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Guided Meditation: Emergent Space of Knowing

Hello everyone, and welcome.

In the journey through the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta^[1]—through the Buddha's teachings on developing a heightened awareness in our lives—we're now in the second foundation. From here on out (the second, third, and fourth foundations), the practice that's emphasized is knowing.

It is to know what's happening. In the earlier exercise for the first foundation, there was knowing, experiencing, relaxing the body, clear comprehension, and the use of imagination or reflection in order to connect to different aspects of the body. But from here on out, it is just to understand or to know. Bhikkhu Bodhi^[2] translates it as "understands." I like to translate it as "to know." One knows.

Knowing is really at the heart of sati^[3], of mindfulness. When we emphasize the knowing, sometimes it's easy to get lost or focused too much on the thing that we're getting to know, as if that is the important thing. It is important, and I don't want to diminish the value of really seeing clearly, but there's another side to knowing. That is that knowing does not interfere with what is known. Knowing is a very simple practice: just knowing without judgment, without value, without criticism, and without desires or aversions. Just know.

One of the reasons that's important is that knowing makes room in the mind for something new to arise. I'll explain it this way: much of the days that we are living, we are acting in reaction directly to the input, the data, the senses, the experience that's coming. We're reacting to it without a lot of forethought or reflection.

For example, if you're sitting uncomfortably in a chair, many people will adjust themselves without thinking about it. They feel the discomfort, and then there's an automatic urge to adjust themselves. Or we hear a sound and automatically turn towards it without any kind of awareness that we're thinking about it or choosing to turn towards it. Or we have a pain someplace in the body, and immediately in the wake of that pain, there's aversion. We have pleasure in the body, and then there's an automatic response of, "Ah, this is great, I want more of this." Reactions are the actions that come almost automatically, as if they're triggered by the experience.

This can happen in the mind as well. We have a particular thought, and certain thoughts produce a reaction. So we have another thought, and another thought. Much of our thinking is in some ways reactive; it's catalyzed by the thought before. Or there are internal emotions and feelings we have. For example, anger is a reactive emotion. It's an activity of response to something that has happened that triggers it. I think about someone who was unkind to me, and just the thought itself is a trigger for a reaction of being angry or indignant.

When that reactivity, that response, is immediate and catalyzed by the incoming input, there's no room for some deeper wellspring, a deeper flow of our inner life flowing out, like water flowing from deep inside the earth into a fountain or spring. Knowing helps us to see what's happening; it helps us to know our reactivity. But knowing, in its simplicity, starts to make room for some wellspring, something different, something to emerge from within that is not reactive.

That's radically different. It's almost like a paradigm shift in how we live our lives. From being reactive and responsive to the input that comes in—in all kinds of ways, including from the mind and emotions—rather than responding to input, we are allowing something to emerge. Rather than being customers of life, we're being producers of life. That is independent or free from the input that's coming all the time.

Knowing allows space for the emergence of something inside which we don't make or create, that is not catalyzed by the input coming in from anywhere, but rather exists independent of our judgments, ideas, theories, or memories.

So, taking a comfortable, alert posture. A posture in which we practice knowing. Perhaps a knowing that's not only cognitive, but also experiential—the way the body knows.

Gently closing the eyes.

Without any special breathing, familiarize yourself with how you're breathing right now.

At the end of the exhale, let there be an ever-so-small pause, so you can feel the emergence of the inhale. That's what the body does: it breathes in. If you pause at the top of the inhale, you'll feel the body's desire to exhale. The exhale emerges.

Perhaps, if you feel your body, you feel where the body has almost an urge to soften and relax: in the face, shoulders, the belly.

Centering yourself on the body's experience of breathing. Seeing how you could know breathing, know inhale, know exhale^[4]. So you know the breathing itself. You experience it, you feel it.

In the knowing, there's lots of room. There's room for a kind of allowance, allowing the breath to breathe itself.

If there are attitudes or agendas connected to knowing, see if you can relax the thinking mind. Relax. Kind of like clearing a windshield or a window, so you can see clearly. Clearing the window of knowing, so there's only knowing of what is here.

Knowing of in-breath. Knowing of out-breath.

And then, as you're sitting here, if you're aware of yourself globally, is your global experience of being here more on the pleasant side of things, or the unpleasant?

Whichever it is, take some moments to simply know it. Know how you are: pleasant, unpleasant, or neither. As if you have permission to be this way. There's no need to be any different. Just feel how you are and recognize it: generally pleasant, or generally unpleasant here.

And whichever it is, do you react to it? Do you have thoughts, ideas, judgments, concerns? If you do, you're making less room for something deeper to emerge in this space that knowing creates, the space that awareness provides.

