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Guided Meditation: Breathing and What Takes us Away

So, good morning everyone, good day, hello everywhere.

I offer you my warm welcome, and I feel very warm sitting here with you again after being away for a week. Happy to be back.

One of the interesting variations for doing mindfulness practice is to keep a focus on the breathing. But whatever clearly takes your attention away from the breathing, or clearly makes it difficult to be with the breathing, then turn towards it and acknowledge it briefly. Maybe all it needs to be is, "Okay, I see you," or, "Okay, there it is."

Or maybe it's a particular name, you know, "thinking," "aching," "sound," whatever it might be. But just do a moment or two of acknowledgment, and don't rush off after that acknowledgment. It's kind of like the acknowledgment is like dropping a pebble in a pond, and just be there for a moment to watch the ripple out. Just be there for a moment and allow yourself to register the experience more fully, and then begin again on the breathing.

And it doesn't matter how often you acknowledge something different than the breathing. It only matters that you do it and then you begin again with your breathing. Just always begin again. And don't linger with anything. And this exercise, you might go back to it again and again, the same thing, but don't linger. Don't, like, study it, investigate it. Just acknowledge it. Give it its time for a few moments, and then begin again on the breathing. Begin again on the breathing, always on the breathing, but without denying, or pushing away, or ignoring what's making it difficult to be with the breath, or what takes you away from breathing. Acknowledge it and come back.

And one of the interesting things about this exercise is you start getting a sense of what it is that takes you away from the breathing. Where does your mind go? What are the concerns and preoccupations? And you don't have to think about it or do anything about it in meditation. But it's just interesting to see that and come back. And maybe it doesn't need any more attention than that. It's enough just to come back to your breathing over and over again.

So, assuming an upright posture, either literally or metaphorically. A posture in which it may be a little bit easier for you to attend to your breathing, to accompany your breathing, the body breathing.

Sometimes it's a posture which is a little more open in the chest, so there's more space in the chest to breathe. Or a little bit more relaxed in the belly, so there's room in the belly to relax, hang forward. And then lowering your gaze about 45 degrees to the floor, not looking at anything in particular. And when you're ready, you can close your eyes.

And then taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. Breathing in and breathing out. Re-familiarizing yourself with the experience of breathing. Deep, deep breath. Long exhale here now.

And then letting your breathing return to normal. And on the exhale, relax more. On the exhale, relax the muscles of the face. Release the shoulders, and soften the belly.

On the inhale, feel your body broadly, globally. And on the exhale, release your body globally, widely. Let go, soften in your body.

And then settling into the body's experience of breathing. Maybe like an airplane coming in to land, and everything gets very still, and focused, and quiet. Coming in to land in your breathing.

Feeling the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out. And letting breathing be the center of your world. But if anything takes you away from that center, take a few moments to relaxedly, clearly acknowledge it. It could be as simple as an imaginary nod in the head, or "I see you," or "Okay," and then begin again with your breathing.

No need to linger with anything that takes you away from the breathing. Just acknowledge it, register it, and begin again with your breathing. Relaxing into your breathing.

Whatever takes you away from your breathing, you can acknowledge it. Kindly acknowledge it, peacefully. Even if it's a surprising new thing, receive it peacefully.

And learning the art of turning the attention to what is happening, so that it's a peaceful meeting between our awareness and what's happening. This way of meeting the world allows for what's good in the world to show itself more clearly.

And may it be that this meditation practice supports us to see what is good in the world, what is good in others. And may we value it and appreciate it.

In this, seeing the good in the world and appreciating it is one of the ways of living for the welfare and happiness of others. When what is good is appreciated, it has a chance to grow. It's not ignored.

May this community of ours that meditates together these weekday mornings, may the benefit of our collective practice be for the welfare and happiness of the world. May it spread out from us, with our ability to see and appreciate what is good in others, even when they can't see it. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

Dharmette: Non-Craving and Simple Caring

So, we have a guest on the altar for this week. It's Kuan Yin, Kannon, Avalokiteśvara^[1], different names.

And I left it there yesterday morning for the Sunday morning talk because I wanted to give a talk for the coming new year. So I gave a talk, calling this the "Year of Care," and talked about care and compassion. So I wanted Kuan Yin to be there.

And now she's there, left her there. And I thought of giving the same talk, spread it out over five days these mornings. But this morning I woke up with a different idea.

It begins with a story. In the monastery, there was a hallway and a door that went outdoors into the garden. There were all kinds of other places, offshoots, other passageways that went off from that hallway. But when you went straight down the hallway, you came to the door, a big wooden door.

But it was kind of a special door, maybe a magical door. And the only way to visit this special garden was to go through that door. Many of the monks and nuns, the monastics, wanted to see this garden, had heard rumors about how wonderful it was and peaceful it was, and they really wanted to see it. Some of them were depressed, or angry, or upset somehow, disturbed, and they wanted to go someplace away from everyone where they could be safe. That's what they really wanted to do. And some just wanted to see beauty. And some wanted to get away from the work of the monastery.

