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Guided Meditation: Letting Go into Stillness

So greetings far and wide, early and late, light and dark. Taking 45 minutes together, settle in with ourselves and reconnect with our intention for practice.

Reflecting on these precepts again and beginning, as we do, with mindfulness. I noticed in myself a sort of quality of appreciation, or something edging on reverence, for the practice and the ability we have to come together as Sangha^[1]. Something to celebrate as we settle. So let's take our seat.

Coming into that upright, alert, and useful meditative posture. Reclining if that's the need for your body, or sitting upright. Sensing into balance. Maybe the shoulders are asking to roll back. Maybe the breath is asking for just a little more depth. Listening to the body, taking its cues to guide us into alignment.

As we settle, if there's any obvious tension or holding, just a little relaxation. It's okay to let go. Relaxing, releasing, settling. And attentive. Attentive breathing in, attentive breathing out.

Attentive with the breathing. If the attention happens to be vague or dull, perhaps adding just one more level of precision, with the awareness a little bit closer with the breathing. How is that connection between attention and the breathing?

And if the attention feels tight or over-energized, rather than forcing the attention on the breathing, letting the breathing come to you.

Attentive breathing in, attentive breathing out. Allowing each moment of experience to arise, register, and release. No trace.

Attentive breathing in, attentive breathing out. If you notice both activity in the mind and stillness, let go into stillness.

And as the sitting comes to an end, a moment of appreciation for these minutes of practice. For our renewal of the intention to be mindful, clearly aware, discerning. Letting any goodness of the practice permeate the body. In small ways perhaps, may everyone we encounter today benefit, even invisibly, from our practice together. Thank you.

Dharmette: The Precepts (4 of 5): Keeping Us Safely on the Path

Thank you all, and hello again. My name is Kodo. Many of us have been having a discussion or reflection on the five lay precepts this week; it's our fourth day. The plan will be to address in some way the fourth lay precept, which is: "For the sake of our training together, I undertake the precept to abstain from false speech." To abstain from false speech.

It's difficult to overstate the importance of honesty and truthfulness in the Buddhist teaching. So much so that the Buddha called false speech non-Dharma^[2], not Dharma. Not the truth, not the Buddhist teaching. And he called true speech Dharma. It broadens the scope somewhat about what is Dharma and what's not Dharma, perhaps, but I think it emphasizes just how important truth and honesty were for the path of practice that the Buddha taught.

Specifically, we've been talking a bit about the Middle Length Discourses 61, the Buddha's advice to Rahula^[3]. In this teaching, when he's advising his own son in the training of a monastic, the Buddha says something to the effect of, for anyone who is willing to tell a deliberate lie—in dramatic language, the Buddha says there's no evil that they will not do.

I want to have a little bit of caution here as I say this, because it's very, very easy to then point fingers to the dishonesty around us, when the invitation, at least for this reflection this morning, is to look at our own conduct. Begin there, let's be sensitive there, become wise there, and then allow that to support us to be wise socially and interpersonally.

No evil they would not do. I think something maybe many of us recognize is the power with which true speech, honest speech, inspires faith. Some might even observe the way that when we speak truthfully, when we speak honestly, it supports and establishes a kind of confidence in us. "I can rely on my own word." It's almost a support for the mind that's observable. These little kindnesses we do for the mind in our practice, somehow true speech brings in this sense of settling, a foundation: "Oh, I have my feet on the ground."

Again, poetically, the Buddha discussing truth and not truth, Dharma and not Dharma... he also compared them in these dramatic images. False speech he compared to dung, in fact, and true speech he compared to flowers. We can really sense into the Buddha's value for truth. I think there may be something here, in my own speculation about how the truth served the Buddha's path. In the story that we know very well, perhaps, the Buddha as a young one was very protected. He was semi-royalty, grew up in a trio of palaces that were just perfectly suited for each season. He was never exposed to old age, illness, and death. When he finally encountered them, the truth of those drove him into a different life. And then he became, and taught, and practiced something that I think is possible for us, and that is to be devotees of the truth. Devotees of the truth.

I've heard honest speech described as mindfulness out loud. Mindfulness out loud. I think we can see, when we reflect on our mindfulness practice, the honesty with which we observe our inner world, the activity of our inner world, supports us to see clearly outside.

Marlene's brought up this great question in the chat. I appreciate questions in the meantime; it makes this more of a conversation. "What if the truth is unclear?" Wow, that's a profound question, isn't it? What if the truth is unclear? I think my first response might be, "Yes. Yes." Because how often is the truth unclear?

