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Guided Meditation: Samādhi and Happiness

Everyone, let's go ahead and start our day together, our time together. So, settling in for meditation, finding your usual posture for sitting or whatever feels appropriate for you today. And if you're comfortable doing so, you can close your eyes and just have a sense of turning in, or settling in, to your own experience of your body how it is now, your mind how it is now.

Feeling balanced where you're sitting.

Today, the meditation will be on mindfulness of breathing, in a similar style as is taught by Bhikkhu Anālayo^[1]. So it comes from the sutta^[2] on mindfulness of breathing, the Anapanasati Sutta^[3], which has many interpretations.

So as you settle into the body, having a sense that you are in a secluded area, probably, or you found a place where you can sit that's a little bit removed from other people in your house, for example. And just enjoying that sense of, to whatever degree of seclusion you have at this time.

Tuning into the sense of straightness in the spine. It could be that you're sitting upright, or it's also fine to feel the straightness as you're in the lying down posture. And just passing the attention through the spine from the bottom to the top, feeling each vertebra relaxing and aligning the spine. You can go kind of slowly.

So having the sense that you're supported by the straight and relaxed spine. And then bringing to mind some motivation for practicing. It could just be your specific motivation for this sit, it could be your overall inspiration to practice. It's nice if it has an altruistic dimension to it, connecting with your inspiration.

And then establishing in the mind mindfulness, so bringing the awareness of the present moment to the foreground. And actually taking a deliberate period of time to sense what it feels like when there is mindfulness in the mind. What does mindfulness feel like for you right now? Perhaps clear and sharp, or soft and warm, broad and spacious. What is the flavor of mindfulness right now?

And then gently turning the attention to the sense of in and out breathing. You don't need to feel the breath at any specific place, but for now just maybe a general sense of knowing when you're breathing in and when you're breathing out, in whatever way it's easy to connect with that.

So we have the sense of mindfulness, the sense of in and out breathing, allowing that to fill the attention. If the mind feels drawn toward other concerns at this time, you just gently say, "Not now, I will definitely get back to you later." For now, staying with the in and out breathing.

And now we draw the attention a little bit closer to the breath in order to know the length of the breath. All that needs to be known is whether it's on the longer side or on the shorter side, the in-breath and the out-breath. So we have to pay attention along the whole length of the breath, and then the whole length of the out-breath. Just generally knowing, is the in-breath long or short? Is the out-breath long or short? They might be different. Natural breath.

We may find that as we watch, the breath gradually gets shorter. Release the active part of the breath. There may be a longer gap.

And then opening the awareness now to feel the entire body breathing. We don't change the breath at all, just change the breadth of the attention, so that we're aware of the whole body sitting and the breath occurring in the body. No longer needing to notice the length.

And when the mind feels connected throughout the body, still paying attention to the in and out breathing, we incline the mind toward tranquility in the body. It helps to physically soften areas of tension. It helps that the simple, repetitive nature of the breath can act as an anchor for the mind, allowing other feelings of busy energy in the body to settle out. Search tranquility throughout the body.

And when the mind gets distracted, as it surely will, we just smile and gently return to the sense of the whole body in and out breathing. And an invitation to tranquility of the body. It's a soft invitation, not our narrow focus on the breath, points toward ease. A simple sense of being present with the body and the breath.

As the body becomes even slightly more tranquil, the bodily activities are calmed even a bit. We can recheck the posture. Maybe a slight shift would help the body feel more balanced. It's natural that as tensions release, some adjustments are helpful. Just balancing with that sense of in and out breathing.

And as the body becomes somewhat more calm, it's very natural that a sense of joy can arise. So opening the mind to the possibility of a kind of inner joy that comes about because of being in meditation. It's often felt in the body, feels almost like an inner smile emerging from that ease.

But even if it's very mild, or we don't even feel any of that joy, we can also feel in the mind just a sense of contentment. Content that we are mindful at this moment, present for what's going on in the body and the mind. The joy, the slight joy of mindfulness, can be this contentment.

If we can feel the happiness of presence, it's actually a happiness that's always available anytime we're mindful. So allowing the mind and body to feel this inner joy or at least contentment.

Mindfulness does not always have to be a neutral noting of exactly what's happening. We can incline the mind toward this kind of inner well-being and pleasure. Just allow that to be there, resting in that, along with the body and the in and out breathing.

It's natural that as we feel even some degree of this joy, happiness of sitting, of breathing, that the mind will become calmer. We see that busy mental activities of wanting or not wanting are less enjoyable than simple presence.

Resting in awareness, we can watch the movements of the mind slowly settle out, as we watch the agitation in the body slowly settle out. Such tranquility available.

We can get a sense that peace is possible, pretty close to our daily life. Something quite different is available when the mind is able to be present and still.

