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Guided Meditation: Mindful Harmlessly

Warm greetings from a fall season that's getting colder. We're here hopefully to warm our hearts and cool the fever of our greed, hatred, and delusion.

One of the primary reference points and purposes of the Buddhist teachings is to understand and to end our suffering. Closely connected to this idea of bringing suffering to an end is to bring harming to an end—to live in a non-harming way. The Eightfold Path^[1] is a path of practicing non-harming. It involves both not harming others and not harming ourselves. In particular, when we get to the meditation part of the Eightfold Path, if you really understand that what we're practicing here is non-harming to ourselves, it gives a different reference point for understanding what we're doing as we meditate. We don't want to meditate in a way that harms us.

There are all kinds of ways we can get harmed. It may be mild compared to what goes on in the world, but there are still significant ways that need to be somehow ironed out and released so that we can really experience the delight and the joy of harmlessness and the absence of suffering.

We will do this meditation today, and maybe we can keep that as a reference: that everything we try to do in meditation has the orientation not to add intentional harm. We want to be careful with how we use our minds—what we think, what we intend, what we try to do and accomplish as we meditate. We try not to be greedy for meditation or for states of mind, and not to try to attain something in a way that's harmful, with expectations and demands, or comparing ourselves with better states, or with other people who are further along. We also want to try to avoid having awareness be mixed up with aversion, ill will, pushing away, being angry, spiteful, or upset in any kind of way. Then, the absence of delusion is to be free of the confusion that our projections, assumptions, and interpretations add to the field of our experience.

This absence of harm points to a kind of radical simplicity: a simplicity of awareness and of being present that is not trying to do too much, but just enough to develop steadiness, presence, and attention here and now. This is attention without the mindfulness in any way being yoked or harnessed to ways in which our mind is motivated by harm, even the subtlest little form of it—holding on to something, or wanting something.

So, we sit and experience. No matter what arises in our mind—and all kinds of things can arise, as we're not necessarily responsible for what our thoughts, feelings, and emotions might be—we do not pick it up. We meet everything with kindness, openness, or simplicity, which maybe goes along with the expression: Not this. Not this. Will I get involved in this? Not this. Will I pick this up? No thank you. We do this without aversion or hostility to what comes up. Just a simple, No thank you, not this.

Sitting in a meditation posture will maybe allow you to wake up a kind of attention—an embodied presence and embodied attention. For people sitting upright in a chair or on a cushion, it's often beneficial to sit a little bit straighter than you normally would, in such a way that your chest doesn't get puffed up, but is lifted or opened up. Sometimes that brings the shoulders back a little bit.

Gently close your eyes. Take some moments here to scan through your body, to see where the obvious places might be that you can relax. There's a subtle, very subtle way—and nothing to be blamed for or upset about—in which tension is a kind of self-harm. Be able to feel your way deeply into the body, to feel where the holding or tension is, and to relax it.

You might relax the forehead as you exhale, relaxing around the eyes, softening. Softening around the cheeks and the jaw, as if the muscles of the face can fall away from the skull as you exhale. The muscles of the face don't have to be held close to the bone.

Then soften the shoulders. Releasing the shoulders so the weight of the arms allows a gentle pull of gravity to support letting go of tension in the shoulders and the shoulder joints. Soften in the chest and the area around the heart as you exhale. Let the rib cage really release and settle. Softening in the belly. Relaxing down the arms and into the hands and fingers. Relaxing the thighs and the knees, and all the way down to your feet.

Soften and relax also in the area of your brain and mind. Soften the mental activity of thinking, wanting, and not wanting—the mental activity of pulling back or being mentally tense. Maybe as you exhale, imagine that the waves of the mind, like the waves of the sea, quiet down and get still. The mind moves to being calm, spacious, broad, and quiet, like a still surface of water. As you exhale, let the mind become quieter.

Perhaps you can now find within you a feeling, an understanding, or an intuitive inspiration of being harmless. The simplicity—without the need to do good, without the need to do anything different—except resting in the simplicity of being harmless. With a gentle No thank you, not this for any little or big movement that's associated with harm, wanting to harm, or causing harm. That No thank you is a harmless attitude toward what causes harm.

Then, with this radical simplicity, become aware of your breathing. The experiment is to explore how to be aware of your breathing so that it is a harmless awareness. The Buddha said that bees do not harm the flowers that they visit. Let your awareness settle on the flowering of your breathing, as lightly as the weight of a bee. Just hover or rest on your breathing, and experiment and explore how the simplicity of awareness can feel like a harmless way of being with your breath.

When the mind wanders off, how do you begin again with your breathing? Without any disappointment, berating oneself, or annoyance. Just simple attention, landing again on your breathing, being harmless to yourself with every movement and every attention to breathing in and breathing out.

Notice any subtle way in which you get involved with thoughts that come up, or feelings, emotions, and attitudes that arise. If those attitudes or thoughts are harmful, then you might say, No thank you, not this. Not this in the sense that you're not going to pick it up or get involved with it, so that just being aware is enough. If it is the simplicity of awareness, you could instead say, This also, and they're the same thing. This also, held without picking it up or being involved in it. Or, Not this, it will cause me to leave the simplicity of awareness of what is. In this way, we find harmlessness in the very nature of awareness.

As we come to the end of this sitting, know that to live a Dharma^[2] life is the same as to live a harmless life. It means living without any intentional ways of causing harm to oneself or others, and having a dedication to being harmless. Considering how to avoid harming in our speech, our actions, and in our minds is a wonderful aspiration to have at the end of every sitting. We can go forth into the world with a deeper reference point for what it might mean to live a harmless life. Meditation teaches us a degree of peace, well-being, and freedom, such that we become disinclined to get involved with the agitation and the pain that comes with causing harm.

May it be that as we come out of this meditation, we dedicate this thirty minutes for the welfare and happiness of all beings. May it be on this day that we contribute to more people feeling safe, more people feeling a refuge of safety and well-being—at least what we can provide. And may it be that in our dedication to living harmlessly, our goodwill and our generosity can flow more freely. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be free.