This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Sitting with the Whole; Eight Worldly Winds (1 of 5) Gain and Loss. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditatioin: Sitting with the Whole; Dharmette: Eight Worldly Winds (1 of 5) Gain and Loss - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on August 05, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditatioin: Sitting with the Whole

Hello on this Monday morning in Redwood City, California, as I sit here at the Insight Meditation Center. For this morning's meditation, I'd like to evoke the idea of wholeness. One of the ways to meditate is to sit with the whole of what's happening and to begin that way the best that we can—a global experience of the whole show. It means we don't select out any particular thing to focus on, but rather, in the way that you might gaze out upon a mountain in the distance or clouds floating by in the sky or out across the ocean once at the beach, there's a kind of broad, wide attention to include the whole.

If the attention falls on any particular thing, just welcome it and say, "This too is included in the whole." One way of understanding this is that we're letting our attention be the widest circle possible, within which all things are allowed to be, all experiences are allowed to be equally, without being for or against, without welcoming or unwelcoming any particular experience that's happening. So it's all included, all allowed here.

And that's just the beginning. With that capacity to kind of include everything, with almost the little saying, "This too, this too is included," this creates the conditions upon which wisdom can operate, where clarity and understanding can operate, and where there can be a wise discernment, a wise letting go, or a wise picking up, or a wise selectivity of where the attention goes. It might be the sense of whole allows us to discover, like there's a big circle where everything's included, we might be able over time to discover where the center of that big circle is. And we would sit at that center. Like a big round trampoline, we would sit in the middle of a trampoline; the trampoline net would sink right there, would rest there. So we find that place in the middle of the whole to rest. But first, we have to just kind of be at ease with "all this too is included."

So, to assume a meditation posture. And whatever posture you take, you might have the attitude or approach it as if your whole body is included, some way in which nothing is left out. Sometimes if we sit meditating in a chair and we're sitting with the legs crossed in some kind of casual way, somehow the legs or one of the feet are not really fully part of the whole process. But if the feet are both legs are both kind of squarely there in the chair, and knees more or less at a right angle, and the soles of the feet kind of touching the floor, everything's kind of more included in the process, in the posture. So that was just an example, but sit in a way that there's a little bit of intentionality in the way that you position your body. And that intentionality is to begin including the whole body as part of the bigger whole.

And then to begin expanding through that wholeness of the body. Maybe it would be nice for you to take some deeper breaths, almost as if the circles of attention expand as you breathe in and welcome everything in as you breathe out. Expanding outwards as you deeply inhale and relaxing, settling inward as you exhale.

And then letting the breathing return to normal. When there is tension, it's useful to think of that as a way of becoming partial, a way of selecting or cutting off or over-validating some part of the whole. And that relaxing the tension starts making room for all things to be included. Relaxation makes space for all things to come into their native way. Breathing normally, on the exhale, going through the body and finding places of holding and tension, and on the exhale, relaxing, softening in the body.

A significant way in which we are not part of the whole of who we are is being overly concerned with our thoughts and stories and ideas. And that over-involvement sometimes involves mental or physical tension or tightness, pressure associated with thinking. And if there is, as you exhale, soften that tension, relax the pressure, soften the thinking mind.

Sometimes we might operate with a spatial awareness, an awareness of ourselves in space and location. It's possible to feel or sense or imagine the space around the body, how we're sitting in a particular room, a particular spatial situation. And to, with the eyes closed, to feel and sense beyond the edges of the body, the space, the room around us. And as if that space is the widest circle of our personal wholeness. Anything that happens within that wider circle is allowed to be known and held in awareness. And every particular thing that happens, see it as part of the whole of who you are, one piece.

Whatever you're feeling—emotionally or mentally or physically—maybe it's easier to let it be there if it's seen as just part of a whole. It's accompanied by everything else here and now. And maybe at the center of it all, like the center of the trampoline, is the gentle movements of breathing.

Perhaps in these few minutes left to sit meditating, welcoming all of who we are, forgiving everything, putting down conflict and right and wrong and good and bad, success and failure. Just to sit here in a very simple way, all things included as we breathe, accompanying all things.

