audio recording – STEPHANIE NOBLE: Recent Episodes
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If you, like so many of us, find it challenging to settle into simply being present in this moment just as it is, this brief recorded meditative introduction might help. It can also help those who feel there must be a stage of meditation beyond the simple awareness of sensation.
As with any meditation, begin by giving yourself a chance to settle in, letting go of any need to get anywhere or do anything. You could listen to this short recording several times at first to fully envision and understand what freedom is being offered:
Water Droplet Meditation by Stephanie NobleThis imagery invites us to the present moment. It then allows even that sense of the finite to dissolve into radiance. This is the spacious freedom of meditation.
Anna Douglas, cofounder of Spirit Rock Meditation Center and founder of Insight Meditation TucsonI recently heard that my primary Insight meditation teacher is retiring.
Anna Douglas welcomed me to her weekly class at Spirit Rock in 1994. I became a regular and then a class manager for many years. After Anna moved to Arizona, our sweet sangha* survived thanks to a series of skilled and wise teachers. I appreciated them all, but I have continued to consider Anna my primary teacher, attending many of her retreats over the years. When I began teaching, she encouraged me, addressed my teaching questions, and assured me I was doing fine.
Now I invite you to listen to her dharma talk from a 2001 retreat, so you will understand why I value her wisdom, clarity, and humor, and why she inspires a deep appreciation of the Dharma in her students.
To give it the attention it deserves, consider giving yourself a few hours to meditate, listen to the dharma talk, walk in nature, and eat mindfully in silence. Let yourself experience a treat of a retreat with this wonderful dharma talk as your anchor. Enjoy!
Listen to Anna Douglas’ 2001 Dharma Talk at Spirit Rock
*Hugs and ‘every good blessing’ to those in the Fri-AM sangha who follow this blog! I still have our Sangha T-shirt! – Stephanie
So often, people’s actions seem beyond comprehension. But the Buddha offers a way to at least understand, if not condone, the strange behaviors of our species. Listen to this dharma talk.
Perception & Volition, a dharma exploration with Stephanie Noble
If you feel anxious, does it help to know you’re not alone? That the Buddha listed it as one of the mental states that humans typically experience? Maybe, but you probably still want to find out how to cope with it. Here is my dharma talk exploring anxiety that includes a guided meditative exercise to help you.
Exploring anxiety by Stephanie NobleI hope you took the time to listen to the dharma talk. Here are some further thoughts to understand the nature of anxiety.
Buddha’s Daily Reflections
What is the source of our anxiety? For many of us, it is rooted in the fear of what is ultimately inevitable. Trying to pretend otherwise is not only useless, but it’s also more painful.
The Buddha emphasized the importance of acknowledging the existence of naturally arising life experiences and recommended reciting these reflections every day:
- I am of the nature to grow old.
- I am of the nature to have ill health.
- I am of the nature to die.
- All that is dear to me and everyone I love is subject to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
- My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions. Actions are the womb from which I have sprung.
In modern cultures, we can be so out of touch with these simple truths that we completely fall apart when they happen. Understanding they are only natural, we become more skillful in our relationship with all that arises.
Find your nature in nature
Even in the wild, we sometimes forget to see these truths. When we take a walk in the woods, if we only appreciate the wildflowers and not the rotting leaves and fallen logs that fertilize the soil, nor the insects and other life forms that break them down into nutrients, then we are living in delusion. Coming home to the ever-changing nature of life, all life, including our own, alleviates much of the selective withholding energy that activates anxiety. By practicing expanding our awareness, by imagining holding the world in an open and loving embrace without needing it to be any different, we release our attention from the stranglehold of the Buddha’s list of Five Hindrances, including anxiety.
In class on Zoom this week, one student took her laptop outside and sat under the redwoods. She remarked after the meditation how wonderful it was to be surrounded by trees and sky instead of contained by walls. It was a gift to the rest of us to have at least that little square of nature as a presence in our class and a good reminder to get out and enjoy the fresh autumn air.
Recognize anxiety paralysisAutumn is a time of year when those living in drought-stricken areas may become anxious about wildfires. Also, in autumn, people who live in the path of hurricanes have their own sources of anxiety. If you are worried about a disaster, whatever it may be, prepare as best you can to cope with it should it happen. Intense anxiety about it can cause paralysis, so you don’t do the very things that could lessen the ill effects of the experience, should it happen. If you really can’t face it, ask someone else to help. Would it surprise you to know that those of my students and friends who have lived through evacuations and property loss have become less anxious over time? They have dealt head-on with disaster, and now they know they can meet such challenges and live through them.
Trust in yourselfYou, too, have coped with challenges in the past. Think about what you have faced and lived through and survived. You have survived a global pandemic! Yay, you! And chances are you have survived the pain of losing a loved one. You have witnessed the skillful and unskillful ways people have dealt with difficulties. You have learned from your experiences and by observing others, both real people and fictional characters. You have proven again and again that you are capable of coping skillfully with whatever arises. Trust in yourself.
