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Guided Meditation: The Visible Dharma Here and Now

Good day to you all. Greetings, and nice to be here.

There is an expression from the ancient language Pali that is translated as "here and now." The literal words are diṭṭha dhamma^[1], the seen dharma. Sometimes those two words are reversed; rather than diṭṭha dhamma, it is dhamma diṭṭha, which is seeing the dharma. This points to the experiential quality of this practice. "Here and now" refers to really seeing the truth, seeing the dharma, seeing phenomena and experience directly here. Whether it's through the eyesight for those who can see, through hearing for those who can hear, through smelling, through tasting, or through the tactile sensations of the body, it's this direct contact, direct seeing, direct experiencing—that is where the dharma unfolds. That's where we see the dharma.

It's not complicated. In a sense, it's not found in books or in dharma talks; it's found in the direct perception, the direct experience that we have. We can make that direct experience unmediated by the projections we put on top of it. We see experience in its rawness, without identifying with it, being for or against it, or interpreting it in all kinds of ways. Just a raw, basic sense experience. There is something powerful about finding ourselves at peace in our direct experience.

So that's partly what we're here to do in our practice: to settle in, become centered, and grounded here in our direct experience.

To begin, take a meditative posture—a posture that supports your ability to be aware at all your sense doors, with a heightened awareness. Even though we use this language of "seeing" a lot, it is the inner mind's eye, and so we sometimes close the eyes to simplify our experience.

Take a few long, slow, deep breaths. The exhale is particularly useful for returning here to where you are. Use a long, slow, steady exhale to consciously center yourself in your body, in this place where you are.

Then, let your breathing return to normal, and continue the centering, grounding, and settling into the here and now. As you exhale, you might relax the muscles of the face, softening around the eyes. Sometimes there's a strong habit to be always looking, even when the eyes are closed—searching, wanting, fearing. Allow the eyes to soften; sometimes softening the eyes softens the wanting and the fear.

As you exhale, soften the shoulders. Let them relax. Shoulders can feel the gentle pull of gravity. Feel the weight of your shoulders.

Then softening your belly. As the belly relaxes, the whole belly area can settle down into you, so your center of gravity goes lower in your torso.

The dharma that is seen. The experience that is experienced. The sensations that are sensed. Not an interpretation, not a story. Not being involved in a prediction or fear of what will happen, not lingering with what has happened and thinking about it. See if your body and mind can be ready, moment by moment, to be fresh, almost renewed, as if there is no past. Just this moment to experience and to know the direct experience here and now, free of past and future.

Experiencing the experience of the moment. Feeling the feelings that are here. Breathing with the breathing that is happening. Sensing the experience of breathing, one breath at a time.

Staying close to the experiences that are direct and immediate. The experiences that are intimate with your five senses, and with the present moment unfolding of your inner life and mind. The river of life that is seen in the present moment.

Then as we come to the end of the sitting, turn your inner eyesight onto the world around you: people in your home, or in your neighborhood, your communities, friends, family, strangers, and the people that you're aware of through the news or other means. They become the dharma that is seen, the seen dharma.

Gaze upon others with soft, kind, and easeful eyes. Gaze upon others without fear or anxiety, without desires or aversion, so that some of the best qualities of your heart have space to come forth and meet those people as you consider them.

May it be that this practice we've done together benefits the lives of people we encounter this week. May the practice of mindfulness help the best qualities—friendliness, kindness, love, compassion, respect—flow out of us in our connection with other people.

May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be safe. May all beings be free. And thereby, may all beings also be filled with happiness.

May we delight in the shared happiness that we might experience as a result. May all beings be free.

Thank you.

Announcements

Before I begin with the dharma talk, a few announcements. When we finish this talk at 10:30 or so, those of you who like will switch over to a Zoom meeting. It's going to be a community meeting for IMC, and everyone, of course, is welcome. The topic is the reopening of IMC—being able to come here in person and practice together. Of course, that has some effect on the people who are far away, who are participating through YouTube or Zoom. But the topic mostly is about beginning to open here in August. We will take questions, hear about concerns people have, discuss some of the plans we have for that, and cover anything else.

