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Guided Meditation: A Field of Generosity; Dharmette: The Five Precepts (2 of 5): Not taking anything not freely given - David Lorey

The following talk was given by David Lorey at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 04, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Greetings from here. Alright, it's time to begin. We'll continue today with an exploration of the second precept in our week-long exploration of the five precepts, these commitments to aspire, these commitments to act skillfully in five different areas of life. Today we'll talk about the precept that guides us to only accept things that are freely given, to avoid taking things not freely given. The guided meditation will support this idea, this theme.

Guided Meditation: A Field of Generosity

We can find our meditation posture, looking for a posture that's balanced. In the very posture we adopt for the meditation, we can find some of the balance of practice between effort and allowing, between alertness, being present, being attentive to what comes up, and adopting an attitude of letting go, letting be, letting whatever arises come up without adding too much judgment, too much opinion, too much preference, just nicely balanced in the gentle momentum of the practice, one breath leading to the next. In the spirit of taking what's given freely and giving freely ourselves, we can in this meditation ask the question, what can I give to the practice? We want, we expect so much from the practice, we ask a lot of it, and today maybe we can just bring our hearts a little bit to what can we offer the practice, what can we give freely to this practice.

One thing we can give freely of, one thing of which there's an inexhaustible store, is our attention. Maybe the sweetest gift we can give to ourselves and to others. And we can do so in a way that's free. We can do this every time we mind that we're caught up in thought, maybe not quite here, maybe a little pressed down or a little tight, maybe the mind is a little contracted around something. Perhaps our field of awareness becomes narrow, limited, constrained. And we can open back up to the breathing, bring the breathing back into the center of attention, the center of awareness. And as we do so, and as we feel coming back into presence, opening back out into the breathing, perhaps we can feel this as a gift, a gift freely given. Just to let our attention spread out again into this middle space where the breathing is happening, where the body is sitting, where the weight of the body can be perceived in the bench, in the chair, on the cushion. If we're standing, on our feet. If we're meditating in a lying-down posture, we can feel gravity holding us.

Over and over again, particularly in the first minutes of a sit, the mind gets snagged on things. Thought spirals develop, little knots and tangles of thinking emerge, usually around one of the well-known axes of our minds: the future, the past, other people, ourselves. And before we hurry back to the breath today, we can notice maybe some of the tightness that's there whenever we find the mind caught up in these things. It's quite a gift of the mind to us that it can do these things: project and plan into the future, recall, remember, think about others, think about ourselves in the world. For the meditation, we just keep opening back up to the here and now. When the breath falls into the background, we bring it back to the foreground. We foreground it.

As we open back up each time, building this habit of returning to presence, strengthening the tendency to keep coming back here, we can understand it as a gift of attention, paying attention, showing up for ourselves, showing up for our experience. So instead of maybe feeling some frustration that the mind has wandered off or that I've got tangled up again, or all the other things we can add to that experience—shouldn't be like this, should be otherwise, no good at this, this doesn't work for me, all that stuff, all that extra added on to experience—just the mind getting tangled up in things, the mind being mind, the mind being mind. When we come back, we can, instead of hurrying back, we can notice that from that tightness, from that place of concern, from that place of worry or preoccupation, you can come back to a place that's at least marginally more still, more open, more simple, more slow. And this coming back, coming back to center, coming back to home, coming back to here, back to now, today let us conceive of this as a gift, a gift freely given.

As we bring this meditation to a close, we can dedicate merit as a gift freely given. Maybe we can think of it this way today, in the spirit of engaging with the second precept. Any stillness that arises in our meditation, any benefit that comes from our practice, we can offer, we can give to others. We can make it available to other beings that need it, and we can do so freely, that is, without any expectation of reciprocity, getting something back. Sometimes this giving away of the benefit of practice, some of the stillness of the meditation, sometimes you can feel the heart close a little around that. We want to hold on to it. We're not sure that it's okay to give it away. What happens to that precious portion that benefits us? And here's the teaching on that: we give away from an inexhaustible store of goodness and a benefit from the practice. And even more, as we give it away, it grows. Giving away the benefit of practice, dedicating it to others, offering it freely in the world doesn't diminish it. In fact, quite the opposite, it strengthens it, increases it. So in the spirit, let's dedicate the merit of our practice to all beings, spreading this gift of attention, of stillness, of meditative calm, of the gifts of practice as broadly, as freely as we find possible in this moment, that it may benefit all beings. May all beings know some of this stillness, some of this sweetness, some of this joy, some of this calm, some of this ease. May all beings be free from suffering.

