This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Mindfulness of Stimulus, Response, Reactivity - Gil Fronsdal. 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.
So, good morning, everyone, and welcome. Can you hear me all right?
This morning, I’d like to talk about a very important concept in mindfulness in general and give a kind of a Buddhist take on it. That is the difference between stimulus and response. People who teach mindfulness often emphasize this distinction, and I will as well, emphasizing the wonderful opportunities that are available in really knowing how to identify this distinction and what’s in between the stimulus and the response. In the process, we can discover something about equanimity1—an angle to understand equanimity and how to have it.
As I understand it, the usual teachings on stimulus and response is that a response is different than a reaction. A reaction is something that happens as a habit, kind of on automatic pilot. There’s a stimulus, and then without any reflection or consideration, there’s automatically some kind of activity we do. It’s called reactivity, meaning activity that’s in response to something.
So that could be we say something that we later regret; it just came out of us like that. It could be an emotional expression that comes out of us so quickly that, again, maybe later we regret it. It could be an activity we do impulsively with our actions. We push “send” on our computer when we saw that there was this lovely thing to buy, and the fact that we don’t have enough money in the bank account for that doesn’t matter. “This is going to be the solution to my and the world’s problems,” and so, you know, it’s a kind of automatic pilot, working on habit. Addictions are often this way.
Sometimes the reactivity is within ourselves. Our mind reacts in such a way that we create an interpretation, further thoughts, further judgments, and further bias comes into play. The mind might spin out in stories and ideas and create universes of interpretations that happen very quickly in rapid succession. Sometimes it can be so quick we don’t really even see all the little steps that go into this creation of interpretations and ideas.
When I was practicing in Burma, I had been practicing on retreat for some time, and there was this very simple little experience that I had that was a big “aha” for me. When I went into the meditation teacher’s little house for my practice discussions, I had to go through the front door. Just on the right going in, there was an alcove that was filled with Buddhas and stuff. It wasn’t actually an altar to bow at; it was just, I don’t know why, it just kept a lot of Buddhist-kind of things there, statues and stuff. For many days, I just walked right by and gave it almost no thought at all.
I had been practicing for, I think, a few months by that time, so my mind was very quiet, very still, and mindfulness was very strong. I walked in and I looked to my right, and as far as I could tell, I think there was a new Buddha there. I saw it as a Buddha. I saw as a very distinct movement of the mind that it was really pleasant to look at. And then I saw, as a distinct kind of event in and of itself: “I want it.”
In the past, maybe the “I want it” would have happened so quickly that it had authority, it had meaning, it had like, “this was the way the universe should be,” or something. I never gave it any thought; it was just suddenly there. But to watch the sequence of recognizing what it was, and then having the experience of it being pleasant—and really, what I could see was I wanted more of that pleasantness more than I wanted the Buddha statue. And so then I said, “Wow, it’s possible to have this freedom in this sequence. It’s possible to see the stimulus-reaction, stimulus-response so clearly that I didn’t have to respond, I didn’t have to act.”
Usually, in the stimulus-response distinction, the way I like to think of it is, on the one hand, there are reactive responses, and on the other, there’s considered response, there’s wise response. So, in that moment with the Buddha, my response was just “wow,” and I left it. I didn’t think about it again for a long time, until I discovered that someone had actually bought it for me and had left it there for the abbot to bless or do something. And so then many months later, it was handed to me. I didn’t say anything to anybody about this little event. So I have it at home now, in the funny way the world works.
Mindfulness has a lot to do with adding the pause between stimulus and reaction, between stimulus and response. So if all you do is something happens—say, it’s something as simple as you breathe in, and maybe the inhale is unpleasant. I’ve had an unpleasant breath and immediately had a judgment about it, so automatic: “This is the wrong breath. I’m a bad meditator. It shouldn’t be this way.” There’s a whole cascade of these automatic pilot kind of thoughts, which are kind of a drag to have. But I can be so caught in their mesmerizing, enchanting truth that I don’t even feel that it’s unpleasant. But it continues to have each of those steps and judgments be kind of draining, kind of impactful in a negative way on me.
