Let go of expectations! Real simple statement, real simple practice, so hard to do! We have one sit, it feels great, "Next one is going to be better!" How often has it happened to all of you? And the next one, you sit down with the expectation, it's going to be greater than last time, and all you get is a lot of messed up thoughts, desires, cravings, whatever. Expectations, the word "expectation" basically means that we're expecting something to happen in the future, this way. Exactly defined in our mind, we have an expectation of what is going to happen. Now life just doesn't work that way, by and large, it doesn't work that way. Sometimes, certainly, some things will be exactly the same. What did I mention yesterday, the vanilla milkshake at McDonald's, yeah, it will be basically exactly the same. But meditation, forget it, it's not exactly the same. You sit down on the pillow, certain conditions produce certain results. If you have any of the five hindrances arising, you can't get concentrated. It's an opposite, remember, by definition, the five hindrances are opposite to concentration. You can't have them both at the same time. So when you have an expectation, it means you have a desire. It also means you have a craving for a future moment. That's also something on a different angle which you want to watch out for, because as long as you have a craving for a future moment, you are not actual here in the present moment, there is a future pulling you away.
So how do we let go of expectations? Just do the work. Just sit down. Hopefully, as we've taught all of you, do the Five Reflections or a little Compassion/Lovingkindness in brief, choose a meditation subject, start with it, when the mind goes off, just note it, come back. It goes off, just note it, come back. When the bell rings at the end of the hour, just note, "hearing, hearing", just stand up mindfully, go out for the walking. Is there any real problem in that? As long as we don't have a desire, there's no problem in just doing the basic work. As long as we have a desire and we don't get it, we don't get what we desire, then we sit there, as the words say "and the mind gets quite agitated", because we are wanting something, but what we actually have in reality is different. So we are fighting all the time. In order not to fight, we can't change reality so easily, but we can change the thought of what we want, what we expect, and that's very important.
Now, on another sideline of this, it doesn't mean that we don't have the desire to sit down, "I'd like to be better with my mindfulness, I'd like to be better with my concentration, I'm going to do death reflection this sit, I want to try to keep my mind there", that's fine, that's our project, so to speak. That's not so much, though, an expectation or a desire, it's just basically our project. We're going to sit down, that's going to be our focus, we come back to it, we come back to it. But if we want something to come out of that project, that's where we're going into desire, that's where we're going into an expectation. Expect boredom. Expect nothing to happen in your meditation. If you're going to expect anything, if you're going to have any expectations at all, expect that it's going to be absolutely boring. And you know what? Then you're never going to be disappointed! You're either going to get boredom, or you're going to get something nice!
Now a lot of you know, having done many retreats with us, we don't stress concentration. We don't care if you get blissed out. The practice as we teach here is very much wisdom focused. Wisdom focused, the word Vipassana, we're looking for wisdom. A lot of other meditation practices are not the same. They're looking for concentration, concentration, concentration, it's called "Samata". People sometimes get lots of concentration, and they can get blissed out, they can get tons more happy feelings than you get in all ten days here. But it's a concentration blissed-out feeling. And some of those same people still get angry later and upset later, and all that sort of thing. This is what we want to watch out for. If your practice is growing in wisdom, that's fine. Boring sits, that's fine if you're growing in wisdom.