This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation:Meditation as Sensitivity to Clinging; Gil's Story pt2 (4 of 5) Growing with IMC. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Meditation as Sensitivity to Clinging; Dharmette: Gil's Story pt 2 (4 of 5) Growing with IMC - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 07, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Meditation as Sensitivity to Clinging

Hello and welcome to our meditation session. One of the things that meditation is associated with often is calming—becoming calmer. To only think of it for that purpose is pretty reductionistic, but becoming calm is certainly extremely valuable. One of the purposes of becoming calm, one of the means of becoming calm, and one of the consequences of becoming calm is the relaxing of clinging, the relaxing of attachment, of gripping, of strong ways in which we hold on or resist in a way that's stressful for our minds, our hearts, and our body.

To emphasize letting go, to emphasize non-attachment and non-clinging in the abstract, sometimes it's hard to understand why, or the value of that. But one of the things we're doing through mindfulness practice is developing a heightened sensitivity, a greater awareness of what it's like physically, emotionally, and mentally when we're clinging. To feel the unpleasantness of clinging, to feel the tightness of it, the pain of it. Even to really be present in such a way we feel—of course we want to relax that kind of tension. It's like holding—if someone's really angry and they hold their hand in a fist, they might not even know that they're holding their hand in a fist. And then a friend comes along and sees how tense we are and just picks up our fist and holds it gently, lovingly. And then, oh, now we realize how painful it is to hold the hand that way, and we relax.

So part of this practice, then, is to be in the present moment so we can feel and sense what this living life is like for us, so we can see where we are hung up, and to loosen up, let up, release. Because we know, we feel. And if we don't feel—well, if we haven't really taken in the experience of clinging, of attachment, and seen in the moment the unsatisfactoriness of it, then I suggest you don't let go. You don't relax, but you bring a greater attention to it until you feel how unsatisfactory it is to do it, to be that way.

So, assuming a meditation posture. Think of this posture as a posture where your body is going to be a fine, well-calibrated instrument for sensing and feeling your lived experience. Giving some care that it's a posture that supports a heightened sensitivity, and gently closing the eyes.

And this instrument of the body, to be more connected to it, take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Just deep enough that you feel more connected, but not winded. Then a long, slow exhale, a little longer than you usually would, as a way of relaxing the body. Sensitive to the body as you breathe in, relaxing as you exhale.

Letting the breathing return to normal. With normal breath continuing, just allow yourself to feel your body more fully as you inhale. Maybe the torso, shoulders, the chest, wherever the body is activated by breathing in. And on the exhale, relaxing.

Breathing in and feeling more fully the mind, the thinking mind. And as you exhale, soften, relax the thinking mind.

And if you're relaxed and it's easy to just ride the breathing, easy to settle into the present moment, continue practicing this way. But if there's any way that you're hung up, you have concerns, preoccupations, resistance, or contractions—anything that can be called an attachment, or a clinging, holding on, resisting—it's okay that you're this way. The task is, as you breathe in, feel it more fully. Allow yourself to feel it till you feel how unsatisfactory it is, how there's something deep inside of that attachment, that clinging, that wants to let go. And on the exhale, let go. Soften, loosen. But only after you've known, felt what it's like to be attached. Never let go without knowing first what attachment feels like.

Remembering to take your time to sense and feel the physicality of clinging, of being preoccupied, holding on, fixating. Whatever way, whatever version of clinging you have, the task is to know it well, feel it well, until you feel almost as if it comes out of the clinging itself: the desire to relax, the wisdom that letting go is wise.

And then, as we come to the end of a sitting, take a brief few moments here to feel yourself more deeply. Is there something about how you might be more subtle, or calmer, or a little bit more clear and aware, that makes you more sensitive to clinging, grasping, contraction, holding on, resisting? And even if those things are not present now, is there a reference point now for a deeper feeling of them when they occur? Not a judgment of them, not ideas about clinging, but to actually feel and sense what it's like.

How can you become wiser when you have a deeper sensitivity to clinging and grasping, to desire and aversion?

