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Guided Meditation: Inviting Peace

Greetings everyone, it's a delight to be here with this beautiful sangha. And I should have mentioned this yesterday at the outset: I had a wonderful visit from my daughter and grandchildren last weekend, but they all had coughs, and I've been fighting off a sore throat all week. Yesterday I could barely talk; I could barely make sounds with my voice. So I hope it'll be a little bit better today, but if it's a little bit scratchy, you know why.

So let's begin our meditation today as we've done every day this week, by first of all leaving all our concerns, preoccupations, agendas, worries, and responsibilities outside the door for the next 30 minutes. So take a moment to do that. Put them out there carefully, knowing that you can come back to them when you're ready.

So we'll begin again our meditation by inviting sati^[1], awareness, our best friend, to the forefront. This is so helpful because as awareness becomes strong, we can see when unskillful thoughts begin to arise, and then we have a little opening in which we can make a choice not to pick them up.

So now bring your awareness to your posture, balancing, aligning the whole body. You might want to adjust a little bit back and forth, side to side. And now connecting with the earth, feeling the connection of the body on whatever is supporting it: your cushion, your chair, your bed. And imagine roots going down deep into the earth. And now inviting the grounding energy of the earth to flow up through the seat, through the spine, providing stability, maybe confidence, assurance we're here on this earth. And then as the energy flows up the spine, we let it exit through the crown of the head. And now we can open to the energy of space.

We can imagine that the body is suspended from above by that invisible thread. So ideally, we have a comfortable posture that is both grounded and spacious, balanced, stable, open.

We'll begin by relaxing the muscles of the face: softening the forehead, the eyes, between the eyes, the cheeks, the lips, the tongue, the jaw, the neck. Relaxing the shoulders, the arms, the hands, the torso, and the belly. Relaxing the legs, the feet. And let's take up residence in this body, just as it is.

And as we become more and more present in our bodily experience of breathing in and breathing out, there may be a subtle joy that arises simply from being present. So now closing the eyes.

Breathing in, being here.
Breathing out, peace.

Breathing in, being here.
Breathing out, peace.

Breathing in, I'm here.
Breathing out, I'm okay with the way things are.

Here in this body, breathing.
Breathing out, peace.

And with our receptive awareness, maybe a subtle feeling of joy in really being present in this moment.

Breathing in joy, and breathing out peace.
So we shift to inviting joy on the in-breath.
Breathing in joy, breathing out peace.

Grounded in the breathing.
Breathing in, inviting joy.
Breathing out, peace.

And from the joy of being fully present, we now invite tranquility.
Breathing in calm, breathing out peace.

Inviting the body to relax, inviting the mind to relax. Tranquil, quiet.
Breathing in calm, breathing out peace.

Right now, I'm okay with the way things are. The body, however it is, is doing its best. Mind is doing its best. I don't need to change how things are to be okay. This moment is enough. I'm happy that I don't have to fight with the way things are.

For a few minutes, just imagine, take in the well-being^[2] of the contentment, the happiness of being okay with the way things are right now.

Now, without really using words, we'll breathe in the well-being of contentment and breathe out peace.

Breathing in well-being.
Breathing out peace.

If the mind should wander—because that's what minds do—come back with a smile to breathing in the well-being of contentment. Breathing out peace.

Coming home to safety, there's room for all of me here. I'm home in this body, in this moment.
Breathing in safety, breathing out peace.

With quiet joy, calm, the well-being of contentment, I'm safe here at home.
Breathing in safety, breathing out peace.

As we come to the end of the sitting, let's bring to mind the people we'll come into contact with today, strangers as well as the people we know. Making the wish that through our presence, our example, we may offer them peace. No matter what the circumstances are, if we have clear awareness, we can always find a way to be peaceful, and we can offer this to everyone.

So by abiding peacefully ourselves, may we offer all beings, ourselves included, safety, peace, happiness, and freedom.

Dharmette: Cultivating Peace (5 of 5) Becoming Peace

Greetings everyone, it's a pleasure to be here with you all. Today is the last in our series this week on cultivating peace.

In the early texts of the Buddhist teachings, there are many synonyms for Nibbāna^[3], complete awakening, one of which is the supreme peace. Another is the unconditioned. So I'll read to you something from the Saṃyutta Nikāya 43.1^[4]. The Buddha says to his disciples:

"I will teach you the unconditioned and the path leading to the unconditioned. What is the unconditioned? The destruction of greed, the destruction of hatred, the destruction of delusion. This is called the unconditioned. And what is the path leading to the unconditioned? Mindfulness directed to the body. This is the path leading to the unconditioned."

