Guided Meditation: Air Element; Dharmette: Flavors of the Dharma (4 of 5) Wonder and Amazement

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Air Element; Flavors of the Dharma (4 of 5) Wonder and Amazement. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Kim Allen at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 22, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Air Element

Okay, so why don't we go ahead and start. Folks can continue to join us as they do, and to settle in for meditation. Finding your posture, finding your place, kind of orienting toward doing this together.

So gently closing the eyes. Feeling into the body and the sitting posture, or whatever posture you're in.

Some of these preliminary things sound very simple, and you know, like maybe we could skip them after we've done them a few times, but I find it so helpful to just begin with feeling the body, sensing into the touch points where you're sitting. Feeling the stability, the groundedness in the place where you're sitting.

And finding some balance in the body, so it takes very little effort to be sitting upright or lying in the position you're in. We don't want to be using a lot of muscles to do that. See if the bones can just be aligned so that they are supporting you. Sensing the straightness of the spine, not in a rigid way. It naturally has a few curves, but there's a sense of uprightness, alignment.

And then the rest of the body can relax around that uprightness. So the shoulders soften, drop. The head floats on the spine. And the arms and legs can just feel like they're floating, the way the fronds of a sea plant float.

Softening the eyes and the eye sockets. The jaw. And softening whatever it's possible to soften in the heart area, in the belly, in the back. Just inviting some ease. Letting the arms and legs be natural, soft.

And bringing up the quality of mindfulness. Mindfulness as the sense of being right in the present moment, connected to what's here in a simple way, in a non-judgmental way. Just knowing this. So sensing how that feels in the mind, to have mindfulness.

And connecting that mindfulness, in particular, to the sensations of the breath. We can start with the physical breath, the actual sense of air coming in, going out. Maybe we can actually feel the air as it enters the nostrils, or touches the upper lip. And there's an expansion of the chest, or the belly. Maybe we only feel that through the shift of the clothing on the skin, but there's some indication of expansion. It's a whole series of motions throughout the torso.

We don't need to make it do anything; we just feel how it actually is right now.

We can also sense the breath as more of an energetic phenomenon, a more subtle flow that can extend well outside of the lung area. Maybe we can feel breath energy flowing into the legs and the arms, throughout the whole of the back, or even up into the head.

As you breathe, is there this more subtle breath energy?

So this is one aspect of the air element. It is the breath energy, and it's also the quality of motion in the body. Movement and flow are part of our experience of the material world. The air element is this experiential quality; it's not a literal substance.

So resting with this breath flowing for a few minutes, energetic air element.

Air is the most subtle of the four main material elements. So we may find that tuning into it naturally draws the mind down to a more tranquil state. It can actually be used to quiet the mind a bit, tuning into the subtle energetic experience of the body.

As the mind gets a bit quieter, even a little bit, we can also sense or tune into our awareness of the breath. So there's the breath, and there's the knowing of the breath. It's just a little turn of awareness to see the other side. And you sense the aspect of the mind that knows. The simple knowing of an object, such as the breath energy, is consciousness. To know that we know.

It's quite wonderful, this capacity to know. Also a bit mysterious. How is it that we can have an experience? If you look at how it's happening, look carefully, you can see that the knowing of an object co-arises with the object. We can't know a sensation before it occurs. We can't know it after it is gone.

But when it's there, there's the knowing of it. And there could only be knowing if there were something to know. It's amazing. There can be some wonder and amazement that our mind is knowing all of these experiences. So see if you can rest in this knowing. Just appreciating this aliveness of knowing.

If you find that the mind needs a place to rest, tuning into that subtle breath energy coming in, going out. We're still connected to the physical world, the breathing, and there's the knowing of experience. Breathing in and breathing out.

As we come to the close of this meditation, we may notice how the elements are interconnected. The air element and the breath that we've been tuning into occurs because we have a body, because there is earth. The substance of this body draws in the air through the working of the muscles. The air has a temperature, often it's cool on the way in, warm on the way out.

And it has a quality of connecting together. The body has the cohesion quality that's associated with the water element. The elements are not really separate; they are different aspects of material life. And all of them are known by consciousness, which arises with them.

It's almost a tautology. How could we know the earth element, or even what it is, without knowing? And how could there be knowing if there weren't something to know? So these are completely integrated. Also, when we tune into the consciousness side, you may have a sense of marvel, wonder. Where's that coming from?