Can you find a way of being that is not reactive to anything? That allows whatever is, just to be in the space of awareness?

If you look around your body and mind, can you find someplace where there is pleasantness, pleasure, or goodness that might be emergent? That arises independent of whatever else you're experiencing, not as a reaction to anything?

Is there a place within of quiet, of calm, some degree of peace? Some kind of pleasure that's not part of the world of reactivity, of thoughts and stories, and what's happened to us or will happen? The place where there is a feeling of being at home, here and now. A place of pleasantness or pleasure, however small.

Maybe, if there is such a place, you can gently breathe through it, breathe with it, knowing it as you breathe.

Just knowing. With the knowing that gives room and space for the emergence of what flows from inside the wellspring.

Letting the thinking mind become quieter. The quieter the mind becomes, the more space there is for this deeper emergence of what exists free of reactivity, not dependent on the inputs that come in.

Is there within you some place of comfort, peace, warmth, or calmness that seems to be independent of the world around you? Maybe even independent of your ordinary feelings and thoughts?

Is there a pleasure within that's not dependent on your ordinary sensations of the body? If you're quiet, it's a pleasure that can be there even when the body is uncomfortable. A quiet pleasure that's in some ways more satisfying than ordinary sensual pleasure. A pleasure that's easier known when there's some degree of calm and subtleness, maybe near the end of a meditation.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, appreciating that certain emotional states have their origins in the deeper wellsprings within: love, generosity, kindness, a love of honesty. That is easily eclipsed by the reactive emotions and feelings: fear, anger, and greed.

Perhaps we can celebrate and treasure the emergence of the goodness within when we're quiet and peaceful.

And in this relaxed place of pleasure within, the emergent, may we turn our gaze outwards into the world with its suffering and challenges, war and poverty, and not lose this place of love, care, or generosity. Gaze upon the world with love, kindness, and generosity, not eclipsed by fear, anger, or distress.

Maybe look upon the world with kind eyes, concerned with the welfare and happiness of others. May we, in our individual ways, contribute to the welfare and happiness of this world.

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

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (37) Reactive Life, Emergent Life

Continuing with the topic of the second foundation of mindfulness, and repeating a little bit of what I said in the meditation.

In the four foundations of mindfulness, when we get to the second foundation, the practice and activity that is being instructed is that of knowing—pajānāti^[5]. The way it's described how to know is to just know the simplicity of the experience itself. If there's pleasure, know it as pleasure; if there's pain or unpleasantness, know it as unpleasantness; if there's neither, know it that way. We'll see as we go to the other foundations, it's that simple. Just know whatever is arising, know what's there, and know it for itself without adding anything to it. Despite the judgments or preferences we might have, just know.

This knowing is a very significant act. Different people know in different ways. Some people are more cognitive, some people are more somatic, experiencing it in the body. But whatever way you have of knowing that knows it, it allows each thing to be itself without the agendas, the preferences, and the commentary. Just to know.

It is as if you're allowing a flower in your garden to just grow and be there. Or you allow a tree to just be there; you just look at the tree, enjoy it, and appreciate it, but you don't say, "Well, that branch is too crooked," or "There are too many branches." It is just a tree, and you allow it to be the tree. The same thing applies to these natural phenomena—whatever happens to us inside, just see it as that of the moment.

The purpose of knowing is not only to know something, but also to discover this place in the mind that can be that simple. Sometimes we're very accustomed, almost habitually, to be reactive to inputs, thoughts, or whatever is going on. We are for and against, searching for how to be safe in every situation, searching for what we can get and how it can benefit me, or how it relates to me, myself, mine, and my self-concept. There's a constant searching, wanting, getting, making, planning, and reviewing that goes on. That's a part of this reactive mind that we live in.

The wonderfulness of this knowing is that we're putting to rest that way of being. We're inhabiting a different way of being in the world, which is just to know. That can create a tremendous amount of calm and peace because we're putting energy into the knowing, not into the reactivity.

This knowing also has a quality of kindness because of this allowing, just letting things be. The knowing then begins to have qualities of spaciousness, peacefulness, stillness, or acceptance. It begins making room for things, making room for that inside of us which is shy, or that which is easily eclipsed by what is loud.

What is loud oftentimes is desires, greeds, fears, aversions, resentments, and envies. We have all these afflictive emotions, which I think of as surface phenomena. They are surface because they're reactive to the input from outside, but also input provided by the mind. The mind has imaginations, thoughts, and memories that it drums up, and then there are reactions to those. Because it has to do with the reaction to input, it's more surfacy, but it's louder on the surface. They cover over the wisdom that's inside.

