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Guided Meditation: Contentment; Dharmette: Poetry of Practice 3 (1 of 5): Nirvana - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 23, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Good morning, welcome. Those of you that are watching on YouTube, you can see that the title is "Poetry of Practice 3." Those of you who don't know, I've earlier done two weeks on "Poetry of Practice," so I just want to distinguish that's what this "three" is for. I think the two happened in August of 2023, and "Poetry of Practice one," I think was in April 2023, but I might have those dates wrong.

So I'm just going to say a few words about this whole idea of poetry, and then we'll get into a guided meditation. There is this way in which we can engage with practice that is an emphasis on the Buddhist lists and a certain amount of technique. There are these 16 steps of mindfulness of breathing, or there are the 13 types of practices for mindfulness of the body in the Satipatthana Sutta¹, you know, these types of things. Especially when we are teaching for five days, it's tempting for those of us that are in the role of Dharma teachers to find a list that has five items; it's just a nice, convenient way to do things for five days. This is a perfectly legitimate way, but it kind of gives the sense that maybe the Dharma is all about this formulaic one-through-five or these lists. That's a perfectly legitimate way; I love to practice that way, I do practice that way, and I also practice another way.

A way that invites another way of engaging with practice, that's less with the mind and the thinking and more with the heart. A different way of relating to our experience, a different way of relating to practice, we might say, a different way of coming home. It's a way of recognizing or tuning into something that's a little bit different than our continual grasping of understanding or evaluation or finding the next moment and where am I in this list or something like that. Instead, there's this way of practicing, we might say, with poetry, with verse, that lets language touch us in a different way, guide us in a different way than these lists.

So we'll do a little bit of "Poetry of Practice" this week. This morning, I will drop in a verse during our guided meditation. I'll lead us to settling a little bit, then I'll drop in a verse, and then during the Dharma talk, we'll talk about the verse. As it happens, this verse is written like a short story. So as I'm saying it, it might sound like a short story rather than a poem. It's perfectly fine. You might say it's a poem because the poet said it's a poem. I'll say the name of the poem and the poet at the end. Okay.

Guided Meditation: Contentment

So again, our meditation posture, feeling into the sense of this moment. What is it like to be in this body at this moment? Putting aside any ideas of how things should be and tuning into how things are. Is there a way to inhabit the body, bring a sense of aliveness, a sense of presence to the bodily experience? Letting go of any ideas of how things ought to be or you want them to be, but instead bringing some curiosity and some engagement to how they are.

And we set the orientation, the direction of our practice, as one of kindness and okayness. Can I be okay however you find the body at this moment? You may be in a body that perhaps has discomfort or pain. Can that be okay for this meditation period?

Maybe doing a gentle body scan, bringing some care and some presence to any areas of the body that feel like they could use some care and presence, some warm-heartedness.

Settling into the sensations of breathing, turning into the experience of breathing, inhales and exhales, as if it were okay, as if this were sufficient right now just to be with the sensations of breathing.

In particular, needs to be happening just noticing the experience of inhales, feeling the stretch perhaps in the body and the release of the stretch with the exhales.

Resting, knowing a body knows how to breathe. We don't have to make it breathe, we don't have to change it. And we allow the breath to be just as it is.

If we find ourselves lost in thought, we don't have to build a story about what it means about us as meditators. Just very simply, gently begin again with the sensations of breathing in a relaxed, easy manner.

To drop in this poem, absolutely nothing needs to be done. Just allow the words to be received. You don't have to interpret it, you don't have to understand it, you don't have to remember it. What would it be like to just simply experience it, moment after moment after moment? I'll talk about it in the Dharma talk; for now, just experience it.

The poem goes like this, maybe I should say it reads like a short story:

Not much chance, completely cut loose from purpose. It was a young man riding a bus through North Carolina on the way to somewhere, and it began to snow, and the bus stopped at a little cafe in the hills, and the passengers entered. He sat at the counter with the others. He ordered, and the food arrived. The meal was particularly good, and the coffee. The waitress was unlike the women he had known. She was unaffected. There was a natural humor which came from her. The fry cook said crazy things. The dishwasher in back laughed, a good, clean, pleasant laugh. The young man watched the snow through the windows. He wanted to stay in that cafe forever. The curious feeling swam through him that everything was beautiful there, that it would always stay beautiful there.

