Day 1 Orientation

DIN THAYAM CHAGKU MAHEKA RÁJAM HARISSA VANNO PATA VIPPA BHAASAM TAM TAM NAMAS SAMI HARISSA VANNAM PATA VIPPA BHAASAM Satsang with Mooji. I see only a few people smiling. The first thing you have to remember is, in this retreat, you're here to let go of your daily life. Awesome. You're here on vacation. You're here to have fun. I will emphasize a lot of smiling, because smiling keeps the mind, the charmance, the allows you to be here, present and I want you to be able to be like a little child.

have fun in this whatever effort that you think that you need to do do that by half and adjust according to you meditation. So the meditation is very simple. This is a feeling-based meditation, which means you don't use a mantra, you don't use any kind of imagery, you don't use anything as your object invitation to accept for what's known as the Brahmaviharas. The Brahmaviharas are made up of four. That is Metta, or loving kindness; Karuna, or compassion; Mudita, or impathetic joy; and Upekkha, or equanimity. When you start out with this practice, you are going to be cultivating and developing loving kindness. That is mental, loving kindness.

And like I said, this is a feeling-based meditation, which means it's psychosomatic in nature. You feel something in your body, and you stay with the awareness of that feeling. There are a few ways to bring up this feeling of loving-kindness. You can use statements in your mind like, May I be happy. May I be well. May I be filled with loving-kindness. May I be free of suffering. You can say that a few times until you actually feel that loving-kindness. So what is that feeling of loving-kindness?

That feeling of loving kindness is wanting the happiness for yourself and wanting the happiness of others around you. Another way to bring up the loving kindness is to use imagery. You bring up the image of holding a little cute baby in your arms or a little puppy, and that creates this warm glowing feeling in the center of the chest.

Once you start feeling that, that's a manifestation of loving kindness. Then you let go of any of the images and rest your mind on the feeling of loving kindness. Another thing you can do is bring up a wholesome memory. For those of you who are parents or older siblings, remember the time when your child, or remember the time when you were younger siblings, how it made you feel. The pure love that many of you... And then let go of the image, let go of the memory, and let the mind, let the awareness just rest in that feeling of what it is. You could use gratitude first in the morning: think about the things that you would wait for you, things that you might possess, not just physical possessions but qualities that you possess, the relationships that you have with family and friends.

And allow that gratitude to elevate your mind and heart. When you feel that feeling, a warm feeling, a glowing feeling of love and kindness, let go of the gratitude aspect. Let your mind just rest on that love and kindness. So you can use different kinds of methods that can bring up that feeling. But the meditation itself is to rest your mind in that for the first ten minutes.

That's your object meditation. After ten minutes, you bring up a Kalyana Mitta. Kalyana Mitta is sometimes translated as spiritual friend. A spiritual friend means somebody who you admire, somebody who you have respect for. Somebody who you think of immediately puts a smile on your face. It doesn't have to be somebody you personally know either. It's somebody that's an inspiration to you.

Traditionally their instructions were to have a spiritual friend who is of the same sex as you are, but if you are of the LGBTQ community you can choose anyone of any sex. The point of that construction is that you want to choose somebody that you don't have any kind of essential lust for, and this has to be somebody who is alive and not a family member, not a relative, and they receive your loving kindness for the duration of the practice. First ten minutes you let your heart feel that love and kindness, letting your mind be imbued with that feeling of love and kindness, first 10 minutes.

For the duration of the practice, you bring up that friend. You can visualize them in front of you and you can imagine or visualize that feeling being sent to them, or if it's easier you can imagine that friend and put them in the center of your heart and imagine them passing the feeling of loving kindness that you are emanating. So that's the duration of the practice. You want to sit for a minimum of 30 minutes. If you can sit longer that's much better.

The walking practice now. The walking meditation you can do over here, we have a lot of space in this hall. You can do it downstairs in one of the halls, and we also have a space on the roof. You do some walking meditation, it's the same thing. You bring up your spiritual friend, bring up the feeling of loving kindness, and send that feeling of loving kindness to your friend. You want to walk at a normal pace. You don't need to walk as you wouldn't just walk on the street. The point is to cultivate that awareness of loving kindness.

