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Guided Meditation: Stopping

Hello everyone, and happy to be here with you. Happy to welcome you. There is something that begins to happen for many of us, if we pay attention and if we allow it to be the case. Something begins to happen as soon as we put ourselves into our meditation posture. Especially if we've been doing it for a long time, it's a familiar posture and the associations are there. The orientation—the body, mind, and heart's inclination to become meditative—can kind of kick in.

One of the consequences of sitting down to meditate, or one of the aspects of it, is that it is a stopping. If you're sitting in seated meditation, you've stopped other activities. Hopefully, you've stopped moving about in your mind. You've stopped searching the web, or using your eyes and ears to figure something out, to search and study. Perhaps it's a stopping of rumination, of fantasy spinning out. There's a kind of stopping that goes on here.

It is a stopping that is not meant to be a bracing. It's a stopping that is meant to help us become clear, to see more clearly, and to recognize. It's like making it to a promontory, a vista point. Once we come up to that vista point, we can see the land around us more clearly. So in this stopping in meditation, we stop whatever is easy to stop. Except for mindfulness, we stop moving as much as we can. We stop a lot of discursive thinking, having conversations, and talking about things to ourselves. We might stop tensing. Sometimes we don't even know how much we're tensing until we stop, sit down, and begin feeling the body. The body itself will begin releasing the tension, which is a kind of stopping. This stopping is meant to clear the clouds, the fog, to help us see clearly. It's not stopping for its own sake, but stopping so we can see.

Here we are. Some people call it a sacred pause, a sacred stopping. In Chinese Buddhism, the character for samadhi^[1] or samatha^[2] is the character for "stop." So somehow, samadhi is a kind of deep stopping, as opposed to a deep attainment. Just a pause, a sacred pause.

Assuming a meditation posture that supports you, let the body be still. Gently, as the body is still, can you let there be an inner stilling of the body by relaxing? Maybe relaxing from the core outwards, or relaxing from the outside, from the edges into the core.

If you're able to feel some place deep inside that is still and peaceful, it has some quality of not moving and not agitating. Soft stillness within. As you exhale, relax everything around it and settle into that inner stillness.

Gently let the mind become still, quieting and stopping discursive thoughts. You might still have other kinds of thoughts—simple thoughts of meditation—but let the large conversations in the mind become quiet. If they are the fog, let that fog clear. The sun of awareness has come up, clearing the fog.

With whatever stillness and stopping you can easily do, may that allow you to have a bit more clarity of mind, a clarity of awareness, as you accompany your breathing.

There is a kind of stopping that is resignation: giving up and shutting down. And there's the kind of stopping that is opening up to gaze upon the view, to gaze upon what is here without interfering. Just clarity, letting things come into view and into perception as clearly as they can.

If you find yourself thinking a lot, consider stopping. Consider becoming stiller, and in the stilling of the mind, becoming clearer. Then let that clearing accompany your breathing, or let your breathing accompany the clearness. What can you stop? And in stopping, opening to greater clarity, here and now.

As we come to the end of the sitting for a few moments here, assume that your heart's wish is to be able to smile, and it's on the verge of smiling, if only something else would stop. What needs to stop to make room for the heart to smile?

What fear, desires, or disappointments would need to pause so you can gaze upon the world with a smiling heart? Not because you're making it smile, but because it's what the heart wants to do. It's asking to be able to smile, to be uncovered from the coverings of fear, desires, despair, disappointment, grief, fantasy, and rumination. Allow there to be a pause to all those things so there can be an uncovering of the smiling heart.

And from that heart, to gaze upon the world kindly. A kind smile that wishes well for everyone. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Hindrances and Assistances (3 of 5) Freezing and Stilling

Welcome to this third talk on strategies for working with the challenges we have. One of the ways of developing skills for being with life's challenges is to train on the small challenges. Life gives many of us huge challenges from time to time. Some of them are so big that the legacy of them still lives in us in difficult ways—fear, anger, grief, and different things. Sometimes it's too much to be able to sit with it, to open to it, without having trained or prepared the ground to be able to do so. With some challenges, especially personal inner challenges that are the legacy of things that have happened to us, it's better to do our best to manage them wisely. We put them on the side until we spend time preparing ourselves to really address them in a useful way.

We train with the small challenges. The training for this week is to start asking yourself the question: "What strategy are you using in relationship to this challenge you're feeling? What are you trying to do with it?" Simply asking that question and stopping to investigate is a powerful thing to do because it begins to pull you out of being entangled or lost in that challenge. It's like stepping back and trying to get an overview. What's happening here? Given what's happening, how am I responding? What is my mind and heart trying to do here?

There are two general things to notice: whether the direction you're going makes it harder to be aware and shuts down awareness—getting you wrapped up, entangled, trapped, or hindered by what's going on—or if it is a strategy that helps you open up, see more clearly, and allows the wisdom in you to come forth. Wisdom can only come forth if you're not entangled, lost, or caught up in it. You have to be able to step back, pause, and make room for wisdom, clarity, and compassion to show themselves in a way they can't if we're caught in what's happening. This is why it's so powerful to simply ask the question: "What's happening here, and what am I trying to do?"^[3]

This week, we are using the Five Hindrances^[4] as a reference for these dysfunctional ways of being with challenges. Today, we focus on the third hindrance, which is usually translated into English as "sloth and torpor" (thīna-middha). I don't think that is quite the right translation of the Pali. The first word that's translated as sloth more literally means to become stiff or rigid, and maybe it is akin to the modern psychological idea of freezing. Some people freeze in the face of challenge—freeze, fight, or flight. It's a shutting down. Something closes down and we freeze, or maybe go numb.

