This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Happiness; Samadhi (28) Well-Being and Being Practiced. 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.
To assume a meditation posture. For those of you who have done this often, maybe just the posture is familiar as home. Maybe the care that you can give to yourself, to feel into your posture, to see what small adjustments you can make to make it more comfortable and more aligned, or maybe even it feels good that you’re attending to yourself, to your own well-being.
And then with a posture of meditation that’s right for you, to now simply check in. Just feel the familiarity of the meditation posture. See if there’s anything just in the sitting here now which is enough. Maybe you’re still easily distracted and caught up in thoughts, but even so, is there something about here and now in this body that has a nice feeling to it, a contentment, a coming home?
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but maybe right now, here and now, in the place you’re in, you’re safe. Maybe you’re warm enough. And with the eyes gently closed, as a way that you’re caring for yourself, doing something good, you gently, without a lot of force, take some deeper inhales and relaxing exhales.
And then letting your breathing return to normal. And now feel into your body. How is it to be present in your body after those few big, deeper breaths and relaxing?
If you allow your attention to be broad, is there any broad sense of feelings of well-being in your body? Not dramatic, maybe they even coexist with whatever challenges you’re feeling, but maybe there’s a little sense of calm now settling in. Maybe a small amount of pleasure just being here in your body. Maybe a relief, maybe a contentment, a comfort that is not located in any one place, doesn’t have a center in you, maybe, but it’s diffusive, pervades some part of your body.
And is there some way that it can feel good to sit here without meditating, without doing anything except maybe gently, lovingly letting go of doing? If you’re thinking, that’s a doing. If you’re trying to change something or attain something, that’s a doing. Not doing. Is there any feeling here and now that just to be present, just to be here, is enough?
Not doing anything and allowing whatever arises in your experience to come to you, to be, to occur within some broad state that’s spacious or open, contented.
And then to be aware of breathing, and with breathing being in the center of it all, but not focusing on the breath. Maybe almost as if the sensations of breathing and awareness meet each other. They meet halfway, each receiving the other. Almost like a warm sunlight and you receiving each other as the sun warms you up. To experience the rhythm of breathing, where the sensations of breathing have both a clarity to themselves but also a diffuseness, as they are part of the wider field, a state that has some pleasure, contentment, maybe even some happiness.
Noticing if there’s any broader state of being that is pleasant, enjoyable, nice, comforting for you. Maybe it’s a bit of calm, some form of well-being, contentment. And if there is such a wider state, however subtle it might feel, relax into it, so that it’s almost as if that state is doing the meditation. So the mind, rather than working at meditation, feels that it can relax into the state, almost as if the mind and the effort of the mind joins the broader state that spreads through your body. It is gently animated by the rhythm of breathing in the body.
And as we come to the end of this sitting, taking some time here to feel or sense whatever way that you’ve become more comfortable or more settled, calmer. Is there some way that some of you is a little more contented just to be present? And is there any way that there is something in the mind, the body, the heart that you could say has a… is happy? Some form of well-being that feels settled and contented or calm, that maybe is effusive through parts of your body, that feels nice to surrender to, to surrender into the feeling of well-being that’s more a state of being than something you’re doing. What you do is surrender to it, settle into it, open into whatever subtle or not-so-subtle sense of well-being, happiness is here now, or peace or spaciousness.
And then if there’s any way that you feel better now than you did at the beginning of the meditation, imagine that better, imagine that good feeling, a sense of well-being, is something you can replicate and offer to others. Imagine that you could simply wish for others to feel it and it would spread into them as it stays with you. That your own sense of well-being is something that can spread out across the land, radiate from you in all directions, so that your wish for other people’s well-being feels like a very satisfying, important thing to do. To wish people well.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
And as I go through the day today, may I remember I’m capable of well-being myself. I’m capable of being happy. May I stay close to it so I can offer it to others.
Thank you.
Hello and welcome to this series on Samadhi1. I’m delighted to be able to share this topic in this slow way that we’re doing it. We’ve been doing it now for a few weeks, and so as we’re going deeper into it, please always remember that it’s good to restart as a beginner whenever necessary.
Sometimes the art of meditation is to know when it is the right time for that. We have to practice, we have to apply ourselves in some way, and when it’s time to not apply ourselves but be more receptive, to be more allowing. In a sense, rather than doing the practice, we are being practiced. Rather than doing the walking, when you walk through the airport here in San Francisco, you are now stepping onto the conveyor belt that carries you horizontally through the corridor, and you can stop walking. You’re carried along.
The nature of our practice changes over time. At some point, and this is one of the nice things about practicing regularly for some time, some of the ways in which we are practiced, some of the ways that things are familiar and a homecoming, and the good feeling of, “I’m back now in a place I’m really comfortable in,” that begins to open up a sense of deeper comfort, a deeper feeling of the practice is doing me, meditation is doing me, rather than I’m responsible for every single little thing that happens in meditation.
To develop a kind of a meditating body means that it’s such a familiar and comfortable and nice place to be that we feel like it’s doing us in some way. It’s nice to settle into it, and we can let go and relax. That takes a while to develop, and it’s really worthwhile finding it. Sometimes slowly over time, the body adjusts and changes, and we find our way.
