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Guided Meditation: Simplicity

Okay, it's good to see everyone. Nice to see all of you joining. Hello. This always feels nice to know how many people are out there from so many different places, so we can feel connected in our worldwide sangha^[1], as someone said in their comment. So why don't we go ahead and get started.

Let's sit together. So just bringing the attention to your body, your mind, sitting here however you are now, and just finding your spot. Settling in, letting go of whatever you had to do to get here so that you can be here. If you're comfortable doing so, you can close your eyes, but you don't have to, and just allow the posture to settle into something that's upright and also relaxed.

Connecting in with the sense of the straightness of the spine. By the place that you're sitting, your seat against the cushion or the chair is a solid foundation, and then the body rising up from that. Sometimes I have the image of a sea plant rising off the sea floor, so it's held at the bottom, and then the rest of the body can kind of float upward.

Softening the eyes, the jaw, the neck. Softening the shoulders, the arms, down through the torso area. Just relaxing the muscles that are around that straight spine: the muscles of the chest, the belly, the low back. Releasing any bracing in the legs, and feeling all the way into the feet. So just bringing the attention through the body to invite some degree of ease.

And then turning the attention toward perhaps the sensations of breathing, or the body sitting—whatever feels easier to connect to. And just allowing the mind to naturally know what's happening with the body or the breath in a simple way. Maybe opening to sounds also in a simple way. We don't have control over what we'll hear next, so it can be useful just to connect to the sounds.

The intention for this sit is to invite this connection to simplicity in the body and in the mind. So we have a simple object like the breath or the posture. We can maybe even see how simple that could get. So instead of, "Oh, that's my back and I need to sit in a certain posture so that my cervical vertebra are at the right angle," we can just feel a slight amount of pressure shifting, easing of the pressure. Or in the breath, simple sensations like the touch of the air against the upper lip or the nostrils, the coolness of the air as it goes in. Simple feelings like expansion or the touch of the clothing on the skin shifting. I sometimes call these the elemental sensations of the breath—very simple. Not about concepts like body parts or difficulties; simple.

When we have a simple connection to the body and the breath, that encourages the mind also to be simple. We can feel that a lot of thoughts are complicated. They're about complicated abstract ideas, intricate stories, trade-offs and balances, hopes and fears. And what if all of that was just for this sitting, just thought? We don't need to figure any of that out now. So bringing our mindfulness back to the very simple aspects of having a mind and a body. It could even be said, if it's not simple, it's not mindfulness.

If the mind has gotten complicated, and we just tuned back in to something simple: a sound, an elemental sensation, a simple label of thought.

We may begin to sense that simplicity is connected with ease. Allow the body to relax. Allow the mind to rest in non-complication. And sense the particular form of ease that comes from simplicity, the distinctive flavor of that.

Sometimes the mind is dissatisfied with simplicity, wishes for something more stimulating. And even that is simple; it's just the simple dissatisfaction of the mind. Another thing to notice. And if there's any sense of joy or peace associated with inclining toward the simple, that can also be noticed. It's even a simple kind of happiness that's possible for humans, just resting with the body and mind in a simple way.

To cultivate simplicity is not to become simplistic. In fact, cultivating simplicity allows the mind to be more open and available, so that we can see more nuance, maybe more subtlety in situations that we're in. So perhaps feeling into how the simple mind can be responsive, has more flexibility than a mind that is caught up in complicated scenarios, many concepts, and ideas. Feeling the openness of the simple mind.

So we can sense how this kind of simplicity, the simplicity that comes with awareness and mindfulness, is actually a service to the world. To have this openness, this ability to respond, not having so many preconceived ideas or knowing already what something is as we come into it. It makes us more caring, more able to help others if we're so inclined toward that. It's the complicated, knotted-up mind and body that can't be easily of service.

So maybe for today an idea could be to approach your life with a sense of seeing it in a simple way. Some new situation: "Oh, I wonder what this is. I won't assume that I know already." Or even a familiar emotion or feeling that comes up: "Oh yeah, there's that same feeling of anger. I know anger." Maybe you don't. What if we just looked at it in a simple way? And the same with other people: could we see our partner fresh, not the way we know they already are? Or our children, or our pets, people that we meet. So that we might offer something of benefit today. It comes when we are not so caught up in complication, some way that we can help.

