This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Beyond Thought; Road Less Traveled (2 of 5) Wholesome and Unwholesome. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Hello my friends, and welcome to this meditation session. Yesterday for the meditation, I offered the phrase “no comment.” One important aspect of meditation is to experience ourselves, to be engaged in the meditation without being caught in the commentary we can make about what’s happening, or especially a commentary about anything else in the world while we’re meditating. Of course, it’s difficult to do this because having commentary is partly how we try to be safe in the world, partly how we think about and plan what we want in the world. Partly, it’s how we create an identity or reinforce who we are, and partly it’s a way to entertain ourselves.
But meditation doesn’t operate in the arena of commentary; it operates in the arena of direct, lived experience, and that exists independent of commentary for the most part. So I offer the phrase “no comment.” Whatever is happening, let it be, allow it to be there, but don’t be involved in it with commentary. Don’t start thinking about it. If you really get skilled at “no comment,” you would not judge it, you would not evaluate it, you would not criticize anything. You would not chase anything or seek anything or try to get something going or going away. There’s a very radical, almost a paradigm shift of what happens in the mind when we start developing an understanding of what mindfulness meditation is.
What I’d like to suggest is that the commentary we make about life is the arena of our suffering. The arena, or the field in which we grow our meditation practice, the Dharma, is the direct experience, especially in the body, that is a different feel than commentary.
Imagine that you are straddling two properties. One is the huge parking lot of a huge factory with smog and pollution and noise. But the other foot is on the property of a beautiful field, a woodland field with beautiful growth, with trees around it and grass and wildflowers growing up. And here you are, straddling between these two places, and you would like to get some rest. You would like to find a place of peace to be for a while. And so you choose to go into the woodland field and walk across it and find a quieter place in the woods.
In the same way with our meditation, the equivalent of the quiet, peaceful, fertile place is the experience we have of ourselves, especially bodily, after a comment, after the end of a comment, at the end of a thought before the next thought, at the end of a comment before the next comment. Beyond the boundaries of thinking, beyond the edges of comments, can you feel or sense the more peaceful field of the quiet, fertile, lush woodland meadow?
The advantage of saying “no comment” is twofold: to not be caught in the commentary, not stay involved, but also to become aware of that which is beyond, outside, before, deeper than comments. The place where there are no comments is a place where things are fertile. It’s a natural area where something healthy and good can begin to grow. Maybe after homeostasis has been reached, a disturbed woodland will take a while to come into homeostasis, but it will.
So, “no comment.” You might continue saying that word as needed, and then look for that space at the end of saying “no comment” where there is no commentary. Look at the space at the end of a thought before the next one and see what is there at the source of where breathing begins within you. Breathing is the natural spring in the woodlands out of which the water flows. Feel and sense the source of breathing, where breathing begins and returns.
So, to assume a meditation posture and gently close your eyes or gently lower your gaze.
Perhaps it helps to begin separating yourself from the world of commentary and thoughts by offering to your lips, the corner of your lips, a gentle, small smile. Maybe a smile of delight in beginning your meditation.
And then becoming aware of how the body experiences breathing. You might have thoughts and commentary and judgments about your breathing, but for now, let them be in the other field. Let them be alone and do their thing. But for you, step into the body’s experience of breathing. And as you exhale, to relax and soften your body.
Relaxing your body is a way of caring for your body, and it’s a way of preparing your body, tilling the soil of your body so an inner health, inner goodness, inner well-being can begin to show itself.
And for a few breaths, extend the exhale without it being a strain. Just a few moments of a longer exhale until the urge to breathe in somewhere in your body is the most natural and immediate issue of the moment. Maybe deep inside your body, the source, the beginning of the inhale.
Experiencing yourself directly, listening to your body, feeling your body, is to feel something deep in your inner life without comment.
And then as we come to the end of this sitting, to appreciate for a few moments that beyond the field of commentary, beyond the factory of thoughts and ideas and judgments, there lies a fertile field, a valley within, from which flows whatever goodness, whatever wholesomeness there is within us. A quality of goodness and wholesomeness that exists within us independent of our thoughts and ideas of should and shouldn’t.
And to be quiet, still, gentle, to be able to listen and feel for these inner wellsprings of goodness. And maybe to hear, to feel the care that’s there for the well-being of others—care and love and respect, absence of hostility, absence of greed, absence of aggression. And from this place, this deep inner field of goodness, to let our well-wishing silently, perhaps, radiate, flow, shine outward, gazing upon the world with goodwill.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
And may whatever is good within us, whatever is wholesome within us, resonate with the goodness and wholesomeness that’s in others. May we share the wholesome with all beings.
