The Types of Meditation on the Path of Dharma – with Jeffrey Stevens
12:52AM Nov 16, 2021
Speakers:
Alyssa
Keywords:
meditation
dharma
awareness
people
called
practice
mind
path
teacher
samadhi
andrew
question
instructions
life
talk
meditation instruction
tradition
compassion
book
stabilize
It looks like everybody's made it. Excellent.
Hello, everybody give me a wave if you're ready to talk about the Dharma Hey, give me a thumbs up if my audio is okay. Oh good. And you can see me I'm bright enough. Do I look youthful? Today is my birthday. So I wanted to share that with you by wishing you all happy next birthday. Today. I'll take it the next time it's all yours. Okay. Um, let me just scroll through the pages here. Okay, how many people do we have all together? Alyssa.
They are still coming in. But right now we've got 39
Excellent. Excellent.
Yep, there's lots of happy birthday comments in the chat too.
So so kind of you I worked all day. All I did today was talk to meditators from various places. That's what I do. And so I've had many meditators well wishes, I hope. Hope I deserve them. Anyway, um, I'll just start out I won't say anything of much importance right? Now, while people are still filing in. But um, I don't need to be the one who lets people in right it's appearing at the top of my screen.
Nope, you're good. I just made you cocoas yet.
Okay. All right. Um, so I was here. One time before. And Andrew is a good friend of mine from many, many years back and has been someone who's been just critical at helping me find the right move to make on my path. At the right time. He's, as you all know, he's very well connected. He knows the who's who of Dharma practitioners, and I don't I know a lot of great people but Andrew really he's network in there. So he's very he's a very good person to have on your side if you're taking up any type of path that has to do with cultivating the mind in any way and I suppose for for any purpose. And so when he invited me to come last time, I didn't know what to expect. He didn't give me any prep at all. He just told me, you'll be fine. You'll be fine. Come and have fun. Talk about whatever you want. And the way that I usually teach is I start out with questions I asked you or you ask me, but I like to have a sense of what people are looking for. Because the practice of meditation or the larger context of that, known as Dharma, I don't want to make any assumptions of who's here. So some of the stuff a lot of you are gonna feel like why is he telling us what Dharma is? It's just because I don't know what you know, and I'm not gonna make any assumptions, but we are gonna dive in deep. So there's so much to talk about. And there are a lot of things in the Dharma that aren't just technically important, but they're also fascinating. So some things in the Dharma are fascinating. But fascinating isn't always what helps us some of the topics that we can take an interest in and the Dharma aren't necessarily the things that are going to move our life forward. They might interest us, but that doesn't mean that we can use them. And because our life isn't long, that's one thing that birthdays remind us. And they might remind us that our life has been long, which means that it's not going to be much longer. Because our life isn't long. It's good to know what's most important for us at any given time. And then there's tradition of meditation, the Dharma tradition. The way that you determine that is often between a dialogue in a dialogue between someone who you trust or who you're willing to try out. And you so you might bring something to the table. And just, it's not like you're asking what you should do, although you, you can always give that a try. But you are articulating where you are in your life, and in your practice, and you're letting someone else who's going to care about you reflect on it. And so now it's two of you, trying to help you make the next move, rather than just one of you. So, it's helpful to me, if I know where you are, what you've been doing and I know that there are too many people for everyone to go but what I found is usually most people don't want to talk. So if some of you would start me out, is there anything you want me to talk about? I did come prepared to talk about something even though Andrew said, you'll be fine, you'll be fine, just whatever. I did come prepared to talk about something. But I'm also prepared to talk to you about whatever is important about your path. So I'm just gonna give you a minute.
You guys are welcome to type it into the chat and I can read it or if you'd like to raise your hand. I can unmute you that way too.
This looks like I'm drinking beer. This isn't beer. This is non alcoholic beer is calories. It's just calories for me. So don't worry, I'm not continuing that tradition.
Okay, Sherry. I'll unmute you, Gary.
Gary. Jerry. Yeah, raise your hand. Yeah.
That's a pleasure to meet you. Jeff. Right.
There it is. Hold. I'm looking for you. There you are. You're up. Okay. I understand.
