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Guided Meditation: Change

Hello everyone, and welcome to our meditation time together. I'm offering this week one exercise for each meditation that goes along with the fourth foundation of mindfulness^[1]. And so today's the fifth one, and the final one, and this one I want to give a little bit more introduction for.

If I'm walking in the city and I notice my shoes are dirty, I might notice it and say, "Oh, when I get home I'll clean them," and that's it. Don't think about it again. Or I might notice my shoes are dirty and immediately start ruminating about this. I'm stuck on this idea, and thinking of how everyone's judging me as I walk down the city streets because of my dirty shoes, and my value as a human being is dependent on having clean shoes. And I'm in trouble with these dirty shoes, and my mind is stuck on this idea of dirty shoes. But then I go along and I see a window of a shoe store and I see the clean shoes in there. "Oh, I should buy some of those shoes and that'd be good. I'll come back and buy some new fresh shoes." And I'm walking down thinking about how I'm going to buy these new shoes, and then my mind is stuck on buying these new shoes. And then I start ruminating about how, well, I don't quite have enough money to buy those shoes, they're quite expensive. And then I'm ruminating about that, and I'm stuck on that idea. And then it occurs to me that I'm a Buddhist, and for Dharma's sake I shouldn't be stuck on thinking about shoes and caught in that web of shoes. And now I'm stuck on the idea that I need to be a Buddhist in a certain way.

But then I remember Buddhism and I say, "Oh, look at that change." Just in the course of a minute walking down the street, my mind has gone through all these changes. And I was stuck, and I was stuck, and I was stuck. But the commonality is that I move on to the next stuckness, the next stuckness. Some of them only last a few seconds, some of them last for hours, maybe some for decades, but there's a kind of stuckness around these things.

But in recognizing the change, that it's all changing all the time, then there's a different kind of, "Oh, okay, it's just changing. I don't have to take it that seriously." And isn't it quite something how much my mind goes from one stuck thing to the next? But now that I see it, I can kind of float above it, or away from it, or not get pulled into it, sucked into it so strongly.

So the last exercise of the Buddha's teachings on mindfulness has a lot to do with seeing change in such a way that we are liberated from being stuck, and so the mind becomes unstuck. And now there's something profound about noticing change. Both the change in our perceptions of what we perceive—the sensations of our body, and sounds around us, whatever it might be—but also the change in what we get stuck on, that the mind is kind of fleeting. It stays stuck sometimes on one thing, and even if it's one thing that's the primary theme, it jumps around inside that theme to be stuck on different ideas and thoughts. So to recognize change is an antidote for that.

So for this meditation, my recommendation is that you recognize change. How things are changing, both in your experience and in what you put your mind on. And if you find yourself stuck on something, involved in distracted thought, remind yourself that things are changing all the time. That you weren't stuck on this some time ago, and you probably won't be stuck in a little while. It might be a theme that reoccurs over and over again, but that doesn't mean that you're stuck every moment. And to recognize that there's change can begin loosening up the ways we're attached and caught. So you might just say that word to yourself periodically: change.

So, assuming a meditation posture, and whatever posture you're in, can you adjust it so that there's a little bit more energy in the posture? Just maybe adjust it so that the spine is a little bit straighter, or the chest is allowed to come out. Even if you're laying down in a bed, you can sometimes move it so your shoulder blades go down the back a little bit and the chest maybe comes up a little bit. And now there's more space in the chest to breathe.

And lower your gaze about 45 degrees to the floor, or whatever 45 degrees is to straight ahead. Relax your eyes, your gaze. And then gently close your eyes, if that's comfortable.

And then taking a few long, slow, deep breaths, and as we do so, we are attuning ourselves to experiences that are changing. The changing sensations of breathing. Changing sensations in the body with the breathing. Breathing in deeply. And exhaling. On the exhale, relaxing on the exhale.

Taking a deep breath and relaxing. And then letting your breathing return to normal.

Continue relaxing as you exhale with a normal breath. Relaxing the muscles of the face, the shoulders, the belly. And whenever you're able to relax, that's also change. When you move your attention from the face, the shoulders, the belly, that's change.

