Day 1 -2022 First July 10 Day Retreat - with Delson Armstrong-Instructions

Recognize when you've become a milestone. Release and let go of your thoughts. Relax, re-smile and let joy rise. Now return to the peace that this moment provides. And repeat it. Now recognize. When you come lost, release. Some of you are new to this practice, but regardless, this first piece of advice is for everyone, now that you are here and the retreat will start. I want you to take everything that's on your mind and leave it in a box. Any other kinds of techniques that you guys have done? Any kinds of meditation practices you've done for the next 10 days?

Just leave it in a box, and just completely try this practice wholeheartedly. The main part of this practice is to, first and foremost, keep smiling. Whatever it is that you're doing, keep smiling. When you wake up first thing in the morning, resolve the night before that you will wake up with a smile on your face, and keep that going. When you wake up, resolve the night before that you will wake up at a certain time. So, if you're going to wake up at, let's say, 5:30, try to wake up at 5:25. See how well the mind is able to wake up at that time. This will be very helpful at a future period. A couple of things to take into account: this is a silent retreat. That means you want to be in noble silence, both verbally and mentally.

Be practical. If you need to communicate with someone about something regarding your, let's say, you sign up for a yogi job and you have something that you need to communicate, obviously communicate that. But don't try to start conversations. Keep absolute silence as best as you can. Don't even have Dhamma discussions, because that is going to get in the way of your practice and another person's practice. So keep your experiences to yourself.

Now for those of you Now for those of you Now for those of you Now for those of you Now for those of you Now for those of you Who haven't done this practice Before I'll give you the instructions Now for those of you Who haven't done this practice Before I'll give you the instructions This is a Feeling based Meditation It's a Somatic Meditation It's a Somatic Meditation Which means That While you are staying With loving kindness You're not using Verbal phrases In your mind Over and over again You're actually With a loving kindness In your heart In your chest In your chest In your chest In your chest So when you Start the meditation You want to sit In your chest So when you Start the meditation You want to sit comfortably You can sit In a chair You can sit In a chair You can sit On the floor On a cushion Keep yourself Steady And comfortable And when you Start the meditation Keep your eyes closed Start with a little smile On your face A little smile In your eyes On your lips

In your mind and in your heart, keep things relaxed. Keep things relaxed. The smile is very essential, because it allows you to keep things light. Here you are on retreat. This is not military camp. Here you are on vacation. Relax, take it easy, enjoy yourself. Leave the world behind for the next nine or ten days. So it starts with a smile. Once you have the smile, bring up a wholesome memory or a wholesome image. So, anything that makes you feel uplifted: imagining holding a baby in your arms and looking at that baby smiling back at you, or holding a little puppy, or a little kitten, or some kind of memory that you had from childhood, something that makes you feel uplifted, something that brings up that warm, cozy, fuzzy feeling in the center of your chest. Once you feel that, let go of the image. Or you can use verbalizations, or both in tandem.

You could say, in your mind, may I be happy, may I be well, may I be filled with loving kindness, may I be at peace. Allow that to start the process in your chest. Once you feel that warmth in your heart, let go of that, and let go of that, and let the awareness, your attention, bask in that feeling. Really stay with that feeling. Imagine it like a candle flame that's just radiating outward, and stay with that. There's nothing else for you to do but just stay with that feeling. Just relax into that feeling.

Don't push. Don't try so hard to bring up the feeling. Don't do anything except stay with that feeling. Whatever effort you think you need to do, do that by half, and make adjustments accordingly. Because there are a couple of things people do initially. They try too hard, and they try to bring up the feeling, and it causes tightness and tension, which is a manifestation of craving. Or they're not able to accept the moment as it actually is. They're not able to feel like they deserve loving kindness. They don't feel like they deserve to be happy. Let go of all of those notions and just stay with the feeling. So you want to stay with this feeling for at least the first 10 minutes of the sitting. You want to sit for at least 30 minutes.

