This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Peace in the Whole; Eight Worldly Winds (2 of 5) Fame and Disrepute. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Peace in the World; Dharmette: Eight Worldly Winds (2 of 5) Fame and Disrepute - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on August 06, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Hello everyone and welcome. For this meditation today, I want to continue on the instructions of wholeness, somehow our capacity to have the attention be broad enough to take in the whole of the present moment. It's possible to be in a natural setting, maybe at the beach or a park, and be absorbed in looking at or preoccupied with some insect or a snake that's right there on the path and to be absorbed in that, maybe fascinated by it. Or maybe part of a conversation with a friend that's intense and difficult, and then there's a pause and standing up and looking around and seeing, wow, the whole of this natural setting includes so much more than the conversation or the insect, the particular thing we're focusing on. And there's a sense of the expansiveness and broadness and a wider context for what's happening rather than what's right up in the details of it all.

Much of the ways in which we're troubled is because there's something that we are focusing on, something we're thinking about, concerned with, something we're feeling. And without having to make anything go away, there is another way of finding peace, and that is the peace that is broader, that's wider. The particular trouble that we have, to expand outwards. It's kind of like being in a very large room and then somehow becoming attuned to the empty space in the room that holds the chairs, the tables, the people that are in the room. They all happen within that wider space, but the space in and of itself is calm, is peaceful, even if the people are arguing or rushing around.

So the context of peace, the wider peace that's here, that's there beyond the edges of whatever you're troubled by, whatever is challenging. Beyond the edges of it, in the space of awareness around it, see if that can support you to be here for whatever is happening, mindful in a non-reactive way. Mindful without picking anything up or pushing anything away, expanding outward into the whole, the peaceful sense of wide attention.

Guided Meditation: Peace in the World

To begin, being centered here in the whole by feeling where the weight of your body is supported by a cushion, a chair, a bed, a floor, wherever the weight of your body rests. Gently taking a little deeper breaths and as you exhale, settle into the place where your weight rests, that the weight of your body is held, place of contact.

Gently close your eyes. And as you exhale, relax the shoulders. Let them give into the pull of gravity.

Relaxing the belly. Maybe there's a softening of the fingers and the hands. A softening of the thighs and legs. And a softening of the thinking mind.

Any physical tension or pressure you feel connected to thinking, a physical sense of agitation, there's always the calm or peace beyond the edges of your thoughts. Your thoughts don't fill the universe. Beyond the edges of the tension and pressure, there's peace and calm. As you exhale, let the pressure and tension of thinking relax outward into that peace.

To the degree to which you can sense the space around your body that is not your body but surrounds it, feel the calm or the stillness of the space itself. Let your awareness be wide and broad to include the peace, the calm that's beyond the edges of your thoughts and your feelings, the sensations of your body. As if that wider calm or peace holds all things, even what is difficult is nested in the wider peace and calm.

And in the middle of it all is breathing. An inhale begins, and as the body expands, the sense of attention expands outwards into the peace. As you inhale, as it expands, it touches the peace and the calm all around. And as you exhale, bringing that peace and calm back to touch the depth inside of you. Breathing a massage that goes out into the whole of everything, touching the peace, with the exhale returning that peace to some tender place within.

If you become preoccupied with thoughts or feelings, events in your life, notice how that is a collapsing or contracting or narrowing of attention. And see if you can open up wider, beyond the edges of your concerns. Notice that there's more happening here and now than you're thinking, you're feeling. Not to dismiss or ignore, but to include more, to put things in context.

And even expand outwards through the whole, the whole experience of the present moment that includes the body sensations, the emotions, the mental states, all of it working together. The whole that goes beyond any particular thing, that includes the calm or the peace of non-attached attention in which everything swims.

As we come to the end of this sitting, to appreciate or notice whatever way you are more settled, calmer, more peaceful now than at the beginning of the meditation. Even if there's still something which troubles you, is there also a subtleness, a quieter place within and around you? Do you have a reference point for some degree of calm or peace, a sense of well-being, a sense of being here and now in a way that feels wholesome or feels right, maybe feels better than some of the alternative ways you can be?

