This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Panoramic Wholeness; Samadhi (29) Coordinated Wholeness. 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, hello, and welcome to this meditation session that’s part of an ongoing series on Samadhi1. Samadhi is the means in Buddhism to see things clearly as they are and to do so with equanimity, to do so with a non-reactivity. Because reactivity prevents us from seeing things as they are, and the primary thing that we want to see is ourselves, or see in such a way that we see what’s there. We see the world clearly, but we don’t get caught in it; we become free.
For some of us, it’s an indirect way of finding our equanimity with the world. It’s also an indirect way of responding to the world. Samadhi is not a retreating from the world; it’s a strategic stepping away in order to come back into health—psychological, spiritual health. What’s remarkable about the whole process of Buddhist meditation and Buddhist spiritual life is that we have self-healing properties. There’s a movement towards homeostasis, or a movement towards health, to wholeness. There’s a movement towards no longer living in a divided way, or no longer caught in our reactivity and our fears and our ambitions and conceits. It’s remarkable what opens up for us, and it’s remarkable how we start allowing and trusting the self-healing, the self-growing movements, the onward-leading nature of this practice. And it is onward-leading if we allow and trust a deep process of connection to ourselves here and now.
Part of this with Samadhi is that it is a process of becoming whole, a process of unification, of gathering ourselves together to allow this process of the whole of who we are to come into some kind of healed, holistic state. As we develop, as we settle in and calm down and be more really here, grounded in ourselves, grounded in this place, grounded right here, meditation practice becomes less and less concerned with accomplishing anything, with attaining anything, with proving ourselves or making something happen for ourselves. Because more and more, we see that that movement of mind takes us away from the whole, takes us away from really allowing this deeper, onward-leading process to happen.
The paradox is that the fastest way from A to B is to be fully at A, to be fully here in this experience with what’s happening now. To not be interested with accomplishments and attainments and getting anywhere in meditation is actually a way in which the whole system unfolds and actually moves into some of the deeper places in meditation. So, it’s almost like giving up attaining anything is the way to make progress in the practice.
When we’re approaching Samadhi, there starts becoming more and more a sense of deep contentment, deep happiness, deep joy, a deep kind of peace with just this moment here, that feels compelling. It feels like it has its own life that begins unfolding, and with that comes a sense of unification. One of the things that can mean is we have a sense that awareness now becomes more whole, more inclusive, more global. We might be very centered on some point, on the settling point in the breathing, but it’s not focused, it’s not tight. There’s an open, soft, relaxed feeling of being centered, at ease, resting there, and at the same time, a soft, wider focus, a sweetness, a joy, a delight, a contentment that is not so specific but is more diffuse. As we’re more content to be here, there’s more emphasis on the diffuse awareness than there is on a tight, narrow, focused attention. But that diffuse awareness that spreads out is nicely centered, and the attention is kind of centered but not tight, not straining to be with something. There might feel a great intimacy, but there’s a feeling it’s in a wider container or wider field that could feel quite spacious, quite bubbly, quite soft, quite warm, a glow, something. This broad, inclusive awareness.
So with those introductory words, assume a meditation posture.
Enter your posture, maybe with your eyes closed, as if you’re lowering yourself into a refreshing pool of water. You would take a deep breath and on the exhale, lower yourself into the pool of your body, settling the body.
Breathing in deeply so that awareness of the body spreads through the torso with the expanding rib cage and belly. Breathing in deeply and also feeling the more subtle sense of movement and expansion in the back rib cage, so the experience of breathing is three-dimensional through the whole torso. And then a three-dimensional settling on the exhale.
Maybe a two-step exhale. Exhale as you normally would, and then exhale a bit more by relaxing further the diaphragm, the belly.
And then letting your breathing be normal. For a few moments here with your eyes closed, feel or sense the edges of your body. Some places where there’s contact with the chair or the floor, the hands’ contact with the body, there’s a very clear sense of edge. In other places, there’s no contact; maybe the edge feels more diffuse, more continuous with the space around it.
