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Guided Meditation: Open Awareness and Letting Go

Good to see everyone. Why don't we go ahead and get started together on the meditation? Welcome if you're just joining, and welcome also if you've been here for a few minutes. It's nice to see you in the chat. But now settling in, and if you're comfortable doing so, you can close your eyes. Just allow the body and the mind to settle into each other, bringing the mind into the present moment, this location, this time.

Softening the eyes and the eye sockets, maybe even feeling the body settle back slightly. I know I have a way of leaning forward a little bit when I'm on the computer sometimes, so just settling back, letting the body be upright and stable, and softening the muscles of the face, the eyes, the jaw. Inviting some ease through the neck, the shoulders, arms, and hands.

Down into the torso, the chest area, heart area, releasing the diaphragm, and letting the belly area be softer. Often a fair amount of habitual holding throughout the torso, and just inviting some ease.

Down through the hip joints, feeling the contact with whatever we're sitting on. Letting the body release into that and be supportive. And softening the legs and the feet.

And then again, broadening the attention to be aware of the whole body in the sitting posture or whatever posture you're in. You could be lying down or even standing. Feeling the body as it is, and being at ease with how the body is. Maybe it's tired or has some pain; that's okay, just invite ease in the mind about how the body is.

And then also sensing how the mind is. Is there a dominant emotion right now, or mood? How's the energy level? Is the mind a little dull or tired, or is it a little agitated from a lot of thinking?

Noticing that, as we do in this practice, we are aware of what's happening in body and mind. So there's mindfulness, a simple knowing of what's happening as it's happening, and sensing in the mind what mindfulness feels like right now.

And in this meditation, we will gradually bring more and more into our awareness. There's always a lot happening at the sense doors, but we only pay attention to part of it. So it will be exploring the whole range of what we can know.

So beginning simply with sound. You can hear the sound of my voice. Maybe there's birds or the sound of other people in the house. Sound of cars. Just opening to the field of sound. Sound without needing to have opinions about each sound that we hear.

One quality of sound is that we don't know what sound is going to come next. We don't have much control. That can be useful, to just sit and be receptive.

Now also opening attention to the sensations of the breath, breathing in and out. As the body becomes more still, even a little bit, often the breath is the largest movement that we feel. And just tuning into the simple sensations of in and out breathing. And if you also hear sounds, that's fine, but it's also fine just to turn the attention to the breath.

We can notice how the breath is a whole series of sensations, almost like a kaleidoscope cascading through the body. Slightly different each time, the way snowflakes are different. So like sound, there's kind of a varied landscape of the sensations of breathing.

And opening the awareness further to include all the little sensations throughout the body. We might first notice that the breath isn't just in the physical lungs. That may feel like the breath energy spreads throughout the body, all through the torso and even into the arms and legs and head. Or if that isn't quite evident, we also have the touch sensations of the contact points: the seat against the cushion, the legs or feet on the floor, perhaps the hands are touching each other or the legs. There are a number of other physical body sensations that we can include in our growing range of awareness.

And as we tune in with a generally receptive, even curious awareness, there can be a sense of ease for just exploring the territory of sensations. Nothing needs to be changed.

Now, as we continue to open the awareness, we can bring in the field of emotions. We're now moving into the mind. You can sense if there's a mood overall—sadness or appreciation or interest—or there may not be a dominant mood, it may just be kind of neutral. We can also have short-term emotions passing through. A tickle of amusement at hearing something, or a little bit of annoyance at persistent pain.

The emotions too are like a landscape, varied, changing. They're actually likened in the teachings to winds flowing through. And as with the other experiences, we just include them as something else to be noticed in mindfulness.

And further opening our awareness, we can include the whole field of thoughts and volitions, very related to emotions, but still a broadening. So we're allowing even thought to arise and pass if it's there, and just be noticed as thought. Not so much the content of the thoughts, but the process of thinking. If it's there, maybe it isn't. One more thing to notice in the field of experience; it's part of being human.

It can help to imagine the mind as a big broad space or sky in which all these different experiences can be seen. The sounds coming and going, various body sensations, emotions, thoughts. All of them can arise, shift, and change, and pass away in this broad space of the mind. And we don't have any preference for one thing over another, whatever wants to come and whatever wants to go.

If we find ourselves wishing for something to come or wishing for something to go, then the wish is what we notice. Oh, there's a volition or a wishing in the mind. One more thing to notice.

And then one more thing that we can notice is the quality of knowing in the mind. There are all these things that we know, experiences, and there is also the knowing. Can we notice even the knowing part of the mind? So there's all the things that come and go in the sky, and there's the sky also, the sky itself. That is the whole space of human experience.

If it's not so easy to see the knowing, it's possible to ask the question: what knows this? We don't exactly get an answer, but there may be kind of a shift in experience. How is this? And then we can rest with that shift.

