This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Feel Thinking, Feel Peace (4 of 5) Fourth Noble Truth - Kodo Conlin. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Feel Thinking, Feel Peace; Dharmette: (4 of 5) Fourth Noble Truth - Kodo Conlin

The following talk was given by Kodo Conlin at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 04, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Feel Thinking, Feel Peace

Greetings. Welcome back. It is wonderful to be with all of you. I'm seeing lots of "good mornings," "good days," sunshine, rain. It's a pleasure to practice together.

Today we arrive at the Fourth Noble Truth, and we'll open up the Fourth Noble Truth by talking about a number of the factors of the Eightfold Path. We'll talk about it from one perspective today, and then look at the final three factors from the perspective of meditation tomorrow. Let's begin with the sitting.

The arc of the meditation today will begin in a usual way with some settling, and then we will look closely at the quality or nature of any distracting thoughts that come up, identifying their quality, and then looking at how different kinds of thoughts influence the body, how they show up as sensation.

Let's begin by settling. Returning to stillness. Returning to our sensed relationship with the earth supporting the body, the air around us becoming breath.

If it's available to you, giving some extra attention to abide in the body, in those places in the body it feels particularly still. Bringing the attention there, sensing stillness. Settling in stillness.

For the next part of this meditation, a bit like watching pebbles falling into a lake rippling the surface, you can try paying close attention to the influence of thinking. With this baseline of settledness in the body, when a thought arises, we allow it to arise. No need to pick it up and run with it, but try to recognize: what's the quality of this thought? Is it a thought with a tinge of boredom in it, or desire? Is it a thought with just a touch of ill will or aversion?

In one word, what's the quality of the thought? And then feeling its influence in the body. What's the signature of sensations that arises as a thought of ill will arises? With a physical contraction, or heat, tightening? So what's the nature of the thought? Is it a thought of kindness or generosity? And then what's its influence?

If there are times when no thought is arising, and no influence to observe, staying here with the body, with stillness, with peace.

And for the last third or so of this meditation, beginning in stillness and observing the influence of thinking. Now, is there some way that the thoughts, whatever they may be, can be allowed to arise and accompany a peace and stillness? Can that peace and stillness, embodied, be in the foreground of awareness, and thoughts can just come and go?

Feeling peace, and feeling the influence of thinking. May all beings relate wisely to thoughts and impulses. May all beings know an embodied peace and true freedom. Thank you.

Dharmette: (4 of 5) Fourth Noble Truth

So before we begin, I am curious how that meditation was for you, how that series of exercises was for you. If you feel inspired to write anything in the chat about that, I'm happy to know.

Now let's turn directly to the Fourth Noble Truth. The Fourth Noble Truth is itself this ancient path that it is said the Buddha rediscovered. It is the Middle Way between the notions of existence and nonexistence, and between a sort of sensual indulgence and self-mortification. I love this phrase: not falling into either of these extremes, the Buddha teaches the Dharma by the Middle Way.

This week we've talked about the First Noble Truth and its task or practice of understanding. We've talked about the Second Noble Truth as the arising or origin of suffering, and the task of abandoning. And then the Third Noble Truth, the good news, the cessation of suffering—the cessation of dukkha¹—and the task of realizing, with some discussion about ways to stay encouraged along this path.

And now we turn to the remedy, the Fourth Noble Truth. The Fourth Noble Truth, as it is said, is just this Noble Eightfold Path. It's the path of practice that leads to the cessation of suffering. Today we will look at maybe five of the factors in brief—five of the eight factors of the Noble Eightfold Path—and then tomorrow we'll look at the final three from the perspective of meditation.

Just to name them, the factors of the Eightfold Path are right (or wise, or complete) view, wise intention, wise speech, wise action, wise livelihood, wise effort, wise mindfulness, and wise concentration. It covers a lot of ground, does it not?

One way to organize or think about these is inspired by a paraphrase of a sutta done by Bhikkhu Bodhi², from the connected discourses of the Buddha. Bhikkhu Bodhi paraphrases it this way: one time when a monk approached the Buddha and asked for the training in brief—basically a monk approaches the Buddha and asks, "How do I do the practice in brief?"—the Buddha told him, "First establish yourself in the starting point of wholesome states, that is, in purified moral discipline and in right view. Then, when your moral discipline is purified and your view is straight, you should practice the Four Foundations of Mindfulness³."

This is an important pointing, putting right view and what Bhikkhu Bodhi is translating as moral discipline (the Pali is probably sīla⁴)—reflections on wise action, wise speech, wise livelihood—having these as the basis. Because we may know the way that a mind that is settled in itself through non-regret contributes to a sense of stillness. And for liberating insight to arise, for us to be freed of this First Noble Truth of suffering, some great measure of stillness—very deep stillness—is necessary.

Right View

So let's talk a few minutes about right view. With a little bit of a smile, I offer this quote that I think I picked up from Guy Armstrong's⁵ book Emptiness, and I believe he's quoting Yogi Berra: "If you don't know where you're going, you might end up somewhere else." So maybe we could say this is the function of right view. Bhikkhu Bodhi puts it another way: he says to attempt to engage on the practice without a foundation of right view is to risk getting lost in the futility of undirected movement. Maybe we know some of the ways of practice, but we don't know how to orient it.

