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: Seeing in a New Way

Hello everyone, and welcome to IMC in Redwood City. We're here to meditate together, and I'm happy for this gathering. Thank you.

The word Vipassanā—that's the word for the kind of meditation in which we do mindfulness. Vipassanā is how we translate it. It gives us the word "insight" for Insight Meditation Center. It comes from the Pali word passanā, which means "to see," and the prefix vi is an intensifier. So, to intensely see—though I don't know if we want to use the word intense. So it's often used as "clear seeing," to see clearly, to see well.

In one of the little slogans in this Vipassanā insight movement, it is said that Vipassanā is not about seeing something new, but seeing in a new way. As a slogan, it only goes so far, but it does point to something important: seeing in a new way. One of those new ways is to be present for our experience—breathing, our body, whatever we are aware of in the present moment. Center ourselves in the present moment, and do so without referring it to our concepts of self. The ideas of identity that we might have about ourselves, the idea of "me, myself, and mine," all the orbit of ideas that circle around the central idea of self—what the self needs, what it wants, what's going to happen, what it means to me.

Then to shift and to see our experience, some people talk about it just as nature, as nature seeing itself. I'm kind of fond of the idea that out of the cosmic soup, the formation of the solar system and this planet, and then out of the elements of all this, there arose life. Life arose in such a way that at some point it became conscious, aware. It's the natural world which has formed these conscious beings that can see, that are not just part of nature, but can see nature. So rather than seeing everything from the reference points of myself and my ego, to see, "Oh, this too is part of the natural world."

Rather than being caught up in responsibility and measuring everything about the point of view of "my life today" and what it means, to see things—perhaps our experience, the thought we have, maybe the feelings we have—as the product of five billion, fourteen billion years of development and evolution. A tremendous amount of cause and effect had to come into play. It's phenomenal that at this particular moment you're thinking about what you should have for lunch. It's not a simple thing that the universe organized itself so you could have the thought, "What should I have for lunch?"

So to see in a new way is to see in amazement and with interest. In this new way, without centering the seeing on what it means for "me, myself," and not to judge what's happening or judge myself for what's happening. Just allow things to be and see them in their particularity. It's just part of the continued flow of life, of experience, of the universe that we just happen to be conscious of. It happens to be a lot of the experience that is arising and passing in this psychophysical being that we are.

This is a new way of seeing, and it's not the only way to see, but it's certainly a fascinating way to see. It gives us access to a different way of experiencing ourselves and the world that is said to be liberating.

So to assume a meditation posture with this body of ours. A body that's made up of 100% recycled material from this cosmic soup. These elements of our body have probably been involved in all kinds of other life forms and situations over these billions of years, and now they've come together here. So to feel, to sense the body. Perhaps take a downward gaze and relax your eyes, and if it's comfortable, close your eyes.

Take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Maybe three-quarters full, and then exhale one and a half times longer than you usually do. Relaxing, letting go on the end of the exhale.

And letting your breathing return to normal.

Take a few moments to relax this body. For whatever causes and conditions that have come together, maybe the shoulders are tight and tense. No need to make a story of it or define oneself by it. Just tension, and allowing the tension to relax a bit.

Feeling the sensations of your belly. If the belt is tight or held in, perhaps you also don't have to make it about yourself and that it means something about you. It's just nature. Who knows why it's tight? You don't need to know it for the purposes of this meditation, but if it's easy enough, relax the belly.

And to also feel the muscles of your face. If there's any tension, clenching, or tightness anywhere in the face, see it matter-of-factly, like you're a naturalist in the wild studying some fascinating plant that you've never seen before. It's just nature, the tension. And if it's easy enough, relax the muscles of your face.

And if there's any tension or pressure in your thinking mind associated with thinking, to also see that as nature. No need to use it to make any commentary about yourself. It's just phenomenal happening: tension happening, thoughts happening, nature unfolding. But if the tension of thinking can be relaxed on the exhale, relax the thinking muscle.

And then centering yourself on your breathing. Wherever the body breathing is most clearly experienced or known, center yourself there, steady yourself there. And allow yourself to experience the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out.

