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Guided Meditation: Knowing Change

Hello everyone, and welcome.

This mindfulness that we're exploring and discovering is always a discovery. This Dharma^[1] that we're discovering here and now is always a discovery. It's an experience where we never bother, never go to the effort of thinking that we've seen it before. We never have to have the mental neurons firing that are saying, "This is not interesting," or "This is too much," or "This is not what I was hoping for." All those kinds of ideations are not needed in the simplicity of just here and now as something to be known, to be experienced, to be felt in its radical simplicity.

Yesterday I offered this teaching about the ouch and the ah, without needing to analyze what the ouch is or what the ah is, or think about its past and its future and what to do about it. Keep it that simple. The other very radical simplicity of this practice is to be with the experience—the ouches, the ahs, the knowing of it. Whatever the experience is, even if it's not an ouch or an ah, be with it as within the changing river of time. Be with it in the current of how things are always flowing past or through.

It's a little bit like we're standing in a river. In the moment right with us, the water is always flowing by. To stay in the flow of the present moment as it comes from the past and goes to the future—comes from the future and flows back to the past, whatever your metaphor might be—just right here in the changing nature.

And what's interesting is that this principle, this being grounded as best we can here and now in the changing, flowing nature of it, allows us to discover the ways that we freeze the moment. We discover the ways we resist the change, the way we step out of that flow by thinking, by wanting something different, by remembering the past or the future, by reacting to something, or by wanting to analyze it and figure it out. These are movements out of the river of time, out of the river of change, movement, and flow of what's happening.

And that flow of change that we tune into is both the change of experiences—that they come and go, new experiences come that weren't expected, they are there for a moment, and then something else comes—but they also involve the changing nature of the knowing itself. Knowing is a little bit fickle. Knowing jumps around.

For instance, if you're with your breathing and then you're with some kind of thoughts about the breath or about yesterday's breathing, the knowing, the awareness has shifted to something else. There's a sound outside, and the knowing shifts to the sound. Is it a knowing that shifts and moves? Is it the sound that moves, that comes to you? What is it? It is the constant moving of the mind, of awareness, of experiences.

Do not be straining to look for it. That's just more freezing in the flow. Instead, relax into the very simplicity of the experience here and now, to know it for oneself.

So, to assume a meditation posture. A posture of confidence. Yes, I will sit here. In a sense, standing in the ground, standing in the middle of the river of time. Yes, here is where I'll sit and be present with confidence. Taking a few long, slow, deep breaths, and on the exhales, closing the eyes and settling into this spot here, now.

Let your breathing return to normal. Continue on the inhale to feel your body, feel where the holding is. Maybe holding tension is a little bit of an ouch. Feel that on the inhale, and on the exhale letting your body relax, soften.

And then quietly, peacefully calming the mind. Relaxing the thinking mind.

As you're experiencing your breathing, the breathing itself, the way it's experienced in the body, is a changing experience. To some degree, it's a change that repeats itself, but it's still a changing experience. Spend some time now centering yourself in the changing nature of sensations connected to breathing.

As you do so, become aware also of the changing nature of what you know, of the knowing itself. You might know the breathing, then the mind might move, awareness might move to know something else—my voice—and then back to the breathing.

Stay centered on the breathing, the changing nature of sensations, but be aware as well of where the knowing is and how the knowing might come and go, and where it goes. It too is changing. Don't worry about the change. If you can, just know and see the change.

Maybe with your breathing, maybe some other way, know how your experiences in the moment, now, here, are changing. And be aware of how your knowing itself shifts and changes.

These two changing things: the experience and our knowing. Relax back into that awareness, an alertness that can allow this to flow along in the present moment, the shifting, changing nature of experience and of knowing. Both are in the flow of time.

What we experience is changing, shifting. The knowing is changing and shifting. Both the known and the knowing come and go and change. Calmly being aware of change. Change of what we know, and the knowing itself. And if you're aware of all this with a kind of background awareness or overviewing awareness that can know what's happening with your knowing, that awareness is maybe where freedom is found.

Being aware of change. The shifting, moving, inconstant nature of our experience. Being aware of it and resting in that awareness. Kind of like you're not standing in the river, but floating in the river of change, carried along in the current. That's where freedom is found.

