This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Re-Earth Through Walking - Gil Fronsdal. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Re-Earth Through Walking - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on August 11, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Re-Earth Through Walking

Good morning. Is the volume loud enough for you? I'll do one announcement, and in my mind, it's been interesting that what I'm going to announce also kind of sets up my talk as a contrast. This evening at 6 PM, I'm going to do an online Zoom teaching meeting for Spirit Rock. They asked me to do a kind of a book reading, I suppose. I have a new book that came out called Everything Is Practice, and it's a manual for sitting inside retreats, especially a manual for our retreat center in Santa Cruz. So I see it not so much as an opportunity to talk about the book but to talk about my enthusiasm for Insight Retreats, and even more so for the longer ones, the month-long ones. I think it's one of the great things that Spirit Rock offers is the month-long or the two-month-long retreat every year.

So that will be the topic. But in thinking about that and being happy to do this, there has been a bit of a problem with teachings like that that I do. And that is that people will assume that what the teachings are for a retreat are how we're supposed to practice in daily life. And one of those has to do with walking meditation. On retreat, walking meditation is very particular. Generally, there are many ways of doing it, but there's a kind of, sometimes we call a formal way of doing walking meditation. And so people get the idea that this is the way we practice walking in this tradition, just walk, you know, very slowly and back and forth. Another way is to see that retreat practice, meditating every day at home, whether it's formal sitting meditation or formal walking meditation, is a laboratory for walking in the world, both metaphorically and literally. It's about discovering that the temple is not at IMC or IRC or anywhere, but that we live in a temple. We live in a sacred world, and that we can walk in a way that gets us connected to that. But not, you know, slowly walking down the street, you know, lifting, moving, placing, looking at the sidewalk, and everyone has to deal with our slow walking and get out of the way. And this person doesn't seem to be noticing me. It's like we look like we're walking zombies.

But this practice we do is a kind of a preparation for living our whole life, and walking is a powerful way to practice in everyday life. But the way of discovering how to do that is different than the more detailed way we do it, maybe on retreat.

One of the very significant metaphors in Buddhism is the idea of the path. And with that metaphor, a path is a place we walk. So the metaphor of walking is very significant. One of the places where that appears in the tradition is with the Pali¹ word for walking, which literally is gacchāmi². But that's used to talk about what for many people is a very important expression of their Buddhism, which is called going for Refuge—going for refuge in the Buddha, Dharma, and the Sangha³. Going for support, going for inspiration, going for orienting our life around the values, the practices, and the teachings that Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha represent.

And the word for "going" is literally "walking." One walks with the three refuges, one walks in the three refuges, walks by the three refuges. The idea of "going to" The Refuge puts it out there somewhere, but we're walking in them, we're walking with them, we're walking by them. It puts us much more here. And so this idea of walking the path, and in Buddhism, the path doesn't exist in the external world per se. You don't go find the Buddhist path someplace. You don't come to IMC, please, to look for the Buddhist path. You come in, you open the door, you look in, "Where's that path?" It must be the blue tape on the carpet.

The path is something that we create with every step we take. It's our job to make the path in every breath we take and every step we take, literally. And so walking becomes a powerful both metaphor but also a reality for where we discover and how we find the Dharma, how we find our peace, how we find our freedom, our awakening. How we find a lived life that's valuable as we live it. It's not like we're looking for it in the future, that we're trying to get someplace.

Not a few meditators will engage in meditation with the idea that if they just meditate, you know, sit quietly and meditate every day, that somehow that's going to be the solution for their life. And they meditate, some people meditate very diligently, sincerely, thinking that's what's going to do it. And then they get up from their meditation and then they just run around like crazy, you know, just live life as usual without giving any more thought to it, expecting the meditation is sometime, somehow it's going to magically affect the rest of their life. You know, provide the key, if you just have the big bang theory of Buddhism. I'll sit there until I get that big bang of enlightenment and then everything will be happy ever after.

But rather, meditation teaches us a way of being that then we're responsible for living in our life. And it's not a matter of this magic thinking that somehow we're going to be just be calm forever if we do meditation. But it's rather, "Okay, now I've touched into something here in meditation, I've discovered something, and now how can I bring that into my life? How can I discover that, or be that, live that in my life? How can I discover the path, be the path, create the path with every step I make, every conversation I'm in, every activity that I'm doing?"

