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Guided Meditation: Joy, Connecting, Sustaining

So tuning in, tuning into that joy of being together. We invite you all to notice how it feels in your heart. Notice how it feels to be present with this virtual sangha. Some of you have been coming for years, and appreciating the greetings. Just taking that in, taking that into your heart.

And when you're ready, after you've had a chance to greet your friends in this global community, sit back in a posture that is upright, alert, and at ease—whatever that is: sitting, standing, or lying down—and begin to turn your attention inwards. Will you be doing any last little thing that needs to be done before settling into the next half hour?

Tuning in to your life's breath. Your body, your heart. And inviting this body to relax, soften, be at ease.

Taking a couple of deeper, slower, more intentional breaths, and tuning into the sense of belongingness and connection with all of these other practitioners. And as the breath returns to normal, allowing that sense of connection and belongingness to be sustained.

Feeling into any joy, happiness, or contentment at being here with this practice together. If it feels right, allowing a smile to come to your lips.

Really noticing the embodied experience of being here now: feet, hands, the support beneath your seat. Rooted here. Allowing the energy of the breath to carry through your body with each out-breath. Perhaps blowing on the embers of any contentment, connection, or joy that's present.

Settling in. Connecting with breathing sensation. Connecting with your heart.

Sustaining the attention on each in-breath, each out-breath, each sensation or sound. Dedicating the attention to the details, the texture of this moment.

If you find a thought, mood, or memory pulls the heart and mind away into "then and there," seeing how kindly, graciously it's possible to return and connect again with this moment, this breath. And perhaps also celebrating the return of awareness.

Noticing and welcoming each moment of awareness, mindfulness, and staying with—being with—whatever is recognized before returning to the primary object of attention. Resting in the moment, to the breath's presentations.

If the attention went, rededicating yourself to the complete, total attention and study of each breath, each sensation, each sound. Reconnecting and feeling the pleasure of staying close, staying connected. Sustaining.

Remember each breath, sensation, or sound ripples through your whole being. We have to be a flowing being, a stream of sensation or sound, allowing, resting.

In the last remaining moments of this meditation, the invitation is to gather up, soak in any little goodness, happiness, joy, pleasure, mindfulness, or connection. Let them resonate and sink into your heart. Basking in what's good, and being with compassion for all the rest.

And then turning your inner gaze outwards to all of the others in your life, seen and unseen. Generating the intention, the aspiration that through this practice, through this life, may others experience benefit. Noticing the feeling of generosity and care in offering this wish.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be seen. May all beings be peaceful, and may all beings everywhere be free from suffering.

[Laughter]

Thank you. Thank you for the sincerity of your practice.

Dharmette: Wise Unification (2 of 5) - Connecting and Sustaining

So today is the second of a five-day series that talks about factors of mind that support meditation practice and daily life in a particular way. Most importantly, meditative stability and unification in a wise way, for the purpose of wisdom, awakening, and freedom. Yesterday I covered the crucial fundamentals of mindfulness and practice intelligence, and today we're going to start on five factors of stability, samādhi^[1], often called the five jhānic^[2] factors.

Today is the first two factors, which in the context of meditation in the suttas^[3] and commentaries are almost always spoken of together. They are the mental factors of connecting and sustaining: that's vitakka^[4] and vicāra^[5].

While vitakka and vicāra are normally associated with formal meditation, the ideas behind them can apply to daily life. Just to give a couple of examples, vitakka (connecting) also has the meaning of thought or thinking, or directed attention. This directed attention can be directed towards and applied to pretty much anything. An analogy in daily life is making an initial connection with another person, the first key step in forming any kind of relationship. Making a connection is so vital to relating that it's taught as a skill in counseling, training, and many other relational fields. So that's vitakka, connecting.

Vicāra, sustaining, is the process of maintaining and being with that initial connection. To continue the daily life analogy, we can connect with lots of different people, but if there isn't sustained attention and connection over time, relationships won't flourish, develop, or possibly even continue. Vicāra also means consideration, which in daily life means keeping someone or something in mind. In American English, it's often known as thoughtfulness. This quality is also a key ingredient to maintaining relationships—good ones, anyway.

The same is true in meditation. If we don't connect with and sustain attention on the object of attention in meditation, or connect and sustain attention on meditation itself, it won't develop and deepen.

Now for the more precise definitions of these terms. The Pali word vitakka can best be translated as a kind of word cloud. In non-meditative contexts, it can refer to reflection, directed thought, thinking, and even intentional thought. It has a quality of fixity to it, kind of like a tapping.

Vicāra almost always appears with vitakka about meditation; it almost never appears on its own, and its word cloud is smaller. It's a quality of sustaining that emerges from vicāra, from the verb 'to go about an object.' It's a continued, non-discursive examination of this object of attention—the breath, the body, whatever it is. And this consideration in this non-discursive way deepens the relationship with the object of our practice, of our attention, and with meditation itself.

