This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video GM: Trusting the Present Moment and the Arising of Joy; Trusting the Practice (4/4): Daring to Trust. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Trusting the Present Moment and the Arising of Joy; Dharmette: Trusting the Practice (4 of 4): Daring to Trust - Meg Gawler

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

Guided Meditation: Trusting the Present Moment and the Arising of Joy

Greetings, dear ones. This week we've been exploring what it means to have trust in the practice, and for this, we also need to trust the present moment. When awareness is well established, it becomes possible to just remain receptively aware of the present moment in whatever way it arises. When we trust our practice, we express that by saying yes to the present moment. Whatever arises, we trust that it's okay and also that we have the capacity to deal with it. No need for tuning out; being here and now.

Resting in the present moment is also to trust the Dharma.¹ In our tradition, the Dharma refers not only to the teachings of the Buddha but also to trusting whatever is on offer to us in each moment. If it feels right for you, you could begin your meditations with "I surrender to the Dharma" as a reminder to deeply trust how things unfold. It's a tremendous relief when we can know and rest in the present moment without being triggered with judgments, opinions, and selfing.² The body breathing is the place where we train ourselves to calm down enough to settle the mind so that we can begin resting peacefully in the present.

In our meditation yesterday, we practiced calming the whole body while staying present with the breathing. In the scheme of Ānāpānasati,³ deeply calming the body gives rise to experiencing joy. The Buddha's next instructions after calming the body are: "One trains, 'I will breathe in experiencing joy.' One trains, 'I will breathe out experiencing joy.'"

You may wonder, why does the Buddha encourage us to train by experiencing joy? With the momentum of the meditation practices we've done this week, culminating in deep relaxation of the body, joy can often arise quite spontaneously, at least in a subtle form. Also, since we're reward-based creatures, our ability to remain anchored in the present moment is strengthened when we perceive our experience as pleasant. Noticing these subtle pleasant feeling tones in meditation can then serve as a foundation for the arising of joy. This creates another virtuous cycle where joy, in turn, boosts our ability to stay in our lived experience.

So, to begin our meditation, calmly closing the eyes and assuming a posture that expresses your highest aspiration.

Gently straightening the spine, perhaps imagining that you're held up by an invisible thread suspending your head from the crown, from the sky, all the way down to the toes. So take a moment now to do a slow, gentle body scan from the crown of the head all the way down to the feet.

Establishing your priority to leave all your concerns outside the door and to stay grounded in embodied awareness. Asking yourself if you can trust abiding in the present moment, letting go of past and future. Just staying with this body, breathing.

When you're settled enough and comfortable trusting the present moment, you can try the fifth step in the Buddha's instructions on mindfulness of breathing, in which he says, "One trains, 'I will breathe in experiencing joy.' One trains, 'I will breathe out experiencing joy.'"

If you've never trained by experiencing joy, you might formulate this simple aspiration: "May joy arise," and then remain receptively open to whatever happens, allowing space in the mind for joy to manifest in whatever form it may.

Tension or becoming distracted will prevent joy from arising, but just knowing our distractions or tensions and relaxing them may suffice for joy to arise.

I found that in times when grief is front and center in the mind, experiencing joy during meditation may well be unavailable. In this case, we may still be able to find peace in the present moment by cultivating our inner contentment, which is softer and quieter than joy.

So, staying in the body and staying with the breathing, letting the mind be open to the arising of joy.

Giving yourself permission to simply be, and most of all, enjoy your meditation.

As we come to the end of this sitting, we return to our circle of caring for ourselves, for everyone here meditating, and for all beings.

May all beings be safe and protected. Being safe, may all beings, including ourselves, be happily at ease. May we all abide in peace. And may all beings everywhere be free.

So, to end our meditation, let's all join our hands together and bow to one another to honor everyone in this beautiful practice.

Sadhu, sadhu, sadhu.⁴

Dharmette: Trusting the Practice (4 of 4): Daring to Trust

Greetings, everyone. Quite a few of you expressed interest in the chat yesterday in having the text of the peach blossoms poem by Dogen that I read. So at the end of the talk, the audio-visual team will kindly put it up in the chat for you.

