Guided Meditation: When Stopping Means Peace; Dharmette: Tastes of Freedom (4 of 5) Nirodha – the Peace of Stopping

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: When Stopping Means Peace; Tastes of Freedom (4 of 5) Nirodha - Peace of Stopping. 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 15, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: When Stopping Means Peace

Greetings, fellow practitioners. Good to be here with you. I asked the tech team to put up in the chat that I do offer practice discussions, and if you're interested, you can contact me about that. I also wanted to thank you for your comments, which have been very helpful.

Today we will gently lean into the factor of nirodha^[1], which is usually translated as cessation. When we're about to become an arahant^[2], nirodha means that we have completely stopped greed, hate, and delusion. But as I've been trying to demonstrate this week, it's really possible to take on these very advanced practices as beginners, because there's a whole spectrum of ways in which we can do it.

Yesterday we explored gently letting unwholesome tendencies fade away. That was viraga^[3]. And then Tuesday we explored protecting our minds by a cozy seclusion from distractions while meditating. So today we'll experiment with stopping.

I think it's important to remember that we're not glued to our unwholesome courses. It's really good to know that as long as I'm mindful, I'm going to be okay. Because then we can be present with full awareness in the moment, and we see when something unwholesome starts to arise, and we can say, "No, it's done enough."

So the work for the meditation this morning is not work; it should be more like tasting. We'll try to savor those moments, whether they're just very brief glimpses, or they last for a few seconds, or maybe if you're really advanced, a few minutes. When the mind is quiet and undistracted, steady, and we're just here with our lived experience in this moment.

With that as an introduction, the invitation is to assume your meditation posture. Since we're on the theme of stopping today, I'm going to make a suggestion. You don't at all have to follow it, and it can be difficult for some people, but see if you can get through this whole half hour of meditation without moving once you've decided on the posture that you want to meditate in.

It's fine now to take a few moments to see which way is up and see which way is down. And in the way that's down, get in touch with the center of the earth, which is holding onto us really nicely. And then, as the meditation evolves, we'll do our best to let go of thinking—stopping thinking. And when we manage to do that for just an instant, we can celebrate. It's fine if you feel joyful if you have a moment of peace.

So closing the eyes and visualizing your posture, so that the main centers of the body are in good alignment. The hara, otherwise known as the dan tien^[4], the belly, as the foundational center. And then the heart chakra resting vertically above that, and in balance with the belly and the heart center, the head center.

Take a long, deep inhale followed by a long, peaceful exhale, noticing the transition spaces.

And again, it's always nice for me anyway, in my meditations I like to begin with at least a brief minute of metta^[5] meditation, to sort of create an atmosphere which has the flavor of kindness. Because I know how important it is to be kind to myself, to not be judgmental, like thinking I'm not a good meditator, or even worse, that I don't even have the right to attempt anything like awakening.

Give yourself a moment to see if you can be aware of the whole body altogether breathing, and at the same time shower this precious body and mind, which is all we've got right now, with love and kindness and acceptance. We don't have to be any different than who we are to be on this path.

May the heart be open and may we have the wisdom to greet each moment with friendliness. Not needing to turn away from anything or judge anything. Knowing that it really is okay to be who we are with all our foibles, because we're human.

So with our best friend sati^[6]—mindfulness, awareness—as our protector, we make sure that she is right in front of us, meaning that she is our highest priority. I kind of like that in Pali, sati is feminine; she's a great ally. So do your very best for the rest of this meditation period to keep her established within you.

Mindfulness of the body. This body.

Mindful of breathing. Connecting with the whole cycle of the breath.

Mindful of vedana^[7], the feeling tone of our present moment experience. Whether it's a pleasant experience, or an unpleasant one, or we're not sure which it is.

And when we've connected to the feeling tone of our lived experience, we invite rasa, which is the Pali and Sanskrit word for taste. We taste those feeling tones. We taste our lived experience. And with our awareness of tasting, we have some insight into our state of mind.

Now we invite sati, our awareness, to be aware of our mind state. Both the mind in this moment, just knowing it. We don't have to change it or fix it, but it is very helpful to be aware of it. Mindfulness of the mind.

