This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Letting Go is Peaceful; Step-by-Step Into Dharma 4/5: Gradual Turning & Loosening. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Letting Go is Peaceful; Dharmette: Step-by-Step Into the Dharma (4 of 5) A Gradual Turning, A Gradual Loosening - Shelley Gault

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

Guided Meditation: Letting Go is Peaceful

Greetings everyone. Today is the fourth day of the week where I have been subbing for Gil and talking about this gradual, step-by-step way that the Buddha would give a talk when first introducing people to the Dharma.

I mentioned that he didn't start talking about mindfulness and samādhi¹. He spoke of ways that people can act in their daily lives and ways they can orient their lives that build a foundation for a mind that is ready to engage with the wisdom teachings of the path. As the listener comes to see the value in cultivating generosity, ethical sensitivity, and understanding of karma, and then recognizing the disadvantages of depending on worldly pleasures for comfort, their mind gets close to being sufficiently prepared to hear the teachings that are special to the Buddhas.

Those are the topics that we've gone through this week so far. There is one more step in this gradual introduction, and that is our topic for today: nekkhamma², which is usually translated as renunciation. "Letting go" is a nice synonym if you find the word renunciation a bit austere.

Before I say any more about it, let's meditate.

Taking a comfortable posture, relaxing, and noticing any areas of tension. Just checking the typical areas where you carry tension. It's definitely the neck and top of the shoulders for me. We all have our favorite places. Just breathing into those areas, and as you exhale, seeing if they can soften a bit.

When there's holding in the body, there's often holding also in the mind. Just sensing into those places if there are such places in your body this morning. Seeing if you can just soften, relax, let go.

Then receiving the sensations of breathing, letting those be in the forefront. Just very simply knowing the sensations as they arise, where they arise. Recognizing that the sensing of the sensations happens exactly where the sensations are arising. They are known in the moment as they happen.

As we soften in the areas where there's tension in the body, noticing the softening that can accompany that in the mind. Noticing the effect of the rhythm of breathing in the mind. Does it soften the mind? Does it allow it to settle a bit more?

Letting go of any straining. Letting go of tension. Letting go of mental activity as much as possible. Letting go into settledness, into relaxation. And just being with the fluidity, the movement, the rhythm of the breath as we sit.

[Silence]

As the meditation comes to an end, just notice if there has been calm or settledness that you've come to feel during this sit. Any inner benefit that any of us feel, may we bring that into the world today, into our activities, into our interactions. Bringing what we receive every day from our meditation practice and our Dharma practice into our days, and sharing the benefit of that with all that we meet, all situations, all beings. May we do that.

Dharmette: Step-by-Step Into the Dharma (4 of 5) A Gradual Turning, A Gradual Loosening

Today's topic is the final step in the Buddha's step-by-step discourse preparing people's minds to be ready to hear the teachings special to the Buddhas.

First, there was dāna³, giving, which is a beneficial action that opens the heart. Bhikkhu Bodhi spoke of giving as bringing pliancy to the mind, allowing for the eradication of delusion. He said it allows openness to new ways of thinking. The generosity that underlies giving brings contentment; it brings satisfaction to the heart. It is skillful and wholesome.

Then the Buddha goes on to talk about ethics, ethical sensitivity, and the development of sīla⁴. We see the value in acting in ways that don't harm, finding a wholesome mental satisfaction in the actions themselves—just like with giving—and also seeing them as creating conditions for good to arise.

Then we begin to get a sense of the kinds of happiness and ease that come from skillful action and wholesome states of mind. We begin to get a sense that those kinds of happiness—those happinesses that arise from within—are much more satisfying than the temporary pleasures of sense desires. The listener's mind becomes more receptive, more open to hearing what they might have rejected at the beginning, as a result of what the Buddha's talk has done with their minds.

The Buddha gives this step-by-step discourse as a guide to how the Dharma can unfold. With a gradual awareness of the value of giving and ethical action, and the potential rewards coming from acting in those ways—some of those rewards maybe being heavenly—the Buddha then turns around in a way, pointing out the dangers of the kinds of pleasures that most people build their lives around. This would include the kinds of pleasures that might be available in heavenly realms.

Right there, there is an inherent contrast being set up with the deeper, more wholesome pleasures that come from a mind and heart that are engaged in action that's beneficial, kind, and wise. Those pleasures are more reliable than those arising from a life centered on obeying this constant striving for comfort and pleasure based on what comes in through the physical senses and the mind. These deeper, wholesome pleasures arise from within. They're not dependent on anything outside ourselves. That's a really important point.

Some of the people listening at this point are likely to see the contrast, recognizing that maybe there's another way of living than chasing after worldly comfort and worldly pleasures. As people engage in practicing in the way that the Buddha has encouraged, our minds begin to turn toward the Dharma gradually. We see there is a more reliable source of happiness than getting what we want.

We begin to see the wisdom of "trading candy for gold," as Thanissaro Bhikkhu, the American monk and translator, describes it. We see the futility of looking for a reliable source of happiness in things that are changing all the time. Satisfactions that are tied to more craving: the craving for something, for more of something, for something desired to continue, or craving for something we don't like to end or change.

Seeing the stress in all this craving, seeing how pervasive it is, we perhaps begin to see that craving itself is stress, is dukkha⁵. Actually feeling the stress in the craving, the painful constricted quality in the heart, in the mind, in the body. That is really the essence of craving: constricted dukkha.

So this final step is letting go, renunciation. The Pali word is nekkhamma, and it literally means "to walk out" or "to go forth." It is the phrase that is used for entering the monastic life, to "go forth into homelessness" as it's often phrased in the texts.

