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Guided Meditation

Good morning, dharma friends. So, it is good morning on the West Coast of the United States. My name is Tara Mulay, and I am actually coming to you from the town of Northampton, Massachusetts, on the East Coast of the United States, which is the land of the Nonotuck^[1] here, and I'm very pleased to be with you. I teach at the local retreat center, which is Insight Meditation Society, about an hour away from where I am. And then across the East Coast... and I lived for quite some time in the Bay Area, over 20 years, and was pleased to also teach at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City when I was there. And I'm pleased to be in connection with the sangha, with the members and teachers. So, looking forward to practicing with you today.

So, let's rest into our mindfulness practice. We'll practice until 10 o'clock Pacific Time. And so, finding our posture, that balance of ease and comfort in the body, as well as alertness and uprightness in the posture. And bringing in a sense of dignity also to the posture.

Calling to mind the nobility of this practice to infuse the body and the mind with a sense of dignity. Practice is noble because it's onward-leading towards the development of more compassion and wisdom. And when we have this sense of dignity in the posture, it supports confidence in our ability to meet whatever may arise, even if it's difficult, even if it's unpleasant.

So balancing that dignity with a sense of relaxation, noticing any areas of tightness and inviting in a letting go. Inviting ease into any areas of holding in the body.

It can be helpful to begin with an awareness of the whole body. That shifting and changing field of sensations we call the body.

And within that whole field of shifting and changing sensations, there are the sensations that we call the breath. A wave of ever-changing physical sensations. In any moment, there might be tingling, or softness, or tightness, or expansion, or movement. And this ever-changing wave we call the breath, we can simply rest into an awareness of that experience. Whether we're noticing the breath in the whole body or in an area where we sense it quite clearly, it can be helpful to keep some of the attention on the whole body and really just notice the breath within that larger frame of awareness of the body.

And we bring attention to however the breath is presenting itself in this moment, and in this moment, and in this moment.

And whenever the mind wanders and mindfulness arises again, we can simply notice that mindfulness has arisen again. That moment happens outside of our control, seeded by previous causes and conditions, previous moments of mindfulness. And here we are, aware again of what's happening right here and right now. And we can notice what mindfulness arises in relationship to, whether it's an experience of the mind or the body, thinking, or an emotion, or a sound, or a physical sensation. Experienced at these six sense doors: the five physical senses we're familiar with, and the sixth sense door of the mind, where thoughts and images and emotions and moods arise. We can rest our mindfulness there.

Whenever that experience is not drawing our attention so strongly, simply gently return to the anchor of the breath.

Infusing our mindful awareness with kindness can be very supportive and strengthening of the practice. Knowing that we are sensitive beings. Arising at these sense doors, unbidden, outside of our control, are pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral experiences. And as sentient beings, this is the experience of ever-changing mental and physical phenomena. That's what we must meet, and over time learn to meet with mindfulness more and more, as a way of relating to our experience that will diminish suffering and harm.

So each moment of mindfulness, allowing for the knowing of what's arising to be infused with care for our sensitive minds, hearts, and bodies.

If we ever find ourselves struggling or in confusion or judgment in the practice—you know those thoughts: "I should be being mindful," and "not being mindful in the right way," or simply confused how to do the practice—you can remember the simplicity of mindfulness. The simplicity of the instructions, not easy but simple. Simply to be aware of what's happening right here, right now, in the body and in the mind, without pushing it away or trying to cling to it. So just accepting and allowing what is arising right here and now in the mind or the body, and knowing its presence.

So if it's frustration or judging that's here, we can simply know, "Frustration feels like this right now. It's here, it feels like this." Or judgment, "Judging feels like this right now. It's here, it feels like this."

This is the same invitation or instruction for any experience of the body or the mind. If it's an experience of the body, tingling, "Tingling is here and it feels like this right now." "Pressure is here and it feels like this."

So remembering and recalling the simplicity of mindfulness whenever there is any struggle. Letting go into awareness with non-contention of what's happening right here and right now.

