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Introduction

Good morning everyone, and welcome to our Sunday meditation and Dharma talk^[1]. I'm happy to be with you, and part of my delight in being here this morning is that I'm teaching a ten-day retreat this week. It's been going on for seven days now, and this is the third online retreat that I've taught during these COVID-19 shelter-in-place times. It's done on Zoom, so everyone is practicing at home. It's been quite lovely, surprisingly, to do retreats this way. Maybe another day I'll talk a little bit about this experience of online retreats and how well it works.

But what I'd like to say to begin this sitting: I'm remembering one of the first monks that I met when I discovered this practice of Insight Meditation^[2]. I was introduced to it in a monastery in Thailand where I sat my first retreat. I kind of stumbled on the place; it wasn't exactly intentional to go and sit a retreat. In the monastery, there was a young English monk who other people said had deep attainments. He had attained some of the greatest meditation states that meditation is capable of doing. I was kind of in awe, and maybe a little bit in disbelief. Can people really do such things?

I had a chance to talk to him. I wasn't confronting him, I was just curious. I asked him, in his years as a monastic, what had he attained? Rather than saying that he attained these great meditation states, his answer has stayed with me ever since. It has been a very important reference point, or inspiration, for my own practice and how to live.

His reply was very short. He said, "Non-contention." In his years as a monastic, he had attained or gained a capacity for non-contention. In my vocabulary, maybe I would say non-conflict. There certainly can be conflict in a conventional way of talking about it, but to be in conflict with non-contention—certainly, I hope it doesn't mean that we just give in or become passive and allow injustice to happen. That doesn't seem right. But to have discovered a capacity to be aware deep inside. For awareness, for mindfulness, especially in meditation, to learn a place within where we don't have to react. We don't have to be for or against. We don't have to be in conflict with what is arising and appearing as we sit in meditation. To sit in meditation with non-contention towards all things that appear. Then, we have our wisdom after meditation to know what to appropriately say no to, or even oppose. But even then, it can be done in a way that is not contentious, yet powerful.

Guided Meditation: Trusting Awareness

To begin this meditation session, you can take a meditation posture that is supportive for you. Take a posture in such a way that you can have a sense that your body is going to support you in this session. Maybe that means that you relax into your body a bit, that you have a kind of receptive feeling. As if you can receive the support of your body—the ways in which your body has supported you for a lifetime so far. Even if the body is challenging, it's the only body you have that has been keeping you alive and going. You can let your body find a posture or a way of being in meditation so it does feel supportive. Maybe even feeling the body caring for itself.

Gently and supportively, allow your eyes to close. With a sense of care and support for yourself, you might take a few somewhat deeper, comfortable breaths, with a little longer exhale. A comfortably long exhale is a way of letting go into this spot, a ritual letting go and settling in to this time and place. To being here and now. This is where you will be aware of what's happening at this place, at this time. A little nudge for the mind to remember not to be concerned with other times and other places. For now, seek the support that comes from being fully here, being really with ourselves and our experience in this meditation.

Then, letting your breathing return to normal and softening and relaxing what is easy to relax in the body. Perhaps as you do so, feel the goodness or the support that comes from not being tense or held. Softening the muscles of the face, so the muscles of the face can relax away from the skull and be held by the skin. Maybe your shoulders can relax a bit away from the spine and down towards the earth.

Perhaps softening in the area of the heart. Even if you feel some trouble in your heart area, just soften and relax around it—the diaphragm, the solar plexus. Soften and relax your belly. Soften in whatever way you might be bracing yourself against life. Perhaps for these minutes we're sitting here together, we can allow what we're afraid of to not hold the body tense. Relax and soften in the body so the body can settle, support us, and settle into the here and now.

Perhaps also relaxing the thinking muscle. The pressure, the tension of incessant thinking, worrying, wanting, not wanting, figuring things out, and fantasizing. Sometimes, if you feel carefully, the thinking mind can feel tired and weary from the ongoing activity of imagining and visualizing. Meditation can be giving the thinking mind a break. Instead of thinking, rest in awareness, allowing for a natural awareness of the present. We come back to opening to how we're aware, by relaxing into awareness, by allowing ourselves to be receptive of the breathing.

Allow the experience of breathing to appear in awareness, rather than us going to the breath with attention. Awareness can be receptive. We can continually invite reality to show itself to awareness, as if we're at ease, non-contentious, not in conflict with anything, or wanting anything. But a willingness to allow things to just appear as they do in awareness. Into an awareness that is hopefully clear, clearly aware, so it doesn't get entangled and caught thinking about things.

As a guide, as a friend and companion for this receptive, present-moment awareness, allow your breathing to come and go. Almost as if you're holding hands with your breathing. Your breathing can be your companion, and you can be the companion of your breathing. Breathing is always in the present. Staying here, staying now, supportively, lovingly, feeling the support and the care of here and now.

When the mind has wandered off in thought, return to awareness. See if you can do so by returning to trusting awareness. To whatever degree that's available to you, return to some place where you can trust being aware. Trust, just for now in these moments sitting here, that just being alive is enough. Just being aware of this lived life, trusting it.

Reflections

As we come to the end of this meditation, you might reflect for a moment on whatever calm or subtleness, whatever peacefulness or clarity that might have appeared while sitting here. Reflect on whatever degree of non-contentiousness or ease, some benefit that you've received from sitting quietly for these minutes.

Reflect on how, from this place, it might be easier to love, to care, and for there to be kindness, simple friendliness, and goodwill. Our natural capacity to care for others and care for ourselves can operate easily when we're not preoccupied and tense, thinking about a lot of things. Trusting awareness, trusting settling in and being present, is a vehicle for greater care and love.

From whatever care, love, or goodwill that you have, imagine that it is a great light that radiates from you out into the world. Imagine that your care spreads outward across the lands, around the world. Wish for all beings to be safe, all beings to be healthy, and all beings to know that there are others who care for them and about them. That there are such people in the world who have goodwill and wish well of others.

May it be that on this day, you actually express your goodwill in some way. If you're alone today, maybe towards yourself. Or, if there are people that you'll encounter, neighbors that you have, people in your community, or people you know far away—what can you do today that gives some active expression to whatever degree of love and care that exists in your heart?