And now that we have put in place the first three of the satipatthana^[8]—awareness of the body, awareness of feelings, awareness of mind state—we can now invite our awareness to include dhammas^[9]. That is our mental objects, for example, the five hindrances. If that's meaningful for you, you can do a little checklist, see if any of those are present, or the seven factors of awakening, etc.

One way of evoking satipatthana of mind objects that we could do this week is to consider viveka^[10], seclusion from distractions. How's that going?

We could investigate the mind object of viraga, dispassion, fading away. How are we doing with viraga, letting unwholesome qualities just fade away?

And then nirodha, cessation. Stopping our tendencies to want to be anywhere else except in this moment. Keep practicing like this. And if these instructions sound like Greek to you, don't bother with them, just do your practice the way you usually do it. That's fine.

And if the mind should jump onto a train, or a pleasure boat, or an unpleasant adventure, this is the time to say "time out." Just take a pause from those distracting thoughts. The beauty and the fullness of the breath, the gratitude for being alive, that's plenty.

And in the last few minutes of this meditation, let's take our state of mind, our loving heart, any kind of peace we may have garnered from not indulging thoughts, and offer that peace by radiating it out. Just imagine yourself as a candle, and you're able to radiate in all directions. In front, to the right, to the back, to the left, above and below. The sphere of peacefulness rippling outwards from your heart into the universe.

Now at the end of our practice, let's share the benefits of this beautiful path with all beings everywhere. May all beings be safe from harm. May all beings be easy and contented. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

Thank you for your practice.

Dharmette: Tastes of Freedom (4 of 5) Nirodha – the Peace of Stopping

Greetings everyone, I'm delighted to be here with you to share the Dharma and to feel the vibes that are coming my way from your practice. I asked the tech team to put an announcement up in the chat that if you're interested, I do offer practice discussions, and you can contact me about that if you like.

I'd like to begin by correcting something that I said yesterday in the Q&A in response to a beautiful question about how one recovers from trauma. I spoke about my own experience from the trauma of being physically and psychologically violently abused when I was a child. The path that I went on included lots and lots of psychotherapy and help, including analyzing my dreams. And then there was a lot of support, especially from Suzuki Roshi^[11] and the community of practitioners at the Zen Monastery in Tassajara, where I cried every single zazen period. I didn't make any noise, but the tears were just streaming. This was a kind of purification that I had to go through, and everyone was very sweet, accommodating, and compassionate towards me. That was really helpful.

In my case, since it had to do with my parents, forgiveness became a big deal in letting go of trauma. I think when I identified as a trauma victim, I was still bitter. When I moved to being a trauma survivor, through the practice of forgiveness and understanding the ancestral dimension of what we inherit, I was able to deeply forgive my parents, knowing that they did the best they could. In a practice discussion, one teacher helped me by suggesting that I just drop any identification with PTSD and being a survivor—that it was not necessary for my identity. That was really helpful at that point in my practice.

I also mentioned that not all trauma comes from family history, as it was in my case. I have a dear, beloved Dharma buddy named Francisco, who has become a marvelous teacher, who has shared a lot with me about the trauma he went through in a devastating car accident where he was just smashed to smithereens. In the Q&A, I kind of tried to guess what his process might have been like, but I regret having said that because I didn't hear it from his own lips. I'd rather let him tell you, if you're interested, than inventing what I think he might have been through. So forgive me for that.

By request in the chat yesterday for the list of the Pali words for what we're exploring this week, I'll talk about that today. I need to give you a disclaimer that this is not a canonical list from the early Buddhist texts. It's one I put together for the purpose of teaching this week, and in addition, I add some of my own efforts at translating the terms into English.

Monday was rasa. In both Pali and Sanskrit, the root literally means to taste. More figuratively, it's the flavor of our experience, or the savor. A really interesting development in where we can go with tasting is the second meaning of rasa, which is essence. Like in perfumes, it's sometimes the essence of such and such. But that essence also means essential function. So in a way, we're tasting our essential function as humans, our experience, our ability to be sentient beings. How does that taste? So that was Monday.

