This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: No Baggage: Introduction to Mindfulness (21 of 25) Mindfulness w/ Concentration 1. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.
Guided Meditation: Without Baggage; Introduction to Mindfulness (21 of 25) Mindfulness with Concentration 1 - Gil Fronsdal
The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on February 19, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.
Guided Meditation: Without Baggage
Hello everyone. I came today, having been away for a week, and the technology here at IMC1 was somehow a bit off. The final challenge was that the way I participate with all of you is through my laptop, and my laptop wasn't connecting to the Wi-Fi here. Initially, it wasn't working at the recording station, but that seemed to have started to work. Now we're connected and I have a different laptop, so hopefully it's all good. Sorry to be a little late.
This is the fifth week of this introduction to meditation series, and I want to build on what we've done so far this week, or apply it in different ways. One of the things I'd like to talk about today is the role of concentration as a partner to mindfulness. I'll start with an analogy, and then we'll sit.
Many years ago, I went to Yosemite2 with my family when my kids were small. We stayed in tent cabins in the Yosemite Valley. During the day, we did some beautiful hikes, but some of them were quite steep, and I had to keep these little kids kind of entertained as we went along. We had brought with us luggage of different types that we could carry from the car to the tents. If I had decided to bring all my luggage with us on our hikes into the mountains—carrying the suitcases, the backpacks, sleeping bags, and everything that we had—we wouldn't have gotten very far. It would have been quite exhausting.
The same thing happens with meditation. Sometimes we carry with us into meditation so much baggage. So much of the memories, expectations, projections into the future, and fantasies. We carry it along, and we can't go very far if we're carrying a lot of baggage with us.
The role of concentration is to put down some of that baggage, even if it's just briefly. We can be mindful, and the mindfulness can be continuous, but part of the function of concentration is for the mindfulness to stay put for a while. We do this so that we can hike along in our life without carrying a lot of baggage or picking up a lot of things along the way. The role of what's called concentration is not just to be continuous, but to be immersed in what we're being mindful of—a certain kind of immersion into it, so we can be present in a fuller, maybe embodied way. With that as an introduction, we'll meditate.
Assume a meditation posture. Part of the idea of an intentional meditation posture is to take a posture which allows some of the luggage we carry in our lives to slide off. Maybe what slides off first is what is least needed for meditation. Take an intentional meditative posture where your whole body recognizes, "Oh, here we go with meditation." The longer you meditate, the more there's an embodied recognition that this is time for meditation.
Close your eyes, and gently take a three-breath journey. Count each breath to three, staying present for the breath.
Let's do that again. This time, to really stay connected to the breathing continuously or immersively, if you count to three, count one for the inhale and one for the exhale. Then two, two; three, three. Do it so that the count gently, quietly—almost like a whisper in the mind—really feels the inhale and feels the exhale. Or maybe you gently repeat it a couple of times through the inhale and exhale, so the count really helps you to be immersed in the experience of each inhale and each exhale. Do a three-breath journey.
Of course, many of you have a different speed by which those three breaths are done. You can always do more. Now, take a few long, slow breaths, relaxing on the exhale, staying with the whole exhale. As you exhale, relaxing with the exhale is an immersion into your bodily experience—an immersion in exhaling.
Then let your breathing return to normal.
Now take a five-breath journey. Count up to five. Count each twice—once for the inhale, once for the exhale. See if you can count as softly as you need to, so that it's not agitating to count or doesn't seem like too much work. Even if you just imagine you're counting, that is enough. Count up to five with the idea that the count is encouraging the mindfulness to stay immersed in the discovery of what the breath is like, the experience of breathing. Do not strain, but relax into the full experience of breathing in and out. This creates a continuity for five breaths without carrying luggage with you.
Continue through the sitting. If you lose count, just start over again at one. If five is too much, go back to three. Or, if you want to make it really simple, count up to one and then start over again.
