That was the explanation of the Shinay using the five doors of perception as a support. Now I am going to talk about using the thought itself as a support for the meditation. Many people think argh! I am trying to meditate and I have too many thoughts at a time in my mind and they ruin my meditation, I’m not able to meditate. If one understands the point of mediation the thoughts will be transformed into one's friends and supports for the practice.

How do you do this, how do you achieve this? It's really easy actually, its not difficult at all, as said earlier if you are using your eye perception as your support when you see the object and you know you have seen the object and have awareness of that then that’s the support, it has been transformed into a support. Likewise if one hears a sound with one's ear and one has mindfulness of that and rests one's mind with that, then that sound has become a support for your practice.

Like that we look at the thoughts. In my mind what thoughts are arising? If one can be aware of the thoughts as they arise then all of the thoughts in your mind become transformed to help us as a support for your practice. Then you are able to have one pointed awareness with your thought, and you have non-distractiveness with your thought. If you have a million thoughts then you have a million supports for your practice, that’s very good isn’t it? You can say oh! Please come thoughts, come on, come on!

The main point is that one's just sits relaxed and one just looks at the thoughts.

What’s arising? If one can see the first thought that comes up then that’s followed by a second thought, and third thought, and a fourth thought, if one can keep one's awareness and mindfulness of that then all of these thoughts become supports for your practice.

Normally we have two states in the mind. The presence or absence of thought. There are just these two states, either the mind moving and having thoughts or the mind resting and absence of thoughts, there is no third state apart from these two.

If one can look at the thoughts one then can use that as a support for the meditation. If one has no thoughts that’s fine that’s Shinay with no characteristics, if one is able to have mindfulness and look at the thoughts that meditation Shinay with characteristics.

So if one has thoughts or not, it's ok, if one has no thoughts that also ok, both are very good, we only have two states in our mind either with thought or without thought, there is no third state to be in, you can meditate in both of these states. There is nothing easier than that. What could be easier than that?

To think that now I have thoughts it's no good when I haven’t got thoughts it's better, one doesn’t think like that, if you think like that, if it was like that then one would have a lot of difficulty, its not like that.

We are going to do a short meditation looking at the thoughts, first one has a relaxed mind, ... now look at the thought ... now relax again ...

It’s finished how was that?

Q. What is the difference between thought and distraction?

A. One can have mindfulness with the presence of thoughts or without the presence of thoughts. Not all thoughts are distractions.

What is meant is if one has lost the mindfulness then one has become distracted that is what distraction means. The absence of mindfulness.

Q. But doesn’t the mind send the thought away?

A. If one has mindfulness the thoughts can go away but then it can also happen that you have mindfulness with the presence of thoughts, you can have both.

For beginners then they have the mindfulness together with the thoughts. If one practises the Shinay gradually over a long period of time then eventually one's thoughts are pacified and become like the ocean without waves. So without having control of the thoughts one just naturally subside and then one will have this wave free ocean. At that point when one has this control of one's mind one can send out or rest. You can have control when one has clarity. If one wants the mind to rest, it will rest, if one wants to send the mind outwards then it will go out. At the moment we don’t have control of our minds, after some time one gets that, if you think I need the mind to rest it doesn’t rest it goes off it gets distracted, and if you think I have to think this won’t happen, we don’t have control of our mind at this time it comes later.

Q. What about clinging, self-clinging, should we look at that?

A. Yes its good you can look at it directly, like yesterday we were looking at the anger, it’s the same.

Q. How does one relate to grasping?

A. You can look at that itself, look at the grasping itself. You are aware that you have grasping, so you look at that grasping itself directly. If one has illness in one's body one looks at that feeling of the sickness the feeling of the pain. You don’t have to look particularly at the illness itself you look at the feeling associated with the illness that’s what one puts one's mindfulness on.

Q. Here at the centre we have a meditation day. Would you please give us some advice on how to begin and end a meditation session?

A. At the beginning one does the Refuge and then recites the Bodhicitta aspiration so that you feel I am going to practice meditation for the benefit of all sentient beings to bring them to the level of enlightenment.

The actual practice itself, in between those prayers of the Refuge and Bodhicitta, and the Dedication at the end, one can practice whatever technique one wants.

Q. Sometimes thoughts arise which I call wisdom thoughts. In the context of meditation should one just allow them to arise or would it be appropriate to contemplate them?

