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Guided Meditation: Awareness Including Everything; Eightfold Path (9 of 10) Holistic Samadhi

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 23, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Awareness Including Everything (link)

Hello and greetings. For this meditation today, I'd like to suggest that in our life, the context in which we're in makes a big difference in how much of ourselves we can accept, include, or hold peacefully. If we're in certain social situations, we might feel that we can't quite be ourselves. Maybe you feel like singing, but you're at a funeral. It just doesn't seem right to sing the song that you had in mind, especially when you're just a guest in the back row.

Or it might be that the clothes you wear might be dirty. Maybe you've been working in the garden and have muddy and dirty t-shirts and pants, and it just doesn't seem right to go to that very formal state dinner that you were invited to. It just seems like that's not going to be okay. So there are all kinds of ways in which context affects how we feel about ourselves.

But we can go into some contexts where how we are is accepted. Some of the advantages of feeling at home is that at home, some people can feel like they can just be themselves no matter what. They can just wear the clothes they wear, speak out loud, sing out loud if they want, do whatever they want. It's okay there.

If we go out into the natural world, where we're maybe safely, happily alone in a wide, expansive natural setting, it might feel like it's all wonderful because all of who you are can be included. There might even be parts of yourself that you're not particularly proud of, but it's almost like it's okay out there. Everything. There's space, there's room for everything. It's as if the natural world—the sky, the ground, the trees—accepts us as we are. And it feels like we can kind of be at ease, deep, deep ease with how we are.

So meditation can be a context that's a little bit like being in the natural world, where we expand the awareness in a sense so everything can be included. Not included by acting on it or speaking on it, but the kind of inclusion where even if we don't approve of it, if we feel like we have some shortcomings, it's okay. In this context, in this setting, it's okay. We can include it all by making our awareness bigger, wider, more open, more inclusive. An awareness that says, "This too can be here." The confidence of saying "this too can be here" has made a large room, a space for many things to coexist. If we have some shortcomings, it's not the whole world. It's just part of this wholeness, the fullness of who we are.

So Samadhi¹, one way of understanding Samadhi is that it's a unification, a gathering together of all we are, so all of it can be there together peacefully. We don't pick anything up necessarily, or act on anything, or believe anything, but everything can be there in the scope of awareness. There's no resistance or pushing anything away. And there's a groundedness. There's a center, a focal point.

It's like walking on a trail in the wilderness. The natural world there just holds us and accepts all of who we are, it feels like. But we're clearly, solidly putting our feet on the ground, touching it, being here, being on this spot. And there's this particularity of the walking which keeps us here, grounded, and the wide open space that includes all of who we are.

So the footsteps in meditation can be the breathing. Stay with the breath one step at a time. And whatever else is happening, don't be involved in it. Don't be reactive to it. Just kind of have the attitude, "This too is included in the wide space of awareness." Let it be in the periphery. Let it recede from the center, with the center being the breathing. Breathing in and breathing out, all things included.

So, assuming a centering posture, a posture that centers you here and now in this place and time, feeling the weight of your body against whatever surface it rests on. And from that surface, like it's arising out of it, take some deeper breaths and relax back into the pull of gravity, the contact of your weight against that surface on the exhale.

Letting your breathing return to normal and taking some time to soften, relax your body.

And then relaxing the thinking mind, soften it, as if you make wide space all around the thinking mind into which it can dissolve. Rest.

And taking a few breaths to have a global awareness of yourself. Almost like you have a wide, expansive view of all the space around you, and allowing all the space of awareness to hold all of who you are. No part left out. Whatever is happening has its place.

Whatever is happening for you and whatever is most concerning, it has a place within the whole.

And then lowering your attention into the torso to feel the alternation of breathing in and breathing out.

Perhaps finding a place in your body where the beginning of the inhale is the grounding place. The place where your feet touch the ground.

And as you exhale, relaxing and returning to this grounding spot, centering spot.

