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Guided Meditation: Balancing Through Mindfulness

Good morning, good day. Just a quick reminder that we'll have a community meeting after this session today, and I'll say a little bit more about that later. But for now, let's go ahead and meditate together.

Find your comfortable spot for meditation, and if you're comfortable doing so, closing your eyes. Bring the attention inward to the sense of the body sitting, or maybe you're lying down or standing. Not just sensing your meditation posture, but feeling into the balance, groundedness, and support of where you're sitting. Actually sensing the contact point with your seat against the cushion or the chair, and letting yourself be supported by that.

Sometimes it's helpful to explicitly check into the balance of where you're sitting. You can even rock side to side slightly, or forward and back, to really find a middle point where the body feels the most balanced. I find that looking at a computer screen, sometimes I get a little bit pushed forward, so you might check if just settling back a little bit feels more aligned and upright. If we're going to be sitting for a while, that makes a difference, just to use as few muscles as possible.

Then softening into that upright posture. Softening the face and the head, letting the head float on the spine. Softening the shoulders, softening through the chest area around the heart. Letting the belly be very soft and round, and letting go of any bracing in the arms or legs. We're inviting a very easeful bodily position, and then also the mindfulness in the mind, in a simple, easeful way, just to know how it is right now.

Sensing the sensations of the breathing, which become more evident as the body and mind settle a bit. The invitation is to continue with the breath as an anchor, but allowing the mind to open to, or turn toward, any object that becomes more compelling than the breath. If a body sensation becomes strong, or a sound, there doesn't need to be any conflict between that and wanting to stay with the breath. Just open to what feels more compelling, and then when that reduces in intensity, naturally go back to the breath.

The same is true if there's a strong emotion or thought train that comes up. Maybe at first we even get pulled into it, but then when we realize that's what it was, just allowing that to be the object of mindfulness until it's again not as compelling, and it's easy to return to the sensations of the breath.

To support this, we could deliberately invoke a sense of care. Care for your own heart, care for your mind states. It doesn't mean that we're going to block anything out and decide we're not going to have a particular mind state. It's still okay for anything to arise in awareness, but the care is in intending to meet it well. To meet it clearly with mindfulness—that itself is an act of care.

This quality of mindfulness that we've been exploring for a while now is inherently balancing; that's actually one of its qualities. If the mind is feeling sleepy or dull, it's mindfulness that knows that, and often just seeing that we're dull brings in a bit more energy. And when the mind is irritated, it's mindfulness that knows that and can feel the pain of that, and so that will naturally soften the mind. If our mindfulness is clear and equanimous, it will balance the mind.

The rest of the sit today will be largely silent. The suggestion is that when the mind is somehow off balance, getting distracted or pulled into things, instead of trying to do anything about that, see if mindfulness alone will rebalance it just by knowing really clearly what's going on in the mind. So, exploring this inherently balancing nature of mindfulness.

Practicing in this simple way, where mindfulness is helping to balance our mind, we can really see that this act of noticing our experience is an act of care. Sometimes it goes so far as to say, seeing is loving. There's so much in our experience that isn't seen clearly and wants to be seen clearly, and when it is, it somehow gets incorporated, somehow gets balanced. So meditation is quite compassionate.

These qualities also move outward to protect others, sometimes directly, sometimes more indirectly. Certainly, this sense of care that gets evoked through mindfulness translates into treating others with harmlessness, with metta^[1]. There's really no way to only practice for ourselves.

You could reflect for a moment: how does your practice of mindfulness affect other people in your life? And also, how might the way that you practice mindfulness serve to promote qualities that explicitly benefit others—things like patience, harmlessness, loving-kindness, and sympathy? How does your practice of mindfulness help generate those qualities?

Mindfulness as Protection (5 of 5): Protecting Oneself and Others

Okay, so first, as noted, there will be a community meeting today after the talk, and it will start around 7:45 a.m. Pacific when we're done here. That will be on Zoom, so you'll have to switch over to that. The link is on IMC's homepage under "What's New," and it's also on the IMC calendar. I tried to put it in the chat, but it turns out I can't do that easily from the way I connect, so I hope you can find it in one of those two places. There's a password for it that I'll mention at the end.

