Waking Up To Our Intentions

This talk was given as part of the Atlanta Mindfulness Institute's weekly community meditation group. In this talk, intention setting is examined as a practice. As we begin to know the mind and to see for ourselves which states of mind lead to peace and which mind states lead to suffering, there is a natural motivation to cultivate more generosity, compassion, and non-harming through being more intentional in our thoughts, words, and actions.

Transcript

Again,

Thank you for your practice tonight.

It's beautiful to have the opportunity to sit with so many people and be reminded that there are a lot of people trying to wake up to more presence and kindness.

It's not a small thing.

Tonight I wanted to talk some about intention.

For those of you that were with us last week,

You might have remembered someone asking a question about intention.

I think it was Amanda saying that she would like to hear some teaching on intention.

And also we touched on the concept of causes and conditions last week.

I think Chris had asked a very poignant question.

So I'm hoping to follow up a little bit with that tonight as well.

So I hope that this will be useful to deepening your practice in some way and your understanding of the role of intention and conditionality and how we can work with this.

I'd actually like to start by inviting you all into a contemplation.

So if you would,

Just to sit back and allow your eyes to close so you can access your own internal world.

And just come into that felt sense of being connected to your body.

Sensing what it feels like to be sitting here.

Just begin receiving your breath,

This breath,

The one you've never received before.

So the question I want to start with is a simple one.

What's it like to be here right now?

What is it like for you to be here right now?

And as you investigate this,

You might see,

Is it pleasant or unpleasant in this moment or neutral?

And what types of thoughts are arising?

And are there particular emotions that you notice right now?

And how do you imagine the experience that you're having right now is conditioned?

Perhaps by something you ate earlier,

How you slept last night,

What your day's been like,

By the meditation that you just engaged in.

Perhaps this moment is conditioned by interpersonal contacts that you've had today,

This year,

This lifetime.

Your mother or father or friends,

Teacher.

Each moment of consciousness springs forward from all of the prior experiences we've had.

Reactions,

Words,

And our own thoughts that came before this one.

So let's just sit with this for a few minutes.

How is this moment conditioned for you?

We can look at this from two different perspectives.

The first is neuroscience,

And you're probably familiar with that neurobiological tenet,

That what neurons fire together,

Wire together.

And that these firing patterns creating these networks create the patterns of our lives,

Create the patterns in our thinking,

In our speech,

And in our actions.

So when I say what thought came before this thought,

What thought led to this thought?

We have some understanding that that is indeed what happens.

We can also look at this from an ancient tradition,

From Buddhist psychology.

You know,

In many of the Buddhist teachings,

The Buddha talked about being intentional in our thoughts,

Words,

And actions.

He was actually very astute to realize the connection between our internal world of thought and our external world of behavior,

The nature of thought and the resulting peace or suffering.

And in the Eightfold Path,

Which was his prescription to end stress,

To end suffering,

He begins with two factors of wisdom,

Wise view or wise understanding,

And wise intention or wise thought.

With wise view or wise understanding,

They're often translated in those two ways,

A person has come to deeply understand what leads them to peace and what leads them to suffering.

And having seen with one's own eyes that having mind states of greed,

Craving,

Dissatisfaction,

Aversion,

And ignorance leads to suffering,

While a mind filled with generosity,

With renunciation or simplicity or letting go,

Loving kindness and compassion tends to lead to a peaceful mind and life.

So once you've seen this so clearly in your own life,

With your own eyes,

In your own heart and mind,

Why wouldn't you want to set intention to practice what leads to these skillful mind states like generosity,

Renunciation,

Loving kindness and compassion.

Once you understand whatever you frequently think and ponder upon,

That will become the inclination of your mind.

So getting more conscious about intention makes total sense.

But let's make sure we're on the same page in terms of what is intention.

Intention is certainly a type of thought.

It arises before words leave our mouth,

Before actions take place in and from our body.

And intention has aim and purpose,

Even when we're unconscious of what our intention is.

And honestly,

I think most of us are mostly unaware of our intentions.

And intention is not the same thing as a goal.

Setting goals is about trying to get to a particular outcome.

And honestly,

When we look very closely at goals,

It's not uncommon that they are often associated with some sort of self-improvement.

And intention isn't about getting anywhere.

It's not about improving the self.

It's about how we want to show up,

How we want to be in each moment.

And we can look at three levels of intention.

First of all,

In the broadest brushstroke,

The overarching intention of our lives,

The direction that we want our life to flow in toward simplicity or kindness or compassion.

Or does it flow in the direction of greed,

The pursuit of always having more,

No matter what the cost is to others,

Of desire for superiority in material wealth or intellectual knowledge or individual power or domination.

And as we contemplate this overarching intention,

A useful question that can be asked is,

What is it that you really want?

