This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Benevolence Within; Ten Protectors (1 of 10) Virtuous Conduct. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Benevolence Within; Dharmette: Ten Protectors (1 of 10) Virtuous Conduct - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 02, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Benevolence Within

Sitting down here for the first time in three weeks, I feel very delighted, happy, and I wish you a warm greeting here from the Insight Meditation Center, and a warm greeting from the momentum of the three-week retreat that I was just teaching at our Insight Retreat Center. It's nice that they ended on Saturday. It's nice now to come Monday morning and sit here. When I just first arrived here it was still dark, and just like going for the morning meditation at the retreat center, it was still dark. So, thank you for being here.

One of the challenges around meditation is to avoid over-prioritizing thinking, certainly to avoid being stuck in thinking. It might be useful to consider the role of ordinary thinking, discursive thinking. The useful role that it has is it's a bridge between an inner source within and our action, how we live. If we understand that to be a bridge, then we see that action is more important than thinking. We learn more about ourselves in our actions than we do in our thoughts, even though many people are trying to understand themselves, trying to understand something through thinking. We understand more of ourselves through action than thinking.

If our thinking is a bridge to understand, to be in touch with a source within—exactly what the source is, maybe each person needs to discover for themselves—but it's the source from where generosity flows, where love flows, kindness, benevolence, where respect for others and for oneself, the source for an inner peace and well-being, the source for an inner intuition for wisdom, for acting on love, acting on kindness, acting on generosity. These wonderful positive motivations and impulses have a source within us. They don't just kind of appear out of thin blue air. And it's possible to be disconnected from them partly by being overly preoccupied with thinking, and partly because more surface reactivities dominate for us: our aversions, our desires, our greeds.

Meditation is a place where we more discover this source within than action. But in discovering that source within for this whole nurturing, tender, kind strength that we are capable of having inside, we discover it there so that when we act, we can act from that place mediated by our thinking.

So, to assume a meditation posture. Perhaps you find a posture that provides you with some sense, or some approximation, or some intimation of an inner strength that is also intimately connected to a kind of tenderness or a simplicity of being. That gentleness, tenderness, and gentleness are trying to point to a way of being where we're not asserting ourselves, demanding things of the world and of ourselves, not fending things off, involved in conflicts and fights. It's a simplicity of being, at least in our inner life, finding a place within that will provide wisdom for how we act in the world later.

And then gently closing the eyes and taking a few moments to feel in your body whatever place you think might be the source for your goodness, for benevolence, for kindness. And from that place, as if the breathing begins there, taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. Maybe an expansion of the body as you breathe in that spreads outwards from that source and returns to it on the exhale.

Letting your breathing return to normal. And as you exhale, continue to relax parts of your body: your face, your shoulders, your belly. But doing so is a settling in through some source within that you might intuit, or use your best guess where such a source might be.

Feeling whatever tension, or pressure, or weariness there might be in the thinking mind, and gently relax the thinking mind as you exhale.

And then, if it is comfortable for you to settle into your body breathing, where the beginning of your breathing, of the inhale, is connected to some place inside, deep inside in your torso perhaps, where there's a feeling of inner intimacy, or stillness, or calm. As you exhale, letting go of thoughts and letting go into that stillness, that intimate, quiet, maybe tender place.

If thinking is the bridge between some inner source of benevolence, goodness, and our actions, and the action of meditation involves having thinking gently, quietly point us back to an inner source of tenderness, goodness, a place of safety and goodwill. Gently, simple thoughts bring you back to that inner source, that inner quiet.

And as we come to the end of this sitting, to see now, feel now for any place within that feels tender or gentle. A place where self-preoccupation, self-assertion, anxiety around self is lessened, is quiet. Maybe a place of softness or warmth, a place from where love, kindness can arise, a place that can receive love or kindness, can recognize it. And consider if you're in touch with such a place within, that this is something that is worth protecting, safeguarding, because it safeguards us, it protects us to stay close to this.

And may we, at the end of this sitting, wish this for others: that they feel an inner safety and well-being that connects them to the source of benevolence in their own hearts and their own body. May all beings receive and offer the full palette of benevolence that humans are capable of. May all beings have the safety that allows for them to be generous, and kind, and friendly. May all beings have the trust that allows them to rest in inner safety and well-being. May all beings have the freedom to be able to act from the benevolent source within. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may we find ways to support this in the world.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Ten Protectors (1 of 10) Virtuous Conduct

So hello and welcome to this Monday where we begin a new theme for 7:00 a.m. teachings, our 7:00 a.m. explorations. I'll be here for the next two weeks and then I go back to teach another weeklong retreat. So in these two weeks, it's ten of these weekday morning sittings, and so I'm inspired to use as the basis for these ten days what's called the Ten Protectors, the ten supports.

This word nātha¹ can mean someone who really is a protector, someone who safeguards others, and also someone who helps, someone who supports. The idea is that there are these ten protectors that we have in how we live, how we act in the world, the attitudes we have, the motivations we have, and that these ten protectors are something we can call upon, something we can have as a protection. This assumes that there is something worth protecting.

It's not, you know, ourselves in the general way we might be concerned about ourselves, because we have all kinds of complicated relationships with ourselves, all kinds of complicated, maybe some not-so-helpful attitudes about me, myself, and mine, and even selfishness that comes along. We're not trying to protect our selfishness, but to protect a deep source within.

