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Guided Meditation: Deactivation; Dharmette: Quarrels (1 of 5) Wisdom Through Calming - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 30, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Deactivation

Hello, and welcome to this Monday morning. Welcome to participating in this Northern California¹ 7:00 a.m. meditation and this wide community of people. All of you coming together, so I appreciate that you're here and attending.

One of the principles of meditation that's fairly well known is that we are practicing mindfulness, awareness, and concentration for the purpose of going from a more activated state to a calmer state. Meditation is often associated with becoming calm—going from a stressful state to de-stressing and becoming peaceful—but the story doesn't end there.

The purpose of becoming calm and peaceful is not meant to be for its own sake. It's a nice thing to do, for sure, but it has a greater possibility and purpose. That is, when we are calm and centered on ourselves, centered in our body, peaceful, and awake with all the senses in the body—a heightened sensitivity—then that is an access point. It's an entry point or a possibility for a deeper form of intelligence or creativity. Maybe some people would call it intuition, or a more holistic way of thinking, considering, or being attuned to ourselves in this world.

There's a possibility of a profound form of contemplation, consideration, and thinking that is the alternative to thinking about the world and ourselves in a reactive way. Reactive thinking is constricted and narrow. When we are not constricted, agitated, or activated, then deeper sources of consideration and reflection are possible from within. Deeper sources of understanding arise. Some of this understanding might even seem non-verbal, deeper than verbal.

For this sitting, with that idea in mind, if you find yourself in conflict with anything while you're meditating—agitated, upset, or disturbed by anything—this is not the time to think about it, to solve it, to analyze it, or to review it. Instead, as we're meditating, if you become aware of how this is an activated state—if you're critical of anything or upset with yourself in any way—simply consider it an activated state. An agitated state, a more energized state, or maybe a constricted state where attention gets narrowed onto the concern. See if you can relax deeply. Relax it all—not as a betrayal to it all, but rather to relax deeply so when the time is right, maybe at the end of the meditation, you can pick up the concern and reflect on it. Contemplate it with greater wisdom, with a greater capacity for profound attention and profound intelligence.

And if you're not activated by anything—even activated sometimes by good fantasies—then we can just focus on breathing, being simple here in the moment.

Assuming a meditation posture, mindfulness begins in the physical activity of placing ourselves in our meditation posture and taking some care and attention to the little details of how we position our body. Lowering the gaze, maybe closing your eyes, and taking a few moments to feel, notice, and become aware of how it is for you to be breathing right now without any concern of changing it. A curiosity, a discovery of how you are, through how you're breathing.

And if there seems to be some tension in breathing, or over-activation with breathing, very gently as you exhale, relax. Especially at the end of the exhale, relax so the exhale continues for a few brief moments. And as you breathe now, with the exhale, with a gentleness throughout your body, relax. Relax in your body, in the face, the shoulders, the belly.

If, as you're relaxing your body, it feels good to adjust your posture more, you may do so. And then, as you exhale, also relax or soften the thinking mind—the tension or activation that may be associated with thinking.

Then, settling into the body breathing, as if you're accompanying the body's experience of breathing. You're riding along with the movements of the body as you breathe in and breathe out.

If you find yourself upset or activated by anything about yourself, your meditation, about others, or about the world, focus less, or not at all, on the content of the concern. Rather, focus on feeling how it's an activated state, maybe a constricted or pressured state. So then, as you're exhaling, relax the activation. Relax the tension until you can settle back, resting in the experience of breathing.

As you exhale, relax more. Maybe as you inhale, notice where there might be some tension or activation. Without ambition, without trying too hard, on the exhale, relax and settle, content to do so incrementally.

If you notice any activation or active thinking, any tension or pressure anywhere in your system, relax. As you relax, feel your way, settle your way into a deeper peace, a deeper calm. Maybe recognizing where, deep inside, you're the most peaceful and calmest. Let everything settle there.

