TRUST  top of page     

The Master would frequently assert that holiness was less a matter of what one did than of what one allowed to happen.

To a group of students who couldn't understand this he told the following story: “There was once a one-legged dragon who said to the centipede, 'How do you manage all those legs? It is all i can do to manage one.' 'To tell you the truth,' said the centipede, 'I don't manage them at all.' “

In life we may trust in our ability to become what we want to become. For instance, we may want to become a doctor, so we train and hopefully we qualify and become a doctor. Or we may want to paint, so we learn to paint and become a painter, or whatever it is we want to do. In life we have an agenda and we try to follow it through to the best of our ability, and this is absolutely fine.

When we enter into spiritual practice we tend to do a similar thing. We bring an agenda to our practice as to how we want to be in the future, but if we practice well this agenda is doomed to failure. It’s OK to have an agenda for a while as it can motivate us to practice, but it will never be fulfilled, because agendas are of the ego, the little me. The ego always wants to become somebody, but practice is not about becoming somebody, it is the end of all becoming.

Practice is about getting to know our self and becoming free from suffering by doing so. This freedom however, cannot be achieved or attained through our usual type of effort or striving. It can be discovered to be our true nature when we give up the struggle to be better, to be someone different.

In my view most of us in the west have complicated and clever minds, and due to this we tend to complicate practice. Most of us trust not in the simple act of being aware, but in the power of the analytical mind. We believe that if we understand something well enough intellectually then that is what practice is about.

It’s a good thing to understand something intellectually, but we must move beyond the intellect and trust in something else, and that something else is wisdom, intuitive awareness, our deepest knowing, god, call it what you will. It’s trusting in that deep indefinable knowing that lies deep in our being. This I believe is what the Buddha and other great teachers were telling us. They wanted us to trust in our own wisdom, to be a light unto ourselves and not to depend on hearsay or to rely on tradition.

We can give up the idea of trying to change ourselves. We can let go of trying to get rid of aspects of our selves that we don’t like, and let go of trying to add anything onto our selves. This is just more attachment and aversion in more subtle forms. This doesn't mean that we don't change through practice, we do change radically through practice. But we can let change happen naturally as a result of our practice of awareness. For instance, if we have a tendency to unkindness (of course we do our best not to be unkind) instead of getting into a war with it “I shouldn't be like this, I need to get rid of this,” we can trust in the awareness of it. If we can let it be, it arises and passes away and eventually runs out of fuel if we allow it to. It's crucial here of course not to get caught up in the unkind thoughts, if we do we tend to act it out and cause ourselves and others pain.

Trying to change is another way of saying I’m not good enough, and I need to change myself in order to be good enough. We can give up the idea that we need to change and rest in who we are right now, rest in the awareness of experience. Give up the idea of trying to be different and come into relationship with who you are. Instead of endlessly trying to change what is we can become intimate with what is. We can rest in the awareness that “sees” life happening. In other words we can leave the contents of our awareness alone and rest in the knowing of the contents, rest in the awareness of our experience.

Whatever is going on with us we can simply know that. This knowing includes everything and excludes nothing. If we have a nasty thought we can know that, if we have a nice thought we can know that too. Practice isn’t about being in a particular state, but simply knowing the state we are in. This is so simple and direct and takes no thinking about that i believe a lot of us simply don’t believe that practice is this simple. “But surely I need to think about my practice, I need to read loads of books, I need to purify myself of all my bad karma, but surely…” All these thoughts and questions we may have can simply be witnessed and left alone. If thoughts arise about our life that seem important to act on then of course we do that.

How many thoughts do we have each day. I want this I want that. I should be like this or I should be like that. Life is a burden, life is exciting. None of these thoughts ever stay around for more than a bleep of a second, but we attach to them constantly and want to make an identity out of them. So we can simply know that a thought is or has been present. Simply know experience and trust in that simple and direct knowing of each moment.

There is nothing to be gained from practice. What happens through intelligent practice is that attachment weakens and we begin to get a sense of what we really are. We are the awareness that’s doing the watching. We can come home and just rest in that warm centre of being that is our real home. This awareness is nothing to do with us, we did not create it, but has been there from day one and will be there right at the very end.

What I'm talking about here is TRUST. It's trusting in the awareness that is ever present. It's trusting in awareness that accepts everything about us. All those judgments, nasty thoughts, fantasies, criticisms, wanting to be right and to prove others wrong, can simply be watched and seen for what they are. We don't have to take them personally, it's the taking of them personally that keeps generating more of them. They are conditioned and will arise when the conditions are right for them to do so, so we can leave them alone and rest in awareness of them. When we watch them and stop interfering with them that's when they begin to weaken, each time we watch the thoughts and emotions instead of trying to do something with them we disidentify with them.

Normally we are identified with our experience, and if our experience isn't pleasant we tend to want to change it. Trust means being able to leave it be and having the wisdom to know that it will pass.

Without trust we continue to fiddle with our experience by trying to change it into what we think it should be, or into how we want it to be. What I'm saying is to leave ourselves alone and to trust in being aware. Know the thoughts and bodily sensations. Soon as we realise we are unaware we are again aware, and then to come back to our bodily experience.

In my experience as we continue with this process a shift slowly takes place. A shift from identification with thoughts, feelings/emotions, which we can call the contents of awareness, to awareness itself. This is the beginning of freedom.

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PARADISE LOST top of page     

Ahmed was walking home from the inn late one evening, when he saw his friend Mulla looking for something on the ground under a street lamp, just outside his home. “Mulla, my friend, what are you looking for?” asks Ahmad. “I’m looking for the key to my home,” replies Mulla. “Oh where did you lose it,” asks Ahmed. “In the house,” replies Mulla. “So why on earth are you looking out front here,” asks Ahmed.”Because the light’s better here of course,” replies Mulla.

