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Guided Meditation: In the Flow of the Moment

Warm greetings, everyone. Hello, Sangha. Good morning. Just reading the chats as I set up my computer here. Thank you so much for the sound check, everyone; it's great.

Hi, my name is Dawn. For those of you who we haven't met virtually or otherwise—oh, and Neil—I'm happy to be here this morning with you. I'll be here this week, and Kim Allen will be here next week. We are right close to seven o'clock. I'm going to pop out and get something, and at seven I will be back to start the meditation. But meanwhile, it's just really nice to see all of you.

Good morning again. This week, I'll be exploring inner and outer harmony—teachings of the Buddha that talk about cultivating qualities of mind and heart that support the practice internally, practice towards freedom, and also support beneficial relationships. We'll start with a meditation.

Whenever you are ready and done greeting each other—even as you're finishing up greeting each other—the invitation is to look around your space. Notice where you are. Notice your external surroundings. Maybe the walls, or the sky and the trees if you're outside. Take a look behind you, and tune in. Tune into your surroundings, the soundscape around you. And then settling in. Settling into a posture if it feels comfortable and alert.

Noticing that you're seeing, softening your eyes, maybe allowing them to close. Checking in with this body. Noticing any sensations first, maybe the sensations of your skin touching cloth or air. Noticing any textures, warmth or cold, pressure, lightness. Noticing the whole body, where the surface of your body meets the world. Perhaps taking one or two slightly deeper, slower breaths.

Together, releasing any excess tension. Allowing the mind, the attention, to rest inward. Tuning to the sensations of your life's breath, or to the sounds around you, and resting. Resting in this moment. Perhaps noticing the rise and fall of the belly or abdomen, the flexing of the rib cage, the sensations of air in the back of the throat or the nostrils, or tuning in to the whole body breathing.

As you're settling in, setting an intention for this meditation: the cultivation of mindfulness. Perhaps, "May this be of benefit," or whatever intention works for you. Allowing the mind, the heart, to rest in the flow of the moment.

If the mind wanders, it's natural. See how kindly, with how much friendliness, you can invite the return of mindful awareness. Tuning and retuning to the sensations, the felt sense of breathing of the moment. Allowing these to carry you in the moment.

In the last remaining moments of this meditation, the invitation is to notice and appreciate any little flicker of well-being, kindness, pleasure, or relaxation. Any of the benefits of this practice—even just the commitment, the consistency of showing up, being here.

Gathering those together in your heart, and turning your internal gaze outwards. Outwards to the others this life touches. Imagining sharing those benefits with each and every person and being you come into contact with, and even those further out. Casting your inner gaze and opening your heart far and wide.

May others be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings everywhere be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

Thank you for the sincerity of your practice.

Dharmette: Mindfulness that Benefits Self and Others

Hello again, everyone, and a warm welcome to those who tiptoed into the YouTube room a little bit late. Happy to have you all here. Happy to see many familiar names and people I've run across either in person or virtually; great.

This week, the exploration, the theme, is on cultivating qualities of mind that are conducive and supportive to inner harmony and outer harmony. Peace of mind, but also beautiful ways or helpful ways of moving through the world. I'm going to start with a story, and it's a story many of you have probably heard before.

We're in ancient India, and there are performers—kind of like buskers these days they would be called—who perform for a living. There are these two bamboo acrobats: a senior acrobat and his assistant, a woman. The way that the trick works is the assistant has to climb up on a very tall bamboo pole that the main acrobat is balancing either on their clavicle or on their forehead. If you can imagine supporting a person just with a stick on your forehead or your clavicle, so much attention is required!

So the senior acrobat says to the apprentice, "Okay, so here's what we're going to do: you look after me and I look after you, and we'll perform our tricks and then we'll get down safely and collect our fee."

The other acrobat, the apprentice, looked at him and said, "No, no, no, that's not how it's going to work. It would be better if you focus on yourself and keep yourself quiet and calm and safe, and I'll focus on my balance. I'll look to my own balance, you look to your own balance, and that way we will support each other by supporting ourselves. We'll finish our trick and collect our fee."

It was a little bit audacious in ancient India for a woman to countermand a senior, and a man. But the Buddha heard this story related and said, "Actually, you know what? The assistant was right. Each person needs to be mindful and look out for themselves. Look out for your own balance, and in that way, the mindfulness will keep each other safe—not just in acrobatics, but in life."

However, it's also true that the senior acrobat was right that it's important that we look out for each other as well. The way we look out for each other, one might call it external mindfulness, a broader field of mindfulness. And that takes place through mindfulness of ethical virtue, kindness, compassion, and consistency. So both were right.