Then the bus driver told the passengers that it was time to board. The young man thought, "I'll just sit here. I'll just stay here." But then he rose and followed the others into the bus. He found his seat and looked at the cafe through the bus window. Then the bus moved off, down a curve, downward, out of the hills. The young man looked straight forward. He heard the other passengers speaking of other things, or they were reading, or attempting to sleep. They had not noticed the magic. The young man put his head to one side, closed his eyes, pretended to sleep. There was nothing else to do, just to listen to the sound of the engine, the sound of the tires in the snow.

There was nothing else to do, just to listen to the sound of the engine, the sound of the tires in the snow.

Dharmette: Poetry of Practice 3 (1 of 5): Nirvana

That poem was called "Nirvana," by Charles Bukowski. "Nirvana," by Charles Bukowski.

So, welcome, welcome for those of you who are joining us late or just joining us here for the Dharma talk. Jane Hirshfield, who's a well-established poet—she's a beautiful poet, she has some amazing poems—and she's also a Buddhist practitioner. I love this quote that she has. She says, "Science and mathematics and engineering exist for answerable questions. Poems exist for questions that have no answers but still require a response." I like this idea that poetry is a way of responding, but not in a way like an answer, which tends to have edges and be really like, "Okay, this is the answer, this is the truth, this is how it is. Next, what's the next thing?" Poems are a response, and we might say, a response of the heart. It's a different part of us that's responding.

So one question that we might have, a natural question with this practice, with this tradition, is this idea of Nirvana, or Nibbana.² This idea of, what is it? What is it to be awakened? What is this about awakening? There's a number of different ways we can understand it. In Pali, the word is Nibbana; in Sanskrit, the word is Nirvana. The exact same word, two different languages. So Charles Bukowski is using Nirvana, and in the Pali Canon,³ it's Nibbana.

So there's different ways we could say to understand this, but maybe I would say what's more important than describing exactly what it is, is maybe to point to the impact it has on somebody who is experiencing it. How are people transformed? What is their experience by attaining Nirvana? Staying more with the empirical, the practical, the experience, rather than getting into metaphysics and philosophy, which is just stories, right? Metaphysics and philosophy are just stories that we're telling ourselves in our mind. So instead, can we point to what's the experience? And then something that we hear a lot and read a lot if you explore this idea of Nirvana, even in the Pali Canon, it talks about how it's indescribable and ineffable.

So this poem by Charles Bukowski, who, let's just say he's not known for being a Buddhist practitioner. In fact, he had a colorful life. I don't know all the details of his life, but I know enough of it to know that he was fond of drinking and wasn't known for his following the precepts, let's just say. He wasn't a Buddhist practitioner. So notice if you can feel into a theme of this poem, the sense of it, maybe the experience of it, as I read it again, and then I'll say a few words. So again, this poem is "Nirvana" by Charles Bukowski.

Not much chance, completely cut loose from purpose. It was a young man riding a bus through North Carolina on the way to somewhere, and it began to snow, and the bus stopped at a little cafe in the hills, and the passengers entered. He sat at the counter with the others. He ordered, and the food arrived. The meal was particularly good, and the coffee. The waitress was unlike the women he had known. She was unaffected. There was a natural humor which came from her. The fry cook said crazy things. The dishwasher in back laughed a good, clean, pleasant laugh.

The young man watched the snow through the windows. He wanted to stay in that cafe forever. The curious feeling swam through him that everything was beautiful there, that it would always stay beautiful there. And the bus driver told the passengers that it was time to board. The young man thought, "I'll just sit here. I'll just stay here." But then he rose and followed the others into the bus. He found his seat and looked at the cafe through the bus window. Then the bus moved off, down a curve, downward out of the hills. The young man looked straight forward. He heard the other passengers speaking of other things, or they were reading or attempting to sleep. They had not noticed the magic. The young man put his head to one side, closed his eyes, pretended to sleep. There was nothing else to do, just to listen to the sound of the engine, the sound of the tires in the snow.

I know this poem, it touches me. There's so many things that I could say, but one thing you might say is, "Completely ordinary. I don't get it. Why is this called Nirvana? It's just some dude hanging out in a cafe." And maybe, what if that's exactly what Nirvana is? We tend to bring some of these ideas we might have about heaven or some of these other ideas about what it must mean to be awakened. But what if it's about having a perfectly ordinary life and being completely content with that ordinary life? No wish for things to be otherwise, no insistence that things be different, no little niggling, "Yeah, but I want this, I don't want that. It should be more like this, it shouldn't be less like that." Instead, just being with what is completely, just letting things unfold, maybe kind of like a bus that's going down the hill, that's going here and there. Just trusting that there's an unfolding of life, there's an unfolding of what's going to happen next without this strong sense of "me" controlling things, without a strong sense of self making things happen and ensuring things go one way and not the other way.

