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: Breathing Generously

So hello from IMC in Redwood City, California. And special greetings to all of you who are far away from here in different states, different countries, across oceans. It's kind of special to have this kind of gathering of people from all over.

There are two heart qualities that go together a little bit like the two sides of a hand, and that is generosity and gratitude. When we experience acts of generosity towards us, sometimes a natural movement is to feel grateful, appreciative, and thankful. And when we are generous, sometimes we are then the recipients of gratitude, of thanks, of appreciation.

It's possible to sit in meditation with gratitude and with generosity, and have that part of the meditation. One of the simple ways of doing that is to appreciate that when we inhale, we're receiving life-sustaining oxygen, without which we wouldn't live. While there's not someone intentionally giving it to us, this planet has been set up in such a way that we're a constant recipient of life-sustaining substances that keep us going, alive, and conscious. And one of those is the air we breathe in. Perhaps in some ways, we can think of the carbon dioxide we breathe out—for us it's a waste product, but for other beings, like trees and plants, it's what they need in order to grow and develop.

So we are part of this cycle of giving and receiving, and perhaps that can also be a cycle of gratitude and generosity just in the breath. One of the things that I like about this is that the breathing is so simple and so easy for most of the day, for many of us, to be out of mind, not really noticing it or appreciating it. Really, in meditation, we have the chance of becoming attuned to the simplicity of each breath, each inhale and each exhale.

Each inhale is a miracle. Each inhale is something we can be grateful for, or appreciative and inspired by. And each exhale also is a miracle. It is a wonderful way in which we are participating in this whole natural, interconnected, interdependent world that we live in. To feel and sense in each breath gratitude for this breath. And even if it's hard to breathe, even if the breath is a little bit of a struggle, to be grateful for the body that knows well enough, even as it is struggling, it's finding a way to keep us alive. This body knows how to do it; it knows how to breathe usually. And so, to be grateful for this body we have that's keeping us alive, that's keeping itself alive. And to have this cycle of gratitude and generosity.

I offer this to you today not as a moral injunction for gratitude and generosity, but as a way of maybe getting more interested in breathing and focusing on the simplicity of this. It's so easy to drift off into other thoughts, concerns, and preoccupations of all kinds. But to get gathered together and have you really centered here just in the simplicity of breathing, then some even deeper gratitude and appreciation, a deeper flow of generosity, comes from a very quiet, centered, settled heart, body, and mind. It's kind of then we really start feeling this miracle of life. When things get quiet, we're really just here, no longer thinking about the issues of our life, the concerns of our lives, the fantasies of our life.

So, with this body that we have, the body that we are, the body that is here, to assume a meditation posture. And for many of you it may be a familiar posture, and the familiarity of it is comforting.

And gently close your eyes.

To take a few long, slow, maybe gentle breaths. Long and deep, so the whole body gets stretched and engaged when you inhale, especially the torso and rib cages expand. Slow, because it's calming and settling to do it slowly. It's conscious to do it slow and deep, to awaken our ability to be consciously here and now. And gentle, so we're not in conflict with anything or struggling, or aversive, or desirous. Just gentle here. Maybe here in a way that's nurturing, nourishing.

And then let your breathing return to normal.

As you exhale, relax the muscles of the face.

As you exhale, relax the shoulders.

And as you exhale, softening the belly.

Taking a minute or so to do soft belly meditation. Keeping the belly somewhat soft as you breathe in and breathe out.

And then to gently quiet the mind. Quiet the thinking. Maybe your thinking can even be slower, softer. Or there can be a soft and slower way of holding the thinking mind.

Perhaps as you exhale, you can relax the thinking muscle—the energies, agitation, tightness, and pressure associated with thinking.

And then settling in to the experience of breathing.

Where each breath, each inhale is a miracle, each exhale is a miracle.

And as you inhale, perhaps very quietly, a silent, quiet gratitude or appreciation for the gift of this breath, this one inhale.

And the exhale, a simple release, letting go. That's generous, it's a giving. Giving of your ears outwards to the rest of the world. A giving to your body, releasing and relaxing. Gratitude breathing in. Generosity as you breathe out. All in the service of the mind becoming simpler and quieter. Here, just here. Breathing in and breathing out.

