This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Yes; Stories of Practice (3 of 5) Wholeheartedness. It likely contains inaccuracies.
Guided Meditation: Yes; Dharmette: Stories of Practice (3 of 5) Wholeheartedness - Gil Fronsdal
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 26, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Guided Meditation: Yes
Hello from IMC. Happy to be here with you.
One of the really great ways to practice that I have learned over my years is to have a wholeheartedness in the practice. To give ourselves wholeheartedly to what we're doing, have our heart involved with it all, and to give ourselves fully to the activity that we're doing here now with the practice.
I learned that partly by learning all the ways in which I wasn't doing that and seeing the drag of that—seeing the downside of not being wholehearted and seeing how great it was to be fully involved.
The word that I love to represent this, which I use not as a mantra but as a kind of instruction, is the word "yes." If I'm doing something wholesome, if I'm practicing mindfulness or Samadhi1, sometimes I'll say to myself in a very enjoyable or welcoming way in my mind: "Yes."
Yes.
It often brings me a smile or the equivalent of a smile. I feel delighted and happy to be able to do more than just say yes. The "yes" is a prompt to be fully here. To enter into what I'm doing—you could almost say to become what I'm doing—and not to hold back. Not to be in the control tower directing myself to do something, telling myself to do something, or trying to do something. Not being in the control tower thinking, "I should be doing it."
"Yes" is to enter into the doing. It is to become the doing. A kind of wholeheartedness: This is what I'm doing.
Assume a meditation posture. It is meant to be a posture that, for you, in just the right way, can represent this "yes." Now I'm going to do something as completely or fully as I can, with my whole being, not just the mind. Wholehearted means whole body. The idea is to have a posture that is a kind of expression of yes, of certainty: I'm going to be here doing this.
That has a balance of being alert and relaxed. It's possible to have a posture that overemphasizes relaxation or overemphasizes alertness. Is there a place somewhere in between that range? Is there a delightful, wonderful way of embodying "Yes"?
Gently close the eyes. Feel the body. Feel your way into how the body is aware, alert, and present. The body in the meditation posture is a choice; it is a way of engaging. It's a way of being here. Feel the body from the inside out. Feel the sensations. The sensing of sensations is an important part of our capacity to be aware there.
Take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Not tiring breaths, not challengingly deep or full, but where the breathing is a kind of gentle "yes." Yes to being here with breathing. Yes to being present. A yes that encourages you to feel this breath fully.
Let the breathing return to normal. Adopt a gentle, reassuring attitude of "yes" to relaxing the body. Relaxing the face. Relaxing the shoulders. Relaxing the belly. Maybe relaxing the whole body.
As you exhale, soften and relax the thinking mind, the thinking muscle. Become clear that whatever you're thinking about right now—if it's not about the meditation—is not needed. It's at best second best. First best is saying "yes" to how you can be aware of the present experience of the body breathing.
Here, wholeheartedness is a full participation with the activity of sitting here. The whole body sitting here, where emotions are included in that whole experience. The mind is included as part of the whole. Where breathing is at the center of all things.
A gentle "yes" that opens and relaxes you into your present moment experience here and now.
Is there a way you can quietly, gently say "yes" to being fully, wholeheartedly here in your mindfulness? You're not directing your mindfulness from the control tower. It's more like you are becoming mindful, becoming the awareness itself.
Is there a way of saying "yes" to your practice that quiets your thinking mind?
As we come to the end of the sitting, consider that an attitude of "yes" to the activity you're engaged in is useful. If you're going to be doing it—even if you don't want to do it, even if you disagree—but it's happening and you're there, have an attitude of "yes." That's mostly a letting go of resistance, holding back, or being halfhearted.
If you're going to do it, do it well. Do it wholeheartedly. Yes.
How can this be translated to being with others? Not necessarily agreeing with others, not necessarily going along with what people want, but is there a way of wholeheartedly showing up since you're there already? Yes, here I am.
Is that kind of "yes" a way to meet anything and everything with friendliness? May it be that we show up to be friendly first and foremost because we're confident in our "yes" to being present.
May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free.
And may we know how to say "yes," to be wholehearted, to support that possibility.
Thank you.
Dharmette: Stories of Practice (3 of 5) Wholeheartedness
Hello and welcome. This week I'm telling stories from my practice, and I hope this is nice for you to hear and encourages you in your practice. It feels like a nice topic on this more relaxed Thanksgiving week.
One of the really invaluable areas of practice for me was something that at the San Francisco Zen Center they called "work practice." The work we did was considered equal in value to meditation. Learning about practicing in the activity of work has been invaluable for me.
There was a very meaningful turning point for me in this regard. I had been at Tassajara2 for about eight or nine months. It was rare to be able to leave—I wasn't actually supposed to leave the first year—but I had occasion to. On the way back, the driver stopped at a big shopping center in Carmel, California, just before we went deep into the mountains, into the Los Padres National Forest where the monastery is.
There was a bookstore, and I went in. I had very little time, so I went to the section where they had spiritual books—Eastern spirituality and religions. I pulled out a book at random, opened it randomly, and read a sentence that said something like this: "The problem humans have is that they hold themselves back."
I closed the book, got in the car, and drove up into the mountains, down into the deep, secluded valley where the monastery is. That sentence stayed with me.
As it turned out, I was assigned to work in the kitchen. This question of holding myself back was ringing in my mind. How do I do that? Do I do that? What is it? I decided that it was a negative statement and that I wanted to reframe it positively. I worded it for myself as an encouragement to participate—to participate fully.
