Guided Meditation: Resting in the Empty Spaces; Dharmette: Wise View Invites Inner and Outer Harmony

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Resting in the Empty Spaces; Wise View Invites Inner and Outer Harmony. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Dawn Neal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 24, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Resting in the Empty Spaces

Good morning. Good morning, YouTube. Dear Sangha, happy to see you.

It's a rainy day, a rainy morning here in Redwood City, California, and I'm enjoying seeing the weather report. Even here in Redwood City, the power is back on; it's sunny in Tucson, and there is snow elsewhere. Nice to see your friendly greetings.

Please enjoy reading the chat, and just enjoy the warm greetings of your fellow Sangha mates. There are little observations from different places; please help each other out with technology if you can. Drink in the goodness, the friendliness coming from all over the world through this little screen.

When you're ready, maybe taking one or two deeper breaths, having one last cup of simple tea, and settle into your chair, your cushion, your mat—whatever it is that you are currently sitting on or whatever kind of surface is supporting you. Softening the eyes, maybe closing them if you're comfortable closing them. Tuning into your surroundings.

Maybe taking one or two more intentional, deep, slow breaths, where you let any excess tension or anything else out on the outbreath. Allowing the tongue to stay soft, the face to stay soft.

Noticing your immediate surroundings—maybe a distant train whistle, soft rain, hawk cries, or birdsong. Whatever ambient sound is around you.

And noticing too the way your body is situated and immersed in the moment. Feelings of warmth or coolness, pressure or lightness, perhaps vibration or tingling from the inside of your body. The comfort, the sense of support—the support of the chair, maybe the support of the mat, or of the ground beneath your feet. Feeling held by the earth.

Having the attention resting on the breath, on the sensations or sound flowing through this moment. Settling.

If distraction arises, you know the mind continues in the world of thinking; that is so common. Just noticing that with kindness, and beginning again. Returning to the moment.

Rededicating yourself to awareness: this breath, this sound.

From time to time, rededicating yourself to non-preoccupation. The simplicity of silence, the spaces in between. Spaces in between the sound, simply being.

In the last few moments of this meditation, the invitation is—if you haven't already—to let go of any primary anchor of attention and rest. Allow all sounds, sensations, mental phenomena, emotions, anything, just to flow through. Noticing the knowing, allowing.

As the formal meditation practice begins to draw to a close, taking a moment to appreciate, gather up, soak in, and savor any moments of peace, quiet, patience, goodwill, mindfulness—anything. No matter how small, gather it up and savor it. Appreciate it in your heart and body.

And in casting your internal gaze outwards, generating the wish that others may experience goodness, kindness, patience, goodwill, and awareness. Reflect on how it feels to wish them well, perhaps setting the intention to be one of the causes and conditions for that goodness in your life.

Dharmette: Wise View Invites Inner and Outer Harmony

Dear Sangha, we are now in the fifth of five explorations on inner and outer harmony. We've drawn from the Buddha's teachings on the saraṇīyadhamma^[1]—principles of cordiality. So, just a quick overview if you've just joined us today: welcome.

The previous days, Monday was mindfulness and wisdom of benefit for ourselves, others, self and other, and everyone. Tuesday was the benefits of kindness and goodwill, internally and externally, personally and relationally. Then was sharing or generosity, and yesterday was the power of ethical consistency or persistence.

Today's topic, which the Buddha held is the most important by far amongst these principles or qualities, is noble and freeing wise view—ariya wise view. Awakened wise view is a huge topic; it could easily be its own series. Today, I'm going to mostly explore wise view compared to the alternative, which is fixed speculative views—buying into our opinions about reality, other people, or ourselves.

Wise view instead isn't an opinion; it is a perspective, an understanding about the way things unfold through conditionality. It's how disparate conditions come together and form this moment—everything that came to now, formed now, all these little interactions.

The simplest and most famous formulation of wise view conditionality is a kind of diagnostic process. I think of the Buddha as a doctor, and that is the Four Noble Truths^[2]. First is acknowledging suffering exists. Second is seeing the arising of dukkha^[3], suffering or disease, in any given moment. Third is the ceasing, the ending of dukkha or suffering. And the fourth Noble Truth is the path to the ending of suffering. I'm not going to go into detail about this this morning. It is amply covered by other teachers, including a series of Gil Fronsdal's talks for this 7:00 AM online Sangha back in 2020, which you can find on audiodharma.org if you want a lot more information. They are excellent teachings.

Instead, I'm going to talk about how a process perspective—including the diagnostic process perspective of the Four Noble Truths—provides an alternative to being swept away or distorted by our internal obsessive thinking, imagination, and speculation. These obsessions are what the Buddha focused on in his more relational teachings about group compatibility, friendliness, getting along, and cordiality, because they're quite damaging when bought into and often lead to quarreling.