This week we've explored a broad range of how mindfulness can function as a protection. It might be a simple guarding of the sense doors, but it also has the potential to be very strong and powerful, such that one conquers—that's what the texts say, conquers—states like fear and pain, and one becomes able to endure harsh words from others.

Today we'll talk about how mindfulness serves as a protection of oneself and others, both of those together. There's a sutta called the Sedaka Sutta^[2] that's about an acrobat and his apprentice who do their stunts on a bamboo pole, and they're talking together about how to be protected while doing their work together. It's a short sutta, so I'm actually just going to read it.

On one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling among the Sumbas, and there was a town of the Sumbas named Sedaka. There the Blessed One addressed the monks thus: "Monks, once in the past, an acrobat set up his bamboo pole and addressed his apprentice Medakathalika^[3] thus: 'Come, dear apprentice, climb the bamboo pole and stand on my shoulders.' Having replied, 'Yes, teacher,' the apprentice climbed up the bamboo pole and stood on the teacher's shoulders. The acrobat then said to the apprentice: 'You protect me, and I'll protect you. Thus guarded by one another, protected by one another, we'll display our skills, collect our fee, and get down safely from the bamboo pole.'

"And when this was said, the apprentice replied: 'That's not the way to do it, teacher. You protect yourself, and I'll protect myself. Thus, each self-guarded and self-protected, we'll display our skills, collect our fee, and get down safely from the bamboo pole.'

"'That is the method there,' said the Buddha. 'It's just as the apprentice said to the teacher. "I will protect myself," thus should the establishments of mindfulness be practiced. "I will protect others," thus should the establishments of mindfulness be practiced. Protecting oneself, one protects others; protecting others, one protects oneself. And how is it, monks, that by protecting oneself, one protects others? By the pursuit, development, and cultivation of meditation. It is in such a way that by protecting oneself, one protects others. And how is it that by protecting others, one protects oneself? By patience, harmlessness, loving-kindness, and sympathy. It is in such a way that by protecting others, one protects oneself. "I will protect myself," thus should the establishments of mindfulness be practiced. "I will protect others," thus should the establishments of mindfulness be practiced. Protecting oneself, one protects others; protecting others, one protects oneself.'"

It's a pretty interesting sutta, so I thought we would unpack this a bit today. Mindfulness brings protection for ourselves and for others, and I'll even add that it brings protection for the whole world in certain ways. Let's talk about a number of main ways that can happen.

Certainly, mindfulness protects us from unmindful actions that are coming from unwholesome motivations. At the gross, blunt end of the spectrum, this would include things like breaking precepts. Others are certainly affected by actions like that, and when we're mindless, we might do that. More broadly, unskillful responses in general: if our mind is caught up at a certain time in sensual desire, or lust for power, or anger, or fear, then we harm our relationships, and we also harm the social atmosphere of safety that can be created. If the mind is caught up in these things and we're not aware of that, we might act on them and do some harm.

Maybe a little bit more subtly, when we get swept up by our views, we might then impose those views on others or act out our views unskillfully, and that also goes in this category of unmindful behavior.

Of course, I've been implying that this is for the people that are affected directly, but in this media-saturated world, it's not only the people that we directly relate to who are affected. If we have misguided views or harmful speech, they can spread rapidly to a lot of other people. Certainly, even before this media-saturated world, history shows that even a small group of people who have a particularly strong misguided view can sway a large number of people, inducing them also to do harmful actions.

That leads to the second main area of protection, which is that mindfulness paves the way for wisdom. In a personal sense, we can clearly see and feel the harm that comes from unwholesomeness. When we can, then it becomes natural to choose the wholesome. That's this balancing function that I talked about: when we actually see the pain that's caused, say, by being irritated, then the mind will naturally want to move into more balance. Mindfulness makes our mind more resilient and wise such that we are less influenced by harmful messages coming in. When we're mindful, we are actually less likely to believe misinformation and rumors that come in, and so we become clearer and more capable of functioning as community members, as citizens.

