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Guided Meditation: Knowing Awareness

Good morning everyone. Welcome to Friday. That's the day of the week. It is. Welcome to the space that we are all sharing. This space that we're now dedicating to our practice, our meditation practice, our coming to stillness practice. So keeping that in mind, let's join together. Find yourself a comfortable place to be. Arrange your body in the space. Settled in. Feel your body here in the room, so that your mind is here. Your thoughts are here. Your feelings are here. Take a deep breath and let it out. Let the breath be the space we begin and that draws us home to this space. Relax.

Let your upper body move and settle. Where it's rigid, let it be flexible. Let your shoulders rest. Let this sinking feeling continue down through your arms. Note where your hands are lying, or by your side, wherever they are. Let them be at ease. Let them be restful. Feel the scanning down. The energy slowly moves down to relax your body. The torso, the hips, the bottom, the thighs, the knees. Let the calves be loose, the ankles loose. If sitting, have your feet clearly on the ground, the toes relaxed. Check the alignment of the body. Is it loose, upright, alert? Take another breath. Let it out. And then let breathing happen.

All of our intentions, all of our settling, all of the letting go of what came before—all of it only makes us ready. Makes us ready to just see what is arising, to hone our awareness, to be with things arising and passing away. It's here. It's not here. Just the breath. Just being in this room, in this space, feeling what I feel. Know that I'm breathing by temperature, by movement. Know that I'm following it. Know that I'm aware.

When awareness slips, as it will, rejoice. I'm here. I'm still here. The breath is moving in and out and I'm with it. The thoughts are coming and going. I'm aware of thinking. Aware of thinking. I'm aware of the feelings that are arising: the uncertainties, the peacefulness, the wondering, the rushing to get to concentration, the efforting. I'm here and I know I'm breathing. I can feel it moving in and out.

In this moment, where is your awareness? On the breath? On the breeze over your arms? Watching the thoughts coming and going? Know that you're watching. Be aware that you're aware. And when that knowledge slips away, bring the awareness back. In this time, we're bringing awareness to the breath or whatever your object of meditation is. Now that you know that, be here for what arises in your awareness. Ah, this, and now this. And once again I come back, settling here on this breath. Not a struggle, just a redirecting.

And what are you aware of now? Are you in a story, an imagination? How does that make you feel? Where in the body do you feel that awareness? Aware of our awareness can only be in the body. Aware of our thoughts, aware of the breath, aware of the twitches in the body, aware of sounds. Aware of my reactions. How wide is your awareness? Is it narrow? Is it broad? Be aware of the energy in your body, around your body. Know what you're aware of. No right or wrong. Know your awareness. If it feels scattered, return to the breath. Just here. Knowing the awareness, wide or narrow. Where is my awareness? Breathing. Aware of my breathing.

I'm aware of sensing. Sensing awareness has no opinion. Awareness doesn't judge. Judging comes from the mind, the thoughts, the reaction to awareness. Awareness knows no blame. Just this, and this, and this. The knowing, the knowing of this sensing. It can be directed, can be felt. It can consider awareness, but it doesn't judge. That's extra. Are there colors? Are there sounds? Know that you are hearing. Know that you are breathing. Know that your hands are touching your thighs. Know that you are knowing that you're here. I am aware of being here.

So, we're not always aware of the time.

Dharmette: The Truth of Suffering (5 of 5): Wisdom

Good morning.

So, this is the final day of the week and the final day that we're going to be talking about suffering. But today I want to talk about the wisdom of suffering. The wisdom in suffering. The wisdom that comes from suffering.

The other night I was watching a movie and a skyline shot of New York City came up showing the twin towers that were erased on September 11th, 2001. Twenty-five years ago. Twenty-five years after the 9/11 attacks, a third of the American public is too young to recall the day itself. It is sort of stunning to me because not only were there crashes, and lives lost, and lives changed, and the US felt what probably seems to people who only know war^[1]... but for us it was quite a big thing. And the solidarity and peacefulness and unity that we experienced immediately in the days past have gone away. And just my talking about that on this anniversary brings up something in you, some reaction, some feeling about it, some sense, even if it's just irritating to have it brought up. "I don't want to think about it."

