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Guided Meditation: Present and Unentangled

Okay, so it's 9:25 here, or 25 after the hour, and that is our unusual start time for this Sunday morning or evening sit. So let's go ahead and begin with the sit.

Finding a posture that's upright, relaxed, settling into your seat. If you're comfortable doing so, you can close your eyes. Just let the eyes gently be soft.

And as we bring the attention inward to our inner experience of the body, first we may detect the sense of sitting. We're sitting in perhaps an upright posture, or perhaps you're lying down—that's fine too. So just feeling the overall posture of the body. Maybe feeling the places where your body is touching what it's resting on, so your seat against the cushion, your feet against the floor.

Just feeling those contact points and finding some balance so that the body is sitting with relatively little effort. If you're sitting upright, you can even rock back and forth a little bit or forward and back a little bit, just to find a balanced posture. Just softening so that you're not bracing against that contact point. Letting it support you.

Paying a little bit of attention to the posture right when we sit down is a way of supporting not only the body but also the mind in meditation. We're more stable and relaxed in the body, and that can be true in the mind too. So then it can also help to soften a bit as we settle in.

So softening the muscles of the face. Softening the eyes; that tends to get a little tight when we're looking at a screen. Softening the shoulders, letting them drop down a bit. Maybe imagining the shoulder blades sliding down the back. Bringing some ease to the area of the chest, the arms, the hands. Softening the belly area. Also the muscles of the low back.

Just allowing that whole torso area to be supported by the straightness of the spine, and letting everything else hang off of that. And then down through the legs, letting the knees and the ankles and the feet be soft, open.

Allowing the attention to tune in to the natural sensations of breathing. However your breathing now is fine, just noticing how that is.

Maybe on the out-breath inviting a bit more softening, a bit more ease. Letting the natural release of the out-breath carry away any additional tension that's willing to release. But if any tension seems to be remaining in the body, that's fine. However the body is right now is fine, just include that.

We may have various things happening in our mind and heart also. There may be emotions present, or memories of something that happened just recently in the day. We may have various thoughts in the mind, plans. These are okay. Mindfulness is meant to be inclusive, so we don't need anything to go away right away.

But mindfulness is also not entangled with experience. So we have some sense that these things are allowed to be there, to come and go, but we're not involved deeply in them during meditation. There's a part of the mind that is independent of the comings and goings of sensation and thought. And seeing if you can connect with that part of the mind that is present, but not entangled.

If we find that we have become caught up in something in the body or mind, when we notice that, we're already present again. So we're just gently connecting in again with the part of the mind that is present but not entangled, allowing experience to flow on in awareness.

We may begin to notice certain qualities of mind that get in the way of being present but independent of experience. If we want something to be there, or if we don't want something to be there, both of these are entanglements. Actually, there's a certain attitude toward experience that is the most useful. Sometimes it's called receptive, sometimes even kind. But a certain stance or attitude toward what is arising and passing helps the mind to be present but not entangled. Sometimes just a small adjustment is helpful. And when the mind does get caught, it's helpful to smile. Smile with the tendency to get entangled.

As we continue to abide with presence and non-entanglement, we may begin to get a sense that mindfulness itself is something of a balancer in the mind. Simply being mindful of how the mind is, how the body is, there can be adjustments. A simple knowing of what needs to be adjusted slightly in order to stay present. Not really something we need to do, but just a sense of how to stay balanced. The way we can stay balanced on a bicycle without consciously thinking about it once we have some familiarity with riding.

Reflections

And in the last few minutes of this meditation, we may open up a bit. Perhaps reflect, use this kind of gentle presence without entanglement. Could this be useful in our daily life interactions also?

We may notice that being unentangled is actually creating the space for us to be more responsive, be more caring. In that space, love and compassion could come in more easily than if we were wrapped up in what was going on.

Sometimes we hear the message that caring or showing concern must involve entanglement and anxiety and worry to show that we care. But maybe through our meditation, we can discover a dimension of caring that comes from this strength of heart, of unentangled knowing. So it may be that what we've been practicing is directly serving the other people in our lives, maybe even beyond to people that we don't know.

So we hope that our gentle, receptive presence, we wish that that brings some ease and peace to those around us, and invites stronger presence of love and compassion in our lives, here and beyond. May it be so.