Centered on breathing. The gentle, calm peripheral awareness is where everything else is included. Everything can be there in the periphery. All of yourself can be here. But the central focus is on breathing as if it's in the middle of all things.

As if the breathing is the center bottom of a bowl, and the edges of the bowl hold all things. But invite all things to settle, roll down towards the center to become quiet, calm at the center. A gathering here.

If anything takes you away from breathing, like thinking might, recognize it. Allow it to be included, but let it be on the periphery. And let the precious food of awareness flow into breathing. Let breathing be the center of all things.

As you exhale, calm and quiet your thinking mind. Instead of having awareness filled with thoughts, allow the quieting of thinking to create more open space of awareness that can hold all things. Nothing needs to be excluded. Everything can be included in the wide open mind, in the wide open heart of awareness centered here, now, in the body breathing.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, to imagine your awareness, your eyesight can spread out across a land like you're standing on a hilltop and can see far away. You can see a wide area where people live and move around and engage in their daily life, where everyone is part of this wide natural world. And in the safety of the hilltop, no one needs to be left out. No one needs to be excluded from awareness, even from the heart.

And in the safety and the stability of that hilltop by yourself, it might feel easy to gaze upon the world with goodwill, with kindness, with care. And you might consider how if all the people in the county, the province, the state, the country you're in, if they could somehow for one day be happy, one day feel at ease and safe and peaceful, what a phenomenally different world we would live in.

And while that might not happen today, it's phenomenally valuable and special that you might gaze upon the world with that kind of goodwill. Someone should do that. Someone should wish that for everyone.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free of suffering.

And may whatever degree you can wish this on the world, may it spread through the world like the wonderful, sweet scent of some wonderful flower. May your goodwill spread through the world and make a difference.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Eightfold path (9 of 10) Holistic Samadhi (link)

Hello and welcome to this ninth talk on the noble eight-fold path. Now we're talking about the eighth factor, and tomorrow will be the conclusion. The eighth step, the eighth factor of the eight-fold path, is usually called right Samadhi. For this series, I'm calling it holistic Samadhi, holistic concentration, a holistic gathering of all oneself together. No part left out.

It's a little bit of a paradox, this thing, because what divides up our world, what separates us from ourselves, is generally a preoccupation with something. Preoccupation with thoughts, ideas, preoccupation with feelings, emotions, often together with their preoccupation with stories and ideas of what all this means. And it would seem that what we're trying to do is not have those so that we can have something else: the inclusive awareness.

In a sense that's true. But that which breaks the whole, that which separates the whole, yes, we're trying to overcome the way that it does that. But it doesn't necessarily have to be by getting rid of it, but rather to no longer be feeding it, no longer be centrally focused on it, but to learn how to soften and relax tension, clinging, preoccupation, and open up and make space, lots of space, so that whatever is dividing us, is limiting us, no longer does. So, it can still be there, but it's no longer a limiting factor. It's no longer a preoccupation. It's just one piece of the whole.

To do this involves a lot of relaxation. Traditionally, it's considered Samadhi. One of my first instructions I ever got on Samadhi when I went to Thailand to practice was I was told that Samadhi is all about letting go. Over the years, I've come to appreciate that that's certainly an important part of it. But if I was going to make a broad, wide, general statement like that, I would say Samadhi is all about relaxing. Or to put those two together, Samadhi is about letting go of tension, all tension that we have. To soften tension is what breaks up the whole. Release of tension begins to open us up. We don't have to let go of all the tension, but we have to kind of let go enough so that awareness can hold everything in a calm way, in an open way, so that we can be aware of it. We can know it calmly.

We don't want to know anger in an angry way. We don't want to know fear in a frightened way. But we want to know anger calmly, openly. It's okay to be angry. I'm just going to feel it. It's not okay to speak the anger, act the anger, especially when you're meditating. But it's okay to have it, just open to it. So you know it calmly. So you know fear, but you're not condemning the fear or trying to get rid of it, but you know it calmly. You know it kindly. That too has a place. Keep opening.

