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Guided Meditation: Starting with Thinking

Good morning and welcome. Nice to be back after being gone for a while. Most recently I was at Spirit Rock teaching a week-long retreat, and I'll be here this week, and then I'm going off to teach another retreat next Sunday. So it is poignant for me to be back. I appreciate so much the opportunity to do this teaching and to be with all of you on YouTube and see your names in the chat. Thank you very much.

During this week, I'd like to generally continue with the topic of compassion that I've done the last few weeks that I've been here. As we begin today for guided meditation, I would like to suggest a way of beginning that may come as a bit of a surprise to mindfulness practitioners: to begin by thinking, rather than putting your thinking aside and not giving it any role in this practice.

Begin with thinking for just a minute or two, to think about how you are right now. Not just, "How are you?" but to really think about it. What is it really, and how is it, and what might be a wise way of being with yourself the way you are? What might be a useful way to practice, given how you are? What might be a useful posture to be in for meditation? If you're tense, maybe a more relaxed posture. If you're tired, maybe a more alert, upright posture. If you're aware of how you are feeling emotionally, what would be a useful attitude to have as you meditate?

These are all questions you can ask yourself, questions that attune you to what's happening for you and how to meet it in practice—how to include it, or maybe even what to ignore at times because it's not really to the point. Maybe if you're mostly concerned about dinner menus for the rest of the week, you don't have to spend meditation thinking about those menus. But maybe there's some anxiety underneath those thoughts. Sort of think about and recognize what's happening here, and if there is anxiety, what would be useful?

I encourage you to spend about two minutes now just thinking about what's happening and how to be with it, as a way of attuning yourself, dialing in in preparation for meditation.

And then, if you are concerned with some challenge in your life and you're thinking about it, is the thinking somehow identified or entangled with the story, the events, the situation? Are there stories that are self-critical or involve self-pity, feeling sorry for yourself? What kind of thoughts do you have if you're concerned with some challenge?

See if you can step away a little bit and look upon what's happening with the challenge and your thoughts, and take a minute or so to think about it as an objective observer. Not identified, not critical, not wanting anything or not not-wanting anything. Just thinking about it, looking upon it objectively. Thinking about, given that this is going on, what's a useful way to practice with it? What's a useful way to meditate? Maybe to put it aside for now and return to it later when you're more centered.

And now, having spent some time thinking, let the thinking mind rest. Let it relax. It's done its job and now you do not need it so much. Take some long, slow, deep breaths, and as you exhale, relax into the body.

Letting your breathing return to normal, and again, as you exhale, softening and relaxing the tensions in the body.

As you exhale, calming the thinking mind.

As you exhale, letting the mind rest in the body.

The mind does not have to work so much. Let it rest in the body, with awareness centered in the breathing, the rhythm of breathing.

So then, as we come to the end of the sitting, let yourself think again freely about whatever benefit has come from these minutes sitting and meditating. Are you more self-aware? Are you calmer? Are you more centered, more grounded? Is your heart more open? Maybe you're not so aware of specifics, but you appreciate the opportunity to meditate.

And imagine what it'd be like, think about what it'd be like to live in the world with those benefits as you go about your daily life today. How might those personal benefits be shared with others so they can benefit as well?

May it be that this practice that we do benefits the world, those close to us, those not so close, those people we don't know—all beings. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free from all suffering. May beings be free of oppression, war, starvation, poverty. And may it be how we live this life of ours that we support these possibilities. May all beings be happy.

So thank you all. While I take a moment to drink my water, I'd be curious if some of you would put in the chat what was beneficial, or what was it like to spend the first few minutes of the meditation thinking in the way that I suggested. I'd like to read a range of how it was.

Dharmette: Attunement (1 of 5) Thinking

Thank you for that, those of you who put chats in. I read a good amount of them, and when we finish I'll read them all. I appreciate it.

To give some context for that: this week I'm going to continue with the general topic of compassion that I've explored the last number of weeks that I've been here, and kind of fill in some of the gaps from before.

Some weeks ago, I talked about five building blocks for compassion, and that all the building blocks ideally would be there when we act in the world compassionately or when we feel compassion. Those are the five A's: Awareness, Attunement, Appreciation, Aspiration, and Action. I spent a whole week earlier on awareness, discussing different ways of being aware in preparation for looking at compassion. Today I'd like to talk about the second building block, which is attunement.

As an introduction to this topic of compassion and attunement, I'd like to repeat something I've tried to say before: if we have just one mode of being compassionate, it's easy to be overwhelmed. It's easy for that mode to not be the appropriate mode for some situations we find ourselves in.

Some people have never really considered what compassion is, or considered different modes and ways of being with suffering. Some people have only one mode of being with suffering—suffering in oneself or suffering in others—and it's overwhelming. Or it awakens all kinds of feelings of soreness, overwhelm, thoughts that "life is difficult," or "I'm a victim, it's so hard for me, I don't know what to do and this is too much, I don't feel safe." There are many ways that people can be impacted by the presence of suffering.

Some people rush to fix it. Sometimes they rush to fix the suffering in the world or the suffering of others, not really caring for others so much as trying to stop being uncomfortable themselves. They're trying to fix themselves by fixing others. There are many ways in which we can find ourselves in relationship to suffering. Some of them are not very healthy, and some of them are.

Sometimes we identify too much with the suffering, or we receive it or take it in in such a way that we feel challenged by it, or feel like now we have even more suffering of our own. Especially if empathy is understood to be simply feeling what other people feel. If it somehow ties into some previous suffering that we carry with ourselves, feeling the suffering of others can trigger our own background and just cause everything to be so much more difficult.

