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Guided Meditation: Meeting Our Mind with Awareness

Hello everyone, and welcome to our time here to meditate and explore some of the teachings.

The topic for this week is the mind and the state of the mind. Not just the mind itself, but the mind that we're mindful of—the mind state, the quality of the mind, the inner quality of our state of being. It's one thing for it to be what it is, and it's something different to be aware of it, to be mindful of it.

I like to think of mindfulness practice as the meeting of two things. It's a meeting of life experience—of life, whatever it might be—and mindfulness, a kind of awareness which is a little bit intentional. Especially initially, it's a dedicated, devoted attention to whatever is. The meeting of attention and experience.

It's one thing to breathe; it's another thing to breathe mindfully. It's one thing to have a body; it's another thing to be mindful of the body, to have the awareness meet the experience of the body. And it's one thing to have experiences of mind and to be aware of them. Today, we are exploring the general state of the mind.

What I'd like to emphasize today is something very simple about the mind state, the mood, or the disposition of the mind. It has many flavors, many aspects, but the one today is that a mind state can be one that is contracted, or it can be scattered. It can be a dull and sinking mind, or it could be over-energized and spinning out, jumping around. One is called the sinking mind; sometimes the other is called an overactive mind.

Sometimes the mind feels contracted, small, and tight—just caught up in its little concerns, and there's nothing outside of it. Other times, the opposite is not exactly "expanded"—that's for later—but the opposite is to be scattered, distracted, fragmented, and just jumping all over the place.

What happens if we're mindful of that, if we're aware of that? The label I like to suggest—you can choose your own for these two states—is contracted mind and scattered mind. If you're caught up in thought, even if it's the same train of thought, it's more like a scattered mind, a distracted mind. Contracted mind or distracted mind, maybe that's a good pairing.

When you find yourself with a sinking mind, a dull mind, a contracted mind, recognize it as such. When you have a scattered mind, a distracted mind, an over-energized mind, recognize it as such. Recognize what it's like to be mindful of it. What changes when you settle back and clearly recognize it, without reactivity, without judgment, without stories of what it means? Just a very simple taking of awareness—I like to think of silent awareness—and meeting the state of the mind.

And if your mind is not any one of these two—scattered, dull, sinking, sleepy, distracted, fragmented—then maybe just appreciate what the mindfulness is like, what awareness is like then. I'm hoping this instruction is very simple. It's either contracted or scattered, or there's an experience of what it's like to be aware of that, the mind that's aware of itself. What happens to the mind then?

If this instruction is too complicated for how your sitting is going and how you're used to sitting, you can just not worry about it. But think of it as a little addition to your practice, maybe not doing it all the time, but once you start getting settled into it.

So, assuming a comfortable posture. And in the comfort of this posture, adjust it so that it's also alert. So the posture brings a kind of wakefulness or a little bit of energy that supports attention.

Scanning your body, making small—maybe not so small—adjustments in posture. Shifting a little bit, rocking a little teeny bit back and forth or sideways, and twisting yourself a little bit. Finding a midpoint where things feel balanced.

Gently closing your eyes. Then taking a few long, slow, deep breaths, relaxing as you exhale. Letting your breathing return to normal. And on the exhale, relax different parts of your body. Release the holding.

Then settling in with your breathing. Taking the next minute or so to be as simply present for breathing as you can, with no agenda, but just seeing if for one minute you can hang in there, experiencing every in-breath and every out-breath without strain, but with devotion, dedication, as if it's the most important thing for this minute.

And then settling in again with just breathing quietly. Noticing the general quality of your mind state. Does your state of mind seem contracted, dull, or sinking? Does your mind state feel scattered, distracted, fragmented, and jumping around?

If it's one of those two things, or if it's something else, be mindful of that. Be aware of it. Have there be a meeting of the state of your mind and the awareness of it. An awareness that's simple, almost permissive of how you are. Simply aware of your mind state, and what happens when you do so.

To meet your experience in such a way that your experience feels safe from your judgments, your over-involvement, your fixing, wanting something different. To be a good friend to your experience by meeting it simply for what it is.

