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Guided Meditation: Tranquilities Influence; Dharmette: The End of Suffering (3 of 5) Second Noble Truth - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 13, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Tranquilities Influence

Warm greetings from the Insight Meditation Center. It is wonderful to come down from my home to sit here and share the Dharma and share the meditation. Thank you for being here.

There is a short Buddhist saying—the shortest version of it in English could be: "For wisdom, be tranquil." If you want to become wise, cultivate tranquility. In fact, the Theravada path of meditation is sometimes called samatha-vipassanā¹ in Pali, which in English would be tranquility and insight.

Part of the function of developing concentration is to have a good amount of tranquility so that awareness can do some deep inner work. This work is hard for awareness to do if it is hijacked by our reactivity, by our emotions, by our preferences, likes and dislikes, or by the stories that the mind spins out. So, tranquility is important.

There are three different kinds of tranquility: tranquility of the body, tranquility of the mind, and—separate from those two—tranquility of mindfulness, or tranquility of awareness itself.

Sometimes, if we can cultivate some degree of tranquility of the body, it supports tranquility of the mind. Some tranquility of the mind supports tranquility of awareness. But sometimes that is not possible. Sometimes the body is agitated and on fire in some way. Sometimes it is the mind which is agitated and on fire for some reason. But awareness doesn't have to be tied to the body or the mind.

This is the great power and magic of mindfulness: that it is possible to know, in a tranquil way, the body in any state that it is in. It is possible to know, calmly, the mind in any state that it is in. If the awareness is tranquil knowing these different things, then it is clear that awareness is not reacting to the body or the mind. It is not pulled into the mood and agitation of the body and mind. There is this peaceful, quiet place of knowing—of awareness, of observing our experience—that is distinct from what we are experiencing. It is invaluable to have this tranquil awareness.

Today, the focus is going to be emotions. Emotions drive us. Emotions grab us. Emotions come with authority. Emotions come with urgency. In some ways, most emotions can be understood as involving some kind of desire—wanting something directly or indirectly. So we can get pulled into them. We can identify ourselves with them. We can define ourselves by our emotions. We can judge ourselves by our emotions. We can struggle with our emotions, rejecting them or trying to hold on to them.

Or, we can know them tranquilly. I propose this is very respectful. It allows emotions to be themselves and to do what is inherent to the emotion: that it is in motion. All emotions are processes that are unfolding, moving, shifting, changing, and passing through. We get stuck in them, we stick to them, and we interfere with the motion of emotions.

So, assume a meditation posture that will support you to be alert in a relaxed way, and calm in an alert way. It could be standing. It could be walking slowly, quietly back and forth. It could be sitting. It could be lying down. Gently close the eyes or lower the gaze, with half-open eyes not looking at anything in particular.

Just sitting this way, how would you characterize your attention—the way that you are aware of your present moment experience? Is it more on the calm side or more on the agitated side? Does your attention come with a mood? An attitude of wanting or not wanting something? Of straining? Resisting? Of reluctance or eagerness?

Notice in a very simple way the quality, mood, or attitude in how you are aware, or your attitude about being aware.

Then gently, as a shy cat eases in, ease in to the experience of your body breathing. In a way that is nice for you, satisfying, take a few deeper, longer breaths and relax as you exhale.

Then, returning to our normal breath, let your attention be open to the experience of the body breathing. Find some place in the body where the attention is not straining or working. Some place where there can be some sense of ease with breathing itself and with awareness of breathing. Maybe some place in the torso that moves with each breath, but which is not doing the breathing; it is a part of your body that is moved by the process of breathing.

Relaxing the body as you exhale. And as you exhale, relax the mind, the thinking mind. Maybe with the idea that the thinking mind sits on top of the body, and as you relax the mind, it settles into the body.

Then, settling into breathing. Being aware of the body's experience of breathing, the rhythm, breathing in and out.

See, as you are with the breathing, if there is any center within, a place within from which you are aware. The place of knowing, the place of directing attention. Any place that is associated with doing mindfulness, doing awareness. As you exhale, relax this doing. See if you can shift awareness, shift knowing, to some other location in the body, in the head—anywhere where there is less doing, less force behind awareness.

