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Guided Meditation: Mindful of Sensual Desire

So, hello everyone and welcome to our Monday morning meditation time together. To introduce the meditation today, I want to evoke the idea that over these last ten months or so, we've been going through the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta^[1], the Buddhist teachings on the four foundations for awareness.

If we take this text to describe a journey of deepening one's meditation practice—or if you don't like the metaphor of deepening, I'm very fond of the idea of clarifying meditation, becoming clear in our awareness—awareness becomes clearer and clearer, cultivating greater clarity. As we develop greater clarity in practice, we get quieter and stiller. As the mind is less caught up in its preoccupations, there's a new opportunity in practice.

As we come into the fourth foundation, I think it's best to think of this as building on what's happening earlier, building on a mind that has the ability to be quite clear, quiet, still, calm, concentrated, or deep—whatever way you like to see this for yourself.

At some point, we start to see this expanded mind. For example, in the third foundation, we talked about the expanded mind where awareness and the mind are coterminous, where awareness becomes quite expansive. Because of seeing and knowing that, we can become aware of how the mind gets contracted, how it gets tight or narrow again. The more clarity we have, the more sensitive we are to how movements of the mind cause us to lose that clarity, how things become more obscure, hidden, or difficult to see. If we like the idea of stillness, as the mind becomes stiller or calmer, we see how the mind gets activated, agitated, or restless again.

Whether the mind gets constricted, restless, or obscured, as the practice continues, at some point we have a reference point for seeing these movements of the mind that take us away from our best interests and the continued unfolding of the practice.

It's one thing to be constantly caught up in sensual desires and desires of all kinds and hardly know we're doing it. But it's another thing if we're still enough and quiet enough to be able to see the mind getting caught in sensual desires and wanting things. It's a very different perspective, a very different vantage point, to just be lost and trying to find your way out, versus being able to see it as a particular mental phenomenon or activity of the mind: "Desire is there, it's coming. I can see the impact it has on me. I can see how it's hindering or obscuring the clarity and wisdom of the mind."

It's almost easier to see it if we have some kind of direct or memory access to what it's like to have a mind that's free of sensual desire. We can see it: "Oh, there it is. It's a particular phenomenon. It's not the whole universe. It's not that I'm completely identified with or caught entirely in this universe of desire. Look at that, it's desire, that sensual desire." And then it's a whole different game, a whole different way of being. It's moving towards freedom.

So we'll sit a little bit. The first hindrance^[2] is sensual desire—a desire for comfort, a desire for sensuality and sensual pleasures. At some point during the meditation, I'll introduce to you the idea of noticing if there is sensual desire. If sensual desire arises, see if you can see it with whatever degree of clarity, stillness, or calm that you have, so you see it for what it is, as opposed to being it or entering into that world of desire. When the mind is bigger, wider, or stiller, you can see, "Oh, there is sensual desire."

Taking an alert posture and gently closing your eyes.

Perhaps as if it's your body's wish, and you're following through on it so it's arising from the inside, let yourself take as deep a breath as the body wants. Taking as deep a breath as the body wants, and then exhaling as long as the body wants.

Breathing in deeply, relaxing the body. Maybe even following the lead of where the body wants to relax and soften.

As you exhale, let your breathing now return to normal.

As you exhale, let the mind become as quiet and still as it might want. In the depths of the mind, in the place where the mind can rest, let the mind become as quiet as it wants.

And then following breathing. The simplicity of the body breathing.

Perhaps as you follow the in-breaths and the out-breaths, follow also the path in front of you to becoming quieter and stiller, the path within you with each in-breath and out-breath, supporting your inner life.

Follow the invitation, the welcoming to becoming quieter and softer. Quieter in thinking, softer in the heart. Gently following the call, the welcome to that place of greater quiet and stillness.

Letting go of thoughts as you exhale. Maybe at the end of the exhale allowing yourself to come to a quiet place.

And then as you continue sitting, notice if there is or is not the presence of sensual desire. The desire for comfort, for pleasure, even in the meditation itself.

If there is, notice what that's like.

If there's not, notice that absence.

If there is the arising of sensual desire, notice what it's like to see it appear. If you can let go of it and be quiet for a moment, and it reappears, see it as an arising phenomenon. Just something coming, like a sound outside.

