This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Opening to Joy; Samadhi (27) Joy. 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, and welcome. For this morning’s meditation, to repeat, for this week we are engaged in the aspect of samadhi1 which is not considered samadhi quite yet but is approaching samadhi. It’s fairly common to think of samadhi as a state of absorption. Another word that maybe works better for some people is a state of immersion. I think since ancient times, and sometimes in the modern world, I listen to people talk about their meditation, and it seems like people come up with this metaphor spontaneously on their own without knowing anything about the tradition. Sometimes immersion in samadhi can feel a little bit like taking a comfortable, safe dip underwater in maybe a cool, refreshing, or warm pool of water, and kind of floating and then sinking a little bit and getting completely saturated and absorbed, immersed. Then coming out of samadhi is kind of like rising up, and the head comes out of it.
So right now, we’re approaching. And slowly, as we approach, we get closer and closer. One of the aspects of the approach is to begin gathering together so that we’re really involved with the meditation practice more than anything else. The strong tendencies to be distracted, the strong tendencies to be preoccupied, the strong tendencies to be reactive and be involved in for and against experience in some reactive way has abated, has quieted for a time being. So that we’re fully absorbed, like we would if we were completely absorbed in reading a wonderful book or watching some wonderful show or activity, or if we’re involved in some kind of game or sport or craft or playing music in some way that it somehow pulls our attention so completely that other things in the world fall away and we’re just here for this.
It’s harder to do this with meditation because we’re not doing, you know, obviously something that normally we would consider interesting. The breath doesn’t seem like it would be so interesting. What’s interesting is not the breath in and of itself, but rather what begins to happen in the gathering, the centering of attention, the calming of attention, the intimacy of attention, the lightness and ease of attention. And there’s a feedback system where the more that we’re gathered around something like the breathing and absorbed in it, it has an influence on the rest of us. It has an influence that where things get gathered and settled and calmed and absorbed, and it can feel really good and a relief to not be pulled away and fragmented by thoughts.
So starting to recognize this process, this feedback loop of this gathering, this influence that being focused has, being centered has, and using that as an encouragement to keep gathering, keep gathering. So that’s the approach part. The hindrances might still be at play, but now we know there’s another game in town. We know there’s something, as we get into the approach, it’s kind of like maybe we see where we’re going or we have a clear sense or feeling for, “There’s something really good here.” And so there’s a more easier way, like, let’s stay, let’s come back, let’s keep in a flow, let’s keep massaging it and staying here and here and here.
Yesterday, I talked about this connecting and sustaining attention, and then last week was pleasure. To bring these together, as we’re looking for the signs of samadhi, the symptoms, the feedback loop, the pleasure begins to feel a little bit like joy, delight, a gladness, a sense of not just pleasure but a sense of well-being. So I’ll offer you some guidance, and maybe this can be the orientation as we continue exploring these different inner capacities we have that are getting gathered and organized and oriented towards samadhi. We’re organizing the mind, we’re organizing our mental life, our heart life. We’re organizing it so it’s really here in this loving way, immersed in love, maybe.
So, to assume a meditation posture and to gently close the eyes. And to take a few long, slow, deep breaths, relaxing on the exhale.
And then letting the breathing return to normal, begin now to sit here quietly without meditating. To sit here quietly and do nothing. And if you do anything, if you start thinking about things or reacting to things or reacting to these instructions, that’s doing something. How simple can you allow yourself to be? If doing anything, it might be relaxing the tendency to do, to think, to react.
And one of the characteristics, one of the things that arise when we get simpler and simpler, doing less and less and less, is a natural capacity to be aware, to be present here and now is left there. Not an active, intentional attention, but a receptive, quiet, almost natural way of knowing, sensing, being aware. In a way, our capacity for attention is always there when we’re awake, and it can stand out in the highlight if we do nothing, letting go, just being.
And doing this not-doing, as it works for you, don’t have a high standard, but notice as you do nothing, do little, very little, some way in which awareness can be present without you doing awareness. Present moment awareness. Maybe an awareness which is very light, maybe an awareness which is a little bit more spacious, a little spacious, open, receptive.
