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Guided Meditation: Simple Knowing

So, good morning everyone, good day. It's my pleasure to welcome you today to the Insight Retreat Center in Santa Cruz. I broadcasted from here a few weeks ago on a Monday; this week, I'll do all the days here. I'm here teaching a seven-day retreat, and I really wanted to be able to continue this series on Satipaṭṭhāna^[1].

I'm delighted to be here and to share this wonderful place with you. You don't see too much of it, but you certainly see the altar. One of the things that I could say, just to give a sense of what IRC is like, is that the altar was built by a practitioner here, a woodworker. It is a beautiful altar that he spent many months building, and that was his inspiration, his generosity to the center. The Buddha was a gift from practitioners at IMC and people who love the IRC.

This gives a little picture of how the center came together. Even the paint on the wall—the color of the paint—maybe it's nothing particularly special, but there were volunteers here. I was part of a team, the aesthetics team, that was considering every color and what would work for a meditation hall and for a retreat center. It imbued this place with this wonderful dharma^[2] dedication of many, many people to make this possible. So you get a small taste, but if I look around IRC, I see this replicated a thousand, ten thousand times in all the wonderful things that people have provided for the center.

When we started the breath exercise in Satipaṭṭhāna, the instructions were: "When breathing in a long breath, know you're breathing in a long breath. When breathing out a long breath, know you're breathing out a long breath." And the same with a short breath. I take that as being shorthand for: when you breathe, know the characteristics, the qualities; know the experience of breathing. The operating word here is to know.

The most common verb, the most common activity that we're instructed to do in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, is actually to know. One of the ways of understanding this that I like is that knowing is a kind of recognition. It's a moment of recognition. Something very special can be discovered in just a simple act or moment of recognition. If you spend some time experimenting with the act of knowing, this recognition, you might be able to find that there's some quality of freedom, clarity, spaciousness, perhaps non-identification, or non-reactivity in the simplest way in which we can recognize what's happening.

It doesn't take too long to experience this. The idea that mindfulness takes a while—that you have to do it for a while to see its benefits—is certainly true. But if you have too much focus on the future and how it's going to develop, you miss the opportunity to discover how wonderful it is just in a moment of knowing, of presence.

Excuse me. So if you would just, maybe for a moment, close your eyes as you are. Find some neutral but clear sensation that's happening, that you're experiencing. It could be a sound, it could be a sensation in your body, it could be breathing. Recognize it with a word like hearing, sensing, touch, warmth, coolness, or movement—whatever it might be. Say that simple word in a very simple, easygoing, relaxed way, but with the understanding that this is really what you're doing. Gather yourself around just the simple act of verbal recognition in your mind at an easy pace.

Either continue with the same sensation or continue with whatever sensation comes to you very, very easily. Just like, "There it is," and you recognize it. Experiment with having that act of recognition feel free, not sticky, not reactive to the experience, not judging it. Just the clarity of, "Oh, this is hearing," as you hear my voice. Hearing. If the chest moves, moving.

Keep it really, really simple. See if you can gather yourself so that this is what you're doing. You're not on the side, in the background, mostly having commentary about it or questioning this exercise. Just give yourself over for a moment to recognize a sensation you're having. See if you can find a way in your mind to do that recognition so that it's spacious, receptive, allowing, and open. Maybe it has some quality where the knowing is free of what is known.

This might feel like a little bit of work if you've never done this kind of focus, but this is the direction that mindfulness meditation can go, where it becomes simpler and simpler, more easeful. We're taking refuge or resting ourselves in the mind's capacity to know. But not a knowing that's necessarily work; it's almost like a natural knowing that the mind does. We're recognizing recognition, so that it becomes clearer and stronger, and we start discovering the freedom and peace that's in that moment.

To start the meditation, assume your meditation posture.

Gently take a few long, slow, deep breaths.

On the exhale, settling into your core. Settling into the center of your being.

Letting your breathing return to normal. And continuing with a normal breath, as you exhale to settle into your body.

Maybe as if you're relaxing and settling into your core.

And then as you're breathing, know you're breathing.

Know if your breathing is fast or slow.

Know it to be long or short.

Know it to be deep or shallow.

And without working too hard at it, see if you can recognize the simplicity of recognition. The simplicity of clearly knowing.

