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Guided Meditation: Non-Harming

So, hello everyone. I'm feeling happy looking at the greetings in the chat. Thank you for those of you who exchange warm greetings every morning. I take the greetings in the chat to be representative of the warm goodwill that exists in this extended community that's participating, including the people who are not chatting. So I want to thank all of you for this.

I want to begin with a little story from the suttas this morning before the meditation, and I'll continue it tomorrow, so hopefully, you'll forgive me. There is a celestial being that comes down to visit a young monk who's starting to meditate, and the celestial being says, "You're young, in the prime of life. You should go out and enjoy sensual pleasures. Why do you abandon what is immediate and directly visible here and now for this dharma practice?"

And the monk says, "No, it's not the case. I'm not abandoning what is directly visible here and immediate now. The dharma is directly visible. The dharma is directly present now, immediate." And he goes through it like this.

And then the deity says, "Well, explain yourself."

And the monk can't explain himself. "I'm new, so you have to go talk to the Buddha."

So that's the part for tomorrow, but at the end of the Buddha explaining all this to the celestial being, the celestial being summarizes the teachings. The summary is the answer to all this, and that's what I want to read.

Oh no, yeah, here it is, okay.

"One should do nothing mean in all the world, not by speech, by mind, or by body. Having abandoned sensual desires, mindful and clearly comprehending, one should not pursue a course that is painful and harmful."

That's why I wanted to read: to not pursue a course that is painful and harmful. So this practice that we do, the way that it's immediately beneficial, visible here and now, to be seen for oneself, is a practice of non-harming. We see something about the dharma when we harm ourselves, and so the dharma is seen there. If we see it as dharma, we see it as a teaching, something to learn from, something to practice with. So the suffering, pain, discomfort, and despair that we might feel—we don't have to see it as unfortunate. We see it as the dharma: "Oh, this is true. This is what's happening. I see it clearly now." And we practice with it and we learn the practice of non-harming—thorough non-harming, radical non-harming, non-harming in all directions, including not harming oneself. And that's when we really discover that this dharma is visible here, it's now, immediate.

It is onward leading. It is to be experienced by the wise.

So that's what we'll do today. Maybe that can be an orientation for your meditation: the practice of non-harming. There's a way in which letting the mind be distracted and lost in thought, while not directly harming, is a little bit stressful. It's a little bit of a tension. It's a little bit away from the place of freedom and peace. And so, use this guideline to sit quietly with non-harming. And if you do harm yourself by being mean or something, don't add harm on top of that. See the dharma in it. Don't believe it, but dharma it. Don't participate in it, but see it clearly for what it is, and then you're seeing the dharma.

So with that, we'll sit quietly. Thank you.

As we come to the end of this sitting, maybe take a few moments in your own way to appreciate that the heart of the dharma is visible here and now, that you're invited to take a good look at. It is onward leading, and something to be experienced by the wise, to experience by yourself. At the heart of this dharma is non-harming: not harming ourselves, not harming others, not harming self and others, not harming the various communities and groups we're part of, and not harming the entire world.

And may it be that as we end this meditation, the meditation serves as a basis for a better understanding of harm and not harming. That we see the dharma. To see the dharma in harming means we don't believe in the harming anymore, the activity of hurting someone. We know there's another way: there's non-harming. The entire dharma can be discovered on this path to fuller and fuller manifestations of non-harming.

May we live for the non-harm, for the benefit, for the welfare of this whole world. May others experience the blessings of non-harming. May others experience the safety of non-harming. May others experience the peace of non-harming. And may others be free of all forms of harm.

May all beings be happy.

Thank you.

Dharmette: The Dharma, Pt 2 ( 4 of 5) Stay Close

So today we come to the fourth characteristic of the dhamma, the dharma, and that is that it's opanayiko^[1]. Most commonly, that's understood as "onward leading," and I like this translation of the word. There are other meanings of it. In the ancient commentaries, they discussed some of the different meanings it can have. These days, Bhikkhu Bodhi^[2], the great translator of our suttas, is translating it as "applicable"—that the dhamma is something that you can immediately apply. You can use it; it's usable. Which is also a very nice idea: it's immediately useful.

Another meaning of it is that the dhamma is immediate and now, and approachable—something to approach, something that's nearby, something to be close to, stay close to. We're guided close to it.

So there are these different meanings. The idea of "onward leading" I'm very fond of because when we practice, it's not a static thing that we just sit and practice. It helps to think of "onward leading" as something that has almost a natural quality to it; it moves along without my effort. If I float on top of a current in a river, it's onward leading; it carries me along. If I stand on a conveyor belt—you know, those moving sidewalks that they have at the airport—you stand there and it just carries you along. You don't have to do the walking. So there is this idea of being carried along, unfolding by the dharma.

It's not a mystical or strange thing. I like to understand it very simply. To see the dharma, to be visible here and now, is to just really see it, to take a good look at what's happening here and now. One of the things we start seeing is the tensions we hold, the holding patterns in the body and the mind. We start seeing the strain, the stresses we carry with us.