I've around here somewhere. I'm looking myself. You
can look and look and look and tell me if you ever find I haven't been able to. That's the problem. Good next. Oh,
well. You know, I'm 73 years old. And I first became interested in the other side, you might say, I'm in my late teens and early 20s. Like I started off with Transcendental Meditation and I've never had a a teacher myself. I've read about it. I've read maybe several 100 books on Eastern philosophy. Uh huh. Quotes, you know, and Western philosophy and Don Juan and Carlos caston ate us. And the thing I have is, every time I do this, they they have another way of doing meditation and I get mixed off. Which one I'm supposed to be doing where am I supposed to be starting out? And like for short periods of time, I've you know, I've been in places where I could be with like, a Zen group. Yeah, not in the community itself, but like, where they'd have open houses and teachings and, and a few other groups, but I'd only be there a short time and leave. So when I discovered Andrew, it was like a gold mine. Yeah, yeah. No. I mean, I can't say enough about how good I feel about it. So what I would like to know is, let's say I'm a beginning meditator All right. What what are the steps? You know, I mean, you know, right, you get in the correct position. Again, a lotus position. I can't even sit because I have severe osteoarthritis in my knees. I'm 73. But you know, I can comfortably sit in a chair. And obviously, you know, you can do things like watch your breath. You can watch absolutely through your body. You can concentrate or if that's not the right word, your chakras, you know. So
Jerry, are you asking like, what is the succinct practical way? To begin a single path that isn't going to become sidelined by the next book you read?
Yeah. latest thing by far and away something I thought I have maybe 500 books on you know, meditation or increasing Buddhism, Western philosophy and more, you know, and not even one of them. I mean, you know, I've practiced Hatha Yoga, Pranayama yoga, not even one of them talked about Andrews, latest two interviews with Charlie Morley, for example, where he stressed very, very, very strongly and Andrew seem to be in total agreement with him. That if you start off with setting meditation in the usual sense, like watching your breath, that you can vastly increase the the results here meditation by doing what's control called controlled breathing. In other words, five breaths per minute.
Oh, yeah. Well, okay, here's here's what I will offer. I'm, I'm making notes of what you all ask. And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to prepare a salad that tries to answer the most salient points now, Jerry, yeah, if I don't satisfy you, um, you should call me next week, and I'm going to give you meditation instruction if you need it, and you can reach me easily through whatever links Andrew provided. Or you can just go to Jeffrey Stevens, I know my name but trying to remember my website Jeffrey stevens.org. Okay, practical meditation instruction is very important. You can't really make headway without a specific path. Yeah, wandering doesn't move you in any direction. And this path is the opposite of wandering. So there are very practical things and what I can do is I can offer you something all of you anyone that's very much in line with what Andrew teaches. I mean, he and I are trading the same tradition. He focuses obviously a lot and I'm assuming that a lot of you are here because you love his stuff on dreams. Dream Yoga, is thumbs up if that's primarily your interest. Oh, that's interesting. Thumbs up if meditation is primarily your interest.
Oh, I want to get as far along the spiritual path as I can.
Yes, absolutely. Okay. So I'm going to come back to you, you come you you let me know by the end of this, if we need to talk next week. I'm gonna try and answer that today. But I want to thank you for your question. And I now I want to see if there are any more things and I'm going to knit these all together in my inimitable way. Are there any other
there were quite a few that came in through the chat? Okay. What is the most important to help us move forward?
All right, let me see here. I got my chat. Perfect. Great. Okay. Happy birthday. What's the most important, what is most important to help us move forward? Talk about Dharma Can you tell us another treat? I would enjoy hearing you speak about the importance of dharma and meditation or any aspect or anything. Thank you. The way of shaman retreat with oh, that's those are people talking amongst themselves. What is dharma in my understanding? Color? Okay, good. These are questions that all come together and if anyone has a question that they want to ask, please.
Kimberly has a hand up.
Oh, thank you. I'd like to feel like I'm not the only one talking. Hello. Let me find you. How do I find you Kimberly's you?
Yeah, I'm here. Are you haven't got my screen really? Sorry. I am.
Alright. I wonder how I knew. Oh, there you are. Yeah, you're a bunch of script.
Yeah, sorry. That's actually really what I am. But anyway. So I come from a Muslim so I come from Islamic tradition. And so when I'm preaching the Buddhist tradition, I'm trying to integrate a lot of the knowledge into my pre existing structures of understanding. So I do this with a lot of things. So I quite identify with the previous questioner who was kind of wandering and reading maybe too much and getting to us with each book. You know, there's more advice and there's more practices and you try that out, you integrate it, but then it's okay, what's next? What's next? I feel because there's just this kind of seeking behavior that is not being fulfilled. So and it's not a quick fix, you know, as meditations probably not the most Quick Fix when you just sitting it's a passive meditation as opposed to it takes a while. So I kind of get get caught in this trap of seeking seeking and I was actually just actually at this point of wanting to know like, what exactly do I do? How do I stop that seeking behavior? How do I just sit in what I already have? Yeah, of course, to fruition,
right. These are a lot of the very same question in different guises. So that's making it easy for me. I'll think and I'm going to get to that I'm going to get to that. I'm going to respond. Are there any more questions?
Oh, let's see.
It doesn't look like it can be kind of delayed. Sometimes. But okay.
