This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation:Vacation from Self; Insight (37) Benefiting from What is Not 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.
Warm greetings from Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City. I’m delighted to be sitting here to offer this period of meditation.
As an introduction to the meditation, from time to time, people benefit enormously from resting. Taking time out to sleep, and if fortunate enough to sleep well, wake up rested and clear and ready for activity. If we’re fortunate enough, we can take a vacation or we can take a Sabbath. We can take some really time off, a holiday, and step away from our normal activities, normal preoccupations and concerns. Maybe even forget a lot of the everyday concerns and preoccupations, responsibilities, not to abandon them but to come back refreshed, to come back somehow settled, come back ready to engage in a nice way.
In the evening, there often comes a time where I’m not that sleepy, but I’m not really interested or quite capable of doing certain kinds of work. And so I take a break and do something simple and get ready for bed, and then in the morning at some point, I’m ready.
This idea of vacation, meditation works this way as well. To understand it that way may help us be more willing to put aside our preoccupations and our concerns without thinking we’re abandoning them or being irresponsible. It gives ourselves the opportunity to put aside the things that we’re ruminating about, churning about, the things that we’re obsessing about; to put aside the ordinary ways in which the mind is spinning and preoccupied, and maybe even put aside the concerns with certain emotions and plans, and even some of the major things that might be happening in our life at that moment around us. But just like we’d put it all aside in order to go to sleep, so in meditation, it can be helpful in an appropriate way to say, “Okay, this is a different time.”
One of the remarkable vacations we can take in meditation, remarkable ways of settling, getting peaceful, getting unified, being collected here in a peaceful, quiet way, becoming calm and centered just here in the meditation, just here and now, just this, is to have a vacation from all the ways in which we’re “selfing.” All the activities of self-preoccupation, self-definition, self-criticism, self-aggrandizement, self-embarrassment, and shame. All the ways in which we’re telling stories where we’re the main character. All the ways in which we’re living in the future with anxiety of what it’s going to mean for me, or what I have to do, and what people will think about me. All the preoccupation with the past, unresolved issues that again, we were the major character for.
Not that all these things are wrong to do. Some of them might be appropriate at times, but we’re allowed to take a radical and full vacation from it all and to no longer be self-preoccupied, self-concerned, and have an experience of living where the ordinary self, the ordinary selfing or self-concern falls away. And to rest there, to be refreshed there, to discover safety there. Many of the self-concerns we have involve danger and fear, anxiety. But to find that in this kind of vacation time, this pause, this sacred Sabbath from selfing, self-concern, self-preoccupation, it’s actually a safe place. We become safe for ourselves. We become safe from our churning and rumination and criticism and conceit. And so to appreciate the simplicity, the openness, the clarity that replaces selfing, self-preoccupation.
So I’d like to offer you one place to find where there is no self, where our gaze, our awareness, our presence can somehow be attuned, somehow recognized in this quadrant of our experience. We can be there’s awareness, there is attention, but we’re resting, we’re delighting, we’re freeing through gazing upon what is not self. This is not a philosophical “no self” or “not self,” but rather a practical thing in our own experience.
The primary thing I’ll offer for now is the notion of space. If you look around the location you’re in, and don’t look at the objects, but look at the space—the space between the objects in the room you’re in and the location you’re at. In this space, there’s no or very little selfing. We tend not to own space, make it mine. We tend not to identify the space as me, the empty space. We don’t say that’s my true self. It’s just the space in the room, just the space between trees outside, the space of the sky above.
So we’ll go into this during meditation today.
To assume a meditation posture, and to feel that the position you’re in, the posture you assume, in some form or other is surrounded by space. Right beyond the edges of your clothes, there are places where rather than touching a couch or a bed or the floor, beyond the edges of it, there is space.
Your eyes closed. Take a few long, slow, gentle breaths, feeling the expansion of the torso, the rib cage into that space. And as you exhale, receding from the space in a sense, making more space around you. And as you exhale, relax the body. And as you relax, soften.
As you continue, let your breathing return to normal. For a few more breaths, softening the body. As you exhale, soften the thinking mind. Gently as you breathe in, feel any of the contraction, tightness, activation behind the activity of the mind, the thinking mind, the mind that drives attention and concerns. Maybe there’s a location for the contraction or the forcefulness of the thinking mind, the wanting mind, the selfing mind. And as you exhale, relax and soften.
And then settling into breathing. Settling into the body’s experience of breathing. Feeling the sensations that come to play as you breathe.