In this week we've talked a lot about views, conditions, how these things affect what our reactions are, how they lead to suffering. There are kind of three aspects to wisdom. There's the conceptual wisdom, the theory of it, where someone says this is what's true and these are the things to look for and this is what you have to think about and this is what this means. It's a gathering and an incorporating of ideas. That phase is the theory of how things work, what you get from a book or listening to a person or listening to your friends.

And secondly, there's the wisdom that comes from practice. The wisdom of your own direct experience. The wisdom that arises when you try these theories. When you say, "Well, how does this work for me in my life? What does this mean for me in my life?" Now we're practicing with knowing in our own experience how suffering arises, how it passes away. We practice with knowing the causes, how things arise that give rise to stress. "Oh, that's feeling stressful now. I'm really confused by that. I'm suffering."

The third type is the wisdom of realization. This is the development of a sense of real understanding. This is the knowing part. This is where we can say, "Oh, I get it." That realization of wisdom is what comes out of the practice. There's the theory, there's the practice, and then there's, "Oh, this is what it means. This is how it feels." It's a place of confidence and clarity. There's a kind of peacefulness there. It's free of reactions, opinions, biases. You don't have to take somebody else's word for it. This is what the Buddha pointed to. He said, "Don't listen to anybody. Figure it out for yourself by your own direct experience."

You know, we talk about mindfulness in everyday life and then people say, "Yeah, but it doesn't really work that way for me. How does it work for you? What happens when you apply it? How do you do that? How do I apply it?" [Laughter] "What does that really look like? Oh, if I'm angry, I'm angry." So, we develop the capacity of reflective awareness. "I'm aware that I'm waving my hands. Ah, there's a sense of urgency. There's a sense of wanting there." That reflective awareness where I'm sensing, "I see this happening." There's an emphasis here. It's an emphasis.

So the reflective awareness is saying, "Yes, this is happening. And what else is here? What are my attitudes about it?" It's asking the next question. And it's developed through deliberate encouragement. It doesn't just happen. We have to include it in our intention. Say, "Okay, I'm going to notice... so this is happening. How do I feel about this happening?" Not how do I want it to be, and how I wish it was different and all of that. "Oh, I'm wishing it was different. Oh, here I am." I know that wishing things to be other than they are leads to suffering.

We have to ask ourselves these questions because the default is to let our assumptions and our beliefs and our biases and all of the other things that influence us speak for us because they're the loudest. Our mind habits are very strong. That's why they're called habits, and that's the default. So we have to develop the capacity to say, "What else is happening?" If we follow through on being kind when we have this pause—that our intention is to be kind—then we say, "Oh, that feels pretty good. I'm going to do that again." Or if we notice the arising of ill will, we notice in the midst of the flurry of anger, "I want something to happen to that person." We can feel the ickiness if we just ask, "How does this feel? This vindictiveness I feel. It's a little sticky. I'm not sure I'm going to do that anymore."

When we find that pause that takes us out of reactivity, we have just this much time to look at it. Just a tiny bit of time. And in that time there is release. And if we follow through with that, we can develop that capacity. It isn't that we become better people. It's just we know more. We have a cultivated wisdom. Wisdom is our ability to evaluate mind states as they're directly felt in the present. And it's nice to reflect on what happened yesterday, but where it really makes a difference is bringing it to mind now.

Just knowing is a potential trap. "Well, I know this is true." Now, we're lost in the world of beliefs. But what am I sensing? Can I look directly at what I am feeling now? Not what do I believe about what's happening? This can be very difficult. It takes a lot of practice. I keep practicing it, hoping that someday it will be even more natural to me.

We're comfortable with the familiar, our friends, our family. I'm going to read you a quote by a guy named Andrew Sullivan. "One of the great attractions of tribalism is that you don't actually have to think very much. All you need to know on any given subject is which side you're on. You pick up symbols from everyone around you. You slowly winnow your acquaintances to those who reinforce your worldview. A tribal leader tells you this is what you should be believing, and everything slips into place. After a while, your immersion in tribal loyalty makes the activities of another tribe not just alien but close to incomprehensible."

You know, we get used to it whether it's a Buddhist community or a political community or our homeowners association. We get used to, "Oh yeah, somebody's taking care of this. Somebody can tell me what to think about this." As soon as we place a label on ourselves, then we belong to that tribe. "I'm a person who..." as opposed to "How am I now? What do I feel about this? What do I think about this?" Not what does the group think about this.

