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Guided Meditation: Inspired

Hello everyone, and welcome. Happy to be here with you, and happy to read these chats. Those of you who can read them, there are lots of good mornings and lots of warmth in those chat comments.

And this is the theme of today: to be happy, or maybe a slightly different word, to be inspired. Inspired as a form of happiness, of delight, of joy, of gladness. And it's inspiring to sit here with you, and to have the opportunity to appreciate meditation, the teachings, the community that's so, so widespread. So thank you.

And maybe to be a little provocative for this meditation, and I hope you allow yourself to be—I don't know if provoked is the right word, or evoked. And that is to allow yourself to be inspired. And maybe the provocative question is: why not be inspired? Why hold back?

Why not recognize, in spite of the challenges and in spite of the difficulties and the sufferings of yourself, your circumstance, and your world—of our world—why not be inspired? There is a tremendous amount of good in this world. There's a tremendous amount of people, in spite of also being the other, who live lives of generosity, who support and help and do so much for others. Many of them are unrecognized and unthanked. Even all the parents do so much for their children.

To be inspired by the people who are ethical, who are honest, who avoid, sometimes at almost all costs, causing harm to others and to themselves. To be inspired that this is possible. Even if only a very few people in the world do it, wow, it's possible. The possibility is inspiring. But there's a lot of people who do it. To be inspired by your ability.

To be inspired by the almost divine circumstance of being able to sit and meditate. Regardless of how difficult, again, so much of your life is, to have the circumstances to sit quietly, to sit still in a place that has a modicum of safety, a modicum of comfort, and a modicum of demands perhaps on you. Isn't there something about this that's divine? That's heavenly. Just so different from ordinary life.

And to be inspired to not be chasing after desires of all kinds. Some people get up in the morning, and just kind of... one way of analyzing a life is going after one desire after another incessantly. So much of human pursuit is the pursuit of comfort and pleasure, much more than people realize. So here, to be inspired for these few minutes.

Here, and inspired, glad, happy, why not? Why not be inspired in such a way that you want to partake of this potential, this heavenly capacity, heaven-like? To really appreciate it, to really take it in, to be nourished, supported, in such a way that the heart can feel safe and contented and happy. Your mind, the thinking mind, is happy to be turned inward on this experience here, to become quiet and still, so that whatever the thinking mind is, it can become quiet enough that it really partakes of the goodness that's here in you, with you here.

Why not be inspired? Why not be glad for what is possible right now? To be glad for, to be happy for, to be happy with. So, gently close the eyes.

And to feel here in your body, what is happening for you now after hearing these words? Was anything touched? Was anything repelled? Is there anything within that now you can take some time to be glad about, to be inspired?

I like to think that the word inspired is related to the Latin word for breathing. What is it that you can be filled with gladness, filled with delight, happiness, in being filled with your breathing?

And this idea of filling ourselves with every breath with presence, with embodied awareness, and a gentle quieting inspiration to do so. Where the path of practice is not linear, going down the path in a linear way to better and better. But the path is more like filling out, filling ourselves more and more with every breath. Feeling out with awareness, embodied attention, here now. With happiness riding along. Inspiration riding along every breath. Every movement of awareness, of attention here and now, filling with peaceful inspiration.

Why not be happy, inspired? Why prioritize thoughts that are unhappy, that have nothing to do with here and now? Why prioritize feelings that might be about other things? Why not be happy with what is good right now? Inspired by the simplicity of being here breathing.

And as we come to the end of the sitting, why not be happy? Even if the happiness is modest, why not be available to that modest inspiration or happiness, gladness here and now? And is there a kind of happiness, inspiration that supports you in being more receptive, available now, here? So you're not asserting yourself on the world, or closed down to the world. But in that happiness, as modest as it is, more available to be present, to be receptive. To discover how others are, by stopping and being available.

Maybe an embodied pause to receive, register, be available to others. Where the experience of others is received in your happiness. And maybe from some even modest happiness within, after having taken the time to know others, to feel others, experience others, to wish them well.

