This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Watching Change; Insight (9) Comprehension. It likely contains inaccuracies.
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California. Please visit website www.audiodharma.org to find the authoritative record of this talk.
Hello everyone, and welcome. I feel fortunate to be able to share some of the wonderfulness of this practice that I’ve been doing for so long. One of the things that’s quite wonderful is developing the capacity to do next to nothing in meditation—not to try to attain anything or make something happen, except to be aware, to be present, to be here.
Sometimes it’s pretty clear in meditation that the mind wants to be anywhere but here. The distracting mind wanders off in all kinds of directions, or it’s clear that the mind is aversive to what’s here, it doesn’t want to be with what’s happening here and now. But to be able to be here with our present moment experience, neither for nor against, neither avoiding nor diving in to penetrate it, but simply to be still. And as we’re still, to notice, or more simply, to watch the unfolding of experience.
One of the purposes for samadhi1, for developing concentration, is to have the stability, to have the settledness to just stay here with the experience. So much learning happens when you just sit and watch. An example that I heard many years ago is if a nature photographer wants to take pictures on the vast plains of Africa, to go running all over the plains looking for the animals makes it difficult. But if the person sits still and quiet by the watering hole and waits, everything comes for the water. All the animals come. So if we can sit still at the watering hole of the dharma and watch the comings and goings of sensations, experiences, thoughts, even feelings in a certain kind of way.
The heart of seeing the coming and going, the key to it, is to notice how the perception, the way we perceive the present moment, is constantly shifting. Even if something on the surface seems like it’s constant, it’s not going away. Like right now, I can feel my hand on my knee, and as long as I rest my hand there, those sensations are going to be there. But if I really pay careful attention to those sensations, I can see how my perception of it shifts and changes to different parts of the palm, then to thinking about what I’m going to say here to all of you, and then looking at the screen and your names and the greetings, and then back to my palm. And then it’s my finger, and then it’s my thumb, and then it’s the base of my palm, and there was more pressure. So the perception changes all the time. The idea of the hand on the knee is kind of constant; that points to something that’s not changing. So it gives the idea that there’s constancy, but this is where if we can separate out the sensation from the concept of it—just the sensation, just the perception—so to be still and do nothing more than to watch.
So we’ll enter into that world.
To gently close your eyes and to enter into your posture. No matter what posture you’re in, can you adjust it a bit? Twist your body, sway side to side, do something that gently opens your chest, maybe creates a little bit of alertness in the back of your neck and the spine. Maybe lifting the back of the head up or tipping the chin down. Maybe there’s an ever so slight way that you could accentuate the curve in the lower back or straighten the curve in the lower back. Whichever way, just ever so slightly, that gives the lower back a feeling of being more alert, more enlivened.
And feeling within an intentional posture, feeling whatever sense of being enlivened you are in your posture. The sense of living vitality, whatever degree is there. Even if you’re tired or feeling weak, to feel where in your body there’s a sense of vitality. Even if you feel weak, to have those sensations means you’re alive. It’s part of life coursing through you.
And into that aliveness of your body, your posture, in a way that’s right for you, nice for you, take a few long, slow, deep breaths. And as you exhale, settle into the grounding place deep in your belly, deep with the weight of your belly, your torso. The movement of breathing in and breathing out with the exhale settles into a place of stillness deep within.
Then to let your breathing return to normal. And as you exhale, to soften, relax your body. And to relax, exhale all the way to the end of the exhale as a movement of settling into a stillness, a settledness, however brief it is.
As you come to the end of the exhale, letting your thoughts, thinking, become quieter. Letting your thoughts drift away, maybe letting them go at the end of the exhale.
And then feeling or imagining deep within there’s a still point. Stay close to that still point. Almost like it’s the quiet place within from which you notice, you watch all the change that occurs. Staying in the river of changing sensations, changing perceptions. Even if something remains and doesn’t change, stay open, stay quiet and still, observing what is changing in your direct experience.
No need to think about anything. No need for thoughts to linger anywhere. Instead, allow yourself to watch the river of change, the river of changing perceptions, sensations, how thinking and thoughts come and go. The way you can watch thinking, if you don’t get pulled into the content, is just the phenomena of thinking. It’s constantly shifting and changing with all the other changes.
No need to think about anything. Thinking about something is doing something. Rest in the stillness from which you can peacefully observe all the change, changing perceptions, not even needing to identify what you’re experiencing, to even know what it is, except that it’s changing, shifting, appearing, disappearing, flowing.
