This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Harmony; Samadhi (30) Harmony in Approaching Samadhi. 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, my friends, and welcome. Welcome to this meditation.
One of the ways of beginning meditation is to think that what we’re doing is gathering ourselves together. There are ways in which we become fragmented, or spinning out, or disconnected from parts of ourselves because we overemphasize other parts. To begin, sit down in order to gather ourselves.
In ordinary life, if someone who knows nothing about meditation is really anxious and spinning out, a friend might come along and in a very kind way say, “Friend, gather yourself together. We have to do something. We have to go help the children get out of the burning house. Gather yourself together.” The person then stands a little bit straighter and taller, with both feet kind of firmly on the ground, and maybe takes a deep breath. They take a posture and a breath that is meant to gather together, to bring everything back in so that they can take care of the important thing that needs to be done. So we’re here to gather ourselves together, perhaps starting with your posture.
A posture that includes as many parts of your body as possible, so you’re caring for the whole body in whatever posture you’re in—standing, sitting, lying down. You are consciously adjusting, placing, considering the different parts of your body so that they begin to be aligned, or they can begin to, in a sense, work together, come together.
Take some deeper breaths. On the exhale, you’re gathering yourself together. Not racing off in thoughts and desires, not resisting anything, not holding on to anything or clinging to anything so that you become disconnected from the whole. You don’t have to necessarily stop thinking or stop feeling whatever your emotions are, but to relate to it all so that it all begins to become together as part of the whole. Nothing is selected out so we become fragmented, separated from the rest. Awareness starts gathering ourselves together into a whole.
With the eyes closed, letting the breath return to normal. With your attention, in a relaxed, easygoing way, do a grand tour of your body with the idea of bringing in all different parts of your body into the whole, gathering it together. Kind of like you have a messy room; you start going around the room and placing things in their place, placing them in harmony, and so the room begins to feel like it’s orderly or clean, or that the whole has a nice feeling. So, a tour of your body, bringing it all together, placing it together.
Seeing that with awareness, with attention to your body, you can feel or sense a subtle movement to bringing the body, part of the body, into harmony, into relationship to each other, contributing to a whole here and now.
And then, whatever you’re feeling, whatever emotions you have, do a tour of those. Recognize what’s here. Maybe feel the emotions in your body, feel where parts of the body are activated or energized or have sensations connected to how you’re feeling, and gather that into the whole. So you’re not overemphasizing your emotions, you’re not underemphasizing them, but rather you’re welcoming them into the whole, here also in harmony with the whole.
And then, also a grand tour of the mind and thinking and wanting and not wanting. Not to resist anything, not to hold on to anything, but simply to know and recognize and gather your mind into the whole, so that too is not over-prioritized but becomes part of the whole here, together with the body.
And then to do a tour of how you’re aware. Are you aware with a lot of effort and strain, or are you aware casually and unenthusiastically? Are you aware by feeling and sensing what’s here? Are you aware by knowing and recognizing what is here? Are you aware with a kind of mind’s eye, as if you’re almost observing, gazing upon what’s here? And whatever way you’re aware of the present moment, can that be clear and relaxed, calm and gently engaged as part of the whole? Not overemphasizing awareness or underemphasizing it, but having the way you’re aware be in harmony with the whole, with being in harmony, with welcoming a deeper connection to your lived experience now, with breathing at the center.
Gently but clearly, gently but committedly hanging out with the breathing, the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out, while at the same time being aware of whatever broad sense there is of the body, the peripheral awareness of the body, of the presence of attention, maybe being cozy here. As if the broad awareness with all things gathered together is like being lovingly wrapped in a blanket—soft, warm, comfortable.
So that how you’re aware has a contentment to it, content to just be here in the lived experience of the body. Awareness that’s supported by what is pleasant, cozy.
Letting go of desires so that there’s more room in awareness to calmly be aware of the present moment.
Calming the thinking mind so you can be more sensitive to the onward-leading movement of being connected here, gathered together.
