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Guided Meditation: Not Knowing

Hello everyone, and welcome.

We're at a day for a natural turning of the planet. It is kind of symbolic. It's been getting darker for many months now, the days shorter, and now with no responsibility on our part, nothing we've done, the days will get longer, there will be more light. It's a marvelous, wonderful thing that that's the case, at least here in the Northern Hemisphere. It's different in the Southern Hemisphere, but they'll appreciate the same thing in six months—that there will be a turn towards light, towards warmth.

In the same way with meditation, we don't cause the light, the warmth, the goodness, and the wholesomeness to arise, but we enable it. We allow it. We make room for it. The unwholesome mental tendencies, thoughts, actions, and motivations belong to a part of the mind that we do activate; we do get involved in it, because they're more the reactive part of the mind. And the wholesome, certainly we can activate it and kind of bring it about sometimes. But in meditation, what we learn is that a lot of the wholesome that develops, a lot of the goodness that comes in meditation, doesn't come from us making it or doing it so much, but more from allowing it. We create the conditions that allow what's not reactive to occur, allowing something which is an unfolding and emerging. The wholesome emerges; the unwholesome reacts, in a sense.

What I'd like to offer today is one of the conditions that can be phenomenally helpful for the emergence of the wholesome: to really stay close to not knowing.

Stay close to recognizing what's happening. In that sense, there is knowing—being mindful of breathing, the body, and the experience you're having. But beyond recognizing its simplicity, you don't know what it means. You don't know where it's going or what's happening. Just get out of the way. "I don't know, this is what's happening. I don't know." Not knowing, so that we're not riding close with assigning meaning, identifying, making it "me, myself, and mine," or operating from what should happen or what shouldn't happen. Let go of expectations, desires for what's supposed to happen, and desires for what's not supposed to happen. Just know what's happening in the sense of recognition—clear recognition.

And just not know anything else. That kind of not knowing makes room. It empties a crowded mind of all its thoughts, concerns, and projections. Emptying the mind of all its crowded visitors makes room for something to emerge.

Then, trust what emerges from your depths. Trust the simplicity of not knowing while recognizing. And the recognition can be phenomenally simple. If it's not obvious what something is, you can simply recognize it as "something." You don't have to go digging or analyzing. Over time, it's just "something, and I don't know," and then see what emerges, what becomes clear.

Assume a meditation posture. A posture of feeling worthy of something important, feeling worthy as a human being. A posture that expresses this, even if you don't feel that way. Because that sense of worthiness, dignity, or nobility is a condition that allows something from the depths to emerge. It's different if we take a posture that's the opposite of self-worth or dignity.

Gently close your eyes.

Take a few long, slow, deep breaths, and as you exhale, let go of knowing. Let go of meaning-making, thinking about the future or past, what should be, and what shouldn't be. Let go, and let the visitors, the crowd in your mind, begin to leave and float away.

Let your breath return to normal.

Just sit here quietly for a few moments, finding your way into a wholesome, satisfying attitude of not needing to know so much. Not needing to judge, assign meaning, or even assign a future to what's happening. Just being present.

Making the room of not knowing.

And maybe in the middle of this vast field of not knowing, your body is breathing. The rhythm of breathing. A rhythm that moves through a mind of not knowing, a mind that's present.

Maybe the not knowing is replaced by a greater attentiveness. A peaceful alertness to what is.

And if your mind starts thinking about something, you might take a moment to see or feel that the thinking is operating on some kind of thing that you assume you know. The mind assumes it knows. Even if it's as simple as assuming it knows that it's supposed to know, supposed to figure something out, let there be a not knowing.

That not knowing makes room to be with the depths of your being.

When you're lost in thought and recognize it, say to yourself, "Not knowing. Don't know." You don't really know. Or you don't really need to know whatever you're thinking about that's not right here and now, in the simplicity of being with what emerges in the body and in the heart.

Not knowing creates different opportunities than knowing. If you go into the world knowing, I think it can be effective and have good results. But if you enter the world in not knowing, you expand the possibilities.