And as we come to the end of the sitting, noticing to what degree, any degree at all, you can find inside of you a way in which you’re doing nothing except watching the change, the changing flow, like a large boulder in a river where the current of the water just flows by. Be still and watch the flow, the river of change.
So that even your heart, your heart center, is unstuck. Even so, your capacity for a tender care or kindness is part of the flow, part of the river of change. A kind of love that’s actually stronger the less it’s held in check, the more it flows openly.
And letting your goodwill flow outward into the world, almost as if the more it flows outwards and spreads, your heart just opens and opens and opens outward into the world. And carried on the flow of your goodwill, let there be the wishes:
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
Hello and welcome to this series on insight. Today I’m talking about the fourth category of insight, of the five different major categories. The first is personal insight that’s unique to each individual. The second is insight into seeing clearly that in any given moment there are two things: there’s the experience we have and the knowing of it, the recognition of it. The experience itself, in the most fundamental, basic way, is the way it’s experienced through the sense doors. And so that sensing and feeling, and then knowing, recognizing what that is, begins to tease things apart that are often entangled.
That tangle that we live in, of what we generally sometimes call perception, has a third element that makes it really sticky, a more solid ball of knots: the self who perceives, the self that’s experiencing things. So if I see an advertisement for the next greatest revolutionary technological device, and it just kind of appears on the screen in a commercial, it just comes and goes. It’s actually moving, shifting, changing scenery as they talk about this new device. But I immediately kind of lock into the device, and I’m the one who’s hearing it. I would like to have it. If I could have this device, then I’ll be the most tech-advanced person on my block, and a lot of people will admire me, and it’ll be really great.
There’s such a big knot of desires and ideas, and ideas of self and the perceiver and what the perceiver wants, that comes together almost simultaneously with seeing the device and hearing it being talked about. So the idea that simply seeing, “Oh, there’s a new tech device I’m seeing in front of me. It’s shifting and changing angles,” and it’s my knowing of it. There’s hearing the voice of the person talking about it. There’s hearing, and there’s knowing that I’m hearing. There’s knowing there are sounds of speaking. The world gets simplified, can be simplified, so we’re not caught up in the concepts, the ideas, the “me” that’s part of it, where it all becomes one big tangle.
Part of insight, as we go deeper and deeper, kind of like we’re going deeper in the jhāna2 and we’re deeper in deep concentrated states, there’s a stilling and a quieting and a simplifying of what the mind is about and what we’re doing and caught up in. In a calmer state, at some point, we’re not adding self and desires and wishes on top of our experience. Each thing is seen in its own pristine simplicity. There’s seeing, the knowing of seeing. There’s hearing, the knowing of hearing. Desire arises, there’s knowing of desire. There’s a thought about how great this will be, there’s knowing there’s a thought arising. And so now, they’re starting to feel and sense a freedom of allowing each thing to be in this simple state like that. That’s not possible if it’s all entangled together.
As we start being that simple with the raw, basic sense data coming in and just experiencing it, it starts feeling very satisfying to be present. There’s a kind of simple satisfaction, joy. It feels there’s an onward-leading movement. “Yes, this feels good. This is where now I’m connected.” And it’s a little bit of some of the qualities of samadhi coming into play as well, which makes it feel experientially like this is a good way to be. This is now there’s more freedom here.
As it goes along, we start seeing the third insight we talked about yesterday: conditionality. There’s a sensation, and that produces certain thoughts and maybe memories. Memories arise, and that produces sensations, or tightening in the belly, or softness in the heart area, or something. We see the conditionality. We see that when there’s a loud sound outside, something inside for a moment just kind of cringes. And I’m not the one who’s trying to cringe. I can’t say I do it. I might say it’s happening to me, or it’s happening with me, but I don’t have to even say that. I see the conditionality: a loud sound, and muscles cringe, muscles tighten, and then they relax.
It’s cause and effect. It’s a condition and the effect of the condition, what arises from it. And so we start seeing that there’s so much of this conditionality, so much that things occur that you can’t really take credit for. You can’t really say it’s me doing it. This defines me, because it’s just what happens. There’s a breeze against the cheek, and the sensations against the cheek and knowing the sensation—those are not me in some kind of usual sense of my personality, who people think I am or who I think I am. I didn’t make that happen. The sensations against my cheek, it’s just the conditions arise, and there’s sensation in the cheek, and maybe there’s a sense of pleasure with it. And pleasure just arising, then there might be desire for more pleasure. But the initial arising of that desire for more happened in a way I can’t identify with. It just seems like a desire floats up, and it’s almost like you say, “It’s not me, it’s just a desire,” and then it floats away.