Introduction

Well, thank you for joining us today, Tara. I'll just introduce Tara. Tara Mulay is a practitioner of insight meditation since 2003 and has undertaken intensive practice periods in the United States and Myanmar^[2]. She is a graduate of the 2017-2021 IMS/IRC teacher training. In 2016, she co-founded the San Francisco People of Color Insight Sangha, and in 2020 to 2021 she served as the interim guiding teacher for the Insight Meditation Community of Western Massachusetts. Her dharma offerings stem from the lineage of Mahasi Sayadaw^[3]. Tara combines a deep love of classical Theravada and early Buddhist teachings with a focus on bringing the practice alive in modern daily life. Thank you, Tara.

Caring Enough to Truly Live

Thanks so much, Kevin, and thank you all for practicing with me today.

I would like to talk about an approach or a phrase that to me really encapsulates this actually holistic, integrated practice that we are doing, part of which is our mindfulness practice. The holistic practice I'm referring to, of course, is the Noble Eightfold Path. And for me personally, it's helpful to remind myself that it is a whole path of eight factors. And when I recommit myself, when there are moments and times of recommitment, there is this framework or approach that really for me embodies or encapsulates that remembering and recommitment. And it is simple, and it is: caring enough to truly live. That's sort of what it feels like to me. And also, I found that I can sort of map all of the factors onto this particular phrase of caring enough to truly live. So I want to share that with you, that approach, and perhaps it will seed some inspiration and perhaps recommitment for you as well.

So I'm going to go briefly through each of the factors and talk about how this approach of caring enough to truly live, how that plays out for me or how that is enlivening for me. But first, I want to just point to how it also describes for me a way that we feel when we do make that recommitment. It describes a sort of a sense of the motivation that often propels us to practice. You know, there are these choice points that we sometimes have, these inflection points where perhaps our hearts are calling us to practice, to dive a little deeper into practice. So for example, to practice more intensively or more regularly, or perhaps to take up a new type of practice that our hearts are really drawn to, that we've learned a little about and that would really seem to be supportive or a skillful means for us, such as a Brahmavihara^[4] practice, or the Five Daily Recollections, or a concentration practice. There are so many ways in which the Buddha taught that would support our whole practice of engaging with the Noble Eightfold Path. But you know, we reach these times in our practice and we can choose to really commit and follow our heart and dive into that practice, or sometimes we falter or become more inconsistent. But what I have found that's helpful to recognize is that when there is this act of diving in deeper or recommitting, what I feel in my heart is that I'm really caring enough to truly live this life. That there is an aspect of caring and an aspect of the commitment to life and to truth.

And so, you know, just to illustrate, I want to describe one of those choice points for myself. You know, this is going back quite a few years, and I had been practicing for quite a while in my daily life. And over time, I had started to go on short retreats, and there was a time where I really did falter in the practice. And I came to quite a commitment in the sense that the practice was really what I needed to focus on, and that it began with a health crisis I had. You might call it a health crisis or an episode. It involved having to have surgery on my foot to—actually there was a bone deformity in my foot, and that needed to be corrected. And in the period leading up to that, and after that in a very long recovery, there was quite a time period there where I couldn't walk unaided and I needed to walk with crutches. And many people experience these kinds of difficulties, health challenges in life with mobility.

I was younger and I didn't practice well enough, and I suffered a lot because of it. I was wanting things to be different than the way they were quite a lot of the time, and so very much in contention with experience. And there was a time where I just really realized, remembering how the practice had supported me in the past, that I needed to really turn back to that practice and try to meet my experience with it. And then I did that. I began to go on longer retreats and to practice much more in daily life, and to reach out more to sangha and practice more with sangha.

But there was an even much starker experience that I had of really reaching one of those choice points and committing to where my heart was drawing me in practice, and that was sometime after I recovered. I actually found myself being very—my heart being really drawn to intensive practice, and I decided to take a one-month retreat, the first one-month retreat that I had done. And I had the particular conditions, the privileges in my life that allowed me to do that, to carve out a month from my workplace, a month of vacation, and I arranged my life and did all kinds of things to be able to do this one-month retreat. And as that time approached, I did though start to feel some trepidations and nervousness, and even some just kind of questioning, "Why am I doing this? What am I doing?" And that intensified as I came closer and closer to the date at the beginning of the retreat. And, you know, I was worried about missing my family, my partner, my wife, my dog.

