Meditation

Hello, I'm Bill Hartley, publisher of Audio Renaissance, and I'm very pleased to introduce

you to Alan Watts' Teaches Meditation, the most recent addition to our library of Alan

Watts' tapes. The material for this program has been made available to Audio Renaissance

through our association with Alan Watts' son, Mark Watts, and the vast archival collection

of recordings of Alan Watts, maintained by the Electronic University. Portions of the

material used in this recording were previously available under the title, Why Not Now?, produced

by Gary Usher for Ascension Records. The Electronic University wishes to acknowledge Mr. Usher's

contribution, and to thank him wherever he may be. And now, may I introduce Alan Watts'

teaching meditation. The art of meditation is a way of getting

into touch with reality. And the reason for it is that most civilized people are out of

touch with reality because they confuse the world as it is with the world as they think

about it, and talk about it, and describe it. For on the one hand, there is the real world,

and on the other, a whole system of symbols about that world which we have in our minds.

These are very, very useful symbols. All civilization depends on them. But like all good things, they have their

disadvantages. And the principal disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with reality, just as we

confuse money with actual wealth. And our names about ourselves, our ideas of ourselves, our images of

ourselves with ourselves. Now, of course, reality, from a philosopher's point of view, is a dangerous

word. A philosopher will ask me, what do I mean by reality? Am I talking about the physical world of

nature? Or am I talking about a spiritual world? Or what? And to that I have a very simple answer. When we talk about the

material world, the material world, that is actually a philosophical concept. So in the same way, if I say that

reality is spiritual, that's also a philosophical concept. And reality itself is not a concept. Reality is, and we

won't give it a name. Now it's amazing what doesn't exist in the real world. For example, in the real world, there aren't

any things, nor are there any events. That doesn't mean to say that the real world is a perfectly

featureless blank. It means that it is a marvelous system of wiggles in which we describe things and

events in the same way as we would project images on a Rorschach plot, or pick out particular groups of stars

in the sky and call them constellations, as if they were separate groups of stars. Well, they're groups of stars in

the mind's eye, in our system of concepts. They are not out there as constellations already grouped in the sky.

So in the same way, the difference between myself and all the rest of the universe is nothing more than an idea.

It is not a real difference. And meditation is the way in which we come to feel our basic

inseparability from the whole universe. And what that requires is that we shut up. That is to say,

that we become interiorly silent and cease from the interminable chatter that goes on inside our skulls.

Because you see, most of us think compulsively all the time. That is to say, we talk to ourselves.

And I remember when I was a boy, we had a common saying, talking to yourself is the first sign of madness.

Now, obviously, if I talk all the time, I don't hear what anyone else has to say.

And so in exactly the same way, if I think all the time, that is to say, if I talk to myself all the time,

I don't have anything to think about except thoughts. And therefore, I'm living entirely in the world of symbols.

And I'm never in relationship with reality.

All right. Now, that's the first basic reason for meditation.

But there is another sense, and this is going to be a little bit more difficult to understand,

why we could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose.

And in this respect, it's unlike almost all other things that we do, except perhaps making music and dancing.

Because when we make music, we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition.

If that were the purpose of music, to get to the end of the piece, then obviously the fastest players would be the best.

And so likewise, when we are dancing, we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor,

as we would be if we were taking a journey.

When we dance, the journey itself is the point.

When we play music, the playing itself is the point.

And exactly the same thing is true in meditation.

Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.

And therefore, if you meditate for an ulterior motive, that is to say, to improve your mind,

to improve your character, to be more efficient in life,

you've got your eye on the future, and you are not meditating.

Because the future is a concept.

It doesn't exist.

As the proverb says, tomorrow never comes.

There is no such thing as tomorrow.

There never will be.

Because time is always now.

And that's one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves,

and stop thinking, we find there is only a present, only an eternal now.

So, it's funny then, isn't it, that one meditates for no reason at all,

except, we could say, for the enjoyment of it.

And here I would interpose the essential principle that meditation is supposed to be fun.

It's not something you do as a grim duty.

