This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Meditation as Generosity; Gil's Story pt 2 (5 of 5) Generosity and Potential. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Meditation as Generosity; Dharmette: Gil's Story pt 2 (5 of 5) Generosity, Gratitude, and Potential - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 08, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Meditation as Generosity

Hello everyone, and welcome. Today I want to introduce meditation as generosity—that the act of meditation is a continual act of generosity. In that regard, I'm inspired that in the classic teachings of the Buddha, the upper reaches of spiritual growth and meditation practice is a very profound letting go.

It turns out that some of the words that the Buddha uses for "letting go" have a double meaning and also mean "generosity." He has a number of words. Maybe it's such a central part of his teachings that the more you're involved in something, the more variation and names you can have. Some of us will just call a wave a wave, but an oceanographer might have many different names for different kinds of waves. Or clouds are just clouds for me, but someone who knows about clouds can identify all the different types. So there are variations of letting go.

One of those is the word cāga¹, which means to relinquish or let go, and it is also used in the Buddhist teachings as an expression of generosity. There's a word translated as "relinquishment" into English which also has the meaning of giving or generosity. One way we can understand this is that if you hold something tight in your hand, in order to give it away, you also have to let go. You have to relinquish it. You could possibly relinquish under force, against your will, or do it reluctantly. But sometimes we do it with our generosity, our sense of delight and appreciation, and the sense of freedom here. There's almost, maybe even no self-consciousness in the act. It's not about me; it's just about the delight of offering, and this is an expression of our freedom.

So it's in that regard that we talk about meditation as generosity: to let go into the present moment. It's an act of generosity where the giver and the receiver are the same. We give fully, let go fully, not hold on to anything fully, and we benefit. We give so we can be free. We are free so that we can give. Meditation is the opportunity where the giver and the receiver are the same. We do it so deeply and fully that the notion of giving, giver, and receiver falls away. The oneness of giving and letting go. The oneness of generosity and relinquishment.

To assume a posture for meditation, but to do so as an act of generosity to yourself. This meditation posture gives you a chance to sit with dignity, to sit in a way that—whatever posture you have—there's a sense of dignity and nobility. There is respect for this body, for ourselves, for our hearts, and that's an act of generosity. And to let go of the ways in which we collapse, or the ways in which we're under the weight of challenging emotions. Certainly, we can have them, but to succumb under the weight of them is not a generous thing to do. It's also not generous to the difficult emotions. Take a posture of dignity and respect, as if your difficult emotions are being respected, as if you're rising to the occasion to meet them, as if you have value and dignity.

And then gently close your eyes. Even closing your eyes can be generosity: the generosity of offering your full inner attention now to yourself, without being distracted by sights around you. Like you're sitting with a friend on a park bench, to really listen to the friend, close your eyes to sit with yourself, to really listen, feel, and be here.

And then taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. It's a gift to your body to take in a deep breath of oxygen, and it's a gift to your body to relax as you exhale. A kind act to the body here: relax, soften. And then let your breathing return to normal. Allowing breathing to be a gift that supports your life. As you exhale, do not only let go of the old air that's being released—the carbon dioxide—but let the exhale also be a release of tension in your body.

Scanning your body for where there's holding that you can let go of, and in the letting go, offer something good for your body: the absence of tension.

And if you also relax your thinking mind, think of that relaxation as a gift, doing something good for the mind and appreciating it as an act of generosity. No matter how small the letting go, the releasing, the relaxing is, appreciate offering the gift of relaxation to the thinking mind.

If you're caught up in thoughts, let go of the thoughts, but let go as a form of generosity, as a way to offer something beneficial here. It's okay to relax, let go, moving the thinking mind to a healthier functioning one that's not caught in the grip of attachments.

Centering yourself on your breathing, and with a very open-hearted, open-minded way, giving attention to your breathing as an act of generosity. It's a way of giving space, allowing breathing more room. It's a way of valuing and appreciating this life here and now. Giving ourselves over to breathing is an alternative to the mind being free to be involved in thoughts which are tense or stressful. Disconnecting, to appreciate the giving of attention to our lived experience, breathing in and breathing out.

To keep you in the rhythm of the breathing, to keep you in the flow of attention, let attention be an act of generosity, a relinquishment of distractions, a giving of oneself to the breathing. Giving oneself to give all of oneself to the present moment of our own experience, and in this way giving ourselves over to ourselves, to the lived experience of ourselves now.

