Transcription
This series of guided meditations and instructions presents a set of tools and approaches for working skilfully with emotions and mind states in practice.
Okay, so we might have to be a little loose with the timing this morning. It might be that there's a little more to say to get the ball rolling, just for this morning. They won't usually be this long, the instructions. Okay, so there's this word in Pali and Sanskrit (Pali is the language of the Buddha), citta. And it's usually translated as 'mind,' but it can also mean 'heart.' It's 'heart/mind.' There's not really a distinction. And this is what we're exploring, the heart/mind. And if we reflect just for a moment as human beings -- and I touched on this last night -- what an extraordinary range we have as human beings. The range of what we can feel emotionally, of what can come up in us and pass through us, is absolutely extraordinary. It's enormous, the range, the diversity of the different emotions and feelings and expressions, the richness of all that, and this capacity that the human heart has. So all that could be seen as a real gift. It's part of the gift of our humanity. And, as I alluded to last night, it can be problematic. No question it can be problematic. If I don't yet know how to work skilfully with all that range, with all that diversity, it can be very difficult. So it's a vast exploration, all this, and there are many possibilities. And as I said, we're just taking kind of one area or angle.
But if I throw out a question right at the beginning: what do you, what do I, what do we want from working with our emotions? What would we like? So now you know what we're going to do for the week. What would you like with that? Where would you like to be going in relationship to your relationship with emotions? What do you want from this work? It's quite an important question. What are we trying to do, again? We will revisit that question and add to it, but to throw out a few things now. We have this capacity, we have this richness, and maybe I want the fullness of my being. Maybe I want that richness. I want access to that. I don't want to feel like I am somehow constraining my emotional life, constraining the expression of my heart. I want that fullness. I want an open heart, to use a clichéd phrase. I want an open heart. I want that capacity. And that is a richness for me. It's a resource for me, a very deep resource. And that includes lovely feelings. It includes joy. I want to be open to joy. I want to be open to love and to peace, and touched by beauty -- all of that. And I want to actually be able to open to pain and working with the more painful, more difficult emotions. And everything in between. So it's certainly not that we're trying not to have emotions. We're not in that business of trying not to feel. Most definitely not. And neither are we in the business of trying to only have emotions that we like, only the nice ones. And sometimes with Buddhist teaching it can feel like that's where it's supposed to be going. Would you really want to be free of desire? I don't know. That's an interesting question to me. But we can get back to that. [laughter]
If we just throw out four things of 'what I want': (1) I want this range. I want that range as a human being. It's part of my birthright as a human being. It's part of what gives life colour and depth and richness and vitality. First thing, that range. (2) I want to be able to be with. I want to be able to be with the emotions in that range (second thing). (3) And then the third thing, and I touched on this last night -- well, maybe I didn't -- that actually I want to be able to unknot things. When they've got tangled and tight and caught and I just don't understand what's going on emotionally, I want that the way that I'm relating to that can begin to unknot things when that's appropriate. That feels important. That's a third thing. And just those three things together bring a fourth thing, which I touched on last night, which is (4) confidence -- an emerging, gradually emerging confidence in relationship to my emotional life. And sometimes one meets people, even people who have been practising insight meditation for decades -- thirty years, I've sometimes met people, and there's something in the heart that they haven't dared to go near, an emptiness or a hollowness. There's fear of the emotionality. And it has all kinds of impacts on the life, and how they are in relationship, and their whole sense of themselves, because that confidence has not been nurtured and fed. Enormous impact. So it's a huge thing to be able to say, "I feel confident." And it brings a fearlessness -- a fearlessness in relationship to what may come up within me in my life.
We may have, because of the way we live, it's like a habit of not really drawing close to the emotional life, not really caring for it, meeting it, opening to it -- a habit, actually, of distraction. And there are so many possibilities: TV, a couple of glasses of wine in the evening, and whatever it is, all the different media outlets. And it's very easy to have a kind of chronic distractedness from the currents of the emotional life. But it has an impact, a huge impact. But we can learn. We can really learn to draw close and to care for. In a way, sometimes we'll be practising, so to speak, like swimming -- practising in the shallow end. It's like getting used to the waters, and then actually you can swim anywhere.
