This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Inner Beauty; Intro to Buddhist Ethics (3 of 5) Ethical Beauty. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Inner Beauty; Dharmette: Intro to Buddhist Ethics (3 of 5) Ethical Beauty - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on May 29, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

So good morning. I think I have the technology figured out. Having been gone from doing this for 3 weeks, it's a little bit rusty and all the little steps. So welcome and warm greetings.

We're about to do a meditation, and what's often not associated with meditation is ethics, is ethical integrity. But the two are very closely connected. They don't have to be consciously connected, but the connection is that when we sit down to meditate, there's all kinds of unethical things we're going to refrain from doing. We're not going to be actively killing or injuring anybody else; we're not going to be stealing or lying or engaging in sexual misconduct. We're sitting very quietly and still, and so physically it's a time where we're avoiding behavior which would be considered ethical.

Internally, we are training ourselves to not be distracted, not be caught up in compulsion or thoughts and the kind of impulses that get us reactive to what's happening. The most impulses to be unethical are ones that take us away from being mindfully present here now in the present moment. So the degree to which we're practicing present moment awareness, going back here, we are disengaging ourselves from unethical impulses and thoughts. They might still come up, but we're not participating in them anymore. We're not giving into them. And so there's an inner ethical stance, an inner ethical space that we are entering into, even if we had never thought about it that way and couldn't care less whether that's the case or not. But it is the case, and there is value in appreciating that, and it supports the meditation practice.

The thing I'd like to emphasize today is that this inner ethical space that arises in meditation is something beautiful. There's a beauty to it, there's a harmony to it, there's something quite lovely about it. And to attune oneself to that beauty, to that harmony, that loveliness, to realize, "Oh, here there's almost like a work of art." It's the beauty of just listening with a quiet mind that has a kind of elegance or clarity or beauty to it, the beauty of simplicity. To feel and sense peacefully what we feel might not be so wonderful, but the ability, the capacity to feel peacefully is beautiful. The capacity to know clearly has a kind of beauty, the beauty of a clear mountain lake, maybe. And even though everything might be confusing and we might be dull or we might be groggy, there can be a beauty in the simplicity of knowing that that's the case. Whatever we can know with clarity, the obvious thing that we can know clearly, there's a kind of truth statement: "Oh, I'm groggy, I'm dull, I'm sleepy." And there's something about saying the truth, even though it's so obvious, is also a kind of beauty to it.

So as we meditate today, maybe you can have a sense, maybe a glimpse of how sitting in meditation not only is ethical, but even more important, maybe more deeply, that the ethical nature of sitting quietly gives us access to a kind of inner beauty, inner harmony, inner clarity, something that feels inspiring in and of itself, something that we're happy to gaze upon like we would gaze upon a beautiful object or beautiful painting.

Guided Meditation: Inner Beauty

So to assume a meditation posture and to lower the gaze, perhaps close your eyes.

And if you were going to do so in a beautiful way, a graceful way, gently take a little bit deeper breaths and a little longer exhales, seeing if you can feel the rhythm of breathing in and breathing out that feels harmonious or feels graceful. And then as you exhale, gracefully, peacefully let go of your thoughts. Loosen up the grip of thinking.

As you breathe in, feeling your body, a wide experience of your body, relaxing the body as you exhale.

And then letting your breathing return to normal. And then be aware of your breathing in whatever way is most obvious, not straining or trying to do too much, aware of how the breathing appears on its own in your body, into your awareness. In whatever way there's clarity, a clear awareness of breathing or part of the breathing. And maybe beginning to get a sense of that there's beauty here in the knowing, in being aware, if we're not straining or contracting or judging ourselves. The simplicity of awareness.

And even if part of you feels agitated, to have a receptive awareness of how you are, where you give yourself permission to be as you are, so that the receptive awareness can feel graceful, generous, harmonious, maybe even a beauty to it.

Centering yourself on the body breathing, to see how simple the awareness of breathing can be, with the idea that the more simple the knowing, the awareness of breathing can be, the more it is beautiful. There's a harmony or grace to it.

