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: Not Holding On

Hello everyone. I'm happy to be here and to be heard. I think we have the sound equipment and everything working again, so it gives me the luxury of repeating myself, which I don't like to do so much, but I'll say what I said yesterday that you didn't hear.

Imagine that you're going down a creek someplace in a canoe, and there's a wonderful, gentle, pleasant current which is just carrying you to your destination, where you're going.

But it's a narrow creek, and there are lots of trees on the bank and overhanging. As you go down, it's easy to reach out and touch the branches, and even hold on to the branches above and to the side. You have a passenger, someone along with you on the trip.

But this person, on every occasion, reaches out to hold on to a branch, and holds it for a while until the canoe stops, and then lets go. You go a little bit further and they hold on, and you go and they hold on, and you go. In this way, it takes a really long time to get anywhere.

This is an analogy for how we can be in our lives, but for now, we'll look at it in terms of meditation. There's a current that we're in, the current of the present moment, that's always occurring. In a sense, the future comes into the present and flows into the past, and the present moment is where we witness this constant change, constant transformation, and this unfolding of time.

We could stay there in that current and let it take us where it goes. Or, we could hold on to the branches. The branches are our thoughts, our ideas, our feelings that we hold on to. We end up having retrospective thinking—something happens, and we start thinking about it, and that's holding on to the branch. We've lost our way; we're not in the current anymore. Or we start thinking about something that is completely unrelated in the past or in the future. The past branches, the future branches.

Or we start making commentaries, stories, and judgments about what's in the present, and those are commentary branches, story branches, judgment branches. As soon as we hold on to them, we're no longer flowing in the current. In meditation, we're teaching ourselves, training ourselves to stay in the current and not to hold on to anything that interrupts our ability to stay present for what's happening in the present moment.

One place to train ourselves in this is in the breathing. It could be with other things, it could be sounds, alright, but the breathing is a classic place to train us. Consider that the constant flow of sensations connected to breathing in the body are the current of the present moment as you experience it physically. The idea is to be present, to rest in, to float in those sensations as they flow through, flow by. That's the place where we tap into the present moment and the constant change.

Then, notice when we get pulled away into thought. We're holding on to a branch. Notice how there's a disconnect if we get lost too much in those thoughts. The idea is to stay feeling, sensing, resting, knowing, and cognizant of the current of breathing. The flow of sensations that come with the in-breath, with the out-breath, wherever in the body you feel the breathing.

It doesn't mean you have to stop thinking entirely; it means that the weight of attention is on the breathing, not holding on to the branch. Sometimes the thinking^[1] can just be like a branch on the side of the creek that you see, and it just goes by. Maybe it brushes even against your shoulder as you go by if it's a narrow creek, but you don't stop for it. You know it's there, but you're staying. For a canoer, the canoe stays nose-forward^[2], floating in the river, just feeling the current, staying in it. That's the center of gravity; that's where the weight of attention is.

So assuming an upright meditation posture, gently lowering your gaze to about 45 degrees to the floor, and letting your gaze be relaxed, not focusing on anything in particular. Then, gently closing your eyes, and gently establishing a connection to the body breathing. Feel the rhythm of the body breathing in and breathing out.

Breathing in and breathing out. Feeling, knowing the beginning and the end of the inhale. Aware of the beginning and end of the exhale. Being aware of the current of sensations between the beginning and the end of the inhale. Knowing the current of sensations between the beginning and end of the exhale.

Feeling the changing sensations of breathing. Take a little bigger breath than usual, and as you exhale, settle into the body breathing. Relax the body as if you're relaxing around the experience of breathing. Let your breathing^[3] come to normal.

For this meditation, trusting attention to breathing. Trusting floating in the current of breathing in and breathing out. Noticing if you grab the branches of thoughts and you're no longer floating, no longer flowing along with the whole experience of breathing in, the whole experience of breathing out.

Staying there, resting, sensing, knowing the full experience in time of breathing as it's occurring.

