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Guided Meditation: Relaxation and Clear Recognition

Hello and welcome to this 30 minutes of mindfulness meditation. Sometimes I think that there are two mutually supportive aspects of mindfulness meditation that can work together. The first is to relax, to release whatever tension that might be held in the mind, the body, or the heart. If there is no tension discerned, then of course one should not keep relaxing; at some point, relaxation doesn't really become relevant.

Relaxation is not the same thing as slumping or collapsing. There is an alertness and uprightness which is related to the second aspect, and that is the practice of clear recognition. There is a quality of attentiveness that is a little bit more acute than in everyday life, where there's a clarity to our experience of the present moment. This allows us to register, see, experience, or know what is happening in the present moment in a particular way.

At different times, it's more being aware, more feeling, more experiencing, more knowing—what some people will call a recognition. And that special way is to be aware without interfering with what we are aware of. So, not to tighten up, hold on, have expectations, try to make something happen, or try to pull away or push away. There's a quality of freedom in the clear recognition.

This idea of relaxing and opening the awareness up to really be here with what's here... part of this clear awareness can be expressed as allowing whatever we know to be here. There's no pushing away or denying anything, and there's no holding on and clinging to anything. There's a deep respect for all things, a deep kind of allowance.

One of the things that leads to is discovering that it's trustable to allow the Dharma^[1] to move through us. We allow phenomena, as they arise and pass, to come and go, evolve, change, and process. But the key to it is a clear recognition where we get out of the way. The agenda of the self doesn't come into play. This relaxing helps the clear knowing be relaxed and useful.

And the clear recognition helps us to stay alert and clear. It also helps us to recognize when what needs to be clearly recognized is the tension we have. Because if it's not easy to relax, then we shouldn't spend a lot of time trying to do it, but rather bring this loving, careful attention to what's going on here. Sometimes what we learn to relax is not the tensions in our body, but we relax the tensions in the mind in relationship to that.

So, these two things: to relax and have clear recognition, and discover how to be aware in a way that gets out of the way and allows the Dharma to move through us.

Please take an upright posture or a posture that allows you to be a little bit more alert. Maybe there's a little energy in the posture. For people who lie down on their back, sometimes that's found by having the forearm—the upper arm might be parallel to the bed or the floor, but the forearms are pointing straight up towards the ceiling, one of them or both of them. That not only gives a little energy but also gives the indication when we're starting to lose that alertness; it falls over.

Gently close your eyes, and perhaps use a few deep breaths to really relax the larger tensions and holdings of the body. Breathe in deeply, and then a long exhale that really allows the shoulders and the belly to relax and let go. Sometimes, if there's a long exhale, it's like a progressive relaxation of the shoulders step by step—a little bit, a little bit more.

Then let the breathing return to normal. Still, it's useful to relax, to soften. Softening in the face. Softening, relaxing the shoulders, maybe the area of the shoulder blades. Maybe you can open up your chest a bit and then see how you can relax your shoulders. Softening the belly.

And then maybe relaxing, softening the mind. Imagine the mind is like the surface of choppy waters, and the wind dies down. The surface of the lake spreads out wide, still, and quiet.

And then perhaps, somewhere inside the mind is the place from which you know, are aware, or experience things—often the location where our sense of self might be. As you exhale, maybe soften, relax, and dissolve that center into the wide field of the mind.

At the end of the exhale, soften and relax a little bit into the pause between the exhale and inhale—the ever-so-slight, momentary pause—so that you can allow the inhale to arise on its own out of that pause, and you receive it. Awareness receives, clear recognition receives the inhale. Clear recognition allows the exhale.

Continue clear awareness of breathing. But if something else occurs in the body, the mind, or the heart that's more compelling than the breathing, see if there's some way you can relax about its presence and practice clear awareness, non-interfering attention, as if it has permission to be there. No problem. And you practice clear awareness of it until you're ready to begin again on your breathing.

If you are floating away in thinking, practice clear recognition of thinking, and see if there's any tension or pressure involved in thinking that can be relaxed. Perhaps renew your practice of clear recognition, clear awareness of the present moment, and begin again with your breathing.