The alternative is to feel the unpleasantness of that breath and take time to be mindful of it. Give everything time. It could just be two seconds. In mindfulness practice, we give everything time. We give everything a chance to be there before the reactivity, before the judgment. So we would train ourselves, we would develop the capacity to feel the unpleasant breath and really feel it. “Okay, this is an unpleasant breath. Let me just feel it before I judge it. Let me feel it before I’m pushing it away, before I’m trying to fix the problem.” Let me feel it, or let me observe it. Let me just observe what it’s like to have an unpleasant breath. And maybe because it comes and goes so quickly, that pause is extended where maybe for the next 10 inhales, I keep looking at what this is like. What is it like to have an unpleasant breath? And I become the world expert in my tense breaths, of what my unpleasant breath is like. I discover things about it. I discover where it’s unpleasant in my body. I discover maybe where there’s a holding in my breathing and tension. I might understand there’s an underlying fear that’s operating that’s part of that holding. I start discovering so much by taking time to know it, to observe it, to be with it.
And then I can decide wisely what my response is. One response I have to noticing I have an unpleasant in-breath is I think of it as just a massage. I’m just massaging the unpleasantness. I’m just massaging the place where I feel held in my breath, where it’s tensed, tight, and a little bit contracted up in my chest. It’s just a massage. Let’s just hang out, let it be there. Let’s not fix it or do anything about it. I’ll just, every inhale, feel where the tension is, where the holding is, and my inhale again and again and again. And I found that this is really a wonderful thing to do—to not make it a problem, but just to kind of meet it, be with it, care for it this way, and to allow something inside to unfold, relax, and unravel on its own, rather than me having to be the doer.
Sometimes the reactivity that I have, like with something as simple as an unpleasant breath, is that I’m operating on this automatic pilot that I’m the one who has to take care of everything. I’m the victim of everything, and I’m the one who has to address everything every moment in my life. But I’ve learned slowly that I don’t have to do that. It’s a lot of work to do that every moment of your life, and it’s good to kind of take a vacation. Mindfulness meditation is a time for a vacation from being the one who’s in charge or thinks they’re in charge of every moment of your life. You’re the victim, you’re the person experiencing things, you’re the person who has to do things and fix things and make something happen and prove yourself and have a good experience to show your neighbors, “Look, I had a good experience in meditation. I went on retreat and boy, did I have a good experience.” Some people are experience collectors.
So as we pause, take time to be with something, it’s just nice in itself. It makes room so the reactivity doesn’t ride so close to the stimulus. And in that time, there’s time to discover something that’s going on, find out deeper what’s happening. One of the things we might discover is the nature of the reactivity. So it might be it takes a while to discover that it’s unpleasant breathing, and there’s a second unpleasant thing that happens, and that is the idea that it’s wrong to have it happen. The reaction of, “This is California, where there are so many Buddhists, then to have a good breath looks like it’s deep, really relaxed, and shouldn’t be controlled. There should be no tightness, and you know, this is an embarrassment to Buddhists everywhere.” So I have this unpleasant breath, and the reactivity immediately in my mind is these kinds of judgments, these kinds of ideas.
So then the choice is, let’s take time with that pause. Let’s hang out with that. Let me see that operating. Let me feel what it’s like to have those thoughts, those judgments. Let me see them operating. Let me see them bubble up. And maybe they’re constant, but chances are they’re not. They might look constant, but chances are they’re happening for a while, and then I’m thinking about lunch, or they’re happening for a while, and then I feel my exhale, which also is not right, and so then I have different thoughts about that. But after a while, I just see, “Wow, that’s a judgment.” It takes a while to just see a judgment as a judgment. And as I see a judgment as a judgment, I no longer believe it automatically. I no longer have to live under the yoke of that judgment. I don’t have to invest so much importance in it. Let me just let it float up. Maybe it needs time, maybe it’s lonely and needs to be seen. So let it just float up, that judgment, come and go. See it, and I’m leaving it alone.