When we can sit in quiet contemplation,

Asking this question to ourselves over and over,

Allowing the question to go deeper and with the backdrop of stillness and quiet,

We can get to know deeply what the answer to this question is.

What is it that we really want?

As Mary Oliver says with this one wild and precious life that is so short.

What is it that we really want?

And then there's episodic intention where we have intention for a specific experience or for a specific time,

Just for today,

Just for this meeting,

Just in this conversation with my aunt,

I will show up in kindness.

Just in this meeting,

I will refrain from judging my coworker.

If judgment arises,

I'll practice loving kindness silently,

Et cetera.

And then the third way,

The third level of intention is related to moment to moment experience.

What is my intention for my speech,

For my actions in this moment?

So goal and goals are great.

Goals are great to have.

They're just different.

And goals are outcome oriented,

Not primarily concerned with how we get there,

Just that we get there.

And intention is process oriented.

Intention is the guide that points us in the right direction and brings us back on course when we tend to lose our way.

And intention,

Like all thought,

Is conditioned.

And it can also rise from a moment of mindfulness.

In each moment,

It's our choice.

This is why we say that this moment is the mother of all future moments,

Right now.

And on autopilot,

We typically have the same intentions over and over because,

But because we remain relatively unconscious,

We may not even know what these intentions are.

And when we're on autopilot,

Often intention comes from places like insecurity,

Fear,

Scarcity.

Remember and I love the way Rick Hansen,

Who's a evolutionary psychologist,

Talks about the fact that we're so wired to focus on the negative,

How he says that,

You know,

The mind is Velcro for negativity and Teflon for positivity.

So we're going to naturally more focus on scarcity,

On fear,

On insecurity.

And when this is the case,

Intentions often end up being about getting whatever we can,

Not really thinking about others so much or interconnectivity.

And this kind of thinking,

This kind of intention often underlies the quest for greater power,

Greater knowledge,

More money.

But when we bring mindfulness to the moment,

We have other options.

We have other choices.

Mindfulness,

This deep and abiding state of awareness that can usher in the great powerful pause.

And with this pause,

We can see where we are.

We can see where we would prefer to be.

With that pause,

We actually can see our mind and it's no longer mysterious.

And when you can't see your mind,

When awareness and thoughts are so merged together,

Kind of cobweb-ish like,

You can't know your mind.

And you're left with no choice but to believe that the problems that you're experiencing are related to the external environment.

If only things were different,

My mind would be peaceful.

I know some of you have heard me talk about when I first began a loving kindness practice.

And at that time,

My teacher suggested that I bring a three-pronged approach to this.

So one,

She suggested that I take some activity of daily living.

And while I was doing the activity,

To just continue to say the phrases of loving kindness.

So I began walking my,

I was walking my dog and I would walk my dog around the block every morning and what I usually did was run through my whole day,

Which was extremely stressful because when you're not actually in that part of your day yet,

There's nothing you can do about it.

It just feels like anxiety.

And I also was pretty oblivious to anything else around me.

And so I started doing that practice and it just really opened up so much.

I started wishing loving kindness for each house that I went by and just noticed so many more things,

Noticed so much more of nature,

Got more interested in my neighbors and started my day with these.

Then the second part of the three-pronged approach was to actively engage in loving kindness,

Formal meditation.

And the third prong had to do with the moment I woke up and became first aware of my thought in the morning.

So what I discovered is that when I was waking up,

I often woke up thinking about not very pleasant things.

I'd wake up and the first thing I'd become aware of was some sort of negative thinking,

Dreading some aspect of the day,

Worrying about something that hadn't happened,

Even having a disagreement or some sort of adversarial conversation with somebody.

And when my mind didn't wake up in that adverse state,

I noticed it often woke up thinking about what it wanted.

Where was the first pleasure of the day going to come from?

What sort of delicious breakfast was usually the first thought?

But then thoughts would quickly jump to other places of seeking pleasure,

Who I might want to say see,

What I might want to do.

And maybe that sounds pretty benign,

Except when you actually began to follow that thought train and you began watching the mind,

You see how much when this is what the mind is engaging in,

We're actually conditioning the mind to always want something that's not here.

And this is how seeking pleasure becomes the source of suffering.

I've noticed lately as I've watched my thoughts during this pandemic,

Even in my meditation,

I'll catch the thought going one step ahead about what's going to happen right after meditation,

Or it'll go to something later in the day.

And as I notice what those thoughts are,

They're always thoughts about seeking pleasure.

And so how that conditions me is to think that this isn't okay what I'm doing right here.

This isn't useful.

This isn't okay.

So my teacher told me that as I noticed these mind states of aversion or craving,

Just to shift the thoughts and began offering myself loving kindness.

And it was actually amazing.

