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Guided Meditation: Awareness as the Town Square

Good morning everyone, and have a good day. Good evening for some of you, maybe good afternoon.

Lately, I've been thinking about the town square. I wonder sometimes if YouTube is kind of open to the world to come by, a little bit of a town square that people come and visit and come through, where everyone's invited. I'm thinking about this meditation session with the metaphor of a town square.

Imagine you're a traveler and you come to a small town. It looks like a welcoming town. It looks like people are happy to have visitors come through. So you come and make your way to the town square. They have very comfortable benches on that town square, and you're happy to sit on the edge of the square and watch the comings and goings. It marvels you, all the different people, and maybe animals and activities that somehow come through, show up in the town square, stay for a while, and leave. It seems like everyone has the ability to use the town square as a public space, and there's no sense that anyone shouldn't be there. It looks like they feel quite happy to be there and comfortable, like they belong and can be themselves.

It's lovely to watch the young, the old, the children, the lovers, the people arguing, and maybe even the people on political soapboxes. All of life comes through. Then at some point, it dawns on you as you look at everyone—something seems unusual. You can't quite put your finger on it until you realize that all the people who come into the square are all visitors like you. Some of them might stay for a few days, some of them for a few weeks, maybe some of them a little bit longer. But in fact, everyone in the town, everyone coming through, are just visitors. And you realize you're a visitor. Everything here is a visitor.

In the same way, it might be useful to think of your capacity to be aware, your mindfulness, as the town square that you keep open 24 hours a day. Everything is welcome into the town square, into mindfulness. Your job is to make sure that you are sitting on that comfortable bench that allows you to be present and gaze upon all that comes. And maybe, if you have a responsibility in that town square, as all visitors do, perhaps it is to be accepting and kind to all the visitors that come.

So, think of mindfulness as a town square in which everything is allowed to come through. Everything that comes through is allowed to be there. Everything is just a visitor; some things stay longer than others. Your job is to know it, to see it, to be present, and to keep the town square available to everyone. Keep this town square as a place where all things can be without you being for or against, without being involved or interfering with anything. Just aware, just present. Perhaps this will give you a profound sense of being at ease and at peace, because you know you're in the town square and you can just allow things to come and go—yourself, all things, all the ways that you are.

Assume a meditation posture that is upright, literally or metaphorically, and gently close your eyes. Settle into your bench in the town square so you can relax and be present. Take a few long, slow, deep breaths. As you exhale, settle in, relaxing. Let your breathing return to normal.

Perhaps you've actually come to the town square early in the morning before anyone else, and you find a broom to sweep it clean, to make it nice for people who come. In the same way, relaxing your body is sweeping and making it nice for all that's going to be there for you. On the exhale, relaxing the face. On the exhale, relaxing the shoulders. Relaxing the chest. Relaxing the belly. Maybe relaxing the whole body. Releasing holding, tightening.

The comings and goings in this town square include the comings and goings of each inhale and each exhale. Maybe the breathing can be like the pigeons flying around. As you stay here, sooner or later, all kinds of things will come to your awareness. Let it come, let it go, let it be. But don't leave your bench. Don't leave and get involved with anything. Just watch it, just see it from the vantage point of your bench. As if your attitude of acceptance of all of it is the very recipe of providing a sense of freedom and homecoming to whatever arises.

As we come to the end of the sitting, take a few moments with the perspective that you're a visitor here in this world. Everyone else is a visitor. Everything is a visitor. We all have this in common in the comings and goings of all things: just visitors. With that perspective, sitting on your bench watching in the town square, it might be a little easier to gaze upon all the visitors kindly, caringly, respectfully, maybe even reverently.

Wishing, aspiring that your heart and your eyes can look upon all people and all beings with kindness. That you can look upon all beings with eyes that convey safety. That you can be with all beings with a heart that radiates peace. That you can be present for others in a way they feel free to be themselves. May it be that your gift to the world—that you aspire to give to this world where we're all visitors—is that you contribute kindness, goodwill, safety, peace, and freedom. And may this meditation practice we've done today support this aspiration to be this kind of person in this world that we live in.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Meaning (1 of 5) Suffering

Hello everyone. I'm starting a new week with a new theme. I think maybe the title of the theme, the one word for the theme this week, perhaps it can be the word "meaning." We'll spend this week exploring the topic of meaning in relationship to meditation. What's the meaning of meditation?

