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Guided Meditation: Practicing Here and Now

So good morning everyone, and welcome to our sitting. Thank you also for welcoming me back. It's nice to be back with you all after being gone for two weeks.

And so, for the meditation today, I want to evoke for you one of the experiences that ideally you would be inspired to enter into, to really be interested in and dedicated to as you meditate. And that is that experience which can be experienced here and now. That which can be seen and felt and heard here and now. That which can be known only in the present moment.

The past doesn't exist anymore except in thoughts about the past, and those thoughts are in the present moment. And so, to know and recognize, "Oh, this is present-moment thinking about the past." The future doesn't exist except as a prediction, certain thoughts and ideas. But those thoughts exist and can be seen and known and felt. Perhaps even if there's tension associated with them, or emotions, they can be known and seen and felt here and now in the present moment.

To really enter into the world of our inner life, know that it's only here in the present moment. To enter the world of our emotions, emotions in and of themselves only exist now. And to stay here, to be inspired, to value, to be interested in what can be visible here and now—this is where the Dharma^[1] opens up. This is where practice opens up.

And it's hard to do because of the tremendous pull into past and future fantasy, thinking about things. These are important things that human beings do; we don't want to dismiss them. But there's something very radically different that happens if we are clearly grounded, in touch with how those things are happening in the present moment. We are not blinded by thoughts about the past to not see that all these are happening now.

In a sense, anything that you experience, anything that is occurring for you, occurs in the present. And this is where mindfulness finds its grounding, finds its center, finds its opening for us to meditate.

So, to assume a posture that hopefully gives you an embodied experience of being grounded, centered here and now. If the posture is too casual, if the posture is just too much slumping against the back of the couch, it might be more difficult to feel an embodied involvement with the present moment, to have your body support you and encourage you into the here and now.

And to gently lower your gaze, and gently close your eyes.

One of the reasons we focus on breathing in meditation is that it's a rhythmic experience that is continuously in the present moment, here and now. And to ride the rhythms of breathing, to begin by taking a few long, slow, deep breaths, relaxing on the exhale. Becoming centered or grounded in that relaxation by settling into your place here and now.

And then letting your breathing return to normal. A bit more on the exhale, relax throughout your body.

And as you exhale, relax the thinking mind. The more there is pressure in the mind, agitation in the mind, anxiety or desires in the mind, the easier it is to slip away from the present moment. To be concerned about other things at other times in other places. But to relax the thinking mind, soften. To gentle the thinking mind.

And then to settle into your breathing again. The breathing being part of your lived experience. To call it a lived experience is another way of saying that which is happening for you here and now, right here and now. The only place you can experience your vitality, or whatever way it is for you to experience being alive.

And it's here in your direct experience where we will discover what the Buddha was pointing at, the Dharma. You don't need to look for it, but to remember how valuable and important it is. Probably the most important thing at this moment is to be here with your present-moment experience, not pulled and lost in the world of thinking, but pulled into the world of direct experience, breathing.

Perhaps after these minutes of sitting, you are changed a bit. Maybe calmer or settled, or maybe more sensitive in your being, so you can better settle into your direct, immediate experience, independent of the future and the past.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, our capacity to care for others, to have goodwill, loving-kindness, and generosity, are all things that exist only as we're doing them, only as they're present for us within us. To be centered and grounded here in the direct experience gives us the opportunity to know, to connect with whatever degree of goodwill we have for this world, that we have for others, that we have for all the creatures in this world.

And here in the present moment, that's so important. It is the location, place, and time—from time to time—that we can give expression to this care for the world. And to take whatever benefit we've received from this meditation practice and dedicate it for the welfare and happiness of others. The benefit you receive, you don't have to give it away, but you can dedicate it, use it to support others.

May all beings benefit from this meditation. May this time that we've meditated together support us in bringing welfare and happiness, peace, and safety to others. May this practice of the Dharma be for the welfare, happiness, safety, and freedom of all the people and creatures that we encounter. May all beings be at peace.

Thank you.

Dharmette: The Dharma (1 of 5) Visible Here and Now

So, warm greetings to you all. And for this week, I'd like to take the theme of the Dharma, the Dharma that the Buddha taught.

There is an ancient teaching about this Dharma that the Buddha taught that describes how someone understands the Dharma when they have a confirmed confidence in the Dharma, in the Buddha, in the practice that we're doing. And this idea of confirmed confidence means that we know something, we've experienced something for ourselves. We know what the Dharma is about. We know something in the Dharma, so that there's a confidence—a deep sense of maybe faith, maybe trust—but the most common way to talk about this is a confidence which is peaceful, a peaceful confidence.

So, to practice to come to enough of one's own personal experience that from that experience one feels, "Oh, this Dharma, these teachings of the Buddha, this world of practice, is something I know for myself well enough that I have confidence in it."

And one of the tests for this confidence is if someone comes along—like, for example, I came along and sat down at one of these 7:00 a.m. sittings and I said, "Well, you know something? I was completely wrong. All this Dharma stuff that we've been teaching and doing, it's not really right, and there are probably better things to do with your life, and I recommend you just give it up."

When one has a confirmed confidence, because one has experienced the benefits, the transformations, and the freedom from this practice, it doesn't matter what I say. Because you would know. You might say, "Well, I'm sorry for you, Gil, but I know for myself how much I've benefited. I know for myself the value of the Dharma, this practice that I do, and I'll continue because I know it for myself."

