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Guided Meditation: Gladness

Hello, everyone, and warm greetings from Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City. I say that with a particular kind of happiness that I'm back here at IMC. I've mostly been gone for the last month, certainly gone from YouTube and all of you here. It's very nice to be back and being able to have this kind of contact with you. The kind of contact it is for me is that I get to share my heart, share my practice, my sense of the Dharma. I feel very grateful to be able to have this opportunity and to be able to share what I have loved and delighted in. So here we are, and I'm certainly delighted, glad, and happy to be here.

I want to use that as a jumping-off point for our meditation: that there is a role at times for gladness, for delight. Maybe as we settle into our meditation here, there's a variety of things that we can settle into or be inspired by, or kind of make a welcoming place within to be present. We want to be present to these good feelings that can arise.

Maybe there is a gladness that comes from simply sitting in this meditation posture. If you've been doing this for a long time, it might be a kind of homecoming. You feel fortunate to be able to have a posture to meditate in. You can maybe feel a certain degree of gladness or delight that you have these minutes put aside where there's so much of your life that you don't have to take care of at this moment, or you've chosen not to take care of or be engaged in. It's kind of a vacation, a Sabbath stepping away. Maybe there's a gladness for this little bit of time, and maybe a modicum of peace and subtleness—the peace of not having to respond, react, do, accomplish, and prove yourself, and just to be here.

Maybe there's gladness in having a mindfulness practice. Gladness in a practice where we, with time, can find our home here in this body, in this space. There's a kind of safety that we find in being aware, being attentive, so that our reactivity doesn't get the upper hand. Just to be here breathing. There is maybe a variety of things you can be glad about, happy about this opportunity to meditate. You might have a lot of challenges, physical pain, or emotional difficulties that are very uncomfortable. Not to deny them or try to override them, but maybe for these minutes here in the middle of them, in this present moment, maybe there's a place where your heart can smile.

Maybe there are some things that allow your heart to have a smile, and in that smile, to welcome you and to be here and present. Gently closing the eyes, maybe closing the eyes so that that part of you which has the smile or the gladness can be felt more. Gently taking some long, slow, deep breaths. A gentle three-quarters full inhale, and perhaps with the inhale and exhale, breathing with the smile, breathing with the gladness.

Letting your breathing return to normal. Sometimes it's useful to notice the location in your body from which you're aware, from where you practice mindfulness. The seat of awareness can be changed, is variable. Without denying how you might be otherwise, can you let your awareness come from the place where you feel a delight or gladness or contentment, a quiet well-being? Like you're sitting in a nice comfortable easy chair from which you can gaze upon the world. Letting your awareness take a seat in the smile of your heart, and from here, be aware of your breathing. Be aware of your body. Be aware of your experience, remembering always to know it from that seat within where there is some well-being, resting there. Awareness resting, so awareness does not work.

(Meditation period)

And then as we come to the end of this sitting, consider sitting here quietly what you might be glad for, grateful for during this sitting. Perhaps the meditation has its challenges for you. Maybe your body now is uncomfortable from sitting this long. But is there somewhere inside, something that you are content or happy or grateful for? This chance to meditate, to be together? Is there some feeling of relief or appreciation, a smile in the heart?

May whatever appreciation we have from this practice be a source from which to appreciate others. Whatever ways that we have benefited from this meditation, in ways that we know and in ways that we don't know, may it inspire us to greater care and respect for the people we encounter and relate to. May it be that sitting quietly in meditation has value for how we live our life. May we contribute to the welfare and happiness of others while doing so for ourselves. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings everywhere be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: The Gladness Pentad (1 of 5) The Flow of Goodness

Hello everyone, and here we are in a new Monday, a new week. I'm happy to be with you. In a sense, I bring with you a little bit of the last retreat that I was teaching at the Insight Retreat Center, which ended yesterday. It was wonderful to be at the retreat center in person, and even more wonderful to be meditating there and being in the flow—a very, very relaxed flow of the practice, of the schedule, of the whole life there at the retreat center.

I come here happy with this, and I also come here with a little bit of the theme of the retreat. What I'm inspired to share with you this week is what has locally come to be called the gladness pentad. I've probably talked about this before, certainly parts of it. These are five inner states or qualities that can grow as we develop practice. The way the Buddha presented these five was not as something that we generate, create, or construct for ourselves, or make happen like we're in charge and we're going to pump this up. Rather, it is something that emerges and then begins to flow into each other, one after the other. The role of the practitioner is to know it, allow for it, make room for it, and not interfere with the process.

We interfere with it by getting lost in thought. Part of the value of learning how not to wander off in thought and be caught up in preoccupations is that when we're really here, those thoughts and preoccupations are a dampener. They limit, they close the doors to something flowing and moving. Something can happen when those are not there. It's kind of like if you're on the radio and you tune into the channel of the news, as horrible as the news might be, you miss out. But you turn it back to the channel where maybe there's some really inspiring music that touches you, opens you, delights you, and helps you to be in the present moment. When we stop being distracted and mindfulness has developed so we're really here, it's a new channel, and something new can flow and move that can't move if we're distracted.

