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Guided Meditation: Location for Awareness

Hello everyone, and warm greetings from Redwood City, from the Insight Meditation Center. I've been away for a week, and it's nice to be back. It's nice to be back here in this early morning, somewhat early morning way of starting the day. Thank you for being here.

When I first came to Buddhism, I studied Zen. When I was instructed to sit in meditation, one of the peculiar instructions that I didn't understand at that time was to put myself in the meditation posture, be with the breathing, and put my attention in my hands. The hands were together in a kind of mudra^[1], one hand atop the other in front of my belly.

Sometimes in Zen, they had told me to put my mind in my belly, in the hara^[2] in Japanese—the spot about two inches below the belly button, maybe about an inch in from the skin. So, kind of in a similar place. The hands were right in front of that place. This idea of putting my mind there was a little bit different than putting the attention there, maybe.

Over the years, I've learned that we have many capacities for perception, awareness, sensing, and knowing. It's a little bit of a choice of the mind—not necessarily your choice if you're not conscious of it—of where we identify as the locus, the center of our attention. Where is attention? Is it up in the head, and are we looking down on the breathing? Or is the attention in the breath? Is awareness part and parcel of the experience of breathing, not separate from it? Is the awareness somehow disembodied, kind of above and behind us watching the whole experience? Is it in our hands? Is it in our belly? Is it in the torso?

In fact, it's a little bit optional where we feel the locus, the center of gravity, of awareness or attention. It is where we identify, in a sense, the center of attention. That itself is sometimes what we follow along with, where we identify ourselves: me, myself, and I. So it's a little bit optional. We can move around and let different things be the center, because it's a little bit of a choice of the mind to prioritize resting in that particular part of the body for where awareness is aware.

I don't know if this makes sense to you; it didn't make sense to me when I first started sitting. But I think it's a very helpful idea, and we'll talk more about this later.

For now, assume a meditation posture and gently close your eyes. Spend the first minute or so of your meditation relaxing your body as much as you can, while letting the body have a certain quality of alertness.

Being alert. Relaxing in the shoulders. Bring your attention to your arms, your elbows, and your hands. Can you move or reposition them so they're more relaxed? So the elbows are not pressed in towards the body, but are hanging loosely. And relax in the belly. A soft belly.

Then, sit quietly for a few moments with the rhythm of breathing. As you exhale, relax a thinking mind. Quiet your thinking.

And then, for a few minutes, heighten your awareness of the body's experience of breathing. Really let your awareness dial in, tuning into the breathing more fully.

As you're aware of your breathing, where is the place from which you are aware? Is it in the head? If it is in the head, where? Around the eyes? Behind the forehead? Between the ears? Is it the upper half of the head, or the lower half of the head?

And if we locate a place—just a minute here—where else might it be? Might it be somewhere in the neck, in the voice box? The place from which you know and are aware: is it in the chest? Maybe in the heart? The solar plexus area?

Is the location for awareness of breathing in the breathing itself? There's no sense of knowing or being aware in some other place than the breathing.

Is the place of awareness... might it be in the belly? In whatever place, if there is a place, where is the place from which you're aware? What does that place feel like? What are the sensations that are present there? There may be sensations associated with being aware.

Being aware of the place from which you're aware. Maybe breathing with that place, breathing through it. Having the experience of breathing be received into the location from which you're aware.

Wherever your location is from which you're aware, imagine that it's an easy chair that you can relax back into. Settling back into that soft, receptive chair, so that your awareness relaxes, softens.

As we come to the end of the sitting, switch the location from which you're aware to your heart. As if there's an easy chair in your heart, and you can settle into that chair. The heart is a place to relax. It's home. Safe. Imagine that you look out upon the world from the heart. You look out upon the world from a place of safety. Nothing's required of you, not for the time being. Nothing is challenging you or dangerous for you. The heart is at ease, looking out upon the world with eyes of kindness and care.

If you find that there is some kindness, some care, some love, or compassion in your heart, you can spread it across the globe. Spread it wide and far. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

The way in which we look upon others and on the world, may that gaze, that look, be soft, kind, and compassionate. May we spread our kindness in the way in which we gaze upon the world.

Dharmette: Locations for Awareness (1 of 5) The Head

Warm greetings on this Monday morning as we begin another week of this 7 A.M. community practicing together, and a new week of teachings.

In my mind, in my heart, the teachings for today are going to continue from two weeks ago when I talked about compassion and its different elements. I have more I want to teach about compassion, but there's an interlude for this week. The medium for compassion is our awareness, our attention. Being aware of the suffering of others, and being aware of the suffering of oneself, is the medium. It is the means by which compassion can arise.

So, I want to spend these five days looking at different ways to be aware. If we have a greater repertoire of how to be aware, then when we're present with suffering—our own suffering or the suffering of others—we have different options about how to be aware of it, how to connect to it, and how to know it. If we only have one option of how to be aware, and we've never thought about those different ways of being aware, it's very easy to sink into suffering or to somehow be entangled with it. It's easy to be impacted by it in ways that are even detrimental. They're not helpful for the sweetness and clarity of compassion itself.

