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Guided Meditation: Steadying

So, good day everyone, and welcome.

The analogy that is coming back to my mind today about sitting down to meditate is the idea of not staying in the control tower, but rather being the airplane that's coming in for a landing. I imagine that the pilot—or if the airplane was animated, if it was a living being—would be focused for the landing. It would put aside concerns and thoughts about the future and the past, and it would really enter into the moment of landing. If the airplane was an animate being, it would stabilize itself. It would enter into its very body, its wings, and really become stable.

It is an interesting stability, to really be focused the way that some of you might be focused if you're doing a craft or an art, or something where it takes careful attention. You have to give yourself completely over to the event, and everything else kind of falls aside. There might be people around, but you're going to do something careful, and the sounds around you kind of fall away. You aren't really listening to anyone anymore; you're just really there for that experience.

When we start the meditation practice, we can think of it this way: we are somehow dropping out of the control tower in the head, and into the body of this being that we are. We are coming in for a landing, gathering ourselves together, being centered, and feeling ourselves here.

Assume a posture that will help you feel present in your body, as if your body and your posture are the means of meditation. Take a posture that is maybe upright. If you're sitting upright, sit a little bit straighter than usual, and then gently close your eyes as a way of beginning to turn your attention inward to your body. Prepare yourself so that you can give your attention over to this body.

Dropping out of the control tower, you might take a few long, slow, deep breaths in a relaxed pace, only as deep as is comfortable for you. Then exhale fully. A long exhale, but not too long—just long enough that you have a sense that you're participating in the exhale, as if the exhale is the plane coming down for a landing.

Then, let your breathing return to normal, continuing with your breathing. With the exhale, let the relaxing of your body be a gathering of yourself together around your body. Come home, centering in the body. It is more than just relaxing your face, your shoulders, or your belly. It is a remembering of yourself, bringing the members of your body together.

Relaxing the shoulders. Relaxing the hands. Relaxing the thighs and the legs. Relaxing the back ribcage. And relaxing the control tower, relaxing the thinking muscle. Relaxing tension, tightening, and pressure to think.

Breathing in, and breathing out. Here.

And then, as we come to the end of the sitting, once again on the exhale, relax your body. If it feels okay, just gently take some deeper breaths again. Very gently. And then see if there are further forms of releasing in your body you can do as you exhale.

Releasing the belly. Relaxing in the chest. Softening in the face. Releasing tension or pressure in the thinking mind.

Feel yourself established and present, here in your body. Consider that our ability to offer embodied attention, our ability to be present for others, is the root, the origin, the support for anything that follows—for any compassion, kindness, or friendliness. Do not rush ahead to be kind, friendly, or compassionate so that you leave behind your ability to be rooted or centered here in your ability to attend.

Sometimes, a profound offering to others is our presence, our attention, our ability to accompany others. Sometimes that is more important than our compassion, our kindness, or our care.

Staying rooted here in your relaxed attention, with that as a basis, let's dedicate the benefits from this practice for the welfare and happiness of others. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Grasping Fuels More Grasping

Hello again, everyone.

What's on my mind this morning is the interesting fact that in the language of the Buddha, the word for grasping—sometimes translated as clinging—is also the same word used for the fuel for grasping. The word is upādāna^[1]. It can mean the fuel for a fire, what a fire burns on, and it can also mean grasping and clinging. There is a way in which grasping something, clinging, or being attached is the fuel for more grasping.

If I can use this example: if I keep my hand open, that's fine. But if I make a loose fist with my hand, now something exists that didn't exist before when the hand was open. Now there exists a fist. Now it's possible to become attached to the fist, and so I might hold onto it tighter, clenched a little bit more tightly with my hand. If I go around with my clenched hand for a long time, it starts to hurt and be uncomfortable. One response I might have to that discomfort is to clench even more, to tighten up. "Oh, this doesn't feel good." There is a progressive way in which I start with something that doesn't exist, create something new (a grasping of the hand) that's uncomfortable or that I'm attached to, and progressively, each step along the way, I'm grasping to what is grasped. The very thing that I'm grasping to is the source for grasping even more.

So there is a cycle of attachment. We see attachment is the fuel for more attachment, and that cycle cannot be broken if we keep grasping even more.

