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Guided Meditation: Ease with the Breath

Good morning, Sangha. Good morning. Warm greetings from Redwood City, California. Nice to be with you all. Great to see all of the greetings rolling in from all over: Scotland, Santa Cruz, Petaluma, Moss Beach, Sacramento. So many different areas up above in the chat that I didn't see as well, so welcome, all of you. Happy to be here with you.

And as a reminder, our topic this week is factors of mind that support wisdom, stability, unification, and they support it in both meditation and in daily life.

So just take in your global Sangha as you're settling in here. Any feelings of warmth, happiness, connection—really soak them in, savor them. Maybe smile at your Sangha mates even though they can't see you. Feel how that feels in your body and your heart. And as you're ready, please settle back, find your meditation posture, and go inward.

Starting out just by feeling into whatever sensations or emotions are present. Maybe allowing any excess energy or tension to be softened, released on the out-breath. Feeling into the goodness of the breath itself, the body itself, and the feeling of being connected to others and to your own breath, your own body, your own inner life. Feeling welcomed to be here in this moment, right now.

Noticing the entirety of this body from the tips of your toes to the top of your head. Noticing the vibrancy, the aliveness. Maybe tingling or pulsing, movement, stillness, weight.

Noticing the movements of the chest, ribs, belly, and tuning into your body breathing. I'll offer instructions on breathing this morning, but feel free to use other objects of attention if they work better for you. Overall sensations of the body, sound, mettā^[1]—any of those are fine.

Tuning into the motion with the ribs and the belly. Sensations of the life's breath connecting us to the outside world. Noticing all the sensations on the in-breath as the ribs expand, the lungs expand. Noticing how it feels at the top of the in-breath: fullness, perhaps slightly pleasant or neutral.

Then on the out-breath, noticing all of the details. The little micro-sensations within each out-breath. Tuning into every detail of when the out-breath ends. Perhaps there's a tiny pause, a still point at the end of the out-breath. Allowing the breathing to be natural, and attending, connecting with the breathing in the foreground. Acknowledging everything else, and smiling at any thoughts or distractions that come up, returning, connecting, and sustaining your attention in the gentle waves. Riding the waves of the breath.

Allowing the gentle motion of the breathing to massage the muscles in your core from the inside out. Softening, relaxing. Perhaps noticing the feelings, sensations of the breathing in the throat, back of the mouth, nose. All the way down through to the heart center, chest. Now you're feeling the in-breath. Following the whole body of the breath. Rising, falling belly. Sensations of in-breathing, sensations of out-breathing.

Noticing, acknowledging any feelings of ease. Any feelings of pleasure, comfort, or interest in this close contact with embodied experience. And if there are any feelings of contentment and ease, pleasure, happiness, allowing them to be there. Giving them space to grow if they want, to subside if they do. And graciously being with all of experience of each in-breath and out-breath. There is no wrong experience.

From time to time, reconnecting. Connecting with the texture of this moment, all of the little details, especially the details of the breath. Perhaps a sense of relief at the end of the out-breath. The goodness of nourishment from the in-breath. Reconnecting. Staying close, staying close to the experience.

If there's any sense of relaxation and contentment, enjoyment, as it appears to grow through the body, inviting compassion, kindness—the kindness of being with everything else—while inviting it to fade to the background.

Noticing the effects of each breath in the body. The expansion of the whole torso, perhaps a rippling through, energetic resonance through the rest of the body transpiring. Massaging breath through all of the body. Massaging, allowing good feelings to ripple through, and staying well. Resting in contentment in the moment.

In the final moment of this meditation, the invitation is to gather up any good intentions, little glimmers of contentment or ease, calm or joy, and savor them in this body, in this heart. If it was difficult, savoring the compassion, the willingness to be with. And then turning your internal gaze outwards towards your life, all of the others you may come in contact with directly or indirectly. And offering a sense of goodness, kindness, compassion, and care for them.

Making the determination that this practice be a benefit to yourself and to all those your life touches. May all beings everywhere be happy, safe, peaceful, and free.

[Laughter]

Thank you. Thank you for your practice.

Dharmette: Wise Unification (3 of 5) - Joy, Happiness & Contentment

Good morning, Sangha. Welcome to those of you who tiptoed into the YouTube stream a little bit late, and everyone else.

Today is day three of the five-day series on factors of mind that support stability, wisdom, and deepening in meditation practice and in daily life. We started with fundamentals on Monday of mindfulness and practice intelligence, and yesterday I introduced the first two of the jhānic factors^[2], factors for stability and samādhi^[3] (concentration). Those two were connecting with the meditation object and sustaining that connection, also known as vitakka and vicāra^[4].

When connecting and sustaining (vitakka and vicāra) begin to build the rhythm of continuity, often good feelings will naturally result from them. The Pali terms for these pleasurable experiences are pīti and sukha, and they roughly translate as meditative happiness and contentment for sukha, and meditative joy for pīti.

The third and fourth of the five jhānic factors... Sometimes in contemporary culture, people have been raised to feel like it's not okay to feel, to really enjoy joy and happiness. So if this happens to be you, please consider this talk enthusiastic permission to savor these forms of meditative goodness. Savor them, enjoy them.

