Wise Concentration_8: Connecting To The Sacred

Today is the eighth path factor of wise concentration. For me, this has to do with connecting to the sacred. The sacred is not something separate or different from other things but rather, it’s hidden in all things. To see the sacred, it’s not about seeing something new. It’s about seeing things in a new way.

Many people associate concentration with the be all and end all of meditation. The way I’ve experienced concentration is more of a unification of my mind.

Transcript

So we are on the last path factor of the Eightfold Path and we've been exploring these path factors from the perspective of engagement and how we become the path of awakening in our being.

How this path bubbles up within us.

So over these weeks together I've linked the first path factor of wise view with meaning.

We're always creating meaning and we're also conditioned by the meaning we have learned from our culture and from our families.

So from this perspective right view is seeing the meaning making happening in the mind and in a way suspending the meaning.

Zooming out,

Checking out our perception,

Seeing is there clinging in my view of what's happening and what is that.

Wise intention I've blended with purpose.

In my experience with intention and purpose there's been some fluidity with it.

You know sometimes my purpose has to do with investigation.

Today's purpose concentration.

Other times I'm just staying with my body and the sensations of the concentric circles of the body.

But what's always at the ground of purpose and practice for myself is to be safe.

Be a safe container for whatever comes.

Not to cause harm to myself or to others.

That's my purpose always.

That's always the goal.

To be safe.

To not cause harm.

Simple and honestly not always easy right.

And then we have wise speech and I've connected that to healing speech.

Speech that heals ourselves and heals others.

So often our internal speech is so hard.

We're so hard on ourselves.

So to actually pay attention to that and to heal it in some way to look at how we're talking to ourselves and seeing how that spills over into our community.

And from speech brings action and I've connected action to reconciliation.

You know so much of the time we need to actually repair these fractured parts of ourselves in relationship with others.

Becoming more whole in a way is the path of speech and action.

Our actions can be a bridge for reconciliation to happen.

And next is wise livelihood and this is about for me it's about agency.

It's an extension of action in a way.

We stretch our capacity.

We bring our authentic self to the table.

All of us who we are leaving nothing out and there's great freedom in that.

And livelihood brings us to wise effort and the effort that we're asserting is to really to really bring all parts of ourselves.

No part left out like including those pieces of ourselves which we've banished as inferior parts.

When we can occupy our fullness then the invitation in wise mindfulness is to bring your whole self to your community.

So where the effort is for belonging the mindfulness is for community belonging and community and will stumble and we bump into each other but we grow in community.

We're mirrors for each other all the time.

And today the eighth path factor is wise concentration.

And for me this has to do with connecting to the sacred.

I'm experiencing the rain right now that's pattering on the roof.

There's something sacred about that.

The sacred is not something separate or different from other things but it's hidden in all things.

To see the sacred it's not about seeing something new.

It's about seeing things in a new way.

With wise concentration many people associate concentration as kind of the be all and end all of meditation practice.

A person who is maybe new to practice may hear about getting concentrated and so they're sort of huffing and puffing with this expectation that all the thinking will stop and they'll have some sort of great ascension experience.

And if that doesn't happen over time well they often stop practicing is what I have found.

And the way that I've experienced concentration is more of a unification of the mind.

Concentration is a byproduct of doing the practice of settling in and being opened and relaxed having a sense of well-being and maybe a sense of happiness and then the mind gathers and comes into harmony with all things.

So concentration is a gathering together of all the different faculties of attention and it happens through simplification,

Simplifying.

So classically it's simply gathering around breath and breathing the way we did this morning.

And the way I was taught concentration practice was that there were these two supports that I'll share with you.

The first is the practice of returning the attention to the object of our attention.

So again in formal practice it's the breath but if we're not sitting on the cushion and we're practicing in daily life then the practice becomes returning to or redirecting the attention or applying the attention back to whatever it is that you're doing.

So a simple example is like washing the dishes.

The mind wanders,

You're washing the dishes,

The mind wanders and then you return to washing the dishes.

And the second activity that supports concentration is sustaining the attention.

So you have to sort of hang in there with it.

You know being with the experience of washing the dishes.

When we're hanging in there in the present moment with what we're focusing on then the sacred is available.

It isn't something separate or different in our life.

It's hidden in the bubbles of the soap.

It's hidden in the ordinary things.

The capability of washing dishes.

So one of the practical and powerful ways in which this played out for me and has really impacted me as a practitioner is when I was a Zen student.

And in Zen practice everything you do,

Everything and everyone you encounter is sacred.

In Zen the idea is that everything you encounter you want to meet it with a kind of presence and when you do you're immediately engaging with the sacred.

As if the sacredness is found in the experience of engagement.

And so what happens in that encounter,

What happens is if you're really willing to take everything as being something you give yourself completely to as being sacred.

You know maybe at first there's some balking and some hesitation,

You know washing dishes that's not really special.

You know there's more important things to do that I could then qualify as sacred.

So it really depends on what you bring to the situation.

Do you bring yourself fully to the one activity that you're doing and can you sustain your attention on that activity?

In my years of Zen training we had these work periods that were part of our practice and during one of these work periods my job was to plant seeds and these flats with one seed in each of the,

I think there were like 20 pods within a flat and then you would put the seeds in and cover them and this was in the greenhouse at Green Gulch Farm.

So every day you know sort of sorting through the seeds and planting and lightly watering and spraying them lightly with water for hours every day for I think at least a month maybe maybe six weeks or so.

And many times I didn't want to do this.

You know I didn't really think it was spiritual.

I was raised farming and I was forced to farm and plant as a kid so I had a lot of resistance to the activity.

You know I came to the monastery to meditate and to wake up and to and so this was not it.

So I had all these reactions to having to do this particular job that was so conditioned by my past.

But I learned to work through those reactions just to look and to learn and to be simpler and simpler with the task.

And it became so simple and rewarding not because I particularly liked sorting and planting but because I stopped resisting.

I stopped judging it as less than spiritual.

I stopped fighting with it and just got very very simple very present.

And when the mind would wander I would return to the seed and just focus on the one thing I was doing.

Also the sacred for me is the awareness that includes everything.

When awareness can be all inclusive then we're in a sacred dimension.

And so when awareness which is all inclusive is one of the challenges and tasks of mindfulness and concentration.

To sit or to be in our world and see well what is it like to meet this as sacred.

What is it like to open to this experience.

What is it like not to push away or hold tight to experience or have preferences that are running the show.

Just to be really present for this this rainy day this opening and sharing together whatever we give our awareness to completely might not change right away but we change in our ability to hold it all.

It's a mind that can hold it all peacefully which I'd like to think is the most sacred on this path that we travel together.

The mind that can hold all things peacefully.

So thank you for this consideration.

This way of practice.

Reviews

"The mind that can hold all things peacefully" 😌 what a lovely aspiration for us to work toward. Thank you 🌟