So Ajahn Sucitto^[2]—he is one of my favorite teachers although I've never met him directly—and one of the things he says is, "True wisdom senses balance and wholeness. True wisdom senses balance and wholeness, discerns cause and effect, realizes the fruit, the blossoming of clarity and happiness." The blossoming of clarity and happiness. This is the wisdom of Right View^[3]. It's for my long-term welfare, the welfare of others, and leads out of stress. I like that. I like that. Leads out of stress.

Another person that I admire a great deal is Stephen Batchelor^[4]. What he says is, "The aim of mindfulness is to know suffering fully. Know suffering fully doesn't mean suffer. It entails paying calm unflinching attention to whatever impacts the organism. Be it the song of a lark or the scream of a child, the bubbling of a playful idea or a twinge in the lower back. You attend not just to the outward stimuli themselves, but equally to your inner reactions to them. You do not condemn what you see as your failings or applaud what you regard as success. You notice things come. You notice them go. Over time, the practice becomes less a self-conscious exercise and meditation done at fixed periods each day, and more a sensibility that infuses one's awareness at all times."

A sensibility. That's what we're developing. That's what mindfulness does for us when we study suffering. When we say this gives rise to suffering, this causes suffering to cease, we become sensitized. We become sensitive individuals. We are just this. We're just this.

So, Ajahn Sucitto sums it all up with this. "Acknowledge and focus on your thoughts and emotions. The mind entering the experience of being aware of them rather than being them. Be aware of anger rather than being anger. Sharpen that awareness by bringing it to the fore, disengaging from the activities of mind and heart in order to know them more fully. Don't follow the story. Stay here. Notice that you can do this for a few moments anyway without denying, censoring, or proliferating about your mental behavior. Don't have an opinion about it. Just see it. Notice too that a blend of clear attention and emotional spaciousness supports this kind of awareness. Clear attention and emotional spaciousness. Once this detachment or non-involvement is established, one can apply goodwill to moods and thoughts affected by ill will, and renunciation to those affected by craving."

We have choices, but we have to pay attention. I'm going to close with an excerpt from a poem by Marie Howe^[5] from her book, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time. And it illustrates this looking at the whole thing, at the whole thing. So, this is from the poem called "The Spell."

"Every day when I pick up my four-year-old daughter from preschool, she climbs into her back booster seat and says, 'Mom, tell me your story.' And almost every day I tell her, 'I dropped you off. I taught my class. I ate a tuna fish sandwich, wrote emails, returned phone calls, talked with students, and then I came to pick you up.' And almost every day, I think, 'My god, is that what I did?'"

"Yesterday, she climbed into the back seat and said, 'Mom, tell me your story.' And I did what I always did. I said, 'I dropped you off. I taught my class, had lunch, returned emails, talked with students.' And she said, 'No, Mom. Tell me the whole thing.'"

"And I said, 'Okay, I feel a little sad.' And she said, 'Tell me the whole thing, Mom.' And I said, 'Okay, Elise died.' Elise is dead and the world feels weary and brokenhearted. And she said, 'Tell me the whole thing, Mom.'"

"And I said, 'In the dream last night, I felt my life building up around me. And when I stepped forward and away from it and turned around, I saw a high and frozen crusted wave.' And she said, 'The whole thing, Mom.'"

"Then I thought of the other dream, I said. 'When a goose landed heavily on my head, and when I untangled it from my hair, I saw it wasn't a goose, but a winged serpent writhing up into the sky like a disappearing bee.' And she said, 'Tell me the whole story.'"

"And I said, 'Elise is dead and all the frozen tears are mine, of course. And if that wave broke, it might wash my life clear. And I might begin again from now, from here.' And I looked into the rearview mirror. She was looking sideways out the window to the right where they say the unlived life is. 'Okay,' I said. And she said, 'Okay,' still looking in that direction."

What I love about this is the slow uncurling of the story led the speaker to consider the dream of frozen tears and also finally the realization that she was not moving on because she wasn't allowing that frozen wave to crust and break. "And if that wave broke, it might wash my life clear, and I might begin again from now, and from here."

It's the realization of what we're holding onto that becomes so clear. What I wish for you is a clarity of mind, a clarity of thinking, a clarity of awareness. When you reflect on what's happening, may you find you. Thank you.