Guided Meditation: Fire Element; Dharmette: Flavors of the Dharma (1 of 5) Love and Care

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Fire Element; Dharmette: Flavors of the Dharma (1 of 5) Love and Care. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Kim Allen at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 19, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Fire Element

Okay, so we'll go ahead and get started. I know some folks are still continuing to join, but let's go ahead since it's the top of the hour.

This week, the theme is—I'm going to call it—"flavors of the Dharma." And I'll say a bit more about that term "flavor" after the sit when we get started. But just as a little preamble, Dharma teachings and Dharma practice can have distinct flavors or emotional tones at different times. Like the way a poem or a scene in a movie could have a flavor, you know, like it could be dark or joyous or suspenseful. But of course, the difference for the Dharma is that there tend to be flavors that support practice in particular ways, and maybe part of the art of practice is to know what tone to take when relating to experience.

So each day this week, we're going to take up one flavor, and there will be a couple of aspects to exploring it. We'll look at some suttas^[1] where the tone of the teaching conveys that flavor, because the Buddha had a variety of teaching styles to fit the circumstances. And then secondly, we'll consider when in our practice it might be appropriate to bring forth that flavor or that emotional tone. And today's flavor will be very foundational: we're going to look at love or compassion. It's a flavor. But first, let's meditate together. Let's get started on that.

So settling into your meditation posture, and if it's comfortable to do so, gently closing your eyes so that the attention comes inward.

And the meditations for this week will touch into what are called the elements in Buddhist understanding. And these are not literal substances or materials, but they're really actually more experiences that we can find in the body, and even in the mind to some degree. So we'll highlight one element each day, and they might have a connection to the flavor or emotional tone that we'll be exploring each day. We could maybe imagine a connection.

So again, touching into the sitting posture that you've taken. Perhaps feeling the contact points where you're sitting. So your seat against the chair or the cushion, or if you're lying down, you're against what you're lying on. Maybe your legs or feet are against the floor. And so you have a sense of the contact with where you're sitting, and allowing yourself to feel into the stability of that, the groundedness.

Perhaps even softening into those touch points, so that you feel yourself giving over your weight to what you're sitting on, and ultimately to the Earth.

It's useful at the beginning of a sit to take just a moment to really get balanced where you're sitting, so you can even shift from side to side or forward and back just to really align.

And then we can notice the way the body kind of rises up from the stable base, as if it's buoyed upward, or maybe like a sea plant off the sea floor. Allowing ourselves to be drawn upward. Or if you're lying down, you can sense the natural straightness of the spine when you've tuned yourself into a meditative mind.

Just softening various areas where we may hold habitual tension. Softening the eyes and the eye sockets, softening the face, the jaw.

Softening the shoulders, letting them drop. Maybe imagining the shoulder blades sliding down the back. Allowing the arms and hands to relax.

And down into the chest area, letting that be soft, open. Or if you feel tension, just being okay with that.

Releasing what can be released in the belly, in the low back. Letting both of those perhaps soften on the out-breath.

And down into the hip joints, the groin muscles, the thighs. That place that's supporting you if you're sitting up, just letting that open a bit more. Down into the lower legs and all the way into the feet. Just inviting some ease through this body.

And now, as you look through the body, if you will, with mindfulness, notice any places that feel warm. Like often the core area may feel warm, the hands are warm, and others not. Generally, areas that feel warm, and also you may notice in cooler places contrast. And this quality of heat or coolness is called the fire element. It's an experience in the body that's often there. There's often a temperature associated with parts of the body. So that just notes the presence of fire element, one of the constituents of form, the material world.

So you can then bring attention particularly to the heart area, maybe imagining breathing in and out of the heart area. Not the literal physical heart, but notice that energetic area of the body. And if it's a little weird to imagine breathing in and out of the front of the chest, you can imagine how the air coming into the lungs flows around the heart area naturally. Lungs around the heart. And sensing into whatever quality of fire element is present in the heart. Maybe it's a lot, maybe it's a little, just seeing if you can detect that.

Now continuing with a little bit of imaginative practice, just imagining gently spreading the heat around the body, the fire element from the heart area, using the breath. So as you breathe in, perhaps feeling a gathering of the energy, and on the out-breath, inviting it to spread throughout the system.

Perhaps it's more natural on the in-breath to spread the heat throughout all the little tissues of the body. Just the natural heat we have, we're not engineering anything, but just allowing it to spread through the body as it wishes to.

Maybe as you feel warmth or heat touching a certain area, like if it's spreading into your legs or feet, allowing there to be relaxation as the heat spreads in.

Keep working along with that, a sense of care for yourself, just as you are. No sense that anything needs to change about how you are right now. We might call it a very basic sense of positive regard for this being right now.

We'll let go of that imaginative and more directive part of the meditation and just settle into feeling the breath in the body, relaxing the mind, and opening to receptive mindfulness. But maintaining perhaps that gentle sense of positive regard, that sense of caring through the heart area.

