This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Settling into Wholeness; Attitudes (1 of 5) From Desire to Contentment. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Settling into Wholeness; Dharmette: Attitudes (1 of 5) From Desire to Contentment - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 20, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Settling into Wholeness

I have been away on retreats the last two weeks, and I still feel somehow the presence of those retreats. So, I'm going to offer something this morning for meditation that comes from the retreat, and we'll see if it works for you all this way, outside of retreats.

The general theme for this week is attitude—the attitudes that we live our lives by. Some of these attitudes are quite deep. Some of these attitudes we're not often conscious of them, but they can be pervasive, setting the mood or setting the orientation, the perspective by which we live our lives and how we understand ourselves.

Part of the possibility of meditation is that it's a quieting movement of the mind, so that we begin quieting some of the voices, some of the attitudes, some of the beliefs, some of the ways of thinking, ways of believing about ourselves and our life that have a chance to quiet down because they're no longer active. Every belief, every way of thinking is an activity of the mind; it's not inherent in the universe. And so, to quiet the thinking mind so that we see ourselves and see the world without the usual filters of how we approach the world, the usual filters for understanding ourselves, the internalized messages we have from our society about who we are, or all kinds of conclusions we have. And these are getting quieter.

And so, when we start meditation with the process of relaxation, this is not beginning Buddhism; it's really part and parcel of this very deep movement to settling, deactivating some of the unnecessary activations of the mind that do not give us an accurate perspective on this life of ours.

To assume a meditation posture and to gently close your eyes. Take a few moments to feel your body as if it's okay to be just the way you are. Whatever way you are, almost as if you appreciate that whatever is happening for you, whatever way you are, is part of a wholeness of the moment. And you are going to sit in the middle of that wholeness, feeling and knowing the discomforts of the body, the emotions of the body, the tensions, as if it's part of the wholeness, discovering what's here.

And then gently taking some deeper breaths, and on the exhale, relaxing the body. Not breathing in too deeply, but just enough so that there's a pleasure, an aliveness that comes from breathing in deeply, and then relaxing the muscles of the face. Maybe you can imagine the muscles of the face falling away from the bone, the skull relaxing around the eyes.

And then to breathe gently and deeply. As you exhale, relax the shoulders, soften in the shoulders. There's a way in which relaxing the body, the tensions of the body, helps the mind to relax. The tensions in the body begin in the mind.

Breathing in and relaxing the belly on the exhale. Now feel the area of your heart, the heart center, and relax, soften in the heart.

As you continue relaxing the thinking muscle—whatever sensations there are in the head, or in the thighs, shoulders, belly connected to thinking. Ancient Buddhists imagined there was a puppeteer in the head with strings that tugged on all the muscles. Letting that puppeteer relax, settle down.

And then relaxing on the exhale down into your torso, maybe even all the way down to the belly, and feeling the movements of the body as you breathe. Maybe almost as if you're gently being rocked by small waves as you float on water.

If there's a lot of thinking, with each exhale, quiet the thinking mind. If you think in words, let your thinking become like a library voice: quiet, soft, maybe even loving. If you think in images, perhaps there's a way of slowing them down or letting them recede a little bit into the distance so they're not so pressing.

Allowing the torso, the belly, the chest to experience the movements of breathing, maybe as gentle waves while you're sitting on a little rowboat. Comforting small movements.

If you find yourself thinking, trusting that there's something deeper here for you to rest in if the thinking mind can become quieter, softer, more relaxed. Letting go of thoughts and letting go into the body's experience of breathing.

And then to imagine a very peaceful, clear lake. The water is so clear you can see down to the bottom. Clearly see the bottom of the lake. It's peaceful, clear, clean. A beautiful stillness in the water. And you have a round, flat rock of some very light material. You take the rock and you release it into the water. And as you watch it settle to the bottom of the lake, let your thinking become quieter. As everything settles, let your awareness settle. Let yourself settle into the bottom of your inner lake, to come to a rest in the deepest place within.

And from there, become attuned to the body breathing. And from the deepest place you know, gently say 'no thank you' to any thoughts that arise. Especially any thoughts that have any criticism or negative judgments about yourself. You don't need to think these right now. Let go. Let go. Relax into the depths of your being here.

