This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Letting Go and Keeping; Ten Protectors (7 of 10) Letting Go and Awakening. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Letting Go and Keeping; Dharmette: Ten Protectors (7 of 10) Letting Go and Picking Up - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 10, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Letting Go and Keeping

Good morning, or good day, and welcome to our meditation time. As I usually do, I like to offer a little introduction as a background to the meditation.

One of the central concepts for Buddhist practice—the meditation we do, the way we engage in the Dharma—is to distinguish between what is helpful and not helpful, what serves us and what doesn't serve us. That begs the question: helpful for what reason, or serves us for what purpose? There are many ways to answer that from a Buddhist point of view, but one way is that it leads us away from suffering and towards happiness. The ultimate happiness is liberation—liberation from the causes of all suffering. It leads us away from agitation and moves us towards peace, where the highest peace is, again, freedom from suffering and all the agitation that produces it.

To love the Dharma is to love the practice. It is to love the practice of making this distinction and delighting in the opportunity to move in the direction of what serves us and what is helpful. Part of the delight is knowing that it's not just for our own sake, but we do it for the sake of others as well. Whether we intend to or not, moving in this direction towards peace, towards the absence of suffering and the presence of happiness, towards the absence of greed, hate, and delusion, and towards the presence of generosity, love, and wisdom—of course, that is going to benefit the people around us.

One way of meditating, which is the proposal for today, is to imagine yourself as someone who sorts fruit. I've done this a little bit before. Imagine there's a conveyor belt that brings a gentle, relaxed flow of recently harvested apples. Some of them are clearly defective and can't be used to be sold as fresh produce or applesauce. Some are useful and will serve many people in feeding them.

You stand at the end of this conveyor belt as the apples come. The ones that don't serve and are not helpful for human consumption are used for other purposes; they are composted. The ones that are going to serve us are picked up and put in a box, maybe on your right. The loving job of just picking them out—this goes for the compost, this goes for others—is done without any judgment, hostility, or aversion towards anything, and without any greed that in a sense one is better than the other. It's really good to create compost, as it supports the soil. Some people love making compost; it delights them. And some people love picking the fruits that are going to serve many people, imagining who they are going to serve.

In this way, sitting and meditating today, maybe there's a way of sitting quietly and focusing on the breath, focusing on being present in a way that appreciates present-moment attention. Just being here. Being present in a kind way, a wise way, a generous way, and distinguishing between what arises in the mind and what's happening to us emotionally. Distinguish the ways we relate to what's happening. That's the apple: not what's happening, but how we relate to it.

In some ways we relate, we have aversion, fear, criticism, conceit, or greed. Some of these are really just good for the compost—just put them aside. Some ways we relate are the fruit of practice that have great benefit, and those are useful to keep for later, or for now. We can meet whatever is happening with kindness, openness, non-hostility, and clear, open, receptive mindfulness. We can offer transparent attention where things just go right through without being stuck on us. We can meet things with wisdom, relating to what's happening in a wise way.

One wise way is to see it as just phenomena rolling through. It's the stream, the flow of life coming through. Now it's this, and now it's this. There's no need to get reactive to it, get greedy for it, or make any conclusions from it, like, "Oh, this means that I am X." We avoid taking it personally or making it into something personal. It is just phenomena happening.

Imagine sitting here, present but attentive to what goes in the compost and what we keep.

Gently close your eyes.

Take some care, and maybe some love, for a suitable posture for meditation—a posture that serves you, a posture that's helpful.

Take some long, deep breaths, relaxing on the exhale.

Let the breathing return to normal. Continue to relax the body, the mind, the heart, maybe for the next dozen or so exhales. Relaxing, settling, softening.

As we continue, is there anything about how you are right now that would be good to acknowledge and recognize clearly so that it doesn't have an undue influence on how you're present and how you practice mindfulness?

How are you, and how are you relating to how you are? What attitude do you have toward what you find and how you find yourself? Does the attitude or relationship you have serve you, or doesn't it serve you? Is it helpful or not helpful? If it's not helpful, can you change? Can you let that go into the compost and find a little more helpful way of being present for how you are?

Even simple mindfulness is helpful. Just aware, non-judgmentally, not taking it personally. Settling into your breathing again.

Maybe imagine breathing is the conveyor belt. Whatever it brings, meet it with a useful attitude. Relate to it in a helpful way. If how you relate to anything that's happening doesn't serve and is not helpful, put it aside for compost and arouse a helpful attitude, a helpful way of relating. The simplest being non-judgmental, receptive awareness.

As we come to the end of this sitting, appreciate that we have a choice. We have the choice between speaking or not speaking, doing or not doing something, thinking or not thinking something. The choice between having one attitude or another. When having an attitude that is unhelpful, do we avoid acting on it in any way?

The ability to make choices about what we do and what we don't do, what we act on and what we don't act on, can give us the choice to act on love, generosity, and kindness, and to not act on ill will, greed, and conceit. We can make this choice calmly, openly, and relaxedly, so that how we are in the world doesn't contribute to more strife or challenge for people.

May we instead learn how to monitor ourselves to make the choice to avoid harming, and when appropriate, to live from generosity, love, care, and respect in a way that brings peace into the world and brings safety for others.

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

Thank you.

Dharmette: Ten Protectors (7 of 10) Letting Go and Picking Up

Warm greetings from IMC to this series on the ten protectors. Yesterday, the protector we discussed was a love of the Dharma. That, of course, can have different meanings depending on what you mean by "Dharma," and different people have different reference points for this wonderful word. What I offered was that the core aspect of Dharma is non-harming.

