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Guided Meditation: Abiding in Non-Desire

So, good morning everyone, and happy to be with you.

The topic for this week has been compulsive desires of all kinds. One way to turn this around for ourselves is to, in some healthy, wise way, have the attitude of wanting what you have. So in meditation, to not look for something beyond or other than what's happening for you, but have an orientation like, "Okay, this is what I want." Now, of course, there are plenty of things which are not desirable, that are painful or difficult, that might be happening as we meditate. But this attitude of, "Okay, this is what's coming, so this is what I want," is not in order to suffer more, but to begin discovering a whole different attitude or way of being in the world that's not driven by wanting something other than what is.

And then something very different can start happening in the alchemy of the mind. We can start becoming free of what is. So it's not necessarily celebrating, appreciating, or validating what is happening, but rather, "Okay, this is what's happening. This is what I want, so that I can become free. So that I can find this place of clear recognition, open awareness, luminous presence." It's as if the awareness is bigger than the details of what's happening, or as if the details of what's happening happen independently of the usual ideas of self—what I want and what I don't want.

And then something very different begins to shift and change. If we just work with what is happening, practice right there with what is here. To the degree to which you find yourself distracted or caught up in desires for things to be other than they are, or even desires to hold on to what's happening, see if you can shift that to a desire to just allow. A desire for what is happening, a desire for what is going on, including that things change and shift, and including that some things stay. In that allowing and wanting what is happening there, you can begin finding some steadiness, some calm, some peace. Some kind of paradigm shift in how we are in this world that maybe is free of compulsion and free of self-preoccupation, free from referring everything back to self.

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

If what I just said seems a little troublesome for you, or you have ideas that it's too difficult for you or that it can't be right, it's okay. Maybe instead you could smile a gentle inner smile at the delight of questioning and looking deeper into this whole world of desires that human beings live in. This is a time to appreciate yourself and appreciate the possibility of observing desires in yourself and considering, yes, there is an alternative.

And that alternative might be to take a few long, slow, deep breaths, and as you exhale, to settle in to just what's happening here now. Take a deep breath in and perhaps relax your thinking mind. Soften, let go of your thoughts of past and future, what has happened, what might happen, letting the exhale center you here. Letting your breathing return to normal.

In this centering process, grounding yourself here on the exhale, relax your face. The face can carry so much of the momentum of our desires and wanting, trying so hard, bearing down, tightening up. Give the face a chance to take it easy, to relax. To not always be at the service of our mind's desires and aversions. Softening around the eyes and the jaws.

On the exhale, relax the shoulders. When the shoulders are tense, they're under the control of our minds, the tensions in our minds. Give the shoulders a chance to be free of the mind and just soften and relax a bit.

And the same with the belly. Maybe as an act of generosity, let the belly move in the direction of relaxation and softness.

And as you exhale, soften the mind. Relax the thinking muscle, letting the mind become quieter, calmer. Making broad, expansive space so the mind is not making itself claustrophobic. The mind has breathing room.

And then becoming aware of the body breathing. Breathing in and breathing out.

See if you can find a way to be intimate with your breathing without clinging or pushing or strong desire. Simply want what's already here. Want how things are right now as you're with your breathing. If you're distracted in a certain way, want that as well. But not to hold on to it or succumb to it, so you're not fighting it but rather being mindful of it, without the need for it to be other. There's a way of wanting what's happening, whatever is happening, that can set you free, even free from any wanting.

Breathing in and breathing out here.

If you get distracted in your thoughts, see if that represents some form of desire that you're caught up in. See if you can let go of that desire to return to wanting just what's here. Being content with what's here so that you can be free in the midst of life here.

And then to end this sitting, is there some way that you can be deeply content just with what is happening at the moment? Some way that you can put aside desires for anything else to be different? Putting aside any attempt to change what is, and even imagining that you could do so. Is there some way that that allows you to respond to the world around you in a new way? In a way that maybe is more open, a way that is free of clinging and aversion. A way where you're not asserting conceit, asserting how it relates to me, myself, and mine.

In this contentment, in this willingness to abide in how things are, can that be a source for love, for care, for kindness that has those qualities of non-assertiveness, non-defensiveness, and non-greed? Because love does not coexist very well with greed and discontent.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, perhaps in any way in which we can discover peaceful care for the world, may that care become strong and gently motivating. May we live for the welfare and the happiness of this world in ways that are appropriate for each of us, flowing from how we are when there's a deep contentment and freedom.

May we contribute to the happiness of others, to the safety of others, to the peace of others, and to the non-oppression of others. May all beings discover freedom from greed.

Dharmette: Greed (5 of 5) Non-Greed as Grace

So we come to the last talk about greed and non-greed, and I can imagine that it's a difficult topic. Partly because desire is so integral to being alive as a human being, and it can feel incomprehensible to not have the assertiveness of desire, the compulsion of desire to have things be different, to want something different. Or it can be inconceivable not to try to hold on to what is happening. And this idea of freedom from needing things to be different and freedom from needing things to stay the same, maybe it sometimes doesn't compute. But this is one of the things that, as meditation deepens and gets quieter, we can start getting a feeling for. A sense for this kind of clear recognition, clear awareness that's settled and open, that needs nothing to be different, including not needing things to not change from how they are.

