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Guided Meditation: Tranquil Mindfulness

Good morning, and a good day. Welcome.

The Buddha said—and this is a slight paraphrase—that tranquility supports tranquility. This can be understood to mean that if you let yourself become aware of the tranquility that is here, the tranquility can grow. If you ignore whatever tranquility is here, it doesn't support the growth of more tranquility. In this Satipaṭṭhāna^[1] practice, the first exercise with breathing focuses on the tranquility of the body.

Some translations will say that the last exercise is, "Breathing in, one tranquilizes the bodily formations." It tranquilizes the bodily constructs: the tension, the holdings, the way the muscles are engaged very subtly based on how the mind is. "Breathing out, one tranquilizes the bodily formations, the bodily activities."

There is this movement towards tranquility in this practice that begins when we start taking the posture. See if you can find a posture that supports tranquility—some modicum, some minimum feeling of the body being still. But not just still in a void; tranquility is a certain stillness that has a wholesome feeling to it. It feels refreshing or feels nice.

The deep tranquility of meditation practice is not the kind of calm that puts us to sleep. It is a kind of clarity—energized clarity that is very peaceful. As the practice deepens, awareness takes on qualities of tranquility itself. Awareness becomes peaceful.

The analogy I have for it is being in some very beautiful, wonderful, sacred space. It could be some great cathedral in the natural world, of great big redwood trees or great mountains, or looking out across the sea. It could be a great cathedral where you go in, and the busy, noisy streets are outside, but inside there is a quiet, a peace, a stillness.

In these spaces, awareness is present without having to work for it, without having to search for it, direct it, or do anything. Somehow, the space and the situation just allow for a spacious, open, wide awareness that becomes attuned to, or becomes part of, the peacefulness and quiet of the place. Attention is not directed. It isn't like awareness is being used to work; it is simply present.

There might be other places in your life where awareness is just there in a nice way. It could be something as simple as waking up from a very refreshing nap. You just feel aware. You are not really focusing or trying to do anything with it, but you are clearly aware, and there is a clarity. Or maybe looking out across a great expanse of the natural world, being on a cliff or a mountainside. The situation awakens a tranquil, open awareness. You are not searching for something or trying to focus on something; awareness is simply present.

In this Satipaṭṭhāna practice, in the first exercise, there is a gentle movement that takes time. It involves establishing awareness, settling in on the breathing, and letting the settling on the breathing settle the mind and the body. It becomes easier just to relax the body more and more, helping the body become tranquil, and appreciating the tranquility of the body.

When that is established, awareness doesn't have to be directed so much anymore. It doesn't have to be work. It doesn't have to be making an effort to know what is happening or to feel what is happening. It is not just feeling, and it is not just knowing; it is a broader gestalt or the harmonious working of all our attentional capacities into a state that we might call being aware. Then, having this awareness established or present, we abide in it.

I am describing a process, and I will say more later, but for today, let's focus a little bit more on this tranquility and see if awareness can take on some of the qualities of tranquility.

Assume a posture that will allow your body to be tranquil and still. But it should be a posture that also has some degree of alertness to it, a little bit energized. The energy, the alertness, and the uprightness can hold the tranquility.

Gently close your eyes.

Notice: are there any hints of tranquility for you now in your body, your mind, your heart? Maybe it is even in your little finger or your big toe, but anywhere at all.

In a manner that has some degree of tranquility or calm in it, calmly take some larger breaths.

As you exhale calmly, soften the body. Calmly relax your body.

Let your breathing return to normal. Calmly, taking your time as you breathe normally, search through your body for places that you can relax and soften. As you do so, see if that can be a settling into a degree of tranquility or peace.

Letting your breathing return to normal, seeing if there can be a little bit of a sense of tranquility or calm in establishing your attention and experience of the body breathing.

Breathing in, and breathing out.

Perhaps, if it is present, if some tranquility is present for you, maybe that can be the atmosphere within which you are breathing. An atmosphere that includes awareness—tranquil awareness.