In the saraṇīyadhamma, the principles of cordiality, the Buddha teaches that wise view is being aware of versus obsessed by unhelpful tendencies of mind. This is incredibly powerful. He specifically mentions being aware rather than obsessed by the Five Hindrances^[4] of lust for sensual experiences, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and remorse, and doubt. Now, that too is a list that can be amply covered in a series. But just notice—rather than even trying to remember all the words I just said in that list—notice when we're hooked and when we're not hooked.

More than anything, as I mentioned, the Buddha highlights the freedom from being obsessed by or adhered to speculation, especially speculation that leads to quarreling, disputing, or, as he put it, stabbing each other with verbal daggers.

Instead, the Buddha speaks of an alternate way of being: a non-ranking, a lack of need to win arguments or be better than. Rather than being better than or worse than, there's this deep internal respect for differences and relationality among each living person, each living being. This kind of non-comparison is a radical kind of humility. It's an understanding of the vast web of conditions, actions, possibilities, and past arisings that we emerge from in any given moment.

It's well known in Buddhist cultures, and it's known in other cultures too, including indigenous cultures. My dear colleague Kaira Jewel Lingo introduced me to Enrique Salmón's idea of kincentric ecology. This is an understanding that he articulates as: life in any environment is viable only when we humans view the life surrounding us as kin.

Can we see those we disagree with as kin too, rather than winners or losers, or some kind of flavor of 'other,' wrong, or bad? It doesn't mean condoning the behavior, attitudes, or opinions of those we disagree with. We're still allowed to have differences and discern what behaviors or attitudes might be harmful or helpful; that too is wisdom. Instead, it means seeing the humanity, the other conditions, or just knowing that they're there—the conditions that drive behavior and underpin attitudes. It's understanding that those too come from this interplay of all different kinds of life forces that we may or may not have shared with these others. This takes a deep insight, a radical kind of perceptual humility, an absence of a need to have my own opinion or speculation be right.

The Buddha kind of illustrates this. There's a story from the ancient teachings. This comes from the Majjhima Nikāya^[5] (the Middle Length Discourses). It's a story of the Buddha who's sitting calmly in the forest meditating, or perhaps receiving visitors, I don't know, when along comes this young man with a big stick, like a walking stick. His name in the suttas^[6] is literally Daṇḍapāṇi^[7], which means "stick in hand."

To really understand the resonance of this, you have to understand that the term "stick in hand" often implies violence; it's a phrase used to talk about violence or quarreling. So Daṇḍapāṇi, apparently as the commentaries explain, is a kind of puffed-up debater type, amongst many in that era. He is going out for exercise or walking, comes upon the Buddha, and is like, "Ah, someone I can argue with," and begins to provoke the Buddha, asking him what he teaches and what his doctrines are.

Well, the Buddha answers this self-important philosophical debater, "I offer teachings that quarrel with no one in the world. I do not quarrel with anyone in the world." Apparently, he did so with such peace, equanimity, and evenness that Daṇḍapāṇi was completely put off. They described him making a very funny face: his eyebrows shoot up, his tongue wags, and he sort of shakes his head and walks away.

So some of the Buddha's followers—I can't remember if they were around or if he just relayed the story afterwards—asked, "Well, what did you mean by that?" A senior teacher and the Buddha both explained that the Buddha, instead of adhering to opinions and views, sees the world in terms of dependent arising and conditions arising. He can see perceptual distortions as such, rather than being hooked by them.

Now, I am definitely paraphrasing and condensing here; it's quite a deep teaching. But the Buddha is resting in and oriented to the process of understanding subjective experience as it is, which is kind of orthogonal to any particular opinion. Basically, he teaches over and over that if we take our perceptions, distorted by obsessive thinking, to be reality, that causes or helps to cause conflict, argument, and suffering.

The alternative, internally and externally, is to focus on the conditions that lessen suffering and increase peace. This is the grounding of how we move through the world: here, now, in this moment, versus what might happen there and then. Always asking, noticing: where is the suffering right now? Where is the peace right now?

It's a great alternative to spinning out stories^[8]. So noticing being, versus being caught by the mind's tendency towards concoction and speculation, and taking those tendencies with a sense of humor. I just think of the current Dalai Lama's infectious laugh. He's asked basically, "Are you fully awakened?" and he just laughs and says his mind tries sneaky stuff on him all the time. But he notices it with compassion and humor.

Being aware versus being obsessed is the key, because anything we clearly see with awareness is fuel for wisdom, food for awakening. This is where the other qualities of mind we've gone through this week are really supportive: mindfulness of what's beneficial to ourselves and others; our attitudes of kindness and goodwill; a sense of sharing or generosity; and the consistency and persistence of always beginning again with kindness. All of these things support us in being able to respond to alleviate suffering rather than perpetuate it in our own minds, hearts, lives, and in the ways we relate to each other.

So in the days between now and Monday, if you wish to, you might consider noticing what lessens suffering and what increases peace in your own practice, in your life, and in your relationships.

Thank you, dear Sangha, very much for your kind attention. It's been a joy to be with you.