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Guided Meditation: Simplicity of Being

So, hello, and welcome. It occurred to me that I'm teaching about thinking this week and coming to the end, and somehow I happily don't have many thoughts about this topic at the moment. I feel pretty content. So, to not need anything, to sit upright, meditate, and let go of needs, expectations. Let go of it needing to be any particular way. To be here with the simplicity of being. With whatever is here, including the complications.

So lowering the gaze 45 degrees to the floor perhaps. Relaxing the gaze, lose focus, not really looking at anything in particular, and then closing the eyes. And to be here with this body. This body that we have, that we are, that we're in. This body that just is, can be like the temple that we enter. And we can enter it with our deeper breathing. Breathing in fully, allowing the rib cage to expand. If you breathe deep enough, it lifts the shoulders a bit. With a full deep in-breath, even the belly might expand outward. And then on the exhale to relax all that. To release. Maybe at the end of the exhale to let your elbows kind of flap a little bit, swing a little bit so that there's a looseness in the arms.

Letting the breathing return to normal. And continuing to relax. Softening the muscles of the face. Releasing the shoulders as you exhale. Softening the belly as you exhale, and maybe also softening it on the inhale. Feeling the touch of your clothes against your skin, your skin against the clothes. And relaxing all along that meeting place of skin and clothes. Relax, soften.

And gently on the exhale, relax the core of your being. The most deepest tender place within, allow it to trust enough to relax, to soften. And then there's the thinking muscle. Whatever tension or pressure, contraction that you might feel associated with thinking. It might be physical, it might be a mental tension, whatever it might be. As you exhale, soften it. Let it become calmer. Maybe letting go of any need to think. The pressure to think. The interest in thinking. Put it aside for now, so your thoughts can float away like thought bubbles blowing away in the wind.

One of the thoughts to let go of is any thoughts connected to time. Even thinking about the end of the next breath is to be involved in time. Do not have thoughts about time. It allows each passing thing to exist while it's present, as if it's there forever. In the quiet stillness of the mind. Each in-breath, moments in forever. No time. Each part of the exhale, fully there itself. No time, forever. Breathing in, breathing out. No in, no out, just sensations appearing and disappearing. And when there is no time, no appearing and disappearing. Just is each moment.

Loosening up on your thinking. Let it become calmer and quieter. Let yourself very gently think about here. Just here. Letting go into here. Let that be the content of your thinking.

And now, letting your thoughts be quiet and soft, calm thinking. Have your thinking remember a time that you received someone's care, goodwill, kindness that was touching for you. Heart softening, where something inside of you resonated with that care, that kindness. Or think of a time that you were caring and kind that was meaningful for you. The feeling, the way it arose, lived in you. Quiet thoughts, simple, relaxed. Thinking to remember how it felt in the body, the mind, the heart. What was inspiring about that for you?

And then quietly, calmly, see if you can have thoughts in your own way of thinking of goodwill, kindness for others. People you know in your life, people you run into, strangers. Very simple, ordinary attitude of kindness and goodwill, and what kind of thoughts would accompany that? What place in the heart or what place inside might be awakened with such thoughts of goodwill, of kindness?

When the mind is quiet, it can be a meaningful time to think wholesome thoughts, beneficial thoughts, especially at the end of the meditation. To prepare yourself to go into the world with a caring heart. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may you share in that happiness and peace and freedom. May all beings be happy.

Dharmette: Thinking (5 of 5) Released Thinking

So we come now to the last talk on mindfulness of thinking. As I've said, thinking is just as much of a valid subject for mindfulness as anything else, including the breathing. The art of it, however, is to be mindful without thinking more. Not to be "think-full" because you're mindful of thinking.

Usually, the breathing is a very good focus for meditation because it tends to be calming and settling. It's a physical sensation, so it tends to help us step out of the world of thinking so that it can quiet down. Thinking maybe isn't always a good object for beginners because it pulls us into itself, and we start thinking more and more. But on principle, thinking is just as valid a subject of mindfulness as anything else. We turn our attention towards it, and sooner or later, it's really wise to do it. Especially if you've been meditating for a long time and you have some ability to just really look at thinking, see it, look it right in the eye, and study what goes on in it.

It's a whole complex of things that are involved with thinking that come into play, and one of those things is our clinging. Our grasping, our holding on, our stickiness, our compulsivity with thinking. In the end, we're not looking to stop having thoughts. Freedom is manifested in not having that stickiness with thoughts, not clinging to thoughts, and having a state of mind, a consciousness and awareness which has released itself from thinking, even if thinking still goes on.

For this purpose, I distinguish between thinking and "thoughting." Thoughting is just what the mind does. The mind is a thoughting machine—it just produces thoughts; they float up and float away. Thinking is when we're involved in those thoughts. Sometimes it's appropriate to be involved, but more often than not, when we're involved, there is some compulsivity, some clinging, some grasping to it. So we study thinking as a way of discovering where grasping and clinging is, as a fascinating window into the clinging to thoughts.

Whenever you're in a hurry, chances are pretty high that your thinking is compulsive. Your thinking has grasped onto something, holding on. The syndrome of hurriedness usually comes along with hurried thoughts, pushing thoughts, wanting thoughts, crowded thoughts one after the other. Not only is the mind crowded with a lot of thoughts when we hurry, but sometimes you can feel the push, the compulsivity. If you allow yourself to feel it, there's a kind of command from hurry, like, "Don't pay attention to itself, just get the job done, do what has to be done." To turn around 180 degrees and look at thinking itself is a real task.