Instead, this deep trust, this deep intuition, this deep sense of things unfolding. I'm using this expression, this sense of intuition, a flow of life, and allowing the life to flow with us without a sense of this center of it that has to control everything, this center which is judging, "This is good, this is bad." I love this, there's this sentence in here in this poem: "a curious feeling swam through him that everything was beautiful there, that it would always stay beautiful there." So this sense of beauty in just the ordinary. And we all know things are impermanent, and yet he's saying that they would always stay beautiful there. So pointing to no matter what happens, it's beautiful. We might use this language, this notion of grace, like everything having this beautiful being, touched by grace. Nothing needs to be different.

And then I like in the poem, he says, "The young man thought, 'I'll just sit here, I'll just stay here.'" So he's sitting and staying here in the present moment. And just that experience, because what comes right after, "The young man thought, 'I'll just sit here, I'll just stay here,' but then he rose and followed the others onto the bus." So he is in this appreciation, this flow with what's actually happening, but the physical "here" is changing. He's going from the cafe and going back into the bus. And earlier while he was in the cafe, he was looking out the window at the snow, and then later he's in the bus looking out at the cafe. So his perspectives are changing. He's in different places and he's looking at things different ways, but there's always this, we might say, this sense of contentment, but contentment with beauty.

And what if that's what awakening is? What if awakening is this sense of, "Things are as they are, and it's like this, and it's okay," and seeing the beauty of the moments? There's this way in which as humans, we have this sense of, we always want things to be a little bit different. We're trying to tumble into the next moment. We're being dismissive of the present moment. But what if there is no more agitation, no more restlessness, no more sense, a complete absence of the sense of, "There needs to be more, there needs to be more." What if there's none of that? It's just this moment, and this moment is a sense of perfection, a sense of beauty, a sense of grace, no matter what's happening.

There's this way that we sometimes talk about Nirvana as the absence of greed, hatred, and delusion. So what this means is this absence of wanting things to be different, is seeing things clearly, changing the perspective whether it's through the bus window or through the window of the cafe looking out, whatever it is.

I'll read this poem one more time. Again, it's "Nirvana" by Charles Bukowski.

Not much chance, completely cut loose from purpose. He was a young man riding a bus through North Carolina on the way to somewhere, and it began to snow, and the bus stopped at a cafe in the hills, and the passengers entered. He sat at the counter with the others. He ordered and the food arrived. The meal was particularly good, and the coffee. The waitress was unlike the women he had known. She was unaffected. There was a natural humor which came from her. The fry cook said crazy things. The dishwasher in back laughed a good, clean, pleasant laugh. The young man watched the snow through the windows. He wanted to stay in that cafe forever. The curious feeling swam through him that everything was beautiful there, that it would always stay beautiful there.

Then the bus driver told the passengers that it was time to board. The young man thought, "I'll just sit here. I'll just stay here." But then he rose and followed the others into the bus. He found his seat and looked at the cafe through the bus window. Then the bus moved off down a curve, downward out of the hills. The young man looked straight forward. They heard the other passengers speaking of other things, or they were reading or attempting to sleep. They had not noticed the magic. The young man put his head to one side, closed his eyes, pretended to sleep. There was nothing else to do, just listen to the sound of the engine, the sound of the tire in the snow.

I'll say this last little sentence: "There was nothing else to do, just to listen to the sound of the engine, the sound of the tires in the snow." This radical sense of okayness. What would it be like for you to notice and tune into any sense of okayness, sense of contentment? Not fireworks and blissed-out happiness, but just a sense of ordinary okayness. What would it be like for you to tune into that today? Thank you.

Wishing you all a wonderful rest of the day.

Reflections

Welcome to this week of poetry.

Jie writes, "I'm looking forward to an extraordinary ordinary day." Exactly, thank you. That's exactly your own little poem there: "extraordinary ordinary day."

Sweet to read your comments.

Someone asks, "What was Nirvana? The cafe or listening to the sound of the engine, the tires? Was it both? Is there a difference?" What if Nirvana is more... it's not a location. What if it's just an experience or a relationship to experience, maybe?

And I'll see you later in the week with some more poems. Wishing you all a wonderful day.