And then as we come to the end of this meditation, to consider how you are now, after these minutes of sitting meditating. How is it that how you are now can help you to have a more friendly, caring attitude for other people? Is there some way of being present for all of who you are that might from time to time give you the ability, give you the occasion, to first and foremost be present for all of someone else, who they are, before judgment, before needing to address issues? But to take time to allow someone to be themselves without us imposing any restrictions or judgments or requirements on them. Maybe that's a gift that brings peace and well-being and respect to others.

May it be that this meditation practice we do allows us to enter into the world of people with greater equanimity and respect and care, maybe even reverence for the whole experience of being human that others have, the whole experience of this difficult and challenging human life. May we see people with care. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

Dharmette: Eight Worldly Winds (1 of 5) Gain and Loss

So hello everyone and welcome to Monday and the first talk in this week's series. The topic for this week will be what's commonly referred to as the eight worldly winds¹, the eight conditions by which people get caught by circumstances in the world. The winds that can change and blow this way and that way, and we're battered around by them, sometimes the victims of these in the way, because of how much we allow them to take over or impact who we are.

To introduce these, first I want to say that it's common enough in Buddhism and meditation circles to have some idea of an ideal state to attain, an ideal meditation to experience, where we're just kind of floating in equanimity, we're just kind of feeling so peaceful and at ease and everything seems so nice. And that that's the goal. And if we're not there, then we're not really meditating properly, and you know, so we have some fault, but we have to kind of figure out the secret of how to get into this kind of blissful state, something like that.

In contrast to that, I think what mature meditation is like, what mature mindfulness is, is not that we're living in some kind of blissful state all the time. When the practice really matures, then there's a keen willingness, a keen interest, a keen welcoming of taking a deep look at what gets in the way of mindfulness, what makes mindfulness difficult, what trips us up, where we get attached. One of the earliest teachings of the Buddha is that what characterizes a wise person is they know how they get caught. They understand and are mindful of their clinging and their challenges. So it isn't that a wise person knows how to be peaceful all the time, but the wise person really understands all their difficulties. And that is the stepping stone to peace. We don't want to bypass that or override it in order to find some degree of peace, but it's by knowing ourselves thoroughly that we can come to a place of peace. And knowing how we cling, how we get caught.

This is a phenomenally important part of Buddhist practice. There are some people who prioritize the lofty ideas, the wonderful ideas of Nirvana and freedom and liberation, lofty ideas of compassion and loving-kindness and all kinds of things that are very, you know, ideals that are very positive. And in doing so, they overlook the basic foundational work of Buddhism which everyone needs to do, including the most mature practitioners. And that is to really understand themselves, really understand how we get caught, how we're not peaceful, how we're not equanimous, how we're not loving and generous. Not to understand it with criticism, not to understand it that makes us a wrong person, but rather, this is the means, the ways of opening up more. It's a stepping stone to freedom, a stepping stone to not being caught. And the way not to be caught is to understand how we get caught first. So there's this deep work that has to happen and not a bypass. It's not jumping over it, it's not finding some wonderful solution so we never have to address any of our issues.

So, these eight worldly winds are examples of how human beings often get caught. There are four pairs: gain and loss, fame and disgrace (or fame and disrepute), blame and praise, and pleasure and pain.

So, the first one is gain and loss. The weather changes all the time. When I lived in Tennessee, their saying was, "If you don't like the weather, then wait five minutes." The weather changes and moves, and it's this way and that way. For a little while we gain the sun, and then the sun goes. The party is washed out in the rain, and then something else happens. So there's a gain and loss all the time. We gain something new, we buy new socks. Soon enough the socks are old and they have holes in them. Soon enough, we lose one of the socks in the washing machine, and now we only have one of the pair. These silly little examples, though, get magnified in all kinds of ways that we gain and lose. We gain abilities as we grow and we're young, and then as we get older, there's maybe more recognition of losing certain things and abilities. There is gaining wealth and losing wealth. I've known plenty of people who have overnight, in a day, somehow or other lost much of their savings. And I've known people who were surprised by suddenly receiving something that they hadn't expected. I knew one person who wanted to go to college, didn't have the money, and then was suddenly surprised one day that there was an anonymous donation that made the college possible.

