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Guided Meditation: Joyfully Surfing the Breath

Hello, greetings international sangha. Dear friends, dear siblings in the dharma inhabiting our shared planet earth. I greet you in this moment in time from Mountain View, California, from my home, from virtual IMC. A virtual background, I'm actually using Zoom to YouTube, hence the difference in audio and why I can beam in without needing to sit as Gil usually does, so hence the explanation.

Let's continue our practice together. We've been exploring various supportive conditions, supportive practices for samadhi^[1], for calming the mind, for settling the mind, for unification, for concentration.

Just a quick review of the techniques we're building upon: we started with relinquishing. Relinquishing what is not helpful, putting aside what is not needed. And then the other side of the coin of relinquishment is turning our attention, our wise attention, to what is actually here, what's already here. Not the distractions outside, but what is joyful, what is delightful, what is wonderful in the simplicity of the present moment, right here, right now. So instead of the stick, the carrot: what is delicious here, to have contentment and peace with what is already here, to recognize what is already here.

And we continued with the invitation to relax. To soften the body, to open up the body so that the mind can relax and can settle. A relaxed sati^[2], a relaxed mode of mindfulness, drawing inspiration from the Buddha under the rose apple tree, as well as the simile of the cow herder under the tree when the harvest has been done, so there's a sense of relaxed spatial awareness.

We'll bring all of these in today, in addition to the new theme today that we'll be adding. All of these are interrelated; all of them depend on one another. This theme is gentle perseverance. Gentle persistence, coming back. Keep coming back, keep coming back. You need to relinquish—it's okay. Keep coming back, relax the body. Notice the simple delight, the joy of the present moment. Keep coming back, keep coming back, but gently. Atapi^[3] is one of my favorite words in the suttas^[4]. It especially shows up in the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, the four establishments of mindfulness: gentle perseverance.

So it's not forceful. It's not a jackhammer, like, "Okay, bring the mind back! Yank it back! Bad mind!" It's not like that. It's the force of a feather. But it's repeated. Bring the feather back. Bring it back, bring it back gently, kindly, patiently. A thousand times, maybe more during a 30-minute sit. Without grudges, without judgment, without self-recrimination, just gently. "Okay, all right. Distracted Buddha in this moment. Okay, gently back." Atapi, gentle persistence. Gentle persistence.

So with the basis of everything we have been cultivating, turning our attention to this week and now today, special attention to this gentle persistence, coming back. And I'll say more about both this and vitakka^[5] and vicāra^[6], which are essential. To translate them: initial application of the mind with the breath, with the object, and sustained application. So initial application: as if you touch the breath, you gently bring back the attention, touch the breath. And sustained attention: as if you're rubbing a bowl. Because if you're rubbing a bowl with a cloth, you rub the breath with your attention. Gently coming back, initial application, sustained application, until the attention drops away. And then again, again and again. So, a day for cultivating gentle persistence and patience, joyfully.

So let us begin, landing in our posture. In our meditation posture, whether sitting or lying down, and inviting the body to relax. The forehead to soften, for the eyes to rest back in their sockets, for the jaw perhaps to open up just a little bit, and then settle into a comfortable position.

Inviting the neck and shoulders to give their weight to the earth. The arms, the hands to drop. The chest, the abdomen. Letting go at the next out-breath. And the sit bones, the lower part of the abdomen connecting to the sit bones, dropping their weight onto the earth, in lieu of the chair, the cushion. Letting go of the weight, the lower legs, upper legs, and feet to the earth. Bringing attention to the entire body. Relaxed, soft.

Breathing, being breathed. The in-breath, the out-breath. Connecting attention, awareness, sati, connecting with the in-breath or the out-breath in their entirety as much as possible. Relinquishing what is not helpful in this moment. Nothing wrong with thinking per se, but in this moment we choose to give our hearts fully, our minds wholeheartedly, to this moment's cultivation and goodness. Here, the simple joy of just being here. Simply sitting and breathing.

