Beautiful Silence by Ajahn Brahmavamso

The beautiful silence, stillness and clarity of mind.
We often have to carry the burden of our many duties, our mind developed in a way, which accumulates and hold on to our problems/things.

Part 1 of Meditation (letting go)
Let us develop a mind which is willing to let go of things, to let go of burdens.
Released your mind from the world, create a path to the pure and blissful mind, let go of all your burdens. First get the right attitude for letting go things, abandoning them freely without looking back. During the beginning stages of letting go, simply give up your past and future. This is called sustained attention on the present moment.

Abandoning the past means not even thinking about your work, your family, your commitments, your responsibilities, your history, the good and the bad time you had as a child. You abandon all past experiences by showing them no interest in them at all. You become someone who have no history during the time that you meditate. you do not think about where you are from, where you are born, who your parents were or what your upbringing was like. All of that history is renounced in meditation. In this way it become unimportant how many years you have been meditating, and if you abandon all that history then we are all equal and free. We are freeing ourselves of some of these concerns, perceptions and thoughts that limit us and which stop us from developing the peace.

So every part of you finally let go of, even the history of what happened to you so far in this retreat, even the memory of what happened to you just a moment ago? You carry no burden from the past to the present? Whatever happen you are no longer interested in it and you let it go. When any experience, perception or thought arise, just let it sink and stop right there.

As for the future, the anticipations, fears, plans and expectations, let all of that go too. Buddha once said about the future "whatever you think it will be, it will always be something different. This future is known to the wise as uncertain, unknown and so unpredictable. It is often complete stupidity to anticipate the future, and always a great waste of your time to think of the future.

In this stage of meditation keep your attention right in the present moment, to the point where you don’t even know what day it is or what time it is. Don't Know! All you know it is right now. You have come into the reality of "NOW". You are here and you are mindful. Reaching here you have done a great deal.

Stage 2 Meditation (Silence awareness/inner silence)
The next stage is to develop silent awareness of the present moment.
It is helpful to clarify the difference between silent awareness of the present moment and thinking about it. The smile of watching a tennis match on TV is informative. When watching such a match you may notice that in fact, there are two matches occurring simultaneously, there is the match that you see on the screen, and there is a match that you hear described by the commentator. Indeed, if in Australia or New Zealander, then the commentary from Australia or New Zealand presenter is likely to be much different from what actually occurred! Commentary is often biased. In this simile, watching the screen with no commentary stands for silent awareness in meditation, paying attention to the commentary stands for thinking about it. You should realise that you are much closer to Truth when you observe without commentary, when you experience just the silent awareness of the present moment.

Sometimes it is through the inner commentary that we think we know the world. Actually the inner speech does not know the world at all. It is the inner speech that weaves the delusions that cause suffering. It is the inner speech that causes us to be angry with those we make our enemies and to have dangerous attachments to those we make our loved ones. Inner speech causes all of life's problems. It constructs fear and guilt. It creates anxiety and depression. It builds these illusions as surely as skilful commentator on TV can manipulate an audience to create anger or tears. So if you seek for truth, you should value silent awareness, considering it more important when meditating than any thought whatsoever.

One of the beautiful ways of overcoming the inner commentary is to develop such refined present moment awareness that you are watching every moment so closely that you simply do not have the time to comment about what has just happened.

Another useful method of developing silent awareness is to recognise the space between thoughts, between periods of inner chatter. Please attend closely with sharp mindfulness when one thought ends and before another begins,-- there! That is silent awareness!

You may spend the majority time just developing these two stages because if you can get this far then you have gone a long way indeed in your meditation. In that silent awareness of Just Now you will experience much peace, joy and consequent wisdom.

Beautiful Silence by Ajahn Brahmavamso