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Guided Meditation: Dharma Delight

Good morning friends. Welcome everyone. Welcome back. Welcome back if you're coming back. Welcome for the first time if it's your first time this week, or if it's your first time ever. Welcome to those who are here every day. Welcome to those who share greetings in the chat. Welcome to those who only come once in a while. It's all good. Everyone's welcome.

As some of you know, and I remember every time I say welcome, I like to say welcome in the spirit of today's theme, the week's theme, and today's special take on the theme. Today, we're going to talk a little bit about dharma delight, delight in the meditation in particular. And so I think it's for this reason that I say welcome with a smile. There's great delight in this practice, and the delight leads us onwards. The delight we feel in the meditation is a wholesome delight. It's part of the path.

We've been talking this week about the specific qualities that each of us bring to the Sangha^[1], and that in each case help make the Sangha what it is. I said yesterday that a community of practice is, in a sense, the sum total of the practices in it. Each of us cultivate practices in which there are strengths that reflect our own way of being in the world, and a way of taking our practice to the world. Those various individual strengths strengthen the Sangha as a whole, strengthen the community of practice, and make it more resilient, and as I said yesterday, more delightful.

So we'll explore this first by sitting and making sure that we recognize that the delight that can come up in the practice is a wholesome delight. And recognize that practitioners who have a particular delight in the practice illuminate the Sangha with that delight. We all benefit from it, and we all can find inspiration in that, particularly maybe at times when the meditation seems like hard work, which it can sometimes.

So let's sit together. I'll guide very lightly as we begin, and then we'll have a brief little dharma talk, what at IMC we refer to as a Dharmette. I think Gil made that word up, and yeah, I like it.

Let's sit together. I'll try to find some way to guide this that helps us access or recognize the wholesome delight that can be there in the practice. Each of us, while recognizing this is a particular strength in some practitioners, can find a way to let this delight inspire our practice, buoy up our practice, and support our practice.

What occurs to me as we sit, as we bring our attention inward, maybe as we bring our attention downward, closing our eyes if that feels comfortable, is that we can notice something in our experience of the body here that's simple. The delight that arises in the practice of the meditation is a simple delight. It's light.

So maybe as we begin to sit, we can bring some attention to the breathing. Something simple that can be quite delightful is just noticing the way that when we inhale, the air comes in quicker and cooler typically than when we exhale. It comes in sort of quick and cool, and goes out sort of warmer and slower. Or perhaps just noticing the temperature of the surrounding air on the backs of your hands, wherever your hands are resting. If that coolness isn't immediately noticeable, you can turn the hands over, palms up, palms down, depending on how you had your hands, and notice the simple sensations and the simple knowing of those sensations of the air on the skin. We begin with something simple.

Maybe another thing is just the weight of the body as we sit on a bench, on a cushion, or on a chair for meditation. The simple experience of the weight of the body, known effortlessly. And in these simple things, we may find that there's pleasantness. There may be, as we start to notice the body here—its weight, its breathing—maybe there's some physical relaxation or ease in the body that comes with just being present with whatever's going on. We may be able to sense relaxation or ease in the body even if there's also, at the very same time, discomfort in the body.

Similarly, there may be some calm in the mind as we just bring our attention here now. And this can be the case even if the mind is busy. The mind can be busy, and it can be known with a knowing that's at ease, that's calm, that's effortless. And maybe we can have some awareness of finding ourselves in the meditation, in the flow of experience. Resting in the stream of present moment happenings, the experience of the arising and passing of each moment, each brief mind moment of experience. And just being here without clinging to anything or pushing anything away.

Nothing needs to be pushed away and excluded. Nothing needs to be held onto. The ease, the pleasantness, the delight that can come with just sitting here in meditation. These states of body and mind, they don't have to be perfect. They don't have to be all-encompassing to be powerful forces in our lives. A little bit of ease, a little bit of openheartedness toward our experience is enough. We can appreciate it. As we appreciate it, it's strengthened. And thus, we cultivate the ease of practice. We cultivate the delight and enjoyment in it.

As we sit here in meditation, notice delight, notice enjoyment, notice pleasure, notice pleasantness. And know that this wholesome pleasantness, this wholesome pleasure can be embraced, can be cultivated. This is a wholesome delight that arises from within. It doesn't depend on external circumstances or conditions.

