This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Sincerity With It All; Letting Go and Cultivation (5 of 5): A Practitioner’s Life. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Kim Allen at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Okay, so hello to everyone from around the world. So nice to see all of you. Let’s go ahead and prepare for meditation. So settling in, finding a posture that will be comfortable for you for a half hour or so. I invite you to close the eyes if that works for you, bring the attention inward, having a sense of connection and intimacy with your own experience at this moment.
Perhaps starting with the body, noticing your posture. Maybe you’re in the sitting posture, or you could be standing or lying down. And just having an overall general sense of the body in the position that it’s in. And then inviting some kind of balance and ease in the posture. So checking to see if you’re using a lot of muscles to hold yourself in this position and seeing if you could find a position that’s quite balanced, so that there’s not much need for muscles to hold you up. Softening.
Inviting ease in some of the main places we carry tension, so maybe in the face, the jaw. Inviting ease through the shoulders, down into the chest and the belly, muscles of the low back. Softening and also finding a comfortable position for the arms and legs.
And then connecting in to whatever degree of groundedness you feel from having balanced and invited ease in the body. Is there a sense of stability or settledness in the physical aspect of you? Maybe sensing the natural stillness of the body when it’s sitting. And even if the body is uncomfortable in certain ways, you know, those pains and aches and challenges that we have, there can still be a sense of groundedness and connectedness to what you’re sitting on, to the Earth. The body is fine as it is.
And to start off today, in the mind and the heart, the invitation is to evoke or connect in with the quality of sincerity. So maybe locating the part of your heart that is really sincere about meditation or about the spiritual life, and offering that part center stage, offering it respect and care. This may be only a small part or it may be a tentative part of you, but the suggestion is to give it a warm welcome today, acknowledging it. Yeah, there is in my heart a depth of interest in this practice, even if the rest of my life is busy or sometimes directed in other ways. Yeah, there is a part though that’s really, really sincere. And maybe it’s easy to contact that.
And then releasing the explicit connection to that and opening to experience. We’ll gradually open. So beginning again with the experience of the body, noticing now the body in the space that you’re in. A sense of the room around you, or maybe you’re outside. A sense of your actual location in space. And then also a sense of the bodily sensations inside that you’re experiencing. The clearest one might be the breath coming in, going out. The body contains myriad sensations. Just letting those come forth, be noticed.
Opening further to include explicitly noticing the sounds where you are. There’s the sound of my voice, and there may also be sounds in the room, sounds outside—people, animals, electronic equipment, heaters, the things in our lives.
We don’t need to put a lot of effort into trying to hold all of these things that I’m naming at once. It’s just that we open to the potential for each one, allowing that into the field of our awareness if such a thing should come in—a sound or a sensation of the breath.
And in the same way, gently opening further to include any emotions that may be present, or maybe a general mood in the heart. How are you feeling in general? And also the shorter-term flickers of emotion that come through. Maybe there’s a moment of joy and then a lingering sense of sadness. Maybe you have a general mood of ease this morning or afternoon or evening, and then a flicker of irritation. Just letting those experiences play on the screen of the mind, along with any other sensations or sounds and physical experiences that are coming.
And see now if you can include thoughts and intentions in this same spirit, as things that simply arise and pass, coming in, going out. Thoughts also are just movements of mind. Maybe they have a physical feeling also, phenomena, experiences that come and go.
And all of this is known by this quality of awareness, of knowing, kind of a heartful knowing that’s open to whatever experience arises and allows any experience also to pass. The whole gamut of what comes into the human mind. And noticing that as we open gently, piece by piece, it is possible to be with all of this in a restful way.
It’s also a natural part of the human experience that the mind gets distracted or caught up or contracted around something in particular. And in that case, you could reinvoke that part of you that is sincere and touch that distraction with the sincerity of caring for your meditation, your spiritual life. Just see if that softens the sense of caught-upness.
And as you continue to rest with the flow of experience and what awareness is now naturally knowing, you could see what kind of meditation or what happens in your practice if you allow the sincerity to have some space. Will the mind settle in and pick up the breath? Will it stay in open awareness? What does the Dharma want to do in you right now?
And gently now, reconnecting with the sense of the body sitting, allowing your awareness to generally sense the position of the body, sensations in the body. Noticing what kinds of emotions or thoughts are present, if any. And perhaps sensing into any space that you feel in the mind or the heart or the body, that which surrounds our experience or which provides the background for experience to arise in. Noticing the contrast, the experiences and the space. Often when we let the Dharma lead, both of those aspects become clearer, sharper.
And perhaps considering as you move out of the meditation session today into your regular life, how would it be to let the Dharma, if that terminology makes sense, take something of the lead? Bringing our spiritual heart to bear on just the ordinary activities. It could be the same type of activities, but done from the sense of practice or from the sense of walking the path. The benefits that would bring to our own heart and also to others, without our even having to talk about our practice or the Dharma, we would be expressing that somehow.
There’s a saying in the Dharma that others are not so happy when I’m a Buddhist, but they’re very happy when I’m a Buddha. So carrying with us our sense of the Dharma and the path for the benefit of all.
