This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Where am I Free? (3 of 5) Third Noble Truth - Kodo Conlin. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Where am I Free?; Dharmette: (3 of 5) Third Noble Truth - Kodo Conlin

The following talk was given by Kodo Conlin at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on January 03, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Where am I Free?

Good day, welcome. Today we'll continue with our discussion of the Four Noble Truths. I'm taking nourishment from this chat that I see going along—all these different cities, countries, time zones, morning, afternoon, evening. Here it's just about dawn and there's a gentle rain that I can hear on the roof. Perfect sounds for meditating, so let's start there.

Our meditation this morning will be a simple one. We'll begin the settling process, and once the bodies are still and the breathing begins to regulate, then I'll just offer one question for reflection.

Let's begin by inviting stillness from the inside out. It helps to be settled squarely on your seat or support, arranging the hands so the shoulders aren't pulled forward. And for a few times, breathing in such a way that you breathe all the way down the torso as far as the breathing will go, and all the way out.

Allowing the breathing to return to normal when you're ready, self-regulating and letting go of any extra tension in the limbs, arms, and hands, hips, thighs, knees, down to the heel and the toes. Settling.

Staying here with what's more simple. Simple breathing. Simple sensation in a way that's peaceful.

Meditating for these minutes, the degree of settledness may have increased. Maybe from a one to a two, maybe a five to an eight. To offer this question into our meditation, not for pondering, just to see what responds:

Right now, where am I free? Where can I sense freedom just now?

In a moment I will ring the bell to end the sitting. What would it be, or how might it be possible, to extend any sense of peace or freedom beyond the sitting? Extending any sense of freedom beyond this meeting into the activities of the day. May all beings keep freedom close.

Dharmette: (3 of 5) Third Noble Truth

Welcome again. This morning, continuing with the discussion of the Four Noble Truths, some reflections on the third Noble Truth: the cessation of suffering. Part of what I want to emphasize this morning is a reflection for us, and that is how to orient ourselves and our practice toward a radical freedom in a way that inspires us and keeps us encouraged.

As we've been talking about the last couple of days, the task of the first Noble Truth is to understand the nature of suffering and to observe it in our direct experience. The task of the second Noble Truth is to abandon that craving that leads on to becoming and suffering—to abandon it the way we might abandon a sinking ship for our own well-being.

And then we come to the third Noble Truth, which has the task of being realized. It's to be made real; it's to be known and seen directly. In the classic sutta¹ on this topic, Setting in Motion the Wheel of the Dhamma², the Buddha puts it this way: "Now this, bhikkhus³, is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering. It is the remainderless fading away and cessation of that same craving (the craving of the second Noble Truth), the giving up and relinquishing of it, freedom from it, non-reliance on it."

Remainderless fading, cessation, giving up, relinquishing, freedom, non-reliance. I wonder what you hear, but I hear a certain kind of independence, a certain kind of agency, something powerful about, in a certain sense, being freed from the influence of this craving in our lives, not relying on it. It sounds so refreshing just to say that set of words.

Gil [Fronsdal]⁴, in writing about Nibbana⁵—the ending of suffering—puts it this way. He says Nibbana, which we could say is the one-word definition of the third Noble Truth, is the good news of Theravada⁶ Buddhism. I like that; it keeps us encouraged. So he puts it this way: "Nibbana literally means to go out like a fire or to cool, and applied to the mind it refers to the extinguishing of the fevers of greed, hate, and delusion, the three roots of suffering. The Buddha's choice of this term Nibbana was intimately tied to the imagery of his famous Fire Sermon, where he describes all the senses as on fire—on fire with greed, hatred, and delusion."

It's a really interesting choice to use fire imagery to talk about Nibbana, because in what we've seen, one of the conditions for the arising of suffering is clinging. Sense contact conditions a certain kind of craving, which conditions clinging, identity, and so on to suffering. And there's this really interesting point about the Pali word: the Buddha's word for clinging, upadana⁷, is the same as the word for fuel. And if you take the fuel away, then the fire can't burn and suffering is extinguished. Gil sums it up by saying, "Understanding how deep-rooted and subtle this clinging is in our own minds, our own unliberated minds, we come to appreciate the mind of Nibbana as refreshingly cool and peaceful."

So something about the third Noble Truth—the cessation of that very craving, the breaking of the chains of conditions that lead from ignorance to craving to dukkha⁸ to suffering—something about it is that it's utterly radical in the extent to how free one can be. If you look at the Buddha's teaching, he describes the possibility of a freedom that is complete, totally extinguished, free from suffering. A radical freedom. The old image is like one's ignorance is made like a palm stump. If you can imagine a palm tree that's been cut down, no tree will grow from that stump or root again; it's that final. So is the ending of suffering that's possible in the Buddha's teaching.