And then around the sensations of breathing, beyond the edges of those sensations, maybe beyond the edges of your body, with your eyes closed, sense the space. Sense any way in which there’s spaciousness, in which there are no sensations. Undefined openness, emptiness of phenomena, sensations.
And recognizing that all the space that’s here, all that exists between and beyond the sensations, has no self in it. There’s not a self to be found in space, in spaciousness.
And if we don’t try to be aware of the space, but more allow awareness of space, maybe awareness also can be present without any selfing. We can have a sense that awareness operates with no self needed, no self-concern.
And as we continue, let the rest of the meditation be a gazing upon that part of awareness and space, experience in which there is no selfing, nothing made of it for the self. Let’s have a vacation from selfing.
What is it like to not assert, find, create, assume a self in whatever direct experience you’re having? Certainly, you’re welcome to do so. But what is it like to take a vacation from it? Leave everything alone. And in that leaving it alone, in the gap, in the space, in the openness that is left when we’re not making a self, doing a self, thinking about a self, to rest in the not doing there, to rest in that absence of selfing. And each experience can be itself without being recruited as part of the self project.
And then as we come to the end of the sitting, imagine sitting peacefully, safely on a park bench. And there are people happily walking by, chatting, children playing in the distance. And you can gaze upon these strangers without needing to be concerned about who you are in relationship to them, who you are at all. You can see the people around you without making any reference to yourself and whether they’ll like you or accept you. You can see them without pulling that sight, holding it into your self project. People are just people walking by, free of your projection of self, assumption of self, making of self. Free of your desires and aversions.
And how this might be seen as a gift, the gift of allowing each person to be free of our self-project, self-preoccupations. And may we grant this gift to others as part of our wish that they be happy and free.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free, including free from having to deal with my self project. May all beings be happy.
Thank you.
Hello and welcome to this continuing series on insight. This is the central part of insight meditation. For these last 12 or 13 days, the focus has been on insight into not-self. I underscore the word “not” because sometimes what’s taught is that the Buddha said there’s no self. He never said that. The only time he referred to this idea of “there is no self,” he did it to denounce it, to say that holding on to this idea just brings suffering. I haven’t really completely addressed this topic of how the Buddha presents not-self, but what I have been doing all this time is trying to point out how much selfing activity our minds are involved in, how much we impute, how much we build, make up, assert, overlay, and create ideas about self.
Conceit is one of the big ones. There’s nothing inherent in life that requires a human being who walks the planet to have conceit, but that can be quite strong and intense. It’s possible to not have that conceit; the conceit is an extra addition. A lot of this selfing is an activity of the mind around this notion of self—self-criticism, shame, embarrassment around me, myself, and mine. So, we look at all these different activities of selfing that we do and understand when we’re doing it unnecessarily, when we’re doing it in ways that cause us suffering and pain, and when we do it and cause other people suffering and pain. This is part of the function of insight meditation: seeing all the extra creativity in creating a self, building a self, making a self, defending a self, and how much of that is extra.
We begin finding an alternative to that. We begin finding that we can be more peaceful. We can be not so actively involved in creating a self, asserting a self, proving a self—all kinds of things we do. We can take a vacation from it. We can take a pause to make it a little bit sacred. We can call it a sacred Sabbath from the activity of selfing, the doing of self. As we do that, we don’t recognize “there is no self,” but we can recognize that in certain experiences, in certain ways of being, in certain forms of awareness, in certain things we’re aware of, there’s no self.
In this wonderful bell we have here at IMC, as the main teacher, I can almost feel like this is mine and it’s important that I have it. Probably when I retire, if I ever retire, the person who gave it to me kind of gave it to me, so it’s mine and I will take it. It’s a really important part of my identity, and of course, I have to have it. There’s so much “I” and “me” and “mine” in that. To be mindful and really quiet and attentive, you can feel how tiring that is. Maybe some of you get a sense of that because maybe it’s just tiring hearing me being so silly and saying this over and over—me, mine, myself—around this bell. Just hearing it is kind of jarring sometimes.
So, to put that down and just have the bell be a bell. There’s no Gil in the bell. There’s no self in the bell. It’s just a bell. And to take a vacation from being preoccupied by this bell… I find if I do that, rather than thinking about it all day and planning and wanting and fantasizing about what the bell will do for me, wow, it’s so nice not to have that preoccupation. It’s peaceful, and that peace is wonderful.
Now, I can start to want that peace. “The peace is me. That peace is mine. That peace proves that I’m a wonderful person. I’ve got to tell people about my peace. I have the peace of not selfing, and I want to show you how great I am because of that.” So immediately, we’re trying to recruit the peace into the selfing project.