I’d like to start today with a story that was told to me by an older man, probably in his 70s. He just showed up one day in a class that I was teaching; I didn’t know him before. He said that 50 years ago, roughly, he had experienced a profound spiritual opening. It was so profound he couldn’t quite relate to it at the time, and his response was just to go back to his regular life—to his career, his family, other things. But this experience that he had had kept lingering in the back of his mind. Sometimes he had made attempts during his life to connect with spirituality, but he hadn’t really landed on anything that felt right for him. And so he had just led his life as was expected in the world.
When he talked with me about it, it was clear that his heart was hurting in some way. He had set aside something that was deeply meaningful to him for decades in order to live a more conventional life. I wondered if he was bringing all of this to me because something in his subconscious was sensing that maybe he didn’t have much time left in this life, or at least not much time when he would have good enough health. So I felt like the thing to do was to strongly encourage him to get serious about his spiritual seeking. I think I even said something to the effect of, “Hey, you may not have much time to resolve this yearning in your heart, so go out and find what you need to find. And this is it.” He didn’t come back, but I got the sense something had landed. So I hope he found what he was looking for, even after a 50-year delay.
I open with this story, which I know is kind of a powerful story, in order to say a couple of things directly. First of all, it’s never too late to get started. But second, you do need to act on your heart’s calling if you’re feeling such a thing. So if you’ve had some kind of an opening or a yearning or an intuition about the spiritual life, if we have that but we don’t give it any space, if we keep living in the way that’s expected by the people around us and by the world, then it will fade a bit. It’s like a plant that needs sunlight and space in order to grow, and it can’t do that if we don’t give it any space.
The alternative to that is to give your spiritual calling some space to take root and to grow and to see what comes of that. I’ve noticed that people who prioritize their heart’s deepest wishes may not always have an easy life, but they tend not to have any regrets either.
So we’ve made it to the last day of this week about our spiritual direction that we might be thinking about at the beginning of a new year. And so maybe it’s time to ask a question: What are you doing with your life? It’s an important question at any stage of life, actually. And, you know, how can a person use this life well? I think that’s a great question, and I love it because it has so many answers. There isn’t just one way, but there maybe is your way.
And so, you know, maybe one way to answer this question in a very general way is to see our life as an act of walking a path, to consider ourselves to be a practitioner. That’s what I am. I’m a bunch of other things too, you know, maybe a parent, a partner, a worker, a community member, a friend in various other situations. But at the heart of it all, I’m a practitioner of some kind. So the theme this week of letting go and cultivation maybe culminates in these notions of a path and a practitioner, and what is that for us?
I think even if we have a family and we’re working and other things, we can still orient our lives around the spiritual life. And that makes a difference somehow; that changes how things unfold somehow. Probably it’s a distinct group of people in the world who see life as a practice. There are some who do and some who don’t, and we wouldn’t expect that everyone would. But I think the ones who do are somehow concerned with finding excellence, with finding human flourishing, and maybe with engaging differently in the world than the more conventional way of being. I’ve certainly found that as a teacher who connects with people who come to me about such things. Yeah, I do see that this group that are orienting around practice has really good effects.
But to engage in a life of practice, if that’s of interest, does mean making some choices. And this is not just a Buddhist idea. I think many spiritual teachers and philosophers and guides and counselors have noted that some kind of discipline or conscious engagement with our life is needed if we want to grow spiritually. You know, what does it mean to be a practitioner?
So I wanted to suggest today some qualities of a practitioner that you may consider, and consider what they look like in your own case, because I think each one has many different manifestations. And so the first one, the first quality that is shared by people who consider their life to be walking a path, I’m just going to use the blunt word, which is I think they share the quality of renunciation.1 Recalling also that renunciation is the first of the three wise intentions of the Eightfold Path2 that the Buddha named.
So what does that mean, though? I think it simply means that we’re fueled by an internal calling. To practice, we really do have to give up some things. At the very least, if you’re going to sit for an hour a day, that’s an hour that you don’t do something else. And you know, we give up certain things for the purpose of having a deeper and richer and fuller life in various areas. So I don’t know if renunciation is the right word for that, as it has kind of connotations that are not so positive, but I’m meaning it in a positive sense of letting go of what is not supportive for this path that we’re wanting to walk.
And so maybe there are certain areas that we have to particularly look at in that case. And one of them is, of course, the material life. That’s maybe what we first think of with renunciation. But I don’t think renunciation in this case means some kind of restriction or narrowing or cutting off, but really more a real investigation of what is material sufficiency in our life. Learning what is just enough so that we don’t have extra burdens on the mind. Material things take up mental space. And so if you’re wanting to use your mental space for service, for practice, for meditation, for retreat, for doing things that are meaningful, we don’t want to have too many extra things that we’re managing. But you do need to have enough in order that life is comfortable enough, secure enough, assured enough. You have access to health and good food and all of that. So this is, I think, something that has to be done consciously. So really looking at our material life to have the right amount that frees us from fear and also from the need for overwork and over-consuming that can happen in our conventional culture. So the material life is worth examining in light of a spiritual life.
