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Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation, Class 4-Thinking - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 05, 2026. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Q&A

Good evening. For those of you who are new today, this is the fourth part, but I'll try to introduce it so it works for everyone. Before we start, it's nice to hear from some of you who've been coming. Do you have any questions or any reports about trying this at home? Any questions about your own practice, challenges?

"Meditation at home seems more boring. When I come here, it's more fun."

Meditation is always more boring. Well, this is fascinating. Boring is fascinating. A big part of mindfulness is learning about ourselves. The fact that you're bored says something about you. There's a whole learning to be done there. There is nothing in the world which is inherently boring, except for the mind making it so. There's something happening in your mind that's constructing this thing called boredom. It's an evaluation, it's a judgment, it's a resistance. There are a lot of things that could be at play there.

The simple way that we practice with boredom, if you have the courage for it, is to look at it, take it as an object of mindfulness, and discover it like you would an emotion. First, you recognize it. Then you would allow yourself to be bored, which some people don't allow themselves. They react to it, they judge it: "I shouldn't be bored, anything but this." But you have to allow for it, not because it's worthy of being allowed, but because you want to learn how to be with it in a simple way without adding second arrows.

Then you want to feel it. Where in the body does the experience of boredom live in you? You might find that it feels all over, but it turns out "all over" may be some feeling of discomfort in the belly, or it might be something really strong around the eyes, even though it kind of feels like it's everywhere. Where's the center of it?

Once you hang out with the physical experience of it, then can you make a distinction between the feelings themselves and the thoughts or beliefs you have about it? If you're really quiet, you might start seeing the very subtle thoughts of boredom or subtler emotions of fear. Sometimes boredom is a manifestation of some deeper fear because it's not good to do nothing, not to be entertained or something. Or it could also be a subtle movement of aversion, of pushing away, because we're not supposed to be bored and this is not right.

So you start teasing those two apart, and all along, just breathe with it. Stay close with the breath and let the breath breathe into the boredom and breathe through it. The advantage of staying with the breathing is that it offers a little bit of a protection so you don't just go into thinking about it and trying to sort it all out. Just breathe. You don't have to do much. It's supposed to be very, very simple. So, recognize, allow, feel, and tease apart the thoughts. Does that make sense?

"Yeah. Thank you."

Is it starting to get fascinating? [laughter]

"Sounds so fun."

Anybody who's going to do meditation for some time has to, sooner or later, work with their boredom. And you're just lucky it's early. [laughter] But it's really worthwhile to sort through it.

"I seem to make it through about 10 minutes and then most of the time I'm asleep for the other 10 minutes until my timer goes off. I think there are a lot of things that can contribute to that and I'm trying to eliminate them, like my cats, because they get in my lap and they're warm and cozy and I go to sleep. [laughter] But also maybe not eating right beforehand because then your blood flow is going to digestion."

Yes, yes. Some people prefer to meditate first thing in the morning before breakfast, but after the coffee. I think experimenting and finding what works for you is important. But do you get early warning signs that you might be getting sleepy?

"Yeah, because I catch myself in thoughts that are not related at all to trying to be calm."

So once you catch yourself, you could open your eyes. In our tradition, we mostly glance down at about a 45-degree angle. But some people find it nice to look out at the sky if you have a window, and that keeps them alert enough so they don't fall asleep. And maybe sit a little straighter and see if that provides enough alertness. Then, after a while, you might try closing your eyes again. Maybe then you're good for three minutes, but those are three good minutes. The important thing is to catch the early warning signs so you can make an adjustment that keeps you awake.

"So, hopefully this isn't a dumb question, but I'll start the meditation and maybe after a few minutes I get to a state of calm and everything's good, but then I'm wondering, should I be thinking about something or should I be feeling something? How do I know if this is going a good way or not? If I've cleared all the thoughts out of my mind, then what should I be thinking about or contemplating?"

