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Guided Meditation: Meditation Aspiration

You're welcome to our meditation time, and welcome all of us together into this meditation community. Thank you for being here, and to offer thanks for all of us being here. In a certain kind of way, thanking myself for being here can arise from a deep appreciation of each other, what we're here for, our potential, and our goodness. It can be a very profound thing to be grateful. Gratefulness at the heart of it doesn't have to be something that is contrived, or something that's obligated, or something that we plan and intend to have. It's just a welling up that happens from deep inside, a deep appreciation, a deep valuing, and thankfulness.

I say this because desire in Buddhism has often had a negative reputation. The most extreme version is that desire is the cause of suffering and we need to let go of all desires. This is a misunderstanding of the Buddhist teaching. There are certain desires which are problematic, certain desires which cause a tremendous amount of suffering. It tends to be the desires that have a lot of attachment, clinging, and compulsion with them. That's sometimes called craving, clinging, grasping.

There are other kinds of desires that well up from deep inside that have nothing to do with clinging, craving, or grasping. They have nothing to do with obligation, nothing to do with logically putting things together and constructing a desire to have. One word for that, that I like, is aspiration.

Partly I like the word aspiration because it's related to the English word respiration. Aspiration means to breathe out. When the breathing is most easy, when we have an easeful breath, then what is the heart's deepest wish? What's the deepest source of desire? What do we most want when we're most quiet, most contented, and most satisfied? When we're not afraid, we're taken care of, we're settled, there are no biological needs, there are maybe no social needs at the moment, and things are just settled and taken care of in a certain way, or been put aside—what is the heart's deepest wish? That is the aspiration.

And it's from that place that the Dharma practice, the intention to practice Dharma, can arise. It's that place where compassion can arise from. And that is to be respected, and that is to be loved. It is love that is delighted. It comes from some kind of profundity and beauty.

That supports meditation practice. If you can sit quietly and calmly enough to hear the quiet voice or the quiet impulse of the heart's deepest kind of aspiration—free of clinging, free of need, free of compensation—and feel the heart's desire for freedom, the heart's desire for real presence, the heart's desire to be awake, to be aware, to be here. Let that be the motivation for practice. Let that be the support that parts the waters of distractions, parts the waters of preoccupation, fantasy, and thoughts, so we stay on course. We stay right here, present.

So, assuming a meditation posture and gently closing your eyes.

And then taking a few deeper breaths. As you breathe in, prepare yourself on the inhale to let go on the exhale, to release and relax the body.

Sometimes it's possible to relax more deeply if we hold our breath just for two or three seconds. Maybe first hold it at the top of the inhale, then at the end of the exhale. Hold the breath a little bit, feel your body, and then it's almost like a space that's been created to let the body relax more.

By holding your breath for two or three seconds, you might also feel the gentle wish of the body to breathe in, to breathe out, that you can give in to and allow to happen.

And then let your breathing return to normal. Continue for a few moments to relax deeply the face, the shoulders, the belly.

And almost as if with your awareness you can reach inside to touch the deepest place inside of you that you know. Gently reach in, touch that depth, and let it relax, soften the deepest place within.

And in whatever deepest place that's accessible to you, can you find there the aspiration, the wish that motivates your meditation practice?

Maybe there's even a physical, embodied association or sensation with that wish, that motivation.

And then having the impulse to be present, to be mindful, rooted and settled in your aspiration. Arising from your aspiration that keeps you steady, breathing with mindfulness, as if you're gently parting the waters of distraction and thought. Anything that takes you away gently, gently falls away or evaporates away with the strength and warmth of your aspiration to practice.

Mindfulness supported by a deep aspiration, a deep sense of importance and purpose.

Where aspiration is the foundation. Aspiration instead of distraction.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, to relax deeply again with a few rounds of breathing and relaxing. Maybe there's a way of a deeper relaxation at the heart of your being. Relaxing anywhere you're bracing yourself, or leaning ahead of yourself, and letting the attention drop deep inside.

What is your deepest Dharma wish? What's your deepest wish related to meditation, to mindfulness, to Buddhist practice? There might not be a conceptual answer. The answer might be more in a feeling or a sensation, something that brings along a 'yes.' Yes, this is right. This is good.

And from whatever depth of aspiration that you know you can have, take in the suffering of the world. But take it in not as your own. Take it in as something that you will hold or care for. Not put it in your heart so that it hurts, but put it in the softness of your hands, of your awareness. 'Here, let me hold the suffering of the world for a little bit.' Not taking it on, not having to do anything about it, to just welcome it here into the softness of cupped hands, the cupped hands of awareness.

And gazing upon the suffering of the world, is there a place of aspiration, of care, of kindness? Is there kindness, care, compassion, a deep wish: May the suffering of the world be alleviated. May this suffering that I witness and know, may beings be free of it. And may I, in my small way, contribute to that. So that together as a community, as a global community, the whole world, may all of us contribute to the welfare and happiness of each other.

May all of us hold each other tenderly, so there's space for the heart's deepest wish of care. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Aspects of Compassion (4 of 5) Aspiration

So today I'll talk about the fourth element of compassion: aspiration. This is one of the really core elements of compassion, what really begins to have compassion take shape and take form. That is the wish for others to not suffer, the aspiration that the suffering of the world be remedied, be fixed, be alleviated.

I use the word aspiration purposely because it's not a very commonly used word, I believe. It is different than desire. The word 'desire' has a lot of associations, and part of the associations is the obligation that we 'should'. There could be a sense with a desire, the desire to help someone, there can be a lot of self-baggage around self and success, and being seen, being appreciated, being a 'good person,' showing that we're a good person. All kinds of things come along with that.

