This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Breathing with Distractions

Greetings from Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City. I delight in seeing all the good mornings and greetings on the chat, and today especially stands out all the locations, the places that you're greeting from. So thank you for being here, those of you who are both present now on YouTube and those maybe who will listen later.

The craft of meditation, of mindfulness, begins this journey we're on with the mindfulness of breathing. I'm taking some time with it because it lays the foundation for what follows, and also because this is the first time we'll go through the so-called refrain, where it lists the insights that come with well-developed practice. I want to go through that a little bit slower than we will do later. But for now, I want to go back to these steps to the breathing.

A little bit of shorthand: the first is to know your breathing, to know that you are breathing, but then also to know the experience of breathing, to recognize it. To have a recognition of the sensations, the characteristics, the qualities of the breath—where you're breathing, what moves, what the sensations are. This is not a probing, but rather a very simple recognition of what is obvious. As we stay grounded and become more centered on the breathing, what becomes more obvious becomes more subtle, and we can start seeing more detail to what's going on.

Then the instructions are, as we do this, as we center ourselves on the rhythm of breathing, the sensations of breathing, to experience the whole body. What I'd like to emphasize today about this whole body aspect is that our emotional life and the life of thoughts and distractions all have an embodied quality, root, or association. Thoughts and emotions often can distract us from being with the breathing. But this instruction to breathe in and experience the whole body, breathe out and experience the whole body, can be inclusive of the very things that make it difficult to be present—the things that keep us distracted or caught up.

The way to do that is to recognize what makes it difficult to be present: the distracted mind, or maybe strong emotions, or maybe discomfort in the body, pain. And then when we experience the whole body, experience that as well. You might just experience it as something mental or something emotional, but you're experiencing with this rhythm of breathing in, experiencing the whole body; breathing out, experiencing the whole body.

The center of gravity is breathing and experiencing the body. The center of gravity is not the distracted thoughts, the concerns we have, and it's not the emotions we have. Emotions are important, but for the purposes of meditation, we don't have to make them the center. They're included in the experience of the whole body. It has this wonderful thing of being able to move in and out, move through whatever is challenging for being present, and including it as part of being present, rather than letting it be something that keeps pulling us away. We assimilate it, we coordinate ourselves with it, we let it cooperate with the efforts to be here.

So, breathing in, experiencing the whole body as we breathe in, and including how the experience of breathing might go through or accompany the thing that makes it difficult. It's particularly useful if what makes it difficult to be present has a physical association, a physical manifestation. If there's a lot of emotion, chances are there's some place in the body where those emotions are centered or most expressed. Or if there's a lot of thinking, there might be some kind of tension somewhere in the body associated with all that thinking—in the furrow of the eyebrows, or behind the forehead, or in the jaws, or all kinds of places.

Then at some point, the last step of this beginning exercise is to relax. Relax the bodily constructs. We take our time with each one; there's no hurry through them, but one of the ways to really get centered is to be inclusive of the very thing that makes it difficult in this way that I'm talking about.

So, to begin, assume a posture that gives you some sense of being inclusive, that includes all of who you are. For some people, that means to sit upright and alert, maybe a little bit tall, with the chest open, and to lower your gaze. As you lower your gaze, turn your attention inward to how your body feels now. Then, if it's comfortable, gently close your eyes, and maybe that allows you to feel your body more fully.

Taking a few long, slow, deep breaths, three-quarters full perhaps. Then, as you breathe in deeply and exhale more fully, imagine that you're including everything within the scope, the range of that deep inhale. Relaxing everything on the exhale a little bit. Imagining that your attention can flow out to include everything as you breathe in, everything as you breathe out.

And then letting your breathing return to normal. Then, whenever there is some tension or holding, wherever there is some compelling emotion, as you breathe in, feel that place. As you exhale, relax that place. Perhaps each time you inhale, aware of a different place in your body. The exhale relaxing that place. In a sense, folding everything into the breathing.

And then centering yourself more on the breathing. And now getting to know your breathing better. Curious about the sensations, curious about how breathing occurs now. The sensations that come into play. The rhythm of it, the nature of your breathing. Long or short, shallow or deep, in the chest or in the belly. Feeling where there might be holding in the breathing. Whatever is there, just know it simply, without worry about evaluating it. Just letting it be and knowing it as it is.

