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: Coming Back

Good morning, friends. It's lovely to see everyone here checking in. And welcome to everyone who's not checking in in the chat. That big global IMC Sangha that gathers for these daily periods of practice together, welcome one and all. I'm just going to wait a minute for everybody to show up.

All right, good morning. It's 7:00 a.m. where I am on the West Coast of this continent. I want to welcome everyone. And one thing I've made a practice of doing, I'm just remembering right now as I do it, is to make the welcome somehow concordant and consonant with the theme of this week. I've decided to think of this week with the overarching theme of what we bring to the Sangha, what we bring to this practice community, what each of us brings with our practice to the community, making it stronger, more resilient, and more delightful. And this will be our theme for the week. Each day we'll consider some different qualities that come to us in the ancient texts, qualities that benefit the sangha as a whole, and that encourage us each to make the practice our own. We don't in this practice get to make up any old practice we want, but we do make the practice our own. And that strengthens the sangha as a whole.

So, that's the theme for the week. Today, the particular quality I want to emphasize is something—let me see if I can find the quote. I'll talk about this more in the dharmette when we've sat a bit together. But, one of the qualities that's mentioned in the texts is that a practice community is made stronger by someone who brings to it the following quality: that they've learned a lot about the teachings, that they remember what they've learned, that they consolidate that learning, that they investigate the teachings with the mind and penetrate the teachings well with wise view. It sounds kind of complicated, maybe, for first thing in the morning. I'll pull it apart for us. But, particularly in this guided meditation that comes, I'll just stress that we engage the teachings in many different ways, but the teachings come from the meditation experience, and we can engage the teachings directly in the way we meditate. In this practice, the means and the ends are one. The way we meditate is the way we want to live in the world. And I'll talk about that more after we've sat together. So, let's sit in meditation, prepare the mind for the teachings, and prepare the mind with the teachings.

And I'll just guide lightly. I know that we come together as people with different practices and people have different ways of entering into the practice. But again, in the spirit of the theme of this week, let's bring ourselves here together feeling confident in what each of us, you yourself, bring to the sangha. The particular qualities that you bring to the practice and that you take advantage of to make the practice your own are gifts to the community, strengthen the community, make the community a lot more enjoyable, and prepare the community for the awakening of each and every one of us. So, maybe feeling some of the warmth of that, some of the sense that what I bring to the practice community is important. That the practice community would be diminished if each of you didn't bring to it what you bring to it, the practice that you bring to it.

And this particular quality we'll investigate today a little bit, this idea that one kind of strength that some of us bring to the practice, that each of us bring to the practice in our own way, is that we keep coming back to these teachings. And we do that in a lot of different ways. We learn them, we remember them, we're taught them, and then we come back to them. And the coming back, which is a key part of what we mean when we talk about sati^[1] or mindfulness or awareness, this ability of the mind to keep coming back in an awake way to here and now. Many different ways we do this, but in the meditation, the one way we do it is keeping coming back to our object of meditation or connecting with each and every object of experience as it arises. This connecting and reconnecting with the momentary reality of our lives in a way that's free from holding on to it, pushing it away, judging it, getting overly concerned about it. This is one way that we engage the teachings.

So, let's settle in with whatever our object of meditation is. I'm going to use the classic practice of bringing our attention again and again back to the breathing that's happening. The in-breath, the out-breath. This practice Anapanasati^[2], mindfulness or awareness of the in and out breathing, literally, is a good one for many, many people and it was the Buddha's practice. When asked, "What's the practice of the Buddha?" the Buddha responded, "You can tell people that my practice, the practice of an awakened being, is this foundational practice of mindfulness of the in and out breath, mindfulness of breathing."

So, you may use a different object—sounds, the body, any object that arrives in any moment—but I'll just make reference to the breath. And I want to talk about two ways of using the breath to engage the teaching. And after saying these two, I'll be quiet. But one today, as we come back to the breath, as we notice that the mind's become distracted, caught up in things, wrapped up around the axle of things. As we notice that the mind's maybe gotten tight, or maybe it's gotten loose and kind of dispersed. We bring attention back to the breathing. And the way we come back is so important. Notice. Can we come back to the breath with gentleness, without judgment? We're going to be doing it over and over again. It doesn't make any difference that the mind has momentarily gotten caught up in something. The power of this practice we develop by keeping returning. Every opportunity to return strengthens our mindfulness. Anytime the mind's wandered, maybe it can—when you realize that, realize that with the realization, there's a waking up. Oh, back here now. Okay. It's an opportunity to be here now.

And then, also notice today that in this sit, just the way knowing happens. And lots of stuff will go through the mind and come up in experience as we sit here even for half an hour. All of it can be known with an unagitated, ungrasping knowing. The knowing is simple. And we can keep it simple by keeping connected to the knowing. How do we know what's going on? That is, what's the attitude of our mind toward what's coming up? Can it be simple? Can we just rest in an effortless knowing of experience even if there's a lot of stuff happening in that experience and maybe some stuff that we find uncomfortable. And the discomfort that comes up in experience can be known by a mind that's at ease. Can be known by a knowing that's free.

