This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Attitudes within Self; Insight (28) Attitudes Contributing to Our Sense of Self. 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. In introducing the meditation for today, it’s part of the wider topic for the week of insight—insight into self and not-self. First, it’s important to have some insight into the experience we have of self, of ourselves.
I’d like to give you a metaphor for this. Some of you might remember the movie The Wizard of Oz, and how there’s this Wizard of Emerald City. At some point, with his big booming voice and this big mask on the wall, he sounds like a great, powerful being who rules the city. At some point, I think the little dog pulls the curtain open, and behind the curtain, there’s this very ordinary, older, kind of harmless-looking man standing there who’s the wizard. It’s all kind of a show.
So what’s behind the curtain in our own minds around ourselves? The voice, the directions, the beliefs that we have about self, the tensions, the pressures around this whole concept of self and who we think we are—if we pull the curtain, what do we see? Part of the purpose of meditation, not as an intentional act but as a consequence of the deep settling with insight meditation, is in fact to pull the curtain around this whole idea and feeling of what self is.
One of the things that we can start seeing if we pull the curtain is that whatever feeling, sense, or belief we have coalescing around this notion of self—it could be something seemingly as innocent as a feeling of “I-am-ness,” the place where we are as a kind of locus, a central control tower—what is the attitude that saturates that sense of self? Is there an attitude that is a lens through which we see everything? An attitude of calm or an attitude of agitation? An attitude of fulfillment or an attitude of feeling unfulfilled? An attitude of feeling adequate or feeling inadequate? An attitude of feeling safe or an attitude of feeling fear?
Is there a sense that this little coagulation, this condensation around self, comes with an unrecognized attitude? It’s kind of like they say people don’t recognize or know that they have a dialect or an accent when they speak because their accent, the way they grew up, is what everyone had. That’s the normal way of speaking. But everyone has an accent in relationship to someone else who speaks. We don’t even know we have these attitudes that we carry with us for maybe a lifetime because it’s just always been there.
So as we settle, we want to start seeing and recognizing the attitudes that are almost built into the fabric of our sense of self, our feeling of “me, myself, and mine.” And to pull the curtain, see it, and recognize: does it come with tension? Does it come with pressure? The tension is unnecessary; that is what we can work with.
So, to assume a meditation posture. Take a minute or so to kind of sway and rock yourself into a settled way of being with your body as you’re sitting or lying for meditation. Part of this swaying back and forth is to become a little bit more embodied and to take some care and time with an embodied sense of your body, to adjust the posture in minute ways so it feels just right.
Gently closing your eyelids. In this beginning of meditation, what or how is that self that’s doing these beginning steps to meditation? What sense do you have of the doer, the enactor, the experiencer?
With that as an exploration, take some deeper, fuller breaths to the degree to which it feels good and satisfying. Become more connected to your body and relax on the exhale. Letting your breathing return to normal.
On the inhale, feel the sensations of your face. There can be a lot of self associated with the face. As you exhale, relax the face, soften. Notice the self that is feeling and relaxing.
Feel the shoulders on the inhale. Soften the shoulders on the exhale, maybe with the help of adjusting your arms and hands a bit.
Feel the belly. And on the exhale, soften in the belly.
With a broad, global awareness of your body, feel as much of the body as is easy. And on the exhale, soften the body.
On the inhale, feel any tension or pressure, tightness that’s associated with a thinking mind. Any pressure or tension associated with the part of you that’s thinking, the part of you that’s doing the meditation. And on the exhale, soften that tension and pressure.
There is a caring way of allowing yourself internally to become quiet and still. Quieting the thinking mind, finding a place of inner stillness and quiet that heightens your sensitivity to feeling, seeing, and recognizing your present moment experience.
And as if the quiet, peaceful, still place within can gaze upon your sense of self—your sense of being the doer, the experiencer, the thinker—what are the attitudes that seem to be within this sense of self? The idea of self, the feeling of self, the locus, the control tower self in the middle of it all. Is there a subtle attitude? An attitude that has pressure or momentum in a forward direction, a backward direction, a sinking direction, an uplifting direction?
Embedded in the sense of self, are there attitudes of liking or not liking, wanting or not wanting? Attitudes that are searching for something, trying for something? Or attitudes of giving up or resisting? The deep attitudes embedded in the sense of self can be many other things.
Rather than being too concerned with what you find, when you find something, feel the tension, the pressure, the tightness, the solidity in the center. Feel it as you inhale and soften it as you exhale.
If you can feel or recognize an attitude that seems to come along with your sense of self, can you look behind it, underneath it, for what inside of you is deeper than that attitude? Maybe what’s behind it is more peaceful. For the next minute or so, gently breathe with, breathe through what’s behind, what’s deeper. Allow it to be known.
And as we come to the end of the sitting, feel and sense whatever degree of settledness, whatever degree of calm there might be for you, whatever new understanding there might be for you. And how might this calm, peace, settledness, and understanding allow you to go into the world, seeing the world kindly, to go into the world in a more friendly way, a more generous way?
May it be that the practice we do is to benefit both self and others. May we do this practice of meditation to support the transformation of a better world. One breath at a time, one sentence at a time, one human encounter at a time.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be safe. May all beings be free.
Thank you.
So hello and welcome to this third talk on the third insight: the insight into not-self. Before going directly into what this teaching is, what this aspect of meditation is about, it’s first and very important to understand a few things about our sense of self, the way we orient ourselves around “me, myself, and mine,” and to recognize something about it, to become wiser about it, to understand it better. One of the things to understand better is the degree to which our sense of self is often a magnet for a lot of suffering. It’s a magnet for the tensions and stresses that we have in our life.
