Day 1 July 2-12 Advanced Retreat-Orientation and Instructions

So I think you've all been told and you're well aware that this is an advanced retreat, and that just means that most of you here are people who have practiced TWIM before, but I also think that most of you have not been keeping up with your practice. I know, I know. We come into the retreat thinking, yeah, we will have great discipline and consistency, and then when we're off retreat we'll do the best we can, and then, you know, invariably we slack off. So for you guys who are advanced, I expect you to make the most of it and to sit for as long as you can. And for those who are starting with the TWIM practice, I would suggest, in fact I would suggest for everybody, to

inhabit a beginner's mind. Whatever techniques, whatever processes, whatever practices that you have done up until now, just forget about them for these ten days. You don't know anything. You don't know what meditation is, you don't know what practices, you're coming in with a completely clean slate. This will be for your benefit. The only way I have made any progress in any kind of practice is because I have adopted a beginner's mind in everything that I've done.

Because what happens is we have the assumption that we know what the person speaking is talking about more than what the person who is speaking knows. So we have this assumption that, "Oh, I've heard about this before," and our mind switches off and clicks off and says, "Okay, let him speak and now let me get to the juicy stuff." No. Understand that when you adopt a beginner's mind, you are completely attentive in everything that you do.

And the idea here is that we're not trying to get anywhere, right? On this retreat, you're not going to get any kind of certificate of enlightenment. You're not going to get any kind of thing of, oh, well done. You know, you're going to come in for the interviews. That doesn't mean I'm going to grade you based on your answers. I need you to be truthful and honest and real with what you bring to the table.

And the less caught up you are in what has to be done, the easier it will be for you. And one of the quickest ways to do that is to have a mind that is light, a light-hearted way of approaching things. Be like a child in everything that you do. Have excitement in every moment that you're experiencing things.

This is how you develop mindfulness. You know, we have heard mindfulness in so many different ways, right? Mindful eating, mindful of walking, mindful driving, mindful this, mindful that. It's all part of the McMindfulness industry. But the reality is when we talk about mindfulness, it's about understanding what you are doing, when you are doing it, based on whether there is any craving or not in your mind.

What is craving? Craving is the attachment to the me, the mind, the myself, to an experience, that this is how things should be done. All right. If it's pleasant, I want more of it and I don't want it to stop. If it's unpleasant, I want to push it away. It's the I that wants it. The I, the I, creates desire, or more specifically craving.

The I is what creates the want and do not want, the identification. So don't take yourself, so to speak, so seriously. Have fun with your mind. Understand that your mind, all our minds, are very funny things. They come up with so many interesting scenarios when we are in the shower. They come up with so many interesting ideas when we're driving. They come up with so many interesting ideas when we're supposedly meditating, right? And that is the mind, that is the nature of the mind that we are trying to work with here. And this is what I would call the thinking mind, the mind that is rooted in samsara. And our mission, should you choose to accept it, for these next eight or nine days

is to learn how to let go of that mind and let your mind, that is the natural mind, the natural luminosity of mind, what we call the pabhasarachitta in Pali. This is the luminous, clear cognizance which is there underneath all of that, and to rest in that, to be in that space. Because when we're in that space, then everything starts to make a lot more sense.

That is the wisdom mind. That's the mind that's rooted in liberating wisdom. And the goal for this retreat is that there is no goal. Don't worry about where am I supposed to be, how am I supposed to practice, am I doing it right, am I doing it the way that was instructed. Don't get so caught up in that.

So for the people who are starting with the TWIM practice, I'll give you the instructions. You know, you will have them in the guidebook and you will have a guided meditation and so on. But basically the instructions are this. The practice here is the practice of brahmaviharas. Brahmaviharas are essentially the mental states that are uplifting.

The mental states that are rooted in letting go. Actually, anything that is rooted in letting go is helping us to transcend our karma, to transcend the wheel of samsara, the wheel of rebirth. So the brahmaviharas are essentially four things: loving-kindness, compassion, empathetic joy, and equanimity. Now, for the beginners, you may choose to start with loving-kindness.

