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Guided Meditation: Being Embodied; Dharmette: Our Stories (1 of 5) They Change! - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 16, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Greetings! Hello! Good morning, good afternoon, or good evening. Greetings even to those of you in the future who are watching or listening to this. A warm welcome.

As many of you can see from the title of the video, I’m going to do a series on stories this week. Stories are mental events—things that we construct in the mind. If we are not in stories, the opposite might be to be "embodied"—to be here in our physical experience. I’d like to start this morning with a guided meditation focused on being embodied, as a contrast to being lost in stories.

Guided Meditation: Being Embodied

Take a meditation posture. Maybe take a few long, slow, deep exhales as a way to release any obvious tension and signal that we’re going to orient towards meditation.

Now, allowing the breath to return to normal, recognize that the body knows how to breathe. We don’t need to do anything in particular with the breath. Rest your attention on the experience of sitting. If you’re sitting in a chair or on a couch, feel the pressure against the body along the back. If you’re lying down, you’ll feel that pressure against the back as well. All of us, no matter what we’re sitting on, can feel that pressure against the backside. Feel connected to your sitting surface. Feel the pressure against the back of the legs.

Feel your feet and whatever they’re touching. Notice that place of connection, feeling grounded and connected. Use this as the foundation upon which you’re sitting.

Connecting with other areas of the body, notice places where we might hold tension, like around the eyes or the jaw. Bringing attention into the shoulders, move them away from the ears and let the shoulder blades slide down the back. Tune into the experience of having a back—the upper back and the lower back.

Is there a way the chest can be just a tiny bit more open? Moving the shoulders back just a tiny bit. Relax the belly, letting the belly be soft.

Feel embodied, as if inhabiting the body. We’re here now in this experience of the body at this moment, however it is. If you have some tension or discomfort, can you simply be in a body that has some tension or discomfort?

Set a sense of direction for this meditation period: one of kindness and warm-heartedness towards yourself and towards your experience.

Rest your attention on the sensations of breathing. Feeling the stretch with the inhale... and the release of the stretch with the exhale. Breathe at your own pace, in a natural way with a natural rhythm. We’re just tuning into different aspects of breathing.

Notice the transitions between inhales and exhales. How does that feel? We don’t need words; we’re just experiencing. Tuning into and being sensitive to our experience of breathing in this moment, whether we experience it in the chest, the belly, or for some of you, feeling the air going in and out of the nose.

If the mind gets lost in thought or lost in stories, it doesn't have to be a problem. We very simply and gently begin again, without adding any extra stories about what it means for us as meditators. We just begin again with the sensations of breathing.

Right now, there’s nothing else to do and nowhere else to be. We’re just here with this experience of breathing.

Dharmette: Our Stories (1 of 5) They Change!

Good morning, or good day. For me, it is morning here, but whatever time it is and wherever you are, a warm welcome. It’s such a delight to practice together and to be part of a community. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Diana Clark.

I want to introduce a series for this week about our stories—the stories that we tell. In some ways, we might say that humans are storytelling creatures; we use language and narratives to make sense of our experiences and to organize them in a way that makes sense to us. Telling stories is a fundamental activity that people in all cultures have done throughout time. As long as there has been language, there has been storytelling.

But you don’t need me to tell you this. Anybody who has sat down to meditate, just as we did, might notice how the mind gets caught up in telling stories, entertaining thoughts, fantasies, or planning. "I’m going to do this, and then this other thing is going to happen, and because that happens, I’m going to feel more safe." A lot of storytelling is happening. This week, I’d like to look at different aspects of this.

I’d like to start us off with a teaching story from Jack Kornfield’s book, A Path with Heart ¹. He tells a story about a tree that has poisonous fruit. When first discovering this tree, people are often afraid and want to avoid it. Or they try to convince themselves it isn't there—that the tree doesn't exist. Or, upon discovering it, they might become angry and start blaming others: "If only the neighbors hadn't done this," or "those crazy scientists," or something else. We have these ideas about why the tree is there, and we start demanding that something be done about it. Our reaction might be: "Let's cut this down! Let's get rid of it before I get hurt, or before anyone else eats this fruit."

