Now then, the other thing first of all that we have to go into is how does one sit in
 meditation? You can sit any way you want. You can sit in a chair or you can sit like
 I'm sitting, which is the Japanese way of sitting, or you can sit in the lotus posture,
 which is more difficult, which is cross-legged with the feet on the thighs, soles upwards.
 And the younger you start that in life, the easier you'll find it to do. Or you can just
 sit cross-legged on a raised cushion above the floor. Now the point of this is that if
 you keep your back erect, I don't mean stiff like this, nor slumped like this, but just
 easily erect, you are centered and easily balanced and you have a feeling of being thoroughly
 rooted to the ground. And that sort of physical stability is very important for the avoidance
 of distraction and generally feeling settled. Here and now, "Je suis, je reste," as the
 French say. I'm here and I'm going to stay. Well now, the easiest way to get into the
 meditative state is to begin by listening. If you simply close your eyes and allow yourself
 to hear all the sounds that are going on around you, just listen to the general hum and buzz
 of the world as if you were listening to music. Don't try to identify the sounds you're hearing.
 Don't put names on them. Simply allow them to play with your eardrums and let them go.
 In other words, you could put it, "Let your ears hear whatever they want to hear." Don't
 judge the sounds. There are no, as it were, proper sounds or improper sounds and it doesn't
 matter if somebody coughs or sneezes or drops something. It's all just sound. And if I am
 talking to you right now and you're doing this, I want you to listen to the sound of
 my voice just as if it were noise. Don't try to make any sense out of what I'm saying because
 your brain will take care of that automatically. You don't have to try to understand anything.
 Just listen to the sound. As you pursue that experiment, you will very naturally find that
 you can't help naming sounds, identifying them, that you will go on thinking, that is
 to say, talking to yourself inside your head automatically. But it's important that you
 don't try to repress those thoughts by forcing them out of your mind because that will have
 precisely the same effect as if you were trying to smooth rough water with a flat iron. You're
 just going to disturb it all the more. What you do is this. As you hear sounds coming
 up in your head, thoughts, you simply listen to them as part of the general noise going
 on just as you would be listening to the sound of my voice or just as you would be listening
 to cars going by or to birds chattering outside the window. So look at your own thoughts as
 just noises and soon you will find that the so-called outside world and the so-called
 inside world come together. They are a happening. Your thoughts are a happening just like the
 sounds going on outside and everything is simply a happening and all you're doing is
 watching it. Now in this process, another thing that is happening that is very important
 is that you're breathing. And as you start meditation, you allow your breath to run just
 as it wills. In other words, don't do at first any breathing exercise, but just watch your
 breath breathing the way it wants to breathe. And notice a curious thing about this. You
 say in the ordinary way, "I breathe," because you feel that breathing is something that
 you are doing voluntarily just in the same way as you might be walking or talking. But
 you will also notice that when you are not thinking about breathing, your breathing goes
 on just the same. So the curious thing about breath is that it can be looked at both as
 a voluntary and an involuntary action. You can feel on the one hand, "I am doing it,"
 and on the other hand, "It is happening to me." And that is why breathing is a most important
 part of meditation, because it is going to show you as you become aware of your breath
 that the hard and fast division that we make between what we do on the one hand and what
 happens to us on the other is arbitrary. So that as you watch your breathing, you will
 become aware that both the voluntary and the involuntary aspects of your experience are
 all one happening. Now that may at first seem a little scary, because you may think, "Well,
 am I just the puppet of a happening, the mere passive witness of something that's going
 on completely beyond my control?" Or on the other hand, "Am I really doing everything
 that's going along? Well, if I were, I should be God, and that would be very embarrassing,
 because I would be in charge of everything, and that would be a terribly responsible position."
 The truth of the matter, as you will see it, is that both things are true. You can see
 it that everything is happening to you, and on the other hand, you're doing everything.
 For example, it's your eyes that are turning the sun into light. It's the nerve ends in
 your skin that are turning electric vibrations in the air into heat and temperature. It's
 your eardrums that are turning vibrations in the air into sound, and in that way, you
 are creating the world. But when we're not talking about it, when we're not philosophizing
 about it, then there is just this happening, this... and we won't give it a name. Now then,
 when you breathe for a while, just letting it happen, and not forcing it in any way,
 you will discover a curious thing, that without making any effort, you can breathe more and
 more deeply. In other words, supposing you simply are breathing out, and breathing out
 is important because it's the breath of relaxation, as when we say, "Phew!" and heave a sigh of
 relief. So when you are breathing out, you get the sensation that your breath is falling
 out. Dropping, dropping, dropping out, with the same sort of feeling you have as if you
 were settling down into an extremely comfortable bed, and you just get as heavy as possible
 and let yourself go, and you let your breath go out in just that way. And when it's thoroughly
 comfortably out, and it feels like coming back again, you don't pull it back in, you
 let it fall back in, letting your lungs expand, expand, expand, until they feel very comfortably
 full, and you wait a moment and let it stay there, and then once again, you let it fall
 out. And so in this way, you will discover that your breath gets quite naturally easier
 and easier, and slower and slower, and more and more powerful. So that with these various
 aids, listening to sound, listening to your own interior feelings and thoughts, just as
 if they were something going on, not something you are doing, but just happenings, and watching
 your breath as a happening that is neither voluntary nor involuntary, you are simply
 aware of these basic sensations, then you begin to be in the state of meditation. But
 don't hurry anything, don't worry about the future, don't worry about what progress
 you're making, just be entirely content to be aware of what is. Don't be terribly
 selective, particularly say, "I should think of this and not of that." Just watch whatever
 is happening.
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