So, that's enough instruction for the moment. Let's sit in silence for the rest of the sit.

...

So, as we come to the end of the meditation, bring yourself here. We teachers say things like that. Bring yourself here today, in particular. I want this to be an encouragement to bring your practice to the Sangha. The practice you cultivate that includes your strengths, your inclinations, the practice you've made your own. These practices each make a contribution of importance to the Sangha. So, bring your practice here. Bring your practice. Bring it and share it.

[Bell rings]

Dharmette: Learning and Remembering

So, good morning or good day to everyone again. We're going to devote the week to a theme of what each of us brings to the Sangha. Various qualities of our practice that help the Sangha be strong, resilient, and also delightful and enjoyable. Perhaps it could be said that the practice community, like this community, a practice community is the sum total of the practices in it. And in this case, as in so many other cases, the whole is much, much greater than the sum of its parts. And so, this week we'll explore a little bit the sorts of practices and competencies in practice that the ancient Pali texts suggest help make our practice community vibrant. We support one another by coming together and bringing our different practices to bear. It's a way we support one another in the practice community.

So, we can sort of take some pleasure in feeling like the practice we cultivate makes a difference in the community. That in addition to just being our way of practicing this Dharma is a way that helps others. And we cultivate a practice that plays to our own interest, abilities, aptitudes, strengths. I don't think we always think about it this way, but we don't have to practice like others. And there's ample encouragement for this in the ancient texts. There are many valid ways to practice this Dharma. Probably as many valid ways as there are devoted, determined practitioners. The Buddha in several of the texts, several of the discourses celebrates the diversity of practice in his practice community. And he too recognized that these different individual expressions of the practice made the Sangha stronger. And I'll make reference to a couple of those expressions of the Buddha about expressing his delight in the different practices that different individuals brought to the Sangha.

We'll go through a series of these qualities. And then as an encouragement to stay through on Friday, I'll share what the Buddha said was his particular gift to the Sangha. So, a little teaser and encouragement there. We'll talk about some of the other kind of well-known practitioners in the Buddhist community and then at the end of the week we'll talk about having heard a bunch of ideas about what different people bring to the Sangha, the Buddha said, "This is what I bring to the Sangha." We can bring that, too.

So, in just 10 minutes or so, let me talk a little bit about the setup for this. So, on one occasion, and I'm sort of glossing a well-known discourse here, on one occasion a bunch of the Buddha's disciples, some serious practitioners, gathered together in a park in which there was a well-known sacred tree, a sal tree^[3], sala tree in Pali. And in this forest area, these practitioners come together on a wonderful evening and listen to the Dhamma as they share it with one another and talk about the qualities that each of them bring to the Sangha. And it's a beautiful discourse and brings a smile to my face and it brings forward this theme of each of us bringing something of importance to the Sangha. And the Sangha would be diminished without all this diversity of practice that comes to it. And again, that's not to say that we make up any practice of our own, but that we do make the practice our own.

So, I'm going to quote just a little bit here. "When it was evening and the meditation had been completed, just as we've just completed meditation, one of the well-known disciples of the Buddha, Maha Moggallana^[4], rose from meditation and went to another practitioner, Kassapa^[5], and said to him, 'Friend, let's go over and see Sariputta^[6][7], another disciple, and listen to the Dhamma together.'" And as they decide to go over, others join them. They're joined by Revata, they're joined by Ananda^[8], they're joined by Anuruddha. And they all gather together on a delightful evening in this wooded park.

And Sariputta says, choosing Ananda first, "This evening is so delightful. The air is scented with heavenly scents that seem to float in the air. The night is moonlit. The sal trees are all in blossom. And on this special evening, I ask you, Ananda, friend in the practice, what sort of practitioner illuminates this park, illuminates this evening, brings something special to the Sangha?" And Ananda says what I quoted earlier at the beginning. "A practitioner who has learned the Dhamma, has remembered these teachings, consolidates these teachings, investigates them with their mind, and penetrates them with wise view, this kind of practitioner brings something special to this community of practice."

And those of you who follow along with these things at home will recognize that Ananda is speaking about himself. It's Ananda who remembers the discourses, hundreds of them. Ananda who accompanies the Buddha through 40 years of teaching and remembers these discourses that come down to us in his voice. When we read at the beginning of these discourses, "Thus have I heard," we take that to be Ananda's voice. Ananda heard the teachings, remembered them, consolidated them with wise view, and passed them down to us. So, this is an important quality that some practitioners bring to our community of practice and it has various expressions.

