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Guided Meditation: Mindfully Entering, Mindfully Leaving; Dharmette: Buddha's Smile (5 of 5) Protecting the Practice - David Lorey

The following talk was given by David Lorey at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 18, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Good morning, friends. Welcome. I’m just slightly late; I wanted to respond to a couple of requests from yesterday and the day before for the texts I’m referring to this week. For some people, that’s useful in their practice—a bow to you—and for others, it doesn’t make any difference. I’ve stuck them in the chat there. I lost a few minutes in the doing, but perhaps we gained a few minutes in the process.

Welcome to Friday. It’s been a lovely week for me to be with you all, to share some Dharma, to sit together, and to explore this particular teaching which is, as I said at the outset, seldom referred to—as far as I know—and quite sweet.

The theme for the week has been "The Buddha’s Smile." The idea, as this text suggests, is that when we cultivate a meditation practice, when we deepen the stillness and the collectiveness of the meditation, five knowledges can and will arise naturally by themselves. I’ve further suggested that as we notice these and they come to our attention, they are strengthened. I’ll review them briefly later in the Dharmette¹. All of them can be accompanied by a sense of ease, a sense of pleasantness and pleasure, and thus become deeply settled in our minds as being wholesome and onward-leading. I think that is the source of this smile that comes in meditation, which we can see reflected in depictions of the Buddha and take as both inspiration and instruction.

Today, interestingly, we get quite tactical. The fifth knowledge that arises in meditation is: "I mindfully enter into and emerge from this deep meditation." As I'll say a little bit more in the guided meditation and then in the Dharmette, sometimes we rush in—as I did today, getting here right at 7:00 and settling in—and just as quickly, the bell rings and boom, we’re back into daily life. Today’s teaching reminds us that the way we enter into meditation and the way we leave are really important in protecting the practice. In some Buddhist traditions, there is a whole culture of protecting the practice, and that will be our focus today.

We usually get a lot of instruction about entering, because as we start a guided sit, teachers typically give a sense of how to enter. We get a lot less about how to leave, and that’s where I’ll focus my comments later. But in the meditation today, I’ll try to bring a little bit more of that sense of entering and leaving to the fore in the guided portions.

Guided Meditation: Mindfully Entering, Mindfully Leaving

I’m going to take a sip of tea as I encourage you to prepare for meditation. This is the most important thing, perhaps, about entering: to do so, as this text suggests, mindfully. I’m going to say deliberately, intentionally. I’m pausing to take a sip of tea; if you have a cup of tea handy, you might do the same as you prepare to meditate. Think about what conditions can be put in place that will help deepen the meditation.

Along with a sip of tea and settling into a physical location, I’m starting to bring the eyes down, because that’s what I do to bring attention inward. Maybe we can also bring to mind intention. What is it that we sit for? Why do we sit together? Just touch base with our desire to be free, and remind ourselves that as we settle into meditation, the mind with which we prepare is an important part of the benefits we can expect. We bring an intention for our own well-being and the well-being of others into the meditation as an inspiration and an intention. Thus, we prepare the mind to meditate.

Instead of just plopping down on the cushion or in our chair, we can ease in gradually and touch in with our fundamental intention for the practice. Maybe it’s just some ease; maybe it’s some momentary relief from stress. Maybe it has a deeper course in our lives, related to more spiritual orientations—that we want to be free, we want others to be free, and that in addition to relief, we want release. This is a wholesome aspiration in our practice.

The meditation, as I suggested yesterday—whether it’s returning to the breath or settling in—can be unhurried. In this unhurriedness, there’s wholesomeness. Meditation is a place where we let go of hurry; we let go of striving. We balance effort with allowing, as we said yesterday, and we take our time as we take it easy. Interestingly, the meditation is deeper, as this day’s teaching suggests, when we enter mindfully. Part of that is entering without hurry. We enter with ease; we enter with good intention, because these provide important conditions for the deepening of meditation.

Now, after sipping tea, looking around, and settling in carefully and unhurriedly, we touch in with intention—intentions for this sit to be here now, and maybe for the whole practice to be free. Having done these useful, skillful preparatory actions, now we can make contact with the breath. We make contact with the breath in a way that brings these intentions with it. Today, every time we return attention to the breath, every time we open our attention back up broadly when it’s become tight and contracted, we can retouch with this intention to be fully here, to let things arise and pass as they will. We retouch this intention to find ease, to lean in toward ease, to lull the mind toward ease.

