This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Beauty and Smiles; Samadhi (23) Supported by Pleasure and Well-Being. 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 the meditation session. As an introduction to this meditation, I think many of you know that when we practice mindfulness meditation, there’s a big emphasis on being with things as they are and cultivating the ability to be present for whatever arises in experience, in whatever sense door, whatever location—mind, body, heart—and to cultivate a way of being with what is.
But there is something subtle, or maybe not so subtle, that is very important to take into account: the mind has a tendency to prioritize certain things, to be oriented in certain directions as being the important thing to notice. For example, many years ago when I was looking for a futon couch, I was surprised suddenly how many futon couch stores there were. I had no idea, but now that I was looking for it or concerned with it, my attention prioritized it, and I noticed and saw.
Some of us prioritize a certain way of thinking, certain attitudes. We prioritize what’s wrong; we prioritize finding evidence that we are somehow wrong or a bad person or something like that. Some people prioritize that everything is wonderful and live with rose-colored glasses, and so they don’t see things as they really are. Some people prioritize things that are directly connected to themselves—me, myself, and mine—and there can be a tremendous over-orientation on myself and how it affects me and what I want. Some people prioritize other people and are concerned with caring for them and what they think.
The same thing happens when we sit down to meditate. There can be a bias towards certain experiences. There were times in my life I had a bias towards pain, ready to notice and pounce on any slightest indication of pain and discomfort, sometimes with a magnifying glass, making it be much bigger than it actually was. Sometimes we sit down to meditate and the orientation we have is perhaps automatically around how we feel, the emotional state we’re in. Some of it might be natural because we have certain conditions that allow certain things to predominate and be very important for our well-being to care for. But there might also be, because of that, a kind of habitual reaction to keep looking in certain directions, to keep becoming aware of certain things.
So when we get down to practice Samadhi1, we’re shifting that and being intentional in the direction in which we prioritize—not to push something away, not to be aversive to something or to condemn anything at all. For example, if you’re washing your dishes and pots, and you want to wash them well, you pay careful attention to where the dirt is. If I can’t see the food that’s stuck to the plate, I might pass my hand over it to really feel. Many other things might be going on in my life, but I’m really engaged. Washing dishes requires a certain direction of attention. I’m not pushing things away or denying other things; it’s just the task at hand.
With Samadhi, the task at hand is to engage and notice what supports you to become gathered, to become unified, to be really here with all of yourself in a nice, unstressful way. And part of what allows the Samadhi to grow is to slightly prioritize the good feelings that come along—not to manufacture them, not to think they’re always going to be there. Sometimes a big part of practice is to learn to be equanimous and peaceful, non-reactive with what is. Sometimes the feelings of well-being that arise are subtle. It might be a feeling of rightness of being with what’s difficult—difficult emotions, difficult moods, difficult situations, and pain. As we practice mindfulness and develop some non-reactivity, there’s a feeling of rightness: “Oh, this is good that I’m present.” It’s a subtle kind of well-being, but it is a kind of well-being that something feels right. Given what’s happening, it’s right that I’m here.
With Samadhi, though, as we settle in, we want to gently prioritize ways in which we feel good, ways in which through the meditation, with the meditation, there are feelings of well-being that begin arising. They might be very subtle at first, but over time, the guideline or the orientation might be to notice the pleasure that’s there, what’s pleasant, and the growing pleasantness and pleasure. Prioritize that, not to push anything else away, but to just gently keep that as a reference point to really help you stay there. In the same way I might gently feel the top of the plate to see if there’s any food still stuck that I can’t see, we gently prioritize: feel this goodness here, feel the well-being that’s arising. In due time, this sense of well-being and pleasure morphs into a sense of joy. And so, I’ll lead you now.
Assume your meditation posture and gently close your eyes.
Take a few long, slow, deep breaths and settle into your posture, your body. The deep inhale is a way of getting the support of a deeper breath to be present here in our body.
As you exhale, allow the longer exhale than usual to help you settle in further, to become grounded in the body.
Deeper inhales and exhales are a little bit of a ritual, a transition to help the mind and the heart be ready to be here and now in this body.
Then, letting your breathing return to normal. For maybe another four or five breaths, feel different parts of the body that you want to relax on the inhale, and then relax those parts of the body on the exhale.
And then, to feel in your body any sense of anything that you appreciate right now about sensations, feelings. Maybe there’s a subtle shift to being a little calmer, more settled, more connected.
Maybe there’s some certain pleasure that comes, or a pleasantness, an inspiration that comes with beginning the meditation and settling into it. It might be a mental appreciation, a pleasure, but it might be something in the body. Maybe a diffuse feeling of pleasantness that might be there, in addition to any places in your body that are unpleasant. Gently lean into the pleasant. Let your awareness become a little bit more clear or present with the help of what’s pleasant in your body.
It might be some soft, diffuse, generalized hum or glow in your body. Or it might be some very specific spot that, as you meditate, comes alive a bit with pleasure, tingling.
