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Guided Meditation: Meditating with "What"

Good morning, everyone. Welcome.

Today, the meditation is about knowing and not knowing. Part of the challenge of meditation is all the meaning we assign, the significance, the fantasies, the illusions, and the ideas that we add on top of our direct experience. One of the ways we do this is by assigning personal meaning or personal ideas about what something means for us. Some of that is okay, but a lot of it is extra. Much of it can be delusion and fantasy.

One of the ways to meditate is to consciously not know—not try to figure things out, not try to explain them, not try to assign meaning to them, and not ask why they are there or how to fix them. We can practice with a simple question, just a simple statement: "What?" "What is this?" But we do not try to answer it.

Asking "what" allows us to witness something and see it fresh, to see it anew. It allows us to let it appear and come to us. We sit with a "what" and then just see what is there, without needing to know the answer. We sit with what is there—not knowing what is there, in a sense, but letting it show itself to us. We do this without asserting or projecting our ideas on top of it.

This is so helpful for living our life: to always begin with the question, "What?", and let the experience speak to you, rather than claiming the experience for yourself. So, what?

To begin, assume an upright, balanced posture. Enter into this posture as if you are not coming with a long history of knowing exactly how you should sit or exactly what your way is. Discover what the posture can be as if it is your very first time.

Then, lower your gaze and perhaps close your eyes.

This "what" can begin right away. What is this experience of sitting here, being present, when there is no overlay of "shoulds," expectations, or ideas of where you are going in practice? Just "what" to this experience.

Bring a willingness to not explain, not even to know what it is, but just to feel, sense, and allow it to be what it is.

Have this "what" for what is happening in your mind—the thoughts, the attitudes, the reactions. Have this "what" as a deeper question, almost like: "What is here? What is this mind about? What is happening here?" But perhaps do not look for answers. Just be open to feel, see, and sense.

Then, perhaps take a few long, slow, deep breaths to settle into your body and settle into your place. Let your breath return to normal.

Relax your body a bit—the face, the shoulders, the belly. Each time you relax, imagine that you ask the question, "What is this?", as if you are discovering this part of your body for the first time. What is happening as I relax? What is revealed?

Let yourself settle into your breathing, the rhythm of breathing, with a beginner's mind^[1]. Do the best you can without expectations or ideas of what should happen, or what it is supposed to be like. Just what. What is this experience of sitting here breathing?

Here, the question "what" implies a relaxation of searching and looking. It is just "what," being open to whatever is here. Be open to breathing, to the body, to the mind.

Oh, what a beginner's mind! It brings a receptivity and a willingness to just be here with this, not needing to make it into anything or judge it. Just the "what." The question "what" takes you away from your discursive thinking and your fantasies. Bring the "what" to what is happening now, here, just now.

Sitting with an attitude of "what" opens you up and makes you curious to this experience right now, while at the same time not needing to know. You do not need to have it understood in words. Just have an open curiosity to this.

When the mind wanders off in thought, what is this? "What" is the question, the curiosity that quiets the mind in a process of silent discovery.

One of the benefits of developing a mindfulness practice can be a comfort level with not knowing. It is a comfortable level of being present for our direct, immediate experience, not needing to have something to say, something to explain, or needing to know what one is supposed to do. You are just present, accompanying the experience, allowing the experience to show itself more fully without the filter of our ideas, explanations, and certainties.

Ask the question "what" without looking for an answer. Just look for the sake of looking, seeing more fully.

In this way, perhaps we can know people in a new way, a fresh way. We can see them without old filters, ideas, histories, and memories. We do not see them through roles and ideas. By not knowing who they are, we actually can get to know them more fully in some way. What is known when we do not try to know?

Perhaps the quiet stillness of mindfulness can help us to have greater goodwill and respect for others.

May it be that as we come out of meditation, whatever ability we have to be present without needing to know or explain generates greater care for the welfare and happiness of others.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

[Music]

Binding and Unbinding (3 of 5) Unwholesome and Wholesome Not Knowing

Good morning. Today the sunlight is quite bright for me.

One of the things that bind us, that keeps people in bondage and can have a huge impact on others, is delusion and confusion. Delusion is a very powerful word. In Buddhism, it is considered to be one of the important forms of bondage, one of the three poisons^[2].

To be caught in delusion can be particularly harmful because when we are deluded, we do not really see the situation clearly. Even if our intentions are good, we might be causing harm in the world around us. With delusion, we can be misinformed or misguided in whatever we think is important.

There is a classic teaching in Buddhism that someone who wants a fire goes and chops up wood, looking for the fire in the wood, because that is where fire comes from. But it is not enough just to chop it up; in the old days, you had to create the fire by rubbing something together. Or there is the idea that you can get grape juice by squeezing gravel. If you are trying to accomplish something and you are deluded about the means and how to do it, you are not going to get much of a result.

One of the delusions that Buddhism emphasizes is the improper pursuit of happiness—believing that what is not a source of happiness is a source of happiness. Thinking that pleasure will bring happiness, thinking that power will bring happiness, thinking that anger will bring happiness, or thinking that criticizing others and assigning blame will bring happiness. We have all kinds of ways in which we think, "I'll only be happy if..." and we hold some idea far in the future, wanting to put everything in place so that only then we can be happy.