If all those things are happening in a tangle, then it’s “wonderful me” having the pleasure of the breeze against my cheek. It’s me that wants to have more. It’s me. Of course it’s me, because it’s all happening together in this big bundle of things, and I don’t see the genesis of it, where it arises out of something which is not my will. I have a desire without wanting the desire; it just seems to float up.
So when the mind is very quiet and still in meditation, it gets to be a fascinating world when we don’t identify with things. We’re kind of seeing the simplicity of different things arising, the conditionality of it. And one of the things that begins to happen is the next, the fourth kind of insight, which is usually translated into English as “comprehension.” Maybe we can call it understanding. This is somewhat conceptual, but people don’t usually think of it this way, but sometimes people are actually coming to a conclusion.
That is, you start seeing that there are so many simple things that are occurring that are not being tied together, sewn together—the Buddha talked about sewn together into some big bundle of things. There are all these things occurring because of conditions, and there’s no self in it. There’s no self-assertion, no sense of self in it. It’s just like the breeze against a cheek. I didn’t make that happen. I don’t identify with that sensation there. Those sensations don’t define who I am. In a sense, they have nothing to do with me, except they’re happening on my cheek. I don’t have to add anything, build anything, build a story that I’m the best, I have the best sensations, the best breeze that anyone’s ever had. I should really get the Guinness World Book of Records to have such a wonderful sensation of a breeze against my cheek. I mean, all that selfing doesn’t go on.
So to start seeing that all this stuff rises and passes, comes and goes without self. And then some people now understand, “Wow, there’s a lot of experience here that I’ve identified with before. And a lot of this stuff is just happening without a sense of self.” It’s just phenomena arising. It’s a natural phenomenon that arises because conditions are such that this comes together to make this arise. And some people, because the mind is pretty still—remember there’s some degree of samadhi and concentration—it feels good, it feels true. And people start understanding, “Wow, there’s a lot less self going on here than I realized.” And some people say it’s all not-self. It’s all just conditions of things coming together, causes and conditions.
And some people will say that there is no self. They’ll even say sometimes there is no will, because will itself is just any kind of decisiveness, a decision is just something that arises from other conditions. There’s no inherent self who’s thinking it and planning it, because in a very deep state, you don’t see that. You just see this cause and conditions and effect, or conditions and what it brings forth.
And so there’s this comprehension, and people will say, “Wow,” and then there’s no self here at all, and there’s no self anywhere, and what a great thing, and there’s freedom here. And so they tend—this is comprehension. This is a little bit like, “Wow, this is great. I wish I want to tell everyone about it. And this means there wasn’t a self in the past, there wasn’t any in the future. Wow.” And in corollary together with this, there’s no self in this experience, is the clear feeling that everything is arising and passing. Everything is impermanent. Nothing lasts. And if I just sit back and let the river flow, all I see is change.
So then people come to make it—so part of the stage of comprehension is to make categorical statements, to make broad categorical understandings. “Wow, everything is impermanent. Everything is changing.” The basic kind of characteristic of reality is change and impermanence and not-self. And this is true everywhere in the world, for every person, all circumstances. And so there’s a kind of excitement or kind of becoming philosophers, kind of conceptualizing and thinking how wonderful this is.
And for some people, this is, because their mind is so clear and settled, they almost feel like, “Now I’m enlightened. Now I understand everything, and this is fantastic.” And it’s like almost like a divine revelation for some people to come into this state. But it’s not the end of the path. And it’s a little bit of a detour in the sense that if people get caught up in the conceptual aspects, the generalization of it—”Now I know something true about reality itself”—it becomes kind of a move into metaphysical philosophy to make these broad claims. And then, “Now I have insight into the very nature of reality.” And so it can be exciting, there’s some truth to what we’re experiencing and even thinking, so it’s important not to think it’s just pure delusion.
But the idea is to keep practicing. This is the beginning of the practice opening up in new and important ways. And so the stage of comprehension, the stage of understanding something that is more of a general understanding, a conceptual understanding, that’s distinct from a deeper direct experience, a deeper, non-conceptual experience. And that’s the most important insight of the insight meditation, and that’ll be what I’ll talk about tomorrow.