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Guided Meditation: Effortless Knowing

Hello again from IRC, the Insight Retreat Center.

Today I'd like to continue with this practice of knowing. It's important to appreciate there's a range of intensities of knowing, or a range of ways we know. Sometimes it's very intentional and directed, and sometimes it's unintentional and undirected.

Sometimes in practice, when it begins, a lot of people find it helpful to have a directed practice, just focusing on their breath for a while. Focusing on the breath allows things to gather and settle around it, so that we're not so easily distracted and the mind doesn't wander so much. When the mind is stable, that's when it can be useful to lessen directed knowing. In a certain kind of way, less intentional. Not a knowing that has any quality of work to it, or any quality of doing, but rather a knowing that just arises, that just is.

To give you a little taste of this, I know we haven't even started meditating, but if you just close your eyes the way you are now. When you make no effort to be aware, but you're awake—you're not falling asleep—what do you know?

When awareness is not directed anywhere, what is known? What comes into awareness?

Is it the sound of my voice? Are there sensations in your body or in the environment? Sounds in the environment?

Not preferring or directing attention in any one direction, but in a sense just being open to the obvious sensation, the experience that comes into awareness.

In the most simple form, in relationship to simple sensations, the direct sensations of the moment, the knowing is not any work. It's just an openness of mind to let things be known as they appear in their own way. There's no control over what is being experienced.

Perhaps the only thing you do is relax. If you notice that your knowing has a certain fixation on anything, relax.

If you're mostly aware of something in particular, maybe a strong sensation, chances are other things appear together with it, or in little moments in between. In a sense, the knowing follows the trail of what arises, what appears.

And if you settle into your body, relax into your body. Relaxing the shoulders. Relaxing the belly. Relaxing the arms and hands, even the fingers. Relaxing the thighs, calves, all the way down to the feet. Perhaps relaxing in the face, softening around the eyes, the jaws.

And with the awareness open now, just open and receptive to the sensations of your body—anywhere in the body. What sensations arise which are then known without any work, without any directedness?

The knowing might not be verbal. It might be deeper. Some people might say an intuitive knowing of sensations as they appear. There is a kind of natural knowing of their presence.

And no need to linger with any sensation. No need to think about anything. Simply each fleeting sensation that appears, maybe disappears, and reappears.

The coming and going and different sensations as they arise—see if you can notice an almost effortless knowing, that knowing for which you don't need to make any effort. Your effort is simply to stay receptive and present in your body.

If you're thinking about things, or living your preferences, or reacting to your sensations, all that is different than the sensations themselves. If you live in the preferences, reactions, and thinking, you might miss the dance of sensations in your body as they appear and disappear. As they appear, and then another appears, another appears. Some don't disappear so easily but are followed by some different sensation. Sometimes a surprise where they appear in the body.

Not directing attention, holding attention anywhere, except for the whole body as an organ of receptivity.

And because the breathing is one of the bigger movements when the body is not moving otherwise, chances are that the sensations of breathing also arise in the field of sensations.

See if you can notice the effortless knowing, or a kind of natural knowing, of what it is that arises.

Settling more perhaps, settling into the body, breathing. Having this receptive awareness that allows sensations of breathing to appear whatever way they want, whatever way they do. Maybe they appear in ways that are not your common pattern, because you're not directing or expecting the common experience of breathing. Just open, receptive, allowing the sensations to appear as they do, and allowing the simplest form of knowing of this appearance.

When there is a quiet receptivity, a sensitive receptivity to our experience, then when we encounter the suffering of others, we might feel it more acutely and readily, or easily give up the simplicity of knowing.

Knowing suffering without giving birth to effort, directedness, responsibility, or needing to do something. Without taking it in in any personal way that the suffering somehow requires something of you. The suffering is simply known, experienced as part of the field of things that appear and disappear.

And this doesn't have to be aloof or disconnected. It's actually more intimate. It's staying intimate, staying connected. Falling back on responsibility or preferences or taking it personally—that's where the disconnect begins.

Taking in the suffering of the world in this simple way of being present may allow for a simplicity of compassion. The simplicity of well-wishing, of care and love. Where our care, our kindness can also arise in this almost effortless way, and we know that we care.

We see the caring arising, and to know it with this simplicity of knowing, not being quick to make it personal or need to do anything. Just care, kindness.

And perhaps with that as a reference point for the dedication of merit^[1], the dedication of our benefits and practice:

May these words I speak be your words, and may they arise with ease and effortlessly out of your being.

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

And may we, as a community and as individuals, go into the world to benefit the world, to support the welfare of others.

May all beings be happy.

And as I bow now to end the sitting, perhaps you'll bow in return.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (18) Posture as a Mirror for Oneself

So, I thought this would be the last talk on the second exercise of Satipaṭṭhāna^[2], which is the mindfulness of postures.

