This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Faculties for Fearlessness (1 of 5) with Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Faculties for Fearlessness Guided Meditation (1 of 5); Faculties for Fearlessness: Sati (1 of 5) - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 13, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Faculties for Fearlessness Guided Meditation (1 of 5)

Welcome, everybody. I had a little wrestling with Zoom this morning, but here I am. Nice to see you all. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, good day wherever you are, and whatever time it is. Sending some warm wishes your way. Welcome, it's a pleasure to be here with you all on these 7:00 a.m. sessions. The pressure is high; there are such beautiful, wonderful teachers who do these teachings, so I'm just happy to be part of the team supporting everybody.

This week, I thought I might title the series something like, "Five Fun Faculties for Fearlessness Forever." Or, "Five Fun Friendly Faculties for Fearlessness Forever." [Laughter] Just going a little crazy with the alliteration! But I'll limit myself to "Faculties for Fearlessness." I want to talk about something we're all familiar with: the five faculties¹. However, I want to look at them in a different way, through a different lens, emphasizing different aspects that perhaps we haven't considered. Instead of introducing something new, I want to introduce them in a way that can be a support for working with fear.

That is a short introduction. Let's do a guided meditation.

Taking an alert posture and settling in. Once you've settled in, is there a way that you could be just a tiny bit more comfortable? Bring a little bit more ease into the experience. We're still maintaining the meditative posture, but there's no reason why it can't have ease as well as alertness.

To begin, open your senses. Even though your eyes are closed, open the senses. Maybe there are shadows or shapes with the eyes, even though the eyes are closed. Feeling the sensation of touch or pressure as the body rests on the surface that supports it. Maybe the touch of air on your skin, the feeling of clothing or blankets against the skin. Maybe there's just a general sense of heaviness or lightness in the body.

Opening the ears, so to speak. The sound of my voice, other sounds in the room or in the environment. Allowing the sounds to just be received. Not having to go out and get them, but receiving them. Is there a sense of smell or taste? Toothpaste, perhaps? Having some ease with the senses. Open, relaxed.

Checking to see if there's a quality of well-being that you can tune into in this moment. It might not be the dominant experience; it might just be a sliver of your experience. But can you tune into any sense of well-being? Allowing that sense of well-being to get as big as it would like. The key word here is allowing.

If there isn't a sense of well-being, can you bring to mind a memory of an occasion—perhaps in nature, petting a cat or a dog, or being with a loved one? Can you bring that experience to mind, and how does that feel?

Opening to this experience of well-being. Maybe there's a feeling of spaciousness in the body. Maybe there's a sense of softening, relaxing, opening. Just know that you can always come back to this experience. Tune into this type of an experience during this guided meditation, or maybe sometime during your day.

We'll do a slight body scan. As I name a body part, you can simply notice what you feel in that body part. No judgment, no need for it to be a certain way, just welcoming whatever experience there is.

The jaw. The area around the eyes. These are commonly areas we hold tension. Maybe there can be some more ease. Maybe not, too.

Shoulders. Noticing the experience of the shoulders. Let them be away from the ears.

The chest.

The belly. Maybe you don't feel anything in particular, or just a numbness. That's okay. Maybe you feel a sense of softening or relaxing. That's okay. Maybe you feel a sense of aliveness, buzzing, tingling, energetic feeling. That's okay.

The back. The pressure of contact, whatever the body is contacting against.

The legs. Our feet, where they are touching or contacting, as well as the experience of having feet.

The arms. The hands.

And then resting our attention on the sensations of breathing. Feeling the movement of the body as it breathes. The breath doesn't have to be any particular way. We're just noticing the movement, maybe in the chest or in the belly. For some of you, it might be feeling the air going in and out of the nose.

And if the mind wanders, that's okay. That's what happens when we meditate. Just very simply, gently, begin again. It doesn't matter how many times we begin again. It's just the activity of coming back, giving ourselves over to the sensations of breathing.

Faculties for Fearlessness: Sati (1 of 5)

Welcome. What a pleasure it is to be here to join you all. This week, I wanted to explore working with fear, and specifically to use tools that we're already familiar with, but maybe emphasize different aspects of these tools, or combine them in a different way.

When I was thinking about this week, I was thinking, "Oh, this isn't very exciting or interesting," but I hope it's practical. Sometimes what we need are just things to help us with these rough spots or difficulties in our lives. The tools I want to introduce are the five faculties. I'm not going to go through the list of them right now, but conventionally they're taught in a particular order. I'm going to teach them in a different order and talk about them in a different way so that they support working with fear.

When we have fear, we don't really have access to our practice or our wisdom. It doesn't matter how many teachings we've had, sometimes we just don't have access to them. My aim is to simplify or to bring things in a way that becomes really practical. As I said before the guided meditation, I was playing around with being silly and playful. Now I forget the exact words, but it was something like, "Five Fun Fabulous Faculties for Fearlessness for Freedom Forever." [Laughter]

In all seriousness, let's say a little bit about fear. We all know what fear is, but we may not really recognize what a large role it has in our lives. The fear of not being understood, the fear of being embarrassed, or the fear of failing. I certainly have these fears, and it's striking to think about what an impact they've had on my life—maybe things that I haven't done or tried because of these fears. Technically, there's a difference between fear and anxiety, but for our purposes here, I'm going to lump them together. We could say that fear is a response to a very specific, imminent threat or danger, whereas anxiety may be a little bit more unfocused and may not be a clear threat.

