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Guided Meditation: Recognizing the Way Forward

Good day. Warm greetings from IMC. It feels to me like it's been a while since I've been here. I'm happy to be sitting here, and somehow in my heart feeling a warmth and a connection to this wide YouTube audience, all of you. So thank you for being here.

One of the underappreciated aspects of meditation is that right from the very beginning—even the beginning of someone who's starting a meditation practice for the first time—there are hints or clues for where this practice is going, and what's being developed. To start tuning in or recognizing these hints, these little traces of the goal, in a sense, from the beginning, can be very helpful. It kind of acts as a guide, maybe a simple guide, for the path of meditation.

For example, if you sit down to meditate, and you're sitting or lying down to be still and not moving, right there, there is no longer the engagement with all the movements of a lifetime: movements of speech, movements of action, spinning around concerns with movement, fidgeting that might go on. In that stillness of the body, there can be a kind of a release from all the activities that might feel kind of good. Like wow, it's like taking a rest. If you sit down to meditate, and you sit and take your posture, and then you relax your shoulders, in that relaxation there is this hint of the whole path of meditation. In the relaxation, there is a release, a release in the shoulder. Maybe even a release in the mind, because of the close way in which the mind and body are connected.

There is a release right there. With that release, there can also be some shift in the mind. The mind might become subtle, more settled, something settles in the mind just as the shoulders settle. Also, something can become clear. There's this little moment of clarity with the relaxation. So this release and clarity, however small it is when you first sit down, that is the way forward. That's what meditation is opening to, expanding, and growing. So to feel it right there at the beginning, and to feel, there's the way forward. Not to try too hard to always release and always be clear—the basic idea is just to see clearly what's going on.

But when there are releases, when we're no longer caught up in our thoughts and concerns, our story-making mind, when we let go of a thought, in that letting go is a feeling of release. There's a feeling of openness, a feeling of space, a feeling of non-preoccupation. Experiencing that sense of non-preoccupation, of release—that's the way forward. That is to be appreciated. To feel that, rather than quickly going on to the next thing. You let go of your thoughts, and then you feel you have a duty to go into your breath, like, let's get to work. Instead, appreciate the goodness that happens, the value, the benefit, the goal that's right here of freedom. Each little moment, take a few moments to appreciate the good impact, the good consequences of relaxing the shoulders, relaxing the belly, letting go of the thought, relaxing the mind. Getting a sense of that and appreciating it points the way forward.

So, assuming a stationary posture, a posture that you can be still in for this 30 minutes.

To help you, maybe it's easier to become quieter and still in the posture if you sway back and forth a bit, gently rock yourself a teeny bit, maybe sway around so that you can better find the center and come to a place of balance. Your whole body somehow is finding its way here to be still and quiet. Then coming into stillness with your body, appreciating whatever lack of work, frenetic energy, busy doing that we can be caught up in, to come into a posture that represents peace and quiet.

Then take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Maybe three-quarters full. And as you exhale, relax your shoulders, perhaps appreciating whatever softening of the shoulders is there, the release.

Letting your breathing return to normal, taking a few moments to now relax different parts of your body. Each time, if you're able to soften, relax, and settle in your body, appreciate what that feels like: the goodness, or the rightness, or the release that happens. You might soften, relax your belly, appreciating if the belly softens, how the lack of tightness, contraction, holding provides a release, a sense of freedom or ease. As you exhale, relaxing in the chest, around the heart. On the exhale, releasing the shoulders. Maybe the tight parts of the shoulders don't release at all, but maybe there's a little softening around the tightness.

As you exhale, relax the muscles of your face, and also any contraction or tightness in the mind. Any pressure you feel in the mind or tightness, as you exhale, can that be softened, relaxed, released? And however small the release is, appreciate what's nice about that release. Letting go of your thinking, appreciating maybe the more spacious feeling that can come with not being preoccupied, even if it's just for a couple of moments.

Then, as we continue this meditation, whenever you notice there's contraction, or pressure, tightness, this grasping or clinging to anything, relax. Let go, and appreciate whatever feels good about no longer being caught up in a contracted state or pressured state. Now, in the lack of contraction, maybe it's easier for the awareness to be clearer. Clear awareness of what is. Releasing all concerns and preoccupations.