So gain and loss, that's built into human life. And so how do we relate to those when they come? Certainly there can be some joy, some delight with healthy gain, and there could be some disappointment with loss. But as a worldly wind, it means our inner stability, our inner freedom, our inner certain kind of peace is sacrificed in our relationship to them. The way the Buddha talked about it is that when there's gain, we get caught in welcoming it and approving it and validating it. And when there's loss, there's hostility to the loss, there's opposition to it. One translator calls it, there's a rebelliousness to it.

So there's an attitude, there's a way in which we then interact that's more than just a very simple appreciation or a very simple maybe feeling of "that was unfortunate." But we're actively involved in approving, welcoming, "This is great, I really like this," and holding on to it, maybe building up a sense of self, maybe almost sometimes it's like a drug. We've gained something and we're pumped up in some kind of way, win a lottery ticket with lots of money, and now we're all excited and elated and we can't wait to start buying everything we want to buy. And then the next day we find out there was a mistake and our number didn't win the lottery. And now suddenly we crash, and not only that, but during the 24 hours there, we've spent our savings because we thought we were getting more, and now we've lost our savings because of it. And now we crash and are disappointed and furious and angry with ourselves.

And so we swing from one to the other. It's just swinging back and forth, almost sometimes as a counter-reaction to each other, a backlash. Swinging one way having our hopes up, swinging the other direction and having our hopes crash around loss, gain and loss.

Part of a wise life, a wise Buddhist life, is to be cognizant, to recognize clearly as it happens through the day, "Now there's a gain, now there's a loss." And then what is our relationship? How does that affect us? Is the wind of gain, the wind of loss, pushing us and grabbing us, and we're kind of riding the wind or being pushed by the wind? Or are we being reactive in some way? Are we overreactive? Is there an enthusiasm and an approval and a welcoming that is a form of attachment and expectation and thinking it's always going to be this way? And when there's a loss, are we disappointed in some deep way? Do we sink? Are we deflated? Do we think now it's going to be this way? And are we angry? Do we have a sense of hostility, "This is not fair, this is not this way," you know?

And so the pendulum swings. For some people, the pendulum swings with every gain and loss. And in fact, it's almost because the pendulum is in one direction that it swings as far as it does in the other direction. If we're really feeling delighted and fantastic about the gain, maybe how elated we are around the lottery, then we have further to swing when we realize we didn't win the lottery. And the sense of disappointment is so much more.

Is there a different way? Is there a way of recognizing in a wise way, in a careful way, in a caring way, "This is loss, this is gain. This is nice, this is not so nice, but let's not invest so much into it. Let's not tie ourselves to gain and loss." And so in his teachings about these eight worldly winds, the Buddha said that someone who is well-practiced, they are ready to see when there's gain, that that is also changeable, that also is impermanent, inconstant, changing. When there's loss, that's also in some way or other, it changes. It'll change, it's inconstant. My experience of it is inconstant, I'm inconstant, things will change. It's not going to be only lost forever, something different happens.

This idea of the changeability of our experience in our life, for the Buddha, helps with a certain degree of stability, a certain degree of not getting invested in the pendulum swinging to one extreme or the other. And in doing so, rather than dampening us down, it makes room for a deeper sense of well-being, a deeper sense of stability and feeling at home, feeling at peace that has more to do with our wholeness, our fullness, our deep inner connection to ourselves that we don't have when our sense of happiness and sadness is tied to gain and loss in the world, to things that we gain and lose, as opposed to some deep inner place that is not about gain and loss but about a sense of at-homeness, peace, stability here with ourselves. That is something that over time, meditation can connect us to. And the stability, the calm, the peace of meditation can feel so much more satisfying than winning the lottery.

In fact, so much so that if we win the lottery, the attitude might be, "Well, let's see what happens. This is maybe nice, maybe not. We don't know. Let's see what happens now." Or if we lose our sock, "Who knows what'll happen?" Or something more serious, "Maybe we'll see what happens. Maybe this is not so good, maybe it's not, but let's just see. Let's see what happens next. We don't know where this is going to go to."

So the first of the eight worldly winds is gain and loss. And now if this seems at all interesting for you, you might go through the day today, for the next 24 hours, looking to see where there might be gain and loss through the day that will teach you about how your pendulum swings more than necessary, how you react, how you get caught in it and get attached, how you're overly welcoming, overly approving of a certain gain, and overly critical, oppositional, even hostile to a certain loss. So please do this with care and respect for yourself. Human life is difficult and we want to find our way through this with grace. So thank you very much.