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Guided Meditation: Settling into Calm

Good morning everyone. We will use this as a sound check to see if you can hear me and also if it's relatively buzz-free compared to what it has been, and then we'll start in a minute or so. Great. Wonderful, thank you.

Starting this morning's meditation with an image. The image is that of taking a flat stone, the kind of stone that you would skip along the surface of water, and you just drop that stone into a pond or a lake. The stone just falls down into the depths of the pond, to the depths of the lake, and settles on the bottom and rests there quietly. Use that image for meditation practice: that we are settling ourselves and placing our attention within in a certain way, letting it just settle, drop, and come to rest. Settle down.

Even if the attention is focused on sounds in the world around us for meditation—as some people do—there is a way in which the quality of attention, the source of attention, becomes intimate. We drop within a certain way to a place, to a reservoir, to a lake where attention can rest in a vast, spacious space, like a beautiful open lake. When I was a small child of 10, 11, or 12, I spent a lot of time at the seashore swimming. I would love to dive deep into the water—maybe five, six, or seven feet deep—to the bottom, turn around, and look up. It was so peaceful. I would see the waves going around up above me, but where I was, it was so peaceful and calm. So, find yourself inward in a certain way, in that peaceful, calm place where awareness can be open to our experience.

Assume a meditation posture. Any posture will do that supports you to be alert. Sitting upright has some advantages, and in terms of this image, maybe it's a little bit easier to imagine the stone of awareness dropping to some deep place inside when you're sitting. Then, let your gaze relax and focus downwards at about 45 degrees. Maybe the eyelids become half-closed, not really looking at anything in particular. Let the eyes rest in their sockets. If it helps them relax, you can even imagine that your eyes are gently looking backwards or downwards into your body. And if it's nice for you, you can also close your eyes.

An ancient technique for getting settled is to take long, slow, deep breaths at the beginning. Deep breaths that are long, relaxed, easy, and gentle—just far enough that there's no strain or getting winded. As you take the deep breaths in, relax your torso, so your belly expands out, your chest expands outwards. Even the back rib cage, you can maybe feel it expand as you breathe in. As you exhale, make it a longish exhale. Relax, be easy about it. Make it maybe longer than you normally would exhale, but not to the point of it being a strain. Just as long as it's comfortable: deep in-breath, deep out-breath.

At the beginning of a sitting, it is sometimes nice, along with the long, deep breaths, to take a few moments to pause at the end of the out-breath. Pause for however long these moments are comfortable and easy for you, without strain or agitation. Pause in that quiet in the way the body becomes still. As the body becomes still and quiet, perhaps you can allow your thinking mind to also become quieter and stiller. Attune yourself to the physical stillness. Like listening to a musical note someone is playing, and you tune your guitar or your voice to that note, you tune your mind to the quiet and stillness that is within.

Then let your breathing return to normal. On the exhale, relax the muscles of the face. On the exhale, soften and relax the shoulders. On the exhale, soften the belly.

See if you can find a still, quiet place within. It can be any place in your body that you associate with stillness, quiet, peacefulness, or calm. Whether or not you feel it now, is there a place inside you associate with those states?

In a moment, I will ask you to take a deep in-breath, and on the long exhale, imagine you are dropping a stone into a lake, and the stone settles to the bottom. In the same way, let your mind become quiet and settled, dropping it close to this place of quiet within, resting in the inner stillness. Taking a deep breath, exhaling, and dropping yourself into your body to the place of quiet, stillness, and calm.

Let your breath return to normal. Relaxing on the exhale. Relaxing the thinking mind, and relax into the inner quiet of breathing in and out softly, gently. Then gently continue with your breathing. Perhaps, if it's easy, breathing together with the inner quiet, stillness, or peacefulness. Whenever you are exhaling, let go of your thoughts. There is nothing you need to think about except staying close to the quiet stillness of breathing mindfully in your body.

Every time you exhale, see if you can let go of your thoughts and let your attention drop. Relax into a place of quiet stillness within, like a rock dropping into a lake. Relaxing your thinking mind on the exhale. Notice if there has been any shift in your mind state from the beginning of the meditation to the end. The quality of your mind, your mental mood, or your mental attitude—has anything shifted? And if it has, is there a new perspective that is beneficial for you?

