This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Simple Mindfulness; Dharmette: Six Qualities of the Dharma (1 of 5) An Overview. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Simple Mindfulness; Dharmette: Six Qualities, an Overview - Shelley Gault

The following talk was given by Shelley Gault at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on May 06, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Simple Mindfulness

Good morning, folks. Good day, good evening, whatever time it is for you. I know there are people from everywhere in this YouTube Sangha¹. I'm really happy to be with you this week, filling in for Gil. Gil is teaching a two-week retreat at IRC², so he'll be gone those two weeks and then a third week as well. It's really a pleasure to be here. I'm often a part of the Sangha, those of you in the chat, and today I'll be in a different role.

For those who don't know me, I live in Santa Barbara and I teach in a Sangha here, as well as for IMC³ and IRC, our retreat center in Santa Cruz.

Let's begin with the meditation. I always like to mention posture at the beginning of a sit; I think it's really important. After we've been practicing for a while, we can tend to ignore it. The way our body is held has a strong effect on our minds as well as our bodies and our whole system. If our posture can stay in an orientation that supports being present in meditation, then our meditation is definitely going to benefit.

Take a little time right now with your posture, just finding a way of sitting that encourages this balance of alertness and ease that is so supportive of staying present as we sit. Just letting all the muscles that aren't necessary to keep you upright soften. If you're sitting or standing, let your spine be upright but not rigid.

Take some time to notice where there's more tension in the body. Maybe in the face, the forehead, the jaw, the neck, and the upper shoulders. Pay special attention to those areas or any areas where you habitually hold tension. Often tension in those upper areas around the head and neck and upper shoulders is related to mental tension. Easing the muscles there can sometimes lead to some easing in the mind as well.

Let your chest be open so the breath can flow easily in and out. Let your belly be soft. Just touch into the way it moves as you breathe. If the belly is relaxed, it will move with the breath. Softening the belly can often soften tension in the mind, just as with the upper parts of the body.

Softening and softening the mind. Breathing in, being present to the whole body. Breathing out, letting the whole body be in as much ease as possible. As soft and as open as possible.

Let the breathing be at the center of your awareness and know it clearly. Know it directly. Don't exclude what else is going on within you; just let all the sensations be known as they arise. If there are thoughts, just know them and let them go. Just a very simple practice of awareness.

Periodically, as we sit here, it can be useful to just give a little attention to your posture again. Notice if there are areas of tension that have crept back in since the beginning of the sit. You might notice if those are associated with particular kinds of thinking or emotion that are arising, and just see if you can let those relax. As the body eases, see if the mind eases as well.

There can be such simplicity in just attending to what's arising in our experience—not moving into the past or future and speculating about the present, but just knowing what's happening. It's a real gift that we give ourselves when we do this. It is like a balm for the spirit. It's so simple, and yet it's very profound. It's a kindness.

If you've felt any sense of ease as you practiced this morning and felt a sense of support from your practice, I invite you—I really encourage you—to stay connected to that sense of ease and support and to carry it into the world with you. Into all the things that you do and the people you meet today. Let it spread.

Dharmette: Six Qualities, an Overview

As I said before the meditation, it's really a pleasure to be here with you. If you weren't here at the very beginning, maybe you aren't aware that Gil is teaching a retreat for the next two weeks, and then he'll be away for the following week as well. I'll be sitting in this week, and next week will be May Elliott. We're not quite sure who the third week will be.

I also mentioned that I've participated in this 7:00 a.m. sit along with many hundreds of you, many hundreds of times over the last four years. It's amazing to me that it's been four years, and I'm really happy to be here in a different role this week, being the one who speaks. I hope it will be useful to you.

Of course, there are a lot of different ways to approach Buddhist practice, Buddhist thought, or Buddhist religion, if you think of it in that way. Some people treat Buddhism as a kind of orthodoxy with things to believe in that can make us feel secure in a difficult world—something outside ourselves, a support, but an external support, a belief system.

Some people treat the path more as a self-help program, a toolkit that helps us to be more effective, more kind, and happier in our lives. Some people focus for the most part on having pleasant, peaceful, and deep meditations, using the practice perhaps as a respite from pain in their lives. And then some people engage with the Dharma as a lifelong path to freedom—a path to liberation from clinging to any inclination or movement in the mind towards greed, hatred, and delusion.

All of those ways of approaching the Dharma are legitimate. But of course, I'm here to advocate for seeing it as a path to freedom. The idea that it's possible to come to a complete sense of freedom of heart and mind in this lifetime—that's really inspiring to me.

Whatever our motivation for practice, when we encounter Buddhist teachings—when we listen to talks, when we read ancient texts or modern books or magazine articles about Buddhism—we all relate in different ways to the teachings that we come in contact with. Some of us will take what we hear or read on faith, not questioning it at all. Some of us might trust the interpretation of one particular teacher; we might have a favorite, and when that person presents the teachings, we really connect. Some of us might consider that what we hear or read makes sense; we might just be looking at it more intellectually or intuitively know, "Oh, this makes sense to me, this fits." And some of us are kind of more skeptical, only accepting teachings that resonate with what we already believe about life.

The Buddha described three general ways that people connect with spiritual teachings. Some people the Buddha called traditionalists: those who base their beliefs on scripture or on oral tradition, those who pretty much take things on faith. Another group he called reasoners and investigators: who rely on logic, on analytical reasoning to make their assessments of what they're hearing or reading. The third group he called experientialists: those who base their belief on their own direct knowledge. That is, their approach is empirical. The Buddha counted himself among this third group. What he understood and taught, he said, was based on his own experience—what he had come to know directly as a result of practice, not dependent on an external authority.

