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: In Touch with Commitment

So hello to everyone, and I'm happy for all of you who are here today and participating. It's a wonderful feeling of a network of connections between people with similar interests doing something quite wholesome, and something that I believe is very beneficial for our world. So, thank you.

And because this meditation practice is so beneficial—beneficial for oneself, beneficial for one's communities, beneficial for the world—that is why I teach it, and I'm quite confident in its tremendous value.

Because it is of great value, it is useful to sit down with a sense of commitment. Commitment is a big word. There are people who are said to be commitment-shy. I like the word commitment because the "mit" part has the same root as the word mitten. It has to do with the hand and with what we can touch. Whether it's quite accurate or not, the point being that commitment is with what we touch—commitment with what we're in touch with.

To be in touch with oneself, what is the commitment? What's the way in which we touch our experience right here? Once we take it in and really recognize and know what's happening here for us in an in-touch way, then can we offer something to that? Can we offer a commitment, a dedication?

A word that I love that's connected to this is the word devotion. Not that it's devoted to something outside of our experience, but being devoted, committed to our experience, and to have a commitment to meet it, to be with it in a wholesome way. It is said that mindfulness is always wholesome, and mindfulness is that attention that we bring to our experience, the way we touch our experience that is absent of any greed, hatred, or delusion, and all the associated states that are unwholesome.

This amazing thing, that we can find our way from the unwholesome to the wholesome, can theoretically be so simple that it's just to be mindful. We don't have to drum up kindness, or generosity, or love, just to see clearly what is here and to have a commitment to that. To be present, to be aware in this moment, stay in touch with our experience.

Commitment shares at least one quality that greed has: both greed and commitment involve holding on to something. However, in terms of commitment in doing practice, it's to be committed to something wholesome, something which leads to our benefit, leads to freedom, whereas greed leads to bondage. The commitment to the practice leads to freedom, but it's worth holding on to. We have to hold on to it wholesomely; we have to hold on to it in a way that leads to freedom, not getting further entangled and caught.

So I take the word commitment to be in touch with the purpose of why we're sitting. To be in touch with the purpose, the tremendous value of staying present, staying here, staying with our experience.

For this sitting today, maybe you can see if you can be supported in the practice with a sense of commitment, dedication, devotion, or sense of purpose that you hold on to gently, lovingly, or caringly. Not tightly, but you hold on: stay here. Maybe that's even the mantra: "I'm going to stay here. Stay in touch. Stay in touch." But don't do it so tight that you bring tension to yourself, and don't hold it so loosely that you drift away too easily. Stay present. Stay committed.

Assuming a posture of commitment, a posture of purpose. A posture that expresses: "Now here I am. My whole being will be dedicated to this period of staying in touch."

Closing your eyes and taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. On the long exhale, see if you can slowly settle in. Not so much to be relaxed here and settled here, but settled into a sense of, "Yes, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to be here staying in touch with my direct experience."

In touch with my embodied experience. In touch with a sense of purpose and commitment to the simplicity of the body breathing, to be awake and present.

And then letting your breathing return to normal.

As you relax different parts of your body, maybe what you do is you're relaxing into a sense of purpose or a sense of commitment to being here, to practice, to stay present.

Maybe beginning by relaxing the muscles of the face. Many of the micro-muscles that tighten up in the face can represent other intentions, other purposes that we're trying to do over the course of the day. But to relax the face, on the exhale to soften. Relax the shoulders, so more of you can settle down into a commitment here and now.

And then relaxing the belly. Softening the belly and maybe even settling your way further down your torso as a grounding to this commitment to be here and present.

And then to also relax the brain, soften the thinking mind. Relax any way that the sense of commitment may have tension in it or pressure in it. A dedication to keeping the commitment relaxed and easy, but still committed, staying in touch with the practice.

Having a commitment to being present, staying with your breathing. But to have a commitment where you don't have to be successful, you don't have to manage to stay present or stay on the breathing. That's just a burden, to have a need and requirement for the commitment. Rather, to do your best, and whenever you wander off, to remember the commitment so you come back right away.

Stay and relax into your present moment experience with a commitment, with a dedication, moment by moment.

Gently holding on to the present moment. Holding on to staying in touch. Holding on to mindfulness in such a way that it keeps opening you to awareness that is free of attachment.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, I evoke the idea of the practice of dedication. Some people will take dedication to a slightly higher level of making it a vow. But dedication to practice, to live for the benefit and welfare of the whole world and for others. Not as a duty, not as an obligation, not as a heavy burden to carry, but rather because it seems to express a natural feeling, intention, or desire that arises out of the heart.

