This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Pervading Well-Being; Samadhi (45) Spreading the Joy. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Welcome to our meditation session. To begin, a ritual of posture, maybe with a homecoming of posture. Maybe with the attention on posture being an expression of care—care for your body, care for yourself. And so, assuming a supportive posture for meditation, giving yourself a little bit of time to make the even subtle adjustments in how your hands are, your arms, your legs, your feet.
Subtle adjustments to maybe even the back of the neck. There is a kind of alertness or a wakefulness that can happen in the back of the neck as the neck elongates a little bit or comes back a teeny bit, with a little bit more space created between the last vertebrae and the skull. Reorienting oneself from concerns that have nothing to do with here and now to a ritual of settling into here and now. Gently closing the eyes.
And gently pausing at the end of the exhale, just momentarily, to feel the body’s urge—the physical urge, maybe a very gentle, calm urge—to breathe in. And give in to that, and ride the inhale. Let the inhale, the movement and expansions of the chest, the belly, let it touch you from the inside out. To the degree to which air fills your lungs as you breathe in, let that feeling of becoming gently full and expansive appear for you fully as you breathe in. And as you exhale, to relax your body, to soften.
Breathing in and becoming aware of the thinking mind—not what you’re thinking about, but the sensations and feelings embedded in that thinking mind. As you exhale, soften, relax the thinking mind. If thoughts are like waves on the surface of water, let the winds die down in the mind. A quieting of your thoughts and a softening on the exhale, a stilling of the waves as the surface of the water spreads wide and calm. The mind becomes expansive and calm.
And then centering yourself on breathing, as if perhaps breathing is a refuge. Breathing is a place that protects you from the winds of the mind, the storms of the mind. Breathing, maybe almost like the calm in the middle of all things.
As you accompany your breathing, as you become one with your breathing, is there any well-being, any pleasure, delight, any joy or happiness, however modest it might be, that somehow is associated with this meditation? And let that become the gentle wind or the gentle absorption of water. Like water is absorbed in a sponge, let that well-being slowly spread, get absorbed throughout your body. Not so much trying too much, just gently breathing, breathing with the well-being, where the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out, connecting to breathing, sustaining attention, is a gentle massage, wind, water that spreads into your body. An expanding field of well-being, which gives you a kind of attitude of yes, yes, yes to being present here.
Feeling whatever well-being is present, for a few minutes put aside any resistance to feeling well-being. Take the risk to feel some degree of well-being, so well-being accompanies your practice. And if there are some ways that you feel challenged—emotionally or physically or socially—if that challenge seems to be standing in the way of well-being, let them accompany each other, like the two flat hands’ palms come together in bowing. And if it supports your well-being and joy, have a little half-smile on your lips, your mouth. Letting well-being and joy be massaged, be worked into everything, your whole being, gently, slowly.
And then as we come to the end of this sitting, some care, self-care, goes into the end of meditation, just as there’s care in going into it. It might first begin by a gentle recognition of what is going well for you through the meditation. And that could be a very modest criteria. What’s going well? Maybe you’re a little more settled, maybe there’s more self-awareness, some understanding of yourself. Maybe there’s more calm, maybe there is some form of meditative well-being. And whatever benefit that has come, let it register in your body, in your heart, in your mind. Take it in. Some people use the metaphor, “drink it in,” or “taste it with your whole being.”
When there’s something good that’s happened in the Dharma, it’s invaluable to appreciate it without appropriating it, without holding on to it or appropriating it to build up another form of self. Just appreciate. And that appreciation, that benefit of the well-being, can expand and grow if we open ourselves up, in a way, to share it with all beings. Almost like we’re going to give it away. Let everyone else share or receive my calm. I’m not going to hold on to it, I’m not going to cling to it. Please let it spread from me out into the world as a gift.
May this calm, well-being, insight, understanding be shared for the welfare and happiness of everyone.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
Thank you.
Good morning, everyone, and good day. Welcome.
