This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Faculties for Fearlessness (5 of 5) with Diana Clark. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Faculties for Fearlessness Guided Meditation (5 of 5); Faculties for Fearlessness: Panna (5 of 5) - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on November 17, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Faculties for Fearlessness Guided Meditation (5 of 5)

Good morning. Good morning, welcome, welcome. Good afternoon, good evening, and even if the future you is listening to this—you know, maybe you listen to it again or maybe you don't listen to them in real time—just a warm welcome. Maybe you're even out for a walk listening on a podcast. Sometimes I do this, and I imagine others do this as well.

Today is the last day I'm talking about faculties for fearlessness. We've been going through the five faculties¹. This is a standard list; those of you who have been around Buddhism for a while know the five faculties, but I've been doing them a little bit differently, in a different order, and I've been highlighting particular aspects of each faculty rather than fleshing out the fullness of each one. I've just been highlighting a particular aspect or a particular way of looking and considering each faculty, and applying it to fearlessness: how can it support us for our fear? Fear is just a part of this human experience. All of us have it, whether it's obvious or subtle, it's there in some way. Maybe not every moment, but it does have an impact on our lives. So, part of finding freedom is to meet fear, to be with fear, and not to be afraid of fear.

With that, let's start with a little guided meditation.

Here, maybe starting with some deep breaths. Our physiology is such that some extended exhales help us to settle. As you know with this practice, we are not manipulating the breath; we're allowing the breath to be normal, just how it is. However, it can be helpful to do a few breaths where we are intentionally extending the exhale just a tiny bit.

Allowing the breath to return to normal, trusting that the body knows how to breathe. We do not need to breathe in any particular way.

Maybe just opening the awareness. Recognizing that there are sounds. Maybe quiet, maybe not so quiet. And just receiving the sounds. We don't have to go out and get them. For me, I can hear little birds—probably you can't hear them through my microphone. Allowing myself to feel that little bit of uplift. Good morning, little birds.

And then bringing attention to the bodily experience. Feeling the contact of whatever surface we're sitting on or lying on. Feeling the pressure against the body. The buttocks against the cushion, the chair. The back of the legs. The feet.

And the back. Maybe you're leaning against the back of the chair. Maybe you're lying down. Maybe you can feel the clothing on the back, or the temperature of the air on the back. Whatever it is that the back is in contact with. Feeling connected, grounded. We're here now with these experiences.

Maybe you notice some areas of constriction, tightness, tension. I often like to check around the eyes and the jaw, places where I hold tension. Allowing some softening, relaxing.

The shoulders, the front of the body, the chest. Maybe it can open just a tiny bit more—very, very small movement, moving the shoulders back. And the belly, letting it relax and soften.

And can we let this softening, opening, relaxing, and releasing be a support for a tone of warmth and kindness towards ourselves? Towards whatever experiences are being had, and toward everything that isn't ourselves. Everybody just setting an intention, a direction, a mood of warmth and kindness.

And then resting the attention on the sensations of breathing. Tuning in to, being sensitive to the experience of breathing. Not the idea of breathing, the concept, or the notion, but the experience. What does it feel like from the inside? What does an inhale feel like? What does an exhale feel like? What about the transitions between inhales and exhales?

It doesn't have to be a problem when the mind wanders. We just simply, gently, with warmth and care, begin again.

Faculties for Fearlessness: Panna (5 of 5)

Good morning, welcome, welcome everybody. Today is our last day talking about faculties for fearlessness. Five fabulous faculties for fun fearlessness forever for freedom! I have many alliterations in a row. I didn't put the word "fine" in there, probably I could get that in there somewhere too. I'm just playing around, I like alliterations.

Review of the Five Faculties

Maybe I'll just start with a quick review of what we've talked about earlier in the week. As you know, I've been looking at the five faculties not in the conventional way, not in the usual order, and not necessarily in the usual way that we think about them. I've been applying them to how they can help us with fear, how they can help us with this pervasive feeling that we often have that, "Oh, I have to protect myself," or "Oh, I'm feeling a little bit threatened." This fear shows up in some really subtle ways, as well as in really obvious ways in which there's some imminent danger. It can also be just this low-grade anxiety where it's not even clear what we're afraid of; there's just this sense of not feeling safe.

