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Guided Meditation: Trusting Relaxing; Dharmette: Trusting the Practice (3 of 4): Having Faith in Yourself - Meg Gawler

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

Guided Meditation: Trusting Relaxing

Greetings everyone. Thank you for coming and for the folks at IMC and in the USA, happy Freedom Day. For our meditations this week are based on the Buddhist discourse on how to practice mindfulness of breathing. Monday we drew on the introduction to this discourse in which the Buddha suggests that we should meditate in some place empty so that the mind can be available for staying close to the breathing. Tuesday we meditated with the first two steps of the Buddha's instructions to know our breathing intimately, knowing the texture and quality of each in-breath and each out-breath, such as whether it's long or short, open or constricted. And yesterday we followed the third step in which we moved from knowing to training by experiencing the whole body as we breathe in and breathe out. Training is a bit more active than knowing, and we'll continue in training mode today and tomorrow with our attention still anchored in the body, but we're also continuously aware of the breathing in our peripheral awareness.

Today we'll work with the fourth step in which the Buddha instructs us, "One trains, 'I will breathe in calming the bodily constructs.' One trains, 'I shall breathe out calming the bodily constructs.'" So these bodily constructs are Gil's translation of the Pali word Sankara¹, which literally means "making together" and is often translated as formations. The idea of "making together" suggests that the Buddha is talking about the unity of body and mind. Our bodily constructs include all its tensions, movements, or activities, whether subtle or gross. These tensions in the body usually have their origin in the mind. So essentially, the task today is relaxing the body, all the while keeping in our peripheral awareness the whole cycle of breathing.

Again, as we did yesterday, we're cultivating awareness of the whole body, but today we want to see our holding patterns and whatever tensions we may have, and then we do our best to relax and let go of them. Or if that's not possible, to just try to soften them a little. We can trust that the body doesn't want to stay tense, and if you find something you can't relax, maybe just acknowledge it by gently breathing into it. It's okay.

So let's begin our meditation on relaxing the body by gently closing the eyes, relaxing and softening any small physical tensions around or behind the eyes. Taking a moment to formulate your deepest intention.

Now, assuming a calm, stable, and grounded posture that can help you avoid any inclination to move. Staying with the breath and bringing compassion and care to the body as we do a soft body scan. Straightening the spine and relaxing everything else downwards: head to the face, the neck, relaxing into the shoulders, the arms and hands. Relaxing the front and back of the torso and letting go in the pelvis, the legs, and the feet. Still aware of the body and the breath, establish your mental posture by letting go of having to be someone.

Now feeling how it is to take a lovely long, calm, deep breath.

And gently letting the breathing return to normal as you stay grounded, resting in relaxing the body. Breathing in, breathing out.

Spacious and caring as we bring calm to our precious body. Keep practicing like this.

The Buddha says that tranquility is the food for tranquility, so whatever little calm or tranquility you have, be sure to take it in and let it register.

Often in images of the Buddha meditating, we can see a slight smile on his face. So bring your attention for a moment to your face and see if you can relax anything in your forehead, again your eyes, your cheeks, your chin, your jaw, and feel free to let your lips express the smile of the Buddha.

And you trust, relax, relaxing the breathing, relaxing the body and mind. If possible, try not to move, knowing that stilling the physical body goes a long way to also quieting the mind.

Earlier we practiced noticing if there is anything calm in our experience. And now the invitation is to notice if there's anything pleasant in your experience of calming the body as you stay with the breathing. Or perhaps you can even enjoy being here in the body breathing calmly. If so, let that enjoyment register.

As we come to the end of this sitting, we'll return to our circle of compassion for ourselves, for everyone meditating with us today, and for all beings.

May all beings be safe and protected. May all beings, including ourselves, be happily at ease. May all beings abide in peace. And may all beings everywhere be free.

So to end the meditation, perhaps we can all join our hands together and bow to each other, honoring the sincerity of everyone's practice.

Dharmette: Trusting the Practice (3 of 4): Having Faith in Yourself

Greetings everyone, good to be here with you.

In our meditation just now, we focused on relaxing the body while staying with the breath, and this is a further step in strengthening our mindfulness because it also helps stabilize and concentrate the mind. Yesterday we talked about Saddhā², the faculty or power of trusting, taking refuge in the path of practice. And Saddhā also refers to having faith in yourself.

I'll begin with a passage from Joseph Goldstein's book, One Dharma: "The heart qualities of faith, confidence, and trust are actual powers we can cultivate. In Buddhist texts, they are likened to a magical gem that settles impurities in water. Faith in the possibility of Awakening, confidence in the moment's experience and in the nature of awareness itself, and trust in the direction of our own lives—all of these settle doubt, confusion, and agitation. They create an inner environment of clarity, stillness, and beauty." Yes, beauty.

Again, earlier in the week, I stressed that the good news is that we have agency. And one of my heroes, Dipa Ma, said, "You can do anything you want to do. It's only your thought that you can't do it that's holding you back."

