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Guided Meditation: Mindfulness of Pleasure

Hello everyone. The main focus of this week's meditations and teachings has to do with the different ways in which we perceive, different ways in which we receive data from the world, including our own inner world. Through the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue—through all the different kinds of sensory capacities we have for information from the world. One of them that the Buddha put much emphasis on was what he called, what we sometimes call in English, "feelings of pleasure and pain, and that which is neither pleasant nor unpleasant."^[1]

So, we'll do a meditation on pleasure and pain, but I'd like to do it in a different way than Buddhism usually emphasizes. In some ways, Buddhism, for very wise reasons, will sometimes narrow the focus on the feelings and feeling tones of pleasure and pain to the simplicity of just the pleasure part and the pain part, because in some ways that's what we react to the most. It's one of the avenues of learning how to be equanimous, learning how to be comfortable or equanimous with pain or pleasure.

But in terms of our attentional faculties, how we take in information, the world of pleasure and pain has a big impact on us. It involves all these different pleasure centers in the brain, and all this different information comes through pleasure and pain. Something as simple as thirst: when we start feeling uncomfortable with the balance of sodium and other things in the fluids of our body, the fluid balance, we feel thirsty. That can be kind of uncomfortable; it's an unpleasant experience that motivates us. We can drink plenty and feel pleasure, and that pleasure is an indication that we're doing well, we're hydrating ourselves. So there are lots of different things that are happening with pleasure and pain that our system is taking in and operating under, and we're adjusting accordingly. We don't just simply sit quietly knowing pleasure and pain. Our system, our body—biologically, physiologically, hormonally, in all kinds of ways—is involved in processes that involve pleasure and pain.

To meditate with pleasure and pain and have equanimity about it is not just to have equanimity, but also to be able to be more attuned to the full spectrum of what's happening when we have pleasure and pain. To be able to listen deeply to what else is being conveyed here with those sensations, with those feelings. This is not a time to think a lot about it, react, and figure out what to do, but rather certainly to have equanimity about it and just kind of continue practicing. The idea of equanimity and mindfulness, awareness of pleasure and pain in an open way, is so that we can go through the door of pleasure and pain to allow our whole system of attention, focus, and awareness to operate more harmoniously, more fully—the way that it does even unconsciously, even without us trying to do something.

Much of this is operating on a deep level within us, but my proposal is that the whole thing works better when we create room in awareness, room in attention, a kind of imaginary room that allows it all to be there without any interruptions, without any hindrances, without any interference on our part. So hopefully that was a little bit quick and understandable enough, and we'll start.

I start sitting here with some pleasure of being together with all of you, and being able to share this practice with you. Perhaps you have some pleasure, a simple, maybe very mild pleasure, to be getting ready for meditation.

Gently close your eyes, and make room for whatever sense of pleasure there might be in your body right now.

It could be as simple as some tingling in your arms.

It could be the ways in which your body is comfortable in your posture.

That pleasure of being able to begin a session of meditation.

Maybe a pleasure of anticipation, the pleasure of relief.

The pleasure of becoming more connected and intimate with oneself.

There might be simple physical pleasures of the hands touching.

The feeling of warmth if you're warm.

If you recently had breakfast, or coffee, or something before sitting down, maybe there's some lingering pleasure, or physiological pleasure in the belly and in you, from what you ate and drank.

There might be a range of pleasures in the body that, if you sit down and just matter-of-factly begin focusing on your breath, you wouldn't notice or even recognize.

And then very gently, not too much, take a few long, slow, deep breaths, as if the inhale is spreading throughout all the areas of pleasure in your body.

Even if you have pain, it's okay to let that kind of be in the background for a few moments, and just with the inhales, it's like a wave of attention from the inhale out throughout the body, feeling the pleasures.

And on the exhale, letting it all relax, all settle.

On the exhale, the body, even the pleasures, can settle.

Gently let your breathing return to normal.

Finding the areas in your body where there's pleasure, pleasantness.

Feeling of satisfaction or contentment.

Simple physical pleasure, even the mildest kind.

And as you exhale, let that settle and spread a little bit, around wherever it is.

And then with the mind, as you exhale, let the mind or thinking mind relax. The thoughts become quieter.

If any of your thoughts are pleasant, feel the pleasure of them as you relax and quiet the mind.

If you're not thinking pleasant thoughts, maybe calmly and quietly see if you can have pleasant thoughts that are appropriate for you to have.

Feeling the pleasure of those thoughts, the pleasantness.

If it feels pleasant to have the thinking quieter and calmer, letting go of difficult thoughts... let go.

