This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Wholesome Connection; The Five Precepts (3 of 5) Avoiding Unwholesome Connection. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Wholesome Connection; Dharmette: The Five Precepts (3 of 5); Avoiding Unwholesome Connection - David Lorey

The following talk was given by David Lorey at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 05, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Welcome, welcome back. We'll continue today, the third day of this exploration of the five precepts¹—commitments that allow us to find greater freedom in our daily activities, focusing on five realms or arenas in which we can avoid unskillful action, avoid harm, cultivate skillful responses. Today we'll focus on the third precept: abstaining, as a way to support practice, from unskillful expression of sexual energy. That's the way I'm going to capture it for the moment. Before we meditate, we'll talk a little bit after the sit about ways to hold, ways to think about the idea and definition of the third precept.

Guided Meditation: Wholesome Connection

So let's settle in for a sit. Because I think it's a useful support for exploring the third precept, the guided meditation will, at least it's the intention, focus on balance. That at least is the intention going in; we'll see how that comes up.

Taking our meditation posture, settling the body into a posture that's comfortable and at ease, but also alert—an easeful, energetic posture for meeting our experience. A posture that balances alertness, energy, attentiveness, attunement with an attitude of being open to what comes up.

We can bring the eyes down if that's comfortable, closing them all the way if that's supportive. And as we bring the eyes down or close them, we can lean into the rebalancing that happens naturally with that movement, moving away from the visual realm to the inner life, the inner world.

We can feel a similar rebalancing if we bring the attention in and down—inward into the body, downward from the mind into the body. And here too, we can lean into that rebalancing. Even if it's early morning for us, walking around with our eyes open, we may find ourselves already just a little out of balance. It's useful to notice the rebalancing that the meditation can provide.

We can bring our attention to something in our experience in the meditation—the breathing—that has within it, for the vast majority of us in most cases, a natural balance. When we connect our attention with the breathing, we're connecting with a phenomenon in our experience and our bodily functions that's naturally balanced. We can settle in with confidence, connecting with the breath and feeling the way that the breath knows what the appropriate, the wise, the skillful amount of oxygen needed is, and just how much waste gas to expel with each out-breath.

Today, as we engage in this exercise, this practice of bringing our attention repeatedly back to here and now, connecting over and over again with the breath, we can be aware of this rebalancing that happens without any effort. We nudge or gently pull attention back to the breathing when we find the mind caught up in thinking. We can do it without hurry, without judgment. And we can notice the rebalancing. The world of thought, so attractive with all its pleasures, with all its delights, and with all its anxious meanderings, we can notice is sometimes a place of unbalance. We find ourselves a little off balance. As we return to the breath, as we open back up to the breath, bringing the breath back to the center of our attention, we can notice the sense of coming back into balance. Just a balance that can have both thought and ease in it. It's a place where we can rest the mind by connecting it with the natural breathing balance.

Each breath offers an opportunity for balance and rebalance. Just this breath. No need to be concerned about the previous breath. The breath itself is unconcerned with the next breath; it doesn't need to plan, doesn't need to fret. Whichever breath we find ourselves with when we return to the breathing, bringing the breathing back to the center of attention, this is the right breath. This is the breath where balance is available.

And it's okay to wobble. It's okay to get off balance. Much like riding a bike, pushing a scooter, or even walking, we rebalance, connect with the momentum of the breathing. And like those activities, maybe the rebalancing can also be pleasant. Of the enjoyment that's available in the meditation, this lovely feeling of rebalancing again and again, this is an enjoyment, this is a pleasure even, that the Buddha has encouraged us to cultivate. Not to fear, but to lean into. This natural balancing available in the meditation is a safe place to enjoy ourselves.

Enjoy.

So as we bring this meditation period to a close, we can return to this exhortation to enjoy. This enjoyment, this pleasure that comes with the meditation doesn't need to be feared. It doesn't depend on external conditions. It's free, and it allows us to develop a wholesome relationship with enjoyment. We can let it come and go. And because sometimes our enjoyment of things is sticky, we get entangled, we can, in dedicating merit today, make a practice of letting it go by wishing it to others. May all beings know some of this pleasure. May all beings know some of this enjoyment, this free contentment. May all beings know ease. May all beings be free from suffering.

