This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Fewness of Wishes

Welcome everyone, wherever you are, and welcome back to this week's exploration of the gifts each of us brings to the practice community, wherever we are and whether or not we participate in the live chat. I always like to give a special shout-out to everybody who's just here and being with the community of practice, not actively engaged in the chat. Welcome to all. It's all good. As the young people say, it's all appreciated—all these ways of being in our community.

Today, I'd like to talk about the special quality that some practitioners bring to a community of practice. Again, I think I've been saying each day that a community of practice is, in a way, the sum total of the practices we bring to it, and the different individual skills, predilections, and strengths with which we develop our practice that grace and strengthen the practice community.

I'd like to talk about one that, at least for the guided meditation, I'm going to call "fewness of wishes." Fewness of wishes is a really wonderful little phrase that comes up in some of the discourses. A practitioner who is settled into the practice in a certain way, having maybe been at it for a period of time, will notice fewer wishes arising. Maybe we notice this first in our orientation toward the things of the world. Maybe the new car seems less compelling than it did at an earlier time in our practice or in our life. But it's broader than that, broader than our interaction with material things. Fewness of wishes can become a general attenuation or softening of the wanting that arises in our lives, that sometimes entangles us and leads us around by the nose.

So that will be the focus of the guided meditation, and then for the Dharmette today, we'll talk a little bit about what comes forward in the discourses. Practitioners who bring a fewness of wishes to their practice and to the community of practice also benefit us by sharing those values of practice with us. They're combined in the Gosinga Sāla Grove^[1] discourse that I've been using as inspiration for this week.

But first, let's sit together. We prepare the mind for the Dharma by sitting. The experience of meditation, as I said on Monday, came first for the Buddha and can come first for us. The Dharma has a way of seeping in more effectively and profoundly when it comes into the meditating mind, the mind that's been still and made peaceful in the meditation practice. So let's bring ourselves here. Find your way into your meditation posture.

The meditation posture itself is a good way to recognize that we each bring our own bodies into the practice, our own way of being in the practice. Any posture in which we balance energy and ease, a relaxed frame of mind, and an attentive presence is a legitimate posture for our practice. So maybe we're sitting on a seiza bench. Maybe we're sitting on a cushion or in a chair. Perhaps we're standing. The important thing is that our posture has in it a balance between alert presence and ease. So whatever that means for you, bring that to our meditation as we settle in.

Feel that balance, feel the weight of the body, feel the natural balance in the breathing. We can just tune into these things and attune to them. We don't have to create them or imagine them. The breathing is naturally balanced when we bring our attention to it. We don't have to work at it. We enjoy it. We rest in the natural balance of the breathing. The breath knows how much oxygen to bring in, how much carbon dioxide to expel. When we rest in the breathing, some of that natural balance, unworried and unhurried, rubs off on our minds.

One of the important things we do as we meditate is we let go. We ease up. We soften around the wanting that is a natural, inevitable, persistent part of being awake and alive in a human body. When we meditate, we put to one side the concerns of the world. Particularly if the mind's busy or there's a lot of stuff happening—a lot of to-dos on the to-do list, a lot of concerns or worries about what's coming in the day—I like to imagine taking this burden off my shoulders and just setting it to one side next to me where I'm meditating. I give it the promise that I'll get back to those things. Maybe I will, maybe I won't. Maybe I'll pick some of that burden back up when I'm done. But for the moment, I reassure the burden that, yeah, I'll get back to you.

We can sort of put aside, in that way, some of the wanting that comes up in our lives, recognizing that the meditation is a place where we can be free of some of that wanting things to be different. And we can, as we've been doing the last few days, let go into this stream of experience that arises and passes for us. Leaving to one side the adding of extra, imposing order, making sense of everything, controlling, asserting ourselves. We can put to one side the wanting that is just part of being human.

When wanting arises, as it inevitably does, we just let it arise and be known. Perhaps we hold the discomfort of it in the contentment of the meditation, and then we watch it going. It comes and goes like everything else in experience. In the meditation, we can get familiar with it, comfortable with the discomfort, and ease up around it. This helps us in all the rest of our life. The wanting comes and goes.

It's only a challenge when we get caught up in it and let it lead us around. And of course, that's natural, too. We can, in the meditation, recognize wanting arising, recognizing entanglement happening. Just recognizing it loosens it. Then we can be aware that it fades away. The fact that it returns doesn't make any difference. It's not a problem. Of course, it returns. Wanting comes and goes like everything else.

We can get used to this fact that things that go away and leave a peace of mind also return. In Spanish, the phrase we use for things coming and going actually goes in the other direction. You say things go and come. I like that: wanting goes, and then it returns, fades away, arises again. There's a certain coarseness to that experience. And the fact that it keeps coming back isn't a problem.

The more we bring this attitude of mind, that we can cultivate in the meditation, to the wanting that arises for us—this wanting that goes and comes—the easier it is to let wanting arise and pass away without disturbing our peace of mind. And the easier it is to take it into the world with us, the world of action and interaction, where wantings arise thick and fast. Then we have a way to meet them more skillfully. Wanting goes, comes back, disappears, reappears. And we can notice that we have a measure of choice. We can be with the discomfort of the wanting. We can get more comfortable with it. And that gives us a way to figure out how to respond skillfully.