Dharmette: The Five Precepts (2 of 5): Not taking anything not freely given

So welcome again, greetings to everyone. Seeing that many people joined us during the sit. So today we'll take a look at the second precept. This is the precept that commits us, or that in which we undertake for the purpose of supporting our practice, refraining from taking anything that's not freely given. And the guided meditation, for those of you who were here, tried to help support this in our practice by suggesting at least two things: that we have the ability to give the gift of attention in our practice, we have something we can give to our practice that allows us a way to know in our hearts what it feels like to give freely, which helps us understand when something's freely, freely offered, freely offered to us. And then we also can take the benefits of practice and share them, knowing when we feel maybe a little tightness around that, if that comes up—it does for me sometimes—that we take from an inexhaustible store. And paradoxically perhaps, but our practice is full of paradoxes, that as we give it away, as we let go, we don't diminish the store. In fact, it seems to increase.

So the second precept, as we take a look at each of the five precepts that support, can support our practice this week, is this commitment to abstaining or refraining from taking things not given. I add "not freely given" because I think it raises the bar. Much as we've seen with the first precept, this isn't a commandment. In other words, it's not a commandment that "thou shalt not steal," for example. But rather, and here's, I'm going to be precise in the language, it's a commitment to abstain from the unskillful making things our own, unskillful expression of an acquisitional urge, maybe we could say. It's more complicated, I don't know if I like the way that came out, but refraining from unskillfully making things our own. So I think it's an invitation. Unlike a commandment where I can say, "Okay, I didn't steal anything today, I don't intend to steal anything today, I'm not somebody who typically steals things," it's just not that simple or that rich or that supportive. That wouldn't be as supportive of practice than this invitation to bring careful attention to our habit of wanting to make things mine.

Trying to think of some ways to illustrate this, and during the meditation, one of the places my mind went off was, "how would it be to share just a brief clip of The Beatles' song, George's song, I think, 'I Me Mine'?" Those of you who know this song can maybe bring it to mind. I decided not to share it because I wasn't sure that doing so would be making use of something freely given. And I know I can probably get away with using less than 15 seconds, wouldn't be caught by YouTube's, what is it, that Content ID algorithm, no ads would appear or the video would be blocked, probably. But it just made me reflect, maybe it's not freely given. Somebody owns the copyright. I don't lose sleep thinking about whether that person needs a fraction of a cent that would come from, anyway. The weariness in that song, and again, I encourage you to listen to it in your paid service, Spotify, Apple Music, whatever, where you're engaged in a commercial exchange. The weariness of that voice that says, "I, me, me, mine, all through the day, all through the night, I, me, me, mine." This urge to make things mine, it brings with it a weariness. That's the heaviness of the self that we impose on things, just coming to sort of influence our interactions in the world.

And this makes me think that the internet may be a really useful way to practice, to explore a little bit this urge to make things mine, and also to notice, ask ourselves whether the things we make use of are freely given. There's a lot of realms we could do this in, but the internet is one that I expect many of us will make use of later in the day. In point of fact, we use it at this moment, and just noticing, wondering, questioning ourselves, is the content I'm enjoying, is the content I'm making use of, if it's another kind of content, is it freely given? Particularly the content that's embedded in things we enjoy or things we make use of, was it freely given? Would it be freely given? This just provides a way to keep asking this question, keep practicing with this precept in a way that's probably very immediate for most of us logged on here to YouTube.