The word greed is an umbrella term. Some people don't relate to the word very strongly and don't identify that their impulses of desire have any connection to greed. But greed is an umbrella term for a lot of different kinds of motivations in the same family. Acquisitiveness, just wanting things, is a form of greed. Miserliness, not sharing, not being generous, holding on tight to what one has is in this family of greed. Strong biological lust, biological passion that can feel so natural and something that we should, of course, just kind of give into and allow for. It feels like freedom and feels like such a wonderful pleasure to just lose ourselves. But perhaps it can also be a form of greed if we're being compelled by it and there's no freedom in it. We give ourselves over to this force that, in a sense, takes over, rather than being free and having a kind of ease and a non-compulsion in how we act and how we live in the world of pleasure even.

So in the Dharma^[1], one of the goals of this practice of Vipassana^[2], the practice of Buddhism, is to realize a way of being or a possibility of radical and complete non-greed, non-compulsive desire. And it might be unimaginable that this is possible, but it is possible, and it's deeply satisfying. That level of peace, well-being, and sense of freedom that comes from that is pretty phenomenal.

Then some people, anticipating or thinking about this goal, are worried that if I have no compulsive desire, no strong desire that pushes me, or no holding on tight to what I have, that somehow I won't be safe. Somehow life will become very difficult. It might have some truth to it. It's a little bit hard to know how everybody lives their life and the conditions and challenges that they're living under, but certainly, we don't want anyone to be harmed by non-greed.

But non-greed has this wonderful quality: the absence of greed is the absence of states of mind that eclipse the deeper goodness within us. They obscure the deeper movements of generosity, of contentment, of love, of a deep faith in the possibility of freedom. This capacity for living a generous life is not because we feel compelled to be generous, but rather that generosity is like the generosity of, if a person has two hands, the left hand washing the right hand and the right hand washing the left hand. There's an unself-consciousness in the hands. There's a coming together. Clearly, there need to be two distinct hands so they can do the work, but they become one and they become somehow not separate. So in generosity, there's a coming together of the giver and the receiver, and also the gift, what's been given. It doesn't become something that's self-centered. It doesn't become something that creates a hierarchical distinction between me, the giver who's special, and you, the one who needs something, and you better be thankful for what I've done for you. There's a softening and letting go of any of the barriers or clingings or holding on that gets in the way of a sense of mutuality. A sense of this simplicity, where just the right and left hand come together to do the work of cleaning. This simplicity and naturalness of generosity that comes from some deeper place cannot come from a place of greed.

Part of this is that greed, compulsive desire, in Buddhist psychology, always comes together with clinging, with grasping at something, with compulsion where there's no freedom. And clinging and grasping are a form of suffering. There's a tightening, a constriction, a tension that comes along with clinging and grasping. So greed always comes with suffering, even if the promise of greed, the excitement of acting on greed, might be pleasant or has a promise of pleasure in it. The fantasies can be pleasant. There's something in and of itself in the greed, if we really pay attention carefully, that brings suffering. Not only that, it brings an alienation from this deeper goodness, deeper wellsprings of love and contentment and generosity that live waiting inside of us. It's not really us, it's not really what we usually identify with me, myself, and mine. It's more like, in Buddhist terms, like the Dharma that lives within us. And so it's not exactly ours, but it's not apart from us.

So greed always comes with clinging, and the freedom from greed comes from the freedom from clinging, the freedom from grasping. And that feels so good to be free of that tension. It gives rise to a whole other orientation of how to live in life that maybe is really foreign to the thrust of living that most people have in this world. So it could even feel disorienting or frightening or undesirable to have this lack of clinging because so much of how we normally live is based on clinging and grasping.

The other thing that greed always comes along with is conceit. It comes along with an assertion of self. "It's for me," or "I want this," or "I'm going to keep this for myself," and "I'm going to grab it for me." And this self-assertion into the world is also a form of suffering. Asserting greed and desire in the world causes a lot of harm in the world around us as well. Directly we can see it, but also many of its indirect effects. The ripple effect of our consumerism, for example, that's based on greed. The ripple effect of the greed of capitalism, how it affects so much of the world, is part of the suffering that greed spreads out like a disease, almost.

And so to learn to discover again, through maybe meditation or some other means, that it's possible to live and live well and happily and successfully without the self-assertion. It's kind of like having a bicycle that maybe one of the brakes is misadjusted; it's always rubbing against the tire or the wheel, and so you have to pedal harder and forcefully in order to get the bicycle to roll. That brake that's always against the wheel is a little bit like the self that we always carry with us, and the rubbing of that wears all kinds of things out. But to undo the brake and allow some deeper wellsprings to come up that are defined by the absence of greed, the absence of hatred, and the absence of delusion^[3]—this is a beautiful way of living.

And so the absence of greed, maybe for some people, will feel like a grace, living a life of grace. For other people, it's living a life of love or generosity. Some people feel like it's living a life of freedom. And so it's well worth taking a deep look at this world of greed, how it works for us. Take a deep look at the world of compulsive desires that drive us and move us along, both in our thoughts—in terms of distracted thoughts and the momentum of thoughts—and in our actions, what we do, and also in how we speak. And what is it like to let speaking, thinking, and acting come from someplace where there's no assertion of self, no clinging, and no greed? It's one of the great pleasures of life.

So thank you very much. Next week we'll do the same kind of journey through the topic of hate or hostility or aversion, depending on how we translate the word, and so I look forward to that.

Announcements

Finally, I'd like to share an announcement about IMC^[4]. We have announced now a few times in different places that we were scheduled to begin opening again on August 1st, so it's coming up pretty soon in eight days or so, and I think it's probably unlikely that we'll open then. Next week there will be some announcements, and on the IMC webpage, we'll post to bring some clarity about when—a little bit more information about our opening or not our opening.

So just if you live locally and you have those thoughts, please check the website.

So thank you very much.