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Guided Meditation: Meditating with Wholesomeness

Hello everyone, hello and welcome.

Part of the value of our gathering together for Sunday morning's meditation and talk is the gathering together of a community of people. And this connection to community, to other human beings, is an integral part of Buddhist spirituality that might easily be overlooked if the emphasis is too much on meditation—meditation where maybe we close our eyes and are not usually paying too much attention to the people around us.

In the teachings of the Buddha, meditation clearly has an ethical component. Or to say it differently, meditation clearly has a very important role for how we live our lives in relationship to each other. An ethical life in Buddhism arises out of a sense of well-being, feelings of wholesomeness, and nourishment that is possible to feel for a human being.

So rather than starting with ethical principles so much, starting with a principle of being attuned to one's own wholesomeness, one's own inner sense of well-being and settledness. So part of meditation is not only to become calm and peaceful, but to awaken inside of us a disposition that is free of ill will, that is free of any inclination to harm. This disposition arises out of touching into something within that feels wholesome, that feels healthy, that feels nourishing in a certain way.

Part of the function of meditation is to feel that nourishment. It is, of course, not easy to do. But it is just interesting to know, at least, that in the teachings of the Buddha, this is actually one of the purposes of meditation. So that then we can live our lives without ill will. We can live our lives with goodwill, live our lives with care because it is our disposition, not because we are following rules that say we should do so.

As we sit today, perhaps you can give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps you can somehow go under the radar of the thoughts and ideas that you might have that you are somehow not able to access an inner sense of wholesomeness, or goodness, or well-being. This is sometimes referred to as something within that is beautiful—beautiful states that we have that maybe all of us have access to, if we, as I said, go under the radar. Because we sometimes have these very strong orientations, beliefs, and preoccupations that give us the message that no, this is not possible.

So assuming a meditation posture... And part of the road to inner wholesomeness is assuming a posture that allows you to have some feeling of confidence, maybe some modicum of strength, some degree of respect—a posture of respect. And it can be done in any posture at all, but maybe an adjustment that straightens the spine, opens the chest, or positions the head better, so those qualities might be a little bit more evident. Or perhaps it has to do with the position of the hands, letting the hands be in a position where maybe they embody a kind of confidence or strength.

It helps very much to be rooted, to be grounded here and now. The radar, the messages we have that we are not wholesome, not good, are messages from the control tower when we're swirling around in thoughts and ideas. Swirling in feelings that are a little bit disconnecting and ungrounding. So, take a few moments to ground ourselves here by taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. And as you exhale, feeling the contact against the surface that holds up your body. As you exhale, maybe imagine that you're getting firmly established here and on that surface.

And then as you exhale, to relax any extra holding you have, any tension in your body, so you can relax into that support of the surface that holds up your body. And then letting your breathing return to normal.

As you exhale with a normal exhale, relaxing the muscles of your face, the forehead, the eyes, the cheeks, and the jaw. Maybe there's even a way to relax your scalp as you exhale. Throughout the day, we can do so much work with the muscles of the face and the scalp responding and reacting. Letting the face have a break, a vacation. And on the exhale, relaxing the shoulders. On the exhale, relaxing the belly.

And then for the next three breaths, breathing intimately and closely. But allowing, on the exhale, for your thinking mind to also relax. Relaxing any tension, holding, or pressure associated with thinking. And for the next three breaths, staying close and intimate with breathing, see if you can also, if it's easy enough or if you can recognize it, relax the pressure around any emotions you might be feeling, any tension connected to them.

And then settling in more with your breathing. Can you also notice any place within where you feel wholesome, healthy, where there's a feeling of inner goodness or well-being? Or when you do feel such things, where in your body do you tend to feel it?

If there is a place in the body that you associate with inner wholesomeness or goodness, as you breathe, you might gently breathe with that place so you're aware of both breathing and the location of your goodness. Or you might breathe through it. And if possible, stay close to your inner goodness as you sit here.

Part of the reason to let go of thoughts is to be under the radar of the beliefs, ideas, and concerns of the thoughts, so you can be more here and present for your inner well-being.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting... is there now some degree of well-being or an inner disposition towards that which is wholesome within? And if there is, to imagine yourself living closely connected to this. Maybe it takes the form of a disinclination to ill will or hostility. Maybe an inclination to have a healthy concern for the impact your behavior has on others, to not cause harm or pain. Perhaps it is an inclination for goodwill, for simple friendliness and care, for compassion and love.

