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Guided Meditation: Investigation of Wandering Talk

Hello. It's nice to see all of you coming on, joining from so many places in the world. We'll be continuing with this theme of mindfulness as protection, looking at different aspects of that every day. So, why don't we go ahead and get right into the meditation today? Find a posture where you'll be able to sit for a little while, just tuning in to the sensations of the body sitting. You can close your eyes if that's comfortable for you.

It's often helpful at the beginning of the sit to just check in with the posture. Feel that the body is upright and balanced where it's sitting. Or, even if you're lying down, there can still be a sense of straightness in the spine. Often we can feel the energy associated with the straightness or uprightness of the body and balance that against relaxation. It's not a tense or bolt-upright straightness, but a relaxed, almost raising up of the body, as if it were being pulled from above. And then we just settle into that.

We can take a longer, deeper breath than usual, and on the out-breath, just soften around that straight, central part of the body. Softening the face, the jaw, the shoulders, the arms, the legs, and then inside the body. Softening the heart area, and the belly.

And then tuning in to the sensations of the breathing. When the body is at least somewhat relaxed, there can be a sense of the breath washing through the tissues of the body. It's a bit of an imagination, but we don't have to think of the breath as just being in the lungs; it can be helpful to feel it throughout the body.

Just as we had a sense of alertness and also ease or relaxation in the body, in the mind we can also sense the alertness, but it's a relaxed alertness, perhaps fueled by an interest in our experience. So often we don't take the time, or sometimes even have the time, to tune in deeply to our experience. We're busy with something in the outer world, and now is a chance to really listen. Really tune in.

We can consider the sensations of the breath to be like a home base to which the mind can return or wake up to at any time. But the sensations of the breath are not the only thing happening, of course. There may be other body sensations, and there's sound. There may be a dominant emotion or mood, and there may be various thoughts. It's okay that these other things are happening. We could just think of them as being on the back burner, while the breath is more on the front burner. Or that these other things happen and we breathe through them, kind of favoring the feeling of the breath, but these other things are there more softly.

This kind of meditation allows there to be multiple experiences, and it can be that the mind will switch the positions of the breath and something else, and go off into thinking or listening. If that's the case, when we notice, we can just bring the breath back into the foreground. And if you'd like for this meditation, you could also just note what it was that the mind was doing when it was caught up in something, like hearing or thinking, or a body sensation. We just note that, so that we know, and then continue on in a simple way with the meditation. It's kind of an easy investigation.

One of the most common things that the mind will get caught up in is a thought trail. Very normal, because the mind thinks—that's what it does. There's certainly nothing to criticize in that, but it can be interesting, if you'd like, if this doesn't feel too busy, to make a little bit further investigation of thought in particular.

When the mind is on a long thought trail, it's called papañca^[1], which means proliferation. The main three things going on during proliferation of thought are either craving, conceit, or views. There's no judgment of these things, but it's often that we're wanting something (or that would include not wanting something). Or we're explaining something about ourselves—how we are, how we compare to someone else. Or we're stating our position on something, explaining it, figuring it out. So: craving, conceit, and views.

On the noting of the thought, we could also, if it's simple enough, just note which of these three seems prominent. If it's not obvious, then it's just thinking, it doesn't matter so much. Sometimes it's interesting to know what we're trading our peace for.

When we investigate in this way, we may come to realize that there's a certain grace to the return of mindfulness. Since we weren't present, we didn't do that. So it's something of a gift that mindfulness reappears when the mind has been wandering. We can be happy for that. Although we didn't do it in that moment, there is some momentum generated from earlier practice. So we can enjoy that return of mindfulness, that sense of brightness and presence returning. I appreciate the gift.

So, in the last few minutes of this sitting, we might bring to mind just how much of the suffering in the world comes from these three things: craving, conceit, and views. First of all, internally for the person who is wrapped up in that, because we can see that in ourselves. And then also actions that are taken based on these things. It's just part of how it is to be human that we have these streams in our mind. It's mindfulness that helps us see that and be disentangled from it.

So mindfulness is our natural protection from falling into these streams or domains of unwholesome tendencies in the mind. For today, we could be happy for the moments of mindfulness, the stretches of mindfulness, during which we know we won't be acting on these forces that aren't so helpful. And it may even be that our mindfulness or our presence could help someone else not to act on such things. We can't assume that or try to make it that way, but it may be that way. So this wonderful gift of presence that arrives on its own, in a sense, is a great protection for ourselves and others.

