---
ai_generation_date: '2026-07-25'
ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview
audiodharma:
  talks:
    - date: '2022-03-21'
      mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/15264/20220321-David_Lorey-IMC-balance_and_momentum.mp3
      speakers:
        - speaker_name: David Lorey
          speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/309
      talk_start_time_seconds: 0
      title: Balance and Momentum
      url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/15264
      video_unavailable: false
location_city: Redwood City, CA
video_unavailable: false
youtube:
  id: L7LEQ-MKM0g
  imprecise_upload_date: '2022-05-04'
  title: Balance and Momentum
  upload_date: null
  uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center
  uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter
youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7LEQ-MKM0g
---

# Balance and Momentum - [David Lorey](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/309)

_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._

## Introduction

Good evening, and welcome to IMC. It was a pleasure as I entered this evening to hear one person who's here comment that this was the first time they've been at IMC in person, and what a pleasure that is. My name is David, David Lorey, very happy to be here sitting in for Gil tonight and sitting in with you, sharing in the Dharma together.

I had intended to guide the meditation lightly in the beginning, and then as I looked around at people settling into meditation, I just felt that that would be superfluous tonight. It was sort of very clear that people were settling in and finding some nice stillness. A quiet evening, not too many trains passing, not too much traffic or sounds of the street. A supportive evening, what the Buddha might call an auspicious evening. So...

## [Balance and Momentum](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/15264)

Gil sometimes comments that in the practice we balance effort and allowing. If you've heard Gil say this, you may have also heard Gil talk about _efforting_ and allowing just to make a couple of parallel verbs. I thought that this evening we might explore a little bit some of the nuances of this balancing effort and allowing in the practice.

Had I guided the meditation I might have, because I sometimes do, bring attention to how even in the initial entry into the meditative space, even in some of the most foundational instructions in our tradition, there's a balancing. There's a balancing, and there's a rebalancing. When we close our eyes, for example, if we close our eyes in meditation, we rebalance. We sort of refind our inner life among all the noise and activity of the world we engage in with our eyes open.

When we bring our eyes down in the meditation, our attention tends to turn, come inward and downward a bit, and we find some aspect of what's happening in the inner world, in our inner life.

When we follow one of the essential instructions of our practice, when we find that the mind has become sort of contracted around something, when we find that the mind has wandered off, when we find ourselves in daydream, solving problems, searching for solutions, remembering, thinking about other people, thinking about ourselves—the places the mind goes when it's being a mind, good and useful places at times.

When we bring our attention back gently, without hurry, to the here and now, maybe using the breath as our anchor, returning our attention to the here and now, we're doing this rebalancing. We're sort of, you could say, adding a little effort into the mix, into a mix that maybe had become a little unfocused or a little tangled, a little caught up, a little distracted.

So what I'd like to do is talk about this just a little bit with a little more detail, having sort of set the stage. I'd like to share a sutta, one of the Buddhist discourses, this one from the Anguttara Nikaya[^1], the collection of discourses ordered by number. And spend a little time thinking about how when we find ourselves maybe pitched a little far in the direction of effort, a little too overly engaged with various things that come up in our experience, we could bring a little additional ease in. Or maybe more importantly, when we find ourselves settling into the contentment that can come with meditation, settling into the ease, getting a little foggy, fuzzy, a little unclear, a little unfocused, how we might bring a little bit of edge, a little bit of attentive curiosity back into the practice.

Part of the reason I emphasize that is we emphasize the other a lot frequently. We talk about what to do with the mind that's overly busy. Sometimes, I think it's useful to look at what we do when the mind gets foggy, daydreamy, or when in the larger picture of our practice we find ourselves becoming complacent, or maybe just sort of going along with what can be a very pleasant flow of a meditation practice.

Along with this balancing, there's also a momentum of practice, and a lot of times the momentum of practice is closely related to this balance. When we find ourselves in a time in practice or a place in the meditation where we feel a strong leaning toward being more awake in our lives, it can be fairly easy to adjust the balance, to come back to center, to come back to the place where effort and ease, effort and allowing are nicely balanced. And so too, this attention to momentum can be beneficial to the practice, supportive of the practice.

