This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Simplicity of Being; Insight (14) Flow or Selfing. 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.
Hello and welcome.
One of the approaches to meditation is to always keep it very simple, with the idea that we are simplifying our preoccupation, simplifying what we’re caught up in, simplifying ourselves in many ways so that we’re able to see our experience free of the lenses of pre-existing concepts. We can see our experience without the filter of ideas and preferences, without the ideas of shoulds and shouldn’ts, and without expectation. We’re simplifying to become a fresh awareness, a fresh perspective, a fresh seeing of our experience. Even to the extent that it’s almost as if we’re seeing for the first time. Seeing for the first time and, in doing so, find it phenomenally interesting, amazing, and wondrous, and that we’re curious and interested in knowing what is here as if we’ve never known it before—even something as simple as the breathing.
But the emphasis is on the process of simplification, not the process of seeing, at least in the beginning. So, assuming a posture of meditation that’s right for you, think of the posture as an invitation to become simply here, to be grounded here, to be settled here.
The way that the posture could help is by assuming a posture that allows you to somehow have both an alertness and an opportunity to relax the larger muscles of your body. Maybe on the inhale, to feel the vitality, the aliveness, the alertness that’s in the body itself. And on the exhale, to relax the body—the shoulders, the belly, the face.
Breathing in a simplicity of being. Breathing out, relaxing into a simplicity of being here with whatever is here for you. Not wanting it to be different, not wanting it to stay the same. Just here with this, breathing with it.
It can be complicated to be present if the mind is quick to judge and comment and analyze. As you exhale, softening, relaxing the thinking mind, gently quieting your thoughts.
And then settling into the simplicity of breathing, or the simplicity of accompanying breathing. An awareness accompanies breathing closely; breathing accompanies awareness. Like two friends walking contentedly in a park together, so breathing and awareness contentedly accompany each other within the world of our experience.
If you would like, in order to stay with the changing rhythm of breathing in and breathing out, you can gently count your breaths one to three, or one to ten. A very, very soft count, a very relaxed, calm count. Part of the function of the counting is to help you notice when you wander off from the count into your thoughts, and then gently, calmly begin again. The simplicity of being centered on the body breathing.
Each time you exhale, settle into a simplicity of being, a stability of just being here in the midst of your present-moment embodied experience. Relaxing the thinking mind. The only thing you have to think about is the breathing itself, accompanying the rhythm of breathing.
As we continue sitting, feeling into the way to a simplicity of being and how you can, for a few more minutes, just be here in the simplest possible way with your present moment experience.
Notice how with a shifting, changing river of change of here and now, there is very little orientation towards thoughts of me, myself, and mine—stories of self, commentary about self—because those take you away from simple presence. Can you feel, see, recognize how the simplicity of being stays free of the major preoccupations of self?
And then, as we come to the end of the sitting, consider when and how simplicity of presence, simplicity of being, when offered to others, is a gift. Someone who is troubled, someone who is challenged in some deep way, who doesn’t need someone to fix them or explain things to them—they just value being accompanied by someone who can be simple, relaxed, someone who can be present for them. Where a simplicity of being provides the right level of accompaniment.
Or when a simplicity of being is the appropriate way of accompanying yourself. Where a simplicity of being can allow for a simple goodwill, a simple care and kindness that gently, non-assertively, without expectation, has goodwill for self and others.
Wishing lightly, openly:
May all beings be happy.
May all beings be safe.
May all beings be peaceful.
May all beings be free.
Thank you.
So hello from Insight Meditation Center here in Redwood City. I’m happy to continue this series on the topic of insight, the insight of insight meditation. Currently, the topic is the insight into inconstancy1, the insight into change.
It’s not a difficult insight; maybe it’s almost too obvious that things change and that things are not the same. But still, we get caught in permanence; we get caught in believing “this is the way it is.” To come to freedom in Buddhism, a kind of a deep inner freedom, is to be supported by staying close to, or recognizing in a deep way—or to say differently, in a continuous way—how continuously things are changing. It is as if we see change, we realize deeply we can’t cling to anything. Because as soon as we cling, it’s like clinging to the current of a river. You put your hand into that current, you’re going to grab that current, grab that water, hold on tight, and you come up empty-handed. There might be a few drops of water on your hand, but the current is not amenable to being grabbed, and the water just goes out of your hands. But some people are constantly grabbing, grabbing, grabbing, or they’re grabbing within the current thinking they have it.
So, to begin seeing and feeling the distinction between being in the flow of change and somehow being separated from it or trying to hold on to something. One of those things, concepts, ideas that takes us out, really far out of the flow of the river of the present moment, is ideas, concepts, and attachments to self. Independent of whether there is a self or not a self, in a practical way, we can get attached to self, we can hold on to the self, and it becomes a trap that takes us out of staying in the changing flow of the present moment, in the fluidity of the present, staying fluid and moving with it, and knowing how to be safe, knowing how to find peace in the current of the river.
