Guided Meditation: Trusting the Breath; Dharmette: Impermanence (4): Uncertainty

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Trusting the Breath; Impermanence (4): Uncertainty. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Maria Straatmann at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on April 16, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Trusting the Breath

Good morning. I'm going to adjust my audio here if I can get my mouse to work. Sorry, I know it's quiet on this mode.

Well, good morning. As I work on this, apparently I'm not going to be able to work on this. Okay, you may have to turn your sound up unless I can figure out how to make my mouse come back. Okay, we'll do this.

What we've been talking about is impermanence^[1]. And at the moment, I've lost the ability to control my mouse. This is unfortunate for us, so I'm going to try to speak louder.

Welcome to IMC^[2]. Today we're going to talk about uncertainty. And here it is. The thing you think is always true: "My mouse always works," and it doesn't. But I trust that we'll be able to do this anyway. I trust in spite of the fact that everything is always changing. Everything is uncertain, but I can always come back to here. I can always come back to my breath. My breath is always here. And so as we begin this morning, rely upon your breath. Pay attention to your breath. Know what is always here for you.

Let's begin.

Take a deep breath and let it out. Allow your body to arrive and settle. For your head to settle on its neck, to be comfortable here, to rest in this place. Your shoulders to lower, to settle down in this place. Your arms to settle. Whatever posture you're in, let them find a place where I can be alert and together here.

Bring your thoughts to the awareness of just being here. Feel your torso, the rising and falling of the breath. And just let it settle. Rest on whatever is supporting you just for this time. Feel the air moving in and out. In and out.

If you're breathing, just breathe. When you're sitting, just sit. When you're hearing, just hear. Be aware of sound coming and going.

Notice your awareness as it settles on whatever object of mindfulness you choose. Be aware that you're aware. Know that you're breathing.

Wherever your thoughts may have gone, invite them back. Invite your awareness back. Thinking, thinking. Breath. Come into the moment. Trust that it is safe here in this moment. Just breathing, just for this time.

What do you know about your awareness now? Are you aware of being here? Aware of the sound of my voice? Aware of the attitude of mind? Where is your mind? Where is your awareness?

The breath is still here. Whether we are aware of it or not, breathing in and out, the body breathes. It's a marvel, this breath. Sometimes shallow, sometimes very deep. But the body keeps breathing. I can trust it.

Aware of the breath moving in and out. Air moving in and out. Aware of the body. Just breathing, the body in this space. Does the space around you seem open or small? Close or far away? This body breathing in this space. Just here.

Aware of the experience of breathing. Aware of the body being in this space. The gentleness of being just here. I trust that for now, I can just be with the breath. I can just be here. Just this, I trust. Just this.

Dharmette: Impermanence (4): Uncertainty

Welcome everyone. Welcome to IMC. Welcome to the day, or night, or afternoon. Here we are in this space. This week we've been talking about impermanence, and today we're going to talk about uncertainty. We spoke of endings and loss. We spoke of inconstancy, the quality of change. But an additional quality of impermanence is uncertainty.

We don't know what's coming next, despite the fact that we think we know. Despite the fact that we plan, despite all of our cautions, the next moment is uncertain.

When I was in college, I wrote an article for my philosophy class on Heisenberg's uncertainty principle^[3]. For those of you that don't know about it, it basically says that for any particle that's moving, you cannot know both the velocity and the exact location. It makes no sense; they don't relate. In order to know the exact location, you have to stop it. If it's moving, you can know the velocity. You might be able to locate its position, but you can't know both things at once. The relationship is uncertain. It doesn't even have meaning.

It seems odd. We think, "Well, I know where my car is and I know how fast it is," but not exactly. Not exactly in the same moment. We're like those particles. We don't know exactly what's going to happen next, much less exactly all of the conditions of our lives. We're aware of some of them. We're aware of the things where we place our attention.

This unsatisfactoriness^[4] that arises as a consequence of not knowing, of not being able to predict, is determined by our relationship to that uncertainty. One aspect of travel is that you see different places, you sleep in different beds, you meet different people, and that uncertainty about what to expect when you travel is handled by people in different ways. And when you come back home, there's a settling into the comfort of the familiar. This makes us feel safe, at least briefly.

If you are not happy with what you find in your comfortable space, at least you know it's comfortable. Your familiar place may be comfortable or not comfortable. It may be pleasant or unpleasant. Sort of like "the devil that you know," being home becomes delicious in some way. There's pleasure in the familiar. There's also unpleasant behavior with the familiar.

But what we all have is a drive for safety. And that drive for safety is challenged by what is uncertain. Depending on your particular tolerance for ambiguity, you may feel comfortable with change or uncomfortable with change. But impermanence has as a feature the absence of predictability. When we step forward, we think we're pretty sure we're going to be stepping onto something. We don't expect the ground to disappear underneath us. But even that happens. Existence is unpredictable.

You may tend toward predictability or non-predictability as a preferred state, but in any case, you don't control the conditions. All of the conditions change. It is inevitable you will be surprised.