Settle the thinking mind.

And then with a quiet mind, quiet attention that's not trying to change anything, make anything happen, or make anything go away. Not trying to analyze or understand. Very simple attention.

Let there be awareness of the pleasures within the body, and the heart, and the mind.

Making room for it all.

Breathing with whatever pleasures there are.

Appreciating that pleasures might be connected to deep, integrated systems of your biological and mental processes, built into being a human.

Sitting quietly breathing, with all the pleasure that's available sitting here, allowing it to be there, making room.

As you become quieter in your mind, there's greater sensitivity to the pleasures within.

Every time you exhale, letting go of your thoughts, so you're more sensitive to pleasure.

If you have sensations of pleasure, there are two things happening: the sensations, and the sensing of them.

If the sensations are pleasant, is sensing also pleasant?

And if the sensing is pleasant, is the knowing of pleasure, the knowing of sensing, the awareness of it—might it also have some pleasantness or pleasure as part of it?

The broader sense of being conscious—does it share in some of the pleasantness or pleasure that's known?

If there is, let the pleasure of awareness, however small it is, let it spread.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, imagine that the pleasantness, the pleasures you feel in your body, your mind, your awareness, radiates from you, flows out into the space around you.

Out into the world.

Touching others as a bridge to others, that will carry your well wishes for them.

Riding on whatever way you feel pleasure, offer these wishes:

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be safe.

May all beings be peaceful.

May all beings be free.

And may the simple awareness of pleasure be a guide to happiness, safety, peace, and freedom.

Reflections

Thank you. A little after-note: I want to apologize to those of you who have chronic pain, where that is really prominent, and an emphasis on pleasure like this maybe makes the pain even more challenging. I apologize. There's a whole way of doing this kind of meditation with pain as well that can be very useful, but maybe we'll get to that at some point. I also apologize a little bit for all the talking I do during these meditations. It'd be nice if there was more silence, but I'm also trying to teach some things, and it would be lovely if you made up for my talking by meditating later with some silence.

Finally, while I have some water and stuff, it'd be nice to have some comments. Maybe a very brief comment, a couple of words or something about what it was like to do that meditation. It helps prepare me for what I'm going to say next. Thank you.

Dharmette: Consciousness (3 of 5) Conscious of Pleasure

Thank you for the comments. I appreciate the full range of them. I'm going to start now with the teaching, and I'll read the rest that come later. I appreciate them very much.

Repeating what I've said the first few days, I understand consciousness or awareness—I use the words more or less synonymously—in the sense that people have that it's a thing. You know, that we have this thing called consciousness, whatever that might be. Kind of a "something" that's always there, maybe something that has a united feeling or a whole feeling.

The degree to which it is a thing, it's a gestalt. It's a combination of many different things integrated together, many different biological, physiological, and mental cognitive faculties kind of working together as a whole, and without necessarily our choice or our direction for how it's to be done. The holistic working of it all can make it feel like there is such a thing as consciousness which is its own thing. There is an idea some people have that when everything else disappears, what always will remain is some kind of pristine consciousness. I don't think that's the idea of early Buddhism. But the idea that what we call consciousness, or the idea we have of it, is a sum total of all these different attentional faculties and cognitive functionings that we have—I think is a very rich idea.

It is conducive to putting greater value on our capacity to be aware, to be attentive, because the whole attentional system works better when it's all being known, or when there's space for it all to be there. If we're caught up in preoccupations, it's like we almost limit how much space there is in the mind, or how much free RAM there is in the mind for processing and working of all the other things that can be going on. Sometimes we reach the limit of how much our active memory can handle, so we get stressed, and things begin breaking down in the psychological and biological system. I mean, something as simple as being so busy with work and activities and doing things that we forget to drink. Even though the body has signals telling you you're thirsty, they're overridden by the intensity of focus on something. That's true with many things in our life. If we're too focused or too preoccupied, we're not going to avail ourselves of, notice, or allow to function all the rich systems of attention, data gathering, and processing that exist within us.

One of those is the capacity to feel pleasure and pain. These are very important parts of life. Without this, our life would probably not really work. People who don't feel pain sometimes will damage themselves tremendously because they don't get the signal that they should pull their hand off the hot stove, or that they should stop sawing into their fingers when they're actually trying to saw the bread or the vegetables. There are a few people in the world who apparently can't feel pain. Imagine there are people who can't feel pleasure, and that's unfortunate just for pleasure's sake, but pleasure is the vehicle in which other information is coming to us, and other systems within us begin operating.

