Guided Meditation: Fading Away Born of Seclusion; Dharmette: Tastes of Freedom (3 of 5) Choosing Fading Away over Rumination

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Fading Away Born of Seclusion; Tastes of Freedom (3of5) Choosing Fading Away. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Meg Gawler at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 14, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Fading Away Born of Seclusion

Greetings everyone. I'm delighted to be back here with you on this friendly virtual tour of Tastes of Freedom.

On Monday, we remembered that by staying in the present moment, and then feeling and tasting our experience in the present moment, that's the key that opens the door to the path to freedom. As the Buddha says in his introduction to his great teaching on the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta^[1], the very first thing the practitioner does is to establish awareness grounded in the present moment. With that, we have the ability to discern which way we want to go when the present moment is offering us something that may be tempting but unwholesome, or something maybe less seductive but more wholesome.

Yesterday, we explored the factor of viveka^[2]—that cozy seclusion which protects us from harmful distractions and gives us the power to avoid these three poisons of greed, hate, and delusion, and to stay wholesome. Yesterday, I talked about leaving our responsibilities, our plans, and perhaps our ruminations^[3] outside the door together with our shoes as a way of establishing viveka: this independence.

Today, we'll look at virāga^[4], usually translated as dispassion, and this is born of the seclusion of viveka. This seclusion is like we're wearing a white cloth that keeps us pure, or that has the magic qualities of being able to deflect arrows or evil. Virāga literally means "away from desire." In this case, desire can include aversion. On the one hand, we might want more of something, which is the usual desire, or we might desire for something to go away or to stop. Both of those kinds of desire are not helpful on the path to enlightenment. This brings us to the dharma factor of virāga: fading away.

To begin, take your meditation posture with, if you can, a sense of confidence. Maybe have some determination to stay here, to the extent possible, in the present moment. Know that when the mind becomes distracted, the wise thing to do is to not go there, and to come back to the breath.

Inviting a little bit of energy into the spine, and letting gravity do the rest. Feeling, if you can, the gravity of the earth, which is holding you very securely in place as our planet hurtles around the sun. Gravity is something we can trust. Sitting and being here with whatever arises is also something we can trust.

You may have seen statues of the Buddha with the mudra of touching the earth, in which the Buddha takes his right hand and, with his fingers downward, touches the earth. For us humans who may not be sitting completely flat like the Buddha was, and having longer arms than normal humans, if we attempt in the position we're in now to touch the earth while sitting, we might have the tips of our fingers just moving forward slightly to touch the thigh. [Laughter] So, imagine touching the earth.

When the Buddha touched the earth, that was his response to Mara^[5]. You may have heard of Mara, who is the tempter^[6]—yes, it's a male—who is jealous of the Buddha and wants to do everything he can to stop him. When the Buddha was about to become enlightened, Mara started firing all kinds of arrows. Remember, Mara is a god; he has supernatural powers, but he's not a good guy who wants to help us—he wants us to remain deluded. So he starts firing arrows at the Buddha, but the Buddha's presence is enough for those arrows to turn into flowers. Then come seductive young ladies, and they have no effect either. The Buddha says, "I'm not going to move until I'm awakened." Then Mara, being seen for who he is, shrivels up and disappears.

That's the power of the state of mind of taking the earth as our witness: that we have every right to be on this path to awakening. Nobody can take that away from us, not unless we let them.

Take a deep breath. First of all, close the eyes, trusting that you're going to be okay. With the eyes closed, take a deep, slow, full breath on the inhale, and then on the exhale.

See if you can visualize yourself from space: now the earth is just a little marble, and you're just a little speck on the marble. With your fingers pointing towards the center of the earth, you're really well grounded.

Now we'll do a brief scan from the feet to the crown of the head. Today, I'd like to invite you to do that scan with a feeling of mettā^[7]. Mettā is the unconditional friendliness of greeting each moment as a friend. During this body scan, we will greet and touch with our awareness each part of the body. We place our awareness with this warm, loving feeling of friendship and appreciation. "So glad you're here, feet, so that I may walk." Or, "So glad that you're here, belly." Rejoicing in being alive.

Let the attention come down to the soles of the feet, and open your heart to the soles of your feet with love. Take that love and bring it up your legs, and bring it through your pelvis. Take a moment to shower everything in the belly with friendliness and acceptance. Now invite that shower of loving awareness to open to the heart center. Again, recognizing that however we feel, it's okay, because that's what our experience is right now.

Let the lovely feeling of warmth travel up to the shoulders. Maybe it will encourage you to release the shoulders a little bit downward. Then, pouring deliciously down through the arms and into the hands, including the hand that is touching the earth. Being alive.