So hello and welcome to this second talk on “The Road Less Taken,” and applying this idea, this metaphor of a fork in the forest, a fork in the road. And that there is a fork that leads to what is unwholesome and a fork that leads to what is wholesome.
What is the path that leads to the unwholesome? It’s unwholesome mental, verbal, and physical activity that we can be involved in. What is the road to the wholesome? It is the wholesome mental, verbal, and physical activities that we engage in. So it’s what’s happening here and now that is important here, taking the next step on these two different roads.
This idea that there is a division or a separation or a distinction between two very different roads to take in life is kind of inherent in the Buddhist path, Buddhist practice. The one that leads to suffering is very much tied to the world of thinking. Not that thinking is wrong or bad in and of itself, but there’s a world we construct out of our thinking. If we want something too much, or if we have aggression or hostility, or if we have fear, if we have anxiety, there’s a way in which that can prompt a lot of thinking, imaginations, and thoughts. And those thoughts that we construct then have a bounce back on the rest of us.
If we’re anxious about something, it’s all too easy to be caught up in thoughts about anxiety—the ideas and the story of what’s going to happen. And those very stories, maybe imagery that we create in the mind, then tie back down to the body and evoke more anxiety, reinforcing the anxiety. So the question is, what comes first, the thoughts or the anxiety? We don’t have to answer that question because it’s like a chicken and egg thing. But the world of thinking is often the world of abstraction, the world of imagination, the world of distraction. And to a great extent, that’s the source for a lot of the unwholesome ways in which we live our life.
So if I have some idea that having a really big fancy car was really going to perfect my sense of self and how people see me and my sense of success in the world, then when I go by a car dealership and see a big fancy car, then that desire for that car arises. The very kind of thought-construct of self that I’m living under is then the source for a desire for that car, and that could become an obsession. If I have the same desire to be wealthy and therefore have a wonderful kind of life with people praising me and recognizing how great I am, and someone crashes into my car, my hostility and anger to that person is not just because of the inconvenience of having a damaged car. My whole self-image is tied to what this damaged car means, and the assault this person has done on me is not just me as a human being, but it’s me as my identity, my constructed sense of self that I’m trying to maintain.
So this reciprocal relationship between thinking and identity, thinking and desires and aversions, can become kind of a whirlpool of activity that we get caught in.
And then there’s another activity which is a deeper wellspring that arises from deep inside, that the Buddha likens not to something that’s constructed by the human mind, the made-up world of thoughts, but it’s related to our biological life, our deep kind of natural possibility or movements within us where we don’t construct things, but we allow things to grow, like a tree grows. The planting and growing of a plant is a metaphor for this inner growth that can happen deep inside. And for that, like growing a plant, we create the conditions for it to thrive, but we don’t make it thrive. So we don’t have to make up a lot of thoughts; we have to almost quiet the thinking down because they’re just weeds that get in the way. But if we can become quiet enough to feel this deeper world to come up, then these beautiful things arrive.
This distinction is big in the Buddhist teaching. One of the ways that it can explicitly play out is when he contrasts explicitly what’s called the five hindrances with the seven factors of Awakening. The five hindrances are sensual desire (in some lists it’s covetousness), and then ill will, hostility, rigidity or sloth, torpor, numbness, and then restlessness and agitation, regrets, and then indecisiveness. I’ve talked about these five hindrances recently.
And then on the other hand, there’s the seven factors of Awakening. These beautiful qualities, they’re kind of like the great wealth of Buddhism that the Buddha is offering you to find inside yourself. And so these are mindfulness, a clarity of mind that sees clearly. I’ll talk more about that. But then there’s making effort, engaging, and being vitality, inner vitality by which we engage in things. There’s joy, tranquility, Samadhi1, and equanimity. And these are states that emerge from within; they’re not things that emerge from our thinking. You don’t think your way into the seven factors of Awakening. If you use your thinking, you almost think your way out of your thoughts so that you can allow this deeper wellspring of the states to arise from within.
