This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Meditation as Vision; Gil's Story pt 2 (3 of 5) Visioning Sangha. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Meditation as Vision; Dharmette: Gils's Story pt 2 (3 of 5) Visioning Sangha - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 06, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Meditation as Vision

Hello everyone. Greetings from the dark. I guess it's still dawn here. I came down here to IMC in the dark and I'm delighted, and it's kind of cozy to be here with you all this way. It's one of my favorite things to do: wake up in the morning and go to a meditation hall. I did it many times in monasteries and temples where it involved going outdoors in the dark and following a path to the meditation hall. It is such a wonderful way to begin the day.

One of the approaches—one of the supports for meditation practice that is usually not emphasized—is having a vision. The reason it's not emphasized is that a vision seems to be something in the future, something elsewhere, and not about what's here and now. Mindfulness is so much about being present here and now. But the more we're present here and now, the more we really settle here and let go of our distractions, let go of our attachments, and become more at peace. At some point, almost built into that experience of here and now, is a strong sense that it is possible to expand that peace further. It's possible to let go more fully. It's possible to be more fully here and now. Not just here and now, but somehow fully inhabiting here and now. Fully alive in this fullness of the here and now, in the fullness or wholeness of ourselves.

It's kind of like if you hold your hand in a fist for a long time, and then something happens that distracts you from the important task of being all clenched up, and you notice that the hand relaxes a bit. You might clench up again, but now you know something. Now you have a vision: "Oh, there's a possibility here." It's right here and now, the possibility of further releasing that hand so the hand can be relaxed finally.

In Buddhism, at some point, there comes a time when a meditator acquires "knowledge and vision." It's a technical phrase. There's knowledge and vision of different things, but the knowledge is something that comes from our direct experience here, something we now know about the quality and the potential of this practice, something about the freedom or the peace. And then there's a vision that comes from that knowledge that yes, more is possible. More is available.

A wonderful way in which this vision is experienced is that it isn't so much that there is "more for me to acquire, me to experience, me to do," but rather there's an invitation. A vision of an invitation, a vision of a request, a vision of a door that says: "Here. Here the door is open. Open here. Freedom is so." Meditation as vision.

So, assume a meditation posture and spend some time refamiliarizing yourself with your body in this posture. Some of you have been meditating for a long time, and the posture becomes your meditation center, your temple, your meditation hall. Your posture, your body becomes kind of the homecoming. Refamiliarize yourself with how your posture feels in your body, as the place you're going to meditate, as a support, as the home for meditation.

Gently closing your eyes and becoming more sensitive to the experience of your body. How your body feels. Feel the request or the call to relax the body. Maybe you can feel the vision, the possibility of softening in the body. And if you have a vision or see the possibility as you exhale, may you let it be so.

Relax. Maybe it's less that you are relaxing, as you're allowing the body to relax on the exhale. The knowledge of where you're tense can translate into a vision of the possibility of relaxing. In the middle of that tension, you might sense a request, an invitation to soften.

Centering yourself on the body. Experience the body's experience of breathing. Gently, in the middle of the body breathing, maybe at the center of it, a vision of the breathing being easeful, soft, light. It might not be that way. But when it's not that way, right there in the middle of it, there can be a sense of a possibility, an invitation. Don't expect it, don't try to make it be that way. Just appreciate that such a vision is possible. It's a vision that makes it possible, in its own time, in its own way.

If you find yourself thinking a lot, with pressure in the mind or contraction in the mind, or if you find yourself emotionally troubled with anything, know that. Know it well. Know it fully. Feel it in your body. And in the knowing, deep inside of it, maybe there's a vision of letting go, of relaxing, opening up. Without expectation, without making anything happen. Just know having that vision as a possibility opens the mind, opens the heart, and expands the context for how you can be with any difficulty. You have a vision of freedom, release. An invitation to become more than anything that limits you.

Letting go of your thoughts, quieting the inside to feel deep inside. To feel where there can be a vision, a sense of freedom here and now. A sensing, a knowing, a vision. It's almost like an invitation: here, this is where you can let go. This is where you can release the grip in the mind, the contraction of the heart, the knot in the belly. Here is where you can let go of the bracing that spreads through the whole body, a bracing against life. Being happy to have such a vision, just having it is enough. It opens the door.

And then, as we come to the end of the sitting, open the heart and the mind to the challenges of this world, which are immense. To know that the world has its challenges, and to have a vision of peace. A vision of the letting go of hostility and greed. To have a vision of the world at peace, not in a naive way, not expecting it'll happen overnight or maybe ever. But without that vision, without that invitation for another way, it certainly won't be possible to change this world. Take refuge in that vision that comes from knowing suffering well. Suffering doesn't have to be a burden; in the middle of it, there's an invitation, a vision for a better world.