So, let's sit with that for the next twenty minutes or so. Just noticing wanting disappearing, returning, wanting things to be different. Sometimes I put a little mental label on it. The phrase I've used for many years now in my practice is "wanting more, wanting different." Just noticing that that's part of how it is to be human. Wanting more, wanting different. Sometimes I reduce its power by saying, "Just wanting more, wanting different." Again, when I put "just" at the beginning and "again" at the end, it seems to reduce its hold. "Just wanting again. Just wanting more again. Just wanting different again."

One of the things we can take delight in in the meditation is that it provides this place, or this way of meeting experience, in which we can hold the inevitable wanting that arises in our experience in a comfortable way. We can cultivate greater comfort with the natural discomfort that wanting creates. And maybe we find a way to sort of label wanting when it comes up. Just recognizing it. Acknowledging, "Oh, here's wanting again. Wanting more. Wanting different. Just wanting more. Wanting different again."

In the guided meditation yesterday, I suggested that maybe this practice isn't about freeing ourselves. Maybe it's about freeing the world from our projections, attachments, and clinging. And so it is with the wanting. When we hold the wanting here in the meditation, in this safe place, when we get familiar with it, intimate with it, more comfortable with it, we're freeing the world from it. This way of being with wanting is an act of generosity. This way of being with our wanting is a gift. This way of being with our wanting is something we give to this community of practice.

Dharmette: What Each of Us Brings to the Sangha: (4 of 5) Praise for the Dhamma

Welcome everyone. Welcome again. Welcome back. Welcome if you're just joining.

This guided meditation around the theme of fewness of wishes, an attenuation of wanting, really comes from a way of holding our wanting. This is important. We live in a world, we live in bodies and minds where wanting is going to happen. I mentioned that in Spanish, instead of coming and going, wanting goes and it comes back. I wanted to use that as a little gift of another language to say that we spend a lot of time trying to push wanting away, making it go away, and then it comes back. Unless we have tools to work with it, it causes suffering for us. We let it lead us around by the nose, which is an expression I don't know where it comes from, but that I like.

This was once pointed out to me in an impactful way listening to a talk by our co-guiding teacher, Andrea Fella, who points out that when we acquire something like a car—I don't know why I'm using a car today, it could be all sorts of things—what it does is relieve us from the discomfort of wanting for a period of time. But as we all know, we get a new car. It gets its first scratch. The new models appear the next year. There's always something more and something better, and the wanting returns.

So it's the wanting that we can meet with our practice. The objects of it are only stand-ins that help, for a brief time, push the wanting feeling—the discomfort of that feeling—away. This practice provides a much more effective way to meet the inevitable wanting that goes and comes, disappears for a while and returns, and do so in a way that eventually has delight in it. And this I want to make the focus of the Dharmette today.

We've been looking at qualities of individual practice that benefit the Sangha^[2], the community of practice as a whole. We've talked about people who have great learning, people who bring a special delight in the meditation to the practice, people who see clearly and bring that ability to keep the big picture of practice in mind. There are many things that people bring to the practice community, but these are highlighted in the ancient texts that I've been using for inspiration this week.

The one I'll go to today is something I've called "praise for the practice." We set up these names for the guided meditations and Dharmettes for the whole week in advance, and sometimes they fit and sometimes they don't. But I'm going to stick with this praise for the practice, because what we find in this sutta^[3] passage is that something practitioners can bring to the Sangha is a recognition of the benefits of practice and a speaking about those benefits. One way we bring it and share it is when we feel something of benefit in the practice, we share it. We talk about it. Of course, teachers do this all the time, but this is something that some people bring to the community of practice that makes it more wonderful than it would be otherwise.

In this portion of the discourse, the venerable Sāriputta^[4] addresses the next friend that's joined him in the Gosinga Sāla Grove and says, "Friend Kassapa^[5], another disciple of the Buddha, what kind of practitioner illuminates this community of practice?" The passage includes this lovely evocation of the scene. Sāriputta says something like, "It's a wonderful evening. We're sitting here together in this moonlit grove. The Sāla^[6] trees are in full blossom." Sāla trees are one of those trees, like cherries, that blossom only briefly. That's one of the things that's special about them in Buddhist practice; they highlight the impermanence of all experience. It's said there is a lovely scent that wafts on the breeze from these blossoms.

Kassapa responds in this lovely setting to this interesting question: "Sāriputta, a practitioner who has few wishes themselves and speaks in praise of fewness of wishes is such a practitioner. A practitioner who is content and finds contentment in the practice and speaks in praise of this contentment. A practitioner who keeps apart, who secludes themselves from the winds of the world^[7], is such a practitioner. A practitioner who has found delight in the meditation practice and speaks of that delight is a practitioner who illuminates this beautiful evening in the Gosinga Sāla Grove."