So let go of directing your practice. It's all just happening. There's a saying in Zen, "The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences."

Thank you.

In a few minutes the meditation will be over, and the conditions will shift, and yet it will be the same set of experiences. Sounds, various other sensations of the body, including seeing, various movements in the mind: emotions, thoughts, volitions to do things, and the knowing of those things. Because the mind has awareness, just the proportion is going to change. And it's interesting to consider: could we carry this sense of inclusiveness, of wholeness, into the changed conditions of being more in the world? And what benefit might that offer if we came with a sense of open receptiveness? We'll still take actions, volitions will happen, things may come about, but somehow that's determined by the needs of the moment.

Sometimes it's said that it's not that we're going to become free, it's that the world is going to become free of us. And so our experience goes on, but there's not so much interference or obstruction from me needing for things to happen a certain way, me needing my preferences to be taken care of. It's a whole different way of being. One that serves everyone, ourself included, but the whole situation that we're in becomes what we serve.

Dharmette: Desire and Letting Go (5 of 5): The Movement Toward Freedom

Desire and letting go. And I've been asked to spell the Pali words, so here they are. The one that I used for sense desire, kāma^[1], is 'k', long 'a'—so that's an 'a' with a bar over it—'m', 'a'. Kāma. Different from the Pali word for the Sanskrit karma, which is kamma^[2], with two 'm's and no long 'a'. So 'k', long 'a', 'm', 'a'. And then the word for renunciation is nekkhamma^[3], 'n-e-k-k-h-a-m-m-a'. So there you go. You can see they look slightly different, but they are somewhat related.

Okay, so we've seen that there are different kinds of desire. Some rather coarse and generally unwholesome, and some that are more refined. And that the associated happiness with getting various things is also coarser or more refined. So we know that material pleasures are not as deep or as elevated—anyhow you orient the scale—as the well-being that comes from ethics, goodwill, and states of meditative calm. But most importantly, wholesome desires are onward leading; they help develop the path. And so the Buddha encouraged us to move along the path by asking us to notice how the mind can become more refined through letting go of the coarser.

However, we have to be careful not to get the idea that this is a linear progression, and liberation is simply the upper limit of loftiness, or maybe even some transcendent realm that's far loftier than what we can imagine here on Earth. This kind of view is easy to develop, actually, but it isn't helpful in the end. It tends to allow ideas of superior and inferior, and it allows there to be a certain ego identification with refinement.

So today we're going to talk about what is the movement toward freedom. It's natural at some point to aspire to spiritual freedom. What if we decide that we want to let go of all forms of suffering and we want to take the happiness of letting go all the way? But then we encounter a seeming paradox. What if we want to stop wanting? Can we wish for freedom from desire? Does that make sense? We'll get to that in a moment.

I just want to mention a couple of other quotes from the suttas, because it's good to know upfront that renunciation prepares the mind for awakening. It does actually say that in the teachings. So for example, here's one: "Desire and greed for the eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or mind—so all six senses—is a corruption of the mind. When a practitioner has given up this corruption in these six cases, their mind inclines to renunciation. A mind imbued with renunciation is declared to be capable of directly knowing anything that can be realized."

And then: "When a practitioner has four things, their practice is guaranteed and they have laid the groundwork for ending the defilements, which means awakening. What four? Thoughts of renunciation, goodwill, harmlessness, and Right View. When a practitioner has these four things, their practice is guaranteed and they have laid the groundwork for ending the defilements."

So we can feel assured that renunciation—in those texts it was nekkhamma—poises the mind for deeper wisdom and realization. In fact, the attitude of renunciation even persists after awakening. Here's another one: "When a monk is an arahant^[4] who has reached fulfillment, which means that they're fully awakened, they are dedicated to renunciation. It is because of the ending of greed, the ending of hatred, and the ending of delusion that they are dedicated to renunciation."

Okay, so we're convinced that what we're talking about here really is integral to freedom. But if we want to take letting go all the way, we're going to have to look a little bit more carefully at what's actually going on with letting go.

As we mature on the path, we start to experience that there is a distinction between volitional letting go and some kind of letting go that's not volitional. There are many times in the practice where we see some reactivity in the mind, and we consciously—that is volitionally—steer in some other direction. In fact, just recently I was fatigued at the end of a long day, and I felt my mind inclining toward irritation with some sound that was going on outside. And I brought up the reminder that the sound is impermanent. You know, this irritating sound is not going to last, even though it was trying to irritate me while I was fatigued. So that's choosing wisdom in order to counter aversion. And it was easy to let go of the irritation and kind of elevate the mind by remembering impermanence.

But I did feel like I was doing that. And so I can carry in my mind the idea that I'm reshaping my mind by making choices like this, and that these choices become available because I'm practicing mindfulness. That's a common way to think, and it's true to a certain degree. But we can also begin to experience that there's release that simply comes about when the conditions are there and the mind is seeing clearly.

