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Guided Meditation: Settled Mind; Liberated Mind

So, good day. Hello from Redwood City, where there's been lightning storms and teeny sprinklings of rain, and nice to be here.

So, the subject of this week's Dharma talks has been mindfulness of the mind and the mind state. We have to appreciate that we have many mind states, many minds, many qualities of minds. The task in the basic teaching of mindfulness is to become familiar with them, get to know them. There's something powerful that happens as we know, as we recognize, become familiar, where there's the meeting of just knowing awareness and the state of our mind, the quality of our inner life.

Some of it has to do with learning how to be mindful, how to have that recognition, that knowing, be really simple without an agenda, without analysis or fixing. Part of that is a willingness to become familiar. Take your time and get to know it. As soon as you choose to take your time to become familiar, you're shifting the inner ecology. You're no longer going to be swept away, caught, and reactive to what's happening. You're adding a whole other ingredient to the local mental ecology, and that is a place of strength, of maturity, of freedom, of agency, of care. There are all these qualities that come when we choose to say, "Okay, I'm not going to fix anything here or change anything, but I do choose to be present for it, to be here."

As we become aware of the mind state, we become aware of different kinds of mind states, and I want to mention three very general categories.

First is to become familiar with how the mind state is when it's active. When there's agitation, that's very active. When it's moving, when the mind gets moved around, goes here and there, when there's activity in the mind.

The other thing to become familiar with is when the mind is stable, steady. When it's gathered together, it's not fragmented and moving around. Become familiar with what this settled mind is like. Part of the advantage of really getting to know the settled mind is that it sets a stage for something to give away, something that we've been holding on to and can just kind of give away. It's kind of like what I'm doing with my hands right now; we steady them so that something can fall away. So what is it that we don't know? You can't really know. The task is just to become familiar with a steady mind at rest, at ease with it, peaceful about it, peaceful with it.

And then at some point, just like maybe sometimes you go to bed, you can't make yourself sleep, but you can lay there, and at some point you're asleep. At some point when the mind is at rest, and we're at peace with that and not trying to make anything happen, something has a chance to let go.

Assuming a meditation posture.

I often say take a posture that's a combination of alert and relaxed. Maybe today I'll say take a posture that expresses a degree of respect for you and your meditating. A respectful posture, so that you enter into this world of meditation with respect for the meditation, for yourself, and for your mind.

Gently closing your eyes.

And noticing, become familiar with the state of your mind. Just familiar, as if nothing needs to change. It's just a matter of familiarizing yourself. Is it agitated? Is it jumping around? Is it energized? Or is it tired and slow?

Such an important part of mindfulness is that agency we choose to have to just meet the mind as it is. Allowing it to be as it is, but knowing it.

So how's your mind state? And what happens to it when you have this very simple attention to your mind state?

And now from within the body, within it all, taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. Exhaling and releasing, letting go. If you're sleepy and tired, emphasize the inhale, how it energizes. If you're over-energized, excited, emphasize the exhale. Emphasizing being, pay more attention to be receptive, to allow it.

Letting your breathing return to normal and continuing for a couple of minutes this process of relaxing. The more familiar you are with relaxing different parts of your body, the deeper and more subtle the relaxation becomes. At some point it's even micro-relaxing.

Then letting your breathing be the center of your attention, and take a few minutes now just to become attuned to breathing. And as you exhale, let go of your thoughts and let go into the exhale.

And then as you're sitting now, what is the quality of your mind? What state of mind do you have? How much movement and activity is there? How much stillness and quiet is there? Maybe the two can coexist, or maybe there's a degree of both.

As you breathe, breathe with the stillness of the mind. Breathe through how the mind is stable, quiet. Letting the movements and activities of the mind, the thinking of the mind, recede to the background.

Becoming familiar with any ways the mind might be stable and steady. It is hard to see if we identify with our thinking or the agitation, but if the mindfulness is simple, simple knowing, see if you can know the stability of mind, the steadiness of the mind, the composure of the mind. Stillness of mind.

And if you're aware of the steadiness, stillness of the mind, and you're less agitated now, or there's less activity of the mind, gently know the absence of that activity, that agitation. To the degree to which some of the active, agitated mind is quiet, notice the absence of that, that which is absent.

And as you continue, as you breathe, exhale. Just let go of the mind. Let go into that absence of agitation. And as you let go, let the mind rest, be still, be quiet.

Letting go.

The mind lets go of itself.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, checking in again with your state of mind. With a simple task of becoming familiar with it, as if it's okay to be the way you are. Just to know it, feel it, sense it, recognize your state of mind. It may be appreciating your capacity to know, to recognize. Appreciating that it's a form of independence, autonomy. It's a form of maturity and strength that nothing needs to change, but inevitably things do change when we know.

And then with your knowing awareness, your ability to gaze upon things, to be familiar with them, to know what they are, to recognize clearly, let your attention now gaze out upon the world. Gaze outward at the joys and sorrows of the world, but become in a sense familiar with it from this place of knowing recognition, not leaning in and not taking it in, identifying with it, just knowing it.

Where the channel of knowing is a valuable channel for our care and our kindness. That sense of autonomy or agency or freedom that comes with knowing is a wonderful place from which to love the world, have compassion for the world, to care for the world.

