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Guided Meditation: Tuning into the Joy of the Present Moment

Good morning. Well, good evening, good afternoon, good day. Greetings, Sangha, wherever you are in the world. It's a delight to be with you and practice with you in this moment in time.

So, we will continue this morning with our explorations of calming, settling, and collecting the mind, also known as samadhi^[1].

For the theme of today's practice, I'd like to offer a quote by Ajahn Sucitto^[2] as inspiration. He says, "I think of enjoyment as receiving joy, and samadhi as the art of refined enjoyment." I love that—the art of refined enjoyment. It is the careful collecting of oneself to the joy of the present moment. Joyfulness means there is no fear, no tension, no "ought to." There isn't anything we have to do about it, so there is stillness. It's just this.

So, the careful collecting of oneself to the joy of the present moment. With that, let's just begin, and I will share guidance as needed to invite us to turn towards joy.

Settling. Arriving in our bodies in this moment, just as it is.

Turning our minds, turning our hearts to the stability, to the quiet inside. As if underneath all the waves of thought, plans, all the preoccupations—ah, there is stillness. There is quiet, there is peace and ease. Trusting, even if we can't find it in this moment.

Trusting, and as if we were to turn and tune our radio—the radio of our hearts and minds—to this channel of peace which we know exists. At first, it might sound crackly, but we tune. We tune to it.

And for tuning to this channel, we settle with the breath, with the body. To tune to this channel of peace, turning our attention, our awareness, our gaze inward to the body.

Inviting the body to soften. To relax. To let go of any holding or tightness. The shoulders. The neck. In our face: forehead, jaw, the back of the eyes. To soften.

Inviting our chest—oh, dear chest, the home of the heart and the heart center, the proverbial housing of emotions—to relax. It's okay. Whatever is here is okay.

To invite our abdomen, our lower abdomen, to drop inward. Ah, giving away its weight, the weight it's been holding, to the sit bones. And for the sit bones to relax, and let go of their tightness and tension to the earth.

Inviting the feet to rest on the earth. Feeling the contact points of the feet, or the lower legs if you're sitting on the cushion. Entire lower legs. Upper legs. Sit bones offering their weight to gravity, to the earth.

Receiving the breath. Receiving the breath however it is. Whether the breath is short or long, receiving the breath just as it is.

Allowing the breath to fill the body. The entire body, with its life-giving, nourishing purity.

Allowing the mind, the mind-heart, to tune to the breath. The rhythm, the flow of the breath. As if the breath is the dial that helps us tune to peace, to the joy underneath the waves of thought and preoccupation.

Noticing that there actually is joy in the contentment of the present moment.

Can we contentedly wrap ourselves, as if in a blanket? Comfortably wrapped with the breath, the soothing contentment of the breath in this moment.

No matter what cacophony occurs outside, right here, the contentment of just sitting and breathing^[3] in this moment is enough. This is enough. It is bountiful.

Tuning into the delight of simply sitting and breathing. Turning away from entanglements and thoughts, towards the simple joy. This is enough. It is plenty.

Even if for just a moment, tuning into the delicious simplicity of this moment. The mind doesn't want to go anywhere else. Simply this is enough.

And as we bring this period of sitting to a close together, your last moment tuning in to whatever level of peace or delight in the simplicity of this moment. Just sitting and breathing. Appreciating the goodness of even the moment of delighting in this peace, and this delight.

And trusting. Trusting there has been goodness generated from our effort of showing up and practicing, without attachment to outcomes. We showed up. We did our best. Letting go of the outcome that's not entirely under this being's control.

And appreciating the goodness generated, and generously sharing this goodness, this merit, all around. As if giving a gift to those we care about: Here, I'm working on cultivating my heart, my mind, and goodness. Sharing the goodness further with those we don't know, and all beings everywhere.

May the goodness of our cultivation be a cause and condition for the waking up, for the freedom, of ourselves and all beings everywhere.

Thank you for your practice.

Samadhi (2/5) Joy Leads to Peace

Greetings once again to friends all around the world. As we continue to explore this week different supportive aspects to establish samadhi—settling and calming the mind.

Yesterday, the invitation was to put down what's not needed, to put down hindrances^[4]. Today, this is the other side of the coin. One side is to put down, and the other side is to notice that actually it's lovely, it's wonderful, it's delightful, it's delicious—the simplicity of this moment, and wrapping ourselves in the simplicity of this moment.

We often only do the putting down. Thoughts arise, we put them down. Distractions arise, we put them down. Actually, sometimes we throw them down! It's like the stick method: Stop! Stop being distracted! Bad meditator! Instead, putting things down is wise, but do it with gentleness, bowing to them: Thank you, not now, not needed, not wholesome, not for my benefit.

Now, the other side is the carrot method: Oh wow, it's actually lovely! The simplicity of this moment is delicious, it is yummy. Then the mind doesn't want to go away. It doesn't want to wander off. In fact, the putting down, the seclusion, or the relinquishment becomes not so much needed because the mind is so still. It is so in love, enjoying and delighting in what is here.

