This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video 7:00 Guided Meditation; 7:30 Dharma Talk with Gil Fronsdal. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Clarity; Dharmette: Five Precepts (5 of 5) Not Intoxicating - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on December 25, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Clarity

Hello and welcome. Today, the topic for the guided meditation is clarity.

Periodically, I find it very useful to change the way the practice is described. The most common way we practice is "mindfulness," and we talk about mindfulness a lot. Sometimes I like to use the word "awareness." Sometimes I like to use a very simple word: "noticing." Noticing frees us from a lot of the associations and expectations we have around what meditation is and what is supposed to happen. It is best with mindfulness to be free of expectations, free of ideas of what it is supposed to look like, and to discover how to make it very simple.

One of these alternative words is "clarity." To have a kind of attentional clarity. I liken this to times I have driven or walked in very dense fog. I could only see a few feet in front of me. I had to drive or walk extremely carefully, and the scope of attention was just what was in front of me, with no idea of what was going on in the wider world ten or twenty feet away.

Then, the fog clears. Maybe there has been rain overnight, or a wind, and the soot and smog are out of the air. Now it just seems so clear. The air is clear, and the eyesight—if I have my glasses on—is very clear. The clarity allows the eyes to take in a lot more, both directly and indirectly, than I could when I was in the dense fog.

We are looking for this waking up to clarity. How can we be aware with clarity? What is it to be clearly aware, to have a kind of silent clarity to attention where there is not a lot of thinking, analyzing, judging, or commentary on the experience? What is the fog that prevents us from having a wide, open, expansive sense of clarity in being just here, just now, in the present moment?

In terms of the mindfulness practice instructions that I have been giving the last few weeks, we offer the instructions systematically with breath, body, emotions, and thinking, to a point where we can practice all of them together in a wide sphere of clarity. They all have their place to be simply known, simply recognized, and gently approached and seen for what they are. But this happens in this wider field of clarity where there can be a deep settling, a calming clarity which is peaceful.

Practice

To begin, welcome your body to assume a posture of meditation. Give a little bit of care to some of the details of that posture, so the hands are placed in a supportive way, and the feet and legs are settled. Ensure the back is balanced, a little straightened in a supportive way for clarity. If we have a posture that is too relaxed, it might all too easily bring in the fog of sleepiness, dullness, or a lack of engagement.

Gently close your eyes and take some gentle, slow, fuller breaths. Maybe breathing in more fully and exhaling a little longer than usual. It is a little bit like the windshield wipers gently clearing the water drops from the windshield. Gently push away or drop all the drops of thoughts that interfere with the clarity of seeing.

Let your breathing return to normal. For a few moments at a time, notice what in your present moment experience you can be aware of clearly. Maybe because it is obvious, ordinary, or not complicated. What can you settle back, relax, and open to, just having a sense of clearly being aware of it?

It could be a sound around you. It could be some physical sensation in your body that is uncomplicated and untroubling, but possible to tune into for a few moments so you get a feel for what it is like to know and sense clearly with a silent, calm mind.

Maybe it is how you are feeling emotionally. Or maybe it is the thoughts that are coming through. Maybe you are in a rainstorm of thoughts, and that is all you can know clearly.

Wide, expansive, open field of simply knowing. See what you can know simply and clearly feel and sense. Get some feel for what it is like to have a clarity of mind, a clarity of attention.

Into that clarity, welcome your breathing. The sensations experienced while breathing in and breathing out. There are some parts of the cycle of breathing that feel easy and peaceful to know with clarity. It is as if the mind is spacious. The part of the mind that is untroubled can simply be here to feel, sense, and know.

Imagine that the breathing, or your body's ability to feel and sense, is like the warm sun dispersing the fog, lifting the darkness of night with each inhale and each exhale. Let there be a spreading sense of clarity, spaciousness, and maybe stillness within which all things occur.

Clarity can hold everything that is happening to you. See if you can identify yourself more with the clarity—the spacious, open clarity that clearly knows and experiences what is happening—without identifying, judging, or reacting to what is happening. You find your home, you find who you really are, more in the clarity than in the details of what happens.

