This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Spaciousness; Freeing the Thinking Mind (5/5) The Taste of Freedom. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by an unknown speaker at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit website www.audiodharma.org to find the authoritative record of this talk.
Good morning, good day, good afternoon, evening. Welcome back to the last of the series this week.
I’ll begin with a sutta1 where the Buddha was teaching his son, and one of the aspects I’ll quote is: “You develop meditation like space. Just as space is not established anywhere, in the same way, when you’re developing meditation like space, pleasant and unpleasant contacts will not stay in charge of your mind.”
One of the ways of thinking about awareness is like a big open sky, a big spacious sky. The objects that arise in the mind are like birds or clouds floating by, rain falling, thunder, or lightning. Sometimes the sky is lit by the sun, sometimes by the moon or stars. Awareness can be thought of like the vast space in which all the objects of mind—sensations, sounds, thoughts, memories, feelings, emotions, moods, all our reactions to our experience—arise and pass away, appear and disappear.
Everything we experience is constantly changing, constantly moving. Awareness is undisturbed by it all. In insight practice, we give careful attention to the details of our changing experience, but we can also step back from the details and pay attention to the spacious field in which they occur. Between every changing object, there is space and stillness.
Let’s sit. Take a relaxed and alert posture and gently close your eyes. You might begin with a few deep breaths, and with each exhale, relaxing a little bit more deeply, relaxing into your cushion or chair, into the earth that supports you.
Allowing the breath to return to normal. Breathing in, breathing out. As we breathe, we can become aware of the air outside of our body. It’s the same air inside of our body. We’re breathing in and breathing out. There’s no separation between inside and outside. The same air that the trees create, the same air we’re breathing. Inside, outside, flowing back and forth. Connected by breathing.
We can become aware of a wider sense of feeling the whole body, as if the whole body is breathing. Breathing in and breathing out. Allowing the body to relax, to soften, to open. Letting go of any ways it’s bracing itself, tensing. Allowing the body to relax, calming anything that can be relaxed: the face, the shoulders, any tensions in the back. Allowing the belly to be soft, arms and the legs. Breathing in and breathing out as if the whole body is breathing.
As you are aware of breathing with your peripheral awareness, you can become aware of the spaciousness that’s all around. Allowing yourself to just know it, just letting it be while you breathe with it. Thoughts might arise in the space, sensations, emotions. We can allow them to come and go. Just breathing in and breathing out. Allowing any movements of the mind to relax, to soften, to settle down on their own. No need to reach out to them, no need to push them away. In the wider field of awareness, any of these movements can arise and pass away. The spacious mind has room for everything.
Whatever arises and passes can do so in this vast field of awareness. Everything is flowing and changing within a vast stillness.
If the attention has drifted, gently bring it back to the present. Breathing in, breathing out. Resting in awareness.
I’ll begin with a cartoon I saw. There’s a school of fish swimming deep in the ocean, and one of the fish says, “Are we there yet?”
In mindfulness practice, we take a lot of care to get to know and understand our thinking mind, but that understanding is for a purpose. The idea is to have freedom with our thoughts, however they are, whether the mind’s busy or if the mind is exquisitely silent.
The Buddha said the dharma is good in the beginning, in the middle, and in the end. In other words, it’s good even if we spend most of the last meditation distracted. That awareness that brings us back is a moment of freedom. That awareness that sees the painfulness of the angry mind is a moment of freedom.
The quote I read yesterday refers to this taste of freedom, this taste of non-clinging: “Just as this great ocean has one taste, the taste of salt, so also this teaching and practice has one taste, the taste of liberation.” When we’re mindful, not clinging, we get this taste of freedom regularly. A moment of mindfulness is not a moment of clinging. Even if we’re mindful of clinging, that mindfulness is not clinging. So, we can practice with that taste and experience that freedom throughout the day. These little moments, these little tastes of freedom.
