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Guided Meditation: Tranquil Awareness; Dharmette: The End of Suffering (1 of 5) Faith, Confidence, Courage. - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 11, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Tranquil Awareness

Hello everyone, and welcome to IMC and this 7:00 a.m. teaching. I was glad that Ines could teach for me while I was gone on retreat. I am very happy to be back with all of you. I very much thought about you this last week, even though I stayed focused on caring for the retreat so there wasn't much room for a second thought.

As usual, when I've been gone for a while, I don't push all the buttons right. Now I think all the buttons are set.

Welcome. What I'd like to do this week is to go back to basics. It's always a good idea to start over, come back to basics, and build the practice—build our world—from the basics. For the meditation, at least, what I'd like to do is the most basic: mindfulness of breathing.

Mindfulness of breathing in the teachings of the Buddha comes along with a number of steps, but I will emphasize three. First, he says that as one breathes mindfully and feels one's body, one can calm the body—calm the bodily agitation. Second, he says that as we're breathing, we can calm the mental agitation—calm the mind.

Third, he says that as we're breathing, we can please the mind; we can satisfy the mind. One way that this happens is we can please, satisfy, or inspire the mind by a third form of calming: we can calm mindfulness itself. We can calm the way that we are aware.

As we know what's happening in the present, we can know calmly. As we feel what's happening in the present, we can feel calmly. The body and the mind might still be agitated, but we can be aware of the agitation with a calm awareness—calm mindfulness. This is the most basic way to go back to basics: not simply to be with the breathing, but as we're breathing, to calm the body, the mind, and then more deeply, calm how we are aware. We do this to such a point that it just feels good to be aware. It pleases the mind and satisfies the heart to be aware calmly.

Assume a meditation posture, an intentional posture. Regardless of what posture you're in, there is an engagement through the body to be present. Gently close the eyes.

To connect to the body and to the breathing more fully, establish a connection by taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. Relax on the exhale in an easy way. Have a long, slow exhale to extend the time in which you soften the body.

Let the breathing return to normal. For a few breaths, allow the body to experience the sensations of breathing, maybe almost like a massage. The torso expands and contracts; the belly expands on the inhale. If the belly doesn't expand on the inhale, see if you can relax the belly.

As you relax, soften the shoulders. As you exhale, soften in the chest. And maybe as you exhale, softening in the face.

Then, as you exhale, soften and calm the thinking mind—the energy or activation around thinking. Let there be a softening, letting go.

Feel a gentle calming wave through the body as you exhale, almost as if the pull of gravity gently relaxes the muscles of the body.

As you exhale—or if you prefer, the inhale—invite the mind to calm. A calming wave through the mind, as if the mind too responds to the pull of gravity to settle, become stable, and quiet.

Then, as you exhale, see if you can be aware of the exhale calmly. A calm knowing of the body exhaling. Calmly knowing.

Inhaling to know, to be aware without pressure, without strain. Each act of knowing a lightening up. Whatever heaviness releases in the knowing.

Using breathing or some other thing in the present moment to be attentive to how you're aware. Perhaps relaxing any sense of being the "doer" of awareness. If you can't do it completely, then be the "allower" of awareness, making room for awareness to operate without being the doer.

Perhaps each moment of awareness cannot be seen as the end—a punctuation or recognition of what is with a period—but rather the beginning of an opening to a fuller recognition. Recognition of what comes into awareness.

Calmly feeling what's happening, not as something to conclude what's happening, but as a beginning of opening to what may arise next. To know and to calmly be available to know what follows.

What you're aware of may be difficult, but see if you can find a way to know the difficulty so the knowing is calm. Tranquil knowing. Tranquil awareness.

In being aware calmly, can you find a way to know, feel, or sense your experience that is satisfying for the mind? That pleases your mind? Perhaps because the awareness is very simple, ordinary, not looking for anything special. Simply aware of what's obvious. Awareness that's peaceful.

As we come to the end of this sitting, appreciate a sense of calm, peaceful knowing that teaches us that agitated knowing will make the situation worse. It is healthy and appropriate to remain with a calm knowing as we address whatever challenges we find in this world. It's not worth abandoning a peaceful mindfulness.

May our ability to be present calmly and clearly support us to go into the world to work for the welfare and happiness of all beings.

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

And may we all contribute to this possibility.

Thank you.

Dharmette: The End of Suffering (1 of 5) Faith, Confidence, Courage.

Hello and welcome to this Monday Dharma talk. For this week's series, I would like to go back to Buddhist basics—the very core insights, understandings, and practices upon which Buddhist life in the world is built.

At the heart of Buddhism is addressing suffering. The core teaching that represents this kind of direct, clear-eyed seeing and practicing with suffering is the teaching on the Four Noble Truths. Classically, it is described as:

1. The Noble Truth of Suffering.
2. The Noble Truth of the Cause of Suffering.
3. The Noble Truth of the Cessation of Suffering.
4. The Noble Truth of the Path to the Ending of Suffering.

What I love about the classic wording of this is that there are no pronouns. It is knowing suffering wherever it occurs. We are not chasing after it, but if it's in front of us—if we're paying attention to the world—we all encounter suffering in ourselves and in others.