When you get up and get involved in your life, taking care of all the details and things, the return of your concerns... what if in your encounters with other people, you stay grounded and rooted in this sense of calm, or peace, settled well-being, rightness? That it becomes a reference point to not become reactive, aggressive, assertive, closed down, but rather, being settled on yourself, you can meet others with goodwill, with basic friendliness, basic simple kindness.

So that whoever you encounter today, something inside of you remembers to have goodwill, wishing everyone you meet: may they be happy, may they be safe, may they be peaceful, may they be free of oppression and attachments.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Eight Worldly Winds (2 of 5) Fame and Disrepute

So welcome to this second talk on the Eight Worldly Winds.¹ Perhaps it's easy enough to focus on these worldly winds as problems and somehow contend with them as the problem, and we have to do something about them. So these worldly winds are the ways in which the ways of the world get us caught, push us around or trouble us or get us reactive. To remind you, these are: gain and loss, fame and disrepute (fame and disgrace), praise and blame, and pleasure and pain.

So today I want to talk about this fame and disgrace, fame and disrepute. But I don't want to start with the idea that they're out there and problems and how terrible they are and how they cause problems for us and we should do something about them, but rather to start with having a reference point within. This is the advantage of Buddhist practice. What we're looking for through Buddhist practice, Buddhist meditation, is a way of being, a reference point, a state, a quality of being, a way of practicing where we feel this is good, this is right, there's a sense of well-being, there's a sense of peace, a sense of at-homeness, a sense of being settled here and now, a sense of being somehow disentangled from all the preoccupations we're normally caught in.

There's something like that, and it's a wide range of possibility exactly what this is. Maybe it's just a little bit calmer than usual, and that's a reference point to understand ourselves better. And what we understand is how we lose that calm, we lose the peace, we lose the being rooted in ourselves, at home in ourselves. We learn how we sacrifice ourselves, give ourselves up for the good cause, for the bad cause, for our resentments, for our hurts, our grudges, all kinds of things, our desires, our wishes. We leave and depart, we ignore, we abandon the sense of being centered and rooted here in ourselves.

So we want to understand this. And as we understand it, we understand and see that it's better actually not to be caught. It's better to be more settled than unsettled. It's better to be calm than to be agitated. It's better to be peaceful than it is to be conflictive. And not that it's just a cognitive idea that we should be a certain way, but it's almost as if, you know, you put your hand on the hot stove and your hand automatically goes away. You don't have to have a philosophy or a belief or a sense of should operating that pulls the hand away. Stepping on a splinter on your foot, we stop, we don't keep walking with it, we pull it out. So it's that simple, that we are kind of beginning to—so that it's that simple that we have this reference point, and with that reference point, we can understand these worldly winds better and our relationship to them.

We learn that the worldly winds are ways in which we give up or sacrifice or abandon or lose touch with something that feels holistic, something that feels good, right, something that allows us to enter the world in a wholesome way, in a connected way, in a useful way, rather than one that makes the whole situation worse. So this is where we come now to these worldly winds, that these are ways which many people can easily lose themselves, easily lose touch with what has been developing in their meditation or Buddhist practice, with the goodness, the wholeness, the sense of being at peace with oneself.

The second pair is fame and disrepute. And fame is well known to really trip people up. When people are feeding on the fame, when their sense of vitality, their sense of rightness, a sense of having value as a person depends on having lots of people focus on you. And some people... I think the word fame here means having a really good reputation in the world. And so that somehow you're, not the same thing as praise, which is the next one, but just many, many people know you. So there's a feeling that you have value, you're connected, you're somebody by the number of, you know, friends you have on Instagram or Facebook, or the number of people who log on to YouTube every morning to listen. That that's where the sense of vitality and liveliness is. And when we don't have that, we feel deflated, we feel lost, we feel somehow that we're not fully alive anymore, because the aliveness is being fed by others, feeding on this sense of fame and what people think of us, that we're known, we're somebody.

