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Guided Meditation: Non-Resistance

Hello everyone, and welcome back. Continuing this theme on the insight pentad for the week, one of the powers of insight is to see things in a new way. I'd like to suggest a new way as we start this meditation. We often start with relaxation, and that's still, I think, a very good thing to do. That kind of goes along with the Buddhist teachings too—to relax the body, relax the mind. It's kind of his beginning instructions for meditation. But another similar movement at the beginning and throughout meditation that's also very powerful is, rather than relaxing directly, to stop resisting. Stop resisting whatever it is you're bracing yourself against, holding yourself against, or protecting yourself against in the context of meditation.

To take a part of the significance of taking a careful posture, an upright, dignified posture, or other postures—the idea is to really take a posture that works well for you and then to hold it. Stay in it. Don't collapse, don't give in to the emotions, the feelings, the beliefs, the desires to do something else with your body. It's quite significant to feel all the movements in the body, to move, to shift, to collapse, to pull back. But more subtly, there are all kinds of ways in which the tension we hold in our body can be a resistance. Resistance from feeling fully. Resistance from holding ourselves against having to feel what's really happening.

Sometimes what motivates us with our desires might not be the desires themselves, but the discomfort that can come with strong desire, and we're trying to resist that discomfort by maybe acting out or doing something, or pulling back. A lot of the resistance is a kind of tension. But relaxing the body is different than releasing the resistance. Because even things which are maybe things you're protecting yourselves from in the moment—the feelings, the sensations, the beliefs—to release them, to free them while we're sitting still and upright, so we're not giving expression to them, we're not acting on them, speaking them, but we are not holding them in check.

We're allowing some kind of full relaxation of the body that comes from releasing all the resistance we have. So if this is relevant for you, or understandable for you and how you are maybe at this meditation, we can begin, or focus on, releasing resistance.

This is one of the characteristics of freedom. The liberation that Buddhism is looking for is liberation from all tension, including that of resistance. And then how to live wisely without this embodied physical, emotional, and mental resistance that lives in us—that is the great art.

So, assuming an upright, dignified posture, or the alternative for you, gently close your eyes, and feel into your body. Feel the tensions, the holdings in your body, and see if any of it might qualify as resistance: pulling back from life, protecting ourselves from something.

And as you exhale, release resistance. Release the way that we're physically bracing ourselves or holding ourselves pulled back, fending off or avoiding. Any resistance, release it, and let what's behind the resistance have breathing room, have space just to be in the simplicity of sitting upright.

And might there be any resistance to be found in your breathing? In any part of the inhale, maybe the second half, do you feel anything holding the breathing back? And if so, if it's easy enough, let go of that holding back. Let go of resistance.

And if it's not easy to let go of, content yourself with feeling the inhale stretching against that resistance.

Any resistance in the exhale? Any holding back, maybe at the end of the exhale, not allowing it to release fully?

If you sit quietly and still, but let go of resistance in the body, the heart, the mind, what releases? What becomes larger or more evident? Make room for it, breathe with it, let it be free, while you're free from acting on it.

Take three exhales: let go, release. Give up resistance to what's here for you. Make room for everything.

And then imagine that the room of awareness expands outward. Out into the world. Nothing's required of you, but you're able to include people in your awareness. Remember people, those you know and don't know. Those you will encounter in work, in communities, in stores. And to let go of any resistance to being present, taking people in, taking them into account, and caring for them.

May we carry with us, sustain enough free time in our minds where our mind isn't so preoccupied that we don't have time to register or take in the presence of other people. And may we gaze upon them with appreciation and respect, with love and care.

May we imagine them happy, safe, peaceful, and free. And may this be our wish, that they have a wonderful life, happy and safe.

May all beings have the good fortune to experience great happiness. May all beings have the good fortune of being safe. May all beings have all the benefits that come with peace. And may all beings be free of affliction, tensions, attachments, suffering. And may our freedom, our lack of resistance, be the source of our care for the world.

Dharmette: Insight Pentad (4 of 5) Liberation

So my friends, we come to the fourth talk on the insight pentad. It's the five movements, evolutions, or growth in the practice that flow from having insight. And the word flow suggests that it's not something we do or construct or make happen, but something that, as we see more clearly—we see clearly what we're doing, what's happening in our minds, our beliefs, our attachments, our desires, our aversions, our resistance—as we see it more clearly, really clearly, and we see deeply into its impermanent, changing, constructed nature, we begin to let go. We begin to be disinterested, or we start changing our relationship to it, where we're not so wedded to it or invested in it, and there's a disinvestment process that goes on. And a fading away of the desires and attachments that keep us caught, that keep us from being free.

The consequence of this is greater and greater calmness, peacefulness, and ease. And so the reward is that there is a reward. It isn't just simply being left somehow in some undesirable state of destitution. As this fading away of attachment, fading away of clinging happens, it leaves us freer and freer. And the freedom, the liberation that comes, is why it's significant, why it's part of this evolution, this growth, this flow. It's not something we do. It's not a letting go, it's not finding the key that we turn to release the lock, and the combination, and we are finally free. But rather, it's the result of this fading away: calming, relaxing, not resisting, not asserting, not being tense or wanting. A real, radical trust to really just be here fully, fully present, in a calm, relaxed way, allowing things to fade away.

And at some point, something inside of us releases. There's something that we're not doing that lets go, stops, ceases. Sometimes it can be a momentary shift, like a quantum flip in the mind, where something in the mind just stops, and now everything is so clear and open and free. It could be the heart finally settles in this openness, at home in itself, and the heart finally has lots of breathing room. The heart just feels like it can sing, and it's so free, light, and easy.

