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Guided Meditation: From Stories to Breathing

Hello everyone, and welcome. I'll begin with a little story having to do with our theme for the week.

Something appears to our senses. We might see an object. I might see the bell that's here. I see the object, and I feel the pleasantness of it. I feel the smoothness of it, and the temperature of it is nice. And then I recognize it as something, or cognize it. In this case, I recognize it as a bell. In other circumstances, I might recognize it as something else.

And then, once I have that bell idea, I can begin creating a story. The story is that this bell will sit next to me here during the meditation, and at the end of the sitting, I'll ring the bell to mark the end. And that could be as simple as the story goes. Or the story can go, "Yes, I'll ring it at the end of the sitting. There are a lot of people listening, so I better ring it well—loud enough but not too loud, with a nice resonance^[1]." And the story might end there.

The story might continue: "If I don't ring it well, people will not like me. If I don't ring the bell well, my reputation will be sullied. And then tomorrow when I come, I'll be quite self-conscious, and it'll be difficult. I wonder if maybe I shouldn't even ring the bell. Maybe I should just kind of announce the sitting is over." And so the story begins spinning and going.

But it all began with a very simple something appearing to the senses. The seeing of the bell was pleasant in and of itself. There was a recognition—not necessarily what it ultimately is, but the recognition of what it is for me, here, now: it's a bell. And then there's the beginning of stories.

Part of what we're doing in meditation is to stay simple with our experience. With the immediacy of what's happening now. What's appearing now. Knowing whether it's pleasant or unpleasant. Allowing yourself to have the simple recognition of what it is for us now—a recognition which is maybe empty of ultimate truth about the object. Just, this is how it's being seen now, recognized now. And then, once the stories begin, we come back to the breathing. We come back to the simplicity of this moment, maybe by first recognizing that I'm beginning to construct and make stories, beginning to elaborate on the simplicity of it all.

Many people live in the elaboration. They live in their stories; that's where their center of gravity is. In meditation, the center of gravity is in the earlier steps in the process: the appearance, the feeling tones, the simple recognition of the experience. This means that we don't need to get involved in complicated stories that involve judging, commentary, predictions, or memories. The mind becomes simpler and easier when it starts going to earlier steps in that process.

An earlier step in the process doesn't mean that it's more primitive or less important. It actually gives us a vantage point to understand how we're getting caught, how to let go, or how not to be caught. Not being caught can become as simple as just coming back to the breathing, or coming back to the direct sensation of the moment with no elaboration.

So, assuming a meditation posture, and gently closing your eyes.

As you are right now, how does your physical experience appear? How does it occur? How does it show up for you, in the simplest version of sensations of the body? And is it pleasant, unpleasant, or neither?

Do you have simple ideas, recognitions, or concepts for what's happening in your body? Not so much big processes, but simple ideas of what is appearing. What is the thing, what is the experience, in the simplicity of the moment?

And do you have elaborations? Do you have stories, interpretations, concerns, or sentences that you tell yourself about what's happening in your body? Bigger perspectives, the meaning of it? That it's good or bad, right or wrong, or it could be better or worse?

If you take those and begin to elaborate, that elaboration is going to continue and spiral out to more and more complicated stories. We can sometimes live in the constructed stories.

And so, settling into your breathing.

As you inhale, feeling your body directly and simply.

As you exhale, relax the body. As you exhale, relax into the contact of your body's bottom to the chair, your cushion, your bed, the floor.

Relaxing the belly, softening in the belly. Yielding to the pull of gravity in the belly.

Softening in the shoulders, relaxing the shoulders.

Relaxing in the face.

And then relaxing the thinking mind. Relaxing the pressure and tension of the thinking that makes the elaborated stories, that constructs ideas and predicts futures, or remembers the past, or makes meaning out of things.

Relax the thinking mind.

And then settle into the rhythm of breathing. The body's experience of breathing. See if you can gently, maybe lovingly and kindly, stay with your breathing. As if your awareness, your attention, is going hand in hand with the body's experience of breathing. Awareness accompanies breathing, and breathing accompanies awareness.

And if you get pulled into the world of thoughts, ideas, or elaborations, recognize it as constructions. Constructing stories, constructing meaning. Constructions. And then begin again with your breathing.