The trouble with religion, as we know it,

is that it is so mixed up with grim duties.

We do it because it's good for you.

It's a kind of self-punishment.

Well, meditation, when correctly done, has nothing to do with all that.

It's a kind of digging the present.

It's a kind of grooving with the eternal now.

And brings us into a state of peace,

where we can understand that the point of life,

the place where it's at, is simply here and now.

Well now, in the art of meditation, there are various props, supports.

One thing that we are going to use as a means of stilling chatter in the mind is pure sound.

And for that reason, it's useful to have a gong.

This is a Japanese Buddhist gong, made of bronze and shaped like a bowl.

If you don't have one of these, you can get the rounded end of an oxygen tank.

Have a machinist saw it off roughly into the shape of a bowl and use that.

Or you can use your own voice, chanting.

Another prop in meditation is the use of incense.

And that is because the sense of smell is our repressed sense.

And because it's our repressed sense, it has a very powerful influence on us.

And therefore, we associate certain smells with certain states of mind.

And so, the smell of incense is associated with peace and contemplation.

And so, it's advantageous to burn incense in meditation.

The other prop is a string of beads.

And these beads are used in meditation for an unconscious method of timing yourself.

Instead of looking at a watch, you move a bead each time you breathe in and out.

So that at a certain rate, you see there are always 108 beads on a rosary.

And when you get to slow breathing, halfway around the rosary is about 40 minutes.

And that is the usual length of time for which one sits in meditation

because otherwise, you get uncomfortable and you get stiff legs and problems of that kind.

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 is going on completely beyond my control?

Or on the other hand, am I really doing everything that is going along?

Well, if I were, I should be God.

And that would be very embarrassing, because I would be in charge of everything,

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 are 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 ear drums 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, 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. Now then, to make this somewhat easier, to have the mind

free from discursive verbal thinking, sound or chanted sound is extremely useful. If you, for example,

simply listen to the gong and let that sound be the whole of your experience, it's quite simple,

it requires no effort. And then along with that, especially if you don't have a gong,

we can use what are called in the Sanskrit language, mantra. Mantra are chanted sounds,

which are used not so much for their meaning as for the simple tone. And they go along with that easy

kind of slow breath. One of the basic mantras is, of course, the sound OM. That sound is used because

if you spell it out A-U-M, it runs from the back of your throat to your lips, and therefore it contains

the whole range of the voice. And for that reason, it represents the total energy of the universe. This word is

called the pranava, the name for the ultimate reality, for the which, than which there is no witcher.

And so, in this way then, if you chant it, and it's varied like this. You can keep that up

for quite a long time, and eventually you will find, as you go on chanting, that the words of the chant

will simply have become pure sound. And you won't be thinking about it. You won't have any images about

the sound going on in your mind. You will simply become completely absorbed in sound. And therefore,

you will find yourself living in an eternal now, in which there is no past, and there is no future,

and there is no something called difference between what you are as knower, and what you are as the

known, between yourself and the world of nature outside you. It all becomes one doing, one happening.

Now, in addition to those slow-moving chants, you may find it, according to your temperament,

easier to do a fast-moving one. These have a sort of rhythm to them that is absorbing.

Say, uh, a chant that many of you have heard that goes,

a chant that many of you have found on earth as they allow.

Satsang with Mooji

However, you want to echo students growing upuate the fear countries in Europe,

and you will have to do that cloud. And as such, when they are asking about the

things that are svampas, you will have to do a fast-moving one of which is what Umweltaby.

And it doesn't matter what it means.

Actually, Krishna and Rama are the names of Hindu divinities.

But that's not the point.

The point is just to get with that thing that is running, running, running.

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, and so on.

And if you're a Christian or a Jew and you feel more inclined to use a meditation word that is more congenial to you,

you can use a,

Alleluia, Alleluia.

Or if you're a Mohammedan,

you can use the Allah, the name of God.

They have a way of doing it, you know, which gets very exciting.

And it gets faster and faster.

You can keep that up for 40 minutes.

And you'll be out of your mind.