When we are born we live in a kind of paradise. Our desires are few and if met quickly by our loving mother we are content and happy. More significantly we experience a state of blissful oneness with all life, though of course we don’t know this at the time. As we grow up however, we develop a sense of self, and the paradise, the sense of oneness and connectedness with life is lost. What takes over is a firm and seemingly solid sense of me that needs to battle against the world to get what it wants and needs. Our needs and wants become more complex and are no longer just about having food, shelter, and warmth. To varying degrees we start to define our sense of worth as a person by what we own, and by our level of success in the world. This sense of self that is developed, though quite a natural part of growing up, nevertheless leaves us feeling separated from other people, and the rest of life. It quite often leaves us in a state of “quiet desperation.”

Every one of us is looking to regain this paradise, and every one of us barring maybe a few exceptions knows that this isn’t it. Almost every one knows that this life now is certainly not paradise. How can this be paradise when I’m feeling miserable? How can having no money be paradise? Can this really be paradise when my partner leaves me for another man or woman?

But whether we have the good things in life or not, lots of money, a loving partner, good friends, we see that it’s not enough, we are still unfulfilled. We are still searching high and low for paradise in almost everything we do.

Of course we cannot go back to the state of blissful ignorance that we had as a baby. But our hearts still yearn for this state of connectedness. We still yearn for the happiness that the state of oneness and connectedness gave us. But like our friend Mulla above we look in the wrong place. We search and search outside of our selves trying to find this lost state of contentment and happiness.

But paradise, or happiness, whatever you want to call it, is not found through acquiring more things, or more knowledge, or being important, or living a certain lifestyle. It is not found by getting the house we’ve been dreaming of, or getting the promotion we have been seeking. It is not found in a different place and a different time. So how is happiness found? How is paradise regained?

Here we have good news. We are already in paradise, we are already happy but we just don’t see it. Why don’t we see it? Because we are programmed into looking for happiness where it doesn’t exist - in relationships, by getting approval, by being successful, by getting rich, etc. I’m certainly not saying that we shouldn’t have these things, they can bring us much needed joy, but we must see that they are limited and will not give us the ultimate freedom we desire.

When we begin to see that we are not going to find happiness in these things we may turn our attention to more spiritual matters. We may even start to meditate. Then we may think, paradise is to be found through meditation. Our attitude may be, once I’ve calmed myself enough, or once I’ve sorted myself out, nothing will bother me ever again.

What happens is that our own personal (egoic) agenda for fixing the external world, as we want it, which has never worked, gets shifted to the so-called spiritual world. Our attitude may be, if I cannot be happy by fixing the world, as I want it to be, then I’ll be happy by fixing myself, as I want to be. This can be called spiritual materialism. We come into the spiritual life because we want something out of it for our selves. We can take up meditation because we want to change our selves into a different type of person. This of course, is perfectly fine and seems necessary phase to begin with. After all if we’re not going to get something out of meditation then why bother doing it.

But to fulfil our own egoic agenda isn’t the point of meditation. It’s true that our life will change significantly for the better if we sit intelligently, but if we have our own agenda, then we’re going to be constantly disillusioned. The egoic agenda is always about how we will be in the future. Our agenda may be wanting to be a wise person, or wanting to be a great meditator, or to be more compassionate than we are.

The ego’s only concern is its own survival, and that means looking to become something or somebody in the future, it means looking to an ideal it can transform itself into. But if we can come into who we are right now, instead of moving toward an ideal, we will come to understand who we are, we will see through the illusion of the ego and the question of being wiser or more compassionate will be irrelevant. Wisdom and compassion are there when the self, the ego is seen through for what it is, an illusion. Wisdom doesn’t belong to us, compassion doesn’t belong to us, they are impersonal.

The point of meditation is to bring light upon (enlighten) the egoic agenda. Meditation is about becoming more and more aware of all our self-centred thinking and acting. The point of meditation, the point of awareness is to die spiritually. This means that the self which feels itself the centre of the universe, begins to whither and to eventually die away, giving birth to our true nature, which is one of wisdom, openness, sensitivity to life and a deep sense of well being.

It is naive hope that maintains the illusion that somehow the future is going to deliver the goods. That doesn’t mean of course that we don’t think of the future when necessary. For instance, we may need to buy train tickets in advance, or think about which school to send our children to. What we need is to give up the dreaming of a future that will bring us fulfilment. It sounds awful to some of us to live without hope. But to live without the hope that the future is going to deliver happiness, helps bring us back to the only place and time we can be happy, here and now. Living with hope in this way is like searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, the search is futile and endless.

Being here and now with life simply as it is, is the paradise we have been seeking, it is the awakened state itself. The Buddha was known as the happy one, he was happy because he was with life as it was happening, and didn’t add anything else onto it. It’s not that he didn’t experience pain, he did, but he didn’t create suffering out of it. He didn’t create the story of this pain is happening to poor old me. There was pain but nobody, no individual self experiencing pain.

It is the adding onto our experience that leads to our suffering. For example, if we’re having trouble paying the mortgage, what we normally get into, and almost immediately, is “poor me, why does it have to happen to me?” “I’m going to be out on the street, what will the neighbours think?” Or it may be that our partner has left us, and again we create a story, “he’s betrayed me, he’s abandoned me. I was so good to him and he’s done this to me.” It is the unnecessary thinking, (which is about ninety five per cent of it) around the event that is the problem. Of course we do what we need to do, we just act and do what’s necessary, without getting lost in the whole thought drama.

Being in the present moment is often said to be the secret to happiness, it is often said to be the key to freedom.

But how do we do it? How can we be present when our mind is all over the place?

Here again we have encouraging news - we are already present. We are already present when we are not caught up in our neurotic and agitated thinking. So we pay attention and simply notice what takes us away from being present. And if we pay attention we will notice that what takes us away from being present our anxious thoughts about the future and thoughts of the past. We simply notice our thoughts of wanting our life to be different than it is. For instance, if we are vacuuming our home we simply notice our thoughts that are taking us away from vacuuming. We may be thinking of the cup of tea at the end of it, or thinking about what we’re going to be having for dinner. We may have chronic stomach problem but the practice is still the same, we notice the anxious thoughts about what it might and might not be. Everything can be handled if we are there just with it and not getting lost in thinking about it.

