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Dhamma Talk: The Clearing and the Swells

Time: 15 Minutes

Theme: Equanimity (Upekkha) as Active Presence

I. Opening: The "Winging It" Practice (2 Minutes)

• Transparency: Acknowledge stepping in for Amy while recovering yourself.

• The Point: This isn't a lecture from a pedestal; it’s a report from the field. Equanimity isn't waiting for the "perfect" conditions—it’s how we relate to these conditions.

II. Internal Preparation: "Clearing" (4 Minutes)

• Context: Before we can meet the world, we have to stop fighting it.

• Poem: Clearing by Martha Postlethwaite

  Do not try to save

  the whole world

  or do anything grandiose.

  Instead, create

  a clearing

  in the dense forest

  of your life

  and wait there

  patiently,

  until the song

  that is your life

  falls into your own cupped hands

  and you recognize and greet it.

  Only then will you know

  how to give yourself

  to this world

  so worthy of rescue.

III. The Sutta Anchor: Being Like the Earth (4 Minutes)

• Context: How do we hold what falls into our "cupped hands"?

• Sutta: Maha-Rahulovada Sutta (MN 62)

  "Rahula, develop meditation like the earth. For when you develop meditation like the earth, arisen agreeable and disagreeable sensory impressions will not take charge of your mind and stay there. Just as people throw clean things and dirty things, excrement, urine, spit, pus, and blood on the earth, but the earth is not repelled, humiliated, or disgusted... in the same way, develop meditation like the earth."

• The Insight: The earth doesn't argue with what lands on it. It has the "capacity" to hold it all without being diminished.

IV. The Embodiment: "The Little Duck" (5 Minutes)

• Context: The earth is our stability; the duck is our movement through the world’s "swells."

• Poem: The Little Duck by Donald C. Babcock

  Now we are ready to look at something pretty special.

  It is a duck riding the ocean a hundred feet beyond the surf.

  No, it isn’t a gull.

  A gull always has a raucous touch about him.

  This is some sort of duck, and he cuddles in the swells.

  He isn’t fighting anything, but he isn’t helpless either.

  He is simply at home.

  He isn’t doing anything.

  He is just being there.

  The sea is doing everything.

  It is lifting him and lowering him.

  It is trying to drown him, only it can’t.

  It is trying to wash him away, only it can’t.

  It is doing its worst, and it is doing its best.

  And the little duck?

  He is just being a duck.

  He is perfectly safe.

  He is perfectly at home.

V. Closing: Transition to Sit

• The "Take-Home": "He isn't fighting anything, but he isn't helpless either."

• The Invitation: Invite the sangha to find that "at home" quality in the upcoming sit—letting the breath be the tide, and the mind be the earth.

🌊 Second Sitting — 20 Minutes

Upekkhā: The Clearing and the Swells

🌉 Bridge from the Talk into the Sit (30–45 seconds)

“We’ve been looking at equanimity through two images tonight — the clearing in the forest, and the little duck on the swells. Both point to the same thing: a way of being present without tightening, without collapsing, without needing the moment to be different.

In this second sit, we’ll explore that quality directly. Not as an idea, but as a felt sense — the earth beneath us, the breath moving through us, the swells rising and falling.

Nothing to fight. Nothing to chase. Just learning how to be at home in the movement.”

0:00–1:30 — Settling / Re‑Arriving

• Invite posture: upright, relaxed, honest.

• Let the breath come and go on its own.

• Feel the body supported by the earth.

• “We began with kindness and compassion. Now we widen into steadiness.”

1:30–3:00 — The Ordinary Field

• Sense weight, contact, temperature.

• Let sounds be part of the field.

• “Nothing to fix. Nothing to improve. Just sensing what’s here.”

3:00–5:00 — The Clearing

• “Imagine creating a small clearing in the dense forest of your life.”

• “A place where you stop negotiating with the moment.”

• Let the breath move through that clearing.

• Spacious, unforced awareness.

5:00–7:00 — Earth Practice (MN 62)

• “Meditate like the earth — able to hold what lands without shrinking.”

• Pleasant → let it be pleasant.

• Unpleasant → let it be unpleasant.

• Neutral → let it be neutral.

• “The earth doesn’t argue with the weather.”

7:00–9:00 — Upekkhā Phrases (Choose 2–3)

Slow cadence, one phrase per breath cycle:

• “May I meet this moment with balance.”

• “May I allow things to be as they are.”

• “May I care without being pulled apart.”

• “This is how it is.”

Let them repeat silently.

9:00–12:00 — The Duck on the Swells

• “Like the little duck riding the ocean — not fighting, not helpless.”

• “Lifted and lowered, but at home.”

• Feel the body as the duck:

  • Rising and falling with breath.

  • Held by something larger than effort.

• “You don’t have to manage the sea.”

12:00–14:00 — Capacity, Not Control

• “Equanimity isn’t shutting down. It’s widening the container.”

• Let sensations, moods, thoughts come and go like waves.

• “You don’t have to follow each one. You don’t have to push them away.”

14:00–16:00 — The Wide Sky

• Awareness expands outward:

  • Thoughts = clouds.

  • Sensations = wind.

  • Emotions = passing weather.

• “The sky doesn’t cling to any of it.”

16:00–18:00 — Returning to the Body

• Back to breath, weight, hands, spine.

• “Right here is enough.”

• “Right here is the practice.”

18:00–20:00 — Closing / Transition

• “He isn’t fighting anything, but he isn’t helpless either.”

• Final phrases:

  • “May I be steady.”

  • “May I be kind.”

  • “May I meet this life as it is.”

• Invite gentle opening of the eyes.