And then as we come to the end of this sitting, what might you learn from this sitting, what might you learn from meditation in general about the source of generosity inside of you? Not any requirement to be generous, but when there's generosity within you, can you identify a source place within it? Or if not a place, what's the feeling or the atmosphere inside of you that most supports the arising of generosity and also gratitude?

In the busyness of life, the preoccupations of life, we all too easily lose touch with the source of goodness within us. And in our meditation, perhaps we can touch into it some, in such a way that it reorients us to a dedication or inspiration to live from this source or this way of being. And it helps to give life to this way of being, this source, this attitude, this subtleness.

To, in a generous way, based on that generosity, wish well for others. Turn your regard outward into the world and look upon all beings kindly. Look upon all beings with wishes that they be well, and happy, and peaceful. And to consider: how could you today, as you go through the day, how could you live to contribute to the welfare and happiness of others? Even if it's the smallest thing, even if it's smiling at someone or opening the door.

With all the many people here who are meditating this morning, what a great impact we can have on the world if all of us contribute to the welfare and well-being of even just one or two people today.

May it be that this meditation that we do, that the goodness of it spreads from us out into the world, contributing to a world where all beings can be happy, all beings can be safe, all beings can be peaceful, and all beings can be free.

May all beings everywhere be happy.

Dharmette: Stories - The Golden Goose

So today I'll continue with telling stories. Jātaka^[1] means birth, and so they are the tales of previous births, they say, of the Buddha's former lifetimes, many of them when he was an animal. And so they're kind of like Aesop's fables, fairy tales that—many of them have characteristics of the kind of fairy tales we tell children. And sometimes I think these fairy tales, as wonderful as they are for children, maybe they're really meant for adults because adults can apply them, understand the deeper meaning of them, and maybe adults have the best chance of living out of the values of some of these wonderful tales.

So the tale today is called The Golden Goose, and it's very similar to a European tale of the goose or the chicken that lays golden eggs. Maybe it points to the idea that some of these ancient stories, fables, were pan-cultural. They traveled and moved through the world because people were inspired by them or they were meaningful.

In the Buddhist version of this, there were two farmers, a husband and a wife, and their two children, who eked out an existence. They worked really hard on their farm and just barely could grow enough to support themselves and their children. It was a tough life on the edge of poverty, the edge of starvation. At some point—and I'm going to change the gender of the usual stories; I think that some of the ways ancient stories are gendered are optional, and some of the fables are probably getting a little bit tired of always being kind of the same stereotypes in gender, so maybe it's okay to change—the wife started to feel sick. She got progressively sicker and sicker, and at some point, it was clear that she wasn't going to survive. She was going to die. She was laying there in bed, and she made a resolve that she would come back. She'd be reborn in such a way that she could come back and support her family.

So she died. The night after she died, the children had a dream, and the dream was that their mother came back to see them and said, "Dear ones, soon I'll be coming back. In a few months, I'll come back and I'll support you. I'll make sure that you're okay and you don't starve. But when I come back, you won't recognize me by what I look like, but I'll identify myself for you, and you'll know it's me."

The children woke up the next morning and told their father about this wonderful dream. The father, who was already quite heartbroken from the loss of his wife, said, "Oh, dreams just make life more difficult, you get disappointed and all that, so we should forget those kinds of dreams." But the children didn't forget the dreams. They kept the dream alive, and they would talk among themselves about their dream and how their mother would come back.

Many months later, this goose started waddling up the path towards the farm. The goose was quite large and fat, and its head was peculiar, and its feathers were golden-colored. When the farmer saw it, it was like, "Oh, food for our dinner. I've been hungry now for days." He went out to capture that goose, but the goose kind of knew what was happening, ran away into the forest, and hid in safety.

Later in the day, the goose came back out when the father was away or cooking or something. It came up to the children who were playing outside and said to the children, "My dear children, I'm your mother, and I've come back. I'm here to take care of you in this way: each day pluck one feather from me, but only one feather, and hold the feather up to the sunlight, and it'll turn to solid, real gold. You'll have that gold you can sell, and it can support you and take care of the family."