And this points us right to what I want to say about the art of relating to the third Noble Truth, and that is: how can we do so in a way that's encouraging and inspiring for us and for others, without getting discouraged? Actually, when thinking about such a radical possibility of freedom, one thing that can come up is great inspiration and energy. Another thing that could happen is a sort of measuring stick that comes up in the mind and measures the metaphorical miles from "Oh, this is my mind now" to "Oh, that's a million miles away. Freedom is a million miles away from here." People can get discouraged from that.

So part of the art is how to stay encouraged, how to relate to a radical ideal and stay encouraged. We have a lot of help with this in the tradition. One of the first things is a frame of mind: just in the way that dukkha (suffering) is not abstract, it's right here, so too can we look right here for freedom. We can look right here in what's here for freedom. To this extent, it's not an abstract thing. When the Buddha's monks were described as the "happy ones", and in a conversation with Sariputta⁹, one of the Buddha's chief disciples, we learn that it's visible, it's evident. Freedom can be seen with our own eyes—not abstract, but something right here, something tangible.

Some of the ways to stay encouraged... these are the things I want to offer. First, this principle: recognizing that there are pleasures all along the way of the path. There's nourishment all along the way. We're very well supported along the path from here to the final goal of Dharma practice. One is a sort of nourishment we know well, and those are the pleasures of mindfulness practice. Others might be the joys of Sangha¹⁰ (community). I think now of this community that's here on these weekday mornings, sitting and reflecting together. There are the nourishments of the well-being of receiving compassion and of giving it. There's the beauty, encouragement, and insight of the discoveries that we have in our meditation, and then how those affect us off the cushion, so to speak—maybe the sort of lightness and peace that extend into our day. And then, of course, the happiness of concentration and what they call the bliss of blamelessness, the nourishment of a mind free of regret. So many joys to keep us encouraged along the way from here to the end of the path.

One I'd like to talk just a little bit about are called the temporary liberations of the mind, ceto-vimutti¹¹. Ceto is mind, vimutti is liberation. And it's so interesting looking in the old texts that there are a number of liberations of the mind that actually aren't all the way at the end of the path. They don't wait for us to arrive however many miles away before experiencing them and being nourished by them.

One is related to the practice of loving-kindness. We get a sense of this when we practice metta¹²; just in a moment, wishing well, cultivating an intention of goodwill brings so much beauty and lightness into the heart. Just a moment of it feels so good. And then that practice of metta becomes a liberation of the mind when it's cultivated to such an extent that the heart and mind are sort of suffused with loving-kindness, and the mind becomes quite unified without an experience of a boundary between inside and outside. It's a very beautiful state, and qualifies as a temporary liberation of mind.

The same process holds for compassion. And this is really interesting because it keeps us in contact, it keeps us related with the suffering of the world. Our practice happens right here with all this, and the practice of compassion keeps our heart alive, awake, beautiful. We know that suffering is right here, but there's a way of cultivating compassion to the extent—just as with metta—that compassion suffuses the heart and the mind, and the mind unifies in such a way that we have a sort of temporary liberation of the mind. One of these encouragements that's available to us.

I describe these just so we know that, say we're walking along quite a long path, you can trust that you're going to find the nourishment you need as you go. I'd like to wrap all this up with the image of a sailboat. You can imagine embarking in one of two ways. You can embark on the sailboat with this attitude of, "Oh, how I wish for the shore! The shore is so far away from me, I'm pining." Do we hear the craving and the clinging and the becoming and the dukkha? That attitude hurts right away. And then we can turn our mindfulness to that if that's the attitude that comes up. So that's the first attitude with which we can embark.

The other is an attitude that knows we have the provisions for the journey. We have the faculties, we have the patience, we've got the resources and the resourcefulness. We can trust our ingenuity and our energy. We have a map and compass and rope and enough food, and we have this attitude of setting out: "We can do this. I can set out on my boat, I can tack this way and that. I know how to stay safe on the path, and I can treasure the sea." Which of these two attitudes can we take out? Which one do we prefer? And which one enjoys the sea and arrives at a shore of peace?

So may we all be oriented and encouraged, prepared and endeavor together on this path of the third Noble Truth, the final ending of suffering. Tomorrow we'll turn to the fourth Noble Truth and look at how we put the conditions in place for the arising of this liberating wisdom. Take care, may all beings be free and treasure the path.