Where you can feel that you're resisting change, or stuck and not moving along with change—as soon as you know clearly that you're stuck, clearly not in the river of change, in that moment, in a way, you're back in the river. If you trust it, if you allow for it, it's just another moment of knowing that has just arisen.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, the end is just a continuation of change and comings and goings. Just another moment in the river of time that we only connect to in the present. To be at ease in this river. To not freeze it or be stuck in some way. Not hang on to the branches hanging over the sides of the river.

To be available for the changing nature of this world, where the present moment is not static but dynamic. To be available and open, receptive. To see that that stance, that way of being can be a gift for how we are in the world. Certainly, many of the other ways of being are not a gift. But to be present and available, aware and attuned to how things shift and change, to be present to feel it, to sense it, is a way of connecting more deeply to other people and to our life.

May it be that the freedom of our awareness, our ability to be aware freely with freedom, allows for a wonderful channel of our care and goodwill to flow into the world.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may our ability to be mindful, aware here in the present, contribute to this possibility.

Thank you.

Dharmette: The Dharma (5 of 5) To Be Known Personally by the Wise

So, we come to the fifth and last talk on the characteristics, the qualities of the Dhamma that has been well spoken of by the Buddha. To some degree it's talking about his teaching and what it is, but it's also talking about what his teachings, what his Dhamma is pointing to. What the Dhamma is, is the truth that we're discovering through this practice, and it's also the means by which we discover it.

This combination of the means of what we're discovering and what we're discovering speaks to this intimacy, certainly of mindfulness practice, but also the intimacy of the means and the goal. The goal is to be free, to be aware and open in a free, unrestricted way. Not doing it completely, but in partial ways, beginning to live that goal in the means—to practice being present in a clear, direct, full way here.

And these five qualities of the Dhamma that I've been going through this week are: the Dhamma which is visible here, that it's now, it's immediate. That it is inviting inspection, inviting us to come and see. This coming to see, opening to see here and now, that's at the heart of what we're doing here. If we enter this world of seeing, knowing, being present here and now, then we find that something opens for us. An open door, or an open current of what's onward-leading. We can see a path, we see a movement towards what is wholesome and healthy.

Where the ah is, we see the ouch^[2]. We can see how our clinging and grasping, and hate, and delusion, and ambition is a freezing of time. It is being stuck without being in the free flow of time. Being free in time, in the flow of here and now. And we feel the ouch of that, and as we see it and be with it, at some point we see, or intuit, or feel there's an alternative to that. We get a sense of that alternative: it is the ah, the possibility of non-greed^[3], non-hatred, non-delusion, non-conceit, non-reactivity, just here in a relaxed, open way.

Something begins to flow and to move, where we start flowing in the flow of the present moment. We start being carried by this wholesome, healthy direction of practice. This Dhamma must be experienced. The last quality is that the Dhamma is to be experienced directly. Actually, the language is: this Dhamma is to be personally experienced by the wise.

Personally experienced by the wise. We're talking about something that, in a sense, only you yourself can really experience and know for yourself. I don't know if these are the best examples, but maybe only you know that you're hungry. You can tell people and maybe you can give the symptoms of it to people, but the experience of hunger is internal to oneself. The experience of having an itch—people might not know you have an itch, but you certainly can know it. You have to pee—that's something we experience for ourselves. So there might be better examples for each of you rather than what I came up with, but there are some things only we can experience for ourselves.

There is a way in which this Dhamma is to enter into that world which we ourselves can experience personally. The way there are ouches and ahs is really something we experience experientially; we can know that for ourselves. And we can know for ourselves whether things are stuck, or whether things are flowing and moving. Maybe other people can intuit that looking at how we behave, but this is something to be experienced for oneself, really.

This is a deep, very personal, very intimate involvement with the present moment, with here and our direct experience. And what we can experience most valuably is not complicated. This is not an engineering job, it's not some sophisticated analysis, it's not remembering causes and understanding why things happen or planning out the future and what should happen. Rather, there's something extremely powerful and freeing about keeping it radically simple in the present moment, the only place where we can directly, personally know for ourselves how things are shifting and changing, moving, how they appear and disappear. Their inconstancy, their impermanence. And not to be straining to see that, but more like resting back into it and seeing the changing nature.