May we remember that vision, and may it inspire us to contribute to that possibility. Each of us is important. Each of us counts. However small a contribution we make, may through our speech, our body, and our mind, we promote goodwill, compassion, generosity, and peace in this world. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free. Thank you.

Dharmette: Gils's Story pt 2 (3 of 5) Visioning Sangha

Hello, and I will continue with this story of my life, now coming into becoming a teacher. I guess I am enjoying talking about this. Sometimes I've become bored telling my story the few times I have, but maybe this gives me a chance to reconsider it and look at it in new ways from this perspective, for today, this age.

In 1990, I came to graduate school at Stanford University. I moved back into San Francisco Zen Center¹. I started teacher training with Jack Kornfield², and within a year or so, I started training to be a Zen teacher and get Dharma transmission³. By 1992, I was married, and it was a wonderful time looking back at it.

My scholarship was a three-year scholarship at Stanford that gave me living expenses. I was able to spread it out over four years, so I went to school two quarters a year rather than three. That allowed me to go and do the teacher training, to go on retreats, and to start teaching retreats. I very quickly understood that in the graduate courses I took, the primary way in which we were graded was by turning in a final paper. Because I was doing other things as well—the Dharma things and retreat things—at least one summer I wrote my final paper before the class began. I understood what the topics were, I knew the subject I signed up for, and I knew how this went, so I knew I would be busy.

One of the things that I was busy with or engaged in was that every fall for pretty much the whole 1990s—beyond the time I was in graduate school—I taught a 10-day experienced student retreat just north of San Francisco. That was right near the end of the quarter, just before everything was due. I had to really plan ahead to be ahead of the game in order to be able to get the coursework done, but that seemed to always work out.

In fact, when it was time for me to defend my dissertation, it happened to be in the middle of that 10-day retreat. Looking back now, I marvel that it worked out this way, but I was kind of matter-of-fact about things back then and just did it. It was in the middle of that retreat while I was teaching it. One morning I got up, put on a nice jacket someone had given me, drove down to Stanford, did the defense, and then drove back to the retreat and continued teaching there. This integration, this going back and forth, worked very well. I felt very fortunate the way it worked for me at graduate school that way.

I was also teaching the sitting group in Palo Alto that I joined. I started teaching for them in August of 1990. That group began to grow, and I very quickly had a sense that there was a vision. I had a vision, or knowledge, of what was possible for people when they enter into the world of Buddhist practice. I knew that there was much more to be done in practice than just coming to a Monday evening sitting group. I knew that volunteering and caring for the place you practice in is really valuable for one's own practice.

There wasn't much to be done; there was just a key to get into the room in the church, and there was taking home every Monday the flyers from Spirit Rock⁴ for programs up there, and then putting them out the next Monday when we came back. So early on, I asked for volunteers for that. The person who I gave the key to, I basically said, "You're now the president of our sitting group." I wanted to really promote people having some sense of ownership, involvement, and responsibility for what was going on.

I taught happily for about six months without any thought or concerns about compensation for teaching. Having grown up for those ten years in the Buddhist world where I practiced at Zen Center and in Asia, being paid and getting money was completely out of the picture. The idea was just to engage in the practice, and if you were invited to teach, then you would teach. Now I had been invited to teach for this group, and I had no thoughts about any compensation at all.

Then, after six months, they had a little basket to collect money to pay rent for the church, and there was $100 extra. "What do we do with this?" Someone said, "Let's give it to Gil." Maybe another six months later, there was another $100. That was the beginning of being supported to live and teach the Dharma.

As that group began to grow, I started to have a vision. I realized later it was a vision, and I began realizing that part of the responsibility of caring for a meditation group was to have a vision of what was possible for them. People were practicing, and it was wonderful, and now there was a vision they could do more. I remember I said, "You know, this group is probably ready now to do a half-day retreat."

Someone had access to a small conference room on the third or fourth floor of the aerodynamics department at Stanford. We went there on a Saturday or Sunday when the building was closed. There was a deck and some hallways there, and that's where we did our first half-day sitting. Then we did more of those, and I had the vision: "Now these people are ready for a whole-day retreat." At some point, I said, "There are people who come here who don't know about meditation, so I think it's time for us to offer an intro class." I had offered an intro class before, and I wrote in the next IMC newsletter about the beginnings of this intro class.

