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Guided Meditation: Present Here

Good morning, good day, good evening, everyone. Happy to be with you. Welcome to our time for mindfulness meditation, opening hearts together, a little respite in your morning or your day. Good morning, good day, good evening, everyone. So happy to be with you. And warm greetings to all of you, and warm greetings to all of who you are.

Reading a couple of phrases to start: Stay calm. Breathing in, may I be peaceful. Breathing out, may all beings be peaceful. Today is going to be a peaceful day. Accept what is. Be kind.

So, thank you all. All of you for your good intentions and your practice. And we'll now start our morning meditation.

Tuning in to peace, to ease, to presence. Tuning in to the simplicity of this moment. This experience here. Now. Perhaps starting with a couple of longer, slower, more intentional breaths. And allowing your body to come to stillness.

Breathing in. Greeting yourself. Greeting the day with warmth, friendliness. And exhaling, releasing into the moment. Softening. Letting the weight of your body settle on the cushion, chair, or mat. And perhaps letting any excess tension out with a sigh.

Inviting, if it's accessible, the face to relax and a slight smile on your lips. And softening the space behind the eyes. Letting the attention go inward. Letting this be home. This time, this space, be refuge.

And then attuning to some dimension of our felt experience in the moment. Perhaps the simplicity of noticing you're aware, mindful, the flow of everything. Or anchoring the attention on sensations of the body, the weight of your body, the warmth or cool in the air, hearing.

Moving more internally still. Inviting awareness of the stillness between sensations. The field of sensations in this whole body. This vessel, vehicle, through which we experience life. And if it's helpful to settle the heart and mind, attuning to breathing. Offering attention with goodwill to the flow of breath, and life, in the moment.

If the momentum of the mind pulls your attention in, the invitation is to be gracious. Inviting the return of mindful awareness here. Pausing involvement with the mental activity. Noticing it as a process simply unfolding, flowing by. And regrounding in the sensory experience of the moment. Just this breath. This sound. This embodied moment.

Steadying the mind, the heart. Allowing attention, mindful awareness to gather in your body. Inviting a wave of relaxation and the alertness, integrity of your core to be here, inhabiting the moment, inhabiting awareness.

Now and then taking an internal step back and noticing the overall quality of how the mind and heart are in this moment. Full awareness. And then resting in the simplicity of breath, body, intention. Letting everything flow by, flow through. No need to hang on or get involved.

Noticing if the mind, the heart are reaching for something, grasping for something, or pushing anything away. And inviting a re-settling, a stilling, an opening of the hand of the heart. Opening the hand of the heart into the moment.

In these last moments of meditation, consider inviting your full presence to step into the moment completely. An open heart, open mind. And then, gathering the intention that this meditation together may allow that open heart, open mind, that stepping into the moment to continue through your day, to be an offering to yourself and others, to the world.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

Thank you for your practice.

Dharmette: Mindful Days 2/5 Motion and Transit

Welcome to the second session of our series on mindfulness and daily life, daily life awareness. Yesterday we covered mindful mornings, waking up with presence. Today, we are shifting to another activity almost all of us do, which is mindfulness in motion, mindfulness in transit: commuting, driving, walking, going somewhere, bicycling, and moving about your day more generally. So, that's where we're going.

I want to start with a fear that some people bring up. This is about mindfulness of driving. I've mentioned it in other talks, and I often get the comment that mindfulness somehow would be an inward distraction while driving, or for that matter, while riding a bike, and that it would cause people to not be connected and safe on the road. The other thing a lot of folks bring up about commuting, driving, cycling, etc., is surges of impatience, or in some cases, a tendency towards rage or frustration.

The first little poem I'd like to offer here is to normalize this. This has been going on for a long time. This is from the Dhammapada^[1]: One who curbs a rising anger like a careening chariot, that person I call a true driver. Others merely hold the reins.

This was 2,600 years ago, friends. The careening chariot, the careening car, the careening whatever. Our minds don't have to respond. They don't have to go out of control to shift around.

In practical terms, mindfulness while driving is a classic way to practice internal and external mindfulness both. Rather than just going inward—as beautiful as that is in formal meditation, as consequential and as valuable as it is—instead, notice touchpoints. Hands holding the wheel. The wheel is kind of like the reins of that chariot, right? Your back against the seat or your body on the seat of the bike as grounding. Using the contact of your foot on a pedal, whether it's a brake pedal or a bike pedal, or your foot on the ground as a touchpoint.

That's the somatic level, the sensory level. Then there is full awareness, sampajañña^[2], the mindfulness of context. Rather than focusing on the minutiae of these things, noticing them as simple facts, simple touchpoints. The other really important senses, of course, are seeing and hearing. Attuning to hearing context. Attuning to seeing the whole visual field, including the periphery. Cars that might be coming up alongside or people. Seeing the dashboard. Staying present.

