This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Wholesome Vitality; Know for Yourself (2 of 5) Knowing What is Wholesome.. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Wholesome Vitality; Know for Yourself (2 of 5) Knowing What is Wholesome.

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 07, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Wholesome Vitality (link)

Hello everyone, and welcome. Welcome to this meditation.

One of the themes for this week is the idea that in the teachings of the Buddha, he emphasized living or action—what we do—more than emphasizing truth. In fact, sometimes he would change the subject when people asked about the truth to talk about how people behave and what they do, and to orient oneself around action. This is done in such a way that we learn how we act through body, speech, and mind, so that the very acting is beneficial, beautiful, wholesome, and skillful.

Many times, humans act unreflectively. They just say things, do things, and think things kind of on automatic pilot without giving much care to it. Some people don't want to give care to it because they feel like they'll be too self-conscious, too inhibited, or that it becomes too forced or artificial. But the opposite is true in the dharma practice. We're learning to settle and wake up in the midst of our lived life to be able to discover how we can act in a way that is deeply satisfying, deeply meaningful, and deeply nourishing—that it's beneficial for ourselves and for others. It's a phenomenal orientation that switches from abstract, propositional truths to the concrete immediacy of what we're actually doing.

Meditation itself is an action. Many people don't want to view meditation as an action because action means doing, and many people are just doing all the time. The relief from doing is being, doing nothing except allowing the hum of vitality and liveliness to just support us, guide us, inspire us, and allow us to relax and feel at home or at ease here without the need to do anything. But to choose to do that is a doing. And even though the art of meditation has a lot to do with undoing and not doing, it's still a way of living. It's still a way of existing. It still emphasizes a certain way of behaving, of showing up for this life of ours. It is a kind of action.

So the orientation for this meditation is to really take meditation seriously as a very mature, rich opportunity to live this moment. To live now, to behave now, to act now, to be here now with all of who we are—to show up. It's like if you go stand at a great view of a natural wonder—the Pacific Ocean here in California, or looking over a vast mountain range, or across a vast open prairie. It can feel so wonderful to be alive and present and fully there. We're there.

So meditation is not just a place to let go and relax. Relaxing is just the beginning of showing up with all of our senses in a relaxed way. It's kind of like turning on the light.

So, assume a meditation posture that orients you to meditation as an intentional activity. It turns out the deepest forms of relaxation and ease do not come by slumping. There's something about the wonderful, natural tautness of alert, relaxed muscles that allows for something deep inside to relax.

Assuming a posture and closing the eyes. With the eyes closed, feel the aliveness, the vitality, the hum of the senses throughout your body. Where in your body are sensations most alive? Where in your body are sensations least active?

Without focusing on any particular place in the body, do you have a broad, panoramic field of sensations, of vitality, of hum and vibration throughout your body? If you have sensations, a sense of vitality, you are alive now.

And in that globe of sensations and vitality, does any of it feel enjoyable, nurturing, nourishing? Does any of it feel wholesome or sweet, beautiful?

Dropping out of the thinking mind, the control tower in the head, and dipping into the body to feel and sense from the inside out whatever goodness there is in the broad flow of sensations.

One of the actions while you're meditating now is the act of being aware, the act of sensing, the act of simply knowing. Whichever one of those is easiest for you, appreciate the miracle of being aware in the middle of your body, throughout your body. The miracle of sensing and knowing.

Not so much being the doer of meditation, but being the allower of awareness, of sensing, of knowing.

Within the field of sensations, the field of knowing, allow the sensations of breathing to be as they are, as you know them, as you feel them.

Relaxing the thinking mind to make space, to let there be a silence that better senses and feels and knows the activity of your body and mind being alive right now. Not so much what you are doing, but what your body-mind is naturally doing in simply being alive as you sit here, as you meditate.

In the way the Buddha was interested in action more than abstract or propositional truths, so in meditation, be more interested in the lived life, the aliveness of here and now, rather than abstract thoughts. Rather than living in the world of thoughts, live in the world of the dynamic aliveness of the present moment through our body.

How we experience our lived life of the present is very dependent on how we act, what we do with our actions, our speech, and our mental life and thoughts. It is possible to prioritize living actions, being the actions that are wholesome, beautiful, and nourishing, and not being pulled into and reinforcing the actions, the speech, the thoughts which are not wholesome, not beautiful, not nourishing. We can discover a higher quality sense of our own vitality and aliveness.

