This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation with Gil Fronsdal (3 of 4). It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.
Intro to Mindfulness Meditation - Emotions - Gil Fronsdal
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 15, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Intro to Mindfulness Meditation - Emotions
Introduction and Q&A
So good evening everyone. This is maybe a little bit loud. Let's see... how's that? Okay.
Maybe we can start a little bit slowly, because of the weather maybe some people are still coming. One way to start a little slowly is to see if you have any questions. For those of you who were here for the first two weeks, did anything come up for you in your meditation practice? Or if you tried it at home, or have questions from the instructions last week?
Student 1: I was wondering about when we talked about your body and sensations in your body, and going towards things that are uncomfortable. I found myself sort of bargaining with myself, like, "Well, if I pay attention to it long enough and go deep into it, it will dissolve and won't make me feel so miserable anymore." And then when that doesn't happen, I find myself not knowing what to do.
Gil Fronsdal: Sometimes that can happen. We go into it and it changes, and something relaxes. But to spend too much time wanting that is a distraction from the mindfulness practice, because what we want to dissolve is not the pain, but our reactivity to the pain.
Student 1: It's just so hard to separate that.
Gil Fronsdal: Yeah, so today we'll talk about that and be able to separate that, because that has a lot to do with the emotional relationship we have to things.
What we do is we certainly learn to stay. We learn how to be present in a calm way with pain and discomfort, if that's what happens. That's a life skill that's really good for all kinds of situations you find yourself in where it's seemingly unbearably uncomfortable, but now you know how to be with it rather than freaking out. At some point, as we learn to stabilize our attention enough on some difficult thing, like pain, what we do is turn the attention around 180 degrees and see, "How am I relating to this?"
Then you might discover, "I'm afraid," or "I'm angry," "I'm aversive," "I hate it," or "I really want to have pleasure. I thought meditation was about being on cloud nine, kind of like better than going to Cabo." So you get to see the operating principles that are behind the reactivity, and then you can start questioning it. Or if you want to do mindfulness, it's very interesting to bring mindfulness to that reactivity. This means that you see it clearly without buying into it, and just look at it like, "I see you, my old friend."
Sometimes we get to see the patterns that we have. You say, "Oh, I've been doing this for a while. It seems like my go-to is I get bored and that's the way I shut down, or I get a little bit aversive, or my go-to is to be aversive and blame someone else." It's easier to find a calm place if we have really seen the reactivity directly and clearly, because then we don't necessarily have to unconsciously go along with it, which is what many people do.
There was a joke many years ago of an executive who had this problem when he got nervous in front of big speeches: he peed in his pants. This was not really a good thing. The company paid for him to go to a really high-end, very expensive therapist. He did that for a while and came back and said, "I'm good now." They said, "Oh, don't tell us you no longer pee in your pants?" And he said, "No, now I don't care." [Laughter] So his reactivity went away. That's not exactly what meditation is for. Anybody else?
Student 2: I think what I'm having a challenge reconciling is there seems to be this conflict between detachment and desire, for example. In my day-to-day life, I do desire to be the best at what I do and look to achieve. There seems to be kind of a conflict between that sense of detachment and that pursuit of—I don't want to say perfection because that doesn't exist, but pursuit of improvement. I'm having a tough time reconciling those two.
Gil Fronsdal: The fact that you can ask this question is really good. The fact that you're seeing there's a distinction that you have trouble finding in practice is a good thing, so you're on the right track. One of the benefits of mindfulness is not solving our problems, but seeing them more clearly so we can tease apart the different elements. As we see the different parts of it, then we can start choosing the parts that are healthy and put aside the ones that are not healthy.
Being good at what you're doing, in my book, is a good thing to do. But there can be a lot of extra with it. It could be there's a lot of needing to prove yourself to someone, getting approval, or status in other people's eyes. Those things on top are more complicated, and some of that might not be so healthy and necessary. It might be that you want to do the best you can with what you do, but you measure your success and who you are as a person by the results. Since ancient times, a lot of spiritual traditions emphasized, "Don't be so concerned about the results, just give yourself wholeheartedly to what you're doing."
There are all these distinctions that can be made. When you're calm and settled and not caught up in the reactivity and the desires, then you can step back and start seeing the different pieces of it, sorting out that which is useful and not useful. Does that make some sense for you? Enough sense that you have your work to do? Thank you, it's a good question.
