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Guided Meditation: Knowing and Sensing

Good morning everyone. Welcome, welcome, welcome to this community of practice. We're exploring this week what each of us brings to this community that makes it a community of practice. The community of practice needs a lot of different kinds of practices, a lot of different approaches to practice, a lot of different qualities of mind, of character. The sangha is richer as a result of everybody bringing their own special gifts to our shared practice.

Today, having talked in the last few days of dharma delight—people who bring a special delight in the meditation—of people who, on Monday or Tuesday, bring a certain ability to recall the teachings. They bring those with them, keeping them alive. One of the things we do in this community is keep the teachings alive for ourselves, for others, for future generations. That's a special gift that some people bring. Today, we'll talk about those who bring sort of a penetrating vision of what all the teachings point toward in the way we can be free in experience. This too is a special gift that inspires, reassures, delights. And interesting, the clear seeing that's in the heart of our practice. I'll say a little bit in the dharmette about where clear seeing is captured in the word insight, which we use to characterize this tradition of Western Theravada^[1] practice. The insight scene, the insight practice realm, the insight tradition, and lineages.

And I'm going to point out that insight is a way of using a noun to characterize something that in Pali is a gerund, is a kind of verb. It's a verbal noun, but it is best translated, most accurately or literally translated, as clear seeing or seeing clearly. How do we see clearly? No surprise. I probably sound like a broken record, skipping CD, or problematic MP3 download—or skipping streaming service. But we see it in the meditation. The meditation is our window into clear seeing. The meditation provides a taste of what it's like to be in an experience without struggling, without suffering.

So let's meditate. And what I'm going to attempt to point to in the meditation is that clear seeing comes from a simplicity in the meditation. The simplest way that we can be with our experience is how we come to see clearly what's going on in our little world, each of us.

So, let's sit together. Let's bring our eyes down if that's comfortable. As we bring our eyes down or close them, we can bring our attention inward and downward. Doesn't take any effort. It happens naturally when we close our eyes. One of the reasons we soften our gaze or close our eyes in the meditation is because what follows when we do that is a natural rebalancing of our attention. Our attention moves inward to this inner world, and it also moves downward from this place on top of our bodies where visual experience is interpreted, where the mind works. Brings our attention down into the body, where we can engage in a simple knowing and a simple sensing of our experience.

This simple knowing, simple sensing, is such an important part of our practice. It turns out—and we find it true in the meditation, and if it's true in the meditation, it can be true in the rest of our lives—that when we know experience simply, when we sense what's going on without adding extra to it, we can be free in it.

And I'll guide just a little bit, but I'm going to try to end up right here with something I've got to say, which is: what if this practice isn't about us getting free? What if it's about freeing our experience? It's freeing the world from our grasping, our holding, our wanting, our selfing, our projections, our anxious concerns. I find it inspiring, and maybe in part because it seems possible, not to free David, but to free the world of experience from my wanting or pushing away, grasping onto, making mine. We do this by seeing clearly what's going on. And that we can do by just being with our experience in a way that's simple, that doesn't add a lot of extra, that eventually doesn't add any extra. Being here without imposing order on experience, letting experience rise and pass, letting experience flow, and letting experience go.

So notice the simple sensing that happens in the body. Yesterday we pointed to just noticing how air enters the nose. Cool and quick, and then exits the body having been in the lungs for a few seconds. Warmer, slower. Notice and sense, feel the weight of the body on your chair, on your cushion, on your bench, on your feet, whatever posture you're meditating in. Feel the weight of the body. Notice any stiffness in the body, any discomfort. Just take note of it. No need to do anything about it. Use it as a way to be with experience, simply.

We can sense the movement of the body with the breathing. Each in-breath, each out-breath, gently lifting the body. Noticing the expansion of the body in the abdomen with each breath. Noticing the gentle rise and fall in the shoulders. And just noticing as simply as we can the awareness of this bodily movement.

Much as the sensing of physical sensations can be simple, so too can be the knowing of experience. Everything that arises in our experience, this whole world of experience, is known with a knowing that is easy and simple. And we can rest in that knowing regardless of what's going on in experience.

There's a beautiful simplicity in the way experience is known. The way little momentary events happen in experience and are immediately known by mind. And you may notice that in this constant bubbling up of experience, of thought, of sensation, that the arising of an event and the knowing of it aren't actually separate things.

So resting in this experience that comes and goes, resting in the flow of it, letting things bubble up, get known, pass back away. Sometimes we're aware of a gentle flow. Sometimes it's more of a rush. Sometimes it's a bubbling of experiences like the way bubbles rise in carbonated water, sparkling water. Sometimes the flow of experience has the quality of sparkling. And we can rest here easy in this flow of experience with a simple knowing and sensing. We can let the experience flow and let the experience go.

Maybe the aim of practice is to free this gentle flow of experience from us, from our wanting, holding, projections, concerns. We could do that when we rest in a simple knowing and sensing of it, sitting right in the middle of the flow, comfortable in the meditation. We can let things come and go. When we get deep into meditation, comfortable in this flow of experience, we find that we don't have to hold on to anything. Not only is it not possible, but it's not necessary. We can rest here at ease without any doing.