Then, we understand the causes of it and address the causes of it. One of the ways that Buddhism addresses the causes, which is somewhat unique to Buddhism, is not necessarily fixing the problems in the world directly, but knowing something about the root cause of suffering that arises in the heart. The Buddha called it a "dart" that's embedded in the heart that is possible to take out.

We must discover what is deep in the heart—the attachment, the craving, the clinging—the dart that, as long as it's there, ensures we will suffer. There is a phenomenal capacity to take that dart out. No matter how much we move the deck chairs on the Titanic, the Titanic will go down unless we fix the leak. We better learn to swim. We better learn to recognize these Four Noble Truths and how to work with them in our lives.

I'll be doing this for the next four talks, going through these four steps of the Four Noble Truths. But for today, I would like to say that we have to be ready for that. We shouldn't just jump into the Four Noble Truths because they could be misunderstood or understood the wrong way, or because people are not ready.

So, how are we ready for the Four Noble Truths so that they are meaningful and impactful for us? Maybe what I'll say is not so accessible, but maybe it will inspire something for consideration and reflection for you.

To be ready for these teachings of the Four Noble Truths, there has to be faith, confidence, and maybe sometimes courage. What do we have confidence in? What do we have courage about?

We have to have confidence that it's possible to pull the dart out of the heart. It's possible to feel or experience an end to what is called dukkha¹. This Pali² word is usually translated as "suffering," but it is not the same thing as pain. It's not the same thing as emotional pain. Rather, it's a form of distress—a particular type of emotional pain that has a cause that can be eliminated, taken away, or let go of. It's a particular kind of distress, a particular kind of suffering, that has its origin in the reactivity in our own minds and hearts.

We're not trying to get rid of all emotional pain; that would be impossible. But we are trying to find a way to meet all the pain of the world with a heart that is not reactive—a heart that is not caught up in aversion, greed, or confusion.

To have faith that that's possible—to have confidence, even courage, that it's possible to find another way than to be caught up in reactivity, reactive distress, reactive hostility, reactive greed, and fear—is a hard thing. It's hard to have faith and confidence both that it's possible and that it's worthwhile. It does sometimes take courage.

One of the sources of this courage and confidence is to have enough self-awareness to know how we make a situation worse for ourselves. We need to be able to track that as we encounter something in the world, the very way in which we react is not required. If we react with hostility, it is not really required. Even if we have to act quickly and firmly, there's no need for hostility. We can feel how we deteriorate because of it; we add a level of emotional pain by responding with hatred and hostility.

With a lot of courage, we can see that if we react with conceit—caught up in ideas of "me, myself, and mine"—it actually makes the situation worse. It narrows us, limits us, and divides us from others in the world. So, know that there's an end of conceit, an end of attachment to "me, myself, and mine." Not that there isn't "me, myself, and mine" in this world, but it's the attachment to it which has caused so much suffering.

Someone has to learn not to be caught by it. Someone should learn how not to be caught by hostility and greed. Someone should learn how not to be caught by fear. The Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, says that you are the one to do that work. If you come to the Dharma, that's the offering, that's the gift of the Dharma. That is, in a sense, the request of the Dharma heart: Yes, don't make it worse for ourselves, because if we do, we make it worse for the world.

Don't sacrifice the good in addressing what is bad in this world. Don't sacrifice what's healthy in you for what's unhealthy in this world. There are unhealthy things; there are tremendous forces of greed, hatred, and delusion operating in this world. But we make it worse if we ourselves then respond with greed, hatred, and delusion. There's a world of tremendous clinging and attachment; we don't have to respond in kind.

The idea is definitely to respond. The idea is to be living in this world to address this. As I said, the Four Noble Truths do not have pronouns associated with them. The suffering of others is, in a certain way, our own suffering. Once we get clear and relaxed and pull the dart from our own heart, we're actually more acutely aware of the suffering of the world. But it's possible to be aware of it without reactivity. Not to be passive, not to do nothing, but to be an agent of change.

There's a wonderful expression in Pali that is a title, in a sense, of one type of person—a role or way of living in the world. Sometimes it's used as a name; there are Buddhists who received this from their teachers as their name. It's a wonderful way of living: Santikaro. Santi means "peace," and karo means "maker." Santikaro is a "peacemaker."³

How can we do this? How can we become a maker of peace for this world? One way is to never abandon—courageously avoid abandoning, letting go of, or forgetting—the fundamental beginning of Buddhist practice: to have faith and confidence that it is possible to come to an ending of distress, an ending of anguish, an ending of reactive pain.

It is possible. It is possible to find an abiding, wonderful feeling or experience of calmly being aware of this difficult world that we are in. In that calmness, some of the most important, valuable, and beautiful qualities of the heart can be with us to address this world. To meet the world with love, with compassion, with kindness and care. To meet it with honesty, directness, and respect. To respect all beings.

These next days, we will look at the Four Noble Truths. Hopefully, you will come to a greater appreciation of how invaluable it is to know the basic foundation of where peace can be found—the simplest, most direct route in the teachings of the Buddha.

I hope that you will have faith in the value of the Four Noble Truths. That you'll hear these with confidence: yes, no matter how little you can practice them, how little you can use them to see more clearly, to that degree it's beneficial. And maybe you'll even have courage—the courage to really take the Four Noble Truths all the way to their end. That you too can find the end of anguish, despair, distress, and the reactive pain that so many people live in.

Thank you, and I look forward to coming back tomorrow to begin this series on the Four Noble Truths.