This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Settling the Mind; Samadhi (7) Studying the Quality of the Mind. 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 everyone. I’m aware that for some people it’s good morning, some good afternoon, and some good evening. Hello around the globe to those that are listening.
To continue now with this series on Samadhi1, I want to mention that often when we sit down to meditate, a very common, maybe almost daily, guidance in meditation is to relax the body, to settle the body. It is a way of bringing the body into a kind of homeostasis, a kind of balance for it to relax. Today, I’d like to do the same for the mind. It’s possible to bring the mind to a kind of homeostasis, that kind of balance. More importantly, it’s possible for the thinking mind, the mind itself, to not be tense, not be contracted, and for there to be no pressure in it. The mind itself becomes settled in a very nice way. In becoming settled, it becomes a healthy mind, a stable mind, a unified mind.
So, assume a meditation posture. Think of assuming the posture as a ritual of becoming present, a ritual of connecting to your body and grounding yourself in the body. So that if you lower your gaze or close your eyes, you’re ready to sense and feel the body—not from the control tower in terms of thinking about it, but more feeling it from the inside, the sensations of the body.
Take some moments to become more familiar with what it feels like: the sensations of your feet and your legs. What are the sensations associated with your sitting bones, or the contact against some surface that’s holding you up? What are the sensations dancing in your lower torso? And what are the sensations alive for you in your upper torso—the area of the chest, the back, the rib cage?
What are the sensations in your hands and arms? Is there any way to adjust the positioning of your hands so it’s more comfortable and balanced, with less tension?
What are the sensations of your shoulders? If there is tension in the shoulders, as you exhale, relax and soften.
What are the sensations in the neck, and where the spine joins the skull? Is there any small little adjustment of the positioning of the head that feels good for you—relieving or opening, or perhaps gives you a little confidence as you sit here?
And what are the sensations in your face? If there is tension in your face, as you exhale, let there be a softening. A softening without ambition or expectation that things actually soften; maybe it’s more of an opening to it, an allowing.
And what are the sensations in your thinking mind, the mind that thinks or visualizes? Is there any pressure, contraction, or tightness? Is there any agitation? Are there the sensations of any emotions underlying your thinking process?
Take a couple of minutes now to discover, without needing to change or relax the mind, to become more familiar with how this thinking mind is for you. It’s almost like you’re giving yourself a guided tour of the thinking mind, just to get to know it, not to change it, not to judge it. And in particular, the sensations, the feelings, the direct experience associated with the thinking mind. What is it like for you? A calm process of discovery.
The mind as a whole is more than just a thinking mind. Is there some way that you can feel or sense the larger process of mentality that’s more than just thinking? A larger process within which thinking is one component part. Maybe part of this larger process of mentality is some sense of silent awareness itself. Maybe there’s a sense of the mind in its fullness, that it has no edges to it. Awareness has no edges. It spreads out into the space all around, beyond the head.
And now, as you exhale, relax the thinking mind. Let the thinking mind settle, settle into this wider space of mind. As you exhale, a gentle calming of the thinking mind, so that any pressure, tightness, or agitation quiets, settles, and moves to a stillness.
To stay connected to the present moment, you might feel the rhythm of the body breathing, with the sense that you’re breathing with the mind, breathing with any calmness or settling in the mind.
As we continue, please see if you can discover what happens to the quality of your mind when you get absorbed in thinking. Sometimes there’s a disconnect; you’re no longer aware of the mind as a whole, maybe not even aware of the body. Sometimes when we’re thinking, the mind kind of goes out, like a light going out. Things get darker, or there’s a contraction or a narrowing. The mind gets small. The stronger the thinking, the more there’s a physical location from where thinking occurs.
Notice what it’s like, how the quality of the mind changes if you get caught in thinking. After exploring that a bit, return to breathing with the breathing, accompanying a connection to the mind, accompanying the best quality of mind that’s available.
To breathe with the mind, feeling and sensing the thinking mind. To breathe and feel the tensions in the mind, and as you exhale, to relax the mind, soften, calming the mind so the mind settles. Maybe any sense of the weight of the mind feels a gentle tug of gravity, so it settles, comes to rest.
