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Guided Meditation: Letting Go Into

Introduction

Good morning, and I'm very happy to see all these names, familiar and unfamiliar: Paul and Claire, hi, Barbara, and LH from Iran, and Rohana, Mary Kate. I wonder if you can hear my sound? Could someone confirm that? Great, it is wonderful that you can all hear. I'm very glad to be here with you, and I will be back in a few minutes to start. Thank you.

Good Monday morning everyone, and welcome to our sitting. I'm very appreciative, grateful, and inspired to come down and sit at IMC^[1] with so many of you here online. It's quite special to see so many familiar names and that we get to be together. Some of you I haven't seen for quite a while, but to have this contact is pretty nice, and I'm very happy for it. I am also happy to see the repeating names of those who seem to have started here now with this online sitting, along with new people. It feels pretty wonderful, and I hope that all of you who are participating also feel the richness and the heartfeltness of this wide network now who are participating in these sittings. So here we are.

The theme for this week, for the dharma talks especially, is samadhi^[2]. Samadhi is really one of the deep heart qualities of the dharma, and it's a way of really coming home here to oneself. A lot of what samadhi entails—a good part of it—is letting go. But to just say "letting go" is not enough. I think it's helpful to think of it as a letting go into something. What that something is, is what we discover through the dharma, through practice.

Certainly, we can let go into the present moment. Let go into awareness of what's here. Let go into our direct, immediate experience. We can also let go into the goodness of practice. Let go into the goodness of breathing, of being embodied, of being here. There are many things we let go into. Sometimes when I get a migraine, I'll practice letting go into the pain. I find that letting go into the pain—I need to kind of be in a quiet place, be by myself to do this—creates a whole different relationship to the pain. Sometimes it doesn't even become pain anymore, or it doesn't become so difficult.

So the idea is letting go into. Letting go into, so that there's a stable presence of involvement, resting in experience: samadhi.

Guided Meditation

So to sit upright, or to meditate in a posture that is appropriate for you, and that you believe at this point supports you in being present. Take a little time to roam around your body and see where you can make small adjustments so that your body is a little bit more comfortable, a little bit easier for the body to settle. The small adjustments make your body a little bit more comfortable place for your awareness to rest in.

You might also, as you're doing this, see if there are places in your body that you can relax. Relaxing is a relative of letting go: softening, relaxing.

From the top of your head, forehead, and eyes. The area around your mouth and your jaws. Maybe all around your neck, and how your neck holds your head. Softening, relaxing the shoulders.

As we go through the rest of the body, let the gentle pull of gravity help you settle. Stable here. Relaxing the arms, softening the arms. Releasing the elbows from any tension. And releasing the hands in any ways in which the hands are a little bit tight or held.

Softening in the rib cage, the center of your chest. As you exhale, maybe also relaxing the back ribcage. Perhaps it's possible to soften the diaphragm. And then softening the belly. A soft belly, sitting here.

Softening the hip joints, the area where you are seated. And as you exhale, softening down the legs: the thighs, especially the top of the thighs. Your lower legs, and all the way down to your feet. Maybe there's a way of relaxing, softening the feet, so that the toes hang more freely off the ends of the feet.

And then to release, soften, relax the whole body. A releasing of the whole body from how you might be bracing yourself or anticipating something. So that as you let go, relax the whole body, it might settle more fully into this time and place. Or perhaps the body has a sense of ever so slightly dissolving outwards, where the boundaries of the body become more diffuse with the space around you.

Perhaps you can relax and settle the thinking muscle. Any tension or pressure in the head, or in the area where you associate your thinking. Softening the mind, relaxing the mind as you exhale.

And then letting go into your breathing. Letting go into the body breathing itself. Letting go into the breathing.

Breathing is at the center of all things, so that as you let go into the breathing, the breathing becomes the center. Centering yourself on your breathing. Breathing in and breathing out, with breathing at the center. As if everything begins and ends with breathing. Beginning with the inhale, everything begins. Ending with the exhale, everything ends. Especially as you exhale, let go of your thoughts. As you center yourself, let go into breathing. The body breathing.

Letting go into this moment breathing. Letting go into whatever subtleness or stability that's here for you.

Dedication of Merit

And then, in the last minute or so of this sitting, as you exhale, see if you can relax into any sense of stability that's here. Stability in your body, stability in your mind, and perhaps some meaningful stability in your heart. A stability that allows you to stay present with the experience of the day without being swayed by them, caught up in them, or pushed around.

Feeling stability inside of you, however small it might be. Consider how this stability can support you in this day, and how being in contact with some inner stability allows you to have a more caring, loving, friendly attitude that you carry with you into the day. So that any ways that you think about others, any ways you might be talking to others, any ways that you might be seeing other people, you touch into your inner stability and from there bring forth your kindness, your goodwill, your care.

So that from this meditation practice, we bring forth an aspiration, a wish, and a practice for the welfare, happiness, and safety of all beings everywhere.

May all beings be safe.
May all beings be happy.
May all beings have their basic needs satisfied.
May all beings know that others care.