But you see, to go out of your mind at least once a day is tremendously important.

Because by going out of your mind, you come to your senses.

And if you stay in your mind all the time,

you are over-rational.

In other words, you're like a very rigid bridge,

which because it has got no give, no craziness in it,

is going to be blown down in the first hurricane.

See, when we try to control the mind,

a lot of yoga teachers try to get you to control your own mind,

mainly to prove to you that you can't do it.

There's nothing, you know,

a fool who persists in his folly will become wise.

So what they do is they speed up the folly.

And so you get concentrating.

And you can have a certain amount of superficial and initial success by a process.

commonly called self-hypnosis and you can think you're making progress and a good teacher will

let you go along that way for a while until he really throws you with one why are you concentrating

see buddhism works this way buddha said if you suffer you suffer because you desire and your

desires are either unattainable or always being disappointed or something so cut out desire so

those disciples went away and they stamped on desire jumped on desire cut the throat of desire

and threw out desire but then they came back and buddha said but you are still desiring not to

desire they wanted how to get rid of that but you see it works like this all spiritual discipline

works this way i'll show you it's done in the form of a child's game you know there's the church and

there's the steeple open the door and there are the people and here's the parson going upstairs

and there he is saying his prayers catch him catch him catch him catch him catch him you never can

because the would-be catchee is the catcher

so then does that's like desiring not to desire loving out of a sense of duty trying to be spontaneous

because you ought to be see all that is nonsense lifting yourself up by your own bootstraps so when

you see that that's nonsense there naturally comes over you a quietness in seeing that you cannot

control your mind you realize there is no controller what you took to be the thinker of thoughts is just

one of the thoughts what you took to be the feeler of the feelings which was that chronic muscular

strain is just one of the feelings what you took to be the experiencer of experience is just part of

the experience so there isn't any thinker of thoughts feeler of feelings we we get into that

bind because we have a grammatical rule that verbs have to have subjects and the funny thing about that

is that verbs are processes and subjects and nouns which are supposed to be things how does a noun start

a verb how does the thing put a process into action obviously it can't but we always insist that there is

this subject called the knower and without a knower there can't be knowing well that's just a grammatical

rule it isn't a rule of nature in nature there's just knowing like you're feeling it and i have to

say you are feeling it as if you were somehow different from the feeling when i say i am feeling

what i mean is there is feeling here when i say you are feeling i mean there is feeling there

i have to say even there is feeling what a cumbersome language we have chinese is easier you don't have

to put all that in why you can say things twice as fast in chinese as you can in any other language

well anyway when you come to see that you can do nothing that the play of thought of feeling etc just

goes on by itself as a happening then you are in a state which we will call meditation and slowly

without being pushed your thoughts will come to silence that is to say all the verbal symbolic

chatter going on in the skull don't try and get rid of it because that will again produce the illusion

that there's a controller just it goes on it goes on it goes on and finally it gets tired of itself and

bored and stops and so then there's a silence and this is a deeper level of meditation

and in that silence you suddenly begin to see the world as it is and you don't see any past

and you don't see any future you don't see any difference between yourself and the rest of it that's

just an idea you can't put your hand on the difference between myself and you

you know you can't blow it you can't bounce it you can't pull it it's just an idea you can't find any material body

because material body is an idea so is spiritual body this is somebody's philosophical notions

see reality isn't material that's an idea reality isn't spiritual that's an idea reality is we find

if i've got to put it back into words that we live in an eternal now you've got all the time in the

world because you've got all the time there is which is now and uh you are this universe and you feel

this strange feeling when when when ideas don't define the differences you feel that other people's

doings are your doings and that makes it very difficult to blame other people if you're not

sophisticated theologically you may of course run screaming in the streets and say that you're god

in a way that's what happened to jesus because he wasn't sophisticated theologically he only had

old testament biblical theology behind him if he'd had hindu theology he could have put it more subtly

but uh it was only that rather primitive theology of the old testament

and that was the conception of god as a monarchical boss

and you can't go around and say i'm the boss's son if you're going to say i'm god

