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Guided Meditation: Stable Awareness

Hello, welcome. Welcome to our meditation together as a community. Hopefully, you appreciate that there are so many people meditating at the same time, and with the same orientation here towards IMC, the teachings, and meditation. So, welcome.

As an analogy, imagine there are two people standing on a hilltop. One person is standing quite skillfully on one foot. Maybe that one foot is quite strong, and they are standing on their tippy-toe to stand for a long time. The other person has both feet firmly rooted in the ground in a strong, wide stance, spread apart a little bit. If a strong wind comes on the hill with strong gusts, they'll both experience the wind—the intensity of the wind, the wind itself—in the same way. They're just as sensitive to it, just as susceptible to it.

But the one standing on one tippy-toe is not going to have the stability to be able to withstand it upright in the wind, and will be pushed over. The one who has both feet in a wide, strong, rooted stance—maybe even with their knees bent, leaning against the wind—will experience the wind just as much as the person standing on one foot, but the person rooted on the hillside won't be pushed over.

In the same way, we can be sensitive to all kinds of things. We can be sensitive in such a way that our own experience, our emotions, our thoughts, our feelings, the world around us, and what's happening with other people all affect us. Two people can experience this and be equally sensitive to what's coming their way. But one of them is doing the equivalent of standing on one foot or on their tippy-toes, and the other one is doing the equivalent of being rooted and firm, having the ballast of a grounding that is very, very stable on their metaphoric feet. Both of them will experience life events in the same way, with the same sensitivity to it, but the impact will be very different.

One person will feel like life events and their inner life are just too much; it is overwhelming, and they might blame the event. The other person will find it intense or challenging in some ways, but they're able to keep their balance. They're able to stay stable, so they're not thrown off balance by it. They feel content and confident that they have a stance that supports them, and are less inclined to say the events are overwhelming because they have the stability to handle it.

So, awareness can be on tippy-toes, or awareness can be well-grounded, rooted, and stable. Someone can be equally sensitive, with an equal sense of awareness to what's happening, but have a very different stance—a very different rootedness to the experience.

When we sit to meditate, we want to tune into this as well. Do we feel stable? Do we feel grounded? That can be partly physical: a posture, a stance, a way of feeling the weight of the body so that we're rooted here. It could also be with the awareness, where the awareness is not like a cotton ball that just gets pushed around in the wind. Awareness has a kind of stability, a rootedness. It has both an openness and a presence of being rooted right here, saying, "Yes, I'm aware."

I have this image of the weight of awareness. Awareness has no weight, but there is the weight of presence, the weight of being present. The awareness is settled into the torso, especially settled into the belly here. A place where things are unstable is when we're aware, but the awareness is rooted in our thoughts, ideas, stories, and imagination; then we get tossed around. But if awareness is connected and identified with the body, it can be a lot easier.

So, to assume a stable posture for meditation, close your eyes and feel the weight of your body. Especially feel where the weight of your body rests on a chair, on a cushion, or on the floor. Whatever is supporting that weight.

Take some long, slow, deep breaths, and on the exhale, let go into that support. Let the weight of your body be received by what holds the body.

Take a few more deep breaths. Gentle, not too much, but doing so in a way that as you inhale, your belly goes out. Relax your belly. The diaphragm, as you breathe in, is pushed down, and that pushes everything in the belly down and out. So relax the belly. If the belly gets pushed out, there's a broader base at the bottom of your torso providing support for the upper torso.

Then let the breathing return to normal, and still allow the belly to expand and relax as you breathe in. The belly doesn't have to do any work to move; it's being moved by the diaphragm. Let the belly be pushed and then pulled in.

On the exhale, relax in your body. Scan through your body, and see what parts^[1] of your body can relax. As you do so, relax, and let the weight of your body settle a bit.

Let yourself settle into your breathing, feeling the body breathing in a rooted way. It's as if the breathing in the torso, the movements of the body in the torso, is a ballast. It is a kind of strength and stability. Be centered more in your body, your torso, than in your thinking mind here.

As you're mindful, as you're aware of whatever you're aware of, be aware while rooted in the body. Be aware so that the body provides a ballast for your awareness, so awareness doesn't get pulled into our thoughts or feelings, or doesn't get pushed around by them.

Awareness can do its work of just knowing and recognizing from a place of stability, unmoved by the winds of the world^[2].

...

Can you relax your belly, your torso, and let the weight of your body settle a bit in order to provide more stability for mindfulness in the present moment?