Fear shows up in so many different ways in our lives and it has an impact on us. It's taxing. Not only is it taxing, it can diminish our life in terms of always trying to avoid greater fear or things that we're not comfortable with. It robs us of some freedom. We're getting pushed around by trying to avoid things that are fearful.

In the preceding days of this series on the faculties for fearlessness, I started off talking about sati², and I emphasized the element of noticing. Part of sati is noticing. If we're experiencing fear or we have some anxiety, it can be enormously helpful to notice our environment. Really mundane things, like there's a computer screen, there's a corner of the desk, there's a keyboard. Just really mundane things to help us get collected and grounded here. There's also a way that we can notice this strong sense of "no," this way in which we're resisting and pushing back: "No, I don't want this experience." We notice that, and how it feels in the body and in the mind.

Then that second day, I went to samādhi³. This sense of getting centered, gathered, and collected, maybe this wholeheartedness or wholeness around something, stopping the fragmentation. I emphasized looking at the sense of "no," this resistance. It turns out this is so powerful. We often think that we have to deal with the fear directly. We can do that, but it's not always available to us. So part of samādhi is to have this collectedness around the resistance, and we shouldn't underestimate how powerful and transformative this can be.

On the third day, we went to saddhā⁴ (or śraddhā). Saddhā is confidence. It is to have some confidence that this practice does lead to greater freedom, greater ease, and well-being. It's also confidence in ourselves that we can do this. We just need enough confidence to do the next thing: be present for the next breath, go to the next sit, listen to the next Dharma talk, whatever it might be. Confidence in ourselves, and confidence that other people have this capability as well. Things unfold differently if we're assuming that they have this capacity to be with what's needed. Also, saddhā as trust: trusting in this inner process towards greater wisdom, towards wholeness, towards freedom, towards healing. There's something inside of us that we can trust. We don't have to make everything happen; there is also something that just naturally happens. I don't want to say that we have to be passive and not put in any effort, because we do, but it's not one hundred percent about us making effort. Part of saddhā is trusting the process, even if it is uncomfortable.

Yesterday, I talked about viriya⁵ as courage. Sometimes we don't talk about the courage aspect of viriya as much. But it is this courage to meet whatever it is. The courage to do the preceding steps that I've talked about. The courage to be curious about fear and the resistance to fear. Some courage to stop avoiding and stop distracting ourselves, which of course we do—of course we don't want to feel fear or the resistance to fear. So yesterday was about viriya as courage.

Paññā: Distinguishing and Discernment

Today, I'd like to talk about the fifth faculty for fearlessness, and that is paññā⁶. Before I give the usual translation, I'll talk about paññā as distinguishing and discernment. This is an ability that we all have, a capacity to make distinctions. I'm not talking about some sophisticated philosophical thing, or knowing esoteric concepts. I'm talking about the distinctions that start to grow out of clarity of mind.

This clarity of mind arises just through practice, through mindfulness in general, and through some settledness. There's a way in which we can distinguish fear from the resistance to fear. This can be such a great starting point, as well as something that matures with our practice. Being able to recognize that fear feels like this—it's a lump in the throat, maybe some tightness in the chest—and the resistance is maybe tension in the shoulders or tension around the jaw. It turns out tension in the jaw, in particular, is really related to a sense of resistance.

Part of this paññā is to know the difference between fear and the resistance to fear, and to know the physical sensations away from the mental events. The physical sensations are the lump in the throat or the tightness in the jaw. The mental events are the thoughts, like, "Oh, if only I were somebody else, then I wouldn't be having this fear or this anxiety," or, "If only I had more time to practice, if only I meditated for 28 hours a day, then I wouldn't be having this." Or, "If that thing over there would just stop doing that, then I would feel safe all the time and I wouldn't have this fear."

There are a lot of stories that are accompanying these feelings of fear and anxiety. This idea of, "I couldn't survive if this or that happened, or if somebody did this or didn't do that." Without concerning ourselves with whether these things are true or not, we are just noticing, "Oh, this is thinking, and this is an experience." This lump in the throat—I keep on pointing to my throat because for me, fear is often a lump in the throat. All of us have our own ways, our own signatures, if you will, of how fear and resistance show up in our bodies. Paññā, this fifth faculty, is this distinguishing between fear and resistance, between physical and mental.

