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Guided Meditation: Settling into Clarity

Welcome everyone, and thank you for being here. As we train our minds by practicing meditation, we are not looking for some special experience. Rather, we're putting in place wholesome tendencies of the mind, wholesome conditions, so that we can open up and greet our experience in a way that is liberating rather than stuck and reactive.

So, as you know, this is a gradual path, and we begin by accepting and getting to know who we are. Our theme for this week is opening the Dharma heart. To me, that means learning to trust what the present moment is offering us, without needing to change how things are in order to be okay. And for those of us who have been conditioned by trauma, it can be that trusting anything can be quite a tall order.

Let's begin our meditation by formulating our intention, the idea that motivates us to practice. On Monday, I shared with you my personal intention, which is: may I be a safe haven of kindness and emptiness for all beings everywhere. So take a moment now to formulate your deepest wish. What brings you to practice meditation?

Assume your meditation posture, whether you're sitting, lying down, or maybe even standing. Feel the support of the earth, resting on the earth to support you. Feel that contact of the buttocks, or the back, or the feet with the earth, and send your roots down deep. Then, gently align the spine so that the energy flows nicely from heaven to earth and back right through your spinal column. See if you can land in a posture that gives you a sense of quiet confidence, where you feel alert and balanced.

Now we'll give ourselves the gift of letting go. To the extent we can, relax first of all the body: the head, the neck, and shoulders. Relax the arms, the elbows, wrists, and hands. Relax the heart area, the belly, the hips, the legs, and the feet. Let go of any obvious tensions. If there are tensions that we can't let go of, just bring a sense of softness to those tensions that are difficult to release.

We'll begin with a short practice of mettā^[1] meditation just to warm up our mindfulness a little bit. If you like, you can bring a benefactor to mind and see them in front of you—someone who invariably brings you joy when you're with them. Or, if you're comfortable offering mettā to yourself, you can just do it that way.

May I, may you, may all beings be safe and protected. May we be happy. May we be peaceful. And may we know moments of freedom. Lighting a little candle of well-wishing in our hearts for ourselves and for everyone, for this community, and the whole world.

And we bring in the wisdom factor of asking: where do we place our trust? Do we trust the mind that is spinning with preoccupations? Or is the invitation to choose stepping into the present moment, leaving all our preoccupations outside the door for this brief half-hour?

As you may know, the Pali^[2] word for mindfulness or awareness is sati^[3], and I often think of sati as my best friend in this endeavor. I invite her to come and sit with me, consciously choosing, resting in, and relaxing into open awareness. It's like putting my head inside her lap, perhaps. Let's let the mind settle down now.

Staying with our ever-changing experience of the breath as our meditation object. Gently taking in a long, slow, deep breath. Appreciating the whole cycle of the breath, as the inhale progressively flows into the exhale, and the exhale flows into the inhale. Letting our full awareness inhabit the process of breathing. Trusting it is possible to let the mind settle down.

Enjoy the beautiful connection of just settling into the world of the breath. Breathing in and settling. Breathing out openness. Trusting the company of being with the breath. Letting the eyes close as you settle into the breath. Being here with this ebb and flow^[4] of the experience of breathing is all we need.

Softening the muscles of the face: the forehead, the eyes, around the eyes, and behind the eyes. The sinuses, the cheeks, the lips, the mouth, and the jaw. Joining the breath on this quiet journey through the inhale and the exhale. Breathing in, feeling settled. And breathing out the clarity that comes from open awareness.

As we settle the body and the mind, breathing in, this makes space for the clarity of open awareness. We can offer that clarity to the world, to each other, and to ourselves. With the warm heart of kindness, breathing in, settling. Breathing out, open and clear.

And if the mind should wander, as minds tend to do, coming back with a smile, settling into the breath and the clarity of awareness.

As we come to the end of the sitting, with a mind that has benefited from appreciating some of the goodness in ourselves and in our world, and through the goodness of our practice... may we, from our center of settledness and clarity, now radiate our heartfelt wish that all beings everywhere be safe. May all beings be happy. May we all be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

Dharmette: Opening the Dharma Heart (5 of 5): Trusting Emptiness

Friends, I'm glad to be here with you. Some of you have been asking about when this series of guided meditations and talks will be up on AudioDharma. Many of you know this, but the beautiful entity that is IMC^[5] has a remarkable business model, which is one of generosity, and there is not a single paid employee. Everything works because a dedicated army of volunteers offer their time freely. In this case, the person responsible for putting these talks up on AudioDharma is away. So everything will be up at some point, but I can't exactly tell you when.

Also, someone asked where I'm teaching from. I live in a very remote and beautiful spot in the south of France near a huge nature reserve. Beautiful stars, lots of biodiversity, and lots of quiet. But if you're into entertaining and shopping, you wouldn't like it here at all.

Today we come to the last talk in this series of wholesome qualities that we can cultivate to prepare the mind and the heart for awakening. On Monday, I talked about Pali as being a language that is highly polysemic—and that's not a pun. Polysemic is of Greek origin, and it means that quite often a single word will have a number of quite different meanings.