...

As we come to the end of the sitting, take a few moments to really let yourself be stable here. In your body, in your heart, your mind. It is as if there is a strong ballast, a heavy ballast that keeps you rooted and grounded, so you're not pushed around by the waves, by the wind, by circumstances in life. You are just here in the middle of this, tall, firm, and strong.

From this stability, gaze upon the world kindly. Gaze upon the suffering of the world: the people you know, people in your area, people far away. Gaze upon this world's suffering from a place of stability, careful to watch if you lose stability by being swept up into the mind's alarm, the mind's distress, or the mind's worries.

In the stability of the body, gaze upon the world kindly, compassionately, as if that is a phenomenal gift to give the world, just that.

Gazing upon the world with compassion, the eyes of kindness, the eyes of compassion, wishing:

May all beings be free of their suffering. May all beings be free of all forms of affliction. May all beings be free of war and oppression. May all beings be free of hostility from others and to others. May all beings live in peace, profound peace, free from all that troubles the heart. May all beings be happy.

[Laughter]

Thank you.

Dharmette: Aspects of Compassion (2 of 5) Attunement

Hello, and welcome to this second talk on the elements of compassion. By having all the elements of compassion together, compassion can be effective. Compassion can be a treasure; it can be nourishing for ourselves and hopefully beneficial for others. These five elements are awareness, attunement, appreciation, aspiration, and action.

Today, we will talk about attunement, but attunement is built on the capacity for awareness. One of the things I tried to convey in yesterday's talk about awareness is that it's not simply a matter of being aware. It's also possible to be aware in a way that is stable and rooted, aware in a way that awareness is autonomous and independent from what it is aware of. So if someone says something, you clearly hear it and know it, but the awareness doesn't get ruffled. The awareness doesn't get pushed around^[3] or agitated. Parts of you might get agitated, but you know, "Oh, there's agitation." Parts of you might be afraid; you know there is fear, but the awareness itself is not afraid. Awareness doesn't get pulled into anything. We manage this by not identifying with the experience—thinking, "Oh, this is me"—or leaning into it, or getting glued to whatever thoughts, feelings, emotions, or events are happening.

Awareness is like this still point in the middle of the storm, or the still point in the middle of everything. It's not becoming aloof; it's not becoming indifferent; it's not becoming uncaring. It's the opposite. When awareness can be free, autonomous, and independent, so we know whatever is happening, then we're able to meet everything with wisdom. We can also meet it with stability. When awareness is stable and free, then when we encounter the world, we can figure out how to attune ourselves in the right way for the circumstance.

The analogy I gave in the meditation, I'd like to use again. If two people are standing on a hilltop, one is standing on one foot on their tippy-toes, and the other is standing with both feet flat on the ground, feet spread apart in a very strong, stable position. If a strong wind comes along, they're both impacted by the wind equally. However, the one on their tippy-toes on one foot is going to be blown over. The one who has stable footing, with feet spread wide apart, can withstand the impact of the wind.

What can happen in that kind of situation, if we use it as a metaphor for human experience in life, is that two people can experience life events equally. But the person who is doing the equivalent of standing on one foot will say, "I'm a really sensitive person. I'm so sensitive, I pick up everything." In a sense, it's true, but both people might be equally sensitive. The difference is that one has strong grounding and is rooted, and the other doesn't. The one who doesn't is the one who will attribute the issue to too much sensitivity, too much stimulus coming in—which definitely can sometimes happen. But it's a whole different way of living if you find that stability of awareness here. Given that stability, you can figure out what direction to face against the wind. You can figure out how to stand, how to lean, and how to attune yourself to the wind so it doesn't blow you over.

Once we have the ability to be balanced and rooted in awareness, that provides a fantastic foundation for what leads up to compassion. The next element is to be attuned to the suffering of others. I like the word "attune" quite a bit because when we use the word "empathy," many people interpret it as feeling what others are feeling. Some people feel that's what you're supposed to do when you have compassion: you have to really feel the other person's suffering. Some people do that; they feel what other people are suffering. But I don't know if that's attunement.

Attunement is to be very sensitive to the inner feelings of oneself, the resonance, to tune into the other person, taking in all the information and what's there. Because we're rooted in awareness, attunement is how we dial in so we have just the right way of being present for someone. People don't necessarily need you to feel their suffering fully. Mostly, what they need is someone to accompany them, to be present, and to understand them. In fact, if you feel people's suffering so much that it becomes your own, you're not really available to help them. Some people might appreciate it because they feel they're not alone, but there are other ways of accompanying people than experiencing the same thing they're experiencing through some kind of empathy.