Samadhi is both this opening up, but the opening up is not so intentional or deliberate. It's what happens traditionally as we find some place to really settle, to really be the home base of our attention, like the breathing for example. Some people like doing loving-kindness meditation as their home base; that's how they get into Samadhi, into concentrated states. There are various kinds of focal points that become the home base. Plenty of people try to concentrate by excluding everything else and just kind of bearing down on an object.

But the most healthy form of Samadhi is resting and settling and abiding in the home object, the breathing for example, so that less and less of the energy of the mind goes to preoccupations, goes into thinking, goes into being tense. The tensions of our system begin to just let go. And so it's not so much a deliberate letting go as it is a byproduct of trusting, staying continuous on something very simple and healthy and good to be with, something like the breathing. The breathing can seem boring. But as the focus on the breathing does its work, we begin letting go and softening, relaxing the tension. We realize that boredom itself is a form of tension, and that falls away and we're not bored. The simplicity of it all can seem more and more luminous. It becomes more and more joyful, happy to be here.

So it's with Samadhi that my interest in translating sammā as whole, as complete, as holistic, really comes into play. The function of Samadhi is to gather everything together, so everything is oriented, everything is in the same direction. Everything is participating in the process of being alive now, in this meditation, in this being present in whatever we're doing in the moment. All of ourselves is included.

If we're cooking, we're really there to cook. All of us is there. We don't have a book on the counter and we're reading the book at the same time as we're cooking or watching something on a screen and trying to cook. If what you want to do is build up this capacity for all-inclusive awareness, don't multitask. That's a different kind of all-inclusion. Just kind of do one thing, and from that one thing let there grow a real calm, steady, Samadhi presence that holds all things.

In this way, it becomes kind of a culmination of all the previous seven factors of the eight-fold path. All of them are part of this holistic whole. The more that the Samadhi is there, the more the others come into their wholeness. The more the others come into wholeness, the Samadhi comes into wholeness. They're all one part and parcel of the same thing: of kind of opening to the whole of who we are and finding a home there, finding ease and peace and well-being there. And for that wholeness, that peace, that calmness, to really allow that, to be interested in how that can create a radical transformation within us.

So that the dharma practice is not about transcendence. It's not about some experience that really takes you far away from this world and has nothing to do with it, but rather it brings you into kind of a settled, harmonious, attuned sense of being fully here now. And then at some point there might be a deep letting go. When all the pieces come into harmony, something can release in a very full and complete way, where there becomes a radical absence of clinging of all types.

And then with the less clinging there is, the more there's space, the more there's the appreciation that there's a way of living in this world that doesn't have to cling, a way of living in this world that can hold all things in an open, good heart. And so I appreciate that one way the eight-fold path is emphasized in the teachings of the Buddha is not as a means to awakening, but rather as a manifestation of our awakening. It's the result of it. And it's a radical transformation. So this is how we live our lives.

And Samadhi is an integral part of this. Because we're no longer going to live where we're having tension or fear or greed or hatred divide us from ourselves, separate ourselves from the whole. And so to live in the world with a wide open kind of peace, calm, goodness, love that Samadhi can give birth to is one of the great things that will live in this world. It's kind of creating a certain kind of paradise here and now, even in the midst of the hell that we live in as well. And both of those are included, not one or the other, but a loving meeting of the two in order to melt away all the ways that human beings harm each other.

May it be that this eightfold path is a radical, fulfilling means to end the harm that one human being can do to another. Let's be transformed to live a non-harming life, which is at the center of the eight-fold path, and Samadhi is an important part of this.

So you might today, before we come to the end of the series tomorrow, practice Samadhi through the day. Simple Samadhi, ordinary Samadhi of when you do something, kind of just do the one thing. But don't do it so tightly that you resent being interrupted. As one person defined enlightenment, "When you're enlightened, you're interruptible." So then you're fully with the next thing that's interrupting you, if necessary. But practice a Samadhi of just doing one thing, seeing one thing all the way through, and see how that changes the quality of your day.

So thank you, and I look forward to our last talk on the eightfold path.