Rather than giving yourself over to thinking, give yourself over to the immediacy of your lived experience through your body, your heart, through the inner experience of being here and now.

As we come to the end of the sitting part, part of the tremendous benefit of giving ourselves to ourselves, to give ourselves over to the fullness, the three-dimensionality of ourselves here and now, to be in our body, sensing and feeling... Part of the benefit of that is there's much more of ourselves here now with which to be present for other people. We're less likely to be distracted, less likely to be caught in tension, less likely to be fragmented or divided. Rather than divided attention and divided intention, we have much more to offer in the gift of listening, the gift of seeing, the gift of attending to this life and to others.

May it be that this practice of ours gives us the capacity to be present for this world, that we contribute to people's happiness, their safety, their peace, and their freedom from suffering. May that be our legacy. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may our ability to be mindful be a gift that contributes to this possibility.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Gil's Story pt 2 (5 of 5) Generosity, Gratitude, and Potential

So I come to this last talk on a little bit of my story in the Dharma. Yesterday I came more or less to the beginning of IMC² here in Redwood City and being able to purchase this building that I'm sitting in. We were able to do it out of the generosity of the sellers, the two Christian ministers who wanted us to buy the church, because they also provided us with the necessary loan to buy it. It would have been hard for us to have had the money otherwise. Also, it took a year and a half from the time that they told us they were interested in selling it to us before they even showed us the building. That worked really well for our mindfulness approach—just doing things mindfully, slowly, and caringly. We kind of got ready and prepared for this process.

That was exceptional because in this area back then, you had to make a bid for buying a property probably the day before it went on the market. It was that fast; you had to be really quick. We didn't really have that ability, and it also wasn't our way of doing things. It's important that we do things—buy things, move ahead, build our program and our community—in a way that feels harmonious with the practice we're doing, that's harmonious with hopefully being relaxed, at ease, not pushing, and not trying to make something happen for which there is no momentum, delight, and enthusiasm.

After that long period, we bought the building, and that was phenomenally beneficial for our community to now have this blank canvas to grow our programs and all kinds of things. With that, our community grew, both in numbers but also in the maturity of people's practice and the different expressions of people's practice. Having a place like this allowed people to develop and grow in leadership, grow in generosity, and grow in goodwill, Dharma friendships, and Dharma conversations. It became a very rich network of Dharma life that people participated in, which was really beneficial for everyone, including myself.

As it developed, one of the really key aspects of this was people's generosity, both as volunteers—and we had a large number of volunteers—and financially. We did buy the building with debt, a mortgage, and I think within two or three years we raised the money to retire the mortgage and own the building outright.

The same thing happened with IRC³. There was a wellspring of generosity, a wellspring of support. In 2005 was about the time we started to be serious about looking for a retreat center. So we started the search, and it took a long time. It took about five or six years of searching and looking, but that was also beneficial for us; it prepared us for it. Eventually, we were able to raise enough money and buy the building. We had a mortgage at first, and a variety of things happened so that probably within six years that mortgage was put to rest, due to the tremendous generosity of some of our big donors, but also from thousands of people from all over the country who were really inspired by our model of generosity.

For these last twenty-plus years of practicing here at IRC, I've been inspired over and over and over again by the generosity of the community and how much support there is. It's been part of my vision of having a Dharma community where that's the case, because I believe that Dharma practice unfolds best where it's all voluntary and given freely to the people who come. This ability to give freely by everyone is beneficial; it's a gift to ourselves to do that, and so it's a gift to others. This mutuality of giving and receiving, and how they're all folded together, is such an inspiring thing. To see it operating in this community is one of the great experiences of my life.

So we were here, and we were able to start developing programs. The community was maturing, and as they matured, we developed more programs to match the maturity of where people were at. A vision grew of being able to support people in the Dharma, in this practice, in all areas of their life—to expand outwards and keep developing. Certainly, the retreat center was one way of doing that. At some point it became clear that to mature further, people were ready to have easy access to retreats, to sit with us and mature there.

The retreat center became very successful, and in some ways the idea of easy availability of offering retreats freely was fulfilled. Renting facilities, which we did before that, was so much more expensive, and it would have been more and more out of reach to do as many retreats as we do every year. So it's phenomenal that we have this beautiful retreat center.

