This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Silence, Stillness, and Space; Introduction to Mindfulness (25 of 25) Freedom. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness (25 of 25) Freedom; Guided Meditation: Silence, Stillness and Space; Q&A with Gil - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 23, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Silence, Stillness and Space

Hello and welcome to the Insight Meditation Center YouTube meditation session. I'm very happy to sit here with all of you who are participating. This is the 25th of the 25 introduction to meditation sessions.

Mindfulness has a lot to do with noticing what is happening, and with that kind of emphasis, it's easy to overlook that one of the things that is happening is the absence of things. Things disappear and they're no longer there. Suffering disappears and is no longer there. And the absence is significant. Absence allows for silence. Absence allows for stillness. Absence allows for spaciousness.

Sometimes when we practice mindfulness, what stands out as the predominant experience, or what stands out as a significant thing to take in and let register, are these absences—the absences of suffering, the absence of tension. In that absence, there's a kind of nourishment, some goodness there sometimes, that you want to take in, that if we go on to the next happening thing, we don't take time to register and receive the benefits of those absences. The absence of noise is silence. The absence of agitation is stillness. The absence of contraction is space, spaciousness.

These qualities can always be present to some degree in some ways, and certainly searching for them or trying to make them happen is not helpful, but sometimes they support mindfulness. As we're paying attention to suffering, as we're paying attention to agitation, as we're paying attention to ways where the mind is tight and contracted, there can also be a connection to silence in the noise. There's also silence; an important part of music is the silence between the notes. In the agitation, there can be stillness. You probably wouldn't know you were agitated unless there was some reference to stillness, maybe a subconscious one. And the absence of contraction—just on the edges of the contraction, the edges of the tightness and tension, just beyond the edges of our thoughts, there is space.

So with that as an introduction, maybe during this sitting you can from time to time notice if any of these qualities of silence, stillness, and space is there for you. Maybe at the end of every exhale. Maybe if you let your thoughts drift off, away, let go of your thoughts. Maybe there, at the end of the sentence that you're saying, the end of the image, some of these three qualities are there.

Maybe mindfulness itself, mindfulness in the middle of everything, the awareness itself has these qualities. Maybe in the middle of awareness there is silence, stillness, spaciousness, and it makes a world of difference to be aware centered on those qualities than it would be for the awareness to be noisy, agitated, or contracted.

So we'll sit in silence and allow you to be your own teacher, give yourself your own guidance for sitting here for these next 20 or so minutes.

[Silence]

And as we near the end of this sitting, finding where in your body do you feel softness? A soft sense of being. Maybe there's softness associated with breathing, maybe with the belly, maybe some places on the edge of your body, along the skin, the arms, the chest.

And is there any softness in the mind? Maybe it's easy to find tightness and contraction, agitation, but is there also softness in the mind? Maybe the softness that is on the edges of the mind, touching the space and the silence beyond the mind.

Maybe a softness in the heart. And if the heart is not so soft, maybe at the center of the heart, inside of the tightness or protectiveness, there's a place, a spot of softness.

And in whatever softness you have associated with, might there also be some sense of silence? The space of the mind that tends to be filled with words and images now has more silence in it than before. A stillness in the body, a softness associated with spacious feeling and sensing within, without, outside of you, the edges between you and the outer world where there might be stillness, silence, spaciousness that can hold all things. That is soft.

And in that stillness and softness, silence, can you feel a selflessness? Freedom from self-concern.

And staying centered in all of this, bring to mind the world of people and events, activities you'll be involved in today or tomorrow. Gaze upon it with stillness and quiet, and bring forth whatever well-wishing, goodwill, loving-kindness, care you might have for others. Let that be supported by the softness, the stillness.

And wish everyone well. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may the way that you remain soft and peaceful be a means by which you support this to happen. May all beings be happy.

Thank you.

So I just posted in the chat the link for our community meeting in 15 minutes or so, and you'll probably have to copy it and paste it into your browser or into Zoom. The link is also on IMC's homepage in the bottom right-hand corner; there's a section called "What's New," and you will find it there also. I don't think you'll need the password with how the link is set up, but if you do need a password, the password is "mettā"¹. It'll take me a couple of minutes to log on myself, so if some of you do before 7:45, just wait for me.

Dharmette: Introduction to Mindfulness (25 of 25) Freedom

Hello, and as I start this last talk on introduction to mindfulness meditation—and considering that this is the last of 25—I'd like to say that I plan to continue with this kind of series starting next week. Maybe we'll call this "Intermediate Mindfulness" or "Introduction to Mindfulness Part Two," but I think that there's much more to say that kind of builds on what we've done so far and is all at the heart of mindfulness practice.

For today, in a sense, maybe it's poignant at the very end. In the end, where this is coming to a conclusion, all things must end. All things come to a time when they are not there, except saved on the internet! But all things are not there, and what follows the end of things is an absence. That absence, of course, can lead us to loneliness and sadness and grief, all kinds of things when things come to an end and we miss them or we love them. There's also something very poignant in absence that we can find sometimes in this practice.

Maybe it depends on what the absence is, but one of the key absences we're looking for in the Dharma is the absence of suffering. When that absence is there, that is sweet or that is freeing. That's very nourishing, to feel our existence without suffering as part of it. So one of the things that we want to be attuned to when we do mindfulness, and recognize, is in fact absence.

