This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Faculties for Fearlessness (2 of 5) with Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Faculties for Fearlessness (2 of 5) Guided Meditation; Faculties for Fearlessness: Samadhi (2 of 5) - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 14, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Faculties for Fearlessness (2 of 5) Guided Meditation

Good morning, good morning. Today we'll continue this idea of the faculties for fearlessness, and there's so many fun alliterations we could do with five fabulous fun faculties for fearlessness, for freedom forever. I'm sure there's many fine... we somehow slip in that word fine in there somewhere, but for the titles I'm just saying faculties for fearlessness.

And today we're not so much in the guided meditation, but in the little talk that I'll give afterwards, we're going to talk about a second faculty. As you may have noticed, I'm not going in the usual order of the faculties. Instead, I'm going in an order I think that a way that we can work with them to be with our fear. And today's... or well, maybe I'll save what it's going to be during the little dharma talk, because when I say the word we bring a lot of ideas to it and I want to introduce maybe a little different idea, so I'll wait to say it until then.

But until then, let's settle into a guided meditation.

So taking a moment to settle in, feeling yourself sitting. What does it feel like to be in this particular configuration of body and mind? Feeling the sensations of sitting, the sensation of the touch pressure with the floor, or the cushion, chair, couch, bed, wherever you are. Feeling the pressure of the contact, whatever it is the body is contacting at this moment.

And using this contact as a foundation for our settledness or arriving. Feeling the sense of stability that comes with this contact and foundation. We're here.

Chances are the contact is with your buttocks, maybe the backsides of your legs, your feet, and maybe your back leaning against a chair. Lying down, feel the contact with the back.

Then the front of the body isn't necessarily contacting anything, but bringing attention to the belly. Can it be soft, relaxed? Can we bring an aliveness of attention, of presence, to the belly, to the chest, the experience of having a chest? Maybe there's a way in which it just opens just a tiny bit by moving the shoulders back just maybe... nobody if they were to look at you would notice, but just a small movement. Bringing this aliveness, this presence to the neck, resting attention on the face. Noticing any tension in the jaw. Maybe it's okay tension is there, but maybe by bringing it into awareness there's some softening. And around the eyes.

We're here, now, this moment. There's nowhere else to be, and nothing else to do. Allowing the attention to gather into the bodily experience.

And setting the direction of our practice to be one of kindness, warmth, and care. Bringing an attitude of openness, warmth, and care to our practice. And letting the attention rest on the sensations associated with breathing. Feeling the stretch and the release of the stretch in the chest, maybe feeling the movement in and out of the belly, or feeling the different temperatures of air as it goes in and out of the nose. Just choosing one of those areas and resting attention there.

And when the mind wanders, as it's apt to do, just very simply, gently begin again with the sensations of breathing. It doesn't have to be complicated; we don't have to make a story about it. We just give ourselves over to the sensations of breathing again.

What would it be like to abide with the sensations of breathing being at the center? We're not grasping, not pushing, we're just abiding, being present with the sensations of breathing.

Faculties for Fearlessness: Samadhi (2 of 5)

Good morning, welcome, welcome. Good day, good afternoon. Lovely to practice together. So today I'd like to continue on this idea of the faculties for fearlessness. And while we were meditating I had this idea like, oh yeah, there's another meaning to this word faculties. So maybe it's a bunch of teachers and professors we want fearlessness from. [Laughter] I'm just sharing with you the things that the mind does sometimes, right?

So I want to talk a little bit about fear. I'll start there. Fear can manifest itself in so many different ways. It shows up maybe just as restless nights, or feeling moody, or not expressing our emotions or thoughts, really holding back, and maybe feeling isolated or not wanting to connect with others. We could even say the list of the ways that fear shows up in our lives is endless. It depends on the person and the situation, but there's so many different ways and it's kind of unique to all of us. But regardless of how fear shows up in your life, it is a natural part of the human experience. Humans are vulnerable, of course we are. We don't like it and we try to pretend that we're not, but we are vulnerable, not only to physical harm but to emotional harm or mental harm.

But today I really like to emphasize that we have fear, which is perfectly normal, and we have the resistance to fear. We don't like to feel fear, it's uncomfortable. And not only is it uncomfortable, but we might have this idea like, "Oh, I'm doing something wrong because I'm feeling fear here," or "If I were a different kind of person I wouldn't be afraid." Especially, social media often likes to portray only the best sides of people. Not everybody watches social media of course, but there's a way in which there can be a valorization of this fearlessness. And then we start to think like, "Oh, if I have fear somehow I'm a failure."