And we can bring to mind something the Buddha is quoted as saying about this: "This is the pleasure of letting go. This is the pleasure of seclusion. The pleasure of peace, the pleasure of awakening. And such pleasure should be cultivated and developed and should not be feared."

Some practitioners among us, some of you, bring a special delight in the meditation to the Sangha. Be confident in this gift. Some practitioners are particularly adept at remembering long quotes from the Dhammapada^[2], or being a master of the concept of dependent arising. They bring something too. But the delight in meditation that you know, this too is a great gift to this Sangha, this community of practice.

And I would encourage you—I realize it's becoming sort of a tagline of the retreat already—bring it and share it. Bring what you have to the community of practice and share it. How might one bring and share the delight in the meditation? Well, there may be many ways, but if it suits you, bring your smile.

[bell rings]

Dharmette; What each of Us Brings to the Sangha: (2 of 5) Delight in Meditation

So again, welcome friends. I'd say it's wonderful to see everyone, but I can't see any of you. It's an interesting and rather delightful aspect of the 7 a.m. YouTube Sangha that I see myself only. But I know you're out there, and I appreciate the gifts that each of you bring to this community of practice. That's our theme for the week.

I've just ended the meditation by saying those for whom delight in the meditation has a particular strength, just know that that's appreciated, that it helps strengthen our community of practice. And as I said at the end, share your smile if that suits you. Delight doesn't have to be expressed in a smile, but I want to share this with you. I have to leave the screen for just a second to reach over here to find a Buddha. There's a handy Buddha in several places in this spot. I'm going to bring up this one.

If you ever notice—now where can I put him so he's in focus? Well, I'll put him in front of me. If you ever notice, most representations of the Buddha show the Buddha with a mysterious little smile. The Buddha knows this delight in the meditation and wants to share it. And it's a subtle delight. It's a delight of a half-smile. Maybe it's an internal smile mostly, but look around at good representations of the Buddha. I can't quite get this one to focus, but the Buddha frequently is represented with a little smile, a little smile of dharma delight. Let me put this Buddha back.

So we'll continue with this particular quality of individual practice that benefits the Sangha as a whole, and I'll return to the discourse that I was using yesterday. Moving on, and remember, this is a discourse that finds a group of disciples of the Buddha in an evening sharing the dharma together in the way we're doing here, but in their case in a little grove of sal trees, a sacred tree for Buddhists.

Sāriputta^[3] has asked Ānanda^[4] what sort of special practice qualities might illuminate this special grove, and Ānanda has answered, as we spoke about yesterday. And now it's Revata's^[5] turn, and I'm quoting here to say: When Ānanda had finished speaking, Sāriputta addressed the venerable Revata and said, "Friend Revata, Ānanda has spoken according to his inspiration. And now I ask you, friend Revata, this grove of sals in Gosinga^[6] here is delightful. This night is moonlit. The trees are all in blossom, and heavenly scents seem to float in the air. What kind of practitioner, what kind of practice would illuminate this sal grove?"

And Revata answers: "A practice or practitioner that would illuminate this sal grove is one who delights in solitary meditation. One who takes delight in the meditation practice. One who is devoted to internal serenity of mind and does not neglect meditation."

So that's where we begin. This is a practitioner who brings this delight in meditation. And it's interesting that what's happened is Ānanda previously has said what he brings is this ability to memorize vast portions of the teachings. It's to Ānanda that we owe the preservation of many of the Buddha's teachings. But Revata, when asked, says something very different—that what he brings is delight in the meditation.

So there are practitioners among us who shine with this delight of practice and light up the whole community, just as Revata himself illuminates the Gosinga sal grove. And this is a wholesome delight. This is something I want to point to. Sometimes in our practice, we come to practice as a result of meeting suffering. We sometimes approach it as a problem-solving sort of exercise. And again, it is useful for that, I am not rejecting or dismissing that. But we sometimes miss that the pleasure that comes in the practice is a wholesome pleasure. Sometimes we actually wonder whether anything that is pleasurable is safe.

This delight in the meditation is safe. We can lean into it. In fact, we have encouragement to cultivate it, to actively enjoy it, because that strengthens it. And this is something that people who bring delight in the meditation to the Sangha of practice have figured out. And again, that's just a strength of their practice. It doesn't mean that other strengths aren't also useful, as we'll explore during the course of the week. But in each case, I want to encourage each of us to bring what we bring. Don't try to bring what others bring. Recognize our own strengths and how they add to our community of practice.

