This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Relaxing Tension; Samadhi (58) Deepening By Releasing. 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 and welcome to this 30-minute meditation. As a continuation of this series on samadhi1, I want to perhaps simplify the whole idea of moving into fuller and fuller samadhi, the peace of samadhi. It is the progressive releasing of mental pressure, the progressive letting up of the ways that we cling to things or get really caught or preoccupied. We do it kind of from the outside in, maybe starting at the more larger kind of ways in which we cling or get preoccupied and caught in things. Slowly, the process of settling, relaxing, and calming begins. We start letting go, and we start feeling the place where we’re still holding. Then there’s a softening, a letting go of that, and then letting go further and further.
Partly, what this involves is developing a deep, deep sensitivity to the way in which we think about things when there’s some pressure there, some tension there in the way that we think. So it’s not just simply that we’re thinking, but there’s an added pressure or tightness associated with the thinking. When we have certain preoccupations, certain ideas that we’re thinking, there can be pressure around those—tension, grabbing, leaning forward, resisting. That begins to go because we feel that tension. Feeling the tension requires no longer being so involved in the content of our thoughts, but rather to feel the experience of thinking and how there’s discomfort in that, some kind of disturbance there. That gets let go.
Then the hindrances get let go of as part of that. Then we’re able to bring our attention much more to the present moment. We’re able to place the attention and sustain the attention, this rhythm and massage of just being here. The mind kind of drifts a little bit, you come back; drifts a little bit, you come back. It’s quite lovely as an alternative to the tensions and preoccupations with thoughts, emotions, intentions, and feelings.
With time, we feel that even that involves some kind of little bit of tension or pressure, and there’s a relaxing of that. Then there are experiences of joy and happiness that can come. With time, we see that the joy part of it is kind of coarse, a little bit too much. There’s too much involvement. Whereas at first, the joy just seems ecstatic and feels so fortunate, over time, as we get more familiar with it, we can sense the way in which there’s some holding, some pressure, some involvement with the joy. Then that tension releases, and we’re left with a happiness, that deep, sublime kind of feeling of well-being, meditative happiness.
But then with time, we start to sense and feel that even that, ever so subtle, hard to believe that this sweet, healthy feeling of happiness has a certain kind of orientation of the mind towards it that’s still a little bit of tension, a little bit of pressure, maybe something holding. And so that releases, and then we move into the fourth jhāna2, where we really don’t feel any pressure or tension whatsoever. It just feels peaceful, the absence of all pressure, all tension, all force of the mind, all caught-ness of the mind. And so it’s a progressive stilling, quieting, calming of tension, tightness, and pressure that we become sensitive to, and then we let go.
So, assume a meditation posture.
The broadest beginning of relaxing is, as you breathe, maybe with your eyes closed, to feel any tension, tightness, or pressure in your body. As you breathe, feel that, and as you exhale, relax the body, relaxing into the present moment with your body as a welcoming place. Something in your body welcomes you as the pulling away of tension, as the narrowing in of tension releases.
Then, to feel the tensions in your mind—pressure, contraction. It doesn’t matter what the tightness is about. Feel it on the inhale and soften, relax on the exhale. Relaxing in a way that allows attention to settle more deeply into the body, where the body welcomes attention, welcomes you.
As you inhale, feel any tension or pressure holding in the heart area. Feel it on the inhale, soften around it, relax around it on the exhale, letting attention, letting you, settle more deeply into the torso, maybe deep into the soft belly.
Noticing if there are any preoccupations, major concerns that you’re thinking about. Don’t be concerned about the content, but rather the felt sense of tension, tightness, pressure around this concern. And as you exhale, soften, relax, settle.
And then to settle into the body, breathing with that gentle massage of connecting to the breathing and sustaining attention, touching into the breath and riding on the breath for a few moments. A very gentle massage of breathing, massaging it with a soft, very light, no-pressure attention. Breathing in, breathing out.
Maybe feeling the relief or joy, the gladness that you’re less preoccupied than you were. Massaging the breath with awareness, letting breathing massage you. Breathing in and breathing out.
And perhaps some of the more subtle tightening or pressure can be softened by having a small half-smile. Smiling at the goodness and simplicity of breathing in and breathing out, being connected in an embodied way with oneself.
And if there is some delight or joy, allow the massage of your breathing to suffuse that joy through the body as the mind gets quieter and stiller. The fewer the thoughts, the more room there is in awareness to feel the goodness, the rightness that’s part of sitting quietly, attending to the breathing.