Well prepared with intention and instruction, we can settle into some time in silence.

[Silence]

This teaching encourages us to mindfully leave the meditation as a way to deepen it. So, let’s just slowly bring attention back to this meditating being in the world. Maybe start to take stock of our surroundings. Perhaps there’s a handy sound, perhaps there’s a sensation of the body against the cushion or the chair, that can help start to bring us gradually, unhurriedly, and gently back into a more energetic interaction with the world and our experience in it.

In the Dharmette, we’ll talk about some specific ways we could do this. We don’t have to do them all each time we leave the meditation, but for here and now, what comes up is perhaps touching in again with our intention. Maybe we had an intention for this particular meditation period to just be here with experience without fighting against it so much. Whether or not that was the experience of the meditation, it’s useful to reconnect with that intention. Compare our experience with that intention and notice places where, yes, there was some greater ease with experience. We have a choice here to perhaps focus on the positive—what felt good, what was wholesome. As we touch in with those mind-states, they are strengthened.

We can touch in, too, with intentions that go further than today’s sit and have to do with why we practice. Right—there’s this strong desire for well-being, an aspiration to be freer, and a heart that would like to be open to others. We can just recall those intentions for our practice. This is a realm in which we take the intention for this little meditation period—or even for returning to the breath in this moment—and we bring it out into the larger world to meet experience without struggle, so that we act and interact with the mind in peace.

Anyway, touch in with intention as a way to leave the meditation mindfully. As we do so, we can commit to sharing the benefits of the meditation with those around us and, by implication, spreading out in concentric circles to all beings.

Dharmette: Buddha's Smile (5 of 5) Protecting the Practice

Welcome, friends. Leaving the meditation mindfully continues now for me, and for all of us. I’m reaching for my cup of tea. I feel the mug; I note that it’s cooler than at the beginning of our sit. I take a sip, and in all of this, I’m aware of leaving mindfully, which will be the main focus of the Dharmette today.

This is day five of what I called "The Buddha’s Smile" this week. The idea is that in meditation, understanding about the meditation arises—understandings about how to make it deeper, how to keep feeding it, how to keep encouraging it. With these understandings comes a smile, a sense of contentment and ease that may be inward, outward, or shared with others.

For those who might be just joining now, I did include the name of the Sutta² that I’ve been riffing on this week in the YouTube chat. Also, because a couple of people asked, I provided the specific Suttas in the Majjhima Nikāya³—the collection of middle-length discourses of the Buddha—where the particular topic of cultivating the pleasantness or the pleasure of meditation is brought forward.

Mindfully entering and leaving meditation—I call this Dharmette "Protecting the Practice." I really love that idea. We ask so much of this practice, but we can also ask: "What can I give the practice? What might the practice benefit from that I can provide?" One thing we can do for the practice is give it our full attention, consideration, and respect. We can do this in the way we enter and leave the meditation.

Regarding entering, where I feel more instruction is typically provided, we get a lot of guidance around connecting with the breath and how to return to it in those first fifteen, twenty, or thirty minutes. Depending on the day, the weather—interior and exterior—it takes time for the mind to settle. It takes time for everyone. To those familiar instructions, I would add a couple of additional ideas.

One is just to begin. Begin meditating before you sit down. Begin meditating before you meditate. Set things up; bow, smile—whatever you do that is part of a habit. It doesn't have to be a ritual, but just a habit, because this is a wholesome habit that replaces less wholesome habits. However you prepare—in my case, walking upstairs—you can walk to the place you meditate, look around, and take stock of the ambient sounds. What's happening in the body? Is there hunger, gurgling, a need to use the bathroom? Is there restlessness or still some sleepiness? Notice what's happening in the body. Notice the quality of attention in the mind: Is there ease, hurry, anxiousness, contentment, warmth, or stillness?

As I’ve emphasized this week: don’t hurry. Take it easy. There’s no hurry needed here. Hurry is counterproductive in this practice. Unlike much of the rest of our lives, when we sit down to meditate, we leave certain things to one side. We don’t have to push them away or pull them out by the roots; we’re just setting them aside while we meditate—setting aside the way we strive and approach life outside of meditation. It’s very nice to set them down for a period.

