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Guided Meditation: Seeing the Parts of the Whole

Good morning, everyone. Perhaps as I hear you getting ready for meditation, I'm already becoming quiet. Maybe if I look for words to say, I won't find any. But if I just talk, maybe they'll come.

One of the teachings or implications of Buddhism is that nothing we see, touch, smell, hear, or think is just one solid thing. Everything that we see, touch, hear, smell, and even think is made up of parts. It is a composite made up of things that preceded it—conditions that led to it—and also a coming together of different elements. And those things are composites as well.

In the composite nature of these things, there are actually no "things"—there are only processes. Some things arise, persist for a while, and then pass. But one way or another, all things are in process. When we look at our inner life, our emotional life, our mental life—the things that we can know there—except for concepts, ideas give the semblance of nouns, of things. They give the impression that "this is the way it is."

But all our emotions, our thoughts, our body sensations—everything that we can feel, experience, and sense—is made up of other parts. It's a composite, and in some way or another, it is in process and moving. It's when we get caught in nouns, when we believe "this is the way it is," that we get hung up. We get caught, we suffer, and we leave the river of change. We leave the dynamism of a life made up of all the comings and goings of our life and the life around us. We leave this dynamic, interdependent process, the interdependent arising of phenomena.

So, we sit to meditate in the middle of the many, many things that make us up. In this moment, we are dynamic processes, though our thinking might not think so.

So, assuming a meditation posture. The posture you take is a composite made up of different parts of the body assuming different positions. The body itself is a composite made up of bones, flesh, muscles, organs, nerves, skin, and hair. We take this composite body and assume a posture that promotes attentiveness to the here and now.

And then, gently close your eyes. One of the dynamic processes that is constantly shifting and changing, one of the important pieces of the whole, is our breathing. Gently breathe more deeply. Fill your lungs maybe three-quarters full, and then let out a long exhale, settling into the body. Exhaling and relaxing into the body. And letting the breathing return to normal.

In an ordinary life, part of the composite of who we are that contributes to the whole is the tension we have in our body, the holding patterns. We create a different whole when we begin to relax and let go of the body. On the exhale, relaxing the muscles of the face. On the exhale, softening the shoulders. Softening the belly.

And then, settle your attention into the body breathing. Feel the movements of the body as you breathe.

The experience we call breathing is a composite made up of other parts, other activities. It's made up of the inhale and the exhale. The movements of the body. The air going in and out through the nostrils.

One way or another, the breathing is often under the influence of our mood or emotional state. Breathing is under the influence of the level of excitement or activation in the body. Breathing is influenced by whatever degree of pleasure, comfort, or discomfort comes along with the experience of breathing.

The experience of breathing is made up of the choices we make, the interests and ideas we have about breathing, and how to notice breathing—where in the body to pay attention. And finally, part of the experience of breathing is the awareness of breathing itself. Without some awareness, there is no experiencing of breathing.

All these things, all these parts of the experience—I don't think we can very well control them, guide them, or make them be just right. Perhaps you can surrender into the experience of breathing. Let it be what it is: a dynamic process made up of many parts that you can allow to operate as it does, and for you just to be aware of it.

[Silence for meditation]

And then, as we come to the end of the sitting, one part of human life is what motivates us, the wishes we have. Of course, there are many wishes, many motivations to be had. We end with the particular form of love, goodwill, and friendliness that is wishing well for others, being motivated to bring about the welfare and happiness of others.

May it be, as we end this meditation, that we spend these next two minutes reflecting and thinking about whatever motivation we have. Whatever desire or wish we have that others be well, that others be happy and safe. Our wishes for the welfare and happiness of everyone.

May everyone be happy. May everyone be safe. May everyone be peaceful. May everyone be free.

And may it be that each of us also has the wish to contribute to that. May it be that we contribute to the welfare and happiness of all beings.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Wise to Emotion (2 of 5) Component Parts of Emotions

Today I'll continue this five-part series on getting wise to emotions—developing a wise relationship to them. Part of it is realizing that emotions are not a singular, unitary thing, but they are composites. They are made up of elements and pieces, and they're made up of elements in different ways. Different parts make up emotions in different ways.

Maybe that's part of the reason why it's not so clear exactly what an emotion is. And we don't have to know exactly what an emotion is as a category. We might want to know what anger is, or we might want to know sadness, happiness, or love. There's a whole range of these things that fit under the umbrella term of emotions, and whichever ones we fit in there, they are composites. They're made up of component parts.

Why that's important is that sometimes people have attitudes, beliefs, and relationships to emotions based on the idea that they are a singular thing. Anger is anger, and it justifies things. It drives us, and we have a relationship to anger where we think it's good or it's bad. But when we start not looking at it only as a solid, singular thing, but start seeing the component parts, then we can have a relationship to the different parts, and the relationship to the whole becomes different.

We might realize that some of the elements that make up an emotion are actually more important—perhaps more important for our motivations, for understanding, for our healing, for finding our freedom with it all. Sometimes it's hard to work with an emotion when we only see it as a singularity, as a solid thing in and of itself, and it can be kind of overwhelming. But once we drop down underneath the veneer, underneath the label or the general, solitary concept, we begin seeing it in a different way and have a whole different relationship to what's happening.

I'd like to offer you some of the things that make up emotions, and maybe you can think of some more as well. Part of an emotion is a bodily experience—a physiological shift and change that happens in the body when an emotion becomes present. For some people, the physiological change is very strong and clear. For some people, it's very quiet, and maybe they would even say there is no physiological change. But I think that an emotion is always something physical. The quieter we become—in meditation, for example—the more attuned we can be to even the subtlest changes of physiology as we have emotions. There are activations of muscles, of energies, probably of hormones and biochemical things. All this stuff begins to shift and change in the body as an emotion arises, as it persists, and as it dissipates.

