This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Fully Here; Qualities of the Dharma (4 of 5) Onward Leading. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Fully Here; Dharmette: Qualities of the Dharma (4 of 5) Onward Leading - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on August 01, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Fully Here

Hello everyone, and welcome to our morning meditation. For some of you, it's the afternoon or maybe the evening.

There's a wonderful saying about the path of mindfulness meditation that can be very useful to keep in mind: the fastest way to go from point A to point B is to be fully at Point A. Of course, that isn't true everywhere, but it's something very true about the practice of meditation. It's a little bit like sometimes trying to fall asleep; the more we try to fall asleep, the harder it is. There's something about letting go of the effort to try to go to sleep and just allowing oneself to be as one is that sometimes creates the better conditions to fall asleep or to relax. Certainly, we can do some relaxation willfully, but there's also a deeper relaxation that comes when we just are present with ourselves as we are without adding anything, without picking anything up, without reacting. The whole system—physical, mental, emotional—can sometimes just settle in that process. The fastest way to settle is just to be relaxed about how you are.

The analogy the Buddha gives is if you stay in the middle of a river, if you're floating in the river and don't grab the branches, don't try to row upstreams, and don't sink but stay floating—just be there in the floating without trying to go anywhere—the stream will carry you along. It may carry you along better than if you try to swim. If you try to swim downstream, you'll get tired after some hours, but if you just rest in the current and avoid grabbing onto the branches on the side or getting stuck on the sandbars, the current will carry you. So the fastest way to get to the ocean in the river is to stay fully in the current where it is here.

For this to work in meditation, we have to keep in mind there is an onward-leading nature. There is an idea that there is a place to go: to greater freedom, to a greater capacity for an open heart, and for less suffering. The Dharma is very developmental in nature. There is a place to go; trust that. And trust that there's something about just being fully present here that puts us in the current, that allows something to unfold much better than if we're trying to engineer and make it happen ourselves.

For this to work, it's not just a matter of being fully here, but being fully here with awareness—to be cognizant, to have the ability to be conscious of this moment, to be fully alive, to feel the vitality, feel whatever degree of clarity or sharpness that's possible for you to just recognize, "Oh, this is how it is now." Sometimes it's stepping away from the fray, the chaos, all the activity, and being able to just step aside and see it for what it is. Sometimes it's being in the middle of it and waking up and, "Oh, this is how it is." Sometimes we're aware of details, sometimes we're aware of the whole party of what's happening. But the important thing is this ability just to be here consciously, be here with awareness, be here knowingly. "Ah, this is how it is." And if in that knowing we feel strain, we see a pushing, a trying a lot, if it's possible, relax that, let go of that. And if it's not possible, just know that clearly and don't make it a problem.

So, assume a meditation posture. The posture can begin by feeling where the weight of your body rests against some surface—the chair, the floor, a bed, wherever it is that the weight of the body rests. This is here. This is the place where you are right now. And to let the weight of your body, how it feels resting against the surface, be the beginning of arriving here now.

Then gently feeling the weight of your body above the surface you're sitting on: the torso in an upright posture. If you're standing, maybe the legs and the joints of the hips that are activated. And if you're lying down, maybe it's a feeling of the length of your body.

Gently closing your eyes and feeling as globally as you can your body, how your body is now. The idea of a global awareness is one that for a few moments doesn't focus on any particular place, any particular discomfort, comfort, or habit of being with something, but a broad, wide awareness of the body as it is here now.

And within this body, to take some gently deeper breaths, maybe three-quarters filling the lungs, and on the exhale, relaxing, relaxing the body into here, into just this moment, just this experience.

Letting the breathing return to normal. Is there anything happening for you that keeps you away from here and now? Any thoughts, concerns, emotions which are preoccupying you? And if there is, is there any tension in your body associated with that concern? Feel that tension, and within the global body, as if the full body supports you, relax that tension. Soften the physical tension associated with any concerns that preoccupy you around the eyes, forehead, the shoulders, chest, the belly.

Breathing a normal breath. Perhaps the experience of breathing is at the center of Point A. To be fully here at Point A is the fastest way to get to B. To feel the body's experience of breathing.

