This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Flow of Attention and Joy; Samadhi (49) Spreading Joy and Happiness. 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, everyone. I hope you can hear me okay with the microphone on my laptop. Here I am at Spirit Rock, these wonderful rolling oak grasslands at the retreat center in Marin County, California. I’m here teaching a retreat with about a hundred people with a few wonderful teachers that are my friends. So, welcome to our meditation session. Maybe you can hear the birds. We’ll see. Sometimes when I’m here, animals will walk by. Yesterday, there was a big, healthy-looking, beautiful-looking coyote up here walking by in the hills.
I’ll offer you a kind of simile or analogy. In my yard at home, we have an outdoor faucet used for watering the garden, and the faucet has an extension to it that is the shape of a Y, so that we can attach two hoses to the same faucet. The Y has a valve, and you can move the valve back and forth between one of the two arms of the Y, depending on which hose you want to have water in. Or you can also put it in the middle position, and some water goes into both hoses. So, whatever part of the garden we want to water, we turn the valve one way or the other.
In the same way, for our meditation, we have something that’s water-like, and it is ordinarily what I think of as our awareness, our attention. In the Jhāna1, it’s the meditative joy and happiness that comes from the practice, but it begins with awareness. That awareness, that attention, is a kind of water that waters, that feeds, that nourishes whatever it flows into. So if you’re watering worry, worry grows. If you’re watering desires, desires grow. If you’re watering resentment, resentment grows. It matters where your attention goes, where your focus goes, where your mental involvement goes. And it helps if we can turn that valve inside so this wonderful resource that we have—attention, awareness—can flow and water, feed, and nourish something that’s really wholesome and good.
The ancient tradition in Buddhism is to do that with meditation, with mindfulness of breathing. And so there’s a kind of non-thinking awareness that we pour into the body, settle into the body, and we water with awareness the goodness of just simply breathing. And as we breathe, there’s a second nourishment, and that is, as we get absorbed, engaged, fully giving ourselves over to the simplicity of breathing, then there starts to be the nourishment of well-being, a joy, happiness, delight that comes from the absorption, that comes from the full engagement in what we’re doing. Of course, it’s a little bit more difficult to do it with something as simple as breathing than it is to do it with a really good book we’re reading, or a great craft we’re doing, or a sport we’re playing. But that’s the art and the practice we’re doing here: to find that way to take the healthy nourishment, to take awareness and our well-being and let it flow into our body, into the practice, to be fully here.
So, assume a meditation posture. For today, you might want to emphasize a posture that has as little discomfort in it as possible. So if you normally sit with knee pain or back pain, maybe for today, assume a posture that lessens that as much as possible.
And then gently close your eyes.
Take a few long, slow, deep breaths, beginning to turn the flow of awareness into the body, out of thinking, where many people spend much of the day.
Letting the breathing return to normal, investigate the body breathing. Investigate how breathing is occurring in your body at this moment. What moves in your body? What sensations come into play as you breathe? What is the nature, the quality of your breathing? Is it forceful? Is it easeful? Is it slow or fast? Is it shallow or deep? Whatever it is, just notice it, note how it is for you.
And then as you breathe, pause at the end of the exhale for a comfortable length of time, however brief that is, so that you have more valuing, more appreciation of breathing in. The same with the top of the inhale—a slight pause, so there’s a growing appreciation of how important and valuable it is to breathe.
As you exhale, softening your body, relaxing.
As you exhale, relax your thinking mind. Soften in the mind that thinks, a softening that lessens the strong pull or the strong inclination to think. It’s okay for a little while to let thinking recede to the background.
And turning your attention now, so that the nourishment, the food, the water of awareness flows into your body breathing. Almost as if with every in-breath and out-breath, the water of awareness is filling your torso, filling your body, gently, softly, please.
And as you’re sitting here, breathing, aware of the body breathing, feel in your body, feel in your breathing, whatever is pleasant, whatever is enjoyable in the sensations, the embodiment of attention. Where is the pleasure of that? Maybe there’s a degree of calm, clarity, a feeling of wholeness. And into that calm body flows awareness, attention—the kind of awareness that has minimal thought in it. A sensing, a feeling, an observing.