What would it be like to go through the world marveling at what's appearing? It might be pleasant, it might be painful, or neither one. All the fullness of life, it's quite marvelous that it all comes into this mind, into this life.

How would it be to live with a sense of wonder? Being here, of seeing all of this, of experiencing this. And how would we have to be to stay in touch with that sense of marvel, even if it's painful? What qualities of mind would we have to have to still welcome experience as wonderful, even when it's painful?

And what a gift for the world it is to see life as a wondrous opportunity, an amazing thing, even in all of its complexity and challenge, as well as its ease and peace. Truly that would be to know the fullness of life. People like that are gifts to the world, able to have a bigger perspective. They will always find somewhere to be easy with what's happening. How is the air able to move?

So we'll see how it is to consider the wonder in life today.

Dharmette: Flavors of the Dharma (4 of 5) Wonder and Amazement

So the flavors of the week continue. We are going through some of the classical Indian rasas^[1], or savors or flavors, that teachings can have. And I want to bring in one more dimension today as we've gotten pretty far into this week, which is noticing if there are certain flavors that we're talking about that you rarely experience, or that you have a sense like, "Oh, that's not that important," or "I don't know about that one," something like that. Or, "What is that? I never even thought about that one." Then maybe it would be interesting to open to some of these other flavors, the way we might try a different food. Spice up our practice with an unusual flavor.

Because all of these are present in the suttas^[2] if we look for them. We may just not have noticed if we're not really attuned to that flavor. So today we are looking at wonder and amazement. We could also say, ah, it's interesting that these are recognized in the classical Indian cultural understanding as being important flavors to have in art, and also in spiritual teachings.

I think it's an ingredient that is sometimes missing here in the West. I know not everyone listening is from the West, but at least I'm aware of much of that culture and Buddhism, and we tend to prefer rationality to wonder and amazement. But the Buddha was very clear that the Dharma, the deep Dharma, is beyond the thinking mind. He said that liberation is unattainable by mere reasoning. So let's draw out some meaning of that from the discourses of the Buddha.

There is a story of a time that the Buddha was living with an attendant named Meghiya^[3]. And you may know that Ananda was often the Buddha's attendant, and that's true, but he actually came a little bit later. The Buddha had some other attendants before Ananda, and at this time he was just living with his attendant Meghiya, just the two of them. Meghiya asks permission to go meditate alone in a lovely mango grove. The Buddha tries to dissuade him from doing that alone, but Meghiya is very insistent. He asks three times, which usually means that the Buddha has to comply. Eventually, the Buddha gives in because, you know, Meghiya is so eager to practice, how can he object to that? So he sends him off.

But Meghiya did not have an easy time. His mind was taken over by sensual thoughts, and thoughts of ill will, and thoughts of harming. His mind kind of went crazy. And what's of interest here is his response. The sutta says that in his mind he said, "This is truly astounding and amazing. I have gone forth out of faith from the household life into homelessness, yet I am still stalked by these three kinds of bad, unwholesome thoughts: sensual thoughts, thoughts of ill will, and thoughts of harming."

So how about that response? He says it is astounding and amazing that his mind is doing all of this. I don't hear that very often from meditators here. Usually, it's more like, "Oh, I'm a terrible meditator, my mind is out of control." Or it even goes farther to, "I'm a terrible person to have thoughts like this," or "to be so bad at my meditation, how awful." So maybe we could try greeting experience more like Meghiya. When the mind is wild, you can be amazed. And truly, this mind has a mind of its own, doesn't it? It can produce all kinds of stuff. We touched a little bit into this yesterday, the unpredictable quality of the mind, when we talked about humor. You know, like you're thinking, "I wonder if there's a body under that tarp." So amazement is kind of related. It can also be a helpful response when our mind is doing whatever it's doing. Wow, how amazing.

So that's one side of amazement and wonder, one that I think is pretty accessible. But in the suttas, of course, there are also instances where advanced meditators display what are called supernormal powers. You know, the ability for the mind to manipulate the physical world in unusual ways. There are discussions of levitation, walking through walls, those kinds of things. Or the ability to see very deeply with the mind, beyond the way we normally are able to experience things, like being able to see sometimes what other people are thinking, or being able to see our past lives. These kinds of powers are said to come about from developing strong concentration. And we don't emphasize them here in the West, and the Buddha absolutely forbade casual use of them for his followers. So they're not really emphasized as aims in the Buddhist teachings.