Even while walking at a normal pace and then staying with that loving kindness, doing whatever it is that you are doing, whether it's having breakfast, lunch, walking, sitting, standing, taking a shower, whatever it may be. Now, as you do the practice you will invariably get distracted. This is a natural process of practice, you will get distracted. These distractions are known as hindrances and I will get more into what they are tomorrow, but understand these hindrances not to be your enemies. These distractions are your friends. These distractions are your teachers.

They shed light on your attachments. They shed light on your sources of aversion. So let's say you bring up the feeling of loving kindness and you're staying there and it feels wonderful and your awareness is imbued with that feeling, and then your mind drifts away thinking about something else. Now you're no longer on your object of meditation. You are distracted when your attention is fully away from that feeling of loving kindness. If there are thoughts in the background and you're still with the feeling of loving kindness, then you don't need to bring your mind back, because you're staying with the object. When your mind gets distracted it means your attention is fully away from that feeling of loving kindness. So how do you bring your attention back? This is a process of right effort. There are four components to right effort: preventing unarisen unwholesome states from arising, abandoning already arisen unwholesome states, generating unarisen wholesome states of mind, and maintaining already arisen wholesome states of mind.

So there is a mnemonic device that we use to understand and apply the right effort, which is called the six R's: Recognize, Release, Relax, Re-smile, Return, and Repeat. When you are staying with your object of meditation and you get distracted, for a moment you notice you're distracted, at some point. The noticing of that, that mind being distracted, is the first step. Then you relax. Then you bring your attention back to mind and body. You're releasing your attention from that distraction.

Then you relax, consciously relax the mind and body. When you relax, you are tranquilizing bodily formations. Tranquilizing formations that are rooted in craving, some form of craving, in the form of grasping, in the form of pushing away, in the form of identifying with something, taking something fresh. After you relax, bring up the smile. So when you sit down for the practice you're already smiling, and you see any iconography of the Buddha, you see that there's always a little smile in this place. Smile with your mouth, smile with your eyes, smile with your mind, smile with your heart.

And then when you have the smile, return back to the feeling. Let the smile be an anchor to that feeling of loving kindness, and then see that, and then repeat. Whenever you get distracted, recognize you were distracted, release your attention from that distraction, relax the tightness of tension in mind and body, back to the smile, turn to your object, repeat whenever necessary.

Take it easy with this practice. There's nowhere to go, there's no one to be, there's nothing to do. Just relax, enjoy the practice, make it like a game. This isn't a competition. I'm not going to be handing out certificates at the end of this retreat. Enjoy yourself. Have fun. Don't push yourself. Now in terms of the interviews: tomorrow there won't be any interviews. Tomorrow, we will have a group sitting at 1:30, and it will be led by an animal Nandananda. And it will be an interesting group sitting. The day after tomorrow, we will have the interviews. Bhatnayananda, who is not here right now, but he will be here the day after tomorrow. He will conduct the interviews on the 14th.

In his place, Venerable Mata Nanda will do the interviews in the morning. I will be doing the interviews in the afternoon. And I think Bharatan is going to put up a sheet to let you know what day is when you need to switch. For two days in the morning you will be interviewing with Mata Nanda, and for two days in the afternoon you will be interviewing with me. The monastics will be interviewing with my dear family. Now when you come in for the interview, it is not a therapy session. We are not your psychiatrists. We are not trying to figure out what happened in your childhood.

When you come into the interview, be prepared to answer five basic questions. What was your object of meditation? What was your only sit? How long did you stay with the object of meditation before you got distracted? How did you bring your attention back to your object of meditation when you got distracted? And, anything you have in your meditation. These five questions. That's it. Now, does anyone have any questions? Can object of meditation be anything which gives us happiness and joy? You have to bring up something that brings up that feeling of happiness and stay with the feeling of happiness, not the object. There is the happiness, the loving happiness, the feeling, not the thing that brings up the feeling.

So maybe some questions can be compared to other sets of things, how do you use the structure related to the meditation, that questions can be compared to the other sets of things, how do you do that? I'll always ask a question at the downtime. Yeah, I don't have to ask any questions. When you find yourself starting to get into anapanasati, that might be treated as a distraction.

Yes, and then the six R's, and then come back to the film. What do you do when the feeling is not strong? That's the thing about the feeling. The feeling will be strong and the feeling will be not so strong. The feeling might be weak, but that's okay. If the feeling is not there, then I will give you other practices today. But what you are teaching yourself here when you do this is how the feeling is also conditioned.

