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Guided Meditation: What is Helpful?

Warm greetings in cloudy, kind of a little bit wet California here. We've had an unseasonable amount of light rain through the week, and clouds, and cool weather, and I like it quite a bit. Yeah, maybe left over from my native town in Norway where I was born, Bergen, where it rains quite a bit, cloudy quite a bit.

So my friends, there are many motivations for meditating, but the ones that Buddhism somehow holds up as central to the Buddhist enterprise could all be subsumed under the expression "benefit." We are meditating, practicing Buddhism to benefit. And who are we benefiting? Everyone.

The Buddha said that a wise person is concerned with benefiting oneself, benefiting others, benefiting self and others, and benefiting the whole world. It's kind of comprehensive. And there's not choosing one or the other, to just benefit yourself, or just benefit others, but there's an integrated whole that is the domain of wise reflection and wise motivation.

If your motivation is to serve others, to benefit others, when we sit down to meditate, one of the important ways to prepare ourselves to bring benefits to the world is, in fact, to benefit ourselves. It's important to do this. It's important to shed layers of reactivity and stress that we carry. It's important to shed layers of clinging, attachments, and anxieties that we carry, because the more these are shed, the more that not only are we available to benefit the world, but our very way of being in the world is beneficial.

When people experience someone who feels calm, who seems to have no fear, someone who has no obstacles to their kindness and their love, and we benefit ourselves and bring forth what's beautiful within us, those qualities then are available for the world as well.

So when we sit down to meditate, one of the options you have, and which we will do today, is to orient the meditation from the very beginning with a question: what is beneficial for me here and now? Let's not just go ahead and meditate by rote, just meditate because I'm supposed to, and I have a technique to do, I have a way of practicing, and I'll just do it because that's what I do.

But rather, take some time at the beginning to reflect: how am I right now? What's happening for me? And given what's happening, how I am, what would be beneficial? What would be a beneficial way to meditate? And there are layers of answering that question. One is to ask the question from the point of view of your body. What's a beneficial way to establish a posture for meditation?

Maybe there's a deep need for rest and relaxation. Maybe there's a deep need for strength. Maybe there's a deep need to really feel embodied and feel connected here in this body, so that with the body, we can feel connected to the world around us. And different postures support these different things. So to be a little bit conscious about what posture is useful for you. In small ways, it might change from day to day.

Then you might ask: what is beneficial for your heart? Maybe it's taking time to acknowledge what's happening emotionally within you, not to overlook it or try to barrel through it. Maybe there's some tender loving care of some kind that your inner life could benefit from: metta^[1], kindness, compassion.

Maybe your heart needs some honesty. Sometimes truth-telling is the greatest need that we have. To really acknowledge how we are, what's happening, in a clear and unapologetic way. Just, "Oh, it's like this." Something in the heart can settle sometimes when our situation, ourselves, are really acknowledged.

Even to acknowledge that I'm afraid, or acknowledge I'm depressed, or acknowledge that I'm angry—that's a truth-telling that's often needed if we want to start bringing benefit to ourselves and to the world. Because when it's honest, then we can find our way with it.

What's beneficial for this mind? Maybe how we meditate is important for the mind and the heart. To not strive, or not to measure, or not compare ourselves. Maybe it's helpful to be fearless when we meditate, or uninterruptible, undiscourageable. Even if there's discouragement, to not let it get in the way. Even though there is anxiety, to not let it get in the way. So sitting here and just asking yourself: what way of meditating right now would be beneficial, given everything? And then meditating that way.

Or starting that way. Sometimes starting for just a few minutes, and then settling into the basic meditation practice. Sometimes just doing it longer. But what happens to you when you begin your meditation with a question: what would be beneficial right now in how to meditate, and then proceed from there? Now, be quiet now, as we meditate for the next minutes.

[Meditation Period]

And as we come to the end of the sitting, take in the idea that if we want to benefit others spiritually or dharmically^[2], we can do more if we have benefited ourselves spiritually or dharmically. And if we don't want to benefit others, but only ourselves, if we're benefiting ourselves in the Dharma spiritually, we will somehow or other benefit others anyway.

Our own spiritual benefit, our own dharmic benefit, is integrally linked to the welfare of others. For one thing, the more we dharmically benefit ourselves, spiritually benefit ourselves, the more we know what dharmic benefit can be. The more we can be attuned to that possibility for other people as well.