Then the goose said, "Do it right now." So the kids plucked one feather and held it up to the sun, and sure enough, poof, it turned into metallic gold.

So they ran back to their father, who was cooking in the kitchen, and said, "Look what we have! This goose came along and told us that if we plucked its feather, it would turn into gold and we could have that gold. But there was a caveat: the goose made sure that we were only supposed to pluck one feather a day."

The farmer was quite surprised and said, "Show me." They went out and saw the goose outside, and the kids said again, "But you only pluck one feather." So the next day they went out and plucked a feather, and sure enough, holding it up to the sun, it turned to gold. They did it every day. Pretty soon, they didn't become phenomenally wealthy, but they had enough wealth to live safely and comfortably. It was a good time for them. They had food and clothes, and their welfare was basically taken care of.

But in this circumstance, at some point the farmer was getting more and more comfortable, but there was a discontent. "Well, there's maybe a fortune to be made here and get really wealthy from this. What if I pluck all the feathers out? Then they'll just have this big fortune, and who knows what I can do then."

The kids said, "No, no, you can't do that. Just one feather a day."

So the farmer waited and thought about it, and thought, "Well, you know, it's dangerous if I just let the goose live around here. The wolves and the foxes might come along and gobble it up, and then we'll have no feathers at all. So it's better to harvest all the feathers now and have wealth than it is the possibility of losing it."

When the kids were off someplace playing, the farmer went, found the goose, grabbed it, and pulled out fistfuls of feathers. He pulled all the feathers off the goose and put them in a basket. Then he held the basket up to the sun so they would turn into gold, and lo and behold, nothing happened.

Distraught, the farmer then scattered all the feathers on the ground so all of them would somehow get direct sunlight. Nothing happened. The farmer yelled out in despair, "Oh no!"

The kids heard and came running over, and they saw what had happened. They said, "Oh no, Mother told us that we only take one feather from the goose at a time."

"Your mother?" the farmer said. "No, no..." And then the farmer said, "Well, you know, the feathers will grow back."

So they waited some days, or weeks, or a long time, and the feathers did grow back. But now they came back gray and dull, rather than the golden-colored feathers they had been before. And if they took a feather out and held it to the sun, nothing happened. After some time, the goose just kind of flew off and never came back.

The story wasn't a complete disaster because from the feathers they already had, they did have enough gathered for their basic well-being for the rest of their time. So they continued living that way; the kids grew up well enough and continued.

But greed. Here we are, all of us are the recipients of generosity. Each of us, you know, the world in a sense is like a golden goose, and the world, the earth, provides us with feathers that we can harvest and take care of and live well. But then we get greedy and afraid of losing it. We human beings gathered all together want more and more and more. Sometimes we have definitely on this planet, for hundreds of years, even back in the time of two or three thousand years ago, over-consumed, over-farmed land, and destroyed it, so that the civilizations that grew there died out because the land became infertile. There's a tendency of human beings to overdo it, to take too much and more and more and more, and then destroy the very thing that is providing for us.

This is happening again today in this world, that the drive to consume, to have, to want, to have greed—that we're not carefully contenting ourselves with the one feather, just what's enough to let us live well and happily, but to strive for always more and more and more.

And so what is your golden goose? What are the feathers that you collect? And when is it that you maybe take so much that you take more than is given, more than is sustainable, and you maybe even destroy the goose? I wonder how many people have gone into debt that way, and consumed, and somehow then can't repay their debt; they're in trouble.

Meditation is one of the ways of learning how to abide in a deep contentment, a deep satisfaction, a deep sense of well-being and peace that's not dependent on material goods and wealth and having more and more things. Rather, it's a way to grow in a healthy kind of way, more and more. The Buddha used the word abundance when referring to some of these inner qualities that can develop. And perhaps the real gold is the gold that's within. If we learn how to connect to the inner gold, we'll find out that we have all the gold we need to have a happy and contented life.

May your heart be the golden goose.

Thank you.