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Guided Meditation: Hearing and Seeing Peacefully

Warm greetings from here, the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California, and in the United States, on this planet Earth, which we all share. Of all the places we could be on this Earth, we're all sharing the surface of it—connected now through the electrical grid of wires and signals. Nice to be together.

One of the common presentations of mindfulness is that it is some form of non-judgmental, non-reactive, non-interfering attention. Somehow we allow things to appear in awareness so that they are clearly known, but we don't try to fix them, push them away, or hold on to them. We don't need to get involved conceptually with judging their worth, or our worth because we have this thought or this feeling.

One of the ways this is taught sometimes in the Insight meditation tradition is to make the distinction between listening and hearing. Listening is something we intentionally, actively do. For example, someone says, "Listen to the sound from outside," and then you direct your attention a particular way to listen to those sounds. Maybe in some cartoonish way, if we're going to listen to something on our left, the left ear gets bigger or stretches in order to listen. Distinct from that is hearing.

We can hear even if we're not actively listening. Sometimes teachers will give instructions on hearing sound meditation, where the focus is on relaxing, letting things be, and just letting things be heard. There's a selectivity process to the ear, but it's hard to interfere with what we hear unless we go over and do something about it. But just allow it to arrive and appear, and be surprised at what comes to the ear. Some of it we clearly are not manufacturing. Some people find that just listening to the ambient sound keeps them in the present moment in a very nice way, and allows them to relax deeply because they're letting go of any effort to try to make something happen within them.

In the same way, we have the distinction between seeing and looking. Looking is active, and seeing is the "I see." It doesn't have to be an intention or a directive. You can ask someone, "Notice what you're seeing," as opposed to, "Look at the sunset."

In the teachings of the Buddha, both of these ideas are used, but the primary one is seeing. We are practicing and developing our capacity to see with the mind's eye. Sometimes that's called the Dharma eye. We are learning to see with the inner eye or inner perception. It doesn't have to be choosing the organ of seeing as the inner ear or the inner perception, but rather an inner knowing that is non-interfering, non-judgmental, and unentangled with what's going on.

This ability to rest back in just seeing requires a stability of mind. If the mind is jumping around a lot to distracting thoughts, there isn't a continuity of seeing. The Buddha teaches the continuity of seeing over time: just settling back, observing, and seeing what's there. This is a very important capacity for attention.

So, assume a stance for meditation—a position where you are going to be rooted and established here and now. Gently close your eyes.

If there are some sounds around you, allow them to come peacefully, quietly to your ears, or receive them peacefully and quietly. Maybe as if you were listening to a symphony or some peaceful music, letting it wash over you. Not straining to hear. Just hearing.

Relaxing any tension between the ears or in the mind, or anywhere in the attempt to hear, and let it almost be a surprise what comes. The sound of my voice.

As you're hearing, maybe a little piece of your attention goes to the breathing. Just enough that you're aware of the exhale. Relax the body as you exhale.

Then letting go of hearing, instead let there be sensing of the body breathing. A sensing that has a quality more like hearing rather than looking—more receptive awareness than an effortful awareness.

Allow whatever sensations there are associated with breathing to simply appear on their own into awareness. Maybe on different breaths, somewhat different sensations show themselves. Different locations. Different intensities. Almost as if your body is a canvas, and the sensations that appear are like the strokes of paint that wash across the canvas. Not quite sure what will come, but the canvas receives it.

As you're feeling the sensations of breathing a little bit gently on the edges of awareness, let there be a relaxing in the body on the exhale. Mostly sensing the paintbrushes of sensations across the canvas. Sensations of breathing.

But peripherally, gently, as you exhale, relax the thinking mind. As you quiet the mind, maybe it can be like the canvas expands in all directions, becomes larger.

Imagine that you're sitting quietly, comfortably in an easy chair, gazing, watching the painting of the canvas. How it all occurs, sensations and sensing, knowing it will occur. Is this something that you can sit back and just watch? Seeing without actively looking. At ease, content. A relaxed gaze of the inner eye that doesn't need to fix or change or judge what's happening. But gazes kindly upon it from the easy chair of awareness.

Settling back further, not only looking at the breathing, watching it. Settle back without any particular direction of attention. Open to everything. With the mind's eye, you're seeing what appears not as paint on a canvas, but as birds, butterflies, or clouds appearing in the sky. Settle back and observe, watch the comings and goings of anything and everything.

As we come to the end of the sitting, gaze upon everything kindly. Gaze upon this world of ours kindly, caringly. Gaze upon ourselves kindly, caringly.

Maybe as if gazing kindly is at the center of all things, and the seeing radiates out and sees through yourself, sees all of yourself. Every good, bad, and ugly, it's all just seen kindly as it travels through you, and then out into the world. Gazing kindly, caringly. Just kindly, caringly.

When we gaze this way with kindness and care, we don't have to be loving, we don't have to be liking what we gaze on or the people we see. But it is a wondrous human ability that we can gaze kindly, with care. May it be that our kindness and care becomes the most natural thing to carry with us through the world. So that we gaze upon the world with goodwill, with caring instincts.

May we care for everyone. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may we walk through the world with kind eyes, caring eyes, so we can contribute to the welfare and happiness of all.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Consciousness (4 of 5) Unentangled Seeing

So we come to the fourth talk in the series labeled consciousness. The premise here is that what we call consciousness, we don't actually know what it is for sure. But what I call consciousness is the synchronized working together of all the different active capacities and faculties we have for attention and for perception. They can come together also with our attitudes and our motivations, and many of the cognitive functions of the mind as well. It all comes together to create an image or a sense of the whole that is greater than the parts. It is a whole which is partly a painting that the mind paints of what this thing is—the unified whole, the thing that consciousness can seem to be.