In years past, I would have been very hesitant to take up a topic like this. Partly because, coming out of my Zen training, the idea of assigning meaning or finding meaning was often presented as being beside the point. There was something very significant about just showing up and being present without inserting a meaning on top of our experience in our life. I love this idea; it was a radical simplicity where so much falls away. But I think we cannot get away from human life, from human minds somehow—one way or the other, whether consciously or unconsciously—being involved in the questions of meaning, of purpose. Why are we here? What's the most important thing for us to do?

Religions often provide a sense of meaning and purpose, an interpretation of what's important, what our priorities are, and what we do with suffering. What's the meaning of suffering? What's the purpose in our life in relationship to suffering? What I would like to do this week is to explore this topic, with the hope that it gives a kind of depth to your involvement with meditation. That it lets your meditation be fueled, founded on, and supported by some of the deeper values and deeper understandings you have—maybe that you're not even conscious of—that give meditation more motivation, more strength, more value, more gravitas in a sense.

We'll do that by looking at the connection meditation can have to a variety of different things in our life. Today I want to talk about suffering. I don't quite remember the sequence that I have, but I think tomorrow is the important values we have. Then the connection to ourself, the connection to others, and the connection to what one might consider to be sacred. What's the meaning of meditation in relationship to these important areas of life?

When this mindfulness meditation that I'm teaching was brought to the United States, there was a very strong wish by the teachers to make it available to as many people as possible, without the hindrance that might be there if the whole Buddhist religious package was brought with it. There was an idea that this mindfulness practice is a simple, raw, basic practice. It doesn't have to belong to any particular religion or philosophy, wanting to make this practice available broadly and widely so it could benefit many people.

In fact, they succeeded in many ways. Those first Buddhist teachers inspired generations of people who now offer mindfulness completely separated from Buddhism—sometimes called secular mindfulness—in clinical settings and all kinds of places. I think it's been, overall, a wonderful contribution to society. There's some real value in offering a kind of "Buddhism Lite," where we don't pile in a lot of the Buddhist meaning, sense of purpose, or religiosity that surrounds it, and just make it accessible to people easily. That's still the case. But I'm hoping that the discussion this week will prompt you to not feel like you have to adopt some Buddhist idea that might come through here. Rather, let the teaching become a mirror for you to reflect and think more deeply about your life—maybe more deeply than you ever have—about the place of meaning. What meanings do you bring? What purposes do you bring? What is your understanding of what it means to be a human being in this world?

An example of the value that can be found is this: someone might go to the doctor, and the doctor says, "You're about to have a heart attack. You're living with so much stress that I think you need to go and learn some meditation. Mindfulness is very helpful, and there's a mindfulness center nearby. Why don't you go there and learn to meditate? Because with this stress, I don't see that you're going to live more than a couple of months." That motivates the person, and the person shows up at a meditation center and learns mindfulness. Maybe the teacher there asks, "Why are you here? What's the purpose? What's the meaning of you being here?" This person might say, "Well, my doctor sent me. It's a prescription, end of story."

But then you press further. You ask the person, "Is that why the doctor sent you?" And the person replies, "The doctor said that if I don't do it, I'll die, and I don't want to die." So the meaning of the meditation is not dying.

But then you start thinking about it more, or you're asked more questions, and the question becomes, "Why do you want to live?" "Oh, because I want to be able to see my grandchildren. I want to be able to finish the work that I do. I love life, and I just want to be able to live it fully. I'm afraid of death, and I'm trying to put it off as much as I can. I feel like I haven't really dealt with the big issues in my life, and before I die, I want to finish and deal with those issues." So there are all kinds of reasons. This thing—the doctor saying you have to go and meditate because otherwise you'll die—begins being connected to other values, other important ideas about why you should stay alive. Those are animating forces.