And then within the skin of your body, this bag of the body, be aware of the global sensations on the inside. Almost as if you can imagine a large, spacious room within you, or a large cavern, or an open space. And as you breathe, you’re breathing within it. Sensations of breathing are moving through the wider space of this body. And as you exhale, a calming of the body, like a wave that travels through.
So the experience of the body breathing is occurring within a wider field of the lived body, the general sense of being in a body as it’s sensed or felt right now. Maybe a soft, diffuse sense of a vibration, energy, glow, hum, where there’s not an awareness that fixates on any particular thing. Like the space in a room doesn’t fixate on anything; it allows all the objects to be there as they are. Or as if you’re gazing into the space of a room, into the space of an open sky, the attention doesn’t land on any object, but the peripheral awareness knows in a general way what’s around.
And within this global body, as you exhale, soften the thinking mind, a gentle calming of the thinking mind. As you’re exhaling, calming and letting go of thoughts, let go into the body breathing. Like a leaf settling from a tree onto the forest floor, awareness on the exhale is settling into the floor of breathing, the settling point within.
A panoramic sensing, feeling of your body without any strain. As you soften, relax, calm the body, settle into a panoramic sense of being present with breathing at the center.
If the whole body is like the ocean, the breathing is like the waves lifting and falling on the surface of the ocean. And as you breathe like waves through the body, also feel whatever pleasure that’s present, especially any pleasure and well-being that comes with the meditation.
And as we come to the end of this sitting, gently, softly, as you exhale, let there be a calming, settling throughout your body. As if there’s a wide, soft awareness that pervades your body, and that breathing in is a movement that travels through that field of calm or space, particular sensations that travel through the wide field of the body. In a sense, the body is like an antenna. All the sensations that we feel in the body are there because we have the ability to sense, to feel, like an antenna.
And as we get ready to open the eyes and begin the process of returning into this wide world, the wide world is a field of connections, a wide network. Before there were wireless networks, there were wireless people, networks of relationships and connections and interactions between people, some wordless. Every communication we have with someone else is part of this human network, whether we’re writing or speaking or sharing a space with people. We’re designed to be in relationship in this human network that we’re all part of.
And to offer into that wide field and network of our humanity some equivalent of a smile, as if a smile brings brightness to the whole field. As if a smile is reassuring and calming for the field. A smile of friendship, a smile of care, a smile of respect. May it be that this practice we do disposes us to spread smiles and kindness and warmth and care into this world. May we bring a brightness to this human world, human network.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
Thank you.
Hello and welcome to this next talk on Samadhi. We’re now at the point of Samadhi where we’re at the phase of the approach, the approach phase, approaching Samadhi. The classic way of talking about this is that it is a gathering together, or maybe we can say a coordination of five different factors that come into play. Having these somehow in the field there to be coordinated creates a kind of onward movement, an onward kind of opening or settling or strengthening of the state of awareness in meditation that we’re in. And so, to gently not try to make anything happen, but to allow the coordination to happen, and then to kind of gently feel where that onward-leading spot is and just rest with it. It’s almost like you’re allowing yourself to be pulled along.
So these five coordinated faculties of ours that come into play, that become a little bit more pronounced—and you don’t have to identify every single one—but the tradition says these are the five things that are starting to become coordinated and working together.
The first is these two: the applied and sustained attention, the connecting attention and the sustaining attention. So we’re not just resting still on some focus of attention like the breathing. There is a kind of gentle, wave-like movement of connecting and releasing, connecting, releasing, connecting, wandering away, coming back. There’s a kind of gentle massage that’s there: “stay here, stay here.” Sometimes I’ve even had the very sense of a little voice in the back of the mind that’s telling me, “stay here, stay here with this, stay now, now.” Sometimes I’ve used the word “yes” for this. “Yes, yes.” And there’s a little bit of a wave, a little bit of connecting and sustaining. I like the “yes” because that speaks to the next thing.
