May 2023 Video Class #3 (captions)
Meditation Course Class #3
Aaron: Welcome to the third part of our meditation instructions.
Last time we came together, we spoke about how you meditate with physical objects that pull you away from your presence with your primary object—the breath, or whatever it may be. At another session I’ll talk more about primary objects. For now, let’s stay with the breath as primary.
You probably have realized by now that when you are with a pain in the body and present with it, you can watch it arise, watch the aversion to it, watch the unpleasantness of it and then the aversion to unpleasant feeling, and not get caught in the stories of the aversion. The aversion in itself is really another object, it’s a mental object.
So, the pain in the shoulder, that’s a physical object. Watching that. Unpleasant, dislike, and the growing aversion. And the mental formations, “I want to get rid of this.” The physical object is happening in the object. The mental object is happening in the mind.
With a physical object, if you watch it for a while, you’ll see it will dissolve. The rain will stop. The itch will stop. Thunder will stop. The scent of baking bread will go away. The grasping and aversion to these will reduce.
When you are present with a physical object that’s unpleasant, perhaps a pain in your foot. You’ve seen that there was an infection in the foot. You’re treating it with an antibiotic. The wound is bandaged. Feeling sensation, sensation. Burning. Unpleasant.
I want you to distinguish between the physical object, the burning in the foot, and the aversion that comes to it, the wanting to get rid of it. And even there, noting aversion, wanting to get rid of it, you’re still not caught up in a lot of thoughts about it.
What is the experience of grasping or aversion? You can feel it here in the chest or the solar plexus. Tension, grasping, pushing, holding it to you, pushing it away.
But then, based on this foundation, a whole series of thoughts may arise, with the experience of the pain in the foot as a base. “Oh, what’s happening? Maybe it’s not responding to the antibiotic. Maybe they’re going to have to cut off my leg! What’s happening? How do I fix it?” Fear. And thoughts pouring out: anger, fear confusion.
All it is, is some little sore on the foot, but suddenly you have your whole leg amputated. All you have is a small headache, and suddenly you’re thinking that you’re in the hospital having a brain tumor excised in surgery. The rain starts. You were about to go out for your picnic, and suddenly you’re in Noah’s flood, needing an ark. Imagining.
There are only so many places the mind can go. Planning, planning thought. A remembering thought. A fantasy. Sometimes opening to a deeply loving thought, offering deep loving kindness to yourself.
But each of these kinds of thoughts—there are more; not just those—but each specific area of thinking is just an area of thinking that has arisen out of conditions. Hearing the rain on the roof—Noah’s ark! Feeling the little bit of burn on your foot—hospital, amputation! It goes on and on, and you’re suffering, and others are suffering because you are suffering and infecting your feelings, your thoughts, your fears on them. “What will we do? What will we do? The sky is falling!” Not really. It’s just the outflow of conditions.
So, this next phase of practice deals with the arising of emotions and thoughts and being present with those, just as you are present with the physical sensations, with interest, with kindness, with a willingness to explore and be present. It requires deepening the mindfulness.
Now let’s imagine an image here. We are sitting together by a railroad track. We’re on an embankment maybe six or eight feet high, and the track down below. And on the other side of the track there’s a beautiful series of low sand dunes with waving grass, and then the ocean, a beach. There in the distance some boats on the ocean. People playing on the waves, children making sandcastles, a very pleasant scene.
Hearing, hearing. You hear the train coming, that loud noise of a locomotive. You don’t see it yet. But then, from around the bend comes the train. You see it from the corner of you eye, seeing, seeing. It’s a circus train. What joy—a circus train!
You have been meditating, present with this beautiful seascape in front of you. Now your attention is drawn to the circus train.
An engine, maybe a second car, and then, the cars that carry the animals. Here’s one with a hippopotamus—kind of neutral about that; interesting, okay. There’s a big bend just past you, so it comes in, you see it, and it goes out behind a hill. You can’t see it around the bend.
But the next car is coming in. Elephants! They have long trunks, long trunks between the bars of the train, and swinging. Ooo, this is fun! Caught up in a fantasy around the elephants. “Ooo, I want to ride one. Maybe if the circus is coming to town there will be elephant rides.” And there’s all this planning going on, how you’re going to go to the circus and ride the elephants.
