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Guided Meditation: Clear Purpose; Dharmette: Stories of Practice (5 of 5) Being One's Own Teacher - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 28, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Clear Purpose

Hello and welcome for morning meditation here in California and other times around the world.

One of the supports for meditation is bringing to meditation, or evoking in meditation, a clarity of purpose—a clarity of what you are giving yourself over to during the course of the meditation.

One of the invaluable ways of engaging in meditation is a clarity that for the time while you're meditating, the most important time is now. The most important place to be is here, in your place of meditation. The most important person while your eyes are closed is you yourself. And the most important thing to do is to be here and now with this person, as if this person is the most valuable person to really listen to, valuable to see, to be present for, to accompany.

So I have to be clear that even if there's more purpose—you know, you want to get concentrated, or cultivate loving-kindness, or develop your mindfulness—there might be different kinds of practices you do, things you're growing. But this clarity of purpose is supported by the clarity that this is the most important time. Wow. No other time.

If we're going to really connect to trust, respect what it is to be alive. In meditation, we're here to experience the lived present. It's only in the present moment. In any given present moment time, we're only in one place: the physical place we're at. To really embody that place. Embody the connection. And the here and now come together in this body of yours. This lived experience is through your body.

So to assume a meditation posture and to gently, slowly take a few fuller breaths. Feeling the expansion of the rib cage, and the settling of the rib cage as you exhale. Feeling the expansion of the back rib cage—much more subtle sensations usually—and the settling of the back rib cage.

Continuing with some fuller breaths, comfortable fuller breaths. See if you can feel the rhythm of an increased movement or pressure, expansion in your lower back as you breathe. Maybe a gentle massage, alternating pressure and release. Expansion. Settling.

And if you're sitting in a chair or on a cushion, as you take these fuller breaths, is there any shifting sensations on your sitting bones, on your bottom as you breathe? Maybe with the inhale, a little bit greater pressure. Fuller contact with your chair, your cushion, a gentle kind of pushing downward on the inhale. Lifting up out of the chair or cushion and settling back on the exhale.

And then as you exhale, relax your whole body. Whole body settles downward onto your sitting bones. A deep settling. Softening of the shoulders. Perhaps a small adjustment to your hands and arms that allows the shoulders to soften more.

And as you relax the body on the exhale, also relax the thinking mind. Allowing your thoughts to drift away on the exhale.

And then letting your breathing return to normal and becoming clear, maybe with your whole body, of the importance of being here in this place. In this body here. Becoming clear on a sense of purpose that there is only now. Now is where the lived experience occurs.

And that here and now is for you. The only way to feel and know the lived experience of the present is with your own body. Your own body and mind. Your experience is the most valuable right now.

Stay here without wandering off in thought. Stay here now, breathing, with breathing being the center of your lived experience.

As we come to the end of this sitting, to appreciate your lived experience of this moment in this place. To be embodied, to experience through your body, with your body, centered on your body, the immediacy of the lived experience.

And let there be a clarity of purpose or a clarity of presence here. Really to be here as if offering your full presence, your full attention through your body is how you can offer the greatest respect, the greatest devotion to this lived life that we have.

And that by having this clarity of presence, purpose, you have actually more to offer others. If you offer thanks, you're embodying that thanks to give it greater value, substance, clarity. If you say "I love you," you're not holding back, hesitating. It isn't half-hearted. And if you offer your kindness and your friendship, there's so much more fullness and clarity in what you're offering if you're fully present in your lived experience.

By considering yourself as the most important place to be grounded, here and now, it does not make you selfish. It gives you more to offer others.

May it be that this practice of mindfulness supports you in a clarity and a fullness of bringing goodwill, kindness, friendliness into this world.

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

Dharmette: Stories of Practice (5 of 5) Being One's Own Teacher

Hello and welcome to this fifth talk where I'm giving some stories from my own practice life. Today I'd like to offer some stories of how I slowly understood how to become independent in the Dharma¹.

One of the goals of Buddhist practice is to become independent in the Dharma. This expression comes all the way from the Buddha himself in the ancient texts. I understand that to mean to be able to be your own teacher—to know what the practice is well enough that you don't have to rely on anyone else to tell you what is the practice and what is not the practice.

When I asked a Zen master once, "How do you know when you're ready to give someone dharma transmission in Zen—the authorization to teach?" he said, "When they can stand on their own two feet."

So this idea of standing on your own two feet and being able to be your own authority was a little hard for me to discover. There were various steps in discovering that, partly because the authority of Buddhism, the authority of these institutions that I was in, the teachers I had, the authority of a whole Buddhist tradition felt very strong and powerful and real and true. It was somewhat intimidating. Who am I to counter that? To make decisions that didn't go along with that? So slowly over the years, I had to learn that.

A small example was when I was ordained as a Zen monk at San Francisco Zen Center. I was living a monastic life pretty much, though Zen Center by that time had a restaurant called Greens Restaurant², relatively new then, and I worked there as a kind of monk. I worked five and a half days a week, and my monastic stipend at Zen Center was $60 a month. My food and housing was cared for, but in addition to that, because I was living at the temple, there was work to do during the week—different chores and things—in addition to the morning meditation and ritual, and the evening meditation and ritual, and obligatory meetings to go to.

So I worked five and a half days a week—a half day on Saturday—and then on Sunday I was assigned to buff these stone hallways at Zen Center. I had this big buffing machine. I would go around, and it's a big building, so it took quite a while to buff it all every week. I was starting to feel some resentment and kind of exhausted from always being so busy.

Then I realized one day that the institution, the temple—they were not going to say no for me. All they did was ask for more and more of me. I was always trying to accommodate, say yes to everything. I realized no, I had to be able to stand up for myself. I had to stand on my own two feet and say, "You know, this is too much for me. It's not healthy for me to do it this way."