Dharmette: Desire and Letting Go (3 of 5): Nekkhamma – A Fresh Look at Renunciation

Okay, so I'm traveling yesterday and today, and I stayed overnight at a friend's house, which is where I am this morning. And they have a completely beautiful home. They've lived here for a long time, and it's grown to be a space with a lot of love and care in it. And it seems like everywhere the eye falls, there's some beautiful thing that they've brought from somewhere and used to decorate the place. So I think it's the perfect setting for our topic this week of desire and letting go.

Yesterday we talked about sense pleasure and sense desire. And I find it intriguing how people hear the Buddha's teachings about this—how they hear it compared to what the teachings actually say. And what the teachings say is simply that these things are not ultimately satisfying, and that they're not the deepest form of human happiness. Whereas what people tend to hear is they hear judgment, or right and wrong, or some directive to stop enjoying things or to get rid of things. That's an interesting reaction to explore in your mind.

So being here in this beautiful place is the perfect setting to talk about renunciation, which is today's topic. So yesterday we talked about how, not only the Buddha's teachings, but also our practice enables us to see that sense desire and sensual pleasures are not all that they're cracked up to be. You know, they're not ultimately satisfying. And the word, as we said, for this whole sense domain that we humans find so enticing is kāma^[2]—with a long "a", kāma.

So the Buddha also talked about a term called nekkhamma^[3]. And that is the word that's usually translated as renunciation. But please hold on to your associations with that word; it's going to be a little bit different. So it's an interesting word, nekkhamma. Nekkhamma can be resolved into its linguistic roots in two different ways. One of them is nir plus kāma, the negation of kāma essentially. So that would mean something like restraint of sensual desire, doing so out of wisdom, and we'll talk about that in a moment.

And then another way to resolve it is nis plus kammati, which is a verb, and the verbal form would be nikkhamati, which means something like "walk away from." And the related noun, nekkhamma, would mean leaving a life of pursuing sense pleasures, or more abstractly, turning away from greed, hatred, and delusion. And it may be that there's a play on words, and both of those meanings are intended in the word nekkhamma.

So it's interesting, right? Because the first meaning of opposing sense pleasure tends to invite our common association of renunciation with grim austerity. And then the second meaning, about letting go of greed, hatred, and delusion—well, that's the aim of the Buddhist path. That's very inspiring, and it's what peace and the deepest happiness are. So there seems to be something of a contrast, maybe, in our associations. So we see that we're going to have to maybe release our associations with the English word renunciation.

Let's see more carefully where this word nekkhamma is used in the Buddhist teachings and how the Buddha meant that word. So we're talking today about two triads, two sets of three qualities that are contrasting each other, they're almost opposing each other. And one of them is an unskillful triad, or unwholesome, and the other is a skillful triad of qualities. So in the unskillful one, kāma is put together with ill will and cruelty. So we have sense desire, ill will, and cruelty linked together on one side. So as we saw yesterday, sense desire and pleasure don't come off too well in Buddhist teachings; they're linked to ill will and cruelty.

And then the skillful one is the opposite. It's nekkhamma, or renunciation, and non-ill will and non-cruelty. So we see that renunciation, which we could also call letting go, is connected with qualities of care and kindness, the absence of ill will and cruelty. So this is where we have to suspend our common Western associations with renunciation. It's different in Buddhism. I don't think that there's a better single word to translate the word nekkhamma. If I had to translate it as one single word, probably "renunciation" is good, but the range of meaning is different in the Dharma than it is in our common associations.

So these two triads in the teachings are connected to some important activities of our mind. They're connected to intentions, thoughts, and perceptions. Those are important movements of mind.

For example, in the Eightfold Path^[4], the second step is wise intention, or right intention, or appropriate intention. And the very definition of wise intention is the intention of renunciation, the intention of non-ill will, and the intention of non-cruelty. That's the definition, and it's the second step of the Eightfold Path.

And then there's also a sutta where the Buddha talks about this before his awakening. He talks about how he looked at his own thoughts. So we're now looking at thoughts rather than intentions. And I want to read a section from that sutta. He says, "As I abided thus, diligent, ardent, and resolute, a thought of sensual desire"—and the word is kāma there—"arose in me. I understood thus: This thought of sensual desire has arisen in me. This leads to my own affliction, to others' affliction, and to the affliction of both; it obstructs wisdom, causes difficulty, and leads away from Nibbāna^[5]." And then he says, "A thought of renunciation has arisen in me"—nekkhamma. "This does not lead to my own affliction, or to others' affliction, or to the affliction of both; it aids wisdom, does not cause difficulties, and leads to Nibbāna."