And as you’re sitting here, sensitive to your inner experience, feel whatever joy, contentment, well-being there is, pleasure that comes from being engaged in the meditation, that comes from not getting lost in thought, but rather dipping in, flowing into this broad lake of the body with an inner wellspring of maybe subtle well-being, joy, and happiness. And as if the body welcomes that joy, the clarity and calm is a welcome container, a welcome invitation. Here, let that well-being have space, have room in this body to flow, to open up, and to spread with every breath. Whatever well-being there is spreads through the body and supports the mind to become quiet, clear, without being crowded with thinking. The clear space has more room for well-being that for these minutes is being prioritized, as if it’s a kind of nourishment for you.
Maybe a soft, gentle current of flowing wellness, happiness, contentment, flowing in the body. And with every breath, giving more room for well-being to flow, coziness, sweetness to flow through your body, spreading into the arms, the legs.
There can be a feedback loop where quiet, soft attention to joy and happiness supports the joy and happiness to grow, which in return supports the interest to stay there with it, to breathe with it. Slowly, gently, the absorption in the meditation, the absorption in the pleasure, and the pleasure of the joy and happiness grow together.
Then, as we come to the end of this sitting, let the boundaries of your body, your joy, your well-being flow beyond your body. Or let the joy and the happiness flow beyond any sense of boundaries to self. Like the breath, the air comes into your body and leaves and spreads out into the world. So let your joy, your happiness, whenever you have it, not be something you hold on to for yourself, but something that is the condition, the cause for you to be friendly to others that you meet. People carrying your joy, your well-being, that is the medium through which you see people, through which you speak with people. Those times when you feel happiness, let it be something that spreads into the world.
May it be that this practice we’re doing together causes each of us to improve the lives of people around us today with small acts of kindness, small acts of joy, of appreciation, respect. May it be that this meditation we do serves the world, so that all beings may be happy, all beings may be safe, all beings may be peaceful, and all beings may be safe, may be happy and free.
So thank you. I’m sitting here in the hills of Marin County without a bell, so I will bow to all of you, and that bow will be the end of the meditation. Thank you.
Welcome to this next talk on the Samadhi2 series, the fourth talk on the second Jhāna1. Some people call Jhāna just “Jhāna,” some people call it “absorptions,” some people call it “immersions.” Some people in the past, many years ago, used to call it “trances” when they didn’t quite know what it was. They are states of wholeness, of unification, where we’re not divided within ourselves. We’re not distracted, or our attention is not pulled in different directions. And it’s a pleasure to come together and have all of ourselves engaged in the same thing at the same time, to really get into it, to really be absorbed in it and give ourselves over to it.
There’s a joy that comes, I think, for human beings, and I think animals too can have it. There’s a joy of a certain kind, of certain types of completely giving ourselves over to something that’s really enjoyable and pleasant. There’s more than just pleasure; there’s a kind of happiness and delight and thrill of giving ourselves over to it, or not losing ourselves, but kind of fully giving ourselves over to something.
I think I told this story sometime recently, but many years ago, I came out onto the street, and it was raining. There was a car across the street where a little bird was sliding down the wet windshield in the rain and then flying up to the top of the windshield and sliding down again, over and over again. I could only think that this bird was enjoying itself, was absorbed in the delight of sliding. So, to give ourselves over, maybe a little bit like the delight of children fully giving themselves over to some activity that’s so much fun.
The quality of the second Jhāna has to do with coming into a form of full absorption, full engagement in what we’re doing without any stress, when there’s a vast calm, settledness, stability, when there’s a vast clarity. Some people call it clarity, and some people use the word “assurance” for the Pali3 word, the ancient Buddhist word. So to sit with a tremendous sense of assurance, of confidence or safety, that this is really a good way to be, and a unification of all of us involved.
Then the art of this is to begin appreciating the joy and the happiness that’s there. Some people call it even “rapture” because it can be quite strong, and some people call it “bliss”—rapture and bliss—because it’s qualitatively so much greater sometimes than ordinary happiness and joy. And in this situation, you ought to give yourself over to it. You’re allowed to make room for it and feel it and enjoy it.
