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Guided Meditation: Love from the Deep Heart/Mind

Hello and welcome to this guided meditation where we're continuing with meditation on equanimous^[1] love. This involves a shift of perspective, a shift of orientation for many of us.

The reason for that shift is that everyday, ordinary ways of thinking and reacting are sometimes not the most accurate ways of seeing ourselves or seeing the world. If we're seeing the world through our ideas, concepts, and stories, even if they have some accuracy to them, they give a very limited view of life. It's like having just one book to read. Maybe it's an interesting book, but you read the same book over and over again. It certainly has a perspective on life, but it's only one.

The perspective we shift to is something that I call the deep mind. Rather than skimming along the surface mind, we drop down to the heart. Rather than living only in our thoughts, ideas, futures, and pasts, we drop deep down into our heart in a particular way to tap into our capacity for equanimous love.

For me, one of the primary reference points for this is having a bird's-eye view of life, a wide perspective. It's sometimes called a "grandparent mind." A grandparent has raised kids; they are old enough to have seen much of life and experienced a lot, so they see things in context. If they're sitting on the bench in the school playground watching the kids play, the dramas of the school playground are not as consequential. The grandmother loves the children, but she's not caught in their drama. She's seen that all before and she cares. She loves. She knows this is how things are. Through the ups and downs of life and the challenges of life, she is there to help, support, and be available.

But that love is not ruffled. It holds experience in a wide space of time where things come and go and change, up and down. This is opposed to someone who is riding each event as if it is the end. When interpretations and stories are caught up in the present moment—believing this is the most important thing of the moment—we just go on to the next thing. I see that sometimes with how many people, including myself, read the news every day. The news of the day sometimes seems so important and so phenomenal, yet within months some of it is forgotten and has receded. These things come and go, but the reaction to it in the moment is, "This is the most important thing. This is really big," and we get pulled into it.

Grandparently love is a time when we sit back on the wonderful park bench and have that wide view of things coming and going. We see that challenges are needed for some people to grow, change, and mature, and that joys are also temporary. We love from the perspective of loving rather than the perspective of the surface mind.

Part of the function of meditation is to drop down into this deep mind, this deep heart, so that its perspective is included in a full way. Occasionally, as in meditation, we drop into it deeply and fully.

So, assume a meditation posture and gently close your eyes. See if there's some way you can adjust your posture or enter into your posture as if your body is here to hold all of what's happening for you in gentleness and in safety. Even if there are aspects of your body which don't feel so safe—if they feel dangerous, in pain, or sick—is there a wider field of body or some place in your body that can provide a sense of stability, a place of calm, a place that can hold it all spaciously?

Gently take some fuller breaths. Take fuller inhales and a longer exhale. Move through. Come out of a place of safety, a place of calm, maybe peace. Take a longer exhale than usual, just a little bit longer. Give yourself a chance to settle down into a place of calm, stability, and peace. Inhale with that calm peace and let it spread through your body.

Spread peace and calm, not in conflict or struggling with where there's agitation or tension. Like soft water, let it flow around the tension and the pains to soften, to moisten, to relax.

The inhale expands peace throughout the body like water that flows around to fill. The lake flows around the stones, the hardnesses, and the challenges. Spreading peace through your body, settle into peace as you exhale. Allow the thinking mind to relax as you exhale, so that the mind partakes of the peace and dips into it.

Deep down below all your thoughts and thinking, deep down in your body and your heart, touch a place of love, goodwill, care, and tender warmth. As you breathe and as you inhale, let that warmth spread with your expanding lungs and chest. Let there be a settling into the love as you exhale. Maybe it spreads in a different way. Breathe in and expand the combination and togetherness of love and peace, relaxing into love and peace within as you exhale.

As you sit here, if you've been meditating for some time, maybe you can appreciate that many different things happen in meditation. Things come and go physically, mentally, and emotionally. Over a wide span of time, maybe everything will come and go through your meditation practice. All your concerns and experiences will somehow come through. Rather than getting caught in the great significance of what's happening in the moment, settle back into the peaceful place, the loving place, the grandparently place. Look at it all through the eyes of love.