The simplest recognition that has no commentary, no judgments.

A recognition that's light, easeful.

If the mind wanders off in thought, see if you can discover the simplest possible recognition that that's happening.

The recognition that has some quality of being free of reactivity, free of preference.

And then begin again with your breathing.

As you make the simplest acts of knowing, of recognition, do you have any sense that your mind is pulling away, or leaning in, searching?

Maybe it's possible to have the mind neither search nor pull away.

The mind itself can rest.

Trusting the simplicity of knowing. Just knowing.

Knowing in-breath, out-breath.

Reflections

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, maybe giving some contemplation to what it's like when you feel really known by someone else. Not necessarily that they know everything about your history, but even a stranger. It takes five minutes to get to know you, and you feel somehow they really knew you to the extent of who you were in those five minutes. What is it like to be really known? And what's it like for you to know someone else?

If there are no words to be spoken and you're with someone, and you really know them—allow for some clarity of recognition of the humanity of some other person. There can be an intimacy in knowing. The simplest and fullest knowing maybe has no barriers. Maybe it has no judgments. There can be something clean about only knowing, but knowing well, knowing clearly.

As we develop our capacity to know intimately and clearly, may it be the channel by which we convey our care for the world, our love, our generosity, our respect. May what we learn through this meditation practice support us to be a conduit of care, love, and kindness.

And may our goodwill spread across the lands, from person to person. A ripple of goodness out across the world, wishing:

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

For this morning, I'm not sitting with the bell anywhere nearby, so I'll bow and you can join me. That can be the ending of our meditation. Thank you.

Dharmette: Satipaṭṭhāna (15) Mindfulness of Posture

Okay, so today I begin the next exercise in the discourse on the four foundations for mindfulness, for awareness. It follows the same pattern as the first one, in that it's going to describe another way of observing the body in terms of the body: ardent, aware, clearly comprehending, having put aside greed and distress for the world.

This is a relatively mature mindfulness state to be in—to be able to observe the simplicity of the body in regards to the body. Ardent, clearly comprehending, and aware, having put aside greed and distress for the world. Some people practice mindfulness so they cannot be caught in greed and distress. That could happen, and when it happens, then the practice can go from there. That is a little bit the goal, and these thirteen exercises are the means.

That's why I translate this text as The Four Foundations for Mindfulness—classically it's called the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta^[3]—because its purpose is for developing this clear awareness, which I call mindfulness. So how do we do that? We can do this with the second exercise. If you do the second exercise well, that becomes a platform or foundation from which to go through the steps of the refrain: to have an awareness that's open both externally and internally, to have the ability to see the inconstant, impermanent nature of the experience, and with the help of that impermanent nature of phenomena, to abide in a very simple, lucid awareness where there is no greed and no clinging to anything at all.

Now, the second exercise is very simple. Because it's so simple, it's easy to overlook. You understand it immediately, and so you might feel like you're ready to move on to the next thing because it's just four or five lines and you're done. It goes this way:

"When standing, one knows one is standing. When walking, one knows one is walking. When sitting, one knows one is sitting. When lying down, one knows one is lying down. In whatever posture the body is in, one knows that."

It is deceptively simple just to know you're standing when you're standing. You think, "Okay, I can do that in a moment, and then I'm ready to do the more important things." But here we're talking about really knowing. The verb "to know" is pajānāti^[4] in Pali. This is the important verb, the core activity that runs through much of the Satipaṭṭhāna exercises. There are a number of different instructions on what we're supposed to actually do here, but the most common one is to know.

A few things make this exercise really rich. One is this emphasis on knowing and this idea of clearly recognizing what's happening when it's happening, in the simplicity of it. Exploring the most simple aspect of it in the moment, independent of any relationship to anything else.

At the moment, I'm sitting comfortably, but I feel a little bit cool. The windows are open here in this room, and it's a little bit cool outside, so I feel cool. I know that I'm cold. I could add on top of that: "Why is it cold in the room? Maybe the windows are open too much. I wonder how long the windows have been open. How long should I sit here being cold? Maybe I'll get chilled if I stay here too long." All that commentary and those questions might be reasonable in some circumstances. But what it does is it takes us away from the most simple, relaxed, present-moment awareness of the simplicity of just feeling a little cool.

