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Practice as best as I'm able - Guided Meditation

Yeah. Good morning. Can you hear me? Okay. Like a... [Laughter] not going to compete with that. [Laughter]

So, good morning and a good day for those who are joining us on YouTube. I'm very happy to be here. Today I will be offering a phrasing in our guided meditation and then I'll be moving into an elaboration of this phrase that I'm going to use in the meditation. So they are going to be somewhat connected.

Here we go. We're going to start.

Riding in with the sound of the bell to arrive at the present moment, here and now. And a here and now feels like this. However it is, let yourself know and register here and now in the body. It feels like this. Here and now in the breath. It feels like this.

We're gathering and collecting around mindfulness, sati^[1]. Maybe a sense of slowing down, quieting down. In the midst of sounds, we're not in a hurry to go anywhere else. We are arriving here and now.

And we're practicing as best I'm able. This phrase, "as best I'm able." Is there any effect of the phrase in the body, mind, and heart? Practicing as best I'm able.

Is there a kind of a relaxation here? Softening of the trying. Relaxing the striving.

We're learning to be present for our lives as best I'm able.

Maybe there is an uprightness, a kind of sincerity. Ready. So both ease and uprightness can coexist.

And for the rest of the meditation together, maybe occasionally if it's helpful, drop this phrase in: "I'm practicing as best I'm able."

Introduction

Good morning everyone, and welcome to IMC. I believe there's an announcement. Who will be announcing the tea? No. Okay. Thank you.

Announcer: Good morning. We have our monthly tea set up which will follow the talk, and if you would just give us a few minutes to finish set up before immediately leaving to the social hall so we can get what goodies there are out there available for you, that would be terrific. And many thanks to some folks who very kindly, who don't officially belong to the tea group, are bringing offerings on certain weeks and it's a very loving and very helpful thing. So thank you for that. And some other folks have expressed interest in being part of the group. It doesn't take a lot of effort, but even just bringing things on occasion is a lovely part of being the tea support group. So, thank you.

And our teacher this morning is Ying Chen. Ying Chen, good morning. Thank you for being here.

Practice as best as I'm able

I'm so happy to be with everyone, and it was delightful when I opened my eyes and seeing all of you here. What a blessing. Very fortunate to be here and practicing Dharma and sharing, reflecting Dharma.

So I brought this topic that I introduced a little bit in the beginning of our meditation together just now. This is the phrasing that I used: "We practice as best I'm able." Sounds so mundane. How could it be otherwise? Right.

I received this teaching from another Dharma center that I practiced quite extensively, called Dharma Ground. Phillip Moffitt^[2] was the one who developed this, kind of coined this teaching and phrasing. I wasn't giving huge attention to it at the beginning, but the teachers kept on repeating this: "Practice as best as we're able." Okay, alright, I got it, you know? But then as I kept on practicing, what I noticed was, wow, it has an effect on me. I noticed first, without necessarily associating with this particular teaching, but I just noticed as I was practicing there is a lot of gentleness, a lot more ease in my body. I felt very relaxed and then something kind of softened in me.

And just as I was noticing this, I realized, wow, there was a kind of trying or striving in my practice. I didn't quite notice until this contrast became available. And if you're like me, striving is a deep-rooted tendency. I can say a huge part of the practice was to undo that striving. I've done this for decades and decades, and I thought I got it. [Laughter] Until, wow, this practice came in. I was like, "Wow, okay, this has some effect on me."

And then as I was continuing to practice with this, and also talking to other practitioners and talking to students, what I also noticed is there is the other flavor as well. That is, for those who may have another tendency—instead of striving, one might be a little complacent. "I'm here, but I'm not quite... okay, I'm just going to sit but keep on doing what I do in my head." With this particular phrasing and teaching, all of a sudden there is a little bit of uprightness to it. "Okay, I'm showing up a little more." I'm a little more almost like the spine was straightened up a little bit, a little more uplift, a little more energy to it. Because we're showing up with this invitation, "as best as we're able." There is this able part of this teaching, so it's calling forth some energy to us as well.

Most of us have both tendencies, kind of swaying around between the two spectrums. This teaching itself can have somewhat of an immediate effect that we notice even when we don't quite feel like we're doing some big study on it. We just notice something happening in us as this orientation gets dropped in. And then over time, as this teaching sinks deeper, what begins to happen is that this practice begins to shift and change some rather deep-rooted tendencies that we may embody or flow in as part of us.

