The Essence of Meditation

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche: I would like to discuss meditation. But first of all, I'd like to ask you a very simple question. Can you see my hand? Yes, raise your hand.

Audience: Yes.

YMR: OK, can you hear me?

Audience: Yes.

YMR: Yes? Great. That is the meditation. So, finished. My TED Talk is finished.

[Laughter and applause]

YMR: Of course, I'm just kidding. But in a way, that is true. Why? What we call the essence of meditation is awareness. And what is awareness? Knowing what you are thinking, feeling, doing, seeing, hearing. That's all.

Two Misunderstandings

YMR: Meditation is actually very easy, but many people find it difficult. Why? There are two misunderstandings about meditation.

The first is that many people think meditation means thinking of nothing -- stop thinking, concentration.

[Laughter]

Shh! I'm meditating, keep quiet.

[Laughter]

When you try to stop thinking, what happens? You will think more. So we will do a small experiment, OK? Now, please don't think about pizza.

[Laughter]

No pizza. No pizza. What happened? Did you think about pizza or not? Yes, raise your hand.

[Laughter]

I know.

[Laughter]

Actually, we don't need to stop thinking. We just need to connect with awareness.

And another misunderstanding about meditation is what we call "blissing out" -- looking for peace, calm, joy, relaxation.

[Laughter]

The more you look for relaxation, peace, calm, and joy, the more they run away.

Step One: Object-Based Awareness

YMR: Let me share with you my own experience. When I was young, I had panic attacks. Although I was born right in the middle of the Himalayan mountains -- the area, the village, wonderful -- panic followed me like a shadow. I had so much fear of strangers that I could not go out and meet people. And there are so many storms in the Himalayan mountains: thunderstorms, snowstorms. These storms drove me crazy.

When I was nine years old, I asked my father to teach me meditation. Luckily, he was a great meditation teacher. And the first thing he said was: "Don't try to fight with the panic. Don't try to get rid of panic. And actually," he said, "you don't have to." Why? Awareness is like the sky in the mountains, and the panic is like a storm -- like a cloud. No matter how strong a storm is, it doesn't change the nature of the sky. The sky is always present, pure, calm. Similarly, our fundamental quality of mind -- awareness -- is always present, pure, calm. But the problem is we don't know how to connect with awareness. What we see is only thought, emotion, that's all.

So he said there are three steps of practice to connect with awareness. The first one: we have to use an object -- a support -- to connect with awareness. This is one of my first meditation techniques that I learned from my father. You can join in, and you can relax the muscles in your body. If you cannot relax, that is also OK -- allowed.

[Laughter]

Close your eyes, and please listen to the sound.

[Ding]

When you hear the sound, through ear and mind together --

[Ding]

That is the meditation. Let panic come and go. Let pizza come and go.

[Ding]

And maybe two pizzas, three pizzas, ten pizzas. As long as you remember the sound, you can have pizza.

[Ding]   [Ding]   [Ding]

OK, how was it? Did you hear the sound? Yes, raise your hand. Great. That is the meditation. Very easy -- just hear, that's all. You don't have to do anything. If panic comes, let panic come and go, don't care. Just listen to the sound. Monkey mind comes -- blah, blah, blah -- let it come and go, just listen to the sound.

So I did that. But I had a big problem. The problem is laziness.

[Laughter]

I'm a lazy boy. I love the idea of meditation, but I don't like the practice of meditation. So it was on and off like that for five years. When I was 13 years old, in India, a traditional three-year retreat was going to start. I thought I should join, because it would be good for my laziness. So I joined. The first month was wonderful -- no laziness. The second month, laziness came back.

[Laughter]

And then what happened? My laziness and my panic became good friends.

[Laughter]

Life in the retreat became a disaster. I thought I should leave. But I felt embarrassed to leave, because I had told all my childhood friends that I could do the retreat. I didn't want to lose face. But if I stayed, there were almost three years to go. So I thought: what should I do? In the end, I decided to learn how to live with the panic.

Step Two: Meditating With Difficulty

YMR: Now we have the second step -- we can actually meditate everywhere, anytime, with anything. So you can meditate with panic. How do you do that? Just like listening to sound: when you listen to sound, the sound becomes support for your meditation. Now you're going to watch panic. If you can see the panic -- great. When you see the river, you are out of the river. When you see the mountain, you are out of the mountain. So now awareness becomes more than panic -- more than depression, stress, monkey mind, whatever. Let them come, let them go.

So that is the first benefit. And the second benefit is that a wisdom comes. When you look at the panic, panic is no longer a solid stone. Panic becomes pieces -- sensation here, a frightening image, a voice, a background belief. And if you take one of these away, you cannot find panic. So what I call panic becomes like shaving foam: it looks like a solid piece of rock, but inside it is full of bubbles.

And the third benefit -- what I call acceptance: self-kindness, self-love, self-compassion. When you let panic come and go, that is the real acceptance, isn't it? So: three in one -- awareness, love and compassion, wisdom. Sometimes what I call buy one, get two free.

[Laughter]

Big deal, right? And all this because of panic. So now panic becomes your teacher, your best friend.

I did this practice, and in the end, me and my panic became very good friends. And a few weeks later, panic was gone. I missed my friend.

[Laughter]

I finished my retreat, and my retreat went very well. After that, I was eager to share this wonderful technique with the world. So I taught meditation in many places, wrote three books -- which became bestsellers -- and gained students and became abbot of a few monasteries. And then what happened? A kind of new ego emerged within me. I thought, "Oh, I have to watch out." So I decided to do something very special: what we call a wandering retreat. Meaning you leave everything behind and go out on the street with nothing.

So I decided to do that. In 2011, I left my monastery, my students, my wonderful cozy bed -- everything -- and got out on the street with only a few thousand Indian rupees, which ran out within a few weeks. Now I had to beg for food. And I got food poisoning -- vomiting, diarrhea. I was alone on the street, and I thought: I'm going to die. Then I thought: what should I do?

Step Three: Open Awareness

YMR: Now we have the third step: what we call open awareness meditation. Awareness, being with itself. Sky, being with itself. Now there is no need for a support. Just be awareness itself. I did that practice. Then what happened? My body became very ill -- I could not see, I could not hear. But my mind became so present -- beyond free. And I was in that state for a few hours. Luckily, I didn't die; I came back. When I came back, the street felt like my home. When I looked at a tree, the tree became like a tree of love. The wind blowing on my face became a joyful experience. And the rest of my retreat went very well. I learned a lot.

I would like to share this open awareness meditation, but it is very difficult to explain. So I want to do something dramatic -- and this is what I learned from my father. What we call this mala [note: likely a prayer-bead mala held as a visual prop] is the crazy monkey mind -- blah, blah, blah, yada yada. And the open awareness meditation means you don't have to do anything. Just be. That's all. You don't need to meditate. The sense of presence, of being -- but not lost. Be free. Be present.

Thank you very much.

[Applause]