This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Balanced Awareness; Inspirations for Insight (3 of 5) Insight in Difficulty. 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.
And this morning, we’re going to meditate together. Before we start, if you take a moment to either silently reflect on or share somehow what you noticed in your practice yesterday, anything at all related to the themes of connecting with wisdom, with abundance, kindness, relating to the moment.
And when you’re ready, taking your seat, whatever posture you’re in, settling into your space for meditation. Perhaps taking a moment to look around or listen to the soundscape, allow a small smile or sense of connection with yourself, with your body.
Beginning to allow the attention to move inward, noticing the sounds around you, the silence between the sounds. Noticing the warmth or cool of the body, the weight of your body on the chair or cushion or mat.
And connecting, tuning with the internal world of this body, all the little sensations of aliveness.
Scanning through your body, maybe a gentle sweep of the attention from the head to the feet, inviting the eyes to relax in their sockets. The area between the eyes and the brow and behind the eyes and the head to soften and spread. Eyes closed, but perhaps as if taking in a broad vista. Allowing the tongue to soften.
And sweeping the attention down through the neck and chest, noticing the sensations of the body breathing. Allowing the mind to be soothed, the heart to rest in a gentle rhythm of in and out breath.
Allowing the whole core of your body to relax, softening the hips and buttocks, thighs and hamstrings. Noticing, softening the shins and calves, ankles and feet. And taking in the integrity of the whole body, allowing awareness to fill it.
And settling onto each in-breath and out-breath, or whatever anchor of attention, object of attention, feels most in balanced in connection today.
If the mind, the attention is pulled away by thoughts, images, wants, or aversions, gently staying in your seat, returning to mindfulness, awareness. Noticing any leaning towards or leaning away, and when it’s possible, returning to simple, balanced awareness.
If the mind becomes entranced, seeing how graciously, appreciatively it’s possible to welcome the return of mindful awareness.
In the last few minutes of our meditation together, the invitation is to open up your awareness to know the knowing. Include the quality of mindfulness itself in the knowing. Take a step back, open the lens of awareness. Allowing everything that’s known just to flow through. Allowing your heart, your mind to be bright, nourished by the knowing itself.
And then as we draw this meditation to a close, the invitation is to appreciate, recall any moments of embodiment, mindful awareness, contentment, any moments of simplicity, goodness, kindness. And in your heart, offering the benefits of that outward to the others in this world, those your life touches directly and indirectly, and those unseen far away.
May all beings be safe, happy, peaceful, and free. And may our practice here together be a cause and condition for greater love, liberation, and peace in the world.
Thank you for the sincerity of your practice.
So today we continue the series on inspirations for insight, stories and wisdom from the myths and stories of the Buddha’s life and others around him. But before I start, I’d like to make an announcement, which is that the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies—many of you know this organization, kind of a sister organization to IMC—they’ve opened their applications for the Buddhist chaplaincy training program about a week ago. There are two versions of this program. There’s an in-person version with Gil and two other teachers, and an online version with myself and two other teachers. Both are wonderful. I went through the first and now teach the second. So for your consideration, if you’re looking for a way to bring your practice into a—deepen it in an engaged way, a way that helps others.
So I’d like to start today’s talk, today’s inspiration for insight, with a story. That story is the very night of the Buddha’s enlightenment, awakening. Some of you were here yesterday and heard the pre-story of him receiving nourishment and kindness and deciding on the middle way. And then he made the determination, a strong determination, that he was going to sit under the Bodhi tree1 until he awoke. And so off he went, and he did. It’s kind of the culmination of his hero’s journey from a mythic perspective.
He’s sitting, and as he’s sitting, Mara2, the mythic figure whose name literally means “death,” who symbolizes the life-denying forces, Mara comes and brings his armies. It’s said he brings every force to bear: sense desire, ill will, horrific visions of all kinds. And the Buddha observes this play of just intense arising of these images and of the hostility and of the desire, unmoved.
So Mara then shoots his army, shoots volleys and volleys of arrows at the Buddha. And in this myth, they’re converted to showers of flowers raining down on him instead of piercing him, offering this sort of beautiful fragrance that’s associated in the ancient texts with virtue.
And then finally, Mara is not getting anywhere with all of this, so he taunts the Buddha with one last attempt to undermine his practice, his awakening. And he says, “Who are you to wake up? Who are you?” He taunts him with doubt. And it’s said that in response, the Buddha touches the earth beneath him. And in some versions of this story, the earth shakes in response. I think of this as “earth as my witness.”
And then when he awoke, he awoke completely. It’s said that it’s the end of ignorance, and this is canonical here, freedom from all forms of suffering and a knowledge of the karmic effects of actions of living beings, action and result, where people, how people are impacted by their own actions.
After his awakening, the Buddha went to another tree and, it’s said, rested under it, stared at it for a full seven days, enjoying the bliss of samadhi3 and freedom.
So, a powerful, evocative myth, right? It’s the culmination of this hero’s journey, an embodiment of courage, determination, restraint, and a peaceful victory. You’ll notice there was no combat, but instead, he stayed in his seat. So that’s the story.