As we come to the end of the sitting, turn your thoughts, your concerns, your vision out into the world around you. Is there some way that you can stay close to a quiet, still place within? Whatever way you benefited from the meditation, try not to lose that, but become aware and be reminded of the tremendous suffering in our world. The struggles of COVID in so many hospitals around the world, at so many bedsides. The challenges of fires, floods, hurricanes, heat, war, and earthquakes. We live in a world where these are parts of our world.

From our meditation, can we gaze upon it kindly? Can we gaze upon it with eyes that are supportive and inclined to help and to care, without becoming anxious, without becoming despondent? From our meditation, can we stay relaxed, with a simple kind of ease and simplicity while looking upon the suffering of the world? Wishing that we, as individuals, as a community, and as a world, can live for the welfare and happiness of the world. Can we contribute to it?

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

Dharmette: Citta (1 of 5) Intro to 3rd Foundation of Mindfulness

On this Monday, we start a new series and a new theme for the week, and the theme will be the Third Foundation of Mindfulness. The classic teachings on mindfulness, as taught by the Buddha, come from a discourse called the Four Foundations of Mindfulness^[1]. There are four domains or areas of our life within which we develop our mindfulness and our awareness so it becomes strong, clear, lucid, and relaxed. These four are the body, the feeling tones of our experience (pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral), the states of mind that we have, and the dhammas^[2]—the mental operations and activities with which we either get pulled into the world of suffering or get pulled out of it into the world of freedom.

This week, we will talk about the third foundation. Earlier, the theme for one week was the first foundation, and then we had a week where I discussed feeling tones. In August, I talked about greed, hatred, and delusion, and their opposites, for one week each. That was actually meant to be a preparation for talking about the third foundation. Now, I am following up on the third foundation. I feel a little bit sorry that this series on the Four Foundations of Mindfulness wasn't done back-to-back so that they could clearly build upon each other, but a good number of you are familiar with the Four Foundations, so maybe you can just pick up here on the third.

I like to think of these Four Foundations as providing a kind of path. I really like the metaphor of depth, so I apologize for those of you who don't like this kind of metaphor of going in and going deep. Another metaphor is that of intimacy. With the first foundation, we can be very intimate with our body, focusing on the body and the coarser experience. Some of the exercises involve being aware of the body in activity: as we're walking, laying down, sitting, and eating, just being aware of the body. Other exercises involve reflections—considering the body and developing a helpful new relationship with it. Provisionally, we will say it requires a slightly coarser attention. It is more obvious, something solid you can connect to.

As we connect to the body and get intimate with it, we start becoming aware of the subjective experience of pleasant and unpleasant that comes along with being grounded in the body. Because it's subjective, it's a little bit deeper than the body. It has to do with the interface between our inner mental life and the sensations that we experience. At that interface, we experience things as pleasant or unpleasant, enjoyable or not enjoyable, comfortable or not comfortable.

We are getting to something closer and, in some ways, more meaningful and impactful for us because there can be a lot of pain or a lot of pleasure felt. As we settle into that, we start discovering that there are two different kinds of pleasant and unpleasant. First, there is that which has to do with the body itself and the ordinary senses. If I pinch myself, it hurts. If I get a massage, it feels good. If I'm sitting in a cold room, I might be uncomfortable; sitting in a room with a comfortable temperature, I feel I can relax. On a cold day, warmth feels very nice and soothing.

So there is the pleasant or unpleasant that has to do with stimulating the ordinary senses of the body. But as we settle in during meditation, we become aware that there's a deeper sense of pleasant or unpleasant having to do with—in modern language, we might call it our psychology—our inner mind state, our inner state of being. I like the expression "state of being." I know it's a vague expression and not everyone understands what it means, perhaps, but it refers to the quality and characteristics of our state of being that are independent of whether the world is providing us with pleasure or pain. This inner sense of well-being, this inner state of being, gets closer, deeper, and more intimate with us.