And to do that is to discover something very special: that the lived life as it's being lived is invaluable. The lived life as we're living it is a miracle. The lived life as we live it is a wonder. And there are a lot of thoughts, a lot of forces, a lot of emotions that tell us otherwise. And some of you are already going to debate me, you know, "This can't be so," and "You don't know about my life, you know, how difficult it is or something."

But again, one of the things we learn in seated meditation, for those who do it, and we could also learn in walking meditation, anytime you start doing mindfulness, we start discovering that how easy it is to live a disconnected life, how easy it is to live an ungrounded life. How easy it is to live a life that the body and mind are separated. How easy it is to live in our thoughts, to live in the future, to live in our imagination, to live in the past. How easy it is to kind of live through the filter of desires, how to live through the filter of our fears, through the filters of our aversions and resentments. And there's a kind of narrowing and a selectivity of our attention around particular themes, ideas, thoughts, fantasies, projections, imaginations, that we disconnect from ourselves. We live in that world rather than the lived world of the wholeness of who we are.

I would venture to say that probably more true what I'm going to say than not true, that the way that modern society is set up in the modern West, especially, is so many ways in which the whole activity of this life becomes more and more disconnected. So just the phenomena of devices, screens that we have. I mean, screens have opened up a fantastic world, and they're kind of a miracle, what these computers and the web can do for our lives, and they should be celebrated. And at the same time, they're almost deadly. Something gets shut down, something dies in people to spend so much time on the web and on the computer. And I see it in myself that I go and look at one thing, and then I go check something else out, and then I go check something else out. And pretty soon my mind is on its own drive, like, "Next, what's more there?" And I'm losing touch with myself. I'm in this head world of this, this, this, and my posture changes, and I'm not really connected to my posture anymore, and my feelings change. And I really don't feel what's going on. But if I bring my mindfulness, what's happening as I get pulled into the world of the screen, I feel how much I'm getting disconnected from myself and my body and my feelings, my emotions, the wholeness of the moment, and disconnected from the environment around me.

I venture to say that most people who spend a lot of time on screens do it indoors. And that's a very limited world. The time of the Buddha, they had indoors, but I think most people lived in one room indoors. They didn't have malls. I had a friend who used to live in Phoenix, and it was so hot there, her morning walk would be walking in the mile-long mall because that was air-conditioned. But you know, so along hallways, and there are people who can seldom go outdoors anymore because their work is just big building and just complex. And it's not necessarily wrong to live that way, but it's an easy way of being disconnected to the Earth, disconnected to the natural world—the sky, the air, the outside.

And that's not just a disconnection to those things, but it's a disconnection to how we can be attuned to that world, how we can be sensing it and feeling it. And as human beings, we've been designed to be attuned to the natural world—to the temperature and air and smells and tastes and the terrain—and to be reading and taking it all in. And not a few people find it so healing to go to a park and go for a walk, go outdoors. And something settles the preoccupations of the mind that we're caught in and spinning out in. It helps us feel regrounded. And the expression that I've come up with is we feel re-earthed. And many of us live de-earthed. We don't live connected to the ground and the Earth. Walking, if we can, especially if we can walk outside, gets us grounded. It can get us re-earthed. Even if we walk on pavement or concrete sidewalks, there's something about being outside, something of walking.

There's a way in which ordinary everyday walking in our lives can be a profound activity. And we can learn that again from meditation, because we can learn the opportunity in walking outside is, just like in seated meditation, to heal the divide between the body and the mind. To no longer live so much in the mind and thoughts that we're disconnected to the body. And it's almost like for many of us, the body and mind are in two different places at the same time. The mind is thinking about tomorrow or another place or other situation. The body is here. Now, occasionally we bring, we take the body to where the mind is, but the real task is to bring the mind into where the body is, which means here and now. To discover how to be here so that the mind and body are operating and working together. And that's such a phenomenal thing to have happen that we can call it a healing. We heal that split between the body and mind.

