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Dharmette: Discomfort (3 of 5) Resting in Discomfort

Guided Meditation: Embodied Attentiveness

Good morning, everyone, and on this Thanksgiving day, thank you all for being here and participating in this daily meditation we've been doing. Many of you have been coming for a long time, and I'm grateful for that. I am grateful that we've been able to have this time together, to share the Dharma^[1] together, and the practice. I certainly have felt very much the large sense of community of people participating, and I hope that all of you also will feel some sense that you're actually participating in a—maybe a loose community, but definitely a Dharma community—sharing something wonderful and perhaps also together bringing a good influence into our world.

One of the characteristics of being free—freedom being one of the goals of Buddhism—is to not be limited in an unhealthy way. Our life force, our ability to be present, our ability to love, to be with others, and to be with ourselves is not limited by bracing ourselves against life^[2], closing down, withdrawing, or identifying too strongly with whatever is happening. This includes identifying strongly with our discomfort, our comfort, our desires, our aversions, and our preferences. We let go so that something inside can feel open and unlimited.

One of the things we're exploring in meditation, whether consciously or unconsciously, is how to have a sense of no limitations: nothing that defines us, nothing that restricts us, and nothing that diminishes us. This includes letting go of any desire or wish to be unlimited, or to identify with being unlimited and prefer that. There is a little protection from overdoing this delightful thing of being not limited and not restricted.

To be able to sit here and breathe with what is, is symbolic. It represents just being with what is, but breathing through it, breathing with it, and being mindful of it, where the mindfulness itself—and maybe the breathing—is not defined by whatever comfort or discomfort is happening.

Assume a posture which will support you confidently in being open: not collapsing, not diminishing yourself in any way, but not puffing yourself up. Find a posture that has some stability and strength, as if the posture can manage fine with whatever happens. It is as if the posture has a capacity to hold whatever goes on for us without us collapsing into it.

Lowering your gaze, soften your focus, and perhaps gently close your eyes. Then gently, maybe slowly, as is comfortable, take a few long, slow, deep breaths.

One of the functions of the deep inhales is to stretch up against and through places of tension and holding in the body—places where we are kept limited. Gently, almost as if you enjoy it, take a deep breath, stretching into the chest and the shoulders, especially places that are still held or tight. And then on the exhale, relax.

Let your breathing return to normal. With normal breathing, whatever that is for you right now, imagine that your breathing moves freely through wherever you feel uncomfortable, or wherever you feel contracted, tense, or agitated in your body or your mind. Imagine that your breathing can just move through that gently, like a salve^[3] that soothes whatever is there, perhaps relaxing as you exhale.

Then settle down to just breathing, experiencing and feeling how the body experiences breathing.

Let your breathing be at the middle of everything. It is as if you're doing very fine work. Even with a lot of activity in the room around you, you get completely absorbed in the work you're doing. It is something delicate and careful that needs to be carefully done, like watch repair or surgery. Let yourself imagine that the breathing is the delicate work that you give yourself over to, partly so you're not defined by or reactive to anything else. Leave everything else alone. Let everything else take care of itself, and for these minutes, breathe mindfully. That is the work at hand for now. If other things arise that are strong, stay with your breathing; that is where the work is, but breathe through or breathe with this other thing.

After these minutes of meditating, is there some better quality or capacity you have for being simply present for yourself? Search around inside for your capacity for simple presence: open, available to experience, not asserting yourself, and not distracted, but here with a simple attentiveness. Maybe an attention that is embodied: embodied mindfulness.

How might you call upon this capacity today? How about you let it come to the forefront so that you are not limited by circumstances?

As we come to the end of the sitting, may our capacity for simple presence, simple attention, and embodied attentiveness allow us to listen deeply to others and to receive others in our hearts. May it make room for our friendliness and our goodwill. May it be that this day and all days, we spend time actively expressing goodwill and well-wishing for others and for the world. May we do so in a way that is at the same time a good thing for our own hearts, so that it is medicine for ourselves as well. In this way, it is not a duty to have goodwill; it is more like a healthy momentum arising from within ourselves.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free. May our capacity for simple, unrestricted, and unlimited attentiveness contribute to these things happening. May we be a force of goodness in this world.

Dharmette: Discomfort (4 of 5) Not Limited

To learn how to be wise about discomfort, one of the interesting questions to consider is: what is the function of discomfort? What is the message? Certainly, as we asked yesterday, what is the function? What does it do for us, and is that function healthy for us or not healthy? Is it supportive or not supportive?

Certainly, there are times when we feel uneasy about something that we should feel uneasy about. It feels like it's not a healthy thing, an ethical thing, or a safe thing. So the function of our discomfort is to let us know, sometimes before we're consciously aware, that there is something here to be careful of.

But sometimes the function of discomfort is to have us hold back. It has us restrict ourselves, limit ourselves, or close down, not because there's any real danger out there, but because we are uncomfortable and uneasy about things which are good and healthy. Somehow we assume there are threats where there is no threat. Or we project—we bring along with us a concept or definition of who we are and who we need to be. Maybe it's not necessary, but it's a self-concept that we feel is going to be threatened. There is a discomfort because of what we want or what we don't want. We want to be seen by others in a certain way. So there are ways in which, when we're uncomfortable, we hold ourselves in check.