Any more questions? Because if you don't ask questions, that means we're going to meditate, which hopefully isn't that bad. [Laughter]
Guided Meditation: Breathing, Body, and Emotions
So the way this meditation is going to unfold is we'll start with the breathing, which we did the first week, and then we'll expand out to include the rest of the body. Then, in this container of the body, we'll start including the emotions that we have. What you might call an emotion might not be occurring, but it could be a mood, a mind state, some generalized feeling. If someone asks how you're feeling, and you say, "I feel tired," or "I feel calm." Positive states like calm—people don't always think of it as an emotion, but it is a state of being. The how you are is the territory we're going to go to.
It's going to be very simple. It's okay if what you have is very, very subtle. It's okay if it's powerful. For this purpose, we're just going to touch into it gently and not do a lot with it, but get a sense of what it's like to do that on the foundation of settling on the breathing, opening up to the body. Then, in the context of having those two as a foundation, becoming aware of emotions. As opposed to how many people might have strong emotions but they're just focusing on that entirely by itself, where it has no support or container to hold it or be with it, which this practice can provide.
Assume a meditation posture that gives you a balance between being calm and relaxed, and alert with your body. If you're tense coming here, maybe you want to emphasize just settling back in the chair and relaxing. If you're sleepy and tired at the end of the day, you might want to sit up a little straighter than usual, so there's a little more alertness in your spine, maybe in your chest.
Gently closing your eyes, and noticing your breathing. We'll do a three-breath journey to begin with, like we talked about the first class. Just three breaths.
Now take some long, deep breaths to really connect more fully with your body. As you exhale, relax your body. It maybe three-quarters full, it doesn't have to be as full as possible. If it feels nice, extend the exhale so that the relaxing can be a little more. Breathing in deeply and maybe beginning the relaxation in the shoulders, and let a wave of relaxation go down from the shoulders all the way down to your belly, to your sitting bones.
Then letting your breathing return to normal and continue for a few breaths. On the exhale, softening in your body. Gentling yourself as you exhale.
See if the thinking mind has any tension or agitation associated with it. If it's easy enough, as you exhale, relax the thinking mind.
A few more breaths. On the exhale, let yourself relax from the place in your body where the top of the inhale is, in the chest up near the shoulders, and as you exhale, relax downward. A wave of relaxing down into the stomach, letting the belly become soft. Maybe the belly hangs forward a little bit on the exhale. At the end, relaxing the belly so the weight of your torso settles towards your pelvic area.
Then becoming aware of the breathing in and the breathing out. The rhythm of inhaling and exhaling as it is experienced by the body. Maybe letting go of your thoughts as you exhale, and letting go into the exhale itself—the physical experience of exhaling.
Feeling the rhythm of breathing in and out in your torso, the rib cage, the chest, the belly. Noticing how some parts of that area expand as you breathe in, contract as you exhale. Imagine your breathing is in the middle of your body, and as you inhale, let your awareness expand outward throughout your body. Global experience of the body. And on the exhale, return to some center at the end of the exhale.
Almost as if your breathing is giving your body a massage, where the influence of breathing spreads throughout the body.
And now as this rhythm of breathing continues, as your awareness spreads through your body, become aware of how you're feeling. What your emotional state, mood, or inner state of being is. You don't have to know exactly what it is, but let it be. Leave it alone. Let yourself be as you are. Allow it to be in your body as you breathe with it, breathe through it. Almost as if your state, your mood, how you're feeling, is also being massaged by the expanding and contracting of breathing in and out.
As if your breathing and your body is making lots of room for how you feel. Allowing yourself to feel the way you are without any judgment or reaction, and without getting involved with it. Just allowing it to be there with the breathing. Breathing through it, breathing with it.
And then to end this meditation, you can take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Feeling your body more fully, feeling the contact with your chair, or the floor, your cushion. And then when you're ready, you can open your eyes.
Talk: Making Space for Emotions
So our emotions are an important part of our life. There are few places in life outside of meditation, or maybe being alone somewhere, that we give complete permission for us to feel whatever emotions we're having. You might have murderous rage, which we hope you don't act on in the world, but it's okay to sit in meditation and feel it. You might have the most beatific, angelic, wonderful feelings of love and peace, and you're allowed to feel that. Some people have a lot of trouble feeling happiness. In my role as a meditation teacher, it surprised me the first time I got to tell someone they had permission to feel joy when they meditated, because in some religions it's not really quite okay.
