Spoken by Supreme Master Ching Hai,
Three-day International retreat in Norfolk, England,
June 11, 1999 (Originally in English)

Real Audio Clips with Subtitles: Aulacese, Indonesia, Spanish

A: I just got very, very tense and just struggled, and struggled and struggled.

M: Struggled with what?

A: Just with meditating.

M: Okay. Don't make meditation a kind of work; it's just a relaxation time. Tell your mind it has nothing to do, and to just sit there relaxing. And if you cannot sit too long, you can lie down and rest. Make it pleasant.

You can put a flower in front, and wear some nice clothes. Make it like a ceremony, if it feels good. That's why some people put out incense, flowers, and all of that, just to please the mind. Whatever it takes to make your meditation pleasant, you can do it. Have fun! Or maybe lie down and rest. Meanwhile, concentrate here (at the wisdom eye.)

Make it pleasant at first. Don't make it too hard for the mind, because he doesn't like it. He doesn't like working. And if you're too serious, the mind will rebel, thinking, "I don't like that. I'd like to have fun; I'd like to go out; I'd like to have music or coffee with friends. I don't want to sit here."

So just make it nice. Invite some good friends, initiates, to come to your house. Or come to their house, have coffee, chat first, or do something together. And then sit together, as if it's a part of the game, part of the fun. That's in the beginning. Later, you get used to it, and you don't need that game anymore. You can just sit anywhere and feel good.

First relax the mind. Most often, all of us are very hurried to become a Buddha, and that's why we have problems. We struggle between the soul and the brain. The soul wants to meditate; the brain wants to play. So we can reward it somehow, like after you have a good meditation, give yourself some of your favorite food. Take yourself out, or see your girlfriend; do something nice afterwards. So the brain will know, "Okay, that's good." Train the brain just like you train a dog. (Audience laughs) You know how to train a dog. When the dog does something good, then you give him a reward. That's how he becomes better and better.

Our mind sometimes is a troublesome thing! If you really sometimes don't feel like meditating, then just leave it. Don't force yourself too much. Just do something else: running, or doing some exercise. And when you're tired, then you will like to sit down. And the mind will not make trouble. Actually, that is a problem when we are alone: Sometimes the mind tricks us a lot. And if we don't have someone to encourage us or to hold hands, we cannot continue so fast. That's why we need a teacher and friends, fellow initiates. Then we can talk out the problem with them, and sometimes they help.

So try to go to group meditation as often as you can. You can talk over problems with your fellow practitioners. Befriend them; invite them for coffee or tea to your house, and vice versa. Make it fun. And sometimes go out together; have fun. Go to the cinema and do something together, so that meditation will become part of friendship and fun. At first, for some people, it's necessary. You have to find out what your mind likes. And then give him a little; don't be too harsh on him.

Some people don't need it. They love to meditate, so it's easy. But even then, when we enter some stages of meditation, we sometimes get stuck there. We feel suddenly that we don't want to meditate anymore. We don't want anything like that. We've had enough with Buddhas (enlightened beings) and things like that. But it's just temporary. Then later, when you have friends, you read some spiritual books and listen to some spiritual tapes or even read some Buddhist scriptures-maybe that's going too far-but some contemporary books about life and death, about meditation, and about the experience of Heaven by other people. And then you will be somehow more stimulated to want to have the same experience. And so you will make more effort.

We have to find a way to do things that suits our pace of life, our style, our thinking, and also our habits. Habits are hard to change. We should do it slowly, if we cannot do it fast.