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Guided Meditation: Being with Change

Hello, and this Monday, welcome. I'm happy to be here with you. Some of you participated in the Saturday morning, a Saturday day-long, and so there's perhaps more continuity in that practice between the Friday and the Monday that you carry with you.

One of the things I said Saturday about the practice of mindfulness is that there comes a point where it's a kind of paradigm shift. We see things in a different way than we usually do. I want to emphasize that here as we begin this meditation. There's a natural tendency, if we're in the present moment really with the experience, to be concerned with how things are.

The expression "how things are" focuses on the present moment existence of what's happening. If you ask, "How are you?", there's a lot of things that might contribute to that answer. But if you try to explain really how you're feeling, sensing what your experience is here, you might say something definitively. But that focuses on the static. Things as they are can be seen as static, unchanging.

The Buddha's way of saying this, and what he emphasized in terms of insight practice, was not how things are, but how they come to be—how they become, how they arise. It's a difference between focusing on the static part of our reality versus the dynamic, focusing on how things are arising, appearing in the moment. Being present right there at the edge of time, the edge that keeps arising, appearing here with particular experiences that arise.

Certainly, some things persist, but to be a little bit like on the front of a boat, just watching the bow move through the water, as opposed to being in the back of the boat, or being on a large ocean liner where you're not even looking at the water because you're maybe inside in some big room. To be right there with how things appear, as the boat meets the water. Things as they come to be.

We can begin this paradigm shift with our breathing. If you say, "How is your breathing?", you might say, "My breathing is tight," "My breathing is loose," "My breathing is fast or slow." And those are all accurate. But how is the breathing arising? How is the breathing coming to be, moment by moment?

Now we're seeing the process nature of our experience, not the static kind of stepping back and generalizing, "Oh, the breathing is this way or that way." As opposed to, "How is the breathing coming to be?" Now we're focusing on how it's coming into awareness, how it's coming into experience. The beginning of the in-breath, the arising of the in-breath, the expanding of the torso perhaps. The beginning of the exhale, the cascading sensations of exhaling, how the sensations come into being there at the beginning of experience. Hopefully, that's clear enough.

So, assume a meditation posture that's stable, rooted, and grounded, so that you can sit at the bow of the boat without being tossed around too much by the waves that keep coming.

If your eyes are open, gently lower the gaze. Then, with a gentle, relaxed gaze, if it's comfortable, you can close your eyes.

To receive the appearing of an inhale. The whole process of breathing in. Taking a long, slow inhale. The coming to be of an inhale. Then at the top of the inhale, there's the coming into beingness, its appearance.

The beginning of an exhale, a long exhale. It's not just a single thing. It's the unfolding of a process of the body contracting, the diaphragm lifting.

In a sense, the body of breathing is not a thing, but a dynamic process of change where constantly something new is appearing, something new is growing, fading.

Relaxing into the breathing, relaxing the whole body as much as you can. A tense body is kind of stationary, static. A relaxed body has room and space for change, for movement, for breathing to be unencumbered.

If the mind is preoccupied in thoughts, it's concerned with how things are. We're relating to thoughts as things, as concepts, as opposed to the process of thinking, the coming into being of a thought. Every moment things are coming into being.

This is the place where the meditation becomes settled, focused, relaxed. Allowing things to come into being, moment to moment. Getting out of the way. Letting the physical and mental experiences arise and pass. As if there is a lot of space for things to come into being, and you're ready and available for the next, and the next. Like an open window is available for the wind that blows through it.

Sometimes what arises elicits a response within us, a reaction. That is just another arising, another appearing, another thing that comes into being. Stay there at the edge of things coming into being. Allowing them to fade away from attention so you can be there for the next arising. Like a bow of a boat that meets the water and then lets the water just slide off the side.

Even within the in-breath and the out-breath. Being available for the process of what comes to be in breathing, the constant process of change.

To be at ease with the ever-changing nature of experience. To be available, ready, and open to ride along with how things change, as they're always changing in some way or other. To do so is to let go of fixations on anything. And without fixations, without dwelling on anything in particular, there's more possibility for being with whatever's happening in a friendly way, in a kind way, with generosity and care.

And as things come to be, may we meet it with our care. May this meditation teach us, encourage us, inspire us to meet everything with open care and kindness. So that this meditation that we do can benefit the world.

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

Thank you.

Dharmette: Insight Pentad (1 of 5) Things as They Come to Be

Hello everyone. Today, being Monday, we start a new theme, and in some ways, the theme this week will continue last week's theme. Last week was what's called the gladness pentad. These five qualities of the gladness pentad—gladness, joy, tranquility, happiness, and concentration—also appear in a longer list that continues the pattern and the flow of the practice for five more qualities. These can be called the insight pentad, the five factors that arise in the wake of insight.

This is Insight Meditation that we do, and here in this teaching last week, the idea is that there's preparation done for real, deep insight. The insight into suffering, the insight into the inconstant nature of our experience, is some deep paradigm shift. The first part of the insight pentad is seeing things as they have come to be: knowledge and vision of things as they've come to be.

Often, the Pali expression yathābhūta^[1] is used. Yathā just means "like" or "as." Bhūta, with a long 'u' and a 't-a', is a past participle. It means not things as they are, but things as they come to be, things as they have come to be.

