This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Content to Practice with What Is; Insight (39) The Samadhi of 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.
Hello and welcome to our morning meditation. I want to start by saying that one of the ways of appreciating Buddhist teaching is that they are oriented around the idea that the teachings and the practices we do should be appropriate for the state of mind we’re in. Our state of mind, our inner life, changes over time, and that the change is not random. There are a lot of conditions that affect it, and one of them is the practice itself. Classically, the practice is understood to be a journey; there’s a path model. And so as we practice on the path, on different parts of the path, different practices are appropriate. Different approaches, different ways of being, and also different understandings come along.
So when we have Buddhist teachings, sometimes they’re pointing or being spoken from a particular state of mind or orientation, whereas the audience might not be there yet. And so there’s a little bit of a mismatch there. But one of the key aspects of the path that we are on and how we change over time is that wherever you are now is the right place for you. It’s the perfect place. Even though there is a path that goes from A to B, the fastest way to be is to be fully at A. And so that being fully where you’re at is supported by contentment.
Of course, there are things to be discontented about in life and about ourselves even. But when we sit down to meditate, it’s invaluable to find yourself content with where you are right now for the purposes of practice, and to put aside other purposes, other needs, other possibilities, other goals, and find a way to be simple, at ease, and content with the state of mind you have. Content that this is the state of mind to practice with. This is the condition to practice with. So to be content is considered to be one of the great and important stepping stones in practice, content to practice with how you are right now. Content to be fully here with how we are right now.
So, assume a meditation posture and feel that posture from the inside out, maybe making small adjustments to make it more comfortable and also so that there’s a little bit more vitality. The lived life of the body sometimes can get highlighted through a deliberate posture that helps you be more present. Our bodies can be difficult, with illnesses and injuries and aging and all kinds of things. And so it might be a tall order to be content with your body as it is, but it is possible for a few minutes to take it as a given how your body is and be content not with the body, but be content that this is the temple. Your body is the meditation hall, and this is the one you have.
Gently closing your eyes in a way that is welcoming, receptive, appreciative. Take a few deeper, fuller breaths. Breathing in fully, content to be bringing oxygen into your body, then relaxing as you exhale, releasing.
Let the breathing return to normal. And as you breathe in, feel the tensions of your body. And as you breathe out, both relax the body but also see if there can be a contentment that this is what you’re practicing with now. Given everything, this is what you’re given. Content to practice with it.
Breathing in and feeling any tension, pressure in the mind. Exhaling, softening, relaxing the mind. Being content with being able to practice and not worrying about how successful you are. Just engaging in breathing, feeling, relaxing.
And then from your mind, maybe dropping your attention more deeply into your body, settling it like settling into a pool of water. Settling down to the grounding spot from which breathing begins and ends.
Being content to practice the way you are, to be fully at A. Not needing things to be different. At the same time, not neglecting, being mindful, aware of how things are. A contentment that’s conducive to an inner stillness, maybe an inner silence.
Centering yourself here in this body, breathing. Centering yourself in a particular form of contentment: the contentment of simply practicing with what is here and now. Finding an inner stillness and silence of here and now. It puts you into the present moment more and more fully until you find yourself in the river of now, the changing river of the present moment.
The more we’re in the present, the more things are shifting and changing, shifting and changing around the inner stillness.
The closer you can be to the present moment with a stillness and silence of quiet awareness, the more the shifting, changing sensations, feelings, thoughts, as they shift and change and oscillate in the present moment, the more easy it might be to avoid saying that they are yourself, they are yours. That you can find the self there within the changing, shifting sensations and experiences. No self found. Just shifting, changing phenomena here and now, and resting with that.
Content. Can you find a way to be content to be practicing with whatever is given to you here and now? So you’re fully in the present with how it’s unfolding in the present. And so you can see how you get involved in thoughts and ideas of me, myself, and mine that pull you out of the present moment, take you away from being in the flow of the present, the shifting, changing nature of now, here.
And as we come to the end of this sitting, perhaps appreciating or understanding how much preoccupation with self takes us out of the present, takes us out of being centered in a deep, embodied way with here and now. Concerns with me, myself, and mine can create a veil of “selfing” between us and our direct experience.
