This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Better Stories; Wise Thinking (2 of 5) Redirecting Thoughts. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Better Stories; Dharmette: Wise Thinking (2 of 5) Redirecting Thoughts - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 19, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Better Stories

Welcome, and welcome to your meditation. During this guided meditation time, one of the strong associations, I believe, with mindfulness meditation—and often how I teach it—is that mindfulness is a non-reactive awareness that doesn't add anything to the experience. It just is present for our experience as it is. And when we practice that way, we're not allowed to change anything, we're not allowed to think about anything, something like that. But in fact, within this mindfulness practice as a Buddhist practice, sometimes it's useful to think of it as a strategy. We're using the best strategy we know of to become free, to become liberated.

Sometimes we practice non-reactive awareness, and that is truly invaluable. Sometimes we practice not adding anything or projecting anything onto experience—no stories. But sometimes we do. Sometimes it's strategic; it's useful to change our experience. Sometimes it's useful to have stories that we tell ourselves. Sometimes it's useful to interpret our experience in ways that support the strategy of being able to be here, present, alive, and be free.

So this week, I'm talking about wise thinking. Often, I believe, for many human beings, thinking goes unexamined and unconsidered. We just think what we think, and we might be troubled by it. We might be involved in it. It just goes along on its own merry way, and we're kind of the participants of it. But if we're living a mindful life and a deliberate life, we don't just let our thinking go into overdrive or go on automatic pilot. We can actually engage it in a useful way, in a strategic way.

The Buddha said that a watched mind brings happiness. If we don't watch our mind, and the mind goes on automatic pilot, that can often be a recipe for suffering. So here we are to wake up, to be present, to see, be wise, watch the mind, but also to engage the mind in a useful way. In relationship to thinking, we can think in ways that support this path. We can think in ways that help the mind get quieter, stiller, more focused, and more non-reactive to our experience. Thinking can be part of our support system for all of this.

One way that happens is in preparation for really settling into the heart of meditation. When we first sit down, we could notice how we're thinking. We could think in wiser ways. We can tell stories in wiser ways. We can imagine in ways that support us. We can use the imagination. So that's what we'll do today in this day and week of the wise use of thinking in meditation.

Assume a meditation posture, and without much other preparation now, gently close your eyes.

To whatever ability you have to imagine or to tell yourself a story, imagine that you are sitting in the room or the place where you're sitting to meditate. Begin a story that says, "In this story, I'm sitting in this room in my meditation posture." And then imagine that you tell the story of here you are, and you're checking in with yourself. Imagine that you're a person who's thinking, and notice: are you thinking thoughts that you're happy to have?

Gently tell yourself the story of yourself sitting here meditating. One way to do that is to gently give yourself instructions in meditation. Rather than relying on me to do it as a guided meditation, gently and calmly instruct yourself. Use your thoughts to think thoughts of instruction, and we'll do that for a few minutes silently.

If you have an unconscious, subconscious, or automatic story of what it's like for you to be practicing, what it's like to give yourself instructions, or what your current circumstances are like, and if that story distracts you, tell yourself a different story. Tell yourself the story of being right now, here, meditating.

Tell yourself the story—the experience of what it's like to be in your body, breathing. Maybe narrating it as if someone is listening.

As you're sitting here, tell the story, give the explanation to yourself of how sitting and meditating can be helpful and supportive for you. Perhaps explain it to yourself with a voice that's calm, supportive, and kind. "Here, let me tell you, this is what this meditation is about now. This is what I'm trying to do because I care. I care about myself, I care about you." Speak to yourself gently and quietly as an alternative to other stories and habitual ways of thinking.

Gently give yourself a relaxing instruction at the end of the inhale. Relax at the end of a thought. Relax.

Let there be an ongoing, relaxed, clear, and intentional instruction. Maybe just with the single word: relax.

If your mind is easily distracted, tell yourself the story about being distracted. Tell it to yourself in a quiet, calm, and peaceful voice. As you tell yourself the story of being distracted or starting to be collected—the story of whatever your experience is—at the end of each sentence, point yourself to the quiet and stillness that is here. The silence at the end of a thought.

And when the mind gets distracted again, deliberately bring in different thoughts. Thoughts about meditating, what you're doing, and the goodness of it. And let each of those thoughts point back to the stillness. The silence.

If any thoughts come up that undermine you, that somehow are critical or fear-producing, or any ones that are unpleasant to have, substitute them. Substitute them with deliberate, realistic, supportive thoughts about doing the meditation in a way that points to a quiet intimacy of breathing mindfully. Do so with a positive regard for yourself, for the practice, and for whatever your experience is. Kind regard for all things.