Creatures of all kinds, many kinds, breathe. Breathing is a natural phenomenon, and the rhythm of breathing is like the rhythm of the waves washing up and down on the shore. It goes on and on. Relax and simply observe this also natural process of breathing, without needing to make any judgments or conclusions about you yourself. Just the breathing.

And if you do control the breathing, that's also natural. Let it be and just say, "Wow, this too."

And then as we continue meditating, see if you can do this seeing in a new way, without the overlay of self and self-concerns. And if those concerns come up, maybe you can be amazed that five billion years of evolution should somehow have given birth to self-concern. And maybe you can see for a few moments that self-concern is just as much a part of nature as everything else. It's all nature. Seeing in a new way.

[Silence for meditation]

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, wonderful aspects of this natural world, somewhat like we are nature looking upon nature, so we can also be nature caring for nature. Just as we have the ability to perceive the world, we have the ability to care for the world.

And if we're relaxed, at ease, feel safe, and don't see through the filter of "me, myself, and mine," there can be the simple, wonderful capacity to care for others, for their welfare, for their happiness. It doesn't have to be dramatic. It doesn't have to be great compassion. It can be ordinary care and support, valuing, appreciating people.

It's useful at the end of a meditation to bring forth this part of who we are, caring for others, to do so at the end of the meditation. It brings a much greater value to the meditation we've had. Even if meditation has been difficult, we benefit from practicing with the difficulties if we practice seeing in a new way.

And in our care for others, let the benefits that we've had from this practice be directed through our care into the world. Simple, ordinary care directed to the world around us with a wish: May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may it be that we have occasion to help make this possible, to help support others to be happy, safe, peaceful, and free.

Thank you.

Flowing in the Dharma by Seeing in a New Way

Announcements

Before I offer this talk today, there's one announcement, maybe a couple. We are beginning to make plans to begin a slow opening for IMC. It's possible it could be as soon as in a couple of weeks, depending on whether we can put together the protocol that we would like to have to feel safe coming here. We'll have more care given to it than we were planning to during the summer.

So next Sunday, after this 10 o'clock dharma talk, the plan is to have a community meeting for the IMC community. One of the things we'll do is talk about that a little bit and describe the protocol. We'll start by opening small, probably on a Sunday, maybe with 25 people coming who register ahead of time. Then we'll see how that feels and how that goes, and maybe we'll slowly start to increase and have more programs. So that's for next week, a community meeting. The Zoom link will be posted in "What's New" some days before, and I'll also post it in the IMC calendar for that event. Those are the two places you can get it, and I'll probably post it also here on the YouTube chat so that if you're on YouTube, you can maybe just jump over.

And then when we open on Sundays, we'll still do the Sunday morning on YouTube. We were doing that before the pandemic and we'll continue after.

The Flow of Practice

To do Vipassanā, the practice of clear seeing, is to see in a new way. In a new way that begins opening up a whole other possibility for how we can grow and develop, how our life can unfold. It's a marvelous thing to learn a new way, and then to give ourselves to that new way, and let that new way really develop and grow and change us from the inside out in a useful way. That's what the Buddhist path involves.

Initially, the new way of seeing is learned provisionally. We hear something and then we try it out: "Okay, I've heard that there's a new way of seeing. I kind of get a sense of it. I'll do my best and see how it is." And then over time, maybe we'll have evidence that this actually works really well, it's actually a very useful framework for living our lives, so that it grows and grows.

This growing of the momentum around a new way of seeing, a new way of living, is described by analogies of movement that the Buddha gives. The movement of a stream, entering a stream and being carried by the stream. Or rainwater falling on a hillside or mountainside, and the drops roll down and become bigger drops, and they flow into little creeklets. Those little creeklets flow into little pools, and the pools overflow with enough water, flowing into little streams. The streams keep flowing into larger ponds, which overflow further down and become rivers. The rivers flow into bigger lakes, and when those overflow, the water just keeps getting bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger, going downhill until eventually it makes its way all the way to the ocean.

