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Guided Meditation: Meditating with Purpose

Good morning, good day. I would like to start with a story. There was a Zen teacher who came from Japan in the 1960s here to the San Francisco Bay Area, and his name was Kobun Chino^[1]. He was also apparently a master of Zen archery, or the Japanese way of archery. He was invited to Esalen^[2]. Esalen was a retreat center that is very famous for incubating much of the human potential movement of the 1960s, and it still exists. The Esalen retreat center is right on the cliffs in Big Sur, south of here, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It's a magnificent place. The nice lawn in the front goes right up to the cliff, and you see the vast Pacific Ocean in front of you.

Kobun Chino was invited there to do an archery demonstration, and many people came out on the lawn to watch him. He was all set up, and apparently, he was wearing formal Japanese archery robes, very formal ritualistic-looking clothes. He came up to where he was going to stand, and he took a long time to prepare himself. Apparently, the people watching were just mesmerized by his care, his attention to detail, and his focus in how he prepared and got himself into position. It took a long time to take his position and get himself centered and balanced, with his stance and his legs just right. Then, picking up his bow and communing with the bow, getting ready with the bow. Then pulling out an arrow and placing the arrow just right. It was a long process, very concentrated and focused. Apparently, the way he did it, people were just mesmerized and came along with him. It was like a tea ceremony, some beautiful ritual.

Finally, he spent a lot of time just making the aim. And finally, he released the arrow. The arrow flew straight, right into the mark, and it landed smack in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. That's where he had aimed it.

So there is this wonderful story that it's not about what he was trying to hit; it wasn't about trying to hit something exactly. It was all about his presence, his attention to the present moment, to his body, to the details. He was fully engaged in this process. And then when he was aiming—I mean, it was hard to miss the Pacific Ocean if you are standing on the cliff looking in that general direction. But he took his task very seriously. He was very focused. The point was not to shoot the arrow and to hit the target. The point was to really be able to see, to get concentrated in the process, the sense of purpose and engagement in what he was doing.

This is what I'd like to suggest for today: it's the preparation and the sense of concentration and purpose of what we're doing that's important. Don't worry so much about the results of your practice, but really center yourself here. Have a strong sense of purpose, like, here is where you're going to get into the present moment. Prepare yourself for it, to get everything lined up, kind of aim for the present moment and really be here. Maybe you'll never shoot the arrow—that's not the point. It's what you're preparing yourself to do; it's the way that it puts you into the activity of being present.

So we take a comfortable, upright meditation posture, and take time with your posture. It could be that you make some big swaying back and forth. It's possible that you just do very small little movements. The point is not to find the "right" posture; the point here is to really be present in the finding of it. Really feel and sense your body, and feel the weight on your sitting bones if you're sitting. Feel if the weight of your torso is balanced, coming down in a balanced way on the sitting bones, not too much on one or the other, not projected forward or backward. Just everything lined up.

And then, with the same kind of care—that every little detail is precious, is tender, is done gently and carefully—close your eyes.

To prepare yourself, take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Breathing in deeply, and exhaling and grounding yourself here, in this place, this body on your seat, the place where you're meditating. As if you're establishing a balance and stability in the place, with the place you're sitting on. That which is holding you up.

Continuing with somewhat deeper breaths, long exhale, relaxing.

Now, letting your breathing return to normal. And still, the preparation of arriving here, being ready. As you exhale, relax your body. Relax the face around the eyes. Relax the shoulders, softening. Not so much to just be completely relaxed, but softening and relaxing to really be here in an intentional, embodied way. As if you're preparing your whole body for a very important task.

Softening in the chest. Relaxing in the belly. And for everything to work together in harmony, it's best to let go of any unnecessary tension. It could be in the hands and the fingers, or the arms. In the thighs, calves, and the feet.

Then, without changing anything in your posture, to embody your posture more fully, think more of the preparation for engaging in the purpose of meditation. Invite your whole body along to participate in this attention, this presence. The setting up of your attention.

Then, to prepare to make the aim, like the archer who took a lot of time to prepare and aim, to establish where the arrow was going to go—set your aim in the body breathing. This is the purpose here, to really connect, to be present for the inhale, the exhale. In whatever place in the body is the right place for you to put your attention regarding breathing. Maybe where you most enjoy your breathing, or maybe where it's clearest.

The point here is not to be successful, not to accomplish anything, but rather to set yourself up with the aim. Really aiming gently, lovingly, at the sensations of the body breathing. Entering into the sense of purpose and dedication to be with your breathing.

Entering into the practice of mindfulness of breathing with a sense of purpose and dedication. Part of what you're doing when you're meditating is embodying, inhabiting, and evoking a sense of purpose. This is what you're doing now, just quietly breathing. With every exhale, letting the thinking mind become quieter so you can really hold the aim on the full extent of the inhale and exhale. Relaxing, present with purpose.