Feeling coldness, and feeling it in and of itself, is worthy of being respected for what it is. It can also be seen as a message that I should pay attention if I were really cold, but it is worthy of just knowing for itself. What we're doing here in mindfulness practice is going in a different direction than the mind usually goes.

Imagine that all those concerns I have—"Why are the windows open? How long can I sit here?"—are like the horizontal plane of life. Mindfulness is the vertical dimension, in the sense that it allows us to penetrate and go deep. The simplicity of just knowing something like coldness in and of itself is a doorway to a deeper entry into that experience, allowing us to really penetrate and see deeply into the experience until we start seeing something liberating and freeing in it. The idea is to really be there with it. But when I use the phrase "really being there," I can imagine some people steel themselves up and try hard. This is meant to be a very trusting, simple, relaxed knowing.

To know you're walking as you walk means that you're not distracted. You're not thinking about all kinds of issues in your life, problems you have, or wonderful things you can contemplate. Thinking is a fine thing to do, but there's also something wondrous about the times we can go really simple and just know, "I'm walking now." In the horizontal mind, which has many concerns and interests, that can get boring very quickly. But in the vertical mind, that can go really deep. It opens up to something really special.

The first time that I experienced that in my life in a palpable, strong way was when I was about twenty or twenty-one. I lived alone for a week on a farm. I'd never been alone for that long. I didn't talk to anyone for the week, or see anyone really. I wasn't meditating, but as the days went along, everything started to glisten. Everything started to have this clarity to it. I would see an object, and it was like it was shining. If I had a thought, the thoughts were just kind of like a wonder. To see a thought arise—there was a clarity to it that I'd never experienced before. It didn't really matter what I was thinking; it was just clear thinking. There was all this space, I guess, and stillness and quiet, around which I could just have this very simple knowing of each thing.

It was life-changing for me. It's one of the conditions that probably led to me being here and teaching: appreciating and valuing this intimacy, clarity, simplicity, brightness, and vibrancy of just being present in the moment for this little thing and knowing it.

To know you're walking as you walk, to know you're standing as you stand, to know you're sitting when you're sitting, to know you're lying down when you're lying down. Upon coming out of meditation, when you're somewhat settled, it could be almost second nature to stay that simple. It's a way of continuing to live in some of the benefits of the practice of mindfulness before you automatically or quickly get into the complexity of your life and your mind. Allow yourself to stay calm, centered, and simple.

I talked yesterday about Thich Nhat Hanh^[5], who recently died. One of the things that many people remember him for is his walking meditation. There were sometimes long lines of people walking with him down a country road, and he would just go really slow and steady. There's something compelling about that: when you walk, just walk. When you sit, just know sitting.

I'll talk more about this second exercise tomorrow, but for today, I wanted to emphasize this knowing quality. I'd recommend that today you experiment. You all know things easily; it can be almost subconscious. You open your front door, and you didn't have the conscious idea, "There's a door, there's a knob, this is opening the door." It's done almost automatically. See if you can stop doing those kinds of things automatically. See if you can open up a little bit, be more mindful of them, and find a way of recognizing "door handle," "opening," in a very rudimentary, simple, easeful way.

You may see that in the knowing itself, there is freedom. In the knowing itself, there is no entanglement with what is known. There's no "for" or "against." The "for" and "against"—the entanglement—can be so integral to the very act of knowing that we can't tease it apart. But see if you can begin teasing it apart. Just know eating, just eating. Hearing a sound, just hearing a sound. See if you can find some places where you discover something very precious and special about your human capacity to know, to recognize. If you start appreciating the freedom, the ease, the peace that's found in knowing, then mindfulness becomes a lot easier, and you start developing an ability to receive some of the benefits that come from ongoing practice.

Resources and Closing

I see that there's a note in the chat about wanting to see a copy of the sutta^[6] that I'm reading from. The reason I haven't posted my translation is I want to redo my translation for this, and I haven't had any time to do that. A version that I did many years ago is on the IMC website. If you look under the resources menu at the top bar, there is a writings section, and I think sutta translations is one of the categories in the menu. There you will find the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. When I have more time, hopefully in the next couple of weeks or soon, I can post my updated translation.

So thank you. Thank you for being here and being part of this. As we go slowly and steadily through this, I hope that this text will become more alive for you, richer, and more engaging for your practice. Thank you.