I like the word attunement because, in the old days when I was growing up, we had radios where you would tune into a station by turning the knob just right to get the exact wavelength. If you were just a little bit on either side of the wavelength the radio station was coming in on, you'd get a lot of static. It's the same thing as we attune ourselves to other people. We're finding that place where there's not a lot of static, not a lot of leaning in or pulling away, a lot of spinning out in thoughts^[4], or a lot of reactivity, but finding the right place to be. This is why stable awareness is so important. It's with that awareness that we can find, "How do I really understand this other person? How do I really sense them, or be with them in an effective way that's useful for them and for me?"

So, attunement is not just simply experiencing people's emotions. Attunement is asking the question, "How do I be present for this person's emotions, this person's life, this person's suffering in a way that's supportive for them and supportive for me?" There's a kind of choice, a kind of agency in how we experience the suffering of others. If we don't feel like we have agency—if we feel we're supposed to just experience the suffering of others, or that's just what we automatically do—then we're not finding that place of choice. This is why stable awareness gives us the possibility to start finding how we can be here in a wise way, and to start feeling confident in this attunement process, asking the question: "What is the wise way of being here? What should I be aware of with this person?"

We get a lot of information from other people who are suffering. It's clear that some people want you to sit next to them. Some want to have a listener who listens to them as they talk. Some people just want someone to bring them a cup of tea, and some people want to be left alone. So you want to be attuned: what is the need here? As you feel that need or feel what's appropriate, you ask, "Now, how do I communicate with this person? How do I share my presence with them? Do I sit close? Do I sit far away? Do I really listen? Do I ask simple questions?"

If you don't have that kind of closeness with the suffering of the world—say it's through the news or something you've heard about far away—there's very little direct information to be attuned with. But the question can still be there: "Given what I know, how do I be attuned? How do I be present and attentive so it can be helpful in this situation, helpful for them and helpful to myself?"

If we get overwhelmed, anxious, or upset, or if we allow ourselves to feel it in such a way that we are on our tippy-toes standing on one foot, then it can be overwhelming, confusing, and distressing. But to be attuned also means being attuned to oneself. The question for oneself is, "How do I be present for this person that I know who's going through a really hard time, who's not sitting in front of me, but is someplace else? How do I be attuned?"

A big part of it, when you're alone and away from the person, might be how you attune yourself so you can be present and aware with that place of stability, balance, and strength. Find the awareness that's calm, available, steady, and able to make choices. If the time comes to be attuned, ask the question, "What is useful here? How do I help this person? What does this person need? What kind of attention and presence does this person need?"

There is an acute or strong sense of knowing, recognizing, or maybe even feeling in some resonant way what the other person is feeling, but it's not feeling their suffering. If we're suffering because someone else is suffering, that's probably not empathy; it's probably our own suffering, and that needs our compassion. We need to find our ability to be present for that in a stable way and ask the same questions for ourselves: "How do I effectively attune myself to the suffering that I'm having so I don't sink in it, so I'm not pushed around by it, so I'm not standing on one foot with it? How do I find the stability? How do I answer the question: what is a useful way for me to be with this suffering?"

As soon as you ask that kind of question—the question of how to be attuned, how to be usefully present—you're beginning to separate yourself from being glued to the suffering, from being immersed in it. It's an expression or a growth of our autonomy, independence, or freedom to ask, "How do I attune?" And if we ask, "How do I attune to my suffering?" and someone else's, it's deeply respectful. It's a way of caring very deeply because, without respect for oneself and without respect for others, I don't know if it's going to be compassion.

That will be the topic for tomorrow: appreciation. So we have awareness, attunement, and with the attunement, having appreciation and respect for the person we're with, or for themselves. That's a really critical element for compassion to be healthy, clean, and nourishing for everyone. So, thank you.

Daily Practice

If you want to do an exercise today based on what I've said, experiment throughout the day with your best understanding of what I mean by attunement. Be with people and see if you can be attuned to them, not identified with them. What does it mean? One of the things it means is asking what kind of presence is useful for them, and what kind of presence allows me to be in the circumstance without any static, with some balance and stability. So experiment with that, maybe in small ways in places and times that are not so challenging, so you get a feel for it. Thank you.