It’s also possible to gaze upon the peace and see there’s no self in that peace. There’s no self to apply or impute. There’s no need to make a self or invent a self or make a decision whether there is or is not a self in that. We can gaze upon the peace with no self needed. A person might say, “There’s peace, but that’s not myself. It’s just peace.”
As we settle in deeper and deeper meditation—and this is one of the advantages of really becoming calm and settled—we take more and more of a vacation from selfing. We start seeing the subtle ways in which we are involved in “this is myself, this is mine, I am this,” and we don’t realize we don’t need to do that. At some point, it becomes really clear, in deep meditation and sometimes in daily life—if we go to the beach or have a wonderful nap, or maybe sometimes in lovemaking—it can happen for some people where there’s a feeling that self just disappears. Self activity disappears.
What some people will do is decide philosophically, “Wow, this is the true way of being, and really, truly there is no self,” because of this lack of all this activity. The Buddha doesn’t want to go that far to make that kind of philosophical conclusion. He always takes the simpler route: there’s peace in there. There’s the absence of selfing, and there is no self in the peace. There is no self in the spaciousness. We don’t see a self in awareness. But then to impute, “Well, that’s the true self,” then we’ve added something not needed. If we say, “It’s mine,” we’ve added something not needed. But to gaze upon different things and see no self in it, to not recruit it into the self project, gives us a vacation, gives us a pause, gives us an alternative.
Some people find it very disconcerting, disorienting, because the way some people make themselves safe in the world, know who they are, and relate to other people is completely connected to their self-concept, their self-identity that they’re constantly creating, constantly reinforcing, constantly using as a medium through which to make themselves safe and known in the world, to make themselves loved, to know that they’re loved in the world. So to have that fall away and not be seeing the world through the lens of me, myself, and mine can be quite frightening for some people.
But that’s the opportunity of meditation. Hopefully, where we meditate is safe. Where we meditate, it’s kind of nice and comfortable. And slowly over time, we start feeling more and more safe, comfortable, and at ease without imputing self, without playing the self game. And something deep begins to settle and relax. That deeper and deeper settling is partly a freeing from this selfing, self-preoccupation, self-creation. We might have experiences more and more where we feel, “in that experience, in this experience, there is no self.” Wow, what a vacation. How nice it is.
And then some people get attached to it. Some people want to make a great philosophical conclusion: “This is the true way of being. We’re supposed to be this way, and we’re not supposed to create any self or have any self operating. We’re supposed to just dwell in this space where this particular activity of selfing doesn’t occur.” I don’t think that’s the teachings of the Buddha. I don’t think that that’s wise. That’s just to get attached. That’s to select something out of the whole. We are full, complex human beings, and of course, we do some selfing. Of course, we have self-understanding. Of course, we understand who we are in relationship to other people, to our culture, to other cultures, to roles we have, to situations we have. Of course, we need to be concerned about all kinds of things: how we are, things we do, what we say, the impact they have, the impact it has on ourselves.
Some of the roles of self, some of the activity of self can occur quite innocently without a lot of suffering. We don’t have to stop selfing. But the deep vacation from selfing, the deep seeing and resting in an experience that feels like there’s no self there, gives us a much clearer window, a view of how we pick up self, how we are involved in this whole self thing that’s kind of needed to get around in our social life. And to do it lightly, to do it clearly, aware that we’re putting on a role, we’re interpreting ourselves in a particular way given a certain context. Who we are as a self and how we understand ourselves might be very different if we go into a preschool class to play with the kids than if we go to the mechanic to get our car fixed.
So the shifting, changing landscape of self, we’re more fluid, more at ease, more willing to shift and change and not hold on to things, appreciating how so much of it is just created. We can be part of that creation. We can be creative and even fun and playful in this notion of self and how we hold it, while being sincere and authentic enough, and free.
So to give yourself a vacation from selfing, not as an abandoning of anything, not as a betrayal of anything, but as a way to come and live in the world more fully refreshed, clear, with better understanding, in a better capacity to support and care for others.
So maybe if some of what I said today is relevant for you, if some of what I said today is understandable by you, you have a reference for this. See through the day today, for the next 24 hours when you’re awake, see if you can find opportunities to have a vacation from your self-concern, knowing that you can pick it up when it’s really necessary. See how deeply the mind and the heart can rest, can be refreshed, can be freed when it’s not always under the shadow or in the grip of selfing.
So I hope you can enjoy that which has no self in it for these next 24 hours. Thank you.