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Guided Meditation: Water Element

Good morning everyone, and good day. Welcome to our 7:00 a.m. sit and the dharma. We'll get started momentarily. Feel free to just check in with the sangha^[1], maybe say hi and settle yourself since you're here a couple of minutes early.

Thank you for those who let me know about the sound. We'll begin momentarily. For now, I wanted to invite you to consider coming to your sitting cushion or sitting chair just as if you're coming to a quiet temple. Begin to maybe evoke a sense of care and gentleness as you sit down.

We'll begin this morning with the arriving sequence. Maybe imagine yourself arriving at a quiet temple—the temple of this body. Allow some gentle settledness as you settle into the space. I remember going to the temples in Kyoto, Japan. It's as if I am walking into the temple almost on tiptoe. It's quiet.

Arriving here, I have a little care. Care for this body, the space it's in. Taking your seat right here and now. And temporarily, we can leave behind any thoughts about the future and the past. Arriving here in this moment, the sense of arriving may be expressed as bringing mindfulness front and center, becoming present, available. Available to the sound of my voice and being in sound.

Being available to the movements of the breath, with a sense of the sitting posture or whatever posture you may be taking. Aligning from the ground up, being supported by earth. Also being supported by the ground of a wholesome intention. My teachers sometimes use this term: resting on the ground of a wholesome intention. Aligning with our aspirations, our values, integrity within.

Maybe you have a sense that you've arrived here home in this body, the temple of this body. Inviting the felt sense of the earth element to come in, however it may be for you. Maybe you're feeling the pelvic bones making contact with the earth right underneath us. The hardness of the teeth, weight of the shoulders and arms. Being available to the experience of the earth element right here in this earthy body. Sitting like a redwood, rooted, uplifted.

Maybe a sense of stability, steadiness can come in. The earth element is stable. In some small and big degrees, the unmoving earth element has a nature to settle. See if you feel a hint of stillness as you sit in the bones. Letting go of the tendencies to try to figure it out. Let the body do what it does. The body knows. The body feels. Mindfulness of the body in and of the body itself, not in the head.

With steadiness and stillness in the earth element as a backdrop, making ourselves available to the contrasting movements of the wind element—air, chi in Chinese. Movements of the breath. Rising and falling of the belly. Expansion and contraction of the torso. Receiving the felt sense of the wind element flowing through the whole body. Maybe you feel vibrations, tingling. Wind moves. The felt sense of stillness may still be in the backdrop or the foreground of your experience as you experience the movements of the air element.

You may feel aliveness as you breathe in and out. There may be a vivid sense of vitality. Stillness and movements can co-exist right here in our experience.

I expand to include the felt sense of the water element today. Notice the moisture inside the mouth. Maybe in the palms, maybe moisture in the eyes. Water takes shape in whatever container they're in. You're sitting—the water element takes the shape of sitting. Lying down—the water element takes the shape of lying down. Fluid, permeating throughout the body.

The body is still, quiet. It may feel like we're sitting in a quiet lake, unmoving. The body has energetic, wavy experiences. It may feel as if there are ripples and waves in the body. For the rest of the meditation, feel free to stay with whatever may be prominent for you: the arriving sequence, the earth element, the wind element, the water element, or combinations of all of these.

Dropping out of the concepts and ideas, beliefs of what all this is. Let the body speak for itself. Feel into the body, sensing into it.

The temple of this body provides a shelter and protection from getting caught in hindrances^[2]—grasping, aversion, and delusion. These last few moments of our sitting together, we offer an inner bowing to the temple of this body and this mind, this heart. We're offering shelter, protection, and safety. Safeguarding inner integrity, inner virtue, inner goodness.

The Blessings of Sila - The Third Precept (3 of 5)

Thank you all for meditating together. I felt a sense of goodness from just being here with you all and practicing together. What a fortune, great fortune.

So today I wanted to continue our reflections on Sila^[3], and today I will be extending this to the third precept. We've been going through this one by one, and the third precept is undertaking the training rules abstaining from misconduct related to sexuality.

And again, I wanted to invite all of us to explore this from an inside-out framework and using this framework of a triple A: aware, abstain, and align. Aware of the inner forces and becoming clear of the consequences of wholesome or unskillful actions, and then we learn to abstain—training to abstain from those that are unskillful and unwholesome. And then allowing ourselves to do what is wholesome and skillful.

So this particular training precept—the direct Pali translation of one of the significant terms in this precept, kama^[4], refers to sensual pleasures. And so maybe the literal translation of this precept is more like undertaking the training of abstaining from misconduct in regard to sensual pleasures and sexual desire. And so this has a broader implication than the common interpretation, which is usually abstinence from misconduct in sexual relationships. And so today I wanted to explore this maybe from a broader perspective. They are not exclusive of each other in any way, but I would like to include a broader perspective as well.