There's a very strong instruction in mindfulness practice to pay attention to what is happening. What is happening is certainly central to this enterprise, but we also want to include when some things are no longer there. If we're caught up in distracted thinking and it just goes on and on, and then when it's absent, when it stops finally, don't just go on to the next happening. Take time to register, "Oh, that feels good, how it's good, that absence of thinking." If you're filled with anger and the anger dissipates and disappears, take time to register the goodness of that absence, what's available, what it feels like to have that absence.

Absence doesn't make for a very sharp object of attention. It's more amorphous or diffuse, almost bordering on imagination. We know in our imagination or memory that something was there and is not here now. There's tension in our bodies that we carry, and if the tightness in the body dissolves, there's the absence of that tension. How does the body feel then without it?

As we sit and meditate, being mindful of what is, part of what is, is absence. Some of the qualities of absence that can stand out really strongly is this marvelous sense of silence in the mind. The mind is not thinking so much, or thinking at all. A marvelous sense of stillness. I love the image of a very still, quiet morning lake before the sun rises, all the animals and birds are quiet and there is no wind, and it's just so peaceful and still. Sometimes you can feel that inside.

Sometimes there's the absence of claustrophobic objects—all this stuff happening, and sensations, and this and that—and there's a sense of spaciousness in awareness. A lot of thinking makes the mind claustrophobic, maybe, but the spacious mind has lots of room.

The nourishing part of stillness, silence, and spaciousness I associate with when there's softness as part of it, or diffusiveness as part of it, where there are not a lot of constructs of self. Where even self-centeredness and self-concern drop away, there's a kind of selfless quality in it. This absence of self-concern, an absence of self-referencing, an absence of self-constructing itself, measuring everything according to the self. A feeling or experience of absence of self, even, is also soft and wonderful and peaceful. Absence has a quality of freedom in it.

All these wonderful absences can be experienced in mindfulness itself when mindfulness is just a clear awareness of what is. In that clear awareness, almost like the clarity itself, you can see the clarity is the absence of smudges, the absence of obstacles to seeing. In that clarity, then, there's an absence of noise, an absence of agitation, an absence of contraction in the clarity of mind that is mindfulness. When mindfulness is really strong and centered, it's characterized by these absences, which are almost synonymous with freedom. A sense of clear independence where mindfulness knows what's happening, but in knowing it, is independent of what is happening—not entangled, not caught, not reactive. That absence of being caught, the absence of being entangled, the freedom from suffering that's there—this is one of the great experiences that mindfulness can bring.

What's wonderful about this is that this kind of freedom, this kind of experience, in a certain way is portable. You can bring it with you into the world. When the experience of freedom is strong enough, then you probably always have a reference point. We're too busy sometimes to notice it, but just to be able to turn towards it and see, "Ah, there's that freedom, there's that refuge of stillness, spaciousness, silence, softness. This refuge of freedom right there, here it's with me." And then mindfulness becomes a wonderful nourishment that promotes greater and greater freedom.

So thank you for being part of this 25-session introduction to mindfulness. I hope this has supported you. Some of you have probably been practitioners for a long time, and some of you are more beginners, and some of you are experienced beginners. Either way, I hope that the introductory instructions are useful for everyone.

So thank you, and I put the chat for our community meeting the link. If you scroll up hopefully you can see it, and if you're not connected to the chat for YouTube, you'll find the link on the IMC homepage on the bottom right. There's a section called "What's New," and there it says "YouTube Community Meeting," and if you click on that, you'll see the link there. I'll be there in just a couple of minutes. For those of you who don't want to go or don't know how to find your way to the Zoom, we'll remain here broadcasting on YouTube so you can just continue. If we do a breakout group for the Zoom people, then I'll just stay here and maybe I can chat with a few of you that are here on YouTube. So thank you very much.

Q&A with Gil

Gil Fronsdal: So it looks like it worked and pretty easily. I see some of you found it, and can you do a thumbs up that you can hear me? Great. Let me check here a little bit more on things. Great, so I think that I am still on YouTube. So I think we're set for that. Yep, we're still on YouTube. For those of you staying, then very nice, and I'll try to switch back and forth on my screen between the two. But now I will go to Zoom again. There we go.

Okay, so wonderful to see you. Maybe people are still coming. I'll start by saying how grateful I am for all of you who come to YouTube. It's been a wonderful thing to be able to offer these kinds of teachings. When I first decided to dedicate my life to Buddhist practice, which was now over 40 years ago, the image I had for myself was that I was going to be a Zen priest and monk, and I'd have the key to a small storefront meditation center in some city. That pretty much was just like a room that I had the key to, and I'd keep the place clean, and I'd go early in the morning and open up the door and sit and meditate with whoever came to support their meditation.

So this idea of getting up in the morning and sitting with people was something that's always been in my mind as a central part of what my life was going to be about. I do that on retreats, certainly; I'm very happy I get up for the first sitting and I love doing it. But here, since we started this YouTube in California at 7:00 AM, I just delight at the chance to get up in the morning, get ready, have breakfast, and then come down here and be able to sit with people. It's not quite a storefront we have here, but I don't know exactly what this YouTube space is. It's very, very satisfying and I'm happy to be a part of this and to do this.

I can't imagine that we'll stop doing this YouTube now. When I go away to do something, we have these wonderful teachers who come and teach for me. I can imagine someday in the future that maybe there'll be a transition where I teach less and some of those teachers teach more, but for the time being I have no plans to do things differently as we're doing it now.