And although the conditions will change in a few minutes, we might consider, as we go out into the world, change our way of being, our level of consciousness. What are we willing to give up our peace for? This peace that we feel. What is more important than that as we get out into our lives? Is it worth getting tangled up in a conflict, or in anxiety, or in pursuit of something?

Is there a way we could just carry this into our interactions, into our work, into our errands of the day, or our tasks? And to see what a gift that is for others, maybe they too would feel just a bit of that.

Gil^[4] often says there's no way to practice just for yourself. It has to help others, even in these very simple ways, if we carry the practice forward from meditation into the world.

Dharmette: Desire and Letting Go (4 of 5): The Happiness of Letting Go

So yesterday we talked about two sets of three, two triads, where one is unwholesome and one is wholesome. And the two sets are sense desire (kāma)^[5], ill will, and cruelty on one side, and renunciation, which is nekkhamma^[6] (or letting go of sense pleasures), non-ill will, and non-cruelty on the other side. And we learned that in Buddhist teachings these are applied to intentions, and thoughts, and perceptions, such that we might say that renunciation, or letting go, is an attitude that we can bring to our life. And it's skillful, which means that it leads onward on the path of spiritual development.

So I didn't get to quite all the suttas that talk about this triad, and I want to read just one more, a little excerpt from just one more, because it points out that these same sets of three are important in relationship and community life.

So the Buddha says in one sutta, "I am not even comfortable thinking about a place where people argue, quarreling and fighting continually, wounding each other with barbed words, let alone going there. I come to a conclusion about them. Clearly those people have given up three things and cultivated three things. What three things have they given up? Thoughts of renunciation, goodwill, and harmlessness. And what three things have they cultivated? Thoughts of sensuality, ill will, and cruelty."

And then of course the converse: "I feel comfortable going to a place where the people live in harmony, appreciating each other without quarreling, blending like milk and water, and regarding each other with kindly eyes. Let alone just thinking about it, I come to a conclusion about them. Clearly those people have given up three things and cultivated three things. What three things have they given up? Thoughts of sensuality, ill will, and cruelty. And what three things have they cultivated? Thoughts of renunciation (letting go), goodwill, and harmlessness."

So non-attachment to various pleasures of the senses helps other people. It helps us live in harmony just as much as non-ill will and non-cruelty do.

So caring about relationship and communal harmony is one aspect of what I've been calling this week the more elevated human desires. And the happiness that these kinds of desires bring could be called the happiness of letting go, which is kind of our topic for today.

So we talked previously about how the Buddha emphasized the disadvantages of sense pleasures in rather stark terms. I read a bunch of those images a couple of days ago, and I know that they were maybe a little bit surprising in how strong they were. You know, things like a dog gnawing on a meatless bone and not getting any satisfaction from it, things like that. And I pointed out that probably he wanted to wake us up from our dream world of trying to secure our happiness through getting things that are not very reliable and not really in our control.

But the good news—I mean that's good news too, that he wanted to wake us up like that—but the other good news is that the Buddha had kind of a dual strategy. So he talked about how ultimately unsatisfying sense pleasures are, and he also talked about the happiness and bliss that come from these more elevated pleasures. And those pleasures become available when we are willing to give up material and sensual forms of enjoyment.

And that doesn't mean that we're not going to have them, and we give up the attachment to them, right? So... we're so entangled sometimes it's hard to see where the attachment is and where the direct pleasure is. But it doesn't mean you need to get rid of all your stuff and live in grim austerity, but we have to give up the attachment to those things, or we can't experience these higher forms of happiness.

So it says in the Dhammapada^[7]: "If by giving up a lesser happiness one could experience greater happiness, a wise person would renounce the lesser to behold the greater."

Do you agree? So the word here that's translated as "lesser" is not a very clear word exactly what it means, and it could also be interpreted as material, and some translations actually say it that way. I read Gil's translation. So whether or not that word literally means material, I think that's a fair interpretation of the meaning of this verse. So that material happinesses are lesser and then, you know, say spiritual happinesses are greater.

So, it's not a difficult trade-off. Which is the greater happiness: getting some kind of food that you want, or creating a good relationship with your partner? Some kind of material gain, or being honest? You know, when the choice is made, then the trade-off is made that way. It seems obvious.

So one of the things that we start seeing as we cultivate beautiful qualities of the heart and mind—that is, when we value them, when we desire to increase them, there is desire behind cultivation. So one of the things that we see is that sensual happiness has a kind of built-in limitation to it.

So let's say I'm enjoying an apple. And if I eat that apple, no one else can eat that apple. That's just how it works in the material world. But if I experience the happiness of, say, being honest, it doesn't interfere with anybody else's happiness. There's an infinite supply of these kinds of more elevated pleasures, which is a good thing. You know, it just works differently in that realm, right?

