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Guided Meditation: Mindfulness of How We Are

A warm hello, and a delight for me to be here with you in this way, and to begin the day here in California meditating together in community. Thank you for being here.

As I mentioned yesterday, one of the qualities of mature Vipassanā^[1] practice is the understanding—let me say it a little differently. Mature Buddhist practice is sometimes described as understanding that nothing whatsoever is worth clinging to, nothing whatsoever is worth grasping. It is a universal statement about all things. It is an omniscience of sorts: you know one thing at least about all things, that all experiences are not worthy of grasping.

What allows that kind of broad, universal understanding? What supports it and what it comes out of is a capacity to have a conscious awareness that is 360 degrees. This means that your conscious awareness is ready to practice with, to bring mindfulness to, whatever is happening in your experience. There is not a division between that which is sacred and profane. In a certain kind of way, there is no division between what is shallow and profound; it is all equally worthy of awareness, of mindfulness.

This kind of all-encompassing mindfulness is able to touch and connect to the full range of our human life. As we begin appreciating that, it becomes a center. It becomes a kind of home and a place of freedom.

But to really make it that way, to make it all-encompassing or 360 degrees, there is one area of mindfulness that is often overlooked. In a conventional way, mindfulness could be seen a little bit like a flashlight or even a lighthouse, shining a light on different objects that we then really look at carefully to take in. We turn the light onto our breathing, our embodied experiences, our emotions, and our thinking, like we did yesterday. With that, we also open up to sounds and sights around us, and all things that can be experienced. In a sense, it is like a flashlight shining light on it, especially when we begin the practice.

But at some point, the light gets turned around 180 degrees, so that we are actually looking at the quality of the light. We are noticing not what we are aware of, but how we are aware; not what we are mindful of, but the characteristics, the felt sense, the quality of the mindfulness itself.

Generally, that takes a while. It helps if the mindfulness is really stable, meaning we have an ability to rest and abide in the present moment with some continuity over time, so we are not just flitting around from one thing to another or getting distracted all the time. In situations where awareness keeps getting hijacked by our desires, aversions, fears, and fantasies, awareness really gets lost, and we get pulled into this world of thoughts. But when awareness does not get lost, does not get swept away by thoughts, and is stable and present, then at some point, how we are being aware becomes the salient thing.

This is closely related to how we are. There is what is happening, and how we are in relationship to what is happening. There is the experience of breathing, and how we are relating to that experience. There are the experiences of the body, and how we are relating to that experience; the experience of emotions, and how we relate to those; and the experience of the mind, of thinking, and how we relate to that. It is in that how where the Dharma really opens up, because the suffering that Buddhism is addressing is in that relationship. Even if there is suffering, how are we in relationship to suffering? If we are happy, how are we in relationship to it? That relationship can get clarified, and part of that is how we are mindful. Mindfulness and attention sometimes carry that relationship, sometimes they get entangled, and sometimes they come along side by side.

So, this meditation, I will point you to some aspect of this. Enter into a meditative posture and soften your eyes. Some of you might prefer to close your eyes, some of you to keep them open, but soften your eyes. Let the eyeballs rest in their sockets. Some people find it helpful if there is an inner gaze for the eyes, to gaze backwards and down, so we are not reaching out with the eyes.

Take a few long, slow, deep breaths. The deep in-breath is to connect to this time and place with this body, and the long exhale is a time to relax and settle into the here and now in this body. Maybe on the long exhale, you can even wiggle your body a little bit, help it relax a little bit more, and release.

Allow your breathing to return to normal. With this normal enough breathing, on the exhale, relax the muscles of the face. On the exhale, relax the shoulders. Maybe adjust the position of your hands a little bit if that supports more relaxation in the shoulders. And on the exhale, soften the belly.

Then maybe bring your attention to your head space, between your ears behind your forehead. If there is any tension, pressure, tightness, energy, or agitation associated with thinking—I call that the thinking muscle—on the exhale, relax the thinking muscle. Relax the effort to be thinking, an effort that sometimes is quite weary, exhausted from a lifetime of thinking and preoccupation. Allow your thinking to relax as well as you exhale, as if the thinking mind can ride the exhale all the way to a quiet place at the end of the exhale.

Then, from the inside of your body, become aware of the body's experience of breathing in that location where breathing is most pronounced or most comfortable, where you have the custom of practicing mindfulness of breathing.

As you inhale, receive the inhalation. As you exhale, allow it to go, allow the exhale to release. Receiving and allowing.

And as you are gently with your breathing, how would you characterize your awareness of breathing, your mindfulness of breathing? Is there any strain to be aware? Are you bearing down or pushing to be aware? Or are you holding back, hesitant, unsure of yourself? Is there a subtle confidence in your awareness, or is there a subtle doubt or hesitancy? With the awareness, are you going out to know the breathing, or is awareness receiving the experience of breathing?

