This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Intention, Mindfulness, and the Journey with Maria Straatman. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Intention, Mindfulness, and the Journey - Maria Straatmann

The following talk was given by Maria Straatmann at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on May 07, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Intention, Mindfulness, and the Journey

Good evening. My name is Maria Straatmann, and I'm here for Diana tonight. I'll be here next Monday night also, so I'm happy to be here.

It seems strange to hear my voice; that bell caught me by surprise.

Tonight, I'm going to start in the middle of the story. This occurred to me this afternoon as I was thinking about what I was going to talk about: all Dharma talks kind of start in the middle of the story because practice is hard. It's hard to pull the pieces apart. Everything is related to everything else. As soon as I say, "Well, I want to talk about this piece," I realize I have to talk about that piece. And if I talk about that piece, you're not going to know what I mean unless I talk about that other piece. Pretty soon, it becomes totally tangled.

Really, what I want to say is: "Look here. Look here. Look at this thing." But pretty soon I'm sitting there full of doubt. And if I'm not full of doubt, I'm full of arrogance—"What's going on here?"

That is what practice is like. We're always in the middle of the story. We don't get to start at the beginning, plan it, and control all the outcomes and conditions. Life is full of conditions, the vast majority of which we have no input to, much less control over. The temperature in the room, whether you got sleep last night, whether you had time for dinner, whether someone in your family just died—we're not even talking about the topic yet. There are so many conditions that affect what's happening in this room.

But what's really happening in this room is life. We are living. We are practicing. We are meeting the moment, or not meeting the moment. We're missing our lives.

So tonight, I'd like to try to weave a little pattern, just a tiny pattern of everything. I already know I can't talk about everything; we only have a few minutes. Everything will not fit in a few minutes, but everything is in those few minutes. We don't get to cut out anything. Life is happening, and that's the good news.

My talk is about intention, mindfulness, and the journey. Sounds simple, right? Intention, mindfulness, and the journey. We could also call it intention, immediacy, and persistence. Or we could say suffering, impermanence, and no-self. Suffering gives rise to intention. Impermanence is what immediacy is all about—why we care about it at all. No-self gives rise to the need for persistence, which arises out of impermanence. But we're not going to talk about those three; we're going to talk about intention, mindfulness, and the journey.

If we're going on a journey, we have to have some idea of where we're going, or we're not going to get there. You can wander aimlessly, but that's what you're doing: wandering aimlessly. Even that is an intention; aimlessness is an intention. So you have to have an idea of what you intend. "What's my intention? I want to do X."

It's the motivation for what you're going to do. It's the inspiration, the aspiration. "I want to do, I want to go, I want to be that." It's a leaning towards something. We have to have some kind of intention. Once we begin, we need that intention before we begin—maybe not chronologically, but somewhere there is something that gets us on the journey. We take a step because we're going somewhere.

That intention is extremely important because it's the source of motivation. It's also the thing that provides the persistence—the one that allows us to take the second step. It's also the thing that provides the faith that allows us to go. It's not only, "I'm going to do this, I know what I'm going to do," but it also allows us to take that leap of faith that says, "Yep, this is the direction I'm going to go. This is the method I'm going to take. This is the way I'm going to do this."

Sometimes we set out and we're not really clear about that intention. We have a very vague notion of it. But as we go along, our experience bolsters that intention. The intention strengthens through that experience, the faith becomes stronger, and our ability to persist becomes stronger. We become more confident, and doubt is less likely to undermine us. But it all comes in the first place from that intention.

When I began practicing, I had a really grand intention: to develop loving-kindness in my life. My primary intention was to be openhearted. That's a good intention. Over time, I heard myself say it a number of times, and I realized that I could just sort of stop with "be open." Eventually, I got to the place where I could just "be."

As I examined that intention over and over again, I realized that the intention was really about the absence of protecting myself—the need for all those things I had in front of me to protect myself from harm, from being hurt. That initial intention was masking what I really wanted, which was to feel safe and loved, and safe in going out and connecting with other people.

It was only through the years of practice that I was able to see that, and to eventually feel more safe, to develop a willingness to be vulnerable, and to just show up—which, it turns out, is what the intention was all along.

So it isn't that you have to know an intention and stick with it forever. It's something that develops along with you, that changes with you. But you have to be aware of it. It's incredibly important. It really guides you across the way and informs your practice. Whatever the practice is, it changes with you. It's a living thing.

This intention provides the energy to your practice. You notice, "I have this intention, I'm getting started, I'm starting to see this sort of makes a difference to me." And then you say, "Oh, okay, yeah!" and you get kind of excited.

When I was preparing this talk, at one point I decided I wanted to look up something. The next thing you knew, I had four or five books open. My husband came in and wanted to ask about something truly mundane, and I said, "Oh, no, but look! I've got this, and I'm looking at that." He said, "Look at you, you're so excited. It's been a long time since I had multiple books open on my desk."