May those who I am aware of this day, may they be happy.

May those who I take the time to know, may they be happy and safe.

May those who I take time to have empathy for, may they be peaceful.

May those who I take time to really register, make room for, allow them to be here in the fullness of my awareness. May they be free as they are free in my attention, without the hindrances, without desires and resistance. Being freely in my awareness, may they be free too.

May all beings be happy, and may we contribute to the benefit and welfare of the whole world.

Dharmette: Ready to Change (4 of 5) Inspired and Elated

Thank you. So, hello everyone. Continuing on the theme—and I was just thinking this morning that this theme of, I call it "ready for change," seemed perfect for the end of the year, or getting ready for the new year. To look forward a little bit to the new year, that we are preparing ourselves so that we can be changed in a good, beneficial way with what comes in this new time.

So how do we prepare ourselves? For the Buddha, he prepared people for his liberating insights. He would give Dharma^[1] talks that created certain mind states in people—or if created isn't the right word, inspired it in people.

And when he saw five things^[2] were present in people, he would give them his deepest teachings. Those five things that he recognized in people's minds were: there was a readiness, a receptivity; there was a malleability, a workability of the mind—the mind is soft enough to really take something in and be changed by it; they are free of the hindrances^[3]; and the usual translation for the fourth one, which is our topic for today, is elated. I think inspired is a good way of talking about it. And then tomorrow's topic—the usual translation is confidence; I like the word trust there, and we'll talk more about it tomorrow—also means kind of voluminously bright.

But today is elated. So there's a way of being inspired that certainly can be so preoccupying, we can lose ourselves in it, that we're not available to the world and to experience the teachings, to be changed by it. But it's also possible to be inspired, or gladdened, or elated, in such a way that the mind gets quieter, still, to really listen well, to really take in, to really allow the experience of the moment to penetrate deeply. And so that's the second type of inspiration that I think the Buddha was pointing towards.

And so this word to be inspired, or to be elated, or to be happy in a way. The Buddha would inspire that in people. The classic texts say that he would give Dharma talks that covered a range of themes that were inspiring, that really got people's attention. They became kind of absorbed, in a sense, concentrated in the talk. And these five qualities are all the qualities of a kind of absorbed, concentrated mind, really present.

So he'd give talks about generosity. We don't know exactly what he said—they don't specify in the text what exactly he said. But what that means to me is that when it's unspecified, then it's up to us, for ourselves, to understand, to figure out how do we get really inspired, how do we become a better person by reflecting on, considering the topic of generosity.

For me, I lived for years secluded from the world, living in deep mountainous monasteries here in this country and in Asia, and it was lovely. It was fantastic for me, and I have no regrets having done that. And it's quite wondrous to be in society. Here I am in Redwood City, in the middle of a city, and living the full life of a householder here. And to see how much generosity there is that I never knew about when I was younger. For example, raising children here, and seeing all the adults—so many who were putting on sports events and coaches and all kinds of things—volunteering their time, their generosity, to make a rich life for the children growing up here. I think it's really something to experience so much generosity for children. There could have been more, certainly, but what I saw was inspiring.

And then caring for my mother as she aged and went through her dementia and died, again, I saw so much generosity. The particular care place where she was, it was phenomenal to me: the generosity, the care, the kindness, the love that she received. And there were so many volunteers who came to offer extra things for the people there at the care home: musicians who came and played, and artists and all kinds of things that came and did things with people there.

And then I live here, I came here to this place in Redwood City. IMC^[4] is, I think of it as kind of in the middle of the city. And it's become a wonderful collection here of so many generous people. I mean, IMC is completely run by volunteers, and volunteers volunteer out of their generosity, out of their care or their love, their happiness. And to be experiencing this phenomenal kind of outpouring of generosity that's allowed this community to grow and develop. And we do so much here, and at our retreat center. So inspired. There's a lot of generosity that's inspiring. It brings out the best in people and does something to my heart that just makes it kind of open and soften.