So we're often conflating this experience of fear and the resistance to that fear. I think for the most part they go together. When we have fear, often there's a resistance to fear. But it can be incredibly powerful and helpful to tease these apart: the fear and the resistance to fear. They feel a little bit different in the body. Maybe sometimes fear is like a lump in the throat, but the resistance, the strong sense of "No, I don't want to," might show up as some tightness in the chest or some hardness in the belly, for example. Or maybe there's a sense of tension in the shoulders with resistance, whereas maybe the fear is a knot in the belly. We don't all experience these things the same, but in order to tease them apart it can be enormously helpful to be aware of how they show up in the body. There's the fear, a perfectly natural normal thing to have about so many different things. And then there's this strong sense of "No, I don't want it." How does that "no" show up?

So I want to now introduce one of the faculties that can help us with this. As I said at the beginning of the guided meditation, I'm not doing the faculties in order and I want to emphasize particular aspects of the faculties. So before saying the exact name of the faculty, I want to introduce this idea of centeredness. This idea of being centered, being collected, not distracted. Because there's so many different things that we can bring our attention to, right? It's probably endless. And not only the objects we can bring our attention to, but the manner in which we do it. There can be a way in which there's this striving, "I have to focus, I have to be connected to this." And anytime we notice any wavering there can be this trying to pounce back onto the object of the focus.

But there's also a way in which we can just be centered, collected, gathered, bringing some wholeheartedness to whatever it is we're wanting to bring the attention to. Some of you might recognize this as the faculty of samādhi¹. It often gets translated as concentration, but I'd really like to emphasize this sense of gathered collectedness and some wholeheartedness. Because if we just think of it as concentration, then for many of us, and I know it was for me for many years, it was kind of like that strain. It was kind of like this taxing striving associated with just having the attention be only in one place, as opposed to the sense of maybe just abiding with what we're bringing the attention to. Maybe resting in or bringing attention to standing in the middle of, connecting with. I want to bring a little bit different flavor than what we often bring when we hear this word concentration. Instead, I want to highlight this gathering and collectedness.

And in particular with working with fear, I'd like to offer that we gather the attention around the resistance to the fear. Not the fear itself, but the resistance, that strong sense of "No, I don't want it, no, make it go away." So it's related to aversion, but it's a little bit different, because sometimes the resistance is so strong or we don't even know that we are resisting, it can show up as avoidance. As opposed to aversion, which is often this turning away, this avoidance can be kind of like a bouncing off. Maybe there's a little hint of fear, there's a pulling back, closing down that might happen. It turns out that working with the resistance to fear is a really effective way to be with fear. Because to be with fear itself is overwhelming—not always, but it can be. And it comes along with so much of these stories about fear: what we're afraid of, we shouldn't be afraid of, or why is this happening, all these types of things. So why not just focus on the resistance?

This can help us so much in our life, not only to be with the fear, but resistance shows up in so many different ways in our life. Every time we feel uncomfortable, there's a feeling of "No, I don't want to be uncomfortable", that sense of resistance. And there's a sense of longing, like we don't like to long for things, that's uncomfortable too. So one way to work with fearlessness is to bring this sense of collectedness, this sense of gathering, this sense of abiding in, standing in the middle of the resistance to fear. Because I would say that samādhi, this gathering, collectedness, centering, requires that wholeheartedness. This might be one way that we could even think about samādhi as a wholeheartedness.

And so often when we come to fear we're not recognizing the resistance to fear. They're getting conflated, and then there's this resistance to the resistance to the fear, and it ends up being a big gnarly mess sometimes. But what would it be like to be wholehearted? So often we can't be wholehearted with the fear because there's the resistance. So there's a piece that's maybe collected around the fear but we're ignoring the whole resistance. So instead let's be collected around the resistance. Let the fear take care of itself, and we'll bring our attention around the resistance to the fear.

And this wholeheartedness requires a certain amount of letting go. We're letting go of the distractions, we're letting go of thinking of the idea that we shouldn't have resistance. We're letting go of fragmentation that might happen. If we're not noticing the resistance, then there's this fragment of us that's resisting. But if we just bring our wholeheartedness and letting go of the distractions, letting go of the fragmentation, letting go of anything that's not a sense of wholeness... then the letting go opens up new possibilities. This wholeheartedness opens up a new way to be with our experience.

Because what I'm pointing to is to meet the resistance with nonresistance. And it turns out that the resistance is supporting the fear. They are leaning against one another. If we bring some nonresistance to the resistance, that resistance kind of falls away. Turns out the fear falls away too.

So samādhi with the resistance to fear... I mean, to bring samādhi to fear itself would be great if we could do it, but most of us can't do it. It's part of our, I don't know if it is hardwired, but it feels hardwired to resist fear. So can you be centered and wholehearted on the resistance to fear? For you, what does this "no" look like? Can you bring a "not no" to the "no"? Can you not resist the resistance?

So one of the five faculties for fearlessness, for freedom forever is samādhi, which I'm highlighting this idea of gathered collectedness, wholeness for samādhi. So today if resistance to anything happens to show up in your life, maybe you can practice, even if it's not with fear, just practicing with the resistance. And I'll see you tomorrow. Thank you.