The key is to simply notice, without judgment or criticism and return back to the felt experience of the present.

As we observe our thoughts we come to see that our suffering is self created. We begin to see that the vast majority of our thinking is at best useless, and at worst very destructive to our self and others. But we don’t try and change our thinking or to stop our thinking, we simply watch it. What slowly happens is that we see the endless and quite often destructive stories the mind is throwing up, and it’s only when we see this going on for our self, with every ounce of our being that we can let go of them because we don’t believe them any more. We start to dis-identify from the thinking and to relax into the spacious awareness that contains the thinking, relax into the spacious awareness that contains everything, and that is our true nature.

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DON'T CHANGE    top of page     

A story: I was a neurotic for years. I was anxious and fearful and selfish. Everyone kept telling me to change - parents, teachers, even my best friend was telling me to change.

As a result I felt self-conscious, resentful and trapped.

I wanted to change. I tried and tried and tried, but I couldn't.

Then one day, my friend said to me, “Don't change, I love you just the way you are.” Those words were music to my ears: “Don't change. Don't change…I love you just the way you are.”

I relaxed. I came alive. And suddenly I changed!

How we change

I think it's common to see spiritual practice as a way of changing oneself, and understandable too. If we feel unworthy we will want to feel worthy. If we're unhappy we will want to be happy, and if we feel imprisoned we will of course want to be free.

It's easy to think that if I'm to attain this happiness, attain this freedom, then I need to change myself into a better person, I need to change myself into a different person. This I believe is not helpful. I believe if we think this we can be just kidding ourselves, we're just putting off being happy, being free.

With this attitude we can so easily get caught up in futurity…I'll be happy when I get this. I'll be happy when I've changed all these things about myself and am content with my life. What I'm saying is that we can be content now, be happy now, with how life is now, in fact we can only be happy now.

It seems to me what people can easily get into is to try changing themselves through pushing themselves. Like the man who's car broke down whilst on his way to the city. He got out, rolled up his sleeves, gritted his teeth and started to push. He pushed and pushed and pushed until he reached the city. He did his business, then pushed and pushed and pushed the car to the next city. He was exhausted, “but I damn well made it he thought to himself.” He made it, but at what price to himself? And the car still wasn't working. What he needed was an expert, someone to come along fill it with petrol and turn on the ignition. This can be our life if we are not careful, push, push, push. It can be all push and no understanding. It's not life, it's punishment.

Quite often what I notice is this constant urge to change our self often exhausts us and leaves us feeling despondent. It doesn't have to be like that. We can rest in who we are right now with all our neurotic little ways - they're OK, we're OK, we don't need fixing. This is not a license for nasty or unskillful behaviour. Accepting oneself doesn't mean acting out when inappropriate. It actually works to the contrary, if we accept and experience the anger, fear etc then we are far less likely to act it out or to be overwhelmed by it.

What do we do? It is so simple, though I find a lot of people simply don't believe it…we simply watch ourselves. We watch all our little ways, all our self-centred thinking and actions, and let the light of awareness change us. We don't change our self, but change happens through us by watching our self, change happens through awareness and understanding. This is not intellectual analysis. We just watch our self without judgement, if we do judge our self that is watched too. Everything comes under the spotlight of awareness.

For example, if I'm in a queue and feeling impatient to get to the counter the natural thing to do is to try to be patient, to impose patience on impatience. This however, can end up in a sort of tug-o-war, impatience – patience, impatience – patience, over and over again. But instead of trying to change the impatience or fight with it what I can do is become intimate with it. This means feeling it and watching the thoughts around it. The lovely thing that can be discovered here is that patience is waiting “just behind” the impatience waiting to shine forth.

This happens with any other aspect of our self too. If we're nervous around a certain person it's very easy to try to fight it, or try to change it, or to pretend it's not there. Instead of doing this we can turn toward it and become intimate with it. Doing this eases the inner conflict and allows us to see that it's impermanent nature and not who we really are.

We don't need to concern our self with how we are going to turn out, with what we are going to change into. We can leave that to our natural intelligence, to our natural wisdom, which is the awareness itself that is doing the watching. We can let go into the mystery.

When we let go in this way and stop trying to change our self, we discover something wonderful. We discover that not trying to change our self actually brings about a great transformation. We start to see our “difficult areas” not as enemies to be repressed, feared or got rid of, which actually empowers them, but as aspects of our self that simply need awareness, that simply need understanding. This simple act of experiencing and watching instead of interfering brings us to peace, brings the struggle to an end. We can let awareness bring us to rest, we can let awareness bring us to reality, then we won't be there, and this is freedom.

Q But If I don't try to change myself isn't there a danger that I end up doing nothing, maybe being a couch potato, maybe even end up being homeless .

A It's not a danger but a fear. The attitude of trying to change is really a way of keeping up the illusion that we are in control of life. Trying to change into a future ideal is the ego investing itself in the future. The ego creates time and loves to invest in it, and in this way it secures its survival.

Trying may result in change but it's still in the realm of the ego, in the realm the self, of me. What we can end up doing is just rewriting the story of me, a so-called better and nobler story, but it's still about me, it's not freedom. What is needed is to watch the ego, what is needed is to watch the me, and let it dissolve in the light of awareness. As the ego (the story of me) is watched what we find is more and more openness, more and more sensitivity to life, more and more freedom.

What we can do is let go and relax. It's like being on a roller coaster ride and holding on for dear life to the steering wheel up front. As the car turns we turn the steering wheel thinking we are in control of it. But the steering wheel is only a pretend one and the car is turning where it likes anyway. If we let go we can sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride. Give our life over to awareness, give up the struggle and be free.

