This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Relax, Alert, Trust; Udayi Sutta (3 of 5) Trust Emergence. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Relax, Alert, Trust; Dharmette: Udayi Sutta (3 of 5) Trust Emergence - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on June 26, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Relax, Alert, Trust

Good morning, everyone, or good day. I think there is an invaluable approach of offering meditation instruction which is radically simple, but sometimes the simpler and more profound it is, the more difficult it is to enact. So at the beginning of many meditations, I offer something which maybe seems kind of preliminary, and that is I mention to let your body be in a posture which expresses both being relaxed and alert. An alert posture in which you can relax.

Any meditation posture at all can find some balance of those two. If you're sitting in a chair or couch using the backrest, it might be helpful to sit up a little straighter, maybe not be quite as leaning back as you would kind of on your own do, but still using the support, but sitting up more so the chest opens up a little bit. If you're lying down, maybe there's a way of also adjusting the spine, the shoulder blades. Maybe if there's a pillow so that the chest is more alert. Some people will have their upper arms flat on the bed next to them or the floor next to them, but their forearms pointing to the ceiling, one or both, and that brings a kind of intentionality and alertness and engagement that can also help this alertness.

But this instruction to have a balance between being alert and relaxed is also appropriate for the mind and for what we do. In fact, it could be the only instruction: that meditation is to stay alert and relaxed. And when we do that, or say just add one more step: alert and relaxed and let nature take its course.

What alert and relax does is make an awareness, that kind of clarity that allows whatever is there to be known without us interfering with it. Just letting it be there, let it be received, let it be known, let it kind of arise and be there without a relationship to it—not without a relationship of being for and against it, without a relationship of defining ourselves by it, without telling stories about it and predictions of what this means. Very, very simple. Just make space to be aware.

Why this is so profound is that that is not what the mind often does. Alert and relaxed is to be free of attachments, free of reactivity. And so the reactive mind begins to quiet down, but the deeper natural mind, the natural functioning of our body and mind has a better opportunity to show itself, to arise, to be there. Some of that is our body and mind's power for healing—spiritual healing, psychological healing—that sometimes works as one of the best sources of healing we can tap into. At other times, it's allowing deep spiritual or deep humanistic goodness, wholesomeness, to arise and flow. That we have a wholesome natural source within that's often covered over or diminished by the unnatural or synthetic or unwholesome kind of movements of the mind that require our reactivity.

So, a profound trust in the natural functioning of our body and mind if we get out of the way of all reactivity, and even being free of relating to things, instead to just be alert and relaxed. To be aware, awake, and at ease. That's it.

So to establish a posture that expresses some simple balance between being alert and relaxed. Letting the eyes be relaxed, resting in their sockets, the eyes pointing in a direction where they are relaxed. Often it's gazing down 45 degrees or so. And if it's nice, gently closing the eyes.

To some degree, you are aware. There's a degree of alertness that operates without any effort on your part. For a few moments here, notice on the edges of your attention the ways in which you are aware without even intending to, how certain sensations, sounds, feelings, experiences that were not intended, that you weren't directing yourself to know, come into the field of attention.

And part of you, beyond the edges of your tension, pressure, agitation, there exists within you probably also some degree of being at ease, being relaxed. Maybe the joints of your small finger are relaxed.

And so to sit here breathing, remembering the "relax" part as you exhale, remembering the "alert" part as you inhale. All along, trusting that you need to do nothing else than be alert, awake, relaxed, at ease in whatever way is easy for you. Trusting nature, trusting the natural processes of your body and mind.

If you are preoccupied in thoughts, you are not trusting the natural functioning of being alive. To be awake and at ease, so the natural processes of your life can unfold, free of attachments, free of reactivity, free of desires.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, could you perhaps for some seconds, for a minute, let go of all mistrust? So that sitting here there is no active mistrust whatsoever. Rather, there's a full trusting of the natural processes of our life here and now, of the mind, of the heart, of the body. And being aware is getting out of the way and trusting, just being here and aware.

There is a principle in psychology that when a group of people are together, when one person has calm awareness of the situation, the whole group moves towards health. May it be that we are the calm person—not just calm, but alert, awake, aware, attentive to what's happening with others. That our capacity to be mindful and nonassertive comes with this clear strength of presence, of attention, of making space and allowing others to be themselves, so some other process can unfold that is not based on our reactivity, our sense of urgency.

May it be that our practice that we do supports the world that we live in to be less reactive, less hostile, less afraid, less conceited, and greedy. May we support the forces of goodness in this world, the natural forces of goodness.

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

Thank you.

Dharmette: Udayi Sutta (3 of 5) Trust Emergence

Welcome to this third talk on the Udayi Sutta¹. Those of you who are interested, it's in the Numerical Discourses², the fifth chapter, Sutta 159 in Bhikkhu Bodhi's translation. And what I read here is an excerpt from it. Then I'll read it again.

So the Buddha said, talking to his main attendant monk Ananda:

"It is not easy, Ananda, to teach the Dhamma³ to others. The Dhamma should be taught to others with five qualities, when five qualities are established with oneself. Which five? The Dhamma should be taught to others while thinking, 'I will speak step-by-step, progressively.' That Dhamma should be taught to others while thinking, 'I will speak for practical reasons.' That Dhamma should be taught to others thinking, 'I will speak grounded in kindness.' The Dhamma should be taught to others thinking, 'I will not speak for material rewards.' The Dhamma should be taught to others, 'I will speak without wounding myself or others.'"