Whether it is breathing, sensations of the body, emotions and feelings, or thoughts, allow them to be there without being involved. If you are involved with anything as a practitioner, it is with noticing, seeing, and feeling the clarity of awareness within which all the others happen.

Experience clarity as if you are relating to ways of being or feeling about awareness. Clarity might come along with a feeling of being cleansed or clean—a clean sense of awareness and presence. It might come with a sense of spaciousness; space that peacefully contains whatever is within it. Space does not contend or judge.

Some people might associate clean, open, spacious awareness with a kind of inner purity. Some people might associate it with a feeling of timelessness—present moment awareness in which there is no time, or at least the mind is not calculating or figuring. That part of the mind is relaxed and open.

Reflections

As we come to the end of this sitting, can you recall some time in your life where you have had a clear sense of clarity? A clear sense of awareness, presence, mind, and heart? What do you remember in your body, your mind, and your heart of what that experience was like for you? Was it nourishing or inspiring? Did it teach you something important?

And then, how do you lose that clarity? What do you do in your life that is most likely to wipe away the clarity, bring back the fog, or bring back the darkness? For what do you sacrifice your clarity? Is that what you want to do? Do you want to give it up, or would you rather stay close to it?

One of the benefits of clarity—a clean, open, spacious awareness—is how it can be a medium for a clear transmission of kindness, goodness, warmth, compassion, and friendship. May it be that, to whatever degree we have developed clarity through this practice, we remember to transmit and extend our goodwill through it.

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

May the way that we offer our clear awareness to this world contribute to the welfare and happiness of others.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Five Precepts (5 of 5) Not Intoxicating

Hello and welcome to this fifth talk on the Five Precepts and their connection to the basic instructions in meditation.

The fifth area of practice in the basic mindfulness instructions involves bringing the first four together. The simplest way of giving instructions in mindfulness is: be attentive to everything. There is nothing outside of awareness. There is nothing which is unacceptable for the purposes of being aware. It might be unacceptable for other reasons, and hopefully, we have a lot of wisdom and compassion for knowing what that is, but for awareness, everything is included.

The beauty, the inspiration, and the liberation of awareness is found when awareness has no attachments connected to it. It has no drives and no compulsions. There is an open clarity, an open spaciousness, and open availability to whatever is happening in the present moment, here and now. Of course, we have to navigate past and present, and we have to navigate our thoughts, but it is possible to do so within this wider field of clarity.

This is opposed to what often happens: we collapse or get preoccupied into our thoughts, our concerns, our desires, our fears, and the details of what we are doing. Sometimes getting really focused on something is a wonderful, nourishing thing to do. But the idea is that we can do that without sacrificing clarity, without contracting, and without getting attached.

We maintain this reference point of clarity, openness, and really feeling clean within. I associate clarity of attention—where the mind is open, wide, and available to experience—with a kind of inner ethical purity. It feels really ethically clean inside. This was one of the big surprises to me when I started doing Vipassana¹ retreats. As I went deeper and deeper into this practice, there started to be this unusual feeling in my chest and heart area. The only concept I could use to refer to it was a kind of "ethical purity." It wasn't some idea or concept; it was just something that grew and evolved within that was so nourishing, satisfying, and freeing.

The Foundations of Mindfulness

The instructions of mindfulness practice are to learn how to be mindful of:

1. Breathing: Keeping that as the center, the "home base." Breathing is always with us, helping us not to get caught by things.
2. The Body: So much of our intelligence, love, and care is experienced through the body. The more we can live in the body, the more intelligence we have.
3. Emotions: Emotions are a rich and important part of human life. We have them as part of the family of who we are.
4. Thinking: Thinking is invaluable, but it is also a trap that we get caught in. Learning how to think wisely and clearly—with deep contemplation rather than being lost in preoccupations, fantasies, and delusion—is one of the great tasks of life.

With all that as a foundation, learning something about how to be mindful in each of these areas, we are ready to have a more spacious, inclusive awareness that can be aware of all these areas in its own time. Not necessarily all at once, but whatever is predominant. It is more of a feeling; not so much that we are going out to experience different things, but that in the clarity, things are just arising and appearing, and we are being present for it.