And then staying with the rhythm of breathing by being attuned to the quiet, peaceful, clear loveliness of being receptive to in-breaths and out-breaths.

Beyond whatever way you're distracted, below your thinking, deeper inside than any judgment you can have, is there a place of being, of knowing, of intimacy with yourself that has some quality of beauty or loveliness, gentleness, that is predisposed to having, being harmonious with all things? A harmonious knowing.

Whatever is not beautiful within you in this practice is just a small piece of the whole. To allow your awareness to expand into the whole, wide and open, deep and still, there you might find what is beautiful. The beauty of being open to the whole, all of what's happening without picking up anything, reacting to anything.

And then coming to the end of this sitting, to allow yourself to be still and quiet just temporarily and gaze upon the world. Kindly gaze upon the world. Bring up to mind the people you'll see, the situations you'll be in, and imagine moving through them beautifully, gracefully, harmoniously.

And how do you have to show up? How is it, with the support of mindfulness, you can move through your day beautifully? A beauty which is simultaneously ethical, simultaneously avoiding causing harm, and a beauty which is nourishing and wholesome. May we go into the world with a sense of beautiful ethics, ethical beauty, so that we support others to feel safe. They feel no threat from us.

May all beings be safe. May all beings be unthreatened. May all beings be able to relax into themselves. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free of whatever interferes, covers over their own beauty. May all beings know that they are beautiful. And may we have the eyes to see that.

[Music]

Thank you.

Dharmette: Intro to Buddhist Ethics (3 of 5) Ethical Beauty

So welcome to this third talk on an introduction to Buddhist ethics, or the foundations for Buddhist ethics. And bringing together the topics of the first two days, that of non-harming and wholesomeness, those two coming together, living in us, point to or evoke beauty, a kind of inner beauty or an ethical beauty. One of the reasons to be ethical in Buddhism is not because of some ethical strictures and commandments or righteousness or a sense of purity—maybe depending on what we mean by purity—but rather to be ethical because we're inspired to stay close to a feeling, a sense, an understanding of our own inner harmony, beauty. What is beautiful within us is not harmed, is not covered over by living an ethical life.

And we can feel that when we do something out of hate or greed, or if we lie or want to cause harm to someone else, we lose touch with this beautiful, wonderful capacity within, a wonderful possibility within of feeling our own loveliness, our own goodness. So one of the words in the Buddhist teachings that can be translated as ethics or ethical is the word from yesterday, kusala¹, and today the word that also can mean ethics is a word that some of you know, it's kalyāṇa². And we know it through the expression kalyāṇa-mittā, often translated as good spiritual friend. However, the word kalyāṇa, its first meaning in all kinds of ancient dictionaries and modern dictionaries is that it means beauty, beautiful. It also means, the dictionary says, can mean excellence, and sometimes means good, but "good" is a little bit kind of cheapening something which is really spectacular and wonderful.

And often in the ancient Buddhist teachings, the beauty or the excellence that's being pointed to is ethical in nature. That a good spiritual friend is someone who knows how to live a life of non-harming, knows how to live a life that is wholesome and spreads that wholesomeness wherever they go, and inspires others, inspires us in our practice to do the same. And so rather than calling it a good spiritual friend, we can call kalyāṇa-mittā the beautiful friend. And there's an expression that's sometimes translated as "the Dharma is good in the beginning, good in the middle, and good at the end." And certainly that's good; good is good. But to say the Dharma is beautiful in the beginning, beautiful in the middle, beautiful in the end, is a pointing, a pointing to a possibility, pointing to what we're capable of. It points to something within ourselves which is more than just good. It's inspiring in its sense of how it feels kind of inspiringly lovely, inspiringly beautiful, inspiringly calming or peaceful or a sense of clarity.

Rather than using the word purity, I like to use the word cleanliness. Something about the inner life that can feel completely clean. And so the sense of beauty overlaps with clean, or the sense of ethical overlaps with this deep sense of... there's an inner feeling of being cleansed. Why would you harm, why would you sully that inner feeling of being clean by doing something which is unethical? So it's not being ethical because of rules; it's being ethical because there's an inner reference point of something really good and nice that we don't want to harm, we don't want to cover over, we don't want to lose touch with.

