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Guided Meditation: Connected vs. Disconnected

Good morning, good day everyone, and welcome to the meditation.

This is the week we're going to be looking at greed, and one of the aspects of greed is the way in which it takes us away from ourselves. Now, some people are so identified with intense desires, wants, and cravings that they feel this is who they are. They don't recognize how there's a kind of alienation or pulling away from a deeper connection to our hearts, our body, our inner life—a deeper place where there's a settling, an at-homeness.

The Buddha doesn't talk about at-homeness, but he talks about one's ancestral home that the practice of mindfulness is to stay based on or grounded in. So it's not just one's immediate home, which can be cozy and nice for some people, but a place where one has been rooted for centuries. The metaphor here is that we're here to meditate to really stay closely connected from the inside out.

One of the interesting things to notice is how, when we get involved in thoughts—especially if we get lost in thoughts—there is a pulling away, a getting lost from this groundedness and connectedness to something that's more solid, more connected, more at home here. Of course, sometimes there's good reason to go spinning out in thoughts, and sometimes it's uncomfortable to be here in our ancestral home. There's conflict going on here, difficulties, and feelings. But it turns out that for mindfulness practice, there is a healing quality that comes from settling in and being present in the body here.

So in this meditation, you might want to just notice the difference between when you kind of get pulled into the world of thoughts. If thoughts are about the external world, past, future, and people, notice how we're leaving the present moment in a certain way. And as we begin again with breathing, with mindfulness, see if that can be a quality of coming home, coming centered, grounding here where there's a connectedness, where we don't lose some deeper, fuller connection to ourselves.

Then we notice that we lose that; we get involved in thoughts. Or if we get involved in strong wants or strong aversions, there is a way in which that pulls us away from this deeper place of groundedness. If we get involved in strong ideas of self and "what's in it for me," oh yeah, there's a loss of something there. See, experiment with, and explore—get to know this movement of away and coming back, being disconnected and being connected, wandering off into distant lands and being at home in your ancestral homeland here.

So, assuming a meditation posture. There is a long tradition of assuming a posture that's dignified, that is, we're expressing our worthiness, our value. We are not diminishing ourselves, cowering, or discounting ourselves. And we're not puffed up by asserting ourselves, but a simple dignity, simple nobility. So assume a posture that expresses that.

For people who are sitting upright, it might mean sitting a little bit straighter. Maybe there's a way of pulling in the spine a little bit between the shoulder blades so the chest is a little bit more open. Feeling the weight on the sitting bones so the weight of your body seems balanced on top of it, not leaning forward too much or backwards.

Gently closing your eyes. And with a feeling that you have all the time in the world, in a loving way, take some slow, deep breaths. Maybe three-quarters full on the inhale. And as you inhale more fully, feel all the sensations that get activated with the deeper breaths in the rib cage, the chest, the shoulders, and the belly.

As you exhale, a long, relaxed exhale. Just long enough to remain comfortable with it. Relax, settle in on the exhale.

Letting your breaths return to normal. And with a kind of intimacy with your breathing, the physical sensations that come into play as you breathe. As you exhale, soften in the face. If the face doesn't soften, be content just to feel and sense the physicality of the muscles of the face, the sensations from the inside out. Meaning, not your thoughts and images of your face, but how the skin and the muscles of your face feel for themselves.

And then to soften and relax the shoulders. And to soften the belly.

And then to tenderly, lovingly experience how the body experiences breathing. A certain receptivity to feel how the body experiences the rhythm of breathing.

And then notice if and when you get pulled into the world of thoughts, or pulled into the world of wanting or not wanting, how there might be a loss of this deeper connection to the body, to the inner life here and now. Maybe even a kind of alienation from oneself. And that mindfulness is to return to this ancestral home, to this place here in ourselves, grounded, connected.

Noticing the rhythm, the contrast between being pulled away and returning, connecting here to the body breathing. See what you can notice and learn about yourself in that contrast between being connected and disconnected with our embodied existence from the inside out.

If you are involved in thinking, can you feel how that pulls you away from a deeper connection to breathing? And even if you feel connected to breathing, perhaps there's some thinking that limits the fullness of the connection to breathing. See if the thinking mind can become quieter and the connection to your body breathing fuller.

