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Onward Leading Questions - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on March 02, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Onward Leading Questions

Welcome here. In some areas of life, having good questions is a treasure. And in Buddhist practice, good questions are worth more than their weight in gold. They're very important.

There can be questions that close things, questions that narrow the scope and sometimes cause the other person to just shut down and close up. And then there are questions that help people to open up. Really good questions in spirituality—at least Buddhist spirituality—are questions that kind of open us to possibilities. Maybe they open us beyond the edges of our thoughts, our beliefs, and our ideas.

Often human beings are trapped inside of their particular thought world: the particular way they think about themselves, the way they think about the world around them, the particular orientation they have, and the important issues of their life. And there can be a question that can just open up the walls of that. We see there's a world that is much bigger and wider, where the scope of our attention can open up and feel a wondrous immensity of potential, possibility, and openness. There's a big world here beyond our concerns, and a good question can shift how we see ourselves.

We find a variety of questions asked in the ancient tradition. In fact, the classic story of the Buddha's awakening involved him asking himself questions. He asked a series of questions that opened things for him, leading to another question, and another question, which eventually brought him to awakening.

It's fairly common for many people, I think, to ask "why?" Why is this? And another common question is "what?" What is this, or what do I do about it? As a teacher, I get a lot of people that come with questions like that, especially "why?" or "what is this?" or "what's happening here?" Those are fair questions to ask, and good ones, but there are other questions that are maybe more important because they're not so conceptual. They're not limiting themselves to just their own domain. There are questions that evoke intimacy and immediacy here in the present moment.

One of the interesting questions you see in the most ancient Buddhist literature is, "Where?" Where? What does that evoke? Now, if you've lost something, then "where" means you're searching everywhere outside of yourself for where it is. But in mindfulness practice, where is your experience? Where are you?

Probably some of you have had the experience of being with someone—or maybe you were that someone—where you look at them and wonder, "Where are you?" I mean, of course, they're physically right there, but they're so caught up in their mind and their head, almost like they're possessed by something. Sometimes you feel like you want to put your hand in front of their eyes and say, "Where are you? You don't seem to be even here with me."

So, where are you? Are you in yourself, or are you not in yourself? Where are you really? Are you still there with yesterday? Whatever was happening yesterday. I had a difficult day yesterday, and this morning when I got up, I could say my body was still in yesterday. The leftover feelings of challenge were still lingering around. But do I go back into yesterday, or do I stay with how I am today? Where am I? Okay, here I am feeling a little off. That's where I am. A body that feels off, a body that feels tired.

And then the next question is, where is what you're experiencing? So maybe I was feeling off. Where is that? Oh, I feel it from the shoulder—some funny feeling of tingling or vulnerability or tenderness from my elbow up to the back of my arm, going down the side of my rib cage and coming with a tightness and agitation in my belly. There, that's where it is. With insight practice (Vipassanā¹), one of the key questions is not what is happening, but where is it happening? You ask this so you can get close to it, be with it, be present for it, hold it, and feel it.

You discover the "what" not by thinking about it, not by analyzing it, and not by having some plan around it, but by asking the question, "Where is it?" Then you can bring your attention close to really get to know it and find out what's there.

One of the wonderful things we discover through mindfulness practice is how little we have to fix things if we're mindful. Some people have a very intense idea: "If I'm uncomfortable, it has to be fixed. If I'm not living up to the standards, it has to be fixed. I have to do something." But we're a natural ecosystem that wants to go into homeostasis and balance, and it has the capacity for it. Sometimes the foreign species or invasive weeds we bring into the system come from the mind. They come from the mind trying to change things, make things different, do something about it, or judge it.

One of the real gifts of practice is to do nothing about what's happening, except be intimate with it, hold it in awareness, and allow something deeper to unfold, move, and change. So the question is, "Where is it?" It's in my belly.

It might be that you're in some kind of public event that's chaotic and difficult. The obvious answer might seem to be, "Those people out there, they're chaotic." Yeah, but where is the experience? How are you experiencing it? Where is it in you? Well, you know that you feel discombobulated. That's a very vague answer that kind of keeps you stuck in being discombobulated. But where is the discombobulation? Where in the body? Is it your little toe? Is it in the back of your knee? Slowly you see that maybe it's not quite in those places, but there's a lot of restlessness in your chest. There's a lot of fire in your skull, a lot of tightness and contraction.

