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Guided Meditation: Choosing Love

Hello my friends, warm greetings, and welcome to this meditation session. Today we continue, or start really, the samadhi^[1] of equanimous love. One of the very important principles in Buddhism that supports this upekkhā^[2], equanimous love, is the idea that people make their own choices. We can't make the choices for them, but we can love them.

Part of equanimity is saying, "The choices you make are yours, and I wish you well. I care for you. My love remains." People make choices that are not the choices we want, or that we think are healthy or appropriate. But we grant them the gift of autonomy. Many people want to feel somewhat autonomous, independent, and able to make their own choices. And so, the choices you make are yours.

We have choices too. We make our own choices. Other people can have that kind of equanimous love for us, but we make choices, and one of those choices is to love. One of those choices is to keep our hearts open, not to close down, not to turn away, not to diminish our warmth, our kindness, our goodwill for maybe any reason at all. To do so diminishes ourselves, and sometimes even harms ourselves. We choose love, and that love can remain very private. No one needs to know it. You're not going to make a mistake or make yourself vulnerable to being taken advantage of, but we can choose love. We can choose to keep our heart open.

This ability to choose is central to Buddhist practice. Sometimes in Buddhism, we talk a lot about not making any choices—just trusting, letting go, and resting in some kind of broad, accepting awareness. But to do that is a choice. We're operating out of a choice that this is what we'll do.

For samadhi, part of what gets us really immersed, coursing in, just flowing in, swimming in the current of it all is that we choose to love. We choose to offer that. It's almost like there's a current which will carry us, but it's a weak current. To get the support of the current, we have to swim. And so we swim, and then we feel the current pulling us and pushing us along. But we have to do that swimming. Maybe it's like body surfing; you have to swim hard enough to be caught by the wave.

And so there is this gathering, a focus, an intentionality that is not meant to be a strain, not meant to be tied to expectations of measuring ourselves or even being successful, but rather: Yes, here I will love. The choices you make are yours, but I will love. Yes. Now my heart will be open. My warmth, my goodness will be there. Yes. And that samadhi is to feel and sense the love, which is a choice. The love which is a yes. The love which is immersing ourselves, putting ourselves into this uncompromising love. Yes.

So, assume a meditation posture. Adjust your posture a bit so it has a little bit of intentionality in it. It should be a little bit more like your posture is participating in the meditation rather than being put offline during the meditation. Without strain, without tension, have a posture which is somewhat engaged—a posture of attention.

Gently close your eyes, slowly and gently taking some fuller breaths. On the inhale, feel your body more fully. On the exhale, relax your body. Maybe on the inhale, feel all that exists in your chest, in the heart center. Choose to just feel it and allow it to be there on the inhale, and choose to soften it all on the exhale.

On the inhale, feel all that exists in your belly area, without resistance or complaints, without seeing any problem. Just feel and sense, to know. And as you exhale, relax the belly, especially at the very end of the exhale.

Then on the inhale, feel your mind, your thinking mind. On the inhale, simply choose the simplest way to just feel it, as if it has permission to be the way it is. Feel it with a broad awareness. On the exhale, relax the thinking mind.

Appreciate the choice, the participation, the engagement. Feeling and sensing on the inhale, relaxing the mind on the exhale without pressure.

Then, drop into the place in your body that is the home for love, kindness, and goodwill. When that is strong, does it activate or awaken a certain part of your body? Whatever degree of goodwill, kindness, and love you have, feel it on the inhale and relax into it on the exhale.

You're participating, entering into the practice, the choice to feel, to relax into the love. Perhaps finding a way to feel where the choice to feel your love is itself a form of love. The choice to relax into your inner warmth is itself a form of love or care.

A choice of yes. Yes to being here for this. Yes for these minutes to enter into the felt sense of love and kindness. Yes, as a choice of participation. Feeling love on the inhale. Relaxing into it on the exhale. And as you relax, allow the thinking mind to be quieter.

Then, with a quiet, calm thinking, think of some neutral person in your life. Some person, maybe you don't even know their name, but you see them periodically and you have no basis for liking or not liking, for being for or against. See if your love can also open to that person as a basic form of friendliness, kindness, and well-wishing in the privacy of meditation. Opening your heart wide to include this person in the care of your love.

