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Guided Meditation: Softening the Mind

Hello everyone, and welcome.

As an introduction to this meditation, we discover that often when we sit down to meditate, the mind has other ideas. We are concerned with things, and we have a mental tendency to fixate on certain kinds of thoughts, ideas, and concerns that we have. The simple act of coming back to focus on the breathing can be challenging because the mind has other ideas. There's this strong tendency to be focused on our concerns, distractions, or fantasies—whatever it might be. Sometimes the mind, when it's focused on its concerns, can be locked in. Sometimes there can be a strong force in that direction, and the mind is not soft or in a receptive, relaxed way because it's concerned about something; there's energy in it.

So, one of the things that happens in meditation is a softening of that kind of fixation or preoccupation of the mind. The energy that's so directed at our concerns is sometimes locked in, and there's a softening, a yielding, a quieting, a stilling of it that happens. Without that quieting and softening, meditation is a battle to come back to the breath over and over again. Sometimes it adds more tension because of the struggle between these two forces. But if we understand that part of what we're doing in returning to the breathing—and even focusing on the breathing—is helping the mind begin to soften the grip of those concerns. Often it's a tightness around its energy. It's a forceful directedness at certain concerns and preoccupations, or even with the thinking itself.

Then it might be easier not to have this battle, but to find a supportive and helpful way to support that stilling and softening of the mind, so that we can stay more focused on the breathing without being fixated, without being tight.

One of the ways to do this is to—of course, the mind will wander off in thought—be very careful how you begin again with your breathing, how you resume the focus on the breathing. It's important not to jerk the mind back, forcefully put the mind back, or be critical and upset with the fact that the mind wandered off in thought and is preoccupied. Rather, find a way that's actually pleasant. Believe it or not, a pleasant way of returning to the breathing and being there. The very movement of returning, beginning again, coming back to the breathing, or letting the breathing come back into awareness feels like an enjoyable movement. It's like a tai chi move that just feels so beautiful or graceful. It feels so much so that we look forward to that movement of returning.

So that the very returning to the breathing can then contribute to the softening of the thinking mind. Then we come back and do it over and over again. Slowly, the thinking mind relaxes. Sometimes it relaxes because we relax the thinking muscle. Sometimes we can actually quiet a little bit of thinking, just to calm it down intentionally. Sometimes it's just the fact that we're not reinforcing it by continually pouring our mental attention and energy into it. It stops being fed, and so it quiets down. Sometimes, with time, our ability to stay focused on the breathing improves. Not because it's a forceful attention, but because we've learned to have this steady, committed attention to the breathing, where the interest now becomes stronger to stay there than it is with the distractions.

So, the softening of the mind, the quieting of the thinking mind, the relaxing and settling of it, brings us to a place where we can abide. We can just dwell. We kind of rest with awareness, rest in awareness, rest with the experience of breathing, or be stable in it. That begins opening up new dimensions of mindfulness meditation, dimensions of insight. Because we've cleared out enough of the veils of thinking, we can be more subtle in the present moment with direct experience.

So in this meditation, maybe you can have some focus on this softening of the mind—the thinking mind softening, relaxing, quieting, stilling. Part of that is how you return to the breathing. However often you wander off, be content that now you get to practice this returning, starting over again, experimenting to find a nice way to do it.

Assuming an upright meditation posture.

Maybe sway back and forth a little bit, twist your body gently as a way of physically connecting to your body. Maybe make small adjustments so that you are a little bit better aligned in your body for meditation.

Then letting the body come to stillness, and maybe appreciating that stillness more because you moved a little bit.

Feeling the experience of the eyes. How do your eyes feel right now? If you haven't closed your eyes, gently close them and feel how the eyes are different with the eyes closed.

See if you can soften your eyes, relax them, maybe having the eyes rest in their sockets. This is particularly helpful if we are still kind of searching with the eyes, even with the eyes closed.

Then gently taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. As you exhale, maybe there's some way that you can relax the thinking muscle, softening any tension or tightness associated with thinking. Almost as you exhale, the mind settles into the torso, down. As if the mind has a chance to settle into a nice soft chair and relax finally. To relax after a long day of work, a long life of working.