Mindfulness As Protection (2 of 5): The Danger of Not Being Mindful

We'll be continuing with this theme of mindfulness as a protection. We'll be using various different images to build up maybe a bigger picture of the multifaceted way that mindfulness operates, and a lot of that has to do with protection in various forms. We started out with the fundamental idea that mindfulness is a good protection for us, and today we're actually going to talk about the flip side of that, which is the danger of not being mindful.

The Buddha gave a number of images that are about this. It seems that he was quite willing to approach from the side of danger; maybe for some minds that works well. Then we'll talk about ways to address that danger, including something that the Buddha himself did in his practice. The reason that we would need protection, such as through mindfulness, is because there is genuine danger in our situation as humans. I don't want to over-dramatize that, but we can certainly see in our own mind that there are a lot of long-standing habits, not all of which are beneficial. We may not be acting on these various things going on in our mind, but we can't deny that they're there when we have mindfulness. Again, not to worry, that's normal for humans. Everyone who's born as human has various kinds of greed, hatred, and delusion that comes with the territory. They're actually not very personal, even though they have their specific manifestations for us.

As I was reviewing various images about mindfulness, I couldn't help but notice that there really are quite a few that relate to the danger of non-mindfulness. So I thought we'd look at just a few of them today. One of them is about a beauty queen—and I'm sorry for the gendered imagery in this sutta^[2]; you're very welcome to alter it in your mind however it's appropriate. The Buddha is telling the monks a story about a beauty queen who is walking through a city, singing and dancing, as a large crowd of people gathers around. And then he goes on to say:

Then a person would come along wishing to live, not wishing to die, wishing for happiness, averse to suffering. And someone would say, 'You must carry around this bowl of oil filled to the brim between the crowd and the beauty queen, and a man with a drawn sword will be following right behind you. Wherever you spill even a little bit of it, right there he will fell your head.' So, what do you think? Would that person stop attending to that bowl of oil and, out of negligence, turn their attention outwards? And the monks say no.

So the Buddha goes on to say, 'I have made up this simile in order to convey a meaning, and here is the meaning: The bowl of oil filled to the brim is a designation for mindfulness directed to the body.' So there you have it, the sense that we could walk with a bowl of oil filled to the brim in the midst of a jostling, excited crowd and not spill any of it. It's pointing toward the importance of precision. I don't know that we need the anxiety that might go along with an image like that, but it does convey the importance I think the Buddha was trying to relate in that case.

Then there are also two images given that relate to an idea of a homeland or a domain where it is safe for us to dwell, and then outside of that, it's dangerous. We'll take a look at those. There's another sutta where the Buddha is talking about places where hunters set up traps of pitch in order to catch monkeys. It says those monkeys who are not foolish and frivolous, when they see the pitch, avoid it from afar. But a monkey who is foolish approaches the pitch and seizes it with his hand, and he gets caught. And then, thinking, 'I will free my hand,' he seizes it with the other hand and gets caught. And then thinking, 'I will free both hands,' he seizes it with a foot, and then the other foot, and then the muzzle. And so he gets caught in five different places.

The Buddha goes on to say, 'Please do not stray outside your own resort into the domain of others. Māra^[3] will gain access to those who stray outside'—Māra being, in this case, the forces of distraction in the mind. And what is the resort? What is the place where we should remain safe? It is the four establishments of mindfulness^[4].

I can relate to this monkey image in that there can be times where I know the mind is caught up, and in my attempts to free it I say, 'Oh, I shouldn't think about that, I'm going to try to think about something else.' Then the mind is actually just continuing to think in some way. And so there's this ongoing... finally there's a realization, 'Oh, I just need to drop this effort. It's not going in the right direction.'

I said there were two of these images about the homeland or the safety. The second one is about a quail that is living in a field, and it's being attacked by a hawk when it leaves the field. It's a similar kind of image as the monkey. In both of these suttas, the dangerous place is specifically said to be the five cords of sensual pleasure—meaning eye, ear, tongue, nose, body—so the usual ways where we would want to seek comfort or pleasure, the things that occupy the mind. And then the safe place is the four establishments of mindfulness.