If you meet a friend and begin by not knowing, you get to experience more of the fullness or the uniqueness of that moment of your friend, and you get to have more room for yourself. Knowing often narrows possibilities. Not knowing, taking a few moments not to know but to discover, allows us to open to something new.

Dedication of Merit

So at the end of this sitting, as we do the dedication of merit^[1], what would it be like to care for the world where there's care, but also room for discovery? Where there's love, but the space of not knowing what's supposed to happen and what's going on.

So I'll say the dedication, but maybe let it open you to not knowing—that not knowing that can be there together with love.

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

May all beings know the respect of others being available to know who they are, without projections and judgments, and even a past. Let people, as you go through the world, have the respect of the not knowing mind as you bring your presence and attention to take in another person. And may that bring peace, love, and happiness.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Right Effort (3 of 5) Emergence of the Wholesome

Oh goodness, hello everyone, and [unintelligible]. The topic this week is Right Effort^[2], and today we turn towards the effort to allow the wholesome to emerge.

Classically in Buddhism, there's a dichotomy—a division between those mental states, motivations, thoughts, and activities that are afflictive, and those that are beneficial. In this dichotomy, what might be in the middle—that's neither afflictive nor beneficial—is not really addressed or talked about. Not because there's a radical duality between these two, but the neutral is not spiritually so meaningful or important to focus on. It is what it is, but in terms of the training, growth, and development that Buddhism is about, it's not particularly relevant.

It would be like someone training for a bicycle race. There are things that they do that could undermine their training, and things that can support it. And then there are things that can happen that do neither. For example, if the person just likes to read about football scores and standings, it might be neutral. It might be pleasant to do or nice if a person likes that, but in terms of the training for the bicycle race, it's neither here nor there.

Buddhism has this dichotomy between the wholesome and the unwholesome. The unwholesome is afflictive, and the wholesome is beneficial. What it indicates is that there are beneficial states of mind and movements of the heart that can live within us that are good and useful. We want to enable them, evoke them, or allow room for them, because these are important.

Buddhism is not just about abandoning, letting go, and renouncing. When the Buddha talked about letting go, he very seldom talked about letting go of outer things. It's always an inner world: letting go of clinging, attachments, craving, and the things that we're caught in. We don't necessarily have to let go of things in the world. Wisdom or compassion might tell us to do that, but in terms of the Dharma, what we're letting go of is the inner clinging and attachments in the mind. But that's not all we're supposed to do.

Sometimes people pick up a simple idea of Buddhism and think, "Oh, Buddhism is all about letting go." Letting go is important—it's part of the Four Right Efforts—but equally important is the cultivation, allowance, and development of beneficial, wholesome, and skillful states.

There are a lot of them. The ones closely associated with mindfulness practice are the Seven Factors of Awakening^[3]: mindfulness, investigation, effort or endeavoring, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity. Elsewhere, happiness is important, as are patience, wisdom, and states of mind that are expansive, open, peaceful, and boundless—like loving-kindness, compassion^[4], and sympathetic joy. There's a whole slew of them.

There are so many that the mind can go dizzy: "Wow, I have to get busy here and do so much!" But it isn't so much that we have to do them all, and all at once. There's another art here, and it's not necessarily the art of making and doing, but of allowing.

The language is usually translated into English as arising—when one makes room for, makes space for, or puts energy into the arising of wholesome states. Rather than calling it "arising," I sometimes like to call it "emergence." Why I like emergence is that it doesn't imply that we're the doer or the maker of it. Rather, there's something within us that wants to be born, something that has the capacity of emerging and coming out. Our job is to make space for that emergence, to allow for that.

The reason I trust this so much is that I associate afflictive emotions and states of mind more with surface reactivity. It's the world of reactions to what's happening in the world, how it impacts us, and how it impacts our attachments and fears. As deep as those can feel, they still have to do with this interactive world. It's more on the surface.

