This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Sensory Doorways to Freedom 4of5: Resting in the Spaces Between; Spacious Sufficiency & Simplicity. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Resting in the Spaces Between; Dharmette: Sensory Doorways (4 of 5): Spacious Sufficiency and Simplicity - Dawn Neal

The following talk was given by Dawn Neal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on July 26, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Resting in the Spaces Between

So today we are going to continue the series on practicing with the sense doors and I'm going to pick up on the theme of yesterday at least initially, which is to practice with spaces and spaces between mind, the gap. So taking a moment to adjust your posture, maybe wiggle, take that last sip of tea, greet your friends if you're on the chat. Settle into your body and enjoy the silence if you're not on the chat.

And softening the eyes as if looking out over a broad meadow, big sky, distant horizon, allowing the eyes to close. Then noticing any of the variations of tone, light, color in the eyelids, softening the muscles. And then softening the tongue, allowing the tip of the tongue to rest on your pallet of your mouth, noticing any lingering taste. And inviting the whole body to relax, soften, allowing your stomach, your belly to be loose. And perhaps taking two or three longer, slower, maybe even deeper breaths, diaphragmatic breathing, inviting the body, heart, and mind to be here now.

Noticing the sensations of each breath, the little space between each exhale and the next inhale, and then allowing the breathing to be natural and normal. And tuning in also to any ambient sounds in your space, distant sound of vehicles or animals, breeze, or water. And attuning to a sense of the distance, the spaciousness between your ears and the sound.

And then establishing mindfulness, awareness at the forefront, gathering your attention on whatever your primary object anchor of attention is. It could be the wash of all of these experiences just moving through, or any one of them: sensation, sound, breath. I'll say a few words about mindfulness of breathing and feel free to adapt those instructions.

Noticing the swell of the inhale, the fullness at the top of the inhale, and the release, the relaxation as the exhale begins. Staying with all the little changes through the exhale and resting, dropping into the gap at the end of the exhale, a little still point, and allowing the next inhale to naturally emerge whenever it feels easeful. Staying in contact with the moment and noticing, appreciating any of the silences, the still points, the spaces between, relaxing, allowing, receiving.

If you find yourself distracted, appreciating the moment of returning to awareness of the senses, awareness of now, rather than judging or criticizing your practice. Appreciating the shift from the world of thinking, planning, back to the simplicity and space of the sense doors.

From time to time noticing the overall quality of experience: pleasant, unpleasant, or neither. Staying connected, resting in the sensory spaces between whenever possible and allowing all of the rest.

And then in the final moments of our meditation together, the invitation is to gather your attention in your emotional center, your heart, your core. The sense of appreciation, casting memory back, remembering any moments of challenge or difficulty in this meditation with care and compassion. Appreciation for your capacity to keep showing up, be present. Recalling that any experience can be metabolized for further growth, wisdom, depth. And from that place of care, compassion, also appreciating, savoring, embracing any moments of goodness, mindfulness, awareness, patience, spaciousness as you are present, allowing them to nourish your heart and mind. These too are onward leading.

And then casting your internal gaze outwards to the others this life touches, here, near, distant, forming the wish that this practice may have a beneficial ripple effect for them as well. May our practice here together be a cause and condition for all beings to feel safe from harm and causing harm. May all beings be peaceful, content, happy, and for all beings everywhere to be free.

Thank you for your practice.

Reflections

Thank you, dears. And I'm curious, since many of you are bowing and offering appreciations in the chat, if you might also, if you did it, offer what you noticed in the last 24 hours in terms of surfing the senses or noticing gaps, spaces in your sensory experience. What unfolded for you, if anything? And it's fine if nothing did, but it's fun for other people too to see.

Listening more.

Great, I love reading all of the little pieces people are offering about what they've been noticing in their sensory experience: the fog, the owls, the sun. Trying to see things without naming so much, yes, that can be profound. The aliveness of the landscape, the hills, appreciating the gift of senses. Yes, absolutely, quite a gift. Clouds and rivers of breath sensations. These are beautiful, we could write a group poem this morning.

Dharmette: Sensory Doorways (4 of 5): Spacious Sufficiency and Simplicity

Today, thank you. I promise I'll read the rest of them later. I probably need to start talking and offer special empathy for anyone whose gap was forgetting to notice the gap. That is also human, so human, and often the first step in the practice is noticing afterwards, the wish. And then slowly it happens right afterwards, and then in real time, and then organically at the beginning.

So yesterday we covered hanging out at the sense doors, which was a couple of different practices that I just mentioned, surfing the senses and resting in the spaces between sensory experiences, minding, finding the gap, gaps plural. Today I want to talk a little bit more about that second practice of being in the spaces, being in the spaciousness that's available at the sense door, and then bring in a related onward leading practice as well.