Welcome to this talk. This is the fifth talk on the first jhāna1, and a continuing talk on a wider series on samādhi2. Samādhi, as I’ve often said, is a state of being. It’s not a particular mental activity of being concentrated or hyper-focused. It’s a state of being that we enter into, and as such, it’s a radically different way of experiencing ourselves, unusual. We’re always in some state. Even the expression in English, “Boy, is that person in a state,” is usually meant that they’re kind of—something’s really unusual about them or odd about them. But we’re always in some kind of state.
Unfortunately, we take some of our states we’re in as being normal and ordinary, that this is just how it is. But often we’re fragmented, we’re stressed, we’re distressed, we’re preoccupied, we’re caught in things, and that feels normal. There are certain attitudes or even emotions which persist that can feel like this is just life as it should be because that’s what we’re used to. But when we let go, when we let things fall away—all the extra, all the unnecessary activity of mind, even the unnecessary activity of heart, even unnecessary activities of the body—and let all that fall away in an, at least metaphorically, upright position, stance, way of being, what we’re left with can be a state of well-being, a state of confidence. A state of, it’s just enough to be alive. There’s no tendency to want to judge it or interpret it as being something is wrong or inadequate. Things become better and better. It just feels good to be alive, good to be here. It’s a state of well-being.
So that’s one of my definitions of samādhi: a profound state of well-being in which we feel immersed. The first jhāna represents a very particular kind of samādhi. There are many other forms of samādhi, of immersions, but this particular one is very, very significant and powerful and can be a game-changer for some people. In the ancient Buddhist tradition, the Buddha said that once a person is in the first jhāna, in that sense of well-being and peace and letting go of so many attachments, it’s kind of the first taste of what it’s like to be awakened, to be free. Some people might even confuse it with full liberation, Buddhist liberation, because it’s so special and so nice. But it gives us a first taste. It can be quite inspiring. Oh, this is possible. It’s possible to have this. Who would have known that such a thorough feeling of well-being, of what feels like a homecoming, were possible? There are plenty of people who will say, have said, that this is not possible to have this level of samādhi and well-being, but it is definitely possible.
In this first jhāna, the state is one that’s often characterized by the five jhanic factors that I talked about yesterday. There is the initial application of mind, the sustained application of attention. There is the joy, my translation of the Pāli word pīti3. And there is happiness, my translation of the Pāli word sukha4. And then there is said to be some overall state of absorption or immersion that’s characterized as, I’m calling it “becoming one,” sometimes called one-pointedness, sometimes called unification.
And so those all kind of come together. In the first jhāna, there are various strengths by which it can occur. It can be very mild, so mild that the difference between the approach state and the jhāna is not so clear. We kind of slide back and forth between them. But other times it’s quite strong, and it’s very clear, “Now we’re in a new territory.” The degree of strength that it has has a lot to do with the degree of joy, the strength of the pīti. There can be a range of strengths to it.
In the classic teachings, there are five degrees or ways that that pīti, this joy, can be experienced. I find it kind of inspiring to hear this list of all the possible ways. You don’t have to have them all, but sometimes it’s nice to know that these are in the range. The stronger forms of it, people can get sometimes afraid of it or scared, like, “Wow, this is intense.”
So the first one is minor. It’s just subtle or minor. It’s not like something that’s so dramatically different than what a joy that one has in daily life. Another one is momentary, that it just seems like it sparkles. It comes and goes, maybe with every breath it comes and disappears, appears, comes and disappears. It’s just there for a moment, it kind of sparkles or sparks someplace.
Then there is something called showering. And this is where it feels like there’s a shower of water pouring through us in some way, a flow pouring through us, moving through us. A stream that’s moving through us, maybe like sand going through an hourglass, where we’re at the thin edge of the hourglass and it just moves, flows and flows. Something streams going, and that stream can be quite intense sometimes, and it might go in different directions. It might go up the spine, up the head, it might go down into the feet. Sometimes when it gets too intense, the sense of the stream, people find it helpful to relax the body even more so the stream becomes softer and wider. And sometimes people even kind of redirect it so it’s more grounding, like down the feet.