We also developed a study center—not IMC particularly, but this community. We have the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies⁴, which grew slowly and is now thriving. Over the last few years, one of the great things that rose out of here—partly because we had this place—was that it was possible to envision more new things. With the Sati Center for Buddhist Studies, September 11th, 2001, had a huge impact on me. At some point I was walking on the beach someplace thinking about this, and I thought, "This has had such a big impact on me that it's actually going to be a continuation of the violence if I'm not changed by this event for the better. Somehow something has to change and be different after that horrendous event."

I asked myself, "Well, how do I want to be different? How does the Dharma community that I'm involved in, how can we be different after something like this?" On that walk on the beach, I decided, "Let's start a Buddhist chaplaincy program." I had learned just enough about chaplaincy to know what deep spiritual caregiving it is to people—not just Buddhists, but from all walks of life—in times of the greatest crises in their lives. Chaplains meet people in hospitals, prisons, hospices, and many different places. They're like firefighters; they run towards the fire. Chaplains go towards some of the greatest suffering that humans have, which other people may sometimes pull away from.

So we started an introduction to Buddhist chaplaincy program. It's not a full-fledged professional chaplaincy program, but it opened the door. For more than twenty years it's continued, and it's one of the bright lights of my life—the fact that we opened this door to the world of spiritual caregiving to so many people who come and do the training. That program has developed now into not only an in-person program but a second online program.

I did it partly to support the continued maturity of the IMC community, because I felt that we had to learn and develop people who grew in spiritual care and in expressions of their compassion. We had a community of people to caretake for: people who were dying, getting old, and going through their own crises. I felt it was important to develop a community that could also care for each other through all these different things.

It's been a phenomenal pleasure, joy, and growth for me to see my own practice, my own generosity, my own letting go, my own clarification of my intentions, mind, and heart within this rich world of Dharma growth that we have. I feel so grateful to have so many opportunities now to develop teachings and programs, to allow people to grow, expand outwards, and fill in the gaps of what it means to be a fully developed Buddhist practitioner and a fully developed human being in this world. We've supported different people to individuate in different ways, because we offer so many different things that provide direction for people to go in different directions.

I think one of the really impactful things of the growth of this community over these years is my phenomenal appreciation of the individuals who I encounter. I appreciate the uniqueness of each person as they follow this path of awareness, mindfulness, care, and compassion. It's one thing to offer teachings, and another thing to take those teachings and personalize them for each person's own path through life, to find how to support that. Coming to really appreciate the beauty and sincerity of people, and how each person has this beautiful unfolding that is their own. It's not a cookie-cutter approach, though sometimes the teachings might sound that way—"just do this, follow the breath." It's opening breathing room and space for everyone to find out who they are in this complicated world and how we can participate in this world in a rich way.

Many years ago, I dedicated my life to trying to make this world a better place, to come to the end of suffering in this world. On the scale of suffering in this world, perhaps I've just made a drop—maybe not even a drop—of difference. But I feel that it's phenomenal what has grown and developed over these years with so many people stepping up to support and practice.

I never could have imagined when I dedicated myself to alleviating suffering in the world how much we've been able to do here and now. As we continue with our community, and now the expanded community of so many people like you all, spread out across the globe, it's very exciting for me to see how it grows and how there's new potential. During the pandemic we expanded our potential with technology, being able to do this online and reach more people. We now have a whole online retreat center—we call it Insight Retreat Online⁵—that offers retreats for people online that have been very impactful.

Watching this growth and development, I find myself still quite inspired by what we're doing here, quite inspired by my role as a visionary, and quite inspired by the potential that's still here as we grow and develop in this field of generosity. It's very important for us to do it in a Dharmic way, in a way that's relaxed and doesn't force anything. I take delight in the day-to-day of what we do here and its momentum. I'm very curious and interested in discovering where we go next and how we continue growing and developing in this phenomenal community, which now has a growing number of teachers, practitioners, and mature people. I look forward to the chance to continue benefiting this world and alleviating suffering wherever we can.

Thank you very much for allowing me to speak about this for the last two weeks. I do wish that I had taken time to take questions from you, and I'm going to look for an opportunity for that sometime over the next period when I can find some freedom of time. We'll do one of these community meetings we've had at our next opportunity.

I'm going to be away on retreat next week, so Matthew Brensilver⁶ will be here. Then I'll be back for one week, and then I will not be here the last week of the year.

So thank you very much, and I look forward to our continuation.