Yeah. If you've gotten fairly calm and cleared your thoughts, the most useful thing to do—there are different choices—but what I try to teach people is to just give yourself over to the breathing. Become intimate with the breath in a very relaxed way. Just open and receive and sense and feel the whole kaleidoscope of little sensations that are at play as you breathe in and as you breathe out. Kind of enter that world of breathing.

And if you can do that, put aside any concerns about getting anywhere or any ideas about what's supposed to happen. If something's supposed to happen in meditation, being concerned about getting there keeps you away. So just put it aside and give yourself over to the breathing. Then at some point, something else might arise that's more compelling, and then give yourself to that for a little while, and then come back to the breathing.

Guided Meditation

Okay, let's start with a simple meditation. Assume a posture that you think you can hold still without moving for about 15 minutes. Adjust your spine a little bit, so it feels a little bit more free, loose, and alert.

Then gently close your eyes.

In the most silent way you know how, meaning without a lot of thinking about it, just feel and check in with what's going on for you in your body. What are the sensations? What are the tensions? What is comfortable for you in your body, even if most of it is not? Quietly becoming aware, sensing, feeling the body.

Then, as a way to relax a bit, gently take some fuller inhales, filling the chest, the belly, and a long, relaxing exhale. Do that a few times. And as you exhale, relax different parts of your body. And if they don't relax, that's okay. Let them soften, soften around them.

Then let your breathing return to normal. Find where in your body it feels most comfortable or easy to be aware of the sensations of breathing. It could be the movements of the belly, diaphragm, or chest, or the air going in and out of the nostrils.

Notice how the experience of breathing in is experienced differently in the body than the experience of breathing out. No need to think about it, but to feel or sense that difference.

If there's a lot of thinking, perhaps you can feel the energy of thinking, the agitation or restlessness of the mind, the pressure to think, tension or tightness. And if you feel any of that as you're thinking—I call it the thinking muscle—as you exhale, relax the thinking mind. Let the thinking mind take a break, have some rest. It's okay for it to settle.

As if you're lowering your body into a comfortable, warm pool of water, let your attention be lowered into your body, into the torso, feeling the movements of breathing.

From time to time, quietly notice, recognize how you are. If you're thinking, let go of the thoughts. Or if the thoughts don't want to go, lighten up on them. Ease up.

From time to time, notice and feel your mood, your mental state, your bodily state, your emotional state. And see if the noticing can be quiet, non-reactive, maybe even wise in staying very simple, not reactive, not making a story about it.

Staying close to breathing, feeling the body breathing, the movement, as if it's a gentle massage from the inside out.

And if you can hang out with the breathing, get a sense of the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out. Let that rhythm be a reminder that it's okay to rest in the breathing. It's okay to let the mind rest from all its thinking.

Allowing and feeling whatever silence there is in you and around you. And in that silence, the silence of the mind chattering, allow yourself to rest in the breathing, almost like you're floating on waves, lifting and falling, one wave after another.

And then to end this meditation, gently take some fuller breaths to feel your body more fully, the contact of your body against the chair cushion. And then when you're ready, you can open your eyes.

Introduction to Mindfulness Meditation, Class 4-Thinking

Sometimes people find that guided meditations are helpful and help them get more into the meditation and be focused, and that's nice. But the goal is to not need something coming from the outside. The goal is to really be able to sit peacefully with yourself and learn to track and recognize what's happening in such a way that you settle and are here more. So you become independent and don't require any input from the outside.

Sometimes, guided meditation makes people feel like they have to do too much. It sounds like, "I'll get busy. Why is this person still talking? I just want to be quiet." So that's also nice. Then maybe the art of it is just to tune out the person who's doing the guided meditation or just trust that maybe they're trying to teach us as we go along. But with guided meditation, it seems like there's a lot to remember, a lot to do. The default here is there's very little to do. If you ask yourself the question in meditation, "What should I do now?" probably the best answer is nothing. Nothing but be awake. Nothing but just notice what's happening. If you want something a little bit more to do, just come back to the breathing. Trust the breathing. Be with the breathing.

