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Guided Meditation: Finding the Saught in the Seeking

So those of you in the heat these days, rather than saying warm greetings, perhaps you could appreciate an offering of cool greetings. It's been said that because the English language developed in England, which can be cold and rainy, the idea of warmth is very appealing and heartwarming. Whereas Buddhism developed in India, where it can be quite warm, and there what is wonderful is coolness—to be cool. And so the idea of coolness has very different connotations than it has in English, where being cool is being pretty hip or something, but being cool is being refreshed and being delighted and being all kinds of things.

And so the idea of Nibbana^[1], Nirvana, is very much associated with the idea of becoming cool, cooling down—the cooling of the flames. And maybe in this heat you can appreciate how that's a really meaningful metaphor that maybe sometimes English-speaking people wouldn't quite be inspired by.

So I'd like to say some preparatory words for this meditation. It's not a preparatory kind of guided meditation; I just want to say my words and that'll serve as the support for the meditation today. So if you'd like to close your eyes as I say this—hopefully you can just listen, but kind of get yourself settled on your own as you listen.

So these qualities of the Dharma^[2] for today, it's the one that says "come and look," "come and see." And so Insight, the name of our kind of meditation, Insight Meditation, does involve seeing, and it does involve seeing more clearly. What comes into view as we see? So coming into seeing more clearly the experience of breathing, the body, sounds, thoughts, emotions—and that's part of the value of it.

But one of the profound things to see: if we're trying to see something, if we're looking to find something, like there's some insight that will be profound, something to discover that's kind of profound, if you're seeking, then what you're looking for can be found in the seeing, not in what you see. What you seek is found in the seeking, not in what you're seeking for out there.

The thing to be aware of is the awareness itself. To be aware of ourselves, mindful, aware, attentive to where we're at, our attention includes what it's like to be attending to what attention takes in. And so this backward step, this kind of turning the awareness around almost to look at itself—there, what do we find? What do we see?

And we might see layers of attitudes and reactions, opinions, preferences. But if those are there, then we haven't taken the backward step far enough back into that which is looking, to the looking itself. To the awareness itself in its simplicity. And in that simplicity, that is the place to rest. That's the place to then open up to be aware of this world as we sit here meditating.

[Silence for meditation]

And as we come to the end of this meditation, maybe again to bring your attention not to something, but to attention itself. The attending, not the looking, not what you're looking at, but at looking itself. And in doing so, maybe becoming aware of the attitudes that come along with mindfulness, with attention—the wanting and not wanting, the aversion, the desires, the fears—that seem somehow entangled with our capacity to be aware. Maybe the delusions, the thoughts, the interpretations, concerns with past and future.

And to think of these as visitors to awareness, visitors to our ability to see. Very simply, the simplest acts of perceptions are free of all these complicated attitudes. Sometimes those attitudes crowd out awareness itself, our recognizing it, our living in it in a conscious way. And as all our attitudes crowd out even conscious awareness, so it also crowds out the deeper capacity for love. All the flavors of love: kindness, goodwill, care, compassion, generosity, and respect.

To let go, to settle in deep enough into awareness itself, gives room for more and more inner beauty to come forth. And may it be that your inner beauty manifests in greater goodwill. A natural goodwill welling up from within, simple goodwill for all the people in your life, known and unknown, strangers.

May it be that through your awareness, you can tap into greater happiness for yourself and for them. May it be that through a more settled mind and heart, you make a world that is safer for yourself and for others.

May it be that as you have fewer and fewer attitudes and reactivities entangled with awareness, that awareness provides peace for yourself and for others. And may it be that as you are aware without being caught in anything, you provide greater freedom for yourself and for others.

May this meditation practice that we do benefit self and others, intentionally and unintentionally, consciously and unconsciously. May all beings be happy.

[Music]

Thank you.

Dharmette: The Dharma, Pt 2 (3 of 5) In the Looking

So, I find myself happy to be here with you this morning for this third talk on the qualities of the Dharma. And today, a simplistic way of understanding these five qualities is that it's about here. The Dharma is here. The Dharma is now. The Dharma is looking. The Dharma is flowing along. And the Dharma is to be experienced.

So today, the topic in a simplistic way is: the Dharma is looking. The literal Pali word ehipassiko^[3], as I said last week, is a very common, ordinary expression that suggests this kind of simplicity that I'm talking about. Because it literally means "come look," "come see." Some people translate it as "inviting inspection." There's one wonderful Chinese Buddhist saying that says, "Awakening beckons us within everything," and "Awakening invites us within everything." So everything that we see and touch is inviting us, "Come, be awake. Wake up." What a great idea that that's how it is! And it is that way in a certain way, and maybe I'll try to explain that.

