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Guided Meditation: Simple Refuge

Okay, so why don't we go ahead and get started? Settling in for our period of meditation.

My aim for this particular sit is to begin by evoking a quality that I'll describe as we're doing it, and then, after offering several options for how we might evoke that, we'll sit mostly in silence. You can do your regular practice and observe how it was to sit in the presence of the quality that we're evoking.

Okay, so settling in and closing the eyes gently if that's comfortable for you. Just allowing the attention to come inward. Feeling the body sitting. Maybe feeling where you're being supported—your seat against the chair or the cushion, with a bench, or if you're lying down. Just feeling the support and allowing yourself to be supported. Letting go into the support of your seat and, ultimately, of the earth. Feeling that stability, that groundedness.

Allowing the energy of the body to settle downward in case it was up in the head, bringing it down farther into the body. And even from the body, we can sometimes let the energy sink down into the earth. Kind of a feeling of rootedness. And then the body may feel like a tree rising up, or if it's more flexible, it can feel like a sea plant rising off the sea floor, floating in the water. To whatever degree you can feel that, allowing that sense in the body.

And allowing the mind to come into presence. So, mindfulness. Being aware of any sensations in the body. Checking in with the current climate in the heart, the mind. How are you? Whatever's there is fine; we just want to include it in our awareness. If there's a mood, or any emotions or thoughts, we can let them be there but intend to bring the attention into the present moment. To whatever degree possible, finding a way to rest with whatever is present for you right now.

So, as we continue sitting together, I would like to evoke a sense of refuge, or confidence in practice. Or for some of you, the word faith may work. Classically, there are many, many ways to do this. You may have a personal one, but I would just like to invite—I'll offer a few of them, and you can see if something works.

So as we sit, we may consider that we are following a long line of practitioners that goes all the way back to the historical Buddha. When the Buddha sat in meditation, it was not so different from this. He too had a mind and a body, and when he started out, it was pretty much like ours. And yet, he found awakening. We may be inspired.

You may consider further that the Buddha offered teachings, instructions for how to be with our experience. What a gift. Even if you're a new practitioner, quite new, you may already have a sense that what we learn—mindfulness, awareness of the body—these are so helpful given that we didn't really get an instruction manual with our mind and body. You can be inspired by the dharma. It really does work. In small ways, and maybe you even know in large ways. It's good to be doing what we're doing right now.

We can also be inspired or supported by the sangha^[1], by the other practitioners on this path. We're supported by a lot of people who have practiced through the years, who are sitting with us right now, who model for us the goodness that comes from practice. Some are teachers. Sometimes it's just nice to know that there's a bunch of other people sitting out there. At any given moment, there are people all over the world somewhere meditating. We can feel like we're joining a vast stream of practice that will carry us.

These are the three classic ways to connect with a sense of refuge: Buddha, dharma, and sangha. And I'll offer two other brief reflections that are also in the teachings.

We can also consider our own ethical conduct, our own goodness. The fact that we try to live well. We try to live a life that is non-harming, that includes some care for others. A way of being in a world that is somehow peaceful or beneficial. This is meant to be inspiring to us, that we live this way, that we're contributing in this way. So we can feel happy with our good intentions and our good actions.

And we can also be inspired by our own generosity, what we give. If we have a sensibility that being here is not just about taking, but about offering material resources, our time, our attention, our compassion. Countless acts of giving throughout the day. The world really operates on this kind of generosity. Simple moment to moment, it couldn't function without it. And we contribute. This too is meant to be inspiring to us.

So it's said that any of these simple reflections leads to a gladness about the practice, a sense of confidence. This is a good thing to do. And we can just rest in that sense and use it as a bolster, or a way of fostering clarity and mindfulness as we continue to sit together.

So choosing your usual practice—breath or body, something else—just seeing if this sense of refuge and confidence can inform the way you continue to sit.

Guided Meditation: Simple Refuge

Do you find that sitting with a sense of refuge or confidence in the practice informs your meditation? Is there some additional clarity to the mind, or focus on what you're doing, or a deeper sense of compassion? Any difference, just noticing that.

So if you found that there is a positive impact from connecting with your own sense of care, a sense of faith in the practice, you might consider that that can positively impact others also, even without needing to say anything explicit. Carrying with you the sense that the dharma is an important part of your life, that mindfulness is something that can inform the way we go through the day. Just carrying that in you can help others. They too may feel a sense of connection to the present. They may feel your harmlessness in an intuitive, subtle way.