So there’s this huge contrast between the hindrances on one hand and the seven factors on the other. And we see with the hindrances that they very much involve the world of constructs and thoughts and ideas that we have about what we want from the outer world, or the outer world that we construct inside of ourselves that’s not really part of our deep sense of self, but kind of the constructed world. When the first of the five hindrances is to covet the things of others, then it’s clearly about the outer world. Sensual desire is also about how to get the senses met by the environment around us and have a good feeling for comfort and pleasure. Ill will is also externalizing something where, both with desire and ill will, there’s an object of attention out there that is the problem. Even if we’re upset with something about ourselves or desire something within ourselves, we are objectifying ourselves. There’s kind of this operating principle of the mind and thoughts and ideas of what things are that’s the object of attention that it’s operating under.
And so all five of these hindrances have a lot to do with this objectification of the world that we’re kind of living with. And some of that has to do, or a lot of that has to do, with how that relates to the constructed idea of self we’re trying to build up or defend or escape from, that somehow is coming into play in this objectification. There’s this self that wants what reinforces or builds or threatens that sense of self. So again, we’re into this world of objectification, of thoughts, of ideas. And people who spend a lot of time in the hindrances spend a lot of time in thought. That’s one of the reasons why they’re so distracting and why they’re a hindrance, because they hinder clarity, intimacy, being in touchness with something deep within where something deep can grow, something deep can be born and sprout and germinate and flow and expand within us.
And the expansive states are wholesome, which the Buddha says that we should cultivate and develop and expand and bring to abundance to fulfill. He does not say let go of the wholesome states. He does not say to destroy them. He actually emphasizes their importance. But these are states that arise from this deep place within. And the representative of the wholesome states that can arise are qualities of mindfulness—not so much mindfulness as thoughtfulness, which some people interpret mindfulness as, but rather, maybe think of it more as a kind of a quiet silence, a capacity for awareness, for attentiveness, for a deep silent listening to what’s here that’s as natural as hearing if your ears work, as natural as seeing if your eyes see.
And then there’s the clarity part of the seven factors of Awakening, but the little word for investigation, usually the name for the second factor of Awakening, is the differentiation of states, to be able to distinguish between states. And what this refers to is the very thing we’re talking about this week: seeing the distinction between these two paths, what’s wholesome and what’s unwholesome. And so to be able to feel that, not just see it, not just know it intellectually, but to really feel the unwholesome qualities, characteristics, sensations, feelings that come with unwholesome activity of mind, speech, and body. And to know and feel and recognize the wholesome. That capacity comes from being really quiet, for awareness being really clear and sensitive to what’s happening deep inside.
And that sensitivity then also includes a sense of inner vitality, where the feeling of being alive and having a certain kind of energy, even if we’re sick, there can be a certain kind of vitality, a certain kind of aliveness that we can feel that actually feels like it’s wholesome, it’s good. And then there’s joy—not the joy that comes from thinking things which are delightful and pleasant, imagining our fantasies are coming true, but rather a certain delight or appreciation of just being alive, just this wonderfulness of a settled, present aliveness that’s not caught up in the factory of thoughts.
There are preoccupations we have in thinking and wanting and all that, that is swirling and is a labyrinth or is a maze with no exit that spins and reinforces itself and can feel like there’s no way out. There is a way out, not because the maze has an exit, but if we can step out of the maze, if we can quiet the mind, if we can see the end of a thought before a new thought begins and see in that very momentary gap there’s another life to be had, where we allow this deeper world to emerge.
And then that joy leads to something becoming tranquil and calm and peaceful, the fifth factor of Awakening. And then the sixth is Samadhi, which is a state of being organized, coordinated. All the different parts of us become coordinated or organized together or cooperative. All of us may become a cooperative entity. It’s usually called unification and a state of wholeness. And then there’s equanimity, a profound experience of peace where we feel happily, delightfully that we’re not going to react to anything, we’re not going to be pushed around by anything. There’s a peace that’s stable.
So this distinction here between the wholesome and the unwholesome, these two different operating systems, is that one operates very much in the world of thinking and ideas and fantasies and commentary. And the other, at its root, operates under something not with thoughts, but rather with deep inner sensations and feelings that we can tap into, that can come in to spread out and grow within us what’s wholesome within us. And a lot of what we learn to do is to let go of the hindrances so we get out of the way of this deeper wisdom that resides within us.
So that’s why the topic of the meditation today, “no comment,” is quite a profound comment that can lead beyond comments. So thank you.
Samadhi: A state of deep concentration or meditative absorption, described by the speaker as a state of being “organized, coordinated… unification and a state of wholeness.” ↩