And if it goes, see it go.

If you can let go of it, let go of it gently.

And if there is no sensual desire, appreciate that absence.

As we come to the end of the sitting, as much as you might value sensual pleasures—sensual desires are maybe innocent—there's also a clarity, a simplicity, and a freedom that comes with the absence of sensual desires, sensual cravings, and concerns with pleasures of all kinds.

That clarity, simplicity, and freedom is a medium in which your goodwill can travel unobstructed.

To whatever degree you can be free right now of concerns with desires of all kinds, sensual desires, and desires for comfort, can you allow that space to be filled with your well-wishing for this world? Your care, your love, your compassion.

May it be that these wishes of well-wishing somehow touch others in seen and unseen ways. May it benefit them that you wish:

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

Thank you.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (43) Hindrances: Sensual Desire

Good day, this Monday in March. Today we're beginning the fourth foundation for awareness, the fourth support for developing a heightened sense of clarity, an awareness that begins to move us into our potential for liberation and freedom.

All along, this is the direction that the Satipaṭṭhāna mindfulness practice is going. It's going toward greater clarity so that there's really clear mindfulness. I like the expression "lucid mindfulness"—that it's not simply just a simple knowing and experience. There's something about the knowing which has qualities of clarity, lucidity, stillness, freedom, non-reactivity, and equanimity. There's something really special about the knowing, the awareness itself, that comes from being settled, being concentrated, getting calm, and having a heightened capacity to be aware. It's almost like awareness and knowing is a muscle that gets stronger.

That also comes from being less preoccupied in our attachments, less preoccupied with our concerns. Then the natural capacity for knowing, for awareness, can shine and be there. The naturalness of it, almost a spontaneity or a simplicity to it just arising and being there without a lot of agency, is one of the stepping stones of developing mindfulness. At first, there's more agency, and then over time, the agency is more about getting out of the way and letting go.

Then we come to the fourth foundation of mindfulness. Like the second and third, there's a journey through this. At the beginning, it talks about the three different ways that the mind gets caught up, attached, and entangled with experience. Then it talks about ways in which the mind moves towards disentanglement, towards freedom. There's a journey from being attached to becoming free.

That journey goes first through what's called the five hindrances, then it goes through what's called the five aggregates^[3], then the six fetters^[4]—the six ways that we get entangled or knotted up in the experiences of the senses. Those are the ways we get caught up. Then the freedom has to do with the seven factors of awakening^[5] and the four noble truths^[6]. There's a journey through this, and I love that we start with the ways we get caught up and hung up, because we must understand that the idea is to become wise about this.

If you're feeling like you're supposed to quickly get to some beautiful, wonderful state, it might be that you're not going to take the time to really know yourself in a deep way. You need to know how you get entangled and know the entanglement itself, so that in the future you won't be tricked by it, pulled into its orbit, and make mistakes. We take our time.

This week is the five hindrances, and we'll do one day on each hindrance. Today is a bit of an introduction. In the teachings of the Buddha, the hindrances are often paired with the seven factors of awakening. These are beautiful qualities of mind that arise as we practice: mindful awareness itself, investigation, effort or energy, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity. In many texts, the Buddha puts these together where one is the problem we're overcoming, and the other is what grows and develops instead.

These two have different impacts on us. The hindrances cover over our wisdom and make it difficult to have access to it; they contract and limit the mind. The seven factors of awakening allow for the functioning of wisdom, allowing for an expansive, open, and free mind. One pulls us down, and one lifts us up.

An image used in the suttas for this covering-over impact of the hindrances is that of a small tree growing in the forest, but there's a larger tree that's covering it over. The small tree doesn't get any light, so it's stunted. It doesn't really grow and develop. The hindrances are that stunting, that covering over that keeps the light of awareness from operating clearly. When the light of awareness is free, then the tree of bodhi^[7], the tree of awakening, can grow within us. Some people call the sap of that tree the seven factors of awakening. The light of awareness really lets it grow and develop. The idea is to let go of or be free of these obscuring qualities of the hindrances so that something beautiful can grow and develop instead in that clearing in the forest.