Can you talk about shamatha and how in depth it is. I wasn't aware until I started studying with Alan Cora. Is that a question to me or, Oh, that's a direct message which means it's to me, right. Not up on my Zoom. Okay. Let's talk about dharma. Because the questions What should I do how to begin? Don't have a teacher what do I you know, what's the what's the road ahead? Dharma has an ancient meaning. That isn't just applied to the meditation path or the spiritual path. It's a big word just like the the word in the English language set SCT. There's just pages and pages and pages in the dictionary upset. It means so many things. Dharma is like that. When we use the term dharma as Western practitioners, of some meditation path, we mean something specific. It's possible that someone might have become familiar with the notion of an individual or personal path in life, called Dharma, one's own Dharma, like our Krishna said this to Arjuna. In the Bhagavad Gita, they talk about, oh, well, your, your dharma is to be a warrior, something like that. When we talk about Dharma, when we hear people talking about Dharma, they almost always mean the teachings of Siddartha Gautama, who we call the Buddha. So dharma means the collection of teachings that do something they do something rare and special. And nothing else. Does what they do. That doesn't mean to say that only Buddhist teachings do this. It's just to say that among the teachings that are out there, it really seems like only the Buddhist teachings quite get to this. Many things are very similar, but Buddhism pulls out ahead of the pack with one particular thing and that's the notion of shunyata or emptiness, which we can talk about. The practice of dharma is the practice of seeing reality and in order to see reality, we have to understand what can see reality and what can see but not see reality. What can see reality is the faculty of awareness. What thinks it can see reality but cannot is the mind. The mind is dualistic and analytical. It's the thing that thinks it's the thing that moves and it's the thing that changes awareness, doesn't think, doesn't move. It doesn't change. It only knows. And it's a sufficient apparatus for a human life that we have not been raised to even know that's possible, much less to think it's a good idea. So we are not unlike people throughout the ages, who have come to want a path of dharma and have been given instructions that start by working with the mind to tame the mind is the sound of the cat getting in the way. Okay, you guys can't hear that because I can't
hear anything either.
I've locked the cat out of the room. He's not happy. He's he's not ready for the Dharma. The practice that we're usually introduced to in our culture least we used to be things are changing a little bit, but the practice that we used to be introduced to is called shamatha. Practice or calm abiding practice. shamatha usually means a way of working with the mind to tame it so that it can abide and purr like a cat, rather than run around like a kitten. It just can be it. It can be but it can be awake and content. And when that happens, we're able to boot up the faculty of awareness. That's just a way of talking awareness is actually always there. But we can't access awareness because the mind is taking up all of our bandwidth. So the classical practice to prepare us to work with awareness is shamatha. And some of you asked in the, let's see, someone asked about Yeah, shamatha retreat with Alan Wallace. There you go. Talk about shamatha. shamatha is a very powerful practice that does not lead to enlightenment. And that is not controversial. That is just the facts in the same way that bodybuilding doesn't lead to health, it could shamatha calms the mind but we don't attain awakening through the mind we attain awakening through an activity within awareness called self recognition. So the other type of practice that we do is usually practices are paired and two, you have shamatha and Vipassana. Those are the two modes of practice Shama to calms the mind and the passion of probes into the mind. And what does it find? Well, first of all, it finds places that it's bound. It's like if you couldn't move very much, and you began to look to figure out what it was and you realize that your shoelace was tied to the chair or your pant leg was caught under the chair leg. Well, you could then with that knowledge for yourself, and then with your freedom, you could move shamatha is important. Because it allows us to become sensitive to a subtler mode of knowing, which we call awareness. And then the practice of a portion of classically shifts us from the mind into awareness. And it does that through what are called investigations or analytical meditation. So you might ask, you calm your mind and then you ask yourself, Who is it that has calmed their mind? Where is this mind that is calm? Is it outside of my body? Is it inside my body? Is it now or is it some other time? In fact, is there any other time than right now? Where would it be where does it go? These are the traditional practices of the portion that exhaust the mind so that it relaxes and then awareness is accessible. But there's another type of a portion of it and remember when I said that, traditionally, in the West, we were all introduced to shamatha first,
