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Guided Meditation: Thinking to Support Meditaiton

Hello and welcome. I'm quite happy to be back here for this YouTube community. I'll be here for this week, then away again for another week-long retreat. For this week, I would like to make the theme mindful speaking. I'll say more about it later, but for this meditation, I'd like to suggest doing a radically different thing.

Normally in meditation, we're focused on quieting the thinking mind. Sometimes we realize that the thinking mind takes us so far away from the present moment that we're not even meditating. We're fantasizing, planning, or remembering—we're doing something else, lost and caught up in it. And so, thinking is sometimes considered to be the problem we're supposed to address; we try to find a way not to think so much, looking for a quiet mind.

What I'd like to suggest for this week is that you include your thinking as part of the meditation. This doesn't mean giving it free rein to think whatever it wants to think, but rather dropping the expectation that you are supposed to have a silent mind without thoughts. The middle way, the meditative way, is to have thoughts which are actively supporting you to become more peaceful, more aware of the present moment, less reactive, and kinder to your experience.

Think about how discursive thoughts can be quieted. Tell yourself how you have better things to do than be involved in fantasies of the past, present, or future plans. You want to be thinking about the depth of this moment—the full possibility of here and now for connecting with yourself, really knowing yourself in a deep way, and feeling yourself. You want to talk to yourself in a way that feels kind, meditative, quiet, and spacious. Do this not in a hurry, not trying to make something happen, but more like you're being your own best friend sitting with you, listening deeply, and involved in the conversation to help you settle and be your best self from the inside out.

Of course, you don't have to do this, but you might consider whether this approach might be better than the alternative. I'll start us off, and some of the ways that I guide you in the beginning might be a model of how you can guide yourself. Part of speaking to yourself in meditation is giving yourself instructions or a guided meditation, doing it in such a way that the mind is speaking in a settling, spacious, and quiet manner.

To begin, feel into the body. Take a gentle survey of your physical body as it is right now. Bring the attention to your posture, noting the different elements of it. Are there ways that the body would like the posture adjusted? Not simply to be comfortable, but so that the body is supportive and actively involved in being aware and arriving here in the present moment.

Are there places in the body that welcome relaxation? It could be large muscles, like the whole belly, or it could be tiny muscles. Where can the body be relaxed and softened? Maybe going up into the area of your head—are there things in your face, your forehead, and your brain that could be relaxed and softened?

Have some curiosity about the experience of the body breathing, the experience of movement, and the shifting sensations as you breathe in and out. Ask yourself: What are the characteristics of breathing at this time? Is it different than other times?

Ask yourself which is more clear to awareness: the inhale or the exhale. Notice if there's any holding or tension in the breathing. If there is, ask yourself how you can be aware of it in the simplest way, without any judgment or pressure. Ask yourself if there are some simple ways to soften around the edges of your breathing.

Ask yourself what your thinking is doing. Can you recruit your thinking to keep you here in the present moment? Let it guide you and support you to be just here, with no reference to before or after, yesterday or tomorrow. Cultivate a living experience of now through your body and your breathing, as if you're gently entering into a whole new world. This can be a peaceful world. At its center, it is very peaceful. Can you enter into it in a peaceful way? Think peacefully and quietly. Remain curious and interested, guiding yourself to a quiet, settled way of being here and now.

Are you thinking about other things at other times? If so, you don't have to let go of your thinking. Simply switch your thinking over to the meditation itself. Think about the meditation in ways that support your quieting, your settling, and a peaceful abiding here and now. As things get quieter, your thinking can be reduced and simplified to single words: Here. Now.

As we come to the end of the sitting, take a minute or so to reflect and contemplate how you are right now. Notice how you might be different now than at the beginning of the sitting. Consider how you are, and allow yourself to receive the benefits—the calming, the honesty, and the goodwill of these minutes of meditation.

Then, turn the attention out into the world so that your meditation doesn't just stay as an area that is personal and private. Can you offer the merit^[1], the benefit, to the world and the people around you? Can you consider how this meditation might make you a better person in your interactions with others, so that the goodness of this practice that we all share this day is spread out across the lands?

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. Thank you.

Dharmette: Right Speech (AUDIT: 1 of 5) Accurate

Hello everyone, and I am happy to be here. I was away for a month teaching a silent meditation retreat, and the whole month was dedicated to the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta^[2], the discourse on the four foundations of mindfulness. It was a wonderful time, wonderful practice, and a wonderful experience for everyone there and for myself.

Now I'm happy to be back here for a week, perhaps swinging to the more difficult place to do mindfulness practice, which is in daily life, and in particular, with speech. Many people find it almost impossible to stay mindful while they're speaking, but it is also one of the most rewarding areas of practice. It's a way of learning to speak in ways that are true to ourselves, beneficial for ourselves, and also true and beneficial for other people. It's a way of building continuity. Mindfulness is not just something we do in meditation; it's something we bring to our lives. In that process, we really get to see ourselves in different ways than we do in meditation. We see our reactions, our beliefs, what drives us, and what our responses are to what happens around us. In doing so, we become wiser about clinging, grasping, fears, and desires, and we find a wise way to live in this world.

The Buddha gave five different guidelines for contemplating and considering what to say and how to speak. They are guidelines on how to be mindful of what's particularly useful, what awakens something very significant inside of us, and what connects us to the Dharma^[3]—the best inside of us—where freedom is possible. It's a wonderful way to be mindful of speech to consider these five criteria.