But the operating thing here is not something we do, and we can't exactly take responsibility for it in terms of making it happen. We take responsibility for setting up the conditions for that freedom. A huge part of this Dharma^[1] practice is creating the right conditions for allowing something, the Dharma, to move through us. Allowing release, opening, and development to move through us.

And that begins right at the beginning of the gladness pentad that precedes the insight pentad that we have. It begins with enough trust and inspiration to start being present for our experience in a non-reactive way. And finding that this presence feels good, there's joy and happiness that comes, calmness that comes, until we see more clearly and we can start getting calm enough, still enough, to see deep enough.

And then this fading away process. I used to look for it while sitting in meditation, kind of like a cat at a mouse door waiting to see if I could see the letting go happen, the releasing happening, finding out where the magic point was where I could finally penetrate something and everything would let go. And I found out over and over again that there was this process of fading away, and ceasing, and things disappearing. But I didn't always see when that moment happened. Sometimes the meditation practice set the conditions for it to happen, and then after meditation is when the releasing happened. I didn't see it happen, but at some point I recognized, Oh, it's gone! The resistance, the desires, the clinging, the conceit, the things I was caught up with. Wow, they're gone! Isn't that phenomenal?

And so this setting up the conditions for the fading away, for the calming down, for the centering, for the settling, is not for its own sake, but so that that which is the suffering inside of us, that comes from some tight clinging or holding or resisting, has a chance to melt away, to thaw. Into this process of fading away that I talked about yesterday, sometimes I think of it like thawing, or being really cold and just slowly warming up, melting, dissolving. It's a process of slow change that we allow for.

And so if we're in meditation, we have to sit in meditation long enough, still enough, regularly enough, that we allow for this deeper process to happen. It's a meditative process where some deeper fading, settling, and releasing can happen. For most people, it's much better in meditation than in daily life or any other kind of circumstance. And it grows the more we sit, the more we meditate, and just learn to sit still. Letting go of resistance, letting go of clinging, letting go of tension, and trusting how things are fading away, settling, quieting. Letting go of our thoughts, coming back. Letting go of our thoughts, coming back. Letting go of our thoughts, coming back in a gentle, quieting way, setting up the conditions that allow something to feel at ease, to feel peaceful, to feel comfortable.

And so it becomes invaluable to learn to have a mindfulness awareness that's non-reactive. An awareness which is not for or against anything, that's not despairing or upset or resisting anything. That's not critical of when the mind wanders off. And to keep going back to this non-resistant awareness that gives the space for things to release, to settle, to calm, to open.

And at some point you'll recognize that what encumbered you with the inner movements of tightness, fear, resistance, holding on, expecting, wanting, and projecting that you do, you'll find, Wow, it's not there. And that is the kind of liberation.

In the teachings of the Buddha, he describes a whole list of, I think, 17 or 18 things that people discovered, Now it's gone. Wow. And it's interesting things like greed and hatred, but also envy, avariciousness, conceit, disrespecting people. It goes on with all these different things. But what I'm emphasizing here is he names particular mental states that fall away, that stop. So it's not a generalized, vague idea of what liberation is; he specifies different states of mind, different emotions, and things. So it's very particular, psychologically particular. Oh, look at that, my envy is gone. Look at that, my resentment is gone. Look at that, my remorse, my desires, my greed, my lust, my self-criticism is gone. So it's these particular psychological states that he says are liberated, liberated, liberated. And then that liberation can grow to be more and more complete.

But to recognize it: Ah, look there, it's gone. I was struck when I learned about this part of the Buddhist teachings naming particular psychological states. That was kind of eye-opening for me, because I realized only then that I had some vague idea that there was some great experience of enlightenment out there that I didn't know what it was, but it certainly must be good, and certainly desirable, and certainly going to free me from all my suffering. When I read that there are like 17 different mental states, psychological states, that the Buddha talked about seeing how they're gone, I said, Oh, let's appreciate the specificity of what liberation I have. Let's not be held captivated with the idea of some grand Big Bang theory of enlightenment that is somehow vague about what actually happens there. Begin appreciating the liberations of particular things that have bothered us. Memories, stories we hold on to, relationships we hold on to, and to see, Oh, I'm free of that. I'm free of that.

And so this process of fading away, and then discovering, Oh, it's not there anymore. Wow. Appreciate the not-there-ness of suffering, of painful psychological states that were there. When you're free of them, that is nourishing. It's really important to see, Ah, now it's gone.

So having insight, seeing clearly enough to start becoming disenchanted. To then have the fading away of the psychological drives that kept us enchanted. And then having that fade away enough that we feel free of it. It's a wonderful thing, and this is a natural process to do this. It's not something we have to make happen. Natural means it's kind of built into who we are; it's almost a consequence of ending doing the unnatural things. And what I mean by the unnatural things are the things that are the artifices of our own mind that we create and make and construct, and the inner states that are not the artifices, like that freedom.

So thank you, and one more day on this insight pentad. You might go through the day today with some homework, and that is to notice the times through the day—notice the absence of difficult psychological states, suffering, clingings, desires, resistance that you have had at some point in the past. Earlier in the day, yesterday, last week. But notice the absence of them, and take in how good that is. That something that was difficult before is not here now. You might have other difficulties now, but appreciate the ones that are no longer here. And see what happens to you when you kind of feel that absence.

So, thank you very much.