In the bigger picture, what we're trying to develop here is not even meditation, but rather to develop our capacity to be peacefully aware of anything that goes on in our life. We're all aware all the time, though we might not be so cognizant of it because we're so caught up in things and busy. But often our awareness is used as a servant of our reactivity. So something happens, and we want to know more about it. I just heard a plane go overhead and so I wonder what kind of plane that is, and maybe I should go out and see if I can still see it. That was an interesting roar. So I was aware of the plane, but now the awareness is being pulled into this world of thoughts about it.

As we meditate, we start seeing that's what the mind does. I'm sitting quietly, it's quite peaceful and calm, and I remember what my boss said at work to me today, and I get furious. Wow, I didn't know I was still carrying that. This is interesting. So let's just be present for this. You don't have to think about it, you don't have to come up with better responses to your boss in meditation. Just, wow, that's interesting. Let's breathe with it. Let's just be with it. Let's do nothing with it but allow it to be there and sense and feel what happens.

Most reactions that we have involve some way in which we're stirring ourselves up. This very profound thing of not doing anything is the opposite. It makes room for something to settle. Or if it doesn't settle, it makes room for us to see it more clearly. "Wow, I'm upset with my boss. But you know, I see that clearly. I think I'm always upset with my boss. I'm always having resentment. Wow, I didn't know how constant it was. I think something else is going on here than my boss." And then you start understanding something more deeply. "Oh, maybe I'm afraid," or something, who knows what. But it's the doing nothing so we can see more clearly.

That's the kind of meditation that we do here at IMC. It's usually called mindfulness, but the original Indian Buddhist word means "to see clearly." We're trying to see clearly what's happening in our direct experience. And yes, we'll tend to get calmer, de-stressed, more peaceful this way, but that's not the real point of it. The point is to be calm and settled enough so that we can see clearly. And it's the seeing clearly that begins opening up the vista, deeper and deeper insights and understanding about ourselves and the world we live in. But the point is not even to have insight or to be calm. The point is not even just to see clearly. The point is to see well enough that you can start letting go of your clinging, letting go of attachments, letting go of the ways that we get caught in our thoughts, caught in our emotions. That is the ultimate purpose of this meditation: to learn to be uncaught, to be at peace with all things. The stepping stone to that is first to calm down, and then to learn the art of doing nothing but seeing clearly.

In the first weeks, we began with meditating on the breathing, which tends to be calming. As we settle down, we start using this clear seeing to see clearly into our body. When people who are not used to it sit down to meditate, after a while the body begins communicating to you. It gets restless, it starts hurting, there are aches and soreness. Rather than seeing those things as a distraction, in this meditation, it becomes the object of the clear seeing. If my wrist aches a little bit, I could stretch it out or massage it. But what we do here is we sit and we don't do anything but have clear seeing or clear feeling and sensing of the wrist. And what we learn is, "I don't want to sit quietly with this. I want to fix this. I'm annoyed by this. This has to stop." We learn all this about how we react to things on automatic pilot by not giving into it. So instead, we just sit here, breathe quietly, relax, and really feel or sense or see this aching wrist. "Oh, look at that. Maybe it's not aching, maybe it's a little sharp pulsing. It's more on the surface than deep inside. Look at that, it's not really aching anymore. Something relaxed, it's become something else. It changed without me having to shake out my wrist. Wow. I can go back to my breathing."

The same thing can happen with our emotions. We can sit down with a strong emotion, or some emotion will just pop right up, unbidden. Emotions can be pleasant and they can be difficult. So here again, we try to relax and be calm, staying with the breath. So the emotion comes up, let's just breathe with the emotion for a while, see if I can relax with it. Then we practice clear seeing. What is this experience of an emotion? As we talked about last time, all emotions have some manifestation in the body. Where in your body do you feel it? Some people will say it's everywhere, until you start the process of elimination. "Oh no, it's not in my ankle. It's not in my knee. I think it's mostly around my heart." What and how do I feel it there? Let me just feel it for a while. That's allowing it to be there. And one thing you might learn is that it shifts and changes just because you leave it alone. You're not trying to fix it or judge it.

