This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Images for Meditation

Introduction

Welcome, and a warm hello to all of you. Sometimes when seeing all the locations where people are sending in their greetings on the chat, I have a very vague imagination of having a globe in front of me and having lines drawn between all the places that are named, and taking into account all the places that are not named. It would be quite an interconnected net of community of people with similar interests, sitting here to meditate and doing a practice which I believe brings out the best in people. It is a wonderful act of imagination.

That is the topic for this week: the ways in which imagination can support meditation rather than detract from it. If we don't use our imagination, then we get used by it. But it's not just our own imagination we get used by; there are a lot of people who are trying to hijack our imagination or plant images and ideas in our mind. Advertisers, politicians, people who are providing us with imaginary scenarios that sometimes are done very cleverly to really penetrate deep inside of us, and then they remain and we're used by them or influenced by them.

It's also possible to use our imagination creatively and use it for the purpose of meditation. It takes wisdom to do that. It takes skill to do it in a way that actually supports the mind to wake up, to be present, to become stable. At different levels of stability and stillness, different forms of imagination might come into play. So if you hear different instructions for imagination, some of them might not work for you, either because you don't have a reference point for them, or because they belong to a different degree of stability than you have.

The Buddha's teachings are filled with what could be called images of the imagination, similes, and ideas. A basic one for meditation is the idea of sitting as stable as the earth, or sitting as firm as a pillar that is planted deep in the ground so it's not going to wobble at all, or being as calm as the surface of a still lake. It goes on and on, these kinds of images that the Buddha uses which are tapping into the imagination.

Part of the purpose of this tapping into the imagination is because the imagination itself is tapped into so many different aspects of our inner life: our emotional life, physical life, kinesthetic life, our motivational life, and our thoughts and memories. Imagination somehow has a capacity to contribute to the unification and integration that is samadhi^[1]. As we get more present and more collected in meditation, the process of meditation is a process of collectedness or unification, or some people like to use the language of becoming whole. Imagination can be in the service of that because of what it evokes within us.

It's certainly not true for everyone; people have different ranges of relationships with imagination. But for this week, we're building on the Buddha's use of imagination in order to cultivate stability, presence, and gladness—to have a certain degree of joy in meditation.

Guided Meditation

Take an upright meditation posture, and adjust your posture so it begins to feel stable. One of the advantages of sitting cross-legged is the stability of the legs and the buttocks on your cushion, a broad, wide foundation. Anything that supports the weight of your body can provide a foundation of stability.

Imagine this body that you're sitting in is here like a mountain: stable, strong, unfazed by the wind that flows by or the clouds that wash over.

Imagining that the mind is like a clear, quiet lake. Calm wind, not blowing. Water still. The mind is broad and wide like the wide, broad lake.

And imagining the heart is like a full moon: fully exposed, fully open, fully here. The heart shines its light peacefully on all things.

The Buddha uses an image for tuning into the breathing: that one tunes into breathing like a woodworker does with a chisel on a lathe carving a piece of wood, or maybe we would say a potter turning clay on a wheel. To make this contact with something which is moving around in a circle, the cycles of in-breath and out-breath. This image of someone working a lathe or working clay on a wheel is partly an image of making contact and keeping the contact there.

So gently make this contact with the body breathing, taking a few long, slow, deep breaths.

As you exhale, maybe like a dam which has opened its doors so water can flow out, relax your body. So there can be a flow of vitality, a flow of ease and calmness from the places where you relax. Relaxing the shoulders, relaxing the arms and the elbows, hands. Relaxing the chest, the belly.

And breathing easily, naturally. As if the piece of clay now has become a smooth and round bowl on the wheel, and it just feels light and smooth and easy to allow the turning of breathing in and breathing out.

Your whole body is the bowl. Awareness is feeling, as you breathe in and breathe out, that kind of intimacy with the body breathing.

And as you're sitting here, bring to mind gently, quietly whatever sense of goodness or gladness that comes from the simplicity of being here meditating. What's absent is the busyness of the day. What's absent are the challenges of the day, the crowds of people, driving in traffic.

And if you can stay quietly focused on the breathing and not giving in to thoughts of desire, thoughts of ill will, thoughts of anxiety and regrets, thoughts of doubt... this begins to feel similar to being free of debt, or free of an illness, free of oppression, free of being lost in thought.

These ideas of freedom from these things for the Buddha are meant to be a source of gladness. Take a few moments to appreciate what is not here right now that feels good to have put aside, and which gives you an intimacy and a peacefulness, even if it's mildly so, with the here and now and being present.

Feeling the goodness of this, maybe being glad to have these moments to be free of these things.

Perhaps making a small half-smile that maybe supports a gladness or a contentment that's willing to be just here in whatever goodness, whatever pleasure or contentment that is available.

As you turn the wheel of breathing in and breathing out, in a sense smoothing out the bowl of your body, the bowl of clay on the wheel.

With the image of a mountain, feeling whatever stability is here in your body, resting in that stability as if you're a mountain.

As if your mind is a broad, peaceful lake, feel whatever ways the mind might be that way: broad and still, even if there are some waves on it.

And then whatever way the heart feels like a full moon: exposed, open, floating in the air, in the sky, in space. Feel that luminosity and freedom of the heart.

And the breathing like a gentle breeze that blows here and there through the body, through the mind, through the heart, connecting you to stability and stillness in freedom of the heart.

And staying centered here in this mountain-like body, still mind, and open heart, open the awareness up out into the world. As if the stability spreads out from the place you're sitting, out across the surface of the lands. As if a peaceful stillness spreads from your mind out across the air and across the seas. And as if the freedom and luminosity of the full moon heart shines all over the globe.

And you, for a few moments undisturbed by the suffering of the world, but in this undisturbed way, perhaps you can tap into a heartfelt wish of compassion, care, a wish for the welfare of all beings.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be free of suffering. May all beings be safe from all forms of harm: physical, mental, emotional. May all beings be peaceful, sharing as we share our peacefulness with them. May all beings be free, as we do not limit them, box them in with our ideas and desires, expectations.

May the benefit of this meditation together spread out into the world for the welfare and benefit of all beings. And may they do so through our deeds of body, speech, and mind. May today be a day for caring for the welfare of others.