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Guided Meditation: Breathing with the Whole; Eightfold Path (6 of 10) Holistic Living

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 20, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Hello on this beginning of a week Monday, and welcome to our meditation here at Insight Meditation Center.

Overall right now, we're exploring the noble eight-fold path, which centers around the word sama in Pali¹, usually translated into English as "right." But the word sama is one of many words that are used in the ancient language which point to, or somehow or other suggest, a gathering together, a coming together, a unification. So something is whole, complete.

I'm fond of this simple idea, and it kind of works in English. First, to say that the word mindfulness in Pali, the ancient language, also has the meaning "to remember." And so we say sometimes we're here to remember to be aware, remember to be present here and now. But then it's a little bit maybe silly, but I'm fond of the idea that you can separate out "re-member" to bring all the members together, all the pieces, all the different parts of yourself into a whole and to become complete.

How do we live? How do we meditate if the orientation is somehow to be present, to be aware, including all of who we are at this moment? The simplicity of gathering ourselves around the breathing, like gathering around the hearth or gathering around the campfire. All the members of the community are gathering here around this central, warm place in the middle of our being with awareness of breathing. Not to ignore everything else, but to somehow include everything we are in the field of awareness, as if everything is sitting together around the fire, the warmth of breathing.

Guided Meditation: Breathing with the Whole (link)

So to gently close your eyes and to sense your posture, almost as if the posture you're in to meditate is the outer surface, a circle gathering all of who we are physically within the circle of our posture. And within that posture, to include the sensations of the body, how the body is, by taking a few deeper, fuller breaths. Just enough to start feeling and sensing your body more fully.

And to relax the body as you exhale. Soften the body without collapsing, releasing yourself into the pull of gravity and feeling the surface that your body is on: the chair, the floor, cushion, mattress. Releasing, relaxing into that surface to feel its stability.

And then letting the breathing return to normal. And in this orientation too, including all of who you are, to let your attention roam around your body, to see where there is tension and holding. And as you exhale, to relax, release.

With the idea that everything can be included in the field of silent awareness, the way we sense and feel and maybe know in silence or close to silence, to feel how you are emotionally, or your mood, and make room for it. Allow it to be part of the whole. It too has a place in the circle. And maybe in the middle of how you feel is breathing. Gently breathing in the middle of it all, as the hearth or the campfire that brings warmth and light.

And also become aware of your mind. Whatever way your mind is, let it sit also at the edge of the breathing, the warmth, the light, so it can be included. It too can be known as it is, breathing with the thinking mind. Relaxing the thinking mind.

And with breathing at the center of all things, allow the rhythm of breathing in, breathing out, the movements of the torso as you breathe. Allow the sensations of breathing to connect you to a silent awareness, a silent presence, a knowing that doesn't search for anything, doesn't try to make anything happen, but rather an awareness that includes whatever it is that arises. Staying intimate with breathing while in the periphery all things are included.

Staying closely aware of breathing as if you're orienting yourself to the warmth and light of the hearth or the campfire that warms and lights up all of who you are, without needing to think about anything. Just silent awareness.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, quietly, as if you're easing in more closely, ease in to where you might feel more calm or settled than you did at the beginning of the meditation. Or you feel more aware or more present in your body. Sensing and feeling with the gentle sensations of breathing as the source of warmth and goodwill, the source of a softness in which to spread awareness out into the world.

As if your goodness radiates from breathing into your home, your neighborhood, your town, your province, so everyone is included in the warmth of your hearth, the warmth of your campfire. Wishing for the welfare and happiness of all. Wishing that your acts of body, speech, and mind can benefit this world.

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

Thank you.

Dharmette; Eightfold Path (6 of 10) Holistic Living (link)

Hello and welcome to this sixth talk on the noble eightfold path, one of the core teachings of the Buddha, and a teaching about how to live one's life in a complete way, to include all of ourselves for the purposes of being complete, whole, deeply satisfied, liberated, free.

The key word in this list of eight basic practices or ways of being is the word sama. It's often translated into English, usually as "right." I think translators have tried many different words, and somehow that's the one that felt the most right to use. But the word sama has a lot of rich connotations that are lost when we say "right." It can mean complete or whole. It can mean a gathering together, a coming together of all the pieces and coming into one. It can also mean a harmony of things coming together for the same purpose, in the same direction. But one way or the other, it's a coming together, a gathering together, a unification. One meaning of sama is unity, unified.

We find that there are a lot of words in the ancient Buddhist teachings that have some kind of association with unification, gathering together, putting together things, that is lost in some of the English translations. Like the word "concentration," what's lost in that translation of samadhi² is that samadhi means a gathering together, a putting oneself together in a complete way. And sometimes the word ekaggata, which is sometimes translated as "one-pointedness," in some ways is a good translation, but it also loses the connotations of that original Pali word of gathering into one, becoming unified or whole.

