Guided Meditation: Relaxing, Recognizing, Releasing, Resting and Realizing; Dharmette: A Monastery Within story (5 of 5) Practicing with Courage

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Realizing; A Monastery Within story (5 of 5) Practicing with Courage. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Ying Chen, 陈颖 at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 09, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Good morning, Sangha^[1]. So sweet to read the messages each morning, knowing that you're joining from all over the world.

Hello again. Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining this global Sangha in all those days meditating and learning together. What a gift to ourselves and to the whole world. I'm just feeling that joy and uplift from this whole week being with you all.

In our meditation this week, we've been speaking about this list of words starting with 'R', and today we'll add yet another 'R' word. We started the week with relaxing, and then recognizing the phenomenon in a relaxed field. And then we added releasing. Releasing any extra tension arising in our world—we call it dukkha^[2]. Releasing dukkha. And when that extra tension is being released, we can rest. Rest here peacefully, calmly.

Today I'll add another word, which is realizing. This realizing comes as a flavor of having some insight into our phenomenon, our lived experience. It can be as small as recognizing, "Oh, I didn't have to believe the story that I've been telling myself in my head anymore, that I'm always quick-tempered." That was just a story. That comes from beginning to see clearly. This is just a phenomenon of thinking, grasping. We can recognize the truth of it and realize that we don't have to get entangled with this anymore.

So this realization doesn't have to be some sort of a big, grand realization. It can be small moments of seeing something that's true, that's new, that wasn't available before. It may be realizing the holding on to a certain kind of striving—for myself, realizing the striving, the trying, holding on to the goal that I had set up for myself, the bar I was holding for myself, that was just a barrier for the practice. That's a moment of realizing something.

Realization has a function in our practice. It begins to offer something for us to shift within. There can be an inner shift when this kind of realization comes forth. A realization can come along the way in this process; it doesn't have to be happening at the end of a certain process. It takes paying careful attention to what is happening.

So we will begin our meditation. I invite everyone to go through this process that we've been speaking about and practicing with, and allow yourself to open to whatever might be available. Wherever you are is a perfect place to be, as Gil^[3] often speaks about.

Let's begin.

Guided Meditation: Relaxing, Recognizing, Releasing, Resting and Realizing

Arriving here and now.

Entering into the temple of this body, mind, and heart.

Entering into a practice lineage that has been going on for generations. All the practitioners before us practiced like this.

Arriving here and now.

Mindfulness front and center. Heartfulness front and center.

As you take the inner, outer seat, begin to open to the broader sense of your experience. Maybe the global sense of the body sitting, lying down, or standing.

Relaxing and easing into the posture you're taking.

Let the relaxing invoke a sense of opening in various ways in the body. Maybe opening of the chest, softening of the belly, dropping of the shoulders.

Letting go of the thoughts, letting go of the conceptual overlays.

Dropping into a felt sense of your experience.

Allow this earthy body to rest on the earth, grounded and settled.

If you like, you can gently turn your attention to the familiar object of the meditation: the movements of the breath and dancing sensations in the body.

Are there elements? Earth, water, fire, wind.

Recognizing each arising just as it is. Each passing away just as it is.

Releasing the stories.

Resting in the field of clear, kind knowing.

This resting is a kind of not-doing doing, as one of my teachers often says.

Quiet and still knowing. Becoming a still field of knowing.

Every experience that arises is fresh.

If tension or stories creep in again, you can always begin again.

As we abide in a peaceful, clear knowing, sometimes you may realize that there is a different way of being that does not involve getting hooked in our stories and grasping.

Maybe new perspectives open up. We can choose.

We can choose calm rather than agitation. We can choose ease rather than entanglement.

And sometimes these realizations may manifest as exactly how we are. Nothing needs to happen.

Dharmette: A Monastery Within story (5 of 5) Practicing with Courage

So yesterday, I left you with a cliffhanger. It's a statement that the abbess^[4] made in the story that I was telling yesterday, and it says: "The Buddhist path only exists while one walks it."

I'm going to continue, and today's story is going to follow this theme. It's called The Abyss. We have to end with some dramatic ending, so, The Abyss.

A monk told this story: "I had reached an impasse after 25 years in the monastery. I had devoted myself diligently to monastic practice. Through much effort, my powers of concentration, mindfulness, and compassion were among the strongest the abbess had ever seen. I was known for my peace and equanimity; I had no obvious attachments. However, I had not yet attained realization. Other monks and nuns with less time in the monastery, and less thorough practice, had reached various levels of Awakening. Everyone thought my circumstance was most strange.

