Ajahn Achalo: What I Teach Beginners (Foundation)

Hello, this is Arjan Achalo. At the time of recording, I have been a bhikkhu in the Theravadan Buddhist tradition for around 30 years. I ordained in the lineage of Arjan Chah in the Thai forest meditation tradition. Recently I've been reviewing some of the resources that I've shared and in recognising that modern people tend to be a bit distracted, have a lot of things to attend to. I thought that it would be good to try to put some basic information in a succinct format where it's easy to refer to. Many modern people are a little challenged in our capacity to pay attention and sometimes we can overlook the basics or sometimes keep repeating some of the same things and not get good results. So I thought it would be good to commit to this recording some of my recommendations beginning, intermediate and advanced Buddhist practitioners. What do I, Arjan Achalo, actually teach and recommend to those people who consider me to be one of their teachers? So for complete absolute beginners, don't skip this if you've been meditating for some time. The basics are always the basics and the basics is the foundation. Sometimes when we get some decades into practice we can forget some of the fundamentals. So the basics are relevant to everybody including myself. But for an absolute beginner to meditation practice I would recommend sitting meditation for 15 minutes. I would recommend using the meditation object of observing the in and out breaths. Anapanasati as it's called in Buddhism. I recommend at first observing the entire breath, nose, chest, abdomen, the feelings in those areas as the breath comes into the body. And be aware of the feelings as the breath leaves the abdomen and chest and nose. A lot of people practice meditation being aware of the feelings at the upper lip or tip of the nose. I find that for complete beginners the nose is a bit too close to the head. It's easy to run off into thinking and being aware of those feelings more in the center of the body down in the hara, around near the solar plexus, is more grounding and further away from the head. So for beginners try to observe the feelings predominantly in that area. It's very important to do it every day. When a beginner first comes to sit meditation there will be a lot of thinking, there will be a lot of craving for, craving not for, various hindrances. There will also often be sleepiness, dullness or restlessness, doubt. So these things are what's called the five hindrances. Everybody experiences these to some degree. The reason it's important to commit to a daily practice is that over time things get better if we are consistent. It's important to understand that if you're sitting and there's a lot of thinking you shouldn't think that something's going wrong. You should understand that this is the beginning. This is what it's like in the beginning. And actually sitting with the intention of being mindful of the breathing and noticing how much thinking there is is actually some development. Because oftentimes we're completely lost in our thoughts and we don't even know we're lost. So if we come to sit we notice there's a lot of thinking. This is the beginning of recognizing the state of our mind and taking responsibility. Another reason it's valuable, important, recommended to do daily practice is because some days there will be some peace if we are consistent. Some days there'll be more restlessness, some days more craving, some days more sleepiness and some days the mind will settle. And we take encouragement from that. If you have really a lot of restlessness or really a lot of thinking or really a lot of sleepiness then I would recommend doing 10 minutes of walking meditation first. With walking meditation the object is to be mindful of the feelings at the bottom of the feet. That's the meditation object. With breath meditation the meditation object is the awareness of the feelings of the breath. With the awareness of breathing I would recommend using mental noting. As you breathe in you gently note rising as the abdomen expands. And as you breathe out you can gently mentally note falling. In the Thai forest tradition we also use the syllables buttoe. Buttoe is synonymous with the Buddha with wakefulness with mindfully knowing. If you're familiar with that you can try that. But rising and falling is something that most people can relate to. The abdomen expands, rising, the abdomen contracts, falling. It is also possible to count the breaths if you prefer. The point is we use mental noting to help us to be with the meditation object and also to gently restrain the thinking mind. One of the benefits of counting the breath is that when you lose count you know you've lost your mindfulness of the object and then you start again. Some people do breathing from 1 up to 5 and then from 5 back down to 1. This way as soon as you lose your count you know and then you start again. This can be very helpful. So you can experiment whichever of those works. With the walking meditation I would recommend in the beginning walk quite slowly. If you have a hallway, a patio, a veranda, somewhere quiet or maybe there's a quiet park you want to be walking for about a 10 meter stretch and walk quite slowly. Your gaze should be about 2 to 3 meters in front of you. As you lift your foot you note lifting as you move your foot moving as you place your foot placing. Lifting, moving, placing, lifting, moving, placing. When you get to the end of the 10 meters stop slowly turn around and do it again. Forward and backwards, forward and backwards. Many people find that if they do 10 minutes of walking meditation before the sitting that has helped come back within the parameters of the body to be a bit more grounded and have less thinking and the sitting goes easier. Another important thing I should mention is put your devices into flight mode. When we use our devices, mobile phones, tablets, various things that we use when we get messages, we write messages, we look at news, social media we're sending the mind out. We're also inviting others and the world in. With meditation what we're attempting to do is come inwards and put down the world for a while. It's an inner journey. So making time for your inner spiritual journey, your inner well-being, nourishing your heart put the device on flight mode so that there'll be no flashing, no beeping, no distraction. If someone calls you won't even know. This is a huge gift to yourself. Just give yourself that