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Guided Meditation: Flowing with the Change; Dharmette: Doors of Liberation (2 of 5) The Signless - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 11, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Flowing with the Change

Warm greetings from IMC.

As we begin today, there is a dynamic, a relationship between stability and change, between constancy and inconstancy, and between a kind of inner stillness and the ability to see impermanence in a deep way. The way I understand this is that the more still, stable, and settled our inner life becomes, the more it is available to see how much things change.

It is perhaps a little bit of a paradox, but the more the mind is busy, caught up in its thoughts and spinning, the more there is a subconscious or unconscious imputing of permanence. We orient around thoughts like, "Things should always be this way," or "Things are never..." We have some idea of permanence, that this is how things are and how they will always be.

But if we settle in and quiet the thinking mind—quiet the mind that jumps around, tells stories, evaluates, and projects ideas that something is ongoing in a steady way—we start to see something else. In meditation, we start seeing that even though the broad experience of the moment is not changing, internally it is constantly shifting. Every experience is dynamic, moving, and changing: sensations, thoughts, feelings, emotions, impulses, and motivations.

There is something very freeing about relaxing into that flow of change. That cannot happen if we are fixated, locked in, or caught in ideas that things are ongoing, or that "this is the way things really are." We are not talking about what is happening in the world externally, but what is happening deep in the realms of how we experience the world. We are looking at how our inner life is participating, being with, making sense of, feeling, evaluating, and selecting the experience we have. That is constantly shifting.

To be in harmony with that, to understand the shifting, changing nature of how we perceive, experience, and know anything at all—that is freeing. But it begins by becoming stable and still.

It helps to be oriented not around permanence, but settledness; not fixedness, but a relaxed stability. Assume a meditation posture. If you are sitting, standing still, or lying down, one of the advantages is that it involves less mental activity than moving. It is possible to close the eyes, simplify the activities of the present moment, and become attuned to the ways in which the body is still and moving.

Take some breaths, maybe a little fuller than usual—not too much. This inserts into the posture a little bit of movement: the movements of the torso breathing, the stretching of the rib cage, opening and relaxing. On the exhale, settle back in. Relax the shoulders and belly.

Let the breathing return to normal and appreciate feeling your way to where in your body you are most settled. Maybe it is deeper than where you feel unsettled. Orient yourself to what is settled. Feel where in the body there is stability, a stable base. Breathe with that stability, where there is an inner stillness. Even if there are swirls of feelings and thoughts, feel the inner stillness.

On the exhale, calm the thinking mind. Relax, soften, and gentle the mind. See if you can find a place of stability in the mind or somewhere in your inner life. Maybe it is a little dot of a place, an inner stillness where your mental life can settle. It is a stillness which invites the mind to settle here. Relax. Settle into your breathing.

Feel the breathing movements of the body. Breathing is like the movements of the leaves on a tree where the trunk is solid, steady, and quiet. Let your torso be still, stable, and strong deep inside, like a majestic tree that allows the branches and leaves to gently sway in the wind.

As you breathe in, there is something that you orient yourself to, something that you recognize and call an "inhale"—some sensation or movement that signifies breathing in. Whatever signifies breathing in disappears when you exhale. Now there is a sensation that signifies that you are exhaling.

To know you are breathing in is to have the mind recognize and signify something as constituting "breathing in." The thinking, conceiving mind can become quieter and stiller, signifying nothing. Ride the changing nature of sensations as you breathe in. Ride the change of exhaling, but let the ideas of "inhale" and "exhale" disappear. Just ride, floating on the changing nature of breathing.

Even the idea of breathing is extra. Rest in the changing kaleidoscope of sensations in that part of your body where you ordinarily experience breathing. Allow awareness to flow in the direction of change, like floating in the current of a river. Like gently petting a cat in the direction their hair lays down, let awareness be in harmony with the direction of change. Floating, petting, just change with no thought. No signifying "breath," "breathing in," or "breathing out." Just riding along with the flow of change.

