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Guided Meditation: Connecting

Good morning, everybody. For those just joining, I guess on this continent it's morning, but if you're on other continents, it's not morning. So good day, whatever time it is, or even if you're listening to this when it's not live, sometime later. Just greetings.

Okay, so I think we'll get going here. This morning I'm going to continue on this theme of Mara's armies, but before we get there, we'll do a guided meditation.

Let's settle into our meditation posture. If you're sitting up, tune into this sense of uprightness in the body. The sense of moving through space upwards in some kind of way. Let this be the container for experience, in whatever way that makes sense for you. So we have some uprightness, but there's also softness and ease.

Connect with an acknowledgment that to practice is a movement of kindness. To come to this meditation—maybe to put hellos in the chat—is a movement of kindness. Can we connect with that? This well-wishing for others and taking care of ourselves. This giving of care and respect to ourselves and to others. This is a beautiful thing we're doing.

Then, just connect with the experience of the body more generally, using a light and curious attention. What is the experience of having a body? The experience of the body. Whatever is there, tune in. Show up for that experience as best we can. As best we can.

Touch experience with this kind and delicate attentiveness, and allow the experience to be what it is, as best we can. Not trying to force it to be different. Not pushing it away or pulling it in, but allowing the experience to be what it is.

It's likely the experience of the body includes the experience of breathing. Feel this stretching at the in-breath, and the release of the stretch with the out-breath. Again, with this kind and delicate attention, notice the transitions between in-breaths and out-breaths, inhales and exhales.

Let experiences come and go, arise and disappear. Make room for whatever shows up. It might be sounds, maybe body sensations, might be thoughts. Can we simply acknowledge the experience, and gently, kindly begin again with the sensations of breathing?

Nothing needs to be a problem in this spacious awareness. As best we can, we acknowledge the experience and gently begin again with the sensations of breathing, in a relaxed, easy manner.

Reflections: Mara's Army of Cowardice

Good morning again. Today I'm continuing on this theme of a story of letters that Mara^[1] is writing to the leaders of his armies. He has ten armies. These are set in contemporary times. These letters were written by Ajahn Punnadhammo^[2] of the Arrow River Forest Hermitage in Northern Ontario, Canada. They're kind of whimsical, but they have a little bit of bite also, in particular the letter I'm going to be talking about today.

Before I go into that, we might just have a reminder: who is Mara? Mara is this character that shows up to the Buddha-to-be when he's sitting underneath the Bodhi tree and has made this commitment that he's going to become awakened. Before awakening, the Buddha-to-be is visited by Mara, who is accompanied by ten armies. There's a number of different versions of this story of the Buddha's awakening, but I'm just focusing on this one and this character, Mara.

As I've said before, I'd like to emphasize that in this tradition, Mara is not this demon that wants people to go to hell or anything like that. Mara is more to encourage complacency. He doesn't care if we have tons of sensual pleasures. In fact, he would prefer that we are having such a fantastic time with our life that we don't even consider practicing to find a way towards greater freedom. So the story of Mara versus the Buddha is a story of complacency versus commitment to practice. It's not a story of good versus evil. I just want to emphasize that; Mara is perfectly happy if we are having a fantastic life.

We might ask, well, how can we use these stories? These things that you're sharing, Diana, what relevance do they have for our practice? There are a number of them, and one is that it can help us recognize our common humanity. These stories are applicable to all of us. When we find that one of these letters resonates with us, we can recognize, "Oh, everybody experiences this. It's not just me." There's a way that there can be this lightening of the load when we realize this is part of the human experience. Not only does it maybe lighten our load, it also helps us to have compassion for others. To recognize others have these same difficulties too, and they may be showing up in a particular way because they're experiencing these difficulties.

With that as an introduction to these letters, today I'd like to talk about this letter that Mara is writing to one of his armies: the army of cowardice. This one has a little bit of a bite to it, at least it did for me when I was reading this. I'm excerpting this; the letters are longer, but I'm just excerpting them for this. Here's Mara writing to the leader of the army of cowardice:

"My sixth army, you have a special place in the task of keeping beings in a state of bondage. You weaken the beings whom you attack and render them vulnerable to my terrible aspect.

I prefer to charm and delight, but I will tolerate no opposition. Those few who fail to be seduced by my charm must be terrorized into submission.

Physical cowardice is useful in its place, but it is the spiritual and moral type of cowardice that is the most suitable for our purposes. Beings must be cajoled into clutching at a sense of security. This is the trick we must play. Of course, you and I know there is no security in this realm, and all beings are subject to the awful realities of birth, sickness, old age, and death. But no matter, the dream of security is a hopeless one, but it is powerful.

