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Guided Meditation: Being with Thinking

Okay, so we'll begin with our sitting. Allowing yourself to find a comfortable posture, settle in for our time of practice together. And if you're comfortable, please close your eyes and allow the attention to come inward.

Just taking a moment to kind of survey the body, the mind, the heart: how are you right now? With the awareness that we are looking at how things are, perhaps with a sense of appreciation for the opportunity to practice, to put to good use of time.

And just softening the body, softening the muscles of the face, and the eyes, and the eye sockets. Allowing the shoulders to release and sink down. Softening any holding in the belly, any bracing in the legs or arms. And then sensing into the straightness of the spine. Sometimes it's even useful to pass the attention through the spine from the bottom to the top, just relaxing and aligning each vertebra.

And then bringing mindfulness into the mind. Just the simple awareness of the present moment, and allowing the attention to settle onto the sensations of the breath. Just the simple in and out movement, like a rhythm, and putting the attention there as a resting place for the mind. Allowing it to gather its energies.

There's nothing magic about the breath, but we can use this natural phenomenon as a support for mindfulness. So maybe just noticing whether the breath is generally long or short. And it might be that the in-breath is long and the out-breath short, or vice versa; they don't have to be the same. And if we just watch the natural breath, there will be a tendency for it to get softer and shorter. There's no control of the breath in our practice.

Still maintaining some awareness of the breath, but broadening the attention to the whole body. Perhaps sensing the breath in the body, or as an aspect of the body. Using the natural recurrence of having a body as a way to support the mind. And it's okay if the body is somewhat uncomfortable or otherwise not up to our ideal. It is as it is, and we accept that, and just intend to release any tension that might be in the body. Especially tension that's due to the mind, due to the way we are relating to the body; just softening that. Letting the body be as useful as it can, while breathing in and out.

And if we find that thoughts are coming in, that's quite normal. But we can just gently reopen to the body and the breath. As if we're releasing the thought, like releasing a balloon whose string we have accidentally been holding; just let it float away. Just gently tranquilizing the sense of the body.

And now opening to the possibility of some kind of joy in the mind, perhaps arising simply because the body is more at ease than it was before. This wouldn't be joy like leaping in the air and celebrating, but a simple inner joy that comes from ease and bodily tranquility. It may be very mild or it may be stronger, but we can open to that possibility.

If we allow that to infuse the body, perhaps spreading it with the breath, we also feel a kind of softer feeling behind it, more like happiness or contentment. Again, it could be subtle. And even if the mind is fairly active and still not wanting to stay in the present moment, there can be a contentment that we're practicing with that, that we're here doing this meditation. In a sense, contentment is always available, to be content with being here for this. Letting yourself feel that.

If you would like to just continue with the breath and the ease in the body, and a sense of inner happiness in the mind, that's fine to just rest with that. And it's also possible to use the breath and the sense of happiness as a support to open to the process of thinking. To actually use and allow the presence of thinking as part of meditation. But we would stay in the present moment, not do the thinking, but watch the thinking. Watch it like an activity, like a parent watches a child playing; just the playing of the mind with its thoughts. Or maybe there aren't any thoughts, that's fine also.

Sometimes that doesn't happen until we allow the activity of the thought, and then just let it settle out the way we settled out the body earlier. So trying that, and remembering that you have the support of the breath in the present moment, and the support of the inner happiness from meditation. Allowing mental activity without becoming active.

Gently allowing mental activity to just settle out. The breath, the body, the inner happiness of meditation. There can start to be a feeling of wholeness, fullness in the mind and body system. We become gathered around just the present moment experience. Nothing is disavowed, but there is no distraction either.

As we approach the end of this meditation, perhaps just reflecting on the experience of opening slowly to the breath and the body, the support of our inner life, and then allowing the mind to be as it is. Is there a way that this is also valuable in our daily life? The balance of having an inner anchor or orientation or reference point that we stay with, and allowing things to come and go as they do. Allowing the mind to be as it is.

Can there be both a clear sense of inner orientation and a complete openness to how things unfold? And wouldn't this be a support not only for ourselves, living peacefully among the ways of the world, but also a support for others? In that we would be available to them—open, responsive, flexible—without losing our own balance, and hence providing support for them when they're not balanced.

We don't always have the capacity for all of that, but we can understand the potential of cultivating the mind. So if it's grounded and also open and flexible, it's a real gift.

Dharmette: The Art of Letting Go (3 of 5): Letting Go by Using and by Avoiding

This week we've been looking at seven ways of letting go. Often in our practice, we would pose a question like, "How do I let go of impatience?" In such a case, these different methods are useful actions to start practicing with. We let go by doing a certain practice without expectation, maybe without impatience, and then the letting go can come about. We don't really do the letting go, but there are things we have to do in order for it to come about.