And you might also find that you do judge it. You have aversion, desire, fear, attachment, conceit—all kinds of things we add to the simple emotion. "Oh, look at that. I'm making it more complicated than it needs to be." Nope. The default here is you don't do anything. You just look at it, feel it, and breathe with it. Try to be really simple.

So finally for today, the topic is thinking. It's best to introduce thinking on the fourth week because if we introduce mindfulness of thinking the first week, you would just think more. But hopefully now you have a basis to begin understanding how to have a peaceful, mindful awareness of thinking without getting pulled into the world of thoughts.

Thinking is a normal part of human life, and it shouldn't be our enemy. It's very beneficial to think, and there are times when it's very harmful the way we think. Most ways that people harm each other and themselves has some strong connection to how they're thinking. So thinking can be both a friend and a real problem. What we're trying to do in meditation is to learn to have a new relationship with thoughts. If there's a lot of thinking, soften, breathe. Stay with the rhythm of breathing. Relax as you exhale. Try to let the thoughts go to the degree that it's possible.

And then at some point, what do you do next? You do nothing, except look at it carefully, or feel the experience of thinking carefully, rather than getting pulled into the content of the thoughts, into the stories. That's where the hook usually is. So we step back. What's really going on here? What's the bigger picture? It turns out that thinking is not one thing; it's made up of a number of different things. If you can step back and watch, then you stop being pulled into the drama of what the thoughts are trying to tell you.

There are a number of component parts to thinking. There are the thoughts themselves—some people think more in images, some more in words. If thinking is really strong, there's probably some kind of sensation in the body that comes from it. You can sometimes tell when someone's thinking by looking at their face; their brow is bunched up, or maybe they're clenching their jaw. From the inside out, you can feel it. "Oh, no wonder I'm getting a headache. It's all this tension around my forehead." With mindfulness, we start noticing the tension earlier so it can perhaps relax.

Buddhism believes that all thoughts have a physical aspect to them—some tension, pressure, restlessness, or agitation that you can actually feel as physical sensations. Then there are the motivations. There's usually some emotion that wants something to happen. There's fear, we want to get away. There's anger, we want to attack. There's desire, we want to have. There's a kind of propulsion or compulsion, a direction that we can feel.

Finally, thinking, especially when it's strong, usually has its roots or its fuel in some emotion. A high percentage of repetitive thinking about the future is rooted in apprehension or fear. Thinking about a past event over and over again might be fueled by resentment. There might be a strong desire for something, and maybe the fuel is loneliness or a feeling of meaninglessness.

So, there are the thoughts themselves, the physical sensations connected to them, the movement for and against things, and the emotions connected to them. There are other things involved that we can start seeing as well. But the art of this is to stay really simple. Always remember you're not really supposed to do anything. So don't get really involved in investigating, trying to figure it all out. Just settle back, relax, and practice this clear, peaceful seeing. "Oh, this is how it is, but I don't like it." That's okay. Relax and look at the "not liking." "Oh, this is what not liking is like. I never stopped to look at it, I just always believed it. There's tension in my jaw, my diaphragm is pulled up, I feel a little bit like a fighter." Wow, do I really want to live this way? Maybe I don't have to believe the "not liking." Maybe I can just leave it alone and not be pushed around by it.

After a while, you learn more and more to leave things alone. And some people report that what they gain is themselves. Some people are living so much in reactivity and activity and thinking and planning that they're distracted from themselves. Some people are so much in their thinking that they believe they are their thoughts. They think they're being intimate with themselves, but the thinking is extra. It's not really who you are. Not a few people come to meditation and discover, as they relax and quiet down, "Oh, now I'm finally myself. I didn't know it was possible to be so at peace with myself."

