This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Steady Connection with Love

So hello, good morning. Welcome. And this remarkable topic for this week, a form of love that's characterized by equanimity, is often misunderstood and is often discounted, and it's often questioned whether it's appropriate to have an equanimous love. Love should not be equanimous. It should care. It should be involved. It should be active somehow. There is an assumption that being equanimous means being detached, being uninvolved, being aloof, being distant. But that's a huge misunderstanding.

Some of us succumb often enough to states of mind that do disconnect us from others. If there's anger, if there's hatred, if there's annoyance, if there is fear, anxiety, if there are strong desires, impatience, there's a whole slew of things that we do that involve a disconnection. And those disconnect.

Equanimous love is not a disconnection. The connection of love is still there, but it's not being given up. We're not abandoning that love for these other states. Someone else in the relationship might be angry. Someone in the relationship might have separated the connection, but that's not a reason for us practicing equanimous love to disconnect, the way that the love is open and clear and present. The kindness is available. We do feel connected. We're present. And it's a powerful thing to know how to stay present and open and loving even in times of challenge and difficulties, even when others are having difficulty and maybe are angry with us.

And so the ability to have equanimous love is the ability not to lose your connection with someone, your connection of love, care, kindness, and goodwill. You can hold your ground and look at them, be with them and not abandon the love, not override the love with other emotions and challenges. So my proposal is that the equanimous love is what maintains the connection. It's not a loss of connection. And it's this ability to stay connected to that love, connected to another person through that love that is the avenue for samadhi^[1], for really staying there, entering into it, trusting it, being with it, letting it grow, letting it fill us, stay with it, relax into it. So that in the samadhi we are steadily saturating ourselves with that flow of love that can exist uncompromised by anything else, uncompromised by reactivity.

So to assume a meditation posture. And maybe with a posture that's appropriate for you, your body and mind, but one that the body is going to house. The body somehow is going to be the container, the temple for love, for a connection with others that's characterized by friendliness, goodwill, kindness, deep appreciation, delight, a tenderness that's characterized by really being present for someone, present for their humanity, to see them through loving eyes. To not compromise the gaze of kindness, but to hold that gaze with equanimity, with balance, with strength. So to have a posture that's going to house this kind of love. Adjusting your hands so that the hands and how they're positioned is one where they themselves express, "Yes, I'm here. I'm rooted here." Maybe the feet adjust, the legs adjust. So yes, here at this spot. And then gently closing the eyes.

And to begin with some fuller breaths, that with inhaling there's an attitude, maybe a word, "Yes. Yes to being here now. Yes to being in this body here and now. Yes to this living experience of being alive right now." And exhaling a second "Yes," for relaxing into it. Letting the breath return to normal. Relaxing the belly, softening the belly, and letting your weight settle deep in your hip bones, sitting bones, deep into the lower belly. So, just beginning to feel stability and balance. Feeling a physical rootedness, weightedness, stability, here and now. That's a very distinct feeling than whatever you're thinking about. And to shift yourself from thinking to being in this stability.

And then bringing to mind a friend where the friendship is relatively uncomplicated, and a friend for whom you do feel you have an attitude of friendliness that's easy and maybe light, for whom you have goodwill, kindness. Someone for whom it's relatively easy to have something in the family of love for this person. And bring them to mind just enough that you don't get pulled into stories, analysis, just enough to awaken your delight at being present with them. Maybe how happy you are to see them again after a long time not seeing them. The joy, the delight, that kind of love. Easy to be kind. And offering them some metta^[2], letting your goodwill come into life as we're sitting here, wishing that they are happy. "May you be happy." Maybe saying "happy" on the exhale. And settling into how this wish of happiness feels good in you, has a pleasure. "May you be happy."

And from the stability of your meditation, from thinking about them at a distance, if there's a physical feeling for your goodwill, settle into that feeling. If there's an inspired aspiration wanting them to be happy, let that aspiration fill you. As you breathe in and breathe out, feeling the pleasure, feeling the warmth, feeling the wish for their happiness. Where the rhythm of breathing supports a quieting of the thinking mind that makes room for more love.

