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Guided Meditation: Attending with Care

Welcome. And there's a way that, given that this is a meditation session, I could welcome you to yourself, welcome you back into yourself. There's a way in which we're deeply coming home or coming connected to ourselves, but in a particular way.

When I practiced Zen, I studied in a school of Zen called Soto Zen^[1], and one of the slogans of that school that is supposed to characterize it is three words: attention, attention to detail. What I understood is that you want to be really present and engaged with the particularity of each moment. Just this. And so we would hold a teacup with both hands, just this attention to detail, just this cup.

The representative story when I was in the monastery in Japan was I went into the kitchen late in the evening, maybe around 9:00, getting ready to go to sleep, but I went in for a snack. There were only two monks there who spoke English. One of them was in the kitchen doing some work, chopping vegetables for the next day's meal. I went up to him to ask a question, and he put down his knife, stood up straight, and answered my question nicely, in an ordinary way. He picked up his knife and started chopping. And I asked another question. He did the same thing: put down his knife, stood up, and talked to me, engaged me fully. Then he went back to chopping his vegetables. And I asked him a third question because I'm slow. Then he did the same thing: put the knife down, stood up, and said, "Gil, you have to realize that I have to do this work this evening before I can go to bed, but I'm only going to do one thing at a time. This is interrupting, interfering with my ability." It was very nicely done, but it was such a poignant moment about someone who was dedicated to really doing one thing at a time, attending to the details of the work or the details of the conversation.

Then I came to do Vipassana^[2] in Burma. There, the slogan was similar: attention to the detail of perception. Attention to the moment of perception, or what's coming into the eyes, the ears, the nose, the skin, the body—just really be there for the particular moment of attention.

In both of these schools of Buddhism, eventually what I learned was not just attention to the detail, or attention to the moment of perception, but how we pay attention. We can pay attention with love. We can pay attention with tenderness, with a caringness, a care that just feels really good, that feels nice.

To give you some sense of what that can be like before we meditate, I read a study many years ago of people in an assisted living retirement community or memory care home. They ran an experiment where they gave some people a single plant to take care of in their room, and other people had nothing to take care of. The people who had a plant to take care of lived longer. This idea of taking care of something, meeting something with our tenderness, concern, love, or tending is actually good for our whole heart, our whole being. "Here, let's care for this. Let's tend to it." And when we're caught in desires, wanting, fears, and aversions, we're not going to be tending in that kind of way.

So for the meditation today, tend to the details, tend to the particularity of this moment. Nothing else, nothing more. How your hands are positioned, how your spine is positioned, how you're breathing, how your torso and body are breathing. What the movements are in your torso as you breathe. The particular thoughts that arise—look at that, there's a thought. The emotions that occur, whatever is happening in the moment. You don't need to come to conclusions with it. You don't need to be for and against it. But meet it with this tending care. Attending, loving, caring. "Oh, I see you. There you are. Let me look at you." Attention to detail. Just this perception.

Can you do that in a way that is an alternative to the usual mode for some of us of desire, wanting, judging, and making something happen? Settling back. Simple, simple, simple. Attention to this particular moment, this particular experience, where the tending to it, the attending to it, is where you'll find your love, your freedom, your deep care, and perhaps in doing so, a deep sense of meaning.

So, assume a meditation posture and gently close your eyes.

Take a few fuller breaths. Have a long exhale, and in that long exhale, feel your shoulders, your chest, rib cage, and diaphragm. In that longer exhale, let all these parts of the torso settle and relax—but not as a command, not as a task to be done, but as an act of care. That you care for yourself, you care for this body in very small little steps. Not ambitious, not trying to do too much. Doing nothing more than gently putting your hand on a friend's shoulder who needs some support. That you care, you're there in an unimposing way to be here with yourself, with the breathing, the body.

Looking past the thinking mind to that place in the mind where there's tender care.

Whatever the experience of the moment, shift into love or care. Not because it deserves it necessarily, but because you can. Because it's the best alternative here and now: to love, to care. Loving attention. Lovingly tending to each thing that arises in being mindful.

Perhaps shifting from the idea of attention to the present, to attending to the present. Where the attending is a gentle, simple offering of care. Attending with tenderness, with love. With attention, it's easy to be the passive recipient. With attending, it's possible to feel nourished by the flow of care, attending to every detail as it arises. This too can be attended to.

And as we come to the end of the sitting, settle back into where it's calm, stable, or has some modicum of peacefulness, rather than projecting yourself forward with your thoughts and ideas. It's more of a settling back to be content to be here in a simple way.

And from this peaceful settling back, you don't have to do anything for the world, but maybe you can attend with attention, gazing out upon the world kindly. Gazing out upon the world with loving attention. Loving attending in such a way that it feels like you are being nourished. You are being benefited by the quality of the kindness, the quality of the tending, the quality of the care for the whole world in a general, broad, relaxed way.

And in whatever way that it touches you, let that speak for how you might be feeling, however small it is. Let these final words be an expression of something profound in yourself related to your tending, attending.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (82) Ordinary Love

So hello and welcome. Welcome to this talk continuing this whole series on love. And for those of you who've been following along since the beginning of January—now we're getting close to seven months of doing this—it's quite a journey to spend so much time on this topic in all the different ways. We're coming to the end of this series, so what are the concluding words to say?

In that context of coming to the end and concluding, one of the most important conclusions, results, manifestations, or full expressions of this practice of love and attention that we do is very ordinary, very simple. It's almost so simple and ordinary that it might seem easy to overlook, thinking, "This can't be so important." It's not so exciting, deeply evocative, or deeply inspiring with great spiritual themes and experiences.