Let go of your thoughts and appreciate that release, opening, and quieting of a thinking mind. Perhaps noticing if then, without the thinking, there's more clarity in your awareness, clarity about here and now.

Can you relax your body further? In the relaxation, feel the release, feel a certain kind of freedom or ease. Can you relax your mind? Settle it, quiet it. In doing so, appreciate the absence of busyness, the absence of chasing thoughts, the pressure to think.

Then as we come to the end of this sitting, once again let go of your thoughts. Release and relax whatever holdings you have in your body and your mind. Appreciate how doing so might allow you to be more present for other people, more present for the tasks at hand. The more you're at ease, the more that you're not preoccupied and dealing with the pressures of agitations of greed, hatred, and fear, there is a potential for attention, clarity, and availability of seeing clearly what's here, maybe with an open heart.

Meditation is not only for our own benefit, but also sets the stage for ways that we can be more caring, more present for others. It sets a stage for us to have the heart respond to others with care and kindness, with compassion and appreciation, with generosity.

So may it be that this meditation that we've done today may serve us. May it serve others in our ability to be present, attentive, present to see and understand and appreciate other people, whether in person or other ways. May it be that as we free ourselves, that freedom is expressed in a greater care, love, and benefit for the world around us. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may we contribute to that possibility.

Seeing the Traces of the Path

The Buddha gave an analogy which I would like to adapt for this talk today. He talked about a forester, someone who worked in the forest, who roamed around the forest for their work, and one day came across the traces of an ancient road that had mostly been overgrown and difficult to see. But he saw a trace of it, and he cleared a little bit and started following the road, clearing it and following it and finding his way through it until he came to an ancient capital that had long since been overgrown and abandoned. The forester went back to the monarchs of the lands and explained what had been found. The monarchs came then to clear the road fully and to reinhabit the great capital.

Partly, what this analogy is used for in the teachings of the Buddha is to suggest that what the Buddha had to teach is ancient. He didn't invent it; he didn't just invent something or make something that hadn't already been there. It was there, available for everyone, except it was overgrown with our preoccupations, our attachments, our contractions, our clinging, our graspings, our fears, our hatreds, our delusions, and so forth. So he rediscovered this ancient potential, this ancient possibility for all of us, and the task is to clear the road and to reinhabit this beautiful place that has always been there for us, waiting for us in a sense. The question is, what is the trace that we can find? If we are the forester, what is the trace? What's the hint that shows us the path forward?

This idea of a road or a path is such a big metaphor in Buddhism about the journey of practice, the way that we grow and develop in the Dharma. I just love the idea of being on a journey that has an arc, a beginning, middle, and end, an unfolding over time. I think partly why I love it is that it's so organic, so part of the human condition, that there's always change. There's always a movement going on.

We see it with young children; if you haven't been around a child for some time, you see that they've grown physically, and they've grown mentally in capacities and all kinds of things. With the right conditions, they grow beautifully, and you can't really stop them, without a lot of effort, from the natural process of their growth, the change that they unfold, the maturation. In the same way, our psychological maturation doesn't end when we're 18 or 21, but continues into adulthood and right up until the time we die.

Many of you can probably recognize that in some ways you're wiser than you were 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 years ago. Things that disturbed you tremendously, or things that you were afraid of, or you resisted, or that you were really grasping onto and clinging to—there might be some things you no longer do. You've changed, and you've let go. You're wiser. You see clearly, and you know there are better options for you, or you don't see the allure anymore of what you used to want.

There is a natural movement, and people who don't do any Buddhist practice at all go through a changing unfolding of it. Sometimes there are challenges or things that interfere with the maturation of wisdom in that process. People get stuck, they get disappointed, they get betrayed. They have disappointments, and somehow they get closed down, shut down, and so they are not available for the continued maturation process, which is a pretty natural process.

Buddhism is going along with that process and setting the conditions in place that really bring out the best in us, that bring out that freedom—freedom from being shut down, closed down, having the heart covered over with mud or overgrown with all kinds of vines and shrubs and stuff that don't allow the heart to radiate or shine. This idea of a path, a journey of that maturation process, is often talked about in Buddhism.