May it be that our meditation frees us from any disposition that is hostile, of ill will, and establishes in us a disposition of goodwill. And may that goodwill travel in unseen ways out into the world so the benefits of this meditation practice extend outwards to others.

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

Announcements

Before giving the talk, I would like to make a few announcements. The first is, I don't think I've said this here on Sunday, that a few weeks ago we had a big fundraising drive for a couple of days for Haiti after the earthquake there. We raised money for a non-profit that does grassroots work there, working in partnership with local healthcare workers. They're called Partners In Health. It was delightful that we raised about $32,000 for that, and I am confident that can make a difference for the people of Haiti in the communities where Partners In Health goes in and partners with people. So that was very nice.

The other is that we're beginning to think again about ways of opening IMC, maybe in October, and maybe with more restrictions on it than were planned originally in August. So maybe fewer people, proof of vaccination, and things like that. I thought that for those of you who are interested, especially the local people, we could have a community meeting about this on October 4th. It's a ways away.

Next week I won't be here. I'm teaching a retreat for the next two weeks. For next week, I'm happy that Max Erdstein, one of the teachers here at IMC, will come and give the talk. I'm delighted that Max will be able to do that. He had a baby in April, so he's not been teaching quite as much, but he's ready to do some teaching and so he'll be here next Sunday.

The Kalama Sutta: Living an Ethical Life

For the talk, I've been thinking some this week about an important discourse of the Buddha called the Kalama Sutta^[1]. It is one of the more well-known suttas in the West. The Buddha teaches brilliantly in this text, taking his audience, the Kalama people, on a journey—a four or five-step journey where he reframes their question to him.

He reframes it by turning away from abstract questions of truth and falsehood, and questions of who speaks the truth and who speaks falsehood, to directing people's attention inward to themselves with ethical principles of attention. And then applying that in their behavior, leading into pointing to the absence of ill will and the presence of goodwill. It goes from principles to behavior to inner dispositions. He's leading the audience through this.

It begins with the Buddha visiting this country where the Kalama people live. They've had a lot of spiritual teachers visiting, and they're perplexed by them because they all seem to say things like—I'll quote the text—"They explain and elucidate their own doctrines, but disparage, denigrate, deride, and denounce the doctrines of others." So they champion their teachings, but they criticize in dramatic terms the doctrines of others.

The Kalamas say, "We're perplexed and have doubt. They're all saying the same thing, that they teach what is true and other people are all wrong." So they asked the Buddha, "Which of them speaks the truth and which of them speaks falsehoods?" It's a question about what is true and what is false.

The Buddha doesn't want to be just one more person who champions his doctrine and denigrates anybody else. What he does is he reframes the conversation. He doesn't actually answer their question directly about who speaks the truth and who is false. He first says what you should not rely on in deciding what is true. And then he points to how you can know something for yourself. He doesn't say it's "the truth" exactly, but maybe it's implied, but you'll see for yourself as we go through this.

The Buddha responds and says, "Yes, it's reasonable you should be perplexed and have doubt given that all these people are coming making claims and criticizing others." But here are some things you should not rely on. These are common spiritual sources of authority for many people that they take as providing access to the truth, and the Buddha says don't rely on these.

After a number of scandals and challenges in Western Buddhism here in the United States, there was a wonderful Zen teacher named Yvonne Rand^[2] who has now passed away. She had a very strong orientation towards being ethical and addressing the unethical behavior that was going on in Buddhism at that time. She once said that what I'm going to read you now should be tattooed on the inside of people's eyelids. She wanted everyone to know this really well.

He says: Do not go by oral tradition. Back then it was all oral tradition, there were no books, but today we could say don't go by the traditional teachings in books. Do not go by the lineage of teaching. If you're in a particular lineage of teachings, organization, religion, or denomination, just because it's part of that lineage, don't automatically accept it. Do not go by hearsay, just because you've heard it around and maybe it sounds good. Do not depend on a collection of scriptures. Just because it's in scriptures that are particularly important for you or your tradition doesn't mean that it's true.

