This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Clinging AND Freedom; Eightfold Path (2 of 10) Holistic View. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Clinging AND FREEDOM; Eightfold Path (2 of 10) Holistic View

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 14, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

So, good morning everyone. Yesterday there was a request for captions, and we put them in place. I didn't know how it worked, but one of the consequences of captions is that there has to be more latency, as YouTube calls it—more delay between when I speak, when it's being videoed here, and when it appears for you on the screen. I think, I'm not sure exactly how long it is, but it might be close to a minute, 30 seconds or a minute. So if I'm looking at the chats, then there's quite a delay between when I'm speaking and what I see there, but that allows YouTube to have enough time to do the captions.

One way of understanding the Buddha's teaching about insight is that it is possible to see or view how we're caught, how we're attached, how we cling, how we get preoccupied, how we get swept away in thoughts and ideas, and to see it simultaneously as seeing the possibility of freedom. Or to say it more clearly: as simultaneously seeing there's freedom here too.

It'd be almost like seeing a shadow, and simultaneously you see the shadow and you see what is still in the light. If you're out walking and your body makes a shadow with the light from the sun, then you see simultaneously the shadow and you see what's around the shadow, which is where the sunlight falls. So this idea that right in our attachments, or right next to them, there is freedom from attachments. The two arise together, they occur together, because attachment, suffering from attachments, is not a universal experience. It's not like filling the whole universe. It's not even filling our whole mind and heart.

If we have the capacity to see clearly, if we have the capacity to have an open awareness of what's happening, then right there in that knowing, we can know freedom as well. We can know peace as well. We can know calm as well. And this is a remarkable thing to see both, so that we're not caught in the trance of our preoccupations, our attachments, our thoughts, our fears. There's fear, and then right next to it, right there, because we're clearly aware, there's freedom.

One of the ways the Buddha describes this, he says that it isn't that we're afraid, which, if I say "I'm afraid," kind of becomes a universal statement. But rather, "this is a mind with fear," "this is a heart with fear." This is a mind with attachment. This is a mind without attachment. This is a mind with preoccupation, not "I'm preoccupied." So there's a switch of language that allows us or supports us to see freedom here now, right next to, right together with, how we're not free.

Guided Meditation: Clinging AND Freedom (link)

Assuming a meditation posture and gently closing your eyes.

And taking some long, comfortable inhales and a long exhale, will you let go and relax into your body.

Letting your breathing return to normal.

And scanning through your body to see where on the exhale you can soften your body, relax.

And then to also do that for your thinking mind. Feeling any tension, tightness in the thinking mind. And as you exhale, relax the thinking mind.

And then letting your awareness settle into your torso, your body, to feel and sense the body's experience of breathing.

To be aware of your breathing, the body breathing. To be aware calmly, as if you have all the time in the world. To be aware calmly of your body, of your emotions, your thoughts, whatever is strongest for you. Whatever comes into awareness, know it calmly.

And in being calmly aware of whatever, calmly aware of any suffering or stress you feel, any ways in which you're caught, preoccupied, calmly know it. This is a mind with suffering, with preoccupation.

And right next to your suffering, your discomfort, your stress, your preoccupation, attachment, there's also freedom. The two can coexist, where you don't identify yourself with either one. Calm in the calm awareness. That which is agitated exists right next to what is calm.

As we come to the end of this sitting, to feel and sense whatever settledness you might have, whatever way you're more subtle or calmer than you were at the beginning. Maybe whatever way that you're more grounded and that you have the ability to know and feel and sense from a calm place, a grounded place.

So as you gaze upon the world, imagine the world of people and activities that you move into at the end of this sitting. That whatever ways that you become anxious or concerned or excited, right next to that is also a calm awareness, a settled, grounded place. Being agitated, being concerned, being excited can coexist with a grounded, calm awareness.

In whatever way you're afraid or angry or disagree with people, maybe from a calm, grounded place, you can also have an open, caring heart. You can also have a friendliness, an empathy, a care for the people you're with. You don't have to accept everything about the people around you to at the same time, right there next to that, to have goodwill.