I'm aware of this little thing, I don't know if this occurs to anybody else, but you know, I enjoy content, I make use of content. I'm going to use YouTube as an example, where I, just as I practice with the second precept, I'm aware that I'm frequently encouraged to hit the like button and subscribe. Sometimes I'm directed, as they do, I can do this, to the link to some free something, bell or whistle, in the below. Just click on this link and I will send you a free this or that if you share your email with me. And just that I'm making use of something that actually, I'm not, I'm taking something that isn't freely given. It's actually, there's an invitation to engage in an exchange that I'm not choosing to engage in, and thus taking something that's actually only partially freely given. At any rate, it can get very detailed and precise, but that's part of the purpose of these precepts, is to really get us to engage in careful thinking about our actions, the implications, the consequences they have in the world. And maybe more than anything, how it feels in the heart. What is this sense when I want to make something my own? What is this self that gets created around the enjoyment of this content?

This suggests that the central problem with taking things not freely given, making them my own, is that it reinforces self, or selfing, reinforces an idea of self, an idea that we know has stress and suffering inherent in it. And this selfing process can get in the way of an otherwise free flow of things freely given, freely accepted. So whereas by making a practice of only taking things freely given, by developing a habit of giving freely ourselves, we can reduce harmful consequences of this incessant imposing self on the world. When we don't engage thoughtfully with this kind of precept, we're just going around our daily business without really engaging with whether harm is caused by our accepting things or taking things, making things mine. By abstaining or refraining from not taking things freely given, we're actually letting go. We're letting go of an unskillful habit of letting self get in the way of this kind of cleansing, purifying flow of things that are in fact freely given, accepted freely, given freely.

This may sound sort of abstruse and theoretical, but each of these precepts in a way takes us to the heart of the Buddhist teaching, or various aspects of the heart of the Buddhist teachings. And in particularly with the second precept, I have this sense that it allows us a way to hold self more lightly in a way that's freeing. When we accept things, we question, "Is this something that is freely given and I can accept freely?" We're letting go of something that really is quite stressful to hold on to. And maybe in taking this into some sort of daily practice today, and I'll give a few suggestions, you can bring some attention to what that feels like to hold the things we hold, to hold the things we hang on to with a little bit more lightness perhaps, let go a little more.

So how to take this into the day? I could just say, "Don't steal today." I'm joking, that would be too simple and it would let us off a little too easily. But perhaps we can, in sort of our orientation to others, orientation to what comes at us in a huge torrent, fire hose from the internet today, we can ask this question of, "Is this freely given?" Particularly, is the content embedded in this TikTok video, this person's experience in the past, is this freely given? And the orientation inward might be, is there an urge to make this mine in some way? And again, it may not be a thing that there's an urge to make mine, but an experience that I desire to make mine in some way.

And returning to the top of the hour and the guided sit, this idea of giving something to the practice, this too might have an inward and an outward orientation today. For yourself, for ourselves, you might think about, "What can I give to the practice today?" This practice from which I expect so much and want so much. There's a lot of "I" in there, "my benefit," "my freedom." "What might I give it?" It's an interesting question to ask when you sit down to meditate or when you find yourself bringing practice into daily life. "What can I give to a practice here? What might it need?" You know, maybe that's another 15 minutes on the cushion. Maybe that's a certain way of being in the world of experience.

And then in an orientation outward to others, maybe giving the gift, the sweet gift, the precious gift of attention, giving it freely, listening to somebody without any expectation of it being reciprocated. Just giving the gift of attention, listening carefully to somebody without asserting an opinion or without judging or without having to say anything ourselves, but just giving the gift of our attention. The more we pay attention in this way, the more we create a habit of being able to do it. And these little exercises over the course of the day can help us create a tendency in the mind to make this the second nature response that comes when we're in an actual situation that, as we said yesterday, we eventually become practitioners who are unable to take something that's not freely given. We don't have to spend a lot of time doing the exercise, we just know this feels like an exchange in which good practice doesn't need to be involved. It's not freely given and I can move along.

So anyway, thank you for coming today, thank you for supporting each other's practice, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Take care.