And I nevertheless drove up to the retreat, and I had some extra time and I stopped at a grocery store. And still my heart and my mind were filled with these thoughts and worries, and I was already missing my family. I stopped at this grocery store, I went in, I came out, and I decided that I had a little bit of time left before registration started, so I would just rest in my car. I got into the driver's seat, and I reached down and I just reclined the seat back a bit. And you know, in inclining back, I looked up at the ceiling of my car, and there right before my eyes were all of these crutch marks on the ceiling. All of these marks that had been made inadvertently, unknowingly, when I had been pulling my crutches into my car over and over again during that time period. And at that moment, all doubt, all thoughts—"Why am I doing this? What am I doing?"—went out the window, went out the door. I absolutely knew. I saw the crutch marks on the ceiling, I remembered the way in which I had gone through that stage without mindfulness, not really practicing consistently, not really doing what I knew in my heart I needed to do to meet difficult experience, and I was completely committed. I saw the crutch marks on the ceiling, I said to myself, "That's why I'm doing this."

And you know, encapsulated in that was this knowing of the unreliability of our experience, the unreliability of our bodies, the impermanence, the dissatisfactoriness of life. The fact that we do have pleasant, unpleasant experiences, and we can't control that. We can't hold on to the pleasant, can't make the conditions the way we want them to. The conditions are coming towards us and ungovernable, and that's that not-self aspect of experience. So there was this knowing at that time, and I absolutely never—I didn't have another doubt. The thoughts flew out of my mind and I went to that retreat. And the practice continued to flourish from there, I was able to move forward. And in that moment, there was a caring enough to truly live. There was that energy, that motivation to practice in a way that I knew in my heart would be onward-leading for me and for others. You know, not just for me to alleviate my own suffering, but in that time period, in my frustration and anger and not practicing well through the experience that I had with having difficulty with mobility and recovery from surgery, I wasn't able to be the kind of person I wanted to be in relation to the rest of the world also, in my relationships. My energy was channeled towards frustration and was not able to be there and serve my community, and also just relate in a way that was really ideal in life, because my energy was taken up and in being caught in cycles of suffering. So I cared enough in that moment that that wellspring of caring enough to truly live, to truly follow my heart's call towards the dharma, welled up as I remembered that.

And you know, there are Pali words for these kinds of mind states that support us, that kind of propel us, that bring an urgency to the practice and support a confidence in moving towards it. And so there was that in that time period for me. The words are saṃvega^[5], which is often translated as spiritual urgency, and pasāda^[6], which is kind of a confirmed faith in the practice, or confirmed confidence in the practice. And saṃvega is that knowing, that knowing that we have where we realize the way we've been relating to experience has been just causing us more suffering and is not the way through. The way we've been relating with trying to maximize the pleasant—you know, those habits that we have as human beings, responding to the truth of dukkha^[7], the experience of unsatisfactoriness in life, by trying to maximize the pleasant or diminish or get away, push away the unpleasant, or just not being aware in our daily lives. That response, we start to realize that response is not the way that's actually going to bring us freedom or peace. And that experience of that knowing is called saṃvega. And then when it's balanced with pasāda, which is some confirmed confidence, some confidence in the practice that in fact the way to experience that greater freedom and that greater peace is to practice the dharma, is to practice mindfulness in the context of the rest of the path factors, that combination is very potent and powerful. And my experience of that is this caring enough to truly live life, to truly follow my heart's desire to understand the truth and to engage with this practice.

So now I want to just talk a little bit about this caring enough to truly live and how I see it as mapping onto and relating to our holistic practice of the Noble Eightfold Path. So caring, I see, you know, the first two factors of the Noble Eightfold Path are often referred to as the first basket, and they're often referred to as the wisdom basket. And so I actually feel that this basket really points me towards this wellspring of caring. And so that may seem a little unusual because oftentimes people sort of contrast wisdom and compassion, or wisdom and caring, that they're quite different. But when we really look at these first two factors of the Noble Eightfold Path, for me they really point towards the flourishing of caring in our lives. They point us towards really beginning with caring.

