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Guided Meditation: Inner Pleasure with Non-Reactivity

Good day, everyone, and welcome to this meditation session. This week, we're looking at the category or idea that all experiences are either pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. These tie into the teachings we had a few weeks ago on the wholesome and the unwholesome. There are some feelings of pleasure or happiness that are wholesome, and some that are not. A simplistic way, perhaps, of distinguishing between the two is if there's craving or some kind of attachment connected to it—to the joy, the happiness, or the pleasantness—it's considered unwholesome and unbeneficial. But if there's no attachment to it at all, then it can probably be considered wholesome and beneficial.

So there are beneficial forms of well-being and pleasure that are used in meditation. "Used" might be the wrong word, but we avail ourselves of them. We allow them and make room for them. In a certain way, we kind of prioritize them—not strongly, intensely, or with attachment or expectation, but we learn to recognize them. In the recognition of them, it supports us to be present. The mind wants to be with things that are pleasant, and there are feelings we can have within our body, in our inner life, which have no attachment. In fact, some of them actually arise with non-attachment, with non-clinging or non-craving. There's just goodness, and this freedom, lightness, and ease that comes when we don't contract around desires. It just feels so good, so pleasant, like fresh air after being in a stuffy place for a while.

As we sit in this meditation, rather than looking at the pleasantness of the conditions around us—if you happen to be sitting in a very comfortable chair, it might be very pleasant, or there's nice music playing, or a nice temperature, there is nothing wrong with that—but that would not be the wholesome well-being that is somehow made in the space of the heart. The inner life is opened when we let go.

Sense and feel that wholesome, inner well-being. Sense that inner pleasantness, that comfort, which seems to be opening. It seems to help let go of distractions, preoccupations, and clingings of all kinds, or even let go of, or fade away, anxieties. We have this within us as a possibility, this capacity, and it requires a little bit of shifting our paradigm, shifting the orientation with which we move through the world, especially in meditation. If we move through meditation with the habit of selfing^[1]—of referring everything back to the self, "me," "myself," and "mine"—there's probably some attachment there, so there's less room for these pleasant things. If we are always pursuing pleasure, we actually narrow the space within which to feel wholesome well-being and joy.

To assume a meditation posture, maybe sway back and forth a bit sideways, and forward and backwards. You kind of have to maybe even rotate around as a way of connecting to your body, helping you find a comfortable, upright posture in which to settle into. Gently close your eyes. Take a few long, slow, leisurely breaths. Maybe three-quarters full on the inhale, and maybe a little fuller release on the exhale. Take a deep inhale, and then on the exhale, relax and settle into your body here and now. Then let your breathing return to normal.

If you appreciate your physical body, does that make you a little bit more prone to feel what is pleasant in your body? If you appreciate your inner life in this body, does that make you more prone to feel and sense an inner sense of pleasantness, pleasure, or well-being, even right next to any feelings of the opposite?

If you appreciate your body breathing, is there anything in the breathing that's pleasant, has a rightness to it, or that you appreciate? Let go of your thoughts, quieting your mind, so there's more space and awareness to feel the body's experience of breathing. Let your mind become quieter—not as a fight with the mind, but as a way of letting the mind feel and sense something wholesome, something connecting, something tender, gentle, and pleasant here as you breathe in and breathe out. Breathing in and breathing out. Breathing with whatever is simple and pleasant, especially that to which you have no attachment or clinging. Let go of clinging and attachment, so there's more space to feel the goodness that remains. If you are involved in thinking, you're missing out on an intimacy with the pleasant, the wholesome that's within.

And then, as we come to the end of this sitting, see if there's some room you can make within to feel some inner well-being. A place of tenderness, softness, or warmth. Something that you appreciate, that has a sense of goodness or rightness within you, in your heart, your chest, or some part of your inner life. Maybe as you exhale, settle into it. As you inhale, expand it.

Resting in this place of what's pleasant in your inner life, now imagine that nothing is required of you. There is nothing you have to say or do, but people in your life come in front of you. What is it like to receive them in this place in your inner life of goodness, pleasure, and well-being? Just to receive their presence without needing to react, respond, or want anything. It's almost like you're welcoming them to also feel the rest, the pleasantness that's there. Maybe receiving them as a pillow receives your head—not going out towards them, but just being available to perceive, sense, and be present for them in this receptive way, so that others have a place in your inner well-being.

From there, perhaps you can evoke well-wishing for these other people. Extend your goodwill to them and to all beings, so that your inner well-being and your inner freedom includes a profound connection to other human beings.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may we contribute to the welfare and happiness of all.

Dharmette: Vedanā (3 of 5) Inner Pleasure with Non-reactivity

Continuing on this series, we are talking about vedanā^[2], the Pali word for feeling or feeling tone. The feeling tone has to do with the subjective experience, the nature of our experience. When we feel something physical—say, we feel the warmth of the sun—certainly the senses are activated on the surface of the skin. But the feeling is a little bit deeper inside because it's the interaction of the sensation with our response to it, our evaluation, and our perception of it. So it isn't just pleasant in and of itself, but it is also how we receive it and how we meet it.

So it's considered to be more subjective. If we begin by going at the physical level, like at the skin level with feeling tone, we're going a little bit deeper inside into what's more subjective. It's something that only we experience. Somebody else might experience the warmth as they're standing next to us, but only we have our own subjective experience of that warmth. It might be a little bit different than the person next to us because as the warmth hits our skin and is felt subjectively, the nature of it is partly this interaction with our mentality, our history, our associations, and our responses to it. The person next to us has a whole other set of those. We're starting to get into something very personal and subjective, taking a movement deeper and deeper into this inner life, and this is one of the channels into it.

