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Guided Meditation: Confident Mindfulness

Welcome everyone, and thank you for the greetings that are in the YouTube chat, and thank you all for being here. Thank you to those of you who have been coming regularly, for some of you well over a year now. I think all this has added inspiration and momentum to me, and I think many of us, for the practice and engagement with the teachings.

Today's guided meditation is based on a little bit of what's going to be said during the dharmette^[1] following here. I want to offer a little caveat first, and that is that what I'm going to teach might not be suitable for everyone, and for wonderful, important reasons. What I'm offering is not supposed to be like this is a better way or the right way for anyone. There might be good reasons for you to have other approaches, other ways of practicing mindfulness which are more appropriate for many circumstances, including what you're working on these days in terms of developing your practice. Please use some discernment of whether to go along with what I'm saying. You're welcome to, if it seems like it's going in the wrong direction, tune me out, turn off the sound maybe, and just sit quietly in your own way.

The topic is strength—to bring a sense of strength, a power, to engaging in mindfulness practice. I would like to suggest that it's not so much a matter of overriding how we are to be powerful or strong in the practice, but rather to realize a certain kind of inner strength and power that is being channeled, or which is engaging our capacity to be mindful. This personal power, a kind of inner power, strength, or maybe a vitality, I associate with things like confidence. To sit with really strong confidence gives a kind of strength to people to sit with courage.

Sometimes what we are working with is quite difficult, and what we have to be present for is challenging, and to sit with a certain kind of courage. Again, not the courage that is bypassing how we are, but that it rises from deep inside and moves through and supports and engages all of who we are, so that we're not limited by anything, or held back, or held in check. So there's a fullness that can come, a certain kind of fullness. The art of this is to discover just that—how we can use a native strength, something that's almost inherent within us in our whole psychophysical system, a capacity for letting the energetic engagement feel like it's not even us doing it. Rather, it is allowing the system to express a wonderful "yes." "Yes, I'm here. Yes, I'm going to be present in a full way."

When there's that kind of energy of strength or power, it's very easy for that to be channeled into thinking, into agitation in the mind. The art of it is to learn how to have a cognitive quiet or calm. Because we're not thinking a lot or caught up in thought, there's more room for an almost physical, embodied strength to support us to be really here. That would be the goal of tapping into our personal strength—a strength for being present, a strength for just being really here. Like an embodied "yes," an intention that this whole system is going to be here in a clear, engaged, open, energetic way that creates a partnership with a certain kind of vitality and a stillness.

If this doesn't make sense for you, please don't hold it up as being a better way or the right way to practice mindfulness. But if it makes sense, you might experiment with it this time.

So, to assume a posture. If it's possible to have a posture that expresses some degree of confidence, you might adjust your posture very slightly to have a feeling of confidence in the posture. You might not tap into some innate confidence, but assume a posture which is an expression of confidence. Like if you were an actor, how would you show a confident stance? Not too dramatically like an actor, but just very subtly, and gently close your eyes.

Without breathing deeply differently than you ever do other times, begin by breathing deeply and recognize in the deeper inhales and longer exhales there is some degree of confidence and strength that's being manifested.

As you have a longer exhale, appreciating that energy of confidence or strength, allow yourself to also relax all the physical muscles which are being held and tense, almost as if those tense muscles are interfering with an inner confidence.

Then let your breathing return to normal. Again, with a little bit of confidence as you exhale, relax the parts of your body, maybe with the word "yes" that expresses that confidence in relaxing to be present.

Exhaling and relaxing the face, softening.

Exhaling and relaxing the shoulders.

And then with a "yes" as you exhale, softening the belly.

Scan through your body and see if there's any location in your body where it seems to be the clearest location for you to have confidence, courage, or a sense of strength. Either because you know from previous experience that that's the place, or you feel it now. It could be anywhere. It could be this kind of strength in your belly, a fire of sorts. It could be in the chest, where the word courage comes from—the word heart in French. It could be a sense of strength in the spine. Or maybe it lives in the hands, legs, and the feet.

If you can, as you exhale, relax into that location in your body, almost like you're letting go of your thoughts and letting go into whatever feeling of strength or confidence that you have in your body.

Any feeling of vitality or strength in your body is a present moment experience. It's not a memory or a plan for the future. The experience, the feelings, the sensations of vitality, energy, confidence, and strength are in the present moment.

Here in the present, allowing that to support or enable mindfulness, maybe an embodied sense of awareness, body-fullness, keeping you grounded or rooted in the present moment body experience.

Perhaps whatever sense of confidence or strength you can feel, maybe you can let it spread and be global enough to include the body breathing, as if it animates or supports or is channeled through the breathing.