And to make another change now, let your attention center itself in the breathing, where you usually experience breathing. And allow yourself to receive, to experience the body breathing. And as you do so, you're experiencing change, the changing sensations of breathing.

And if you get involved in your thoughts, chances are it's a little bit of a stuckness there, stuck on some idea or theme or concern. But appreciate how even our thoughts are fickle and change.

Periodically, you might just remind yourself there's change. Ever-changing change. And to relax into the changing of the experience. Not just to focus on breathing, but to rest in the changing nature of breathing, the changing nature of everything. That's interrupted when we get stuck on something. And when you're stuck, remind yourself of change.

If you're stuck on something now in your thoughts, that's just the current way that change has ever come to. It'll change again and again. Appreciate change and relax. Let go into the flow of changing nature. When we're not stuck, there's just change.

In the course of this meditation, chances are there's been a lot of change. In your thoughts, your concerns, your focus, your attention to the body, your breathing.

In what way does recognizing change loosen stuckness?

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, may we through this practice learn to walk through the world unstuck, not fixated on anything. So we're able to be, so we're ready to respond to the circumstances we find ourselves in. So we're ready to respond with care, kindness, compassion. Ready to respond with clarity, honesty. Ready to respond being self-aware of what's going on inside of us. Being ready to respond, really sensitive to the people we're with.

And through being unstuck, may we live in such a way that we support the welfare and happiness of many people. Maybe that's one of the great tasks of human life, to live for the welfare and happiness of many, including oneself.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings everywhere be free, which is another way of saying being unstuck.

Dharmette: Dhamma (5 of 5) Four Liberating Insights into Change

So good morning. This is the final talk on the fourth foundation of mindfulness^[1:1]. This is the area of mindfulness practice that we're studying: being attentive to the ways that we get stuck and the ways that we get unstuck. Or, to say it in more Buddhist language, how we get attached, where we get attached, the nature of detachment, and how we get unattached, or free, liberated.

I've presented this as a kind of a process. First, we spend our time moving through the layers of attachment we have, the layers of stuckness, and getting more and more subtle. But at some point, when it's subtle enough, when our preoccupation and stuckness doesn't predominate, then meditation practice opens up to a native and natural feeling of well-being that's here. Which is the seven factors of awakening^[2]. We don't need to be so concerned with exactly all seven, but right now I just want to say a sense of well-being: tranquil, happy, equanimous, feeling a kind of being at ease in a deep, deep way in this world.

And that is the foundation for the last foundation, the last exercise, which sometimes is called the Four Noble Truths^[3]. So it's not called that in this exercise. And it's a little formula that appears repeatedly, hundreds of times in the teachings of the Buddha. And that is to know suffering, to know the arising of suffering, to know the cessation of suffering, and to know the way to the cessation of suffering.

Sometimes this is called the Four Noble Truths, but that confuses it a little bit because what the Four Noble Truths have become down through the ages of wonderful teaching is a little bit more complicated than the simplicity of seeing change. And in this fifth exercise, it's seeing the rising and passing of phenomena, the rising and ceasing of things.

Because we're so at ease, equanimous, and peaceful, then we have a readiness and ability to kind of flow and go along with the changing nature of the present moment, the river of change that's happening here. The changing sensations of breathing, body, emotions, thoughts, sounds—they're all changing except for when we get stuck in the concepts of ideas and stories related to it. And that also has layers of subtlety. If we're at the grosser level, we're stuck in the stories. At the most refined level, we might be stuck in very simple concepts, ideas of what things are. And the idea of breathing is not the breathing itself. You can think about your breathing and have no connection to your breathing.

But to really feel and sense the breathing and not filter it so strongly through the concept, the idea, then we're able to see the changing nature of all the little sensations coming and going, rising and passing. To really start resting or taking in this radical way in which things are flowing, changing all the time, is a kind of a massage on the remaining places in our mind, in our hearts, that are stuck, that are frozen, that are tight. So it's a little bit hard to keep that stuck, to keep it there. And so there starts to be a willingness and a relaxation into this place of ease and freedom that comes with resting in change, resting in how things are always moving and changing.

