This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Readiness

Good morning. I had to turn off the speaker system; it had been left completely on. I could hear the booming speakers above me in the wall, and it's nicer just to be here with all of you without that extra voice coming in.

To begin, when we sit down to meditate, we can ask ourselves, are we ready to be in the present moment? Are we ready to be receptive and present, and engaged nicely in the present moment? In a way, it might be interesting or evocative to say that the present moment is always ready for you. Are you ready for it?

Is the mind ready? This mind that we have can be busy and caught up in thoughts, ideas, feelings, agendas, and preferences. Many things might interfere with the capacity to be ready, to be available for this moment, to be receptive.

Sometimes it takes part of the meditation—a lot of the meditation period—for the mind to finally be present enough where we can say it's available to the present. It's ready for the present. It's ready to allow something to grow and develop. One of those things is a greater readiness, a greater receptivity, a greater availability to really feel, sense, and be here in what can be called our experience. And that's a choice expression, because it means what we're experiencing, not what we're thinking so much. What we're experiencing is always here in the present. We might have agendas about it and preferences, but those interfere with our ability to be ready, available, and receptive here.

To begin this process of readying the mind, assume a meditation posture. A posture itself that, if someone saw you, they could see that this posture is available for the present, is here, attentive, awake, and alert. If you are sitting back a lot in a chair, take maybe just two minutes or so to sit up, as straight as you would if you suddenly heard a car come up to your house that sounded like the car of a very good friend. Like, "Oh, what's that I hear?" And you sit up to kind of pay attention. "What's this?" It's just maybe for a couple of minutes to get a sense of a certain kind of alertness, which is ready, available for here.

Gently closing your eyes.

Being receptive to the experience of your body. Taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. Relaxing the body as you exhale. A long exhale, maybe slightly longer—long enough to get your attention that it's time to breathe in. So the inhale is a little bit more conscious than automatic.

Letting your breathing return to normal.

What would it be like now, sitting here quietly, to establish a readiness of mind? A readiness of attention for whatever might happen during this meditation, that you're available to be attentive. A kind of readiness where nothing is a surprise; it is just one more thing to be with. This, too, is the experience of the moment.

A readiness which is not assertive, but rather receptive, available. Maybe be ready and available even for what would be unexpected.

Relaxing the body. The more relaxed you are, the more receptive, ready, and available you can be.

And then settling into the experience of breathing. Settled and ready, as if each breath is a new event. Each breath as if it's unique, and almost like the first breath. Ready for it. Available as the breath is.

If this time now was the beginning of the meditation, would your readiness be different? Your receptivity, your availability to the present moment, has it changed over these minutes?

And as we come to the end of the sitting, is there something about how you are right now that feels more ready, available in a relaxed way, in a receptive way? Maybe it's in your body. Maybe it's in your mind or your heart. Some part of you is more settled, at ease, so that it's open and available for whatever is here and now.

And then, coming to the end of the sitting, invite into your mind, your attention, and your thoughts, other people who you might encounter today. People you know, strangers on the street, people in stores, people that you might somehow encounter on your screen and media. Is there a way of being ready and receptive to others that helps you tap into an appreciation of others, goodwill for others, a generosity of spirit and of attention for others?

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

[Music]

Thank you.

Dharmette: Ready to Change (1 of 5) Ready, Receptive, Available

Welcome to this beginning of the week. This week that is between these two holidays that we have is, in some ways, a liminal or alternative kind of week for many people.

We have a new theme. Last week the topic was the Four Right Efforts^[1], where the emphasis is to let go of the unwholesome and develop the wholesome. For this week, I wanted to talk about five wholesome states that can be cultivated, developed, and appreciated in our lives.

These are not the common wholesome states that this early Buddhist tradition is maybe most associated with. Often the Buddha would begin a dharma talk to laypeople on the topic of generosity, and generosity is often a preeminent wholesome state in our tradition. He might also talk about states of ethical integrity. There might be meditative joy and happiness, tranquility—a variety of things that are fairly well known in our tradition.

But for this week I want to do something which is not so emphasized. The Buddha put a particular emphasis on the importance of these as wholesome states to be developed, cultivated, or evoked in preparation for real insight, to really be able to see deeply into the nature of our hearts, our minds, and our lives.

These five wholesome states are a readiness of mind, a malleability of mind, a mind free of hindrances... I forget the fourth for a moment. The fifth is a bright mind or a confident mind. So ready, receptive, free of hindrances, bright. At the moment, maybe some of you remember the fourth, but we'll get to it; somehow it slipped my mind.

