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Guided Meditation: Choosing Well

Welcome to our guided meditation, and as an introduction to the meditation and to this topic this week of equanimity, especially the form of equanimity that is a form of love. I'd like to emphasize that one of the most loving things that we can do, especially for ourselves, is to be the caretaker of our inner life. To care for the quality of our inner life and not to contract that out to the world. Not look for others or anything outside of ourselves to be responsible for the deep capacity of our inner life to find peace, to have love, to be able to choose wisely and skillfully. To be able to choose how to live, what to do, what to say, even what to think in a way that is, to use a Buddhist word, kalyana^[1]. Kalyana here means beautiful.

And so there's a very deep part of Buddhist teaching, Buddhist orientation to life, which is not to look outside of ourselves for our peace, our freedom. Not to look outside of us, as if someone else, some person, some god, or some external force is going to somehow take care of the quality of our inner life. Buddhism being a karmic religion rather than a theistic religion, the orientation is in some very deep way to focus on what we can do, what our area of capacity is, to love, to care for, to free our inner life, our heart.

So there's a very personal aspect of the dharma, and the remarkable thing about that is that it dissolves conceit, dissolves selfishness. And in a way we get turned inside out. The goodness, the love, the freedom, the integrity we have, the beauty then is available to meet the world.

So the teachings on equanimity are not some cold obligation to somehow be unfeeling. It's the opposite. To focus and equanimity is to feel deeply, to care deeply, and to care and feel deeply about the choices we make internally, the movements we participate in, what we feed within ourselves, what we let go of, what we step away from. Out of love, we're caring for our hearts, caring for our inner life, and we want the best for it.

And this idea that we're the caretakers of that is a protection from all the messages that we get from society, from religious upbringing, from family, or that we take in unconsciously from the experiences of life, how people have treated us, and beliefs we have that focus on things that can't be proved. Things that take us away from sitting right here in ourselves, loving, caring for this here. Caring for the quality, the beauty, the peace of our inner life. That here we can do this.

And that gives rise to a form of equanimity that's very qualitatively different than fending off, or wanting others, or trying to change something in the world so we can have peace, appease a god, or appease relatives. It's a deep form of love.

So assuming a meditation posture, and if it's okay with you, to think of your posture as shaping or forming your meditation hall, your monastery, your temple, your sacred grove that you sit in. Gently closing your eyes and getting ready to turn inward. And by ready, I mean to become quieter, more respectful, caring, as you would if you went into someone's sacred sanctuary, as you would if you went into someone's sacred place where they're quiet and attuned to something deep, important for them. But for you to approach with respect and care, maybe reverence, to feel and sense your inner life as it is.

To feel and sense your inner life without doing so through the lens of your normal thinking. Taking those glasses off, the lenses off, and allowing this inner world of sensations, feelings, emotions, breathing to show itself to you, for you to approach it gently.

Gently, quietly feeling your breathing, sensing and knowing breathing. And is there a way that you could gently, openly, spaciously feel the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out? The feeling of it, the knowing of it, the attending to it is beautiful. It's calming. It doesn't spend time making anything a problem, but uses your time wisely to attend to breathing gently, pleasantly. Please.

And as you feel and sense your breathing, make room for your breathing, the sensations of breathing to touch your inner life. Whatever sensations the breathing provides is a gentle touching. Touching the physical sensations, touching your emotional sensations, your spiritual sensations. The sensations of what is wholesome, peaceful within.

And if there's something difficult within, remember that caring for your inner life is a kind of love. And with your awareness, with your breathing, to gently touch, gently attend to what's difficult with love. Attending in a beautiful way, a caring way.

Slowly, quietly, just to be present, not to fix and not to be defined by the difficulty. If anything, be defined by the wholesome way that you attend to your inner experience.

As we engage the miracle of mindfulness, the miracle of attention, there's something we do and something we don't do together. What we can do is to be very careful and loving about how we attend to our experience. How we come along to accompany our direct experience. And what we don't do is interfere with it, judge it. We simply are present, maybe to the sacredness or the reverence of this deep inner life of ours. It's the locus, the center of how we care for the quality of our inner life. Accompanying our inner life and discovering what it is to let it be undisturbed, uninterfered with.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, is there some different way you can understand caring for the quality of your inner life, a way of love? That how you respond, how you apply attention, how you accompany your experience is loving, caring. Not assertive, not pulling away, not anxious, not blaming. Not caught in the stories and thoughts, but a kind of sacred quietness, sacred accompaniment that to some degree you can choose to do.

You can choose to be present in a calm way, a kind way. It doesn't have to be all of what's going on for you. Just a place where you have some choice for how you attend to your direct experience.

And perhaps with that attending with choice, now choosing to turn your attention outward into the world with a calm attention, a loving attention. Nothing to do, nothing you have to make happen. Maybe nothing you need to judge or be caught up in criticism or desires. For now, the most important thing is staying close to that way that you can choose. To be aware, to know, to think about the world around you with kindness, peace, gentleness, or some inner way that feels most intimate for you. For what is most wholesome, most appreciated, arising from your inner life.

And gazing out upon the world. Maybe from the distance of the moon, gazing upon this globe as being a treasure, a jewel, as are all the people on it. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (67) Caring for our Inner Life

Hello and welcome to this third talk on equanimity. Laying the groundwork to understand equanimity within ourselves so that when we're ready to do the samadhi^[2] of equanimity, there's a rich or well-understood inner landscape that we can tap into that supports a very special, very beautiful way of experiencing being with equanimity.