This is a movement that we're entering into, this movement of growth and development and flow. The rainwater analogy is fascinating because it has two different meanings. It points both to growth—something's growing in strength and capacity—and it's also flowing down waters following gravity, rather than resisting gravity. Following gravity in a natural way all the way to the ocean, where it doesn't have to flow anymore; it can come to a rest of sorts.

This new way of seeing that is encouraged—one way of describing it is very simple mindfulness. Just very simple, ordinary seeing things as they appear, as they exist in the moment. Without, as we do in mindfulness practice, reference to the past or the future, and—this is more difficult—without reference to the egoistic self. Without reference to the ideas we build up around who we are, what we need, and who we aren't, the judgments we have about ourselves, the ways we undermine ourselves with negative self-talk, or the ways that we have delusions of grandeur about how wonderful we are.

We just allow experience to be itself without any reference to itself, but we see it clearly. Now, this isn't necessarily how we're supposed to live our life the whole time. The past and future are valuable and enrich life as well, but in meditation, that's not what we're trying to do. Meditation is trying to really discover something very radically new and allow this stream inside of us to get bigger and flow, and to be carried along by it: the dharma stream.

Seeing Suffering as Pain

So it involves seeing in a new way. A fascinating way of presenting this is that it involves seeing our suffering in a new way. Some of you are probably tired of Buddhists always talking about suffering—suffering this, suffering that—and maybe you even kind of tune out a little bit as soon as you hear the word "suffering," it's repeated so much. What's fascinating is that the literal meaning of the Pali word for suffering, dukkha^[1], is not suffering. The literal meaning of it is pain. And it's by interpretation, by application, that it involves psychological pain and emotional pain that we would like to call suffering.

But it's useful to think of it as pain. What happens if we see so-called suffering, or the big sufferings of our life, as pain rather than suffering? It begins to remove a little bit of the hegemony of self, the ways in which we get invested in the pain. We get interested in the pain, we get infatuated with the pain. One of the ways we get involved with it is we overlay attachments and reactivity on top of whatever pain we're looking at. There might be emotional pain, there might be psychological pain, physical pain, existential pain—all kinds of pains come along with being alive. And then we overlay our ideas on top of it: "It shouldn't be there. This means that I'm living life the wrong way, I'm doing something wrong that I feel pain. I need to be the one who now gets rid of it. This is happening to me, I'm the victim of it all."

There is the pain of loss, and then we refer that loss to all the ways in which I thought I was going to live my life and build up my wonderful life that is not possible now. It's sad, and this happens, but there can be a lot of extra investment of self—what's in it for "me, myself, and mine"—which is separate from the pain of the loss. Now it's the pain of losing a future that we imagined, rather than just the particular loss we have. So grief sometimes can get quite complicated in what it involves. There can be anguish over the pain because we add so much meaning to it and so many projections into the future: "This is always going to be this way, it's always been this way, I'll never make it, I'll never figure it out, this is too much for me, and no one's caring for me, no one's taking care of me, and I feel so lonely in my dismay and my despair."

I don't want to belittle how difficult it is to have human suffering; it's quite challenging. But I want to try to get across the idea that there are certain layers overlaying a certain degree of extra baggage on top of it, or reactivity or commentary. Maybe that's just a very thin veneer on top of it, so it's not very much, but for some people, the overlay is actually the primary quality of what makes the pain suffering.

The suggestion is to see in a new way. And maybe it's an outrageous suggestion: to see our suffering, whatever we call it, but to not call it suffering. Not call it grief, not call it anguish, not call it dismay or depression or anxiety, and all these things that we now have gotten used to calling it. It's valuable to see it that way—I don't want to diminish the importance of seeing clearly. But when we meditate, it might be a time in our life where we can let it be very simple and just see it as pain. Making it that simple and seeing it just as pain might help us begin relaxing the mental activity of these overlays we put on top of it, the way we build the story of "me, myself, and mine." We might start seeing that some of those layers lighten up. The pain is still there, but it's not as intense, it's not as debilitating. It has a whole different quality to it.

