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Guided Meditation: Contentment

Express my delighted greetings to be here with all of you and share this time together. There are many approaches to meditation and many approaches to being deeply connected to this present moment. One of the most common things that I teach here is, if the mind wanders off, come back to the breathing. Stay with the breathing.

Another approach, which can be both a means to being peaceful and settled in the present moment, and also the result of being present in the moment, is contentment. You might practice contentment as we do the meditation practice. Just call on contentment with whatever is happening. Or maybe that's too much to say—just being content at this moment. Find a contentment. That's the direction the meditation is going. It's going to a very profound form of contentment, a subtleness, a being at rest with what's here, and not needing it to be any different.

If you have some reference point for contentment, whenever you need to return to the present moment, whenever you need to adjust how you are to be here in the meditation, see if you could bring a sense of contentment. See if that can help you be more settled and more present. So, taking an alert, upright posture, gently close your eyes.

Is there a way directly that you can allow yourself to be content here? Not necessarily looking for something or retaining anything, but in some way feeling a contentment to be sitting in meditation, to be present here and now, even if things are difficult. Rest into some form of contentment.

If that's available to you, see if you can breathe with and through the contentment. Out of contentment, take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Deep breaths that expand the torso, the chest, the ribcage. And a long exhale where things just settle and relax. Maybe settling into being content here. Not concerned about the other times and other places. Just what's happening here and now. Deep breath in and out, relaxing into your body.

Let your breathing return to normal. As you exhale, relax parts of your body. Softening in the face. Softening the shoulders. And relaxing the belly.

Once again, is there a way you can settle into a deeper contentment? Content to be here in this body of yours, even if there's pain or aches. If that's what you have to include as part of the meditation, even with that, settle into a content place. Be just here, breathing. Content to be alive with a breathing body. An aware mind, aware of your breathing, aware of the body's experience of breathing. Maybe even content to be present for each inhale and each exhale.

If the mind wanders off in thought, perhaps renew your contentment. Be content to be with your direct experience, one breath at a time.

A reminder to find a contentment, resting in a contentment that supports you in being with your breathing and being really here, at ease and settled in your body and mind. Here, content.

As we come to the end of this sitting, perhaps we can reflect that contentment is not a complacency or some naive acceptance of things that shouldn't be accepted. Rather, contentment is being settled in oneself, at ease in oneself, so that whatever we do is not agitated. Whatever we do is not anxious or greedy, and doesn't come from a place of discontent and unhappiness within ourselves.

Perhaps a deep contentment allows us to be better friends, to offer more care and love, and to be generous to those around us. Because we're not impatient, we're not needing things to be different, we're not trying to get away or get someplace or do something different, we can be present here. So that the goodness, the beauty, the support of others can be part of our orientation.

What a wonderful thing that our contact with others comes from a deep contentment in our hearts, content with being alive and being present. Perhaps when we're content in ourselves, we have more room and space for well-wishing and caring for others. The end of meditation can be expressed with these words:

May it be that all beings be happy. May it be that all beings feel safe. May it be that all beings may be peaceful. May it be that all beings may be free.

And may we contribute to their happiness, their safety, their peace, and their freedom. May we contribute to it out of a deep sense of contentment and ease. May all beings be happy.

Dharmette: Kusala (8 of 10) Skillfulness

To continue our discussion of kusala^[1] this week, mostly we are talking about it as a skill and doing what's skillful. The Buddha uses lots of analogies of craftspeople, farmers, and animal trainers to make similes, metaphors, and comparisons to the developing of meditation skills or skills along the path of liberation. Because all these similes have to do with craftspeople, farmers, musicians, and animal trainers—like elephant trainers in ancient India—the idea of skill seems like a better translation sometimes than wholesome, but these two are closely connected.

One of the skillful practices or skillful states is mindfulness practice. The simile for it is becoming a skilled cook. I guess bringing together all the ingredients, bringing ourselves completely here—maybe we're the pot, and we're bringing all these good qualities together so we're really here, maybe cooking something really wonderful.

This idea that mindfulness is a wholesome, skillful practice—a craft we're developing—suggests, as I said yesterday, something developed slowly over time. The Buddha had this wonderful quote: when based on ethical conduct, established on ethical conduct, you develop the four foundations of mindfulness, then whether night or day, you may expect only growth in skillful states, not decline. Mindfulness itself is considered to be a skill to develop. As we develop this skill of mindfulness, it brings with it the development and growth of other skillful states.

Another theme from this week is how much the Buddha emphasizes personal growth and development in certain qualities that are helpful and good for us to have. There are lots of lists in the early tradition of these skillful states and qualities of being. In fact, there are many more lists and enumerations of skillful states than there are for unskillful states. It's almost as if there are only a relatively few unskillful, unwholesome movements of mind that we can have, and many, many different options for skillful ones. Unfortunately, we spend a lot of time with the few negative ones and don't explore the range of all the good qualities that we can develop and cultivate.