Know that it's all just the comings and goings. It's all what passes through meditation over time. It's okay. You don't have to lock into what the drama of the moment is. It's okay to settle back with a peaceful love and to care for it all without being pulled into the drama. You don't have to be hijacked by whatever is happening in a way that takes away your peace or your love.

Gaze upon all things with peaceful love, knowing that in meditation all things will come, have their time, and go. Make room for that changing nature of your experience, allowing it to change. Settle down into the deep mind and the deep heart that is unbuffeted by the experience of life, which can gaze upon all things with care and love without being activated.

For these few minutes now, take the chance and the risk to dip down to the middle of an equanimous love. Breathe with it, spread it, and see all things through its eyes.

From whatever depth within you of a settled, peaceful love and kindness, let that come up into your mind's eye. Gaze upon the world kindly without being for or against, without the need to act or react, but with a wide panoramic view. Gaze upon the world kindly. Gaze upon the world with an equanimous love as if, for the next minute or so, it's the only thing you have to do. You have complete permission to only gaze upon the world with an equanimous love.

Wishing all beings well, travel out on the waves, the radiance of your kindness, spreading this wish for all beings to be well. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Love (74) Unruffled Love

Hello and welcome to this final talk on equanimity as one of the four divine abodes^[2], four resting places in love. It is more than resting in love; it is abiding in love. This is particularly accessible—or the place where it's most accessible most of the time, I believe—in meditation, where we don't have to be interacting with people, talking with people, or trying to understand the social world.

In the social world, we sometimes go through swings where we are overly leaning into a situation or overly pulling back. Somehow, those swings are a little bit too big. Sometimes they are wonderfully so, and sometimes tragically so. But in meditation, all we need to do is stay present here without having to navigate and negotiate. We give ourselves permission just to sit.

One of the remarkable things that happens over time in meditation—and this requires doing it every day or most days so it becomes a thread that goes through your life—is that everything gets included sooner or later. If you only meditate when you feel happy, you only see part of who you are and part of what your life is like. If you only meditate when you're stressed or unhappy, you only see that part. The idea is to see it all. Let all of it come to be seen, experienced, and processed through the experience of meditation.

One of the things that will happen is that certain things will become familiar and will repeat themselves. For example, you might find that you have some physical pain. I've had a lot of knee pain over the years, especially when I was a new meditator. It would come and go, and the knee pain in the beginning was a tragedy. It was a great drama. It was something to be quite worried about or reactive to. I would hate my pain, feel like I had to fix it, and feel like maybe I was a failed meditator to have knee pain.

But it came and went, and slowly over time, I learned how to be mindful of it. I learned a little bit how to be less reactive to it, and after a while, it became familiar. When pain would come, it wouldn't be this crisis. It would be, "Oh, there's the pain again. I know how to be with this. I know how not to be reactive to it and not to be caught in self-pity. I know how to just make space for it and hold it." Slowly over time, I learned how to be with the comings and goings of knee pain. There came a time when there was no drama involved. There was no reactivity and no getting stirred up by it, just, "Oh, there's my old friend knee pain. I know how to do that." There was equanimity with it, and there was equanimity with care and with love for how we deal with it.

The continuity of meditation and seeing the same things come and go gives us a sense that there is always an up-and-down swinging, a coming and going of things. At some point, that wisdom of being equanimous and non-reactive translates to new things. In the beginning, it might just be particular things we're getting familiar with: "Oh, there it is again. I know how to be with this, and it's not such a big thing after all. I can just ride it out and be with it." After a while, we say, "I think maybe this is true for many things. Maybe even new things that arise will come and go too."

