This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Engaged With The Moment; Dharma Well-being (1 of 5): Spiritual Power. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Engaged with the Moment; Dharmette: Dharma Wellbeing (1 of 5): Spiritual Power - Dawn Neal

The following talk was given by Dawn Neal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on April 15, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Engaged with the Moment

I am so happy to be with all of you. It is really a delight. It is nice to see old friends, old regulars, and new names too. Warm welcome.

As you are seeing or thinking about the weather reports in the chat, the invitation is also to check out the weather report inside you. You don't have to type it in, but just notice: is it Metta¹? Is it enthusiasm? Is it kind of tired? It is all good.

So friends, I am going to start the recording, and the invitation is to start to settle inwards.

The theme this week is on inner and interpersonal Dharma wellbeing. Notice just how the word "wellbeing" lands for you. Feel it in your heart, and then turn the attention inwards. Maybe turn off any devices or other things that might distract you. Perhaps, as I am about to do, take that last sip of tea so that my voice lasts.

Find your posture—a posture of balance, connection, and groundedness. Perhaps take a couple of longer, slower, gently deep breaths.

Letting the breathing be natural, the invitation is to take an interest in whatever your internal ecology is today. The feeling of your heart, the mood, whatever is happening in the mind—just greeting it with a gentle friendliness.

Allow the heart, the mind, and the body to settle in this moment. Rest on sensations of the breath, the overall soundscape, your weight, your body, and all the details of this moment.

Notice that breath and sensations are the aliveness, the language of vitality of this body. Take an interest, closely being with each breath, each moment, with a warmth, a care—falling in love with each breath.

Notice the difference between the in-breath and the out-breath. Allow the out-breath to be a release into relaxation. This, here. Call this home, these moments.

If you find the mind wanders, that's natural. Greet each moment of returning here with friendliness, interest. What is this moment like? And again, resting in the flow of in-breath, out-breath. Present.

In the last couple of moments of this meditation, the invitation is to recollect and gather any moments of goodness, good intention, mindfulness, peace, and awareness. Any moment in this time of practice together. Let yourself be nourished by them. Appreciate them.

Then, allowing for any moments of challenge or difficulty, hold them with kindness, compassion, and care. These too are moments in the path.

From that place of care and compassion, cast your internal gaze outwards to the others in your life. Wishing that they may be well, safe, peaceful, and free.

Thank you for your practice.

Dharmette: Dharma Wellbeing (1 of 5): Spiritual Power

Thank you for our meditation together. It is really meaningful for me. Most of you probably don't know this, but I was involved in IMC beginning these YouTube sits back at the very beginning of the COVID shelter-in-place here in California. I helped out a little bit here and there, and so I watched regularly for quite some time. Like you, I feel part of this online Global Sangha². So it is a delight to be with you.

Today I will introduce the topic for the week. The week's theme is on inner and interpersonal sources of Dharma wellbeing. These are on cultivating qualities helpful for internal and interpersonal flourishing.

I will start with the theme for the week by telling a very condensed story. If you can picture Ancient India in the time of the Buddha, the Buddha is sitting around with a group of his practitioners, probably monks. I picture it being kind of dusk or evening; maybe they have got a fire going, it is kind of cozy. He is telling this ancient story of a series of kings.

He tells how, through a series of mishaps with the eighth in this line of seven amazing kings, society began to have difficulties. A lot of bad things happened, and there began to be societal tensions and division, and eventually, a kind of breakdown. Then he talks about how through developing these inner qualities—especially ethical qualities—society regenerated itself.

He finishes the story by encouraging everyone to develop beautiful qualities in relationship to themselves and each other. He talks about five kinds of well-being that practitioners in particular can develop, even in difficult times. They are: spiritual power (or empowerment), true beauty, happiness, heart wealth, and freedom.

I will unpack each of these over the course of this week, but the theme this morning—or whatever time of day it is for you—is spiritual empowerment or spiritual power. I am going to talk through four areas of this. But first, I just want to say they are all held by and supported by joyful, enthusiastic engagement with practice and a sense of immersion, as best you can, in the moment.

The first of these is healthy desire. In spiritual circles and in meditation practice, desire often gets a bad rap, and sometimes for justified reasons. There can be desire for unhelpful, even unhealthy, distracting things, or being overly fixated on a good goal, a healthy goal. Both of those can run counter to meditative spiritual development.

