This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Settling Point; Samadhi (6) Recognizing the Limitation of Desires and Aversions. 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 and welcome to our Monday beginning of the week series of meditations and teachings. Overall, we’re doing samadhi1 over this extended period of time. In thinking about samadhi, many people consider it the same as concentration, and that is the same as some kind of mental laser focus of the mind that happens from the control tower. Another way of thinking about it is that the word samadhi can also be understood in the very related words, samatha, can also be understood as a settledness, to be settled deeply.
In meditation, in Buddhist teachings, there are four dignified postures for meditation, and I love it when it’s called dignified. There is walking, standing, sitting, and lying down. But the representative for meditation is the sitting posture, and the posture here we have of the Buddha here next to me. There’s something that happens there in this posture. If you stand or if you sit in a balanced way, rooted, upright in this kind of posture, it allows something to settle, to relax. The body then with time begins to relax the tensions, the shoulders which are tight, the belly which is tight. The upward kind of swirl of agitated energy begins to settle, and there’s a feeling of settledness, a settling into the body deeper. In the body, the sense of gravity lowers, the sense of being rooted and grounded increases.
And that is not the same thing as this laser focus of the mind. One way I understand it is that it’s kind of like a trampoline. If you lay down in the middle or sit in the middle of the trampoline, the trampoline settles and sags, takes the weight, receives it. So when we sit in a good way, everything kind of settles down. And that settling point, the lowest point of the trampoline, then is a little bit the center, or the grounding, the root for samadhi. This can be done in any of the four postures, but it takes some care to allow the posture to support that, to assume a posture which is aligned, or kind of where, in whatever way our body allows us to do it, that our body is somehow in harmony with itself, or set up in a way that allows for something to settle. There’s not unnecessary tension or holding in the posture, and then there’s a settling that can happen.
Then we can become, whatever degree of settledness we have, we can become aware of what makes us unsettled. And when we feel unsettled, when we lose that whatever degree of modicum of settledness we have, it’s possible to become aware that we now become fragmented. We now kind of become, we’re prioritizing, or the energy and tension and activity is going into some part of the body-mind that kind of stands out at the expense of the whole. But if we allow that to settle, if we relax that, then there’s a sense of settling back into the more the whole of what’s here. And to recognize the way in which becoming unsettled, there’s less of us there, less of our wholeness there. And when we return to a sense of feeling of more the whole of our body, mind, and heart, that allows the body, mind, and heart to settle more. Not because we’re making it settle, but maybe because we’re finding that place at the center of the trampoline where something can rest. The mind can rest, the body can kind of be at ease.
So when I did Zen practice, the instruction was to place the mind, let the mind rest in the hara, in the deep place about two inches below the navel. And that was a place where things were rooted and settled, and not to avoid everything else, but allow everything else to settle in the center of the trampoline.
So, to assume a meditation posture that’s right for you—walking, standing, sitting, lying down. And move a little bit in the posture, wiggle, sway back and forth, forward and back, twist a little bit, and then see it to come into some kind of center, some kind of midpoint where things seem most aligned.
And sometimes it can be that the aligned posture can help it feel like the two lungs as they breathe, the experience of breathing has a midpoint in the front of the torso, perhaps parallel to the spine, and where sensations of breathing arise and settle. And that arising of the inhale, the exhale, which can be a settling and letting go, it’s kind of like kneading bread, kneading dough, kind of a gentle kneading of the body to soften it and settle it and support a settling that you’re not focused on doing, but that you’re attuned to.
So if you haven’t closed your eyes, you might close your eyes to better feel, sense the sensations that come and go as you breathe in and out, perhaps relaxing on the exhale. Or if there’s nothing to relax on the exhale, let there be a calming, a calming wave through your body.
And there may be a similar kind of kneading the mind, the thinking mind. As you breathe in, to feel the sensations and energy activation of the thinking mind, and as you exhale, to calm the thinking mind. Soften.
Centering yourself on breathing, as if the place where the inhale begins, or some other place deep within the body, is the midpoint on the trampoline, is a place where everything settles. And you don’t have to do the settling as much as keep a light connection to that point, maybe on the periphery of attention, so that the feeling of that settled point allows things to settle into it, allows the rest of your body, mind, and heart to be reassured there’s a home base on which to rest.
