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Guided Meditation: Receptive, Awake, Relaxed; Dharmette: Step-By-Step Into the Dharma (3 of 5); Actions Ripple Out - Shelley Gault

The following talk was given by Shelley Gault at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 19, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Receptive, Awake, Relaxed

The clock has turned over to the top of the hour. So, I'll get started.

Once again, I am happy to be with you this week sharing some Dharma. For those who haven't been here this week, I'm focusing on the step-by-step way that the Buddha would introduce new people to the Dharma. I am trying to give the sense of the importance of the teachings that lay the groundwork, the foundation for what are often called the teachings that are special to the Buddha. The teachings on the Four Noble Truths are usually spoken of in that regard.

I talked about dāna¹, generosity, on Monday and about sīla², ethical development, yesterday. I have two topics today, actually. I hope I don't go over the time because it's kind of hard to talk about these two in fifteen minutes. The first is called "the heavens" in texts, and it's about the relationship between our actions and their results—karma³. Again, this seems to me like a very natural progression from the teachings on ethics. Both dāna and sīla are kinds of action in the world that are wholesome, skillful, and harmless—the kind that lead to benefit for ourselves and for others, and sometimes both.

The implication of the teachings is that wholesome actions give rise to beneficial results, heavenly results, maybe even if we're living out our ordinary lives here on the earthly plane when we experience them. After the Buddha gave these teachings on the heavenly realms—the possible benefits of doing wholesome action—then he turned it around and talked about how depending on sense pleasures for our happiness is kind of a losing game. So those are the two topics for today.

But before we go further, let's meditate.

As usual, I'll ask you to spend a little bit of time with your posture. Our posture in meditation really has an effect on our ability to be at ease and to really become more clear in our minds. So to have that balance of being upright, alert, and at the same time with a sense of relaxation.

So there can be this uprightness in the spine even if you're lying down. Or if you're standing, of course, the back can carry this sense of dignity, and the head is balanced on the neck over the shoulders, not bent forward or bent back. Balanced.

It can be useful to lengthen the back of the neck slightly just by tipping the chin just very slightly forward. Not tilting the head forward, just the chin just slightly down. You might sense a bit more uprightness in the spine as you do that.

Maybe lift the shoulders a bit. Let them go back and fall, just drop. And the arms just hanging loosely from the shoulders next to your torso, not stretched forward. This helps avoid tension in the neck and shoulders, in the trapezius muscles—classic places to hold tension. Let the chest and belly be open so the breath can flow freely in and out.

You might take a couple of intentional breaths. Breathing in long, exhaling slowly. Settling in, letting yourself ease into the intention to be present with your breathing, with your life as it's unfolding moment by moment.

Being present to the sensations of breathing. Sensations existing all along the airway, from the tip of the nostrils all the way down deep into the chest and lungs, and the belly expanding. Sensing into the effects that breathing has in the whole body.

Receiving the sensations. Receptive, awake, relaxed. Relaxed in the body. Relaxed in the mind.

Breath comes in, breath goes out. Never still, never static, always moving. That's the nature of life. It's always moving.

And if you feel tension returning to areas in the body where it's typically held, if you eventually hold it, just invite those areas to relax. Maybe using the breath. It's beneficial. It's skillful. Be at ease, receptive, alert, and relaxed.

As the meditation is coming to an end this morning, I want to just encourage you, as I did yesterday, to bring a sense of presence into all your interactions today, all your activities. This recognition that this is our life moment by moment, and to be attentive to it, to be alert and relaxed with it, is a gift to ourselves. It's also a gift to others, as it brings something wholesome into all our activities, all our interactions.

So may that be an activity today.

Dharmette: Step-By-Step Into the Dharma (3 of 5); Actions Ripple Out

[Laughter] Forgot to unmute myself there.

So, I'm talking today, and this week—a little bit every day—about the topics that the Buddha typically taught people who were new to the Dharma. The understanding was that in order to be ready to hear the more subtle teachings, the liberative teachings, there needs to be a foundation of wholesome intention. The soil of the mind needs to be prepared, fertilized, cultivated.

