Meditation
I’m Michael Taft, we’re going to sit for an hour, as still as we can. Let’s meditate. I’m going to do a guided meditation. You don’t have to listen to it, or, actually, you do kinda have to listen to it, but you don’t have to follow it. You can do whatever meditation you want, as long as it’s silent and still. But, if you want to follow along, you might find that helpful or interesting.
We’ll start by just checking in with what it’s like to be myself right now. What is it like to be me right now? That’s the question I want you to ask yourself. Just check in with your thoughts and feelings, your body, and a general weather report on you. Hint: no matter what it’s like in there, it’s just right. It’s just the way it needs to be right now. So, just let it be that.
Normally I don’t ring this at the beginning, but today, I’m going to do a very brief chant.
Next, just check in with your intention. Why are you here, why are you meditating? If you have a lineage, or you have a figure of devotion, or anything like that, feel free to bring that in now.
Very good. Now, we’re going to simply do some relaxation. What I’d like you to do is, allow your mind to be really wide open, just notice the breath coming and going, in a very relaxed, very pleasant manner. If you want to, for this section, you can breathe a little more fully, with a deep, open belly breath. You could even allow the exhale to be longer than the inhale, so you start to tune into some really pleasant body sensations of relaxation. We aren’t doing any tight or narrow focusing, it’s very wide open. Just feeling the body in a normal way, not in a tight, laser beam-focused way. Let it feel good. Breathe nice and deep. The body loves to breathe, so notice how good it feels to have breath coming and going.
Now, continuing to breathe out tension, and breathe in relaxation in a very gentle manner, I’ll guide you through some letting go of tension in the body. Begin with allowing the forehead, face, cheeks, and mouth to relax, allowing the tension to just drain away. Allow your upper and lower teeth to part enough that they are not touching, so your jaw is a little bit unclenched. And as your face and head relax, you may notice a little bit of warmth in your face or a slight amount of tingling around the lips, as more blood flows to the region. Let your throat open, and your neck relax, and your shoulders come to an easy tension-free, open place. We’re not fighting tension here, just whatever can relax, whatever can open, whatever can be easeful, just let that be that way. The breath here can really help. The breath breathing out any tension, and breathing in a sense of ease and pleasantness and openness, safety, comfort, and so on.
Good. Next, allow your arms and hands to become as limp as wet noodles. Utterly relaxing, utterly relinquishing even the readiness for movement, so that they are so limp that you would have to tense them up to move. Just feel the pleasant warmth and tingling that arises in your hands when you do that. As you relax the tension, there is a little more blood flow.
Good. Now, just allow all tension to flow out of the torso, the whole trunk of the body, front and back, the chest and the belly, the kidney area, and on the sides. Even in the core, just let any tension just drain away, breathing it out, breathing it out. Allow it to become nice and relaxed, retaining just enough tension to sit upright. Notice how this level of relaxation, the openness in the belly feels like relief. Approaching the true depth of possibility of relaxation. Just notice how easy it is to simply and effortlessly drop into a much deeper place, a much more open and easy place. Settle into a more fundamental peace, a more foundational openness, very natural, very awake. Tremendously easy.
Now, let your hip joints relax, your legs, angles, and feet as limp as wet rags, utterly at ease. Allowing all tension to just drain away. Finding a place of deep abiding stillness. Just breathe here.
Good. Now we will just add to this a little Western technique to allow us to go a little deeper into relaxation. I want you to notice just how relaxed your eyelids can get–as relaxed as wet blankets, utterly at ease. I want you to notice, if your eyes are closed, that to open them again, you’d have to tense them up. But, if you allow them to just relax, it is actually impossible to open them. It’s a deeply pleasant thing to notice. Again, of course, if you needed to open them, you could, but you would have to tense them up. And we don’t have to tense them up, so they remain completely at rest.
Good. Now, let’s notice something similar with your arms and hands. Again, allow your arms and hands to be relaxed, so utterly limp that, to move them, you would have to tense them up. So, without tensing them, you can’t move them. If you’re keeping them tense, then you can move them. If you relax them all the way, they are just laying there like wet noodles. All the way at rest, and that feels really pleasant, to have that loose stillness.
Very good. Now, let’s do the same thing with your whole body. Of course, you can breathe, that’s a kind of movement. But, allow the rest of your body to become so relaxed, that in order to move at all, you’d have to tense up. And there’s no need to tense up. So just naturally, without any effort, notice that your body has become completely still, just by being relaxed. Very natural, very open.
