Day 1 2022 April Retreat 26 May5 - Orientation / Instructions

So, welcome everyone. Just to get a sense of where everyone is at, how many people are new, completely new to TWIM? So, I'll give you the instructions, the meditation instructions, but before I do that, it's important for you to know that there will be a lot of emphasis on smiling. And the reason is because smiling sharpens your mindfulness.

The more you smile, the more attentive you become. The more you smile, the more uplifted your mind becomes, and the easier it is for you to let go of things. So smiling is very vital to this practice, as you'll understand when I talk about the six Rs. So, I mentioned before that smiling sharpens your mindfulness, to know what is mindfulness.

We have so many different definitions of what mindfulness is. Mindfulness is being in the present moment, mindfulness of eating, mindfulness of walking, mindfulness of breathing, and so on. But there's a very practical and easy to understand definition of what mindfulness is: to observe how mind's attention moves from one object to another. Why do we say remembering? Because mindfulness comes from the Pali word sati. And sati means memory or to remember.

So you're remembering to keep your mind, or rather to observe how your mind moves, how attention moves from one object to the other. And so when we talk about the practice, we talk about two components. Number one, we talk about what is the object of meditation here. So primarily it is the brahmaviharas: metta, karuna, mudita and upekkha. We start off with metta, which is loving kindness. So to start off the practice, you bring up a wholesome image or a wholesome memory.

You could use verbalization in your mind for a couple of times with words like, may I be happy, may I be well, may I be content, may I be free of suffering. Whatever works for you. And you don't have to keep verbalizing it in your mind like some kind of mantra, of times, to get the feeling. And that's very important to understand. This is not a meditation where you're using words. This is not a meditation where you're using primarily visualization. It's a somatic meditation, it's a feeling-based meditation. So when you use a wholesome image or a wholesome memory, like holding a little baby in your arms or petting a puppy or something that inspires you, something that puts a smile on your face.

You feel the warmth in your chest. It's a warm glow in your chest. And that feeling is a feeling of joy, a feeling of happiness, a feeling of metta, a feeling of wanting happiness for yourself. So you feel this metta, this loving kindness in your heart, and you allow it to be there. And you let your mind rest and bask in that feeling of metta. Now, you do that for the first 10 minutes, maybe even longer if you feel like, but at least 10 minutes, and you allow the mind to just stay there.

After that, you send this feeling to a spiritual friend. A spiritual friend is somebody who is alive, not a family member, is of the same sex, and somebody who you admire. It could be anybody, somebody you know or somebody you admire in public life, whatever it might be. Somebody who you think of that immediately puts a smile on your face.

And you can visualize the friend there smiling and that you're sending this loving, kind feeling, loving-kindness feeling, out to them. Or you could just allow the spiritual friend to be in your heart, in that glow, and allow them to rest there and just know that they're experiencing your loving-kindness. This is the practice. You just stay with your spiritual friend in your sitting meditation.

And when you're walking, you walk at a normal pace and you stay with the spiritual friend, stay with the loving-kindness, the feeling of loving-kindness, and with the idea that your spiritual friend is experiencing your loving-kindness. Now, in meditation, there is something known as distraction. Your mind will become distracted. It will experience certain kinds of hindrances. And so now I will tell you what to do when you have these hindrances, when they come about.

How do you know your mind is distracted? feeling of loving kindness on the feeling of sending loving kindness to your spiritual friend so there might be background thoughts just coming and going without your attention you kind of know that they're there but if they're there you don't need to do anything with them you don't have to bring your mind back because your mind is still on the object it's only when your mind is no longer with the feeling of loving kindness, no longer with the feeling of sending out this loving kindness to your spiritual friend, that you use what's known as the six R's.

So the six R's are recognize, release, relax, re-smile, return, and repeat. So you notice that you were distracted: oh, my mind is no longer on my object of meditation. That's the first step. That's recognizing that your mind is distracted. Releasing, or release, is to take your mind's attention away from that distraction and bring it back to the mind and body, bring it back to the present moment.

And the mind and body are the anchor for the present moment. And then you relax. What are you relaxing? You are relaxing craving. So craving is a big word in the Dhamma. And it has different connotations, different shades, different meanings depending upon context. But the easiest way to understand the manifestation of craving is through tightness and tension in the body and mind.

And what is tightness and tension? It's literally when you tighten your fist, you feel this tightness in the body. You feel like the mind has become very hard pressed. So relaxing is letting go of that tightness. Just releasing that. And you know that you've relaxed when you feel like the mind has opened up. The mind has expanded.