I found over the years, as mindfulness of driving has naturally emerged in my own practice, that I've become a much safer, much more present, and much more relaxed driver. I've heard others report similar things. And of course, we all check out. This may happen to you. It certainly happened to me. You get too into the mindfulness of driving, or in some cases just too into the zone of thinking, and you might miss your stop, your turn, even your exit. It's important to include mindfulness of purpose. Where are you going? Awareness of reading signs, notifications, including speed, turns, what's coming up.

This is a broader, more spacious form of mindful awareness, and it's very powerful. Not a few people find they're more relaxed, more concentrated, or at least more settled arriving at their destination when they do this than they were when they started. Which is a really lovely alternative to anger, frustration, and seeing other people, cars, and commuters around us as impediments and delays.

That's the last piece: to bring the open heart into this. Notice those around you, whether they're on a road, a bus, a train, an airport, or a plane. They're on a journey just like you. If we're stuck, we're stuck together. We're in this together. How our hearts relate to the moment can transform frustration or boredom into a moment of mettā^[3], goodwill, compassion, even equanimity, or joy.

That's the first level of mindfulness of movement. Another question I see a lot is about rushing or moving fast. People might even feel guilty that they can't maintain a slow, mindful pace walking or moving through their day. There are times when moving quickly is what is called for. Mindful walking isn't necessarily moving in slow motion like a retreat practitioner, a monk, or a Buddhist nun. This can create internal and external conflict if you're in a situation that calls for speed. Instead, bring the practice of noticing viriya^[4], wise use of effort and energy, and match your mindful awareness to the actual pace of movement.

Awareness, sati^[5], works at any speed. Think of runners, swimmers, athletes. You can also anchor attention in the sensations, the physical mechanics of movement. Your weight shifting heel to toe on the ground. Your limbs, especially your legs flexing and moving. Your arms moving. The entire kinematics of your body moving in concert. Noticing air against skin. The visual change of scenery as the world flows by, or we flow through the world.

This is from the Theragatha^[6], the ancient verses of the awakened monks: When looking ahead or looking back, when bending or stretching out my limbs, with full awareness at every step, I protect the mind in all postures. That was said by Sariputta^[7].

Releasing the headlong mental rush into the next thing, into the future. It's possible to move fast physically while remaining present, grounded mentally. Arriving in this step rather than compulsively leaning into what's coming. Resting in movement, even fast movement, can build steadiness and be relaxing. It may just get you there more safely and in better shape for what's next.

This is also from the Theragatha: Just as a person stepping onto uneven ground watches their footing with care, so a wise person walking through the wild world watches their mind at every step.

There's an overarching principle that benefits you and is onward-leading for your practice in all of this: harness habit-making. Harness this natural power of our minds to make habits by weaving or wiring presence practice into your daily routine itself.

A suggestion for your consideration: As you move through your day today, notice one physical transition. Holding the steering wheel at a red light. Reaching for a door handle. Stepping off a curb. Pair^[8] that physical moment with a two- or three-word anchor, like "red light, relaxing shoulders." Or "door handle, opening to this." Whether you're sitting live now or listening later, consider writing a few words, a short phrase, and establishing a micro-anchor like stepping off the curb or stepping through a door threshold to share with your future self or to share with others.

The last area I'll touch on is being in crowded places and working with sensory boundaries. Some people impacted by a sensory overload in noisy subways, airports, and busy streets tend to go into a kind of hyper-reactivity or a digital escape—doom scrolling. It can provoke these kinds of responses in our hearts and minds. Instead, it can be very helpful to attend to your senses. This creates healthy boundaries in our relationship with experience rather than withdrawal into a thought world or screen.

Micro-practices for your dance through the day: gathering attention inward to a stable physical baseline. Feet on the floor, breath in the abdomen, and then intentionally allowing the attention to go to that process rather than be distracted by all the content in it. Go with the flow, so to speak.

This is from the Samyutta Nikaya^[9], the connected discourses: Just as the tortoise draws its limbs into its shell, so the practitioner with mind well gathered connects within themselves, leaving no room for reactivity.

Letting ambient sounds and sights pass without resistance. You can also choose to go to a certain kind of real-world emptiness. Looking at the space in the room or around, rather than the objects. This softens and calms the nervous system. The space around, the space between, and then noticing space within.

Thank you for your kind attention. To bring heart wisdom in as we close, consider attending to the humanity of those around you. Looking at rushing people or being in transit spaces in process, moving, I can open my heart, perhaps yours, to consider that they too are in a moment in their life journey, in transition. Tap into the tenderness of common humanity.

Thank you.