And then, as we come to the end of this sitting, to appreciate our capacity to know the mind, to know what we’re thinking, what we’re wanting, what we don’t want. To know our motivations and impulses before we act. And then how learning about ourselves, learning about the mind and the heart through this practice, can show us that we have a choice of what we say and do, a choice about what we refrain from doing and refrain from saying. This choice is invaluable because it allows us to choose that which is beneficial for ourselves and for others, to avoid causing harm, to avoid making situations worse.
May it be that our capacity for mindfulness is used for the sake of benefiting ourselves and others, for the sake of the common good, for the sake of supporting and caring for others. May this practice we’re doing be for the welfare and happiness of everyone.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.
So hello and welcome to this, the seventh talk in this Samadhi series. A lot of our success in being able to cultivate Samadhi, the unified state of being, has a lot to do with how well we know ourselves. If we know ourselves well, entering into these states of concentration and absorption doesn’t have to be an act of will, doesn’t have to be something that we force ourselves into or strain to enter into. Rather, it’s a profound settling in, a profound kind of entering into a new mode of being. But it really requires understanding ourselves well.
One of the things to understand is what happens to our mind, our thinking mind, when we get distracted, when we get pulled into obsessive thinking. I began this week with a discussion about the first two hindrances2: desire and aversion. Today I’ll continue with the third and fourth hindrances, which are usually called sloth and torpor as the third, and restlessness and remorse, or restlessness and agitation/worry, as the fourth.
What all these hindrances have in common, and partly why they’re so hindering for us, is they involve mental preoccupation. They involve this thinking which may border on being obsessive, where we get pulled into the world of rumination, of daydreaming, of commentary, of story-making. In the strength of this thinking, we get absorbed in the content of the thought and we don’t even see what’s happening; we don’t even know we’re thinking.
One of the consequences is that we’re thinking about things which are not that wholesome or healthy for us to be thinking. There are certainly healthy ways of having desire and thinking about what we want, but as a hindrance, there’s an obsessive quality. Oftentimes, we’re thinking in ways and with attitudes that are not healthy, that are full of maybe greed or strain or conceit or aversion or hatred. It’s the power of these unwholesome ways that gives strength to our preoccupation, to be lost in thought or keep getting pulled into it. Even if we’re not lost in it, we know we’re doing it; it’s compulsive, and we can’t quite know how to stop. It can be quite discouraging.
The force of these kinds of thinking is very significant because they have a conditioning effect; there’s a feedback loop. When we’re thinking in ways that are unwholesome, that creates more unwholesomeness within us. It makes us feel kind of lousy or not so good. This is particularly true with the third and fourth hindrances.
The third is anything that kind of drains us, that depletes us, so the energy is not there in a full way. Sometimes there’s a numbing effect that goes on by how we think or what we’re concerned with. Sometimes there’s a shutting down. Sometimes there’s a freezing, like fight or freeze; there’s a freezing because things are so difficult for us. Sometimes there’s a profound discouragement or a shutting down, going to sleep because we’re resisting something or we’re overwhelmed. But those can come with some kind of attitudes or thinking or beliefs that are operating, maybe even subliminally, that we’re pulled into and we don’t even realize how much they’ve affected us.
With agitation and remorse and worry, regrets, there too, we’re thinking about something that agitates us, and we’re energized, we’re activated in a way that doesn’t really feel pleasant. It feels like agitation, restlessness. So we’re thinking about something—remorse or regrets or worry all have to do with things we’re thinking about. The thinking mind is activated.
In both of these third and fourth hindrances, it’s certainly possible to feel the effect that being in those hindrances has on the body. But more important for what I’m going to talk about today is the effect it has on the mind, the effect it has on being aware. When we’re caught in thoughts, there are usually physical sensations. Think a lot, and there are physical sensations that come along with the thinking. There can be a location for thinking that is contracted or tight or has pressure. There is a narrowing of attention to a small little domain of the mind. There is tightness, there is maybe pressure. Some people have reported when they get caught in the world that it’s almost like the light went out, things got dark. And when they wake up, it’s like the light comes back on.
So what effect does it have on the mind? What effect does it have on awareness? Can you feel how there’s a compulsion in it? Maybe even a sense that we’re wearing blinders and we only see what we’re concerned with. We don’t see the bigger picture, we don’t see the fullness, the wholeness of what’s going on. Like if we have aversion with someone else, we don’t see their goodness. If we are discouraged by something and we shut down, we get depleted, then we don’t feel that we have the wherewithal to see where the choice is, where the inspiration is, where we can make a difference in a way that does make it better. Even if we can’t get what we want or something is limiting us dramatically, we don’t have to be defined by it.