And so to express that care with a dedication of merit at the end of the sitting: May it be that any benefit, well-being, and happiness that comes from this meditation, may we share it with others. May the benefit be a source from which we can benefit others. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

Dharmette: Citta (5 of 5) Knowing the Mind

So in this fifth week, the fifth day of mindfulness of the mind, I want to emphasize that there are many things that we can notice about the mind. It's multifaceted, and we can spend endless time in the labyrinth of the mind being mindful of all the things. But in offering these teachings of mindfulness, I like to interpret that the Buddha is pointing our attention to what is most useful to notice and what is, in a sense, onward leading to freedom, to peace.

And so these eight categories that he talks about in mindfulness of the mind are divided into two general categories, two general divisions. One has to do with the mind that's relating to things. So a greedy mind relates to things, a mind of generosity relates to something. This is the mind that is kind of involved with the world, and that's an important part of the mind. We want to find a way to come to a mind which is wholesome and healthy.

And at some point in the meditation, as it settles, there's a shift. What becomes more important is not what the mind is relating to, or how the mind is relating, or the relating mind, but rather it's the mind that is at ease and at peace. So it's not actively involved in relating. That part of the mind, our awareness, begins to be spacious, settled. So to start noticing, I like to think of it as the mind in and of itself, independent of what the mind knows, the quality of awareness. We might be aware of something, but at some point we become more interested in the quality of awareness than what we're aware of. Certainly, it can possibly be disassociated in unhealthy ways if we don't notice what's happening, but to start noticing the quality of the mind allows the mind to begin to settle more deeply.

So the second to the last of these eight categories is to know a settled mind as a settled mind, and to know an unsettled mind as an unsettled mind. So here we're beginning to track how well the mind is settled or not settled. Sometimes the translation here is "know a concentrated mind as a concentrated mind," but the word being translated is not samādhi^[1], the usual word for concentration, but it's samāhita^[2] (s-a-m-ā-h-i-t-a), which means to be settled, to compose, to be unified, to be stable.

So at some point we start feeling in degrees that the mind is starting to get settled, starting to get composed, unified, stable. We start feeling the mind doesn't move so much. You know, if there's a sound, then we get interested in it, the mind moves to notice what that is. We say the mind wanders away into thought, direct your mind to the breathing, place your mind in your torso as you feel the breathing. All these expressions involve movement.

But at some point, the mind doesn't need to move anymore. It can be aware and be very still. It becomes like a big open space where things arise in the space and are known, but the mind doesn't have to go anywhere because it's happening within the space. And so things are known, but they arise within the mind, in a sense, in awareness. And so awareness doesn't have to go anywhere or move anywhere or turn anywhere. It's just very still, very spacious, very open.

And that mind becomes settled, composed, stable. It depends on how we want to translate these terms; different people orient a little differently to different ones. It's possible to know when the mind is not stable and steady, and that's the task, to know that difference, and to know that difference makes a world of difference.

The instructions here are just to know, just to be familiar with it. It doesn't say adjust it, change it, make it better. There's something very powerful that begins happening when we just meet the experience with a knowing mind. We're just there to be with it, to recognize it. And so to recognize when the mind is not settled. The more subtle the mind becomes, the more we'll recognize how the mind is unsettled.

Sometimes we can feel that our mind is really settled, and then some other time in meditation we realize, oh, it's possible to be even more settled. And then what was settled is seen as being a little bit unsettled. This often can be a step-by-step process where we think we've reached some level of peace and you know, "this peace is really it," and then later we find, oh no, there's a greater potential for peace that's possible. And simply becoming familiar with how it is allows something to deepen, to open, to relax.

The idea of familiarity, of just knowing very, very simply, the goal is to just be. Don't be excited by the mind state, if it's exalted and big and wonderful and lots of joy and rapture, or lots of peace and equanimity, or lots of agitation, lots of difficulty in the mind. The idea is to become very equanimous or easeful with it, especially when the meditation goes deeper and deeper. The idea is to become as familiar, as easy with it as brushing your teeth. It becomes that ordinary. Just okay, no, nothing exciting. It's wonderful, but not exciting. The mind doesn't move or get excited by itself and its state.

This ability to discover... it's not necessarily having a particular mind state that's important; what becomes more important is the knowing of whatever the mind state is. The mind state begins to change and settle as it's known, but you don't get enamored with the mind state. We stay appreciating the significance of the knowing, and as we learn that knowing can be more and more equanimous and peaceful, then something lets go.

And then it's the last state of mind in this list, and that's a liberated mind. One knows a liberated mind as a liberated mind. And then one also recognizes what an unliberated mind is like. And so something lets go, and in the wake of letting go we know something new about the mind, we know the mind that has let go. The deeper that letting go... that also has stages of letting go. We might let go deeply and think, wow, that was full, and then later we discover there are deeper levels, more levels of letting go. And the more we let go, the more we'll recognize when we haven't let go, when the mind is not liberated.

And that's actually quite important, because whatever degree of liberation, of letting go we have of the mind, that becomes a support, a guide to highlight where there's still practice to be done, where we still cling and get caught. Rather than being disappointed, that's really an encouraging, useful thing. That's where the path of practice is found, becoming familiar and seeing how we're caught, and we go through the cycle again until the mind settles and something lets go more deeply, and more deeply.

So mindfulness of the mind. Sometimes we're aware of the agitated mind as agitated. Sometimes we're aware of a settled, stable mind as a settled, stable mind. And sometimes we'll know a liberated mind as a liberated mind. And we'll cycle through all these, remembering that it's not the state of the mind that's so important; it's the knowing of it. That's where something really significant happens.

So thank you very much.