I want to invite you to take whatever feels inspiring in it to you into your heart and mind. I’ll offer a few reflections in the next few minutes of some wisdom I found it holds for approaching the experience of insight.
One lesson I take from this is that the mind can experience insight, the heart can experience freedom, even when the most difficult kinds of memories or images or hindrances are present. In fact, that can be the moment of very strong insight. I’ve seen this in people I support, and I’ve seen it in my own practice as well. As we covered yesterday, the exact same experience can be challenging and difficult, can be distracting or discouraging, or it can be a penetrating insight. The difference lies in how we relate to experience and what mental faculties are implied here. So I talked a lot yesterday about how we relate to experience, and that will be a little bit in this talk as well, but first, I’ll kind of focus a little bit more on the faculties of mind.
So the first things that you notice in his mind in this story is that if we kind of depersonify Mara and his attack, all of the mental hindrances that are talked about in the Buddhist teachings are present: sexual or sensual desire, which is by definition a life-giving force, here is utilized as a distraction. And then there are these horrific visions, ill will of being shot at, and fear of all kinds.
The Buddha meets these rather than becoming entranced by desire or pulling away or pushing away in fear or disgust or horror. He holds his seat. Even though all hell was breaking loose, he stayed present. He didn’t give in, he didn’t give up, but he also didn’t actively engage in fighting. There was a non-contention present.
In other words, if we consider the Buddha in this story as our inner capacity, potentiality for awakening, awakened awareness, which is on a continuum with simple mindfulness, he was mindful, simply present. And that kind of simple presence of mindfulness, not leaning towards or away, is a powerful support for insight.
And what supports the capacity of this mindful awareness? What we do each time we sit: noticing it, attending to it, appreciating it, not being critical when it’s gone. And sometimes reflecting after meditation what conditions you might put in to help it arise more often. How much interest might be able to be brought to bear to help the mindfulness be more continuous, more steady, more balanced? Mindfulness too, awareness too, is conditioned, and appreciation helps it to arise more and more often.
So now we come to this image of the army’s volley after volley after volley of arrows transformed into flowers. The way an aware, wise heart and mind can metabolize difficulties into wisdom. So what might this look like? There are different ways. I’ll offer a few.
Most of you probably know the simile of the second arrow. You get hit by a first arrow—those are the slings and arrows of life. It hurts. There’s pain, there’s grief, there’s loss, there’s the arising of things we don’t want on a personal, familial, or societal level. That’s the first arrow. The second arrow is all of the ways our minds and hearts make things worse. When wisdom is present, it’s possible to see the arrows, the many ways the mind can make things worse, as conditioned processes of this mind and this heart.
In other words, while in some ways life’s difficulties might feel and be intensely, deeply personal, on another level, what we experience inside is not personal. It’s universal qualities, tendencies of heart and mind. So instead of taking things personally, it becomes possible to connect with this process and with the flip side of wisdom: compassion, care. Just like me, everyone suffers sometimes. That compassion recognizes the universal human experience.
So in short, rather than being wounded by the arrows of the life-denying forces of the mind, seeing into them with clear mindfulness—how they’re formed, how they’re conditioned, how they’re common among humans and other beings too—this perspective, this capacity can transform difficulties into inner beauty, flowers.
And as we draw to the close of unpacking this story, just as it was for the Buddha in this story, doubt tends to be the most difficult hindrance for people. “Who are you? Who am I to experience bliss? Who am I to experience a moment of insight?” A classic way in the stories and teachings of the Buddha is to simply say, “I see you, Mara. I see you.” To look doubt in the eye and doubt the doubt.
There’s also the power of being grounded in your own seat, your own place on earth, touching the earth. There’s a simplicity and an integrity in us being part of nature. We are nature. Everything that unfolds in our minds and hearts is part of natural processes interacting. There’s honor in that.
So to review, factors of mind that are helpful at the moment of insight and difficulty are recognition of a strong, simple mindful awareness that doesn’t lean towards or away, not entangled. Recognizing that what arises is based on conditioning, nature, and rather than reacting with blame or shame—and even if blame or shame are present—to bring compassion, clear seeing to the process of what’s happening.
In other words, the way our minds and hearts metabolize or relate to anything in our inner lives can transform how it lives in us. The very same experience can result in protracted difficulty or in profound inner growth. Sometimes both: first one and then the growth.
So friends, please stay grounded in your own place on this earth these next 24 hours. If you’re walking, you’re earth walking. If you’re sitting, earth sitting. And notice for your homework, your assignment should you want to accept it, where are there moments of mindfulness, awareness, where you’re not leaning in or leaning away?
Thank you for your kind attention.
Bodhi tree: The specific sacred fig tree under which the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, is said to have attained enlightenment. Original transcript said “bodhic tree”. ↩
Mara: In Buddhism, a demonic celestial king who personifies the forces of temptation, spiritual obstruction, and death. He attempted to distract the Buddha from his path to enlightenment. ↩
Samadhi: A state of meditative consciousness, often translated as “concentration” or “unification of mind.” It is a state of deep meditative absorption. Original transcript said “samadei”. ↩