you must allow it for everyone else too but this was a heretical idea from the point of view of hebrew

theology and so what they did with jesus was they pedestalized him that means kicked him upstairs so that

he wouldn't be able to influence anyone else and uh only you may be god

and that stopped the gospel cold right at the beginning it couldn't spread well anyway this is

therefore to say that the transformation of human consciousness through meditation is frustrated so long

as we think of it in terms of something that i myself can bring about

by some kind of wangle by some sort of gimmick

because you see that leads to endless games of spiritual one-upmanship

and of guru competitions

of my guru is more effective than your guru

my yoga's a faster than your yoga i'm more aware of myself than you are i'm humbler than you are

i'm sorrier for my sins than you are i love you more than you love me

there is interminable goings-on about which people fight and wonder whether they are a little

bit more evolved than somebody else and so on all that can just fall away and then we get this

strange feeling that we have never had you see in our lives except occasionally by accident

some people get a glimpse that we are no longer this poor little stranger and afraid in a world it never

made but that you are this universe and you are creating it at every moment because you see it starts

now it didn't begin in the past there was no past see if the universe began in the past when that happened

it was now see well it's still now and the universe is still beginning now and it's trailing off like

the wake of a ship from now in the wake of the ship fades out so does the past you can look back there

to explain things but the explanation disappears you'll never find it there things are not explained by

the past they're explained by what happens now that creates the past and it begins here the birth of

responsibility because otherwise you can always look over your shoulder and say well i'm the way i

am because my mother dropped me and she dropped me because she was neurotic because her mother dropped her

and away we go back to adam and eve or to a disappearing monkey or something we never get at it

but in this way you're you're faced with you're doing all this and that's an extraordinary shock so cheer up

you can't blame anyone else for the kind of world you're in and that helps a great deal

because most of the good things we are trying to do are based on blaming somebody else and to improve

them kindly let me help you or you'll drown said the monkey putting the fish safely up a tree

if therefore we would stop blaming others it would be very difficult to go about a war with a straight

face if you know you see that i in the sense of the person the front the ego it really doesn't exist

then it won't go to your head too badly if you wake up and discover that you're god i'm not really a

musician but it just so happens that i have in front of me a fabulous instrument which the japanese call

koto i suppose it would be best described as a table harp long instrument stringed with bridges

horizontal harp it was customary among chinese poets

in the old days to read poetry and strum on the lute or table harp at the same time and i've got here

a curious old text called saikontan which means the vegetable root discourses written by

koji say somewhere around 1624 and i thought i'd like to read some of this to you and to get into the

right mood i suggest that you try to become a little stupid that is to say childlike as if you hardly knew

how to talk and didn't really know very much about anything that's going on just listen as you would

listen to the wind if the mind is clear a dark room has its blue sky if the mind is somber broad daylight

gives birth to demons and evil spirits the just man has no mind to seek happiness heaven therefore

because of this mindlessness opens its inmost heart the bad man busies himself with avoiding misfortunes

heaven therefore confounds him for this desire how unsearchable are the ways of heaven how useless

the wisdom of man the tao is common property it should be pointed out to all we meet learning is as

ordinary as eating rice at home according to the circumstances it should be applied circumspectly

the ancients left rice for mice and did not light lamps out of pity for moths

these thoughts of theirs are the operation point of humanity in life

lacking this a man is a mere earthman a wooden body the zen sect says when you are hungry eat when you are

weary sleep poetry aims at the description in common language of beautiful scenery the sublime is contained

in the ordinary the hardest in the easiest what is self-conscious and ulterior is far from the truth

what is mindless is near will you try and experiment with me simply close your eyes

and allow your ears to hear all sounds around you don't try to name or identify these songs

just hear them as you would listen to music as when you hear a flute or a guitar without asking what it

means and as and when i talk just hear the sound of my voice don't bother about what it means

your brain will take care of that by itself just let your eardrums respond as they will

to all vibrations now in the air don't let yourself or your ears be offended by improper or unscheduled

sounds if for example the record is scratchy okay you wouldn't object if you were listening to it

