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Guided Meditation: Generous Love

So, a happy Monday to all of you and welcome back. And coming to a whole different phase of our study of love that we've been going on since the beginning of January. We're now coming to the part of love that becomes scary. And that is the expression of love, to enact love in the world with the people around us.

It's one thing to sit and meditate in love, to open our hearts in meditation and have love be a private affair. It's another thing to have it enacted or expressed or come alive in the world in a relationship with other people. One of the really important expressions of love in Buddhism is our generosity: a generous heart, a generous mind. A generous living of life where we live from generosity. We can act from a sense of abundance even if we have almost nothing. We can feel like we have an abundance to give, even if it's our smiles or asking someone how they are. We can just live a generous life flowing out of us.

To understand more deeply how these come together, one of the functions of meditation can be to quiet all the surface activity that we're caught up in—the surface activity of wanting and not wanting and figuring things out. That surface activity, often reactivity, has a momentum of its own. It is self-generating and keeps us going and going.

When we sit down to meditate, we sometimes start feeling that momentum. We feel it in the tensions in the body. The shoulders might be higher, the belly more contracted, the muscles in our face might be a little tight. There might be sensations of restlessness in the body, and sometimes a very powerful kind of restlessness to move, to shift, and to fidget, because the momentum of reactivity, fear, and anxiety is so strong. The surface activity of the mind creates cycles of thinking, wanting, imagining, storytelling, projecting into the future, and imagining scenarios that we might have to deal with. We can be caught in all these reactive worlds that are self-generating and keep going.

We sit down to meditate to let those become quiet. To let those become still. So in meditation, one of the ways to practice is the idea of not moving physically unless you really need to, and to begin to not move mentally. We learn not to follow the thoughts, be involved with them, or react to them. We let things be radically, and let the reactivity and surface momentum of activity quiet and become stiller.

We don't do this just so we can be neutral or inactive, but so we can discover a deep source within from which our actions come. Our actions then don't come from reactivity, from anxiety, from greed, or hatred. They come from a deep source within that some people might call love.

So, assume a meditation posture which you feel you can allow yourself to be still in. Adjust your hands and arms so they're as comfortable as you can have them for these minutes. Maybe gently let your attention travel up your spine, and make small adjustments in the curvature of your spine, so that it feels both at ease, comfortable, and alert.

Softly close your eyes. With your eyes closed, imagine that your eyes are turning inward. They no longer need to be concerned with the world around you. Now it's the world within you that you're going to care for.

In a gentle, relaxed way, become familiar with the body's experience of breathing—the movements of the belly, the chest, the diaphragm. Notice how there's an interplay with the body being still and the body being receptive to the gentle movements of breathing. Being still allows us to better feel the movements of breathing.

As you exhale, soften and relax the body wherever it's easy: a little bit around the shoulders, the chest, the belly, and the face. For some of you, part of what you feel in your body is the legacy of tensions you've carried, the surface reactivity and activity you've been caught up in that gets stored in the body. It's okay. Allow it to be there. But allow it to be there in stillness, in spaciousness. A stillness that invites it to relax when it's ready.

With the rhythm of breathing, let your attention feel and sense the thinking mind. Pay attention not to what you're thinking, but to the energy, tension, pressure, and agitation. All those are a legacy and momentum of our preoccupations and concerns. Let some part of the mind, the broad mind, be still and soft to feel the movements of the mind and to invite them to settle and relax when they're ready.

Then, settle into the body breathing again. The gentle rhythm of breathing is a reminder to let everything else just be. Everything is held in a stillness. All the surface activity of mind, body, and heart has room to become still when it's ready.

Find a way to have an inner stillness. An inner place of quiet around which all the movements, all the agitation and tension of body, mind, and heart can settle. With every breath, breathe with and from the inner stillness that invites everything else to feel safe and relax.

Feel your way into the deepest place within. Whether it's in your body, your heart, or your mind, find the place that's below reactivity, below preoccupations and thoughts. A place deep inside where there's a gentle feeling of safety and well-being. Or simply a place that you imagine where that can be within you. It is some deep place which both is you and is not your ordinary identity and sense of self. Some deep place of tenderness and gentleness.

Is there anything that wants to be expressed there? Anything that wants a chance to move out, to be said, or be done? Any seed that's sprouting with goodness, where something has some deep integral integrity? Just sit quietly and breathe with it without trying to understand it or do anything about it. Treat it as if what it most wants is to be accompanied for a few minutes. Breathe with it, sensing it.

Feel the deepest place within where there's a sense of goodness or safety, maybe some form of well-being. It is deeper than any of the ways that you might feel the opposite. Maybe it's very small, maybe even shy. And in that area, is there anything there that you associate with love? With care, kindness, compassion, loving joy, or loving equanimity?

If there's nothing like love there, if there could be love there, what do you imagine it would be like? And if this deep source within, this love, could say something or express itself, what would it say? What would it do? How would it come alive in your life? How would you want to live your life if you lived it from this source deep inside, from this love?

From this source, this quiet place within, gaze outward now with your mind's eye out into the world, locally and far away. Gaze upon the world with kindness and goodwill. See the world through the eyes of wishing everyone well, wishing everyone happiness. Imagine them all smiling.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may we live close to these wishes. May they guide us in how we live.

Thank you. While I have my water and reboot here, if some of you would like to put in the chat what should be expressed from your deepest place, the source, the love inside, it would be nice to get a little sampling in a few words. It's wonderful to read these. I'm not going to try to read them out loud, but maybe some of you are tracking these wonderful words of expression that are appearing.

