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

Guided Meditation: This Too Will Pass; Dharmette: Ten Protectors (10 of 10) Wisdom - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 13, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: This Too Will Pass

Hello everyone, and welcome. We're coming now to the end of this two-week series on the ten protectors. To begin the meditation that leads into the talk on the last protection, I'll tell a Sufi story. There was once a person who went to a Sufi master with a ring and said, "Can you inscribe on the ring some piece of wisdom that will always be useful for me to carry everywhere I go?" The Sufi master said okay, took the ring, and said, "Come back in a week." After a week, the person returned, and the Sufi master handed the person the ring. Inscribed on the outside of the ring were the words, "This too will pass. This too will pass."

The Zen teacher Suzuki Roshi¹ summarized Buddhism in three words. It's kind of phenomenal that these three words he thinks encapsulate all of Buddhism: "Not always so." Not always so. This too will pass. Not always so. It won't always be the way it is.

So in this meditation, you might want to consider, "This too will pass." If something doesn't pass—if you have an idea that something is not changing at all—chances are that it's a memory or an idea. Maybe it's an idea that compares what's happening now with something else. In a way, the memory might not be a changing thing; it might represent something that will never happen again. An idea might, especially in comparison to something else, have some truth to it. But in the moment we're meditating, those are ideas and memories, and they too will pass. Even in the course of the meditation, you won't forget them, but as thoughts, as ideas, as memories, they too come and go. This too will pass.

As we sit today, you might sit with an orientation, a perspective of how everything that's occurring also passes. Every inhale comes to its end. Every exhale comes to an end. Unless it's a constant drone, most sounds will come and go. Some return immediately, but still they pass. Remember to also see that thoughts pass, ideas pass. In the moment-to-moment flow of what the mind is concerned with and thinking, memories are part of this constant passing. There's something profound about just allowing things to pass, to be in the place of attention where we just see things arise and pass. It is kind of like we're sitting at the edge of a river and just watching the river go by. Anything floating on the top of the river comes and goes. Everything flows. When we're fully in that perspective, we discover that we become part of the river too. We're just flowing, coming and going. So this too will pass.

Assume a meditation posture. One of the paradoxes is that the more stable and still you can be in your posture and with your mind, the easier it is to see that all things are passing. There's just a constant flow, a river of experience just flowing through and flowing by. Occasionally there are little eddies or big eddies where we get swirled around and around and are no longer in the current, but eventually everything returns to the river of change, flowing on. This too will pass. For these minutes here, this too will pass.

Gently close your eyes, and notice that as you take some deep breaths and relax, some of the tension in your body, the holding, might soften a bit. Relaxing on the exhale might also soften something in the mind. Let the breathing return to normal, and continue for a few breaths to relax so some of the tension passes.

Relax the thinking mind. Soften in the mind.

Settle into the body breathing, with the perspective that each breath, each inhale and exhale, comes and passes, arises, appears, and disappears. Sit with a perspective that sees the passing of all things that are occurring in the present moment. If they're not occurring in your direct experience, they are thoughts, ideas, images, and memories—those too will not always be present. They'll come and go, maybe return. Settle back and allow all things in their own way to pass away. Don't hold on to anything. Don't pick up anything. Sit quietly, watching the river of change.

If you're not mindful, we can be operating as if things have some permanence. If we're aware directly here and now, then all things are constantly changing in the way that we experience them. The knowing, the perceiving, the recognizing, the sensing—all coming and going. The thoughts, the ideas.

If there is any tension, pressure, or tightness in the thinking mind, let the mindful mind relax. Allow the mindful mind to settle in with the pull of gravity, relaxing to observe the river of change here and now.

Here in our body and mind, to see the river of change—to see all that comes and goes and passes—is to be in a cleansing river, a river that refreshes and cleanses, so we can be fresh and clean in how we return to the world. Let the river of change dissolve whatever is tight and tense, whatever holding there is.

