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Guided Meditation: Doing the Wholesome

Greetings and welcome to our meditation time together, and into our reflections on the dharma^[1]. One of the primary purposes of the dharma and reflecting on the dharma is so that what is beneficial in us, what is wholesome^[2], can grow.

So for this meditation, I would like to suggest something, maybe a kind of thought exercise, but it's very much at the heart of the kind of teachings the Buddha taught, I think. And that is: put aside any idea you have of being good or bad, any thoughts you have about doing things right or doing things wrong, any thoughts you might have about supposed to get something or reach some place in meditation. Instead, stay in the present moment the best you can, and simply avoid doing those things that feel like they hurt you, diminish you, darken you, or obscure your vision.

And continue doing those things, or do those things, that just seem to uplift you, or to bring out the best in you, or that just feel like there's an inner goodness to them. Continue doing those, but particularly avoid doing anything that has an "ouch" to it.

But sit still. To sit still, let your body be still and quiet. And if you find that there's any movement of the mind that seems somehow it doesn't feel good for you, it feels detrimental—so there could be fantasies that you go into that might feel pleasant, but to really be attuned to them, you can feel it's not so healthy to keep thinking that way. It's not wrong, you're not bad to do that, but simply, "Oh, this is not... there's an ouch to this, there's a kind of diminishment to it." So the criteria for the meditation is to move towards the wholesome and away from the unwholesome.

Just very, very simply. And it means that if you don't do this exercise well, if there's an ouch in saying that to yourself, don't bother with that judgment, that idea. If you find that you're thinking a lot, there's probably some way in which that has a little ouch, and a little bit of a "not quite the best for you."

So if this exercise doesn't make much sense, it's okay, then you don't have to do it. But the idea is to stay very pragmatic, to move towards that which is beneficial, brings happiness and well-being, and to not do the activities of mind that clearly are bringing more suffering.

So take this meditation posture, and gently close your eyes. And maybe you want to sway a little bit side to side, rock back and forth, and then find a midpoint to balance, where you feel grounded in your sitting posture, where you feel connected to the chair, the floor. And then let your body come to stillness. Not a forced stillness, but maybe if there is a stillness that feels nurturing, or relieving, or even enjoyable, take a few moments to feel that maybe subtle well-being of allowing yourself, allowing the body, to be still.

Maybe a relief of not having to do a lot. Relief of how the body can begin to unwind or relax.

Taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. And perhaps it feels good to then, on the exhale, release and relax the body. Perhaps as you relax parts of your body, you can feel that the way you were tense, holding parts of your body... well, it wasn't a problem, but it doesn't have the same wholesomeness or healthiness of relaxing.

And letting your breathing return to normal. And continue relaxing on the exhale. Perhaps starting with relaxing, softening the face. And if you're able to relax the muscles of your face, maybe the idea of tightening them up again doesn't feel so wholesome, or healthy, or pleasant. But keeping it relaxed does.

Then to soften, relax your shoulders. Maybe there's a relaxing of the belly. Sometimes a relaxed belly can feel a little uncomfortable. But maybe it's the kind of discomfort that leads in the right direction. There is a kind of goodness in some forms of discomfort.

And then settling the attention on your breathing. Gently, maybe even lovingly, steadying your attention on the breathing.

And then, as you sit and meditate here, be attentive to any self-critical thoughts of whether you think you're doing it right, whether you're doing it wrong, being good or being bad. Those are not needed. But rather, notice the simple way that some movements of the mind and some thoughts can feel unhealthy or unwholesome. They don't lift you up. And other ways of being—meditating on the breathing—are more wholesome or healthy.

As we meditate, cultivate and nourish that which is wholesome. The kind of wholesomeness that supports the mind to get quiet and settled here in the present moment, with your breathing. Letting go of what is unwholesome. Probably all unwholesome activities go in the opposite direction to being settled and peaceful here, now.

When the mind wanders off in thought, see if you can avoid any unwholesome judgments about that. Maybe rather substitute it with wholesome ideas of goodwill, compassion, wisdom, so that the way that you begin again with your breathing, that beginning again itself feels wholesome, feels healthy.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, consider that when you act and speak and think from the sources inside of you that are wholesome and healthy, at the very same time that you are doing so for yourself, it is also wholesome and healthy for others. When we're interacting with them, when we come into contact with people, that's a wonderful... I want to say coincidence, a wonderful coming together, that this movement towards wholesomeness, the benefits go inward and outward, probably at the same time, or sooner or later in both directions.