First 10 minutes, you're sending loving kindness to yourself. Then you bring up a spiritual friend. A spiritual friend is somebody that is alive, somebody of the same sex, somebody you admire, somebody you think about that brings a warm feeling in your heart, somebody that brings a smile to you. It could be the Dalai Lama. It could be a Nobel Prize winner. It could be anybody who you admire. Or it could be your best friend. But as long as they are alive and of the same sex, stick with them. Just one spiritual friend.

If you're a visual person, imagine them in front of you while you're meditating, smiling at you, and them receiving the loving kindness from you. You have a heart-to-heart connection. You're sending out loving kindness to them, and they to you. This is what you do for the next 20 minutes of that 30-minute sit. And inevitably you will meet with distractions. It's a part of this meditation. Distractions are your friends. Distractions are your teachers. They help you see where your attachments lie, where your aversion lies, where your identification lies, where your mind lies, where your identity is. With your spiritual friend, no longer with love and kindness, and you are in la la land of distractions, whatever those distractions are.

And those distractions can last for a minute, two minutes, five minutes, ten minutes, thirty minutes. Doesn't matter how long you've gone away. But the key is to recognize: oh, I am no longer on my object of meditation. This is the first step, recognizing. When you recognize you are distracted, now you are distracted, now you can release that distraction. When you release that distraction, you relax the tightness and tension in the mind and body. Tightness and tension is a manifestation of craving, of what's known in Pali as tanha, thirst. There's so many different definitions of craving. It's the 'I like it' mind, the 'I don't like it' mind, 'I am this mind', or whatever it might be. But it might be, but it's basically

A reaction to things in the present moment, where the mind is discontent with what is arising. So when you're six, you're recognizing your mind got distracted. You're releasing your attention from that, and you're relaxing the body. And what does that feel like? When you clench your fist, there's tightness and tension. There's tightness, and you're relaxing. There's tightness in the body. The tightness arises as a result of reacting with craving, so that tightness has to be let go of. This is what's known as tranquilizing formations. When you intentionally relax, you are de-conditioning the mind from reacting in such a way that it identifies with the process and gets attached to it.

You're de-conditioning your mind from that, and by relaxing and then re-smiling and returning, which I'll get to, you're reconditioning your reactions into intelligent, wise and compassionate responses. So you relax the tension and you come back to the mind, to the smile. Remember, you started this meditation with the smile. Remember, you started this meditation off with the smile. The smile allows your mind to be open, uplifted, light, very spacious. This meditation is not about being one-pointed, singly focused on one thing. The meditation is more about this being the object of loving kindness, and this is your awareness orbiting the loving kindness, keeping the space, keeping the mind spacious, keeping the awareness open, so that insights arise, so that if hindrances arise, you're able to recognize them, release them, relax the craving, and then come back to the smile. And then come back to the smile. Now, if you're already smiling, that's good. If you're not smiling, notice that and bring up the smile.

And then return to the loving kindness. That doesn't mean you have to restart. It means start from wherever you left off, before you got distracted. So if you got distracted, if you were staying with your spiritual friend, stay with your spiritual friend. And then repeat whenever you got distracted. Now, it's not like you have to say, "Oh, here I am, recognizing. Here I am releasing. Here I am relaxing. Here I am re-smiling. Here I am returning." Just do it, right? Just let it be, like a wave. In about three to four seconds you just recognize, you just recognize, you just recognize. Release. Relax. Relax. Relax. Relax. We smile. Return, and stay with the object of meditation. So this is how you deal with the object of meditation. So this is how you deal with hindrances. This is how you deal with distractions. This is how you deal with distractions. What you are doing, by doing so, is developing wisdom, developing clarity, developing mindfulness. What is mindfulness? You hear this thrown out a lot.

