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Guided Meditation: Space that Holds All Things

So welcome to this meditation session. And unequivocally here we are, to acknowledge the location that you're sitting in. To acknowledge what is supporting your weight, where the pull of gravity meets a surface, and to really feel that you're here.

And one of the opportunities in meditation is to recognize the space that's around everything. That whatever we sense, whatever we feel, whatever we experience, whatever we think—that there's a way of seeing it in its own uniqueness as a particular manifestation, around which is the space of awareness. Around which it can exist just in itself as it is, in a way that can be seen as respectful for the uniqueness of it, for the momentariness of it, but also allows us to not get involved or caught in it. Allowing each thing to exist like a star is allowed to exist in the vast night sky. So different sensations, and different vedanā^[1] (feeling tones), and thoughts, and whatever—there's a way of being open, relaxed with awareness to see it by itself.

Just without diminishing its value. You can add the word "just". It's just a feeling. Just a sensation. It's just a thought. It's just a sound. And that "just", maybe, is to allow you to recognize that whatever unique situation or event comes into awareness, there can be the space of awareness around it.

There can be a gap between what we are aware of and how we react. How we react to it. How we think about it, how we feel about it. That gap, that space between them, is a space of freedom.

The gap, and freedom. The space between the way in which we identify with stuff, or assume there's a self, make up ideas of "me," "myself," and "mine." Maybe it's okay that you do so, but there's a space, a gap, a pause between each thing. And each thing is independent, free of the self-making we do.

So gently closing your eyes, and taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. Relaxing as you exhale. If you take a deep inhale, maybe your torso, chest expands out into the space around you. And on the exhale it recedes.

Letting your breathing return to normal. And on the exhale, continue to take a few moments to relax the body. Softening in the face, the shoulders, the belly.

And then becoming aware of the simplicity of breathing. That whatever sensations are present in your breathing, they exist surrounded by the space of awareness. They exist as particular points of sensation, places of sensation, outside of which those sensations are not seen or felt.

The sensations that make up the edges of your body, beyond them, there is space. In a certain kind of way, inside of them there is space. And you might be thinking about what's happening, but there is a space or a gap between your thoughts and the experience. It's possible to know the experience in its own simplicity, as distinct from thinking thoughts.

The space around each phenomenal experience might also be characterized by silence, a sweet silence. Or a stillness. And as you breathe, perhaps breathe through and into the spaciousness here. The silence that's here. This stillness that's here.

So you don't deny anything. But each thing, each experience, can exist within the space of awareness as itself.

If you focus on the objects in a room, you might not notice the space that's in the room. If you focus on your thoughts and your feelings and sensations, you might not notice the space that holds all that. We tend to not notice the space. But that's where we can find freedom. Notice the space around things. Breathe with it. Relax into it. Let the space help silence the mind.

As we come to the end of the sitting. To open the space in your mind, in your heart, to take in this vast wide world of ours. A world of suffering, a world of joy. A world of oppression, and a world of people who care to end oppression. A world of poverty and sickness, and those who work hard to alleviate poverty and sickness. It's a huge, wide world. The young, the old. Those who are alone, and those who are together. And to have our heart be wide enough and spacious enough to allow each of them to be held uniquely in our hearts. So there's lots of space for people to be known, and listened to, and seen.

May it be that we can maintain or find a heartfulness, mindfulness, that allows us to meet others and care for others for their own uniqueness, for their own personal circumstance. May it be that this meditation supports us to live for the welfare and the happiness of others. May that be an extension of what we find in meditation.

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

Dharmette: Vedanā (5 of 5) Non-Clinging to Vedanā

So this will be the last talk on vedanā, the feeling tones. The affective quality of our experience that all things have. Among all the different qualities that things have, experiences have... all the different characteristics they have, they're either pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant. And we're kind of focusing on the real specificity of a moment of experience. In the complexity of life, and many things happening in a kind of swirl or complexity, there could be a combination of all those that we can identify. But when you get quiet and still and really kind of tune into the details, the particularity of what it is, they are pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral.

Now, one of the really fascinating teachings of the Buddha is that people's philosophies, people's view of life, people's—maybe he doesn't say this, but even their politics—have at their base, or at their root, somehow, a reaction to what's pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. The very sophisticated philosophies, very sophisticated justifications for political systems or views, might have their beginning in a reactivity to things that we find pleasant and unpleasant.

