This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Gil Fronsdal: Dharmette on Mindfulness and Rafting. It likely contains inaccuracies.
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. I had lots of hours on the raft on the river, and I started considering how mindfulness is like rafting.
One way of understanding this is that the raft is the awareness that 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. Awareness also floats in something. We rest in awareness, we place ourselves in awareness, and we trust awareness. Awareness carries us; it holds us as we go through life.
On the river, ideally, what is carrying the raft is the current. The current is the present moment. The present moment is a stream of reappearing 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 or the future, or you might get caught up in fantasy, you are just being carried by the current in a certain kind of way. You are within this current.
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. You have to be present to pay attention to what is coming and figure out the route. Where are the openings? Where is the route through? Where are the boulders and the rocks? Where do we find a way?
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 and suddenly, "Oh, I hear the rapid coming up." It’s loud, so you pay attention. Sometimes we are going along being aware, but it requires more than just being aware. It requires looking more deeply at the situation, studying it, understanding what is happening, and reading the situation well.
If we are in a challenging social 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 and find out how we go forward and keep floating—how to stay mindful in this situation.
Sometimes going down the Colorado River, we actually got out of the rafts and walked down the river to study the rapids. It is called "scouting the rapids." It was so important because 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 it didn't make any sense. I would read this rapid and it was just a mess of white water and chaos. But the people who knew how to be there would say, "Oh no, that’s the way we go, just right down there. Don't you see that?" It took scouting.
Sometimes in life, we have to consider, we have to learn, and we have to step back and really look at something.
Also, going down the river, especially right after the rapids, there are what are called eddies. Eddies are where the current stops going downriver but turns around and goes upriver. Eddies can be really bad in the Colorado River; people get stuck in them. There were times we got stuck in the eddies. 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 are back in the current. But sometimes in the Colorado River, the rowers rowed as hard as they possibly could. It took a lot of work to get out of the eddy. They would get almost out, and then the eddy would grab them and pull them back in, and they would have to try again. I've been told that 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 is required in doing mindfulness practice is a lot of work. I call it manual labor. Sometimes people have the idea that meditating is supposed to be relaxed, floating on clouds—that it's supposed to be easy and not require a lot of work. Some teachers will say, "You are not supposed to strive. It is supposed to be relaxed. Just relax." But there are times when relaxing is not the answer. If we relaxed in those eddies, we would still be there; we would never get out.
Mindfulness sometimes requires a lot of work. I have had that experience regularly enough where my mind doesn't want to be in the present moment, or it feels unsafe to be in the present moment. I have had to really work hard to come back: "Come back, wake up, be here, be here." The force of the pull of thoughts is sometimes so strong that it takes what I call manual labor. It takes a while, and then at some point, I am out of the eddy. When I am out of the eddy, then I can get relaxed in the current.
The Colorado River is a big river; there 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 going upriver. Surprisingly, there were times on this very wide river where the width of the current going downriver was literally only two feet wide. All the rest of the river was going upriver. It is hard to believe. That two-foot current kept moving; it was like a snake snaking down, and you had to read the river and follow where that current was. We sometimes had to move from one side of the river to the other to stay in that one tube. I couldn't believe that the Colorado River was reduced to two feet flowing downriver. Maybe there was a massive amount of water flowing underwater, hitting the bottom and bouncing back up.
In life as well, you can't just float on the current. You have to keep finding the current to float in to find the present moment. "Where is the present moment here? What is the present moment?" That really keeps moving. "Where do I stay present and aware?"
The goal in this awareness practice is certainly to stay in the raft, stay in awareness, don't fall off, and don't flip over. But the goal in mindfulness practice is to have the awareness be strong enough that we are floating in the water but not identified with it. We are not caught in it, we are not holding onto it, and we don't define ourselves by what is happening. We don't try to defend ourselves against what is happening or create a self around what is happening.
Rather, we can have an overview of it, or be independent of the situation because we know it clearly. There is something about the 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, wrapped up in it, or caught in it, there is a feeling of freedom in the knowing.
When things are 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 all going well, you are not in the water. You are independent of the water and you stay dry. The best rowers on the river stay pretty dry. People in dories1 are skilled, but boy did they get wet.
I find mindfulness profoundly respectful of life. When we can have this clear knowing, it is as if 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, and some of the most beautiful and important aspects of life have a chance to flow and move through us. That can't be if we identify with experience, if we define ourselves by the experience, or if we have a lot of expectations, desires, or aversions about the experience. Those are all the eddies and rapids of our lives.
To see these eddies and rapids operate and not be caught by them, to stay in the current of the present moment and stay dry—stay independent of it—then it all goes swimmingly. It all goes beautifully.
I offer this analogy because in essence, sati2—the mindfulness of mindfulness practice—is not something that we do, but something that we allow to operate. It is something we rest in. We are not passive passengers in the field of awareness; we have some responsibility to guide it, to keep it in the current, 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 current of the present moment—is really exquisite. It is 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, and out of the eddies.
Thank you for being here today.