One of the ways of understanding or interpreting this text is that it's not just about how we teach the Dhamma, but how we speak to others. Do we speak in a clear sense of progression, building our explanations or reasons? Do we speak for reasons we understand, the causes and the conditions and the reasons for why we say what we're going to say? Do we speak with kindness? One of the great questions is, "Is what I'm about to say kind?" And we can speak not for material reward, not to acquire things and get things, and without wounding myself or others. Am I harming myself by what I'm saying? Am I going to harm someone else?

For these five talks, I'm not going in the same order, because I want to connect them to the five core teachings from last week. For today, I'd like to connect to "I will not speak for material reward." I'd like to suggest that instead of speaking for material reward, we can speak for Dharma rewards. The Dharma is that which is without conceit, without greed, without hatred, without hostility. The Dharma is that which is free of self-preoccupation, acquisitioning. But for Dharma rewards is to the rewards that come from deep within. That part of ourselves is a natural functioning that we best create the conditions for it to flow freely, than to engineer it. It belongs to the mind of attachment, to reactivity, that we're trying to control and fix and get things in some kind of self-centered way.

And to not be involved in this material gain, pursuit of wealth, of fame, of status, of praise—there's all this stuff that's kind of more surface stuff that belongs to the world of attachment, of clinging, of reactivity. And so to pay attention, for a Dharma teacher, is to not teach the Dharma based on any of those things. It takes a lot of self-awareness for teaching the Dharma to make sure that they're just teaching freely, coming from the Dharma place, not from the greed place, not from the conceited place, not from the attachment to self or the praise or status place.

One of the primary interpretations of this line, "I will not speak for material reward," is to not speak for monetary gain. It's interpreted to mean that when they teach, Dhamma should be taught freely without any expectation for anything in return—material things or monetary things. Just teaching because that's what one is inspired to do. This is an ancient principle from the time of the Buddha and one that some people hold to very closely. The monastic community often holds to this very closely. And here at IMC, we hold to this: that the people who teach here teach freely, without expectation of receiving anything in return. I think it's a beautiful way of teaching the Dharma. It's a beautiful way of being in the world. And so for those teachers here who teach this way, it brings me a great joy to see them with this kind of generosity and care and love and kindness with which they teach.

But for ourselves, outside of teaching, not to speak for material reward or physical reward. Now, there's nothing wrong with acquiring enough monetary wealth to live safely. There's nothing wrong with having physical goods and things in order to live well. But we have to be very careful that in our interactions with others, with our friends, that we're not kind of subtly or not-so-subtly working the system, trying to get something, trying to have an exchange. "If I give you apple pie, then certainly next week you'll give me a chocolate cake," and kind of expectations for something in return, material in return.

However, if I make you an apple pie, and I just love making apple pies and giving it to others to share, my reward is the delight, the joy. My reward is the inner sense of happiness and contentment, and maybe the shared joy, the shared contentment that we have with others. And that nourishes something inside of me that greed and expecting something in return does not nourish. In fact, it does the opposite. There's this deep feeling of natural goodness or natural health in the heart and the spirit that gets a little bit, or very much, squashed and lost if we get involved in the whole market of exchange and expectation and wanting something in back. There's nothing inherently wrong with exchange and wanting things back, just that if we're caught in it, we're limiting something much more profound that can happen. So it's not judging something as being wrong so much as being sure not to limit what's best for us.

One of the important roles that something like meditation or spiritual practice has is to connect us to this deep natural goodness that's within, deep natural wholesomeness that can arise and be there. The Buddha talks about the wholesome qualities that can grow and become abundant, that they can suffuse us and spread throughout us. This is possible day and night, allowing wholesome qualities to grow, as opposed to day and night living in a world that diminishes us or stresses us or brings tension in us—the world of anxiety and urgency and demands and expectations and judgments and wanting things to be just right, in control. This is a world of stress that's so easy to fall into.

Spiritual practice can help us to relax that, to get out of the way, to open up the space of the heart, the space of the mind, awareness, to allow things to settle that need to settle and can settle, and allow things to emerge which can emerge. And so, Dharma life is a life of emergence, not of reaction. It's a life of the emergence of something, not the life of emergency.

So for me, what I'm doing here today is tying this quality of not speaking for material reward to the naturalistic orientation that I talked about last week. That I have a deep trust in these naturalistic processes of human life that the Dharma is tapping into. In fact, sometimes the word Dharma is maybe one of the closest Pali words to our English word "nature." And so to trust the Dharma is to trust our nature, trust the naturalistic functionings and activities of our inner life.

May you know goodness or wholesomeness. May you know good qualities within that can emerge and be allowed to spread and grow within you. And that you learn to be careful and attentive and alert to the ways in which reactivity, tensions, a sense of urgency, a sense of anxiety covers over these good qualities, diminishes them. Because we have the capacity to live an abundant sense of wholesomeness, and ideally, we're not sacrificing that capacity for anything at all. Let our goodness, let our wholesomeness be the source of our gift, being a gift for this world of ours. May we all support and help this world with the gifts we have, not through the anxieties we carry.

So thank you very much.