And then slowly, maybe that relaxes. Maybe slowly I see something about that judgment. Maybe I see that that judgment comes from some kind of beliefs that I have. Maybe that judgment comes with a certain kind of self-understanding that I’m carrying with myself about how I’m supposed to be in the world. I’m supposed to be a perfect Buddhist, whatever that is. And so there’s a whole universe of things that start being discovered in that pause, in the taking time with things.
Mindfulness is the practice of pausing, not necessarily in the activities you’re doing if you’re going about your daily life, but something inside of you giving yourself a little bit of time to know, to feel, to observe what’s actually happening without laying over on top of it judgments, reactions, wanting it to be different, fixing it. Let’s just get to know it. Let’s be with it. Just that helps with equanimity. Just that allows you to not be—equanimity is the ability to be present without being on automatic reactivity, automatically kind of getting worked up, but just kind of have a steadiness. “Okay, let’s just be with this without getting caught in the reactivity.”
So I mentioned two things that are important, I think. One is that we start seeing what’s happening more clearly. The second is we come to a place where we can choose how to respond. One of the responses is to choose to be mindful of it rather than being reactive. Let’s take time with it. Let’s get to know this. Let’s investigate this. Let’s discover this further.
This is all very nice, and it can make for a much wiser life. It can make for a life where we really start understanding ourselves more and more deeply. One of the things I’ve seen of people who do a lot of mindfulness meditation, mindfulness practice, is they grow in self-understanding because they start seeing how these things operate, the operating systems. And the more we can see and understand, the less likely we are to be working on automatic pilot, the more likely we’re able to kind of step back and have more choice on what we act on. Freedom has a lot to do with having choice. So we’re giving ourselves choice by pausing and knowing and recognizing what’s happening inside. And then there’s an opportunity for wisdom to make wiser choices of how to live.
Maybe this example of an unpleasant in-breath is such a minute, mundane, silly kind of example, but I chose it for that because it is a very small, ordinary, everyday kind of thing. Most of you are breathing in all the time, regularly. And so it’s an ordinary thing, but even right there, there can be a developing, growing capacity to have this mindful pause, mindful take time to really know something and feel something. Let alone when you’re driving. Driving on the freeway, is there not a few people who have reactivity to what happens around you? Some people are driving reactively because they’ve already gotten in this mode of “have to hurry, have to get somewhere.” They’re already upset with everyone else, and so the very way of driving is driving tense. They’re already kind of ahead of themselves by this force of some reactive decision that they have.
So even there, we can say, “Wait a minute, I’m tense.” I found it fascinating to watch sometimes my right foot waiting for the red light to turn green. My right foot—I blame my foot—it has this kind of like restless energy, like, “Let’s go!” Judging my foot and blaming my foot is just one more way in which we don’t stop and look more deeply, because it’s not the foot. There’s something deeper in me that’s gotten attached to or afraid or eager or ambitious to get somewhere, need to get someplace quickly. So I’m living in the reactive mode, and most people are doing that much of the time. What mindfulness does is it gives us time to pause long enough that we can think, we can consider, and we can see where there’s choice. And then we can hopefully choose wisely because we know something different.
This is all fine and good. Maybe this is kind of ordinary teachings on stimulus-response, but there’s another possibility that this allows. And that is, in that space between stimulus and reaction, and even a growing possibility of a space between stimulus and response where we leave things alone, there’s the opportunity for something to settle inside of us. It’s an opportunity to begin to feel something deeper about ourselves that arises from some depth inside. Where reactivity comes from inside of us is maybe different for different people. I often think of it as being kind of surface reactions. Sometimes it’s from the neck up; it has a lot to do with what goes on in the mind and thoughts and ideas. Sometimes I think of it as having to do with the muscular system of who we are, where reactivity is like, “want that, get that, push away that, make something happen in the world.” And so it’s kind of more the surface.