When you feel that, be with it. Where is it? In my head, in my chest. Get close. Then you might discover that maybe there's annoyance, maybe there's fear, maybe there's confusion about what to do. Ask, "Where is it?" Get closer and be with it. Maybe you don't have to fix anything. Maybe the inner system that knows how to unfold, settle, open up, and reveal what's going on can take care of the situation better than you.

"Where is it?" is such an important question because "What is it?" often triggers more thoughts. You don't have to know the "what", but you have to know how to be with it, how to hold it, and be close to it. Intimacy and immediacy are the hallmarks of mindfulness practice.

It can get even more interesting, because you can ask yourself another rare question. Say you feel afraid, and the fear is mostly agitation in the chest or in the belly. You can ask the question, "Where are you now?" Where are you, the one who is aware of the fear? You realize the fear is one thing, and maybe you're up in the control tower watching it, thinking about it, predicting what it means, trying to fix it, hide it, escape it, or spinning out in the head. So where are you? Not in the abstract sense that you're in this room, but where is that part of you that you think of as "who I am"? Where is that? Maybe it's in the control tower in the head. Well, if it's there, let's get close to it. Maybe that's more important than getting close to the fear. Let's get close to the one who is afraid.

What do you discover there if you get close to it? Maybe there's a tightness or a contraction. Maybe there's a kind of energetic agitation around the thoughts, behind the thoughts. Most people are locked into what their thoughts are thinking, but it's possible to have an intimacy with the whole experience of being the thinker—the ecology of it. What does that feel like to be thinking so much? Where is that "you" that is being aware of the fear? That can reveal a whole place to bring attention to and hold, which opens up the field. It allows something different to happen that can't happen if that "I" up in the control tower keeps spinning, figuring, planning, judging, and reacting. We do some of those things, of course. But mindfulness practice is to feel where that is happening inside of me, and discover what happens when I hold it in caring, compassionate, loving, and gentle attention.

I used to practice a sledgehammer approach to mindfulness where I was just going to penetrate, break open, and get there. It was kind of violent, and generally, it never worked.

Recently, I spent time with my cousin who was out in front of his house on the sidewalk, and there was a little parakeet that had fallen onto the ground. It was lost and discombobulated. He picked it up and didn't know what to do with it. He was just holding it. He was very touched by holding this little parakeet in his hand, and it seemed happy to be there, shivering. A stranger walked by, and my cousin asked, "What do I do with it?" The stranger replied, "I guess it's yours now." So he took it to a pet shop, got some instructions and support, and now it lives with him. The parakeet's favorite place is just inside his shirt, pecking at his neck or sitting on his shoulder. How do you hold that? In the same way, how do you hold yourself? How do you hold what's difficult in you? You can only hold it carefully like that if you know where it is. Where is it really?

It's easy to be afraid and just get lost in that cloud of fear. It feels like fear is everywhere and fear is the whole experience. Fear penetrates everything because we're not really living in the immediacy and intimacy of the moment. We're living in the vague image, idea, or sense that the thinking mind radiates out. But fear is not everywhere—there's a place at the heart of it. Can you find it? Where is it? Hold it, and be with it.

So you ask, where's the fear? And where are you in relationship to it? Where is the "you" that is doing the practice, reacting to it, or approaching it? Where's that? Hold that. Sometimes that's more important. And don't get involved in Buddhist ideas of self and no-self. You might think, "Gil, you don't even know Buddhism. There's no self, and you're telling us to ask 'where are you?' You're leading people astray. You have to say there's no self." [Laughter] That is more of that thinning conceptual world that actually keeps people away from the intimacy and immediacy of now. What's important is your experience—to know where that experience is, and respect it enough to hold it and be with it. So where's the fear? Where's the "you"? Where are you?

If you're really there with that process, there's a third question: Where's the awareness of all of that? Where's the awareness that knows the experience of "I"? Where's the awareness that knows and holds the fear? Where is attention? For some people, that question opens up the field because awareness is something that usually doesn't lend itself to a very exact, careful place of attention. If it does, that's invaluable to see because that gives you a place to bring your awareness. But at some point, you start becoming fascinated that if you're aware of being aware, where is that? Are they two different kinds of awareness? Is one of them larger and holding the other? Does awareness have a bounded place? Maybe it's centered someplace, but maybe it points to some wider potential—a wider possibility beyond our usual sense of self, our usual sense of the world, and our usual preoccupations. What if a boundaryless awareness, a kind of undefined presence, is where freedom is found?