If your mind wanders off, relax something. Relax any holding or tension in the thinking, or in the body related to thinking. See if you can settle back in to a tranquil awareness. It is more like the atmosphere than it is a doing—an atmosphere within which breathing is the center.

A tranquility that makes room for the kind of awareness that doesn't require effort. The kind of awareness that just is. Some people might call it just being conscious. Conscious in a tranquil way. The effortless way of being conscious.

Breathing through that effortless awareness.

Noticing whatever tranquility or peacefulness is present for you now. Is that sense of tranquility shared in some way? Is it shared by awareness, by being aware, being conscious?

Imagine that, with whatever calm, tranquility, or peacefulness you have, you are sitting together with someone you trust. Someone that it is easy and peaceful to be with. Nothing is required; nothing needs to be said. See what it is like. What would it be like to sit there, aware of them, present with them, through this tranquility, through this peacefulness?

Perhaps appreciating them. Perhaps having goodwill, care for them. Nothing is required. The care, the goodwill don't need anything to be done. Just let it be there in the peacefulness, in the care.

And with that kind of goodwill, staying in that place of tranquility, expand your goodwill now out into the world. Tranquilly wishing all beings well.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

And may my peacefulness create the conditions that support them in feeling those ways. May all beings be free.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (14) Lucid Awareness and Non-Clinging

The last step of the refrain for Satipaṭṭhāna is: "One abides mindful that there is a body just to the extent necessary for knowledge and lucid awareness, dwelling independent, not clinging to anything in the world."

One abides. This is a very important word. It rests, it just allows. At the abiding, there is not a lot of work. Mindfulness has now transitioned from whatever directedness, whatever effort was needed to show up and be present, to allowing. So, just to be present is almost more like a being rather than a doing.

One abides in awareness. This awareness is present to a very simple recognition: there is a body. It is very simple. There is no judgment, no complications, no analysis, no feeling that it has to be different in any kind of way. It is just a simple recognition, just to the extent necessary.

I love this expression: just to the extent necessary. We are not looking for a super high standard, to do absolutely the best we can, but just to the extent necessary. So, awareness is established just to the extent necessary for there to be knowledge. A very simple knowing that is not work; it's not actively knowing. It is just the knowing—for example, that there is a body, knowing that we are independent, knowing that we are not clinging to anything.

And so, to the extent there is knowledge and lucid awareness. This word, "lucid awareness," in Pāli^[2] has the word sati in it, which is often translated as mindfulness. It has a prefix paṭi (paṭissati). It is a reflexive prefix meaning reflecting back on oneself. Here, it is awareness that is aware of itself. So, I say this is a "lucid awareness," because we know we are aware in a lucid, clear way.

The practice leads to this place where there is a very simple abiding in awareness that is lucid and is able to know very simple things. That sets the stage for moving into this freedom of not being dependent on anything in the world, not clinging to anything in the world.

What that means is not necessarily that we don't depend on shopkeepers having food so we can live, but rather that awareness, the mind, and the heart are at rest in themselves. The mind and heart don't need anything to supply a peaceful place. This last phrase—"being independent, not clinging to anything in the world"—is one way of describing Nibbāna^[3], the full realization of practice.

You don't expect to sit down and just do that quickly, but it is something that grows over time. This idea of this practice growing over time is inherent in the whole way in which Satipaṭṭhāna is laid out. We are describing a path, a process. There is an onward-leading movement slowly over time. But it is not an onward-leading movement that is linear, where you can expect to just steadily make progress. It is more like up and down, back and forth. Our lives are so complicated, and the states of our minds are so different at different times. But slowly, over time, we are moving in one direction, and that direction is toward freedom.

There is this process, this path, a journey that unfolds over time. We don't want to get tripped up around that, caught up in striving, comparing ourselves, and wanting to be further along than we are. One of the principles that I love is the principle that to go from A to B, be fully at A.

