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Guided Meditation: Freedom With Change

Greetings. To jump right in, I want to say that one of the fundamental characteristics of mindfulness meditation is cultivating a greater sensitivity to change, a greater sensitivity to the flow, the inconstancy, and the coming and going of life and of experience. Life is sometimes described as a river, the river of life. If you go to the edge of a river with a bucket, pick up a bucket full of water, and go back to your friends and say, "Look, I have the river right here," you no longer have the river; you have a bucket of water. Or if you go stand in the river, face upstream, put up your hands, and say, "Stop, stop, river," you can exhaust yourself because it won't stop. But if it's a little mountain stream that dries out in the summer, as it dries out, if you chase after it to keep it, it's kind of pointless as well.

So our relationship to this changing life is one of the things we're discovering in sitting in meditation. Meditation is a little microcosm of change. We sit still and quiet, unmoving in a sense, to really become attuned to all the movement, all the subtle ways in which things are changing and moving. Even as we sit still, we allow the mind to become quiet and still, and that, paradoxically, helps us to see much more clearly all that is changing. From that still place of mindfulness, we just allow the river of change to move, to come and go. And we start noticing that when we hold onto it, try to resist it, or try to chase after things, that it's exhausting, it doesn't really work, or it undermines our freedom. So to sit here quietly, maybe contentedly, is to allow this life to flow through us.

So sitting in a meditation, taking a meditation posture, and gently closing your eyes. Taking a few moments to gentle your body. Can you enter your body in a gentle and gentling way, accepting the body as it is, but entering into it with care and kindness? Aware of it, maybe adjusting your posture to be a little bit more settled. And part of the flow of constant change is the comings and goings of your body breathing. The inhale comes, appears, and ends. The exhale begins, and soon enough, it ends. And that rhythm of rising and falling, coming and going of each breath is itself part of the rhythm and the flow of changing life.

Allow yourself to settle into your body breathing. To settle into the place in your body where your body most easily is aware of breathing, or most pleasantly. Wherever breathing seems most pleasant, not dramatically so but maybe modestly. Maybe it's the expansion and contraction, lifting and falling of the chest. Or maybe deeper inside, in the area of the lungs, is the rhythm of rising pressure, expansion in the lungs, and the release of that pressure, the collapsing of the lungs. Or maybe it's most pleasant in the area of your belly, expansion and contraction there. Maybe like a balloon that is blown up and then a little bit deflated, or like the gentle waves on an ocean you're floating on, being lifted and lowered with each wave. Or maybe it's in the nostrils or the lip^[1], a very narrow little place where there's an acute feeling of temperature and sensation that changes with the different temperature of the in-breath and the out-breath.

And as you exhale, perhaps try to soften and quiet the thinking mind. The Buddha said that one of the most changeable things in the world is the thinking mind. And if there's a lot of energy for thinking, feel that energy. Feel the emotions that fuel the energy to think. And as you exhale, see if you can allow your thinking mind to become quieter. The thinking becomes softer, with more gaps between the sentences, or more spaces between the images that appear. Maybe letting go of your thoughts, and letting go back into the body breathing.

And without thinking about it—or thinking about it too much—become aware that there is change as you meditate. Different things come and go. In addition to the breathing, new thoughts appear, sounds appear, sensations appear. What the mind is aware of changes. Don't hold onto any of that. Don't resist it. Don't chase after anything. Let it all kind of fold back into the body, and fold back into your breathing. As if the breathing is the current in the middle of the river of life, and you allow yourself to rest, focus, and stay in the current of breathing in the midst of all other change. Breathe in and breathe out mindfully.

When the inhale begins, the exhale is gone. The absence of the exhale can be known as a kind of freedom, freedom from exhaling. When the exhale begins, the absence of the inhale is a kind of freedom, unless we're thinking about it, wanting it to be different, or wanting to hold on. Allow things to end. Allow things to go, even if they return. Appreciate the freedom. Allowing things to come and go, appear and disappear, as found in your breathing, even if the breathing is controlled. Still, when the inhale begins, the exhale is no longer there. You're free of it. The thoughts you had five minutes ago may not be here now. Thoughts you had a few moments ago may not be here now. There's a freedom from those thoughts when they vanish and disappear.

Towards all the many things—sensations, and breaths, and feelings, and thoughts—that appeared and then disappeared during the sitting, in relationship to those, there can be a sense of freedom in their absence, provided we don't get fixated on the next thing that arises. The next thing that arises is just allowed to arise. In that freedom, it simply appears and is there for as long as it's there. And we stay sensitive to the freedom of allowing things to come and go at their own pace.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, our ability to be free of the comings and goings of life means that we don't habitually react to things. We might respond appropriately, but it's not a reactive response, an automatic response from our habits. And may it be that our ability to be free, to be present for things that appear and things that disappear, helps us to be a safe person for others. The Buddha instructed us: "Make yourself safe for others." And may it be that this meditation practice allows us to go into the world, in all the ways that we encounter or experience other people in person, or through some device of communication, or even reading about people in the news, may we enter the world being safe for them. And being safe for them, they have nothing to fear from us. May we then aspire for this meditation practice of ours to support the welfare, and the happiness, and the goodness of all beings. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. And may all beings be free.