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Guided Meditation: Awareness Like Water

Hello, and welcome.

So, it's a time to perhaps be a bit quiet internally, to sit and meditate, and to bring mindfulness to our experience—to bring awareness and attention. It seems that in the teachings of the Buddha, water is used as a simile or metaphor for awareness. When we begin practice, maybe our capacity to be mindful and consciously aware is brief. It's more like moments that we sprinkle into the situation—sprinkling awareness into our life. That is a nice image. I've been in places where Buddhist monastics have sprinkled blessed water on people's heads. It is a blessing, kind of sprinkling awareness on our experience.

As the moments of awareness become more continuous, awareness becomes more like flowing water. It flows over, through, and around our experience. It is kind of like being washed by awareness or floating in awareness. When you have flowing water, it doesn't stop for anything. If there is a dam, it builds up to the top of the dam and spills over, eventually finding its way downhill. It can be soft, but over time, it is very powerful, wearing away the hardest granite. It wears away the hardest attachments we have as we let the water flow through and with us. Water doesn't complain about things; it just flows. Water doesn't attach to anything; it just flows.

At times, water enters into a large lake, where the water becomes really still, quiet, peaceful, and transparent. This is how mindfulness and awareness can become when they are well-developed—when all those moments of continuity really come together. There is no more reinforcing or bringing more attention and energy to it; the awareness is just there. To abide or dwell in this kind of lake-like, oceanic awareness is also possible. In these and other ways, the Buddha uses water as a simile and metaphor.

As we sit today, perhaps you can keep close by the simile and metaphor of water for the awareness that you are evoking and bringing forth for this present-moment experience. Water flowing along with the breathing. Water sprinkled in. Water as the vast space, spaciousness, and vast stillness in which everything floats. Everything floats in its own way. And when everything individually floats in the vast space of awareness, for the Buddha, there is a lot of equanimity that comes along—being equanimous about all things.

So with that, that's kind of the idea for today. Mostly, we will sit quietly. If you haven't already, you might gently close your eyes.

If your mind, awareness, or heart is like agitated water, take a long, deep breath, and on the exhale, let it all settle. Let it all settle.

Letting your breathing return to normal.

Bringing awareness to your body breathing. Sometimes it is intermittent like water sprinkled in blessings on yourself. Other times, it is more continuous, flowing and moving. Everything floats, allowing it to be as it is in a vast body of water, a vast body of awareness.

If you find yourself agitated, or caught up in thoughts, feelings, or body sensations, imagine that it's floating in an ocean or a wide lake of water. It's allowed to be there, but it's allowed to float all by itself. It doesn't have to influence you or affect you. It doesn't have to go away, but it's held in a wide, vast field or lake of awareness.

As we come to the end of the sitting, again, give some thought or image to water. If you touch your hand into water, the water doesn't resist the hand, but it does surround it. The water touches the hand completely and thoroughly, but offers no resistance.

So when sounds come, sensations come, feelings and thoughts come, it's possible to have no resistance. Allow them to come, and the water changes its shape to receive whatever comes into it. In the same way, your water, your awareness, receives and doesn't resist. It can be intimate with everything—non-resisting, in contact, and touching.

To go into the world without resistance, but with a heart that can shift, change, adapt, and move with whatever comes. It doesn't resist, but it doesn't lose itself. It remains connected—connected at the heart.

May it be that this practice we do teaches us how to care for ourselves and others by not resisting while staying connected. It teaches us how to be safe by not resisting, but staying warm, kind, and friendly. It teaches us to be peaceful by not contending, complaining, or grasping.

May it be that what we learn about being present can be a benefit for this world. May it be that our ability to attend and be mindful is for the welfare and happiness of all.

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

Dharmette: Similes for Meditation (3 of 5) Still Water

Good morning and good day. Here we come to the third talk about the Buddha's use of similes to augment his instructions, or to provide instructions in meditation. Some of the instructions have to do with describing what can happen as we meditate, so we can recognize it. In recognizing it, the Buddha talks a lot about abiding in experience—entering and abiding. This idea of abiding, resting in, dwelling in, or living within is supposed to have connotations of being at ease, being somewhat still, and kind of just content and happy to be present for what's here. It is a place of abiding, a place of resting, standing, and being.

By recognizing the states that are useful to abide in, we can learn to dwell there. It has connotations of being at home in the experience, being where one is supposed to be, and being at ease there. To convey these experiences of meditation and provide instructions, the Buddha uses similes. As I mentioned in the guided meditation, there are a lot of similes where the Buddha uses water. In different similes, water represents different things, but often in the context of meditation, it seems like water represents awareness and mindfulness. Depending on how strong the meditation is or how centered we are, the mindfulness feels differently.