What are the traces we can find? What I'd like to say is that those traces are available at the very beginning of meditation. Even before meditation, in the first teachings or ideas of meditation, there's maybe a recognition that, Oh, these teachings point to something I can feel. I can sense, I intuit that there is some freedom, some ease, some absence of stress that is possible for me. That is the beginning. That's the clue, the first traces of that road.

What that means is that the traces and the road itself are not complicated metaphysics. They're not complicated beliefs and philosophy, but something experiential, something we can see and feel and experience for ourselves in simplicity. It's as simple as if you hold your hand in a tight fist, it becomes a problem, but if you release the fist, it becomes a lot easier. It feels freer and more comfortable.

We have all these fists of the heart, fists in the mind. We have all these ways we contract, or there might be strong resistance or strong pressure that lives inside of us that kind of obscures, gets in the way of our sense of ease or peace or freedom. There might be a strong desire, you need to have something now, you need to have this now, and without this, I can't be happy. The very intensity of the desire is the very thing that keeps us from being happy, rather than the thing that is going to make us happy. It's that intensity of wanting that obscures our natural capacity for the good heart to just manifest, to show itself, to relax, to open. It doesn't need much but space. It doesn't need much but quiet and freedom to do so, to express itself.

So it's this experiential sense of the difference between being stressed and being not stressed, being contracted and not contracted, being in bondage to something versus being freed from it. Feeling under pressure and then the release of the pressure. Feeling the weight of the world and the release of that weight. Feeling a strong shutting down of resistance and then the release of that resistance. There are all kinds of things like that. Those are the traces of the path; that's what we're clearing.

When we first sit down to meditate, the shoulders relax. Relaxing the shoulders is the very first, maybe, trace or hint of what this Buddhist practice is all about. Rather than thinking that relaxing your shoulders is a preliminary practice or a kindergarten practice of Buddhism, it is itself a little movement towards that ease, towards that freedom. Rather than just relaxing the shoulders and then quickly moving on to whatever practice you're going to do, take some time to appreciate, to feel: Ah, yes, it's a little bit easier there now. More relaxed, more open, a little softer.

Sometimes when I relax my shoulders, I feel, Ah, that's good. But when I do so, what's left is a little bit of the underlying tension and holding that might be there. And I feel that's good too, to know this, to be aware of it, and to be close to it, to feel it, because that's the way forward. To go back to being tight so the underlying tension is masked—that's not desirable. It's really good to relax, to feel what's going on here, Oh yes, it's like this. And then that allows, over time, for a deeper relaxation, deeper release.

Something as simple as relaxing the shoulders. I've been in social situations where I noticed my shoulders were tense or my stomach was tight, and then I relaxed it. It's not like something to write home about and say, Look what great thing I did! I attained the fulfillment of Buddhist practice. It's silly to do it that way. But in talking that way, I am pointing to the fact that there's a trace there. This is the path. This is the way forward. This is what it takes. It isn't like you relax your shoulders so that now you can go read some big tome of Buddhist philosophy. You relax your shoulders, and that's the door. That's the book we're reading. We're reading the book of softening, releasing, opening, together with clarity.

There can be with relaxation a little sense, maybe a minor sense of clarity; the awareness becomes a little clearer. These two together, release and clarity, are the primary things that we're appreciating, valuing, opening to, remembering to do as we do this Buddhist practice. Letting these grow and develop then allows for this maturation. It allows for the greater clearing of the road, until we come to this great capital at some point as it gets uncovered.

That's one analogy, the analogy of a path that we go on, but it's just an analogy. Another way of saying this is that we are going from one place to another. We're going from here, of self-suffering, to there, where we're not suffering at all. That's the overall simple description of the Buddhist path. However, it's not a geographical journey; it's not like we're traveling anywhere in the world. It's all about what happens right here. Each step along the way is not about doing something so that you can get someplace in the future, but each step along the way is itself a fulfillment of clearing the road, or expressing or finding even a small degree of what the whole path is about: freedom from suffering, from stress, from contraction, from pressure, from resistance, from fear. So really appreciate that it's just right here and right now what we're doing in this regard.