Thinking has a flow and a movement from one thought to the other. See if you can switch your allegiance from the flow of thinking to the flow of breathing, letting thinking recede to the background, and let yourself be carried along in the current of the present moment that appears with every sensation of breathing.

As we come to the end of the sitting, take a few moments to appreciate whatever degree of calm or peace you might feel. If there is no calm and peace, consider what you might have understood about your mind's tendency to hold on to branches, and what you might learn from letting go of the branches, even if it's momentary.

Being present in the flow of the present moment, let that be a place from which to gaze upon others kindly. To look upon the world with calm, peaceful eyes, not filtered by the attachments and fears we might have. Feel fortunate to have the ability to sit quietly and meditate, and think of this meditation as a foundation for going into the world with care, loving-kindness, and friendliness.

May this meditation practice we do be a preparation for living a wise and caring life. May the peace of our meditation spread from us out into the world. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (53) Sense Doors: Eyes

So today we come to the next exercise of the discourse on the establishment of awareness. This is sometimes called the six sense spheres, and it refers to being mindful at each of the sense doors.

The six sense doors are eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body (and its tactile abilities to know, to feel), and the mind door. It's as if we have an eye or an organ of perception that recognizes that we're thinking, that we have emotions, the activities of the mind. That organ of perception is considered one of the six senses.

The text itself begins with a very simple statement, and builds on it. It says that one knows there are sight objects—things that we can see—and we know that there's the eye. In this simple statement is the beginning of mindfulness, a certain kind of emphasis of mindfulness which is very much centered in the present moment, in the direct experience of the senses. We are not anticipating the future or remembering the past, but right here in the moment. If you're hearing, you might hear the bell. If you're seeing, you're seeing what's in front of you in the moment that you're seeing. And it begins with sight.

Many years ago, I went to the Zen monastery at Tassajara^[4]. I was there for a little while... [Laughter] and I noticed something unusual about seeing. I could look at a tree, and I saw the tree, and I was aware of myself looking. I was aware of the eyes engaged in the process of looking. Then I noticed that in between—it's almost what it felt like, in between—were my ideas of the tree. It was almost as if I was painting the concept tree on top of the tree. The concept was accurate enough, so ordinarily I would not have thought twice about there being anything more than seeing that tree. But I became acutely aware of how there was an act of conception, an act of interpretation, an act of projection onto the tree.

So there was the object of seeing, the eyes that see, and something in between. It could be judgments, our stories, our ideas about what's there. It could be our bias that we project onto something. And so we don't see things directly as they are; we often see them through the filter of something.

In mindfulness practice, it's possible to become aware of this filter, this thing that's in between. But it begins by learning to appreciate the simple moment of sense awareness. One of the sense doors is seeing, and it's a wonderful exercise, a wonderful capacity to learn how to look with quiet eyes, relaxed eyes. To look without an agenda, without the wanting mind looking for something, or the scared mind looking for danger, looking for how to be safe. But to have very cool, calm, quiet eyes that gaze in a relaxed way.

I believe in the ancient world, in the ancient Buddhist world, they sometimes had the idea that rather than light coming into the eyes, it's more like the eyes go out to touch the object out there, to grab the object. Certainly, I've felt sometimes, if I'm really intense on wanting something, or afraid of something, or curious about something, I can almost feel like my head goes forward. It's almost like my eyes open more, like my eyeballs are popping out a little bit to see, "What's that?"

Or I might be straining, trying to really look at something carefully and minutely, and try to make sense of it, and I can feel the strain in my eyes. One of the wonderful ways to practice mindfulness, to have a reference point, is to learn how to let awareness of seeing be useful. Generally, this means a relaxed, easy eyesight.

The eyes don't have to be conscious even, but the eyes are slightly moving around. The eyes are not held fixed. Fixedly held eyes strain and get tired. But with relaxed eyes, it's kind of like they float in the eye socket, and they're looking a little bit here and there. Looking at a particular object is maybe looking at the perimeter, looking at different pieces of it. The eyes gently roam around.