When reactivity is strong, it blocks our awareness of something deeper. If we’re constantly living in reactive thoughts, constantly living in a swirl of thoughts and concerns and fears and angers and resentments and betrayals and all this kind of world, it kind of fills the attention so there’s no space in the attention to feel or sense something that’s deeper, that’s shyer, that’s not screaming for attention. So this opportunity to have a space between stimulus and response allows for some deeper connection to ourselves, where in Buddhist teachings is the location out of which wisdom comes, it’s the location out of which love comes, it’s a location out of which peace comes. It’s a location where a sense of deep well-being that’s very nourishing can course through us, coming from some deeper place rather than these, what I call, surface kind of places.
It takes time to settle in, to relax. Some of it has to do with relaxing the tensions we’re carrying in our muscles, the tensions we have in our body. I would propose are all products of the reactive mind. And the more tense we are, the less we can feel that which is below the tension. Or less we feel how those muscles feel when there’s no tension in them. They might have tautness in them sometimes, but there’s no contraction, no tightness, they’re not held in place. And the muscles then can start being part of a system of nourishment, of feeling nourished, feeling goodness, feeling warmth, feeling kind of like these deeper wellsprings arise from within that feel like they’re feeding us, supporting us in these good ways.
This is one of the miracles, I think, of mindfulness: that mindfulness makes room for some deep sense of being alive to bubble up inside that feels like just to be alive is enough. That feels like this is deeply satisfying in a way that a life of desire, a life of fixing it, a life of getting ahead, a life of conceit, a life of trying to prove oneself or get ahead or get behind or whatever we’re trying to do, it will never do for us. Because those kinds of ways all too easily are never going to be satisfying. If we live always wanting something, if that’s the habit of mind, we can get something, but the habit is still there. As soon as we get it, we want the next thing, we want the next thing, we want the next thing. It’s kind of like what I discovered sometimes if I stay too much surfing the web. I’m just minding my own business, kind of reading a few websites, you know, I’m innocent. But I’ve clicked on enough clicks that I can feel that now there’s a kind of a drive, a desire, an urge to click for the next thing. I don’t even know what the next thing is, but there’s kind of an automatic kind of wanting to do, do, do. So even if we succeed, sometimes it can still be unsatisfying.
To be preoccupied with conceit is one of those things that limits this deeper place inside that can well up, that can’t well up if we’re somehow caught in the world of self-preoccupation. So this stimulus-response allows for this upwelling of something which I feel you can’t really appropriate as your own. I mean, it’s not anybody else’s, but the very movement of “this is who I am, you know, let me show you who I am,” that doesn’t work because that is this kind of suffocating or this tightening up or covering over of something which doesn’t really lend itself to being claimed as mine. It’s not anybody else’s, but you can go along with it, you can be supported by it, you can be guided by it. You can choose to feel it and know it and tend to it. You can choose to know it and study it, find out when it’s wise, maybe when it doesn’t seem wise, when it’s appropriate, when it’s useful.
So the stimulus-response distinction, when it’s really lived out in practice, when mindfulness allows for these longer pauses before even a response, something really precious can happen. That’s one of the things that can happen in meditation, for example, and one of the great values of meditation is that in the minutes that you’re meditating, it’s one of those few times in life when, hopefully, you don’t have to say anything to anyone. You don’t have to decide what to buy. You don’t have to move your body, decide that, you know, there are so many things you don’t have to do. You don’t have to plan your menu for your meals for the next month. You don’t have to solve the world’s problems. You just have to be there.
