Meditating in Public

0:01I find it easier to meditate in public places, such as on the train going to work, than by myself at home. Is this unusual? Fear of everything. Some people are afraid of leaving their home. Some people are unable to find peace at home. It sounds a little bit unusual in the beginning, but to meditate in public definitely has some great advantage. When you do group meditation, for example, then you feel the power of the group. And that might happen to you when you are in a train or so.

0:49that something in your mind don't want to give up when others are there. So you have another level of discipline that you might not have when you are practicing alone. When you are practicing alone in your room, you really need to build up all the discipline to sit down and to meditate. from within you and in in public places or in groups there is something happening that that you It might be in the beginning that it's coming from the ego, that it doesn't want to give up or something like that.

1:41But it really is a power that comes from meditation in public places. Although I think it would be important to have the same intensity or the same strength of meditation and the same ability to meditate when you're alone at home. Yeah, I mean, you can compare another level of being at home alone and being at home with a teacher. As I've done some Skype courses, and it totally changes people's meditation. They would, just having this contact, knowing that they had to meet with a teacher every day, When I was doing my foundation course I actually had the idea that someone probably gave to me that our teacher was watching us.

2:38And of course this is so egotistical that we think that he's watching us and he's there with us even though there's a hundred people or so in the monastery. And so not only do we think that he has magical powers, but we think that he's using them to take care of us particularly. And so I thought, you know, here he was watching me. And so that was a real encouragement. So I would say it's different levels. In the beginning, this is a useful thing, but eventually you don't let it be a crutch.

3:18This is the same as sitting on cushions. We tend to discourage people from buying and sitting on these croissants and marshmallows that they sit on. but not because there's anything wrong I mean not because we don't sympathize that in the beginning they're useful but that in the long term it's only going to become a crutch for you and then you'll have trouble sitting doing meditation when you're in the airport or or anywhere you'll always have to lug around this croissant wherever you go