Guided Meditation — Settling into the Place where Nothing is Happening
followed by a contemplative reading on Wakefulness from the Dhammapada
Today we share another excerpt from a dharma talk Paul gave several weeks ago, including a guided meditation and closing with a contemplative reading from the Dhammapada.
Letting go of your Head
So that’s what we want to do when we get here. Okay, take all the stuff that’s going around in our heads and in our emotions and in our bodies and jangled nerves or whatever. And say, “Okay, you had your place all day, maybe too much today. And now it’s time for you to have a rest. This is my time to come to the place of peace.”
And everything that comes up, you know, the memory about this person who did that with the other or the feeling that arises that made you uncomfortable. You can just say, “Okay, thank you.”
Uchiyama Kosho Roshi—who I was one of the first teachers I studied with—used to use this phrase, atama no tebanashi (頭の手離し). Atama (頭) means your head and tebanasu (手離す) means to open your hand and let go—letting go. So basically “letting go of your head”.
One of my friends, Daitsū Tom Wright1, is a Zen teacher and a disciple of Uchiyama Roshi for many, many years. He translated that as opening the hand of thought. I don’t know if that’s a great translation or not, but you get the idea. It’s like just letting go of the whole construct, the world we construct with out thinking. Now we can let it go and be here, and experience what is really here. What is a real experience here when we leave a little space, when we put the thoughts to rest. So that’s our task.
Guided Meditation — Settling into the Place where Nothing is Happening
Make sure you have a good posture, supporting your back as needed to be comfortable and upright. You may listen below as Paul plays the bells and gives some sparse guidance.
Reading on Wakefulness
I brought a book of short teachings of the Buddha or later masters. I’ll simply start at the beginning.
This first excerpt is called Wakefulness. This is from the Dhammapada. It is a very old collection of sayings of the Buddha which I’ve quoted from before..
This selection on wakefulness says:
Wakefulness is the way to life. The fool sleeps as if he were already dead, but the master is awake and he lives forever. He watches. He is clear. How happy he is, for he sees that wakefulness is life. How happy he is, following the path of the awakened. With great perseverance, he meditates, seeking freedom and happiness.
In some ways, the teaching of the Buddha is too simple to grasp. What’s that thing in you that's awake? We have all kinds of content of the mind, all kinds of distractions, troubles, wonderful insights, positive thoughts and feelings that come through.
But what is that thing that’s fundamentally awake, that is there to perceive all of that, that can get the idea of me, or the idea of compassion, or the idea of altruism, or the emotion of compassion, or the emotion of empathy, or the emotion of remorse?
What is that thing that receives, that field of, what shall we call it, consciousness, awareness? When you look, when the thought arises and you look at the thinker, what do you find?
Sometimes we try to look and it’s a little murky. Often we look and it’s kind of murky. But if we cultivate our practice steadily, then we will become more adept at looking, turning—in the words of Bodhidharma, the great Zen teacher who brought Zen from India to China—take that backward step, the turning around in this fundamental seat of consciousness.