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Guided Meditation: Meditating within Peace

Greetings everyone. Welcome to our morning meditation. As a kind of preparation for this meditation, I'd like to tell a short story.

It seems that there was a great monarch once upon a time who was troubled and wanted to have a painting made that would express both wisdom and peace. An invitation was sent out to artists across the land. Many paintings came back, and none of them satisfied the monarch. So, the monarch sent out ministers and messengers all over the land. More and more paintings came in from professionals and amateur painters, and none of them satisfied the king that they expressed both peace and wisdom.

At some point, someone in the court said to the monarch, "Well, actually there is one more person I know. I've heard stories about a good painter, a very poor farmer who lives deep in the woods in the mountains. Maybe, since we've tried everyone else, we should ask them."

So the monarch said, "Bring that person to the court."

After many weeks of journeying, this poor farmer came, and the monarch asked, "Could you please do me a painting that expresses both wisdom and peace?"

This poor farmer thought about it for many weeks, wondering what to do, and finally produced a large painting. When the unveiling was going to happen, the monarch was there, the ministers were there, and many people were there. The curtain came off, and everyone gasped. Everyone was surprised and said, "Well, that's not peaceful." Even the monarch kind of wondered, "What is this?"

What it was, was a painting of a torrential waterfall with water cascading down and steaming up from the bottom. Great founts of water—a painting of a certain kind of agitation, violence even, and just lots of energy. Nothing really peaceful.

The monarch looked to the farmer and said, "How is this peaceful and wise?"

The farmer said, "Well, you have to go close into the painting."

So they walked up to the painting really close. And there, in a little opening in the flow of water down the cliffside, was a parting of the water. There was a little ledge, and on that ledge was a nest, and in that nest was a bird. And that bird was sitting there safe and peaceful.

The monarch said, "This is peaceful. This is wise. This is how it is in this world we live in. We live in a tumultuous world, a world full of change and challenges. But to find the ledge, to sit on the ledge that looks over everything, the ledge where we can be peaceful—we can be sitting in our own nest. This is wise."

Rather than all the beautiful pastoral scenes of peace the monarch saw, this seemed realistic. This seemed wise: to sit in the middle of this difficult world and find a place of peace.

So, take a place. Take your ledge, and take your seat here and now. The place you're at can be your ledge. The wider world is in turmoil in many ways. Maybe your household is in turmoil. Maybe even you are in turmoil, tumultuous. But there is a ledge.

Maybe in the room you're sitting in, it's peaceful. Maybe at this moment, on the cushion or chair you're sitting on, this is actually peaceful in this particular location. Or perhaps, if you take a few deep breaths and relax into your body, you can find your ledge within your personal turmoil. Maybe you can find somewhere within the nest where you can rest for these minutes that we meditate.

Taking a deep breath again. A long one. A long, slow, gentle exhale. Settling into your seat, to your body. And relaxing. Softening, relaxing your belly.

Perhaps the sense of the pelvic cavity is also a nest that holds the rest of you. It receives, if you're sitting upright, the weight of your body. Perhaps if you settle and relax your chest a bit—perhaps within the area of the chest, maybe in your heart, diaphragm, or solar plexus, is a nest where you can sit. A place of some subtleness, some peace.

And perhaps also in your mind. If you look between your thoughts, underneath your thoughts, on the other side of them—that the mind too does have some place where things are quiet, peaceful. Something you may be opening into^[1] right now.

Wherever you find the ledge, the nest of peace within your body, your heart, your mind—a place where you can allow whatever agitation, turmoil, and difficulties there might be to recede to the periphery. Not to deny them, but to use this time now to be at ease, to rest. To settle into a place inside that's quiet, that has a certain quality of stillness, of ease.

And if it's possible, if it's available to you, allow your breathing to arise and pass. Rise and return, come and go, in this place of quiet and peace.

Whenever you get caught up in your thoughts, look through the crack in your thoughts, the space between them, or the space around them, for the place of quiet and stillness. It allows you to rest or settle into a place of peace, where knowing itself, awareness itself, has a chance to be a place of peace and quiet.

Quietly, peacefully aware of breathing. Breathing in and breathing out. At home in your nest for now. Safe from whatever turmoil exists in the periphery around you. Just here, just now.

Reflections

As we come to the end of this sitting, sometimes one of the benefits of meditating is that in becoming a little calmer, more peaceful, more settled, there's less static in the mind and the heart. So that our care, our love, our compassion, and our warmth for others and for the world can flow from us, radiate from us, with less static.

Use this opportunity to bring forth your best wishes, your goodwill^[2], for the people that you might encounter today, or the people who you might be in communication with, the people who you'll be thinking about today. And for all the people that you will not meet, will not be in communication with, and maybe you won't think about. To open your heart, static-free. Goodwill that becomes a conduit not just for your good wishes, but also for your good actions—the things that you do that make this life a little bit better for someone else.

May it be on this day that the fruit of our meditation practice is to promote welfare and happiness in practical ways, in real ways, for the world around us. May this practice be directly connected to the welfare and happiness of all beings.

May all beings be at peace. May all beings be wisely at peace.