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Guided Meditation: Mindfulness Supported By Peace

Hello everyone, and welcome. I'm happy to be here with you, and I love coming down here in the morning. I live about two kilometers from IMC, and at different times of the year, I enjoy different parts of coming down here. Right now, it's the early morning light that's here. The sun is beginning to show itself a little bit through these big windows we have in the room here, and I think they'll probably have the shadow play on the wall again.

At some point, as people continue meditation practice, continue doing Buddhist practice, or just continue with life experience, they'll have a significant experience. Maybe I shouldn't make it that dramatic; a noteworthy experience of letting go, of not holding on to something, putting down a burden. It could be something like retiring and no longer carrying the burden of work. It could be finishing school, graduating from school, and no longer having to stay up late at night studying and having the anxiety of tests. There are many different things that we put down and get relieved of. Sometimes we let go of them, sometimes they leave us, and we can experience something like a state of peace, a state of relief, a state of well-being, of emptiness—a kind of delightful emptiness, like, "Now I'm free and no longer have this filling me."

So for this meditation we're going to do, you might want to consider sometime in your life where you've experienced a degree of peace, calm, freedom, or ease. To whatever degree that's accessible to you—it doesn't have to be dramatic. It could have been something mild that happened yesterday, or it could be some big event in your past. Is there a way that that can be a reference for you for the meditation? Not that you have to attain it again, but rather, is there a memory? Not so much a memory of the event, but an embodied memory of where that sense of peace was in you, or how it was, or the taste of it, the feel of it. Maybe that still lives in you someplace. Maybe there's something that you feel still to this day that is a remnant, a little hint or trace of that experience. If so, can you call on that as a way to support you in being present for your experience during this meditation? Almost as if that experience of ease, peace, or letting go is a beacon or a guidepost. "Here, this is the direction to go as you're present with your experience here. This is the way to be with being mindful like this."

So, sitting upright in an alert, comfortable posture, gently closing your eyes.

And to settle into this spot, here and now. To remember that to really go into this practice is to realize that the mind and body are being brought together so that they're cooperating in harmony here at this moment, now, in this place. It is mostly a task of the mind coming here in the same place as the body. When the mind and body are cooperating or connected in the same place at the same time, then the dharma^[1] can begin opening up for us.

Gently take a few long, slow, deep breaths, as deep as is comfortable for you. And on the exhale, relax and let go.

Softening your body as you exhale.

Preparing your body to relax as you inhale.

And then gently return your breathing to normal.

And as you exhale, relax your body some more. Go through the different parts of your body. Wherever there's holding, see if you can soften the holding.

This is all an exercise that brings the mind into the body, engaging the body.

And then bring to mind a recent or distant memory where you let go, or you were relieved of something that was agitating or difficult. And in it going, you experienced some peace, some ease, some freedom, some calmness.

Remembering that experience in your body—how did it feel in the body for you to be at ease? Peaceful? Do you remember what it was like in the mind?

Maybe in the next few exhales, continue to let go, relax your body as you exhale, but relax into the feeling or the memory of that sense of peace, ease, relaxation.

And maybe on the inhale, if there's any feeling in your body, in your mind, of that experience, as you inhale, see if you can let it spread and grow.

On the exhale, settling into it more.

And might there be a way that a memory or a leftover feeling of peace might guide your mindfulness? Instruct you in how to be present for your breathing?

Letting your mindfulness base itself on some peaceful orientation, some peaceful way of being. And even if you're agitated, the mindfulness, the awareness itself of the agitation, can be peaceful.

Letting peacefulness be a guide of support for being present, attentive here and now. One breath at a time.

And then as you meditate, perhaps the near goal of the meditation, just a moment or two away, is to be present, to be a little bit more peaceful. To be present to touch into the aspect of the present moment where there is peace.

Peaceful attention to breathing.

Remember the place where there's peace, even in the midst of agitation.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, there are times where some modicum of peace, of letting go, can allow us to be ourselves. We shed the ways that we put on a mask, or are not quite honest, or do things which are not really who we are. Sometimes meditation is a homecoming to ourselves.

When we have some reference to peace and being peaceful, our peaceful attention to others is a way that we allow them to be themselves, allow them to just be, and relax, and maybe even come home to themselves.

May it be that whatever calm, peace, and understanding we have from this practice supports us and our goodwill for others, so that we bring a generosity, a kindness, a goodwill for the welfare and happiness of those we meet, and a friendly, peaceful presence that allows them to feel and sense who they are in some deeper way.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (65) Fourth Noble Truth

So today's topic is the Fourth Noble Truth^[2], and how we understand that depends a little bit on how we understand the Second Noble Truth.

If the Second Noble Truth is the cause of suffering, then we may or may not be able to let go of the suffering, but we understand the cause. Knowing that maybe some attachment is the cause, some clinging is the cause, some unhealthy belief is a cause, then we look for a practice that helps us to become free of that, to loosen the grip. And so the Fourth Noble Truth is the practice to do that. We start cultivating a way of being in the world that creates the conditions for us to let go of the cause. So we practice wise view, we practice an ethical life, we practice meditation, so that we can experience or attain a degree of subtleness, a degree of non-agitation, a degree of integrity that allows the system—our mind, our hearts—to begin to soften and release the attachments we have.

If we know the cause of suffering is craving or attachment, and we have a very clear release of that craving, a cessation of it that's dramatic, then we know, "Oh, this is the way forward." The Eightfold Path^[3] becomes the way to do this again. This is the way to develop myself and grow myself, so that I put myself in a better position to let go even more and not cling again.

