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Introduction

Good morning, good day, everyone. Welcome you all for our 7:00 a.m. Pacific time meditation and a little dharma. We'll begin momentarily.

Thank you. If someone is still pointing out my sound, I will try to speak a little louder today just being conscious of it. I do have somewhat of a high ceiling, so it may have a little bit of an echoey effect here.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Ying Chen. I'll be offering meditation and dharma today.

We will begin again with this arriving sequence that I shared about yesterday, the arriving sequence that I learned from Dipa Ma, [unintelligible] Phillip Moffitt^[1]. An arriving sequence contains three components: arriving here and now, making ourselves available to this moment, and then aligning with a wholesome intention. This is what we will do.

Let me see if there's any other thing I can do on my end about the sound before we begin. My microphone is actually right in front of my computer. I tried a few different microphones yesterday, and none of them seem to work as well as the computer microphone. So let's see if there is a little more that I can do here.

For some people the sound seems to be okay, and for others, the sound seems to have a little challenge here. Thank you for letting me know.

I think we're going to begin just as is, and I'll be mindful about my sound. Today I will go over this arriving sequence again to familiarize ourselves with this sequence as we begin the meditation. Then today I'll incorporate an additional element of our practice, and that is the air or the wind element in our meditation. Let's begin.

Guided Meditation: Air Element

Arriving. Arriving home, home to this body. Arriving here and now.

I'm offering an image of arriving home, maybe by letting go and putting down the bags you were carrying. The plans, projects, memory, preoccupations. If for now we can put them away, we arrive here, this moment.

Feeling the connection of your body with the ground. Feeling your feet and legs contacting the ground. Maybe take a few long, deep breaths to let yourself arrive as you breathe out.

Momentarily, we avail ourselves to this moment. A sense of availability. Maybe that mindfulness is present here. Nothing dramatic, just being available. Receiving the sitting posture, the breath, the sound of my voice.

The sense of availability isn't incompatible with demanding certain experiences, but opening and receiving whatever arises.

Maybe we go back to the arriving process again. Gathering ourselves and centering ourselves right here.

Maybe there is a physical felt sense of alignment from where we sit. Alignment of the pelvic area, the spine, neck, and head. Maybe there is a sense of inner alignment of the heart, the mind, and our body.

Align with our aspirations. Maybe wholesome qualities. Maybe align with inner integrity. The word integrity has the felt sense of coming together. Everything included. Nothing gets pushed out.

Taking a few long, deep breaths. Resting into this moment with a sense of deeper registration, deeper connection.

And turn our attention to the physicality of our body. Pelvic bones supported by the ground. Making ourselves available to the felt sense of the earth element. This earthy body resting on earth.

The earth element is hard, heavy. You may feel the weight of the body settling down, downwards. You may feel the earth element with the quality of stability. Settled, unmoving.

However the earth element manifests, we receive it as is. Letting go of big ideas, conceptualization of what the earth element is. The body knows. The body is an organ of perception. Letting go of trying to figure it out from the head.

Resting in the felt sense of the earth element. You may feel some sense of stillness, stability, or any hint of it.

Resting in the stillness of the earth element in this body. Unmoving, like the big pillars of an ancient temple.

With stillness in the forefront of our experience—stability—we'll invite that sense of the air element, the wind element.

Maybe you feel the movement of the breath. Letting stillness drop into the background, turn your attention to the movement of the breath. Maybe the movement of the belly rising and falling. Expansion and contraction of the torso. Maybe vibrations in the body moved by the wind element.

Being available to the felt sense of moving wind. A wide range of movements in the body. With the steadiness and the stillness of the earth element in the background, maybe the wind element feels quite alive, vital. Life-giving breath.

Being available to the air element in this body. Letting go of trying to figure it out. Just available however this is for you.

Wherever you are, see if you can make yourself available to the sense of contentment, ease, or relaxation that is found in the body. Maybe there is some felt sense with the earth element resting on earth, or the ease of the breath.

A kind of contentment that is independent of our experiences. The experience of the pleasant or unpleasant. We can be content with that, not leaning in to grasp or pushing away.

The sutta^[2] that I've been sharing yesterday, where the Buddha offered instructions to his son Rahula^[3]: "Meditate like the wind. When you meditate like the wind, pleasant and unpleasant contacts will not occupy your mind. Suppose the wind were to blow on both clean and unclean things, like feces, urine, spit, pus, and blood. The wind is not horrified, repelled, and disgusted because of this. In the same way, meditate like the wind. When you meditate like the wind, pleasant and unpleasant contact will not occupy your mind."

The Blessings of Sila - The Second Precept (2 of 5)

So today we'll continue the reflections on sīla^[4], virtuous behavior. Today I'll speak about the second precept^[5], undertaking the training rule of not taking what is not given to us, or maybe a simpler translation for that is abstaining from stealing.

