This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Wholesome Resonse; Intro to Buddhist Ethics (2 of 5) Wholesomeness. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Wholesome Response; Dharmette: Intro to Buddhist Ethics (2 of 5) Wholesomeness - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on May 28, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Wholesome Response

Hello everyone, and welcome. Welcome here to IMC, where I'm sitting inside Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, and I'm very happy to be here with you.

For the meditation today, I'd like to emphasize a very important point: the key to finding the freedom that Buddhism points to—the freedom that can be found in meditation—is greatly supported by understanding or focusing on how we respond to what is happening. Sometimes I've emphasized that there are always only two things ever happening: what's happening, and our relationship to what's happening. Or even more so, the way that we respond. We want to really stay close to how we respond, more than being caught up in what is happening.

If it's a hot day, we could be a victim of the hot day. We could be troubled by it, upset with it, and maybe complain about it. Or, we can notice it's a hot day, the heat is uncomfortable, and think, "I'm going to stay present for it. I'm going to be open to it. I'm going to allow it to be there without reactivity, without judgment. I will stay present and mindful of the experience, even though it's uncomfortable." We're taking the initiative to engage in a way, to be present, that has to do with how we are in relationship to it. There's a freedom, there's an engagement, there's a capacity to know.

So, in every moment we're in, we have the opportunity to respond to what's happening instead of reacting to what's happening, which has no freedom in it. We take refuge in that place where we have some modicum of choice to be present, to be mindful, to be aware. In that way, we're always in the present moment. The response to what's happening is a present moment. It's kind of like having caught the wave and now we're on the front of the wave, being carried by it, rather than being in the wave and twirled around in the water by it. We're there, riding it with awareness, with attention.

The key thing here is that we're learning how to respond in ways that are skillful, in ways that are wholesome, avoiding the unskillful, unwholesome responses. Avoiding reactivity, avoiding being caught in the hindrances, being caught by greed, hate, and delusion, being caught by negativity or judgment or conceit around what's happening. And instead, to respond in ways that are deeply satisfying, respond in ways that are nourishing, which is one of the meanings of wholesome. To be able to respond with a simple, clear awareness that's maybe kind, maybe compassionate. To be present and recognize, "Oh, this is what's happening," and do so with a gentleness, with an openness, without a criticism, without a big story, interpretation, or opinion.

But always, what's the wholesome response? Maybe it's a generous response. Maybe it's kind, maybe it's loving, maybe it's friendly, maybe it's wise, maybe it's patience. Maybe it's meeting it with ethical integrity. Maybe it's meeting it with appreciating the value of truth-telling, being really honest: "Oh, this is what's happening." And appreciating that honesty is really a nourishing thing in itself, even though what we're honest about is difficult.

So every moment we have the opportunity to respond in a way that is nourishing, wholesome, beneficial, and nice. That's what I'd like to emphasize for today's meditation. Try that. And if you try too hard and it's stressful to do it, or if you are judging yourself for not doing it well enough, all those are unskillful, unwholesome. Take refuge in the wholesome, a wholesome way of staying in the present, a wholesome way of riding the wave of a present moment experience.

In this way, you can think whatever you think, you can feel whatever you feel. What's important is how you respond to what you think and what you feel. Can you respond in a way where you're free? Are you free enough to respond independent of what's happening, free enough to respond with kindness, with truthfulness, with mindfulness?

So, assuming a meditation posture and closing your eyes.

And before anything else, just sitting here quietly for a few moments, taking in the experience of your body. How is your body right now? And what would be a wholesome way to stay present, aware of your body, whatever state your body is in?

Become aware of your breathing, whatever way your breathing is, whether it's comfortable or uncomfortable. Whatever state your breathing is, let it be that way, but know it. Be aware of it without any judgments or criticism or self-beratement. Know it in a way that feels kind, supportive, as if you are meeting a friend, and you're meeting with friendship, your goodwill. So meet your breathing that way.

Noticing what's going on in your mind, your thoughts, your thought stream. See if your response to whatever your thought stream is, is a response that feels nourishing, feels good for you because it's friendly or kind or a simple truth-telling, where you are not defined by your thought stream.

And then settling into the body's experience of breathing, as if the rhythm of breathing is the ongoing basis for responding, meeting the present moment in a wholesome way. Not straining, not judging, not afraid. You might be all those ways, but let the awareness that knows be something that feels good for you. Moment after moment, each act of mindfulness a relaxed manifestation of being a friend for all things.

If you know what it's like to nourish yourself, to bring about a wholesome way of being, something of inner goodness or an inner generosity, can you find a way of being aware, of practicing mindfulness, that carries with it, in and of itself, a wholesomeness? Where there's nothing you need to attain in order to feel nourished, feel satisfied by the effort you make.