Okay, so what's the territory? We talk about emotions, and most people understand what we mean by emotions, but let's introduce another term: mind states. So I would say an emotion is something like fear or anger or joy or something. It's quite marked and strong, relatively speaking. But a mind state is perhaps more subtle, encompasses more. So for instance, boredom -- it's not really an emotion. It's not a fully-blown emotion, but it is a state of the mind, a state of the heart, a state of the consciousness. A little bit of, say, calmness versus agitation -- I'm not sure if these are emotions; they're more subtle than that. They're mind states. Does the mind feel energized, bright, or dull? And the whole system. Again, these are mind states, not so much emotions. So we could say emotions are a kind of subset of mind states. Mind states is a bigger category of which a part of that is emotions. So we need to include all of this in the territory of what we're exploring.
What happens if I'm not aware of the more subtle aspects of what we're calling mind states? It's more subtle -- just, for instance, does the mind feel a bit contracted or more spacious? If I'm not aware of that level of things, I start reacting to that level, just a little bit. And it starts becoming the kind of womb for a more heavy-blown emotion, or difficulty, or my reactivity toward someone: I snap at someone, or I start thinking along certain lines. So actually I have to be aware at this bigger level and at this slightly more subtle level.
But -- and this we will really go into in a lot of detail on this retreat -- it's not just that I want to be aware that I am feeling this or that. It's not just that I want to be aware. I mean, that much is great. If I think, for me, it took me a long time to actually be aware of what I was feeling, know what I was feeling emotionally, and to differentiate between emotions that might be there. So what, for instance, is the difference between feeling sad and feeling touched or moved? These are different, and it takes a while to differentiate those, perhaps. Did for me. So it's not just that I want to be aware that I'm feeling this or that. It's also not just that I want to be able to share with another human being what I'm feeling. That's very beautiful, but it's also more than that. And it's not just that I want to be with what I'm feeling -- and this we will go into in a lot of detail -- because sometimes my being with a feeling is making more of a mess, making more of a problem out of the thing. The very way that I'm being with it is causing problems. We're going to talk a lot about this. But rather, as I said last night, what we want is to be able, as well as all that, to work skilfully and helpfully, in a helpful way with what's going on; to be able to explore, really explore it. That means the texture of the experience. What is this experience? The relationship that I have with it -- to experiment with the relationship that I have with this feeling. We're going to talk a lot about this in detail. To experiment with different perspectives on what I'm feeling. To look at the context of the emotion. How do I resource around, how do I resource myself around what's going on? What are the assumptions I'm having about what's going on? All this is really crucial. And all that brings an understanding, an understanding of the emotional life. And that's really key. And the heart understands something, and the mind understands something. And all that helps, helps our heart to unfold what it needs to unfold.
So, the practice that we're going to be starting with is tuning into and focusing on the mind state or the emotion that's happening in the moment, but via the body, in the body. (And I'll explain this.) And that's the object that we're focusing on. And if I say to you, how do you know when you're feeling angry? How do you know when you're feeling bored? What tells you that? What is this thing, a mind state? What does it involve? What constitutes it? And that's quite interesting, if we kind of pick it apart a little bit. Not always, but oftentimes with a mind state, the body is, so to speak, feeling something. We feel sensations in the body, the body is vibrating a certain way, and that's going to be very central to what we're exploring. So there's body experience. There may also be thoughts with some mind states. Certain thoughts, along certain lines, go with certain mind states. You know, when you're angry, well, there are angry thoughts. When you're depressed, there are depressed thoughts. And of course, those thoughts feed back into the mind state. There's something we could call the texture of the mind. So it's like I was saying a little bit earlier: does the mind feel cramped, tight, constricted, or more spacious? Energized, bright, or more kind of dull, depressed? The texture of the mind -- that's part of what tells me what the mind state is, part of what I can notice. The perceptions that I'm having -- because when I'm in a certain mind state, when I'm feeling irritable or depressed or loving, then the way I see the world, the way I see myself, and the way I see others is coloured very much by that mind state. So my perceptions also tell me about the mind state.