Part of the function of Buddhism is to overcome delusion, confusion, and ignorance. The last form of bondage that we will talk about on Friday is ignorance, so I want to save some of the obvious opposites of confusion and delusion for then.

But what I want to say now is that, in relationship to delusion and confusion, there are two wholesome corollaries.

One of them is a capacity and willingness to not know. It is a willingness, when we do not understand, to not be confused and not spin out delusive ideas and conspiracy theories about how things are. Instead, we can be willing to not know, to be comfortable with not knowing, and to be able to simply say, "I don't know."

Rather than not knowing and then becoming confused, or adding delusion on top of it by coming up with theories, stretching reality, and projecting ideas and solutions onto the situation, there is something very powerful about not understanding what is happening and remaining rested and grounded in not knowing.

There is a wholesome not knowing. Some schools of Buddhism put a tremendous emphasis on cultivating a not-knowing mind, sometimes called a beginner's mind^[1:1]. The value of this not knowing is not that we become uninformed or foolish, but rather that we see things fresh. We are willing to learn and see anew what is there. This opens up new possibilities. We are actually better informed by what is happening, and we do not get caught up in the suffering of needing to know.

It is not a crime to not know. I have met people who were in difficult situations where they didn't know what was happening and didn't know what to do, but they openly said so. There was something about them being comfortable with not knowing and not understanding that made such a huge difference to me. It inspired me: Wow, you can do that? You don't have to have answers? You don't have to have solutions? You can just sit there and not know. You can take a stand in not needing to pretend it is otherwise, and not needing to rush ahead to figure things out or make things up.

I think it is a phenomenally powerful thing to be willing to not know. It is a protection from delusion and confusion. There is a lot of pressure in our society to know, to have explanations, and to assign blame. There is pressure to live in a fantasy world about what brings happiness and what dangers we face. There are lots of people who are spinning out tales of where the danger is and who the dangerous people are—it is delusive^[3]. There is a strong pressure to go along with that current of social delusion.

If we can step back, not know, and be comfortable with that, it is harder to get swept up in mass delusion, the collective delusion of the people around us, or the pressure to do something just for the sake of doing something. Being able to not know opens doors, gives us a new perspective, and can free something very profound within us. So, as a healthy alternative to delusion, there is the possibility of not knowing.

The other healthy, wholesome corollary to delusion is a commitment to building our life from our lived experience in the moment. This is where we discover how to live a wise life: through a dedication to the present moment.

Here and now, we can start seeing how we suffer, how we create our suffering, how we get caught, how we strain, how we contract, and how we get resistant. We can see how we get caught in desires, caught in fear, and caught in any kind of bondage.

If we have a commitment to being here, we can find a way to be present without believing that the way forward is through suffering, or through doing something that brings suffering to us.

For example, imagine being in a challenging social situation and using hostility to clear the room to make things feel safe, or to chase people away. It might be effective for the situation, but the hostility harms ourselves. Or consider thinking that what we need to do is become wealthy, but the very pursuit of wealth involves an engagement in greed that creates a tremendous amount of suffering in our own hearts.

The opposite corollary to confusion and delusion is to be committed to tracking and seeing very carefully how to live a life right now, right here, that is not built on things that cause us suffering in the moment. Seeing that as a sense of purpose gives us clarity. It is not the final answer to everything, but it is the foundation. The beginning of our life is the place where we can sit, be present, and know: Now I am contributing suffering to my life, and now I am not.

We can be committed to that in a strong and powerful way.

This morning, I was thinking about when I was 14 years old. I met a 14-year-old girl that I was attracted to, but all I knew was her first name and the street she lived on. So, a friend of mine and I went through the town's telephone book. I started from the front, and he started from the back. We called everyone who lived on that street and asked for her using her first name, until we finally met in the middle of the book and found her.

I say that because of the drive, the seriousness, and the dedication it took to be completely focused on that quest. If you were to use one-tenth of that kind of dedication to track yourself—so that you do not get swept up in confusion, delusion, the suffering of needing to know, and the suffering of straining for solutions—you could stay in that place where you don't succumb to the movements of mind and heart that cause suffering here and now.

With that dedication, let that be where your life is built from. Everything can be built from that. A wonderful life can be built from that. It is not a life built on delusion, fantasy, expectations, or abstract ideas. It is a life that does not know about—and is willing to not know about—so many things, but it does know about tracking and staying close to that place where we do not contribute to our own suffering.

May you not be caught in delusion and confusion. May you discover the wonderfulness of a not-knowing mind.

As you go through your day today, you might check if some of your ideas, explanations, or projections have some tinge of delusion or confusion. See if there is a tinge of, Maybe it's not quite accurate what I'm assuming here. Instead of assuming things, see if you can practice not knowing.

This is the kind of not knowing that doesn't ignore what is happening, but allows you to gaze upon it with fresh eyes. It allows you to see what is actually going on, including what is going on inside of you. By not knowing what is out there, and not being confused or caught up in it, you are more likely to see what you are doing to contribute to your own suffering.

That exploration will probably save you from a lot of delusion.

Thank you.