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Guided Meditation: Embodied Path; Dharmette: (5 of 5) An Ennobling Path - Kodo Conlin

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

Guided Meditation: Embodied Path

Greetings. Hello. Wonderful to be with you again.

It's been four mornings on the Four Noble Truths, and we've arrived at Friday, the fifth day. My hope for the morning, for the day, wherever you are, is that we remember to bring the whole body and the whole being along as we walk this Eightfold Path. So let's begin with a meditation, a simple meditation of embodiment.

The instructions in brief will be: first let's establish mindfulness here with this body, and then whenever awareness seems to get a little small or shrink, bring the awareness back to the entire body. We are aware, as best we can be, of the whole body at once. So let's begin.

Taking our places. Really taking our time to connect with the body as it is right here.

I would suggest making any adjustments that you need to the posture, such that the breathing can flow easily and deeply. If free and easy breathing is not available, no problem. Perhaps in that case, instead of feeling the body from the inside out, you can try sensing the body from the outside in, almost from its perimeter.

Bringing the whole body along on this path. Now is a good time to check in with all of the senses. If there's any tension, say in the eyes, relaxing the eyes. Any tension linked to the ears, relax the ears. Just so with the nose, even the tongue, the mouth, and the gums, and gently with the whole body.

Applying now just enough energy to bring awareness, as best we can, to the whole body. Holding the whole body in our awareness so it can be seen in one glance, sensed in one glance. The whole width of the shoulders, the distance from the front of the body to the back of the body, and from the scalp to the toes.

With our eyes closed, sensing this whole dancing field of sensation.

And if, after some time, you notice the awareness is growing smaller, gently invite the entire body.

Sensing the entire body, bringing the entire body along, walking this Eightfold Path. No part of our being left behind.

In the last minute of this sitting, I invite you to relax any effort in the meditation, and if it's available, breathe a touch of gratitude into this body, offered to the body. It's by the body that we're aware, by the body we walk the path, and the mind and body together that we wake up. May all beings be free from suffering.

Dharmette: (5 of 5) An Ennobling Path

Welcome again. The Four Noble Truths: the noble truth of suffering, the noble truth of the arising or origin of suffering, the third noble truth of the cessation of suffering, and the fourth noble truth of the way, the path, the practice leading to the cessation of suffering. I'm wanting to emphasize this morning bringing the whole body along. As we said at the end of the sitting, it's the body and the mind together through which we awaken.

I have this metaphor that helps me remember that the whole body is involved in this Eightfold Path, and that's likening each factor to a part of the body. This is totally my idea, so let it go if it doesn't land for you.

Right View is like the eyes that orient us to our direction on the path. I liken Right Intention to the head, that I associate with impulses, thoughts, and choices. Right Speech for obvious reasons. Right Action and Right Livelihood are like the left and the right hand together, so action and livelihood are not so distinguished. Right Effort I associate with the belly. There are associations of power in the stomach, motive force, so Right Effort in the belly. Right Mindfulness I link to the entire sensing body, this whole body's mindfulness. And then Right Concentration is the heart. The association with the heart is actually influenced by the teachings of the Thai Forest tradition, that a heart, the citta¹, the mind, they locate in the chest. They say when one becomes concentrated, what happens is it's the citta that's becoming concentrated, the citta that's collecting. So I love to think of the heart becoming collected in the center of the being. This metaphor helps remind me that this whole body comes along.

Yesterday we spoke about five factors of the Noble Eightfold Path. We touched on Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, and Right Livelihood. I divided those factors in a way to emphasize Right View, holding up Right View and then holding up the other four in a sort of creative category I called conduct. Usually, the path is divided into three divisions: the division of wisdom that includes Right View and Right Intention; the division of sīla² (virtue or ethics) that includes speech, action, and livelihood; and then this third division which will be the focus this morning, which is samādhi³ (concentration), that includes three factors also: Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration.

I want to emphasize that Right View is not left behind no matter where we go on the path. We're orienting to the next step on the path and the goal at whatever distance. There's this beautiful sutta, a Middle Length Discourse, it's 117, that is called the Great Forty. There's this description in it, over and over again, about how Right View, Right Mindfulness, and Right Effort all circle and run around each other. I love the dynamic aspect of thinking of these factors of the Eightfold Path running and circling around each other, and that Right View, Right Mindfulness, and Right Effort are all working together.

Part of that teaching explains what each of these factors is. The effort that's involved is to abandon an unwise view and to enter into Right View. And the mindfulness that's involved is that which keeps us attentive. We have to be able to recognize Right View and recognize some effort, that's the mindfulness. So maybe in other words we could say that Right View orients us skillfully, effort is the effort to align with Right View that we see, and then mindfulness is that attentiveness which allows this process to happen. Right View stays with us as we move into this samādhi section: Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration.