Now we invite our awareness through the neck and into the head area. Softening the jaw. Maybe inviting a gentle smile. Softening all around the eyes, the forehead, and the scalp. Now letting our awareness radiate throughout the whole body, from the soles of the feet to the top of the head. Warm, radiant awareness.

If you are so inclined, I invite you to take a vow that if the mind should wish to go off on a thought tangent—sometimes we call these thought trains or pleasure boats—that we evoke the quality of dispassion, independence. It is born from seclusion.

When the mind—and I don't say "if," I say "when," because this is what minds do—starts thinking again, going off on some tangent, whatever it is, have the mindfulness well enough in place to see that. When you see that temptation to go off on a trip somewhere, you express virāga, dispassion, or independence by just saying, "No, thank you." And come back to your meditation object, whatever that may be.

Virāga is the factor of being willing to let unwholesome qualities abate. Let them fade away by choosing not to reinforce them. With the help of the breath, come back to right here in this body, in this mind. Keep practicing like this.

[Meditation pause]

If the mind is somewhere other than your lived experience in the present moment, then with all the gentleness and sweetness you can muster, invite it to come back to being right here with you. With the breath.

[Meditation pause]

For the last few minutes of this sitting, if you've had even the briefest taste of fading away of temptations, know how healthy this is. Let yourself appreciate the goodness of letting all those distractions abate, even if it's only for a second.

[Meditation pause]

In our body scan, we invited getting in touch with the different areas of our body by showering them with loving-kindness. Now, if you are so inclined, the invitation is to take that loving awareness and radiate it out in all directions. Just radiating the goodness of being here in the present moment. To the north, the east, the south, the west, above, and below.

May we, and all beings, be protected. May we, and all beings, be peacefully contented. And may we be free.

[Bell rings]

Thank you for your practice.

Dharmette: Tastes of Freedom (3 of 5) Choosing Fading Away over Rumination

Greetings everyone. I'm happy to be here with you again on this bus tour of Tastes of Freedom.

What we began with was recognizing that establishing mindfulness, establishing clear awareness in the present moment, is the key to becoming free. The reason is that if we stay with our lived experience, we'll see what's happening not only in the body but in the mind. As soon as the mind starts heading in a direction that may be unwholesome, we can take corrective action, because we've learned to discern what's wholesome and unwholesome.

Even if we're a beginner in meditation, if we begin our sit by making a vow that we'll do our very best not to move once we get settled, that is a huge help in getting the mind not to move. If we're sort of changing our posture, getting comfortable, or moving around in any way, with any kind of movement there's a very strong chance that the mind will be moving also. What we're trying to cultivate this week in Tastes of Freedom are these very advanced dharmic factors that are essential for steadying the mind, and steadying the body is a big step in that direction. That's one thing you can try out, and you may find that it does help the mind to settle down.

On Monday, we explored feeling and tasting. As we place our awareness in the present moment, that feeling allows us to determine the feeling tone, vedanā^[8], of whether our experience seems to be pleasant, unpleasant, or neither. In addition to the feeling tone, we can take a look at the emotional tone by tasting the present moment. The word for this in Pali is rasa^[9], and it literally means "taste." It was used even in ancient times in theatrical treatises, where you could have little plays that have different tastes as part of them. So it might be sweet, it might be salty, it might be bitter, it might be sour, it might be umami. If we can figuratively use the idea of taste to go a little bit deeper in discerning our present moment awareness, we'll have not only the very basic pleasant, unpleasant, or neither feeling tone, but we'll also be more in tune with the flavor of our feeling. That can be subject to any kind of figurative use you'd like to use it for. That was Monday: becoming free from greed, hate, and delusion by placing our awareness very steadily in the present moment.

Yesterday, we evoked the protection that is offered by the factor of viveka. It's usually translated as seclusion, but it really means independence. What it means in terms of meditation is being secluded from unwholesome habits. If we have a habit of—you know, it's getting to be breakfast time and we start thinking about what we're going to have for breakfast—that's taking us away from our meditation of being right here.

When we see that we're tending to go off on some track of distraction, that's a door opener too, because it gives us the choice to say, "No, thank you," and to come back. Those of you who have been meditating for some time, I'm sure you're well aware that there's a lot of coming back to do in this practice. You just have to be patient with it and keep coming back. Little by little, you'll start to get it. The mind will start to realize that it's okay to stay centered and undistracted for more than a minute or so.

