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Dharmette: Mindfulness and Rafting - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on April 25, 2018. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Dharmette: Mindfulness and Rafting

This morning, I would like to make an analogy for mindfulness and mindfulness practice that is based on the activities I did for the last three or four weeks, which was rafting down the Colorado River.

As I spent lots of hours on the raft on the river, I started considering how mindfulness is like rafting. One way of understanding this is that the raft is the awareness that we have and the mindfulness we have. The raft is not an activity; the raft is what carries the rower who is doing the activity.

The raft is floating on the river if everything goes well. So awareness as well floats in something. We rest in awareness; we place ourselves in awareness; we trust awareness. Awareness carries us. Awareness is what holds us in this way to go through life.

On the river, ideally, what is carrying the raft is the current of the river, and the current is the present moment. The present moment is a stream of disappearing moments—this moment, and this moment, and this moment. We are always in the stream of time of the present moment. You can't really get out of the present moment. Even though your mind might get lost in the past, lost in the future, or caught up in fantasy, you are just being carried by the current in a certain kind of way.

But from time to time, if you are rafting, you come into rapids. When you come to the rapids, you better start studying them before you enter, because it can be dangerous to go through a rapid. So you have to be present to pay attention to what's coming and figure out where the openings are. Where is the route through? Where are the boulders? Where are the rocks? Where do we find a way?

Now, if you are not paying attention, you won't notice the rapids coming. Occasionally it happened on this rafting trip that we were having a conversation or something, and suddenly—"Uh oh." You hear the rapid coming up; it's loud. You know to pay attention.

Sometimes we are going along—mindfulness, mindfulness, being aware—but it requires more than just being aware. It requires looking more deeply at the situation, studying it, understanding what's happening, and reading the situation well. Reading the social situation—maybe we are in a socially challenging situation or a challenging situation at work, and we see the problems coming. It requires more than just being aware; it requires a certain kind of wisdom to read the situation, find out how to go forward, and how to keep floating and stay mindful.

Sometimes going down the Colorado River, we actually got out of the rafts and walked down the river to study the rapids. It's called "scouting" the rapids because it was so important. These are so big. Some people in our group were really good at reading the rapids. I wasn't so good; I learned a little bit. But there were some rapids where, really, I didn't know—it didn't make any sense. I didn't know how to read this rapid. It was just a mess of whitewater and chaos.

But the people who knew how to be there said, "Oh no, no. It’s clear. Just right there, that’s the way we go. Just right down there. Don’t you see that?"

It took scouting. So sometimes in life we have to consider, we have to learn, we have to step back and really look at something.

Sometimes going down the river, especially right after the rapids, there are what are called "eddies." Eddies are where the current stops going downriver, turns around, and goes upriver. Eddies can be really bad in the Colorado River. People get stuck in eddies, and there were times we got stuck in them. The full force of the water is so strong going upriver that it is actually quite hard sometimes to get out of the eddy.

Sometimes when we are mindful and moving along, we get caught up in the "eddies of the mind." These are strong currents of thinking about the past, thinking about the future, or fantasizing about all kinds of things. We are no longer in the current of the present moment; we have stepped out into this eddy.

Sometimes all we have to do is just paddle once and we can get back in the current. But sometimes, when we were on the Colorado River, the rowers rowed as hard as they possibly could. It took a lot of work to get out of the eddy. Sometimes they failed numerous times. They would get almost out, and then the eddy would grab them, pull them back in, and they would have to try again.

Apparently—I didn't see this, but I've been told—some of the eddies are so strong that they can actually flip a boat. Luckily that didn't happen to us in the eddies; it happened in the rapids.

Sometimes what we require in mindfulness practice is a lot of work. I call it "manual labor." Sometimes people have the idea that meditating is supposed to be relaxing, kind of floating on clouds. It is supposed to be easy and not require a lot of work. Some teachers will say you are not supposed to strive, or you are supposed to just relax.