Dharmette: Love (75) Generosity as Love

Okay, so with this day we turn a corner with this long series on love. With six months of love behind us, the next stage of love is to express it in the world. To not just let it be a private affair, not just be something that happens in meditation or in our own hearts.

There is a way of genuinely, deeply feeling love that contains within it an expression, a movement to speak or to act or to orient ourselves, to give rise to a way to live, to give rise to a deep motivation and intention. Love is not static. Love is not fixed. It is connected to some deep source inside that is a source of how we live, how we express ourselves, the values, the purpose, and the orientation upon which we can center our whole life.

Some people might call it a life of love. Some people might call it a life of practice. It's a life of freedom, a life of generosity, a life of vow, a life of commitment to living freely without attachment and without clinging, and to living with concern for the welfare and well-being of others. It is a life of gratitude. There are many different expressions that can come from this deeper place of love.

And it wants to be expressed. If love is not expressed, then it's only half of what it can be. If certain kinds of love are not expressed, they are curtailed; only half comes alive. Part of what love is relates to how it lives through us, through our speech, our eyes, and our behavior. The fulfillment, flourishing, and maturing of love has a lot to do with how we live it in our lives—not just how we receive it or are inspired by it, but really, in a deep way, how we live it.

There are many expressions of love that can flow from us, and the one I want to emphasize now is generosity. In Buddhism, it's one of the foremost expressions of practice, of love, of being on the path. We allow that to flow from us: a generosity, a giving, a gifting, a freeing outwards in a way that our hands release into the world something beneficial for the world.

It can be our kind words, our appreciation of others, or our friendly feeling of a hello where we release our fear to do that. We release our hesitation or our caution, or we release our preoccupations with other things in a genuine way because we would like to. It is what's coming from deep inside, from the love itself. Living from that love is more important than living from the surface desires, aversions, or anxieties that we have.

There can be a very strong pull into those surface reactivities and concerns. For some people, that's who they think they are. They are their desires; they are their fears. But what we learn in this practice is that these surface desires, fears, and aversions are certainly there, but they don't have to define us. They don't have to govern us.

We can allow them to be in the wide space of awareness so that they don't predominate. There's more space; there's more of us here than just those things. We don't get locked in or narrowed by them. In that more spacious open presence, we can begin dropping into a deeper source within to ask, what is it that the heart most wants to do?

Maybe it's even deeper than the heart. Maybe there's some deeper place, like the heart of the heart. In Buddhism, there's a strong association that some of the deepest places within us are not necessarily the heart, but deep in the belly. That's the source, almost like where the womb is.

What is it that wants to be expressed from there? From that place that knows freedom. From that place that knows unruffled love. From the place that can't really be disturbed by what goes on in the world. It's a kind of insulated, safe, confident, or at-ease place where all kinds of things can happen around us that are challenging to our surface mind, but that place remains a place of peace or well-being.

From there, there's generosity. From there, there are movements to support other people, to give to other people. We give our smiles, our kind words, our greetings, our support, our help, and maybe sometimes gifts. We give our time to help other people.

We don't do this because we should. There's no sense of obligation, which is where many people come from—that they're supposed to, that they've learned growing up that this is what they're supposed to do. Some people live in that surface sense of duty, obligation, and responsibility.

But now we're talking about a whole different orientation, a different operating system within, where there is no should. There's no we have to. It's more, this is what love wants to do. This is the expression of freedom. This is the expression of the deepest vow, the deepest sense of commitment, the deepest sense of the heart's true wish.

One of the ways to stay close to that and to remind ourselves of it is to take time every day to ask ourselves, what is your deepest wish? What's the deepest wish of your heart? What's your deepest intention for yourself? What's the deepest place you know when all the surface concerns are not present? Every day, spend time with that. Have tea, look out the window, or just be quiet after meditation. What is the deepest wish? What's there?

Just asking that question can be an expression of that deep love. To stay connected, remember you're so important, we're so valuable, and there's so much preciousness within us. Let's take time to find out what wants to be expressed.

Then we have to navigate these deeper expressions versus the surface fears, anxieties, desires, wants, and concerns. Where do we want to come from? What's important for us? Is there some place deep inside that's different than the surface concerns?

One thought exercise is to ask yourself something like this: If you had all the financial security and relational security with people, if your health was good, and if everything was settled and you weren't trying to figure out those things—if your intentions of how to live weren't mostly to overcome difficulties and make yourself comfortable—what is the heart's deepest wish? What would you do? What comes out of this deeper place? How would you express it in the world?

The proposal here from Buddhism is that the deepest heart, the deepest source within us, will animate our life in a positive, good way. It will animate our life from this place of love and give us purpose, meaning, dedication, and joy. It will give us a deep sense of harmony and guidance for how to be in this very difficult, non-harmonious world.

So, consider generosity. You might spend the day not having to be generous unless you want to, but simply seeing if there is some way to give yourself a little space and time. Maybe periodically through the day, just sit quietly in different situations. No one needs to know you're doing this. Take that three-breath journey. Just stay with three breaths to feel each breath deeper inside of you. See at the end of three breaths if there is something inside that wants to be generous, that could be generous.

How can that generosity be a deep, natural expression rather than an obligation? It could simply be how you delight in someone. You might have a sparkle in your eye as you appreciate them, and you might be a little bit more present or become a better listener. Your gift is to listen. Your gift is to be present. There are so many different ways of doing this.

Just find ways today to see if you can find where a natural generosity wells up in different circumstances. And may it nourish your deepest place.

So, thank you.