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Guided Meditation: Agitation and Calm

So now I think you can hear me. Welcome. I find it very delightful and kind of homey to be sitting here Monday morning to be able to speak to you all about the Dharma. For me, speaking to you is speaking to myself as well. This is as much a Dharma exploration for me as it is offering you things to explore.

In this Dharma practice that we do, there's a wonderful way in which contrasts support us to find our way, to deepen the practice, and to help us use this practice to become more free. To be able to be aware of two contrasting states at the same time—or have them in mind at the same time, or evoke our connection to or intuition of them at the same time—can be a very significant way for the heart and the mind to find the beacon, to find the path forward. One example of this is the contrast between agitation and calm.

Agitation and calm. I'd like to propose there's always going to be some degree of both present for us short of awakening, short of enlightenment, when all agitation disappears. But otherwise, there's going to be a little bit of both. Sometimes we're more on the agitation side, sometimes we're less. Sometimes we're more on the calm side, and sometimes we're less. But the two are there. The degree to which you recognize sitting down this morning that you're maybe a little bit agitated or already a little bit calm means you've already begun to find yourself on that spectrum between the two.

It's not really so necessary to have the idea that you should be anywhere else on the spectrum. If you find yourself much more on the agitation side of the spectrum for the purpose of this meditation, that's fine. That's the door, that's where we practice mindfulness. Mindfulness can be developed wonderfully with agitation. I've had wonderful meditations with restlessness, where it just felt like this ping-pong ball energy bouncing around inside. At some point, it became even entertaining to feel all the energy in the body, just that bouncing inside.

If you can be aware of both at the same time, the chances are that your agitation will be reassured by the calm. Somehow the calm will more and more be a companion to the agitation so the agitation can quiet, can settle. That's one of the ways to use the wisdom of contrasts to help us along this way.

So assume that meditation posture. Lower your gaze down towards the floor without closing your eyes, and soften that gaze so you're not really focused on anything in particular. Maintain a broad focus, as if looking at a mountain far in the distance, soft and relaxed. And now gently close your eyes.

Feel in this body of yours and the posture where there is agitation and where there might be some modicum of calm.

As I sit here, I do feel a little bit of agitation in the front of my chest, but in the back of my chest, it's calm. I feel some energy, maybe agitation a little bit in my hands and fingers, but they rest on my knees and thighs, which feel calm and settled. I feel a teeny bit of tightening and restlessness in my eyes, tension, but behind them in the back of my head, it feels peaceful and quiet. So where is this contrast found for you?

Feeling your whole body, and recognizing the degree to which it might be calm or agitated on the spectrum between the two. And then gently, calmly, take some deeper breaths. Even in the breathing, there might be ways in which there's agitation and calm. See if you could know agitation and calm calmly, peacefully.

Noticing which parts of breathing feel more on the calm side, what part of the cycle feels more on the agitated side, at least relative to itself. Letting the breathing breathe naturally, continue to feel the contrasts in breathing. Maybe it's more agitated to less agitated, and more calm and less calm, or the two sides, calm and agitation.

If while being with your breathing you feel agitation or tension in your body, maybe on the exhale, bring a wave of calmness to hold, to touch the places of the agitation. Is your thinking behind it more agitated or more calm? If it's agitated, it might be pushing itself out of the body, or upward, or just spinning unconnected to the body. Maybe you can allow the thinking mind to settle back and rest in the body. Perhaps you can think calmly about how to bring attention to the agitation.

Attuning yourself to the rhythms of your breathing. Maybe as if the breathing is like the tide moving up on the beach and back, coming and going. As if the breathing comes and goes across the calm and agitation that's in you gently. Agitation and calm, touched by your breathing.

After these minutes of meditating, has the balance of agitation and calm shifted for you? Either direction is fine. Not being troubled by anything. Even agitation is a support for calm.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, to gaze upon your experience calmly. To have a kind, calm awareness whatever you're thinking about, whatever you're aware of here and now. And then to let that calm attention, calm thinking, be directed towards the people you might encounter in the next 24 hours. Whether people you know or people you don't know, strangers on the street, neighbors, colleagues, people you'll read about in the news or see on the news, anywhere.

Imagine gazing upon them, being present for them calmly, free of agitation, so that you can take them in, be aware of them from your heart. And from that heartfelt place within, wish them well.

May all the people that I have some awareness of today, may they be happy. May the people that I'll have contact with, may they be safe. May the people that I'll know about, may they be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may my ability to stay connected to calm while I'm also on the spectrum from agitation to calm, may that calm support the welfare and happiness of all.

Dharmette: Conditioned Consciousness (1 of 5) Agitation/Calm

So this will be the first talk in a series following last week's on consciousness, where I'll attempt to talk about how different factors of the mind, mind activities, can affect the quality or the characteristics of consciousness—how we are aware of being conscious.

If overall that purpose of these talks doesn't quite work for you, don't worry too much about it. I think what I'll be teaching about will have other value in addition. What I'd like to do is to set up the idea of contrasts—that different contrasts of different mind states will have different effects on how we feel aware, how we have a sense of what being conscious is. To the degree to which we have a sense of consciousness, that sense of consciousness can be affected by these different contrasting mind states. And so for today, the talk is about agitation and calm.

