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Guided Meditation: Liberation Now; Dharmette: Core Teachings Pt2 (5 of 5) The Goal in the Means. - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 21, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

So, good morning for some of you, good afternoon for others, good evening for maybe another set of you. Good day for everyone. We come to the last day of this five-day series, and the topic for today is liberation.

Liberation is often considered to be an absence of certain mental states rather than the presence of something which can be a source, or reason, or an object of attachment, expectation, or comparative thinking. It's an absence of greed, hate, and delusion; an absence of clinging; an absence of prejudice, bias, conceit, selfishness, resentment, and covetousness. An absence of so many ways in which we human beings harm each other, including ourselves.

An absence leaves us without something; an absence is a simplification of certain kinds of things. And so, one of the characteristics of liberation is freedom from those things which harm. One of the characteristics of the path to liberation is that the way we practice the path should contain within it some of the goal. The goal is to be found in the means. What that means is that the very way in which we practice Buddhism, the very way in which Buddhists practice meditation and mindfulness, is a care—maybe a loving care, but a real care, a real kind of carefulness. Attention is to be paid, is to be given, that the way in which we practice is with as little greed, hatred, and delusion as we can muster. That we practice without attachment or clinging, without hostility, and without conceit; without selfishness, without strain, without complacency or holding back; without shutting down, without avoiding.

In the ancient texts, they talk about neither accepting nor rejecting, and we have to understand carefully what that means. That accepting and rejecting involves a kind of taking and pushing away, a kind of acquisition and appropriation, and rejection. So this absence leaves us in a state of radical simplicity, awake here. Just awake with the same simplicity of what wakefulness feels like when waking up from a really good sleep or a nap. There's something in that waking up from a really good sleep and nap that the wakeful state itself has this simplicity in it.

Finally, to become free of clinging, free of hostility and craving, cannot be done with more attachment, with more clinging, with more hostility and craving. So, to practice mindfulness with a care and a love and a devotion—maybe even an almost religious devotion—is to free ourselves from those things that go against the grain of freedom. And it isn't that we have to do it perfectly; it's that we do it to the extent that we can. And for what we can't, we hold that spaciously, openly. We hold that with kindness, compassion. We hold that with faith that we can practice with it, meaning that we can be mindful of it and find our way slowly to freedom from it.

But whatever is difficult, not to meet it with more difficulty. You can't solve the problem with more of the problem.

Guided Meditation: Liberation Now

So assuming a meditation posture and gently closing your eyes.

And here you are in the spot where you're sitting, rising out of your seat, arising out of whatever place that's holding you. Here it's you, your body, your heart, your mind. It's so precious, it's so valuable. You are a treasure. You are wondrous. And to sit here caring for this wonder that you are, by being mindful of whatever arises, where the mindfulness itself contains qualities of being awake, free of all the forces of harm. Or as free as we're able to practice with for today. With faith that this kind of care and this kind of love, this kind of attentiveness is the way to freedom.

There is freedom right here, just outside of whatever attachment you have, clinging. Just beyond your distraction. Deep within, below your thinking, there is a place of absence, the absence of being caught.

And then, as we come to the end of this sitting, to take a few moments here to sit with the wonder, the wonder of being alive, the wonder of being conscious. The wonder of that corner of your heart, your mind, your being, which knows how to be alive without fear, without craving, without hostility. A simplicity of being, free of conceit, free of being caught in self. Here it's possible to breathe freely. Here it's possible to sense or live life easily. Here it's possible to have a mind that operates peacefully.

And to whatever degree we can intuit or feel or sense this possibility, even if we imagine this possibility, to then from that place to be open to the world, to be aware of people in your life, the people in your neighborhoods and communities, the people around the globe. And for you to share with them, through whatever example you can provide, a life that's free of being caught in forces of harm, forces of hatred and prejudice and bias. Examples of a person who lives with the opposite: with generosity and love and wisdom.

And may it be that radiating from you is goodwill towards all beings. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Core Teachings Pt2 (5 of 5) The Goal in the Means.

So, suffering and the end of suffering. Freedom from fixed views. The natural functioning of our life flowing freely through us, sometimes taking the form of love or care or compassion, all leading to or supporting or pointing to liberation. And the path to liberation, a path that liberates us from suffering, brings about the end of suffering. So these are the foundations of the core teachings that I believe I base my teachings on, and my practice on, my life on.

Today, the topic is liberation and the path to liberation. And what's delightful in this tradition is the principle that before liberation there is practice, and after liberation there is practice. The practice moves continuously through us. Even the Buddha, after he was fully awakened, would go in the forest to practice meditation. And so in a sense, the difference between before and after an experience of awakening or liberation doesn't matter that much. What matters is that we practice, that the practice is sincere. The founder of San Francisco Zen Center, Suzuki Roshi¹, made this now often-referred-to statement. Someone asked him, "If I do Zen, will I become enlightened?" And he replied, "If your practice is sincere, that's almost as good."

So before enlightenment, practice; after enlightenment, practice. And so maybe in a certain kind of way, enlightenment doesn't matter that much for what we do, for what we dedicate our life to. So, not to be too caught in the idea of some kind of experience of awakening, but to be devoted to just keep practicing the Dharma, the mindfulness, the compassion, the concentration, the ethics, all the different pieces of the Eightfold Path.