Sometimes you'll hear Gil and other teachers, Andrea, the co-guiding teacher here, use metaphors to talk about balance in practice, and very commonly the metaphor of riding a bicycle is used. Andrea sometimes uses the metaphor of using a kick scooter. I don't know how many people grew up using kick scooters. One thing I found about these metaphors is that they're a little culturally specific. I grew up riding a bike, I guess I had a scooter, but not everybody did. And some of the communities I teach in, bicycle riding and scooter kicking are not actually part of everybody's experience, so I've been trying to find other metaphors that might be useful.

The ones I've come up with tonight for some reason are standing and walking. I recognize that even these aren't universally human experiences and would like to be as inclusive as possible, but let me give an example from each of these. Riding a bike we're going to start with. When you're riding a bike, particularly if you've become good at it, not maybe when you're first learning, we do this rebalancing without real effort or attention because it's become so second nature. We find that we can tip back to balance really without thinking about it.

And similarly with the scooter. Again, my memory of the scooter is less distinct than the bicycle, but a very similar thing. Once you've learned, you could say it's like riding a bike, that is once you've become adept at it, maintaining your momentum, maintaining your balance is second nature.

Standing and walking are similar, and if you do any standing meditation, which I do quite a bit, you can just enjoy the body's ability to balance without thinking about it. If you want to experience that, you can sometimes bring greater attention to it by closing the eyes for a period of time and doing it without a support, noticing the body's incredibly complicated little orchestrated, second nature maintaining balance, maintaining a balance between effort and allowing.

These two themes of balance and momentum can be applied to any scale of the practice that we choose. It can be true in tonight's sit and it can be true in almost any portion of the sit. As we meditate we find the mind moves off into fogginess, or gets caught up in something that needs doing before tomorrow morning, or gets distracted by bodily sensation, perhaps we're hungry or overly full or sleepy, and we bring it back to greater alertness.

That's happening at this micro-scale. In the course of a 45-minute sit, that's going to happen many times. This is a natural part of the meditation. It's important to point out that we don't just establish balance as if it were autopilot and then it's set for the rest of the evening or the rest of our practice life, but rather it's something we constantly rebalance. Just like on a bicycle, just like on a scooter, just like standing or walking, the balance is constantly being adjusted, constantly being reasserted, constantly being refound.

It also works on the scale of the whole practice where bringing ourselves back periodically in touch with our fundamental intentions for the practice balances a tendency to over time sort of take it for granted. Maybe not be as focused in it, frequently settle into the pleasantness of it if we find it largely pleasant, and lose a little bit of the growing edge or where the edge of the practice is, where there's something still to be discovered of interest, something that may be disturbing. Sometimes when there's a sense of stasis or static-ness in the practice, there's some avoidance, something that we maybe have a little aversion to seeing or something that's frightening.

So it can work from this very intimate scale, a very micro-scale of a portion of a sit, it can work on the scale of the whole practice. I said earlier that one thing I think we tend to focus a lot on is the busy mind, the mind that gets caught up in things, distracted by things, lost in things, wanders off. And sometimes we don't look as closely at the mind that daydreams or that gets fuzzy and unfocused.

This can be particularly something in the evening. I thought of this in particular because this is a rather late time for me to sit, and I had a little cup of tea beforehand so that I wouldn't nod off during an evening meditation. But I wanted to share with you a sutta that talks about dozing off, and in which the Buddha gives one of his principal disciples some advice about what to do when one finds one's mind becoming unfocused, unclear, daydreamy, and perhaps dozing off.

It's a sutta that provides some tips that we can apply to the micro-level—what to do in meditation if you find yourself dozing off sometimes, which possibly we all have from time to time—or if on the larger scale we find ourselves becoming a little complacent in our practice. Again, sometimes we focus on over-striving in the practice, sometimes we get a little bit—I don't know if lazy's the right word, it sounds sort of pejorative—but a little complacent, maybe overly content. This sutta provides some good and wise tips that sort of work at both these levels.