At some point as we practice, there comes a phase of practice, before entering into this state of being called Samadhi, that we’re beginning to approach it. Classically, it’s called access concentration or access Samadhi. I like to call it the approach, the approaching Samadhi stage.
This last summer, I went back to my hometown in Bergen, Norway, and being driven from the airport back into the middle of town, where it’s such a home place for me, something very cozy began happening in my body. I felt very contented and satisfied, like just being here was enough. As I got closer and closer, something began to open inside, something began feeling comforted and home and safe. In the course of the days I was there, I would come and go out of the center of town, and each time I came towards the center, I remember having this feeling, or going to visit the places where I had lived growing up, and oh, it felt so good to even approach it, to be there.
This approaching, where we begin feeling that we’re not the only one practicing—our body is practicing, we’re being practiced. There’s a sense of a state of being that’s a little bit diffuse and broad, that feels like it’s inclusive, it’s unifying, it’s holding everything of who we are in its broad kind of bubble of pleasure, well-being, delight, confidence, calm, contentment, peace, spaciousness. I offer all these words not because any single one of them is right, but rather that this approaching, this feeling of rightness, this feeling that it feels really good to be here in such a way that I don’t have to keep practicing, I’m being practiced. It’s almost like a state of being where just to be alive is enough.
The idea that we’re the ones in the control tower engineering the practice, making the practice work, begins shifting as something else now begins to be pervasive through the body, through parts of the body—maybe the torso, maybe the front of the chest, maybe down the arms, maybe in the face or in the hands, or some place in the body that starts to maybe vibrate, maybe glow, maybe feel more open. Maybe parts of the body, in a very contented way, just feel like they disappear, like there’s no resistance, almost nothing there because it has just become so peaceful in that part of the body.
Some of this will feel like just very nice pleasure. Some of it will feel like a joy or delight that begins welling up. Some of it can feel like a very contented or satisfying feeling of happiness. We’re just here.
Then, what I talked about Monday, this rhythm of applying attention and staying and resting and kind of settling again and resting—kind of like, as I keep saying, petting the cat, and the cat purrs. It’s very nice and it’s very comforting for the cat. You’re just doing this nice thing, and it’s almost unselfconscious. It’s not trying to provide oneself or the cat with the highest peak of human ecstasy; it’s just a contented feeling, happy to be there.
So, in the same way, with applying attention into the middle of all this sense of well-being with the breathing, the breathing is clear enough. It’s kind of at the center of it, but it now begins to feel like this wider state is somehow the context of attention, a context of awareness, like awareness is continuous with the state of being, as opposed to awareness being created and engineered from the mind. Awareness becomes, for some time, maybe a diffusive feeling. It’s more like a diffusive feeling through the body. And maybe if you don’t want to call it awareness, that’s okay, but it’s kind of like the feeling of well-being now pervades or influences or shapes or informs how we’re aware, how we’re mindful, how we’re knowing the experience. We’re knowing it now in an easy, relaxed, easygoing way and staying there.
The art of meditation now, of Samadhi, is to know how much effort to make. When the mind is really distracted and really spinning out, doing a kind of relaxed, open, peaceful, calm awareness is not going to work. The amount of effort we put into practice is measured a little bit by this: if we don’t do it, the alternative is worse. So we have to do just enough that it’s better than the alternative, just enough to be present in an easy way, and then slowly things settle in and we develop further and further.
As we get into this approach phase of practice, the amount of effort we have to make in some ways diminishes. There’s less self, there’s less idea of attainment. It’s almost like it doesn’t matter if I go into Samadhi, it doesn’t matter how concentrated I get, it doesn’t matter if I attain anything. What matters is that it’s just so good to lie there and be there in this contented way.
Sometimes when I take a nap in the afternoon, I feel refreshed when I take a 15-20 minute nap, but then sometimes I have no desire to get up from the bed. I just feel so contented and happy that just to be there and breathing and being alive feels like it’s enough, it’s good. And there’s no idea of attaining anything or proving myself or having something to show for myself, or no idea of non-attainment or getting away from anything. Just there.
This approach stage of Samadhi is a time when there starts to be a shift between us practicing and being practiced, us kind of doing the focus and somehow feeling the awareness or the focus or the presence that we have is easy to do. It’s almost like there’s some momentum happening. Something is holding us, something is supporting us, so that practice feels more like it’s being done from the inside out. Like we’re being carried now, we’re being supported now. Something has gathered, something is unifying, something is holding it all.
I apologize for offering all these words, but I do that because no single word is going to work for everyone, and some of this is very personal. So what I’m trying to offer here is a little bit of the map, so that if there are better words for you to describe how it is, then please go along with that. But now we’re at the approach phase.
So I hope that this teaching, even if you don’t exactly follow it or understand it, maybe it brings you a kind of delight and confidence that this practice is good, and it’s good to be part of it, knowing that there’s a wonderful map, there’s a wonderful territory, there’s a wonderful life to move into and be part of in this practice of meditation. Thank you.
Samadhi: A Pali word that refers to a state of meditative concentration or absorption. It is a state of deep mental collectedness and tranquility, often considered a key component of the Buddhist path to enlightenment. ↩