Letting your breathing return to normal. Still, as you exhale, relax the body some more. The tensions of the mind are also often expressed in the body. Soften the belly. Soften in the shoulders. Soften in the face.

Then gently, maybe lovingly, center your attention on the breathing. Maybe with the idea that, using your awareness, you will accompany your breathing. Every time you exhale, let go of your thoughts. Or if you can't let go of them, see if you can quiet the thinking mind. Bring greater calm to it.

If you wander off in thought, see if you can return to breathing in an enjoyable way. It might be enjoyable if you don't have a high standard, but are content with doing the best you can. Over and over again, settling into the breathing. Accompanying the breathing with a soft, committed attention. One breath at a time.

Returning to your breathing. With the mind as soft as is possible, let your attention rest. Almost like the mind is resting in the rhythm of breathing. As if the rhythm of breathing is like waves moving across the ocean. Awareness rides the waves up and down, coming and going, floating on the breathing.

As you exhale, perhaps softening the mind, relaxing the thinking muscle. Imagining the mind as a broad, still, quiet lake. Cool, peaceful. As you exhale, letting go of your thinking. Letting your thoughts float away off the surface of the peaceful lake. And whatever is not peaceful, can you for a few moments be aware of that peacefully, calmly?

Then to turn your calm attention outward into the world. To the people you'll encounter today in your neighborhoods, stores, colleagues, family, friends, and those who you hold in your heart. While you're resting the mind, without fixating on anything, be aware of the people of the world, their joys and their sorrows, the ways in which they live in all kinds of challenging ways.

And to look upon it all, gaze upon it with eyes of care, of compassion. Quietly, peacefully. Gazing upon the world kindly. Offer your care to the world, maybe through these words:

May I contribute to the welfare and happiness of everyone.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be safe.
May all beings be peaceful.
And may all beings everywhere be free.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (12) Abiding Observing Change

So, hello. In our continued discussion and exploration of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta^[1], we're spending time now with the refrain. There are thirteen exercises in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, and we're staying now with the first one, which has to do with breathing. But as this practice of breathing becomes more focused and awareness grows, then that awareness is available for insight, and that's what the refrains are about.

Let me repeat what I've said a number of times now: the exercises are an engagement, a way of practicing that is meant to heighten our sense of awareness, to bring more clear, stable awareness into the present moment. In this case, breathing is helping us establish present moment awareness. The practices of knowing, feeling, and relaxing are all there to support our ability for awareness to become stable in the present moment—soft awareness, open awareness, clear awareness.

When our awareness and mindfulness start becoming stable, the description of how we know we're ready for the insights of the refrain is when we're able to abide observing our experience.

The Pali word is viharati^[2], which means to abide or to dwell. It's used in the teachings of the Buddha for when awareness is strong. Once our capacity to stay present is really stable, then we can abide in different things. We can abide in equanimity, we can abide in calm, we can abide in deep concentration states, we can abide in mindfulness, we can abide in awareness.

This word "abide" is actually a very rich, important word in the suttas. It's indicating where we're going with mindfulness practice. It's not only about being mindful of our experience and seeing it clearly for what it is—that's very important—but it's also about developing this capacity to have present moment awareness so we can abide in it. We can abide in our experience.

It goes along with observing our experience. This observing, as I've said, is a very spacious, clear seeing that is not interfering, judging, reacting to, or fixing our experience. We just kind of settle back and see it clearly. Now we can start seeing it clearly for what it is in a clearer way because by abiding, we're not attacking. By abiding, we're not reaching forward to grab, or pulling away, or doing stuff with our experience. We're just abiding with it.

That allows us to come to this place of perceiving things in a very spacious, relaxed way. It's not easy to come there, but this is what the mindfulness exercises in this text are supporting us with, helping us to get there that way. Sometimes it takes a long time to keep doing breath meditation and keep coming back. It's so beneficial to do this, and then eventually we come to a place where the benefit becomes that we can feel this abiding way of just being present.

The reason why this is helpful for the purposes of this path of liberation is that it frees up the mind from being fixated on concepts, ideas, stories, opinions, and imaginations that we have.

For example, to use an analogy I've used a number of times: watching a river go by. Just sitting on the banks of the river, watching the river go by. But then the mind starts thinking about the river. We start thinking, "Well, this river is not really flowing in the right location. If it was a hundred yards further to the south, it would probably be better there. It's probably nicer to sit there and look at it, get more sun during the day." We start ruminating about this river.