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ACCEPTANCE    top of page    

Two men were on a long hike through the jungles of Africa. They'd long day so decided to take a short cut across a large field. When they were half way across one of them noticed a large Rhino galloping straight at them. “My god, Mick, quick say a prayer to save us from this beast,” shouts Dick. “I don't know any prayers for goodness sake” replies Mick. “Look any prayer at all will do” says Dick. “Ok, I remember one my father used to say. Dear lord please make us truly thankful for what we are about to receive.” THAT'S THE SPIRIT

We all have aspects of ourselves that we are uncomfortable with. We may experience anger, fear, jealousy, sadness, we may have nasty thoughts about others or even about ourselves. As well as having these painful experiences we can make it worse by feeling bad about having them at all. In this scenario we are creating more amd more unnecessary suffering for ourselves, it doesn't have to be like this. we don't need to feel bad about feeling anything, all these aspects of ourselves are fine, they're not bad, they may in some cases lead us to cause pain to our self and others, but they're not bad.

If we think they're bad, if we think that we're a bad person for having these thoughts and feelings we can so easily repress them. And repression leads to illness, a lack of vitality and prevents us from living a full and happy life.

What I'm suggesting is that we accept all these aspects of ourselves, we say yes to everything about our self. There is absolutely nothing about us that is not worthy of acceptance.

Say yes to the anger, say yes to sadness, to resentment, to the nasty thoughts about somebody, say yes to the joy we feel with a friend, say yes to our present experience no matter what it is. This does not mean expressing our experience necessarily but it means experiencing it. If we can experience it we are less likely to act it out anyway.

When we have a painful experience it's very easy to fight it, or resist it, or to pretend it's not there. We will do anything but face up to our present felt experience. But if we want to be free and happy we need to do just this. So instead of running from experience we can become intimate with it. We can become intimate with it by turning toward experience and feeling whatever our present experience is. What does the fear feel like? What does anger feel like? What does joy feel like? Where do we feel sadness? Whatever it is we can become intimate with it. we can learn to stay with the felt experience and allow it to show its face to us.

When we watch and experience in this way we begin to see something quite remarkable, that we are not the anger, the fear or whatever. If the fear can be watched objectively then it cannot be who we are. If the anger can be watched then that too is not who we are. Normally we may assume that “I'm angry,” or “I'm afraid,” but that isn't how it is. The anger isn't who we are. This experiencing and watching helps us to wake up from identification with the various states of mind that are experienced. We then begin to discover something quite wonderful, that we are the awareness that is doing the watching. We see that we are something much more vast and wonderful than our usual small and constricted self. 

What we are doing here is learning to experience and to open up who we are. We are learning to accept our life as it is, to accept our experience as it is, not to change it, not to get rid of our experience but to understand our experience. This brings about a great transformation, and we no longer see fear, anger etc as the hidden enemy to be avoided. It's similar to being intimate with a person. Once we become familiar with them, once we become intimate with them we are much more comfortable around them. We don't see them through our own fears but see them more as they really are.

We can be free, we can be free and accept our self as we are, we can be free and accept all our funny and quirky little ways. We don't need to try and change them but to simply be aware of them. When we allow the light and wisdom of awareness into our lives change happens quite naturally. The things that need changing will change, the things that don't, won't. We can leave ourselves alone and just watch.

When I first started to practice Buddhism I found it difficult to accept myself. I had the idea that Buddhists were very spiritual and very saintly people, which was very convenient for me. So what I did was I tried to be saintly, I tried to be spiritual, whatever that means. I gave up a lot of my little ways of enjoyments…music, football, dancing, a social drink occasionally and so on, all this just to fit into an idea of how I thought I should be as a Buddhist. I squeezed the joy out of my life trying to be spiritual. Like the man who walked into the doctor's office and said, “I have this awful headache doctor, can you help me?” the doctor says, “of course, but I want to ask you a few questions. First of all do you go dancing at all?”

“Dancing?” replied the man indignantly, “of course not doctor, I wouldn't engage in such a vulgar activity.”

“Do you have the odd tipple occasionally?” asked the Doctor. “Drink, I've never touched the filthy stuff for years, I'm living a spiritual life,” cried the man slightly offended.

“Look, I'm a bit embarrassed to ask you this but are you one of those men who slopes about of a night time, doing a bit of this and that?”

“Of course not doctor, what do we take me for? I'm in bed every night by ten o'clock and up at every morning at six to meditate and pray.”

“Okay, tell me," said the doctor, "this pain is it at the back of the head or at the front?” “That's it doctor, it's a dull pain right here at the front.”

“Simple, my dear fellow, your trouble is you've got your halo on a little too tight. All we need to do is slacken it a little.”

Like the man above we need to watch out for living our life to conform to ideas of how we think we should be. We don't need to be a saint, don't need to be “good,” don't need to be special, don't need to be any other than our experience right now.

If we have an image of our self as a nice person, or a kind person, or a spiritual person, or if we think we should be any nice, kind or even worse spiritual, then watch out. What can happen is that if we experience anything that goes against this image it can be repressed, it can be denied because it doesn't fit in with how we think we should be. Ideals too, however noble and “good” can in my opinion be quite unhelpful. Again it's saying I'm not good enough and I need to be better, the goal being always out there in the future.

Acceptance is simple, there is nothing difficult or complicated about it at all. What is difficult is living a life of resistance, which is the opposite of acceptance. To accept we simply bring awareness to where we are resisting. If we are resisting anything at all a feeling of tension or constriction in the body will reflect it. We don't need to try and relax the tension, but to accept and feel it. Allow it to be there exactly as it is. There is no need to change it or try to get rid of it. In fact if we can let it be it may even open up and reveal its little treasure, it's telling us something about ourselves.

How many times a day do we think or feel “I don't want to feel like this?” “I don't want to be here?” “I don't want this to be happening?” If we're in this state then we are resisting life. We are creating more pain for ourselves by wishing things to be different. If we can change something then do so, if we can't then accept it fully. If we can accept life, if we can accept ourselves this is the end of conflict. We can rest, we can give up the struggle of trying to be different. Happiness and freedom are present right now if only we can learn to accept the unacceptable.

There is much more to acceptance than merely accepting our present experience however. What we need do is to accept that we are more than the self-centred little self that may be our usual experience. We can accept that we are indeed Pure Awareness itself. We can accept that we are the space or consciousness in which everything appears. We can accept that we are everything and at the same time we are nothing. This is freedom.