If you don’t trust in yourself, explore the veil of thoughts and emotions that entangle you, telling you stories about why you can’t be trusted. If the knots in the veil are so tight, you are blinded, and your anxiety is intense, seek the help of a qualified therapist.
Stay here and nowBeing fully present makes us better able to cope with whatever happens. So trust that your ongoing awareness practice is helping you to handle whatever happens. It’s a well-known fact that many of life’s worst moments come from people being distracted. So do one thing at a time, and as you do so, cultivate compassionate awareness for yourself and all beings. In this way, you can greet whatever comes in a way that will create a better outcome.
Rest in the don’t-know mindYou might feel as if you would feel safer if only you could know everything. The fear of not knowing is central to the experience of anxiety. We imagine all kinds of catastrophes, personal and global. And our imagination is so rich, it’s as if it is happening. Yet what actually happens is often very different from anything we had imagined. Did not see that coming! And having exhausted ourselves by imagining various terrible events, we are too exhausted to see this moment and greet it with wise effort.
With wise effort, we make sensible preparations, stay present, and accept that we don’t know. One of my favorite insights on a meditation retreat was the realization that there was no way in the world I could ever really fully know anything! All I thought I knew about everything around me was based on hearsay, partial truths, and often erroneous assumptions. This personal discovery of the don’t-know mind was joyful and a great relief. I don’t know! had been a scary thing to admit in the world when I was younger, but now it is the fiercest, most delicious acknowledgment of the truth for all of us. Sure, we all know stuff, but that stuff is ever-shifting and changing. And believing we know doesn’t make us safer. It locks us into a tangle of beliefs that constitute our sense of self, beliefs that we must continually repeat and defend. When I had my insight on retreat, I wrote a three-word note to my teacher, Anna Douglas, saying, “I don’t know!!!” And within an hour, pinned to the bulletin board was a one-word message from her: “Hooray!!!”
“Don’t agonize, organize”
This slogan reminds us that wise action helps alleviate the anxiety that comes with politics. You can’t bite your fingernails over the outcome when your hands are busy dialing or writing postcards! Thank you to all who are keeping democracy alive with your action, including many of my students.
Anxiety is not a traitIf you describe yourself as an anxious person or that you have anxiety as if it’s a disease, please stop. It’s not helping. This labeling is just another knotting process that weighs down your identity veil and makes it so thick no one can find you, not even you.
Instead of claiming anxiety as a label to define you, try using verbs: Noticing the physical sensation of anxiety when it comes up. Anxiety is rising. This is how anxiety feels in the body right now. Noticing how the sensations shift. Breathing through the sensations. Keep it all in the present moment, just observing the changes without rushing anything. Whatever we experience is just passing through. It’s not a permanent state.
Wherever we feel the physical effects of anxiety — tension and tightness in the chest, stomach, jaw, etc. — we can notice that it is a state of contraction. In meditation, we always begin with the assumption that there is tension in the body, and we do whatever is skillful to relax and release it without making an enemy of it.
If chronic anxiety comes up, we can cultivate some compassion. Ah, there you are again. I know you. The sensations are not enemies. In some way, they are familiar old companions. But in any case, they arise and fall away in all of us. Remember, as I shared in the audio, that the Buddha taught that anxiety is part of the human condition. Not an enemy. Just anxiety. Just worry. Just entangled thoughts about the future, which by its very nature, we cannot know.
Trying to get rid of anxiety only makes it an enemy and creates more upset. We don’t need to manipulate it, run away from it, or control it. If we are paying attention, we might notice that when we try to run away from it, anxiety comes along with us. But when we pause and turn around and open our arms to it, anxiety breathes a sigh of relief as it relaxes in our embrace.
And, who knows? It may offer surprising gifts that we would not have expected.
There is another guided meditation for coping with anxiety on my Audio page and also on Insight Timer.
It’s not magic, but it may feel that way!
When my attention gets entangled in tight knots of thoughts and emotions, it’s worth taking time to take a look and see what’s going on. But I can’t do this effectively if I look at the tangle in the same state of mind that created them. That only makes it worse. So what can I do?
We all get stuck in mental knots, however we think about them. I like using the metaphor of knots because they acknowledge that something’s blinding us, but the image allows for the possibility of softening and releasing the tangle into the easy weave of the veils of thoughts we all have about all kinds of things, including ourselves, our loved ones, and the world as a whole.
And I like the metaphor of veils because they are light and flowing. They can be gauzy and even transparent. We can play with them, dance with them, and, most importantly, by their very nature, we can drop or lift them. Letting go of them is a natural part of the experience of veils.
When we notice a knot in one of our veils, we can feel how it weighs the veil down, how our attention circles around the heavy place and settles there. The knot makes dancing with life more difficult. It breaks up the flow of the veils, and as it grows, it causes blind spots.