So the Buddha taught first about giving and then about ethics, or virtue or morality. Both of those kinds of actions are wholesome or skillful actions that tend in the direction of where the path can lead: to a heart that is free, a mind that is free, peaceful, caring. We don't know exactly what the Buddha said about these topics to new people, but we do know that he spoke to inspire them to cultivate these qualities.

Next, in his next topic, he would go on to talk about the heavenly realms—the rewards that people could expect in their next lives from being generous and ethical, from acting in skillful ways. There are lots of heavenly realms, of course, described in the Buddhist texts. All of them with slightly different kinds of wonderful pleasures, realms of gods and other celestial beings. Realms that people can be reborn into if they live generous, ethical lives.

Of course, rebirth is kind of a sticky topic for many people who follow a Buddhist path in the West. In the Buddha's time, it was a generally accepted idea in most spiritual traditions, I believe. But you don't have to believe in rebirth literally in order to benefit from the essence of teachings on heavenly realms.

I don't believe experiencing the bliss of blamelessness as a result of not causing harm requires belief in rebirth. That's a kind of heaven that the mind and heart can be born into. You might say the most well-known heart qualities that we can develop—mettā⁴ or kindness, karuṇā⁵ or compassion, muditā⁶, upekkhā⁷ or equanimity—what are they called? They're called the Brahmavihāras⁸, the heavenly abodes. The abodes of Brahma, who was a god.

The descriptions of a lot of the heavenly realms in the Buddhist texts focus on the happiness and beautiful mental states that characterize them. In some, there are these deep, deep samādhi⁹ states. Acting skillfully, being generous, living in a way that doesn't harm ourselves, that doesn't harm others—those are skillful, beautiful ways of living in the world, putting in place the conditions for beautiful results like that.

So the teaching about heavenly abodes is really a teaching about karma. Our intentional actions in the world cause ripples—ripples moving forward, ripples in our minds—and those can be really beautiful ripples, and they can be not so beautiful at times.

Right from the beginning of this step-by-step introduction to the Dharma that the Buddha would give, this idea of conditionality has been implied. It's been inherent in there already. As the mind inclines in the direction of beneficial action, we notice the results. We see, "Oh, generosity actually feels good." We feel that goodness and it encourages us to continue. That's karma operating right there.

And not harming others, we feel more at peace. There's more peace in the heart, more ease. We appreciate that, and that encourages us, inspires us to continue. "When this arises, that arises"—the most basic description of conditionality. So dependent on acting skillfully, a sense of satisfaction arises in the mind and heart. And we notice that acting skillfully is a condition for the arising of a sense of satisfaction.

Conditionality, of course, operates in the natural world as well, not just in our behavior. If a flower is pollinated, a fruit can form. Without the pollination, it's not going to happen. When a wave hits the beach, the pebbles will roll around. That's not karma; that's just how the world works. Things happen, and as a result, other things happen. That's conditionality.

But when conditionality operates in the world of intentional human behavior, that's where the concept of karma comes in. In our lives, there will be times when we choose to be generous, or we can choose to be stingy. Which intention we choose—generosity or stinginess—carries a kind of inertia in the mind that's going to have a result. That's just how it works. That's how karma works.

So first the Buddha teaches giving, and then he teaches ethics. Once we've seen the effect of being generous and ethical in our lives, the assumption is that we're going to tend to choose generosity over stinginess. And then, in the next step in his gradual exposition, the Buddha tells us the result of that is that you could be reborn in a heavenly abode. And for those of us who can't really accept the idea of that, maybe he's telling us that our minds will be born into a heavenly abode as a result.

So at this point in the Buddha's step-by-step, gradual talk about the Dharma, he introduces the idea that the actions we choose to engage in can lead to very pleasant outcomes. I think at this point we can assume that the people the Buddha is addressing are not really inspired to be fully liberated yet. They're pretty new to the Dharma—completely new—but they're getting the idea that the Dharma can be like a self-help tool. That they can improve the quality of their lives by being generous and ethical, their next lives maybe. And if they really take on those intentions seriously, maybe they'll be reborn in worlds where their lives might last a thousand years and be filled with continual mental bliss. Hey, sign me up, right?