Your benefit and goodness in the world is increased when you know that in yourself. It's kind of a hidden side benefit of all this practice that it does go out. And that too can feed back and be a source of happiness for us.

So perhaps today, you could just carry in your heart the sense that this practice is important to you. Just carry with you the clear knowledge that mindfulness, harmlessness, and generosity are valuable, and trust that that will inform those around you also.

The Dharma of Uncommon Lists (2 of 5): Four Qualities to Emulate and Grow

Okay, so this week we're doing a theme that I'm calling the Dharma of Uncommon Lists. We started yesterday with a list of five, and today we'll have a list of four, and so on. There's a lot of good dharma in these lists. This one actually may not be so unfamiliar.

So today's list is a set of four qualities that are praised in lay practitioners like us. They appear together, this set of four, in several different ways. They appear as the basis of spiritual friendship. They appear as qualities that should be emulated. And they also are listed as forms of inner wealth.

So these four are confidence or faith, virtue, generosity, and wisdom. You've likely heard of each of these separately or in other contexts, but it's interesting to consider them together as a set, if you will.

Here's the quote from one of the suttas^[2] that talks about them as the basis of spiritual friendship. It says: "And what is good friendship? It's when a person resides in a town or village, and there are householders or their children who may be young or old but are mature in conduct, accomplished in faith, ethics, generosity, and wisdom. That person associates with them, converses, and engages in discussion, and they emulate the same kind of accomplishment in faith, ethics, generosity, and wisdom. This is called good friendship."

We see that we are encouraged to associate with and emulate people who have—the sutta says saddhā^[3], which is the quality that can be translated as faith but also confidence—ethical conduct or virtue, generosity, and wisdom. Altogether, that set of four is called conduct, or it's said that these are people who are mature in conduct.

First, I'd like to just talk about each one of these, and then we'll kind of put them together.

So the first one, saddhā—confidence or faith. I've come to like the word faith, but I didn't used to, and so I can understand if that word has some aversion for you. It's fine also to use confidence or trust. It's typically stated classically in the teachings as confidence in the Buddha's awakening. That's interesting. It's not a blind devotion to a religious figure from the past; it's really the confidence that the Buddha was able to find a way through the labyrinth of his mind to awaken to a place that is free of greed, hatred, and delusion^[4].

But more broadly, and this is also implied in the teachings, we could say that faith or confidence is pointing toward a sincere acknowledgment of higher possibilities. It's kind of the opposite of something like cynicism or sarcasm, or other ways where we diminish our own or others' potential. Gil^[5] talked last week about self-respect, for example, and in my experience, genuine saddhā, genuine confidence, is rooted in some degree of self-respect. We have a sense that we are able to do something good. We're able to meditate, we're able to practice mindfulness, we're able to be in the world in a way that is somehow beneficial, or at least to intend that, to move in that direction.

Some suttas say that "there are beings who are inspired by things that are lofty." It's kind of nice. We recognize that there are things in the world that are lofty, that are pointing toward something genuine. I remember one time being on a retreat that Gil was teaching, and he said that we should feel happy about being on retreat because there are people in the world who are inspired simply by knowing that there are people who go on retreat, and so we are fulfilling that for them. So to have this kind of confidence or faith, I think, is a form of wealth. Like it says in the teachings, it enriches us to have a sense of potential.

Then the second quality: ethical conduct or virtue. This translates to the word sīla^[6]. It's fairly straightforward. The text says: "Here a noble disciple abstains from the destruction of life, abstains from taking what is not given, abstains from sexual misconduct, abstains from false speech, and abstains from intoxicants which are the basis for heedlessness^[7]."

So ethical conduct is the basis of friendship, and it's a form of inner wealth because it directly protects other beings, and it also protects us from our own difficulties. It protects us by bringing what's called the bliss of blamelessness. I think you heard a lot a few weeks ago about sīla when Gil [taught it?]^[8] for the whole week on that. So what I'll just say now is that this is a time right now—both specifically the holiday season, but also this time in the pandemic in our society—when we really need people who are genuinely positive forces in the world. Beneficial. Not the fake positivity of denial or sugar-coating things, but genuinely possessed of some well-being and some sense of acting well in the world. And even just doing our best with good intentions can do this for us. Ethics is actually meant to be a basis for our own well-being, which then translates out into the world. So I actually have a lot of faith that all of us are working in that direction.

