This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Just This; Insight (36) Not-Self as the Better Option. 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 our morning meditation. This meditation is a continuity of so much of what we’ve done so far this year, but it focuses on something very simple. Maybe it takes a lot of learning, a lot of practice, to be able to be radically simple with mindfulness practice. The radical simplicity, and understanding why it’s so valuable to have the wisdom to know that this is okay—not only is it okay, there’s tremendous benefit from this simplicity—is one of the great consequences of doing this practice and understanding Buddhist teachings.
The simplicity is represented today by the word “this.” This is what is happening. This is what the experience is of this moment. And “this” is always meant to be particular. It isn’t “this” as in, “this is the world spinning around, circulating the sun.” To know that is kind of abstract, and we do that from memory and from understanding and learning. But the “this” of the immediacy of direct experience, this.
Sometimes it’s nice to add the word “just” in front of it: “just this.” So, just breathing in, just the sensations of movement and stretching, expanding pressure that happens with the inhale. Just those sensations. Just the exhale, just the sensations of the exhale. The “just” means as a present moment experience. If I just allow the inhale, or any other experience, to be itself without any reference to the past, any reference to the future. Just this breathing in. No need to think about a past inhale that was so much better, and in comparison, this one is not so good. No need to think about, well, probably not the next inhale, but maybe in a few days I can get a good inhale again. There’s no need to bring in the past, bring in the future, in the practice of “just this.”
As I said earlier, this is actually a very wise, sophisticated thing to do, even though it seems radically simplistic. It seems like we’re putting aside all our wonderful sophistication, all our wonderful intelligence that can include past and future and analysis and judgments and opinions. Just this. If there’s an itch, just an itch. If there’s a sound, just hearing. If there’s an emotion, just happiness, just calm, just sadness, just grief, whatever it might be, is respected and allowed to be there. It is phenomenally generous to allow each thing to be and leave it alone without getting wrapped up or entangled in it with our more sophisticated mind that can place it in the context of past and future, desires for something else, aversions. Just simply, just this.
And then most radically, “just this” can be without any imposition, any addition of relating the experience to oneself, identifying with it, defining ourselves by it. Even something as simple as “my inhale” or “my pain.” It’s not anybody else’s, but “just this” without the overlay of this simple, sometimes very innocent concept: me, myself, and mine.
So, to assume a meditation posture, a posture of some deliberateness. A posture of deliberateness, so you can inhabit with your posture this moment, this place. A small ritual of assuming a meditation posture that reminds your whole body and mind to be just here, just with this, just now.
And that ritual of coming into just here, just now, can continue with taking some deep, full inhales and relaxing on the exhale.
And letting the breathing return to normal.
And here, just breathing in. Just this.
If you’re feeling tense in any way, let that just be. Just this tension. How simple can you be to know it, to feel it, and let it be as it is? Let things unfold as they do. Just this.
Without a future, without a past, without anything needing to be different. Because that need is an extra mental activity. Just this breath, just these sensations. Just this.
As we come to the end of this sitting, is there a way that now, after meditating, you can allow just this? Some way your body is calmer, more settled, to be here with just this. Is there some way that your mind is more calm, so it’s a bit easier to be just with this? And your heart, just this.
And if the mind wanders off into other things and other times, can that be just this? Just thinking.
May your ability to just be here with this, the simplicity of this, the absence of a lot of complications and interpretations and judgments—just this—may it allow us to see others simply, without our projections and assumptions and overlay of associations. Just this with some other person. So we can see others with goodwill, see others clearly, with a clear heart.
And may it be that this practice we do gives us the clarity and simplicity to meet the world with goodwill.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
Thank you.
Hello and welcome to this Monday morning talk where we continue with the theme of insight. Starting in this little bit fresh with a new week’s orientation towards insight, the topic is still not-self, a topic that’s very difficult for many people to appreciate and understand. What I’d like to do today is to emphasize that the teachings on not-self can point to staying close to a sense of well-being. This is not meant to diminish us, but rather to leave us in a good place.
Remember that these teachings about not-self are following a long series of teachings and practices of samadhi1, and now a series of teachings on insight. So this is not meant to be understood just walking off the street, going into a Buddhist center having never practiced before, and hearing a very rational—maybe not so rational—talk on not-self and trying to understand it from one’s ordinary state of mind. The orientation here for this talk is that it’s for people who have some experience of meditation, of a deeper inner life, where they have some qualitative experience of inner well-being. Where there’s a qualitatively good experience of peace, happiness, freedom, joy, calm, tranquility—something that feels really good, maybe not easily found.
In the context of that, then the not-self teachings point to: be careful. Watch how this whole world of me, myself, and mine, this whole contraction around defining ourselves, even identity sometimes, sense of ownership, sense of judgments and concerns about how we look and do people like us and are we adequate—this whole constellation of things clearly feels like a diminishment, clearly feels like a loss as we get involved in that world.
To give an example I’ve used before: say that you’ve come to IMC, to the meditation hall here, and you’re sitting with a group of people and the meditation is going really well for you. You can’t believe how peaceful you’ve become, how subtle and calm, and there’s a feeling of great well-being, happiness, and you’re just cruising along like this. And then you notice that you have to go to the bathroom. So, you matter-of-factly get up and you take your peace with you; it doesn’t go anywhere. You stay calm and present, staying close to it. You go to the bathroom, you come back, and you see that someone is now sitting in your seat, maybe on your cushion.