And then, as we come to the end of the sitting. To be connected deeply to ourselves, to our hearts, to our inner sensitivity, to being at ease, calm, and settled, might provide us with a heightened sensitivity to others. Perhaps one that is tender, relaxed; one that is not governed by desire, craving, clinging, greed, or aversion and hatred. Something simple, relaxed.

And to have that simple capacity for gazing out upon the world, to gaze upon the world with kind eyes, and to wish well for this world. To have our well-wishing, care, and our love not confused or mixed up with distress, fear, desires, wanting, aversions, or resentments. This simplicity of looking upon the world kindly, well-wishing.

And how wonderful it would be, how meaningful it would be, how preferable it would be if others could be happy, safe, healthy, peaceful, and free of all the forces within them that afflict them, all the forces around them in our societies that oppress them.

May it be that this practice that we do, and how we live our lives from this practice, may it be for the welfare and happiness of others. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings find peace. And may all beings share mutually in a life that's free.

Dharmette: Greed (2 of 5) Understanding Greed

So this is going to be the second talk on greed. In this one, I'll just try to talk a little bit about what this word greed is. It's a very important concept in Buddhism and in Buddhist practice, not least because freedom from greed is one of the aspects of the spiritual liberation that Buddhism points to. It's a possibility for us, and so to understand what this is so we can work through it and get to the other side is important.

But it's a little difficult maybe for me to talk about greed. Maybe because of associations I have with the word, and maybe other people have it. Or to say it more specifically, in my history with Theravada Buddhism^[1], I sometimes felt that greed was disrespected. That greed was somehow just considered to be all bad, and therefore the goal was just to get rid of it. Or if it was there, it was a negative, it was something wrong with us. It was almost like the closest thing to sin. There's an impurity that we have if we have greed; in fact, the tradition talks about greed as being impure.

I think we have to be very careful to consider that this thing we are translating as greed is multifaceted. It is integrated or connected to so many different aspects of our lives. Some of them are very healthy and important, and some of them are causes of suffering. We don't want to throw away the baby with the bathwater. We don't want to have a simple idea of greed as being bad and therefore, let's get rid of it. It's important to take a deeper look and really get to understand whatever it is we associate with the word greed.

We don't want to judge it negatively, disrespect it, condemn it, or condemn ourselves because of it. In mindfulness practice, we want to take a deep, good look at it and really find out: what is it for us? How does this work? What is it connected to, what is it trying to do, and is there anything valuable underneath or as part of what we call greed?

There are two words that are sometimes translated as greed that belong in this triad of greed, hatred, and delusion^[2]. Sometimes there's the word raga^[3] that's used for greed, and sometimes the word lobha^[4].

Raga has more to do with sensual desires—the desire for sensual pleasures. But it's a desire that's not just a dime a dozen like, "Oh, it'd be nice to have pleasant food," or "It would be nice to have a soft bed to sleep in." There are all kinds of things it would be nice to have, but there's a compulsion, a compellingness to it. So some people will translate this word raga as lust; some people will translate it as passion. Maybe different people have different associations with these two words that don't work very well for a translation, or as a synonym of greed, and don't really work as something that is generally seen as being negative. So there's some variability and choice you have about what words you use. But this word raga has to do with sensual pleasures.

We know that some people have a tremendous intensity of desire around sensual pleasure. There are addictions, there are cravings, there's a strong compulsion to be involved in that world. Some people lose themselves and cause a tremendous amount of suffering in life because of it, and very quickly regret what they've done because there was pleasure in the moment, but it was pleasure that hurt other people or hurt themselves in some deep way. For example, drinking alcohol and drugs sometimes can be a drive for pleasure, but it doesn't really provide happiness; it provides a little bit of alienation.

So for human beings, sensual pleasure plays a huge role in their lives. How do we be involved with that in a wise way, in a liberating way, so we're free in relationship to them? Not to dismiss sensual pleasures, not to feel like we're not allowed to experience them, but how do we experience them without the suffering and pain that comes with being compelled to search for sensual pleasure, to really hold on or cling?

