YOUNG: This is going to be both a practice and a theory presentation, so we're actually

going to do some meditation and we're going to talk about your experiences and then we'll

do some more and then we'll talk some more as Ming mentioned. So, you don't need to have

any previous background; I'm going to start you out with a few minutes of guided meditation

practice and then we'll build from there. Now, the simple way to understand a meditative

state is to compare what people's normal experiences to what a meditative experience would be.

So, what's people's normal experience? Well, in the day, we're very alert but have you

noticed we tend to be a little frenetic; there could be a driven quality? So the good news

is we're quite alert, but we're not necessarily in a deep, restful state while that alertness

is there. At night, the good news is we're in a deep, restful state but we don't have

alertness; we sacrifice that for the deep rest. What meditation is simply the best of

both worlds simultaneously. You're very alert like you are when you had a bunch of coffee

and you're doing something exciting in your background world. But at the same time--at

the very same time, there's a kind of reposed restfulness, so it brings together the best

of those worlds. Now, why we might want to do that, well, we'll talk about that in a

little while. So, I'm going to guide you [INDISTINCT] process that will, in time, elevate your levels

of alertness but also your levels of repose. So, it's important while we do this exercise,

particularly for those of you that have never meditated before, that you do attempt not

to fall asleep. There will be some tendency for that to happen, so try to bring yourself

back to the practice I'm going to guide you with. One of the ways that you can control

of your level of alertness is through your posture. There are direct links between the

posture centers in the spine and what's called the reticular activating system in the central

nervous system that basically as you posture wilts like this, your reticular activating

system turns off and the brain stops processing and at the extreme level, you become drowsy.

Conversely, though, if you keep your spine straight, that will physiologically wake up

your brain. Now, it takes a little while to learn how to have your body deeply relaxed

while at the same time your spine is straight; that is a body learning, a motor learning

that just takes practice. But they have found, for example, with Zen monks in Japan for whom

they did electromyographic studies--that is monitoring the real-time electrical activity

in the muscles, in their posture muscles--they found that those monks could maintain a bolt

upright posture for hours on end and their muscles were more relaxed than if they were

horizontal and asleep. But that's a long training, that's many years of training. Many of you

will be beginning so that's going to seem strange to you; well, how can I keep my spine

straight and at the same time, allow my body to be completely relaxed? Well, that comes

with time. I would say, basically, the trick is balance. You learn how to align your spine

and then just let the whole body just hang from that. So, I'm going to give you an initial

concentration exercise where you're going to be straightening your spine, letting your

whole body settle, then I'm going to have you focus on the physical relaxation in your

body, and you're going to mentally note that as feel rest. We'll use the word feel to refer

to anything in the body and well, when you're feeling that you are physically and/or emotionally

reposed, we'll say that you're experiencing feel rest; your body is--you're having a body

experience of restfulness. And the particular flavor of feel rest that I'm going to help

you explore is muscle relaxation. And you can create muscle relaxation by dropping your

jaw a little bit and then your face looks smooth, you can let your arms hang limply

and loosely. Every out-breath physiologically, your intercostal muscles and your diaphragm

muscle automatically slightly relax on each out-breath; it's part of the intrinsic physiology

of breathing. On the in-breath, those muscles contract to pull open the thoracic cavity.

On the out-breath, it's the stored potential energy in the tissue elasticity plus gravity

that does the out-breath for you, so the out breath, all muscles have to do essentially

for an out-breath is relax. So, if you tune in to your core of your body, you'll find

that the relaxation flavor is present automatically on each out-breath. So, I'm going to take

you through a sequence of focusing and your objective is going to be physical relaxation.

All you have to do is follow my guidance. After we do that and we have a little experience

of concentrating on that, we're going to begin to talk about why one would want to do an

exercise like this and so the theoretical considerations of, well, what would happen

if you did something like this for--on a regular basis for 10, 20, 30 years? What sorts of

changes would you start to see in your daily life? We'll talk about those conceptual pieces,

but I wanted to make sure that we begin with something experiential. So, we often start

out meditation by one of these East Asian-styled bells, so that's what we're going to do and

just listen in and follow alone. Now, take a moment to stretch up and let your whole

body settle and notice how that will tend to produce a kind of a global relaxation throughout

your body. Focus in on that and every few seconds, make the mental label feel rest to

remind yourself that you're focusing on this restful quality in your body. Feel means it's

in the body. Rest in this case means nothing mysterious, it's just muscle relaxation, or

settling into your posture. You may experience that relaxation in just one part of your body,

that's fine. Or it may move from place to place within your body, that's fine. Or you

maybe aware from relaxation simultaneously and uniformly throughout your body, that's

fine, too. So, whether it's just one place or whether it moves from place to place or

whether it's global throughout your body, moment by moment, contact the pleasant quality

of muscles relaxing into a posture and every few seconds, to acknowledge that that's what

you're focusing on. Say it yourself mentally, feel rest and keep that sequence of mental

labels going. Now, as you do this, non-rest is going to arise in the form of internal

visual experience of mental images, internal auditory experience of mental talk, other

kinds of body sensations, external sounds. You can do this with your eyes closed so there

won't be external sights, but all sorts of things are going to come up in your mind,

body and outside world other than relaxation. Perfectly okay, totally give permission for

all that to activate. But what you're intentionally focusing in on is the relaxation, locally

or globally, intensely or subtly doesn't matter, that's your objective focus, and that's it.

Mental talk might arise, fine. As soon as you find yourself caught in it, gently return

to body rest. Mental images might arise; images of the past, the future, fantasy, that's fine.

