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Guided Meditation: The Craft of Mindfulness

Hello everyone, and welcome. This week we're exploring the topic of kusala^[1], the ancient Pali word that, for today, I'll translate as "skillful."

Sometimes it's useful to think of meditation as a craft, a craft that you need to work on in order to develop the coordination, the dexterity, and the skill to be able to do it well, effortlessly, and maybe elegantly, beautifully.

Probably many of you have learned a skill of some type that took a while. It took a lot of repetition to slowly have things which are not exactly in your conscious control. Slowly, the coordination, the dexterity, the strength, the movement, the fluidity, and the muscular subtlety of movements allow you to do something very precisely and carefully.

At first, it was awkward and difficult, and maybe even uncoordinated. We know that we have to repeat it over and over again. I think of someone who is a competitive swimmer. They do the same stroke over and over and over again, a million times. But something inside, very subtly, is becoming more and more attuned to the efficiency of that stroke. Just the slightest little change in the angles of the hand and the arm, the slightest little shift and change of position, of strength, of application, and what muscles are and are not engaged. At some point, it gets phenomenally subtle. The subtlety of sensing and sensation, the feedback loop between the sensory data that's coming in and something inside that knows how to adjust it ever so slightly to make it more efficient, faster, or better, is a phenomenally complex inner process. It is maybe more intuitive, or more of a silent, absorbed attention than a figuring out.

So in meditation, we develop a skill. We know that as a skill, as a craft, it takes a lot of repetition. And slowly over time, the meditation changes. What I've seen in people who have a regular meditation practice is their body begins changing. They start developing a more yogic body, a body that somehow becomes adapted to a meditation posture. Some muscles get stronger, some places of tension release, and more and more, a person feels at home in this posture. It's a balanced posture, an alert posture. That is the crafting of the posture, slowly doing it over and over again.

The same thing applies with mindfulness of breathing. A swimmer doesn't complain or get bored just because, "I've done three strokes now, that should be enough. I know how to do it." So too for the meditator: "I've done three breaths. That's it. What's the big deal?" What's the big deal is all the little mechanisms that are operating inside. All the different capacities or forms of attention we have, the distractions we have, and the preoccupations and reactions we have begin to come into focus or come into harmony. Something gathers and gets settled. Very slowly, over many thousands of breaths just coming back and being here, something begins shifting and changing until the time comes where it's effortless. It just feels like we've arrived right now. Rather than us making the effort, the effort is making us. We're developing a skill, and sometimes that's useful to understand. Tomorrow I'll talk about how kusala can also be understood as something wholesome and healthy, which has a different meaning and understanding. But for today, it's "skillful."

To assume a meditation posture, that preparation of assuming the posture is actually quite important. We don't want to just plop down and take the first relaxed posture we can. Sometimes you want to take as much as a minute to fine-tune the posture. Maybe rock forward and back, sideways back and forth, to see if you can find just the right balance points on your sitting bones and tailbone to get your spine aligned. Taking time to adjust the hands so they're not an afterthought for meditation. How you put your hands in such a place that it feels like they support attention. Having your attention slowly move up the spine, making ever so small adjustments, so it feels like your spine is not an afterthought. The spine is becoming aligned. The spine contains within it a certain relaxed intentionality to be present, to be involved in the craft of meditation.

And then adjust the head ever so slightly. The neck, the head, the position—maybe tipping the head forward and back, from side to side. See if there's a way the head can be positioned that gently feels supportive for being alert and present here. And then gently closing the eyes if they're not.

Take a few moments again, just like an athlete might prepare themselves for the meet they're about to do. Prepare yourself by gentling yourself, gentling your awareness. Gentling the way that you will feel, or sense, or gaze upon your breathing. And then with a gentle, maybe a quiet awareness to prepare yourself to be with the breathing as you meditate, gently settle the attention into the part of the body where you normally attend to breathing.

This still is the preparation, to gently with awareness refamiliarize yourself with the body's experience of breathing. The exact details of how breathing is done, the muscles engaged, what moves, varies from day to day, hour to hour. Refamiliarize yourself. Maybe like a sailor might become familiar with the wind and the currents, the conditions of the water before setting sail.

And then, only now to begin mindfulness of breathing. Each breath is like a stroke of a swimmer. Or each breath is like the pedaling of a bicycle. Each stroke, each breath is like a gentle wind that fills the sail of awareness that you keep open, wide, receptive to be lifted and carried and moved over and over again.

The simple craft of mindfulness of breathing and allowing the thinking mind, the distracted mind to become quieter. So you can be absorbed in your craft. So you can be absorbed in all the details of the craft of meditation. It helps you be absorbed in what you're doing, refined in what you're doing. So you find a deep peace with the absorption in mindfulness of breathing.

