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Guided Meditation: Yes to Mindfulness; Dharmette: The End of Suffering (5 of 5) Fourth Noble Truth - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 18, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Yes to Mindfulness

Hello on this Monday morning. For those of you who were here on Friday, apologies for our technological challenges here at IMC. Things had been changed in the recording equipment and not put back together properly, so it took a while to figure out what the issue was. We didn't really meet last Friday, but it works out well because I will finish the series today, and then I have a four-part series for the rest of the week.

The topic last week was the Four Noble Truths. The Buddha has a very strong orientation to look at conditionality—to look at how one thing conditions another, how one thing sets up the conditions for something else to arise. Suffering is not all bad in the Buddhist teachings because suffering is the necessary condition to really understand suffering: to see it, to stop for it, and to care for it. It sets up the conditions for having inspiration, confidence, and faith in a path to the ending of suffering.

That is a beautiful thing to have: inspiration, enthusiasm, confidence, and trust. The classic word is saddhā¹, which is often translated into English as "faith." Use whichever one of those words works for you.

As we start the meditation today, call upon whatever confidence, trust, enthusiasm, inspiration, or faith you have in this practice as a way of addressing the challenges of this life. Do this so that you can give yourself more wholeheartedly to the simplicity of mindfulness—the simplicity of being aware here and now.

It is a powerful thing to be mindful, to be aware, to understand, and to know and feel what is happening. That kind of offering of presence and attention takes away some of the energy of preoccupation, anxiety, desires, attachments, and being lost in thought. It takes this life energy of who we are and begins putting it in a good direction—the good direction of simple awareness.

Assume a meditation posture. Think of it as a posture of attention. In whatever way works for you, assume that posture with some care so that it feels like your whole body is going to be attentive. Gently close your eyes.

Take a few gently long breaths, just comfortable enough to feel the rib cage and the torso expand. As you exhale, perhaps take a longer exhale than usual so that you can relax, let go, and settle in here.

Let your breathing return to normal. Continue to relax. As you relax the body, feel like you are relaxing into some inner depth, some place deep inside where you feel stability, steadiness, and subtleness. Relax the face, shoulders, belly, and chest as it works for you.

Then, let your breathing breathe itself. Let yourself be quieter and stiller, no longer making any effort to relax. Be stiller, quieter. Bring attentiveness here to the body breathing—maybe an attentiveness or sensing from within the body itself.

In the quiet of sitting here, can you find, remind yourself of, or touch into whatever you have that is a gentle "yes" to being mindful? To being present with attention? To be aware here?

That "yes" might be a confidence in awareness, a trusting in mindfulness, or an inspiration or enthusiasm for simple attention. It might be faith in this path of practice. Whatever it might be, I am summarizing it with the word "yes."

Is there some place in your body that is the home, a source deep inside, for that yes? For that inspiration and confidence? If there is, rest there. Breathe with that place. Breathe through it. Let your "yes" arise from the place of faith or confidence to support simple awareness of what is here, now. Maybe with a simplicity of breathing in the midst of all other things that are going on.

[Silence]

Whatever is challenging for you or difficult for you—thoughts or feelings—if they should arise as you meditate, remind yourself of your ability to say "yes" to being aware. Yes to putting your life energy into being aware rather than preoccupied.

[Silence]

Let your mindfulness flow out of a quiet, gentle "yes" to being aware here and now.

[Silence]

As we come to the end of this sitting, appreciate that it is quite rare for people to stop to be really attentive and aware of their experience. It is even more rare that they know something about how to hold their suffering, stress, tensions, and challenges in awareness. Non-reactive awareness is an awareness that clarifies, allowing some deeper healing and understanding. It is an awareness that interrupts the train wreck of thinking over and over again in ways that perpetuate suffering.

This ability to be present for challenges is a growing capacity we learn from this practice, and it becomes a gift that we can give to others. We can be present without perpetuating the reactivity that others have, or that groups of people have. We can be a calm, clear presence to see clearly. This maybe helps others to be calm, helps others to see clearly, and helps others to be seen well so we don't see them through our reactivity.

May it be that in our "yes" to awareness, there can well up within us the wish for others' happiness.

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

May we find a way today to contribute this into our world, no matter how small the gesture, the attention, or the care that we give. May we support the welfare and happiness of those we meet.

Thank you.

Dharmette: The End of Suffering (5 of 5) Fourth Noble Truth

Hello. Today I am going to conclude the five-part series that I started last week on the Four Noble Truths: to the end of suffering.

The Fourth Noble Truth is the noble truth of the practice—the way, the method—that leads to the end of suffering, that goes to the end of suffering. The way, or the practices that lead to it, are described as the Eightfold Path.

These are amazing practices that are not exactly only practices; they are states of being, qualities of character almost, that can build up inside of us. At some point, they are not practices but rather who we are. They become so integrated into the fabric of our being, the fabric of our character and personality, that they are no longer practices. At first, they are practices, but I make this point because the idea is that this is not importing a practice from outside. It might feel that way at first, but it is really learning to awaken something inside that can flow through us, so that we become this way.

The Eightfold Path begins with, of course, "I'll be present for suffering." Of course I will attend to it, because to not do that will make it worse. Now, if attending to suffering does make it worse, then maybe that's not the right call for now; something else is needed, perhaps some other preparation work. But at some point in this Four Noble Truth process, there is a "yes" to being present for suffering.