There can be a place within, when we're relaxed and settled, where there's no need for any thoughts that there's something wrong with us. Those are extra. Without those thoughts, we can experience ourselves as being whole. No part pushed out, no part judged. As thinking gets quiet, it can heal the inner divisions we have, and everything we are could be included in the whole.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, to imagine that you're sitting within a large sphere of goodness, of warmth, of safety. And that all of who you are makes up that sphere. You have nothing to prove, nothing to assert. You're allowed to be yourself in whatever way you are, but not choosing any particular aspect. Letting it all exist within a larger whole. Parts of yourself that you know, and you don't know.

And from whatever place inside that's calm or relaxed, even if it's just ever so slightly so, imagine you're gazing upon other people. Looking upon them from a place of safety and maybe contentment. And from there, maybe there's goodwill, warmth, care. And see if you can, from that place, have desires for their well-being. A well-wishing.

May the people of my life be happy. May the people of my life be safe. May the people of my life be healthy. May the people of my life be peaceful. May they be free. A freedom where there can be their wholeness, where they can settle and be contented and happy as they are in their wholeness. The wholeness which does not act from the limited perspectives of anger, ill will, or greed.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.

And may the way that we look upon people help them see themselves as whole, respected, and loved people in this world.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Attitudes (1 of 5) From Desire to Contentment

So good morning everyone, and welcome to this Monday here in California. Morning in California. And I feel like in this day in November, just before Thanksgiving, that here in the United States we kind of turned a corner to a new season. And with Thanksgiving coming up, I thought it might be nice to spend the week in the beginning of this winter season focusing on the topic of attitude.

There was a time when I taught the introduction to mindfulness meditation, which normally is a five-week program. There was a period of time, a few years, where I did six weeks, where the fifth week became a focus on mindfulness of attitude. Attitude is very important because it's the background or the manner or the lens by which we see the world, understand the world, behave in the world.

And it's often invisible, because it's kind of like... if you're focusing on what you're seeing, you might not be paying any attention to the fact that you're straining or that you're afraid, and you're looking for the dangers or the safety. Or that you are thinking that in order to have a good time and be safe or be comfortable in yourself, there has to be pleasure. And so looking for where is it pleasant, where are the nice things to do.

So there's an attitude behind, or a belief behind, how we see, how we talk, how we live. And those attitudes can be quite deep and subconscious, and we are not often conscious of them. One that I had, when I started my meditation practice in the monasteries, at some point I realized that no matter what I was experiencing, the belief, the attitude I had towards all of it was: it's not the real thing.

So in any meditation experience, if I was calm, it wasn't the real calm. If I was present, it wasn't the real way of being present. If I was breathing, it wasn't the true way that you're supposed to breathe when you meditate. And I didn't know that I had this belief. It was very, very quiet in the back of the mind, but it brought a kind of discontent and a dissatisfaction, and a little bit of a feeling of inadequacy that I carried with me in everything I was doing.

I was so grateful to see it because once I saw it, I saw well, this is a little bit ridiculous. And then I tried for a while just to switch the belief to: "If it's happening to me, it's the real thing." And that kind of loosened things up and broke up the strength of this attitude that I carried with me for so long.

So, to become aware of attitude. And as we do this week, I would like to say that there are kind of two categories of attitudes that we have, depending on the source within which it comes from. One is an attitude that is from reactivity, and maybe from a certain kind of conceit. And the other arises out of a non-activity. It arises out of a deep ability to not always be busy, not be racing around, not doing, not feeling like we have to accomplish something or fix something or understand something, but let a deep rest happen.

So for today, I'd like to suggest that one attitude that can be pervasive in some people's lives is desire. That there's always wanting something. And so sometimes there are some people who can want without even having something in mind of what they want. It's just the habit of wanting, the desire to have something. And so wherever they go, they're looking for, "What is it I might want in this situation? What do I want to get? What do I want to do, or have, or receive?" And there's always this wanting.

And some of it can come from a feeling of lack, a feeling of inadequacy, a feeling of scarcity even. I spent a period of time in my very early twenties being very poor and not having enough food. And for a while after that period, I became a little bit of a neurotic eater. Just always looking for food and wanting food and eating a lot to make up for it. And this wanting was just so powerful until I really started meditating and settled something deep, deep inside of me.

And so that wanting, that desire, sometimes that greed, is expressed in how we use our eyes. Where the eyes are searching and scanning, and maybe a little bit coming out of their sockets, kind of straining to figure out, "What is it that I want?" or "How do I get it?" or something.