So, this is "personally experienced by the wise." The wise person is mentioned here. My favorite definition that the Buddha gives for a wise person is a person concerned with the welfare of self, the welfare of others, the welfare of self and others, and the welfare of all beings. I think it's such a beautiful definition of wisdom because it doesn't require opening up all the Dharma books and learning all the lists and all the teachings. It's more of an attitude. It's something that arises within.

But as a practice deepens, part of the reason a wise person is interested in the welfare of everyone, including oneself, is because in the direct experience of the moment we see very clearly this ah and ouch. We can feel the movement to the ah, to where welfare is, where well-being is, where peace is. And that comes together with seeing impermanence and change.

Because when we don't see the changing, impermanent, moving nature of reality, we're probably locked on in some way. We've frozen, we've gotten contracted or caught in some way on some preoccupation. Maybe trying to think about, "How can things really be inconstant and changing so much?" As soon as we start thinking about that, we've removed ourselves from the directness, the immediacy of what's changing. We can feel that movement, we can feel the ouch of that—maybe very, very subtle, but a little bit of strain or tension. And we can feel that there is a way in which the ah comes from coming back into the river of change, of flow and movement.

To see this is not an easy thing I'm talking about. You can't just decide to sit down and do it. But as practice deepens and as we settle in more and more, and feel more confident and more at ease and more able to stay mindful of the present more continuously, at some point this opens up for us. We start seeing the changing nature of our experience, the changing nature of our knowing of experience.

Sometimes we're more aware of how experience is changing, like the breathing sensations are changing. Sometimes I'm more aware of how the knowing of it is a changing, moving phenomenon. The knowing cooperates a little bit, sometimes independent of what we have chosen to know. Because if we start thinking, the knowing mind knows different things. There's a sound outside, and now we know the sound for a moment rather than the breathing. There's a thought about how much time is left in this meditation, and we know that. And then we're back into the breathing. We might be knowing something about the breath, and then next what we know is we notice that there is some sensation in that area of the chest where we're breathing, but maybe not directly connected to breathing. How did the knowing move? That knowing changed.

All this knowing of change is at the heart of what's called vijjā^[4] in Pali. Vijjā some people translate as true knowledge. Vijjā is liberating knowledge, the liberating understanding or knowing. Vijjā is the opposite of avijjā^[5], which is ignorance. So if we use ignorance, the opposite in English I guess would be gnosis, but knowing, understanding, seeing.

And so a wise person is a viññū^[6]—is the word—which is connected to this word vijjā. Someone who knows what's beneficial, who knows what welfare is, is concerned with it, and can see that in the direct moment of being attuned to the changing, quiet, flowing nature of phenomena. In the awareness of all that, not looking for freedom, but in the awareness of all that, freedom is revealed. Letting go and non-clinging is revealed.

To be personally experienced by the wise. To know for yourself from the inside that the mind is not clinging to anything, attached to anything, holding on to anything, at least for a short period of time. Trusting that, finding that, being that, is this art of this Dhamma that the Buddha is talking about.

So we have this Dhamma spoken by the Buddha. Well spoken is the Dhamma of the Buddha. It is visible here, it's immediate now. It is inviting us to see deeply. It is onward leading, and to be personally experienced by the wise.

This is often chanted in Pali, and my Pali chanting is not so great, but I'll offer you my best effort for it.

[Chanting]

You have to kind of be generous to the chanting, but that's the Pali^[7].

So thank you, and I hope that these kinds of teachings about the Dhamma can give you some deeper trust and confidence in mindfulness. Don't be so concerned about how far you practice or whether what I'm talking about this week is exactly where you are in your practice, but have confidence that doing this practice, it's onward leading. And you're not necessarily responsible for the onward leading nature of it; we are setting the conditions for it by being present and mindful, and then when the time is right, the Dhamma is onward leading within us.

May you become a wise person, free, liberated, and concerned for the welfare of all. May all beings be well.

Thank you.