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Guided Meditation: A Wide Awareness of Breathing

Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whenever you're hearing this. Welcome to this time we're spending together. You and me, we are entering into this meditation with the intention, whatever your intention is. But let it also be an intention to be here with everyone, that we are all engaged in this meditation, in this practice of being aware. Allow your awareness to include beyond us, beyond this skin, beyond this room. Know that we're here. And then return to your breath. Take a deep breath. Let it out.

Adopt a comfortable, alert stature. Let your posture reflect your intention to be present. To be truly present. Relax the body. Relax the neck. Relax the shoulders. Allow the elbows to settle into a comfortable space. The arms, the fingers, the torso. Know that your breath is moving through all of your body. Know that you're sitting, or walking, or standing, or lying. Know that you're here. Let your legs relax, your feet meet the ground, your body meet the surface it's on. Return to the breath.

Whatever our intentions, however we think about our breath, let whatever happens happen. Okay? It's like this. The breath is coming and going. My task is to be aware of it as it changes. However routine the rhythm of breathing is, it's never exactly the same. Whatever our intention, the meditation is never exactly the same. Thoughts come and go. Feelings arise. Bodily sensations arise. We never know exactly what's going to happen. Let that be okay. Rest in the comfort of breathing. In and out with the breath. We can trust in the breath, in and out. And then let it be just as it is.

All of your awareness in a receptive, open mode, just here, all of us breathing together. Even as we're breathing together, that all of us are just breathing, following our breath or not. All the other people in the world who are not meditating are also breathing. Animals are breathing. The trees are breathing. This movement of air in and out is all of life. Our being present here is being present for all of life. Each breath, a shared experience. Physically shared with the room. Feel your heart aware of the shared experience. Be here for your breath. See it as a meeting of the air, the exchange, the being present for, aware of the thinking mind.

I can feel chaos, contentment, whatever the feeling about it is. I can be aware of that. Not worrying too much about the label. Just watching the thoughts come and go. Notice the randomness. No need to understand. Just be aware. Feeling the breath, the air moving in and out. Awareness is the knowing of that. Awareness is very broad. It's the knowing. The knowing that watches the unexpected. Knowing we are experiencing this moment, this breath, this thought. Knowing the body is here. The ears are hearing. Just hearing, the awareness of knowing that. Not understanding, not explaining, just available, this knowing.

I can direct my awareness as I direct my attention. I can't control what it knows, what arises. And that's okay. Connected to this breath. I've totally abandoned the one that came before, the movement of air. I'm not rushing ahead to the next breath. Just this one. I only need to be aware of this one. This feeling as it arises. What else? What else? I don't need to understand it. I just have to see it. Ah, this breath, aware of this.

Dharmette: Wisdom and Views (4 of 5): Intention – The Other

Hello everyone again, all of us. I'm on a Jack Kornfield^[1] mailing list, and an email came through this morning. All I saw was the title, but it was, "You don't have to be ready." I thought that's wonderful. You don't have to be ready. You don't have to be in a certain mind state. You don't have to be anything to show up for just here, who you are. You don't have to be ready. It's okay. For those of us who have been raised to be in control all the time, that's a really radical thought. You don't have to be ready for this moment. You just have to show up for it.

Most of what we've talked about this week, having to do with the wisdom of wise view and wise intention, and how wisdom arises, has been really focused on: What am I feeling? What am I thinking? What am I aware of in this body? What are my emotions? What is my attitude of mind? It's been largely self-focused. But much of the suffering in the world arises out of our relationships. All of it arises out of our relationship to our experience. But today, I'd really like to focus on the other—the other person, the other group of people, the other. Those people we have relationships with. What happens between us and everyone else?

Somebody mentioned Wes Nisker^[2] to me yesterday, and I looked at his book, Crazy Wisdom. A short little phrase came out at me, and it was a Japanese proverb: "The reverse side also has a reverse side." The other, whoever they are, to them I am the other. That perspective, that whatever I am experiencing, whoever I am experiencing with is also experiencing. They're not a blank sheet. They're not a null point out in front of us. We are their reverse side. Sometimes that perspective can be really the space that we need to step out of reactionary behavior.

Just as I'm interpreting what you're saying, you're interpreting what I'm saying to you. I'm interpreting what you say to me. There's an interpretation happening. There's a translation happening, and that translation is happening through our respective views. Each of us has a view. We've talked about where views come from—like from things we've heard from people, things that we've read. We've talked about verifiable beliefs. We've talked about the confidence that comes with actually settling on values that have been tested and experienced directly for ourselves. We know that views set the tone for the exchange that we have.

Yesterday we talked about developing a peaceful heart. That peaceful heart is a place to operate from. It's a place of calm that gives us space, that creating a space between us and reaction is important for us. Do we allow a space for the other person? Where's their space? The space that allows them to be individual, different than us. A lot of our interactions are based on a form of tribalism, right? This morning as we were meditating, I was speaking to the fact that people everywhere are breathing. I realized that in the beginning I was saying all of us are here. We who are meditating are all breathing together. And then I realized it was much broader than that. There were other people who weren't part of this little group that were also breathing. And the animals, and the plants—all of life was breathing. It's so human to think of "my group," what we have in common. There's a certain safety in my group, and my group tends to separate out everything else. To be aware of that unconscious separation—that I have my beliefs, I have my opinions, I have what I want to say, and so do they—to allow some space for whatever is going on over there is crucial, because so much of what we believe becomes a place of transference.