It's fairly common for mindfulness practitioners to suddenly realize that they're behaving differently without trying. Maybe for the last two decades you've been habitually tense when talking to a certain relative. You knew that—maybe you were tense even before that but you didn't know it—but you feel physically tense when you're talking to someone. And then one day you become aware that you're talking with them and your body feels relaxed. You didn't consciously practice with body awareness with this relative. You didn't attend workshops on social anxiety or cultivating equanimity. But when you examine your mind, you realize that some defensiveness is simply gone. You don't feel any threat from this relative as you used to. They're just as they are and you can be with that. How did that happen? Don't you have to actively work on the issues that you want to let go of? Actually, no, not all of them.

And we can only go so far on the path if we want to be the ones doing it. As we let go of the unhelpful forms of desire, grasping and holding on, and even pursuing some of the normal sense pleasures of human life, we can tap into a powerful movement of release that is not done by us. It is a movement toward—and that was the general term that I'm calling desire this week, this tendency of the human mind to be able to move toward things. We feel that, but we realize that we're not the ones doing it. And so we begin to suspect and to actually see that those beautiful qualities that we were wanting or practicing toward, they seem to come about naturally in the wake of releasing the unwholesome habits.

So mettā^[5] emerges when ill will is released. Maybe at first we can cultivate mettā a little bit, we can breathe some life into it, we can bolster it a little bit. But if we look carefully, we start to see this deeper process at work where, when we release ill will, it's actually just that mettā is there. Sometimes it feels like the heart is by itself dropping painful habits, and sometimes it feels like the heart is moving toward the deep peace of not grasping. They're kind of like the front and back of the hand, whether we're moving away from suffering or toward the end of suffering. But either way, there's a growing sense that it's not a willful creation that we're doing.

I once told Gil, near the beginning of my practice, that I had heard that desire was the cause of suffering, but I still had the desire for freedom. This is actually a very common question among Dharma students. And Gil said what most Dharma teachers say in some version, he said, "Oh, you can have that desire, Kim, until it's the last one." So it's fine to want the more elevated aspects of life like ethics and compassion and wisdom. But bit by bit we have to drop even those lofty desires in order to move fully into those states.

Take compassion, for example. I would say that we become fully compassionate when we're no longer striving to let go of cruelty, when we're no longer aiming to generate compassion, and when we don't view ourselves as being a compassionate person. We can have some degree of compassion with all of those things, but it becomes full when compassion is just natural and unselfconscious.

So gradually along this path—and it is gradual—we concede our volitional desires to this more non-volitional movement of the Dharma. And then maybe the last thing to go is this aspiration of the heart for complete freedom. We can sort of incline the mind in that direction, but then it's no longer up to us.

I want to read a quote from Ayya Khema^[6], who was a wonderful Western bhikkhunī. She was German and she was born yesterday, on August 25th in 1923, so she would have been 99. This is from her: "Trying to achieve something in the spiritual world is just as foolish as trying to achieve something in the material world. There is nothing to achieve, there's only letting go. As we let go more and more of ego identification, desires, and support systems, bliss will arise."

So it's interesting, what do we do practically with these teachings on renunciation? I want to bring it back down to what we can each work with. I would say that, please only let go of what makes sense for you to let go. That will be fine. The volitional renunciation of various material things that we realize we don't need, and various unwholesome mental habits, if we work on those, that will gradually help build momentum toward this non-volitional letting go. And that is what carries the heart beyond even the wholesome, even the beautiful, to what is free.

So in a sense, the deepest happiness comes when we no longer want even happiness. But we don't have to worry about that, and we just let go of the next thing that feels like it's limiting us, and the process will go on. I have so much faith in it.

So to tie things up, desire—which is this movement toward that we have naturally in the mind that can help us walk the path—only one part of this broad space of desire is harmful. And then there are these more elevated desires that lead to deeper forms of happiness, and that makes them onward leading, because the mind is motivated to keep moving toward refined happiness. But to continue deepening, we'll have to let go of volition and ideas of achievement, like Ayya Khema said.

So true letting go comes about without our help, in a sense. Eventually we get squeezed into releasing all of our desires. It's a process that makes sense as you do it. There's no need to manufacture it or to push ahead, or to try to let go of something that we don't understand why we have to let go of it. Each insight that we have and each little thing that we release helps us go on to the next thing. So it's actually a path of trust. Of trusting that desire and letting go do form an onward leading process that will eventually take the mind all the way. And every little bit that we're working on, whatever we're doing right now in that process, is beautiful and is helping us to feel more free in this moment, and is helping others around us as we grow and develop in the Dharma.

So this is one lens that we can put onto the path of awakening: it's about desire and letting go. And I hope the journey this week has been good, and may it continue for all of us. So thank you very much.