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Guided Meditation: Calm Awareness

Good morning everyone, and welcome from the Insight Retreat Center. I feel very cozy and comforted with the topic for this week, which is compassion. These morning meditations are meant to be a foundation that supports it.

For today, I want to emphasize calm, and to say that there's always a choice. Maybe it's not easy to find the choice, but there is always a choice to have a certain kind of calm when we meditate. The calm I want to emphasize today is calm awareness: calm recognition, calmly feeling what's going on, sensing what's happening, calmly observing what's happening.

There is some capacity in the different forms of awareness that we use in this mindfulness practice to let that become calm, even if what we're being aware of is agitation. There is a moment, a place, a little location somewhere in the field of where we're from that calmly recognizes agitation. If there's a recognition, then the mind would—either verbally or in some silent way—have a clear but calm recognition: agitation is present.

If there is discomfort anywhere, we would recognize discomfort. If the place of calm awareness is a little bit more embodied—like it almost feels like the body can sense and feel discomfort or agitation—then feel that with calm. That's the place for mindfulness. If there's more a sense of being the observer, a little bit removed from the experience, stepping back in a sense and just observing, and that's where calm is, then take that backward step and observe the experience.

If it's most calming to be intimate with the experience, really close in, then really touch the experience softly, maybe lightly, but really be close. If it's more calming to step back and have a bird's-eye view of it, then do that. See if you can experiment with whatever is happening to have a calm awareness.

Assuming an upright posture and gently closing your eyes.

Just be aware of how you are, calmly. Is there some way of just matter-of-factly recognizing how you are in the most obvious way that is calm? A calm knowing. A calm sensing.

With that calmness, be aware of your breathing. Take two or three long, slow, deep breaths, relaxing as you exhale. Settling in.

Then, letting your breathing return to normal, settle into your breathing. Becoming aware of your breathing.

If your breathing is in any way uncomfortable, be calmly aware of the discomfort, the uncomfortable breathing, maybe without having a need for it to be any different way. If your breathing is comfortable and easeful, know that calmly.

If there is discomfort in your body—if it's tense, aches in some way, or hurts—know that calmly. This calm knowing, calm awareness, might be fleeting. It might just last a moment or two. Let yourself be content with that. That's enough. And then do it again.

If your mind is uncomfortable, if you're agitated with your thoughts, know that calmly. Calm recognition: this is how it is.

If you have emotions which are challenging you or are uncomfortable, know that calmly. A tranquility of awareness.

As you're aware of your breathing, find a way to be calmly aware. Maybe even calmingly aware, so something becomes more peaceful, tranquil. If you're agitated, be aware of that calmly. Being aware in a way that is calming for yourself.

As you're aware of breathing, body, mind—whatever you're aware of—if you can be aware of it calmly, lightly, can you find in the middle of that, or next to it, some care? Some motivation or impulse to care^[1], or have compassion? The simplest form of compassion for now; it doesn't need to do anything. Be aware with calm compassion. Be aware with tranquil love, even of what is difficult here and now.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, consider for a moment, or feel for a moment, the compassion that might be a companion of calm or tranquility. A compassion or love that has no room when the mind is agitated, in a hurry, or reactive. The simplest form of care.

If you were going to live this day with care, with compassion that came from being calm—calm compassion, compassionate calmness—how might you live your day differently? How might you live your day informed by a calm love, calm compassion, compassionate calm? Would you live differently if you were informed by compassion, care, love, or kindness? Live differently in the small details of your life, or in the large areas of your life?

May our care for the world somehow be carried out into the world on these words:

May all beings be happy.
May all beings be safe^[2].
May all beings be peaceful.
May all beings be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Seven Factors of Compassion (2 of 5) Compassionate Effort

The topic of this week is the seven factors of compassion^[3], and how these seven factors follow in the wake of compassion. When we live in a compassionate way, we find that in the wake of that, or together with that, there comes a form of awareness, mindfulness. There comes a quality of investigation. We make a distinction, and for compassion, we distinguish between suffering and the absence of suffering. In all the different ways that we call distress, or feeling emotionally challenged, or when things are difficult, compassion is based on the recognition of suffering, whether it's mild or big.

That recognition involves a distinction between the suffering and the possibility of the absence of suffering. With this compassionate care, there comes a sense of awareness or attention to what's happening. Compassion has an object, or has a way of living, a way of attending to the world. Part of that attending—the compassionate nature of compassion—is to see a distinction between suffering and the absence of it.

This is the fundamental distinction that Buddhism is about. It lives, grows, develops, and flowers out of making this distinction, because with this distinction, it's possible to move towards greater and greater freedom, a greater absence of suffering. There is a deeper and more sensitive attention to suffering when we do this practice. Some of the coarser suffering might go away, but it becomes a more acute sensitivity to smaller and smaller, or deeper and deeper ways of suffering. That's not a mistake; that's the way of doing house cleaning—to clean the house and clean things up with that distinction.