In relationship to the Eightfold Path, Right Effort is that effort that it takes to enter into each one of the factors of the Eightfold Path. The effort it takes to enter into Right View and let go of its opposite, and then that effort it takes to enter into wise intentions and let go of the opposite. Same with speech, same with action, same with livelihood. Now in meditation, the art of finding the right amount of effort is often the main question. And that effort is likened to tuning a stringed instrument. Maybe you've heard this teaching before of the Buddha meeting Soṇa⁴. He's having a tough time in his meditation; he seems to be doing everything right but it's not going well for him, and the Buddha asks him a question about his effort. In explaining the art of finding the right amount of effort, the Buddha likens the application of energy to tuning a stringed instrument. If it's too loose the string won't play, if it's too tight the instrument is out of tune. So you have to tune the effort.

Circling around with Right Effort, of course, is Right View and Right Mindfulness. Regarding Right Mindfulness, there's a contemporary teacher who says that to be mindful is easy. What is difficult is to remember to be mindful. I appreciate that. Maybe we could say that Right Mindfulness is a sort of comfort zone in our tradition. We talk about it a lot, we study it a lot, we practice it regularly. We might say we do this with some energy, and though it's our comfort zone so to speak, it takes vigor. We see this in the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta⁵, that there's a degree of ardency involved in our right view and clear seeing, in our practice of mindfulness.

And it's a wonder, it's just a wonder that the power of sustained, clear awareness, clear mindfulness is able to develop what's beautiful in us and to support us to abandon what's harmful. Can you hear the Right Effort that comes along with Right Mindfulness? It helps us to grow in the beneficial. Also, part of the power of mindfulness is the simplicity of the method. It's so easy to describe that what we're doing in mindfulness is to clearly know the body as body, these feeling tones as feeling tones, this mind as mind, and qualities as qualities, just as they're arising. Not as we wish they were, not as we wish they weren't, but just as they are. And doing this, putting aside greed and distress in reference to the world, it's said the simplicity is just amazing.

So Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and this brings us to Right Concentration. Wise concentration, or as Gil has been teaching recently, complete concentration. In a way, this eighth factor of the Eightfold Path is like the culmination of the Eightfold Path in that, in one reckoning, it arises at the end and it's been conditioned and supported by the entire path before it. Again, in the Great Forty, Right Concentration is explained as that sort of concentration that's invested with all of the other factors of the Eightfold Path. Another classic understanding is that wise concentration is related to these four deep states of unification of the mind and heart called jhāna⁶. Why I want to bring them up is because the images that are used to teach most of them are associated with water.

Why is that significant? When thinking about concentration you might think, "Oh, laser beam," or "clamp," or "I will sternly demand that my awareness be in one place," something like that. So rather than the laser beam or clamp metaphor, thinking about water. The first of the four metaphors being like sprinkling water on bath powder, or maybe in modern terms sprinkling water on bread dough and kneading it so that this dough is unified and there's water suffused throughout it, nothing extra. In the same way, in this state the body is filled with rapture and pleasure. Then the second, just as another example, is a state of concentration, collectedness of the mind, where a spring-fed lake is welling up from within, and that's likened to the pervading of cool waters throughout the body.

Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration—these are meditation's contribution to the Noble Eightfold Path. It's been quite a delight this first week of 2024 that we've returned to the Buddha's traditional first teaching on the First Noble Truth. To summarize, we've reflected on this path of practice that is to be cultivated, that's to be developed in order to realize freedom from suffering. With some gratitude to the Buddha, the Great Physician, it's based on his understanding of dukkha⁷, his understanding of this human predicament and its causes. These are the Four Noble Truths.

And in closing, I want to say that the truths are noble in part because they are ennobling—therefore, ennobling truths. In the Buddha's time, of course, nobility was something that one was born into, but this was not so for the Buddha. A noble one instead was one who had realized a degree of freedom of heart: free of greed, free of hatred, free of delusion. I'd like to encourage us as we close and as we move forward on this path together, to appreciate and be nourished by all of those noble moments when the heart is free of greed, hatred, and delusion. I'm so inspired by this, that each moment that's free of greed, hatred, and delusion is a noble moment. We're bringing nobility into the world in a direct, material, actual way with every step we take in this world that's free of greed, free of hatred, free of delusion.

Announcements and Closing

Thank you so much for your attention, your practice, your kindness this week. Hopefully, I will be back with you soon. I don't know that I'll be back before this, so I want to say now that Gil and I will be teaching a retreat together in June at Insight Retreat Center. I believe registration opens for that sometime in February, so if that's of interest, maybe we'll see you there.

Take care everyone, best wishes. May all beings be free of suffering and have the causes of happiness, and may we all walk the path with balanced hearts and minds, and view each other with kind eyes. Take care.