And so the question is, why do we carry this self around if it has such a strong connection to suffering and tension? One of the reasons for that is that this sense of self can give a sense of being very real. After all, it’s me, and I’m important. Sometimes the realness of it is not just a figment of the imagination but comes with the feeling that we’re in touch with it. It has a location in our body, maybe in the mind and the head. Maybe there is a sense of solidity there around this sense of self. Of course, it’s there because the very feeling of “I-am-ness” can be very broad and spacious, but it can also be condensed, centered around this particular feeling or sense in the body, in the mind, somehow the heart. There might be tension there, pressure associated with it, and tightness. These sensations of tension give it a sense that it’s something, it’s a place, it’s a location, it’s a real thing.
You know, a hologram is a focal point where different laser lights are focused, and in that, something that seems quite real and three-dimensional appears. But you put your hand into the little hologram box, and your hand goes right through the object because it’s not there. It isn’t exactly the same metaphor for the sense of self, but parts of it are true in that way, where we take something which is not the self but is associated with that sense of self as proof that there is a self, that that’s the self that I’m holding on to.
Again, I’m not trying to dismiss the self in any kind of way. I don’t have to worry about it philosophically. What I’m trying to get to is to understand better what’s extra, what’s put on top of the sense of self that gives it its solidity, gives it a sense of “this is how things are.” And often, so much about this sense of self that we carry is taken for granted, is maybe even subconscious. It’s almost like the atmosphere, a general attitude that comes along which is so embedded in the sense of self that we don’t realize that the attitude is extra, that the attitude is maybe not helpful for us, not useful, not universally applicable to how we live our life, but it’s always there.
So part of what we can investigate when we really get quiet and settled enough—it’s difficult to do in an ordinary, busy, activated life—but if we get into a contemplative, quiet, settled mood in meditation or some other way, it’s possible to begin looking, sensing, feeling, and recognizing the kind of fundamental attitudes that come along with our sense of self. This might be related to what Buddhism has called the three personality types, the three kinds of qualities that our mind activity can have. There’s a desire personality, the aversive personality, and the confused personality.
For example, I am more the desire type, and desires are a dime a dozen for me. So desires can always be there in the background, wanting this and wanting that. That’s an attitude, a kind of general mood that that sense of self or mind can have. I’ve learned to see it, I’ve learned to recognize it, and I don’t see it as defining who I am or necessarily myself, but it’s definitely part of this operating system that I have to be wise about. For some people, it’s aversion. Everything they see and touch and experience, there’s an initial orientation towards aversion. But if we know it, then we don’t have to identify with it. We don’t have to believe this is what has to happen because this is built into the whole idea of who I am. It’s just aversion; moments of it arise and pass. And the same thing with confusion. A confused mind doesn’t have to be something we identify with. Maybe confusion is a dime a dozen, but it’s just particular moments of confusion. There’s no need to wed it to our identity or sense of self.
So there are these kinds of attitudes of desire, aversion, and confusion. There can be attitudes of wanting and not wanting. There can be deeply embedded ones like fear. Some of these attitudes are more emotional; emotions sometimes have attitudes built into them. So there can be a pervasive mood in that sense of self of anxiety, hostility, inadequacy, or assertiveness and aggression.
To slowly begin recognizing these attitudes that we have and to see how they are not just embedded in our whole orientation—the way we see ourselves as the seer of the world—but also that they carry with them a subtle sense of tension, a subtle sense of pressure or tightness, of stress. And that stress and tension is not necessary. Any sense of self that carries with it tension or stress—the tension and stress is extra. Not only extra, but it might be the very thing that locks in or keeps tight the ongoingness of the attitude, the mood, the emotional landscape of this thing that we call the self.
So part of becoming wise about the self is becoming wise about some of its characteristics. If your sense of self has no characteristics because it’s disembodied, it’s empty, it’s somehow free, chances are high that you haven’t really gotten quiet enough, still enough to really see what’s going on. But of course, sometimes the sense of self is so ephemeral, so light, so peaceful that maybe it’s better off just feeling the peace and being nourished by that than going exploring for something.
Finally, the very exploration, the very focus of mindfulness to see all this, that too might be done from this place of self. This is where it gets very interesting. Anything we do, we might bring ourselves along in terms of the deeper attitudes, beliefs, and emotions that are always there in the background. If some of those have to do with attitudes of perfectionism, being successful, trying to make something work, engineer something, always trying to figure something out, then if we bring that to being mindful, we’re kind of using the problem to try to solve the problem. So this idea of investigating the self and its attitudes, we have to be careful that that investigation doesn’t come along with the very attitude that we’re trying to investigate.
The invitation in meditation is to find a peaceful, relaxed, open, unforceful way to investigate, a way to discover what’s happening here. What is this sense of self? What attitude comes along with it? What mood comes along with it? What beliefs come along with it?
This is a huge topic, and a lot has been said now in these few minutes. It’s best to take it slow. Maybe there are a few pointers I’ve given today that might be particularly interesting for you. In the next 24 hours, maybe make sure you have some time to explore and reflect on this, to feel your way into it. Maybe it’s just taking a two or three-minute break from work or your activities. Or maybe if you’re driving around to go shopping, before you start your engine or before you get out of the car, you sit quietly and just question: What is this? What’s happening now? How is it now? One of the fascinating things of doing this over a day is you start getting a sense of the shifts and changes that maybe normally go unnoticed and that are deep inside this sense of self that many of us have.
So, maybe talk with friends about this. Maybe with Dharma friends, you can have conversations about what we’ve been talking about today to kind of make it come alive and feel a deeper connection to it. This will provide a very useful foundation for understanding the Buddhist insight into not-self.
So thank you very much.