Now, I've known people whose dedication to truth is not just an idea or a commitment. I've felt it in their whole being that these people are completely incapable of lying. There's a commitment to truth that has been quite inspiring for me to see. I've known people who I have a deep trust in them because of how strongly it comes through them that these are ethical people. These are people who are not going to do anything that's going to harm others, not intentionally at least. And so to be with them, there's a safety, but also what I value more is a deep trust or confidence in them, and a mirroring in those people of what's possible for me as well. It evokes the same kind of orientation for me as well.

And so one of the foundations for Buddhist ethics then is kalyāṇa, a kind of inner excellence and inner beauty and inner goodness and inner... you have some choice about what word you want to use to translate kalyāṇa, but it does speak to something within us that's inspiring, something that's worth maintaining or staying close to, something that's worth within us to be inspired by. And one of the things that I tried to say yesterday about wholesomeness is that we don't want to be a little bit careful to assume that there's something inside that is the thing which is beautiful or wonderful that's separate from how we're aware of whatever is happening, how we're relating to whatever is happening.

And there is some, maybe some element of choice here, that we choose to be present, to be attentive, to be mindful of whatever is going on in a way that is not harming ourselves, in a way that is nourishing for us, wholesome-making for us. A way we're aware, in a way that the beauty is in how we know, how we're aware. So it can be very simple. Something like, the mind wanders off, and I've spent years being upset with myself. The mind wandered off, and then I jerk my mind back, sometimes in a harsh way. And it just certainly was not beautiful how I came back from being distracted. And slowly over time, I've learned how to notice that I'm distracted and then, knowing that, not being in a hurry to judge or criticize but make space to feel that and know that that feels good. It feels wholesome to just know it in a simple, clear way. And then if I'm going to come back to my breathing, to begin with my breathing again in a way that just feels nice to do. It's part of the meditation, it's part of the spiritual life, the manner in which I come back to my breathing. So it almost doesn't even matter if I make it back to my breathing. Just the movement itself of the mind, the opening up of the mind, the switching to receptivity in the mind just feels so nice. There's no harshness, there's no demand, there's no disappointment, no aversion to anything. It just feels so nice just to keep coming back and being here.

And so how I relate to wandering off is where part of that loveliness is, that kalyāṇa is, how I can be my own good spiritual friend or my own beautiful friend or my own good friend here. Come back, be here in a nice way. So it's easy to judge ourselves that who we are or something is wrong with us or inadequate or not good enough or something and have a global view that that's the case. And so then it's hard to find something inspiring within us that we feel is beautiful and lovely and satisfying, where we feel a harmony or goodness. But if that's the case, then maybe you can find it in how you know, that you know it kindly, you know it with compassion, that you know it with clarity. And in the very clarity of knowing something, there's some beauty.

Sometimes mindfulness has a lot to do with truth-telling, that we're telling ourselves the truth of what's happening in the moment. So if I'm being self-critical, then the truth would be that, "Oh, here we have self-criticism going on." And there's something about the clarity of that truth-telling that frees us from believing that that's who we are, or it creates a different context for recognizing what feels good in the truth-telling itself. And this ability to say the truth is, whether we directly see it that way or not, a characteristic of mindfulness that is the continual act of being with the truth of the moment, the continual act of seeing it, feeling it, recognizing it. And in doing so, there's something quite lovely and beautiful and profound about this ability to tell ourselves the truth.

So one of the important sources of Buddhist ethics is appreciating something valuable about ourselves, some way in which we discover within ourselves an inner beauty, an inner harmony, an inner cleanliness, and inner goodness, and that that is where the motivation to live a life comes. Living a life of beauty, living beautifully, rather than living a life of clutter and hurry and wanting and reacting. And it is a life that requires giving a little extra time to everything. To live beautifully is to give time to each thing. If you don't give time, chances are you won't feel the inner beauty. And if you do give time, maybe each thing you'll do will be more thorough and complete, and there'll be less to clean up after yourself.

May you live a beautiful life and may you understand how inner beauty is an inspiring source for living an ethical life. Thank you.