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Guided Meditation: Maturing Thoughts

Hello and welcome to this week of considering wise speech, right speech^[1], beneficial speech. And for the meditations, we're emphasizing how we can speak to ourselves. How we can actually think in meditation. Not condemn thinking, or feel like we have to stop thinking entirely, but rather to stop thinking distractedly. Stop thinking about things that have nothing to do with the here and now. The "here" that's right here in our meditation. And the "now," so that we're not so caught up or concerned with past and future. Just how we can find our way here to be with our experience in a settling way, a peaceful way, a liberated way.

And so to have our thoughts, our thinking, be about the meditation, about our direct experience, and to be attuned to the impact we have through our thoughts as we think about things. What impact does it have on our body, our hearts, our mind? And that's true for any thinking. But when it's done for how we think meditatively, it means that we're very sensitive to how we're thinking about the meditation itself and where that thinking comes from.

The thinking comes from maybe the deepest place or the most central place within us, the most peaceful place or the calmest place. The most intimate place within that's below the layers of reactivity, and beliefs, and stories that we can often live in. To think in ways that are calming, that are settling. But also think in ways that are affirming for our maturity. Think in ways that express some confidence and sense of rightness to be here and present, and to pay attention to the impact of our thoughts.

Do we think in ways as we meditate that undermine us, that diminish us, where we treat ourselves maybe as incapable, or that we need a lot of reassurance and compassion as if we're not really able to manage on our own? Or do we treat ourselves harshly and critically as if we're wrong and not doing it right? Instead, to treat ourselves with dignity, with value, with respect. Yes, we can do this. We're capable. We're here in a full way.

So to begin, take whatever physical posture is right for you, but for this sitting take an inner posture, whatever way you are. Some of you might be lying down, some might be sitting, some might be standing, some might be doing walking meditation as you listen. But take the inner posture of being mature, being capable. An inner posture of dignity and value. An inner posture of confidence for these few minutes, in this special—and for some people, sacred—time of meditation, here and now. Just for this time, to be with yourself in an inner posture of confidence, respect, value, of having some importance. Yes, I can be here. And to feel that inner posture of dignity, uprightness, integrity, or confidence. Maybe imagine it a little bit like a strong mountain or pillar that is stable, with a wide base within.

Gently closing your eyes and taking some large, deep breaths, keeping that inner strength, maturity, and brightness. As you exhale, relax the body around it, like rain washing down the sides of the mountain. And then let your breathing return to normal.

I'll offer you some instructions for how you might think now about the meditation. Your job is to think in a way where the impact of the thinking doesn't diminish you, doesn't undermine you, or criticize you. If anything, it feels supportive. Ask yourself some very simple questions:

How are you here and now? How are you in your body, heart, and mind? Where is there holding? Where would it be easy and appropriate to relax or soften? How would it be nice to feel and be with breathing, and what is the tone of voice you're using to speak these instructions to yourself?

So that's an example. Please see if you can be thinking during this meditation—thinking thoughts of instructions, guidance, that support you to be calmer, steadier, more clear, and present. Where the ordinary thinking mind, the distracted mind, quiets down and becomes more peaceful as a deeper mind gently supports your discovery of the present moment.

Even without intentionally thinking about meditation instructions for yourself, that can be operating almost non-verbally. A knowing, these non-verbal background decisions to be here: Come back. Start again. Pay attention here. The ability to stay in the present moment can be guided by the deeper mind. It's almost like allowing the deeper mind to show how it can guide you into peace and stillness, with or without thinking. But if you're thinking about other things, switch to thinking about the meditation again. And then maybe become quieter.

You could ask yourself in a very quiet, open way: Where inside is the deepest place of calm, of peace, even if around it it's swirling? Where are you most settled? And how could you rest there?

If you are thinking a lot, you might ask yourself: In what way can you open up widely to be large, so awareness is larger than your thinking? How can you then accept the thinking mind and allow the thinking mind to rest in the peace, the calm, that's beyond the edges of thinking?

You could, for example, ask yourself as we come to the end of this meditation: Is there any sense of peace or calm, more quiet, beyond the edges of your body, the edges of your mind, in the wider space around you?

