This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Courage; Intro to Mindfulness Pt 2 (7) Faculty of Courageous Effort. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Courage; Dharmette: -Intro to Mindfulness Pt 2 (7) Faculty of Courageous Effort - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on March 05, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Courage

Hello, my friends. It is special for me, and maybe all of us, to gather for this meditation. Thank you for being here.

Today, I would like to associate meditation with something that perhaps it is seldom associated with, but I think many of us at times will definitely bring this quality to it, and that is courage.

Meditation sometimes needs courage. It is often associated with being calm, relaxed, unassertive, quiet, and peaceful. It is maybe even associated with being docile or something similar. But sometimes we need to have courage, and sometimes a lot of courage. Certainly, it takes a lot of courage in life to sometimes be ethical. Sometimes it takes courage to not give in to expressions of hostility or anger, and to not give in to strong compulsive desires that we might have.

This can play out in meditation as well. We take our place and show up to be here in a clear and courageous way, so we don't give in to distractions. We don't give in to the distractions that keep us from recognizing what's really happening here in important ways. We don't give in to avoid the difficult emotions that we have. Instead, we show up to our grief, our fears, and even our angers, to really be honest about them and take our place in the middle of them. Sometimes we talk about "sitting in the fire" when meditating.

I have behind me a statue of the Buddha on the night of his Awakening. His dignified and upright posture represents taking one's place in a dignified, clear, and complete way. It means you are allowed to inhabit the place where you're practicing—you can be there without having to diminish or apologize for yourself. Part of the symbolic imagery you see there is that he is touching the earth; he's touching the spot on which he's sitting. So, touch the spot where you're meditating. Yes, here you will be, and you will show up courageously for what is here.

It is not the kind of courage that makes you agitated or tense, but actually the opposite. Sometimes it takes tremendous courage to be relaxed and at ease in the fire with the difficulties. It takes courage to stay in your place, stay present, and stay here—not giving in, not collapsing, and not running away, but staying here with what is. Sometimes it takes courage to do that even when things are going really well in meditation, because of the strong desire to enjoy it or to go into it in a way where we're not really present.

So, take a posture that for you is a posture of relaxed courage, a certain kind of relaxed strength. This is not a casual thing to sit down to meditate. It is a heroic act in a world where people succumb to greed, hate, and delusion all the time. Assume a posture that allows you to have a heroic stance in really showing up here for your experience mindfully, with clear awareness.

Close your eyes and feel that posture. Take a deep breath. Relaxing, relaxing, but not giving away your strength, your courage, or your clarity of purpose that here you will be. As you exhale, relaxing around that clarity of purpose. Yes, to being here in the fire, in the winds, whatever you have here. Through earthquakes, just sitting here, not in contention with anything and not in favor of anything, with an impartiality to pleasure and pain, to success and failure. Just here.

Every breath is propelling you through the ocean of here, bringing you back here, now. If it makes sense for you, have the courage for an ongoing relaxed awareness of breathing, of your experience of meditating in the middle of your place here with whatever is happening. Stay present, awake, clear, and courageous to do so.

[Meditation period]

And then, as we come to the end of this sitting, consider that in a world with so much hatred, animosity, divisiveness, and greed, it takes courage to be compassionate, generous, kind, and honest. It takes courage to stand in the midst of injustice and name it as injustice.

In what way might the courage to meditate translate or be applied to the courage to live our lives in a fuller, clearer, and more honest way? To have the courage to be kind, friendly, and generous. To have the courage to wish people well, to want the best for them, knowing that the very best is to live without any greed, hatred, and delusion. That is where happiness is found. So even to your enemies, you can wish them well sincerely. Maybe show up in a way that you express non-hatred, non-greed, and non-delusion. Have the courage to avoid those things.

May all beings be the recipient of our non-greed, our non-hatred, our non-delusion, our non-bias, and our non-prejudice. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may we live today in such a way that, in small or large ways, we contribute to that possibility, even if it's just for one other person.

[Music]

May all beings be happy. Thank you.

Dharmette: -Intro to Mindfulness Pt 2 (7) Faculty of Courageous Effort

Welcome. This is the second talk on the Five Faculties¹. When we translate this Pali word indriya² as "faculties," we are kind of diminishing or hiding the power and strength of the word. "Faculty" just seems like a potential that we have, like maybe we have a faculty we could use. The word indriya is related to Indra. In the time of the Buddha, Indra was the head god of the pantheon of gods. In ancient Greece, you might say it's like the qualities of Zeus, or in Norway, the qualities of Odin or some great god.

These are qualities that can take charge and really guide and help us to take control of our life in a certain kind of way. In American Buddhism, controlling ourselves has often been seen as not appropriate, but there is a way that it's very appropriate to show up and really take charge of our practice. We have these faculties, these capacities, that really infuse, enliven, and give strength to the practices we do. There is nothing wrong with doing Buddhist practice strongly, calling upon a capacity for inner strength, maybe even a capacity for inner power.