So let me read it, and I'm going to read it selectively and then go back and make a couple of comments about it. For those following at home, this is from the Anguttara Nikaya from the Book of Sevens, and it's the 61st sutta in the Book of Sevens, so Anguttara Nikaya 7.61, and it's called appropriately, _Dozing_.

As I read it, I'm going to correct for gender, as I typically correct for some. A lot of the discourses, as you know, are shared with monastic followers of the Buddha, and sometimes a little correction for lay practitioners is useful. In this case, I think it works fine as it is.

It begins as so many suttas do with the phrase, "Thus have I heard. On one occasion the Blessed One, the Buddha, was dwelling among the Bhaggas at Sumsumaragira in the deer park at Bhesakala Grove. And on this occasion the venerable Maha Moggallana[^2] was sitting in meditation and dozing off." Some of you may know that Moggallana, Maha Moggallana, Moggallana the Great, is one of the Buddha's principal followers, equal to Sariputta[^3] in his importance in the early practice community.

So here we have a senior practitioner, somebody who's practiced a lot, sitting and dozing. And the Buddha notices this. In the back of the room could be Nancy, but it's Maha Nancy who has dozed off, and the teacher has noticed and approaches and says, "Are you dozing, Moggallana? Have you been dozing off sitting in meditation?" And Moggallana confesses—he doesn't confess, it doesn't say that, he just says, "Yes, Bhante[^4]. Yes, teacher."

The Buddha says, because we're in the Book of Sevens, he gives seven tips, seven ideas, seven maybe practice suggestions as a teacher might: "Moggallana, perhaps you should try not attending or cultivating the object that you were attending to when you became drowsy. Perhaps by this means it would be possible that your drowsiness will be abandoned.

"If this doesn't work, if you're unable to abandon your drowsiness in this way, you could ponder, examine, and mentally inspect the Dhamma[^5] as you have heard it and learned it. Then perhaps by this means your drowsiness will be abandoned.

"If this doesn't work, if you find yourself unable to abandon your drowsiness with this technique, you could recite in detail the Dhamma as you have heard it and learned it, and perhaps by this means it is possible that your drowsiness will be abandoned.

"If this doesn't work, you could pull both your ears and rub your limbs with your hands, and perhaps by this means abandon your drowsiness.

"If this doesn't work, you should get up from your seat, rub your eyes with water, look around in all directions, look up at the constellations and stars, and by this means it's possible that your drowsiness will be abandoned.

"If you cannot abandon your drowsiness in this way, you should attend to the perception of light. You should undertake the perception of day, thus as by day so at night, and as at night so by day, and thus with a mind that is open and uncovered, you should develop a mind imbued with luminosity, with light, and by this means possibly your drowsiness will be abandoned.

"If this fails, you can undertake the exercise of walking meditation, walking back and forth, perceiving what is behind you and what is in front, with your sense faculties drawn in and your mind collected, and by this means possibly your drowsiness will be abandoned."

And then finally there's one more, and this is the punchline. He says, "But if you cannot abandon your drowsiness in any of these ways, take a nap." He doesn't say it quite like that, but, "If you cannot abandon your drowsiness in these ways, you should lie down on your right side in the lion's posture, with one foot overlapping the other, mindful, clearly comprehending, and noting in your mind the idea of rising. When you awaken, get up quickly and think, 'I won't be intent on the pleasure of rest, the pleasure of sleep, but rather return to practice.' It is in this way, Moggallana, that you should train yourself."

So there's a lovely set of instructions and tips here presented in this very supportive way that I think provide a sense that there's nothing unusual in this kind of experience. Nothing wrong has happened, nothing's gone wrong in the meditation, the practitioner hasn't done anything wrong, but rather that one of the natural aspects of our practice is this kind of occasional drowsiness if we're thinking about it at that small scale, or complacency or lack of focus in the practice on a broader scale.