Luckily, I was assigned to the kitchen, and there were a lot of opportunities to do physical work—very simple, clear work standing at a table. I was mostly involved in prep those first few months, so I did a lot of vegetable chopping and a lot of pot washing. This issue of participating with my activity was really a great one because I started seeing how much I didn't participate.
I saw how much I didn't want to be there. I didn't want to be in the kitchen; I didn't want to do the work. I thought the real work was meditating and I should be up there in the meditation hall, because when you were in the kitchen, you couldn't meditate that much.
Literally, I could watch my body turn towards the door. It was like half my body was doing the chopping of the vegetables, but my whole body was not participating. I was trying to escape. So I would tell myself: "Gil, participate here." I would turn my body around and really be there for chopping the carrots or washing the pots. Over and over again I had to come back. Okay, Gil, just right here.
I learned so much about my resistance and wanting to get away. I also learned the delight and joy of giving myself over to the activity. It got to a point where I really loved to chop the vegetables. Sometimes there were lots of them for a monastery of many people. I loved having to do a gallon of chopped onions and just being with the onions.
I worked in the kitchen for a year and gave myself wholeheartedly over to being in the kitchen when I was there. There was a surprise that happened from that.
There was a time in the day where the work would stop kind of abruptly. Partly because I became the manager of the kitchen, I would stay longer than the other people. Then I would stop, literally take off my apron, put on my robes, walk up to the meditation hall, and sit down to meditate.
What surprised me was that I would sit down and find myself completely present and concentrated. There was no warming up. There was no settling in. It was like, boom, I was there. Because of what had happened in the kitchen—this giving myself heartily, participating just with this activity, having no tomorrow, no yesterday, nothing but the activity—it had cleared my mind. It had already concentrated me, already helped me be present. I brought that with me to the meditation hall. I would sit down and I was very still, very focused, very concentrated.
Then the meditation in the hall spilled over and affected how I did work. A representative example of that happened at a different time. I had to carry a very heavy object with another person—I think it was a wooden object. We had to carry it across the property, a long distance. It was heavy and hard to carry; it was digging into my hands and my hands started to hurt a lot.
I suppose I could have asked to stop and rest a little bit. But what occurred to me—and it's more in retrospect that I understand what was remarkable—was that this became an instinct rather than a "should" or a practice. What I was learning in meditation was how to have an unpreoccupied mind, a mind that was peaceful, a mind that wasn't caught up and reactive. Not that I did it well, but I was certainly learning this was possible.
It became a natural thing as I was carrying this painful object. I wasn't injuring myself, so I kept that in mind, but I could feel that I just wanted to really be there for that activity. I didn't want to give in to a reactive mind, to my pulling back, to my screaming mind saying, "No, this is too painful." I knew a better way of having the mind, a better way of having the heart. Could I stay in harmony? Could I stay true to this deeper way of being present that didn't give in to reactivity, in a way that was safe and appropriate to do?
My biceps were quite intensely painful, but it was the work. I learned this idea of wholeheartedness.
In Zen, there was this idea that when you do something, you do it with both hands. If you offer someone a gift, you do it with both hands. If you're eating, you pick up your bowl with both hands. The idea of two-handed participation, whatever you're doing, was a way of being fully, wholeheartedly present. Not holding yourself back. Not doing things half-heartedly.
One of the representative times for that was when I went to Japan and practiced in the monastery there. I was tasked sometimes to carry the dinner food to the table where the monks ate. There were about 30 of us, so it was a really long table in a long room. We had a table where we would put down all this food, and I was tasked to carry it and place it on the dining table.
One day I was carrying the pot of white rice. It wasn't that heavy, and it was easy enough to hold in one hand, so I was walking down the hallway holding it in one hand. One of the monks stopped me and said, "No, no, no. When you carry the rice, you have to carry it with two hands."
I think the idea was to respect the rice, but also in Zen, the idea was to really be there for that activity.
The other story of work practice happened after the evening meditation. I was going through the kitchen and one of the cooks was doing some last-minute vegetable chopping. He was one of the few people in the monastery who spoke English. So I stopped to talk to him.
He was chopping his vegetables. I asked a question. He put down his knife, stood up straight, and answered my question in a simple, nice way. He picked up his knife to chop again. I asked him another question. He put down his knife and answered nicely.
I did it a third time. He put down his knife, sat up, and nicely said to me, "You know, I'm doing this work now. I'm going to either fully do the work or talk to you, but I'm not going to do both at the same time. Really, I need to do the work. It's late, time to go to bed."
Only then did I understand—I didn't pick up the cues—that what he was doing was stopping completely to talk to me. I was so inspired by this, both by his care in the way he talked to me, but also that he was just going to do one thing. In a monastery, just do this one thing. Don't multitask. Just do it. If you have to stop doing it, then stop and do the other thing that has to be done.
This is one of the really important lessons I had from my Zen monastic life. Work practice—what we do with our daily life and how we give ourselves over to it—means we really don't hold back. Participate in what you are doing. If you're doing it anyway, participate. Give it a wholeheartedness.
It doesn't have to be fast. It doesn't have to be strained. It doesn't have to be overdone. You could be very relaxed and simple, but give all of yourself. Don't hold any of yourself back. You're too important to divide yourself between doing something half-hearted and having the other "half-heart" doing something not really necessary.
You're so important that, please, include all of yourself in what you do. If you do so, that will support your meditation, and your meditation will support how you live your life.
Thank you.