What's quieter, maybe shyer in a sense, is that which gets eclipsed by the surface emotions and reactivity. That which is not reactive is what exists for us independent of reactivity to incoming input.

Imagine, for example, that your finger gets cut. Maybe you're gardening, putting manure in the garden, and you get a cut. There's dirt and manure on your finger, but you just keep working. Then you go into the compost pile, and you clean out the outhouse, and you don't take care of your cut. So it festers, it gets infected, and gets worse and worse. But if you stop all the doing, clean it well, cover it, and protect it, then something emerges from our whole physiological system to heal the cut. Lots of things get marshaled together inside of us in order to heal a cut; it's not a simple phenomenon. It is amazing how complicated it is.

In the same way, if we can not keep adding input from the outside all the time, but clean ourselves, clear out all the reactivity and this gunk that's there, and keep it clean, that allows a huge, beautiful, complex inner world to emerge and take care of things. It's not like nothing's in there. We have a rich inner heart; we have a rich inner life that, given a chance, will bubble up and begin to do the work it does. It is healing and liberating.

So in this second foundation of mindfulness, the Buddha first says to know what's pleasant as pleasant, know what's unpleasant as unpleasant, and know what's neither pleasant nor unpleasant as neither. Just learn to make those distinctions and recognize that.

Once you've learned to recognize that, and if you get more settled, it allows you to know that which is pleasant because it belongs to the reactive world, and that which is pleasant because it belongs to this other place—the non-reactive, emergent world from deep inside.

Many people are so oriented, when they sit down and focus on their body and breathing, on the sensual world. The sensual world is always the world that responds to input: the temperature, comfort, and physical sensations that go on. It can be wonderful and profound to do that, but there's another world within which doesn't require input. In fact, it's almost like the less input we have, or the more the ground is cleared, the more something can grow there. A farmer clears the field so the plants can grow. What is it that can grow within us when we don't have input?

That comes when we're quiet, focused, and calm. In Buddhism, it is primarily associated with meditation practice, though it doesn't have to be only there. But because of the strong meditation tradition, as we begin meditating and get calmer, more settled, and more concentrated, that which is quieter, that which is not reactive within us but emergent, can begin to flow and move through us.

At some point, we want to be able to recognize that that's happening. For the Buddha, this was distinguishing the pleasure which is of the flesh and the pleasure which is not of the flesh, and the unpleasantness that is of the flesh and the unpleasantness that is not of the flesh. I like to translate it as worldly and spiritual, though some people might say physical or spiritual. One translator translates it as "worldly" and "unworldly," which reminds me of some other location that's not even here, like the astral field or something. But it has to do with something that is really valuable.

As we move along the path of insight, the path of mindfulness, something we begin to be attuned to is what is usually eclipsed and hidden in our reactive, preoccupied mind. If we're always trying to navigate and negotiate the reactive mind—the mind that's all about input and rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, where everything has to be right, fixed, and made just right in the world—then we're missing the opportunity to become aware of these deeper wellsprings.

These deeper wellsprings then become the reference point for this path of liberation that's being described in the four foundations of mindfulness. These deeper wellsprings of the emergent, of the non-sensual. The sensual is impacted by the sense doors^[6], which are impacted by input from the outside. The non-sensual creates a reference point, a foundation for the last two foundations of mindfulness.

So we have this switch now in the four foundations of mindfulness, a pivot from the mindfulness of the sensual body, which has a lot to do with input. Even if you dance, which is a beautiful, sensual thing to do, the dancing is providing the input. I don't want to say that the sensual is somehow less than, but it's different from this deeper, more spiritual place. Here we're having a switch from that which is of the body, the physical sense sensuality, to focusing on something that some people might call the mind—the citta^[7], the whole inner landscape, but something deeper and more intimate. That is helpful for appreciating the path to freedom from suffering.

I hope that this discussion about the distinction between "of the flesh" and "not of the flesh" gives you enough ideas so you can kind of search for yourself. Maybe find your own terminology for this distinction, and your own way of finding something inside that is not dependent on the conditions of the world, including the conditions of your ordinary body, but belongs to the heart, the spiritual center, the citta, the mind. It belongs to the wellsprings within where the deep reservoirs of peace and happiness can be found.

Thank you. Next week I won't be here, as I'm going off on retreat at IRC. I'm very happy to have Nikki Mirghafori^[8] coming back. She's done this a few times now, and I think people have really appreciated her. I appreciate your receptive perception of her, and the appreciation of her that I've heard from many people. I'll be back on the 7th of March, and then we'll start with the third foundation: these citta, these mind states, or this inner life that we're now beginning to point to. Thank you.