Independence in the Dharma

So here in the United States, today is called Independence Day. And it's interesting to me that what we celebrate is not actually the day that we did become independent, but the day that we intended to become independent by declaring that that was our aim. And so there's something special about directing ourselves toward an aspiration. So maybe we can all celebrate our intentions to be free, to be caring, long before they come about necessarily.

This idea of independence can be a little bit complex. Most of us would like to have certain kinds of choice and agency and determination of our own life, but we also like connection, interdependence, participating in things that are larger than ourselves. And of course, in the Buddhist teachings, we know that there isn't such a thing as an independent, separate being. That's considered an insight that we have. But at the same time, the Buddha did talk about a certain kind of independence in the discourses. There is this idea of being independent in the Dhamma, or independent in the Dharma.

And this is actually quite an important idea in the suttas, in the teachings, and it's what I would like to talk about today. So let's unpack this term a little bit.

As I said, it's not that we are going to be independent as an individual, and it isn't considered a deep insight to understand completely that we are not a separate entity operating in a separate world. Instead, this kind of independence that the Buddha was talking about refers to a very positive transition that people go through whereby the Dharma becomes internalized. It becomes embedded in the heart to a degree that the path becomes self-sustaining from the inside, if you will. So being independent is said to be one of the qualities of a person who has entered the stream of Dhamma^[1].

So they've maybe understood something about how the path works, and it's very satisfying. This kind of independence is said to be a reliable form of safety that we can have on the path when the path has become somewhat internalized. So I want to talk today about a cluster of qualities that are associated with entering the stream and becoming independent in the Dhamma.

But it's important to know that all of the qualities that we'll talk about today develop somewhat continuously, starting from the very beginning of practice. So what I say is relevant for everyone who's doing this practice. And also, the qualities that I'm going to bring forth today are things that we can emulate always, before they become fully internalized. We're always aspiring toward certain qualities that I'll talk about today.

So maybe we could see this as kind of a general gathering up of the changes that are happening in our mind and heart as we walk the path. What is happening in the mind and the heart as we do this practice? I'll talk about three different areas. There are some things that are gained along the path, and there are some things that are lost along the path, and we also come to see differently along the path. And then those three kind of come together to add up to being independent in the Dhamma. It's also true that these three areas are intertwined and mutually supportive, so you'll see how each one kind of contains the others.

What is Gained on the Path

Beginning with what is gained, the first thing that is said that we gain with this entering of the stream is confirmed confidence. That's a translation of a term that means, more literally, confidence based on knowledge. So in particular, it refers to confidence in the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha. So the three items that we take refuge in, maybe early in the practice. It really amounts to a very deep form of trust that we develop along the path, and again, this is kind of incremental.

It might be that some of you have taken refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha at some point, and that's kind of an initial offering of the heart to these beautiful qualities, these beautiful things that we feel are somehow reliable for us. And it's nice to know that that confidence, or trust, or placing of the heart just continues to deepen all along the path.

One way that this plays out in terms of our actual way of being in the world is that we will get less upset about the vagaries of life. The more trust and confirmed confidence—or confidence based on knowledge—that we have about how the path works and what's really reliable, the less we need to get thrown off by the natural changes that happen in life, the surprises that continue to happen all along the path. We know that we can't know what will happen next in our life, but we have trust that if we stay with the path, that'll be the best we can do.

I've had times when things were a little wild in my life, and I could just remember, okay, but I know I have a path. If I just stay present with this, bring forth the best qualities that I can, that'll be the best it can unfold. So we have something to orient around, given the changes of life. So one thing that we gain more and more is this confirmed confidence, confidence based on knowledge.

And then the second thing that's noted to be gained along the path is excellent ethics. So people who live in the stream of Dhamma are said to possess the virtues dear to the noble ones: unbroken, untorn, unblemished, unmottled, freeing, praised by the wise, ungrasped, leading to concentration. That alone is a very interesting list, but it points toward the internalization of ethical conduct as just a natural way of being. And also that it supports the path, in that two of the qualities listed were freeing and leading to concentration. So we can see that ethics is just a natural support for walking the path, and it deepens and it continues to deepen all along our practice.