I was excited because I was realizing that the last time I had these books open, I was quite different. There was a different person looking at those books, reading those lines, and examining those pieces of information. That was exciting to me. It was motivating. It was interesting.

Sometimes we get kind of bogged down in how hard we're working on something and we forget why we're doing it in the first place. Why am I doing this? What's it about? There is real delight and joy in changing your mind, doing something different, and maybe modifying the plan—adapting.

It turns out that the way we practice—well, Buddhism has all kinds of lists. One of the lists that ended up being in my "grab bag" was the Five Faculties¹ (or Five Powers)—the things that help you get through practice. The first three are Faith, Energy (or Effort), and Mindfulness. See how nicely they fit in with the topic? The faith that comes from experiencing what's coming out of your intention, the energy that's generated from that, and mindfulness, which is the key to all of it.

Mindfulness, mindfulness, mindfulness. It is the thing that tells you where you are. We often think about mindfulness as, "I have an object and I know the object." I'm following my breath, I'm following sound, I'm following whatever is the object of your mindfulness. Or I have expansive mindfulness where I'm mindful of whatever arises.

But the mindfulness I'm talking about is the mindfulness that says, "What's happening here? What's happening here? What's going on right now?" Mindfulness that says, "Here I am right now in this moment. I am registering my awareness with whatever it is."

The important thing about mindfulness is you have the object, and you know the object, and you know you know it. That's the awareness part—the being cognizant and registering. "I know I'm following this. I know I'm here. I know that I'm breathing. I know that I'm sitting. I know that I'm hearing. I know that I'm smelling. I know that I'm walking."

It's that knowing part, the awareness, that constantly brings us back to here. We can say, "What do I know now? What am I aware of now?" That registering—"What do I know?"—is the key that tells you where you are.

What's going on here? What's going on now? It doesn't have to be a grand thing. It can be a trivial thing.

We want to be able to notice what's happening. When we're sitting in meditation, we can notice: "I'm following my breath. I'm following my breath." The mind wanders off. We notice the mind comes back—"Oh, the mind has been gone." That's the very moment when we're really aware. We're here. Great. Rejoice. We're here.

It doesn't have to only be then; it can be anytime. I'm going to tell you about something truly trivial that happened to me today and use it as an example for how this might work.

I met somebody this morning, and this person said, "Would you like a bottle of water?" I said, "No, I've got my coffee here in my thermos, and I haven't had any time yet for even a swallow of coffee. I can hardly wait." This person immediately began telling me how terrible coffee was, how she had never drunk coffee, how it stained teeth, how it really tastes bad, and how glad she was that they never had coffee. On and on and on about coffee.

My reaction to this was immediate. I reacted. I felt the reaction. I could feel the pulling back. I could feel the resistance. I could feel a kind of tension and twisting. I felt the wanting to defend myself.

And then I stopped.

There were a lot of things happening. This is somebody where it's easy for this person to trigger me, so I'm always prepared. There are certain topics that I'm really ready for, so there's no way this person is going to trigger me. I was not prepared to be triggered by the coffee.

So here I was, and I feel it all happening. So I just stopped. In that moment I said, "I don't have to be the person who reacts to the coffee." Whatever is happening here—whether it's "I have to be right," or I'm reacting to feeling diminished, or I'm reacting because I thought this was a friendly gesture—whatever the source of my reaction is, it is not important.

I don't have to be the person who reacts. It's stopping. Noticing. Caught. Stop.

The reason is not important here. Later you can analyze it, but in the moment, just stop. I don't have to be the person who reacts to this. The chattering is still going on; I'm still hearing about how bad coffee is. But I've stopped. And in stopping, I am no longer enchanted by my role. I have become dispassionate about it. Who cares? Who cares? I'm going to drink the coffee; she's not going to drink the coffee. It doesn't really matter. Who cares?

Suffering ceases. There is no argument here. There is nothing.

Now, in that moment, I can go back and try to figure it out, which is retelling the story—and immediately it can come up again. Or I can say, "I wonder... she's still talking. I wonder what she's thinking? Is she thinking, 'Why is she telling me about the coffee? I offered her water, she could have accepted...'" Who knows what she's thinking?

So now I can expand my awareness to wondering about something outside of me. I don't have to make it about me. It can be another story that comes up. Now I'm telling myself a story about her, but now she's no longer the "bad guy." Now I'm wondering.

There are an infinite number of things that can happen. Which one can be mindful? Which one can introduce suffering or the end of suffering over a thermos of coffee and a bottle of water? It doesn't have to be a big thing. But what happens is you become used to noticing tension, letting go, freedom, release, relief in that moment. Even if it comes right back, you can stop again. And you can stop again. And you can stop again.

