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Guided Meditation: Healthy Guidance

Hello, and I'm delighted to be here with you. It is very nice to receive the warm greetings in the text.

For this meditation, I would like to offer you a practice, a way of engaging in the practice that you maybe already do. It is an aid to being interested in staying in the present moment—more interested in what's happening in your direct experience than in what you can think about. When you are thinking about things, having discursive thoughts about other topics, you're not here and now. This practice makes the present moment more interesting and helps you enter more deeply into your direct experience.

In doing so, your direct experience becomes a guide for you to find your path. In a sense, you become your own teacher, your own guide.

As you sit here, you'll be doing a lot of things. You'll, for example, adjust your posture. You'll decide to bring your attention to your breathing. You'll wonder where you should focus on the breathing today; the usual place is fine, but perhaps there is another place where the breathing is stronger. There might be some sensations in your body that need attention, so you'll direct your attention to the body sensations. Or sounds, or maybe emotions are predominant.

Whatever you are doing in every moment, the subtle small things that you're navigating all the time, feel your way into doing what is healthy for you. Let the notion of healthy be your guide. What feels right? What feels healthy? What feels wholesome? What feels like it is supportive of you? It can be as subtle as how you move your attention to an object. If you feel an ache in your knee and you're going to be mindful of it, notice how you turn your attention and place it there. How can you do it in a way that's healthy, that is easeful, that has goodness in it? It's like you enjoy doing it; this feels good, as opposed to not healthy.

If you're following your breathing, what is a healthy way of being with the breath? Is the way you're breathing the most healthy? When I use the word healthy, I don't mean dramatically healthy or long-term healthy. I'm talking about the very feelings, the sensations, the way it is right now. Perhaps relaxing more in the exhale feels like it moves in a healthy direction, having a subtle feeling of being more right, more easeful, and more connected.

You're searching, feeling your way. If you can't sense what's healthy, then choose some related criteria: what is inspiring, what feels right, what feels easeful, what feels like it connects you more deeply to yourself.

This present moment criteria guides you with all the little choices you make. One of those choices is to start again. If your mind wanders off in thought, if you notice you're thinking, there is a choice you have to make. Can you make that switch from thinking to being present for yourself again in a way that feels healthy, sane, or easeful? Can you do it in a way that feels peaceful, that has within it a feeling of being reassuring and settling, like, "Yes, this is good to come back." Come back not in a hurry, not with shame, anger, or blame. The idea that you're doing things wrong or shouldn't be thinking—those kinds of thoughts are not so healthy for you. It's healthier to say, "Oh, it's time to go back to the breathing. Let me gently start again with my breathing, and let me start it in a place where it feels most reassuring, most centering, most healthy for me."

Make that choice continuously in a relaxed, healthy way. You want to do this in a relaxed, healthy way itself, staying close to that constant guidance. It's like following a somewhat indistinct path in the forest: you search for the next step in the path continuously, looking for the good path that takes you out of the brambles and the difficult rocky areas. Stay away from the rattlesnakes. Just right here. Stay here. This is the next step for your meditation.

Sit in a healthy way for you, where health also has an energizing, awakening feeling in your body. Look for the present moment experience of what's healthy. Even if you're sick and not feeling healthy at all, there is a more generic, subtle feeling of aliveness. In spite of being sick, aching, and tired, sitting this way gives a little more sense of aliveness.

Adjust the hands. Notice if the hands have a little bit more sense of healthy aliveness.

Maybe there's an adjustment to the torso that frees up the space around the diaphragm, so the whole area of the diaphragm feels like it has more room.

Maybe it's healthy to relax the muscles of your body.

Relax the thinking mind, the thinking muscle.

Maybe there's a way you can approach your breathing in a gentle, healthy way. Not getting too close or too far away, but just the right distance in relationship to your breathing. This gives breathing room.

Subtly adjust your breathing so it feels more healthy and easeful.

What would be the healthy orientation of the mind, of awareness, to accompany breathing to make room for it? Can the sensations of breathing feel like they support you in life?

As we continue sitting, for each step along the way you need to make a little choice. Often these choices are made unconsciously. Feel your way. Sense your way into what might feel healthy, easeful, and satisfying.

Is it more healthy for you to allow the sensations of breathing to be received like you're gently being massaged or stroked? Or is it more healthy for you to be the masseuse, the one who gently strokes the breathing?

As we come to the end of this sitting, consider: has there been some way that the reference of healthiness has oriented you into the present moment? Has it oriented you into the present moment in a welcoming, beneficial way? What is that mind, that orientation, that has healthiness as its concern? Can that orientation itself be healthy? This way of self-care—can it be directed towards others? Not that we're going to make them healthy, but can we be oriented to the welfare of others with that healthy mind? A mind concerned with welfare, health, and happiness in a simple, ordinary way.

As we end this sitting, may we offer our best wishes for the welfare and happiness of this world. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. Thank you.

Dharmette: Wholesome (1 of 5) Finding One's Path

Hello and welcome to the beginning of this series. This week's topic follows last week's, which was about the characteristic qualities of the Dharma by which we can find our own way. We can be our own teachers by really knowing how to connect to and touch that inner intelligence that exists in the present moment, which arises from a careful attentiveness to our present moment experience. I offered the idea that this Dharma intelligence is there in between the sensations and perceptions we have of present moment experience and the knowing of that, the awareness of that. Something dynamic can happen there that can guide us and support us. This is onward leading; this is where it invites us to be present.