The Zoom link is in a few places: it's on the IMC calendar (I think you have to cut and paste it from there), and it's also on the "What's New" page on the home page of IMC. If you can't just click on it, you might have to copy and paste the Zoom link. If you need to use a password to get in, the password is mettā^[2] (m-e-t-t-a). It's a Pali word for loving-kindness. I'm going to put it here in the chat now, and it will be at the end of the chat when we finish today as well, just so it's easy to find.

The other announcement is that in a couple of weeks, maybe three weeks, this very innovative and creative dharma teacher named Gregory Kramer will be teaching for us on Zoom. It will be a creative way of having a weekend retreat where there's a lot of time for practicing in daily life. Gregory is very focused on relational practice—how we practice in our lives in relationship to each other. He has a wonderful new book on the Whole Life Path, which is taking the Eightfold Path^[3] and applying it to our whole life, not just meditation or some segment of our life. He is going to present on that in a creative way and support you through a weekend of practice and reflection. Information about that is also in the "What's New" section on IMC's homepage and on the calendar. You have to register for it. Part of the creativity is that in the times during the weekend when you're not actually on Zoom, he's going to periodically send people text messages with some dharma teaching or practice to keep us practicing and engaged outside of the Zoom session itself.

Opening the Dharma Eye

As many of you know, Vipassana^[4] is the ancient Pali word used for our meditation practice. Sometimes we say we do Vipassana practice. What I want to highlight is that the root of the word, passana, means "to see," and vi is an emphatic prefix. It means to see in some special or important way. So, some of us like to translate it as "clear seeing." It is also often translated as "insight"—Insight Meditation—and it has the word "sight" or "seeing" in it.

This ability to see is not only about physical seeing (some people can't see), but it's the ability to perceive through any of the senses or to see through the mind's eye. The wisdom eye, or the dharma eye, is the place in the mind where we are really present for what's happening, and there's a wisdom about it. There's a penetrating understanding about what is happening here. In fact, as we mature in the dharma, the experience of a real penetration of what's happening in our lives is called "opening the dharma eye."

When we open the dharma eye, we see the dharma. The dharma which is visible here and now is clearly seen. Sometimes it is described that with the dharma eye open, there is knowledge and vision. For those of you who know a little bit about Hinduism or the yoga traditions, the Sanskrit word for vision is darśana^[5] (darshan), which is a very powerful word. Darshan is often used for sitting in the presence of a guru, where the guru is in sight; seeing the teacher is very powerful. Here in this tradition, seeing the truth, seeing the experience directly, is very powerful. This knowledge and vision is emphasized over and over again in this tradition.

Imagine that you leave town on a hike. You leave the metropolitan city you're living in, and there's a mountain on the edges of it. You go for a nice long hike up into the mountains, higher and higher. If you don't like to hike, maybe there's a gondola that carries you up to the heights. You get close to the top, and there's a tunnel, or a set of big double doors. You open these double doors and step forward onto a wide ledge on the other side of the mountain.

There on that ledge is a vast panorama of mountain after mountain, mountain ranges, rivers, forests, and birds flying—eagles and hawks flying around. You are high up in the mountains, under a vast sky that is so clear, broad, and wide. It can take your breath away, it's so beautiful. Maybe in a healthy, wonderful way, you feel very small, or you feel like you're part of this amazing natural world that we live in. You're on this ledge looking out at it, and there is just a sense of awe.

But it isn't that you want anything. You're not leaning forward trying to grasp it—"I want that mountain, and that mountain." It isn't that you're identifying yourself with the scenery, the rivers, and the forests, saying, "Well, that's mine," or "That's how I want to be." The sense of self and self-concern drops away in a way that, back in the city, all kinds of social concerns were operating. Here on this ledge, looking out at this amazing scene, self-concern drops away. It is a kind of self-forgetting.

We look across the scene, and some of what we see seems dangerous. On some of the mountaintops in the distance, there's a storm brewing and there's snow, and you're glad you're not there because it looks like it could be quite dangerous. But it's far away. Or you see these rushing rivers, and of course, it's pastoral and wonderful from a distance, but you know if you were to come across that river it would be treacherous to cross it. You can see that some of the paths on the side of the cliff going down to the valley below are thin, treacherous little paths. It would be dangerous to walk down there, but you're not going down there, so the danger has no fear for you. The beauty, the pastoral nature of it, the peacefulness of the setting, the danger that's there—standing on a ledge and looking out, just taking it all in in a peaceful, open, comfortable way. Feeling secure on the ledge, not being for or against anything, just at ease, taking it all in.