So how is it affecting the mind? The reason why this is important for Samadhi is that Samadhi is a healing of the mind, so it’s not fragmented, so it’s not limited. We’re not caught in a small little domain. The hindrances have a way of limiting the mind, narrowing the mind, blocking the mind, not allowing the fullness of the mind to be there. For Samadhi to occur, the mind gets reorganized so it’s not fragmented or narrow or limited.
So first, we have to see the effect that our thinking, the hindrances, have on the mind to appreciate how limited it has become, how fragmented it’s become, how small it’s become, or contracted it’s become, or maybe a sense of weight and heaviness that feels like a burden on the mind. It might be discouraging to feel these qualities of the mind that can be there when we’re caught in the hindrances or caught in thought. But what we’re doing here is discovering how the mind is, so that the ways in which awareness can support us to heal it, to knit it back together again, to bring us back into the wholeness of the mind where all the capacities of the mind can work in a kind of homeostasis or work together for the same purpose.
Part of the task for Samadhi is to become a mind whisperer, to become someone who begins to sense and feel and know and recognize the quality of the mind, not just what you’re thinking about. In fact, what you’re thinking about might be important, but for you, what’s more important is the quality of the mind, the aliveness of the mind, the goodness of the mind. With sloth and torpor, the quality of the mind kind of becomes deflated. With agitation and worry, the quality of the mind gets agitated and overactivated. Both of them are not so useful for us. But if we can see that and know how the mind has shifted under the force of these two states, that’s the beginning of being able to open up or to allow something to settle—the settling of the mind, or the calming of the mind, or the opening of the mind, or the expanding of the mind.
Over time for meditators, there’s all this rich world of the mind that we begin to sense and feel that’s so much greater than what we are thinking about. We begin to appreciate that the mind is bigger, awareness is bigger than any of the particular things we’re focusing on. So if we’re agitated, chances are there’s something, it might be subconscious, something that worries us or concerns us or we’re troubled by. Can we feel that sense of agitation, of the troubling of the mind? Can we care for it? Can we hold it in the simple rhythm of breathing?
A lot of what Samadhi is about, and mindfulness itself, is not about fixing things. It’s not about judging things. Rather, it’s about healing things, settling things. In meditation, we don’t solve anything; we dissolve our problems. Problems are not solved, they’re dissolved in the larger scope of intelligence that is not even personal when the mind is full and the mind is unified and whole.
The part that I’m hoping that you’ll understand from this talk the most is the value of becoming familiar with the quality of your mind, the characteristics of your mind in different situations that you’re in, during different mental activities. In particular, how some mental activities, some forms of thinking, some forms of wanting and not wanting, some forms of discouragement, and some forms of worry, create a particular kind of mind that is much more limited. The full capacity of the mind is not really available. To start feeling and sensing what this is like, in preparation for how Samadhi will help this to settle, help this to quiet, to calm, and the mind becomes whole or unified.
To the degree to which you might understand what I’ve said today, I’d encourage you, during this next period for the next 24 hours when you’re awake, that you might take time through the day—maybe even put a timer on that goes off every 15 minutes or 30 minutes or something—to remind you: what’s the quality of the mind? How is the thinking I’m involved in, the activity I’m doing, how has this affected the quality of the mind? And in what way has the mind now become limited and narrow and tight? And is it possible to open it again?
Thank you very much. As I’ve said now a few times, we’re going to go through, we’re laying down a slow foundation for Samadhi. We’re going to go over these weeks into some of the deeper states of Samadhi, but it’s really important to lay the foundation for it in a slow, maybe systematic way, so that you’re getting more and more familiar with the territory.
So may you study your mind today. Thank you.
Samadhi: A Pali word for a state of meditative consciousness, often translated as “concentration,” “unification of mind,” or “absorption.” It is a state where the mind becomes still, focused, and unified. ↩
The Five Hindrances: In Buddhism, these are five mental states that hinder progress in meditation and in daily life. They are: 1) Sensory desire (kāmacchanda), 2) Ill will or aversion (byāpāda), 3) Sloth and torpor (thīna-middha), 4) Restlessness and remorse (uddhacca-kukkucca), and 5) Doubt (vicikicchā). ↩