Then moving on to generosity. The word that's translated that way is actually cāga^[9], which is the movement of mind, the intention in the heart toward giving. You may have heard the word dāna^[10], which is more the actual gift that's given, but cāga is the mind state that informs that. The text around this, the classical language, is quite nice. It says: "Here a noble disciple dwells at home with a heart devoid of the stain of miserliness, freely generous, open-handed, delighting in relinquishment, devoted to charity, delighting in giving and sharing."

It makes me happy just to read that, you know. It's so needed at this time when it is, or even feels like, a time of scarcity or threat or a high degree of uncertainty. Psychologically, the tendency is to hold on or withdraw, when actually exactly the opposite movement is what is beneficial. So generosity, this cāga, this inner movement toward giving, helps us to give even when we feel like we don't have very much. So this is a good season to of course reflect on and practice generosity when we can.

And then we go to wisdom, paññā^[11]. It's interesting that this is placed alongside the others. Sometimes people think of wisdom as far off or some high accomplishment, but it's placed right alongside these other three. The texts say: "Here a noble disciple is wise; she possesses the wisdom that discerns arising and passing away, which is noble and penetrative and leads to the complete destruction of suffering."

That's interesting too. Buddhist texts often equate wisdom with seeing impermanence and inconstancy. For our purposes now, we can point out that people who pay attention to the way so many things in life arise and change and pass are more likely to be able to handle surprises or shocks when they come. People who have a sense of the flow of life, how things come and go, can stay calmer when there are large shifts, such as what we've seen recently in the world. I think this kind of wisdom is fairly natural when we've lived a life of awareness; we've paid attention to things. How can you not notice that they come, they go? Even the body isn't constant from moment to moment, and surely throughout our lives we've seen many things arise and pass. But we can have some wisdom about that, some groundedness, some stability for others.

So now let's consider them all together as a set. This is a set of four: confidence, virtue, generosity, and wisdom. You can see that this encompasses both individual and relational qualities. It has a connection to the material world as well as to the mind. It encompasses everyday actions as well as penetrating insight that can be quite deep.

Recall that in the discourse about these four as the basis for good friendship, they were collectively called being mature in conduct. So there's an element of maturity in manifesting all of these. We have to have some integration of the practice and of our understanding in order to be able to do all of these well, and maybe there are some of course that we do better than others.

Another thing about these four qualities is that they don't decrease if we keep practicing them, and they can't really be taken away by others. They persist and they grow through all the ups and downs of life. So even if we go through periods where we have more wealth and less wealth, periods where we're healthy and periods where we're ill, even as we get older and our faculties diminish and we can see that the body is winding down, these four qualities can be continually increasing. They don't actually decrease, so they're worth encouraging in ourselves and others. You can see why they're called inner wealth, because they're really independent of the external wealth that we don't have as much control over.

We can also emulate these when we see them in others. If we have a friend who is very generous, you know, without comparing ourselves unfavorably, we could aspire to be as free as they are in the way that they give. Or if we see someone who's very wise, and they just seem balanced and they seem able to flow along with things, they seem clear about what they're seeing, we can consider, "Oh yeah, they seem to really see things well. Maybe I could emulate that also." So we're meant to help each other in the practice, meant to share in this.

Maybe you're visiting with people right now at this holiday time. We often are. And I wonder if you can find one or more of these qualities in some form in each of the people that you are visiting with right now. So even if you have a history of a difficult relationship with someone, perhaps you can think of one way that they express one of these qualities. Maybe they have some degree of confidence, confidence in what's good. Or maybe they have some kind of virtue, some kind of ethical conduct—you know, they're careful about not taking what's not given, they're careful about being truthful when they speak. Maybe they have a streak of generosity in them, a way in which they give their attention, their time, physical things. Or they have some kind of wisdom that you see in them, a glimmer of it from time to time.

Focus on that. Focus on the goodness of that person. Maybe even emulate it. They don't have to be perfect; goodness knows we aren't all perfect or an exemplar of all four of these qualities. It's good enough if people are showing just a glimmer of one of them. Take that as the basis for being with them in a kind and clear way.

Or if you're by yourself at this time of year, it's good to reflect that these four things are forms of inner wealth, and they can be grown through meditative development, through reflection.

Either way, this is a great time to be growing these particular qualities of faith, virtue, generosity, and wisdom. I hope this set of four may inform your day and your week, and maybe carry you into the new year. So thank you very much. See you again tomorrow.