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Dharma Samadhi (1 of 5) Carried by Inspiration

So, if you make the effort to climb up the ladder of a slide and then you allow yourself to slide down, you are, in a certain way, making your own effort to get to the top. But then you're allowing gravity to slide you, to pull you down in a delightful way. Yesterday, I watched some kids on a water slide, just delightfully coming down and smashing into the water. Very nice.

If you make a paper airplane, you have to fold the paper just right and know what to do. But then, when you throw the paper airplane, it's not just up to you how you throw it; it's also up to the air that holds you up. It holds the paper airplane up, and that air is what allows the paper airplane to fly.

If you want to grow a garden—maybe you want to grow tomatoes—you have to plant the seed, make the conditions in the soil fertile, and keep it watered. But the whole thing depends on having the sun, having light come. We offer our part to care for the plant, but we also allow the sun to do its work and allow the plant to grow. If you plant the plant in the shade, it doesn't grow so well.

This cooperation of our effort and something that's not our effort that allows something to unfold and happen also occurs in Dharma practice, in meditation practice, and more deeply in Dharma practice as our whole life. We have to make our efforts. We have to do what we need to do—climb the ladder, plant the seed, and nurture the seed. We have to fly out, in a sense, and then something is there to catch us. Something is there to hold us, or to grow us, or support us like the sunlight.

It's a magic moment, or maybe a special moment in practice—like in meditation practice—when you feel that there's something other than your own effort that has been activated, and it's really supporting you, helping you, and guiding you along. I don't know if this is the best analogy, but when I was younger and used to run, I found that no matter how much I was in shape, the first little piece of the running—maybe the first 50 or 100 feet—I kind of didn't want to do it. It was kind of like work. I had to override certain feelings and ideas that, "No, this is too much." And then I would get into a groove with the running, and it felt like the running was running me. It takes a lot of energy to run, but it found a kind of effortless feeling that it wasn't just my own mind, my usual myself as the agent applying myself and making myself run. Something kicked in, and the running just seemed to arise out of my body in a kind of effortless way. But I had to start; I had to do that beginning for something else to come along and pick me up.

The same thing happens in Dharma practice. We have to do our part of it, but if we only focus on, "It's me, myself, and I. I'm the agent. It's up to me. Am I doing well enough? I have to do more. I'm not doing it right. Look how great I am," all this "I" has a role, we have to admit some effort, but it can be overdone. If we only think it's about personal effort, then we miss the way in which we're supported by something else that comes along to support and move us.

I like to think of it not as some supernatural thing, but rather it's the natural functioning capacity of our whole psychophysical ecosystem—that the whole inner being, or whole mind and body as a system, is so much more than whatever we associate with ourselves as the agent, the victim, or the experiencer. We are a large cooperative. We, as the agent and the experiencer, have to contribute our part in the cooperative. But then you have to allow the rest of the cooperative to do its work. So, part of Dharma practice at some point is to make room for, to allow for this kind of Dharma process to move through us.

One of the things that's sometimes associated with this is Dharma joy—allowing a certain kind of Dharma joy to arise. The Buddha calls it Dharma Samadhi^[1]. There are many samadhis, many concentration states that are emphasized in this Buddhist tradition, but there's one term called Dharma Samadhi. Dharma Samadhi has to do with having five qualities. Five things are activated, or we're engaged in, absorbed in, or flowing through us in a way where it's activated through us and we're being carried by them. Samadhi^[2] is almost like being carried by something as much as being absorbed in something.

The Dharma Samadhi is: gladness, rapture, tranquility, happiness, and concentration. By the end of the week, if not the end of today, I hope you'll have memorized these five things: gladness, joy, tranquility, happiness, and concentration. I tend to call these the gladness pentad, since there are five. These five appear as a sequence over and over again in the Buddhist teachings. When that Dharma clicks in, when there's an appreciation^[3] of something called the Dharma, this inner cooperative process begins to well up and be carried by something. We're carried by these five.