Jack describes how this often resembles our initial response when we discover difficulties arising in our lives. When we encounter aggression, or see in ourselves a compulsion, fear, greed, stress, loss, conflict, depression, or sorrow, our initial response is often: "This poison is afflictive. Let’s uproot it, cut it down, and make it go away." We try to do that by avoiding it, pretending it’s not there, or distracting ourselves.

But the story continues. Other people who have journeyed further along the spiritual path see the same poison tree and they don't meet it with aversion. They aren't trying to get rid of it. Instead, they have realized that in order to open to life and to this present moment—to open to how our life is unfolding—requires compassion. They have heartfelt compassion for themselves, for others, and for everything around them. They recognize, "Oh, this poison tree is actually a part of me." So they don't cut it down. Instead, out of kindness and care, they build a fence around the tree to protect others from being poisoned by it, while allowing the tree to still be alive.

Then the story describes a third type of person, someone who has traveled even further along the path. They see the same tree and say, "A poison tree? Perfect! Just what I was looking for." This person picks the fruit, investigates its properties, and mixes it with other ingredients to make a great medicine that heals the sick and transforms the ills of the world. Through respect and understanding, this person finds value in what others might call difficult circumstances.

There are a number of ways we can interpret this story. One is that experiences we label as "difficult" might actually be beneficial; they might become a great asset for us. But I also want to use this story to say something about the nature of stories: there is more than one story possible for any given set of facts. The narratives we create and believe deeply influence how we perceive and experience the world.

David Loy ², a Zen teacher, writes: "One meaning of freedom is the opportunity to act out the story I identify with. Another freedom is the ability to change stories and my role within them." In this way, a person can move from being a scripted character to being the co-author of their life. "A third type of freedom results from understanding how stories construct and constrict our possibilities."

The way we work with and hold our stories has a huge impact on our lives. Kim Hanlon-Hart ³ gives an example of how one set of "facts" can have many different interpretations, and how those interpretations impact our freedom. She uses the example of a mother who was distant and unhappy. Here are some of the different stories one might tell:

1. "My mother was distant and unhappy. She didn't love me, and because she didn't love me, I am unlovable."
2. "My mother was distant and unhappy. She was broken and incapable of giving much love. I didn't get the type of love I craved, but I am worthy of love and belonging regardless of her inability to love me the way I needed."
3. "My mother was distant and unhappy. It was because of something I did. I am responsible for her unhappy life, and I need to do everything I can to make her and those around me happy."
4. "My mother was distant and unhappy, and I didn't get the love I needed. She ruined my life. I can never be whole or happy because of the love I was denied as a child."
5. "My mother was distant and unhappy. Because I didn't have a model of how to interact emotionally, I can't get in touch with my emotions or express them in a healthy way, and I cannot change."
6. "My mother was distant and unhappy. Because I didn't have a model of how to interact emotionally, I struggle with my own emotions. However, I can learn and grow and figure out a way to get in touch with my emotions and express them in a healthy way."

You can see how many different meanings can be created around the same facts. How we interpret them—which stories we apply to them—has such a big impact. There isn’t one "right" or "wrong" story here. Part of the power is to recognize that there can be more than one story, and that they can change. Maybe early in our life we have one story about our childhood, but as we mature spiritually and as adults, those stories can change.

Whichever story we believe becomes our frame of reference and affects how we interact with the world and the views we have about our possibilities. Small shifts in thinking can lead to significant changes in our behavior and how our life unfolds. Rewriting our personal narratives isn't about changing facts; it’s about changing our interpretation of them. These narratives are fluid and dynamic. Part of our spiritual life is to see the stories, to hold them loosely, and to find the freedom there.

I hope you’ll join me for the rest of this week as we continue this exploration. Thank you very much, and see you tomorrow.