So, what created the knot? The mental state of fear in its various forms: greed, aversion, and delusion. Buddha called them the Three Poisons. Before I share the ‘trick’ of how to untangle a mental knot, we need to be able to recognize these mental states when they show up. As they will, again and again. Get used to it! They are part of the human condition. But we can relate to them more skillfully, and that makes all the difference. And we can disengage them enough to explore mental knots without making things worse. So here they are:
When the Three Poisons Investigate a Mental Knot
Greed is grabby by nature. It wants to amass more and more solid sense of self, so when greed investigates a knot, it spends a lot of time there, almost taking comfort in its density. The Knot becomes the grand to-do project we feel we must address before life can go forward, and thus we never live.
Aversion makes a knot tenser and tighter. It makes an enemy of the knot and attacks it. Not useful! It takes the form of anger, criticism, and hatred. And not surprisingly, the poor knot gets further entangled.
Delusion fails to notice the knot or pretends it doesn’t exist. In a state of delusion, our attention wanders along less challenging thought threads. Delusion is also called ignorance because it ignores what’s right in front of it. Or it makes us think we have all the answers when none of us do. Believing we do makes us turn away, or stick our fingers in our ears and go la-la-la, I don’t want to hear it. Or it gets lost in the knot itself, not realizing it’s just a knot of thoughts.
As I describe these three poisons and how they interact, you may recognize them in your own experience or in someone you know. When you know what to look for, you discover that the Three Poisons are always on display, hiding in plain sight.
If we deactivate greed, aversion, and delusion in our moment-to-moment experience, the knots have a chance to soften and unravel on their own. So before any inner exploration, we cultivate spaciousness primarily through meditation and being receptive as we spend time in nature. Reading inspiring poetry or listening to uplifting music may also be beneficial. As we activate awareness of the nature of life, we can recognize that it’s not about self-improvement, remaking ourselves to meet some obscure measure. Instead, it’s about coming home to the aliveness of being.
One pitfall to avoid is thinking that the Three Poisons are a way to label ourselves. They are not personality types we glom onto to build a sense of identity. They are simply patterns that arise. All three patterns are present in all of us. Maybe we find ourselves more often in one pattern or another, but it doesn’t make us solidify an identity trait. It’s important to understand that none of us is a greedy, hateful, or deluded person. Instead, we notice that right now greed is present. This is how the poison of greed feels. Ah, now here comes some aversion. It’s interesting to see how they collaborate sometimes. And here comes a little fog of delusion. Wha???
All three poisons divide us from life. Greed tries to amass a fortress of self. The more stuff we have (whether physical objects, achievements, praise, activities, friends, followers, etc.,) the more solid we may feel. I exist. I’m real. But it’s just an unskillful way to attempt to experience the fearless interconnection our inner wisdom tells us inherently exists, something we experience by letting go, not by grasping and clinging.
Aversion also creates a separate fortress of self. But instead of amassing like a collage artist, it cuts and scrapes away, like a sculptor chipping away at marble, all the things and people of the world that are not acceptable, hoping to define and defend that perfect self.
Delusion isn’t trying to build or chip away, but when we’re in that state, our attention floats along in a cloud of unquestioned assumptions, spacing out, getting lost in a fog.
One way I’ve heard the Three Poisons described is that there is no fire hotter than greed, no ice colder than hatred, and no fog thicker than delusion. Pretty intense! Which only speaks to the importance of noticing them as they arise. But it also reminds us that we can’t extinguish a fire with fire, melt the ice with ice, or clear fog with fog. So to address the knots that blind us, we pause to practice being present and cultivate awareness.
Here is a brief recorded practice you can try right now.
Stephanie Noble guided meditation for releasing the Three PoisonsBreathing in. Breathing out. And noticing whether the three poisons are present. With our attention fully present, they disappear. How comforting is that? What a lovely reminder to meditate. Not as an escape but as a practice to train the attention to be present in this moment. To stop chasing down the next delight or live in dread of the next encounter.
As we practice mindfulness, we notice that the three poisons begin to dissolve. Since our practice is to cultivate beneficial qualities, we can notice how the cultivation of ease and contentment dissolves greed. Lovingkindness dissolves hatred. And the clarity of mind that comes from the practice dissolves delusion.
So before any inner exploration, take the time to breathe. Then use that breath awareness to allow the knots to soften and dissolve in the safety of your compassionate and expansive embrace.
One of the three marks of existence in Buddhism is Anatta, translated into English as ‘no self.’ This translation freaks people out: But wait!! I exist! I’m here!
Yes, indeed, you DO exist! You ARE here! We all are. And in this audio dharma talk, I share how we can fully joyfully embody our existence.
A dharma talk by Stephanie Noble on Anatta.
After a break in posting, here is a new dharma talk. You’ll notice it’s a recording instead of a written essay. The break I took from writing (and reading) was insufficient for my eyes to overcome their disgruntlement over close-up work! So I will now do what every other dharma teacher I know does and simply record my talks.
This one is about pivoting when, for whatever reason, you can’t keep doing what you love doing. How do we adapt? Is there a gift to be found?
My students found it helpful. I hope you will, too!
Pivoting, a dharma talk by Stephanie Noble
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