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Guided Meditation: Opening to the Nature Within; Enriching; Dharmette: Teachings of the Ancient Similes (3 of 5); Simile of the Adze - Ying Chen, 陈颖

The following talk was given by Ying Chen, 陈颖 at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on May 22, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Opening to the Nature Within; Enriching

We'll get started. In the last few days, we've been doing a sequence of guided meditations related to opening to explore the nature within ourselves—in this body, heart, and mind. We started the week with a sense of grounding: grounding through sitting like a mountain, an inner mountain, letting the earth element rest on the earth.

Yesterday, we added the aspect of breath, the aliveness and movements of the breath—a kind of alive mountain within. This offered a sense of enlivening. Today, we'll expand even further to include our emotional, thinking world in our exploratory discovery. The word I'll be using is enriching.

So: grounding, enlivening, and then enriching. Today we'll explore that. My sense of the emotional, thinking world is that it is a rich world. Sometimes our relationship to it is a little tricky, and yet overall, it's a very enriching dimension of being human.

Those are my introductory words. We'll go into a meditation right now.

Arriving here. Arriving now. Arriving at where you are and how you are, just as it is.

You may notice how easily and quickly the mind wants to go somewhere else. But we always start with where we are and how we are.

Taking a few long, deep breaths. As you breathe out, settling downwards towards the earth. Sensing the ground underneath. Allow this earthy body to rest on the earth. Feeling the skin, flesh, and bones making contact with the floor, chairs, or beds.

Resting on the ground of Mother Earth. It feels like this.

You may feel pressure, sensations in the contact, or temperature. The earth element in the body is solid, heavy, and firm. Grounding with the felt sense of the earth element in the body.

Sitting like a mountain within. Quiet mountain. Releasing commentaries, stories.

The stability and the stillness of the inner mountain may highlight the movements of the breath. Naturally open to receive the felt sense of the movement of the breath. An alive mountain, where the breeze went.

Your breath may expand and contract throughout the torso. It may expand throughout the body, enlivening the cells and the nerve systems of the whole body. Open to include a sense of aliveness: tingling sensations, pulsations, vibrations, shimmering.

The movements of the breath enliven the whole body.

Open to include the felt sense of the movement of the emotions or emotional thoughts. Are they just thoughts? They may have a kind of embodied, energetic feel to them. They may feel like waves or thought bubbles.

This aspect of being human is rich, filled with a wide range of emotions and thoughts. Without going into the content of the thoughts, feel and sense the rich dynamic of the emotions.

There may be lightness or weight associated with thoughts and emotions. Or maybe a sense of color associated with them. Open to receive the richness of this aspect of being human, like there are weather systems in the mountain.

Releasing judging. Releasing ideas. Open to receive the richness. This aspect of being human enriches our experience.

You may stay connected with the breath while opening to the felt sense of emotions and thoughts.

Surely the mind will wander off from time to time into this stream of thinking thoughts. Whenever you notice, simply come back. Period. And I'm in it. Period.

Releasing judging, criticizing, complaining, blaming, "I should," "I could." Just here and now, again and again and again.

With humility and dignity. Now we're back on the path.

Dharmette: Teachings of the Ancient Similes (3 of 5); Simile of the Adze

So this week in our Dharmettes¹, I've been sharing some ancient similes in the Pali Canon² suttas³. Yesterday, I shared a simile that spoke about how a chicken incubates and allows the chicks to hatch, as a way to highlight the process of cultivation and development. This particular simile described how there is a need for proper cultivation—wholehearted, sincere, committed cultivation—like the chicken sits on the eggs.

But the Buddha wasn't done with that, so he offered a second simile to describe the characteristics we have in cultivation and development. This is a simile of an adze⁴—or, I'll say axe; maybe that's something we can relate to a little more. This describes a carpenter using the adze in some way.

Let me read this simile to you from the sutta. The sutta is Samyutta Nikaya⁵ SN 22.101, for those who are interested in looking it up. Here it is:

Suppose a carpenter or their apprentice sees the marks of his fingers and thumb on the handle of his adze. They don't know how much of the handle was worn away today, how much yesterday, and how much previously. They just know what has been worn away.

In the same way, when a practitioner is committed to development, they don't know how much of the taints or defilements⁶ were worn away today, how much yesterday, and how much previously. They just know what has been worn off.