Are you more connected to your stories and constructions, or more connected to the direct experience of breathing?

If you're involved in the world of stories and elaborations, memories and future imaginings, imagine that all that are like clouds, and that you allow yourself to drop through the clouds and land back on the ground of the body breathing. Here is a place to be grounded.

One of the pleasures of meditation is being content to rest in the direct experience of the body breathing. To rest in the direct experience of what arises in awareness. In either case, do not be pulled into the world of stories and constructions, even though some can be pleasant and wonderful, and some can be difficult.

There is something profound about connecting to this lived life of ours without the stories. And there's something profound about the safety, the directness, and the simplicity that can then also occur in how we are present for other people.

We're present not through the filter of the stories, the meanings, the history, or the projected future. We're able to put that aside to be present for the directness of seeing another human being, and letting them feel the safety, the contentment, and the ease of just being present with each other in the simplicity of the moment.

And may it be that what we learn about being content to be in the present moment, unburdened by our stories—may it be a vehicle for supporting the happiness, safety, peace, and freedom of others, as it is supporting our own happiness, safety, peace, and freedom.

May this practice that we do express itself in this world. Bringing happiness to all beings. Bringing safety to all beings. Bringing peacefulness to all beings. Bringing freedom to all beings.

May we do this practice for the welfare and happiness of all beings everywhere, yourself included.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (51) The Fourth Aggregate: Mental Constructs

So, we're talking about this important topic which appears prominently in the teachings of the Buddha. It appears often. Sometimes it is presented in ways that are hard for modern people to identify with or appreciate, but I think that these teachings on the five aggregates—the five groupings or the five divisions of our human experience—might be easier to appreciate by presenting them as a story. This is a little bit paradoxical, since part of the purpose of this teaching is to help us come to the end of stories, or appreciate a different way of being.

These five aggregates, these five groupings, begin with the direct experiences of things. There's a sensory experience, and the Pali word can mean "appearances." Just like in English, the word appearance means what comes into view, but it also can be extended to be any sensation that comes into experience with anything we sense. So, it's kind of the raw sense data from which we build our world and our understanding of the world.

In Buddhist psychology, the understanding is that once a sensation has come—once sense data has come—the first detail that becomes apparent is the pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant nature of it. There's some idea that this kind of amoeba-like being, for or against, pleasant or unpleasant, is very basic. It occurs almost immediately after just taking in a sensation, before we necessarily even recognize what it is.

We often react to that pleasant or unpleasant quality. It might be that the recognition notes, "This is terrible, this is uncomfortable," or "This is wonderful," and that's a simple act of recognition, which is the third step. But it could also be recognizing what the object is. Like I was talking earlier about the meditation bell we have here. I see it, it's a pleasant sight, and I recognize it as a bell. But we have to really appreciate that the recognition doesn't live in the object. The recognition is often a construct, a very simple application or projection onto the thing. In this case, by its function, it's operating as a bell, so we call it a bell.

Many years ago in San Francisco, I saw a homeless person who was asking for money, but he had a beautiful Japanese bell. I was surprised how beautiful it was, kind of like this one here that I have. He was going around and asking for donations, and I realized, "Oh, now the bell is a begging bowl."

So those are the first three of the aggregates: the appearance of sensations, experiencing it as either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, and building on that, there's recognition. Recognition is usually just one word, a simple label, idea, or concept of what it is. Then, once we have a simple concept, there's an elaboration that goes on. That elaboration can be a story or some construct that's more than just the object itself that we're recognizing.

I see the bell here, and I recognize it as being IMC's bell. I remember the person who gave it to us many years ago, where the person gave it to us, and what inspired the person to give it to us. I remember the person's name, and my appreciation for that person, and wondering what's happened to them. I feel this warmth for this person as I think about this bell. So there's all this construction, this elaboration, that arises in the wake of having recognized, "This is a bell."

That's innocent enough. It kind of adds to the richness of life to have stories and histories and things like that. But it also is a place where life can get unnecessarily complicated. A lot of human suffering gets born in the elaborations and constructions that happen after the basic recognition.