In the meditation, we can become aware of this constant flowing of experience. Tiny little bubbles, microseconds of events happening and being known, being met by mind. Maybe the challenge that practice presents us is to rest in this flow without pushing back, without in various ways trying to stop it, control it, make it ours.

A curious thing that happens when we add extra to what's going on here is that we solidify it. We sort of interrupt the flow. And when we see this happening, when we see the flow, when we see the way it gets interrupted, we're able to have a clear view into how suffering arises. And we can see how when we let experience flow, when we free it from our desires, our pushing and pulling, our wanting it to be another way than it is, that that struggle, that suffering, that stress that we add, that it comes to an end.

This seeing clearly is transformative, and we live it in the meditation. We get a sweet taste of it in the meditation, and we can bring it into the world with us.

Dharmette: What Each of Us Brings to the Sangha (3 of 5); Seeing Clearly

So, welcome again, everyone. I hope that was a nice sit. Going a little deep there, you know. Going a little deep. So arrest me. Sometimes that's what happens. But this way of being in the experience that I've sort of suggested in the guided meditation—and it may or may not connect with anybody's experience today or in this particular meditation—this is the heart of our practice in a way. This idea that in the meditation we can see clearly how suffering arises, and there's various ways to characterize that, but today I sort of characterized it as a way that we stop time, we stop the flow. And another way to say that is that we make things into things. We make this flow of experience into things. That's just another way to say it using the tools of language at hand. Sort of an inexpressible thing that happens in the meditation.

So to make a transition to the dharmette, and particularly for people who join us now or who will see just this portion of today's YouTube sangha, we're exploring this week the strengths of individual practice that grace this community of practice, that make it what it is, that make it strong, make it resilient, make it delightful to be a part of, to practice in.

I've said, I think on each previous day, that a practice community is the sum total of the practices in it, and like many other things, the sum is much greater than its individual parts. Kind of teasing out, looking in some ancient texts, teasing out what these qualities are. And we've talked about people who have great learning and who bring that to the community. We've talked about people who take great delight in the meditation and inspire the rest of us with that delight. Some of it rubs off on us when we're practicing together. Today, in the middle of the week, we find ourselves in the heart of our practice. This idea of seeing clearly is a particular strength of practice that illuminates this community. I didn't mean to, but maybe I'm using the word illuminate in a profound sense there, that there's a way that seeing clearly enlightens us, illuminates the community, and enlightens our practice.

So we'll return to the discourse. We'll return to the Gosinga Sāla Tree Grove^[2], and to this conversation among disciples of the Buddha in which each one has been asked by Sāriputta^[3] what they bring to the community of practice, and each one has answered in a way that reflects what they understand that they bring. It's interesting here that there's no embarrassment here. You know, we're used to saying, "Oh, I don't add anything. I don't bring anything." I guess it's important we think to be modest. These are advanced practitioners, awakened disciples of the Buddha. They're not worried about being modest. They know what they bring. And they suggest that these are qualities. Maybe that's important for us, too. You know, I've been saying, "Know what you bring. Make the practice your own and be aware of what special attributes it brings to the community." And I've been saying, "Bring it and share it," just like these disciples do.

So today, or at this moment in this conversation, Sāriputta addresses Anuruddha^[4] and says, "What kind of practitioner, Anuruddha, illuminates this grove?" And I've left out the beautiful language—it's not here—but that says, "This is a beautiful moonlit evening. This grove is delightful. The sāla trees are in blossom and a wonderful scent pervades the air. What kind of a practitioner would additionally grace this moment?"

And Anuruddha says, "Sāriputta, a practitioner would add much to this community who, with the divine eye purified, surpassing the human, surveys a thousand worlds, just as a person with good eyesight when they've ascended to the upper palace chamber might survey a thousand worlds."

This is an interesting metaphor or simile here. And perhaps this is a special way of seeing the world that comes with full awakening. And yet for regular practitioners like us, bodhisattvas^[5] like all of us, we might say that a practitioner who sees the big picture brings a lot to this community of practice. And I like this idea. Sometimes these similes that come up in the discourses, these ancient texts 2,500 years old, some of them—these similes, I like to feel them. They're experiential. They incredibly, after 2,500 years, they're things that most people can relate to in some fashion. And this idea that if we climb, if we have good eyesight—that's explicitly said here—when we ascend to a tower or in this case the upper palace chamber of our little palace, and we look around us, we survey a thousand worlds with a vision that is purified, meaning it's free of suffering. It's purified by wise view. And it surpasses normal suffering eyesight. It allows us to see far and wide.

I like to think of what that would be like as an experience. What I feel is, if I go to the top of a tower, I'm closing my eyes to imagine it. I look out and although perhaps things seem fixed, if I look closely, I notice that everything is in constant motion. And it's not just that the things out there, maybe clouds passing or people moving about or birds flying or wind happening, are moving, but every little fragment of what's seen is actually in motion. Nothing, if it's looked at for more than a second, is still. And of course, there's a complicated thing going on there because there's the world happening. There's the mind perceiving it. There's that consciousness in between. None of it is stable for any period of time.