But "come and look." And what we find then in these five characteristics of the Dharma: The first one is sanditthiko^[4]. Diṭṭhi does mean to see. That means visible. So it's visible here. Some people say it's "in this very life" that we can see and live here. Some people will translate it as "to see here," "visible here and now." But I think just say it's visible here. The third one now is to "come look." So here, both of them have seeing in the meaning of it. And then the fifth one on Friday is to know, to experience, to know. The word means both things: to know.

So this way of seeing and knowing is really steeped in the Dharma. You find the Buddha throughout his teachings keeps emphasizing "seeing and knowing," "seeing and knowing." And so, cultivating or developing our capacity to narrow, to settle into the here and now, to discover a way of being here and now that is not in conflict, not fighting, not running away, escaping, not afraid of the here and now. Not putting layers of interpretation and wishes and expectations on the here and now. Coming into a simplicity of being with the here and now is a lot of what we're discovering in this meditation practice. Here and now, here and now.

And that gives us an opportunity then for the looking, the seeing, to be relatively simple. To be uncomplicated, not a lot of baggage comes along with it. And it's all too easy to have baggage come along. One of them is to look and be mindful with a kind of self-consciousness, performance anxiety, or measuring oneself: "How am I doing?" and "You know, I'm not doing well enough, I should be further along," or "It's too difficult for me." All these forms of self-consciousness take us out of the simplicity of the here and now, and also out of the simplicity of this seeing what's here. Just this looking, just being mindful, just aware here.

And one of the challenges for some people will be that this simplicity of the here and now, and simplicity's mindfulness here, is boring. That it's unpromising, and it's not going to provide us with the rich things, the special things, the wonderful things. But maybe that's the price of coming into a wonderful state of being: a willingness to be very simple, without expectation, without wanting anything. So that we can put down the activity of boredom, put down the activity of selfing and wanting something and building a self up. Just very simple.

And then to be able to look from that point of view, to see, to be mindful, to be aware in a way that is very respectful of whatever is happening in the present moment. That each thing in the present moment is allowed to be itself without our interference and our desires. The kind of pristine, primordial appearance of whatever is happening in the moment. "Okay, this is allowed to be here." So all our emotions, there's an art to allowing them all to be here without being entangled, reactive, and without being pushed around by them, without being influenced by them.

And so this simplicity of being might not seem so interesting in some ways, but it's a radical alternative to being influenced by our inner life and desires, wishes, and emotions and all that. Something different can happen.

But as we begin to look more, at some point what becomes interesting and fascinating is not what we see, and not that we can see clearly. It's the looking itself. We begin appreciating more and more that the mindfulness itself, the way we are aware—awareness in itself, the inner perception, the perception we have itself—that maybe that's where the treasure is. Maybe there is where we find a freedom, an awakening. This wonderful capacity to turn around and look: awareness looking at perception, perceiving perception perceiving itself. Looking—the inner eye looking and seeing itself. Awareness aware of itself in such a way that we begin shedding all the extra baggage that comes along with it, all the extra attachments, clinging, stress levels that come along with being aware, being mindful.

And this is one of the ways in which mindfulness really opens up to a deep equanimity: as the mindfulness, as the awareness, begins shedding the complexities that we add on top of it, it just becomes simpler and simpler awareness. Simpler and simpler looking. The simplicity of it becomes the guide. "Oh, there's where non-clinging is. There's a little bit of stress there in how I'm aware. Oh, and as I become aware of that stress, something opens, something relaxes." As I become aware of the stress in mindfulness, I notice there that that awareness has no stress in it. So we're stepping back, we're going kind of through these layers and layers, to finding that place where awareness has no stress, no tension associated with it.

And then kind of staying close to that, letting how we're aware of the world come from that place of no tension, no stress, no pushing, no straining, no resisting, no pulling away, no leaning forward. So that's why sometimes it's powerful to realize that, or to have this attitude or understanding that what we're looking for is in the looking. That in being attentive, we're being attentive to how we're attending. Attention and attending I could use together. In having attention, we're attending to the attending itself. In mindfulness, we're being mindful of how we're being mindful. In looking, we're mindful of how we're looking and attending to anything. We're paying attention to how we're attending.

And that is where we can begin to understand a lot about what's going on in our life. It begins shedding all the different activities associated with attention—with a practice that involves stress, strain, tension, involves some kind of discomfort—until we find this equanimity of simplicity. The simplicity of equanimity.

So this idea of the Buddha says, "Come and look here and now. In the here and now. With the here and now. Come and look. Come and look." So today as you go about your day, you might take some time—you know, maybe set a timer, be reminded periodically, sit and have tea whenever you have a chance—but making an assignment that today, "I'll start becoming more aware of the characteristics, the quality of my awareness itself. Of my attention itself, of my mindfulness. Turn around and see how much extra there might be there along with it. And see how simple you can allow your attention to be."

And if there's any kind of extended period of time of this simplicity of awareness, I suspect that you'll discover that your breathing shifts and changes. It might become more peaceful.

So I hope that it's a wonderful day of exploration, and I look forward to our time tomorrow. Thank you.