This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Inviting Contentment

Greetings everyone. It's lovely to be here with you on this Dharmic path. So again, we'll begin our meditation by making the conscious choice to, first of all, leave all of our concerns, preoccupations, agendas, worries, and responsibilities outside the door of our meditation area for the duration of the sit. Take a moment to carefully put all your concerns in a safe place on the other side of the door, with the commitment to leave them there during the meditation. You can come back to them afterwards; there is no need for them now.

As we have done over the last two days, we will continue to breathe in open, non-reactive, receptive awareness. We have a good friend who can help us with this. Her name is sati^[1], which is the Pali word for mindfulness or awareness. Many of you have participated in Gil's^[2] series this year on the Satipatthana^[3], and in the final talk of the series, he spoke about living in awareness with Satipatthana. If we can do that, we know that we have a clear place to abide in. It's a home that we take with us wherever we go.

Maybe it's like living in a messy house that has a clean living room. When messy challenges, fears, desires, and attachments arise, we know that with sati—this lucid awareness—we have a clear place where we can abide. Sati is the treasure, the magic of Vipassana practice, and we can call on her whenever we need help.

So, as we would do in Satipatthana practice, let's begin our meditation by bringing awareness to the fore. We know that when awareness is strong, it opens the door to seeing when unskillful states arise, and then we can make the choice to not pick them up.

Bring this strong, clear awareness to your posture, balancing and aligning the whole body. Feel your physical and energetic connection to the earth. And now imagine your energetic connection to space via the invisible thread through the small opening in the top of the head. Sitting here, between heaven and earth.

Now, with a long, deep breath, invite your awareness to the experience and sensations of the body breathing. Breathing naturally now. On the exhale, relaxing and letting go of the muscles of the face: the eyes, around the eyes, the forehead, the cheeks, the lips, the tongue, the jaw. Moving downwards, relaxing the neck, the shoulders. Letting go in the arms and the hands. In the torso, the heart center, and softening the belly. Relaxing the legs and the feet.

Breathing in, lucid awareness. Breathing out, letting go.

On the in-breath, lucid awareness of this body breathing. And on the exhale, letting go again, relaxing.

Sitting with the stillness and tranquility of a mountain. No matter what the weather is like, the mountain does not react. And as the body becomes still, the mind has a quiet place to abide in. This is the peace of simply being. As agitation and craving are left behind, we are soothed, nourished.

With the body calm, anchored in the earth, the mind and heart open softly, becoming spacious, limitless, and connecting to the vastness of space. In this calm spaciousness of resting in awareness, our knots, our places of holding, can begin to untangle.

Breathing in, receptive awareness. Breathing out, calm, letting go.

The tranquility of calmly letting go naturally gives way to contentment. We are in a safe space, not needing anything. So now the invitation is: breathing in calm receptivity, and breathing out well-being and contentment. Nothing is needed. We feel satisfied by the simplicity of being here.

Breathing in calm receptivity. Breathing out the well-being of contentment.

If the mind becomes agitated, we can be calm about being agitated. We hold ourselves kindly when agitation is present. But since we know that feeding our thoughts does not bring relief, we choose instead the Dharmic path of resting in spacious awareness.

Breathing in calm receptivity. Breathing out well-being, contentment.

Not needing anything, we breathe in calm receptivity. Now, on the exhale, we radiate out ease and contentment to all beings everywhere, including ourselves. For this practice of radiating, the invitation is to bring to the corners of the mouth the Buddha's gentle half-smile of contentment.

Breathing in calm receptivity. Radiating out ease and contentment on the exhale.

As we come to the end of the sitting, we bring to mind the people we will come into contact with today—strangers as well as people we know. We make the aspiration of offering them, through our own example, the ease of calm contentment, one of the fruits of cultivating a mind of peace with things as they are.

May all beings, ourselves included first of all, be safe. Being safe, may all beings be peaceful. With safety and peace, may all beings be contented. And may all beings everywhere be free.

Dharmette: Cultivating Peace (3 of 5) Radiating Contentment

Welcome, everyone. It's good to be here with you all. Today is the third day in our theme this week of cultivating peace, and the flavor of the day in the spectrum of peace is contentment. In Pali, the word is sukha^[4], which can also be translated as happiness, and I'll use these two translations interchangeably. Sukha is the opposite of dukkha^[5].

