This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Compassion; Samadhi (5) in the Context of Compassion. 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 and welcome. The overall theme for the beginning of the year is Samadhi1—the practice of Samadhi, the experience of Samadhi. This first week is about setting the foundation for exploring this. For this fifth and last day of the week, the foundation, background, or context for practicing Samadhi is compassion, care, anukampā, karunā, mettā, muditā2—all the different caregiving, care-feeling emotions that we are capable of.
This is the context for Samadhi. The purpose of Samadhi is not for its own sake; it’s not to have some wonderful, good experience just for its own purpose. Certainly, the experience of Samadhi that can occur is invaluable, but the purpose of Samadhi is not for its own experiences, but rather to be able to meet the suffering of the world—our own suffering—and care for it in a profound and effective way. To care for it not with our reactivity, but to care for it where we meet it with the place deep inside where the heart can be open enough to hold the whole world. The place of stability and steadiness where love can gaze upon our own suffering, the suffering of others, and care about it. To offer it a tender love, to offer it the gaze upon it as something that deserves our respect, our care, our love.
Just as if you encountered a child who was injured, maybe a very young child, or an animal, or a friend, or an elder, you would offer your heart to them. You would stop and care. And maybe at first, you wouldn’t do anything; you would just let them know that there’s someone here who cares and is holding them, holding the context of their challenge to accompany them. They’re not alone.
We have this profound capacity in our hearts, maybe deeper than our hearts, within us, to have a care for the world and a care for ourselves. The context for Samadhi is to practice Samadhi out of that care, with that care, for the purpose of that care. Not to lose sight of that will make the whole practice of Samadhi more meaningful, more satisfying, more inspiring, and more transformative.
So as we sit today, experiment with what it’s like to sit with a kind of deep care for yourself, where you are accompanying yourself with love, accompanying yourself with compassion, kindness, friendliness. All these words can be a high standard to measure yourself by. Maybe you can meet yourself with respect. Samadhi is sacred, in a sense; it’s an area of reverence, at least for me. And so can be your experience of yourself, the attitude toward yourself—that a certain reverence and respect, a sacredness of holding all of who you are, including whatever is challenging. This is a context for Samadhi.
To begin this meditation practice, gently close your eyes or lower your gaze if you want to keep them open. Appreciate that however you are in this present moment—in your body, in your mind, in your heart, with the challenges of your life—that here in meditation, you’ve come to hold it in care, to accompany it with care. To begin by not trying to fix it or judge it or be overwhelmed by it, if possible, but rather to assume a deliberate posture of care, attention, of accompaniment. For some people, the deliberate posture of meditation helps us to step out of our normal states of mind so we can better accompany what is here.
The same with breathing. To begin, maybe if you have a shift of attitude where taking a few deeper breaths is done in a way that you care for yourself, you want well for yourself as you supply oxygen, presence, and relaxation, calm into your system. Taking some long, slow, deeper breaths and relaxing with the exhale.
Then, returning to normal breathing. If there are some very simple ways you can adjust your normal breath so it’s more comfortable or pleasant, so it’s more sensitive to your deeper life, maybe you can exhale just a little longer than usual, maybe by letting go. Maybe there’s a greater stability in breathing if you relax your belly. Maybe there’s a feeling of welcoming the inhale.
Then, relaxing whatever is agitated or tense in your body, mind, or heart. Whatever way that you’re sitting here in meditation, whatever way you are, can you imagine that there’s a wide field around you of care, love, compassion? That the radiance of your care spreads wide enough so all of who you are occurs within it.
And then in the center of it all, the center of that radiance of love or care, the center of your thoughts and your imagination of love—the center of it all, for there to be breathing. With the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out is what massages care and compassion and love. It is what spreads a tenderness and a gentleness of love into your meditation.
You might, once in every cycle of breathing in and breathing out, ever so softly say to yourself a word of care, love, or compassion, kindness, or the word “care” itself. Say these words as a reminder to touch into these feelings, these attitudes, as you sit here with whatever is happening.
If you are a little calmer or more settled than at the beginning of the sitting, see if you can find on the edges of your calm, on the edges of your settledness, an embodiment, attitude, or feeling of compassion, care, a tender kindness. And then breathe into those edges, breathe into those attitudes, maybe allowing it to be the flavor or the weather of attention.