But if we read the suttas honestly, again, they are sometimes strategically used to shock people into presence or to evoke inspiration. There's a case where the Buddha uses his power to prevent someone from being able to catch up with him, even though the person is running as fast as they can, and the Buddha is just walking at normal speed. And this causes the person to stop short. Obviously, something different is going on there. And because of the Buddha showing his power that way, the person stops and actually listens to the Buddha give him a teaching, which turned out to be crucial for him. So the Buddha was strategic in using that ability. There are also quite a few cases where the Buddha is asked, or even sometimes spontaneously tells, the rebirth destination of someone who has just died.

He even explains why he's doing that. He doesn't just do it so that people will be amazed, but he's very clear about why he's doing that. He says there are people who are inspired by things that are lofty. And when he unpacks that, it's that if people know that someone has attained a certain stage of liberation before their death and is reborn in a good destination, they might be inspired to practice while they're still alive here. We can even see simpler versions of this maybe in everyday life here. There are people who are inspired that people go on long retreats. Just knowing that somebody is going on a three-month retreat, I've known people who were really inspired to know that. They weren't going to do it necessarily, but we offer that in our tradition at IMS every year, there's a three-month retreat, and it's always full. That can be really inspiring.

So talking about the elevated mind states that are possible has a place on the path. There's also a discourse that's called "Wonderful and Marvelous"^[4]. And in this discourse, Ananda is recounting a number of the wonderful and marvelous things about the Buddha's past life in the Tusita Heaven^[5] before he was born here. And then also coming into his mother's womb to be born here, and the birth itself. There's kind of a mythology around all of this. But what's interesting in this sutta, "Wonderful and Marvelous," is that Ananda explains all of these things in the Buddha's presence, saying that he heard all of these things from the Blessed One's own lips. And the Buddha doesn't object, so I think we're to take them as true. He says things like, when the Buddha was born, there were flowers blooming out of season, and streams of water rained down from heaven, things like that. So we can maybe take this metaphorically, or who knows, we weren't there.

But an interesting thing—so all of this is kind of there in the sutta, and the Buddha is implicitly agreeing with it. And then the Buddha listens to this long recitation of miracles without comment. And then he says to Ananda, "That being so, Ananda, remember this too as a wonderful and marvelous quality of the Tathagata^[6]," meaning the Buddha here. "For the Tathagata, feelings are known as they arise, as they are present, and as they disappear. Perceptions are known as they arise, as they are present, and as they disappear. And thoughts are known as they arise, as they are present, and as they disappear."

So it seems that after all these miracles, which apparently are true, the Buddha also really values the simple knowing of one's mind. That is the genuine miracle, if you will.

And he meant it actually even for himself. There's a sutta from just after the Buddha's awakening where the Buddha realizes that it's—in his words—it's painful to dwell without reverence and deference. And he's just been awakened, right? So you'd think he wouldn't need that kind of thing, but he looks around for something to be awed by, some person, and he doesn't see any being who's superior in knowing than himself. So he decides to revere the Dharma. How about that? And so even the Buddha wanted to revere something, so he decides to revere the natural laws of how things work.

It's amazing. This is a simple, natural element of the universe that could evoke wonder and awe for us. How amazing that there is this mind, there's all these things we can know about the body and the mind, and there's consciousness knowing it that we didn't create. Wow.

I originally studied science in my earlier life, and I was drawn to it largely because of the feelings of awe and wonder that I had as a child imagining the universe and my place in it. Nature is quite wonderful and marvelous, and I hope we don't lose that in our practice, and in the little minutia of trying to get our life right and figure out our past and our relationships. Nature is so wonderful; the mind is amazing. So we need this in our practice. We need to bring in inspiration, faith, juice of some kind.

Wonder can evoke joy. It can enliven and lift the heart. It can enable us to move forward when we have no idea how. You know, we can get into situations where we don't know how to go forward. Life can be like that. It can bring something large, and then we might really need something bigger than us. Our small self is so worried about getting everything together. Open the mind to the wonder, the larger picture, the sense of the wholeness. Not as a philosophy, but as a flavor, as an emotional tone that's useful for us. We don't have to make it into a big thing, and then we're gripping onto it. Just be with it, feel it, use it so that the mind can become unstuck.

So this is my suggestion for today, the flavor of the day. I hope you're getting a sense, as we go through these flavors, of the breadth that's offered in the teachings. A breadth that's possible in our heart and mind. So be well. See you tomorrow.