Today, I'd like to introduce to you the next factor, which is called virāga in Pali. It literally means "away from desire." Vi is "away from," and rāga is "desire." It also means "dye," like the dye for changing the color of a cloth. Away from the dye: the cloth being washed repeatedly and put out in the sunlight to dry, the color gradually fades away. In the same way, as we practice cultivating seclusion—not getting so tempted by distractions of the mind—we get more and more adept at having moments of virāga. This independence takes the form of being comfortable with letting things abate. You say, "Okay, here we go again, another thought train," and then with the decision, you just let that one slow down and go away.

So that's dispassion. I do have a passion for etymology in English, in French, and in Pali, so I am going to take us on a little detour to talk about rumination.

I went to the great gospel of Wikipedia, and rumination comes from the Latin ruminare, which means "to chew again." There's a whole group of hoofed mammals that are ruminants, and what do they do? Ruminants are hoofed herbivores, grazing or browsing mammals that are able to acquire nutrients from plant-based foods by fermenting it in a specialized stomach prior to digestion through microbial actions. The process typically requires the fermented cud to be regurgitated and chewed again. Rumination is the process of re-chewing the cud to further break down plant matter and stimulate digestion.

The same thing is happening in our minds when we ruminate. It's maybe not quite as gross as regurgitating the contents of our stomach, but there has been an article recently by the American Psychiatric Association that is about the cycle of repetitive thinking and how it gives birth to anxiety and depression. As I shared with you last February, I'm kind of an expert in the pathology of anxiety and depression. Let me read to you now what the APA says in this article on repetitive thinking:

"Rumination involves repetitive thinking or dwelling on negative feelings and distress and their causes and consequences. The repetitive, negative aspect of rumination can contribute to the development of depression or anxiety and can worsen existing conditions."

Virāga is about knowing when you're tempted to "chew your cud"—like going to the past and reliving the past, having that argument again, thinking how you could have done that better, or what they did wrong. Or going into the future, planning what's going to come next because you've got to be perfect, right? You keep thinking about what you have to do, keeping your list in order. We can let go of that. We can let go of all of that. It can abate. It can fade away. Just like when a stained cloth is washed and put out in the sun to dry, the stain can go away—the stain of greed, hate, and delusion. So that's the dharma for today on virāga.

If you'd like a little homework assignment for the next 24 hours: if you see the mind wanting to go down some unskillful track, pause, and very sweetly invite it to just gently fade away. "Thanks, but no thanks. I'll stay right here."

Q&A

Host: Thank you for the teaching, Meg. We'll take some time here to see if anyone has any questions that they'd like to ask. You can put it into the Zoom chat or raise your hand, and we'll ask you to unmute. Questions are welcome, or comments, or complaints. [Laughter]

Host: Okay, we've got Bill with a question. Bill, you can go ahead and unmute yourself.

Bill: No questions, just thank you for the kind of reminder I need most—to just gently come back and let go of those pesky, determined thoughts that aren't helpful. That's really all. Thank you, Meg.

Meg Gawler: Sure, my pleasure.

Host: And then next we've got Layla. Go ahead and come off mute.

Layla: Meg, I just wanted to say I'm so glad to see you back, because I had missed seeing you in the chat. Every once in a while I would ask someone, "Does anyone know how Meg is? Where's Meg?" So it's lovely to just feel you in the community. Thank you for sharing your deep experience and your practice. I really appreciate it.

Meg Gawler: Thank you so much for sharing that. I disappeared because I was so overwhelmed that I was making myself sick. I just needed to do less, so I had to drop it for a while. Anyway, I'm glad to be back too.

Host: Okay, Pat.

Pat: How do I unmute?

Host: You're unmuted already.

Pat: Oh, okay, thank you for trying to figure this thing out! Just to say thank you so much. I'm a bodyworker, and the somatic work that you do is so helpful. The body keeps the score, doesn't it? I'm having some challenges of my own, and this helps a lot. Thank you so much.

Meg Gawler: My pleasure, really.

Host: We've got a question in chat from Mariah. She says, "Okay, no complaints! Thank you so much Meg for these timely teachings. I wonder if you would be willing to speak a little bit about working with and practicing with trauma. What does one need to change in one's practice?"

Meg Gawler: Oh, thank you, Mariah, that's a beautiful question. Most trauma survivors like myself need to go through very, very extensive and deep psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, or, as Pat was talking about, somatic experiencing^[10]—the bodily approaches to letting go of trauma. That's kind of the truth for most of us.

But that's not enough for where we want to go as Buddhist practitioners. We're not satisfied with just being okay with trauma. We go from being a trauma victim to eventually becoming a trauma survivor. In my case, what I had to do to make that shift was to really dig down deep in my soul and my heart to forgive my parents for harming me. That required, on my part, finally seeing that they had done the best they could. Their best was really not very good at all for a child, especially an eldest child who was the designated family scapegoat, but that's the best they could do.