Tuesday was viveka, which literally means separated. It's usually translated as seclusion, but I think a preferable translation would be independence. It also can mean solitude, detachment, or disengagement. Interestingly, another meaning in Pali goes farther than that and takes viveka to also mean discrimination, understanding, and true knowledge. The Sanskrit root is very interesting too. The Pali root literally means separated, but the Sanskrit means to sift, sort of like we're sifting grain. So the idea is having a clear sense of separation from the unwholesome. According to the commentaries, it often applies to seclusion from the hindrances. A lot of times you may see that once a monastic was secluded from the hindrances, at that point, they could go deeper in meditation. But I've taken the liberty of broadening that idea of seclusion in the context of our meditation to seclusion from distractions. It's really very powerful to be able to leave our distractions on the shoe rack outside the door and to stay present.

Yesterday we evoked viraga, which in Pali literally means away from desire. The fading of desire, dispassion towards something, detachment, or indifference. But the word raga in Pali also means color, hue, or a dye for dyeing cloth. It might evoke the image of a bloodstain on a pure white cloth that fades away by washing it and hanging it up in the sunlight. We can take the stain to be a metaphor for the impurities of our mind, and the white cloth to be a metaphor for the innate purity of our mind, which we all have but which we may not be experts at accessing. It's the treasure inside of us that all this work of meditation and mindfulness practice aims to reveal. It's a beautiful image, especially since viraga, fading away, happens naturally. Wash it and let it dry in the sun. Healing through sunlight. In Pali, it also goes farther than dispassion to also mean leaving aside infatuation, lust, or passion. Like I said, there's often a whole spectrum of meanings for these dhammas.

Today, and I see that the clock is ticking, the theme is nirodha, which literally means without obstruction, and is usually translated as cessation. The ending or termination, finishing off. Both the Pali and the Sanskrit roots are the same; it comes from the root rudh, meaning obstruction. The commentary says it also means release from imprisonment or confinement, being locked up. In the Chinese Agamas^[12], translating the Pali texts into Chinese, the character given to represent nirodha is "stop" and "see" together. That's the value of stopping. If we can stop long enough, we can see what our foibles are, we can see what our temptations are. And with that, we have the freedom to make a choice whether we want to go that way, or maybe we want to just be peaceful. We stop long enough to be able to see what's happening with the clarity of an open, quiet, and steady mind.

Tomorrow we will look at vossagga^[13], meaning relinquishment. The homework for today, if you're so inclined, is to stop from time to time to observe the mind, and to see if there are any obstructions you need to remove from your path of practice so that you can continue on your wholesome journey to end suffering.

Thank you. A last announcement is that I learned just today that a revolution is happening in the Theravada Forest Tradition. It used to be called the Thai Forest Tradition, but now there's a kind of official new breakthrough. I remember when I first moved back to California after living 40 years in France. It was a full moon night, and the first thing I did was drive up to Abhayagiri^[14] to meditate with the monks all night long in the moonlight. The next day, I had an opportunity to ask Ajahn Pasanno^[15] a question. I asked him, "What's the problem with bhikkhuni^[16] ordination? Why don't you monks here support that?" It was kind of indelicate on my part, which is kind of who I am, you know, stepping in the puddles.

But he really got it, and he replied beautifully, saying that the hierarchy of the lineage in Thailand is old guys, and they're unlikely to change. It will require that gradually they'll die, and they'll be replaced by more moderate officials in the Thai Forest Tradition. So what's happening is that Ajahn Pasanno has sort of been able to put in motion this revolution. Specifically, what that means is that there's going to be a monastery in the Seattle area gathering around Ajahn Nisabho^[17] and Ajahn Kovilo^[18], and yes, including bhikkhunis Ayya Santussika^[19] and Ayya Jitananda. I'm getting goosebumps telling you about it! I have so much more data, and in the chat, there's the link. Excuse me for going over time. If you're interested in joining the Q&A and you're watching from YouTube, you're welcome to transition over to the Zoom. Thank you so much.

