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Guided Meditation: Relaxation

Hello everyone.

I appreciate the opportunity to be here with you and to offer these words, and to have a sense of so many of you who are participating have been doing so for a very long time. I feel like it's a wonderful thing we share here, and thank you for the opportunity.

Some of you, most of you, know that often, usually when I start these guided meditations, I put some emphasis on relaxation. One of my preferred things to add is that we relax with a posture that has some expression of alertness. There are many ways of doing that, of course, and we have to have a posture that works for us. Even if you're sitting back in a chair, for example, maybe you can put your hands in your lap on your thighs in such a way that it kind of expresses, "I am here."

But the emphasis I want to make today is, I often start with relaxation, and there's a way of understanding Dharma practice that involves an ever-deepening process of relaxation, of loosening, dissolving, letting go, releasing. Relaxation is just one way to describe this. So rather than dismissing relaxation as being a beginner meditation or something simplistic, maybe appreciate that it actually contains within it the profundity of the Dharma. All we're doing, in a sense, is ever-deepening relaxation until the final relaxation is an opportunity to let go of all ways in which we hold tight, that we're caught up, that we are preoccupied, that we are attached.

I say this as a way of appreciating the beginning, appreciating the relaxation. There's something about it, in it, with it, that has a goodness to it, that has a ripeness, that has a pleasure. Trust that. Take time to feel that. Let that be a guide for you.

So, taking an alert posture, even if you're laying on your back, you could maybe point your hands up to the ceiling with your elbows on the side, resting on something, but the forearm pointing up.

And then to gently close your eyes, and take a moment to feel your body before doing any relaxation at all or doing anything. As a way of respecting yourself, respecting your body, respecting this moment, take a few seconds here. Just feel and sense what is here for you.

And then taking some long, comfortably long inhales, and relaxing the body on the exhale. It could be the whole body or particular places.

And then letting your breathing return to normal, and I'll guide you if you want to follow with relaxing different parts of your body. And even if all you can do is soften around that part rather than relaxing something, see if you can appreciate whatever pleasure, goodness, a sense of "this is right" that comes with that relaxation. Even if the relaxation reveals some discomfort, maybe there's some rightness to it, knowing it, feeling it, rather than ignoring it.

So on the exhale, relaxing the face. Maybe relaxing around the eyes. The eyes themselves, letting them rest in their sockets. Not looking with your eyes at anything. The looking can rest. The back of your eyes.

Relaxing the shoulders. And even if they don't relax, maybe your shoulders appreciate the care that relaxing expresses.

On the exhale, relaxing in the chest. Relaxing the belly. Relaxing the thighs and down the legs. Relaxing the arms down to the hands.

And then again relaxing in the shoulders, but this time as you do so, also relax the relaxing. The way that you relax, let it be relaxed. Without expectation, without needing the relaxation to happen. An impulse and signal to relax that is very relaxed itself.

And then, in a relaxed way, relax the thinking mind. If there's any tension or pressure or preoccupation around thoughts, relax any tension or pressure associated with that.

And relax the mind as a whole, so the mind is calmer or stiller. Without needing to be directed anywhere, just here. In whatever degree of calm the mind has, allow the experience of the inhale to show itself in the mind, to be known in the mind. So the mind doesn't go to the breathing; the experience of breathing comes to the mind. Receptive, available.

And then on the exhale, relax with the exhale, release, let go. Anywhere in your body and mind where it feels good to do so. It could be just in the breathing itself, in the exhale itself. Relaxing on the exhale, giving yourself over to the relaxation. So at the end of the exhale, your awareness is more ready and receptive for the inhale.

Taking a moment to feel your mind. If there's any ways in which you feel tight or contracted, hard, solid, tense—as you exhale, let it dissolve. Let it soften. Maybe first it softens on the edges.

If you are involved in thinking, that's a sign that something within could use relaxing, softening.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, take two, three, four breaths. On the exhale, to relax as deeply in your being as you can. Maybe if it's a little longer than the usual exhale, to exhale from the surface of your body all the way to the core.