And then there's ethics. To be inspired by people's ethics. There's plenty of—if you read the news, of course, there's the opposite of being ethical. Virtue doesn't stand high in front page news. But for every horrible story in the news, there are lots and lots and lots of unsung heroes of ethics, people who have committed to being honest, to not steal, not kill, not lie. And a lot of what they don't do is never seen because there's nothing to see, and so it's not celebrated, it's not appreciated. But there's a phenomenal amount of ethical people in the world, and I see lots of little examples as I go through my day. There's plenty of examples of the opposite, of course, but where does our mind settle on? What does it focus on? What is the world we want to live in? Do we want to live in an unethical world? Do we want to live in an ethical world? If we want an ethical world, be ethical, love ethics, love virtue, love this kind of thing. And recognize it, see it, appreciate how much it's here, to be inspired by it.

And then the absence of the hindrances in the Buddhist teachings is meant to be a source of gladness, a source of contentment, of happiness. Wow, finally I'm not in debt, not in prison, not a slave to the hindrances. Something else I'm not. Now I'm here and, in a certain kind of way, more in charge, rather than hindrances and desires taking charge.

And then the Buddha gave—a part of this series of talks was he gave a talk on the first hindrance^[5] of sensual desire. So as a hindrance, it's clear it's a problem. But I think he highlighted it as being a particular characteristic of the human realm: that people are very driven by sensual desire and sensual comfort. And there's a way in which there are dangers in pursuing sensual desires. Lots of people make all kinds of horrible mistakes and cause suffering in the world and harm others through the pursuit of sensual desires of different types. He talked about the dangers of it. He talked about the vanity of sensual desires. It's interesting to kind of think how vanity or conceit is part of it, especially when it hurts other people.

And he talked about the stain of sensual desire. In the modern English-speaking world, I don't think we like so much to think about there being stains. But there's a way in which we feel—if we really feel some of the ways that people act around sensual desire, where they objectify other people, for example, and it's all about their own pleasure and not about a human connection—there's a stain, there's a diminishment, there's a contraction within. And to feel the benefit of the ethical dimension of how to live with our sensuality ethically, that can be inspiring to feel.

So to be inspired by this, to feel the goodness of it. To feel what's going right in our life, so that we have the right balance of input into our hearts, so that our heart is not weighed down or struggling. And how do we get the right input? How do we get inspired enough? Not the inspiration where we lose ourselves, but rather the inspiration that allows for a deep kind of availability, full presence for this world and for experience and for here. So that we're ready to be changed. We're happy.

The opposite of being ready for change is to be caught and tight and limited and deflated. But to be happy in a way: "Yes, I have the courage, I have the willingness, I have the availability of trying something new, of trying a new way and being a new way, of letting go of some places where I'm stuck, letting go of some things I'm holding on to. Yes, I'm available."

So these are all wholesome qualities, and the Buddha said it's possible to cultivate the wholesome. If it's not possible to cultivate the wholesome, I would not tell you to do so, but it is possible to cultivate the wholesome, and so that's my instruction. And so here, these are some of the wholesome qualities that the Buddha held up as being valuable in preparing to be changed, to be open, to really let the full impact of this Dharma practice work.

And so to be ready. A malleable mind, to be ever ready. It's all about the mind. It says a ready mind, a malleable mind, a mind free of the hindrances, an inspired mind. And then tomorrow it's the trusting mind, luminous mind.

So for today, if you'd like, your homework, your life work, is to see if you can be not exactly happier, but see if you can tune in to the parts of what's happening here in this life of yours that does make you happy, glad, inspired. Notice how much priority statistically, in terms of time, you give to things which are the opposite of inspiring, the opposite of making you happy. Because whatever your mind is involved in does have an impact on our mood, our emotions, our hearts. And is your mind spending a lot of time with things which are not inspiring and not happy-producing? And can you switch the percentage to have more percentage of the time—not all the time, but maybe just ten percent more—focused on what's inspiring, what's happy and good? I love the word good these days. And what is really good? What's the goodness of the moment here?

So thank you. I hope that this homework, life work of inspiration is good for you and good for the people around you today. Thank you.