And that's hard to do because the thinking mind, the feeling mind, the mind that gets preoccupied and caught up has a lot of publicity that it sends out. A lot of advertisements, a lot of lawyers, a lot of politicians that are arguing how important it is to stay preoccupied and caught up in that world. And it can seem so important. The authority of that mental world that we get lost in can be huge, that we grant it. And the cost is we lose ourselves. We lose not just ourselves, but we lose sometimes a deep connection to this world that we live in.

So if we walk, walk down the street and we're starting to bring together the body and the mind, so that every step we take, we are making the path. Every step we make, we are discovering something that we can maybe deeply respect and value. Every step we take, we are waking up to this moment, in the fullness of the moment. And what the fullness means, means the whole show. It means includes how we're distracted, but not to just keep being distracted, but to wake up to all this whole picture. Here's a body walking, here's a body that doesn't feel seen and recognized, here's a mind that's caught up in thoughts. And we open, this is what's happening. Let's walk now with all this. Going for Refuge with the Buddha, Dharma, and the Sangha means going for Refuge with all of who we are in this moment.

And something can begin to settle, something can begin shifting when we're not caught in the world of thoughts. Something can begin shifting if we begin being attuned to the whole body and mind as it operates together. Our body and minds were designed to work together. And our bodies are kind of like a miracle. We take walking for granted, those of us who can walk. And I read recently that one of the first things that characterized hominins, the Homo kind of class of mammals, was walking upright on two legs. It's one of the first things. And slowly over time, these kinds of beings that evolved into Homo sapiens, or nowadays as Homo consumerus, is the very efficient walking we do. Apparently, we humans walk more efficiently than chimpanzees and other things that can walk on two legs. And it's amazing engineering feat that somehow evolution has shaped this phenomenon of walking, and we do it without thinking about it. But it's an amazing thing. And we're walking in the footsteps, in a sense, of three million years of humanoid evolution.

So we walk, and we feel the ground. So that as feet touch the ground, we walk in a speed that gets us connected to now rather than disconnected. It's easy to just walk around so fast that we're not connected. It's another thing to consider, what's the speed of being re-earthed? What's the speed of mindfulness? What's the speed of reverence? What's the speed as if each step we're in a sacred world?

Maybe that sounds kind of romantic or silly to talk about every step being sacred, but there are places we go where it feels special, it feels like that. It does feel sacred or have a kind of reverence. Those of you who have been to Muir Woods, especially if you can go there early in the morning before everyone else gets there, I mean, you'll probably be awed into kind of silence being there. And actually, one of the groves of trees there is called the Cathedral Grove. And then another one called the Bohemian Grove. And if you go to the Bohemian Grove, read the sign for the Bohemian Grove. Actually, don't read it, you don't have to read it. Even look at the picture at the Bohemian Grove, because it's a picture that in 1892, the Bohemian Club met there, and there's a picture of the 62-foot Buddha they put in that place. 1892, United States, a Buddha, a 60-foot Buddha in Muir Woods. Anyway, I mean, that's a sacred place or an awesome place or a wondrous place.

And sometimes there are religious places, temples or cathedrals literally, that feel sacred. The beauty about this mindfulness practice is we could have that feeling, that sense in every step we literally take in this world. So to walk to find that. And there are lots of people who love going for walks, and one of the opportunities if you walk long enough is over time in the walking, there's a kind of coming into harmony of the body and mind. It settles together again, just like in meditation, it settles. Especially if you're walking with that in mind, walking, coming back to your body, coming back to your steps. Just like in sitting meditation, we keep coming back to our body, back to the breath. And walking becomes, over and over again, it can be ordinary walking, just walking around, but to have walking be a place we discover a whole different way of being in the world.

And this is what I'm about to say now is very important. Walking in a way that's mindful, we also discover all the reasons we think we can't do that. All the reasons we feel pulled into something more important, or the value our thoughts or confusions or all this stuff. And is that really true? And this is where you should have a debate with yourself. You should sit down with yourself or go for a walk with yourself and take this seriously and question the forces, the beliefs, the attitudes that pull you into your world of distractions, pull you into the concerns and preoccupations of everyday life that you have that are so important to be there and do this and be thinking about that that you become de-earthed, disconnected. And your arguments, your capacity to kind of hold your own spiritually against all this force of the profane world of distraction to return to the sacred world of here is helped if you've discovered how invaluable it is to live in a world where you're grounded and settled and present for yourself. So you have available to you the full capacity of intelligence that comes when the body and mind work together, the full capacity of being really here with all of who you are, not just from the eyebrows up or the neck up or something.

