This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Meditation Power; Dharmette; Quarrels (3of5) Inner Power. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Meditation Power; Dharmette: Quarrels (3 of 5) Inner Power - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 01, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Meditation Power

Hello and welcome to this meditation session. As an introduction to the meditation, I want to mention that occasionally in the world that I travel in, the concept of power is often seen negatively. This is partly because power is used in interpersonal relationships and in society in ways that are quite painful and harmful. If you go back and look at the meditation teachings of the Buddha, he has a lot of references to power that are power within oneself.

Some of the faculties we have for doing meditation practice, as meditation develops, develop into powers. There's a strength that carries them, with which they carry us and support us. There's the power of confidence, the power of effort, the power of mindfulness, the power of samadhi¹, and the power of wisdom. None of these are being referred to in relationship to power over anyone else, and maybe not even power over oneself. But they are strengths that develop and that, from the Buddhist perspective, we don't need to be afraid of. They're here to support what's really best in us. The power of wisdom is clearly related to the power to recognize and act on what is beneficial for us and to avoid what is harmful for us as we meditate.

So this can get very quickly into a complicated discussion, but for this meditation, I would like to see if I can support you to meditate where there's some underlying sense of power in this body and mind. It is a strength that is an aid, keeping us grounded, keeping us centered here and now. It keeps us gently but firmly rooted here in this practice, in this time and place. Not with strain, not with striving, not with expectation, but almost like a delightful, appreciated sense of being rooted in the practice.

So, assuming a meditation posture that is right for you, a posture that maybe is adjusted with small adjustments so that it expresses a confidence, a kind of power that we have. It is almost like gathering ourselves together, preparing ourselves maybe for a physical activity we have to do that requires all the strength that we can muster. We might take a deep breath, we might take a good stance, we might kind of bring together our whole body. Find a meditation posture that gathers you together, gently closing your eyes.

Find a place within that you associate, whether it's present now or not, with a location for gathering power and strength. A definitive feeling of being, "Yes, here, no question about it." Gathering it together to be rooted here for an important activity. Is there a place where you gather, where you center? From that place, take some long, slow, deep breaths, as if your breathing begins there and spreads from there as you breathe in, returning there as you exhale.

Relax as you exhale. Almost as if you are relaxing around an inner sense of strength, so any complications around the edges of it fall away.

And then let your breathing return to normal and continue to breathe out of, or with some sense of inner strength and power. With a gentle breathing, relax on the exhale. Do this so there's a sense of calm or peace around that sense of strength, however small it might be.

A sense of personal strength or power in meditation is closely connected to confidence. It is a simple confidence in the value of being present here and now. A confidence in not staying involved with thoughts and attitudes which undermine you. Confidence in simple awareness, so that awareness too is rooted in an inner strength. The gathering together of oneself, a joining of mindfulness with a peaceful strength, power, and definitiveness here and now.

If you find your mind wandering off, to the best of your ability, recenter yourself in whatever sense of inner strength or power that's available to you, however small. With confidence, clarity, and definitiveness, you return to being aware now. Here.

Connect mindfulness with an inner source of strength and power that is not assertive, but rather is closely associated with vitality. The sense of being alive in a clear, definitive way.

As we come to the end of this sitting, once again settle in yourself, maybe on the exhale. Settling in a grounded, rooted place where there's a feeling of being strong in being rooted. It is a strength of presence, the advantage of which is you're not going to be pushed around, collapse, or give up, but stay present, able to look calmly onto whatever challenges you're aware of.

From this way, be able to gaze upon the world kindly, generously, with care and compassion, without fear interfering with care, and without feeling inadequate in the face of what's happening in the world. Wish well, look kindly upon others. Wish them the best. Wish them to be free of their greed, hate, and delusion. Wish them to be free of oppression, hunger, and illness.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free. And may the way that I'm present for people support that.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Quarrels (3 of 5) Inner Power

Welcome to this third talk about the Buddha's teachings on disputes and quarrels. We know that disputes and quarrels can be verbally violent. They can be assertive, and there can be a lot of power and strength that is evoked in disputes. Sometimes some people's sense of personal power gets awakened and channeled through anger, or sometimes through conceit. Some people who don't have much sense of connection to their personal power will really value being angry because of how it makes them feel powerful and strong.

When our personal power is channeled into disputes and quarrels, it makes the whole situation much more complicated, and it's not so easy for us to find ourselves in that. There's a losing of ourselves in it, and it can come along with all kinds of unfortunate things that go on. One of the things that the Buddha talks about is that what gives strength to any expression of greed, hatred, and delusion is people's love of power—identifying with power, saying, "I am powerful, I want power." That kind of social power is a power that has to do with relationships. We want control over others. We don't just want to be right in the arguments we have; we want to have a sense that we're powerful and can get our way in a situation. Sometimes this is because we only believe there's a win-lose option: either that person wins or I win. So we want to win, we want to be safe, we want to not be losing, because losing doesn't feel good. Feeling powerful is a way of winning in a sense, or being right, or having a sense of control, or even a sense of pleasure in having power over people.