And then, as we come to the end of this sitting, once again as you exhale, settle more deeply. Maybe extending the exhale so there could be a little bit more relaxation—a little bit of a longer exhale. In that longer letting go, settling into the quietest, maybe the most comfortable place deep within your body, and resting there. In the calmest place within, considering the welfare and happiness of everyone that you know, having an attitude of wishing everyone well. Even the people you have the most difficulty with, wishing them well, happiness, and peace. Partly because, you know, for them to really have happiness and peace, they'll probably behave better.

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: Quarrels (1 of 5) Wisdom Through Calming

Warm greetings from IMC. On this Monday morning, we begin a new five-part theme. The topic of this week will be quarrels—what the Buddha had to say about quarrels and disputes.

The overall context for teaching this is that since the beginning of the year, I've been somewhat emphasizing the practice around challenges: what do we do with the challenges in our lives, and how do we be with them and practice with them? One of the big challenges is the conflicts we have with other people and others in the world—quarrels, disputes, and hostilities that exist. So, that's the topic for this week. It's somewhat topical as world events take more center stage; it seems there's no shortage of growing divisiveness, quarrels, and disputes that people are living with or worried about. Taking a Buddhist perspective—maybe a different perspective than usual—on this, you'll find valuable.

The Buddha addressed quarrels and disputes quite a bit. It seems that, just like in our world, it was a common phenomenon in the ancient world. In his context, the religious communities of his time—the different spiritual seekers, practitioners, and teachers—were in an active environment of debate. People would actively debate in order to conquer their opponent, to defeat them.

One such person came to the Buddha once to challenge him in this competitive, quarrelsome environment of different religious teachings. They asked, perhaps in a belligerent or challenging way, "What is it that you teach?" The Buddha said, "I teach that by which we have no quarrels with anyone in the world." Just hearing that, the person was somehow disturbed, upset, disgusted, and left right away. They just walked away, maybe realizing that the Buddha was not going to engage in doctrinal quarrels and debates.

It's a profound thing that the Buddha said: "I teach that by which we are not in quarrel with anybody in the world." So the question is: what does quarreling mean? Are we just arguing with people? Is there anything we actually have to argue and quarrel about? Is there another alternative? When the Buddha talks about quarrels, one of the primary ways he approaches it, over and over again, is in personal terms. How can we look at ourselves to find the source of quarrels within? What are the psychological conditions that bring us to a situation where we are quarreling and arguing with people in a hostile way?

It can be a little unsatisfying to have the Buddha always pointing back to oneself, because aren't some quarrels interpersonal? We also have to find a way to engage interpersonally in order to work out what's going on and understand it. If we don't confront people who are doing injustice or doing something wrong, are we just going to allow them to continue? Do we just go meditate, get calm, and check out, in a sense? I don't think that's what the Buddha is teaching. He's not someone who checked out. In the way he lived his life, he was constantly showing up, meeting people where they were at, and engaging them. But he did it with such great wisdom and care that his teachings were recorded, and some of us are still finding ourselves quite inspired by him. He was an effective teacher.

There are a number of records of different people coming to the Buddha and asking questions like, "Why is it that people quarrel?" I'll talk about a few of them this week. Probably one of the oldest versions of this, maybe from the earliest time in the Buddha's teaching career when his framework wasn't as greatly developed yet, offers a very simple series of layers within us. As these layers activate each other, rising higher and higher into more activated states, we end up quarreling. Someone comes and asks, "Why do people quarrel and dispute so much?" The Buddha then gives the condition within us that has to be in place in order for us to be ready to quarrel. Then the question is, "Well, where does that come from?" And the Buddha goes deeper, layer by layer, inside.

One way of understanding these layers that the Buddha describes is that he's describing layers of activation and reactivity. The more activated we are, the more reactive we become, and we're triggered to get even more activated. As we get more activated, one of the effects it has on our attention is that it becomes more constricted. It becomes narrowed onto a particular concern, topic, or perspective. We might look at the world through the perspective of only our hurt, only our anger, or only our hostility. We might be looking at it with the perspective that "only that person is wrong," or "that person is evil," or "I'm wrong," or "I'm misunderstood"²—whatever it is. And so the focus gets narrow. The thinking becomes tighter and more constricted. When the Buddha describes going deeper and deeper through these layers, he's describing layers of getting calmer and calmer, more and more settled.