And if you'd like, you could ever so gently say the word softly, lightly in the mind, say the word "here" as you breathe in, and ever so lightly, lovingly say the word "now" as you exhale. So that these two words are a reminder to not try to get anything or make anything happen, but to just be awake to the experience of here and now.

Gently saying the word "here" as you breathe in, "now" as you exhale, but doing so as a pointer to the experience of the body breathing, now and here. Pointing to sensing and feeling here and now.

And then as we come to the end of the sitting, to imagine, remember, maybe visualize yourself being present with another person, maybe a person who you feel safe with. You don't need to act on desires or aversions, or responsibility, and there's an occasion just to be present here and now, maybe listening to the person. A clear recognition of the person where you're not caught in ideas of praise or blame or right and wrong or responsibility or expectations.

May that ability to be fully present here in an open, clear, mindful way be a vehicle, be a means by which to respect others, care for others, love others. For people to be seen clearly is a form of love. May it be that the practice of being present supports all of us to love or care or respect everyone we encounter, especially the people for whom it might be hard to do this. May it be that this practice we do is not just for our own sake, but for the sake of bringing goodness, happiness, and care to the people we encounter.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Qualities of the Dharma (4 of 5) Onward Leading

Hello everyone, and welcome to this fourth talk on the five qualities of the Dharma. There are two ways of understanding the word Dharma¹ here. One is that it's the teachings of the Buddha, so these are five qualities or characteristics of those teachings—how we can recognize what's essential in them. But sometimes the Dharma is considered to be the inner processes, the movements, the development, the growth, the unfolding that happens when we practice. It's an unfolding which sometimes feels not like we're doing it, but that we're being practiced, that we are almost getting out of our own way and allowing something deep inside to unfold, to grow, to mature, to expand. A lot of Dharma practice is creating the conditions of being so fully present here, and in being here, having the right conditions for something to flower. Practicing the path, practicing ethics, learning how to be present and mindful in a non-reactive, non-manipulative way—just fully present with care and attention—is phenomenal in setting free some process of maturation and growth.

The fourth characteristic of the Dharma is that the Dharma is "onward leading." It begins by saying the Dharma is something that's visible here and now, it's something that's immediate, it's something that invites you to come take a deeper look. As we are looking deeply, as we see more clearly, one of the things we start seeing and feeling and sensing is that the Dharma in us, the movement in us of practice, is not static, it's not fixed. There's a feeling, "Oh, here is where it can grow." If I let go here, if I bring attention here, if I give myself to the practice now, something's asking to grow, something's asking to unfold, something wants to be born, something wants to be released, something wants to be healed, something wants to be understood. There's all this kind of movement of something here that wants to grow and develop. We can sometimes feel that and then allow for it, or give into it, or practice because of it or in that direction.

The sense that Dharma is developmental, is onward leading, is actually built into the Buddhist teachings over and over again. His teachings follow a developmental model. He's presenting teachings and practices that are relevant for different points of maturation and growth. Even in a single retreat, for example, even a single meditation, there's a variety of changes that happen. Knowing how to meet those changes, recognize those changes, and allow them to keep unfolding is part of why it's valuable to learn the Buddhist teachings in some detail.

This idea that it's onward leading, that it's developmental, is not opposed to a common idea that in mindfulness practice we want to sit and be really accepting of this present moment. What that means is that we're not rejecting right now, we're not trying to fix right now, we're not trying to get someplace right now, because fixing and resisting and rejecting all actually move us in the opposite direction to freedom. They interfere with this growth that can happen in the Dharma. So the idea of being fully present here for what's here is not just for its own sake—though it can be beautiful just to feel this full presence, to experience here and now—but it's also for the sake of allowing this process of growth to unfold without our interference.

In truth, I think the Buddha never talked about practicing acceptance; he actually talked about letting go of both acceptance and rejection. Both of those interfere with the Dharma. How I understand that is that the active, conscious movement of accepting something is a little bit too much like condoning or being too involved and engaged with the process of what's happening. There is a deeper, more peaceful way of being present that allows things to be as they are, but we don't have to take the next step of accepting it or rejecting it. We can see it clearly. Just really seeing is not for or against; seeing is not accepting or rejecting. Seeing just sees something in a very respectful way: "This is how it is now, look at this." And then take a deeper look. Remember, that's the characteristic of "come and see," come and take a deeper look, discover what's here. Everything you need to discover about the Dharma you can really discover here in your own experience if you take a deeper look, if you're really present and patient and not trying to analyze, not trying to fix, but to really tune in and allow things to reveal themselves, show themselves to us.