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THE FEELING BODY    top of page    

One thing that I notice about so many people who are new to awareness practice, new to spiritual practice, and even a lot of people who are more experienced is that basically we need to become more comfortable with feelings and emotions (bodily sensations). And this becoming comfortable with bodily sensations is essential if we are to live a happy and satisfying life. Becoming comfortable with all our bodily sensations can be done very effectively through body awareness. What we need to remember is that awareness practice is not about reaching a certain stage or experiencing a certain state of mind, but about having a full-blooded, authentic experience of oneself as one is and being able to observe ourselves. What we need to do is to feel our body, which is to feel our body with awareness, to feel all the sensations that are present. There is nothing more we need to do. We just feel whatever sensations are alive in the body now and that includes the breath too.

One of the benefits of body awareness is that it allows integration and healing to happen. A lot of us have certain aspects of ourselves that we find unacceptable which means we are uncomfortable with them. We may have painful memories from the past, we may have long held hurt from the past, or resentments going back in some cases for decades. What we can easily tend toward is to trace back and to know why we the person we are. I think many therapies encourage this. In some cases of course it may be appropriate to do so if done with skill and care. What I’m talking about here however is not analysis, it is the end of it analysis. In awareness practice we are not trying to work out all the reasons why we are the person we are.

What we need to remember is that all this hurt and all these memories are present right here in the body. Our personal history is stored within the body, every thought we have, and every incident in our life has an effect on the body. If it's a kind thought or event the body responds positively, if a nasty thought or painful event then the opposite happens, it contracts. As we (as most of us will have experienced) relax and bring awareness into the tensions and contractions of the body it eventually relaxes and releases the energy stored in them. We may start jerking as a consequence of this, or memories may arise, tears may flow, but what is happening is that the unresolved issues of the past, the tensions that we may have carried around for years are slowly being resolved and dissolved. This happens because we are no longer ignoring the body but giving it the attention it deserves. We could even say that we are listening to the body and the reward of that listening is the healing of our (quite often unacknowledged) pain that we have carried around for years. Also as the tensions and contractions begin to release we will also experience more energy, we will experience more vitality and aliveness than we have previously. It can be a welcome to life experience. It's easy to speak of body awareness but how exactly do we do it? What I mean by the term is the act of bringing a certain quality of feeling and listening to the body, a quality of warm creative interest to the feelings, sensations and deeper felt senses within the body. This is not thinking about the body nor is it relating to an image we have of it in our minds. What body awareness means is to feel the body with the body. This is not a technique that can be taught but a spirit of curiosity about our selves.

For instance we may be experiencing a sensation of something vaguely uncomfortable in our belly. All we need do in this situation is to allow the feeling to be there, we need first to accept the feeling of discomfort. Allow it to be there like you allow the breath to be there. What the sensation wants to do is to release itself. However, most of the time we are too busy ignoring ourselves for some “greater” purpose. So we allow it to be there, we allow it to arise into consciousness and to pass away. Our job is not to interfere with it but to be a space for it.

This is not something that is only done on our meditation cushion but can be done whilst buying your biscuits at Tesco, collecting your winnings in the betting shop, whilst talking to a friend, or doing your famous belly dance routine.

All the emotional healing that comes from body awareness is a wonderful thing. But in my opinion it isn’t the greatest benefit. The greatest benefit is that awareness of the body allows us to be present with life whilst it’s happening. A lot of the time we live a life of abstraction, that is we live our lives in our heads. We prefer to think about life than to feel it. We prefer to think about our life than to live it. We often get lost in thinking about how we would like our life to be, or we think about how our life could be, or even worse how it should. What’s happening whilst we’re doing this?…life is going on and we are missing it. This doesn’t mean that we don’t think about our life when appropriate, but means that we don’t get lost in constant fantasy about it.

If we allow ourselves to be constantly lost in our thinking minds we will be in constant conflict, always ill at ease. Like the man who was sitting in the centre of a giant concert hall listening to the most wonderful symphony he had ever heard. The place was full and everyone around him was completely rapt by the sheer brilliance of the music. Suddenly he had a thought and a moment of panic “Did I lock the car?” “Of course I locked the car,” he repeats to himself, “just enjoy the show man.” He rests back into listening. Then another thought attacks him, “are you sure you locked it, I can’t remember actually doing it. The car is new and sure to get stolen?” “Oh for goodness sake I always lock the car, don’t I, it’ll be fine.” He shouts to himself. And on and on it goes. The poor man couldn’t leave the hall and couldn’t enjoy what was going to be a night of great joy. All this because he believed and was caught up in the thoughts. He had two choices, either to do something about it and go out and check, (in this case however he couldn’t move) or to forget it and to sit and enjoy the show. He couldn’t do either so sat in conflict for the rest of the show.

Q, “But isn’t it good to worry about things a little, it means we care and we will get things done?” A, in my opinion no. Worry, being caught up in anxious thoughts is a state of inertia. It’s a state of being stuck in our neurotic thinking which leads to a feeling of helplessness.

Actually it’s not thinking that’s the problem but the identification with thinking. Thoughts themselves are natural but it’s when we believe them that the trouble starts. If we practice awareness of the body it allows us to watch the thoughts rather than getting lost in them. This is a great freedom. Try it.

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HEART OF THE MATTER    top of page    

A man who had been practising meditation for many years, and who'd experienced a host of cosmic experiences went to a famous master for confirmation of his spiritual achievement. The master said “Sit down, I'd like to ask you a few questions first.”
“Who are you?” asked the master.
“My name is William,” replied the man.
“I didn't ask your name, but who you are,” said the master.
“I'm American,” replied the man.
“I didn't ask your nationality, but who you are,” replied the master.
“I'm a husband and father of two sons.”
“I didn't ask whether you are a father or not, but who you are.”
“I'm an architect.”
“I didn't ask what your profession is, but who you are.”
“I'm a Buddhist.” And on and on it went. “Who are you?”
“In my spare time I help the poor and needy.”
“I didn't ask about your spare time, but who you are.”
“I'm a meditator.”
This went on and on no matter how many times he was asked he couldn't see the master's point.
The master finally says, “When you know your appearance from who you really are, come back.”