Dharmette: The Five Precepts (3 of 5); Avoiding Unwholesome Connection

So welcome again, greetings.

We'll explore today, as we have been in brief fashion, with a focus on actions instead of actors, with a focus on mental action, another of the precepts. Today, the third precept, which is a commitment to abstain from unskillful expression of sexual energy or unskillful entanglement with the enjoyment of sexual expression. The wording we use to capture the third precept can be really important in guiding us. And I like this idea that just came up in the meditation, that the enjoyment that we experience can be experienced in a free way in the meditation, and that the meditation has a place in helping us understand how to respond skillfully or with a wholesome mind state to the enjoyment that is a natural part of living.

Sometimes householders, lay practitioners like most of us here, think that monastics have it easy. And in regards to the third precept, monastics at least have a clear rule to abstain entirely from sexual relations. For the lay practitioner, it's quite a bit more complex. Again, it's not a commandment, it's not a rule that we abstain from sexual interactions, and yet it can be a commitment to be attentive to the way that we react and respond to the enjoyment and pleasure that come up in our sexual behaviors, our sexual expressions.

We can expand the definition in, I think, some useful ways from the focus on sexual—which in many cases implies social, that is, interactions with other people—to include aspects of expression of sexual energy that are private or erotic in nature rather than social or interactive. In some cases, the precept is expanded to include our interactions with all sensual pleasures, not just sexual pleasures. This is, in a way, the literal meaning of the phrase that's used in Pali² to express this commitment to abstain from certain behaviors. It might be a little too broad, but as we'll see in the suggestion for a daily practice today, sensual pleasures of lesser sorts, or less heady sorts, or less complicated sorts—whether that be chocolate or another pleasure you encounter today—can again give us a small thing, a little thing to practice with: how we respond to pleasure signals in the brain, how we respond to enjoyment.

In the case of this precept, it can be useful to invoke the other four precepts, two of which we've already discussed and two more of which are to come. We can ask ourselves, for example, with the first precept: does this sexual activity in which I plan to engage, am engaged, or have just engaged cause physical harm to myself or others? We could also say, does it cause harm to a relationship? To myself, to others, to both?

In regards to the second precept, which we discussed yesterday: does this sexual activity involve taking something that's not freely given? I suggested yesterday that a valuable practice is to watch the way we use the internet, and this is a place where there can be entanglement for some of us around things not freely given that find their way into our expression or our enjoyment of sexual energy.

In regards to the fourth precept, which we'll get to tomorrow, which involves avoiding unskillful speech, we might ask whether this sexual activity, this sexual interaction, this expression of sexual energy is deceitful. Does it involve, for example, making something secret instead of just making something appropriately private? Again, it's a way of asking ourselves, learning more about how we're responding to an action of sexual expression or enjoyment.

And the fifth precept, the one that asks us to abstain from what I've called intoxicated heedlessness, we can ask, and sometimes it's useful to ask, whether our entanglement with the pleasure or enjoyment or expression of sexual energy is compulsive or avoidant, or leads to heedlessness. Again, a way of querying our action.

Aside from the kinds of harm that might be referenced in each of these ways of applying the other four precepts, it's useful to just bring to awareness that it's not pleasure or enjoyment of sex or of erotic activities that's problematic. It's rather our relationship with that enjoyment or that pleasure, how we respond to it, how we get entangled in it, or whether we can remain free of entanglement with it. The pleasure we experience—this is true for all beings, I think I can say that pretty broadly—pleasure provides one of the most important signals to the brain, to the being, and it has a very forceful influence in our lives. And so learning to work with it, seeing it not as a problem but as something we can problematically respond to, helps us forward. This practice of mindful attention to what's happening here and now that the Buddhist traditions give us can be a very valuable way of helping us meet this universal experience.

We can't expect to make problematic pleasure go away; that's not how it's seen in the Buddhist view. Rather, we can definitely develop skillful ways to meet what is very likely to come up in our experience. So we can notice the stickiness of pleasure, the stickiness of sexual enjoyment, and it's useful to notice that it's not inherently sticky; it's the mind that gets stuck to it, gets snagged, gets entangled, gets caught up. The sticking to it, or the entanglement, the knottedness in it, and also the selfing around it—some of the shame or guilt or all the sorts of things that the mind adds unhelpfully to our experience, and alternately the sense of power or arrogance or superiority that can come with responses to pleasure.

