Guided Meditation: The Protection Of Seclusion; Dharmette: Tastes Of Freedom (2of5) Cozy Seclusion

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: The Protection of Seclusion; Tastes of Freedom (2of5) Cozy Seclusion. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Meg Gawler at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 13, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: The Protection Of Seclusion

Greetings everyone. I'm delighted to be here with you again. The theme for this week is "Tastes of Freedom." Yesterday, we explored feeling and tasting as a way of putting in place conditions that open the door to freedom. Today, we will evoke the power and the protection of creating conditions of what is usually translated into English as seclusion, or viveka^[1] in Pali.

Yesterday, when we were talking about the key to the path to freedom—the door to freedom—I talked about the dangers of giving the reactive mind the upper hand: wanting more of what we desire or what is pleasant (grasping), or wanting to push away what we don't like or are aversive to (what is unpleasant). Those two conditions are two of the most important factors, and the Buddha gave instructions on how to do meditations on these factors.

But there's a third one. In addition to "pleasant, I want more," or "unpleasant, get me out of here," there is also "neither pleasant nor unpleasant," which is sometimes called neutral. This one is a bit hard to describe the flavor of, or how it feels, because we're not sure how it feels. We're not sure if it is pleasant or unpleasant. There's an element of maybe confusion in that third feeling tone of neither pleasant nor unpleasant. And what this is pointing to is that all three of the feeling tones—pleasant, unpleasant, and neither—are in response to what is often called in the Pali texts the three poisons: greed, hate, and delusion.

If we want to be independent in our practice, we have to overcome our instinctive response to whatever comes in the sense doors. It's almost simultaneous; as soon as it comes in, the mind knows or categorizes it as pleasant, unpleasant, or neither. In each of these three poisons, of course, there's a very broad spectrum of how they might appear in our consciousness. If we haven't practiced very much, we might be just extremely reactive by nature. As soon as something slightly unpleasant arises, we're already in fight, flight, or freeze mode^[2]. And if something delicious comes up, then before we even know it, we're off on some fantasy. But if what arises is neither pleasant nor unpleasant, then we're not sure how to respond. This is exactly what the poison of delusion is all about: that we don't know what is wholesome and unwholesome. We haven't learned to discern which way we should go at the fork in the road that is in front of us in virtually each moment.

So, a lot of this path is about cultivating our capacity for discerning the wholesome and the unwholesome, so that we know which way to go when something like greed or hatred comes up.

To begin with, take your meditation posture. Feel the connection of the body with whatever you're sitting on, lying on, or standing on. Then let your roots go deep down into the earth, giving you a sense of stability. Drawing on this groundedness in the posture, we can begin to explore a little road trip through the body by scanning from the feet to the crown of the head, little by little. Every time we direct our awareness to a certain part of the body, we also use that moment to see if there might be something there that we could relax a little bit or soften, letting go of tensions as we go along.

So, closing the eyes, and inviting our awareness into the feet. Is there something there that we can let go of a little bit? And the same with moving up the lower legs, the upper legs, and the hips, the basin, the pelvis, the connection of the pelvis with our support and with the earth. Sometimes the endings in the hip joint get stuck, and it's very useful to let them go a little bit.

Then bringing the awareness to the belly. In Zen practice, this is called the Hara, and it is the center of gravity for us physically, but also the center of where we invite the mind. So can we let the belly relax a little bit? Let it all hang out slightly. Nobody's looking at us; it doesn't matter.

Then gently moving up through the diaphragm and into the heart area. How does it feel in there, in your heart center? Is it a pleasant feeling of warmth and glowing, maybe? Or perhaps an unpleasant feeling because you just lost a loved one, and that's where your heart center is at now, doing the grieving that it needs to do. We make friends with whatever arises in our hearts, not needing to push anything away in order to be able to meditate.

Then coming up the spine to the shoulder blades. If you can, let the shoulders themselves drop a little bit. Inviting awareness into the upper arms, the elbows, lower arms, wrists, and fingers. Softening as we go, releasing as we go.

