This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Sensory Doorways 3of5: Riding the Waves of Experience; Spacious & Ease through Surfing & Resting. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Riding the Waves of Experience; Dharmette: Sensory Doorways to Freedom (3 of 5); Spaciousness and Ease through Surfing and Resting - Dawn Neal

The following talk was given by Dawn Neal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on July 24, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Riding the Waves of Experience

The invitation is to notice that you're sitting, many of you watching the screen, some with your eyes closed. Notice how it feels in your body to be present. Maybe noticing the warmth or familiarity of the company, any heart qualities that might be present. Noticing the cause and effect of being present as you drop in, become present to the meditation.

If it feels right, after you've made any greetings you want to make, start with a couple of longer, slower, deeper breaths. Really letting go on the out-breath, releasing any extra tension and letting go into the moment.

Soften your eyes, and when you're ready, close them. Perhaps imagine gazing out over a beautiful vista—a vast ocean or canyon or landscape. Then, let go of that imagination, allowing the continuation of the softness of gaze.

Allow the breathing to return to normal. Notice your jaw, perhaps your tongue, the tip of your tongue at the palate of your mouth.

Shift into your senses: all of the sounds around you and the silences between them. All of the sensations of each breath, perhaps the gap, a little pause at the end of the out-breath before the in-breath begins to fill your torso.

Tune in to whatever sense area or experience keeps you most consistently present. I'll offer instructions on breathing; however, if the flux and flow of sound, or overall body sensation, or the flow of now is more hospitable, please allow that to be your object of attention.

Dedicating the attention to the beginning of the in-breath, the gradual filling of the lungs, the shifting of the diaphragm, perhaps sensations at the nose or throat. Noticing the moment of fullness at the top of the in-breath, and then the moment of release, the ease of the out-breath.

Stay in contact with the entirety of the in-breath, the pause, the release of the out-breath, and perhaps notice resting in that tiny gap at the end of the out-breath. That moment of stillness, riding the waves of breathing.

If another sense experience—a sound, a stray sensation, a smell, a moment of flavor, or an experience of mind—pulls the attention, notice that too. It is born into being, lasts for a while, changes, and then fades. When it's no longer predominant, return your attention, or allow the attention to be naturally drawn into the flux and flow of the next arising breath, sound, or object. Usefully staying with the flow.

We'll practice mostly in silence for a while. I might add a few little invitations here and there.

If any new sensations arrive, or shift, or become more acute, notice that. Savor any bits of comfort or ease or pleasure, and be with anything else with kindness, compassion, and dispassionate interest.

Noticing, appreciating, not leaning into or away from, not clinging to the flux and flow, the change of breath, sensation, sensory experience. Allowing the heart and mind to be open, receiving, allowing.

In the last remaining moments of our meditation together, the invitation is to turn your attention to your core—your physical core and your emotional center, perhaps of the heart or throughout the torso. Notice with kind appreciation whatever's there. Just note it.

Then cast your mind back over these moments of meditation with an appreciative, receptive sensibility. Savor and steep in any moments of pleasure, goodness, or presence, any moments of flowing with, riding the senses. Appreciate above all your own dedication to showing up, for however long, in whatever way.

From that kind, appreciative place, lovingly include any challenges or difficulties that arose, without a need to judge or criticize. Push nothing away. It's all included, it's all onward-leading, nothing needs to be left out.

From this place of integrated appreciation, offer a sense of kindness and goodwill outwards to your companions here on this sit, and to the others in your life. May our practice here together ripple through our own hearts and minds and lives, to all of the lives we touch, and all of the lives they touch, onward and onward. May all beings experience the joy and benefit of freedom of the heart and mind.

Thank you for your practice.

Dharmette: Sensory Doorways to Freedom (3 of 5); Spaciousness and Ease through Surfing and Resting

Warm greetings again, everyone. Everyone who's been here the whole meditation and those of you who tiptoed into the Zoom/YouTube chat room and sit just a little bit late.

Today is the third of five talks on the sense doors: sight, sound, smell, taste, touch or bodily sensation, and the heart and mind. Today I'd like to talk about ways that spaciousness and ease can be available at the sense doors and offer a couple of tips about meditation that fit into the general category of "hanging out at the sense doors." Stepping into sensory practice and spending some time there, not a lot of effort is required. These two practices are "surfing the senses" and "resting in the spaces between," or simply resting.

I'll start with a little anecdote. Some weeks back, I was meditating at the ocean with open eyes. It's actually a pretty remote location, not a lot of people, but there was a very dedicated surfer camped out on the beach a little ways away. Occasionally, he would glide through my visual field on a wave, just completely one with the ocean, in perfect balance. Not unlike that surfer, though with a lot less effort and practice perhaps, we can ride and be supported by, in harmony with, the waves and flux and flow of sensory experience flowing through our sense doors. It is this flux and flow; we can surf our senses.