I do have some concern for how to continue to support those of you whose primary connection is through YouTube this way. Some of you might find it very interesting—some of you already do—that with the pandemic we've started to offer day-long retreats and longer retreats on Zoom. Some of them are called hybrid, where some participants are in person at our retreat center and then lots of people can do it online on Zoom. It's not uncommon for us to have retreats with 100 people on Zoom and 40 people at the retreat center, which is the maximum we can hold. We have day-longs as well on Zoom through Insight Retreat Center (IRC).

I know that Matthew Brensilver² also wants to offer something for us on YouTube. I need to be in conversation with him on how he wants to maybe add an additional thing weekly, which I think would be quite wonderful. Many of you know him and find him wonderful. And of course, many of you know that Nikki Mirghafori³ and now Liz Powell and some others are also offering happy hours sometimes on YouTube. So there's more and more available as we go along here.

Do you have any questions you'd like to ask, maybe from this intro meditation series or from anything at all that's somehow related to what we're doing here? It would be best if you can raise your Zoom hand. In the bottom screen of your screen there's a menu, and it should say "reaction," and now you finally have a chance, you're allowed to have a reaction and push a button. I'll see your hand and can call on you. Padma? Let's try again Padma.

Padma: Can you hear me? Yes, thank you. Thank you, Gil. Thank you for all your services, and I'm grateful that IMC came into my life like seven years ago, and it's been nothing but blissful. A couple of questions. I attended all these 25 sessions. Even though I've been practicing for a while, I'm still a beginner, and I notice it, and it's really nice when I notice how the mind is going. But my question is, isn't the noticing part still the mind? That's question number one. Question number two is completely different, which is, I've had this thought for a while, I think I talked to a couple of teachers too: it's like I wish IMC had this community living. I want to just live and breathe in the community. What are your thoughts on that? I mean, it's more like going into the monastery style, I guess. I think it would be such a great thing to have it in California, and I'm sure I'd love to contribute in any way I can.

Gil Fronsdal: Thank you, very good questions. Let me see if I can repeat the first one. We're practicing mindfulness of everything, mindfulness of the mind, but the mindfulness itself, the noting itself, is the mind. And so you're a little confused about that, like, how can the mind know itself? Or you're kind of stuck in the mind, you can't get out of it.

Padma: It's not like I'm stuck. It is nice, I do get those moments of quietness, stillness, and I don't even feel my body, and it's beautiful. It's just like a floating sensation, and then slowly I'm like, "Is it still my mind?" But I'm not stuck there, I'm just going through the waves still, right?

Gil Fronsdal: Yes, that's nice. So I don't think you should worry about it. In a certain kind of way, everything is mind. Sometimes it seems like we're surfacing to make a note to recognize what's going on, and so you just recognize, "Oh, I feel like I'm surfacing," and then you make the note, maybe, or don't make a note. Sometimes you can start feeling yourself surface as the intention to note comes up with a thought, and then you say, "No thank you," and then you settle back in again.

Just be relaxed about it all, because it's the rhythm of maybe coming up and having a note and then not being ruffled by it, and then you settle again. There are times when there's no need to make any note. There's no need to have this active recognition. But that's mostly when things are very, very quiet and still and empty. It'll come in and come out, and your job is just to be at ease with whatever happens at that point. Part of that ease is, at this point, no need to figure it out, because figuring it out is an agitated mind. Does that help?

Padma: Yes.

Gil Fronsdal: Okay. With this retirement community or IMC place where people can live together, that would be lovely to have. Sometimes I've thought it would be nice to—there's an apartment building next door here, and I don't know how many units it has, maybe 10 units or something. I thought, "Wow, if we or someone could buy it, we could have a community of people living right next door," and that would be nice. People are complicated, so it'll have its other aspects.

Many people have asked for a retirement community. The San Francisco Zen Center has just opened one that took at least 10 or almost 20 years of planning. They didn't know what they were doing, so one person who was the vice president at a certain time, with not a lot of support from the community, thought, "We have to do this." They researched and planned and created the connections to make it happen, and they failed, and they started again, and then it worked. Now I think it has 200 units, and people are now moving in. Some of the people I've talked to who moved in there love it. It's a Buddhist retirement community, and it's actually a Buddhist-Quaker partnership, which is kind of special.

From what I've seen from the San Francisco Zen Center, there's a model in this country for how to create retirement communities that are supported by some of the churches. Some of the big denominations have these non-profit wings; this is what they do, they create retirement communities. The Quakers have a preeminent one; it's a really high-quality and caring way of doing it. So there's a way of doing it and partnering with people who are in the business of it, but it's a lot of work. If one person put their full-time task to it, that could probably be done. I would love to see it happen for us, but I don't see the volunteer who's going to step forward to make it happen unless you want to do it!

Padma: Thanks again.

Gil Fronsdal: Thank you. So I see a hand, I got to look in the right place and for that I have to put on my glasses. Mary Lou.

Mary Lou: Thank you, Gil. These weeks have been so helpful, and I'm glad we're going to go deeper in the coming weeks. My question today is about earlier this week; you were discussing the aperture of mindfulness moving close or moving far away. Lately, I've had some work anxiety, concern for another being, and there's not much I can do really about the situation. I have just had waves of emotion during the cushion and off the cushion. Of course, when it happens on the cushion, there's a part of me that's like, "No, I want to be settling and following the guidance," but I can't. It feels like there is no way I can step further away. So then I just follow what I believe is the instruction: if something's predominant, you stay there and it ebbs and flows, comes and goes. My question is, is there a skillful way, or should I or could I be learning to step further away when something like that happens? What does widening an aperture look like when something is emotional? How does it look to step further away?

