How Not to Meditate: Insights and Practices Explained

Meditation teachers often unknowingly emulate rigid practices, straying from the Buddha's compassionate, flexible approach.

### The Art of Mindfulness: Embracing Impermanence and Interdependence in Meditation
* 🧘 This evening's lesson focuses on the unconventional teachings from the book "How Not to Meditate," emphasizing the **importance of understanding what meditation should not be**.
* 📚 Sturgeon's law reminds us that "**90% of everything sucks**," including many self-proclaimed meditation teachers who often follow rigid paths reminiscent of the Buddha's cousin, **Devadatta**.
* 🌟 In contrast, the Buddha exemplified qualities such as **kindness and flexibility**, promoting a meditation practice that relies on the **autonomic nervous system** to foster **peace and joy**.
* 🧠 The overuse of analytical thinking can trigger **anxiety and aggression** in the brain, which is **counterproductive to the meditative experience**.
* 🌈 The meditation practice encourages participants to explore concepts like **impermanence and interdependence**, using metaphors such as **melting into rainbow light** to illustrate these ideas.
* 💖 As the session progresses, the focus shifts towards **cultivating loving-kindness**, aligning with the Buddha's eight-fold path, which emphasizes **compassion and the interconnectedness of all beings**.
* 🎶 The practice concludes with a collective chant, inviting participants to **embody these teachings and foster a sense of community and support among all beings**.
* 🙏 "May all minds of all beings know peace," encapsulates the essence of the evening's meditation, encouraging a **shared journey towards enlightenment**.

[Music] Come, let us explore how not to meditate. This evening's lesson is drawn from my latest book, a work in progress, How Not to Meditate. Sturgeon's law reminds us that 90% of everything sucks, but not in the fun, tingly way. This includes humanity, including those who fancy themselves teachers of meditation. According to Buddhist mythology, Gautama, who was also known as the Buddha, was rather flexible, loving, rational, laid-back, lucid, gregarious, cooperative, and kind. This is why many people are enthusiastic to emulate his example. Many people, that is, other than his foolish cousin Devadatta. What was he like? Devadatta was rigid, fearful, superstitious, controlling, cryptic, elitist, competitive, and cruel. Gautama's path can be described by many terms, including Yin or spiritual matriarchy, and Devadatta's as Yang or pseudo-spiritual patriarchy. Statistically, the majority of meditation teachers unwittingly follow in the footsteps of the Buddha's foolish cousin. Therefore, it should come as little surprise that these individuals

implore their students to actively focus and analyze. They might even use labels such as analysis, contemplation, vasana, samata, concentration, focus, or even mindfulness, but that final term is woefully misapplied. The only way to practice either active focus, active analysis, or both is to rely upon disparate mechanisms such as those found in our medial prefrontal cortex or our dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Overuse of such regions triggers our amygdala, the seat of anxiety and aggression. This is clearly antithetical to the peace, love, and joy that lure us into what we hope is the Buddhist path of meditation. Far better it is to practice mindfulness and meditation in reliance upon our autonomic nervous system, for doing so could calm our amygdala's anxiety and oopsie aggress. Let me add some extra words here, extra letters, un Moto. Okay, well, it's a good thing I put that typo all over the damn internet. Yeeha! For doing so could calm our amygdala's.

anxiety and aggression, as well as excitement, her interior singular gyrus, empathy with consistency. It could even cause our choices, utterances, and deeds to flow habitually from the effortless effort of love-centered spontaneity. This is why the Buddha taught meditation. [Music] Jay's here. Hey kids, Jay's here. Jay, to you I send such a psychic hug, and for your little kitty cats too. Now dear good boy, and promise me you're going to start watching Agatha all along because it is awesome, and it's a fun source and harmless source of dopamine. Oopsie, come on coordination, don't fail me now. Guys, I think it could be great fun if we together as a team, we chanted and meditated after approximately 30 seconds of housekeeping. This is Lama Jig Makatu of the Buddha Joy Meditation School. For more than 30 years, I've spent about eight hours a day, almost every day, studying, practicing, mastering, and reverse engineering the teachings and techniques of each school of meditation.