If the people the Buddha is teaching are still attached to the satisfaction of sense desires—if they cling to the idea that getting what they want, keeping what they have, and getting more again and again is the best way to spend their lives—they're probably going to see renunciation as synonymous with deprivation, with a loss.

But the minds of the people that the Buddha is addressing have been primed by teachings on giving, ethics, karma, and the disadvantages of depending on sense pleasures. His intention in giving this step-by-step discourse is to gradually turn their minds in the direction of what's wholesome and beneficial. So for some of them, that's probably happened. They see the potential in trading candy for gold. They might begin to see letting go as freeing themselves from the ways that they're bound by the things that they own, the things that they cling to. Then renunciation doesn't seem like deprivation. It's like dropping a load. It's a relief.

[Laughter] I'm sure you can relate to that. When we let go of something that we've been holding, it's just such a relief.

I realize I've been saying "they" as though this only applies to those people 2,600 years ago listening to the Buddha for the first time. But letting go of craving and clinging is a gradual process for most of us. Valuing renunciation, coming to see the freedom of it, is also going to be a gradual process for us. We're not likely to suddenly give up everything and go forth into homelessness to become monastics, and one talk is certainly not likely to do it.

It is a bhāvanā; it is a cultivation. Gradually coming to see the downside of depending on what is undependable for happiness. Gradually developing more interest and deriving more satisfaction from living in a way that doesn't harm. Finding more satisfaction in the beautiful qualities of the heart and mind that grow as we live more generously, more thoughtfully. As we grow in wisdom, we become more and more able to determine the difference between what is wholesome and what is not.

There is a story in the early texts about a monk who was a king before he went forth into homelessness. Perhaps you've heard it before. The monk's name was Bhaddiya⁶. When he was off in the woods or in an empty hut meditating, he would often be exclaiming, "Oh, what bliss! Oh, what bliss!"

Some of the other monks heard him, and they assumed that he was thinking about the old days when he was a king and surrounded by all these sensual pleasures. So they went to the Buddha and reported their suspicions to him. The Buddha sent for Bhaddiya. When Bhaddiya arrived, the Buddha asked him if it was true that he would exclaim, "Oh, what bliss! Oh, what bliss!" while he was sitting in some wild, desolate place.

Bhaddiya told the Buddha, "Yes, it is true." He explained that in the days when he was a king, he had great protection from guards in the palace, in the city, and all around the countryside—people whose job it was to protect him. And still, all the time, he was fearful. He was scared. He was suspicious. He was nervous. But now, wherever he found himself, even out in these wild places, he said he was unruffled, relaxed, at ease, owning nothing, living on charity. His heart was as free as a wild deer.

The things we own have a hold on us. If you own a car, you have to have insurance on the car. You have to make repairs to it, and it can break down at really inconvenient times and cost a lot to fix. You might worry if you park it in an area where there's a lot of car theft.

I have a Prius, and a few years ago there was an epidemic of the theft of catalytic converters from automobiles because they have some rare metals in them that are valuable. For some reason, Priuses were often targeted here in the United States. I remember being kind of nervous when traveling and parking in a motel parking lot, trying to make sure the car was in a well-lighted spot near the front door. There was stress associated with this.

I don't know if catalytic converter theft is still a thing, but I did let go of worrying about it, and that was a relief. Remembering the story of Ajahn Chah⁷ and the beautiful cup that he used to drink his tea from: it was already broken in his mind. He could use it and enjoy it because he let go of clinging to it. I'm not going to let go of that car, but I recognize that clinging to it involves stress that would disappear if I could say, like Ajahn Chah, that the car is already gone.

I had a friend who used to ask himself about his possessions: "Do I own the car, or does it own me?" Good question to ask. When there's craving and clinging—any kind of attachment to physical things like our possessions, or to relationships, to views about ourselves, hanging on to stories about ourselves and our lives, about others, needing to be seen in certain ways—anytime there's clinging to these things, it's true in a sense that those things own us. At least they have a kind of lien on our existence. We aren't free of them. So there's going to be dukkha. Anytime there's any kind of craving and clinging, there's going to be stress.

So, nekkhamma: letting go. As lay people, what are often called householders, we aren't likely to renounce all our possessions and go forth into homelessness. The Buddha doesn't ask lay people to give up our possessions or relationships. But as we recognize more and more clearly the stress of our attachment to all the external things that we're so bound up with, we can learn to gradually let go of the craving and the clinging. We can come to that sense of laying down the burden.

Sometimes we speak of it as being a movement towards simplicity, and that doesn't sound so much like sacrificing. I think the most important things to let go of, of course, are greed, hatred, and delusion—the tendencies to those in all their many disguises. As we gradually see the benefits of living a life that's oriented around the skillful and the wholesome, I really truly believe that the ways we're driven by these three gradually weaken. Just like the rigging of an old sailboat, like old rope. As we see the stress in trying to hold on to things that are changing and falling apart, our minds gradually become ready to let go of the tight hold that we have on them—or the tight hold they have on us. Remembering it's not just physical things that we cling to. Holding on to views, attitudes, self-views, roles we play in life—whatever we cling to also clings to us. We're stuck to it in a way.

Here we are, having gone through very briefly the preliminary topics that the Buddha addressed with new people to the Dharma. Tomorrow, I want to talk about how I see this particular progression as a kind of preview of what the teachings special to the Buddha are about. They're kind of intrinsic to the teachings special to the Buddha; they aren't really separate. The seeds of understanding are already there in these preliminary teachings.

So, that will be tomorrow. I look forward to being with you, and may you have a really beneficial day of practice and of life—not separate. Thank you.