Recognize deep within where there is a stillness, a stability. A place deep in the mind and heart that is gently, softly, very still and calm. It is unmoving. Beyond that, we are aware of the shifting, changing nature of all direct experience and perception. Perceive the changing, moving, shifting nature of what arises and passes in the mind.

Relax that part of the mind that signifies, assigns meaning, or assigns concepts to what is there. Simply be aligned in harmony with the changing field of all perceptions.

And then, as we come to the end of this meditation, appreciate a very light, calm, peaceful way that we can invite back concepts, ideas, and the signification of things. Hold them lightly and openly, almost like a dream or a light cloud floating in the mind.

Take into account the people in your life around you—people you might be communicating with, running into, neighbors, people in your community or places of work. Hold it all lightly and softly so that your ideas of them don't interfere with a kind heart. Kindness of heart, friendliness, warmth. Let fixed ideas, fixed stories, and opinions not interfere with our goodwill and well-wishing.

May we live with an open, friendly heart to all beings.

May all beings be happy.

May all beings be safe.

May all beings be peaceful.

May all beings be free.

And for each of us, may our mindfulness, our awareness practice, keep us fluid and open, free of conceptual fixations. Always ready to be friendly.

May all beings be happy.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Doors of Liberation (2 of 5) The Signless

Hello and welcome to this second talk on the Three Doors of Liberation¹. Yesterday was the introduction, and today we will be talking about the first door, which usually in English is called the Door of the Signless (animitta), or the door where there is the absence of signs.

To understand this, we have to appreciate that the English word "sign" can be used as both a noun and a verb. When we sign something, it means we gesture or indicate something, like sign language used to communicate. But if we assume that a "sign" can also be a verb in the sense of "to assign," it means we project something, assign value or purpose to something, or select something.

In the Buddhist way, a sign is the value, meaning, or concept we have assigned to something. We understand that a sign is something we are doing ourselves; we are assigning.

Take something as ordinary as this bell. I assign this object the concept of "bell." The "bell" is the sign, the signification that my mind makes for it. I have seen objects like this, very much the same, used for cooking pots or to hold pens. I remember seeing something almost exactly like this being used in downtown San Francisco by a homeless person as a begging bowl asking for coins. I have seen objects like this used as doorstops. I have seen things like this used in Asia as a spittoon.

We can assign different meanings and purposes to this. We can assign different signs or significations to it, and some things are quite fluid and change over time. But there is still this active way in which you are assigning. We can assume unconsciously or subconsciously that this is really a bell, and we operate as if "this is a bell." There is no question about whether this is a bell or not. But in fact, what we don't see is the degree to which we are assigning "bell-ness" to this object.

That is what we start seeing when the mind gets really quiet, still, very clear, and mindful. We start seeing the role of the mind in assigning things and signification, and how that is an activity of the mind that we can quiet.

For example, I could be sitting here minding my own business, meditating, and start thinking, "Wouldn't it be nice for me to make one of the childhood desserts that I had occasionally at home? Boston Cream Pie."

I have never made a Boston Cream Pie from scratch. I shouldn't do it because I can't. I am a very bad cake maker and I would probably burn it and end up with soup rather than a cake. I am a really bad cake maker. I start spinning this story about myself as a bad cake maker, which is easy enough to do, but I am doing it during meditation. My mind is getting wrapped up and tight. I am assigning to myself this label, this concept: "I am a bad Boston Cream Pie maker."

Luckily, I have some mindfulness. After a while, I recognize, "Wait a minute, Gil, this is really stressful. I'm feeling my mind getting all tight in a big knot around this idea of who I am as a cake maker. Boy, am I busy having cake-making thoughts. I'm supposed to be just sitting quietly being with my breath. Why don't I switch? Let me relax this fantasy of being a cake maker and just be with my breath."

That goes fine for a few cycles of breathing until I decide, "Well, actually, I'm a very good breather. I've been breathing for decades. My body can breathe well. I should probably get a Guinness World Record for the most successful breathing."