so that you would not have to welcome my friends to meditate like a Jedi, which is made possible due to the generosity of viewers just like you. You know I'm going to be a good host and quick like a bunny, strive to go to the chat window. Moonlight is so well done. So, Kevin, did you recognize, uh, I'm not the voice of the guy who played the big bad in that. I'll give you a hint. He was in Amadeus. Kids together as a team, let us play with the latest duration of all good On's easy meditation, and I am so excited about the latest subtle tweaks because that's how I geek out, one of the ways I geek out. Oh yes, remember the halcyon days of Junior High when a fat man with a baseball cap and a whistle would demand that first we warm up, then we exercise, and then we cool down. Come, let us follow a similar Paradigm. The view of reality that supports letting go is described as the first fold of the Buddha's eight-fold.

path. Let us therefore practice Mahayoga's wisdom. Warm up. Yep, it was F. Murray Abraham. Geeks of the world unit. Please chant with me rather than indal controlling tendencies with all of active visualization, emotion, magic, and B. We could just recite these wi words in harmony with all breathing and allow us of conscious to do the heavy lifting. Let us therefore s up the rigidity that confuses metaphors with statements literal and relax into the flexibility that savors that chance explaining met [Laughter] for yes I have three inches of gek points. Your gek points rival Mount Everest. I think your standing is safe. Okay, so the Buddha was keen on sorting all that we could perceive into four categories: the circumstantial, the physical, the interpersonal, and the mental. I'm going to begin with a circumstantial, but first allow me to remind you about the use of the word May in this context. We are not petitioning the favors of a real or imaginary celestial entity. Oh contr, we are simply using words to guide.

Our intention upon the path of wisdom. That's it. Let's go for it. May I see how well circumstances could be as impermanent into depend as if they could blissfully melt into rainbow. Li could liul absorb into this body. [Music] or we could use the verb melt as a metaphor of interdependence. Sorry, take two. We could use the verb melt as a metaphor of impermanence, and we can use the verb absorb as a metaphor of interdependence. And in the height of irony, we could you just as some might use fire to F fire with through the cunning use of fire breaks. I guess that's not fire versus fire. Never mind. Anyway, we could practice. We could use self-centeredness to trans sent to transcend self-center, which I think is quite funny. I did an extended counseling session this morning, so I'm exhausted. It was fun. It's totally, it's much more exciting to count someone's about their world life's choices than it is to discuss, you know, politics, but it's

tiring, so if I sound like I've had one too many more ties, that's it. I'm a lightweight. It doesn't take much to tuck me out. So, what we're going to do, my friends, is take all these words and compress them down to just six syllables that we're going to divide between our inhalation and our exhalation together. May we feel how all M or phones could be permanent and interdependent, as if they could blissful M rainbow light that could life absorb into this communicational speech. May we hear how all interpersonal speech could be as impermanent depend, as if it could blissfully melt rainbow light, could delight absorb into this mind. So, in addition to exploring impermanence and interdependence, we're going to demystify emptiness. Emptiness, when taken literally, is opaque. When explored figuratively, it makes perfect sense. May we feel her all perceiving, emoting, intending, thinking, recalling, and imagining Ms could be as impermanent and interdependent as if they could.

blissfully melt into rainbow could absorb our vast dead. What's an empty void like? Like the illusion of the infinite azure sky on a bright and beautiful cloudless morning, which, although tantalizing to the eye, could be long graspable to the hand. Having completed our warm-up, we now turn to ATI yoga's mindfulness and meditation, the seventh and eighth folds of the Buddha's eight-fold path. That which supports ATI yoga is mudra. Anu yoga's use of gestures to guide our subtle energy work. We, our inner, during our first collection, we could gather eight sets on our left hand of our right hand's 12 rounds, remembering that round is both the inhalation and the exhalation, and remembering to advance the thumb during our inhalation. How are we going to mark or keep track of this first of four collections? By resting the great knuckle at the base of our right little finger up the tip of our left little finger, setting both these hands palms up in our lap. Doing so coalesces our subtle energy.

