This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Spacious & Boundless; Insight & the 5 Elements (5/5) Inner & Outer Space. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Dawn Neal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit website www.audiodharma.org to find the authoritative record of this talk.
So everyone, welcome. As we start to settle in to our morning, afternoon, evening meditation together. The invitation is to consider in your heart, or if it feels right to share aloud or in writing, what if anything you noticed about motion, conveyance, air movement in your practice. The winds of change in your practice.
And as you consider that, beginning to settle into whatever posture expresses and supports your meditation practice best this morning. Taking a moment perhaps to look around your room or your space. And especially noticing the spaces between or around objects, between you and the screen, or between you and whatever is in front of you. Noticing what artists call negative space, the space around, the space between.
And then perhaps taking a couple of longer, more intentional breaths, allowing your attention to go inside. And notice how you perceive the space around you with your eyes closed. Noticing sound and silence. Perhaps an intuitive sense of the largeness or smallness of whatever kind of environment you’re in in this moment.
Then allowing the breathing to be natural, however it is today. Noticing breath moving into your body through the space of your nostrils or mouth. That sense of expansion or rising as this breath enters in the lungs. The diaphragm moves, the abdomen moves.
Perhaps allowing the shoulders to roll, move up and down a couple of times to allow more relaxation in your core. Inviting the eyes to soften in their sockets, the tongue to relax in your mouth. Perhaps noticing if there’s a way of holding your head that allows just a little bit more space between the vertebrae in the back of the neck. A little bit more relaxation.
Allowing the heart, the mind, the attention to attune to this moment. The warmth and cool on your skin, the weight of this body held to the Earth. The sense of moisture or dryness in your mouth or nose.
Attuning to any sense of spaciousness within. Perhaps that little pause between breaths, or a feeling of softening and releasing into this moment.
Allowing any mental or emotional activity just to be there in the periphery. And noticing the sense of healthy distance, space from any thoughts, emotions. Space between any mental activity and resting, allowing present moment experience to flow through unimpeded.
Inviting more ease, relaxation into this moment. Allowing the body to soften into the surroundings.
And if it feels right, sensing into, perhaps imagining, the vast sky above you, wherever you are, far above or just above. A sense of wide open space. Letting the heart relax into that wide open space. The mind, the body to open to it.
And allowing wishes of goodwill, friendliness, mettā1 to flow out, born on into this open space, flowing out boundlessly. Wishing that others be safe, happy, healthy. That they be peaceful, at ease, and free. In whatever words or wordless reverberations, like sunlight through unimpeded space, go outwards in all directions towards whomever or whatever occupies that open space within and around your heart.
And as this meditation draws to a close, considering how our practice here together, your practice, might be of benefit in your own mind and heart and life. And how that benefit might radiate out to benefit all of the lives we touch and all of the lives they touch, outwards and outwards.
May all beings be safe, 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 your practice.
So friends, we have reached the fifth of five days exploring the five elements, which is a contemplation and meditation practice in the ancient teachings of the Buddha, a practice that can support insight, reveal insight.
So this week we’ve covered earth, water, fire, air or wind, and today we’re covering space. The space element… the translation “element” for the word dhātu really kind of completely breaks down here. A better translation could be “quality” or even “potential” or “potentiality” in our direct experience.
Space around and in our bodies can be quite evident. The space around or between objects, the space up in the sky, especially the night sky, and the space within our bodies: our ears, mouth, nostrils, other orifices, the space within the diaphragm or lungs. But often in the ancient tradition, especially in the commentaries, space is considered to be more of a mental quality or shifts in perception.
So what do I mean by this? Well, here’s a couple of the ways the quality of space might show up in the experience of meditation. Externally, many people find it easy to tune into the space of vastness or closeness even with their eyes closed through noticing the quality of sound. Sound and silence or reverberation can make it very clear whether we’re in a smaller space, kind of cozy, or in a vast cathedral or out in the open outside. Even with the eyes closed, there can be a sense of the amount of light and where the light is coming from that might give the sense of a sky.
And then sometimes when we’re fortunate, there’s an inward sense of spaciousness in the heart, in our perceptions, and even in our bodies. Remember, some people after a retreat feel like they’ve lost weight within their bodies, like it lost a density or contraction, and there’s more of a sense of spaciousness, almost like it’s between your cells. Or at other times there might be a sense of density, contraction.
And while these are all perceptual qualities, it echoes physics, right? We are on a quantum level mostly space. Our atoms are 99.999% empty. Without space, we’d be really tiny and very, very heavy.
I find it fascinating that in a simile back in the Buddha’s time, the Bronze Age, ancient India, the Buddha conveys a similar notion. He uses the simile of the form of this body being like a lump of foam. Like a lump of foam, there’s an emptiness there. And more practically, another simile used, and I’m quoting here: “Friends, just as when a space is enclosed by timber and creepers, grass and clay, it comes to be termed just ‘house.’ So too, when a space is enclosed by bones and sinews, flesh and skin, it comes to be termed just ‘body.’”
So that simile reveals an ancientness of the construction of homes in ancient India, the simplicity of it. It also, both of these similes, allude to the insight of anattā2, not-self, the emptiness that can be directly perceived through insight that is within.