So you go from a very spotlight, field of vision in your mind to a more panoramic way of looking at things. And that's the way you want to do this meditation. You don't want to be super focused. You don't want to be one-pointed. You want to let your awareness rest and observe the feeling of loving kindness. To feel the loving kindness.

But you want to keep your mind open. Allow the awareness to be open so that the mind is able to recognize when it gets distracted. Oftentimes when you become one-pointed, it will suppress the mind. And you might experience joy. You might experience equanimity. You might experience balance of mind. And you think that you're super focused on the feeling of loving-kindness.

But when you do that, because you're suppressing those hindrances, when you come out of the practice, those hindrances come back with full force. So this meditation is not about suppressing hindrances. It's about dealing with them while your mind is collected around the object of meditation, the feeling of loving-kindness. So coming back to relax. When you relax, you're loosening up the body, loosening up the mind. Then you come back to the smile.

So you started off this practice, this meditation, with a smile, as I said. You're using the smile as a way to keep the mind sharp, to keep the mind collected, to keep the mind clear and mindful. And it's an anchor for experiencing wholesome states of mind, like loving kindness. So you re-smile. So you notice if your smile is still there, it will be there. But if you notice that the smile is not there, smile again. It's a small smile. It's like the smile of a Buddha. When you see a statue or an image of the Buddha, you see him smiling.

And you smile with your mouth, you smile with your eyes, you smile with the mind, you smile with the heart. Keep everything light and fun. Once you come back to the smile, then you come back to the feeling of loving kindness. And you stay there until you get distracted again and you repeat the whole process again. of verbalizing them. It's not a process of analyzing them. It's not a process of saying, "Oh, here I am recognizing.

Here I'm releasing. Here I'm relaxing. Here I'm re-smiling. Here I'm returning." You just do it. Allow it to be in the flow. When you notice your mind is distracted, that's recognizing. When you come back to the mind and body, that's releasing. When you relax, that's relaxing. When you come back to the smile, that's re-smiling. When you come back to your object, that's returning.

So it's a flow. It shouldn't take you more than three or four seconds to do the whole cycle of the six Rs to come back to your object of meditation. And the six Rs aren't just used for your formal sitting practice. They can be used while you're doing your walking meditation. So while you're walking around and you are with your spiritual friend, you got distracted because you were seeing something and suddenly you're no longer feeling the feeling of loving kindness. You notice, oh, I'm distracted.

Use the six R's. Recognize you were distracted. Release the attention. Bring it back to mind and body by releasing the attention. Relax the mind and body. Come back to the smile. Come back to the feeling of loving kindness. And not only can you do it in your formal sitting practice and in your walking meditation practice, but you can do it anytime.

Just as I'm going to suggest and recommend that you keep the smile going as much as possible, I also suggest and recommend that you apply the six Rs in whatever circumstance you are. When you notice that the mind starts to crave for something, when you notice this tension, this feeling of, I want this, or I'm resisting this, this feeling of dissatisfaction with the present moment in whatever way it is. Just a small little irritation or a thought or a distraction.

Then you can use the six R's. You can notice my mind is distracted. It's no longer here in whatever is going on. You can recognize that. You can release that. You can relax. You can re-smile and you can come back to whatever it is you're doing with a feeling of loving kindness. So in other words, imbue everything that you're doing with loving kindness. Stay with the loving kindness. Stay with the spiritual friend, whether you're walking, whether you're eating your breakfast, whether you're taking a shower, whatever it might be. Stay with the smile. Stay with your spiritual friend. Stay with that light mind. In terms of some practicalities, when you wake up the next day, before you go to sleep, try to determine what time you'll wake up.

If you're going to wake up at 5 o'clock or whatever it might be, wake up at 4.55. Let the mind know that you're going to wake up at 4.55 and see how close you get to that. Or the next day, 5.03. Or the next day, 4.57. And the second thing you want to do is when you wake up, before you go to sleep, you determine that when you wake up, you will wake up with a smile on your face. And when you smile, keep that smile going.

And then allow that to keep the mind light and uplifted. There's no trying too hard in this meditation. There are two things I've noticed with people who do this meditation. They feel like they have to try too hard. They feel like they have to push, and they're not able to accept themselves or the present moment. When you try too hard, you constrict the mind, you constrict the awareness, and that causes the mind to become one-pointed.