What's inspiring is the way in which they flow into each other. The Buddha presents these as natural processes, and as there's momentum in the practice, one leads to the next. Whatever gladness is, when it has a momentum in it^[4], this being carried by it can lead to joy. When there's the arising of mental joy, there can follow in its wake a tranquilizing, a calming of the body. As the body becomes calm, there can follow the arising of happiness (sukha^[5]). And as the mind and body are with this arising of happiness, what can follow in the wake of that is concentration.

Those are the five. Remarkably built on these five, with the same sense of a natural flow where one thing gives rise to the next, it talks about how there can then be seeing things as they are. There can be dramatic, real insight into this world, or there can be deeper and deeper levels of concentration. In the suttas^[6], we see these five qualities leading to either deep states of concentration or deep states of insight.

It can seem to someone new to meditation like, "How do you access these five wonderful qualities?" It isn't so much that we access them. As we start getting settled and working through the hindrances^[7], at some point we open up to and allow some kind of deeper thing to occur. And those deeper things often arise in the wake of something else. We're inspired by something: "Wow, this is fantastic."

There's a whole series of things that the Buddha talks about that can create this kind of catalyst for gladness and joy. There is being free of the hindrances—finally having a mind that's not out of control, that's not caught up in chasing after desires, aversions, and thoughts, but there's a settledness and a peacefulness. We've reclaimed our mind from our distractions, and we're feeling, "Wow, this is so good to not be distracted, to be able to be here," and to really appreciate that and feel the joy of it. Not everyone is able to do that because sometimes the mind is always looking ahead: "What's wrong? This can't be quite right, or it's going to be better than the others. The grass is greener on the other side of the fence," resulting in an inability to just settle back and appreciate the goodness of this moment. So, being free of the hindrances is one catalyst.

Another thing is living a life of good ethical conduct. Being inspired by our goodness, our virtue, can be a real catalyst for joy, if we allow ourselves permission to feel the goodness of our own virtue—the goodness that we haven't killed anyone today, or stolen from someone, or broken any of the precepts. Some people are so ready to feel, "We're guilty before we're tried. I'm just basically wrong," and we don't allow ourselves to feel a kind of joy: "I went through the day today and didn't kill anyone, steal from anyone, lie to anyone, or hurt anyone with my sexuality." The Buddha encouraged people to really feel that delight or joy.

There's also the joy, the inspiration of the Dharma, the inspiration of the goal of practice, the purpose of practice. Knowing other practitioners in the Sangha^[8] can inspire us. There could also be the inspiration in the Dharma itself. These are all things the Buddha talks about that are inspirations. The Pali word that Bhikkhu Bodhi^[9] translates as inspiration is veda^[10]. That can mean just to know, but it can also mean to feel. At some point, we have a feel for the Dharma. We have a feel for what liberation or freedom is. Knowing it and reading about it can be inspiring, but to really start feeling it in ourselves, getting a very personal feel for it, an experience of it—that can be inspiring.

So, the inspiration gives rise to joy and gladness. Having that strong enough, with enough clarity, or the channels open, or a willingness to experience it, can then set in motion this going down the Dharma slide, or being carried by the Dharma air or the wind, or being ready to be receptive to the Dharma light because there's no more shadow over us. The light begins to let something inside grow and evolve.

It's a remarkable process, this cooperative practice that we're involved in, where we offer ourselves to the practice, and the practice then cooperates and offers itself to us.

This is kind of the introduction. I'll go through these five over the next days—maybe tomorrow do gladness and joy, and talk about the difference—and go through these five over the next days. And then at the end of the week, on Friday, we can do a 7:00 a.m. morning community meeting on Zoom. I'll talk more about it later, but just know that on Friday at 7:45 California time, we will switch over to a Zoom meeting to be in discussion a little bit, answer questions, and give you a chance to have breakout groups to meet each other a little bit.

So thank you. I hope that you consider today, and talk with friends and others, and give time to really explore what inspires you. Where is the inspiration you have in the Dharma? What feeling for the Dharma do you have? Even if your life is a challenge today—there are a lot of challenges people live with these days, and I don't want to belittle those challenges and say, "Just be joyful"—perhaps even because of those challenges, there can be something that inspires you in the midst of it, that gives you courage, that gives you inspiration to practice in the middle of the difficulties you have.

May the Dharma be with you. May you experience Dharma Samadhi. Thank you.