Do not go by logical reasoning. To establish what's really most valuable, at least from the Buddhist point of view, don't go by it just because it seems reasonable or logical. Don't construct a logical argument for it and accept it based on that. Do not go by inferential reasoning, a kind of intuition, for example. And by reasoned cognition, more of the same thing. And by some kind of acceptance of a view just because you've thought it out—a kind of mental consideration. Or by the seeming competence of a speaker. Just because someone has charisma, seems confident, or seems very convincing in how they are, that's not a reason to accept something. And then finally, do not accept it because "The ascetic is our guru." Just because you think, "Oh, this person is my teacher, I should accept it." Always be very careful. Don't accept these sources naively or simplistically.

It's not a rejection of those sources. You might get ideas, encouragement, inspiration, and things to think about from all these sources, but they are not the place to find out what is true.

Now, the Buddha doesn't actually talk about what's true—he doesn't use that language. He talks about principles of what you should go by. He says, "But when you know for yourselves these things are unwholesome, these things are blameworthy, these things are criticized by the wise; these things, if accepted and undertaken, lead to harm and suffering, then you should abandon them."

The word for "things" here can mean actions. When there are activities that you do that are unwholesome, that you can feel make you feel bad, they deflate you, they somehow feel unhealthy in doing them, then don't do them. You should abandon them. When they are blameworthy—and exactly what that means we don't know, but if they seem unfair or unjust—abandon them. And when they are criticized by the wise, which means taking into account the people who you respect, maybe they know something that you don't know. So here we're relying a little bit on other people, those people who are wise. That doesn't mean relying on them for what's true, but relying on them a little bit to be careful about how we act in the world.

And then, if you know for yourself that these things, if accepted and undertaken, lead to harm and suffering. The idea is we don't want to do anything that has the consequences of harm, either to ourselves or to others.

Then he says the opposite: "If you know for yourself these things are wholesome, these actions are blameless, these actions are praised by the wise; these, if accepted and undertaken, lead to welfare and to happiness." That's the principle he's offering. It's a principle of your own evaluation with the help of wise people. That's only one of four or five criteria. Here the emphasis now is on what you undertake, the actions we do.

So the Buddha now switches the conversation from the question, which is about truth and falsehood, to action and behavior. This indicates an orientation the Buddha has. He's certainly disinclined to get involved in controversies around what is true and false. He's not getting involved in the question that was asked, but he's pointing people to behavior, to their actions. He's talking about principles by which to evaluate your actions.

There are two things about them that I would emphasize. One is that there's a reference point to what feels wholesome inside, what has a goodness or a rightness to it. Maybe it shouldn't be the only criteria, but certainly we want to avoid what feels unhealthy to do, where an inner sense of well-being is diminished as we do these things. The other is consequential thinking: do these things lead to harm and suffering, or do they lead to benefit, to welfare, and to happiness? It involves some reflection, some thinking based on experience where we have some sense of the harm or benefit that comes. The text does not specify to whom, so it could be either to oneself or to others. We are meant to be custodians of our own well-being and careful not to harm other human beings. This is a central orientation and principle of the Buddha's teachings, and I probably can't underscore enough how central and important this is.

Because he's talking about behavior, he then applies it to particular forms of behavior, which we can understand as the first four of the five precepts. [Unintelligible] says, well, he applies it not to a behavior first, but rather to mind states and the behavior that comes from those mind states. He asks: Is greed wholesome or unwholesome? Is hatred, ill will, wholesome or unwholesome? Is delusion wholesome or unwholesome?

The answer is that greed, hatred, and delusion are unwholesome. They harm the person who has them. There is something unhealthy about the presence of greed in the person who is greedy. It is often invisible because greed is so focused on the object of what we want, people are not paying attention to what it feels like to be greedy. With ill will or hatred, the same thing. People are often focused on what they dislike, and so they're not noticing the effect it has on them, but it is considered unhealthy.

And if we act out of that, then that is also unwholesome. So an example he gives is if we kill, steal, engage in sexual misconduct, or lie based on greed or based on anything that is unwholesome, those things should not be done. They lead to harm. But if we analyze or evaluate the situation and see that it is wholesome, that we recognize the goodness in it, and that it doesn't lead to harm, then we do it.

He does the same analysis with non-greed, non-hatred, and non-delusion. Non-greed is not only an absence; it is a wholesome state. He asks them, "Is non-greed wholesome?" and the Kalamas say it is wholesome. This kind of care and sensitivity might seem abstract, it might seem kind of theoretical or principle-based. It is a little bit, but they are principles that are meant to be oriented towards an inner sensitivity, an inner capacity to feel and sense for oneself what is healthy and what is not healthy. What harms ourselves and what does not harm ourselves, what is beneficial for ourselves and what is not beneficial.