Any object in meditation is conditioned. And it will change because it is conditioned. If things change in your meditation, just observe them. Don't try to hold on to the feeling. Let the feeling be there. If it goes away, it goes away. I'm going to get back up. That's it. When you do the six R's, when you see how this feeling changes, you are seeing for yourself the process of impermanence. It's a process of instability.

And the moment you take it personally, the mind causes itself suffering. So watch it like a movie. The mind is a very interesting movie. The way we look at this practice is, this isn't a single-pointed focus practice. It's more of a, what you would call a lantern consciousness, lantern awareness, sort of a panoramic kind of awareness. But you're staying with an object to keep your mind rooted, anchored, and morbid. So your mind's attention is a satellite. The object of meditation here is the planet, planet Earth.

Due to the gravitational field of your correct attention, it orbits the planet. But then as you get distracted, the satellite lifts away. It's no longer and more. So you use the six R's to bring the satellite back into it. That's it. Don't give too much importance to the feeling. Let the feeling be an anchor. Your mind remain stable, steady, and elective. - Is the feeling always repeated in the architecture? - Can it be a sensation, a throw to the heart? - It's usually in the heart. And it will change. It might become weaker, it might become stronger, it might shift up, it might shift down. Just allow the mind to be aware of it.

Is there any particular position to meditate in the right way, in the right sitting? You can sit on the floor if you like or you can sit in a chair. You can even lie down, so there's no magic pose that goes as long as your attention. If you're lying down and you're meditating, some people have very excruciating bad problems, so it might be best to sit in a chair. That doesn't work right now, try that. If you're doing that, make sure that your attention is a little stronger, a little bit more. I don't want emphasis in their focus.

So, there's no magic in sitting across it. Yes. All the time. - Sometimes, you have to think about it. Sometimes, you have to think about it. - That's the point. You forget to smile, recognize you forgot to smile and bring it back. Training your mindfulness in that work. The more you smile, you see there's been research done about this. They did a research on, actually Venerable Metthananda is perfect to talk about this. There have been a few studies on the psychological benefits of smiling. One of the most interesting studies was on people that administered Botox, does everyone know what Botox is, where they inject a chemical to make the lips bigger. In this case, there was a control group about the Botox that didn't give them a smile, and then a group of people that were the Botox just happened to lift their mouth in the right way to make them smile.

And the people who had this little smile from the chemical uplift, they found were psychologically happier than the other people. It doesn't mean you didn't get Botox. So you don't have to get Botox, but if you're not smiling on this retreat, we will recommend Botox. You know what, we went down Super Missouri, especially when it was hot out.

If we found somebody not smiling, actually in a different medical background, the world's smallest water garden is super sober. I don't know if you guys know what super sober is, but it's like, it's like a beach party, you know, a heavy-duty beach party. And it was very small, so anyone who was caught not smiling, he would secretly bring it out.

So we're not going to do that here but this is something we could do. Better watch out. Do you know about the pencil? Yeah, there was also a study where they put a pencil in people's mouth to basically uplift the corners in their mouth and really knowing what was going on. And these people, based on a questionnaire they were filling out, seemed to be psychologically happier than another group. There's all these little tricks, but you can just feel for yourself, if you smile right now, how does your mind feel? Did you want to pull the things to pull out? Yeah, just a little bit, just like that. I can't hear you at all, I'm sorry.

So the sensations are the same as feeling in this space. When we talk about feeling based meditation, we're talking about a sensation, a warm sensation in the heart. But it is also tied to an emotional quality of feeling good, feeling happy. Actually that's good because if that lifts the mind, the idea is that as you're bringing up a feeling and staying with quality. So when you see that, when you notice that when you're chanting that the mind is uplifted and you have this sense of appreciation or whatever it is, that mudita that comes out. That comes out, you can use that as the object. Okay, let's end it here.

Anyone else? Oh, do they have the sharing of the internet? Yes. Everybody has the sharing of the internet? No, please. Not dead. Yes, just a trigger and let go of the channel and stay with what they feel. Then it will open when the army is back. Yes, after 10 minutes, then we have it all done. So 10 minutes we have to stay and then we can put it all done. Right. Because you're doing it to yourself. Ah, I didn't have to wait for it. There are two parts of the practice. It was 10 minutes to be set, and then you can put it all done. Correct. So it's not there. It's not there. Actually, I almost needed it.