There's a wonderful coincidence that in Pali^[1], the word for mind and work, which might easily be translated as consciousness at times, is a homonym with the same pronunciation as the word for a painting. Maybe consciousness is this kind of construct, this painting the mind makes of itself, that somehow brings together all the different parts into an image or a sense of something.

These different capacities we have for perception and attention are key component parts to this painting that's created. One of them today that I'm talking about is the ability to see clearly what's happening. The Buddha uses this language of seeing as a metaphor for the inner way of perceiving, sensing, and knowing that is somehow in the mind rather than in the sensations. That's the knowing quality of the mind that knows, "I'm sensing warmth, coldness, a sound, a taste, a smell, a tactile sensation." It's not so much cognitive in the sense of recognizing what it is, but more like the level of the mind that can just do the equivalent of hearing or seeing.

Hearing and seeing are different than listening and looking, in that hearing and seeing are receptive. They are not directive, nor are they an active engaging of those sense doors. But those sense doors are on, and sensations, sounds, or sight objects arrive and are seen and heard, but they're not looked at or listened to in an active way.

In both of these metaphors of hearing and seeing, I think it builds on the idea that what is seen and heard is actually usually at some distance from the ears and the eyes. There's a gap, a distance, and the medium through which the information goes through creates a little bit of a difference. That's different than feeling physical sensations in the body, like pain or pleasure, where there's an intimacy to ourselves.

Because of that intimacy with pain or pleasure, it becomes something that we are prone to get actively involved in, concerned with, or identify with. But the things we see in the distance, like a tree, we don't usually identify it as being who we are. If we hear traffic outdoors, we're not defining ourselves by the traffic. We might find it uncomfortable and have a reaction to it, but the hearing itself does not react. That's deeper in the mind where it begins reacting, making meaning, values, and preferences. Before these other layers of the mind get involved—the judgments, evaluations, reactivity, preferences, and emotions—there is initially this very simple and relatively innocent act of just hearing the sounds and seeing the sights.

This is adapted by the Buddha to talk about the inner eye and an inner way of seeing, and here also the idea is to do it in this receptive, non-active way. The Buddha never tells us in his instructions to actively do the perceiving, but rather to abide in it. He uses this word abiding a lot when he's talking about deeper meditation. When we get settled in practice and are able to course in the present moment, then it's more like settling back and abiding in a state, a way of being, and a way of perceiving, rather than actively trying to do something and make something happen.

It's a remarkable shift when that can happen. Some people find they can tap into that early in their practice, while for others it takes a long time. Some people can do it early and then they can't do it for a while because they're going through layers of needing to do some real inner work to sort through and settle down. For the Buddha, it's the latter. We do all the work of practice—a purification practice, a cultivation practice, settling practices, understanding practices—and then with enough practice, at some point we can just settle back and observe what's happening.

We can abide in the observing, abide in this inner seeing where everything's allowed to be itself. It's very respectful of everything. It can almost be reverential, that everything is allowed to be its own pristine thing. Every sensation, every sound, every sight, everything that's known in this seeing can be seen with reverence, care, or radical simplicity. Just allowing it to be itself becomes the foundation for the kind of insights that the Buddha emphasizes the most. The insights that are part of the insight meditation path are insights that don't come from actively looking for them, but rather when we settle back and can observe and see in this kind of way.

As we see this way, the seeing is somehow free of what is seen. In the seeing, we're not entangled, caught up, or reacting. So what's being seen is clearly left alone, just like seeing with the physical eye or hearing with a physical ear. We're not actively interfering with the tree as we're gazing upon it. We're not interfering with the sound of the car outside; it just does its thing independent of us.

All things are allowed to be this way and be seen in such a way that then insights begin arising. What I want to emphasize today is the way in which there's a freedom in the seeing, an independence from the freed. There's a spaciousness and allowance of things as they are in this kind of inner seeing.

In that seeing, as one of our intentional faculties, when seeing has this quality of freedom in it, the construct of consciousness begins feeling like a place of freedom, an allowance, a space of openness and receptivity. There can be a feeling that consciousness itself is something we can rest in. The way that the inner mind constructs a spatial sense of awareness where it constructs spatial ideas of location—when that spatial location gets relaxed and soft, it starts having a broad, almost boundless quality to it. The construction of consciousness now starts feeling not only free, peaceful, and broad, but it can also feel untouched by the things of the world. It can feel like it's boundless, open, and expansive.

Is consciousness actually boundless? Is it actually anything at all? It's hard to say, and there are strong opinions about this. But the view that I'm presenting here is that yes, it's boundless in the sense that the construction, the image of it, the sense of it that the mind creates has no boundaries. But it's a wonderful composite Gestalt image or idea of all these wondrous faculties that we have that come together and work in some kind of harmony to give us a sense. We try to make sense of it, understand it, and have an image of what is operating, and then the mind creates that image of it all. Then we can abide in it, we can rest in it, we can allow it, and it can be very freeing and very supportive to have a sense of consciousness like this.

I hope this is useful for you and gives you something to reflect on and explore on your own. I would encourage you for these next 24 hours to use hearing and seeing—the physical ones, and also the mind's eye's ability to see and hear and perceive—to experiment with gazing upon things or hearing things in a very receptive, open, allowing way. Feel the refreshment that can come, how the eyes and the ears get refreshed, cooled, calmed, and peaceful when they're able to just see rather than look, rather than searching, straining, or staring. The same thing can happen to hearing when we hear rather than strain to listen.

Thank you all very much, and I am looking forward to coming back tomorrow morning.