And then relaxing more, relaxing around the joy or the delight, the sense of relief, to feel more deeply in your body whatever sense of well-being might be there. Even if it’s in the cracks of feeling otherwise, feel that kind of well-being, a sense of happiness, contentment. Letting the mind become quieter so you can better have room for happiness and contentment.
And then deeper than happiness, deeper than contentment, is peace. The peace of a clear, non-reactive mind, non-reactive awareness. Letting go of happiness, contentment, and becoming centered on that part of your being which is a clarity of attention, attention that feels clean, open, spacious. That part of awareness, the heart of awareness, that has no pressure, no tension, nothing to do, nothing to be. Simply aware, as if awareness is a vast, open space, undisturbed by anything.
And as we come to the end of this sitting, see if you have a clear sensitivity to ways in which there’s added pressure or tension in the mind, the heart, the body. An activation of wanting and not wanting, a holding on, a stickiness to thoughts and feelings. You can even let it be the way it is, but appreciate that there is the possibility of not having any stickiness, any pressure, any activation, any holding. And that possibility exists together with your holding, surrounding it, underneath it, as a friendly, welcoming possibility. Yes, you can let go. You can release the pressures on the mind.
And that allows you to see the world with new eyes, with clear eyes, without the filter of desires and aversions, wanting and not wanting, without the burden of judgments and interpretations. To gaze upon the world calmly, with a friendly heart, a warmhearted attitude to all beings.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
And thereby, may all beings know what it’s like to live without any tension in their mind, any pressure, any holding, as they come home to themselves. May all beings be happy.
Good morning, and welcome to this series on samadhi. I think we’re now on the 58th talk, discussing the fourth jhāna. To step back and have a little bit of a different orientation to understanding this whole process of samadhi, it’s sometimes said to be a continuous process of letting go. That’s what’s required in attaining a deep samadhi. Another similar way of putting it is that samadhi has a lot to do with relaxing or letting up on all the ways in which attention has been hijacked or harnessed into our attachments, into pressure, into subtle ways that the mind grabs onto or pushes along its thoughts, subtle ways in which we’re reacting to our feelings.
It’s about the subtle, and maybe not-so-subtle, ways in which we’re very involved with a kind of pressure, contraction, tightness, or leaning into whatever attention is directed towards. If it’s directed towards thinking, there can be a lot of it. The process involves becoming sensitive to that holding, that pressure, that push, that preoccupation around anything at all—the way attention zeros in.
Sometimes it’s innocent enough. If you’ve lost your keys, then some part of the mind is now intent on finding the keys, looking for the keys. There might be a subtle kind of tautness or intentionality in the mind, or there might be fear, anxiety, and desperation, and now the mind has really gotten tight, really gotten narrow. The holding on there can be a healthy tautness, a healthy kind of engagement, or there can be all this extra stuff.
Meditation is a place to become very sensitive to the tension, the pressure, the strain that we add. Sometimes it’s pretty soft, so in ordinary mind states, we don’t see the tension. But as the mind gets quieter in meditation, we start noticing what wasn’t noticed before because now we’re quiet enough to start feeling more deeply what’s happening. We’re not preoccupied, not caught up in the thoughts and ideas, and we start feeling the cost, feeling the tightness, the tension, the strain.
Sometimes, with mindfulness, just feeling it carefully is enough for it to begin to soften and dissolve. In the process of samadhi—whether it’s feeling the tension and letting it dissolve, or whether it’s staying on the breath, focusing on the breath wholeheartedly so the attention doesn’t go into that tension, doesn’t go into the preoccupations, and they kind of fade away on their own—both are happening. In one way or the other, the tensions of the mind are calming down and quieting. When they quiet down enough that we really feel like we’re in the present moment, we’ve arrived, and we’re not leaving, we’re just now at rest, at ease, it can start feeling like a delight. It can be a relief; it can be happiness.
And so then we go further. The four stages of the four jhānas are a progressive calming of the tensions and activation of the mind. Sometimes it’s just enough to feel and recognize the tension or the disturbance or the unnecessary activation that happens in each state. So in each jhāna, if you hang out long enough, get to know it, suffuse it, feel it, really enter into it, then sooner or later your system, you, will recognize, “Oh, this is where there’s still some kind of tension.” And that releases, and we can move into the next jhāna, and the next.