As you count your breaths, you might think of each count as an invitation to relax, open, and feel. Receive the experience of breathing, maybe almost as if you're receiving a gentle wind that surrounds you and fills you. Staying with the breath, carrying no luggage, nothing with you. Open-handed, open-minded, open-hearted, to just this experience of breathing.
For a few more breaths, see if you can give yourself over to an immersive attention with no baggage—to just breathing. Allow an equal immersion in the inhale as the exhale, with no strain. Immersing yourself in the body's experience of breathing is like lowering yourself into a refreshing or warm pool of water, safely immersed in the pool or the bathtub. Just as you would feel the water against your skin, feel the sensations, the waves of breathing, on the inside of your skin, inside your body.
To end this meditation, relax. Let go of breathing. Just be here for a few seconds. Nothing to do, nothing to be, nowhere to go. Just sit here, open and present, in the simplest way possible.
Then, without picking up baggage, histories, and fears, open your attention and your concern to the people around you—in your communities, households, work, or wherever you might be today. Imagine meeting people without any baggage, without any predetermination, ideas, judgments, or history, so that for a few moments, you meet them fresh.
In that freshness, with good will, wish them well. May the people in my life today, may my good will spread to them. May my care for their well-being be directed towards them. May whatever ability I have to be a safe person for them come forward as I put down my luggage. In whatever way that I accept them so they can be themselves, free to make their own choices, may I accept them. May the meditation practice we do serve us in one way or another to benefit the world around us.
Introduction to Mindfulness (21 of 25) Mindfulness with Concentration 1
Good morning on this Monday morning, or good day for those of you for whom the morning has already gone by.
This is the fifth week of this introduction to mindfulness meditation. The general idea of mindfulness is very simple. I think at the very beginning of this series I tried to offer the simplicity of it, and the instructions that I've given since then might seem like they make it complicated, but it's more like describing the territory of what we could experience if we're available and open to the present moment. The idea is to be present simply for that. You don't have to make it complicated, and you don't have to do a lot of things except to be present, but we know what to be present for.
We began with breathing—being present for breathing. That is stabilizing, connecting, and for many people, a wonderful beginning. For some people it's not, and there are other home bases for attention, but generally, the way we teach in a generic way is to have breathing be the home base.
As we go along, the body speaks up. The body becomes more vocal and wants to be heard, and so then we can let go of breathing. The very simple attention to recognize and feel what's happening lies with the experience of the body. As we go along, there might be emotions that arise. Those emotions we can feel in the body and are expressed in the body. Emotions can be listened to, heard, and attended to, again with a very simple attention. It is profoundly caring and profoundly meaningful for our emotional life for the emotions to have room to be, without us involving ourselves with them, being for or against them, but just keeping it really simple.
At some point, we become aware of thinking, and the idea is to keep that simple recognition. As we're recognizing these things very simply, since we know the territory, we might see different aspects of each one. We might see the particular sensations of the body, or we might see the way the sensations in the body where the emotions are most active express themselves. We might see that the emotions are made up of different parts, and so we can be aware of these different component parts because we kind of have a sense of the map. It's not like we have to go searching or figuring it out. Over time, we know more and more of the territory, and we can just bring simple awareness. "Oh, this is how it is. This is how it is." Some people find it very helpful to have some phrase like, "This is how it is now," or, "This is X now. This is how it is at the moment." Just leave it that simple.
So, the general way we teach is to have the breathing at the center. When something else becomes more predominant, attend to it. Be present for it, receive it, allow for it to enter into awareness. When it no longer feels like it needs to be attended to, then go back to the breathing. Go to the next thing that comes up, and back to the breathing. The breathing is the place to come back to. One of the reasons for that is, for many people—not everyone—having one place that's the place for stability, the default to come back to, helps to develop continuity there. The rhythm of breathing is a place that's continuous. It's always there gently rocking us, massaging us, being present here for us.
What we're doing then is we're also bringing along an ability to stay with something continuously. Sometimes that's called concentration, though some people associate concentration with straining, narrowing down, or a laser focus. It's more an experience of immersion with the experience, composing ourselves on the experience. Just really being here for this.