What is the ultimate purpose of meditation, of spiritual practice? It is to wake up to who we really are and to free us from suffering. This is the heart of the matter; it's what all those hours of meditation and being aware are really about. It's what the Buddha and Christ and all the other great spiritual teachers were pointing to.
For a few rare individuals this waking up to who they are happens spontaneously. Their true nature, (Buddha nature, God, The Beloved; whatever we wish to call it), bursts forth and shows itself for what it really is. This seemingly without any effort on the individual's behalf. However for most of us who want to wake up, who want to be free and happy, it is not so simple. We need to put forth some effort, we need to engage in some form of intelligent spiritual practice; we need to engage in some form of meditation. By meditation I don't mean a technique to achieve something, but simply the art of being aware. Because it is through awareness that we free ourselves form the misery that can be our lives.
The root of our suffering is a sense of separate self, a sense of me being separate from all the other selves out there. Over the years of growing up and becoming an adult we build an identity out of this sense of self, like the man in the story above. We then lose contact with our true nature. This sense of self, which in some cases can be very constricted, then becomes our prison. What we normally do at this point is to try and decorate the prison, to make it cosy and a nice place to live in. This is the area of self-improvement.

Self-improvement isn't what meditation is really about. Awareness practice (meditation) is seeing what imprisons us, it's about studying the walls of the prison for a way out of it completely. Never mind tinkering with the place, never mind repainting the walls, never mind putting up some fancy new curtains, or polishing the furniture; it's about finding a way out of prison altogether.

What we don't actually realise is that we are already free. We are already happy and free and we don't even know it. We don't experience it because our minds are confused. We spend nearly all our time preoccupied by the machinations and demands of the ego, of the sense of this separate me. This sense of a separate me is actually just a story we tell ourselves, it makes us feel both real and very important. But it is also the root cause of all our suffering.

Of course we are separate too and that is not to be denied. But this experience of our self as separate from others is in some cases so strong and habitual that we may not even begin to think that the reality of the situation could be different. However, if you're reading this then you have at least a sense that there's more to this life than this sense of separation, than being in prison.

The way out of the prison is not to deny that we are separate individuals but it's seeing that the experience of separation is not the whole picture. As well as experiencing the diversity of life, experiencing the difference between us, we need to see the underlying unity too.

How is this realised? How do we free ourselves from this self-made prison?

On this front we have good news. We don't need to do anything, we don't need to add anything onto who we are. We don't need to develop any special qualities, or to engage in trying to endlessly change ourselves into somebody else. What we do need to do is to be aware. And what we need to be aware of is the thinking mind that is running the show. What we need to do is to watch, to observe the endless games of our slippery minds.

As we watch our mind we will notice we are telling ourselves stories all day long. These stories are ways that the self, the sense of me, reinforces itself.

One way that the self reinforces itself is through judging others. When we judge others we either feel superior or inferior, either way there's a strong sense of me there, as separate from other people. What we judge we cannot understand, we distance ourselves from what is judged.
Another way the self reinforces itself is through comparison. The self cannot see differences without comparing as better or worse, again reinforcing itself as different.

The self doesn't like uncertainty. It would rather create a story that causes us to suffer than be in a space of unknowing.

The self constantly needs to be affirmed. It needs approval. It needs its fix of appreciation and approval, and to be noticed in a good light.

When we go through the day notice how many times we want to be noticed. Notice how many times we want to be seen to be special in some way. Notice our assumptions about others and life in general. Notice how we act to please others quite often at the expense of what we really want to do. Notice when we want to say no, but end up saying yes instead. A sign that we are waking up is being able to say no.

Notice what it feels like the next time we are praised or criticised. The elation we feel when praised is setting us up for feeling depressed when criticised. Notice how much we blame others for how we feel.

These are all ways that we give our power away and let other people dictate how we feel. Wouldn't it be wonderful to be free and not have to constantly seek approval from others? Wouldn't it be wonderful to not have to constantly be seeking others' permission to feel okay?

Observe all this as non-judgementally as possible. If we do judge then that too can simply be noticed. Observe all this without trying to change anything at all about ourself. What we can so easily get into is to try and change our experience into what we think it should be rather than understanding our experience as it is. Do this and watch the change in us occur quite naturally, we don't have to try and change, but change will happen through awareness.
As we pay attention in this way we will notice that all the demands of the ego, all the judging and blaming begin to weaken. We find ourselves experiencing more peace, more freedom and happiness. We find ourselves relaxing into the openness that is our true nature.

All this happens not because we have added anything, or because we have acquired happiness, as it cannot be acquired. It is because that which causes us to suffer has started to fall away.

And what is there when the self has been seen for what it is; when we're not caught up with the screaming ego? Freedom and happiness - that's what we discover, and we see that they were there all the time and are our birthright

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SITTING IN THE MIDDLE    top of page    

We can see being present as really the heart of meditation. Our meditation is really only as good as our ability to be present. Though necessary presence isn’t enough by itself, we need also to be curious. Presence and curiosity work together. If we are present we can be curious, if we’re curious it helps keep us present. By curiosity I mean being interested in what’s happening in the body and noticing our thoughts. The question really is – are we interested in what’s going on?

Meditation in my opinion is very simple, not easy, but so very simple. It comes down to being present with and witnessing our experience as it’s happening. We don’t need to get anywhere, don’t need to create a special state of mind, or to feel a certain way, or not feel a certain way. We just sit with a sense of curiosity and witness whatever is arising. We may hear a bird sing, we notice that, we may hear a car pass by, we hear that too. Nothing complicated about it at all. We witness the breath (not so that we can become concentrated) but because it’s there. We witness the sensations in the body, maybe a pressure in the side, maybe a tension in the belly because it’s there. There maybe a twitch in the eye, we witness that, maybe our hands are cold we witness that too. Why? Because this is our life as it is right now, this is reality.