With gentle, gentle persistence. Connecting with the breath. As if awareness lands on the breath, connects with the breath, and surfs the breath joyfully. The attention surfing the breath joyfully for as long as possible. And if and when it drops, the attention drops, it's okay. Gently relinquishing without judgment. Smiling. Coming back, gentle persistence, coming back. Connecting attention, awareness, connecting with the breath. Continuing to surf, to be with the breath joyfully for as long as available. No problem. Again and again. This is our practice. This is our training of our mind.

Every now and then, as you notice the mind is resting on something else, and you relinquish without judgment, smilingly check to see the body is relaxed, if any tension has crept in. Release, relax with the next out-breath. And connect with the breath, surfing the wave.

Returning again and again to the joy of surfing the breath.

Surfing as long as possible.

If we're dropping off...

And however our practice was in this moment, trusting there is goodness generated. Trusting that our coming together, aligned with our intentions, our actions for cultivation, that goodness is generated for ourselves, for others around us, and the whole world. And offering, sharing with generosity that goodness that is ours and not ours, sharing it generously with the whole world.

May our cultivation, may this merit generate this goodness as a cause and condition for freedom, liberation of all beings everywhere. May all beings be happy. May all beings be free, including ourselves.

Thank you for the grace of your practice.

Samadhi (4/5) Atapi, Vitakka, Vicara

Greetings, greetings, everyone.

So, our fourth day of exploration with supportive practices, supportive tools for cultivating samadhi, translated often as concentration, but perhaps better translated as unification of the mind, settling of the mind, calm abiding.

Today's theme—one is atapi, as I mentioned. This favorite word of mine that shows up a lot, especially in the Four Foundations, the four establishments of mindfulness, where the Buddha in the refrain that repeats so many times in that sutta says to come back with atapi, with gentle persistence. Gentle persistence. There's a sense of gentle persistence that we cultivate, and what's really important to keep in mind here is the persistence. We keep coming back, we keep coming back, we keep coming back. And yet, there is the gentleness. Because if the coming back is like a sledgehammer, it becomes exhausting. It becomes painful very soon.

If every time the mind—and the mind is a puppy, we are training this sweet, darling, beloved puppy of our mind, and just as puppies like to run around, it's in their nature, it's in the nature of our minds to like to think and go here and there, etc. So training this beloved puppy of the mind, you don't want to yank it back, traumatize the puppy every time. "Come back! Sit! Sit!" and beat up the poor puppy, beat up the poor mind. Gentle. "Come back, sweetie. Come back, come back." You may do it a thousand times. Come back gently. It's okay. It's okay, or run away. It's okay, come back. Come back with that level of gentleness. Training, caring for a beloved puppy.

Another simile that I mentioned is the pressure of a feather. The pressure of a feather, not a sledgehammer. So it's persistent. It happens over and over and over and over and over again, without making it into a problem. "Yes, this is the nature of the mind. Oh yeah, it's the millionth time this morning in the 30 minutes I'm coming back. It's okay." Just calling, "Oh, today the busy Buddha is showing up on this cushion. The busy Buddha." That happens for me many times. In fact, I remember once I was teaching a retreat and there was so much planning going on. I'm sitting on the dais and realizing, "Wow, the mind is going everywhere. Okay, all right. Busy, busy Buddha is showing up in this moment. Busy Buddha." And the heart can settle with that. It can settle with that gentleness of, "Okay, it's like this." It doesn't become conflictual. And yet there is persistence. Yet there is persistence after you say, "Okay, it's the busy Buddha. All right, sweetie, okay, come back. All right, yeah, it's the busy Buddha today, yes. Come back, come back." This beautiful word in Pali. One of my favorites.

And the other couple of concepts I'd like to bring in today is vitakka and vicāra, which are two of the five jhānic factors^[7]. So vitakka means initial application and vicāra is sustained application. One simile is that—imagine you have a bowl, and here I have a bowl, and you have a cloth. Vitakka is like the cloth touching the bowl. This is vitakka, the initial application, the initial contact, the initial connection. And then vicāra is the sustained application, as if you're rubbing the bowl with the cloth. Then at some point—so the cloth is awareness and the bowl is your breath, the object of your attention, which could be many different objects. There are 40 different samadhi objects in the Visuddhimagga^[8] in higher teachings, but here we're using ānāpānasati^[9], the breath, as our object. So in this case, for our practice today, it is the breath. It could be many different things, it could be sounds, sensations, etc. But here it's the breath.

