This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Deep Relaxation; Quarrels (2 of 5) Roots of Quarrels. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Deep Relaxation; Dharmette: Quarrels (2 of 5) Roots of Quarrels - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 31, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Deep Relaxation

One of the opportunities and often purposes of Buddhist meditation is to settle deeply inside of oneself, to become calm and settled in order to understand oneself better. And by understanding oneself better, being able to let go of that which doesn't serve us—that which gets in the way of further understanding and further clarity.

I offer an analogy: if the faucet is on and the kitchen sink is blocked, the water fills and spills over onto the kitchen floor. You come home and see the floor wet, and then you run around the house looking for buckets and sponges. Maybe eventually you find them, and you start mopping up the floor and emptying the water. After a long time of doing that, you're getting tired of all the soaking up and throwing away. It occurs to you: how about just turning off the faucet?

It's that way in our lives sometimes. We can go around with a lot of challenges and conflict of all kinds, and we might be trying to take care of them. Sometimes we do take care of them, and it's important to care for a lot of things. But the opportunity in meditation is to sit quietly and no longer objectify our experiences, our life, our challenges, ourselves, or the world around us. Instead, we drop into a deep subjective experience of what's here, so we can come to a place to recognize where the faucet is on and turn it off.

The more you're preoccupied with something, upset about something, concerned about something, or even thinking about something, the more you're involved in a certain kind of objectification. There's the issue there—the thing you're thinking about. Even if what you're thinking about is something that's present for yourself right now, we'll often objectify that we're thinking about it, concerned with it, figuring it out, or analyzing it.

The opportunity here in sitting quietly is to begin feeling our way into what's deeper: where the faucet is on, where the energy is coming from. One of those things is tension. One of the simple ways to explore this is to ask: where's the tension? Where's the stress? Where's the agitation? Because that energy—the running water of agitation, the running water of tension, the running water of stress—if that's still on, we keep getting caught up in this objectifying world of concerns. We are often so caught up in the concerns we don't see that the faucet is on, but there is a faucet that's giving it energy, giving it power, and helping us be attached to it.

So I propose for this sitting that the faucet that's on, the running water that's flooding the kitchen floor, is discovered through its tension—the agitation, the stress, the constriction that we find in our body and mind. If you find that, see if you can relax it. See if you can calm it, soften it. Maybe you can't turn off the faucet, but maybe you can slow down the flow, decrease it a little bit.

Assume a meditation posture, and be reminded that it's a posture with which we are going to really show up in our body, here and now, for our present moment experience. A posture that is almost like taking a stand: "Yes, this is where I am. This is where my attention will be, here and now." Not denying anything, but here to see how everything manifests as present moment experience. The direct experience is here and now.

Gently close your eyes. Just to the extent that's comfortable for you, take some deeper breaths. Take longer inhales, and on the exhale, relax the body. Maybe stretch out the exhale a bit so there can be more time to soften, let go, and release.

Let your breathing return to normal. Continuing on the exhale, take time to relax the muscles of the face. As we relax the muscles of the face, we sense the sensations of the face more fully. Maybe extend the exhale a little bit to see if there's an additional relaxing, releasing the muscles of the face.

Then do the same for the shoulders. On the exhale, soften the shoulders.

Relax the belly. Soften the belly. And wherever in your belly you're relaxing, see if you can feel or imagine yourself deeper into the belly for a deeper release.

Bring your attention to the area around the heart. There too, gently, maybe lovingly, on the exhale, relax around the heart center. Allow a softening throughout the chest.

Take some minutes here also to relax the thinking mind. The muscles in the face, the eyes, the forehead associated with thinking. Any tightness, pressure, or agitation in the mind—on the exhale, allow it all to soften.

Finally, on the inhale, feel in your own way a global experience of the body. On the exhale, release and relax the whole body.

Settle yourself into the body's experience of breathing. Accompany the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out. If anything troubles you, feel your way into the body, mind, and heart to where the tension, stress, or pressure is, and see if you can relax it. Relax the tension, the pressure. Soften on the exhale.