And then from whatever feeling for relaxation that you have, a feeling of being softer perhaps, to open your awareness. To take in the room you're sitting in, the building, the neighborhood, the wider community. Your attention goes out, receptively out into the whole land, the whole continent, the whole world.

And letting that open attentiveness to the whole world around you be the medium for carrying your goodwill, your well-wishing for the world. A simple idea that it would be wonderful for people to be happy and safe, free and peaceful. How wonderful. And that you would like that; there is a wish for you.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

And even if such a broad universal wish could never actually be accomplished, it makes a difference to have that wish. For many people, it makes a difference for them to know that there are people who care enough to wish them well.

May all beings be wished well. May all beings know of people who wish them well. May we be well-wishers.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Ready to Change (2 of 5) Soft, Malleable, and Workable

So, hello, and welcome to the second talk on these five wholesome states of receptivity, of softness. These are five areas of inspiration that are considered wholesome mental states to develop, to evoke. And these are the kinds of focused states which are self-protecting, meaning that as we cultivate these, they protect us from the opposite.

So yesterday, the theme was a readiness, a receptivity. That if we try too hard to be ready, strain or something to be receptive, we actually diminish the receptivity, the readiness. The readiness has to have within it a kind of letting go of a certain kind of straining, intense, unwholesome effort.

So today, the topic is the wholesome state that is really helpful for this process of the practice, and even listening to the Dharma, preparing ourselves for the deepening. Today's wholesome state is malleability. Sometimes the word is translated as soft. Becoming like beeswax that becomes soft enough that it can be made into something, shaped into something.

I love telling this story, so some of you have heard it many times. I apologize, but when my son was in kindergarten, once a week they would make little animals with beeswax. The beeswax that they were going to use was up by the shelf, and when they went to get it, it was always very hard and you couldn't really shape it. They were instructed to hold it in the palms of both hands, kind of hold the beeswax between the two hands, and then the teacher would proceed to tell a story. By the time the story was finished, the beeswax was soft enough, malleable enough, to make into something beautiful, a little animal.

So, it is the same with our mind. If we can hold it in the embrace of awareness, of mindfulness, without reacting, without forcing, without doing, but just really stay there, our whole being will begin to relax. The mind will begin to relax. And relaxing the body is a way of softening the mind.

So it's very important not to undervalue the relaxed body, to undervalue relaxation itself. We want to become acutely sensitive in this practice to tension, to strain, to any kind of stress involved in how we practice. So it can be relaxed and soft, but not so relaxed that we fall asleep or that we become complacent. There is a wonderful balance between being upright, being alert physically and mentally, and letting that alertness relax. Letting that kind of soften—not collapse, but kind of settle deeply while staying alert.

One of those qualities of this kind of wholesome mind is malleability, softness. Often in the Buddha's teachings, it's paired up with a word that means workability, sometimes translated as wieldiness, but it means the ability to make something with the mind. The words come from the word kamma^[1], to make.

And so there's a time in meditation practice where the mind is so ready, peaceful, we're so present, we're here. And there's a feeling, "Oh, now I can start applying my attention with more freedom, with more ease." It's not a struggle; there's no preoccupation or strong tendencies to be caught up in thought. Now I'm really here. And because I'm here, the mind, the attention, the awareness, there's a wieldiness, it's a workability. It can be applied, it can be engaged. There's some kind of way in which the whole mind becomes malleable.

The example I like for this malleability is in my early years being a Zen student. We would sit in a very particular kind of posture—very upright, very straight, and a very balanced posture, kind of a yogic posture almost. We got up very early in the morning, sometimes before 4:30 in the morning we were awake in the monastery, and we went to bed at maybe nine o'clock. So, people were often tired.

But there was a custom of teachers to walk around and adjust people's postures during meditation, just in case they weren't lined up, if they were leaning or slouching or something. The teachers would come from behind where we were sitting, and what they would do is gently put a hand on the back of one shoulder just to let us know they were there, and then they would proceed with both hands, usually from the back or the shoulders, to adjust it. This was all done silently during meditation.