Mindfully eating, mindfully, mindfully, mindfully, mindfully, mindfully, mindfully doing. This is how you are doing mindfully doing, mindfully doing this and that, mindfully doing this and that, mindfully doing this and that, mindfully doing this and that, mindfully doing this and that, mindfully doing this and that, mindfully doing this and that. What does that mean? Oftentimes it's about staying with whatever it is that you're doing. But here, the definition of mindfulness comes from the original Pali. For mindfulness, which is sati, and sati comes from the Sanskrit smriti, which means memory. Memory, meaning you are remembering something. You are recalling something. You are recalling something. And what is it that you are remembering? To observe how your mind's attention moves from one thing to the other. That's it. That's it. So you're staying with your object of meditation. You're staying with your object of meditation. You're resting your awareness on the loving kindness. Now you observe that it is no longer on the loving kindness. This is mindfulness. Developing this clarity, developing this clarity develops wisdom. You're teaching yourself how your mind works.

And in doing so, your mind works. And in doing so, you are reconditioning the way the mind responds to situations. So we'll get, we'll unpack this more as we go on in the next nine or ten days. But right now, just understand that you want to keep your mind light. You want to keep your mind uplifted. Keep your mind clear, with the smile. Stay with the feelings all throughout the day. Now, that's the sitting practice. There is a walking practice to this as well, and it's not about walking slowly, trying to pay attention to how the foot makes contact with the earth and all of these things. It's about mindfully walking, which means you're staying with your spiritual friend as you're walking. Walk at a normal pace. Walk, you know, with your eyes in front of you, so that you're seeing what's going on, so you're seeing what's going on, so you don't get distracted. But don't get distracted. But don't get distracted.

But don't get distracted by other things around you. Don't get distracted by the birds. Don't get distracted by the birds. Don't get distracted by the dogs or anything else. Just walk, and allow the mind to rest in that feeling of loving kindness when you're walking. Normally, your mind is occupied by all kinds of thoughts and ideas, aren't they?

There's always some kind of rumination going on. So what you're doing here is you're replacing all of that rumination, that process of thinking about this, that process of thinking about this, that process of thinking about this, that process of thinking about this or that, by letting your mind stay on one object, which is the feeling of loving kindness to your spiritual friend. This is the walking practice. When you notice you get distracted, you do the same thing: recognize you got distracted, release your attention from that, relax, relax, re-smile, and return. Keep going. Now, for those of you who have already done this practice before and are radiating in the six directions, what you want to do is start with loving kindness, and then allow the mind to go to compassion, and so on. So always start the practice until I give you further instructions. As we do the interviews, start with the loving kindness. Allow the mind to really be acquainted with loving kindness, radiating in the different directions, each single individual direction, and then in all directions at the same time, and allow the mind to gradually

go into the different brahmaviharas. And of course you know the six are. When you have the six are, when you have the six are. So are there any questions? Yeah. Loving kindness is friendliness. Loving kindness is wanting happiness for another individual, wanting happiness for another individual, wanting happiness for another individual. Compassion is something else entirely. Compassion is something else entirely, which we'll get into later. But the feeling of compassion, but the feeling of compassion, but the feeling of compassion. Sorry, the feeling of compassion. The feeling of metta, the feeling of loving kindness, is the feeling that you have for your best friend, right? Somebody that you admire, somebody that you see, and when they, you know, you just want the best for them. You always think the best for them. There's no malice behind your thoughts about them. You always think the best for them. There's no malice behind your thoughts about them. So loving kindness is just feeling good for yourself, wanting good for yourself, wanting good for yourself, wanting good for yourself, wanting good for yourself, wanting good for yourself, and wanting good for another being.

So you start the practice off with loving kindness. So you start the practice off with loving kindness, and we'll talk about the others as we gradually get. Okay. Let's share some merit. May suffering ones be suffering free. May the fear-struck be fearless. May the greed, may the fear, our grief shed all grief. Shed all grief. Shed all grief. Shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. And may all beings shed all grief. That we have thus acquired for the acquisition of all kinds of happiness. May they long