opportunity to take some quiet time for your spiritual practice. The thing about putting devices in flight mode is that when you tap, turn it off flight mode it doesn't need to fully reboot. Everything will be there. So truly helpful to do that. Another thing that can be helpful for beginners if you have a lot of recesses or sleepiness is the traditional practices of chanting. So if a person is a Buddhist and somewhat familiar or comfortable with the idea of chanting chanting for five, ten, fifteen minutes first is also a wonderful way to put the thinking mind onto a wholesome object and then we would find, many people find that it then settles on the meditation object, the feeling of the breath or the feeling of the footsteps more easily. Another option is to listen to a dhamma talk or some dhamma instruction. So whatever works you can experiment. If listening to dhamma helps bring your mind inwards, a Buddhist teaching, okay? If practicing walking meditation helps to gather, settle your mind very good. If doing some chanting helps, very good. Sometimes playing the chanting of someone else and chanting along can also give that nice sense of communion, having a community joining in a tradition. So you can download things so that if you need to look at your device, your device is on flight mode but you can still follow along to a chanting file. So that's for the complete beginners. If you are a committed beginner, so you've now understand the benefits of meditation and you want to deepen your practice, then you want to be looking at meditating for half an hour to 40 minutes. Why? In my experience, and I have done quite a bit of meditation, I meditate every morning, every afternoon and every evening, every day and have done for three decades. So in my experience, it takes about five to ten minutes for the mind to become peaceful. And then oftentimes the mind will be happy to stay somewhat still, somewhat peaceful for about 20 minutes. And then it will naturally come out of the peacefulness and start thinking. So if we only practice for 15 minutes or 20 minutes, sometimes the mind is becoming peaceful and we actually disrupt the peacefulness and go and fill the mind with more restlessness and activity. So giving enough space and time to allow the mind to settle, then you will get more benefit. So in the beginning stages, 10 minutes, 15 minutes for absolute beginners, committed beginners, 30 minutes to 40 minutes, if you can do some chanting, some walking, listening to some dhamma. Before the session, you will get more benefit. Some common questions that people often ask, can I meditate in a chair? The answer is yes, you can meditate in a chair. If possible, I would recommend sitting on the floor first, on a mat or a zafu for as long as you can. There is something about that traditional meditation posture that seems to help the mind settle. But if it gets too painful, you can then have a chair nearby, get up mindfully, sit in the chair. The chair should ideally not be too soft or comfortable because slouching will incline the mind towards sleepiness or fantasy. So you want a firm chair and you want to sit with a fairly straight back. So for people who want to go from beginning to committed intermediate practice interested in developing more peace, exploring, having longer sessions, then that's something that can be done. Sit on the floor for 15 minutes, mindfully sit on the chair. It's possible to sit for another 15 minutes or half an hour if the mind gets peaceful, if you are inspired. Something I would like to caution is with regards listening to too many teachings from too many people. Point of Buddhist practice is not to be endlessly entertained or fascinated, titillated, inspired. The point, as I understand it, is to know which basic practices work to help you become more mindful, more peaceful, more wise, to live more skillfully and to begin to uproot the power of ignorance, greed, hatred and delusion. It's okay in the beginning to listen around a bit, try to fill things out, get a sense for who you resonate with. Once you do resonate with a teacher, I would recommend that you have two or three teachers who are ideally from the same tradition. Why? Why do I recommend that? So if we have the analogy and consider the Buddha's teaching and Buddha's training, the goals of Buddha's practice being liberating the mind from ignorance, delusion and craving, and through doing so experiencing great tremendous peace, we could have an analogy of a mountain and the teacher, the teachers would be people who are higher up on the mountain than you. Now if you have three or four teachers who have climbed the mountain and made it to the summit, but they each had a different experience perhaps going on a different trail or in a different season, one of those guys might say, for where you are now turn right. The other one might say, where you are now you need to turn left. Another one might say, just bolt straight up. Another one might say, actually you took a wrong turn, go back a bit and then turn left or then turn right because people's experience of practice is different. Individual practitioners have their own karma, different people have been practicing for shorter or longer periods of time. In Buddhism we understand that that can be a matter of lifetimes as well. So people have different characters and they've developed different skillful means. So if one teacher resonates, you feel like what he's saying makes sense, is practical, then try to focus on that teacher. If there are other teachers in his or her lineage who are a skillful supplement, then also listen to those. But I wouldn't recommend listening to Theravada Mahayana Vajrayana teachers and a lot of different teachers within the Theravada. If you want to get some results from your practice, I'm speaking as someone in the practice tradition. So my focus will be on doing a lot of the practice and getting the results of the practice. What does that mean? Less hindrances, more mindfulness, more collectedness, more wisdom, an ability to know the states of the mind as they arise, stay for some time and cease, and a capacity to let go of mind states, not to be identified with our thoughts as much as before. In concluding the section about beginning practitioners, I should mention Buddhism is usually taught as a threefold training. Dhana, Sila and Paavana. That means generosity, ethical conduct or virtue, and mental cultivation, the meditations. Lord Buddha explains that our suffering