This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Objects of Mind; Knowing & Not Knowing (2 of 5): Clearly Knowing. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Dharmette: Knowing & Not Knowing (2 of 5): Clearly Knowing; Guided Meditation: Objects of Mind - Ines Freedman

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

Guided Meditation: Objects of Mind

Morning everyone. It's great to see you all and be back with you again.

Yesterday I read you a piece of the teaching that the Buddha gave his son Rahula about meditating like the Earth. This is another section of that same Sutta:

"Rahula, meditate like space. For when you meditate like space, pleasant and unpleasant contacts will not occupy your mind and remain. Just as space is not established anywhere, in the same way, meditate like space. For when you meditate like space, pleasant and unpleasant contacts will not occupy your mind and remain."

So one way of thinking about mindfulness, about awareness, is like a big open sky. The objects that arise in the mind are like birds or clouds floating by, like rain falling, or thunder appearing, or lightning. Sometimes the sky is illuminated by the sun, sometimes by the moon or stars. All the objects of mind just come and go in that space.

We can think of awareness like the vast space in which every one of these objects of mind occur. Like our body sensations that come from the five external senses—what we see, hear, taste, smell, and touch. What we might feel from the internal senses—pressure, warmth, pain, position, balance. All our thoughts and memories, feelings and emotions, all our reactions—they all occur within this field of awareness.

The key is to allow all objects to come and go, to be seen clearly when they arise, but without holding on to them, without trying to keep them or fix them, or without pushing them away. A simple way of seeing it, as Ajahn Sumedho¹ said: "The spacious mind has room for everything." It's like the space in this room, which is never harmed by what comes in and out of the room.

So let's sit. Taking a comfortable and alert posture and gently closing your eyes. Settling into your meditation posture, allowing yourself to be centered on your body. Allowing the attention to meander throughout the body, relaxing any tensions that can be relaxed. Relaxing the face, the shoulders, the belly. Whatever tensions you might find, whatever holdings, see if they can be relaxed. If not, you can just soften around them. Just connecting intimately with that body. Relaxing the body.

[Silence]

From within the body, you might become aware of your breathing. In the simplicity of this moment: this inhale, this exhale. Knowing you're breathing in, knowing you're breathing out. You might take a few long, slow, deep breaths. With each inhale, connecting more intimately with the moment. And with each exhale, relaxing a little more deeply into the moment. Letting go, settling in.

[Silence]

Then allowing your breath to return to normal. Staying close to the breath. Staying simple.

[Silence]

Nothing is needed. Just here in this body, breathing in and breathing out. Like a tree with deep roots, the branches reaching into the blue open sky. Allowing the winds of thoughts, emotions, sensations to come and go. Breathing in and breathing out.

[Silence]

You can become aware of any sense of space, of stillness in the midst of the movements of the breath. Any sense of ease, well-being, and the stillness. Like the clear open sky, undisturbed by any clouds that drift by.

[Silence]

Resting in the moment. Allowing whatever appears to disappear. Just seeing it clearly, not adding anything to it. No need to complicate it with ideas or stories about it. See if you can be equanimous to whatever arises, not being for or against it.

If thoughts arise, allow them to be in the background. They're not a problem. No need to push them away, no need to add to them or build on them. Just simple thinking in the background. No matter how important it seems, it's just a thought that comes and goes. If we don't feed it, no matter how complex or deep or emotion-stirred, we can allow them to be simple. No need to figure it out, but allow each emotion to be simple. To come and go. Just knowing what's here, what's obvious. No need to chase anything. Just resting in the moment of awareness.

[Silence]

If the attention has drifted, you can notice it and gently escort it back to the breath. Welcome it home. Just returning to the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out.

[Silence]

I'll ring the bell in a moment. When I do, you might take a couple of slow deep breaths again before opening your eyes.

[Bell]

Dharmette: Knowing & Not Knowing (2 of 5): Clearly Knowing

So this morning I'll continue with the theme of knowing and not knowing, and reflecting particularly on clear knowing or clear comprehension.

An infant can be fascinated by the flame of a gas stove and climb up on a chair and burn their hand. They can be very present with the flame, very aware of the pretty colors, but they don't yet have the context that it's not a wise thing to do to stick your hand in a flame. This fuller context is what we call clear knowing or clear comprehension.

Clear comprehension broadens the simple observation of mindfulness into understanding the fuller context of the moment. If we're meditating and maybe we notice our head is feeling warm—warm and much warmer—it is clear knowing that realizes, "Oh, there's some fire and we better put it out." If we act out towards someone in anger, yelling at them, mindfulness might recognize yelling or anger, but clear comprehension makes it obvious that it's not in accord with our intentions of equanimity and compassion.

Additionally, there are four aspects of clear comprehension that I'll mention. You don't have to remember all four, but maybe some of them will particularly resonate with you. These four aspects of clear comprehension can apply both to formal meditation but also to mindfulness in daily life, in all aspects of our life. It's the same mind that gets caught in meditation or gets caught in the ins and outs of our days.