Perhaps a subtle feeling of vitality, of energy, of aliveness in your body can be the wave that you're surfing on, gently, softly, slowly. And the surfboard on which you surf is kindness, or honesty, or gentleness, something that feels wholesome, a goodness being carried along in the wave of the present moment.

And then, as we come to the end of this sitting, to turn your thoughts and your heart out into the world. From the vantage point of sitting in meditation, can you gaze upon the world, reflect on the world in a wholesome way? The world that is full of good and bad, the world that's full of people who benefit each other and harm each other, with all its challenges and all its joys. To gaze upon it in a way as if your gaze, your consideration, is the food on which the world will grow. And offer the food of wholesomeness, goodness, ethical goodness.

Gaze upon the world with an attitude that lets the good of the world grow. Gaze upon the world in what you hope the world can become. And offer your goodwill through these words: may all beings be happy, may all beings be safe, may all beings be peaceful, may all beings be free.

And may each of us contribute to a better world by the way in which we meet each and every person we encounter today. May we meet this person with a wholesome attitude of care, generosity, friendliness, so that we can contribute to these qualities growing in this world of ours. May all beings be happy.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Intro to Buddhist Ethics (2 of 5) Wholesomeness

Welcome to this second talk on an introduction to Buddhist ethics. I'm trying to provide you with some of the foundational attitudes, approaches, and principles that support Buddhist ethics. Yesterday, I talked about the role of harmlessness, or non-harming. Today, I want to talk about two very important terms. I'll give you the Pāli, the ancient Buddhist word for it first, and then discuss them. The two words are kusala¹ and akusala.

Kusala is generally translated as either "skillfulness" or "wholesomeness." Different translators translate them in different ways. But if you look for a Pāli word, an ancient Buddhist word, that most closely matches the English word "ethics," this would be the word. It's very hard to find a good word that matches the word "ethics" really well in Pāli, with the more sophisticated way in which ethics is understood. But the closest, I believe, is kusala. So it's a very important word, and it's very significant that the word for ethics can also mean wholesomeness and it could also mean skillfulness.

Skillfulness refers to that which is useful, it's skillful. One can develop a skill that is onward-leading to something beneficial. This word "skillful" is the best translation in the context of meditation. We want to develop skill, the skill of meditation, the skill of spiritual practice. And it's a skill that we develop over time. It's like a training that we're doing over and over again. We're practicing to become skillful in something. So, skillful in attention, skillful in concentration, skillful in mindfulness, skillful in equanimity—just a whole range of things we're developing. Some of them are developing as a byproduct of doing basic mindfulness practice; it's not something we have to actively, intentionally develop, but we are slowly developing this skill.

The other translation is "wholesomeness," which I kind of interpret in almost the same terms as nourishing: that which feels really good and nourishing for our whole system, for our body, mind, and heart. It's wholesome. There's a goodness to it. There's a very satisfying feeling of rightness, of goodness, that comes when we feel wholesome, when we feel what we're doing is wholesome. There's an inner goodness to it, perhaps. And so much so that just doing the activity in a wholesome way is deeply satisfying. It's almost enough in itself, just that we're doing it in this way.

For some activities that we do, maybe it doesn't matter so much if we're successful or not. What matters is that it was really good to do that. What comes to mind is offering our seat on a bus. Someone clearly could use the seat more than you do, and so you stand up and offer the seat, but maybe the person doesn't notice or declines. So you were unsuccessful in offering the seat. The purpose of the action, in a sense, you failed. However, just the fact that you were offering the seat felt nourishing. It felt, it came from an inner goodness, a generosity, a simplicity of being—the kind of wholesomeness where there was nothing dependent on the outcome. We weren't looking for praise, we're looking for success. It just was a good thing in and of itself to offer. And there's no disappointment that the person didn't take your seat.

What's also nice about translating kusala as "skillful" is that, rather than asking the question, "Is it ethical to do this or unethical?" which carries a lot of connotations in English which are not so useful, we ask, "Is it skillful?" Or we say, "That was an unskillful thing to do," rather than saying, "That was a wrong thing to do," or "That was a bad thing to do," or "That was an unethical thing to do." It takes a certain kind of judgmentalism or a certain kind of punitive quality out of our statements. It kind of focuses more on: is it beneficial or not beneficial? Is it useful and relating in a good way, or is it not?

So Buddhists will often ask that question. Someone has a difficult and challenging decision to make, and they make a decision: "This is what I'd like to do. What do you think? And is it right that I do this?" Rather than answering that it's right and wrong, it's common to answer the question, "Is it skillful?" or "I think that's skillful," or "I think that's unskillful." And then you can ask the question, you know, "What is skillful?" or "What's more skillful?"