I think it's useful for us to be conscious of the ways that we personally tend to approach any system of knowledge, whether it's religious, political, or social. Just in general in our lives, do we unconsciously hold views or attitudes that come from our families, from our culture, from what we learned in school? I'm sure that's true for many of us, maybe for all of us. Do we take those things on faith, or do we question them? Are we more likely to look at ideas intellectually, just judging them to be well thought out, rational, and aligned with reality? Or do we tend to try ideas out and see if they actually make a difference in our lives, leading to more of what we'd like to see in ourselves?

Recognizing the ways that we tend to develop views around any subject that we're interested in is really useful to look at, and we're probably using the same strategies to arrive at the way we relate to the Dharma. So it's good to be aware. Maybe we're taking things on faith that could be investigated with more fruitful results. Maybe we're depending on our intellectual understanding without testing to see whether our beliefs are really congruent with our lived experience.

We're encouraged in our Dharma practice to investigate, to see if the Dharma teachings actually reflect our own experience. We inquire into the teachings we come in contact with, and as our mindfulness strengthens—our sati, our awareness—we're able to pay closer attention to our own experience than we probably ever have before in our lives, and we learn from that.

When I make a claim about Dharma practice, I want to be really clear what I'm basing that claim on. For example, I can tell you that as I was getting dressed this morning, I was kind of hurrying. I can claim that if I'm really present to and mindful of the felt sense of hurrying in the body as I do it, that I'll see the stress in it and I'll be able to let go of it—I'll be able to let it dissipate.

What am I basing that claim on? Did a teacher tell me that this is how practice works? That mindfulness can lead us to seeing stress that we might be ignoring and then allows it to dissipate? Is it maybe something I just think makes sense? It does make sense, for sure. Hopefully, it's actually been my experience often enough that I can feel confident suggesting that it works. And that's true: when I feel a need to hurry, I can sense the stress in it right away, and I can let that stress soften. I can ease up. I have empirical knowledge about that.

Of course, the Buddha considered himself an experientialist, one who bases belief on direct knowledge, not simply on faith or inference or reasonableness. So during the mornings this week, I want to talk about six qualities of the Dharma that are related to its empirical nature, that can be experienced directly in our lives and in our practice. The list will be familiar to many of you, maybe all of you. But I'm planning also to bring in a list of capacities—it comes from a completely different area, from the study of literacy. My sense is that the capacities I'll talk about can really support us in seeing and experiencing these qualities of the Dharma in our practice and our lives.

Maybe we could say that one way of looking at our practice is that we're developing more and more skillful literacy about the nature of our experience of life. We're learning to read our experience really deeply, to make sense of it, to understand it in deeper and deeper ways. I appreciate when I come across something from social science that really sheds light on Dharma teachings.

I'll go through the six qualities of the Dharma quite quickly, and we'll go through them during the rest of the week.

1. Svākkhāto⁴: The Dharma is said to be "well expounded." The implication is that the way the Buddha taught the Dharma was skillful. What's often mentioned when referencing this statement is that the Dharma is good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good in the end. It's useful all along the path.
2. Sandiṭṭhiko⁵: The Dharma is "visible here and now." It can be examined right here in our own experience. It's not something that needs to be taken on faith.
3. Akāliko⁶: It is "immediately effective" or "timeless." We don't have to wait until we're dead or until our next lifetime—if we subscribe to rebirth—to experience it. It's always available. It's here in our experience, and we can see its workings in our minds and hearts as it happens.
4. Ehipassiko⁷: This is the famous exhortation of the Buddha: "Come and see for yourself." It's often translated as "inviting inspection." Again, this points to the Dharma not being taken simply on faith. We can apply this ourselves. We can keep investigating, keep inspecting, keep looking all through the path—beginning, middle, and end.
5. Opanayiko⁸: "Onward leading." Fit for being used, relevant. This is actually my favorite word in all the Dharma. The practice of the Dharma leads one on towards freedom, towards awakening. This aspect points to the fact that our practice unfolds over time. It naturally moves us in the direction of more freedom, of less clinging, less craving. There's a natural unfolding that takes place if we're practicing sincerely. We're gradually coming to understand what leads to more stress in our lives and what leads to more ease, gradually inclining our minds more and more towards what's skillful, what's beneficial. After a while, our minds and hearts just incline in that direction naturally, organically. The Dharma leads us on.
6. Paccattaṃ veditabbo viññūhī⁹: The Dharma is "to be experienced by the wise" or "to be realized by the wise." It's up to us to walk the path ourselves. The goal of practice isn't given by grace; it's not given by good deeds or bestowed by some all-powerful god. An analogy that Gil often uses is: "Only you can pee for yourself." [Laughter]. We have to walk the path for ourselves. It's the only way that it can be realized.

All six of these point to the path's empirical quality. There are different aspects of actually experiencing the Dharma playing out in our lives. Since there are six of them, I'll talk about two of them tomorrow so we cover them all in the five days. I'll be trying to show how capacities that are useful for developing literacy about reading texts are really very helpful in becoming skilled at reading our own experience so that the Dharma can fully unfold in our minds and hearts.

So tomorrow I'll begin with these first two qualities of the Dharma: that it is well proclaimed (Svākkhāto) and visible here and now (Sandiṭṭhiko). I'll introduce one of the competencies that supports seeing the qualities of the Dharma really expressed in our practice. I look forward to being with you then.

Thank you very much for your attention this morning, and have a really lovely day or evening, whatever time it is for you.