This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Wholeness; Eightfold Path (1 of 10) Path of Wholeness. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Wholeness; Eightfold Path (1 of 10) Path of Wholeness

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 13, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Hello and welcome. As a way of contextualizing today's meditation and this week's teachings, I'd like to suggest that the idea in Buddhist practice as a whole, including meditation practice, is the concept of being whole. I believe this is central to the entire Buddhist endeavor. Our Buddhist practice is about our whole life and the whole of who we are. Buddhist meditation is also about bringing all of who we are into our awareness. Not all at once, which would be chaotic, but the spirit or approach of attention is to cultivate an awareness that is expansive enough that nothing is considered outside of the whole.

When we sit today, is there some way to not be confused by all the different things that are going on, but to sit peacefully and easefully with an awareness which is inclusive? We know it's inclusive of all of who we are, including what we don't know about, what is offline or unconscious, or what we haven't discovered yet.

Guided Meditation: Wholeness (link)

Assume a meditation posture. I like to think of the posture as involving all of our body, that every part of our body is somehow positioned in a manner that supports awareness and attention—a kind of waking up to the whole.

If you're sitting in a chair or on a couch in an ordinary way, have both feet firmly planted on the floor, not one leg crossed over the other and dangling in the air. There's a kind of grounding of attention, of presence, with each foot. If you're using a backrest, be a little bit careful you're not over-relying on it. Of course, sometimes we have to rely on it, but not so much that part of your torso goes offline and you don't have to think about it. I know that people have back pain; I've had very bad back pain at times, and you have to use a backrest or lie down. But still, position yourself in a meditation posture that seems to somehow take into account the whole of your body, so the whole of your body is present.

Adjust your hands so their position supports being here now, fully. Generally, the idea of closing your eyes in meditation is not necessarily to shut out sight—some people meditate with their eyes open—but to make it easier to open the inside awareness, the embodied awareness of being in a body. Let that become more fully part of your experience. Eyes open tend to take the attention out of ourselves into the world around us. Here, we want to go inside of ourselves so we can expand our embodied awareness to be undistracted from the whole of our personal experience.

Another way of expanding into the whole is to gently, without doing too much, take some fuller breaths. The expansion of the belly and the rib cage encourages a spread of awareness, an awakening of sensations more fully in the torso. And as you exhale, a longer exhale than usual, relax the body. Then, let the breathing return to normal, letting breathing breathe itself.

For you now to open up as broadly, as globally as you can from the inside of your body, become aware of the body. Sensing physically how the body experiences itself from the inside out. Not so much in the control tower thinking about or watching or doubting, but to feel and sense the global body in whatever way that is easy. As you exhale, soften and relax into this global body.

As you breathe in, allow or receive the expanding torso. Allow your awareness to spread with the inhale to a global experience of the torso and maybe beyond. And as you exhale, this global awareness of the body gathers, comes back in together, relaxed and soft.

As you breathe in, gently expand the awareness to include your thinking mind. Not to be involved in it, but to know that it's there within an expanded space, so thinking is not the central thing going on. It's part of the whole. And as you exhale, relax the thinking mind.

Then, in the middle of the whole of who you are, at the center, let there be the grounding place, the settling place in the torso, in the belly, where the sensations of the inhale begin and where the exhale ends. Follow the inhale as an expansion into the whole, and the exhale as a return to the settling place where the whole of who you are settles and gathers to a rich, vital, core settling place, a grounding place.

If there is anything that takes you away from the experience of breathing, welcome it into the whole. Let it be part of the whole, so that you can stay with your breathing. As you inhale, awareness expands throughout the body to include it all, without being caught or lost in anything. Everything is included, but only the breathing is at the center.

Perhaps you can feel the whole through the silence of the mind. Even if you have some thinking going on, the wider silence of sensing, of being aware—this silence that includes it all.

As we come to the end of the sitting, imagine that as the meditation ends, you can still be sitting. But as you open your eyes, you can see the people of your life in a situation where nothing needs to be done. You don't have to say anything or do anything. People are going about their business. They know you're there, and it's wonderful that you're there, but there's no need for you to do anything. You're allowed just to be quiet, coming out of your meditation in the midst of all the people—strangers, colleagues, friends, neighbors.

In this peaceful way, include them in your heart. Include all beings in your heart as you gaze upon them without the need for anything to happen. No need to judge, no need to protect, no need to care for or do anything. In this peaceful way, gaze kindly upon everyone, include everyone in your awareness, allowing your whole heart, your heartfulness, to encompass everyone. And with this big, broad heartfulness, wishing well for everyone.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free of their suffering.

And may it be that this open heartfulness guides how you interact with people today. May it be that your heart supports you to make this a better world for the people you encounter.

May all beings be happy.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Eightfold Path (1 of 10) Path of Wholeness (link)

Hello and welcome to the beginning of a new series. This series will go for two weeks, ten days, and it will be on the topic of the Eightfold Path. In a sense, I gave an introductory talk to this yesterday morning, Sunday morning at IMC, and I'm happy to continue now on this topic.

The Eightfold Path is sometimes called the Noble Eightfold Path because it's intimately associated with the nobility, the dignity, the fullness, or the freedom of the Buddha and the people who have followed his path. There's something very profound about this Eightfold Path, and in a way, we might consider that these are the most central, most important teachings of the Buddha.

We see that, whether it actually happened or is how the tradition has recorded it, the very first teaching the Buddha gave was on the Eightfold Path. And the last teaching he gave before he died was on the Eightfold Path. After he was enlightened, he went to find the people who he had practiced with before, who hadn't become enlightened, to tell them his good news since he had found what they were looking for. The first thing he said to them when he found them is that there is a middle way between indulging in the senses and denial of the senses, or asceticism. And what is this middle way? It's the Eightfold Path.

