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Guided Meditation: Breathing as a Refuge

Greetings again. One of the aspects of Buddhist practice is discovering what we can take refuge^[1] in—what we can rely on and base our life on. We know that people will often base their life on things which are not very reliable: things which come and go, things which are fragile, or things which are not really even that healthy for themselves. The momentum, the movement, and the direction of Buddhist practice is to find what is reliable that can be the basis of our life.

Ultimately, it is to discover our capacity to be free, for the mind and awareness to not cling to anything. The absence of clinging is the ultimate kind of thing that we find and discover can be depended on. That is a protection, a support, and a basis upon which your life can be lived.

In the meantime, we try in practice to rely on and take refuge in things which are provisionally dependable, which are supportive, and which are part of the path. In meditation, the ideal is to find something in the present moment where awareness can rest that does feel like a provisional refuge for you, so the mind can settle, open up, become clear, and shed its preoccupations with all the other things that we depend on that are not so reliable. Our thinking perhaps depends on anxiety, greed, desires, resentments, and regrets—that's what the activity of the mind can somehow depend on.

But what is provisionally reliable? I often suggest the body, and within the body, breathing. The rhythm of breathing is a way of protecting ourselves from running off with our thoughts and our emotions, and getting so preoccupied. For some people, other things are reliable when you first sit down. Some people find it is reliable to connect to their kindness and care, loving-kindness, and compassion, and connect to that first. For some people, it is perhaps the sense of open awareness—awareness which almost doesn't do anything but is clear, alert, and receptive. For some people, what's reliable is the mind's capacity to hear, listen, and open. Receptive listening to sounds in the room or around you ensures that we don't get caught up in our preoccupations.

I will let each of you find it for yourself, but I will guide you now. Close your eyes and take some slightly deeper, longer breaths than usual, just slightly. As you exhale, settle in and relax into your body. Feel as if here in this body, there is a refuge. There is safety here in this body; there is wisdom and understanding.

Exhaling and relaxing, letting go... almost like a snake that sheds its skin. Settle in, and maybe imagine that you're shedding all the holding, tensions, and preoccupations. Settling in. As a snake sheds its skin, it allows some new skin to grow. As we shed our preoccupations, it allows for a deeper sensitivity of something tender, which allows something new to appear.

Then letting your breathing return to normal. Breathing can be a refuge, especially if we're able to hang in there with a series of breaths in a row. That's a refuge because the more we can hang out with the breath, the less we hang out with preoccupations, fears, clinging, and fantasy. The more we can hang out with breathing, the natural physiological regulatory process of breathing can begin to soothe and settle the nervous system, the muscular system, and all kinds of things. Regular, relaxed, easeful breathing can be a healing process.

Notice how your body experiences breathing, perhaps without any ideas or expectations of any special way to breathe, or anything that's supposed to happen when you breathe. Let it be a very simple allowing of the breathing. Trust breathing in. Trust yourself to your breathing more than you trust your thinking for these few minutes.

As you exhale, remember to notice if you're caught in thoughts. As you exhale, let them go and return to sustaining the attention on the rhythm of breathing. It is as if the rhythm of inhale and exhale is a massage that cares for your inner life and cares for your body. The breathing sensations are a gentle way to touch yourself from the inside, to be touched with a warm, kind pressure from the sensations and movements of breathing.

Breathing can be a refuge if you entrust yourself to the simplicity of breathing. Whenever you wander off in thought, with your faith and your trust, begin again with your breathing. Be happy—always happy—that you can begin again connecting to your breathing.

What would it be like to trust your breathing? For now, for these minutes, the breathing is the place that you can trust the most. It is the kind of trust where the mind can rest and the heart can settle all its troubles. It is a place where there's a context or a support for being with whatever is troublesome. To breathe with it, to breathe easily, acts as a foundation that allows us to not get preoccupied with troubles. We breathe with them and breathe through them, knowing that there's something dependable so we don't have to get preoccupied.

Reflections

As we come to the end of this sitting, our ability to care for families, friends, neighbors, community, and the world looks very different when that care arises out of a deep trust within a settledness^[2]. A trusting, being calm or settled, or perhaps trusting not being preoccupied and obsessing about things. No longer trusting our anger, our greed, our hostility, our lust. No longer trusting craving, anxiety, and conceit. To discover this place where the trusting of all those things has fallen away, and we trust something deep inside. Then our care for the world comes from someplace trustable, someplace inspiring.

May we discover, may we take the time to make room for, and make time for a wellspring within. To touch into sources within us where our care and well-wishing for the world come from a reliable place—a place that's healing, supportive, or nourishing for ourselves and for others. Let us take the time to keep returning to such a place. Let us be as interested in caring for the world as we are that our care arises from some place that's a refuge, a support.

These two things go together: that we find a refuge within, and we become a refuge for the world. May it be in this day that we support and care for this world and for others. May it be that for this day, we go to sleep knowing that in some maybe very small way, we have made the world a better place for someone else. May all beings be happy.

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