The first one is clear comprehension of purpose². It asks the question: "Why are we doing what we're doing?" For instance, in meditation, we might be seduced into a fantasy. It's a really juicy fantasy and we become aware of it, but we don't want to pull away; we're enjoying it. Clear comprehension recognizes that it's not the purpose of training the mind in meditation to sit here massaging this fantasy.

In daily life, maybe our long-term purpose is to be liberated, to be free, to open our hearts. But our actions may not support our purpose. For instance, these days many people find themselves regularly "doomscrolling" unhelpfully on our devices. Doomscrolling is when we just go from one piece of news to another, even though you may have already spent half an hour doing it or more. Or maybe our purpose is opening the heart in kindness and compassion, and yet we find ourselves caught in gossiping about people in a disrespectful way.

It can be helpful to take time periodically to reflect on our long-term purpose, to use the intelligence of the mind to clearly reflect on our deepest aspirations. Why are we on the path? Keeping it close to our lives. I often find it helpful to connect with this daily at the beginning of each formal meditation period, to remind myself to use it as a reference point in my life. Are my actions aligned with this purpose?

It really becomes clear. If our deepest aspiration is to be at peace and we're trying to convince someone else of our point of view, and the contractions around that convincing, all that energy of clinging—it's not aligned with our deepest aspirations. It's not that we don't express our points of view, but it's: do our hearts contract when we do? When we're agitated, clinging to a point of view, there's no communication going on. Recognizing when that happens that this is dukkha³, this is suffering, and that this process is not aligned with the intention of being at peace. Maybe we can allow something within us to relax.

The second clear comprehension aspect is suitability⁴. What do we need to do to accomplish our purpose? And even if it's a wise action, is it appropriate at this time? For instance, in a situation in daily life, maybe you need to give constructive criticism to someone. But maybe you don't do it when they just told you their dog died.

I like to consider: what's practical? What are we actually likely to do? In relation to practice, I had a student that was really struggling hard to establish a daily practice. He had the idea that meditation happened in the morning sitting in his meditation spot. But when he started meditating he didn't have children; now he had two very young children at home. Time and time again things came up, from lack of sleep to family needs, and he'd only manage occasional meditation. So we explored what might work for him. He saw that he had to let go of the ideal of sitting in this beautiful meditation area each morning. He developed a strong, steady practice eventually by meditating at work in his office. He was much more easily able to carve out the time there and not be interrupted. Another of my students found that the best time was to sit in her car during her lunch break.

The other thing we can do in this area is we can set the bar too high, which can sabotage us. What's practical? What stretches us just a little bit, just a little past the edge of our comfort zone where we can grow? Some of us set the bar too low with procrastination. So what's practical here? How do we move from procrastination to doing a little bit of something? A little bit of sitting.

The third one is the domain of practice⁵. Where do we place our energy? Where do we place our effort in our lives? Where do we place our time? In our daily lives, we might ask ourselves: where do we get our nourishment to carry out our higher purposes in life? If a larger purpose in life is freedom, compassion, or peace, do we get nurtured by watching the news? We see clearly the difference between being informed and the compulsive quality of going from one thing to another on the internet.

Most of us have heard the term "monkey mind," where the mind just goes from one thing to another like monkeys jumping from one branch to another. Maybe instead of the internet, we should call it the "monkey net." [Laughter] Maybe calling a good friend might be more nourishing, or going for a walk, or just sitting to meditate.

The fourth form of clear comprehension is non-delusion⁶. This asks the question: "How do we view our experience?" Do we view it from the eyes of attachment, or do we view it from the eyes of Dharma? For instance, being upset because my computer died the day after the warranty expired. Would this still be a big deal on my deathbed? Or maybe we could imagine if the Buddha had a computer, how would the Buddha view it?

We don't have to take the behaviors of others personally. That's a form of non-delusion. Thinking that their point of view, their behaviors are about me, rather than just about their conditions, their process.

In meditation, non-delusion involves opening to the moment just the way it is, even if we don't see it clearly. Maybe what we see is confusion, but just opening to it: "Ah, this is what's here, confusion." "Oh, this is what's here, an uncomfortable sensation." Opening to it just the way it is, not the way we want it.

As we bring mindfulness more deeply into our daily lives, maybe we notice clinging once we're well into the middle of an argument. Or we find ourselves clinging to a point of view. We can recognize it and step back from it. That moment of recognition is a moment of non-delusion and a moment of freedom. Each time we clearly see our clinging and see the suffering it's causing us, we can incline to let it go, to see the release of it. We weaken these chains that bind us.

Clearly knowing allows us to understand or experience more fully what's needed at the moment, but it doesn't mean complicating our experience anymore. So hold these categories loosely. It just means seeing clearly. If we've complicated our experience—which we often tend to do with our thinking and ideas—what are we adding here that's not helpful? If we find ourselves in moments of feeling disconnected in our lives or caught up in unhelpful ways in the events of our lives or events of the world, we can view any situation through the eyes of the Dharma, through the eyes of practice, through the eyes of non-clinging.

So tomorrow I'll continue the topic with the focus on not knowing. Today knowing clearly, and not knowing—the two complement each other beautifully.

May the benefits of our practice together spread out to all corners of the world. May all beings be happy. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free. Thank you.