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Guided Meditation: Letting Go with the Buddha

Welcome. In my imagination, I have this kind of an image of all of us together, sitting in one very big circle, and that we're all welcoming each other into this meditation time. Thank you for being here.

One of the inspiring, maybe even guiding, stories from the Buddhist tradition for me is the story of the Buddha's death. He died knowingly and consciously. He died prepared to die. He spent his last days saying farewell. He spent his last days carefully asking his disciples if there was anything else they needed to learn, or if they had any questions anymore. Perhaps as a very fortunate thing for him, they did not, so that as he was dying, he could feel complete with having passed on his teachings to others.

Then he gave his very last teaching. His very last words were two sentences: everything that arises, everything that's conditioned, has a nature to pass away. I think he was just saying, "Of course I'm going to die." And then he said, "Keep practicing to become complete, to become accomplished. With vigilance, with diligence, keep practicing."

After that, he lay down—or maybe he was already lying down. He was outdoors, which I find inspiring, between two trees. They say it was the Indian sal tree^[1], and he laid down between them on his side. He entered into meditation. He entered into deep concentration, deep absorption. He went through the jhānas^[2], and it's kind of like he took one last tour or visit to these meditation states that he was familiar with. Maybe they were kind of a home for him.

He went through experiences of being very settled and focused, experiences of tremendous joy, maybe even kind of rapture as the concentration deepened. He had further experiences of a sublime, pervasive sense of peaceful happiness and happy contentment. He went further and experienced deep levels of equanimity and peace. This is a man who knew he was dying.

He went further and went into deep states of absorption where he was no longer hearing, seeing, or touching the world around him. The mind became very, very still, until finally everything kind of faded away in his mind. There was almost nothing, almost no perception or feelings at all. You would think that's a place he would die, but he returned. He came back out of his deepest absorptions and went back to the beginning, and then started again. He came to the middle state of a very deep equanimity and peace. We don't know exactly what he did at that point, but that's when he died and passed away.

This is a wonderful, inspiring story for me because death is one of the great things that terrify people. A lot of people are troubled by death. Here, the Buddhist tradition offers a story at the center of its religion about its founder, who had this tremendous peace and equanimity. He was an old man—he was 81 years old, knew he was dying, he was sick—and he faced it with a lot of peace, equanimity, and a kind of matter-of-factness.

That story is a reframing story. It's a story for people who don't have an example of embracing, facing, or stepping towards death, and having the capacity to do so with tremendous equanimity and peace. To do it in a way that is very rewarding and satisfying, with a level of peace and happiness where the process of letting go in that kind of circumstance becomes a welcome process. In this way, it's a story the Buddhists tell that creates a very different context. It is not one of fear, closing down, horror, running away, or trying to discover an elixir that will let us live forever. It is something that faces the inevitability of an end with freedom and peace.

There are many endings in our life, and many challenges. The story points to the possibility that we can meet them with a level of peace and attention. We can practice in the middle of it. These stories of practice are what's important; they are the stories that help lead us to our freedom.

So here we are now to do our meditation practice. There is a long history of mindfulness meditation being a preparation for dying. It's many other things too, including a preparation for living, but this is a very important work: this work of waking up to here, developing the capacity to be here, and developing the capacity to let go of distractions. To let go of what takes us away from here. That capacity to let go and come back, to let go and wake up—let that become strong, developed, cherished, and loved. It is a kind of homecoming to be awake here. It might not seem so special today, but there will be a time, maybe not just when you're dying, when you'll be so grateful that you've developed this ability. It will provide you with tremendous benefit.

So now we practice. Take a meditation posture and do whatever you do to settle in, to be here.

Perhaps have an intimacy to your body, to your breathing, and a relaxing letting go as you exhale.

Each exhale, letting go of your thoughts.

Exhale, letting go into your body.

Here.

Each breath, each exhale, as if you are the Buddha and it's your last breath.

As you're sitting here, if there are any challenges for you, maybe reframe the challenge. It is either one more thing to let go of, or one more thing to love.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, you might consider a new way of viewing your awareness, your attention. Some people have the idea—maybe deeper than an idea, maybe even unconscious—that awareness receives the world. Maybe we're oppressed by the world, by what comes to us, by difficulties and things. Rather, look at awareness as something with which we touch the world. It's a kind of Midas touch where we touch everything with awareness, with kindness, with care.

If we're fortunate enough to see, our seeing sees everything with kindness. If we're fortunate enough to hear, everything we hear is touched by kindness. Smell, taste, touch—even if we think about things.

I offer this not as a thing you have to do, but rather as an alternative that might be better than what you're currently doing. And if it's a better alternative, you might try it. So that when we come out of meditation, maybe, just maybe, you're more inclined to see each and every thing, to hear each and every sound, with some modicum of kindness, of care, of love.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

Dharmette: Stories (3 of 5) Opening Stories

Hello. Continuing with this theme of stories that we live by, today's focus is "stories that open." Using the acronym for S.T.O.R.Y., we have the Source story, Trapping stories, and then today's Opening stories.

Over the years that I've been a Buddhist practitioner, especially here in the West, I've seen all kinds of attitudes towards stories, thinking, and words that are dismissive of them. People treat them as traps or as problems. There is an idea that mindfulness practice is about breaking out of stories completely, that all stories obscure reality or are not quite right. Or even that having any words for things is somehow a barrier toward wordless, direct, non-dualistic contact with reality.

Certainly, it's true that stories and words can interfere with our life. That's why the talk yesterday was about trapping stories. There can be trapping words that keep us restricted, narrow, tight, and constricted. But there are also words and stories that are opening. They open us to new possibilities and kind of free us from the traps of stories.

