This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Attuning to the Heart; Dharma Well-being (4 of 5) Inner Wealth. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Attuning to the Heart; Dharmette: Dharma Well-being (4 of 5) Inner Wealth - Dawn Neal

The following talk was given by Dawn Neal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on April 18, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Good morning. It is delightful to see you all in the chat. I like seeing the warm, friendly greetings from people all over the place—BC, Scotland, Santa Cruz, Bellingham, Cupertino, Mountain View, and many, many other places. It's great to see. Wishing you all well.

This is a sound check, among other things, which is why I'm on a couple of minutes early. I'll mention for Eric's benefit: Digha Nikaya 26¹ is the sutta reference that I put in the chat last night.

I would also like to offer a follow-up on the homework. Yesterday, I invited those of you who stayed to the very end to notice little glimmers of joy, happiness, or contentment in your day. If you have a moment, as you are saying hello to everyone anyway, maybe offer a short example in the chat. It will light everyone else up to see it as well.

So here we are, giving the pause that it takes. We have a bit of a lag between what I say and what gets broadcast. You all probably know that from sitting with Gil.

[Reading from chat] "Watching the morning light change." "Other glimmers of happiness: meeting with my dear friends in a prison support group." Nice.

For those of you just joining, the invitation is to just note in the chat if you had a little glimmer of happiness, joy, or contentment yesterday. The warm greetings themselves are a kind of joy. "Grateful to be alive." "Going on a walk and talking chatting with acquaintances and strangers." "Joy of playing with my kitten." Oh, yes.

Just an invitation, friends, to read what your fellow practitioners are writing in the chat. "Mated pair of eagles flying overhead." "Bluebird." "The sun." "A mama crow in the nest." "Joy of success from a student." "Hearing spring peepers." Yes. "Awakening to the birds."

Thank you all for that. Notice for yourself how it feels to recollect moments of contentment, happiness, and joy, and how it feels to read that of others.

Guided Meditation: Attuning to the Heart

Now, as you take that into your heart, taking any glimmers of joy, contentment, ease, or happiness heard about, read about, or experienced into your heart. When you're ready, beginning to turn the gaze inward. Inhaling the appreciative joy—a little smile, maybe—from other people's sharings, or an appreciative joy for yourself. Gratitude for any blessings, any goodness in your life.

Breathing with that. Letting that feeling suffuse into your body, maybe your chest, around your heart, or just in the face with a subtle smile. The memories. Allowing that feeling to echo through a glimpse of goodness.

Appreciating this moment. The nourishment of this breath. The priceless opportunity to be present and practice.

Allowing the mind, heart, and body to settle. Receiving the in-breath with appreciation. Offering the out-breath back into the world.

If it feels right, intentionally cultivating a sense of goodwill, kindness, or compassion for this moment, whatever is arising in the heart and mind. Appreciating joy or contentment if they arrive. And allowing a sense of spacious equanimity with whatever comes and goes. Just inviting these qualities to be there in the background.

Settling deeply into this breath. This moment.

[Silence]

If the mind wanders, the invitation is to greet the return of awareness with appreciation. Welcoming with kindness. And returning all of the attention to this breath. This sensation. This moment flowing through.

[Silence]

And in the last remaining moments of this meditation, the invitation is again to tune in to the quality of your heart. Whatever is there is fine. Meeting that with a sense of appreciation or acknowledgement, kindness or compassion. Perhaps joy.

Cultivating an overall sense of spacious okayness. Noticing the noticing of all of it unfolding.

And then casting your mind back over these moments of meditation and gathering up any moments of goodness. Savoring them. Steeping in them. Allowing them to nourish you.

And then offering them outwards towards the others practicing here today or later with the recording. Towards the others your life touches directly or indirectly.

May all beings benefit from the blessings of this practice. May all beings be safe from inner and outer harm. Be peaceful. And may all beings know the highest joy of awakening.

Thank you for your practice.