Becoming aware of the quality of your mind, your mind state, with a simple meeting of it. This is how it is. Noticing if it's contracted, scattered, dull and heavy, or distracted and over-energized. And what happens to the quality of your mind state when it is met with awareness.

Taking the time to step back and observe the state of your mind, the quality of your mind. Sinking mind or over-energized mind. Dull mind, active mind. Then allowing it to be that way, but to observe it clearly. A meeting of awareness and the state of your mind. Recognizing it clearly, what happens to the state of mind as you do so?

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, if you've learned something about awareness meeting experience, let your awareness meet the world, or how you construct the world that we live in. Turning your attention outward and simply meeting it as a witness, as someone who cares, but without being over-involved or under-involved. Without being for or against, just to see and meet, be present first and foremost. To know the world in whatever way that comes to mind.

And to perhaps drop into your heart. Maybe the feeling center or the place where you feel goodwill, kindness, generosity, care, compassion, or love—what might be called the heart center. And then meet the world now from the heart center. Meet it with your care, kindness, and goodwill. Gaze upon the world kindly. Gaze out across the lands with goodwill and care.

It's a powerful thing to end meditation practices with reflecting upon, evoking even, this goodwill and care for the world, for others, and to connect the meditation practice with benefiting the world.

May it be that in intentional and unintentional ways, in ways that you know and in ways you don't know, may it be that this meditation session can be for the welfare and happiness of others. May it somehow spread from each of us individually, and from all of us as a group. May it spread out across the lands as a movement, a domino effect of goodness, generosity, care, and love. May it be that somehow our practice is for the welfare and happiness of the world.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

Dharmette: Citta (3 of 5) Contracted Mind, Scattered Mind

So for this third talk on the third foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of the citta^[1]—a wonderful term. Here we're taking it to be the mind state, the general quality of the mind. And here, the mind isn't necessarily limited to what we think of as the mentality related to the brain, the control tower, but rather some kind of general state of being, a state of mood. Once we settle in and relax, and really feel ourselves deeply, what's the general quality of our being that we have? That's probably closer to what this mind state is, though sometimes it does feel very closely connected to the mind in some identifiable way. Exactly where this is doesn't matter too much. It matters more that we are meeting and being aware of the inner quality of our being, the state that we are in.

When meditation gets deeper and quieter, the body becomes more and more subtle, and sometimes the sense of the body kind of disappears, or is not really very prominent at all. So what is left seems to belong much more to a mental world, or that part of the beingness which is not so body-centered. Maybe then it's more clearly recognized as the mind state.

In the instruction, there are eight sets of instructions or eight pairs of things to notice in this third foundation of mindfulness. What's interesting is how it's particular aspects of the mind, the mind states, which are emphasized. I think the reason for that is these are the parts of the mind, the mind states, that are most useful to notice for the purposes of the path of liberation. If you're really interested in becoming free, notice these aspects of the mind. That's distinct from maybe other ways that people are interested in their mind—their preferences, their expectations. They have all kinds of priorities about what you might want to pay attention to, like the content of the mind, the stories we have in the mind, or what it all means. But the description here is very simple.

As I said yesterday, it begins with knowing the mind when it's with greed or without, with ill will or without, with delusion or without. Those are the first three. The fourth one of these eight pairs is to notice whether the mind is contracted or scattered. Exactly what these words mean in Pali is not really that clear. The commentaries associate contracted with sloth and torpor, and scattered with agitation, restlessness, remorse, and things like that. So we each find ourselves in relationship to these words.

But something very simple: a sinking mind that gets dull and duller, or an over-energized mind that's restless and scattered, or a mind that gets really small. It's fascinating to be aware of ourselves when we're really consumed with some preoccupation, really caught in something. In that caught-ness or preoccupation, the whole state of the mind seems to get very, very narrow and small. It's like this becomes the be-all and end-all. Everything's wrapped up around, contracted around some black hole in the mind, where the gravitational pull is so strong that light doesn't come out, just because you are so wrapped up in something.

Then sometimes the mind just seems like it's scattered, or someone has their mind in the clouds, or someone just feels really spacey—not because we feel spacious, but just spacey and hardly here, where the mind is kind of drifting and vague. These are all words that maybe touch into what the Buddha is talking about here with contracted or scattered.