And perhaps to imagine or see or know what a relief it can be to simply be present, content, at ease with what is, without the ruminations and preoccupations of me, myself, and mine. You might find yourself even more fully alive, more fully content and happy just to be here.
And without that veil, without that preoccupation, maybe we can offer a better presence, better listening, better caring for the people we’re with.
May it be that this practice of ours, may it be that our insight into not-self helps us to be more present, caring, and friendly to all that we encounter.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may the lessening of our self-preoccupation support us to help this world.
Thank you.
So hello from IMC. Continuing this ongoing series on insight. I can easily imagine that if someone joins this talk today, they don’t have the benefit of all the talks that preceded this that laid out a kind of a gradual path of practice, a gradual deepening of practice, first with samadhi1 and then with insight. With samadhi, there are various stages of deepening that we can fall into occasionally. Most of the time we’re not there; we’re dealing with an everyday mind. But there are times when things become calm and settled enough that we can get absorbed in a deep way with here and now. And deep states of absorption, joy, happiness, and peace can arise.
The same thing with insight practice. There are stages of insight just like there are stages of samadhi. Mostly we’re in more ordinary states of mind with insight, but from time to time we also have the benefit of samadhi, the benefit of being deeply settled, deeply at peace, deeply present here and now with a qualitatively different state of mind than the ordinary everyday mind. The teachings that are relevant, the perceptions, the experiences in deeper states of mind are not the same that are appropriate for everyday states of mind. And there’s a way in which that’s not always made clear when Buddhist teachings are presented.
It’s so easy to make declarative statements about something, maybe from the deepest kind of perspective we can have, and say, “This is how it is.” Whereas it’s more useful to say that in particular states of mind, this is how things are. And we learn to shift and change our understanding of what’s appropriate depending on where we’re at. So Buddhist teachings have a little bit more to do not with making universal claims about reality, declarative statements that “this is how things are,” but rather to appreciate how deeply how we perceive the world shifts and changes based on our state of mind. Our understanding of how to navigate and what’s useful depends on our state of mind, our state of calm, and what’s happening with us in our response to that.
Buddhism practices are always in response to what’s happening. There’s a very deep way that how we perceive the world, how we perceive ourselves, shifts and changes based on our state of mind. Some of you probably have the experience of being in a particular mood and how that colors how you understand yourself. And if you have a nice meditation, a nice walk in the park, a nice time with your friend, and your mood shifts, how you understand yourself, how you relate to yourself, changes as well.
So when you hear Buddhist teachings and they don’t make sense to you, it might be for a good reason: they’re not meant for the particular state of mind that you have at that point. One of the ways you can hear Buddhist teachings is to imagine what state of mind these teachings are useful for. And maybe if I have that state of mind, then I’ll remember that and these will be useful. Maybe they’re not so useful right now, but I’ll kind of store them away for the future.
This is all by way of introducing today that we’ve been doing all this time with samadhi and with insight. So imagine yourself deeply settled, deeply at peace. Imagine yourself that you have no concerns about anything. All your concerns are put aside for now. You’re on vacation, you have a day off, you’re at the park. You’ve had a nice meal, a nice nap, nice times with people. And you feel now quite content and happy, peaceful, and you sit down to meditate. And it’s just so good to feel that peace and that centeredness, and the concerns about work and family are just not present at all. You find yourself kind of sliding down to become more and more calm and peaceful, sliding down into a place where the thinking mind thinks less and less and less.
You find that your world both opens up, in the sense of the mind becomes more peaceful and expansive, but also becomes simpler and simpler, just here. Maybe just here with the body breathing, and being with a breathing body like a jellyfish in the ocean expanding and contracting. Maybe like the waves of the ocean rising and falling, swells as they move across the ocean. Gently the breathing rises and falls, and you watch it like you would watch the waves on the beach. You’re just there. Nothing else needs to happen.
As you do this, you see that you leave that world of the present moment, the shifting, changing breath, if you get involved in thoughts and concerns where you’re the primary character—what people said to you, what they did to you, what you should do, what’s going to happen. And you can watch, “Wow, I’m going to lose this peace if I pick up that concern, and I don’t need to right now. I’ll get to that later. No, thank you.”