I'll give you a simple example. Again, I don't want to belittle how difficult life is by giving a simple example, but simple makes it maybe clearer. It was a very powerful learning for me, so that's why I like telling it. When I first started meditating, I was practicing Zen, where you weren't supposed to move during the 40 minutes of meditation. But my body had not been conditioned to sit in this posture, and so my knees were on fire, they hurt a lot. But I wasn't supposed to move. So I had a lot of intense suffering around this. I felt self-pity, I felt fear, I felt upset, I was angry with myself, I was angry at others, I was feeling it was impossible, "Why me?" Very impatient, frustrated—all kinds of layers of things were happening.

Because I kept sitting this way, I slowly began to notice that there was a difference between experiencing the pain in and of itself and experiencing the pain with the self-pity and all the different aspects of it. If I had all this extra stuff—the self-pity, the impatience, the frustration—then it was intense psychological suffering, emotional suffering. But if I dropped the self-pity, the pain remained, but it didn't become as bad. It had space, had breathing room, it eased up. Sometimes the pain would become quite manageable, until I forgot about putting aside the self-pity, and it would come roaring back and the knee pain would get intense again. I saw over and over again how much overlay I put on it, and slowly began to simplify and simplify and not add all these layers on top.

Liberative Dependent Arising

That to me was incredibly inspiring, and it gave birth to a kind of inspiration, a faith, a trust, a confidence that this was useful to shift how I saw the pain. The radical idea from this talk today is whenever you have suffering and you're going to try to take a dharmic approach to it, like in meditation, see what the shift is if you stop calling it depression, anxiety, despair, grief, sadness. Without any diminishing of it, without any disrespect for what's happening for you, but simply shift the orientation to see it just as pain. Then breathe with that and see if some of the layers that are extra, the baggage on it, begin to settle.

If you get inspired, like I was by that, or have trust or confidence in it, that gives birth to something similar to what the Buddha said. Learning to see pain and suffering in a new way through practice—through the eyes of Vipassanā, clear seeing—gives birth to faith, to confidence, a kind of inspiration. If then you don't just get inspired, but with that faith and confidence you say, "Okay, now I'm going to start practicing this new way of seeing, I'm going to stabilize it, I'm going to use it more," and really give yourself to develop this new way of seeing, that's when the stream begins to flow.

At first it might be just a trickling little stream up in the mountain, but if we want to get this stream to grow and develop, we have to practice it. And so then we start practicing. We have this inspiration, and if the inspiration can fuel the practice—the confidence can fuel the practice—rather than continually falling back into the old patterns, that can give rise to gladness, to a delight that we have a practice. "Wow, this is cool. I didn't know that I could live this new way. It's hard, it's challenging, I doubt it at times, but there are times when it's really great and I think I'm on a path."

The Buddha said that once that faith is there and we continue to practice—without the practice, probably nothing will happen—then with the practice there comes a delight, a gladness, or a satisfaction, a feeling of "this is right." As that practice continues and you start getting more evidence that this works, as we get into the flow of the stream of practice, we feel this stream getting bigger. The stream starts to have a little bit more momentum. Initially it seems like we're doing the work, but with time it just seems like, "Oh, now it's that practice doing me. I'm kind of flowing along here." Being involved and being really engaged, having been able to put aside a lot of the distracted mind, the undistracted mind is really into doing this practice of seeing in a new way.

There's a kind of physiological delight, joy that comes. The Buddha said that if we keep practicing with delight, from the delight there grows a joy. As we keep practicing and settle into this and really start feeling the fruit of this—"This really works, this is good"—the practice begins growing. The stream lands into a large large lake that's calm and very tranquil. Tranquility sets in; it's like there's an ease, a certain like, "Oh, I have something here that really works. I don't have to be so agitated or so anxious anymore because I have this practice. The practice really helps me to see in a new way." I can't always do it, but just knowing I have the practice can make us less agitated.