I'm talking about here the importance of the primacy of mindful awareness as a foundation—the foundation for keeping ourselves in balance, and an important foundation in how we're showing up with other people. The foundation of all other virtues, in some sense, is reflexive awareness. Being aware of what's happening, what we're doing, how we're showing up, and what the impact is.

In a sense, this is internal and external mindfulness writ large. Mindfulness of how we are in the world and how we are in ourselves. In the ancient teachings, the Buddha talks about other beneficial qualities, too, which I'll cover in the next four days. They are goodwill or loving-kindness, a kind of sharing or non-stinginess (which is a kind of virtue), the consistency of showing up in these ways over and over, and then the fourth is wise view. We'll cover each of these in the next four days.

Meanwhile, just to set the stage: a wise person, the Buddha says, a person of great wisdom, does not intend or practice for their own affliction, for the affliction of others, or for the affliction of both. But rather, they practice and think of their own welfare, their own benefit, the welfare of others, the welfare of both, and the welfare of the whole world. That's the intention.

As many of you have been participating in these Zoom sessions for years now, you're well aware that the early Buddhist teachings are about cultivating qualities—qualities that help create these healthy, harmonious mental states, culture, or ecology within us. These same qualities, when wisely developed, also help us show up and move through the world in a way that can increase the harmony in our lives and in the micro-cultures around us. Whether they're a band of ancient Indian mendicants like the Buddha led around India, or at a modern meditation center, family, workplace, or neighborhood, the same kind of principles apply.

This combination of internal and external cultivation is really helpful as a basis for true spiritual maturation, insight, and greater freedom of the heart and mind. It also brings more of a sense of connectedness, satisfaction, friendliness, and ease with the other people in our lives—even the other animals in our lives.

One of the teachings I drew from, and will draw from over the next four days, is known as sāraṇīya dhamma^[1] in Pali. Dhamma, or Dharma, is one of those words that can mean many things; here, it means something like qualities, principles, or factors. There's also a kind of word cloud, a range of meanings, for sāraṇīya.

So, feeling into your body, feel how the different English translations I'm about to give land in you: courteous, polite, friendly, thinking, happy, rejoice, gladden, to be compatible. Just feeling the resonances of them. Together, this phrase means principles or factors of compatibility, friendliness, or cordiality. The teachings I'm drawing from are often called the principles of cordiality or concord.

Some of you may also hear the word saraṇa in Pali in sāraṇīya. This is kind of a happy coincidence. The word saraṇa means "refuge." Many of you have heard that: Buddhaṃ saraṇaṃ^[2]. It doesn't appear to be a direct derivation in the language, but rather a homonym—that the word for compatibility or friendliness among people also happens to sound like the word for refuge.

In my mind, that means that these are linked. This happy coincidence means that cultivating these qualities helps our minds, our hearts, and our behavior become a refuge for ourselves. Our ways of showing up, our attitudes, and ways of relating can also be a refuge for other people, a refuge for those around us.

This does not mean sacrificing your own welfare. Many of you have probably heard a very modern simile: you can picture yourself in an airplane on the tarmac getting ready to take off. The flight attendants come out and they show the seat belts, and then they talk about how, in the unlikely event of needing oxygen, masks will drop. The instruction, if you have a companion, especially a child or an older person, is to put your own mask on first, breathe, and then help the other person put their mask on.

So, put your own mask on first in the practice. In fact, the Buddha kind of ranked motivations for practice. Practice which is not for one's own benefit or others' benefit is kind of at the bottom—like, why do it? It's not worthwhile. "Worse than useless," I'll just say euphemistically, for how it's described in the discourses.

Practicing for others but not for ourselves is a little bit better. It's really worth noticing that practicing for one's own welfare, even if you don't have others in mind, ranks more highly. Look to your own balance first. Then, the highest motivation, the most excellent motivation that the Buddha praised, is to practice for one's own welfare and for the welfare of others as well.

So, your mission, should you choose to accept it over the next 24 hours, is to perhaps notice how mindfulness meditation benefits you throughout your day, benefits others, or maybe benefits both. Just check in once or twice, or notice throughout the day. You can talk about it with a friend, or notice it in formal practice.

We'll be back tomorrow to continue to explore inner and outer harmony through talking about the process of inner and outer kindness, goodwill. Thank you all very much for your practice. It's a real delight to see all the names and the greetings in the chat. Please enjoy your practice.