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Guided Meditation: Seeing not Being Aversion

Greetings, and it's my delight to welcome you to this session of meditation. Welcome to your own meditation time. I'd like to begin with a little story from the suttas^[1].

It seems there was a man who was annoyed and upset about the Buddha. He came to him and scolded him, heaping abuse on him, and apparently, the Buddha just sat there calmly. When the scolding and abuse had stopped, the Buddha said, "Do you ever have friends or family who come to your home, and you offer them a meal?"

The man said, "Yes."

"And if they do not receive or take that meal, who does the food belong to?"

The man said, "Well, then it still belongs to me."

So the Buddha said, "In the same way, I do not accept your hostility, so it stays with you. It belongs to you."

And that's the little story. The reason I say that at the beginning of the meditation is that, in a certain kind of way, whenever we have aversion or hostility—I'm trying to avoid using the word anger, but anger towards ourselves, or criticalness towards ourselves as we sit and meditate—whenever there's some kind of pushing away or aversion to something, it's never who we are. Unless we have a very strong identification with it, it's just a part of what the mind is doing.

When mindfulness is strong, the mindfulness can be like the Buddha. The awareness can see and not accept the hostility, staying calm. This power, this ability to stay centered or balanced in the midst of our awareness, allows us to see very clearly what's going on inside of ourselves. We can see the attachment, see the greed or the impulse towards wanting and holding. We can also see the criticalness, the aversion, the hostility we might have, the complaining, the biting, or even the meanness that might be there. We can see it, but not accept it. We don't take it in; we let it be and leave it alone for where it comes from inside. You don't have to do much about it.

This capacity just to see is so powerful, and that can be our home. In a sense, if we want to identify with anything, we identify with the awareness, with the mindfulness. In one place, the Buddha called mindfulness the charioteer who drives a chariot. So there is some sense that this is a good place to be, to be centered in this place that doesn't pick things up or react to things, but sees really clearly. It is said to be a place of safety.

Meditation Instructions

So, taking a meditation posture now. Take a posture, if you can, that gives you a sense of stability. If you're sitting in a chair or sitting cross-legged, sometimes you can feel the weight of your body against the chair, the place where your chair receives the weight, or where your cushion or the floor receives the weight of your body. You might even rock back and forth a little bit to feel a little bit more fully the place where you are touching your chair, the floor, or your cushion. Really feel that contact.

And then sitting straight, sitting still, with your eyes closed. Almost as if you're building a mountain, take your awareness and slowly move it up from that bottom. Feel perhaps the area of your sitting bones and your hip bones, the small of your back. Perhaps relax and soften the belly, the lower belly, so there's a little bit more stability, broadness, and weight down below that supports what's above.

Perhaps feel your weight, firmness, and stability as you move your attention up the spine, maybe vertebra by vertebra. You might make small adjustments in the vertebrae so they're a little bit more balanced and stable on top of each other.

Maybe it provides a little bit of stability for you to open up a space between the last vertebra of your neck and the skull. Opening that space there has the same effect as tipping your head slightly forward and your chin back. Your head comes a little bit back, and the crown of your head goes up towards the ceiling.

Feel the stability of your body to whatever degree you can feel it. Sometimes it's the three-dimensional substance, the substantiality of the body, and the sensations of the body here. This is the center of gravity.

And then, feel whatever inner stability there might be, or whatever other words work better for you—something like inner stillness, an inner strength, or a place of inner quiet and peacefulness.

Perhaps then, let your breathing and your awareness somehow move through, inside, or around the sense of inner stability that you have. This stability keeps you a little rooted in the present moment.

You might experiment now, from whatever degree of inner stability you have with your awareness and your mindfulness, to watch what goes on in your mind. Do not interfere with it, criticize it, or hold on to it. Let it flow by like a stream flows by. Know it from a place of stability.

If there is any aversion, perhaps you can also know that from awareness, without accepting it, being it, or reacting to it. It's just something to observe. Or if there's a desire for something, it is just something to observe from a place of stability. Neither desire nor aversion needs to be acted upon; we don't need to do anything about it, but to see it clearly.

And then, once again, return to your breathing. Perhaps there's some way from the base of your breathing, the inner breathing within your breathing, that you can find a place of simple stability and stillness. That is the home for seeing clearly, without getting involved with what you see.

Reflections on Compassion

With this emphasis on seeing and not being involved or reactive to what we see, we practice trying to see, not to be our hostility or our desire. Don't be desirous. Don't be aversive. Just see. Discover the power and the freedom of just seeing, without accepting any of it or rejecting anything. Just see. Just observe. Just know this.

It is possible to see from the heart, to observe life in us and around us from our kind regard, our compassion, and our care. There is the idea in Buddhism of seeing the cries of the world^[2]—somehow observing, being present for, and being a witness to the suffering of this world. To be able to watch it and see it without being reactive, pulling away, or becoming hostile, so that we can look upon our own suffering with a compassionate gaze. We can look upon it in such a way that our heart's care, aspiration, and motivation to support, help, and make a difference in this world is awoken.

It's only by seeing clearly the suffering of the world that we have a chance for the deepest places of love and compassion to well up to meet that suffering.

As we sit here in meditation, the way we can meet it is to have the aspiration and the wish for all suffering beings to be free of their suffering. For all beings who are hungry to be free of their hunger. That all beings who are sick be free of their sickness. For all beings who are oppressed to be free of their oppression. And for all beings who do not feel loved to know that they are cared for and loved.

May it be that our heart's capacity for compassion, care, and love on this day finds some real expression and gets translated to living the day differently. May it be that this is a day that, in whatever small or big ways that are available to us, we are contributing to the welfare and happiness of this whole world. May all beings be happy.