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Guided Meditation: Silence; Dharmette: Wise Thinking (5 of 5) Deep Thoughts in a Silent Mind. - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 22, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Silence

Good morning, everyone, and hello, everyone. I am delighted to be here.

It's possible to listen to two things at once, to be aware of two things happening at once. We do that with music, where there are maybe many instruments playing at once, and somehow we hear them all and can distinguish one from the other. When many of the instruments in the orchestra maybe stop playing so there can be a soloist, we're very aware of the silence around the soloist. That allows the soloist to be highlighted and accentuated, and then the whole orchestra joins in again. Or we can be listening to something in our kitchen and maybe listening to someone talking, and then suddenly the hum of the refrigerator goes off, and now there's a silence. We can still listen to our friend speaking, and the voice of that friend is highlighted by that silence that we also can be aware of.

So in the mind, as I've offered here, there are two different operating systems, two categorically different ways of thinking. There's what can be the world of discursive thought: distracted thought, jumping around thoughts, spinning thoughts, where we have conversations, where we create stories and images and predictions of the future that are relatively abstract and kind of filling it with the fullness of the story life that we live. And that is more like the hum of the refrigerator. It's possible sometimes for that to become quiet. It doesn't mean we no longer have any thoughts, but rather thinking changes its nature. It becomes thinking from a different operating system, a different place, a different source within. Rather than the surface mind, now it comes from the deep mind.

The thoughts there are generally very much to the point, very much about the present moment experience, understanding it in a very simple way, recognizing it in a very simple way. Maybe they are very simple instructions we give ourselves, like, "Maybe I should bring more attention now to the end of my out-breath. I seem to be holding back a little bit from breathing out all the way. What would happen if I breathe all the way out, relax the exhale?" So it can happen almost preverbally. It's almost like a sense or intuition, or it could be simple thoughts that ask a question: "What would happen now if I tuned into the changing nature of my experience? What would happen?" Or, "Is there any wisdom now about how I get attached? What can I understand from this vantage point?" So they can be very, very simple, not long, discursive, just a few simple words.

When practice gets really quiet from that deep place, it's just simple thoughts, words, images of recognition: "Oh, that's what's happening. That's what's happening." And there's a silence in the surface mind. There's a silence in that mind that's discussing things or having stories, and that can be exquisite. It might be easier to feel that silence, the turning off of the hum of the refrigerator in the mind, if we understand that we're not trying to get rid of all thoughts. Thoughts themselves are not the issue. It's the source from which we're thinking. Are we thinking from fear? Are we thinking from anger, desire, ambition, or confusion? Are we thinking from the surface, the control tower? Or are we thinking from a quiet place where there's no stress, a place free of fear, free of anger, free of greed and ambition, free of building up a self?

The self is so tied to the story-making mind. When we let go of thinking primarily, we're letting go of that surface mind to be attuned to the resulting silence and quiet. A quiet that lets us hear the solo music that's so beautiful. The quiet, the voice, the thoughts that come from deep within, from a peaceful place of no stress.

So to assume a meditation posture, gently close the eyes, taking a deep breath and relaxing on the exhale. Relaxing deeply.

Letting breathing return to normal. And again, as you exhale with a normal breath, relaxing the body from head to toe.

As you exhale, relaxing the thinking mind, the control tower. Any pressure or tension, contraction associated with thinking. Thinking that has tension as part of it is part of that surface mind. It's not who we really are in our depths.

As you exhale, slowing thinking down, so whatever you're thinking, you think more calmly. No hurry, no reaching for anything, softening the need to think.

And as you're breathing, soften your belly. Soften your belly and settle into the pelvic floor. Let your weight be supported, the weight of your torso supported by the pelvis, relaxing as you exhale into the pelvis.

And from deep within, is there a place that is calmer, more peaceful, maybe more still than how the surface mind is? The quietest, most peaceful place within. And that's a relative concern—relatively more peaceful and calm.

And in that quieter place within, allow yourself to have very quiet, gentle thoughts about staying present with your breathing. Quiet thoughts of recognition that recognize how the sensations of breathing change as you breathe.

Okay, and as you exhale, let go of your discursive thoughts. Let go of thoughts which have to do with stories of past and future fantasy, stories that judge yourself, and stories that spin good and bad, right and wrong. Let go of the surface thoughts and let go into the depths of your being, the depths of breathing, where the deep mind thinks gentle thoughts, appreciating the silence of the surface mind.

Sometimes when the surface mind is quiet, silent, quiet enough, and we relax and let go into the depths of our being, the thoughts that we can be aware of might be preverbal, pre-image. There's a knowing without words and a knowing without images. It might be followed by words or images, but there is a quiet place deep within. And the more peaceful that place is, and the more silence around it, the more we can rest in that preverbal knowing.