Then you turn around to go back. When you turn around, you find out that you're actually on another ledge that's facing the city. You look down at the city, and some of it is quite inspiring and beautiful, with tall buildings, and some of it clearly is treacherous and dangerous. There is smog and fires in places. There are clearly poor places where people are in squalor, and places of excessive wealth. Beyond the edges of the city, there are vast green plains, grasslands, and beyond that, other mountains and oceans and rivers. The city is just part of this wider big circle, and you see it all. You're high on this ledge, and again, right now there's no inclination to be judging it, to be for or against it. It all just seems to be in the context of the vastness of the natural unfolding of this universe, and you are sitting on the ledge just watching it. Even though you will go back down to it, defining yourself by it or being caught by desires doesn't exist right now. You just take in this wide field, and there's a stillness and a quiet within you as you gaze out upon the scene.

Maybe this analogy points to the ability to gaze out from the ledge of your eyes. That is your mountaintop on your head, and the ledge is the bottom rim of your eye socket, and you're looking out. How do you look when you look out into the world? Do you look with an agenda? Does your looking serve as the servant of your fear and anxiety, darting around, looking for how to make yourself safe? Is your looking a servant of your desires, looking at what you can get next? I think some of us sometimes get pulled into web surfing, and the eyes are looking, getting, and going to the next thing. They're busy. They're not at rest and at ease, just looking at the scene. Or is the seeing in the service of what's wrong—the aversion we have? Or is it like settling on that ledge in the mountains, looking out on a scene that we don't have to identify with? We don't have to judge, we don't have to have any agendas with it. We just gaze peacefully with calm eyes, relaxed eyes, soft eyes, taking it all in.

When I first went to practice in Thailand, I practiced in a small monastery outside of Bangkok. There was a monk there who was explained to be an extremely mature practitioner and a deep meditator. In fact, I was told that he had attained something called nirodha-samāpatti^[6]—that he could sit in a state of suspended animation, a certain kind of cessation, unmoving for seven days. He could just drop into this deep state. I don't know if he could actually do that, but that's what I was told. I met him and talked to him, and the thing that was so remarkable was looking into his eyes. It wasn't that his eyes were physically deeply receded, but there was something about looking in his eyes that felt like looking into amazing depths. It was kind of like being on that ledge in the mountains looking out at this huge natural scene, or looking out at the night sky and it's just so deep and vast. There was something about looking at his eyes that I thought, "Wow, this man is deep." There was depth or spaciousness there.

Some of it was that his eyes were not darting around. His eyes were at rest and at ease. It wasn't like he was staring at me, but he wasn't not looking at me either. His eyes were not bulging out, his eyes were not pulling back. He was just there. There was a feeling inside me that this man's mind was not agitated; it was at ease, and in that ease, he was just looking. One way it is talked about sometimes in Theravada Buddhism^[7] is that all the lights were on, he was fully conscious and awake. It was like a house where all the lights were on, but no one was home. Everything was firing, everything was clearly there, but there was no place of self, no center. He was holding onto no contraction around self—"me, myself, and mine." It was this vast emptiness that he experienced.

To see, and to be able to see and become free, is a phenomenal thing. As we practice, we start seeing, understanding, and feeling that the way we see is sticky. Things stick onto the seeing, and we don't just see clearly. We see with desire, we see with fear, we see with judgment. We see with interpretations, we see with bias. We see with bias about who we are, with projections and ideas and identities: "I'm this way, I'm not that way, I have to do this, I'm supposed to do that." All these ideas are sticky, and they stick onto the eyesight or the perception that we have. Sometimes it's really clear that they're agitating. With an agenda, the mind or the perception is darting around and moving and wanting. But when there is no sticky stuff, then there is just seeing.