I'll get one out of the way quickly, which is study. Some of us find study really important, reading books, listening to Dharma talks from different teachers, sitting retreats with different teachers or different topics or themes of their hearts. And this can be an important strength that some practitioners bring to our community. A formal engagement with the early texts and teachings is obviously a hallmark of IMC teachers. Like myself, like many others trained with Gil and Andrea. This is important in keeping the teachings alive, making them accessible, keeping them meaningful, keeping them inspiring. But I like to remember that it's the Buddha's experience in meditation, like we just did, in which he found a durable freedom in meeting human experience without suffering. So, the meditation came first. The Buddha found his awakening meditating. And the teachings come later as a way to explain how to meditate, what becomes available in this way of meditating, what good use we can put the benefits of the meditation to. So, the teachings are here in the meditation. The teachings are in a sense all about the meditation and the meditation is all about the teachings.

So, in the meditation practice, we engage in the teachings in a really important way and in a way that benefits everybody else in the community. I'm going to say this phrase again and then kind of put it in the context of meditation. Learning, remembering, consolidating the teachings, investigating the teachings with mind, penetrating the teachings with wise view. All of these things are ways of describing what happens in the meditation. So, formal study is important to some. It's an important thing that some people bring to the community. But, you don't have to. Because you're doing it in the meditation. When we practice with these instructions, we're engaging with the teachings directly in the way the Buddha did.

And again, I'll just stress that the meditation experience came first. All the rest, all the discourses that talk about how to meditate, what's available in the meditation about understanding life and suffering particularly in life, freedom in life, all of these things derive from the meditation. I tried to sort of point to this in the guided meditation that these teachings are fundamentally a practical, not a theoretical way to understand suffering and freedom. And we can rely on the meditation to remind us of the teachings, to remember the teachings, to consolidate the teachings, to explore the teachings with the mind, to penetrate the teachings with wise view, just as Ananda says. Are the qualities that he brings to the Sangha.

I'll give you a couple of examples that point back to the guided meditation and that you can make use of every single time you sit down and meditate. I stressed in the guided meditation, how do we come back to the breath? When the mind's wandered, when it's got caught up in things as mind does, as we rely on mind to do. Mind is not the enemy of our practice at all. It's important to love the mind, respect the mind, have gratitude for the mind. But when we come back to the breath, we can do it with force, frustration, judgment, or we can come back with ease. We can come back with kindness. We can come back without any hurry. We can come back with simplicity and lightness.

Somebody said to me just yesterday, for those of you who live near the Bay Area, yesterday, I'm back in Portland today, but yesterday I was in the Bay Area for just a day on 280 with a friend, and he said, Dharma friend, practitioner friend, he said, "My mind's still busy a lot, but I'm not troubled by that anymore." And I thought, this is—I said, you know, this is such a great benefit of practice. You know, that's the practice at work. Not fighting mind, not seeing mind as the problem, being at ease with mind.

So, this idea of how we come back to the breath, I want to stress, it's not just a technical thing, it's not just a practice thing to get back to here and now. It's a recognition of something really important in the teachings that we want to meet our experience with kindness, with patience, with simplicity, with lightness. I sometimes say when guiding meditations that there's no hurry. This is going to happen in the course of a good practice, even a simple meditation. It's going to happen many, many times. Why get upset? Recognize every moment of realizing that we've got caught up in a worry, thinking about the past, thinking about the future. Each one of them is an opportunity to be here now. What could be more wonderful? Meeting our experience in that way is a way of engaging the teachings, remembering the teachings, consolidating the teachings.

What we'll notice, and this is the second example that I brought up in the guided meditation, is how do we know the workings of mind? Do we meet them with disappointment, exasperation, aversion, or with understanding, patience, care? This is where we can engage in the meditation. The knowing that arises around whatever is coming up in mind. There can be an unagitated knowing that knows the agitated mind. There can be a simplicity of knowing that meets the most complicated of experience. And we can rest in that simplicity of knowing. The teachings are right here in front of us. When we meet our experience with that kind of simplicity, we're meeting it without suffering. We're meeting it without pushing it away, pulling it close. And that's the core of the teachings.

So, come back to the breath, come back to the object of meditation with kindness. With love, Gil might say. And meet whatever comes up with a clear kind of resting in that clear, untroubled, broad knowing that's always part of our knowing if we rest in it, if we just let it be there and we enjoy being in its presence. This is something important we bring to the practice. And this is a way to learn a lot. Again, back to this phrase that Ananda provides, learning a lot, remembering what we've learned, consolidating that learning, investigating the teachings directly in our experience of meditation, penetrating our experience with wise view. With wisdom, with kindness. This kind of practice, this orientation to practice illuminates this little community of practice. I say little community of practice, this global IMC family of practice.

So, bring your practice to the sangha. So, tomorrow we'll talk about something totally different, delight in the meditation, very separate from kind of formal thinking about incorporating the teachings in practice or finding the teachings in practice, but rather the importance of delight in what we do and bringing that to the sangha. So, till tomorrow. Thank you, friends. May you all be well and I look forward to reconnecting tomorrow. Take care.