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Guided Meditation: Room for Absence; Dharmette (2 of 5) Second Noble Truth - Kodo Conlin

The following talk was given by Kodo Conlin at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 02, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Room for Absence

Welcome, second day of 2024, Second Noble Truth. Delighted to be back with you this morning. I hope the practice was fruitful yesterday; let's see what today brings.

We're starting this first series of the year on the Four Noble Truths, returning to the root, as it were, to the basic frame that can hold most of the Buddhist teaching. Discussing what's taught as the spiritual problem in Buddha Dharma, along with the Buddha's analysis of that problem, and then the promise and possibility of freedom and the way to that freedom. It's inspiring for this one here, so let's begin with the meditation.

Preparation for this meditation, as yesterday, is an image. So as you settle into your seat or whatever is supporting you, beginning to feel stable, I would invite you to bring this image to mind.

Imagine that you're maybe standing, maybe seated next to a cool, clear lake. This lake is vast, it's broad, it's wide, and it's reflecting the open sky. You're safely on the ground, but you're near the depths.

In this moment, you notice there is a weight in your pocket. You reach in, finding three stones, maybe different colors and textures. You can feel them in your hands and see them in your hands. Maybe they're warm from your body heat.

After appreciating them for a moment, you realize you don't need to hold them anymore. You extend your arm over the deep, cool water and slowly start turning your palm. You can feel the rock nudge, then slide, and disappear, dropping out of your hand and plunking into the water. You can watch them fade.

Returning attention to your hands, feeling what was a weight is now an absence. Empty, light.

At the time of this meditation, as we gently, kindly attend to the body—this body breathing—do we not need to hold anymore? What can be let go and offered to this vast, cool lake?

Breathing in, breathing out. Letting go of what's extra. We may find that we're staying close to the senses. The senses without the added weight of reactions and involvement.

Breathing and letting go, making room for a welcome nothing.

Being near the senses and letting go of what's extra. Letting go of what's extra. What do you notice about what's left behind?

In these last minutes of the sitting... sensing... breathing. Having let go of what's extra, to appreciate the possibility. The possibility within the absence.

May all beings everywhere have the conditions to let go of what is extra. To let go of what's weary, making room for this absence, possibility, and peace.

And again... oh, what wonder that absence keeps turning into something. Oh, what might emerge for us today.

Dharmette (2 of 5) Second Noble Truth

So today we turn from the First Noble Truth to the Second Noble Truth in our reflections on this core teaching of Buddha Dharma.

I wanted to open with a story from the suttas¹. There's a householder named Upali² who goes to have a conversation with the Buddha. A few circumstances transpire, and then it's this that I want to share for how it says the Buddha prepares Upali's mind to receive the teachings on the Four Noble Truths. He doesn't dive right in.

And this is an important point. The Four Noble Truths we often introduce as the first teaching, but you can see in this little section from the ancient teachings that actually the mind needs to be prepared to receive the Four Noble Truths. This is how it's written there:

"Then the Buddha gave the householder Upali progressive instruction, that is, talk on giving, talk on virtue, talk on heavens. He explained the danger, degradation, and defilement in sensual pleasures and the blessings of renunciation. And when he knew that the householder Upali's mind was ready, receptive, free from hindrances, elated, and confident, he expounded to him the teaching special to the Buddhas: suffering, its origin, its cessation, and the path."

You might recognize these as the Four Noble Truths in brief. And it says that just as a clean cloth would evenly take on dye, so too the householder Upali, as he sat there, had this spotless, immaculate vision of the Dharma arise in him.

It's so beautiful. It's amazing to me also that just hearing the teaching was transformative for Upali. I think that shows the power of reflection and the power of cultivating the supports for understanding, wisdom, and well-being.

The tradition often teaches the Four Noble Truths as dukkha³ (suffering) as the first, the origin or cause of suffering as the Second Noble Truth, the cessation of suffering as the third, and the Fourth Noble Truth as the path, the way to the cessation of suffering.

Now, Gil⁴ gives some great talks on a distinction he brings in something called the "four liberating insights." He points out that the Four Noble Truths as such aren't named so many times in the suttas, but the direct, clear seeing of dukkha and its arising—clearly seeing the arising of dukkha right here in experience, then clearly seeing its cessation, and clearly seeing the path—that these have a liberating power to see these four things.

It's a really powerful framing, I think, and it points us back to the practice happening right here in this mind, in this body. In other words, our experience of dukkha, our experience of suffering, is constructed, made, or born out in this mind. That's how we experience it. Not to say that's the only condition, of course.

I think this emphasis on the mind is well expressed in the beginning verses of the Dhammapada⁵:

"All experiences are preceded by mind, led by mind, and made by mind. Speak or act with a corrupted mind, and suffering follows as the wagon wheel follows the hoof of the ox. All experiences are preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a peaceful mind, and happiness follows like a never-departing shadow."

Such is the importance of the mind. So, as the task of the First Noble Truth was to understand and comprehend dukkha in direct experience, the task of the Second Noble Truth is to abandon.

