Guided Meditation: Relaxing, Recognizing, Releasing and Resting; Dharmette: A Monastery Within story (4 of 5) Practicing with Mindfulness

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Resting; A Monastery Within story (4 of 5) Practicing with Mindfulness. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Ying Chen, 陈颖 at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 08, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Relaxing, Recognizing, Releasing and Resting

Good morning, Sangha. Good morning, everyone. Welcome.

I am not seeing myself here. Are you able to see me on YouTube? For some reason, I'm not able to see myself. Okay, I'm going to start the meditation. I'm hoping everything is working okay. I'm not able to see the YouTube myself, but I do see the messages. Let's begin. I'm going to assume that everything works okay.

This morning, we've been working through these words that start with 'R', and today I will add one more 'R' to this unfolding meditative process. These last few days we started with relaxing, and added to it that in the relaxed field, we can recognize things clearly. With recognition, we get to release any extra tension that we notice, along with grasping and clinging. Today, I will be adding one more word to this, and that is resting. Once any extra tension gets released, we can simply rest. That's the process that we'll go through.

Let's begin with a meditation. Please take a meditative posture if you're not in one already. Now again, evoke this image of entering into a temple. Maybe that's conducive because of the metaphors we've been using in our dharmettes.

Take a few moments to allow yourself to settle into the space you're in. Arriving here and now.

Imagine entering into a temple. An ancient temple. The temple of this body, this mind, this heart. Just this image of entering into the temple may already evoke some felt sense in the body, or certain feelings in the heart. For me, there is an immediate quieting down of my mind, and there is a tenderness and respect in the heart. As we enter into the temple of this body, take your seat right in the middle. Arriving right here and now.

Grounding the body. Inviting relaxation and ease. As if you're settling into your home. A homecoming.

Mindfulness is front and center. And maybe heartfulness is front and center.

As the sense of arriving deepens, invite the relaxation and the ease to deepen. Maybe the relaxation can happen throughout the body, and maybe even at the cellular level. A microscopic level, easing up.

Relaxing the thinking muscles. Relaxing the heart into some sense of opening. An unburdened heart.

In this relaxed field, we can begin to turn our attention to any familiar meditative object, whether it's recognizing the movements of the breath, sensations in the body, waves of emotions, or fleeting thoughts.

Simple recognition. Pure recognition.

Maybe this recognition arises out of the felt sense, the immediacy of the felt sense through the body. We can let go of the conceptual overlays, the stories. Staying with the felt sense of your experience.

If you notice any tension, tightness, or constriction that's creeping up, see if there is a way to relax and release the extra tension. This is not a big project to undertake. Use a very light touch. It's like opening the palms.

A simple, unentangled awareness. Allow our system to rest. To deeply settle.

Resting. The word "resting" carries such a flavor of being peaceful. Being peaceful in the midst of what is happening in your experience. Peaceful abiding. To rest is to stop doing. Resting is simply being.

There is a process of relaxing, recognizing, releasing, and resting. Wherever you are is a perfect place to be.

Sitting in the relaxed and restful field, our hearts and minds can open to receive experiences of the world at large—the challenges and the beauty. And from this field, we can receive the challenges and beauty in our own heart and mind.

Dharmette: A Monastery Within story (4 of 5) Practicing with Mindfulness

Thank you, everyone. Today I will continue from the theme that we've been speaking about: the multifaceted or multidimensional aspects of our practice path. We've spoken about how we practice the words kindness and embodiment—holding babies in the premature ward^[1], or practicing in family dynamics. Yesterday we spoke about practicing in the relational field.

Today we will continue with yet another story from A Monastery Within^[2]. This is called "Many Ways of Walking the Path."

The monastery held a big public event celebrating the birth of the Buddha. As crowds of visitors came to commemorate the event, commotion and noise rang throughout the monastery. In the early afternoon, four young monks decided to slip out the back gate. They had decided that they weren't needed, and that their absence would not be noticed. They decided to hike a well-trodden path into the mountains.

As they hiked, one of the monks said, "I'm so glad we decided to get away from all the chaos of the monastery. I was agitated by all the people and activity."

Another monk replied, "It hadn't occurred to me that we were trying to get away from anything. I thought we left the monastery because we wanted to reach the overlook with a beautiful vista that is along this path."

The third monk then spoke up quite forcefully: "I am not interested in escaping what is behind us or focusing on distant goals. I thought we were simply walking the path to enjoy the views each step along the way."

Impatient with what the others had said, the fourth monk said, "I thought we headed out on this path to get exercise. The goals you all have for our walk are all temporary. By building up our strength, we will be better prepared for even longer hikes that we may have to undergo. Also, it is such a delight to move and feel vitality coursing through the body."