And we can go back and just look at a few of these. I want to make sure to leave some time for people to ask questions or share reflections or anything else. But the first one here, you should not attend to or cultivate the object that you're attending to when you became drowsy. Very interesting suggestion. We tend in our practice to get very used to a particular object, and yet as we know from, for example, the Satipatthana Sutta[^6], the sutta in various ways and various approaches to establishing mindful attention in the here and now, that there are a whole host of practices, a whole host of objects, a whole host of ways to cultivate the practice of mindful attention, the practice of open awareness. It's an interesting suggestion that if drowsiness is there, perhaps shifting your attention in various ways can be a useful remedy or useful way to spark a little bit of greater alertness in the practice.

Even with drowsiness sometimes there can be a great deal of very small or laser focus on the breath, and it can be useful to broaden the focus. So I think there are many ways that this advice could be brought into play. It may also be useful in the broader scale of practice. We get caught up in a certain practice, you can do a practice for years, and complacency can set in. Finding, with the guidance of a teacher, some additional ways to bring support into the practice can be very beneficial.

The second one says, "If you cannot abandon your drowsiness"—or your complacency, I'm going to sort of add that in—"in this way, you can ponder, examine, and mentally inspect the Dhamma as you have heard it and understood it." And this is true in a sit, but it's also true in the bigger practice, that it can be very useful if you're starting to find yourself drowsy to bring attention to a teaching that is relevant to whatever's going on in your sit or in your larger practice. I'm not sure I can think of an example at the moment, but it can be useful.

Here's an example too, and I think I mentioned something like this a few moments ago: to notice whether the drowsiness has aversion in it, to notice whether there's something that doesn't feel comfortable to see or know. Or if there's an attachment to bodily comfort that's there in the meditation that's kind of part of the drowsiness or daydreaminess. If there's ideation in the daydream, it can be very useful to notice how much wanting, how much selfing is happening in the daydreaming, as I envision myself in a different position with different accomplishments, different friends, different attributes that somehow are puffing me up. So even in the drowsiness, there can be aspects of the teaching that if we bring our attention to it, can sort of bring us back to the here and now.

"If this doesn't work"—this is a slight change—"we can recite in detail the Dhamma as we have heard and learned it." In other words, we can ponder, examine, mentally inspect it, or we can recite it. And this one is useful to bring forward into our time. At that time, reciting was the way, in a sense, you read or reread the Dhamma. You would chant a sutta if you were a monk at any rate, and that would be a way of, in a sense, re-engaging with what we would think of as a text. But this could direct us to a text, and in a sit it can be very useful if you're drowsy, or just before you sit down, to read a paragraph from a book or a sentence or a poem, but somehow to re-engage with a textual reference or the language of the teaching.

Obviously, this can be true at the sort of larger scale of practice, that we can pick up a book we've read before or listen to a podcast or go on retreat online or offline, and in that way sort of re-engage with formal teaching. I think that's the distinction that's being drawn here in these two.

The ones that follow, I think we could stretch them to that larger scale, but they're mostly, I think, useful for actual sitting with drowsiness or unfocus in the mind. I have found, I have to share, that pulling the earlobes is a really good solution for drowsiness, and particularly if you're in a place where it's not appropriate to just lie down and take a nap, which as we know is recommended by the Buddha, we'll get to that in a moment. Rubbing the earlobes is a really good one. And who knows why this works? Because the earlobes don't have a lot of... you know, we don't really think about them very much, but if you spend some time twisting your ears and pulling your earlobes, it can bring quite a bit of alertness into your sit if you find yourself nodding off and you're sort of thinking that you don't want to nod off and fall over.

The following one, standing up, rubbing your eyes, looking around. I don't know if other people have tried this, but if you're drowsy in a sit, standing up for a couple of minutes and sitting back down can really bring some additional energy.

The following one, opening your eyes and letting some light in can be very useful. And we typically, even at night—this has this interesting passage about "as by day so at night," "as at night so by day"—not sure exactly what that means, but in our world, I'm just looking at those halogen lights over there, there's usually a source of light even at night. Even in a retreat setting where we can open our eyes a little bit, bring some light in, and in that way bring some alertness back into the meditation.

