This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Step by step, drop by drop; Crossing the flood (5/5) A gradual training. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Ying Chen, 陈颖 at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Hello. Hello everyone. Good morning and good day. Joining here from Los Altos, California. And I’m joined by a Dharma colleague and Dharma friend here in my own space here. So I’m very delighted to be here.
This week we’ve been unfolding this simile of crossing the flood. Now here we are on the last day of this week, and I was savoring the flavor of this teaching. There is the sense of one step at a time. One step at a time.
In this meditation, the week started with stepping into the flow, stepping into the flow of our lives. Staying in the flow, in the current, whether or not there are waves and forces and floods. And then we learn to stabilize ourselves by not hurrying and not freezing. Yesterday, we incorporated attuning to the effects of our practice, our efforts. Sometimes we’re going to overdo it, sometimes we might underdo it, and then we learn from observing, feeling, sensing the effect of it and having a deep trust. There is an inner wisdom, inner compassion, inner responsiveness that is capable of an onwardly leading momentum. So it can see, can hear, can sense the wholesome, can find the way.
Today we will be practicing in that kind of a territory. Please join me, maybe by starting with just taking a few long, deep breaths to arrive. Arrive at this moment, here and now. I’m going to ring the bell to just to allow you to also arrive with the sound of the bell.
Let the sound go. Settling here, settling now.
We are arriving because we know the value of being present for our lives. We know the value of getting centered, collected around the sati.1 Sometimes I hear this phrase from teachers, “mindfulness front and center.” Let yourself feel the centeredness of being present. And then mindfulness all around, a kind of a pervasiveness or expansiveness. Let the mindful presence get big, so all kinds of experiences that are happening here and now can be received. Sounds, silence, sensations in the body, breath.
We are unhurried, not in a hurry. Because the moment is here, there is no need to hurry. The next moment will come to you. We are staying, learning to stay here, now.
Let the momentary mindfulness flow into a flow of mindful presence. Studying and stabilizing in mindful awareness. Yes. Quietly feeling and sensing, coming inside of your experience. Like dropping below the surface level of the water. There is a whole world below the surface. Yes.
We are not in a hurry. We are participating with energy, vitality, and we can feel the aliveness of the process. It may touch your heart, tender, maybe refreshing. There is a heightened attunement to your experience, so you can feel the ease or the strength. You just know this intuitively.
And right here, maybe there is some degree of a choice to relax and soften the strain, the striving. The wholesome qualities may bubble up. Energetic joy or sweet happiness. Peaceful, or not so peaceful. Seeing and knowing clearly feels like this.
When we’re not being identified by our experiences, you may feel a kind of still, flowing movement within. Ajahn2 likes to point to “still flowing.” There is a stillness and there is a movement.
This is step-by-step training, practicing. May whatever degrees of goodness, benefits, support our own hearts and minds and bodies. And may it support all beings.
Thank you, friends, for practicing together.
As I was reflecting about this sutta3 that I’ve been sharing, “Crossing the Flood,” as a whole, in the totality of it, the flavor of this whole sutta evokes a kind of flavor. It’s this steady, step-by-step crossing the flood. Sometimes the Buddha would describe the practice journey or practice path as a gradual training. So it’s gradual and can’t be hurried, unhurrying and untarrying. So it’s a step-by-step, alive process, and it invites us to meet the moment and respond to the moment as best as we can with wisdom and compassion. And that’s no small thing. That’s no small thing.
Also embedded in this simile, there’s a whole sense of crossing the flood. There is a sense of direction. Can you feel that? There is a sense of direction. In other suttas, sometimes the Buddha would speak about the near shore and the far shore. And the far shore is said to be a sanctuary. We have to cross the flood to get to the far shore that is peaceful and sublime. This crossing the flood has a directional orientation, and it’s with this directional orientation that we are not disoriented by the forces of greed, hatred, delusion, by the flood, by the current.
This is quite significant because I know for me as a lay practitioner, there are lots of internal and external activities, forces in the world and internally that can be quite disorienting. It’s just very confusing for us at times, you know, what to do, how to meet it. We can get disoriented and distracted by various events around us, and sometimes they may even dominate. The disorientation may even take us off a directional sense for a while.
I was reflecting that sometimes, for example, in meeting our relational world, sometimes your family members or friend circles, some people may be struggling. We have an intention to support and offer our help, starting off with this kind, compassionate attitude to meet the situation. In that process, sometimes what it can move into if we’re not oriented, it can move into, “Oh, I really need to fix this. I really need to fix the person.” If the person didn’t respond the way that we expected or they turned away from what we wanted to offer, we can slip into a fixing mind. And sometimes we can slip into being defeated if the person wasn’t responding the way we wanted.