This is a very unique place. We're not trying to repress any emotions. We're not trying to deny any emotions. But we're also not celebrating them. We're also not expressing them. We're neither for them nor against them while we're meditating. That's a radical thing to do, because in ordinary life we're for and against our emotions. We have good ones and bad ones. Some which we're ashamed of having, some that we feel are unacceptable, some which we think we're supposed to be having but we're not. And some we have and we think, "I have it made, I'll never be depressed again," and that lasts for 10 minutes.
We have this complicated relationship with emotions. We have expectations of how we should be feeling. Some of this comes from our society, some comes from our family, some comes from our life experiences. Some of them are very painful. I expressed some of my emotions to friends when I was a teenager, and the way they responded to me was such that I felt something in my heart close. I thought, "Okay, I'm not going to show that ever again." It took a few years of meditation to come to a place where that part that was closed would start opening up again, and the capacity to feel certain emotions came back over time.
Our emotions are an integral part of what a human being is. To have a safe place where you can go and really take time to feel and be as you actually are, without any of the extra judgments and ideas that we might have received from growing up or from our society, is a gift to ourselves. Meditation is meant to be one of those places.
Some people think that Buddhists repress their emotions because they're just too equanimous. You're supposed to just be calm all the time. Well, there is something to that; Buddhists tend to be calm and equanimous. But many people find when you do this meditation, the range of emotions and their familiarity with them, and the way they tap into the wisdom of emotions, becomes so much greater.
What happens is that the pendulum doesn't swing as far. If we just hang on, ready to celebrate and think "I'm the best thing since apple pie" because I have a little bit of joy, the excitement goes too far. If we have some fear, and then we get afraid of our fear, that produces even more fear, and the pendulum goes really far. The anger pendulum, the shame pendulum goes really far. Some of the great range that people have is not actually so healthy for them. As we do this practice, our capacity to have emotions grows, but we don't swing so far with them. It looks like maybe we're calmer with it all, but it can be richer. Emotions are actually a very important part of Buddhist practice. Growing on this path of Buddhism is to have an emotionally rich life.
Mindfulness tends to dissipate the reactive emotions. It dissipates the unnecessary swings. It dissipates the emotions that are connected to attachment and clinging. The emotions that have no attachment part of them—those grow. The ones not connected to attachment and clinging are things like love, happiness, compassion, generosity, calm, peace, all these wonderful things.
As we make room to feel and give permission for us to feel as we actually are, no matter what it is, we start having a better and better understanding of what's happening. We begin to shift what we are feeding. We're no longer feeding, supporting, or participating in the kind of emotional reactions which are actually harmful for us. We learn how to feed in a nice way those which are beneficial.
But making that distinction between harmful and beneficial emotions is not meant to push the harmful ones away when you meditate. It's not about feeling shame or thinking that if you're a good Buddhist you're not supposed to ever be angry again. Mindfulness meditation is the safe place to be who you are and what's happening. One of the benefits is it gives us a chance to see it much more clearly. As we see it more clearly, wisdom is born. We understand better how to relate to it, how to be with it. We can find the wisdom, we can find the way forward in a much better way than if we just kind of live in it all.
Discussion: Experiences with the Meditation
So this meditation we did just now, starting with breathing, feeling the body, and then opening to the emotions in some way or another—how was that for some of you? Did you find that interesting or a different way to be with it? Anybody willing to say a few words?
Student 3: When I was kind of opening emotionally to what was happening, I found to get a sense of that, I was going to physical sensation, I was going to thought to kind of assemble emotion. I'm curious if that's a helpful way to approach getting in touch with emotion. I think maybe I got caught up in the second layer of trying to figure out if that was a good approach or not.
Gil Fronsdal: So you were thinking. Yeah, that's next week. [Laughter] You're a little bit of a prodigy, you're ahead of us. What I'm going to try to convey today is to be aware of emotions without thinking much about them—before the thinking, the analyzing, the predictions, the stories that are connected to them. Keep it really simple. Some people find it to be such a relief to be with their emotions without having to evaluate them, believe them, solve them, figure them out.
Student 4: It may be pretty much the same thing she was saying, but I guess I don't know how to separate thinking from feeling. Like I'm trying to feel, but I'm trying to evaluate, trying to find where the feeling is.
