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.

Guided Meditation: Letting go

Good evening. Welcome, welcome. And even if it's not evening when you're listening to this sometime in the future, or maybe you're in a different place on the planet where it's no longer evening, a warm welcome. So, we'll start with a little bit of a guided meditation and just settling in.

Feeling what it feels like at this moment. Feeling the pressure of the chair or cushion against the body. Feeling what the hands are resting on, and feeling connected, grounded. We are here at this moment.

Paying a little attention to the posture. A posture that has both some uprightness—if not literally, then figuratively has an uprightness with some dignity—but also some ease, also some relaxation.

Sometimes it can be helpful to just notice the chin. Sometimes we raise them up a little bit, or we find ourselves going down, but to have it be level with the shoulder and to just tuck it a tiny, tiny bit to open up a little space in the back of the neck. The placement of the chin, and therefore the head, can really have a big impact on our posture.

Perhaps taking a few full breaths and just connecting to the sensations of breathing. Feeling the breath in the chest, the abdomen, or in the nose, and just allowing the attention to rest there on the sensations of breathing.

And what is it like to tune into the out-breath? To feel the out-breath from the beginning to the end. And what about the in-breath? All the phases of the in-breath. Without straining more, just opening up to these experiences. And we can notice the transitions between the in-breaths and out-breaths.

It might be that at the end of the exhale, there's a little bit of a letting go, a little bit of a moment—just a moment, a very subtle moment of ease, letting go of the exhale, and then the inhale naturally begins. It can be helpful to tune into that very slight sense of letting go that's just naturally there at the end of the exhale.

There might be some other moments of letting go. Letting go of thoughts, allowing the mind to come back to the sensations of breathing. There can be a time when the thought train just runs out of steam, and there's just a subtle moment there—a little bit of letting go and returning to mindfulness.

It might be that the mind is caught up in desire, wanting something, fantasies of something you're going to purchase, or sexual fantasies, or thinking about what food you want to eat. It can be really supportive, as best you can on occasion, to just hang out with these desires, maintaining balance, maintaining mindfulness as best you can. Maybe making the note "desire." Maybe feeling the desire in the body. Allowing it to be there in a relaxed, easy manner. Just noticing this desire, and sooner or later, it will subside. It's impermanent like everything else.

And then, as best we can, to watch when the desire ends. Not always easy. And importantly, to notice what it feels like after it has ended. When there's a certain letting go of that desire, feeling the absence of that desire, the increased freedom of the mind not being bound up in that. It's not our habit to notice the absence, but it can be really helpful. "Oh yes, it feels like this now, now that that desire has subsided." And feel the ease, the freedom, this spaciousness. It might be subtle.

There are lots of ways in which there's some letting go that naturally happens with our meditation practice. It can support our practice to recognize how it feels after there's a letting go, before the next clinging.

There are so many things we can let go of. This path of practice is not about acquiring, getting more and more and more. It's really about letting go, letting go, and discovering the freedom, the peace, the ease, the openness, the spaciousness that becomes available when letting go happens.

And this spaciousness and openness can support our practice, support our lives, and also help to make room so that we can see others, really see them and meet them how they are, and support them in a way that's appropriate for us. And in this way, our practice is a support not only for us but for those around us.

So, may our practice together be for the benefit of all beings everywhere, without exception.

Letting Go

Good evening, and welcome. Welcome, welcome. A really warm welcome. I'm happy to be practicing with you all. Even though we're not all together in the same room, just to know that there are other people practicing—I don't know, it's heartfelt or meaningful in some kind of way.

So tonight, I'd like to talk about the notion, the practice, the teachings of letting go. And in some way, we could say that all the teachings and all the practices come down to this idea of letting go. In fact, we might understand that Nibbana^[1] is a really radical type of letting go. A very thorough letting go. Letting go—just completely letting go. So thoroughly that there's not even anyone to let go of anything. Just this complete letting go.

And it's quite something to think that it could be summarized so simply. And yet, how many suttas^[2] are there? How many dharma talks have there been? How many times have we meditated? So somehow, this letting go is not so easy, or maybe the idea is simple, but maybe not so easy. And part of it is to have the confidence and to have the trust that this is the direction to go. It's not to be grabbing on for more and more things, or not to be clinging tighter, but to be softening and loosening whatever it is we find ourselves holding to, whether that's ideas, or people, experiences, or wishes.

