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Guided Meditation: Bright and clear

Good morning, friends. And good day. Welcome to the 7:00 a.m. IMC meditation and dharma soaking together. I'm very delighted to be here.

This week I've been sharing some reflections on the topic of sila^[1]. We will continue today. Yesterday, I mentioned a little bit about how sila protects our hearts and minds. This morning we're going to move into yet another dimension of the practice of sila, which the Pali Canon texts would call some of the forces of sila—bright things in our heart and mind. Let the goodness of sila brighten the heart and mind.

So let's do a meditation together. I'll offer a little guidance at the beginning, and then we'll be in silence together.

Taking a few moments to settle into a meditative posture. Maybe a dignified posture that expresses an inner dignity, humility, and a sense of integrity. We're gathering ourselves, collecting ourselves around the Dhamma^[2]. Does that not feel good already? The Dhamma that's always visible here and now.

Gather, collect ourselves around here and now, in the present moment. Feeling and sensing, being present. A sense of a wakeful aliveness to meet each of the moments of our lives. There is often a sense of "ah," expressed in my body, in my heart, and in my mind. Ah, here. Now.

Mindfulness front and center. Mindfulness all around. Let the citta^[3] expand. So you can feel and sense the multitudes of the aliveness of being human. Maybe you are aware of sense gate contact. Sounds. Temperature. The contact of the body against earth, chairs, couch, beds. Let yourself feel the aliveness of receiving the lived experience.

Being present for our experience is enlivening. Like a light turned on from inside. Being available. Being available to Dhamma. The Dhamma that's expressed here and now. Being available to the alive moments flowing through. Now.

This being available here is a kind of spacious presence. So the objects of our minds have space to move through. Thoughts, emotions, sensations in the body, movements of the breath. Bright and spacious.

You may remember the goodness of a virtuous heart. You may remember the blamelessness of virtuous conduct. Let yourself align. Aligning with the Dhamma. Let the Dhamma flow. Uplift the heart. Can you feel the effect in the body? Relaxation. A sense of groundedness. The heart is uplifted. Bright. Let the mind be quiet and clear.

When habit tendencies arise—greed, ill will, complaining—a natural clarity allows us to feel, sense, and know clearly, right here. There is a choice available to us. We don't have to ride out to judge, to fix, to blame. In the spaciousness, compulsivity has space to move through. Ill will can be washed through. Flow through.

Resting in the vast spaciousness within. Bright and clear.

You make a vibrant Bodhi tree^[4] with the abundance of branches and foliage. And bark, softwood, hardwood from inside, rich expansive roots. Sila, samadhi^[5], panna^[6] together forms a vibrant aliveness in us, like a vibrant Bodhi tree. From inside out, from outside in, nothing left out.

And wholesome and unwholesome thoughts, mental movements may come. They can be met with a bright clarity. They can be held by a virtuous heart. A heart of non-harming.

And a virtuous heart is a wise heart. A virtuous heart knows deeply the value and the goodness of non-harming, for ourselves, for each other, and for the whole world.

Let it be the blessings of our cultivation, our training of sila, samadhi, panna. Let the goodness ripple out from this heart, this being, into the whole world. May the whole world know peace, love, wonder, joy, and the liberating wisdom, just as it is, in this life.

[Bell rings]

Dharmette: Sila from inside out (2 of 5): Sila purifies

It feels really good to be practicing together and sharing the exploration of Dhamma. I wanted to flow from yesterday's reflection, that sila protects. It's a protective force. Sila protects our hearts, our minds, and our bodies from harm—harming ourselves and harming others, as best as we're able. Because this is a training. This is a practice. I like this phrasing, "as best as I'm able." We're in the flow of the practice, rather than trying to get really perfect.

What this protective force opens us up into is another kind of possibility, and that is: sila purifies. It's like a cleansing force, a cleansing agent in our system. It begins to allow the hearts and minds to be purified. Things that cloud or dust up the heart and mind get rubbed off.

I was reflecting these days on the directness of the Buddha's teachings. All of the Buddha's teachings are not complicated dogma or theory that needs mind-bending analysis. No one needs to be a PhD in order to understand the teachings. In this way, the freedom and the goodness of the Dhamma is available to all of us.

In our human nature, it's not very hard for us to know, to feel, and to see that there is some kind of innate conscience in us. We don't feel good when we lie or when we have done something that doesn't sit very well in our heart, like if we harmed somebody or cursed someone. Nobody needs to read some gigantic ethics book in order to know this.

