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Guided Meditation: Receptive to Harmless Joy

Greetings from Redwood City, where the air today is about as clear as it ever gets. It is as clean as it ever gets, with a very light fog-rain that's helping to refresh everything. May the gentle fog-rain of the Dharma^[1] nourish and feed all of us.

The Buddha had a radical idea for his times, and the radical idea is that it's okay to be happy. The happiness that he advocated—a happiness which he said people should not fear, but rather practice and experience regularly—is a radical kind of happiness for our modern world. It is a happiness which doesn't harm anyone. It is a happiness which doesn't depend on or require anything of other people, and it doesn't harm our environment by using natural resources. It's amazing to have such a clean, harmless form of happiness available to us.

However, it's a happiness that is pretty radical and revolutionary for individuals, in that it requires a radical reorientation. It requires a revolution in the mind about where we're oriented—at least for the period of meditation—where we center ourselves, what our central values and purpose are, and where to base our lives. It's a revolution in the mind which is not necessarily easy to do, but it is a revolution that, for the time of the meditation at least, turns the attention around. It turns away from the concerns of the world, away from the concerns of the self, away from the past, the future, and the stories of our lives.

That turning away is perhaps a temporary shedding, a deep letting go of many of the ways in which we usually think about ourselves, and even the emotions and feelings that we are really focused on. We turn the attention to become receptive to the depths of our being, to be receptive to the upwelling, to allow the possibility for an upwelling of this happiness the Buddha talked about.

It's the happiness that comes from being settled, from having some degree of tranquility and peacefulness about just being here. It is a happiness that comes from being content for a few moments, for a few minutes, just to be here in this body, in this time, in this experience here, and not looking forward and outside, or concerned with other things in other places and other times.

Here is where we can find a happiness that does not cause harm. Here we find a happiness the Buddha said is not to be feared. Here we find a happiness that supports the deep insight leading to liberation, leading to the arising of a deep care and compassion for the world.

So, please take a meditation posture. For this meditation, perhaps find a posture that certainly helps you to be mindful and alert—to really be here—but also a posture where you feel comfortable. If you have some obvious places of discomfort when you meditate, maybe you can adjust your posture so that the discomfort is not there.

The idea of closing our eyes in meditation is also a little bit symbolic. It represents letting go for a few minutes of the concerns with the outer world and other people, to allow the attention to become interested in our direct, embodied experience. What experience does your body have of itself?

If we really tune in and listen to our body, as if we've never listened to it before, we can experience the body from the inside out with a slightly heightened sensitivity to our embodied experience. Turning the attention to the breathing is also symbolic of turning our attention to the way our body is caring for us, nourishing us, and supporting us in being alive. It keeps enough oxygen flowing and carbon dioxide leaving to make this whole system of ours work. So symbolically, we're turning towards a way in which the body is caring for us and supporting us.

Then, as we exhale, we begin the process of relaxing some of the extra tension in the body. This is also symbolic of the value of coming home to oneself, to be centered and settled really here in your experience. Most tension represents concerns and worries, and they're usually not about being here now.

As you exhale, perhaps try relaxing the muscles of your face, softening and maybe cooling the eyes. If the teeth are touching, it might be nice to let them just fall away from each other slightly, so the jaw can relax a bit.

As you exhale, soften the shoulders, maybe feeling their weight and releasing them to the pull of gravity. Each time you relax, it's also relaxing into being more deeply in your body. As you exhale, soften the chest and the rib cage.

As you exhale, soften the belly. If the belly hangs forward and down, and the weight of the belly settles more deeply, it's symbolic of becoming rooted and stable at this time and at this place. Here, this is the place for mindfulness.

There might be a global way of first feeling your whole body, perhaps together with the global movements of breathing in your body—the expansion and contraction. Is there any overall way in which you're holding the body tense, or resisting something? Perhaps as you exhale, you can relax and let go.

As you relax your body, see if you can, at the end of the exhale, let yourself be receptive to the beginning of the inhale. Feel how the inhale just begins by itself.

If it's easy enough to soften your breathing, you can. If it's easy enough to let there be an ever-so-slight pause—a rest at the end of the exhale—then it might be easier to be receptive to the beginning of the inhale.

Being receptive to the inhale is symbolic of an overall orientation to be receptive to the experiences of the body. Whatever way the body is feeling and experiencing, let there be an openness and receptivity. Every time you exhale, see if you can relax more. Maybe on different exhales, you can release and relax different places in your body.

As you sit here relaxing, opening, and receiving, is there anything pleasant about that? Are there any feelings of pleasantness or pleasure in your embodied experience? It could be a very embodied pleasure: the pleasantness of some part of the breathing cycle, the pleasantness of some aspect of relaxing, or the pleasantness that comes with a kind of receptivity to experience—a contentment to be rooted and centered here.

As you breathe, perhaps you can also breathe through that pleasure. Maybe it's a subtle feeling of lightness, well-being, contentment, or joy. However small it might be, let that also be something that, as you exhale, you let go into. And as you inhale, let yourself be receptive to it. It is almost as if the inhale expands the pleasure and radiates it further through the body.

Breathe with the pleasure and pleasantness that is here. The pleasantness might help you to be more focused on cruising along with your breathing, just quietly riding on the in-breaths and out-breaths, feeling the pleasantness that might be part of your embodied experience.

If it's easy enough, you can make a little half-smile, lifting up the corners of your lips a teeny bit, especially if doing so brings you a little bit of joy or delight. If it does, then let that joy or delight be integrated with your breathing to support your breathing.

Let whatever joy is there simply be. Let it grow in the receptivity of embodied awareness with each inhale and exhale, like a gentle bellows blowing. Some of the meditative sense of well-being can be feelings of lightness, like a gentle wind lightly lifting a leaf into the air.

Or it can be like a gentle fountain of water moving up underneath an underwater lake, an underwater fountain spreading its water through the lake. Just be here, letting go of thoughts and concerns. Let go into the body experiencing itself, the body experiencing breathing, the body experiencing whatever is pleasant and enjoyable here and now.

As we come to the end of the sitting, check in with whatever degree of subtleness or well-being you feel, or perhaps a memory you have of some qualitatively nice sense of well-being that you've experienced in your life. This is a well-being and joy that was harmless—it didn't require something from the world, so much as it was a deep sense of contentment and well-being just to be alive.

Appreciate that this is a human capacity. All human beings have the capacity to have a deep sense of ease, peace, well-being, contentment, and joy. How wonderful it would be if that potential could be the experience of all beings, all people.

May the human potential for happiness and well-being be actualized for all people. May it be a wellspring of inspiration to work for the welfare and happiness of all people. May this meditation practice that we have done today inspire us to live without causing harm to the world, and to wish that all beings be free from harm, free from distress, and free from fear. May all beings be happy. May all beings be filled with joy. May all beings be at peace. May all beings be free.