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Guided Meditation: Letting Go into Change

Hello everyone, and welcome. Here our YouTube meditation begins. In the language of Buddhism, it arises, it appears, and it'll be here for a period of time. And then it will disappear; it will cease, it'll come to an end, only to begin again, probably tomorrow. Already this week, the 7:00 AM has appeared and disappeared, and appeared and disappeared, and here, appearing again.

When we hold the hand of our mind open—the mind open—then we can just let the comings and goings come and go. To not prioritize one over the other, but prioritize the lack of clinging to any of it, the lack of getting caught up in any of it. And so, the capacity to let go becomes the capacity to let be. When we don't stay involved and stay stuck, we just let everything be, and everything comes and goes in some way.

When we sit in meditation, I often teach using the breathing as a default, as the guide to support, and to keep coming back to the breathing. The breathing itself repeats itself: the in-breath and the out-breath, the coming and going of inhale and exhale. Each inhale begins, it persists for a while, and then it disappears. It's replaced by the exhale, which begins, disappears, and passes away.

So one of the things we're learning and doing with breathing is starting to become attuned to the mind's ability to receive and allow the comings and goings of something here: the breathing. At some point, it isn't the mindfulness of breathing that's so important—the breathing itself, though that's part of it—it's the mind's ability to just stay open and receive the waves coming and going, the arising and passing of the breathings. And of course, what arises and passes are particular sensations, how the body experiences the breathing.

But at some point, we start appreciating the inconstancy, the constant change of the breathing. Getting centered on the breathing, then at some point we become more and more sensitive to how all experiences, all things that we perceive, all perceptions, are of the same nature. They arise and they pass, they come and they go, they appear and they disappear.

It isn't so much the particular objects that we're looking at. For example, we see the arising and passing, but the perception of it comes and goes. I perceive something for a moment, and then my mind goes into my thoughts, thinking about it. I perceive something for a little while, and then I'm aware of the sound outside. And so we'll see this constant moving of perception in the mind, that perception of everything has this nature of coming and going.

Just as we get attuned to the coming and goings of breathing in and breathing out, as practice deepens, we become attuned to how perceptions of anything and everything are also arising and passing. Sometimes it's because the object arises and passes—the sound comes and goes, some thought comes and goes. And sometimes it's because our perception of it, our focus on it, arises and passes.

The exception is when we get attached to something, especially a thought or a feeling. We get stuck on something and we're holding onto it. Then that holding on obscures the nature of anicca^[1], impermanence, the nature of inconstancy. And so if we take mindfulness and look carefully at the holding, the way we're stuck, we'll start seeing that that too has a nature of inconstancy, the perception of that. And then it begins to loosen up the grip. The grip of attachments begins loosening up. And more and more, as the grip of attachment loosens up, the perception is open to the flow, the river of change, the flow of things coming and going. And this is the deeper art of Satipaṭṭhāna^[2].

So taking and assuming a comfortable upright posture, and gently closing your eyes. And as you're sitting here now, with your eyes closed, what do you notice comes and goes? What experiences arise and pass, change? There might be things that stay for now and don't seem to change, but what is changing in your experience? The coming and going of my voice. Maybe there are ambient sounds for you.

Maybe as you settle into your body, you perceive you're aware of different parts of your body, and your perception, your awareness moves around through individual moments of knowing this and that. Perception, in the Buddhist language, is unique for everything that is perceived. And so, individual acts of perception come and go depending on what we're focusing on.

Settling into this more deeply, taking a few long, slow, deep breaths, and relaxing on the exhale. Softening the belly. Letting your breathing return to normal. And if there are other simple ways that you can relax your body, maybe as you exhale... and then settling into breathing.

Perhaps being aware of how the body experiences breathing. Or knowing, with very simple thoughts, the coming and going of breathing in the body, coming and going of inhale, of exhale. Maybe the appearing and disappearing of the inhale, the appearing and disappearing of the exhale, massages the mind's tendency to hold on or to be attached to anything, allowing the mind to relax and loosen up in that rhythm of being aware of inhale and exhale.

Imagine you're sitting on a boulder. It's sticking up out of a river, and the water is flowing by. And you sit there and let everything flow by. Everything comes and goes, appears and disappears. Everything is floating down this large majestic river. You, safe on your boulder, sitting. Allowing things to flow by. Everything flows.