This is one of the gifts of ongoing, regular meditation: all kinds of things come through, and we start getting a sense that we can hold it all. We can just be present for this too. "This too is arising now, and this too I can just not be reactive to. I don't have to spin out in thought or try to fix it." We don't use it to define ourselves and say, "Oh, I'm a failed meditator." Or if it's going well, "Boy, I'm a successful meditator." It is just a coming and going of phenomena, with no need to add anything extra to it. There is much more peace. There is much more equanimity about the comings and goings of things. It can be a remarkable state. It's not neutral because it's vital and alive. It feels very healthy, like a dynamic peace. Yes. Clarity. Yes. I'm here for this.

This equanimity of just being with the comings and goings of things also translates to how we love and how we have kindness, goodwill, and care for ourselves, for our experience, and for the world. At some point, we learn that we can just love through the ups and downs. We might even have likes and dislikes about things, or we might have to talk about difficult challenges between people. But there too, "Oh, here we go. I've been here before. I know this. I can hold this. I can be present for it. I don't have to sacrifice the kindness, the goodwill, or the love. I know how to hold this." This is just part of the ups and downs of life. It's not just the ups and downs of meditation.

With time, because we're not getting pulled into the drama of things, we realize, "Oh yeah, I know this. This is part of the ups and downs, and I can hold it. I know how to be with it." That kind of approach then gives room for our kindness, our love, our goodwill, and our ability to stay present for the world and for other people with respect, connectivity, and friendliness. It makes a rich, heartfelt kind of connection to people possible because we didn't get pulled into the drama of the moment or get reactivated by the things that come and go. It's not saying that difficult things won't come and go; it means that over time, we become wiser about it. A certain kind of confidence arises—a clarity and a strength of capacity—and that translates to a wonderful sense of equanimity.

It is wonderful to be present, to know what's happening, and to care about what's happening without getting pulled into the drama, the reactivity, the fear, the hostility, the complaining, the blaming, the defending, or the building up of self. We aren't caught in the drama of it all. Other people might try to engage in conflict with you, but when they're with you, you're not activated. You are present. You're not offending or closing down. You're not caught in it or reactive to it; you're simply present.

Over time, you might be surprised that learning this capacity becomes a doorway for goodwill and kindness. Some people might say that you are a very loving person, but you're also equanimous. You're unruffled, but you're loving. This equanimous love is an unruffled love. Equanimous love is an uncompromised love. Equanimous love is a generous love. It is a compassionate and uncompromising love.

When things are incredibly difficult, when maybe nothing else can be done, we sit, we stand, and we are with people in unruffled love. When things become impossible, rather than collapsing or running around like a chicken with its head cut off, we provide others with this wonderful ability to have a wide, spacious perspective of the comings and goings of things. We can say, "Oh, this too is impossible. This is what's happening. I know how to be with the impossible. I'll just be with it without reacting and without making a story." In that space, at least in the impossibility of what's happening, we can love. And that is no small thing.

So this equanimous love is a great gift. It's a great power, and it's something to be interested in and curious about. One way to do that is to pay attention to other people and see if you can find the people who seem to have a twinkle in their eye. They have love, delight, and care, and they always have presence. They are there. When things are difficult or when there are challenges, just recognize when that presence is happening. Appreciate it. Study those people. If you know them well enough, ask them about it.

This equanimous love, this loving equanimity, is really the coming together of all these important strands of Buddhist practice: mindfulness practice, concentration practice, wisdom, understanding, and insight. It is the coming together of freedom, letting go, and non-attachment, as well as the coming together of goodwill, compassion, and appreciative joy. All of that comes together in equanimity. It is a phenomenal thing, and it is not to be had quickly or suddenly, but rather through the continuity of practice over time. Through the steady thread of meditating every day and showing up for yourself all the time in mindfulness, we learn to ride the ups and downs of life with equanimous love.

Thank you very, very much. I'll end this series on equanimous love with the wish: may it be so. When I come back on Monday, we'll continue for another couple of weeks with this long series on love, bringing it to a conclusion. Thank you, and may equanimous love and loving equanimity visit you and arise in you.