This is quite interesting. I thought, "Wow, this simile carries a very different flavor or texture than the chicken and the eggs." This simile points out another aspect of the practice. Particularly, it highlights that the measurement of our practice—how long it takes, how much has been done, how much more is left—these kinds of questions make no sense because, honestly, we really don't know.

In the sutta, the words used are "they don't know." They don't know how much was worn off yesterday or how much was worn off previously. That's the truth of it: we really don't know.

This can be so challenging for our human psyche or the ego's normal way of orienting our lives. We really like definitive lines: the end of the racetrack, the goals, the expectations. Ever since school days, we have grades to measure ourselves. We have bonuses to measure how we do at work. We have all the things that we use to measure ourselves against: Did you get a house? Did you get married? We are very trained in this way of orienting our lives. This kind of tendency can lead to quite excessive judging, evaluating, calculating, comparing, fixing, striving—you name it.

Right? And yet the Dharma⁷ doesn't work this way. The Dharma unfolding doesn't happen this way. I remember there were times in my own mind where I was constantly asking myself, "Am I there yet? Am I there yet?" Not knowing what "there" means, but that's the kind of orientation we can have.

The nature of the Dharma unfolding is not based on our logical analysis, measurements, or expectations. It is lawful, and yet unfathomable.

I'm aware that many of us may not have been in carpentry. Yet with this simile, we can feel into this process. The Buddha used this simile quite vividly to illustrate our cultivation process.

For example, at the beginning of our practice, for a long while, there may not be very obvious signs of thumbprints or fingerprints on the handle. Or we can say, in our practice, there's nothing really visible on the surface that has changed. And yet, we still practice with commitment and as best as we are able.

I remember early days, I was sitting with the community. Maybe I was borrowing the faith or trust from the community I was practicing with, or borrowing trust from the teachers. Intellectually, the teachings made sense. There are these different ways to allow us to continue to engage.

The thumb marks, the finger marks, may become visible after a long process, but it doesn't mean that we wouldn't know anything in this unfolding. I think that would be pretty hopeless, at least to my mind. That's where the cryptic and intriguing statement at the end of this simile comes in. It says: "They just know what has been worn off."

You know, you're holding the adze and you keep using it. At some point, you do see your marks on the handle. So the statement is: "They just know what has been worn away."

I don't actually know exactly what this line means, but I can think of some different cases that may be relevant here. So I'm going to share a few different things.

For example, through the practice, in the moment, sometimes we can know that maybe a moment of frustration arises, and it fades away when we don't react to it or criticize ourselves or others. There is a momentary knowing of something fading away that so often, otherwise, we would have reacted to. In this way, we can know for ourselves: "Oh, we're actually suffering less," even if it's just for a moment.

Also, through the practice over time—I don't know exactly how long; this is rather subjective for individuals to feel in their own way, and there's no formula—we can reflect for ourselves. At times, we can recognize that some of the habitual reactivities or unskillful reactivities of body, mind, and speech have lessened or thinned out.

Like yesterday, my husband and I were sitting over lunch, and he made a comment to me. I said, "Oh, your sharp edges have softened a lot. Still comes out occasionally." And I took that as a compliment. [Laughter] So there is a process. It does allow us to smooth out some of the sharp edges of our reactivities and allow us to have these marks of change in our ways of being.

I myself want to share a story that I discovered in the process of my practice. There was a very habitual pattern I recognized from my early years: I was very thrifty. I would notice that I often stood in the grocery line looking at item prices and discounts, and I would start calculating, "How much would I save?" Even though I've got everything in my cart—I don't need to buy anything else—this would just start churning.

At some point, I realized, "Wow, this is kind of wearisome in my mind. Why would I keep doing this?" So I started letting go of this whenever I noticed this calculating mind happening.

At some point, one day I stood in the grocery line waiting to check out, and I noticed, "Oh, there was no more calculating in my mind." That was interesting.

So, through the practice, some of the patterns do thin out. We can know this for ourselves. They may not be completely gone, but we can notice their momentum has maybe settled a bit. We can know something about defilements being worn off, worn away. That can give us a kind of trust and confidence in our practice.

So that's the simile of the adze. May we all grow degrees of confidence and trust in our practice. May we all benefit from it, and may it benefit all beings around us.

Thank you for your attention. Be well everyone. See you tomorrow.