The value of this is that if we don't have a home base like this, if we're not cultivating concentration with the mindfulness, our mind has its own interests. If we're simply being available to notice what's happening in the mind, sometimes the mind might not have your best interests in mind. You might not see how subconsciously there's a bias towards certain directions, certain concerns, and certain emphases. Some people are almost addicted to their thinking, and so to constantly be mindful of "thinking, thinking, thinking" actually strengthens the thinking; it reinforces it. Some people prioritize their emotions, and there's a way in which we're predisposed to experience the emotion more than is necessary. Our attention is often not unbiased, but represents some of the deeper attachments, deeper fears, and deeper concerns that we bring with us.
The idea of staying with something like breathing as continuously as we can is equivalent to not going hiking in the mountains with all your luggage. That's really hard, and you can't go very far. You might get to understand the weight of your luggage and what it feels like in your hand to grip the handles of the luggage, you might get to know those things really well, but you're still not going to go into the mountains very far.
The idea is to be able to put down the baggage that we carry with us, the bias we carry with us, and the orientations that we have that don't really serve us, in order to become fresher and be able to go deeper and look more without bias, without pre-existing orientation and baggage. Developing some modicum of concentration with something like the breathing—don't have a high standard. Being able to stay with three breaths continuously, or sometimes even just one breath continuously, is enough to begin to interrupt the way in which we feed thinking, feed our emotional life, or feed some concern that we have.
Think of attention as food. Whatever direction attention is going, we're feeding that thing. If attention is going towards being mindful and aware of thinking, then the attention goes to the mindfulness. But if attention goes into thinking, then we're feeding the thinking. If attention goes into emotions, there's a way in which we feed them. But if attention goes into being aware, being mindful of emotions, it's kind of like we step back and really see it. Not to condemn it, not to push it away. We are with the experience, but we're not identified with the experience. We're not being the experience. Every experience is allowed to be what it is, but we don't have to be identified with it, defined by it, or be in it.
This continuity—just one breath—is enough to step away and put down the baggage. Two breaths, three breaths. Do not try too much, because the idea is to let that slowly grow. Continuity, immersion, and concentration is something that's like a muscle that develops. Or it's like a muscle that we're relaxing, just gently massaging it over and over again, and slowly something develops.
Or it's like butter. If you take butter out of the freezer, it's really hard. To break it in half you have to take a hammer to it or something. But if you let the butter sit out in the warmth of the room, slowly it will get softer, until you can take a butter knife and just put it on top, and it just sinks right through easily. It is the same way with concentration. It's a slow warming-up process. We come back and stay with a few breaths, and if we're not upset that we get distracted but lovingly begin again, begin again, something begins to come into the groove. Maybe we get five breaths, maybe ten breaths. As an act of will, we could stay for ten breaths, maybe, but concentration is not meant to be an act of will. It's meant to be an act of love, an act of care, an act of offering our presence to something.
That comes with the combination, the coming together of mindfulness and concentration. With a continuity of mindfulness, we're mindful of something, and then we stay with it for a while, feel it, and be with it. If it's something other than breathing—like if it's some sensation in the body, or some emotion or thinking—the idea is you spend at least three breaths with each one. Maybe three breaths is enough to fully acknowledge something, and the acknowledging and feeling it for three breaths might be enough to be able to put it aside and come back to the breathing.
This rhythm of three breaths with whatever we recognize and are with—sometimes we want to be longer with something, and that's fine. It's great sometimes to just stay for a long time with one thing. But the three breaths, putting down the baggage, just being with that, can begin to overcome and relax the bias, the automatic pilots, the automatic prioritization that the mind makes for where attention goes and what we're concerned with, for example, with our thinking.
I hope that makes sense. I want to leave you with the principle that the way that I teach mindfulness is with a partnership with concentration. The two don't have to be done separately, but one supports the other.
Thank you, and continue this introductory series tomorrow.