This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Orienting; Samadhi (17) Orientating Awareness. 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 everyone from California, and good day around the world. A big welcome.
One of the characteristics of many of our minds is that we don’t know it so well. We kind of go on with a certain kind of ‘business as usual’ as we go about our life, and we don’t really pay attention to the quality of our mind or how the mind is working. The opportunity of meditation is to certainly learn about the mind, learn about the different ways the mind can be, the quality of the mind, and also how to adjust the mind in a way that is supportive for us.
In the topic of Samadhi1, the mind is becoming unified, being organized. An organized mind will do that on its own if the conditions are right—if we’re not distracted, if we’re not caught up in preoccupations, the mind will begin to come together and come into a settled, unified, organized manner where all the parts are kind of working together.
One of the steps towards that, a step towards Samadhi, is to orient the mind. To orient the mind is different than focusing the mind. Focusing or concentrating the mind is all too easily interpreted as a laser focus on the control tower, and we’re kind of zeroing in, almost like using our eyes to stare something down. Often, it uses maybe the front of the mind. To orient the mind is something different. It’s to set the direction. A sailor on a boat might orient the boat towards a lighthouse, towards a harbor, and then be completely involved with the wind, the waves, the currents, the whole situation—kind of open and available. But still, the boat and the orientation is towards that harbor.
So there’s a way of orienting ourselves that is a gathering and a settling that comes almost from, I’d like to say, the back of the mind. And that orientation then allows for everything else to kind of begin joining and supporting that orientation. So again, with a sailboat, once it’s oriented, we know where it’s going. We know where the harbor is, a lighthouse at the edge of the harbor perhaps. Then all the choices in sailing are in support of heading in that direction. And there’s many different little pieces of choices, but everything is for that purpose at that point.
So I will guide you through this idea of orienting the mind today as a beginning of unifying the mind in Samadhi.
To assume a posture where you organize the posture, you orient the posture to a wonderful balance between being alert and being relaxed. A posture that promotes a heightened, relaxed attention and promotes an alert body, allowing it to soften and relax. And even if you know exactly what posture to be in and you just plop into that posture, you might slow down and sway from side to side, forward and back, to really begin to find the balance, almost as if each time you meditate, you are rediscovering the appropriate posture for meditation.
Gently closing the eyes.
If you have a settling spot for the beginning and end of each breath, starting there, you might take a few long, slow, deep breaths and relax as you exhale, where the body can settle into that settling place deep within, a grounding place within where you can feel rooted.
Here, letting your breathing return to normal. And again, with an ordinary breath, feeling the breathing arise from the grounding place, that settling place within where the first sensations of the in-breath begin. And if there’s more than one place, maybe the place that’s lowest, most grounded, most settled within, or the place that’s most comforting.
Allowing, receiving the inhale through your body and relaxing the body on the exhale, kind of allowing all things to slide in towards that settling point, the grounding place.
And then if you have this place, some little area where maybe the breathing begins or where the breathing sensations are most nice to feel, maybe it’s just a small area in the middle of it all. There’s a long tradition of finding that spot in the belly, maybe a couple of inches below the belly button, an inch or so in from the skin. It could be a spot in the middle of the chest as the chest moves. It could be at the nostrils. It could be the whole breath body, the whole way that the body expands and contracts as you sit. So it’s a very broad harbor, a big opening, or it could be a very small, narrow opening in the harbor for the boat.
Whatever it is, whatever you feel the breathing can be, the home base, see now if you can feel or sense or imagine being aware of that spot from the back of your skull, where the brain sits all the way to the back. A place we normally don’t feel or sense or have much relationship to. Often thinking and doing and motivation might feel, if it comes from anywhere in the brain, like it’s near the front, a place where the eyes tense or the forehead scrunches up as we focus. But to kind of feel, even if you don’t feel anything, just imagine yourself sitting there at the back of that skull. And from there, as you exhale, orient yourself to the experience of breathing.
The skipper of a boat, usually sailboats, is in the back of the boat looking forward towards the harbor. And as you exhale, orient yourself towards the center of your breathing experience. Almost like there’s a light from the back of the skull shining softly, gently onto the breathing without any tension.
On the inhale, feeling the rising, the growing of the inhale in your body. And as you exhale, counting the breath one to ten, but with every count, being oriented towards the breathing. There might be waves in the sea that push the boat this way and that way, but the harbor is always there ahead on which to be oriented.
