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Guided Meditation: Seeing One Thing Through to the End

Warm greetings to everyone who is here today for us to spend our time together meditating, and hearing and exploring the teachings. Also to those of you who will be listening to this later, I want to welcome you to this time. I think we're all together whether it's in so many different places, but also in so many different times—the amazing way in which we can share this practice in this electronic age.

One of the very significant and effective ways of engaging in mindfulness practice, whether it's on the cushion or in daily life, is to develop the orientation, the dedication, the love for doing one thing at a time. When you're doing something, within reason—unless something dramatic happens, like the building starts burning or something—stay with it and see it through to the end. Do one thing at a time and see it through to the end.

In meditation, that can be as simple as being fully present for the in-breath and seeing it through to the end, staying there. Really having a sense, an attitude, an orientation, a dedication, a valuing, a savoring, a love of just seeing it through to the end: that in-breath. And then when the out-breath comes, just seeing that through to the end. One thing at a time.

Sometimes we renew it every in-breath and every out-breath, and a different way of continuity develops. The continuity of, "Okay, now I'm going to just stay with the in-breath and out-breath without leaving at all," may be too big of a goal. But the goal of just seeing this one thing through to the end—if that's the primary activity here, then that's a wonderful place to be, the place where you do one thing at a time.

If you're doing the first tetrad of being with the breath, knowing it, and then experiencing the whole body, and then relaxing the body, each of those steps is what we dedicate ourselves to. Perhaps it's again kind of like the in-breath and out-breath; it's temporary. We're just there for this relaxation, this moment of experiencing the full body, and then renewing it. This gentle, loving renewing. We're renewing and starting with the next moment, the next activity. We're going to see it to the end, even if it's just the same thing over and over again. This can be a very effective way of building and developing, settling into this mindfulness.

So, to begin with doing one thing at a time, just give yourself over to your posture. Establishing a meditation posture, with the details of posture cared for and tended to. Feeling how the weight of the torso is centered on the sitting bones. Are you leaning forward or leaning backward? Or do you have a sense that your weight is balanced on a vertical center of gravity?

Maybe sitting up a little bit straighter. Breathing in, breathing out. Adjusting where the hands are, and the arms, the elbows. Noticing if the elbows are a little bit locked in or tense. There's a way of just flapping your elbows slightly, like a chicken or something, just to make sure they're loose in the arms. You can also just ever so slightly shake your hands to see if they're loose.

Taking some care for how your head is on your neck. Ensuring that the meeting of the back of your neck and your skull doesn't feel scrunched. Like you're lifting up your chin and opening the space there between the last vertebrae and the skull. Being careful that the chin is not pulled down or your head is not tipped down too much, so there's pressure in the front of the neck, underneath the jaw, from being crunched a little bit.

And if you don't have your eyes closed, gently close them if that's comfortable. And then to do one thing at a time, take one deeper in-breath, as if that's the only thing that's important. And then one full exhale, just doing that all the way to the end.

Breathing in, breathing out. On the exhale, relaxing the body.

Letting the breathing return to normal. And again, on the exhale, take a few breaths to relax the body, the whole body or parts of the body, but to do the relaxation on the exhale as if it's the only thing happening. Giving yourself over to this one thing: breathing on the exhale, relaxing on the exhale.

And then settling into breathing, and seeing if there's an attitude of attention that makes attention to the breathing enjoyable. Maybe a friendliness, a love, maybe a peacefulness or a tranquility. Whatever way makes it enjoyable to really take in the breathing on the in-breath. Just the in-breath, that one thing, all the way to the end. On the exhale, the one thing that you give yourself to, gently, receptively, all the way to the end. And then start over.

If something takes you away from your breathing, let the knowing of that thing be the one thing that you do. Just knowing thinking, just knowing feeling, patiently, openly. And then begin again with the breathing.

To help you do one thing at a time while you're breathing—just the inhale, just the exhale—you can gently say the word one, count up to one on the inhale. Then start over again counting up to one on the exhale. Just a long, gentle one, to really be there for this one thing.