Gil Fronsdal: Great, wonderful question. It stood out for me that you were talking specifically about how to be mindful with it. There are other practices to do, like equanimity, that might be helpful sometimes, but let's just stay with the mindfulness for now. It struck me that you talked about it being waves, about ebbs and flows. You see, there's some freedom in you to be able to just let it pass through and be there and know that it's passing through, as opposed to getting locked into it. So you're already in a good spot.

One of the things that might be helpful is to just accept that this is the human condition. People have had these kinds of feelings, this kind of loss, this kind of concern for people for millennia. This is the human condition. Not to dismiss it or belittle it, but to allow yourself to accept your humanity. Life is hard, life has this part as part of it. In some sense, of course, we want to have this capacity to feel sadness and concern because we love, and this is part of love.

With that kind of acceptance, then very carefully and lovingly, just allow it to be there. Allow it to just be and move through you, but pay attention to it until maybe you start seeing, "Oh, look at that, there's resistance there. Look at that, I'm holding on to something there." Or, "Look at that, I'm thinking of myself as a victim of all this." See where the extra is. What are you doing that's extra without disrespecting the basic feeling? Because it might be very normal what you're experiencing, but slowly tease apart what's extra, where the attachments are or the clinging is. Maybe you assign meaning to it, and this assigning a meaning is, after a while, extra. It may just be simpler to be with it.

That clarity then might help you to do what you're asking to do: to step away from it. One way to do that more specifically is to use mental noting. Let's call it waves for now, just generic. There's a wave, and then you can just recognize it as "wave," but pay attention to the tone of voice in which you're saying it. The way you're relating to it or involved with it might be contained in the voice. You might be a little bit afraid of it, and so, "Oh, wave coming. Oh, wave," and you can hear that in the voice. Or it's anger, or confusion, or something. See if you can find a place to use the mental note that's free of that reactivity. That might create the distance you're looking for, the bigger aperture you're looking for. Then it might be easier to say, "Oh, okay, now I have this bigger point of view to hold it in."

Mary Lou: Yes. Thank you.

Gil Fronsdal: Thank you. So then, is it Zoo? How do you pronounce your name?

Zoo: I got it. My question is about my posture. I was unable to sit for a very long time, so I started lying down with my back on the floor and my legs on a chair. I've been doing that for maybe two or three years. Finally, the injury has resolved itself and I can actually sit again. I find that I actually get much deeper lying down, much more relaxed, and the mind is much calmer. Now that I sit, the meditation does not go as deep, and I'm wondering about that. Whether it's okay to be lying down, or whether I should try sitting again. If you have an opinion about that, it would be great.

Gil Fronsdal: Well, certainly it's fine to continue the way you were if that worked well for you and you're learning something very significant from that deep peace. At some point, I hope that you become interested in how to carry some of what you're experiencing in meditation into your daily life. The mind that's in meditation and the mind that's outside meditation is the same mind; it's your mind. To limit that possibility of that peace you have in meditation and not the rest of your life is unfortunate; why not have it be continuous?

A big part of mindfulness practice at some point is practicing in daily life and bringing this into daily life. One possibility is that sitting in an upright meditation posture is the intermediary that'll help you bring it into daily life. You can do one of two things. You can continue with lying on the floor the way you have been for your primary meditation, and then when that finishes, if you have time, stretch your legs, prepare yourself, and then go back and sit in an upright position. You have the momentum and the residue of the earlier meditation, and you get to bring that deeper peace into that posture. The idea is at some point you're going to explore what it's like to start bringing some characteristic of it into your daily life.

The other thing you can do is just say, "Well, I've done a few years of this floor thing, and that was meditation with training wheels, and now I want to take off the training wheels and just jump right into sitting upright." It's going to take a while to get to the same place. When you take off the training wheels, you're a little wobbly on the bike, so you're a little bit wobbly sitting upright, and it'll take a while. You're so fortunate to have had this reference point, this possibility, and now you're going to learn it sitting upright. What you learn there will be a great foundation for taking it into life. Those are the two things I suggest.

Zoo: Thank you so much. Wonderful. Thank you.

Gil Fronsdal: Kathryn?

Kathryn: Hi Gil. Thanks so much for all these teachings. Today the softness at the end especially was really helpful. It's kind of related to my question, which is, I notice when you've talked about resting your eyes in their sockets and also relaxing the belly, I find both of those very challenging. Especially when sitting upright, for my belly, I can't quite figure out how to relax it sometimes, and then I think I create stories around it that I'm trying to relax. Also, I can't figure out how to get my eyes—it feels like they're just constantly looking. I wondered if you had any thoughts about that.

Gil Fronsdal: Yeah, so with the eyes, most of the time they will be gently moving in the sockets, just kind of floating in there. If that's what's doing it, just be relaxed, that's fine. But if you're actively looking—like every time your left knee hurts, you can almost see your eyes looking in that direction—then you're too involved. The first line of how to practice with that is to be content just knowing that's the case. It's just one more thing to be mindful of: "Oh, look there, I'm doing my thing again." Just, that's how it feels, this is how it is now. There's something very profound about being relaxed about anything that's going on, including something you think shouldn't be happening. Drop the "this shouldn't be happening." Just, "Okay, this is how it is. I'm just supposed to be mindful of how things are, and this is how it is." That kind of acceptance and clarity itself over time begins to relax those things.