Sometimes it's enough just to see, to notice if our mind is headed into dukkha^[1] or not. Sometimes what we see is that we need to actively restrain something—we're going too far or we're getting compulsive in some way. Then over time we'll feel less and less compulsion around that. If we make the effort to restrain a little bit, it just becomes weaker and then someday it lets go. So that's what we talked about so far.

And then today we have a pair: letting go by using and letting go by avoiding. Those might sound like they contrast quite significantly, they're even opposites. And that's part of the art. This series is called "The Art of Letting Go," and part of the art is knowing which thing is going to be the best. So let's talk through each of these.

Letting Go by Using

What does it mean to let go by using? In the texts, this refers mostly to the requisites, those are the things that we need, like food, clothing, shelter, and medicine. As laypeople, we may also need some kind of transportation, some kind of communication—these basics of life. These are the aspects of life that are not going away. Here we see clearly that letting go does not mean getting rid of. Letting go does not mean getting rid of. We're not going to stop eating. But we do need to develop, for example, a relationship with food that doesn't include craving and clinging, that doesn't include dukkha. So the Buddha recommends that we explicitly practice with the aspects of life that we cannot avoid using.

As you might imagine, a lot of the energy in this one goes around food, the requisite that we often have the most attachment to. There are a lot of practices we can do to work with our relationship to eating. It's not always just that we're doing too much or we need to restrain like the previous one. There can be all kinds of subtle things tied in with our relationship to food. We may have some aversion to having certain kinds of food, or think that we should be having more of—who knows? So don't go in with expectations, but here are some popular ones.

There is a practice of taking the eight precepts for laypeople, and one of them is to not eat after the midday meal. We would just have two meals that day. In Asia at least, often people will do this on the full moon day and half-moon day, and sometimes even the quarter moon, so kind of once a week. But at least once a month they would have a day where they just have the morning meal, and then something at midday, and then wait until the next dawn. That is a way of letting go of our busyness with food when we do that, just to see what that's like. We may feel hunger, of course, and we can learn that that's okay. We can be with that for a few hours. When we can do that with relative mental ease, which might take a little practice, then we find over time that we're less controlled by our appetite. Our appetite is not as compulsive for us. So that's one possibility, to play around with whether or not we're being controlled by our belly.

There's also deliberately eating foods that we think that we like or that we think that we dislike. We all have foods like that, where there's one where we think, "Oh yeah, I love that one," and then there are the other ones like, "I haven't liked that one for 25 years, maybe my whole life." It's not a matter of having an allergy or anything, it's just we don't care for it. It can be interesting to deliberately eat each of those foods and really watch, instead of just going with the like or the dislike, the major feeling tone that comes with it. Actually watch what's going on in the mind. Notice: where does that feeling arise from? How long does it last? If I take a bite of something I don't like, is it just instantly and uniformly unpleasant for the entire time? Or are there variations in that? When does it come on? Can I redirect my attention such that it's not really as problematic? Again, this is about developing a healthy relationship with different kinds of food, such that we're not as controlled and led around by the dukkha and craving that arise with it. It's an interesting exercise; it won't hurt you really.

It's also interesting to get just in general very intimate with the process of eating. Normally, eating is completely focused on loading the fork, getting it into the mouth, and you get that first hit of what it tastes like, and you chew on it for a while. Then as soon as that gets a little bit less interesting, because the taste does fade, we're busy loading the fork again before we've even swallowed. It's interesting to watch that process. How is the mind choosing where to put the attention? When the flavor fades out very quickly, the mind gets bored and moves on to something else. We can notice that the texture changes. It's not as good once it gets all mushy, it's kind of not as appealing, and so then we're back to loading the fork. If we get very intimate with that process, then we start to see it's just a process. It's a necessary process, we have to feed the body. But can we change our relationship to the different aspects of it, such that there's not so much pushing and pulling in little instances of the mind grabbing on and pushing away? Because that's dukkha actually, at a subtle level. So try it out.

There are also things we can do around clothing, another area, because clothing is related to our image and that's an area where we have a lot of attachment. We see that these requisites tie into aspects of mind where we have a lot of clinging, craving, and identification. It can be interesting to deliberately wear unusual clothes. There's a class I teach about renunciation, and on the day that I talk about being aware of our identity, I often wear a dress to teach that class. This is unusual clothing for me. I do own a couple, but they're not my regular wardrobe, and so it's kind of fun for me to put that on and see how it feels and see people's responses or non-responses. Try it out. I remember one time suggesting to someone who dresses rather fashionably, as part of their practice, to go out wearing old, mismatched clothes, and just see how it was to shop at the grocery store wearing something that they felt very uncomfortable in. I don't know if they did it or not, but it can be fun.