See if you can find a way to be aware that is tranquil. Calm. An awareness that is aware without being involved with what you are aware of.

Awareness that has the tranquility of the opening space of a door. An open door people go through, but the opening is not agitated. It doesn't resist. And so, an open awareness.

Experiment with having a moment of awareness that is tranquil. A lot of small moments, brief periods of time being tranquilly aware of this. Maybe it helps to use a mental note so you are clear about what it is you are knowing, and the mental note is done tranquilly. Peacefully.

Then gently, slowly becoming aware of your emotional state. The general mood that you are in. The state of mind. How you are feeling overall. See if you can know it with tranquil awareness. Tranquil knowing. Maybe even using a mental label for your emotional state. It could be as simple as calling it "an emotion," where the labeling is an opening of the door to a tranquil awareness of your emotional state.

Each time you label or name an emotional state, see if awareness can be tranquil for a few moments until you use a mental note again.

A cat that goes through an open door doesn't get caught by the door frame. Each moment of awareness can be like an open door so that the movement of emotions can pass through without sticking to anything. Passing through some moments of tranquil awareness.

As we come to the end of this sitting, check in with yourself again as we began. What is your emotional state? Your general attitude, state of mind? And how has it shifted from the beginning of the meditation to coming to the end? What difference does it make to you to allow all things to be, but to know them tranquilly?

One difference that tranquil awareness could make is it can allow us to be more attentive to the wholeness of other people. More attentive to be attuned, be connected to others in a way that we care for their well-being and their welfare. We would like them to be happy, peaceful.

Where we might wish for the welfare of others:

May it be that all our meditations lead us to care more for the people in our lives—known and strangers. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

And what a difference we can make if all of us who are here today for this meditation could contribute a small piece to the well-being of others.

Thank you.

Dharmette: The End of Suffering (3 of 5) Second Noble Truth

Wow, that is quite impressive to see all these little comments. They are going by so fast now that I can't see them all, but I am going to read them carefully when we finish here, when I have more time.

Good morning. Good day to this third day of talk on the Four Noble Truths. After the first talk, which was an introduction, and yesterday talking about suffering, today the focus is the cause of suffering.

When the Buddha talked about the First Noble Truth, the way that he described it is suffering that arises or is constructed by the person who suffers. The classic way he describes or defines it talks about five different ways that we construct our experience in such a way that there is clinging and craving involved—that we build up a kind of cathedral of self, or a building of reactivity, where the accumulation ends up with one big ball of suffering.

So when we come to the Second Noble Truth, it is the truth of the cause of suffering. Before I tell you what that cause is that the Buddha offers, it is important to understand that here the orientation is: What is our contribution to suffering?

If someone walking down the street, or someplace, steps on my foot and maybe even hurts it a little bit, that might be painful. But I might get irritated. It might relate to all the different people lately who have been stepping on my feet, and I am just frustrated and angry with humankind because of how thoughtless they are stepping on my foot. I start spinning out all kinds of thoughts about myself and what people are doing to me, and how stepping on my foot is an act of disrespect. And, "You know, I'm always invisible to people. It must be because I somehow have the wrong kind of glasses. I should really get new glasses, but I don't know what—I can never make a good choice and I'm such a bad chooser of glasses."

The mind spins out and all these constructs can build and create huge edifices. But it turned out that the person was maybe blind and didn't see you, and you actually stepped into their path. You didn't see that they were blind—they had a walking stick—and so the whole spinning out was your addition to something that was not really present at all in that event itself.

We can contribute—even though there might be some harm being done, my foot was stepped on—we can contribute whole layers. Sometimes other people are doing things which are hostile and hurtful to us, and that should not be overlooked or not dealt with appropriately. But even there, we can contribute to the suffering ourselves. Some people see this—I've known people who have seen it years later—how their resentment towards someone was their way of constructing suffering for themselves. Long after the original person maybe even forgot that they existed or forgot the event, the repetition, the story, the resentment is something we contribute going on.

So the particular focus of the Four Noble Truths is not all forms of emotional pain, but the kind of emotional pain that we contribute to.