And so, when you sit down for your practice, sit down with a straight spine. Sit down with a smile on your face, a smile in your heart, and a smile in your eyes. And let the mind rest into the heart space. And you may use statements in your mind: May I be happy, may I be well, may I be filled with loving-kindness, may I be free of suffering.

You bring up something that causes you to be happy, maybe the image of a puppy or an infant in your arms. Maybe a wholesome memory that makes you feel immediately uplifted. Now, that image is there to evoke that sense of loving-kindness, that feeling in the heart. You may feel warmth in the heart center, you may feel tingling, you may feel all kinds of things, and that's fine. Those are all just signs that you're experiencing that. You might not experience any of that altogether, but there is a general sense of being uplifted, a general sense of appreciation for yourself.

That there is this feeling of, I am a friend to myself. That is what metta is. That's the Pali. Maitri means, Maitribhav, which means the emotion of friendliness. Being a friend to oneself and being a friend to others. So for the first 10, 15, maybe 20 minutes, you're just basking in this feeling of loving-kindness directed towards yourself.

You may use gratitude. You may use things that help you uplift the mind. But once you're honed in on the feeling, let go of the words. Let go of the memories. Let go of the images. Let go of the gratitude and just stay with the feeling. Don't hold on to it, don't lock on to it, just rest in it, let the mind bask in that feeling.

And then, after a while, you bring up a spiritual friend, what we call the kalyana mitta. Kalyana mitta actually means the friend for whom we want the best. That's actually what... kalyana is not actually spiritual. We translate it as spiritual. Kalyana means, I want the best for this person. So this person is human. They are alive. They are of the same sex.

And they are not a relative. They could be somebody you know personally. Generally, it's better to do that, because as soon as you think of somebody that you know personally, they should bring a smile to your face. Or it could be somebody that you admire in public life. Whoever it is, that you feel you want to send that loving-kindness to.

So you can imagine them in front of you. Visualize them in front of you and connecting your heart with theirs. Radiating the feeling of loving-kindness to them. Letting them feel into it. Or you can have them rest in your heart space, basking in the feeling of loving-kindness. The intention is there, that this person, may they experience my loving-kindness, may they experience this happiness.

And you stay there for as long as you can. For the beginners, I want you to sit for at least 30 minutes. If you can sit an hour, that is great. Now, invariably, you will be distracted, and that is fine. Be okay with that. Remember, we are working with the samsaric mind. We are working with the mind that is analytical and thinking.

We start this practice from there. But the way to deal with whatever comes up that takes your attention away from the feeling is right here: the 6R's, right? The 6R's are just a mnemonic device to understand what right effort is, as the Buddha has talked about. A lot of people will talk about, you know, when they're meditating, okay, there's a distraction or there's a pain or there's an uneasy experience.

And they'll tell you, go into that experience. Observe that experience. Notice that experience. But that's not right effort. Right effort is to recognize the mind is distracted, to let go of that distraction, to replace it with a wholesome state of mind, and to maintain that wholesome state of mind. If you were to understand the essence of the teachings of the Buddha when it comes to the practice of meditation, it is rooted in right effort.

Without right effort and right mindfulness, one does not attain to right samadhi, to right collectedness. So the practice here is essentially, I don't know how many of you know of a guy named R. Buckminster Fuller, but he's a very interesting person. He has a wonderful quote that really emphasizes what we're doing here, and which is in alignment with what the Buddha has taught. He says, you don't change the existing reality by fighting it.

Instead, you put a new model in its place so that the old one becomes obsolete. That is the practice. You're dealing with a mind that has all of these disturbances. That's the old model. The more we try to look into it, the more we try to cuddle it, the more we try to control it, what are we doing?

We're fighting it. We're pushing it. We're trying to do something with it. But instead, we drop it like it's hot. We drop it. We let it go. And we put something else in its place, namely the smile first to generate that feeling of happiness and then returning back the feeling of loving kindness. So the first step is to recognize when the mind is distracted. What does it mean to be distracted?