The other possibility is to spend some time actively relaxing the eyes, at least feeling where the tension is. Maybe spend five minutes at some point during the sitting doing an eye scan. Scan all around the eyes, the inside: where is the tension, where's the holding? What does it feel like to be looking this way? Are my eyes a little bit popping out of their sockets? Are they reaching out into the world to grab something? Or is there some emotion that's connected there? Look, for some people their eyes are a manifestation of anxiety; there's a little bit of apprehension there. Then it becomes apprehension meditation; leave the eyes alone and just connect to the anxiety that might be there.

With the belly, it might have something to do with the posture you're sitting in. You might see if there's another posture that's more upright, or sit in such a way that there's a little curve in the lower back so that gravity will pull your belly forward. I carried a lot of tension in my belly when I started meditating, and it was a surprise to me how much. I would relax it, and it would last for half a second. I didn't make it a constant project, but after a while it just became an ordinary everyday kind of thing in meditation. Three, four, five times in the course of a 40-minute meditation, I'd relax my belly, and then I wasn't concerned that half a second later it got tight again. It was just, "Okay, this is how it is," and then after years of doing that, the belly started to stay more and more relaxed. I don't know if you have the patience for years, but I didn't mind because I wasn't really trying to—I didn't have an idea that it should be different. That ease with it all usually works well.

Kathryn: That is so helpful, thank you very much.

Gil Fronsdal: Nice to see you. So, Amparo? Actually, this is Nate?

Nate: I'm on my mom's Zoom accidentally, I thought it was mine. I've been meditating with you for almost a year and three months. I caught COVID and was having long COVID symptoms. I was told by a community that had autoimmune disorders to meditate, and I can tell you today, right now, I'm much more active and much happier since meditation, I really am. But I get a lot of pressure in my scalp, in my ears, everything, a lot of pressure. I just remember you saying things in class, "breathe into the chaos," right? And that's actually helped me a lot, expand and relax.

Gil Fronsdal: Great, that sounds excellent. One of the primary aspects of mindfulness is to accept what's happening. Don't fight it, don't be concerned, but be mindful of it. Bring your mindfulness to that tension and do a guided tour of your tension. "Hi tension, we're friends, we've been around for a while." Just kind of scan around, feel where it's happening in your body, and then if you can breathe with it or breathe through it and expand with it, fantastic. You're on the right track.

Nate: You know, it's changed my life. I no longer have anxiety, depression. I used to have really bad agoraphobia, I was in the house for like five years, it was so bad. This has allowed me to just sit and confront it. I started with Zen meditation and that was really difficult. I come from a really religious background; I learned my Rosary in Latin and had an experience in my religion, but then I've had my experiences with meditation, which are very personal ones.

Gil Fronsdal: I'm very happy to hear this. One thing you might consider, since you brought up the pressure in your head, is that for some people, that happens when they're meditating and they're trying too hard.

Nate: Yeah, I read up on this! "Am I trying too hard?"

Gil Fronsdal: It might not be so, but it sounds like you're finding your way very well. I think my job listening to you is to celebrate with you how well you're doing and how well this meditation has worked for you. Maybe more than just celebrate with you, maybe I can be your cheerleader.

Nate: Thank you! I want you to use your strong voice one time though to say, "Meditate!" Have a good morning, man, thank you very much.

Gil Fronsdal: Thank you. Steve?

Steve: Yes. I'm amazed that I have this opportunity to speak to you, Gil. You've been one of my guides for the last few years; I started listening to you on AudioDharma many years ago. It's really an honor and I want to express my gratitude right now. I do have a Dharma question, or more of a psychological Dharma question. It's about unpleasant emotions and the resistance to them. I've recognized there's a distinction between the two, and I've been working with the resistance. I really think I've made some headway on that. There's tightness in my chest and my worry about what I'm feeling; the tightness in my chest has really vanished through just feeling into it. But there are some unpleasant emotions that are still there, that have been refreshed for good reasons because they're unpleasant, especially fear. I've tried to just feel into that, but it doesn't work. It seems like it overwhelms me. What if it's overwhelming? What can you really do about fear? How do you work with it? Should I use mettā or some other hack, because I just can't dive into the fear, it overwhelms me.

Gil Fronsdal: Well, thank you. This is very important what you're bringing up, and you're not alone with this kind of concern. It's very personal. Ideally, the answer the teacher gives really knows a person well because fear can be debilitating and can be connected to extremely deep things inside that maybe it's better to work with a really good therapist.

Steve: I do have a therapist. I do see the distinction between the two job descriptions. I'm asking from a Dharma perspective.

Gil Fronsdal: Yes. I would find circumstances where you feel pretty safe. Maybe for you it's safest if you know you have your therapist later in the day, or find a circumstance where you don't have to do anything for that day and you feel like you can kind of just be yourself or recover. Make yourself safe, even if it means getting an extra lock for your door, whatever makes your heart and mind feel, "Okay, now it's safe," or have a friend nearby. Then meditate with the fear and let yourself be overwhelmed. Try that. Let it take its course, but the way to do this is to have a good meditation posture that you do not compromise. So you wouldn't collapse or tense up and start pulling away. Hopefully, it's a comfortable enough posture, but you stay in the posture. Then whatever overwhelm and fear you're having, compost it in the body. Let the body hold it, let the body process it. Just bring it back and feel how it is in the body. Composting in the body is the same thing as feeling it in the body. Just come back to feeling the body as opposed to the stories and the mental reactivity that might be there. If you can relax the body around the fear, great. So you really see it through. Let it overwhelm you with those conditions I just provided, and see what happens on the other side of the overwhelm.