Another thing that is gained is generosity. And the suttas use such phrases as, a person walking the path delights in giving and sharing. And this is a natural kind of non-possessiveness that comes about through practice, and it again is something that deepens. Maybe from day one we've started to become a little bit more generous as we sit with our own mind, our own body, as we start to be more mindful in life, and it just goes deeper and deeper. So this is something we can look forward to gaining more of, this beautiful quality.

And then, because it's named in the teachings, I'll mention that another quality gained is fearlessness concerning one's death. So that's interesting. It's said we become less and less governed by that subterranean, existential anxiety that we can have about the possibility of our own death. So it might be that fearlessness about death is something like gaining—that is, something like losing our fear of death. So gains and losses maybe go together.

What is Lost on the Path

To shift then to what are some of the things that are lost along the path, you know, what are we freed from? What do we let go of? Of course, we let go of many, many things along the path of practice, but there are three especially important ones that are singled out as being part of this process of becoming independent in the Dhamma. And these three are part of a larger list called the ten fetters^[2]. Fetter is a little bit of an unusual word. A fetter is a bond or a restriction. And there are said to be ten of them, but the first three are the ones that are really relevant in this case.

And the first one, maybe is a little hard to describe sometimes, but it's often translated as "doctrine of self." So we lose having a doctrine of self. The word literally means existing body view, sakkāya-diṭṭhi^[3]. But put into more common language, it really just means a firm belief in an unchanging self or entity, some kind of a permanent self or permanent inherent qualities. And this is profound, of course, to deeply investigate this, but I don't think we need to get really wrapped up in it. It's something that begins quite soon as we start practicing, in that most people can see that as they practice meditation and mindfulness, there's a way that they become lighter somehow.

Fairly soon we become less burdened by restrictive ideas of who we need to be. We become more able, for example, when we're in a conversation with our partner, to see their point of view, to take a pause before we react, to maybe give up something we would have grasped at before and be willing to see things from their point of view. All of these are small ways that we're letting go of things that we had identified with before, aspects of ourselves that we were holding on to as our doctrine of who I am and who I need to be. So essentially what we're losing is some rigidity. We're losing some rigidity along the path, and in particular, rigidity around ourselves. So I think this is something we can connect with right away, and then let the deeper parts of it unfold as they do.

And then the second main thing that we lose or let go of, one of the other fetters, is doubt. And this refers specifically to doubt in the Buddha's teachings and the path to liberation. It takes a lot of forms. This doubt can be outright disbelief, it can be a lack of confidence in our ability to walk the path, or it can be a kind of a subtle uncertainty about what is referred to in the path of liberation. And so abandoning this fetter or releasing it is essentially just the counterpart to gaining confirmed confidence in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha.

So we see as we walk the path and we get clearer on what's going on, we have less and less doubt about the direction that we're going. You know, even if we can't know, as I said before, what's going to happen next in our life, we have no doubt that the practice and the path will be supportive in meeting whatever comes along. And again, we can just let that doubt slowly wither away to the point where the practice becomes internalized and we essentially have no doubt about the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha in our life.

And then the third main thing that we let go of in the process of becoming independent of the Dhamma is said to be attachment to precepts and religious practices. That's how it's usually translated. So that first word is important: we're losing our attachment to these things, our grasping of them, essentially. Of course, a person would not stop following the precepts. Remember that one of the qualities gained was excellent ethics, excellent virtue, and respect for ethical conduct. So it's not that that really changes, but the attachment or the grasping. And we don't believe that the precepts alone are sufficient for awakening, or that they amount to the only thing that we're striving for on the path.

And the same is true for various kinds of religious practices that we would undertake, rituals or devotional practices. These can of course still be done—in fact might be done even more deeply as we walk the path—but we don't have the attachment to them that they alone are what brings about liberation, or that they alone are the point of what we're doing. So they're used properly as skillful means.

So it's interesting, if we step back and reflect on these three fetters: the doctrine of self, the doubt, and the attachment to precepts and religious practices. All of those are fetters that are related to our understanding. So they have to do with how we see things, how we relate to things, how we view things, how we imbue things with meaning. And so entering the stream of Dhamma means releasing some of our key misunderstandings that inhibit walking the path. And that's essentially what these three fetters are; they're misunderstandings that we walk around with and that we maybe don't even realize are inhibiting our ability to walk the path. And so as we release them, we become freer, and we feel that we are entering into this stream.