One of these is an outcome and result orientation. We're practicing here, but we've got to get somewhere. We've got to do this. This is a very strong, deep-rooted conditioning because we all grow up in this kind of culture. I remember how many times at work, when I worked in the corporate setting, of course, it's always outcome-driven. It doesn't matter [Laughter] how you do it, if it is outcome-driven and result-driven. In school, that's the same thing. So we're deep in this culture of being outcome-oriented and result-oriented.

And of course, when we practice, that conditioning comes in. When we sit down, if I don't get to what I wanted to get to in half an hour [Laughter], we can have a lot of attitude toward ourselves, and that may not be helpful. I was talking to my spouse yesterday, and he asked, "What are you going to talk about tomorrow?" And I said, "As best I'm able." He asked why, and I said, "You know, it's really reconditioning a bit of this outcome-oriented attitude or tendencies." And he said, "Good luck." [Laughter]

In a way, it's a recognition of how much that orientation is happening all around us. It doesn't mean that we just have to fall into a victim mode to it. There is a way that we can show up to begin to shift and change because it's wholesome for this heart and mind, and because it's helpful for the benefit of others as well.

As we engage in this way of practicing as best we're able, what happens is it begins to highlight how much of the time we can practice with an inflating mode. "We've got to get better," and we're constantly in this self-improvement project mode. That's very hard for the heart. I remember some years ago on retreat, one of our IMC teachers, Matthew Brensilver^[3], brought this vivid image. This stays in me, so I'm going to share this—maybe channel a little bit of what he taught. He said that sometimes we can walk around in life as if we're carrying a very thin glass layer, walking around in this inflated mode. A little bit of huff and puff: "This is who I am." So fragile. [Laughter] Anything you bump into, it just breaks. If we're carrying that kind of feeling walking around, someone says something about you, "Oh my god, the world is ending." It's very fragile and unsettling for us.

As we practice this way of "as best as we're able," it settles a lot of this. "Well, I don't need to be something bigger than who I am, how I am right now. And this is good enough. I'm showing up as best as I can."

The other aspect of this, that some of you will notice, is if we tend to have this inflating, outcome-driven mode, for sure we're going to feel deflated at some point because it's just very hard to live up to that standard that we set up in our head. Sooner or later we will feel, "Boy, what a big failure." I know for myself, because I grew up in a very competitive environment, I feel like I always have to try so hard and be very competitive. But what I also noticed through the practice is how often I could feel I'm just not good enough. That's for sure going to happen if that's the orientation; you're never going to live up to what you set up for yourself. So this deflating mode can come in as well. Sometimes some people may be told by authorities or powerful figures, "You didn't live up to a certain thing," and we can sink, we can collapse. Sometimes we are stuck in there for a long time because we believe what other people are saying.

This orientation and this attitude of "I'm showing up for my life as best as I'm able" begins to shift that. I can have a little bit of uplift, have a bit of respect for who I am with all my shortcomings and all the imperfections of this human being walking around in life. There can be a kind of dignity for that. Why not? If we don't give ourselves that respect and that kind of dignity, who will, right?

Both the inflating and deflating tendencies prevent us from being who we are, just as we are and how we are, with a kind of softness, with a kind of ease to it. As we practice with this attitude and orientation more and more, what we also find is we are more and more able to allow ourselves to just be who we are. There is a kind of honesty, authenticity, and truthfulness that begins to bubble up that is not based on how other people evaluate us, or how our inner critic evaluates us, or how our self-doubts start to evaluate us. But no, I can be true to this moment as I am.

The other thing that comes forth through this practice over time—at least in my own experience—is that, in between this inflating and deflating, devaluing ourselves mode, as we practice "as best I'm able," it begins to soften the sense of "I have to do it. I'm doing it." Guess what? That's where the inflation and deflation happen.

Instead, we let the practice carry us. We're more and more allowing ourselves to be in this practice of flow rather than this "me" constantly trying to control our meditation and our practice, or constantly trying to project-manage our practice. "I got this right, I got to do this, I got to do that." No, we're more open, we're more available to this, and we're more attuned to this.