Now, one last thing. See if you can allow something similar to happen with your mind. Let it relax so much, that it just kind of falls open. For it to grab onto anything or close up, it would have to tense up. Just allow it to be very naturally and effortlessly wide. If you notice an urge to tense up, just let that relax, easy and open. Arms so relaxed that they can’t move. Just settle into that. Simply breathing.
Very, very, good. Now, in this place, let the breath rise and fall in the sky of the mind. The mind is wide open, and the breath is like the wind, rising and falling in the sky. No need to focus on it or make it a big deal, it is simply obviously present in awareness. What could be more obvious? Just let that easy, open breath wind rise and fall, like it’s been doing every minute of your entire life.
Now, in this place of tremendous openness, awakeness, and clarity, I just want you to imagine being a sun, like the sun in the sky, or a bright, warm star. You can either see it as a picture, or just feel it. It doesn’t have to be any particular sense gate, but just imagine being a radiant star. The star radiates warmth, energy, spontaneity, and the color of the star is whatever is most incredibly beautiful to you. This is a very special star—it also radiates wisdom and clarity, love, joy, and kindness. So, just feel the radiant warmth of the star, resting in your heart, clarifying the mind, and bringing deep abiding wisdom softening the heart, bringing joy and kindness and love, radiating in all directions. Enlivening the belly, and bringing vitality, spontaneity and playfulness. See that as bright, clear, and as powerfully as you can now.
There is no part of your being that is untouched by the radiant warmth of the star. As it settles even more deeply into your heart, you feel your whole being, all body, mind, emotion, thought, turning into the star completely. And then the star begins to shrink, and gets brighter and stronger as it shrinks, and smaller, until it is just a point of light in your heart, but incredibly strongly bright, very, very, bright. Then it simply vanishes and is gone, taking everything with it. But, notice, that vast, spacious, awareness is still present. Simply rest in that vast, spacious, awareness that is present, without changing anything.
Now, in this place of vast, open, awareness, ask yourself this question: What is peace? Don’t answer the question with the machinery of your thinking, or with a memory or some kind of cleverness. Look into the sky of your own awareness, and see if there is peace. What is peace?
Very good. So, remember, we do this like a “Where’s Waldo.” When we ask the questions, you’re not trying to figure it out, you just look. The answer is found by looking. So, again, into the vast sky of limitless, open awareness, ask yourself now, What is awake? Words may enter the mind, or images, but just look—what is awake, right now? Look directly. You may think, “Oh, it’s me, or it’s my mind,” but those are just words. Look directly, can you find what’s awake? Is it the thing that right now is convinced of its own discomfort and suffering, or is the awakeness the thing that notices that?
Good. Now, into the tremendously boundless openness of awakeness, introduce the question: What is absolutely perfect and complete? What is absolutely perfect and complete? And, then, look, look. The answer is not a memory, not a fantasy, not a thought. It’s something noticed. What is absolutely perfect and complete right now?
Next question that arises naturally in the primordial perfection of the mind: What is fucked up and broken beyond repair? It’s not some ready answer in your mind, like “my stepmom.” Look into experience right now: What is fucked up and broken beyond repair? Is it just some concept, or is there something there?
Good. Now, remaining as boundless, timeless, openness, ask yourself now, What is acceptance? What is true acceptance? Look, allow this boundless, timeless awareness to look. What is boundless, timeless acceptance, right now? What is acceptance, right now?
Good. Now, into the vast, boundless sky of awareness, notice, again, the sun arising, the star of brilliance arising. Bright, clear and warm, tremendously beautiful and radiant with joy and kindness. Settling in the heart, then beaming out love, kindness, and joy, in all directions. Touching all beings everywhere, all people everywhere, all animals everywhere, all other kinds of being, in all of every otherwhere. Bringing peace and joy and healing, and safety and comfort. Radiating out to all beings everywhere, a sense of gratitude, joy, a sense of peace.
Good. Let’s let go of that now. Feel free to move and stretch. For everyone who is sitting, move forward to fill up the rows nearby.
Dharma Talk
So, notice that there is a real desire, maybe more of a habit or a need, when you ask a question, the gears in the mind start turning. The squirrel on the wheel starts spinning, and the whole thing starts trying to find an answer. Trying to either figure something out by grinding through possibilities, or going through the card catalog of memory, trying to find a memory that will answer it.