There are two things that seem to be going on here. One is this idea about the simplicity of our practice. And there's a way in which this simplicity sort of sets us apart from the world. The letting go of things, the not getting as caught up in acquiring things, the fewness of wishes that comes with practice as an inevitable part of it, is worth speaking about because it can create its own discomfort. We start to be a little less like some of the rest of the world.

People sometimes say when there's doubt that comes in the practice, "I sit here for half an hour, but what am I doing in the world?" And one of the things I like to point out is: well, you're sitting in meditation for half an hour or an hour, or you're on retreat for a week. And during that time, you're not at the mall, you're not at the car dealership, you're not shopping online. By meeting the wanting that comes up by sitting with it, you're actually doing something very important in the world. But it does set you apart from the world. Everybody else may have a new car.

So this is another way that the Dharma delight we've been talking about is cultivated. This idea of letting go around the wanting, not letting it drive us, and freeing the world from it, which we do by things like not buying the next model car. I'm really stuck on cars today! I'm down to one old car and I'm not looking at cars, but you could do it with another classic thing that teachers in the Dharma scene use: chocolate or ice cream. Anything that, for you, stands in for that way that we meet wanting to help it go away for a short period of time. It doesn't matter what the object is, and it doesn't have to be a thing. The more subtle things are relationships or promotions at work. Anything that we get caught up in where we find that wanting arises and we satisfy it for a period of time, but it doesn't have a deeper contentment in it. There's a liberating joy, a Dharma delight, when we find that we need less from the material world and from the sort of mental world where we sometimes satisfy our wanting or push it away with behaviors that keep it at bay for a period of time.

The second thing that's going on in this passage is that it's not just a practitioner who enjoys fewness of wishes—a phrase I love—or contentment in the practice or delight in the meditation, but someone who speaks in praise of these values of practice. I think that's one of the things we do when we come together as a community. We are practicing in a world where that fewness of wishes and this way of meeting wanting kind of makes us a little different. And it's nice to be able to know that others are on the same path. Others see these values.

Instead of posting my latest Instagram photo of the latest mountain I climbed, or the latest holiday dinner I had in Italy with my beautiful family—which solves the wanting for a brief time until somebody posts a picture of them summiting a higher mountain with a more beautiful family—instead, we speak about the fewness of wishes, the contentment with wanting that comes in the practice. The peace of mind that comes when we loosen up around and meet our wanting in a way that holds it here, instead of inflicting it upon the world and the people we love in the world.

The Buddha says something fun about this. Tomorrow I'll share what happens after this whole conversation is through and these disciples go and share what they've talked about with the Buddha. They ask him, "Well, what do you think the qualities of practice that benefit the Sangha are?" And the Buddha has a really interesting answer that we'll talk about. But the Buddha is quoted as saying about this idea talked about today the following: "I feel comfortable going to places where practitioners live in harmony, appreciating each other without quarreling, blending like milk and water, and regarding each other with kindly eyes. And I come to a conclusion about these practitioners. Clearly, they've given up three things, and they are cultivating three things. What three things have they given up? Thoughts of easy satisfaction of their desires, malicious thoughts, and cruel thoughts. And what three things have they cultivated? Thoughts of letting go—thoughts we could say of fewness of wishes—thoughts of goodwill, and thoughts of harmlessness."

The Buddha recognized this about his community of practice: that he enjoyed being there because people there had let go of inflicting their wanting on the world and on one another, and instead were cultivating thoughts of letting go, goodwill, and harmlessness. Here is the Buddha recognizing these values and talking about them for our benefit.

In summary, you know what I'm going to say because I've been saying it for a few days, which is that these may be particular strengths of yours. Some among us have really found a certain peace and ease in the world in which we live, of markets in which goods and services are exchanged. Our practice happens in this larger context. And some of us have had greater good fortune in really cultivating fewness of wishes, letting go. This doesn't mean living in a wooden shack on the beach in Santa Cruz. There are several people signing in in the chat from Santa Cruz, and I don't know that they live in wooden shacks! But it doesn't mean living without the good things of the world or without comfort. The Buddha points out in many places that in order to practice, we need a certain material support. That's one of the conditions that supports practice.

But it's the way we are with those things, the importance we give them, the way we sometimes use them to meet wanting. Some practitioners bring to the practice a way of being with those things that is really inspiring. The encouragement of this text is that if this is a strength of yours, bring it and share it. If that means speaking of it in one way or another, that helps others. We can talk about how we meet wanting in ways that are skillful, and the challenges we face. What's it like when we see that Instagram post? What urges come up? What wanting happens? How do we meet that wanting? Because the wanting is natural, and it keeps going and coming. It keeps disappearing and then returning. How do we meet it?

Thank you all for being here. I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Over the course of the day, bring this practice that we cultivate in the meditation—this way of meeting wanting—into your life. Wanting more, wanting different. Recognize the presence of that. It's not a problem. That's how we meet our experience in a way that doesn't struggle with it. We don't have to be judgmental about it. Of course, we want more and we want different. How do we meet it? The meditation and this practice helps us meet it in ways that are skillful, that help ourselves and help others. Till tomorrow, take care.