This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video GM: Trusting the Breath; Trusting the Practice (1 of 4): Trusting Your Wondrous, Beautiful Mind. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Trusting the Breath; Dharmette; Trusting the Practice (1 of 4): Trusting Your Wondrous, Beautiful Mind - Meg Gawler

The following talk was given by Meg Gawler at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on July 02, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Greetings, dear Sangha. Thank you for your kind comments in the chat yesterday, but be sure to let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement. This week our meditations will be guided by the Buddha's own instructions on mindfulness of breathing, drawn from his foundational discourse on Buddhist practice, the Ānāpānasati Sutta.¹

We started yesterday, actually, with the introduction to this discourse, which is on the key practice that's at the heart of the Buddhist path, in which the Buddha tells us to go to some place empty in order to establish awareness, some place uncared for and with a mind that's empty of self-preoccupation.

The Buddha then instructs us by summarizing his entire discourse on mindfulness of breathing as follows: "Always attentive, one breathes in with awareness and breathes out with awareness." So our effort today is to rest the mind with continuous awareness on the entire process, the whole cycle of breathing. We want to know intimately how we're experiencing the beginning, the middle, and end of each inhale; the beginning and end of each exhale; and the pause after the exhale before the next whole cycle begins again.

Of course, the mind is likely to wander away from the breath, and that's okay. As soon as you see that the mind has wandered, then without any irritation or frustration, just come back lovingly to your breathing. Always attentive, we breathe in with awareness and breathe out with awareness.

Guided Meditation: Trusting the Breath

So begin by closing your eyes, or if you prefer, just lowering your gaze. And give yourself permission for the next 30 minutes to leave all your worries, concerns, obligations, and responsibilities outside the door of your meditation room. Allow yourselves to drop down into the flow of your lived experience, resting in being here in the present moment and letting go of past and future. For these minutes of meditation, the invitation is to drop the burden of the ego.

So now, set your intention, your aspiration for this period of meditation, perhaps something as simple as, "May my practice serve as a condition for awakening for myself and all beings." With such an aspiration, it's important to know that you, like all of us practicing here, have the potential for awakening.

So settling into a posture that expresses your intention, a posture that is grounded and balances being both relaxed and quietly energetic. Being friends with this body, offering it compassion as we do a brief, fluid body scan. With this body, however it is, we can offer it our thanks, our care, for supporting us and keeping us alive for all these years.

So bringing appreciation and care to the body, starting from the head down through the neck, shoulders, arms, and hands. Down through the torso, the pelvis, flowing down the thighs, the lower legs, and the feet. Our priority is to establish Sati,² awareness that is embodied and as continuous as the predominant quality of the mind.

Taking a deep, long, satisfying breath and connecting with the flow of breathing. Then letting the breath gently come back to normal and discovering the rhythm and the texture of our natural way of breathing.

Our task during this meditation is to stay connected with the whole process of breathing and to know the quality of the breath just as it is, letting the breath itself become our meditation guide. Every breath is its own microcosm, so see if you can stay with the whole process of each inhale and each exhale, noticing the moment it starts, how it grows, then fades, and finally ends with a slight pause before the next one begins.

As I mentioned yesterday, I find it helpful to visualize the cycle of the breath as an energetic oval with the bottom of the oval at the perineum and the top at the crown of the head, where there's a little virtual opening in the skull. So if this works for you, you can visualize the in-breath starting at the perineum, then moving up the back as the inhale begins and then fades with a brief pause above the top of the head, where the out-breath then starts and cascades down the face and the torso, then ending again in the perineum, where the whole cycle begins again. We are resting in and trusting the whole process of breathing naturally. We don't need to intervene in any way, just letting the breath breathe itself.

If visualizing this oval doesn't work for you, another way I find it helpful to stay with the breath is to use the in-breath as a reminder to connect with the body and the out-breath as a reminder to relax.

Knowing the breath feels intentional, conscious, spacious. We start to know the details of the breathing, the texture of the breath, and its rhythm. By staying with and trusting the breath, we're cultivating our capacity for knowing the present moment.

We rest in the breath tenderly as a way of caring for our own well-being.

As we come to the end of this sitting, we bring our attention to sending loving wishes of well-being to everyone here meditating together. And now we return to our circle of compassion for ourselves and all beings.

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

As I join my hands together and bow to you now, I'm honoring your practice.

Dharmette; Trusting the Practice (1 of 4): Trusting Your Wondrous, Beautiful Mind

Greetings, dear Sangha. It's good to be here with you. And thank you for your kind comments in the chat yesterday, but know that I'm really interested also in hearing any suggestions for improvement you might have.

So, in the early texts, the Buddha often describes the mind as luminous and bright. Gil's teacher in Burma, U Pandita, once said that the mind is like a garden. If neglected, defilement weeds will grow. But if the plot is well tended, it will be beautiful and fruitful. And this quote comes from a book of U Pandita's teachings, which is called The State of Mind Called Beautiful.

And the Pāli word for the noun "mind" and the adjective for "beautiful" are the same: citta.³ So if I were to tell you in Pāli that your mind is beautiful, I would say it's "cittaṁ soṇaṁ".⁴

In the ancient texts, there's another word, kalyāṇa,⁵ which also appears frequently and which is usually translated as "good" or "wholesome." However, it literally means beautiful. The word kalyāṇa is closely associated with virtue and inner goodness. And it's true that as we get in the habit of following the Buddhist precepts—to abstain from taking life, to abstain from taking what is not freely given, to abstain from doing harm with our sexuality, speech, and from intoxicating the mind—we gradually do purify our virtue and inner goodness.