As we think about the river, we're thinking about the concept of the river. We're no longer actually just watching and deeply absorbed in watching the river in and of itself, because we get absorbed in the concept of the river. The concept of the river is just a concept, and that has a certain kind of permanence to it. The concept maybe doesn't change so much; it's just 'the river.'

But if we wake up from this rumination, sit back on the riverbank, return to the river itself, and see directly with the river, we see that the river is actually a dynamic process of change. It's moving and flowing all the time. It's the moving and flowing that allows us to settle back and just rest, to be soft and relaxed, sometimes letting go of our thoughts and letting go of anything else, just absorbed in watching it go by. We cannot rest back and be absorbed in a nice, restful, abiding way if we're caught up in thoughts like, "We have to move the river. How are we going to do this? How much is it going to cost? Who do I write to to make this happen?" The mind then is active, and maybe even a little bit straining. It's work to have those thoughts.

So, as the mind softens and relaxes, and the thinking mind stops being a priority—that we have to figure out everything or think everything out—we start relaxing enough to start being not with concepts, but with direct experience. Then we start watching the changing nature of things.

It's kind of like seeing a single fall leaf fall from a tree, and immediately thinking, "Oh no, now I have to sweep soon. I've got to sweep my yard, and it's going to be a lot of work. Maybe I need to buy a new rake." Then I'm caught up in a world that doesn't allow me to really appreciate the wonderful floating down of the leaf. Then maybe the wind picks up, or as fall gets stronger, a lot of leaves begin falling at the same time. I can't just fixate on one leaf falling; I just have to sit back and watch in a very broad, spacious, receptive way all the leaves just falling and falling, like snow coming down.

As we develop this practice, it turns out that so much of our direct experience of the body is more akin to the river flowing or the leaves falling than it is to a fixed concept. Often we live in a world of fixed concepts and ideas, and we're relating to what's happening in our experience through the lens of these concepts and ideas.

Even the concept of breathing—'inhale' is a concept. If we're not fixating or focusing on that concept, but rather experiencing the inhale, experiencing the exhale, we see that the inhale is made up of many, many different sensations that are coming and going. It's kind of like a river of sensations that flows through us as we breathe in, as we breathe out.

I've sometimes had trouble with my breathing in meditation, and I got so worked up, thinking my breathing was wrong: "Why can't I breathe better?" What I learned to do was not to worry about these kinds of thoughts, but rather to dip down into the contracted breathing, the tight breathing, whatever difficulty I had, and just start feeling the experience itself directly.

And the experience itself, sooner or later, you see is actually made up of a lot of different small sensations that are coming and going into existence. They're there for a moment, they pass away. A minute later, the sensations of the inhale are different from the sensations of the exhale. When the inhale stops, all the inhale sensations have passed away, and the exhale sensations begin.

It might sound boring that you're just involved in these sensations, but it's not. It's just like watching a river. It's to be relaxed and absorbed in the beautiful flow of the process, the dynamic nature of experience.

So in this refrain, then, as practice deepens, it explains that one abides observing. To use shorthand for today: one abides observing the changing experiences of the body; one observes the arising and passing of experiences in the body. Not that we're searching for it or trying to look for change. It's more like you're not trying to search for how the river is changing. It's more like you settle back, relax, and you can watch it change.

As mindfulness gets well established, as awareness is established and we can abide in the present moment in a way that observes what is happening in a spacious, relaxed way, what we become attuned to is the changing nature of sensations in the body.

Now the practice opens up in a different kind of way when we open up to seeing this changing nature. We'll talk more about this because this is probably the central insight of insight meditation: the insight into the changing nature, the inconstant flow of sensations. Why it's so important and central, and why we appreciate it so much, is probably not so obvious to people who are uninitiated into this world. It seems like there are much more important things to do in the world than to look and see how things are changing in the body.

But I'll talk more about that tomorrow and go a little bit further into this particular section of the refrain, which says: abiding, one observes the arising experiences in the body, one observes the passing away experiences in the body, and one observes the arising and ceasing of experiences in the body.

So, that's for tomorrow. Thank you very much.