Breathing in, experiencing the whole body. Maybe as if awareness spreads through your body as you breathe in. Breathing out, experiencing the whole body. Maybe as if the awareness moves back through the body.

If anything distracts you from breathing, as you breathe in and experience the whole body, experience the nature, the quality, the distraction itself. The movements of the mind, the body, the emotions. Breathe in and let the awareness spread and touch the very place where you're distracted.

And then breathing in, relaxing the bodily formations. Breathing out, relaxing the holding and tension, contractions of your body. By breathing in and experiencing the whole body, it lets you know, feel where it's possible to become quieter, more tranquil. Maybe spreading a tranquility of body through the body. Relaxation and tranquility that touches everything, including what is difficult.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, breathing in, experiencing the whole world. Imagine that your awareness spreads from the breathing as you breathe in, out into the whole world. Out beyond yourself, beyond the place you're living. And then as you exhale, that awareness returns here to you. And the scope of your care expands outward with that expanding awareness, circles of care out into the world. And then it returns to you on the exhale, centering you, connecting you, settling you here.

With this rhythm of sending your care, your love, compassion out into the world as you inhale. As your chest expands, belly expands, as your lungs fill, so your care expands outward. And as you exhale, it all returns back here, centered here on you.

May all beings be happy. May you be happy. May all beings be safe. May you be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May you be peaceful. May all beings be free. May you be free. Breathing in and breathing out, may we hold each other in mutual kind regard.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (11) Observing Knowing and Feeling

So today I'm going to continue talking about the so-called refrain of the Satipaṭṭhāna^[1], the place where some of the fruit of mindfulness practice occurs, where we start having insight, where we start seeing in a new way. It begins with the line, "One observes the body in terms of the body internally, and one observes the body in terms of the body externally."

As I've emphasized, the word observe is actually the fruit of being gathered, settled, and centered here in the present moment. The tendency to be distracted and wander off in thought is pretty minimal. I think of it a little bit like a large bowl. Any marble you drop in the bowl will roll back and forth around the bowl, but eventually, it will always come and rest at the center. In the same way, as we practice, attention eventually comes and rests at the center, which is the present moment. The sides of this bowl, where it is not very stable, are the future and the past. If we end up on the sides inevitably, if we relax, we'll come back and rest in the center. It takes effort and energy in the mind to be pushing the ball up the sides this way and that way. The energy of that ball to roll down will—sometimes it takes a little while for it to settle—eventually settle in the bottom of the bowl.

So our attention settles in the present moment, and as it does so, then at some point we can simply observe. The knowing and the experiencing aren't as important anymore. They still occur, and it's important they occur, but we're settling back and more than movement of awareness is out of observing, just watching freely, relaxedly. Not entangled or enmeshed in what's happening. Just kind of seeing it, not being for or against anything. Just perceiving it with the mind's eye, or the mind's ear if you prefer the metaphor of hearing, or feeling. Sensing in the body also can be done this way. It's an inner way of perceiving that's deeper than the direct experience of the senses.

This experiencing internally and externally, there's one way that I interpret this for myself that I'll share with you. The external way, so-called external, is to experience it cognitively. The knowing that's the beginning of the breath meditation—knowing the breath is a cognitive experience of recognition. So there's the knowing that it's a long breath, knowing it's a short breath, knowing it's a shallow breath, a deep breath. Knowing the breath is fast and slow, knowing that there's expansion as we breathe in and contraction as we breathe out, knowing there's pressure and as we breathe in the release of that pressure perhaps as we exhale. And there's tightening and pulsing and vibration. All these things are known, and that's a little bit of a mental cognitive act to know. The knowing, you know that you know when you could describe it to someone, when you have the words to say, "Oh, that was expansion, that was contraction. That was long, that was short." To have those words requires it goes through the cognitive functioning of the mind, the recognition, and I think of that as a little bit the external kind of way.