A. If one doesn’t understand the nature of one's mind if one has these naturally arising thoughts which you are calling wisdom then they won’t be very beneficial to you, won’t be much benefit it has to go with one's realisation of the nature of mind.

Now I'd like to say something more. When one is looking at the thoughts as a support of practice then there are three things that can happen. The first one is, as John was saying, if one looks at the thoughts they can disappear, and one is unable to have thoughts they don’t seem to arise, one is just sitting there with no thought, that’s very good, but it won’t last for a long time. Only a very short period of time that’s Shinay without characteristic, maybe two or three seconds it will last for. Then again a thought will arise, then you look at it again and then it disappears and then one is just sitting there, there is no thought, and there is nothing particular happening, then another thought will arise, it changes like this, it alternates between thought and not thought, that’s very good.

The second thing that one experience is that when the thoughts arise, immediately you have this awareness of the thought arising, so this is like a mala one thought comes and then it's followed by another one, and another one and then one can be aware and look at all of these thoughts in a row, that also very good.

All of the thoughts become a support for ones Shinay practice, with the arising of the thoughts one has one pointed awareness of the thoughts and one has mindfulness of the thoughts, then you can have awareness of all the thoughts in the session you have this one continued awareness. The thoughts themselves become the support for one's non-distractedness in the practice.

The third thing that one can experience is that a thought arises one looks at it and it disappears, and then there is a long gap between a thought arising, it’s a very long time no thoughts at all and that’s also very good. It's easy isn’t it? The mindfulness is the most important, that’s the most important thing to know.

Any kind of conflicting emotion, the anger, jealousy, pride and so on, if they come up one can look at them and they can all be transformed into support for one's practice. If one uses these techniques of using anything that arises as a support for the meditation then over time one will achieve more control of one's mind and peace, happiness and bliss will naturally arise in the mind. Having this mindfulness and practice of the Shinay then one's power and openness of mind and qualities will increase. One will have a very strong confidence and power with the mind, then you will have absence of fear and suffering, finally we will have the experience of our mind being open completely like a cloudless sky.

So from the beginning we practise in a gradual and relaxed way and one will have the experience of clarity, emptiness and bliss, so these three things emptiness, clarity and bliss will be a natural result of having a relaxed mind. They are the peaceful experiences.

Also at the beginning when one is practising it seems one's thoughts have increased, have become more than normal. The explanation for this is that normally we are not aware of our thoughts, but when we practice the meditation our focus is the thoughts we are becoming aware of what’s going on in the mind, so then we see what we normally don’t normally perceive.

Then finally we can have the experience of what is called very well trained, that means that one's body feels lighter and one naturally has the feeling of bliss, emptiness and clarity. In the beginning when one enters this stage of very well trained the first feeling one gets is that one's head will become a little bit heavy. After that one will get this feeling of bliss, and one's body becomes very supple and free and whatever one wants to do with the body one can do it and also in one's mind the suffering is decreased.

An example of this well trained feeling is like when you have completely shaved your head with a razor so there is nothing left and then you put a very hot hand on top of your head, that feeling you get with that hot hand is similar to the feeling of the well trained, where you have this feeling in one's head. One gets this arising of bliss and absence of suffering.

There’s another example, it’s like the lining of a very good quality sleeping bag it's like kapok or something very soft and very nice and warm, its like being wrapped up in something like that. These are the experiences one gets when you enter this stage which is called well trained. At the point one has achieved this level of well trained then the experiences are like that and they don’t change. But up to that point then one has experiences that are going up and down and they won’t be stable. They will be all over the place, sometimes one will have a great feeling of bliss and happiness, and maybe a month later you will loose it all and become very depressed and feel that you can’t meditate.

Also you can experience bliss and then you sometimes get depression. None of the experiences are stable; this is likened to the waterfall that comes down a mountain rushing here and there all over the place. You have various experiences some are good and some are bad and their instability is not a bad sign it's actually taken as a good sign, this is the sign of the beginning to start meditation practice.

You need to recognise this and look at that, be aware of it, so you have to understand that it's a good sign. If one does not recognise that these things are a good sign then you will have suffering because you’ll think I’m not doing very well, things are going badly I’m not happy all the time I’m unhappy. One needs to recognise these ups and downs as a sign, a good sign.

This brings us to the end of our teachings. You’ve had a lot of diligence sitting here quite happily listening to the teachings and I would like to thank you all. If you can practice it will be very good. The happiness and peacefulness we have is from the mind itself, so if we want to have peace and happiness in our lives we should practise with our minds. OK.