This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Offering and Receiving; Dharmic Reciprocity (1 of 5): Trust and Confidence. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Offering and Receiving; Dharmette: Dharmic Reciprocity (1 of 5): Trust and Confidence - Dawn Neal

The following talk was given by Dawn Neal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 21, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Offering and Receiving

We are right at the top of the hour. So, after you’ve had a chance to say hello to me and say hello to each other, please settle back. Find a meditation posture that works for you this morning. Settling in, smiling at old friends, and starting by going inwards.

Taking a couple of slower, deeper breaths. Letting go on the out-breath and receiving—receiving the warmth of this community, receiving air, receiving awareness on the in-breath. Tuning into your whole body, your heart, your mind.

Receiving awareness, allowing awareness to brighten just a little bit with each inhale. And then, on each out-breath, giving yourself over, giving yourself completely to the breath, to the moment. Perhaps with a slight smile. Whatever time of day it is where you are, dedicating this time to being present.

Receiving on the in-breath. Offering, centering, giving over, letting go on the out-breath.

If you find the mind wandering—thoughts, imaginings, memories—greeting them kindly in the moment. And again, offering yourself to this practice, this breath. Being here, receiving present-moment awareness.

Allowing the attention to settle, to rest in the body. Now, I get to follow the breath. Be invited to open up, receive sensations within this body, allowing the breathing to be soothing and natural, however it wants to be today. Receiving the fullness of awareness in this moment.

Softening. Allowing. Resting in the felt sense of the out-breath. Giving over to this moment of meditation. Trusting this moment.

In the last few minutes of our formal practice together this morning, the invitation is to recollect—remember the moments of goodness, mindful awareness, peacefulness. Any glimmers of goodness that emerged in the practice today: a moment of patience, kindness, trust. Whatever was there.

Gather it into your heart. Receive the nourishment of it. Taking a moment to trust and appreciate the integrity of your own efforts today, of showing up in the practice. It’s not a small thing.

From that place, casting your internal gaze outwards to the other lives your life touches, with the wish that the benefits of your practice touch them as well—ripple outwards.

May all beings everywhere be safe, peaceful, and free.

Thank you for your practice.

Dharmette: Dharmic Reciprocity (1 of 5): Trust and Confidence

Good morning, Sangha¹. I'm delighted to be with you. A special warm welcome to those of you who slipped in a bit late into the online Sangha, and a warm welcome to those of you listening later as well. I'm so happy to be with you, and I really delight in reconnecting with this Sangha.

Today, I would like to offer some reflections on the gifts we receive from this practice. This is based on a few of the Buddha’s lesser-known teachings and discourses on generosity. In general, you may be well aware that the Buddha’s teachings place a lot of emphasis on giving and offering as part of the beginning of the path for most practitioners. It is often less about what is given than how it is given. This week, instead of focusing on giving things, we're going to focus on the qualities we give—the how we give to our practice—and the gifts that can be received from it.

I'm going to start with a story. Many years ago, I had the benefit of staying in a wat² (a temple) in Thailand. This temple was on a little arid island in the Bay of Thailand called Ko Sichang³. The temple itself had been started by a very sincere monastic who grew into a wonderful teacher. For a long time, it was just him in a cave. Then, gradually, as these things happen, the complex grew up around him as people came to practice with him.

I was touched to learn early on that the temple itself was named after an enlightened woman. This teacher had seen her in a dream and was so inspired by her that he named his life’s work after her. It was a very human-scale kind of place. It centered around the monastic life, the rhythm of the seasons, the rhythm of awakening, practicing, and gardening. The monastics, mostly with some help from the villagers, built up the temple over time. They lived their life as a Dharma⁴ expression, dedicating their practice to others.

In fact, we would come together twice a day—in the morning and in the evening. In the evening, all of us women would sit in a beautiful, open-air place at night and dedicate our practice to others. There was a kind of symbolic ritual or practice involving pouring water from one vessel to another, and then we would pad out in our bare feet into the darkness of the garden and water the plants. It was such a beautiful practice—a starry night, a big sky—but it was also symbolic in another way.

On this arid island, there were no lakes, no ponds, and no rivers. All of the water came from very crafty catchments built right into the temple roofs that caught the rainwater. It would pour down into cisterns beneath each structure. Because the temple was on a hill, there were a number of different structures at different levels. The people there gardened with the water, they bathed with it, and we drank it. For many years, they gave the excess water and food to the villagers all around the temple, which they then received back in the form of meals.

There was such integrity and open-handedness about their trust, conviction, and generosity. I talk about this because that kind of trust and conviction can be an inherent condition of mature Dharma practice and an expression of the practice itself. They related to life's necessities in this generous way. The people there treated what they gave, and to whom they gave it, with respect and attentiveness. This rhythm was in resonance with the seasons and an abundance appropriate to the context of that place. You could feel a palpable sense of kindness and care between the temple practitioners and the villagers.

Those cisterns were built in a very intentional way. As the whole temple was on a hill, each cistern flowed into the cistern in the structure beneath it all the way down. Whatever water wasn't used for gardening or personal use, or given away, flowed back into the ocean. In that vast cycle of oceanic generosity, it eventually returned as rain.

This hints at both a kind of trust and a way of relating to offering through a sense of conditionality. The people there had no way of knowing when or if the sharing of their abundance—whether it be water with the ocean or food with others—would be returned to them. But they trusted that what they gave would somehow offer an intrinsic good, whether to them directly or outwards in unknowable ways.

In the coming days, I'll explore the whole range of ways that these gifts cascade back to us—the abundant goodness and possibility when we approach the Dharma and meditation practice in an open-handed way. In my experience, offering yourself completely to the practice invites receiving even greater gifts from it. In this way, the means of Dharma practice precedes the ends. There's a beautiful mystery in how what we offer transmutes into receiving. As our friends in the Zen tradition say, there's not a real separation between the giver, the receiver, and the gift.

That is the overview—an impressionistic sense of where we're going. Today, I simply want to underscore the power of conviction and trust in the practice. A place like this Thai temple represents that kind of conviction, trust, integrity, and the reciprocity that can come from the staying power of showing up in these ways.

There are three levels of this kind of trust: borrowed, bright, and verified.

• Borrowed trust (or faith) is experimental, perhaps based on what you've heard, seen, read, or possibly even based on scientific studies.
• Bright faith⁵ (or trust) is when something has clicked. There's a sense of possibility, a tailwind for the practice, and an energy. You think, "Wow, okay, this works." I saw it written on a signboard outside of a yoga studio years ago: "This kind of trust or confidence isn't trusting that things will turn out okay; it's trusting that no matter how things turn out, you'll be okay."
• Verified trust (or confidence) is based on powerful, firsthand experience.

To the extent that you can offer trust, integrity, and conviction to the practice—offering yourself wholeheartedly—these qualities increase the possibility of receiving feelings of joy, lightness, openness, and spaciousness. They can become sources of strength and a rootedness. This kind of integrity in the practice can be very sustaining.

That is the quality I want to invite you to consider for yourself today and tomorrow. How does conviction, confidence, and trust show up in your heart? How might it inform your life and practice? Or how might you like it to? What can you do to invite more of it?

I'm not going to offer a full outline of the week because this is a journey we're taking together. It's alive in my practice, and we'll discover it together. Thank you very much for your kind attention. I would love to see any thoughts you have about how trust, confidence, and integrity show up in your practice now, or how you think it might be helpful.

May the benefits of our practice here together be a cause and condition for greater trust, clarity, conviction, and freedom in the world.