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In the Seeing just the Seeing - Bahiya Sutta - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 01, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

In the Seeing just the Seeing - Bahiya Sutta

The inspiration for today's topic is that I'm going off to teach a retreat at the Insight Retreat Center (IRC) today, and it is related to the theme we've selected for the week. It is a discourse by the Buddha that I'm fond of teaching, a very famous teaching given to a man named Bāhiya¹. Some of you may have heard it before. The Buddha gave this teaching twice in the records we have, and I might make reference to the second teaching because it clarifies a little bit of what he was talking about.

The Story of Bāhiya

I like this teaching partly because of the story that leads up to it. There was a spiritual teacher—not a Buddhist—living far from where the Buddha was, apparently close to Mumbai on the west coast of India. He was in meditation one day and asked himself this question: "Am I, in fact, enlightened as people think I am? Am I even on the path to awakening?"

It is a very honest question to ask, to check it out. As this fable-like story is told, a deity flying around heard him ask himself this question. The deity came down and explained to him, "No, [Laughter] you are not awakened, and you're not even on the path to enlightenment."

To his credit, Bāhiya asked, "Well, who is enlightened, and who knows the path to awakening?" The deity replied, "There is a person up in the northeast called the Buddha. There is a Buddha up there who is awakened and knows the path."

Bāhiya immediately set off to find the Buddha. He was heralded in his time and place as being spiritually mature and a great teacher, but that didn't keep him from going to find someone who could teach him. He made this long trek across much of India to find the Buddha.

Meeting the Buddha

He happened to come across the Buddha at a time in the morning when the Buddha had his bowl out and was off to do his alms round² to collect food for the day. The Buddha was likely hungry, and people were waiting to give him food in the village. Bāhiya walked up to the Buddha anyway and said, "Can you tell me in brief, because I really need to know, the essence of the Dharma?"

The Buddha said, "Well, you know, this is not the right time. I'm going off for my meal."

Bāhiya asked again, "But I'd really like to know. Can you please tell me in brief? I'll listen to it and I'll put it into practice right away."

"But I'm about to go on alms round. Not now."

He asked a third time. There is a custom in India that if you ask someone three times, it is really serious. The third time he asked, he said, "Time is of the essence. I don't know when I'm going to die. I don't know when you're going to die. It could be any time now. I've come a long way. I really want to know; I don't want to wait any more time."

"You never know, sir, when life is at risk, either the Buddha's or my own. Let the Blessed One teach me the Dharma. Let the Holy One teach me the Dharma. That would be for my lasting welfare and happiness."

The Teaching

So the Buddha said, "Okay." He gave him the teaching in brief. The emphasis is not just on giving him a teaching, but on how to train. How do you practice?

"In that case, Bāhiya, you should train like this: In the seen will be merely the seen. In the heard will be merely the heard. In the sensed will be merely the sensed. In the cognized will be merely the cognized. That is how you should train.

When you have trained in this way, you won't be involved with that. When you're not involved with that, you won't be 'there'. When you're not 'there', you won't be here, or beyond, or between the two. Just this is the end of suffering."

The Outcome

Due to this brief Dharma teaching of the Buddha, Bāhiya's mind was right away freed from defilements through not clinging. He was really sincere. He was dedicated, and probably well-practiced in his own way, so he was ripe to hear something. This is what he heard. Some people call this "pointing out instruction," where you are briefly pointing to the way the mind can function—how awareness can be—that sets someone free of the ways in which we cling, grasp, and hold on.

As the story goes on, Bāhiya leaves. He goes out onto the road and a stray cow kills him. It serves as evidence for his plea: you never know how quickly you have to get the teachings or get started on practice, because you never know when death might come. Maybe that is why the fable ends that way.

Projection and Signification

The other teaching where the Buddha gives this instruction mentions how people often don't see "just the seen." Involved in seeing is projection. We signify things that we see. We signify meaning, purpose, what it means for me, what it means for others, what I can do with it, or what I don't like about it. There are a lot of complicated ways in which we get involved in what we see, and some of this is deeply unconscious.

I like to tell a story from when I was nineteen. I traveled with some friends through Morocco. I had never been in a country like that as an adult. It was a very different culture with very different clothes. I noticed something strange was happening to my mind being there for the couple of weeks I was visiting. There was a little bit more clarity. Something was more open and clear in my mind, but I couldn't quite understand it. I wondered, "What's with my mind? What's happening here?"

I went along, happy enough with it, but wondering what it was. After a while, I identified what it was. The men in Morocco back then wore djellabas³, which are robe-like garments. They didn't wear Western suits or pants. In the West, I constantly assumed I knew who people were based on their clothes, their hair, and all these things. "That person's a jock," "that person's a businessman," "that person is this and that." I had all these judgments. It wasn't just an innocent "Look over there, there is someone walking around with a suit." It was as if that was the end of the story. For who I was at nineteen, a suit wasn't a good deal.

I had all these judgments, assumptions, or ideas about people based on what they looked like. In Morocco, I didn't have any of that. That was the clarity. That was the way my mind was more at ease because of that absence of projecting, assuming, and signifying that the mind operates under. It was a very powerful experience for me to be able to see for the first time what my mind was up to when I wasn't paying attention—my subconscious, my unconscious—and how much that was operating in my life. It was the beginning of putting a question mark behind my assumptions and seeing the active way in which my mind is constructing, building, or signifying the world.