And may we be grounded and settled enough to stay close to the goodwill that can also be there. It's not either/or. Letting goodwill be the end. And there's goodwill.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free of suffering. And may each of us contribute to that possibility.

Dharmette: Eightfold Path (2 of 10) Holistic View (link)

So hello and welcome to this series on the Eightfold Path. Yesterday was the introduction, and today I'm starting with the first fold, the first limb of the Eightfold Path, which is usually called Right View. The word for view is Pali¹, which has the same meaning as "view" in English. It's both a view that you can see with your eyes, and it's also a view which is an understanding, an insight we have about something. And in some ways, what it represents is how we see our experience, whether it's literally with the eyes or metaphorically with the mind's eye. And Right View can maybe be the overview that we have of our experience.

So, based on yesterday's talk, I would like to not use the word "right" to translate the Pali word sammā², but to call it "holistic." It's the holistic view of the whole. It's the orientation, the perspective that's holistic.

To give you a kind of a metaphor for how I want to introduce it: I've been in somewhat shallow rivers, maybe the river was up to my mid-thigh, and I could lay down flat on the surface of the river, and it had a nice current that carried me beautifully down the river. It was kind of fun and nice to be floating along. And that's all very nice, and you feel like you're one with the river, one with the environment, and it feels really nice until you realize that the river is going right over a big waterfall. So then it's not so nice anymore. And you know, you turn around, try to swim upstream, but it's a river pulling you down the stream faster than you can swim up. The waterfall is coming. You can hear the roar.

And so, all you have to do though is stand up in the river because it's shallow; the current is only up to your mid-thigh. And if you stand there, then the current of the river continues. It flows right by you, but you're still. You're not separated from the current, but now you're free of the current because you have the stability, the strength of standing there. And you're far from any danger of going over the waterfall. It's relatively easy now to walk to the shore or walk upriver.

So we get swept away sometimes by our thoughts, swept away by our emotions, swept away by the world and concerns that are going on. And we don't realize how much we're being carried along, swept away by the current of this momentum of thoughts, momentum of desires, momentum of aversion. And we don't even see the waterfalls that are going to take us over sometimes.

But what mindfulness teaches us is that we could always have the ability to stand up in the current and kind of wake up and be stable and strong, be grounded in a sense. Stand up, be straight, open, upright in the situation that we're in, so that we have the overview. Remember, if you stand up in the river, you're much taller than the river, so you can have the overview of the whole lay of the land that you can't have if you're kind of flat, floating along.

And the currents are still there as currents of our life, currents of desires and thoughts and preoccupations, fear. But now we can feel the current, feel the momentum, but part of us is not caught in it. Part of us is actually, we feel free. We have agency. We're not being pushed by it. We're not necessarily having to believe it. We have now an overview, and we say, "Oh, there's a lot of fear here." But the part of you that says there's fear, that has the overview of it, sees that together with the fear, we are not afraid. The whole idea of identifying with fear and assuming that I am the person completely saturated with fear is being floating in the current, being pulled around.

There is this place when mindfulness gets strong that it's kind of like we're standing there and we can know there is fear. We're not denying it. It could be strong. But there's also what is not afraid. There's also this freedom from the fear. There's also this sense of overview, a holistic view that yes, there's fear, and at the same time, there's freedom from fear. Yes, there's attachment, and there's a freedom from attachment. And sometimes we can see ourselves kind of on that teeter-totter where we can see we're leaning into becoming the fear, becoming the attachment, becoming our preoccupation, you know, getting pulled into it and staying free. And the stronger the mindfulness, the stronger we have the overview, the holistic view of it all. We see all of it. We see where there's attachment. We see there's lack of attachment. See where there's suffering and see where there's not suffering. See where there's stress and see where there's not stress, because of having this grounded, clear, open sense of awareness.