Rather than thinking your thoughts, feel the underlying tension or pressure to think, to be troubled. As you exhale, relax the tension and the pressure wherever it might be. Gently, slowly.

And then, as we come to the end of this sitting, gently, almost like radiating¹ outwards on the inhale—feel the expansion of the chest, the movements of the lungs as you breathe in. In your own way, feel as widely in your body as you can. On the exhale, let go. On the exhale, relax the body. On the exhale, release any holding that remains in the body.

Let go of even trying to let go, and sit here for a few moments breathing. Not even meditating, just being present.

As we come to the end, turn your gaze outward into the world. From the mind's eye, through imagination, bring in the people in your lives, near and far. The people in the world who are suffering terribly. Become aware of them from a relaxed state, from which maybe we have access to love, compassion, respect, and care, no matter how challenging what we're considering is. From that place of care, wishing well on others:

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

And may we contribute to the welfare and happiness of the world from a place within that has no stress and tension, no agitation. So that how we contribute to the world is through the medium of being peaceful ourselves.

May all beings be well. Thank you.

Dharmette: Quarrels (2 of 5) Roots of Quarrels

Hello, and welcome to the second talk on the Buddhist teachings related to quarrels and disputes.

The idea that human beings live in conflict with each other was very well recognized by the Buddha. Not only did he have a lot to say about it, but it could be understood that the core teachings of the Buddha—even the whole purpose of becoming enlightened—have to do with creating a world where people are not driven by unethical behavior. The core teachings of the Buddha are ethical with an ethical goal.

A person who is awakened is defined as someone who will not harm anybody at all, including how we navigate the way in which we have disagreements with people. Certainly, we will have disagreements, but to disagree in an argumentative way, with hostility, anger, assertions of power, and demeaning other people, is not the direction that the Dharma teaches or that the Buddha taught.

He really wants us to take responsibility for our contribution to suffering in the world. Certainly, that's not enough to diminish the suffering in the world just to look at ourselves, but without a deep look at ourselves and what's going on with us, we could inadvertently continue being models and perpetuators of hostility, hate, and assertions of power. We could continue the endless cycles of harm that have existed since the time of the Buddha. So, his teachings on quarrels are the topic for this week.

The primary strength of the Dharma the Buddha taught is the capacity of this practice for us to take a deep dive into ourselves and understand ourselves. Not to ignore the world, but I like to think of it as taking a deep dive inside of ourselves to really see ourselves and free ourselves from the inside out. We turn ourselves inside out and return to the world with a heightened sensitivity and capacity to care and to love without any hostility, without taking on any stress in that process, and without any kind of conceit that gets in the way of caring for others and the world.

In one set of teachings about quarrels and disputes, the Buddha talks about six roots. These are the six problematic ways underneath a quarrel from which we contribute to the argument or disagreement in an unhealthy, unbeneficial way. We want to find a way to go under the surface—to go a layer down—and not constantly be involved at the level of the quarrel: who said what, what's going on, and what I should do. That is living a little bit in an objectified world of the problem. We also want to take time out to really understand what we are contributing. What gasoline are we putting into the fire?

One of the purposes of meditation is the introspection to drop at least a layer into our being, into our psychology, to see what we are contributing in terms of pressure, energetics, agitation, and stress onto the quarrel.

The Buddha talked about six roots, and when he talks about them, he pairs them up. They are pairs, so somehow they're considered maybe synonyms, close synonyms, or part of a family. Each of them we can understand to imply that as they settle, they maybe get replaced by their opposite. The Buddha² uses the word "root" because the reference point is a plant: if you cut off the plant at the surface, it sprouts again from the roots. If you really want to get rid of a weed, you have to get down there and pull out the roots so nothing can resprout.

