This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: No Comment; Buddha Before Buddhism (4 of 5) The Peaceful Sage. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: No Comment; Dharmette: Buddha Before Buddhism (4 of 5) The Peaceful Sage - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 05, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: No Comment

Welcome again to this morning of meditation.

The emphasis for the last couple of days has been on the wise use of "no" as a support for meditation. Today, I would like to suggest a little phrase that you can use in the meditation. Either say it or just keep remembering it as you go along. Maybe at every exhale, or the beginning of the inhale, somehow just have some reminder to say this and see what effect it has on you.

This is the two words: "No comment."

Whatever is happening to you, no comment. Let it be. Let it be alone. Don't get involved with it. Don't be for or against it. Don't accept it, don't reject it, and don't participate in it. No comment. Just leave it alone.

You might have the most wonderful thought ever and it is tempting to keep thinking about it—no comment. You might have an awful thought and you might be horrified and want to get involved with how terrible it is to have those kinds of thoughts. Rather, in meditation—no comment.

The meditation is going really, really well—no comment. It is going really badly—if such a thing is possible—no comment. Just stay present. Stay with what is happening. No need to comment on it. Just stay aware. Stay here with what is.

Assume a meditation posture. Maybe lower your gaze 45 degrees to the floor, letting the eyes relax and be soft. If it is comfortable for you, close your eyes.

Maybe feel whatever tension or agitation there might be in the eyes. No comment. But you might want to see if you can let your eyes rest in their sockets. Sometimes I imagine that I am looking backwards and down a 45-degree angle in my head. There is a way of doing that that helps me settle into the back of the eye socket. Relax the eyes. No need to be looking at anything, including with the mind's eye.

As you exhale, relax any bodily agitation or tension you might have in your body. Maybe feeling it on the inhale, and releasing and relaxing on the exhale.

It might be that after feeling and relaxing the body for a few breaths, you might want to readjust your posture a little bit. Maybe the position of your hands and your arms. Just now, I brought my hands back on my thigh a little bit. That allowed something to release in the shoulders and even in the belly.

Let the inhale continue a little bit longer than usual, just a brief few moments. Almost like you are enjoying it. Just linger with it. Do the same with the exhale; linger with the end so almost on its own it continues for a couple of moments more. It is not an effort to have longer breaths, but just linger and allow it. You are allowing the inhale and exhale to be more complete.

Be with the breathing for a little while now with no comment, which includes no judgment about the breathing. If there is, in spite of yourself, commentary that arises in the mind, think of it almost like another person who is speaking. Your reply is, "No comment." And return to breathing.

To be making comments, judgments, and stories about what is happening is to be entrenched. It is to be under the influence of what is happening. To say "no comment" is to stay independent. Stay free. Not living under the influence of how things are going, but instead living aware of what is going on without being under its influence.

No comment.

Remember: no comment. Including about things that are not here and now. No stories. No reviewing. No planning.

There is a way, when you do those things, that you lose a certain freedom—the freedom of not being under the influence of preoccupations. The freedom to be here and now. Aware.

No comment.

Then, as an alternative to comments, consider as we come to the end of this sitting bringing how you are when you practice into the world for the benefit of others.

If you are calmer, go into the world supporting a calmer world. If you are kinder, bringing kindness into the world. If you are mindful, bring mindfulness into the world to see, understand, and appreciate this world and those you encounter. If you are more free, less preoccupied, let that help you listen better to others.

May it be that this meditation that we do serves for the welfare and happiness of the world.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

Dharmette: Buddha Before Buddhism (4 of 5) The Peaceful Sage

Welcome to this fourth talk on the Buddha Before Buddhism.

Before I begin again, I would like to make a couple of announcements. One is that the scenery will change tomorrow for this. I am going down to our retreat center, the Insight Retreat Center, for a short teaching that I will be doing down there today and tomorrow. So tomorrow morning I will be in the meditation hall or in the walking hall of the retreat center. You will see me there.

The other is that at this time of year, as with many organizations, we have an end-of-the-year fundraising letter that goes out. Some of you might be interested in reading what I wrote. It is a letter from me about IMC and IRC. You can find links to it on our websites. You might be interested in seeing the wider, bigger picture that we are connected to through this YouTube teaching.

Today we are talking about the third theme in this ancient text that I translated—I call it The Buddha Before Buddhism.¹

The first theme was not clinging to any views. The second is not clinging to any sensual desires. The third theme that goes through the book is a description of the sage. One of the primary names of someone who is mature in this practice and what the Buddha is teaching is called a wise person, a sage, and a muni.² Sometimes the Buddha is called Shakyamuni—the muni, the wise person, of the Shakya clan that he was born into.

What stands out to me as I translated this text is that a lot of the later descriptions of people who mature in this practice have descriptions which are not directly connected to the practice and the realization itself.

For example, we have the word arahant³ for people who are fully enlightened. I don't know if the etymology is that important, but that comes from the word "to be worthy"—to be worthy of respect, to be worthy of donations. So, it is a word that has its source in the social relationships we have.