If the Second Noble Truth is the arising of suffering, and the third is the cessation of suffering, we see it coming and going—all the different shapes and forms of suffering that we have, of stress we have. We see that in the arising and passing, there starts to be freedom. Then the Eightfold Path can be seen as a path to do this more and more, to support that deep seeing. But if the cessation, the Third Noble Truth, is a definitive, clear dropping away, the bottom drops away in some wonderful, inspiring way, and then we realize, "Oh, this is freedom. This is peace. This is the profound sense of well-being that's possible, I had no idea," then the Eightfold Path is still the practice to do. It becomes a practice for two things: to move into this experience of peace more and more, but it also becomes a practice that manifests that peace.

In the teachings of the Buddha, we find plenty of times where the Eightfold Path are eight ways of being in the world which are not practices to attain peace. They're not practices where we say, "Now we understand this is what we should practice if we want to deepen our peace." Rather, they are more expressions of the peace.

I don't know if this is a good example, but an open hand might feel easeful. The expression of the open hand is ease. The expression of the open hand is being open. The expression of the open hand is its sensitivity, available to the world. The expression of the open hand is that it's not creating a fist to hit someone; it's just an open hand.

When the letting go is deep enough, it can become a reference point and a source from which we then live our life. The Eightfold Path then is not a prescription for how to practice further so we can deepen our practice or experience more liberation. Rather, the Eightfold Path is an expression, a description of how we start living.

At some point, we have a clear sense that it's really good to be at ease, to be at peace, to have a sense of well-being. And then when we have forces within us that want to go in a different direction, we would say, "Why? Why give up something good, something useful, for something that is not so good?" It's not a matter of practicing the Eightfold Path, but rather it's a matter of not doing those things that take us away from the Eightfold Path.

Someone who is deeply practiced becomes the Eightfold Path; they don't just practice the Eightfold Path and then become it. They don't do the things, they don't allow themselves to do things that take that away, or cause them to lose touch with themselves, this home of who they are.

At some point in this Four Noble Truths practice, the Eightfold Path becomes more and more interesting. Either we understand that it's useful to do all eight of these practices to create the conditions to transform who I am—transform my feelings, my sense of being, my attitude, how I am in the world—so it becomes easier to let go more and more. Or, there has been a transformation from a deep letting go, and now it's a matter of growing that transformation, letting it spread and become bigger and bigger.

The Eightfold Path is then both the goal, the fulfillment of the goal, and the means to the goal.

The Eightfold Path are eight sets of ways of being. Sometimes they're called eight practices, which is true when they're understood to be a means to liberation. But they're eight ways of being when they're understood as being an expression of our awakening. So these are Right View, Right Resolve, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.

The middle ones—Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood—are ethical. They are about how we behave in the world, how we relate to other people, and how our actions affect others. There's an orientation to an ethical transformation. It's not about following rules so much, but to follow these guidelines, these ways of being that are the ethical guidelines, so that we begin to be transformed. It's not about following rules only; it's about living this way so that we start being ethically transformed. We become someone who has such a sense of integrity or peace that, of course, we wouldn't do the unethical things that would obscure that or harm that.

With Right Concentration, we're also talking about a transformation. Concentration is not just a matter of having a laser focus of the mind. It's having a unified sense of peace and calm from having let go a lot, and practicing concentration, practicing stability and steadiness. This is one of the primary ways that the Buddhist tradition has for preparing ourselves for the deepest kinds of letting go we can do. We're becoming softer, more malleable, more resilient, less distractible. In that state, it's kind of like we're ready for something to be put down that we've been carrying for a long time. There's some kind of inner transformation that happens, and part of that inner transformation is an experience of peace.

At some point, that peace becomes a reference point, a seed that we can water and grow, becoming a plant that grows and blossoms within us. And the Eightfold Path represents that blossoming, that fulfillment of it all.

If you are not familiar with the Eightfold Path, there are really marvelous things to learn and study. Once you kind of get the idea, study them enough so you understand the basic idea of what each of them is. Then, once you understand, you can start feeling your way, sensing your way, understanding how these eight ways of being are not only practices, they're also inner wellsprings of being at home, inner expressions of being settled and at peace with oneself.

This peace doesn't have to start off being dramatic, but there might be little hints of what that is like. As we orient around that peace, it can grow. It's possible to have very small degrees of peace in this life that we overlook. The mind is so concerned with its preoccupations that we just keep thinking them. We have one preoccupation finished, and we just jump on to the next one, and the next one, and there's no space. What we learn in this practice is to create a little more space and attentiveness to the subtler places of well-being, the subtle places of peace that begin surfacing through the practice. Then touch into it periodically, regularly through the day. Find the little seeds and recognize it, water it with attention, let it be a reference point. Let it be a guide, let it be there to support you as you go through your life.

So for this day, you might get a book or go online and read about the Noble Eightfold Path. But you also might look for the seeds of peace, the little hints of it, or ease, that might be more a part of you, more available than you allow yourself to feel. Pause, stop, take a break. Check into yourself. See if you can find if there is anywhere within you some modicum, even the smallest degree, of peace and well-being. And if you stay close to that for a little while, breathe with it, what happens to you? And what do you learn about peace being an expression and not a practice?

So thank you for today. We'll have one more talk on the Four Noble Truths tomorrow, and we're almost done with this. Thank you.