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Faculties of Fearlessness: Viriya (4 of 5); Faculties for Fearlessness (4 of 5) Guided Meditation - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 16, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Faculties for Fearlessness (4 of 5) Guided Meditation

Welcome, welcome. Before I turned on the recording, I was just having a delight in how many of us are coming together for these practices. It's such a beautiful thing we're doing together. Thank you for that. Today, I'll continue on this theme of faculties for fearlessness. Five faculties for fearlessness. I'm sure we can make up all kinds of alliterations, but we'll start with a guided meditation and then we'll introduce the fourth faculty. And when I'm saying the fourth, it's not necessarily the fourth faculty in the traditional listing of the five faculties. I'm choosing to do them in a different order and to emphasize particular aspects of the faculty, so not in the most common, conventional way.

So we'll start our meditation just tuning into the posture. Whether you're sitting on the floor, sitting on a chair, or even lying down, can there be a sense of uprightness? Not in a way that is stiff or forced, but in a way that maybe conveys a sense of respect for yourself, for the practice. Allowing the vertebrae of the spine to stack one upon the other, and maybe moving the chin backwards just a tiny bit. Someone might not even be able to see how much you move, but it opens up the vertebrae or the experience in the back of the neck, allows for a little bit more stability, a bit more openness, this tiny movement.

And then getting a sense of this posture at this moment in general: the sense of uprightness, the contact with the surface, whatever surface the body is contacting. Settling into the bodily experience, feeling grounded, connected. We're here and the body is in this configuration. And can you make this bodily experience be a container, a receptacle right now for a sense of kindness, openness, and spaciousness in whatever way that makes sense to you?

Can we connect with a sense of openness, maybe some softness or relaxation in a general sense? Not bracing ourselves against what we imagine might happen, but instead having an attitude of welcoming and warmth and care. Can we connect with an acknowledgment that practice is a movement of kindness and care, a way to honor and respect ourselves?

With this attitude of care and warmth, bringing attention to any areas of the body that feel particularly tense or tight. I often mention the eyes and the jaw; they often have tension, though not always. The shoulders can rise up or get tight. Can we allow the shoulder blades to slide down the back? And softening the front of the body, the chest, the belly.

Bringing attention to the back of the body. If you're leaning against a backrest, feeling the contact. Feeling the contact on the buttocks, the back of the legs. And feeling where there's not contact on the back of the body. Also we're just noticing, nothing in particular needs to be happening. We're just bringing awareness, bringing attention to the different parts of the body, different experiences.

Recognizing that there can be sounds, just letting them be there. And then resting our attention on the sensations of breathing, the movements in the body as the body breathes. The stretching in the chest and the release of the stretch. Movement of the abdomen in and out, or feeling the different temperatures of air as it enters and exits the nose. Whichever of those locations is most comfortable, most accessible to you right now, just rest attention there with the sensations of breathing.

It's natural for the mind to wander unless you're in some very deep meditative state. And so when we notice, we just begin again. All judgments or evaluations of our practice, of ourselves—that's extra and not needed. We just rest attention on the sensations of breathing.

We practice in such a way that we're resting attention on the sensations of breathing and making space for whatever arises, making room for whatever shows up. It might be sounds, maybe the bodily experiences, thoughts. A sense of doing both: resting with the sensations of breathing and allowing room for whatever else is showing up.

Faculties of Fearlessness: Viriya (4 of 5)

Morning, good afternoon, good evening. Welcome, welcome as I explore the fourth session on this theme of faculties for fearlessness. And as maybe I'll say again, I'm not going through the faculties in the traditional order. In this exploration of the faculties and fearlessness, I'm emphasizing different aspects of fearlessness. It kind of started with wanting to do something about fear, but I wanted to do something uplifting about fear rather than just talking about it. So this idea of faculties for fearlessness—like how can we use them as a support? Because it turns out that naturally, humans have fear. Sometimes it's really obvious, and sometimes it's really subtle, because risk is just a part of human life. In fact, if there were a life that's not open to the uncontrollable elements in the world and therefore not subject to fear, then that life would be a divine life. That would be like a god, right? Not a human being, because human beings have risks. We're vulnerable, whether through accident, disease, impasse, humiliation, loss, or failure. These things happen to humans.

If we don't address them or acknowledge them, there can be this long-term effect of perpetually feeling fear. There's a way that we just become habituated to it, not even noticing the different ways it shows up. The impact of this continuous or long-term feeling of subtle, low-grade fear—maybe with spikes of a lot of fear—affects our ability to take risks, which includes things like feeling deeply, feeling love, and feeling the loss we all have. It also affects our ability to think independently and not just be pushed around by whatever sources we have contact with, whatever news sources or social sources. If we just are so used to having some fear, then we don't say, "No, wait, I'm going to think about this myself." Having this long-term chronic, low-grade fear really impacts our ways to express ourselves with creativity or innovation, to bring something new into the world. Not that we have to share it, but even for ourselves.

There's this powerful book that I really like I'll just mention briefly. It's by David Bayles¹ and Ted Orland, and it's called Art & Fear. They talk about how fear kind of robs us of some of our creativity. There's a way that it can render us a little bit more passive. So this is part of the reason why I like to address fear.

Quickly, I'll just do a review of the preceding weeks. The first week was Sati², which I talked about as noticing: noticing our environment and noticing our own experience. Then I did Samadhi³ as collectedness and wholeheartedness, bringing this centeredness or wholeheartedness to the resistance to the fear, which is a little bit different than doing it to fear. If you can do it with fear, great, but instead this sense of resistance to fear. And then yesterday was Saddha⁴. Saddha is confidence and trust. This confidence in the practice, this confidence in ourselves—just enough confidence—but also a trust in this natural inner process that moves towards greater freedom and wholeness. A way of trusting that what's needed from us is to just get out of the way sometimes.