It's important maybe to say at this point that we're not talking about really an intellectual understanding. I'm using words and explaining things and talking through things, and that's important as we listen to the Dharma and take it in, but eventually what we find is our understanding is a direct experience. It's an experience that goes deeper than just our cognitive understanding of things, being able to repeat lists and so forth. So we take it in in this verbal form, but you know, please let it enter into your being, into your heart, so that it becomes a deeper understanding.

Seeing Things Differently

So then that leads naturally into the third area that I wanted to talk about, which is that the understanding aspect of independence in the Dharma is that we start to see things differently. We start to see in less habitual ways than we did at the beginning of the path. This is what's meant by the term right view, also translated as wise view or maybe appropriate view. It's not really a right and wrong kind of thing; it's something that we slowly move into. The way that we see gets clearer and clearer as we practice.

And I think this is also something that nearly everyone has experienced, no matter how new or old in practice you are. We start to see—as soon as we have mindfulness—we start to see more clearly what's going on in our body and our mind. And so, all along the path our vision is getting clearer. But in the context we're talking about today, the particular understanding that we're talking about is some kind of experiential understanding of what are called the Four Noble Truths.

And these pertain to a certain quality of experience called dukkha^[4], which could be translated as unsatisfactoriness. It's of course often translated as suffering, which might not capture all the aspects of dukkha. Sometimes I just think of it as offness. You know, the sense that it's hard to get everything aligned all at once and keep it that way, and there's often a feeling like, that's not quite right, that's not quite working. That of course is something that we're generating in our own mind. But this quality of dukkha the Buddha identified as very important to look at.

So these four noble truths are: to know that there is dukkha in life, to know that it arises in dependence on craving and clinging—there's some wanting that is present if we're feeling dukkha or unsatisfactoriness or suffering—and then to know also that it can end, and to know that there's a path to ending it. So those are a concise statement of the four truths. But what this means practically is that the mind begins to orient toward seeing dukkha, seeing the clinging and craving that accompanies it, seeing its release, and seeing the path to releasing it. And that doesn't mean that in every moment we have to rush to try to figure out what all those things are. It's more that we just have an orientation toward: where's the difficulty, the suffering, the tension, and where is the release of that? How might that be released?

So this is sort of an orientation to the mind. And maybe a second important aspect of understanding that I'll mention, because it's so prominent in this quality of entering the stream, is that we start to have genuine wisdom around arising and ceasing. So there's a statement in the suttas that people often say when they're declaring their independence, and what they say is: "All that is of a nature to arise is also of a nature to cease." So people understand that everything comes and goes, literally everything. And how would somebody know that for sure? Well, it could be that the person has experienced something ceasing at a deep enough level that it makes an impression on their understanding. So a lot follows from that simple statement: everything that is of a nature to arise is also of a nature to cease.

It can get a little abstract sounding, we're talking about truths and things like that, so it's maybe also important to know that as we practice, our understanding of truth actually becomes less and less abstract. So we start to see that dukkha and the end of dukkha are about this particular experience happening right now.

Just recently I was traveling on an airplane for the first time in a year and a half, and I got delayed at my stopover and had to spend a few extra hours. And so my mind, I noticed it kind of veered toward thinking that the unpleasantness I was experiencing was going to end when I finally got home. But then, looking into the future, when is this going to be over? But then something shifted, and I realized that the dukkha was the suffering that was happening at that exact moment. My impatience, my irritation with air travel^[5] had not changed in a year and a half, and it was being added by my mind. And so I was actually able to relax right there in the crowded airport. It was still unpleasant, but I wasn't suffering.

So there's a way in which these four noble truths become about this moment. It's not that "there is dukkha," it's that "this is dukkha," or "this is the end of dukkha happening right here." So we get brought into the present moment really through this practice.