In these times, we actually limit ourselves unnecessarily. We don't avail ourselves of the goodness, the wonderfulness, and the potential that is here.

One of the ways that is quite dramatic is when we feel uncomfortable about love, warm feelings, and warm-heartedness that we might have, or that others have. We might feel threatened by people's warm-heartedness, or feel like we're obligated to return it or do people a favor. We might just be uncomfortable with intimacy or uncomfortable with kindness. Sometimes we're uncomfortable with expressing kindness, love, or care. Some people feel very uncomfortable with expressing gratitude—even though it's Thanksgiving—saying thank you to others, or expressing our appreciation of others.

Sometimes we're uncomfortable simply staying present without saying anything, without actively expressing love, friendliness, or gratitude. We're afraid of just staying fully present and aware, receiving whatever is happening in the room, even when what's happening is good. People are being happy and celebrating, and maybe people are appreciating you, and we don't allow ourselves to be with it.

One of the interesting issues around the words comfort and discomfort is that the word comfort comes from the French word for "with strength."^[4] It is related to the English word force, but we're not talking about an aggressive force here, but rather a strength—with power. Discomfort can be seen as a way in which we limit, hold back, and keep in check our own strength. To be comfortable is not to have a pleasant abiding and a wonderfully comfortable couch to live in. Rather, in the Dharma, comfort is to have a delightful, peaceful, but strong kind of inner strength in our attentiveness, in our presence, in our posture, and in our ability to be with what is.

This turns the concepts of comfort and discomfort around a little bit. The idea is to not let discomfort limit us, but instead allow some natural life force to blossom, bloom, and be present in a peaceful, maybe even gentle way. When we're with people, we want to be careful that we're not asserting our will on them, or asserting our power or strength on them. But in the Dharma—this practice we do—the movement is in fact to becoming strong. Buddhism is often associated with being peaceful and calm, and that might seem to go against the grain of being strong; it doesn't seem like the two are compatible. But they are, and that's the wonderful thing: it's possible to have strength in calmness, and strength in peacefulness.

One way to have that is by not diminishing ourselves. When we're peaceful and calm, there is an embodied attentiveness, so we are present for what goes on. We don't need to go to the back of the room and pretend we don't count, nor do we need to be in the middle of the room and be the one who has all the attention. We can be fully in the room in a balanced way, with a kind of peaceful strength and peaceful confidence that says, "Here I am."

The advantage of that is that when we are present in a confident, strong way, we actually have more to offer other people. Our love, kindness, and friendliness for others has more embodiment. It has more strength and fullness to it. If I'm completely slumped on the couch, half asleep, and I look over to someone and say, "Oh yeah, I think you're great," and then fall asleep, there's no strength to it. But if I walk up to someone in an unthreatening way, am really there in a strong way, and say, "I really appreciate you," that appreciation has so much more value than slumping on the couch and mumbling something before I fall asleep. It may be a dramatic contrast, but it shows the difference.

Today, and at other times, be careful with how you restrict or limit yourself with your discomfort. One of the functions of discomfort is to limit us and protect us when necessary, but we often succumb to it when it's not really necessary.

What we learn in meditation is to have a simple, embodied attentiveness. We learn to really be here for our experience without holding back, collapsing, or cowering. Being fully here—not asserting ourselves or insisting on who we are, but just being here in a full way—is something we can learn to do if we learn how to be wise about our discomfort.

We learn how to recognize when it's there and how it causes reactivity. The hindrances^[5] come up and take over, and we might limit and define ourselves through that discomfort. We can learn how to stay grounded and present in the midst of this discomfort. We can breathe through it, know it is there, but not let it limit us. You can be able to tell someone how much you care for them, how much you appreciate them, or how wonderful they are in an appropriate way. It might be uncomfortable to do it—maybe you're shy—but the discomfort of the shyness doesn't have to limit us.

This is what we're learning in meditation: to breathe with things, breathe through things, and allow things to be there, but still stay present for the breathing. Then we can learn to stay present for the task at hand without being limited or defined by inner voices or inner feelings that might keep us limited.

Sometimes we can relax and let go of our discomfort. Sometimes we can choose not to let it limit us and do what is wonderful to do in spite of it. The advantage of really recognizing the discomfort is that we get to receive the messages from it. We can pay attention to it enough to know whether we want to let it limit us, or whether we want to use our skills to be present in spite of it and offer ourselves.

So, maybe we can translate comfort into English as something like "with our life force," and discomfort as "without our life force." Perhaps our life force, when it's most healthy and most free, is a peaceful force—one that has a lot of space and room for warmth, kindness, friendliness, generosity, respect, and appreciation for others.

So on this day, please use these lessons as a way to live comfortably with your own life force, whether you're doing that alone or with other people. Any day is a wonderful day to let your peaceful life force arrive and bring confidence, strength, and presence to your life. If you have time today to meditate a little bit, even for ten minutes, you might see if that supports this way of being.

Thank you very much. May this day be a nice day for you. I look forward to coming back here tomorrow for the last day of the week. Thank you.