The first faculty I'd like to introduce is sati², commonly translated as mindfulness. I want to introduce this first because whatever we are experiencing—even if it's mightily uncomfortable and exactly what we don't want to be experiencing—it turns out it's always better to be present for our experience. Somehow, trusting that being aware of what's happening is always helpful. Even if we can't really be present for the experience itself, maybe we can be present in a different way.

Before we dive in, consider these questions: What would happen if you got curious about your fear and worked with it? Would it be uncomfortable? Would it build your self-confidence? What parts of your life would it impact? How might that set you free?

The first step with mindfulness is perhaps the most coarse or obvious: recognize what's available in the present moment environment. Very specifically, right now I have this desk in front of me, I see a computer monitor, I have a light, there are some books, I have a dongle on my computer. Very mundane things. This might not feel very spiritual to notice, but it turns out it's incredibly helpful to just be aware of our environment.

If we're feeling particularly anxious, it can be really helpful to notice specific, mundane things: the corners where the ceiling meets the wall, the corner of the doorway in the lower left, where the flooring meets the wall, the corner of the baseboard, the corner of the desk. Bringing our attention just to the environment can really bring some grounding and resources to our experience. Sometimes that's all we have access to when there's fear or anxiety.

The second step is moving to our bodily experience. As contemporary humans, we've developed this incredible capacity to be disembodied. The mind goes its own way with thoughts, fear and anxiety build on themselves, and there can be this tremendous momentum. Bringing awareness to the environment, and then to our bodily experience, interrupts that momentum.

What are some neutral, more readily accessible bodily experiences? Feeling the feet on the ground, feeling the pressure of whatever the body is contacting, or the feeling of clothing against the body. Bring mindfulness, attention, recognition, awareness, or noticing—all these synonyms for sati—to just our experience in an uncomplicated way. You might also notice the breath and slightly extend the exhale. This is something else that can bring some calmness and interrupt the momentum of fear. We know that the Buddha did this. He brought awareness to his bodily experience when he was experiencing fear before he awakened. He talked about maintaining the same posture, just knowing how his body was, and staying with it.

First the environment, second the bodily experience. We're coming closer and closer. The third step can be enormously powerful: recognize the strong sense of, "No, I don't want this." The sense of resistance, the sense of, "Go away." Tune into that, and ask how that shows up for you.

Notice that I'm not talking about fear yet; I'm just talking about the "no, I don't want this." How do you generally act when fear arises? Do you believe it automatically? Do you recoil from it and shut down? Do you avoid everything that makes you feel afraid? Do you attack, get angry, become critical, or blame? Do you feel bad about yourself, thinking, "If I were a different kind of person, I wouldn't be afraid"?

Just tune into how you're reacting. No need to judge it. How does that "no, I don't want this" feel in that moment? Maybe it's a sense of energy coming up, or a sense of energy going away. Maybe it's a particular sensation in the body—a tightness in the throat, the belly, or the chest. Can you be with that "no" experience? Part of that is teasing apart the fear. We don't have to be with the fear itself; we can just be with the "no". You'll notice that as we work with that strong sense of resistance, the fear itself starts to abate and soften.

Finally, the fourth aspect, which is a little more subtle: What is it that feels threatened? This might be something to explore later when we're not in the midst of the fear. We feel fear when something we're trying to protect feels threatened. So, what are you trying to protect? Maybe it's an inner story about aging or health. Maybe it's a belief that it's dangerous to speak up, to hope, or to ask for things. Maybe it's a desire for relationships, security, or health to be a particular way. Maybe it's a fear of dying. These are all perfectly natural, legitimate fears.

If there's a way we could bring some specificity to what feels threatened, this can be a doorway to greater freedom. Not only freedom from fear, but just freedom in general. Bring some mindfulness and curiosity to this from a sense of care. When the fear isn't so paramount, just drop in the question: "What is it that feels threatened?" and allow whatever the answer might be to bubble up. We don't have to do an archaeological dig to find it. Just be present, honoring and respecting what comes up.

In this way, sati (mindfulness)—one of the five faculties—can be a tremendous support for fear and anxiety. We move from the most obvious (the external environment) to the body, then to the resistance (the "no"), and finally bringing curiosity to what feels threatened. This is a common technique for psychologists who work with trauma, starting with what's in the room to help the nervous system calm down, finding grounding contact, and tuning into the resistance.

So here is the first faculty for fearlessness. Wishing you all a wonderful day today, and maybe you'll have an opportunity to bring some mindfulness whenever you notice some fear or anxiety. I look forward to our journey exploring these this week. Thank you.