So a little bit to repeat what I said for the guided meditation, one of the central principles or approaches in Buddhism is understood well, maybe by some people here who grew up in a western culture or grew up in a theistic culture, that Buddhism is not opposed to theism, but Buddhism is not a theistic approach to life. It's a karmic approach.

It's an approach where karma here means that we really focus on what we can do, the actions that we can engage in. And for people who know meditation, it's the inner actions. How we treat ourselves, how we meet our experience, how we relate to our experience, how we respond. Because the quality and the characteristics of your inner life is something that is affected by the choices we make, the mental actions that we do, what we do with our hearts. And that the actions we have in the world are an expression of what is arising out of our inner life, arising out of our mind, our heart, and what we do with our inner life is paramount. That's the center of where we care for and organize and see the life.

We don't look externally for forgiveness in Buddhism in some deep existential way, but rather we look at in ourselves how we are behaving, what are we doing here, what have we contributed to suffering, and how can we make it better. How can we shift that, how can we change the inner landscape so suffering won't be created in the future? And how do we live with the consequences of our actions so that we don't fight them? We don't resist them, but we're wise about them. We know what we should just accept because that's a consequence of what we've done, and what we maybe make amends for or change or do differently.

But it's all about the place of choice within ourselves. And one of the really important purposes of mindfulness meditation, even deep samadhi, is to be able to become more and more sensitive, more and more aware of where we have choice, inner choice. The choice of what we do with our minds, our hearts, and then we become the caretakers of that choice.

If we don't see the choice, then we have no choice. And then we're kind of being carried along by forces we don't understand. But when we become quiet enough and calm enough that we can see, "Oh, there's a desire, and I never knew this before, but something inside is choosing to go along with that desire, choosing to act on it, choosing to believe in it, choosing to give it authority and importance and following along." There's this choice we give ourselves.

If there is generosity that arises, a desire to be generous, it's very different than a desire to steal, a desire for greed. We can feel and know, and this place of choice would be, "Not now, given the circumstances. Not the time for generosity. Now is a time for patience or kindness," or "Yes, this is a time for generosity. Let me get involved with that." And so there's a place of choice where we get involved, don't involve, we participate, we don't participate. We're not really responsible for what bubbles up in our mind on its own. We're only responsible for how we respond to that and live with that.

And so this responsibility, this ability to be responsive in a place of choice, means that the quality of our inner life, the directions of our inner life, how we live with our inner life, is all a matter of choice that we have. And we always have choice. We always have choice to choose what's wholesome over unwholesome, to choose maybe not for the unwholesome what arises, but we have a choice to go along with it, to pick it up, or we have a choice to relate to it wisely. Not put on our boxing gloves and be critical and immediately attack, but rather, "Oh, look at that. That wasn't so good. That was unhealthy. Unhealthy to have that thought or that impulse. But let me just back up. Let me just open up. Be aware of it spaciously, because I have a choice here. I could attack it, I could go along with it, or I can just let it be."

And over time, we get to realize that the quality of our inner life, the peace in it, the warmth of it, the deep satisfaction of being connected to our hearts, or even deeper than our hearts, that this is something that's invaluable to care for. Something we don't want to harm. We don't want to fracture or tear or rupture this beautiful inner life that we have. It's sacred. The heart, it's sacred, this life of ours.

And it might sound a little bit like this is selfish because it's all internal, but it's the opposite of that, because selfishness is a choice that contracts around a definition of who we are. And you can feel that that's off. If we really care for the quality of the inner life, we wouldn't be selfish.

And so equanimity that comes out of seeing where we have choice is an equanimity that arises out of choices which are loving, caring, profoundly loving, profoundly caring for what is best in us, what is most wholesome, what is most beautiful within us.

And the remarkable thing about that is that it's not selfish, but then it spills out beyond us. It begins to flow into the world. We never... deep, profound dharmic peace is not something you can keep for yourself. It flows outwards. It's a movement into the world. Maybe other people don't necessarily see it, but you feel it. It's not held in check. It's not held tight. It's like, just yes, it flows. The peace spreads out. This inner quality of life becomes the quality of the world that we experience.

We experience the world peacefully. It spreads out and spills out into us. We experience it without reactivity. We experience it without these sometimes seemingly unconscious choices to be angry, to be spiteful, to be jealous, to be envious, to be blaming, to be pulling in, being afraid, to being preoccupied with all the things that are going wrong, which keeps us from this open field of the inner life spreading out its peace, its love, its care.

It's a remarkable thing to realize how much choice we have, and to not take that as an oppressive responsibility, but see it as an inspired possibility for love, for loving what's best in us, for us and for this world. And the choices we make become expressions of love, expressions of profound wisdom and peace. This is a remarkable thing.

And the choices that we make, even though it's a kind of doing, are not tiring, are not stressful, because it's almost an expression of what is most profound, most sacred, most treasured, most peaceful within ourselves.

So thank you. And I'm hoping you appreciate how coming to this very special place of choice helps us to have, kind of as a byproduct, greater equanimity, not being batted around^[3] or tossed around like a tumbleweed in this world, and being more like a wonderful redwood tree, maybe.

So maybe you can see for this day the choice you have for how you accompany with attention whatever is happening in your life. How do you accompany it? How do you attend to it? Are you aware of it? And can you be aware of it in a beautiful way? And does that beautiful way allow something in you to be autonomous, non-reactive?

Thank you.