Notice with your eyes, and do it now if conditions allow, changes in light, shadow, motion, changes in focus or softness. Just notice. Perhaps notice the movement of wind in the grasses, or the flow of the trees, or birds flying. All of that can be a way of tapping into, staying present with, the flow of change. I practiced tai chi for many years quite seriously, and I still do it on retreat. One of the instructions we got was to allow the hand to move during our different postures. We were moving through the visual field without looking at the hand, but rather allowing the hand to move through just like a bird or a cloud moves through the sky.

Then there's the flavor or texture of the moment, literally. When tasting food or drink, you might notice a good tea or a good coffee changes in flavor from the beginning to the end of a sip. There's the taste on the front of the tongue, the middle of the tongue, the back of the tongue, and the variation over the lifetime of a single swallow. This kind of surfing the senses involves noticing the very slow and the very fast. We've all done this. Sunrises and sunsets are very slow changes. Thunderstorms can be quite fast. The flickering of an oil lamp or a candle fire can be mesmerizing and languid, or very fast.

Even the mind and heart, as Ajahn Sucitto says, can change faster than the flick of a horse's tail. I'm actually very touched by stories of Richard Feynman; may he rest in peace. He loved to discover that he was wrong and to change his mind. Changing our minds can be delightful if we're open to it. It's noticing the flavor of the moment, as it were, in a more figurative way. Changes in attention are the same thing.

Then there's the general flux and flow: the sound of wind chimes, the flocking of birds. There's so much beauty and unfolding inconstancy whirling around and within us everywhere, all the time. The rapid turning of a bicycle wheel, or the flow of swiftly moving water, scintillating waves on the ocean or a lake, or that child's game which I recommend to adults of watching clouds form, deform, and reform into different shapes. It's all cloud, but "cloud" is a process, not an object—a constantly changing process, different Rorschach-like shapes.

All of this can be beautiful, and it's otherwise known as Anicca¹. That's the Pali² for the perception of inconstancy. The invitation in surfing your senses is to let yourself feel interest, wonder, even a pulse of joy, surprise, delight. Let go into the flow. The possibility of delight lives in the details of each moment of change. Freshness and novelty is the gift of inhabiting here and now. The only purchase price for this joy, this ease, is to pay attention, to be there closely, completely, with intent and dedication. Isn't that nice?

Many of the classical teachings, the older teachings that formed in the wake of the Buddha's life, emphasize the suffering in this kind of inconstancy. There's wisdom in those teachings, in that they encourage us to let go. A very famous teaching from Ajahn Chah, a great teacher in the Thai Forest tradition, likened suffering to rope burn—to when we hang on when change is moving through. Noticing the suffering of change can result in letting go. However, this surfing the senses teaches our minds and hearts to let go in a different way, by finding the ease and spaciousness in being in the flow of moment-to-moment experience without clinging, just enjoying the ride.

Suffering is only present in this practice if you try to make something happen, resist something happening, or hang on. This way of riding the senses means appreciating changes and differences for their own sake, in real time. That too conditions the mind and heart not to cling through positive reinforcement. It's like that very famous teaching in Insight Meditation that we should be kind when attention returns, like being kind to a puppy when it finally comes when you call it. That begins to teach a different orientation to how to show up for the joy of seeing, feeling, and letting go.

This can have practical benefits, too. Many of you know that I came into the Dharma through what's called the Dukkha³ doorway—the Dukkha of pain. At a certain point in my life, far too early, I encountered a medical condition that seemed to just cause an intractable block of pain to be there all the time. As I started meditating, with very many expectations I have to say, I discovered that this kind of flux of change was really good news. Rather than a solid, conceptual block of pain that seemed to be there all the time and last forever, sensations changed, shifted, broke down, and altered. Then I started to notice life-giving gaps in the pain—breaks where ease, spaciousness, comfort, and joy existed. That was the beginning of a profound journey of healing.

I'll probably talk about it more in the coming days of this week, but I want to just briefly say that that transitions us to the second practice, which is noticing the spaces and the gaps in sensory experience. The Brits have the saying in the underground: "Mind the gap." Indeed. Notice the spaces between sensations, objects, trees, or hills; your body occupying and moving through space. Every single one of our senses can be a doorway to ease and radical simplicity and present-moment awareness. It's another way to relax, hang out at the sense doors, and step back from any internal thought and emotional flurries, resting into the natural spaciousness available.

Today I'll only mention the eyes, because we talked about the useless gazing in the corners. This is a similar practice. Artists notice negative space—the space in between, the space around objects. The space above you, around buildings or trees or mountains or forests or oceans or fields—that can also be an entry point into noticing a spacious oasis, allowing a sense of that space in between to infuse and inform our experience of this moment.

I'll say more about this in the coming days, but meanwhile, as you go about your day, the invitation and optional homework is to notice if there are moments where you can surf the senses or notice and mind the gaps, rest in the spaces. I would love to hear more and see more in the chat when we see each other tomorrow.

Thank you very much for your practice. May all beings benefit. Be well.