This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Deliberately Here and Now; Samadhi (4) Being Deliberate. 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.
Good morning or good day, everyone. Welcome. As we come here to begin our meditation, one of the very valuable approaches to meditation is to, when you begin, do so deliberately, intentionally, purposefully. Clearly, this is what you’re doing. It’s invaluable to sit down to meditate, and it’s invaluable to sit down to concentrate the mind in such a way that it enters into a degree of Samadhi1. The Buddha said that to see things as they are in this world, cultivate Samadhi. To be able to see things as they are in ourselves, to be able to see things in the wider world, it’s as valuable to clear the eyes in meditation as it is to get a good night’s sleep or to have the basic needs of food and water cared for, so that there can be the subtleness and the clarity to be able to be in this difficult world in a useful way.
So, in the same way, for Samadhi to see things as they are, one of the ways to do this is to be actually quite deliberate that you are entering into a new situation. If you’re going to go to sleep, do so deliberately. Just go to bed. People who are sometimes tempted to bring with them their devices may have a hard time falling asleep. If you’re going to clean yourself in the shower, don’t do it casually and walk in with all your clothes. Do it deliberately and prepare yourself.
And so, when I started regular meditation, it was in the Zen tradition. Every time we would sit down, the practice was to bow to your meditation seat and then to bow away from the meditation seat, which was understood—at least I understood it to be—bowing to the whole world as we sat down. In Zen, we would sit facing a wall, so in a sense, you were turning your back to the world. But before doing so, you would bow to the world. You’re not abandoning it; you’re not leaving it behind. This bowing made a clear transition to really sit down into a new location, a new time. This is what we’re doing.
If we go into meditation too casually, we can bring along with us the thoughts and concerns, preoccupations of the day, and we’re swimming in those as we begin. There’s something very wonderful and clean and appropriate that when we start doing some activities, for example, going into a sacred temple, we’re leaving behind for a few minutes the ordinary world—not to abandon it, but to actually enter into the world in a deeper way than we can if we’re still swimming in ordinary daily preoccupations. So we can see more clearly. That’s the theme of this meditation today: the idea of starting the meditation deliberately.
So, with a certain kind of purposefulness or deliberateness, care for your meditation posture. You might sway backwards and forwards, side to side, as a way of really feeling the center of gravity, feeling the pivot point with your sitting bones, so you can find a way that if you’re sitting upright, the weight of the body is balanced and aligned through the whole body, centered. If you’re lying down, maybe there’s a way of also twisting a little bit or adjusting the spine, the shoulders. There’s a way of having the shoulders roll back a little bit so the shoulder blades are a little bit more tucked underneath the back, allowing the chest to open. And maybe a small straightening out of the spine between the shoulder blades. Some people find laying down that bringing their legs up towards their body, so the knees are bent and upright, makes for a more deliberate “here I am.” So the soles of the feet are flat on the surface.
And then to close the eyes and spend a little bit more time with the posture, now from the inside out. Feeling, is there any way in which the body wants to be adjusted? Any ways that you’ve overdone a casualness or relaxation in the body? Comforting yourself in a comfortable posture on a couch, it’s possible to overdo that, and it’s possible to do it too little. Adjust the posture so that it’s an intentional posture. There’s a sense that the whole posture is now going to participate in the meditation. It isn’t that you park your body in a comfortable position so you can forget about the body and meditation is mostly mental. Samadhi is a full-participation form of meditation. It has to be, because it involves a unification of all of who we are.
So, a deliberate, intentional way of having the body. Generally, it means to sit a little bit more upright, like if you heard a fascinating sound that you don’t recognize nearby. Some people would sit up, straighten up to, “What is that?” Not with tension, not with fear. Maybe there can be an attitude of delight in this intentional, purposeful way of being here in the body. This posture, this purposeful inclusion of the body, provides a grounding in the present moment, in the present location.
And then with the eyes closed, almost as if it’s a ritual of beginning, of putting aside the wider world in whatever reasonable way that’s possible, to be here for the purpose of meditating, not for the purpose of solving problems. To take, to assume, to offer yourself a few deeper breaths, comfortably deeper, fuller. A longer inhale and a longer exhale than usual.
As part of this deliberate coming here to meditate, you could say to yourself as you breathe in deeply: “here.” And as you exhale a longer exhale: “now.” Letting those words invite you into here and now.