As I said before, I think in Buddhism, where there's a very strong mindfulness practice and a strong emphasis on being present for the pleasantness and pleasure of our experience, that's a very valuable exercise to do. It's very valuable to tune into it and develop equanimity to it, but it's also valuable because if we have equanimity and allow the pleasure and pain to be there, we might also start appreciating that it's not just kind of mechanistic pleasure and pain. It's the felt part, or the visible part, of a bigger system of human functioning going on behind that, or is part of it.

Something as simple as a human touch: human touch can feel pleasant, and that's nice that it's pleasant, but so much can happen physiologically and psychologically with physical touch. If it's pleasant, it can be reassuring, it can be nurturing. Touching a child, holding a preemie, is necessary for them to really be able to mature the whole system of a premature baby. This idea of touch supports the growth and development of human beings as they grow up as children. Touch is valuable for our sense of safety, our sense of social connection, a sense of nourishment inside. The pleasure of social touch is fantastic.

There are the pleasures then of sexual touch, and that can also be wonderful. But sex has a very different mechanism, or other things going on involved there too. With sexual touch, the pleasure there is clearly connected to so much more than just the place that's being touched; it's part of a bigger system involving hormones and all kinds of things going on.

Aesthetic pleasure—where does that come from? What are all the systems that are operating when we see something really beautiful in nature, or we see beautiful art? The sense of satisfaction or inspiration you might feel—that inspiration might feel very pleasant. That pleasure is more than just some simple pleasure; there are probably all kinds of processes within us that have been activated, and apparently, there are many pleasure centers in the brain.

So pleasure is not just physical pleasure, or the sensations, or the sensing itself being pleasant; it's processed in the brain. To allow ourselves to have simple pleasures and not deny them can be very helpful for this integrated awareness, this full awareness that we're trying to develop in mindfulness.

As that gets developed, it hopefully also develops our capacity to be with pain. We learn not to hold on to pleasure or expect it to be there all the time, but we also learn a non-reactive way of being with all things. Pain, too, is an important system for us. What I've learned through mindfulness practice is to pay careful attention to pain when it arises, because part of the function of pain sometimes is a danger signal. Sometimes I pay attention, and if I feel that there's a little bit of a signal of danger in the pain itself—and I can't always specify how that is or how I know—sometimes it's clear there's a danger, something's about to go wrong or bad. Other times it feels like, "Okay, this pain is okay." Who knows, I injured myself, the injury is over, but now it's healing, and there's pain left over that needs to be there until it settles down, and I don't feel a danger anymore. If I feel danger, I don't just practice mindfulness and acceptance of it; I will try to avoid the danger if it's possible. For example, if I'm sitting in meditation and I feel a sense of danger in how I'm sitting, I'll change my posture. But if I don't feel that sense of danger, then I don't.

This pain is also connected to all kinds of deeper systems that are providing information. As we begin tuning into this world of pleasure and pain, that itself can feed back onto what we might call consciousness, or the sense we have of awareness. The sense of awareness and consciousness can take a different shape—I don't know if "shape" is exactly the right word, these are all metaphors for something that doesn't really exist, but that we have an intuitive sense for. Consciousness or awareness can feel either contracted or expansive. It can feel tense if there's a lot of pain, or it can feel the pleasure in it and the kind of goodness in it, and then it expands. So much so, that some people feel that consciousness in and of itself has bliss as part of it. I don't know if it's in and of itself, but as things get simpler and quieter, and awareness can tune into these other systems that are working in harmony, the sense of harmony creates a pleasure for awareness itself.

There are many pleasures: the pleasures of sleep, the pleasures of eating, the pleasures of drinking, the pleasures of sex, the pleasures of exercise. All these can provide pleasures—not just the physiological surface pleasure of the moment, but they tap into something deeper within, maybe a sense of satisfaction and inspiration. Pleasure and pain are pieces of this gestalt, this whole that contributes to our sense of being conscious.

What I'd like to suggest for you, if you would like, for the next 24 hours, is to give a kind of respectful attention, maybe even reverential attention, to the simple pleasures and pains of daily life. Do so with the assumption that they're not simple. They're kind of like the tip of a vast inner network, and maybe even interpersonal network, that is somehow being conveyed, carried, or evoked by the pleasure and pain. Offering respect to that means making room. Feel what's going on in some bigger way. Allow yourself to feel that pleasure, allow yourself to feel the pain, so you can not just feel pain or pleasure for itself, but see if it helps you connect to some deeper or fuller dimensions of how your system, your body-mind, works.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to continuing on this theme of our attentional faculties tomorrow.