Anger and Resentment

The first of these roots is anger and resentment. Anger in the Buddhist lexicon is maybe not the same as the English word. Kodha³ is the word in Pali. It involves hostility and hatred. Some people in the West want to justify certain kinds of anger as "clean white anger" or "justified anger," but the anger that Buddhism says is a problem—a poison—is anger that has hostility and hatred within it. Resentment is also a kind of poison that certainly harms the person who is resenting.

If these settle down, what's possible is friendliness and care. We can come from a different place. We might still disagree, but we disagree in friendly ways. And if we can't be friendly because that's too high a bar, we can disagree with care for the welfare of everyone involved. What does it take to really engage in disagreement in a productive way? It is not easy.

Contempt and Spite

The second root is contempt and spite: having this attitude towards others with whom we are in disagreement. We know that there are whole political movements and politicians who are demonizing their opponents. Contempt and spite just put gasoline on the fire of a lot of social, political, and national conflicts that exist in our time. There's no hope of resolving a conflict if there's contempt, spite, hatred, and demonization of the other. The alternative is respect—to enter into disagreements with respect for the other, even if they don't respect us.

Envy and Greed

The third root is envy and greed. The word for greed can also mean selfishness. Envy for some people is a really deep poison. It's not an issue for me, but I've been so surprised when I've talked to and learned from people how toxic it is for some to live with envy. It seems to come along with an undermining of one's own integrity or well-being to just be envious of others, what they have, and their situation. Or to be greedy and selfish—to want more and want everything.

Some disputes have to do with us wanting what they have, and they don't want to give it to us, or we can't have it. If that settles, if that level of tension within quiets down, the healthy alternative is generosity: to want other people to be well, to have things, to give them some of our things, and to wish them well.

Deceit and Deceptiveness

The next root for quarrels is deceit and deceptiveness: trying to deceive people into getting what we want, being deceptive in what we say, and lying. This is poison for our society and for our interpersonal relationships. It means that there's no trust and no respect for others; we're just trying to get our way without considering the cost.

The alternative to that, as we relax the inner tensions and forces of deceit and deception, is honesty. Honesty is medicine. Honesty is the food for psychological and spiritual health, which then spreads and inspires.

Evil and Wrong View

The next root of quarrels is evil and wrong view. What exactly is meant by "evil" is not so clear, but it could be wickedness pure and simple—a tendency some people have to just want to cause harm without any other reason. Wrong view is the view that doesn't understand the nature of what is harmful and what is not harmful.

Both of these involve some kind of tension, contraction, and agitation within, just like all the other roots. As we drop down in our awareness of self below the level of the quarrel and into the subjective level, we start discovering these tensions, and we discover what we can relax. If evil and wrong view relax, there can be greater wisdom. The core penetrating wisdom in Buddhism that applies to almost everything is understanding what causes harm and what causes real welfare.

Attachment to the World

The final root is attachment to the world: just being attached to this life that we're living. It can seem like, of course, we should be that way, but the alternative is to be generous to the world. We don't have to be attached to the world to live a full life. In fact, I would suggest that not being attached to anything, but being able to give and be generative from the inside out, is a fantastic sense of well-being and freedom. To be attached to the world means that we are only consumers holding on and not giving away.

Conclusion

The primary Buddhist lesson that I'd like to pass on is that we want to be able to sit quietly enough, or find a way to be, so that we can step below the level upon which the quarrels, disputes, and fights are going on. We need to see what our contribution is within: what's the tension and pressure, and what are the roots within us? This list is a good checklist to see if any of these are present.

As we find them, we must really feel the physical, subjective way in which that tension, pressure, and agitation is present for us, and then learn to relax. Maybe it's easier to relax physically, mentally, and emotionally than it is to pull out the root itself initially. To stop being envious, we might first have access to relaxing the tension around it.

So I propose to you today: if you have any of these things—anger, envy, greed, deceit, a tendency to lie, attachments of any kind, or contempt for other people that you read about in the news or politics—stop and look below it subjectively. Is there any tension? And if there is, see if you can relax, and see what healthy alternative is possible when you're relaxed.

Thank you very much, and I look forward to being with you again tomorrow.