A confidence of being here with each breath.

If the energy seems to be building too strongly, remember to relax as you exhale. Soften so the energy doesn't get concentrated in any one place in the body, but becomes a global, soft, open feeling of confidence and courage.

Letting the thinking mind become quiet. Letting this strength or confidence cooperate with whatever feeling of peacefulness or calm that might be here as you practice. A calm confidence, a peaceful strength.

Not letting the strength or energy override the peacefulness and calm. If it does, then maybe let go of the strength and the confidence to settle in deeper.

[Silence]

Now shift your attention just a little bit from the sense of inner strength or confidence to whatever sense of inner peace or calm there might be, no matter how small or background it might feel.

Relax the thinking mind and settle into that feeling of calm and peace, so that present moment peacefulness or calmness is a little bit more of what carries your mindfulness, your awareness. So the sense of gentle, tender mindfulness can be infused with peacefulness and calmness.

[Silence]

As we come to the end of this sitting, appreciate the capacity of human beings, of others, and of yourself to live a life where our life energy does not feel held in check by fear or attachments within, or by the social conditions around us. Where confidence and courage is not channeled through an aggressiveness that then limits or intimidates others, but is a kind of freedom, a wonderful "yes," and a feeling that we're confident that we're able to make a difference in the world. We have the ability and the capacity to make this world a better place, even if it's quite small, even if it's very local in our own lives, for the people immediately around us.

Turn your heart inside out to gaze upon the world kindly, compassionately, tenderly. Wish both for happiness and well-being and freedom for others, and wish that you have within you the appropriate "yes" that you would like, to support this possibility.

Yes, may all beings be happy. Yes, may others feel safe. Yes, may I contribute to a peaceful world. Yes, may we all together find ways to work for freedom, for the liberation of all beings. Yes, may we live for the welfare and happiness of the whole world.

Dharmette: Hatred (4 of 5) Composting Hatred

Today I'm offering the fourth talk on the topic of ill will, hatred, and hostility. The talk is not meant to be a standalone talk; certainly, it's meant to be a continuation of the first three talks that set the ground for today. But also, it's meant to be a continuation of a long period of time focusing on mindfulness practice and Buddhist practice. It's meant for people who have a strong grounding in mindfulness.

Most specifically, this talk is a little bit of what we think of as an advanced practice, in the sense that I'm really offering it either as a possibility in the future for some of you, or for those of you who have already cultivated a good sense of how to practice mindfulness. It builds on the capacity to be non-reactive with our experience. To get out of the way and to allow what's within us to be there without being involved. Without picking it up, without getting caught in it, without fueling it, and without trying to get rid of it, resisting it, or trying to fix it.

To learn this capacity and how to do it wisely so that we don't cause harm in the world or harm to ourselves, I think of meditation practice as a wonderful laboratory for it. Because the topic is ill will, hostility, and hatred—which overlaps but is not always synonymous with anger, sometimes with fury—when we sit in meditation, we're committed for the duration of the meditation practice to not act on any of these impulses. We commit to sit with a body that's quiet and still, and we're also committed to not intentionally and actively be involved in the stories, the ideas, and the planning that are connected to these intense feelings of ill will that might exist in us.

What the practice is today—and which we practice every Thursday for these three weeks—is composting these difficult states or these intensities. These are things which in Buddhism are considered poisons^[2]. So rather than condemning them, we learn how to be present for them so that they can be transformed. But they are not transformed because we're in there tinkering with them. The composting of them happens through the way the whole psychophysical system has the capacity to move them to greater health.

Hostility and hatred is a form of illness inside. It is an illness in the sense that it's self-harming and can become a kind of poison. Rather than condemning it, we allow the inner system to heal it, to transform it, to compost it by simply allowing it. This is sometimes most useful when there's no other choice because the anger or hostility is so strong. If we have the ability to be present for it without getting entangled or caught by it, and just allow it, something different can happen than if we're trying to fix it, or if the self identifies with it, or pushes it away, or somehow the self is in relationship to it.

One of the advantages of this is that our sense of personal strength, even power, a real vitality that moves through us in a wonderful way, overlaps or is connected to hostility and anger. These are very powerful states; there's a lot of energy in them. If we squash, push away, or deny these powerful feelings, we might also inadvertently suppress the vitality, the energy, the strength, and the confidence that can exist in us as well. The suppression of anger and hostility creates a bottleneck or a pressure cooker—unhealthy ways in which this life vitality can then explode later on or fester within.