Linking internal and external perceptions of space can be awe-inspiring and very practical and helpful in settling the mind. Simply looking out at the night sky, the space around the stars, the space between the stars, the space around the moon. If you’re out in the country, especially where you can see clearly, there’s this vastness. Wow. A sense of healthy humility and smallness in the larger vastness of things.
And then on a practical level, the space around and the space between things, whether they be the palm trees I’m looking at outside my window right now or buildings or plants, that begins to attune and settle the mind and nervous system if we do it for at least a while. This works inside a room by simply looking at the empty spaces where the corners are or the space between furniture. And a solid minute or two or three of that actually settles the nervous system. It settles reactivity. And if you do it right before meditation, it can help our minds attend to the space between thoughts, the space within.
You can try it right now. Closing your eyes and feeling into the space that weaves through, interpenetrates your body.
For some on retreat, in certain states, the perception of this internal space becomes vast, even infinite. This is a base of perception which is related to the jhānas3 that Gil talked about earlier this year. The immaterial jhānas, they’re sometimes called. And that can be a powerful experience, not necessary for awakening or insight, and powerful nonetheless.
The Buddha advised his son Rāhula to make his meditation like each of the elements, including like space. He says, “Son, if you make your meditation like space, agreeable and disagreeable contacts”—contacts meaning any sensory data, any sensory contact—”will not invade your mind and heart and remain.” Because nothing sticks to space, right?
The Buddha also, in a more daily life context which is still quite relevant today, teaches practitioners to imagine space if they’re hearing harsh, divisive, unpleasant, or even hostile speech. The technique he offers is to imagine those words landing in space, that they need to have no impact.
And as part of the same teaching, the Buddha then asks practitioners to imagine space, boundless, vast space, as a way of cultivating boundless mettā, goodwill, friendliness. This is even echoed in the very common chant about mettā and the other immeasurables, the Brahmavihāras4, where the chant is something like: “outwards and unbounded, freed from hatred and hostility, with goodwill, with friendliness, with kindness, outwards and unbounded.” There’s an unbinding that happens in internal reactivity when the heart begins to open to mettā, when the heart begins to open to spaciousness. Even without any conscious kindness being cultivated, kindness tends to be a more natural response when we’re spacious. You’ve probably noticed.
So space as element, space as quality, space as inspiration, space as a perceptual way of relating to your body, your meditation, your heart and mind. It’s the fifth of the five qualities, five elements we’ve explored this week.
And to recap, we’ve explored the potentialities, the qualities, from kind of an inspiration point of view as well as a more direct experience in meditation of:
Internal and external, all of these qualities teach us our inseparability from nature, our fundamental belonging with everything. Attuning to these can support insight into inconstancy, anicca5. They can ground the meditation in broader and deeper connection with felt experience and cultivate more malleability of mind, fluidity of perceptions. These contemplations can support letting go of a flare of reactivity and support a healthy warmth or coolness of the heart depending on the situation. It can open us to mindfulness of motion and more ways of skillfully navigating, more balanced, to navigate the dukkha6 of life’s storms and the eight worldly winds.
And finally, these practices can reveal inner spaciousness. They can support an absence of fixated self-concern. And that’s an absence into which an abundance of presence can flow.
I’ll close with another poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.7 It’s entitled, “It’s Like This.”
It’s like this. The sun itself is constantly moving through space, wherever and whatever that is. Yet it never leaves us. Add this to the list of marvels. Like how a glass of water was once a cloud, like how love can grow in us despite despair, despite fear. Given such gifts, one must wonder how it is our arms aren’t constantly raised in spontaneous praise for life. I know and you know why sometimes our hands stay down. But now, standing still together, even as we’re spinning and racing through space, even if it’s only a whisper, when faced with the truth that great forces hold our lives in place, it feels right to say, “Thank you. Thank you.” Eyes lifting, heart trembling, the improbable earth so solid beneath our feet.
So, thank you for your kind attention and thank you for your practice.
I have two short announcements. One is that if you would like to deepen your practice and spend more time with myself or with other wonderful teachers—Gil, Paul, others—there are opportunities to be part of the Buddhist chaplaincy training, either in person with him or online with me. Applications are now open. And there’s also the opportunity to sit potentially a retreat with me upcoming in August. So, both of those will be in the chat. Thank you. It’s been wonderful to be with you this week.
Mettā: A Pali word meaning goodwill, friendliness, or loving-kindness. It is one of the four Brahmavihāras (divine abodes). ↩
Anattā: A fundamental Buddhist doctrine of “not-self,” the understanding that there is no permanent, unchanging, independent self or soul. ↩
Jhāna: A state of deep meditative absorption. The original transcript said “jas,” which has been corrected to “jhānas” based on the context of discussing immaterial states of perception in meditation. ↩
Brahmavihāras: The four “divine abodes” or “immeasurables,” which are four sublime states of mind cultivated in Buddhist practice: mettā (loving-kindness), karuṇā (compassion), muditā (sympathetic joy), and upekkhā (equanimity). The transcript said “Brahma Biharas.” ↩
Anicca: A Pali word for “inconstancy” or “impermanence,” one of the three marks of existence in Buddhism. The original transcript said “ana.” ↩
Dukkha: A Pali word often translated as “suffering,” “stress,” or “unsatisfactoriness.” The original transcript said “dooka.” ↩
The speaker says “Rosemary Watah Traor,” but the poet is likely Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer. ↩