Some people don't know why they're alive, or they don't have a meaning or purpose. And some people might practice because they've discovered that they can live much more peacefully if they don't live searching, questioning, or getting all wrapped up around issues of meaning and purpose. If you're happy just to roll along with whatever's happening, then that becomes the meaning. That becomes the purpose: just roll along, just be present. The meaning is that meaning itself is a hindrance, and it's just nicer to roll along with things.

So, what's the meaning? What's the purpose? What's the interpretation we have? It might be interesting for some of you to know that there's a standard Theravada^[1] Buddhism that this tradition comes out of. I consider myself a Theravada Buddhist in this role of teaching, but I don't really have much place in my heart or my mind for some of the core teachings that give meaning and purpose to Theravada Buddhism. Some people will say this is the foundation of it. Some people say that without believing in this, there's no Buddhism at all. But I take exception to that. My sense of meaning is very Buddhistic; I have some kind of ultimate sense of meaning and purpose that comes from this practice, but I don't share some of the core things that the tradition has.

For example, I'm not motivated by the idea that the purpose of this practice is so that we will no longer get reborn. That doesn't speak to me, doesn't inspire me, doesn't have a place for me. It's completely appropriate and fine for someone else to have that view; I don't have an issue with that. It's just not what animates me. The idea that the purpose is to no longer be reborn doesn't really do much for me. But do I have something else that's comparable? If anything, I feel that it's enough for me to have a radical freedom from suffering. To really let go of suffering in some deep way, and then live this life free of the attachments and clinging—that's motivating for me. It's almost fundamental.

But in the background of that, there is an idea that I don't hold very tightly: a sense of trusting life, of feeling at home in this universe. This letting go of suffering, letting go of clinging, is also a homecoming into this universe where I'm no longer standing in opposition to it, or making some problem out of it. These are all ways of making meaning, a purpose, of contextualizing and interpreting what we're doing.

I want to end here now with one of the things people find meaning or purpose in, which is in relationship to suffering. Some people inherit some meaning of what suffering means or what the purpose of suffering is from the religions they grew up with. There are some religions that have a very important idea that suffering is redemptive—that you're supposed to suffer, and it's good to experience suffering because it prepares you for the hereafter. Some people say that suffering is testing our religious faith, and so we have to somehow hold on to our faith when we suffer. That's the key thing we have to do, and we'll be rewarded if we hold on to our faith. People have all kinds of ideas. In Buddhism, the meaning of suffering is that it's unnecessary. It's motivating in order to come to the other side of suffering, to be free of suffering, to experience a radical liberation from suffering.

There's a famous quote from the Buddha where he says, "I teach suffering and the end of suffering." You might say there's no need to ask why, just like when you take your hand off a hot stove, you don't have to ask why you do it; your body will do it immediately. It could be that simple, like a biological imperative to be free of suffering. But there might be other things. There might be the idea: "Yes, I want to be free of suffering so I can be a better support for the world around me. I want to be free of my clinging so that I can act from a place of compassion and care for this world, and take care of my family. I want to become free of the sources—greed, hate, and delusion^[2]—that bring about suffering, so that I can live a certain way, be a certain way, or do this and that." What is your meaning in terms of your meditation practice? What's the purpose? What's the role? What's the meaning of suffering?

How does suffering fit into it? And how does that fit into wider or deeper circles of meaning in your life? Is it simply to be free of suffering and that's enough, or is there some deeper purpose that serves some deeper value? Is it just to be free of stress so you don't have a heart attack? If you are free of suffering, what do you hope that will do for you? What is your aspiration? What is your sense of purpose if you can become radically free of suffering? Or is coping with suffering and freedom from suffering a bit of a sideshow that you do reluctantly so you can get on to what's most important? What is most important? What is the most important way in which you understand your life, what your life is about, and what it means to be a human being? How does suffering, and freeing yourself from suffering, fit into that in your life?

I hope that this makes some sense for you, and I'm hoping this acts as a catalyst for you to do some reflection. I would encourage you, if you have anyone—friends, family, total strangers—that maybe you engage in this topic of meaning and purpose. What is the most fundamental meaning and purpose that you have, that you live by? How does meditation connect to that? What connection might meditation have to support that?

Thank you. We'll continue these reflections over this week.