And then as you exhale, to settle the awareness into the settling spot of breathing. To allow the centering spot of breathing to be in the middle of this very light, open awareness. And as you breathe, and as you just be, doing very little, feel your way into your body. To feel whatever pleasure, whatever rightness or relief there is in this simplicity of just sitting here in meditation.
Maybe the awareness, a simple non-doing awareness, can have a global reach to feel in the body where there’s pleasure or contentment or comfort or a feeling of calm or settling.
And without doing much, just a little bit more than doing nothing, let there be a gentle massage with awareness, a gentle returning and entering and being in the middle of it all. Breathing, connecting awareness to the inhale, connecting awareness to the exhale.
Connecting and sustaining with the inhale, as if maybe the inhale touches the ability to sense and feel. Inhale and this exhale is a touching into awareness, rather than you doing the awareness. Awareness is quiet. It’s more like the breathing touches awareness, and you stay open to experience the whole inhale, sustaining the whole exhale.
Centered on breathing, the peripheral awareness can receive whatever pleasure, calm, contentment there might be with sitting here with your breathing, sitting here aware.
Alert enough to the experience of breathing that you’re likely to notice if the mind begins to think and wander off. And if it does, use that as a reminder to connect to breathing, stay with the breathing.
You might allow there to be a little smile, add a little bit of joy to the pleasure. A gentle yes to settling in here, to breathing at the center, surrounded by some feeling of pleasure or joy, however small that is.
Maybe the inhale is a connecting to the process of breathing, and the exhale is sustaining the whole length of the exhale, while you relax into a wider feeling of well-being associated with the simplicity of being here, meditating.
And as you’re sitting meditating, can you do less? Can you relax, let go of anything not needed for meditation? Let go of anything not about meditation. Soften, relax anything that keeps you at a distance from being settled here in your body, breathing.
A calming of the mind and body, a feeling of contentment or calm or simple pleasure that’s here as we come to the end of the meditation. Maybe as we started, to do almost nothing, just enough awareness to be centered here in the experience of breathing. And to feel, as with the end of the meditation, whatever is pleasant, whatever you enjoy.
And maybe you can appreciate that you took this time to practice, to sit here, and appreciate it with a small smile, turning up the corners of your mouth just a little bit with an attitude of “yes, here.” And if it’s easy enough, allowing some joy to arise, the joy of practicing, being a little bit more connected, a little calmer, settled. Allowing yourself to feel joy or delight or appreciation, a kind of appreciation that brings a smile at least to the heart.
And as we come to the end, may it be that we gaze upon the world with a smile in our eyes, a sparkle, delight. And may we see other people with appreciation. Many people are not often seen with appreciation, with delight, with joy. And it’s a gift we can give others, is to not be in a hurry to speak or to get what you want or to make something happen, but to use the ability to be present quietly to appreciate others, to gaze upon others with a simple joy. The joy of at least having our hearts open and caring for everyone we meet. We’re so lucky when we have care and appreciation and compassion for others, love.
And may it be that this practice we do supports the welfare and happiness of others. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
Thank you.
So, continuing this series on samadhi, the topic I want to talk about now is joy. And with that in mind, I want to express my joy and my appreciation, my gratitude for all the people who made donations to our Save the Children fundraising drive. The little meter on the Save the Children’s page for IMC shows us more than 90% there to the somewhat arbitrary goal that we set. And so I’m quite inspired and delighted and happy that this community came forward so much and to offer. It’s close to $70,000 there, and we’ve actually raised more because of a donation that came in indirectly, not through that particular page on Save the Children. So, and some of you, if you would still like to make a donation, it’s a donation well offered and inspiring to have done it together. And kind of the sum total of what we’re doing here is quite impressive. It makes a kind of a loud statement for some of us of what a community can do when we come together to do good things in the world. So thank you. You’ll find information about it on the IMC website.