"Then one day, the abbess took me aside for a long talk. We discussed how I was held back by my fear of completely letting go. As much as I trusted the spiritual life, at my core was some deep, unarticulated, nagging mistrust. As long as I could remember, a part of me was on the lookout for impending tragedy."

(This is a side comment, but I think most of us probably can relate to this: always on the lookout for danger.)

"At the end of the conversation, the abbess told me she could think of only one more catalyst for my enlightenment. Just the possibility brought me tears of joy, until she told me it meant entering a basement room called The Abyss. No one in many generations had entered this room. Only the abbess was entrusted with the secret knowledge of what was inside; no one else knew. While the red door to the room was kept locked, it didn't need to be. An atmosphere of terror emanated from within, and the monks and nuns were afraid to walk anywhere near the door.

"Walking down to the basement, the abbess explained that my one and last opportunity was inside this room. Once I entered this room, there would be no turning back. Standing in front of the door, I had mixed feelings about entering. The abbess carefully explained the instructions that had been transmitted to her. I was to step into the room, the abbess would close and lock the door behind me, and under no circumstances would she unlock it again. Upon entering the room, I was simply to walk to the other side of the room and exit through the door there. It sounded easy enough.

"Suddenly, the abbess opened the door and pushed me inside. Before I could get my bearings, I heard the door lock behind me.

"The room proved to be huge, perhaps a hundred feet wide. On the other side of the room was a door just like the one I had entered. The room had no floor. I was standing on a two-foot ledge as wide as the door. Between me and the other door was a gaping abyss. I could not see the bottom. From the depths came horrible grinding and cracking sounds. Occasionally, a ball of flame shot upward.

"I was scared and perplexed. How was I supposed to walk across? I spent the first day standing on the ledge, studying the room, certain that I was meant to discover some secret way to get across. I spent the second day banging on the door, hoping that someone would let me out. I cried most of the third day until, while sitting on the ledge, one of my slippers fell off my foot. As it fell, the grinding noises seemed to get worse.

"On the fourth day, I desperately and repeatedly reviewed the instructions. They were so simple: walk across the room and out the other door. Could I trust the abyss?

"Tired and hungry on the fifth day, I gave up all hope and, thinking I had no other choice but to try the instructions, I decided to walk off the ledge. I tried not to imagine what awaited me down in the depths. Terrified, I looked straight ahead and took a step into the room, into the unknown.

"As my foot came down, the ledge stretched forward, receiving me with a firm, steady base. It took me another day to take the second step, but when I finally did, the ledge again extended itself outwards to receive my foot. I continued walking into the emptiness, and with each step, the ledge became longer. Sure enough, I had reached the opposite side. From that day on, letting go into the freedom of realization was easy."

The Buddhist path only exists while one walks it. That's a real daring endeavor, right? What we're doing here, showing up each day to practice and learn to walk the path. It's a really courageous act, even if you don't feel heroic just yet. Do we dare to walk the path unfolding right underneath our own feet, maybe with the fires shooting up underneath and the heat? Do we dare to choose calm and compassion when someone is mean and angry to us? Do we dare to meet our own inner turmoil, even though the default reactivity would be to blame and escape? Do we dare to choose the wholesome even when it seems quite impossible?

My husband shared a little cartoon yesterday with me. It had a picture of an old wise man and a young little girl. The little girl asked the old man a question, saying, "Tell me sir, in which field could I make a great career?" And the wise man replied with a smile, "Being a good human being. There are a lot of opportunities in this area, and very little competition."

Yeah, do we dare to choose something unpopular? Walking this path takes a lot of courage, patience, persistence, determination, sincerity, commitment, and boundless kindness to ourselves and others.

In many ways, this whole week of stories and reflections are pointing at how the practice path is a whole life path. I think one of you kind of put this in the chat box the other day: it's a whole life path. And I would also add it's a whole lifelong path. It's a way of living.

A great Thai teacher, Upasika Kee^[5], in her book Pure and Simple, says this: "The practice isn't something you do from time to time... you have to keep doing it continuously throughout life. You have to keep up with the holy life because you're playing for real."

You are playing for real here. This is not dipping our toes in the water and just walking away. This is crossing the flood. Crossing the flood of greed, hatred, and delusion^[6].

May these stories and reflections enrich and deepen your practice, and may our practice and our learning together benefit all beings everywhere. I deeply bow and appreciate all of us doing this together. What a wonder in this world.

I also want to introduce our teacher for next week, another wonderful IMC teacher, Meg Gawler, who will be joining you, teaching from France^[7]. Another wonderful being to be with.

May your practice blossom. May you thrive in the Dharma. Thank you, everyone.