in our bladder region to tund taught that mindfulness was simply the vulnerable passive visceral random and fleeting awareness of mind's antics of perceiving emot noting intending reasoning recalling and Imagining. The most elegant way to practice this is to silently mentally and passively recite the demonstrative pronoun this during each inhalation. Chud Tulu taught that meditation was simply relaxing into mind's non-graspable nature. How do we do that? By silently mentally and passively reciting the one syllable verb ease during our exhalation. Relaxing into our exhalation causes that which we perceived during our previous inhalation to feel at least fleetingly less solid, less permanent, and less defining. For, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, allow me to remind you that as you relax into your exhalation, whatever duality of happy or sad you might have noticed during your inhalation can melt into the simplicity of just memory. For, for, as we relax into our exhalation, whatever

duality of Justice or Injustice we might recall or imagine during our inhalation can melt into the Simplicity of just Behavior, not just essence, uh, simply Behavior for for for we come now to our second collection of our left hands eight sets and our right hands 12 rounds. Remember to advance the tip of the right thumb during each inhalation. We keep track of this second collection by resting the great knuckle at the base of our right ring finger upon the tip of our left ring finger in our hands. Doing so induces subtle energy IES to coalesce at our Naval wheel. Mindfulness is simply vulnerably, passively, viscerally, randomly, and fleetingly observing Minds antics of perceiving, emoting, intending, reasoning, recalling, and Imagining. The most elegant way to practice it is to silently, mentally, and passively recite the demonstrative pronoun during each enolation. Meditation is simply relaxing into mind's non-graspable nature. To do this, silently, mentally, and passively recite the one syllable verb ease during each

exhalation. As we do that, whatever we noticed during our previous inhalation could begin to feel fleetingly less solid, less permanent, and less defining. For, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for, for. We now perform the third collection of eight sets and our right hand's 12 rounds. We keep track of this third collection, resting the great knuckle at the base of our right middle finger upon the tip of our left middle finger. Doing so induces our subtle energy to coalesce at our heart. The essence of mindfulness is to vulnerably, passively, viscerally, randomly, and fleetingly watch the antics of the mind as it perceives, emotes, and tends, reasons, recalls, and imagines. The easiest way to do this is to silently, mentally, and passively recite the demonstrative pronoun this during each inhalation. The essence of meditation is to relax into the mind's non-graspable nature in such a way that whatever we perceived during our previous inhalation could feel less solid, less permanent, and less

defining to do this silently, mentally, and passively recite the one-syllable verb ease during each exhalation for e for for for for for for for for for for for for for for for. We come now to our fourth collection of our left hands, eight sets: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Will we keep track of our right hands, twelve rounds: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, wherein we advance our right thumb during each inhalation. How do we keep track of this fourth collection? By resting the great knuckle at the base of our right index finger upon the tip of our left index finger in our lap. Doing this induces our subtle energies to coalesce at our Crown. Oops, wrong button. To tundup Tau, that's kind of a tongue claser, isn't it? That mindfulness is simply vulnerably, passively, viscerally, randomly, and fleetingly observing mind's antics of perceiving, emoting, intending, reasoning.

recalling and imagining that might seem like a tall order, but it is as simple as silently, mentally, and passively reciting the demonstrative pronoun this during each inhalation. Chögyam Trungpa taught that meditation was relaxing into the mind's non-graspable nature in such a way that whatever we perceived during our previous inhalation could begin to feel less solid, less permanent, less defining, at least fleetingly. The most elegant way to do that is to silently, mentally, and passively recite the one-syllable verb ease during each exhalation. For now, we now switch gears from silent meditation to mantra meditation. Please chat with me. I invoke [Music] teachings of Enlightenment in city abilities who may be mastered by all [Music]. It's very simple. During our inhalation, silently, mentally, and passively, we recite relaxing into this. During our exhalation, we physically relax as best

we can while striving to chant this 12-syllable Mantra three times per breath. Now, if this is your first time hanging out with me or Hing out with me, please give yourself permission to have a learning curve. Now, a simple way to keep track of our chanting is this: C with um count one breath per finger and count one recitation per set of creases. [Music] Oh for [Music] [Music] [Music] for our second collection of 12 Monas. We could oopsie wrong button. We could rest the great knuckle at the root of our right index finger upon the tip of our left index finger in our lamp for [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] I'm feeling really out of it so let's Jump Ahead. We began with Maha yoga's wisdom warmup and let us conclude with Mahi yoga's compassionate cool down. For 50% of the Buddha's 8f path is comprised of loving kindness. Please chant with me.