As we come to the end of this sitting, appreciate any benefits that have come from sitting quietly. Any ways in which we might be calmer, more mindful, or more patient. Any ways in which we have been cleansed of some of our attachments, holdings, resentments, or fears. Appreciate being present with clarity, attention, and the capacity to offer attention. May we offer our attention. May we offer our kindness. May we offer our willingness to let go of resentment and greed, so we can gaze upon the world with care, with kindness, and with an ability to see all beings with friendly eyes, to care for their welfare and happiness. We know that when people really know happiness and have real deep welfare, they will be kind. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may this community of ours that sits together these mornings spread out from us into this world this day in acts of kindness and compassion, care, and support to the people around us, strangers, people known and not known to us. Let the goodness of our practice and our community spread out into the world for the happiness and welfare of all. Thank you.

Dharmette: Ten Protectors (10 of 10) Wisdom

We come to the end of these ten talks on the ten protectors, and the final one is wisdom. Appreciating wisdom as a way that protects us, we can think of pretty obvious ways in which it does. We go through the world wise, with our eyes open and an understanding of how to behave and how to be. There are many ways that wisdom supports us and helps us protect others. In this list of ten protectors, the Buddha gives a particular meaning to it. I want to appreciate that it's the last of the list of ten, so there are nine before it. The assumption here is that we have something to protect in ourselves that is worthy of protection, worthy of caring for, and worthy of support. A wonderful aspect of these ten protectors is that these ten things themselves are so wonderful that it's worth protecting them. We are protecting the very things that protect us and help us to thrive. We protect the very things that help us protect others, that let us be someone who serves and cares for the world around us and is safe for other people. It's a wonderful list.

I think of these lists in Buddhism as being progressive; one builds on the other. The first one that protects is just basic virtue, basic ethical integrity, a basic living by the Five Precepts². We protect ourselves to some degree—certainly from ourselves, by not putting ourselves in situations that are very harmful. But we also tend to protect ourselves from others; the world tends to treat people who are ethical better than those who are unethical. Like many things in Buddhism, it begins with the foundation of ethics.

When we have the foundations of ethics, then we're prepared for the next protector, which is to study the Dharma³, to learn the Dharma, and to take it in in some deep way. If we live an unethical life, the Dharma can't really penetrate us. The teachings can't really come in because they undermine the very motivations and way of being that are unethical. Being ethical begins creating the ability in the mind and heart to receive and understand the teachings. Studying the teachings protects us; we understand what the teachings are about.

Then, we understand the teachings enough to know that there are good spiritual friends—beautiful friends who are maybe more practiced and more rooted in the Dharma than we are. To love them, to care for them, and to have these good friends in our lives protects us so that they can inspire us, guide us, and help us understand the Dharma more. We don't just understand the Dharma as teachings, but understand how it gets integrated into how we live our lives.

So, ethics, then studying the Dharma, then having good spiritual friends who live the Dharma. Next is being someone who's easy to correct, someone who's easy to speak to. If we want to benefit from our teachers and the more experienced practitioners around us, we must be someone who's easy to talk to, willing to hear what they have to say without protesting. This is particularly important when we have the wonderful treasure of having people who are willing to point out our faults—where we're off, or where we're causing harm in the world. Since the time of the Buddha, it has been considered a treasure to have people like that in our lives. To have people who care for us very much but are willing to help us understand where we need to focus to really clarify, grow, and develop means we must be easy to speak to and not be defensive.

So be virtuous so you can study the Dharma. Study the Dharma so you can appreciate the people who live by the Dharma and have good spiritual friends. Be easy to speak to so they can really help and support you. Then, care for the Sangha⁴, care for your practice community, care for the community of people who are supporting you. It's a mutual relationship. You're able to practice generosity, taking your ethical qualities and what you're learning, and applying it in a community that values, supports, and helps you develop.

Caring for your Dharma community and engaging in this process of integrating all this into your life makes it easier at some point to love the Dharma. Loving the Dharma is the sixth quality. Loving the Dharma is not loving something outside of you, because the Dharma is really you, and the heart of it is non-harming. You love non-harming so much that you love your capacity for non-harming, for living a peaceful, Dharma life. We're protected by non-harming in important ways; it's deeper than just living by the precepts.

As we learn to live this life loving the Dharma, we understand that we don't want to do anything that harms ourselves. We want to do the things that support and benefit us. Learning to abandon what is unskillful and unhelpful, and then picking up, supporting, and developing what is skillful and beneficial for us, is one of the key guidelines for practice in Buddhism. This is also a protector. Living that way, we're protected from causing harm to ourselves.

