Guided Meditation: Space Element; Dharmette: Flavors of the Dharma (5 of 5) Peace

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Space Element; Flavors of the Dharma (5 of 5) Peace. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Kim Allen at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 23, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Hey, it's nice to see everyone arriving. Hello. It's been nice to share this week. Perhaps just before we get started with the meditation, I'll mention that next week it will be May Elliott. I think some of you know her; she's a wonderful young teacher at IMC, and I hope you'll join her. I don't know what her topic is, so you'll have to come on Monday. Let's go ahead then and get started for today.

Guided Meditation: Space Element

Finding your meditation posture, settling in for the sit this morning, or afternoon, or evening—I know we're all over the world. Just gently closing the eyes and bringing the attention inward.

Sensing into the touch points of the seat against the chair or the cushion, the legs or feet against the floor, or if you're lying, it's what you're lying down on. Just finding a place where you can feel balanced on what you're resting on, so there's very little effort to hold yourself up. If you're in a chair, it's sometimes nice to sit a little bit forward, not to be leaning back. Of course, if you need to, that's fine, but if you don't, it's actually more stable to be resting in a balanced position on your own sit bones.

Softening the eyes and the eye sockets. Softening all the little muscles of the forehead and the face, the jaw, down through the throat and the shoulders. Letting the shoulder blades slide down the back, and releasing the arms and the hands so they feel natural.

Down through the torso, softening the chest area. Belly releasing the diaphragm. Letting go in the muscles of the lower back. If the body is balanced, the belly and the low back can both relax, and the spine just supports the weight upright. Down through the hip joints, thighs, the Achilles, the ankle joints, and even the feet.

Connecting through the whole body. If there are parts that are sore today, or you couldn't even feel them very well, that's okay. Let's just have ease in the mind about how the body is right now. It's fine.

Connecting in with the sensations of the breath. We've worked with the breath in several different ways this week, and the invitation for today is to connect with gentle, whole-body breathing. Nothing effortful, but you're sensing throughout the body the way the breath can connect, spread, and connect the different parts. Natural breath.

On the out-breath, we can continue to soften any parts that we notice are tight, and on the in-breath, we strengthen the sense of uprightness. The in-breath is energizing, and that bolsters the support in the body, the uprightness, and then everything else relaxes around that. So when I keep saying relax, we're not just turning into a lump; it's more that we're relaxing more and more around this upright support of the spine. Or if you're lying down, the spine is still the straight support.

There's a way that the breath can feel like a bath or a massage. It just flows gently throughout the body. It can even flow through any thoughts or emotions that are there. We put the breath more in the foreground, and those other things can be in the background with the breath touching and connecting those too.

This way of resting with the breath as our favored place of attention will slowly generate some stability in the mind. If we keep our continuity of attention in a gentle way, we can feel into the ease and rest of having a little bit of stability. Just as the mind begins to gain even a bit of stability, a bit of steadiness, we can gently now open the awareness a little bit wider.

If it used to be kind of curved in around the breath, you just soften that curve so that the awareness includes sounds, other sensations in the body, and into the space of the mind. We feel if there are any emotions present or thoughts. You don't have to move the mind, we're just widening it. We're not going looking for things, we're just opening.

The same amount of energy is going toward staying in the present moment, but we don't direct it to add to the breath anymore. It feels like the mind is becoming a vast sky or a vast space in which all experience occurs. The mind is just there, and other things can be noticed within it.

This is the space element. The space element is not established anywhere, so it's free. Free of positionality, of a particular view, of a focus like ourselves. It's just there. It is an element also because it connects all things by extending between them, and because it can be experienced. All of the elements are experiential.

So just allowing the mind to be this vast space in which other things occur, and notice the deep rest of that. Clouds, wind, leaves, and birds all go through the sky, but none of them touch the sky; none of them taint the sky. Let the space of the mind just be there. And each time we get caught up in something that's in the sky and we notice, just open and become the sky again.

Even if this doesn't quite make sense, that's okay too. Just rest as well as you can with the openness to all experience in the present without getting lost. Resting with the space element.

As we move toward the end of this meditation, connecting again with the sensations of the breath in the body. Perhaps taking a little bit deeper breath, and on the exhale, sensing the groundedness of the body sitting, or standing, or lying. So allowing the mind to re-enter its orientation in the body, in space, in time.

But perhaps we still retain a lingering sense of a large space that's possible in awareness. Even as we reconnect with our own back, shoulders, knees, the heat of the body, we can still remember this sense of being part of the sky, and that's something that we can carry with us throughout the day. This breadth, spaciousness, largeness of mind in which things are happening.