As we cultivate mindful awareness, like all of you have been doing this right, we can begin to see how sensual desire arises out of sense contact. It may be related to seeing beautiful appearances or clothes, hearing some sound or voice that somehow attracts us. I remember hearing many stories about personal romance on retreats. I think some of you may have heard of this as well, or may have even experienced this on retreats. There's not much else going on on retreats, so our minds can get caught up just by watching a person, somehow the way they take a cup of tea or drink a cup of tea. We can get really caught up by some romantic fantasy.

It's not until the end of the retreat when the person begins to speak or do something different, and then all of a sudden it hits us: what happened here? [Laughter] So the forces are common and potent within us if we are attuned with our awareness. And those momentary sensual desires are just kind of like ripples in a big pond of water; they come and go and they ripple outwards. They kind of settle without getting manifested into anything significant at all. And yet without clear awareness and clear knowing, these kinds of forces can get an upper hand. We can get caught up and we can act out these kinds of desires and manifest them into unwholesome bodily and verbal actions.

And so as we begin undertaking the training of cultivating awareness, we can become aware, we can know these forces, and then externally, we undertake this training by abstaining from sexual misconduct. We don't want to play with fire, and it's kind of like we don't want to get burned. So being aware has a lot to do with how we cultivate the capacity to undertake these training rules.

I wanted to just name how potent this force is and the kind of harm it can have on human beings. There's no denial to this. We all know that the misuse of these kinds of forces—sexual energy, sensual desires—leads to deep trauma, deep pains, and distress for ourselves and for others. I was looking up some statistics yesterday, and I don't know how true the information is, but it feels reasonable. It says 40-plus percent of the women in the US have encountered sexual violence, and 20 percent of the males in America have been victims of sexual violence.

Isn't that amazing? And I thought this might be low. Growing up with a sexual body, much harm can be done. I was stunned by the statistics, and those are probably just the reported ones; unreported might be even higher. So just imagine, one out of maybe close to two women might have encountered sexual violence. And yet those are deep forces within. When we are hurt and harmed, so much dukkha^[5] can happen. Some people have a lifetime of hurt and harm buried within.

And yet because of the potent force, it's also easy for us to get caught. I recently read something from Sharon Salzberg, one of the pioneer teachers in the Western Theravada^[6] tradition. She shared an encounter in an article: a friend was once at a community meeting at which a member was being rather self-righteously denounced for their sexual misconduct. Her friend's comment was, 'Who in this room has never made a fool of themselves over sex?' In fact, no one raised their hand. Isn't that kind of stunning?

So sexual forces are very powerful forces. I wanted to say a few words about how we relate to these forces inside of us, whether it's sensual desires, misconduct in relationship to these forces, or maybe unskillful actions that we experienced and took in the past. I invite you all to also engage in the practice of not shaming ourselves or others, not blaming ourselves or others, because we all know that shaming and blaming are only adding thoughts and wounds, right? And this applies to all the other precepts, the whole training of Sila. Shaming and blaming are unskillful and unhelpful.

Instead, the very fact that Sila is a training points to how we can learn. Through coming to know these forces, coming to know the implications and consequences of these forces, we can train and learn to not get burned again and again. And this gradual training takes patience, lots of care and gentleness, kind attention, and a willingness to learn. Just think about how you might treat your children if they make a mistake. We know they have the potential to correct them. We don't just tell them, 'That's it, you're a bad boy or bad girl forever,' right? Instead, we all know that children have the potential to grow and mature through learning. In the same way, we are ever-growing and maturing too, even though physically we're adults.

Sexual energy and sexual forces are also life-giving, caring. They feel the love of our partners and our families, motherly, fatherly love. We usually don't associate this with sexuality because somehow, I guess nowadays sexuality gets reduced to appearances and sensuality only. And it's undeniable, though, that sexual forces are also life-giving, caring. So in practicing this training rule, we have a choice to honor and respect care and love for life, and not to diminish life. So this speaks to how we align ourselves to respect and care for our own bodies and others.

So I want to end with a quote from the Mangala Sutta^[7]—the Sutta of the Blessings—and I'll share this link maybe in a day or two. It says: 'Caring for mother and father, kindness to children and partners—this is the highest blessing.' So may we all respect ourselves and others, and may this cultivation benefit all beings. Enjoy your practice and whatever activities you take on today. We'll meet here again tomorrow. Thank you everyone, and take good care. Bye.