The Buddha taught Right Intention². Wise Intention is renunciation (or not clinging), harmlessness, and... [pauses]... non-ill will. My mind is not clear, and I refuse to feel bad about it. It'll come when I don't need it.

The two I can address directly are not clinging and harmlessness. Renunciation—not clinging. Not clinging to who I need to be, who I might be, who the "better me" is. Not clinging to being right. Just stop. Just stop. Not clinging to "be openhearted." Just stop.

Practice that in the moment. The mindfulness of just being aware of what's happening in the moment leads to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation. That's the process. To do that, you have to be mindful. You have to see what's happening right now.

One of the real traps that we get into is the trap of needing to be better than we are. Needing to be a better person, needing to be more clear than we are. One of my favorite quotes is from Suzuki Roshi³, who noticed that a lot of his students were extremely self-critical. He said:

"You're perfect just the way you are, and you could use a little work."

The reason I like that is it's very clear that you really don't have to be other than you are. And you should not stop working. You should not stop following that intention toward being non-clinging and non-harming, that leaning toward freedom in the moment. That should not be let go of. That should be reinforced. That should be cultivated.

In order to do that, we have to be willing to let go of all the opinions we have about what's going on now. We have to be able to see what's going on now. Seeing it clearly so that we can say, "Oh, I don't have to be all the things. I don't have to react to... I can stop."

It's not easy. I don't want to claim it's easy. It can come right back. But being able to feel what it feels like when you can stop and be free of that passion, to feel that passion go, allows you to feel what it feels like for a moment of freedom.

Personally, I just want to add those up and become used to seeing that so that I can be aware of that in any moment, in more and more moments of my life. When the surge in reactivity slows down, then I can reflect on what was going on. Where did the mind go? What was the form of reactivity? What did that look like? I should be careful about that; that's a mind habit I should be aware of.

But in the moment, the important thing is: Stop. Just stop. Feel the puffiness go out of the moment. Feel it deflate. I don't have to understand everything in the moment; I can just... ah.

One of the books I had open was Joseph Goldstein's One Dharma. The nice thing about this book is he talks about the various forms of Buddhism that he has practiced and how, while the practices are different, the song they sing is pretty similar. I have a quote from him that I particularly liked:

"Faith in the possibility of awakening, confidence in the moment's experience and in the nature of awareness itself, trust in the direction of our lives—all of these settle doubt, confusion, and agitation. They create an inner environment of clarity, stillness, and beauty."

Let me repeat that: "Faith in the possibility of awakening, confidence in the moment's experience and in the nature of awareness itself, trust in the direction of our lives—all of these settle doubt, confusion, and agitation. They create an inner environment of clarity, stillness, and beauty."

That sounds really attractive. And it really goes back to knowing your intention, practicing with your intention, revisiting your intention, and being mindful of that. Persisting in being mindful. Persisting in just seeing, being aware, being here. "Ah, this is what's happening." Not judging what's happening, but seeing it as clearly as you possibly can. "Oh, this is what's happening. I'm reacting to that. Oh, look at that." Not "this is good, this is bad, this is more, this is less." See it. See it.

The quote from him I was looking for is this one. He was talking about enlightenment, freedom, or liberation, and he was quoting René Daumal in Mount Analogue:

"Keep your eye fixed on the way to the top, but don't forget to look right in front of you. The last step depends on the first. Don't think you've arrived just because you see the summit. Watch your footing. Be sure of the next step, but don't let that distract you from the highest goal. The first step depends on the last."

You begin with your intention. You have a goal. Don't lose sight of the intention. But it is the intention that sets you off on the first step. And that first step leads to the last step, which is the next step that you take, and the step after that, and the step after that. Live that step—not the one you took 20 years ago, not the one you haven't taken yet. This step. This is the only one that you can affect right now, and this is the one that you can know about.

So what you get from that, the promise... this is a poem by Jane Hirshfield:

Mysteriously they entered, those few minutes. Mysteriously they left, as if the great dog of confusion guarding my heart, who is always Sleepless, suddenly slept.

It was not any Awakening of the large, not so much as that; only a stepping away from the petty.

I gazed at the range of Blue Mountains. I drank from the stream, tossed in a small stone from the bank. Whatever direction the face of my life might travel, I trusted; even the greedy direction, even the grieving. Trusted there was nothing like to be saved from, bliss nor danger.

The dog's tail wagged a little in his dream.

It was not an Awakening of the large, not so much as that, only a stepping back from the petty. As if the great dog of confusion guarding my heart, who is always Sleepless, suddenly slept.

I wish you all to have Sleeping Dogs of confusion. Thank you.