And so walking is one of the great places to discover this. And one of the real great proponents of walking meditation in daily life was Thich Nhat Hanh⁴. And he's famous for taking these 300 people for a walk, and he would be in the front and he would just walk every step he took, like you could almost feel like he really was there for the step. And he didn't do the next step until he had completed one step. And everyone would slow down and just be with him. And it was profound. People had the experience of walking with Thich Nhat Hanh.

He has one of the best Buddhist book titles that I know. Sometimes I got his books just for the title. But there was Peace in Every Step, was one of his bestselling books. Peace in Every Step, what a great title. And the subtitle is The Miracle of Mindfulness in Everyday Life. It's also a great combination. And then he has another one called The Long Road Turns to Joy: A Guide to Walking Meditation. So the long road.

My wife is a thru-hiker. If you don't know what that is, a thru-hiker is someone who goes and walks for a long time. Like she goes for, like right now she's just finishing up a relatively short thru-hike, which I think it was 18 days. She was trying to walk from Oregon to Canada, but she had to stop halfway because of all the fires up there. But one of the things she talks about is you get into this rhythm by walking and walking until the body and mind are together. It's a meditation practice for her that puts her in the present moment, and she's really here because she's walking all that's what she's doing all day. And there's something about walking that really helps us to be present.

This sitting meditation that some of us keep championing, it's pretty wonderful, but we don't move. We're sitting still, and that has value. But walking, the body is there to help you. The kinesthetic sensations and feelings, activity of the body moving and waking up and expressing itself. And there's something about the fluidity and the moving of the body that can be a great help to loosen up the way the mind is stuck. And to keep walking. And I sometimes am stuck in my thoughts and my feelings, I have big things going on, and I find it invaluable to go walking. And just walking, and I find it helpful to walk with all this, because I allow how I am to be there, but the walking protects me from getting unconsciously caught in it all. It keeps me kind of fluid and kind of moving and kind of not caught. And so I can let everything be there, but then it all begins to move, it all begins to find a way, and I can respect it and be with it and just let it be held or all held by the walking.

So walking meditation, being grounded, not ungrounded, being embodied, not disembodied, connected, not disconnected, re-earthed, not de-earthed. So in thinking up this, I think it's a new word in English, de-earthed. And then I looked at that, I wrote it down, and I said, "Well, if you just take out one of the E's, then you have dearth." And then I looked up what's the etymology of the word dearth, which means like the absence of something, right? The scarcity of something. So I looked it up and it turns out that the English word dearth comes from the word dear with a suffix -th that means like a state of, the condition of. The condition of being dear. So how do you get from the condition that something is dear to the English idea dearth means scarcity? So the theory, I don't know if anybody knows for sure, the theory is that when there were famines in England and places like that, what was dear was scarce. And so somehow that got kind of turned into dearth meaning scarce.

But isn't that kind of, can't we kind of revive the original meaning of dearth? And so that we go from being de-earthed to a state that's dear, a world that's dear. Living in this dear world where we value, we love, we care for every step that we do and every conversation we're in. Why not? Do you have something better to do? Do you know something better than just being present for this moment, for what you're doing, to be here fully? If you do, question that. Sometimes maybe there's an emergency you have to take care of, but don't live a life of emergencies. Live a life of emergence, where something can emerge here in the present moment. Something that who you are, what's this life is. Let life be lived. Live the lived life. Don't live the imagined life. And the lived life, it turns out, who would have known, only happens in the present moment.