Another question the earliest texts depict the Buddha using is "when." When this is here, what arises then? What appears then? You can ask the question: When you're aware, what arises then? When you're being reactive, what arises then? If you're really pissed off and someone cuts you off in traffic, what arises then? When you're peaceful and someone cuts you off in traffic, what arises then? How does that condition the situation? What changes?

When you're aware of your fear, how does that unfold? What occurs then? This is an opening question. It's not "what is it?" but "how do things change?" How are things evolving, growing, and shifting? The interest is in the process, rather than locking into, "This is what is there, and now I know exactly what's supposed to happen." Be open to it. Maybe you don't know what happens when this is here. Let's see. Let's make ourselves available with this immediacy and intimacy. When I hold the fear non-reactively, what occurs? That leaves you open to discover. If you judge your fear or judge yourself for being afraid, you may be locked into those judgments. But if you ask yourself, "When there are judgments, what happens then?"

It's always looking at the process and the movement. Often we don't give ourselves a chance for a process to unfold because we're locked into our judgment or our concern, and we get stuck.

We can be present for our experience. Where is it? How is it? When you meet that with kindness, what happens? When you meet it with annoyance, what happens? You have to ask, "When I'm here, how am I here? What's happening when I'm here? Who am I when I'm here? And when I'm this kind of 'I', what arises?"

This movement towards seeing is what the Buddha pointed to. He also asked, when this happens, where does it come from? Again, not figuring it out, but when there's fear, what's underneath the fear? What's the foundation for it? There are a lot of different answers. Sometimes it's vulnerability, sometimes it's hurt. People feel deeply hurt or betrayed in this life, and that hurt makes them very tender and easy to frighten because they're afraid of being hurt again. So when there is X, where is it arising from? That question points to even greater intimacy. Get really close and just keep feeling.

I've been in situations where I had some emotion, and I asked the question, "Now that this is here, where is it coming from?" And I didn't have an answer. That was great. Without the answer, it opened my attention to just feel the whole situation more carefully—more curious, more attentive, more quiet. "Okay, I don't know what this is, but it's certainly arising from something." If I become quieter, less thinking, and just allow everything to be there, what shows itself? Does anything occur?

In English-speaking Buddhism, we use the word "practice" a lot. A common question people ask is, "What's your practice?" It's fine to practice, but the ancient Pali word that's being translated as practice is bhāvanā². Bhāvanā literally means to grow or to cultivate.

When you ask people, "What's your practice?", they might respond with a technique. "I practice mindfulness of breathing. I'm doing loving-kindness practice. I'm doing insight practice." That is all fine, but it's a little abstract. If instead you were asked, "What are you growing in your inner life?", many people would have to stop and think about it. "Oh, no one's ever asked me that." What are you growing? Are you growing confidence? Are you growing kindness? Are you growing compassion? Are you growing peace? Are you growing in wisdom? Are you growing in patience? Are you growing in your capacity to let go? Are you growing in ease? I love the word "ease", and I love that as the heart of Buddhism because it's unpresumptuous. Just finding and growing your sense of ease in this world. Someone might answer the question with, "I'm growing a greater sense of feeling at home in myself, in my heart, in this world."

We might have different answers on different days, months, or years. But what I like about that question is that "What are you growing?" points back to some kind of immediacy and intimacy here in oneself. There's a feeling, a sense, a reference point for what we're talking about that is not there when we say, "What is the practice?" Sometimes people use the word technique: "What's your meditation technique?" That makes it seem even more like something abstract, like an engineering project.

So what are you growing? Where are you growing it, and who is the one growing it? When you're growing, where does that come from? These are all mindfulness questions to ask yourself when you meditate. Not incessantly, not as a big project, but as a principle to ask questions that allow you to rest or relax into the open possibility of something revealing itself to you, rather than you figuring it out.

I often like to think of this practice of mindfulness as a process of making ourselves available for revelation. It's a big religious word, but we're here to allow something to be revealed. Nothing too grand—don't get too excited. But the basis of your peace, goodness, compassion, and love... can you really let your experience be revealed to you, rather than always being the doer, going to "do the thing", or being the one who's going to understand?