well, that changed about 20 years ago, because some of the teachers that were coming over and we're meeting a lot of the the students of the forming communities thought that maybe it would be better to start us off with more advanced practice, which means awareness practice, and I'm imagining that if you work with Andrew, he's probably talking about that a lot. The two most well known traditions there are called Mahamudra and zoek chin. And these are traditions that introduce you directly to awareness, and then give you very pithy instructions in what to do with that. You're learning to distinguish mind from awareness. And as you become more confident in making that, that distinction, you become loyal to awareness and you begin to live your life from it. The practice of dharma, seen from 50,000 feet is the practice of teaching people how to make the distinction between mind and awareness. It's teaching people how to move from the part of us that thinks it understands but doesn't, to the part of us that does understand but doesn't think and that, in a nutshell, is the practice of dharma. It's bringing us to the part of ourselves that is already free. That is already still it is well, and that is the source of a spectrum of expressions that are traditionally lumped into three categories intelligence, compassion, and power. So those are the in the Buddhist tradition, they often will say that those are the three the three faculties that emerge when we rest in awareness. So if we're going to begin a Dharma path, it's always best to work with another person. It can save you so much time it can take what would take you 20 years and condense it into one. It's just like having a guide in you know. If you've never been to China and you're walking around Shanghai, you need a guide. Take it from one who knows. You need someone who knows that area who you trust. It's important that you know that you can trust them, or that you really feel that you trust them. It's not a good idea to take teachings from a teacher just because other people say the teacher is good you can you can take some teachings, surely, but inner teachings about how to guide the mind are a little bit more intimate. And while it is a good thing to have instruction on that you realize down the road, whether that was the right person for you to get those instructions from because you find that you have either hesitation or no hesitation. If you have no hesitation and you just engage the instructions they gave you that was a good teacher for you. If you have a lot of doubt, maybe because of the way they treat other people or just something about what they were like, that probably wasn't the best teacher to guide you. A good teacher for you will not complicate your life. They'll simplify your life. That doesn't mean they'll take anything away. But they'll show you something that's accomplishable that doesn't take anything more than you already have. It takes a lot less than you already have. And it's something that you can do. The path is possible when you make a decision that you're going to walk it you don't need anything else. You need a basis of understanding and you need time and you need intention. And these are all things that we have. So the path can be rich and scholarly. And there are many topics you can study, many retreats you can do. For the most part that doesn't. That doesn't really do much. Um, a simple path is the path that most of us want. We can handle a simple path, we have the time and the energy for a simple path. A complicated path is often one that we walk 10 steps down and then stop and then look for another path. And when you're out shopping for paths, you often find that the marketplace is choked with people who have some variation of fancy in the path they teach. Because, you know, that's the type of people we are, but we don't need that. At its essence learning how to recognize awareness. And developing confidence in awareness will be the path than anyone treads. Most of the complicated practices I was trained in all kinds of just I mean, I'm glad I don't regret it but the number of retreats I went on and the number of very complicated practices I had to learn because that was the tradition. Andrew did the same thing. It was crazy, but it all leads you to a simple path. And I have friends who started with that simple path. And we're doing exactly the same thing now. And I don't know if I'm ahead because of all the complicated stuff I did. I don't know. I know that we're following the same instructions. We're doing exactly the same thing. Except that I spent all of those months living in cabins in the woods and I didn't go on a vacation for 12 years. Every minute I could get away. I was just on retreat, because I had all these complicated things to do. I had great teachers who did these complicated things themselves. And so they thought that their students should do them too. It's why I did and I don't think you need to do that. I think that what we need to do is recognize that it's how we prioritize our time that determines how we develop and it isn't the information we put into our thinking mind. That's, you know, I mean, I was like some of you. I read. That's what I did. I read books. I went to graduate school, I studied all this stuff. I read it all did nothing for me. It actually it did it was wonderful, but it didn't cause me to move into any kind of development. It made me polished. It made me appreciative of the diversity of excellent things. In this world. It also made me understand how far back in our human history this quest really goes. And that there has been no development there's been no improvement in spiritual practices for at least 2000 years. There's nothing that people do today. That's better in any way than what they were doing 2000 years ago. This is a perfected collection of practices and there's the tweaking is has been done it went through like 800 years of refinement over 2000 years ago. So it's been out of beta for a long, long time. And so, the practices that we learned, there's no new thing. There's no one who's coming up with anything. That's the greatest thing if they're if someone's pretending that is someone to turn away from. That's either someone who's trying to fool you and knows they are or they just don't know anything. They're making it up. There's really nothing to advance once Dharma exists just kind of like water. It's very hard to improve water. People are finding ways to seem to improve it so they can charge more for it but water is just water and we need it. And the Dharma has been circulating in human populations for 220 600 years, perhaps longer, but we don't know of it any older than that. We only know of the existence of this as far back as the life of this one person who was a person not a God. Nothing bizarre, but a very skilled teacher and oh, what are the three okay?