There can be an inverse relationship where the more we are thinking, the less we’re centered and settled in the body. And the less we’re thinking, the more we’re available for the settling into the midpoint, the center point of the body, the grounding point. Shift your priorities from thinking to embodiment.
And then as we come to the end of a sitting, to perhaps return now, settle more on the grounding point within the settling point, wherever that might be for you. Maybe it’s the place where the exhale finishes. If you let the exhale extend a little bit longer than usual by letting go more, can you in that few extra moments relax and settle deeper into your body? And as you inhale, have the bottom of this inhale, the bottom of the sensations of your body as you breathe in, feel as if it’s resting on that settling point. And as if you’re grounded or settled or rooted deep inside.
Now bring to mind the daily life, the world that you’ll be returning to after meditation, the people you’ll encounter today. Maybe thinking of the strangers who you’ll pass on the street, meet in places of commerce, and from this settled place, to gaze upon others with appreciation born of a sense of kinship. We are all family in some way or other. And in this rooted place where no one needs to know what you’re doing, to wish others well. And may it be that this meditation we do allows us to see and take the time to appreciate others and wish them well.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free. And may our ability to be settled on ourselves allow us to contribute to the welfare of others. Thank you.
So hello, and on this Monday morning, we begin the second week on the theme of samadhi. Last week was more of the preparation for it, and this week is still preparation. Sometimes I think of the Buddhist practice, meditation practice especially, as being kind of a pyramid, where the preparation for meditation or this beginning meditation is creating the very thick foundation for the pyramid. The pyramid represents how much time we spend on different things in meditation, and we spend most of the time on setting the foundation. So in a sense, we’re all beginners; we spend a lot of time with beginning practice. And then as we settle in and the mindfulness gets stronger and the concentration gets more unified, then we kind of slowly go add higher levels of the pyramid until we maybe occasionally get to near the top. But that’s where we spend very little time. Because if you spend too much time on the top of the pyramid, it’s a little bit like turning the pyramid upside down and having it standing on a point, and it’s not going to be stable. It’s going to want to fall, and then it’ll create a new foundation once there’s a wide base again.
In the teachings of the Buddha, the preparation for samadhi, the proximate preparation for it, is to settle the hindrances. These are five states of mind that inhibit or block or hinder the settling and the unification of the whole self into this present moment. And so somehow learning to settle these or not be caught in the hindrances so they hinder is a big part of being able to go into samadhi.
So the five hindrances, I want to just be very simple. I’ve taught them before, some of you know them well, and I want to just give a simple label for them. The first hindrance is to be hindered by desires. The second is to be hindered by aversion. The third is to be hindered by a sinking amount of energy, just kind of like a fading, like a draining away of energy or freezing of it. The fourth is to be overactivated with too much energy. And the fifth is to be confused.
I’ll talk more about these, but for today I want to focus on these first two because to have a better appreciation about why the hindrances interfere with samadhi, you have to appreciate and be able to recognize how each of these hindrances generally puts us into the world of our thinking. This is particular with desire and aversion. There’s something that we want or there’s something we don’t want, we want to get away from or push away. And so there has to be a cognitive concern of the mind, a story, an idea, thoughts, an imagination. Sitting and meditating with our eyes closed, we’re imagining somehow what it is we want. And so we’ve gone up into the head, into our thoughts, ideas, imaginations, images that we create that we’re swimming in and caught in when there’s a strong desire or strong aversion.
And also as we get pulled into strong desire and strong aversion, there’s not just a cognitive part of it, but there’s also a motivational side. We get pulled into the motivation behind it. There can also be an emotional side to it that sweeps us into the emotionality or the authority, the sense of urgency or power, strength of the desire or the aversion. And this being pulled into this world, that little complex of things associated with desire and aversion, then it limits the wholeness of attention. It limits how we can be, what we’re aware of. Caught in a strong desire, we can hardly notice anything else around us but the object of our desire. Caught in strong hatred, and we notice nothing really except for the object of our hatred.