Gil Fronsdal: This is hard. But we'll do thinking next week, sorry. Some people think, "I think therefore I am"—it's almost like who we are is our thoughts. For some people, thinking and emotions are inseparable. There's a very strong connection to thinking and certain kinds of emotions. That'll become clear as this continues to deepen. I think just the fact that you see that is great; that's the beginning to understand what's happening.
Student 5: I kind of noticed in myself that maybe the pattern goes the other way—rather than the thinking causing the emotion, the emotion causes the thinking. For me, there seems to be this low underlying current of fear or anxiety that drives a lot of the "Have I thought about this? Did I do that thing? I've got to plan this." Sometimes I'm able to identify that feeling and meditate with it, put my attention on it and hold it as a feeling rather than as a thought. Other times I'm thinking about stuff.
Gil Fronsdal: That's considered a very important understanding to get to. Some people, when they meditate regularly, it starts dawning upon them, "Wow, the fear is pervasive, I had no idea." But you need to be quiet enough and still enough so you're not distracted from yourself. Most people live distracted from themselves. If fear triggers a lot of thoughts, the thought train can be really long, and you're so involved in the thoughts and ideas that you've lost touch with the fear. One way of understanding the connection is that thoughts are just a messenger. Don't spend a lot of time with the messenger; get the message. The message is the emotions. The emotions are the factory for a lot of thinking. We want to learn how to be mindful of the emotions before or instead of spinning out in the stories of it all.
Student 6: I think I'm actually a week behind. I found just in meditating, I came in with a tightness in my back, and just being able to meditate, I don't know if I let go of something or if it just... I feel a hell of a lot better.
Gil Fronsdal: Fantastic. So feeling a hell of a lot better, that's a feeling. How did that feel not in your mind, but how did it feel in your body? Did you feel lighter or glowing or happy?
Student 6: Like I let go of something. And the tightness that was there was released. I feel better, I feel lighter.
Gil Fronsdal: Fantastic. One of the things we do in mindfulness practice is we allow ourselves to feel those "feeling betters." Some people can feel better, but we have all these things to worry about, important things to think about, so we think we don't have time to feel that. We go off and worry about the next thing, and then the back tightens up again. One of the things we do with mindfulness is we stop and really stay present for things. When something is healthy like that, take time to let that register. How do you feel good from it, and what shift? It might be very subtle, but it's good to let it register deeply. Even when what we're feeling doesn't feel good, there's something about the deeper connection to it that allows something to shift.
One of the interesting things about the English word "emotion" is it has the word "motion" in it. The prefix "e" in Latin means "out." It turns out that all emotions are in movement; they're processes that are moving along and mostly want to work themselves out. But we tend to block it. We lock onto them, or get tight around them, or get afraid of them. Sometimes these emotions get stuck in us for a long time. Part of what mindfulness does is it begins to unstick us. We're making room for it so that it can start moving. It's fascinating to watch how emotions start to move and change and shift. That's what they want to do if we can give them space to do it.
Talk: The Space of Awareness
In that meditation we did, I was trying to give you a little feeling for what it's like to have your emotions with more space for them in your body. Because you are breathing with them, there's less mind space available to be thinking about it or reacting to it. Think of awareness as space. If that space is filled with thoughts, very little awareness is available to really feel and be present for other things. As the thinking mind quiets down, or as our priorities shift and we become more interested in staying with the breathing, awareness is no longer caught up in the mind, and we can start feeling other things more fully.
One of the reasons why we do this in the third week is that if we just started the first week with "feel your emotions," we'd probably all be a mess right away, because we haven't learned how to be with them in a wise way. But breathing is calming. It's a well-known technique that people who are stressed can relax if they just breathe and tune into the breathing. If all the mental space is filled by thinking, and the thinking is stressful, that's going to stress out the body. But if we fill it with breathing and the body, there's less energy going to the stressful thoughts.
To start breathing—especially with difficult emotions, to breathe through them, breathe with them—is a way of not being caught in them. It's doing something different with the mind space that doesn't feed them, doesn't react to them, but doesn't ignore them either. We're not distracting ourselves; we're creating a different way of being with them so we're not caught in their grip.