So, joy as part of meditation. Now, it’s not so easy to feel joy. When people come to meditation, they often will begin because of some challenge they have, maybe the suffering they have, difficulty they have, that they can’t just sit down and smile and feel joy. But at some point, as we learn mindfulness, learn how to be present for our experience, it’s phenomenal that we have a practice that can meet our suffering and that can meet our sadness, our grief, our anger. And we could do it. That practice of mindfulness does it effectively, and it’s a very significant way of not being caught by the emotions while at the same time developing the capacity to hold them in a beneficial way. We’re not being driven around or controlled by our emotions, but we’re also not avoiding them. So this whole process of mindfulness is such a good foundation.
And as mindfulness develops, then at some point, the capacity to be present grows, and it becomes a time maybe to begin appreciating that mindfulness can partner with a kind of a steady, stable, calm focus, really staying here in the present moment. Some people call a certain kind of concentration momentary samadhi, where we’re really here moment by moment. And you can really feel a shift sometimes when we feel, “Now I’m really here,” and “I’m not being pulled off this way and that way anymore.” Now the whole system is settled enough, clicked in enough that I’m just going to be in the flow of the present moment. And that can bring so much delight and joy, especially if it’s been a long time coming, that we’ve been working with the reactivity and the strong preoccupation of the mind and bringing the mind back and waking up again and again. At some point, it doesn’t become so much work to be present anymore. We’re here.
And even the most experienced meditators have to begin again at the beginning. Even the experienced meditators will sit down and their mind will be preoccupied, and it feels like they’re beginners again. The difference, in a sense—I like to think that we’re all beginners, just some of us are experienced beginners—and the difference between a raw beginner and an experienced beginner is that an experienced beginner kind of knows the terrain, knows to recognize what’s important, to recognize what to be present for. And someone who’s a novice to meditation might not know that yet.
So when we start kind of bringing in samadhi as a partner to mindfulness, we’re going further into recognizing what is important, what is useful to notice in the present moment. So it’s not a complete random, choicelessness about what we’re being present for. Because if we do that, then the old habits of mind actually give priority to certain things. It’s not, we’re not really choiceless. But when we really settle deep, then at some point, we start noticing that it feels good to meditate. There’s more calm, there’s more subtleness, the mind is not so much out of control. And as we develop samadhi, we want to start recognizing some of the good factors that begin growing and developing. And one of those is the ability to stay present. And one of those forms for samadhi is what I talked about yesterday: this connecting attention and sustaining, that there’s a gentle kind of, “stay there, stay there.” So we’re not ready yet to really click into the present moment, but we’re there close enough. We just stay there, stay there. And it can be kind of delightful, it can be very pleasant. Almost as it’s pleasant to get a massage, it’s pleasant to massage the mind, the attention, the present moment. Stay there, be here, be here.
And then, as the meditation develops, part of the landscape we want to become familiar with is whatever kind of pleasure there is with it. And the word pleasure, as I said last week, involves a wide range of good feelings. Sometimes it’s a feel, kind of a sense of beauty, a sweetness that’s present. Sometimes it’s a more clear physical, kind of strong flow of pleasure, of tingling, of delight that moves through some parts of the body. And some of it has a little more of an emotional quality. And one of the things that becomes invaluable as we’re approaching the immersion, samadhi, approaching and getting immersed in the world of samadhi, is to feel joy. And the Pali word is piti2, which is P-I-T-I.
And I’ve seen sometimes that it’s translated as a thrill. There’s a kind of little bit of a joyful excitement that’s there. So it’s represented by a smile. Sometimes with a smile, there’s kind of a little bit of energy that awakens and becomes strong, maybe a kind of sparkle in the eyes and maybe the cheeks and in the head. There’s a kind of a feeling of delight and kind of energized delight, kind of an enthusiasm, “Yes, we’re here to practice.”