What would you adjust? What would you change or allow if meditation is to sit in harmony with all of who we are, to hold it all together in some wider field of harmony, care, love? No part left out, no part pushed away, no part held on to. All of who we are is set free to be part of the whole.
And then, as we come to the end of this sitting, evoking your imagination to imagine yourself doing what you’re doing right now. Have an image in your mind or have thoughts in your mind of yourself sitting in meditation. Imagine yourself in harmony with yourself and somehow in harmony or at peace with the immediate space around you. And imagine yourself in harmony and in peace with the neighborhood around you.
And imagine that your sense of peace and harmony—not resisting anything, not holding on to anything—is the most important medicine for this world. And that you imagine that here, sitting, meditating, you’re spreading that field of harmony, of peace, of the way that you hold and relate and are present for this whole world, as if this whole world can settle in the field of your peace.
And of course, this is just an imagination, but with that imagination, now let your goodwill have thoughts of goodwill and care and love for all the lack of harmony there is in this world, all the struggle and all the suffering that exists. And imagine that your goodwill can travel out through that field of peace to touch everyone.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
And may it be that when each of you goes out into the world and meets other people, that this goodwill is remembered, this idea of being in harmony with the people around you is remembered. And may you contribute to the peace of those immediately around you that you encounter today. May all beings be happy.
Thank you.
Good morning, everyone. Hello and welcome to this now fifth talk on the approach to samadhi1. I think we’ve done maybe six weeks now on this topic of samadhi. The last piece of approaching or moving into samadhi is what’s called the approach samadhi or access samadhi. I’d like to evoke the idea that it involves some kind of harmony, that we’re gathering ourselves together, a unification of ourselves. Not every single thing that we are is included, but everything that’s present in meditation is included. Whatever we can be aware of here and now as we’re settling into the present moment feels like it all gathers together into one large, harmonious whole. So, to find a way to live in this harmony.
In the ancient world, samadhi is sometimes associated with harmony or an evenness where all things are held together in a kind of even, harmonious way. Sometimes the word that’s used is “beauty,” that there starts to be a kind of beauty, and we begin to live in a kind of beauty. We meditate in beauty. I love this expression “beauty” because it’s not something we can appropriate for ourselves; we can’t claim it to be ourselves or who we are. It’s kind of like the atmosphere or the context in which we’re operating. We’re operating in a context of beauty. Walk in beauty, talk in beauty, meditate in beauty. The world that we live in begins to change when we start entering into deeper samadhi.
It’s not easy to do. Most of the time when people meditate, they’re not in samadhi. It’s still amazingly beneficial to practice mindfulness meditation well short of entering into a state of being that’s known as samadhi. Or we can say that samadhi has many different types. For people who do practice mindfulness, there is a kind of samadhi that has to do with how we enter into any single thing we do. If you’re washing dishes, there’s a samadhi of washing dishes where you’re really there in harmony with that activity. You’re not trying to do it quickly to get on to other things; you’re not doing it while doing a second or third thing at the same time. You’re just there in that. This idea of just being present for this activity, fully in harmony or attuned to this activity, is sometimes called samadhi in daily life. The more we do that, it supports doing that then in meditation as well.
For this approach samadhi, I’d like to use an analogy. Say that you’ve never ridden a bicycle before and you don’t ever plan to ride a bicycle; it’s the last thing you want to do. But then there’s a friend of yours, maybe many miles away, who is really in need of some medicine. It’s really important the person has the medicine. You can’t get there fast enough; you don’t have a car, you don’t have any public means of transportation, but there’s a bicycle. Someone says, “Well, if you ride the bicycle, you can get the medicine there in time, but if you have to walk, you won’t be there in time.” “But I’ve never ridden a bicycle.” “Well, it’s up to you.”
So you say, “Okay, well, I might as well try.” You begin getting on the bicycle, and it’s really difficult. The first few times you try to get on, you fall off. You pedal a little bit and you kind of fall to the side. You get back on. It’s so important to keep trying because of your friend. So you keep trying, you keep moving on, and slowly you can pedal more than a few times without falling off. Then finally, you seem to be able to pedal and stay on, but it’s very wobbly and shaky and difficult. You feel like you’re ready to give up because why bother when it’s so difficult? Maybe you have one big spill, and then you’re really ready to stop. But you remember your friend, and so you get back on again, no matter what, even with scraped knees or whatever you have.