Learning that there are different ways of using awareness and that we can shift modes of awareness at different times is very helpful. If one mode of being with suffering is not really working for you—you find yourself sinking into it, excessively impacted by it, or someone else's suffering becomes your own suffering in a way that is quite painful to feel and looks overwhelming—then you might want to question the way in which you're aware of that suffering. If you have a repertoire of different ways of being aware, you can switch to another way.

What I'd like to do for this week is discuss five different ways of being aware. A lot of this has to do with locations from which we're aware. We will find our way through it this week. But this first principle that I just mentioned is that when any situation is difficult for us, and we are trying to find our way with it, one of the variables we can consider is the way in which we're aware of the challenge.

Often, that's not questioned. Often, we absorb the challenge. We're absorbed in the difficulty, entangled, caught in it, or concerned with it so strongly that we don't step back and ask, "Is the way that I'm attending to it the best choice? Are there other ways of attending to it that might be more useful at this time?"

Just that question itself changes the ecosystem. It's like having an ecosystem where you introduce a new element, and the whole thing morphs and changes accordingly. To introduce the question, "Is there another way of being aware of this challenge?" is the beginning of creating a new ecosystem, and one that is probably going to be much more useful and healthy. When you ask the question, "Is there a different way now to be aware of this?" just that begins to loosen the attachments, the clinging, the grasping, the pushing, and the tightening contraction around the challenge—the feeling of, "No, I have to take care of this." That gives space to be able to see it more clearly and relax a little bit around it.

This is very different for different people: how they're aware, where they're aware from, and the first mode of how they're present with awareness. As you hear these teachings this week, just be aware that it's not like your way is wrong. It's rather to discover what your way is, and then to learn the capacity to fluidly and relaxedly change that mode when it's useful to do so.

For today, I just want to talk about being aware from the head. There are some people who live from the neck up. The center of gravity, the center of everything, is in their head. Usually, that means they spend a lot of time thinking. There are a lot of thoughts and ideas, and the way that they're aware, or the place that they're aware from, is the thinking itself.

Maybe thoughts don't have an exact location, or maybe they do. But the thinking is so strong that that's where we think awareness is. That's who we think we are: "I think, therefore I am." Identification with thoughts is so strong that for many of us, we are our thoughts. To be aware through the lens of thinking, or from the place in which thinking happens, is almost like saying, "I am that place where thinking is happening. That's the locus, the center, the nexus of who I am."

So, it is good to be aware: "Oh, mostly my awareness is in my head." It might not be through thinking. For some people, it's through the medium of their eyes. Not the eyes literally, but the mind's eye. Somehow, they live close to their physical eyes. They are very eye-focused people. So, not necessarily thinking-focused, but eye-focused. Even with their eyes closed, their physical eyes are engaged. It's almost like they're looking at the breathing with their eyes. That eye-centric way of paying attention is the place in which they're aware.

For some people, where they're aware from might be related to thinking. It is the place where the voice is projected, the speaker system for the voice, where the mouth is for the voice. Or it is where the projector is for the images that we're seeing, almost like a screen in front of us. We're aware through those images on the screen. That's part and parcel of experiencing being aware—having images that come up and somehow inform us of what's happening, or relate to what's happening. The awareness is partly rooted in these images, in the voice, in the seeing.

Sometimes there's tension in the head someplace, and that tension is the place we identify with: "That's where I am. That's the locus of me," or "That's the locus from which I'm aware." It's not wrong to be aware from the head. Often in our Buddhist circles, it's like somehow we're not supposed to do that. It's not wrong; it's one mode of being aware, one place from which to be aware. All these places have a time and season. There's no one way which is the wrong way, but if one way is the only way we have, then we're quite limited.

First, we want to become aware of how we are aware. If your center of awareness, the place you're aware from, is in your head, then see if you can find ways to soften that place. Imagine that you feel the place where you're aware from—it might be the place where you're thinking from or seeing from—and see if you can settle back into it like it's in a nice, relaxed easy chair. You might be able to benefit more from that way of being aware than if you're tense in that spot. If being aware from the head is not what you do, try it anyway. See if you can.

Part of what can be beneficial about being aware from the head is that sometimes it does remove us from our experience. It pulls us away. Let's say there's an emotional pain in the torso; by being aware in the head, there's a kind of distance from it. Some people will automatically assume distance is wrong, but distance is actually one of the modes of being aware which has its benefits, and I'll talk more about that tomorrow. For now, I just want to see if you can get to know your mode of awareness, where you're aware from. And if there is no place, is it in your little toe? Is it in your heel? Is it in your pinky?

As it turns out, if you ask those questions, it actually begins coming in closer. Is it in the whole torso? If it's the whole torso, is it in your back? Is it by your tailbone, or is it in the back of your neck? Some people, when you ask those questions, say, "Oh no, it's mostly in the front of the torso." People who very quickly say there's no location for them to be aware—if they start from the widest point out and start working their way in, they find by a process of elimination, "Oh, I'm mostly aware in the chest. In the middle of the chest. I'm mostly aware here. This is a location." When you find that location, or close to it, relax the attention wherever it might be.

So, this will be a beginning. I'm very aware that this might seem a little esoteric for some of you. If that's the case this week—exploring awareness and where it's located—I ask for your patience with it. I don't think it'll be harmful, and hopefully, you'll benefit a little bit from it. When we turn our attention to compassion again, you'll see the richer options of how to be compassionate. Thank you, and I look forward to being here tomorrow.