The definition or simple explanation the Buddha offers for the cause of suffering is called taṇhā². In Pali, taṇhā usually means "thirst." It is a metaphor. When we are thirsty, there is a compulsion, a reaching out, an intensity of wanting something—wanting water. That can grab us and push us to do things.

So it is not just a simple desire that arises. Desires for me are a dime a dozen. They can come, and I just let them come and go. Sometimes I smile when they come and just shrug my shoulders and let them pass through. Occasionally I get caught in it. Occasionally, when I get caught too much, what comes is disappointment, or expectation, or frustration, or being upset by whatever gets in the way of my desire.

But when the desire becomes strong—when the desire becomes strong enough to get in the way of our ease, or peace, or calm; when it grabs us by the nose and pulls us around—then what the Buddha calls taṇhā arises. Rather than being translated as "thirst," English translators—to be more descriptive or more to the point—will translate it as "craving."

Craving is a kind of compulsive desire where, if craving is strong, we kind of lose our autonomy. We lose our freedom to the desire because it now has authority. It now is in charge. It is now pushing us, compelling us to do something. Or, even if we don't act on it, it is such a strong force in the mind and heart that it churns, it pushes, it brings tension. It can get so strong that not only does craving construct the sense of self, construct ideas and stories about what something means, but the craving itself is suffering. There is something about thirst which is uncomfortable. When we are really thirsty, it is a kind of pain or discomfort.

So the cause of suffering in the classic teachings of the Four Noble Truths is a certain compulsive desire that is itself unsatisfying to have. We might be blinded by the object of desire. We might be enamored with the object, having wonderful fantasies about it. Or, if the desire is negative—like wanting something to go away and there is hostility, "I want to push it away"—we might be caught up, not enamored, but caught or mesmerized by the hostility, really caught in the grip and the trance of the hostility. So craving can be for or against something. But in and of itself, there is tension, there is pain or emotional pain in it when we are grabbed and pushed like that.

This is the definition that is offered by the tradition: that the cause of emotional pain—our contribution to the cause—is craving. A certain kind of intensity of desire, wanting or not wanting.

Because it is our contribution, we can make a difference. That is where we can make a difference. We can't always change other people. Sometimes other people do mean things to us, maybe say something that feels clearly offensive to us. Maybe it is something that ideally we should stand up for ourselves and say, "You shouldn't do that." But we don't always have that ability because of who we are, because of the situation, all kinds of things. So we can't necessarily change other people, but we can change ourselves.

If we are contributing to the suffering, that part that we are contributing is where we can have the greatest role, take the greatest responsibility, and have the greatest success in making a difference. It makes a huge difference to be able to turn around and see what we are contributing—what we are adding that is extra on top of something. The way that we are tensing up, the way that we are pushing, the way that we are straining, the way that we are collapsing or tightening up all over in the heart, and the belly, and the shoulders, in the mind.

Because craving—this cause of optional emotional pain—can be strong, and often is somatic as well, that becomes an important way to find relief from it, and then eventually release from it: by remembering to relax, to calm, to settle the body and mind. We can't always settle and relax all aspects of the mind. We can't make pain go away. But sometimes we can relax and open up and soften around the edges. Those places that we can relax, we can relax.

Then eventually, we might be able to offer a presence, an attention—to be attentive to whatever is going on where the attention has not been hijacked by craving. Where attention has not been used in the construction of suffering, the construction of this edifice of self and stories that we have. That attention has been extricated from all the attachments, all the identities that we are caught in, so that the awareness itself, at least, is not caught. The awareness becomes tranquil, peaceful, still, quiet.

In so doing, it becomes much more creative, much more intelligent, much wiser. Rather than a tranquil awareness making less of who we are, it actually brings forth much more of who we are from our depths—much more of the fullness of what is available.

And so we come to the saying that I mentioned at the beginning of the meditation. The simplest version is: "For wisdom, be tranquil." If you would like to be wise, cultivate tranquility. A tranquility that frees you from the reactive craving that is seen as the cause of optional suffering.

So may you find the ways in which you get caught in desires, and rather than being identified and caught in desire, identify with something which can't really be the "self" but still, it is provisionally good to do so: identify with tranquil awareness itself.

Thank you.