And then, as we come to the end of the sitting, imagine what relaxed, clear recognition would be like when gazing upon the joys and sorrows of the world. What would it be like if you were able to stay relaxed, clearly recognizing? The great Bodhisattva^[2] of compassion, the great embodiment of compassion, is sometimes named "the one who sees the suffering of the world."

To see, to gaze upon the sorrows and joys of the world with relaxed, clear recognition. And in so doing, maybe the channels of recognition can touch the tenderness, the warmth, the places of care in our hearts. The place where the heart is nourished and nurtured by the goodness of the world, by our own goodness.

And from this place of being touched, consider how wonderful it would be if the suffering of the world could be transformed, so that people are freed of that suffering, freed of oppression and injustice, freed of greed and hatred^[3].

And may it be so. As we end the sitting, wishing:

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

And may we learn to share this happiness, safety, peace, and freedom with each other.

Dharmette: Hatred (2 of 5) Understanding Hatred

Today is the second talk on dosa^[4], which can be translated as hatred or hostility. We're following a sequence this week. Yesterday I introduced the concept of non-hatred as a significant state of well-being that involves love, patience, calmness, and peace. It is not simply the absence of hatred, but a reference point of a significant, healthy state of being. It highlights the unsatisfactoriness of hatred, how it is a form of stress, tension, and pain for the individual who has it, when we can really see the contrast to being in a state that's not full of hatred.

Today, I want to talk about just this idea of dosa itself. Tomorrow I'll talk about practicing with it, Thursday will be on composting hatred and its transformation, and Friday will be on liberation from hatred and what is possible with that liberation.

It's important to appreciate that this word hatred, dosa, means hostility. Ancient texts talk about it being a wanting to harm. It can also involve intense dislike, a kind of intense opposition to others where that dislike and opposition is a form of harm, making others feel somehow belittled, boxed in, oppressed, or disrespected in some big way when the aversion is so strong.

Now, there can be a simple dislike of things and people, maybe a dislike of their activities and what they do. But it doesn't have to translate to any kind of disrespect for others. It doesn't even have to diminish our love for others. It's possible to have a heartfelt warmth towards others even if we dislike some of the things they do. But if the intensity of it is strong—even if we don't think we hate someone or feel hostility, and we don't feel like we want to harm them—the intensity of the dislike is a form of hatred.

What it overlaps with—sometimes includes and sometimes doesn't—is anger. This is important because if we treat anger and this dosa (hostility) as the same thing, then all anger is seen as a problem or a source of suffering. But sometimes anger is a very impassioned sense of "no," a sense that "this is unjust, this is not right." The intensity of it might look like something that resembles hostility, but there doesn't have to be any hostility in it.

I've been on the receiving end of what I call "white anger," where I felt there was zero hostility. In fact, I don't know if I felt friendship from the person, but I felt no hostility. I felt safe, though the anger was intense. In the occurrence I'm thinking about, the intensity was in the message of "No, don't do that again." As soon as the message was delivered, I could feel the person just kind of let it go. It was an appropriate message, it was received, and I was inspired by how clean it was. It was an intense "no," a kind of anger, but there was no hostility as part of it.

The way in which we have hostility, and how this movement of hatred can harm, is a way we harm ourselves. That's why the reference point of non-hatred is so useful, because we see how we're harming ourselves. It's like a wood fire, where the fire is arising out of the wood and the fire is burning the wood. In the same way, the heat of hatred burns the one who's on fire with it.

Generally, when there's hatred, this dosa, the attention of the mind is externally directed to the object of the hostility. For some people, it takes the form of blame. Sometimes it takes the form of being hypercritical, an unwillingness to see anything good about the other person, only seeing the aspect which is bad or problematic. Sometimes there's a recoiling from our own pain by blaming, by finding something outside of us to either blame, attack, or be hostile towards. It is a deflection from being willing to experience our personal pain and suffering, redirecting that pain outward. And sometimes it's clearly to cause other people pain: 'I'm feeling pain, so other people should feel pain.'