Is there any anxiety that goes along with being aware, a sense of caution? Is there any subtle feeling associated with being mindful of "I can't do this, this is hard"?

If you notice anything that is extra, anything that is more than simply being aware, see if you can let go of it. Or if you can't let go of it, let it fall to the side. Highlight for yourself the radical simplicity of awareness that simply knows, simply is aware. It is somewhat like a mirror that just is aware of what is in front of it without distortion, comment, or preferences. Just aware.

Breathing in and breathing out.

And then, as we come to the end of this sitting, if we can appreciate that there are always two things happening: there is what is happening, and there is our relationship to it. When we have this ability to recognize the relationship—the attitude, the desires, the intentions, the preferences that come along with what is happening—then we can avoid acting on those attitudes and intentions that are harmful, and we can choose to act on those which are beneficial. This realm of how we relate is a sacred realm. The relationships between ourselves and our experience, ourselves and other people, ourselves and ourselves—that relationship is so important.

May it be that this practice of mindfulness supports us to avoid causing harm in the ways that we are connected to others and to this world. May we not hurt anyone, oppress anyone, or diminish the value of anyone. Instead, may that relationship we have bring benefit, bring joy, bring freedom, happiness, and ease.

May we care not only for others and ourselves, but may we care for the relationship, for how we relate. And in how we relate, may it be for the welfare and happiness of all beings. May all beings be happy. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be safe. And may all beings everywhere be free.

Dharmette: Harmony of Zen and Vipassana (5 of 5) Prescriptive and Descriptive

So, my friends, we come to the end of this week. For these days, I have been presenting the basic, simplest way of teaching mindfulness that we do here at Insight Meditation Center, and in parts of the Western Vipassanā world.

As we come to the last day, I want to address the so-called instructions in mindfulness practice. I have instructions to be mindful of breathing, the body, emotions, and thoughts. Instructions to be aware of the four foundations of mindfulness: body, feelings, mind states, and what are called dharmas^[2] (the inner processes that either lead to suffering or to freedom). There are other instructions, like "this is what you do," "focus here," and "focus your attention this way."

It can give the idea that we are doing a "doing" practice—we are doing something with awareness and attention, directing it someplace. It is a fine instruction to do that. It is wonderful to do. It is wonderful to be engaged and fully involved in whatever the task is at hand, and it could be meditation as well.

But the "doing" sometimes comes with all this extra baggage. There can be a lot of self involved in any kind of doing, even something as simple as bringing awareness to something. We are checking ourselves out as we do it: "Am I doing it the right way? Am I doing it well enough? I can't do this. The person next to me meditating is probably doing it better," or "I'm the best one." All these things can be very subtle, almost subconscious—little attitudes of "this is too difficult for me."

When I was a young student, I had this idea that if it was happening to me, it was not the right experience. So I could never get it right, because I had a subtle, almost unconscious idea that it was never right because it was my experience. It is almost painful even to say it, that I used to be that way. I also had the subtle idea that there was always somewhere else to be, somewhere else that was "the experience" to have. It was this constant dissatisfaction with what was happening, and that came along with that "doing."

Other times, I discovered that there was such pristine purity or simplicity in the doing. I would kind of forget myself in the doing of all kinds of things, whether it was gardening, cooking, or different activities. The same thing happened with this simple mindfulness of breathing. I could give myself over completely to it, and any sense of me being the doer dropped away because I was so completely in it, and it was so simple, with so little attitude.

But there is still an instruction of where to bring your attention, of what to do. So in a sense, mindfulness instructions can be seen as prescriptive: this is what you do.

Another way of understanding these mindfulness instructions is that they are not prescriptive, but rather descriptive. It is describing what awareness is noticing. So there is no actively searching for something, trying to do something, trying to get something, or trying to make something happen. It is more like settling back in a nice easy chair and just noticing, being aware of what comes into awareness.

For example, we are sitting quietly, and a loud sound happens outside. That just has arisen in awareness. The mindfulness describes what we are aware of: "Oh, that's what it is." It's not that we are actively describing it, but rather the instructions are descriptive. It's like, "Okay, if the inhale arises, then we know the inhale." This happens not because we are practicing mindfulness of breathing per se as an intentional act, but more that we just know that this is what is being known. We know that this is what has arisen.

The description of mindfulness being all-encompassing means that there is an openness to awareness, an openness to our sense of presence that is receptive—it just receives whatever is coming and going, whatever is arising and happening. To say "receptive" is maybe a little bit too much of the prescriptive thing, like "Okay, now I have to be receptive." It is more like the windows have been opened, and what happens? Maybe we hear the sounds of the birds, or the breeze comes into the house. It isn't that we are intending for the breeze or wanting to hear the birds; it is just that this is what arises. We have eyes, ears, a nose, a tongue, and sensations of our body. As we sit, what is known here? What are we aware of? What comes into awareness?