Now bring your awareness to the head area and check to see if your head is well-balanced at the top of your spine, so that it doesn't require any extra energy to keep your head upright. It does require some wakefulness, but there's no physical constraint in having an erect posture if the head is aligned with the heart, the belly, and the earth.

What's it like inside the head area? What's it like in the thinking muscle? Is it active? Is it producing stories, or living in the past, or living in the future? If so, the invitation is to say to that mind that loves stories and distractions: "Okay, I see you, but not now. I'm going to stay with the breath."

Coming to the jaw, loosening the lips, the cheeks, all around the eyes, forehead, the scalp. Softness. To the extent possible, if you find tensions in the body, by all means, don't berate yourself for that because that will only make things worse. So if something is really tight and you can't seem to do anything about it, be friends with that. Practice with that.

And now take a long, deep inhale, feeling the whole length of the inhale as you do it. And then as you exhale, a long, drawn release^[3].

Now all you have to do is stay with the cycle of the breath. Simple, right? Yeah, simple, but not so easy. When the mind wanders off, as minds tend to do, then we try to catch that before we've been in some kind of a fantasy for ten minutes, or we've been in some sort of recrimination about the past that is going on and on. It's not the first time we've been through this particular screenplay; we just say, "No thank you."

Just as we leave our shoes outside the door when we come into our meditation area, we leave our thoughts, responsibilities, plans, expectations, and stories out there with the shoes^[4]. And to the extent we can, we stay with the cycle of the breath. Fully present for the inhale, fully present for the exhale, and for those little spaces in between.

If you should find that the corners of your mouth have turned up a little bit into a half smile, or even better, the corners of your eyes are in a half smile, please use that as an entry into a pleasant feeling for your meditation. That's really not only permitted but encouraged.

Being able to sit here in our spot on this beautiful planet. The Buddha talked about the place he sat as his bodhi mandala^[5], where he pictured a beautiful mandala on the ground, and bodhi, of course, means enlightenment. The connection with the earth and the connection with the breath allow you to inhabit this mandala of awakening.

Keeping ourselves secluded from the three poisons of greed, hate, and delusion, secluded from reactivity to our experience, we can be protected by this seclusion. And nurtured in a way that opens the doors, putting in place the conditions that lead to awakening.

As we come to the end of this meditation, let's take a few moments to open our hearts to all beings everywhere. Any of whom are suffering, many of whom are caught in delusional reactivity, or in oppressive greed, or in destructive hatred. Let us offer the benefits of our practice in all directions.

May all beings be safe. And feeling that sense of safety, may all beings be contented. With contentment, we don't need anything else. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Tastes Of Freedom (2of5) Cozy Seclusion

Greetings everyone, lovely to be here with you again. I'd like to let you know that I'm not able to see your comments in the chat on YouTube or in Zoom, but they are very welcome indeed, and I will be able to see them after finishing the teaching.

The theme for this week is "Tastes of Freedom." Last week, Ying Chen talked about the multifaceted, multi-dimensional aspect of the path of practice, and she read some stories from Gil Fronsdal's little anthology, The Monastery Within. Of course, The Monastery Within is a metaphor for our practice, meaning that the seat of our practice is inside. We don't have to go to some monastery off in the mountains to know seclusion or to be protected. We have everything we need to awaken right here in this body and mind. That's quite amazing.

As I've shared before, the path to freedom is your path. There's no carbon copy. You can, of course, see from people you admire how you'd like to practice, but that doesn't mean you can do it exactly the same way. I met Shunryu Suzuki Roshi^[6] when I was only 21 years old and a very troubled young girl. And yet, it was abundantly clear that he incarnated awakening, and that's kind of a mystery—how does that happen?

For many of us in this tradition—the Vipassana tradition, the Theravada tradition—the Buddha does not teach the importance of sudden enlightenment. Sometimes his in-person disciples—monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen—did wake up quickly when they heard him speak or when he was giving them an instruction specifically for them. But you know, most of us in the last 2,600 years actually have to figure it out for ourselves, and it's a gradual path. This gradual path also means gradual awakening. That is why, even before we become enlightened and are totally free from suffering, greed, hate, and delusion—which is usually for most of us at the end of a very long, dedicated practice—it's possible to have tastes of this freedom at a very early stage when we're just beginning. And that's what I'm trying to share with you this week through these teachings.

