Austria 2025 | Introduction - Just Relax!

The practice that we're going to do in this retreat is known as the Brahmaviharas. The Brahmaviharas are made up of four components: Metta, or loving kindness; Karuna, or compassion; Mudita, or empathetic joy; and Upekkha, or equanimity. For those who are starting out on this retreat, in other words, you guys have just started out, you are beginners, and I will give you the instructions shortly. But for those who are advanced practitioners, you can start off with radiating in the different directions. What is metta? This is very important to understand.

Metta means friendliness. It means loving-kindness, that's the usual translation that they give, but really it means friendliness, it means in the spirit of friendship. And we want to start off with metta to ourselves. How do we befriend ourselves? It is seeing our own innate goodness. I was speaking with a friend of mine in the U.S. about this.

And he had been a monk, a former monk, for many years before he left the monastery. So he had some degree of experience with meditation and Buddhism in general. And he said it occurred to him that metta is the recognition of goodness in ourselves and the goodness of other beings. And I thought that is a very good definition. That is a very good explanation.

How do you recognize your own goodness? What does that mean? How do you recognize the goodness of other beings? What does that mean? I'm not talking about, or in our discussion when we spoke about this, obviously it was understood as we discussed. And I say here now, I'm not talking about some kind of superficial goodness, not that I am a good person because I'm moral, I'm a good person because I give to charity, I'm a good person because I don't break the precepts, I don't lie, all of these things.

What we're talking about is an innate goodness that is independent of any kind of causes or conditions, an innate goodness that is not dependent on any kind of external or internal factors. Just the sense of your most core essence, that is your goodness, and that same recognition for other beings. There are many ways you can do this. At a superficial level, in order to bring up the metta, we may use different techniques or different factors, such as using mantras. We say mantra, but really it's a statement, a statement like, may I be happy, may I be well,

may I be free of suffering, may I be filled with loving kindness. You may say that a few times until you actually feel it for yourself. You have that intentional wish: I want to feel that happiness, I want to feel that loving kindness towards myself. And you feel that as a somatic experience in the chest, in the heart center, that warm fuzzy feeling when you're holding a baby in your arms, that warm fuzzy feeling when you fall in love for the first time with someone. There is a sense of connection, there's a sense of deep desire to connect with that person. This is also loving kindness. Take away the superficiality of I like this person because they look good or they make me feel good, and all of these things. That innate essential desire is a desire for one's own happiness and a desire for another's. So if you can feel that and experience that in the heart center, then all you have to do is rest in that. You don't need to do anything after that, once you're able to experience that.

Let your mind sink into that feeling, into that experience. You could use gratitude as another option. You could think about the things that you are grateful for, the people in your life that you are grateful for, the circumstances, the situations, the events, the things that have shaped you in the way you have become. Different things, different people that allow you to feel that warmth, that appreciation for life, appreciation for existence.

Gratitude is the quickest way to bring attention back to the present moment. And that is what meditation is all about. Meditation is about using an anchor, like metta or the breath or any other thing, to bring your attention back to the flow of every given moment. And you utilize your attention in such a way that you don't force it.

When you force it, you cause yourself pain. When you force it, you're causing yourself unnecessary and undue tightness and tension. But when you relax and rest in the experience of every given moment as it actually is, using the anchor to let your mind rest in that, then it is natural, effortless meditation. So when we do this and remain in that feeling, whether using words in our mind or a happy image or gratitude, we allow our mind to rest in it. There is another exercise that you can do. So I'm giving you different options for you to play around with and see what works for you. The other option is to recognize a time in your life as a child, before things in your life supposedly got screwed up.

This is the innocent inner child for you. Connect with that, connect with that essence of your being where you're not beholden to anyone, beholden to anything, affected by any kind of memory. One of the exercises that I've recommended to people, and this was from my interactions with a teacher named Forrest Knudsen, and it was developed by a woman named Anna Wise, is that in that practice it is sort of like a visualization, a sort of process of contemplation. But when you start it you will start to feel that self-love, that loving kindness. What you would do there is imagine yourself walking down some steps. It could be a large staircase, it could be a spiral staircase, doesn't matter. You imagine yourself walking down these stairs towards a door that opens up to a hallway.

You walk into the hallway and you go to a door that says inner child. And you open the door, and inside is your inner child. And that inner child can be any age, in any time, in any place. The inner child does not remain static. Sometimes it's your seven-year-old self, sometimes it's your four-year-old self, sometimes it's your 11-year-old self. Doesn't matter, it is whatever is required in that particular scenario. And the idea there is you spend time with that child version of yourself and you ask the child, what do you need in this moment?

What do you need? So one of the examples was somebody had done it and the child said, I just want a bowl of soup. So you give a bowl of soup to the child. Or, I just want you to hang out with me and play video games. You are providing the attention that that child maybe didn't receive, the love and affection that was maybe missing in that moment, and you stay with that feeling that comes up. The whole point is to stay with that feeling. Don't worry about how grandiose the visualization needs to be and so on. It's all about coming back to that innate sense of goodness, connecting with that. So once you have that, you stay with that for about 10 minutes, 10 to 15 minutes, and that just feels like whatever that feels like. It might be five minutes, it might be 10 minutes, it might be 15 minutes. It doesn't matter.