Some metaphor I like for being really mindful in the moment would be, literally sometimes but metaphorically, kind of like standing firmly on both feet, standing up tall and straight, opening the arms wide and saying, "Here I am. I'm going to be here with this." And there's so much agency, so much confidence, so much strength, so much being bigger than the situation that something shifts inside. We're not so strongly identified with what's happening. We're more identified with the one who stands tall and straight. "Okay, this is what's happening." We're not collapsing or giving in. We're not being carried by the current over the waterfall.

So holistic view, the first stage of, first step or first fold of the Eightfold Path, is to have a holistic view, which the Buddha describes sometimes as—the primary way he describes it is to know our suffering, to know our distress, our stress, to know and see how we're caught, to see the suffering there in such a way that we also see the freedom from suffering right there. And right there we see that this practice that we do, the practice of mindfulness, the practice of concentration, the practice of honesty, that the practices we do, that's how to stay standing tall in the river. That's how to maintain this stability that lets us have the holistic view.

So the holistic view that supports the whole Eightfold Path is not easy to come by. And in a sense, for those of you who've been here all year, it's the kind of the culmination of these samādhi³ and insight practices that we spent what, seven months or so, going through at the beginning of the year. It creates a very strong, skillful way of using our ability to be present fully and have confidence in it, that we step into awareness. We step into this holistic view that's not caught in any one thing.

And then we see there is desire, strong desire, and here the desire arises, it's coming, and right here at the same time, there's freedom from desire. There's a mind with desire. It's not a desiring mind. It's not a desiring person. It's a person with desire, a mind with desire. And we see it clearly. And we see that we have confidence. We see the practice that allows us to be free, to stand tall in the current.

So Right View is to have the overview, the holistic view where we see at the same time where we're caught and the freedom from being caught. And this is not necessarily an easy thing to come to. That's why we have this practice that sometimes needs to build and become stronger, that we begin to feel and sense this bigger view of what's happening so that we're not limited by the small part of the whole that we see. If we only see fear, if we only see desire, if we only see our belief systems and our preoccupations and our interpretations, our judgments, then that becomes the whole world. But to step to be bigger than that, to have a view that's wider, broader, so that we see simultaneously—and this is the language of the Buddha—simultaneously suffering, the arising of suffering, the cessation of suffering, and the practice that leads to that cessation of suffering.

And so this holistic view, because it shows us freedom, it shows us non-clinging, it shows us this healthy way of living even while we're clinging, this then becomes a guide for the next seven steps of the Eightfold Path. Because now we know for ourselves something about what it's like not to cling, not to grasp, not to be caught, not to be limited. And so it gives us a chance to now have a holistic view of these other factors of the Eightfold Path.

So tomorrow, what's usually called Right Intention, I'm going to call a holistic orientation. So we can be oriented to the whole river, the whole situation. We know there's a waterfall. We know there's a current of the river. We know where the shore is. And we know that we're safe because we can stand there in the knee-high water and hold our ground. And with that, we can now have a different orientation of how to be in the river than we could if we didn't have that holistic view.

So the whole Eightfold Path begins with a view, an overview, some people call it the frame of reference for our experience. And that view in the Buddhist tradition is not something to believe. It's not something to now take in and live as if you have now an opinion or a philosophy that you have to live by. But rather, it's a way of seeing that we cultivate, we grow, we develop, and it becomes obvious. We have the overview, we have the holistic view, and now we don't have to be convinced that this is what we're supposed to believe. We just know for ourselves that standing tall in the river, having the overview of the situation, this gives us freedom. This gives us agency. Now we don't have to be afraid of the waterfall because we know how to take care of ourselves. We know how to walk to the shore. We're not trapped by the current of the river.

So, a holistic view. And may you today, as you go about your day, stop enough, pause enough, and see if you can metaphorically stand grounded and upright and metaphorically with the eyes open, see: What's happening? Can you have the overview of the situation you're in, including an overview of how you are? And in that overview, can you find freedom right next to ways in which you're not so free? Can you find peace right next to where you're agitated? Can you find clarity right next to where you're confused? See if you can cultivate this overview and see what difference that makes. And that might set the stage for you to appreciate these other folds of the Eightfold Path.

So, thank you.