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Guided Meditation: Space Element

Good morning. Welcome once again. Good to see you, those who I see, and good to see all the good morning welcomes on the chat. It's really been lovely being here with you, connecting with this sangha. Thank you.

So we're continuing today, moving in the elements now to the element of space. And yesterday I sort of hinted at this way that we're moving further and further into the ineffable, the unseen, more towards emptiness, and as I'll say a little bit more about later, a little bit more into mind, into the nature of mind. So we'll do a practice. Our practice this morning will be a meditation about space.

And I want to read you a quote from the sutta^[1] I've referred to a number of times, 62. And this is again the instruction that the Buddha is giving his son Rahula^[2], and this is what he says:

"Rahula, develop meditation that is like space. For when you develop meditation that is like space, arisen agreeable and disagreeable contacts will not invade your mind and remain. Just as space is not established anywhere, so too, Rahula, develop meditation that is like space. For when you develop meditation that is like space, arisen agreeable and disagreeable contacts will not invade your mind and remain."

There's a phrase in there I want to bring your attention to, which is he says, "just as space is not established anywhere, so too, Rahula, develop meditation that is like space." This idea that your meditation, just as space is not established anywhere, and that you could have a meditation that is not established anywhere. And that is an interesting idea, and it's also a little unnerving for our systems that we are used to settling on objects. We're used to landing somewhere, recognizing it, having our perception name what it is, and then having an opinion about it, or at least a vedanā^[3], a feeling tone, a pleasant or unpleasant. So when we land on space, there can be this uneasiness and an immense neutrality.

And I'll speak more later about how useful this neutrality can be, and how useful it is to not be established anywhere. But as we move into this meditation, I want to name that you may at times in the meditation sort of be a little like, "What am I paying attention to?" And that's natural because we're shifting. Instead of paying attention to objects, we're paying attention to the space, and that can be a little different.

So find your comfortable meditation posture. And we'll begin as we always do, sensing our contact with the ground. Letting yourself feel the ground through the seat, through your legs or feet. Let your attention be aware not only of the pressure and the contact, but also of the ground beneath you, of the place where you're sitting. Let yourself land. Land here, right now. Let yourself grow roots.

Notice the parts of your body that have some tension and see if you can bring some ease or relaxation, particularly in the shoulders, around the eyes. Let the belly soften.

And let your attention come to the breath and just feel the flow of breath. And see if you can find a place, a way of connecting with your breath that has some sense of ease in it. It might be, as we played with yesterday, sensing the whole body as you breathe. It might be letting your attention ride with the breath as it flows in, and then as it releases flowing out.

And as you feel yourself established in this place, sensing the body, feeling the movement of breath, no need to be resistant or push away thoughts as they arise. Simply allowing them to float with the breath, being breathed in and breathed out.

And begin to pay more attention on the exhale. Follow the exhale. And as you notice the exhale, let your attention follow it as it leaves through your mouth or nose or both. Follow the exhale and ride the breath right out to beyond your lips and nose, right into the space there. You begin to have a sense of your attention in this space just beyond your body. And when you inhale, you might notice that the attention comes back in, and then on the exhale, allow it to flow out again into that space. And with each exhale, perhaps allowing your sense of that space to expand, getting a little bit larger.

And after a few breaths, you might find that you can just allow your attention to rest in the space, even as you inhale, and then with the exhale allowing your attention on the space to get a little broader, a little bigger. Perhaps extending a few feet or more, beginning even to fill, if you're in a room, filling the whole room in front of you. If you're outside, letting it extend out, maybe as far as first the closest object.

Begin to explore a little what it's like to have your attention on this open, empty space. Notice if the mind struggles a little bit to land somewhere, or notice if there's some stillness or peace or just calm in the space. Don't need to make it a particular way, just explore it.

And allowing this sense of space to expand as far as it's comfortable. It can keep expanding out and out. Go through the walls, let your attention go out through the walls, beyond the walls, if there's walls in front of you, to what's beyond that. So that you allow yourself to have the space outside the building. And if you're outside, allow your attention to expand further and further. The objects are not a problem, they too are made of space. So just let your attention flow right through them. Not really attending to them in any detail, just on the space. Letting it extend maybe as far as the horizon.

