Guided Meditation: Stillness and movements in the body; Dharmette: The story of Patacara, crossing over the ocean of grief

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video GM: Stillness and movements in the body; The story of Patacara, crossing over the ocean of grief. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Ying Chen, 陈颖 at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on August 07, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Stillness and movements in the body

A warm welcome, everybody, to our 7 A.M. Pacific meditation and dharmette. So good to see you all. My name is Ying Chen, and thank you for joining this week's journey together. It is very happy to see all these chat messages flowing in the chat box in front of me. Good morning and good day.

This week, the meditation theme that I brought in is that of stillness and movement, in a wide variety of ways. We'll begin there. So, if you'd like to join me and take a meditative posture, please feel free to do that. We'll just take a few moments to settle in.

Maybe take a few long, deep breaths. As you breathe out, arriving here and now. Entering into this body and mind.

Maybe the immediate sense of this moment as we settle in is that of movement. Maybe there are dancing energies in the body. Movements of the breath. Movements or the waves of emotions. Just noticing this mindfulness is already here.

Take a few moments to just welcome a wide range of movements in our experiences. Inviting settling, resting down.

Noticing the lower half of the body making contact with the floor, chairs, or maybe the whole body making contact if you're lying down. Your body is supported by the earth.

And there is the earth element in the body that is heavy, firm, grounded. Maybe a sense of an earthy body resting on earth.

Right here you may already notice a kind of relative stillness with the earth element in the body. Steady, stable, relatively unmoving. There is a stillness in the body. There is a movement in the body.

And rest your attention on the stillness of the earth element in the body. Sitting like a mountain. Steady, quiet, and still.

Maybe the whole body has a sense of resting down. Relaxed, soft.

Sitting like a mountain.

The stillness of the body may highlight the movements. The movements of the breath. Tingling sensations. Vibrations or pulsations.

You can open to receive the movements in the body as well as the stillness. As if the wind blows in the mountain.

Maybe the torso gently sways. Belly rises and falls. You feel the dance of the stillness and the movements in this very body.

Resting in the felt sense of your experience. Feeling, sensing stillness. And feeling and sensing the movements.

Letting go of stories, ideas. Just to this.

Sitting like a tall mountain. Still, quiet.

Meaning, in this very body, there is a natural quality of stillness and movement. By being aware of the stillness and the movements in the body, our minds settle and become quiet.

If you'd like to play for the rest of the day with this dance of stillness and motion, the invitation is to pause throughout the day to notice stillness and movements in this very body.

Dharmette: The story of Patacara, crossing over the ocean of grief

Welcome again, everyone. I'm so happy to be with you. Let me make sure I have my recording on here... okay, I think I'm all good.

This week, I brought a set of stories of the great women disciples of the Buddha. I'm going to bring forth five women this week who came from a wide range of life situations and backgrounds. Each of them, in their own ways, experienced a wide range of challenges and losses in their own lives. Not only that, they also experienced all kinds of difficulties and challenges that came from the broader culture and the society that they lived in. And yet, they were not disabled by them or hindered by them. These heroic women rose beyond all of the difficulties, challenges, and the pain that they experienced, and they were transformed by the Dharma.

The first four women I'll be speaking about were from the time of the Buddha, and they were considered to be awakened individuals. The last one I'll be bringing in is a modern-day woman disciple. I hope that these stories will inspire and uplift us in some way, so that each of us knows for ourselves that liberation is a possibility for each of us.

The first woman I brought in is the story of Patacara^[1]. Many of you may have heard of this, but we have a Patacara statue at IRC^[2], which is maybe why I chose to begin with her. There is a bit of affinity with the IMC and IRC community. Her statue is sitting inside our retreat center right now, and so for those who go there to meditate, they see this.

I'd like to tell a little story about Patacara's life and her awakening journey. There is a collection called the Apadāna^[3], and I will be drawing some verses from this Pali Canon collection, translated by Jonathan Walters^[4]. It's called "The Legends of the Theris." Theris^[5] are senior female disciples of the Buddha, and so they are considered to be legends.

Patacara was born into a rather wealthy, well-to-do family. As a young woman, she fell in love with a servant boy of her family. In those days, the caste system was quite strong, and people were not supposed to marry outside of their own caste. In some ways, it remains a quite strong system in different parts of the world, particularly in India even now. But she fell in love as a young woman, and they ended up running away from the household that she was born into. They had to leave and lived in some villages a little far away from Patacara's home.

Along the way, she had given birth to one son. Then, with a second child in her womb, she was ready to go back to see her family. She was really missing her family. She recounted this experience: "My husband was not pleased at this thought. So then, when he was on a journey, I snuck out of the house alone to go to Savatthi^[6]," which is where her family was living. She decided to go on her own with a second child in her womb and basically a toddler in her hand. This time, running away from her husband, she had to go back to visit the family. But her husband caught on and began to chase after her.

