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Guided Meditation: Meeting and Receiving

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our sitting, and to the community of people who are sitting together at this time sharing our YouTube connection. As we begin this meditation, I want to bring up a metaphor that might be useful for meditation. It has to do with meeting.

Life has a lot to do with meetings that happen, where two things meet the world, or the experiences of the world meet our eyes and we see the world. This morning I opened the door, and I went out to meet the handle. In that meeting, I could open the door and push the handle down. There is this contact that is made—some sort of sense contact, different kinds of contact.

Why is this kind of metaphor useful? In a meeting, sometimes we are the active agent for the meeting, and sometimes we are the recipient of the meeting. Sometimes things happen in a free way where no one is really the agent; it's just that in the meeting there's an occurrence without there being a sense of receiving or giving, reaching out or coming to us. For example, to make all this YouTube work, it would be very nice if all the buttons would come to me so I would know what to push, but I have to actively go to them and remember which ones to push. So I am the agent for the meeting. When I stand in the sun and I'm cold, I'm the recipient of the sunlight and the warmth coming in, and I open myself to receive. In different settings, we operate in different ways.

The same thing happens with meditation. Sometimes this idea of where we are in the pendulum of meeting when we sit and meditate is helpful. Sometimes we are the ones going out to meet something, and sometimes we allow ourselves to be the recipient in a very receptive mode. Sometimes both the idea of receiver and giver, agent and recipient, fall away, and a very deep peace can happen. We need to know where we are on that spectrum at any given time. We can use where we are in the spectrum to help us be in the present moment, and that is really the doorway to freedom in this meditation practice: connecting to the present moment.

I say all this because when we first sit down, we are the one who is going to the meeting; we're meeting something. When I just sat down now, I went to meet the cushion that I sit on, placed myself on it, and then I actively moved around a little bit to get just the right connection between the cushion and me. I am the agent, the one who is doing the meeting. But once I sit here and relax, then I am the recipient of the contact of the body against the mat and the floor. I sit here and receive, relax, and allow, and I feel that contact.

Sometimes at the beginning of a sitting, it is nice to intentionally begin by being the agent, the one who goes to meet, in order to begin establishing that connection as a reminder. Then, as the meditation moves along, we can start shifting. Perhaps we are less the agent and more the recipient, more just allowing what's happening and not being the doer. Sometimes we are the doer, and so we go back and forth. Hopefully, as we learn to recognize where we are in that spectrum, we can do it in a relaxed, spacious, and forgiving way. We can do it calmly, as is appropriate and attuned to what is needed at the time.

Posture and Practice

If you now take a meditation posture, to begin, you might be actively engaged with meeting your body and connecting with your body. One way that is a little bit dramatic is to actually sway back and forth quite widely if you're sitting upright, and just feel your body connect to your body. Feel your body against your cushion or your chair, and then make shorter and shorter sways, really feeling as you come into the center to be aligned. The same thing with maybe rocking forward and back a bit. You are meeting your body, you are meeting the place you are sitting. You are engaged in the process of connecting and feeling, and then sitting upright and centered.

If that is how you are, then close your eyes and now be the recipient of the sensations of your body. Now that you have swayed back and forth, how does your body feel? What parts of your body feel activated, or where is there a flow of sensations? What inner sensations^[1] of your body arise to meet awareness if you are just relaxed and open to feel your body globally?

Then let the pendulum swing to being more active. You can meet your body more fully by taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. As your lungs expand, the diaphragm is pushed down, feeling the expansion, the pressure, and the lifting. As you exhale in a slow, calm way, perhaps feel the settling. The places of contact inside your body's sensations change on the exhale.

Then let your breathing return to normal. Once again, be the recipient. Allow yourself to discover how the body shows itself into awareness. You just sit and are open globally. Notice if there is any tension associated with your thinking mind—any pressure. If there is, as you exhale, relax the thinking mind.

Take a few moments to go with awareness to your breathing. As if awareness is a loving hand that gently puts itself on someone's back or shoulder lovingly, see if awareness can lovingly feel the sensations of your body breathing. If it's helpful, you can actually put your hand on your belly and your chest to make contact with the movements of the body as you breathe.

Perhaps allow the body breathing, the sensation of breathing, to be received in awareness. Perhaps even received in the body. In whatever way you make contact with the body and with your breathing, see if you can have that contact be calm and relaxed. Also be committed to a gentle, calm devotion to staying close to that meeting place of breathing and awareness—the body breathing, and the awareness that knows it.

Reflections

As we come to the end of the sitting, it is always nice to consider how we can use our practice to make the world a better place. Consider how, when you meet the world, when you meet others—whether personally, in the distance, on the phone, or in email communication—how can you meet the world with friendliness and with kindness? When the world meets you, when people come towards you and you receive them in some way, how can you be a friendly and supportive recipient for that meeting?

May it be that our contact, in whatever way we have with the world, be one that promotes friendship, support, and mutual respect for each other. May all beings be happy.