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Guided Meditation: Being Grounded

Good morning, everyone. And as I say every day, maybe it's not morning where you are, so just a warm welcome and greetings.

Okay, so today is the last day of my stories of Mara—these letters that Mara is sending to the leaders of his army. But of course, we're going to begin with a guided meditation today.

Feeling this transition to a sitting practice, taking a few moments to find a comfortable posture, and taking your time to notice how you're sitting. Feel your way: what does it feel like to be sitting right now? Do that in such a way that your awareness is light, open, and spacious. Adjust your posture in any way that feels like it would be helpful.

With the awareness being light, just noticing that sometimes we have a tendency to want to really hold on to whatever the object is that we're noticing. Can we just be soft and gentle? Still connected, but with some ease, some spaciousness.

And we're just sitting here. In this moment, you don't have to be anything for anybody. You don't have to be any particular way. We're just sitting here.

Allowing yourself to arrive, to land in this moment, taking your seat, whether that's a literal or figurative seat.

Noticing if there's this really subtle pressure—we might say that there's a right way to do this, and you have to get it right. See if you can let go of any nuance or subtle idea like that, if it's there. And instead, just tune into how things are at this moment.

Is there a way you can allow what's here? Maybe receiving or allowing that chair, cushion, mat, seat, bench, or couch—whatever it is—allowing that to receive the weight of the body while also maintaining uprightness.

This can be a subtle shift. The movement of the pressure against the body as it's in contact with the seating support. Allowing the weight of the body to be received by whatever it is in contact with, while having this uprightness.

Just noticing and allowing any patterns of tension that may be in your body. Sometimes when we notice tension, there's this plethora of thoughts to get rid of it, thinking it needs to be different. Can we just allow both that thought pattern and any tension in the body, just for now? Can we let it be how it is?

And then naturally noticing the body breathing, the experience of breathing. Noticing with the quality of kindness and allowing however the breath is. Can we just notice?

What would it be like to just abide with the flowing sensations of breathing, without anything to do? We're just abiding, noticing, allowing.

Being sensitive to any notions that it has to be different, that it should be different. Can we soften those notions as best we can? As best we can.

Noticing that we're lost in thought, just very simply, gently begin again at the sensations of breathing. Or begin again with the sensations in the whole body, the bodily experience.

With the attitude of kindness and allowing, yet with a commitment to this meditation practice for this session. Softness and allowing aren't the same as casual or half-hearted.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Mara's Tenth Army

Good day. Hello. Joining us on the fifth and the last day of this series that I'm doing on these letters from Mara to the leaders of his ten armies.

Mara^[1], as many of you know, is this character that we find in the Buddhist teachings. I'm not concerning myself with exactly what Mara is or how he works. I'm just inspired, maybe, by some of the things that are getting pointed out in these letters from Mara to his armies. They are often topics that we don't talk about so much in Buddhist teachings and Dharma talks, and yet these things that are personified as Mara are things that get in the way—things that might hinder us or obstruct us in our ways towards freedom.

And to be sure, these letters from Mara are nowhere in the Pali Canon^[2]. These were written by Ajahn Punnadhammo^[3] in the Arrow River Forest Hermitage up in Northern Ontario. In the Pali Canon, we do find just a mention that Mara has these ten armies. And then he, who's in the Ajahn Chah^[4] lineage, kind of set these letters in contemporary times. I think they are delightful and a little bit cutting, just in the way that they're pointing to this human experience in a way that feels a little bit uncomfortable sometimes.

I've been excerpting portions of these letters, and I will especially be doing that for this last one today. It is a long letter and has a number of different subcategories to it, but I'll just be pointing to one. The part that's being pointed to today in this letter from Mara is the Tenth Army, which often gets translated as self-praise and denigration of others. I'll just be looking at a little portion of that.

So here's this letter excerpt that's written by Ajahn Punnadhammo:

To my bold and powerful Tenth Army, greetings. Your task is crucial, yet fortunately for us, it is also easy. Generally, humans have a most unreasonable attitude of taking themselves quite seriously. They seem quite unable to mentally disengage from the ego perspective. Let them think of themselves as truly wonderful and righteous; fill them up with pride. This is the task of you, the first division of the Tenth Army. Self-praise fuels all the defilements^[5]. It is a masterwork of delusion. Humans look into the mirror with rose-colored glasses. They become quite unable to see their own faults and bristle with indignation whenever these are pointed out to them. And self-praise, of course, also fuels attachment and sensuality. After all, doesn't someone as wonderful as me deserve a little fun?

Self-praise also fires up anger—the fierce anger of the self-righteous who knows their views and opinions are correct and everyone else is an idiot. It's so amusing to watch two humans' egos clash.

The forces of the Tenth Army have a special role to play in these difficult cases where an individual shows signs of spiritual progress. If they begin to free themselves of the coarser snares of my other armies, we can often use their own victories against them by encouraging a spiritual pride and arrogance. Whisper in their ear about what wonderful spiritual beings they are: "Look at me, the great holy person." This is a trap that has caught many fish.