As with the first exercise—each of the 13 exercises—it's followed by the refrain. The refrain is the same for each, and this implies that this simple mindfulness of posture as a foundation can lead to the deepening of practice described in the refrain. It can lead to a kind of open awareness that's receptive to both what's inside and outside—the ways in which we experience our body from the inside out, and then the ways we experience our body from the outside in. It's just an open awareness to know what is arising.

As we do this, there starts becoming a sensitivity to how things just appear. Even though there might be some predominant thing that lasts, at the same time we notice that new things appear into consciousness, into awareness from the body within the posture, the sensations of the body. To receive the comings and goings of sensations and to know it in this simple way can allow a kind of deepening and a quieting and a settling, stilling of the mind until we start tasting something of the freedom of the radical simplicity where there's no craving, no clinging to anything. So that's one direction in which this mindfulness of posture can go.

I'd like to take it a different direction, which is as we become more sensitive and more attentive to our posture, we can become aware of the details of our posture or the subtle variations in our posture as we go through our lives. We can develop a tremendous amount of self-understanding by noticing the shifts in our posture.

It doesn't have to be big shifts. It doesn't have to mean going from standing to sitting, or sitting to lying down. But if we're standing with someone, talking with them, or we're sitting with someone doing some activity, what is the posture expressing?

Are we tense, and maybe not happy with what's going on, and we're actually in a chair and we're pushing back into the backrest of the chair? Or perhaps we're really eager to understand someone, and in this desire to understand, we lean forward. Maybe they tell you that they know what the lottery number will be for winning some big prize—then we lean forward because of the desire for something.

Or maybe we feel discouraged. Someone says something personally about ourselves. Someone says to me that, you know, a self-respecting Dharma^[3] teacher doesn't wear blue shirts. And so then I notice that my shoulders sag, and a little slumping goes on. There's a deflation going on, a discouragement, a disappointment. There are all these little movements where the posture varies.

As we pay attention to the posture and we're sensitive to it, we can become aware of the subtle shifts and variations. We turn away when someone is saying something, or we hold ourselves more tensely. The posture expresses what we're feeling. The posture expresses some intention, some purpose. All kinds of things are expressed in the posture.

And this is kind of represented in the English language by the verb posturing. We say someone was posturing. It means that they were asserting themselves, their status, and trying to assume a place in the hierarchy or in the situation, or trying to prove themselves or show who they are in relationship to others. That can also be expressed in posture. Confidence can be expressed in posture. Care and attentiveness can be expressed in posture. To really be present for someone can be expressed in posture.

Many years ago—I haven't experienced this for maybe almost 30 years—but there was a series of people over the course of a year, maybe three people, who, if I stood listening to them speak and I was facing them directly (maybe I'm a little bit intimidating, perhaps), they would turn around almost at 90 degrees to talk to me. And if I went around to be more directly facing them, they would turn around 360 degrees without knowing it, just because they didn't want to have that direct looking or direct contact.

I was quite surprised by this because they seemed unconscious of it. Though I don't know what was going on. Now, 30 years later, maybe it was something about how I was, maybe I was too forthcoming in my attention.

So it can go all kinds of ways. Sometimes we pay attention to the postures of other people and it tells us something about how they're responding to us and reacting to us. And this is one of the meanings and one of the interpretations of the first part of the refrain, that one observes the body internally and the body externally. Some people say it means to pay attention to other people, their bodies.

And so now with the posture, you can also notice other people's postures and the shifts they have. As we speak and as they're doing things, we can tell a lot about their emotional state, their attitude about things in their posture.

So this exercise, this mindfulness of posture, can take this more subtle form. This variation here is a means of both self-understanding and a heightened understanding of other people. Our psychology, our attitudes, our feelings and emotions sometimes can become very clear, or first revealed, through shifts in our posture.

That happens for me sometimes. The first thing I know that I'm tense is when I'm leaning forward. Sometimes when I'm giving Dharma talks and I'm a little bit concerned that people are not understanding me or following me, I notice I begin leaning forward. And it's that leaning forward that tells me that I'm a little bit worried about how people are hearing me or how clear I might be. And so I notice that leaning forward. Occasionally, leaning forward doesn't mean that, but sometimes I know that's what it means. And then I notice that, and I come back and relax and settle in again.

So, mindfulness of posture. I hope that these days I've been looking at it has heightened your attention and interest and sensitivity to your posture. And the value of how that can be one of the anchors to the present moment, to staying present, staying mindful, being here and not wandering off in thoughts too far away from the present.

So, thank you very much.

And tomorrow I will start on the next exercise, which is a continuation of what I just did now, where mindfulness of posture can lead to a wider understanding of ourselves. So the next exercise, also on mindfulness of the body, involves a richer, wider understanding of things in our lives as we go about it. So that's for tomorrow, and thank you very much.