If in addition to that, we are stabilized in the body, we feel like, "Oh, I'm really here in my body." There's a lot of people in our culture who are not in their bodies. They spend much of the day from the neck up, spinning their thoughts. The body is a delicate instrument. I'm pretty confident that this body of ours is much more sensitive and has a lot more fascinating instruments in it than your smartphone. It's an amazing thing, and it works so much better if you're present for it. If you're not present for it because you're on your smartphone all the time, you're short-changing yourself dramatically for the intelligence, the sensitivity, the possibilities that are here.
To slow down, be mindful, and start being aware of your body creates room to feel your emotions. If we want to expand out to the greater capacities we have as human beings, you have to bring online all these apps that you have that have been turned off. As you start feeling your body, getting more embodied, it's a lot easier to feel emotions. The stability, the steadiness of the body provides strength that makes it easier to feel what's going on.
What we're trying to do in mindfulness is learn a very simple—but simple doesn't mean easy—capacity to know we're having an emotion when we're having it. As opposed to, "I'm having it and I'm upset," or "I'm having it and I'm afraid," or "That jerk deserves everything I'm going to do to him." We're caught in it. As opposed to, "Oh, there's anger. Let me feel the anger." Slow down, take a deep breath, relax, just feel what's happening. "Oh, anger. My stomach is in a knot, my jaw is tight." You start seeing that every time you go to your head, your thoughts, some other kind of tension begins. When you come back and slowly the anger dissipates, you might find out that underneath the anger you're afraid. The source of the anger is how afraid you are, how threatened you feel. Now you're in a different world, and maybe that's what really needs your attention.
We're trying to be with ourselves. The difference between being as you are versus being with yourself is like a friend who, whenever you're having a hard time, will sit on a park bench with you. They're not going to fix you, they're not going to judge you. They're just going to be with you and listen. You feel cared for, you feel like there's this calm presence, and something inside of you begins to relax because the person is with you—not participating in your anger, but also not judging.
We're doing that for ourselves. We're trying to be with how we are, as opposed to being it. Try to be with the anger, not be the anger. Be with the fear, but not be the fear. That's a huge step. It's much more respectful for your emotions to be with them than to be them. Some of the reasons people feel shame is because they think they are the emotion. "I have so much anger, I feel ashamed of myself." We define ourselves by the anger. But if we're not the anger, there's anger, but now we're going to be with the anger. Mindfulness is this capacity just to see and be present with what's happening without being pulled into it. Just allowing it to be there, breathing with it, feeling it in the body.
The RAFT Acronym for Emotions
There is an acronym that we use here at IMC sometimes that has four different elements of how we are mindful of emotions. The acronym is RAFT1. One of the teachers here, Tanya Wiser2, teaches a lot using this acronym.
The first step is Recognize when you have an emotion. Take the time to recognize what it is. Something powerful happens with our emotional life if it's clearly recognized. It's kind of like when something is named, something can relax. I've been upset and didn't know it, and a friend has said, "Gil, you seem to be angry." "Oh yes, I think I am." When someone names it for me, there's something powerful that happens. Recognizing it is the beginning of stepping far enough away from the emotion so that we can come back and be with it. If you don't know what it is, start by just recognizing it as a feeling. I remember once I had a feeling that the best I could do was, "This is yucky." As I just breathed with it, eventually something relaxed and I knew it was depression. First is to recognize.
The second is to Allow it to be there. This is very respectful for emotions. I don't mean allow yourself to act out and show your middle finger to other drivers. I mean allow it in meditation with some stillness, allow it to be without acting on it. If your friend is sitting on the park bench with you and you're telling them how sad you feel, and your friend is slumped over going, "Oh, this is terrible," that's not going to help you. But if your friend sits upright and has maturity in their posture, you feel, "There's someone stable, a grown-up in the room who's not overwhelmed by what I'm talking about." Can we do the same thing for ourselves? Allowing is powerful. This is why meditation is a fascinating place to do all this, because you take a dignified posture. You don't give into them. We don't collapse no matter how upset we are, we don't make a fist no matter how angry we are, we don't run away no matter how afraid we are. We just have this posture, and then we can be a good friend for ourselves.