And we become more and more sensitive to the subtlety of being stuck. It can even be the idea that, "I am aware," or "I'm here, and that's the change that I'm watching," is a very, very subtle kind of innocent, almost, stuckness that also begins to dissolve when you really kind of rest in the ocean of change and just be with it.

At some point, this experience of just seeing arising and ceasing becomes the predominant experience of mindfulness meditation. And it doesn't really matter anymore what you're experiencing, like what it is. It's just the fact that everything is arising and passing, and there's no overlay of concepts on top of it. Now you know that even the subtlest kinds of stuckness are no longer operating, at least for the time being while we're in meditation.

And then at some point, the rising and ceasing... the ceasing happens more dramatically, and there's a ceasing that really feels like something has radically, dramatically stopped. Something that's been like the hum of the refrigerator suddenly stops, and it's like, "Wow, I didn't realize that was humming even." So something that we didn't even realize was there drops away and falls away, evaporates, collapses into itself, or is just set free in some way.

And then to recognize, "Oh, being able to see change at this level, that's the way to freedom." And in this fourth foundation of mindfulness, that's what it means at the last: knowing that this is the way to the cessation of suffering, is to stay in the current of change. The language here is suffering: knowing suffering, knowing the rising of it, knowing the ceasing of it, and knowing the way to the ceasing of it. Because as we get more and more into this field of change, it's that stuckness, the place where we still suffer, that stands out in the highlight. It stands out above the flow, and so then we bring our attention to that, to be present and see that, until we start seeing that it too breaks up and is made up of rising and ceasing of things.

So at some point, after meditation is quite deep, and there's a lot of, like I said, the seven factors of awakening are established, there's a lot of well-being, the name of the game becomes just tuning in to the subtlest forms of stress, of tension, contraction—all words for the subtlety of suffering in deeper meditation.

Definitely, Buddhism is about addressing suffering, and we do it all along the way, because any place we're stuck has to be somehow resolved in order to drop into change. At the coarsest level, we're caught up in the hindrances^[4], and that might take years to work through some of the stuckness we have. At a more refined level, we're stuck on self and identity issues that we're attached to. And then in a more even subtle level, we're still caught up in comfort and reacting to pleasure and pain, and wanting or not wanting, in the world and the sensations we have.

And so kind of working through that, it's not an easy process, you know, but boy is it worthwhile. It's a fantastic thing to practice mindfulness and go through this process, and end up in a process of radical change. And that's a change that's freeing, it's liberating. All along the way, throughout the four foundations of mindfulness, throughout the whole process of what happens in meditation, the basic practice actually is always the same. It's just to be mindful, attentive carefully, attentively to what's happening now. And in doing so, slowly learn how to free attention from any kind of stuckness, any kind of agendas, any kind of attachment to self, any kind of reactivity to anything at all.

So first, when we start meditating, mindfulness is not so clean, but that's okay. It's always the same practice: just do the best we can to be mindful of what's here, and keep going, doing it over and over again. Doing it in daily life, doing it in meditation, developing the capacity to be aware, to live in awareness. To live in awareness more and more and more. And so as we go through our life, we're living in a field of awareness. We're present and aware of what's happening in our minds and our hearts, and all around us.

And as we do that practice, it is always the same: being aware, being mindful. And at some point, especially if we do enough meditation, we drop into this world of change, and the change that is liberating, that's freeing.

So that is the exercise, the fourth foundation. And hopefully, that was clear enough. There are maybe many other ways of understanding it or interpretations, but this is the one that I liked to present.

Announcements

So that's enough. Thank you. An announcement: next week I'm going on a small vacation with my wife up into the mountains to go hiking. And I'm so happy that Nikki Mirghafori^[5] will come and teach. She's been here before for our morning 7:00 AM sitting here at IMC^[6], and is a wonderful teacher here at IMC. You'll be in good hands with Nikki, and I'll be back the following week. So thank you very much.