The emergent world comes from a different place within, and it's something that can well up as opposed to reacting to something. We don't have to have anything in particular happening in the world that triggers the beneficial. It's more like we get settled and make room for it. This is a remarkable thing to discover in meditation: the more peaceful, quiet, and calm we become, the more we have this sense of not knowing—just being willing to be here in our experience and make room—and then the beneficial begins to flow and come out. It's not an intentional making; rather, the intention is to make room for it, to allow for it, and to be with it.

It can seem a little bit passive, or like magical thinking, to say, "Okay, I'm just going to sit here and do nothing, and something wonderful will emerge." Maybe that's a little too passive. The language of Right Effort is actually kind of dramatic and powerful. Here is the classic description of the third Right Effort:

This is my own translation, so if you look it up somewhere else, you'll find it quite different. "Practitioners take up and take hold of their minds..."

To "take up and take hold of their minds" doesn't mean to grab on tightly. It means they enter into the world of their minds, and the thinking, reactive mind doesn't have us. We are there for our mind. There's a kind of freedom there. Who's in control, the mind or you? In a certain kind of way, in this practice, you are, and the machinations of the mind don't grab us by the nose and pull us around. Another way of saying this is to really be present in a full way: take up and abide in the heart.

"...take up and take hold of their minds, and generate desire, and then endeavor and initiate courageous effort for the arising of wholesome mental states that have not yet arisen."

Generate desire: Have some desire for wholesome states. That is a good thing. And initiate courageous effort (Viriya^[5]): not just to make space for it, but to trust it's okay to have it. There are times where having this kind of open experience of presence and attentiveness to the world feels very vulnerable and very scary. To be able to feel the depth of what's going on for us, we have to go through layers of things which are difficult. So we keep opening and saying, "Okay, this too. This too I stay with."

This courageous effort is not believing the thoughts in the mind that say you have to fix, do, react, and blame. It's the courageous effort to really be present in a simple, relaxed way, right here, putting aside all the other things to allow something to emerge.

At first, what might emerge is^[6] grief, sadness, or anger that's been long unresolved. But trust it. Just keep opening, and see what wants to emerge. Courageous effort is keeping getting out of the way for that. This idea of not knowing can be a way to get out of the way to allow something to begin to come. This not knowing and emergence seem to work best when we're most settled, calm, and peaceful.

It doesn't work so well if we're caught up in our reactive world, that self-perpetuating world of samsara^[7]. So drop down, quiet down, or pause long enough to have this not knowing, this availability for something to emerge. When you take the time to stop the running—the running of the mind, the running of the body, running around doing things—if you take the time to pause, the sacred pause, to feel and be available to what is here, ask: What wants to emerge? What wants to be born? Even in times of great crisis (unless there's immediate danger) or great challenges, become quiet enough to ask the question: What here wants to be born in the center of it all? What wants to emerge? And as things emerge that are wholesome, beneficial, and nourishing for the heart, allow them. Let them come.

A lot of this third Right Effort is not making something happen, but rather availing ourselves of what's already here.

I'd like to propose to you that you have more beneficial states going on all the time, available to you. If you pause, make room, and quiet down for just a moment, you'll start feeling that things are good. There are reasons for joy, happiness, kindness, and love. There are reasons for curiosity and interest in a delightful, nourishing way about what's here, as opposed to, "Oh no, this again."

Avail yourself. Rather than making yourself be a certain way that's wholesome, see if you can pause, make space, and avail yourself of the wholesome that's already here and available. No matter how small it is, no matter if it's accompanied by unwholesomeness, don't give the unwholesome the authority to grab you and pull you around, or feel that you have to listen to it and obey it. Avail yourself of the wholesome that's here.

If you don't have it for yourself, then borrow it from others. If you can be with people, or somehow have a connection with someone—even on the web—put yourself in the presence of people who you feel are emanating something wholesome. Borrow it from them so you can avail yourself of it, and begin exploring the world of the emergence of the wholesome.

The homework for today is to make yourself available for the wholesome. It's not so much making it, but making space for it. If you're only running around, there's no space, no possibility.

Thank you, and I look forward to our time tomorrow.