Aristotle defined humans as "rational animals" and this is still a very common way to think about ourselves. It's appealing partly because it makes us look good and people always like to believe things that make them look good. However, a Buddhist would certainly argue that the average human is anything but rational most of the time. Interestingly, modern science is discovering this as well. For example, if you put people in a CAT scanner so you can monitor their brain functions, and then you give them a problem to think about that they haven't encountered before, what you tend to find is that the emotional centers of the brain activate first, the subject reaches a conclusion based on the resulting emotions, and only then do they activate the rational centers of the brain (if you are interested in this sort of thing, google "trolley problem" for examples having to do with ethical reasoning). This suggests strongly that, for most people most of the time, they emote their way to an answer and only after finding the conclusion do they seek reasons to support it. This is certainly not a rational process and it's easy to find examples where this kind of "thinking" gets us in trouble. It's also not surprising from an evolutionary point of view, since higher reasoning is the new kid on the block in terms of brain features and our brains still have most of the same structures and operations you find in, say, frogs. Humans can think, but it doesn't really come naturally to us.
To some extent, our non-rational nature can be useful if we realize how it works. I said before that, if you are ever in an emergency situation, you need to focus on slowing down your breathing. If you do this, your mind will calm as well and you can think more clearly about what you need to do. This is fairly obvious to the Eastern way of thinking, but to Western ears it sounds strange. "If I want to calm down," your typical Westerner might say, "then I should think about calming down My mind will cause my breathing to slow, not vice versa." In the West, we picture ourselves as always being in rational control of ourselves, thus we seek to manipulate our reasons to change our bodies, etc. But the truth is that few of us are really able to control our mind that well. I mean, you all probably thought it would be simple to concentrate on your breathing for 10 minutes and how many of you came anywhere near to pulling that off? Our brains are evolved for a much simpler time when there were few opportunities to use careful reasoning and thus they still have all sorts of control mechanisms built into them that are more like animal instinct. If we know about them, we can often put them to use for us. Here's another example you all should try - when you are feeling down or annoyed, consciously put a smile on your face. I know, you are thinking, "what good is that going to do?" Well, give it a try a few times and you will find it often helps lighten your mood (it's not a cure-all, of course, but it helps). It may not fit the typical Western picture of rational control, but the fact is that there are many ways to influence the mind by manipulating the body in very simple ways.
When we meditate, we focus on our mind in action, often for the very first time, and we suddenly realize what was always there: monkey mind. The monkey is always there, always derailing our higher thought processes, always distracting us from the task at hand. One way of thinking about it is that our default state is not reason. If we want to truly reason, we need to expend extra effort, because reason is an unstable equilibrium which will dissolve when we don't actively pay attention it. The difficulty is not that people can't be rational, though we often imply this by calling others "idiots", etc. In actual fact, we can all manage rationality when we put our minds to it...:) The problem is that we don't often do this. For example, we typically spend very little time really examining how we make decisions and thus we tend to believe we are being completely rational even when we are not. Obviously, one can't fix a problem unless one is at least aware that there is a problem.
Because of this, we all tend to go through life on a kind of "mental autopilot." We give little thought to most of what we say and do, allowing a mix of reason, emotion and monkey mind to take us where they will. To be fair, we are good enough at this that we rarely step in front of buses and die, so as far as evolution is concerned it works well enough. But although this autopilot will generally keep us alive, it doesn't do a very good job of keeping us happy or of making important decisions in the best way. Just ask yourself if you have ever said something really "stupid" that had serious negative consequences - maybe hurting the feelings of someone you care about. Did you want to hurt their feelings? Of course not. Could you not realize, if you had thought about it, that saying this would hurt their feelings? Of course you could. So why did you say it? What probably happened is that you were having a conversation on autopilot and the words came out of your mouth without any sort of critical review. In this case, the autopilot resulted in your being hurtful to another person unnecessarily. One another day, you might find yourself very unhappy because of some particular aspect of your life, even though you realize "rationally" that in most ways you are very lucky and should be happy. Why is this? If you know the thing making you unhappy should not have such an effect upon you, why do you let it? Here you are sacrificing your happiness for no good reason. What's really important is that both of these situations are completely avoidable if you will just learn some mental discipline.
You need to figure out how to be more rational, more in control of your thoughts, on a day to day basis. This is one of the key insights of Buddhism: you need to pay attention at every moment, not just to the world around you, but to your own mind and how is it functioning. This is why we begin with concentrative meditation - to get you used to examining your mind in action and gently directing it to focus on what you want it to. This sort of constant awareness of your mental functioning is called mindfulness and is one of the most important ways that meditation practise translates into more general self improvement. The mindful person never acts thoughtlessly, never allows silly things to upset them. She always thinks about an action and its consequences before she does it. As a result, she is both a better person and much happier than someone who is mentally undisciplined. Now isn't this a goal worth working towards yourself?
Ok, there's your dose of theory for the day. Today we are moving up to a 15 minute session of concentrative meditation. We will do this twice, then move up to 20 minutes where we will stay for the rest of the class. The first 10 minutes of the 15 minute session works just like before - 5 minutes counting at the beginning of each breath, then 5 minutes counting at the end of each breath. However, during the last 5 minutes we are not going to count at all, just concentrate on your breathing. You may find this hard to do at first, but always remember: be patient with yourself, all things become easy with practice...:)
For next time, I want each of you to think of an instance where you acted "stupidly" because you were on autopilot - that should be pretty easy to do...:)