So this experience of seeing clearly the impermanence we say of all experience is key to our practice and in some ways the center of it. And I say our practice because there's an assumption there that many people understand themselves to be practicing in this broader insight tradition. And so just a word about that word insight. Insight is a translation of a Pali word, but which many of you have heard in different contexts. And one of the things that happens with some of these translations is that they were made, most of them, the earliest translators, by British colonial administrators who were also scholars who first translated these texts. Most of them were men, with one really important exception. But they used terms that were familiar to them, and a lot of times they used nouns when there's some form of a verb in Pali. And this particular noun vipassanā^[6], which we sometimes translate as insight, is a gerund, it's a verbal noun, and it means clear seeing or seeing clearly. So it's not something that we have and hold. We don't get insight. We don't attain insight. We don't have insight. It's not my insight. It's something that happens in experience, and in particular we open to it and let it happen in the meditation.

And what is it that's seen clearly? What is the heart of this practice of vipassanā or insight or clear seeing? Impermanence. And not just things like seasons and life and all things change, but what we notice in the meditation, which is that every fragmentary second, mind-moment of the experience that we have of life is incredibly fleeting. And as meditation deepens, it becomes clear that all the complicated fabrications of the world that we make up are made up of these little fragments and then after a very short period disappear back into them. This kind of scene of fluttering mental phenomena.

When we first come across this, when we first see it clearly, it can be unnerving and unsettling. And then as we get used to it over time—and this is one of the things that regular meditation does—it becomes comfortable and eventually delightful just resting in experience as it arises and passes. It's like resting in a bath of mineral water. I'm going to say that I think that might be delightful. Maybe that's an uncomfortable image, but it's like resting... I'm trying to think of another simile. The ancient ones work. Every time we come up with a new one, it has limitations to it. It's like resting maybe lazily in the flow of a warm stream or something like that.

So this is the big picture when seen clearly with what the sutta passage, the discourse passage, calls a purified and surpassing sight. Seen clearly with wise view, with the teachings in it. The big picture has the power to transform our experience of life. And we can find ourselves in this constantly moving world of experience without flailing about and trying to hold on to things and get it to stop, get it to be our way.

I want to pause and say that the mind's ability to impose order, make sense of things, create a sense, an illusion of fixedness, permanence, or at least solidity and things that last, is super useful. We can't always walk around in the world. Certainly, we're not going to drive on the freeway as we sit in this experience of meditation. The practice isn't about actually sitting, being in this experience of just stuff arising and passing as we walk through daily life. But being aware of that, having seen it, seeing clearly in the meditation this arising and passing of all things, allows us to suffer less and eventually not at all.

So I spoke yesterday of dharma delight, and you know, the delight that particularly some of us bring to meditation, and sometimes without any formal learning or study, and it's just the delight in the meditation, and that's just so important as something that is brought to the community, and it's great in individual practices according to the early teachings. Another way that dharma delight is cultivated is through this clear seeing. And it's interesting that as we settle into this clear seeing, it does become delightful. There's something delightful about letting experience flow without trying to stop it, control it, make verbs into nouns, make the passing of things into objects.

And maybe without making ourselves into things, you know, trying to impose a person, a David in my case, on this experience, just letting it happen without all of that jazz, without all of that extra added. And again, it's useful to remember my name, and I hope I'll remember it long. It's useful to remember a name. It's useful to have a name, I imagine. We don't have to like one's name, you know, that has utility, but it's lovely to let go of it in the meditation. It's lovely to be able to let things just come and go.

So, some practitioners... I could talk all morning. I realize I only have two minutes left here, so let me sum up a bit. [Laughter] Some practitioners grace our community with this ability to keep the big picture always in mind. This penetrating sort of way of seeing through, in a way, day-to-day concerns, the way we get caught up in things. And these practitioners that bring this kind of aspect of practice into the community are really important. It provides sort of a guiding light and a reminder of what's at the heart of the practice.

And there are practitioners who make the engagement with impermanence, engagement with the unreliability of experience, a central part of their practice and something they bring and share. And this seeing clearly in practice, and people who bring that into our community of practice, illuminate our practice, illuminate this community of practice, just like Anuruddha illuminates the Gosinga Sāla Grove in the discourse.

So we'll leave it there for today. Tomorrow we'll sort of extend—all these themes are related, that may be clear now, maybe I should have saved that spoiler alert. [Laughter] All these things are related: delight in the practice, clear seeing. I think you could go back through Monday: today clear seeing doesn't happen without delight; delight in the practice doesn't happen without returning over and over again to the teachings in meditation—that was Monday's theme.

Tomorrow we'll explore more something that came up today in passing, which is letting go. Sort of various ways that the practice encourages us to let go of the things we hold on to in the world. And like I said in the guided meditation, free the world from us, instead of thinking about freeing ourselves, freeing the world from our suffering.

So that's that for today. Take care everyone. Have a pleasant 24 hours and we'll see you again tomorrow morning. Bye.