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Guided Meditation

Good morning from a quiet, cloudy San Francisco morning.

It has occurred to me over the years of practicing meditation that we can never remind ourselves too often of just how the process of mindfulness works.

The usual way of being is, "It's me in my world." It's so persistent, and it's just an assumption we make. And mindfulness is to bring attention to me and my world, but not to change it into what it should be. The outrageous proposition of mindfulness is that just how it is, is the ground of awareness. It is the content of awareness. You know, there is within us, I think through our deep dedication to practice, a strong impulse to curate it, to manage it, to influence it in a way that's more appropriate. Of course, "more appropriate" is according to me, whatever our being constructs as appropriate.

There's a teaching that persists in many schools of Buddhism that says the awakened are awakened to the workings of karmic mind. So this is our teacher. The very karmic conditioning that constructs me and my world and interacts with it, and approves and disapproves, and has the full range of feelings and memories and associations around it. This is what's being offered in the practice of awareness.

So with that in mind, to simply notice now this mind this morning, or this afternoon, whatever time zone. How is mind now?

And as you open in that way, can you notice a shift from me constructing something to experiencing me? The shift from the mind that has an agenda to awareness of that mind.

And sometimes we initiate that just by attending to the content, noting, acknowledging.

And as we do that, to notice: is there any impulse to curate? To nudge it over to how it should be?

I'd suggest to you this morning to let it be the wild and beautiful thing that it is. How amazing that in this moment we are the product of a lifetime. Actually, we're the product of a stream of lifetimes. We're a product of our environment, of the experiences that have shaped us. Here it is crystallized into me.

What is me right now? What's happening in mind? What's happening in the realm of emotions?

And can it be drawn into body? Can it be embodied? Can it be noticed as it reverberates through our physical being?

And as it happens, this mind conjuring up whatever it conjures up, can we allow it? Can we breathe it in? Can we allow it to be just what it is?

And can we notice the disposition of allowance? Allowing what is to be experienced. Experiencing the experience.

Me being me. Expressing being moment by moment.

Embodying the experience that's happening. Breathing it in and releasing it with the exhale.

Can mind be allowed to be exactly what it is? Can it then be held in awareness?

Embodying in the here and now whatever appears in consciousness.

Experiencing "me"

If I may ask, could you hear the reverberation of the bell this morning? No? Ah, someone sent me a message telling me how to alter the sound, but apparently I didn't register it correctly. I'll try again tomorrow.

This radical proposition that's implicit in, "the awakened are awakened by karmic consciousness." There's a formulation in Buddhism about the nature of consciousness. It has three categories. The first one is discriminative mind: the mind that thinks and judges and concludes. And then the second one is—literally the Sanskrit word is citta^[1]—which means heart. It's like the emotional, the feeling, the way in which what arises, as the phrase I've been using, we take personally. It becomes an involvement in me and the world according to me. And then the third mind consciousness is the realm of experience.

What is the realm of experiencing? Well, it's the functioning of citta and the functioning of hridaya^[2], the functioning of discriminating mind and the functioning of feeling mind, psychological mind, however you want to describe it.

And so the very practice of mindfulness is simply attending to the thinking and the feeling, and coming into contact with the experiential level of being. In the early sutras it says that this experiential is where the learning of what is happens. That each of us is a miraculous expression of being. And it's offered to us as a way, as a context to be aware of. You know, I've been quoting that statement by Martin Luther King: that challenging experiences can be instructive—educational was the word he used—and they can also be transformative.

As we live in this world according to me, and me according to me, as we live within its confines, there's a construct of being. There's a construct of what is. There's even a construct of what's happening in the moment. And the more we invite the experiencing, the more that's illuminated. The more it becomes evident, me being me becomes more evident. And as it does, it becomes educational. And it invites a greater being beyond just the world according to me. Maybe to put it a little poetically, we could say it's a shift from the world according to me, to me according to the world.

And the interface is what's being experienced moment by moment. And this is the great intrigue and challenge of mindfulness.

Yesterday I offered this illustration of myself in a meeting, and watching that impulse, the subtle reactiveness, or maybe not so subtle reactiveness, when I heard that something had been arranged in a way that was disappointing to me. "Well, let's cancel it!" It's me and my world would like things to fit more within my agendas, my preferences. And then as we see that, we see it, and in a way we see through it: "Oh, that's me in my world trying to corral this vast endless existence into the way I would like it to be."

Not to condemn ourselves for such thoughts and feelings, but more to be instructed by them. Awakened. Awakened to karmic consciousness. And can we hold that with benevolence? "Okay, can we let there be within our being an evolution?" Oh yes, indeed I do have preferences. I do have ways of seeing things. And yes, they are self-centered. However, I can still invite into my way of being an ever-growing recalibration of what it is to be.

It's burdensome for others if I just go around trying to insist the world should always be the way I want it. And how human it is that when it's not the way I want it, it disturbs me. And that's how it is for everyone. When it's not the way we want it, it's disturbing, it's challenging, it's upsetting. Why not? And when we see it, it's like we're inviting a deep sanity into being, and a deep compassion.

Indeed, isn't this the way we're made? Isn't this how our neurology works, how our psychology works, how our somatic being works? Isn't this complex organism of being a human subject to these impulses? And can we sit and practice awareness with a willingness and an attentiveness of being this interplay of all being through this particular being that I am?

As we enter the world, can we appreciate and allow that everybody else is having their version of it too? Can we dance together, you know? Can we collaborate? Can we collude? Can we support each other? Can we offer our patience and our empathy to others? Can we offer them to ourselves? As we experience the moment's version of this interplay of being, can we open to its teaching? And its teaching will be the world according to me, and the me according to me, and the preferences and the aversions that are embedded in both of those. That's the ground of awakening.

So whether someone praises us or insults us, or delights us or frustrates us, that's the ground of awakening. And then for each of us to discover how to stay close to that sensibility, how to keep referencing it. And to remind ourselves that complex and amazing as the human condition is, in another way it's fragile. It's asking for a reassurance. It's asking for a wise compassion. So as we open up to the workings of ourselves, it's very, very helpful if we bring that compassion, that skillfulness, and that wisdom.

And part of the heritage of our practice, our Buddhist practices, is that embodying helps to create stability. There's a teaching that says that when we meditate, that when we practice mindfulness, it offers us a kind of protection from the excesses that we're capable of. It offers us a kind of support. So we offer a kind of benevolence to ourselves. We offer ourselves a support, a reassurance, a trust.

And it's not that we offer these things just on the level of thinking, although that's a very helpful way to engage them. But if we can embody it as well, if the core of our being can find a reassurance. And often that's how the body is contracting and the breath, how they're contracting or expanding. And then there's a way we can do something similar with our attitude and disposition. "Okay, this is how it is." Can that statement, can it have a tenderness to it?

When it's pleasant, can we soak up appreciation? And when it's unpleasant, can we watch how that ripples through us? Can we have compassion in the ways we contract? Can we have an empathy for others in the ways they contract?

So each day, this is—for some reason the word that comes to mind is the prayer of our practice—this is the aspiration of what we carry out into the world to discover. The new day, this way of being that's invited to go beyond me and mine and my world.

May this day bring you lots of moments of awakening. Thank you.