So, I am in the present moment, but now I am assigning value to my breathing, to me. After a while, luckily, my mind says, "Wait a minute, Gil. It's much more relaxed than thinking about cake, but you're still caught up in your ideas. Just relax. Just quiet the mind. Just be with the breathing."

But it is hard to do. So, I begin saying to myself: "In" as I breathe in, "Out" as I breathe out. Just saying that keeps me there. I can feel my in-breath as an in-breath. I can feel my out-breath as an out-breath. I am assigning this idea of "breathing in" or "breathing out," and that is helpful. It gets me settled.

I find myself settling more and more. After a while, I notice that the assigning of the idea of an in-breath to an in-breath is extra. I have been breathing much of my life just fine without the mind perceiving and assigning that concept of "inhale" to the inhale. I can feel that it is a little extra to keep assigning "inhale" to inhale, "exhale" to exhale.

Why don't I quiet the mind even more? Let the mind become really still, really gentle and calm. Now I don't have to call this movement in my chest and belly anything. I can just feel the ripple of different sensations that come into play in what conventionally I can call the in-breath, but it is happening on its own and I am connected and following along. It doesn't have to be assigned any meaning or any purpose. There is no assigning of me as a good or bad breather. There is not even assigning "this is an inhale." It is just a flow of sensations.

The same applies to what conventionally I call an exhale. Now the sensations have shifted in a different way. I start to just settle into that flow and rest with it. There is less and less signification, less and less assigning of concept and idea to the direct experience. There is just change.

To really feel that change, there is less and less orientation towards having any signification at all—any assigning, any signifying. That is called having a mind or attention which doesn't make any signs: the Signless.

We realize that as soon as we assign signification or a concept, the experience is shifting and changing in such a way that it doesn't rest there. It is like watching the waves in the ocean. I see a wave coming and I say, "That's the wave." But even by the time my mind has said, "That's the wave, that's the perfect wave," the wave has shifted and changed. The concept of "perfect wave" is something I could hold on to—"It is the perfect wave, it was the perfect wave, I better always remember that wave"—and my mind is caught again in thinking and conceiving.

Even though the idea of "perfect wave" has come up, the wave has changed. It is actually stressful to be caught up in the idea of a perfect wave. It is more easeful just to rest the attention in the changing flow of those waves, not to signify, not to assign.

For some people, when they are deeply settled, deeply calm and peaceful, they are really in the flow of the present moment—the shifting, changing, impermanent, inconstant nature of how the deep mind experiences things when it is not putting an overlay of concepts on it. We see more and more how we do overlay ideas, how we do interpret, how we do assign meaning and purpose. That gets put to rest, till finally it is so deeply at rest that the mind finds itself absorbed in the flow of the arising and passing, the flow of change.

It is like someone who relaxes into the current of a gentle river and finally finds themselves perfectly at ease and at rest, floating on the surface so the current finally catches them and carries them along.

In the same way, there are Doors of Awakening. Some people have such a deep experience of change and impermanence that the mind gives up its signifying activity—assigning signs, meaning, purpose, and concepts to things—and we go along with the current. We go with the grain, and at some point, the current catches us. At some point, the Door of the Signless opens. The portal opens, and there is a deep, deep letting go. A deep kind of release happens that is not something we can do, but happens when we are deeply in harmony, attuned and aligned with the flow of change—just following along, not resisting it, but going with the grain of it all.

For some people, when they really deeply experience inconstancy, the door to liberation for them is through the Signless—giving up all signs. It turns out that any craving, clinging, or attachment that we have involves some signification, some movement of assigning a sign, a meaning, or an idea. To release that fully is one way to step through into liberation.

That is the first of the Three Doors of Liberation. It is said that different people will go through different doors, maybe based on their personality or circumstances—it is not so clear why. This is the first, and tomorrow we will do the second, which is equally profound but maybe difficult to appreciate: the Door of Wishlessness.

Thank you.