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Guided Meditation: Effortless Awareness

Good morning, everyone. I'm here in the fog at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Northern California. I'm teaching a retreat currently, and I'm sitting just outdoors from the little room where I'm living during the retreat. Behind me, it wasn't as foggy when I first set up here. The morning fog is coming in. You can see behind me the rolling foothills of Marin County. Maybe in the course of the 45 minutes, the fog will clear, and you'll get to see the hills. Occasionally, there'll be turkeys walking by.

I'm so happy to be here, happy to be with you. This week, we are getting to the end of the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta^[1], and we're doing what's called the Seven Factors of Awakening^[2]. I'll say more about them later, but you can think of them as the culmination of this long practice of Satipaṭṭhāna. This means practicing for a long time, not just sitting down and being introduced to mindfulness and expecting that the Seven Factors of Awakening will arise. These arise through practicing, developing, and settling in.

For this meditation, imagine that all the best moments of these weeks that we've been doing Satipaṭṭhāna—if you've been following along—are bundled together. You feel a tremendous trust in the practice, in your ability to practice, and that you're settling down here not so much to practice mindfulness as to allow for mindfulness. You are allowing for a kind of natural awareness to appear, to float up, to arise. Your job is mostly to get out of the way. If you let go of thoughts and distractions, it's mostly in order to allow for the form of awareness which is always here. And then, to be aware of, to recognize what the mind is aware of in those circumstances.

Some of this can still be directed towards the breathing, but the breathing now is not something that we're intentionally focusing on. It's more that we're opening to it, to allow the naturalness of the sensations of breathing to enter into awareness. To say it differently, we're noticing what experiences of anything, including breathing, arise effortlessly in the mind. The doors of awareness are open to the experience of breathing. Rather than bearing down, we are noticing what is effortlessly arising in relationship to breathing into awareness.

Take a meditation posture and settle down by first taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. As you breathe in, gather together all the momentum or the best associations of sitting down to meditate. Then, as you exhale, let go into the practice that arises from your body. Let go into the natural capacity we have to be aware that does not require intention. It requires allowing it, noticing that you are aware.

Let your breathing return to normal, and we'll begin with a little exercise. Of all the present moment experiences that are occurring, what arises obviously, easily, effortlessly into awareness for you? What arises—maybe it's not even planned, maybe you can't even expect it—that is an itch, an ache, a pressure, a particular thought or feeling? Before there's any reaction on your part to it, notice the effortless way in which it arises in awareness. It is just there.

If you notice any holding and tension in your body, rather than relaxing, see what happens if you are just effortlessly aware of it. This means you're not trying to do anything or fix anything or make anything happen. Maybe you're not even holding your attention on the tension, but you recognize it's there when it arises effortlessly. Maybe your awareness floats a little bit between different experiences.

Not so much as you're directing your attention to the breathing, as you are opening the door or the window, and then breathing comes into awareness. Become aware of what is obvious about breathing, what comes effortlessly. What parts of the experience of breathing come effortlessly to awareness?

If your mind floats between different things—the sounds of the birds, my voice, anything else that's happening in the present—just allow yourself to know that now the mind is aware of that. You might be confused by these instructions, and if you are, then simply know confusion. Allow that to be there effortlessly in awareness.

When the mind becomes aware of anything, maybe there's a little movement of relaxing you can do. Try relaxing, letting go of the trying or work of mindfulness, in favor of just keeping the doors of awareness open to receiving the experiences that float through.

If you're able to be aware of what arises effortlessly, sometimes it's the more pronounced, strongest experiences of the moment, and sometimes it's the more subtle ones or the quieter ones. Sometimes the louder experiences recede to the background, and the quieter ones are what come. Sometimes it is the other way around. Without choosing what to be aware of, simply notice that quality of the mind, that aspect of attention that seems to operate effortlessly. Notice the quality of awareness that you could not turn off. If you stayed relaxed and present for the present moment, you couldn't not be aware.

If you're trying to do anything effortfully, see what happens if you let go of the trying and just let awareness know what is obvious. Rather than trying to overcome a distracted mind, relax and simply know. Simply let there be in awareness the fact that you know the mind is thinking. Keep returning to being aware of how awareness, how knowing, can operate effortlessly. Notice the new things that come into awareness unplanned. For a moment, they arise. Before you try to do anything with them or try to be mindful, there's a simple knowing, a simple awareness.

As we come to the end of the sitting, is there anything about being aware that you recognize is peaceful? That you recognize is safe, or something you appreciate, maybe even joyful?

Think of the people in your life, or the animals in your life, or the world around you. Perhaps you can wish for them to have some of the same peace, some of the same well-being or appreciation. Perhaps with your simple awareness taking in and being aware of others, you can wish them well. You can wish that your ability to be attentive can be a support for them. May it be through this practice that we do that we're able to bring greater safety, peace, happiness, and freedom to this world. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

I didn't bring a bell with me here outside, so maybe with this saying thank you for being part of this, we end this sitting. Thank you.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (57) Mindfulness as Effortless Awareness

I saw a comment about the volume being low. I just increased the volume output for the mic on this computer; I wonder if that made a difference.

Good morning, everyone. This is the beginning of the week on the second-to-last exercise in the Buddha's discourse on establishing awareness. It is the Seven Factors of Awakening. There's nothing in this exercise that talks about making these factors arise; it's more recognizing they're there, and then maintaining them.