Feeling tones are pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant. It's simplistic because every experience has these simple qualities to it. Of course, "pleasant" can cover a wide range of things, from just a mild sense of comfort to intense ecstasy. The "unpleasant" can again be mild discomfort to extreme pain. There's a whole range, but to reduce it to this very simple label of pleasant and unpleasant—or the literal Pali is more like happy and painful—can make things a lot simpler and help us become freer more simply.

If you go into a social situation that's very uncomfortable—people are arguing, and all kinds of terrible things are happening in this conversation at a party, for example, or at a meeting at work—trying to figure out what's going on, understand the details, and know what you have to do gets very complicated. But to take a moment and recognize, "This is unpleasant. I know how to be with unpleasant things. When things are unpleasant, I can just kind of open up, be still and quiet, and just feel the unpleasantness. I don't have to be reactive to it. I know how to be non-reactive to just what is unpleasant. It's intensely unpleasant." Simplifying it to that level, free of the drama and the stories connected to it, can be a doorway into relaxing, opening up, and finding our balance. Getting grounded in the situation might be faster than trying to navigate the situation in order to feel that.

The same is true with things that are very pleasant. "Oh, this is pleasant, and I know about pleasantness. I know how to be present to experiencing it without leaning into it and without chasing after it, just allowing it to be there and feeling it." This is a very powerful thing to do if you want to start becoming free in the midst of your experience.

There are a number of ways you can experiment with this, depending on how motivated you are and how far you want to take some of these things. One of the things that I did in my early years of Buddhist practice was that when I had an occasion to feel pain—for example, I was working on a farm at the Zen center, or doing different kinds of physical work—some of it was painful. I remember having to carry heavy objects for a long distance, and after a while, it hurt. I made it an exercise not to hurt myself, but to see, "Where can I find equanimity with the pain? Where can I find non-reactivity with the pain?" Just to feel it clearly, recognize it's there, but not get reactive to it. Not taking it personally, not having pity for myself, or getting angry at the situation around me. Just to feel the simplicity of the pain. I wasn't intentionally hurting myself, but when these things occurred, I would take them as my practice until it felt like it was no longer appropriate, and then I'd put down the heavy thing that I was carrying.

Another place to discover this, if you're motivated—which I think is generally probably pretty safe—is to take cold showers. See if you can stand under the stream of the cold shower and find your equanimity. Find your non-reactivity. Find your ability just to breathe easily and calmly, feeling the cold going over your body, and not cringe, pull back, complain, or feel panic at the cold. It might take a while to be able to stand there and just feel the cold and say, "This is unpleasant, but I know how to be here." In the process of doing that, you might not get to some wonderful result, but you'll learn a lot about your reactivity. Maybe you'll learn to settle and quiet some of the reactivity around the cold shower.

Working with pain, or working with cold showers, for example, is a training to really understand our reactivity and to understand the option of being non-reactive. In fact, some things that we would subjectively say are initially very unpleasant can actually shift and become pleasant. I've done this exercise with cold showers, and after a while, I learned to relax, and relax, and relax. I came to really enjoy it; it actually felt pleasant to take cold showers, but I needed to have the body begin to relax, soften, and be there.

It isn't so much that you have a life of cold showers, but you use that to learn about how we can relax and open. Because what's more important in terms of Dharma practice over time is connecting to something that's deeper than physical pleasure of any kind. Deeper than the kind of pleasure that isn't even pleasure anymore, but rather a deeper sense of well-being or happiness—for people who can make a distinction between pleasure and happiness. It's a happiness that can be there even when things are unpleasant. We're opening to the kind of pleasure that's considered wholesome, a pleasure that is not connected directly to our senses being stimulated. It isn't because something nice is touching our skin, our tongue, our eyes, our nose, or our ears. It's not a pleasant sound, for example. It's also not because the world out there is telling us things which are pleasant for us to hear. If someone says, "Oh, you're such a wonderful person, you're the best person, you're great," that is an external stimulus which is stimulating conceit or something. But there's a well-being that can well up from the inside that is not because anything is being stimulated by stimuli from the outside, or stimuli from the inside if we're telling ourselves stories or fantasies.

To discover this place, to open, to relax, to be non-reactive—not for the purpose of being non-reactive so much, but to make room to start sensing and feeling the well-being, the pleasure that is not of the senses. This distinction between "of the senses" and "not of the senses" is a little bit my vocabulary, but that distinction is there in the Buddha's teachings on mindfulness practice. At some point, as we continue to practice with vedanā, the feeling tone, the idea is to begin differentiating between a wholesome pleasure or wholesome well-being of the senses, and that which is not of the senses—even though both could still be wholesome, there's a distinction. This wholesome experience that is not of the senses is something we open to.

If we really discover this, then we carry our well-being with us wherever we go. We're not so dependent on the conditions around us being just right so that we feel at ease and peaceful. This dramatic exercise of standing in the cold shower is not so that you can learn to stand in the cold shower; it's to learn how to release and relax the reactivity we have to unpleasantness. Then we discover that this non-reactivity gives us access to open and connect to something quite precious and beautiful. A feeling, maybe, of abundance, goodness, warmth, or safety that lives within.

I'll talk more about this tomorrow and tell you a little more about the Buddhist language for it. Some people are very oriented towards their senses and sense stimuli stimulating them, but there's a whole other way to go through life which is deeper, fuller, more profound, and more sublime. This is the welling up from the inside out that's not dependent on the outside in, and that's one of the purposes of meditation: to discover that.

So thank you. We'll continue tomorrow.