One of the advantages of mindfully practicing really careful mindfulness with these strong, harmful energies is that it connects us to this inner strength. It's possible that as we compost it and transform this negative expression of energy, the energy can be retained or made available for healthy things, for wholesome phenomena. I think in Buddhist practice, over time, the idea is to become strong human beings, to not have our inner strength, confidence, or even courage be somehow stifled, but to actually be able to show up in the world. Not aggressively or assertively, but with a clear sense of stable, upright energy and presence.

So, composting hostility in meditation. First, we have to learn the capacity to be present non-reactively, to be present without being for or against, until mindfulness becomes strong enough that it feels like it can open to be present here for this. When anger or hostility is strong, I think it's best to look upon this as not trying to just do this continuously, but rather that it's sequential—it's moment by moment.

We might recognize, "Oh, there's anger here, hostility here." Then, for a moment, open up and feel what it feels like in the body. Let the body feel it. As soon as you're in your body, the body is in the present moment, and the body is a kind of processing center. It's a way in which things can move and transform, making space, like we're giving things breathing room to relax and open up. Sometimes it needs to get stronger first. The thoughts are there, and we don't fight the thinking and think we have to make letting go of the story the be-all and end-all. When we're practicing this composting, it's a moment-by-moment opening to what's here. "Oh, this is what's happening."

In those few moments that we can open, that's where the non-reactivity is. That's where the freedom is. Then we have to do it again and again. We just kind of trust opening again and again. What we're doing there by constantly saying, "Okay, here, feel this, be present for this," is we are stepping away from being entangled, fueling, identifying with, and feeding the anger, the hostility, and the hatred. We really give it room as if it could take care of itself and transform itself.

There's no need for shame. There's no need for hostility towards our hostility. I don't know if I want to say there is no need for fear—there's healthy fear definitely around hostility and anger, a fear of causing harm—but there's also no need to somehow be caught in the fear of it. It's just, "Here, here." Sometimes it takes a while for things to settle down, open up, and transform. On the way, we might realize that the hostility or the anger, as I said yesterday, is a symptom. It's a messenger almost for something deeper inside of us. By making room for it, something in the cracks of the ill will can show that there are things like fear or hurt underneath it. If we open to that, then that itself begins to show that there's something deeper still. Underneath it, there's a sense of maybe care or compassion, a sense of goodwill or tenderness. There's a whole other world deep inside waiting for us here that sometimes is the very thing that's been challenged or overlooked or that we're closed down around.

The very closeness to our tenderness, our peacefulness, our love, and our compassion is part of what gives some of the negative power to hostility. To be able to discover this reservoir of peace, of compassion and care, and of tenderness within—that's where the energy and strength can flow through and be here. Then the energy of our life is not squashed or diminished, but it can flow now through goodwill instead of through ill will. A goodwill and a compassion that maybe needs to address the situations in the world that are the conditions for anger or hostility. There is injustice in the world, and there is harm that's being caused in the world and to ourselves. So how do we respond to that, or how do we protect ourselves from that? How do we address that with this sense of confidence, courage, and uprightness of this deeper vitality that somehow gets skewed or becomes more dangerous if that energy is channeled through hostility and anger? To do this practice of composting and transforming is not meant to be an avoidance of addressing the issues of our life and around us, but rather to do so from a different place where we're rooted in the wholesome roots inside of us. We're rooted in generosity, love, compassion, and wisdom, in a way that people feel, "Oh, there's strength there." There's a real chance to meet someone and be with someone who is confident and is not diminishing themselves.

I feel a little bit cautious in what I've offered here. What I'm saying today needs to be done with great care, certainly with compassion and gentleness, and very careful monitoring, so that this allowing and being present for things like hatred, hostility, and ill will doesn't get stronger than we can manage. The standard for knowing when it is stronger than we can manage is when it takes over, so that when we open our eyes and take a deep breath, we can't feel grounded again or stable. One of the ways of practicing this composting is periodically in the meditation to pull ourselves out of it, look around, take a deep breath, somehow shake it off, and then dip down again if it seems appropriate. We don't want to let that pressure build and build because we're supposed to just stick through it to the end of the meditation. That's usually not so useful. The standard is to just do it well enough, just good enough, and trust that over time the composting will happen. Not insist that it has to happen in one sitting. Do it just good enough, and when you feel like it's getting the upper hand a little bit, then take a deep breath, open your eyes, maybe even get up and go for a walk, and then come back. It is very important to feel that you have some strength in not being pulled into it too much.

So, composting, transforming. We have one more talk tomorrow that's related to the liberation from and of ill will and hatred. Thank you all very much, and I look forward to our time tomorrow.