Or standing up and walking, doing some walking meditation. There's no rule that says at home if you're drowsy you can't get up and walk around. Even here, if it's not disruptive to others, getting up and taking a few paces, sitting back down can entirely wake up the practice.

And about the nap, I would just say, and here too I can refer to something Gil says a lot. Gil, let me think how does he put it? In the intro class to meditation, he frequently comments that more than mindfulness meditation, Americans need a nap. Something like that. And it's very true in our culture with artificial light and self-medicating with caffeine throughout the day, we extend our days in a quite unnatural way, and I think we think we get away with it, but sooner or later we notice it, not infrequently in meditation.

It's not uncommon, as you all maybe remember when you first sat to meditate, that along with noticing how incredibly busy the mind is, you may have noticed how fatigued both mind and body are. And that can still be there, and just being aware of that fatigue and making sure that it's addressed as a support to practice. As the Buddha counsels Moggallana, the idea is to take a brief nap as a way of supporting practice so that addressing the natural fatigue of body and mind can be part of practice.

So let me leave a few minutes for questions, and I would just say this is a lovely little sutta, it's fun to read. It shows the Buddha in a lighter moment perhaps, or at least giving very gentle guidance to a senior practitioner who has, I think, in whom and in whose practice we can see ourselves very easily.

In addition to giving these sort of tips and tricks and techniques, I think it does point to some of the deeper aspects of practice. The idea, as I said earlier in the evening, that the practice is always about not setting a balance and expecting it to stay, but constantly rebalancing. Constantly looking for ways to add additional curiosity, inquisitiveness, looking, being attentive, being present, but at the same time doing that in a way where there isn't a lot of for and against, where there's ease. Noticing, as we do when we ride a bicycle or a scooter or when we walk or stand, just noticing when things are slightly out of balance and then coming back into balancing.

To the extent that that becomes second nature, it's useful even to be aware of that process happening when it's very, very subtle. When we follow it, we keep that momentum going, because in that balancing there is directionality, that is a path that leads toward awakening, toward ease, toward contentment of a deep sort. And so this idea of keeping attuned to the balance of effort and allowing in the practice really is a way to keep moving toward the direction that frequently we in some sense hold as our fundamental intention for the practice, and perhaps for the way we take our practice into the world.

So let me leave it there and then ask if there are any questions or anything that anybody would like to share. We probably have a couple of microphones we can pass around, and I can repeat questions if not.

## Q&A

Are there any questions, any reflections, any thoughts? Nancy.

[Laughter]

Hi. Thank you. During retreats I have usually a difficult time sleeping in the evening, and then in the morning sit, usually the 6:00 a.m. sit, I doze off immediately. And I noticed that by the end of the retreat, like a week-long retreat, I'll do better at staying awake early, but I'll just be exhausted by the end of the retreat. And I'm wondering if you could comment on that phenomena.

Oh gosh, it's funny because for every Nancy with that experience on retreat, there's the other half, right? There's the larks as opposed to the night owls. But you could ask the same question from that perspective, people who find quite the opposite, quite alert in the morning.

It's interesting, I actually use these approaches a lot. I didn't read about all of them here first, they were recommended also by teachers, but I think what we find frequently, either in the evening or in the morning, is that we're sort of fighting that experience instead of integrating it into the practice.

Among other things, it's okay to nod off. We don't usually fall over and hurt ourselves. Everybody does it, so nobody cares on retreat—that is, people nod off through the course of the day, particularly in the first few days. So, just like the Buddha and Moggallana, there's a sense of a supportive environment to the experiences that come up in the retreat.

The last advice, which is actually eighth, and even though it's in the Book of Sevens, taking a nap. There's usually time during the day to take a nap. I always take a nap on retreat after doing the dishes after lunch usually, and so you can make that part of your practice.

But anyway, I think my main thing is there's no—you haven't described a problem. Very much as this is seen, the Buddha doesn't see this as a problem, but he has some ideas for kind of how to keep alertness there.