Deconstructing Experience

In meditation, it has been a steady process of learning how to deconstruct these projections, assumptions, and biases that come along so automatically in us. We are kind of built to have them. Human beings, in order to get around in the world effectively, do generalize in order to understand what is going on. Otherwise, it is too much to try to reconstruct and understand fresh every time. So there is a way in which we generalize and have these projections, but we also cause a tremendous amount of harm with them. We cause a lot of harm for ourselves because this signifying often has to do with our attachments—how we cling, how we have aversion. Greed and hatred are part and parcel of this projected world that we live in.

In meditation, we let that become quieter and quieter, more and more subtle, until we're not telling ourselves stories. We're not fantasizing about the past and future. We're not caught up in dramas of resentment, desires, and romance. Things get quieter and quieter, and our sense experience becomes simpler and simpler.

A very significant moment in my life regarding this projection was when I was going off to the Zen monastery deep in the mountains. I had never been there. We were driving down Carmel Valley, way behind Carmel Village to the east. There are some magnificent oak trees there—California has great oak trees. I was going to a new place, sitting in the back of the car, and it was quiet and calm. I was already getting into the spirit of being in a monastery, feeling quite cozy and simple.

I was looking out from the back seat at these oak trees, and I had an experience I'd never had before. I could almost see that as I looked at the trees, I was overlaying a concept of "tree" on top of them. I was painting a concept that was a perfect fit for the oak trees for that moment. I could see the oak tree, but there was something added going on. There was a reconstruction in my mind of "oak tree" through which I was seeing the actual tree. Mostly, we don't see that we're doing that; we think we are innocently seeing a tree. But I was doing something a little extra. That experience set me up to see even more deeply the ways in which the mind does more than just see, hear, or think.

Thoughts are innocent, kind of. It is thinking which gets us in trouble. Thinking is a train of thoughts, one triggering the other. There is some kind of little attachment that gets triggered—a thought triggers some other attachment, idea, or conception. We are building and continuing something rather than a thought simply arising and passing.

Radical Simplicity in Practice

Bāhiya was probably the equivalent in his time of someone who had been at a Zen monastery practicing deeply, so he was poised to have this pointed out to him. "Hey look, this is possible. In the seeing, just the seen. In the heard, just the heard. In the thought, just the thought. In the cognized, just the known."

Then it goes on to say, "If you do this, then you won't be involved in that." The word "involved" is an interpretive addition to the text; it is a little vague what it means. It suggests you won't be defined by that. You won't be caught in that. Whatever is seen, heard, thought, or cognized, you won't define yourself by it.

In the other teaching on the same Sutta, the Buddha talks about what "involved" means as being desire, lust, and craving. You won't be doing those things, and with that, you won't be defining yourself or making a "self" in relationship to it. If you are not involved, then the more powerful thing that happens is that there is no subject-object relationship going on. There is no "that" over there, no "here," and nothing going on in between. That is a little strange to understand, but if your mind gets really quiet and clear, you wouldn't be concerned about trying to figure out "what does this mean?" There is no here or there, no subject and object. There is just the experience. The seen is just the seen. There is no getting caught up in "me as the seer," "me as the hearer," "me as the thinker." It is a very simple way of being.

I remember a classic experience for many people on retreat: having a noisy neighbor. I had someone in a retreat for three months sitting right next to me. The person would always come late into the hall, and there was a long hardwood floor he had to cross to get to where I was. He had this way of walking hard and fast—I called it a "lumberjack walk"—with heavy boots, stomping. We were all sitting there quietly. He'd always come late with this big stomping, sit down next to me, and I guess he must have been out running because it took five minutes for him to catch his breath. Finally, his breathing would quiet down, and then the jacket would come off... which had Velcro. [Laughter]

You can imagine that I had a little bit of this projecting mind, this signifying mind—signifying that this meant something, what this meant for me, and all kinds of things. But three months was a long time. What was remarkable was to have all my reactivity settle down over the days and weeks until it did nothing to me. The sounds would be there—just sounds. In the heard, just the heard. In the seen, just the seen.

The Buddha is offering Bāhiya a possibility, a way of being where we stay radically simple in relationship to what we see, hear, and even think. We aren't going to stop thinking, but how simple can you be with those things? How can you just allow them to be their own pristine experience without the overlay of our concepts and ideas?

I offer this to you today not because it is easy for you to go home and do this, but rather as a reference point to point out that this is actually possible. It highlights for you in a useful way for mindfulness practice what is "extra" that you are adding. If you are fantasizing about all the New Year's presents you are going to get, you're involved. Romance? You're involved. Resentment from work? You're involved. You are caught in something. If you are caught up in trying to get enlightened by huffing and puffing in meditation, you're involved. You are projecting and signifying.

If you have a noisy meditator next to you, rather than being upset and writing a letter to the president of the IMC board, you would take responsibility for how your mind is reacting and signifying. Take a deep look at that.

I hope the outcome of this talk will be that it heightens in a wonderful, receptive, and meaningful way a deeper self-understanding of what you are adding to your experience. It is possible, from time to time in the right situation, to put all that projection and signifying to rest. Let it come to a stop. That is a wonderful thing to do. If it is relaxed enough, subtle enough, and really in the present enough, one or two things might happen.

One is you discover how delicious it is to be alive. Just to be alive is enough because just breathing, sensing, feeling, and knowing can be so simple. It is peaceful and contented; everything is good in the world in a wonderful way in those few moments. The second thing that might happen is something deep in your heart that has been held tight for a long time might finally feel like it can relax, let go, and release. That is what happened to Bāhiya when he heard these teachings.

So that is the Bāhiya Sutta.