The Fifth Precept: Intoxicants and Clarity

At some point, the practice becomes all-inclusive, and clarity becomes a reference point. That is also a very important reference point for the Fifth Precept. The topic of this week is connecting the precepts with the instructions in mindfulness. As this inclusive clarity becomes stronger, it becomes very clear when we lose that clarity.

Sometimes, while we are losing it, we don't realize how much we lose. With alcohol and drugs—recreational use, entertainment use, or self-medicating and self-soothing—we often escape. But what happens through alcohol and sometimes drugs is that we lose the clarity in which wisdom exists. We lose the clarity in which we really understand ourselves and the world around us. It can feel like a great loss.

I remember when I was first introduced to meditation as a teenager in college. It was a Hindu form of meditation, and I was required to stop smoking marijuana for a month. I didn't smoke much, but I did a little bit. I loved the clarity that came when I wasn't smoking anymore. Even though smoking marijuana created its own kind of "clarity" of sorts, it was qualitatively different to have that cleared away and to start to meditate in this settled, peaceful mind.

So, the precept of not intoxicating ourselves with alcohol and drugs eventually ceases to be an ethical precept and becomes a precept of wise living—a preferred way of living. It is a precept for how not to lose and diminish ourselves through something which takes away our clarity, our intelligence, and the deeper sensibility that is growing through this practice. To intoxicate oneself goes against the grain; it goes in the other direction of where the mindfulness practice is bringing us.

At first, this might not be obvious. If you are meditating regularly, maybe you don't have to worry about it because, sooner or later, the meditation will reveal something that is better than alcohol. It creates a better ambience, better relationships, and better connections to oneself. It just becomes the preferred, wiser way of living.

In this way, the precepts—including the fifth one, not intoxicating ourselves—are not exactly an ethical choice but rather a wisdom choice. It is a choice born out of a kind of inner health and interpersonal health that we want to maintain. No longer drinking alcohol or taking intoxicating drugs is not a "should," but a wish, an aspiration, and an inspiration because we don't want to sacrifice something precious. We want to return to this deeper, more valuable place of being.

Deepening Practice, Deepening Life

We see that deepening the practice of mindfulness has implications for how we live our lives. By deepening our practice of meditation:

• We no longer want to harm others (The First Precept).
• We no longer want to steal or take what is not given (The Second Precept).
• We no longer want to engage in sexual misconduct or harm through our sexuality (The Third Precept).
• We no longer want to lie (The Fourth Precept).
• We no longer want to compromise our clarity, wisdom, and intelligence through becoming intoxicated (The Fifth Precept).

In this way, the practice of mindfulness and what can be called the ethical precepts are completely integrated and inseparable from each other. Not a few people who started mindfulness practice had no interest in the precepts initially. But as they developed and grew in the practice, the precepts became obvious and inspiring. The precepts stopped being something we should do and became something that we wanted to do. They became descriptions of who we had become, rather than prescriptions of what we should do.

I hope that this week of connecting the instructions in mindfulness with the precepts has enriched your life, giving more fullness and depth to both the mindfulness practice and the precepts.

Announcements

I will be on vacation next week, so we are going to do a replay of a series of talks I gave for the 7:00 a.m. sit three years ago, in 2022. It is about how to be available for change, available for the practices, and what is coming.

When I return at the beginning of the year, the plan is to do a series on the Brahma Viharas (The Divine Abodes)²—the four primary forms of love and care that we have in Buddhism. This is understood to be a meditation practice in itself. I want to offer those instructions and that practice for the beginning of the year, likely starting on January 5th.

Finally, if it inspires you, I would like to point you to the end-of-year fundraising letter that IMC (Insight Meditation Center) has. You can find it on IMC's website homepage or in the description of this YouTube video. If you are inspired to offer support for IMC, I am very grateful.

I am very grateful for all of you who have been part of this YouTube community this year. I think it is a wonderful way of beginning the day and being in mindful community. It is a wonderful opportunity for me to offer these teachings.

Thank you all, and I wish you a wonderful beginning of the year.