Abandon what, and abandon in what sense?

First, abandon in what sense? The word in English, "abandon," has certain connotations. But when you look at the teachings, what you find is that it's much more like letting go of what's not needed anymore, or the way we use abandon in the term "abandon ship." The ship is clearly going down, and it's time to get off for our safety and well-being. That kind of abandon ship.

And what are we abandoning? We're abandoning the conditions that give rise to suffering. This points to something important about suffering, and that is it arises based on conditions, just like everything else in our experience. Because suffering is conditioned, an instance of suffering isn't forever stable or permanent; it's bound to change.

In the classic teaching, it says that the origin, cause, or arising of suffering is a certain kind of craving. Now, of course, in Buddhist circles, we might run the risk of generalizing and saying something like "all desire is the cause of suffering." But this isn't quite right if you look closely. What we're looking for is the sort of craving that leads on to suffering.

The Buddha points to a few. The Pali terms are kāma-taṇhā and vibhava-taṇhā⁶. Bhikkhu Bodhi⁷, the prolific translator, summarizes these like so: he says the desire for pleasure and possessions, the drive for survival, the urge to bolster the sense of ego with power, status, and privilege—that these are the sorts of things that we need to watch for and keep an eye on because they can lead on through clinging and the creation of identity to the sort of suffering that the Buddha is helping us to eradicate.

If we want to abandon the conditions that give rise to suffering, we have to get to know them really closely. The Buddha's analysis of dukkha and craving traces its origin to a sort of darkening of the mind that we term ignorance—in Pali, the word is avijjā⁸, which is actually the opposite term of wisdom.

For today, for the next few minutes, I want to talk about a few examples of how, in one of the Buddhist descriptions, we go from sense experience to clinging, and look at these links pretty closely and in a few ways so that they can be practiced with.

These are a few links of the twelve-fold chain⁹—like a twelve-factor analysis of how suffering arises. We're just going to zoom in on a couple.

First is a moment of sense contact—like a sound coming to the ear. With that as a condition, a feeling arises, that is, a feeling of pleasant, unpleasant, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant (neutral). With feeling as a condition, the conditions are in place for a craving (taṇhā, a thirsting) to arise—an impulse to get closer or to move away. And this impulse can condition clinging (upādāna¹⁰)—grabbing on, grasping. Then, with grabbing on and grasping as a condition, comes identity making, or becoming.

Let's look at this in just a few ways. Take the example of a sound that comes to the ear. Say you're sitting in meditation and you hear a bird outside, and you happen to like the sound of this bird. The first thing that happens, if you're noticing very closely: sound comes to the door, and there's a pleasant feeling that arises in the body, maybe in the ear itself. If you watch closely, that pleasant feeling arises, and then here comes craving: "Oh, the bird has faded away, and I'm wanting more. The sound of the bird has faded away, and I'm craving more of the sound of the bird that was so pleasant." Or, "I'm craving more of the pleasant feeling that has arisen."

That craving arises, and then we grasp on. We start strategizing about how we're going to hear more birds, fantasizing about birds. Then, all of a sudden, we have created an identity: "Oh, I'm the person who likes and seeks birds." We've gone from a simple sound while sitting here in meditation, to the arising of a pleasant feeling, wanting it, clinging on, and then suddenly creating an imagined self.

That's an innocuous example of how that can happen with a pleasant sensation or a pleasant sense contact that arises. We can also take the example of maybe unpleasant speech.

Let's say we're having a conversation, and at our ear we come into contact with everyday but innocuous speech—there's no particular boundary issue that needs pushing back on, there's no threat. There's just the experience of unpleasant speech coming to the ear. Again, an unpleasant sensation this time. Then craving comes up in the form of wanting to push away: "Push away, push away, want to push against the experience." Then all of a sudden we're grasping onto the pushing, doubling down on the pushing, if you will.

Pleasant and unpleasant—if you're watching for it, it's happening all the time throughout the day. You can see, feel, and sense the way that pleasant and unpleasant feelings don't just remain themselves. We have the power to do this with mindfulness, but very often, if we're not paying close attention, if ignorance is in the way, what happens is our pleasant experience becomes craving, then clinging, and we just go full in. We become fully committed to an impulse. We're no longer in control of our body and mind; craving, ignorance, and clinging have taken over.

So my encouragement for today might be, if you happen to notice these pleasant and unpleasant sensations, get really close to noticing how they influence us—how they influence the mind, influence the body. The way this fulfills the task of the Second Noble Truth is that it supports us in abandoning craving. Because we can see, observe, and recognize how craving operates, we understand suffering as suffering. We sense it, we see it, and we can maybe have the opportunity to let it go.

But we'll start with just getting to know it. Getting to know suffering, and then through observation and patience, practice letting go of this cause of the Second Noble Truth.

Thanks so much for your attention today, and tomorrow we'll pick up with the Third Noble Truth. May all beings have the conditions for freedom. May all beings abandon the causes of suffering and know true happiness. Take care.