This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Happiness Here and Now; Core Teachings pt 2 (1 of 5) Happiness of Practice. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Happiness Here and Now; Dharmette: Core Teachings pt 2 (1 of 5) Happiness of Practice - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 17, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Good morning, everyone, here in California. Good morning from here, and good day. I'm sitting here quite happy looking at the chats that are coming through. Wonderful good mornings. It's quite nice.

I'm happy to be here with all of you and to start this new week of teaching. What I'd like to do this week is to go back over what I did last week. I believe that there's much more to say on each of the five topics, and given how central these ideas, these practice approaches, are to my teachings, maybe it's not a surprise that it's nice for me to be able to go through them again.

For today, I'd like to keep these instructions quite simple, so I ask you to find a way that you can make what I'm about to say work for you. It might be challenging for some of you, for sure, to hear this, and many of you might come up with exceptions that this can't be universal, what I'm going to say. I would probably agree with you that that's the case, but still, there might be a way, a perspective that you could use, that you can find beneficial. It's not universal, it's not going to be true all the time, and it might not address all of your concerns in practice. But still, it might, at least for these next few minutes, be a different orientation, a different perspective from which you can learn something. Sometimes we even learn something deep when something doesn't work for us.

The simple idea is that Buddhist practice is oriented towards suffering and the end of suffering, but it's an orientation that, one way or the other, brings happiness, is oriented towards happiness as much as it's oriented towards suffering. The very orientation, the very perspective, the very ability to practice with suffering can be a source of joy, happiness. Be so lucky, so fortunate to have a practice. In spite of whatever suffering we have, wow, we can practice with this. Not many people have that. To understand that the practice always has something to contribute when we're challenged and when we're not, and that there's happiness in just the engagement of practice, the ability to do it. The happiness of the faith of engaging with it.

There's the happiness that somehow exists side-by-side with suffering, that these two sometimes don't live so separate from each other. That the more we suffer, maybe we can feel our way into it, our way to the other side of suffering. We can maybe even see the possibility of an ending of suffering, kind of through the cracks of our suffering. So as we sit this morning, we'll sit mostly in silence now, but orient yourself towards a realistic happiness. By realistic, I mean not a denial of the challenges you have, or the suffering you have, the pains that you have. In no way is this meant to be a denial or an avoidance, but it is a way of shifting the orientation from being preoccupied with the suffering, from being caught in the suffering, reactive to the suffering, to having some form of happiness, joy, together with our challenge. So that we are more appreciative, more nourished, more supported by the happiness of practice, and that happiness maybe allows us to be even more realistic in a healthy, beneficial way about suffering.

Guided Meditation: Happiness Here and Now

Assuming a meditation posture, gently closing your eyes.

And gently taking a few conscious breaths, with as much consciousness, awareness as you can, relaxing as you exhale.

Maybe it's not so much that you are aware of your breathing, as your body senses the breathing. The experience of breathing senses itself.

If there is any discomfort or suffering, any unwholesomeness or tension or strain, distress, pain, through this sitting, perhaps the experience of breathing, or perhaps not the breath, the whole body, or if not the whole body, the kind of listening or sensing to the space around the body allows you to shift from being focused on suffering to feeling the goodness of having a practice, of being present.

A happiness here and now that orients the thinking mind to become quieter, stiller, so there's more sensitivity to being with the well-being that is here.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, continue breathing mindfully, tapping into whatever sense of ease or calm or happiness, well-being that might be here for you. With that as a reference point, turn your attention out into the world that you'll encounter today or tomorrow, a world that's local, that's far away.

May it be that your ability to gaze upon the world kindly, peacefully, inspires you to go forth into the world. That in a world of suffering, you bring happiness. In the world where people feel unsafe, are unsafe, you bring safety. In a world of war and conflict, you bring peace. And in a world where so many people are caught in attachments, how to bring the greatest benefits to this world around us. May all beings be happy.

