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Introduction

Welcome, and appreciating very much the good mornings and greetings on the YouTube chat, and also the places where you are when that's listed, and a sense of the very wide range around the globe that we are a Sangha^[1] community, people coming together to meditate.

One of the appropriate ways of translating the word Samadhi^[2] is not as "concentration," but as "unification." In fact, a number of the different words related to concentration that are often translated^[3] into English as concentration can have the meaning of gathering together, settling together, unifying together.

This idea of coming together, unifying, happens on many different levels. Sometimes when we sit down to meditate, it's helpful to have this in mind: that we're making things whole. We're unifying, encompassing maybe even the whole globe, everything, the whole world where we are sitting, maybe the universe even. And then we're beginning to settle into the middle of that by coming in, not to reject anything, but so the awareness stays whole. It begins to settle quieter and quieter into the very heart of it, which is in the immediacy of our direct experience here in this body.

So it's not so much a matter of shutting out the world and narrowing the attention, as it is unifying the attention so that awareness is whole and can encompass whatever comes under its gaze. There's a settling, a quieting of the fragmentation, the preoccupations that prevent the unification of the mind, the unification of mind and body. We come here and we can settle into a very deep, quiet place in the midst of present-moment experience, close to the heart of where it all comes and goes.

Guided Meditation: Unification

So taking a meditation posture that allows you to be as whole as you can, so that awareness can be encompassing, open, and inclusive. Perhaps sit in such a way, or have a posture in such a way, that you can open your chest a little bit. Sometimes you might feel a little bit more vulnerable, but that vulnerability in the chest is maybe a part of a process of inclusion, beginning to include more and not being protected or pulled away from. And perhaps there can be a softening of the belly, that is also a movement towards inclusion.

Settling your being, gently closing your eyes, and letting your awareness be almost wide and open like the sky, so that whatever happens within your awareness is known as space, breathing room. There might be all kinds of thoughts, concerns, or feelings you might have. It's all allowed to be there, no need to exclude anything. But perhaps you can imagine that you have a bird's-eye view of it all, and it's all held within the gaze of that bird, that large view. The thoughts you have are just a piece of everything else.

That bird's-eye view is broad enough, high enough in the sky, that you're somehow inclusive of where you're sitting: the place, the locale, the land, the town, the homes, the location all around you. It's also a part of your meditation. The ground you're sitting on that spreads out from you, or out from the building you're in. Allow your awareness or your thoughts to be encompassing of so much more of what this life is than your own thoughts and concerns. Not to exclude them, but to broaden the attention.

And then allow your broad, open awareness to settle into the particular room or locale where you're sitting. Here you are in the meditation posture, in a particular place, with a space around you. Then settling into the place where your body touches what supports you from the pull of gravity. The place where your weight to the body settles in this contact with the floor, chair, cushion, or bed.

Perhaps at the center of a unified, open, encompassing awareness, nothing is excluded, but things are allowed to recede to the periphery of awareness. At the center of your awareness can be the experience of your body, the global experience of your body. If there are thoughts or ideas happening, they can be included, but let them be in the periphery. Let them be in the background; no need to exclude anything.

If awareness has a shape, imagine it's a big circle, and at the center of it is the body. In the center of the body is the breathing. Kind of like you're on a trampoline, standing at the very middle of it, and the middle bends a little bit or sags a little bit from your weight. The center of your circle of awareness is the weight of your breathing. Allowing other things to be included, but no need to get involved in them or think about them. Let them be in the periphery. At the center of awareness is breathing.

The unification of Samadhi is to use all your senses. It makes sense for all your capacities for awareness to be involved with breathing. Whatever tactile abilities you have that come into play as you breathe, feel the movements and physical sensations of breathing. Maybe even feeling the contact of your body against your clothes as your body moves, as your torso moves as you breathe.

There might even be proprioception^[4] at play as you sit upright, then as you breathe you can feel the location of your body in space, a body breathing.

Unification also means that maybe your thinking is involved in the attention to breathing. Very, very quietly, having very simple thoughts about the experience of breathing. It can be so simple that it's a label: "in" as you breathe in, "out" as you breathe out. "Expanding" as you breathe in, "contracting" as you exhale. Or very quiet, soft instructions to yourself: "stay right there," "feel," "sense the body breathing."

If there's any mental tension that interferes with settling on the breath, see if you can relax the thinking muscle and settle into your breathing. So the unification is all of yourself; all of yourself is there with breathing. Almost as if you become your breathing.

Finally, as you experience breathing, allow yourself to feel the kaleidoscope of sensations that come and go with the inhale and the exhale. Notice what appears and disappears as sensations connected to breathing, and rest in those sensations. Almost like you're the sandy shore that receives the waves as they wash up and down off the shore. The sensations of the body breathing wash across your ability to sense and feel the body inhaling, the body exhaling. Whenever you're lost, caught up in thought, relax the thinking muscle. Let go, back into the waves of breathing coming and going.

Reflections

As we come to the end of this sitting, I'd like to call upon the metaphor of a bell. If a bell is rung nicely, the sound of the bell radiates outwards touching all things that it encounters, without harming anything. Perhaps we hear a bell and it doesn't harm us, but maybe it's soothing or inspiring to hear the bell.

So our care for the world, our kindness for the world, can reverberate out from us in unseen and seen ways. In these last few minutes, gently, lovingly repeat these three words that I'm going to say. Just quietly in your own mind, say the words and open yourself up. As if you're a bell that's been struck, the waves of these words, the meaning of it, the sense of it, will radiate outwards across the globe. As you say the words, sink into the association in your body you have for these words:

Happy.

Peaceful.

Love.

And then consider how these sentiments that live in you might find expression in words and deeds today. May the things you say and your actions today be words and deeds that promote happiness for others, peace for others, so others may experience love, or know love coming out of our meditation today. Let's have this meditation session make a difference in the world, making the world today a little bit better place for people who are local and around the globe.