rather than IND controlling tendencies, we could just recite these kind words in harmony with our breathing and allow our subconscious to do the heavy lifting. Let us therefore set aside the rigidity that confuses met forceful statements literal relax and the flexibility that Sav the chance explaining metaphors of sim may all minds of all beings know be as peacefully enlightened as the mind of a [Music] real. Let us as we rest the great knuckle at the base of our right little finger on the tip of our left little finger in our lap. Our subtle energy could coalesce at our bladder. May we be a font of blessing for let's try this again. May our minds be a font of blessing for all remember or even hate [Music] us. If you've just joined us during our inhalation, we silently and mentally recite this loving wish. During our exhalation, we physically relax as best we can while striving to chant this 12.

syllable mon three times per breath. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] The mental morality of kind intention is the second fold of the Buddha's eight-fold path. Together may all relationships, all speech of all beings, now be as joyfully loving as a hymn. As we gently rest the great knuckle at the base of our right ring finger upon the tip of our left ring finger in our lamp, our subtle energy sees us at our navel. May our speech be a font of blessing for all who hear us or speak of us, even in scorn. [Music] [Music] Oh [Music] The interpersonal morality of kind community communication is the third fold of the Buddha's eight-fold path. May all bodies or forms of all beings now enjoy the beautiful health represented by a Buddhist statue depicting the blissful body of a real image type of enlightenment. Such as as we rest the great knuckle at the base of our right middle finger upon the tip of our left middle finger in our La our

subtle energy could coalesce at our heart. May our bodies be a font of blessing for all who we touch or touch us, even in malice. [Music] Me for [Music]. The physical morality of kind conduct is the fourth fold of the Buddha's eight-fold path. We now come to the final practice of this evening, so come let us make it count together. May all circumstances or lots of all beings know, have [Music] theune as we rest the great knuckle at the base of our right index finger upon the tip of our left index finger in our LP. Our subtle energy could coalesce at our crown. One moment if you please for thank you for your patience e [Music] [Music]. The circumstance stal morality of kind commerce is the fifth fold of the Buddha's eight-fold path. If you feel that I have earned it, you could give this live stream a thumbs up. You could even help support this channel in approximately 10 and 3/4 hours. I would very much like to return.

to lead tomorrow's early meditation class and group practice. And if you are as geeky as me, may the force be with you always.

How NOT to Meditate

Meditate Like a Jedi with Lama Jigme Gyatso

The speaker's lesson is based on their book, "How Not to Meditate," highlighting the flawed teachings of many meditation instructors who emulate the Buddha's cousin, Devadatta.

They argue that active focus and analysis, often used in meditation, trigger anxiety and aggression, which is counterproductive to finding peace.

The speaker advocates for practicing mindfulness and meditation through the autonomic nervous system to calm anxiety and promote love-centered spontaneity, aligning with the Buddha's true teachings.

The meditation session is inspired by the generosity of viewers and aims to create a welcoming atmosphere.

The host draws parallels between the meditation practice and a traditional exercise routine, while also incorporating the Buddha's eight-fold path.

The session emphasizes the impermanence and interdependence of circumstances, using metaphors and humor to guide participants towards a deeper understanding.

Exploring Impermanence, Interdependence, and Emptiness

The speaker emphasizes the importance of impermanence and interdependence in our experiences and interactions.

They use mindfulness and meditation techniques, including mudra and breath coordination, to guide subtle energy work.

The practice involves mentally reciting specific words during inhalation and exhalation to cultivate awareness and relaxation, ultimately aiming to demystify the nature of emptiness.

The Practice of Mindfulness and Meditation

Mindfulness involves passively observing the mind's activities, such as perceiving and emoting, while practicing through breath and hand movements.

Meditation focuses on relaxing into the mind's non-graspable nature, aiming to make perceptions feel less solid and defining.

The practice is structured in collections of sets and rounds, using specific finger placements to coalesce subtle energy at different points in the body.

Mantra Meditation for Relaxation and Compassion

The meditation practice involves silently reciting "this" during inhalation and "ease" during exhalation to relax the mind's grasp on perception.

The transition to mantra meditation includes chanting a 12-syllable mantra three times per breath, using finger creases to keep track.

The practice emphasizes loving-kindness and flexibility, aiming to bless all beings and promote peaceful enlightenment.

The Buddha's Eight-Fold Path: A Guide to Kindness

The second fold emphasizes the mental morality of kind intention, aiming for joyful and loving relationships.

The third fold focuses on interpersonal morality through kind community communication, promoting health and blessing for all beings.

The fourth and fifth folds highlight the physical morality of kind conduct and the circumstantial morality of kind commerce, encouraging positive interactions and support for one another.