Sometimes when practice gets very peaceful and settled, where there is very little anxiety or attachments, it can feel very natural to respond to the suffering of the world. As natural as if your pillow at night is a little uncomfortable under your head; half asleep, you might bunch up the pillow in a different way. With that kind of ordinariness and simplicity, the heart's dedication to care for the world can arise.

At the end of the sitting, it can be expressed in words or in thoughts so that it moves through us, it's expressed, and not just a feeling.

May it be that this practice that we have done this morning, may it somehow, in seen and unseen ways, in intentional and unintentional ways, spread from us out into the world, contributing to the greater welfare, happiness, and freedom of all beings. So that those who are unhappy, may we contribute to their happiness. Those who don't feel safe, may we contribute to greater safety. To those who don't know peace, may they taste and experience more peace. And those who are not free, those who are oppressed, subjugated, limited, in bondage, may it bring them freedom.

May we contribute this practice of ours, contribute to the welfare and happiness of all beings everywhere. May all beings be free.

Dharmette: The Dharmic Life (4 of 5) Intention and Commitment

Before I start this talk, I want to mention that tomorrow morning I thought we could have a Zoom meeting after our 7:00 AM sit and talk. We haven't done that for a long time, and I've certainly missed doing it. We will do it for about 45 minutes, as I have other things tomorrow to go to. I will post the Zoom link on the IMC calendar for tomorrow, I'll also post it in the "What's New" section of IMC's website, and here on the chat. There will be a password to get in, and that password will be mettā^[1], the Pali word for loving-kindness: m-e-t-t-a. I'll explain how that all works again tomorrow, but we'll just go over to Zoom and we can do a little bit of a Q&A if you have any questions about this week's topics, and maybe a little short period for breakout groups so you can meet each other a little bit. It'll be short and sweet, 45 minutes or so.

The topic this week is living a dharmic life, with the emphasis that there are things we can bring into our daily life that will enhance our sense of practice and dedication, bringing us the benefits of a full-time religious life. Being in a monastery or being in a retreat center is more a matter of degree. When a person is living a monastic life, they get all these reminders to practice, all these associations and schedules that put them back into thinking about the practice or remembering to do it. For people who are not living a monastic life or living in a retreat center, it's harder to remember. Sometimes there are family responsibilities or work responsibilities that pull us into their orbit so strongly that we don't think about practice, or don't think about mindfulness, being present, or the values of the Dharma^[2].

But the difference is not a matter of all or nothing; it's a matter of degree. Overall, for most people who practice in monasteries, for example, they're not necessarily stellar monastics in that every waking moment they're doing the practice. Some of them are maybe not even as dedicated to the practice as some people I know who are laypeople living in the world. So, it's a matter of degree.

If you're living an ordinary lay life, it's possible to increase the degree to which you're dedicated to get a lot of the benefits of a full-time or more dedicated dharma life. That's what the teachings this week are about.

On Monday, it was about being embodied, being present, and mindfulness of the body. Just practicing that through the day is tremendously beneficial, letting the body be your temple, your monastery. Mindfulness of speech was the second day, caring for your speech and noticing why you're going to say what you're doing, the tone of voice in which you say it. There's a whole world of our inner life that gets revealed if we really pay attention to our speaking. Rather than listening to the abbot of the monastery give a dharma talk, listen to yourself speak. Maybe it's not a dharma talk, but maybe you start becoming conscious of what you are doing, and it starts moving naturally. You'd want it to be more dharmic if you're really listening to yourself.

And then there was the dedication to being harmless, the singular essential essence of the whole Buddhadharma: living a life which is harmless to self and others.

Today the topic is commitment, or living with a sense of purpose and really being dedicated to that sense of purpose. Sometimes when mindfulness is taught, we emphasize the side of mindfulness that has to do with not wanting, not reacting, just being in experience, and just coming back to being still. That is all well and good, but we have different layers of our psyche, of our mind, different areas of how we engage in the world.

For example, when we sit down to meditate, we might be really dedicated to just being present, just being, and not trying to do so much. We let go of the doing mind and just feel still, quiet, and peaceful. It can be so nourishing to do that. But there was something that brought us to the meditation cushion. There was a dedication, there was a commitment, there was a sense of purpose that brought us there to do that practice. So, before meditating, there's a sense of purpose, and then we can put away that purpose just to sit and meditate. I'm trying to say that in different areas of life, it's appropriate to look at these different qualities, and the quality I'm encouraging today is to look at your intentions.