You can see that you become indignant. You can see that you become alarmed, that you’re about to get angry. But the anger, the alarm, the indignation is seen right away because of the sense of peace and the well-being you have. You notice that the surface of the water is getting all choppy in the mind and the heart. And you sit there and you look at it and you say, “Wait a minute. My assuming that’s my seat, and someone is sitting in my seat, taking it away from me… if I go down that route, I lose this wonderful state of peace I have. I don’t have to take that as mine. That seat is not mine.” I can feel that as I do that, that peace begins to go away. The happiness diminishes. Why get wrapped up in these thoughts of, “That’s my seat”? It’s not my seat. I’ll leave it alone. I’ll find another seat. Here, the example shows that we know something is good, and we know that as soon as we take it as “mine,” we get diminished.
It could also be that you had a nice day. You’ve been on a nice hike in the park, you got rest, you ate just the right amount of food. You just feel very fresh, refreshed, and nice, and it feels really good. You feel like there’s a spring in your walk and you’re feeling really nice. And a stranger walks by and says to you, “Your shoes are ugly.” Now, you can feel that you’re tottering between “who cares?” or “wait a minute.” Why do I want to go down and be angry? Why do I want to now criticize myself? Why do I want to now look at my shoes and feel like I’ve really failed as a human being to wear shoes like this because some stranger said that they’re lousy shoes?
Because of the feeling good, what is the priority? Do I want to sacrifice my feeling of goodness and freshness and happiness to pick up this whole question of, “Am I an inadequate human being because someone has an opinion about my shoes?” Should I run after the person and tell them that was mean, that was unnecessary? Or do I stay close to my peace? Do I need to sacrifice it around a self-idea that somehow I’m a very bad shoe-chooser? I don’t need to do that.
So, the deeper the meditation goes, the more of a reference point, more understanding we have of the downside of “this is mine, this is who I am, this is me.” There are lots of things in meditation it’s relatively easy not to assume are “me, this is mine, this is myself.” There might be a sound outside—hearing. We don’t own the sound. It’s not mine. We don’t define ourselves by the sound: “That’s my true self, that’s who I am.” It’s just a sound, and we leave it so simple. The extra layer of me, myself, and mine—we feel there’s a little bit of tension, a little bit of preoccupation. Something really good was lost in that. So the sound occurs, and we realize that’s not myself, that’s not self. Leaving it that way, seeing it that way, I stay closer to my peace. I’m better off this way.
There is an itch. That’s not myself. That’s not mine. That’s not me. I’m not the itch. It’s just an itch. Just this. The itch itself. Just this.
What about a thought? Just a thought. Maybe I don’t have to overlay me, myself, and mine. I don’t want to define myself by the thought. Many people are very closely identified with their thinking. It’s like the thinking is who they are. But it’s not necessary. And when the mind is really peaceful and quiet, it’s possible to see the thought arise. It’s possible to see we follow it, get involved, to judge it, to define ourselves by it. “That was really one of the best thoughts the world’s ever had. I better show it to people so they see how great I am.” You see, we get involved, and we have something better to do. We don’t want to sacrifice our well-being, our concentrated state.
From the vantage point of deep practice, we begin seeing more and more that the particularities of experience in the moment—what’s happening in this moment, in the lived experience—this is not self. And this is always particular. This sound, this itch, this thought, this emotion—this is not self, because we see that to assume that, to get involved with that, is not necessary. It’s a diminishment. It’s a narrowing. There’s something lost in that process. It’s almost like if I take that thought as me, in a way I become less of myself. I lose part of the wholeness of being here because I’ve now selected a piece of the whole to get caught in and preoccupied with. And so the suchness, the fullness, the wholeness here is lost.
In deeper meditation, we begin seeing that any attribution of self to any particular thing is unnecessary, adds a level of stress, adds a level of diminishment. Why bother?
Then you might come up with, “But there really must be a true self. There is a real self, after all.” All these protests around teachings of not-self… in that deep state of peace and calm, you don’t need to have philosophy. You don’t need to get into that. It’s completely unnecessary to get involved asserting, “Yes, but there is something.” Why diminish yourself again? Why lose yourself, in a sense, in these kinds of narrow preoccupations to prove that you are yourself? Just stay with the peace. Stay with the peace. The concerns about the philosophy of self can be for later. It takes a long time to get into quiet, deep meditation. Stay there.
So what I’m offering today is still not a clear definition of the Buddhist teachings of not-self, but we’re slowly getting there through the edges of it, by working our way in. What I’m offering today is that there’s a whole way of understanding how little self we need to assert into our psychophysical system in states of deep peace and happiness and well-being. Self is not needed. Selfing is not needed. Making things into “mine,” “who you are,” and “who we truly are”—the self is just extra on top. It’s not even cream on top of the cake; it’s putting, I don’t know, dirt on top of the cream.
So, not-self is so valuable at times when it’s clear that self is not needed.
I hope that made sense. And if it did, I’d encourage you to go through the day, the next 24 hours. Maybe you put an alarm on your smartphone or your watch or whatever you can. And maybe once an hour—maybe not on the hour, maybe sometimes off the hour, so it’s a little bit of a surprise. And when the alarm goes off, just check in. Are you involved in selfing? Are your thoughts about yourself? And might there be a better option nearby? Is there a little more peace, a little more happiness and well-being if you’re less involved, less caught in this whole selfing thing?
So thank you, and we’ll continue this tomorrow.
Samadhi: A Pali word for a state of meditative concentration or absorption. ↩