As we have been sitting for a number of minutes now, you might see if it's possible to relax more deeply, to release more fully. From the top of your head all the way down through your body, slowly relaxing, like there's a wonderful flow of water that starts at the top of your head and then flows down through the body, relaxing it all. With every exhale, the relaxing water moves down, settles down through your body.

And from the calmest, quietest place deep within—the place that maybe knows preverbally, knows without the filter of stories and memories and desires and fears—bring to mind the people of your life, the people you might be seeing over the next days and week. And privately, just you from deep inside, can you touch into a tenderness, a gentleness, a warmth of love or compassion, kindness, care for these people? Even not needing to act on it, just to feel it. So it's independent of what actually goes on when you meet, just a deep sense of goodwill, well-wishing.

And may these words express your care for others: May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

[Music]

Thank you.

Dharmette: Wise Thinking (5 of 5) Deep Thoughts in a Silent Mind.

Hello, and welcome to this fifth talk on wise thinking. I suspect that for much of my life I didn't think much about my thinking. I took it for granted or took it as being what it is. And sometimes, in a way, I took it to be who I am, as if my thinking represented me and my interests, my thoughts, my beliefs, my opinions, my emotions. It wasn't anything to question or consider or investigate; it was just taken for granted as a big solid kind of event in its own right.

With meditation, I've learned to not do that, but rather to be mindful of thinking, to investigate the nature of thinking, what goes on as I think, and the ecology of thinking. Thinking is a composite thing; it's made up of many different component parts, only one of which is the content of the thoughts, the very particular ideas or stories that are being considered. This was really a great thing to open up to the wider field of what's going on: the emotional field, the physical field, what's going on in the body energetically, the tensions, the holdings, the emotions that were the fuel or the source for the thoughts. This is included now when we do the basic introduction to meditation instructions here at IMC—it's a whole hour and a half on mindfulness of thinking.

One of the things we can begin discovering is that there are different levels of thinking, or different sources within from where we think qualitatively, and different kinds of thinking that we can do. When we start understanding the range of possible ways of thinking, the kinds of thoughts we can have—not so much the content, but where they arise from and what's feeding and fueling them—we can at some point discover that there's thinking that is free of any clinging, attachment, free of any need. Whereas the surface mind, the more usual way of thinking, is operating from need, from desires, from greed, from aversion, from hostility, from criticism, from confusion, from fear. In sum, it's operating from stress.

It's possible to discover a way of thinking that is stress-free. For some people, this is the source of creativity. Some people need to take a vacation, or really sometimes meditating is enough to awaken the capacity for creative thinking that can flow. It can't flow when there's the limitation or contraction of any tension connected to thinking. So we start feeling there's a different way of thinking, a whole different approach to the way of thinking, and it begins to put a question mark about the value of the usual way of thinking. Is this really the best thing to be doing? Is this really the best way to think? And more importantly, are the messages coming from the surface mind that does the thinking, are they really accurate messages? Is it true? Is it valuable? Is it something that I need to believe in, or is it appropriate to question it and look more deeply to see what's really going on here?

I found that the answer was often yes, it is appropriate to question it. It is appropriate to look more deeply at what's really happening here, more deeply within. As we go deeper within, we discover that there's a place of thinking that comes out of being stress-free, or some core part or deep place inside where there's calm or peace, and that the nature of those thoughts is very different. They are very simple. They can be sophisticated because they can take in the whole of who we are. Whenever we're tense, were always limited, and we have so many faculties, so many abilities that come into play. When there's a sense of harmony within, all these things can come together into an intuitive understanding or a well-informed understanding. We don't necessarily recognize all the data that's coming in, and that's why it's creative. That's why it knows so much and can be so effective. It can be sophisticated, but the content of the thoughts, the way they appear, is not complicated. It's not a deep complicated analysis. It's a satisfying thinking in and of itself; it's very simple.

Even that thinking gets quieter and quieter, and sometimes it's just this absolutely most rudimentary act of recognition of what's happening in the present moment: calm, peace, knowing, joy, concentration, spaciousness, settled. Just very simple, without leaning forward or against, not wanting or not wanting, just knowing, knowing, knowing. So much drops away of our life, things just drop away, and it just feels like the most satisfying place to be is in this very deep quiet knowing that we really feel and are connected to and are experiencing in a deep way.