Dharmette: Core Teachings pt 2 (1 of 5) Happiness of Practice

So before I begin this talk, I have one announcement to make about an upcoming event here at IMC, and it'll be on Zoom. IMC is going to, for the first time, do a kind of celebration of the federal and state holiday of Juneteenth Day, which is this Wednesday. I feel it's one of the great holidays in the United States because of commemorating a long overdue freedom, liberation of people here in this country: the liberation from slavery. It's the date when, after the end of the Civil War, slave owners neglected to tell slaves in Texas that they were free. So it wasn't until this day that the US Army came into that part of Texas to bring the news and to free the slaves, the final freedom. It's a wonderful celebration of a painful part of American history. Suffering and happiness together. We're very fortunate to have an [unintelligible] to come and lead us in this event, and she'll give a little Dharma talk. The information about it is on the IMC website, on what's new, and on the calendar. It'll be at 6:00 p.m. California time, and I look forward to seeing any of you who might come there to be part of it. Thank you.

For the talks for this week, I'd like to go through again the topics from last week's talk, which were the core foundational teachings that I rely on, or that are underneath how I teach Buddhism. I thought it would be invaluable for people, for me to just lay it out how it is for me, so that you're not guessing or assuming a lot about me. This topic is something I'd like to continue with for this week and go through each of the five topics and offer some more thoughts on it, partly with the idea that you will reflect on this. Some of the value of these YouTube teachings that I do will come to you when you reflect on them and consider, maybe have conversations with friends afterwards, or journal, or think about them for yourself and how this works for you.

So the first one is, maybe that's why it's first, it is so central, is that it's an orientation towards suffering and the end of suffering. Many years ago, when I was first getting involved in Buddhism, I went to have dinner with a friend, and she asked me, you know, "What is this teaching of Buddhism about? What is Buddhism about that you're interested in it?" I was a little bit thrown off. I was new to it all, as I was young. So I proceeded to explain to her the Four Noble Truths.¹ I didn't give a Dharma talk; it was relatively short. So that was kind of the end of that part of the conversation.

Then, as I was walking home afterwards, I thought to myself, "Wow, that was a pretty simplistic account for Buddhism and my involvement with it." I felt a little bit kind of embarrassed that I would do something so simplistic. Many years later, I came to appreciate, no, that was really the heart of it. That was like the best explanation I could do. That this addressing of suffering, the conditions from which suffering arises, the end of suffering, and the path to the ending. I mean, what a fantastic thing. I've spent a lot of time in my life reflecting and thinking about the Four Noble Truths, and I find them ever fascinating and deepening and opening. I just feel so delighted by the simplicity and the directness of this teaching.

One of my favorite kind of reworkings of the Four Noble Truths is: if you cling to anything, you will suffer. If you let go of that clinging, the suffering ends—the suffering from the clinging. To me, that's a very powerful, succinct way of saying it that shows you we have a role in the end of suffering. If the suffering we're addressing in Buddhism is that which arises out of clinging, then we have to somehow take a deep look at ourselves to understand what we're contributing to the suffering.

One of the tasks of having suffering at the center of the Dharma, of practice, is not to suffer better, in the sense of just having more suffering, but to suffer better in the sense that we suffer in such a way that we start looking and seeing, what's the ecology of suffering? What is this suffering? It's like putting a question mark next to it. What is this? In the very questioning of it, we begin to find ourselves free from it. In the very questioning of it, we're no longer locked into it, no longer caught in it, but we begin to kind of step back and ask, what is this? It's a very powerful step to ask that question.

Part of this question, "What is this suffering?" is the question, "What is my relationship to suffering?" That might not go to the heart of suffering yet, but how do I relate to it? Some people relate to it with fear. Some people relate to suffering with dismay and discouragement. Some people relate to it with attachment. There are people who are attached to suffering, who hold on to it in some way. Some people think it's bizarre that they're told that maybe they're attached to suffering, but Ajahn Chah would have talked about people being enchanted with suffering. Some people are so familiar with suffering; it has been such an important part of their life, such a big part of their life, that they can't imagine who they'll be without it. They're afraid of letting go of it because then who will they be? Some people form a very strong identity around their suffering, and it's an identity sometimes that other people support. In fact, part of the reason for the identity is to get other people to relate to them through the lens of that suffering, to feel sorry for them or take care of them or something.