Once there are all these things together—the appearance, the pleasant or unpleasant feeling, the recognition, and the constructions of stories and ideas around it—then there is the fifth aggregate, which we'll talk about tomorrow. Usually in English, it is called consciousness. In the way the story I'm talking about unfolds, consciousness is not prior to all the rest of it; it actually arises in the wake of all of this. But we'll talk about that tomorrow.

For today, we are looking at the fourth aggregate, the fourth grouping, which is usually translated into English as mental formations. The Pali word is saṅkhāra^[2]. The saṃ means "with" or "together," and kāra is related to kamma^[3]—to make or to do, to form something. That's why people say "formations." I like the word "constructions." It doesn't say "mental" in it, but that's by implication; it has to do with the mind. It refers to the mental constructions, the mental elaborations that go on in the mind, the stories, and how we build the world we live in. Some of it is built collectively, and some of it is built by our own projections onto people, things, and ideas.

This world of constructions has a lot to do with our inclinations, our biases, our preferences, our motivations, our sense of purpose, and our fears. It's a huge world that is just this part of the mental landscape that we live in. Often we don't recognize it as such. Not only do we think that the recognized object—the third aggregate—is really what it is, but we also attach to the idea we have of it. I can attach to this being a bell here at IMC. If someone wanted to use it as a trash can, I'd feel a little bit like, "What? I'm not so sure about that. I kind of like to keep it as a bell and keep it clean." And there are stories and constructs around it: "IMC's bell," keeping it clean, what it means for a meditation center to have a clean bell. Some of that is normal, but that's the world not only of constructs, but also the world of clinging.

What's fascinating around these teachings of the Buddha is that this constructing aspect of the mind is what constructs the other groupings. The appearance of things is partly born not innocently just because something comes, but partly because we have an apparatus that selects that out of the environment. Of all the things we could pay attention to, there's a selective process that says, "This is important," and we're selecting this. Or we're selecting the feeling tones, we're selecting the ideas and the recognition, but more often we're selecting the constructions themselves. For the Buddha, each of the five aggregates is a construct, made by the constructing activity of the mind.

Many times, teachers in the West will say that the Buddha said there's no self; what there is are these five aggregates, these five heaps. The Buddha didn't actually say that. He actually saw the five heaps more as the problem, and he called all five of them a burden. How I understand that is that the constructing activity of the mind selects out of the suchness^[4] of experience—the simplicity of the experience—certain things to prioritize. It's kind of necessary to do it in some ways, but there's an extraness that comes with it that creates a lot of clinging, a lot of suffering, and a lot of burden in this world. It's very different if we rest in the suchness of things. We allow things to be as they are, almost as if we don't need to get involved in the appearance, the feelings, the ideas, or the stories around it. We're just there in a very, very simple way.

So, there's a story going—you can say, like I did: appearance, feeling tones, simple recognition, elaboration, and stories. What's interesting for mindfulness practitioners is that it's possible to go backwards. To recognize that we're involved in storytelling and the elaborations of the mind, and then be curious: "Can I just recognize that that's happening in the simplest possible recognition? Thinking, story making." And then step back further: is that pleasant or unpleasant to be thinking and telling these stories? And then we take one step back: what are the actual sensations that come along with it? Maybe there's pressure, a tightness. Maybe there's some kind of pleasantness and warmth in thinking about it.

What we're doing is going back to what's primary or foundational, to get grounded there. By taking a stand on the simplicity of the experience, we're less likely to be swept away in the currents of these elaborate thoughts. Sometimes we can watch from appearances as things get more complicated into stories, and sometimes we can trace it backwards into the basic, simple sensations that are there. It's fascinating to be able to play the mindfulness scales back and forth, up and down this, and find in doing that that you start appreciating that each of these four so far are experiences that have a genesis. They arise and they disappear, they come and they go. They appear and they cease. It's possible to be in the flow, the current of these things, which is much closer to the suchness of them than it is to select them out and hold on to any one out of the general flow of the river.

I hope that made sense. Tomorrow's topic, the last aggregate, is very interesting for many people. We call it consciousness. So we'll take a look at what this is for the Buddha. Thank you, and I look forward to tomorrow.