Guided Meditation: Mindful of the Beginning; Dharmette: Impermanence (5): Arising

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Mindful of the Beginning; Impermanence (5): Arising. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Maria Straatmann at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on April 17, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Mindful of the Beginning

Good morning. Hello everyone. Whatever time of day it is, allow yourself to be here, experiencing things coming and going.

This week we've been talking about impermanence, and today I want to bring back to mind the intimacy of mindfulness. Let's begin our sit this morning by realizing that we are beginning a sit, a period of quiet meditation. We are beginning to leave behind everything that was here the moment before we arrived, the moment before this one. We are simply here at the beginning of our sit.

Do all of the things that you do when you're setting aside this sacred time. Align your body here in the room. Be aware of where it is standing. What is supporting it? Sitting, lying down. We're beginning a new period just now. Just now we're resting in this period. We're coming together in this place, coming into this time.

Take a deep breath and let it out. Maybe another deep breath and let it out. The movement of the air, we're noticing. We're aware of it. We're aware of our body, the head on its axis, the neck. Loosen the neck. Start the beginning of this sit by lowering your shoulders and noticing your elbows close to your body. The intimacy of all the pieces of your body being in this moment. Your hands at rest, no longer having to do something. Just breathe.

With the passage of air, notice the beginning of the breath, the end of the exhale, the beginning again of the inhale. Enter each moment and know you are entering each moment. Feel the aliveness of your body with each inhale. Know that you are here. Feel the sensations of your body. Let your attention be as soft as the breath. Just yes.

As my voice interrupts this moment, notice the beginning of hearing. Notice the beginning of reaction to hearing. Be aware of the beginning of this, the presence of my voice, and the end of the hearing. And when you notice the end, notice where your awareness goes next. Be aware of the beginning of the moment, the beginning of the inbreath, the beginning of the outbreath.

Are you still in the room? What are you aware of? What sensations? Hearing^[1], feeling, movement, touching the moment. Know that you are touching this moment. Know that you are here in this moment.

As we come to the end of the period of meditation, before you step out of your meditative posture, notice the intention to move. Notice what moves first. Notice the beginning of the movement and the end of the movement. Be as intimate as possible with how you begin the ending. The intention to move your hands, to shift your posture, maybe to lift your feet, to open your eyes. Notice first the intention. Notice what you move first.

Dharmette: Impermanence (5): Arising

So here we are in this moment. We have this week been talking about impermanence^[2]. So far we've looked at loss, inconstancy, and uncertainty. All of these things are somewhat related to the unsatisfactoriness^[3] we sometimes experience around impermanence. Unsatisfactoriness, we know, leads to suffering. "Oh, I don't want it this way. I want it to be other." We watch the rise, the being present, the passing away of all things.

The sequence that we've addressed it in has been somewhat in an opposite order. We've talked about what was past and what was present. Because after all, what is time from a perceptual point of view? It's a way of ordering your experience. It's a way of tracking the experience. It's a way we keep track of what's happening in our life. But as we implied yesterday, perhaps a better way of thinking about experience is that conditions are always "not here yet," "here," and "past."

But all of the information we get, the experience that we get, is all happening in the present. Everything is happening in the present. That's the only thing we can actually experience. I can only know the present now. I can know the past when it's past. By definition, it's past. And I can only know what is to come when it comes. It's not yet here. I can't experience the future until it's here.

And we think, "Well, I'm experiencing the past. I have my memories." I have a wonderful quote from Ian McEwan^[4] who wrote a book called What We Can Know. It's his latest book, and the statement is, "Memory is a sponge. It soaks up material from other times and other places and leaks it all over the moment in question."

Our memories are very selective, and we have all kinds of opinions, ideas, and feelings about those memories. But our experience of the past is happening now. Memory is a sponge. It soaks up material from other times, other places, and leaks it all over the moment in question. What's happening now is my reaction to that. Memory gives rise to feelings, impressions, and perceptions in the present. What's important is to realize it's happening now. We're not experiencing the past, but only what the past causes to arise in us.

So the closest we come to experience, the closest we come, the most intimate we come, is to see when something is arising. "Oh, this is happening. Oh, this is happening." To be in touch with the experience, to feel all of the experience. To know all of the experience.

Let's think about the arising part of all experience. It arises, is present, and passes away. If every moment is passing away, it is also constantly arising. Each moment is arising fresh. In the same way, the reason we practice, the reason we are practicing mindfulness in general and practicing being present, has to do with the end of suffering. So one way to think about this is that the end of suffering is always beginning. It isn't only suffering that is arising. The end of suffering is also arising.