Steve: I know this is a dangerous question—you mentioned my therapist should be helping me as well—but are you implying that there are good things on the other side? You're giving me faith of that?

Gil Fronsdal: Yes, I'm implying there are good things on the other side, and it's possible to live without fear and anxiety. Some people will do this on meditation retreats because there it's very safe, and you have the whole day to let it unwind or process. You don't have to go to work, you don't have to talk to people. Whether it's the right place for you might be something you want to ask your therapist. I don't know how intense it is. What can happen with fear is that there can be panic attacks. Rather than finding more mindfulness, it triggers more fear and spirals out. If you notice that it's really spiraling out, you have to be cautious; maybe it's not healthy for you. But overwhelm and spiraling out are two different things, so you have to be able to be discerning about what's happening. In principle, that's what I recommend: trust the process, open to it, let it be overwhelming, and breathe and stay. Stay. If you stayed for a long time, 40 minutes, 45 minutes with it, then maybe get up and do some walking meditation or walk around the block, and then come back and continue.

Steve: I know that I don't want to take too long, but the routine of your retreats... I'm sure other people would be interested in hearing the general routine, because I've been to a Zen retreat, and I kind of know the traditional Zen sesshin format. Is that an appropriate question right now, or I could ask a teacher?

Gil Fronsdal: It's fine. I think we have the schedule for our retreats on our website, but the difference between Zen and our Insight retreats is that in Zen the schedule is required; everyone has to show up. In our retreats, the schedule is a recommendation, and so if you need to take a break, it's easy to take a break. We have a lot of sitting through the day, sitting and walking meditation. In Zen, the walking meditation is usually 10 minutes; for us, it's 30 to 45 minutes, so there's a bigger break between sits in that way.

Great. So then we have Susan.

Susan: Hey folks, hi Gil. Sort of along the same lines. I don't have a teacher, I've never done refuge or any of that, but I do read and I study on my own. I've been coming to these sessions for quite a while. One of the things that I'm trying to figure out is, we are told, and neuroscience tells us, that the things that we focus on become stronger and stronger, like ruts in your mind, whether they're emotions or thought stories. In the Buddhist interpretation, that would be: the more you have those thoughts or attitudes, that's what's going to become a stronger inclination for your mind, and eventually becomes part of what builds your character. We are also instructed to, when something comes up that's not particularly helpful or wise, sort of sit with it and feel it even more and more and more. I'm wondering, where's that line between desensitization therapy—letting the spiders crawl all over you until you're no longer afraid of spiders—and when is it indulging the fear or the emotion or thought even more?

Gil Fronsdal: Yes, this is a very important question, thank you. It's very important that we can start discerning the difference between participating in difficult states of the mind that reinforces them, versus being mindful of them, which is a different track in the mind. It's a different activity of the mind that we're trying to reinforce and strengthen, not trying to strengthen our neurosis. It's difficult to see the difference between the two. The way we get involved and participate in our negative mind states is almost unconscious, and so we bring mindfulness to it, and the mindfulness itself is just more of the same as before, and we are then reinforcing it.

One of the instructions I offered this last week or two was the idea that when you're mindful of something, especially the thinking mind, do it for only three breaths. Because that might be enough to interrupt the usual way in which we're feeding the thinking mind, but we're not likely to keep unconsciously feeding it. Then we come back to the breathing, and then a few breaths later you go back and notice thinking again. But not just stay on it all the time. That principle might also be true for some emotions. With fear, it might be that it's almost automatic that some fear is carried in the mindfulness itself, which then subtly or not so subtly is reinforcing the fear. But if we do three breaths with fear and then return to just breathing for a while and relax, and then three breaths with fear, that might support shifting what's being developed in the mind.

We are, in Buddhism, trying to develop positive states of mind by their repetition, by feeding them. Some of the positive states of mind are mindfulness, joy, tranquility, concentration or steadiness of mind, equanimity, and faith or trust that we want to strengthen. There are good states of mind that we want to recognize and allow for. But what happens with the best states of mind that come with meditation is that they're there because of the absence of other hindrances. They're not there because we're participating in them, so we're allowing for them, making room for them so they can grow and spread, rather than engineering them or trying to push them to be better. When too much self-concern is involved with the mindfulness, chances are we're feeding the wrong thing.

Susan: The other flip side of it for me is the idea of the positive states of mind. At what point is shifting in that way also a way of suppressing and denying? Like, "Okay, I'm going to suppress and deny. I can allow certain things to bubble up, but I have to push something else aside." Is this really something naturally drifting off because I've let it go and something positive is coming up, or is it really subconscious suppression and grasping after something that has a nice sound to it, like equanimity, and labeling it so I feel okay? When in fact it's really disengagement from something I don't want to feel.

Gil Fronsdal: Great. So the fact that you're concerned with this and thinking about this is a good sign. This is healthy and appropriate to have this kind of self-reflection and these kinds of questions. I would like to suggest to you that you have a discerning mind, and it's there to support you. What you need to do is to trust the practice and that everything will be revealed over time. If you're repressing things, it's not a crime to repress things. You're not a bad Buddhist because you're repressing things. There might be good reasons to repress; it might be better than the alternative for some people.