So let's move on to some other aspects of these elevated pleasures. The Buddha was a teacher of the full Eightfold Path^[8], and he also highlighted that the happiness of meditative development is a much deeper kind of happiness than various sensual happinesses. Sometimes the ordinary pleasures that we experience are called the five cords of sensual pleasure. That's just the phrase that's used in the teachings: so things that are enjoyable sights, and sounds, and smells, tastes, touches.

And there's a teaching—I'm reading a lot from the suttas today, it seems—where the Buddha says, "Should anyone say the five cords of sensual pleasure are the utmost pleasure and joy that human beings experience, I would not concede that to them. Why is that? Because there is another kind of pleasure that is loftier and more sublime than that pleasure. And what is that? Secluded from sensual pleasures, secluded from unwholesome states, a practitioner enters and abides in the first jhāna^[9]."

And then it goes on to other levels of concentration. So that's referring to deep states of meditation, but really it could be any state of meditation where the mind has let go of wanting and not wanting, somewhat like what we did in the guided meditation.

So it's interesting that it says that the precondition for meditative composure of mind, let's say, is seclusion from sensual pleasures and unwholesome states. So once again we have to give up those pleasures in order to experience meditative calm and unification. And in that case, unwholesome states refers to the five hindrances^[10], which are a different list.

So one of the other uses of this term nekkhamma that we talked about yesterday—the word that's usually translated as renunciation but could also be letting go—is giving up distraction in meditation. That's another way that it's used in the Buddhist teachings, so that the mind can find ease and calm. Letting go of stories and rumination and thinking about our views is also part of renunciation, as the Buddha meant that term.

There's a story of a man who comes to the Buddha, and he says that he understands... he's a long-time practitioner, and says that he understands that greed, hatred, and delusion are the main problems in the human mind. And he definitely wants not to go in that direction, but that he still gets overcome by desire for sense pleasure sometimes. And he asks the Buddha why that is.

And the Buddha says, "Oh, it's easy. It's because you don't know a better form of happiness."

So it happened that that practitioner had not deeply experienced any alternative to sense pleasure. So in that case, you know, the Buddha didn't tell the man about all the dangers and terrible problems that come from sense pleasures. He didn't give him all those images that I read the other day. He simply said, "There are better forms of happiness, but you haven't cultivated them yet, so of course you're not willing to give up sensuality." So he points toward the positive, and points toward the other forms of happiness.

So this makes sense. Humans are not going to give up happiness. We're very strongly drawn to happiness, and we have a natural desire for happiness, if I could say it that way. So the Buddha used this desire for well-being, and peace, and freedom that we have, and we wish to be free of the pain of greed, hatred, and delusion—he used that to encourage us on the path. He encouraged creating harmonious relationships, being ethical, being caring, and developing the mind in meditation. And all of these are these loftier forms of pleasure.

So we're actually meant to experience, to fully take in, this happiness that is not sensual. We don't need to be just neutrally mindful all the time. It's good to feel joy, and contentment, and ease, and peace, to whatever degree they're available in a moment. And even if the moment is unpleasant, you know, even if we have a bodily pain of some kind, or are in a situation that's challenging, it is always possible to have a slight joy in the mind simply from being mindful of that. I know I've experienced that. I've had the sense, when mindfulness was there, of, "Wow, this is really unpleasant, but I'm glad to be knowing it. I would rather know it than not know it."

So another quote: "This is the bliss of renunciation, the bliss of seclusion, the bliss of peace, the bliss of enlightenment. I say of this kind of pleasure that it should be pursued, that it should be developed, that it should be cultivated, and that it should not be feared."

How about that? The Buddha says this kind of bliss should not be feared. Head straight into it: the bliss of renunciation and the bliss of peace.

And the more that we experience these higher forms of happiness, actually the less attractive sensual pleasures become. We look back at those from some other place, and we wonder why we invested so much in them. So our desires shift over time, over the course of the path. More and more often we find ourselves wanting ease, peace, harmony, awareness, wisdom.

Sometimes people are a little bit surprised that something that used to be enjoyable for them now feels a little bit coarse. There's a refinement and also a lightening up of the mind. It's actually a bit of a relief to let go of the more stressful forms of pleasure. And this is also a way of healing, you know, healing of the mind and heart. We live with more well-being, and we're more often able to care for others more fully when we've started to let go of these busier, more stressful forms of pleasure.

So the happiness of letting go, I would say, is one of the great discoveries on the Buddhist path. And it draws us along the path further. And at some point we will feel the desire to move on even from these states of well-being, because the deepest stirring in the heart is the desire for complete freedom, which is what we will touch into a bit tomorrow.

So thank you for this ongoing journey, and I hope to see you then.