And then as we come to the end of this sitting, to take two or three breaths to gaze upon yourself in appreciation. No matter how challenging or easy your meditation has been, it’s a profound offer of care, a gift that you give yourself. To give yourself an attitude of respect, an attitude of valuing yourself enough to do this practice.
And to gaze now out upon the world, to value everyone, to offer a degree of respect and appreciation for the life force, capacity for attention, and connection, relationships, success, and fulfillment that everyone has a capacity to experience, and which many people don’t. And to offer the whole world our compassion, our care, with an attitude of respect and reverence, where people are accompanied and supported in how they’re finding their way.
May the way that we live our lives support the welfare and happiness of everyone. And may we wish and may we act in ways that are for the happiness of everyone. May our goodwill and how we live support the safety of everyone. May our well-wishing and how we contribute to this world contribute to everyone feeling peace, being at peace. And may we wish and offer in whatever way we can, freedom for everyone’s hearts. May all beings be happy and safe, peaceful and free. And may that be our heart’s wish.
Welcome now to this fifth introductory talk to the topic of Samadhi. This experience, dedication, and practice of Samadhi lies at the heart of Buddhist meditation practice. It’s integral to both the development of deep concentration and to the development of mindfulness itself, Vipassanā3 itself. Mindfulness and Vipassanā are not the same thing. Mindfulness is a practice, and Vipassanā is a consequence of that practice. The word Vipassanā refers to the deep, liberating insights that can come when the practice of mindfulness is conjoined, is united with a strong, stable, steady, focused, still attention—when it’s combined with Samadhi.
In the way the Buddha taught Samadhi, there’s always preparation for it. There’s not a direct frontal assault on Samadhi. Not a few people, maybe highly idealistic, will learn about meditation, learn about Samadhi, and say, “By golly, I’m going to do this.” There’s a fable of a very capable young man who was successful at school, successful in sports, successful in many different areas of life—very capable—who for some reason decides to address his suffering by going to a monastery to practice. He asks the abbot, “I’m quite dedicated, I learn quickly, I’m skilled in many things, and I can really apply myself. I have dedication, I have discipline. If I come to the monastery to live here to practice, how long will it take to become enlightened?” And the abbess says, “Well, probably 10 years.”
That seems pretty long for him, and he says, “No, you don’t understand. I can really give myself wholeheartedly to it and apply all of myself to this and really do it full-time. How long will it take if all my capacities are engaged?” And she said, “Oh, in that case, it’ll take 20 years.”
To have the wrong attitude of willfulness with Samadhi, which is not uncommon for people, is not the preparation that’s needed. This week has been about some of the things we can do to prepare ourselves. They’re all kind of a set together and they support each other, these five qualities. They don’t necessarily have to be in order, but the first that we gave was discovery. This is why mindfulness is so helpful. It’s so invaluable, necessary for Samadhi to know yourself well.
I’ve known people who have practiced concentration, sometimes not even practicing it. I’ve known people as young children who have had very, very difficult lives, maybe with a lot of suffering, maybe a lot of violence. The only relief they could find was by somehow separating themselves, detaching, disassociating themselves from their ordinary life, their ordinary mind. They had the ability to go into very deep states of concentration. It gave them safety; it gave them a place to go that was away from all the challenges of their ordinary daily life, sometimes at home. But they had never really opened up to really experience and be associated with themselves, be connected and healed with what was there. These kinds of people who have this deep, quick ability to concentrate—it’s often a sign that they don’t know themselves very well. For Samadhi, not just concentration, to really be effective, the idea is that it needs to include everything. So discovering who we are, knowing who we are, and as we practice, new things will appear about ourselves. To welcome that, “Oh, this too needs to be included, this too needs to be known.”
The second thing I talked about was the very awareness, the attention that discovers and is present for things. It is to experiment so that attention is not strained, there’s no forcefulness in it or willfulness to it. It has a lightness to it. There’s a feeling that attention is open, maybe receptive, maybe accepting, maybe available and non-contentious. That there’s a light touch. Of course, that light touch, lightness of attention, makes it easier for thoughts to hijack attention and for the mind to wander away. The art of meditation practice is how to have a deliberateness in attention, an intentness for being attentive, without having strain. That takes a while to learn.