As we become aware of it, this state of being is very closely connected to, or maybe the same thing as, the state of mind. For "state of mind," the word is citta^[3] (c-i-t-t-a). It is a very important word in the teachings of the Buddha. Sometimes it's translated as "mind," sometimes as "state of mind," and sometimes as "thinking" or "thought." Depending on the context, that is the constellation of things the word points to. I prefer "state of mind," "quality of mind," or "quality of being." It's the overall mood or attitude through which we are aware of things.

For example, I can be angry as a momentary flare-up about something in particular. Then it goes away, and my basic disposition hasn't changed. But when my disposition becomes an angry disposition, then we say that the state of mind has become angry. The inner quality of our being is characterized by anger. It's an attitude or a mood we carry with us that is more enduring than the flare-ups of the moment. The same thing applies if I feel tremendous goodwill. That goodwill isn't just a momentary reaction in some encounter that I have; there's a disposition of goodwill that characterizes the state of being, the mood, the state of mind that we have.

Maybe for some of you, it might be meaningful to know that some people translate the word citta as "heart." So it's this quality of our heart.

Now, with this third foundation, we focus on this state of mind, state of heart, or state of our inner being. We are getting much more intimate, getting into something that is much more impactful and closer to what feels most intimate with us. It is not so tied to the vagaries of changing phenomena in the world. This is a place that has a big impact on our mood and our sense of well-being. We might feel a pervasive feeling of dread, a basic feeling of greed or a desperate wanting for something, or we might feel a pervasive mood of ill will and hostility. Or, we might feel the opposite: a tremendous mood or attitude of generosity, open-heartedness, love, kindness, or goodwill.

This is the mind state. As we settle and get quieter and quieter—maybe the breathing gets quieter, the body becomes still and quiet—we feel at ease and relaxed. Things become comfortable enough that we start noticing what stands out: this inner disposition, this mood, this mind state, this heart state, how we truly are. Sometimes we discover that it's a difficult place. There are all kinds of ways people try to avoid their inner life. They don't want to know it, so they stay busy so they don't feel it, because there might be some real sadness or grief there, or something we are very much afraid of, or some inner sense of conflict between different parts of ourselves.

But starting to become aware of this deeper inner state allows healing to unfold. It allows purification—a term often used in Buddhism—purifying ourselves of the afflictive states that we carry. Buddhism in that sense is very optimistic and encouraging. It teaches that it is possible to change ourselves, that we're never permanently stuck in any particular mood or afflictive mind state that harms us or is difficult to be with. There is a path through it.

Recently, we've talked about faith and patience. These are important states and qualities for being able to work with these deeper mind states. We need to have faith in the value of practice to enter into it, and we need patience with what is difficult for us. Then, it's possible to work through, open up, or settle the afflictive mind states.

"Settle" is a good term because afflictive mind states involve a certain kind of overactivity. There is an activity of the mind that generates boredom, hatred, ill will, fear, or despair. As the mind gets quieter and stiller, that activity settles away, and we experience ourselves without those afflictive mind states. As we do so, two different things can happen. First, we start making room in our hearts for the opposites of those afflictive states to begin to appear: generosity, love, and wisdom. Second, the mind state itself begins to change in quality and texture. It starts becoming expansive and open. It starts feeling an ease that is related to freedom, as if the mind or the heart can now breathe easily because it feels free and unrestricted.

All these things are part of mindfulness of the mind state, the third foundation. Becoming mindful of mind states that are afflictive, those that are the opposite of afflictive, and those that arise as the mind becomes freer and freer. To feel this freedom of the mind state and freedom of the heart is one of the great, important teachers for us on this path of mindfulness. We become our own teachers as we recognize the ever-changing states of mind we are capable of having, and as we begin to notice and appreciate the ones that support movement towards freedom, wisdom, compassion, and care.

So that is the introduction to our theme for this week, and I look forward to sharing this important part. To end, I will say that what we're looking at when we examine the mind state or the heart state is the quality of our inner state, the quality of our inner being. It turns out that we are the primary, or maybe the only, custodian of our inner well-being. If we assume other people are the custodians of it, and that our inner well-being depends on how other people treat us or what they do for us, then it's not a reliable place to find happiness and well-being.

But learning through mindfulness to be the custodian of our own well-being is what's possible with the third foundation of mindfulness. We will talk more this week. Thank you very much.