But in this imagined step-by-step discourse he's giving, then he sort of pulls the rug out from under any listener who's been thinking, "Okay, all I have to do is be generous and ethical and my future happiness is assured." Because the next step in the talk is to describe the downsides of depending on having pleasant situations, having sense pleasures.

This is a turning point in the discourse. I think it feels like a place where the Buddha begins to turn the listener's mind from thinking about their life and their sources of happiness in terms of comfort, security, pleasure—the things that people typically depend on for happiness in their lives—to something deeper. He's beginning this process of turning their minds toward something deeper. He's given them a glimpse of what kind of amazing future they could have if they're really good people, planted in their minds seeds of understanding that their actions will lead to results.

And then he begins to point to the downside of depending on sense pleasures for their well-being and happiness. Even the kind of sense pleasures that are available in these happy, heavenly abodes, let alone the kind of pleasures that are available to just mere mortals.

So what are the downsides? Well, first of all, nothing lasts. Even life as a god in a heaven ends.

I'm more intimate every day, I think, with the ways that things that provide a sense of comfort and pleasure in life don't really last. Physical strength, for one thing. The roof on my house, clean laundry, dinner. I'm often amazed at how often it takes me an hour or more to make dinner at our house, and then eating it takes about fifteen minutes. And maybe it was delicious, but now it's gone. It's over.

The things we want to last—our favorite T-shirt, our vegetable garden, our relationships—maybe they don't last, or they don't last as long as we'd like. They have their life and they're gone. We cannot make them stay.

And that dinner I cooked, I was somewhat attached to it being tasty and the pleasure of that. It's gone so quickly. And then after the pleasure is gone, what arises is, "Oh, okay, the next one." The thoughts about the anticipation of the next good meal, or maybe the next football game if that's what you're into, or the next good movie to watch. The pleasure itself is so slippery and so quickly gone, and we feel driven to make it happen again and again and again. That feeling of being driven, that is an "ouch." It's not pleasant.

The Buddha is explaining that karma also operates to give rise to dukkha¹⁰, not just heavenly bliss. If we're wealthy, we worry about keeping our wealth. If we're healthy, we might worry about keeping our health. Our lives are oriented around trying to prevent anything difficult from happening to our belongings. It's natural, and of course, it's sensible to take care of ourselves and our possessions, but if we're attached to being in our present physical state, we're going to suffer when it changes. And we know it will change. And of course, the same is true with everything we own.

So if we're depending on things going well in our lives in order to be happy, we're going to suffer a lot when they aren't going well.

I think we're probably all familiar with the desire to distract ourselves when things aren't going so well. Try to get away from the difficulty. And that can be a very healthy response if we're turning our minds toward what is wholesome, what's beautiful and uplifting to the mind and the heart. But often it's more like binging Netflix or chocolate or some other sense pleasure as a substitute for what we feel we're missing. A temporary fix that isn't really very satisfying in the long run.

So, after encouraging us to be generous and to refrain from doing harm, and then describing this delightful future we can enjoy if we live in that way, the Buddha goes on to remind us that delightful experiences are temporary. They're not reliable. They're not something we can depend on. Depending on them just leads to more dependence. It's not easeful. It's not satisfying.

But remember how giving felt satisfying, and being skillful—developing ethical sensitivity—how that feels good? So the Buddha is kind of setting the stage. Maybe real satisfaction lies somewhere other than what people typically try to create in their lives—some kind of perfect existence, like a heavenly realm, where the conditions always support comfort.

What is more reliable? What is more conducive to lasting well-being than satisfying sense desires?

That's a good question, and we'll look at that tomorrow. That'll be our topic: letting go of those sense desires and what is there that's possible when we do that.

So I look forward to sharing time with you tomorrow morning. I wish you a good day. Presence, receptivity, alertness, ease, and kindness to all you meet within you and outside of you. See you tomorrow.