Why do you do things? What's really the intention, the sense of purpose underneath it? Not the surface purpose or surface intention, but what's really the heart's intention in doing whatever we're doing? What are the inner life's deeper intentions and sense of purpose in what we're trying to do? Just to look at that and be mindful of that is a whole valuable practice in itself.

To take it a step further is to spend some time reflecting on your deepest intention. What's your heart's deepest wish? If a genie came along and said, "I can provide you with anything at all," what's your heart's deepest wish? Not what your desires are or your ego is, but if you really get quiet and listen, what does your heart most want? What is the deepest intention?

I think this is so valuable that I sometimes encourage people that it's more important to spend time every day reflecting on your deepest intention than it is to meditate every day. Clearly, I value meditation a lot, so for me to say that it's even more important to reflect on your deepest intention says something about how important I think this is. And do it over time; not just do it one day and decide what it is, but keep coming back and looking at it every day, because it morphs and changes. You see different angles of it, or you see layers and go deeper and deeper over time.

If you find that you answer the question, "What is your deepest intention?" with a negative statement like, "My deepest intention is not to be afraid," that's fine. But you might want to see that if that negative thing was accomplished, what then would be your deepest intention? If you could feel safe, then what would be available for you?

So then with this reflection of a purposeful life, an intentional life—what are you living for? Not so much from the ideas of shoulds and shouldn'ts, but really what is the heart's wish? What is the heart's deepest intention? I emphasize the heart because it's a metaphor for some inner depth where it seems to arise out of us in the most natural way we can imagine. It's not an effort for it to come, but it really feels like it's integral to who we are in some deep, intimate way.

And then there's a commitment to that. Living a committed life is something wholesome and valuable. If you have something that's wholesome and valuable that's your purpose or your intention, then it's a wholesome thing to have a commitment to it.

There are so many wise things a person can do in one's life. Some people just have too many choices—tremendous amounts. It's like going into a supermarket these days with all these choices to make, whereas in the old days you went to a little market and there weren't so many brands and choices; you just took what was there. For some people in the modern world, there are so many choices and ideas of what we should be doing, and people can get so busy doing all the different things they are called on to do.

A wise life is one that is able to let go of even wholesome things—good things to do—so that we could really focus on a few things really well. Sometimes if we do a lot of different things, we don't go very deep in any of them. Some things are so valuable and so useful to give ourselves over to in a fuller, deeper way and really see them all the way through to the depth or the heart of it.

This dharmic life—if that's what you're interested in doing, there's no obligation to do it—is worth really spending time on. Reflecting on your sense of purpose with it, your intentions with it, and also your sense of commitment. Maybe there's a way of being more committed so that you have clarity in its purpose, and you put aside some of the things you do which don't really fit that purpose, that dilute your possibility of engagement, and really let it grow and develop.

If you are watching movies on the computer every day by a factor of two, three, or four times longer than you ever meditate, that says something about what you're committed to, what's important for you. And maybe it's okay. Maybe there's a higher purpose that comes from watching TV programs. But what do you want your life most to be about? By the time you get to be old or are going to die, do you want to look back and list all the TV programs and movies you've seen and say, "Ah, that was a life well spent"? Or do you look back at your practice life, your dharmic life, and realize how much you've changed and grown and say, "Oh, that was a life well spent," or your life of supporting other people?

Having a committed life, there are plenty of times in Buddhist history and traditions where the sense of commitment even takes the form of a vow. It's almost what goes on when we take refuge^[3]. To hold on to the refuge, we have deep faith, commitment, and conviction, and we hold on in a wholesome way. We dedicate ourselves, we limit ourselves to some degree: "This is what I want to do."

As you go through your daily life, maybe your daily life doesn't change any, but the sense of commitment is to bring practice to everything you do. Bring it into embodiment, into speech. Whatever you're doing, you're going to do it in a committed way, committed to the practice as you do it, as if that's more important than what you're doing. At work, practicing as you work is more important than getting a raise, for example.

Intention, commitment, dedication, and devotion can be some of the great supports and nourishments for a dharmic life. You might want to consider, at least for the next 24 hours, what is it that you are committed to? If you really reflect deeply, what intentions do you want to have for your life? When you look back over your life at the end of it, what would you like to see about how you lived that life? Does that reflection give you something to be committed to in a devoted and relaxed way, but still committed?

Thank you very much. We'll continue one more time tomorrow with this topic.