And then, as we come to the end of this sitting, we shift the focus of attention to the dedication of our efforts to benefit others. Through this practice, we benefit ourselves, and the more we benefit ourselves, the more we have to offer others. May we benefit ourselves so we can better benefit others. May we benefit others so we can benefit ourselves. May this wonderful circle, cycle, wheel of mutual care keep rolling in our world.

And so, as we come to the end, evoking the wish, the desire, the goodwill that wishes everyone well, wishing the best for everyone. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And in so doing, may all beings be free of their suffering, their oppression, their poverty, their illness. May all beings have the opportunity to breathe easily, and have their heart be at ease.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (22) Doing One Thing at a Time

We're still staying with this third exercise that the Buddha taught in the discourse on the Four Foundations of Awareness^[1]. It is easy to overlook this exercise because the Four Foundations of Awareness are often taught as meditation practices, and so people will focus on the parts that have more directly to do with meditation. But here, it's not meditation that's being focused on, but rather activity. So it's mindfulness in daily life, mindfulness in activities we do.

It is worthwhile to take some time with this, and to really begin to appreciate how this can be put into practice in our lives. Because there's a mutual relationship between how we develop our attention in meditation and how we develop it in daily life, and they support each other. They certainly support each other in that both places are places where it's getting stronger and expanding our capacity to be present. But it is also important because the two areas highlight different aspects of life and different aspects of ourselves.

If all we ever did was meditate—go to a monastery and just meditate all the time—it might be wonderful, but it would be a very partial experience of who we are. Not a few people have gone off on retreats and been able to meditate all day and thought, 'Wow, this is great, and I'm so wonderful, and I'll never be challenged again because I'm so balanced and clear and peaceful,' and then within a day of leaving they're angry and upset and yelling at other drivers, or they find themselves completely consumed with desires. They have certainly learned to settle themselves on retreat, but they haven't learned how to bring attention to what happens in daily life, and how to be in daily life so that mindfulness carries the day, not our reactivity.

In meditation, we get to look at part of who we are. In daily life, we get to look at other parts of who we are, and we find a way to live wisely in both situations. So in terms of mindfulness in daily life, in activity, one of the great approaches is to do just one thing at a time. Whatever you're doing, just do that.

Part of the advantage of going on retreat or living in a Buddhist monastery is that the situation there tends to be set up—the ambiance, the atmosphere, the dedication, what's happening around you—it supports, more often than in daily life, just doing one thing at a time. When I was in the monastery, it was understood: if you're sweeping the monastery grounds, just sweep. If you're washing dishes, just do the dishes.

It's represented by a story in Japan when I was in the monastery there. I went into the kitchen in the evening for something, maybe a little snack, and one of the other monks was preparing the vegetables for the next day's meal. He was chopping away, and I stood opposite the table where he was chopping, faced him, and asked him some question. I have no memory of what I asked him. What I do remember was that he put down the knife he was chopping with, stood up straight, looked at me, and answered me in a very matter-of-fact, nice way. And then he picked up his knife and started chopping again.

Then I asked a second question. He put down the knife, stood up straight, faced me, and answered the question. Not really understanding what was going on, I asked him a third question. He put down his knife again, faced me, and he said, 'Gil-san'—he said Gil—'I'm here in the kitchen to just chop the vegetables this evening. If you're going to talk to me, then I can't really do my work and focus on it.'

So then I bowed, apologized, and left. He was just doing one thing at a time. When he was chopping, he was just chopping. When he was talking to me, he was just talking to me, and he was dedicated to that. This was not really the ordinary time to have a conversation, so it was reasonable that he wanted to dedicate himself to his work, and it was the evening; he probably wanted to get ready to go to bed.

That story represents this kind of dedication to just doing one thing at a time. Of course, it can be overdone, and there are times when the one thing we do is a number of things, but then just do that. I think I told a story yesterday about being a short-order cook. I just did one job, and I was absorbed in just doing the job, surrendering to everything that was needed. I was tracking multiple things, but I was just cooking.

So exactly what 'one thing' means varies by context, but the principle is: when you're doing something, just do that, and don't be involved in things which are extraneous to it. This one practice can enhance the experience of daily life so that it begins to approach the kind of wholeheartedness that monastic life has. Not that it is monastic life, but it's getting some of the benefits, because a big part of monastic life is this ability to really just do one thing at a time.