It isn't that my whole inner experience changed so dramatically in a short amount of time.

It doesn't happen like that.

But just intentionally focusing on the loving kindness phrases shifted my attention and the harm,

The heart closing the negativity of the mind all quieted down.

The grasping,

The longing,

The seeking for pleasure,

Quieted.

And over time,

The fruits of that early morning practice of loving kindness just blossomed.

I also started playing around with gratitude,

Noticing that as I spent time intentionally offering loving kindness to myself and others,

A natural inclination toward gratitude developed.

And as my morning rituals changed,

You can imagine that so did the beginnings of my day.

With the cultivated pause,

If the old mind states of pursuit,

Of comparison mind,

Of competition arose,

I could see these mind states for what they were,

Sometimes even before they grew into interpersonal conflict or judgment or resentment.

And this is the way that conscious intention develops and begins to change our thoughts,

Words,

Actions,

Relationships in life.

Indeed,

As the Buddha said,

Whatever you frequently think about and ponder upon,

That will become the inclination of your mind.

It's not a mystery.

So let's take a brief look at three pairs of mind states.

And in each pair,

One tends to lead toward peace,

And the other tends to lead toward more suffering.

Although,

As I say that,

I really invite you to see if this is true for you,

To begin to pay attention to your mind when these mind states are arising or when you're actively cultivating them,

And see what it feels like in the body.

See what the result is.

So the first pair is generosity and greed.

And we cultivate generosity.

And another way to think about generosity actually is letting go,

Literally taking the clenched fist and opening the hand.

Yes,

Sometimes that is material,

Economic,

But it can be of effort,

In words,

In time,

In attention.

It's a movement from greed,

Which is all about,

How is this best for me?

What can I get out of this?

Greed is about tunnel vision,

Forgetting that there are others.

And generosity is about care for both self and others,

Because there's wisdom in generosity.

There's the understanding that we're in this together and connected.

And true care,

True care,

Can't really be unpaired,

Uncoupled.

And then there's the second pair to look toward is loving kindness and ignorance.

So in ignorance,

We don't see what's really happening.

We don't see others.

We don't see reality.

We expect permanence when everything is impermanent.

There's a lot of judgment and criticism in ignorance.

We tend to simplify things,

Not in a positive way,

But in a way that suggests cause and effect very simplistically.

There's a harshness to it often.

And with loving kindness,

We cultivate this natural friendliness,

This natural acceptance.

And then the third pair is compassion and ill will.

Ill will can be aversion.

It can be judgment.

It can be harm,

Actual harm.

And sometimes we think of harm as in its most hyperbolic sense,

Like killing or physically maiming,

And just invite us to open up to thinking about harm in much broader ways and to explore that.

I think that is best explored,

Like how our words can be harmful,

How our thoughts can be harmful,

And how our actions can be harmful,

Even without ever making physical contact.

And compassion is about care.

Compassion is about acknowledging harm,

Acknowledging suffering,

And turning toward it ourselves and others,

And allowing it to touch our heart so that we want to take action,

Even if action is only wishing peace.

That may be all we can do.

But it's a desire,

It's a movement toward compassion and away from harm.

Just turning back to some of the Buddha's teachings,

In another place in the Discourses,

He said,

Whatever you intend,

Whatever you plan,

And whatever you have a tendency toward,

That will become the basis upon which your mind is established.

Develop meditation on loving kindness,

For when you develop meditation on loving kindness,

All ill will be abandoned.

I just want to end with that because that certainly was what I found in the morning as I paused and noticed where the mind was,

And noticed either the negative thoughts about what I didn't want to happen the day,

Or the seeking pleasure.

As soon as I shifted to begin offering loving kindness,

The mind couldn't hold both.

It's not that I pushed them away or aggressively tried to force them out.

It simply left.

And what took its place was,

May I be safe.

May I be peaceful.

May I be healthy.

And may I have some ease today.

And may you be safe.

May you be peaceful.

May you have help.

And may you have some ease today.

Such a different inner experience.

So just to end,

I would like to invite us back into a contemplation.

Just to invite you once again,

Just to close your eyes.

Find this breath.

This one that you've never found before.

And so just thinking about these mind states of generosity,

Of letting go or simplifying,

Or loving kindness,

Or compassion.

Do any of these call to you that you would like to bring more intention around?

That you would like to cultivate as a way to begin to show up in your life a little different?

Or maybe you already are bringing conscious intention to being more generous or more generous or living more simply,

Being kinder or more compassionate.

And if so,

What are you noticing as you set your intention each day to meet yourself and each person,

Each situation with these qualities?

What are you noticing?

What's different?

For Emily,

Or Kaycee,

Or for Your time.

No matter how much,

But if you're wanting tojit the vita As.

Reviews

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