And when you do that, the mind experiences restlessness. The mind experiences racing thoughts. The mind experiences pain and tension in the body and in the head. Allow the meditation to flower naturally. This is a natural progression, a natural process. Allow your observation, allow your intention to bring up loving kindness. Allow your observation to bring up the feeling of loving kindness, and allow the meditation to progress as it does. Once you get started with experiencing the feeling of loving kindness and you start really feeling it as that warm glow, allow the mind to rest there. Keep it going with your attention. And when it gets distracted, use the six R's. So in essence, I would say you just observe in six R's.

That's all you have to do. Don't push. Don't try to bring up the feeling. Allow the feeling to come up with that wholesome image, with those verbalizations. Allow the mind to feel it and let it just flow. And when you judge yourself and think, I'm not doing good enough, the way I'm doing things, let that go. Just see that as another distraction, use the six R's, and come back.

Be happy. Be kind to yourself. Be gentle to yourself. When you're gentle with yourself, when you're kind with yourself, you can be kind and gentle with the world. So be loving and kind and keep smiling. And for those people who are going beyond this practice, because there will be parts of the practice. Just do what feels natural to you. Use your intuition. Does the mind feel like bringing up loving-kindness? Does it feel like bringing up compassion? Does it feel like bringing up joy? Does it feel like bringing up equanimity? And allow the mind to rest in whatever it feels like it wants to do in that sitting. And then radiate it outward and get to quiet mind.

You want to be able to get to quiet mind as quickly as, but don't push it. Allow the mind to naturally progress to quiet mind. And when you're sitting, when you're doing your walking meditation, the same thing: you can radiate whatever the mind feels like it wants to radiate, and then allow it to get into quiet mind while you're walking. So let's see, I think I've covered most of everything. Yes. So tomorrow you're going to be taking precepts. That's very important.

You have to understand the importance of why you're taking the precepts. You're making a commitment to have a pure mind. When you take the precepts, understand that what you're doing is letting go of all unwholesome states of mind. As you're doing that, commit to taking those precepts and commit to keeping those precepts. You're purifying your mind.

And so those precepts should be kept all day long, all retreat long, and ultimately all lifelong. If you break a precept, forgive yourself. It's okay. You did it. Take it again and move on. Tomorrow I'll talk about the importance of precepts and the hindrances, and why the hindrances arise and how they arise, because you're probably going to experience them in your sit at some point or another. So this practice is very gentle, this practice is very easy, very free-flowing. Just keep smiling and keep the mind light.

Make sure that you have a straight posture. You don't want to slump because that's going to cause you sloth and torpor. That's going to make the mind dull and might make you feel sleepy. And you don't need to be like completely rigid with your back either. That's going to cause a lot of discomfort. Just be comfortable. Find a posture that works for you, whether it's sitting in a chair, or sitting cross-legged, or whatever. You don't have to sit on a cushion. There's no magic to that. Just sit comfortably and keep your back relatively straight. Keep it upright.

And I think that's it. Walking with a spiritual friend? Yes, walking with a spiritual friend. Are there any questions? We're not supposed to move, right? In the meditation, the sitting meditation? Can we cross our legs or cross our feet or arms while we're listening to your talk? radiating in the six directions. So the way I've done it is basically you choose one direction individually.

So it's six individual directions. So you have forward, backward, right, left, below, and above. And you bring up the feeling of loving kindness. You bring up the feeling of compassion. You bring up the feeling of joy or equanimity, whatever it might be. You can start with loving kindness if you want. And you just allow the mind to bring up this feeling and let it flow in one direction.

And you allow it to just radiate. That means it's just flowing. It doesn't matter if it's flowing from the body or the head. Just know that it's flowing outward, because a lot of times people will be focusing too much on the head. And when they do that, especially when they're trying to push out the feeling, they feel tension in the head, especially in the direction that they're pushing it outward. So if you're pushing it out on the left, you feel tension here. If you're pushing it out on the right, you feel tension here, and so on and so forth.

So it doesn't matter if you're pushing it out from the head. What matters is you don't push it out at all. You just allow it to flow and observe how the feeling is flowing. Allow the feeling of that expansion of radiating loving kindness to go in one direction. Five minutes and then go to the next direction. Stay there for five minutes. Go to the next direction. Stay there for five minutes. Allow the mind to radiate for those five minutes in that direction, and so on for each of the six individual directions. Once you finish that, it should be about 30 minutes. Once you have done all six individually, then you allow the mind to radiate in all directions at the same time.

So it's a feeling of expansiveness, that the feeling of radiating loving kindness just moves outward, out into space. You don't have to visualize too much. You don't have to think too much. Just feel it. Allow it to be there, and allow it to just grow and expand as it would, in whatever rate of expansion it wants to go. And you're going to feel some spaciousness and other things that go on in the mind.