There’s an art in deep meditation to begin not holding on to the joy, not being attached to it, but to make room for it, to, with the breathing perhaps, massage it more or allow it to flow. Mostly in the second Jhāna, I think of this as just making more room, letting it flow, feeling the current of it, feeling the hum, feeling the flow of these good feelings that can be there, and not making a lot of them, not getting excited, staying with the calm. But with the calm and the clarity, just allowing them to live, allowing them to flow. This is where the food of awareness, what attention supports: the growing of joy, the growing of happiness.
The classic instructions are to let it pervade, suffuse, permeate, spread throughout the body. So sometimes it’s actually kind of nice to feel like you’re kind of blowing it or supporting it to flow into the arms and the hands and into the legs, into the full torso. And at times when there doesn’t seem to be any boundaries to the body, to just feel like it’s just radiating in all directions—front and back and everything.
I know that this kind of joy I’m talking about is far from our ordinary experience. There are a lot of challenges that we have in our lives—challenges with our external lives, challenges with our own minds and hearts. And it can be a little bit grating or discouraging to hear these descriptions of this kind of pervasive joy and happiness. But it can also be inspiring that this is possible for a human being. We can put aside all our ordinary concerns and get refreshed, get renewed, get settled, so that eventually we can do a deeper work of insight, a deeper work of really seeing clearly to the depths of our hearts where suffering is and where freedom is. And that’s the overall purpose for this joy and happiness. It’s not just for this meditative joy and happiness for its own sake. Some people get a little bit sidetracked by it, by just getting addicted to it and just wanting to have this over and over again. But it’s important to see it as a stepping stone to eventually having very deep insight. There’s a purification, there’s a clarification that goes on with this. There’s a healing that goes on by allowing ourselves to feel this kind of joy and happiness.
If one drops into these kinds of Jhāna states, it’s good to take one’s time with it. Ordinarily, people will often get quite excited by these wonderful states, and then they pop right out. They start thinking how wonderful it is, and they get distracted almost by their excitement. But the idea is to become familiar with them. Don’t be in a hurry to go through them, don’t be in a hurry to strengthen them, but gently get to know them, feel them, become familiar with them. And let the joy and the happiness nourish you, support you, guide you. Feel it well.
This is a time in life, in these states when this joy and happiness is there, you have complete permission in meditation to experience it up to the point of ecstasy, to experience the joy, the happiness. And maybe you can support that process by making a half-smile, or you could maybe feel that the joy and the happiness wants a half-smile. And you can smile with the practice as you do it.
And then if you go into these kinds of deeper states of well-being, it’s valuable to come out of these meditations slowly. Try not to be in a situation where you have to pop out and get to work or do something quickly, but come out slowly so you stay closely connected, as if you’re allowing something to still work on you, allowing, receiving the goodness of it, the blessings of it somehow. You’re reconditioning yourself in a deep way. Maybe get up and start doing simple things in the morning. Maybe you can get up and make breakfast in a simple, relaxed way that kind of goes along with the general tenor, the general feeling of how it felt in the meditation.
And if you don’t feel this kind of deep happiness and joy, that’s fine. Mostly meditators don’t feel it. But from time to time, they come, and I’m hoping that you’ll have a greater appreciation and readiness to practice with it through these teachings here.
So thank you very much. I’ll be here tomorrow again at Spirit Rock, and next week for the first three days. So probably I’ll be doing it from this place here, where the grasslands are behind me, and with a little bit of luck, we’ll have sun one morning, and maybe the wildflowers will start coming out during this week. So thank you, and I look forward to tomorrow morning.
Jhāna: A state of deep meditative absorption, characterized by profound stillness and concentration. There are traditionally eight stages of jhāna, each deeper than the last. ↩ ↩2
Samadhi: A state of meditative concentration or one-pointedness of mind. It is a key component of the Buddhist path, leading to tranquility and insight. ↩
Pali: An ancient Indo-Aryan language, closely related to Sanskrit. It is the scriptural language of the Theravada Buddhist canon. ↩