We can also live with the promise of freedom. Both a taste and a promise can guide our lives. We can have freedom with a busy mind, with restless thoughts. Freedom is there to be found. Just one moment of not clinging, not grasping. It’s right there. Not resisting it, not pushing the moment away, but attending to it with care, allowing it to flow. The busy mind is not a failure. It’s not a mistake. It’s there from the conditions in our lives. It takes only a moment to stop fighting it, to stop feeding it, to just watch it do its thing until it settles on its own.
One of the classic images for meditation in Buddhism is the image of a muddy pond. Someone comes along and stirs up the bottom of the pond and all the mud. What needs to be done to have a clear pond is to leave the pond alone, to allow all the sediments to settle out. The pond will become clear again all by itself. When we resist our experience, it’s like stirring up the pond.
Zen master Suzuki Roshi said, “When you meditate, don’t be bothered by your thoughts. They’re just thoughts.”
As we reflect on this path, this eight-fold path that the Buddha walked before us, we can recognize the forward-leading nature of this path to freedom. It’s a path. We’re going somewhere. We may be inspired by the idea of being free of greed, hatred, and delusion. Or maybe the idea of the full blooming of our hearts, a heart that loves like the sun without limits. The idea of being at peace.
But also, as we’ve been meditating together this week, moment by moment opening to our experience, we might also connect with being nobody and going nowhere. This is the title of one of Ayya Khema’s books. And both of those are essential: the forward-leading nature of the path and being fully in the present moment—in that moment, being nobody, going nowhere.
There’s a difference between having an aspiration to freedom, an aspiration to free the heart from the defilements, and striving to get there. The difference between striving and aspiring is suffering, dukkha2. Striving comes from the delusion that what really counts is what’s coming up, and that this moment is somehow not enough, lacking a bit, not quite right. It’s what’s coming up that’s good.
When I was in school, I was regularly bored. I would deeply contemplate the huge clock on the wall, watching the seconds tick by, just waiting for the bell to ring. “Once this boring class is over, then I’ll be happy.” To find myself at times echoing that sentiment in meditation was an unwelcome surprise. I spent much of my time during the years of education striving to get to my real life once I graduated. But once I began to work, I couldn’t wait till the weekend. I thought that’s where my real life is. Then during the weekend, I’d take a long drive to visit a friend and I’d often find myself leaning forward, and then a voice would show up: “Are we there yet? Are we there yet?”
Striving has a contraction, a tightness. Aspiration has a lightness of heart. We can climb a mountain with the aspiration of getting to the top with a brightness of heart, maybe inspired by the panorama we’ll see when we get there. And on the way, each step we take can also be an arrival, sensing the beauty around us, feeling our bodies walking on the trail. Sometimes we run into boulders on the path that we need to climb over. The boulders aren’t wrong for being there. Sometimes the path seems easy, and we’re just enjoying the experience—the sun on us, the beautiful sky, the warmth. And sometimes it’s rough and gravelly and awkward. And sometimes it’s steep and challenging. And sometimes it’s just easy downhill. Sometimes the body aches, the feet get tired, but as we continue on the path, we don’t leave our tired feet behind. We bring all of who we are up the mountain, aching feet and all.
But we can also climb that same mountain with a tight or grim determination to get to the top, to accomplish it, another checkbox of what we’ve done in our lives. Either way, our body might show up there, but it’s a very different experience. We’ve climbed a very different mountain.
With being nobody and going nowhere, we can be fully here. If we’re nobody, we don’t need to be different in any way. Nothing has to change. Nothing has to happen. This is the taste of freedom.
Aspiration to freedom inspires us to keep choosing what’s wholesome, to keep choosing the path even when it’s hard. Aspiration gladdens the heart. If we’re complacent or discouraged, the aspiration can lift the heart. And if we find ourselves striving, remembering that we’re being nobody and going nowhere can bring us back to balance.
In one way, it’s between these two seemingly opposite ideas that the practice dances—in its forward-leading way and going nowhere at the same time.
So, thank you very much. I’ve really appreciated this time with you and your beautiful comments and your presence. Thank you.