I've had that when I went to bookstores when I was younger. I loved the idea of books, but when I was poor, I couldn't buy books much, but I wanted books. I used to just look at all these titles, look at books, and I was in the bookstore looking for the books that I wanted to buy, buy, buy. But I wasn't going to buy any, and I left bookstores with a kind of headache and exhausted from it.

So sometimes it's in the eyes, sometimes in our posture, leaning forward or tensing up in a kind of way from the desire. To begin becoming sensitive to a pervasive attitude, a manner, a mood of desire, which maybe underlies a lot of the behavior we have, a lot of ways we're thinking. If you track what you're thinking about through the day, how much of the thoughts are motivated by desire and wanting something, wanting something different? And as I said, some of that can be born from a discontent, from an attitude, from a belief that there's not enough, that we're afraid, we want to prove ourselves, we want to be approved of by other people. All kinds of things can go behind that desire, but they're all activities of the mind, kind of of the surface mind.

And as we meditate, as we have some way to quiet that surface mind, and there's an absence of always doing, always going, then there can be an alternative. I'd like to propose to this mind that's always desiring is contentment. To be content. To be content with what you have. To be contented with your basic requisites¹ cared for, a roof over your house, clothes on your body. Just content with the basics: you're safe, you're cared for.

But it's not a contentment that is a belief or something you have to do or talk yourself into. It's a contentment that comes from the mind being quiet enough that it's not operating from this desire and feeling of lack, which are activated states, reactive states. This quietness, this contentment that is almost a non-doing, arises out of this deep subtleness. You have to stay settled to feel this deep contentment or return to it. It's not something where if you lose your contentment, you have to do more to become content. It's more like an undoing.

Realizing that there is a contentment that's possible. A certain kind of contentment. Not necessarily content with everything, but the ongoing attitude, the mood that we're in, that's what we're talking about this week. So that even though you might be discontented with something, like politics or something, the ongoing attitude by which you see the world, understand the world, understand yourself, is seen through a lens of contentment. There's a mood of contentment that's pervasive. It's the background for how you think and speak and go about the day.

And I'd like to propose that that sense of contentment arises when we're not activated with other attitudes, other beliefs, other ways of thinking that somehow are critical, somehow are divisive, somehow fracturing something that takes away our overall sense of wholeness. When we're operating from the thoughts, the belief that something's wrong with us, acting from a place that we're a problem and there are problems with us—we all have so-called problems, we all have ways in which we are not perfect. But to be operating with that as an attitude, it's just pervasive. Carrying with us, retelling ourselves the same story, the same idea, so we travel around with that attitude all the time, is completely unnecessary.

To find some way to settle that, to step away from it enough so that we don't believe it, enough so that a different attitude is the one that is supporting us, that's feeding us, that's benefiting us. And we're not walking around with an attitude that's undermining ourselves. So even if some of the things about you are true, that maybe you have some kind of quirk that's difficult, do not use that as the basis for a pervasive attitude that you carry with you all the time. That's unnecessary. There are ways of being honest and clear and practical about the quirks we have without it becoming a pervasive view that something is wrong with me, something I have that makes me a problem for the world, or something like that.

So contentment. Today I'd like to suggest that if you're interested, that you kind of ride through the day with an investigation and looking at these two: How does desire work for you? How pervasive is it? How much are you caught in the world of desire, wanting things? And is there kind of not just a doing of contentment, which is not so interesting, but rather a settling into contentment? A kind of opening up and relaxing into a place where there's a sense of wholeness of who we are, rather than a sense of divisiveness or fractured sense of self.

And in that wholeness, there's less to do, less to prove. And out of that can come a contentment. Out of that contentment can come a very different way to operate in the world, and speak and do things. You know, be a fully engaged citizen, but from an attitude that's beneficial.

So, to spend some time appreciating what might be the pervasive attitudes that you carry with you. And consider whether the attitude that you're carrying needs to be 24/7. Does it need to be always operating and always the view through which you see things? And if it's a reactive attitude or an undermining attitude, is there an alternative? And for today, I suggest you look at desires and contentment. Is there a way to be content and still take care of what you need, take care of what needs to happen, but from that contentment rather than from an attitude of desire or even greed?

So thank you. May this support your deep well-being, to see the difference between these two kinds of attitudes.