And all that allows you the option to let the gap between stimulus and response be forever. And what that means is we trust just being mindful of what’s happening, pausing and knowing it without needing to respond. So if I have my uncomfortable in-breath, I would just feel the uncomfortable in-breath. That’s all I need to do. If there is a thought, “This is a bad in-breath, this is the wrong in-breath,” I just can see it. Because sometimes these reactions, some of these automatic pilot things can just happen on their own anyway. But I can just see that, “Oh.” And with time, that ability to have this extended pause doesn’t necessarily stop some of the automatic ways in which the mind might react to things, but it takes the power out of it, the strength out of it. It’s just like this thought bubbling up, “Oh, this is a bad breath, this is a bad in-breath.” It’s just like, you know, it has as much substance as a hologram or something. It doesn’t really exist. It just kind of comes and goes. It’s a cloud that comes and goes in an empty sky. And it feels like I don’t have to get involved in it or do anything with it. I just have this long pause in which whatever happens inside of me doesn’t require any response, doesn’t require any judgments, and doesn’t have to be any different.
We just let everything be liberated from myself. We free everything that happens within us from our reactivity, our judgments, or what has to happen or doesn’t happen. We’re just there. If there is choice, it might be the choice of how to continue being mindful, how to continue to be aware, to feel, to sense what’s happening, as opposed to making anything happen, fixing anything, without thinking about things and analyzing things, just being present, just being there.
So meditation is a time to learn that. And the more we can extend that time, the more there’s a possibility to start feeling something deeper inside show itself. There’s a deeper relaxation, deeper calm, deeper subtleness that happens that brings us to a place that’s below or very different from the place of reactivity, the place of automatic pilot that many people are living in. In Buddhism, they glorify this kind of way of being by calling it being “awake.” And the other way they sometimes call being “asleep,” even though reactive people sometimes are hyper-awake, hyper-alert, you know, but they’re not really here and present for our life in a full, embodied, clear way.
And it’s a world of difference to live a life that comes from this deeper response inside, which is not the response of me, myself, and mine. There’s this deep wellspring inside that can respond to the world that is not planned, not thought out, not connected to our usual understanding of who I am, not connected to our fears and our ambitions. We have layers and layers of wise responses that can bubble up from inside that can help us find our way through this world. It helps us be equanimous because we start seeing that the alternative to that is not so desirable. The alternative to this resting or being with or connected to this deeper wellspring inside diminishes us, it narrows us, it brings tension to us, it brings tightness, it brings suffering to us, agitation to us, and probably not a very good basis for wise choices about how to live this life. But if we’re settled in this deeper place, a place where it’s almost as if we’re not the one responding, but it’s wisdom that’s responding, chances are we will make much better choices for how to go through our life. And it’ll feel much more, have much more integrity to it, much more sense of being connected to something more holistic within us than we can ever do from the surface reactions that we have.
So to end this talk, to again say this, there’s this very important distinction between stimulus and response. And what we’re doing in mindfulness, at least in meditation, is letting that gap between stimulus and response become longer. How long it is depends on what you’re doing. If you’re driving on the freeway, it probably shouldn’t be very long. But if you’re sitting in meditation, maybe you can actually give a lot of time. And the advantage of that is then you discover more about the depths of who you are that you can’t if you’re always responding, even if you think it’s wise. So those are my thoughts for today. And now it’s your turn to respond. How would you like to respond? Do you have any questions or comments?
Questioner 1: As usual, you’ve been a fly on the wall in my house and are delivering just what I need to hear. I don’t know how you do that.
Gil Fronsdal: Because we’re all, in certain ways, we’re kind of the same. So much of how our minds operate is a lot alike.
Questioner 1: But I so much want to be unique! [Laughter] So, how does this work in a conversation? Because when I get triggered or reactive, it’s often when I’m talking to somebody else. And I was trying to imagine how to pause without looking like I was not understanding, had gone to sleep, was rude, whatever. I just couldn’t imagine how this works in a conversation because that tends to be where I am frequently triggered.