It's strength and power that can support us to live without hate, without greed, without conceit, without asserting ourselves, wanting to dominate other people, or being aggressive. It is a power that also keeps us from being weak, succumbing, collapsing, or running away. This word indriya is a powerful word, as is the word that's usually translated as "effort," the second faculty, viriya³.

Viriya is also a powerful word, and "effort" kind of domesticates it in some way or tamps it down. It makes it kind of too ordinary and doesn't really carry with it what in the Indian context is a word of power or strength. In ancient India and Tibet, this word is sometimes associated with heroic effort. For today, I was associating it with courageous effort.

There was a time when I was growing up in Buddhism, and when I first started teaching, that chances are I would have been criticized as a man using language like courage and heroism. It would seem too masculine or something, and certainly, there can be huge problems with it. But it is also a gift; it's a necessary part of life to have a certain degree of heroic effort so that we don't give in to our own personal tendencies to be weak or complacent, or to acquiesce to our attachments, our clinging, and our aversions. It takes courage to not give in to the Five Hindrances⁴.

This viriya, again translated as effort or heroic effort, is the corollary to the second hindrance, which is ill will, hostility, and aversion. The connection between the two, or their meeting ground, is that ill will has energy and power in it. Anger especially has tremendous power that kind of bubbles up. Sometimes I can feel a volcanic way that anger is moving through us. But if anger has ill will with it, then it takes a kind of heroic effort to not give in to that volcano in a way that causes harm. The heroic effort to avoid causing any harm—that is the heart of what this heroic, courageous effort is in Buddhism. Not to cause any harm whatsoever to oneself or to others.

With the energy of anger, the idea is to channel that energy. Don't give up the energy of anger unless it's just over the top. That energy, engagement, and vitality is part of the reason some people like their anger; it can make them feel alive. But if we could take that sense of alive energy and let go of the hostility, keeping the energy of anger, then it's available for powerful, heroic effort. It becomes: "Yes, let's not yell at anyone. Let's show up, let's be present, and not be hostile with our body, our speech, or our mind." And we must do that towards ourselves as well: not to have any hostility towards ourselves, and not to succumb to these inside forces that debilitate us, deprive us, or harm ourselves.

Faith⁵ or confidence, the first of the Five Faculties, sets us on the course of practice. We know something about practice: "This is what I want to do. This is important." The second, heroic effort, is being serious: "This is what I'm going to do." With faith, there is no doubt, only clarity and confidence. It doesn't mean that we are in a hurry, that we strain, or that we put ourselves in a situation where we're going to be discouraged because we're not making progress. It is an embodied way of saying, "Yes, I can give myself to these values, this way of living, this approach to life, where I will avoid causing any harm, and I will do that heroically with courage."

Sometimes the forces of distraction that we practice with in meditation are themselves a running away. They are a comforting avoidance of what is really happening here for us, and it's harmful to avoid and not show up honestly for ourselves. Sometimes meditation practice is sitting in the fire. It is showing up for what's very difficult here with us and learning how to metaphorically stay still, take our seat, be in the middle of it, and not be overcome. It is finding some inner strength, stillness, and inner capacity to stay with what is very difficult rather than getting distracted.

If things become quite peaceful and wonderful in meditation, it might seem like that kind of heroic effort is too much. Probably that's true; that effortful, heroic effort is maybe no longer needed. But maybe it's still heroic. I have had experiences in meditation where I became very, very peaceful, and coming out of meditation, I had to have courage and a lot of confidence or faith that it was okay to stay peaceful when all the people around me were insisting that I should join them in their anger. Join them in condemning people, gossiping, greed, and behavior which is not harmonious with this deep settled feeling of peace. It's a heroic thing to say, "This is where I'm going to maintain this peaceful inner life and be present for what's happening here, but I'm not going to succumb. I'm not going to give in. I'm not going to give it up."

So, faith is what begins the practice. We have confidence that this is a way forward. Even if we're going to experiment, even if we're unsure where this Dharma practice goes, we are willing to give it a try. That is some indication of confidence. What follows that is really committing to it: if you're going to do it, do it with some commitment, strength, and courage. Not anything that causes you to be tense—it's the courage not to be tense. The courage to engage in a peaceful way, and as I keep saying, the courage to be non-harming but to show up with embodied energy and embodied vitality where we take our place.

The Buddha took his place on the night of his Awakening. In the classic statue behind me, the Buddha is touching the very ground upon which he is sitting. In a sense, he is asserting, "This is my place." He didn't have to give in to the forces of greed, hatred, and delusion that assailed him on the night of his Awakening. He stayed upright, still, courageous, unwilling to give in to it, unwilling to collapse, and unwilling to run away. He chose to sit there and be present, really present, here and now.

I hope that this talk on courageous effort has hit the right spot, that it encourages you. The word "encouraged" has the word "courage" in it. I hope it encourages you to have some courage and strength, and to give yourself to the courage of how you are. Be courageous in how you practice, in such a way that it helps you to take refuge in your capacity to be at peace and to be an emissary of peace in this world.

Thank you very much. Tomorrow we will do the faculty of mindfulness, sati⁶.