So the first is the connecting attention, the second is sustaining that attention, in a very small, relaxed, nice way, like “yes.” The third is some degree of joy, some degree in which the mind is getting lit up. The mind is saying, “Oh, yes, yes, this is good. Yes, this is nice.” It’s not necessarily verbal like that, but it’s as if there’s a kind of a brightness, a kind of a, maybe a teeny bit of a thrill or a pleasure that feels delightful and wonderful that comes with this feeling. Like you’re now on the slide and it’s so great to be sliding along. Now you’re in the field, now you’re kind of nicely connected. It’s almost as if this connecting and sustaining attention is like a cat being petted, and that just feels so joyful, happy, thrilled.
But then there’s also—and this sometimes is less clearly felt—but there’s also a deeper feeling, or embodied feeling, that maybe initially can be described as contentment. I often think of it as happiness. It’s less of the mental brightness and thrill that can be there, the mental “yes, this is great,” but now there’s a more settled “ah.” And then it becomes easier to… this happiness is a place where it’s easier to happily be calm, happily be settled, happily to be here, not needing anything else, happy to just arrive and be present, because just being alive is enough. So it can be a feeling of contentment, it can be a feeling of coziness, a feeling of sweetness that’s settling, calming, reassuring. It is a kind of happiness that brings a sense of confidence, like, “this is the right place to be, this is a good thing.”
So there’s the connecting attention, sustaining attention, there’s joy, there’s happiness. And then the fifth of these coordinating factors is sometimes called one-pointedness. But that “one-pointedness” is too easy to have the idea that we’re tensing up and straining to be really locked into something. Sometimes there is a feeling of really clicking in and really being present in a very clear way, but we’re not the one who’s doing it; it’s the system that’s doing it. So the mind could be quite relaxed.
The metaphor or the example I like to use for this is that, say we’re just staying with the breathing. And the breathing is, let’s say, like a wave coming and going, rising and passing. And then someone says, “You should concentrate on the breath.” And so then there’s a mind here, and to concentrate, everything in the mind gets tense and focused like a point, and then it goes and kind of points and tries to pierce this breath that’s a moving, flowing thing. And sometimes that can create strain and headaches and all kinds of problems to do it this way.
Another way of doing it is to let the mind be very soft and relaxed, to calm the mind, calm the body, relax everything. So there’s a feeling of spaciousness and openness, like the hand now is open, not collapsed on itself. And then you bring these two together. This is the holistic, broad, wide sense of being aware because the mind is quite open and spacious. The body feels quite open and kind of pervaded with a hum of just being alive, or the hum or vibration of all the different little sensations of the body kind of singing together. And in the open mind, there’s no tension. The breathing is still moving, and what you do is you bring this together so that maybe the breathing gets quieter and quieter, and so the breathing and the most sensitive part of the mind meet and join.
So there’s a resting, a coming together. There’s a kind of a sense of being right centered on the breathing, the massage of the breathing, staying there. The connecting attention is kind of like connecting, sustaining, falls away, connecting, sustaining to the most sensitive part of the mind. So there’s a lot really centered there, but it’s not focused, it’s not preoccupied. And there’s at the same time a broad field all around it that can feel sometimes like just space. Sometimes it can feel like a sweetness, a pleasure, a joy, a holistic kind of sense of being here in the whole body. But this is soft and relaxed.
This begins taking prominence, and sometimes what will happen is this connection will become stronger and stronger, and everything around it becomes softer and softer, and maybe parts of the body seem to disappear. The wider world disappears, and we’re just sitting right there on the breathing. So that’s the one-pointedness, the one gathering, the one settling, the settling place, the gathering place, the sensitivity place that we really feel, “Oh, this is it.”