Now, one of the things that I like to emphasize is for the goal to be found in the means. If the goal is a radical way of being not caught in anything, caught up in anything, a radical way of being free from being stuck, free from being obsessed, free from being oppressed with our own mind, our own hearts—fear and upset and dismay and criticism and anger—that if that's the goal, then the means to that goal should have some of the qualities of the goal in itself. It doesn't mean that we can just wipe away the ways that we're attached, but it does mean that we can begin finding a way to be mindful, a way to be aware, a way to bring our attention to what's difficult in us, to our attachments, where that way of attending is free of attachment, free of being caught to some degree.

And even just to some degree, if it contains part of the goal, that's enough to begin seeing a sliver, seeing a little hint. "Oh, this is what it's like to be present without any attachment, without any resistance, without any shutting down or any holding on or any self-preoccupation. This is what it's like to be free of preoccupation." And we start getting little senses of it and then to be guided by that. "Oh, this is good. This is the way forward. This is what the path is about." And to have some confidence that you can find that in yourself, in how you're mindful, in how you're aware and caring for your practice.

And so then slowly, one way of understanding what practice is, is that that little sliver of freedom that you begin to recognize in how you're aware begins to grow, begins to spread, becomes bigger and bigger. So rather than focusing on having some deep insight or getting concentrated or aiming towards something exactly, it's still the same practice, but also kind of behind it, or in the very mode in which we're engaging the practice, something is growing. Something is growing and becomes bigger and bigger until it fills us, until it really shows us deeply the experience of freedom that's possible.

In the Theravada² tradition, the emphasis of doing this is by talking directly about recognizing what greed, hate, and delusion is like, and what attachment is like, so we can find a way to practice without that. In some other schools of Buddhism, they point to a different possibility. They have some way of pointing the practitioner to the place of non-clinging, and just to abide in that the best they can. And then over years, that grows and develops until the sense of non-clinging becomes much more pervasive in who they are.

But this is the growth of freedom. So before awakening, there are small awakenings, a small sense of being awake. And I love this metaphor of being awake for this liberation from clinging, liberation from suffering. Because, I don't know if it's true for everyone, I don't know what the conditions are for people that might interfere with this, but some of us maybe have this experience of waking up from a good sleep, a good nap. Maybe it's even having a nice cup of coffee for some people, where there's a sense of feeling awake, a wakefulness that is independent of what we're aware of. If we're tired and grumpy and things are challenging and difficult, then it's almost like everything the eyes set their gaze upon is just difficult and challenging, and everything is kind of seen as a difficult thing. And even our awareness, our knowing and thinking about it, just doesn't feel good.

But when we are waking up from a really good nap, or sitting on a park bench on a day that we don't have any work or any responsibilities, and just sitting there with nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to be, just looking at maybe children playing or the squirrels running around or the wind in the trees, there's a feeling of contentment. Just being alive is enough. There's a feeling that, independent of what we know, what we're aware of, you feel this beautiful feeling of just being awake. It feels so clear and crisp and content. It's a clarity that's expansive, without edges. And then we go into the kitchen and there's a mess in the kitchen sink, and it's like, "Wow, okay, this is just... there's no reactivity to the mess in the kitchen sink." It's just like, this too is happening in the clarity.

So if you have an experience like this on a park bench, or waking up from a nap or something, this is now beginning to be a guide where you start getting a sense of, "Oh, this is what freedom is like, this is what's possible." And there might be other things in your life that have given you this kind of foretaste of what freedom and liberation is. And then to grow that, we're developing it.

After a very clear, definitive experience of awakening, of freedom, radical freedom from all suffering, that registers deep, deep in our consciousness, in our hearts, in such a way that now there's a reference point for living free. And now the challenge is, we still want to practice. That's still the dedication. But now we know something we don't want to compromise. We don't want to give in to forces of harm, of hatred, of fear, because that interferes with this capacity of freedom, which is the channel, the open door for the wholesome goodness of our hearts, for our capacity for love and compassion, generosity, our compassion to be of service for others and for this world, to care.

And so after some experience of liberation, there's a kind of, for a while there could be a debate going on inside of us between: "Do I get angry at the condition of the world? Do I get dismayed? Do I get afraid? Or is it okay to stay in this place of freedom? Is it okay to stay without clinging, without attachment, without preoccupation?" And inevitably, if you do this practice well, freedom wins in the debate. Greed, hate, and delusion don't win. Fear does not win. Dismay does not win. Because if we do that, it diminishes us. We lose something. We harm ourselves. And we see that over time, we also start harming others in maybe subtle, sometimes big ways. There are not a few people who have been engaged in the process of, to use a choice word, fighting for justice and have used the very forces within of greed, hate, and delusion to fight for justice, which is the reason why there's injustice. And of course, we want to live in the world to bring justice, but to know how to bring our freedom, our wakefulness, to spread it into the world, this is a possibility as well.

So before awakening, there is the practice that can be informed and guided by some intuition of freedom. After awakening, there can be some intuition of freedom that now really sets a stage, that guides us—not just an intuition, but a knowing of freedom. So I hope that you can learn to appreciate that the goal can be in the means, and that that nourishes you, that supports you, that guides you, that inspires you in your practice. And that through this practice, you can benefit all beings.

So thank you very, very much for today.

Announcements

I have one announcement. Here at IMC, Insight Meditation Center, we've been given an opportunity to partner with a local nature preserve called Hidden Villa, where we used to put on retreats for 10 years. They would like us to come back and continue putting on retreats as well. We don't know if we're able to do it because of a variety of factors here at IMC. So, what we'd like to do is have a meeting here at IMC on Sunday at 11:15 in California time to talk about what interest there is in our community in this partnership of putting on retreats at Hidden Villa. So everyone's invited. It's on Zoom and in-person here, and if you have interest in this kind of project, you're welcome to come. Thank you.