That's pretty powerful in itself, but the companion to that is doing what's beneficial—doing the opposite of harm. This protects us, and this protects the world around us. The operating idea of love is fantastic. Doing this with love, having love for this, means the way we approach and meet the world is healthy and nourishing for us and for others.

Now we come to the next protector. When I was first introduced to this many years ago, it just seemed too technical, a little bit too technique-focused. It felt very different to me than just having open mindfulness and presence for whatever is here. It seemed a little bit judgmental and more difficult. But I've come to really appreciate that what's coming next is also very fundamental to the Dharma.

The traditional way of translating it into English is to abandon what is unwholesome and arouse or awaken what is wholesome. Sometimes it's said to be abandoning what's unskillful and awakening what is skillful. I like to think of this as letting go of what is unhelpful and picking up what is helpful. Putting down what is unhealthy that our mind, speech, and body can be doing, and picking up what is healthy.

This distinction makes a huge difference. If we don't see this choice we have in any situation in our life between what is unhelpful and what is helpful, why would we stop doing the unhelpful? If you have a thorn in your foot and you don't see that it's helpful and serves you to take the thorn out, and you just keep walking on it, eventually it can get infected and cause lasting damage.

We constantly make this distinction in our life. We sit in a chair and we feel what makes for a nice way of sitting that helps us to relax, and what maybe is not nice. Maybe there's painful pressure against part of our body in a certain way of sitting, so we make an adjustment. This constant adjustment is pretty much human nature. When we apply it in Dharma practice, we're learning how we relate to our experience and the things that come out of us. As opposed to looking at the world and changing the world, Dharma practice has a very central focus on taking responsibility for what comes out of us.

If what comes out of us is not helpful for the world or not helpful to us, there is the art of letting go of it. If it is helpful, or if we awaken what is helpful, then please continue doing that with enthusiasm.

For mindfulness practitioners, it's always helpful and wholesome to be mindful if the mindfulness is clean. If the mindfulness does not come along with unhelpful attitudes of judgment, criticism, greed, or expectation, it is simple mindfulness. Tracking this for ourselves is a way of being our own personal protector. The deepest harm that we can experience as adults is harm that we do to ourselves. Even if horrendous things happen to us on the outside, in our deepest heart, it's how we relate to them that really counts in the end and has a lasting effect on us.

If we react with resistance and aversion deep in the heart, if we react with hostility and hate, or if we react with greed and desire in some deep way where the greed has a kind of tension and suffering in and of itself, then we can create lasting harm. But in the deepest places within, if we can meet things with love, care, generosity, non-conceit, and without shutting down, then there can be a lasting benefit to us.

This is, of course, very difficult to appreciate when horrible things happen to us. But when we really get into Dharma practice and understand it well, we realize that we are becoming the custodians of our own hearts. Whatever happens around us, we begin developing the strength to really stay close to our heart and keep it free, keep it clean, and keep it non-reactive. Otherwise, we actually compound the challenges by adding second arrows¹ to ourselves. This ability and choice—seeing where we don't add the second arrows and staying close to that—is a way of protecting ourselves.

What I find fascinating and delightful is this idea of standing there and choosing between what goes into the compost and what we keep. By calling what we don't want and don't need "compost," we don't have to think of abandoning it as just another form of aversion. Everything has a use; some things are just useful for compost. When I have anger or greed—these things that I don't think are useful—if I can let go of them, drop into my body, and feel it all there, the body has a way of composting it. I don't have to reject it exactly or hold an attitude that it's awful, bad, or wrong. It has a use. If I can let go of it into the body, it gets transmuted, settled, or supportive for something beautiful to happen. Then, I can pick up and awaken what's beautiful and helpful.

The way to do this—to abandon, to let go of, and to awaken and maintain—is to do it skillfully. It is done in a helpful way, a nourishing and supportive way that feels wholesome. Rather than making navigating this distinction one more difficult, exhausting thing to do, the attitude and approach we take is supported by the love of the Dharma. We just love doing this practice. We love doing something that avoids further harm and creates more benefit. How lucky we are that we can do this!

If we don't have a healthy attitude for how we navigate this natural distinction between what's healthy and not healthy, it's hard to sustain. It can be exhausting, debilitating, and feel like a burden. But if we can find a healthy way to navigate this distinction, it can be a delight and a joy. It's kind of like the joy of paddling down the current of a river and enjoying staying in the current as we go. That little choice we make—stay in that healthy current, stay here, be here—is delightful.

I love that this idea of abandoning the unwholesome and awakening the wholesome follows the love of the Dharma in this list. Maybe that's a guide for how to do this very fundamental practice, usually called Right Effort² in Buddhism. It's one of the pieces of the Eightfold Path³, so it's pretty central to it all.

In doing this, we become our own protector. That is one of the really significant stepping stones in Dharma practice: learning how we can be our own protector. We protect ourselves from ourselves. As we do this, we also become a protector for others; we're protecting them from us. We become a safe person.

Maybe this seems a trifling thing in a world full of horrendous suffering and challenges, as many of us are very sensitive right now to what's happening in the world. But someone has to be this kind of person. Someone has to be able to enter into the world so that we're safe for others. Who is better for this than ourselves? If it doesn't start with us, does it make sense to continually expect that other people will make the world a better place?

If we can do it, if we can be a safe person for the world, maybe we have a stance upon which to stand that can begin encouraging other people to do it too. We can speak up and say, "Let's meet each other peacefully and kindly." Let's actively stand—not exactly in opposition, but stand to convince people that violence doesn't work, hate doesn't work, and greed doesn't work. Let's speak up about that. But we can only do so if we know how to be a safe place for all people, including the people we disagree with.

We'll continue on these ten protectors tomorrow. Thank you.