But in particular, what I would emphasize today is the translation of kusala as "wholesome." Wholesome has a beauty to it. Wholesome has something nourishing and satisfying, feels really good. And to live our life in relationship to this possibility we have of inner beauty, inner goodness, inner wholesomeness, inner nourishment as we go through our lives, that we can benefit ourselves internally from how we live our life, as opposed to feeling and recognizing that the way I go through my life, "Yes, I'm right, and I'm right to be angry. I'm right to be critical. I am wiser, more discerning than other people. I see what they don't see, and so I'm upset with them and critical of them and aversive." Yes, you might have a lot of wisdom that allows you to see that, but that attitude of aversion, that attitude of criticalness, doesn't produce nourishment for the heart. It doesn't make the heart smile or feel delighted or feel content in itself.

This capacity to really do the things, to act in the world so that there's a feeling of deep satisfaction, contentment, and happiness for how we go about our life—this is possible. And this is a foundation for Buddhist ethics: considering whether something is skillful or unskillful, considering whether it's wholesome or unwholesome.

This wholesome quality gives ethics a very different quality than a set of rules that either you follow or you don't. You're breaking a rule, you're a bad person because you did something wrong. But rather, you're doing things that are not rule-based exactly, in a narrow kind of way like commandments that you have to do something this way and it's either/or. But rather, your reference point for how to live an ethical life is from a deep sense of what brings a kind of deep sense of joyful satisfaction, some feeling of wholesomeness, a kind of wholesomeness that has a kind of ethical integrity to it. But not because we're being puritanical or holding to rules in a tight way, but rather because we know, we recognize that this is actually for our own benefit. This is how we grow. If you want to grow a plant, you want to make sure that it has sunlight, and then it can grow. If you want to grow a human being, you want to make sure that it has the sunlight of our own inner warmth.

And to be able to recognize that. Now, it's not all that easy for many of us to find that inner warmth and inner wholesome attitude that we have, but that's one of the purposes of training. That's one of the purposes of learning how to be skillful, skillfully begin finding the ways we can, maybe in small steps. One of the ways to learn and appreciate this is to really appreciate this very precise, refined, maybe difficult, but very simple idea that what is happening, what occurs in the moment, it's just what occurs. We don't have to define ourselves by it. We don't have to be critical by it. But what arises, what occurs, how can we meet that? How can we relate to that in a way that feels wholesome?

It's kind of like the next step we take. If you take a step and you move forward onto that forward foot, you're kind of committed. That's what's happening. But the next step is a whole new world. The next step, you can put your foot down in a little bit of a different direction. You can take a longer step or a shorter step, step over onto a rock above the muddy ground if you wish. But you have choices about the next step. So whatever is happening is the ground upon which you're standing, and there's a next step, the next moment. Can that be a wholesome step? Can that be a step that's attentive to you, that you stay present for? And can you take that step in a way that carries in it an attitude of peace, an attitude of friendliness, an attitude of integrity, honesty, an attitude of kindness, an attitude of compassion or love? There's a whole range of possibilities of things which are wholesome for us.

But can you take the next step? Or can you meet each thing that comes your way... so if you have a thought, and your thought is really one of the worst thoughts a human being has ever had, once it's arisen, that's the step. The next step is, how do you relate to that? Can you say, "Oh, wow, I feel sorry for that mind," or, "It's okay, mind, I'll be your friend regardless." We don't have to take that thought so seriously. We can just gaze upon it kindly.

Wholesomeness is a foundation for Buddhist ethics, and it provides a foundation that is very different than a rule-based approach to ethics. It provides a reference point inside that we can begin to recognize how we want to live, the choices we want to make. That can be understood from the outside as being, in English at least, as ethical choices of how we live. But from the inside, they're not exactly ethical. Inside, they feel like the choices by which we grow in inner beauty, in inner wonderfulness, in inner warmth or goodness, inner wholesomeness. This is possible, and it's one of the foundations of Buddhist practice and Buddhist ethics.

So, thank you very much. I hope that, at least for this one day, you give yourself the benefit of the doubt. You suspend all disbelief, all the reasons why you can't do this, and practice the skill of doing what you're doing in a beneficial way, doing what you do so that you see the beauty of how you live your life. Maybe today you can be an artist with every act of speech, every step you take, every activity that you do with your hands. Whatever you're doing, whatever you're saying, for one day, suspend all disbelief that you can't do this and see if you can live a life that brings a deeper, fuller sense of wholesomeness to yourself. Thank you.