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Dharmette: Buddha's Smile (1 of 5) The Pleasure We Cultivate; Guided Meditation: Leaning into the Pleasant of Meditation - David Lorey

The following talk was given by David Lorey at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 14, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Leaning into the Pleasant of Meditation

Good morning, friends. I say good morning to those on the West Coast here, but good day and welcome—good afternoon, good evening—to people signing in from all over. I see some friends checking in: Richard, Cindy, Julie, and many others, old and new. Thank you for your support. It's lovely to see everybody greeting one another.

It’s 7:00 here on the West Coast, so we’ll get underway. Before we sit together, I’ll introduce a theme for the week, following on and inspired by Kim's theme last week, which she shared with me the other day. It is a theme I'm going to call "The Five Knowledges" or "The Five Understandings."¹ I thought to myself this morning that it sounds like a technical designation, and it's probably too late now to change the titles with the people who name the week's talks, but I think I want to call it "The Buddha's Smile."

I don't know if you've noticed this, but Buddhist statues frequently show the Buddha with a mysterious—you could say Mona Lisa—smile. I've always been curious about that smile. This week, we can explore aspects of meditation that arise as part of the practice and bring an inward contentment, and with it, sometimes an inward smile expressed on our faces or in our spirit, both in meditation and throughout the day. I'll say more about the theme as we go. The first understanding is cultivating the pleasant, and even the pleasure, in meditation.

Let’s sit and bring our attention inward and downward. You may close your eyes if that feels comfortable, or bring them into a relaxed middle distance if you wish to keep them open and let some light in.

As we settle in and make contact with the breathing or with the body—whatever object of meditation we take as our first connection with the here and now of our experience—we can bring our attention to the pleasant in the meditation. It can feel quite easeful, bringing us to rest, centering us, and grounding us.

Sometimes we characterize meditation, its qualities, and perhaps its objective as "ease" or being "easeful." Even if it’s incremental or marginal—just a greater ease for this moment than when the mind is busy planning, remembering, fretting, or casting itself into the future or the past. Those are all useful qualities of mind, none of which we seek to stamp out as we cultivate an inner calm, peace, and ease.

Maybe today we can connect with this ease. Even if it’s just a greater ease, we can notice that it's pleasant and even pleasurable. This is a deep aspect of the practice: the pleasure that comes in meditation isn't to be feared. The Buddha encourages us throughout the texts to cultivate this pleasantness. It isn't to be feared because it is an uncomplicated, simple pleasure. It’s not "sticky"; it doesn't entangle us or rest on external conditions. It rises from within.

It is a deep knowledge that comes with the cultivation of meditation: this contentment and ease are wholesome. They lead onward and point toward freedom. We can trust this ease. As we become comfortable with it, it becomes stronger. This is how it is cultivated. So, just rest easy in this today. Whatever pleasantness or ease comes, it’s part of the path. It supports our practice, provides a pleasant abiding in the here and now, and bears fruit in the future.

As we rest in the meditation, no matter what is happening—whether the mind is busy or preoccupied with the day to come or the day past—we can seek out any greater ease and enjoy it fully. Be confident in the knowing that this pleasantness is wholesome. In addition to providing a benefit for us personally in the here and now, cultivating it results in skillful action and benefit to others.

We bring the meditation to a close with the idea that we cultivate the practice for our own benefit and share that benefit—the ease, the pleasantness, even the pleasure—providing a quietness in the mind that is useful to us as we meet the world and others in it. Let’s share the benefits of our practice, confident in the knowing that far from depleting the benefits to ourselves, sharing them increases the benefit for all beings.

May all beings benefit from this ease. May all beings know this ease for themselves. May all beings be free.

Dharmette: Buddha's Smile (1 of 5) The Pleasure We Cultivate

Welcome again, everyone. I hope you're well. I'd like to devote the teaching this week to a somewhat unusual and obscure teaching that comes through one of the more obscure texts undergirding our practice, which refers to something called the "Five Knowledges" or "Five Understandings." As I said at the outset, that seemed to me a technical designation, so I also want to think of the teachings this week as being about "The Buddha's Smile."