And now just letting the breath energy spread through the body, and being receptive to experience as it comes and goes. Just simple mindfulness practice.

Staying with the flow of experience in the present moment.

If the mind has wandered away into thought, just gently returning to the breath. Perhaps touching into the heart area or the sense of warmth in the body. Letting the fire element be a reminder of the present moment and softening into that sense of warmth.

And in the last few minutes of this meditation, again inviting in our imagination to sense the fire element in the body as a direct experience. Actually, it doesn't need imagination; sensing the direct experience, and then imagining kind of spreading it throughout the body. Inviting it to touch into all aspects of our being.

And what would it be like to carry this sense of warmth and flow and a connection to our heart area out into our lives today? What would it be like to let whatever degree of warmth is there spread out to meet other beings, to meet the Earth, the environment? It's not about how much there is, but really how we use it. Using it well.

Bringing some sense of warmth, the softness of care, into the world, not with an agenda, of course, but simply because that's the way we are today. To the degree possible, and see the result of that. See how just that natural degree of heat to whatever it is can have an impact in a very simple way. So that's an invitation to try out today, if it's of interest.

Dharmette: Flavors of the Dharma (1 of 5) Love and Care

Okay, so the first question is, were you able to hear the bell? I've been having some trouble sometimes with the bell not transmitting over the electronic connection. So if you didn't hear it, the bell did ring. And please let me know in the chat so that I will know what to do tomorrow. And in the meantime, we'll go ahead with the talk.

This week is called "flavors of the Dharma," as I mentioned. No bell? Okay, thank you. We'll fix that tomorrow.

This week is called flavors of the Dharma. And I mentioned just briefly before the sitting, but in case you weren't here, we'll be exploring how certain teachings have a distinct emotional tone or flavor that is meant to support practice. And the reason I've chosen this particular lens or way of seeing it is that there is a precedent for it from the aesthetic culture of ancient India. The Buddha was teaching in a cultural context that included a highly developed aesthetic sense. So he was in this environment, and of course spiritual teachings are distinct from art like poetry, but still, there was this context surrounding the presentation of spiritual teachings, if you will, which also have an emotional tone, of course.

And there was a word for this, it's called rasa^[2], which means nectar or essence or taste, and it's the emotional experience that's evoked in the listener. And there was a standard set of rasas that were evoked in art, this was kind of understood. And people sort of high up in Indian society would have known about these rasas, and we see some of them reflected in the suttas.

So today, we have the rasa of love or compassion, or more generally care. And all of these in a spiritual sense. Of course, in the regular arts, they would include romantic love or other things like that. But within the suttas, we do see a flavor of care in a spiritual sense in a way that would support our practice or path toward liberation. And so, with each of these flavors, we'll look at suttas that are examples of it, and we'll consider when and how that flavor is useful in our practice. So I hope that will be of interest this week.

So this flavor of love or care, it really underlies and supports Dharma practice at a base level. There's a sutta about the king of Kosala, whose name was King Pasenadi^[3]. And he was a follower of the Buddha, a devoted follower, but not a great meditator. Very sincere nonetheless. And in this teaching, he is talking to his queen, whose name was Queen Mallikā^[4]. And he says to her, "My dear queen, is there anyone more dear to you than yourself?" And apparently he was hoping that she would say, "Why yes, you are more dear to me than myself."

But that's not what she says. Actually, what she says is, "There's no one, great king, more dear to me than myself," kind of straightforward. And then she asks him the same thing and says, "Well, king, is there anyone more dear to you than yourself?" And given how the conversation has gone up to that point, he has to reply in kind, "Well, no, actually there is no one more dear to me than myself."

And he's a little taken by this conversation, and so he goes to the Buddha and he shares everything that happened in that conversation. And the Buddha uses it as an opportunity to offer an ethical message of care. You know, so the Buddha approves of what the queen said, and he says, "Having traversed all quarters with the mind, one finds none anywhere dearer than oneself. Likewise, each person holds himself most dear, or herself most dear; hence one who loves herself should not harm others." So we see that this sense of being dear to ourself is actually in this sutta pointed to as the basis for caring for others. So at a base level, we are generally dear to ourselves, we care about ourselves in some way. And this is normal and is in fact the basis for wholesome conduct. So the Buddha is praising the queen's assertion of self-love.

In another sutta with this same King Pasenadi, the king notes that people who engage in unwholesome actions treat themselves as a foe, even if they say they are holding themselves dear. And also, people who engage in wholesome actions treat themselves as dear, even if they say they regard themselves as a foe. And the Buddha again agrees with him. So our actions, you know, if we are behaving poorly out in the world—we're lying, or we're manipulating people, or we're being unkind in some way—even if we say we're doing it because we care about ourselves, we're standing up for ourselves, "If I don't take care of myself, who will?", we're treating ourselves as a foe, because we're engaging in these harmful actions that actually have an impact on us, even if we think we're helping ourselves. And people who attempt to live ethically, who try to be kind, who don't lie or steal or manipulate, sometimes people like that will say that they're unhappy with themselves and that they don't love themselves so much. But these very actions of trying to care, wanting to care, are good for us; they help us at some level. So we could get in better alignment, actually, by also loving ourselves, also being kind to ourselves.

