This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Including Awareness; Dharmic Reciprocity (5 of 5): Ripple Effect. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Including Awareness; Guided Meditation: Including Awareness; Dharmic Reciprocity (5 of 5): Ripple Effect - Dawn Neal

The following talk was given by Dawn Neal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 25, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Good morning, Sangha. It is good to be back with you. This is a warm greeting from Santa Cruz, California. Thank you for whatever thoughts or reflections you are holding in your hearts or sharing with others over this week of practice on the theme of Dharmic reciprocity.

Guided Meditation: Including Awareness

The invitation, once you've had a chance to settle in, is to welcome yourself here. Offer a warm welcome to the day or the evening. As you settle back, start to move the attention inward. You might adjust your posture, take that last sip of tea or coffee, and start with a couple of intentional, slower, deeper breaths. Receive on the in-breath and let go into the practice, relaxing and softening on the out-breath.

Perhaps at the end of the next out-breath, allow yourself to rest in that tiny still point—that moment of transition between the exhale and the inhale. Then, allow the breath to be received just as it naturally wants to be in this moment.

Allow mindful awareness to be at the forefront of your attention for this half-hour of meditation. Notice the sounds in your space, the warmth or cool of the body, and the air on your skin. Notice a sense of weight or lightness. Notice, too, whatever mood or attitude is in your heart—perhaps gratitude, calm intention, or the momentum of the day. Let that be there, too. Take nourishment from your aspiration to practice, whatever the conditions.

Allowing a soft smile, tune your attention to whatever anchor feels like it will help you stay in this present moment. Here, just here. Acknowledging and including all of embodied experience, rest and settle on each breath. This breath. This sound. This moment.

Noticing the effect—perhaps the soothing effect—of centering the attention. Resting in sensations coming and going, however life is showing up in this breath.

If an emotion, sound, sensation, or thought becomes compelling, include this too in mindful awareness of this moment. Meet it with respect and care. If it fades and becomes less predominant, as it will, return the attention to your home: this body, this breath. Give over to the moment of meditation.

From time to time, rededicate the attention to the felt sense—the flow of the moment.

In the last few minutes of our formal meditation together, open the awareness wide to all of present-moment experience unfolding. Notice sound, sensation, and breath, but also the mental or emotional activity flowing through like flocks of birds or clouds in a vast sky. Then, too, notice the quality of that observation, appreciating the capacity for it.

Cast your mind back over these moments of meditation, acknowledging any challenges with respect, compassion, and trust that they become part of the compost for growth in this practice. Then, especially, recall any little glimmers of goodness: peacefulness, calm steadiness, a finger-snap of kindness, or a droplet of mindful awareness. Breathe those into your heart, your emotional center, being sustained by them and savoring them.

From that place, send those good wishes outwards to the others in your life: other practitioners and those your life incorporates in other ways. For those here, near and far, we wish them well. May they be safe, happy, and healthy. May they be peaceful, at ease, and free.

Widening the circle, allow that goodness to ripple out, offering the intention: may all beings be safe, happy, peaceful, and free. Notice the effect of that wish on this heart and this mind in this moment.

Thank you for your practice.

Guided Meditation: Including Awareness; Dharmic Reciprocity (5 of 5): Ripple Effect

A warm welcome, Sangha, to the last day of this five-day exploration. A special welcome to those of you who slipped in late. What I'd like to cover today, on this last day of the Buddha's teachings about giving and reciprocity, are reflections on how that resonates in our own practice.

There is a teaching found in an obscure section of the Pali Canon stating that a person of integrity gives with the view that something will come of it. In other words, there are effects from what we give: cause and effect, and conditionality—the way different conditions come together to form this moment and to form what is.

This teaching, as many of you will recognize, is closely related to the topic of karma¹. The Buddha made it clear that if someone tries to wrap their head around all the implications of karma, their head would explode. In the interest of keeping everyone's head intact today, I'll offer the simplest definition: karma is action—action of body, speech, or mind.