The idea in understanding the different building blocks of compassion, the different aspects of compassion, is to start having some agency in working with our minds and our hearts in such a way that we can be with suffering in a useful, healthy way for ourselves and for others. One of those ways is attunement: to take time to attune ourselves to the suffering that we're encountering, whether in ourselves or others.

As soon as we have the notion that we're doing something—attunement—there are a number of things that can happen. One is asking, "What is attunement?" The other is that we're bringing some ideas, some practice to bear to address and meet the suffering, rather than just feeling the suffering in some unmitigated way. We step out of the old way where we identify strongly with it, or where the suffering touches the wounds we carry. Now we're beginning to engage in agency: "Oh, I have some ability to do something here, to question, to wonder, to look at."

In this rising to the occasion to meet it, we start bringing a personal—I keep using the word agency—a personal wherewithal, a personal involvement that's something different than just being impacted by the suffering or trying to fix it.

So, asking the question: "What is attunement?" For this week, I'd like to offer five different aspects that I think are important for this attunement, for coming into harmony with the suffering, coming into a healthy balance in relationship to the suffering. I use the acronym T.O.U.C.H. for this. It begins with Thinking, and then Openness to suffering, and then Uprightness in relationship to suffering, and then Communicating (actually talking and communicating is an extremely important part of attunement), and then the last one is Helping (part of attunement is to figure out how we can be helpful or serve the situation the best we can).

The first one involves thinking. Again, this use of agency. "Okay, here I am encountering suffering. Maybe I feel it deeply, maybe I feel it in a moderate way, or I'm aware of it in some way. Now let me think about it a little bit. How is this impacting me? What's a useful stance to be present for it? What background do I have that influences how I experience it and how I think I should address it or do something with it?"

Maybe I carry with me a sense of responsibility for everyone in my family or everyone in my neighborhood, and so when I encounter difficulty, it automatically means I have to do something to fix it; I have to solve the problem. Begin thinking about this: is this really the case? Is there another way of being with this? Is there another way of experiencing it or understanding it?

For example, I'd like to propose that compassion can have a very different quality if we read or hear about suffering in the news, where it's far away and unconnected to us, versus being present for someone close to us who's suffering in some way. With someone close, we can feel and read them and know what's going on, knowing the context and the situation. In the news, we know so little about the context that there's a rush to relying on our thinking mind regarding what it means, the opinions we have, and our imagination about how it affects people. It becomes a kind of cognitive explosion that might not be the best source for compassion. It might be a source for alarm, anger, or distress. Those emotions can then get confused for compassion, or we might feel like it's naturally part of compassion to have them.

But spend some time not just being mindful of the impact and how we're feeling, but actually thinking it out. In our mindfulness tradition, we don't talk much about actively thinking or having critical thinking skills, so it's easy to imagine that this practice of ours does not involve wise thinking. There is wise mindfulness and wise concentration, but concentration is often presented as a letting go of the thinking mind. This can do us a disservice if we think we're not supposed to think, or if we become lazy with the thinking mind.

Thinking is a rich part of our life. It gets us into trouble—big trouble at times—but thinking is also very helpful if we can think out, "What does it mean to be attuned here? What is a balanced way of being present for suffering? What is a way of being in harmony with it?"

Rushing to judgment is not harmony. Rushing to fixing is not harmony. Immediately getting preoccupied with the impact that the suffering has on us is not really in harmony. So what is it to be harmonious? Even just asking that question begins creating space. It creates a little bit of healthy distance and healthy receptivity.

Part of this ability to think about situations where suffering is involved is to consider the common responses that we have, and question them: "Is this really the best way? Is this really wise? Is this really coming from some place of love or care? Or is it appropriate for the situation?"

To think about a situation where there is suffering is to consider: "What's the context of this suffering? What's my role in it, and what's the role of other people? Given the context and the people who are suffering, do I understand them well, or am I projecting my own assumptions on them?"

Sometimes I've had compassion for people who were not actually suffering, but I had been in similar situations in the past, and so I assumed they were having a bad experience. One of the places I saw that was with my kids. I had challenges in elementary school. I changed schools a lot growing up, so I was often the new kid, and I dealt with questions of being accepted or being bullied. To say it simplistically, when my sons went onto the playground, I had this concern for their well-being. I thought, "Oh, they're certainly going to suffer, they're going to have the same experience." And so I wanted to intervene or say something, but it was all based on my own history and my own ideas. There was no compassion needed in some of the situations where I was so concerned; it was more a legacy of my own challenges.

So there's something to using the thinking mind to figure things out. Some people like to journal to really explore, "What's going on here in a deeper, fuller way?" This might not happen if we simply rely on our capacity to be mindful or aware—just thinking, "Oh, let me just be aware here, that's it."

To be attuned, the first element is thinking. Don't overthink, but don't under-think either. What I'd like to suggest for you is that you experiment today with this thinking aspect of attunement. If you find yourself in a situation where there's some challenge or suffering—your own or others'—don't rush to do something, and don't shut down. Go get a cup of coffee, a cup of tea, or water. Go for a little walk. Sit quietly, or if you can, excuse yourself to go to the bathroom to breathe for a little bit and think it out: "What's going on here, what just happened, what is the context, and what does it mean to be attuned here?"

One reference point for how to be attuned is to ask yourself this exercise: "How would you like other people to be attuned to you?" Maybe then you can get some sense of what attunement means and what you can bring to others. Have conversations with people today about what attunement is for you. It's not a common word, so maybe you're discovering together what it is to be attuned to the suffering we encounter.

Thank you very much.