And then the second area of renunciation is maybe seeing beyond the conventional expectations. So giving up conventional views, if you will. So what is our relationship to what our society says we’re supposed to be doing? You know, get an education, get a job, get the right house, have this or that, keep up with the neighbors, etc. It’s okay to live a life that looks conventional in certain ways, but where are you coming from in doing that? You know, are we just buying into everything that society tells us we should want and need and will make us happy? Or have you discovered in some way that those things don’t necessarily bring happiness? That’s what brings a lot of people to the spiritual practice. Maybe they haven’t quite articulated this, but they’re coming in the door because what they were told would make them happy didn’t actually fulfill that. And the Buddha picks right up on this in his teachings. He’s very direct about this and says, “Yeah, these things are not so satisfying, but it’s okay.” That doesn’t mean depression and confusion. There’s this path that does bring actual satisfaction and actual happiness. And so we have to again work in this area of how do we relate to the messages that we hear every day and see every day, and yet something is calling us differently in our heart. And there’s, I think, a fair amount of work in being able to navigate that skillfully, gracefully, keeping up the connections and relationships and factors of our life that are needed. This has always been true in whatever culture religion and spirituality has arisen in. So practitioners have to navigate that. It can help to have a teacher.
And then maybe another large area, another main quality of a practitioner, is what I like to call converting all problems to internal problems. And this doesn’t say that all problems are internal, but one quality of a practitioner is to look first inside, to always try to find the source of our suffering or struggle in our own relationship with experience. This will serve you very well in the long run if you’re walking a path. And being a practitioner in life is to first look at how we can change, how we can shift. That allows the Dharma space to grow. Each of these areas are ways of creating space that lets the Dharma have something to move into, so that we’re not covering it over like that man did for 50 years and not giving space for something beautiful to grow.
So people with these qualities of renunciation and of looking internally first, I think have a certain depth and strength that others can feel. And interestingly, what we discover when we take on these qualities of a practitioner is we discover softness, humility, love, compassion, all sorts of things that come out of creating that space for the heart to grow. So practitioners are moving toward becoming both stronger and softer, becoming freed from the compulsions of the heart that narrow us and bind us and make us harder and also weaker.
This gives us a general idea of what letting go and cultivation can cover in their full breadth. And you might see if you’ve had specific New Year resolutions or intentions like we’ve talked about this week, how they might fit into these ideas of letting go, cultivation, of material sufficiency, of having an internal sense rather than just following societal conventions, and also bringing all of our problems into internal problems. Can we change ourselves in some way?
I want to read a quote from Stephen Batchelor3 about creating a path that I find very beautiful. It’s a couple paragraphs, a little long, but just hang in there and see how it lands.
As we learn to play this complex instrument of bones, flesh, nerves, impulses, thoughts, and feelings, we trace a path that weaves its way like a channel through the landscape of our experience. It is guided by an intuitive yearning for what we value most deeply. Its space is the openness we are able to tolerate within our hearts and minds. It is sustained by the networks of friendship that inspire us to keep going. The path follows the contours of our life as one day turns into the next. It is found amidst the most mundane of circumstances as well as the most sublime. To create a path is to become intimate with the space opening up within, around, and before us. This intimacy comes from the mindful awareness of what is unfolding in our body, feelings, minds, and worlds from moment to moment. We get used to the taste, the feel, the texture of the path. It ceases to be something to which we self-consciously aspire, and when we stray from it, we feel its loss as an act of self-betrayal.
So I really like this notion of the path being something that’s unfolding right here from connecting to this experience here and now and creating space for the Dharma to move us forward into the next moment. It may be powerful and profound, and it can be making coffee for your family.
So returning to the foundational sutta from the Dhammapada4 that we read at the beginning: “Not engaging in what’s unskillful, engaging in what is skillful, and purifying one’s mind. This is the teaching of the Buddhas.” So how does this look for you as we launch into 2025? It’s your life, and I think you won’t regret making it into a spiritual path.
So my wish for all of us in 2025 is to give ample space to the Dharma, to let it grow and flower in whatever way it can in your life for the benefit of you and everyone. So thank you so much. It’s been a beautiful week. Be well.
Renunciation (Pali: nekkhamma): In Buddhism, this term doesn’t mean ascetic self-denial, but rather the positive act of letting go of attachments and desires that cause suffering. It’s seen as a joyful release and a step toward freedom, not a grim restriction. ↩
The Eightfold Path: The fundamental teaching of the Buddha that describes the way to the cessation of suffering (dukkha). It consists of eight interconnected factors: Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. ↩
Stephen Batchelor: The original transcript said “Steven Bachelor.” This has been corrected to Stephen Batchelor, a prominent contemporary Buddhist author and teacher known for his secular and agnostic approach to the Dharma. ↩
Dhammapada: The original transcript said “dhap.” This has been corrected to Dhammapada, one of the best-known and most widely read Buddhist scriptures. It is a collection of sayings of the Buddha in verse form. ↩