This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Caring and Loving

Hello everyone, and good morning and good day. It's just really delightful to see the chat messages flowing through. It makes me very happy to be together and sharing this morning, where I am with you in the Dharma field. It's already a kind of joy that's bubbling up for me.

I'm going to begin by summarizing a little bit of where we are this morning. We spoke about the overarching topic of ethics, sīla^[1], or how we choose to live our lives out in our actions, speech, and in our minds in a wholesome way, and that sīla has multiple aspects to it. We started with how sīla protects our hearts and minds and allows for a kind of inner purification to happen. And yesterday we spoke about the possibility of virtue as a heart that allows for a kind of inner freedom. Freedom from acting out the compulsive forces in us that are based on greed, hatred, and delusion, because the inner clarity allows us to see this clearly. There is a natural Dharma flow that allows us to choose not to add more suffering, to react, or to ride out the compulsion.

Today, we are going to add yet another dimension. With this possibility, what also becomes available to us is the expression of care and love, the expression of beautiful qualities that are available to us as alive human beings when the heart and mind are not tangled up by our demands, by our wantings, and our likes and dislikes. There is this possibility that in this inside-out way, the sīla of conduct—our actions—begins to express care and love. There is a sense for me of turning from a very personal and individual kind of cultivation to a kind of cultivation that begins to loosen the boundaries of self and others. There is a force that flows from this. We'll be practicing together in our meditation, and then I'll offer some more words in this kind of orientation.

So let's begin. Let's begin turning inward. Maybe taking a generous moment to allow yourself to gather and collect around the here and now.

The directness of the here and now. The quality of the Dharma is always available, and it's always here and now. So we gather ourselves aligned, oriented towards the Dharma. Arriving. Arriving here and now. Unmistakenly, here and now.

When we're settling into the here and now, we can begin to feel and sense what's here in a more intimate way. Our mind often lives in the past and the future—the next moment, next day, next hour, or yesterday. We can miss the opportunity to really feel and sense the aliveness manifesting right here.

The aliveness manifesting through the sense gates. The expression of aliveness that's embodied. A myriad of sensations. A flow of movements, an energy flow as we breathe. Let yourself enter into your life here and now. Not the ideas of it. Your lived life here and now.

There is a sense of immediacy, a sense of intimacy. Can you feel the invitation of the lived moment, inviting us to feel, sense, and know deeply, quietly?

Let yourself drop below the surface-level chatter, like settling down to the bottom of a peaceful lake.

When we're not so caught up by our judgments and ideas, concepts, thoughts, and stories, here in the depth of our being, there is a natural feeling of benevolence. Quiet kindness.

The Dharma never blames you or criticizes you. Our ego and thinking mind do that. We don't have to choose chasing after the inner critic. Let the thoughts float away. Let the quiet benevolence pervade. Natural care. Natural benignness. Spacious without boundaries. Yes.

The virtue as a heart is a kind, caring, loving heart in your lived experience. Whatever is present right now in this moment.

Notice there is also how we relate to what is happening that's present here and now. There is a "what" that's happening, and there is "how" we relate. Might this how we relate be a possibility of care, love, and wisdom? No matter what is present. The freedom that the Buddha spoke about is not in the what, but in how we relate to whatever is present—without clinging, grasping, demanding, or resisting, and with care, peace, and kindness. Yes.

May our actions, our speech, and the activities in the mind... may they flow out of a wholesome relatedness. May they flow out of care. Mettā^[2], compassion, and equanimity.

[music]

[bell]

Dharmette: Sila From Inside Out (4 of 5): Sila Cares

Thank you, everyone.

This possibility—as we cultivate sīla together with samādhi^[3] and paññā^[4]—what begins to become available to us is that our actions, our speech, and our way of living in this world begin to reflect or channel a deep inner beauty, an inner resource. There is a kind of echoing of these inner capacities in all of our relational field. So much of our lives live in the relational field, in how we relate to the world around us, and how we relate to different aspects of ourselves internally and to our different "committee members." As we touch in on this deeper inner resource that is peaceful and benevolent, the goodness ripples out.