If you lose contact with your breathing, it's okay. Bring yourself back into the dedication of finding the breath, getting centered on the breath, aiming at the breath. It's not so important that you drifted off; it's important that you come back and start again. Always, whenever you can, having a purpose. A very valuable purpose of really honing in on breathing. Quieting the thinking mind, relaxing tension, all in the service of a dedicated attention to breathing.

And then, as we come to the end of the sitting, I invite you to experiment with reorienting yourself to a sense of purpose, dedication, and engagement with the dedication of merit. Turning our practice around and wishing well for this world of ours.

How would you embody this change of direction in the practice now, and give yourself over to a new purpose? The purpose of wishing for the welfare of others, a kind, supportive, caring concern for the welfare of the world. With this new purpose, to enter this purpose for these couple of minutes:

May it be that any known and unknown ways that we benefited from this practice, may we let those benefits spread from us into the world, so that the benefits of this meditation benefit others as well. May it be that our practice is for the welfare and happiness of everyone. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

And may this be a purpose I carry with me on this day: to look for ways to contribute to the welfare and happiness of the world.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Finding our Way (3 of 5) With Joy and Dispair

Hello everyone, and welcome to the third talk in this five-part series. I've called it "Finding Our Way," and finding our way with these different pairs of states that we can experience. Sometimes they exist in relationship to each other, and sometimes they can exist independent of each other. Sometimes they can be healthy, and sometimes they can be unhealthy. Today the pairing is that of joy and despair.

When I think of this joy that has been awoken in me through this Buddhist practice, I think of it as a big "yes." And even not knowing what I'm saying "yes" to—I mean, I'm not saying "yes" to anything in particular. It's just the idea of "yes," that something brightens inside of me, opens, and delights me—the joy. In that regard then, despair is just "no." "Oh, no." A kind of giving up, a deflation, a drop and loss of energy, sinking. A feeling of maybe hopelessness, or great disappointment, or a great sense of fear of what might come.

This "yes" movement and this "no" movement can exist together, a little bit like yesterday with gladness and sadness. Joy can come from hope, and when hope is dashed, it can bring a lot of despair. Or if there is no hope, it can bring a lot of despair.

One of my strong associations with these two has to do with purpose. When we have a clear sense of healthy purpose, there can be a kind of "yes" to that. Our system, our being, gets involved in doing it. And when there's no sense of purpose, or the purpose seems hopeless or is not working out, or we can't engage in it, then there can be despair about not fulfilling this purpose that's important to us.

The question is: what is the purpose we have? Is it a valuable, healthy purpose? There can be joy in the engagement and doing of things which are unhealthy. You know, you can be really, fully immersed in eating only desserts for lunch and for dinner. You're just completely engaged, and the concentration, the absorption, is such that everything else in the world falls away because it's just dessert. It can be joyful; the feeling of engagement is so nice. But it might not be healthy for you.

And there might be things that you know are healthy to do, but the way that we engage in them is not healthy. We might do them with resentment, with reluctance, with hesitation, and we don't really give ourselves over to doing them. So maybe we can't be successful when doing something half-heartedly. But it's an important thing to do, and so we feel despair over something healthy that we do.

So the sense of purpose—what we have a purpose for, what the intention is—is a very important part of human life. It's a valuable thing to do in a spiritual life: to spend time reflecting on the purpose, the intention, the reasons, the goals we have set up for what we're doing. This can set up either joy or despair. Even wonderful, lovely, important, valuable spiritual dedications or meditation purposes can bring a lot of despair if we are unsuccessful in doing them and we don't reach what we're trying to do.

What I'd like to propose is that it's important to spend time reflecting on what our purposes are. Whether the purpose is just to cook a meal or clean the dishes, or the purpose is to develop or mature spiritually in our Buddhist practice, these motivations and purposes are important to become clear about. Then we can inhabit the purpose, really say "yes" to it, and engage. Hopefully, it's a healthy purpose.

And then have a sense of appropriateness of how we attain these purposes. If you sit down and your purpose is purposely to get enlightened, but first you don't even know how to do breath meditation, maybe first you need to learn the basics of breath meditation and learn about the hindrances^[3]. So there are all these earlier purposes we have to inhabit and follow through on before we can attain the full ones.

The sense of purpose I'm talking about here is not an abstract purpose which might be some distant one that is important to us, but rather each step of what we do, how we engage in the moment in the direction of that purpose. If the purpose is to be able to develop strong concentration, then engage fully for a while in understanding the hindrances. Without really becoming wise about the hindrances, you probably won't get reliably and healthfully concentrated. So engage in that process, study the hindrances, and that becomes the purpose. That's what we engage ourselves in.

Despair can come when we don't have a purpose, when we don't have an engagement. This idea of joy and despair that are healthy is founded on a healthy sense of purpose, and then learning how to inhabit that purpose in the moment—doing in the moment what's appropriate for that purpose. Not sitting there just daydreaming about a big purpose far in the future, but rather asking: if this purpose is important enough, what do I enter into and inhabit and do now?