With every breath, as you breathe in, let the sense of this person come into your heart. As you exhale, let your love flow outwards to the person like a shower of rain or the radiance of the sun.

As a way of participating more—almost like you're swimming to catch the wave, the current—gently, quietly say, or with nonverbal thoughts express towards this person: Your choices are yours to make. I'll keep my love, goodwill, open and present for you. Unruffled love. Your choices are yours, and I will love.

Say these ideas to yourself as a way of not holding back. As a way of saying yes. Settling more and more into just loving, nonreactive love, balanced love. Regardless of your choices, I will love.

If loving with goodwill, compassion, appreciative joy, and equanimity is fully your choice and no one else's, for these minutes now, choose it fully. Open your heart. Say yes. So you enter more deeply into a field of love, a state of love, an embodiment of love that's independent of what other people choose, say, or do. Equanimous love.

Then, let your attention and your love spread out into the world. Equanimous love, a kind of independent love, is not dependent on what others do. That's easiest in the privacy of meditation.

Allow this wide love to become, for a few moments, universal. With no exceptions, no holding back, no fear, wishing all beings happiness. Choose to maybe visualize the possibility of wide, broad happiness throughout the world. And may it be so. The love that wishes this, that has a yes. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (71) Upekkha Samadhi 2

Hello, and welcome to this series on love and exploring equanimous love. This deep love of equanimity is considered by some Buddhists to be the fullest potential of love, the greatest capacity of love. It is to have a kind of independent love, where love is not dependent on what other people do. We don't compromise our capacity to keep an open heart, a balanced heart, a calm heart, a caring heart for others, no matter what they're like or what they're doing.

This, of course, is phenomenally difficult, and there can be a lot of quick movements to justify that this isn't right—that there must be situations where our love must be compromised, changed, unavailable, or destroyed because of what people do. That's for you to struggle with. But certainly in Buddhism, and especially in meditation, it's a phenomenal capacity that we have as human beings to have this universal love, this uncompromising love, this love that's not dependent on anything. And to have it not be there for any reason except that it's the full radiance of the human heart, the full capacity of resting in this love.

To understand the samadhi of love, the samadhi of equanimous love, we have to really appreciate that, at least temporarily, we are allowing ourselves to love fully without any compromise or dependency on anything. It's just the same as with any other samadhi. Any other samadhi we go into is deep joy. A joy that does not depend on anything in those minutes, just the radiance there. It's independent of the conditions of the world. A happiness that's like that. A peace that's not dependent on anything in the world. At least in meditation, to know that the clear, clean, unpreoccupied heart and mind has this amazing capacity to be present, not dependent on anything.

The same is true with love. Knowing that, and saying yes to that, allows us then in meditation to dip deep down into the fullness of it, letting the surface mind quiet. The surface mind is the mind that is dependent on things, that wants things and doesn't want things, that is building stories and ideas and futures and pasts. We're choosing not to give energy to that. We're choosing for a few minutes not to continue with that. It might happen on its own, but that's not where the directionality of our choice is.

Buddhism puts a tremendous emphasis on choice, that we choose. There's an intentionality. There's a sense of purpose. There's a sense of dedication. Yes, I give myself to this breath. Just this breath, nothing else. Just this embodiment, nothing else. Just this joy and happiness and peace. Just this, fully, completely, as if it's everything. We get a sense, as we go into deeper concentration, about the undesirability of the ways in which we get pulled away into distractions, thoughts, beliefs, and desires. It just feels so much more satisfying not to give into those, but rather to give ourselves over to choose the samadhi, the subtleness, and the peace.

The same is true with the samadhi of equanimous love. We're choosing a kind of universal love to relax and keep our hearts open uncompromisingly, without exceptions. We're giving ourselves a big yes to that. It's not passive. It's not wishful thinking. It's not, "Yes, you know, this is what I'd like to do, but there's all these exceptions and people who are difficult, and I'm not sure." We get caught up in that surface mind. But we're saying yes for now. Yes, love. Love without compromise. Love without exception. Later, maybe we have exceptions, but for now, let's give ourselves over to this.

