Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: How can I create a relaxed environment for meditation?
Come into a relaxed, seated position. Find a space that's quiet and comfortable. Allow the body to be at ease in whatever posture is suitable and supportive for you. To remain alert and awake. but not a tight alertness, not a tense alertness, simply a relaxed alertness. This meditation will explore how we can work skillfully with thoughts.
Those thoughts particularly that might cause anxiety, confusion, frustration or fear. And there's some skillful means that we can apply in order to gain greater insight into the nature of thoughts. And when we have this deeper insight, this deeper understanding, then thoughts can lose their hold this way over us. They can lose that sense of power that we feel they have over us.
and we can see clearly into them. So let us just begin by giving space to whatever wants to come, to whatever wants to arise in the mind.
Chapter 2: What techniques can I use to work skillfully with my thoughts?
We're not suppressing thoughts, but neither are we indulging thoughts. And when I say indulging in thoughts, I mean holding onto them, running with them, allowing the mind to proliferate, often with the deluded sense that I can figure this out, I've just got to figure this out and then everything will be okay. So from the outset we adopt the attitude
that we're neither going to engage in nor repress thoughts. And simply taking that stance from the very beginning can actually have a huge difference on what comes up, the waves of thoughts that come up. When we neither fear nor indulge in thoughts, they can naturally start to subside.
But in addition to this, I'll offer some reflections, some contemplations that we can explore together so that we can really start to see into the nature of this thinking process. once the mind becomes more spacious and more settled, it's much easier to have a clearer sense of what these thoughts are, what's going on.
whether it be a thought, a memory of the past, which arises as some sort of ephemeral image in the mind. or if it's a projection or an imagination of the future. Whatever arises, be inquisitive. Start to investigate the nature of your own thinking process.
Chapter 3: How can I gain insight into the nature of my thoughts?
Just to examine one stream of thinking. To start to look at it with a fresh perspective.
What is a thought?
What is thinking? What is its nature? If we just start to watch for a while, without commentary, without judging, we can really start to see clearly how flimsy these thoughts are. When we hold onto them, when we identify with them as me, my story, my problem, my past, my future, they become very solidified They take on an appearance as if they are real and true.
But once you step back a little, by step back I mean Become the observer. Become the witness. Or simply be the awareness. You start to separate from this identification with the thinking. It doesn't mean that thoughts stop altogether or even need to stop altogether. But there's a separation happening.
Chapter 4: What is the importance of observing thoughts without judgment?
A greater wisdom is emerging. within you that can know, that can suss out these thoughts and no longer be fooled by them, no longer be drawn into them. And can you notice a few things about this thinking process? Firstly, if you can abide more and more as the witness or within the awareness itself,
You start to notice that thoughts arise and cease within this empty space, within the empty space of the mind. just like waves rising and falling within the vast ocean. When we identify or cling to a thought, either liking or disliking it, pushing or pulling, the waves come thick and fast, often quite violently crashing on the surface of the water.
And that's when we can feel like we're drowning. When the mind begins to settle, the waves become smaller, less violent, less fast, to the point where they might just become ripples on the ocean surface. But regardless of the nature of the thoughts, regardless of the nature of these waves, can you see that they are all of the same essence? They arise and cease within the same ocean.
Within the same vast space of the empty mind. And just like a wave, these thoughts contain no separate entity. There's no me. There's no mind to any of these thoughts.
Chapter 5: How do thoughts affect our perception of reality?
There's simply energy moving within the space of this awareness. But if you go a little deeper, especially as your mind starts to settle, you can notice more and more about these thoughts. I find it helpful sometimes just to hold the question. What is this thought?
What is a thought?
They don't truly exist. They appear, but there's nothing you can hold on to. There's absolutely no substance to them. They are formless. They appear as an energetic movement or phenomenon. But in essence, They are completely empty. In reality, they don't truly exist. Can you see that for yourself? Right in this moment.
Chapter 6: What role does awareness play in understanding thoughts?
that what you take is real, this continuous storyline of yourself, which really is only formed through the continual perpetuation of thinking. such that it's like constant series of waves with very few breaks in between. When the mind, the thoughts move that quickly, that rapidly, It gives the appearance of some sort of continuity of a person, which we identify with.
The other metaphor I find helpful to reflect on within the film that shows on the screen, and because these frames move so fast, they give the appearance of a continuity. But in actual fact, there's discrete frames So once the space becomes bigger, the space between each thought, we have more of a chance then to really start to investigate what's going on here. Why am I so drawn in?
Why do I suffer so much from my thinking? Thinking with guilt, regret over the past, or sick with worry and anxiety because of thoughts of the future. But when we really look clearly, we can see there's no such thing as the future. This idea we have in our mind of the future is simply our imagination. And we can imagine all types of horrible futures for ourself.
or all types of amazing, wondrous futures for ourselves.
Chapter 7: How can I differentiate between past memories and present experiences?
But none of them are real. The future is simply a projection of our desires or fears. And we can see that clearly in our meditation.
And drop it.
Drop any expectations. Drop any regrets. Drop any expectations for the future. and the past. What is the past? When it comes into this present moment and starts to cause us feelings of guilt, regret, resentment, anger, It's simply a memory. And no doubt a very distorted memory at that too.
We bring up these experiences of the past and yet they're more than often coloured by our conditioning, our way of seeing. If something terrible or traumatic happened to us in the past, I'm not suggesting that we deny that, but just to look at how much we drag that up into the present moment and cause ourselves to suffer. Reliving the storyline, the trauma again and again is very painful.
Chapter 8: What steps can I take to let go of attachments to thoughts?
Or reliving the things that we did that we wish we didn't do and we keep going over and over it Sometimes in our mind, thinking we can fix it now. But this is simply the mind playing tricks, getting caught in imagination and making ourselves feel sick And we suffer.
But if a powerful memory of the past comes up and it just won't let us be, sometimes we just have to hold it with compassion to understand that sometimes these things do come up from the depths Things that we've pushed away or feared or don't want to look at. So we allow all of this to arise just like a wave will arise on the ocean. but we don't indulge it.
We just acknowledge it and allow it to subside. So neither indulging nor repressing. And seeing Seeing clearly the nature of this memory.
What is it?
It's just this dynamic energy, this movement within the space of awareness that perhaps just needs to release. giving it space to release, to rise, to abide and to pass. But within all this there's simply the knowing. Knowing the movements of the mind, of this thinking process, and starting to know more and more its substanceless nature, its empty nature.
to the point where we develop greater confidence that none of these thoughts can hurt or harm us. They only cause harm and pain when we cling to them. When we cling to them, we identify them as me or mine or my story But they're not. They have no weight. They have no substance. The past is completely gone, vanished. The future is yet to arrive. So who are you in this present moment?
If you decide to dredge up the thoughts from the past, or even if they just come up without your wanting them to, If you cling to them, you become them again. You become this storyline of the past, this person of the past who did the wrong thing who was traumatized, who stuffed up. And so in the present moment, all those things you didn't like about what happened, give fresh harm.
Because we become that again, that me who got it all wrong. Or alternatively, we indulge in thoughts of the past when we were successful and wonderful. Give rise to an inflated sense of ego, of how great we were, and indulge in that. And I'm not trying to say that either of these are necessarily wrong, but they are deluded.
Deluded in the sense that they create an imaginary person and feed the ego either the inferior ego or the superior ego. And thus, we continue in this cycle of samsara. As this person, constantly becoming, becoming, becoming, but the past is completely gone, not a trace remaining. So in the present moment, who are you? What are you? The choice is yours.
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