So then when these five factors are coordinated, then there might be a gentle feeling of onward movement. One way that I’ve felt it is it’s almost like there’s a place, maybe in this breathing, maybe where the sense of joy or the pleasure is the strongest with all this, it’s almost like the Dharma is up ahead with a string and it’s gently pulling you, “here, here.” And so there’s some place inside that feels like, “Oh, here is where the slide is, here’s where the world is opening up, here is where to relax into.” Not to rush into, but it’s a place of approach.
As we are approaching, this feeling of being content, being holistic, being whole, being unified becomes a little bit stronger and stronger. Everything is here together. There’s nowhere else we’d rather be. The thinking mind is quieter and quieter. To the degree to which we’re thinking, it’s thoughts about the meditation, thoughts about, “Ah, here it is, here’s the in-breath, here’s the whole feel here and present.” And it’s nothing more sophisticated than that, just the most simple kind of thoughts about the experience.
And then in the process of that, there might be a feeling that there’s something operating here which is not you. It’s something operating here that you can trust, an onward movement, a deepening settling, a deeper opening. And this is something that if you have any role at all, it is to trust it. If you have any role at all, it’s to let go, let go into that place, into that onward-leading feeling, where it’s onward-leading because it feels like the pleasure, the joy is going to grow, or onward-leading because it feels like this is where the center point is that you want to really rest and follow and be with. Allow yourself to be pulled by that string, allow yourself to be carried on that slide, allow yourself to open that door. Allow the… you know, like if you have a parachute on, allow the floor of the airplane to fall open so you can start floating and flying in the space with that parachute.
So there is this kind of onward-leading. This coordination of all these things and that coming into a wholeness this way is not something you can engineer and plan for, but you can feel the symptoms of it. You could feel the joy, feel the pleasure, feel the goodness of it all, the sweetness of it all, the contentment of just being fully here, and trust it. Trust it and allow for it. Don’t be the engineer, don’t be the constructor and the maker of it. Don’t be measuring and trying to ask, “Am I there yet?” Just trust. The fastest way from A to B is to be fully at A. And as we’re at A at this approach stage, then the Dharma will know what to do. Your job is to trust the process, not be in a hurry, not to try to make it happen. And maybe the biggest thing you can do is to let go into trusting the process rather than making the process, however long it takes.
So, we’ll have one more talk on this approach point. Thank you very much.
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, hello, and welcome to this meditation session, which is part of an ongoing series on Samadhi1. In Buddhism, Samadhi is the means to see things clearly as they are and to do so with equanimity and non-reactivity. Reactivity prevents us from seeing things as they are. The primary thing that we want to see is ourselves, to see in such a way that we see what’s there. We see the world clearly, but we don’t get caught in it; we become free.
For some of us, it’s an indirect way of finding our equanimity with the world. It’s also an indirect way of responding to the world. Samadhi is not a retreating from the world; it’s a strategic stepping away in order to come back into psychological and spiritual health. What’s remarkable about the whole process of Buddhist meditation and the Buddhist spiritual life is that we have self-healing properties. There’s a movement towards homeostasis, a movement towards health and wholeness. There’s a movement towards no longer living in a divided way, no longer caught in our reactivity, our fears, our ambitions, and conceits.
It’s remarkable what opens up for us, and it’s remarkable how we start allowing and trusting the self-healing, self-growing movements—the onward-leading nature of this practice. And it is onward-leading if we allow and trust a deep process of connection to ourselves, here and now.
Part of this with Samadhi is that it is a process of becoming whole, a process of unification, of gathering ourselves together to allow the whole of who we are to come into some kind of healed, holistic state. As we develop, as we settle in and calm down and become more really here—grounded in ourselves, grounded in this place, grounded right here—meditation practice becomes less and less concerned with accomplishing anything, with attaining anything, with proving ourselves or making something happen for ourselves. More and more, we see that that movement of mind takes us away from the whole, takes us away from really allowing this deeper, onward-leading process to happen.