Maybe for people, more than material help or emotional help, what goes deepest into the heart is dharmic help, spiritual help. Something that touches a home inside of us that's deeper than our emotional life, our cognitive life.

May it be that as we navigate and walk this path of the Dharma, may it be that we do so to benefit ourselves, to benefit others, to benefit self and others, and to benefit the whole world. May our deepening connection to the dharmic life, to the spiritual life, be a support for the welfare and happiness of all beings. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings know freedom, freedom from suffering, and find it in their hearts.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Attunement (5 of 5) Help

Thank you. So we come to the last of these five talks on attunement, and with the acronym TOUCH, there's thinking. Thinking well, thinking carefully about the suffering we encounter, because the attunement we're talking about is the attunement that allows a meaningful, important, effective compassion, healthy compassion, to come forth into our care for the world. So before we're ready for compassion, we want to be attuned to the suffering, and that can take some reflection and thinking.

We want to be open to it, willing to experience it. And this willingness, this openness to it, is a profound thing, because it's part of the movement towards freedom. Freedom from resistance, freedom from picking things up, freedom from blocking or becoming caught. So free, we're like an open window, and everything can pass through without touching the window, without affecting the window, breaking the glass. Being upright, stable, strong, undefeated, uncollapsed, just fully present. Not assertive, not withdrawing, but a strong sense of presence with the suffering we're encountering.

And then communicating with people. To really be in conversation with them, and find out better what's going on. Don't assume we know. Don't assume we know what's needed, but to find out, be in communication, get the information.

And then today, the H of TOUCH is help. An important part of compassion is to help, to do something to alleviate the suffering in oneself, and others, and in the whole world. But as a kind of building block to become compassionate and to real compassionate action, the help that I'm going to talk about today is a little bit more modest, or a stepping stone towards more full compassionate action. To help, you want to be able to ask the question: what is helpful here? What is beneficial?

And in all directions: what is beneficial for oneself? Because if we leave ourselves too much out of the equation, then we can actually cause harm to ourselves and to others. If we don't bring careful attention to our motivations, our emotions, our feelings, our reaction to the situation, and just feel like we're obligated to help someone and we're supposed to be altruistic and not care for ourselves at all, we actually can be so disconnected from ourselves that inadvertently unhelpful things will come out of us. We say things, we express things, we actually discover there's anger in trying to help someone because we don't really want to, but we feel like we should. So what is helpful for ourselves in this situation?

And this really questioning ourselves is very important also because with compassionate action, some people will live under rules of obligation and duty and "shoulds" that are kind of authoritarian and override any careful attention, and can exhaust people. Part of compassion fatigue can sometimes come from the sense of obligation that "I have to do this, I have to do this." And so to really question that: what is beneficial here for me?

Because when I am benefited—especially spiritually benefited, dharmically benefited—and become settled, and peaceful, and calm, and have a nice presence, then not only can we act better, but the action that we do conveys something important. Many times the medium is the message. If we do things to help someone because we're anxious and we're trying to assuage our fear or are motivated by fear, that will have a very different message to people than if we are calm and settled. If we don't act from fear, but we act with great energy, great passion, or something, but we're calm, and settled, and present, and clearly connected to the person we're helping in a way that we can't be if we're being motivated by fear.

What is helpful for oneself is to check in with oneself and understand what motivates us to be helpful. If we're motivated to help others because we're not really caring for them, but if we really look carefully, we're just trying to get comfortable for ourselves, we want to create a nice identity for ourselves, we want to be able to show the world that we're a good person, and we're more driven by that than we are by helping the other people. All those kinds of motivations for ourselves are not spiritually beneficial, not dharmically beneficial, and naturally can cause long-term harm sometimes even.

So to really check in: what is really helpful? And the more we practice, the more we can answer that question in ways that are really deep, or really full, or concerned for our long-term happiness and welfare, not the short-term just making ourselves comfortable.

With that as a reference point, then we can ask: what is helpful for the other person? Remember we're talking about being attuned to the people. And what is helpful for the other person is an important thing to question, to not bring the wrong kind of help. Some people want to be left alone. They want to figure things out themselves. They just want a companion. Some people just want to be seen and known in their struggles, but they don't necessarily want someone to come to support them and aid them and fix the problems for them. So what is supportive for others?