Then, to be content with what we have. This doesn't mean being 100% content with living in poverty or living in areas of abuse. It means that when the basic necessities of life are available to us, we shouldn't be greedy for more. We shouldn't be discontented, wanting more and more, looking outside of ourselves for how to make ourselves happy. Be content with some degree of the basic necessities and the way that works for you in your life. This gives you more time to practice, more wherewithal to be present for your experience as you live it, rather than looking externally for more validation or more pleasure.

We're protected by the ninth factor we talked about yesterday: mindfulness. Mindfulness is the ability to be truly present here with our experience, and it builds on all the others.

And then we come to wisdom. If this is a path of practice that we understand as a maturation process, then at some point we become ready for wisdom. The reason why it's important to think of wisdom as the end result of all these steps—rather than offering you wisdom first—is that this particular wisdom the Buddha emphasizes is maybe hard to appreciate. It's much easier to protest and say it's not good enough, it's dismissive, it's indifferent, or it doesn't understand how the world really is for me. It takes some deeper capacity for attention and finding a refuge inside oneself, rather than looking externally.

The particular wisdom that the Buddha says will protect you is the ability to really see the river of change. See the river in which things arise and pass away, come and go. Being really in that stream is cleansing and freeing. It protects us from the ways in which we cling and hold on, the ways in which we resist unnecessarily and painfully, and the ways in which our attachments spill out into how we relate to others.

This idea that Buddhism has of "entering the stream" is partly entering the stream of this change: constant change, constant movement, constant coming and going. I think it is playing off a metaphor in ancient India, and maybe still in some areas of India today, that you can go into a river like the Ganges to be purified. The Buddha didn't believe in the idea that a physical river can purify you of your inner challenges, the ways you're stuck, or the inner faults we have. For him, we are the river that can purify. We become our own protector, our own purifier, our own liberator when we allow that river of change inside of us to wash through us. It washes away our attachments, dissolves the ways we're stuck, and evaporates the ways in which we are afraid, anxious, tight, and restricted. There's something profound about beginning to appreciate, sense, and feel the way that all things are constantly flowing through.

The challenge in this is that we have all kinds of things we feel are never going to change. We experience a loss, and we think, "How can these Buddhists say that everything is changing when this loss is permanent?" Or we compare ourselves to someone else, thinking, "I'm always going to be X, while other people have the advantage and they are Y." These things have some truth in the world outside of ourselves that we don't want to deny, and we want to be wise about them. But when we close our eyes and sit quietly in meditation, we see that sitting quietly at home in ourselves—where we're allowed to be ourselves fully and completely, like we're perfect just the way we are—that the loss, in this moment, is a memory. The loss is real, but in the moment-to-moment experience of change, it comes to us as a memory. And our comparison of ourselves to someone else is, in the moment-to-moment experience, an idea or a thought of the mind making a comparison. Those memories, thoughts, and ideas themselves come and go. They're part of the stream of change.

If we understand that and allow ourselves to see it, then we're not going to let those things weigh us down. They're not going to grate at us, and they're not going to add salt to our wounds. We're going to see them just flowing and moving through. It's hard to be willing to do that, because it can seem like a betrayal of our ideas or a betrayal of our memories. But this is a deeply cleansing process. Just like it's good to bathe physically once in a while to be clean when we go back into the world, it's good to do this inner bathing, this inner cleansing. It comes when our mindfulness is stable and strong enough that we can really be here in the present moment, just allowing ourselves to rest in the changing, streaming flow of experience moment to moment. We see: this too will pass, this too will go, this too comes and goes, flows and streams.

This is the experience that liberates us from our attachments, liberates us from holding on, and liberates us from freezing and holding what is there. It liberates us from having to dip a bucket into the stream of our life and then go around carrying that bucket for the rest of our lives. Some of us are carrying many, many buckets. But the bucket is not the stream of life. We protect ourselves through the wisdom of change, impermanence, and inconstancy. If we cleanse ourselves with that, then we can go into the world and be a better protector for the world.

Through all these ten protections, maybe we can care for this world that desperately needs more protectors. It desperately needs people coming from this deep experience of love, kindness, support, and wisdom. May it be that as we protect ourselves, we protect the world. Thank you.