They may have very ordinary kind of expressions, but how it gets flowing out can be so different. For example, this morning I was just noticing how I was making breakfast right before I came here. This making of breakfast was not coming from a kind of duty, like, "It's my obligation," but it flowed out of a kind of love, a kind of care for my household and for other beings in my household. It may not even look different, but internally we can feel that the whole orientation is changed. This is very natural, and people begin to feel this.

I'd like to read this quote from the Anguttara Nikaya^[5]. It's something that I'm really fond of and very touched by:

"Wise people of great wisdom do not intend for their own affliction, for the affliction of others, or the affliction of both. Rather, a wise person thinks of their own welfare, the welfare of others, the welfare of both, and the welfare of the whole world. It is in this way that one is a wise person of great wisdom."

All of you this morning as we gathered together, I'm just in this chat message, and there is a kind of related field that I can feel that is loving, kind, joyful, and delightful. It has an effect on us. It has an effect in ways that we may not even understand or imagine.

In the Digha Nikaya^[6], I'd like to read some verses that the Buddha offered. This is the Long Discourses, and this is one of the discourses that probably has the most detailed ethics that the Buddha laid out for lay people. I was struck by how much of this description has to do with how wholesome and virtuous conduct leads to a wholesome related field all around—in relationship to parents, spouses, partners, children, social networks, kind of everywhere. Let me read these verses for you:

"The astute and the virtuous, the gentle and the articulate, the pleasant in mind and amiable: they are the kind who win glory.

The diligent, not lazy, those not disturbed by troubles, those consistent in conduct: they are the kind who win glory.

The inclusive, the makers of friends, the bountiful, those rid of stinginess, those who lead, train, and persuade: they are the kind who win glory.

Generosity and kindly words^[7], taking care here and treating equally in the worldly conditions as they deserve in each case... these ways of being inclusive in the world are like a moving chariot's linchpin."

I love this powerful image of the moving chariot's linchpin. For me, this linchpin symbolizes a kind of core or stabilizing force that keeps the entire spiritual life, the entire life, from falling apart and becoming fragmented. In this chariot, the wheels are held together by this linchpin so that it can move in the world without becoming chaotic or bumpy.

One way I imagine using this simile is that the integrity we carry is a kind of linchpin for our lives on the individual level. When this is our core value, we can begin to express all of our relationships, all of our related field, from this kind of inner ethical integrity. The temptations and the compulsions that flow out of it have a kind of inner value. This allows us to move in our lives over time, more and more having this kind of inner core to us.

Also, as we live in a community, or as we engage in a community like this particular one that we're a part of right now—the 7 a.m. community—when the bond of the community is based on generosity (dāna)^[8], sīla, and a bond by the cultivation of practice, we can feel how this begins to shift each of us individually and have an impact in the world. How many times I remember living on retreat for some period of time—whether it's a week, two, three, or four—when a whole group of people have this kind of linchpin that we're organized around. It doesn't mean that we're perfectly like that, but that we are holding this as a possibility, and we're wholeheartedly cultivating in this way. The whole field begins to change. There is a deeper sense of trust, safety, a deeper sensitivity, and a deeper honesty. Caring becomes a natural expression, and loving becomes a natural expression, even if we're not being explicitly about this.

I'd like to end by reading you a poem. This is a poem by a wonderful poet, Naomi Shihab Nye^[9], called "Shoulders."

A man crosses the street in rain, stepping gently, looking two times north and south because his son is asleep on his shoulder.

No car must splash him. No car drive too near to his shadow.

This man carries the world's most sensitive cargo, but he is not marked. Nowhere does his jacket say FRAGILE, HANDLE WITH CARE.

His ear fills with breathing. He hears the hum of a boy's dream deep inside him.

We are not going to be able to live in this world if we're not willing to do what he's doing with one another.

The road will only be wide. The rain will never stop falling.

May this be the possibility of this practice. May this be the possibility for our hearts and for the hearts of all beings.

Thank you, everyone. Have a wonderful rest of the day.