The word sama also has some of the rich, useful, and satisfying ways in which we use the English word "good." For example, you might say, "It was a good rain." We don't have much rain here in Northern California lately where I am. And there's been promise of rain, but the rain has been very small, light. You can sometimes wonder, "Was that really a rain, or just a lot of drips?" But then it might rain for many hours or a day or something, and someone might say, "Oh, that was a good rain," meaning that was a satisfying rain. It kind of did what rains are supposed to do for the land, the vegetation. It was solid. It was complete. It was a good rain. A person might say that they had a good life at the end of their life. "That was a good life." And that's kind of a wonderful thing for anyone to be able to say, that somehow they lived well and they're satisfied and it was a good life.

So when we come to the now the fifth factor of the eight-fold path—the first being right view, the second being right orientation, the third being right speech, the fourth is right action—we now come to what's usually translated as "right livelihood." But it could be translated as "a good life." Sama ajiva—ajiva means living. It's a right living, a good living, a good life. It's a complete living. It's a unified living. It's a gathering together. So that if all of who we are is there, what choices do we make about how to live?

One translator, Stephen Batchelor, has translated it as "right survival" or "wise survival." And so it's how we live our life, how we support our life, we stay alive, we keep our life going. And there's a wide range of things that that entails. It's kind of the overall way in which we live our life. There's nothing wrong with translating it as "livelihood," because that's such a huge area of life for some people. But there are some people who are retired, and one doesn't really quite call retirement a livelihood; it doesn't quite work. But there's a lifestyle, there is a way of living, even if one doesn't work, if one's a child, if one is unemployed for a while. We're still consuming things. We're still living. We're still participating in this world actively.

So how do we do that in a good way, so we come to the end of our life and say, "That was a good life, that was a complete life, that was a full life"? And how do we do that as we live our life now? This is a key aspect of Buddhism. What is it about now? How can we be complete? How can we include all of who we are? How can we not be distracted from ourselves, or separated from ourselves, or divided in ourselves, so that all our sensitivities, all our awareness, all our intelligence, our whole humanity is in harmony and conversation, is aware of what's going on in some kind of deep way, is connected.

This is so important for the first factor of the eight-fold path, because then of course we have challenges. Of course we have foibles and unhealthy impulses and thoughts we might have. There are ways in which we cling and suffer and are stressed. But when we're complete, we are going to see that in the context of a wider field that includes how we can be free, how we can be calm. Right next to agitation is peace. Right next to stress is calm, ease. Right next to clinging, there's also a part of us that's not clinging. And when we start opening up to more and more, then we're not fixated on anything. Fixation, preoccupation, is a real limit. It limits us so dramatically because it limits us from being aware of the whole of who we are.

So when we come to holistic living—that's my favorite translation these days of sama, holistic, part of the whole, wholesome—when we become all of who we are, is included, then there's hopefully a chance for us to have wisdom, compassion, kindness to the whole of everything, including ourselves. We become more important when all of ourself is included, and at the same time, in a certain way, we become less important. And it's possible to hold those two side by side, where of course we want to care for ourselves, and of course we don't need to. Of course we want to care for others, but of course we don't need to. And all of it is there. And then how do we live with all of it with freedom? How do we live with all of it without clinging to anything, including not clinging to clinging? And if we don't cling to clinging, but we see the whole, then perhaps we are free of the clinging.

So in terms of right life, good life, holistic livelihood, holistic way of living, holistic lifestyle, the key aspect of this, to kind of boil it down to the heart of how it's manifested, is a dedication to non-harming. To live in a way that minimizes the harm. It's not possible as a human being to cause no harm whatsoever in the world, but we can try to minimize it and not to cause unnecessary harm.

And so a lifestyle that maybe doesn't enable the cheap availability of the kind of drugs that are so detrimental to our society. A lifestyle, a way of living, a livelihood that doesn't make a cheap supply of weapons more and more available so that children end up going to school with guns. A lifestyle that doesn't figure out better and better ways to sell alcohol, and better and better ways to get people addicted to something, better ways to lie to people. There are livelihoods that harm. There are livelihoods that come from a narrowing and dividing and separating ourselves from all of who we are. We have to ignore the whole of who we are if we're going to be actively involved in professions that cause harm.

One of the really satisfying or gratifying aspects of being a dharma teacher is to witness people who begin practicing and realize that the way they're living, the work they do, no longer works for them because it causes too much harm in the world. Not that they're trying to cause harm or they want to cause harm, but somehow that's the end consequence of what they do. So maybe it's someone in marketing and advertising, and they're asked now to work on marketing rifles, guns, ammunition. Some of these advertisements for weaponry in the United States are kind of disturbing, the values that seem to be in them.

So there is this idea of living a life that also benefits the whole, and not benefiting just a few. But how do we not only become complete and whole ourselves—holistic living—but how does the holism of that benefit all the world? And I think that is one of the great challenges, but also the great invitations of Buddhism: to figure out a life, a way of living that is dedicated to benefiting all beings. Maybe not all at once, but a way that all beings are included, are part of our care. No one excluded. And how would we live? What kind of lifestyle would we engage in? What kind of livelihood would we engage in so that at the end of our life we can say, "That was a good life."

So, thank you. And so now we've done the middle three of the eight-fold path, which are the ones having to do with sila³, with our conduct: speech, action, and now way of living, lifestyle. And then tomorrow we'll go into the samadhi, the growing, cultivating, developing our inner formation, our inner lives.

So thank you.