There was an interesting phenomenon: if I was preoccupied with my thoughts during meditation and I felt that hand on my shoulder, I would startle. It was like a physical startle reflex. But if I was really present and I was not preoccupied with thoughts, it would still be a surprise to feel the hand on my shoulder—I wasn't expecting it, it would just come out of the blue—but it would touch my shoulder and immediately my whole body would become softer and receptive. It would be this kind of softness that felt almost like I was already soft and just ready to kind of flow and move with whatever movement the teacher wanted to put on me.

So I learned from that the impact of being preoccupied. When I'm preoccupied with thoughts and concerns, I don't become fluid or flexible; I become inflexible, I become fragile, I become startle-able.

And so learning not to be preoccupied is a very important part of this process. It helps by taking time not to dismiss being preoccupied and caught up in thought, but rather to see it as a valid area to be mindful of. When you do feel yourself really caught up in thoughts and ideas, start feeling the mind, feeling the body. Feel how it might be tight, how it might be tense, how it might be assertive, or if there's pressure or stress in it. All these things would be not malleable, not soft; it's hard. And we get to know that, because if you know it, that's like taking the beeswax off the shelf and holding it in your hand.

So take the hardness of the mind, the attention, the pressure, and don't make it a problem. Make it something that you are willing to hold with warmth, with kindness, with receptivity, with the very thing we're trying to develop: this malleability, this workability, this receptivity. See if you can bring that to the places in your mind where you are not that way.

See if that will soften it. If it's easy enough to relax it, relax. Many meditators will learn to let go of thoughts without learning to relax or soften the underlying pressure to think. And so you can let go of thoughts all you wish, and that pressure will just pump out more thoughts.

So we take time to soften, and begin to appreciate the softer mind, the receptive mind, the malleable mind. The mind where something surprising happens and it is not stunned or shocked or frozen. It's like the mind can just go with whatever's happening. "Oh, okay, like that."

I think that in certain activities we do—like maybe sports or playing music, or maybe taking a walk in nature, being outdoors within a reasonable way—there's a way in which new things arise and can be folded and included in this malleable, wieldy, soft, receptive mind, and it is just included as part of the whole. So this cultivating, developing, and appreciating a soft mind, a malleable mind, a wieldy mind, a workable mind. To know that there is a radical difference between a hard mind and a soft mind, an unreceptive mind and a receptive mind. And be inspired by the possibility of a soft mind, a malleable mind, a workable mind.

Attention and awareness which has that quality. Awareness that may be a little bit like soft butter, and whatever happens, it's just like a knife going through soft butter; no pressure is needed. Or maybe as your hand moves through water, the water doesn't really offer much resistance, and it's just there softly. There's a softness in water to let the hand move through.

So in the same way, the awareness in the mind, let that be soft for things to happen and occur. Being ready for anything, surprised by nothing. Just kind of available.

Part of the theme for this week is that these are states of inspiration, beautiful qualities of mind. So is there some way that you can be inspired by these, by the softness? Some ways you can cultivate it, appreciate it?

I'd like to propose for homework today that all of you assume that to some degree you can evoke a softer mind than you have in any given moment. You can make it more malleable, softer, and more receptive. And take some times through the day to make it so.

Don't think it's dramatic, but what it requires is pausing. It requires taking some time to do this. And I know for some of you taking time to do something like this is very expensive. It really interrupts the efficiency of doing a lot of things, and doing the things that you're under pressure to do.

But I think it's well worth the investment to take the quality time, even if it's just two minutes, to see if you could soften the mind some, and get a sense and feel of even small movements in that direction. Because in the long run, we live our lives much more effectively with this soft, malleable mind that's receptive, and it's a more creative mind.

So I hope that this is something you can have some feel for and some ability to tap into, and this would be a great day to do it. So thank you very much.