I remember being with a very small young kid, I think a three- or four-year-old. One day, I was watching this kid pacing back and forth, with a little bit of a restless sense. I just had this instinctual feeling that something is off. I didn't know what it was, but I was just offering space, being around, and not saying anything or doing anything. At some point, this young kid came to me and confessed. He said, "I lied." I couldn't remember exactly what he was lying about—maybe he took somebody else's toy or candy.

But what I felt and observed was when he confessed, I didn't blame him. I really celebrated him. I said, "You're very brave." I said something about how you could feel like a bug in your belly that makes you feel uncomfortable when you lie. "And when you don't tell the lie, when you really recognize this and let me know, this is really good." He heard this, and all of a sudden you could just feel a kind of inner burden get put down. A few minutes later, he runs around in the space that we were in and was a happy camper again.

So this inner conscience, inner prudence, is innate in us as human beings. We have this capacity to have a sense of integrity and a sense of goodness. There are teachings in the Pali Canon that use Pali terms to describe this quality, called hiri and ottappa^[7]. There are many different translations of these two terms, but one translation I really resonate with is a sense of conscience and a sense of prudence. Often, the Buddha would call these the "guardians of the world." Isn't that good? I love this phrase. In one of the Pali Canon texts, it is said that hiri and ottappa are two bright things in this world. I just love this notion that this conscience and prudence are the guardians of the world, and they brighten our hearts and brighten the world.

The suttas often describe an outwardly leading flow. With this innate capacity in us, it begins to be conducive to a kind of inner peace. It's not a suppression or a tightness, but is based on a deep inner touch with the goodness of non-harming. With these forces in us, what is harmful kind of falls away. Or even when it arises, we don't have to add to it or tighten around it again.

So when one doesn't take the training of sila lightly and cultivates it wholeheartedly, what begins to naturally flow in us is a carefulness, a feeling full of care and trustworthiness. We become safe for ourselves and safe for others.

Even though we sometimes teach sila individually, if we look at the totality of our practice path, it includes the totality of sila, samadhi, and panna. It is one whole practice. So with this cultivation of sila alongside the gathered collectiveness of our being (samadhi) and wisdom (panna), we can begin to open to a richer and deeper dimension of this training.

When we dwell in safety and protection to some degree—it doesn't have to be perfect, it's really this sense of "as best as I'm able"—we create a wholesome environment for an inner blossom, an inner unfolding. This allows us to begin to be open to a wider range of inner patterns and inner experiences. It allows us to begin to see some of the deep-rooted patterns and how they might impact ourselves, other people, and the whole world.

In our meditation that we just did, I mentioned that as we gather ourselves with this sense of conscience and inner integrity, we can sit with a brightness and clarity within. Then we can begin to notice the forces of compulsivity that come in from time to time. But as we meet this in a wholesome way, we open up to a choice. In the moment when there is space to meet this compulsivity, we can choose not to be defined by it, not to be identified by it. We choose to have a wholesome relationship with it. Not judging, not fixing, but a spacious holding.

We can pause in that moment to allow a shift to happen. A shift from being identified, or blaming or shaming ourselves, to: "How do I want to express my deepest inner being? Inner peace, inner calm."

So sila is no longer about somehow becoming a good person or becoming accomplished in our ethics, but rather deeply understanding dukkha^[8], suffering, and harmful actions, so that they no longer become so compelling to us. We don't automatically resort to them.

In the Pali Canon suttas, there is a simile that I utilized in our meditation together that describes this whole cultivation—starting from sila all the way to samadhi and panna, and liberated freedom. It's like a tree that does not lack branches and foliage. And when there is an abundance of branches and foliage, there is also an abundance of shoots, bark, softwood, and hardwood. We're growing in the totality of our being, in the wholeness of our being, with our ethical expressions starting from inside. Heartwood, hardwood, softwood, with rich aliveness and an abundance of goodness.

I'm going to end this morning by reading a verse from the Digha Nikaya^[9]. It says this: "Wisdom is purified by virtue, and virtue is purified by wisdom. When one is, the other is. The virtuous person has wisdom, and a wise person has virtue. And the combination of virtue and wisdom is called the highest thing in the world."

May we all cultivate this combination of virtue and wisdom for the benefit of all beings everywhere. Thank you, dear friends, and I will see you tomorrow. May you have a wonderful rest of the day.