This can often be a product of fear. Fear gets the upper hand and shuts us down because what's happening is too much. Other strong emotions can also have that effect on us. It has the byproduct of turning us away from what's happening. Part of the reason to shut down, to freeze, or to become rigid is so that we don't have to deal with something. Sometimes it's like the ostrich that supposedly puts its head in the sand to not see the danger. Freezing is a kind of shutting down.

Sometimes it's very extreme. It happened to me when I was young. I remember something made me really afraid, and I had a clear feeling that I just disappeared. I wasn't there. I couldn't understand why people were looking in my direction because I had disappeared. It wasn't an imminently dangerous situation, so there was no immediate threat to me, but I remember later finding myself walking down the street with no idea how I got there. Something inside of me had turned off. I guess I left the place, but I don't know how I left or what I said. Something shut down.

We can feel that. We can feel a kind of shutting down, closing up, and resisting: "I'm not going to deal with this." Something gets rigid, tight, closed, and locked. Sometimes we can feel it physically over the heart. I remember when I was maybe fifteen or sixteen, a friend of mine said something to me, and I literally felt like the doors of my heart just closed. They locked up, and I remember having the thought, "I'm never going to open that again." It wasn't until I started meditating some four or five years later that the part of me that had closed that day began opening.

So, shutting down and closing up is the dysfunctional way of responding. The more functional, healthier, and wiser way also involves a stopping or stilling. But the functional side of doing the same kind of thing is to stop to pay attention. We stop to be present for what's going on. We take a step back, either metaphorically in the mind or sometimes physically, to get an overview of what's happening. If there's an argument and you're caught in the heat of it, sometimes it's a really healthy thing to pause, ask for a pause, and maybe even step away a few feet. You can say, "Pause, I need to spend time thinking. I need to feel what's going on." Creating a little physical distance and explaining why helps you catch your breath, get your bearings, and really understand better what's going on.

To the degree to which there can be an inner stilling—stopping in the form of an inner stilling, not a numbing—it allows us to feel and make room for what's there. There's a feeling not of closing down or locking up, but a stilling which has more of a feeling of opening up, becoming more full, or entering a sacred pause. What's happening here? What am I feeling? What am I thinking? What am I trying to do? What's happening with the person or situation I'm with? Can I take a second look at what's happening?

I find the act of pausing and reflecting invaluable. Even to this day, my mind will produce interpretations, bias, or jump to conclusions about a situation. If I'm moving along fast, I don't see that my mind has done it. There's something in my mind that sometimes predisposes it to a certain confidence in my ideas, so I have an erroneous idea, but the confidence rides along with it, making me think it's right. But I know myself well enough that if I can pause, stop, and become a little bit still, then I can see, "Oh, that's an interpretation. I'm overlaying a guess onto the situation."

I've learned to put a question mark after my assumptions, my guesses, and the conclusions that I make. Even when I'm confident that I'm right, I've learned to put a question mark after it: "Is this really so?" The more consequential my view, my decision, or my ideas are about what's out there, the more important I feel it is to stop, pause, and live with that conclusion for a while. I reflect on it and see if it comes up repeatedly. If it comes up two or three more times and still seems right, then maybe I give it a little more credence. I give it more attention and explore a little bit more of what's going on. This is stopping so we can see, stopping so we can question, stopping so that we can catch our breath and really look at things in a fresh way.

There are two forms of stopping. In relationship to the hindrances, there are two forms of each kind of mental movement: one is the hindrance, and one is opening to wisdom. With the first hindrance, sensual desire, there are desires that cause problems, and there is a healthy desire to open up, to see, and to be free. When we're with challenges, can we see the difference? Which desire are we operating on? In challenges, there is averting as a hindrance, and there is healthy averting—turning away or saying no. Can we see a difference between the healthy and the unhealthy?

Today, we are looking at the unhealthy hindrance of sloth and torpor—freezing, getting still, getting numb, shutting down, and going to sleep in a certain way. And then there is the healthy stopping and pausing that opens us up, makes us clearer, and makes room for wisdom.

These are my words for today. What I'd like to suggest is that you take a look at this. The movement of shutting down, turning off, getting bored, going numb, and losing interest is all a symptom of this third hindrance. Waking up, being interested, clear, and investigating—even a situation that at first might seem boring—means finding something about it that you can study. See what the interesting thing is, what's going on here. Do a little bit of work pausing and stopping—not to be lazy, but to figure out what the mind's work is here that is beneficial, healthy, and creates a better connection and empathy for the person, the situation I'm with, and myself.

You might look today for opportunities for this. See what goes on with your mind and your awareness. Is it shutting down, or is it opening up in the situation you're in? And if you see the difference, choose opening up.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to being together tomorrow.