Q&A

Host: Okay, thank you Meg. If anyone has any questions or comments, you can either put them in chat or you can raise your hand in Zoom. While we're waiting for people to collect their thoughts, there was a question on YouTube yesterday. The person asked if you could touch on how to be in a contemplative mind skillfully without leaning into a ruminating inclination. I don't know if you want to touch on that, Meg?

Meg Gawler: I tried to touch on that at the end of our discussion yesterday in the Q&A. I think it's recorded, it's up there. But anyway, if not, I'll do it tomorrow. Okay, I'm going to switch to gallery view. Oh, these beautiful faces.

Marilyn: Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia. I'm so happy about what you just said, so I just want to thank you for sharing that and bringing in all that other stuff. My other comment was just to say that I did really appreciate your sharing about how we transform our suffering. I had an insight yesterday when you were talking about how the compassion for your parents comes in, and how I have a similar experience, and I've never understood it before. I used to feel so much pain, but now when I sort of think about that suffering, I'm overwhelmed by compassion for the people who hurt me. I've never understood it. I'll be trying to explain it to people and I'm like, "I don't know what's happening to me now."

Meg Gawler: Thank you so much for sharing that, Marilyn. I'm crying. I actually was on a retreat with Gil^[20] in May at IRC, my first residential retreat in three and a half years, and boy was it wonderful to have that seclusion. That sort of came to my mind because at one point Gil was doing a guided meditation, and he asked us to go into the place in our body where we identify as the self, where we reside. For me, it was just right away the heart center, and I started crying.

It's amazing because at Tassajara, when I was 21, I was crying out of pain—just raw pain—and that's a purification process that I had to go through. This time at IRC, I was crying with compassion for my poor parents who must have had an even more difficult childhood than I did. So that transition from raw pain to compassion, I know exactly what you're talking about because I just went through it myself. It's really amazing when it happens, and I think that's also part of the purification process. It's kind of like growing up into compassion from being angry.

Marilyn: Yeah. Okay, well again, I'm so moved and I will just be metabolizing this week. Thank you again.

Meg Gawler: Sure, thank you for sharing. I guess we can also take this opportunity to thank our wonderful editor team that we've got. They've kind of been stepping in this week. There's Dimitra, Job, Julie, and Kevin H. Julie's been helping to post some of the announcements in chats, and everyone else has been pitching in to help out with the audio editing for our guest teachers and the video editing for the YouTube videos. Thank you, you guys are really a crack team. You're pretty savvy about all this stuff, and I'm very grateful to you for what you've taught me about teaching on Zoom. So thank you.

Host: While we're waiting to see if anyone has any other comments, I don't know if this will help anybody, but I actually liked that you mentioned Francisco. I had the chance to talk to him once when we were doing a Zoom livestream and we were talking about back pain. I asked him, "Well, how did you get over yours? It sounds like a hundred times worse than what I go through." And he just simply said, "Oh, I just meditated." So that was really cool to hear.

Meg Gawler: Sure, it sounds simple. That's sort of what I read into it. What I guessed yesterday was probably accurate, but still, I didn't want to just leave it at that. Yeah, he just went deep, deep, deep into his meditation. I think that's pretty safe to say.

Host: Okay. Hey Bill, you got the floor.

Bill: Thank you. Once in my entire Buddhist career, my mind got so still for an extended period of time—what, six and a half hours—that my back pain completely disappeared. Not a trace of it. Only once, but now I know what's possible at least. But what I really raised my hand to say is hearing people talk about their imperfect upbringings and their imperfect parents, it's such a common story. Certainly true for me. I had a little bit to overcome, like 20 years of depression. Very common, I hear it from other people often enough. My reaction to that is just to look around me as I go through the world and if I see people unhappy, realize what a common thing this is. Just feeling compassion for it makes it easier. Understanding this makes it easier for me to feel compassion for other people who may be acting up or are not doing well in one way or another, and for their parents and their parents, and the whole society in a way. Being happy and relating well to other people seems so simple. Just let go, man, just let go. But in practice, that does seem to be hard, doesn't it? Anyway, I just wanted to mention this way of relating to the world a little bit better because of an understanding of what people have gone through.