Maybe the other aspect I'm going to flow into is the longer effect of practicing with this attitude. We begin to notice sooner or later we need this practice of practicing as best as we're able. Why? Because whether you've practiced for two weeks, five months, five years, or ten years, sooner or later we're going to run up against some deep tendencies in us. Some of us have this inner critic that comes in all these different flavors. If somehow we feel like, "I've done this thing for five years and it's still happening" [Laughter], we might give up. We might quit. Or we might try harder, which goes against the very directional orientation of the Dharma practice, which is relaxing the grasping and clinging. We're going to need it at some point because otherwise, we're going to beat ourselves up and we're going to huff and puff.

Even as our outcome orientation might give us some little hint of, "Oh yeah, okay, I got this, I'm getting better at this," for some of these deep-rooted tendencies, it's asking for a different kind of attitude, a different kind of relationship. So this phrasing, "as best I'm able," when coupled with our practice, begins to soften and allow a kind of release of the second arrow we shoot ourselves. We can say, "Okay, I have a choice right now when I'm seeing that I'm beating myself up because I just started judging myself again. I can say, okay, I'm going to drop this as best as I can." It doesn't mean that five minutes later it won't come back, because maybe it's a very, very strong tendency. But for this moment, I have a choice not to judge the judging, not to try to fix the judging. We get really tight on all of this, and so that begins to open up a kind of spaciousness around the unfolding of our practice.

I want to point out that if you're inclined to utilize this simple phrasing in your practice, maybe over time you recognize that embedded in this simple teaching is a compassionate attitude. It's got a flavor of kindness to ourselves, a kind of softness to ourselves and to others. Embedded in it are some degrees of wisdom, because we know the other forms of strategy are just getting us caught, getting it all knotted up.

The other aspect I'd like to talk a little more about is this simple practice. It's such a simple phrasing, almost everybody has some relationship to it and we can understand it on some level. As we practice more and more, there are also subtle aspects of this teaching that begin to come forth. One of the things in my own practice with this is, as I become very sincere with this practice, I begin to notice how much I'm attuned and present for my experience. If I'm really tuned in to this simple practice, "as best as I'm able," I notice I don't always know [Laughter] what exactly it feels like. It's not like there is a perfect formula where everything just lines up exactly and that's it. I have to be attuned because there are subtle ways that I'm leaning into this outcome-driven mode. If I'm not attuned to this, and I'm not present for this experience, I may not really know.

And then there are times that I might have a flavor of thinking, "I'm not really up for this." [Laughter] If I'm not attuned and feeling present for my experience, available for my experience, I would not know. Over time, I noticed this simple practice began to open a much more dimensionality and degrees of sensitivity for me to show up with my life, not just on the cushion meditating, but in life as well.

If throughout the day I drop in this phrase from time to time, I get to take a pause and notice what's here. What's here? Am I showing up to meet my life as best I'm able? And how does that feel like? I would say it's not a fixed thing. It may feel different at different times in different situations. We're not trying to cook up some fixed formula for this. But with this, there is a lot of refreshing aliveness that begins to come forth in meeting the moments of our lives that could otherwise feel like some sort of default mode, like "something is supposed to happen at this point or this time." No, it's much more alive, much more fluid, and much more dynamic. I would say for me, it's an enlivening practice, and it gives some energy and life to the practice. Rather than trying to figure out the perfect balance of what this phrasing might be pointing to, that aliveness is worthy of showing up for.

It's just a simple practice that is in some way very ordinary and accessible, and it also has its richness and dimensionality that can unfold for each of us in our own ways. There is not a huge rush in trying to figure out how you might get this, but rather we're opening to this simple, almost mantra-like phrase and just letting it drop into your experience from time to time, and you notice what you discover.

My own sense of it, and maybe this is where I'll end my talk, is that there is a fruit of this way of practicing "as best as we're able." The fruit is that we are less and less adding dukkha^[4], adding dukkha for ourselves, adding dukkha for others, we are less and less grasping and clinging. It has this directional alignment with the Dharma. And that's a really powerful thing.

So, thank you, and thank you for your attention.

Q&A and Reflections

We have a little time, so maybe we'll open it up for any questions, any reflections you may have, or sharing some experiences. We did a little bit in our meditation, and we can see how it is for you.