But what will invariably happen is that you will get distracted, and that is the nature of the mind, that is the nature of the process. So welcome that. Be okay with that, that you will be distracted. When you are okay with it, then your mind will not resist it. When there is resistance, your mind creates tension. Allow the distraction to be there. Recognize that distraction is there. As soon as you see the distraction is there, okay, I am distracted. So what do you do? I am going to simplify the practice for you. All you do is relax back to your object.

That's it. For some people, it takes too much effort to recognize, release, relax, re-smile and return. So all I'm saying is just relax back to your object. What does it mean to relax? It means to drop the distraction. It means to let go of your attention towards that distraction. And when you relax back into the feeling, you are sinking back into the feeling.

You can feel that mentally, that the tightness and tension clears away, and the mind sinks into the feeling of loving-kindness, of whatever the object might be. You know, the six Rs, for example, or the four Rs, or drops, if anyone knows this, which is don't resist or push, soften, and smile. These are all strategies. These are all different instruments of practice that you can take up, and you're welcome to take up any of them.

The whole point of any of these strategies is to let go. That's it. That is the entire process of practice. When we talk about the Eightfold Path, it is about letting go. And what are we letting go of? We're letting go of our desire to control the outcome of how things should be. We come into the meditation practice and we have a certain kind of image: I will meditate for this much time, and I will feel the feeling, and I will stay with the feeling, and it will be a good meditation.

And lo and behold, we experience distractions. So let go of the desire to control the outcome of the meditation. Let go of the desire for anything at all. The only thing you need to do is to relax back into the present moment. Relax back into every moment that flows. And with that, the anchor of the feeling of loving-kindness is present.

So no more of this. If you want to do it, you can, but no more needed to just recognize, release, relax, re-smile, return. Everything that we do as a technique then becomes the distraction itself. But the technique becomes the obstacle. Don't get caught up in how things need to be, how they should be, what is expected of you. I don't expect anything from you guys.

You are free to do as you please in this retreat. The only person you're accountable to is yourself. But I would suggest, as someone who has studied the map, as someone who has walked the path and seen the different parts of the territory, where the shortcuts are, where the long paths are, I would suggest that you treat this retreat as a time to reconnect with that playfulness.

Reconnect with the ability to sink into every moment as sweetness, as nectar. There will be times when things feel difficult. There will be times when it feels like the mind is pushing, and that is your signal that you're not able to relax into the moment. The moment you see that, just relax, surrender, back here now. Nothing to do. I've always said this: there is nothing to do, no one to become, nowhere to go. If you just remembered this, you can leave now.

But you see, the mind is such that there are two aspects to the mind. There is the thinking mind, where it feels like there needs to be something done. There is the mind that builds conceptual frameworks. That is our samsara. Samsara is basically the conceptual proliferation of the mind. And we go through some kind of practice, we go through some kind of object of meditation, we go through some kind of technique, to finally come to a point where we reach that mind, that is the intuitive mind.

The intuitive mind doesn't have any expectations, doesn't have any desires, for lack of a better word, any craving. It is the mind that is content, the mind that is fulfilled, and this is equivalent to or synonymous with the quiet mind, as we may call it in the TWIM practice. We go through the ladders, or the rungs of the ladder, of the jhanas.

We feel like we're achieving something. Oh, I got to the fourth jhana. Now I'm in infinite space. Now I'm in nothingness. Now I'm in neither perception or non-perception. But then you come to that space where the mind is free of any kind of desire, free of any kind of objects, free of any kind of associations. And that is the space that we want to go to.

Don't worry about cessation, don't worry about achieving anything. And this is something that's important for you individually to understand. What is your intention? What is your intention for this retreat? Why did you come on retreat? For what? Because we have a good marketing team that's able to tell you you're going to do this and you're going to do that.

Enlightenment in 10 days or less. What is the intention? Are you here to let go of pain and anger and years of suffering? Are you here to just relax? Find the next nine days to kind of contemplate and reflect and be here in nature, right? Whatever your intention is, you have to understand that. Don't do something just because you find that someone like myself is telling you, do this and do that, and you'll experience this and that.

Come back to the intuitive mind. And the intuitive mind, or intuition, is born when the mind is quiet, is active when the mind is quiet, and that is the whole process of the practice: to get to a certain level of tranquility, a certain level of serenity, a certain level of quietude, so that intuition arises. That intuition, for some traditions, is known as the higher self. For other traditions it's known as God. It's whatever it is, but it is that part of you that knows without a shadow of a doubt that this is what we need to do, these are the steps to take for every given moment. It doesn't engage with the thinking mind. It doesn't engage with analysis. It doesn't engage with KPIs. It doesn't engage with all of these things that are consequential, that are related to a certain outcome, because as soon as the mind is aligned with a certain outcome and a desire for an outcome, craving sets in and the mind becomes obsessed. No matter how much you tell yourself, "No, no, no, I'm not obsessed by it."