There's no single moment of the end in the sense that, "Okay, now that's ended," because I'm still thinking about it. I'm still developing impressions and opinions. There's an ever-repeating letting go of wanting things to be other than they are. An ever-present, ever-repeating letting go of wanting things to be other than they are. The letting go of what I think about it, what I'm holding onto, is something that has a beginning.

This is where a practice arises. Some event happens, some experience arises, some sensation we hear, we see, we taste, we smell, we have a thought, and ends the way the conditions have been up to this moment, and new conditions are arising. And what we have left is noticing and our intention, which sets the conditions for the next moment.

This is why the emphasis is on the intimacy of mindfulness. It's not just, "Well, I'm going to pay attention to green today." It's noticing how I'm reacting to green, what my intentions toward green are, and why I am standing in this place.

When you get up in the morning, you make choices about, "Well, what am I going to put on? What am I going to think about today? Where is my coffee?" The beginning of your day is largely habit. But sometimes, you know, I'll get up and walk to my closet and I'll think, "Okay, I'm going to put on the t-shirt I had yesterday." And I'll look at the t-shirt and I'll say, "Oh, it's black. I don't think I feel like black today. I think today I want a different mood." And I condition my day by putting on red because I think, "Ah, red is an energetic color." I can react to what I am experiencing and choose to alter the conditions.

I have no control over most of the conditions of my life. But I have some choices about conditions I deliberately set—conditions that have to do with my intention, like treating myself with kindness in this moment. I have this pendant that I got from an artist, and it's attractive. I don't know if you can see it, but it's a fossil of a palm root. That's what the stone is on the inside. The reason I got it from this artist is because of what she did on the back. I'm not sure you can see this from around my neck, but there are two hands here holding a flame, which is what the palm root fossil reminded her of. And she said, "This was my pendant for hope." So, most people can't see this, but I know this intention toward hope is on the back of this pendant. And when I put it on, I put it on because I have a feeling I wish to encourage hope. And if I never think of it the rest of the day, I've thought of it for that moment, the beginning, setting hope.

We have more control over what happens to us than we actually allow ourselves. But it's related to noticing the precise suchness of how things are, and radical honesty about what we are thinking, feeling, and what our attitude of the moment is. We need to practice seeing, hearing, or tasting without embellishment. Just this. If the teacup is overfull, you can't fill it. There's nothing to come into the moment. If I've decided everything about this moment is this, and now there's no room for what's actually happening, I can't be aware of it. When we embrace what is fresh in our experience, we are more likely to see this. This is what's happening.

If I feel anger arising and I say, "I really don't want to be angry." If I can stop in that moment and think of my intention, perhaps I can redirect my attention. Perhaps I can say, "Okay, I'm on the phone with this person complaining about something that's not working, but it is not this person's fault." If I can catch myself being irritable with this person, I can stop and say, "I'm sorry. It's not you that's the problem here. I'm sorry. Let's begin again. Let's talk about how to solve this problem." I can change based on my intention to be kind, but only if I can stop. Only if I can see it arising. Only if I can see the tendency toward it. It takes a lot of practice, and sometimes I get it wrong, which is why I have to apologize and say, "Oh gee, I'm sorry. I don't mean to make it about you, I mean to be about this moment." I can create space in the moment by saying, "Wait a minute. What else is here besides what's right up in front of me? What else is here that I am not aware of?"

We can become intimate with our mind state. As in the poem I read yesterday from Jane Hirshfield^[5], where she said whatever arises, even the greedy part, even the grieving, I trust. This is being in touch with "just this." I have faith in mindful awareness to help me realize my intentions. This arises out of being very carefully aware and the realization that this moment never arises again. These conditions—they're changed by the very conditions of whatever I decide or think or follow today. This moment never arises again. So I want to experience this now moment^[6] as completely as possible. What makes this moment different from any other moment?

So there are two things I'd like you to think about today. One is to notice what arises, that it arises out of conditions, and that our intentions—what we gather around ourselves in this moment—condition the next moment. My intentions for this moment condition the next moment. "Oh, I'm going to get it." Relax. The next moment. The next moment. The second thing is what we experience is a product of what we experience directly through our senses: the sense stimulus, the thoughts that arise. The conditioned mind, because our minds are conditioned—we have tendencies for how we react to things—creates something from that sensed object.

The importance of mind state, the importance of knowing what our mind habits are and how they influence the conditions that we set. This is happening over and over again. So each moment can become a moment to refocus our attention on our intentions, and then be there for the moment as it unfolds, just as it unfolds. It's a place of wonder and curiosity. Suffering is always ending. Arising is always happening. Impermanence is a process, not a thing.

So, I'm going to close with a brief poem from David Whyte^[7]:

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.
This opening to the life we have refused
again and again until now.
Until now.

Thank you for your attention. I wish you the intimacy of mindfulness. I wish you to always see the end of suffering. Thank you.