Dharmette: Dharma Well-being (4 of 5) Inner Wealth

Friends, welcome. Dear online, global, far-flung Sangha, it's good to be back with you today. Special welcome to those of you who slipped in a few minutes late. Nice to see old friends, familiar names, and some of the new names.

Today is the fourth of a five-day series on qualities of inner and interpersonal Dharma well-being—wellsprings within us that can help us be at home in ourselves if we come home to the practice. The Buddha taught that practitioners can cultivate these particular kinds of Dharmic well-being, flourishing even in difficult times, by staying with the practice, staying with contentment with the practice.

There are five qualities I'm covering this week. They are: spiritual empowerment (or the Four Roads to Power², as the teaching is sometimes called), true beauty, happiness, inner wealth (or heart wealth), and freedom. Yesterday we covered happiness. Today we cover that sense of inner wealth, heart wealth—becoming rich in the heart qualities, the forms of Buddhist love.

By way of introducing this topic, I'm going to continue with another little vignette from Queen Jasmine's life—this Buddhist myth or fairy tale that I brought up on Tuesday, and actually introduced at Insight Santa Cruz last week. To summarize so far: she met King Pasenadi³ when she was a low-caste, very poor daughter of two flower growers, out gathering flowers for her family's business in the field. Based on her generosity, her kindness, and her confidence, he fell in love with her. It turns out he lifted her out of obscurity to become his first and most beloved Queen.

Earlier this week, I talked about how she encouraged him to go to the Buddha and thus prevented a very ill-advised, large sacrifice of animals. After this experience, he began to trust her even more. He began to trust her inclinations, her compassion, and a little bit of her wisdom.

Perhaps it's after that time—the commentaries don't make it clear—but this story happens when the two of them are in a private moment. I picture them on the balcony of their castle, surveying their realm. It's dusk. That kind of indigo duskiness has settled over the farmland, and you can just see the Himalayan foothills and the peaks of the mountains etched against the sky. It's a kind of romantic moment.

In this moment, the King turns to Jasmine and he asks, "In all of the world, my dear, who do you love the most?"

Now, the commentaries say that this question happened from a place of kind of smugness or entitlement—that he lifted her out of poverty and that she must be so grateful and love him above all else because of this. But that's not how I read Jasmine. Mallikā⁴ was dear to his heart, and she turned to him and took both of his hands in hers, held them, and looked into his eyes. And she said, "In all of the world, beloved husband, it is myself I hold the most dear. It is myself I love the most."

Well, the King was a little bit startled by this, one imagines. But he stays with it, and she stays with him, hands still on his. After pausing for a few moments for him to drink that in, she asks, "And my love, who is it that you hold most dear? Who do you love the most in all the world?"

Upon contemplation, he somewhat reluctantly has to agree with her. It's himself that's the center of things. He holds himself most dear.

This conversation made an impact. So the King goes to the Buddha and relays this conversation to him. The Buddha nods sagely and says, "Yes, Jasmine Mallikā is right. Each person holds themselves most dear, holds their life central within themselves. The significance of that is that it is a basis for this profound empathy. All people, all beings are the center of their own lives. Their lives matter so much to them. Because of that—this wish to be alive, this wish to be happy—no one should ever harm or kill another."

I tell this story knowing that self-love is sometimes dismissed as "New Age psycho-babble" or a modern add-on to ancient Buddhism, and it isn't. To hold oneself most dear on a conventional level is not full awakening by any means. However, it is an assumed, easy basis for the profound cultivation of heart and mind. It's the beginning of mettā (loving-kindness) for oneself and all beings—"as to all, as to oneself."

If this is challenging for you, consider that one of the most beautiful gifts you might be able to offer in your life is to cultivate healthy self-regard. Not "better than," not "worse than," but incomparable. That kind of spiritual assurance flows out to other people; it overflows. And lest there be protests in the audience, I want to note that healthy self-regard is something that the Buddha exemplified on a relational level for 45 years of teaching, well after he had penetrated to full awakening, complete deep insight.

So if it's too heavy of a lift, or if it doesn't feel like a good fit, it's okay to start elsewhere. But consider that no matter how buried, hidden, disguised, or twisted, that wish to live, that wish to be happy weaves through us all. It is the basis, the beginning of a profound empathy.