And then the pendulum can swing to disrepute, to being disgraced, to having a bad reputation in the world, where again, our sense of well-being is really dependent on what others think of us and how many people think of this. And so what there isn't is being fed from the inside out. What there isn't is learning to be alive, breathing in a relaxed, open, settled way and allowing and feeling quite content with ourselves, quite at home and at peace with ourselves. It is possible to have that, and it's very difficult to believe that sometimes when our whole psychophysical system has been conditioned by society, by our experience, by being fed from the outside in. And so this drive that we have to get it, we have to have it.

So if the fame goes away, which inevitably fame goes away, or is not there in the same way to feed us and to support us and to energize us, and there's nothing inside to replace it, then some people crash and get depressed and feel kind of lost and feel like they don't count. And you know, sometimes people's lives unwind in deep and painful ways. Or if people feel disgraced or feel like now lots of people think that they're a bad person, then that also, something is challenged inside, that we're not getting reinforced, this outer validation.

So there's nothing wrong necessarily with fame. There's nothing wrong necessarily with not having any fame, to losing that fame. Where the challenge is, is how we're relating to it. And if we're relating to it as the source of our well-being, then it's a challenge. One of the benefits of doing maybe any kind of spiritual practice, or anything that connects us to a kind of much more of a, I almost want to say innate sense of well-being, a sense of well-being that doesn't have to have a reason, being fed from the outside of success and fame and recognition and all this... it just is because we're breathing, because we're alive. That's enough. Just being in this world in a kind, open, supportive way, and not succumbing to the beliefs that we have to be different, we have to have more, we have to be known and recognized and do something big in the world so that we have our 15 minutes of fame. It's okay just to be alive and present and here.

And one of the validations of this whole approach of Buddhist practice, finding some deep inner peace here that's unconditioned, unaffected, not dependent on the world and things and thoughts and feelings, is that this turns out to be a phenomenally effective, powerful, meaningful way to respond and live in the world in a wholesome way, with compassion and care and love and caregiving to this world. A caregiving to the world, a love and a compassion where we don't lose ourselves in the process. We don't feel like we have to hurry and rush, and our sense of well-being, our sense of personhood is dependent on the outcomes of our service, our care, our love of the things we do. We do things because it's the natural or easy kind of manifestation of being deeply at peace and connected, not because of what we get from it or what should happen for ourselves.

So that's why fame and disrepute is such an important thing to be attentive to, because it's a way of losing touch with ourselves, losing the ways in which we can be fed from the inside out, where we can feel the deep sense of contentment just to be, just to be here. Trusting, or more than trusting, knowing that being at peace and settled, with almost like with nothing you have to do, that that is a powerful and effective state from which to do. And it's a little bit of a paradox, to not have to do anything allows us to do everything peacefully and effectively and without succumbing to clinging and attachment.

So fame and disrepute, whether it's fame locally in our neighborhood or places at work, or whether it's these days many people have on social media and count their friends and the connections... maybe fame is overrated, and maybe disrepute, the lack of fame, is also overrated. And we don't have to base our life on either one. So thank you very much.

Announcements

I have one announcement. The Spirit Rock Meditation Center that I'm very connected to up in Marin County had asked me, invited me, or requested of me to do an event celebrating the publication of my new book this year called "Everything Is Practice." And I agreed. And now they would like me to try to encourage people to come to it. So maybe some of you would like to come. It's this coming Sunday, it's on Zoom, and it's at 6:00 p.m. And I'll talk a little bit about my book, but I didn't really want to focus only on my book. So I want to talk a little bit about the great value of retreat practice. The book is kind of a manual for insight retreat practice, so that's what I want to kind of just talk a little bit about. So some of you might be interested in going to it. You have to register. There's a link to it on the IMC homepage on that little box in the lower right that's called "What's New," there's an announcement there about it. And also if you go on Spirit Rock's website, you can probably find it. And it's a small, I think it'll be a small, somewhat intimate kind of opportunity on Zoom to have a discussion, and I'm certainly looking forward to having this little period of exchange. So thank you.