Whatever you're doing, whatever way you find yourself, ask: Where is the experience of this now? Where is the "I" that's engaged in this process? What's arising in it? What's the process that's going on? And then when you begin getting a sense of that intimacy and immediacy with "here", ask the question: Where's the awareness? Where's the attention? At least for me, that has been a wonderful question because it dissolves the walls of the mind. Awareness is everywhere. You can't point to the edge of awareness.

These are open-ended questions that you can ask yourself for this practice. Those are my thoughts. We have some time if you have questions or examples.

Q&A

Speaker 1: Gil, you mentioned the question, "What are you growing?" Gil Fronsdal: Yeah. Speaker 1: It occurs to me there are a couple of different angles to that question. One is intentional, like I planted broccoli and so I'm growing broccoli. The other is more observational, like, I got this vegetable box here and I'm not sure what's coming up right now. I was wondering if you had anything to say about those two different angles.

Gil Fronsdal: Well, the first thing is to just celebrate that you would point those two different sides of it out. I appreciate it a lot. I think that there's a point in practice where it's more observational than it is intentional. It's wonderful to be intentional around this, to have some clear idea of what you want to grow or how you want to change, but it's also about really beginning to understand this natural wonder—this amazing capacity we have to get out of our own way and bring into the mix of "here" something very healthy and wholesome, which is awareness itself. Just being really attentive and present for stuff, and then finding out what wants to grow and having it be revealed. So you observe it rather than do it. Sooner or later in this practice, you have to get out of the way and not be the doer or the intender. It's best even not to have any idea of what's supposed to happen. In fact, it's not possible to do this Vipassanā practice to its full potential if you always know what's supposed to happen. If you know what's supposed to happen, you're going to trip yourself up. So I love what you brought up, the observational side of that.

I had the good fortune of studying philosophy and religion with Jacob Needleman³ at San Francisco State. I had several classes with him, and at the beginning of every class, he would say, "We don't do answers in this class. We only do questions. We try to do better questions." I thought that idea works in the academic setting as well as in the spiritual setting.

Speaker 2: Relative to what you just said, Thich Nhat Hanh⁴ at one point suggests that you write down on a piece of paper, "Are you sure?" and put it somewhere. I have that on my computer monitor. Gil Fronsdal: Yeah, it's a little bit similar to how Shunryu Suzuki Roshi⁵ reduced all of Buddhism into three words. It's not a question, but it's similar: "Not always so." If it's not always so, then the good way to be is curious.

Many years ago, I went and was doing a retreat with an English Vipassanā teacher named Christopher Titmuss⁶. In a group discussion, someone started to talk about their practice and started off with something like, "I'm waiting for something to happen in my practice. I'm waiting for something." Christopher Titmuss, in a very kind way, said, "If you're waiting, you missed the bus." So, what's the bus? Here, whatever is happening in the moment.