For the purpose of mindfulness practice, if you want to go anywhere in your practice, don't worry about getting anywhere. Just focus on being fully present for what is. That practice of being fully present for what is, is what is onward-leading. It will unfold the way it is supposed to unfold. If our dedication is not to making progress but rather showing up and being fully present here, the progress takes care of itself.

To summarize or repeat what I have said already, to get a sense of this journey described so far: The Buddha talks about a path to liberation, a path to Nibbāna. What is that? It is "observing the body in the body, ardent, aware, and clearly comprehending, having put aside covetousness and grief for the world."

That is a high standard already: to put aside covetousness and grief for the world, to put aside stress for the world. So then he explains how to do that, how to practice observing the body in terms of the body. You sit down to meditate, sit upright, and you establish awareness.

With awareness established, you use that first to become aware of your breathing. Because the mind so easily wanders off, the tether to the present moment is knowing the breath. Some people will use a practice of knowing with a mental noting. As they feel the breathing, they say "in," "out," or "rising of the belly," "falling of the belly" or chest. That mental note is a way of being slightly emphatic with the knowing of the breathing, keeping a tether to the present moment.

As that practice deepens, then we can become aware of our body, and we just become aware of the whole body at some point. Then the onward-leading movement goes towards relaxing the body. This part of the process can be repeated over and over again for a long time—just getting used to knowing, feeling, and relaxing. Some days, one is emphasized more than the other. Sometimes we just barely stay at step one because the mind is so busy.

Wherever you are, just be fully at A. Practice with what you have. That is an onward-leading practice—practicing where you are, not where you think you should be.

As we settle in, there is more and more tranquility, and we settle into that tranquility. Then we enter a phase of practice where there is observation—watching this non-reactive, non-interfering perceiving of experience, internally and externally. One way of understanding that is just open awareness, 360 degrees, aware of the full body in a simple, relaxed way.

As we settle into that further, then we abide in a time when awareness begins tuning in to the changing nature, the flow of change, the inconstancy of experience. With things constantly changing, coming and going, it becomes clear after a while that it doesn't make any sense to cling to anything, hold onto anything, or resist anything, because everything is flowing. If anything, we surrender to that sense of flow in the body that exists, of everything arising and passing, everything moving.

We see so clearly that when we get involved in thoughts and concepts, we start solidifying our experience again. So then we dip back down into the flow of the river of life that flows through us.

Because we are not clinging, what happens next is that we are just present in the simplest possible way with a lucid awareness. Awareness becomes freed from how it gets agitated, contracted, or cloudy with concepts, clinging, wanting, and not wanting. It is just this lucid awareness, lucid consciousness, that is not working to be mindful, not working to do anything. It is more like something we abide in, we rest in, we allow.

That very still, quiet mind, where we just allow things to be, where we are not for or against anything, is very equanimous. That allows for an even deeper letting go. In that state, it is clear that our hearts and minds no longer depend for their well-being on anything at all. It's not that our well-being and freedom are self-contained or self-existing, they just don't depend on anything at all. We are not clinging to anything in the world.

To have that experience as a reference point for what is possible brings a lot of wisdom and inspiration. Probably, you'll cling again. Probably, you'll have a sense of depending on things again. But you understand there is a different perspective now, a different way of being. You will hopefully hold your clinging and your feeling of dependence much more lightly, having a sense that practice is moving beyond it to be free of all that.

This is a journey. Now we have done the first exercise of Satipaṭṭhāna, going through with the breathing into the refrain. There are twelve more exercises, each with the same refrain that we just went through. On Monday, I will start with the second exercise, contextualizing it a little bit. We will never lose track of the breathing—the guided meditations will often come back to the breathing as the anchor or the foundation that supports this. But the other practices are also relevant, so if some of you don't care for the breathing at some point, these others might be more meaningful for you.

Thank you. When we continue on Monday, I will be back at IRC, the Insight Retreat Center^[4]. I am teaching a retreat next week, so I will be broadcasting from the meditation hall there, and you will see that I am in a different location.

Thank you all.