And then you keep pedaling, and after a while, you get the hang of it. You can pedal, and it’s a long, flat stretch, and you’re pedaling along. After a while, you feel like you’re in the groove. You feel tired, so you stop pedaling, but then the bike stops, and it’s a little hard to start again because you’re still wobbly. Maybe you fall again. Finally, you get going again, and then you realize, “I just have to keep pedaling because when I have some momentum, it seems like it’s easier.” So you keep doing it.
As the terrain is set up to where your friend is, you know you’re going to get there in plenty of time with the bicycle. But as the terrain goes, it slowly begins to slant down the road, a slow grade. At first, it’s so slight you don’t even notice. Then you notice, “Well, it’s a little bit easier to pedal.” And then you feel it’s getting easier and easier. At some point, you feel the momentum, the pull of gravity, and you realize you don’t have to pedal anymore. You’re being carried, you’re being pulled. You can just glide down. You’re now in this place where you’re approaching your friend’s home that’s down that hill. It’s not a real steep hill, but all you have to do is to stay on the bicycle and feel that momentum, stay with the momentum of gravity that pulls you. And you get pulled all the way down to your friend’s house with the medicine, and your friend is happy ever after.
Practicing meditation can be like that. The beginning can be wobbly and difficult, and we fall off and we get discouraged. The point is to always just get back on again and back on again. With regularity and familiarity, something starts developing, and it gets easier and easier. At some point, as we keep practicing and keep pedaling, it’s almost like there begins to be that slope. There’s a directionality, there’s an onward-leading, just like on the bicycle if it’s on a grade going downhill. If you’re keeping your balance on the bike, it’s onward-leading now to some place. At some point, you’re really all there, it’s all smooth, the bicycle is all in harmony, biking is in harmony, everything is flowing. You have the balance, and now you’re in this approach stage. At some point, you have to learn to just let go of the pedaling and allow the momentum, the onward-leading nature, to kind of pull you along. That takes a lot of harmony. It means to be in harmony with all things. It means not to be resisting, not to be wanting, not to be ahead of yourself or behind yourself, but to be centered here in yourself. To bring everything into harmony.
So we’re here now at this approach stage of samadhi. This seems like a good place to pause because I’m going off to IRC, to our Retreat Center, for a couple of weeks. We’ll have wonderful guest teachers who come to teach while I’m away. In the meantime, I’ll come back and we’ll continue the samadhi series in March. I think on March 10th I come back, and on that day we’ll do one more week on this kind of approach stage to samadhi, kind of to warm up again, get back into the groove of it. Because it’s a very refined state, becoming more familiar with some of the challenges that can happen in this approach state will help you maybe understand better what it’s all about, and maybe it will be easier to follow along when we go to the next step with it all.
Mei Elliott will be here next week, and Diana Clark will be here the following week. They’re both wonderful teachers, and I look forward to our return to continue on this. If some of you would like to stay a little bit more in the flow of this samadhi series, you might want to relisten to some of the previous talks or guided meditations of this series, maybe even going back to the beginning to kind of stay in the flow, so some of the earlier teachings can be more familiar for you and supportive as we go forward here.
So thank you. And then I also want to just offer a big thanks and a final report about the fundraising we did for Save the Children. We exceeded our goal. On that little thermometer kind of circle that we have, it shows we’ve now raised over $73,000, plus there’s another little more than $10,000 that has come in directly to IMC that we’re sending to Save the Children. So we’re getting close to $85,000, not quite. If any of you would like to offer more, it’s still available. But I want to thank all of you who did, and I’m very happy and very grateful that our community could come together this way. So thank you, and I look forward to seeing you all and being with you again in a couple of weeks.
Samadhi: A Pali word for a state of deep meditative concentration or absorption. It is a key component of the Buddhist path, leading to tranquility and insight. ↩