So this confidence, this trust on why to let go, or how to let go, or even to ask the question: does one even do the letting go, or does letting go just arise, just happen? And it can take years of practice to unlearn a lifetime of clinging and acquiring. Of course it does. Certainly, our society promotes acquisition, so a kind of renunciation or letting go is the opposite movement of what we've probably been doing for most of our lives and what other people around us are doing.

And it takes years of practice to appreciate that more freedom and ease arise with this letting go. In the guided meditation I did before this dharma talk, I pointed to some—they might be very subtle—but some letting go that just naturally happens with meditation practice. Letting go of thought trains that happen, and then we come back to the breath, and just to notice that slight moment, maybe it's a split second when that letting go happens, and there's a little bit more ease and freedom. The letting go that happens at the end of the exhale—just a natural physiological letting go. Or we can hang out with a strong emotion, and if we can stay steady and with a certain degree of mindfulness, we can notice that even that, too, there's a certain letting go; it subsides.

And certainly, not only in our meditation practice, but we can notice letting go in our daily life. And we might even say that learning to let go skillfully is part of having a happy life. But we regularly let go of plans, let go of preferences, maybe let go of opinions when we get new information, when it just doesn't make sense anymore to be holding on to the picnic outside when it starts to rain. It doesn't make sense to have one particular view when you get more information, you realize, "Oh, I didn't realize that. I guess what I was thinking isn't quite right. I'm going to adjust my thinking now."

And maybe I'll say also, thinking about daily life, that there might be competing priorities that cause us to let go. You know, we want to do this, but then when we realize it conflicts or gets in the way of something that's more important to us, of course, we just naturally let go of what is less important to us. And in the same way, letting go is part of Buddhist practice, part of our spiritual practice. This letting go of this underlying compulsion that we have to want to hold on to things and to go get things.

But it's not only the things, the objects, or the views or ideas that we might have, but it's the clinging to them. Of course, we need to hold on to things, literally, to carry them. But, of course, we have views, opinions, ideas. Of course, we have preferences. But the practice here is not to cling to them. Not to be strangling them, and not to be holding on to them so tightly that the clinging is painful, which again might be really subtle but kind of inhibits our life, shrinks our life, makes things smaller.

And letting go of this idea that "If I just have this one more object, this one more experience... if I just squeeze this thing hard enough, then that will be a source of lasting happiness." Sometimes we're clinging to these ideas: "This has to make me happy." So, can we let go of that type of clinging?

As well as letting go of a strong sense of self. So, not only these outdated or no longer accurate ideas that we might have about ourselves—certainly we can let go of those, and that often happens naturally—but also the idea that there's a "me" at the center of it all. "Me, right here, I'm here, and everything else is over there. Me and you," something like this. Can there be a letting go of that strong sense of "me" in the center?

Often this doesn't make sense to people until they have some experience of it. But we can point to it. If we point to those ideas of flow, you've heard about this, where when we're doing something enjoyable and we kind of just get lost in what we're doing, and the sense of "me" isn't really prevalent there. This could be with gardening, finding ourselves with the plants. Singing, dancing, sports. Our favorite hobbies often are our favorite hobbies because the sense of self is often absent while we're crocheting or whatever it might be.

I appreciate very much what I've seen Gil^[3] do about this idea of letting go of clinging or just letting go in general. He often does this demonstration with a bell striker and talks about this. There can be a letting go when we're really holding on very tightly to this, and there can be a letting go that's like this, so that we no longer have it. We just let go, and the striker is no longer there. And that might be appropriate if what we're holding on to is unwholesome and unhelpful.

But often, if we're really holding on to something, we can't just simply let go. Especially if it's unhelpful, we might know it's unhelpful, but we can't stop the clinging. So something that I appreciate very much that Gil has shown is to let go this way: just to soften the clinging. The striker is still here in my hand; I've just unclenched my fist around it. So, is there a way in which we can have this movement of opening? Maybe we can just open a little bit. Maybe we open a lot.

So this idea of clinging and letting go... letting go of clinging. So it's not so much the actual objects, because some objects or views are really worth having in our life and are appropriate to have.

So you might say, "Okay, well, sure, letting go of clinging seems like it should be a good idea. But how does one do this? How does one let go, either by unclenching the fist this way but still holding the object, or letting go in a way in which the object completely goes away?"

