Let’s set our posture. Use your frame, your bones, to support you and find a position that keeps your spine mostly straight with only a slight curve near the base. Adjust as needed so that you allow your muscles to relax and rely on your skeleton to support you. Bring your awareness to your body. Scan your body from one end to the other or be aware of your whole body at once and look for places that are holding tension and try to relax those areas. As you do this, settle into a posture that will hold you upright and alert but relaxed.

Now, let’s set our intention to be present. You may follow along with my lead or follow your own practice but either way set the intention to be in the present moment experiencing what it is to be sitting in meditation tonight. Use your mindfulness to bring your awareness back to the present moment as soon as you notice that you’ve become distracted. Sounds simple.

Welcome to the first sit of the new year. Last week Abhaya offered a meditation on looking at how the past year continues to ripple through us. 

I’m going to try to bookend that with an invitation to explore the future. New years is a time when we reflect on where we are and where we’d like to be. We make resolutions to improve parts of our lives. 

Have you set any resolutions for the coming year? When we do this we set an expectation for how we’d like things to be. We want things to be different than they are. That’s understandable and generally a good thing. To examine ourselves and look for areas that we want to make better is how we keep moving forward. How we keep becoming a more ideal version of ourselves. 

When we sit we often bring expectations to the cushion with us. We’re all hoping to get something from this practice. We want more peace or calm. We want enlightenment. We want something that we think this practice will bring us. That’s what brings us to the cushion – an expectation. 

Expectations also have pitfalls. We may put ourselves down for not following through on a resolution. We might feel sad or angry if our expectations aren’t met. Let’s not do that tonight. If that kind of thinking pops up, cut it off quickly. When you polish a diamond you start with a coarse grit. This is our coarse grit. If that negative voice starts talking just tell it NOPE. NOT TONIGHT! 

Without judgment, without critique, let’s take a few silent minutes to consider what expectations you have that bring you into this practice. Don’t worry if you feel like your expectations have been met or not, if they’re lofty or lowly, just what are they. Remember, don’t judge or critique, and let’s actively stop any negative thoughts that come up.

What if you allowed yourself to hold an expectation, to set a resolution, that you knew going in was impossible?

In zen temples and sanghas around the world people take the bodhisattva vows – 

   Beings are numberless; I vow to save them all.

   Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them all.

   Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them all.

   The Buddha Way is unattainable; I vow to attain it.

These are enormous statements. Unattainable, boundless, inexhaustible, numberless. Yet the vow is sincerely taken and practiced earnestly.

So for the next few minutes I’d like to offer you space to create your own enormous vow to yourself. 

What is your vision of your ideal self? What does the perfect you look like? If you attained everything emotionally and spiritually that you could imagine, what would that you be like? Try to get as clear a picture or concept as possible of your perfect, ideal self. And go big! As big as you can imagine! We’re not worried about possible or practical. There’s no limit here.

You may have some resistance. A voice that says “you’ll never do that.” or some other limiting thoughts.  Let that go. If you need it then use the coarse grit and tell that voice to sit down and be quiet. Cut it off as soon as it starts. Everytime. Once you have your ideal self in mind simply sit with it. Hold the concept, the image, the thought – “This is my ideal self.” and just let it become your object of meditation.

Picturing your ideal self isn’t to say that there’s anything wrong with who you are now. We’re simply acknowledging that we’re always a work in progress. By picturing our ideal self we’ve expanded our view of ourselves. We’ve opened to a greater possibility for who we’re becoming. 

When taking the bodhisattva vows we expand our right view and open ourselves to the limitlessness of this practice. The same is true for holding a limitless view of our ideal selves.

Simply by holding the limitless even for a few moments we now KNOW that within ourselves we hold the limitless! 

Let’s sit with that a little longer.

As we near the end of this meditation, let’s use a finer grit to polish our diamond self. Bring your focus to the sense of limitlessness by itself. Hold the feeling that it’s created. Even if it’s only a small sensation, draw your attention to it as strongly as you can. 

   Beings are numberless; I vow to save them all.

   Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them all.

   Dharma gates are boundless; I vow to enter them all.

   The Buddha Way is unattainable; I vow to attain it.

I am already my ideal self.