I’d like to talk about and explain and demonstrate the sitting posture, and how we’re actually going to do meditation. We’re already sitting down; we’re on the cushion; but if we’re about to begin a session, we could almost begin a session by.... As we walk towards the cushion, as we walk towards sitting down, that each step we take, what we should in our mind start saying to ourselves is that. "I’m about to begin meditation, and that I am really sort of, kind of leaving my usual world, leaving the conventional world of my busy day", or whatever it may be, you know even if we’re meditating for just a very brief tim ive minutes, ten minutes. That we think ,"family responsibilities"; we’re studying, you know; we have an exam or something’s coming up, just sort of saying, you know, "For now, just let those thoughts go". And it’s important just to say, "I’m going to try to just let the bigger concerns I have go". And as I walk towards the meditation cushion say, "Oh, I’m going to do peaceful abiding. "I’m going to relax and understand and sit with the nature of my mind, "and I’m going to strengthen my mind, stabilize my mind, develop the clarity of mind and strength of mind". And as we begin to do that, that’s our intention; so we know we’re doing that. Because if we don’t do that, we just walk up to the cushion and plop down and just sort of, you know, sort of haphazardly begin the meditation session, then it’s, you know, going to be a very murky process, and when we actually began and when we’re ending, everything becomes very convoluted. So really one of the most important things is just change of attitude and approach as we’re beginning to sit down. We can look at the cushion itself as like a throne, you know, we are a king or a queen, or whatever sitting down on our throne, so there’s a sense of purpose, you know. And when we sit down we become very powerful individuals. It doesn’t matter whether we’re sitting on a cushion or we’re sitting in a chair, just so it’s something that is supportive and stabilizing and comfortable for the period of time. Now, the sitting posture is really the best of both worlds. Ideally speaking I suppose, you know, we could meditate in any posture. We could be meditating, you know, lying down or walking. But most of us, if we lie down we tend to fall asleep. If we’re walking it’s too much stimuli, so it’s able to kind of stabilize the mind. So the sitting posture is sort of the ideal between the two worlds. We’re sort of resting; yet at the same time we’re still awake. So, you know, we have that kind of good middle ground; and people have been sitting in this kind of meditation posture for a long time. And it is considered that this particular posture is really good for the breathing, the energy flow inside the body. And just by sitting down and relating to the breathing, automatically we’re going to be reducing kind of anxiety, stress, discursiveness. The posture here is something that will take time to get used to. And as we proceed it’s important to realize that we don’t necessarily always need to be stiff, we can move and shift. Now when we sit down on these cushions it’s important...., what we all have right now is called "gomden"; they’re square cushions. You can also at home if, you know, you don’t have meditation cushions, you can use a blanket and then fold another blanket up behind, or some cushions and sit on it. What you want to do is get your hips a little bit above your knees ideally, so there is some kind of way for the hips and the seat bones to sit properly. How high the cushion is, is something we need to adjust; over time we’ll get a feeling for it. And when we’re sitting we can cross our legs, and we don’t necessarily need to do, you know, a full lotus or any kind of particularly complicated folding of the legs. You know, we may not be that flexible. It may be something we’re not familiar with, so just simply crossing the legs, you can’t see my legs, but they’re crossed. You'll have to take my word. So, crossing legs, and on the cushion not sitting too far forward. If I sit too far forward I’m going to be perched over. If I sit too far back I’m going to be slouching. So you want to sort of find, you know, usually just front of center is good. What I like to do is sort of imagine as though I’m being pulled, like from a piece of string on the top of my head, just sort of up so the vertebrae, everything kind of gets elongated. And then just sort of, you know, let it go. Almost as if I was like a, you know, on a string here. And then it elongates everything here. And then, just kind of relax. You want the spine to stack one upon the other. It’s said like gold coins, just one upon the other, allowing for the natural curvature of the back. So you don’t want to be pushing it straight, cause the whole backbone is curved, so you want that posture. So balance is important. And it’s, you know, OK when we’re sitting down to rock side to side so that we have our seat bones nicely on the cushion. As we sit there, we don’t want to feel perched. We don’t want to feel like we’re about to fall off. So we want to feel good and comfortable, and especially because