For example, with this idea of concentration, you might say, "Well, I need to learn about the hindrances. So maybe the next step is to read about them." Then you would sit down in a way and really purposefully engage. You wouldn't read a book or an article about the hindrances like you would read a novel, just for entertainment or to be carried along and relax. You would purposefully engage in it, but not in a way that's stressful, of course. This is where the art of all this is. It's a way that brings you joy, and there's a "yes." There's the art of doing, of engaging, that brings joy.

Not a lot of people have learned this. They've learned it in certain areas with certain things that are fun to do; they can really enjoy doing those. But there is an art to learning how to do anything that you need to do in a joyful way, in a way that's a big "yes." In doing it, it feels so good.

If you have to clean the toilet today... the more senior monks in Buddhist monasteries in Japan are assigned to the task of toilet cleaning, maybe because they have the spiritual maturity to really do it. If you have to clean the toilet, maybe you don't like it, it's a little bit gross, and so you do it half-heartedly. But to do it fully, to really feel, "If this is what you're doing, this is your life energy for this moment, just clean the toilet." Do it as if it's everything, it's the whole. Just give yourself to it, say "yes" to doing that.

What I'm teaching here today is a lot of what I learned through Zen training, where if you sweep the courtyard, you really do that. You give yourself over to it. Toilets, whatever you're doing, you give yourself to it. The surprise is that it's possible to learn to really feel a sense of joy and delight and happiness in just giving ourselves over to it. Even if you're sick and don't have much energy, then you have to figure out what giving yourself over means. What does it look like, given the conditions of your life? If you're sick or in pain, whatever the circumstances are, the sense of doing is in harmony with the circumstance, with yourself, and the world around you. But this is what you're doing, you say "yes" to this.

It can be overdone, it can be done with stress so you're exhausted at the end. We can learn the art of doing it where we're fully there, but we're relaxed in doing it. This art of appreciating the value of what we're actually doing while we're doing it can be a source of tremendous joy, and that kind of joy can grow.

Part of the despair that people can experience is when they have no sense of purpose, when the purpose they had for their life gets shattered, or when they're unsuccessful in their purpose. Purpose is very important. The relationship between purpose, fulfilling a purpose, engaging in a purpose, and your joy and despair is something to reflect on and look at and consider.

Certainly, knowing you're doing something that's wonderfully meaningful and purposeful for you can be a source of joy. But if it's only abstract, an evaluation in your head like, "Oh, I'm doing something wonderful," then you're missing where the juice is, where the real heart of this practice of mindfulness is, and the way it can really grow for our life. And that is: give yourself to the purpose of the moment. Give yourself to whatever bigger purpose you have, if you're pursuing it or engaged in it, in the steps of the moment.

Just to make the point with a silly little example: say that your big purpose is to develop concentration in meditation. You've heard now that reading about the hindrances, learning about them, and understanding them well is a very important stepping stone for concentration. But now you don't have a book on the hindrances; you don't have anything. So you go to the library to get one. And so now, walking to the library, driving to the library, biking to the library—that's the task of the moment. You forget about going to the library; you set the course to go there, and now you give yourself over to the going. When you get to the library (and this is how it works in the monastery), when you open the library door, you give yourself over to opening that door. You give yourself to walking down the aisles, finding the book.

It's the doing where something really important comes up. Doing things in a purposeful way, an intentional way, so that you find joy in it. I'm not suggesting this is easy, but it's possible to live a life of "yes." And if the purpose is valuable and you find this kind of value in inhabiting and engaging in what you're doing, then it doesn't matter so much if you're successful. You might fail at things, but you're so happy about the way you did it; it was rewarding. The way you did it was rewarding. And whether you're successful or not successful, your joy, happiness, and well-being are less dependent on the success or failure, but on how you did it, how you were involved with what you did.

So for today, you know, I may be giving you lots to think about and to engage in for the day, but to make the key points: Reflect on purpose. What role does purpose have in your life, and have you dismissed the value of purpose? Can you find a sense of purpose? Purpose doesn't have to be a big purpose; it could be the small purpose of the next five minutes, the next hour. What's the purpose you have? And then the "yes" of engaging in purpose in the step-by-step ways, the small steps it takes. Whatever the purpose is, not to get ahead of yourself from the activity of the moment, the individual steps to get there. Finding how a "yes," an engagement in the steps to whatever you're doing, that that is purposeful as well.

Finding purpose in how you do things is one of the great joys and secrets of a well-developed life. It will support your practice. Your mindfulness practice is a way of manifesting your mindfulness into your life.

So I hope you enjoy it. I hope you find a delightful day with "yes" to whatever you're doing, and exploring your sense of purpose. Thank you.