And all of those aspects, I'm reacting to all of them. I have a certain vibration in the body, or feeling in the body, and I react to it: I like it. I don't like it. I try and get rid of it. I ignore it. Same with the thoughts, same with the perceptions. So there's all this kind of confluence of factors and conditions that's reacting, that's going on. And then with all that there's this question I'm going to keep coming back to: is my being with this, is my mindfulness of this helpful or not helpful? And that is the golden question. Is the way that I'm with this helping it or not? Because sometimes I have reactions that tie the knot tighter: I hate what's going on. I want to ignore it. I want to get rid of it. I assume it means something about me. And what I'm doing is, this ball of wool that's already knotted, I'm tightening it even tighter. And pouring gasoline on the fire. So we're going to talk a lot about what's helpful.
One thing, a concept I want to throw out right now is, we're paying attention to what's happening emotionally or in the mind state, and if I say, when we're having trouble with an emotion, when we feel overwhelmed by an emotion, whether it's fear or grief or depression or whatever it is, we can talk -- metaphorically, maybe; I don't know -- the energy of the emotion is higher, bigger; it dwarfs the energy of the attention. It's like the energy of the attention is swamped, overwhelmed by the energy that's caught up in the vortex, in the system of the emotion. When you're angry, when I'm angry, there's a lot of energy in that. You can feel it even when you're depressed. It feels like a low energy state, but there's actually a lot of energy, psychic energy and everything, caught up in that, in a whirlpool. Attention, our capacity to pay attention, also can be very low energy -- we're not really that present -- or there can be more energy in it. It works like a seesaw. When the energy in the emotion is high and the energy in the attention is low, it will submerge it; but if I can raise the energy of the attention, it's like it takes the energy away from the emotion, the problematic energy.
Okay, that's really significant. When the emotion has more energy than the attention, I am sunk. I am sinking. I am drowning. When the attention has more energy than the emotion, I'm in a good place. I can handle what's going on. I can have perspective on what's going on. And something starts to unfold. A little bit of peace comes into the experience; a little bit of that confidence that I was talking about. A little bit even of sweetness around what's difficult, because the energy balance has shifted. And we can deepen -- something can deepen there. And the consciousness and the experience can unfold in ways that are healing. But if it's the other way around, that's very difficult for that to happen.
So like I said, we're not concentrating on the breath or the mettā here. We're going to be concentrating on the emotion and the mind state, particularly in the body. And we're going to sustain the attention on that. That's going to be the focus, in a way -- trying to find ways that that's helpful. So let's talk about this body a little bit. As I said, usually when there's an emotion, not always, but usually, there's some reflection physically of that emotion in the body. Now, some of you will be very familiar with this. When there's anger, there's a lot of heat or pressure in the body. When there's fear, there are butterflies, etc. When there's joy, it feels a certain way. Love certainly feels a certain way.
Now, sometimes that feeling, when the emotion is difficult, an oppressive emotion, the feeling in the body is difficult; it's unpleasant. Whatever's going on in the body is unpleasant. When we have a lovely emotion, when you're in love -- well, sometimes it's difficult when you're in love, but when there's joy or whatever (and again, sometimes that can be difficult), sometimes it's pleasant. There's a pleasant feeling in the body. Sometimes we don't even notice that. And sometimes it's somewhere in between. But there's a feeling and a tone to that feeling in the body. Now, a funny thing, and I don't know if you've noticed this: not all emotions, but a lot of emotions reflect predominantly on a kind of central axis in the body.
In other words, we feel a lot of the emotionality somewhere along a line. For instance, very much in the heart area, of course. You feel grief there. Or you may feel something in the throat -- you know, you get a lump in your throat. Or sometimes, for instance, there's sadness; you can feel it in the mouth, even. The mouth starts quivering. In the belly. Sometimes even in the head, even at the top of the head. Somewhere along this line. That's quite a common place. And what we're going to be doing -- and I'll take us through a practice in a moment -- we want to be tuning into: what's the experience? We'll start with this line here. What's the experience? What's unfolding there? What's expressing itself there, on this line, in the body, somewhere, wherever the attention gets drawn? What is it? What does it feel like? Can I draw close to it, touch it with the attention? If you can see this gesture [hands open, palms up], it's almost like the attention opens. The hands are open to hold what is going on. Hands are just open. The palms are open, cupped together, and we are literally, with our attention, holding the experience. Not pressuring it. Just holding it, holding the experience that passes through.