if we’re going to do more meditation, we’re going to be sitting there for a long time. The hips and the lower back are neither pushed forward; we don’t want to push it forward like that; it shouldn’t be like this; and obviousay we don’t want it caved in. Sometimes if you ride a horse, you can’t be too far back and you can’t be too far perched; so it’s a nice medium area. So you want, you know, hip joints will relax over time, you don’t want it holding on. So you’re sitting in that way, as we go up, feeling the breathing, relaxing the abdomen. The hands are sitting in this position, not too far this way, and not like this. If we do this it’s going to pull us forward, and then we’re going to hold on. If we’re here it might feel too tight with our shoulder blades; so there's a natural position. And again, hands shouldn’t, fingers shouldn’t be spread too far. It’s sort of a nice, simple posture, so hands, the back, the hips, the legs, as we move up, the neck.... The chin is not out; the chin is slightly in. It doesn’t need to be like this. The main thing is you don’t want the chin sticking out, the head hanging out like this; it just creates too much weight here. But each of us is going to have different structure of neck and head; and it will be slightly different. Now one noticed that our gaze, you know. Where’s our gaze? Is it straight, or is it lower? Sometimes, you know, what you can do is look straight; and then just bring your gaze down, and as you bring your gaze down, there’s sort of a natural place where it falls, before it gets too tight. So we look up, down. Now depending on what kind of meditation, if we’re trying to really not have too much visual stimuli, we can bring our gaze really in. Because traditionally when, where the gaze is supposed to be is two fingers above the nose. So it’s, you know, you can barely see the tip; so it’s quite down. But it’s, you know, you can move it a little bit above. The thing is that you don’t want to make it too high right now, because maybe there’s too many things you’ll see; or it will be too difficult to focus, and too many things to look at. Again, with all the senses, starting with sight, we’re seeing; but we’re not looking. We’re not... you know this is a very busy pattern here, so we’re not looking at the pattern of the rug. What we’re doing is we’re just sort of... the eyes see it and the same thing with sound. We’re going to... the sounds we hear, but we’re not particularly listening to the sounds. This is the first basis where we’re kind of beginning to sort of draw our senses in. And we’re not drawing our senses in to ignore the world. We’re drawing our senses in just for purely meditation, to relax them. They’ve been all day being, having to be used. You know, seeing things and, you know obviously we need to see things; we’re walking down the street, you know; we’re not going to be hit by a car and so forth. We’re having a conversation; we need to listen to people, but here, just relaxing all that. We’ll notice that our jaw is tight in the beginning, so all the facial muscles relax; so the jaw might slide forward slightly. Our tongue is relaxed. We’ll notice that it’ll touch the.... If we relax the tongue, relax the jaw, we’ll notice that tongue will sort of rest naturally on the palate and the tip of the tongue will touch the bottom part of the upper rows of teeth.1 This again allows for natural flow of saliva. We don’t swallow too much. It relaxes the throat.1 As we begin to sit here, we’ll notice that with the looking down, relaxing of the gaze,1 we’ll notice our breathing.1 And this the first stage of this meditatio t’s called "placement".1 There are nine particular stages that we go through, and this is called "placement".1 It’s the first stage; and it’s the most important because it’s going to start our meditation.1 What we’re using as to focus our mind on,1 to stabilize and strengthen our mind, is the breathing.1 So what we do is, in a very natural way, we notice that we’re breathing.1 Just by calming down, sitting down in the posture we’ll just notice the breathing.1 We’re breathing out;, the breath dissipates;, there’s this pause or space;1 then there’s inhalation into the lungs and down to the abdomen.1 Again, the air goes out and, what we do is we place our attention;1 we place our mindfulness; we place our focus1 on that breathing process. So we’re just breathing out, and in, out, and in.1 This is the majority of what we’re doing here.1 We’re just relaxing the mind, and if the mind needs a place to focus,1 which it does because it tends to go off; it tends to be thinking. And once we have a thought,1 it generally will lead to some sort of, sort of heavy emotion,1 and all of a sudden we’ll get very sort of involved and perturbed.1 We’ll start, you know, we may start thinking about food1 and then we’re thinking about the last time we had dinner with, you know, somebody,1 and then we realize that what they said, and what we don’t like them, and the next time, you know;1 we want to tell them something, then it goes on and on.1 And we’re sitting here, you know, getting really upset. And if you look at it, it seems pretty