The paradox is that the fastest way from A to B is to be fully at A, to be fully here in this experience with what’s happening now. To not be interested in accomplishments and attainments and getting anywhere in meditation is actually the way in which the whole system unfolds and moves into some of the deeper places in meditation. So, giving up on attaining anything is the way to make progress in the practice.
As we’re approaching Samadhi, there starts to be more and more a sense of deep contentment, deep happiness, deep joy, a deep kind of peace with just this moment here. It feels compelling, like it has its own life that begins unfolding. With that comes a sense of unification. One of the things this can mean is that we have a sense that awareness now becomes more whole, more inclusive, more global. We might be very centered on some point, on the settling point in the breathing, but it’s not focused, it’s not tight. There’s an open, soft, relaxed feeling of being centered, at ease, resting there, and at the same time, a soft, wider focus—a sweetness, a joy, a delight, a contentment that is not so specific but is more diffuse.
As we’re more content to be here, there’s more emphasis on the diffuse awareness than there is on a tight, narrow, focused attention. But that diffuse awareness that spreads out is nicely centered. The attention is centered, but not tight, not straining to be with something. There might feel a great intimacy, but there’s a feeling it’s in a wider container or wider field that could feel quite spacious, quite bubbly, quite soft, quite warm—a glow, something. This broad, inclusive awareness.
So, with those introductory words, assume a meditation posture.
Enter your posture, maybe with your eyes closed. As if you’re lowering yourself into a refreshing pool of water, you would take a deep breath and on the exhale, lower yourself into the pool of your body, settling the body.
Breathing in deeply so that awareness of the body spreads through the torso with the expanding rib cage and belly. Breathing in deeply and also feeling the more subtle sense of movement and expansion in the back rib cage, so the experience of breathing is three-dimensional through the whole torso. And then a three-dimensional settling on the exhale.
Maybe a two-step exhale. Exhale as you normally would, and then exhale a bit more by relaxing further the diaphragm, the belly.
And then letting your breathing be normal. For a few moments here with your eyes closed, feel or sense the edges of your body. Some places where there’s contact with the chair or the floor, the hands’ contact with the body, there’s a very clear sense of edge. In other places, there’s no contact; maybe the edge feels more diffuse, more continuous with the space around it.
And then within the skin of your body, this bag of the body, be aware of the global sensations on the inside. Almost as if you can imagine a large, spacious room within you, or a large cavern, or an open space. And as you breathe, you’re breathing within that. The sensations of breathing are moving through the wider space of this body. And as you exhale, a calming of the body, like a wave that travels through.
So the experience of the body breathing is occurring within a wider field of the lived body, the general sense of being in a body as it’s sensed or felt right now. Maybe a soft, diffuse sense of a vibration, energy, glow, hum, where there’s not an awareness that fixates on any particular thing. Like the space in a room doesn’t fixate on anything; it allows all the objects to be there as they are. Or as if you’re gazing into the space of a room, into the space of an open sky, the attention doesn’t land on any object, but the peripheral awareness knows in a general way what’s around.
And within this global body, as you exhale, soften the thinking mind. A gentle calming of the thinking mind.
As you’re exhaling, calming and letting go of thoughts, let go into the body breathing. Like a leaf settling from a tree onto the forest floor, awareness on the exhale is settling into the floor of breathing, the settling point within.
A panoramic sensing, feeling of your body without any strain. As you soften, relax, calm the body, settle into a panoramic sense of being present with breathing at the center.
If the whole body is like the ocean, the breathing is like the waves lifting and falling on the surface of the ocean. And as you breathe like waves through the body, also feel whatever pleasure that’s present, especially any pleasure and well-being that comes with the meditation.
And as we come to the end of this sitting, gently, softly, as you exhale, let there be a calming settling throughout your body. As if there’s a wide, soft awareness that pervades your body, and that breathing in is a movement that travels through that field of calm or space—particular sensations that travel through the wide field of the body.
In a sense, the body is like an antenna. All the sensations that we feel in the body are there because we have the ability to sense, to feel, like an antenna.