The seven are mindfulness, investigation (which we'll talk about tomorrow), effort, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity. These are considered to be the crown jewel of Buddhist practice because they come when practice begins to mature and develop. There starts to become a kind of inner momentum or naturalness of the qualities of the practice living in us, coming forth, and flowing through us in a certain way. This is not an easy thing to experience for beginners. Sometimes it takes a long time of practice. As these things get awakened and become present, they support us.

Remember, this is the 12th exercise of 13 in this discourse. The others provide the foundation. We are building momentum, developing and learning how to be mindful of the body, feelings, and the mind. As that learning happens and the muscle of being in the present moment becomes stronger, we find that these things begin to arise.

The first one that is talked about is sati^[3], or mindfulness itself. As I said, the text doesn't say, "Now practice mindfulness, apply yourself more to being mindful." It basically says, "Notice that there is mindfulness there." The question is, what is mindfulness here? I prefer to translate the word sati as awareness. What we're doing is establishing awareness. We're abiding in it, dwelling in it. We are not "doing" awareness. Nowhere in the Buddha's teachings does the Buddha say, "Do awareness." Awareness itself is not a verb of something that we actively do, but something that we establish, allow for, or abide in.

At the very beginning of the text, it talks about abiding and observing the four foundations. It is a matter of abiding in something, knowing it's there in this very simple way.

In that meditation, I talked about the effortless quality of attention. There is certainly attention that can take effort, and sometimes that's useful to apply. But sometimes there's an effortless kind of effort. If you are just minding your own business and suddenly a loud bird nearby whistles, the first hearing of that bird just appears without any effort on your part. I'm sitting outside, and just as I was saying this, I felt cold going through my thighs. That cold was effortless. It appeared, it called attention to itself, and my mind knew it. I was pretty equanimous and content to be here, and it was not a problem to just know it.

As practice deepens and matures, there will be times when we can tune into this effortless quality of attention. It might take some gentle effort to let go enough to allow that to be there, but with time it becomes the backdrop. It becomes a foundation or support for how we go through our lives, because there's a constant awareness of present-moment experience as we live it. We don't get lost in our thoughts, in conversations, or in the work we're doing. We can do these things wholeheartedly, but there's a knowing that seems almost effortless. It's like, "Oh, I'm here. This is what I'm present for." It's a feeling of presence. Some people might call it ever-present presence, an ever-present awareness.

Why this is useful as we develop awareness is that it's an awareness that doesn't automatically come with attachment, greed, clinging, ill will, aversion, or pushing things away. Things are just allowed to be there without us being for or against them. We don't have to accept them, we don't have to condone them, and we don't have to criticize them. Awareness in and of itself is not involved in being for or against. It is not involved with needing to accept it or needing to reject it. It's just there with the experience.

To practice acceptance is an extra step. Allowing things to appear in the mind effortlessly might be evaluated as a kind of acceptance practice, but there's no acceptance being done. It's just things arising in awareness.

To do that with the breathing at the same time is part of the art of this. I'd like to try to show you something on the video here. If this finger of mine is my breathing—breathing in and breathing out—and my other hand is my mind, the idea of focusing on the breathing might look like the mind coming down tightly and bearing down on it all together. Now, that's fine; it can be done, and it's possible to get very focused and concentrated this way. Another way is not to make any effort in the mind like that. Keep the mind relaxed, open, soft, and just kind of available.

Because I'm sitting outside, when I do that, I start feeling the wind on the palm of my hand, the back of my hand, the cold in different places. It's kind of nice. Then, gently, I bring these two together. This is the breathing, and this open hand is the awareness. I bring them together so that the breathing and the most sensitive part of the hand are in touch with each other. Now I'm intimately feeling the breathing, and the world around me begins to fall away, disappear, recede, because the breathing becomes the only thing I'm aware of. But the breathing is known effortlessly. The coming and going, the rhythm, the different sensations are known effortlessly.

There might be a tendency to want to do something to stay there, to not lose it, and the mind begins to tighten up again and hold on. But the idea here, when you come to this part of the Seven Factors of Awakening, is for sati to be less and less work, and more and more resting and abiding in awareness. And then, in that abiding, letting things be known effortlessly.

If there is any work at this stage of practice, it is to remember to do this. Remember to do this because it's not easy to be this way; there has to be some momentum in the mind. Don't try to do it if it's not easy. Rather, be very content to go back to the very beginning of Satipaṭṭhāna. Go back to the simplicity of practicing breath meditation. The first four steps of this whole enterprise of Satipaṭṭhāna are to really know and recognize the experiences of your breathing, which takes a little bit more effort. Then, know and recognize your whole body, and then relax your body. That's how it begins, so you always go back to do that. That's a fantastic practice in its own right, and it leads to where we're going here with the Seven Factors of Awakening. If you're not there yet in the seven factors, don't worry about it. It's not important for you then.

But as the momentum builds, you'll see that there will be a kind of effortless awareness that arises that can hold things peacefully, openly, and clearly. This is a gift. This is one of the great gifts of practice, and it sets the stage for the other Seven Factors of Awakening. Tomorrow I'll talk about investigation, which sounds like a lot of work but is also meant to have an effortless quality to it. How does that work? That is what I'll talk about.

Thank you. I delight in being here outdoors at Spirit Rock doing this with all of you. I see a chat message about having an interactive session at the end of this week. Yes, it's possible we can do that. I'll look at my calendar and see. I'm here at Spirit Rock through Wednesday, so tomorrow and the next day we'll do it this way in these rolling hills of Marin County. Then Thursday and Friday, I'll be back at IMC.

Thank you all very, very much. I look forward to being here with you tomorrow.