silly.1 This is the time to relax. We can get mad at them afterwards if we want, but not right now.1 So we’re breathing; so this is mindfulness, feeling the breathing.1 Sometimes we say following the breathing, following the breath.1 Learn how now what focus we’re putting on the breathing.1 What we have to realize is that breathing is a moving thing. There’s not going to be one point.1 It’s continuously coming and going. There are many aspects to the breathing.1 There’s the aspect of what it feels like when it’s outside of the body,1 what it feels like when it’s inside the body. Maintain our mindfulness.1 As we maintain our mindfulness through this whole period,1 then what we’re able to do is it lets us stabilizing and strengthening.1 It’s the first, sort of, one of the most important and first aspects of meditation1 is learning how to strengthen and stabilize the mind.1 As we’re able, as we’re able to pay attention and focus on the breathing out, and the breathing in,1 we are strengthening our mind. So that is going o ut, in, out, and in.1 If we hold it too tightly, if we’re focusing too tightly, we’ll get lost in the breath.1 Then we’ll go off thinking. When we have a thought, and when we find ourselves thinking,1 the most important step in that is the recognition that we’re thinking, "Oh, I’m thinking".1 Again, here in this meditation there is no difference1 between a good, positive thought and a negative thought.1 If we’re really caught up in a good thought, and say, "Oh, this is a good thought, you know;1 it’s worth thinking about". Well, it may be, but not during this meditation;1 because it’s meditation and we’ve already told ourselves this.1 This is a time of meditation where I’m practicing strengthening the mind,1 letting go of those thoughts.1 So we let them go and we come back to the breathing.1 So recognition is the first, then we acknowledge the thoughts. We say, "Oh, that was thinking".1 It’s a process of looking at it, almost labeling it. It’s recognizing, acknowledging thought,1 come back. And we do this you know, kind of very quickly.1 When we have the moment where we find ourselves,1 "Oh, I have been wandering from my breathing", that’s awareness.1 Another way to look at it is to see it as "presently knowing".1 In Tibetan this process of awareness is known as sheshin. Sheshin means "presently knowing".1 We know what we are doing presently. We are aware of what we are doing;1 so the breathing is coming and going, coming and going. We wander off; we come back.1 We say, "Oh, I’ve been wandering off a lot;1 maybe I should relax with my technique on the breathing.1 Maybe I should have it tighter; maybe I should have it looser".1 That’s something that we have to try.1 This first stage in the process of meditation is we’re just learning how to meditate.1 Learning how to hold a posture, learning how to relate to the breathing,1 learning how to place our mind,1 learning how to coordinate labeling, recognition of thoughts, pulling back.1 So again, here, this is the time where we need to give ourselves a little space.1 There are going to be many, many levels of thought;1 and we’re not going to be able to come to just a completely peaceful stage.1 What will happen is we’ll try to reduce the big thoughts.1 Initially when we’re doing this meditation,1 we don’t want to be totally drawn away from the scene of meditation.1 We’re in this room; we’re meditating.1 We may have a thought about, you know, posture. That’s an improvement.1 Again, we’ll have some thoughts;1 but even while having some thoughts, we can still maintain focusing on the breathing.1 And again here, it’s learning how to be patient, you know, and simple, again and again.1 The mind wanders off; bring it back.1 In the course of the session, you know, again;1 it’s not particularly an endurance test. We need to regather ourselves, redo the posture.1 We don’t need to hurt ourselves. If something hurts, you know, we should move.1 At the same time we should know our limits.1 We say, "You know, it doesn’t, I don’t need to move - I’m fine".1 Maybe other times our knees pain and we should move.1 So the posture is very simple, just cross-legged, sort of good posture.1 Our back and our head, our shoulders, our arms, everything is just sort of very, very....1 We need to sort of recognize some more that this is an important activity we’re doing.1 The more we become connected with the breathing and what the breathing brings,1 we begin to want to be here and follow the breathing.1 We need to empower the breathing so the breathing becomes more meaningful1 than all the thoughts that we feel like we want to be engaged in.1 Begin to feel the rhythmical aspect of the breathing.1 We’re alive, human, sitting here and simply breathing.2 This process of breathing and staying here, sitting here, obviously helps not only our mind;2 but it helps our body. It’s helping the blood flow and the organs and the blood.2 It’s purifying everything.2 So in this way, you know, we just continue to meditate2 and continue to make adjustments every time that we meditate.2 So that’s basically the posture, and that’s basically the technique; and it’s up to you to do it.