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Guided Meditation: Being With

Hello everyone, and welcome. I hope you're doing well, and your area is doing well enough that you can sit here and meditate, aware of the challenges of this world while at the same time being able to put them aside wisely and safely. Knowing that sitting and meditating is a preparation for being in the world in a wiser way, carrying away that sitting in meditation and putting aside the wider world the best we can has the idea of turning ourselves into a gift for the world. It's not an escape from the world; it's a pause, just as it would be to pause to take a shower so that you can be clean for the people you're going to be visiting. Meditation prepares us to be better people as we enter into the world.

One of the important aspects of Buddhist practice, a little bit like what I just did, is to reframe how we think about our lives, approach our lives, and how we're aware of our lives. Often, the framework or orientation which we use is part of the source of the challenges that we have. If we take our existing orientation for granted—which is what is so easy to do, we grew up with it, we've had it all our lives—it almost seems like it's inherent to existence that the way I see the world and see myself is just the way things are. But as we begin to settle in meditation and the mind begins to quiet some, we learn, either on our own or because of the teachings we hear, that there are other frameworks, other points of view, or other very foundational understandings from which we can live our lives. Buddhism offers many of these, and I'll offer a few today.

One is that when we have anything happening for us—especially things that are challenging, but even things that are really good—it is not to dismiss any of them, but to allow ourselves to be present in a wiser way. It's helpful if we don't identify with them, not taking them to define who we are. Rather, add a very simple four-letter word, and that is with. So if we're filled with fear, rather than saying, "I'm really afraid," we say, "I'm here with fear." I'm here with desire and craving. I'm here with anger and resentment. I'm here with doubt. I'm here with a distracted mind. I'm here with joy. I'm here with calm.

When we say with rather than "I am," there is a gap, a space between us and what we're experiencing. That space is invaluable. It might just be a crack initially, but with that space, with the with, now we can engage in deciding how close or how far away to be with the difficulties we have. When we're aware of it, is awareness going to come in close and get really in touch with the feelings, with what's happening for us? Or do we want to step back, almost like we're standing across the street or up on a hill looking back at the challenge?

"Oh, fear. If I stay close, it just seems too much for me. But if I step back ten feet in my mind... well, still difficult. But if I stand back up on the hill a hundred feet away... well, then it's okay to feel the fear, to be with it." I don't become it, and I don't get influenced so strongly by it. There's an agency, an ability to reclaim our lives from the way we get swept up in what we identify with. Engaging in a certain amount of agency, a certain capacity to say, "Oh, I'm with this difficulty," and in that with, decide how close or how distant you want to be. How close in, or how expansive and spacious do you want to hold it? How big of a container of awareness do you need to make so that you can be with what's happening?

To experiment with this, take a sitting meditation posture and close your eyes. Check in with yourself: how are you, just in the most general way? How are you sitting here? In whatever way you answer, can you gently step back and say, "Oh, I'm with this way of being." You don't have to identify yourself with it as who you are. Instead, "I'm with tiredness," "I'm with preoccupation," "I'm with calm or agitation," "I'm with being okay."

In that space of with, can you find a space between you, in a sense, and the experience, to decide how to hold it, how to be aware of how you are that's most helpful? Do you want to get in close and really feel it intimately, or do you want to open up and be expansive and spacious rather than intimate?

As you're sitting here, your body is breathing in a certain way. You can just let yourself know that you're here with the breathing. Being with breathing, does it feel nicest to be intimate with the breath, with a body breathing? Or to open up and spaciously receive, as if breathing is a bird gently flapping its wings in a vast open sky? Or intimate and close, as if you curl up with a comfortable blanket, you curl up with breathing, or breathing curls up with you?

You are not your breathing, but you are with your breathing. It accompanies you. Not to identify with it, but to accompany it, to be with it. In that space between you and it, how will you be aware?

If you take a time out for meditation to step back and check in with how you are, what's happening? In what way are you identified or caught up in something, where you can switch to recognizing it as just being with preoccupation, with sadness, with confidence? Whatever it might be, what are you leaving out? Then begin meditating again, staying close to a place where awareness and mindfulness allow you to be with things, instead of being what's happening. Just with.