It's important to savor and enjoy them when they arise because that encourages them to arise more often. The Buddha talked about these forms of goodness being healthy, onward leading, and to be cultivated, not to be feared. It's also helpful to note that "cultivate" here means cultivating the underlying conditions for joy and happiness to arise. We can kind of have a little control over reconnecting with our experience, the meditation object, and we can kind of have a little bit of control over sustaining that connection over time. These feelings emerge naturally from that. They don't come on demand, and you can't just make them appear necessarily. So savor, but do not demand.

The Pali word pīti has a broad word cloud of translations or meanings. I'll read some of them here. Please tap into your body and feel how they feel as you hear them:

Joy. Satisfaction of mind. Positive interest. Rapt interest. Delight. Zest. Zeal. Exuberance. Mirth. Merriment. Exultation. Thrill. Rapture.

You'll notice there's a broad range, and one is not necessarily better or deeper than another. Pīti has this large cloud of meanings because of the wide range of ways it can be experienced. It's energetic and embodied, and it can manifest as anything from a sense of positive interest to a little pulse of momentary delight, uplifting joy, all the way through to rapt interest and a bubbly joy or tingles, a rain-like feeling.

Many practitioners find that as their practice deepens, these feelings actually become more subtle. Not stronger, but they can be quite strong. Some people never experience them at all other than the mild interest or the pulse of joy every now and then. It's all good. Stronger is not necessarily better.

At its simplest level, this meditative joy is the joy of being present, closely in contact with the moment in a way that helps an energetic resonance to arise, and that's available to all of us.

Like sukha, pīti is an embodied mental quality. To explain both of them a little, I'm going to draw on one of yesterday's similes. If connecting is placing your hand on a friendly, furry cat and sustaining is stroking the cat, then pīti is the purring that results from this natural pleasure of connection and sustaining.

It can also arise from another kind of joy called pāmojja^[5] in Pali. That kind of joy is a condition for pīti, but it also arises itself when the heart and mind have let go of hindering mental qualities, unskillful qualities. Pīti and pāmojja can also emerge with the joy of generosity, the joy of letting go in a wholesome or skillful way. There is more than one pathway into meditative joy, and there's more than one progression that can go on. This series this week is one of those progressions. Gil [Fronsdal]^[6] has talked about another one, which is a gladness pentad.

You'll notice that this is an important quality in Buddhism because of that rapt interest, zeal, and enthusiasm. It appears in several lists.

That joy of generosity that can give rise to pīti reminds me of a story. This is from a scientific study by a wonderful researcher whose name I'm completely blanking on right now. They invited research participants to give away cupcakes to total strangers. They were provided the cupcakes as part of the study, and what they found was that the giver received this pulse of joy from the giving, especially when the giving was done with kindness and warmth. Not only that, the giver underestimated how good it would feel to give.

There's this giving over to the practice, either generosity with others or giving over to the practice and kind of letting go, that opens the door to joy and happiness.

Sukha, the happiness or contentment piece, is subtler and it also has a word cloud of meanings you can feel into:

Agreeable. Pleasure. Ease. Well-being. The feeling of being blessed. Contentment. Being pleased.

Sukha is present along with pīti, the more energetic resonance or purring of joy. It's softer and subtler, so it's kind of invisible sometimes when pīti is present because it's overshadowed by the broader energy of pīti. Sukha is more like a calm happiness, a pervasive pleasure. It can be a little like that happy, contented glow after a really good laugh.

Like pīti, sukha can emerge in other ways. One of the most powerful is from what the Buddha calls the bliss of blamelessness, ethical conduct—recognizing that we haven't done anything to harm others.

To finish the cupcake story, it turns out that people receiving the cupcakes valued the warmth and friendliness of the person giving them more than they valued the cupcake itself. Not only that, the sense of happiness, that calmer happiness, pervaded the day of these people long after the receiving happened and made them more likely to give to others through that day—pay it forward, so to speak. That lingering happiness, that's the sukha. The pulse of joy in the giving, that's more like pīti.

An ancient commentary of the Buddha's teachings called the Atthasālinī^[7] poses a story of a person finding an oasis or forest after crossing a desert. Hot, exhausted, that pulse of joy at stepping into the shade and finding a beautiful cool spring to take a bath in—the Atthasālinī describes that as pīti. Then sukha is the ease and contentment of resting after emerging from that cool spring on a hot day.

Perhaps one of the greatest teachings or takeaways from tasting or learning about this kind of meditative joy and happiness is that we have the capacity to experience joy and happiness with very, very little from the outside world. Almost nothing is required. Not buying anything, not beauty, possessions, or fame, but rather attending with kindness and devotion to every unfolding experience within. That's a gift.

That's how these experiences are most fruitfully regarded: as gifts, emergent qualities. Pursuing them or grasping them scares them away, because they can be really shy. The Buddha said that these are pleasures to be cultivated, and it's important not to attach too much, to grasp too much. This is where mindfulness and practice intelligence come in.

While it's not the same thing, another way of cultivating these can be to open ourselves to simple joys, pleasures, and contentment out in the world. It's a good way of teaching our systems how to recognize the meditative joy within.

So your homework, your assignment if you would like to accept it, is to notice today over the next 24 hours, moments of pleasure, joy, contentment, and happiness. Really feel them, savor them.

As they come to full fruition in meditation, they support unification, and that is our topic for tomorrow. Thank you for your kind attention.