The internal is to sense and feel the experience of something. For example, if I take my fingers together and maybe press my two fingers, my thumb and my first finger together, and I look at it, I can recognize that the fingers are touching, and maybe I can recognize that I can see they're pushing against each other. That's the recognition part. But as I touch my fingers together, I feel the warmth, I feel the pressure, I feel the elasticity of the skin a little bit. I feel the hardness and pressure as I push hard. I can recognize those cognitively, but I can also feel those sensations. The feelings are happening within the fingers, and that's inside. So the experience of the fingers touching can be known two different ways. Cognitively as a recognition, a knowing that the fingers are touching, and knowing that there's pressure, knowing that it's warmth, that it's elasticity that I'm feeling. It could also be known, I can be aware of it from the inside. I can be aware of it in the location in the fingers where the touching is happening, and I can just feel from the point of view of the fingers how it feels. So we have these two ways of knowing: to recognize and to feel, recognize and experience.

The two are closely connected, they're mutually supportive, they can occur together. It's not like one or the other. And there's a natural kind of going back and forth in the mind between experiencing and knowing, knowing and experiencing, that when the mind is settled and relaxed, is a little bit like the example I like so much—please bear with me—it's like watching the river flow by. Sitting on the banks watching the river's little currents you see, maybe little waves you see. The eyes don't fixate on any one thing because everything is moving, and the eyes are moving along with it. It turns out that when the eyes are locked, there's usually tension in the psychophysical system. When the eyes are in a natural, relaxed state, the eyes kind of flow and move around here and there, they are not held at a single thing. It's actually work to find a little point in front of you and hold your eyes there fixedly without letting them go. But to let the eyes just wander around a thing—it doesn't have to be a big thing, it could just be a small thing—it naturally moves around and takes in everything of the thing.

So the same watching the river go by. That's one of the reasons why it can be relaxing to watch something like that, because the eyes naturally will kind of move with everything going. Therapists sometimes will encourage people when they're stressed or afraid, especially if they're locked into it, to look around a room and just kind of look at the corners, look at lines. When I'm sometimes on the computer a lot, like on Zoom a lot, I'll start looking at the edge of the monitor, just trace the edge of the monitor. There's something about just tracing it in a relaxed way that feels relaxing, and it kind of loosens up something deeper inside. The same thing with our inner awareness, our mindfulness. If it's locked in, it's actually kind of tense. But a way to get settled and concentrated in a healthy way, gathered in and unified, is this very simple, it's not exactly willful or intentional, but there's a natural moving, feeling, and knowing. Knowing and feeling.

And there's something about gently, relaxedly allowing each to be mutually supportive. To know I'm breathing, to feel the breathing. To know the in-breath, to feel the in-breath. To feel the in-breath, to know the sensation. It might seem like it's busy work, like there's a lot going on, but it's actually recognizing what's probably happening all along. You might prioritize one; it might be mostly knowing in the beginning, like the exercise is, or it might mostly be feeling, experiencing it. But each one includes the other.

So observing the body internally and observing the body externally is to recognize this simple, relaxed, constantly changing and shifting mode of awareness. Sometimes feeling, sometimes knowing. And it's more like recognizing that it's what the mind is doing, what our system is doing, rather than instructions to do, because the instructions are just to observe. As we open up our perception to what's happening, we're also becoming aware not only of what is happening, what the experience of the body is, but that it's being known in different modes. It's being known in the mode of knowing, recognition, and in the mode of feeling.

And if you get the best of both of those worlds, both of those ways of being, they both are profound and meaningful. It's important not to prioritize one over the other as being the way of doing mindfulness. But one of them might be the way we get centered and focused. So if you learn yourself well enough to know that you get more focused by the knowing faculty, great, go for it. If you get more focused by the feeling faculty, go for it. And if you get more focused by the relaxing quality of this first exercise, relaxing the bodily formations, go with it.

But the movement is to come to this place where we can just observe. And one of the ways that I found helpful to observe internally and externally the body is to recognize the shifting, natural, relaxed shifting that goes on between knowing and experiencing. Now it's kind of like sitting at the riverbank watching a stream go by. Just, "Oh look at that, it's constantly shifting and moving." In that way, it can be relaxing too, because there's no fixation. I hope that made sense. If it doesn't make sense, maybe it will one day, and in the meantime, don't worry about it.

This first exercise of meditating on the breath is phenomenally useful. You just keep doing it and it probably keeps opening up and opening up. Just the simplicity of doing the breath meditation without trying too much the techniques and drawing everything all at once. Today's teaching, then, is the foundation for the teaching tomorrow and the next step in the refrain. In the meantime, maybe through the day you can study a little bit the shifting nature of when you know something cognitively and when you know something experientially, and how closely connected they can be if you relax.

So thank you very much.