As I said, this is one approach to working with the emotions, and it's not the only one. So we're working, we're starting a lot with the very simple level, with the body. Now, sometimes people think, "Well, I have this very complex emotion going on, and I'm a little bit afraid of being simple with it, because I might lose the meaning and the richness of the meaning and my story. And this has a lot of meaning in my life." And that's actually very important; it's extremely important, the meaning that we give things and that they give us. But right now, just for our purposes right now, we're putting that aside. We won't lose the meaning. We can come back to it, come back to it and investigate it. This is just one way only, but it has the advantage, this way, that it simplifies. Because we're paying attention in a very simple way to something that's simply happening in the body, it's a simple level of this complex thing that we call an emotion. And because it's simple, and the attention is simple, it can simplify what's going on. And like I said last night, it's not any more advanced; it might just be different. For some of you it won't be different at all, but it's really not any more advanced.
[22:30, guided meditation begins]
Okay, so let's do a little practice together. So we'll talk about posture later on; for now, just to find a posture that's comfortable. With the back as upright as possible, without being rigid. So there's relaxation in the posture, but there's also uprightness. The posture is reflecting openness and uprightness, alertness -- both. Perhaps you just want to feel into your face right now, and just notice if there's any tension, any holding there. Very normal, natural even. Perhaps around the eyes or the jaw, the mouth, and just noticing whatever you feel there, and relaxing. Relaxing, just as much as you can. And the neck and the throat area. Just tuning in, feeling what's there, whatever's there, relaxing just as much as possible. Letting go. The shoulders, sensing and relaxing. And the arms. Resting. The upper back. Just tuning in, noticing, noticing how it feels, just how it feels. And then is it possible to ease, even just a little bit? And the chest, letting be and letting go. And then the belly, the whole belly, the abdomen and particularly the lower belly. Feeling in and releasing, letting it hang down towards the floor. And let yourself feel how it feels to sit. What's the experience of sitting right now? How does it feel, the sensations of contact with the cushion or chair or bench? Very simple, very simple sensations. And receiving the sensations of contact with the floor, the legs, or the feet. Feeling the whole body sitting. What does it feel like? So you're alive, alive to the experience of sitting. And if it helps you to settle, you can take a few breaths and be with the breath, just a few breaths if you're used to that, if it's helpful.
Now, I wonder if it's possible to be aware of what the state of the heart is right now? What's the emotional experience, the mind state? And just to check in and see: what are you feeling right now? What's the experience? So it may not be anything dramatic at all; it probably isn't. What's happening in the body, perhaps somewhere along this central line? What do you feel? What's the experience? And focusing, in the body, on the expression of the heart state in the body right now. So letting the breath go. If that's your habit to be with the breath, let that go. What do you actually notice? Maybe it's in the heart area. Maybe it's higher up in the throat, or the head -- maybe even the top of the head. Maybe it's lower down in the belly, or really low down, down in the perineum or in the sexual organs. It could be anywhere. Just noticing what's going on. And if there's something that's a little bit more prominent there, can I let it be? Can you allow it, allow it to be however it is, however it is in this moment? Is it possible that the attention can delicately draw close to the experience in the body there? That there can be an intimacy, an intimacy with the experience, whatever it is? Whatever it is. Just allowing and gently drawing close, exploring the texture of the experience. And the hands are open to allow, to explore. So notice the experience changes, and let it change. Let it change. Whatever it is, let it go through its manifestations. Noticing the different qualities, the different experiences. So simply, what is the experience in the body along this central line or somewhere along it? What do you feel in this moment? Seeing if you can connect to whatever it is, to the experience, and really stay in the orbit of what's happening.
Just connecting and allowing. Touching, holding, interested. Being patient with yourself. It's natural that the mind will wander, and just bringing it back to that bodily experience and the gentle exploration of that. Or perhaps there's a lot of thinking, and it feels like the mind is full of static. Not a problem at all, not a problem. What does that feel like in the body? What does that static and that experience of a lot of thinking feel like in the body? Don't fight the thinking. Just notice what the bodily experience is while you're thinking, while there's thinking. So maybe it's in the head as pressure, as static, as an experience in the head, in the physical head. Including that. Tuning in, tuning in over and over.
