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Guided Meditation: Affectionate Curiosity; Dharmette: Knowing & Not Knowing (1 of 5): Intro - Ines Freedman

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

Guided Meditation: Affectionate Curiosity

Welcome to our YouTube Community. This is my first time doing a YouTube live, here at 7:00 AM in Sunnyvale, California. I am delighted to be sharing the Dharma with all of you.

I will begin with a short story. A few decades ago, there was a global meditation event called the Harmonic Convergence¹, where people all over the world celebrated a rare celestial event and meditated together, no matter where they were. They had parties and celebrations. A couple of friends and I decided to join them in spirit and do it at sunrise by meditating at the top of a nearby mountain.

It was a beautiful, awe-inspiring vista where we sat. Daylight had just started. We made ourselves really comfortable, bundled up in our blankets, getting ready to really appreciate and join the world in meditation. Then, a fly started messing around. Very quickly, the little annoying fly became much more compelling than the beautiful vista or the feeling of harmony with the world.

In mindfulness practice, we can pay attention to what is easiest to notice, to what is obvious. I became mindful of the obvious: how much I disliked the buzz, the fear that it was going to land on me, and the tension in my body. I was tight; I wanted to take action against the fly. But as I began to see the aversion clearly, the body relaxed, and the aversion gradually dissipated.

Then, what was obvious was that the fly had landed between the three of us. It was the largest fly I had ever seen. I saw the body and the wings of the fly, and the way the sun reflected on it with a blue luminescence. It was beautiful. I noticed a sense of affection for the little being that had joined our meditation. Just by seeing what was obvious, it allowed my relationship to the fly to transform from aversion to affectionate curiosity.

It can be helpful at the beginning of a sitting to take a couple of minutes to establish a supportive atmosphere in the mind, a welcoming attitude to whatever arises. An attitude that says, "Yes, this belongs," to whatever shows up.

So, let's sit.

Take a comfortable and alert posture. Gently close your eyes, taking a little time to settle into your meditation posture. Arrive here, in this body, in this place, in this room, on this Earth. Set aside any thoughts and concerns you may have; you can put them on a shelf for the time being. Be fully here, centered in this body.

From within the body, as part of the body, become aware of your breathing, however you experience it. Notice the movements and sensations of breathing. Maybe you notice how the chest and ribs expand and contract, or the belly rising and falling, or the air moving in and out of the nose and throat. Be at ease with whatever we notice, however you feel these movements.

Now, take a few long, slow, deep breaths. With each in-breath, nourish the body with air, feeling the body expanding. With each exhale, allow the body to relax a little more deeply, to soften, to open. Let go of any tensions, any bracing.

Allow the breath to return to its natural rhythm. Notice wherever the sensations of breathing are easiest to feel and allow the attention to rest there. This is your home base, your anchor.

It can be helpful to bring an attitude of friendliness to whatever shows up. We are here to discover what is present, what arises, and to get to know the mind more intimately. If ideas or concerns show up, put them aside in favor of our actual physical experience. Be intimate with the breath, with the rhythm of breathing.

If your attention has drifted, you can notice it and gently escort it back to the breath. Welcome it home. Then, just keep returning to the rhythm of breathing in and out.

If your attention has drifted, notice it in a friendly way and gently escort it back to the breath again, welcoming it home.

Just as it is helpful to take a few minutes to settle into meditation, it is useful to do so in coming out. A simple way to do this when I ring the bell is to take a couple of slow, deep breaths again before opening your eyes.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Knowing & Not Knowing (1 of 5): Intro

The theme this week will be on different aspects of both knowing and not knowing.

It can be said that insight meditation is based on knowing the mind for the purpose of freeing the mind, of being fully at peace. But only by deeply knowing how our minds work can we free the mind. We can only know something well if we pay attention to it closely. In this Insight practice, we value the quality of how we know something. We develop our ability to pay attention, but we do so with equanimity. Even if what we want is unwanted, we can meet it with respect and with careful attention.

There is a story that Ajahn Brahm² tells about one of his monks. Ajahn Brahm is the Abbot of a monastery in a remote area of Australia. One of his monks was having trouble with his teeth and was procrastinating going to the dentist, knowing he had to have a tooth pulled. It was such a long trip, and of course, monks don't drive.

One day, Ajahn Brahm saw the monk standing outside the tool shed with a pair of pliers, holding a bloody tooth. It was obvious he had just pulled his own tooth. So he asked him, "How were you able to do that? Didn't it hurt?"

The monk responded that he was in his kuti³, his little hut, when he decided to pull out his own tooth. But he hesitated at first. He asked himself, "Does it hurt now?" And he answered himself, "Well, no."

So he walked over to the shed across the long field. In that time, apprehension arose, so he again asked himself, "Does it hurt now?" No.

He reached the shed and put his hand on the door handle and asked, "Does it hurt now?" No.

Next, he found the pliers and held them to his tooth, and asked himself, "Does it hurt now?" No.

Then he yanked the tooth out. He thought to himself, "That hurt, but not for long."

