Guided Meditation: Practicing with "Here”

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Practicing with "Fear”. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 27, 2020. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Good Monday to everyone. Greetings to the beginning of our five days together this week. I am also teaching a retreat through the Insight Retreat Center online, and there is a wonderful space between. It's been 7:00 to 7:45 here for me to come here to our Zoom sitting and teaching. I hope that some of the qualities of the retreat are conveyed during our time together this week.

Guided Meditation: Practicing with "Here”

One of the practices I have occasionally in meditation is to say to myself the word "here" (H-E-R-E). I usually do this especially if my mind is more busy or more distracted than is helpful for meditation, but at other times as well. "Here" acts as an acknowledgment that this is where I am at. It is not a command like you would give a dog; it's done in a kind, supportive way, without any idea that things should be anything different here. It's a kind of waking up or a recognition: "Here I am, and it's like this here and now."

If I'm thinking a lot, I say the word "here," and then in the wake of that, I just recognize what is here. So if I'm thinking a lot, then I'm recognizing that I'm thinking a lot—there's a busy mind or an active mind. That simple recognition is mindfulness. Rather than my thoughts taking me away, the thoughts become the basis for recognizing what's happening in the present moment. I'm thinking about the future or the past: just "here."

Then I open to it, and it's very permissive. What is here is allowed to be here; it's just that I'm recognizing it. As I do this in a relaxed, ongoing way, the force and momentum to be caught up in thoughts or be distracted begins to abate as I re-familiarize myself with the sense and feeling of being attentive, being mindful to "here." "Here" becomes more and more the basis of where attention resides and where I'm staying.

It is not a rejection of anything, but rather it's establishing myself in the present moment with whatever is happening. There's a world of difference between being clearly, cognizably present, knowingly present^[1] for something, and being carried into it, caught up in it, or obsessing over it. But it's "here." It's very gentle, it's permissive, it's allowing, but it allows a kind of gathering together: here, and here, and here.

As I do it, I come closer and closer into the heart of what's happening here in my body, my breathing, my thoughts, and my feelings. Eventually, there's a settling in here to what feels more like the center of gravity of it all.

So, taking a meditation posture, and sometimes maybe swaying forward and back as a way of beginning to adjust, align, and find a good posture. It is a way of using your body as a reminder to be here. Gently closing your eyes and taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. These deep breaths are also a ritual for being here, especially as you exhale to relax into "here." And the closest, most intimate part of "here" is your body.

Letting your breathing return to normal and allowing further softening or relaxing of the body. Whatever is tense or being held, softening the muscles of the face, allowing the face to rest. During the day, the face is often involved in all kinds of small expressions, sometimes expressions of presenting yourselves a particular way to others, smiling... And now in meditation, letting the face rest.

Softening the shoulders, relaxing the shoulders, releasing them to the pull of gravity. Maybe as you inhale, a sense of lifting, opening, and expanding of the shoulders. If you don't feel that lifting, you can take a few deeper breaths to feel the movements of the shoulder, letting go as you exhale.

Softening in the chest. Opening the heart, softening the crust, the hardness of the heart.

And softening the belly. If the belly is held in tight, something in us is working hard to protect ourselves or to want something. For this period of meditation, perhaps you can allow yourself to feel safe enough for the belly to relax.

Then settling into your breathing. Settling into the body's experience of breathing. And then, as you need to, as is useful, you can gently, softly in the mind say the word "here." If you're attending to your breathing, maybe "here" opens further to your breathing—the body breathing.

If there's a lot of thought here, recognize thinking as a present-moment phenomenon. Almost as if you can step back and view it as another person who's thinking or imagining: "here." In the way that we experience our lived life, the living experience of being alive is only in the present moment. So "here" brings us closer, drops us into the lived life, how it's experienced in the present moment after moment: "here."

Know "here." Gently, lovingly saying the word "here," and maybe popping the bubble of thinking. Popping the bubble of treating thoughts as substantial and somehow real, or somehow more important than finding ourselves really intimately connected to the lived experience of the moment. The lived experience we discover through our body—the body breathing: "here."

Reflections

The simple movement to being aware "here" is the door for deeper meditation. It's also the door for how we can more fully be present for others. Even to say "here" to ourselves silently so that we're not caught up in thoughts, judgments, bias, and expectations, but instead we give time and space to take in the other—the people we're with. We make time to allow who they are and what's happening with them to be registered, to be experienced. Take time to experience others "here," recognizing the impact they have on us "here," without being caught up in the impact. "Here" is a place of strength and generosity in being with someone else.

May it be that what we learn and how we learn to be in meditation is something that we apply to the world of people. Whether it's to take time to really feel and sense and experience an email before we respond, or a phone call, or a stranger in the store. They don't have to know that we are "here" in line at the store behind them. Just "here," allowing ourselves to experience the other.

Or listening to or watching the news: "here." Letting go of the thoughts and reactions, or knowing the reactions but remaining "here," and learning to be simple and wise to really see clearly what's happening to us as we listen to the news. Being "here," so maybe we can generate goodwill, a certain generosity. Not that we agree with others, but we don't banish them from our hearts.

May it be that the meditation practice we do allows us to be more fully "here" for our world, and in doing so, that we live this life for the benefit and welfare of all beings, maybe in many small ways. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. And may all beings be free.