This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: The Goal in the Means; New Vision (5) Being Freedom. 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, welcome.
One of the principles of Buddhist meditation, early Buddhist meditation as I understand it, is that it’s possible to have the goal of practice be found in the means, the way we practice to the goal. The goal and the means are not radically separate. If the goal is to be free of all clinging, then the way to attain that goal is to begin not clinging. To engage in meditation, to engage in ethics, to engage in all the parts of Buddhist practice—concentration practice, mindfulness practice, loving-kindness practice, compassion—to have them all have a quality of non-clinging, non-attachment, non-assertiveness, non-strain right in them. It doesn’t have to be dramatic, but to remember, “Oh yes, how I practice, how I walk this path needs to contain part of the goal.”
As practice matures, that connection becomes more and more obvious. The vision of how we can practice without strain, without attachment, without selfishness, without self-preoccupation becomes clearer and clearer. It isn’t that we can then do it 100%, but we can do it to a greater percentage of the time and to a greater degree.
As we grow in non-clinging and non-attachment, that doesn’t leave us as a blank. It doesn’t diminish us as human beings. What diminishes us is the clinging, is the attachment. As clinging dissolves and lessens, it makes room inside for profound, natural human capacities that thrive in the open, aware light, in the sunlight of awareness—the sunlight that’s unobstructed. The awareness that allows something from deep inside to arise.
There are two things that I want to highlight. They don’t have to be separate from them; they’re not necessarily two different things, maybe two ways of saying the same thing or two sides of the hand. One is that there’s a natural inclination to be ethical because we see and feel that to be unethical involves some clinging. There’s a deeper and deeper sensitivity to the undesirable impact of clinging. The other is that it awakens a very deep, innate, natural mammalian capacity for care, compassion, and kindness.
So non-clinging is found even in a beginner’s practice. For someone brand new to the practice, some modicum, some reference point of not clinging, not getting attached, makes room for a deep sensitivity to care, to being ethical. And these all are self-reinforcing; they build on each other.
To assume a meditation posture, and right there in the posture, the relaxing in the posture is itself an expression of starting to let go of clinging. It’s hard to be tense without some grasping, tightening, holding on to something.
Gently closing the eyes and appreciating that this body that we have, with all its challenges, is a profound instrument, a musical instrument, a tool, a profound home for some of the deepest capacities of freedom. Knowing both clinging and letting go, it is the home for a deep capacity to care, to love, that has more room to grow.
Taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. Letting go, relaxing as you exhale. Appreciate being present in an embodied way. As you breathe in deeply, just enough that it remains comfortable, relaxing as you exhale. And letting your breathing return to normal.
On the inhale, feel, sense, recognize any tension, pressure, or agitation associated with a thinking mind. Feeling the thinking mind and relaxing on the exhale, letting go. Letting the thinking mind become quieter, calmer, so there is more room and space and awareness to feel the global body.
Then lowering your attention into your torso. Lowering your attention so it’s centered on wherever it’s most comfortable to rest the attention in the torso and to attend to breathing. Remembering to let the experience of breathing remind you, every breath, every inhale and exhale, to keep the awareness, the attention, awake, open to this present moment with as little clinging and attachment as is easy to do.
Spreading your awareness through the whole body in a relaxed, open way to allow the sensations of the body to show themselves throughout the body, each in its own time, each within the container of your posture, the shape of your body. Allowing awareness, allowing sensations to be received. Take in the experience of your body without clinging preferences, without resistance, avoidance. For another minute or so, just allow the calm, the subtleness, the connectedness you might have after meditating for a while. Allow yourself to feel fully what’s available now with a non-clinging, receptive awareness.
And then as we come to the end of the sitting, to feel, reflect, consider how a state of non-clinging, non-resisting awareness that’s available to be present for the world, for others. How can non-clinging guide you in how you relate to others? How is non-clinging a protection for you? How is your non-clinging a protection for others?
May it be that the intimate connection between staying aware, being aware, resting in awareness, and not clinging be a means by which we can live in this world with kindness and care, sensitivity, and goodwill. May it be that spreading from each of us is some greater capacity to care for the welfare and happiness of others while caring for our own.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
Thank you.
So, welcome to this last talk in the series on new vision. This is the culmination of the whole series of talks I’ve given since the beginning of January, and now it’s almost the beginning of September. Starting with a long series on samadhi1, the cultivation of a stable, unified mind and body that creates a foundation for insight, for the ability to see clearly.
In Chinese Buddhism, the words samadhi and vipassana2, or samatha3 and vipassana, are translated with two very ordinary characters that, if we translated them most literally in their basic meaning, mean “stop and see.” So samadhi is the ability to somehow stop the busyness of the mind, the caught-up-ness of the mind, all the activity that we’re engaged in, so that we can see clearly. Or to put it in a different way, if we’re trying to see the moon holding a big telescope in our hands, only our hands, we probably can’t hold it still enough. But if we put it on a tripod, then we can see. So samadhi creates the stability, the tripod, the stopping, the quieting that actually allows us to see more deeply, more clearly the present moment experience. We can see without the filter of a busy mind, the filter of projections of our stories, projections of our commentary and opinions and preferences, the projection of the memories and associations that come along, and simply see the pristine simplicity of everything as it occurs in the present moment.
I think of this as deeply respectful, to really be present for things as they actually are as they’re occurring, instead of being present for things as we wish they would be, or things as they are frozen in time, like “this is how it’s always going to be.” Not allowing the changing nature, the growing nature, the unfolding nature of all of living life.
