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Guided Meditation: Strength and Assurance

Greetings. For this Sunday morning sitting, I'd like to very briefly tell you of a sutta^[1], the ancient teaching from the Middle Length Discourses^[2], where someone is recounting a dream they had to the Buddha, and the Buddha interprets it. The dream is that a person comes across an anthill, and someone else tells them they should dig into the anthill. As they dig into the anthill, they find different objects, and they pull them out. The guide who is giving instructions keeps saying, "Throw that away. Throw that away and keep digging." Finally, at the bottom of the anthill, deep down in the ground, the person digs up a naga^[3], a big, powerful serpent. The guide says, "Don't throw that away. Keep that. Let that be."

The person tells this to the Buddha, and the Buddha interprets the dream. He says that the anthill is the person, because maybe we're made up of all kinds of composite pieces kind of buzzing around. All the different things that are thrown away are things that cause difficulties for human beings: ignorance, throw it away; anger, throw it away; the hindrances, throw it away; doubt, throw it away. And it goes progressively through the temptations of the world—throw away—until they come to the naga. The Buddha says, "Yes, the naga, the great serpent, represents the person who has let go of all their attachments."

Here we have this very powerful symbol: a powerful naga for the person who has let go of all their attachments. What waits for us, what's inside of us if we go down into ourselves, is something very powerful and strong. The letting go that the Buddha teaches is not meant to leave us with nothing. It leaves us with no attachments, but it also leaves us with a certain strength, a power, a confidence, an assurance. A deep kind of assurance that allows a person to be in the world with confidence.

As we begin this sitting, I'd like to request of you that you call upon a deep assurance within. That you call upon a strength, maybe even a power within. Not a power over anyone, or maybe not even a power to do certain things, but the power to sit confidently with the assurance that you have a right to be here, and to be here upright, confident, and strong. For those of us in California, maybe to sit with the straightness and uprightness—even if you're laying down in meditation, to have the metaphoric uprightness and strength—of a great, tall redwood tree. Where you're deeply rooted, with broad, wide roots that keep you connected to the ground. And clearly, you are here.

Perhaps take a few moments to really feel yourself here through your body. Really feel the contact of the weight of your body against the chair, your cushion, the floor, or bed. You might even kind of lean forward a little bit gently so you feel a little bit more of the push of your feet or your knees against the floor. Or you slowly sway back and forth just a little bit so you feel more connected with your sitting bones against your chair or your cushion. Really feel that contact in a firm and good way.

Let yourself sit still, but not the stillness of hiding or the stillness of being silenced. Let it be a stillness of strength and uprightness that you can feel in your body. There's a definitiveness, an emphaticness to being here. Here at this moment, in this time, with the strength of a serpent, the strength of a redwood tree, the strength of a wide, firm stance—to sit like a mountain.

See if you can reach deep inside of yourself to touch or feel a place of stability, of some kind of well-being, some kind of rightness, a place of strength. With this reference, you welcome the experience of breathing.

Perhaps you can first familiarize yourself with how it feels to experience breathing now. Then, maybe you can make some subtle adjustments to your breathing so it is a little bit easier for you. Maybe releasing a little bit in the belly as you breathe, or a release in the solar plexus or diaphragm. As you relax the belly, perhaps it feels more easeful to breathe with the movements there, and to feel the upper chest expand and contract. If it is supportive for you, maybe you can adjust your breathing to make it slightly longer or slightly shorter breaths, slightly deeper or slightly shallower breathing. Whatever feels nice for you.

In the Pali^[4] language, the word for assurance literally means "to breathe easily." To have an assurance which is not tense or contracting, an assurance that allows us to relax willingly into this present moment. If many of our thoughts are thoughts of anxiety and arise out of feelings of inadequacy, perhaps for this sitting you can be reassured that you are quite adequate. For these few minutes, you can allow the fear to recede, and in the foreground, to sit, breathe, and be alive with a quiet, peaceful assurance. Letting that which is strong and stable within you support you in the simplicity of being here. Breathing, feeling, sensing. Here.

To sit here reassured that you have greater personal strength, inner strength, than you realize. It's appropriate and okay for you to sit strong, assured, and confident. At these moments, these minutes of just sitting and breathing, these are your minutes to be embodied, to be grounded, to really be here as if you count, as if you're a great naga.

As we come to the end of the sitting, imagine yourself as strong and stable, carrying with you a kind of self-reassurance, not easily threatened, not easily confused. As you go into the world where there's so much suffering, you go in with a heart of kindness, a heart that cares. You have the wisdom to know when you can help and when you shouldn't, when it works for you to offer a helping hand and when it doesn't. You are assured that it's appropriate to offer what you can and not what you can't.

You go into the world with your strength, your reassurance, and stability. You feel confident in whatever feelings and motivations you have to be a benefit for others. Meditation teaches you something about allowing and being present for your heart's wish that all beings be happy. Or if not all beings, then some beings—maybe some of the people you'll encounter today. May they be happy. May they be healthy. May they be free of oppression. May they be free of afflictions. May it be that you are a person who makes a difference to improve their lives, or that you improve the lives of this world. May it be that the world is a better place today because you've been in it.