There is this innate, intrinsic sort of rudder that's taking you to a certain outcome. And that motivation is artificial. It's fabricated. I would suggest that you explore that for yourself and see what parts of your mind fabricate your reality, and what parts of your mind are natural, fluid, intuitive, that allow you to be here present with whatever is arising, without any expectation, without any intention to change, maneuver, control, or identify with.

Because we innately require some kind of validation. We innately require some kind of, "Oh, this is good." Why am I saying this? Because in the interviews, when you come into the interviews, do not come to the interviews to try to impress me or anybody else in the room, or even yourself. The interviews are there for us to explore together what works and what doesn't work, based on whatever is happening in the practice for you individually. So I don't have a checklist of, "Okay, jhana one reached, jhana two reached," and you're not getting a certificate at the end of this retreat. So, coming back to the practice for those who are starting out.

You can use, as I said, words in your mind like, "May I be happy, may I be well, may I be free of suffering." You can use an image that invokes that warmth in your heart. You can use gratitude. You can use the idea of connecting with that inner child. And you may stay with this for a while. You may recognize the mind is distracted. Just relax the tension and let the mind sink back into the feeling.

And you may do this for a while, and then you switch over to a friend. And for those who feel like they want to, you can visualize that friend in front of you and you can have a heart-to-heart connection with them. Or you can imagine them being in your heart and basking in the warmth of the loving-kindness.

And you stay with that for the rest of the practice. And you want to sit for a minimum of 30 minutes. How do you measure that? That's dependent on you. You can look at the clock. Okay, I'm sitting now. When it feels like it's natural to come up, see how long you've meditated. Look at the clock. That's how you measure. Do you want to sit longer? That's dependent on you. I would not ask you to sit longer if you don't feel comfortable. Sit for as long as you feel like you want to sit, but I would suggest a minimum of 30 minutes, because it takes that much time on average, 30 minutes to 45 minutes to an hour, for the mind to settle down. In any case.

This is what is known, or was told to me, by another TWIM teacher. This is the period in which you're taking out the trash. So those 30 to 40 minutes is the time when the mind is starting to settle into itself. Now, in terms of posture and sitting and all of that, do what works for you. If you like to sit cross-legged, sit cross-legged. If you like to sit in a chair, sit in a chair. There's no magic in one or the other. The whole point is to be comfortable.

When you do walking practice, walk at a normal pace. Walk as you would walk normally from one place to the other. We have a lot of natural beauty around us, so it's nice to walk out, and weather permitting, it would be nice to walk around and just be in the nature and stay with that feeling and appreciation.

In fact, nature and the tranquility around us will help us to feel appreciation, and that appreciation will allow us to recognize that loving kindness, the goodness that is all around us. I'm not asking any of you to be delusional and just be, oh, everything is hunky-dory. No. The world sucks. Life sucks. And that is the first noble truth.

And the reason that the world sucks is because we have certain expectations of it, of ourselves, of our friends, of our families, of the world at large. This is why when we watch the news, we get irritated, we get frustrated. We have a side, right? We want this person to win. We're against this particular group. We are identifying with this particular group.

All of these are the second noble truth, and we'll explore more when we talk about dependent origination. But in essence, having a certain expectation of ourselves, of the people around us, and of the world at large, that is craving, and the obsessive nature of desiring something to such an extent that we identify with it, is part of that craving.

The moment we disengage from it, that disengaging process itself of relaxing, is what is known as the fourth noble truth. That's the path. It allows us to experience relief from any tightness and tension. And this is what we're doing with the practice. Every time you're able to see when the mind gets distracted, every time you're able to see when the mind strategizes about something, every time you see the mind tries to control how things should be because it has certain expectations, and you choose to relax that and you feel into that relief, you feel back into the loving kindness, into that warmth, you are exercising, you are applying, what are known as the four noble truths.

So when you're doing the walking practice, you can walk for 10 minutes, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. Walk at a reasonable pace and just let your mind or your heart be filled with that loving kindness. Use whatever method you need to bring that up, and let the mind stay with that feeling. And then walk with that feeling in mind.

It may seem or sound harder than it actually is. When we're walking around, we're already thinking about this or that. Our mind is aware of whatever it is that our mind is aware of. We're thinking about our job, career, relationship. Why did he say that to me that way? I hope this doesn't happen. So your mind is already able to be in that space while it's walking.

The idea here is to re-condition the mind from that automatic process, that default mode network of thinking helter-skelter, and engage your mind with an anchor that allows you to be fully present. So the loving kindness is that anchor. And that will extend on to you eating, showering, sitting, standing up, whatever it is. Entering a room, exiting a room, whatever it is, stay with that feeling as much as you can.

So, this is the practice for those who are starting out. Now, those who have done this practice before and got to that point where you are advanced, stay with the six directions. You may use the feeling of loving kindness towards yourself for maybe the first 10 minutes, whatever feels good for you, and then allow that feeling to expand out in all directions, to all beings everywhere, and see where that takes you.