And if you imagine that space to be wide enough to cover a great territory of land around where you sit, what is it like to hold all the people in that area within that peaceful awareness, where they go about their life? And your calm awareness has room for them all quietly, peacefully.

As we get ready to end the meditation and become part of this wider world, wish them all well. Wish the best for them.

May all people be happy. May all people be safe. May all people be peaceful. And may all people be free. And may how I know them and speak to them contribute to their well-being. May all people be happy.

Thank you.

Reflections on Thinking During Meditation

To make some follow-up comments about this meditation this week, and this thing about thinking as part of meditation: Of course, you don't have to do that. Some people find it agitating or troublesome to do it. But in fact, if you really are honest, is it better than the alternative? Sometimes it's so easy, comforting even, maybe even more relaxing to think thoughts that are not good for you, to think the usual thoughts and fantasies of other times and other places. We slip into these habits, or the addiction to thinking, so strongly that it can feel like we're doing heavy work to not do that and to be thinking about meditation. We think it's better just to be quiet, but then we spin off right away. And so, intentionally gather ourselves by thinking about the meditation to enter into it and be here, and then we start learning something about how this deeper mind works.

We begin recognizing that it doesn't have to be so self-conscious or even purposeful that we are guiding ourselves into peace, into being present, into clarity, into well-being. It's almost as if the deeper mind, maybe even the non-verbal mind, has a knowing. We have a deeper knowing of how to do this, how to find our way. And the interface between this deeper mind—this deeper knowing that might be non-verbal—and the more verbal talking to ourselves about meditation and what's happening in our experience doesn't have to be a sharp line. Both of them can be part and parcel of a peaceful mind, a quiet mind, a centered mind that can center itself right here.

I'm hoping that this week shows you something about your thinking mind that can be very supportive for the deepening of meditation. It can be seen as thinking that brings you to the end of thinking. So, thank you.

Dharmette: Right Speech (4 of 5) Impact

So we come to the fourth form of wise speech, beneficial speech—right speech perhaps. This fits under the acronym of AUDIT: Accurate, Useful, the Disposition with which we speak, today it's Impact, and then tomorrow is Timely.

In terms of impact, closer to what the Buddha actually said is, is it endearing or agreeable? Do we speak in ways that are agreeable to people, most pleasing to people? He actually described it in a bigger way, and I'll read you the quote: "Is it gentle, pleasing to the ear, lovable, going to the heart, courteous, desired by many (many want to hear us speak), agreeable to many?" So this idea that it's pleasing, agreeable, or nice for people to hear is part of the audit of, "How am I speaking now?"

A way that's not agreeable or pleasing is to be harsh, to be mean, to say things which are unkind, not gentle, or callous. That doesn't touch people's hearts in a good way, doesn't inspire people in a nice way. If anything, they close down their heart, they shut the heart, they turn away, they back up, they tense up. Why do that? Why are we trying to protect ourselves by being mean or angry? Are we trying to do one-upmanship? Are we trying to prove that we're better than other people and more capable by diminishing people? Are we trying to convey our frustration with them that we have to somehow get across?

The corollary for this idea of paying attention to the impact and being concerned with a positive, agreeable impact is that the Buddha talks elsewhere about speaking words that are unifying. For people who are not in concord, it brings them into concord. When people are divided, it brings them together into being unified.

That implies: don't speak words that are divisive. Don't pick words that separate people, the "us versus them." Find a way that's appropriate and doesn't deny the challenges we live under, but words that keep the door open or help create a nice world for everybody, that is agreeable to everyone.

One of the guidelines for this that some practitioners do—that is fascinating even to do it for one day, and I'd recommend for today, for the next 24 hours, spending one day from waking up to going to sleep with this exercise: Don't say anything about someone who's not present that you wouldn't want them to hear you say. For that day, say nothing behind people's backs where it would be awkward if they heard you say it. Where they'd be upset, they'd be challenged, they'd be offended, they'd be concerned ("What does this mean? What are you thinking about me?"). Simply don't say it, and see what impact that has.

Instead, find a way to talk about the person in ways that you are happy for them to hear, that might be agreeable to them, pleasing for them, that speaks right to the heart. Not in a saccharine way, not in a pretend or artificial way, but rather to do it in a way that is honest, inclusive, and takes care of everyone. That is unifying, so that if you spoke about them this way, maybe they could participate in a conversation about how it's going.