And as we do so, may it be that how we live in the world, how we talk, how we act, supports others, so the quality of their aliveness can be happy, filled with a sense of safety, peace, and freedom. May it be that we contribute to the welfare and happiness of the world.

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

Thank you.

Dharmette: Know for Yourself (2 of 5) Knowing What is Wholesome. (link)

Welcome to this second talk on the Buddha's teachings on actions, on what we do. I'm teaching this from a particular text that's usually called the Kalama Sutta¹. When the Kalamas come to the Buddha, they ask him how they can discern which spiritual teachers that come through town teach the truth. The Buddha changes that topic without saying he's doing it. He just reframes it to not talk about truth, but to talk about action—to talk about what to do and not to do.

When he talks about what to do, he provides five criteria. This is something we should know for ourselves. We should be able to discover for ourselves how to live, how to act in the world. And that's different than coming to a conclusion about how to think about the world, how to interpret the world, how to have propositional truths that we can broadcast to the world, saying, "This is what's true." Rather, it's to discover for ourselves how we can act with our body, speech, and mind so that it's beneficial for us.

The five criteria he gives are a little bit to explain not only how to do it but why to do it, because these five criteria are really good. The first one that I'll talk about today is something called kusala² in Pali. Kusala (k-u-s-a-l-a) is translated into English in two ways usually. Sometimes it's translated as wholesomeness, "wholesome," and sometimes as skillfulness, "skillful."

When I first came to Buddhism, it was being translated as wholesome. And when I found translators who used skillful, it was a relief for me. I said, "Oh, this is good," because wholesome had a little bit too much of a flavor of something from when I was young called Wonder Bread, that was not so nutritious but was presented as being wholesome. It was not a word that really resonated very deeply for me. The word skillful was a relief because wholesome is maybe a little bit close to good and bad, right and wrong, but skillful was more pragmatic. Is this skillful for a particular purpose? Is it useful for a purpose? It took it a little bit out of the moral dimension.

But now, as I continue with my practice all these decades, I've come back to appreciate the word wholesome a lot. Because wholesome is satisfying in and of itself; it doesn't have to have a purpose, whereas skillful we do for a purpose. And it's wonderful to have a purpose, and Buddhism offers something that's worthwhile as a goal. But there's also something really valuable in feeling a deep satisfaction and a certain kind of healthiness in the very thing we're doing in the moment, in how we do it. This feels healthy.

So sometimes I've liked to render the word kusala as "healthy," and the opposite is "unhealthy." So whether it's healthy and unhealthy, wholesome and unwholesome, skillful and unskillful, sometimes I use the word useful and not useful, helpful and not helpful. Somehow this pairing of words helps us find our way. But now I'm going to use the word wholesome because one of the reasons I like it now is that I like to understand the roots of the word wholesome as meaning "part of the whole." The Buddha emphasized action rather than truths. It's actions with the whole of our being, all of ourselves included. It's not a divided self or cutting off ourselves or prioritizing a certain way of thinking, certain kinds of thoughts, certain kinds of values, certain kinds of beliefs that truncate or narrow ourselves. But rather, it's a way of thinking that promotes all of ourselves being here, included. So that when we act, when we speak, when we're present, there's a feeling of being whole, not fragmented, not divided, but a kind of harmony, a kind of wholeness, a kind of attunement to something that feels profoundly healthy.

And it turns out that this kind of attunement to what's healthy psychologically and emotionally, to really kind of sense that, is in fact onward-leading. It has a wonderful purpose. It leads us to greater and greater wholeness. It leads us to greater freedom. It leads us to greater goodness and more wholesomeness. The Buddha encouraged people to develop it, to grow it to a feeling of abundance.

It was a surprise for me to learn this because in so much of my early decades of Buddhist practice, the teachers always emphasized letting go, letting go, and sometimes "don't attain, don't become something, just be." But the Buddha, yes, in a sense he said "just be," but he emphasized not the beingness of it, but rather the healthy growth, the healthy becomingness. We can become.