When we begin practice, mindfulness is an awareness that we bring to our experience. It might be intermittent. We might have a moment of being mindful, and then we want to find a moment again. The Buddha talks about sprinkling water into our experience. Earlier, I mentioned loving the idea of sprinkling because on a hot day, it's refreshing to be sprinkled with water, to have a water sprinkler touch you and cool you down. Or standing in a shower, lots of sprinkles pouring down; it can be very nice. Another example is the way Buddhist monastics will sprinkle blessed water on people's heads. It's a really fun ritual ceremony they do. It's not just simply bringing attention back; it's bringing it back in a nice way where we're kind of sprinkling a blessing, refreshing our experience with awareness the best we can.

As these drops become more continuous and come together, the metaphor is that of a lake that has a current flowing through it—a delightful current flowing from an underwater spring. Here, there is still activity and movement in the awareness. We are maybe still applying ourselves; there's an active way in which awareness is functioning within us, and we kind of feel the dynamism or dynamic quality of it.

But then, as we get more concentrated, more settled, resting and abiding more deeply in the experience, the simile the Buddha uses is that of a lake, but this time the lake has no current or movement in it. The lake now is completely still. I think of this lake as very clear, very still, and very peaceful. I've been to mountain lakes early in the morning before the birds are up, when the light is up at dawn. Standing on the edge of these lakes before the wind begins, seeing the top of the water so still and quiet, reflecting the mountains in the distance—there's something so peace-generating. By watching that, I just love sitting there looking at this peaceful, quiet morning scenery where the day hasn't begun, and everything is so quiet and still.

The Buddha uses this idea of a still, quiet pond or lake for how sometimes meditation can be experienced. The mind has no sense of movement anymore, and awareness has no sense of movement. It's not being applied, brought to anything, or flowing through us. It just is, and things occur within it.

The metaphor the Buddha uses for this still, quiet lake mentions lotus flowers of different colors—I believe he specifies white, red, blue, and maybe black. These lotus flowers are floating, not just on the top of the water, but in his metaphor, they're floating underneath the water. Because the water is clear, these lotus flowers are just floating there, each one separate from the other, floating by itself in this beautiful body of water.

The different colors represent all the different experiences we can have as we're sitting in meditation. Each experience, each individual detail, is allowed to exist there by itself. Each thing is allowed to be just itself, without any reference, tie, or caught-upness in the past, the future, or comparisons to other things that are not it. It is just allowed to float. Agitation can just float there and be a lotus flower. Sensations of the body, kind of feeling, are just floating there. Everything seems to float, each thing by itself. We're not doing anything with it or connecting it to anything else; it is allowed to be itself. This idea of allowing each thing to be its pristine self, as it actually is, gets conveyed in this simile of the lotus flowers floating in this very still lake.

The water here is not just awareness, but it's also awareness saturated or filled with a kind of joy and delight. With joy and happiness, there is strong awareness that comes along with it. The distinction between this joy, delight, and awareness maybe isn't so obvious. The idea is that the water touches everything. No part of the lotus flower is not touched by the water. In this metaphor, the Buddha says no part of the body is not touched by the peace, the tranquility, the contentment, the joy, and the happiness present in this state.

It's not easy to just suddenly feel and experience the mind, the awareness, our being as a still, quiet lake. But when it does happen, the instructions are twofold: to abide in it and rest in it, and to very gently allow the well-being, the joy, the happiness, the sometimes rapture or bliss that's there, to spread and suffuse throughout the body—throughout everything. So nothing that occurs is untouched by awareness, by this well-being that can be there.

The Buddha provides these metaphors and similes, pointing to and illustrating the kind of experience that can come as the mind gets settled, focused, quiet, and still. We start living in awareness, rather than having to only sprinkle awareness and remind ourselves to bring more to it. It points to a possibility and potential we have. These beautiful similes can be inspiring to think about—the possibility of abiding and resting in awareness, not contending or resisting anything, but meeting everything with clear awareness and letting that build and develop over time.

As the sprinkles slowly increase, another simile the Buddha uses is rain falling on the mountainside. If the rain continues long enough, the water sits on the surface of the soil and starts to roll. The drops meet each other and become little streamlets. The streamlets become streams, creeks, and rivers as they go down the mountainside. They first go into a small lake, and then a bigger lake. With each lake, it gets bigger, quieter, and stiller, because the lake is so big compared to the amount of water coming in. Finally, the water ends up in the ocean, which, in this simile, is the most peaceful place if you go a few feet under the surface of the water.

So, drop by drop, we practice our mindfulness. That's our job: to provide the drops. If we keep doing it, the drops join and come together, and we start getting a sense and feel for something vast, large, and beautiful.

That was my attempt to make these similes come alive for you a little bit. See if something in your experience corresponds to these similes, and if there's something about water that's evocative and interesting as a simile for awareness and mindfulness. It can change the quality and characteristics of how you practice. You practice as if you're bringing moist, flowing water to your experience, where there's no resistance to what is, flowing around, through, over, and under. Or if it's not flowing, maybe it's still, and just holds everything in the stillness of a quiet mind.

Thank you. There are more similes that the Buddha gives, so we'll continue tomorrow. Thank you.