sitting by a fire of crackling logs let em ring it's just a noise and keep your tongue relaxed floating

easily in the lower jaw also stop frowning allow the space between your eyes to feel easy and open

and just let the vibrations in the air play with your ears you must understand that in meditation we are

concerned only with what is with reality nothing else the past is a memory the future and expectation

neither past nor future actually exist there is simply eternal now so don't seek or expect a result from

what you're doing that wouldn't be true meditation there's no hurry just now you're not going anywhere

simply be here live in the world of sound let it play that's all in the world of pure sound can you

actually hear anyone who is listening can you hear any difference between all these sounds on the one hand

and yourself on the other naturally we use techniques and gimmicks to help the thinking mind to become

silent and one of them is the gong it is a sound at once pleasing and compelling it absorbs attention

but watch what happens when it fades out the one sound becomes the many the single tone is transformed

easily and gently into all other noises and that's how the universe comes into being out of the one energy

underlying all events so if you don't have a gong you can use your own voice

by chanting what hindus and buddhists call a mantra that is a syllable or phrase sung for its sound rather

than its meaning chief of these is the syllable om or om called the pranava or the sound of god

because it involves the whole range of the voice from the back of the throat to the lips take the tone

from the gong and hum it with me oh you can hear all sounds as ohm they're all at some point in the

total range of sound from the back of the throat to the lips making a spectrum of sound as all colors

are originally one white light don't ask what the sound is or what it means just hear it and dig it

come with me again let me explain again what we are doing we are going behind words names numbers

beliefs and ideas to get back to the naked experience of reality itself and at this level of awareness we

find no difference between the listener and the sound the knower and the known the subject and the object

or between the past the present and the future all that's just talk what is really happening is you

may wonder how i can keep the sound going for so long a time it depends on regulation of the breath

which is basic to the art of meditation and i'm going to show you how to do this and why to begin

with just as you've been letting vibrations in the air play with your ears let your lungs breathe as they

will don't as yet attempt any breathing exercise don't force anything simply allow breathing is this

breathing a voluntary or involuntary action or both or neither just feel it without taking sides

without words and again hear my voice as if it were wind in the trees or the sound of waves

most of us are short of breath we never really empty our lungs but to make a long complete

out breath you mustn't force it imagine there's a large ball of lead inside your neck and allow it

to fall slowly through your body to the floor pushing and easing the breath out as it drops

ease the breath out just as you settle and sink down comfortably into a bed when the ball reaches

the floor let it drop away as if to the center of the earth then let the breath come back back in

as a reflex without pulling it and then imagine another ball of lead in the neck

and again let it fall out long and easy and once again do you see what's happening

you are generating a great deal of energy without trying or forcing two things seem to be happening at

once first the outflow of breath is simply falling happening all by itself second it's under perfect

control so from this practice you learn to experience to realize that what happens to you

you and what you do are one and the same process there is no real separation between one thing called

you and another quite different thing called the universe when you stop talking and naming

they're quite obviously one so again let your breath fall easily out all the way

let it come back on its own and then out again and now let's put the sound r on the next outflow

and again so that you have nothing in mind but this melodious and now familiar chant

the sound is

is

are

Hare, Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna.

Not what it means, but how it feels.

What happens to you when there is complete absorption in the chant?

An idea called your ego simply disappeared, didn't it?

Then, there is a very effective mantra used by an important sect of Islamic mystics known as Sufis.

Like all these different mantrams, they will be kept up for quite long periods, say 15 to 20 minutes or more.

So what I'm giving you are only samples.

You can easily do this one with me, it goes like this.

Meditation has no purpose, no objective, except to be entirely here and now.

It isn't something you do to improve yourself, to get ahead in the world or to prepare yourself for life.

For the division of time into past, present and future is a trick of words and numbers.

All memories and expectations exist now.

And now only.

Because now is what there is and all that there is.

We could say that the past flows back from now, like the wake from the prow of a ship.

And then just like the wake vanishes.

As the wake doesn't drive the ship, the past does not propel or move the present.

Unless you, here and now, want to insist that it does.