With every breath, an opportunity for your body, your mind, your heart to continue cultivating this skill of meditation. A skill that comes mostly from showing up well for this breath, this moment.

And in these minutes that we've been meditating, have you in any way become calmer? More settled, more aware of your present moment experience, more sensitive to it? Even if that means that you're distracted a lot, or reactive a lot, or have a lot going on emotionally. Is there more awareness or clarity around that?

And if any shift like this has happened, how does that contribute to the simple skill of attending to your breathing? Attending to your breathing gently, peacefully, like a swimmer attending to their strokes. A bicyclist attending to their pedaling. A woodworker attending to their sanding. The final sanding of what they built.

And as we come to the end of the sitting, is there anything about mindfulness as a skill, and as a skill development, that you can bring into your everyday life? Maybe in the simple act of making breakfast, chopping vegetables, the simple act of cleaning around your home, or how you drive. Is there a skill of attention, a skill in being present mindfully that you can enjoy developing in the ordinary activities of life?

And is there something about the skill of attention, the skill of mindful attending to what's in front of you, that supports you to be a better friend for others, for friends or strangers? That you're kinder, more present, more caring, and respectful.

May it be that this practice of mindfulness supports us to be present for this world in a healthy way. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. Thank you.

Dharmette: Wholesomeness (2 of 5) Skillfulness

Hello, and welcome to this second talk on the topic of kusala, the ancient Buddhist word that can be translated in different ways. As I said yesterday, one way of translating it is "wholesome" or "wholesomeness." Another is "skillful" or "skillfulness," and another way is "ethical," and maybe some others.

What I like about these multiple choices for how to translate this word is that it encompasses much of what we are as human beings in terms of how we engage in the world, how we're present for the world, and how we act in the world. It's meant to be comprehensive. Any one of these translation choices limits it somewhat, but to get a full sense of how it applies to the fullness of our life, we need all the words. In our hearts and our minds, we somehow hold them all.

The translation choice I want to focus on today is the word "skillful." There are clearly places in the teachings of the Buddha where that is the best translation of the word kusala for an English audience. It's when the Buddha talks about meditation itself and samādhi^[2]—to become skilled in samādhi, to develop the skill and the craft of meditation, to cultivate and develop ourselves in particular ways to grow the inner qualities of Dharma practice. He uses metaphors about having a skill. For mindfulness, he uses the metaphor of a good cook who knows how to cook different meals and knows how to select different meals for different times.

This is used for the Four Foundations of Mindfulness^[3]. Part of how I like to interpret it is that the cook knows which of the foundations to focus on given the conditions of a particular day, our activities, and what's happening for us. Sometimes we focus more on the body, sometimes more on feeling tones, sometimes more on mind states, and sometimes more on the mental processes and activities going on in our lives. So we have skill in knowing how to pay attention to this, to recognize what's happening, and to be present for the different component parts of the body sensations, feeling tones, mind states, and mental processes.

So you have a skill like a good cook. Maybe some of you really enjoy cooking and find that it makes you present. It's de-stressing, and the busyness of life kind of quiets down. We're just absorbed in this wonderful activity. It can be a reference point for how we are in meditation, that we're being the cook.

Sometimes he uses the metaphor of a musician and the famous metaphor of the lute. The lute has five strings, maybe because he associates it with the Five Faculties^[4], and each of those strings has to be tuned just right. Part of being a good musician is knowing the craft of tuning, and knowing how to tune the strings in relationship to each other takes a certain kind of attention. I've known some stringed instrument musicians who give me the impression that they really enjoy the tuning.

The famous sitar player Ravi Shankar was well known for spending a tremendous amount of time at the beginning of a performance, as people were arriving, just carefully tuning his sitar and being absorbed in that work. Some people interpreted this as meaning he was really tuning the audience. Sometimes the craft is training horses or training elephants. There's a skill in knowing how to do that. How do you approach an elephant in order to train it so it respects you, cares for you, and is not afraid of you, but rather train it as they did in the ancient world? There are all these craft references that the Buddha uses, along with others.

For those of us who do a kind of craft, or a skill, or play a musical instrument, or play a sport, there's something about cultivating the skill there that is needed that can perhaps be applied to meditation itself, to mindfulness itself, and to concentration practice. This certainly includes a lot of patience, the importance of repetition, and the importance of how we do it. Sometimes what's needed is to learn to let go of all the extra baggage we bring along—the extra tension, stress, judgments, and self-consciousness we bring that trips us up.

We might think, "I'm not doing it right. I have to do it better." In meditation, sitting quietly, there can be a lot of room for self-conscious ruminations to go on about the meditation that interfere with it. Maybe this is because we don't get the same in-the-moment feedback loops that we get when we're doing a craft, a sport, or playing music. Or maybe we're just not using the feedback loop that can support us to get involved.