Speaker 3: Last night I was talking with a friend and she said, "Oh, have you heard what happened with Iran?" And I said, "No." And she was like, "Are you kidding? How did you not know what happened in Iran in the last two days?" And I said, "What?" Then I read about it in the New York Times before I went to bed, which was probably a mistake. In the middle of the night, I woke up and it was hard to get back to sleep. But then in the morning when I woke up, Gil, there was really a lot of sensation in my belly, which I believe was fear. With this example and what you've been talking about, the "where" and "when", could you address this a little bit? Because I was aware that this is fear, I think. Could you talk a little bit about that example? Gil Fronsdal: Yeah. So the fear was in your belly? Speaker 3: Yes. Gil Fronsdal: And what's the experience like there of fear? Speaker 3: It was very tight. Thankfully, I don't usually feel that, but it was kind of a dramatic thing and I realized, okay, I associate this with what's going on in Iran. Gil Fronsdal: Yeah, that's kind of abstract. But who's the "I"? Where's the "I" that's reacting to that, thinking about it, concerned about it? Where does that reside in you? Speaker 3: Well, my first response to that is that I was aware that something's really going on here and I want to be with it. Gil Fronsdal: Sort of. Twice now you've used the word "I" very strongly. Where's that "I"? Where does that "I" live in you? If you look, is it in your little toe? Speaker 3: Well, it was in my head, I think. Gil Fronsdal: In your head? Speaker 3: Yeah. Gil Fronsdal: So if you bring your attention to the head to feel what that "I" feels like there, the "I"-ing, the "my"-ing, what does it feel like there? What does it feel like in your head with this? Speaker 3: Oh, okay. Uh, well I was aware... it was um... these are tough questions for me. Gil Fronsdal: I don't think you're the only one. But now that you're perplexed about this? Speaker 3: Yes. Gil Fronsdal: Where does that perplexion live in you? Where are you experiencing that right now? Speaker 3: Probably in my head. Gil Fronsdal: Where? In the back of the head or tip of your nose? Speaker 3: Well, I'm feeling tightness in my jaw. Gil Fronsdal: Uh-huh. So, what happens if you just allow your jaw to be tight, but stay close to it? Speaker 3: Well, now I'm feeling sadness. Gil Fronsdal: Things change quickly. And then where's the sadness in you? Speaker 3: It's in my eyes, it's in my stomach, and it's in my chest. Gil Fronsdal: Yeah. It's probably been waiting for you, the sadness in those three places. Where's the sadness the strongest? Speaker 3: Uh, I would say in my face and my jaw. Gil Fronsdal: Yeah. So then go into your face, just allow it to be there, just be present for it. And when you just offer very simple presence for it—it's not a mistake, there's nothing to fix, just be—then when you do that, what happens? What occurs? Speaker 3: I feel more sadness. Gil Fronsdal: There are only three things that could happen: it could get weaker, it could get stronger, or stay the same. So you're on... Hooray! [Laughter] So now we're in a different world than the world of fear. The question is, what's the foundation? What's the source from which the fear arises? I don't know you well enough, but it could be that fear has power over you and is strong because it's arising out of some underlying, maybe semiconscious sadness. But if you stop, really stop and feel this whole phenomenon, you start feeling the deeper sadness. And it's healthy to do that. Remember this ecosystem of who we are: it knows how to heal. It knows how to find its way forward. So even sadness, we don't need to be afraid of it. It should be deeply respected and given nice room. So the question: where is that sadness, and when you bring attention to it, what happens next? It's that simple. So there's an example that gets a little more concrete. Speaker 3: Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Gil Fronsdal: Great. Thank you.

Speaker 4: So it seems like all of this process is aware in the physical—you know, a headache or the eyes or whatever. Is that what you're trying to say? Because I'm thinking sometimes it seems like a thought or an emotion will be in here somewhere, but it isn't a specific physical manifestation. Are you assuming that all emotions are going to have a physical manifestation? Is that your assumption? Gil Fronsdal: Yes. Yes. Every emotion has a physical corollary. Without the body, you wouldn't really know what emotions you have. It could be subtle. It could be in a small little place. It could be broad and strong. Maybe some people can't feel their emotions very well; they might have a general sense of what it is because they haven't grown in the capacity to feel their body. They've done the opposite. We live in a society that grows the capacity to be shut down and shut off from our body.

With mindfulness of the body, over time we're developing greater and greater sensitivity to feel what's happening in the body, to feel the emotions. And the wonderful thing about that is that the more we can feel in the body, the more room there is for this natural system to work well. So just focus on the sensations in the body, not worrying about the "why" or the history or the future. Just put that aside. There might be a time to ask the "why" questions and think about things—maybe journal or go for a walk with friends. But what most people don't give themselves over to enough is something much simpler than that. With too many "why" questions, we lose ourselves in the process.

So the idea is, where is it? And can I open to it? Can I feel it? Can I just be with it? What happens if I don't try to fix it? If I don't ask why, but instead just hold it gently? Hold it gently in awareness, like my cousin holding that parakeet. Speaker 4: Yeah, that was a wonderful image. Gil Fronsdal: Mindfulness has a lot to do with this process of not asking why, but really discovering what's there. Some of the deeper, more challenging things we might not be ready to resolve until we've developed a greater capacity to be present and learned how to really bring presence. Speaker 4: Okay, thank you. Gil Fronsdal: So maybe the last one, yes.

Speaker 5: Could this be related to the idea of chakras? Gil Fronsdal: There's a wonderfully rich tradition in India about chakras. In early Buddhism, our school, we don't really talk about chakras. Partly because, as I understand it, it tends to narrow the focus a little bit. It already comes with a whole bunch of ideas of what chakras are, how they work, and chakra systems. So we prefer in our system not to overlay that kind of idea on top of our experience. Just let the experience be what it is on its own without that kind of label or system. Other systems will use it and that's fine. Speaker 5: Okay. Well, thank you. Gil Fronsdal: So, where are you?