Faith grounded in wisdom is also one of the seven mental qualities that support the development of equanimity. Saddhā opens us to what is greater than the ego's concern. We open up to the possibility of freedom and come to understand that our limitations, our separateness, our fears are actually the material through which we discover the truth of our wholeness. Having faith in the present moment lets us be with whatever arises, and that in turn allows us to investigate whatever difficulties arise. The awakening factor of investigation is what gives us the wisdom to make wholesome choices about what we do in each moment.

The reason that the hindrance of doubt is considered to be the most dangerous is because it can knock us off the path. But everyone starts out with doubts, and we can learn a lot by studying them. Here's a poem by the founder of the Soto Zen tradition, Dogen Zenji, the great ancestor. He says, "The peach blossoms begin to bloom in the breeze of spring. Not a shade of doubt is left on the branches and the leaves. Though I know that I shall meet the autumn moon again, how sleepless I remain on this moonless night."

In the Zen tradition, the moon is often a metaphor for awakening, clarity in the mind. But it's pretty amazing that even Dogen, contrary to the peach tree, knows the without doubt. And what's important is that we don't identify with our doubts. Instead, we can watch the whole process of doubting, asking who it is that doubts, seeing how doubts come and go. Another problem with doubt is that it takes us away from the direct experience of the moment. So if you have doubts, see if you can step outside of them so that you're no longer victimized by doubting.

Trust in the practice gives us the energy to bring our lives into alignment with our highest aspirations, and if your inspiration fades, your faith can keep you going. In the Proximate Cause Sutta³, the Buddha explains that we all experience suffering, and when faith or trust, rather than doubt or despair, is born of that suffering, this sets in motion the whole chain of liberative dependent arising, which actually begins with suffering and then leads to gladness and joy and all the way to complete liberation.

And what this means is that we're not stuck with our Dukkha⁴, our difficulties. If we trust the practice, our difficulties are just the starting point. They lead to gladness when we have no doubt that we're on a path we trust. The hindrance of doubt manifests in two basic ways: doubt in the Buddhist teaching and doubt in oneself.

I'll never forget how I felt when I first met Suzuki Roshi as he bowed to each of us as we filed out of the little meditation space at Sokoji⁵ in San Francisco. And in that bow, he wordlessly communicated that he literally saw me as a Buddha, and I was moved beyond words. Six days later, I heard him teach, and somehow I knew beyond a shade of a doubt that I was in the presence of a great teacher, and I'd give up anything to become his disciple. And ever since then, my faith in the Dharma has been unshakable. But having faith in myself has been a lot more challenging. I know it's true that many of us tend to be loyal to our suffering and to seeing ourselves as inadequate or damaged.

One of the challenges for me has been the tyranny of perfectionism. A powerful lesson from my childhood was that if I'm not perfect, I'm not safe. But actually, we can trust that we're all fine just as we are, which means that we can all shine just as children do. And when we see how perfectionism doesn't serve us and can start letting go of it, we can become contented and peaceful with just doing what we can. This in turn counters agitation and fosters tranquility. A useful mantra for me has been "good enough."

I love what Walt Whitman says in his Song of the Open Road: "I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness."

It's important not to be afraid of feeling insecure. After all, in this practice, our priority is to cultivate non-clinging, and as human beings, not clinging to anything is profoundly counterintuitive. Gil tells us that we can trust that the safest place to be is in our field of awareness. It's a lot safer to be aware than it is to be identified with a self. And there's great freedom when we deeply understand the Buddhist teaching on the truth of not-self. We can all stop worrying about our supposed inadequacies. This practice is pointing us to a place of the greatest safety, which is portable, internal safety we can take into the world where things may not be so safe. And as we learn to abide in awareness, we learn to carry our internal safety with us.

Awareness is the pure, natural quality of the mind. Awareness is often said to be like the sky, where everything is okay, knowing that all our mental storms are just clouds that don't change the nature of the sky. We can trust opening up to the sky itself.

In our meditations this week, we've cultivated knowing, feeling, and relaxing. And these three work together to bring forth the calm and the confidence we need for awareness to be more here in our experience. Taking a moment for knowing, feeling, and relaxing allows us to be less distracted from what's happening in the moment. And when we connect with our pure mind in a way that's relaxed and balanced, our experience of the world is also relaxed and balanced. A mind even momentarily empty of distractions feels beautiful, and we can't help but enjoy it. As the Buddha says, "With a mind that is open and uncovered, one develops a luminous mind." And my hope is that each of you can grow in having confidence in yourself, just as you are, resting your inner goodness and wisdom.

In the meditation today, we practiced trusting, relaxing, and in the talk just now, I emphasized the importance of trusting yourself. So if you'd like some homework for the next 24 hours, reflect on what you personally might do in order to cultivate trusting yourself. Are there any mental or physical habits you may want to let go of? Or how might you pause and relax more often? Or take a piece of paper and jot down a few ideas, then get in touch with a friend to share your thoughts. Thank you.