I've put the five together with an acronym. Since it's a way of considering your speech, I'm calling it a speech AUDIT. Hopefully, you receive this idea without feeling like you're being tested or investigated; it's just a way of being more aware of what goes on when you're speaking. In the Buddha's time, the five were in a slightly different order, but in plain English, for this acronym, AUDIT, the criteria are:

• Accurate: Is it true?
• Useful: Is it beneficial to speak?
• Disposition: Can we say it with a mind of goodwill?
• Impact: Is it gentle? What is the impact our speech has on ourselves and others?
• Timely: Is it timely?

The first one is: Is it accurate? Is it true? That is our focus for today. Over the course of the week, we'll do one of these each day.

One of the inspiring aspects of what the Buddha teaches is something called protecting the truth, or preserving the truth. This means being very careful when you speak about something to let people know the source, the basis, or the evidence for what you're saying. Many people make declarative statements as if they are absolute truth. When that's the case, people can't participate. They don't understand the origin or the source well enough to think for themselves, consider how it works for them, check your sources, or reply reasonably with why they believe what they believe.

The Buddha provided ways to preserve the truth, which in ordinary, modern speech might sound like saying, "I believe..." When you say this, people know it's a belief rather than you claiming you know the ultimate truth. I think that's very generous, appropriate, and helpful for conversations. Making a claim that you know the absolute truth is often a conversation stopper.

Another way is expressing a preference: "I like this idea," or "I prefer this idea." It's just an idea, and you have an orientation towards it. Again, it's very personal, and you're not making an absolute claim that other people have to either take or leave.

Next is saying, "I was told," "I read," or "I heard." Here, the source is something outside of yourself. You don't know if that source is accurate or true, so you're not going to repeat it as if it's true, but it might be important for you to mention it. That allows a listener to take it in, reflect on it, and consider if there's any merit in what's being said, as opposed to having to receive it strictly as true or false.

Lastly, there is saying, "My reasoning tells me," or "When I reason it out logically, this is what I come to." Again, people understand the source and how you got to it. You might explain the logic that brought you to the conclusion, and then people can engage with that logic. They can appreciate it and understand better why you believe it. Maybe they follow that logic and agree, or maybe they can see flaws in the logic and offer an alternative. This creates a space where you begin to understand each other and what's behind the opinions. There's room in the conversation for everyone to change, grow, and respond; no one is having something forced upon them.

There are many conversations where people present their opinions as if they are true, with a "take it or leave it" attitude. Sometimes there's an assertiveness or almost a demand behind it: "You have to agree with me, or you are wrong." But if you provide the source for what you're saying, it's easier for people to participate conversationally. It's also a way for you to preserve the truth. You can say all kinds of things, but if you explain where they come from, that is what is true. If you don't say that, you might actually be saying something which is not true.

Related to this, another way of being accurate in your speech is to not be quick to present judgments as fact. If you say to someone, "You're awful," that's a huge judgment that can be very painful to hear. But if you instead talk about your own experience and say, "I found myself feeling very uncomfortable when you said that, could we talk about it?" the focus is on yourself and the impact the interaction had. Now you're inviting a conversation.

If you make a heavy judgment and tell someone what you think of them as if it's the truth, it can't be the truth. A judgment is an opinion. It has particular reasons and background for why we might say it. Part of it might simply be that I'm too uncomfortable to stand here, I need to push you away, or I don't want to look at myself. So we must be very careful that the feelings we have are not presented as statements of fact, but rather statements of feeling: "This is how I feel. This is what's going on for me." This is a way of speaking honestly.

Speaking the truth, being honest, and mindfulness are essentially the same thing. Honesty is mindfulness out loud. The primary characteristic of mindfulness, more than anything else, is self-honesty.

There are a lot of questions about whether we should always be honest in our social life, and people will come up with all kinds of horrific examples of when maybe it should be okay to lie. But one of the core aspects of Buddhist teaching is that it's never okay to lie to yourself. We always want to sit in honesty with ourselves, see ourselves, and know how to do that in a way that is kind, useful, and supportive, rather than in a way that undermines us or hits us over the head with what we think is the truth.

When we speak the truth to ourselves, this idea of preserving the truth is also very important. What's the basis upon which we say something is true about ourselves? It might just be an opinion. It might be something we've worked out logically, or it might be based on what we've heard from our society about what is right and wrong. To be able to really look deeply at our own speech and how we talk to ourselves is invaluable.

To start doing more and more of this in our social life, and to be known by the people around us as honest, starts making social peace. We need to know how to be honest in a useful and appropriate way so that people feel safe and reassured around us. It's a gift to the world, and it's a powerful way of bringing greater mindfulness to our day-to-day, moment-to-moment life by paying attention to what's behind and underneath what we say, and questioning whether what we say is true.

If you're interested in an assignment for this next day, I would suggest that when you have the occasion to offer an opinion—some idea that you think is true—that you explain the source of that opinion, the basis for it, and where you got it from. Is it because you read it in the news? Is it because you reasoned it out? Is it because this is simply your preferred way of seeing it? Experiment with preserving the truth by talking about the source or the basis upon which you're expressing an opinion.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to being here tomorrow.