Yogi 1: Thank you for your talk. I had a reflection. What you were talking about sounds a lot like how we engage with practice. The attitude we have towards it is just as important as what we do. It reminded me of a quote by Suzuki Roshi^[5]. He said, "You're perfect just the way you are, but you could also use a little improvement." [Laughter]

Ying Chen: Great. I love the reflection. Yes. There's one over there.

Yogi 2: Thank you, Ying. What arose in me as you were sharing is also how we can practice this viewpoint for others—that others are also just showing up the best that they can. To me, that helps soften some of my frustrations or impatience with others. It also provides that other side of uprightness or uplift in the sense that you play a more active role in other people's experiences, right? Where if you just view them as trying the best that they can at that moment, you start to take into account perhaps their current experiences, their backgrounds, their challenges. It helps you really show a lot more compassion, and to your point at the end, reduce the dukkha and the suffering for that current relationship or experience.

Ying Chen: Beautiful. That's a beautiful reflection. Yes. So it's not just something beneficial for ourselves, but for others. There's more space to hold others just as they are, with a sense of respect and a sense of care. Beautiful. Thank you.

Any other thoughts? Feel the rippling effect of just this kind of a simple attitude shift. You can also share your own experience if that's helpful. Maybe others will resonate as well.

Yogi 3: Thank you for your talk. I had the good fortune to attend the non-residential retreat last weekend that was held here. I believe it was the first such retreat they've had here. The main instruction for that retreat, if anyone else was there or if you're interested, was to know, and then to sense, and then to calm. I was first struck that that seemed too simple or something, but I found that a very, very helpful practice. But the one piece that I didn't quite get was calming. I found that your talk today was very helpful to me in terms of that process, because the way I heard "I'm doing the best I can," that to me felt like, oh, that's calming to say that, isn't it? Anyway, just appreciate that, that was my experience of this.

Ying Chen: Beautiful. Thank you for recognizing that, because as you were saying this, I can hear it—sometimes as we hear an instruction like that, to calm, without us noticing it, we can have a kind of a demand on ourselves. And I was like, "Ah, I better be calm." And I'm not. [Laughter] And then we can have a bit of a fistfight [Laughter] with ourselves. And so yeah, just this attitude shift, "I'm just as best as I'm able." Wow. Already calming. [Laughter] Yes. Thank you for that.

So there's one in the back.

Yogi 4: Thank you. One of the things you talked about was the deep-seated tendencies that we may not be aware of, and we may think, "Yeah, I've been practicing for a long time. I know the ropes." [Laughter] And then these deep-seated tendencies appear, and working with them is a very juicy moment, or hours, or [Laughter] days. Those unconscious tendencies that it may take us many years to become very familiar with and to work with.

Ying Chen: Yeah. Thank you. This attitude is very important. The more we know how deeply rooted some of this is—we don't have to own them like being so identified by it. Who knows how the conditions came, you know, family, culture, society, and all of this. But as we practice with it, as we come in contact with it more and more, we have a soft relationship to it. Okay, it might be characterizing the moment, but doesn't have to define who I am. Just an experience that's happening right now.

So then this whole "as best I'm able" has so much space for this, and it doesn't have to trap us as soon as it gets us. Beautiful. Thank you for that reflection.

If there is one more, maybe one last one here. And if not, that's also okay since we have tea [Laughter] right after this. And so maybe you get to hang out and connect a little bit with the community. Maybe Martha will offer any instructions, or are we just going to go? Okay. Alright.

Announcer: We need a few minutes to finish setting up.

Ying Chen: Okay, no rush. So why don't we do a dedication of the merit together, and then we'll end our session together in here, and then we'll move.

Just take a moment to notice your own sincerity, your own sense of showing up as best as we're able. There is a kind of integrity with this, a kind of dignity, and a humility. Knowing the goodness of our practice is available to us, and it's available here and now, not out there.

And so let whatever goodness that's available here in our own hearts, minds, and bodies, may it grow, expand. May it nourish our own hearts and minds and bodies. May it expand out into the space, into the world, so that whoever comes in contact with this can feel and receive the goodness.

May all beings everywhere be happy. May all beings everywhere be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

Thank you everyone for your attention, and I guess we'll give a little space for folks to set things up, and then those who can stay and join the tea, that'd be great. Thank you so much.