In terms of hurrying, it's possible to do things quickly without hurrying. So hurry is this extra kind of compulsivity, this being caught in something that has to be done quickly. It's possible to do things quickly without being caught. So one of the things we're looking for in the Dharma^[1] is not to be without thinking or without thoughts, but to be with them without clinging to them.

Now, this is a very profound thing because that's all we ever cling to when there's clinging. Unless you're at the edge of a cliff, holding on, clinging to the railing—then it's you clinging to the railing. But generally, the clinging that we're addressing in Buddhism is the predominant clinging that human beings are involved in all the time, and that is we're clinging to ideas and thoughts. That's really what we cling to.

We don't see it that way. If I'm clinging to a person, I think I'm clinging to that person. But if you're really quiet and study your mind, you see you're not clinging to the person unless you're holding their hand tight. You're clinging to the idea of that person in your mind. The associations you have, the meanings you have, the value you have around that person, the desires you have around that person. It's the clinging to ideas, to thoughts, and to start seeing that is fascinating. The recipe is not the same thing as a meal. To cling to the recipe and never cook, you never have a meal. A map is not the territory.

When I was a relatively young Zen student, I had some challenge with my father. I talked to my Zen teacher about it, and he made this comment to me which really struck me. He said, "Before your father was a father, he was a person without any fatherhood, any being a father." When he said that, I said, "Wow, I'm only seeing him through the lens of being my father. He has a whole other side of him of how he lives his life without being a father. I wonder who he is. I wonder how he is there in those situations." We hold on to these ideas of how it is. There's a little saying that came from, I think, Munindraji^[2], this Vipassana^[3] teacher who was a teacher for many of us. I just knew him briefly, and he said, "The thoughts of your mother are not your mother."

We have these thoughts, these ideas, and we need to release our thoughts from our grasping and clinging. Here's a very interesting idea: in Buddhism, the goal is liberation, is freedom. Often the idea we're holding on to is that "I will be free when I'm liberated." But maybe it doesn't work that way. Maybe you will never be free; those are just ideas and thoughts. If anything, what's happening is you're giving freedom to the world, you give freedom to your thoughts. Not to think wildly and recklessly and unwholesomely. The reckless thoughts, the unwholesome thoughts, the harmful thoughts that we think are a form of clinging. We're holding on to an idea, to something. Without clinging to anything, the thoughts will gravitate, will flow towards what is wholesome, what's immediate, because it's not driven by desires, by hatreds, and all this stuff. So rather than you becoming free, you're giving freedom to your thoughts.

To have thoughts be free, it's one of the great delights to have thoughts just relaxingly appear. It's a miracle that thoughts appear. Where do they come from? To be quiet and still and watch a new thought be born. Where did that come from? It just arises, floats by, and goes away. It's not any different than a flower blooming and fading. It's not any different than the clouds forming in the sky and passing by. It's not any different than a leaf floating in the wind, hovering and finally landing someplace. If we don't identify with the thoughts—to identify with a thought is to be attached to little identification thoughts, "this is me, this is mine"—to not make thoughts "me, myself, and mine" is so wonderful. To not have to take them personally. To not have to do anything with them. To not have to measure oneself by it.

When I was about 13 or 14, my father took me aside to have a little father-son talk, and he said to me—I don't know if it was that intentional, but he said to me, "As you grow up, from time to time, you'll have bizarre thoughts." I thought, "Okay." I didn't know what to do with that information. And lo and behold, at some point or other, I had bizarre thoughts. And I said, "Oh, my father told me about this, that this might happen." And because of that, I had no inclination to do anything about them, or to judge them, or to be horrified by them. Whatever they were, I don't even remember, but they were just bizarre thoughts. They come and they go. Thoughts are a dime a dozen; they come and they go.

The ability to step back from them and not automatically latch onto them is a kind of power, because it allows us to choose which thoughts we get involved in and which we don't. And that is where maybe a certain kind of freedom resides: the freedom to choose what we think. The primary choice that I think we learn in this practice is mostly what not to think. "Oh, I don't need to do that. I don't need to do that." Sometimes it's very, very appropriate to actually choose what we think about. Like at the end of the meditation, spend a little time choosing to think about goodwill and kindness. It has a double purpose. It has the purpose of helping us stay free, to open the heart and not cling, and just open ourselves and be available to the world in a kind way. It clears the decks of our hearts so that we can just be available for the world and we're not clinging and holding on to "me, myself, and mine." And it nourishes something very important in us, and it supports and helps other people. All those can happen, that dedication of our thinking that way, but the thinking needs to be done in a free way, in a relaxed way, easy way, calmly.

To learn how to think, some of us need to relearn our thinking. But first, to learn how to be free of thoughts, to release them. So may you explore, study, ride the edge of where you can find ways to not cling to your thinking. You don't necessarily have to let go of your thoughts, just let go of the clinging and see what happens.

So, releasing thoughts. Next week I'll continue this series on the basic mindfulness practice, and I'm going to talk about something called mindfulness of mind. We'll continue with this momentum that we have over the last four weeks. So thank you very, very much, and I look forward to Monday.