And you're only alive for a short time. It's amazing that we have all been given this opportunity to live. Remember to live it. Don't imagine it. Don't live in fantasy for it. Don't live in projections and don't be caught in the memories, don't be caught in the futures where we lose the lived life. So walking meditation, just walking, just not even call it meditation, just walk. Walk the lived life and let that be a life that's sacred. Every step is a sacred step. Every step is how we discover the path of freedom. There's no Buddhist path outside of that. If you want to discover Buddhism, don't go get another Buddhist book. Walk. Go walk instead and discover the lived life of walking and see what that book teaches you, what comes alive, what emerges, what's there for you if you walk re-earthing yourself. Walk on this Earth. We're made for it. We are the Earth walking on the Earth.

And so this wonderful activity of walking, that's both meant literally and also figuratively. Some people can't walk. And so I'll end, maybe partly thinking of the people who can't walk, that one of the wonderful ways to maybe turbocharge, you know, this movement towards a lived life is if you walk, go walk someplace in your city, your place that you've never been to before. Go walk someplace new, maybe without a map, maybe following the trail of the trees or the butterflies or something. There's something about going into new environments that wakes something up in us, takes us out of our distracted world.

So if you can't walk, then maybe drive to a new place, go someplace new. Sometimes, there's a wonderful quote from a teacher named Chögyam Trungpa⁵: "If you can't meditate, travel." So that sometimes brings out the lived life. We're suddenly paying attention and we feel and notice much more what's going on. But maybe you don't have to go even to a new place. Maybe every place you're in is a new place. Maybe every step is a new world. And as we step it mindfully, we are authoring our own life. Each step is a new life emerging.

So I hope that that inspires you to walk more or take your walking kind of more seriously for its potential.

Q&A

With that, if we have some time, if anyone wants to ask questions or comments or would like to have testimonials about the value of walking, I'd love to hear.

I do a strange thing. I go walking sometimes with my cat. With your cat? With my cat, and she actually leads the way. It's very, very slow.

What happens to you when the cat leads you?

I just follow her.

But what happens to you internally?

It's wonderful. It's a new adventure every time, even though it's the same street. You see the world in a different way.

Yeah, that's very nice. Going for a walk with a little kid, a toddler, is also fascinating to see the world in a different way.

This isn't a question, it's a testimonial. As you know, Gil, I lived in Truckee for three years and just got back a few months ago. And every day was an incredible delight. I felt like a child in a candy store. I literally would think, "Which hike am I going to take today?" I had about six favorites. And what I didn't like as much was hiking with people. And I didn't want to be antisocial, but I didn't know a whole lot of people when I lived there. I was much more present when I walked alone. And this is really a continuation from last week because you were talking about forest walking, and I have felt grief and loss since I've been back. Even though there are wonderful places to walk here, it's just not the same as in the Sierras and being surrounded by the mountains and the smells and the reservoirs and the lakes.

So the idea is not the same for sure, and it's inspiring to be in those places. But the task is to do those walks and discover how you could be different, and then bring that, let that emerge as you walk through the city. And the city can be just as awesome. It can be amazing. There's so much wonder here. And if you want a little help, they've now created a path here in Redwood City that goes from the library almost, I think it is, under 101 out onto the bay land there. And it goes along that Redwood City Creek that they kind of revived that was kind of covered over or abandoned or lost. It's kind of fun to see the old creek that's still there. I did that the other day and that was kind of cool to walk and see something new. In Redwood City, I've been here for 20 years, and wow, see that.

My question is not pertaining mainly to walking, but it triggered based on what you said. I do a lot of walking, and trying to be present is easier when you're outside and when you're moving. So when I'm trying to be present, for me, it means that I'm fully absorbed and aware. I'm trying to be aware of what I'm thinking, what I'm feeling, and this is just a daily practice. Now one day, it so happened I was in the outdoors and I was by a beach, and I saw a little gopher come out of a hole. And I just started playing with it and giving it some little bits of whatever was growing on the sand. And this game continued for I don't know how long, but then at some point he got bored and just put a lot of mud and sand up in the hole and just blocked me out. But what I realized, because when I was playing with that gopher, all I was aware of at that moment was this amazing encounter. And I was aware that I was aware, and I was aware of the sea and the sand and the breeze, but all my friends, everything else was just blocked out. So I'm wondering what was that quality of presence that I had at that moment? Because I'm still going back to that to see, was my noticing different? Was my presence different? And how can I bring that wonder into my everyday life?

