This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Deep Relaxation

Hello everyone and welcome to our meditation together. I appreciate all the chats and the greetings. Very warm, very heartening to come here and see them all.

The theme this week is the karmic stream and the dharmic stream, and the two are related. What I'd like to emphasize for this meditation is that one of the physical ways of seeing the manifestation of karma, or feeling the impact of karma, is in physical tension. Most—I won't say all—most forms of physical tension that we have is a consequence of the karmic activities of the mind: the way we hold on to our ideas, our thoughts, our resistances, our aversions.

And so, as we relax the body, the more relaxed we become while we stay alert and clear, which makes room for the dharma stream to flow. The more tense we are, the more we obscure it, lock it from view, or block the stream from flowing.

Part of the advantage of relaxing is it opens up and allows something to flow, something to move through us. Something gentle and peaceful, something that shows us the possibility of living with ease, with freedom, with calm, with peace, with equanimity. All these things clear the channels and clear the obstructions from the flow of life.

To relax at the beginning of meditation is doing much more than just preparing for meditation. It is beginning to shift the karmic stream so that it doesn't interfere with the development of meditation and the development of that dharma stream.

Assuming a meditation posture, maybe rocking back and forth a bit and side to side, and maybe even forward and backwards, rotating around, partly to relax, but partly also to feel your way into your body until you find a posture that feels balanced, aligned, and alert. Part of the advantage of sitting upright for relaxing is that an upright sitting posture has more room for the body, the shoulders to relax and soften. If we're collapsed in some way or scrunched over, it makes relaxing more difficult, deep relaxation more difficult. Sometimes to relax deeply, it has to take a while, maybe weeks or months, to build up a little strength in the torso, too, so the strength holds us upright and allows for this deeper letting go.

Gently closing your eyes, and scanning through the body to see what adjustments you can make now to let the body be more at ease. Are there any tensions or holdings in the muscles that you can relax? Maybe in the belly, maybe the shoulders, maybe the face.

And then, take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Let the breaths be long so that it gets your mind's attention. Let the exhale be long enough so that your mind now gets interested in breathing more than interested in its thoughts. And as you exhale, can you relax deeply inside?

And then, letting the breathing return to normal. In a way of attuning yourself, aligning yourself with your breathing, every time you exhale for the next little while, gently relax parts of your body. Maybe feeling a part on the inhale, and relaxing on the exhale. Maybe relaxing the muscles around the face, maybe the muscles around the neck. Maybe there are micro relaxations that are possible.

Staying with the rhythm of breathing in and out. As you exhale, relaxing the shoulders, relaxing down the arms into the hands, so those hands become soft. Look at the loose hands. You might even move your fingers slightly to loosen them up. On the exhale, softening the shoulders. And don't expect that you can relax completely; just as far as it'll go, even if it's a micro relaxation.

As you exhale, soften, relax the chest, and relax deep in the heart. Soften the belly, and down your legs. If there's any holding there, can you release it? Is there any physical tension that comes from some mental tension you have? Mental strain, pushing, pressure—the pressure to think? As you exhale, relax that as well.

And then to now settle into your breathing. As you exhale, relax the exhale. Relax the parts of the body involved in exhaling. As you inhale, can you slightly allow the inhale to be softer, gentler? Relaxing, softening. If you find yourself thinking and drifting off in thought, let go. As you let go, let go back into your breathing. Let yourself be centered, with breathing at the center, centered on breathing.

With all the relaxation we've done, maybe some of the body will feel a nice flow of energy or a nice softness. And so we're breathing now within a field that's more relaxed, softer, flowing. One breath at a time.

And as we come to the end of this meditation, the ability to stay relaxed, to be calm, can be part of our gift that we provide others. If we go through the world anxious, distressed, upset, in a sense we're teaching the world that this is a useful way to be. If we go through the world at ease or calm or confident in our ability to meet the world, we have a very different effect on those around us. We see this particularly the case with young children and their parents. If the parents are anxious, it teaches the children that the world is a frightening place.

To know that we can care for ourselves, care for challenges and difficulties so much better if we're able to stay relaxed, and to offer that to others as a gift—that there's a different way of being in the world that is not anxious, is not upset, distressed, dismayed. Be the kind of person that people relax around, feel safe around.

May it be that through this meditation practice we do, that our presence in the world is a gift to others. It doesn't have to be so conscious or intentional. If we're calm, if we're relaxed, just who we are. May it be that through the practice we do, that we're able to make this world a better place. May we support the possibility for all beings to be happy, all beings to be safe, all beings to be peaceful, and all beings to be free. And being relaxed is more likely to support that than being tense.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Karma/Dharma (2 of 5) Constructing vs. Allowing

Continuing now with this second talk on the karmic stream and the dharmic stream, these two major ways in which our lives can unfold and move, what moves through us. With these words, karma, dharma, kind of built into the word you get a very different feeling for it. Karma has the literal meaning of action, with the connotations of making something, like constructing something. And dharma in its etymological root comes from the meaning 'to support'. So karma implies that we're doing, and dharma suggests there's support.

The dharma stream can provide tremendous support for us. The value of the karma stream has a lot to do with the nature of the actions we do. One of the ways of understanding this karmic stream is that it has a lot to do with constructing. When we act in a certain kind of way, we're building, creating, constructing our response, our reactions, our character, our personality, our habits, our dispositions. In all these ways, we're contributing, we're making something happen, and it takes work. The karmic stream requires effort on our part; we have to engage in creating it. Sometimes people are weary and tired from all the constant doing and doing and doing that they do, living this karmic stream of acting and reacting.