This is a great way to approach situations that might feel a little bit intense. It's all weather happening within the sky of the mind. Or if there are people who are challenging for us in some way, if we just broaden awareness, they become a smaller part of the whole. It's a great gift, really, to have the ability to touch into this wider mind even in the everyday world that we live in, as a way that we're not going to be so reactive. A way that we can take a larger perspective, or a way that we can give space and feel compassionate for someone else's caught-up-ness.

It's not such a usual way of being in the world in our intense, self-focused, view-oriented world. So it can be a nice contrast, and a protection for us and others.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Flavors of the Dharma (5 of 5) Peace

We continue to survey the emotional tones called rasa^[1] in ancient Indian cultural understanding. There are more than five of them, but this week we're touching upon the key ones for Dharma practice. Today's flavor is one that connects into all of them and is the direction that they're all heading, and that is the savor of peace—santi^[2] in Pali. Some of you may be more familiar with the Sanskrit version, which is shanti, but in early Buddhism, we would say santi.

In the suttas^[3], the flavor of peace refers to the peace that comes with the fulfillment of the path, so it's the peace of liberation. It also includes some associated qualities like tranquility, rest, purity, and happiness. Peace could be thought of as a spaciousness and presence that can underlie any of the other flavors, kind of like a baseline. It gets stronger and stabler all along the path until it reaches its full fruition.

It's said to be like the string for a set of jewels, which are the other flavors that we're talking about. For many people, the idea of peace is not so glittery or emotionally exciting—the way the string is not as glittery as the jewels—but nonetheless, it's there and it gives support to all the others. So peace might be the deepest and most pervasive essence or emotional tone that there can be in these teachings.

There's a verse in the Dhammapada^[4] that uses the word—well, this translation says "flavor," it uses the word flavor twice: "Tasting the flavor of solitude and peace, one becomes free of distress and evil, drinking the flavor of Dharma joy." And the word there is rasa in Pali. So this mentions the flavor of solitude and peace, and it mentions the flavor of Dharma joy. Those all go together.

This nectar of peace is woven so thoroughly throughout the suttas that we could never talk about all of them here that have this tone. So we'll just focus on two questions: What is needed in order to attain this peace? And once a person has become peaceful, what is that like? The prior conditions and the result. Of course, even those topics are too big, but they give us some kind of focus for today.

It's possible to approach the peace of liberation more from the heart side or more from the wisdom side; we see both of those in the suttas. If we look at one that exemplifies the heart side, it's also a verse from the Dhammapada: "A practitioner dwelling in loving-kindness and pleased with the Buddha's teachings attains happiness, the stilling of formations, the state of peace."

We see some important qualities along this heart-based path to peace. There's dwelling in loving-kindness, dwelling in mettā^[5]. And then it says the person is pleased with the teachings, so I associate that with having deep faith in the teachings and also spiritual joy. Sometimes we think we'll be happy once we get liberated. "When I'm finally free, then I'll be happy." But the teachings are pretty clear that happiness is a prerequisite for awakening. We're going to be happy before we become free. So that's something that we can cultivate along the path. And then it also mentions the stilling of formations—the deep tranquility that the mind can get into such that it's no longer making stories, too willing to let go. So this is a path to peace through the development of the heart through love, happiness, and faith.

And then there are also suttas that talk about a path that sounds more like it comes from the wisdom side. They're not so different, but there are different sides. There's a sutta that says specifically, for one going along the path toward freedom, one should not neglect wisdom, should preserve truth, should cultivate relinquishment, and train for peace.

This is an orientation that's more focused on seeing things as they are, seeing truthfully, restraining the mind from its habits of grasping, aversion, and reactivity, and being willing to let go very deeply—cultivating relinquishment. This too is a path to peace, more from the wisdom and restraint side.

So what about the result? How is a person who has attained peace? These suttas that talk about the flavor, the essence of peace—what's that like? The Buddhist teachings, as I read them, are clear that someone who has reached freedom and peace sees things from a very different perspective than our usual ways. This is a quote that I think captures that: "When the tides of conceiving no longer sweep over one, one is called a sage at peace^[6]. 'I am' is a conceiving. 'I am this' is a conceiving. 'I shall be' and 'I shall not be' are conceivings. By overcoming all conceivings, one is called a sage at peace. And the sage at peace is not born, does not age, does not die. They are not shaken and do not yearn."

This term "conceivings" refers to the way that we imagine things to be or that we imagine ourselves to be, which is different from how they actually are. We're concocting stories, we're seeing ourselves as a being that's navigating a challenging external world. We're imagining the past and the future. In a way, that's conventional; it's not that that doesn't have some value, but it does work against being deeply at peace. And I think we can see that in our practice. Worrying too much about who we are, what we are, what we're not, what we're going to be, whether this is going to work, can the future be like this, was the past like that—so tiring.