If you find yourself distracted, don't simply let go of your distractions. Offer a reframing of whatever you're thinking about. It can be as simple as adding, "Not now. This is not the time to have these thoughts." Or, "It's not so." Or if your distractions are fantasy and imagination, reframe your interest to being intimate with reality as it is in the present.

If the thoughts are negative, reframe those thoughts in such a way that they don't undermine you. Maybe a simple statement: "I see you. I know you, distracted thought. It's okay for you to rest and relax because right now I'm meditating."

Consciously, you can use a thought that points beyond thinking. The gentle, calm thought: Listen. And then listen to the silence where there is no thinking. The thought: Feel. That points you to feeling, not thinking. The thought: Stillness. That points to whatever non-discursive stillness there is here in this body or in the space around you.

As we come to the end of the sitting, in some way that seems realistic to you, tell yourself a story of positive regard for yourself. Ideas of how you'd like to support yourself, how meditation is helpful, and how taking this time to meditate—even if it was not a "good" meditation—was good to do. Maybe even have a small smile on your lips, appreciating yourself.

Then turn your gaze outward into the world. If it's nice for you, you can tell a brief story of how our lives are so interdependent on the lives, work, and efforts of so many people. We benefit immensely from the unseen labor of people in our neighborhood, in our wider communities, in other countries, and of the whole world. Remind yourself of this story of the amazing, supportive network that brings us our food, our clothes, and all that we need for our life.

Then think thoughts of goodwill for all those people whose lives support yours. Wouldn't it be nice, wouldn't it be wonderful if they could be happy and peaceful and safe? Wouldn't it be wonderful if you were happy, peaceful, and safe? And so all the networks of interconnection we have, all the ways that we share this planet, are filled with mutual kind regard. And may we contribute ours. 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: Wise Thinking (2 of 5) Redirecting Thoughts

So, continuing on the theme of wise thinking. In a Buddhist practice, all our life is a subject for practice. Everything that we are about is a worthy object for our mindfulness and attention, and that includes the world of thinking. There's certainly a lot to learn about thinking by being mindful of it, but thinking is also such an important and necessary activity for our lives that we don't have to leave it to chance what we think about. We don't have to let the automatic pilot let us think whatever we think. We don't have to be the victims of our thoughts.

We could deliberately think things that are supportive and helpful. We can change the currents of the river of thinking that we're involved in. We can introduce new things to fill our mind. This has to be done wisely, so it's not simply covering over how we are, creating a happy scenario so that we don't feel our sadness, our grief, or anger, and pretending that everything is good and nice. That doesn't work. But we don't have to just go along with whatever our mind gives us in terms of our distracted thoughts. We can, in a certain sense, be in charge of our thoughts rather than letting the thoughts be in charge of us.

One form of thinking that's quite common is the story-making mind. We're constructing stories, scenarios, images, scenes, and predictions. If you're planning for the future, that's partly a story about what we think is going to happen and how we're going to behave in that story. If we're remembering the past, it's usually a story about something that happened then, and there's a narrative behind it. Sometimes there's a framework around which we tell a story about our present moment: "Oh, this is not going to work out. I can't do this. This is too hard." Or, "This is great. I'm wonderful, and I want everyone to appreciate me more and more because of how wonderful I am." There are all these kinds of things going on.

Those stories can be elaborate in terms of fantasies and huge scenarios. If those stories are of an unfortunate kind—if they're fear stories, angry stories, despair stories, or conceit stories—it creates a mood and affects us in profound ways. It's kind of like there's mood music that comes along with the stories we tell ourselves. That mood music can depress us or enliven us; it can benefit us or close us down.

To learn how to engage in deliberate thought while we meditate—in just the right way, not too much (it's almost better to do a little bit too little)—is to think wisely, to recognize what we're thinking about, and reframe it.

For example, with a lot of the story-making mind, one of the main characters in the story is ourselves. Sometimes we repeat the same story over and over again. The same memory, repeatedly telling ourselves the conclusion of the story, the implications of the story, over and over again. If it's debilitating, if it's draining us of our energy and life vitality, then it's probably not useful to keep telling ourselves that story repeatedly.

So, in a certain way, we take responsibility or take control of our own mind and our own thinking by figuring out how to think in a way that's not debilitating. Think in a different way. Maybe there are ways of thinking about your distracted thoughts where you tell yourself a different story, where you tell yourself, "It's not like that. There's another perspective." Sometimes you can tell yourself a reframing of what you're doing.

