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Guided Meditation: Mindfully Available

Hello everyone, and happy to be here. And wonderful to have this clear sense of meditating together in community with others. Even though I'm looking mostly at the camera as I speak, I have a very rich sense of those of you who are at the other end of this. Seeing the chat helps tremendously with that, both the names that I recognize and those that are new. So thank you all for being here.

One of the attitudes with which to meditate is an attitude of curiosity or interest, of wanting to really know what is happening here in the moment in our experience. And to have that kind of interest in knowing what is here, while at the same time not trying to understand. And the reason not to try to understand is then we will not be meditating; we'll be thinking, reflecting, probing. So the art of this is to have that interest where the eyes, the perception, the attention has a nice alertness to it.

As if we're trying to discover the message that's available here. As if we're trying to understand it, we're available for it. And so rather than trying to figure anything out, there is heightened availability. As if there is a profound message to be discovered here, but a message that only can be discovered if we don't actively try to discover it, but rather be available to it. So that kind of interest... and some of this has to do with beginning to understand the deeper conditionality, deeper conditions that are coming into play, that are operating in the moment as we're living our lives.

And the message that we can receive is to see the deeper structures of what's happening, the deeper motivations and emotions. And the other thing that the message might be is something about the potential of what's possible. And it becomes really clear that it's not just of the moment, but what future we create for ourselves—maybe in the next moment, the next minute—by how we are here. And so this availability to wisdom, availability to understanding... an interest to understand, to see, while not trying to. So available but not figuring it out, as if it's going to arise, it's going to appear if we have this attentiveness.

So, to sit in a meditation posture. And maybe to think of the alert posture as alert to just be available to sense and to feel. If you're going to go into the woods to listen to hear a faint bird, there might be a physical uprightness, a lifting up of the body, kind of to hear and listen. And so this alert posture... and then closing the eyes to also begin a process of settling into the body. Maybe settling around the alertness, so the unnecessary tensions and holdings are released.

Taking a few long, slow, deep breaths, and savoring each breath. Taking your time, really sensing, feeling the body expand, fill with air, stretch as you breathe in. And maybe relaxing into a longer exhale, maybe with a sense of relaxation, settling.

A deep, long inhale and a long exhale. Relaxing the thinking mind, quieting the thinking.

Letting your breathing return to normal. Taking a few moments to be attuned to the rhythm of breathing in your body. Breathing is connected to so many different parts of our being; it's at the crossroads. If you're available for the message of breathing, for the deeper experience of what's happening as you breathe, what is revealed?

And then for the next few exhales, relaxing whatever energy or agitation there is in thinking. The thinking mind quieter as you exhale, settling more deeply on the exhale. As if the thinking mind can rest, can let its weariness settle down.

And if you're present for your mind in some quiet, open, available way, as if there's a message or a deeper understanding, deeper insight... does anything arise when you quietly make yourself available to sense and feel the thinking mind?

And taking one deeper breath and exhaling. Returning to natural breathing, your normal way of breathing. Available to the experience of breathing. And continuing with the rhythm of breathing. Maybe within the breathing itself... what emotional message, what emotional understanding comes if you're available to see or feel your emotional life as you breathe?

Is there a unique message or understanding that appears when you take into account, when you feel both your breathing—you're connected to your breathing—and you feel your mood or emotional state? What does mindfulness of breathing contribute to a better understanding?

And then continuing now in silence with your breathing, but perhaps with an openness that's available for a deeper experience.

One way of understanding mindfulness is that it involves an availability to experience. We're available. We don't assert ourselves. We don't pull away. We don't project our ideas. We don't shut down or avoid. But we're available for experience. We get distracted, and then we return to that availability. And in this way, we're not asserting ourselves, not protecting ourselves.

And as we come to the end of this meditation, imagine that in a safe situation, you're simply attentive, present, mindful, innocent, feeling with availability. You're available to be mindful, to be attentive to the social situation. Not asserting yourself, not pulling away, just available. Available to feel and sense, know the humanity of someone else. Available to sense and feel what animates them. More fully who they are and how they are.

And through this availability, good will and kindness. A very different life than if we assert our goodwill, assert our kindness. We're available to our kindness, our goodwill. We're available for love to arise in the space of not knowing, the space of possibility, in the space of knowing others more fully.

And in this way, our meditation practice can benefit our wider life and others in our life. May it be that this meditation practice we do serves for the welfare and happiness of others. May it bring others safety, happiness, peace, and maybe even freedom. At least the freedom from our assertiveness, our neediness, our projections onto them. May we be safe for other people. May all beings be happy.

Dharmette: Wise to Emotions (4 of 5) Emotions as Messengers

So, continuing the discussion about emotions. People have many attitudes towards their emotional life. Some people are shy of their emotions or troubled by their emotions. Some people don't pay much attention to them. Certain emotions are considered wrong or inappropriate to have, or we have an aversive relationship to them, or we're ashamed of having them. And some we're happy to have, some we're delighted by and hold on to. There's a wide range of ways to relate to them.

In the Dharma^[1], in practicing with emotions, it's useful to respect all emotions, in the sense that all emotions have a place. Buddhist practice is not meant to negate or squash or push away any emotion, but in that more respect and openness to experience the full range of emotions that we have, to come to healthy emotions, to come to a healthy relationship to emotions and a healthy source for emotions.

And one way to relate to emotions for this purpose is to see all emotions—provisionally, at least—as a message. All emotions are pointing to something. We don't want to kill the messenger before we've seen the message, or even after we see the message. But to think of emotions as pointing to something that's deeper.