Of course, the mind can be other ways. A mind that has greed in it, or a mind that is without greed, might be one of these. It might be scattered, or it might be contracted and small, or it might be expanded. It might be energized, agitated, and distractible, or it might be really tight, small, and focused on its desires. The same thing applies to ill will. A mind of ill will might be contracted or scattered. A mind of delusion might be contracted or scattered. So these things can coexist.

But simply tap into this quality of the mind that somehow feels dull, contracted, scattered, or over-energized, and begin to notice the range of ways in which this works. It can be very big, or it can be very subtle, the way this works. And then notice what happens when you're clearly mindful of it.

This is where the magic begins happening. What happens if you cannot be for or against your mind state? It's easy to be against something that feels uncomfortable or not so nice. But what is it like for you to not be for or against it, and leave that on the shelf? Put that aside for now, and just bring simple, clear recognition to the quality of your mind state. To meet a scattered mind as a scattered mind, to meet a contracted mind as a contracted mind.

As if you are getting a PhD in quality states of mind, and you have to write a whole chapter on what a scattered mind is like, or what a contracted mind is like. You have to be a naturalist. You have to really stay present for it and not disturb it too much, just be there with it. But what we're really getting a PhD in is not the scattered mind or distracted mind. We're studying what happens when awareness meets that—non-reactive awareness, non-desirous awareness, non-aversive awareness. Simple awareness. Very simple, it just meets it, touches it, recognizes it, observes it. What happens to this quality of your inner life, of the mind, when it's known, when it's seen in this simple way?

It's so easy to get pulled into the mind or be reactive to the mind, especially if it's uncomfortable or doesn't feel good, or if it feels really great and you get pulled into it to celebrate it. But what happens is the magic of just meeting it and seeing it. That's what we're studying here.

There's a shift of paradigm from being so interested in what we're experiencing—feeling like what we're experiencing is important and we have to adjust it or fix it—to being more interested in the experience of awareness of the experience. It shifts the paradigm and shifts the direction. For example, it can make us less selfish. When we're looking at the experience itself and trying to get just the right experience, or reacting to it, so much of the "self" comes along. But if we just sit back and know the mind state—"Oh, this is how it is"—then what happens in that meeting? Does this contracted mind begin to open up? Does a scattered mind begin to settle? Does the dull mind get a little more light? Does the distracted mind get less distracted? What happens in that meeting? That's what's interesting.

As I said yesterday, we're talking about the third foundation. To really do this in a refined way, it assumes that the mind is fairly quiet and stable, that we've developed some concentration, some stillness. You don't want to be ahead of yourself. You want to just practice what's appropriate for you. Sometimes it's appropriate just to do mindfulness of breathing or mindfulness of the body, and settle in, let go of your thoughts, and come back. If the mind is too energized, maybe it doesn't work too well to do mindfulness of the mind. But as it gets settled, that's where it gets more interesting to start becoming aware of the mind.

It tends to happen naturally by itself, so you don't have to be ahead of yourself. If you just keep doing the practice, with time, as I said, the body becomes more subtle, more settled, or calls for less attention to itself. At some point, meditation becomes not so much concerned with pleasant and unpleasant sensations anymore. That concern kind of recedes a little bit, and then what's left to become aware of is the quality, the state of the mind. That's what we're exploring this week.

In the next two days, I'll talk about the final four pairs of mind states that the Buddha taught. There's a shift now from the first four to the second four. The second four tend to be the states of meditation, or the states of mind that begin opening up or appearing when we've really learned well to have this non-reactive mindfulness, this awareness, meet our experience. Including meeting all the different vagaries of how the mind states might be. As we learn that meeting, then the mind begins to shift and change. To be able to recognize how the mind changes is a little bit the task of these last four for the next two days.

One thing I've been fond of as I've talked today is talking about this meeting of awareness and our experience, awareness and the mind, and how it brings the hands together into this namaste, into this gesture of respect. As you explore and consider your own mind state today, maybe you'll check in and see how it is. Maybe you can think of this meeting as something like a bow of respect—that we meet our experience with respect.

Thank you very much.