Every exhale with the count, sense or imagine or allow the awareness of breathing to begin in the back of the head, where there is no tension. Maybe in the back of the head, there are no distracted thoughts, but there is awareness that is oriented, directed towards the exhale, towards the breathing. Maybe like a rudder of a boat that’s at the back of the boat.
As the inhale grows and expands, allow it to grow and expand into your awareness. Almost as if the inhale, as it grows, grows and touches the back of the head, so that when you exhale, there’s an orientation of awareness all the way from the back of the head towards the settling of the exhale, settling into the grounding spot.
A soft orientation, but a clear orientation, kind of a direction from the back of the mind, back of the brain, skull, that shines out down towards the breathing. Kind of like a light, a beam of light that attracts, welcomes all other things to join it from the sides, so that on the exhale, everything is settling, relaxing into the experience of the body exhaling. Thoughts let go, relax, and slide into that light, quieting the mind, this orientation towards the settling spot.
And then as we come to the end of this sitting, again, let your awareness, let the source of how you know, see with the mind’s eye, let the place from which you orient your attention to anything at all, let it be oriented from all the way at the back of the head or the back of your body, as a radiance that’s relaxed and open, settles back. So that looking out upon the world is not done with tension, not done with wanting or resistance, aversion, not done with a narrowing of the focus, but settling back to the back, as if awareness shines or begins from a relaxed place where there’s no tension in the back.
And gaze upon this world. Imagine you’re looking out across the land, your neighborhood, your town or province, county, state, looking out across the land for all that is wonderful and difficult in this world, gazing upon it from this soft, relaxed place in the back. So awareness is not centered or doesn’t begin in places of fear or tension or wanting, or even places of me, myself, and mine.
Gazing upon the world, and from there, perhaps to gaze on the world with kind eyes, with goodwill and well-wishing, offering the world goodwill in the way you’d wish all that everyone would do. What a world it would be if everyone wished each other the best, contributed to goodwill in this difficult world. And whatever way you wish everyone could do it, may you do it.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
And may the way by which we orient ourselves to the world provide some of this to those we encounter. May all beings be happy.
Thank you.
Hello. For this second talk this week, the 17th talk on Samadhi, and as I’ve often said, Samadhi is a unification of mind and body, a gathering together, more than a laser focus. That unification of the mind has many different characteristics. One is that it’s inclusive. The idea that we don’t settle the attention on something in particular, get absorbed in something while pushing things away. There’s a way in which there’s a kind of feeling of availability and openness that makes room to be inclusive of all things.
And that movement of inclusion, receptivity, is a wonderful attitude for receiving and including the primary subject of the Samadhi. The primary subject might be the breathing, which is the standard we’re using for this Samadhi course. This inclusion, this receptivity, can in particular be felt on the inhale. And then there’s a kind of settling into it all, settling into the body, into the body breathing, so that it’s a settling where we allow all things to settle into it, almost like we’re including everything without focusing on everything, without thinking about everything or reacting to everything. Just on the edges, everything kind of settles.
So there’s different aspects of this unification. This inclusion is what I talked about yesterday, and today the focus is this idea of orientation. If some of what I’m talking about doesn’t make sense to you, it’s okay. Maybe you could translate it in a way that does make sense to you, or you can just take it as being interesting or not, and just kind of hang in there. As we go through this, especially for this week, there might be different parts of this week that speak to you.
Today is this orientation, and that’s a very different word or idea, I would hope, than focusing or concentrating in a tight and narrow way. Focusing is very much associated with the eyes, I think, for some people. And sometimes meditators engage their eyes unnecessarily in meditation if they’re focusing, looking, trying to see their experience. There can actually be tension around the eyes because of that. And so in a sense, because of that tension, that’s kind of the place from which we’re being oriented to do the awareness practice.
It might be that it’s more thinking, knowing, or even labeling the experience, even counting the experience. It might engage someplace behind the forehead, or even the forehead can get a little tight. There might be a sense of a little voice or a little operating center, a control tower, that’s doing the mental work that we have to do. And so again, the orientation, the place from which we’re doing it, might be behind the forehead, kind of in the cerebral cortex or something.
Sometimes it might be some other place where there’s some tension or holding, even if we might be feeling, kind of knowing or experiencing, feeling the experience. And so the orientation is from the body itself and how it feels. There might be the one who is experiencing it, the one who’s enjoying it, or the one who’s uncomfortable because of it. The one who’s doing the awareness, the one who’s the experiencer, or the one who’s the victim, the one who’s the enjoyer, might reside someplace in the body or someplace in a disembodied place that is kind of like the place from which the orientation is happening.