All of Buddhism can be seen as arising out of the impetus to compassion. It's so central to the whole enterprise of Buddhism. Sometimes that compassion takes the form of kindness and friendliness; they're part of a mixture of care. So sometimes it's not exactly compassion that's in the forefront, but kindness, friendliness, a sense of care for people and for ourselves.

As this unfolds and we see the distinction between suffering and the absence of it, then comes effort. Then comes the desire to do something to make a change. In the guided meditation we just did, the change that was emphasized was becoming calmly aware. We can suffer, and we can just suffer unapologetically—just living in the suffering, really captivated by it, fully inhabiting it. Or we could, in a sense, step away from it and be aware of it calmly.

It involves a little bit of disidentification with the suffering. Instead of feeling, "It's my suffering and I'm suffering," we step away and say, "Oh, there is suffering here," and calmly be aware. That calm awareness allows us to see it more clearly. One of the things we see is that there is suffering, and there is something which is not suffering so much: the calm awareness. That's an important distinction.

With that distinction, we are then able to choose more often that which is not suffering: the calm awareness. It's not getting rid of the suffering; it's still there. It's not just fixing it, it's not condemning, it's not ignoring it. But it's meeting it from a place where we're not identified with it, or glued to it. This is a powerful aspect of compassion—this ability to see clearly and calmly. If the compassion is not calm, it might not really be compassion; it might be distress that we're feeling. Finding that calm place is not easy to do, but it's worthwhile and it's possible.

For some of us, the easiest place might be in the mindfulness itself, in the awareness itself. So the mindfulness factor of compassion helps us see this distinction better between suffering and the absence of it.

As we start seeing this distinction and the possibility of being without suffering, then comes the effort factor of compassion. The engagement, the activity of moving towards, coming close to, or giving ourselves over to that place where there is less suffering. Doing that which decreases the suffering.

If we build on what's happening already, a place of less suffering is not getting rid of the suffering, but is a heightened capacity for attention. Awareness can blossom and become stronger while the suffering is there. Maybe the suffering doesn't get any better, but mindfulness and awareness get stronger, which creates a very different context. As awareness gets stronger, then maybe we can identify or live more in the awareness than we live in the suffering. It's a very significant thing to say that the suffering doesn't have to go away. The ecology of the mind and heart is being changed. We're bringing in something that's stronger, larger, more significant, to be next to it, or be part of it, or be around it. That is the capacity to be aware, to wake up in the middle of it.

We can shift the paradigm from needing to get rid of suffering to becoming bigger than the suffering, or resting in a place where it's peaceful to look on the suffering. That's a radical thing to do. That's living the investigation factor, the distinction factor of compassion.

And then comes the natural effort to engage in activity, to keep practicing, to do something about it. Yesterday I used the example of a little girl who got hurt on the playground with a scraped knee, and there's compassion in the adult who's going to care for her. Of course, the adult puts effort into caring for the child. They bring the Band-Aid, bring the water to clean the wound, and do it very carefully. The engagement is one of care and love, but it is engagement; it is effort being put in. But that effort doesn't feel like work. The compassion is a motivating force for a relaxed, easy, and maybe in a certain kind of way, non-self-centered effort. An effort that's here to make things better.

Part of the difficulty people have with the concept of effort is that some people make effort which has suffering embedded in it. They're straining, they're pushing, they're expecting, they're anxious, they're disappointed, they're hesitant, they feel hopeless in the effort. So then we come back to compassion: "Oh, there's the suffering. Be mindful. Suffering is in the effort itself." Part of the reason to make effort is to discover how the effort is off, and then to see that distinction.

In the seeing of it, we engage in a process of finding an effort that is calm, an effort that is engaged but not agitated. Finding effort which is engaged in doing what needs to be done but has no strain in it—that's caring, that's loving, that's present.

The suggestion is that in the wake of compassion, in the wake of caring and feeling a sense of care or kindness or love for something, there starts to be a making of distinctions (the investigation factor), and from that comes a certain kind of effort.

The big efforts would be to go out and save the world, to go out and really try to help someone who's suffering. That's a beautiful thing to do, an important thing to do. But maybe as a way of really discovering compassion-informed effort, that includes compassion for oneself, and compassion for the very effort we make.

Maybe today we should not be in a hurry to be compassionate for the world, but have the compassion really be towards yourself. Not even just to yourself, but to the particular ways in which your mind and heart are operating, in the way that you're aware. Are you aware in a way that's stressful, demanding, or expectant? Or can you be aware in a calm way? Are you making distinctions? Are you seeing the challenges you have but building on those challenges, or are you judging yourself and being upset with things? Can you find a way to see that making simple distinctions between suffering and the absence of it really is a path to freedom?

As you engage in this practice and practice with all this—the effort part—have compassion or care for that. Can you recognize where there's strain and suffering? To do this very personal work sets the stage for bringing a healthy form of compassion into the world and for others. We're laying down the foundation here.

Thank you. I'll be here for the week at the IRC, so I'm happy to be here. As I said yesterday, I look forward to the chance to show you the meditation hall on maybe the last day here, and we can zoom out a little bit and scan it for you to see what's here. Thank you.