And then imagine that you are going to hold that open heart, open warm mind, well-wishing with stability, with groundedness and rootedness, not giving it up, not making it dependent on how the other person is, whether they're being challenging or difficult or making choices which are not good. You will not let the connection of love be lessened. Maintain it steadily. So it's there in the ups and downs. That equanimous connection that stays there regardless of the challenges you have. "I choose to love. I choose the connection of love that's unwavering, not dependent on your anger or desires, praise or blame, not dependent on the choices you make. I will stay with an open heart and not give up this connection."

Being careful as you think about your friend to not have thoughts that disconnect you from this love, disconnect you from the friend. Stay stable and connected to that ray of love, the channel of love that's not dependent on what they do, but is committed to maintain that connection of love without any agitation, without being ruffled.

As if your equanimous love rides out into the world towards your friend on your breathing; on the exhale, you send out your care, your love. On the inhale, you receive them into your open heart. And for these next minutes, relax into just this rhythm. Giving and receiving, receiving the person in your heart in a stable way, balanced. And giving, sending out on the exhale whatever form of love that's available for you, with no expectations in return.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, as you breathe in, filling yourself with love. Filling yourself up throughout your body with the warmth, the tenderness, the openheartedness. And the exhale, sending it forth out into the world with no hesitation, no exceptions. No preoccupations, just love offered to the world. Equanimous and broad. Breathing in, filling yourself. Breathing out, filling the world with love. And with our equanimous love, our capacity to love the whole world, may it contribute to the welfare and happiness of this world. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may we keep a loving connection always open. Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (72) Upekkha Samadhi 3

So, hello and welcome to our continued exploration of love. And for some of you, you've been with me exploring this topic now for over six months. And may it be that you're learning to trust love more, to value it more, and to find it in yourself more, and to appreciate that loving is better than what is worse than loving. That loving is better than hating. Loving is better than objectifying people as objects of your desire. Love is better than being praised. And that loving is better than being loved.

And so there is a kind of resilience. There's a kind of self-sufficiency that comes with dharma^[3] practice. That kind of deep settling into ourselves, and the whole path to that resiliency—that settling is really kind of feeling at home with oneself—can take a long time in practice. And so some of you have been along here for this time, and we did a whole six months or so last year on samadhi, the gradual deepening of this deep ability to settle in deeply in ourselves independent of the concerns around us, to not be tied always to what happens around us. Of course, it's important. Of course, our social relationships are important, but it's also important to develop some inner balance, strong balance inside where there's a kind of independence of sorts.

And so the Buddhist path is gradually building this over time, and moving into this love that we've done now six months on. And now on that foundation, beginning to explore this idea of equanimous love, and to do it gradually. And today the introduction was a friend, a friendship that's light, a friendship that is easy. It's uncomplicated, maybe because you don't know each other that well. You don't have that much at stake in your relationship, so it's relatively easy to have it. And so to begin exploring what it is to have an equanimous love to someone for whom there aren't the complications. What will often happen is that it's very difficult to stay on track sometimes in these kinds of things because the very doing of one thing will bring up the exceptions, bring up the places where it's hard otherwise. And so we don't give ourselves to the simplicity of the exercise now. And trusting that we'll get to that, we're slowly growing and developing and exploring. And now we're exploring today with this easy friend that's easy to love in some way.

And then to begin exploring, in order to really appreciate this equanimous love, that equanimous love is not to be disconnected from people. Some hesitation people have around equanimous love is that equanimity just seems like a disconnect, like being aloof, being detached, being somehow unavailable, being blank, being neutral. And so there's nothing there, and so there is a lack of connection. But the opposite is what's going on. This equanimous love involves a deep connection that might only be one way. The connection doesn't have to be reciprocated. We can feel connected. We can feel present for other people.

And we can also then begin learning how we disconnect, how we give up the connection. If someone doesn't treat us just perfectly the way we want to be treated, then there's a little bit of resentment. We feel disrespected. We feel discounted. We feel betrayed. We feel hurt. All kinds of things we feel. And they're very human to feel these things. But in feeling them, there's a subconscious choice made to step away from the connection and allow yourself to be disconnected by this. Sometimes we come with justifications: "Of course, we should be disconnected. They've disconnected." Is that really the case? Is it "of course" that in the calm and the peacefulness of meditation, that's a place where you need to maintain the disconnect? What's it like to maintain the connection?