In the scheme of liberative dependent arising^[6], contentment is born of tranquility, which in turn is associated with joy. Joy always contains happiness, but contentment can arise in the absence of joy. This may be counterintuitive, but this kind of happiness can also arise from the depth of grief, when we allow the grief to be as it is, known and embraced.

Those of you who have heard me speak before may know that I lost my youngest sister to ALS (motor neuron disease). I was the eldest of four, and she was the youngest, with an eight-year difference. She was my baby, and I adored her. She grew up to be a wonderful, wonderful person and did so many good things in her life.

When she was fifty-nine, she was diagnosed with ALS, which is a death sentence. It is a particularly challenging, some may say cruel, illness in the sense that the body becomes progressively more and more paralyzed. First, you lose the use of your limbs, and then you can't swallow and eat. So, my sister got a feeding tube in her stomach. Then you can't use your hands anymore, and so to be able to communicate using a computer, she had to learn to type with her eyes. Every week for over five years, there were increasing challenges.

When she got this diagnosis, I was just distraught. It seemed so wrong. Why wasn't it me? I'm older. She was a model of kindness and generosity and community support, and she saved a rare plant species in Maine. I was railing against the injustice that this illness was happening to her. A few months later, I went on a long retreat. This pain was with me day and night, but thanks to the practice and the beautiful instruction, the mind began to settle.

Quite early on into the retreat, somehow—I don't know how—I seemed to dive into this ocean of tears. Doing that was followed by a feeling of happiness and peace. I had come to peace with the way things are, and I wasn't fighting against reality anymore. This was a tremendous help for me in my desire to be of as much help as possible to her during her five years of illness. It was essential because when I was able to live with the reality of her suffering with a calm, easeful^[7] mind, I could bring that to all my interactions with her and with her husband, who provided her tremendous support.

Not expecting things to be different than they are, the mind becomes more peaceful when delusion is dispelled. In the meditation we just practiced, we explored how tranquility can naturally give rise to the ease of contentment. Our nervous system is soothed when the body becomes still, and the mind and heart can abide in the tranquility of lucid, receptive awareness.

Many of you have participated in Gil's series this year on the Satipatthana, and in his final talk there, he talked about living in awareness with Satipatthana. Knowing that we can be present in lucid awareness can make a world of difference. With strong awareness, we have a peaceful abode when fears, desires, attachments, and challenges arise. This awareness is a place of freedom that allows us to be present with our shortcomings and our challenging mind states in a healthy way: we see them arise, and we don't pick them up.

In this wholesome abode of strong awareness, we know that there is the possibility of ease. When suffering and agitation arise, we can be at ease with what is. We don't need to change reality to be okay. It's normal to want relief from agitation, and the karmic, samsaric^[8] path offers us a wealth of unwholesome solutions to escape. Here again is a fork in the road. We know that there is an alternative Dharmic path where we can find true relief from suffering and agitation.

When we step into clear awareness, we can be fully present for whatever arises. Sati^[9]—mindfulness or awareness—is the first and most important of the factors of awakening^[10]. Sati is our best friend on this path to awakening because once the mind is free of obstacles and established in awareness, then gladness, joy, tranquility, contentment, and samadhi^[11] arise without personal effort. The only effort that may be required is maintaining our mindfulness and not picking up the mental obstacles.

You may have had experiences of this. When the mind is clear and calm, ordinary things become wonderful. Simple things become beautiful, and the mind settles more and more. We experience this as a relief, knowing that this simple moment is enough—that we don't need anything except to be established in awareness. Sweet, easeful contentment arises from knowing that this moment is enough.

I'd like to read to you from Majjhima Nikaya 89^[12], the story of King Pasenadi^[13] coming to visit the Buddha. The king was surprised when he arrived, and he said to the Buddha:

"Here I see monastics smiling and cheerful, sincerely joyful, plainly delighted, their faculties fresh, living at ease, unruffled, subsisting on what others give, abiding with the mind free as a wild deer's."

What he saw was the Sangha of monks and nuns radiating contentment. This was from the happiness that arose naturally from their practice.

This kind of happiness does not depend on external conditions. It doesn't depend on getting our needs met. The possibility of being content may be much closer than you realize. By recognizing suffering and agitation directly, there is the chance to direct the attention to the alternative of dwelling in the possibility of ease. The ease that we seek comes from within.

For the next twenty-four hours, maybe you can practice noticing moments when you don't really need anything except to be present. With that calm, contented presence, you can radiate that same easeful, contented mind to everyone you come in contact with.

Thank you for your attention. Thank you for your practice.