Guided Meditation on Thinking

Let's do another meditation. Why don't you stand and stretch and refresh yourself a little bit. This guided meditation is going to be a guided tour of your thinking. It's not exactly the basic meditation we do, but I'll include some of that as well. I'd like to do this so people get a fuller sense of the terrain of thinking. You can always open your eyes or stop meditating if you don't like what's going on. We'll first do a little bit of just relaxing and settling, then the guided tour, and then we'll just do some quiet settling again with the basic practice.

Again, give some care to your posture. Maybe twist a little bit or sway back and forth to gently find that midpoint that feels nice to sit upright. Then gently close your eyes.

Breathe a little fuller than usual, so there's more time to exhale a long exhale. Breathing in comfortably and then relaxing the whole length of the exhale.

And letting your breathing return to normal. Move towards doing nothing but following the inhales and exhales, the movements of the body, the sensations in your body connected to breathing. Relaxing your thinking mind as you exhale.

And then notice if you're thinking. For now, you're allowed to think. Do you think more in words, more in images, or are words for you more kinesthetic experiences?

Gently, as if you can step away from your thinking to have a bird's-eye view of it, use a simple thought to recognize that you're thinking. You can use the thought "thinking" or "remembering." This movement of recognition is a step out of the fray, out of the thoughts, to look back at it. Simply to recognize it, to see it clearly for what it is. It's thinking. That's what's happening. So you're not in the thinking, but you're stepping away to observe it.

As you're thinking, if you're thinking in words, is there a tone of voice? Is it gentle or harsh? Is it confident or afraid? If you think in images, is there a mood that comes with them, like mood music in the movies? Is there a lot of energy flowing into thinking? Is it fast or strong, or is it more quiet and slow?

Is there a location from where the thinking occurs? A location for the inner voice, or a location for the projector or screen of the images? If there's a location for your thinking, are there any sensations in that place associated with it? Any tension, tightness, pressure?

Is your thinking more pleasant or more unpleasant? Whatever you see about your thinking, it's okay. Just see it, just know it, maybe breathing with it, where the breathing helps you not to be so involved or reactive.

Is there any emotion associated with your thoughts? Any emotion is okay. It might be subtle or large, pleasant or unpleasant. What's the basic mood or emotion associated with your thinking?

And then come back to breathing. The simple experience of breathing in and breathing out. Staying close, riding the waves of breathing, no longer needing to concern yourself with your thinking.

And then if you start thinking, very simply, look the thinking right in the eye and recognize, "This is thinking," without being for or against it, without wanting it to go away or stay. Just quietly, peacefully, look at it directly and recognize it in a very clear, definitive way. This is thinking. And what happens to your thoughts when they're allowed to be, but they're known with that kind of clarity?

And then coming back to breathing, to the closest approximation you can to doing nothing. Breathing simply, being at ease. Nothing to do anymore, just to be here, breathing mindfully.

And then to end this meditation, take some deeper breaths again. Feeling your body, feeling yourself here. And when you're ready, you can open your eyes.

Q&A

Thinking will be present when you meditate. It's best not to fight it or think it's wrong, but it's also best not to give into it and spin out in your thoughts. The middle way is to be mindful of it, to know that it's happening. If you recognize you're thinking, bingo, you're doing the right thing. Many people immediately will judge it: "Oh, I wasn't supposed to be thinking, I'm messing up." But before you had those judgments, you must have known that you were thinking. Bingo. That's all you needed to do.

As you know that you're thinking, you have a number of choices. One is to let the thoughts go and come back to breathing. Occasionally that's easy; more often, it's not. Some people will just let go every exhale because thoughts come back so quickly. But every exhale, they let go, and something begins relaxing in a deep way. Sometimes they don't want to stop and you can't let go of them. An option you have is just to ignore them and stay with your breathing. Let them be in the background if you can.

But sometimes they're pretty insistent and want to be center stage. Then, you can do nothing but see it clearly. When we did this last meditation, I asked you to step back, get the bird's-eye view, and just really recognize "thinking is going on." What happened to some of you when you had that simple, clear, full recognition of thinking?