Some emotions arise out of other emotions. Some emotions come together with other emotions. Sometimes the predominant emotion might be grief, but mixed in there might be a sense of guilt, there might be some shame, there might be anger. It's part of the whole complex of how we're feeling at a particular time. But maybe we focus mostly on the grief, or we sense the other ones are there but feel somehow it's wrong to have those. But they're part of the complex, and maybe they're a needed part of the complex. They all point to something. And if we see all these emotions as messengers that are pointing to something, then it's easier to respect them and take time to get to know them more.

If we take some emotions, like anger, as being anger in and of itself, without being connected to something deeper, then we can have an aversive relationship to anger. We can feel ashamed for having it or upset about ourselves. But if we see anger as a message, then we ask, "What is going on here? What's it pointing to more deeply?"

In the broadest terms, some emotions arise out of attachment. They arise out of something we're holding on to and clinging to. And so the message might be, the pointer is to discover, "What are we attached to here?" Rather than getting caught up in the anger by itself and relating only to the anger—if we do that, then we're missing the deeper message, a deeper understanding. But if we look and see the anger represents something, it's a manifestation of something deeper... what might that be?

In terms of other emotions, it might be that we're hurt, and that being hurt is more primary than the anger, which is secondary. Allowing the anger to point back to the hurt—that might be what really needs our attention, what we want to practice with, because it's more primary. That's somehow the source that's prompting the anger.

It might be that what underlies anger is fear. So if we just stay with the anger and blame someone and get angry with someone, we won't feel the fear. We won't recognize that we're afraid as well. Recognizing the fear doesn't make us weak. Recognizing the fear can actually give us a lot of strength if we learn how to be with fear in a useful, productive way. But then we're more connected to what's primary, we're coming home in a deeper way, and now we know what needs to be taken care of.

But both hurt and fear may be related to something even deeper. Those are kind of messages too, and what's more deeply going on here? That's where there might be attachments, and there might not be attachments. If there are attachments, clinging, then that's what we want to see in this practice. That is really the heart of moving towards freedom: to see where we're caught.

If we're not attached and caught, then below the fear and the hurt there might be something that's really precious, something that's tender or loving or appreciative or grateful about this life. There might be some deeper place of being at home that maybe makes us feel more vulnerable. And rather than avoiding the vulnerability or the tenderness or the love, the Dharma task is to discover how to find strength in that, how to find ease with that, how to be wise about that, so we can stay in touch with that as we go through our lives.

So whatever the emotion might be, it should be respected. What "respect" means—kind of how I understand the etymology of the word, the etymology game—is that it's to look again, to inspect again. To respect, to take a second look or a third look and really spend time getting to know this experience. "What is this?" And then be available to feel or sense what else is happening here. What might it be pointing to? What might it be coming out of? Not so much to analyze what it is, but this is why mindfulness is so helpful: we're available to notice what's going on in the cracks of it, what's going on underneath it.

If we open up the attention more widely and look beyond the secondary emotion or the thing that's strongest at what it's pointing to, then we might start seeing deeper and deeper sources and processes that are going on. So in this way, we're respectful.

And what's the message? Even the most difficult, challenging, maybe painful, maybe even inappropriate emotions that we might feel... the stronger they are, the more they represent that there is something important for us to delve into and see what's going on. There probably is some strong attachment, some strong clinging to something. The stronger the reaction—the stronger the despair, the stronger the grief, the stronger the anger, whatever it might be—the more it actually is a messenger.

It's hard to take this idea in sometimes when the strength of our reaction, the strength of our emotions, has a lot to do with the terrible things that are being done to us or happening in the world. I don't want to in any kind of way say that we're responsible for our emotions because there are terrible things that happen to us. But the stronger the reaction we have, the more a richer, more important opportunity there is to see where—like, the bigger the reaction, the deeper in our psyche and our mind and our hearts is where the attachments might be. The stronger the reaction, the more it's a doorway into understanding the depth of what's going on.

I've seen this a lot of times on retreats. The classic example on a meditation retreat is we try to make these safe places for everyone, but occasionally something happens that is not so safe. The very thing we were trying to protect people from happens. I remember once we were renting facilities in a university, and there was a fire in a distant building in the university. There were firefighting helicopters that came flying over really close to us, and there was a lot of noise and maybe some smoke.

There was a woman at the retreat—this is many years ago now—who still had a traumatic legacy from growing up with the bombings in Europe during World War II. The sounds of the helicopters and the noise and everything seemed so much like what she was familiar with that had been so troublesome. She got really frightened. But because she was on a meditation retreat, she kept practicing with it and going deeper and deeper and discovering where the knot was, where she was still knotted up holding herself in fear and protecting herself unnecessarily. She was able to let go.

So on retreat, it's a very special environment to kind of really... the stronger the reactivity, the more it points to uncovering^[2] something really, really deep sometimes.

And sometimes receiving the message is respecting our love, our kindness, our compassion—to give it time. When we connect to that and use that as a message to what's deeper, maybe we connect that to our freedom. We see, "Ah, this goodwill I have, this compassion I have, it's arising out of freedom." And the freedom is maybe the greatest gift we can give: to connect to that sense of freedom that we've discovered and to let that be the vehicle for our care of the world.

So you might try this. Whatever emotions you have today, if it's safe, if it's appropriate, maybe step away a little bit, be on your own, and reflect more deeply: What is this a message of? What is this pointing to? If this is a messenger, what's more intimate, deeper, more important here? What can I discover? Maybe all the emotions are pointing to something deeper than themselves.

So thank you, and I'll continue tomorrow.