It's kind of like when the smog clears, or the fog clears, and after a long time of not seeing it, we see how clear the air is, and we see the mountains in the distance. It isn't so much that we're seeing a thing, but we see the absence of smog; we see the clarity. Is clarity a thing? It's not exactly a thing, but the clarity is there. The same thing can happen with the mind. The mind can become clear. There's no self-preoccupation, self-assertion, self-criticism, or self-belittling. We don't have to apologize. The self is not in the seeing and the perception.

The same thing happens when we turn inward. We stand on the ledge of the eyes and we look inside, and we see all kinds of things in there as we go along in practice. Sometimes it's said that self-knowledge is seldom good news, because some of what we see is our bias, projections, fears, interpretations, shortcomings, and all kinds of things operating in there. That can be a source of agitation. That can be fuel for continued identification: "I'm a bad person," "I'm wrong because I'm doing this," or "I'm an embarrassment to the Buddhist world because I had an attachment."

But what if we are able to sit on the metaphoric ledge of our eyesight and look back into ourselves just like we would look out into the natural world—with this unmoving mind, with peaceful eyesight? Not darting around, not wanting, not interpreting, just looking. Of course, some of the things that you might see are maybe not your best qualities, but maybe you don't have to identify with them or do anything with them. In fact, if you do nothing—just see it—maybe something inside will be slightly amused or slightly liberated: "Oh, it's just a natural phenomenon." We're just seeing what's there.

This ability to see with an unmoving mind—a mind that's at peace and at rest, that clearly sees but isn't darting around, not straining, not trying to understand, not searching, no stickiness of "me, myself, and mine," no self in the seeing—is just seeing. There's something about the eyesight (and maybe hearing as well) where the seeing itself doesn't add so much. At some point, we can see all the stuff that we add—the judgments, the interpretations, and the desires. We see those as extra. But we see with this quiet, still, soft, easy eyesight.

The dharma eye that is opened, that the Buddha talked about, happens when there is clear, undisturbed seeing. When the mind, the heart, and the inner eye are not agitated, they are at peace. We can just quietly gaze out on the world, quietly gaze on what's inside, to see the direct experience as things are. We start seeing how things arise and disappear, how they come and go, how experiences are transient and flux and change.

There's something about seeing in this still, peaceful, clear seeing how things are in flux and changing that frees us from the identifications, the attachments, the stickiness of all these ideas, desires, and feelings that go along with seeing. There's an allowing of the flow, the stream of experiences, to happen through, and to appreciate how everything is just coming and going. In allowing things to come and go, there is also this freedom from attachments, from clinging. There is also this clarity and simplicity of clear seeing, of just being at rest and at ease on a ledge overlooking a vast natural world.

On a ledge looking at the vast natural world that includes all the things that humans create and are part of. Maybe be inspired, maybe be free, maybe have compassion, maybe have heartbreak at some of the things we see. But there's only seeing. Or to say it a little bit more accurately: there is clear seeing without the self caught up in the seeing. That clear seeing makes room and space for the heart, for all other things to operate in a kind of natural way.

So, literally, you might be mindful of your eyes and seeing. Notice how you use your physical eyes. How often do you strain? How often are they darting around? How often are they at rest? How often are they just gazing quietly and peacefully, like you're sitting on the bank of a river watching the river go down, or looking at the sky at the clouds floating—just very relaxed, open, and peaceful? And how much are they agitated in the service of desires, fears, and aversions?

More deeply in the mind, is there stuff your mind does that is sticky, that sticks itself onto your sight, making your sight not so clear? What experience have you had of clear seeing? Can this idea of an unmoving mind, unmoving eyes that just see without getting agitated by anything, be a reference point for you to understand and gaze upon the inner world? To see how we do get caught and how we do get sticky? And then, in all these complicated ways that you see when you look inward, can you discover how to look upon it with an unagitated mind, with unagitated sight? It's all nature. It's all natural phenomena coming and going.

We can switch the paradigm of how we see. We switch from seeing through the lens of "me, myself, and mine" and identity, to the other paradigm where we just see it as nature, as natural phenomena coming and going. Certainly, we respond to and take care of things when it's appropriate, but without this huge, heavy filter of self. Gazing upon the world inward and outward with eyes that are cool, not feverish. Eyes that are peaceful, not agitated. Eyes that are caring, and not hostile.

May your dharma eye open. Thank you.