Because power is so often used for people to get their way, or politicians to get their way, or rulers to get their way—and sometimes it is expressed in all kinds of horrible ways—power is often seen as being evil or wrong. People then become afraid to express their power sometimes, because if they express it, someone else will come along and knock it down. Someone will express even more power and say that you're wrong or conceited.

The Buddha offered a lot of discussion about personal power, but it was never power over anybody else; it was all in relationship to power over oneself. Though occasionally he talked about having the power to enter into relationships in such a way that creates healthy relationships, and I'll talk about that.

Some of the forms of power that the Buddha talked about developing include the power of having a conscience and care to not cause harm. He talked about the power of confidence, the power of knowing what is healthy and unhealthy, beneficial and not beneficial. He talked about the power of effort: the effort of doing what's wholesome and avoiding what's unwholesome. The power of mindfulness: part of the purpose of mindfulness and really being present is not just to be calm, but to be able to find our way to recognize what is healthy and unhealthy, what is wholesome and unwholesome. The power of samadhi: the power of being grounded here in the present moment. And the power of wisdom: one of the ways that the Buddha defines wisdom is in fact the wisdom of being able to recognize what is beneficial and what is not beneficial, what is wholesome and what is not wholesome.

Over and over again, we see the Buddha wanting people to have power over themselves—over the choices their mind makes, their heart makes, their body makes, and their activity—to be able to choose well. One of the ways of choosing well is to choose the strength of mindfulness, of being present without assertion and without giving up. Without running away or collapsing, and without assenting to things we don't agree with, we are able to hold our own calmly, in a relaxed way, to stay there and be present. Rather than turning away from conflict, I think the Buddhist approach is to stand up tall metaphorically, to keep our seat, and to be able to look at reality directly and calmly without flinching, without collapsing, and without getting confused or agitated. This is not an easy thing to do.

By emphasizing that there is a kind of internal power meant to be awoken and support us in this Buddhist practice, we remember not to shortchange ourselves. When this practice is only associated with being calm and peaceful, sometimes we miss what's possible here. Yes, being calm and peaceful is part of the practice, but it's a partner with having strength, a partner with a certain kind of inner personal power so that in the peaceful state we're not fragile, we're not vulnerable, and we're not so sensitive that we feel like everything is too much.

In one place, the Buddha emphasizes four powers. The first is the power of wisdom, which he clearly defines as the power to know what's beneficial and what's not beneficial, to know what's wholesome and not wholesome. The second is the power of energy, to be able to act on that wisdom, to act on what's beneficial and avoid what's not beneficial. The third is the power of blamelessness. I love this one: the power of not living in a world where people have reason to blame you. Sometimes he calls that the joy of blamelessness. It is the strength to walk through the world knowing that, while people might blame us, there's no real cause for it.

The fourth is the power of sustaining favorable relationships and favorable community, bringing people together². He describes this in four different ways, four sub-powers in a sense:

1. The power of giving, as opposed to the power of taking (like taking power from other people or controlling them). Giving people the benefit of the doubt and being generous to them. Giving them their opinion: "Okay, we can agree to disagree and you're welcome to your opinion."
2. The power of kind or loving speech. So often in disputes and quarrels, speech is not kind and sometimes is downright mean. The power of knowing how to speak in kind ways is crucial.
3. The power of beneficial conduct. Not just knowing what's beneficial, but really knowing how to act. Giving is one of those, kind speech is another, but it also means conducting oneself in beneficial ways and not succumbing to harmful ways of being.
4. The power of equality. The power of a certain kind of impartiality where we treat everyone equal. This is the one that our society needs tremendously. There are so many different ways that we have bias and prejudice towards people of all kinds of differences from ourselves. The power of treating everyone equally is a power of respect.

I offer these teachings today in the context of disputes and quarrels. In the difficulties and challenges you have with people, call upon personal power, but don't engage in disputes and arguments by asserting power over other people. Have it over yourself, so that you know how to stay present. Keep your seat and your place without succumbing, without giving up, and without agreeing just because the other person is seemingly more powerful, arguing more strongly, or because you're afraid of them. Be able to breathe and stay rooted here.

This sense of inner power might, in the long term complexity of our life, be more important than trying to hold on to being calm and peaceful. The more that we can have the power of attention, of being present, of being rooted, the more our calm and peace can accompany us and support us.

I hope that all of us can grow into becoming powerful people, but powerful over ourselves, with ourselves, so that we can do good in the world. Powerful enough that we can avoid the habitual tendencies to be mean, argumentative, complaining, or just upset about all kinds of things in ways that undermine others and make the world a worse place. To have the power to hold our tongue when what we're going to say is going to make things worse.

This practice of ours is meant to support the development of powerful, strong people who can do good in the world and good for themselves, not to assert ourselves over anyone. Thank you. May this support you in disputes and quarrels that you're being pulled into or tempted to get involved in, and maybe it will teach you how to be present for discussions when there are disagreements without it being a dispute or quarrel. Thank you.