People who are not quite fully enlightened sometimes are called "once-returners" and "non-returners." A once-returner is someone who will die and then be reborn one more time before they become fully enlightened, is what they say. And then the non-returner is not fully enlightened but will somehow finish that work after they die and never be returned as a human again. Here again, it is not descriptive of what the person is now, but rather has to do with some ideas and theories of rebirth that are used to describe what they have attained.

In this "Book of Eights,"⁴ this book that I translated, it is a wise person. The description of the person is always in some quality they have here and now. Even the wise, the muni, translated as "sage"—what are they wise about? There are descriptions of what they are like, what wisdom they have attained. Interestingly, the wisdom they attain is always described as: they are wise about delusion. They are wise about how they get caught. They are wise about clinging.

In that wisdom, they can learn how not to cling, not to get attached. It is not wisdom about emptiness, or wisdom about not-self, or wisdom about some metaphysical or supernatural thing. It is really a wisdom about how we suffer and the causes of suffering. To have wisdom about that is what makes the person wise, especially if they are wise enough not to get caught.

It keeps coming back to describing the person, the practice, the realizations, the insights, and what they do in a way that is very naturalistic. It is very humanistic. It is just what you see, what you live in, what humans are like in their life directly, without any recourse to metaphysical ideas, doctrines that are abstract—something you have to take on faith and belief without really being able to experience it for yourself—or something supernatural. It is a remarkable kind of humanistic or naturalistic description of the sage, of the wise person.

I am going to read to you some of these verses.

Here in the introduction:

A significant attribute of sages is their ability to know and see. Sometimes their name, their title, is "the ones who know." They do not see the nature of ultimate reality or some form of ultimate consciousness. Rather, sages know and see the ways in which people struggle. They know what is not harmonious and what is dangerous. They know the problems that come from pride and holding on to opinions. They see how people selfishly thrash about, get elated and deflated in their disputes, speak with arrogance, and cling to teachings. By having insight into these afflictive states, a wise person knows not to get involved with them and instead to let go of them. Being at peace and having overcome cravings, sages become independent, knowing the Dharma through their own direct insight and experience.

Someone asks the Buddha a question:

"Seeing what and behaving how is one said to be at peace? Talk about this, Gotama, when you are asked about the supreme people."

Then the Buddha said:

"Free of craving before they die, independent of past and future, not making up anything in the present, they revere nothing."

It is almost like the whole religiosity of religions that have sacredness and reverence is put aside in favor of just becoming confident and present in a peaceful way.

"Free of anger, free of fear, not boasting, not worrying. They are sages who, when speaking, teach without agitation. Not clinging to the future nor grieving the past, they see seclusion in the midst of sense contacts and are not guided by views. They are neither clinging nor deceitful, not greedy or stingy, neither impudent nor offensive, and don't engage in malicious speech. Neither addicted to what is pleasant nor given to arrogance; gentle and intelligent. They are faithless and don't free themselves from passion."

They are faithless.⁵ It is fascinating. Here, "they are faithless" means they don't require faith. They don't have to believe in something because they know themselves. "Faithless" has a kind of negative connotation—I think even back in ancient India it was probably a little shocking to refer to someone who is a sage as faithless—because, just as in English, that can mean someone who is dishonest or betrays. But here: free of faith.

Then this also says, "they don't free themselves from passion." It is also kind of shocking to say. But the reason they say this—it is a kind of pun, or a play on words, or a little zinger—is that they don't have to free themselves from passion because they are already free.

"They are not upset with lack of possessions. They are not hindered by cravings. They don't covet tasty foods. Always equanimous and mindful in this world, they don't think of themselves as equal, superior, or inferior. They have no swollen pride. Depending on nothing, having known the Dharma, they are independent. They have no craving for becoming and non-becoming, for living or dying.

"I say they are at peace, they who are not concerned with sensual pleasures. They have no bonds and have crossed beyond attachments. Not greedy nor selfish, sages don't claim to be superior, equal, or inferior to others. Being free of comparisons, they do not compare."

Even saying "we are equal" is a comparison.

"Taking nothing in the world as their own, having no sorrow for what doesn't exist, and uninvolved in doctrines, they are called peaceful."

The idea that they are peaceful—this is what describes them. All these other ways might seem pretty far out, pretty unattainable in some ways, but they are things that are very humanistic. Part and parcel of human life that we can see for ourselves. We see it in others, and we can see degrees of it in people. Some people are really greedy, really attached; some people are less so. It is part of the normal world we live in. Even though it seems pretty extraordinary, it is free of doctrines, beliefs, the supernatural, and great states of meditation. It is something much more direct, here and now.

There is a way, then, to understand that this can be about you. That you can be a sage. You can be a peaceful one. What you need to understand to be a sage is not endless studies of Buddhist texts and doctrines, but rather it is to really understand yourself. The Dharma book that we study in Buddhism is in your own heart and your own minds—understanding how you get caught and knowing how not to be caught.

The place to find the Dharma for yourself is when you find a degree of peace here and now. Peace from all these things: comparisons, conceit, arrogance, and fear. This is the message of this ancient text. This is perhaps the earliest message that the Buddha made once he set forth to teach what he had discovered with his enlightenment.

Thank you very much. I look forward to seeing you from IRC tomorrow.