Then the other word is lobha, and lobha has more to do with acquiring things, getting things, obtaining things. There's a whole slew of things which do not necessarily involve sensual pleasure directly, but just wanting money, wanting material things, wanting fame, wanting praise. This lobha is a strong desire for things.

When these intense desires are strong, we can get caught in the web of them. This idea of getting caught is one that the Buddha emphasized. He talked about the metaphor of catching monkeys. Apparently, hunters in his time had a kind of pitch, maybe a pine tar or sap, that was very, very sticky. They'd put some on a piece of wood, maybe a stick with food attached to it, or maybe on a pole. The monkey has to get up to the top of the pole to get the food, and it puts its hand on the pitch. Then it can't pull its hand really free, so it takes the other hand to push itself off the pole, but the other hand gets stuck in the pitch. Then it takes a foot to try to get the two hands free, and that foot gets stuck on the pole. Then it takes the second foot to do the same thing and gets stuck again. Then, the Buddha said, the monkey takes its nose and pushes against the stick to push away, but then the nose gets stuck. With all five body parts stuck to the pitch, the hunter can just walk right up and pick up the monkey. The poor monkey has now been caught.

With this greed, this lobha or this raga, when it's strong, we get caught in the web, in the pitch of what we want. Sometimes we're inflamed in desires and we can't think of anything else but getting what we want.

But one of the reasons to respect greed is that greed sometimes has deeper roots inside of us. If there's a reason for it, sometimes the pursuit of very strong desire comes from deep conditionality—deep hurt, suffering, fear, or distress that is trying to find some way to be healed, cared for, distracted from, or compensated for. If we simply let go or throw away greed too quickly and dismiss it, we don't understand that it's a symptom of some deeper desire.

Not all desires are wrong. Some desires are attempts to move towards health and to care for ourselves, but sometimes they get misdirected, and they get directed in ways that can be harmful, disconnecting, or alienating. So if we stop and take a look at greed, this intense desire, to see what more is going on here—let's stop and not dismiss it, not disrespect it, but think of it as something that really needs to be seen, to be heard, to be connected to.

Rather than having greed be a source of disconnection—where we're disconnected from ourselves and trapped or connected to the pitch, to the spider's web, and can't get away—rather find a connection to the greed that allows us to have a deepening experience of ourselves.

Partly what that involves is turning the attention around 180 degrees from the object of the greed to what it's like to be greedy, to what it feels like here in the body. This movement from alienation that greed can cause when we're so focused on the object can be turned around to create the opposite of alienation: connectedness here.

So one of the things to study in greed, so we really know for ourselves, is the way that greed, when we're involved in it^[5], doesn't really feel like it's for our own welfare. The way that it leads to alienation, the way it maybe causes suffering. At least in the teachings of the Buddha, greed always involves suffering, some kind of distress, stress, some kind of 'ouch' for ourselves in having the greed.

Part of the reason to discover how greed is stressful to have, or the underlying suffering or problems with the experience of greed, is so that we can discover a different kind of desire—a healthy desire that has no suffering involved in it, that has no distress, that doesn't diminish us, limit us, or trap us, but does the opposite. It nourishes us, frees us, opens us. There are such desires.

The fact that we're looking here at greed and we see that greed is problematic doesn't mean that we should just dismiss it. We should respect it, look at it deeply, discover what's really happening under the surface of it, and search for other forms of desires that can animate our life that are freeing, healthy to have, and appropriate to have. This is the task with mindfulness practice in relationship to greed.

Then tomorrow I'll talk more about this turning the attention around 180 degrees and really practicing with greed, looking at it in a deeper way. But for today, for the next 24 hours, you might look and see—maybe not use the word greed if that doesn't really resonate, or if you think of that only as intense desires—but see if in small ways, in the small compulsions, the small ways you're compelled by desire, study what you are compelled by. Where do you lose your freedom around desire? It could be as simple as going for seconds, or going for a cookie, or all kinds of things that you do where you can't help yourself but to be pushed by a desire, and in that losing your freedom.

So I hope you enjoy the exploration of greed, and I hope that you're a better person because of it. Thank you.