And then there is something called uplifting joy. Now this is quite inspiring, and this is kind of almost like people feel they get very light. Sometimes they feel like they’re being lifted up, and sometimes actually the posture will change because this lifting up sometimes straightens out the spine, and everything’s alert and present. But it can feel like we’re lifted off the cushion even, because everything’s so light and inspiring and wonderful to experience.
And then there’s pervading. The showering can sometimes be quite intense. I’ve had the experience of it feeling like huge cascading waves. You could feel the wave coming and then crashing down. And sometimes I’ve had it after meditation, and when it happens, I have to stop what I’m doing, just kind of pause and wait for this wave to crest and break and pass. So there’s all kinds of very unusual things that can happen with the intensity of it, mostly when people are on retreat.
But the one that I like is this last one called pervading. This is the instruction the Buddha gives, is to let this well-being, this joy, spread. And that’s the only instruction he gives, as I said yesterday, is to let it spread, let it be suffused. Almost like with every breath, there’s a massage that spreads it further and further. Every breath is like the wind, the air of a bellows, letting a fire’s warmth get warmer and warmer and let it spread. So there’s no bottlenecks for it, there’s no place that gets contracted, there’s no tension in the body in which the flow is blocked, which can cause a little bit of challenges for people. Just relax. And so it’s a continual relaxation, continual opening, opening to the well-being, feel it fully. And that continued letting go, continued falling away, prepares a person for the second jhāna, which we’ll talk about next.
So what tends to happen when that first jhāna gets strong is that the joy factor can predominate, but the happiness factor is still there as well. And so these two together, they’re kind of like a combination of joy and happiness that arise together, but it is possible to also distinguish them. The distinction is that the happiness is more, I like the word sublime. It’s more calm, it’s more settled, it’s more content, whereas with the pīti, the mind is a little bit brightened and excited by it. With the happiness, the mind actually quiets down even more. There’s a pervasive feeling of well-being more than a pervasive feeling of inspiration or a little bit of excited joy.
So these are the five factors, and they can be very minor, and you don’t have to be in jhāna to have these present. There’s an art to recognizing, even if they’re here very subtly in an ordinary mind where you’re maybe somewhat distracted, preoccupied, there’s a way of discovering that these are already here in some way. And you’re allowed to feel it, to support you, to get absorbed, to get into the meditation, to temporarily let your everyday concerns, preoccupations, fall away. It’s that sometimes called the happiness that leads to more happiness, the joy that leads to more joy. To feel even the subtle feelings of calm or well-being that begins to come as you meditate, there’s an art not to cling to it, not to try to make something happen, but to register and let it kind of be massaged or open to it. And it supports you to let go of your everyday orientations, preoccupations, just to be here.
So, next week I’ll be back at the retreat center, IRC, for a more private event we’re doing down there. And then I’ll be back in the following week, and Matthew Brensilver will be coming next week, and I think that’ll be quite refreshing to have him as an interlude. And then I’ll be back, and then the following week we’ll do the second jhāna. And the idea is to spend a week on the next three, so that you can have some sense of what these are about.
I thank you for attending and listening and practicing together, and I very much look forward to being back in about 10 days. So thank you.
Jhāna: A state of deep meditative absorption, characterized by profound stillness and concentration. ↩
Samādhi: A state of meditative consciousness, often translated as “concentration,” “unification of mind,” or “absorption.” It is a state of profound well-being and mental collectedness. ↩
Pīti: A Pāli word for “joy,” “rapture,” or “zest.” It is one of the factors of the first jhāna and is often experienced as a physical sensation of energy or lightness. The original transcript said ‘pity’. ↩
Sukha: A Pāli word for “happiness,” “ease,” or “bliss.” It is a more subtle and calm feeling of well-being than pīti. The original transcript said ‘Suka’. ↩