To allow the eyes to roam gently can release a lot of stress, a lot of fixation in the mind. Because when the eyes roam a little and look at different things, it's more difficult for the mind to stay fixated on its preoccupation. The more fixated we are on our inner concerns and our thoughts, the more the eyes tend to be held tight or don't have that floating feeling.

One of the ways to do this in mindfulness of seeing is to settle back and allow sights to come to you. Don't go looking for anything. See, but don't look. The difference being that looking is an active, intentional act to look for something. Someone might say, "Look over there," and then you look. People don't say, "See over there." They might say, "What do you see?" It's not necessarily a request to go looking, but just, if your eyes are in that direction, what comes to your eyes? What comes into awareness?

So one of the ways to cultivate mindfulness and develop it is at each of the six sense doors, and to begin to appreciate a relaxed, quiet way of receiving the sensations at the particular sense doors. Today, through seeing. Just that is a wonderful exercise. If you have the fortune of being a passenger in a car—for me, it's even better on a bus or a train—just let the eyes gaze out at the countryside or the scenery around you as you're driving. Let the eyes just float and look and relax, and don't hold on to anything. Just keep the eyes soft. When I was a teenager, I used to get very calm looking out train windows and just looking at things going by.

The exercise on the six sense doors is to know the object that we're seeing, to know we're seeing something, to know the eyes, and to be able to see in a relaxed way. But then, to notice one of the things that's in between. The particular thing that this exercise is about is to notice the knot. It's sometimes translated into English as a fetter^[5], but I think the word in Pali^[6] is better rendered as the word knot. Fetter implies that we're hindered by something, which is true, but knot means we're knotted up in it; we're entangled with it. Personally, I prefer the language of entanglement, or being knotted up in something.

If I have some problem with my computer, my eyesight is knotted up, tangled in trying to figure it out—"What's going on here?"—and looking, and my eyes are not relaxed. I'm not just gazing at the issue and letting some kind of quiet inner exploration try to figure it out; I might be entangled and caught in the issue that I have.

It's possible to become aware that there's the object we see, there's the eyes that are seeing, and then there's something in between. Some of you might have more sense that it's in the mind behind the eyes or something, but between the two—or in addition to the two—there's the way we're knotted up. Those things are entangled with each other. The way that we're looking is not relaxed and easily useful, but we're looking in a way that is caught, or preoccupied, or concerned with what we're looking at. It becomes stressful in the eyes. The eyes become locked, they get tight, they get tired. They've lost this relaxed way of being.

One of the reasons to cultivate mindfulness of seeing is to learn and develop a capacity for this relaxed gaze, so that we become more sensitive to the knots when they occur. This is not like an incidental exercise that the Buddha is giving, but rather it's another perspective from which we can become aware of all the ways we get attached. Every attachment is an attachment at a sense door, at some particular sense door. As we become aware of each of the different sense doors, it's a different kind of angle to become aware of attachment itself.

Sometimes it's with what we see, sometimes with what we hear, taste, smell, touch. And then the mind door is a big one. In this particular exercise, the Satipaṭṭhāna^[7] is going through very carefully, repeatedly, each of the six sense doors. It's talking about seeing the sense door, seeing the object. Now, for this first one: sight object. Knowing the eye that's seeing, knowing the knot that's between them. And more than that, in the style of how this teaching goes, it's also knowing the manner in which that knot appears, seeing it, and then letting go of it. Seeing the appearance of a knot when it first occurs is this amazing vantage point where it's easier to let go.

Relaxed seeing. Noticing how the eyes get locked in, knotted up, but noticing just as it occurs, and then letting it go. For today, as you go about your day in the next 24 hours, you might give a special attention to seeing, and see if you can learn greater ways of looking in a relaxed way. Calm looking, relaxed looking, where the eyes can look at things and study them even, but do it in a very relaxed, receptive mode. As you get the hang of that, maybe then you can start noticing when the eyes are not that way, when they're locked in or straining or something. That is the knot, and maybe you can let go of it.

That's the introduction to this topic of this week, mindfulness at the six sense doors. Thank you.