To the degree to which this half an hour meditation has calmed you, or settled you, or connected you to a way of being that feels healthier, or more wholesome, or more connected than you were before: how is it that that way of being can also benefit others? How is it that as you go about your day, if you stay close to this way you are now, if you stay close to being guided by what is wholesome, that you'll have wholesome relationships with others? And having wholesome relationships with others is a way of growing the wholesomeness that's within us.

May we come to a deep understanding of how as we grow in wholesomeness, we benefit others, and as we engage in wholesome ways with others, we benefit personally. So that when we wish well for others, it does benefit us.

So at the end of this sitting, may whatever benefit that's come from this practice be dedicated, be an inspired offering to contribute to the welfare and happiness of others. May all beings be healthy in body, mind, and heart. May all beings experience the wholesome in body, mind, and heart. May all beings find peace in recognizing the goodness that's within them. May all beings be happy. May all beings be free.

Dharmette: Kusala (2 of 10) Discerning the Wholesome and Unwholesome

So continuing on this topic of wholesome and unwholesome.

It's such a central orientation in the teachings of the Buddha. So much so that one of the short, pithy sayings from the early tradition to kind of encapsulate the teachings of the Buddha goes like this: "Avoid doing what's harmful, cultivate what is wholesome, purify the mind. This is the teachings of the Buddha." It could be translated many ways in English. "Harmful" could be "wicked", sometimes it's translated as "evil", but it has to do with causing harm in the world. And it could be just said to be: abandon what is unwholesome, don't do what's unwholesome, cultivate the wholesome, and purify the mind. This is the teachings of the Buddha.

So this idea that at the heart of the Buddhist practice is this distinction and dichotomy—some people say duality—between two different directions to go. And to make it pragmatic, which it is, we could say what works and what doesn't work. And if something works, even if it partially works in the right direction, great, let's do it. And if it doesn't work in the direction we want to go, then don't do it. And to be able to distinguish between what works and what doesn't work, what's helpful and what's not helpful, is at the center of what mindfulness is about. Mindfulness is meant to place us in the center of our experience so that we can make these pragmatic choices in this direction.

To illustrate a little bit more how important this is in the Buddha's teachings—I'm going to paraphrase now, so my examples are not going to be quite as said in the text—but someone is said to have come to the Buddha and say, "Do you teach that we should avoid all pleasure?" And the Buddha would answer, "No, I teach that we should avoid pleasure which is unwholesome, but we should cultivate pleasure which is wholesome." "Do you say that we should always speak the truth?" "No, I say that we should speak the truth when it's wholesome and beneficial to do so, not when it's unwholesome and harmful to do so." "Do you say that we should always believe in this or that? Is it always one way?" And the Buddha keeps coming back and says, "No, if it's wholesome we do it, if it's not wholesome we don't do it."

So this essentializing and absolutizing behavior, beliefs, and ideas seems to be something the Buddha was very reluctant to do. In fact, there's a whole discourse in the Middle Length Discourses^[3] where the whole discourse is based on the idea of what should be cultivated and what should not be cultivated. And they go through all these different categories of what should be cultivated through actions, through speech, through mind, and different categories, and the answer always is: we cultivate what is wholesome, we abandon what is unwholesome.

And in discussing the wholesome, the Buddha says that these are qualities that lead to a sense of abundance; they grow, we thrive. There's a thriving with them. We want to take the wholesome and make it abundant and thriving and increase it, to grow. It's very dramatic language emphasizing the value and importance of what is wholesome.

Now, I think in my early years of Buddhist practice, especially when I was doing Zen practice, this kind of message was not something that I understood or picked up from the teachings that I heard and was engaged in. In fact, I kind of got the opposite. Not quite the opposite, but more like any attempt to try to cultivate intentionally or orient towards what's wholesome was somehow missing the boat. That what we should do is just sit in emptiness, sit as if we are Buddha without trying to do anything or make something happen. And I sat that way in Zen, and it was very beneficial for me. There's a whole Zen terminology or approach to life where that's coherent, and if you understand it, it works really well. But I also felt, as time went along, that it was also limiting if that was all I did. But rather, to sit and meditate that way when it's wholesome, but not when it's unwholesome.