The first hindrance in the sutta is sensual desire. In the teachings of the Buddha, an alternative term sometimes used is avariciousness—wanting things, wanting more and more stuff. Both can be a big entanglement. Sometimes people just call it "desire" to cover all those things, but the problem with calling it desire is that not all desires are problematic. The desire to be free of the hindrances may be really healthy and appropriate.

Sensual desire and wanting things have innocent versions. It's innocent to want something like a new tube of toothpaste because you ran out. There are simple, maybe beautiful ways of having desires for pleasure. You want to cook your broccoli to just the right tenderness so that when you eat it, there's pleasure, and it feels nourishing, delightful, and fresh. That can be innocent.

But what is not innocent are desires that grab us, that catch us, that we become preoccupied by. There can become a kind of strong biological force behind that, sometimes strong enough to be like rocket propellant. It's so powerful, some forms of sensual desire, that it's hard not to follow along with the strength of it.

For the purposes of Satipaṭṭhāna, it's not that it's immoral, bad, or wrong to have sensual desire. It just happens to be that it makes it difficult for this clarity of awareness to grow, for this open, expanded mind to grow, and for this quiet, still place of freedom to show itself. Since that's the direction we're going, we want to learn how to be mindful of sensual desire so it supports that direction. It doesn't support freedom to go along with sensual desires, spending time in meditation thinking about sexual fantasies, thinking about food, or trying to make meditation as pleasant and enjoyable as you can to recapture a past meditation experience full of bliss. The desire for that bliss again is just another desire for sensual pleasure.

Rather than negating them or condemning them, we bring a very clear, purposeful, and dedicated mindfulness: "Sensual desire is present." We get to know it and feel it. I find it very useful to feel it physically. There's something about feeling the physicality of desire that very quickly shows me the downside of it. Being caught in the force of sensual desire is not really pleasant. The sensual pleasure might be pleasant, but the force of this drive for it is not. It's a kind of loss, a kind of alienation from myself when it's there.

Then know when it's absent. There are times as meditation deepens that there's no sensual desire at all. This is actually very important to register, to take that in and get to know what that's like. Notice the benefits—the way there's clarity and freedom or ease, where you can breathe more easily and you're not being pushed by some kind of inner force.

The instructions are to know when it's present and to know when it's absent. As we know the absence of it, that gives us a new possibility. This is really getting down to the heart of the insight of Satipaṭṭhāna, and that is to be present enough and clear enough to see how any phenomenon, any experience at all, arises and appears. Nothing is there all the time. Anything that qualifies as an experience is in perception for a while; it appears, and then it disappears. When the mind is quiet enough and not involved in thoughts, you can start seeing this arising of sensual desire, and you might see its passing.

It's easier to have a freer, more disentangled relationship with sensual desire when you see it first arise than if it's already there full-blown. To be right there and see, "There it is," makes it easier to just leave it alone. It's easier to abandon it, to let go of it. This exercising of our capacity to let go—to let go of the clinging, the wanting, the reaching for—is a wonderful thing to cultivate and develop.

The way the Buddha describes working with sensual desire is: one knows sensual desire is present when it's present; one knows it's absent when it's absent; one knows that it's arising when it arises; and one knows the abandoning of it, letting go of it, when it is let go of. If that's thorough and deep enough, it can lead to a deep freedom where we realize that the sensual desire is no longer there and is not going to arise again, at least in that meditation session. There is such a fullness of clarity, such peacefulness, such subtleness, that it's like, "Wow, this is so good. Sensual desire is not going to arise in this context because the freedom feels so good."

The goal is to become wise about the hindrances, to become wise about how the hindrances obscure wisdom. The Buddha said that fools who know they are fools, to that extent, are wise. To apply that here: practitioners who know they've lost their wisdom are starting to become wise.

For the next 24 hours until we meet again, I'd encourage you to notice sensual desire—desires for sensual pleasures, desires for comfort—that might exist for you. There are lots of them through the day for most people. See if you can notice when it's present and when it's absent. In particular, notice what happens for you when you see it just arise: "Oh, there it is." That's a fascinating place. Hopefully, you'll get wiser over these next hours around sensual desire.

We'll continue tomorrow. Thank you.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (44) Hindrances: Ill Will