Gil⁴ says—I don’t think he made it up, but I like it when he says it—that in this practice, the quickest way from point A to point B, from here and now to where we want to be, is to be fully present here at point A. It’s here we want to be, and we don’t have to hurry to be here. In fact, when we get hurried, we are less "here now" and more "there then." Be here now. Another way to say that might just be: don’t hurry. There’s no reason to hurry. We’re not trying to get anywhere else.

Having said that about mindfully entering, here’s a little bit more about mindfully leaving or exiting the meditation, which we hear a lot less about. When we come to the end of the meditation, it’s useful to take a few deep breaths and bring awareness back to the body. As you do so, notice any sense of ease that’s there. Be with the awareness that noticing it strengthens it. Notice where we are. Sometimes you’ll notice this most forcefully when we open the eyes; there will be an awareness that the eyes are focused in a middle distance, like the mind, and it takes a while for focus to come back. Just be aware of what that’s like before stirring, before moving from the cushion.

Another very useful thing to do is to come out the way we went in. Retrace our steps. Whatever depth or ease came up in the meditation, come back out the way we went in so that we’re creating a path. It helps to remember how we got in so we can go in next time. This might mean noticing what the breathing was like, where the mind was centered, and what led up to greater ease or contentment. Make a mental note of that and be prepared to try those same steps next time. The conditions we create both entering and leaving are really important in deepening the meditation.

In some Buddhist traditions, such as the Tibetan Mahamudra⁵ in particular, there are quite sophisticated approaches to what is called "protecting the practice." In this case, protecting entails a comparison of the immediate experience of the meditation with the teachings given. This can be a very powerful thing to do as we leave: to notice that there was greater ease when there was less attention to self, or there was more letting go when I returned to the breath without judgment. These are important things to notice because they connect the experience of this particular sit with the teachings that lead onward.

I love the idea of taking care of the practice. We often look at the practice as a tool. I think of my father and the fact that I have some of his tools; I don’t always take care of them like he would have. This is a place where we should take care of the tools. After we’ve used a tool—as I was taught—if you use a shovel, wash it off and let it dry in the sun. Don’t let it get all rusty in the garage. (I’ve got to wash off my shovel later!)

Protecting the tool, taking care of the meditation, is something that can powerfully deepen it. That’s the point of entering and leaving mindfully: it helps the meditation grow deeper. This is all before we stir from the cushion. And then, before you get up, we might take time to feel grateful for the time we spent meditating. Almost "thank" the practice.

And don’t leave entirely. Throughout the day, we can keep practicing. We can keep the breath in mind, for example. If we keep the breath, these instructions, this ease, and this peace with us, we create a more sustained mindful awareness throughout the day. Then it’s there next time we go to sit down; we’ve already been with the breath, we’ve already been preparing. Not leaving entirely is a way of always being ready to enter.

That’s what I have for this week. In the couple of minutes that remain, I’ll just refresh our collective memory for this teaching. I’ll read some of it verbatim.

"Practitioners"—this is addressed then and now to us, to people who practice—"develop the meditation, deepen the meditation, cultivate the stillness and collectiveness and well-being of the meditation. And when you do so, five knowledges will arise. What five?"

1. That this meditation is pleasurable now and results in benefits in the future. We can lean into that wholesome contentment and satisfaction.
2. That this meditation points onward toward greater things—toward deep spiritual knowing and release.
3. That this immersion, this deep meditation, we cultivate in good company—with one another and other people who share these aspirations, who seek to open their hearts and act with a mind at ease and at peace. Ultimately, we practice together with the Buddha and others who have awakened in this practice.
4. (As we discussed yesterday) The knowledge arises in the meditation that this peace, tranquility, and unification of mind isn’t held in place by force—that we are better off when we balance effort with allowing.
5. And finally, today: that we benefit the meditation and strengthen it when we enter and leave mindfully.

This is an interesting ordering for me because it’s the most tactical at the end, and yet it’s perfect for this 7:00 AM sit. It gives us something very specific to do when we gather again. I won’t be with you Monday in the teacher's seat, but when the group gathers again next week, there will be this renewed opportunity to enter and leave mindfully in a way that strengthens the meditation.

It’s always a pleasure to do this. I’m happy to be with you and I appreciate people coming together to support one another’s practice in this way. I'm always happy to sit in for Gil with my wonderful teaching colleagues, Ying and Kim, and the many others who sit the 7:00 AM with you.

Take care, everyone, until next time our paths cross. Take good care of your practice.