Happily, this turns out to be a much more satisfying way of seeing than our usual way. To see immediately what's happening in this present moment, how it might be released into freedom, how this experience itself might be the basis for liberation, brings a form of joy to have that accessible right there in this exact moment of experience. The simple joy of being present with being in touch with what's happening now, and the joy of having a wise orientation. So this kind of present moment wisdom that starts to come in pretty quickly and then grows, gets deeper and deeper, it provides a subtle but important support for walking the path in our life. It's going to support us all along the path. So seeing accurately is so important.

Independence in the Dhamma

So we have that some good qualities are gained, some restrictions are lost, fall away, and we see more clearly. So all of that adds up to a kind of robustness of heart or inner strength that is what the Buddha called independence, independent in the Dharma when it becomes internalized. And this is what we're working toward or working to deepen in our practice.

I want to consider this stock phrase that is said about this transformation of understanding, and it's said about a lay follower named Upali^[6]. So lest you think this sounds impossible, Upali was an active community member, a busy householder who was doing a lot of things in the world, but nonetheless he listened to the Dharma and had a realization. And then the Buddha says about him, "Upali saw the Dhamma, attained the Dhamma, fathomed the Dhamma; he crossed beyond doubt, did away with perplexity, gained intrepidity, and became independent of others in the Teacher's Dispensation."

So this path is about knowing for ourselves. It's about knowing for ourselves what the teachings are referring to and being able to embody them in certain ways. That's what it means to become independent in the Dhamma, and it benefits everyone around us really.

There is another teaching that mentions a few things that are sort of specific actions that would be done by a person who is independent in the Dhamma, and I think that some of them are interesting. I'll just name a few. A person like this will instinctively draw back from committing ethical violations, and they will immediately report any that they have committed. You know, they will feel uncomfortable if they know that they have lied a little bit or maybe accidentally taken something that wasn't theirs. They will feel so uncomfortable about that that they will go and find the person that they need to talk to about it. It's a very beautiful quality of heart that comes with this excellent ethics, and of course very useful for relational life also.

Also, a person who's independent in the Dhamma will consider practice to be of primary importance in their life. There is a way in which they can't become so busy and over-committed that they're no longer able to practice, because that will be too important to them. Also a very beautiful quality.

And also, such a person pays close attention to Dharma teachings, listening eagerly. It's said that this person will feel inspired and confident and joyful when the Dharma is being taught. And they will know that their mind cannot be obsessed to so great a degree that they could not see things as they are. I like that one in particular. So there's a sort of a non-obsession that comes about through being independent in the Dharma. It's not that the mind never gets caught up in things, or temporarily obsessed, but that gets greatly reduced. And essentially that gives us this space to become more flexible.

So you might consider if you have these ways of being, or if there are ways of bringing in more of these ways of being. You know, being clear about our ethics, making practice more primarily important in life, listening to the Dharma with a heart of joy, really taking it in and feeling the goodness of it. And also taking care that our mind is not so obsessed with things such that we would not be able to see things clearly. That's a little bit what we did in the meditation, just practicing the non-entanglement of the mind.

So independence is freedom, but it's not freedom to just do whatever we want. It's a deeper and more profound kind of freedom. It's the freedom to be responsive without getting entangled in self-interest or in our own animosities^[7]. Free of our past habits, such as strong desire and aversion, these habits that limit being wise and connected in the moment. Also, freedom to see broadly, to see a variety of perspectives, and to see beyond our previously limited view of things. To have a flexible viewpoint on the world. And free to trust the unfolding of life in all of its glory and all of its pain and all of its triumph, in all of its reality.

So this is a transformation of heart that we're doing. It's a slow change toward having less and less impedance and suffering in our heart, and more and more freedom and flexibility and responsiveness in our life.

The Wine in the Glass

I want to end with a poem that maybe speaks to this^[8]:

The wine in the glass remembers the long days in darkness, how it couldn't breathe, how it lost its scent of grape and became more grapefruit, more green pepper, more grass. How it lost its harsh taste, lost its astringency, and became rounder, more smooth, more wine.

I too am changing in these long days. I too am converting what I've known into what I will be. I too am becoming something I almost don't recognize, heady with transformation, yet tethered by memory to what it was like to feel trapped, what it was like to steep in that darkness, to have to learn to trust whatever came next.

So wishing you all well on this Independence Day, and may the Dhamma embed itself deeply in your heart and bring you freedom in life. Thank you.