We may find that we are lost in thoughts, maybe anxious thoughts so we bring awareness out of our spinning heads and into the felt experience of anxiety in the body. We can do the same with any other strong emotion too, experiencing the energy of it in the body. Not to get rid of it but because it is there. Though it can be said that experiencing the energy of these states in the body does tend eventually to their ceasing.

We have no agenda for what should turn up, so we don’t make a choice for or against whatever does turn up. We don’t judge anything as good or bad, we just watch, we just notice. We see it all come, and we see it all go. In this way we help create an attitude of acceptance. Acceptance of the pleasant and the unpleasant feelings. This is not to be confused with passivity, if we find our selves getting lost in thoughts, fantasising etc, we notice our thoughts and come back to our felt experience of the body and the breath.
This coming back to our bodily sensations allows us to experience our life as it’s happening right now, rather than dreaming of a life we would rather have. Also awareness of the body, which means feeling all the sensations that arise in the body tends eventually to relax the body. Though there may well be times when long held tensions "rise to the surface" and make us feel more tense than usual. These are all good and necessary stages we may go through.

One thing we can do to help us stay and to watch our experience is to adopt an attitude of what I call sitting in the middle. When I go to sit – and indeed in daily life – I have the intention to sit (or be) in the middle of my experience no matter what my experience is. It may be fears, anxiety, joy, boredom, frustration, lust, or ill will. But the point is to be right there with it, as it is, and not getting lost in wishing my experience, my life to be different.
What slowly happens is that we slowly become comfortable with the uncomfortable. We become intimate with ourselves and no longer see anxiety, fear, lust etc as an enemy to be avoided. What I’m saying is that we don’t need to treat these feelings as hindrances to be got rid of, but as part of our selves that we can come to understand. We can actually learn something about ourselves from these energies if we are curious. Anxiety for instance might be telling us something about how we are living our lives. If we are fearful for example, we can bring ourselves out of our spinning mind and into the feeling of fear in the body.

Everything is meditation, there is nothing outside meditation, and we don’t have to be in a certain state of mind before we can meditate. Whatever is in our awareness that’s it! That is meditation, meditation is simply awareness.
As we watch our experience in this way we begin to become more intimate with our selves, with our thoughts and emotions, and we begin to free ourselves from their tyranny. We become more comfortable with them, but also as we continue with this watching we begin to see their true nature, that they are not-self, that we are not our thoughts and emotions. We begin to see that we are something much vaster and more wonderful, we are Pure Awareness itself. This is freedom and what Meditation is essentially about.

It’s the watching of experience that is more important than what is watched. It is the art of watching experience - irrespective of what the experience is – that is going to lead us to freedom. If we cannot watch our experience and contain it and see it for what it really is, then we will be forever lost in our own subjective worlds.

I have used quite dualistic language here, for example, there's a me and there's my experience that I'm watching. But this is our experience and that's fine. But as we meditate this way over time a shift takes place. There can be less of a sense of me watching my experience, of me meditating. At times we may experience periods where the watcher, the meditator, falls away and there is just pure awareness, spaciousness, vastness, there is freedom.

Basically what I’m suggesting we concern our selves with, in meditation, is very simple. I’m suggesting we feel the bodily sensations, and to notice our thoughts. We notice our thoughts so that we can see through them and stop being fooled by the stories the mind throws up.

Nowadays as I practice I don’t think in terms of changing myself. I don’t have an ideal that I’m trying to change myself into. I did for many years try to live my life from how I thought I should be, from ideas of how I thought I should be - more kind, more patient, more friendly, more confident, more mindful, more like my friend, more like my teacher, more like the Buddha. I should be able to give better public talks, should be better at study, should be able to think clearly, should meet lots of people…the list of how I thought should have been was endless. Now I simply think in terms of being aware. And through simply being aware, integration happens and I actually find myself changing. Not changing into an ideal outside of myself but simply changing into who I am. And I find this both thrilling and very, very satisfying too. This is freedom.

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WHAT MEDITATION IS AND ISN'T ABOUT    top of page    

Meditation isn’t about getting into some special state, or feeling something special. In fact it’s not about feeling any particular way at all.

It’s not about feeling good (or bad) but about feeling what we are feeling. As we meditate however, we do feel better about ourselves, about life, which is great, but meditation isn’t about feeling a certain way.

Meditation isn’t about changing ourselves or about self-development. We do change and we certainly do learn and develop through meditation, which is wonderful, but that’s not what meditation is primarily about.

It’s not about getting rid of our so-called bad qualities and replacing them with so-called good ones.

It’s not about having special or cosmic experiences. These may happen but are not what it’s about.

Meditation isn’t about blanking our minds or getting rid of thoughts. It’s not about getting rid of anything. However, our minds do tend to be quieter as time goes on, which is great, but it’s not what it’s about.

It’s not about trying to change our selves a certain type of person. In fact this trying to change ourselves gets in the way, it’s the self-reinforcing the self.

Not about reaching some mental ideal of perfection.

WHAT MEDITATION IS ABOUT...
Meditation is about Seeing. (I use seeing because it’s got that "ah I see" quality to it, as this seeing is done with our whole being. I also however, substitute the word seeing with the words watching and noticing)

Meditation is about seeing who we are. It’s about simply sitting (or any other activity) and having a good honest look at who we think we are. It’s about seeing that who we think we are is just a story.

It’s about seeing what’s going on right here and right now. It’s about watching the experience that we are having and not getting lost in wishing for an experience that we’re not having. Of course we tend to drift into fantasy etc, and that’s fine, but we notice that and return to our immediate felt experience of the body.
The art of meditation is to simply notice the bodily sensations and thoughts (the story which reinforces the "I"), which take us away from an open and direct experience of the moment, to notice what takes us away from life as it is right now.

Meditation isn’t about who we can become but about who we are. It’s not about changing ourselves into a different type of person, into a perfect person (we will never be perfect) but about having a full - blooded experience of ourselves as we are, and accepting everything, absolutely everything about ourselves, and this takes courage.