So I told them I would not do the Sunday morning floors anymore. That was a real step forward for me in a small way to hold my own against this big institution.

Then I went to Japan to practice. The Japanese monastery was also one of these great authority figures. Japanese Zen Buddhism³ as a whole was this big kind of authority figure. I went there to do a three-month practice period, and in the middle of that practice period, I decided that this was not good for me here. That this practice was not serving me. And it wasn't the wrong place to be [per se], but who am I to say that? It's considered very disrespectful to leave during those three months. Who am I to know what I need compared to all of the history and hundreds of years of the Zen tradition?

But it became clear one day that I had to make this decision. And I made the decision: "This is not the right place for me to be and I'm going to leave."

Then an amazing thing happened. I knew that I made the decision. I could really feel that turn. I felt like this was a new way of living, to be able to make that decision for myself in the face of this huge authority figure. But when I made that turn, then something amazing happened to me. I remembered that I had been sponsored at the monastery by a Japanese monk. If I left during the middle of the practice period, it would have major repercussions on his standing in his Japanese tradition and among his friends, the abbots and different temples. This could have serious negative repercussions for him, and he was my friend. He had supported me to be there.

So then I decided to stay for his sake. I felt completely good about that. I felt there was no problem with staying and I was at ease with the decision. Even though I knew it was not the right place for me, I was happy to live with that shortcoming, in a sense, just to be able to support my friend that way and not make it harder for him in his own tradition. So that was a wonderful kind of coming into my own in a strong way—that this is what I had to do.

I also had a Zen teacher who was a wonderful teacher in many ways and very important for me. But part of the practice of Zen was learning how to meet as equals—not just to be student-teacher all the time, but for the student to grow and develop and come to a place where they're capable of meeting the teacher. How I understood that was I had to overcome my intimidation in front of an authority figure, a strong character, a strong teacher. I had to kind of rise to the occasion. I had to find a way to meet him and hold my own and be there in a full presence. Not assertively, but just really not be intimidated, not see myself as lesser than or deferring, but just really be there respectfully, fully—the meeting of equals.

That was a great year for me to see and understand what was going on for me and work through my intimidation of authority figures and father figures. I grew a lot, not in meditation per se, but in living there. I was living in the same temple as the teacher, so there was enough contact that I was finding my way through this.

After a year, I realized that it was unlikely that this teacher was able to bridge that divide—that the teacher was always going to be in the teacher stance. At that point, I kind of shrugged my invisible shoulders and said, "Okay, my work here is done in this regard." I was content with a year of good work, but I'd come into my own. I'd learned something about standing for myself. And if the teacher couldn't meet me, that was okay. I wasn't upset or angry or thought less of the teacher, just that that wasn't the capacity of the teacher. And so then I moved on from there.

This whole way of becoming independent in myself and standing for myself served me really well when I went to Asia to practice this practice here, Vipassana⁴ practice. I had a very wonderful, very significant teacher, Sayadaw U Pandita⁵, who could be very stern. He was kind of like a warrior-style teacher. He could be very hard on his students.

There was a period of time he was hard with me and other people, especially Westerners studying with him. It was very hard. He was this stern father figure who would reprimand them, and many people kind of got a little bit crushed by this strong person who was always expecting the most from people.

So he was difficult with me for a while. I listened to him and tried to accommodate his instructions, but I remember I had this long walk to go back to my room. Generally, by the time I got back to the room, I'd kind of sloughed it off. I'd kind of let go of what had happened in the meeting with him. I wasn't so tied to him. I wasn't so dependent on him. I certainly took what I could that was useful from him, but I could be my own person. I was going to be independent in Dharma.

And that was invaluable because it allowed me to go back to my practice and just really enter my practice again, having let go of the interpersonal dynamics of how I had reacted to his sternness, his firmness, that in an interpersonal way was quite difficult.

So to be able to become kind of stand on our own two feet and know how to do that in a healthy, balanced, appropriate way—in a way that doesn't make us conceited or selfish. In a sense, I would say the opposite. The more we can just inhabit and be really fully here, and really know and feel and sense and be ready to be our own teacher, we'll start seeing the limitations of being selfish. We'll start seeing the limitations of holding on to some strong idea of who we are—identity, stance, position, judgment about me, myself, and mine. And let those go enough to really even more be able to be here fully.

And that fullness of being allows us the way that we live in friendship and in support of others means so much more. If we feel diminished and that we're not important, if we're always ready to apologize for ourselves and cower or submit to others, then a "thank you" has less meaning. "I love you" has less meaning. Care, support, opening a door conveys so much less than if you're really there—not asserting yourself, but not diminishing yourself. Then there's more that's conveyed in terms of kindness, care, support. We're more able to meet and make space to meet the fullness of other people as well, as we fully respect ourselves and stand on our own two feet.

Maybe that can resonate or help us to recognize and meet the fullness of others in the way that they can be their own teacher. They can be their own fullness in the space that we give them.

So, thank you very much. Two announcements.

Next week I'll be back on retreat at the Insight Retreat Center and David Lorey will be here. A wonderful recent graduate this year from IMC's teacher training program. He's been here before for YouTube and was well appreciated.

And the second is that coming to the end of the year, IMC has an end-of-the-year fundraising letter. I invite you all to read it. You can find it on this YouTube channel in the information about the broadcast just below the picture; there's a link to the letter that I wrote about IMC. And maybe you'll consider a donation to support IMC. You'll also find that letter on IMC's homepage under "What's New."

So, thank you very much for all of you who will offer the support that makes all this possible. I look forward to being back in about a week—make that nine days.

Thank you.