You might notice that there's moments when there's just sort of a little confusion and a, or even an unease, and just notice that. Or there might be moments where you feel almost like you're falling into the space. And then giving up any effort and just come back and feel your body landed on the ground, sensing the breath.

Then begin to notice, just imagine that you could breathe out to your right side. So now imagining the exhale coming out the side of your head instead of out the nose, and letting that exhale take you into the space to the right side of you. At first it might be a little awkward, and your attention will come back in as you inhale, but then begin to allow your attention to rest, and with each exhale, allowing a little more expansion in your attention. Again, allowing yourself to sense the whole right side of where you're sitting, perhaps in the room, or out into the space if you're outside, and then going through the walls if you have walls, and beyond. Beginning to feel the vastness. This empty open vastness. You might even, if you can, sense your attention going out into the sky. The limitless sky.

And then again, dropping all effort, noticing if there's any tension that's accumulated in your body and letting that soften. Feel yourself anchored here, feel the flow of breath.

And then continue by breathing out behind you. So allowing the exhale to take your attention back behind you. And this is sometimes a little more challenging because we're not as aware of the space behind us. But I encourage you to sense it. As you do this, you'll tend to rest further back into your back body, perhaps softening some. See if you can sense the space not just behind your head but behind your back. And letting this sense grow out further. Perhaps with the exhale, or perhaps just naturally your curiosity leading you outward behind you. Let your attention go out behind you, through the room, through the walls, out into the vaster space as far as is comfortable. Perhaps it'll be out into the distant sky, perhaps just a little beyond what you know is there.

And then again relaxing, feeling your body. Noticing if there's any tension. You don't need to work hard at this.

And then letting your breath now go out to the left side, becoming aware of the space to your left. Close in first, and then in your own time, in your own way, expanding out.

And then letting that go, feeling the body landed here.

And then very gently inviting your attention to breathe out in all directions. Letting your attention get broad and open. You might notice that there's a way it moves, but it feels like it moves around, and then you might find moments where it just rests in the open space, not landing on anything in particular. Not even landing on any particular point in space. Let yourself sense the sky above you, through the roof, through the walls, the trees. Sense the space behind you. Let yourself rest into all this open space. It might feel like resting in a soft cloud. It might be a little uncomfortable or unfamiliar, and that's okay. It only needs to be as big and as broad as you choose.

Notice in this open space that the objects don't interrupt it, that the space even might seem it goes right through the objects. The objects can arise, we're having a sense of them, but they don't disturb the space, the space continues. You might notice as you rest in this space, perhaps this space continues right through your own body. That this open emptiness also includes right here. And in this open empty space there are objects. Sounds might arise. Sensations in the body will happen. Thoughts float through. Sensations of the heart and the emotions. Let them all come and go. Nothing needs to be resisted or pushed away, but allow yourself to stay resting in the space, with this open relaxed attitude of allowing. Allowing everything to come and to go. And you simply rest in this big open space.

If your attention contracts and comes back, that's okay, just begin again, opening back up to the space. And allowing yourself to rest.

Nature as Teacher: Space Element

So the first thing that I'd like to name about space, and I won't go into this in as much detail, but that space is often used, and for very good reasons, as the portal to the nature of the mind. To connecting with and understanding this mind itself. So I'll read you one quote from Longchenpa^[4] that is pointing to this. He says:

"The mind is like the sky, beyond assertion and negation. And just as in the sky the clouds take shape and then dissolve with no change to the sky, which stays forever pure, the nature of the mind is likewise always pure. It is primordially enlightened, uncreated, naturally present ultimate reality."

Longchenpa is a 12th-century teacher in Tibet, and he traveled in Tibet and Bhutan and did some of the most detailed writing and instruction around the nature of mind.

So this quality of space that allows room for everything, and this is part of what the Buddha was pointing to in the specific things of agreeable and disagreeable can come and go, and space doesn't have a preference. It doesn't, as far as we can tell certainly, space doesn't have, you know, something nice, something not nice, something difficult, something that's wholesome, unwholesome, pretty, ugly, whatever, it all comes into the space. And then when it leaves, the space is still there resting, unaffected. It's never harmed by the space.