That's part of one of those descriptions of the gladness pentad. The first quality gives it its name: gladness itself. Then joy, tranquility, happiness, and samadhi^[1] (concentration). One of the salient features of the description of these is that it doesn't say that the meditator makes these happen, but that one arises from the other; the other flows from one to the other.

This idea of flowing or arising is maybe one of the preeminent ways in which the Buddha talks about the growth, expansion, and movement of healthy states of mind. In a number of places, he uses the metaphor of water flowing in a river, flowing in a stream, or water flowing from an underwater spring into a large peaceful lake—the flow of that water from the inside out. Or really finding the current of the river and then flowing in the current. Or as the rivers go down the mountainside and combine, they get bigger and bigger and bigger. So as these good qualities come together and grow, something within us gets bigger and bigger, more expansive. This idea of becoming expansive is part of what the Buddha talks about as practice develops.

The alternative to this flowing is what we could call reactivity. The Buddha points to very different metaphors to describe reactivity. He describes it as garbage, as a fire that burns you, as a barb or kind of an arrow that pierces you. A sickness that comes from the outside, like a virus that makes you sick. A tumor, which is also something that's extra. Sometimes he calls it a burden, something outside that's weighing you down like a heavy thing you have to carry.

These are very different ways in which we can go through life. One is a burden, which is afflictive, and the other is being carried along; something's moving within us that we make space for and allow this movement towards freedom.

The way the Buddha describes this gladness pentad, it begins with something that inspires us. Sometimes it's the faith or trust we have in the Dharma and the practice. Sometimes it has to do with some experience of freedom that we've had—not necessarily the big bang freedom that the Buddha might be emphasizing, but just the small ways in which we learn to let go and experience ourselves independent of our reactivity. Our preoccupations, our rumination, is self-afflicting. We repeat the same self-critical thoughts over and over again, and it is a kind of burning fire that singes us. To have that stop, or cease, or quiet down enough that we have a different experience of ourselves, we're inspired that it's possible.

What's remarkable for many of us is how we can go through life thinking that how our mind is operating is normal, that's the way it should be. If the mind is involved with reactivity—by reactivity I mean a habitual mental or emotional activity that gets triggered by some event outside or inside. For example, if I sit here quietly and think, "I haven't had my car oil changed for a while, now it's time to do it." There can be a reactivity to that inside, like, "Gil, you're a really lousy, terrible car owner. You don't really take care of that well. This is a thing that should be cared for and respected, and how could you?" I get angry with myself. That automatic pilot, that kind of criticism and anger, that's reactivity.

That reactivity can then produce more reactivity. Once I get angry with myself for being a lousy car owner, then I start remembering that I'm supposed to be a mindfulness teacher who doesn't have reactivity! Now I'm a really bad person because I'm a lousy teacher in addition to it. Then, I talk about it to all of you, and I get caught up in my embarrassment, my conceit, my ideas. It's possible that for some people, that's all they're living in. Just reactivity triggering more reactivity, swirling around. It's so normal that the mind doesn't think anything of it. In a sense, this is what life is.

To have it all quiet down enough to experience ourselves without that reactivity, where one thing doesn't trigger another harmful thing, another little fire that singes us or a barb that pokes us, but we experience the mind and the heart unpoked, unsinged, relaxing, softening, opening—wow, this is possible. For the Buddha, this kind of experience provides one of the sources for gladness. It's a kind of inspiration.

And whether the word should be "gladness"—the Pali word is pāmojja^[2]—I kind of like the word "delight." We can't say "joy" and "happiness" because those come later. Joy is evaluative in nature; it comes from realization or understanding, "Oh, this is a good thing." It does require some engagement and involvement to reflect on, "Oh yes, I appreciate this. This is valuable."

The nature of reactivity is that it can go non-stop. It never takes a vacation. We just go from one thing to the next, and there's no room to pause and stop and just appreciate the present moment, appreciate what can live within us that is not reactive.

A non-reactive life, where something begins to flow, is one of the things that Dharma practice is moving us towards. Our reactivity gets out of the way so that the current of goodness that lives within us as a potential can begin to flow. Getting an inkling of this possibility, feeling it within us, and taking the time to appreciate that, allows us to begin feeling a gladness, an appreciation, a certain kind of joy.

That's important because when that becomes strong enough or present enough in this non-distracted state of mindfulness, that becomes the seedbed, the river that grows into a stronger, bigger river. That grows into joy. From gladness there arises joy, says the Buddha. He doesn't say, "From gladness, now make yourself joyful." The joy just flows like the current.

Perhaps today you can take a little bit of extra time here and there through the day to see what it's like to be undistracted in the present moment. Allow yourself to find a way to appreciate just being present here and now. See if, in that kind of letting go of reactivity and thoughts—not that you have to stop thinking, but enough that maybe you can find something bubbling up, flowing up, some little hints within of something that wants to flow, radiate, move, that is good. Maybe a beginning of a smile, an inner smile of the heart.

Thank you, and I'm very grateful to all of you that you're here to keep me company as we engage in the Dharma together this way. Thank you.