This kind of empathy—the Pali is anukampā⁵—is a spontaneous quivering or movement of the heart, a caring impulse, a wish for non-harming. It can manifest as helping. Yesterday I talked about the tale of Sujātā⁶ and the Buddha—this woman who walked by and noticed the Buddha to be practically starving, and fed him out of compassion, kindness, anukampā.

The heart qualities—mettā (loving-kindness), karuṇā (compassion), muditā (appreciative joy), and upekkhā (equanimity)—can all emerge naturally through mindfulness practice, dedicated Buddhist practice. And they can be cultivated directly, as many of you already know, through intentional practices. For many, mindfulness is enough at first, and then it can be skillful to interweave direct cultivation of the heart qualities. This can be through directed attention with phrases, through radiating broadly, or through more receptive forms of noticing, like we did today—noticing in the meditation.

They've been covered extensively elsewhere, including by Liz Powell earlier this spring, so I'm not really going to go into them. I'm just going to touch on them and how they fit into these wellsprings of well-being for a few minutes.

First, to say that the Immeasurables, the Brahmavihāras⁷, predated Buddhism. They were considered four facets of Brahmā—the ground of all being, the Creator, in Hinduism. But later the Buddha operationalized them as practices, and they became known as Divine Abodes, or Divine Abidings, because they are so sublime and so powerful at the upper reaches of their cultivation.

From a Buddhist perspective, these are ways of inclining the mind towards the qualities helpful for liberation. They can also just arise spontaneously—the expression of an awake, aware heart and mind towards whatever is arising in experience. If you picture clear light, a sunbeam shining through a prism, the awakened awareness is the clear light. When it strikes the prism, it fractures into these different qualities of the rainbow. These colors are different expressions, based on conditions of the world—different expressions of awakeness, awareness, responsivity.

So the first, loving-kindness (mettā), is a baseline friendliness towards self, others, and experience.

Compassion (karuṇā) is when that same responsive heart's awareness responds to suffering.

Appreciative Joy (muditā) is the healthy, awake, aware response when others experience good fortune, good things. Like celebrating the success of a child, or a grandchild, or a friend you're rooting for.

And then Equanimity (upekkhā) is the awakened response to that which cannot change, spacelessness, space.

Finally, Gratitude. It is what some call the "fifth Brahmavihāra." It is so closely related to this quality of appreciative joy. Gratitude could be considered inner- and outer-directed appreciative joy for our own good fortune and those conditions or people that caused it. Even if it's very modest good fortune, it's a very beautiful, onward-leading quality.

So how is this wealth? Inner wealth?

Well, in addition to being beautiful in their own right and wonderful experiences to have, ancient commentaries and science document some of the benefits of these. A person, according to the ancient texts, is "beloved by humans and animals alike." This manifests as greater interpersonal harmony, social lubrication, and group cohesion. This has been documented in meta-analyses of people practicing heart practices; after just six weeks, many people experience more joy and satisfaction in their relationships.

Both the ancient texts and science agree that attentional control and concentration improve, immune response improves, and there is a greater sense of purpose. So in short, cultivating strong heart qualities, whether through mindfulness or direct practices, nourishes our minds, our emotional lives, and relationships. It's a form of true wealth.

It can culminate or express in a freedom—ceto-vimutti⁸—of the heart, in which no one is better than, worse than, or even equal to. This is also an enduring understanding that the awakened heart, fully awakened people, have. And liberation—that liberation of the heart—is something that I will touch on tomorrow.

So, thank you for your kind attention, everyone. I'm going to put in the chat, by the way, that I am offering later this summer a half-day on the use of loving-kindness as a concentration practice at the Sati Center. So if you are interested, go to my website and look at the teaching schedule there.

Friends, thank you for your kind attention. Your assignment, should you choose to accept it for tomorrow, is to notice any glimmers—moments of kindness, compassion, appreciative joy, gratitude, or equanimity. Thank you.