These are five states that the Buddha would evoke in people in preparation for giving the deepest dharma he had, the deepest teachings he had. He would give a dharma talk to prepare people for deep teachings, and these are the five ways in which he prepared their minds.

The first is the word kalla^[2], and it's usually translated as a ready mind, a readiness of mind. It's a mind that's receptive, that is available, that's prepared in order to receive something really significant.

One of the functions of meditation is in fact to cultivate this readiness of mind. The Zen master Suzuki Roshi^[3], the founder of San Francisco Zen Center, in his book Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, defined mindfulness as in fact a readiness of mind. It is to be ready and available to attend to whatever might be coming up next, the next thing that arrives in the present moment.

If we're distracted, if we're retrospecting, thinking back at what just happened, then we're not there for the next moment. This art of being able to let go of what just happened enough not to think about it and dwell in it, to really be fresh and available, ready for the next moment, is a phenomenal gift. Many people feel like they're obligated to review, think about, criticize, comment, and be weighed down by what happened in the past, even if it's just a few moments before. This readiness is always available, always open for the next thing.

A mind which is prepared, a mind which is receptive, is available to be changed. And this is one of the aspects of readiness of mind: to be ready and available to be changed. There's an idea that a real dialogue with other people is only possible if each person is willing to be changed. If we're stubborn or resistant in a dialogue, or in some kind of serious conversation with someone, and we're not willing to change, there's no possibility of dialogue. A dialogue, in this kind of definition, is one where each person is changed by the conversation—they learn something new, they see something new, they understand something in a new way.

The same thing applies to meditation. Are you available to be changed? Now, I don't think that's such an easy thing to be, because of the intensity in which many of us will be involved in our concerns, our beliefs, and the attitudes that we have. We're holding on to it, resisting something, or we're hunkered down, tight, or frozen in time.

Part of meditation practice, and in the time of the Buddha, part of a dharma talk, was to engage people in such a way—to engage yourself in such a way—that something softens, opens, and relaxes, and you finally arrive here. A turning point in meditation practice is arrival, when you really feel, "I'm here, I've arrived, I'm in the present moment." Of course you are, you always are, but the mind, the attention, the thoughts are not. In a sense, your life energy is going someplace else. When your conscious, alive attention settles here on this moment, then we've arrived. That's the beginning of being available, of being ready, a kind of receptivity.

Part of understanding this is to appreciate that it's important and valuable. Appreciate the role and place of this kind of readiness here, and understand what gets in the way of it. Each of us probably has our top two or three concerns, ways of being in the mind, that prevent us from being ready.

It might be that we have chronic anxiety about what's happening and a need to plan. The planning is to get ready, but it's not being ready for whatever's here—that kind of willingness to almost not know, not assert, not to project onto life because we're anxious.

Another top one might be wanting pleasure, wanting good things, wanting delight. Wanting is not a bad thing in and of itself, but if it's too intense or we get too caught up in it, then we're not available, we're not present for what's actually here. The art of having desire is having desire with such a light touch that it doesn't blind us to the here and now.

And then what interferes with readiness might also be some preoccupation about the past, an emotional preoccupation, maybe resentment, maybe delight, or some kind of reviewing and trying to figure things out.

Those are possibilities, but what are the top three ways in which your mind operates that interferes with your mind being ready? Your mind being present in a way that doesn't overlay your preoccupations, your projections, your belief that you know what's happening, and your opinions about what's happening? Readiness is a willingness to put those opinions aside so we can see, hear, and know as if everything is new. In a certain way, it is.

If we don't see in this way that everything is new, then we limit the possibilities for our own transformation, our own way of being changed, which is part of the purpose of cultivating this readiness of mind. Because the ultimate purpose the Buddha gave for this was to prepare people for deep teachings in order to awaken them, to achieve what he called opening the Dharma eye^[4].

So, a wholesome state to be cultivated. We begin by appreciating the value of it, the value of having a readiness and availability. Then, evoke it or recognize it in ourselves, and let it expand, let it grow. Let it push against the edges of what gets in the way of it, so you really see what interferes with it.

Experiment with what it's like to live in this world ready, available, receptive, with a kind of not-knowing mind, meaning that the mind doesn't assert or insist that it knows everything—it's available.

This is a wonderful wholesome state of mind that supports a wholesome life, a wise life, a compassionate life, and the ongoing development of this practice that we do. It's one of five states that the Buddha emphasized, and we'll go through the next four, perhaps in preparation for the coming year. Maybe we're getting ready for 2023.

Thank you very much. I appreciate this chance to be with you all.