And then you start also seeing that not only do you lose the present, but picking up this idea of “me, myself, and mine” actually has stress in it. There’s a discomfort in it, and you’re so peaceful and calm. Why pick up that discomfort? And so you see from this vantage point of deep peace how often we attribute “me, myself, and mine” unnecessarily into the equation, into the situation. You start seeing that every inhale, there’s no need to make that self, to attribute self to it. That’s an extra layer of thinking, of cognition. If you want, of course, it’s you. Of course, it’s part of who you are. But there’s no reason to get involved in it. In the direct experience of breathing in, you see there’s no self to be made out of that. There’s no need to attribute self. That’s not-self because it’s just nature. It’s nature breathing in. Nature has made breathing creatures, mammals, for a long, long time. And now it’s your turn to have this mammalian instinct to inhale and exhale. There’s no need to say this is me. It’s just nature operating. No self needed.
As we get deeper and deeper into it, it becomes clear that anything that’s particular, anything that’s not a generalization—any particular sensation, any particular movement of the body, any particular thought, sound, any sense that comes in—that we become aware of that’s particular, not a generalization, not a broad category, not connected to a story, just in and of itself, the details, the particularities of the moment-to-moment experience that is shifting and changing, there’s no need to pick it up as self. No need to measure it against ourselves. No need to create a self from it.
And in this deep state of peace, this deep state of samadhi, we see that every particular thing is not-self. That’s not really who I am. That’s not really my true self. We learn to leave every particular thing alone. At some point, this deep insight into not-self occurs when we turn the attention around 180 degrees. And we see that even the practitioner, the knowing that knows, the knower that knows not-self, the awareness that is aware of the present moment, the thoughts that are thinking about the present moment—that too is not-self. It’s just phenomena rolling through. It’s just a thought. It’s just perception. It’s very, very simple.
A phenomenal thing can happen when we are dwelling in this very deep state of peace. We have no inclination to make a metaphysical view of it, no inclination to make a story and come back carrying the banner of “there’s no self.” That’s an extra layer. That’s suffering to do that. We are just content to allow these things to unfold. And we see that 180 degrees around us, in us, and in fact, the very locus of self, the place where we think the self is, is also not-self. The feeling of self, the feeling of emptiness, we see that’s just a feeling. That’s just a moment, and that’s not-self. And to see all this with a deep equanimity.
So that locus of self, that little kernel of self, that little contraction, that little coagulation of self has a chance to rest, has a chance to not always be doing its work of holding on, and it lets go. And a phenomenal peace is discovered when the clinging of self is not there.
When the Buddha describes this, he doesn’t describe it from the point of view of a person. He says, “Now the mind, the heart, is liberated through non-clinging.” And he doesn’t say this, but I’ll add: with no self needed at that moment, in this state, in that experience of freedom. It’s state-specific. You don’t have to then say, “Oh, now I know there’s no self.” That’s extra. What we know is that from time to time, and maybe more and more, we have the orientation to say, “This is not-self.” This thought is not-self, this feeling is not-self, this sound is not-self. You don’t have to do this. You don’t have to live this way. You don’t have to make a philosophy out of it. But as we practice, the practice itself brings us to these stages, these states where that’s what we see. That’s the insight we have. That’s what’s revealed. And it shows us how to be at ease and how to be at peace.
It also, over time, shows how much we shift and change our states of mind. And one of the great insights is to appreciate and see that the ordinary state of mind that we normally have is just a state of mind. It gives a particular perspective on life and ourselves that’s contingent, that’s shifting and changing, that’s not absolute. Even the ordinary state of mind is impermanent, changing there because of conditions. And maybe we don’t have to lock on to it as “this is who I really am.” We can find freedom instead.
So, I hope this makes sense. We have one more talk tomorrow on this insight into not-self. I’ll be in a different place tomorrow; I’ll be up in the Sierras, broadcasting from my friend’s meditation center, the Mountain Stream Meditation Center. So I look forward to broadcasting from up there. Thank you.
Samadhi: A Pali word referring to a state of meditative concentration or absorption. ↩