If you're learning to be mindful of the body, with time you get to be mindful of your reactivity, the tensions in your body, and sooner or later you'll start noticing you're repressing. You'll see it and feel it, and then the practice becomes self-correcting. Don't be ahead of yourself. Don't guess and worry that it might be happening. Just assume it is happening, it's okay, and just keep doing the practice until it becomes obvious in your experience. "Oh yeah, there it is. I see it, I'm doing it again." You don't have to guess whether you're doing it or not. You know you're doing it, you feel the tension and the downside of it, and then you're ready to do a course correction. But don't do a course correction until the mindfulness has revealed its full glory. Trust the practice, just do the practice with what's obvious, what's going on. You have the discernment to notice these things, so you can now relax, trust the process, and the practice is self-correcting over time.

Susan: Thanks.

Gil Fronsdal: Ash?

Ash: Thank you, Gil. I feel in some ways that that answer might have answered my question. I had a clear question at the beginning, and now I'm having a little trouble framing it. I've been meditating with you for 20 years now; it's 2004 when I started listening to you. I feel like I've made a lot of progress—equanimity, a sense of openness, noticing when I'm contracted, and orienting towards an opening towards what's coming, both on the cushion and in interactions. I guess, without just "keep going and begin again," you know... what's next?

Gil Fronsdal: I have a clear sense of what's next for you, but I don't know if your life circumstances allow for this yet, so it might be some years away. You're ready to sit some long retreats. Minimum a month, it could be the two-month at Spirit Rock, it could be longer at IMS⁴. You're ready for long residential retreats.

Ash: Yeah, I'm oriented towards that, opening that space.

Gil Fronsdal: So I feel like that's what's next for you. You're practicing great as you are, so it's not like you're missing out, but in terms of my wish for you in addition to what you're already doing, it would be a long retreat.

Ash: Okay, thank you.

Gil Fronsdal: And then, is it Jean or Jeannie?

Jeannie: It's Jeannie. Longtime listener, first time caller. I'm just so grateful for this opportunity. I might get a little choked up because, like Nate, having a practice and having access to insight has absolutely transformed my life in ways that I never imagined to be possible. So thank you from the depths of my heart for that. Thank you to everyone who sits, because we perfect it in some way by practicing together. My question is related to that, because in this world where there's so much suffering and so much injustice, it can sometimes feel deeply unfair to even sit. I know rationally the reasons to do it, from literature and experience, but sometimes just balancing that feeling that by practicing I'm being unfair. Any thoughts or guidance that you can offer would be most appreciated.

Gil Fronsdal: I'm very touched and appreciative of you saying all of this and the concern that you have. I probably won't be able to give a good answer for you personally, but I'll do my best. I appreciate first how meaningful the practice has been for you. One possibility is that you're ready for something different now. Of course, I hope you keep practicing, but maybe it's time for you to do something that responds to the suffering of the world more actively or more fully than what you do now. Maybe it's time for you to actually bring the practice to something. Whether it means going to Gaza or Ukraine to try to help the children there who are suffering, or whether you form a neighborhood support group for people who are suffering in your neighborhood. I don't know what it would be, it doesn't have to be dramatic. You're not going to end some of the wars in the world, but do something.

As you do it, probably you should start something small, easy to do, but do something. Keep checking in with yourself, be honest about how it's going. You might then, at some point, because you know what you're capable of—how much suffering you're capable of holding—say, "Okay, now I know I need this practice. Now I really need it. I read all the stories why you should be practicing and how it helps other people, but now it's true. If I don't practice now, I'm going to make a mess of what I'm trying to do for the world." That might be the phase you're in, and you do that for a while, and then you might be ready to, like Ash⁵, go off to a long retreat. Is that okay as an answer for now?

Jeannie: Yes, that's very helpful as an answer for now, and it brought additional clarity as well about what is or is not ready. Great, okay, thank you.

Gil Fronsdal: Thank you. So maybe we'll do two more. Mij?

Mij: Thank you, Gil. My question has to do with being a senior, an advanced senior, and coming to Buddhism as a practice and finding that many things that I thought were resolved in my life through a longtime spiritual practice and many years of therapy have opened up. I hear that it takes time for these things to take place, and I'm beginning at the end. So how does a senior come into active Buddhist practice?

Gil Fronsdal: Well, active Buddhist practice... where do you live?

Mij: In San Jose.

Gil Fronsdal: So IMC does have a senior sangha⁶ group that meets.

Mij: I'm doing senior sangha. I'm doing the Eightfold Path⁷. I've been attending your meditation practice for over a year.

Gil Fronsdal: So I don't really know you, it's a little bit hard in this context to have a really deep meeting with you about this. If I take a risk with you and with everyone here, if that'll be okay... you've had a long spiritual practice. It's a thought experiment based on this premise: you might already have a very strong foundation, and the question is, can you call on your existing foundation as a foundation with which to practice with the difficult things which are arising now?

Mij: I do find that helpful.

Gil Fronsdal: And can you do so in such a way that your issues do not get resolved? Is there something more important for you that can be present that doesn't depend on these issues being resolved?

Mij: My desire for coming to Buddhism was to face dying consciously.

Gil Fronsdal: Yes, so that was where I was going to go with you. Imagine that you're on your deathbed, and you understand you have about five minutes left to be alive. That's the circumstance, and you're comfortable, you're dying the best way you could imagine. But you have five minutes left. And then you remember, "I think I overpaid my credit card. I better do something about this and call my credit card company and try to fix this." Would that be the best way to spend your last five minutes alive?

Mij: No, not for me.

Gil Fronsdal: So what would be better?

Mij: To be present to what's happening right with me at that moment.

Gil Fronsdal: And why is that better than dealing with money? Money is important, right? You earned it and you should not lose it. So why is being present at that moment more important?