And the analogy for this that I'd like to offer, I think it comes from Christianity, and I'll use this analogy without really understanding its Christian context. So I apologize to the Christians for this. But there is this idea that, and I've heard it goes around in our society, this idea of "If someone hits you, offer them the other cheek." And there's something very profound about this, but it's not a Buddhist approach. There's never any idea in Buddhism to give the other cheek to allow them to hit you again. Rather, if someone hits you, either literally or with their words, we're not there to stand there and just kind of receive it passively, or crumble. Rather, the idea is that's the occasion to not give the other cheek, but to look them in the eye, hold their gaze, be present, be even more present than you were before. Really establish a presence, like "I am here." And look at them, not glare at them, not with anger, but look at them with the human sense of friendly connection, concern, love, compassion. Hold the gaze, stay present.

And so this analogy is the idea that you don't give up the connection. And I've seen many times people treating me this way, I've treated other people this way, I've seen it between people, that keeping that friendly connection going, just being present, almost like not reacting to what the other people say but staying friendly, staying relaxed, staying non-reactive, can be amazingly good medicine for the situation. Where what the other person is doing can't survive, can't continue because of the warmth coming.

And of course, there needs to be some real skill in having these kinds of difficult conversations with people, and that's something to be learned over time. But the reference point of learning and exploring this in meditation is that in meditation itself there's not much at stake. You can always... it's very private. No one needs to know that you're doing this. And there, to explore your amazing miracle of capacity, your capacity for love, your capacity for kindness, for friendliness, for openheartedness, to gaze upon the world kindly, to gaze on others with friendship.

One of the definitions of love is a friendly open space in which to receive others. That equanimous love is a love which doesn't lose that connection for anything, which doesn't lose that connection because the person's going to give you whatever you want and it just is so good and you just kind of get overwhelmed with gratitude, delight, and filled with love. But there's something lost in overwhelming gratitude and joy and appreciation and conceit around getting exactly what you want. Maybe there's a way of staying equanimous even if you're being praised, and then when things are not going well. And so to learn how to maintain that equanimous, open, caring, friendly open space no matter what.

And for today, the emphasis is to do that with a person for whom it's uncomplicated to do. You don't quickly come with exceptions. Don't quickly come there with reservations why you shouldn't, why you can't. "When they do that, they're going to do that again." "You can't do it because they'll take advantage of you." When you're meditating or when you're doing this in your own private situation, try not to come up with the exceptions. Try to just... and don't worry about whether they deserve it or not. That's not the name of the game.

The samadhi of equanimous love is to find a way genuinely, honestly, completely to immerse yourself in this world of love. To hold it constant, to hold the connection constant, the flow, the warmth, the open friendly space. Just keep it there. Breathe with it and let that become the only thing you're thinking about, the only concern you have. Because as a meditator, hopefully over time, we're learning how to let go of our preoccupations, let go of our thoughts that take us away from the task at hand, and to give ourselves over fully to this. And to learn the amazing experience in meditation, or in the privacy of your own life when you're not in complicated relationships, the amazing gift and the medicine of being able to have an equanimous love in all situations. To be able to gaze on the world kindly, to not turn away, to not turn the other cheek, to not attack, to not blame, to maybe not get angry, but to meet the situation honestly, wholly, completely with kindness. "I'm here."

And so as you continue now, if you want to continue with doing this the next 24 hours before we meet again, see if you can find a variety of people through the day that privately on your own—no one has to know you're doing this—people for whom it's relatively uncomplicated. See if you can hold the gaze of kindness. See if you can value not the ideas, not the history, not the memories, not the challenges of the relationship that exist, but the simplicity of an open friendly gaze, open friendly heart. Breathe with it. Stay with it. Just give yourself over to it. Whether it's for a minute, five minutes, explore it, feel it, and see what that highlights for you of how you lose that connection. And that losing that connection is maybe something you don't have to do as much as you're doing it. To stay connected, stay present with love, equanimous love, that's a great gift. So, thank you very much.