You see, when you're with the feeling, there might be thoughts in the background. And that's okay. As long as your attention is with the feeling, if there is this sort of mental noise in the background, it's fine. It will die down. It will subside after a while. But if your mind goes in the direction of those thoughts, no longer with the feeling, now you are distracted.

And you may be there for a minute, five minutes, 10 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour of being distracted. But as soon as you recognize, oh, here's a distraction, you have stopped it in its tracks. And you release, which means you let it go. And you relax back into the mind, relax back into the body. Relax the tightness that might be there.

That's relaxing the craving. And then re-smile, because that uplifts the mind, brings back mindfulness. And then return back to the object. And repeat whenever it happens again. This process of recognize, release, relax, re-smile, and return should take you no more than three seconds, three to four seconds. And that's what you do all the time. You may have to do the 6R's a hundred times in a minute, so be it. Every time you do it you are cleansing the mind, you are purifying the mind, you are transforming the mind.

So as you do this process, eventually your mind will slow down. The distractions will become less prevalent and subside. And now you have a certain sense of steadiness, which means you have used the equipment of a right effort and right mindfulness so that your mind goes into right collectedness. Now, for those of you who consider yourselves to be advanced, I expect you to sit for 90 minutes as punishment for not practicing.

No, sit for at least an hour, get to 90 minutes. And how will you practice? You will practice with bringing loving kindness to yourself for the first 10 minutes, 15 minutes, and then radiating it out in the different directions. So you can send the loving kindness in each of the six directions, or you can send it out in all directions at the same time.

It's important to do this because it helps to balance out the energy. You see, we may feel as we are practicing that the mind just wants to rest and we feel like we're in quiet mind, but really what we are is sleepy mind and sloth and torpor mind and heavy mind. So we're invigorating the mind by using the six directions. We are helping the mind along so that after a while, when it's ready to get into the quiet mind, there's none of that heaviness, none of that dullness.

Now, there is a walking component to this. So for the beginners, what you do is you stay with the feeling of loving kindness. You maybe keep your spiritual friend in mind when you're walking, that it's directed to the spiritual friend. And for the advanced group, you just have the feeling of loving kindness as a bubble around you that continues to expand outward while you're walking.

You can sit. As I said, sit for an hour at least. But walking can be 20 minutes at a time, 30 minutes at a time. Now, it's very hot out, which is wonderful because it forces all of you to come and actually sit. So I want you to sit for as long as you can. What is the upper limit? Three and a half, four, four and a half hours.

So that's up to you. There will be interviews on Saturday. I think you guys have already told them where and what and so on, right? So it'll be 10 minutes of interviews. And I will tell you what you need to do about the interviews. Don't worry about it. Just focus on your practice. Tomorrow I will tell you what the questions will be. It will be very simple. I want you to make the most of your time during the interviews by just focusing on what you need to respond to. So basically that will be: what was your object of meditation? How long did you sit?

Or what was your longest sit? Or what was your best sit? Sometimes your longest sit can be your best sit. Sometimes your best sit can be not your longest sit. Your best sit is where your mind is very collected, where there's very few distractions and it feels like things are happening, things are going in a certain direction.

And I might ask you, when you got distracted, how did you come back to your object of meditation? And don't tell me six R's. I want to know in your own words what you did, how you got back. And there'll be time for questions. You know, what might be pressing in your mind about certain things about practice or something you've heard at the Dharma talk and you want to talk about it alone, whatever it is. It's not a therapy session. It's not a session to talk about your problems in life and things like that. I don't care about your problems.

I only care about you making the best you can on retreat. That's my job. My job is to make sure that you are following instructions. And when you're not, you will see another side of me that you might not have seen before. Where I will tell you, I will admonish you for it. But I say it or I do it with the best of intentions. I want the best for you.

