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Guided Meditation: Connecting with the Anchor

Okay, so here we are at the top of the hour.

Just a warm welcome to everybody. It is a delight for me to be here and to be sharing it with the goodness of this sangha^[1]; it's quite something. Many of you know that Gil^[2] is starting a retreat, so I am more than happy to help support IMC as he takes some well-deserved retreat time.

Maybe I'll wait a few more seconds before I start with the guided meditation.

Wishing everybody a good morning again. Here it's a little cloudy too. I like how there's a little bit of a weather report; it is a little bit cloudy. I'm in Redwood City, not too far from IMC, actually.

Okay, so we'll start with a sit. Being in the meditation posture. And can we bring an aliveness of attention to the experience of sitting? Taking a moment to settle in. What does it feel like to sit, to be in this particular posture?

Feeling the legs touching the chair, or the mat, a bench, couch, bed—whatever it is. Feeling the feet, and whatever they're touching. On the back side, whatever it's touching—cushion, chair, couch, bed, bench—so many different ways we can support our sitting.

Feeling the pressure against the body. Feeling connected. Feeling grounded. And can we feel the stability of this sitting base? Feeling the steadiness of this sitting base, our legs and feet and backside, and allowing that to support us.

Then bringing an aliveness of attention into the body, into the bodily experience more generally. Is there a way we can inhabit the body with aliveness, with presence? Alive to the body and the way it feels right now.

Maybe there are some areas of tension or tightness. If so, we can rest our attention on those areas with a spirit or an intention of allowing. Just for this sit, can it be okay those areas of tension and tightness are there? Maybe the shoulders, the face, around the eyes, or the jaw. Allowing any softening, any opening, relaxing. And if there isn't any softening, opening, or relaxing, can we allow that too? Being okay with it not being quite okay.

Can we set the direction, the attitude of our sit together this morning? Can it be a direction of kindness? Of warmth? Of care? In some ways, we might say that just the act of sitting down to meditate is an act of kindness towards ourselves, a way of taking care of ourselves. But just intentionally bringing in that orientation, that direction of kindness, goodness, time together.

And if you haven't already, resting the attention on the sensations of breathing. Feeling the body as it breathes. In a relaxed, easy way, just noticing the sensations of breathing.

When the mind wanders, as it's apt to do, just very simply, gently begin again.

Dharmette: The Stories of Mara

So again... oh, let's see, I need to stop the recording here for a moment.

So, good morning. Thank you for that sit together. It's lovely to sit together.

This morning I'd like to talk a little bit about stories and the role that they play, some of the stories we tell ourselves, and certainly some of the stories that are in our tradition. There's one story that probably many of you are familiar with, and that is the story about the Buddha's Awakening.

The story goes that the Buddha-to-be, after renouncing both extremes—this sensual indulgence^[3] in all possible sensual pleasures, and then going to the opposite extreme of extreme asceticism, nearly starving himself to death—found that neither worked; he didn't become awakened. Then he decided, "Okay, well, I'm going to meditate." He went under a tree and sat, determined not to move until he was awakened, until he was enlightened.

And while he was sitting there under the tree, the story goes—there's a number of different versions of this story, as is often the case when there are stories—that he was visited by Mara^[4]. Mara tried to entice the Buddha-to-be with these different fantastic things, sensual indulgences, and when that didn't work, he attacked the Buddha-to-be with armies. And that's a little bit of what I'd like to talk about in our week together: these different armies that Mara used to attack the Buddha-to-be before his Awakening.

We might say that Mara in this story symbolizes that which gets in the way of our further freedom, our Awakening, this movement towards enlightenment. Some people might say that Mara represents the hindrances^[5], and certainly we could say it's the hindrances, but it's also more than that. It's that which captures us and makes us think that we don't need to move along this path towards greater Awakening, or distracts us from this path towards greater freedom.

Regarding Mara as a character, I want to emphasize that he's not satanic. Sometimes I've heard different teachers or writings refer to him more as a demon or demonic. But I would say that a really important distinction between Mara and any satanic ideas we might have is that Mara absolutely has no wish for beings to do evil or to be in hell.

It's actually the opposite. Mara wants individuals to enjoy all the sense pleasures they can imagine. Mara would like for us to have the best food ever, the best vacations ever, the best sex ever, the best anything, just so that we feel intoxicated by sensual pleasures and indulge in them again and again and again. Instead of seeking greater Enlightenment or Awakening, we find ourselves endlessly seeking, searching, and striving towards freedom and peace, but never finding it because we're stuck with these enticements—whatever it is that gets in the way of our Awakening, gets in the way of greater freedom and peace.

So for Mara, you would say there's this way in which we're never leaving what we might call samsara^[6]. There are a few ways to understand samsara. One is that there are these different realms that beings can exist in. Some of them we might say are heavenly realms, some are hell realms. We can understand it as, you know, some moments we're in the heavenly realms where things are just perfect and ideal—it was nice for me to sit with you all just a few minutes ago, maybe we could say that was a little bit of a heavenly realm. And then the hell realms, where we have real difficulties. And then the human realm, or just kind of our everyday life.