It could be, for example, that something difficult happened to you, and you feel really bad about yourself. Then reframe it: "What could I learn from this? How can I be a better person in the future, rather than being weighed down by the past? Let me learn from that." That's being truthful, honest, direct, and real about what happened, but it's reframing it in a way that does something positive for us. We learn something. We learn how to be better because of it.

Whenever something's debilitating, try not to participate in the thoughts that we churn out that are debilitating. Be honest about why we're doing it and what we're feeling, but ask: is there another way of understanding it? Another story you can tell yourself? If you're doing Buddhist practice, you can say, "Well, instead of ruminating about this story over and over again, the story I have is that now I can fold this into my practice. I have a practice that helps liberate this. I have a practice that helps bring kindness, gentleness, or stillness to this. I have a practice that shields me from the impact of these." Because the stronger the mindfulness is, the less the mood music of those stories is going to penetrate into your heart.

Tell yourself that story, because those can be true stories. They can call upon positive ways of being, and the new story or framework can be something that brings us a little bit of joy, happiness, relief, or confidence. "Oh, it can be a different way." I'm not suggesting we do this all the time, but I am suggesting maybe doing it when it's the better alternative. If we notice that what we're doing is spinning out in our thoughts, or being pulled into distracted thoughts, or we've had the same thought and told the same story a thousand times, then you probably have something better to do. You don't need to do it again.

Step forward with some sense of agency, some sense of ability to change the currents of your life. Step forward with an ability to monitor and take control over yourself to some degree by engaging in a reframing—a new story that is a better one than the one that's debilitating you. Again, not to make up something, not to invent something, and not to project fake positive regard onto ourselves. Really recognize what's happening and then reframe it in a way that is realistically a much better and more interesting story.

If there are a lot of challenges, for example, I've known people who, when it was reframed for them that they're learning to practice with this so they can help others who have the same problem and challenge, suddenly they get buoyed up. They get inspired. "Oh yes! When I'm just focusing on myself as the main subject of my story, I feel more depressed. I feel like, one more time, it's so hard. But when I think, oh, there's a higher purpose for going through with this—to learn and recognize and practice with this—I'm going to be able to support other people going through it." They'll understand them better. The more I understand myself with my difficulty, the more I understand other people with this difficulty. The more I learn to be patient, have insight, and practice with it, maybe I can support other people to do the same.

The main point I'm trying to make today is: don't be a victim of your stories. Don't operate on automatic pilot regarding what you think about through the day, as if you have to, or as if that's just who you are, or that you have no say over what you think and have to just go along with it. Don't believe that every thought you have is true and so it has to be there. It's not the case. We can have a role in how we think and what we think about. We can think in ways that are supportive and helpful.

For those of us who are doing Buddhist practice, we have a whole repertoire and a whole set of understandings about what we're doing that's actually quite profound. So, call upon how we understand the practice and how it's beneficial. Bringing the practice to our difficulties is a reframing of the difficulty. It's inserting a new story: the story of practice, the story of the Buddha, the story about how we're going to practice with this and find our liberation from it. Or we're going to sit patiently and not give in to it.

Maybe we tell ourselves the story of Mara¹. Mara's story is that he comes to the Buddha—this temptation, a devilish kind of person who's trying to stop the Buddha from being enlightened. He comes to the Buddha, and the story tells that the Buddha does not have to fight and battle Mara. He just looks at him straight in the eye and says, "Mara, I see you." And that's enough. He's not for or against Mara. He's not criticizing Mara. He says, "Mara, I see you." And to be clearly seen—Mara can't stand that and just disappears. He goes away. Mara loses his power if he is seen that clearly.

So there's the Mara story. You have your challenges, your strong drives and desires, and ill wills that come up so powerfully. Tell yourself the story of Mara. You might say the words, "Mara, I see you," and use that to really see what's going on with such clarity that you're not being pulled into the world of your desires and aversions. You're standing out and really seeing, "Oh, this is what it is."

This is a skill to learn: deliberate thinking, reframing your experience. It can certainly seem like you're being busy in meditation when you do this, but the idea is to develop this skill and orientation so you know when to bring it in because it's supportive. You know when this is the better alternative to do, rather than merrily going along in distracted thought.

So may you, today, as you go through the day, find ways to reframe your experience, or to place whatever is happening to you into a different story than the one that you're habitually or unconsciously engaged in. May your life occur within stories that bring you and others tremendous benefit and freedom.

Thank you.