We keep practicing and that tranquility fills up. It goes over the banks and creates a different river that's smoother. Remember, as big rivers get bigger and come down off the mountain into the plains, they can be very quiet, whereas in the mountains it's quite noisy as rapids and boulders go over. So it gets quieter, it becomes something called happiness, a pleasure or a deep sublime feeling. It just feels so good to be in the flow.

That, the Buddha said, gives birth to concentration, samadhi^[2], to really be present, really be here. That the Buddha said gives birth to seeing things as they are. This is now to get confirmation, a qualitatively different kind of affirmation and confirmation of the value of seeing in this new way. Now you see directly the evidence, "Oh, this really is significant." To see things because things are constantly flowing and changing in this natural world. To really see this flow, moving along, and seeing how nothing gets stuck and nothing gets frozen unless we bring the baggage and the self and the attachments to it—then things get solidified. But to see that without that baggage, without those overlays, things just naturally flow, the natural consistency of movement.

So not only do we feel like we're in the stream of practice, but now we see the stream, we see the flow. This feels so good, so right, so much clarity, that there starts to be what the Buddha said gets born: a disinterest or a disenchantment with the old way of seeing. Now the old way of seeing—egoistically or self-centeredly, or with all the baggage and concerns, or even some of the old cultural or familial ways we've learned to always see our life—is seen as maybe not so accurate or not so useful through that lens. We start becoming disinterested, disenchanted with it, and it begins to relax and fade away.

Seeing things as they are gives birth to a disinterest, a disenchantment, which gives birth to this movement of fading away of our attachments. And when the attachments have faded away enough—who knows when enough is enough, but when they're enough—something lets go and we have liberation. Liberation then flows further into a deep understanding of what this liberation is all about. One of the things it's about is not just a confirmation of seeing in a new way, but now inhabiting the new way of seeing, so it becomes like who we are, rather than something that we introduce into our life.

Remarkably, 2,500 years ago, the Buddha and the people around him who were practicing this—really looking at their minds to understand their minds and how to practice with these minds and hearts we have—discovered these amazing tools and capacities of the mind that they then described in quite inspiring ways. The description I use today is something called Liberative Dependent Arising, how liberation comes dependent on certain conditions being in place. There are 12 steps, and they are born on the basis of seeing suffering in a new way.

That gives birth to faith. Faith gives birth to delight. Delight gives birth to joy. Joy gives birth to tranquility. Tranquility gives birth to happiness. Happiness gives birth to concentration, samadhi. Samadhi gives birth to seeing things as they are. Seeing things as they are gives birth to disinterest in attachments. Disinterest or disenchantment gives birth to the fading away of attachments. The fading away of attachments is the condition that leads to the ending of attachments, which is called liberation. Once there's liberation, the story doesn't end there. Then there's understanding what has happened and really understanding now we're living in the world with new eyes, seeing in a new way.

And all this depends on itself, the whole list depends on practicing. The practice we do is the rain. I love the analogy of rain because it's just little drops, moment by moment, that we're adding. Those drops are not inconsequential moments of mindfulness, but the continuity of it, more and more, over and over again. So it's not just the occasional drop, but it becomes lots of rain falling on the parched ground, overflowing and building up the volume that allows the river to get bigger and bigger and bigger.

So practice based on seeing in a new way. You might consider: is there a new way to see that you could try out? Is there a new way of seeing you'll do provisionally, meaning you don't have to accept it as the absolute true way of seeing things, but maybe it's just a different orientation and different perspective? To see without any reference to "me, myself, and I," without reference to past and future. Just see pain, see suffering just as pain, very simply, and see if that begins to loosen up the crust, the solidification of all this extra baggage, extra layers that we add on top of the difficulties of this human life. If those difficulties don't have all these extra layers, maybe it's easier. And maybe we'll be inspired to practice because it's really worthwhile once we start getting a glimpse of this new way of seeing. It's really worthwhile to do what it takes to let this glimpse become a bigger and more regular part of our life.

To see in a new way, Vipassanā. May you see in a new way, and may we as a community share that with each other and see each other in this new way. I think that we'll end up with tremendous delight and appreciation for each other.

Thank you very much.