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Open Questions AMA - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 20, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Open Questions AMA

Normally, when I come here on Sunday morning, I give a Dharma¹ talk. Part of the purpose of giving a Dharma talk is to convey the Dharma, and if I don't have a Dharma talk on my heart, I am probably not going to convey it. A Dharma talk shouldn't be forced or contrived.

So, I think the better way of conveying the Dharma today is simply to tell you I don't have a talk and to use this time for your questions. I am happy to respond the best I can, and maybe in those wonderful exchanges, the Dharma will be born here at IMC². Do any of you have a topic or something you would like to ask?

What Happens When We Die?

Question: What do you personally think happens when we die?

Gil Fronsdal: I personally believe that if the dying goes well—if it is not too sudden, and there is not too much pain or mental chemistry changes—then that process is very much like the process of letting go in deep meditation. In very deep meditation, that process of letting go is so good; it is like some of the very best things that can happen to a person. It brings the greatest happiness, the greatest peace, and the greatest meaning. It just gets better and better the deeper the letting go is.

So, I look forward to dying. I look forward to that process if I am lucky enough for it to be a good death, because I have a very strong association that it will just be this process that I already know, and it only gets better the more you let go. I don't know what happens at the final letting go, but it has to be good. Does that answer your question well enough?

Questioner: Yes. I have been reading the Tibetan Book of the Dead³, and as you know, they believe in reincarnation. The bardo⁴ is the time between when you die and when you get your new life. I'm sure you're aware of this book, and it is kind of complicated to read—they talk about all these deities, demons, and bright lights shining in your eyes. What are your thoughts on that?

Gil: The title of the book says a lot for me because it is a book of living and dying. However, we are not in the Tibetan tradition here; we are in the Theravada⁵ Buddhist tradition. Inside the Theravada tradition, we are much more rooted in the earliest recorded teachings of the Buddha. We don't share the same worldview as the Tibetans, so we don't share the idea of a bardo period or their specific cosmology. I wish them well with their worldview, but ours is different.

Questioner: I have several colleagues from Burma who are very devout Buddhists, and they very firmly believe in reincarnation.

Gil: Generally—and this is a minor semantic issue—in Buddhism, we don't often use the word "reincarnation." It is sometimes used in Tibetan Buddhist circles in English, but in our Theravada tradition, we usually use "rebirth,"⁶ which has a slightly different connotation. It is true that most Buddhists believe in rebirth, but Theravadins don't believe in the bardo. For those who believe in rebirth in the Theravada tradition, it is seen as an instant process: you die and move on to the next round.

The Origins of Fear and Anxiety

Question (Pearson): I had a question about the origins of fear and anxiety, specifically when it comes to things that you logically understand are not a real threat. Right now, my blood is pumping faster; I feel a kind of social pressure. Where does that come from, and how do you start to feel comfortable dealing with it?

Gil: Wonderful. I love the question. Fear, anxiety, distress, and anger—I like to understand these as the perceivable response to the world we live in, or the imagination in which we live. What we want to do in this practice is not stop at the perceivable. We want to be careful not to give a lot of authority to these perceivable emotions, or to be too invested in them or identify with them. At the same time, we don't want to disrespect them.

So, we don't identify with them or assign them a lot of meaning and value, but we do respect them. In doing so, we begin discovering the less perceivable source within from which they come. Often, there is a place inside where we have a caring heart—a capacity for love, compassion, and goodness. This is often not very perceivable, especially if we have strong emotions on the surface. For you, what experience do you have of that less perceivable source underneath the emotions you asked about?

Pearson: I mean, it’s like a desire to connect and feel comfortable.

Gil: That’s fantastic. And if you take it one step further: for that desire to be connected and feel comfortable to be there, what has to be there before that?

Pearson: I think I’m still rooted too much in trying to escape the pain. I don't know where the origin comes from.

Gil: That was a great answer. Underneath this desire to be comfortable and connected, there is some pain. We would hold that pain like this. From our point of view, the answer you provided is very profound. That pain probably needs your care and your attention. What part of you can offer that care to your pain? Or, from where within you can you offer care to your own pain?

Pearson: Not to be corny, but from my heart. From the center. From the origin, before I was in pain.

Gil: From my point of view, these are profound answers. That "where" you are asking about is what is underneath it all. In this practice, that is where we are going to rest and trust. We allow something new to emerge in that care for the depths within us—something that cannot emerge if we are giving all our authority and identification to those perceivable emotions.