We speak of action and result, or kamma-vipaka². This is what people are usually referring to in mainstream Buddhist English when we talk about karma. While we don't always know the results, we can trust that there are results. Choice, regard for consequences, and results are actually key to the entire process of Buddhist meditation. Karma is not fate; actions have results.

One of the key actions in these early Buddhist teachings is giving, but with a particular frame: giving with attention to the effect of the offering on your own heart and mind, your own practice, and your own way of being. While this may not be totally knowable, it is far more accessible than the vast interplay of ripples and conditions out in the wider world.

From the Buddha's perspective, the most helpful reason to offer is to ennoble the heart and mind, to prepare for deeper insight and wisdom, and to increase generosity and goodness in the world. It is not "giving to get," and it is definitely not offering out of obligation. This points to the real power in giving with no strings attached, which creates a nonlinear reciprocity.

Those of you who have been here all week might remember the story I started with about a monastery in Thailand. The people there would give excess food and water to the nearby villagers. In that oceanic cycle of generosity, the excess water on that arid island—water that came only from rain—rippled down through the cisterns and cascaded back into the ocean. It was an expression of trust that the life-sustaining moisture would eventually cycle back to them.

To use another ocean simile, the Buddha likened existence to a voyage across the ocean. The destination, the far shore, is freedom. Much skill is required for this voyage, as is a compass—which is non-harming—and a guiding North Star where wisdom and non-harming meet. As the person on the voyage, we do not control the weather or the conditions of the ocean, but we do have influence over how we respond and wisdom about which directions to take. The voyage is a collaboration with what is. Where we give our time, attention, material goods, and especially the actions of our body, speech, and mind determines the quality of that voyage.

This lens on giving invites discernment. It invites choosing to give up—to "ditch"—the excess weight of unskillful qualities to make room for skillful ones. The Buddha invites us to notice the effects of our attitudes and actions on our hearts, our minds, our practice, and that crucial relationship with ourselves. What we offer to the practice matters even more than the specific details of what is offered; how it is offered matters.

Paying close attention to these effects has immense benefits, especially when combined with the other qualities we've explored this week: wholehearted attention, mindfulness, respect, and an appreciation of timing. This reorients us toward a very beautiful compass.

We do this by noticing the effects moment by moment, just as the Buddha taught his son, Rahula³. He taught his seven-year-old son to notice before, during, and after an action of body, speech, or mind: "Is this harmful?" If so, stop, or resolve not to do it again. "Is it helpful?" If so, keep doing it and learn from it. Either way, we learn.

Anything we give, offer, or do affects us first. The Buddha used the simile of hatred or hostility directed outwards being like picking up a hot coal to throw at someone else; it burns you first. On the other hand, if you offer kindness or beautiful attitudes like metta⁴ (loving-kindness), that sublime intention touches your own heart and mind first.

This is transferable wisdom, and it applies to what we choose to receive as well. There is a story of a person coming to the Buddha with great hostility. The Buddha asked, "If someone shows up at your doorstep and offers you a gift you don't want, do you take it?" The person said no, and the Buddha replied, "Just like that, I leave your hostility with you. I am not picking it up."

Conversely, receiving or offering the gift of the Dharma (dhamma-dana⁵) is considered one of the highest expressions of generosity. The Buddha advises us to assess the wisdom of what is offered for ourselves. If it seems helpful, receive it respectfully and do your absolute best to practice with it.

These teachings are offered out of love and generosity. The highest gift I receive is the trust that you will find what works for you, set aside the rest, and continue to practice sincerely. Giving over wholeheartedly to this practice deepens its transformative power. Eventually, the offering becomes both the beginning and the end—a beneficial cycle of letting go into freedom for the benefit of yourself and others.

Thank you very much for your practice, your presence, and your kind attention. May the benefits of our practice ripple outwards through our lives and all the lives we touch. May all beings benefit from our practice here together.