If you look at thoughts directly, you'll see they're made up of comings and goings. Get out of the way for the comings and goings, without being involved in thought.

If you're not aware of things coming and going, maybe you can be aware of the way the mind is stuck on something. The way the mind is preoccupied, or holding itself at a distance from direct experience. And breathe with that. Feel that, sense it. Sense the way that gets in the way of seeing change. Maybe it's a belief.

In the river of changing experiences, perceptions, let go into it. Let yourself become the change. Everything is changing. Everything appears and disappears, flows on and on. Even anything that you can identify as yourself, it appears and disappears in perception. Let go. Let go into the river of change.

Then, as we come to the end of the sitting, might there be something within, something tender, that is touched by the changing nature of reality? Maybe it's some apprehension, maybe it's some joy. Maybe it's some kinship, a feeling of being deeply connected to what's most at home here in this world. This is true: the changing nature of everything comes and goes.

We share this with others. Some change is painful, some is joyful. Some involves sadness, some involves joy. Some involves relief, some comes with new stresses. We all share living in this world of change.

And may we gaze upon the world kindly, in a friendly way, offering our support, our companionship for others as they go on their journey through this difficult world, this life of change. May we tap into goodwill, wishing people well.

May everyone be happy.
May everyone be safe.
May everyone be peaceful.
May everyone be free.

And may whatever we learn about freedom help us to better support the welfare and happiness of others. May all beings be happy.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (64) Third Noble Truth

Today I want to offer an alternative interpretation of the Second Noble Truth^[3], how this truth is taught in the ancient teachings of the Buddha. The more modern one is that craving is the cause of suffering—that's the Second Noble Truth. The more common one in the ancient texts is that the Second Noble Truth involves seeing the arising of suffering, seeing the appearance of it, without any explanation for why it's there.

The search for reasons, for causes, is a little bit challenging at times, and sometimes will lead us astray and take us away from the simplicity of our experience in the moment. There's certainly a time and place to look for causes for why things happen. It's a wise life that understands conditionality and causes, but it's also one that lends itself to thinking a lot, reflecting, and analyzing.

The Satipaṭṭhāna practice moves us towards more and more really abiding in direct experience. And in direct experience, the idea of cause becomes less important. You can still see it sometimes in the moment, see, "Oh, there I was grasping at something in the moment, and I saw there was suffering in that grasping." So you can see there the causality. But there's another way of seeing, and that is simply to see that suffering arises and that suffering ceases. It appears and disappears.

And the suttas^[4] emphasize this, this insight into the arising and passing of many, many things, and not just suffering. Suffering is like the umbrella term, perhaps, for all the things we become aware of. We see the arising and passing of the aggregates^[5], the arising and passing of the faculties, the arising and passing of perceptions, the arising and passing of thoughts and feelings. It emphasizes arising, the arising and passing of things, the arising and ceasing of it.

And the simplicity of that experience is particularly valuable in deep concentrated practice of Satipaṭṭhāna. In ordinary states of consciousness, the world of cause and effect, thinking about things, is a very common phenomenon. As the mind gets quieter and quieter and quieter, more and more focused, clearer and clearer, it's not inclined to look at experience through the lens of analyzing it, reasons, causes, why, and what's going to happen. It becomes just a simple experience of the moment, of the river of change flowing by.

So I want to say again what I've said before, that coming as the last exercise of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, I think we can assume that this exercise on the Four Noble Truths^[6] represents a deep level of practice, a mature level of practice. It's not easy to come into this as a beginner, this level of seeing, this kind of insight. We get a sense of that from the refrain that we've looked at. The refrain for each exercise talks about this very thing: seeing each of the things we're looking at—the phenomena of the body, feelings, phenomena associated with the mind—and seeing it arise and pass. And the aggregates, the hindrances^[7], the fetters, the Seven Factors of Awakening^[8]—all those, at some point, what we're seeing is their arising and passing. That's what's emphasized in the refrain.

Sometimes you start seeing it so quickly that the text talks about—first it says seeing arising, seeing ceasing, and then it talks about seeing arising and ceasing—where rising and ceasing happens very fast in deep subtle practice. The moment-to-moment experience of direct experience comes and goes. And so when suffering arises in that kind of context, it's not overwhelming, it's not so difficult, because it doesn't persist. It comes and it goes. It might disappear quickly.

