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Guided Meditation: Inner Medicine

Warm greetings. I'm happy to be back. I had a wonderful time backpacking—long hikes, beautiful places, and adventures with California fires, mostly the smoke and closed trails because of the fires. Now I'm happy to be back, happy to be here with you all.

In the meditation world that we practice in, this spiritual inner life that we develop and turn inside out, there's a principle that wherever there's an illness, there is the medicine. Now we're talking about a kind of spiritual or dharmic illness. If you can recognize where the suffering is, the dukkha^[1], the illnesses, and if that recognition is clear enough, it's possible to find the medicine right there. So if you clearly recognize your mind is agitated, chances are right next to it, close by, is the medicine, which is a calm mind, calm attention.

If you're caught up in greed, with the clear recognition of it, you can see or feel that potential or that place in the mind and heart where there's no greed. That's the medicine for greed. The same goes for hatred and delusion. To some degree, it's also true for fear. If you have the capacity to clearly recognize fear, and then to look around and not be contracted, fixated, or preoccupied by the fear, but to see it clearly, you can then look around along the edges of it, beyond it, underneath it, or below it somewhere within. You'll see that there is the medicine for it. There is courage, there is confidence, or there's peace—something that's non-fear.

This clearly involves recognizing what is going on inside. Without that, there's no medicine, but the medicine comes with a clear recognition. It's wonderful good news that each of you, each of us, has within us the medicine—the spiritual or mental medicine that we need for spiritual illnesses. But it's a little hard to pull ourselves away enough from the illness, the so-called dharmic dukkha, that we might have to disengage or not be overly preoccupied with it so we have the capacity to see something else.

One of the things that we can do in meditation is find something that feels basically healthy, appropriate, or good to focus on. That's very simple, something like the breathing. Some people use clear recognition itself, the simplest clear recognition of what's happening, as a way of not giving the energy of attention to the illness to feed it even more. We don't feed these mental preoccupations that we call illnesses or dukkha, and just stay with the breathing. Stay with the breathing, and then slowly the interest, the preoccupation, the feeding of these kinds of spiritual illnesses abates without us having to do anything, without even using the medicine. This continues until we find ourselves settled enough, calm enough, and unagitated enough that the medicine spreads throughout us—the medicine of peace, the calm of non-reactivity, the medicine of non-greed, non-hatred, and non-delusion.

Taking a comfortable posture that will also promote your capacity for attention and for clear recognition, gently close your eyes.

Take a few long, slow, deep breaths. If you take those long, deep breaths unhurriedly, it can start being medicine for our hearts and our inner life.

As you take a deep breath, maybe relax and soften the body as you exhale. Perhaps allow your body to settle as you exhale.

Then letting your breathing return to normal.

As you exhale now, the medicine of relaxation. On the exhale, softening the face, softening around the eyes. As you exhale, softening the shoulders. As you exhale, softening the belly.

And gently, as you exhale, soften in the mind. Relax the thinking muscle, whatever contraction or tightness that's there associated with thinking.

Maybe you can identify in your mind, your heart, somewhere within, something that has the potential to be medicine for whatever ails you spiritually or mentally. Maybe there's some spaciousness, calm, peacefulness, compassion, care, or inner respect for yourself.

And then to settle into your body breathing. Simple, caring attention to breathing in and breathing out. Caringly receiving the inhale, caringly allowing for the exhale. Receiving and allowing, inhaling and exhaling, one after another.

If you can recognize it, the medicine you need is always within. The dharmic medicine.

As we come to the end of the sitting, when we learn to recognize the inner medicine, the heart's medicine for what ails the heart, that very medicine is the medicine that the world needs as well. Appreciate the value of your inner medicine as a contribution to this world. When we are unagitated, it's medicine for the agitation of the world. When we have compassion and love, it's medicine for the world's hate. When we have generosity and contentment, it's medicine for the world's greed. When we have wisdom, clear seeing, and recognition, it's medicine for the world's delusion.

