Guided Meditation: Recognizing; Dharmette: A Monastery Within Story (2 of 5): Practicing with Challenges

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Recognizing; A Monastery Within story (2 of 5) Practicing with Challenges. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Ying Chen, 陈颖 at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 06, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Thank you everybody, it is good to be here with you all. I'm just feeling the enthusiasm and happiness in practicing together in these mornings and these days.

I received a request, as I didn't say anything about myself or introduce myself yesterday, and some people don't know me at all. So maybe I will just say a few words today about myself. I'm Ying Chen. I am a long-time IMC and IRC practitioner of a few decades here in the community, and I have also been practicing primarily with Gil Fronsdal^[1] for close to two decades. I've been very fortunate to be able to practice in this community and receive the teachings. In these last few years, I've been undergoing training to be able to teach Dharma in the community, and I'm in the current IRC/IMC teacher training cohort. I feel very fortunate to be able to share the Dharma and the practice with everyone.

Today we'll continue. In our meditation yesterday, the focus was relaxation, or relaxing. Today we'll be expanding to add another word that starts with the letter 'r', and that is recognition. When our body, mind, and heart are at ease and relaxed, it is conducive for clear recognition to come forth. So today we'll progress around this relaxed field and begin to see things clearly. With that as the intro, we'll begin our meditation together.

Guided Meditation: Recognizing

Take a few moments to allow yourself to settle into a meditative posture, whether it's sitting, standing, or lying down. Give yourself a few moments to arrive here and now.

Recognizing clearly that you're arriving at this moment, in this space, with this experience.

Maybe start by having a global sense of the body—sitting, lying down, standing. Allow the sense of presence to come forth. We'll begin by inviting relaxation and ease in the body, mind, and heart.

We'll do a gentle scan of the body, from the bottom of the feet all the way up to the top of the head. Relaxing your feet. Maybe your toes, bottom of the feet, top of the feet. Relaxing your legs. The fleshy part of the legs, the muscles. Relaxing the knees, thighs. It's a very gentle invitation. Not an imposed expectation or a demand. A soft, soft invitation to relax.

Allow the pelvic area to settle down naturally, giving in to the wonders of gravity. Nothing we have to do, just resting down.

Relaxing the belly. Softening and easing up any holding or tightening that can be softened. For me, there is a sense of just a gentle opening of the belly as I breathe in, and a relaxed settling as I breathe out.

Easing up at the lower back ever so slightly. Not a big project.

Softening and opening up the chest ever so slightly so the shoulders can drop. Relaxing the muscles in the upper back. Let's feel that sense of your whole torso right now.

Letting shoulders, arms, and hands naturally drop.

Softening, relaxing the neck. Relaxing the face muscles, the face, jaw, inside of the mouth. Relaxing the forehead, skull.

What is the global sense of your body right here and right now? Maybe a sense of a little more grounding now. Relaxing the heart and the mind, however you may be associated with them.

As the body, mind, and heart settle, being a little more relaxed, we begin to recognize different experiences. Maybe you're recognizing a little bit of calm. Or maybe a lot. Or maybe it's easy to recognize the thinking mind.

Recognition naturally happens when the body, mind, and heart are at ease. Clear seeing naturally happens in a relaxed field. Let me recognize the sound of my voice, the ambiance, the sound. Recognize certain emotions in the heart.

Allow this recognition to be carried through in a useful and relaxed way. A simple recognition, a very light touch.

Relaxation and direct connection can happen anytime in the course of the meditation. Maybe you recognize certain tension, extra tension that has built up. Invite relaxation and ease. So, relaxing and recognizing support each other.

A relaxed attention. Hold our experiences like holding the premature baby from yesterday's story. Nothing to do, just kind, gentle contact with the movements of the breath. Tingling sensations in the feet. The fleeting movements in the mind, emotions, thoughts. Holding them like holding a baby. And when they leave, allow them to leave on their own terms.

As I ring the bell to end the sitting, if you like, you can stay in the meditative mode to receive the dharmette.

Dharmette: A Monastery Within Story (2 of 5): Practicing with Challenges

So, a transition to the short dharmette. Today I'll continue the theme of the multifaceted nature of our Dharma practice.

I read one story yesterday from this book, A Monastery Within^[2]. We spoke about how an engineer in his practice kind of ran into a wall. This wall was how he was practicing with all these conceptual frameworks that were stuck in his head. What happened was the abbess offered a new instruction, which was holding the baby in the premature maternity ward. Through this gentle contact with the baby, something opened up.

Today I'll read yet another story in this book. This story touches yet another dimension of our practice that probably all of us will have to face at some point in our practice journey. So, without spoiling it for you even further, I'm going to read this story for you. The story is called "Finding the Right Teacher."

Many people arrived at the monastery hoping to be admitted to the monastic order. Some were sent away since what they were searching for was not to be found in the monastery.

