This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Opening the Windows and Doors

Welcome. It's lovely to be here with you, and I really do appreciate your being here with me.

So here we are today in a community where we're creating together, opening the Dharma heart, cultivating wholesome qualities in our hearts and minds. Monday, it was focusing on receptivity. Yesterday, cultivating a softness of mind. And today is perhaps an ambitious one of cultivating a mind that is unobstructed.

So I'm sure many of you are familiar with the five hindrances, those unwholesome states of mind: sensual desire, wanting; not wanting, aversion, ill will; sloth and torpor, or feeling rigid and stuck; the agitation of restlessness and worry; and the hindrance of doubt.

To make this a doable project for a 30-minute meditation, we'll try to create the conditions where we can notice if one of these unskillful tendencies starts to arise and see how we might let go of it.

Let's begin by vowing to be gentle with ourselves. Kind with that mind that may be spinning off in thoughts. And if we see that the mind has been spinning for a while, it's no problem. We can rejoice that we've seen it, and we come back to being present here in this body, breathing. And then comes the important part: appreciating what it's like when that negative tendency subsides, even if only temporarily.

So as we have been doing, and will continue to do this week, we begin with each of us setting our intention for this period of meditation. What motivates us to practice?

And now taking your meditation posture, sitting or lying down. Connecting with the earth. And aligning the spine. Feeling your seat or your body on the bed, and the earth supporting you. Feeling your spine as an alive space where the energy can flow through you up from the earth and out to the heavens. And you could also appreciate the energy that comes down from the sky through you and into the earth.

It's important to try to center the head a little bit on the spine so that it's not lolling forward or looking up or being off to one side or the other.

With our alignment as balanced and comfortable as we can make it, we do a scan from the head down to the toes. Relaxing the shoulders, arms, and hands. The heart area, the belly, the hips, the legs, and the feet.

And if you can, settle down into the stability of being here. It's really invaluable if you can refrain from moving while you meditate. Just be here in this body the way it is without trying to change what your circumstances are.

And now we'll continue with some short metta^[1] meditation. The last two days we did it by inviting a benefactor to come and join us, sitting in front of us and looking into their eyes and sharing the well-wishing.

If today you are comfortable being your own benefactor, you can try it that way. Or if it's helpful for you to do that in the company of someone that you dearly love and always feel good with, that's fine as well.

What we're doing with this little bit of metta is warming up our mindfulness meditation by lighting a little flame in our hearts of kind friendliness towards ourselves, and towards whatever arises moment after moment.

We're creating a safe space where we're protected by this feeling of warm-hearted well-wishing towards ourselves and all beings.

May I be safe and protected. May I be happy. May I be peaceful. May I be free.

May all beings be safe. May all beings be happy. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

With this well-wishing, we light a little candle in our hearts, bringing warmth, receptivity, softness, and openness to our mindfulness.

And now we bring in the wisdom. The vow that for this period of meditation, we'll do our best to help the body and the mind to settle down. It's the wisdom to know that we and our community here are better off if each of us can leave our preoccupations, responsibilities, worries, and concerns outside of our meditation space. No need for them now.

Connecting with the breath and letting that little flame of wishing ourselves well imbue our mindfulness with a feeling of benevolence. Connecting with the cycle of the breath.

Breathing in well-wishing. Breathing out well-wishing.

Breathing in safety, breathing out happiness. Breathing in peace, breathing out freedom.

And just staying with the quiet of the mind that is happy to be here just breathing, together with our like-minded friends from all over the world.

Breathing in... I'm sorry about that, I must have forgotten to turn something off. So let's go back to the breathing.

Breathing in with a warm heart, and breathing out with a peaceful heart.

Feeling the beginning, the middle, and the end of the in-breath. The beginning, the middle, and the pause after the out-breath.

The quality of friendliness towards whatever arises. Letting ourselves be nourished by the quality of warm-heartedness as we breathe in, as we breathe out.

Happy to open the windows and the doors of the mind. Not shutting anything out, and not spinning off in useless thoughts.

Letting the warmth of the heart radiate inwards as we breathe in, and letting it radiate outwards as far as it wants to go as we breathe out.

And if you should find yourself on a thought train, you could say, "I see you, Mara."^[2] So if you don't know who Mara is, he was the tempter who was furious that the Buddha had so many devoted followers and was so highly respected. Mara's job in life, as far as he was concerned, was to knock the Buddha off of his pedestal of enlightenment, and to knock all of his followers off as well.

I find this a very helpful image. If I just get on that thought train for a while, and I just say, "I see you, Mara," then Mara, when he's seen, is defeated and slinks away.

If we find ourselves thinking again, just coming back gently, no judgments at all, and just with this simplicity of being here in this body, in this breath. Tasting the goodness of even a second of just...

If another thought starts to arise, "Ah, I see you. No thank you," and with a smile, you come back. Being here in this body with the ebb and flow of the breath, and gently daring to open the windows and doors.

Breathing in, enjoying the spaciousness of a moment of freedom. Letting in the warm sunlight and the fresh air. Enjoying these moments when the mind is unobstructed.

Breathing in, radiating warm openness. Breathing out, radiating spaciousness for all beings.

Breathing in openness, breathing out spaciousness.

And as we come to the end of this sitting with a mind that has benefited from fresh air by opening some windows and doors, through the goodness of our practice, may we from our center of openness now radiate our heartfelt wish that all beings everywhere be safe.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

Dharmette: Opening the Dharma Heart (3 of 5) - Unobstructed

I do appreciate your presence. I appreciate your practice, and I'm happy to be here with you. Today is the third talk on opening the Dharma heart, and we're looking at five qualities of mind that the Buddha used himself to see if someone was ready to become awakened.