Clearly recognize you can be with whatever is happening. In that with, there is a gap between you and the phenomena. In that gap, you can decide whether to be intimate or to be spacious. If things are difficult, sometimes it's easier to be with it if you're very intimate with the direct experience of it. Sometimes it's much easier to open up and be very spacious, maybe even being aware of it with a kind of peripheral vision, so you're not being aware of it directly.

As we come to the end of the sitting, the ability to accompany, to be with, becomes a kind of power or strength. We can learn to accompany and be with others rather than being preoccupied with ourselves. Rather than being preoccupied with ideas, or shoulds and shouldn'ts, preoccupied with pleasing or protecting ourselves from others. The operating word is "preoccupied." Shift the frame of reference from being preoccupied to learning to be with—with ourselves and with others.

When we have a clear sense of being with, there is in that place of agency a place of choice for how we will be with others. One way to be with others is spaciously, calmly, so that maybe we can be with others kindly. May we accompany others in their lives with our goodwill and encouragement, our appreciation of others, our love for others. May we live with kind regard for those we are with. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Challenge Check-In (3 of 5) Accompanying with Wise Awareness

Hello, and welcome to our five-part series on a kind of mindfulness check-in. I guess I'm calling it the challenge check-in—checking in with ourselves when we are having challenges in our lives, difficulties, or troubles of some kind or another. To present this in a slightly different way perhaps than I have the first couple of days, we are using the Buddha's foundational teachings on mindfulness as a way of reframing our challenges and difficulties. Often enough, some of us are using a framework, an orientation, a belief, or an attitude which is not supportive or helpful when we're in the middle of challenges. Rather than avoiding the challenge, pretending it's not there, or fixing it, what we do in mindfulness practice is reframe the situation so we approach it and see it in a new way that may be more productive and helpful for how to be in the middle of it all.

Since a lot of what a challenge is involves how we are challenged with our emotions, our beliefs, our physicality, our fears, and all kinds of things that go on inside of us, unless there's an immediate danger, it's invaluable to check in with ourselves. How am I? What's going on here for me? For example, just simply calming down a little bit usually puts us in a much better space to really see wisely what's going on. Just to take a pause and check in. We check in in these four different ways. It's a reframing, and the value of this is that we often will be caught in a framework that is clearly not helpful—well, not clearly, as we don't always know that, but sometimes it is self-reinforcing.

If I'm allowed to use an analogy, maybe if you have a tendency to really distrust dogs, and in that distrust you're angry at them. If a dog comes along and you're angry and you stare at it with angry eyes, the dog will take that as a threat and is maybe more likely to growl or attack than if you are just ignoring the dog, relaxed, at ease, and not staring at it. If you go around with an attitude, a framework that all dogs are terrible and bad and shouldn't be there, the dog picks up something from that very attitude, and then dogs all become that way. If we're afraid of dogs, it's the same thing. Dogs have a way of picking up fear. Sometimes when we're afraid, we also stare at them trying to protect ourselves, and the fear becomes self-reinforcing.

So we have a framework—a fear or anger—which we believe is true, that this is how things are, and it's accurate. But we don't realize how much we are sometimes self-perpetuating the proof that that's the case. This can work with people as well. Sometimes if we can see how we are—"Oh, I'm really angry, I'm really afraid"—we can say, "Well, that's the framework, that's the attitude through which I'm seeing things." Certainly, there might be threats out there and difficult things out there. I don't want to deny that I have to be careful. But let me reframe this for myself. Let me look at this from different points of view. That's kind of the wisdom of the Buddha, to take that different framework and see if there's a different way that's wiser and more beneficial for how to be.

So we ask ourselves, how is this physically for me? How is it in terms of feeling tones? Today the emphasis is: how is it in terms of the mind states? What's the state of mind, or state of heart, with which I'm with this experience? What's happening? For example, if you notice that the state of mind is one of anger, fear, greed, doubt, or agitation, whatever it might be, or the state of mind is contracted, or the state of mind is scattered. If you're able to see that, the way the Buddha presents the mindfulness practice is to know that the mind, or we, are with fear, with anger, with desire, with being scattered, with being contracted.

This word with, I think, is so phenomenally simple, humble, and easy to overlook, but it is so powerful. It creates a little space between what's happening with us and the mind or awareness, or in simple lay terms, between me and the experience. In that gap, in that little pause or recognizing, then the question, the reframing is: now that I know that I'm with this, that this is here and it's filling me in many ways, but I'm not it, how do I want to be with that? How can I be with it? One of the reframings we're doing that is so important in times of challenges is to begin finding some degree of agency and choice to do something that is wise.