Once, there was a thirty-year-old man who arrived at the monastery feeling exhausted, discouraged, and hopeless. He had decided he was no longer capable of living in the worldly life. Perhaps he hoped the monastery would provide him with a path that would bring him freedom.

It was the birth of his second child that had pushed the man over the edge. He could no longer manage to live with the frustration and the demands on his time that family life had become. He was also worn down by his older child's constant pushing of the limits of acceptable behavior. (Side comment: How many of us can relate to that, right?)

When he came to the monastery, he asked that he be put under the care of the abbess or another great teacher who could help him find peace. He felt encouraged when he was told that this could be arranged. However, first, he would have to prepare himself and prove himself to be worthy by sitting alone in meditation for seven days in a small waiting room next to the main entrance of the monastery.

The man cried for the first two days. During the third day, he was washed with alternating waves of nausea and fear. The fourth was spent reviewing his life. For the fifth and sixth days, he seemed to question every belief he had. By the seventh day, he was beginning to feel calmer, and certainly more rested than when he had arrived days earlier. At the end of the seventh day, he eagerly waited to be admitted into the monastery and to find out who would be his teacher.

When the seventh day was over, the abbess herself came for the man. She congratulated him on completing the solitary retreat. "Come," said the abbess, "and I will introduce you to your new teachers. It took a while, but we have found the ideal people who can help you find both your spiritual strength and freedom."

The abbess then led the man out to the front gate of the monastery. Waiting for him there were his wife and two children. Happy to see them, the man raced out to embrace them. Then the abbess declared, "Your wife and two children are your ideal teachers. In your case, nowhere else but in your own family will you find the freedom you're looking for."

With that, the abbess closed the monastery gate.

How many of you can relate to the story? I can certainly relate to the story myself, having a child who knows exactly which button to push and at what time. I can say for certain that, at times, he is my best teacher. Practicing with the family is humbling, challenging, and enriching.

I like the specific words that the abbess said to the man: "That's where you will find your spiritual strength and freedom." For myself, I can say for sure that through these years of practicing with a family and a child, both my son and myself are growing and maturing in various ways.

This story points out aspects of the practice that all of us may have to consider at some point. A prominent aspect that I'd like to share—based on my own interpretation of this story, as there may be many different interpretations—is that Dharma practice is not meant to escape from the challenges that we face, but rather we are cultivating skillful ways to meet our challenges.

This thirty-year-old man went to the monastery and had this sense of trying to escape from the challenges he was facing. Somehow, staying in the monastery would be the solution for him, as the overwhelming demands from his family kind of overpowered his capacity^[3]. Yet, this seven-day solitary retreat maybe opened up something inside of him. My own interpretation is that maybe he got a sense that the solution is not found "out there," but rather into something within. The abbess certainly recognized for him that the practice has to unfold for this particular man in his family life.

But of course, this is a story. The abbess's instruction and the seven-day solitary retreat seemed to somehow do a little magic here, but it is a tale. In real life, there may be many, many ways that can support us to skillfully navigate meeting with the challenging situations in life. For each of us, we may over time find ways to engage and meet with the difficulties and challenges.

I want to offer a few pointers on how we might meet with challenges, just like this person who went to the monastery to look for a teacher. Sometimes, when we are overwhelmed by our own challenges, finding a teacher, trustworthy friends, or a therapist to talk about the challenges can be helpful and can offer a certain kind of resource for us. Other times, maybe we know something for ourselves about how not to be caught by the overwhelm.

For myself, staying close to mindfulness of the body practice has been game-changing in so many ways in meeting all kinds of challenges. By staying with the felt sense in the body, it allowed me to see through many mentally constructed stories. Surprisingly, many of these stories can feel like enormous challenges that we can't get through, but when we are really staying with the body, we begin to see that these are mental constructs that are not so solid.

There may be other ways that we can meet the challenges. For example, turning to something that might provide a resource that supports us, like a loving-kindness^[4] practice or compassion^[5] practice. Or maybe we do simple things that may be supportive and helpful, like going to explore nature, becoming more physically engaged in certain activities like gardening, going out for a run, or cooking a meal for the family.

I'm naming this because there are many skillful means^[6] that may be available in different situations and at different times. The art of the practice is to learn what might be suitable for our own situation. Curiosity, patience, openness, and courage to explore different aspects go a long way, no matter what practices we choose to do.

I think that may be enough to be said for today. Maybe one last point I wanted to say is that it's also helpful to recognize what might not be supportive in challenging situations. Resorting to unwholesome indulgence might not be helpful. Binge-watching news may not be very helpful, or resorting to various toxic addictions. These are things that over time we begin to be able to discern.

So my invitation today is to invite us to include the challenges in our lives. Include practicing with the challenges. When we are able to do this for ourselves, this will be beneficial both for ourselves and for all beings all around. May this practice with challenges be a beneficial resource for all beings everywhere.

Thank you everyone for your attention, and I'll see you tomorrow.