The 'F' of RAFT is to Feel. Find out where the emotion is being expressed in the body. Is it a tightness in the belly? A rumbling in the chest? The shoulders? The face? Where is it most active? Sometimes people say it's everywhere, and I ask, "Is it in your little toe?" "Oh no, it's in my torso." We find where it is most active, and then just feel the physical sensations associated with the emotion. The physical sensations are not the story. We're trying to step away from the stories to just feel the simplicity of the emotion in the moment. All emotions want to process themselves and complete themselves. But if we're participating in telling the story of why we're so angry over and over, it sucks the life out of us. We shift the center of gravity from the thoughts to just feeling the emotions. A powerful gesture is to cup your hands together and come from underneath wherever you're feeling the emotion in your body, and just hold it gently. Helping our fear feel safe. Not making yourself feel safe—that's identifying with the fear—but helping that place inside feel safe.
The fourth one, 'T', is to Tease apart. Often emotions are seen as one big hunk of junk, one big ball of something. Emotions are composites; they're made up of different things. If we can separate out the story from the immediacy of how we're feeling physically, that makes a world of difference. Tease apart the emotion and how we're reacting to it. "Oh, look at that. I'm feeling afraid. But now I'm embarrassed that I'm afraid." This means we have a relationship to it. So we tease apart the fear and the embarrassment. Tease apart the liking from the experience, the not liking, the aversion, the attachment. Over time, we're seeing all the extra things we're doing, allowing things to be simpler, so each part can be seen for itself rather than as one big stew.
So RAFT: Recognize, Allow, Feel, and Tease apart. Let's do a little bit of it now in meditation.
Guided Meditation: Practicing RAFT
It's often good to think of setting yourself up for meditation, doing preparatory steps. Here I recommend that you just start really simple and do a three-breath journey. Just stay with three full breaths. Keep it that simple, but give yourself to those three.
And then maybe taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. Relaxing on the exhale.
And then returning to natural breathing, just as you are, but continue to do this relaxing on the exhale.
And then letting yourself just breathe and center yourself on the body breathing. So that you're not so much up in the control tower of the head, see if you can notice more how your body experiences the breathing.
As you come to the end of the exhale, feel the weight of your body touching your chair or the floor. To feel the stability of what supports your body. As if you have a foundation that holds you up. Maybe as you exhale, relaxing into that foundation so you feel more grounded.
And so that you don't fill your awareness with thinking, so that there's more space in awareness to be aware of the body, see if you can quiet your thinking. Soften, maybe even slow your thinking down. Maybe thinking from a deeper place within, or maybe letting go of your thoughts as you exhale.
And then riding on the rhythm, breathing in and breathing out, for a little while here in silence.
So now notice how you're feeling. Anything at all. Could be you're tired, could be that you're calm, could be you're agitated, sad or happy, irritated or content. Worried or feeling safe. Maybe it's very subtle. Whatever you're feeling, start and see if you can recognize it in some way. It doesn't have to be exact recognition, but recognize that it's there.
The act of recognition allows you to step away from it, so you can be with it rather than be in it. Like you can say, "Hi sadness, hi joy, calm," whatever it is.
And then to be with it as a good friend, allow yourself to feel whatever you're feeling. It's only going to be for a few minutes, so for these few minutes allow yourself to be. But the allowing is being with how you're feeling; you're not being what you're feeling.
Maybe it's easier to allow if you're breathing with your emotion, breathing through it.
And then whatever you're feeling, notice where in the body that feeling is most pronounced. And feel the sensations or the activation in your body associated with the emotion or your mental state. Maybe imagining you're cupping your hands of awareness and holding it gently. You're being with it as you feel it.
And then teasing apart. Noticing how the physical sensations of the emotion are different from the thoughts, the stories. Different than how you're relating to it. There's the emotion, your state, and the reaction to it. The judgment of it, preferences, interpretations, predictions of where this is going. There's the emotion, and then how you define yourself by it ("This means I'm this kind of person"). Tease those apart so that you can be with the basic emotion by itself. So you can better recognize it, allow it, and feel it.
And when you feel like that's enough, then begin again with your breathing. Return to breathing and just practice mindfulness of breathing.
And then to end this sitting, take some long, slow, deep breaths. Feel your body, get yourself ready to end it, and when you're ready you can open your eyes.
Applying RAFT in Daily Life
There were a lot of instructions and ideas presented today. It's always the default, if you have a choice, always choose the simpler choice in this practice: simply being aware. The basic idea is to use breathing. Let that be the center of gravity for the meditation. Be with your breathing until something else becomes more compelling. We don't only stay with the breath, because then you set up a tension between the other compelling thing and your effort to stay with the breath.