I started feeling my responsibility, my caretaking, was to have this vision of what was possible. At some point, someone suggested we move to the Quaker Meeting House, which had a bigger room. That turned out to be really wonderful. I love the Quakers, I love the ethos, the atmosphere. I felt like there was something I took in deeply—not so much from being among the Quakers, but from sharing their space with them.

There, I decided we were ready to take a deep dive into the Buddhist precepts, and we did a class on the precepts. Then I decided we were ready for loving-kindness, and we did a class on loving-kindness.

Now we were kind of full on Monday nights, so I said, "Let's start Thursday nights." The Quaker place was available for us, so we started Thursday nights. I had a little different vision for what Thursday nights was about. Monday nights was more about Buddhism and Buddhist practice, and Thursday evenings was mostly about coping—how to cope in this difficult life of ours. In fact, the people who came on Thursday night were much more on the edge of just managing and coping, wanting some kind of basic support. I loved having both those possibilities.

We kept wondering what to do, and at some point, I had a vision of my involvement with the group. The vision was not about staying with the group. I was so inspired by the people who were coming and how serious they were about practice, and I felt the responsibility to caretake and support these people. So I had this idea that what we were going to do was grow this group to be big enough that we could invite another teacher to come take over, so I could leave.

My idea was that I wanted to live in the country. I had this vision, this idea of living near Point Reyes⁵, up the coast north of San Francisco, in a place that's kind of halfway between the Green Gulch Zen Center⁶ where I practiced and Spirit Rock where I'd also practiced. I had a strong connection to both, and I thought my vision was that I would live up there halfway and be involved in both worlds.

But at some point, I think by 1996, I was so inspired and impressed by this growing community that I decided, "I guess I'm committed now. I'm going to commit myself to stay here and support this group, stay here on the Peninsula." It was a big deal for my wife, who didn't want to live in an urban area, but that's what we did. I made that commitment.

I didn't require or want anything from the community with that commitment, except I wanted them to know that was the case. So I asked for a meeting. I forget who was invited to it, but I think there were maybe a dozen or fifteen people who by this time were more central than everyone else. We met at someone's home, and I explained to them what was happening. I felt like I needed to tell people about this commitment, and there was no expectation of anything as a result.

But that stimulated a conversation. In that conversation, a vision was evoked. I certainly had part of that vision, though I forget who initiated it: that we should have our own home. We should have our own place to practice. I had a full vision of that. I had a really clear sense that so much more was possible if we could really have our own place, where we didn't have to move zafus⁷ and things in and out, where people felt like, "They come here now, this is our place." It could be available 24/7. It could be people's spiritual home in a way it couldn't be in a church room. As the community grew, and the depth of practice and maturity grew, we would be able to do more different kinds of programs and support people.

So then we decided to get incorporated as a religious nonprofit, and that took a little while. Back then, coming out of the alternative culture that I'd grown up in in the United States, consensus, equality, and everyone being in it together were kind of paramount. So the idea that we would have an all consensus-based model for governance for this new center was in the forefront of our minds.

There was a group of people that came up with bylaws. When they presented them to me, and we had this meeting where we were going to ratify them, I was kind of shocked at what was presented because it was very open. Everyone had a vote, and there was no membership exactly, so I guess anybody who came to a meeting had a vote—except one person, and that was me, the teacher.

In this consensus model where we're all supposed to have a vote and decide together, to not grant me just that one vote didn't seem right to me. It was so complicated what was set up. I said, "This is not going to work." So I told the committee, "Well, I'm not ready for us to ratify this. I'd like us to put it on hold while I have some time to think about this."

Some people were angry with me, but that was the decision. About nine months later, I felt ready, and I reassembled some of the people from that committee to come up with new bylaws, which are the ones we have today. Then we were ready to start thinking about a center, and keep growing and developing, following the maturity of this community.

As I come to the end of this little talk, at some point around that time, it was clear to me that I was also maturing. There was something about the interrelationship, the back-and-forth connection to a community that was growing and developing and maturing. My teaching the community, them asking questions and growing—that affected me.

In this role of being a teacher, that was a very important time to really understand myself much better. Being a teacher is not free of attachments, not free of certain shortcomings and oddities. I had lots of opportunities to see parts of myself that I hadn't seen in years of meditation practice, because it was elicited in that community dynamic. It was wonderful to watch the mutual maturing of the community and myself, the growing that was going on there. It was a very important choice I made, that the community made at that point. That incorporation then opened the door for much more to happen here at IMC⁸.

So thank you very much, and I'll continue with this tomorrow.