And as we get ready to open the eyes and begin the process of returning into this wide world, the wide world is a field of connections, a wide network. Before there were wireless networks, there were wireless people—networks of relationships and connections and interactions between people, some wordless. Every communication we have with someone else is part of this human network, whether we’re writing or speaking or sharing a space with people. We’re designed to be in relationship in this human network that we’re all part of.
And to offer into that wide field and network of our humanity some equivalent of a smile. As if a smile brings brightness to the whole field. As if a smile is reassuring and calming for the field. A smile of friendship, a smile of care, a smile of respect.
May it be that this practice we do disposes us to spread smiles and kindness and warmth and care into this world. May we bring a brightness to this human world, this human network.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
Thank you.
Hello and welcome to this next talk on Samadhi. We’re now at the point of Samadhi where we’re at the approach phase. The classic way of talking about this is that it is a gathering together, or maybe we can say a coordination, of five different factors that come into play. Having these somehow in the field, to be coordinated, creates a kind of onward movement, an onward opening or settling or strengthening of the state of awareness in meditation that we’re in. The idea is to gently not try to make anything happen, but to allow the coordination to happen, and then to gently feel where that onward-leading spot is and just rest with it. It’s almost like you’re allowing yourself to be pulled along.
These five coordinated faculties of ours that come into play become a little bit more pronounced. You don’t have to identify every single one, but the tradition says these are the five things that are starting to become coordinated and working together.
The first two are applied and sustained attention—the connecting attention and the sustaining attention. We’re not just resting still on some focus of attention like the breathing. There is a kind of gentle, wave-like movement of connecting and releasing, connecting, releasing. Wandering away, coming back. There’s a kind of gentle massage that’s there: “stay here, stay here.” Sometimes I’ve even had the very sense of a little voice in the back of the mind that is telling me, “stay here, stay here with this, stay now, now.” Sometimes I’ve used the word “yes” for this. “Yes, yes.” There’s a little bit of a wave, a little bit of connecting and sustaining. I like the “yes” because that speaks to the next things.
So the first coordinating faculty is the connecting attention, the second is sustaining that attention in a very small, relaxed, nice way, like “yes.”
The third is some degree of joy, some degree in which the mind is getting lit up. The mind is saying, “Oh yes, yes, this is good. Yes, this is nice.” It’s not necessarily verbal like that, but it’s as if there’s a kind of a brightness, maybe a teeny bit of a thrill or a pleasure that feels delightful and wonderful. It comes with this feeling like you’re now on the slide and it’s so great to be sliding along. Now you’re in the field, you’re nicely connected. It’s almost as if this connecting and sustaining attention is like you’re a cat being petted, and something just feels so joyful, happy, thrilled.
But then there’s also—and this is sometimes less clearly felt—a deeper or embodied feeling that maybe initially can be described as contentment. I often think of it as happiness. It’s less of the mental brightness and thrill that can be there, the mental “yes, this is great,” but now there’s a more settled “ah.” It then becomes easier to happily be calm, happily be settled, happily be here, not needing anything else. Happy to just arrive and be present, because just being alive is enough. So it can be a feeling of contentment, it can be a feeling of coziness, a feeling of sweetness that’s settling, calming, reassuring. It is a kind of happiness that brings a sense of confidence, like, “this is the right place to be, this is a good thing.”
So there’s the connecting attention, sustaining attention, there’s joy, there’s happiness. And then the fifth of these coordinating factors is sometimes called one-pointedness. But “one-pointedness” is too easy to have the idea that we’re tensing up and straining to be really locked into something. Sometimes there is a feeling of really clicking in and being present in a very clear way, but we’re not the one who’s doing it; it’s the system that’s doing it. The mind can be quite relaxed.
The metaphor or the example I like to use for this is that, say we’re just staying with the breathing. Let’s say the breathing is like a wave coming and going, rising and passing. And then someone says, “You should concentrate on the breath.” Then there’s a mind here, and everything in the mind gets tense and focused like a point, and then it goes and tries to pierce this breath that’s a moving, flowing thing. Sometimes that can create strain and headaches and all kinds of problems.