The point being that during his walk to the shed, he didn't get caught up in the emotional pain that can arise when we are afraid in anticipation of pain or anticipation of something we don't want. The monk was mindful enough, moment to moment, that he was able to see clearly there was no pain in the moment until he yanked the tooth. There was a lot less suffering than anticipating the pain all the way to the shed. When we worry about future suffering, we are not seeing that in this moment, the imagined pain is not there. The imagined situation is not here. All the pain and worry is extra; it is unnecessary.

I am going to continue with the teaching that the Buddha gave his son, Rahula⁴, from Majjhima Nikaya⁵ 62. He said:

"Rahula, meditate like the Earth. For when you meditate like the Earth, pleasant and unpleasant contacts will not occupy your mind. Suppose they were to toss both clean and unclean things on the Earth, like feces, urine, spit, pus, and blood. The Earth isn't horrified. It's not repelled or disgusted because of this. In the same way, meditate like the Earth, for when you meditate like the Earth, pleasant and unpleasant contacts will not occupy your mind."

To know something, to learn something, as I said, requires your attention. It requires our interest, which arises from a curious mind. In mindfulness practice, the object of attention is not as important as the observing mind. The idea is that whatever arises—whether it is a physical sensation, an emotion, a mood, or a state of mind—is present. Whatever arises is worthy of our attention. So we can meditate like the Earth.

Sometimes things show up that we don't like: fear, anxiety, restlessness, physical discomfort. Or maybe things we are not interested in, like boredom or impatience. We can bring interest to something we are not naturally interested in. We can bring interest to something we don't like. We can do that by inclining the mind to be interested.

What I mean by that is that first we see that we are rejecting what is present, and we can aim to be interested. We don't force anything; we just know in our hearts that, "Okay, that's the direction we're going for. I'm going to engage with whatever it is we're not wanting or liking."

In the same way that let's say, for instance, we need to get up in the morning extra early. We set the clock just in case we don't wake up in time, but our unconscious mind can wake us up before the clock. Maybe you have experienced that already. In the same way, when we incline the mind to be interested, the unconscious mind does the work of bringing the interest in as we turn towards the object we are looking to get interested in.

An example for myself: I once was a project manager for an extensive building renovation at the retreat center. I had to make major decisions about the two septic systems there. I had absolutely zero natural interest in septic systems at the time. I had lots of resistance to the amount of learning I needed to do; I had no background. But I was committed to letting go of my resistance, and I persevered with it.

It became pretty obvious to me that every moment of resisting was a moment without learning. It took a lot more time to learn something if I spent a lot of that time resisting it. So I began to approach the process by reading just one paragraph at a time, or one diagram at a time. Gradually my interest grew. As the interest grew, I was able to learn, and things gradually began to click into place in my mind. There was such a rewarding sense of knowing. Now that I understood what was happening with the septic system, I knew what I didn't know, I knew what I needed to know, and I started to understand how to go about making a decision.

Generally speaking, knowing something gives us a sense of confidence. We know how to do our job; you know how to cook breakfast. When we learn a skill, like playing a piano, we may start out not knowing how to do it. We become more and more confident as we keep practicing. You can watch an infant go from falling over backwards to walking with confidence in a period of months. Every moment of knowing develops a confidence in the practice, a confidence in ourselves knowing what is here right now at any given moment, regardless of what it is.

As we learn to meet all our moments in our life with mindfulness, with careful attention—including the challenging moments—we can develop an inner strength and confidence. We develop the trust that we can meet all our moments as they change.

We know what is here, and we don't know what is next. Even if we have an idea of what is next, we don't really know what it is going to be like; it is always different. There are different aspects of not knowing that are really useful to hold with an open hand. We don't know what the future holds; whatever we imagine is not real. If there is confusion in the mind, we may not know what is happening within ourselves. Or if there is confusion in our lives, we may not know that. Or there might be a larger not knowing—of not knowing the universe, not knowing the whole of life. We can't know all of that. But knowing that we don't know allows us to connect with our experience.

Suzuki Roshi⁶ said, in relation to having an open mind:

"In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few."

A beginner's mind supports a mind rich with curiosity. An attitude of not knowing helps us be open to others' opinions, other ways of seeing things, new solutions, new ideas, and new experiences.

Confucius⁷ said:

"To know what you know and what you don't know, that is true knowledge."

There is a lot more in the universe that we don't know at any given moment. There is a lot more even in just our minds and body at any given moment that we don't know. There is a lot more about the future, about our life ahead, that can't be known. Every future moment is unknown in the present, only imagined.

But knowing the future can also be seen through the eyes of the excited explorer, traveling in a new territory in a foreign country, not knowing what will happen next, interested in everything they see because it is all new to them. We can have a welcoming attitude to both what we know and what we don't know, wanted or unwanted.

The knowing of mindfulness develops in us trust and confidence to meet whatever shows up. Being interested in what we don't know allows us to grow. Being aware of our moments allows our lives to flow, and like a river, our lives flow into the unknown.

Tomorrow I will continue the topic of knowing and not knowing with a focus on knowing and clear comprehension.

May the benefits of our practice together ripple out into the world. May all beings be happy, all beings be peaceful and free. Thank you all for your practice.