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Guided Meditation: Affirming Here

Hello everyone, welcome.

So, entering into your body with your awareness and assuming a meditation posture, a posture for being alert and present, a posture that affirms that you are here now.

And gently closing your eyes, and again affirming that you're here, present. Taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. Maybe on the long inhale, the feeling of fullness that comes in the torso as you breathe in, take it as an affirmation that you are here, nowhere else. And in the long exhale, releasing into here, just here now.

Letting your breathing return to normal. And as you exhale, relaxing your body. Peace, relaxation embodied. Affirmation that you are here, here in this body at this time.

On the exhale, softening in the face, relaxing any intenseness, forward-looking, that's carried in the face. The eyes settle back in their sockets.

On the exhale, softening in the shoulders. To the degree to which the shoulders can relax, it's an affirmation of their trusting, relaxed ability to trust the moment, not tense against it.

On the exhale, softening in the heart, relaxing and trusting. A subtleness, the relaxation in the heart.

And softening in the belly. And relaxing anywhere else where you might be holding tight or stiff, the arms and the fingers, in your hip joint and down your legs.

Perhaps relaxing, softening in the spine. Then settling into the body's experience of breathing. Maybe letting the inhale be a kind of gentle affirmation of being here, and the exhale to be relaxed, letting go into here, just here.

Here is where awareness can be established and can blossom. Blossoming of open, relaxed awareness, supported by breathing in and breathing out.

With your whole body affirming that you are here. Feeling the weight of your body maybe against your seat, the substantiality of your body. Clearly recognize and affirming you are here, nowhere else. And within this here, this affirmed presence, breathing as the primary physical activity that's occurring as you sit quietly.

Whatever is happening for you that's present moment happening is a thing to accept in direct experience. And in accepting it, to affirm that you are simply here, here simply aware, but maybe not troubled, just aware, breathing with what is.

And as we come to the end of the sitting, perhaps to recognize that when we are at odds with what is in our direct experience, if we're tensing against it, judging it, we have less affirmed presence, less fullness of being to offer the world.

To affirm oneself being here in the present moment, as if you have a right to be here, means there's more of you here to be friendly, to have good will, to be generous, or to simply listen better to others, to offer your presence.

May it be that as we practice mindfulness, it gives us the ability to be more present for others, more caring for this world. May it be that this practice that we do, this large community at the 7:00 a.m. sitting, that we collectively aspire to contribute to the welfare and happiness of others.

May all beings be happy, may all beings be safe, may all beings be peaceful, and may all beings be free.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (23) Activities as Mirrors

Often in the teachings of the Buddha, he lists our experience in terms of body, speech, and mind, or our activities as being activities of body, activities of speech, and activities of mind. And it's usually the body, and its activities, which are mentioned first in these kinds of lists. Part of the reason for that is the physical activities we do—walking, talking, eating—are not only the most obvious to notice, they can be seen by other people. They're much more obvious than sometimes how we are aware of our speech, and certainly can be more obvious than how we're aware of our mind and mental activities.

In being more aware of them, we also have more choice, more ability to do something about our activities than maybe our speech sometimes, and especially our minds that seem sometimes to be on automatic pilot. And so the training in Buddhism begins classically with attending to our actions, because that's where it's easiest, in a sense, to bring mindfulness to and to see clearly, and it's the easiest to have some choice about what we do within our actions.

Here in this discourse, we're going through the teachings of the Buddha on the four foundations for awareness. The first foundation is the body. And in the beginning of the body exercises, it has to do with activities. The first one, breathing, is a physical activity. When we sit still, it's usually the largest activity, the biggest activity of the body. And then experiencing this breathing, experiencing the whole body, just taking in the body in whatever way it comes, and then relaxing it, calming this body. We might not be able to calm our mind, but we might be able to calm, relax this body to some degree. It's more accessible sometimes.

Then we're aware of our postures that we're in, and then this third exercise is aware of the activities that we're doing. And these are activities that involve the whole body and much of the body, and we can observe, we can watch, we can train ourselves to be attentive to these activities we do. It's setting the ground, warming up the mind, strengthening the mind, so at some point it can be aware of something which is much more fickle, much more slippery, and that is the mind itself.

In a sense, mindfulness of activity is preparing the ground for a fuller experience of mindfulness. But mindfulness of the physical activities that we do has another very important role, and that is that our activities are a mirror for what's happening for us, a mirror to see ourselves better. This idea of our activities being a mirror goes back to the Buddha's teachings to his own son when the son was relatively young, and he encouraged him to use his activities of body, speech, and mind as a mirror to understand himself.

