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Guided Meditation: This is not Personal

So good morning, good day everyone. As an introduction to this meditation, one of the implicit ideas of Vipassana^[1] meditation is that as we're able to settle into the present moment—so we're not drifting off in thought so much and are really here for the unfolding of the now, the present moment—many, most, maybe all (but let's start with many) of our experiences, the direct perceptions we have, are impersonal. There are more impersonal perceptions happening moment by moment than anything that can be called personal.

For example, if there's a sound outside wherever you're sitting—a car goes by. The appearance of that sound, the roar of the car, you didn't will it. You didn't intend it. You're not responsible for the sound. You didn't manufacture the sound. The sound just arises in the mind through the ears, and it arises in an impersonal way. It doesn't refer back to us. It doesn't define us. It's just a sound.

If that sound goes through the ear, and we hear the roar of the car in the mind, there might be a thought that arises in the mind: "car." But that thought, again, wasn't willed or intended. Or perhaps something inside of us had the thought, but it's not usually the locus of what we take personally. It's just an impersonal phenomenon of the mind that recognizes "car."

Many of the things that occur to us moment by moment have their genesis, beginning in something that is impersonal. An itch arises on the body; in some ways, it's impersonal. We might identify it with ourselves, or not like it, and then coalesce around it. But in the simplest possible way, a little breeze on the arm or the hand is a kind of impersonal phenomenon.

So many of the things that arise as we sit, at the beginning of their appearance, often start in an impersonal world. There's just, "there it is." This is not personal. This is not myself. This is not something that defines me or that I make; it's just something that occurs. We might make it personal, but that comes later.

In this meditation, you might use a little mantra of mindfulness: as you become aware of something new, maybe you can notice, "this is not personal, this is not personal." Chances are that for a majority of things, the first perceptions of anything—even a thought when it first appears—there's something about it which is not really personal. I'll talk more about this for the dharma talk, but that was a kind of background for this meditation.

So, take a comfortable upright posture, closing the eyes, or keeping them half open if that's more comfortable for you. Maybe gaze downward at 45 degrees, and take some leisurely, long inhales and exhales.

Feel the ribcage expand as you breathe in, and the ribcage come back together again. The space between the ribs increases as we breathe in, and that space decreases as we breathe out. As you exhale in a leisurely way, perhaps you can begin to relax your body. Nothing ambitious, just a softening, or even a gentling of the body.

On the exhale, softening the shoulders. On the inhale and exhale, softening the belly, so that maybe as you inhale, the belly expands in an easy way. Generally, when the diaphragm—the big muscle—pushes down, it creates a vacuum in the lung area which brings in air. When the diaphragm pushes down, it pushes against all the stuff in the belly, and pushes the belly out and down. If the belly is relaxed on the inhale, the belly goes out.

Letting your breathing return to normal, gently, lovingly, soften your face. Relax the muscles in your face. Maybe lovingly relaxing your face can be an appreciation for how much the muscles of your face are part of your life, and everything you express, and talk, and say. Allow them to have a few moments of rest.

Then, if it makes sense, you can also soften, gently relaxing the whole area of your brain, or associated areas of the forehead, temples. Whatever agitation, energy, or pressure there might be in the area where you think or you spend a lot of time imagining—soften and relax.

Then, on the next exhale, settle into the experience of the body breathing. Settle into the experience of how the body experiences breathing. As you exhale, let go. Relax into the exhale. When you inhale, receive the experience of inhaling—not the breath or the air, but rather the sensations of your body. Receive the sensations of the body breathing in. Relax into the experience of the body breathing out.

There are sensations connected to breathing in and breathing out. While you could say that you are the one breathing, the appearance of these sensations of breathing is impersonal. Expansion, pressure, release, tightening, softening, movement. The sensations themselves, in and of themselves, you might experience or know them as not really part of the personal world that we live in—in the sense of the world that we have agency over, and how we define ourselves, and what we're constructing and making.

In a sense, creatures have been breathing for tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of years. Creatures with lungs, human beings, have been doing this for a long time. Some of the sensations in the body of breathing, the movement and the rhythm, just come with the kind of life we have. This is impersonal. It's nature working through us.

The moment-to-moment perceptions that we experience—the beginning of those perceptions is impersonal, before it is harnessed or recruited into the self. The self that prefers things and wants things, and defines itself, constructs itself. See if you can stay close to the moment-to-moment perceptions of things, and notice how so much of what happens to you is impersonal. Perhaps just nature doing its thing—nature that we are, just as much as the non-human world. That which is impersonal is nature.

A sound appears, and when it first appears, it's quite impersonal. No relationship to the self in and of itself, just a sound. When a sensation of the body first appears, there might be a moment there, before the mind gets involved, where it's quite impersonal—just the sensation of the body. The body feels warm or cold, and before preferences and liking and disliking, for a moment it's impersonal: just warmth, just cold.

A feeling arises within, and in the first moment of the feeling, it's impersonal. Maybe you don't even know where it arose from or why, it's just there. A new thought arises, kind of out of the blue, unbidden, not planned. It's impersonal for a moment before we get involved and judge it or pick it up.

We are swimming in a world of moment-to-moment perceptions. We are swimming in an ocean of what is impersonal, of what is not self, but which is nature. That we perceive, that perception of perceiving—it's just a natural world. Nature knowing itself. And to relax into this impersonal world, to relax into nature. Nature knowing itself.

Dedication

So, to bring this to an end here: at times we can even experience love, kindness, and compassion as something quite marvelous, and wonderful, and nourishing, and impersonal. It's not quite "me, myself, and mine." It's not quite the usual self that we take personally. Compassion and kindness and love can be nature. A natural functioning in a relaxed, open, and receptive heart that is not filtered by greed, or hatred, or delusion.

May it be that as we settle and relax more deeply—free of attachments, free of greed, and hatred, and fear—that we learn to trust nature working through us. To trust the impersonal world, the natural world which is found within us as well, so that our heart's capacity for kindness, friendliness, and love is close at hand. It's not covered over. We're not distracted from it, but we're ready with it, so that when we meet others, when we communicate with others, when we think of others, that we think of them with our goodwill, with our positive regard, our well-wishing.

And may it be that our meditation practice together prepares us for this natural world of goodwill, of friendliness, of kindness, of care. Not because we're doing it personally—like personally mustering ourselves to do it—but because we're allowing it to flow through us.

May it be that this meditation practice we do prepares us, inspires us, to enter the world with a heart that cares. A heart that values and appreciates others. May all beings be appreciated. May all beings be the recipient of our goodwill. May all beings be safe, and certainly safe from us. And may all beings be free. Free in themselves, and free from the oppression of others, including the ways that we might interfere with people's freedom. May all beings be free.