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Guided Meditation: Undistracted

Greetings, and it is nice to be here with all of you. I feel kind of cozy sitting here. This is the second time I've sat down here to meditate in this hall today. At six o'clock, there was a meditation with the group that's here. It's very nice, and now with all of you, thank you for being here.

One useful definition for mindfulness is that it's being undistracted. Why that's useful is that it doesn't imply that we have to do anything except maybe let go of our distractions, and then we are there, aware of whatever is left.

To let go of distracting thoughts, let go of thoughts that interfere with being aware, and then be aware in whatever way remains. Be aware of whatever arises. You could even be without any choice; whatever arises in the present moment in awareness is allowed to be there.

This kind of way of understanding mindfulness is supported by the idea that we are present for whatever arises easily. We're not looking for something, trying to make something happen, or trying to penetrate deeply into the nature of reality. We are just very simply, lightly, calmly, receptively, easily, with ease, aware of whatever comes.

It can be easy to be impatient or feel like it's not enough. After all, meditation, mindfulness, and Buddhism are pointing to all kinds of fantastic, great states of meditation and attainments, and all kinds of great things. So, just something ordinary, like whatever arises in awareness, may seem like it's too ordinary.

But it's not ordinary, because most people live their lives distracted. The continuity of this ordinary, easeful, undistracted state leads to great freedom. It is a kind of freedom in itself.

So, to begin with a posture that has a little bit of intentionality in it: If you're sitting in a very relaxed way on an easy chair, or some other posture that's very relaxed, see if you can do a small adjustment that adds a little bit of intentionality to the posture. It could be sitting up a little bit straighter.

If you're meditating lying in bed, you might stick your forearm up, pointing your forearm towards the ceiling. The upper arm can be flat on the bed, and so at a right angle, the forearm points up. That is a little bit more vigorous^[1] and requires some intentionality.

Then gently close your eyes, and without much more preparation, what in your experience here and now arises effortlessly or arises easily? What is easy to be aware of here and now?

As you're aware of whatever is easy, is there any momentum or movement in the mind to wander off in thought? A kind of wandering off that eclipses present-moment awareness. A kind of wandering off in thought where we lose touch with being easily aware of what comes easily to us here and now.

If you do find yourself moving into distracted thoughts, you might just use the word "undistracted," maybe like a question or a reminder to open again in an easy way to be aware of what's easy here. What's left when you are undistracted?

For now, there's nothing else you need to do. You don't have to focus on the breathing. You don't have to have something that you're focusing on and trying to stay with. Just come back to this simple place where you can be aware of what appears easily in awareness.

If there's commentary and judgments about anything, that's also a pull away from being aware easily.

Staying close to this undistracted place, being aware of what comes into awareness easily, you might notice that the mind sometimes settles on certain experiences. Other times, there's a shifting of sensations that are coming in, almost like the mind just moves between things and floats, and all kinds of things are appearing, shifting.

Undistracted.

And then you might let awareness be more centered on the body breathing, becoming aware of whatever sensations of breathing arise easily into awareness.

As you return to undistractedness and being aware with ease—whatever easily comes to awareness, whatever is easy about the breathing—is there any tranquility, calm, or peace in that easeful awareness?

Undistracted. What remains when you're undistracted? And what is it like to be aware of that easily, with ease?

If whatever is occurring here for you is uncomfortable or painful—physically, emotionally, mentally—what might it be like to know it with this easeful awareness? Whatever is painful, whatever is dukkha^[2], let it appear. Let it arise easily into awareness without becoming distracted by it, without being pulled into commentary and stories.

Undistracted awareness of the challenges that arise simply and easily here and now. The hereness of them.

In the simplicity of awareness, might there also be a tenderness or warm-heartedness, a compassion that vibrates or is awakened in the ease, in the calm? Is part of easy awareness, calm awareness: easy compassion, easy tenderness, kind-heartedness?

Now, as we're coming to the end of the meditation, bring to mind someone in your life who has challenges of some type or other. In these last couple of minutes, bring them to mind and see if there can be a simple, light, easeful sense of care, compassion, tenderheartedness, kind-heartedness. Not a doing, so much as what can arise when we're undistracted.