Well, one way is to notice the feeling, the experience, or maybe even imagine what will be gained with the letting go. That is, let go into something that feels more open, more spacious, a little more ease, something that's more satisfying and pleasant. And for those of you who are familiar with concentration practices, to get deeper and deeper with concentration—in fact, to even get concentrated at the beginning—is all about letting go. Whether we think about that explicitly or not, concentration is described as like a shedding. First of the hindrances, and then of different factors that arise, kind of like let go, let go.

So just to recognize that when you find yourself with a certain amount of settledness, you might just do a little bit of reflection. "Oh yeah, this feels a little more spacious or open than the unsettled mind that was perhaps a few moments before or at the beginning of the meditation session." So to recognize that this movement of letting go is associated with settledness, ease, pleasantness. I'm using this word openness, spaciousness, but it's usually a pleasant, a comfortable feeling.

And here's a poem from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer^[4], kind of about this idea of letting go and letting go into. She wrote this on December 9th, 2020, still in the midst of the pandemic. And the title is "A Little Pep Talk." I love this, "A Little Pep Talk." And this poem goes like this:

The swirling ash doesn’t try to become log again. The flying leaves don’t attempt to return to the tree. The girl can’t untwist her genome back into separate strands. The flour in the bread can’t return to the sack, can’t undo the kneading of hands.

In all things lives a memory of letting go and the chance to transform into what it can’t know. What do you say to that, heart? Good self, what do you say to that?

So Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. And in my mind, she's giving herself a little pep talk, reminding herself, "Yeah, you know, good things happen. Nice cozy fires, bread. The leaves just fall from the tree. Natural senescence is a natural thing that happens. It's part of the lifespan of trees." Maybe it's pleasant to walk around in crunchy leaves, but just this recognition that letting go is natural, and it's part of what happens. But it helps create the conditions for something else to arise. And maybe we already know what this something else is that arises—something pleasant and open.

So that's one way to support letting go, is to let go into. Maybe it's letting go of some of the hindrances, letting go of insisting that our meditation go a particular way, and instead being able to just acknowledge and appreciate how it is going.

Then the second way the Buddha talks about a lot is this idea of noticing the gratification, the drawbacks, and the escape. The gratification, drawbacks, and escape. And the Buddha talks about this in lots of different contexts. And I appreciate very much that it starts with gratification. So what is meant here is to start with acknowledging that our experience in the world provides some degree of gratification and enjoyment. There are pleasant experiences to be had, and to notice them.

And maybe also to notice the pleasure or the happiness that arises when our desires are fulfilled. When we get to that thing that we believe we want, when we get it, at that moment there can be a certain, "Ah... I don't know." Maybe a certainty like, "I got it. I achieved it." Whether that's just the satisfaction that comes out of the ending of the desire, or the beginning of having—that's another dharma talk. But just to notice that there can be a pleasant sensation that's associated with achieving, acquiring, getting something, and holding on. And whether that's just an experience or an object or an idea.

But then, when we look more closely—and often this is what meditation practice can help us do, it can help fine-tune the mind so we can look more closely—we notice that there is a little bit of a dark underbelly to these pleasant experiences. I remember one time being on vacation, and it was a wonderful place, just really enjoying it. And my traveling partner kept on talking about, "Oh, next I want to go here. And next I want to have that. And oh my gosh, I can't believe we have to leave on this date." And so they were kind of tuned in to this fear that it's going to end. "And what are we going to do next? And I don't want it to end. And maybe this other place will be just as okay."

So there's often this dark underbelly to pleasant experiences. There's this little niggling, "Oh, I hope this doesn't end. How can I keep this? Can I turn up the volume on this just a little bit? I want more." So often, even with these pleasant experiences, there's a little bit of agitation associated with them.

And this is what the Buddha's talking about with the drawbacks. There's often some agitation because we know that things are impermanent, we know that it's not going to last forever, and we wish it were. We wish it would last forever. And not only are things impermanent, but they have this liability for suffering. This agitation of not wanting it to end, and, "I have to find the next thing that's going to be just as pleasant," or, "How can I make sure that this doesn't go away?" And this might be subtle, but that doesn't mean that it's insignificant, this little bit of unease that happens when we're associated with things.