Beings everywhere are afraid to risk what they have, and can be seduced to this spiritual impotence by that fear. So encourage beings often not to take risks. Because if they risk, they may grow. And if they grow, they may awaken. And then they will be out of our clutches. To be sure, it takes great courage to plunge into the emptiness, and this we can undermine.

This is, after all, the golden age of cowardice. We can encourage them to make a virtue of their cowardice. Call it prudence, call it responsibility. And with that, they will get up every morning, put on their hats, and take the subway to their dull grind of a job, and carefully plan for their retirement. By that time, they will be so beaten down that they will slide easily and thoughtlessly the rest of the way to the grave while never escaping our clutches."

Reading this, it feels very uncomfortable, at least it is for me. This idea of the golden age of cowardice, and that we have to take risks. This letter to the army of cowardice is pointing to how we need some courage in our lives and some courage in our practice.

We might say courage is this capacity to face fear, because it's true that as long as beings have something to lose, as long as we are exposed to risk and uncertainty, fear is a part of the human experience. There's no getting away from it. Even though we long for this security—this wish to not have any fear—the truth is that humans are vulnerable, and so we will always have a little bit of fear. This is sometimes a really difficult pill to swallow, but there's also a way in which it's helpful to align with the reality of what it means to be a human.

The stereotypical idea of courage is this hero who stands up to this beast. We might even say that we have this in this story of the Buddha standing up to Mara, who has these ten armies. Some versions of this story have these armies as ten different types of beasts. Mara didn't want the Buddha to awaken, so he brought his army to attack him. But the Buddha stayed, and practiced, and became awakened despite these threats and despite the attacks.

So again, I don't want to gloss over this idea and pretend that humans don't have any fear. We shouldn't. Instead, we need a little bit of courage because no matter how confident or brave we are, or how many advantages we might have, risk is an essential component of our life as we know it. We're all aware of this: accident, disease, embarrassment, humiliation, loss, failure, not to mention old age, sickness, and death.

I'd like to add on to this also that there's this courage that we need to grow sometimes. This courage to expand, this courage to change. To feel joy, to experience the beauty, to love the world, to love ourselves, in spite of all the ways our lives are endangered, in spite of all the risks this human existence brings to us. Some everyday courage is needed.

One of the core teachings is about the truth of suffering—the First Noble Truth, right? There is suffering (dukkha^[3]). It takes some courage to recognize this suffering. Obvious suffering, the way that our lives are at risk and our experiences are ever-changing and can't be reliable. But also the really subtle suffering, the subtle unreliabilities. Subtle ways in which we really want something to be completely stable, where we can finally relax like, "Oh, okay, I made it."

This subtle suffering—and maybe it's not so subtle sometimes—makes us question. We can't have this spiritual retirement. It takes courage to do something other than this habitual way of turning away from suffering. To acknowledge it, and to treat ourselves with kindness and care, and to bring our wisdom to the way that we work with this suffering and work with the difficulties, but in a way that's appropriate for us to turn towards them and to not turn away, which we so often do. I know I do.

So this courage to be with the suffering. How do we develop this courage? We often come to meditation practice thinking that it will lessen the difficulties that we have, and that we'll gain some wisdom and gain some new understandings, and maybe we'll even have some cool meditative experiences. But for all the reasons that we choose to meditate, practicing with courage is probably not something that was on the top of our list. And yet, practicing with courage is a big part of this practice. Maybe sometimes it's under the radar, but it is what's happening. The courage to face things about ourselves that maybe we don't want to face because they are very difficult. The courage to face things one more time that we've seen countless times before, but to look again.

Buddhist texts don't really have anything specific to help us with courage, but there is a connection between courage and trust. Is there a way in which we can connect with something bigger than ourselves? Taking the refuges, doing metta^[4] practice, doing any devotional practices that feel comfortable for you.

And then maybe I'll end with something that Brené Brown writes in her book, The Gifts of Imperfection. Brené Brown writes, "Courage is a habit. You get it by doing courageous acts. It's like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging."

And so with that, I leave you with this letter from Mara to his army of cowardice. An encouragement for us to find the courage in a way that's appropriate for us, honoring and respecting our experience. Honoring and respecting where we are in our life trajectory and our life story. We don't have to jump into the most difficult, but is there a way that we can meet some of the difficulties as best we can?

You learn courage by couraging. Thank you.