This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Arrive Curious; Poetry of Practice 4 (1/5): No Certainty. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Diana Clark at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Good morning, welcome. Even if it’s not morning where you are, I’m just happy to be here practicing with you all. You can see from the title that was posted there on YouTube that I’m going to do a week of poetry here. I’ve done this a few times before. There’s a way in which I like to use poetry to point to a different way we can engage with the teachings, other than the memorization of lists or trying to remember the sequence of practices or something that we’ve learned. That’s tremendously valuable, and I love the lists—I teach them sometimes—but I think it’s a trap if we think that the only way to practice is that we have to figure something out and we have to understand it all and get it just right.
As an alternative to that, poetry points to something that’s in the heart, something that we feel our way into, or open up to, or allow ourselves to experience and know in a different kind of way than all the lists and the instructions. We need both, I would say. And it’s so easy when doing a Dharma talk to feel like, “Here are the instructions, here’s something to do.” That’s extremely useful, but not the only way to practice. In fact, I would say we need a combination.
So, part of practicing with poetry is allowing the language to touch us in a different way. Maybe in this way, rather than consuming information, perhaps a little bit more passively, it’s a way to allow language to touch us, maybe touch our hearts, or maybe allowing language to nourish us instead of telling us what we should be doing.
Well, that is a little introduction about this idea of the poetry of practice. I will guide us into dropping into a certain amount of settledness, whatever amount of settledness is available to you this time. And then I’ll drop in a poem, and then there’ll be some silence. And then for the little dharmette, I’ll unpack the poem in a way that we might use it to support us in our practice and certainly in our life.
Okay, so taking a moment to settle in with our meditation posture, connecting to the sitting surface, whatever that might be, whether it’s a chair, cushion, bed, or couch, wherever it might be. If you’re using a backrest, feeling the sensations on the back as it contacts the backrest. For all of us, feeling the contact with the buttocks as we are sitting. If we’re laying down, we’re connected, supported by the back of the legs, the feet. Resting our awareness in an easy, relaxed manner to feel connected, grounded. We’re here.
It can be helpful to do a little bit more of a body scan to help the body find some ease and let go of whatever tension or tightness can be readily let go of, without making it a project. Checking in around the eyes, the mouth, the shoulders, allowing them to drop away from the ears. The chest—sometimes we bring a certain amount of armoring to our experience. Can we allow it to soften and open? And the belly, allowing that to soften.
Then bringing an aliveness of attention to the sensations of breathing. Feeling into the experience of breathing. Feeling the sensations more than thinking about them. Maybe there are no words with the sensations. Attuning into the experience of breathing, allowing the attention to settle or organize around the breath.
And we set the sense of direction as one of welcoming whatever is arising. It’s already here. Can we align with the reality of the moment?
There’s a poem I’d like to drop into our meditation. It’s entitled “Prescription for the Disillusioned” by Rebecca del Rio.
Come new to this day. Remove the rigid overcoat of experience, the notion of knowing, the beliefs that cloud your vision. Leave behind the stories of your life. Spit out the sour taste of unmet expectation. Let the stale scent of what-ifs waft back into the swamp of your useless fears.
Arrive curious, without the armor of certainty, the plans and planned results of the life you’ve imagined. Live the life that chooses you, new every breath, every blink of your astonished eyes.
I’ll read it again. “Prescription for the Disillusioned” by Rebecca del Rio.
Come new to this day. Remove the rigid overcoat of experience, the notion of knowing, the beliefs that cloud your vision. Leave behind the stories of your life. Spit out the sour taste of unmet expectation. Let the stale scent of what-ifs waft back into the swamp of your useless fears.
Arrive curious, without the armor of certainty, the plans and planned results of the life you’ve imagined. Live the life that chooses you, new every breath, every blink of your astonished eyes.
What would it be like to arrive curious to this moment?