Poetry of Practice (1 of 5): Friends

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Poetry of Practice (1 of 5) with Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on August 14, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Poetry of Practice (1 of 5): Friends

Introduction

Good morning, everyone. I hope that I clicked all the right buttons this morning. It's an interesting thing to be here, talking to the camera, assuming there are other people on the other side. Welcome, everybody. Wherever you are, whatever time it might be, welcome.

It's nice to be practicing with you all here. For those of you who don't know me, I'm Diana Clark. I teach at the Insight Meditation Center. Usually, I'm teaching there on Monday nights, so I am often teaching in the evenings rather than here in the mornings. As you can see from the title of the video this morning, this week I want to explore the "Poetry of Practice." As the days go on this week, I'll unpack the different ways we might understand that.

I'll begin by saying there's a way in which we can engage with practice that is concerned with technique. We might ask, "Should we be mindful of the breath here, right on the upper lip? Or should we be mindful of the chest or the belly?" There's a way we're really concerned with the technique. Or maybe there's a way where we're concerned with the Buddhist lists, like, "Now, what was the seventeenth step? I know there are ten paramis, but what are all the ten?" We might have this real concern with, "Am I doing it right? What are all the lists, and do I have all the information that I need?"

That is a valuable way to practice, and it certainly has its place. It's been a real support for me in my practice, but it's not the only way. It can be a trap if we think it is the only way—that we just have to learn all the lists, know all of the techniques, and try to get the exact right list for the exact right technique.

I'd like to point to another way today. This other way invites another type of knowing that encourages an opening of the heart, or maybe a sense of coming home. It's a type of practicing that recognizes something true and pure inside of us. Something that feels really clean and beautiful inside of us, allowing us to soften this continual grasping, evaluating, or looking for the next moment. That sense of, "Am I doing this right?"

One way to do this is practicing with verse or poetry. Words that can touch us in a different way. I don't want to devalue the lists and the techniques; I just want to add to, or maybe broaden, our understanding and appreciation of the ways that practice can show up. So, rather than just consuming information and trying to adapt to the information that we learn, we can allow ourselves to be nourished by the words, to be touched and fed by what we hear.

Many of you will know there is plenty of verse in the Pali Canon. This is something that practitioners throughout the millennia have been practicing with, and we'll be doing some of that. Today, during the guided sit, I'll drop in a short poem. Then, in the short talk afterwards, I'll talk about it and maybe provide some other poems.

With that as an introduction, let's take a meditation posture.

Guided Meditation

Taking a moment to really settle in. To sit and know you're sitting. Bringing an aliveness of attention to the experience of sitting. Breathing. Feeling the sensations of touch with the floor. The feet touching the floor, or if you're sitting on the floor, the legs. The buttocks sitting on the chair, the cushion, the bench, couch, or maybe even the bed. However you are in this moment, whatever posture you're in. Maybe your back is supported, feeling the pressure, the touch with the back of the chair. Bringing this aliveness of attention, this mindfulness, into the body, into that bodily experience. Inhabiting the body with aliveness, with presence.

Then, setting the sense of direction—a movement where we're going for the rest of this meditation period. Can you set the intention as one of kindness? Is it possible to have a sense of holding yourself in care in this moment? Being within yourself with a kind attitude and warmth. Putting aside any notions of this being a self-improvement project. Through this meditation period, returning to this orientation of kindness.

Then, connecting with the anchor. For many of us, it will be the breath. Feeling the sensations of breathing in a relaxed, easy way. But not a cavalier way—a way that has some intention or commitment to feeling the sensations of the breath, or whatever your anchor is.

When the mind wanders, that might be a time to remind ourselves of this orientation towards kindness. Just very simply, gently, begin again. No need to make stories. It doesn't mean anything about us as meditators; it just means the mind wandered. We just come back.

Really feeling the sensations of breathing. The beginning, middle, and end of an exhale. The beginning, middle, and end of an inhale. The transitions between inhales and exhales. Nowhere else to be, nothing else to do. We're just here with the experience of breathing in a simple and uncomplicated way.

I'm going to drop in a short poem. You don't need to do anything with this poem. Just allow it to be heard. Maybe it touches something, maybe it doesn't. The poem goes like this:

While walking along the river after a long day meditating on Vulture Peak, I watched an elephant splashing its way out of the water and up the bank.

"Hello, my friend," a person waiting there said, scratching the elephant behind its ear. "Did you have a good bath?"

The elephant stretched out its leg, the person climbed up, and the two rode off like that together.

Seeing what had once been so wild now a friend and companion to this good person, I took a seat under the nearest tree and reached out a gentle hand to my own mind.

Truly, I thought, this is why I came to the woods.

Seeing what had once been so wild now a friend and companion to this good person, I took a seat under the nearest tree and reached out a gentle hand to my own mind. Truly, I thought, this is why I came to the woods.

Thank you.

Befriending the Mind

Hello again. So, this poem that I read during the guided meditation was written by a poet who was inspired by the poems of the Therigatha^[1]. Some of you might know the Therigatha are the poems of awakening, poems of women from the time of the Buddha. This poet was inspired by them, reinterpreted them, and wrote new poems which I think are really lovely.

Sometimes meditation practice is not befriending our mind. Instead, there's a certain type of beating ourselves up, berating ourselves, or speaking disparagingly about ourselves or about our practice. So, what would it mean for us to make friends with our minds? What would it mean to soften this inner critic that sometimes shows up with meditation practice?