In that enthusiasm, that yes, that delight and joy can be kind of soft and sweet, and it could also be kind of quite strong at times. It’s kind of like the connecting and sustaining, staying there with experience, becomes a little bit like blowing on a fire, and the fire gets stronger and stronger. That staying there, staying there with the breathing, the focus of attention, this connecting, applying attention, and then sustaining it, is a gentle kind of blowing that lets that joy arise. This joy is considered in the tradition to be a little bit more mental in contrast to another form of well-being that comes into play when we go into samadhi, which is what I call happiness. And it’s one that’s not, it’s more sublime, it’s more settled. And so often it’s associated with being a little more physical, but it’s because the little bit of mental excitement, thrill, that involves joy quiets down, becomes quieter. And then we feel a kind of a settled, calm, peaceful kind of happiness that feels very still. The joy has a little bit of movement or excitement in it that this deeper happiness doesn’t have. And these two can coexist.
But these are kind of elements of this gathering together. We’re gathering together these good qualities. And now emotionally, we’re gathering our emotional life, the goodness that’s there with our inspiration and practice, the goodness of the intention of why we’re practicing, the goodness of the purpose, the goodness of how we offer ourselves in the practice, the self-respect, the care, maybe the love for ourselves that grows as we do this practice. There’s all this kind of gathering of goodness that’s here that is being collected to be present in a very simple way, to be present almost as if we’re doing very close to nothing, but we’re engaged, we’re fully here. And at some point, this fully here, this engagement begins having a life of its own. And sometimes the effort to practice does not feel like we’re doing nothing, but it feels like, “I’m not doing it now, the practice is carrying me now, the practice is flowing.” And we’re here connecting, sustaining, and this joy of practice, the pleasure of practice begins carrying us, begins flowing us. It’s kind of like we’ve stepped onto the moving sidewalk, and we’re walking, walking, and then we suddenly step onto that moving conveyor belt, and we can stop walking because now we’re being carried along by it.
So at some point, as we gather, as we feel, allow ourselves to connect to all this, it clicks in and we’re being practiced rather than doing the practice. And for this to happen, there is this organizing, gathering of ourselves, unifying of those things that we know are part of this process of samadhi. So there is a selectivity, not to push anything away, not to deny and put blinders on. Samadhi is the opposite; it’s the releasing of blinders, but then also of beginning to take in the pleasure, the goodness of the practice here and now. We’re allowed to feel joy in this practice. Not only are we allowed, but the joy itself and then happiness, these qualities are what begins to allow, it’s part of the approach to the wonderful, sweet lake that we’re going to go dipping into, that immerse ourselves in. These are the qualities that come into play.
If we chase them, if we try to engineer them, then we get in the way. If we have a strong expectation, we’re forcing it, it gets in the way. It’s the pleasure of not forcing anything, the pleasure of not chasing, that’s part of the pleasure of this samadhi. It allows us to settle in, allows something to come into play, and puts us on the conveyor belt that, maybe in the airport, where the San Francisco airport has all these moving sidewalks we can stand on, it takes us to the plane. So we’re going this, and then at some point, we’re in the plane.
So I hope this makes sense. And I certainly hope that for those of you whose direct experience isn’t the same of what I’m talking about, that you don’t lose heart. That the great joy of this practice is that the practice puts us in the middle of our life as it is, and then we find our way with that with mindfulness. And I’ve had a lot of joy in the practice by, oddly enough, by having a practice that connects me in a useful, significant way to my personal difficulties. So even there, we can find a certain kind of pleasure.
So thank you very much. You might today, as you go through your day, see if you can find more joy. Avail yourself of the joy that’s here. There’s probably more opportunities to feel joy if you slow down, look around, than you usually allow yourself to feel. See what happens if you spend a day allowing yourself to feel the simple joys of life here and now. Thank you.
Samadhi: A Pali word for a state of meditative concentration or absorption, where the mind becomes still and unified. ↩
Piti: A Pali word often translated as “joy,” “rapture,” or “delight.” It is one of the factors of meditative absorption (jhana) and is often experienced as a physical and mental thrill or energy. ↩