You can see this sometimes in the thinking mind, where there is a drive or a push to think, a preoccupation, an attachment to grasping thoughts, ideas, trying to figure things out, making plans to make ourselves safe. Swirling around reviewing the past, repeating the same conversation with someone over and over again. There's a kind of drive, a pressure to think, and that pressure is the very source for having more pressure. Grasping to certain ideas, trying to accomplish something with our thoughts, can become uncomfortable. Our system reacts to that discomfort and wants to find more comfort, and if it thinks that comfort is found through thinking, then the very thing that's causing the discomfort is what we'll give ourselves over to more, to try to figure out even more.

It becomes cyclical. We are attached to something, we cling to something, we grasp at something, and that sets in motion, or sets the foundation for, doing more of the same. This reinforces the same over and over again. When we are doing something which is unhealthy and stressful for ourselves, sooner or later we have to realize this is not working. For some people, they don't discover that for decades. It is not an easy thing to discover that the very approach we have to help make ourselves safe, or get what we want, is the very source which is making us unsafe and stressful.

Grasping is the fuel for more grasping. Attachment is the fuel for more attachment. At some point, we have to step out of this cyclic movement. We have to be willing to somehow realize, "Oh, that's not the way anymore."

In meditation, at some point, hopefully it becomes a clearer sense: "For me to continue thinking this way, it just doesn't work. This kind of thinking is a labyrinth, a self-fulfilling perpetual motion labyrinth that just keeps fueling itself. I'm going to stop investing in it. I'm going to stop giving myself over to it. I think it's time to step away."

We step away into awareness, into mindfulness. The mindfulness of the attachment is a way of stepping away. We can step away into our body and begin to relax our body. The tension, the stress of grasping is often expressed or found in tension in our body. If we can relax the body and reduce the tension of the body, it goes a long way in helping us relax the tension in the mind.

Sometimes the tension we have in our mind is hard to figure out. We can't find our way to see, "Well, where do I relax? Where do I let go? How do I stop this?" It's really hard sometimes when we see it just as a mental thing. Beginning to relax the body, quiet the body, and maybe use mindfulness of breathing or some kind of meditation to begin calming the thinking mind. Through this progressive calming and quieting of the body and mind, releasing tension, at some point we get to a place where it seems, "Oh, you know, I can just not think anymore this way. I don't have to be caught in this discursive thinking. Okay, enough."

Maybe for a few moments you can get quiet. For a few moments, you can have this mental peace and quiet, and then you can focus more on the breathing.

Just as grasping is a fuel for more grasping, at some point the equation switches over: peace is the fuel for more peace. Calm is the fuel for more calm. Clarity is the fuel for more clarity.

You can feel that. If I open my hand and feel how nice it is to have an open hand—it's relaxed, open, and at ease—then feeling that ease is support for having more ease. When I do it, I can feel the ease of my hand. I feel my shoulders release a little bit, and I value that, so I stay close to that feeling of ease. The slightest little movement to tighten up, I notice, "Oh, wait a minute, the peace that's there, that's the way forward," and so I relax my hand.

Beginning to understand this principle can be very helpful: to be willing to see that grasping is the fuel for more grasping, and letting go of that grasping is the way towards peace.

But it is not a linear way to peace. Sometimes, why we were grasping is to protect ourselves, get away from, or cope with difficulties in our life, strong emotions, difficult emotions that we might have. We have to sometimes go through that and really feel what's going on. In the example I gave of grasping the hand: if I do a light clenching of the hand, and then that feels uncomfortable, I try to get away from that discomfort and I clench even more. As I relax the hand, I might feel that initial layer where it was uncomfortable, and it might feel very, very uncomfortable. I don't like being there, and then I clench even more.

We have to learn to be willing to go through this feeling of discomfort as we release the layers of grasping that we have, until we come to the place where peace is the fuel for more peace. Clarity is the fuel for more clarity.

So thank you very much for all this. We'll continue tomorrow. Next week, there will be a theme, and that will start the series on the four foundations of mindfulness based on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta^[2], the discourse on mindfulness that the Buddha taught. It will be comparable to how we did Ānāpānasati^[3] (mindfulness of breathing) at the beginning of last year, but we will go through it systematically over a few weeks.

Thank you all very much.