As each committed to his approach for walking the path, they each decided to go on their own way. After all, why should they be troubled to walk with someone who had a different understanding of what the walk was about?

The further he walked from the monastery, the less the first monk felt obsessed by the festivities he had left behind. When he felt quite removed from the monastery, his motivation for the hike disappeared, and he sat down and took a nap leaning against a tree. (This might remind you of something—the rabbit!)

The second monk was so eager to reach the overlook that he didn't notice the rocks and the roots that lay across the path. He stumbled and fell often. After a while, he was scraped and bruised enough that he sat down, giving up on the hike.

Further along the path, when the path passed through a scenic meadow^[3], the third monk left the path to admire the beautiful butterflies flying among the colorful flowers. Thoroughly enjoying himself, he stayed in the meadow until it was time to return to the monastery.

The fourth monk became absorbed in the exercise of walking. As the flow of vitality increased in his body, his attention was increasingly absorbed into his immediate physical experience. When the path went by the overlook, he didn't notice and kept hiking further into the mountains.

That evening, the abbess^[4], who tended to notice everything that happened at the monastery, met with the four monks and asked why they had left together but returned separately. The monks explained that they had disagreed about why they were on the path. They said because they couldn't agree on what they were doing, they had to separate, each hiking according to his own purpose for walking the path.

Upon hearing this, the abbess laughed and then said, "The Buddhist Path (with a capital 'P') only exists when someone walks it. While people walking on this path do so for many different reasons, they are all equally walkers. It doesn't matter what motivates them as long as they walk the path mindfully. If you're mindful, the shortcomings of any purpose will be overcome. As abbess, my job is to help make sure you keep walking the path. Your mindfulness and persistence will take care of everything else."

Well, we can't talk about the practice or the path without saying something about mindfulness, right?

No matter why we started walking the path, or what forms of practice we're engaging in—whether it's meditative practice on retreats, holding babies, caring for the family, caring for the community, or making a livelihood—mindful presence plays such a central role in our path.

I loved this analogy that I heard early on in my practice: mindfulness is like turning the light on in the darkness. When the light is on, it has so many functions. The path will begin to unfold clearly.

In the story, the first monk walked the path out of the desire to escape the chaos in the monastery. Some of us may have started the path out of a desire to escape the chaos internally to ourselves, or externally. But when we begin to pay attention to our immediate experience, we may notice—so often, I wouldn't say all the time, but so often—the chaos is more or less like a jumbled cluster of thoughts stitched together by our views, beliefs, and ideas. They become a story that we repeat to ourselves again and again, and they can be so convincing.

Right? It can start with something very simple. My neighbor talks really loud. Well, what's wrong with this man? How can that be? How can you be so inconsiderate? You know, maybe I should move away from this neighborhood. I can't stand to see him anymore. Well, I've been thinking about moving away anyway for other reasons. Maybe this is just yet another reason for me to do this. But wait a minute, why should I move? He should be moving!

You can see, right? There are so many times the chaos that we create in our mind is just this kind of jumbled set of thoughts, stitched together because of our opinions, views, and ideas. But if we're paying attention and we're mindful about it, we can see through it: Ah, this is just a whole jumble of opinions and thoughts. They're quite fleeting. They're quite elusive.

As we become mindful, we can relax and release. Release the holding, the belief, the solidity of the stories that we may be holding on to.

The second monk, who rushed through the path to try to get to the end or get to the overlook, ended up with a lot of scrapes and bruises, giving up the walk altogether. Without being aware, our goals can become a barrier at some point. I remember from my own first Theravada^[5] retreat, I had no other agenda but to get enlightened. That was it! I had no other thing going on. I tried so hard. I got up early in the morning, slept late in the evening, and I got a whole lot of bruises and scrapes of my own kind on that retreat.

Fortunately, I didn't give up like the second monk. I did persist. And at some point, a little bit of mindfulness lit up, and I realized that all that striving and trying were creating a bigger barrier rather than being a support. That actually cracked open the path for me. Mindfulness is a key part of the practice.

The third monk was all about enjoying the scenery and got caught up by the butterflies and the flowers. Just like that monk, sometimes we can get caught by the goodies along the path—whether it's a pleasant meditative experience or some high praises your friends have been telling you. How do we avoid getting caught? Mindfulness. We can become aware of how we might get caught, and when we release that, we can keep going.

The last monk of the story kept on walking by simply being present, taking one step at a time. This simple, immediate kind of walking the path brought vitality and sustained him deep into the mountains.

As the abbess says, the Buddhist Path (with a capital 'P') only exists while one walks it. The story of this last monk is to be continued tomorrow, so that's probably enough for today. Thank you for your attention, and thank you for your practice. We will resume in our Global Sangha tomorrow morning. Have a wonderful day, everyone.