One of the ways to learn it is to understand that when we’re doing Samadhi practice, we are not consciously bringing all of our life with us, even though we want to include all of who we are in it. Samadhi practice is to enter into a sacred space, a special time. You might go into a sacred place in nature, a grove of trees where things are really peaceful and still, meaningful. It feels like you can really relax and be whole and feel like you belong to the world. There’s a quiet and peacefulness, and you’ve left the world behind. But in that peacefulness, all of you can be there that’s still there. And so you can feel yourself and know yourself in a deeper and fuller way than if you bring with you all your preoccupations, concerns, desires, and fears into Samadhi.
To have this light touch that doesn’t wander off into thought, there has to be an appreciation that this is a distinct time and place. And now to be here in a different kind of sacred environment that is meditation, and to be somewhat deliberate about that. Some people will bow, some people will light a candle, light incense, some people will put on a meditation shawl, or some people have robes. Some people close the door, lower the light, or do something. Some people like to meditate outdoors and go someplace outdoors under a tree—do something that’s intentional that feels like, “Now I’m going into a different time and place.” It’s very valuable to go meditate in the same place every day, so the association with the place has to do with meditation, so that deliberateness, that association, that familiarity kicks in when you’re there.
And then today, to have compassion, care, love, and the whole family of caregiving emotions that we have is a palette that we can choose from. Some people experience love in different ways. For some people, compassion is what’s close at hand. For some people, it’s friendliness and kindness. For some people, it’s a very simple feeling of care that maybe wouldn’t be called love but has a gentleness and a tenderness to it, or a warmth to it. For some people, it is just the feeling of loving warmth. All of them, what they have in common, is care, is appreciation, is a valuing and a respect for the object of that love, that care. In Samadhi practice, that can be for ourselves.
To sit and create an atmosphere—and part of the intentional deliberateness of entering into the world of Samadhi that supports the lightness of awareness—is to somehow infuse or connect that lightness of attention with something that’s tender and soft and warm. That feels like maybe dropping into a warm bath, or on a cold day sitting in front of a warm fire with a blanket over you—something that kind of… and there might be other examples than mine that help you feel like this is a special time for care, for love, for warmth. So that when we’re practicing Samadhi, there’s not a lot of greed and force. There is not a lot of disappointment and discouragement that it’s not going well, like we’re not getting concentrated. To get concentrated with Samadhi can happen without concentrating in the normal kind of way. There can be a settling into a center rather than focusing on a central point.
Sometimes the movement toward Samadhi is best approached kind of from the sides or from the back, not this frontal, “This is what I’m going to do now and be determined.” For some people, that works very well. But what I’m trying to emphasize this week is to deliberately—and if this idea works for you, ritualistically, like a ritual—to create the conditions, to focus on putting them into place. And for today, the last one is to have compassion as part of it. That can be the overall motivation for Samadhi practice.
Samadhi practice, as I’ve been saying, is not for its own sake. The purpose that Buddha offered Samadhi is so that we can see things as they are, clearly, with care, with love, with compassion. So we can become free of our suffering, so that we can enter the world, live this world free of suffering, free of clinging, free of distress, free of anxiety. We can live stable, strong, settled, peaceful, with a clarity of purpose. That we can meet the suffering of the world, we can live a meaningful life.
So the purpose of Samadhi points back to how useful it is to prepare for Samadhi. If the purpose of Samadhi is to be free of suffering and to awaken a care for the world, then the preparation for it is to begin with care, to begin with compassion as a context for doing this practice.
Thank you very much. We’ll continue this for a number of weeks that I’m here. So next week I’ll be back and we’ll continue. Thank you.
Samadhi: A Pāli word meaning “concentration” or “unification of mind.” It refers to a state of deep meditative absorption, where the mind becomes still, focused, and unified. It is a key component of the Buddhist path. ↩
Karunā, Mettā, Muditā: These are three of the four “Brahmavihāras” or “divine abodes” in Buddhism. Karunā is compassion, the wish for others to be free from suffering. Mettā is loving-kindness, the wish for all beings to be happy. Muditā is sympathetic joy, the ability to rejoice in the happiness and success of others. The fourth is Upekkhā (equanimity). ↩
Vipassanā: A Pāli word that means “insight” or “clear-seeing.” It is a form of meditation that involves developing a deep, direct understanding of the nature of reality, particularly the “three marks of existence”: impermanence (anicca), suffering or unsatisfactoriness (dukkha), and non-self (anattā). ↩