But Chanda³, the word for desire in the ancient language of Pali, is actually neutral. And there is something known as Dhammachanda—desire for the Dharma. A wholesome practice process of being in love with the practice of meditation. It is considered to be skillful at many stages of development. It has these qualities of being kind of expansive or open, rather than obsessive and constricted. It is the difference between a grasping hand (or a fist) and an open hand. An open hand holding things lightly.

In relationship with others, this holding things lightly manifests as a wish, desiring the best for them and oneself in the relationship of both. It is bringing out the best. So this kind of empowerment—I want to empower you to be in love with meditation, to desire what is in the moment, and to be present with it completely.

The second area of spiritual empowerment, or "second road to power" as they are sometimes called, is a sense of balanced energy and vitality, balanced effort—Viriya⁴ in the Pali. This has a range of intensity from heroic effort—really strenuous effort like hiking up a big hill—to very soft, gentle persistence when you are walking down a gentle slope, maybe with a great view.

It is helpful to adapt the amount of life energy and effort we bring to a meditation session or situation. The Buddha likened this to tuning a stringed instrument. Many years ago, I lived in San Francisco and I cohabitated at the time with this beautiful baby grand piano. We had to have tuners come regularly because the tuning of the strings changed with the weather. It changed with the seasons. The conditions changed, and the tautness in the strings needed to be adapted. It is just like that for us in meditation. Conditions change, and we attune a little bit differently.

The next one here is to be aware of the overall state of mind—the intentness or the distraction of our minds. The Citta⁵, it is called. The objective experience of mood, of being, of concentration or distraction. It is like the overall weather report, the overall landscape or ambient sound around us. It is just the whole.

The instruction isn't to make it be different. Instead, it is to notice and appreciate when helpful overall qualities of mind are there or can be invited. Especially to appreciate relaxed intentness—this kind of slow, steady interest, willpower that can be there. And be kind to any state of mind; it is a huge benefit.

And then this fourth area of empowerment is interest and investigation. The Pali word for this is Vīmaṃsā⁶. It is kind of like being a naturalist for your internal ecology—the internal ecology of the body, heart, and mind.

I told this story at Insight Santa Cruz recently of walking along a forest path and turning a bend. It is this beautiful park area. The friend who describes this story was walking, and when she turned this bend, she encountered this young man just completely bellied down across the path, intently studying a little plant. She said hi, and he looked up at her, and his smile just lit up his face, lit up the interaction. He was a botanist, and he was completely jazzed about finding the details, the little foliage differences and textures of this plant in the wild.

It is that kind of delighted interest that it is helpful to bring to the details of meditation—like the breath, like the sensations, like the mood itself, like how the meditation is flowing or not. To notice, get interested in the object of attention.

There can be an art and a science to it in the sense of experimentation, too. Noticing inputs and outputs. Noticing, "Oh, I do this and that happens," or "This arises and then that went away." It is kind of like a young kid learning to paint, maybe in kindergarten. "I put these together, they do this. And when I add that one, it makes brown. Oh, interesting." Or like a sailor: "When I adjust the sail this way, the boat does this. When I adjust it that way, it moves." It is this process of adjusting, shifting, responding, being responsive, and stepping back from time to time—just like a painter—to see the overall picture.

This interest, experimentation, this caring interest is helpful in a meditation session. And it can be helpful in interactions. Like, how many times have we walked by a neighbor or the postman and said, "Hey, how's it going?" but not really engaged, just being polite or casually friendly? And that is fine. But then showing up with real interest, and maybe stopping in the sunshine or the wind and having a deeper conversation with that person. The difference is the level of interest. Sometimes that mutual interest can connect, and it is just like watering a plant: the relationship grows, it begins to flourish.

So this is a tiny introduction to the Buddha's teachings on spiritual empowerment, bases or supports for meditative success, for internal power—taking our own weather with us wherever we go.

I just want to acknowledge that this particular teaching emphasizes more doing than a lot of mindfulness teachings do. You don't have to do too much—you really don't. These explorations, these playful, light ways of addressing things unfold best in a field of relaxation, ease, and trust in the practice.

If you want to learn more about this particular set of teachings, I unpacked them in detail back in December of 2022 on this YouTube series, so you can check them out then.

For this series, tomorrow we talk about Dharma Beauty—cultivating Dharma Beauty. So thank you, it is a delight to be with you. Thank you very much for your practice everyone.

Maybe between now and tomorrow, just notice for yourself if there are moments of a healthy being in love with the moment (Dharma desire), moments of fluctuations or attunement of Dharma energy and vitality (effort), moments of awareness of your overall mind, and the effect of delighted interest and experimentation on your day, on your relationships, and on your practice.

Thank you everyone. Be well. May all beings benefit from our practice together.