If we understand it this way, we realize the Buddha looks at this from the point of view of how we can practice with it. The point is not just to become calm or peaceful and then stop caring—going about our business not caring that people are harming us or others, or that we have differences of opinion. Rather, as we get calm enough and centered enough, we have available to us a much more intelligent, creative way of thinking. Our thinking is not going to be caught up in a constricted focus; it is not part and parcel of the reactivity. Instead of a reactive consideration of the conflict, we have access to deeper wellsprings of understanding, wisdom, and sensitivity. This deeper place takes into account a broader, wider field of concern and consideration, which is possible when we're deeply relaxed, compared to when we're very tense and everything has gotten constricted.

In these earlier descriptions of the genesis of quarrels—the personal genesis inside of us—the Buddha identifies the immediate condition required for quarreling to be present. In this particular teaching (there are others, so don't take this as the final or only word; maybe it was specific to the person he was addressing), the principle is what I want to emphasize, rather than the absolute accuracy of each point. Someone asks the Buddha, "From where does quarreling come? What is the condition from which it comes?" The Buddha answers that it comes from liking and not liking—having preferences. We like something, we don't like something; we prefer one thing over another. If we can realize that our quarreling, disputes, and argumentativeness have underlying strong preferences, we might have a chance to notice those strong desires for things we want to have and not have, what we like and don't like.

Then the question is, where does that come from within us? We drop down another layer, and as we do, it becomes a slightly calmer state. The condition necessary to have preferences—liking and not liking—is desire. Now, not all desires are wrong; not all liking and disliking is wrong, but they are activated states. As we relax the liking and not liking, we notice we have a deeper desire. This desire is calmer than the activated state of acting on liking and not liking.

And where does desire come from? The answer is that it comes from things being either pleasant or unpleasant. Some things are comfortable or nice for us to experience; other things are not nice or unpleasant. To be able to be present for that level of pleasant and unpleasant is a calmer, more open state of awareness.

So, quarreling involves very constricted attention. Liking and not liking is less constrictive; there's more movement in attention, and it's more open. Dropping further, having simple desire and being aware of it means we're not caught up in the object of desire—what we like and don't like. We're more settled and relaxed. We see we have desire. If we relax the desire, we see that we're operating in relationship to things being pleasant and unpleasant. There's nothing necessarily wrong with pleasant or unpleasant. What's nice about it is that we're much more settled when we're just tuning into the direct experience, here and now, of how things are pleasant and unpleasant.

And where does pleasant and unpleasant come from? The Buddha says it comes from sense contact. It's the simple sensory feelings we have in our body. There is sense contact, and from that comes pleasant and unpleasant. From pleasant and unpleasant come desires. From desires come liking, not liking, and preferences. And once we have preferences, quarrels can arise when we can't get what we want.³ It's a very simple, maybe simplistic, discussion, but the important point I want to make is moving down through the layers. If we can come to a place of relaxed, open, present-moment awareness—being mindfully present for sense contact as it comes and goes—then we don't have the constricted mind. Then we have this greater sensitivity.

From there, we can tap into what the Buddha called contemplation or thinking "from the womb"—from a deeper source within, a generative, gestational source.⁴ This is not a reactive way of thinking. It comes from deep wisdom, a deep inner source of consideration, openness, and sensitivity. From that place, we can now consider the conflicts we have with other people from a very different perspective than if we were caught up in an argument and yelling at people.

The reason the Buddha focuses on the self—taking a deep look at ourselves—is not to dismiss the fact that there's conflict. It's because that is where we can do the most important work. We come to a place where we are ready to discuss the conflict with someone in the best possible state of mind and state of heart. This is one of the reasons why meditation is so useful. It helps us to deactivate. We're defusing ourselves and disarming ourselves from the intensity of anger or upset that isn't going to do anybody any good. We're trying not to deny what's happening or deny ourselves, but to come into the situation from the best place possible.

So, that's the beginning. Thank you very much for being here, and I hope that this discussion this week on quarrels will make our world—at least the local world around us—a more peaceful and compassionate world. Thank you.