This way of being our own teacher, finding our own way, is key to Buddhism. We find this in a very famous discourse called the Kalama Sutta^[1], the discourse to the Kalama people. The Buddha didn't frequent that part of northern India, but when he came there, the people were eager to ask him a question. They said, "There are a lot of spiritual teachers that come by and tell us what the truth is. How do we know which one of them is speaking the truth?"

The Buddha avoided answering the question directly, but rather gave them guidelines for how they could know the truth for themselves, rather than trusting other people to provide it. The first thing he offered was that you can know for yourself what is wholesome and what is unwholesome, what is harmful and what is beneficial. There are a few other things he said, but we get the sense here that we ourselves become the person who understands this. There is evidence we can acquire by being present in the present moment, information that helps us find our own way. We might not find a great philosophical, cosmic truth about the nature of reality, but rather the profound truth that's needed to find our way to peace, to the end of suffering. For that purpose, we are meant to be our own teachers.

This criteria of wholesome and unwholesome will be the topic for this week. You find it in the teaching of the Buddha; he comes back to it over and over again.

There is a famous poem in the Dhammapada^[2] that says, "This is the teaching of the Buddhas." It's in the plural, as if all Buddhas in time and space have this particular teaching. It says to avoid causing harm, to avoid doing what is wicked, bad, or harmful. Sometimes people use the word evil here, to avoid doing what's mean and harmful. That's the first line.

The second line is to cultivate and engage in what is wholesome, to purify the mind. This is the teaching of the Buddhas. This little four-line verse puts cultivating the wholesome right at the center of what the Buddha wants us to do.

Elsewhere, the Buddha said, "If you could not cultivate the wholesome, if you were not able to do what is wholesome, I would not teach you to do so. But it is possible for you to do the wholesome. Therefore, I teach you to do the wholesome." Over and over again, this criteria is at the center of what the Buddha has to teach. It is the Dharma intelligence that helps us find and recognize where we can move toward greater health, and where we can avoid what is unwholesome or leads to ill health.

The Pali word for wholesome is kusala^[3]. There is some fanciful etymology for the word suggesting that it comes from the Indian word for a particular kind of grass called kusa grass. It is a very hard grass with very sharp edges, and it was apparently collected and used for different things, maybe for feeding animals. Sometimes they say the people who collected it would sit on top of it to make a softer sitting place than the hard ground. However, the edges of the grass are so sharp that if you're not careful, you can cut yourself on it. The people who collect the kusa grass have to be very skilled at it. They have to grasp it from the base; they know how to do it so they don't cut themselves.

Following this etymology, the word kusala implies that we are trying to do things which are skillful, things from which we can benefit—like creating a soft place to sit—rather than doing something that harms us. What's nice about this etymology is the realization that even when acquiring things which are beneficial for us, we can do it in harmful ways. The idea is that we always come back to something deep inside of ourselves and ask: How are we taking the next step? How are we engaging with whatever we're doing? If we're doing something that seems universally good, it is still possible to do it with greed, conceit, or even some aversion, which is how we cut ourselves. Can we engage in everything we do in a way that we don't harm ourselves? This is the call for kusala inside of ourselves.

There are two main ways that kusala is translated into English in the texts: "wholesome" and "skillful." If we look at the ancient texts, we see that in different contexts, different translations work best.

A third translation that we could use for kusala is "ethical." It turns out that it's probably the word best qualified to translate the English word "ethical." Most people who know a little bit about ancient Buddhist teaching think that sīla^[4] means ethics, but sīla literally means conduct, and by usage refers to ethical conduct rather than just something that's inherently ethical. Kusala is a little deeper. It points to a deep inner ethics that we want to live by, an orientation of how we live. The fact that this word encompasses wholesome, skillful, and ethical all together makes it a wonderfully rich concept for Buddhist practice and life.

Some people prefer to translate this word as "skillful" and its opposite, akusala^[5], as "unskillful," because it takes decision-making out of the realm of good and bad. If we're doing an ethical evaluation, we simply ask, "Is this a skillful thing to do or an unskillful thing?" It becomes something more specific and practical than a moral judgment.

Some people, like myself, prefer "wholesome" because I think of it etymologically as meaning "part of the whole." We sit here and meditate to come into a harmonious whole, where all of ourselves is included, and it all works together in a healthy way.

That leads to the fourth way that I like to translate kusala: healthy. What is healthy? What is the healthy thing to do?

This week the topic will be kusala and a little bit of akusala—skillful and unskillful, wholesome and unwholesome. As I give these talks, I hope you'll take them as a pointer to how you can feel and sense your way into knowing for yourself what is wholesome and unwholesome, rather than worrying about what is true and not true in some abstract, metaphysical way. With the next step you take in any moment, you can ask: Can I do that in a wholesome way?

The underlying basis of this in the Dharma of the Buddha is that this path of finding what's wholesome is the path to liberation and freedom from suffering. It is a profoundly useful skill. I hope it's meaningful for you, and I am certainly looking forward to talking about this important area of practice. Thank you.