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Guided Meditation: Peacefulness

So, good day, and hello, everyone. For today's meditation, I'd like to offer something a little bit different. Rather than thinking of meditation as something we do as a work, think of it more as an undoing. There is a little bit of doing we do, of course, but mostly it's avoiding or not doing so many things that we normally do that add tension and stress to our moments of being alive.

In this meditation, you might try to touch into some modicum of being peaceful or calm. You might mostly not be that way, but maybe somewhere you can touch into a little bit of being calm in the middle of the storm, and then let everything kind of settle into that calm or peace. That's the reference point to see how much you're actually doing.

For example, tension in the body is a doing. It's an activity that we're engaged in, and it's tiring to be tense. As we sit with a modicum of calm or peacefulness, let that tension in the body release. Let yourself settle into that peace a little bit more.

Some modicum of calm or peace can be a shield that protects you a little bit from too easily wandering into thoughts, which are stressful and a lot of doing. So we're undoing the engagement in active thinking, coming back, letting go into this peace, and staying close to that.

When we're focusing on the breathing, it's kind of like we're aware from that peaceful place. We're aware in a calm way, as if breathing is held in a sea of calm.

So, sitting upright, entering into your meditation posture, and perhaps gently closing your eyes. Without doing anything more, can you find or touch into some degree of calm, ease, or peacefulness that's here now for you—the calm in the middle of the storm?

Maybe it's found someplace in your body. Maybe it lives in your chest, your belly, or your hands. In whatever modicum of calm or peace you can feel, let your body relax into that. Relax the doing of tension, the holding of your shoulders, of your belly, of your face.

In a calm, peaceful way, become aware of your breathing. It's not work to be aware of the breathing, but almost as if the breathing are the waves of the ocean gently washing across the shore, the sand. Gently, your breathing washes across whatever is calm or peaceful for you.

Especially as you exhale, kind of return to a peaceful place, staying with the whole exhale, settling into whatever calm there is here.

Notice if you start thinking, if that's extra work for your mind. The overactive mind is tiring. Sometimes in the mind, there's physical tension from all the thinking we do. That can be tiring if we really feel it. Undoing the doing of thinking. Let the thinking mind relax.

Not so you don't think at all, but so your thinking becomes calm and relaxed. The thinking becomes thinking about breathing—gentle, slow thoughts about being present here in this peaceful place.

And so for this meditation, stay close to a feeling of peace or ease, and notice what takes you away from it. Whatever takes you away from it, can you relax, settle back, and let go into the peace again? And then notice what takes you away from it.

Touching into some degree of calm, peacefulness, or ease within, and trying to stay close to that, open your heart now to the people around you—to the people you might encounter today, or people in your lives, neighbors, strangers, colleagues.

Bring them to mind with a peaceful heart—a heart which is not doing much, that doesn't have to react or immediately pick up all the things that should be done. Just be aware peacefully, and perhaps peacefully, without expectation or work, have a gentle calm of aspiration. That is our aspiration: that we can contribute to the welfare and happiness of others calmly, peacefully.

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

And may our peacefulness contribute to that. May our ability to be peaceful make space for others to be free, to be happy, to be safe.

Maybe our contribution is simply to stay peaceful and calm, and in that peace and calm, to be present for others—for our friendliness, simple friendliness, to shine forth.

Dharmette: Supported by Peace

Yesterday morning's teachings on karma^[1] are an important aspect of Buddhism. It is important to appreciate that all our actions have consequences, to be careful of what we do, and to do the things that are health-producing, wholesome, helpful, and supportive—that move us towards freedom—and to avoid those that do the opposite.

So this is an important teaching, but it can be heard as if now we have to get to work, like this is a lot of work. Now every single action I have to track, monitor, think about, and try to do just the right way. It can be taken as a teaching that you have to work. Sometimes it can even be exhausting just to hear this kind of teaching because the implication is a lot of working.

Sometimes Vipassana^[2] insight meditation practice in general, when it's taught, might lend itself to the idea that there's a lot to do. There are a lot of instructions, and you hear all the instructions, and you wonder, "What do I do now? Do I do this now? Now there's a lot of emotions, and what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to go through the list of the different RAIN^[3] steps, or whatever it might be?" It could end up just keeping you busy, but that's not how it's supposed to be.

I think closer to the idea is what we did in this meditation: to find some degree of calm, peace, or ease, and let that be the reference point for not making things worse. Recognize that when the mind gets caught up in preoccupations, in a sense, you're losing touch with that peace and ease. You're not being peaceful anymore, and in a sense, you're making things worse.

If you're peaceful, but then you start rushing and feel tense, in a sense, you're making things worse. If you start complaining about something, in a sense, you're making things worse, maybe for yourself and for someone else. So to have this reference point of some degree of peace and calm—have that as a reference to not make it worse. It's not a lot of work to do this. It's more like staying close to the peace, staying attentive, and noticing when it becomes not peaceful, when it becomes agitated, stressful, contracted, or tense.

With time, we start becoming quite sensitive and familiar with the feeling, the sensations, the experience of things getting tense, tight, contracted, or agitated. We recognize it earlier and earlier, and then question, "Is it really necessary to do this?" And maybe not. Come back to the peace. You can still do things and take care of things, but do things from this calm place.