It's sometimes said in Buddhism that the fastest way to go from A to B is to be fully at A. So not to be so involved in getting anywhere, but really be here with what's happening now. That's very much the same process. Because if anybody sits down to start paying attention to what's going on, they might find that there's a lot of physical agitation. They don't want to sit there. They have a long to-do list, and they're anxious to do it all, and there's all this restless, nervous energy in the body to do. Because there's all this restless, nervous energy, it actually feels better to enact it or act out the energy than it is to sit still and feel it. That makes us busy again and keeps people spinning until they're exhausted.

But notice this energy of wanting to do, and then maybe settle back and relax the body until there's some ease and presence, where things can unwind. Then we notice that the mind is not here and now. It's in the past or in the future thinking about things, and so then there's a process of releasing and letting go of that to be here.

Then we notice that we're here, okay, but we spend a lot of time analyzing and telling stories about here and what's happening, where we're going. We see that all this story-making mind and all this analysis and plans about what to do are also keeping me from being really present at A. So then we let go of the stories, we let go of the plans, we let go of the analysis of what's happening, because it keeps us removed from the experience.

So we kind of keep shedding, letting go, releasing all the things that keep us from being present in a very good, high-quality way. It's not about getting anyplace as it is really arriving and being here in a fuller and fuller way. In that sense, we're learning to be fully at A. But in doing so, we are shedding, releasing, understanding all the things that help the process of maturation unfold. The process of inner growth, the process of movement towards freedom, towards wisdom, towards compassion and love—all those things now have space and room to unfold and grow.

There is that kind of going from A to B. Simultaneously, we're becoming transformed and changed in that process. Even if you don't want to be transformed in that process, you can't help human change. We're all changing psychologically, we're all changing physically, day by day, hour by hour through this lifetime. But what we can do is create really good conditions for that change to happen in a way that's beneficial. If we continue to live under stress, if we continue to live not really connected to ourselves, spinning out with desire and agitation, wanting the next thing and making the next plans, or always hiding and closing down and not really being honest and present for what's happening, those are powerful conditions that influence the direction of our maturation. And it can be a direction which is not so good.

But if we meet ourselves and our life with courage, with goodness, with presence, with love, with letting go, opening up, that creates a very different set of conditions where things start feeling safe inside. There starts to be a fearlessness inside. There is appreciation and love and care for what's here. Those are very different influences on how we change and mature over time. So simultaneously to the practice being fully here at A—nowhere but here—we are putting ourselves in a process that has us go from A to B. It has us go from who we are today to what we can become as we become freer, more compassionate, and more liberated in this whole process.

Whether you're looking at it as going from A to B, the road in the forest that's overgrown and you're clearing it, or it's simply that you are already at the palace and there's nowhere to go, nowhere to be. However, the palace is overgrown, the capital is overgrown with lots of shrubs and trees and vines and dirt, and so it's not a matter of getting anywhere, but it's a matter of clearing all the overgrowth so the capital can be inhabited. Either way, whatever metaphor or analogy you prefer, they're both the same process.

It is a process that develops the more we can appreciate the benefit of each moment of release. We can appreciate the value or the goodness of letting go, of opening up, of not resisting, not chasing desires and wishes, not being agitated and swirling around in stories, not caught in the grip of resentments and anger, hostility. All these things are the overgrowth that prevents us from seeing this wonderfulness that waits for us inside, this beauty that we can inhabit. Maybe this inner beauty, this inner freedom and peace can be where we take up residency. Whether it's a path from A to B to get there, eventually we're there and we're taking up residency in this wonderful beauty. Or if it's just being at A fully, nowhere to go, no road to it, no path, we also end up taking up residency in a beautified heart that has become free and compassionate.

So recognize, even at the smallest initial steps of the path of release, relaxation, opening up, seeing clearly what's here, stopping to look, Oh, this is what's happening. In the relaxation, in the stopping to look and see clearly, recognize the best you can that the whole goal of the practice is found. Traces of it. You're already there, you have it, you have what it takes. Now keep doing it, keep opening to it, keep practicing it repeatedly over and over again so this can really make space and grow and develop.

There's a wonderful word in the teachings of the Buddha, [Pali word unintelligible]^[1], which means to make it abundant. He says by repeated practice we make it abundant. So make your freedom, make your peace, make your beautiful qualities of heart become abundant for you by just continuing to practice over and over again what is available for a beginner at the very start of their practice.

Thank you very much for today. It's very good.