In addition, through mindfulness, we come to know our own mind and heart well so that we can work skillfully with our own tendencies. We start to know what our particular little patterns are, and then how to counterbalance those so that they don't bring harm to the world. I went for a walk one time with a longtime practitioner who I otherwise didn't know very well, but we got into kind of an animated conversation about the dharma. At one point, he paused to say, "My tone of voice can sound kind of authoritative when I get interested in a topic like I am right now. So please know that I'm not making strong declarative statements; I'm actually quite open to inquiry and exploration."

I was impressed that he said that. He knew himself well enough to know that his manner of expressing deep engagement in a topic might come across to others as being a little bit assertive or even sound close-minded. So he was taking care to say that that's not how he feels inside. He was showing good relational skill, and that kind of skill comes from close mindfulness, from knowing ourselves, knowing our tendencies.

Also in the realm of wisdom, as we come to see the universal truths of impermanence, of unsatisfactoriness, of not-self, we're less inclined to grasp so tightly onto one way of doing things, and this flexibility makes us better community members and leaders. There's another sutta where the Buddha talks about qualities of a good community member, and one of them is wisdom—knowing the wisdom in particular of impermanence. As we see that everything changes, it just becomes less important to grasp onto our particular way that we want to do things, and that makes things go better in a group.

Through mindfulness, we also become stable for others. I'm reminded here of a story that Thich Nhat Hanh^[4] tells about the Vietnamese boat people. Of course, there were many, many other terrible conditions surrounding that situation, but what he was focusing in on in this story is that when there was one person on the boat who was expressing calm and presence, everybody on the boat would also feel calmer. That could make the difference between really life and death for those people. If everybody panicked, the boat was likely to go over, but if one person could stay calm, then they had a chance. So this is another function of mindfulness, another great value that it offers the world.

The Buddha was clear that he favored what the apprentice said, not what the teacher said. The apprentice said, "I'll look out for myself, you look out for yourself," and in that way, things will be able to stay balanced. We take care of ourselves first, in a sense like they say on the airplane: you put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others. This is how it can work in a more broad way than just our own internal practice.

In many different ways, the benefits of mindfulness kind of spill out to support others. We can't help it; we're going to help others also. The cultivation of mindfulness naturally brings forth qualities that we might associate with protecting others. As the sutta said: patience, harmlessness, loving-kindness, and sympathy. These qualities come about quite naturally through the development of meditation. That's the game changer because we see in ourselves, we see our suffering, we see our patterns. We have to soften up and work with that, and care about that and love that, and then that translates into treating others the same way when we see those qualities in them. There's not that much difference between internal and external as practice goes along. But we do need to meditate to create enough depth and stability that we can protect both ourselves and others.

I want to quote now from Nyanaponika Thera^[5], who has done a nice analysis of this sutta about the acrobats, and he comes to the conclusion that it relates to what are called the Wings of Awakening. He says:

"Self-protection and protection of others correspond to the great twin virtues of Buddhism: wisdom and compassion. 'I shall protect myself'—thus should we establish our mindfulness, and guided by it, devote ourselves to the practice of meditation for the sake of our own liberation. 'I shall protect others'—thus should we establish our mindfulness, and guided by it, regulate our conduct by patience, harmlessness, loving-kindness, and compassion for the welfare and happiness of many."

It's quite beautiful what we're doing. We kind of can't help ending up benefiting the world, and if we make that explicit in our way of being through the balance of wisdom and compassion, we can really discover the potential of the human heart. The great potential that we have, the potential of this practice for bringing about so much benefit in this world that so much needs it.

So thank you. Thank you for your practice, and it's inspiring to me to have been here this whole week with you. Thus ends our exploration of the images of mindfulness and some of the broader context in which this practice situates itself. With that, you can dive back in next week with Gil and look at the fourth foundation of mindfulness. He'll be going through some of the other qualities and practices that are in that final foundation of mindfulness. So, thank you.

Announcements

We're moving now into the community meeting, and as I said, the Zoom link is on the IMC homepage under "What's New," and it's also on the calendar. I connect into YouTube a different way than Gil does, so first of all, I can't put the link into the chat, but second of all, when I switch over to Zoom, this YouTube session will end. It has to end, so just so you know. You're welcome to join if you're both available and interested. The password, in case it's not listed there, or maybe it's listed as the Buddhist word for love, is m-e-t-t-a, metta.

So very good, and I will see you there in a few minutes.