It could be, for example, that someone said something to you that was offensive, but you don't want to tell them that directly. Maybe as you talk about it with a friend you say, "You know, someone said something—I don't want to tell you what they said—but it had an impact on me where I felt diminished. I felt disrespected. And I value this person, and I wonder how, after feeling disrespected, I could be open and now find a way to open the channels of communication, or somehow soften what happened and re-establish the connection."

You're saying there was a challenge, but you're approaching it as something that you want to try to do some healing, some good with, rather than just crossing your arms across your chest and saying, "That person was a lousy person and I can't believe how lousy they were. The person's always like a louse." When you do that, there's no room for conversation. There's no emphasis on unification coming together; it's more that we're divided. If the person heard you say this, the relationship becomes strained.

So the idea of saying what's agreeable, pleasing, touches the heart, and comes from our heart is a very powerful way of Buddhist practice. Because this is a way of speaking that is good for us to do. It supports us from not being attached, not clinging, not being reactive. It supports us to do things which feel nourishing, supportive, that unify us within ourselves.

If we just say someone is really a lousy person, and it's focused outward in that kind of aggression, it actually harms us because it divides us. It separates us from what's deep inside. But if we talk this other way that I just described or acted out, we might feel, "Oh yes, I'm here. I'm available. I want to include this person." And it's good for your heart. It's good for our inner life itself.

This idea of how we speak to ourselves in meditation privately when we're by ourselves, and how we speak with others, are not two different worlds. They often go hand in hand. When we speak harshly to ourselves, the chances are we're going to do something like that to other people. If we are divided in ourselves, being for or against parts of ourselves, chances are we're going to be divided with other people in some way or another.

So to have this practice, this audit of checking out: Is what I'm about to say agreeable and pleasing? Does it touch the heart? Is it unifying? Is it supportive for people, or is it the opposite? And if it's the opposite, will I make the situation worse? Is it less helpful to do that? If I don't know any agreeable or pleasant way to say something, maybe I'm better off being silent.

That's also a very powerful force for our inner life practice ourselves, because I know for myself that sometimes the compulsion to want to speak right now is so strong. To be silent, and wait, and allow something else to happen, to give time, begins to relax the compulsion. It relaxes the place that's tense.

I've seen it myself sometimes that the tension says, "No, you can't not say anything, you have to do something now!" Usually, it actually doesn't have to happen at all with that kind of immediacy. By waiting and not speaking, eventually something quiets down, calms, there's a different perspective, and then I'm ready to find a way to say something that has integrity. A way that is more supportive of a rich conversation, being connected to someone, and not creating division or separation.

Finally, I want to say regarding words like gentle, agreeable, pleasing, lovable: It's a little bit too easy sometimes for those kinds of things to somehow not treat other people, or ourselves, with dignity. A certain kind of seeing them as mature and capable human beings. There's, I think, too strong a movement in some circles to see other people as being wounded, or being somehow incapable, or somehow needing to be reassured. Needing to be treated maybe sometimes a little bit juvenile-like. I see too much of this, and it kind of supports that side of people.

So this idea is doing things which are pleasing, lovable. It's possible to do that in a way that views other people as mature, as capable, as dignified. We're not trying to placate^[2] them. We're not trying to talk down to them as if they're not capable. We're treating them as equals. And for that to happen well, we have to treat ourselves that way, understand ourselves that way. That's why in the meditation we just had, I had us begin with the idea that we sit with a certain kind of inner strength of dignity, maturity, and confidence in ourselves.

And that is magic. When we can do that ourselves, we can speak in ways that touch the heart, ways that connect and unify, where we treat other people that way as well. We treat them as being people of dignity, maturity, capability, but do so in a friendly way.

So that's the instruction for today. Try, if you would like, to spend one full day—waking hours—not saying anything about anybody else who's not present that you would not want them to hear. If you don't want them to hear it, think about it first, then just keep quiet. Maybe figure out another way to talk about what you want to talk about, or just drop it.

Thank you all very much. We have one more day of this topic, and hopefully, talking about this tomorrow is going to be very timely.