And so the Buddha often emphasized the drawbacks in many experiences. And he talked a lot about the drawbacks in sensual pleasures. Not because they're sinful or something like that, but just because he noticed that as humans, we can spend our lives chasing one sensual pleasure after another and not really paying attention, trying to deny that there are any drawbacks, even though there's a part of us that knows that there are. Trying to ignore maybe that part of our experience. So the Buddha was pointing out there is suffering and giving an encouragement not to indulge in sensual pleasures.

And so when we see this in some deep, radical way, when we see that ideas, people, objects, experiences can't be sources of lasting happiness—they just can't, they're changing, they're inconstant, they end, they create the conditions in which we have this agitation where we're trying to want more or chase after them in some kind of way—when there's a real deep understanding, "Oh, this can't be a source of lasting happiness," perhaps there's a part that says, "I wish it were," but with this deep understanding that it can't be, then letting go naturally happens. It just doesn't make sense anymore to be holding on.

So there's a way in which some deep insights—maybe more than just an intellectual understanding, but more an experiential understanding, maybe like deep insight to see the agitation, the suffering that's associated with clinging, to recognize that things are inconstant and they end—then letting go naturally happens.

And that is the escape. The Buddha talked about the gratification, drawbacks, and escape. That's the release from the drawbacks, the ending of them. When we see that our craving for pleasure in some way kind of binds us to what is inherently flawed, maybe not perfect, it won't be perfectly satisfying, then we just stop. Maybe I shouldn't say we just stop, I should say maybe just clinging stops.

So the Buddha talked about this in his own practice. And maybe in some ways this gratification, drawbacks—sometimes also translated as danger—and escape, these three elements, in some ways we might say this is a foundation to the whole Buddhist practice. And the Buddha describes in his own practice, this is a quote from a sutta. He says to his followers:

"Mendicants, before my awakening, when I was still unawakened but intent on awakening, I thought, 'What is the gratification in the world? What is the drawback, and what is the escape?' Then it occurred to me, the pleasure and happiness that arise from the world—this is the gratification. That the world is impermanent, suffering, and perishable—that is its drawback. And removing and giving up desire and greed for the world—this is its escape. And as long as I didn't truly understand the world's gratification, drawback, and escape in this way for what they are, I didn't announce my supreme perfect awakening. But when I did truly understand the world's gratification, drawback, and escape in this way, I announced my supreme perfect awakening in this world."

So his realization was a part of his awakening that allowed this radical letting go that's Nibbana. This really radical, complete, completely thorough letting go that is Nibbana.

So noticing the gratification, drawback, and escape is another way that can support the letting go. And it might be that with some more obvious or less dearly held experiences, objects, people, things, we can let go. We can say, "You know what, this just doesn't make any sense anymore. I'm going to let go." And it might be that with some of the more subtle ones, it's with insight into impermanence, suffering, and not-self that letting go naturally happens.

So maybe in some way, we can also consider it, as a support for letting go, as a giving up. "Up" as in like we give up, and we put up onto the altar. I kind of like this idea, like we make an offering. Like, as an act of generosity, to let go might be to give up, to recognize that I'm going to offer this to something bigger, something other than me. It makes it more of a sacred act, if you will, and a type of movement of the heart.

And to be sure, this letting go and giving up should be done in the service of what is wholesome and virtuous, and in service of beneficial states of mind. There's absolutely no obligation to do this. It's just part of the path of finding more and more ease and more and more freedom in our lives. So, to let go, if we feel like we're kicking and screaming and kind of really protesting, wanting to let go, maybe it's not quite right to let go of that. Maybe there's something more to understand about why we're letting go, and what is it that we believe is the support that we're getting from whatever it is we might be holding on to.

So letting go is in the service of creating an inner wealth, this inner treasure, if you will, of this spaciousness and ease. And so we're able to let go of the unwholesome and make room, which helps bring in the wholesome. So in this way, we might understand that letting go is an integral part of the practice. And there's a number of movements that we can do to support letting go. And maybe some of those are intentional, and some of them are creating the conditions in which insights can arise, and then letting go just arises.

But whatever degree of letting go we do, and whatever manner we do it, may it be for the benefit of ourselves and for those around us. If we're no longer clinging so tightly to things, it can make space for other people. Make space for our ability to be able to hear them, and see them, and to be available for them, and to be available for ourselves.

So may letting go be for the benefit of ourselves, others, and all beings everywhere. Thank you.