Many of the monastics stood in front of that door and tried to open it, and it wouldn't open. It wouldn't open. This door only opened under very particular circumstances. For the monastics to discover how to open this door—because they really wanted to go to see this garden, or they wanted to get away from what they were doing—how do you open this door?

Because the door didn't open, some of them ended up going down the side hallways and into the labyrinth of the different places in the large monastery. Some of them forgot about the door or took a long time before they came back to that door.

But every once in a while, some people would stand in front of the door long enough, trying all the different things to open the door, that they would just stand there and not have any more wish for the door to open. Stand there without any desire.

And when that happened, then the door opens.

The door only opens for people who have no craving, no clinging, who are not caught in the grip of desire. Then the door opens.

So this little story represents a huge possibility for us. A door that's always standing in front of us, ready to be opened when we meet reality without projecting and asserting our desires. Our craving—the strongest desire that Buddhism talks about is craving^[2].

Craving is a desire which has the better of us. It directs us, it's compulsive, and we can't put it down easily. Some desires are a dime a dozen; they come easily and are easily let go of, there's no big deal. But cravings are the ones that we can't put down, that kind of force within us like, "I have to have this." And as long as that force is there, there's a door that won't open. The door to reality, the door to our heart, the door to our minds. There's a door that won't open. It only opens when we put down our craving and we stop desiring, for a few moments at least.

Now, it's a hard thing to do because some people identify with desires. "I desire, therefore I am. Desire is me. If I have a desire, it's my desire. It's part of me, it's an important part of me. And to deny my desires is to deny myself in some way." And of course, there's some truth to that. Not all desires are a problem. But the desires of craving, the desires that are compulsive, the desires that take the better of us—those are the desires Buddhism is learning to address.

When we identify them strongly, and we follow them, and go into them, and try to understand our life through them, sometimes the metaphor for it is that of a big tangled ball of string. It's more than a two-dimensional maze; it's a three-dimensional labyrinth. It's very hard to find your way out once you go into the world of desires, wants, and not-wants, cravings, and aversions. Trying to navigate, and understand it, and find the right one—it can be a labyrinth you never come out of, taking all these side hallways and trips for a long time.

And then there's the Gordian sword that cuts through that Gordian knot, the big knot of entangled desires. It's a very simple thing. It's very hard to do, but maybe even harder to appreciate the value of it.

And that is to crave nothing. To be present without any compulsive desire whatsoever. Maybe with no desire—just here, just present. What opens then?

And what then? We just stand if the door opens, we just stand there. Some people don't like to have no desires because then they feel like they don't do anything. But then there's a next instruction.

In the monastery, if the door finally opens for you, there's a rake just the other side of the door. And begin raking the garden, cleaning it. It works to have no craving. It doesn't work to have no craving if we're couch potatoes. But no craving, no compulsion, nothing, no desires driving us. And then take the rake, start raking. Sweep the kitchen floor. When's the last time you cleaned the shower? Clean the refrigerator. Take out the trash. Go say hello to the neighbors. Call a friend. Start doing the simple things of life, but the ones that are kind of in front of you and obvious. Don't do nothing. Have no craving, and start caring for this world in the simplest possible ways. And then that grows and develops and can become the whole world.

The danger, the challenge is how to engage with the raking, the caring for the world, without then succumbing back into the world of craving, into the world of desire. One of the ways to avoid that is to meditate every day. To find a way to be present that allows you to shed, to put down the burdens of desire, the weight of craving and aversion, the force of contraction.

In meditation, to discover or get close to a way of being when you put down desires, put down craving. Even healthy ones and good ones that are good to pick up again after meditation. But to come to a place of diminished quiet, calm, diminished desires, and have that as a reference point. Then to understand what are the healthy desires to act on.

If we come out of the door, if we stand in front of the door and we have no desires, and we just stand there, very quickly that becomes a desire. It's a natural thing to follow the natural pull into the garden. The rake is there, start raking the leaves.

When I was a Zen monk, there was a very formal way of eating in the meditation hall. We have these three bowls that are nestled inside each other—a big one, a middle one, a small one. Usually, the rice would go in the big one, the soup would go in the middle one, and some salad or vegetables go in the small one.

I thought, "Well, I'll just eat the most efficient way there is. I don't have any desires for anything. I'll just eat everything from the first bowl, then everything in the second bowl, everything in the third bowl, and I'll be done."

But I was eating in the meditation hall where we ate in silence, next to the abbot. At some point, he saw what I was doing and he told me, "Gil, just eat naturally."

Then I noticed that if I stopped my drive to eat efficiently—simply because I was not supposed to have any desires—I noticed that I would take a few bites of the rice, put it down, and naturally pick up the soup. I'd go back and forth. It was almost as if there was no desire, just this natural thing to do, to go through and eat from different bowls at different times.

What is your natural inclination when you have no craving, when you have no desires? Maybe it's to clean the kitchen floor, the refrigerator, or the bathroom. Or go visit a neighbor. There are all kinds of things this world calls on us to do.

And so to have no desires, to be desireless, cravingless in a certain kind of way—in a way that allows us to care for the world. And then, do please engage. But be careful you don't get caught up back in the world of craving.

So that's my thoughts for today. Thank you very much.