Surface Pleasures and Profound Pleasures

Question (Richard): I have a question about working with "pleasures of the flesh" and developing a relationship to pleasures that aren't of the flesh. I'm wondering if you could address that and perhaps refer to the suttas⁷.

Gil: This question comes from an ancient language. To contextualize it, the Buddha distinguished the hedonic experiences of pleasure and pain into two categories. The most common way this is translated into English is "spiritual" and "worldly," but the literal wording the Buddha used was "of the flesh" and "not of the flesh."⁸

There are surface pleasures that are worldly, meaning they have to do with something in the world pleasing our senses. It could be as simple as feeling the sunlight on a cold day, or eating nice food. But imagine you are distressed or afraid, and a friend says, "Come with me, my friend, let's go stand in the sun together." Now there is another pleasure there that isn't just the sun warming you up; it’s the deeper pleasure of being accompanied by your friend. That might actually be more nourishing than the sun itself.

I remember my grandmother in Norway when I was seven or eight years old. I would lie in a wooden Norwegian bed in a little wooden room. The sunlight would come through in the early morning, and I’d be under a comforter reading Donald Duck magazines. She would come in with a tray of milk and toast with Norwegian goat cheese on it. I took it for granted then, but that has stayed with me my whole life as an expression of a profound pleasure "not of the flesh"—the love and care with which it was offered.

To go deep into the Dharma, we need to appreciate this second dimension. We don't dismiss pleasures of the flesh; some can be wonderful and inspiring, though some can be deadly and ruin lives or societies. That world needs a lot of care and love. But Dharma practice really wants to support this "not of the flesh" side. I like to call them "profound pleasures" rather than "spiritual" ones. The Dharma movement is to start becoming sensitive to these deeper possibilities of well-being and to nourish them.

Many people haven't even learned to tune into that part of themselves because they are so busy being busy. It is easier to just pick up sensual pleasures here and there, which can distract us from really feeling what is here in a deep way. There is a profound rightness in feeling our life from this deep inner place. Even if there is pain, it feels right because we are with the truth. As we become sensitive to that profundity, we can recognize the goodness and well-being there so it can grow and fill us, creating a context for life that isn't dependent on being externally comfortable.

Befriending Discomfort

Question (Scott): I want to circle back and combine two questions. Most of us suffer from psychosocial stress—like right now, talking to you in public. We can dial into the somatic experience of that, but if I look deeper at what I’m clinging to, I see these "ill winds," like a thirst for recognition or a fear of insignificance. On the other hand, those aren't entirely unhealthy; we evolved in small bands where it was important to get along with our bandmates. Are you suggesting we should befriend even that discomfort?

Gil: Absolutely. We should be befriending everything. Everything needs our friendship.

Scott: So, in a way, our reaction to this discomfort is just "piling on" and isn't helpful?

Gil: It makes it much worse or not useful. I would be reluctant to live in a world where clinging is the response. I would rather be ready to meet everything with care, love, and friendship. You said we have an evolutionary conditioning to respond with fear or anger, and that's true. The problem becomes the clinging to it, the identification with it, or granting it authority. We lay all these extra things on top of it.

Have any of you seen the movie Perfect Days? It’s a movie about a man who cleans toilets in Japan. People I know who have done Zen training in monasteries recognize it immediately; they love it. I won't give away the end, but if you see it, you'll see part of my response to you. The movie becomes perfect in the very last scene.

Responding to Political Violence

Question: I’m thinking more and more about how to respond to political violence. I was recently somewhere where someone was forcing a different political perspective on me, and I felt fear for my family. How do I respond with both love and safety?

Gil: Of course you felt fear. Do you know who John Lewis⁹ was? John Lewis had many reasons to be afraid, growing up in the South when he did. He was beaten many times in his efforts to change the violent, segregated South.

There is a beautiful story from 1961. He was at a bus stop doing nonviolent civil disobedience, and a member of the Ku Klux Klan beat him up. In 2009, that man, Elwin Wilson, came to John Lewis's congressional office in Washington, D.C., with his own son to ask for forgiveness. It took forty-eight years for John Lewis’s willingness to stand there in love, rather than succumb to fear, to change that man’s heart.

In 1965, during the march from Selma to Montgomery, Lewis was at the front of the line. The police gave the group two minutes to disperse; after one minute and five seconds, they started beating them. Lewis was the first one hit; they fractured his skull. Six months later, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. His willingness to stand there and love instead of being afraid changed the country.