Practicing in a way where mindfulness is more a description of what we know than a prescription of what to do, is how things begin to shift in practice. This happens when there is enough stability, when there is enough ability to not wander off in thought with the mind being scattered. Sometimes it takes a long time to really settle down and learn to recognize the forces of distraction, the hindrances^[3], and the power of the desiring mind, and to let all that come to rest, soften, let go, and quiet. It takes time to be able to just be here fully in the present moment in a simple, very ordinary way, nothing special, not trying to do anything except just allowing ourselves to be here and being open.

At some point, the practice takes on this more descriptive quality than a prescriptive quality. What helps to get there is that we have to really know ourselves well. One of the strengths of mindfulness practice is that we are learning to pay careful attention to recognize many different dimensions of what is happening in the present moment.

If the Buddha came, popped into modern society—teleported from ancient India to a big metropolitan city like New York City—and wasn't prepared for the experience, he would be very present. He knows how to be present, he is really there for the experience, and he knows himself well. He was a walker; he walked all over India. So he starts walking through New York City, but he doesn't know the difference between a curb and a road, or what the lines on the road mean, or what traffic lights are. He can't read English, so he doesn't know what a one-way street is. There is a lot of stuff he doesn't know, so he is going to get into trouble pretty quickly walking the streets of New York.

It is a silly example, but the same thing is true with our minds. If we don't know aspects of our minds, we don't even know what we don't know. When I was a new practitioner, I didn't have a self-image of myself as being an angry person. There was a way in which I didn't recognize when I was angry; it was kind of outside of the blinders I had on, or what I would notice. There was a whole range of emotions I didn't really recognize or know how to bring into awareness. As I got the mindfulness instructions, and mindfulness of emotions, I started seeing, "Oh, look at that, I didn't know all these things." So my ability to be aware in a descriptive way, in this choiceless awareness way—just aware of what's there—expanded into a new realm.

It wasn't so narrow. The world of what I became aware of when I used to focus only on my breathing in meditation, sometimes I felt quite present and wonderful and free in good ways, but it was all within a narrow domain. Throughout my life, I've learned to open up and see more and more. It isn't that I now actively intentionally practice with all these realms, but they are just there as part of the territory. Just like if you are driving through New York City, you are not consciously, actively studying the lines on the road to interpret what they are, or looking at a red octagonal stop sign and wondering, "What is that?" It is second nature to see that as you are driving along.

The same thing happens as we learn the territory, learn the vocabulary, learn the map of our own experience. Then the freedom we receive, the freedom that we have in the awareness of all things, starts becoming more and more inclusive.

There is a balance between practicing to discover what's here, and practicing just to allow what's here. Those two practices go together really well and are mutually supportive. Sometimes it seems like I'm doing more of one, sometimes more of the other. The discovery part is sometimes a little more prescriptive, like "This is what I'm doing." And sometimes the allowing part—just being free in the middle of stuff—is more descriptive: "Oh, this is what is happening to my experience."

I hope what I've said gives you something to think about, to explore, and adds a little more richness to the practice of meditation and the practice of awareness. I hope it doesn't make you busy. Hopefully, you have a sense of the metaphor of the mind: awake, aware, clear, resting in an easy chair, aware of what is happening.

Thank you.

Announcements

I have a couple of announcements. One is that these 7:00 AM sittings will continue now for the next two weeks in a wonderfully different way. This week that I taught was part of a three-week series called "The Harmony of Zen and Vipassanā." I was trying to teach Vipassanā in a way that harmonized a little bit with Zen.

For the next two weeks, my dear friends Paul Haller and Fu Schroeder will give the teachings. They are both senior teachers at the San Francisco Zen Center. Fu is currently the abbess of the Green Gulch Center. They are wonderful friends and people I have tremendous Dharma respect for. Their practice is really an inspiring thing, and I feel very fortunate that they will come here and participate in our 7:00 AM community. Paul will do it next week for those five days, and then Fu will do the last five days.

Because this is the last time I'm going to be here for these next two weeks, I wanted to say that on May 8th, on a Saturday morning, we're going to have a new and wonderful event. There is going to be a five-week series called "Mindfulness Circle for Black Identified Practitioners." If you are Black identified or African-American and you'd like to come together with other Black and African-American folks, there will be a wonderful teacher named Anne Roise. I met her this year; she is studying chaplaincy with me. She is a profoundly long-time practitioner. One of the wonderful aspects of her, in terms of the Zen and Vipassanā thing that we're doing this week, is that she was a student of Suzuki Roshi^[4] some 50 years ago. She is a long-time practitioner and a wise person.

There is information about this on the IMC website, on the IMC calendar, and on the "What's New" section.

Thank you all very much, and I look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks, and to being here with all of you as my wonderful friends offer their teachings. Thank you.