In this process, her labor pains began. Right around that time, she recounted, "At the time for me to give birth to the second baby in the womb, a massive raincloud arose there. Then my husband, having gone to find grass..." Even though her husband caught up with her, Patacara decided not to go back, and they continued on. So this raincloud came, and a rainstorm came, and the husband went to find some grass to make a fire and perhaps a shelter, but he was killed by a poisonous snake.

Patacara said, "Then miserable and helpless, in the throes of painful childbirth, going toward a relative's house, seeing an overflowing stream..." Having lost a husband, you can imagine that now she has a newborn in her arms and a toddler, and there's no going back now. But there was this overflowing stream right in front of her because of the rainstorm. She had to carry the newborn across the flowing river while keeping the toddler on the other riverbank for the time being. She couldn't take both in one shot.

When she had put the baby on the other side and nursed the baby, she was ready to come back to the other side of the stream to get the toddler. Right in the midstream, Patacara recounted, "I turned, and an osprey carried off my wailing baby. Then the current swept the toddler away, my other son."

What happened here? She put the baby on the other side of the bank, but an osprey saw the baby, dived down, picked up the baby, and flew away. She was yelling, screaming, and waving, trying to get the baby back. But hearing this screaming and yelling, the toddler thought, "Oh, mommy is calling me to come." So he started walking towards the river, towards the flow, and then the toddler got swept away.

Within just 24 hours, she lost her husband, her baby, and her toddler. Just like that.

She was overwhelmed by the grief and the loss. Now she had no choice but to go back to Savatthi to visit her family. There was no other way. Yet, on the way to Savatthi, people saw her and she inquired about her family. Someone told her the whole family was killed because of the rainstorm last night; the house collapsed. Her parents and her brother all died within 24 to 48 hours.

So she went mad. I feel like this is the kind of pain that the logical mind just can't hold. It's kind of beyond what our minds can hold. And so she went mad. She sobbed and began to wander around kind of like a crazy woman. She said, "I grew pale and thin, helpless." This was the state of being she was in. Her clothes were torn, and people began to throw stuff at her, thinking she was a mad woman.

In the midst of this, the Buddha was staying at Savatthi, at Anathapindika's Monastery^[7]. She was wandering around and saw the Buddha far away. This was the moment when some sort of consciousness came back to her. When she finally reached the Buddha, she began to recount this whole experience to him. The Buddha listened to her compassionately. At the end of her recounting, the Buddha said this to her:

"But little water do the oceans four contain, compared with all the tears that one sheds, by sorrow smitten and by suffering distraught."

The Buddha put her sorrow and grief in perspective. The ten thousand sorrows and griefs that we experience, even the four great oceans couldn't contain them all.

And so the Buddha continued: "Do not grieve, child. Breathe easily. You should look after yourself. Why uselessly torment yourself? There are no sons to give shelter, and there is no shelter with the family."

Those words penetrated her mind deeply. For her, this was truth. She saw how fragile it was. She was relying and counting on the family, and the children, and the parents, and one by one they were swept away right underneath her feet.

So she knew the impermanence of all things so deeply right there. She experienced samvega^[8] right then. She knew the truth of anicca^[9], impermanence. She knew the truth of dukkha^[10]. She knew the truth of clinging to dukkha—that clinging is dukkha.

Right then and there was a moment of transformation for her. She entrusted herself to the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Ever since that day, she practiced diligently.

This poem, translated by Gil Fronsdal^[11], speaks to her awakening experience. I'd like to read this poem from the Therigatha^[12]:

Plowing fields with plows, Sowing seeds in the ground, Caring for children and wife, Young men getting wealth.

Why is it that I, established in virtuous conduct, Doing the Buddha's instruction, not lazy or proud, Have not attained release?

Having washed my feet, I watch the water, the foot-washing water, Flowing from high ground to low. With this, the mind concentrated like a thoroughbred horse.

Taking an oil lamp, I entered my hut^[13]. Looking over the bed, I sat down on the bed. Taking a needle, I pulled down the wick. As the flame went out, the mind was freed.

So this was possible for Patacara, even after the ocean of sorrow and grief. Not only did Patacara become awakened, she was known to be the one who taught many other nun disciples.

I'd like to evoke a sense of inspiration through Patacara's story. There is a Patacara statue at IRC, and for those who go to IRC to do retreat practice, maybe wander to the walking hall right now and just stand right in front of Patacara for a few moments.

May this uplift all of us. May awakening be a possibility for all beings.

Thank you, everyone. And we will continue tomorrow with another story.