I respect your fear for your family. There is a lot of hatred in our society, but our society won't change if we get caught in our own fear. The task of this practice is to help us find a way to be the change we want to see. We go under the layers to find that profound place so we can tap into a different way of responding—with love, care, and respect. It comes with risks, and I don't think we can avoid that.

But what world do you want your children to grow up in? What do you want to pass on to them? Many years ago, a woman in my retreats told me she had cancer. She had a ten-year-old child and didn't want to die, so she did everything she could to live. Later, she told me she was going to die and she was very angry. I told her that if she died angry, it would condition her child’s future. The child would see anger as the primary response to fear. But if she could resolve her anger and die peacefully, it would change her child's life forever.

After she died, her husband called me. He said that when she passed, he and the child went into the garden, got a flower, and put it on her chest. When I heard that, I thought, "Okay, she died peacefully." How you live with this difficult world is a loving challenge from your own heart: to meet it courageously.

Seeking a Teacher

Question: When should one seek a teacher, and how does one do it? In this journey, there is often a feeling of being lost.

Gil: I think having a teacher to support one's practice is invaluable. I’ve had a number of teachers, and I am confident that if I didn't have them and fellow practitioners to practice with, I wouldn't have practiced nearly as much. I depended on that support.

How one finds a teacher is a bit like magic or chemistry. One possibility is to spend time with different teachers until you feel a resonance or trust. Even then, you want to be careful. The Buddha said you should hang out with a teacher for some time before deciding to be their student, so you can know their ethics and who they are. Don't be too quick in choosing.

There is a bit of folklore that "the teacher will find you," not because they are looking for you, but because it happens when you aren't looking. But you have to do your part. Nowadays, you can listen to Dharma talks online and check out many people quickly. When you find someone you resonate with, you need a certain amount of healthy assertiveness to ask how they are available and what it means to be their student.

Describing Meditation

Question: How would you describe the purpose of meditation to someone who knows nothing about it?

Gil: It is so contextual. I would try to do it briefly and say something memorable rather than giving a whole treatise on clinical studies. For example, I might say, "So you can really be yourself." That’s vague, but it’s meaningful for some people.

To someone else, I might say, "It’s a really good way to de-stress." For another, I might say, "This is how you get to see the truth of yourself." It would be fascinating to go around this room and give a different answer to each of you, because the answer should be different for everyone.

Navigating Secular Meditation

Question (Morgan): Meditation has become very popularized. I run into people who have a practice without the "Buddhist" part. I find myself walking a line because I don't want to proselytize, but I know how much the Dharma can enhance the practice. How do I navigate that?

Gil: I love that you're asking this. You mentioned that you enjoy your friendships more when you can learn from them, and that your friends become your teachers when they are rooted in the same practice.

My advice is to simply be her Sangha¹⁰ friend without necessarily telling her that's what you're doing. Be a supporter of her practice. Share your own experience in meditation without making it about Buddhism. Accompany her on that path.

Then, it is okay to say something simple like, "I've found so much value in having Dharma friends who share this practice. If you'd like to come with me to IMC one day, I'd be happy to go with you." You're giving the message, but you aren't "poking" her with it. You're just saying, "This is what I found useful, and it's available if you like."

Courage and Honesty

Question (Kirk): My question has to do with courage. You mentioned John Lewis standing up, and it took a lot of courage. In French, the word coeur means "heart," so there’s a connection there. How can one access courage in their own life?

Gil: Start with the courage to face yourself. Sit and meditate in a courageous posture—sitting up a little straighter and taking an internal stance to be honest. To me, a wonderful synonym for mindfulness is "honesty." It is being a radical truth-teller to yourself.

Start by knowing yourself in a deeper, more thorough way than ever before. Put yourself in situations where you normally shut down or become reactive, and take that courageous stance to be with the fullness of yourself. If you have a good friend, you might even ask them if there is a direction in your life where you could be more honest or a quality of heart that needs your attention.

Question: This conversation reminds me of a teacher I had in grad school, Charles Hampden-Turner¹¹, who believed in connecting opposite values. He would say: "Courage without caution is recklessness. Caution without courage is cowardice."

Gil: Very nice. Being a human being is difficult, but it is also profound. Each of you is a profound human being. May your profundity support this world we are living in. The world needs support from that deep place inside. May all of us know it, and may all of us be courageous so that we have more love, more care, and more justice in this world.

Thank you.