I also went to a really nice retreat at Spirit Rock^[11] a long time ago with Joanna Macy. She had us in a circle where we evoked our ancestors. Realizing that my parents' childhood was undoubtedly more difficult than mine, and that abusive behavior can be hereditary because you don't know any better. But also because, as a man from San Quentin says, "Hurt people hurt." If we've been hurt, sometimes the reaction to that is to go out and hurt other people. But he also says, "Healed people heal." This is the beautiful motivation for letting go of our trauma. The letting go—like all the kinds of letting go that we're doing in this practice—is progressive. It's not overnight, it has its ups and downs, and it may take decades, but it is happening. If we look back, we can see progress.

Gil^[12] has helped me a lot also. At one point—he doesn't usually give you devastating assignments unless he thinks you're ready for it—he said to me, "Meg, it's great that you're no longer a trauma victim, now you're a trauma survivor. But why don't you just forget about being a trauma anything? You don't have to relate yourself to PTSD; it doesn't have to be part of your identity." That was a kind teaching that he gave me.

I won't go into the one that had me burning apart, but fortunately, I came back together again! [Laughter] Anyway, I hope that answers your question a little bit. Forgiving is what allows us to make that shift from identifying with having had a traumatic experience.

I have a friend who's a beautiful meditation teacher, Francisco, and his experience with trauma was not because he was abused as a child. He was in a devastating car accident and was just in pieces afterwards, in constant extreme pain day and night. I don't know if he's ever affirmed this to me, but my impression is that he was able to let go of his trauma through the depth of his practice by really going deep in meditation. Francisco, if I'm misrepresenting you, please forgive me! I'm letting everybody know that I'm not at all sure if you actually said anything like this.

Host: Okay, thank you, Meg. Marlene asks, "Is it really enough to simply keep returning to the dharma?" And she said, "I missed you also, Meg."

Meg Gawler: Thanks. It's nourishing to teach, also. I taught almost a year ago, I think it was, and afterwards I was just blown away because I had so much to learn from my own teachings. Actually, this is recorded in the Pali Canon: there are examples of monastics who teach and who become awakened from teaching. So thank you for giving me the opportunity to teach. It is an enriching experience, albeit a humbling one.

Host: Actually, Meg, she was asking, "Is it enough to simply keep returning to the dharma?" Sorry, I think I may have misrepresented it as a comment when it actually was a question from Marlene.

Meg Gawler: Oh, okay! Well, maybe I missed the point. It depends on your faith, really. If you have faith in the path—if you know that the tempter is Mara and he is doing everything he can to get you to give up, if you want to turn away—it's up to you to want to practice. We have to come to terms with what is our deepest intention. If our deepest intention is to put an end to greed, hate, and delusion in ourselves, the way to do it is to follow this path that the Buddha so beautifully laid out for us. Does that answer your question, Marlene?

Host: I'm not sure she said anything in chat, but thanks for asking again.

Meg Gawler: And thanks for pushing me on it, I appreciate it.

Host: No problem. Robin also asks, "Hi Meg, thank you. Ruminative-type thoughts seem to be serving some purpose, as in solving a type of problem. It seems that one both has to let those thoughts go (or encourage their not reappearing), but also to find the underlying issue and let that go. Is there anything in this way of thinking?"

Meg Gawler: Great question, Robin. I'm reminded—and by the way, during this week I'm borrowing a lot from Gil, I had the good fortune to be on a two-week retreat with him in May—one thing he said was that he found it very useful to set aside time every day to just sit back, have a cup of tea, and look out the window. Or maybe sit down by the river and watch the water go by without any agenda, and just see what bubbles up. Having a practice of doing that on a daily basis gave him the latitude to let things like what you're saying—that these rumination-type thoughts might be serving some good function—bubble up. They'll come up, you'll see them, you'll be enriched by that, and have some idea of what you want to do with it.

It's sort of like lucid dreaming, where you go to bed saying that you have a question you want to answer, you ask your dreams to please fill you in, and then in the morning you analyze your dreams and get the answer to your question. You take time out to just do nothing, relax with a cup of tea or something, and see what comes up. Then, when you're in meditation, you're not so tempted to go off on a ruminating tangent because you know you'll be able to do it later. Is that helpful?

Host: Marlene and Robin both said thank you for the comments on their questions. I think that's all the questions we have in chat, and that'll bring the Q&A to an end. So thank you very much, Meg, for the time and the teachings.

Meg Gawler: My pleasure. Thank you all.

Host: If folks want to come off of mute and have any greetings or well wishes, feel free.

Group: Thank you very much, everyone! Good to see you all. Hi Meg, good to see you! Lovely to see faces. Thank you so much, Meg, that was beautiful.