It's important to note that although the similes are about physical places, because that's easy to imagine, what the Buddha names as safety is not actually a physical place, but a stance of our mind. We're safe when the mind is mindful. So he's not saying that we need to be locked up in our house with the door bolted in order to be safe. He's saying instead that there's something to do with how our mind is.

We begin with this practice of guarding the sense doors, that's what we talked about yesterday. Usually when people start, they find it useful to actually avoid situations that are particularly triggering, and that is totally fine. When we actually have that choice, it can be skillful to do that. For instance, people who are in recovery should definitely choose not to go to bars. Or we may choose not to go to a big noisy party if we don't have to go. Or maybe we would simply be more subtle and just choose to have fewer conversations with our neighbor whose political views are very different from ours. That's fine to do.

But in the end, the Buddha is pointing toward the real danger being from within. It's our own lack of mindfulness, or our own lack of capacity with mindfulness. Like strengthening muscles, we have to exercise mindfulness in order to grow our capacity. You may have already seen in your practice that once you started cultivating mindfulness, there came to be situations where, in the past, it would have been very difficult to stay mindful or to be skillful. And then one day you're present for it, and you realize, 'Oh, I didn't automatically lash out when I think I would have a couple of months ago.' And so we realize, 'Oh, my capacity has grown a little bit.' It's nice when we notice it spontaneously, but I want to talk a little bit about deliberately cultivating our capacity. At some point, just like we would have to increase the weight stack at the gym, we'll probably have to venture into more challenging situations and try to remain mindful in them. Kind of move into new domains, expand the domain of safety for our mind.

We're not seeking out difficulty willy-nilly, but it is really a kind of a fun point in practice when we start doing little experiments to see if we can be mindful in more challenging situations. We're trying to stay in the safe domain of mindfulness but gradually develop what is needed so that that domain gets larger. The Buddha talks about doing this in his own practice at one point. This is before he was awakened. There is a sutta entitled 'Fear and Dread'^[5] where the Buddha deliberately went to scary forest places to practice in order to remain mindful during the experience of fear and dread. There's a lot in the sutta, and I'm just singling out one point for today, but one of the key points is that he consciously considered ahead of time, before he went into the situation, that he possesses certain good qualities, including mindfulness. He actively reminded himself before going into the woods that he is ethical, he's mindful, he's caring, and even has some degree of wisdom. This sort of buoyed up his mind and heart so that he could stay aware even during experiences that were bringing up fear.

We can do this also in our own lives. There was a time when I did a program in chaplaincy training. This is a while ago, and when I started the program I didn't really have any experience with going into hospitals and meeting people there and talking with them. Part of the training in this program is that we needed to do volunteer work, and I chose to go into a hospital. I joined the spiritual care volunteer team, and I would have to go into rooms with very little information. I didn't know anything about what was wrong with the person or anything about their background, or very much at all. I think you get their name and their religion listed on the sheet. I would go in and I would offer myself: 'How can I be helpful here? Would you like to talk?' At the beginning, I didn't know how to do that, and I felt quite nervous, of course. I was going to the training program so I had some ideas of where to start, but it took the practice of doing it to be able to be present and mindful in situations like that that were very unclear or uncertain, and just lead from the heart and see what I could do. So that was very good training, and it did expand the domain in which I was more comfortable being with challenging situations.

You can try this as you approach a challenging situation: bolster the confidence ahead of time by bringing to mind some kind of inspiration from our practice. We could recollect our own good qualities as the Buddha did, and it's also recommended that we can recollect the Buddha, the Dharma, the Sangha^[6], and other inspiring themes for us. And then you can let those go and just go into the situation intending to be mindful and see what comes up.

We're working with this idea of danger and protection. With the protection of mindfulness, more and more of the world looks safe to us. We're safe from things that are essentially alluring, or things that bring up aversion or cause agitation in some way. When we have that, through the establishments of mindfulness, it's a kind of safety that we can carry around with us. We become free in our own awareness, no matter what the situation. Of course, it takes a while, it's a long process to expand that, so I want to respect that process very much. But we can maybe be inspired that awakened people can go anywhere in peace and safety; everywhere is safe for them.

May your range of mindfulness and safety keep expanding as you continue to practice. You might consider if there are conscious ways that you could do that. Thank you, we'll continue tomorrow.