We can bring these kinds of ways of responding into our practice. They're not separate from our practice. They don't have to exist in some different world. As Andrea Fella, the co-guiding teacher of IMC says, there's nothing that is outside the realm of mindfulness. There's nothing we can't bring this practice to. So we can let our growing understanding that develops with the practice of our minds, of our hearts, when they feel closed, when they feel open—we can let that growing sensitivity or attunement help us understand what forms of sexual interaction and enjoyment might best be refrained from and those which we can enjoy without entanglement or without harm to ourselves or others. We can start to look to the attitudes we have toward these activities. And again, our practice can help us notice how physical desire, how pleasure in the physical realm, the sexual realm, which activities actively support practice, which attitudes toward these things are a support for our practice. These are precepts that, in encouraging us to abstain from harmful activity, support our practice. And this is true here too, that we can actively contribute to creating a stronger relationship, stronger connection with others, with ourselves, with our own natural patterns of arousal and expression of pleasure.

This is a nice thing to keep in mind, I just kind of tumbled over this right now, but this is a good reminder that these precepts are to support our practice. So we bring our practice, we bring these aspects of life into our practice instead of keeping them apart.

What might this mean for what to do, what kind of things we could engage in today? I think a couple of questions, like we've sort of proposed in previous days, might be useful in this realm, this arena, this kind of heady space of the enjoyment of physical activity that's sexual or erotic. I think a good one might be something like, how fully present can I be in this experience? How mindful can I be here? As Gil said, as Andrea Fella said—I hear it in Andrea's voice—there's no place mindfulness can't go. There's no place outside it. It's never too small. So what would it mean to ask, or what value might it have to ask, how mindful can I be of what's happening in this expression of this natural energy, in this enjoyment? Can I be fully present? That's a good signal. If I can be fully present, there's some wholesome response to what's happening.

Another similar one is, can this pleasure, can this enjoyment—and I like, by the way, I noticed it in the meditation, that for me the word "enjoyment" lands in a different way than "pleasure." A lot of associations with the word pleasure. When I think about it as sexual enjoyment or enjoyment of natural sexual interests, activities, expressions that come along with being born in a human body, being born in any body, enjoyment somehow helps me lighten up a little bit around it. I don't know if that's true for anybody else, but here's an encouragement to find a word that helps support your practice. So, can this enjoyment be skillfully held? Can I enjoy it and not add a lot to it? Can I enjoy it in a way that's not causing harm? And then maybe let it be less sticky. Maybe when it causes no harm, it's less sticky.

Like the first day when we talked about ants, here too it might be useful to start with something very small. And here there might be some utility in a broad definition of the third precept that focuses on sensual pleasure, pleasure of the senses, rather than restricting it to sexual pleasure. A good way to begin with our relationship with the pleasures of the senses would be something that is perhaps not as heady as a sexual activity, but maybe comes a little bit close. I mentioned chocolate at the outset. I guess for me that's something that can bring a lot of delight, a lot of enjoyment, and also can be kind of sticky. I don't mean literally on a warm day, like apparently it's supposed to be in California today looking at the chat, but rather I can start to get wrapped up in wanting more chocolate, wanting better chocolate, wanting my friend Kirsten's chocolate. So, choosing something small that for you has enjoyment and has delight in it, and then watching how present can you be. Can the pleasantness, can the pleasure, can the enjoyment, whatever word works for you to support your practice, can it be skillfully held? And perhaps can it be let go of? You know, could it be shared with others in a way that helps skillfully hold a pleasure?

So that's where we'll leave it for today. I really appreciate everybody checking in. I'm distracted a little bit by looking down and to the side at the chats as they come in, and it's really lovely to see people exchanging well wishes and checking in. May you be well till tomorrow, and may you find some wholesome, some skillful delight and enjoyment in the day. We'll see you tomorrow morning. Take care till then. Bye.