So you can let go of the breathing and bring your mindfulness to this other thing. If your neighbor is really loud, rather than struggling and being upset with it, you can just notice hearing—being mindful of listening to the noise. But what's really happening is this is the thousandth time, you've talked to them 999 times before, and here they are disrespecting you. What's really happening is you're angry.
Okay, this is the chance to be mindful of anger. So you Recognize it. Step back. "Oh, anger. Okay, now I'm a little bit apart from it." Once you're apart from it, it's a gift, because now you can come towards it as a friend. You offer respect by being separate and coming together. "Oh, anger, I see you."
And then Allow it. "No, this is terrible, it's my neighbor's fault, I'm going to write a letter to the owners." No, no, that's later. Now just calm down, just allow.
And then Feel it. "I don't want to feel it. Life is about feeling good." Let's shift gears then. What's really happening is you don't want to. Feel that resistance. Recognize it, allow it, feel it. Don't make resistance bad. After a while the resistance dissipates, and now you're left with just the anger without resistance. So you hold it and feel it.
And then the 'T' of RAFT, you can Tease it apart. "Oh yeah, there's the story I tell myself. The lame neighbor is trying to ruin my life." What you don't know is your neighbor has gone deaf and they're desperately trying to hear something, so they crank up the music and feel bereft. So you start separating out the story from the actual experience. Even if your stories are true, this is not the time for the story. Let the story be later, so I can just be with my own experience and take responsibility for my part of it all.
Closing Q&A
Student 7: I was having trouble just staying focused. I'm feeling really cold in this room and it's very uncomfortable, so I can't stop thinking about it. I try to be with it but I tense up because I'm cold. I found myself trying to soothe myself by rocking a little bit, but then I'm like "No, I'm not supposed to be moving."
Gil Fronsdal: This is an example. You don't have to do what I'm about to say—a lot of times meditators put on shawls to stay warm. But when I was studying in a Zen monastery in Japan where it was pretty cold, I was told, "When cold, just be cold. When warm, just be warm. When hot, just be hot." I've done a lot of that where, yes, this is uncomfortable, but I'll just be cold. I take the cold as the object of mindfulness. It's possible to shiver and be at peace. But it's also possible to have such a strong reaction to it that we're fighting it and getting all activated around it, which sounds like what you've been doing.
Student 7: I do it all the time. I try, "No, just be with the cold," and then "No, I can't, it's cold, I don't like this at all."
Gil Fronsdal: One of the things I like to teach is that Buddhism is about learning how to be free in the midst of everything. But if you're only free when you're comfortable, you're not really free. So what does it mean to be free when things are uncomfortable? This might be a very interesting area for you to explore, but don't explore it when it's most difficult. Try to find a situation where you're mildly cold and experiment with RAFT. And then teasing apart the judgment, like "I shouldn't be so upset about how cold I am." You're allowed to be a cold person. No shame, just be cold. Keep it simple. But if it's easy enough, put on a blanket. This is not supposed to be forceful asceticism.
Student 8: When I'm doing meditation, I'm not getting too many emotions unless there's a distraction. So I'm not able to practice being with that emotion. But in real life, let's say my boss is screaming at me, I'm having fear and worry. What do you do then? Is the technique to help extract yourself?
Gil Fronsdal: At work you have to take care of the work, but you can take five minutes time out. Say your boss did something and you're really angry. You say, "Excuse me, I need to go to the bathroom." You go sit on the toilet and just breathe and practice this with your anger for five minutes. If you don't have many emotions when you meditate, that's fine. If you can stay with the breathing, stay present, and come back over and over again from your thoughts, you're building a capacity to be able to be with emotions later. So don't worry about it if you don't have it here. But take the opportunity at work if you can step away for five minutes and see what happens.
I want to say that to open the arena of emotions sometimes is opening Pandora's Box. Emotions are difficult for some people. It's possible that this has been tender for some of you. Take care of yourself when you go home. Be careful with yourself. There are people here you can check in with.
Thank you. I hope that this coming week you'll explore your emotional life in a way that you maybe haven't before. If you want a little extra momentum, find a friend who you trust, who maybe you can sit on the park bench with, and tell them what you're learning. Have a little conversation about it. Great, thank you.