So the stages that we want to go into if we want to begin a path are that we first learn how to make the distinction between the body and thinking most of us have not made that distinction. When we when we relate to our body. We are related to a mixture of physical sensations and ideas. It's a mixed situation. It's not the body, in my in the style that I teach I call this the atomic body. The atomic body is just the body and the reason this is important is that the atomic body or just the body body is not a thought. Obviously, but because of that, if we direct our attention to it, it doesn't produce thoughts. It produces anything we put our attention on has a tendency to increase, to grow, to develop. If we put our attention on something if it grows, or it becomes more a part of our experience. And if we want stability, which is what we all want in the beginning of our path. We need to direct our attention to something which is stable. And what stable really means is that it doesn't produce thought and emotion. The body moves and it's always changing. So it's not exactly stable. But by putting your attention on the body, you can achieve levels of stability that most people wouldn't think are possible. And yet they're not only possible, but they're not really that difficult. I'm working with with one student right now. I just got off the phone with him about 45 minutes ago, who he's from Colombia. And he's just decided he wants to practice meditation, and he's read this book. I don't know if any of you have seen this book. This is sort of become a popular book. For those who want to stabilize their mind. It's called the mind illuminated written by a kind of unusual gentleman who died a few months back in his late 70s after a lifetime of solitary meditation. a Westerner anyway, this person called me and I gave him instructions to stabilize the mind and he was able to stabilize his mind completely in I think today we had our seventh meeting. Other people that I've been working with we've been working together for years. And their meditations improved but most half of their time in meditation is spent with wandering mind, just sort of off then they're there. All right, the breath. They come back. And I worked with a person before this, who was fast and I thought this is probably the best student I'll ever work with. But then this guy came along. And in just three months he achieved Well, he's about to achieve meditative equilibrium, which is also known as Samadhi. That's what we all want. We want to achieve a flowing mind that is undisturbed, yet completely awake and with that flowing undisturbed mind and this is called Samadhi in Sanskrit sh M Adhi. With that mind, we were able to develop the capacity to begin to probe and look around, like where am I? What am I? So we first develop stability. And when we've developed stability, that's called Samadhi. And that's the fruition of shamatha. When we've developed Samadhi, usually it's by paying attention to the body, the breath. Now when we pay attention to the drum to the breath, because I know there were some questions about this. I just want to say this, and I'm going to risk saying this on behalf of all meditation teachers. We do not mean the air that's coming in and out of your body. We mean the feeling of your torso and your body as it does this. That's what we're stabilizing our mind on if you try to pay attention to the air.
That's a thought. And if you pay attention to a thought, it grows and it grows into more thoughts. They might be meditation thoughts oh wow, I'm really stabilizing my winds and so forth. That's harder to do than we think it is. But at first we might get carried away and think that by paying attention to our breath, magical things are going to happen. They won't, but we'll think that they are and that's the nature of the thinking mind. It thinks that it's onto something. But reality isn't a thought. And reality is inaccessible to the thinking mind except by inference or analytical conclusion but that's not satisfying. That's like reading an X Expertly written menu. wareness knows reality. So first, we stabilize our mind. We bring it together, we consolidate it into something that can abide or as I said earlier, something that can PR from there. As the mind settles, we begin to cognize the container in which the mind exists and that container is what we call awareness. Something sometimes people call this the space of awareness. But the most important part of it for us is that that's where knowingness is, that's where the knowledge that we exist is my teacher, Sony Rinpoche. Um, likes to call this or maybe it was his father who started this cognizance, cognizance. Rather than awareness. We're trying to become sensitive to cognizance, and to just rest in that cognizance is kind of a, I don't know, it's not. It's not a folksy word. And so some people don't like it much, but I think that it's an accurate one. When you consolidate and tame the mind, you don't stop being life doesn't end just because your thoughts are no longer leading you around the room. So what's their cognizance? You know, that you are and then, once we have achieved that, or once we've made some progress in that direction, we can begin to probe What am I what am I cognizance becomes the bull's eye. And we now aim our inquiry at that bull's eye. And it's got to be gentle. We have to be really casual. When we do this not intense. What am I what we look, we look just keep looking. This is a little crude. What I'm gonna do, I'm gonna do something crude. I have to because it's my birthday, and that's my tradition. But when you stabilize your mind, and you're able to feel that basic cognizance, you want to probe that caught that cognizance and see what happens when you probe it? Because something does happen. And it's kind of like here comes a crude part. So So hide your eyes. It's kind of like if you put your finger down your throat and you probe the back of your mouth. Something comes up. When you probe awareness, you're provoking one of the three elements of awareness which we talked about earlier, you're provoking intelligence. There's a faculty that we all have called prajna Pragnya pra J, N A proche. Na, pra jn a prajna is what I translate as meditative intelligence. It's a very powerful type of intelligence that we all possess. We don't have to create it. But it only understands reality.