I delight in the fact that this early tradition lists many more positive states and qualities that human beings have than the list of negative ones. In one of these lists in the later tradition, in the Abhidhamma^[2]—the Buddhist psychology—the unwholesome, unskillful ones are called akusala^[3]. But the skillful ones, or the wholesome ones, are called "beautiful." There are more beautiful states of mind, mental factors, or mental movements of the mind that are possible for us than there are unskillful ones. So we have this great capacity, and maybe to some degree it's underutilized. Part of what we're doing is cultivating this underutilized part of our mind.

There's a wonderful list of skillful states that the Buddha taught to his foster mother^[4]. She is the one who raised the Buddha, and she came to him, became a student, and became a nun. She asked him once to teach the Dharma in brief so she could go off and practice alone. She wanted practice instructions.

Whenever the Buddha is going to say it in brief in the suttas^[5], it's very interesting to see. It's fascinating to gather together all the brief statements of how the Buddha encapsulates the Dharma. You see there's a particular kind of orientation that gets repeated over and over again, and that is practice and the immediacy of our experience now. That's where all the emphasis is.

So, this is what he told her:

"As for those mental qualities of which you may know: these qualities, these states lead to dispassion, not to passion; to being unfettered, not to being fettered; to shedding, not to accumulating; to fewness of wishes, not to many wishes; to contentment, not to discontent; to solitude, not to crowded company; to arousing effort, not to laziness; to being unburdensome, not to being burdensome. You may definitively hold: this is the Dharma, this is the teacher's instructions."

What's interesting about this kind of list is that they're both states—mental activities, ways of being that we can practice and cultivate—and they're the result of that cultivation. They're the result of practice as well. Dharma practice leads to these states. So rather than just practicing breathing, ethics, and all the different things of practice to reach those states, the idea is to practice those states as well.

We find this way in which the goal of practice is integrated into the means of the practice; the means and the goal are not so separate in the Dharma. If the goal is to be peaceful, then we practice peace. If the goal is to be compassionate, we practice compassion. If the goal is to be content, we practice contentment. If the goal is to not be caught in the grip of many desires, then we practice having few desires, or fewness of wishes.

Some of these ideas are interpersonal, like not being a burden to other people. We need some care in how we understand that. Certainly, we don't want people who need support to feel like they can't get it. But to expect too much from people, or depend on people when we don't need to, is to be a burden.

And this idea of solitude, not being in crowded company: the ability to be alone and be content is one of the great things to discover. It's really skillful to develop that capacity, that wholesomeness to be at ease with oneself, to be comfortable with oneself. To be able to be in a room by oneself and just sit there and be content. Keep one's own company, be one's own friend. It doesn't mean we have to live as a hermit, but that ability means that when we are with people, we don't bring our neediness. We don't bring our grasping and wanting them to provide us with all kinds of benefits, company, support, praise, love, or everything because we have a lack ourselves. So we want to cultivate a capacity to have comfortable solitude.

It's fascinating that to his foster mother, these are the skillful states the Buddha highlighted as being essential for going off and practicing alone. I think part of it is that as we cultivate these states, they lead to more and more of the same. These states are the guide; this is the direction we're going. If we understand where we're going, then we start doing those things, those states and practices that lead in that direction.

For practicing meditation, mindfulness, or breathing, to have in mind that it's leading us to being content—let's start finding it and seeing it now. If it's leading us to have fewness of wishes, as we sit and practice, can we tap into this and have that support the very meditation practice itself? If it's leading us to a capacity to feel at home when we're alone, can we cultivate meditation with that in mind, to feel a deep sense of settledness with ourselves?

Many of these are sometimes called virtues that we're cultivating and developing. The overarching character of many of the lists that the Buddha emphasized to develop and practice are peaceful states, peaceful qualities. In his discourse on loving-kindness^[6], he talks about being upright, straightforward, easy to speak to, gentle, not proud, contented, wise, and calm. So here's more of these skillful states that are to be cultivated. Another list includes respect, humility, contentment, gratitude, patience, and gentleness. As I said, there are many, many of these lists.

We cultivate and allow for the growth of skillful, wholesome qualities. It's skillful to develop these states because they themselves are onward-leading; they lead to further growth. Just as mindfulness leads to the growth of skillful, wholesome states, all other skillful states bring along with them companions of other wholesome states. There is a mutual support of all these states within us. It's a wonderful thing to start feeling the momentum of wholesome, skillful states growing in us and offering a kind of energy, inspiration, and movement for life.

May you explore the idea of skillfulness. Orient your life today around what would be the skillful thing to do. What would be the skillful thing to do to support these qualities of contentment, fewness of wishes, unburdensomeness, freedom, and all these wonderful things?

Thank you all very much, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.