And then letting your breathing return to normal. Maybe for a few more breaths, to use the words “here” and “now.” But as you say “now” for the exhale, gently, without ambition, relax your body. Relax your body into now, so that it’s a choice, at least for a moment, to deliberately orient yourself to now. And as you inhale, “here,” deliberately orienting yourself to here, maybe with the inhale also kind of settling into here.
Letting the words “here” and “now” maybe become quieter or fall away, but with the attitude behind those words, gently breathing in, here. Breathing out, now. And as you breathe out, to relax the thinking mind, relax the thinking muscles.
And then with a gentle, relaxed determination, “here” as you breathe in can be a “here” just with this inhale. “Now” as you exhale, just “now” with this exhale. Not pushing anything away, but letting breathing, the sensations, the experience of breathing here and now, be at the center of all things. With a certainty, maybe a provisional certainty, that breathing mindfully, breathing with attention, just breathing, is invaluable. This is all you need to do, so that you can purposefully dedicate, be centered on breathing in and breathing out.
Gently, gently, with a certain purposefulness, be here and now, as if just fully here is the most important thing.
And can you feel some healthy, appropriate difference between being just casually here, or not really here with drifting off in thoughts, versus being here with a gentle deliberateness? Maybe arising from deep inside, a sense of intentionality, an embodied intent to inhabit here and now.
And as we come to the end of this meditation, is there a way of being deliberately rooted here and now, centered in your meditation posture, that provides its own important, valuable way to turn your attention out into the world to see things as they are, without losing a rootedness, a centeredness here?
Gazing upon this suffering world, gazing upon this compassionate world of people caring for each other’s suffering. Gazing upon this world where people do feel fulfilled and feel joy, too. Rooted here to gaze upon it all. And to wish well. To gaze upon the world and wish it well.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
And may all beings know that there are others who care for them, even from a great distance. Let’s not exclude anyone from the circle of our care.
So hello and welcome to this fourth talk on Samadhi. This is still part of the introduction to this topic of Samadhi; more will be revealed slowly as we go along. It began with the emphasis on discovery. This is why mindfulness is invaluable: to really know oneself as well as possible, to know all the parts of oneself, so that when the work of Samadhi begins, all that begins to be gathered together in a certain kind of way in which the inner life gets organized or oriented.
Then, to create the attentional space, the intentional context for this gathering together, it’s helpful to have a form of attention to what’s happening in the present that has a lightness to it, or openness to it, a non-straining, non-forcefulness, at the same time as not being casual or lackadaisical.
Then yesterday, the emphasis was that Samadhi is really a stepping away from life as it’s ordinarily lived—ordinary concerns, thoughts, activities, and even feelings. Not to push anything away, but to deliberately step away, as you would when going into a shower to clean oneself, or going to the bathroom, or going to your bedroom to sleep at night. There are probably all kinds of activities where you go and you really put things aside. Maybe a nicer reference point for this was—I still have very fond memories of visiting my son’s preschool. We could visit anytime we wanted to; it was a very wonderful, special place. And somehow being there when all the children were napping… that’s a time when you don’t want to wake up a little preschool kid. So entering into the space was to put aside everything else to just be there quietly. It was a very clear way to be somewhere new, in a different place. So, Samadhi is entering, a willingness to enter into a kind of different realm, almost. We’ll talk more about this as we go along.
And then today, I want to make the emphasis that if the focus is going to be on Samadhi, it’s really helpful—it’s as helpful when we do mindfulness, but even more central—to sit down and meditate in a deliberate way. To be deliberate, purposeful, intentional, like, “Now, this is what I’m doing.” It’s all too easy to bring with us our life, our concerns, our preoccupations, the habits, the momentums of our mind, and be a little bit too casual, lackadaisical, and just kind of sit down in a casual or habitual way. And we sit down, and we’re just continuing to roll along in how we were thinking and how we’re feeling from before. Not to push anything away or deny any of it, but this deliberateness of, “Now I’m going to do something different. This is a time for this sacred space. Now is a time for this, to really be centered here.”
If you feel like you’re abandoning your world or yourself, what’s going on, understand that the purpose for Samadhi is not for its own sake, for the pleasures of Samadhi. The purpose is, in fact, to be able to see things clearly. And so it’s an approach to shift the orientation of where the mind and the concerns are temporarily, to create the conditions in the mind, the heart, the body, to be able to then later see the world more clearly.