This capacity for being clearly present and mindful is something we are training ourselves to do in the mindfulness tradition. This training to be present and be mindful as we go through our day has this ethical component. Because as we are more and more mindful in the present moment, we have access to the feelings and sensations inside of what has an "ouch" and what has an "ah" in it. We become our own reference point, our own guide for what kind of behaviors to do that support us. Then, to avoid greed and stay close to non-greed, avoid hate and stay close to non-hate, avoid delusion and stay close to non-delusion. This is the direction the Buddha is going.

As we pay attention to the present moment experience that arises within us of wholesomeness and unwholesomeness, as we pay attention to the presence of mind that allows us to see consequences, this tends to lead people to living without ill will, to live unconfused, and to live with clear comprehension of what is happening.

The Buddha now is leading the Kalamas, evoking that based on living this way, there is this non-confusion, there is clear comprehension, and a lack of ill will. With those three states strong, the Buddha then moves into being rooted in goodwill, rooted in compassion, rooted in appreciative joy, and rooted in equanimity. These are inner dispositions that can arise from wholesome states of being.

These are social dispositions or social emotions. They're how we relate to other people. We relate to them with goodwill, or when it is appropriate, with compassion. When appropriate, with appreciative joy—feeling joy and appreciating their success and other people's happiness. And with a certain kind of love or care called equanimity, which is to be caring for people but to do so without being caught up in any reactivity around it.

So we have this journey. The Kalamas ask about truth and falsehood and who has it. The Buddha answers differently than the question being asked. He focuses on what you can know for yourself. He describes the principles for what is useful to know for yourself, especially the idea of wholesomeness and leading to harm and suffering. He then asks this question about the inner dispositions towards greed, hatred, and delusion, helping people to recognize that these are unhealthy, and that behavior that comes from them is also unhealthy. And then he does it for the opposite.

This is all turning the attention inward towards oneself. He is not answering abstractly or philosophically, but he's pointing them inwards. I see this as a progressive talk, almost like a guided meditation if you will, encouraging his audience to recognize these things in themselves. And if they do this well, that leads to a state where there is no ill will and there's no confusion anymore about what to do and not to do, because we have clear criteria for avoiding harm and doing good. And then there's clear comprehension. There's a clear sense of presence and attentiveness to what we're doing. Not just mindfulness where we just are aware of something, but a wise understanding about behavior and action and the impact of what we're doing.

That leads to a disposition—and exactly how it leads to it the Buddha doesn't explain—to these things that are highly valued in the early Buddhist tradition, which are goodwill, compassion, sympathy, appreciative joy, and equanimity.

One of the things I want to highlight in this discussion is that in switching the focus from truth and falsehood, the Buddha offers central, core teachings of what he wants to emphasize. And all of these could, in Western terms, be considered ethical. They have to do with how we behave in relationship to ourselves and in relationship to others. How we behave in our mind, how we behave in our physical and verbal behavior. It's such a central feature of the Buddhist teachings: how we get transformed so we live in the world in a beneficial way.

The transformation that Buddhism is looking for is not just to make people who are peaceful, calm, and free for themselves, who go off into a kind of enlightened retirement and have nothing to do with the world anymore. Rather, the whole enterprise is contextualized in being ethical in nature. Or if you don't like the word ethics, it's contextualized in the healthy relatedness that we can have with the world and the people around us. It is not a practice and a goal that is only to benefit oneself. It's a goal and practice that's there to benefit self and others, both self and others.

This is my reading of the Buddhist teachings; it is one of the really central components of it. And this Kalama Sutta is a wonderful text, both because of the challenge it is to us about what we rely on to know what is true, and the Buddha's brilliant way in which he turns that towards avoiding questions of truth and falsehood and rather focusing on behavior. If you follow through on what the Buddha is teaching here really thoroughly, not only is it beneficial for the world around us and leads to an ethical disposition, it also brilliantly, if you do it carefully, leads to awakening, to the spiritual liberation that the Buddha also champions. These two are not separate; they are closely connected and intertwined with each other.

So thank you. This Kalama Sutta is found in the Numerical Discourses of the Buddha^[3] in Chapter Three. It is a delightful text. Thank you all very much.