And so the attention is now radically limited. And the Buddha talked about this, that greed and aversion is a limitation, and we put ourselves under severe limitations the stronger those are. And one of the ways to feel those limitations is that we’re no longer in touch with the wholeness of who we are. We’re not really aware of the greater capacities for feeling, for emotions, for sensations, for embodiment when we’re caught in the grip of these strong things. And so it’s possible to feel when we get caught in the grip of desire or aversion, how it maybe for some of us pulls us into our head, pulls us into our thoughts. It maybe creates an activated energy in the body that now focuses the energy of the body, the activation of the body in a particular area at the expense of really feeling settled or complete or in the fullness of the body.
And what we’re looking for in samadhi is a capacity to settle into the whole body, to settle down and be rooted and grounded here. And so the hindrances are the very thing that gets us ungrounded. They can be very compelling and they can be very even desirous to have them because of the strength of motivation, the sense of energy and aliveness and authority they have. Like they almost can give a life meaning and purpose that can feel really good to have, like, “Now I know what to do is to hate this people or this thing.” But it’s at a tremendous expense of alienation from oneself, being more and more disconnected to who we are.
And samadhi is to be connected. Samadhi is to be the opposite of alienated from ourselves, but to be deeply connected, at home here in ourselves. And so rather than being at war with the hindrances and feel like they’re bad to have, good preparation for samadhi is to remember everything is to be included, everything has a place. And so rather than being caught in the desire and aversion, to see it clearly and recognize the effect that has on you, recognize how it limits you, how it alienates you from parts of yourself, and recognize how it puts you into a very narrow domain of awareness, of cognition, of concern. And so much is being left out, and you kind of have blinders on almost. And as you see the limitations of this, that is the beginning of opening up to something wider. And then you might be easier to make room for a settling, to feel that settling place. And as we breathe, maybe breathe with the hindrances, but breathe from that settled place. Let the settled place receive the energy, the activation, the tension of desire and aversion.
And remember that the process of samadhi, especially in the beginning, has a lot to do with a settling and the settling point. And each of you will have a different settling point, grounding point, place of rootedness within the center of your body perhaps. And whatever that might be for you. In Zen, sometimes you’re taught to meditate with your hands, one on top of the other, the thumbs touching like this. And sometimes the instruction is not to put your mind in your hara, in your belly, but let your heart rest in the curve of your hands, the palm of your hands. And that becomes a settling point. For some people, it’s the sitting bones against their cushion, the contact point. Some people it’s something deep in the belly. Some people it’s in the area of the solar plexus or maybe in the heart. And some people it’s the whole body is the grounding place.
But when you feel settled, when something goes “ah” and you’re relaxed, you’ve been busy and activated and preoccupied, maybe tense or something, and then finally you can stop and something releases and lets go. Where is there some place in the deeper place of settledness? It might feel a little bit amorphous, might not be as clear as the clarity of the shoulders relaxing, but see if you can start finding a place inside that is the gathering place, the settling place. And be careful with it. Don’t focus on it directly, don’t zero in that laser focus on it. Almost like you have more like a peripheral attention to it, a gentle, soft attention to it, as if that is what allows it to kind of smile, allows it to grow, allows it to feel safe.
So practicing with the hindrances is an invaluable part of this foundation, the foundational part of the pyramid that we’re building. And so if you have, maybe you might have occasionally today, some of the hindrances of desire and aversion, don’t see them as unfortunate and be aversive to them. See them as, “Oh, this is an opportunity now to practice with the foundational elements of samadhi.” And as I’ve said, one of the key things to do is to notice how these hindrances, now for today, aversion and desire, how they limit you, how they narrow the focus, the attention, that’s where attention can go, how they contract you, how they keep you caught, and how so much more of who you are, the totality, all your capacities as a human being, many of them are left out now and left behind. And so is your way in which you’re aware of your environment. It’s very significant to see the effect of the hindrances and know them well. This is what’s going to help the whole complex of the hindrances to settle and to return so you can return to the settled point, the settling place, the grounding place within.
So today, please notice when you get caught—and the language is “caught in desire and aversion”—and notice how it limits you. And if you just do that in the course of the day, you’re doing really well, and it’ll really support this laying down the foundation for where we’re going in this course on samadhi. So thank you very much, and I look forward to tomorrow with you.
Samadhi: A Pali word that can be translated as “concentration,” “unification of mind,” or a state of deep meditative absorption and settledness. ↩