When we encounter the suffering of the world, it's medicine to see it honestly, clearly, and caringly, without being oppressed by it or distressed by it. May it be that this meditation that we do today be medicine for the world, knowingly and unknowingly, intentionally and unintentionally. Intentionally, we live our lives so that we make this world a better place, so that all beings may be happy. All beings may be free of suffering. All beings may be free of fear and distress. That all beings may be free of oppression. May all beings be happy, may all beings be well, may all beings be peaceful, and may all beings everywhere be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Greed (1 of 5) Non-Greed as a Reference

Good morning again, and welcome to the beginning of the week and the beginning of a series. The series for this week, and actually for the next three weeks, addresses an issue which is huge for human beings both personally and socially. In terms of an illness that spreads within and without, and has a big bearing on the Buddhist spiritual life, the topic is greed, hatred, and delusion.

I'll say a little bit about why there was a time in my life where I would hesitate to spend so much time talking about this, and maybe that will support some of you for whom it's not inspiring to hear that this is going to be the topic for the next few weeks.

The plan is each week to have the same pattern of five talks related to each one. We'll see if plans work out, but the idea is on the first day, Monday, to talk about the opposite—the absence of greed, hatred, or delusion—and its wonderfulness. The medicine of non-greed, non-hate, and non-delusion, and the value of it as a reference point for studying this topic. Then on Tuesday, to talk about the particular topic itself. I've done this recently and hopefully can do it in a different way. Then on Wednesday, to talk about the basic Vipassana^[2] practice in relationship to each of these. On Thursday, to talk about composting greed, hatred, and delusion, and what composting and transforming mean. Then on Friday, to talk about liberation from each of these, living a life that promotes the ending of greed, hate, and delusion to support others in this world of ours, and to diminish the rampant greed, hatred, and delusion which, in some way or another, needs to be addressed. Maybe we can be agents of change in this particular focus. So for this week, the topic is greed.

I want to start with the idea of non-greed. Part of its value and importance for me personally is that when I was younger, when I first encountered Theravadin^[3] Buddhism, there were all these talks over and over again referencing greed, hate, and delusion. At that time, when I heard it, I saw this as being reductionistic. I felt like I was being reduced. It felt puritanical and moralistic, like who I was was being reduced to this very limited, unsavory thing of being someone who has a lot of greed, hate, and delusion, and you're supposed to uproot it. It just didn't resonate with me. In fact, it was a little bit off-putting for me to have this emphasis.

But I went along and did the practice of mindfulness. What I discovered, and now in retrospect I can say, is that I discovered non-greed, non-hatred, and non-delusion. I discovered a capacity for inner health and well-being that became a very important reference point for understanding myself and my life. To have a strong capacity to touch into a non-agitated mind, a mind that's peaceful and calm, that seems to be operating in a healthy way. To tap into a capacity for a confident mind, a clear mind, a loving mind or heart. To start discovering this wealth of beauty that we have within that is not reductionistic, but is actually enhancing and fulfilling.

There's a nun in the early Buddhist tradition, her name was Punna^[4], which meant "full." She said she was full like the full moon, bringing this idea of becoming full of beautiful things and radiance. To start to do the practice and discover these wellsprings of well-being within, and then to start recognizing—this is what happened to me—when I had greed, that was what was reductionistic. That was what was diminishing me. When I had hate, I would eclipse this beauty. I would lose it, and I would be diminished. I'd be reduced to something that wasn't very pleasant. If I was caught in delusion, that also limited me, and in some ways, it was very alienating. To be in delusion kind of separated me from myself and separated me from the world around me.

Understanding this non-greed helped me to understand the shortcomings, the danger of having greed. Then the teachings on greed, hatred, and delusion became much more interesting. It became interesting to understand greed in a deeper way. It became interesting to practice with greed, to overcome it, to learn how to compost it, and to learn how to live a life liberated from it, because I could recognize the limitations, the suffering, the dukkha, the distress, the way in which I was short-changing myself when I got pulled into greed, hatred, and delusion.