What is uncertainty but impermanence really seen fully? Sometimes, because we're directed on impermanence, we look forward to what's missing. The mind searches for sameness. It also looks for what's not the same, what is not safe. There's what's changed, what is, what might change, and what has not changed. All of this leads to this sense of things moving, constantly moving.

Especially at our busiest, we tend to want control. When things are moving fast—and in our society, they move very quickly—the mind tries to create the idea of permanence. "Well, you know, I'm good in a crisis." So we make up stories about who we are to deal with the unpredictability of life.

If you consider a wave in the ocean, you see a wave coming into the shore and you see this vast movement of water. But you know the water is not traveling with that wave. There are actually molecules of water that are going up and down. There's energy moving through the water. A force moving through displaces a molecule, and then it rises and it falls, gravity being what it is. And that energy wave moves on that we call a wave.

It exemplifies the difference between the close, exact experience and what we see as that experience—the story we tell of water moving into the shore. Now, some water moves that direction and moves back. We've seen waves come up on the beach and come back. But basically, the water that began the wave out here is not the water that reaches the shore. Those molecules are different.

As the water molecules, can we look at what's happening right here and be aware of what's going on right here? Not waiting for what's happening, but present for what's happening, knowing this has changed and this will change.

We often set up, "Well, if I do this, then this is what's going to happen." We have all of these imaginary contracts that we make with the universe. "Okay, if I do this, then this will happen. If I'm a good person, this will happen. If I'm a bad person, that will happen." Experience is unpredictable.

What we need to be able to do is see very clearly: "This is the change that has occurred." Not what I think about it, what my opinion about it is, but just what's happening. Seeing clearly requires us to both see unpredictability and, "This is how it is."

Joseph Goldstein^[5] makes a distinction between what is the establishment of mindfulness and the development of mindfulness. In the development stage, the awareness of impermanence becomes more predominant than the object itself. This development of the establishment of mindfulness is the beginning of movement from mindfulness of content to mindfulness of process.

Mindfulness of process versus mindfulness of content. That's when we note in meditation, "thinking, thinking." It's an attempt to step away from the content of thinking and be aware of what's actually happening with the thinking, the quality of the thinking. Developing the ability to see experience as a process is the route to developing trust in dharma^[6]. The ability to be present for "this is what's happening" despite whatever else may be true. This is what's happening.

What's come up several times during this week has been the dripping water spout outside my office over which I have no control, and it doesn't seem to even be related to active raining. Over the course of being in this office, when I hear it—just a bright pinging sound—I'm thinking, "Oh, it's raining." And there's a certain amount of delight and comfort in that. But since it's become an irritant for people while they're meditating, I've become much more conscious of it, and my awareness has been going over there. I watch the mind want to fix it, want to control it. What was a source of delight has become a source of tension.

When I see that in my mind, I say, "Ah, it's just sound. Like the sound of an old building. It's just sound." And I let go of being responsible for change, for an unpredictable world. What arises when I'm not certain of who I am or what my experience is? What's true when I don't have a preconceived notion about it?

A wave can be described as a disturbance that travels through a medium from one location to the other. It's not really a thing, but a process. Impermanence is also not a thing, but a process: the arising, being present, and falling away. When we see that, we watch a thought arise and pass away, an attitude arise and pass away, and they become insubstantial. They don't become things that we have to operate on. We see feelings morph from pleasant to unpleasant to neutral. It's changing all the time.

We can let go of needing it to be something so that we can see clearly, "This is what's happening." Life is uncertain. Experience is uncertain. If we become curious about what it is, we become free of the need for it to be a certain way. We lose the suffering attached to wishing things were other than they are.

I'm going to close with one of my favorite Jane Hirshfield^[7] poems called The Promise. I like The Promise because it has to do with what we were addressing in the meditation as well.

Mysteriously they entered those few moments.
Mysteriously they left as if the great dog of confusion
guarding my heart who is always sleepless suddenly slept.
It was not any awakening of the large
not so much as that only a stepping back from the petty.
I gazed at the range of mountains.
I drank from the stream.
Tossed in a small stone from the bank.
Whatever the direction the fates of my life might travel, I trusted.
Even the greedy direction, even the grieving, trusted.
There was nothing left to be saved from, bliss or danger.
The dog's tail wagged a little in his dream.

That dog, if you recall, is the dog of confusion.

Mysteriously, they entered those few minutes.
Mysteriously they left, as if the great dog of confusion
guarding my heart, who is always sleepless, suddenly slept.
It was not any awakening of the large,
not so much as that, only a stepping back from the petty.
I gazed at the range of mountains.
I drank from the stream,
tossed in a small stone from the bank.
Whatever direction the fates of my life might travel, I trusted.
Even the greedy direction, even the grieving, trusted.
There was nothing left to be saved from. Bliss or danger.
The dog's tail wagged a little in his dream.

May you all know the beauty of the dog's tail wagging in your own dream. Your own dog of confusion leaves because you see things clearly just here, just now. It doesn't need to be other than it is. And now what?

Thank you for your time.