And so give yourself a perpetual alibi for every kind of irresponsibility.

But I'm not preaching.

That would be a diversion from our feeling centered in this eternal here and now.

From feeling it directly as the reality.

Again then.

Just let all sounds going on play upon your eardrums.

Without trying to name, identify or locate them.

Relax your tongue.

Let it just float in your lower jaw.

Close your eyes.

If you're still thinking in words or calculating about this, that and the other.

Which you're supposed to be doing.

Don't try to stop it.

Just let your mind do whatever it likes.

And hear its chatter as if you were listening to rippling water.

So then.

We're going to try and find out and feel what we mean by the word now.

Not the idea, but the actual sensation.

Get it?

Like that?

Or this?

Are these two different kinds of now?

One a short sharp pop.

And the other a long continuous boom.

Is now a split split second?

Or is it a drawn out expanse of sensation?

Try this.

Just stand up for a moment.

And take three steps forward.

One.

Two.

Three.

And stop.

Where at this moment is the first step you took?

And where is the next movement you're going to make?

Hold it.

Be still.

Next movement hasn't happened.

Past movements aren't here.

Where are you?

When are you?

What is the position of the universe?

When is it?

Where is it?

Take another step.

Is this a new now?

Or the same old now where you always were?

The next step is not with your feet, but with your imagination.

Recall the first step that you just made.

Now when are you?

Back then or still here?

Don't think a word.

Just feel.

Please sit down again and relax.

For meditation it's best to sit on the floor.

In lotus posture or just cross-legged.

Or kneeling on a cushion and sitting back on your heels.

Spine straight.

Hands with palms upward resting upon each other.

The reason for this position is that it's firm and grounded.

And just uncomfortable enough to keep you from going to sleep.

But don't fight the discomfort.

Relax into the position just as you have learned how to relax

and to ease out a long, long breath.

And so create energy without strain.

In the same way.

If you have understood that there is no time but now.

You will be able without the least difficulty to sit in this way for a long time.

As measured by the clock.

Once again.

The essence of the whole art is to feel.

To experience.

To sense.

What is.

What happens.

Without defining it.

Without saying anything to yourself about it.

So let your breath flow easily, heavily down and out again.

No strain.

And after it has come back in.

Once more.

Keep it up.

We are going to play it along with the sound.

Mu.

A Chinese Japanese word which means.

That which isn't a thing.

A think, a thought, an idea.

But reality itself.

The very sound.

Mu.

What is moo?

Words in the head as mere noise.

Relax your tongue and let it float.

Easily in your lower jaw.

Just.

Let the various colors and shapes before you play with your eyes.

Just as you have been letting sounds play with your ears.

Where are they?

Out in front of your face?

Or inside your brain?

In the optical nervous.

Is your head in the world?

Or is the world in your head?

Or both?

Everything you felt.

Or you just didn't feel yourself, the feeler at all.

Just as you didn't see your eyes.

All or nothing.

As is said in an ancient Chinese text called The Secret of the Golden Flower.

Between the all and the void is only a difference of name.

Now, put your hands back on your lap.

Palms upward, one upon the other.

Just let go of it all.

Let your ears hear whatever they like.

Let the nerve ends in your skin feel whatever they like.

Let your eyes see whatever they like.

Let your nose smell whatever it like.

Let your mind think whatever it like.

Let your lungs breathe as they will.

Let things happen as they are happening.

Are these all different senses?

Or just one sense?

Consciousness.

Listen to my voice as you listen to the sound of the rain.

The sound of the rain needs no translation.

No explanation.

Now I want to show you another form of meditation.

Which I heard about from a Zen Buddhist master.

Who said it was one of the very best ways.

Will you please stand up and put your hands on your hips.

With wrists upwards.

Now, let's all just laugh.

Ha.

have

the

well,

have

I

have

the

And now sit down again.

This Zen Master told me that you should do that first thing in the morning when you get up.

It's even better than sitting for a long time and getting your legs stiff.

Now, how do you feel?

Where was you when you were laughing?

What is you now?

Listen.