If there’s a generalized sense of well-being or pleasure, allow that to surround the experience of breathing, almost like a gentle, soft blanket that nurtures or nourishes the body’s experience of breathing.
And then, to feel in this cycle of breathing in and breathing out, is there any point in that cycle where the sensations of breathing feel pleasant, where the body can take in the pleasure of it?
And if there is some pleasure in breathing, something pleasant, let that be a slight priority to feel it each cycle of breathing, as if it’s a door to enter into, to be more in the breathing, more centered in the breathing.
If there’s any pleasure at all associated with the meditation, gently, lightly let that support the awareness that begins in the settling spot, the grounding spot, and remains throughout the inhale, throughout the exhale.
Feeling the full length of the in- and out-breath, as if from the inside, breathing is stroking your body. And if any of it is pleasant, allow yourself to feel the pleasure as an encouragement to stay with the breath continuously.
And when you let go of your thoughts, see if in the quieting and letting them float away, there’s some sense of pleasure or well-being in the mind to not be caught in thoughts. And allow that well-being or pleasure then to join the pleasure of breathing.
Sometimes the pleasure that can support meditation is evoked by ever so slightly, with the corners of your lips, your mouth, making a little smile. Just enough for there to evoke some pleasure or joy, delight. And if there is such pleasure, let it support an orientation to being centered on breathing. As if the rhythm of breathing in the body is what keeps us connected to pleasure, joy, well-being, however subtle it might be.
And as we come to the end of this sitting, perhaps allow yourself to smile. Perhaps allow yourself to feel whatever well-being or goodness is here through this meditation. Maybe it’s a subtle pervasion of the body with being calmer, more settled. Maybe it’s a specific feeling of physical pleasure somewhere in your body, or something that’s between being pervasive and specific.
For a few moments, maybe there’s a way of allowing yourself to drink in whatever sense of well-being or pleasure that’s here. Maybe turning up your lips to smile in such a way that a sparkle might be there in your eyes for how you’re going to open your eyes and see the world. And with your mind’s eye, with a sparkle of appreciation, delight, that maybe can see other people with respect and delight and appreciation that softens them, that disarms them, that brings forth their own relaxation and ease and well-being. So that the difficult people in the world become less difficult, so that the friendly people in the world feel seen and joined in their friendliness.
May it be that this practice that we do allows us to see the world with fresh eyes, without bias, but with a sparkle, with a joy. And with that, to live for the welfare and happiness of all beings, including our own. And in knowing well-being for ourselves, we can wish it for others.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be free. And may all beings be peaceful.
And may this wonderful community of ours, with so many people meditating now, feel like we’re doing this together as we go out into the world, that we’re spreading human goodness out into the world.
Welcome to the next talk on Samadhi. But before I do, I would like to repeat the announcement I made on Monday. IMC, partly inspired from what this YouTube community did three years ago raising money for the refugees from the Ukraine, is inspired to do this again for children in areas of great crisis who are facing famine and illness and injuries of all kinds. The way we want to do this is by making donations to Save the Children, a wonderful organization that does wonderful work in the world for children, for many decades now.
We started this fundraising drive this week, and we’re about a third of the way to what I’m hoping is an inspiring goal for us. If you’re interested in joining together and participating in the collective effectiveness of a community doing something with each other, you can go on the IMC website. The homepage has a couple of places where you can get to the Save the Children donation page that we’re using, that is specific to IMC. There’s a red banner on top of the website, and there’s a notice in the “What’s New” section of the homepage as well. So, thank you.
In talking about that, the gathering together of a community and the power that that can bring—so in meditation, the gathering together of ourselves into a unified whole, to enter into a state of being that’s called Samadhi, gives the individual a certain power that can then be used for good in the world. It brings the power of love, the power of peace, the power of being settled, and the power of being present in a very full and embodied, complete way.
This gathering ourselves together of Samadhi is supported by pleasure, supported by the pleasantness or the happiness that can come from meditation. There are times when meditation teachers have de-emphasized the joy and the happiness that come with meditation. One form of that de-emphasizing is by telling the practitioner, when they feel some joy or happiness or pleasure in the meditation, “Now there’s one more thing for you to let go of.” But I think I would say it differently. It’s one more thing not to be attached to, but don’t exactly let go of it. Stay with it, maintain it. It’s one more thing to open your hands to, to hold kindly and supportingly, so that something there can grow and develop.
It’s almost like not clinging, not being attached, not being resistant, not being afraid of the pleasure and joy that comes in meditation. It’s almost like we’re opening up, or there’s an opening up like a flower that opens. When it’s going well, we don’t say the flower is letting go of itself when it opens, but it is no longer bunched up and tight. The reference to a flower works well for some people who talk about the beauty that can arise in Samadhi. That’s sometimes a more useful reference point than pleasure or joy, where some of us can have a complicated relationship to that. Maybe we have a certain standard of what joy means or what pleasure means that gets in the way of us appreciating what’s here. Or we want to appropriate it; we hold on to the joy or the pleasure like we want more.