And most of our lives have nothing to do with understanding reality. So we don't experience prajna if you have a near death experience, or if you have a drug experience, or you have a me, you might have a lucid dream experience. Or maybe just a great meditation experience. You may experience the flash of prajna. Pragnya just knows, and it's able to make a distinction between what is real and what isn't real without having to resort to thinking. So we stabilize our mind least in the way that I was trained and the way that I train people to bring up that first of the three characteristics. We could bring up compassion. I guess we could try to bring up power. Power is the ability to overwhelm situations that are untrue. It's the power to abide when deception is advancing. The Power of Awareness, the power aspect of awareness, stands firm at the impasse and is not overwhelmed. So power is what holds prajna meditative intelligence and meditative intelligence is often symbolized as a double edged sword, but it's a sword that no one needs to swing. You just hold it and non reality cuts itself. It's double edged because when you hold prajna it cuts non reality and then it cuts you clinging to it. And it just leaves that pure meditative intelligence aspect of awareness. So some traditions try to bring out compassion. And that's great. Um, seems to me that it's almost impossible to bring up meditative intelligence without bringing up compassion alongside and it's almost impossible to really develop compassion without bringing up meditative intelligence. So it doesn't really matter that much. But one of the things about compassion that can be tricky for some of us, is that we have a lot of baggage that we load into it. Because compassion isn't about us feeling good about how we're taking care of someone else. It's selfless. And if we're already struggling with that, well, I don't know. I think that it's okay. to approach this from a compassion perspective. There are some wonderful teachers that way, but, I mean, if you meditate in it with any of these instructions, you're going to have both so you'll be okay. So we want to first cultivate some stability. And then when we have some stability, we learn to cultivate prajna. And the way that we cultivate prajna is we begin to investigate what are called the three marks of existence, the three marks of existence. Every experience, everything is said to be marked by three aspects. These are three things that apply to everything just like all liquid probably has water in it, and I don't know if that's true. Maybe one of you is going to he still thinks that but I bet milk has water in it, doesn't it? It must why and has water come on. So everything is impermanent. Everything is free from entity Enos which is sometimes translated as egoless and everything arises and dissolves in such a way that if we try to stop it, we experience pain, and that's called dukkha or suffering. So everything is characterized by impermanence, suffering, which is a little bit of a hack, there needs to be a little bit of finesse to understand or to make sense of that. But once we do, it's meaningful. And then selflessness. easiest one, to start with, is impermanence. When the mind is stable through Shama to practice, we can begin to experience the fresh, vibrant quality of nowness. Now notice is not a thought. So if we're trying to think now notice we can't experience it. When we experience noun as our mind is stripped away from us. When we are experiencing noun us, we begin to see that it has no duration, it has no platform. It doesn't exist for a moment and then go away it arises and dissolves instantaneously. And it's impossible that that's happening. If we ask the mind, but if we rest in awareness, we see that that is what's happening. And we've just made the distinction between reality which is within our reach, and the world that the mind has created, that we've lived in our entire life. And doing that is the practice of dharma. In a nutshell, the practice of Dharma teaches us to rouse certain faculties within us that can accurately see reality. And when we see reality, meditative intelligence, compassion and power, become part of our personal expression. So that's dharma. And that's how to begin and that's the type of meditation practice that I would think would be of interest to any of us. I have seven minutes left.
There were a couple other questions that came in. Let's see through the chat.
I guess I could be looking at this.
Oh, here, okay. Sometimes I get direct messages and I miss them too.
Well, I see one of them. What is the difference between Samadhi and shamatha shamatha is the overall practice that culminates in Samadhi. But the practice of shamatha this is this is an Indian thing. The practice is given the name of the result. So the result of perfectly attaining Samadhi is called shamatha. But usually that's not what anyone means when they say shamatha they mean the practice of beginning the path even before you've stabilized your mind. So shamatha is traditionally divided into nine stages. And Samadhi is meditative equipoise, or the consistent placement of our attention on an object that has become unwavering, which means we place our mind on our breath or whatever it is, and it does not leave for the duration of our session, an hour, two hours. And that happens midway between the fourth and the fifth of the nine stages. In my tradition, and in my preferred way of advising practice, once we get to the fifth stage, or even the fourth, we don't do any more with shamatha because our mind at that point is stable enough to recognize awareness. And recognizing awareness is what's going to transform our life, not just more stability. What accounts for the quick progress of the student you mentioned? Boy, if I can find it? I can find that out.