So with complete awakening, the poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion are completely eradicated, never to return. And then the Buddha says that the essence of the path leading to the supreme peace of the unconditioned is mindfulness of the body.

As we've seen, samādhi^[5], or unification, is the last of the preparatory conditions from which the insights necessary for liberation arise. When the meditator can dwell in samādhi, the insights leading to awakening will gradually and spontaneously unfold.

And in all the wholesome states that we find in Buddhist teachings, each one can arise in a wide spectrum of depth or intensity, and that entire spectrum is valuable, including the first baby steps. Samādhi, for example, encompasses a range of increasingly profound states of meditative absorption. And before entering into samādhi proper, there can be access samādhi, when all five hindrances^[6] are in abeyance and the mind is settled.

For most practitioners, it's unlikely to be accessible in a 30-minute meditation on a weekday, and a silent retreat offers the ideal conditions for cultivating samādhi. That said, we may have tastes of samādhi outside of a retreat center when the mind is at peace, unified, and these small tastes are valuable and should be savored. They give us an idea of what is in store.

So for samādhi to arise, we put in place the condition of peaceful contentment. The body and mind are suffused with a sense of well-being, which is calmer and more satisfying than joy.

So let's briefly review the steps along the path of liberative dependent arising, which put in place the conditions for entering into the sacred state of samādhi. It all begins with an honest confrontation with our suffering. We live in a world of ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows, which arise and pass away, and we need to know our suffering in order to start the process of becoming free.

And then it's important that we have confidence in the path we've chosen to follow. The stronger our confidence in the path, the greater our resolve can be. Then, with confidence that we're on the right track, gladness naturally arises. We see that indeed there's a light at the end of our tunnel of darkness.

The next step is joy, which is directly proportional to how absorbed we are in our practice. When awareness is strong, we feel the joy of being fully present, the miracle of each moment. And these first steps of confidence, gladness, and joy have a very useful function of dispelling anxiety and agitation. They put in place the conditions for tranquility.

When tranquility becomes pervasive, the conditions are in place for peaceful, calm contentment to arise, the gentle happiness of sukha^[7]. We are at peace with the way things are, with a deep feeling of well-being. With agitation dispelled through tranquility, the well-being of calm contentment allows the mind to become unified in samādhi.

So we're on this beautiful gradual path, and it may be more gradual for some than for others. It doesn't matter if we're a slow bloomer or a fast bloomer; we all have our karma to untangle, our knots to untie, and this will take the time it takes. We need to study how we get caught and to learn what works and doesn't work for us on the path to freedom.

The good news is that no matter where we are on the path, there are always opportunities for meeting our suffering skillfully. And in that encounter, if we are mindful, we will see the forks in the road that continually arise, and we can choose the peaceful road that leads to freedom. If we're not mindful, chances are we'll be caught in reactivity, and without even seeing the fork, we hurtle on down the saṃsāric^[8] path of dukkha^[9].

It's also good news that as our practice develops, we do get better and better at recognizing the forks in the road and choosing the wholesome one over the unwholesome. We learn that we don't need to be at war with ourselves, or at war with the way things are. In any situation, we can choose peace. Obviously, I'm not saying that we shouldn't defend ourselves if we're attacked, but I am saying that blind reactivity is our enemy on this path.

As our mindfulness becomes strong and we begin to live in the practice of mindfulness more and more, we choose the path of peace. One of the most powerful things I learned from my root teacher, Suzuki Roshi^[10], was that he taught the dharma most powerfully by his example. He radiated the Buddhist teachings, and that's something that we can do too.

So in the context of what we've been exploring this week, we can incline our minds to the supreme safety, the supreme peace. Through our practice, we cultivate joy, tranquility, the well-being of contentment, and unification, and we can share these beautiful fruits of practice with everyone we come into contact with. So the invitation is to live in peace to the extent we're able to.

We can begin to contribute to peace in the world by cultivating peace in ourselves. If aversive thoughts arise, we look for peaceful thoughts. We try to ensure that our speech is peaceful, our actions peaceful. And through our practice, little by little, with the help of sati, lucid awareness, we can be peaceful.

In everything we do, we offer peace to ourselves and to everyone, to all beings. And we can make the aspiration to be a safe haven of peace for all beings everywhere.

Thank you for your practice.