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Guided Meditation: Inhabiting Aspirations of the Heart

Greetings friends. Greetings and good morning, good afternoon, good evening, whatever your time zone might be. It's lovely to be with you on this day in May, and I'm delighted to be able to support Gil^[1] while he's teaching a retreat, and also to spend time with you sharing teachings and practices together. My name is Nikki Mirghafori for those whom we have not met. Without further ado, let's start meditating together and I'll introduce the theme for today, and whatever is needed later.

Let's just arrive together. Let's arrive in our bodies. Let's arrive in this moment. Releasing into the body. Releasing thoughts, releasing plans, preoccupations. It's okay, we'll return to them afterwards. Taking this time to take refuge.

Starting, as always, with our intention. Connecting with the intention. What is my intention right now? Why am I here? What is my bigger intention, big picture intention? And what is my moment-to-moment intention for this engagement? Letting your intention be felt not in your head as a thought, but in your body, in your heart as a conviction, as a bright light, as an inspiration that lifts you up, keeps reorienting you every moment when you get lost in thought. There is your intention: "Yes, I do intend to be here, to be present, to be kind to myself and others." When I'm lost, it's all part of the training. Connect. To be. To inhabit the better angels of ourselves.

This angel is here, available to be inhabited with ease. Letting the body relax. Letting the muscles be soft. The forehead releasing. Our face, our jaw. The cheeks, the ears. Neck and shoulders putting down their weight. The chest unburdened. Releasing, softening. Whatever emotions are present is okay. It's all okay. Nothing is a problem in this moment to be treated as such. To make space. The heart is more expansive than we realize.

Releasing the abdomen. Your upper back, our lower back into the sit bones. Releasing the weight of the legs, the upper legs, lower legs, and feet. Here, this body, this entire body. Soft, alive. Relaxed as much as possible. Breathing. Breathing on its own. We don't have to consciously breathe. Trust the body.

And at any point, if you find yourself lost in thinking, it's okay. It's really okay. Become aware in that moment with a smile towards yourself, towards the thinking mind. "Thank you thoughts, thank you. Please come back later." Now let awareness reconnect with your intention to be present in this moment, to train your heart, your mind. Such a beautiful intention, to be kind. And settle back in the abdomen. The sit bones receiving the breath. Calming, soothing breath.

It is helpful to reconnect with our intention now and then. Here. Let the intention be the guiding North Star. And yet, right here, so close in our hearts, inhabiting this better angel here and now in this moment. Not too far. The angel out ahead is closer than we think; it's right here. Stepping into and inhabiting in this moment our better angels. Just a mind moment of intention away, right here.

What is your intention in this moment? What is the intention of the heart, not in a tight, graspy way at all, but in a beautiful, loving, perhaps even devotional way? What do you want to give your heart to in this moment of awareness right here? What do you want to cultivate in this short human life, in this moment of it, in this passing moment? It's already here, just recognize it. With a relaxed, easy, soft, gentle heart, mind, and body.

And one invitation for an exploration: for some, the word "intention" is just fine, and for some, it might be too dry, too heady. You're welcome to experiment in your heart and your body with an alternative. How about "the angel within"? Aligning with the angel within. Or whatever phrase or idea is embodied and inspires you physically. See how this might shift. My invitation, if you like it, is to notice how it might shift something for you, open something. Inhabiting the angel within. Maybe you sit a little taller, a little more with ease. Vibrations of warmth, goodness, and kindness reverberate. See for yourself.

And as we move to bring this sitting together to a close, let the inhabited, felt, expansive angel within appreciate that you showed up, that you have practiced. And for them to let go, to be kind towards anything that, quote-unquote, you didn't like—sleepiness, distraction. It's all okay. This angel within is forgiving, kind, wise, appreciative, and grateful to have sat with sangha^[2] in this moment in time. They don't take it for granted to have sat with other angels in this moment in time. Oh, so much goodness co-created together. So much goodness in each of us.

And with generosity, we open our hearts and offer the goodness, the merit of these moments of beauty, of presence. Share it to all beings everywhere. May all beings everywhere be free, including ourselves.

Thank you for your practice.

The Three Inseparable Aspects of Karma

Karma (1/5) The Three Inseparable Aspects of Karma

Hello and greetings again, dear sangha. So lovely to practice together, so lovely. Not taken for granted. I have this image of us in different places, and so I appreciate the words in chat coming through and the different places you are in the world. We appreciate feeling your presence, all of us together. Powerful, thank you.

Today I would like to speak about a teaching, a concept, and a practice that's often misunderstood in the West. Not perhaps so much by Buddhists, but maybe by us too at times. But this word has been co-opted, this teaching has been co-opted by popular culture and misrepresented, misunderstood. This teaching I'd like to talk about today is the beautiful, profound teaching of karma^[3].