So we see that the Buddha is quite clear that ethics and positive self-regard overlap. Ethical conduct is the basis of the Eightfold Path^[5], and so is care for ourselves and others. There's another sutta that says this in a nice way. There's a story of a newly ordained monk who keeps having difficulty following the monastic rules because there's so many of them, right? So he's always kind of making mistakes and looking awkward. The other monks are, you know, "He didn't do that right." But they sense that he is proceeding from deep love and faith in the Buddha, you know, he's ordained out of really deep faith. And so, when they think about it, they decide not to discipline him very much because it might dampen his faith and love, and that would be more harmful for him. So they're kind to him, and eventually he grows into being able to manage the monastic life and live up to all the rules that there are. So we have this sense again that deep love and faith as a basis for practice really help things to unfold well.

If we look across the suttas, it's probably the case that the Buddha rarely displayed what we would conventionally consider to be love here in the West. Many of his teachings were a little analytical or a little tough sometimes, to wake people up a little bit. But many of his teachings really were profoundly caring. He met people right where they were, using language that they could understand. That in and of itself is an act of care and love and compassion.

For example, there's a story of, I think many of you know the story of Kisā Gotamī^[6], who was a woman whose child had died. And she wasn't really a practitioner at that time, but she was so distraught that her son had died that she was actually carrying him around while he was dead, and trying to get somebody to help her, and people were turning away. And she finally found the Buddha a little bit when she was a little bit crazed. And he said to her, "Okay, okay, I can help you." So she's, "Oh, thank goodness." And he says, "Go to a house, find a mustard seed from some household where no one has died, and bring me that mustard seed." And so she sets off to do this task, right?

And you know, a mustard seed is hardly worth anything, everybody would be willing to give her one, but she goes from house to house, and of course, there isn't any household where no one has died. So she learns in that way that her situation, although difficult, is just real. It's normal. That's how it is. And that was so much more profound of a way of learning it than anything else that could have been offered. It could have been told to her or explained to her, or anything like that. So this is a way where the Buddha was being profoundly caring, although somewhat strong, tough. And she comes back and understands and is willing to bury her son, and she becomes a nun and becomes awakened, as these stories go.

So there are many, many examples of love and compassion and care in the Buddha's teachings. It's threaded all throughout. And it also comes forth explicitly in some of the cases like the ones that we've explored today. So when is it appropriate to use this flavor or savor—maybe we could say rasa is sometimes called savor also—savor of love or compassion or care? I mean, there are so many, right? But we could just name a few, which is we need to give ourselves time. So we need to just do the practice without seeking results or achievements. It can sometimes seem a little distant, "You know, why am I sitting here trying to be with the breath? I really need to think about this problem that I have. I have to work on this relationship, that's what keeps coming to mind." But if we just stay with the breath, stay with the body, stay with the mindfulness practice that we're doing, it has a way of affecting us more profoundly than we realize. You know, like going from house to house asking about a mustard seed. That was so much more effective than, say, grief counseling, if you will, when that instruction was given by the Buddha and she was willing to do it. So there's this doing of the practice just to give ourselves time to unfold, to let it do its work. That is profoundly loving.

And of course, at moments when there's a lot of dukkha^[7], we can bring self-compassion directly to our situation. Sometimes that might look like self-care in some way, or maybe just seeing clearly that what is happening is the most loving thing that we can do. We may not need to bring in ideas about our story and other things, but to see directly and feel how it is: "Yeah, it's really hard right now." Without a story, it's just, "This is it." Deeply compassionate.

And also, love and care is the indirect basis for so much of cushion practice. There are so many cases where, in kind of a standard sequence of sitting down to get ready to meditate, some of the suttas will say that the practitioner sits down, has an upright posture, establishes compassion for all beings, and then brings mindfulness to the fore and begins to meditate. So we can do this also, is have a sense that we're meditating out of compassion for ourselves and all others.

So I really see this as a foundation for so much of what we do. It helps so much unfold when we have a basis of love or care. And I'm careful to use those general words so that we can find our own way of meeting that.

Today in the United States, it's a holiday, it's Juneteenth, which celebrates or commemorates the emancipation of African-American slaves in 1865. And so maybe it's appropriate that we talk today about ethics and love and compassion and care as a basis for ourselves, our life, our relationships, and indeed our whole society.

So tomorrow we'll be on to a different flavor, a different rasa. Five of them this week. And I hope you'll enjoy this tour of some of the emotional tones that we see in the Buddhist teachings. Be well.