But this delight in meditation shouldn't be feared. It's not a pleasure or a pleasantness or a delight that we need to turn away from as we might with others. You know, in all our lives there are sources of delight, pleasure, and pleasantness that we want to be careful around because, among other things, they don't provide a stable, secure source of contentment. Sometimes quite the opposite. But in the meditation, we can lean into this. And I've said it in the guided meditation; I quoted the Buddha. I'm going to do that again now, because we have teachers who delight in the meditation and bring other qualities to the Sangha as well. But the delight in meditation is probably something pretty common among your teachers.

We don't just say it ourselves. We have it on good authority. And here again is a quotation of the Buddha that I particularly like. The Buddha says this, meaning what we find in the meditation, this ability to meet our experience without fighting against it, to be here without struggle, without suffering, without stress. He says, "This experience in the meditation is called the pleasure of letting go. The pleasure of seclusion." Secluding ourselves from external influences and external forces that push and pull us, lead us around. "The pleasure of letting go, the pleasure of peace, the pleasure of awakening. And such pleasure should be cultivated and developed and should not be feared."

So this is very strong encouragement to pay attention to the pleasantness and even the pleasure of the meditation, and lean into it. What the Buddha is pointing to in this quotation is that this wholesome pleasure is path. It's the way forward. It's very interesting that in many places in the discourses, the Buddha shows that it's through pleasurable knowing of experience—this pleasantness, pleasure, delight that comes with letting go—that's the path to awakening. And I think I've written that somewhere here. Being at peace in experience is pleasurable. Being awake in the world is pleasurable. The Buddha is pointing to this, and this kind of pleasure, this delight that we can find in the meditation as sort of a foretaste of the pleasure of awakening, is to be cultivated.

This shouldn't be any mystery, in a way. Something the Buddha understood, and that we point to as teachers, is that this is just a natural functioning of mind and even of the brain, that we lean in toward pleasant experience. And frequently, in our struggles, in our suffering, we found that it's dangerous to lean into that. In this case, and this is why the meditation is so important and delight in it is so inspiring, is that in this place we can lean into this pleasantness and enjoy it and take delight in it, knowing that it leads onward.

So we get better and better at discerning where wholesome lies, and this will be the practice quality we talk about tomorrow. When we see clearly how suffering arises, how we can meet our experience without suffering, we learn which way lies wholesome and which way lies unwholesome mind states.

So this is a delight in meditation that is reflected in something also kind of a larger delight in the practice that is sometimes called dharma delight. We take delight in the meditation, and that reflects a larger delight in the dharma, in the teachings. And in the teachings, dharma delight is recognized as sort of the highest form of delight that one can experience. In the Dhammapada, which I mentioned at the end of the guided meditation, the Buddha says of all delights, the delight in the dharma is greatest, because it's a delight that overcomes all suffering.

So this profound, unshakable delight that arises in the practice, and that we can touch into in the meditation, arises from turning the mind inward and from letting go, from seclusion, from seeing clearly.

And I'll close with a couple of things today. One thing I like about this word delight, and I think I referred to it in the guided meditation, is that it has light in it. So delight is light. It has a lightness to it. Right? You can see that in the smile of the Buddha statues and representations, that there's a lightness that comes with this pleasantness of the meditation. It's not heavy. It's not weighed down. It's not too complicated. It's a simple delight. It's light, and it's light as opposed to dark. Delight has light in it. This light that illuminates the Gosinga sal grove. This light that illuminates practice, and this light that, when brought to the Sangha, illuminates the whole community of practice. It lights up this community of practice, just like Revata's delight in meditation lights up the Gosinga sal grove.

So, I ended the guided meditation with this little phrase that I could go back and retitle the week with because I like it a lot, which is: bring it and share it. Bring what you find in the practice. Bring it to the community and share it. And share can mean a lot of different things. Maybe it's just that little mysterious smile of delight in the meditation. But be confident in what you find in your practice that strengthens you, that helps you meet experience. Be confident that that is an important, meaningful, valuable expression of the practice, and that when you bring it to the community, in whatever way you do that, it strengthens the community, makes the community more resilient, and as I've been saying since yesterday, more delightful.

So that's it friends for today. Tomorrow we'll meet for more. Remember that Friday we'll learn from the Buddha what he thinks he brings to the community of practice. So till tomorrow, take care.