Gil Fronsdal: I see. Seems like an important issue. I think I’ll have to think about that for a moment. [Laughter] Could you say that again? You know, I’m a shrink, we’re always saying to people, “Tell me more about that.” But I’m not talking about those kinds of conversations. No, no, I mean, yes. So maybe for you, the danger is you start sounding like a shrink. But there are ways of slowing a conversation down that people don’t feel like you’re going slow. And it’s probably, you know, just to say even just a nod and say, “Oh, yes,” and people will allow you a few seconds. And you can ask, “Can I pause for a minute?” And then if you can’t, if you have to respond with something right away, I don’t know, you say something inconsequential so you have a chance for your system to process it.
Audience Member: I’ll put in a plug for a mindfulness teacher named Orin Sofer.2 He wrote a book called Say What You Mean, and he has a couple of classes that you can do asynchronously, but you can get a partner and practice bringing the mindfulness, the non-violent communication,3 and things like that into your conversations.
Gil Fronsdal: So great. Yeah, so Orin Sofer is great. What he does, he’s made a real specialty of mindful speaking. And probably one of the things that’s been most—it’s very hard to practice mindfulness in speaking. So I think it’s often very difficult, and I don’t want to give the impression that it’s easy. But probably the one thing that’s been most important for me in learning to do it is to stay connected to my body, mindfulness of the body. Just feel the impact it has in my body, feel the impact it has in my emotional life, my emotional body, and give time to really know that. Because to speak without being in touch with myself is often not so useful. So a kind of general thing of how I’d like to live my life is to have, if I’m in a conversation with people, about 50% of my attention on what the person’s saying, my partner in conversation, and 50% on myself. And I’ve learned that if I have 100% attention to the other person without tracking what’s going on for me, I don’t really listen that well. Or I’m listening, for sure, but I’m not processing it because I don’t see what my reactions are, my emotions. I don’t see the filter through which it’s going. And if I have 100% on myself, which happens more often than I’d like to admit, like someone’s talking and my mind goes off into thought, then I have to say, “Can you repeat that, please?” because I wasn’t tracking. But the idea of 50/50, to really be there and then to also to feel my body, my emotional body, to see what thoughts arise, what beliefs arise, to track both at more or less at the same time, I think has been invaluable for living a wise life.
Audience Member: I also want to share something briefly. My cousin lives in Boston and drives for ride-shares and was saying he was struggling with getting angry and reactive in driving. And so he was practicing some of these types of mindfulness of that and non-reactivity. And he said it was really great and that he saved a lot of gas money. [Laughter]
Questioner 2: Gil, during your talk, I found myself remembering—I cannot count how many times in the past, in conversation with other people, when I feel like I’ve been at my best and when I feel like I haven’t been. And the times when I haven’t been, I find myself going over and over and over those occasions. So, how could I have said that better or been more, you know, more like a mountain pose instead of leaning forward? Thinking over and over again how I could have said things better instead of leaning forward or leaning back. But the one thing I want to say is when I’ve been at my best, I’m a lot happier. And when I haven’t been at my best, you know, I’m just not happy. So maybe recognizing that kind of happiness will be my teaching moment on how to be.
Gil Fronsdal: Yeah, it sounds great. And mindfulness practice has a tremendously important role for when you’re at your best and when you’re at your worst. Both are great times for mindfulness. Thank you. And everything in between.
Questioner 3: So I find sometimes I get very reactive, as you say, in daily life when you’re interacting with people. And when I sit, I don’t feel anything, or there’s this big ball of stuff, you know, and I can’t figure out what the underlying thing is. And you’re probably going to just tell me to keep sitting with it. [Laughter]
Gil Fronsdal: What you’re raising is a very important topic, and it probably deserves more attention, more understanding than is appropriate for me to give an appropriate response. And to say something that quickly, “just sit more,” seems premature without understanding a lot more what’s going on for you. But generally, the kind of generic way of responding is that whatever it is, including sitting quietly and nothing’s happening, the reactivity is not there, but a big kind of amorphous swirl of something is… maybe there’s something there for you to discover. So to bring a deeper attention to that or what’s happening there. And it might be that if you feel your way into the emotions that are present, that that might be a doorway to understand something deeper about you.