When we see representations of the Buddha—for example, the one on the far right of our screens showing him resting and preparing for his final freedom, or Parinirvana²—a gentle smile plays on his features. Perhaps that smile comes from understandings that grow with the meditation practice. In the text from which I draw these teachings—and I’m taking some liberties with the Pali³—the Buddha encourages us to deepen our practice. He states as a fact that as the meditation practice deepens, there will be five knowings or understandings that will arise naturally.

The first one is this: "This meditation is pleasant and pleasurable now, and it results in benefit in the future."

Let’s unpack that for a few minutes. Before getting into the specific idea of the pleasure of meditation, there is an important point: as our practice deepens, these understandings arise all by themselves and for ourselves. This is one of the mechanisms by which these teachings come to us—from our own internal meeting of our experience rather than from an outside source like a teacher or a book. It’s a reminder that meditation practice is primary and that we can trust it to provide the teaching we need. While guidance from spiritual friends and teachers is useful, the encouragement here is to pay attention to what arises naturally in each of our experiences.

The idea that meditation is pleasant now with beneficial results in the future runs throughout the teachings. I introduce the idea of "pleasure" with some hesitation because we are sometimes afraid of pleasure. We aren't always sure how it fits into the path, and there can be a shying away from the pleasantness that arises. I laugh because we often look for "trouble" in meditation; we look for the suffering as it naturally comes to our attention. Yet, in the pleasantness of meditation, there is also a path. Understanding suffering is critical, but knowing the pleasure of the ease and openness of mind that develops in meditation is also part of the path.

To ensure it doesn't sound like it's just me saying that, I want to quote the Buddha, who says in one discourse: "This pleasure, this ease of meditation, I call the pleasure of letting go, the pleasure of separating ourselves from the world of mental activity and regular daily life, the pleasure of seclusion, the pleasure of peace, and the pleasure of being awake in the world." He says such pleasure should be cultivated and developed, and should not be feared.

This encouragement is based on his own experience of becoming awake. After years of seeking different paths and practicing extreme asceticism⁴—starvation and living without shelter—the Buddha realized those practices did not lead to freedom. One day, sitting under a rose-apple tree⁵, he fell into a deep meditative state and realized that the pleasure coming from within, not dependent on external conditions, could be trusted. It was part of the path.

Our brains and bodies are naturally oriented toward pleasure for good reasons. If we can find and develop wholesome pleasures that bear fruit in skillful action in the world, those can be cultivated safely. The beauty of meditative pleasure is that if we bring it to our attention and rest in it, we can see that it is not "sticky." It doesn't have the complications and entanglements that other pleasures do. Although it is very pleasant, we don't want "more" of it in quite the same way we want more chocolate or other sensory experiences.

This centeredness and Stillness⁶ of mind, accompanied by a feeling of well-being, does lead toward greater ease and ultimate freedom. This "pleasant abiding in the here and now" yields beneficial results in the future. When we find ease and stillness within our practice, we are at greater ease in the world of interactions with other beings. We are not seeking the same kinds of externally conditioned satisfactions, which makes it much more likely that we can interact in a way that is free of clinging, attachment, projection, and suffering.

One thing I think is inspiring about this teaching is that it doesn't encourage us to do anything except deepen our meditation practice and notice what arises naturally. We don't have to seek these knowledges; if we pay attention, we can notice, "Oh, this feels good now, and it seems to have benefit later." We don't have to make it happen; we can trust that it has good effects.

Many of you may notice that after meditating for half an hour on a regular basis in the mornings with Gil⁷ and my other colleagues, the day is more easeful. It is axiomatic that it is always more skillful to act with peace of mind than without it. We don't have to go looking for proof; we can trust that the meditation produces that effect without our having to do much at all except return to the practice and watch what it teaches us.

So I'll leave you with that thought: just watch what arises naturally as a deep understanding in the meditation. If it's pleasant or pleasurable, trust that. Know that it is part of the path, providing a pleasant abiding in the here and now and resulting in beneficial action in the future.

Thank you all. I appreciate you being here together supporting one another, and I'll see you tomorrow morning.