So see if you can really let go of any preconceptions you might have or that might be present about what you should be experiencing or feeling or what the sensations should be. Completely open to what's there. Might be there's something difficult or knotted somewhere, or it feels there's something blocked or tight. Completely okay. Giving that a kind, interested attention. Maybe somewhere just feels kind of soft. What is it to explore 'soft' and the feeling of that? Or open. Or light. Or heavy. Sense of brightness, or darkness, or colours sometimes. That's completely fine -- just noticing, but want to be more in the body. So noticing that, but very aware of the feeling in the body. Can be anything -- metallic, fuzzy, static, a mixture, bittersweet. Maybe there's the experience of nothing feels like it's there, and what does that feel like? Can I pay attention to that? So whatever it is, it's okay and worthy of my interest and my attention.
[39:17, guided meditation breaks for instructions]
Okay, let's take a little break, and you can open your eyes. Does it make a little bit of sense? Yeah? No? It's okay to say "no." It would be helpful just to hear. So very easily doing this -- and we'll talk much more about this -- we bring unconscious expectations. I'm looking, the teacher's saying "do this," I look and I expect to see something clear. I expect that clearly I'll go in, and I can say, "Tick. My emotion is now this. Done. Clear." And it's a clear experience, and I may expect it to be a steady, clear experience. "I'm having a steady, clear experience of X," and then I feel like I'm doing it right: "Phew! It's this. It's identifiable." It may be. It may be that that's the case, but it may not be at all. But if I expect it to be and it's not, then I'm going to get frustrated and think I'm doing it wrong. And actually that's just the mind gone off on some expectation.
It might not be a clear thing that I can put a label to, the experience, and it certainly might not even stay steady, certainly. So if it looks like I'm paying attention, and what I'm getting is something I'm not quite sure what it is, but there's just something there, even if it's quite subtle and it keeps changing, that's perfect. It's perfect. So is it possible to let go of the demand, if there's a demand there, or an assumption, and explore the kind of grain, moment to moment, what's happening, the grain of the experience? And then the whole thing becomes freer.
Actually, it's quite interesting. I don't know what you noticed or what happened. Of course I'm extremely curious, and I'd love to hear right now from everyone. I don't know, but did you notice that there was some expectation there or pressure or demand or assumption going on? Yeah? Did you run into any of that? We'll talk a lot more about it. Because that's there, and it's really, really important. It's absolutely crucial, and it has an enormous effect on what's going on. Did you also notice that the experience was changing, that the whole experience was changing? Yeah? So rarely do things stay the same. This impermanence, it's almost like there are waves in the experience. In any experience we have, it has waves. That's actually really helpful to us. Rather than, as I said, expecting something to be steady, there will be waves in the experience: waves of being clear, waves of being present and not present, caught up in thought and not caught up in thought. But also in the experience itself, it changes. It doesn't stay the same. I might want it to stay the same just so that I can be clear, but it won't.
It goes like this: when something's very intense and difficult, there are also waves in it. It's also impermanent, moment to moment. And this we want to start seeing right away, in the grain of what's going on. This is important to us, because it's part of what enables us to feel confident, slowly. It's a bit like when you were a youngster at the seaside, and maybe you waded out into the sea, and the waves are coming in, and, you know, you're just a small person. And you don't know -- there are waves coming, and it's like, "Is it going to take me over?" But then you actually see, "Oh," you can ride this wave, and you actually see, "Oh, it's quite fun actually." The wave comes. It rises. I go up with it. And then it goes down again. And then the next one comes. And sooner or later it's actually fun to do that. And I trust something. I begin to trust something. I begin to trust that when the water goes up, I don't drown, and it doesn't stay up. The water goes up. It comes down. I go with it, and it comes down. I learn to trust. I won't drown. Sometimes the emotions, of course, in the range, like I said before, we can have such difficulty, such difficult stuff coming up -- it feels so enormous and overwhelming. Part of this noticing the impermanence is actually making what is enormous handleable, and so we get confidence.
Let's just do five minutes again together, yeah? So when I was saying this thing about 'quick,' I want to get so that you can dip in and out as well.