In the early texts, the word for the quality we'll explore today is pasanna^[6], and it's not related to vipassana, which has two S's and one N. This word has one S and two N's. Gil Fronsdal^[7] translates pasanna as clear, happy, and trusting. But literally, it means something like "settling forward." In Pali, the prefix pa- means forward, onward, or to the fore, and it brings the idea of this quality of mind as one that is [forward-leaning]^[8]. Sad is the root of the word pasanna, and it means "sit" or "settle." So pasanna literally means settled, but as an adjective, it is translated as bright, clear, pure, transparent, and it can also mean being full of faith, having confidence, and trusting. In addition to that, it includes a sense of being pleased and happy.

I think that the root of the word has a lot to do with what it means for us as meditators—of being settled as the big part of how this all comes about. In my professional life, I used to work as a limnologist, which is somebody who studies the ecology of lakes, rivers, and coastal areas. I like to think of taking a sample of a column of lake water from near the bottom to near the surface, and then letting it sit long enough so that all the dregs and the particles can settle to the bottom. What's left at the top is water that is transparent and clear.

If we sit long enough and let the mind settle down, we can enjoy a mind that is transparent, clear, and able to let in the light of the Dharma. Dharma practice is often thought of as a process of purification, and it does take a while. It does require letting the magic happen, but it's the transformation habit and the opening up that makes that possible.

Eventually, if we sit long enough and let the mind settle down, we do have moments when our preoccupations are no longer running the show. Instead of letting the mind keep stirring up the dregs of thoughts and preoccupations, we can perhaps dare to let things settle, if only for a short time. Don't be discouraged if you can't yet remain settled for a long time. You might think of yourself as a parent and your mind as a little toddler. If you've had kids, you'll remember how wonderful it was when your little toddler first stood up, finally took a couple of steps, and of course, plopped down right away. But those baby steps were just glorious and a cause of great happiness for you. Celebrate your baby steps of letting the mind settle down.

And then, trusting the emptiness of a mind with awareness that is wide open, receptive, soft, unobstructed by preoccupations, glad, and confident.

I think the idea of trust is key to being able to walk this path. I had the good fortune to receive lay ordination from my Zen teacher, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi^[9], and he gave me the Buddhist name Kancho Doshin, which means something like "feel, illuminate, path of faith."

For the "feel, illuminate" part, I remember my first two years in the monastery where I cried silently in nearly every period of meditation, and often throughout the day. The tears just kept coming, and this did feel like a process of purification. I think perhaps with the first part of my name, "feel, illuminate," Suzuki Roshi was encouraging me to trust the process of letting my feelings arise and eventually light the way.

As for being a "path of faith"—well, I don't think this was my strong point. Of course, my faith in my teacher and my faith in the Buddhist teachings was rock solid, but faith and confidence in myself was really sorely lacking. For me, learning to trust has been a big part of learning to walk this path. The Buddha never wanted his disciples to trust blindly; on the contrary, the Dharma does a splendid job of pointing the way. But even with that, each of us has to learn how to realize it for ourselves because we're all different. We all have our own causes and conditions, our own knots to untie and unwind.

We need to learn where we get stuck, where we cling, how we become reactive. Right now, where am I putting my trust? Am I trusting my fear? Am I trusting anger? Am I filling up the radiant emptiness of the present moment with needing to prove myself, with "me, myself, and mine," wanting to be someone? Or might it be possible to trust this radiant emptiness? It is available to each of us when we stop filling it up with our agendas and preoccupations.

Do I trust noise, or [clutter, or]^[10] silence? What kind of trust is needed so that I can let the dregs of selfing settle out, allowing for the clarity that is needed for insight?

The qualities that the Buddha sought to inspire in his followers to prepare them for his deepest teachings are: being receptive, having a mind that's soft without the fetters of fixed views and conceit, free of the preoccupations of the hindrances^[11], glad and inspired to practice, and—with today's quality—a mind that is settled, clear, bright, and confident.

When these qualities are in place and we have opened the Dharma heart, then we can finally understand the deepest teachings of the Buddha. Do you know what these deepest teachings are? They may sound rather pedestrian at first, not so mind-blowing. In the discourse I'm referring to this week, Majjhima Nikaya 91^[12] in the Middle Length Discourses, when the Brahmin Brahmāyu had these wholesome qualities of mind and the Dharma eye arose in him, then the Buddha said: "All that is subject to arising is subject to cessation."

And with this, Brahmāyu saw the Dharma and became enlightened. That's all there is to it. To really know that all that is subject to arising is subject to cessation. But of course, it's not enough to just know it with the mind; we have to know it with our whole being and be transformed by it.

My suggestion to you with the teachings of this week is that for the Dharma eye to open in you, you may need to do some preliminary work of opening the Dharma heart. We need to get to the bottom of our suffering and see the uselessness of clinging to anything, bringing all of who you are to walking this path. Then letting go of trusting the small self of "me, myself, and mine," and opening up and making space for trusting the Dharma to take you in the direction of freedom.

When we can let the mind settle and get out of the way, the Dharma knows where to take us, and that's something we can trust.

Thank you. A small announcement is that next week you will be in good hands with my friend Dawn Neal. Dawn and I were thesis buddies six years ago when we did our master's degree with Gil Fronsdal as our major professor, so I'm sure you'll enjoy next week as well. Thank you for being here.