So vitakka and vicāra are foundational for cultivating greater mindfulness and concentration. In a sense, the sound of each word hints at their different functions. If you listen, vitakka sounds like a quick pulse. Vicāra hints at lingering; it's longer, softer.

In some similes, vitakka is like placing your hand on a friendly cat or dog; vicāra is stroking its fur. Connecting is like a single center point of a circle drawn with a compass, and vicāra is everything within the circle. So there's the center point of attention, and then everything related to the object of attention: consideration, going about, sustaining.

Vitakka, that initial application, can have a bit of a fixed quality to it, kind of like a hand holding a bowl or a bell. Vicāra has a more moving-about quality, like rubbing a cloth or polishing the bell. Vitakka is also like hearing the striking of a bell; it can be like a clank. Vicāra is not just the striking of vitakka, but the sustained ring afterwards.

At first, both vitakka and vicāra are skills. We develop these factors of mind as our meditative practice deepens, particularly when it has momentum. These mental factors begin to naturally emerge as conditioned responses. Then a rhythm of connecting without trying begins to build, kind of like repeated bell strikes. After a period of sustaining, vicāra begins to stretch out longer with fewer moments of vitakka—the bell strike—needing to happen. Persisting, sustaining.

Together, as these factors gain momentum, the mind and heart start to gain some meditative stability. Perhaps part of why vitakka and vicāra are presented together nearly always in meditation is because they're so interlinked. Connecting (vitakka) without sustaining can feel clunky, like doing meditation by a checklist, or it can feel disjointed or dry. Sustaining (vicāra) can stay with an object of attention once there's been a lot of connection and reconnection with it. But before that, it can wander off in a cloud of vague associations without this connecting and reconnecting.

It's worth noting that both of these factors—connecting and sustaining, vitakka and vicāra—are morally neutral. They're not inherently good. It means relating to them with mindfulness and practice intelligence is absolutely key. Misdirected vitakka and vicāra can help create a phenomenon known as "Yogi mind"^[6]. Those of you who have sat retreat are probably familiar with this term. Yogi mind is a phenomenon where the mind becomes preoccupied with, or perseverates on, something minor, usually blowing something very small out of proportion. This can happen when concentration starts to build through vitakka and vicāra, but they're somehow misdirected toward an object of attention, an idea, or a topic that's not helpful. That little bit of concentration—sometimes a lot of concentration—can magnify things in strange, funny, and sometimes even unhelpful ways.

A really sweet example of this I've heard from other practitioners, and experienced in my own life, is after a retreat someone will come up and enthusiastically describe how they have designed, in their mind, a better meditation cushion. This is a classic thing to do on a retreat; any discomfort kind of feeds these ideas.

At its worst, vitakka and vicāra can lead to obsessive thoughts or spinning out in ways that distort our understanding of ourselves and of other people. That's a topic for another time to really unpack, but just to name that the practice intelligence of directing, and where we direct things, is important.

There's a story from the suttas where a very famous and powerful ruler comes to the Buddha. Here's a sincere practitioner who is deeply dismayed, asking why beings who wish to live in harmony and peace so often live in hatred, hostility, and enmity. He asks this question a number of times. The Buddha, in answering Sakka^[7]—the name of the ruler—names a number of contributing conditions: jealousy, avarice and greed, desire, hoarding of wealth, and under desire, repeated directed thinking born of a tendency to obsess.

Many of us might recognize that last part. Sometimes our minds just won't let go of something trivial or even unhelpful. This underscores the importance of discernment that mindfulness and practice intelligence can reveal. Asking the question non-discursively every now and then: Is this even what I should be focused on? Is this object of attention, or this way of focusing, helpful or unhelpful? Beneficial or unbeneficial? Skillful or unskillful?

The key question is: might there be a way to direct and sustain the attention so as to nurture what's most beneficial? With that discernment, there's the possibility of connecting and sustaining attention on objects of meditation, people, topics, activities, and experiences that are life-giving, nourishing, and conducive to freedom. That's a huge thing in life and formal meditation both. This begins to open a pathway to greater joy, happiness, peace, freedom, and awakening.

As a last aside, vitakka and vicāra can be directly observed in daily life in our minds. I'll discuss this and continue exploring some of these jhānic factors at IMC tomorrow during the Wednesday half-day meditation retreat. It's in-person only, however, recordings will be posted to audiodharma.org, so if you're interested in hearing more about this, you can hear it there. There are also a few practice discussion slots available on-site for people who come.

In meditation, there starts a wise deepening of meditative stability, and that in turn begins to manifest as joy, happiness, and contentment—pīti^[8] and sukha^[9], which are the third and fourth jhānic factors. Those will be our topic for tomorrow.

So a joy to be with you, sangha. Thank you for your kind attention.