And so in making this distinction between wholesome and unwholesome, we become our own teacher. It isn't that we're supposed to go into the books, to the manual, to ask what should I do, what should I not do. But we're using our own inner antenna, our own psychosomatic apparatus for sensing and feeling and knowing—our own wisdom—to recognize the impact that our behavior has: behavior in body, speech, and mind. And if it is healthy, wholesome, if it brings a sense of goodness, if it brings joy and happiness, well-being, then yes, do it, develop that. You're allowed to develop that. If it does the opposite, abandon it, avoid it.

Now, another criticism that I would have had in my early years for this is that it lends itself to selfishness. It lends itself to a kind of pursuit of hedonic... to just pleasure and hedonism. I think that it doesn't when what we're doing is practicing real mindfulness, real careful attention, really sensing and feeling what's happening in here. And what we'll feel, what we'll recognize, is that if it's selfish, if it's hedonistic, that itself is unwholesome, unhealthy, and we can feel that. We can feel the impact it has, that it actually debilitates, it actually deflates and undermines us. It's not such a good thing to do.

And so part of what this practice is about is starting to become a connoisseur of the impact of our behavior. Not whether it's good or bad in some abstract way, not whether it's right or wrong in some abstract way, but what we know from the inside out, what we learn to recognize directly. It's almost like we feel the wholesomeness and the unwholesomeness. We feel the "ouch" and we feel the "ah, that's going in a good way."

And the importance of doing that for oneself, being one's own teacher this way, is that there is no divine authority in Buddhism that's judging us. There is no external source for what is right and wrong. It's all mediated here, in our own psychophysical being. Can we really find the wisdom, the deep understanding for exactly how this works? And in this way, early Buddhism has a tremendous trust in the human being's capacity, provided they have a heightened mindfulness, heightened sensitivity, maybe even a heightened ability to be still and peaceful, so we can really tune in to what happens.

So when you do that, you start feeling like when we have hostility, we're hurting ourselves. When we're greedy, we're hurting ourselves. When we're caught in delusion, there's a very tightness and contraction, and being lost in delusion feels also like something's being lost here, an obscuring going on, or confusion. And to feel that, "Oh, look at that, there it is." And sometimes the early warning sign that we're going in the wrong direction does not come from our abstract ideas, but rather from our body and the felt sense. The movement of, "Oh, that's now... it looks like what's happened just now, I feel diminished, contracted. I feel drained a little bit. I feel like there's a tension building up."

And so when we look more closely, is this wholesome or unwholesome, healthy or unhealthy? In terms of the unwholesome, the Buddha described the unwholesome as something which harms the very thing that is producing the unwholesome. And the analogy he used was that of some kind of reed, some kind of plant in India, that when the fruit ripens, it takes all the nutrients from the rest of the plant and the plant dies. And so the unwholesome is like that. It takes the energy from the person in some kind of a way of being, and something gets diminished. Something at times can even die if the unwholesome thing we do is really dramatic, like if we really harm someone in terrible ways.

And so, in this way, there's a possibility to not get caught up in old ideas that we've inherited from our society, our religions, and all that, about whether we're good or that we're bad, that we're right or we're wrong. Rather, we just kind of lovingly care, caringly evaluate, look, consider: is this wholesome or is it unwholesome? Is it helpful or not helpful? Does it lead to growth of wholesomeness or diminishment of our wholesome qualities?

And what we're looking for on the path to liberation is a growth in our wholesome qualities—and we'll talk more about those over these next couple of weeks—and the diminishment of the unwholesome ones. Because on the path of liberation, the unwholesome qualities agitate the mind, obscure the mind and heart, and make it very hard to be on the path of liberation. The cultivation of the wholesome qualities, looking for what's more and more wholesome, leads to a deep sense of well-being and subtleness and peace that allows us to move into freedom, into liberation. Freedom from all unwholesomeness.

So, tomorrow I'll talk a little bit more specifically about the unwholesome, because in a sense we're supposed to become a connoisseur of the unwholesome so we can recognize it and not be caught by it. And so in the meantime, please study yourself and see what you recognize, how you recognize this distinction between healthy and unhealthy, wholesome and unwholesome, and what it means for you right now. And maybe over these next days you will come to a more refined understanding of what these concepts are. So thank you.