The third jhāna, for some people, is the most satisfying in some ways because of the sublime happiness that’s there. But even there, there’s a kind of attention, a little bit of something extra, an activation, that it feels so good to find that which is calmer still, more peaceful, which is the fourth jhāna. Now, because the mind is not oriented towards anything—it’s not oriented towards the happiness, gathered around for the happiness—there’s very little sense of the body going on. There’s no pain and pleasure in this state. Sometimes breathing gets very, very quiet. Some people report that breathing seemingly stops because we don’t experience any breathing in and out. Whether we are still breathing a little bit or whether the need for oxygen is so diminished that there’s some kind of cycling of oxygen and carbon dioxide that doesn’t quite require active breathing—exactly what’s going on, I don’t know.
But it can be quite something the first time. I thought I stopped breathing. I was so deeply calm and peaceful and unpreoccupied by anything until I noticed I wasn’t breathing. Then I gasped and said to myself, “I’m going to die.” And then I was back up in my thinking mind. Over time, I learned to trust this and how I wasn’t going to die in deep meditation when I could no longer feel any breath. Some of that is that the quiet, peaceful mind that has so little mental activity doesn’t need a lot of oxygen. One of the primary consumers of oxygen in the body is the brain because we’re so busy there.
So with the fourth jhāna, there is now no real involvement with anything outside of the state of awareness itself. It’s described as an equanimous awareness or a clear, clean, pure mind. If anything, there’s a kind of a feeling of, “This is what there is.” The unification, the one-pointedness, is just with what’s left, which is this equanimous, clear awareness that we’re here. This involves the absence of tension and activation that’s so deeply satisfying.
I wanted to emphasize this today because the balance in practice is some balance between being focused with attention, staying with the breathing or the object of attention, and relaxing and softening. You can get somewhat concentrated by only focusing, but there are not a few people who do that who don’t notice the strain by which they’re focusing. Then their samadhi gets a little bit out of kilter, or very much off. A lot of strain and tension builds, a kind of energy that’s not a healthy energy to have. And if we’re only focusing on relaxing and letting go, it might not really allow the kind of unification, the kind of quieting or centering that allows for the deeper samadhi.
So where we find the balance is somewhere between the two. Some people want to emphasize more the letting go, the relaxing; some people more the focus. At different times, more one or the other. But ideally, they’re working together, working harmoniously, almost as if they’re the same thing. And that becomes a protection from the problems that can happen with samadhi if we’re trying too hard to get into it, if we’re straining, pushing, gung-ho. I’ve known people who have been a little bit too idealistic, a little bit too striving around samadhi, and they’ve gotten into trouble because the tension built so much in their body and their mind, and they got headaches, for example, or strange kinds of activation of energies happened in their body.
So it’s very important to see the process of samadhi to be a sensitivity to tension, a sensitivity to holding, to pressure, to contraction, to clinging in all the many variations that can be there. To be sensitive to it so we know how to let go, we know how to relax. This is valuable at any stage of practice. If we’re in ordinary states of consciousness, then maybe some of that holding is fairly coarse. As we get deeper in meditation, it’s more and more subtle. Subtle doesn’t mean it’s unimportant; it becomes the next doorway to go further and further.
So, the progressive stilling, softening, evaporating of tension, clinging, holding, pressure. And then we come to the fourth jhāna. When a person has come to the fourth jhāna and is well-established in it, then it can be relatively smooth and quick to move between the jhānas. The mind becomes malleable, workable. Sometimes there’s a sense of mastery, of just being able to move in and out of these states because there’s no clinging, no tension that interferes with that movement. It’s almost like you blow on dust and the dust kind of floats away. So you flow in these concentration states and you can kind of move between them because there’s so little clinging.
The idea is not to necessarily develop mastery of the jhānas, but rather to see how the deeper the jhāna, the less holding there is in the mind, less clinging, and the more and more prone we become to a deeper and deeper letting go that the mind does on its own. And that is a miracle. That is a delight when the mind lets go of itself.
So thank you. We have two more days on this fourth jhāna, and I appreciate very much this chance to be able to offer you these teachings.
Samadhi: A Pali word for a state of meditative concentration or absorption, often described as a unification of mind. ↩
Jhāna: A Pali term for a state of deep meditative absorption, characterized by profound stillness and concentration. There are traditionally four jhānas, each representing a deeper level of absorption. ↩