I don't know what it is. Because like I said, there are two of them. And they're both though. The worst students to have as a meditation teacher are often people who are like in their 20s or early 30s because their life is just too busy. Yet both of these people are that age. So it's just it's doubly confusing to me the best students are usually people in 60 and older are the people who've made the deepest progress in my experience, so I just think that what is going on, first of all, one of these two students is in recovery from substance abuse, and has made remarkable strides in every facet of his life and has become a real leader in the recovery community. And so this is just a person who is very realistic about who he is and what his talents are and what they aren't. And he's just a very humble person. He's an enlightened auto mechanic, is what I would call him. He although he's not really enlightened, he's, he's disciplined. He's sincere, and he's consistent. When I tell him what to do, to my amazement, he just does it. He doesn't go looking for some other book to enhance it with the spices of some other teaching, and he just makes progress. And then the other guy, the one who I was talking about today, who's even faster. It's similar. He's not in recovery, but he's not looking for other instructions. I don't know why this guy doesn't even know me, but he's just trusting me. I was not like that. I have really good teachers. I had excellent teachers and I didn't even trust them. I was always looking for other teachers to ornament or validate the teachings that these great teachers gave me. It took me at least 10 or 12 years before I thought, why don't I just do what they tell me to do? And then I started to realize that yeah, it's it's actually not that difficult. So I think it's a simplicity
so we have a hand up to Oh, good. Give me Kimberly. Yeah. Hi, again. Thank you.
Can you hear me? Yes. I can't. Yeah.
Okay. So yeah, everything you were saying was like, perfect and spot on. And very beautiful. And, as you said, simple. So I suppose what I was wondering is where, like, I've heard different things on how like how much to perform the shutter there, how would you what would you say is the starting point of like a meditation sitting per day and again, also, how do you progress through and how do you know when you're progressing through without a teacher and without, you know, somebody guiding you and getting feedback?
I think that the second question is, you don't really think that I don't think there's any way whatsoever to guide yourself much beyond the most basic stages. And that's very hard for Western people to hear. I don't know
what's what I've experienced. Yeah, so do you do any coaching or personal coaching or anything?
Yes. Oh, I certainly do. That's what I do. Um, we can you can. Jeffrey dot Stevens at Mac calm if you anyone wants to talk to me. I also can just you know, talk to you briefly. You don't. I give a lot of it away. But yes, that is what I do. I teach meditation and I coach people and I am available for that, but we could talk about that separately. The first thing that you you asked, How do you I'm sorry, I'm bringing the second part of your question together.
Yes. The first how do you begin?
How do you begin shamatha.
Once you know the shadow side of it, what do you begin with like, how many sessions How long is the session?
Oh, yes, good question. Um, so this is, uh, this is the thing. I'll, I'll tell you what I think is a good way to start. But I'll also say that actually, this is one of those things where there is a really good book. This is a really good book for this. The mind illuminated by John Yates um, John Yates. is not a perfect person. He had some challenges in his life. And I don't want anyone to be upset that I'm not giving you a book by the Dalai Lama. I'm just giving you a book by someone who knows what he's talking about. I read this book. Basically, this book gives you a step by step that I would say is, is very good. It's not exactly what I would teach, but it's, I don't teach something better. It's just a little different based on my training, but um this is one of those situations where you really can follow a book and get a basic things set up. And what that basic thing is going to look like, is you're going to take about five minutes at the beginning of a 30 minute session. And you're going to contemplate in a structured way what it is you're about to do. You're going to review the instructions. You're going to that you have. You're going to form the intention to apply them. You're going to bring to mind what might get in your way of being able to do that today. And once you've done that, and that's all in a checklist in his book. It's very, very traditional, this this is a person who studied the classical stuff. Then you launch and you just do it. And you you try to meditate for 25 minutes after about five minutes of contemplation and it's likely that the first three or four weeks are going to be a lot of learning how to do this. Now that's where it can be helpful. If you're, if you're a person who can just get instructions and move forward and just know that it's probably you're going to feel lost a lot of the time that if you if you stay to a steady course it will work, then you're fine with the book. If you're not, you should talk to someone who's done some of this stuff before and there are a lot of people who can guide guide you. You can also by the way, um, where do you live? Kimberly?
She muted back let me get it again.
Where do y'all think? Yeah. Oh, I mean, Australia, Melbourne.