This is different than how sometimes mindfulness is taught. Mindfulness is taught that everything is practice, everything is something to be mindful of. And there’s not a turning away or deliberateness in saying, “Now this is the time to just be centered in the breathing,” for example. Samadhi is a kind of gathering inward to a particular kind of focal point or center around which we gather ourselves, whereas mindfulness sometimes is taught as, “Don’t do that, but rather stay completely open and just be aware of whatever arises in your experience.” This is also a very effective way of practicing, though sometimes it leads to just letting our mind roll along like it usually does. I’ve known people whose idea of mindfulness is letting things be, just being aware of it, to just let their thinking think what it wants to do and just kind of casually follow along. That’s not really mindfulness if we’re just kind of letting the train of associated thought think what it wants to think. Mindfulness is not stopping that, but it’s stepping away to no longer participate in that, to see it so clearly that some kind of participation and fueling of it stops. Some part of our mind becomes quiet.
So mindfulness is much more of an open awareness, usually. Samadhi is more of a centered awareness where it’s a different orientation. We’ll talk more about this, but these two don’t have to be opposed; they can actually be partners with each other. And that’s how I like to teach mindfulness, is that it’s partnered with Samadhi. But for now, for these weeks, we’re focusing more on just Samadhi by itself, and the integration with mindfulness will come.
For this purpose, when it’s Samadhi, to understand it’s not letting the mind continue as it usually is; it’s really choosing to step into a different approach, a different way. It’s a deliberateness. And it begins by how in meditation you enter into your meditation posture. To think of that posture as almost like a ritual of deliberateness, of purposefulness, of, “Now I’m going to do this,” almost as a transition to go from one space to another. There are plenty of times in our world where we mark the transition from one situation to another. Sometimes in certain situations, there’s a minute of silence to prepare people for what’s coming. So, this deliberateness: “Here I am.”
So as you practice meditation, you might experiment with what is a good way for you to bring a quality of deliberateness, purposefulness, intentionality to your meditation when you sit down. And to discover how to do that so it’s not a strain, it’s not a stress, it’s not an expectation that things now have to be different and you have to hold things at bay, but rather a settling, a rootedness here and now. “Now it’s time to do this. Now is not the time to compose shopping lists or not the time to review the conversations from yesterday. Now this is the time to do this.”
So part of Samadhi involves a clarity of purpose. And the simplest way of saying that maybe is a clarity that, “Now I’m going to center myself, root myself on something that’s going to be at the center of everything.” So rather than, “I think now there’s a laser focus on something,” it’s a centering on or settling on, for example, the breathing. And that’s the reference point we’ll use for these weeks on Samadhi. For some people, it’s another thing they center themselves on; it’s loving-kindness, and loving-kindness is understood to be a Samadhi practice. Sometimes it’s a mantra. So there’s a variety of things.
But for now, it’s breathing. And this idea of centering yourself on the breath, rather than focusing on the breath, is offered as a way to appreciate that we’re gathering together. We’re not creating a separation with a mind that’s looking and zeroing in and focusing. We’re not excluding things. We’re going into having something be at the center of all things. And at that center, we settle into it more and more. We relax into it, we open into it, we allow it to fill us. And everything else either gathers together to support that, or it simply falls away temporarily because it’s not really needed in this centered way of living in the course of meditation.
This approach to living a deliberate life in how we are present for things, how we’re rooted here and now—you might want to experiment with that through your daily life as well. There might be all kinds of situations where you just end up doing it casually as you go through the day. But what would it be like to do the things you do with a gentle, clear deliberateness? “Now I’m doing this. I’m giving myself, centering myself on this.” If you’re washing dishes or filling the dishwasher, to just center yourself and do that fully, not casually. Cooking in the kitchen, cleaning the house, walking from your car in a parking lot to wherever you’re going, a store or work or something, is to do that in a deliberate way, rooted. So you’re rooted here in the walking.
So what happens? How is your life different if you insert an intentionality, a purposefulness, a deliberateness to really do what you’re already doing, but to really do it, and not to do it as if it’s not really what your life is about at that moment? That what you’re really about is the proliferation of thoughts and concerns in the mind.
So may you live, may you benefit, may you find a freedom in living deliberately. Thank you.
Samadhi: A Pali word that refers to a state of meditative concentration or absorption. ↩