And the more we can become aware of the remaining ways that we still cling, or hold on, or attach, maybe the greater patience, generosity, care, and compassion we can have for others who are clinging and grasping and holding on. That we see in others, ourselves. We see in ourselves, others. We feel and know the challenges that are deep inside. And now our own, perhaps, allows us to gaze upon others more generously, more kindly, as we all go through this difficult world, difficult life.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be safe. And may all beings be free of suffering. Thank you.

Dharmette: Gil's Story pt 2 (4 of 5) Growing with IMC

So then I continue with the story of my Dharma life, and for this week it's more my life as a teacher. I ended yesterday by talking about how we decided to become incorporated as a religious nonprofit, and that happened in 1997. The purpose of that was to be able to purchase our own property, to have our own center.

So that process began of seeing how we could do that. Early on, we had the first, and maybe the only, fundraising committee meeting—a group of people who were interested in trying to fundraise for this purpose, and we met in someone's living room. Terry Lesser, who's been our yoga teacher here for many years at IMC, said, "Money follows the practice." As soon as she said that, we stopped talking about how to raise money and rather talked about how we could offer more practice opportunities. We did a survey of the community to see what kind of practice opportunities they wanted, and one of the things that was desired was to have a Sunday morning program, another was to have a yoga program, and other things.

So we started a Sunday morning program in Portola Valley¹. By now we were using many different facilities around through the week for all the different programs we had been developing. We had two programs a week at the Friends Meeting House. We had programs at the community center in Portola Valley. We had the Sunday morning program. We had daylong retreats in a couple of other churches—a Presbyterian church and a Unitarian church—that we did often on Saturdays. We started doing weekend retreats at a Zen center up in the mountains here called Jikoji², a wonderful little Zen center.

And then a sangha³ connection offered me a room in her house that had its own door to the outdoors that I could use as an office where I could meet people. Before that, if I was going to meet one-on-one for practice discussions with people, when the weather was good I would meet in city parks, and when the weather wasn't good I would meet at coffee shops. That was interesting, to be having very deep, difficult conversations in a coffee shop. Sometimes people were crying, telling me about their life or something, but that was the only way; we didn't have any space because we had no place of our own. So then I had this office in this person's home.

We had all these different places, and it became clearer and clearer that we had enough programs through the week that we could consolidate them all, just move them all into our own center. It justified having our own place. But we just developed our practice.

Then, in deciding to have first Monday evening, then Thursday evening, and then Sunday morning, one of the clear decisions that I made was that I didn't want to be a teacher teaching too many people at one time. So when we had about a hundred people coming Monday nights, we started the second program on Thursday nights to take the pressure off Monday, and then we started Sunday morning. It would have been a lot easier for me to just give one Dharma talk a week to a big group of people, and maybe it would have been more efficient in some ways, but I felt that the dynamics of being a teacher in the front of a very large group of people—there's a lot of projection, even if it's unconscious. Just the fact that so many people are focused on one individual, and the way we do it in the Insight world giving Dharma talks, I think it creates kind of a skewed relationship or projections or associations to all that. I wasn't interested in that. I wanted to keep things kind of simple and more basic, and I didn't want to become like a "big teacher" somehow.

One of the aspects of that was that when we were meeting at the Friends Meeting House, and everywhere we met, I just sat on the floor on a zabuton⁴, on a meditation mat. But then slowly people said, "Well, we can't see you in the big room, you have to elevate a little bit." I resisted that a lot. Even to go up eight or ten inches on a little platform was—I didn't want that, because I felt it was associated with becoming a little bit too special or something. Then at IMC we brought that platform with us here, and then they wanted it higher, and I resisted that, and would only use it sometimes. But now, and that's what I'm sitting on now, it's probably fifteen inches or so, and now it just seems like what we do. But I had this concern about the elevation of projection, the elevation of authority, power, all kinds of things that go into being in this role as a teacher.

So we started to look for a place, and we were pretty naive about how we were going to finance it. We were surprised that before we even started asking for money, when people learned that we wanted to buy a place, people walked up to us with checks and said, "Here." It wasn't necessarily big checks, but people just started offering us money. Then we started raising money with a fundraising letter once a year.