In the West, it's often thought of as an inheritance, and it's often bad. Like, "Oh, what have I done?" or "What has this person done in their past life that they deserve this?" or "They must have done something terrible," or "I must have done something terrible." Basically, using the teaching of karma as a way to either self-flagellate or flagellate others. It's not helpful, and it's not actually a useful way to use this practice, to interpret this practice, to understand this practice. I want to speak a little bit about that, and actually to the profundity of what karma means here and now for us. It's not this magical, weird thing that we don't quite understand and is in some other dimension.

Not to think of karma as destiny or as fate, as it is often thought of. It's really a distortion to think of it as fate. It's a distortion of the Buddhist teachings. I love the words of Andrew Olendzki^[4], who says that karma has "unparalleled profundity and significance." I love that: unparalleled profundity, the concept of karma in the teaching.

Let's do away with this magical, weird thing that we don't even know—fate, destiny. Let's do away with that understanding altogether. Instead, consider first of all that the word karma simply means action. It's derived from the verbal root kṛ^[5], which means "to do, to make" in Pali. You already get the sense, right? "To do, to make" is different from something you inherit, something magical and weird.

There are three distinct senses of the word here, and yet these three distinct senses, which I will describe in a moment, are inseparable aspects of the same process of karma. Here are the three aspects:

The first one is the decision to do something. It's the intention, the decision to do something. That's the leading edge. The second aspect is the action that actually carries the thing out. And the third aspect is what we make thereby, as the result of that action.

Let me repeat that: the first is the decision or the intention to do something, the second is the action that actually carries it out, and the third is the result of the action, what we make. Karma is actually all three of those. They're distinct but inseparable. Not just the intention, not just the action itself, and not just the results—it's all three of them, which is so beautiful and profound. It's right here, right now.

The Buddhist understanding is that these three parts are the same whole. The intention being the leading edge of karma, which directs the activities of the mind, speech, and the body. All of those are considered actions. Notice that thoughts are considered actions in Buddhism—actions of the mind. Speech is considered an action of speaking, of course, and the body is considered action. So again, intention is the leading edge of karma, which directs the activities, which then, on the trailing edge, accumulates the karmic formations or karmic dispositions. It's our disposition. If we just drop the word "karmic," it's our dispositions; it's how we show up. We ourselves are made up of those dispositions, which also is the intention, the actions, and the dispositions.

In other words, every action—action of the mind, speech, and body—is already preceded by some doing, right? By some doing. And that doing is where the decisions are made; it is the intention, the doing of intending, the volition, the aligning or not aligning. There's some doing before the action, and then there is a result in the making—in the making of our unique personality, of our dispositions.

The main idea behind karma is the relationship between what we choose to do and what we make of ourselves. Let me just pause here. Wow. To me, this teaching is so profound. It's not about fate: "Oh poor me, what have I got?" It's actually a powerful, empowering teaching of what we choose to do and what we make of ourselves. So powerful.

I love this teaching. I'll just share with you, as I come to this and many teachings over the years, over time, there are more nuances, there's more beauty. Maybe when I was younger, in my early years of practice, there was some level of understanding, and the more I come to these teachings, there is a newer level of appreciation for the beauty, for the profundity of these practices. So I invite you to see them with fresh eyes. Even if you're an experienced practitioner, don't hear the word karma and go, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, I've studied this." Appreciate it as if with fresh eyes in your practice, in your heart and mind in this moment.

One last thing I want to say, and there's more I want to say tomorrow. There is this expression in Pali: saṅkhāraṃ abhisaṅkharoti^[6], which can be translated into English in many ways. According to Andrew Olendzki, it could be translated as "one forms formations," "one constructs constructions," "one creates creations," or "one fabricates fabrications."

An action involves both the activity as well as building something as the product of it. An image that is used in the suttas^[7] often is the image of a potter on a pottery wheel. A potter is engaged in the creative process of shaping, forming the clay, and making something to his will, with his intention, with his desire, with his actions. So intention and actions are forming the clay. And then when the pot is done, it's put in a kiln and it's fired. It's put in the fire, and then it's an enduring, everlasting artifact.

Think of ourselves, our characters, our personalities, our very, quote-unquote, "self," as this. Again, Olendzki puts it beautifully: "ossified karmic relics." Or rather, as "a gallery of ossified karmic relics, the accumulated residue of earlier dynamic processes of intention and action." I'll close by reading that one more time: "What we take to be our very self is viewed in Buddhist thought as a gallery of ossified karmic relics, the accumulated residue of earlier dynamic processes of intention and action."

There's so much more here to say, but just to end, think of karma as an empowering teaching that we can change. We can change. Anyway, we're out of time. So much more to say, but we have time together tomorrow. Well, maybe; life is so impermanent and unpredictable. But if all goes well, maybe we'll see each other tomorrow. Take good care. Looking forward to practicing together. Be well.