So there’s a sense of, at times in our daily life and maybe sometimes even in our meditative practices, we can get disoriented, can get confused. It’s not until we recognize, “Oh, I’m slipping into trying to fix this person,” that we can see, “Oh, this mind and heart needs an orientation, needs an alignment in our heart and mind so that we’re protected to move into this kind of disorientation.”
And then I know even in our meditative space… I think Gil mentioned this, so I feel like I’m probably okay to say this. At times, when we dip into some deep, peaceful, pleasant, inspiring experiences, we can begin to believe, “Wow, you know, those experiences are what it’s about.” I certainly have done that. You know, “I have to wait for the next retreat to get to that experience.” I think probably all practitioners will encounter this phenomenon. And not until we begin to question that motive or that orientation, we can begin to see, “Oh, the mind is leaning in a direction that’s not aligned with what the Buddha is pointing to, not aligned with the dharma orientation that’s non-clinging, non-grasping.”
This is very important for us to reflect on as practitioners, maybe on an ongoing basis. What are my deepest aspirations? How do I live out these aspirations on a daily basis, in the moments of my daily life?
I’m aware that in the monastic training, there is a certain kind of reflection that happens on a daily basis. The monastics, waking up in the morning for pujas and maybe evening, taking refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha.4 And so the heart and mind is aligned in that way, finding protection in that way. We’re reminded throughout the day, this is the orientation in the teachings of the Noble Eightfold Path.
Sometimes the path is depicted as a wheel, and other times it’s kind of a sequence, and it starts with wise view and wise intention. This wise view, wise perspective, wise orientation of our perspectives guides us. The rest of the path factors unfold from it. I like this word “unfolds.” It’s really unfolding, you know, like a cloth gets unfolded. And so this whole path unfolds in that way. This wise view of this possibility of choosing not grasping, ending craving for ourselves and for others. That’s the possibility. That’s the perspective guiding us.
And then the wise intention allows us to feel into, in this moment, how am I going to live this out with a wholesome intention? A wholesome intention of non-harming, non-grasping. Wholesome intentions of aligning with the Brahmaviharas:5 kindness, compassion. This orientation can begin to guide us in some way. And even if at times it’s not so clear—it’s not always that we know what the appropriate response is for specific situations—it is important for us to keep that reflection in our hearts and minds. And just that reflection may be enough for things to get clarified over time.
So again, even in helping us to clarify our directional sense, the directional orientation is not to be rushed. I was very touched by when Gil shared that in his journey at one time, he had to spend the whole year reflecting about his intentions. So, we’re not in a huge rush here, but it is important for us to get a sense of direction, a sense of orientation in us.
This wise view and wise intention, as it becomes more and more clear, what happens is we can begin to have a sense of wise livelihood. How do we want to live? Wise speech, wise action. It doesn’t mean that somehow magically we will immediately be able to just choose the right, appropriate word, but we know with that orientation, it helps begin to create a wholesome container. So as best as we can, this began to be a training.
And then in deepening this whole process—and it’s depicted as a wheel—through deepening our meditative and daily life practices with wise effort, wise mindfulness, wise samadhi,6 our wise view gets more and more clear, our wise intention gets more and more clear. And so in this way, it’s a gradual training. It’s this wheel that keeps turning, keep turning, and keep turning. And guess where it’s all happening? It’s here and now.
I’d like to end this whole sequence by reading from the book Dancing with Life, which I read a few quotes from this week. So here it is:
Each step on your journey is complete in itself. Thus, finding fulfillment in living your intention is not dependent on your reaching your goal. Rather, each moment you’re awake and not clinging is liberation itself.
May that be a possibility for all of us and for all practitioners and for all beings.
Thank you everyone for your practice and for your engagement. It’s been such a delight. I wanted to just offer to say that for the teaching colleagues including myself, David, Lori, Diana Clark, and Kim Allen, we will kind of unfold this for a Sati Center daylong at IMC. For those who are local and would like to join the flow, where we will weave in more water similes together, we’d love to practice with you. Check on the Sati Center website. And for others, may you continue to flow with the current of your life and find more and more freedom and ease in this. So, thank you everyone and be well.
Sati: A Pali word that translates to “mindfulness” or “awareness.” It is the first factor of the Seven Factors of Enlightenment. ↩
Ajahn: A Thai word meaning “teacher.” It is a term of respect, often used for experienced Buddhist monks. ↩
Sutta: A Pali word for a discourse or sermon, especially one given by the Buddha. ↩
Sangha: A Pali word meaning “community” or “assembly.” In Buddhism, it refers to the community of monks, nuns, and laypeople who follow the teachings of the Buddha. ↩
Brahmaviharas: The four “divine abodes” or “sublime states” in Buddhism: loving-kindness (metta), compassion (karuna), sympathetic joy (mudita), and equanimity (upekkha). ↩
Samadhi: A Pali word often translated as “concentration,” “meditative absorption,” or “unification of mind.” It is a state of deep, non-distracted focus. ↩