And there's an invitation here: what is it like to have a meditation, a mind like space, where things can come in and be known and then leave again? And that natural reactivity that we get into when we're focused on the objects, giving our mind a little break from that, an alternative. It's not like we're never going to be aware of objects, but it's giving ourselves an alternative, a way of being with things where we open up. Sometimes it can be as simple as looking at something—you see someone and you're in a really difficult situation and you look at them, and then you can just broaden and look at the space around them. And all of a sudden there can be a calm, a kind of like, "Oh, this is just an arising in space. Oh, perhaps it's a disagreeable one, but the space is relaxed and open," and we can feel that in us.

This sense of space also, hopefully in the meditation you touched into it, there can be some aspect of stillness or peacefulness. We can access this like in the meditation we did, but there's a very important way we can access this regularly in our meditation, in our lives, which is watching when things fade. So we're paying attention to some object. It might be an object of our mind, something we're thinking about, or it might be the breath. Breath is a good example. Or something that's happening in our emotions or with another person. And if we stay with it, if we don't move our attention and get distracted onto the next object, if we stay with that one, there will come a time when that object of our mind, or the obsession with it, or the clinging to it—is really what I'm speaking to—the clinging to it softens. And in that fading away, there's a gap. There's a space. When I said you could feel this in the breath, we're very familiar with this, at the end of the exhale there's a little gap. At the end of an emotion there's a space. When a thought fades away, there's an opening. And all of those are pointing into this aspect of space. Into the freedom and ease that's available between the objects. There's lots and lots of space opening between objects, but we're so trained to look at the things that we don't pay attention to the space. And so this element of space is an invitation to notice all the places where there's gaps, and an invitation to notice that there's ease and freedom, even freedom from clinging, in that space.

And perhaps as I'm talking you can sense that this is very accessible if we turn our attention to it. Access to equanimity. Equanimity has this quality to it where it is allowing everything to come and go. It's not that we're indifferent or aloof or not paying attention, cut off from it, dissociated. It's the opposite. Everything can come and go, but we don't grab hold of it. And so this quality of paying attention to the space can give us access in a very visceral way to the quality of equanimity.

I think in this day and age when we live—not that other ones were different, but just naming that we have so much happening, and the ways that things are not as we would wish—and if we can open up and see that there's a much bigger container. It's like going from here, tight, small, to much bigger, open, and then whatever arises is arising in that. Whether it's the challenges of climate change, of loss in our own lives, of the social injustices that we see. It doesn't, it's very important it doesn't mean we ignore it and we don't respond, but we're giving ourselves some calm, some stability, from which then to be able to respond. If we're caught in clinging, we cannot respond with wisdom. We need to open up and give everything the room to come and go without being reactive.

I know for myself, I expand this not only into space, but when we get a very expansive sense of space, we can also start to have an expansive sense of time. And as we crunch down with things that are happening, this expanded sense of time and seeing long distance—I mean, sometimes for me it really helps to see the rocks and see the expanse geologically—and that is an access for equanimity. Not for non-responsiveness, but for equanimity, where, as the Buddha said, what's agreeable and disagreeable contacts will not invade your mind. We let things in by clinging to them. We're letting them invade our mind.

And so finding ways to not be invaded. A simple practice you can engage in is just look around at the spaces between things. You can do it right now, right as I'm talking. Look around and see what it's like to look at the space. You may have done this practice before, not an uncommon one, but it's interesting to try to remember it and notice as you look at the space. Or another way is even with your eyes open looking around, see if you can sense the space behind you. And notice what happens as you sense the space behind you. In this case you just let your eyes go soft and have sort of a sense of peripheral vision, and then sense the space behind you, and notice what happens if there's a kind of settling in the mind. So for each of us, we can find our own doorway, what allows us into this place of non-clinging.

I'll end today with a short poem.

I am beyond limits. I contain all things.
Yet you will not find me unless you look between the rose^[5] and its petals.
I am the silence between each moment,
the space the leaf leaves behind as it falls to the ground.
When the crickets chirp incessantly and the sky is jammed with stars,
between the soft brushes of warm breezes, you will find me everywhere.
Stretching out my arms, I cannot be found because I never hide.
Yet I beg of you to look for me, for it is when our eyes meet
that every dewdrop is filled with love.

So thank you all so much for being here and spending this week, and I hope you take your practice outside and play with the elements and expand that aspect of your practice if you have found this useful. And I'd like to dedicate the merit of our practice this week: may it be of benefit to each of us, and to all we come into contact, and to all beings everywhere to whom we are so intimately and inseparably connected. May all beings be free. Thank you.