It's a great question. And I think one of the good answers is that points to something for you to look at is you were not distracted. And maybe even when you're walking and in touch with your feelings and emotions and what's going on for you, there might be still, even there, you're a little bit distracted by it. You're a little bit selecting, you have priorities, you think this is important to notice, and you're kind of zeroing in in a way that is a little bit stressful or a little bit too choiceful. But to be undistracted and then absorbed in what you're doing without any stress, it's almost like a self-forgetting. And this idea that you're aware that you're aware, but maybe the more you can almost forget yourself, the clearer awareness of awareness is.

Sorry, I didn't hear that. Would you just repeat the last bit?

The less you're thinking about yourself, the stronger, the more clear can be the sense of awareness aware of itself. And there are a lot of ways in which, many ways that seem so second nature that we are oriented around the idea of me, myself, and mine. And it's not necessarily wrong, but it's a little bit stressful. And it's wonderful to have a non-distracted state where we're really present but without the distraction of self. And that's probably what was so fascinating about the gopher, that the fact that you hadn't done your taxes was not important or something like that.

I love walking, and I agree with you, there's something special that happens. In fact, I try to walk every day at lunch, leave the office, and my energy definitely shifts when I come back. And I'm also a lover of connection amongst us that gives me a lot of energy too. And in my experience, I have found walking with a loved one is magical to me. And we open up, the walls crumble. And I do believe nature gives us that energy. And the experience of walking alone is wonderful. I also have found that the experience of walking with a loved one is just as powerful. So I don't think it's necessarily a practice of solitude, but it's a practice of connection to yourself, connection with the natural world, and then connection amongst us.

It's a wonderful topic today. It's wonderful. And just to add a third option is to walk in silence with others. I've done these Buddhist pilgrimages where a group of us are walking together but walking in silence, and it's been very profound to share the walking and share each other and sense each other together on this... it's a way of making every step sacred and then sharing that. Thank you.

I'd just like to give a short testimonial about doing the walking meditation on retreat. A lot of people, I've noticed, take it as a time to go get a cup of tea or take a nap. And I do that sometimes, but I just love walking meditation. I really recommend you try it. This is terrible, but sometimes I like walking meditation better than sitting meditation, especially if your back is kind of hurting. It's fun. So I just want to really recommend to people that skip it, that it's really great to go up and do walking meditation during that 15 minutes when everybody else is standing in line for food. Kind of sneak in another walking meditation. Anyway, I just really recommend it. Thank you.

Yes, one of the things I've done on retreat, I love walking meditation on retreat as well, is I'll follow an alternate schedule to everyone. So when everyone's sitting, I'm walking, so then I'm quietly by myself. And then when they come to walk, I go and sit. Shh, don't tell anyone. [Laughter] And the opportunity of walking meditation on retreat is that's a situation where you can really get absorbed in it, into the simplicity of it. Simple, simple, simple. But sometimes to try to do that, that level of concentration in everyday life, then something is lost actually in everyday life. But I mean, some people prefer doing formal walking meditation like this at home as a daily meditation instead of sitting meditation. Different forms of meditation work for different people. And some people every day will walk for 30, 40 minutes, and that's their primary meditation practice. Other people it's sitting practice, and some people it's both. When I was in Burma, I was doing a lot of sitting meditation, but my very stern, strict meditation teacher in Burma, he said, "Gil, always do walking meditation before you do sitting meditation." It was kind of like, it's okay you're sitting so long, but you should always start with walking. So for many years, that's what I did. I would do at least 10 minutes before I would do sitting meditation.

Can I add one more thing? Sure. Okay, so what you have to get over is thinking you're being judged by the person that's walking next to you. The first thing is you think you're being judged. And if you're being judged, that's their practice. And your fear of being judged is your practice. So once you can drop that, then it's just helpful.

Fantastic. It's their practice and it's your practice. And to know what's your practice is to know where to discover the sacred in every moment. So thank you very much.

Today is tea time, so you can walk over. Maybe as a way of breaking the ice for some people who are new, maybe just turn to the people next to you, say hello and say your name. It can just be that simple. If someone has to go, it's nice to kind of break the ice a little bit.