May our ability to be undistracted as we go about this suffering world allow for our capacity for simple compassion to be present and available, always ready to wish everyone well.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be free of their suffering. May all beings have their burdens and oppression lifted. May all beings be free of their afflictions. May they get well. May all beings be safe from harm. May all beings experience peace, not war. May all beings be free, so they can breathe easily, smile easily, care easily. May we all care for each other.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Seven Factors of Compassion (4 of 5) Tranquility and Samadhi

Hello and welcome to our fourth talk on the seven factors of compassion. Today we talk about the tranquility factor of compassion and the samadhi^[3] factor of compassion.

Just to review a little bit, a few weeks ago—I suppose two weeks ago—I gave a series of talks on the foundational elements for compassion. These are the things that ideally would be in place so that compassion can come forth in a healthy and useful way.

First is learning how to be aware in a calm, non-reactive way. Just to be aware, and to be aware of what's happening within us carefully and well, so we can track and monitor our response to compassion and how to be compassionate. So, learning to be aware.

Then, to be attuned. To attune ourselves to the people we're with, the compassion that we're being present for, to find the right way to be in harmony with it before we act, maybe even before we focus on compassion.

And then, appreciation. To have some deep respect and appreciation for oneself or others, so that when we're compassionate, it's not pity. It's not feeling sorry for someone, but maybe there's something there more important than compassion, which is a deep honoring and valuing of others and oneself.

Then there is an aspiration: the aspiration that people not suffer, that we don't have suffering, that we come to the end of it, that we support the end of it.

And then there's action. When all those five things are in place, then compassion has a healthier foundation for being supportive and actually nourishing for our lives. Rather than being debilitated by the compassion because it's so painful and exhausting, it's actually enlivening and valuable for everyone.

This week, when we do have compassion, we continue practicing with the presence of compassion. We do not just take it for granted or take it as being something we have to now live with as it is, but begin appreciating some of the different elements that follow in the wake of compassion.

If there's healthy compassion, then as we live compassionately, there will be mindfulness. There will be a natural, easeful awareness if we're coming from that motivation of being present for somebody or ourselves with compassion. We don't have to work on that so much to be mindful; it just comes along in the wake of the compassion.

That awareness that comes along is useful so that we can really see better what's happening as we're compassionate. We can see if there are ways that we're operating that are harmful or beneficial. Are we straining a little bit? Are we a little bit under the burden of responsibility and contracted around that? Are we a little bit afraid? Do we feel like we have to jump in? How are we with it?

It helps to see the difference between a way of operating which is not so healthy or beneficial, and one that is. Rather than straining, we learn how to be present and engaged with a kind of ease or relaxation. Rather than clinging to something, we find a place of non-clinging so that compassion can flow more effectively.

As we make these distinctions and see where the challenges are with the compassion and adjust for it, that's the effort factor of compassion. We do make some effort and follow a path, or make the choice to go in the direction where it's more useful, where it's more free, where there is less clinging, less attachment, less resistance, and less burden. So there is an effort factor of compassion that comes along with the compassion that supports it.

Then there's the appreciation side, the joy factor of compassion. There's a kind of sweetness that comes from healthy compassion. If we don't feel that sweetness, we probably should go back and review and do these other steps, and maybe even go back to the Four A's—awareness, attunement, appreciation, and aspiration—to really see what's going on here within ourselves.

And then comes tranquility, calmness. Healthy compassion has a calmness to it, a tranquility to it. I've sometimes responded with compassion to try to take care of something in the world that seemed to need to be taken care of right away. Because I acted reactively, agitated—feeling I have to do something and jumping right in—I ended up making a mistake.

Once, I thought there was a little fire in the distance from the farm I was living on. I wasn't calm; I got immediately activated. I didn't take the time to take a second look before I called the fire department, and they came. I don't know what it was anymore now, it was so long ago, over 50 years ago. But it wasn't a fire. If I had actually taken the time to look, I would have seen that there was not a problem.

So this idea of being calm, to have enough calmness to see clearly—the calm factor of awakening. That is supported a lot by the ability to trust easeful awareness. To trust an awareness that's not straining or under the burden of our needs, our desires, or our fears. That's not easy to find, but it's part of the gift of this practice. As we do this practice, we discover this easeful, calm awareness, so that compassion can exist with calmness as well.