The art of this Buddhist practice is to really discover for yourself—not through a book, not through instructions, not through some kind of over-preoccupation with a distant goal of practice—but discover how we can act, how we can live, how we can meditate in a way that is deeply satisfying in how we do it. Maybe we do it calmly, maybe we do it with goodwill, maybe we do it compassionately. Some people might like the word "do it with love." We do it peacefully. We do it without conceit. We do it without hostility. We do it without greed. We do it without shame or being trapped in some kind of issues of identity of being a person who's right and wrong or worthy or not worthy.

We learn to kind of drop all the ways of thinking and being where we feel, "Oh, this is unhealthy when I do this. This diminishes me. This undermines me. This drains me to think this way." And rather than validate the way we think because we're so focused on truth ("It must be true what I'm telling myself. It must be true that I'm a lousy, unworthy person"), don't focus on truth. Focus on how we behave, how we act. Having thoughts that diminish you is not so healthy. Are there other ways of thinking that are mature, honest, that are realistic, but also feel like they benefit you and help you to grow and become more full in a healthy, good, inner psychological way?

So whether we call it wholesome or skillful—skillful means it's for a purpose. Classically in Buddhism, the purpose is liberation. But it's possible to have a sense of purpose and become divided with oneself by not really inhabiting this moment. So somehow it's a combination of these meanings. It is not so much that you're supposed to understand what the Buddha means by kusala, but rather what you feel deeply in yourself is healthy. The exact language you want to use is up to you, but is it beautiful? Is it healthy? Does it feel like it's part of the whole? Does it promote a sense of wholeness as opposed to a sense of narrowness or constrictedness or dividedness? Does it support an onward leading in a good direction? This is a good way to go.

These are experiential reference points. It's not carrying this idea of what is wholesome and not wholesome, but rather discovering it for yourself. You are supposed to have this criteria to begin discovering what is healthy. And the way you discover that, the way you tune into that at first might not be the absolute best way, but it's the starting way. Then over time, we get more refined and more clear and have a better understanding of what's happening. And we see, "Oh, well that seemed wholesome yesterday, but I can see there's a little bit of strain or greed or a little bit of conceit involved. It's very little, but I can see it's there. Can I adjust it so that the greed or the conceit is not there?" So over time, it gets refined and we discover deeper and deeper aspects of what it means to do things in a kusala way, in a wholesome way, in a skillful way, in a beautiful way, in a healthy way.

When the Buddha talked to the Kalamas and switched the conversation from religious, philosophical truths to how we are, he was putting his faith that how we are, how we act, can be done in a way that benefits ourselves and benefits this world. It's all too easy to hold on to truths and harm oneself and harm others.

I'll end with a short story that Jack Kornfield has told. I don't know where it comes from. There is this character in Buddhism called Mara³, and it's a mythological character, a little bit like the devil, I suppose, but he's more like a trickster. His primary job description is that he wants to prevent people from getting enlightened. He wants people to stay stuck in the world of sensual pleasures so that he has control over them and they're in his domain. The last thing he wants is people to get enlightened because then they're liberated from being trapped in the sensual world.

So, Mara is out and about walking with one of his disciples, and they see a Buddhist monastic sitting meditating who suddenly has a realization: "Oh, this is the truth." He has a deep insight into the nature of reality—not truth as a propositional truth, but the truth of what it's like to be free, the first glimpse of it. The disciple tells Mara, "Aren't you worried?" And Mara says, "No, because soon enough this man will turn this realization into a dogmatic truth, and then it'll no longer be a realization."

The strong tendency we have is to be caught in truths, dogmatic truths, and limit ourselves. The antidote is to come back and really experience yourself deeply and well, to notice how you're limiting yourself, how you're contracting, what is not healthy. And take the opportunity, take the time to stay with yourself, to live in the world in a way that's healthy for you—spiritually healthy, emotionally healthy, that feels genuine. That is the call when the Buddha suggests that the criteria to live by is to know what is wholesome and unwholesome.

So that's the first of the five criteria. Tomorrow, I'll do two of them, the two that are the most clearly interpersonal, and then we'll go on from there. Thank you, and I hope that you have a wholesome day. I hope you use this criteria, this reference point for inner health, and see what it's like to have that guide you through the day. Write "wholesome" or "skillful" or "healthy" on a piece of paper, tie it with a rubber band on your finger, do something so you're constantly coming back with the question, "What is the wholesome thing to do here? What's the healthy thing?"

So, thank you.