One of the ways of really getting into this is to add the idea of seeing that one thing through to the end. So if you're walking in your house from the living room to where the laundry is, to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer, and you're walking—that's the task. Just do that. If you see that something needs to be cleaned up along the way, or something grabs your interest along the way—you see that mail has arrived and you want to check the mail—if you're doing this 'one thing at a time, seeing it through to the end' practice, since you set yourself on the course to go to the laundry room and move the laundry, just do that. It might be a little bit less efficient than doing something along the way, but it's more efficient in terms of cultivating mindfulness. Just do that. If it's important to do something else along the way, then of course switch and do that. But practice more and more just seeing one thing through to the end. And then, when you're finished, go look at the mail and do that one thing.

At first, it might seem a little artificial, but as you get into it, you will find that there is an enhancement of awareness, of presence. It helps evoke the various capacities we have when we're fully present for something, just being there. It can be very relaxing. It can be very freeing of the preoccupations and stresses of the day. A lot of the stresses of the day don't have so much to do with what's happening in the moment, but have to do with our imagination, our projection into the future, or fantasies, or anxieties that have more to do with a thought world than they have to do with what's happening right here and now.

So, to be able to just see this thing through to the end and develop that capacity can be very freeing in terms of what builds up stress in our minds. And then to learn to enjoy doing that, to learn how doing just one activity, embodying that with awareness so it's not a duty, it's not a mental thing like, 'Okay, now I should just be here.' It is an embodied, whole-body thing. The body is there for itself.

This also brings to mind the experience I had in the Japanese monastery, where sometimes it was my job to bring the food from the kitchen to the dining room, to the table where we would eat. Sometimes I was given a big pot of rice to carry. It was big, but I could carry it with one hand, so I would carry it with one hand. It seemed like a fine thing to do, and it was doing the job. Whenever I did that, some other monk would come along and say, 'Gil-san, when you carry the pot, carry it with both hands.' Just really be there.

In Zen, also, if you're drinking tea, you wouldn't just drink it with one hand. You would actually be there fully to drink the tea—just the tea, seeing that tea all the way, with both hands. There is something about using both hands that contributes to this embodiment, like, 'Let's just be here for this thing.'

Then also with our posture: there is a posture that maybe is relaxed enough, but the posture is not participating in what we're doing. So it's not just a matter of doing one thing with attention, but also how much of our whole being we can gently, lovingly bring along to do something, so that there begins to be a feeling, a sense of being absorbed in something. The more of ourselves we bring to the activity, the more pleasurable it tends to become, and the more it tends to enhance our capacity for presence.

Certainly, sometimes it's nice to just relax at the end of the day, sitting in a nice easy chair, reading something or having tea, and kind of mindlessly drinking the tea because you're doing that one relaxing thing. That's completely fine because you know this is what you're doing. But there is a qualitatively very different thing if you say, 'Okay, now the one thing I'm going to do is drink tea,' and you sit up a little bit straighter so your spine is involved too, and then you pick up the cup with two hands, and you really meet it, and really say, 'This is what I'm going to do with two hands, with my whole body.'

There are times when that begins awakening a very different kind of mindful presence, an embodied awareness, rather than the idea that mindfulness is a mental activity of just knowing: 'Knowing I'm lifting, knowing the cup, knowing a feeling.' That is sometimes part of what mindfulness is, but it's a partial awareness. It's using just one faculty. Bringing our posture and our body into what we're doing, feeling it and sensing it, is how a sense of absorption or pleasure in the activity can grow.

In doing so, you can find over time that the result of doing it is that you have more clarity, more wisdom, more understanding, and more ability to tune into your environment and be in harmony with it, or be wise with what you do. Enjoying one thing at a time is not hedonistic; it sets up the conditions for wisdom, freedom, and clarity. So, doing one thing at a time, one activity at a time, and seeing it through to the end—within reason, of course.

Thank you very much. We'll continue a little bit more on this topic of mindfulness in activities, because we'll see that some of the lessons we learn here relate to what we learn in meditation practice. We learn to apply that there as well, and it supports the meditation. So, thank you very much.