Have you noticed when you do something that you love—a hobby, whatever it might be—you don't want to stop? Come have a meal. No, let me finish this! I want to finish this puzzle, gardening, knitting, this game. Because there's so much joy, so much delight. So, we are tuning into that delight, into that joy, into that simplicity. We often don't see it because we're so focused on, Okay, put it down. Come back. Put it down. It becomes a somewhat conflictual relationship with practice, whereas if we tune into, Oh, this is actually quite lovely, it might be subtle.

A lot of times we wait for that delight, that deliciousness, that stillness to arise, and then we tune into it after we've done this putting down a lot. Then we realize, Oh wow, yeah, it's pretty calm, it's delicious, it's lovely. The invitation is to try to tune into it earlier. Tune into it with the breath, with the body, trusting that underneath the waves there is this deliciousness, this safety, this calm, this peace.

Trust, as if you're tuning a radio. Yes, it's crackly, but something is coming through. There's a memory of it, you know it's there. It's been there. You trust it's there even if you haven't experienced it yet. You've heard, you've read that it's there. Trusting that you're not different from the other seven billion people; it's there for you also. Trusting, and coming back to this joy.

I shared a quote at the beginning by Ajahn Sucitto. I'd like to read it again in case some of you might have missed it earlier. Ajahn Sucitto is a senior monk in Ajahn Chah's^[5] forest tradition. He says: "I think of enjoyment as receiving joy, and samadhi as the art of refined enjoyment. It is the careful collecting of oneself to the joy of the present moment."

I love this. Samadhi as the art of refined enjoyment. It doesn't say the art of, Okay, concentrate, bring your mind to it, hard work. No, it's the art of refined enjoyment. It's the careful collecting of oneself to the joy of the present moment.

And there is a lot of joy in the present moment! It's just that our minds are so used to the cacophony, the busyness, the diet of constant stimulation: sound, noise, news, Facebook, conversation. So the mind becomes tuned to only see delight and enjoyment in thinking, reading, interacting, and doing.

It's the same way that a subtle flavor could be lost on someone who's tuned to just really complex flavors. I'll share this with you: when I was very young, I only liked rocky road and chocolate-flavored ice cream—things that had a lot of flavor in them. I couldn't understand why people would ever eat or enjoy vanilla. My taste buds couldn't quite tune into the subtleness. Only when I became older did I realize, Ah, vanilla. There is so much complexity in this simplicity.

So, tuning our palate, tuning our mind to appreciate the delight, the simplicity, the loveliness, the joy in the present moment. And that may not happen immediately on the cushion^[6]. If we've been busy, busy, busy, doing, doing, doing, and now we come to the cushion to sit, it's as if we've been a car driving at 200 miles an hour—or okay, maybe 100 miles an hour—and then we come to a stop. The car would still be shaking. It's still reverberating. We need to slow down, slow down, slow down.

When we arrive, we need to allow the mind to be able to catch up with itself. To delight, to notice the joy, the delight in the simplicity of the present moment. The path to the mind settling is through joy, through delight, through this nourishment of ease. Not through beating ourselves up: Okay, concentrate, drop it, drop it, drop it.

In many suttas, including the sutta teaching on Transcendent Dependent Origination^[7], the path towards freedom is through joy, rapture, tranquility, happiness, and concentration.

In this sutta, it starts with faith leading to joy. Faith—saddhā^[8]—is the trust that I was talking about. Trust leading to joy, or actually, pāmojja^[9], which I'd like to translate not as joy but as gladness. Faith leading to gladness.

Gladness (pāmojja) leads to pīti^[10]. Pīti is the word also translated as rapture, or sometimes as joyous rapture. The sense of delight, really this wow, yum that can come up in meditation.

And pīti, rapture and joy, leads to passaddhi^[11]—tranquility, calm tranquility.

Tranquility leads to sukha^[12]. Sukha is happiness. It is sweetness, the sense of sweetness in the mind.

Sukha, happiness, leads to samadhi—concentration. So you see, all the steps before samadhi, before concentration, are this delight, rapture, joy, tranquility, and happiness.

And from there, it leads to knowledge and vision of things as they are, to disenchantment, dispassion, emancipation, and knowledge of the destruction of the āsavas^[13], which is awakening, Nibbāna^[14]. So from concentration, the next steps are the states of awakening.

So, delight! The joy of the present moment. I'd like to invite all of us throughout the day: can we tune the radio of our minds to the simplicity of the delight in this moment? The simplicity of the joy in this moment that's not born from outside, but is born from within. The simplicity of this joy born from within: Oh, it's actually quite lovely. I don't need all these extra things. Can I tune inside and notice this joy?

Trust the delight, the joy within, which^[15] then leads to the mind being calmed and settled, not being agitated and needing so much entertainment from the outside.

Just an invitation to explore for yourself, to be a scientist of your own mind.

Thank you all. Thank you for your practice. Thank you for cultivating your hearts in goodness, in kindness, in generosity to yourself and to all beings everywhere. May all beings be well. May all beings be happy. Thank you. Be well.