I use the word "source"—maybe the concept should be held a little bit lightly—but we have anxiety, for example, that's the source for fretting and worrying about our life and the future. That anxiety could be felt physically somewhere in our body that's activated and tense. Maybe we could have a feeling of a different kind of tension inside, a different kind of maybe hurt or anger that can be the source for ill will and even hostility. We have sources within, or a place, or a location, or some conditions that need to be in place for us to come into the world with generosity, with benevolence, with kindness, with friendliness, with a sense of care for the world and ourselves.

That source on the inside tends to be overridden, covered over, or obscured by an overly active mind that's driven by anxiety, hostility, conceit, or desires of what we want, lust and greed. When those kinds of things settle and quiet down, then these deeper motivations, a deeper way of being, can show themselves. It can appear as we get calmer, more subtle, and it can be quite wonderful to feel a deep sense of inner intimacy in the here and now, in the present moment with our lived experience that's below the discursive level of thought where we might often be caught up, discursive thinking that's driven by these more unhealthy or obscuring attitudes and motivations.

So we settle and come into the present moment through our body, and at some point there might be a feeling of "I'm home." There's an intimacy, there's a place where there's more wisdom, more sensitivity. That sense or feeling for that inside—which I call a source, though it's not meant to be identifiable as, "Okay, right there is where it is"—sometimes there's a more effusive place within. Maybe somewhere in the torso, in the belly. Some people might associate it with the heart, some people with the belly, some people in some other effusive way that spreads through the body, a sense of goodness or wellness that is there.

This is worth protecting. This needs a protector for us because the way life is, the way that we are sometimes caught up in the world, not only can obscure it, but can also limit it or even damage it in some ways. So we need to know how to call upon those things that will protect it.

The first thing in this list of ten is virtuous conduct: the actions that we do in the world. That we do actions which are ethical or are wholesome, that are beneficial in the world, that do not cause harm. Non-harming actions in the world. Thinking about this, it's useful to consider that sometimes we learn more about ourselves through our actions than through our thinking. I think some people in the modern world have become excessively preoccupied with their thoughts, trying to think their way out of everything, or to figure out everything, or understand everything, as if thinking is a vehicle for making sense of the world, making sense of oneself, protecting oneself, planning better for the future, remembering all about the past to make it better.

Certainly, thoughts have a very important role in our lives, but it's not necessarily where we come to the best understanding of ourselves. In many ways, we understand ourselves better through actions, what we do in our lives and what we say in our lives. If we see and hear and understand that, then actions become a window into understanding something deeper about ourselves.

The role that thinking has is to be a bridge between our actions, our speech, and some source within. If the source within is anxiety and anger and hostility, greed and lust, then the actions have a particular shape and form. But if the source is this place of benevolence, non-assertiveness, non-conceit, non-hostility, non-greed, non-lust, then thinking is the medium, a bridge for that place to come into the world in our actions.

And it goes in both directions. Our actions protect this inner place of goodness, and it's really worth protecting. The more people meditate, for example (there are other ways of tapping into this), the more we understand this is health, this is a kind of inner health, inner beauty, inner freedom that's worth protecting. It's a place that recognizes the value of being truthful, recognizes it in ourselves, recognizes it in others. It's a place that resonates with kindness. It's a place that acknowledges or confirms the value of friendliness or generosity, and it can see it in others, see it in the world, and respond to it. It can offer it to the world.

So one of the ways to protect this place is to live a life of virtuous conduct, to live a life that abstains from doing the things that we know are going to harm other people or we suspect might harm other people. The tradition certainly lists five things that are harmful. It's harmful to be killing or physically harming others with violence. It's harmful to others to steal, to take what is not given. It's harmful to others to be involved in sexual misconduct, sexuality which takes advantage of people, where we assert ourselves over people, there's an aggression in the sexuality, there is a deceit in it, there's lying, there is a lack of respect for the other person, a lack of respect for other partners that we have. We harm by lying, and we harm indirectly ourselves and others with the consumption of alcohol and recreational drugs, and a lot of harm gets done in our society from this.

There might be other ways in which we harm, but at least for these five areas, to really protect our inner goodness, to help discover it and let it flourish, these things are really important. So in the list of these ten protectors, our actions can protect. There's a bridge, there's a channel between these actions of living a life of ethical integrity and this inner life, and that bridge, that channel is our thinking. If we know that we're living ethically, know that we're not causing other people harm intentionally in overt ways, that's to be celebrated, that's to be appreciated.

To have thoughts that have inner confidence that we're not causing harm, thoughts that recognize it, appreciate that, and letting those thoughts point us back to that place, the source within that resonates, that recognizes the inner wholesomeness of living without motivations to harm anyone at all, without any hostility or any greed that can cause harm. There is this kind of sensibility, sensitivity that exists within us, that that's what feels the best: the intuition of our goodness, the intuition of our ethical integrity, the intuition of a deeper wellspring of benevolence that we can live our life by.

So the first protector we have is our actions, and specifically being careful to live a wholesome life based on the Five Precepts²: not to kill or physically harm people, not to steal, not to engage in sexual misconduct, not to lie, and not to abuse intoxicants.

I hope that on this day, as we go through these ten protectors, that we can have that, the kind of most obvious because they can be seen. And maybe you could take a look at your actions and your speech and consider where your actions, where your speech comes from. Is there a way of speaking, a way of acting that you feel safeguards something precious within?

Thank you very much, and I look forward to it tomorrow.