Again, I wanted to explore this from the perspective of the inside-out orientation. I invited you to sense into that inner integrity and inner dignity in our meditation, and we will explore that from that place and see how we relate to them through the expressions of those. Again, I'll use this triple-A framework that we talked about: aware, abstain, and align. We become aware of the inner dynamics and inner forces within us and learn to discern the wholesome and skillful versus what is not. We abstain from the unwholesome and unskillful. And we cultivate and align with wholesome qualities instead.

In the last few minutes of our meditation, I invited you to check in to this quality of contentment and ease as we were cultivating mindful awareness. A kind of contentment that's not pulled or pushed away by the forces of wanting, greed, aversion, and delusion.

We know as we meditate that the act of grasping or being aversive to something easily takes us out of that contentment and well-being. In this way, the second precept that we're going to explore today—abstaining from taking what is not offered to us—is coming from a place of non-grasping, non-clinging, non-aversion, and being free of fear. We all know sometimes fear will drive us to take what is not given to us. We've all probably seen this in the pandemic; when we're fearful of running out of certain kinds of resources, we can grasp more than what we might need.

Of course, this particular precept is about, to one degree, not stealing. We are not engaging or participating in full-blown criminal acts like robbing banks and stealing expensive jewelry or personal information online. Now, of course, I think all of us don't do that, right? And yet, as a training in support of liberation and freedom, this precept is also inviting us to look into the subtle, small impulses—or maybe sometimes big impulses—of grasping, clinging, and aversion in our inner being.

It invites us to become aware of the areas that sometimes we may overlook, and this is where the cultivation of awareness comes in. We begin to pay attention to our activities during the day, or movements in our mind. I'll just use a few examples that many of you might relate to. For example, what about taking a piece of paper from work? What about taking a pen or a pencil from work? What about taking an extra plate of food out of a buffet table, even though they're offered to us?

Some of this we may act out of wanting to be convenient. Isn't it convenient to sometimes just take a piece of paper? It's not such a big deal, right? I remember for myself, many years ago, I was printing out a personal thing at work because I thought it was convenient and fast. On the way back, driving downhill from work, I remembered this action, and all of a sudden I felt my whole body was uneasy. It was a felt sense of something off in my body. It was a powerful moment for me. I realized that these kinds of actions have an impact on me, and there's dukkha^[6] in this, so I vowed not to do this ever again.

In the modern-day societies that we all live in today, we're all driven by convenience and comfort. Maybe we can take a moment to reflect a little bit. Convenience and comfort are quite related to each other, and yet there is a cost to the obsession with convenience and comfort.

The tricky thing about living in our modern-day societies is that things are interdependent in so many ways. We may not actually understand the impact of leaning into convenience and comfort for generations to come. Maybe it's the next generation that feels the impact. For example, these days I know there is Black Friday for those who live here in the United States, Cyber Monday, and I don't know what today is—hopefully it's something good. With all of this, we can just push a few buttons on our computers and things will show up at the doorstep, and they're even cheaper, right? Why not get two or three of something, anything—shoes, clothes, games, whatever—when it costs the price of one, right? Why not?

This is why it's important to become aware of our inner dynamics, to begin to become aware of these kinds of impulses. Now someone is typing in "Giving Tuesday." I love that. I hope this is a good one. We'll talk about giving in just a few moments.

I wanted to point out that as we cultivate awareness for this specific precept, we can begin to tune in and recognize the difference between needs versus wanting, or wants. A need, for me at least, in the way that I'm going to share, is related to some form of care. Care for our body, our mind, knowing what's appropriate. Our body needs food, needs shelter, and medicine. It comes out of a sense of care and wisdom, and so we want to take care of this body and others. Wanting is a form of greed. It comes out of a sense of discontentment with what's happening right here, right now, and so something else must happen.

So many forms of violations and breaches of the second precept are based on wanting and a strong desire operating underneath. This precept invites us to abstain from acting out of those impulses, abstain from taking what is not given, and begin to align more and more with our sense of inner contentment and ease.

This speaks to the other side. The other side of not taking what is not offered to us is aligning with wholesome qualities and cultivating dāna^[7]. Since today is Giving Tuesday, it's wonderful, I guess it's a perfect timing for this. Cultivating generosity, giving, and cultivating contentment, ease, and the simplicity of our being. In the meditation, some of you might have felt some sense of this. When we're content, not driven by the underlying impulses of jumping out of where we sit, our heart is open and soft.

There's a sense that meditating like the wind doesn't have to be just sitting here meditating. As we go about our lives, can we be meditative like the wind? Whatever comes through, the wind is not horrified, repelled, or disgusted. It is wide open, free air. There is a sense of freedom here. The pleasant and unpleasant contacts and sensations will not get us caught.

Again, I've been talking about cultivating the sense of sīla as a form of a blessing. Today I'll end with a few words from the Mangala Sutta^[8] and talk about what the highest blessings are. Here it says: "Giving and righteous conduct, contentment and gratitude. This is the highest blessing."

May you all have faith in inner integrity and inner dignity. May the expression of your virtuous conduct benefit all beings. Thank you for being here, everyone. I'm just delighted to share this space and this time with you all, and we'll continue tomorrow. Have a wonderful rest of Giving Tuesday for those who are starting Tuesday. Take care, everybody.