Audience Member: Thank you, Gil. Thank you so much for this beautiful invitation and reminder. I’m struck by how many times I have heard or I have offered a teaching like this to sit with reactivity, to notice it, to invite the opportunity for response. And yet this morning felt so fresh, like the very first time I’d ever heard this. And I just wanted to say how beautiful that was and to thank you so much.
Gil Fronsdal: Great, that’s nice to hear. Nice, thank you.
Questioner 4: Thank you for that talk. I just have a question. So sometimes when I recognize a reaction, an emotion, especially like anger, for example, I can sit with it and try to just be with it. Sometimes it becomes a rumination. So what kind of suggestion do you have to avoid, you know, to be able to sit with the different reactions, emotions, but not turn it into a rumination?
Gil Fronsdal: Yeah. So I might not be responding to you in the way that you asked the question or what you’re hoping to hear, but I was struck by your use of the word “rumination.” To me, that’s a very significant word. It’s what cows do. And for you to identify it as rumination means that you have a certain insight. You have some clarity or some wisdom about the particular kind of thinking that you call rumination. What is the wisdom? What is the benefit of seeing it as rumination? Because you seem to identify that’s what it is. So what benefit comes from having that kind of clarity?
Questioner 4: I’m going to have to think about that one. But the futility is one of the things that came up. I think futility is one of the responses that came up first.
Gil Fronsdal: Ah. So I’ll leave that for you to discover. But I want to say that for you to have enough self-understanding to recognize it as rumination, you’re seeing that way of thinking as not useful for you, futile maybe even. And that’s the beginning of wisdom. That’s actually a good sign that you’re seeing it that way, if it’s in fact not useful for you. And maybe to appreciate yourself, rather than focusing on the rumination as being the problem—it is something to address and to learn about—but begin to appreciate yourself as the one who’s now beginning to be mindful of it and beginning to kind of separate yourself from it a little bit and beginning to see it. Maybe we want to emphasize that movement in you rather than trying to deal with the rumination, which is what people want to do. It means you’re still caught in it. But let’s appreciate what’s beginning to happen to you. The very fact that you can recognize it as rumination and recognize that you do it a lot and recognize that you’re caught in it, you’re beginning to separate out and becoming freer. Let’s emphasize that movement so you begin feeling what that’s like for you and do more of it and more of it.
And the day will come, two things can happen. One is the movement of freedom of awareness, this clarity, the freedom of mindfulness of rumination is so strong, it’s more dominant, more a living thing in the moment than the rumination. And in a sense, you’re living in the awareness now more than living in the rumination, and that feels good. The other is, if you use the metaphor of the hand for this movement, you know, first you were caught, and then you started to become a little bit separate, separate, until you were free of it. In a sense, at some point, you can go like this and take that ruminating mind and just hold it gently and see what happens. And maybe then it begins to relax.
Questioner 4: Thank you.
Gil Fronsdal: Great. So it’s time to stop, and I’m happy to stay up here if you want to come up. And if you’re willing, you don’t have to do this, but if you want to say hello to someone next to you, that would be nice before you leave. Some people might be new here today. And, but thank you for being here.
Equanimity: A state of mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation. In Buddhism, it is one of the four sublime states (Brahmaviharas) and is developed through meditation and wisdom. ↩
Orin Sofer: A mindfulness teacher and author known for his work integrating mindfulness, non-violent communication, and somatic practices. His book, Say What You Mean: A Mindful Approach to Nonviolent Communication, focuses on bringing these principles into daily conversations. ↩
Non-violent Communication (NVC): A communication process developed by Marshall Rosenberg that focuses on three aspects of communication: self-empathy (deep and compassionate awareness of one’s own inner experience), empathy (listening to another with deep compassion), and honest self-expression (expressing oneself authentically in a way that is likely to inspire compassion in others). ↩