But he offered particular criteria of what to see in this mirror. Part of what we want to see is whether what we're doing is causing harm to oneself or to others. To really see that this ethical component of mindfulness is really important, and we want to see whether what we're doing is wholesome or not wholesome, whether it's nourishing, whether it brings a sense of goodness and warmth or nourishment to ourselves, or if it does the opposite. And then also we want to know if it brings suffering or whether it brings happiness. These kinds of reflections of what's the impact, what's the result of the activities we're doing, is part of the role of seeing activities as mirrors.

It's not simply being aware of the activity in and of itself, which can be quite delicious just to be there fully for it. As we develop this capacity for mindfulness, it's also taking in the impact, the influence, the effect of these activities we have. When the Buddha talks about full awareness of activities, this kind of using activities as a mirror is important. And then as it's a mirror, we see what we have choice about. If we're hurrying to do something, and we see, "Is this nourishing us or not?" then we see actually we're not being nourished. We're not taking in the full experience and being present in a way that offers some deep support for our being, but rather we're draining ourselves or shortchanging ourselves.

This can be, for example, with eating food. To take your time to eat food, to take in not only the food properly but to enjoy it, to take in the nourishment of it, to feel and sense the goodness of caring—maybe someone has cooked for you—and what it's like for the body to process that food and to take it in. Yesterday I had this delicious soup for lunch. I was hungry, and it just felt so wonderful to take it in, just feel it. It felt almost like medicine for myself, and it just felt good to be there present for it, as opposed to reading emails while I'm eating and not really taking it in. So this ability to then make a choice, "I'm not going to do emails. I'm going to be there with the soup and just be with that."

Rushing anywhere—if you're driving your car, you're rushing. Is that the way to be nourished? Is that the way to be benefited, to feel somehow the growth of attention and a kind of feeling good about being in your own skin? Probably not. Probably rushing takes you out of your skin or disconnects you in some way. So, to use the activities as a mirror of something deeper and important for us as we go through life.

Sometimes in the teachings of mindfulness, the emphasis seems to be so much, in certain schools of mindfulness, on just being present for things as they are, to just feel the immediacy of it. Then there's no emphasis on taking in the bigger picture, the impact, the influence it has on us. As we take in this bigger impact, then we can make choices about what to do and what not to do. Learning to do this with our physical activities is also preparing the ground for later when we do it for speech, and later we start doing it for, more importantly, the mind. The mind is really the origin, the source for our physical activities, our speech activities.

To get a sense and feeling for what it's like to shift gears, to move into a wholesome direction, to move away from that which debilitates us or drains us in the mental activities as well—that's coming. It's much more difficult. But to learn to do that in terms of physical activities prepares the ground, gives us a sense of how to do it. And if we do it in a relaxed way, it builds and becomes stronger over time. It's like we're developing a muscle, and that muscle at the right time can be applied to the mind. But if we live mindlessly in activities of our life, then we're not developing that capacity that's going to eventually in Buddhism be directed to the mind itself and mental activities.

What we'll see as we get into this is the mental activities are quite subtle, you know, they get more and more subtle what we see. But the subtlety of it is not inconsequential; that's where the core operating principles come from for our lives. To be able to touch into those and be able to use them as a mirror and have some choice about them, what to let go of and what to encourage, is a very important part of this practice.

So the message for today is that in training mindfulness, developing awareness in physical activities, it's phenomenally important for what we're going to do as this mindfulness practice develops and goes on. You can try this in your daily life: be present for the activities you do, but not just the activity in and of itself, but being present as a mirror. So you can open up a more and fuller picture. You see what impact this activity has, or what impact the way you do the activity has on yourself. Is it healthy for you? Is it wholesome? Is it beneficial, the way you do it? And if not, can you find a way to do it that feels good?

Kind of to repeat what I said a few days ago, one of the guidelines for what is maybe wholesome and beneficial is that which is beautiful. To live in beauty, to act in beauty, to see how to be in the world with beautiful activities. How would you walk down the sidewalk in a way that, not for other people, but for yourself, it was beautiful? Or how would you clean your dishes? How would you clean your home? How would you go about it if the activities you do have the capacity to really, really nourish you, support you, develop something beautiful and wonderful inside?

So I'll read one more time this passage... oh no, I don't have it here now. So we'll have to do it another time. And I hope that you will stay closely mindful, attentive to the activities of your day and see how that supports wonderful possibilities for you and for what you can offer other people.

So thank you, and we'll do one more day on these activities, mindfulness of activities, and that's tomorrow. And then Monday we'll start with a whole new orientation on the fourth exercise of Satipaṭṭhāna^[1]. So thank you.