And so the attentiveness of mindfulness, this attention to the moment and to the consequences, can be very simple. It means staying calm and peaceful the best you can, and noticing when you lose it. Probably if you lose it, you're making the situation worse. One of the fundamental principles of these karma teachings is: don't make it worse.

Whether you can make it wonderfully wonderful for people or do wonderful things for the world—that might be difficult to figure out, and kind of a burden to carry that responsibility. It's nice to be supportive and do nice things for people, for sure, but the minimum is: don't make it worse. Making it worse is probably some kind of activity; we have to work to make it worse.

If we're a little bit hesitant to do meditation because it seems like a lot of work, we're probably overlooking all the work that we do that makes situations worse for ourselves and for other people. Don't make it worse, and then trust this place of calm, peace, or settledness.

If you have these reference points of some modicum of peace and calm—and again, it doesn't have to be dramatic. It might be that you're quite agitated, but you have a sense, a sliver of calm, you have some sense of what it is. That becomes a reference point to highlight how you are tense, how you are contracted or agitated, and then to stop and take a good look at that. Become familiar with that. That's what we bring our attention to.

Sometimes my instructions that I give myself—what I do in meditation or in daily life—is I stop for suffering. I go about my life peacefully and happily, but if I start suffering, if I start getting agitated or tense, that becomes a mindfulness bell. "Okay, here's something I should pay attention to now. I should notice. Here's something for me to learn. What did I just do? What did I just believe? What is arising out of me? What's the reactivity that's happening here?" Those questions of investigation, of looking at it, begin to take some of the authority away from it, some of the automatic nature of it, so that I don't have to go barreling into or participate in this suffering-producing state that I'm in.

For some people, there are very strong counterforces to being peaceful and calm. One of them is a belief that it's not okay—the belief that we're supposed to be agitated, or, "I'm such a terrible person that I have to make up for it and really try to run around and fix everything up and make everything safe, good, and tidy. Being peaceful just means that I'm lazy or good for nothing. My worth is only found in doing, and so if I don't do something, I will have no inner worth. And this peace implies some kind of not doing, so then where's my worth if I just sit and be calm?"

It's not necessary to think this way because it's possible to do all the things we are supposed to do, our responsibilities, with calm, with peacefulness. We can do it peacefully. We can do it calmly. Some people have found that they do things better that way. It's more effective, it has a better impact on others and on oneself, so that by the time some activity is over, we feel more settled or more focused than if we did it in an agitated way and by the time it is over we feel exhausted and tense by it.

So this idea that Buddhist practice is a lot of work is a misunderstanding that's easy to come up with. I like to think of it as almost the opposite: it's like the undoing of work. It's the undoing of all the different forces that are work, that are exhausting or tiring, and discovering a place of ease from which we can do things and enjoy them. That's a wonderful place to be, and trust it in some deep, profound way.

In this way, the instructions in meditation that we give sometimes are not really prescriptive. It's less about what we do, and more what we notice. Less what we're doing, but more what we're undoing.

If the attention is to the breathing, then it's noticing how we add extra work to breathing, to the attention to breathing, like when we're trying too hard, and trusting that it's possible to do it in a peaceful way, in a relaxed way.

If we bring attention to our body, feeling that we have to fix every ache and pain in the body, we get busy trying to focus on the pain, get rid of the pain, and do something with it, as opposed to being peaceful with discomfort. "Oh, I'm supposed to pay attention to discomfort; let me do it peacefully, with no agenda, no work."

Emotions. All these wonderful instructions we give on emotions can seem like a lot of work. But what is it like to be with emotions in a peaceful, calm way, and to use the instructions to support a peaceful, calm way?

And thinking. A lot of thinking makes it worse. A lot of thinking is difficult and stressful. But what's it like to hold that peacefully, and look upon it kindly, and not be too caught and preoccupied by it?

Our actions make a difference; our actions have consequences. The actions that are done peacefully will have peaceful consequences, at least locally. And the actions that are done in an agitated way, unpeacefully, will have unpeaceful consequences.

Hopefully, that simple teaching will encourage you to stay peaceful and not to use Buddhism as a lot of work. It can be ongoing, it can be continuous, it can be the center of our life, but it's more of an undoing than a doing.

It's kind of like we put a lot of work in to stay at ease and stay close to the place of ease. There's a paradox there: if you put a lot of work into that, you can get tense. You can't get tense in order to be at ease. But you can have a continuous attention; you can have a heightened awareness that keeps you close to that place of ease and peace—a heightened awareness which is itself an expression of that peace itself. And that becomes a protection.

This easeful mindfulness is really a protection; it becomes a shield from all the ways that we get caught up in excessive work in the mind and the heart.

So thank you. If you take one thing from this talk: live a life where you don't make it worse. Whatever situation you're in, don't make it worse.

I look forward to coming back tomorrow, and then next week I'll start the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta^[4]—the Buddhist instructions on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. We'll go through it probably over a few weeks, like we did last year with Anapanasati^[5]. Thank you.