Usually, I'll recite what these are. It's often done in English with the word "right," but it means something more like "complete" or "consummate." In modern Buddhism, the Eightfold Path is often introduced as a beginning teaching for beginners. In the time of the Buddha, it seemed like the teachings on the Eightfold Path were for the end of the path; it was a teaching relevant for people who were most mature. What's wonderful is that it can function both ways. To think that you know what the Eightfold Path is because you've learned it before is to not understand that it's also a very advanced practice, representing the full culmination.

So, rather than calling each of the eight steps "right view," "right intention," and so on, for these two weeks, I'd like to call them "whole." There's a whole view, a whole attitude (I'll explain why I say that), whole speech, whole action, whole lifestyle, whole effort, whole mindfulness, and whole concentration. Or perhaps "wholesome" is a nice way to include the "whole." The idea is that it includes all of who we are; it's not meant to be an exclusion of anything. This idea of not being lost in sensual desire and not being involved in asceticism points to the idea that the whole path is the lived life. It's the life that we live wholly and completely, not a disconnection from life.

Before his enlightenment, the Buddha did practice the meditation practices taught by the great meditation teachers of his time. But both of them taught what's called the formless jhānas.¹ They taught that the deepest experience was a complete nothingness or a state of neither perception nor non-perception—a radical kind of non-experience of the usual world. The Buddha was offering something different. He was offering how to become whole and complete. Rather than a deep meditation practice into nothingness, it was a deep meditation into the fullness of who we are in the most unified, peaceful, harmonious way, in which we can really experience this lived life.

So he began with this when he came to his fellow practitioners, who we assume were very good practitioners. He presented them with the Eightfold Path.

At the end of his life, he was dying outdoors under the canopy of two sal trees, the majestic trees of northern India. People knew that he was dying and came to see him. He was fading away. A wanderer, a non-Buddhist seeker of truth named Subhadda,² heard that he was dying nearby. He had heard that it was quite rare for a Buddha to be born and to be able to encounter one, so he went that night to visit the Buddha to ask his questions. He approached Ānanda,³ the Buddha's attendant, and said, "I'd like to ask the Buddha a question." Ānanda said, "No, no, he's weak. He's dying. This is not the time." Subhadda asked again. "No," said Ānanda. He asked a third time, and I think Ānanda said no a third time, which in ancient India was a big deal.

But the Buddha overheard this. He called to Ānanda, "Enough, Ānanda, do not hinder Subhadda. Let him see me, for whatever Subhadda asks me, he will ask in quest of enlightenment, not to annoy me."

So Subhadda was able to come to the Buddha and ask this question: "All the wanderers, the seekers, and the Brahmins who have their sects and their followers, who are well-known and famous as founders of schools and popularly regarded as saints—have they all realized the truth as they all make out? Or have none of them realized it? Or have some realized it and some not?"

The Buddha replied, as he often did when people asked him about truth, not by answering the question directly. He said, "Enough, Subhadda. Never mind whether all or none or some of them have realized the truth. I will teach you the Dharma.⁴ Listen and pay close attention, and I will speak."

This was his last teaching before he died: "In whatever Dharma and discipline the Noble Eightfold Path is not found, no spiritual seekers are found of the first, second, third, or fourth level of awakening. But where the Noble Eightfold Path is found, such spiritual seekers can be found. Now, Subhadda, in this teaching and discipline, the Noble Eightfold Path is found, and in it are to be found spiritual seekers of the first, second, third, and fourth level. Those other schools are devoid of spiritual seekers who have attained these levels of awakening. But if in this one the monks were to live the life of wholeness, the world would not lack for enlightened ones."

Here, the Buddha is saying he doesn't want to engage in philosophy or truth claims about the nature of reality or metaphysics. He's saying it's the Noble Eightfold Path—not as a beginner practice, but as actualized in the lives of people. Those who are living wholly and completely in this world, not apart from it. Buddhist monastics are sometimes considered to be separated from the world, and in a way they are—separated from the ordinary social life of commerce and the ways in which people are caught up in desires, aversions, and preoccupations. But they are not separated; they are still part of the whole, holding the whole world in their view, the whole world in their heart.

This wholeness is represented by the Noble Eightfold Path. And this path, as he said, represents the culmination that comes with some degree of awakening, of being set free, of deep realization. This is where the Eightfold Path appears not as a teaching, but as a maturation of the spiritual practitioner. We mature into the Eightfold Path.

So, at the beginning of his teaching and at the end of his teaching, bracketing the whole 40 years, was this idea of the Eightfold Path as being central to what he had to teach. In doing that, the Eightfold Path is about a personal transformation. It's how we get transformed. It's not a truth that we hang on to. It's not about hanging on to "this is the true teaching" or "this is the true state of mind." It's not a truth in that sense, but rather a whole way of being transformed. It's a personal change, deep in the heart, deep in ourselves, where we become not divided, not caught, not attached in a way that limits us or makes us partial. By letting go of the divisiveness, by letting go of the way we are at war with ourselves or conflicted with ourselves, we become whole.

So that's what I'll do. We'll go through the Eightfold Path in the next eight talks, starting with Right View tomorrow, and then the tenth talk will be a kind of conclusion. This is a very important teaching, and hopefully, you'll understand that it is not only for beginners but is extremely relevant and important even for the most advanced practitioners of Buddhism. Thank you.