And occasionally, people do want to get help from other people, but that's not actually spiritually helpful for them. Maybe it represents some way of always being helpless and looking to others to be the savior. And so at some point, we want to stop being the savior, because people need to grow up. People need to learn how to stand on their own two feet, and to always come to the rescue is not really beneficial for others. To be uncaring is not beneficial, but to be caring and allow someone to grow up is good.

So on one hand, we want to ask what's beneficial for ourselves, what's beneficial for others. And in this category of help here, we also ask, because we're trying to be attuned: what form of help is attuned to myself and is attuned to the person there?

Say someone is having some challenge, say they are late to go someplace, and maybe they have a flat tire, and they don't know how to fix a flat tire. So on the surface, it just seems like what's best is to help them put on the spare for them, because maybe you know how to do it, and that's nice. But maybe you don't have a clue how to put on a spare tire. So it's not helpful to go and try to help them with the tire. Then what might be helpful is to call someone who does, find some other kind of help. Or maybe there's no place to call, maybe there's no cell phone, you're in the desert, you can't help with it.

So what's attuned with what you can do and what this need is? Maybe what you can do is bring them water. You realize they've been struggling for some time, it's hot in the desert, and so you bring them water. Maybe you bring them some food to eat and say, "Here, take a break. It looks like you need a drink and to be settled a little bit, and you can go back to it then."

So there's an example of: what can I do that's appropriate for me? And sometimes, for someone who's a completely devoted introvert, sometimes it's just sitting on the park bench or accompanying them someplace where they're challenged, and not to be involved so much in conversation and fixing, but just accompanying. You have the ability to be calm, and centered, and present. I've gone just to sit with people, to be quiet and let them do what they needed to do, but they felt that there was some support quietly in the room.

Or if you're a devoted extrovert and you love to sing, it might be that singing a song for the person is the right thing. I don't think that anybody wants me to sing, exactly, [Laughter] but there are people who do sing. I knew a chaplain who was in the hospital with someone who was dying in the emergency room. It was kind of a tragic death, and the person was quite upset, discouraged, angry, and had turned her face to the wall and was unresponsive to anybody coming in. The chaplain just started singing a song. In the course of the song, the person softened and opened up and turned around, and then started to engage the chaplain.

So what is the right way? What's attuned to oneself, what we can bring? How do we help this person? How do we help the person in a way that they can receive? Some people are not able to receive what seems like the logical, obvious help that should be done. They feel put upon, they feel it's too assertive, that people have entered their space too much. Or they feel obligated; in some cultures, there's a deep sense of obligation that comes with receiving help, and so it's difficult to step into their zone. That's where communication is important: what does this person want to receive? What can they receive?

So what kind of communication? Maybe some people, as I said, they just want to be quiet together with someone else. Someone else wants to join in a song. If someone came to me in an emergency and wanted to care for me, expecting me to sing a song with them is not really going to be so helpful for me.

So this question of being attuned means questioning and considering all the factors that are in place to know how to help. What would be helpful here, given oneself, given the other person, given the situation? Go with the assumption, and this I think is a really good assumption to go by, that at any given time, there are many ways to help, not just one. If we are rushing into that one way that we think is the right way, then there's a good chance we're going to miss what the situation is really about—the total situation that includes oneself.

So TOUCH: Thinking, Openness, Uprightness, Communication, and Help. All places where we do the work of attunement. Great.

Announcements

So thank you, and I will be away next week. I'm back at the IRC^[3] for a retreat, actually for the next two weeks. Next week, Dawn Neal^[4] will come, a wonderful new teacher coming up here at IMC. And then the following week, it's going to be Dakota O'Connellan^[5], who taught for us last fall, and is also a wonderful upcoming teacher here at IMC. Then I'll be back after those two weeks for one more week before I get ready and go on my month-long retreat that I'm doing—a self-retreat for the month of June.

So thank you, and you'll be in good hands with the teachers that are coming. Please support them in their capacity to be a teacher and appreciate them. I'll see you in a couple of weeks. Thank you very much.

At that point, I want to continue on this theme. This idea of compassion is an ongoing theme, and it's also an ongoing way of dealing with the theme so far this year of how to be with challenges. Now we're kind of covering the area of compassion in that field, so we've been doing that for a few weeks, and we'll continue for a while. Thank you.