It is also distinguishing or discerning between kusala and akusala⁷. These are Pali words. We might translate them as helpful and unhelpful, skillful and unskillful, wholesome and unwholesome, or more suffering and less suffering. Just being able to notice in our life and tease this apart: "Oh yeah, when I show up in this way, it leads to more suffering. However, when I show up in this other way, which always involves some openness and ease, it leads to less suffering." This resistance and really tightening up always leads to more suffering, and this opening and spaciousness leads to less suffering. It's easy for me to say this; I know it's not easy to do it. But this is just to acknowledge that there are ways in which we show up in the world that bring some greater ease, peace, or freedom than others. So, paññā is distinguishing and discernment.

Insight and the Three Characteristics

I will also highlight that paññā is insight. Paññā is often translated as wisdom, but we might think of it as insight. Insight is a change of heart, an opening, a realization, maybe an expansion, a vision, a clear seeing. It is seeing the world in a different way that leads to less suffering.

Insight has two components: seeing things differently, and seeing them in a way that leads to less suffering. Sometimes we focus on how we see things differently, but we can also focus on how it leads to less suffering. "Oh yeah, since I had that realization, there is a little bit less suffering now. Now that I see that fear and the resistance to fear are tangled up together, and I'm able to tease them apart... I can see how my tendency to get angry and blame is not the same thing as the fear, but is my pattern of reacting to the fear." Having that little bit of insight brings a little bit less suffering. Insights might be big-bang ones, or they might just be a little bit of greater self-understanding.

I want to highlight that this idea of insight—right, we are the Insight Meditation Center, we kind of like this insight stuff—is that we can learn from every experience, including fear. Sometimes we think that we just have to have meditative experiences and then we'll have insights. But fear and our resistance to fear are also great places to have insight. We don't have to wait for perfect, pleasant conditions to have some really transformative and impactful insights.

Some of you know about the three characteristics: things are inconstant, they're unsatisfactory, and there isn't an inherent core to the experiences. Anicca, dukkha, and anatta⁸. I'm not going to say more about them; I'll just point out that all of these insights, whether smaller or bigger, involve a little bit of letting go so that we can let go into greater and greater freedom. And of course, freedom is fearlessness.

Announcements and Closing

Thank you all for being on this journey with me this week. Before I sign off, I want to mention that if you're interested in exploring fear some more, there are some classes coming up.

If I can figure out how to put them in the chat box, I will. I'm not exactly sure how to do this. I'm looking at this, but while I'm doing this, I'll describe it. There's a class called "Fear, Dread, and Freedom" that I'll be teaching with some of my friends in December. Maybe if you just google "Fear, Dread, and Freedom" you'd find it, I don't actually know. And then there's also "The Path of Fearlessness" that I'll be teaching.

Oh, here we go! Now I think I can chat. Okay, so I think I put this in the chat box, just in case you're interested. Oh, I have too many words. Sorry about this, I should have figured this out earlier.

Right, so "Fear, Dread, and Freedom" is at the Sati Center. And then this other one is called "The Path of Fearlessness" and it's with IMC. This is more of a program where we'll be meeting once a month for six or seven months. These are all freely offered. This is only if you're interested in exploring more about fear. I'll be talking about it in some different ways, co-teaching with some of my friends, and I'd love to see some of you there. Both of them are completely on Zoom, so there will be a chance for interaction with the teachers and with each other, as well as some guided meditations and learning in whatever way you feel comfortable with.

Yes, I'm sorry if you hear this loud sound up there. As someone just noted in the chat, "The Path of Fearlessness" is listed on the homepage of IMC, and "Fear, Dread, and Freedom" is on the Sati Center website. I'm just offering this in case it's helpful and you want to explore this whole idea of fearlessness more. We won't be covering the specific things that I covered here in these five days; it will be a little bit different.

What a pleasure it's been to spend these days with you and to be exploring these faculties for fearlessness and freedom. Five faculties for fearless freedom forever! I wish you all a wonderful rest of the day, and may you find some fearlessness. And if fear shows up, maybe you can tune into the resistance to that fear, rather than feeling like you have to dive right into the fear itself, which is not always available for us. Thank you.