Some of that physiological change might precede the actual arising of the emotion itself. We might have a lot of stress, and the stress hormones, the stress sensations, that tightness in the body is a condition for the arising of anger or fear. The condition that precedes it in the body is sometimes the way to heal it as well. Sometimes as the body relaxes and settles, the fuel for the particular emotion is no longer being provided. The physiology sometimes drives our emotional lives. So dropping down into the body and really getting familiar with all the different bodily expressions of emotions, the bodily manifestations of them, can be very important.

Another thing that makes up a good number of emotions is cognitive, and we might start with the stories that we have. It's a classic thing in meditation to be relatively calm and peaceful, minding your own business with your breathing, and for some reason that is not obvious at all, your mind produces a thought from long ago of a person you knew—maybe a person who harmed you, hurt you, or annoyed you. Just thinking about that story and what happened with that person, our physiology changes. The energy in the body maybe goes from being centered in our torso up into our head. Maybe the hands get tight, the jaws get tight, or we feel a contraction in the mind because the story still has a lot of juice, a lot of impact on us. What's fascinating there is to see that the movement is from the story that arises. The story is a condition for the bodily manifestation. The body was fine by itself, but then the story evokes something very powerful, and then the bodily expression comes.

When stories are part of emotions, if we are storytellers telling and retelling the story, that can perpetuate the emotion. It can keep it going, strengthen it, and very much influence the course of the emotion. Because of the nature of storytelling, sometimes the stories change as we tell them, and so then the emotions change as well. We might have started off, for example, being angry, telling ourselves a story about how we've been slighted by someone. Then we tell ourselves a story: "Well, if that person knows that I'm angry, they'll probably retaliate, and now I'm afraid." Now suddenly fear arises. And then we realize something with another story. Maybe we realize, "Oh, the person's actually moving to another continent, and they're never going to come back to this country." Then you can feel yourself relax, and happiness might arise. So we tell ourselves stories, and the stories have meaning and associations.

Another component part of emotions that's sometimes more obvious with the story is that there's a self in relationship to the emotion: self-understanding, how we view ourselves, how we have other people see us, how we are personally affected by the story and the events of what's going on, and what the emotions mean for me. What's going to happen? Maybe I feel happy, and I'm the one who's happy. I'm so happy that I'm happy, and this will be great, my life is made, I'm going to be happy forever. There's a lot of "I-making" and "my-making."^[1] Part of the happiness might be in relationship to "I'm the one who's happy." This self-identification with the emotion, the role of "I," and the self-understanding of who I am is a component part of emotions as well. I'll talk more about that tomorrow.

There's also motivation that's part of the emotion. I talked about that a little bit with mettā^[2] earlier. An emotion like loving-kindness is one that has motivation built into it: wishing someone well, wanting them to be well, maybe wanting to support that to happen. If there is anger, there is a motivation perhaps to get rid of something, to push it away. You get angry with your computer and you throw it across the room to kind of get it away. Some emotions come with motivations and intentions—wanting something to happen. Sometimes it's really helpful to notice what motivation comes along with an emotion. What motivation comes along with sadness? Or what comes along with joy? Just noticing these shifts and changes. What is the motivation? What is the desire that's connected to it?

Emotions are also connected to perceptions. It's a little different than the stories, but it overlaps with them. Perceptions are what we think we're perceiving, the ideas we have about things. There's an ancient Chinese story^[3] of a man who is in a sailboat going across a big lake, and another sailboat comes along and unexpectedly bangs into his sailboat. The person gets furious. Then he lifts up and looks over the edge of the boat, and sees that there's no one in the other boat. It had just somehow gotten loose and was floating around. The anger was there thinking there was a person in charge that they could be angry with. Then the person realized he should always be attentive to what's floating around and pay attention.

We perceive things a lot differently when it's done by another person versus if it's done by a natural phenomenon. If a beautiful deer walks across your garden, maybe you're upset. Or maybe you've never seen a deer on your property—they haven't been around for hundreds of miles—and rather than upset, you're just amazed. "Wow, there's a deer with its fawn." But if a neighbor comes and walks across your garden, maybe accidentally, we perceive it differently and we interpret it differently. Are the perceptions we make the most useful perceptions? Are they optional? Are they a particular interpretation of events? Maybe they're good perceptions, good interpretations, but it is important to see it that way.

So these are some of the component parts. I could go on further, but take some time to look at your emotions as they occur. What is the physiology of it? What are the stories related to it? What are the motivations related to it? How do you, as a person, as a self, your identity, your idea of yourself—how does that come into play? And what are the perceptions and ideas that operate when an emotion is there? Are they built into the fabric of the universe that that is the perception, the idea, the interpretation to have? Or are there others to be had? There are others that are maybe more appropriate or more peaceful. Maybe there's a range of interpretations, and maybe they're all equally valuable. But why choose the one that's stressful for you? Maybe choose one that brings you a sense of awe, delight, and joy.

So what you might do this next 24 hours is take some time to sit down, maybe with a piece of paper, and map out the different component parts that make up your emotions. Different ones you have, especially the ones that are live, but also you can review other ones you've had. Lay them down on a piece of paper like a little mind map, or a mandala of what they all are. Then consider the component parts themselves. What kind of permanence, what kind of solidity do they have? What kind of relationship do you have to the parts? As you begin looking more carefully at the parts of an emotion, what happens to the emotion? Does the emotion shift and change in surveying the parts that make it up?

Thank you. I hope your emotional life is rich, valuable, and supportive for you. And if it's not, I hope that this deeper investigation into it will be supportive. Thank you.