The beauty of meditation is difficult to appropriate. It’s difficult to grab onto beauty because it’s kind of amorphous. It’s not something that can be destroyed the more we cling. It’s almost like an open hand disappears if we grab onto it. We like that open hand so much we don’t want to share it with anyone, and we make a fist—well, the open hand is lost in that process. Beauty can be that way. Some people can feel the beauty of breathing, that there’s something very sweet that can start happening. The word “sweetness” is another way of talking about these positive feelings that can start coming from meditation.
It’s okay to evoke it slightly, not to make it a big project. A classic instruction is to have a little half-smile on your lips, and sometimes that brings kind of pleasure sensations around the lips, around the cheeks or the face. Sometimes it begins to shift the whole inner feeling that we have, kind of reconditions, reshapes something that maybe creates an alternative to how we might be shaped and affecting our body or hearts or minds by doing something with our mind that’s the opposite of a smile. Sometimes we can be on automatic pilot with resentments or anger or aversions or finding what’s wrong or being critical, self-critical. It can be so common and so frequent that it just seems like the natural state of being, and we don’t even know that we’re doing it. But it has a very strong conditioning effect and influence on our whole being.
Sometimes it’s nice to do, within reason, a slight re-orientation towards what is good right now, what is pleasant right now, what is nice right now. Some people find it useful when they sit down to make sure that they’re sitting in a place where no one’s going to disturb them, where they feel safe. And maybe even look around in their room, that the door is closed and no one’s there and there are no monsters under the bed, and actually feel the safety of it. Some people feel very little safety in their life, and so that the fear doesn’t get the upper hand, it might be good to actually take time to feel the sense of safety that might be there.
Some people take time to feel gratitude at the beginning of a sitting. Being reminded of things that we’re grateful for is an antidote to some of the other non-grateful ways in which we’re operating. Some people like to evoke a sense of contentment. Contentment is in the family of well-being and happiness. And so, to feel the ways in which you feel content in your life, as opposed to discontented. To kind of bring into the meditation some appropriate way—not forcing it, not Pollyanna-ing it—but some appropriate way to start evoking and bringing forth and being connected to a well-being, a pleasure in the present moment.
For some people, that pleasure that can come from meditation comes from starting to be absorbed in the focus of meditation, such as the breathing. Because just staying continuously with the breathing means that we’re no longer concentrating on or absorbed in thoughts and feelings which create the opposite for us—the opposite of joy, the opposite of well-being. And when those begin quieting down and settling, and they’re not fragmenting us or irritating the heart or the mind, there’s a natural sense of being more peaceful, more subtle, more calm. As we kind of stay continuous with the breath, there’s something that gets evoked that is clearly a feeling of pleasure or joy that is not in the breath itself, but is in the way the mind is getting organized and absorbed with the focus of attention.
It turns out that there’s something about the brain that when it gets really peacefully absorbed or attentive, gathered around a thing, it seems to release—maybe it’s releasing hormones or something—it tends to release something. Something begins to be evoked, and pleasure and joy comes, maybe partly because with that kind of absorption, there’s no longer a feeling of unsafety, there’s no longer a feeling of discontent, there’s no longer a feeling of being oppressed or being put upon, or no longer being reminded of all the responsibilities we have to accomplish, all the things, all the plans we have to do, the to-do list. All these things that make us fragmented and cut up and tense begin kind of falling away, and just that feels good. There’s the pleasure of relief. “Ah, just here in a simple way.”
Of course, it’s not like this direct highway to pleasure, but it’s helpful to realize that pleasure, well-being, contentment, gratitude can coexist with the opposite. And it starts creating a different atmosphere, a different influence on ourselves when we begin centering ourselves on the more subtle sense of well-being. Again, not to push everything else away, but to appreciate that we will take care of the world and ourselves better when we’re really centered and calm and peaceful in a way that Samadhi creates. Samadhi creates a kind of capacity and power and ability to meet the world in a full and open and direct way, so that we can care for the world from the place that’s the best in us. We don’t want to care for the world from how we are aversive or angry or greedy or afraid. It is possible to care for the world, care for ourselves, from beauty, from peacefulness, from love. And that’s the wonderfulness of Samadhi, that as it grows, we have the ability to respond to the world in that way.
So thank you very much. And I hope that on this day, you’ll smile more. I’d like to offer, a little bit tongue-in-cheek but a little bit serious, that if you find a nice way to smile twice as much today as you normally would, probably you’ll have half as much feeling that you have problems in your life. May you smile, and may you share your smile and your sparkle with those around you. Thank you.
Samadhi: A Pāli word for a state of meditative consciousness, often translated as “concentration,” “unification of mind,” or “absorption.” It is a state of deep calm and stability that is a key component of the Buddhist path. ↩