For me, the paradigmatic^[3] example of this—one that I loved when I first read it—was in the autobiography of Helen Keller. She was blind, couldn't hear, and couldn't speak. She was raised without any words at all, almost like a wild animal. Some of you know the story better than I do, but she had a teacher who, at some point, put Helen's hand underneath a faucet of flowing water. With the other hand, the teacher spelled out the letters for "water" into Helen's hand. Helen writes in her autobiography that the light went on for her. The world opened up. She now understood there were words that referred to the objects in the world. Now she could communicate, she could understand, and she could organize the world. The whole world was starting to make sense.

So this idea that words and stories always interfere is not the case. There are some stories which are opening. They open us and free us from the trapping stories that we live in.

I'd like to retell you a story from my book, A Monastery Within. In the monastery, after the new monastics had been there for close to a year, they were starting to get restless and wondering why they were there. They had settled in enough to start seeing that their monastery had problems, especially interpersonal issues. Monasteries are often places people go who have the greatest need of spiritual practice, but because of that great need, they often bring challenges with them. So monastic life can be difficult with all the challenging fellow monastics there.

It was a custom for the abbess of the monastery to take the new monastics, after about a year, on a pilgrimage to the holy sites of Buddhism. When they heard this, the new monastics were quite excited. They'd read about the holy sites in India where the Buddha was born, where he first taught, where he was enlightened, and where he died. So they packed their bags, ready to go, and got on a bus.

The first thing the abbess did was take them to an old age home. There they saw people who were amazingly old, frail, in wheelchairs, blind, and toothless. Some of them were quite frail, and the monastics had never seen such a collection of really old people. It was a surprise to see it.

They went back on the bus, and the abbess took them to the local hospital. There they saw people at all kinds of stages of illness—dramatic illnesses, Alzheimer's, and major injuries that people had to live with. The monastics were stunned to see the collection of illnesses, injuries, and physical challenges that people can live under.

Then the abbess took them to a hospice and a mortuary. They saw people who were in the last days of their life, people who had died, and people laid out on mortuary slabs to be prepared for whatever is next. They'd never seen so much death and dying all in one place, and it was stunning.

They went back to the monastery and went to their infirmary. There was an old monk who was maybe 99 years old. He had lived a long monastic life and was also dying. They went to see him in his room, and there was a peace in the room. There was a serenity. When they went to sit with him, he didn't really talk, but he was certainly very cognizant and aware that they were there. He had this delightful sparkle and warmth with which he received the visiting new monks. They'd never seen someone on the brink of death who had such warmth, peace, and love.

Then the abbess took them back to the meditation hall to give them some teaching. She said, "You have now seen the holy sites of Buddhism. Now it's for you to practice." The holy sites were old age, sickness, death, and the monastic who has discovered peace.

This is a story of reframing, of opening up. Now the monastics had a whole different attitude to their life in the monastery than they had before.

Rainer Maria Rilke^[4] writes that "perhaps everything terrifying is, in its deepest being, something helpless that wants our love." That's not a story, but it's a reframing statement. The idea that everything terrifying needs our love is a terrifying idea because there are frightening things, and now we're supposed to love them. But we have stories that reframe and open up our world.

If you have enough of this, you begin to appreciate that maybe the trapping stories shouldn't have the last word. Maybe they're not absolute or ultimately true. Maybe there are other perspectives to bring. Good stories bring that. They bring an opening, offering a new possibility and a new perspective that's freeing rather than limiting.

I'd like to end with a story which I'm also fond of that I've told many times. I tell it in children's programs, so I'm sure many of you have heard it. But maybe, as you hear it, you can avoid dismissing it just because you've heard it before, and rather apply it because you know it. How is this relevant for you in your life? How is this a story which is opening?

It's a story from China of a very old farmer who was getting old and weak. He had a young son who helped him on his farm. They also had an old horse they used for plowing their fields and taking care of things. At some point, the horse ran off into the mountains. The fellow villagers said, "Oh, disaster has struck! Poor you. How are you going to manage? This is terrible. What's going to happen to you now?"

And the old farmer says, "We shall see."

So the young son goes up into the mountains to look for the horse that ran away. He comes back with a wild horse that he found and brings it back. The villagers say, "Oh, now everything will be okay for you!"

And the farmer says, "We shall see."

Then, as the son was training the horse, he fell off and broke his leg. The villagers said, "Oh, this is terrible for you. Your son does all the work, he can't work now. This is a disaster."

And the farmer said, "Oh, we shall see."

Then the king of the country decided to go to war with a neighboring country, so he drafted all the able-bodied young men. But of course, the young man had broken his leg, so he couldn't be drafted. The villagers came to the farmer and said^[5], "Oh, you're so lucky that your son wasn't drafted! He's here, and his leg will heal well enough. This is great."

And of course, the farmer says, "We shall see."

There's no end to the story. A good story is supposed to have an ending, but this story just goes on and on and on. We shall see. Maybe so, maybe not. We'll see.

This is an opening story. What are your opening stories? In what ways can you reframe the trapping stories that you live by? What are the stories that you live by that do not serve you, and is there in fact a better story to tell? Not to make something up—the trapping stories are already made up; they're just perspectives. Stories that tell of possibilities. Stories that tell of love.

To love everything, to care for everything, is neither a true thing nor a false thing. It's a possibility. So, the stories let us live into the possibilities that are inspiring, meaningful, and help this world. Stories that teach us to love everything.

Thank you. We'll continue tomorrow with a little different twist on these opening stories—the stories that release us, and maybe they release us from stories. Thank you.