A guided meditation through the Ānāpānasati sutta. Establishing a comfortable, upright posture, incline awareness toward direct experience of the body. Sustain appropriate mindfulness and citta will sensitize to the qualities we call 'body’. This exercise resets the mind, which is then gladdened, steadied and cleared so that insight can develop.
Samādhi is entered into dependent on the ripening of other factors. It gives us a place to stand outside of the personal perspective. The process of stepping out requires meeting the painful and unresolved in the body, then calming and soothing the heart.
Mindfulness is an empowered awareness that exerts authority over dukkha. Mindfulness doesn’t contract or become agitated by it. Holding steady and curtailing proliferation, it provides the proper laboratory within which wisdom can arise.
Puja provides an occasion to step out of our personal lives. The gesture of offering and dedicating trains citta to open rather than grasp. The unfolding of citta reveals awareness.
An important theme in mind cultivation is to relieve pressure – mental, emotional, physical. This is done through moderating the quality of ground and space. When these are sensed through the body, citta picks up their signs and relaxes its own pressure.
Exploring Maranasati: Mindfulness of Death/Awakening to Life. This talk highlights the normalcy of Death. We survey how death is related to in various Buddhist traditions as well as discussing personal experience of death as part of contemplative practice.
Energy has to be cultivated as a resource for practice. This process has three stages: gathering, specific application, and the strength that can release obstacles. The thinking mind uses energy but cannot generate it; energy is generated in the heart (citta) and in the body. Apply energy to empty out the negative and unskillful – the good and bright will arise on its own.
Sati – mindfulness – is only mentioned once in the Ānāpānasati sutta. ‘Directly feeling and knowing’ – pajānati – is the mode of practice. When we’ve attuned to this, we move to ‘training’. This phase of ānāpānasati begins with training in deeper sensitivity of the entire body.
Sensing the space beyond the skin boundary, and the space felt ‘within’ the body. The two can blend. In this way, they facilitate our experience of breathing.
Wisdom is the know-how faculty that discerns suffering and its end. It knows how the 3 intelligences (verbal, emotional, bodily) can work together to bring about the stilling of saṇkhāras. From it noble knowledge – realization – arises.
The 5 indriya are spiritual faculties that become activated by feeling them in the body. Starting with faith –the pivotal faculty for coming out of the personal and sensory realm – and culminating in wisdom – the ability to discern skillful from unskillful, non-stress from stress – these 5 indriya work to release the mind from the pressure of identity.
This talk looks at how our upbringing and culture lead us to mistrust who we are and become identified as a separate, deficient self. We then explore the practices of presence and self-inquiry that turn us toward the openness, tenderness and wakefulness of our Being. Our trust grows as we increasingly glimpse, embody and live from our natural Being.
NOTE: This talk was given at the Spring 2019 IMCW 7-day Silent Retreat.
In this guided meditation, we forgive or at least intend to forgive ourselves and others for being human and clearing the way to offer kind and gentle compassion.
We can’t will forgiveness, but we can be willing to bring presence to our wounds, and gradually let go of the blame that contracts and dulls our hearts.