But aspiration has for me a sense of arising from something deep inside. We aspire for something, but it's held very lightly. There's no attachment or clinging. The aspiration is very simple. The word aspiration is related to breathing. It's related to the word 'respiration,' which has to do in Latin with breathing. I think the Latin literally means something like 'to breathe out'.

But to breathe easily, to have a relaxed, easy, comfortable breathing where the breathing is not tightened up, faster, and bigger in order to run or to fight, or to get a job done, or to protect oneself. Everything is kind of soft and relaxed. So in that easy breathing, there's room for this easy aspiration to arise.

To have this aspiration to support people in their suffering, to alleviate the suffering, or to care for them in their suffering—to have it come from such a place is precious. That's what makes karuṇā^[1], the compassion of Buddhism, sweet. There is kind of a pleasure to it. It just makes it a source of happiness just because the feeling comes from such a good, deep place inside.

I'm introducing this now on the fourth day of these five elements because each of the previous three are setting the stage for allowing the simplicity of aspiration to come in. Often in the world, when people talk about compassion, many people recognize it as a wonderful and inspiring ideal, but very few people have a really clear sense of what it is in its simplicity.

It can be a general, vague idea. And that can come with the idea: yes, we want to feel people's suffering, we want to have empathy for them, feel their suffering, and want to go out there and help them. But if that's not done carefully, feeling other people's suffering could just make us miserable. And if we're not doing it carefully, wanting to support or help someone can come along with a lot of complicated desires, attachments, and confusion.

So to begin this by being aware, we're present for the people in the world, but we're not entangled with our thoughts. We're not proliferating thoughts, memories, fantasies, expectations, and selves, and 'me' and 'you.' There's something very grounded and simple in the awareness that is going to then begin to take in another person, others.

And then, when we're with someone who's suffering, to find out how to be attuned to them, how to be in harmony with them. It's so easy to lose harmony if we have a headlong rush into caring for them, fixing them, and having the 'I need to help, I need to fix them, I have to.' One of the most complicated things is to feel responsible for the suffering of others. But to be attuned to the suffering, to find a sense of harmony that's very contextually situated, that takes one's personal situation into account to others, so we don't lose ourselves, we don't give ourselves up in the contact with others, but we attune ourselves to what's happening.

And then to appreciate and respect others, respect ourselves. We don't respect people if we're trying to fix them. We don't respect their autonomy if we take responsibility for their suffering. We don't respect and appreciate other people if we take on too much of the notion of 'I'm the helper, I'm a little bit superior, I'm the person who knows it all, or I'm capable to do it and I'm going to take care of you who doesn't know what to do and can't know what to do.' It's even a little bit condescending, that kind of helping sometimes. So, to have this respect and appreciation of others.

Then, when we encounter suffering, maybe we allow for this deeper aspiration to arise. It's one of the most beautiful things that a human being can have: love, care, kindness that is an aspiration that arises from the depth of who we are. It has no pressure in it. It has no assertiveness in it, no hurry in it, no requirement in it, and no obligation.

But it's the warmth, it's the glow, it's the calling. It's maybe the yearning or deep kind of desire that we have. This is one of the beautiful things, to be able to discover this deeper desire. We are human desirlings. Desire is an intimate and integral part of who we are. To discover how these desires benefit us, fill us with goodness, fill us with a sense of wonderful vitality and animation—that is a wonderful thing.

And we're not supposed to give up all desire and be deflated. This deeper place almost comes from a place, or does come from a place, where there's no ego, no conceit, no locking into an identity. 'This is who I am, this is who I have to be'—no fixed identity that we hold onto. It's deeper than any identity we can have, this deeper place, this wellspring.

So there's a compassionate wish that others not suffer. I've been the recipient of that. This is where someone didn't actually help me, but I felt their wish, their compassionate care and recognition of my suffering, and their good feel that they wanted it to be different for me. That was their wish.

There was this beautiful love, and just feeling that from that person changed my life. This is when I was quite young and being with a Buddhist teacher, a young teacher, a Zen priest. In my suffering, feeling this beautiful, clear, simple field. I felt the person would have helped if it was appropriate, but it was just this simple, beautiful aspiration, this wish that resonated with me. There was an attunement that I really felt touched by.

So this is kind of the beginning, or the heart of compassion is a desire. To become wise about desire and to know the difference between desire which is neurotic, desire which is obligation, desire which is forced, assertive desire that comes along with fear, desire that comes along with desperation. All those fall away, the parting of the water, and this beautiful, deeper place of aspiration remains.

Then one other part of the art of this whole kind of karuṇā, deeper compassion, is learning to trust that that's okay. Learning to trust that yes, it's okay to have a deep desire for the welfare of others that doesn't come with anger, doesn't come with desperation, doesn't come with force and obligation. It doesn't come with the clinging, or the drive, the compulsion: 'I have to fix it, I have to do it, it's up to me.'

It comes from a very different place. It comes from a place that feels, 'Yes, yes, if I can, if it's in front of me, if it's possible.' From this place of freedom, from this place of deep heartfeltness, I will now consider acting and doing something if I can, or consider, 'What can I do?'

And that's a topic for tomorrow: action. How can action also have these qualities of this depth that I'm talking about today, where aspiration comes from? How can action have some of these qualities of non-attachment, non-assertiveness, and non-clinging?

So, awareness, attunement, appreciation, aspiration, and then tomorrow we'll do action, which completes the five different aspects or elements that make this karuṇā in Buddhism. So thank you, and I look forward to tomorrow.