So it is good to take meditation as a skill, as a craft we're developing. It helps if we can be attuned to what's happening in the present moment as we're being mindful, to see if we can gently take in the feedback loop. "Oh, this works. Now I'm present for that breath, I was really there." Or, "Oh, I missed it. Let's try to go back and do the next one more fully." Or, "Oh, that was pushing too much. I was too complacent. I was too lackadaisical, and no wonder I slipped off. Can I do the next breath in a gentle way, in a determined way? Can I ride the whole in-breath and the whole out-breath?"

If you are too busy looking for the feedback loops, then of course you stress, and you don't really learn it. So how do you learn to be engaged in the refinement process? There is built into this a feedback loop: let's stay here, let's stay and see, and allow the whole system to develop the skill through repetition, through doing this over and over again. This can happen throughout the day simply in the act of showing up and being mindful, and getting the feedback of, "Oh, this is good to be present." There's a little bit of aliveness, a little bit of alertness. It feels good to be fully present and clear as opposed to being distracted and reactive.

There's a positive feedback loop to that which reinforces the very skill of mindfulness, the craft of mindfulness—that it's good, and we want to be here. Part of the emphasis on skill is also this idea that we're developing a skill for a purpose. For some people, the idea of a purpose is very helpful. If the purpose is to swim to the other side of the pool and do that in a clear, fast way, or to win a race, there is a purpose, and we give ourselves fully to the activity. We can become absorbed, and this is all we're doing, just swimming.

That's the craft we're refining. The purpose is to play the music in a lively, engaged way. The purpose is to become stronger in how we can walk up steps, so we give ourselves the exercise of walking up steps a lot, and slowly we develop it. To develop a skill often has a goal that's a little bit more than just being present for it in the moment. That's an ordinary part of being human, to have a little bit of a goal, a purpose, and a direction that it's going.

The art of it is to do it in a wholesome, skillful way. We can't do it in a way that makes us tense. If we strive and we get tight, then we interfere with the very craft, that beautiful craft we're trying to develop. One of the words that I love in the Pali Canon is the word kalyāṇa^[5]. Its first meaning is beauty, beautiful. Can we engage in a practice of mindfulness so that the practice is beautiful?

There's something about the simplicity of it, the untroubled nature of it, the unfettered nature of it, the simplicity, the clarity. Yes, it has a goal, yes, it has a purpose—to become freer, to become more present, to become kinder—but the very way in which we engage in that process, on that path, in and of itself feels beautiful. This is the feedback loop that I talked about last week without calling it a feedback loop: that the Dharma is onward leading, that it welcomes us here and invites inspection. It's right here in the present moment, in the meeting place between our sensations and our awareness of the sensations.

That meeting place is also present for the sensations involved with how we do what we do—how we walk, how we chop vegetables, how we are with our breathing. We can really stay there and feel, "Is there a skill? Is there something beautiful we're cultivating and developing here?" Maybe it's not beautiful. But if we really tune in to it, how is it more efficient? How is it simpler? How is it less complicated with all kinds of extra stuff? How can we be there and take in the invitation to be present, and let this be onward leading to something marvelous, something beautiful, something peaceful? We can trust and be patient that we're developing a skill slowly over a long time. We don't have to see the results in the moment or in the day. A good craftsperson does things over and over and over again until the doing of it becomes the beauty.

I'll end quickly with a story that I've maybe told before enough times. There was a Zen master in America named Kobun Chino^[6]. He went down to Esalen^[7], the human potential retreat center famous here in California, right on the Pacific coast on a cliff in Big Sur overlooking the vast ocean. He practiced the art, the craft, the path of archery.

He was going to do a demonstration, and a big crowd of people gathered on the lawn there on the cliff. He got all his archery gear ready, and he spent a lot of time preparing. He was getting everything all set up and getting everything right, wearing his archery robes. He was completely absorbed in the preparations, getting into position, getting the arrow just right, and getting everything prepared. The audience just watched.

It took a long time, and the audience was absorbed in his absorption. The actual art, the actual purpose of what he was doing, the whole thing was the preparation. He was so into it, so present. The preparation was necessary, but for him, it was a whole meditation practice just to do all the little things. At some point, he was standing well and absorbed, and he began pulling back the string with the arrow in it. He took a really good aim, getting focused, getting centered, really becoming one with the target maybe, who knows? He was really present. And then finally, when he was fully there—I mean, the whole thing had drama to it. People were absorbed because he was so present, so concentrated and intent. It was kind of like people's mirror neurons or something were operating, which pulled people into what he was doing.

Finally, he released the arrow. And of course, it hit the mark perfectly, right in the center. He shot the arrow into the Pacific Ocean, off the cliff. A perfect shot. So, preparation can be the purpose. The purpose is to be fully mindful here. And in doing that, may you hit the perfect mark, perfectly arriving now, here.

Thank you.