So, the relationship to the suffering. One of the core practices we do to look at this is a teaching called the Five Hindrances.² When we suffer, when we are feeling emotional distress of any kind at all, do we succumb to some kind of sensual desire to take us away from it, addictive behavior, for example? Or when we have this kind of psychological distress, do we have aversion? Do we get caught in blame or aversion or hostility towards anything—the suffering, or others, or the situation, or ourselves? Do we freeze? Do we get rigid? Do we shut down in some way? Do we fall asleep? Then the fourth hindrance is, are we restless, running around in circles? Or do we get full of remorse and regrets because of what we've done or because of how we are? And then the final is doubt. We just live in indecisiveness, not being able to make any commitment, not knowing which way to go.

So these are all—this is very, you know, just basically giving you the list, but we're beginning to question, "What is my relationship to suffering?" And that's a different question from, "Why am I suffering?" Sometimes in this practice, it's more useful and more important to ask, "How am I relating?" That's kind of like the outer layer of the shell. Without having some sense of the relationship we have to it, we can't really ask the question of why or how or what's underneath it. We have to kind of clear out the space around our suffering and not be so locked into it or caught in it. Being caught in suffering is the relationship. Being resistant to suffering is the relationship.

Learning slowly, you see that suffering and the way that we relate to it are two different things. As we start teasing those apart, we see that we can create space, we can create distance, we can create freedom towards the suffering. If we're so locked into the idea that happiness only happens when the suffering goes away, we miss a very important part of what this Buddhist practice can bring us, and that is a certain kind of well-being, a certain kind of delight and joy that comes from freeing our relationship to suffering. I'd like to propose that that's an easier job than getting rid of suffering. But if we don't see the difference between our relationship and the suffering itself, then it makes the task so much more difficult.

Part of the reason why people practice concentration practice is that it's a way of shifting that relationship. By not understanding what it is, we get really concentrated, and the complicated relationship falls away and we can see more clearly. But in mindfulness practice, we want to understand how we relate to suffering, how we're caught in it and resistant to it and all this, and then be so happy, be delighted that we have a practice that helps us to understand that, that helps us to kind of separate out the extra that we add to it. So we can learn to suffer with nothing extra. That is special. I don't know if it's an inspiring concept, just pure suffering. The simplicity, just the suffering itself without the stories we add to it, without the predictions of what it means in the future, without the fantasy and concepts and constructs, layers and layers we add to it. Just: this is painful, this is difficult, this is hard, whatever is going on, in the simplicity of that statement.

Then to find there's a happiness in having a practice that puts a question after suffering, that we have happiness and joy and faith and inspiration that, oh, we have a practice that addresses this. I can sit and meditate, I can follow my breath, I can do some concentration practice, just enough to be able to look more carefully. In the process of that, there's a way in which we are so happy to engage in a practice, to give ourselves to a practice of meditation, of mindfulness, of honesty, of engagement with this process, that the very engaging of it starts to feel almost physiologically good, almost like you're involved in a craft or an art or some activity that you really get absorbed in, and just the activity of doing it feels so good. So believe it or not, really giving yourselves over to a practice to come to the end of suffering brings happiness.

In the kind of simplistic way that I think sometimes is helpful to hear, Buddhism teaches there's suffering and the end of suffering. The path in between those two, how to get from suffering to the end of suffering, is a path of happiness. Happiness is that important, and it's realistic to engage in our practice and in our life in such a way that happiness is the guide, well-being is the guide to the end of suffering. So Buddhism offers a realistic assessment and engagement with our suffering, an honesty about the fact that we're suffering, and that realism is a catalyst for happiness. Not to paper over the suffering, but rather, in the midst of it, to know there's another way, to know there's a possibility of freedom, and to be delighted to engage in a practice that is honest about suffering and also has a realistic sense of a joy, a delight, a happiness that can come from a path, a practice to the end of suffering.

So may you find the delight, the joy, the happiness that can come when we practice with suffering. Thank you, and I look forward to tomorrow.