So I'll recap just a little bit because we barely covered this yesterday, but yesterday the invitation in that second practice was to notice the spaces available between objects, between what meets our senses, our eyes, ears, etc. and to rest there, just kind of hang out there. And the space in between can be between sensations, sounds, sight objects, like between trees or tree branches, between hills, between our body, your body and other things, or even a sense of the body occupying, moving through space.

Especially when we tap into the senses this way, they can be doorways to easeful and a radical simplicity in present moment experience, even if we're moving around and about our day. I've had moments of spaciousness happen even in heavy traffic on Golden Gate Bridge by noticing this, so it's portable. There's this possibility of tapping in to just a touch of comfort, stillness in any sense experience.

At the eye door, we call it, it's the difference between looking at something and seeing that I talked about the first day, that finger wiggling practice of tuning into the peripheral vision, the overall act of seeing rather than looking, softening, connecting, appreciating visual receptivity itself. And then noticing what artists refer to and photographers as negative space: the space between, around and above things. The space between the image of my body in the background, for example, or the space around your computer monitor, the space around all of the objects in your room.

This has a couple of nice effects. One is it actually can be a way of calming the mind if there's any emotional overwhelm. There's something about doing this that's inherently calming. And then whether or not there's any emotional overwhelm, emotional activity, it can be an entry point into a much softer, quieter place, especially if you're able to notice vastness of any kind. The sky is available to most of us.

Sometimes I find it helpful to invite this practice with wisdom questions I call them, vas-koans¹. And they are, for example, "Am I aware of what is in the senses?" and "What is the quality of awareness right now?" And these are not questions that need to be answered with words or even asked with words. It can feel like a sense of a question mark meeting the moment. However you might notice, if this practice works for you, a shift in acuity at the sense door, and just to appreciate, rest in that.

Sometimes, non-verbally, people experience resting at the sense doors, especially the visual door, but it can be all of them, as a kind of transparency, like being a window for awareness in the world. Yesterday I also spoke of noticing the gaps, the spaces in physical pain, and that can be incredibly powerful for those of us who have had or have ongoing chronic discomfort or pain. Those with practice experience on this sit may also have occasionally noticed that the same kinds of spaces, the same kinds of gaps can happen between thoughts and emotions in your heart and mind, even in the midst of emotional pain and suffering and internal storm. You can notice the absence of a thought or painful emotion when shifting to another sense as well.

I have an anecdote for this from a retreat I sat. This was many years ago now, well over a decade ago, and I did something that I don't recommend any of you ever do, which is I had a difficult conversation with someone right before going into silence, a phone call. And if you've ever sat a retreat, you know that whatever the last few things you did of consequence are, are often featured in your mind, sometimes for days or at least hours. And so my mind was just reviewing this conversation and trying to figure it out and work with it and... very unpleasant. But the practice was continuing. There'd be moments of presence and then moments of distraction with this. And at a certain point, the attention just naturally moved to the space in the sky between the clouds, the sun coming through, and the mindfulness was strong enough to notice that, boom, the suffering stopped. And then the heart and mind, the attention could just hang out there.

So the invitation is to notice these kinds of moments, dramatic or small. Notice your own clouds parting, your own mental story parting. You can notice these gaps at the ears, especially the perception of distance between yourself and what's heard, or the silences between the sounds. Noticing the ends of a taste or the end of a smell, and noticing moments of balance, stillness, equipoise in your body, stillness between sensations. It's often our minds that stir up distraction or activity. Can you find a place in the body that's still, quiet, spacious?

And if hanging out at these sense doors, it's also really helpful to notice Vedanā²: simple knowing of pleasant, unpleasant, or neither. Many of us, I would dare say most meditators after you've been practicing for a little while, find it's more inherently pleasant to be with the simplicity of the body, the moment—seeing, hearing, tasting—than it is to be caught up in the stories of the mind, the virtual reality. Knowing simply pleasant, unpleasant, or neither is important information, and it can undercut reactivity, stop stories in their tracks. And it begins to deepen these sensory doorway practices in a wisdom direction, which I'll talk about more tomorrow. This is the deeper end of the pool for this practice, but meanwhile, it's so simple just to notice every now and then: pleasant or not, or unpleasant.

A sense of sufficiency can emerge from practicing with the sense doors in these ways. And that sufficiency, contentment, simplicity, generosity help to open any clenching, clutching of the heart and mind.

So between now and tomorrow, your assignment, should you choose to accept it, is to experiment with resting in this simple, intimate connection with the world through noticing again any spaces between sensory experiences, around things, within yourself. And notice the Vedanā, notice what nourishes you in these practices. Thank you so much for your kind attention. It's a joy to be with you, and I look forward to being with you again tomorrow.