This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Cultivating Presence; The Five Precepts (5 of 5) Refrain from Intoxication. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Cultivating Presence; The Five Precepts (5 of 5) Refrain from Intoxication

The following talk was given by Maria Straatmann at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on September 12, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Cultivating Presence (link)

Welcome to the moment. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, good day, good night. Whatever time of day it is that you are here, you are here. Welcome to this moment. Please settle into this moment. Find a comfortable but relaxed posture and just breathe.

Be grateful for being in this moment, for this body in this moment. Feel the ease of just being here.

As you breathe in, be aware of the air moving into this space, and breathing out. In and out. Know you're here.

Let all the parts of your body relax into being here. You have arrived in this moment.

The short leg, the long leg, the weak knee, the strong knee, the loose hips, the tight hips. Whatever has arisen, let it all just be here. Relax the torso. Let them sink into now.

If your thoughts are pulling you away, invite them back into the room. Thinking, thinking, thinking mind, back here.

Whatever arises, I choose to be here. I choose to be here. Breathing. Breathing.

Bring yourself home to your senses. Know you are here. Be aware of yourself in the room. Breathing in this space, breathing. I am here. Awareness of here. Awareness of now. Knowing now. Choosing now. Here.

In the stillness of this moment, be here with whatever energy is around you. Be aware of that energy within and without. You are here, breathing.

I'm here. I choose to be here. I'm aware I am here.

There in this body, breathing, the air is moving in and out. I know that I am here. I choose to be here now. Aware of this moment, this one. This moment being here, I feel my body. I feel the breath. I experience here, now.

Dharmette: The Five Precepts (5 of 5) Refrain from Intoxication (link)

Hello everyone. This is great. I don't have shoes on this morning and my legs are different sizes. One is shorter than the other, and one foot is lighter on the floor than the other. Should that be delightful or just a thing? I can feel the difference in the lengths of my legs because I don't have shoes on. Ever so tiny a difference.

What we can sense is really quite amazing. What we know about our bodies, we don't think about. We shouldn't spend all our time thinking about all the things we know. But it's really a gift to inhabit our lives and not be lost in all of the things that we can think about, that we've thought about a thousand times, a million times, countless times, going over and over and over and over in our minds. To actually inhabit our lives is a true gift of mindfulness. To be in our lives.

Which brings me to today's topic, which is the fifth precept: to refrain from intoxication. Now, it's pretty easy to just put this down to no alcohol, no drugs, just don't do it. We can turn it into a commandment that has to do with let's not engage in any intoxicants. Or we can look at what the precept really says to us. It is the principle of non-heedlessness.

More broadly, it addresses anything that we feed ourselves that leads to heedlessness, carelessness, anything that takes us out of the presence that we bring to our lives. It's not that we should never touch these substances, although there may be wisdom in that. It stands as a warning that we decrease our sensitization to what's going on around us, what's happening in the here and now. And it means our capacity for clear seeing and clear judgments is impaired.

Basically, what is an intoxicant? It's something that allows us to alter our senses, either to enhance them or dull them. We want to change what we're sensing. That's what they do. The important thing is this principle isn't about purity. It's really about clarity and discipline. It's about how sharp do you want your sense abilities to be? How clear do you want your seeing to be?

Now, if you've ever been a designated driver, it's a very interesting place to watch from and to see really clearly, either from that point of view how people's behavior is altered, or as someone who has become inebriated, what the consequences are—physical, social, emotional—the next day. It may feel great at one point but not so great at another. One wonders, why do we do it at all? An idea of control that we give up control in the name of control.

One of the real virtues of the mindful life is enhanced sensitivity, an enhancement of all of the senses that we have. The Dhammapada¹ says, "If by giving up a lesser happiness, one could experience greater happiness, a wise person would renounce the lesser to behold the greater." Yeah. Surely that would be true. Surely that would be true.

I'm going to read you something from Gil's translation, The Buddha Before Buddhism. It's a translation of the Book of Eights, the Aṭṭhakavagga², and what I particularly want to read you is the Kama Sutta³, the discourse on desire.

When desire for sensual pleasure is fulfilled, one will surely be delighted. The mortal's attained what the mortal wanted. But if this pleasure fades away, the person with this desire who gives birth to this desire is pained as if pierced by an arrow.