So your goal here, your job here, your duty here in these nine days of retreat is to have fun, is to laugh, is to smile, is to be gentle with yourself. Don't be hard on yourself. For these things, if you do not follow, I will admonish you. You see, there are two things that really affect the mind. One is this sense of, I need to be the best. I need to prove to myself or to the teacher or to others that I can do this. And that comes from the sense of, am I doing enough? Am I good enough?

And the second, so that's trying too hard, basically. And the second is kind of related to it, but that can be where we feel like, this isn't going anywhere, and I'm not good enough, and I don't know if this practice is for me. So there you may need some forgiveness. That we will talk about in your interviews.

There's nothing to prove here, there's nothing for you to have to do to prove yourself. I've always said this, there's nowhere to go, there's no one to become, there's nothing to achieve. If you have this in mind, and you wipe clean the slate of your mind with comparing, contrasting, I've heard about this, I've heard about that, maybe if I do this, maybe if I do that, I will do this, I'll get better. Let go of all of that.

Just follow the instructions and things will take care of themselves. So this retreat is, being an advanced retreat, I will read from suttas. Some of these suttas you may have heard, some of them you may not have heard. The idea is there will be a lot of information that will be provided to you through the talks. Whether you retain it or not doesn't matter. Whatever seems to be appropriate for your mind, that you need to retain, will be available to you. That's fine. And the beauty is, we're recording these things, so when you want to go back you can go back and check and see. You might find other things that seem to be useful and helpful for your practice. Don't worry about trying to understand everything. Just let the information be absorbed through your listening. Everything will take care of itself.

The more you are relaxed and don't make this into more than it is, which is just a time to be away from the world outside, to connect with the nature of your mind that is underneath all of the superficialities and conceptualizing and so on, to connect with the nature around you, connect with the people around you. Obviously, we have noble silence, so we're not going to be talking on this retreat with each other. There will be time for that towards the end. But being in a space where other people around you are filled with loving kindness, this. Beautiful.

The luxury of being here for nine days. Wonderful. Not everybody can do this. Not everybody has the means or the opportunity to do something like this. So put things into perspective that way. Make sure that you make the most of your time here. Anybody have any questions? Yes. I noticed that I'm already smiling so much, my face hurts. I'm curious, when that happens, it's like there's so much joy, it's like the body kind of retracts into itself.

Do you have any advice for that? The joy, you know, the joy will come and go in different spurts. And sometimes the joy, as you say, will kind of contract, right? It's not really a contraction, but it's more of the mind becoming more collected. There's no tightening going on. It's just that there's an inward feel that the mind is getting more collected towards. And that's fine.

And if your face hurts, you can take breaks from smiling. It's okay. Anyone else? Yeah? Well, I'll mention that we have some new places to meditate. You can meditate in the log cabin, although it's a problem. Just take one person that is air-conditioned in there, you feel like a solitary kind of thing. And also the new building, you're welcome to go inside and take a look around. Big kind of Dhamma Hall in there as well, and so that's a place that you can go to a city. It's also open, though, maybe in the morning, to some yoga if you feel like that. Don't make a yoga retreat, but it's available for that, and then we'll have the interviews over in that building, but we are going to do them.

To the corner office. Yeah. We'll set up some chairs there, yeah, that way they can wait inside and not in this heat. Yeah, that's good. So, yeah, no, not at all. Just don't talk to them. Yeah, there's some wonderful animals here. We've got Duke, we've got Non and Culture. I don't know if you have seen those dogs. Sukha, after whom Dambasukha was named. No, not really.

He is the abbot in waiting for this place. He's timeless. He's been around for a long time. He's the fat cat, literally. Wonderful animals to pet. And that's a really great way of feeling the loving kindness. So, you're welcome to do that. May suffering ones be suffering free, and the fear-struck fearless be. May the grieving shed all grief, and may all beings find relief. May all beings share this merit that we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. May beings inhabiting space and earth, devas and nagas of mighty power share this merit of ours. May they long protect the Buddha's dispensation.