The aim of meditation and the aim of our spiritual practice is not to develop a perfect breath.
It's not to enforce certain states of mind that we walk around with like something that we own from morning till night.
We might see the aim of the spiritual life as learning to live in connection with experience with a mind that is free from clinging.
In the Satipatthana Sutta and in many other discourses,
It says one abides independent,
Not clinging to anything in this world.
What a profound possibility.
How do we abide with the mind that is not clinging to anything?
Not attached to the things that we see,
Hear,
Smell,
Taste,
Touch and think about.
Not attached to the idea or impression that we have about ourselves.
Not attached to pleasant or unpleasant.
Not clinging through desire and not clinging through aversion.
Yes,
Aversion is a form of clinging.
It's a form of attachment.
It's not the attachment of wanting things to be that way,
Wanting more of that.
It's the attachment to not wanting things to be that way.
The wanting of things to be other than they are.
It's still attachment.
It's still clinging.
So how do we abide not clinging to anything in this world?
The first step may be to notice the experience of clinging.
What does it feel like?
Do you notice a constriction,
A tightness?
I like to notice the experience of clinging in the moment that the thought arises,
I am.
It doesn't even matter what I am.
I am this,
I am that,
I am not,
I am yes,
I am no,
I am whatever.
I am happy,
I am sad.
I am hungry,
I am satisfied.
That initial sense of I am is where I feel that first contraction with the arising of that thought.
And so as we sit and meditate and observe our experience,
Observe the mind,
We might notice a contraction of I am.
We might notice a tightening and in that tightening we might notice that for a moment we have lost touch with the flow of changing experiences.
We've separated a little bit from the reality of things changing and being known as they're changing.
That's a moment of fixation where the consciousness has become dependent upon something and it's holding on to that.
It's not independent.
And so we notice when we have created that phenomena we call clinging,
Craving,
Wanting,
Attachment,
That sense of dependency,
That construction and fabrication of I am like this,
It should be like that,
I want,
I don't want.
And we notice that phenomena,
It's not so much like the body gets muscularly tight,
But you might find some echo of a physical response,
Some clue that you notice is associated with that particular experience that we call craving and clinging.
How do you recognize it?
It can be helpful to play with both the perception of things changing and the tendency for attachment because these are two interesting movements of mind.
Experience is changing,
Feelings are changing,
Sensations are changing.
As you observe the breath,
You're observing a flow of changing sensations.
Is it okay with you?
Is it okay that things change?
I mean fully wholeheartedly okay.
Because it may be that part of abiding without clinging is becoming familiar,
Deeply accepting,
Fully knowing and being really profoundly okay with the simple fact that everything is changing.
The more fully we accept and recognize the changing nature of things,
The less inclination we'll have to contract,
To hold,
To fix,
To cling,
To crave.
When we see something changing,
We are not holding on to it.
By seeing something changing,
Whatever that experience is,
A feeling,
A sensation,
A sound arises and then disappears.
A taste is known at one moment and five minutes later it's not known.
That impact is no longer there.
So connected with the experience of impermanence and this recognition that things are changing is the willingness to let them end.
When you know a pleasant experience,
A pleasant feeling,
Are you willing to let it end?
When you breathe in,
Experience the in-breath,
But you don't have to cling to it.
You don't have to hold on.
Let it end and the out-breath will come.
The in-breath comes and ends,
The out-breath comes and ends,
Until some point when they don't anymore and we die.
Can we also let that happen?
Be okay that death will happen?
And impermanence doesn't just mean that a tingle appears and it disappears,
That a light flickers on and off in the room,
But that actually everything born will also die.
So part of the meditative training is to allow things to end,
To be so at ease with impermanence,
So connected and unresistant to this basic fact of change,
That we observe things arise,
We observe them pass away and we learn to let them end.
Without trying to make the pleasant ones last,
Without trying to identify with them and attach to them,
Without building up a story of who I am so that we can preserve that experience as a part of our identity.
We sit and we feel the body sitting and whatever sensation we feel arises,
Is known and then it perishes,
It passes away.
We abide not clinging to those sensations.
When sounds occur,
We know they appear and then they disappear.
Tastes,
Smells,
Sights appear and disappear.
And we know those experiences with mindfulness free from clinging.
We let them arise and be known and we let them end.
For many people the arena of their thoughts and emotions is the place,
The most clinging.
But if we look closely,
We realize that the feeling that we had five minutes ago,
The emotion that we had during breakfast,
The thought that arose two seconds ago are long gone.
The mind changes so quickly,
Even more quickly than physical phenomena.
It's even a less reliable place for attachment.
And that may perhaps because it's so impossible to hold on,
It may be why the clinging gets triggered again and again and again and again.
Because it's changing so fast that we try to cling even more,
We try to construct an idea of who we are in the experience and what it is and some thoughts,
Some emotions,
Something that we can just sort of get our teeth into and hold on to.
I think we can understand this tendency with compassion,
But then with wisdom,
We look and we see,
Ah,
It's changing.
And if we reflect back again a thought that's changing,
We realize that there's never been a possibility to cling to those anyway.
So what happens if I stop clinging?
What happens if for just the next 10 minutes I say,
Okay,
Let me not cling to anything in this world.
Just for 10 minutes,
Do a little experiment.
If 10 minutes feels too long,
Try two minutes.
Try two breaths.
What is the quality of mind that's not clinging?
Do you sense that non-contraction?
We might say spacious,
But maybe even putting it in a term like spacious is already too defined.
Unconstricted,
Non-distracted,
Non-clinging.
Get to know the quality of this mind,
This mind state.
If there's joy,
Feel the joy without clinging.
If there's peace,
Know the peace without clinging.
Whatever the experience is of,
However the experience is felt,
Know that without clinging.
And so we abide,
Independent,
Without clinging to anything in this world.
Everything can be known.
Anything can be perceived.
What we know and we see and we experience with the mind that is free from grasping,
Clinging from the habitual forces that distort our perception.
So allow the possibility for this utter intimacy.
An intimacy that is not bound by relationship.
A totality of experience that is not distorted by the divisions of me and you,
Of self and other,
Of want and not want.
Allow your attention to meet the flow of changing experiences moment by moment and sense the profundity of that encounter with life.
To experience this moment free from clinging.
Perhaps,
It doesn't matter to what we don't cling.
Whether the experience is pleasant or unpleasant.
Whether it's a taste or a sight or a thought or a sensation.
With mindful awareness,
We know the experience arising,
Changing and ending.
And it's okay that things end.
Not for all.
You