There might be disorientation that happens. We live in a world where we expect things to be constant. We want to hold on to certain things to be oriented, and know ourselves, and know the world around us. We know we're safe by knowing certain ideas are settled. And so there might be a period of disorientation that some people feel as the mind gets quieter and quieter in meditation. The usual ideas of self, the things we're holding onto and depending on, are no longer available because they had to have some level of constancy in order to hold on to them. But when things come and go, there's a whole different way that we're asked to relate to it.

So, to see the arising of suffering is to see its contingent nature. To see it's not permanent, it's not solid. We can see that it arose from a time and place and situation where it didn't exist before it arose. And if we see it cease, we know that there comes a time where it's no longer going to be there. And that begins to loosen up the grip of the mind, or the resistance of the mind, the fear of the mind that we have. We just start appreciating that there's an emptiness to it all, the freedom of it all, that this is not something to be worried about, or upset about, or cling to.

This deeper seeing of things arising and ceasing, the inconstancy, begins to loosen up the grip of our attachments, some of the deepest attachments we have. We had to let go of a lot of attachments to get to this level of meditation. A lot of preoccupations fall away as we're getting concentrated and settled. What's left are some of the deepest attachments: attachment to self, even attachment to life itself. Those are all ways of interfering with the flow of change. It's becoming the flow of change. And so as things begin to loosen up, to be massaged, relaxed, let go of, then there can be a moment where something in the mind gives away.

It's maybe a little bit like standing in a real river, and the river is just flowing, and you're walking deeper and deeper in the river. It's not dangerous, this current; you know how to swim. You can just feel more and more the river flowing against your body as you walk out into the river, deeper and deeper and deeper. You just feel very light, like you're floating. It feels very comfortable, but it gets deeper and deeper until you get to a place where it's deep enough that you're not touching the bottom. Suddenly, the gentle current picks you up and starts carrying you down the river.

As we let go into more and more the flow of change, there comes a time where the bottom's not there, and we can start becoming carried in the current, carried in the stream. And that's the meaning of the Buddhist idea of stream entry^[9]. The word for stream, sota, means current. It's entering the current, and it can be seen as the current of change that's always here. I like to think of it as the current of non-clinging, non-grasping, not holding on to anything, but then beginning to flow in a Dharma current. The Dharma flow starts flowing through us, because the Dharma current that we're in is the current of non-clinging, non-grasping. And this begins to carry us on a dharmic path, to a dharmic life.

So, this Third Noble Truth is a truth of the ceasing of suffering. It means both the seeing together of the arising and ceasing—the constant change and coming and going—but it also represents, at some point, when the bottom of the river is out of reach and falls away, there's a more dramatic ceasing that goes on. And now it's a ceasing that changes things. For example, in the analogy of going in the river, when you're no longer touching the bottom and it no longer keeps you stationary, then the current has a chance to carry you. So it marks a very important change in going into the river.

The Third Noble Truth involves not just seeing the arising and ceasing of things, the constant coming and going, but it's when we really become the coming and going, relax into it, that there's a more complete ceasing that is more than just the particulars of the moment. A ceasing that feels just much more holistic, more inclusive. And this changes kind of the whole flow, the whole current, the whole understanding of what Satipaṭṭhāna practice is, and I'll talk more about that tomorrow.

So the Second Noble Truth has two meanings, and both of them are good. They have their value in different contexts. Often in much more ordinary states of mind, seeing the cause for suffering is very helpful. In deep meditative states of mind, looking for a cause just keeps the mind busy. There we want to just kind of rest in the current, the arising and passing of direct experience. That's only possible if we have some level of stability and concentration, so that we're not distracted, we don't wander off in thought, and we're really here.

Then we see that we're living in arising and ceasing. And now the Second Noble Truth is seeing the arising. And the Third Noble Truth is really appreciating the ceasing, the passing. First initially, just as it comes and goes, the ceasing comes and goes, until finally the ceasing becomes much more comprehensive. And then that opens the door to understanding the Fourth Noble Truth^[10], the Eightfold Path^[11]. And that will be the topic for tomorrow.

So thank you very much.