In Pali, the word for mind is citta,^[3] and the qualities we're looking at this week are... And someone yesterday asked where this came from in the Pali Canon. Although they're not one of the many Dharma lists that you often see in the early texts, I looked it up and they do occur as a group together nine times in the early teachings, and the text that I'm referring to is near the end of the Brahmāyu Sutta, which is Majjhima Nikaya 91.^[4]

On Monday, we talked about being receptive, available, and ready to change. Yesterday, we evoked the quality of having a soft and malleable mind. And Gil talked about this process of softening the mind with the idea that we're each a work of art, and in working to progressively become more and more beneficial to ourselves and others, having a mind that's stuck or rigid or hard makes it difficult to change ourselves in a beneficial way.

We need a mind that's receptive and also soft, so that we can shape the mind to become more and more beautiful.

And today we come to the third quality, which is vinīvaraṇa.^[5] Vi is a prefix meaning away from or not, and nīvaraṇa are the five hindrances—those powerful forces that we as humans all experience.

The root word in Pali for these hindrances is var, which is to block. So the hindrances are obstacles, obstructions, and barriers to awakening.

And it's important that we look at freeing ourselves from the hindrances as a progressive task. These five hindrances exist in each of us on a spectrum from being completely caught to being completely free.

As you may know, the first hindrance is sensual desire, wanting, greed. The second is not wanting, aversion, hatred, ill will. The third, usually called sloth and torpor, refers to resistance, stiffness, shutting down. The fourth includes restlessness, agitation, worry, regrets. And the fifth is doubt—doubt about the value of the Buddha's teachings, or doubt about our own ability to walk this path of freedom.

One of our first jobs as a practitioner is to get to know these forces in ourselves, to study what causes them to arise, and to see the unskillfulness when we're caught and reactive. And then finding ways to see them start to arise and having the wisdom to know, "This is not how I want to be."

In the process of getting to know our own unskillful qualities, it's important as always to remember to be kind to ourselves, because we're human after all.

You might think of training the mind the way you would train a sweet little puppy. If you yell at the puppy and kick it every time it makes a mistake, you're going to end up with an angry, aggressive dog. If you want your puppy to grow up to be a happy, relaxed, loving dog, then you train it with caresses and with treats, giving the puppy positive feedback every time it does something right.

In the same way, without setting expectations too high, we can give ourselves positive feedback by noticing the moments when the hindrances are in abeyance, and appreciating what it's like to be free of these obstructions. If it's just for a second, "Ah, it's like we've opened the windows and doors of the mind." And we can enjoy the healthy pleasure of the sunlight and the fresh air. What a relief not to be spinning around in preoccupations.

The more often we notice the goodness of these moments of freedom, however short-lived they are, the more we build the neural pathways so that letting these obstructive forces in the mind subside can happen more easily and more often.

So take these moments of freedom in and savor them, without, of course, clinging or getting attached. It's enough just to say, "Ah, right now the mind is unobstructed." A mind that, instead of being caught up in me, myself, and mine, is open to the sunlight, fresh air, and spaciousness of the Dharma—that's beautiful. So let yourself consciously receive and enjoy these moments when the mind is unobstructed, open, beautiful. You can enjoy the taste of well-being and gladness that come with letting in the light and the fresh air of open awareness.

My first Buddhist teacher was the Zen Master Suzuki Roshi, and I began studying with him at what was for me the tender age of 21, only two years after I had gotten out of the mental hospital, and I still had a lot of work to do with myself.

What struck me so deeply right away was that at the end of every period of meditation, he would bow to each of us as we came out of the meditation hall, and when he bowed to me, he communicated that there was something worth bowing to. In the same way, he would bow to a Buddha.

No matter how screwed up we were, he saw the beautiful potential that each of us had, and he treated everyone like a Buddha. And I had the good fortune to become his disciple and to be on the receiving end of his unconditional love.

It wasn't because I was someone special, but it was amazing to just be with someone who was convinced that there was nothing unworthy about me. I didn't have to worry about being worthy or unworthy; it was enough just to want to practice sincerely.

And this is something we can do for ourselves. We may have been taught that we were inadequate, unworthy, or unlovable. But being inadequate or worse is a harmful mirage that we can let go of. And the beauty of this path is that even those of us who struggle with scars from having been deeply traumatized are perfectly welcomed.

This seed of the Buddha, the beautiful Buddha, is alive and well in each one of us. I hope you believe me. It's alive and well in your own heart.

So this path is about little by little learning not to cling to the unskillful coverings that we thought were necessary to survive, and to enjoy the aliveness and taste the freedom we can experience in moments when the doors and windows are unobstructed.

For a little homework for the next 24 hours, see if you can slow down enough so that whenever possible, the mind can take a break from its reactivity, from spinning off in thoughts. Notice how beautiful it is to simply abide, even temporarily, in the moments when you're unobstructed, in the absence of the hindrances.

This moment of touching the doorknob, the aliveness of being right there with the doorknob. Or mindfully cleaning the sink. It's lovely to just be cleaning the sink without all the commentary of the mind.

Listening attentively to a loved one without jumping ahead on how we want to reply. Just being receptive, soft, and without barriers for them.

So the homework is to really touch into the joy and gladness of those moments when you are fully present with your experience.

Thank you for being here, and know that I appreciate and am very much encouraged by your practice. Thank you.