So then we start seeing more clearly, and we see what is harmful for us, what hurts us, what limits us, what stresses us. And we see that holding on to things lends a certain kind of permanence to them, holds them in a certain kind of locked view, and that is suffering, it’s painful, it’s exhausting—to hold the story, hold ourselves, hold the world in a locked view. It’s tiring. We can have views, but we don’t get locked in them.
To hold the view that there is a fixed suffering, to get caught and locked in suffering, or to be locked in the idea of things to be happy—there’s a way of being locked in the whole world of comfort and discomforts, suffering and happiness, joy and sorrow, that as long as we’re caught in it, then we suffer more.
And then we also start seeing clearly that many of the ways that we associate with ourselves—creating stories, identities, views about who we are, how we should be—a good percentage of them, certainly not all of them, can be seen as being constructed, made up. And more importantly, we see that even the ones that are actual, real identities that we have, how we relate to them often comes along with a lot of tension and suffering.
So with insight, we start seeing deeper and deeper the layers and ways in which we cling and get attached. And as things loosen up and we flow more in the river of change, as things loosen up and we’re not caught in the grip of reacting to pleasure and pain, as things get loosened up around this whole complex thing of being self-preoccupied, the insights into happiness, well-being, peace, and non-clinging grow.
At some point, this non-clinging becomes a really strong experience. Sometimes experienced as peace, sometimes as happiness, sometimes as relief. And it now provides a vision of what’s possible. It is possible to live without being attached. It is possible to live without being preoccupied, caught in the grip of self and self-criticism and self-doubt. It is possible to be present in a wonderful way without being pushed around by what’s pleasant and unpleasant and wanting things to be just right. And it is possible to have a feeling that we’re fluid, we can adjust fluidly to the world. We can change and morph in appropriate ways, that we don’t have to put up walls of resistance. We don’t have to show up to shape the world into how we think it should be. We have an amazing adaptability to what’s there.
So, we see a vision of a life that’s free of clinging, that’s more than just non-clinging. It allows for all of who we are, the fullness of who we are, that operates when there’s no clinging, that operates unimpeded when there’s no clinging to flow and grow within us. And some of that deeper beauty, deeper aspects of who we are, are beneficial. They’re considered wholesome in that they’re part of the whole of who we are. Attachment, clinging, story-making, making up ideas always limits the whole, always kind of pushes away or carves out something out of the whole. So we really limit ourselves. When we have a more unlimited sense of being present in our body in this deeper world, it’s not a blank slate.
People who mature in this practice are characterized as experiencing peace, as having happiness, as having care and kindness, compassion, are characterized as being ethical. In fact, maturing in this tradition is inseparable from maturing ethically. There’s a greater and greater capacity and interest in caring for ourselves, caring for others in such a way that we don’t cause harm, in such a way that we don’t harm ourselves or harm others. But not out of some duty, but rather because there’s a wonderful, profound vision and understanding and knowledge that that’s what our whole deep system, our heart most wants, what makes the heart sing. And that anything that limits that, anything that does cause harm, shuts down the singing heart, shuts down or limits our possibility of love, of peace, and of happiness.
And so, maturing in this practice allows for an amazingly wonderful inner maturation that provides a vision, a new vision, an understanding that then becomes the basis of how we live our life. An orientation around our life that becomes less something that we’re doing, less practicing, less following instructions, but more and more who we are. And one of the teachings of the Buddha is that with spiritual maturity, the eight-fold path are not things that we do, but ways that we are.
Flowing out of us, almost as if it’s our nature, almost as if this is how our system operates, we have right view. We have right intention. We have right speech, right action, a right lifestyle, way of living, livelihood. We have a right form of effort and how we apply any effort. And we have right mindfulness and right concentration. The word “right,” the Pali word sammā4, has different connotations than the English word “right.” It seems like the best word maybe in English given all the different choices, but it means something a little bit more like consummate, coming to completion. It becomes more like embodied view, embodied intention. All of ourselves, it flows from us. It’s who we are, not what we do.
So this is a grand vision, and the Buddha ended this vision of his, this path, this whole development to full maturation of our inner life with the instructions that now, go forth out into the world for the welfare and happiness of all.
So that’s quite a thing, and I hope we don’t have to wait until we mature fully in this practice to have that characterize who we are. That as we do this practice, and to whatever degree we cultivate samadhi, our practicing insight, and have a new vision, to whatever degree, even as a beginner, may it be that we learn that the means contains the goal when we don’t cling in the diligence by which we can center our life on this practice.
May all beings be free.
So thank you. I’ve appreciated the opportunity to give this very long series. I hope that it was meaningful for all of you who were able to follow. I’m going to be away for the next month from here. I’m going to be teaching a month-long retreat for the next four weeks at IRC, and I think I come back here at the end of September, maybe September 29th. In the meantime, next week Diana Clark will lead this YouTube sitting, and then the week after that, it’s Maria Stratman. Then there’ll be one week where we’ll do a rerun of one of these YouTube weeks, and then Maria Stratman will do it a second time, and then I’ll be back. So thank you, and I appreciate very much this chance to be in this YouTube community. The people who chat are a wonderful representation for me of the whole community who’s participating, and I look forward to continuing in four weeks or so. Thank you.
Samadhi: A Pali word for a state of meditative concentration or absorption, where the mind becomes unified and stable. ↩
Vipassana: A Pali word often translated as “insight” or “clear-seeing.” It refers to the practice of observing reality as it is, without attachment or aversion. ↩
Samatha: A Pali word meaning “tranquility” or “calm.” It refers to practices that develop a calm and concentrated mind, often as a foundation for insight. ↩
Sammā: A Pali word that is often translated as “right” in the context of the Eightfold Path (e.g., Sammā Diṭṭhi, Right View). It carries a connotation of being complete, perfect, or consummate. ↩