In general, there are wise reflections that monastics do around using things, and we can do that too. Just being aware of why and how we're using the requisites of life. Are they just supports for us to be practicing, or are we bringing in extra craving and clinging?

We can also use various non-material aspects of life. The Buddha recommended using conceit to overcome conceit, for example, which is something like skillful imitation. We compare ourselves—that's what conceit is, it's a comparison, we're either better or worse or equal. If you want to use this quality of mind in your practice, instead of just saying, "Okay, I'm going to try to not do anything," which is very difficult, instead we compare ourselves to someone that we admire. Compare yourself to someone who's more skilled in humility or unselfishness or generosity, and then aim to become more like that. We can use the self to overcome attachment to self in a sense. There are a lot of good ways to use the parts of life that we're not going to be able to change immediately.

Letting Go by Avoiding

And then there's also avoiding, the opposite. This comes with a quote in one of the texts that says, "What taints should be abandoned by avoiding?" Here a practitioner wisely reflecting avoids—this is ancient India—a wild elephant, a wild horse, a wild bull, a wild dog, a snake, a stump, a bramble patch, a chasm, a cesspit, a sewer. These are things that are actual physical dangers, and that's common sense. We can avoid getting ourselves into dangerous or unhealthy situations that might get us agitated.

But it also goes on to say that we should avoid associating with bad friends, or behaving in ways that might harm our good standing in our community, because others might think ill of us then. Maybe you think that doesn't sound very dharmic, thinking about how we appear socially. But it does matter in that if we don't think about it, we can end up being enslaved to our relational life. Goodness knows people really go overboard on social media into avoiding looking bad and trying to look good, and there's a lot of dukkha around that. We can be a little bit more wise about that and understand: okay, I don't need to impress everybody on Facebook, but it would be nice to associate with good friends and be in good standing in a community that I care about. For the simple reason that we're nourished by that, and we thrive when we're at ease with people who share our interests and values.

This part about avoiding goes deeply into things that are dangerous for us, physically dangerous, relationally dangerous, and it can even allow us to care for others if we do that carefully. But if we look, we see that we don't always avoid what we could; we run into things that we could have avoided. Sometimes we avoid for a while, and then we can use. Remember that our pair for today is using and avoiding. Until we have enough capacity of attention, we might need to stay away from things or limit them. Then when we're stronger, we can go into them and learn to be free with them, and even learn from them.

I remember a friend of mine went on a long meditation retreat at IMS^[2]. For a while, for the beginning part of the retreat, she would come right at the end of the meal and get her food right at the end so she didn't have to see anybody in line. Then she would take it to her room to eat, which you're allowed to do there. (Don't do that at IRC!^[3]) But after a while, she found that she was just avoiding contact. She found that supportive at first, but at some point she didn't find it supportive anymore. She felt like it would be more supportive to go and be with the group and see the reactivity that came up in her mind. And so she started being able to use the conditions of the retreat in order to further her practice. So it can change.

I also have heard a story from Ajahn Amaro^[4] who said that he used to be very upset—he's a Thai Forest monk at a monastery here, or I guess now he's in England, but this was when he was here. He used to get very upset if people misinterpreted him at meetings at his monastery. He would find that somebody misrepresented what he had said or had misunderstood it and interpreted it wrong, and he would get angry about that. He'd go to great effort to be sure that everybody understood his views and he'd have to talk with everybody to make sure that they really got it. And then he realized that he was just making a huge self out of being seen perfectly in everyone's eyes. So he stopped trying. He let people state his ideas incorrectly. He let people take credit for things he had suggested. He felt what it was like to be seen as stupid or harsh when others interpreted his words that way, and he said it was a great lesson in emptiness. But he did that from a position within his monastery of having a good social standing, and from an internal space of having enough mindfulness and attention that he didn't get triggered by having these insults to his identity.

There are basically no taints, vexation, or fever if you don't feel attached to yourself.

So using and avoiding—there's a role for discernment in discovering when to do each one of those. They're different. And what is the criterion? The one that we talked about on Monday: are wholesome states increasing and unwholesome states decreasing, or are unwholesome states increasing and wholesome states decreasing? So check it out. Maybe we're starting to get a sense now of the heart that's involved in letting go.

That's it for today, and we'll continue on. Thanks.