But I propose to you that concluding with the most ordinary way of being means that the practice of love and attention has matured so that it can be carried with us in everything we do in our life. Nothing is left out. If we leave things out because we have "more important" things to do, or because we're getting somewhere and involved in the world of desires and aversions, then we've lost an opportunity. It might seem exciting to get more things, accomplish things, and do things, but we lose touch.

Maybe you want to lose touch with it, maybe it's not so important for you. But we lose touch with something that in Buddhism is profoundly important: our freedom, and our freedom to be able to care, the freedom to love. Right at this place where we have the freedom to love the ordinary things of life, the simple details, the next step we take, the next breath, opening a door, picking up the striker for the bell, whatever simple thing it is.

To not treat it as unimportant or as something to get over with and move on to the next thing, thinking, "We have important things to do after all, let's do it efficiently and listen to a podcast while we're doing it so we don't have to get bored by just cooking our meal." But instead, to be able to give ourselves to each thing we're doing and stop measuring it by how much we do, how quickly we get through our to-do list, or what we get out of it, but rather by what we offer.

And it's not offering from desire, ego, or anything assertive, and there's no clinging in this kind of care, as I said yesterday. But still, it's this beautiful meeting of every detail of our life in a way that cares for the thing, and is a profound care for ourselves, because we're coming from a deep place of mammalian care^[3]. We're coming from that place of very ordinary, simple friendliness, care, and tending.

The evocative example the Buddha uses is the care of a mother for a young baby, her only child. It's the care of the elderly, the care of a neighbor, the care of someone who is hungry or deeply troubled, and we dare to be with them. It's the care of how we put down our dinner plates when setting the table. We don't just throw them down, but we care in such a way that the people who join us for dinner see a cared-for, generous place. There's love in putting down the plates. Attention to detail. This is good. Not because we should, not out of obligation, and not because we're trying to be perfect, but because it's an expression of a profound place of care. The profound sense that just this detail is what's important.

Many years ago when I had small kids, I read one of my favorite books—I don't remember the name of the book or the author—but it was quite beautiful and wonderful. It had a series of questions that someone was asking a child. One of them was, "What's the most important time?" and "What's the most important place?" The most important time was now, the place was here. But then, "Who is the most important person?" The answer was the person you're with. That's the most important person.

This idea of what we bring in a caring, loving way to whatever the thing of the moment or the person of the moment is, is where we offer our care. I'm repeating myself to try to say it better because it's so important: that care is not an obligation, it's not work. We're caring for ourselves at the same time because we have a deep place inside of gentle tending and attending. It just feels so tenderizing for ourselves to stay present calmly, subtly on this moment, just lovingly taking care of something.

We can't do that if we have a long list of things to do, fears, anxieties, or a feeling of being the victim or the consumer of reality, thinking we have to be the doer of reality. Instead, it's just being here to meet the details of the moment, where there's this beautiful bridging place. The two ends of the bridge are what we're tending to and where it's coming from in ourselves. Both of them are meeting, and we are benefiting from how we tend as much as what we're tending to.

To dry the dishes in the kitchen and then put them away can be done in a hurry, efficiently, matter-of-factly, doing the job well without breaking anything. But we don't benefit from doing it that way. There's a way of being really present that's more than just being mindfully present and developing present-moment mindfulness. There's something deeper going on where there's actually an act of love—very mild, very ordinary, very simple—but something that is healthy and beneficial for us. We feel, "Ah, of course, this is nice."

Do not give yourself a hard time questioning it: "What's going on? Why are you not doing that nurturing, healthy kind of way of being with every detail?" Is the alternative better? Does the alternative involve desires about getting someplace else? Are you ambitious, or do you have expectations that the next thing you do is going to be the thing that's inspiring, wonderful, and fun? Maybe it's okay, but why sacrifice this?

Maybe there's a life of slowing down a little bit, doing a little bit less, so that everything you do can be close to an act of love and care, attending to what you're doing. Everything that's in the present is important.

The combination of mindfulness to the present and love of the present in the most ordinary way can be represented by this simple, humble four-letter word in English: care. It's a longer word in Buddhism: Anukampa^[4]. But today I want to emphasize the ordinary, the simplicity of it, the humbleness of it, and that it's something we can do throughout ordinary life.

For that to be the culmination and consequence of these months of practice and exploration is fantastic. This is how we are developing a deep contemplative life, a deep life of love, a deep life of freedom, a practice that's onward-leading and keeps growing and developing in us. It's the coming together of mindfulness and love where they don't have to be separate. It's meeting the next moment not just with attention, but with attending. Attending is this rich, wonderful combination of awareness and love for what's happening now.

I'd encourage you, if what I said today is meaningful for you, to see if you can maybe do a little bit less than you planned to do today. Maybe simplify your to-do list. Give yourself a little bit more time between things, more time with things, and see if you can have that attention to detail, that attending to whatever is happening in the moment. So that you find it's healthy for you, it's good for you, it's loving for you. You love your care. You attend in a way that brings a deep sense of satisfaction, warmth, flow, glow, tenderness, and gentleness of love to you as well. You feel benefited from it, benefiting the world and benefiting yourself together.

Announcements

Thank you. We'll continue tomorrow. As I said, we'll have a community meeting on Zoom, which we've done periodically, when we finish here at 7:45 on Friday. I'll be posting the Zoom link on IMC's website, and I'll announce it more tomorrow and on Friday. Hopefully, it'll be easy to find the link. We'll switch over there and have some discussion, question and answer, and follow up from these many weeks of love, with a chance for maybe a breakout group for some of you to meet each other and talk a little bit about what it's been like.

So until then.