So the first factor is wise view. Wise view, and that is usually mostly described as understanding the Four Noble Truths. That's the wise view, it's understanding the Four Noble Truths. So when we look at this, one of the first of the Buddha's teachings, the Four Noble Truths, it is based in his own compassion for his own experience of suffering, and then his teaching of the Four Noble Truths out of compassion for us, out of compassion for other beings, that they could also understand suffering that they were experiencing and understand that there was this accessibility of cessation of suffering, of peace and ease. So the Four Noble Truths in a nutshell are: there is dissatisfactoriness, stress, unreliability in life because our experiences are ephemeral and we don't control them, for example. That is part of our experience, it's the First Noble Truth, and that's to be understood. And then the Second Noble Truth is that there is a cause or an origin for that dissatisfactoriness, that suffering, that dukkha in Pali. That there is a cause and it's craving. Craving, for example, for sense pleasure, is craving for becoming over and over, trying to solidify our experience. Craving also for non-becoming, to really push away at the unpleasant, reject it. And this is the Second Noble Truth. And then the third is that there actually is a cessation of that suffering, and it's the letting go of that same craving. And the fourth is actually the Noble Eightfold Path, that that is the path to the cessation of suffering. So this practice has this beautiful non-linearity to it, this cyclical nature.

And so this understanding, you can see of wise view, that the Four Noble Truths are rooted in an experience, an expression of compassion by the Buddha himself. And as we practice them, they are also an expression of compassion for ourselves, because we are addressing—we are recognizing and addressing and training our minds and our hearts. We're recognizing, addressing the suffering, and then training our minds and hearts towards greater ease and peace and towards the cessation of that suffering. There could be nothing more sort of caring than really, really making that commitment to actually understand what causes our suffering and respond to it. And so that to me is caring.

And the second factor of the Noble Eightfold Path is really directly about caring mind states and cultivating them. So this is wise intention or wise resolve. And there are three wise intentions that this factor of the Noble Eightfold Path calls on us to cultivate. The first is renunciation or simplicity, so that means letting go of our greed impulses that cause us suffering in the world also. So renunciation or simplicity, and that intention is the first. And the second two are the intentions of loving-kindness and harmlessness. So loving-kindness, that simple wish for well-being for ourselves and others. And harmlessness, really relating, dropping that intention of non-harm moment by moment. And what could be more caring for ourselves in the world than to cultivate these kinds of intentions in relationship to our own experience and that of others? So this is caring in the first basket. It is a caring that's infused with wisdom. It's based in wisdom, it's based in this understanding of the Four Noble Truths, but it is infused with caring also.

So caring enough. Well, to me, the enough points to the second basket of the Noble Eightfold Path, which is acting on this caring, acting on these intentions, following through. And so the second basket is called the basket of ethics or virtue. It is really a combination of three factors which point to non-harming conduct. You know, so bringing the non-harming intentions and the caring into our lives and infusing our daily relationship to the world, our relationship to others, our relationship to ourselves, interestingly, into really acting on those intentions. So the factors, the three factors of this second basket are wise speech, wise action, and wise livelihood. Wise speech referring to truthful speech. So abstaining from false speech—all of these are really framed in the abstaining, as we drop our habits of harm, our lives begin to be infused by non-harm and caring. So abstaining from false speech, abstaining from harsh speech, abstaining from divisive speech, even abstaining from idle chatter where we are more likely to fall into perhaps habits that are harming. And wise action really pointing to some of the other precepts, the typical five ethical training precepts for lay people that many people are familiar with. But those are abstaining from killing, harming other beings, abstaining from taking that which is not freely offered (so abstaining from stealing), and abstaining from sexual misconduct. Right. And then wise livelihood, to not make a living in a way that is based on harm or deceit.

So this basket is this action of caring enough to infuse and imbue your life with non-harming conduct. And one of the most beautiful things I think about the teachings is that this practice of ethics, of virtue, is one that the Buddha taught so that we would experience joy. It was about non-harming for ourselves just as much as others, because there's a recognition that when we do engage in harming conduct, there is an impact on our hearts and minds. That we feel a remorse, even if it's underneath the surface, even if it's sort of subconscious, there are ripple effects of a sense of dis-ease in our hearts and our minds. So this particular basket is caring enough for ourselves and others, really. And I just want to quote a couple of lines from the Dhammapada, because I like to really bring home this teaching, this truth that the Buddha taught, non-harming conduct for our joy. So these are a few lines from the Dhammapada. The Buddha said: "Live the dharma, a life of good conduct. One who lives the dharma is happy in this world and the next." So he equated in this line living the dharma with a life of good conduct, and it brings happiness. You know what it brings is non-remorse. He also said: "One who makes merit rejoices in this life, rejoices in the next, rejoices in both worlds. Seeing one's own pure acts brings joy and delight." It brings joy and delight! So this is caring enough.

