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Guided Meditation: Mindful to the End

Warm greetings from IMC in Redwood City. I'm happy to be here with you.

So, I want to tell a little story, I guess a meditation story. Imagine that you come to some trailhead with a wonderful, wise guide, and the guide tells you, "Here's your trail." You walk this trail, and your only task as you walk is to stay in the present moment, attentive to what's happening as you walk.

As you walk, the beginning of the trail is a barren wilderness, maybe quite dry and quite an unvaried kind of wasteland. It's hard to stay present. It's hard to be interested and stay present for the walking, and present for looking. Then slowly, as you walk into areas of more vegetation and more activities, it seems a little more engaging. However, you walk by homes and buildings. Some homes have large TVs you can see through the window, and they just seem so interesting, and you get pulled into looking through the window to see what's there. Other buildings are nightclubs, or others are prisons, or there are little arguments and wars going on in some neighborhoods. You get pulled into that and you stop really being mindful, caught up in the drama of it all, or lost in the stories. Or, if you keep walking, you're just in the imagination of all that.

But slowly the terrain changes and develops, and you get to beautiful meadows with wildflowers, and beautiful oak woodlands. It just gets really beautiful walking by streams, and it's easier and easier just to stay walking and present, and really staying in the experience. As you keep walking, you come to this beautiful garden. The garden is bursting full of wonderful flowers and a beautiful array of colors. It's almost natural just to go "wow" and stay right there. The mind doesn't wander at all; of course it's going to be there. There's no effort.

Then this trail takes you right to the center of the garden, and there's a bench with a nice view of those garden beds around it, and you sit there. There's no effort whatsoever to walk, to search, to look, to be mindful—just present and just with it. It's such a captivating and timeless moment of just this color, just this garden, just now. There's a dropping away of agency, of self, of me being the one who watches and is doing something. It is just there in a timeless moment in the experience, with a great sense of satisfaction, happiness, lightness, and ease. And there you rest.

It's wonderful to know that this is possible. And then, being refreshed, you take the trail back and you come back to the world in a refreshed way, in an open way.

So, meditation can begin sometimes being barren, sometimes caught up in the dramas of life, and swept off this way and that way with concerns. But as we keep settling and developing concentration, the meditation path begins opening up to more enjoyment, pleasure, beauty, and awe, just with staying present, staying here. And as we stay here, it opens up more and more. The staying here opens up at some point to a beautiful garden. We stay here and it opens up to just sitting on a bench in a timeless moment here, where all agency, all self-concern, all desires, and all aversions fall away, and we're just here with this experience. It's refreshing, it's healthy, it has a certain kind of happiness in it.

All along the way, the idea was to be in the present moment. But that present moment unfolds and changes on the path of practice. So this is not that we'll end up in the garden today, but one of the primary things I wanted to say in this little story was that the path is to be present. If we just keep staying present with our experience, it's not just a barren wilderness, it's not just a dull place. But as we keep doing it, there are more and more treasures, more and more wonderfulness to explore, to be present for, as we get more and more settled, more and more present, more concentrated in the mindfulness.

So, take a meditation posture that's suited for you for walking this path, a meditation posture that gives you some support to be alert, to be attentive. For those sitting in a chair or on a cushion, it might mean the posture that allows you to be a little bit more alert with your spine a little more upright, maybe letting the spine between the shoulder blades come in a little bit, reducing the curve that might be there. And gently closing your eyes if that's comfortable for you. Having the eyes closed is partly a support to keep the sense doors simpler, sense experience more simple, and not being pulled into the world of sight.

Then, to begin settling in, take a few long, slow, deep, gentle breaths. As you exhale, let the exhale be a little extended, but in a relaxed way. Almost as if by relaxing further, releasing further, the exhale exhales more fully, longer. And then letting your breathing return to normal. Take a few exhales to relax, soften the body, letting go of any tension that's easy to let go of. Softening in the face, relaxing the shoulders maybe by feeling the gentle pull of gravity, and softening the belly.

Then settling in, letting the attention settle onto wherever it's easiest to experience breathing. It could be in the nostrils, the air going in and out. It could be the movements of the chest or the movements of the belly. Or all of those together, kind of like the whole breath body breathing in and breathing out.

And for those of you for whom the breathing is a good meditation practice, think of the breathing as the path you're going to walk on. You simply walk, whether it's barren wilderness, or meadows, or forests, or gardens, whatever it might be, don't be distracted by any of it, but stay with the breathing. Stay present for your experience, content to let the experience be what it is. The only important thing for you here is to be aware, mindful of what's happening in the present moment, as if it's the only thing, the most valuable thing, the thing for the moments that it's here, remembering to stay present.

When you're present for your experience, you're on the path. It's a path that becomes wonderful in and of itself each step of the way. No need to be thinking ahead where it's going. And it is a path that leads to a garden.

Reflections

As we come to the end of this sitting, I'd like to add something to the metaphoric story I said at the beginning. And that is, when the wise guide sent you on the trail to stay present, follow the trail to the very end, the guide said, "Please do this, and bring back a gift that you can give to the world."

When you come to the end of the trail and the center of the garden, sitting on the bench, you wonder, what is the gift? Are they some of these flowers? But you don't know if it's okay to pick them, and it's a long walk back and they'll wilt by the time you get back. So what is the gift? The gift is you.

The gift is how you have become at peace with yourself, at ease, that you become happy in yourself, that you become free of all kinds of preoccupations and concerns, which are not gifts. It's your goodness, your wholesomeness, your freedom, your peace, your generosity that comes out of this place of freedom.

So as we come out of this meditation practice, may it be that whatever benefits, seen and unseen, that you've had from this meditation practice, may it be a gift for the world. That in seen and unseen ways, known and unknown ways, you become a gift, that you're an agent for some modicum, some piece of the happiness of all beings. That all beings feel safe. Let all beings be free.

May it be that this practice we do together supports the welfare and happiness of all beings everywhere. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. And may all beings be free.