Meg Gawler: Thank you so much for sharing that, dear Bill. I remember, I started practicing with a wonderful Zen master at the age of 21. Well, I'm 76, that looks like 55 years of practice, but I'm just kind of starting out in a way. It's true, and I can remember over the years thinking, almost every retreat I would go on I would be so frustrated with myself, because I know that I don't want to go down the river on that pleasure boat of thinking or planning or whatever, and yet it keeps coming back. And I just think, Meg, you know, for some of us it takes a really long time.

Bill: Well, I've only been doing this 21, 22 years, so that's a 48 or 49 really late start. So there's hope for me, huh?

Meg Gawler: The Buddha, you know, he said there was hope for everybody. I mean, he gave Angulimala^[21] ordination.

Bill: Yes, we wish.

Meg Gawler: For those of you who are not familiar, he was this mass murderer at the time of the Buddha who wore a necklace of 999 fingers because his goal, which was imposed upon him by his own spiritual teacher, was to kill a thousand people in order to become enlightened. He only had one person to go, and it was going to be the Buddha. And instead of him being able to kill the Buddha the way he was able to overpower everybody else he ever came across, the Buddha got the best of him and then showered him with compassion and ordained him as his own disciple. If Angulimala can do it—and he did become an arahant in his lifetime—being that evil, we haven't killed 999 people. So there's hope for all of us.

Host: Thank you. Leila, you got your hand raised.

Leila: Hi. I'm curious about the vedanas, because I find neutral to be such a powerful state, and I just wonder is it similar to nirodha? It's like a cessation. I'm just curious, but I think neutral is under-supported or underrated.

Meg Gawler: And what's the rest of your mind like when you're in a neutral feeling tone?

Leila: Well, the whole state feels like a kind of relief. It reminds me of Thich Nhat Hanh's celebration of "I don't have a toothache." It's nice, but I celebrate neutral and I think that's a great contribution to our discussion.

Meg Gawler: Because, I may be wrong, but I don't remember reading anything like this in the canonical texts that neutral vedana was a good thing. In the commentarial tradition, it's usually strongly associated with delusion. I think that you're absolutely right, if in your case it feels like a relief and you're not just escaping from going after pleasure or going away from pain, and you just don't know which one. I think that's a very positive way, an instructive way that you've found for yourself to appreciate when you have neither pleasure nor pain. Congratulations, that's like becoming your own teacher, you know?

Leila: Well, I know because I work with trauma with myself and with people, and the trauma is really big. Sometimes resourcing to access anything that might feel like pleasure just feels inaccessible. But to move from an overwhelmed trauma state to neutral is a doable movement.

Meg Gawler: Yeah.

Leila: That actually offers something other than the vortex. It's a door opener.

Meg Gawler: It's a door opener for you, and it's a valid door opener for you. And so this is something that we need to take from the Buddha's example also. It wasn't one teaching for everybody. It was a different teaching for each disciple and for each situation with that disciple. In fact, at some point, it's really up to each of us to have the wisdom, the discernment to be able to wisely know that this is a good thing, this is wholesome. That's kind of what we were talking about yesterday with viraga, letting our unwholesome tendencies just quietly fade away. It sounds like your feeling tones of desire and aversion just sort of faded away and you were left with a nice open door.

Leila: It's almost a gateway to equanimity.

Meg Gawler: Exactly, exactly. Perfect. Well, thank you. Thank you for asking that. Thank you for bringing that to the discussion.

Host: Okay, I think we don't have any other comments or questions in chat. So thank you for teaching today, Meg. And as we sign off today, if anyone wants to come off mute and say goodbye or well wishes, please feel free to do so.

Participant: Thank you, Meg, and thank you all the tech folks. Really indebted to you.

Meg Gawler: Yes, thank you.

Participant: Thank you. See you tomorrow.

Meg Gawler: Yeah, my pleasure.

Participant: Yes, thank you for that opportunity to converse.

Meg Gawler: Nice. I appreciate it too. Bye y'all.