And caring enough to truly live. So that brings us to the third basket of the Noble Eightfold Path, the last three factors. And mindfulness is here in this basket. And to truly live is to truly be aware actually of what it is to be a human being, what is happening and arising in our experience moment to moment. So there's this way in which when we're not mindful, we're not practicing this meditative cultivation and we're not practicing really cultivating awareness more and more, this is a way in which we don't quite feel alive, right? We know we're separated from our experience, we know we're not really living it, and we're not really understanding the truth. When mindfulness is not actively cultivated, we fall back into habits of non-awareness. So my caring enough to truly live, this third basket of truly living, is referred to as either the concentration or the meditation basket. It has three factors. It's wise effort, wise mindfulness, and wise concentration. And all of them involve this cultivation of the mind so that we begin to understand what it is to live the life of a human being. What is the experience of life? And how it is that we can cultivate, how it is that we can cultivate our minds, train our minds so that we experience less suffering, more peace, more ease. And so how it is that we can truly live our heart's intention of living a life that is one in which we can really meet our experience with that caring. We can really meet our experience with that caring and that understanding.

It's wise effort. This is getting to know our wholesome and unwholesome mind states. And getting to know and beginning to understand how we can abandon the unwholesome, which means those kind of mind states that harm us, that's what's unwholesome. So for example, afflictive mind states like impatience, afflictive mind states like rage, or fear that gets in the way, that limits our potential. So those mind states, we can feel the harm of those in the moment. So this wise effort is beginning to understand how to recognize, abandon those more and more over time by seeing how they show up in our lives, and beginning to understand how we can abandon them. And when they do arise, just to overcome them. And also this wise effort involves recognizing, bringing forward wholesome mind states. So those that are non-harming, that loving-kindness I talked about earlier for example, gratitude, joy, these kinds of non-harming mind states. Understanding over time, developing the skillful means to cultivate those more and more and have them arise more and more in our lives.

And then wise mindfulness, where many of us are very familiar with mindfulness, and this is again about really understanding our experience and truly living in the sense of truly being there for our lives more, truly being aware. And not only that, this mindfulness allows us to understand the truth of the way things are deeply and more intuitively over time. As we practice more and more with being aware of what's happening moment to moment and not pushing it away, and not trying to cling to pleasant experiences, the more we see the actual ephemerality of experience. The more and more deeply and intuitively we can understand impermanence. And that deep understanding then allows the heart to let go of its habitual entanglement and suffering and reactivity to that impermanent experience. So this is truly living, the sense of truly beginning to understand the mind's capacity for freedom. You know, the mind's capacity to understand more deeply the truth and to let go. And you know, bringing us back to the beginning of the Noble Eightfold Path, to understand more and more the Four Noble Truths, including the third one of letting go of that craving that keeps us on that wheel of saṃsāra^[8], suffering.

And finally, wise concentration. So that is really this gathering, collectedness of the mind that supports all of the factors really, that supports mindfulness and wise effort. It's just this collectedness, just coming back again and again and again. Oftentimes experienced through a continuity of mindfulness, it's the unification of the mind, the collectedness, the gatheredness. It brings stillness to the mind. In fact, some people are of the view that this word that is often translated as concentration, samādhi^[9], is mistranslated as concentration and should be translated as stillness. So you can think of it as the growing stillness of the mind as we practice wise concentration.

So in this last meditative basket of the Noble Eightfold Path of wise effort, wise mindfulness, and wise concentration, I see the potential for all of us to really truly live, and truly live a life that is not harming towards ourselves and others. And that is not harming because we begin to really have a deep understanding of the truth of the way things are, and that living in alignment with that truth, and truth of impermanence, of not-self, of the unreliability of our experience, that that is what brings great happiness, and also brings us in alignment with our care for the world, for other beings, and infused with that, our care for ourselves.

So, dharma friends, I hope that this framework might have been of some inspiration to you. Caring enough to truly live as a way of thinking about or pondering the Noble Eightfold Path. And I wish you a wonderful rest of the day of practice.