Meditation for me is an invitation. It’s a throwing open of the doors and windows of being and allowing all aspects of myself to enter, without judging them in any way. It might be lust, joy, ill will, anxiety, resentment, bliss, violent thoughts, whatever, but they are all welcome.

Everything passes in front of the impersonal witness. The witness just witnesses, it doesn’t judge, it doesn’t try to manipulate, it just sees the truth of whatever arises…that all is impermanent and not-self. It is this ability to witness, irrespective of what is witnessed that is the crux of meditation. It is this watching that leads to freedom. Out of this watching (without trying to change or manipulate anything) our true nature unfolds.

Through watching we come to see the story of who we think we are. As the story comes under the scrutiny of the impersonal witness the story begins to crumble. The story is really a story about me, about the "I". What we tend to do is to try and write a better story, that is to become a better person. There is nothing wrong with this of course, but it’s not freedom, it’s still in the realm of the story of me.

What the Dharma is about is seeing the truth of this, seeing that there is "no doer of the deed to be found" that there is nobody at central control running the show and never has been. This is the truth of no-self, the essence of the Dharma. Our experience is that "I’m running the show," but when this is seen or even glimpsed to be just a story (thoughts) then we can relax and let life just happen, it is anyway. It is then seen that what we are is Pure Awareness itself, that we are whole and complete as we are.

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LETTING GO   top of page    

A man is on top of a mountain, he slips and falls onto a ledge, where he is holding on with one hand.
He waits, looks up and asks, “Is there anybody there who can help me?”…There is just silence.
He looks up again and prays, “Please is there anybody there who can help me?” A voice replies, “Yes I can help you, but you must do exactly as I tell you.” “Yes, yes of course,” replies the man.
“Then release your grip and let go,” replies the voice.
The man waits a while, looks around, “Is there anybody else there who can help me?”

We can see awareness practice (meditation), as a continuous process of letting go. What are we letting go of? We are letting go of life long habits that cause us suffering. We are letting go of all the limiting views that lead us to live a small, fearful and cramped life. In a word we are letting go of the self.

The self is the one that compares, the one that judges. The self is the one that places itself at the centre of life and places everything and everybody else around it. The self always experiences itself as lacking something and so goes through life trying endlessly to fill this sense of lack, always to no avail.

Though this sense of self feels very real and solid it is really only a bundle of habits that have become deeply ingrained throughout our life. It is really an idea that has gone uninvestigated and has therefore taken over the driving seat. This idea of our self, this bundle of habits are what we are letting go of in our practice.

How do we let go?
As an example let’s look at how we let go and relax when we meditate.
When we sit we tune into the felt experience of the body. As we do this we will sense how the body is. We may see that we are a little agitated, maybe a little tense. We feel how we are and we accept how we are. We don’t try and relax it, but allow everything to be simply as it is, we let go of trying to be different to how we are.

This sitting with our felt experience of the body is the essence of meditation, nothing special at all. Within this felt experience of the body we allow whatever comes into awareness to simply be and to move on. Our job isn’t to interfere or to try and change it, but to observe it and let go and relax. Relaxation cannot be forced it is a natural result of letting go of tension and contraction.

As we sit we will notice that some of our senses are being activated. We may notice sounds, or we may notice certain smells, all we need do is too notice and let them go. It is the same with any bodily sensations too, whether it is fear, anxiety, sadness, joy or raging ecstasy, we simply observe them and let them go. By observing them I mean we feel them just as they are.

At times and maybe quite a lot of the time we may notice lots of mental chattering, lots of thoughts. We may observe for instance that we have been lost in an imaginary conversation, so we notice, let go and come back to the felt experience of the body. Or we may observe that we were lost in planning the future so we notice that too and return awareness to the body. When we realise that we are lost in thought we take a moment to notice that, we can simply label it “thinking,” then simply let go and come back to our felt experience. No judgment or condemnation is necessary. We simply do this over and over again with gentleness and patience. We observe, observe, observe and let go, let go, let go.

This noticing of thought allows us to see where we are holding on.

For instance, we may realise that there are resentful thoughts present. Or we may see that we are complaining about something to our selves, but all we need do is notice this tendency of the mind to hold on and let it pass. Once we see for ourselves that the obsessive mind serves no purpose but to cause suffering, letting go will happen more and more easily, actually we won’t be able to stop it. This seeing for ourselves needs to be done over and over again until we know it in our bones.

As we let go of thought we come back into the felt presence of the body and the breath. We simply let go into the aliveness of the body. We don’t let go into thinking about the body, or an image of the body, but the feeling of the body.

As we practice in this way we may encounter lots of fear and resistance. This is because we are letting go of our very own intimate sense of self, the ego. The ego is only interested in its own survival and that means stirring up fears and anxieties about the future. It wants to think about all the things that are going to happen, and all the problems we (don’t) have just to keep us from reality, just to keep us from being present with life as it is. I’m reminded of a saying by Mark Twain, “I’m an old man, I’ve had many problems, most of them didn’t happen.” The ego will create the illusion of problems where there aren’t any just to keep us restless and unhappy, because that’s what it’s familiar with.

If we persist in letting go in the way I’ve described above then after a time a shift takes place, a gradual shift but one that has enormous benefits. The shift is from identification with ego, with thoughts, with the stories that we tell ourselves to one of identification with awareness itself, with spaciousness itself. In other words we stop believing the constantly chattering mind with all its fears and anxieties and judgements and begin to dwell in the natural openness of our true nature. It is the constant belief in thoughts that keeps them proliferating, and which drives a lot of us to exhaustion and some of us almost to madness.

It’s wonderful when we start to see that practice isn’t about adding anything onto ourselves or endlessly trying to change our selves. Practice is so much simpler than that. Practice is simply observing all the ways that we cause our own suffering. As we observe our selves in this way, and this means both on the cushion and in everyday life we realise that we were already free and happy and that all the ways we tried to acquire happiness were just getting in the way.

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