And this idea of pleasant and unpleasant that we're talking about here is not the raw unpleasantness and pleasantness of experience. There is no such raw thing, because almost right away things arise as pleasant or unpleasant with our perceptions, our evaluation, our associations with it. So this pleasant and unpleasant is sometimes referred to as liking and disliking. This movement of liking and disliking, being for or against, is so deep. And it's kind of amazing that if we really trace back where the basis of how we react in the world is, it all begins with pleasant and unpleasant.

Anyway, the teaching of the Buddha is that all these philosophies and speculative views about life and the nature of life can have their roots in this simple thing: pleasant and unpleasant. And the one that's most significant for many people, and for those interested in becoming free, is the way in which ideas of self-identity can have their roots. Not identity that we are born into, or that other people assume about us—there's a lot of identities which just come with being a human being. But the act of identification, the act of latching onto an identity. All these different identities that we swirl around in a kaleidoscope are relevant at different times. If we latch onto it, cling to it, hold onto it, then we'll suffer.

This clinging to identity, clinging to ideas of self, has at the root of it this concern with pleasant and unpleasant. Pleasant and unpleasant can be a very deep conditioning for this movement towards "me," "myself," and "mine." And one way it takes shape is when we identify with the feelings themselves. When the feeling tone of experience... when things are pleasant, it's like, "I'm the one who's experiencing the pleasantness," or "I'm the one who experiences the unpleasantness. This is my pleasant experience, this is my unpleasant experience."

This very close wrapping of ourselves around, clinging, and having a sense of self in relationship to feeling tones is one of the great sources of suffering. And one of the great possibilities of freedom is to allow the kaleidoscope of feeling tones—of how things appear and disappear as pleasant and unpleasant—to just come and go. To kind of float in them, or make room for them, or be spacious around them.

These feeling tones are something that, if you really tune into them and really get close and feel them, they're not stationary. They're not fixed. They're actually quite fluid and changeable. The analogy that the Buddha gave for them is that when there's a big rainstorm, and the raindrops are falling on a lake, there's the spatterings and little bubbles and splashing of water from the drops. Those appear ephemerally; they're there for a brief moment and then they dissipate. So the feeling tones, whether things are pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, have that kind of ephemeral quality to it.

If we can really settle back and open up in the spaciousness of the mind, to feel intimately that kaleidoscope of changing sensations, that's where sometimes we can loosen up the grip of self around the sensations themselves and let go. And it's not meant to necessarily let go of philosophical views or ideas of what "self" is at the core. What this Buddhist tradition is about is letting go of clinging. Any kind of clinging. And one of the means to do that is to be aware of the pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral quality of our experience.

If you can tune into the changing, impermanent, inconstant nature of those feeling tones, you'll be well on your way to appreciating that clinging to them doesn't really work. And that sometimes what we cling to is not the pleasant and unpleasant, but rather the concepts and ideas we have of pleasant and unpleasant. That makes them stationary, seem like they last longer than they really do, and more constant than they really are.

To discover non-clinging through feeling tones is to discover freedom in feeling tones. One way to do that is to appreciate the space around each feeling tone, the stillness, the silence within which the raindrops are splattering.

So feeling tones—pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral—and becoming aware of the ephemeral nature of them. If they don't feel ephemeral, if you don't see them or sense them as somehow changing, maybe flashing in and out of existence—though there's continuity over time with some sensations, they are actually in the moment kind of flashing in and out of existence in a certain way. If you don't see it that way, chances are that you're living in your ideas of them. Your thoughts of sensations, your thoughts of what's pleasant, your thoughts of what's unpleasant.

But if you really turn the lens of mindfulness around carefully to the thoughts themselves, you'll see that thoughts too are insubstantial. Thoughts too are like raindrops that come and go, are there for a moment, and then they fade away. Unless we're holding onto them, or unless we somehow, in the clinging, are stringing a whole series of them together so they look like they're constant. But in fact, there's actually a lot of space between thoughts, between ideas, if we don't string them together. If we allow each thing to be there in its own uniqueness, in that space there can be freedom. Freedom of the mind that does not cling.

So those are my thoughts on this topic of vedanā. I look forward to being back in a little over a week. And I hope that your weekend is pleasant, and in the pleasantness, you see the inconstant nature of pleasantness. Not holding onto it, not clinging to it, but learning how to enjoy with no clinging whatsoever.

So thank you all.