One opportunity is to find a place from which we can get oriented that has no tension in it, that maybe has no obvious association with me, myself, and mine. And so the suggestion I’ve made was the back of the head, kind of in the back of the skull. Generally, kind of the back of the brain, near the back of the skull. Maybe if someone has a headache or something, there might be some sensations there, but there’s a place there where maybe there’s not a lot of sensing neurons to really sense and feel. And so it’s a little bit maybe free of all the associations of me, myself, and mine, free of the associations of doing work and straining to make something happen.
And you can say, “Well, that’s arbitrary. It’s made up to find a place like that in the back of the head to orient from.” And maybe so, but that doesn’t make it wrong. That’s mostly what the mind is doing anyways, making up things, making up a place from which we’re oriented. It’s arbitrary, or it’s not really inherent in being aware that it has a spot from which to be oriented. So if it’s from the eyes or forehead or something else, that’s made up too. So we’re using our capacity, maybe for imagination, to find a place from which we can be oriented.
One possibility is the back of the skull, and almost like there’s a light there, a light of awareness. Almost a light that’s not a light, it’s just kind of maybe clarity or just a sense of directedness that has no tension or no grasping or pushing there exactly, but there is an intentness. There is a sense of purpose that, “Oh, this is the direction we’re going.”
I myself love the idea because I spend a lot of time on sailboats. On a sailboat going back to the harbor, you see the harbor, but the waves are pushing the boat this way and that way. You have to adjust for the wind, and you can’t always actually be directly focused on the harbor. There might be kind of going back and forth some, but the harbor is always the orientation. And the skipper of the boat can be quite relaxed, not really troubled by the fact that we go a little bit to one side or the other side in the waves, because the orientation knows where they’re going and just gently keeps it on focus. The mind is relaxed, the awareness is relaxed, softened, moving in the direction.
So from this place in the back, orienting ourselves, “Oh, this is the direction.” And it’s more like a kind of a wide field than a very tight little one, but it’s orienting itself. You know, the harbor might be in the distance, it might be on the horizon, a very small little spot. So there is a place that is very teeny up ahead, but there’s an orientation that takes it in without getting tight and narrow and focused.
So the orientation with breathing is to find this orientation towards the breathing, and a kind of commitment and a wonderful, soft intentness, a sense of purpose that this is what I’m doing now. And if you feel like other things are more important to think about, imagine, or feel, or have emotions about, with this intentness or this kind of orientation towards the breathing, it’s not to push anything away, but it’s to allow it to be there on the edges, in the peripheral awareness, so that you never forget about the harbor you’re going to. The skipper might have all kinds of things going on, but it’s always focused there. It’s like driving a car on the freeway; you always know the direction you’re going ahead on the freeway, even if you’re talking and having a difficult conversation with someone in the car. You’re always there.
So that’s the orientation. And then with that, it allows a kind of a gathering of everything that supports that. It’s almost like the orientation is a slide, maybe a big curved slide, and everything can slide in as we exhale, sliding down towards what I call the settling spot or the gathering spot or the grounding spot, which I find to be the very end place where the last sensation of breathing occurs for me. That could be in different places depending on where you focus your body on the torso, but I do it right at the end of the out-breath, down in the belly, because it’s the most grounding, settling place inside. It allows everything to feel settled there.
And that’s the small little spot of the harbor. So everything is oriented towards that little spot, even if this feeling of inhale grows and expands through the torso. It grows out of and continues being rooted in that settling spot there.
So what this is doing, hopefully, is to create a welcoming or an appropriate or a wise way of orienting the attention towards something that’s going to develop a unification, a gathering, a wholeness, a sense of being really here and alive in the present moment, without too easily being scattered and being fragmented by thoughts and concerns and feelings and reactions we have. It’s because we’re doing this wonderful thing, we’re in this boat heading towards the harbor. So don’t lose track of that because, you know, you could get in trouble if you don’t. The last thing you want to do is for it to get dark before you’ve reached the harbor.
So I hope that these analogies and this way of talking works for enough of you that it’s worthwhile. And if it doesn’t, as I said, just kind of follow along. Always use your imagination in the Samadhi course. Don’t try to understand all of it only logically or rationally or as a technique of what to do, but it’s also the idea you can just imagine it in some way. And the imagination might give something on your inner system, your inner life, something to orient yourself to, something to support you so that you have a better way of meditating than if you just left your mind to its own devices.
So thank you very much, and we’ll continue with this theme of unification tomorrow.
Samadhi: A Pali word that refers to a state of meditative concentration or unification of mind. ↩