At some point, we heard about a minister couple in Redwood City who were the ministers of this building here. It had been built by a small Christian denomination called First Christian Assembly. They were a little bit mystical Christians; they sat in silence a lot. The elderly couple was ready to sell it, but they wanted to sell it to someone who also sat in silence. We had a middle person, a bridge between us who knew us and knew them, and introduced us.

So I called them up, and they were certainly interested, but the message we got back was, "Don't call us, we'll call you." We drove by the place and saw it, and it was at the furthest limit of the geographical area we thought we could move to, so we didn't call them. I think I called them one more time in January or April, and then the following January we still hadn't been shown the church. So I called them up, honestly a little bit as a way to see if we could get some contact going. I said, "You know, we were looking for a place to be able to hold some kind of event we want to do, could we use your church?"

The one minister I talked to on the phone basically said no, I think. But we had an hour-long conversation, and that was really nice. Then the next day I talked to the spouse in another hour-long conversation, and by that time we were like best friends. We talked a few more times on the phone. It just felt like so much love, so much warmth going on, and they just assumed that they were going to sell it to us. They hadn't even shown it to us! They even said that they would carry the loan, which we didn't really have the money to do that with—to buy it ourselves. It was very strange to have all this going without actually having seen it.

Finally, in September of 2001, they showed it to us, and it was just a wonderful connection with them. They were so happy with our community, and us with them. We bought it. In September 2001 we saw it and bought it, and then moved in in January of 2002.

In looking for it, I had a bigger vision than just having a center. The dream I had was, since I was going to be rooted here in this area now, that it would be nice to be able to provide Buddhist practice opportunities or support for people throughout their lifetimes, from childhood, from cradle to grave. So one of the visions we originally had was to find a property that was big enough to have a community meditation center, a place for people to do long-term self-retreats, and a hospice. Those three would be a synergy of a certain kind of depth of spirituality and connection. We had thoughts about children's programs, and when we finally moved here, we were kind of pioneers for the mindfulness in schools movement. A few of us here met periodically and organized the first conference in the country on mindfulness in the school systems, and people came from all over to have this conference. So there was a bigger vision of what was possible that started with looking at a center like this.

As I continued teaching, before we bought the place, my wife and I had our first child, and that was a real turning point for me. We had a high-spirited child, and parenting for me was quite demanding. Monastic life was easier for me than parenting. I was often very tired, and my wife and I were often very tired from the constant care of this child. We had no support; we didn't have grandparents nearby, we didn't have any nanny, and things like that.

At one point, we brought our child to a preschool kind of thing, and he was expelled from preschool within a few weeks—flunked out of preschool. So that was a glorious beginning to his educational career, I think. [Laughter] He woke other kids up during the nap, and that was a no-no for that place.

But what happened for me as a teacher was I no longer had time to prepare for my talks, and I was tired. So I would show up to teach, and I thought that the quality of my talks was really dropping dramatically. But the odd thing that happened was people seemed to appreciate my talks more and more. I think what was happening was that I was becoming less intellectual about the Dharma and more talking from the state that I was in, talking about how things were for me personally, and people resonated more with the talks.

That also then was the beginning of starting to be attuned to how being a teacher is its own practice. An example of this would be: I'd be sitting, like I'm here now, in my meditation posture to give these talks. As I taught, I would be paying careful attention to whether I was leaning forward, or being pulled back, or the tone of my voice, and there were so many little feedback loops inside of me of where I got caught. I was concerned about what people were thinking about me, or if one person in the hall walked out I could feel like, "Oh no, I'm failing," or something. I could feel—sometimes it was subtle—but I could feel the shifts of attachment or fear. Sometimes if one person was sitting looking down, shaking their head like this, I noticed that my eyes went to that person all the time, as if that person was the arbiter of how successful I was in teaching.

So I got to see a lot of the conceit, a lot of the attachment, a lot of the fears. In this posture, I could see the subtlest shifts and movements represented how I got caught. So as I was teaching, I was using this as a practice thing, and that was really important for me. I learned so much about myself practicing paying attention as a teacher in this role. That was a good thing, because as we got the center here, then I started teaching even more, and that has just steadily grown over time.

So I think we'll do one more day on this Gil story, and then we'll see what's next after that. So thank you, and I appreciate all of you and this chance to tell these stories. I hope that it's somehow instructive or helpful for you. Thank you.