What we do is adjust how we see, how we look. As I said yesterday, what we're looking for is in the looking. It's a very profound thing to notice how we're mindful, how we're attending to our experience. The mindfulness, the seeing, the attending doesn't contain inside of it rejection or clinging or wanting or pushing or entanglement with experience, but it's just a very simple, clear seeing and the simplest, free knowing of the experience. As we do that, that creates the conditions to know something better, to know something without our projections, without our interference. And that's what's meant by "come and see," see deeply, let things reveal themselves to us.

I think it's one of the very inspiring, encouraging aspects of our practice that it is developmental, it does flow, it does move, we do grow, there is a maturation. The ancient language uses the metaphor of a fruit that matures until it's ripe. Something inside of us keeps growing. We see in children how they grow developmentally in stages. Kids grow and develop physically, emotionally, psychologically, and intellectually. I would say that some of that continues beautifully, wonderfully in Dharma practice as we become adults and go into adulthood. But also, spiritually there's a kind of spiritual growth and development, a development in these beautiful qualities that come as we discover how to be freer and freer: the qualities of kindness and good will and compassion, the qualities of equanimity and peace and joy and happiness.

The Dharma is onward leading. One of the ways to support that onward leading is this practice I mentioned during the meditation: the fastest way to go from Point A to Point B is to be fully at Point A. To be in a hurry to get to Point B, maybe we'll never get there. But if you're fully at A, at least in meditation and Dharma practice, that can sometimes be the way that something begins to unfold, let go, relax, settle, open up—much better than if we willfully are trying to fix and change and resist and deny and ignore our experience. But to wake up here, to neither accept nor reject but to be awake in the field of awareness, in the field of wisdom. Of course, there's a time to change things in the field of wisdom and street smarts. There's a time to say no, "this can't be," or yes, "let's do this." But in the field of awareness, the field of presence, to learn to just be present and hold it wisely and clearly and freely and openly is one of the great gifts of this practice.

That's a gift which we can offer to others. It's remarkable, the onward leading nature of our friends, our strangers, our enemies, when we bring kind, open, awake attention to really know them, to listen to them, to be with them and don't interfere, don't judge, don't try to fix, but really be present in a kind, supporting, respectful way. Listening deeply, sometimes you can watch how people relax and open and become happier. In our relationships, too, there's an onward leading nature of moving the relationships to healthier and healthier states.

This practice is onward leading and ultimately, according to the Buddha, this practice is onward leading and carrying us along like a current in a river to nirvana²—to the mind's and heart's fullest capacity and capability to be free of every single clinging, every single resistance, to be free of suffering. It's one of the greatest things that we can experience, and then to offer that, to support others to do the same, is also phenomenal.

So, the five qualities of the Dharma: the first four are that it's directly visible here and now, it's immediate, it's inviting us to inspect for ourselves, to see for ourselves, and it is onward leading. Tomorrow we'll do the last one, which is to be personally experienced by the wise.

And tomorrow, when we finish here at 7:45, we'll have a Zoom meeting, just a gathering to meet, and I'll answer questions from you. It's a chance for some discussion. We'll probably do a little breakout group, maybe groups of four for 10 or 12 minutes or so, so you can say hello a little bit to some of the other people who are coming to this 7:00 a.m. YouTube. It's a wonderful community and a wonderful opportunity to actually have a small conversation with a few of them. The link for that is currently on the "What's New" section of IMC's homepage. I'll post it here as well on the chat tomorrow, and it'll also be in the IMC calendar for tomorrow. So, a number of places. I look forward to meeting with those of you who want to be part of it on Zoom. Some of you might want to just remain on YouTube; I'll keep this YouTube channel open, and you won't get the full experience, but it's a way of participating without going on Zoom.

Thank you.