So attention being the cloth, initial application, the contact. When we make contact, we grok, we grab, we get on the wave if we're surfing (I'll talk about that analogy a little more), and then vitakka, and then vicāra, sustained application. We rub the bowl. Attention rubs, stays on the breath, the entirety of the breath, as if touching the breath. Touching the entirety of the breath, before at some point it will fall off. It's okay. With atapi, with gentle persistence, we come back. We make contact, vitakka, and then we sustain the attention, vicāra. We sustain the attention for as long as possible before it drops off again. Then when it drops off, no judgment. Just, "That's the puppy." It just drops off. That's what happens. Okay. With atapi, we come back. Initial application, sustained application.

So whichever of these metaphors work for you. And another metaphor that I invited you to consider today is being a surfer. Those of you who are surfers maybe can easily connect with the joy. Even though I'm not a surfer, having watched surfers, there is so much joy watching surfers when they catch a wave, when they connect with the wave, and then they stay on the wave as long as possible. There's such joy. So for us to connect with the wave, with the breath—initial application—to connect with it, and then ride the breath. Surf. Surf the breath for as long as possible, and joy arises. Joy arises with the out-breath, in-breath, the pauses. The breath—oh, it's pausing, pausing, oh, and then there's another breath. You can continue to surf it. So this is a lovely metaphor I just came up with today. So it's new, fresh off of my practice. Here it is: enjoy. Surf, enjoy surfing. And there's also this joy of the delight, of this idea of surfing the breath, really connecting into samadhi. The mind doesn't want to go anywhere else. "Surfing the breath is so much fun, why would I get out of the water? This is so much fun." So the joy, which we talked about a couple days ago, can actually be part of this metaphor, part of this way of working.

And I want to end with making a distinction. Many of you might already know this, but it might be helpful as this week we are working with samadhi, and you might think, "What is the difference between samadhi, concentration practice, and vipassana^[10], insight practice?" So this could be a long, long lecture, and there are many similarities and differences. But in terms of technique, one thing to keep in mind is—and this is giving credit to the similes, giving credit to Steve Armstrong, a senior teacher in the Theravada^[11]. I learned this from him a couple of decades ago. He would say that vipassana is like serial monogamy for the attention. So the attention is with the breath, and then there's a sound, so the attention can go to the sound and be with that, but really there's monogamy. You're really dedicating, giving yourself, staying with that object. And then maybe a sensation arises in the body, then you go to that. Then you're monogamous, but it's serial. You go from one object to another, to another. Insight, opening up to all these different objects after the mind has settled with samadhi.

Now, samadhi, concentration, on the other hand, is in his words absolute monogamy. It's just the breath. You come back to the breath, and you're just with the breath. Absolutely monogamous, faithful to one object, whatever the object of your concentration, of your practice, is. Just with the breath. And often, one thing that actually might sound confusing is that we often in the practice of vipassana start with a few minutes or a period of samadhi practice to settle the mind. We keep coming back to the breath with this sense of, "Oh, just the breath, just the breath." And then when the mind is settled with some concentration, samadhi practice at the beginning of insight practice, then we can open up. Usually, we open up the sphere of attention so that when the mind is settled, then it can stay with the sound. "Oh yes, impermanence, the sound is coming and going. Oh, the sensations. Oh, notice the vedanā^[12] in the sensations." So there is that malleability, that flexibility.

So I just wanted to offer these, and I realize this was kind of brief. I hope it was helpful and made sense. There's so much more here to cover, there's so much more dharma, and to be a scientist of your own mind. So explore. Explore for yourself today what is the nature of gentle perseverance. Gentle perseverance in your daily activities. Gentle perseverance without judgment, coming back, coming back. Initial application, sustained application. Enjoying, really tuning into the joy of surfing the wave of whatever it is you're doing.

So thank you all for your practice. May you be well, and see you tomorrow.