"There was a wave of deep calmness. That aha moment that, 'This is it, this is the story that's happening.' Then it loses its power and becomes like a very refreshing way of being."

Very nice. That was well said. It loses its power. Where did its power come from?

"Attachment with the story."

From you. But when you clearly recognized it, you were stepping out of the attachment and leaving it alone. This clear recognition can be very powerful if it really helps you step out of the involvement.

"My vision inside, it physically went from darkness to a light. When you said 'look it in the eye,' I had this dark blanket, and it often comes up when I have those thoughts. I feel removed or protected or in the dark. And then when I faced it and I breathed into it, it's like all of a sudden light was there, and you could feel that calmness come up."

Very nice. It's a fascinating exercise. If you notice you get lost in thought a lot, ask: What does it feel like to be lost in thought? Then try to wake up and recognize it clearly. What's different? Not a few people report what you said, that being caught in thoughts feels very small and dark, but when we see clearly, it becomes more expansive, open, and light.

"I think in the process of you guiding the meditation, I had seen a really powerful image and I had gotten into story. When I was trying to then detach and look those thoughts in the eye, I felt like I was already too deep in. So I think that's helpful maybe for next time to cut it off at the pass, look it in the eye right at the very beginning before there's a big story going on."

Yes, that's very good. Please do that. But if you do find yourself caught in the big story, then even there, to the best of your ability, try to do nothing and look around. "What is it like to be caught? What's it like to be lost in this?" Just keep asking, "What is this like?" Give yourself a tour. [laughter]

The warning is don't spend a lot of time paying attention to thoughts if it just keeps you caught in thoughts. But there is this art we're learning of how to have a kind of silent awareness—silent meaning not more thinking—around the thinking itself that begins to free us. Most people don't know that they've actually lost their freedom when they think. It's possible to think very creatively and freely and mindfully, but most people are locked to their thinking much too much, and it narrows and limits their life a lot.

What's really surprising is how little we're bored by it, because thinking is often quite repetitive. One of the main characters in our thoughts is "myself." If any friend of yours walked next to you and spoke the same repeated things over and over again, you'd be begging them to stop. You'd think they were crazy. But what's remarkable is we don't get bored. My theory is that it's because we're the main subject, so it's always very interesting. In meditation, you can actually see, "Wait a minute, I've had that thought 32 times now. Do I really need to do a 33rd time?" Why do I have so much? Because there's fear, because there's desire, something is fueling it. "Oh, let me just be aware of the desire, of the fear." And now something settles.

There's a difference between thinking and "thoughting." The mind is a thoughting machine. That's what it does. It produces thought. Thinking is a chain of associated thoughts. I have a thought about the carpet. "It's a nice carpet. We have a wood floor at home. Maybe I should get a carpet..." And I'm off on a chain of associated thoughts. That's thinking. But the single thought, "They have a carpet here," that's one thought. Why do they lead from one to the next? Because we're involved, invested, engaged. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that, but it doesn't give us a chance to find that deep place of peace and freedom inside where we're not always caught up. You might see the train of thoughts coming by. Don't get on the car. Let it just keep going.

"I think what I'm doing right now is more like a generalization of becoming the witness of the breath, the witness of body sensations, the witness of thoughts. Don't get on the train, something like that. Almost like seeing the thoughts go by, like an observer of thoughts. Is that more or less what you're saying?"

Yeah. That's a very nice way of saying it. We're being the witness, the observer of everything. When this meditation practice goes deeper or fuller, we discover that the notion of an observer or a witness is just a kind of unnecessary thought, too. And so then it becomes just witnessing, just observing. This whole idea of being the person who witnesses is not really needed. But until you come to that point, it's fine to have that idea that you're the witnesser. It's a stepping stone.

We have one more class next week, and that's used to tie all this together and also to talk about bringing this practice from meditation into life, and some ways to actually help support the deepening of the practice.

Thank you for coming. I'll stay here if you have any questions. Thank you for being here.