[45:36, guided meditation continues]
So again, just kind of finding your seat. Feeling yourself in the body. Feeling this openness of the body with the relaxation of the body. Especially if there's tiredness, the openness of the body can bring a little energy, the uprightness of the body. And then seeing this as a kindness -- as I said last night, this is a movement of kindness, of caring for myself and for my heart. And this whole movement of kindness to connect with inside, to just look at what's happening. What's happening? What's the heart state right now? And what's happening? What's drawing my attention? Maybe in a quiet way, what's drawing my attention on that central line, right from the top of the head down to the perineum? Something there I can tune into.
Let go of the preconceptions. Let go of the demands, and allow what is there, and see if it's possible to explore it a little bit with the attention, to touch it with the attention. So if what is happening is unpleasant, that's completely okay. Letting it be that. Or if what's happening is really not very marked at all -- it's quite subtle; almost nothing -- that's completely okay. Very helpful to pay attention to that, how that feels. Touching and allowing. The attention like the open hands together. Letting it be, and drawing close, becoming intimate with the experience in the body that is reflecting and expressing the state of the heart, of the mind, of the consciousness right now. Just connecting as best you can, being interested.
[53:51, guided meditation ends]
Okay, so we're just beginning this. I know that for some of you it will feel quite new. For others this is very familiar territory so far. We'll be expanding it. Either way, it's completely fine. We're just beginning to notice, maybe, notice this dimension or stratum of the experience. So noticing and beginning to notice without preconceptions, or as much as possible letting go of preconceptions -- really important. And to familiarize, beginning to familiarize with the experience, and the experiences, and how it feels, and to tune in, to focus. What happens when we focus in? So this thing I said about relative energies of the attention and the emotion -- another way of putting that that's quite significant: when we have an emotion -- a difficult emotion, certainly, is going on, or a difficult mind state -- usually we feel like we're in it. We are in it. It has kind of become us and we're looking out at things through it.
When we do a practice like this, we're having a different perspective, so the actual emotion or mind state becomes an object for the awareness. Do you understand the difference? Rather than the emotion being, "It is my awareness. I am that. I'm in that," because we're finding something to pay attention to, it becomes an object. It becomes something in awareness. That makes a huge difference. It makes a huge difference. Because then, what's happened? Another way of saying it: awareness is bigger than this that I'm going through. Rather than this that I'm going through being bigger than everything -- I am just lost in it, sunk in it -- actually, the awareness is bigger than it, because I'm making it an object of the awareness. And that's hugely helpful so that I'm not so overwhelmed. I don't drown. I don't sink.
Does that feel enough to be getting on with? Yeah? Okay, good. So we'll be alternating walking meditation. Now, in fact, is a period of walking meditation. We'll expand the walking instructions a little bit as the week goes on. For today, what I would say is when you're walking, if you're new to this, you want to find a path to walk on. So anywhere out front or back, anywhere on the grounds or in the walking meditation room, and you walk between two points, so it's kind of contained. And you can stand and just feel. The object of concentration for today for the walking is: what does it feel like to walk? What's the actual human experience and sensations of walking? So before we even start, what does it feel like to stand? What's the experience in the feet and the legs and the whole body? What does it simply feel like to stand? And that's what I'm paying attention to. And when you begin to walk -- and you can walk however fast or slow feels helpful for you -- and just walking, and what does it feel like to walk? And again, it could be that you're paying attention just to your feet, and the feeling of the feet on the floor, or it could be the whole body, and the whole body's experience of walking. And when you reach one side you can stop, and stop for as long as you want, and turn around mindfully. What does it feel like to turn around? And walk again. So whatever pace you want and whatever exactly you want to pay attention to in the body is fine. It's just simply: how does it feel to walk?
But in addition to that, if you want to throw in what we just did in the sitting at any point, feel free to. In other words, you're walking, and stop and check in on this centre line, and maybe there's something going on that you can give attention to. Maybe you're standing there for the next ten minutes or thirty seconds or whatever it is, exploring it in the way that we explored it. Maybe I don't even need to stand. Maybe I just slow down a little bit, or maybe I don't even need to slow down, and I'm with the emotionality in the body. So could be just the sensations of walking, or could be the practice that we started this morning. And you can move between the two as you like. That sound okay? Clear? Great. Enjoy the walking.