Now I'd like to introduce a fourth faculty, and that is Viriya⁵. Viriya is often associated with the power and virility of the warrior. It's this strength and exertion to make extraordinary accomplishments. We're not going to be talking about that. Instead, I'd like to focus on a different aspect of Viriya: courage. Sometimes Viriya can be translated as courage. Courage is this capacity to face the fear as best we can. It's the power to stand one's ground even though exactly what we don't want is there. This courage is to be with the fear and the resistance to the fear as best we can.

I've been talking about how to work with fear, but it turns out we also need courage. Sometimes we need courage just to notice or acknowledge that we have fear, or just to acknowledge the resistance to the fear. Because it doesn't matter how many Buddhist texts⁶ we've heard, it doesn't matter how much meditation experience we've had, if we can't just be with our experience in our daily life when these difficulties arise. Something difficult like fear. Sometimes we just need some courage to show up for what's happening as best we can, bringing with us the tools or the knowledge that's available to us at that time. Let's face it: sometimes when fear is up, we don't always have access to our greatest wisdom. We don't always have access to a sense of groundedness and presence. So sometimes courage is what's needed.

Sometimes this courage shows up as the capacity to avoid despair. Sometimes it's courage to not collapse into the temptation to surrender. Sometimes it takes courage to stay upright, to be with our experience. There's this way we can refuse to be open to new chances or new experiences, and we have this movement where we just want to close down, isolate, and be secluded. In this way, we might feel a little bit less vulnerable. But we need courage when terrible things are happening so that we can acknowledge them as best we can, notice them as best we can, gather ourselves around the resistance to them as best we can, and have some confidence and trust as best we can.

Not only is courage needed when difficulties happen, but sometimes we just need everyday courage to expand. We need everyday courage just to change. "Yes, I've been doing it this way for a lifetime. Yes, I've been having these beliefs for a lifetime. But maybe there's something different that's available. Maybe there's something more, something more beautiful." And there are no guarantees that if we open up and allow something more that there won't be difficulties as well. So it takes some courage.

So then the natural question is, "Okay Diana, you're talking about courage, how do we develop courage?" The Buddhist texts don't really help us out here. They don't have anything specific to help us with courage. They have the stories of the Buddha right before his awakening having this determination that he was going to sit and find the way to complete freedom. And as he did so, Mara⁷—who we might say is the embodiment of whatever gets in the way of freedom—assailed the Buddha with his armies. Some of you might remember a number of months ago I did some morning talks on Mara. So there are stories of how the Buddha was able to behave with courage. There's also this story of the Buddha, even before Mara, recognizing that when he went to meditate in the jungles sometimes he'd be afraid, hearing sounds and thinking that some animal was going to come and attack him. He had the courage to bring mindfulness to his bodily sensations and to stay in those postures. So we have these stories, but how do we develop courage?

Well, one way is this connection between courage and trust. I recognize trust is not always readily available either, but is there a way that we can connect with something bigger than ourselves? This might show up differently for different people. Maybe there's a way to take the refuges in the Buddha, Dharma⁸, and Sangha⁹ to help have some courage. Can we do some Metta¹⁰ practice, radiating, sending good will out into the world and to ourselves, connecting with others in this way? Maybe there's some devotional practice, whatever devotional practices make sense to you. Some people do chanting practices, some people do bowing, and some people will spend some effort setting up an altar and putting on the altar what's meaningful, important, and uplifting for them. So this connection between courage and trust brings this openness of heart.

I appreciate Brené Brown¹¹. I think she's a sociologist, I'm not exactly sure, but she has this book entitled The Gifts of Imperfection. She writes that courage is a habit, it's a virtue, and you get it by doing courageous acts. Just like you learn to swim by swimming, you learn courage by couraging. So is there a way that we can show up for those small little things? For me, it's spiders. I used to be really afraid of them, but I'm so much better now. I can just show up with spiders. So we practice with the small things. Maybe connecting with things that are bigger than us, the refuges, devotion, chanting.

Certainly, we come to meditation practice thinking that it will lessen some of the difficulties we have, or that we'll gain some wisdom, we'll gain some new understandings, maybe even have some cool meditative experiences. For all the reasons we come to this practice—to alleviate the suffering that we have—practicing with courage is probably not high on the list. And yet, part of what we're practicing is courage. You might have some different experiences and showing up for them even though it might be unknown, uncomfortable, unfamiliar. A courage to face things in ourselves that we haven't seen before with meditation practice. The courage to face things one more time even though we've seen them so many times before. So we have been practicing courage in these small ways. Just by coming back to the cushion again and again, coming back to the breath again and again, is a way that we've been practicing courage.

So this fourth faculty of Viriya, I like to emphasize this idea of courage. One way to work with fear is to acknowledge and be with the fear. I didn't start this series on the faculties for fearlessness with courage, because if it were easy to have courage, then you wouldn't need any of the other factors. But I'm introducing it as the fourth, just as a recognition that you might need other things to be with not only the fear but the resistance to fear.

So today, may you notice all the small ways in which courage is showing up for yourself. And can we notice what it feels like to be willing to maybe be a little bit more vulnerable, to show up in maybe a little bit more spacious, open way? I'm wishing you all a wonderful rest of the day today, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow as we explore the last faculty for fearlessness. Thank you.