I'm in utter admiration of the nuns and monks I've practiced with because they all go to such great lengths to cause no harm, painstakingly avoiding even the slightest things that might cause harm to themselves or to others. And it's no exaggeration to say that they all move through their lives with beauty in everything they do or say.

I've heard Gil say that we all have the potential inside for something amazingly beautiful, a treasure that can be discovered, cultivated, and grown inside. So let me read you a teaching that Gil gave in this forum, the 7 a.m. teachings. He said, "In meditation practice, we're touching into a capacity of the mind to be beautiful and wondrous, something that may border on or feel sacred. The great value of this practice is to discover a rich, wondrous, beautiful inner life that can inform how we live in the world."

I like to think that as we discover this wondrous inner life, we get turned inside out. What was inside is no longer inside but is something we share with the world around us. Oh, thank you, Gil, for that.

And it's similar in the early texts. The Buddha stresses that the Dharma is kalyāṇa in the beginning, kalyāṇa in the middle, and kalyāṇa in the end. So literally, our Dharma path is beautiful in the beginning, beautiful in the middle, and beautiful in the end. We all have this capacity for inner beauty, and we need to trust the fact that our potential is unlimited. We all have the same birthright, which is our enormous potential for goodness and wisdom.

The Buddha also talked about being skilled in the beauty of meditation. And as you know, in meditation, we train in cultivating awareness. And when we're fully aware, the mind is beautiful, and what we do becomes beautiful.

My beloved Zen teacher, Shunryu Suzuki,⁶ taught me that instead of having a deep understanding of the teaching, we need strong confidence in our teaching, which says that originally we have Buddha nature. And that Buddhist practice is based on this faith in our Buddha nature. So let me read you some quotes from Suzuki Roshi on Buddha nature and big mind:

"Our original mind includes everything within itself. Nothing comes from outside your mind. The true understanding is that the mind includes everything. When you think something comes from outside, it means only that something appears in your mind. Nothing outside yourself can cause any trouble. You yourself make the waves in your mind. If you leave your mind as it is, it will become calm. This mind is called Big Mind. And to exist in Big Mind is an act of faith. Big Mind is something you have, not something to seek for. Big Mind is like the great sky. Whatever kind of bird flies through it, this sky doesn't care."

So for me, existing in Big Mind as an act of faith means that I deeply trust the Dharma. The practice is supporting me; it's taking me in the right direction. And I'm hoping to convey to you that in this practice, whatever kind of bird you are, you're okay. It's just fine. And then in the world of Buddhist practitioners, you have plenty of company.

The Tibetan teacher Pema Chödrön⁷ echoes Suzuki Roshi's words when she says, "Our true nature is not some ideal that we have to live up to. It's who we are right now. And that's what we can make friends with and celebrate. We already have what we need. The wisdom, the strength, the confidence, the awakened heart and mind are always accessible here, now, always. We're just uncovering them. We're rediscovering them. We're not inventing them or importing them from somewhere else. They're here."

So this doctrine that our very essence is an unborn and undying awareness is not limited to Mahayana and Tibetan traditions. The Theravāda Thai Forest teacher Ajahn Chah⁸ asserts that the original heart-mind shines like pure, clear water with the sweetest taste. He often referred to "the one who knows" as a pointer to the inherent wisdom within awareness itself.

Also in the Thai Forest tradition, Ajahn Maha Bua says of impermanence, "This vanishes, that vanishes, but that which knows their vanishing doesn't vanish. All that remains is simple awareness, utterly pure." And another teacher from our tradition, Ajahn Buddhadasa, teaches that emptiness and mindfulness are one.

Most of us unconsciously identify as a separate, threatened, deficient self. But if we trust in the Dharma, our practice will reveal the freedom of our beautiful mind, our true nature. Our capacity to know and be aware is a beautiful quality. And one of the potentials of the Dharma is to be able to discover what's beautiful inside and outside us, to have eyes—the inner eye and the physical eye—which is able to see what's beautiful.

The quality of how we practice comes into play when we're looking at the quality of the mind that's beautiful. When we're aware, we'll make ethical choices, do the necessary house cleaning, and discover more of this beauty that we already have.

So I'll close with the story of the musk deer. Very early in her life, a musk deer began to notice this heavenly scent in the air. Intoxicated by this divine aroma, she set out to find the source. She searched the depths of every forest, smelled around every tree, every blade of grass, and still couldn't discover where this scent was coming from. She was determined, because the scent was so glorious, she knew deep down that she would be profoundly happy once she finally found it. She spent her whole life searching, and one day fell exhausted to the forest floor. And as she fell, one of her horns pierced her own belly. Suddenly, the air was overwhelmingly flooded with this divine, heavenly scent. After a lifetime of searching, in the final moments of her precious life, she realized the scent was coming from her all along.

You may have heard the Navajo tribe of Native Americans have a concept of "walking in beauty." So if you'd like a little homework for the next 24 hours, you might reflect on or try out how it might be to sit in beauty, walk in beauty, stand in beauty, and lie down in beauty. What might it be to live in beauty?

May your practice serve you in bringing light to your beautiful mind and inner goodness. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for your practice.