Meditation Won’t Help You Focus

Do you remember the first time that you were doing something that seemed mundane like that and you were just you were doing your job, you're listening, you're doing it, you're doing it and then like the aha moment happened like later on like oh wow this is this is why I did this practice. Yeah and some of those aha moments come 20 years later.

Wow. I've had aha moments just two weeks ago but something my guru taught me 25 years ago and suddenly I'm like, oh shit, I didn't realize that. How do you know, right? You don't and sometimes you don't but there needs to be a trust, right? Of following and you know that this person has walked down the path so many times they know it really well. It's like you're

climbing the Himalayas, you're going with a ship that knows how to get to the top of the mountain, you trust the ship. You don't go like, I don't think that's the right way. What did a typical day look like when you're at the monastery? What were some of the practices you would do daily? We had to be in the temple at 5.30 in the morning. Between 5.30 and 6 was a traditional Hindu ritual ceremony in the temple.

So monks could get up anytime some monks woke up at 5.15 and showered and ran to the temple. But if you were second late, you had to work outdoors all day. So, I would wake up anywhere between four and four ten in the morning and shower and do my own practices before we started.

So we did five thirty to six rituals, six to seven. We meditated as a group. We only meditated one hour a day because and that's surprising to most people because people think that monks meditate all day and then they silently sweep the sidewalks.

And the Hollywood monks do that. But my whole guru's training was about preparation. The whole day was preparation for the one hour meditation. So when we actually sat down for one hour, we were really, really focused.

So meditate at six to seven, seven to seven thirty was exercise, seven thirty eight breakfast, and then the monitor is broken up into five groups. So eight to twelve thirty, we all worked in different groups, and then twelve thirty to one, we were assigned a different place in the monastery to clean.

One to one thirty was lunch, one thirty to three was a siesta and a little nap because we got up so early. And then three to six we worked again, and then six to seven was time off, and then seven to nine we watched TV and then went to bed.

Oh, wow. And this was every day? Every day, yeah. So we had weekends, and the weekends we would watch TV a little longer.

And I'm assuming there were vows of like no certain types of foods, no alcohol. The food, we only ate three meals a day. So breakfast, lunch, and dinner, one or two monks were assigned for the food to the food that we ate. And that was the tough part, right, giving up because when I was growing

up at home in Australia, you know, you want to buy a candy bar, get a cup of coffee, gone buy a candy bar. Now all of a sudden you're just eating three mils a day and in between your body is craving for stuff. In the first two years, it's, yeah, two years it's, it's learning to adapt because for so many years it could eat whatever it wanted to eat, whenever

wanted to eat. It's used to different tastes and that's hard on the body. Really, really hard because you have three fakes to meal and you don't get to choose what you're eating. It's served and you eat it. And alcohol, the monks actually drank. In our monastery, in our tradition, we were allowed to drink naturally brewed alcohol, not distilled alcohol.

So you guys could drink beer and wine? Beer and wine, yeah. In moderation. Of course, right. We're getting plastered every night.

So you talk about that the whole day there's this preparation for meditation. What do you think when you hear these people now that make lots of money on these 15 minutes of meditation or these morning type rituals and I really feel like it's marketing to what we want, like we kind of alluded to early on.

What are your thoughts of that when you hear that, like the quick morning routine to get you ready for the day? So one common thing people say to me is, if I meditate five minutes a day in the morning, will that help me concentrate?

Two things here. One is, meditation doesn't help you concentrate. This is a total, false, erroneous belief. Concentration leads to meditation.

You cannot meditate unless you can concentrate. So meditation doesn't help you concentrate. Second is, look at it this way. You've heard of Usain Bolt?

Yes, right. I don't know much about this guy, but I'm gonna make a few assumptions and you all correct me if my assumptions Are wild he's from Jamaica. Mm-hmm. Yep, the boy goes to the gym. He's ripped He works out right he drinks a lot of water I'm sure I'm sure he stretches cuz he's doing quick sprints I'm sure he runs every day when he was competing his whole day was probably filled with rituals for what?

for nine point five eight or five six seconds not 9.56 seconds supports the whole day. And you need to look at your life that way. Your whole day is a preparation. At first, your rituals throughout the day is what supports you.

Then you start meditation. You can't meditate for five minutes a day, and then the rest of the day practice distraction. Don't lead a life that supports meditation. My guru had a beautiful saying, and he quite often would say that,

most people can't meditate because they do not lead a life that supports the practice of meditation. And with the sprinter, his whole day is supporting him so that when he gets on the track, for 9.58 seconds, he's the fastest man in the world. So in the monastery, that's how we looked at our life. We meditate only an hour a day, but the remaining 23 hours was a diligent practice

of practicing everything that would support our meditation. So when we actually came to sit down together at 6 a.m. We've been practicing for 23 hours. How good, how ready are we now to meditate? We were so ready, but people don't prepare, right?