Yesterday we explored feeling and tasting as a way of putting in place the conditions that open the door to freedom, and this requires very dedicated mindfulness. In the factors of awakening, the very first one is mindfulness, or perhaps better translated as awareness. On the whole path as we walk it, where we place our awareness is going to determine how we find our way.

You may have heard the story of someone walking along a road with deep ditches on each side. The guide in front sees one person about to fall into the ditch on the right and says, "Go to the left! Go to the left!" Then someone else is about to fall into the ditch on the left, and the guide says, "Go to the right! Go to the right!" So there is no single answer to how we walk this path that is not contingent upon where we are and what our mindset is. It's a big job for us to get to know ourselves, and I think also to befriend ourselves.

If you're trying to train a young puppy—and puppies are adorable—if you yell at your puppy, scold them severely, and kick them with severe training, they're going to grow up to be an unhappy and maybe vicious dog. On the other hand, if you give your puppy rewards instead of beating, kicking, or yelling at them, then you'll end up with a dog that enjoys being in your presence and will do anything you ask because they're so happy to be with you. We need to train our minds the way a skilled dog trainer would train a puppy. Vinegar doesn't work, but sweetness is a pretty good strategy.

In the Pali Canon, there is one meditation practice that most scholars are very confident the Buddha actually practiced himself, and that is mindfulness of breathing. When the Buddha describes his awakening, he describes the mindfulness of breathing. Now, this is a practice that's not appropriate for absolutely everybody in the world. If someone has nearly drowned or nearly suffocated to death, they might be too scared of the breath to want to go there. So it's not one hundred percent pertinent for all practitioners to have awareness of their breathing, but it is what the Buddha taught and practiced himself more than anything else.

If we read the Anapanasati Sutta^[7], which is Majjhima Nikaya 118, it begins with a prologue providing a beautiful description of the setting and the monks and nuns being ready for these teachings. When he is beginning to give his instructions, this is what we need to pay attention to. From my own translation, he says:

Here, a practitioner, gone to the forest—so far from noisy villages—to the base of a tree, or to someplace empty, sits down in their meditation posture, placing the body straight, having established mindfulness (awareness) in front as the first priority.

We could do a whole two-week retreat just on this one instruction at the beginning of the Anapanasati Sutta, because it's very profound. Before we even sit down, we are cultivating emptiness. We are looking for seclusion from distractions. We're going to some remote place, and when our mindfulness is perfectly in place and well-established, then we know we are sitting on our bodhi mandala.

Even the word for forest in Pali, arañña^[8], literally means remoteness. I think all these instructions have a lot to do with their metaphoric meaning. Yes, it's good to go out in the middle of the forest, but even more important, it's crucial to be secluded from our distractions. We wrap ourselves in this cozy cloak or shawl of seclusion, viveka. It's that ability to stay without jumping off on a thought train or going back into the past, planning or thinking about lunch or whatever. We stay, and we stay, and we stay. That quality of seclusion, even if it's just very brief, is one of the keys to freedom.

I'll stop there. If you'd like a little assignment for the next 24 hours, you might try to keep track of what takes you off on tangents, and then also taste the flavor of your experience as you come back to being in the present moment with whatever you're doing—whether it's washing your face, cutting the carrots, or sitting in meditation.

Thank you very much. We will now migrate to the Zoom room for any questions you may have. Thank you for being here.

Q&A

Host: If anyone has any questions for Meg, you can go ahead and raise your hand in Zoom, and we'll call on you in order.

Meg Gawler: Well, I hope that wasn't as clear as mud! But "no mud, no lotus." [Laughter] Yeah, that was so clear that no one has any questions about it.

I just put on the gallery view, and it is wonderful to see your faces. I really appreciate your being here. Thank you so much for your practice.