If I believe this, and you seem to be opposing me on that, then you don't believe this. You don't have these same values as I have. We discount other people's values. Not consciously, not deliberately, but just that sense of "other"—"not me, not me." To be able to see the "not me" and ask, "Who is seeing this? Who is 'me' that's asking this?" Sometimes we engage in group behavior where we support the group even if it's not in our best interest. The mystery of that has always astounded me. People make decisions based on, "Well, this is what they want," even if it's not what I want. "So I'm going to do that because it's my group." We identify with the group. There's a pressure to conform. We all have felt that, whether it's in the way we dress or the words we use. That's where jargon comes from, right? We're the in-group. We know what these secret words mean.

The cry to be seen is common to everyone. We want to be seen. We want people to know our point of view, understand our point of view. We think it's their job to understand us: "Of course you understand what I mean." At the same time, I'm insisting that it's not possible for you to see me because you just don't know me. You don't know enough about me. At the same time we're asking to be seen, we're saying, "You can't possibly understand how I feel." To see ourselves putting those barriers up can be really interesting.

We are prone to generalizations about other people. We have expectations of them: "Well, I know how you're going to behave. I know just what you're going to say to this. I know what you're going to say because everybody in your group says this, or you always say that." As soon as I hear a thought in my mind saying "you always," I shut it down. I know immediately I'm making a generalization that may or may not apply. Nobody always does anything. Not even us.

For a long time, a major part of my life, I had a personal habit that I would not see race because I wanted to develop the capacity for it to have no discriminatory meaning. I refused to see it. And it was only later that somebody finally got through my thick skull that this was a form of dismissal. Despite my good intention, my really well-meaning intention, it was refusing to see someone as they are. Sometimes that arises out of being afraid of what you're going to find out, a small fear about what that means. So I set out to really notice everybody's ethnicity, and not in generalized terms. I wanted to know the difference between someone who came from Senegal and someone who came from the Caribbean, and someone who came from Japan versus someone who came from China. And I realized I was still putting people in categories, still not seeing them. But even that was painful, to overcome my bias of not seeing. So ask yourself, what am I refusing to see with the best of intentions in my group, in your group? What am I refusing to see?

This "we/they" dynamic that gets set up is so prevalent, and it leads to extremism when it becomes too strong in a culture, which I believe we experience every day. In the Book of the Eights^[3], there's a famous line that when you're disputing with people, you tell them, "In this dispute, you have no opponent here." I love that line. "In this dispute, you have no opponent here." And the immediate response is, well, what do you do? The dilemma of position-taking is a problem of not giving up one's values while trying to see someone else's point of view. Can I see someone else's point of view without abandoning my own values? My tested, abiding faith in those values? This is an edge to work on. Individuals focused on their own arguments or moral values will not be very effective at coming up with solutions.

When my husband frowns, I have to tell you, I have an immediate, profound feeling of rejection. On the other hand, when I frown, people have the same effect. Early in my life, I developed an affectation of screwing up my forehead to indicate I was thinking. It's a habit for me. If I'm really engaged in thinking about something, considering something someone is saying to me, my forehead will creep together and then people will say, "Oh, she doesn't like this." They have a very negative reaction. So, for a while, I wore bangs that covered up my forehead so nobody would see me frowning. Now I frown less when I'm thinking and considering, because I'm aware of how people react to that.

Ajahn Amaro^[4] wrote an article a few years ago in Buddhadharma where he was talking about some specialized way of looking at Buddhism regarding the Bodhisattva^[5]. In some traditions the Bodhisattva is important, in some it is not. He was talking about the fact that this should not be a bone of contention among Buddhists. He discussed the role of tribalism in that argument, and he said non-contention—this "you have no dispute here"—can be seen from the point of view of self. He said it is the great minefield: mine, mine, mine, mine. Through a misguided faithfulness to our origins—this is my team, my lineage—we co-opt the intellect to defend our group, often bending the facts and the philosophy for the sake of winning the argument.

When you make this mental journey between differences to criticism—"Well, you're just wrong"—and you start thinking about what you want that other person to think, we've lost it. We go from a noble intention to emotional sniping. You know, like, "Well, no wonder you're eating lunch alone, because you have this bad habit." Just whatever hurts, fact or not fact. His quote continues, "Even if the fact is 100% provable, if we use it as a weapon, it becomes, as Ajahn Chah^[6] said, 'right in fact, but wrong in Dharma.'" Right in fact, but wrong in Dharma. Nothing should be clung to, even our own views. Nothing is to be clung to.

I'm going to close with one of my favorite poems from Stephen Levine^[7], Meditation Blues:

To watch my mind:
Cold self-interest, insistent fear and judgment,
Whispered insults, vengeful fantasies,
Triumph and despair.
A conditioned unfolding so impersonal we take it personally.
Sometimes I gasp at the casual cruelty of even minor fears and celebrations.
Sometimes it breaks my heart to watch my mind.
And sometimes it stays broken long enough to touch even this pain with love.
Sometimes the mercy washes even Lady Macbeth's^[8] hands, turns tragedy to grace,
And makes it all worthwhile.
Sometimes it breaks my mind to watch my heart.

As you watch all of the impressions you have, be aware that everyone is also having impressions. Watch your mind. Allow it to break your heart so that it's open. A broken heart is open.

May you have a lovely day, all of you. Thank you.