We started last week with training in emptiness.⁵ Well, trusting the present moment as we meditate has a lot to do with trusting emptiness. We constantly project our ideas, concepts, memories, and associations onto reality. So, we need to, first of all, see that our discursive thinking is not reality, and then savor those moments when we're no longer projecting self and permanence onto our experience, because that's when there's a possibility for the mind to really relax and let go in a deep way. Relaxing with insight into emptiness is one of the conditions for awakening.

Venerable Analayo says that compassion and emptiness are like two sides of the same coin. As we practice, they start to interpenetrate. So being okay with not okay is the beginning of learning self-compassion, and when the mind is compassionate, it's boundless.

He says that all the wisdom, all the insight we need for enlightenment will only be found when we're able to stay in the present. It's a profound thing for the body and mind to come to rest when, momentarily, we're not caught in wanting this and that. A sense of well-being and contentment with what naturally arises can arise. The contentment of knowing that just being alive is enough, with nothing to improve, to apologize for, or to defend. This then inspires confidence, which then circles back and further inspires us to be present for this lived life as we're living it right now.

On Monday, I shared with you the quote from the Buddha in which he assures us, "Speak or act with a peaceful mind, and happiness follows like a never-departing shadow." But our ancestors have given us powerful DNA which tells us that we need to stay stressed in fight-or-flight mode rather than allowing the mind to rest peacefully in spaciousness. But when everything becomes our friend, we can then dare to trust, letting go into the present moment, and we have the support for developing lasting happiness. Our practice is to untie the big knot of selfing, and we need serenity as the foundation and preparation for insight. If the mind remains contracted, it's easily disturbed. But if we have a big, sky-like mind, many things can arise, and the mind is able to hold them all without being disturbed.

However, if we don't tame the elephant of the mind to be confident, calm, imperturbable, and peaceful, we'll never dare to trust ourselves or to trust the Dharma of the present moment. Mingyur Rinpoche⁶ tells us, "If you're determined to think of yourself as limited, fearful, vulnerable, or scarred by past experience, know only that you have chosen to do so, and that the opportunity to experience yourself differently is always available." When you enter the path of Buddhist practice, you're ending an abusive relationship with yourself. So this is a strong statement, but I think what Mingyur Rinpoche is trying to convey is that we can choose freedom.

Gil Fronsdal teaches that the foundation for a practice is knowing, sensing or feeling, and relaxing. This can provide a radical change from how we usually live our lives, because the process of knowing, sensing, and relaxing can be free of any pressure or projections. In and of itself, just knowing and sensing can be peaceful, thankful, spacious, opening us up to a wider world. So be patient with your clinging. When we dare to trust ourselves and our practice, then we become a beautiful witness, and we can see the beauty inside ourselves and in the world. We can trust relaxing into this marvelous body of ours. We dare opening up to the vastness of a spacious mind and to the joy of inner goodness when the mind is at least temporarily free of greed, hate, and delusion.

In this practice of embodied awareness, we're letting go of the holding and identification that freeze the mind and the heart. Everyone is looking for a safe place, and we can know the real safe place is within us all the time. The well-being of our pure, innate awareness is our safety. And we begin to be less driven, wanting to be someone, to accomplish results. There's a big difference between setting a powerful aspiration and trying to get somewhere. As mammals, our biological instructions for survival are to be goal-oriented and to lean into the future. And our culture teaches us to keep on focusing on getting the next task done. As a consequence, many of us have internalized endless striving, consciously or unconsciously. The reptilian part of the brain tells us to remain stressed and fearful.

The neuropsychologist Rick Hanson, author of Buddha's Brain, says the mind tends to transfer unfulfilled needs from childhood into the present—needs such as to be safe, worthy, successful, or loved. And what's surprising is that these ancient longings often continue even after we've already resolved the original issues.

It's important how we live in this troubled world. We know that everything we think, say, and do is influencing the world around us. And I'm convinced that the practice we're all engaged in is teaching us how we can live for the benefit of all beings.

I'll close with the beautiful etymology of the English word "arrive." It comes from the Old French ariver, which means "to come to land," and this in turn comes from the Latin "to touch the shore" after a long voyage at sea.

In our meditation today, we practiced trusting the present moment and cultivating joy. And if you'd like some more homework after this week, you're invited to adopt the mantra, "Relax, you've arrived," whenever you see that the body is moving a bit too fast or you feel a little stressed. So the homework going forward is simply to relax and trust, knowing that you've already arrived on the other shore of supreme safety.

Thank you for your participation this week. Thank you for your practice.