One of the ways of giving ourselves over to really get behind it, if we're in equanimous love, is to grant people their autonomy as a part of the love. To grant people the dignity of making their own choices and making their own mistakes. To appreciate that each person makes choices for themselves, and they're making choices which maybe you can't have any say about. They are going to have to live with the consequences, and you have to live with the consequences sometimes. You are not responsible for the consequences; you are responsive to them. You might be generous, you might be kind, you might meet it in different ways, but the choices they make are theirs. And I'll love you anyway. I'll keep my heart open anyway. I'll calmly be present in a full, embodied, kind way anyway. I'll be friendly anyway.

That's your choice. Others make their choice, and I'll make my choice. My choice is to keep the heart open. My choice is to love. My choice is, for at least these few minutes of meditation, to give myself to an uncompromising, non-dependent love that's not dependent on what you do or what you don't do. I'm confident that love is a healthy ingredient in a good human life, so no matter what you choose, I'm going to stay with that.

In giving ourselves over to this yes and entering into samadhi, it's kind of like we're saying yes in the same way we would say yes to entering into a nice, warm, soft bed with a comforter or a nice soft blanket. Yes, I get in here. Yes, I put my head on the pillow. Yes, here. Or dipping into a wonderful refreshing pool of water. There's no resistance to going in. It's not too hot, not too cold. Yes, this is good. So, we're saying with every breath, choosing yes to love.

Realizing this, and part of the swimming, part of the focal point for this equanimous love, is to have the idea or to say the words: You have your choices, I have mine. I choose love. You have your choices, I choose love. Yes. That becomes a little bit of the gathering point, the continuity, the push on the scooter, the swim in the current. Yes, you have your choices, and even so, I will love. I will love. I will be open.

To do this in a way that allows the mind not to strain and not to push, but to settle, gather, and dip into a state of love. Something where the pleasure, the well-being of just being present, just being alive, just being here, is deeply connected to maybe the deepest place of well-being we have inside. Yes, love.

The classic way of doing this in meditation is to choose a neutral person first. You have someone who you don't know enough about to really think it's complicated. You feel like they're basically a good person, but you have no strong feelings for or against them, and you're not necessarily going to have much to do with them or even talk to them. In this context, you get to explore provisionally. You get to experiment. How is it you can just keep opening to choose yes? Love, yes, let's keep it open, yes. Doing it with a neutral person then creates a reference point for doing it towards the people who are progressively more difficult.

What is nice with all these brahmavihāras^[3], these samadhis of love, is that the basic idea is you're not expected to do it perfectly. What you are choosing to do is to go up against the edge where it starts becoming difficult and not feel bad about yourself, or feel like something's wrong with you, but rather the opposite. Boy, this is good. Yes, I choose to be up where it's difficult because this is one of the great loving things to do: to see where it's difficult and find out how to open up more, how to expand in a healthy, appropriate way. And to feel, Wow, this is phenomenally fortunate to have come to a point in my life where I can learn to expand this love, to live in love, to feel love. This is one of the great gifts of Buddhism: this amazing teaching on the meditations of love, where we really explore how to get fully immersed and absorbed with a love which is not dependent on anything.

So, thank you.

And there is this principle that we go from where it's easiest to where it's next, a little bit more difficult. It might be that the neutral person is difficult for you. Maybe the next category is someone that you have some love for already, where your heart easily feels loving or kind or appreciative, but they are a little complicated. There are exceptions and times you have to be cautious. Now you want to choose someone who's a very light challenge, just a little bit. Not so neutral, but a positive person; it may be a distant friend or something. We will explore that tomorrow, but I tell you ahead of time so maybe you could start thinking about this.

But in any case, experiment during the day. Especially with strangers, at times when no one needs to know, see what it's like to open to that person. Open the heart and take them in or accept them with a love which is not dependent on anything.

May this private, maybe secret life of today bring you much joy, much learning, stretching your heart to be more and more open. May we all love more. Thank you.