The dharma stream, because it comes more as a support, doesn't require the same kind of action. There might be things we do, in a sense, movements we make, things we say, but it doesn't come from this impetus, this forcefulness of making something. It maybe comes more from something that's being expressed rather than holding something up. We're being held up.

So the karma stream tends to be much more volitional, intentional, like this is where we're disposed to do something, to make something happen. We can see that in our thinking. An easier way to see it is if you use the principle that if you're thinking about anything that's not in the present moment, your mind is constructing the memory, the fantasy, the future. And in that construction, there's an impetus, there's maybe even a compulsion to have something happen, to want something, to not want something, to like something, not like something. That impetus, that creation, and that force behind it creates the nature of that action, and the nature of the action creates what impact it has in the future.

If we act with greed, that creates a very different momentum in our lives than if we act out of generosity. If we chronically act out of aversion, it creates a very different momentum in our lives than if we act out of love. And so to think of the karmic stream as something that's always being construed, constructed, built.

Sometimes in English, we think of karma as the results of our actions. In Pali, it's a different word, vipāka^[1], that means the results. The Buddhist emphasis on karma is on the act of constructing. We see in the teachings of the Buddha less interest in understanding why something happens. You know, something happened and now, "It must be my karma in the past," people say. That's not very interesting for the practitioner of the dharma. Rather, what's interesting is, given what's happening, no matter what it is, whatever is happening, what is the action or reaction with which we're meeting that or responding to that? The focus is on what we're doing in the present, not the reason why the present is happening. That's valuable at times to look at the reasons in the background, but to really get to the heart of the karma teaching is to learn how to act differently in the present moment, where the choice is to construct things a little differently.

What's useful is that if you're interested in the dharma stream, if you're interested in freedom, if you're interested in this phenomenal inner goodness that comes with the dharma stream, you want to act accordingly. You want to act and do things that support that possibility, that lead in that direction. Generosity, ethics, kindness, compassion, equanimity, letting go—these are all actions that are constructing a better self, a better disposition, a better stream of momentum in us that is supportive of the dharma stream.

To some degree, if we're living in the karmic world where we're choosing the particular actions that we want to live by, those we have a sense are wholesome, beneficial, and useful, and we're learning to let go of those which are not useful. It turns out that all the unuseful ones, the ones that create a negative impact on us, all come with tension of some kind or other. And that tension has an ongoing momentum. That compulsion has an ongoing momentum in our lives. When we do beneficial karma, it might have tension, it might not. It might have a compulsion, it might not. And that's a very important distinction, because if doing good things is done with tension, the results are mixed. If we do good things without compulsion, without tension, the results tend to be better. And the results here we're talking about are not necessarily the results out in the world, but the impact it has in us inside—the impact on the ongoing momentum and disposition through which we act and respond to the world.

The dharma stream is mostly something that we allow. We don't construct it; it's mostly getting out of the way. It's clearing the blockage in the stream. In the karma stream, we're learning to turn off the fire hose. In the dharma stream, we're removing the obstacles that keep the stream from flowing.

Because we're not acting with tension, the dharma stream is to learn to relax deeply, and we're letting go. If we're not acting out of compulsion or tension, we're not really going to be creating this negative karma. Instead, we'll allow for the native goodness inside of us. The love, the generosity, the caringness, the kindness, there are all these wonderful good qualities we have, including wisdom. Including strong wisdom, strong compassion, and strong adherence and dedication to the truth. A strength that is stable and strong, partly because it's not agitated or fragile the way that tension can cause.

What's interesting is that when we do dharmically positive actions that are part of the construction process, the conditioning process, it aligns itself with this goodness that's inside. It becomes a time when there's a transition from what we're doing to what we're allowing, from what we have to contribute to what we are. As we do good in the world, do good for ourselves, this inner goodness tends to support the awakening or the freedom or the expressivity of the dharma stream inside of us. The dharma stream is manifested in many ways, but it's manifested with a tremendous confidence and trust, in joy and tranquility and happiness, an ability to be settled and focused in equanimity, and ultimately in freedom.

One of the things we learn—and this is a very important distinction between this dharma stream and the karmic stream—is that it helps us to see that we don't have to always be constructing our world, constructing our responses to the world. We're not meant for the incessant work of reacting and acting and doing and thinking. One of the primary constructive activities people are doing is through their thinking. It's a lot of work in thinking, and it's constructing. It's manufacturing ideas, fantasies, stories, interpretations of what's there. It's a tremendous burden if it's just done incessantly and compulsively, and it's not necessary to do as much as most people think. The authority behind our thinking can be questioned.

It's a little bit like someone who lives in a home for years, and they've accumulated a lot of things and furniture and stuff. They live in this home, and it turns out that there's a wall down the middle of the home, and half the home they didn't know was there. Then someday someone takes down the wall, and they realize, "Wait a minute, there's a whole second half of the home." To understand this distinction between the karmic stream and the dharma stream can be an 'aha' moment. "Oh, there's a whole second half of how to live." You'll still live in the karma stream to some degree, but hopefully you live it with wisdom and clarity and just understand how it works. There's this whole other room to live in that gives you breathing room and space and freedom. That's the other half that's often missing for people who live only in the karmic world, which is most people. So to discover the dharma world, the dharma stream, is a great gift and a wonderful thing.

We'll continue over these next days on this theme, and hopefully, as we continue, you'll get a better sense of this distinction and how to practice and work with it. Thank you very much.