We might think of this inner critic as a sub-personality inside of us, a certain dynamic or constellation of experiences that puts us down and belittles us. It is judging, blaming, and nagging. It has this quality of harshness and creates an inner climate or environment of harshness. When this inner critic is up and running, there's a pervasive sense of inadequacy, of not being enough. Whatever I'm doing is not quite right or is somehow insufficient.

When the inner critic is loud, authoritative, or really present, there's a sense that we just don't accept things. We think, "It's not good enough, it's not okay, I don't accept it. Whatever my experience is, this shouldn't be happening."

The Four Noble Truths^[2], of course, recognize this. The first truth is that there is suffering. The second noble truth is that there's something underlying that suffering. So, instead of asking a question like, "What is underlying this? What is supporting this?" when the inner critic is really up and running, we often ask, "Am I doing it right?" We might have this feeling that we're not doing it right.

As one way of making friends with the mind, can we change the question? Instead of, "Am I doing this right?"—which often leads to, "I'm sure I'm not doing this right"—can we change the question to, "How am I?" How am I right now?

This question is very different. It is a question of kindness rather than meeting demands; it's a question of care. When we notice that the inner critic is really up and running, can we make friends with the mind? One way to do this is to just ask: "How am I? How am I in this moment?"

There's another poem that points to this orientation of kindness and friendship with oneself, with one's mind, and with what's happening in the moment. This is by the same poet—whom I'll name at the end—but right now I'll just read the poem. It goes like this:

After twenty-five years on the path, I had experienced almost everything except peace. When I was young, my mother told me that I would find true happiness only in marriage. And remembering her words all those years later, something in me began to tremble.

I gave myself to the trembling, and it showed me all the pain this little heart had ever known. How countless lives of searching had brought me at last to the present moment, which I happily married.

And can you imagine? We've been living together ever since without a single argument.

I love this poem. It has this little twist in there that we're not expecting. It starts with the practitioner seeming to have difficulty with practice. The poet writes, "After twenty-five years on the path, I had experienced almost everything except peace." Sometimes this is the way the inner critic shows up. It's like, "Twenty-five years"—or however long, twenty-five minutes, twenty weeks—"I should get it by now. I should be having different experiences. I've experienced everything, all this terribleness, except peace." There might be a way the inner critic tells us that we should have different experiences than what we're having.

Then, in this poem, the practitioner allowed herself to tremble. Some of you might know that trembling is sometimes described as a quivering of the heart, like compassion. What if this trembling that the poet points to is this quivering of the heart, this compassion? Showing the pain that she'd had all these years, being met with compassion, and then she marries the present moment.

And then she says, "Can you imagine? We've been living together ever since without a single argument." I love this idea of marrying the present moment, because there's a commitment, a loyalty. But with no guarantees it's always going to be fun and easy. We know this in all our relationships—whether with friends, family members, spouses, partners, or kids. Sometimes there's ease, and sometimes there are difficulties. But we can have this commitment, this loyalty to staying. Here, she's staying with the present moment. What would it mean to stay with the present moment, even though it's not always easy or pleasant?

I'll bring in a third poem written by the same poet. It goes like this:

I was forever getting lost until one day the Buddha told me, "To walk this path, you will need seven friends: Mindfulness, Curiosity, Courage, Joy, Calm, Stillness, and Perspective."

For many years, these friends and I have traveled together. Sometimes wandering in circles, sometimes taking the long way around.

There were days when I thought I couldn't go on. There were days when I thought I was finally beaten. It's scary to give all of yourself to just one thing. What if you don't make it?

Oh, my heart, you don't have to go it alone. Train yourself to train just a little more gently.

Oh, my heart, you don't have to go it alone. Train yourself to train just a little more gently.

Some of you might recognize that the list of the seven friends at the beginning of this poem are the Seven Factors of Awakening^[3]. Here, the poet is interpreting them as mindfulness, curiosity, courage, joy, calm, stillness, and perspective. Can you imagine if we have these as friends, as companions on our path?

Then the poet adds a few more things to this list: confidence, conviction, or trust. Antidotes to doubt. The poet writes, "It's scary to give all of yourself to just one thing. What if you don't make it?" Imagine this is a certain way the inner critic shows up, saying, "What if you don't make it? I'd better hedge my bets. I'll do a little bit of this, a little bit of that, or I'll be present only when it's pleasant."

But instead, she points to this gentle persistence at the end, with an emphasis on gentle. Making these seven factors, along with confidence or conviction, companions on this path. Rather than something we're supposed to do to make ourselves better or fix something, what would it be like to just have these companions on our path? In the same way that we make friends with the mind and the present moment, what would it be like to be friendly with the Seven Factors of Awakening, to invite them in as companions?

These three poems—some of you might have heard of them, perhaps not—are by Matty Weingast^[4]. They are collected in his book called The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns. These are Matty's interpretations of the awakening poems of early Buddhist women, and they're really beautiful. I love them. They bring in a certain amount of whimsy and seem so relevant in describing practice from a different angle. Instead of practice being something heavy or fussy about what we should do, it just makes my heart sing. It feels like there's an openness, an ease, and a real invitation to bring this openness to our practice.

This week, we'll be exploring different poems that point to practice in a different way. Hopefully, it's a way that nourishes and warms the heart, inviting all aspects of ourselves—including the inner critic—to bring this full-heartedness to our practice.

Thank you, and I'll see you tomorrow.