Being present for it so that we can start seeing the cause in attachment and craving. Being present for it so we can notice first the moments, and then the longer periods, where the suffering is no longer there. Appreciate that it is not constant. In some kind of way, the more attentive and careful we are here in the present moment, the more we can see that it does wax and wane. When it decreases, that is something important to see. If it decreases enough—sometimes by accident, sometimes because we're distracted—it shows us we are not necessarily stuck in what we call suffering.

A willingness to say "yes" to attention is called Right View—right attention to suffering.

Then, as we become more sensitive to ourselves, there comes this Right Attitude or Right Resolve, which is to avoid being cruel, avoid being unkind, and avoid being attached and caught up in all kinds of addictive sensual behaviors and actions. There is a sense that there is something here deep within that does not want to harm ourselves or harm others through acts of cruelty. So care and compassion become prominent. One doesn't want to be unkind but rather wants to be friendly. One doesn't want to be caught up in addictive behavior but wants to be free of them.

As we practice there, it follows then that we want to be careful with our speech. This is Right Speech: it should be kind speech. It should at least avoid lying. Our speech should not be harsh speech, nor slander. This is not because it's a "should" that we have to take on, but because it grows out of this practice of sensitivity to suffering and to stress. Of course we don't want to create more stress for ourselves. Of course we don't want to create something that's going to harm ourselves. With the heightened sensitivity we have, we can feel that harsh language, lying language, and slanderous language harm something within ourselves. It diminishes something; it closes something; it limits us.

The same thing applies to Right Action, which is to avoid killing, stealing, and sexual misconduct. These things also limit us, harm us, and cause difficulties. So if we want to continue this heightened sensitivity of mindfulness—heightened sensitivity to suffering and the end of suffering—we want to live in a way that doesn't go against the grain of that. We want to live in a way that doesn't decrease our sensitivity but actually increases our sensitivity to be more attentive and careful.

The same thing applies to the way we live our life—Right Livelihood and lifestyles. We want to be careful with those, that those don't cause harm.

Then there is Right Effort, which is to be very careful now of inner states of mind—inner states of being. We can sense and feel the difference between unwholesome ways of being and wholesome, healthy ways of being. We can have the sensitivity keep growing because unhealthy states of mind decrease our sensitivity to the path, to freedom, and to the end of suffering. Wholesome ones increase it.

Develop concentration; develop mindfulness. Right Mindfulness and Right Concentration all support this movement to a greater presence, greater sensitivity to this experience here.

The Fourth Noble Truth is doing those practices that cultivate the conditions for a greater attentiveness and sensitivity so that wisdom can arise within. So a deeper understanding can arise. We become sensitive to and inspired by a "yes" to suffering—being present for it, seeing it, seeing the cause of it, and seeing the cessation of it. Letting go more deeply. Letting go of all the things that involve some kind of self-harm, all the ways in which we contribute to our suffering, our anguish, our distress, our anxiety—the whole gamut that's under the umbrella term dukkha², the emotional pain that we contribute to.

Knowing that there are these eight practices—and they are practices that are pointing us back to ourselves, not taking us away—we have to be very careful how we practice them. We must ensure we are not holding on to them like a life ring keeping us afloat, or as something to do that takes us away from ourselves. The practices of the Eightfold Path are practices that really help us be here in awareness, in attention, with heightened sensitivity to this life of ours. They create the conditions for greater and greater capacity to understand, to have clarity, to be present, and to develop a kind of strength behind the mindfulness, a strength behind our presence, a strength behind our dedication to a path that ends suffering.

It is not just for ourselves we do this path, but we also can do it for others. As we do this path and develop along the Buddhist practice, at some point it doesn't make a lot of sense to keep doing it if we only do it for ourselves. At some point, the inspiration that comes to keep doing this practice, even for yourself, is for the benefit of others. You can be a conduit to benefits. You can be an inspiration. You can be someone who doesn't cause harm, someone who lives for the welfare and happiness of others.

The Eightfold Path doesn't cause awakening, but it leads to liberation. It is a gradual path that leads to heightened care, sensitivity, wholesomeness, and letting go. That supports us to eventually see and experience the end of suffering in a very dramatic and full way.

At that point, the Eightfold Path takes on a very different flavor, a very different nature. At some point, it is really clear that the Eightfold Path is not practices anymore but ways of living that emerge almost naturally, almost part of who we are. We live this way rather than having to do them. That is an amazing tipping point that brings a tremendous amount of happiness.

That will be the topic for the next four days of this week. I'll start a new four-part series called "Four Happinesses." I am calling them kind of my own categories, but they are the "Four Truths of Happiness" or the "Four Noble Happinesses," because it directly ties into the fruition of the Four Noble Truths. Now there are the Four Noble Happinesses. That will be the topic, and I look forward to starting that tomorrow.

I thank you very much for being here today. May it be that you take some of this "yes"—this faith, this inspiration, enthusiasm, or confidence you have in mindfulness—and see if you can bring it into your life so that you naturally find yourself more sensitive, more aligned with the Eightfold Path, the eight factors, or whatever part of it you can remember.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to tomorrow.