In meditation at least, and sometimes in daily life, it can simply be reorienting how we're going to be present for something. Meditation is a fantastic laboratory to work with this because, ideally, you're comfortable and safe in your meditation time. Maybe you've locked your door, closed the door, and really feel that right now things are safe. You've looked around, checked all the corners, under your bed, and in the closet, and it's clear that it's okay for now.

Then ask the question of yourself: how should I be with this? Simply asking that question is an expression of agency, a beginning of your own strength. How do I want to be with this? I'm with it now; how do I want to be with it? It might be that you'll learn very quickly: "I shouldn't be with this. This is not useful. I don't know how to be with it without spinning out or getting overwhelmed by it. I need to take a break. I need to break the way in which I get sucked into the whirlpool of it all." So we go off and do something different, something that stops that kind of being swept up in it. Or we find a different framework to hold it so that we don't get swept up, because the framework itself creates a nice container, a nice balance, a foundation, and a grounding so that we can be with it in a good, healthy way.

In terms of awareness practice, being with something, you can ask the question: should I be intimate with it, really close, or should I be very spacious? There are sometimes I have difficulties, physical pain or emotional pain, and I find that it's most helpful to be with it so intimately that I feel like I'm sitting at the heart of it. Sometimes that's useful, and sometimes I find that's not useful at all. What's useful is to step back and create a spaciousness, to be really wide with it within an expansive awareness and expansive mind.

Sometimes we can use our imagination to support this. We can imagine that we're in this very large room, and the awareness is as big as the cathedral-like room, and we can hold the challenge. Or we're standing on a hilltop a hundred yards away, and we're at that distance, and we're not holding it at all. It's just so far away that, "Oh yeah, I can allow myself to be aware of it now."

Or perhaps we have some ability to shift the focus of attention, so maybe we come back to the breathing. That's the center; that's where we stay grounded in the rhythm of breathing. But then in the peripheral vision, kind of on the side, we're aware: "Oh yeah, I'm afraid, I'm upset, I'm sad," or whatever I tend to get pulled into. I'm distracted, the mind is really busy. It's there, but you're not looking at it directly. Just like with a dog, don't look at it directly, kind of look away, but you want to stay aware that it's there. Use that peripheral vision to know what's going on.

In this Third Foundation of Mindfulness, there are two ways that I think are helpful that are emphasized here. One is this word with. The Pali word that's used is a prefix meaning being with: sa-^[1]. So, with greed, with ill will, with delusion. It's also possible to do it with healthy states. The opposite of greed, ill will, and delusion: "I'm with generosity, I'm with love, I'm with wisdom."

There's a fascinating thing that goes on when we make this with. Some things get weaker; the difficulties, the things that we react to most. Reactivity tends to get weaker—"tends" is an operating word—when we're with something that's coming out of our inner reactivity. But if it's coming out of our inner wellspring of wisdom, our innate capacity to be within the world in a nurturing way, then that tends to grow. As it grows, it tends to let us settle. We start recognizing more and more that spacious mind, the expansive mind. That's a reframing. Learning how to reframe to be with stuff in an expansive, spacious way.

It's a little bit complicated, maybe, what I said today. But it's well worth beginning to see how the Four Foundations of Mindfulness^[2] are all a reframing. How is this challenge from the point of view of my physical experience? Once I'm aware of it physically, that maybe gives me a foundation to learn to be with it in a helpful way, to be present and mindful in a compassionate way.

How am I with the feelings? Is it pleasant or unpleasant? This gives you the power or the strength to choose: is it useful to stay with the unpleasantness, or would it be useful to bring in more of the pleasantness which is here that's overlooked? What's the mind state? How are you with this? What's the state? Switch to "I'm with this" to help you find a more supportive way to be with things.

You might try today, as you go through your day, when there are difficulties—maybe start with the smaller ones—to notice how you fall into it, lean into it, or get preoccupied with it. See if you can switch to accompanying it, being with how you are, so that how you are is not driving you almost subconsciously. Instead, you're really present, and you're with it, so that the reactivity doesn't have the upper hand. Then see if you can figure out how to be with it wisely.

Thank you, my friends, and I look forward to tomorrow.