And there's something about showing up and being really present for tension, for stress, for holding—something begins to release. Sooner or later, it's hard for the psychophysical system to keep being tense, to hold on, under the gaze of mindfulness, of awareness. It's kind of like we can't do two things at once. We can't be fully present and fully tense, fully engaged in holding on and clinging. As we devote ourselves to being present, to being aware, there's less energy available to be tense, to be tight, to hold on, to cling. And so it begins to relax and soften.

Sometimes we see what we're holding on to, and we let go of it, and something relaxes. That relaxation of the system—mind, heart, body—is onward leading because it heightens the sensitivity to recognize more clinging. It helps to recognize the remnants, the next layer of tension or strain that we have. It heightens our attention to notice when we bring in more strain again, when we get tense again. You can see that in meditation sometimes very clearly, where we were pretty relaxed and at ease, and then we have a certain thought or memory, and we feel a tightening up someplace—maybe the whole body, or we brace ourselves in some way. We can see we're getting involved in an idea, a story, and the effect it has.

Sometimes, in seeing it so clearly, it's possible to let go of it. We say, "I don't need to be involved in that story. I can let go of those thoughts and let it go." And the body relaxes a little bit. Sometimes it's a practice that we do because of this heightened sensitivity, getting more and more aware of it. So as we relax, we're more sensitive. As we relax, there's a momentum towards greater ease, towards greater letting go, not clinging.

And our whole body begins shifting. They say that with a lot of stress, our biochemical makeup inside of us changes; there's more cortisol, stress hormones, and different things, and they're not good for us. But as we have ease and destress, the system moves towards a kind of homeostasis of health and well-being. So there's this onward leading towards health: spiritual health, psychological health, and even, to some degree, physical health that can happen through this.

At some point, this movement towards letting go begins to feel like it's happening on its own. It feels like we're on a gentle slide or in a current, and all we have to do is stay out of the way. Don't interfere with it, and the whole system moves towards greater and greater ease, greater relaxing, letting go, opening up. It's remarkable to feel this. It's almost impersonal; it has almost a natural quality to it. It's kind of very inspiring to feel this not-selfhood of this process of the dharma unfolding within us. We have our role for sure, but we can't engineer it. We have to kind of enable it, allow it, and stay close to it.

This dharma that we stay close to is one of the meanings of opanayiko—something to stay close to. I love this idea that we stay close to the dharma, keep it close in, stay close, remember it. It's the most important thing for our life. Not because other things are unimportant, but because it sits at the center of a really healthy way of being with the things that are important in our life. The important things in our life, if they're worthwhile, stay important. But with the dharma being the most important, we actually have more to offer the other important things we have in our life. With the dharma being most important, there's a quality of freedom that comes with how we connect and be with people. People we love, we can still love them fully, maybe even more so, but there's a quality of freedom, of non-expectation, of non-demanding, maybe a non-neediness that goes along with it.

So, "onward leading." Bhikkhu Bodhi now translates it as "applicable." As we see the tension, the holding that we have, we see it clearly. That shows us what we can do, what's useful. We see what we can let go of. Sometimes we can't let go of the tension, the holding itself, but we might let go of our self-criticism that we might have: "Oh, I'm such a terrible person. I'm a bad Buddhist because I'm clinging." Maybe that can be let go of, and we're still holding on to something, but we're more at ease with being tense, more at ease with our attachment. It doesn't mean that we're condoning, celebrating, or participating wholeheartedly in our attachments, but it does mean that we're not adding more suffering on top of it.

This is a beautiful quality, I think, of dhamma practice: this kind of acceptance, this not being troubled by all the challenges we have, all the faults that we have. A few of us have a few faults—interpersonal faults—and I kind of like to think that every human has them. It's not even personal; it just comes with being a human being. So to not be troubled by that, and at the same time to see it, and to know it, and not to cause any harm because of it. As long as we don't cause harm, it's fine to be who you are. No harm to yourself, no harm to others. It's profound because it's an alternative to how much harm is being caused in this world. It's phenomenal the amount of harming that goes on even in the most subtle ways; even among people who love each other, there's harming going on. It would be a radically different world if we stopped that. So even for one person to come to that place of not harming is just an amazing thing. Close to that.

So, opanayiko, this onward-leading quality of the dharma, also means the dharma is applicable. It's something we can apply ourselves to. We can apply ourselves to the stream that carries us to greater and greater freedom. And it's something to stay close to: stay close to the stream, stay close to this practice, stay close to this thing that can be visible right here, that is now, that is good to take a deep look at. Yes, look at it deeply. Stay close to that so that you can experience what the wise experience, to be experienced by the wise.

And that will be the topic for tomorrow. So thank you, and stay close.

So today, stay close to non-harming. And if that means that you're seeing clearly the way that you harm, try not to be troubled by that and don't participate in it. See it clearly. Don't add problems on top of it, but explore this world of harming and non-harming. Stay close to that and you'll find there, you'll see the dharma there; that's where the dharma can be found.

So thank you very much.