He’s gone around the bend, and suddenly in front of you is a giraffe. Very tall, head way up above the top of the car. He reaches out his head toward you, just a few feet from you. Ooo, a little bit of fear and some delight. Stories about the giraffe, and he’s gone.
The next car holds a lion. He’s snarling and growling; he’s angry. You can see his claws sticking out. And suddenly, you see to your horror that it looks like the door is unlatched. It’s not really unlatched, just your fear has created the fantasy it’s unlatched. “What if it is unlatched? He’ll jump out. He’ll kill me. He’ll kill others. What am I going to do?” Fear comes up.
Then the car is gone out of sight and the next car has monkeys in it, swinging and playing. And now you’re entertained and engrossed, forgetting the lion.
One car following another, some pleasant, some unpleasant. Some not truly unpleasant, but your mind creates an unpleasantness about them. “This could hurt. It could hurt others.” Fear. “This delights me. I want to hold onto it.”
Your meditation practice is a bit like this. Objects arise. Some are pleasant, some are unpleasant, some are neutral.
You didn’t pay much attention to the hippopotamus. Much more to the lion and the monkeys. We are able to watch the arisings, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling… present with this particular car, this train car. Pleasant or unpleasant or neutral, and then the arising of thoughts that grow out of that pleasant, unpleasant or neutral.
I want you to develop the ability to see the whole process, so that when the figurative lion comes by and you see yourself becoming defensive and afraid, you can simply note, “Ah, all that’s here is a lion.” Maybe an angry face, someone speaking angry words.
Come back to your breath. Your deepest essence knows how to respond. Fear doesn’t really know how to respond; it reacts. Love, your deepest truth, this knows how to respond.
And seeing the monkeys, seeing something joyful, seeing a flock of beautiful birds fly overhead—ah, it’s so lovely. Joy knows how to respond.
Your practice will give you the ability to be present in each moment with that which is challenging, difficult, or painful, with that which is joyful, loving, and to respond from your heart essence, not from ego’s voice of fear or grasping.
Backtracking a step. When the predominant object is physical, you watch how it arose, you watch its passing. As it’s no longer predominant, you return to your breath.
With an emotional object, it often sticks with you longer. With a thought, it often sticks with you longer. So it takes a bit more effort to notice: this is just fear, this is just anger. It has arisen from conditions. I do not deny it; I acknowledge its presence. But I don’t have to entertain it. I can just invite it in, serve it a cup of tea. Invite it, “Sit here until you’re ready to leave. I am not afraid of you. But I’m also not going to get caught up in a dialogue with you. So, sit and have your tea.”
When that anger, fear, whatever it may be becomes bored, it will go, and you’re just there with your breath again.
I have not distinguished too much between mental and emotional objects. Emotional objects are a kind of mental object. In our next time together, we’ll talk in more depth about that.
For now, I’m asking you just to note how, when a physical object arises, often thoughts will arise with it. Repeating this chain: contact, consciousness, feelings—pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feelings—and then mental formations come with those feelings. By feelings, I don’t mean emotion; I just mean feelings of pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. And then the stories that come.
I want you to practice catching that point where it shifts from something being simply unpleasant—the headache—to the reactivity, the mental formation that has you with the story, “There I am, I’m going to need brain surgery to have them remove a tumor.” It’s just a story. There’s no fact to it. I’m not saying there could not be a fact; if you have constant headaches, you want to see your doctor and find out why. But you understand what I’m saying, how things trigger a reaction in you, each of you with your own particular set of habitual reactions.
And this is not a curse upon you; this is a place of practice. It comes as a teacher. The headache and the anxiety about the headache—”Ah, thank you, teacher.” Right now, just holding loving space for the headache, for the pain in the foot or the anger at the lawnmower. Just relaxing into spaciousness until that reactivity diminishes and you’re back with the direct physical sensation—or perhaps just back with your breath. It’s a beautiful flow.
I love you and I appreciate your dedication to learning this practice. Step by step we’ll go through it.