This sage of peace who doesn't do that in the mind is quite radical. It's not something that we can really imagine or think about with our rational mind, or even through our emotions we can't quite touch into that. But the teachings offer these sort of inspirational and visionary words so that something in us can feel and respond to that. Something that's not part of our usual rational and emotional mind, something deeper. There's something in our heart that can know what that is and move toward it. It's kind of the way a seed knows which way to send the root and which way to send the stem even when it's buried in the soil, right? It orients even though it's buried in the soil. There's something in us that can do that too.

Here's maybe a simpler version of the same idea of seeing things differently. It's a verse: "Victory gives birth to hate; the defeated sleep in anguish. Giving up both victory and defeat, those who have attained peace sleep happily." So giving up both victory and defeat, those at peace can sleep happily. There's a way of being that doesn't conceive of winning or losing. That's one more conceiving that has to be let go: winning, losing, being better, being worse, or even being equal. All of those are conceivings.

Like the sage at peace, we're learning to see in a different way. Our life is all about, "Did I win or did I lose? Did I get that or not? Did I come off okay or did I look kind of bad?" Both of those lead to suffering. One of them because we have to defend it then and keep living up to it if we actually succeeded, and the other because we were defeated. Both of them harm us. So giving up both victory and defeat, those who have attained peace sleep happily. That's maybe a little more pragmatic way of saying that. Can we find ways in which we're playing this game, and can we start to soften and ease that? You'll find it's much more peaceful.

Although the full attainment of peace may seem far off, this flavor of peace can seep into our practice from the very beginning. We've all tasted peace, this savor of peace, in some form. I'll just mention a few that are very, very practical and see if any of them resonate for you. Right when we start, we use basic mindfulness to be able to observe what we used to fall into. For example, if we're having difficulty with anger, when we start mindfulness practice, we're taught to observe our anger. Can we see that we're angry at a given moment instead of just becoming that and acting on it right there? That's the beginning of a growing presence of peace, something where we're not getting caught. So that's something that we touch into right away: this idea of having an observer, being able to see what's happening in our mind.

And then as we go along farther, we may be able to feel our body a little bit better, and then we can start feeling equanimity or peace as ease in the body. We start to have an embodied sense of peace. If we are feeling tight, we realize—even if we don't connect in exactly with what view we're carrying or even what emotion we have—if we feel the tension in our belly or our throat, we know that there's some clinging there. And just feeling that and then being able to ease that, that too is an embodied sense of peace that starts to grow in us.

If we follow that along and continue to try to find more and more ease in the heart, and the throat, in the shoulders, in the belly, we will find more and more of this savor of peace and we'll start to be able to navigate our life better. That's a lot of the path. We'll do that all along the path.

And then at some point, we may have experiences that are quite deep feelings of peace. They visit us at times. We'll have a moment out in nature maybe, or on a retreat, where really something drops away and we feel something very peaceful. It may not last, but we have that as a reference point. Our practice can take on a new dimension where we start to use our deepest experience of peace as kind of a reference point that we can touch into at times when we realize we're caught up. We can maybe even remember a little bit of that savor of that time that it was peaceful, and that can help us in moments that are challenging.

And then at some point, maybe we gain the ability to have this emptiness or awareness that's inherently peaceful be in the background of our experience. Yes, the mind still moves here and there and occasionally gets caught up, but we have almost a background or a baseline of awareness or peace or emptiness or equanimity—I'm going to use different words because it appears in different ways. And that's something that we carry with us through the world. So all along the spectrum of the path, there are these ways that the flavor of peace is there in subtle or more manifest forms, pointing to where the path is going.

We've looked this week at some of the main emotional tones that run through the Buddhist teachings, a wide range that captures much of the essence of Dharma practice. If we could move through this set of emotions, carry these savors, we might find them to be resonant and helpful in our path. They're always supportive of the path. We talked about love and compassion and care—a sense of warmth and care that we can have in the heart. We've talked about energy and heroism—having the strength to meet the challenges of the path. It's not an easy path, I know, and there are times when we can rise to that, have a heroic kind of stance in a good way.

There's humor—ah, we don't have that on this path! Oh, this mind that we're trying to tame, right? [Laughter] And then wonder and amazement. We have no idea what we're capable of, what's possible in the heart and the mind, what's wrapped up in there in the knot that we're carrying. When that starts to free, we can be amazed at what's possible in this human life. There's so much.

And peace. It's all going toward peace. It all connects and is wrapped up in peace. And that's what the heart really wants: to rest upon itself in peace. So may you have all of these flavors and savors. May they make your life a wonderful, rich experience for you and for all that you touch. Thank you for this week.