This actually touches on something else I wanted to mention, which came up as a question yesterday: "How do we recognize harm?" I think as I explain that, it may touch on this question of what about when the truth is unclear. So I'd like to open this up maybe with an exercise. Just for a minute, let's bring ourselves back to the meditative posture, but this time I'd like you to lay your hands open in front of you. Your eyes can be closed, but your hands open on your lap.

And then I'd like you to bring your attention to, let's say, your left hand. Your left hand. Let's take a minute to feel and sense into the left hand. And then maybe any tensions, or holding, or twisting in that left hand, and see what you can relax just right there in the muscles, the tendons, the fingertips of the left hand. Breathing the tension in and out, relaxing, relaxing. Just for a few breaths.

Now I'd like you to sense into your other hand without that relaxation. Maybe you can see or feel or sense the difference between those two hands side by side. One with some residual holding, clinging, tensions, discomfort, and one that's been cared for and relaxed. Just to sense into that contrast.

It's a simple exercise, but one that I think starts to point us toward how to recognize harm and not harm. And this applies to what happens when we're confused, what happens when the truth is unclear.

Reflecting on harm and not harm, what I wanted to share with you is we can begin where it's simple, where there are clear admonitions about what to refrain from. We can begin practicing there. And then what's required of us is repeated reflection over and over. We grow more subtle in our sense of what's harmful and what's not harmful. The training, in fact, isn't to always walk around with a clear sense of "this activity leads to harm, this one doesn't... I should take care without saying this now." But the notion is that we will continually deepen the skill of recognizing harm. It too is part of the practice; it develops over time through repeated reflection and through a process actually of trial and error.

One of the ways this can happen, to describe this sort of as a developmental model that I think applies to both harm and truth, is the simple but clear observation: "Oh, there's suffering here in my life. There's suffering, I notice this specific suffering, not a suffering in the abstract." So seeing, "Oh, there's suffering here," and our mindfulness recognizes that. Our mindfulness meets that, and through that encounter... oh, you may have seen my hand do this, this is a reminder to myself that the suffering that we experience often is repetitive. Often a similar suffering repeats itself for us; we end up doing the same things.

But that also gives us the possibility, the opportunity to recognize that every time this particular kind of suffering arises for us, there are all these conditions that lead up to it. There are all these contributions that come and make this bit of suffering. And then seeing that, seeing the conditions underneath, we have a chance to possibly do something different. So we learn to recognize harm, we learn the contributions that go into harm in just over and over practice. It's a slow growth in wisdom.

And the same is true for truth. In the early teachings, the Buddha encouraged a person to remember three locations. One was where they were ordained—he was talking to monastics, but we can maybe remember the place where we first encountered the Dharma teachings. The second is where they saw all Four Noble Truths^[4] at the same time, where they had some penetrating insight into, "Oh, this is the ennobling truth of the Buddha, these are the truths of the Buddha." And what do those comprise? Something about suffering and its ending.

So maybe this is a long way of saying that our understanding, our familiarity, and our recognition of harm and truth develops over time. Develops over time. We act with the best possible intentions available to us, and then make an honest assessment about how that went in terms of true speech and false speech.

We can take a cue from the Vinaya^[5], the monastic rules, about how one makes amends. To recognize something important, one makes amends. One makes amends through recognizing that something has gone wrong, confessing and laying that open to a good Dharma friend—in their case, monastics—and then making a resolve to try to do something different in the future. Recognizing, laying it open, and making a resolve.

In this sense, the Buddha is very clear actually that our mistakes... they may be our mistakes, but it's a source of growth. He actually calls it growth in the Dharma when we do this. We recognize our mistakes, lay them open, and then resolve for something different in the future.

So hopefully that touched a bit on the fourth precept. With the time we have, before we do a short precept recitation, I want to say a little bit about the plan for tomorrow. We will discuss and reflect on the fifth precept of abstaining from intoxicants that are a cause for heedlessness. I'll make some concluding remarks about this week, and then I would also like to make room for more questions tomorrow. So you may consider what feels alive or evocative or unfinished from our conversation. Not to say we'll finish everything tomorrow, but anything you'd like to bring up, we'll have some time for that. And then I would like to do a little bit longer precept recitation tomorrow, perhaps in the ancient language of Pali^[6], just so we can all be exposed to that or hear it again.

So let's close as we have been all week, and then we can sit for a while here. We have the five precepts:

For the sake of our training together, I undertake the precept to abstain from harming living beings. For the sake of our training together, I undertake the precept to abstain from taking what is not given. For the sake of our training together, I undertake the precept to abstain from sexual misconduct. For the sake of our training together, I undertake the precept to abstain from false speech. For the sake of our training together, I undertake the precept to abstain from intoxicants that are cause for heedlessness.

May we all be well. And may our integrity and honesty support us in the practice today, and those we encounter. May all beings know the benefits of truth. Take care, until tomorrow.