Mij: The money is of no use to me at all. It has no meaning at that particular time. It's something that's over and done with.

Gil Fronsdal: Okay, so that's nice. I'm happy to hear this. Now, what about some fear that you have that you still carry with you comes up, and there's that old friend, your fear. Well, that's probably a good thing to do for the last five minutes, is to really get into it and be afraid. Wouldn't that be a good use of your time?

Mij: No. I'll tell you my concern now is my children. Letting go of them, letting go of the things that were guiding cares and concerns in my life, and joys and opportunity in my life, and being present to what's happening with me right now.

Gil Fronsdal: So you have five minutes left, and your kids, your family is around you, and they value you so much. You've been a teacher, a model for them, and they're looking to see how you're going to die. Do you think clinging to your kids is the final message you want to give?

Mij: No.

Gil Fronsdal: What is the final message you want to give?

Mij: Again, just being in that moment and taking the journey of my life in a peaceful, calm, accepting way.

Gil Fronsdal: Fantastic. Mij, I apologize if some of the things I say were a little bit coarse, but you have a foundation. You know something already very profound about the value of being present here in a peaceful way. It's in you already. Can you call on it more now? Why wait?

Mij: I feel that that's the practice, and what comes up are things that I thought were resolved. For instance, I've worked in counseling with people in death and dying, and being at this side of it is different.

Gil Fronsdal: I agree with that. So now we come back to what I said in the beginning. Do you have the ability to be honest about what's coming up for you, to meet it with mindfulness and intelligence, and maybe even try to find a way through it? But you don't need to have it resolved. You can breathe and be present, just fine with the issues coming up, because you only have five minutes left, maybe. You never know. I'm trying to offer you a different perspective on this. Is this working? You think you're up for the challenge?

Mij: Yes, I am. I would love to talk to you about it someday.

Gil Fronsdal: Let me hear how it's going, and if you're in San Jose maybe you'll come up one Sunday morning when I'm here and say hello. Thank you, Mij. So then the last one is Charlie.

Charlie: Hi Gil. Hello from near Boulder, Colorado. Now that we all have learned how to die, I don't know what else there is to say.

Gil Fronsdal: Well thank you for that. If you've learned how to die, then there is something important to do, and that is to live your life fully. Live your life compassionately.

Charlie: That sounds like it's in line with what I'm trying to do, and I just wanted to express a lot of appreciation to you for the support I've received from joining you for these guided meditations these past six weeks. There's always been a tension in my mind in meditation between a kind of spiritual bypass or escapism, going away from life through silence, through being alone, versus connection, compassion, the point of life, right? You talk about creating space and distance from aspects of mind, and part of me says, "No, I don't want to do that. I want to be with everything. I don't want to create space and distance. I want to be connected to myself, every part of myself, every part of the world. I don't want to go away, I don't want to escape, I don't want to bypass." And then I'll just think and think and think, and time goes by. There's been this tension between being connected, allowing everything, versus creating space, distance, seeing things. Does that sound like a question?

Gil Fronsdal: Yeah, I understand your question. It turns out both are possible, actually. If you do both, they both become better for each other. For example, do you have this concern about being disconnected from people and separating yourself and locking yourself out of people's lives when you go take a shower and close the door?

Charlie: I'm just imagining inviting everyone to come with me! Yes, no exactly, I want to be alone for that one.

Gil Fronsdal: And because in principle what we're doing there is getting clean, and when we're clean then people want to connect to us. If you never took a shower, people would probably be pulling away! But you go back clean and refreshed, and you're so much better for making that connection to people. That rhythm of pulling away and locking the door in the bathroom to shower and coming out clean is a natural rhythm. Meditation is the same way: we learn to cleanse ourselves by being apart in meditation, closing our eyes so we come back better, cleaner, fuller.

What we're looking for in meditation is not to be apart from people, we're looking to avoid being entangled with people. We come together like this, where it's uncomplicated, it's clean, it's full, it's caring—not caught up with each other. Ultimately we have better connections when there's a separation that comes together like this, where each person is met in their own wholeness, which a lot of people don't know how to do. But to discover your own wholeness, your own fullness, your own freedom in meditation then allows so much more to happen when you come together. The relationships become richer. So you can do both. Don't set up one against the other. They both support each other like showering. I love that you have this sensibility, your concern that you have a practice that you want to be in the world and connected maybe in a compassionate way. I think you probably have good things to do in the world, for the world, and I would encourage you to be courageous.

Charlie: Thank you. I will do my best, and hope to join you for a retreat at IMC soon.

Gil Fronsdal: Great. I'd love to have you come. As long as you understand that it is a wonderful way of pulling away from your normal life, but we have 40 people in community that's really special, so you're doing it in a different context. Yes, you're pulling away from your normal life, but it's not from life itself. Life is fuller on retreat for many people; it's a way of stepping into life. In the way that you want to really be connected to life, on retreat there's a particular way we step into life in a much fuller way than we ever can do in some of our daily lives. Nice to talk to you.

So let me put it back on Gallery View. Thank you everyone for being part of this. I had hoped to do a breakout group for you so that you could meet each other, but it seemed like it was nice to continue with the questions, so I appreciated the questions. I appreciate all of you being here. It's my intention to do these community meetings more often, and certainly I'm inspired after today to do it more often. My schedule is such that it's a little hard, but I will look for the next opportunity. So thank you all and be well, and I'll see many of you, I hope, on Monday. We'll be together. Thank you, bye-bye.

[Laughter and farewells]