However, you should be aware that there is also a large number of humans that have a very negative self-image. Both the positive and the negative versions suit our purposes quite well. So if you cannot convince them that they are wonderful, then encourage them to kick themselves for being such losers. Remember, there are three kinds of conceit: "I am better than you," "I am worse than you," and "I am equal to you." Any one of these is still a conceit. It still reinforces duality. In fact, there are signs that in modern culture, the negative form has become predominant, and a great many humans don't like themselves very much. Encourage them in the opinion that they are, as individuals, inadequate.

Wow. Ouch. This is so painful to hear, this idea that there's this Mara creature, quote-unquote, out there who is encouraging humans to feel like they're inadequate as a way to obstruct their spiritual progress, as a way to get in the way of having greater freedom, greater ease, and greater peace.

The Inner Critic

We don't need to imagine this mythic Mara character to recognize the role of the inner critic that it might have in our lives. Not everybody has this as a dominant or obvious feature, but many of us do. This inner critic is almost like a sub-personality inside of us that's constantly putting us down, belittling us with self-judgment or blaming ourselves. It's nagging at ourselves, having this sense of shame for who we are and how we do things with this quality of harshness.

When this inner critic is up and running—it's not always there, but when it is—there's this feeling of inadequacy, this sense of not being enough. I'm not worthy. Who I am or how I am is not enough somehow. And there's so much pain, so much dukkha^[6], that is caught up in this structure.

For some people, it's such a prevalent and ongoing part of their inner experience that it might even be difficult to conceive that it might be otherwise. Some people feel like it's just them. They feel like everybody else must have it together, everybody except me. But I assure you, this is such a prevalent form of one's inner life, and it's important to know that we're not alone in this. It was even written about by Ajahn Punnadhammo, whose letters were written a number of decades ago. So it's understandable that people have this inner critic. We learn it from society, from family, from school. But it's important not to blame ourselves for having this dynamic as part of our inner life.

That's just the inner critic trying to pretend that it's not the inner critic, because the inner critic always shows up using first-person pronouns: "I'm not good enough. I need to do more." So it's difficult to recognize. You might think, "Oh, this is just the way it is," but it's just the inner critic.

You might even ask yourself right now, what is the picture you hold in your mind about how you're supposed to be? Do you have this sense of how you're "supposed" to be? Is there this unnoticed image propelling you towards this idea that you must have a certain appearance, or status, or livelihood? Or that you have to be charming, or funny, or lively, or intelligent?

You might even ask with regard to meditation: is there a picture in your mind of how you should be when you're meditating? Because you're a meditator, you might have this idea: "Oh yeah, I should always be peaceful and calm and wise, never having anger or sadness or anything like this." Without any judgment at all, can we notice what some of these ideas or pictures are in our minds?

Working with the Inner Critic

We want to step out of this tendency for the inner critic to judge and evaluate us, and instead step into curiosity, noticing, and allowing. And this is the way that we can work with this inner critic: with this openness, this curiosity, this allowing, this warmth.

One way might be to do some loving-kindness (mettā)^[7] practice, to bring some kindness into our mindfulness practice and to give the inner critic some space. If we're trying to get rid of it or make it be different, then that's just the inner critic showing up, trying to pretend it's something else working on the inner critic. So we might do some loving-kindness practice, bringing some of this deep friendliness towards ourselves. We might imbue our meditation practice with it.

To be sure, when the inner critic is up and running, it might feel like, "Loving-kindness is ridiculous, I can't even do that, that's not what's going to help." But just have this recognition that when the inner critic is up and running and we believe it—when it has this certain authority to it—recognize that that is just one perception at that moment. That's like the mood at that moment. It's not the truth, even though it's trying to be very persuasive.

Instead, the thoughts of the inner critic are just this tight, habitual way of thinking about things. Loving-kindness practice allows us to set up these different habits of thinking, different orbits of thinking. When these alternative, different constellations of thoughts and experiences arise, the inner critic just runs out of energy. It loses its power.

So it's not that we have to get rid of the inner critic. It's more that we're just cultivating and developing alternatives, and then the inner critic just kind of drains itself of its authority. So one way to work with the inner critic is with loving-kindness practice in any way that feels appropriate and nourishing. But be careful, sometimes the inner critic gets in there with loving-kindness, so it might mean just doing loving-kindness only where it's easy. Only where it's easy.

The second thing we can do when working with the inner critic is to bring mindfulness with some kindness, and in particular, I would say mindfulness of the body. Bringing mindfulness into the tangible, felt experience of this moment with some kindness, some openness, some spaciousness, and allowing, will again drain some of the authority or momentum behind this inner critic.

So can we just let the inner critic be there, recognize it's there, and cultivate loving-kindness and mindfulness of the body with some warmth and spaciousness?

With that, we end our series on letters from Mara, where I looked at a subset of the letters and excerpted some of these letters from Ajahn Punnadhammo. I wish you all a wonderful weekend. Thank you.