As soon as you find yourself caught in mental images, gently return to relaxation in the

body. Physical and/or emotional sensations may arise in your mind including discomfort,

impatience, sleepiness, that's fine. But as soon as you're caught in those body sensations,

gently return to the pleasant sensation of relaxation. So, it's an exercise in selective

attention. The relaxation may be very mild relative to the intensities of the inward

seeing, hearing or feeling or the outwork: hearing or feeling. But that's okay. Like

when you listen for a faint sound, you get very concentrated. If in relaxation it's only

subtle, then you have to be very highly focused, but that builds concentration. You can create

relaxation locally by smoothing your face or dropping your jaw or dropping your shoulders

or lifting your arms. You can find relaxation in the core of your being anytime you want,

by focusing on how the rib muscles and the diaphragm muscle relax on each out breath.

Furthermore, you can create local relaxation anytime you want by straightening your spine

once again as we did in the beginning and then letting the whole body settle, creating

an overall relaxation albeit perhaps subtle throughout the body. So through some combination

of finding and/or creating, try to focus as continuously as possible on the pleasant sensation

of being physically relaxed and let everything also rise, but in the background; selective

attention on the relaxation frame. Remember every few minute--every few seconds, rather,

make the mental label feel rest to remind yourself that you're focusing in the body,

which is what's encoded by the word "feel" in the system, and that the flavor of experience

you're focusing on is the restful flavor which, in this case, is muscle relaxation. Now, we're

going to up the ante on this exercise. We'll make it a little more challenging. We're going

to continue to do exactly what we're doing, focusing on body relaxation, but we're now

going to attempt to do it with your eyes open. I'll explain how to do that. You de-focus

your eyes. You open your eyes, but you sort of look blankly out and that will help you

maintain awareness on your body even though your eyes are open. Now, of course, you'll

be somewhat pulled into external sights, but you'll sort of de-focus or soft focus or far-focus

your eyes, making it easier to focus on relaxation with your eyes open but more challenging because

they are open. So now open your eyes, sort of soft focus. This will also help you retain

alertness as you're physiologically waking up the brain. Now your eyes are open and continue

to create and find relaxation in one part of your body or circulating from place to

place or maybe over your whole body at once, continue to mentally label, feel rest. And

now your eyes are open but your awareness is back and you're fine. Now, we're going

to be--in a moment, be moving from formal practice to practice in life. That means we're

going to be talking and interacting. But you might see if you can keep some awareness on

finding and/or creating relaxation from time to time as we're interacting, so that the

momentum of what we've done is somewhat maintained; not unbroken, but there's some carryover as

we go about the more ordinary situation of talking and interacting. So see if, from time

to time, you can be aware of relaxing in your posture even as we talk and interact. So as

Ming mentioned, my name is Shinzen, S-H-I-N-Z-E-N. And I got that name in Asia, although I was

not born in Asia. I was privileged to grow up partially in American culture and partially

in Japanese culture, so I grew up bilingual and somewhat bicultural. And part of that

was a stay of a number of years in Buddhist monasteries in different parts of Asia. And

then I came back to the United States with an interest in how I could take what I've

learned--which I view as the pinnacle of Asian technology, which is the internal science

and internal technology of meditative states--how could I take that and combine it with the

best of Western science and technology to perhaps bring about or fertilize a whole new

direction in human history? And that has been my main goal and interest. And one of the

reasons that people like Ming enjoy having me as a meditation teacher is I'm a fully

professional meditation teacher, but I'm a pretty good amateur scientist and I bring

a little bit of that perspective into the way that I present things. So my favorite

thing in the world is to give presentations at places like this, like Google or other

institutions where there are people with a scientific or engineering background, so that

I can sort of put on that little bit of that decap myself. So, we just completed an exercise.

Now, those of you with a background in math know that one of the things that you always

want to do in mathematics, if possible, is generalize and abstract from specific to broader

formulations. So I had to do a very specific exercise to with you're focusing on one sensory

quality. Now, let's generalize that, let's speak in the most general terms. What did

I have you do? Well, I had you pick a sensory event and I partitioned all sensory experience

into that event and then everything else. And the instruction was keep your attention

as much as you can on event X and when Y, Z and T pull you away, as they inevitably

will, come back to X. What were some of the Y, Zs and Ts that pulled you away from relaxation?

Tell me what were some of the things that were in the distraction category that you

found you were caught in and had to come back from. Tell me.

>> Noises from other people. >> YOUNG: External sounds that came from other

people. They could also come from cars, but they're more annoying somehow if they come

from other people or more gripping in some way; external sounds.

>> Just thoughts about other aspects in life. >> YOUNG: Thoughts. Now, some of those thoughts

probably have the form of internal conversations, correct? And you know its--most people tend

to point to their head, their ears. But did anybody have thoughts that involved mental

pictures where you saw people, places; situations? Did anybody notice that sometime a thought

could have both a video and an audio component? You can see the scene and hear the dialogue.

So we had external auditory events that could pull us away; we could hear out to the world.

We had internal audio events that could pull us away; we could hear into our own mental

talk. We could see out to the world now that--when I had you do it with your eyes open, did anybody

notice you tended to get pulled into external vision? You could be pulled into inner visions

that are mental pictures. And then there were various physical--did anybody notice that

the body, other than the relaxation, would pull you? Anybody notice that you had sleepy

sensations, for example? How many people had that? Okay. That's a physical sensation. Anybody

noticed any aches and pains? Okay. Anybody noticed any antsiness, impatience in the body?

Okay. If you were irritated by sound that might've been an emotional irritation flavor

in the body, there could be fear flavors in the body. In other words, there could be physical,

you could feel the physicality of the body, but also parts of the emotional experience

involve body sensations. So what we did do? We partitioned the world into one category

of experience called "Physical Relaxation" and then all the other experiences. It turns

out all the other experiences are external seeing, external hearing, internal seeing,