And then there are other suttas that mention that sensual thoughts have a kind of blinding or obscuring quality to them, whereas renunciation thoughts remove blindness, produce vision, and have an openness and clarity to them.

And sometimes, as I said, that triad applies to perceptions, saññā^[6], instead of thoughts. So it's interesting. We'll have to check for ourselves if that's really true. But it does seem to me that when my thoughts are very much caught up in things that I want, or even things that I enjoy, there's a little bit of narrowing, a little bit of obstruction in some way. Whereas, even if I'm in the presence of things that are beautiful, like I am here in this house, if there's not a sense of grasping onto it, then there's just a feeling of openness and clarity. I can see those things, and my mind is still wise.

So the sutta that I just read about thought also includes a famous line that some of you may have heard. It's even quoted out of context in other traditions. It says, "Whatever a person frequently thinks and ponders upon, that becomes the inclination of their mind." So that suggests that renunciation, this word nekkhamma, can become a beneficial predisposition of the mind, if you will.

So I like to name nekkhamma as an attitude. That's a word I'm trying to choose to capture intentions, thoughts, and perceptions—that we could have an attitude of nekkhamma. And what does that mean practically? Maybe what it would mean is that we would walk around the world with the view or the idea that situations are opportunities to release the binding of unhelpful desires.

So just to give a concrete example: Suppose we find ourselves struggling in some way. We are irritated by somebody, or we're frustrated that we can't get something to work, or we're impatient—we're waiting for something to happen and it's not coming. So we're struggling in some way. And if we have mindfulness at that moment and we realize, "Oh, I'm struggling right now," maybe the thought would occur, "What would I have to let go of to make this easier?" So that would be the attitude of renunciation: "What would I have to let go of to make this easier?" This is vastly different from the approach of most people or in most situations.

So instead of wishing for that thing that I'm trying to get, or that result that I'm trying to create, we would realize that our desire for ease, or for peace, or for not struggling is more important in that moment. Maybe we realize that we'd rather figure out how to help someone than try to get them to be the way we want them to be. So this attitude of renunciation helps redirect our mind in helpful ways.

If we were to live by this attitude of letting go of things that are not helpful, letting go of unbeneficial desires, the effect of that is to gradually elevate our desires. Remember when we talked about the diversity of desires, there were five, and the fourth and fifth kinds I named were kind of the elevated human desires: the desire to help others, the desire to be ethical, and eventually the desire to be free. These are the helpful desires that support the spiritual path. So renunciation, the attitude of letting go, moves the mind toward the more beneficial kinds of desire.

If we can't let go of sense desire, and sense pleasure, and ordinary wishes that the mind comes up with, I would suggest that we're not going to be able to fully realize the better forms of happiness that are available for humans. We have to let go of one to get the one that's better.

So in the texts, in the Buddhist teachings, the affective or emotional quality that's associated with nekkhamma is described in terms that are clearly positive. So the words for it are things like delight, happiness, even bliss.

I want to read just a couple of examples. So here's one: "There are these two kinds of happiness. What two? Sensual happiness and the happiness of renunciation. Of these two kinds of happiness, the happiness of renunciation is the foremost." So that's a fairly straightforward kind of prose description of it.

And then I want to offer also a verse. It says, "Even the gods envy the awakened ones, the mindful ones, the wise ones, who are intent on meditation and delight in the peace of renunciation." How about that? Even the gods envy those who know how to delight in the peace of renunciation.

So this word renunciation, I hope what we're doing is reshaping our ideas about it. How it's used in the Buddhist teachings may not be what your gut reaction to it is. And to see that there are choices about which pleasures we go for. And the ones in the sense domain are real enough; we have them, we may be surrounded by them. And there are options that are better, and we can incline the mind toward them by having this willingness to let go, this willingness to be open—which is also associated, of course, with non-ill will and non-cruelty. So good things, good ways for the mind to be directed.

So thank you, and we'll continue our exploration tomorrow.