Agitation can be coarse, and many people associate meditation with becoming calm. But one of the not widely recognized aspects is that as we become calmer in meditation, we start uncovering deeper and deeper layers of agitation. Maybe quieter, more subtle layers of it that are invisible to us in ordinary states of mind. In fact, some of the places that we recognize the deeper, very subtle agitation is in contrast to ordinary states of mind. When we're agitated, it might seem like a calm state, but when we're deeply calm, we still see there's a little bit of agitation, that tension, pressure. So learning to recognize the contrast between calm and agitation, learning to be accepting of agitation so that we can be aware of it carefully and fully, is an important part of this path to freedom.

To emphasize this, part of the classic teachings of Buddhism is that agitation—sometimes explicitly that word, sometimes restlessness is the word that's used—is the last attachment^[1], the last hindrance, the last piece of dukkha^[2] (ouch, suffering) that remains before a person becomes fully liberated. In fact, you have to be fully liberated to let go of the last vestiges of restlessness and agitation. So if you have some agitation in your meditation, it certainly means you're not fully awakened, but it also means that you're human. This is part and parcel of being human that we're working with, and becoming wise about how to be with agitation.

And calm can set in in all kinds of different stages of meditation, or all kinds of qualities of it. The first really palpable and impactful experience of calm that I experienced in my spiritual life—especially before I was interested in spirituality—was when I was eighteen and I went into a little Catholic chapel in France. Immediately this calm descended. In the cool, ancient chapel with the stone walls, there was something about the cool, clear, crisp air, the history of the chapel maybe in the atmosphere there, or the associations I had with it, who knows. But I felt this calm settle into my body that I just found so stunning, and I kind of stayed lingering with it for a long time.

And then I found myself being agitated in rush hour traffic here in the Bay Area freeways, and decided, "Well, I'm here for a while and I have better things to do than be agitated." And then finding some simple modicum of calm to settle into, to settle in the seat in the car and be still, look around at the other drivers, and wish them well. Nothing too dramatic, nothing that I would want to linger in or feel that was something spiritual, but it was what was available and I was content with that.

Part of the advantage of calm in the path of liberation is that as we become calmer, we're able to see more clearly. As we become calmer, we have access to more wisdom, skillfulness, and understanding of where to go from here, including how to not feed the agitation. How not to get agitated because we're agitated, but rather to support, to nourish the calm. To "feed the calm" is the language of the Buddha; he says the nourishment for calm is calm.

So if you don't have any calm, you can't nourish yourself with it. But if you recognize some degree of calm within, even a small degree, then that calm can act as the food for becoming more calm. In the same way, agitation is the food for more agitation. To be able to see the contrast between calm and agitation gives us the wisdom to know which one to attend to the most. Not to ignore the agitation, but to learn to tend to the calm enough that we can be calmly aware of the agitation, and that way we're not feeding the agitation.

Each of these, calm and agitation, has a different effect on how we experience consciousness, how we experience being aware. Agitation can make the awareness agitated. Agitation is a kind of movement that feels uncomfortable, and so it's localized. You can feel it in a certain place, and it tends to ground, settle, gather, or tie consciousness to a bounded, smaller, tighter place within. Sometimes it's so agitated it's really hard to even know we're aware, or to tune into what consciousness is like. When we're agitated, it's impossible. It's almost like it's absent.

But as we become calm, calm can have a location in the body, but it tends to have soft boundaries. It tends to not be moving and jumping around so much, and it tends to have smooth, relaxed, or porous boundaries. It spreads out through the body. Sometimes the calm, especially mental calm, can feel the same way—that it just has no boundaries. So much so that the calm can feel like it's in the room, even though the room conventionally is agitated, because our calm is so strong it kind of spills over into our sense or feeling of the room, at least how we're aware of the room, the awareness that is there.

One of the most precious resources we have is our capacity for attention, for awareness of being conscious. And this amazingly precious resource, this amazingly precious treasure that we have, its characteristics, its availability, and the way in which it supports us can vary a lot depending on how agitated we are or how calm we are.

One of the things that you might consider doing today, in the next 24 hours, are two things. One is to just become attuned to the presence of agitation and calm. Just that attunement, that recognition of them, might be enough. You don't have to fix anything, but just see what happens when you see it clearly. You might find yourself shifting even unintentionally in a positive direction by that clear awareness of it.

And then if you can be calmly aware of your agitation, what happens then? What shifts then? I'm not going to suggest that you become aware of the calm in an agitated way, but if you did that, that would have a different kind of effect.

A second thing to do is to see if you can notice what your sense of being conscious is like, being aware is like, at the times you're more agitated and at times that you're more calm. Does your sense of what awareness is, or its location, or its qualities, or its characteristics shift and change depending on where you are on the agitation-calm spectrum?

Finally, I'll say that the deeper we go in this exploration of calm and agitation, one of the things we can discover is a lot of the agitation that we can experience is connected to our idea of self—our idea of me, myself, and mine. That's one of the ways to get a handle on or to put a big question mark next to our agitation. Not to make it such a rarefied thing, but to realize that what's agitated is our idea of self. And that as we get calmer, our idea of self shifts and changes as well. The relationship between consciousness and self is one of these fascinating things to discover.

So one saying we could say: To assert the self is to be agitated. To forget the self is to be calm and wise. To assert the self is to be agitated and foolish. To forget the self is to be calm and wise. Thank you very much, and I hope your exploration of calm and agitation makes you wiser.