And then comes this fascinating, wonderful capacity of compassion to support concentration, samadhi. The samadhi factor of compassion. A lot of samadhi is a unification, a gathering together. I like to think of it as feeling so at home in our experience that we just settle really deeply, so that all of who we are settles together and feels at home with itself.

What that means about samadhi is that it's not meant to override dukkha, our challenges, or override the way we're distracted or our suffering. Samadhi should wait until we find a way to be present for what's challenging for us. We find our way through it with mindfulness, with compassion, with care, with attention, so that even in the midst of challenging experiences in life, we've found an inner home. We're home in our hearts; we're home in our inner well-being.

Again, that's not an easy thing to come to at all. It might take years for some people practicing to find that. But at that point, we can appreciate how compassion is an ingredient for samadhi. It's part and parcel of being collected, settled, contented, and really gathered together, so that the focus of compassion, the focus of attention, can be an effective way to just be here with what needs to be done. Just here, gathered together in the moment.

When we have this easeful, relaxed kind of way of being present, and this being at home in this world—even if in the external world we're not at home, but we're at home with ourselves—we feel like we belong to ourselves. We belong here. We belong in this universe in some way. Even though maybe the people around us don't feel that we belong, we carry our belonging with us. We carry our settledness with us. That's part of the gift of samadhi.

This is especially true if samadhi is not held onto as only some kind of deep state of concentration in meditation, holding on and attached to it having to be something really special. There are deep states of meditation that happen—they're called samadhis—but the samadhi in daily life of meeting the world is more the after-effect of being settled and calm. Whatever ability we have to settle and calm, and be centered and belong, and feel cozy and at home here.

If there are very deep states of concentration, it's the after-effect of that that teaches us how to feel at home, or be at home to ourselves. That after-effect is also what I think of as samadhi. And so, to allow for that reference point to be there.

It's really a fantastic thing. With that samadhi, with that kind of ability to gather around and let the concentration just be, and the attention really be present for what needs our attention—that's part of the sweetness that can come from compassion.

An example I gave earlier is a little girl who scraped her knee on the playground that we care for. We try to be sensitive, to attune to her, and care for the wound and for her in the kindest, most supportive way. There is an ease to that, because it is not a big danger she's in. We're present in a kind, caring way, and we almost become self-forgetting in caring for something like that.

In that self-forgetting, if we're at home in ourselves and collected here for ourselves, then that gathering of attention to care for her knee, or care for her, comes along with our capacity to gather in. It comes with our unification of being just focused and concentrated on the task at hand. That has a sweetness to it. It's so sweet to have this ability to be focused in this kind of way. So, this is the samadhi factor of compassion.

We're going through these, and we have one more tomorrow: the equanimity factor. What I'm hoping you'll learn from this is not to take compassion as a fixed thing—like you're either compassionate or not compassionate, and you're compassionate in whatever way you're compassionate, and you don't want to hear anything else. You might think, "This is my way of being compassionate," or you've never thought about it; you're just compassionate the way you are and think you're supposed to be that way. You might not be aware that compassion has many flavors, many component parts, and many aspects. Many things interact with compassion.

So, by learning to be mindful of compassion and appreciating the different factors of it, we can start playing in the playground of compassion. We can start exploring it and adjusting it, and finding how the best of compassion can come forward. It's not just compassion happening to arise, which might sometimes not be so healthy. Rather, we find that which is most healthy for ourselves and for others.

So, if you would like for today, maybe focus on tranquility and calmness. If you have occasion to have compassion for the suffering of others, and the circumstances allow you to take some time with it—you don't have to jump into action—you can do the experiment to explore how you can feel warm-hearted, tender compassion for somebody, or for yourself, and let there be a tranquility as part of it. Maybe it floats on tranquility, or it's supported by tranquility, or the compassion is tranquil itself.

Try not to fall into the trap of the worry that you're betraying compassion, or betraying some other person, by finding tranquility in it. Actually, it supports and helps grow healthy compassion in a wonderful way.

Thank you all very much, and I look forward to our time tomorrow.