So this idea of really knowing it and having this confidence—how does one come to that kind of confidence? There's a five-part description of what this well-proclaimed Dharma is. We could say "teachings of the Buddha," but the Dharma is not a teaching in the abstract, like a creed or a set of propositions. The Dharma is part of our lived experience. It's things that, when we discover them in our lived experience, show us a way to live a wise and good life.

So what is it about the Dharma that provides that? What do we see? What's going on here?

There is a five-part description of what we have confidence in and what we know. It's possible, in a sense, to do a kind of reverse engineering to understand these five parts, and this will tell us what the Dharma is in a deeper way. As opposed to just some abstract teachings of the Buddha, or some vague principles or natural forces that we connect to, we really discover it for ourselves.

These five qualities of the Dharma, or five characteristics, are frequently chanted in the Theravada^[2] tradition. The English goes like this: "The Dharma is well-proclaimed by the Buddha, by the Blessed One. It is visible here and now, immediate, inviting inspection, onward-leading, and to be personally experienced by the wise."

So I'll take each of these days, we'll take one of those and look at it more deeply.

The first one is called sanditthiko^[3] in Pali, and it refers to the fact that it's directly visible. The ditthi^[4] here means "to see" what can be seen. We often say in English for this phrase, "visible here and now." The "here and now" is not in the word; just like if the word is "to be seen," it's known, and seeing always happens in the here and now. And so, by adding "here and now," it's really emphasizing the immediacy of the experience and the immediacy of the knowing of it.

It doesn't have to be only with the eyes. It says the word is "visible," but it's visible with the mind's eye, with all the different capacities we have for direct attention. We can sense, we can hear, we can feel, we can know in the mind directly what's happening.

And so this Dharma that is well-proclaimed by the Buddha is not something that you have to believe or find in a book. It's something that we can see for ourselves. In fact, sometimes it's said that everything you need to know in Buddhism can be discovered by your own powers of observation. But you have to look carefully. What the teachings and the instructions do is point us to how to see in the present moment, so that the Dharma really comes alive for us.

For today, that is the value of our direct experience and to see it clearly. When the Buddha wanted to explain a bit further what this means—sanditthiko, that the Dharma is directly visible here and now—he referred to our psychological states.

We can feel, we can know, we can see and experience directly that there are unhealthy states of mind present. There might be greed, or hatred, and delusion. There might be jealousy or envy, or there might be avariciousness. It might be lust, it might be anger, there might be resentment. All kinds of things might be in the mind—conceit. One can know directly that it is there.

There are two things that can happen. With clear seeing—if the seeing is clear enough, strong enough—we are not identified with those states. We're not involved in or participating in those states. It's almost like we can instead take a step back and observe what's happening, rather than being in the middle of the fray.

And this is a powerful thing to do for all the difficult states of mind, activities, and forces that exist within a human being. To not be invested in it, not be caught by it, not be reactive to it, not be struggling with it, but to step back. Step back, open up, so there's an overview with mindfulness, with awareness. There's a clear sense: "This is happening in the present moment. This is here. And this is what it feels like. This is what it's like to know it. This is what it's like to step back far enough, or get the overview high enough, so that we see, 'Oh, this is what it's like,' and then we're not caught in it and involved in it."

If we're not caught or involved, if we really discover how to see it in that kind of way, then these unhealthy states of mind have much less, or maybe no, power over us. To see the presence of unhealthy states of mind—clinging, grasping, resistance, and hating—to see it there, and then see ourselves being unattached to it, unentangled with it. To see that we can clearly know it without believing it or being pushed around by it—this is a phenomenal thing to discover.

Even more phenomenal is to see that these unhealthy states of mind can disappear. For some people, certain chronically unhealthy states of mind can be so deeply ingrained that we don't even know we have them. Or we assume that it's always this way, that the universe was built this way to have these states of mind. But to have these drop away, to have the experience of life without them, can be life-changing. To know that there's another way: "Wow, you mean I don't have to always be afraid? I don't have to always be aversive? I don't have to always be critical, or always fighting for what I want? It's possible to find some peace in a different way."

So that's how the Buddha elaborated on this idea that the Dharma is visible here and now. What it means is that we want to be able to see clearly what is happening for us here and now.

And what can be quite marvelous, wonderful, and wondrous is that we discover our capacity to see unhealthy states of mind within us and not believe in them, react to them, or use them as a basis for criticizing ourselves. All we're asked to do is to know it directly for what it is. And then we can start seeing the freedom from it, the ways in which we can know it so clearly that we're not caught by it.

To see that over and over again, to develop this capacity to be here and now, is the direction this is going. We're cultivating and developing our capacity to be in our lived experience—the experience of here, the experience of now. And the stronger that capacity can be, the more we're interested in this, the more we decrease some of the unhealthy drive that pulls us into the world of the past, pulls us into the world of the future, pulls us into the world of fantasy and rumination.

And as we do this, we get to appreciate the richness, the texture, and all the different heightened opportunities and potential that are available here in the present moment, now. I think of being fully present here and now as like opening a door into a multi-dimensional experience of life that is not available if we spend our days in our thoughts, past, future, fantasies, and desires, whatever they might be.

So the Dharma that the Buddha taught is something that's directly visible here and now. And I'd encourage you for this day of practice that you have before we meet again tomorrow, to make it a task, a real activity of the day, to really be present in a relaxed, calm way with what can be experienced directly here and now.

The Dharma is visible here and now.

Thank you.