is caused by grasping, with craving and identifying as our body, our thoughts, our feelings as being a self. Stinginess tends to compound the problem. Being generous tends to brighten the mind up and helps us begin to let go of some of our habits of clinging. So dhana practice being generous is not something that is simply recommended because it's nice, it's good. It is actually fundamentally important, it's necessary. In Buddhism we do believe in karma and merit. I certainly do, my teachers do. The Buddha did talk about this as being a matter of fact. There is wholesome, skillful deeds, unwholesome, unskillful deeds and they do produce fruits. If we neglect the dhana practice, if we don't find ways to dissolve some of our grasping, selfishness, then it is difficult to experience bright, spacious mind states and it's difficult to let go of our unwholesome mind states. If we train in giving away some of our wealth, some of our income, it does actually translate as helping us to let go of our hindrances and our mind states. I am aware that we are living in a period of time where the costs of things are increasing while wages are not. I know that many people struggle just to pay the bills. So generosity is not just giving away material wealth, but most people can usually manage to give away a little something. That might be 50 cents or a dollar to a homeless person or smiling at someone who looks like they're struggling, listening to a friend, giving encouraging words. There are many ways to practice being generous and kind. One of the benefits of being generous and kind is that when you come to sit, you feel good about yourself. It supports your self-esteem. If we are a bit stingy, a bit contracted, a bit mean, then when we sit, we tend not to want to spend time with ourselves. The mind isn't a pleasant thing to be with. So generosity has many benefits. With regards to the sealer, ethical conduct, it's important to understand that when the Buddha explained the five precepts, the five precepts are don't kill, don't steal, be sexually responsible, don't lie, and don't indulge in intoxication. It's important to understand that the sealer is a training. Nobody starts with perfect sealer. When I began meditating and did my first ten-day meditation retreats, my sealer was not perfect. It was through the course of doing daily meditation practice that I begun to see clearly that it was true, that if I broke a precept, it did affect my clarity, it did affect my well-being. No matter how much I may have felt I could justify it in the moment, if I was being truthful, looking at the consequences, if I broke a precept, my clarity, my well-being, my self-esteem was affected. But for many people that's a process. What we intend to do is to cultivate better ethical standards so that this quality of virtue blossoms in the mind. Being virtuous is a tremendous gift to oneself, giving freedom of remorse, self-respect, and it's also a tremendous gift to those around us, offering them fearlessness. People will know, people will sense, you're not going to lie, you're not going to steal, you're not going to cheat. They will feel that they can trust you. Some people of course will be threatened by people who are virtuous. That's okay. Sometimes we need to make new friends. On the subject of intoxication, it's probably the case that many people feel that some occasional recreational use of marriage, that recreational use of marijuana, or the occasional glass of wine, a beer, is okay. Of course in a worldly sense it's okay. I know in Australia where I grew up many people considered a good person would be someone who would have a beer with his mates. That's a good person. So common normal cultural understanding is one thing. If we are interested in deeper peace, true well-being, clarity, then sobriety is a tremendous support. I've had several students who thought it was okay to have the occasional drink, but as they meditated more and more, with diligent with their daily practice, they came to see that it was true. Even just one drink did affect the mindfulness, did affect the clarity, did affect the well-being. And when they started to feel deeper peace, deeper well-being from being virtuous and meditating daily, the desire to indulge in intoxication got less and less because they actually had something superior. The Buddha explains that peacefulness is the highest pleasure. And I really come to experience that myself. I totally believe that. On the subject of intoxication in this day and age, should mention that playing a violent computer game or looking at pornography also counters intoxication. Studies have shown what it does to the mind, to the brain, huge releases of dopamine and it is addictive. And also we don't want to be feeding unskillful things. A big part of our challenge as Buddhist practitioners is trying to contain and sublimate greed and hatred through our thoughts, our speech, our actions. We don't want to be doing our best to contain and lessen greed, hatred and delusion on one hand and then embrace greed and aversion and anger on the other hand. This will not be helpful. As I mentioned, it's a training so we do our best and slowly over time do better. I've mentioned it before but I'd like to mention it again. A note to end on is that consistency is fundamentally vitally important. In the absolute beginning it's okay to do it a few days a week, not every day. But if you are really interested in experiencing better mindfulness, greater peacefulness, some collectiveness, some coolness and peace, then you do need to be consistent. Mindfulness grows steadily, stronger through consistent effort. If you practice sometimes and don't practice other times, it literally is like taking one step forward and one step back. So it's a tremendous gift to your life and your spiritual practice if you can be consistent starting at a smaller amount, something that's manageable that you really can commit to. 15 minutes, get it up to 20 minutes. Then when you can get it up to 30 minutes, 40 minutes of meditation each day. And you need to make it something that's non-negotiable. It's just something that you will do. And if it's time to sleep and you haven't meditated yet, you will meditate. This is the approach that will help your practice to continue to grow. And then through consistency when you see the benefit, you will be inspired to cultivate your meditation even further. So I wish you every success. May you get great results from your meditation practice.