My mom was a librarian, so one of the first things I learned in life was how to sort a card catalog. All those cards—that’s a real image for me—to find the right image to answer the question. But, that’s not what we’re doing here at all. It’s a habit, and your mind will try to do it, but you cannot answer these questions that way. I don’t mean that’s the wrong way, you just can’t. It won’t work. You can come up with those sorts of answers, but it won’t do what the question is trying to do. So, if you can possibly remember that, you have to come up with an answer, you are required, when I ask the question, you must find an answer. At the same time, if you try to do it that way, it’s an immediate fail. But that doesn’t mean that it’s some big paradox or conundrum, just do what I’m saying: Look. The answer is seen or felt, or directly experienced, it’s not an idea. So, you are required to find an answer, but you don’t do it with the machinery of the mind, you do it with direct experience.
The trouble is that we are not trained to do that, even though it’s the easiest thing in the world. It’s almost like it’s too easy. We’re trained to do the hard thing—to try to figure it out. Unfortunately, there are a lot of questions in life that you can’t figure out—there’s no figuring out an answer. So, even though this might seem like a kind of game or clever trick, that’s not what it’s for, not to be tricky or clever. Not at all. It’s a really different intention, to show you how to work with stuff that can’t be figured out by thinking.
Turns out there are a lot of things that you can’t figure out cognitively or rationally. They are not fungible if that’s the right word. You can’t get any traction with cognitive rationality with certain types of questions. But, you can get tremendous traction by looking directly, or, we might say, intuitively, almost in a dream, or just in direct awareness. It is very different than conception. We are trained that everything can have cognitive rationality successfully applied to it, but actually, very few really important things can be figured out that way. Some, but relatively few, really important things. But, they can be recognized directly.
So, that is what this is showing you how to do. The first part is relaxing, relaxing the mind, opening, and getting into a boundaryless place, is good meditation practice, which is of benefit. It’s also to encourage you to drop out of the machinery of cognition, the mechanism of thinking. It’s almost like we’re so stuck behind the wheel of the machinery of the mind, that you think you’re chained to it. Or, even worse, you imagine you are it. I am my thoughts. That’s a tragic viewpoint. There isn’t anything wrong with thoughts, but to imagine that that’s what you are is like being chained to the wheel of a factory, like a Charlie Chaplin. It turns out that you can leave it at any time—just walk out of the factory, under the open sky. It’s always there, and you are completely free. This is the fascinating thing.
If you read any book by Kafka, particularly in the original, but also in some of the translations, he always makes it clear that, even though these people think they are trapped in some kind of Kafkaesque, labyrinthine, nightmare that they can’t escape, he always makes the point that they have trapped themselves. They can always just walk out at any time. And yet, there is a belief in the trap. We put ourselves in that same place in our mind with the belief that we are stuck in the cognitive. But, we leave it every night when we go to sleep, so that’s not very stuck. It’s pretty easy to just stroll outside under the open sky and something very different is available.
It’s great that the machinery of the mind is there—it is very useful for all kinds of stuff, we like it. But to think that’s who you are, or where you’re stuck, or that that’s your only tool, is tragic. Go nonlinear and see what happens—another useful, interesting, fun possibility. Not the only one. It would be just as bad to be stuck there; but I don’t find many people stuck there.
So, when I present these questions that can’t be answered rationally, that’s useful to do, to point to something interesting. But, notice that anything deeply meaningful about your entire life is that same kind of question. Where did I come from? Who am I? What’s love? What matters? If you think you have an easy rational answer to those, guess again. You’re not skeptical enough of your own answers. Almost everything that really matters is that kind of question. If all you’ve got is your rational thinking to deal with it, you’re forever lost. You’ll just spin in confusion, and are utterly lost. Just as lost as someone who tries to do their accounting in a dream. It’s just the wrong kind of mind for that.
Q&A
If there are any reports, or stuff you are curious about, raise your hand, and I’ll parade my ignorance about it in front of the whole world.
Questioner 1: I notice a global effervescence in the mind, especially in the arms and hands, and feet.