Okay, well then there must be an Insight Meditation Society, their insight, Meditation Society and the Vipassana meditation society are two legitimate places to get guidance if you want to work with someone in person. They're not going to ask you to do anything bizarre. They're not going to ask you to give them all kinds of money. They're there. I think they're all nonprofits and they do there's they're strongly good traditional stuff. Doesn't Andrew lead some of this stuff? I just think that he must. He must. Andrew must have resources for that. I will ask him. Yeah. I mean, I would be happy to just if he wants to have me come back. I would be happy to just do like a two part. meditation instruction seminar. shamatha used to be my area of expertise. I was the person who sent people into retreat, and I train them and I train them I train them. And I know it really well. And I do think it's important, but I don't think it's as valuable as it sounds. I think that some shamatha is really good, but working with awareness will change your life. shamatha will change your life to but it's kind of like building like an athletic type of fitness that feels wonderful, but you have to maintain it. You know, like someone gets in shape for an event, and they're in the best shape of their life, but it was so hard to manage that shape that you find them a month after the event. They don't look anything like that they look like me or something. You know they've lost, they've lost it. awareness on the other hand isn't something that you gain and then lose once you've had insight into the three marks of existence doesn't go anywhere. It deepens. It's like waking up from a dream, or a better way to put it is. Awareness practice changes you in the same way that if you were to learn that, um your best friend was robbing you are sorry for the if you were to learn something unfortunate about someone, you would never be able to unsee that you would never be able to see them as someone who wasn't a thief. It's always in your mind stream even if you forgive them, you still know and when awareness is stimulated, and you begin to make the insights associated with awareness, you know, something that you didn't know before you understand a dimension of reality that you didn't know before and you don't lose it. It might not influence you much if you don't keep practicing, but it does give a lot of confidence particularly I think this is very helpful when we're facing the end of our life. Awareness is your best friend when you're thinking about the end of your life. Awareness is a good friend
whereas Jerry's thing, Jerry, oh, my website and contact me from that website Jerry. Glo NiaK I think I said that in a way that. Oh, I'm sorry. I lost the
I put your website and the link to the website and the link to the contact page in the chat for you guys. So yeah, access that a little easier.
Thank you Thank you for the birthday wishes everybody. Yeah. You're in a great place. You're in a great place being part of this thing with Andrew. I know him well. And I trust him so deeply. I love him. He's he really is someone who knows what he really knows what he's talking about. He's one of the few people that I know who I would have no hesitation asking Him for help on my path. And I can ask, you know, his teachers. We have the same group of teachers, but I would also ask Andrew, I haven't yet because he's he never returned my emails.
Oh, he wants me to teach. What's that? Oh, Jerry's got his hand back up. Okay, let me get him. There we go.
What is your website again?
I'm Jeffrey stevens.org. Okay. Thank you. You bet. I look forward to talking to you.
Oh, I'm sorry, Jerry. It's in the chat. Chat. too. There's two links in there. Oh.
Okay. Are we good?
I think so. There's just lots of comments saying happy birthday.
Oh, yes. I'd love to come back. I'll you know, I mentioned Andrew that I could come and just give a I don't know, a day, not a day but a couple of sessions of basic instruction. Oh, I should say I really should. I didn't say this. Um, you don't need a teacher one on one and I think that when we think about getting a meditation teacher, we imagine how we're going to have time with this person one on one. It just doesn't need to be like that. Everybody's questions are kind of unique to them. But they're also basically everybody is in the same boat. It's better I think. Finally, after all these years of resisting it. I now firmly believe it's better to learn with a group of people. It's better to start on a journey with companions. And you can do that in a group. So you have someone who leads a group and those are easy to come by. That's what I think this is isn't it isn't doesn't Andrew have a group? If he doesn't, just ask him, pester him because you'd be very good at that. And he knows a lot of people like he knows me and he probably knows 15 other people who could come in, but once you have a group, you have the support and the support is important because the path is longer than you think it's going to be. And when something shifts when you have an insight or a breakthrough, you don't want to be alone. You want to talk to someone you want to make sure that you didn't that something weird didn't just happen. Usually it's nothing weird, but every once in a while, something weird happens or it's not that something weird happens, but we interpret things and we think oh, maybe this means it's time for me to go on Oprah. Or we think that something's happened that probably hasn't. And if we're in a group that normalizes us, it's also good to look out and see other people who are, have sore knees and wandering mind and are weeping because something's come up in their meditation they haven't thought of in 30 years and now they're processing it. That's real. And other people can help us normalize this beautiful path. It's very lonely to do this. Without friends. It's traditional to have a community it's called the Sangha, the gathering of practitioners. The Buddha said that three things are necessary. You have to have a teacher, which can just be someone who gives you the initial instructions. It doesn't mean someone that you're living that you don't like, live with them or sit in their lap or anything. And then you need the teachings, which is called the Dharma. So you need the teacher, the Buddha, the teachings, the Dharma, and then the community of fellows. of other practitioners called the Sangha. And if you have those three, it's very likely that your path will yield the result that it should so Happy birthday to you all.
Happy birthday to you.
I I appreciate Andrew for inviting me to talk tonight. And for any conversation that I have with any of you next time, or if you reach out. I'm usually good about getting back to people. I've got some travel coming up for the holidays. So if you do reach out through email, and I don't get back to you, I will I just might not it might be when I'm with my family. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Have a wonderful um, it's Monday, isn't it? So happy next weekend. Have a good weekend.
I'll unmute everybody so they can say goodbye. Here we go. Bye bye everybody. Hope to
see you. Yeah. Wishes.
Happy. Happy birthday. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna sign off now. It's dinnertime in my house. Goodbye, and practice well practice well.