Another way of doing it is to let the mind be very soft and relaxed. Calm the mind, calm the body, relax everything, so there’s a feeling of spaciousness and openness, like the hand now is open, not collapsed on itself. And then you bring these two together. This is the holistic, broad, wide sense of being aware because the mind is quite open and spacious. The body feels quite open and pervaded with a kind of a hum of just being alive, or the hum or vibration of all the different little sensations of the body kind of singing together. The open mind has no tension in it, and the breathing is still moving. What you do is you bring this together, so that maybe the breathing gets quieter and quieter, and the breathing and the most sensitive part of the mind meet and join.
There’s a resting, a coming together. There’s a sense of being right centered on the breathing, the massage of the breathing, staying there. The connecting attention is kind of like connecting, sustaining, falls away, connecting, sustaining to the most sensitive part of the mind. So there’s a lot really centered there, but it’s not focused, it’s not preoccupied. And there’s at the same time a broad field all around it that can feel sometimes like just space. Sometimes it can feel like a sweetness, a pleasure, a joy, a holistic kind of sense of being here in the whole body. But this is soft and relaxed.
This begins taking prominence. Sometimes what will happen is this connection will become stronger and stronger, and everything around it becomes softer and softer. Maybe parts of the body seem to disappear, the wider world disappears, and we’re just sitting right there on the breathing. So that’s the one-pointedness, the one gathering, the one settling place, the gathering place, the sensitivity place that we really feel, “Oh, this is it.”
So then when these five factors are coordinated, there might be a gentle feeling of onward movement. One way that I’ve felt it is it’s almost like there’s a place, maybe in this breathing, maybe where the sense of joy or pleasure is the strongest, where it’s almost like the Dharma is up ahead with a string and it’s gently pulling you, “here, here.” So there’s some place inside that feels like, “oh, here is where the slide is, here’s where the world is opening up, here is where to relax into.” Not to rush into, but it’s a place of approach.
As we are approaching, this feeling of being content, being holistic, being whole, being unified becomes a little bit stronger and stronger. Everything is here together. There’s nowhere else we’d rather be. The thinking mind is quieter and quieter. To the degree to which we’re thinking, it’s thoughts about the meditation. It’s thoughts about, “Ah, here it is, here’s the in-breath, here’s the whole feel here and present.” It’s nothing more sophisticated than that, just the most simple kind of thoughts about the experience.
And then in the process of that, there might be a feeling that there’s something operating here which is not you. It’s something operating here that you can trust, an onward movement, a deepening settling, a deeper opening. And this is something that, if you have any role at all, it is to trust it. If you have any role at all, it’s to let go, let go into that place, into that onward-leading feeling. Whether it’s onward-leading because it feels like the pleasure and the joy is going to grow, or onward-leading because it feels like this is where the center point is that you want to really rest and follow and be with. Allow yourself to be pulled by that string, allow yourself to be carried on that slide, allow yourself to open that door. Allow the floor of the airplane to fall open so you can start floating and flying in the space with the parachute.
So there is this onward leading. This coordination of all these things and that coming into a wholeness this way is not something you can engineer and plan for. But you can feel the symptoms of it. You can feel the joy, feel the pleasure, feel the goodness of it all, the sweetness of it all, the contentment of just being fully here, and trust it. Trust it and allow for it. Don’t be the engineer. Don’t be the constructor and the maker of it. Don’t be measuring and trying to ask, “Am I there yet?” Just trust. The fastest way from A to B is to be fully at A. And as we’re at A, at this approach stage, then the Dharma will know what to do. Your job is to trust the process, not be in a hurry, not to try to make it happen. And maybe the biggest thing you can do is to let go into trusting the process rather than making the process, however long it takes.
So, we’ll have one more talk on this approach point. Thank you very much.