I'd need to do a little bit more research on the word, but I think that the Pali word sammā⁶—that's the "right," "wise," or "complete" in right view, right intention, etc.—I believe it has a connotation of orientation. I like to think that each of these factors is part of the Noble Eightfold Path because it points us in the direction of liberation. It's rightly directed. We know where we are going, and we move in that direction.

It's said that just as the dawn is the forerunner of the rising sun, so right view precedes all of the other wholesome factors. And we know that right view, as with the rest of the Buddha Dharma, is not merely theoretical. Right view has an influence on our actions, on our values, the way we think, the way we speak.

So how do we understand right view? A few points. One is that, in summary, right view is an understanding that our actions have effects, and that those actions can have beneficial effects or they can have harmful consequences. And then this final, important point: that we have a say in choosing an action that is beneficial as best as we can see, or choosing an action that's harmful. So our actions have effects, harmful or beneficial, and we have a say.

I had a memory while I was thinking about this. When I was living at Tassajara⁷, we were 14 miles away from anything in the wilderness, and sometimes there were maybe 40 monks there for three months at a time. It was very easy to see in that cloistered setting how an action has a consequence in the community. In some ways, you could see your words and deeds ripple around and have an effect. It was so palpable, the influence of our actions on others and on ourselves. It felt a little bit like being a goldfish in one of those little goldfish aquariums—you can see all the little movements of the fins and the way that the mouth opens and closes. It was so plain to see.

For example, one—let's say two—seconds of unskillful speech in such a small community that's close together like that, you could see the effect just ripple through beings, and then it could take hours of care to address. So this is cause and effect: our actions have consequences, and we have a say in whether we choose beneficial or harmful consequences.

On another level elsewhere, the Buddha defines right view as an understanding of suffering, an understanding of the arising or origin of suffering, an understanding of the cessation of suffering, and an understanding of the way leading to the cessation of suffering. Sound familiar? Do you hear the Four Noble Truths? Just our study this week of the Four Noble Truths is part of this training in right view, wise view. And both of these modes—thinking about actions and consequences, and studying the Four Noble Truths—both contribute to the path of liberation.

Conduct

So the basis in the sutta that Bhikkhu Bodhi pointed out is wise view, and then there's conduct. Let's talk in brief about four of these factors of the Noble Eightfold Path that I'm grouping under the heading "conduct": wise action, wise livelihood, right speech, and right intention. Here we can apply a principle we talked about with the First Noble Truth, that is, closely observing our actions and their effects, and then making room for new possibilities in our conduct for the purposes of developing the path of practice.

You can think about viewing wise conduct under all four of these factors as observing and practicing from the gross level, the easy-to-observe level, to a very subtle level. On the level of the body, we can look at wise action and wise livelihood. This is maybe the easiest to observe. If you do a physical action, you can see it; you can see it on my camera now. Whereas an intention, for example, is not so visible. It takes some greater stillness.

The way the training is done in refining our conduct for the purposes of liberation is twofold. There's this first aspect of refraining from what is harmful. In a sense it's a training in restraint; it certainly sounds like restraint. And then the other aspect is this creative, open possibility—some sort of new conduct happening. There's the refraining from aspect, and then there's bringing forward the beautiful.

We can look a little bit more closely at this. If we zoom in on right action, three of the things that are advised to refrain from in practicing with right action: one is intentionally harming living beings, two is taking what's not given, and the third is those ways of engaging in our sexuality that do harm. These are the things we restrain or we certainly observe. And then there are positive associated behaviors and virtues. So instead of harming living beings, or taking what's not given, or harming through sexuality, we cultivate actions and virtues based in kindness and compassion, honesty and contentment, and generosity.

And then very briefly, just something about right speech. Gil⁸ has this great saying: "If you want to learn about yourself, study why it is you say what you say." You can study where your intention and your speech come together. And the training, as we're talking about it, is to refrain from that speech that's harmful—that is, say, dishonest, harsh, divisive, frivolous, or maybe just untimely—and then open the possibilities for yourself of speech that's kind, speech that's needed or necessary, useful, honest, and timely. It can be useful to envision those two sorts of speech and sense for ourselves which ones are conducive to harmony, which ones are conducive to offering our attention in a beautiful way.

And right intention underlies all of these: right action, right speech. Why are our intentions so important in the Buddha Dharma? Because they influence sort of the moral weight of an action. We observe the effects of our actions and we observe the intentions of our actions both.

So to close, I'll just offer Bhikkhu Bodhi's paraphrase again: that first we establish the starting point of wholesome states—purified moral discipline and right view—and then when those are established, practice the Four Foundations of Mindfulness. So we'll turn to the Noble Eightfold Path, the last three factors in relationship to the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, tomorrow.

Please take care, everyone. May all beings be free from suffering and have the causes of happiness. Take care.