But this is the general instruction for radiating. Yes? When you start radiating in the directions and you haven't finished all the directions, your mind naturally sometimes will start radiating throughout. And that's wonderful. That's okay. You don't have to go back to trying to hit all directions. No. So if you start radiating in just one direction and you notice, oh, the mind just wants to radiate outward in all directions, just allow it to be that.

And one thing is, sometimes you're not sure what's going on, whether you should radiate or not, and you can just try to radiate it again. And just, if you're not sure where, just do it again. If you're in equanimity, and you, well, maybe I'm in a quiet mind. Maybe it's good to just... Yeah. Basically, when you are in equanimity and your mind starts to radiate equanimity, it might just stop and you think that you're in quiet mind. Like David said, you just try again and it might just feel like a little tension is there and the mind is just saying, no, I'm pretty good resting in quiet mind. If that happens, that's fine.

But you just want to test and see what's going on when you're doing the radiating. So, same question. If the mind goes into quiet mind while doing directions, and the sequence happens rather quickly, you would say then that there would be no need to continue doing directions? Yeah, and you can test it out and see for yourself. Does the mind feel like it still needs to radiate? If it does, then allow it to happen, and it will naturally fade away, and there will be quiet mind again. But if there's a tension, if the mind says, I'm okay with this, and doesn't want to do any more effort of radiating, then you can just stay with quiet mind.

So what's your advice? A follow-up question. So, let's say that's the circumstance, and the sitting ends, you come back to the next sitting. What's the wise choice here? To come back to that quiet mind? Because my experience is, meditations never continue. What's your advice? You always want to start off the meditation with radiating a little bit. It keeps the mind's energy balanced.

If you go into quiet mind, you might mistake that quiet mind, or you might mistake sloth and torpor for quiet mind. When you radiate, even if it's equanimity, wherever you last left off, if it was equanimity or compassion or whatever it might be, just radiate a little bit. Two minutes a side, two minutes a direction. Or maybe just radiate three or four minutes, and eventually it becomes spacious again, and you might still radiate and might change the feeling, and then go naturally into quiet mind. Or it might just skip all of that and go naturally into quiet mind. But always start with doing the radiating.

Yes? What does the quiet mind feel like? It's very quiet. Yeah, there's basically just... it's an experience of the mind being quite comfortable and collected and at ease, and there's not much going on there. There's a feeling of the mind resting in itself, of rest in itself. No movement. Any other questions? It is easy for me to feel kindness and joy.

What is the difference between that and compassion? Compassion, in the progression of the Brahmaviharas, you have loving kindness, you have compassion, you have joy, and you have equanimity. In my own experience, loving kindness has a feeling of vibrancy. There's a certain energy to it. It's not as energetic as the joy factor of jhanas, which we'll talk about later, but it has a certain level of vibrancy to it, and it kind of downshifts into compassion. It's much, much softer, a little more expansive, a little quieter in its energy, and then the feeling of joy is

even softer than that, but there is a feeling of this happiness that's there, this feeling of joy that's there, this feeling of upliftment that's there. Then that down shifts into equanimity, which is more balanced, more tranquil, more stable. It's basically a feeling of no feeling, in the sense that it's neither painful nor pleasant so there's not a lot of there's no energy there it's just very relaxed very stable any more questions Yeah.

If someone is really, really tired, would perhaps just taking a smile as an object be sufficient without having to put any more mental energy into it? Tired meaning? What do you mean by tired? Go to sleep. Go back to bed. Do your practice for the next hour and a half or whatever it is. And then go back to bed if you need to.

Take the precepts on your own if you have to. But I would recommend that everybody comes here together and takes the precepts. There's a certain vibe that happens when you do that. And take naps. Naps really help. And that doesn't mean like a half-hour nap or an hour and a half nap. I'm talking about short 15-minute to 20-minute naps. What's going to happen is you're going to get into dreamland and you're going to get groggy. But if you take a nap for 15 to 20 minutes, that keeps the mind alert and sharp. If you experience sloth and torpor, which is where the mind is just very dull, it's not sleepy necessarily, but it's just dull, then do some walking and meditate outside if it's good weather, out in the light, and that will help. And walk backwards, that sharpens the mind's attention. And when that happens, then you're able to be more collected with your object. But if you're just plain tired, there's no point in pushing yourself. Get enough sleep. Make sure you get enough sleep. And you'll have better meditation sessions that way. Good. You