That's not an easy thing to see because these forces are very compelling, and any resistance, any restraint to having them flow through us freely can feel uncomfortable. It can feel like our freedom is limited, and if we're supposed to be free, we should let these things roll, let them flow through us. Greed is almost valued in much of our society; it just seems like it's all good to be greedy, and certain kinds of greed are not recognized as greed.

It seems like every ten years or so—the 80s, late 90s, the first decade of this century, and maybe now—there have been huge economic collapses in this country where we discovered bankers and other people operating with tremendous avariciousness, illegally or unethically acquiring huge wealth at the expense of other people. But did they use the word greed? Did they understand themselves as being greedy, or was this just the American way to get more, acquire more and more wealth and material things?

To begin understanding how unabated, unrestrained giving ourselves over to greed, to hatred, and to our delusions is not an expression of real freedom—it's actually an expression of being in bondage, being caught, being enslaved by forces inside of us that have taken control and are pushing us. What we're looking for is how not to be on automatic pilot, not to be compelled by these strong human instincts or drives, but also not to hold them restrained in a way that can feel very uncomfortable and like a lot of work. Instead, we allow ourselves to learn how to dissipate them, or come out the other side of them where there is peace and the inner beauty begins to shine forth, where we feel full and enhanced.

Now, one of the reasons why people might be very resistant to the idea of non-greed, non-hate, and non-delusion is that the drive, the compulsion for desires, for wanting, for pushing away, and for being hostile are there for a reason: to try to get what we want. With the idea of not having them, people can feel like there's no motivation, that we can't take care of ourselves, or get what we need, or protect ourselves from the encroaching masses which are going to destroy our lives.

But when we start discovering this beautiful capacity for peace, for calm, for inner well-being, what we also start discovering is that we can take care of ourselves. We can act in the world without greed and act beneficially. There can be wholesome desires; there can be desires to do good, to be generous. It's said that faith in Buddhism is a kind of desire because Buddhist faith is the desire to develop the fullness, to develop the freedom that we have. So there can be tremendous, beautiful motivations coming from a peaceful heart, coming from a heart of well-being that is not agitated, not pushing, not resisting, not fighting this world of ours, feeling good to fight for everything we can get.

Instead, there's a kind of movement of Aikido—a movement of not resisting, not fighting, but discovering the wellsprings of a different kind of wisdom, generosity, love, compassion, and a sense of peace. There's a tremendous capacity for creativity and engagement, but it's not one that's so centered on self: me, myself, and mine. The idea of a personal identity—who I am, what I need, what I have to do to care for myself and protect myself—the excessive focus on "I," the excessive focus on one's personal identity and maintaining it is part of what complicates greed, hate, and delusion, making it really mucky and even dangerous.

To discover there are beautiful motivations within that are not self-centric—they're certainly within us, so in that sense they're part of ourselves, but they're not centered on the egotism, conceit, or selfishness that often goes along with greed, hatred, and delusion. One of the reasons to not want to give up greed, hate, and delusion is because it seems like then we're giving up our self, giving up our self-identity, since people are often rooted in some contracted sense of self and self-identity. But to discover that which is not-self within, the non-contracted self, the place of non-preoccupation with identity, to discover this beauty inside, the fullness inside where motivations can well up from this wellspring of goodness and beauty within, without this preoccupation with self—this is a fantastic thing.

So this inner beauty is a reference point for becoming interested in studying and understanding greed, hatred, and delusion. Then we really understand how greed, hatred, and delusion diminish us, reduce us, and limit us, and how much more wonderful we are—and oddly enough, the world is—when we live without greed, hatred, and delusion.

So I'll continue tomorrow on this topic of greed, and we'll take our five-day journey through these three topics. Hopefully, you'll appreciate why this is such a valuable topic in Buddhism, and how the liberation from greed, hatred, and delusion is one of the most potent expressions of what liberation is in Buddhism.

Thank you very much.