Sidestepping sensual desire as one would the head of a snake with one's foot is the mindful one who while in this world steps beyond craving.

Through greed for fields, goods, gold, cows and horses, servants, women, relatives, and lots of sensual pleasures. One's weakness overpowers. Crushed by many troubles, suffering pours in as water into a leaking boat.

A person ever mindful therefore turns away from sensual desires, abandoning them one will cross the flood, like bailing a boat to reach the far shore.

Bailing a boat to reach the far shore. All of the precepts have this in common, really. Well, they're all about non-harming. They're about incorporating into our way of being a way of not putting our pleasure over displeasure, unpleasantness. It's not saying that satisfying our desires or our need for pleasure is the greater happiness.

There's a tendency that we all share to look at something that is pleasant versus something that's unpleasant and move toward what is pleasant. And the thoughtless person will just automatically go to what is pleasant. "Oh, that's pleasant. I'm going there." This leads to heedlessness. This leads to carelessness.

But if we cultivate our capacity to be with what is unpleasant—to be with, not to enjoy, not to say this is better than, but simply to say, "Huh, what is it like to be with what is unpleasant?"—one can actually cultivate true contentment. Not the temporary happiness that comes with satisfying one's desire for pleasure, but the contentment that arises from not wanting and not not-wanting; that neither wants nor not-wants, but is simply, "Ah, so this is what's arising."

I choose to be here to experience what is here. I want to see clearly what is here. I want to see clearly what's arising in my life. I want to be able to experience you clearly.

The way to contentment passes through the roads of both wisdom and compassion. All of the precepts have to do with how we interact with what is around us. They're not self-focused, although they begin in our own heart-minds. Do we have in our heart-minds the peace of, "this is what arises," and skillful action requires me to neither push away nor hold on to what I want, versus what does not cause suffering?

Primarily, we need to pay attention. Pay attention. So if intoxicating ourselves means that we are impairing our ability to pay attention, why would we do that? Indeed, why would we do that? Because we're trying not to pay attention. We're trying not to pay attention.

Coming home to being present in this moment requires a kind of brutal honesty of, "this is what's true. It's like this." And to understand that we can breathe into this moment, just this moment, and find freedom just in this moment can be quite frightening. And yet that is where we're headed. That's the place. That's the place of true contentment. Neither wanting nor not-wanting. Not holding on to or pushing away.

Living an ethical life requires us to truly see ourselves and others. The clarity of vision is really the key. The mindfulness of what's true in this moment.

I'm going to read you a poem, a Jane Hirshfield poem called "I Imagine Myself in Time."

I imagine myself in time looking back on myself. this self this morning drinking her coffee on the first day of a new year and once again almost unable to move her pen through the iron air perplexed by my life as Midas was in his world of sudden metal surprised that it was not as he'd expected what he'd asked and that other self who watches me from the distance of decades what will she say, "Will she look at me with hatred or with compassion? I whose choices made her what she will be."

Because that's the thing. Our choices make us who we will be. What we cultivate in ourselves, that's what we will realize.

The other day I opened with the beginning lines of the Dhammapada:

All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a corrupted mind, and suffering follows like the wheels of a cart behind the hooves of the ox.

All experience is preceded by mind, led by mind, made by mind. Speak or act with a peaceful mind, and happiness follows like a never-departing shadow.

What we think, what we hold in our minds, what we hold in our hearts, that's what we create. Those are the conditions for the next moment. If I'm saying to myself, "Oh, I don't want this. I don't want this," I'm creating the energy for the next moment of "I don't want this. I don't want this." And that's the energy that I'm creating and carrying forward. If I'm someone who takes shortcuts, if I'm someone who speaks ill of others, if I'm cultivating the ill will in my heart, that's the energy that I'm carrying forward. That's the condition I'm creating for the next moment.

Those are the choices we make. Our ability to see clearly what's happening allows us to step back and say, "Wait, my intention is to be kind. My intention is to be clear." How do I want to be in this world? How do I want to live in this world? How do I want to manifest my desire to be compassionate with myself and others?

Those are the choices. Those are the choices we make. The world of the principles is a world of seeing clearly and making skillful choices. It is the path of both wisdom and compassion.

I wish you great wisdom and the joys of great compassion. Thank you for sharing this time with me. I'll be back in a couple of weeks. I'm going to do this again week after next. So, I'll see you again then. Good morning. Bye bye.