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Guided Meditation (62) Constant Change

So, good day everyone, and welcome to this meditation session.

One of the functions of Buddhist meditation is to place ourselves squarely, fully into the vibrant and dynamic, pulsing experience of life—of being alive. All the sensations that you experience, whatever they might be, pleasant or unpleasant, come and go. They are dynamic, they vibrate, and they are flashing in and out of existence, moment by moment.

All the experiences and sensations that you have, you have because you're alive. Once you're dead, your body is no longer energized or animated with whatever the life force is within us. There are no sensations whatsoever. The sensations we experience are proof of the livingness in us. They are the dynamic and active quality of the natural world, the energies of the natural world, and how they flow through us and manifest in us.

So, to sit in the middle of our body with anapanasati^[1], and to be centered, unified, collected, and liberated from distractions, is to really be here. It is to feel, sense, and be intimate with the dynamism of change—the coming and going, the appearing and disappearing of phenomena, of everything that can be called experience.

What doesn't change are concepts. Platonic concepts of things, the ideas of them, stay constant: ideas of self, ideas of others, ideas of what has happened to us, and even, in some funny way, what will happen to us. These ideas give the semblance that things are continuous, and maybe in some ways they are. But to drop into the flow of experience is to step into the direct, immediate perception, knowing, and experiencing of life as it flows in that little window between the vast past and the vast future.

We have this idea in English sometimes that we're moving into the future. I think in ancient India they had more the idea that the future was coming towards us, and this river of time just flows. We know the future only in experience as it becomes the present, and as we know it, it already vanishes. There's something about the immediacy—it already vanishes here.

Assume a meditation posture—a posture to embody and inhabit the lived experience of the moment. Perhaps close your eyes in order to be inside, to sense and feel inside your life and your body. Sometimes, with the eyes open, we're looking at things externally and are pulled into the external world. When the eyes close, the idea is to come into this intimate world of our physical, embodied experience in the immediacy of here.

Gently, lovingly, kindly, and slowly take some deeper breaths. Breathe maybe three-quarters full. Take deeper breaths so slowly and carefully that it's almost like you're savoring and enjoying the feelings in your body—of the chest expanding, the belly expanding. Then, take a longer exhale than usual. Not so much that you're forcing the air out, but let go. Release the muscles around your diaphragm and your chest so that the exhale extends itself.

As you have these long exhales, also relax other parts of your body, relaxing into your body. Then, lovingly and gently allow your breathing to return to normal, without the need for any clear idea of what normal is. Just allow your breathing to breathe itself.

Continue this relaxing. Soften the face, soften the shoulders, and release the belly. Release all the holding, the global holding of the body, holding it all together. There is no need to in meditation. Relax and release into this body to feel and sense the immediacy of our lived life, the experience of sensations.

Then kindly, gently, maybe even tenderly and determinedly, center yourself on the experience of breathing. Breathing is often taken as a sign of being alive. Notice the inconstant, shifting, changing sensations of breathing. The sensations of breathing in are different than breathing out. The sensations of breathing in disappear so that the sensations of the exhale can begin, and vice versa.

Regardless of how pleasant or unpleasant your breathing is, to feel it, experience it, and center yourself in it is to enter into intimacy, to be really here with our lived life.

As you're with your breathing—and maybe that's mostly what you do—feel the inconstancy of all the sensations that flow through, that appear and disappear. Perhaps as you do so, you relax and open up to everything around the breathing. As you get more and more intimate, there will be some experience that everything is shifting, changing, arising, and disappearing in the immediacy of how they are felt and experienced.

If we recede into thoughts and ideas of things, we begin projecting ideas of constancy and permanence. But as the thinking mind gets quieter, we just feel and sense experience: breathing in and breathing out, with all the inconstancy of things coming and going.

If we are intimate with the actual experience, thoughts are also inconstant; they come and they go. Rather than being involved in thoughts, settle further in and just see thoughts as arising and passing, coming and going. Individual words or images appear, come, and go. In the intimacy of the moment, everything is part of a field of appearing and disappearing phenomena.

As we come to the end of the sitting, there is something about being at rest in the middle of change. Settle back as if you were sitting in an easy chair, allowing everything to move and change, appear and disappear freely, without interfering with them. Feel safe and comfortable just letting everything come and go.

It can be uncomfortable to do this, but it also can open up the barriers to feeling tender loving-kindness, to feeling compassion and care for this changing, buzzing, flowing world. Because what gets in the way of our love is something we're holding on to, something that blocks or covers it over. But when everything is buzzing and changing, and we are at rest with awareness, there can be a greater capacity for compassion for all of this.

To be still and gaze upon everything kindly. To be still in the middle of all the change and to feel compassion for the challenges that everyone has in this changing world. To feel the joy, mudita^[2], because things change, things also get better for people. And because we're not holding on to anything, there can be kindness.

May all beings be free of suffering.
May all beings celebrate their capacity for freedom.
May all beings live in a world of kindness and friendliness.
May all beings be the kind and friendly ones.
May all beings be peaceful, and may all beings contribute to the peacefulness of this world.
May all beings be free, and may all beings support the freedom of others.

May we all share in loving-kindness and friendliness in living this buzzing, changing, impermanent life that we find ourselves in.