The focus here is not an insight into how things are as things, but rather a focus into the process, things as processes, things as dynamic and changing. It's very easy for us to be concerned with particular things, ideas, and experiences. Sometimes we hang on to an experience for a long time, carrying our resentment, our desires, or our regrets around it. We may carry some fixed idea of what happened, but we're focusing on that as opposed to the process of thoughts arising, memories arising, or thoughts of regret arising.

If we're settled enough, we see that these are actually a relatively inconstant process, in the sense that it keeps reappearing, but it's not a static, flat preoccupation. The mind is constantly regenerating itself in terms of what it's focused on and what it thinks about. But we get enamored, we get caught in the ideas of things being a certain way. They're fixed; "this is how it is."

The alternative offered by the Buddha is this: everything is a process of becoming. Everything is unfolding, so there's always a possibility for change, always a possibility for something new. The world, our suffering, and our personality are not static, big icebergs that don't change. They are more like water that is constantly moving.

To the degree to which we live as an iceberg, the gladness pentad is a process of thawing, of relaxing the places of tightness and holding, the places where we're caught, the places where we're fixated on things. The practice of the gladness pentad is to free the fixations of the mind and the heart, so we're ever available for what's happening now, what's happening next, what's happening in this moment.

If we're able to see the constant arising and passing, the constant things as they come to be, then we live in a world that is full of potential, full of possibilities that grow the less we fixate. The potential of how we meet any situation can become more creative and varied; it becomes a meeting of reality with freedom. A fixation, focusing really tightly on "this is how it is, it has to be this way," is not a space where there's freedom. For freedom of the heart, openness, availability, and readiness for something new, if we see, "Oh, this is not how things are, this is how it's coming to be," then the fascinating and powerful question is: "Given that it's coming to be this way, how can we shape it? How can we let it become something next, be something else? How do we respond creatively? How do we respond with newness to allow things to keep unfolding in a good way, to take everything that appears not as a fixed thing, but as a platform, means, or condition for responding in a new way?"

For example, if someone offends you, it's easy to get upset and angry. Then "this person has offended me," and that offense has become a static thing. But if rather we see it as a process, an ongoing process, then we ask ourselves, "Oh, that seems offensive, that hurt. Given the flow, like the flow of water, how do I now navigate this to make it better? How do I navigate this to understand it better, to be better with it myself, and maybe respond to the person in a better way?"

If I meet it with resistance, then I'm stuck; there's less flexibility. But if I meet it with something fluid, then maybe something different can become and arise. I can't do this necessarily so well, but I know people who will meet an offense with humor, and it de-escalates it quickly. It kind of changes the whole nature. I know people who will meet offense with curiosity: "What's really going on? Do I lean into the person? What's happening here for this person?" I know people who meet offense by letting people know: "Well, that's happening to you, let me tell you what's happening to me. I feel hurt, I feel afraid, I feel concerned, I feel angry given what's happening."

So we're expressing and talking about what's happening in the moment as they come to be, and maybe saying, "Wow, this is how it's come to be. This is a difficult situation that's come to be here. Given that that's what's come to be, what's next for us? Given that this was difficult to hear what you had to say, what should be next? How do we go forward from here?" Always this movement: how do we go forward? Where's the dynamism? Where's the movement? That is more difficult to happen if we're dwelling, fixating on "this is how it is."

So things as they come to be in meditation can be a dynamic place of change. Everything is just coming into being moment by moment; we don't dwell anywhere. Sometimes this in Buddhism is called non-dwelling awareness, or non-abiding, where we kind of float on the river of change and time, being the change, being the changing flow of the present moment. We become it as opposed to thinking about it, being a step apart from it.

Is this easy? Not necessarily. But the ability to be in the flow of the dynamism of things coming into being is built on a continuity of the gladness pentad, the teaching from last week. If we can't do this, then we step back and go back to the beginning where practice is. Maybe we go all the way back to the place where we're fixated, suffering, and challenged, and we hold that with kind, non-reactive awareness.

Maybe feeling glad that we have a practice to do so. And then, with that gladness, we can engage in the practice of really trying to see more clearly, practicing more non-reactive awareness, which maybe brings a kind of warmth to it all that begins to bring some ease and tranquility. It maybe begins to thaw the iceberg of how we're frozen in some concern or preoccupation.

When the whole iceberg has melted, then we're resting in this wonderful pond of water, the lake of samādhi^[2], from which we then can be with the fluidity of the water, the changing nature of it, meeting the currents, meeting the changes as they come to be, as they flow.

This is one way of talking about the insight into impermanence. In Buddhist language, he literally said insight into inconstancy, how things are in constant motion, constant change. One of the purposes of this deep insight is to begin letting go—letting go of resistance, letting go of clinging, letting go of fixation. Not "this is how things are," but "this is part of a process of change, this is part of things coming into being."

When we see it that way, then it may be easier to be interested in: "Given how this is coming into being now, how do I participate in this for the greater good? How do I step into this changing river of phenomena and contribute something really wholesome, valuable, wonderful, beneficial into the mix?"

Our job is to let go and contribute what is good, let go of our clinging and flow along, letting the current be an expression of our goodness. This is the insight pentad. As we start having this insight into change, shifting the orientation from things as they are to things as they change, as they come into being, this has an impact. That's a condition for something to begin to thaw, to change, to move.

And that's a topic for tomorrow: how we're affected by the deeper and deeper insight that comes from this practice. So thank you very much, and I look forward to our time together tomorrow.