Michael: That’s called piti. That’s the felt energy of the body. You can meditate on that and it will take you into some pretty deep states. But, it is also just always there. The more we relax and open, we’ll start to notice more and more of that. In a funny way of talking, that’s what the body thinks it is. What the mind thinks the body is, is a bunch of cellular mechanisms, metaphorical pulleys and pumps; stuff like that. But the body’s feeling is like effervescent bubbling energy, so you’re just tuning into the body’s own experience of itself. That’s a beautiful and powerful thing to get in touch with. It is a bunch of effervescence, notice how it has a flavor of aliveness, vivacity, spontaneity, playfulness. That’s one of the things we tune into, and start feeling it more and more—the body’s own sense of its aliveness, which, to the body, feels really good. That’s just there, it’s not a special thing we’re creating, but it is something we learn to stop ignoring.
Other comments, reports, angry critiques? What’s coming up for you?
Questioner 2: Hi. I feel a bit disoriented, like I had a lot of new experiences.
Michael: Can you feel your feet right now on the floor?
Questioner 2: Yeah, I can.
Michael: Can you feel your butt in the chair?
Questioner 2: Yeah.
Michael: Look around the room really slowly, very slowly. Look up and down, just feeling your butt and your hands very clearly. So, now, that is being oriented, so it’s just regular being back in the world. What kind of new experiences did you notice?
Questioner 2: My heart is pounding now, I feel my legs and butt on the floor.
Michael: You can use that technique—feel your feet on the floor, feel your hands on your legs, look around real slow. It’s a powerful way to get re-oriented. So, if you ever feel lost like that, or disoriented, just do that. Anything else you want to say about the experiences?
Questioner 2: Not sure, I have a lot of tingling in my fingers right now.
Michael: Yeah, that’s what the first question was about, right? Very apparent once you tune into it. It’s always there. The body is always maintaining a homeostasis, and when it is on that homeostasis, it just has this sense of effervescence or vibration, but it’s a good feeling, sort of saying, Yeah, we’re on the spot. It’s nice. It’s always available.
Other comments or questions?
Questioner 3: I’m interested in doing more visualization practice.
Michael: Why? For What?
Questioner 3: Just for samadhi practice.
Michael: That’s good for concentration.
Questioner 3: I see a fair amount of lights and colors when I close my eyes. Is that useful as a visualization object? It almost feels like it’s coming from a different place than a mental image that is constructed to be used in a visualization practice.
Michael: It depends. Sometimes it can just be artifacts in your visual field, or in your optic nerve, so that would not be useful. If you close your eyes right now, you might see left-over patterns from your eyes being open. That doesn’t really help. But if it is a nimitta type image, where, as you go into samadhi, a light starts arising that is luminous and related to samadhi, that is worth concentrating on, because it is almost a feedback loop into samadhi. That’s a common meditation object.
Questioner 3: There are some indicators that it is a nimitta, but there are times when it seems that there is over-efforting, but it feels like I’m staring at it, but it is a different quality than collecting around it.
Michael: Don’t stare at it. You can’t, you’re not using your eyes. Don’t get tight and directional, just let it rise like a moon in the sky of the mind. Just close your eyes and do that for a minute. You just do it as a visualization, it’s just there; it’s not that you’re staring at it or looking at it. It’s almost like there is a sky in the back of your mind and the moon is rising back there. Can you notice that quality? That’s how to meditate with a samadhi-induced light, not with a sense of staring.
In traditional Asian work, you do a lot of this kind of visualization work, because it is good for developing samadhi. For some reason, people in the West tend not to like it as much. But, any concentration object is fine, if it works. If the breath works, great; if something else works, great. Hopefully, one’s samadhi is applicable to anything, not just one object. You want to be able to collect around anything you want, to develop samadhi; you want to generalize it. But, if you are good at internal visual stuff like that, it has an interesting feedback loop, where, if you lose your concentration, it’s instantly obvious. So, it’s nice to get into it.
The instantly obvious feedback is when you have an internally generated image; the spontaneously arising nimitta does a different thing. It’s also the case that if you lose your focus, it will also start to fall apart and disappear. Interesting stuff. Try not to force it; if you try to force it, it’s almost worse than not doing anything. Just very gently, but consistently be with it, and it is delightful, beautiful, this object that is continuously changing in your mind. So, when you get captivated by that, and completely enraptured, it is weird magic. Now, the samadhi gets really good; you start to collect around it.
Questioner 3: Does the same apply if it is a mental image?
Michael: It’s a little different, but, yes.
Questioner 3: Thank you.
Michael: Thanks for your question.
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