But there are times when relaxing is not the answer. If we relaxed in those eddies, we'd still be there. We would never get out.

Sometimes mindfulness requires a lot of work. I have had that experience regularly enough where my mind doesn't want to be in the present moment, and it's not safe not to be there. I have had to really work hard to come back. "Wake up! Come back! Be here, be here!" The force of these thoughts, that pull, is sometimes so strong that it takes what I call manual labor to come back. It takes a while. But at some point, I am out of the eddy. When I am out of the eddy, then I can relax in the current.

However, the Colorado River is a big river. It is a tremendous amount of water going down. One of the things I learned is that you want to stay in the current that goes downriver; you don't want to go into the eddies that go upriver. Surprisingly, there were times when on this very wide river, the width of the current was literally two feet wide. Only two feet on the surface of the water was going downriver; all the rest of the river was going upriver. It is hard to believe.

That two-foot current going downriver kept moving like a snake, snaking along. You had to follow that, read the river, read where that current was. Sometimes we might have to row from one side of the river to the other to stay in that one tube of water. I couldn't believe that the Colorado River was reduced to two feet flowing downriver. Maybe there was a lot of water flowing underneath, hitting the bottom and bouncing back up—I don't know how it all works.

Sometimes in life as well, you can't just float on the current. You have to keep finding the current to float in. You have to find the present moment. Where is the present moment here? What is the present moment? Where is the present moment that keeps moving, where I stay present and aware?

The goal in this awareness practice is certainly to stay in the raft, stay in the awareness, don't fall off, don't flip over. But the goal in mindfulness practice is to have the awareness be strong enough that we are not in the water. We are floating on the water, but we are not identified with it. We are not caught in it. We are not holding onto it. We don't define ourselves by what's happening.

We don't try to defend ourselves against what's happening. We don't create a self around what's happening. Rather, we can have an overview of it; we are independent of the situation because we know it clearly. We see it clearly.

There is something about clear knowing: "This is a breath." "This is feeling afraid." "This is being in an uncomfortable situation." "This is feeling the warm sunlight on my body." "This is being in a happy circumstance." When the knowing is so clear that we haven't sunk into it, aren't wrapped up in it or caught in it, there is a feeling of freedom in the knowing.

When it is going really well on these rafts, it is all about the water—reading the water, being in the current, reading the rapids well. But if it is going well, you are not in the water. You are independent of the water, and you stay dry. The best rafters, the best rowers on the river, stay pretty dry. People who aren't skilled... boy, did they get wet.

The idea of having mindfulness—and what this does—is that I find it profoundly respectful of life. When we can have this clear knowing, it is like we have gotten out of the way of the current. We have gotten out of the way of how things are evolving and flowing. We are not interfering with things. Some of the most beautiful and important aspects of life have a chance to flow through us and move through us. That can't happen if we identify with experience, if we define ourselves by the experience, if we have a lot of expectations about the experience, or have a lot of desires or aversions about the experience.

Those are all the eddies and rapids of our lives. But to see these eddies, see these rapids operate and not be caught by them—to stay in the current of the present moment, stay dry, stay independent of it—then it all goes swimmingly. It all goes beautifully.

I offer this analogy partly because, in essence, sati¹—the mindfulness of mindfulness practice—is not something that we do. It is something that we allow to operate, allow to flow. It is something we rest in. We try to rest in it or abide in it.

We are not passive passengers in the field of awareness, in the raft of awareness. We have some responsibility to guide it, to keep it in the current, to stay here, to stay out of the eddies, and to be careful with the rapids. If we do that, then this way of staying in awareness, being dry, staying independent of the river, independent of the current or the present moment, is really exquisite. It is a great thing to do. It is a great experience, a great way of being alive.

It is a way of feeling a certain kind of vitality and aliveness that comes when we are not enmeshed or caught. I don't know if that analogy made sense for you, but maybe it will make your daily life more exciting as you find your way in the currents, out of the rapids, or out of the eddies.

So thank you for being here today.