Q&A

Question: I recently had a coffee experience too. I stopped drinking coffee 50 years ago for various reasons. I had friends coming to stay who are big coffee drinkers. I made sure I could find the coffee maker and show them how to use it, wanting them to feel comfortable. But when they started making coffee, I realized I was trying hard not to react to the smell, which permeated the whole condo. I kept telling myself, "This is their vacation." I tried to flow with it and not make comments. I controlled myself from asking, "Why do you just drink coffee?"

After the third day, I looked at myself and said, "You're going to learn to like that smell and not let it spoil your day." Finally, I was at peace and said, "Just let it go. It's just coffee." The second week, I started thinking about why I stopped drinking coffee, and I was happy I wasn't drinking it anymore, but there was no judgment. I think it was good they came because it helped me release a subtle reaction I was still having.

Maria: Thank you for your story. I don't think it was trivial at all. It helps you to know that even little tiny, subtle things—so small—can cause a reaction.

I think it's also important to realize that it was unpleasant for you. You don't have to pretend it was not unpleasant. There is a poem by Jane Hirshfield—it's called "Cedar something" or similar—where she writes: "I still every morning wash my face in cold water to remind myself that it's okay to be with something that's really unpleasant."

I like the idea of it. It's unpleasant, but you don't have to push it away. You don't have to do it in the spirit of "I'm tolerating this," necessarily either. It's just unpleasant. It sounds like over the course of the three days you got to the point where you just said, "It's just unpleasant, and this is something I'm giving my guests that I'm willing to be with." And as an aside, you learned something about yourself. But we don't have to pretend it's not unpleasant. That should be acknowledged.

Question: I want to go back to the concept of not clinging, particularly at work. I typically get very engaged in conversations and sometimes too impassioned. There are moments where I catch myself and say, "Okay, let it go. It's okay, you don't have to be right." But when that happens, I typically go to the polar opposite—a big disengagement, almost a sense of apathy. What's a good way to find the "golden mean" between clinging/being impassioned and apathy/disengagement?

Maria: That's a great question. I think an important thing to consider is: How important is what's involved?

I deliberately chose coffee and a bottle of water because nobody's impacted by this. Nobody is harmed. There are no great decisions tied to this. Had I chosen something like where my husband and I are going to go on vacation, there's more invested in that discussion.

In a previous marriage, I felt like I won every battle and lost every war. I would win the battle and then let him have his way because I was into being a debater. It was important to me to be right, but I felt like protecting the relationship required me to give in. That was a totally misguided way of thinking and very destructive.

At work, you have to make similar sorts of decisions. Is what you're discussing something that has import? Or is it a case where you just want to be right? Or is it a case where somebody's being intellectually bullied? If you can see that happening, you decide: "Am I being bullied? Am I stepping away from being bullied? How important is that? Is that affecting my standing, or is that just affecting how I am with this person? What are the consequences of giving in to this person?"

So you kind of have to measure that in the discussion. How you deal with speech is: Is it true? Is it useful? Is it timely? Is it kind?

But in terms of this broader question of apathy versus argumentativeness, that's in the realm of: How do I establish personal space in an appropriate way?

That's something you have to measure by honest reflection and consideration of whether the situation you're in is appropriate for you overall. Do you want to keep the job? Do you like the job? Is it your boss? Are there other avenues? Is this a person that does this all the time?

I don't think it's a simple answer, but I think you do have to look at it. It is not necessary to become the person who always gives in; I don't think that's appropriate. But seeing what's happening is extremely important, and not automatically behaving in a certain way.

Question: My practice lately is about being aware wherever I am, whatever I do. I'm practicing this mindfulness to be effortless. Because in order to be mindful, you often have to pause, look at it, decide, and put in the intention to do the right thing—that's effort. I notice most of my reaction is from the outside world; someone says or does something. I feel like sometimes without that effort or pause, I just come right out with a reaction that is not based on mindfulness.

Maria: There is a lot there. It could be asking a lot of yourself to have total insight when there's a lot happening. In the midst of a conversation at work, you can't be aware of everything. You have to choose what you're going to be aware of.

One of the points I tried to make earlier is I didn't try to analyze what my reaction was—only that I was reacting, and that I would stop. I didn't try to decide "How should I be reacting?" I just stopped. I didn't have time to analyze it in real-time and figure it all out to be wise. There wasn't an option to be wise; all I could do was stop.

Later, I could think about what was going on. Then I expanded my awareness and said, "Okay, what's going on with her?" It's too complex to figure out what's going on with me, but rather than making her the bad guy, why don't I ask myself what's going on with her as a way of not re-entangling? Because we can become too focused on figuring out "my stuff," and it just makes it more complex.

You want to practice mindfulness to the extent that you feel like you are inhabiting your life, but not that you're cluttering it. If you're cluttering your life, you're doing yourself a disservice. Choose pieces. You don't want to make your life into a project; you want to live your life.