Having said that, if you were to find, and I can say this to you knowing something of your practice, just that if you were to find that in that repeated pattern there's some complacency, or something that is not ready to be seen yet that you feel like you want to—and I don't know that I think that's there—but that would be a useful thing to know. And that's another reason to look at that drowsiness with some curiosity instead of some judgment, like "this shouldn't be happening." "Oh, is there anything else going on here? Am I just tired? Am I just a night owl?" And if you were to find something like that, you know, that's a good thing to bring into your practice too, with the support of your teacher.

Yeah. Other questions, reflections? Jim.

Well, thank you David for your talk. You know, in my practice I think a lot about being sleepy in the morning, and actually I kind of find that there's something that happens in that liminal space between being asleep and being awake where things do kind of present themselves to me in a way that they don't if I'm upright and alert and paying attention. It's kind of like there might be things that are kind of in that liminal space. So a lot of my practice has kind of been in that sort of dream state between sleep and awake, and I was wondering if you've had that experience or might have something to say about it.

Yeah. And what you point to I think is a really productive way to bring and integrate that into practice, which is to notice what's going on in that realm. Sometimes when we receive the encouragement to return attention to the breath, it's done in such a way that we move our attention back to the breath too quickly, and we miss noticing where the mind's gone. And whether the mind's gone all tangled up in some compulsive spiral of thought or whether it's found itself in daydream. And I've also found it very useful to be attentive to—I say daydream, but I know the liminal space you're talking about that's sort of between, it's in a way beyond daydreaming, toward random things that happen in mind. But I think more likely than not, there are things that happen there that can be usefully noticed.

So anyway, I think the instruction always is to notice what's going on. Be curious about what's going on, be present for what's going on in a way that can sort of integrate that experience instead of push it away or hold on to it. So it sounds like good practice.

Yeah, other thoughts, other questions? It's hard to tell with masks on quite how alert everybody is, and maybe how apt the advice of the Buddha to Moggallana is. I'm alert now because I'm sitting up here, but... say again? Oh, that's a good question. I don't even know how this works. Okay, yeah, thanks for reminding me Nancy that there's a larger audience. Yeah.

Any other thoughts, reflections from the YouTube audience or the audience here?

## Reflections

Okay, so I can just... trying to think if there's any closing thought beyond making sure you get your rest, take that nap that the Buddha recommends, that Moggallana takes. It's funny because we underestimate the importance of that piece of sage advice from 2500 years ago.

I think I've already sort of summed up these things, but let me do it in sort of the manner of offering the merit of the practice this evening, and just suggesting that we bring this aspect of our practice, this aspect of bringing attention to the balance that Gil has mentioned and that I've just sort of been riffing on this evening between effort and allowing, that that's something we take out into the world with us and make that part of balancing our practice. Something that we do in a way and do with the intention of benefiting others.

And there's probably many ways that this could be thought of, but I think being curious about other people, being open to other people's experiences, being listening with an open heart can be part of making that effort, and the allowing can be as we look around the world allowing our hearts to break, allowing our minds to be as open as they can. Allowing ourselves to ask for help and give help, allowing ourselves to care and be cared for.

So with that in mind, may all beings be safe, secure, may all beings be healthy in body and mind. May all beings be free from suffering and the roots of suffering. May all beings be at ease, content. May all beings be free.

So thank you and thanks for coming, whether for the first time, the last time, 100th time. Yeah, good to see everybody. Take care.

---

[^1]: **Anguttara Nikaya:** The fourth of the five Nikayas (collections) in the Sutta Pitaka, consisting of discourses arranged by numerical groupings.

[^2]: **Maha Moggallana:** One of the Buddha's two chief disciples, renowned for his psychic powers and meditative accomplishments.

[^3]: **Sariputta:** One of the Buddha's two chief disciples, renowned for his profound wisdom.

[^4]: **Bhante:** A respectful title used for Buddhist monks, translating roughly to "Venerable Sir."

[^5]: **Dhamma:** A Pali word (Dharma in Sanskrit) referring to the teachings of the Buddha and the truth of the way things are.

[^6]: **Satipatthana Sutta:** The "Discourse on the Establishing of Mindfulness," one of the most widely studied teachings on mindfulness meditation in the Pali Canon.