I’ve gone rafting, and one of the ways to get trapped, to get caught a little bit sometimes rafting, is to get pulled into the eddies, usually on the side of the river. An eddy is a place where the current of water flowing somehow gets pushed off, maybe the bottom or usually the sides of the river, in such a way that part of the current flows backward and upriver to be then pushed down again. It can go in a circle, a little bit like a whirlpool, but the water is not being pulled down, so it just kind of moves around in a circle. The raft can get stuck there. Some eddies can be quite strong, and some are somewhat large. You can get stuck in there. Every time you try to come out of the eddy, you come into where the current is most strongly going to push you down back into it, and around and around.
The preoccupation with self is an eddy. It has a gravitational force that pulls us into it. So if I have this idea that I’m a bad meditator or a good meditator, that’s an abstract idea, but it’s an abstract idea about me: I am something. And anything about me is interesting; anything about me that’s praise or blame is even more interesting. So there’s a pull into that world. There are emotions and feelings that are produced by it. There are concerns and anxiety produced by those thoughts. There are ways we get pulled into that eddy, and even if we try to come out of it, the force just pulls us back in, and we circle and circle. And the river is just a few feet away; it keeps flowing, the water is flowing and flowing, but now we’re stuck in this eddy going around and around.
When we try to get out of it, towards the edge of it, it can feel harder and harder to pull out because there the force of the eddy is strongest. But if we can get free of the eddy, then there’s the freedom, the delight of now being in the flow of the current of the river, being carried by it nicely. And then not a lot of rowing is needed or paddling is needed because now we’re in the flow. We just have to stay in it. And we might, from the point of view of being in the current, come close to an eddy, but we can see it and we keep ourselves away from it. We know the danger there.
So, selfing is one of those concepts where we get caught in permanence, get caught in “this is how things are.” And when we’re really caught in it, then we’re actually disconnected from the simplicity of life, the current, the flow and unfolding of life. And it can be quite intense, the eddies we go into.2 The ideas of self, the self-concepts we are caught in, are not just simple ideas like “I’m a good meditator” or “I’m a bad meditator,” but it gets pulled into the world of fantasized imagination, story-making. I start imagining that I’m going to go off to some beautiful natural place, and that’s what it’s going to take for me to be a good meditator, where there’s peace and serenity. And I imagine the birds singing and how there’ll be people coming and delivering wonderful drinks to me, smoothies, and it’ll just be so comfortable at temperature. And I’m lost in a fantasy, this fantasy that’s centered on me, myself, and mine, that’s more and more disconnected.
What’s sad is when those fantasies are negative in nature. “I’m a bad meditator, and therefore everyone will hate me. I can’t go to meditation centers because if I go to a meditation center and meditate, other people are going to see I’m a bad meditator and they’ll want to reject me or they’ll laugh at me.” And we start imagining all these things actually happening, and the imagination affects our emotions almost as strongly as if it’s really happening. And we’re caught in that eddy, and it’s hard to get out of it.
But if we know, if we have some deep understanding, deep insight, deep ability to connect to the flow of the present moment, the changing nature that everything is inconstant, everything is changing, including our thoughts and emotions, then we don’t get caught in it. We’re not in the eddy, but we’re in the current that flows downriver. We just stay in there, being carried along. Then we’re less likely to be tricked, fooled by these concepts of self. We’ll be able to better see the concepts of self are very much like grabbing on to something and holding on. Sometimes it’s not like an eddy, but you can get caught in its flow. Sometimes what keeps us caught is that we’re still tied to the pier, or the anchor hasn’t been pulled up. And the self is that strong, that solid.
It isn’t that we have to deny that there is a self. At this point in practice, there’s never any denial. But we see more and more how concepts and ideas of self are pulling us away from being fluid, being in the flow, being somehow adaptable, or somehow appreciating the lived life of the present moment as it unfolds and changes and shifts. At first, this present-moment simplicity of being can seem boring, too simple. It’s much less sophisticated than the elaborate thoughts, fantasies, and ideas about self and what I’m doing for myself and what I’ll accomplish and how great I’ll be. But over time, we begin realizing that the eddy of self is itself very impoverished, very limiting, and that the three-dimensional, the multi-dimensional richness of human life has so much there in the simplicity of being. Because it’s in the simplicity of being that we can connect to the deep sensitivities, the deep activities of the heart, of our inner life, to ourselves, to others. That’s where something comes alive that is freeing, that is satisfying, that’s wise and caring.
So part of the emphasis on the insight into inconstancy and change is to help us, support us from being caught in the eddies of self. As you go through your day today, you might look at this. You might consider, you might try to notice when you get involved in the swirl of thoughts, ideas, and stories that are centered on me, myself, and mine, where somehow you’re the prime character in your thoughts and ideas, or your emotions are the primary fuel for thinking about other people even. And how it takes you out of something, it disconnects you from something that, if you were connected to it, would actually give you a much better ability to be wise, to be present, and to be caring for the whole world.
So, may your simplicity of being be a gift you give to this world. Thank you.
Inconstancy (Anicca): A fundamental concept in Buddhism, referring to the doctrine that all conditioned existence, without exception, is transient, impermanent, and in a constant state of flux. ↩
Original transcript said ‘the entities we go into’, which was corrected to ‘the eddies we go into’ to align with the ongoing river and eddy metaphor used throughout the talk. ↩