We can understand it as just one moment to the next, or we could understand it as one lifetime to the next. For the purposes of what we're talking about this week, it absolutely doesn't matter however you like to hold this idea of samsara, of being in one realm after the other. But getting back to this idea of Mara: he's not satanic, he doesn't want evil or bad. He emphasizes complacency, and contentment in some kind of way, but really this complacency.

So the story of Mara is the story of complacency versus effort. Being satisfied, not really doing anything, versus working—or I don't know if that's the right word—opening towards greater Awakening. It's not good versus evil; it's complacency versus... I'll use this word "effort," but I don't want to imply that it has to be super hard effort, because sometimes it does, but sometimes it doesn't.

To this story of Mara, there has been a modern-day reinterpretation that I just think is delightful and that I've really enjoyed. This story has been written by Ajahn Punnadhammo^[7], who is from the Arrow River Forest Hermitage in Northern Ontario, Canada, and he's in the Ajahn Chah^[8] lineage. He wrote a story that is the story of Mara writing letters to the generals of these ten armies. He has these letters that he's written to encourage those individuals who are leading these armies that lead humans, we'll say, into this complacency.

Here's the setting in which Ajahn Punnadhammo wrote, describing Mara sitting down to write these letters. Here's a description:

"In a faraway realm, there's this most intoxicatingly beautiful pleasure park in all the vast swarms of universes. Golden leaves, swayed by gentle breezes, tinkle with soft and lazy melodies. Gorgeous birds and enormous butterflies flutter through the shady groves."

And then he goes on to describe how there's this castle, and inside this castle, there is this individual named Mara who is sitting at a desk, dictating a letter to the ten armies, to the generals of these ten armies.

So you have this really fantastical realm. And sometimes that's kind of what makes it fun, I think, this fantastical realm, this sense of whimsy as opposed to some of the seriousness. This practice is really serious, but sometimes we need a little bit of whimsy to uplift the heart, and to maybe see ourselves in a way that isn't so critical or overbearing.

So the scene is Mara sitting at this desk in this beautiful castle in this beautiful land to write letters to his generals, the leaders of these ten armies. So what are the ten armies? Sense desires, boredom, hunger and thirst, craving, sloth and torpor, uncertainty, malice and obstinacy, honor, renown and notoriety, and self-praise and denigration of others. These are the ten armies. These are the things that get in the way of our path to greater freedom.

And so in these ensuing weeks, I'll be talking a little bit about these armies and the letters that Ajahn Punnadhammo has written to the leaders of these armies.

We might say, "Well, why? What about stories? Why do we even bother with these stories? This is silly, Diana." But stories have such an important part in the human experience. We all share stories. We share stories of our family, of work, of our experiences. And certainly, in our daily lives, we might refer to myths or folklores or characters from TV shows to explain things to others, or maybe even to explain things to ourselves.

I know in Buddhist circles we sometimes use this expression, "the second arrow," referring to a story, right? The Buddhist story of the first arrow is what life brings us, but the second arrow is our reaction to difficulties, and the second arrow can be just as painful as the first arrow. So that's just a representation of a story that, as practitioners, we share, and we often use it to represent something that's meaningful.

The use of a story is a way in which we can maybe do a shorthand, but it also connects us. Stories let us share information that creates a little bit of an emotional connection with others, or maybe helps us understand information, and maybe even makes that information memorable. It's really easier to remember this idea of the second arrow rather than a complicated idea of, "Well, there's what happens, and then there's our reactions to what happens."

But how can we use these stories to help our practice? Maybe even these stories with Mara and his armies. These stories can help us recognize our common humanity. All beings experience these visits from Mara and his armies. We don't have to take it personally; it's part of the human experience to be visited by sense desires, boredom, malice and obstinacy, thirst and hunger, and all these other armies. We don't have to identify with them when they arise, because when we identify with them, we may feel incompetent, or inadequate, or we may feel discouraged.

So there's a way in which sharing these stories can be a way for us to connect with others and to feel like, "Oh yeah, this is what it means to be human."

And then I'll add the role of whimsy. For me, I actually really like this whimsy because there's a way in which it dissolves some of this anger and frustration, or maybe we might say lets light shine in some of the dark places. Or we might even say that it warms our hearts, or softens our hearts, and makes life more interesting to have some of these stories. To have a little bit of whimsy that eases some tension, there's a way that connects us together.

So, the role of stories in practice. Certainly, there are stories that we tell ourselves that are not helpful, but I'm hoping in these few days together to share stories that are helpful. Them having this whimsical, fantastical form helps remind us that they're stories, and maybe helps us be able to look at ourselves and our own experience with some of this warmth and kindness that connects us with others.

So I hope that you'll join me for the rest of this week as I'll share some of these letters that were written to the leaders of these different armies. I'll choose a few of these. Tomorrow will be boredom: how does Mara encourage people to be bored, and then how can we as practitioners work with that?

So thank you, and I look forward to spending these days together, wishing you a wonderful rest of the day. Thank you.