So, to recognize how hostility does this. There can also be hostility towards oneself. Maybe some people hate themselves or some aspect of themselves. There, it's not exactly externally focused, but there's an objectification of something that the mind is directed towards. And anytime there's this objectification, there is an alienation.

There's an alienation from the other person or thing we feel hostility towards. We're no longer present to be able to see, feel, and experience fully what's there. We're now seeing it through a particular filter—the filter of hate, hostility, and aversion. Everything is seen in that light. Everything is wrong, and we just pick up on all the problems. That's an alienation; we aren't really there fully for the person.

It's also an alienation towards oneself. Because we're involved in an intense objectification of something—a thought, an idea, a concept—the attention is directed towards that object and towards thinking about it, so we lose touch with ourselves.

When there is hostility—it doesn't have to be intense hostility, just hostility—it comes with all these different aspects. It comes with a burning, a tension, a tightening, a stressful state. It comes with an objectification of something that is alienating and disconnecting. As we'll see tomorrow, the task of mindfulness is to re-establish the connection, to overcome the alienation both towards others and towards oneself by opening up and really being present.

Because hostility and hatred are so compelling at times, they produce their own fire. The hurt of the stress or the alienation produces more of the same. It keeps looking outwards for more things to hate, more things to feel bad about, or to be critical of. There's a loop of hate that is sometimes difficult to get out of, because to not have the object of the hate is to allow oneself to feel what's happening here, and that's just too difficult.

Sometimes intense hatred comes from good reasons within. It could be that there's an intense protectiveness, or fear for good reason—there are people who cause harm. It's easy to justify the hatred because it's a form of protection, for justifiable reasons. But the question is: is that really the best way to protect ourselves? I'm not going to answer that question for any individual because circumstances are so complex. I don't want to say to never have hatred if that's what protects you from the harm other people are doing, but I believe that it's possible to be trained, to be reflective, or to have a presence of mind that allows us to protect ourselves in other ways besides returning hatred with hatred, returning harm with harm.

How to find that is an important topic, but the beginning of it is having a willingness to study our own hatred and hostility—to really stop and take a look at it. Maybe the words "hatred" and "hostility" are such intense words that you feel they don't relate to you often. But hostility and hatred also exist as subtle forms of aversion, dislike, and opposition to something. Sometimes there's a biting humor we use to get back at people. Sometimes we say cutting things because we're upset with someone and we want to have verbal daggers to stab them a little bit. There are all kinds of subtle ways in which we express hostility or say things where we don't believe we're wanting to harm anyone, but there is a subtle kind of attack happening.

So, become sensitive to this, become aware of this, and spend some time being willing to look at personal hostility. Aversion sometimes takes the form of prejudice and bias. Sometimes it takes the form of turning away, walking away, shutting down, or ignoring, where we feel like, 'I'm not hostile,' but we've shut someone out of our hearts, and it is a kind of hostile act.

Study it, really get to know it. It's a worthwhile exercise to do. Even if it's just for these next 24 hours, review how this dosa, both mild and intense, has been part of your life, how it's still part of your life, when it manifests, and what the conditions are to bring it about. Then look at what your relationship to it is. Do you hate it? Are you distraught that you have this within you? Do you justify it quickly, almost automatically? How is it?

See if you can practice clear recognition. Relax with it. Find a time and place where you can relax and just allow it to be there so you can start seeing it clearly without the interference of hating it, being distraught over it, being critical of it, turning away from it, or trying to fix it right away. Spend time getting to know it. Really getting to know and understand how it is for us lays the foundation for practicing with it well and moving on towards freedom. In Buddhism, the freedom from greed, hatred, and delusion^[5] is one of the primary definitions for what full liberation is.

It's well worth spending some time with each of these, and this week, with hostility, hatred, and dislike, really understanding how it works for you. Hopefully, you don't get discouraged or depressed. Hopefully, you feel encouraged that this is the way forward, that this is a wise and mature thing to do. Tomorrow we'll talk about practicing with it.

Thank you, and may this all be for the purpose of non-hatred. Thank you.