It might even be possible to sense at some point that there is a kind of cognition, a kind of knowing that happens before there are words, thoughts, images. A funny thing can happen in deep states of meditation where it's possible to feel physically a sense that a thought is about to happen. The image I often have is like a surface of water, and bubbles begin growing up on the surface of the water, and that thought bubble at some point will leave the surface. I could feel a little bit of pressure, a little bit of movement or something, a little bit of energy behind the thinking. Because the deep attention is right there to feel and know and recognize what's happening, this almost preverbal knowing, that impulse to think fades away. I knew I was about to think, but I never discovered what those thoughts were going to be.

In other words, thinking begins offline often in this deeper place. We have a rich inner life that's deeper than verbal thoughts and images. When the mind is quiet, we can sometimes sense this preverbal knowing. Not that it's necessarily knowing accurately, but it's knowing freely with a depth that then we can, because we're paying attention and being mindful, use as a kind of a check and balance system. We kind of feel, "Oh, is this so? Let's find out. Let's look more deeply or check the situation out more."

The important thing I wanted to highlight today is that it's possible to let the surface mind become silent. It's exquisitely beautiful, wonderful to be in this world with a surface mind quiet and peaceful, but the deep mind present and aware and connected and considerate to what's happening around us and within us. There's an intelligence there. We don't need to have the surface mind always thinking, always operating, always figuring out. The way that we can be present for others and present for ourselves, present for this world, with the surface mind quiet and peaceful and the deeper mind available is really wonderful. Begin to recognize when the hum of the refrigerator quiets in the mind, when the surface mind gets quiet. We can still think, but we're not thinking from the place where the hum is happening, where the stress is happening—the silence of the surface mind.

I want to end with a story from my little book of stories called The Monastery Within.

The monastery work leader always appeared peaceful. This was not so unusual among the monks and nuns of the monastery. He was unique, however, in that he remained peaceful and calm even when the monastery was at its busiest, for example, when large crowds of people visited to celebrate the Buddha's birthday. If a person was needed to visit the hustle and bustle of the local market town, this was the monk the monastery usually sent. When asked how he managed to remain peaceful, he said, "I entered the monastery for peace and quiet. I had spent years in the harried world of commerce and people. I longed for the silence the monastery was rumored to have. I was delighted with my first weeks in the monastery. The silence was exquisite. However, as I settled into the silence of the place, I was shocked to learn how noisy my own mind was. The real noise was within. It was the busyness of my own mind that oppressed me, not the noise and activity of the world. Now it doesn't matter to me where I go, I carry the silence within me."

I hope that this week, talking about these different aspects of thinking has opened a window for you to investigate and consider your thinking in a new way. Just to question what your thinking is about is a step towards a kind of mental freedom where we're not caught in the grip of our thoughts. We don't automatically believe every thought we have and think that we are our thoughts. There is a deeper way of being, a deeper way of living in the world that is not from the control tower of the surface mind. May that surface mind from time to time provide you with a nurturing silence and quiet, and may you discover how to operate in this world with the surface mind quiet.

Thank you very much.

Announcements

I have a few announcements. First is I'm not going to be here for the next couple of weeks. I'm going to take the next couple of weeks more as a vacation time and will be going to be with my family. I don't know exactly what we'll be doing yet, but I just want to spend some time not teaching and taking time off. We have wonderful teachers who are coming. Liz Powell, who has not taught yet for this 7 a.m., is one of the teachers here at IMC and she's a wonderful teacher. She will be teaching next week, and I think she's teaching about the Brahma Viharas¹, a wonderful preparation maybe for the new year. And then the first week of the new year, Koto Conin, who has been here before, will be here, and I'll be here the following second week of the year.

My plan for the beginning of the year is, the last few years I've always talked about something to do with meditation practice, and sometimes a long series on it. What I'd like to do this time is go back to the basics that we use here at IMC and do kind of an in-depth instruction on the basic insight practice that I teach here. And so even if you've been a practitioner for a long time, I hope that as I teach it, new dimensions will become available for you. So it'll be a week each on the five different areas that I emphasize in the introduction to meditation course: breath, body, emotions, thinking, and then practicing in life.

Also, I want to say that since this is my last talk of the year, maybe I'll just mention that for those of you who would like to support IMC, I did write an end-of-the-year fundraising letter that might be interesting for you to read. If you'd like to support IMC, you can go to the donate page on IMC's website. Certainly, I'm very appreciative and grateful for the support that our center receives, and thank you for any support that you provide in all the different ways. I'll put it here in the chat. I think it went in. I tried, and there it is, yes. There's a link there. Hopefully, I don't know if you can get it, but maybe it's not fully there, the link, but it's on the YouTube, underneath the video, there's a place for the year-end for Gil.

So thank you, and may your beginning of this new solar year that's today be a rebirth of all that's good in you. And I look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks.