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Guided Meditation: Resolve and the Path

Good morning friends. It's 7 o'clock here where I am. Welcome to you whatever time it is where you are, and thanks for coming together to practice.

As most of you know, I like to give a welcome that's related to the theme of the week and the talk, the theme of the day. And today I'll just acknowledge that in showing up for yourself here, for showing up for others here, you bring to the practice community a determination that the Buddha valued highly and spoke of regularly. This is worth recognizing—that one of the values that we celebrate in the practice community is that determination that some practitioners in particular grace the sangha^[1] with.

So thank you, and welcome to each and every one of you with an acknowledgement of the importance of your showing up. I like to acknowledge that when we show up here in what feels a lot of the time like an individual practice, we're showing up for others, and that we support the practice of others by practicing ourselves. This will be the theme of our meditation today, which I'll guide lightly beginning in a moment, and also the theme of the dharma talk or dharmette, as we call the short ones.

It's Friday and the end of my brief stay here on this occasion, and so I have promised that today I would share what the Buddha adds to this conversation that we've been following. This conversation at the Gosinga Sal Grove^[2], this wooded area of sal trees in blossom on a pleasant evening, as these practitioners share thoughts about what different strengths of practice each individual brings to the practice. Finally, they ask the Buddha what he brings, and we'll learn about his response in the dharmette today.

So let's begin by sitting together. I think you all know the drill, and it's fitting today that I use that expression, "You know the drill." There is discipline in this practice. There is discipline we bring to it, all of us, by showing up here and doing our practice regularly. We bring a dedication to it and a discipline to it. It's not a practice without dedication and discipline. It benefits from that sort of committed approach, determined approach to the practice.

Maybe these words can settle into our meditation. Bringing the eyes down, finding that interior balance, bringing our attention to the inner world. Noticing that as we close the eyes, or bring our eyes down as is comfortable for each of us, that there's a natural resettling of our attention inward and downward into the body. Maybe a simple balancing of mind and body, to the extent that we sense them to be different things.

And maybe touching in with the dedication that you bring to the practice. This dedication and discipline and determination, to use three words that begin with D: dedication, determination, discipline. These have an important part in our practice. And there's an irony, maybe even a paradox, that through dedication, determination, and discipline, we find a way to be free in our experience.

So maybe just recognize that as we settle into the meditation, that you're here again. Back here, back meeting experience in this way. This ancient practice of meeting experience with as little struggle, as little suffering, as little stress as possible as a way to experience what it's like to be free in our experience.

It takes some determination, some discipline, some dedication, because it ain't easy. The instructions we give frequently, we like to say they're simple, but they don't indicate that the practice is easy. The simple instructions to keep bringing the attention back to here and now, frequently by anchoring attention in the breathing, sounds simple enough. But it takes dedication, determination, and discipline to keep coming back to it over and over again.

And in this practice, these things—determination, discipline, dedication—they come with a very light touch. In other parts of our lives, we might have to really lean into these qualities in order to bring fruit to bear. In this particular practice that in a lot of ways is different from other activities we engage in—different from work, different from raising children, different from caring for elders, different from being active in the larger world—here it's a soft determination, a soft discipline, a soft, sweet dedication to keep coming back to this inner life.

When it's challenging, when it feels frustrating, exasperating, when we find ourselves feeling that the thought patterns we get wrapped up in, entangled in, caught up in, are too much or need to be pushed away, it's useful to recall why we do it. I like to use a simple phrase here, that this is a way we show up for ourselves and it's a way we show up for others.

So whenever it feels challenging, whenever it gets tangled up, whenever it feels like it's not working, whenever we wonder if we're any good at it or if it's the right thing for us or what good it does in the world, with a little channeling of that dedication, determination, and discipline, we can say or think to oneself, This is how I show up for myself. This is how I show up for others. This is why I do this. That can help keep us in touch with our resolve, our determination, our commitment to ourselves, and to others.

So let's sit quietly for the rest of the sit.

And maybe each time we have that brief moment of waking up, recognizing that the mind has wandered or gotten all caught up in something, we come back to presence. We can touch in with the determination that keeps us sitting here as we find freedom in our experience. It keeps us sitting here even through the hardship, knowing that in the sitting practice, we can learn how to meet our experience without struggle.

[Meditation Period]

The way we meditate makes a difference in the world when we bring to it resolve, determination, dedication, and even discipline. Meditation changes us and changes the way we are in the world for the better. And it can be useful to keep that in mind with each returning to the experience of here and now, connecting with the breath or the body, connecting with each passing moment of experience. That this way of showing up for ourselves makes us better at showing up for others.

We don't have to exert effort to make this happen. It happens naturally as the practice deepens. One of the conditions for the unfolding of that natural process is this resolve, or determination, or dedication that we bring to the practice. Coming back over and over again to this simple but challenging task of meeting our experience with as little struggle as we can.

Dharmette: What Each of Us Brings to the Sangha: (5 of 5) The Buddha's Gift

Good morning. Today, on this last day of exploring various qualities that practitioners bring to the practice, I want to develop and explore just a little bit this theme of determination, commitment, discipline, and resolve.

These are words maybe we don't associate with the practice, a practice about freedom, of letting go. And yet the letting go we do, the meditation practice we do, rests on this foundation of coming back over and over again to this challenging and simple task of being here now as opposed to being there then.

This determination is something that was recognized by the Buddha in his community of practice, and it seemed to be what the Buddha felt himself to add to the practice community. Here's the text from which we've been drawing inspiration this week in its final passages, where the friends who've gathered in the Gosinga Sal Grove, with the trees in blossom and a wonderful scent floating on the air, have each shared what they bring to the community.

There's about seven or so different qualities that each of them feels they bring. And I pointed out yesterday that they're not modest or immodest about this. They recognize, as I think we can too, our particular strengths or the particular strengths of our practices and make sure we bring those to the community and share them. Each one has said, This is something I bring that illuminates this wood, that illuminates this evening.

And it says here that Sāriputta^[3], after hearing all his friends speak, says, "Okay, we've each of us spoken according to our inspiration. Let us go to the Buddha and report all of this conversation to him. See what he has to say."

I'm providing a gloss here, not a direct translation of the text, doing things like changing pronouns and making it a little bit more contemporary. So this gathering of friends leaves the sal wood and they go visit the Buddha. They pay respects to him, sit down to one side, and then, because these texts do this, they report verbatim the entire conversation that they've just had.

When it's all been recounted to the Buddha, Sāriputta says to him, "Venerable sir, which of us has spoken well?"

I love this. He's not asking which of us spoke best, but in a sense, was all this well spoken by this group of disciples? And the Buddha says, "Indeed, Sāriputta, you've each spoken well, each in your own way."

So again, there is this recognition that each of them brings something significant to this community of practice. And then the Buddha says, "Hear also from me what kind of practitioner illuminates the practice community." And because each of them has spoken about their own qualities, we can take these to be the Buddha's. It's quite lovely, very simple. He says a practitioner who lights up this community, who contributes to this community, is one who, when they've returned from their alms round, after their meal, they sit down, fold their legs crosswise, set the body erect, and establish mindfulness. And they resolve, I'm going to sit here until I'm free through non-clinging, until the mind is liberated through non-clinging.

This kind of practitioner illuminates this evening, this special gathering.

There are two things going on here. One is that, for the Buddha, the most important thing that we bring to the practice is that we sit and meditate. I said on Monday, and I'll reiterate today, that the meditation comes first. There's the recognition in this practice—and it comes directly in this case from the Buddha—that it's in the meditation that we find a different way to meet our experience. That's the secret. That's the key that unlocks the way we can be in the world.

For the Buddha, the freedom that he experienced came in meditation, and he recommends the same thing to us. And then there's the resolve, the determination, the commitment, the discipline, that when we sit in the meditation, there's some force of the Buddha's resolve that I'm going to sit here until I am awake.

The Buddha did a lot of meditation and a lot of practice. But on the night of his awakening, the story is that he just sat down and said, I'm going to sit here until I get awake. And that happened at daybreak. But it also means each time we sit down to meditate, I'm going to sit here until I find a way to be free. A place where the mind is free without clinging onto everything that's going on, meeting each experience as it arises and passes without getting all tangled up with it, without adding extra. And we can do this every time we meditate.

Any little bit of that is extremely valuable. Gil^[4] says that no moment of mindfulness is wasted. Meaning, just that moments of mindfulness are cumulative. So any little moment of being free that we experience in the meditation adds up to something important.

This particular gift is true of some practitioners, and I think they inspire all of us. Among my dear teaching colleagues, there are some that I find inspiring because of their determination to be awake in the world, to be free of suffering, and to not inflict that suffering on others. When we're free in the world, as I think we've pointed to this week, it's not we who get free, it's the world that benefits from this way of meeting experience. Yet we bring that freedom into the world in important ways.

The Buddha is saying here what I also tried to say at the end of the guided meditation, which is that something important happens in the meditation. Something important is available there—a way of being in experience that is unlike the way we are in a lot of the rest of the world. By engaging in this again and again with determination, with resolve, with this recognition that the instructions are simple but putting them into practice isn't easy, we are cultivating a practice that leads in a direction of freedom.

Of course, the Buddha was quite a determined individual, determined to awaken, but also determined to teach. Some of you probably know the story that the Buddha didn't initially want to teach, or so the stories have it. Because although it sounds simple, this is a challenging practice. It takes determination. It takes discipline. It takes a real commitment to seeing clearly. It takes great delight in the meditation. It takes an engagement with the teachings. All the qualities we've talked about this week that different practices bring to the community of practice.

And it was only with encouragement that the Buddha said, Okay, I'll take this on. There are people who will sit down, fold their legs crosswise, sit erect—or analogues of that, we don't need to do it exactly in this posture all the time—and establish mindfulness with the resolve: I'm going to sit here and meet experience without suffering. He realized that this could be taught and that there were people who were ready to do this practice, take this commitment, take this resolve, and become freer through non-clinging.

Each of you, by showing up here regularly—I saw somebody in the chat yesterday talking about three years of coming to this particular practice community, bringing their practice to it, supporting others in it by showing up, throwing something into the chat, or just by showing up—demonstrates this determination. And the point of this week's teachings has been that that display, that expression of the determination in practice, builds, supports, graces, contributes something important to the practice community.

I've been saying all along that the practice community is the sum total of the practices in it, and that the whole is much greater than these individual parts. So we all benefit from everybody showing up in a regular way to benefit themselves, but in so doing, to benefit all of us. If you're somebody who is one of those people with that particular determination, that strength of your practice benefits all of us. It inspires others, and it's something that, when acted on, is a wonderful thing in the practice community.

As I said all week, when you recognize in your practice particular strengths, and you recognize that, Oh, this is something that is strong in my practice... I'm not a Star Wars fan particularly, but I had kids who were, and I have this phrase in mind about the force is strong in you. When you feel the force strong in you, when you feel a strength of practice in you—and it may shift over time, different strengths develop at different times, different strengths support us—bring it. Bring it to the community. Show up with what you bring. What I've been saying all this week is some form of: bring what you bring. Bring what your practice is strong in, and share it.

Dedication of Merit

I'll close with that and with a dedication of merit for the week's practice.

May the practice we do in the meditation individually, each of us as the practice unfolds for us and deepens for us, may we recognize that the qualities in this practice, the qualities that each of us bring, the qualities that appear in our practice, may we know, may we be confident that these qualities are valuable to the community of practice and that they affect all the world.

The meditation we do together in this tradition does make a difference, and it does change the way we are over time, little by little. Cumulative moment of mindfulness by cumulative moment of mindfulness strengthens us, makes us more resilient, makes us happier, makes us more content, makes us delightful.

And may all those benefits of practice, may all these values that we find in the practice community, may they spread out through our troubled world, may they spread out through these times in ways that benefit many, many people, many, many beings, with a wish that they benefit all beings. That all beings know something of the contentment that's possible in experience.

May all beings be free. May all beings know the contentment that comes from an absence of suffering.

Take care all. I expect I'll see you again sometime in the future. Wishing you all well, and take care. Take care of yourself. Take care of others. Till next time.