This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Meditating, Not Being Somemone; Insight (32) This I am Not.. It likely contains inaccuracies.

Guided Meditation: Meditating, Not Being Somemone; Insight (32) This I am Not.

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on August 05, 2025. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Hello everyone, and welcome. To begin, it might be helpful to think of meditation as an activity we are engaging in, that we're giving ourselves over to, rather than that meditation is a time to be somebody. Many times, human beings are busy being some character, some identity, some image of who they're supposed to be or how they want to be seen. Because we're sitting quietly in meditation, we can all too easily go into who I am, not what I'm doing.

For example, if someone is fully engaged in playing music in a concert or playing a sport, or many things that are activities that are really fun and engaging and get absorbed in, if we spend too much time thinking, "I am the musician," "I am the athlete," "I am this and that," and then we're concerned what people think about us, we're analyzing ourselves, having commentary about ourselves, judging what we're doing, judging ourselves as being the doer, it very quickly and obviously interferes with playing music, interferes with the sport or the activity we're doing. But that's less obvious sitting in meditation. Because we so easily get pulled into, you know, we're not doing a lot. It looks almost like we're doing nothing. So we're not so engaged in a full, embodied, interesting way. All our senses and activities are not absorbed in it. And so it's easy for attention to flow into the world of being someone. "I am a bad meditator." "I am a good meditator." "I am someone who has to go shopping today, and how do I shop in such a way that the other shoppers think that I'm a good shopper?"

So in sitting in meditation, you might want to shift from any concern with who you are, any idea of who you are, and focus more on the activity of being engaged in the meditation itself, the activity of meditation. And that's a number of activities. One that I found very helpful over these years that I've been meditating is to not be too passive with the posture of meditation, to have just the right amount of intentionality in sitting upright. Even if you need to use a backrest, a couch, or a chair, or if you have to lay down, there's a way of assuming those postures where there's a little intentionality involved. Maybe you can sit up a little straighter. Maybe the positioning of the hands—in Zen, they hold the hands off the legs, so that usually the hands are together, one resting in the other, right below the belly button, so it's not resting on anything in particular. Or people who lay down sometimes will have their arm at a right angle, with the elbow resting on the floor or the bed and their upper arm pointing right to the ceiling. So there's some intentionality. We're engaged with the body when we meditate, being careful of the position of the head, and watch the body so you don't sink or get contracted.

And then we are engaging the mind, not in an intense way. We're gauging the mind to be at ease. So we're attentive to the mind, noticing when stress comes in, tightness comes in. We're engaged in feeling the sensations of the body. We're there in an easeful way, but we're engaged in tracking, in a sense, the shifting, changing sensations of breathing. Someone who's playing basketball or some ball game is tracking the ball as it moves around the court. Their eyes don't go off it. They're fully engaged. So there's an activity of meditation and how to do that activity so we're fully in it. And it doesn't really matter, all the ways you might answer the question, "Who are you?" It doesn't matter here. Who you are in meditation is almost like a jacket you wear that you can take off. And you're taking it off here now so you can do this activity of meditation. You can put it on again later, but it's not really needed right now. Just the activity.

So, assume an intentional posture. If you're able to sit upright, there's something profound about the upright, cross-legged meditation posture that can allow the body to relax deeply when it's well aligned. The two postures that most allow the body to relax are laying down and sitting upright.

Gently close the eyes and begin gathering in your different attentional faculties, so that all your attentional capacities are gathered together for the purpose of the activity of mindfulness, the activity of awareness. So that you're awareing, you're minding, you're feeling.

Begin by feeling, using your capacity to feel, to begin gathering yourself together in the activity of attention, feeling the body and letting yourself roam around the body, as if you're familiarizing yourself with the location where the activity of meditation will be happening. Getting to know here, this place, this time, so you become more centered here to be able to give yourself to this activity. It can help to relax the body, adjust the body so maybe it softens and relaxes more. In many physical activities, we limber up the body, prepare the body for the activity. In some activities, we adjust the mind, letting go of whatever is not the activity—thoughts and concerns—and becoming centered, oriented with the mind, getting focused here and now.

Maybe focused on breathing, focused on feeling the sensations of breathing. Gently setting the mind on the task of knowing your present moment experience. So you're gathered together knowing the activity of breathing, feeling the activity of breathing. And let the breathing support you to relax and to calm the body and mind.

For now, it doesn't matter who you are. It doesn't matter where you've been, where you're going, what you've done, and what you will do. It matters only now to gather yourself into this activity of meditation. And to do so in a way that is centering, quieting, calming, with no strain, no tension, or at least leaning into the places of no tension. Engaging in the activity of mindfulness, meditation. And any thought or concern that has to do with putting on the jacket of self, "I am this," take it off. Let it go. Give yourself over to this activity as you might already do in some activities you really enjoy doing.

With whatever calm subtleness you might feel, let that be the location, the place, the approach to being fully engaged in the activity of attending to a calm, settled way of being, a calm, settled awareness here. And in gathering together attention, that can include appreciation for whatever degree of subtleness and calm awareness you have.

And as we end this sitting, perhaps you can consider how too much involvement with "I am," with self-preoccupation about who we are and our judgments about it, interferes with our ability to listen well to others, to see others clearly, to appreciate others, and to care.

May our involvement with meditation support us to be better listeners, better attenders, better appreciators of others. May it help us remember our goodwill, wishing others well.

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

Thank you.

Hello and welcome to this continuation of talks on insight, the insight part of insight meditation. Yesterday, I started talking about this list of three things that the Buddha instructed us to be very careful around in the context of meditation—that maybe these are not necessary and we don't have to be involved in them. That is the notion that "this is mine," taking ownership of something, feeling that there's a certain kind of greed.

Today, the topic is not to make things into who I am. This idea that "I am something" can be innocent enough and held lightly. But the way I want to focus on it today is not that it's inappropriate to say "I am" and have a view that I am a certain kind of way, but rather how it's a magnet for a lot of unnecessary ideas about "I am."

When I first got involved with Zen meditation, I liked going to the San Francisco Zen Center to visit because when I talked to more senior, experienced practitioners, I would, as usual—it was almost unconscious that I did it until that time—I was playing social games. I was trying to present myself in ways so they would see me in a certain way. They would think I was a great person or a kind person or a capable person or a smart person. I was trying to get them to like me, and so I was trying to manipulate or present myself or engage in ways that would get that result. With my friends, it kind of worked. We all kind of did it; it was just part and parcel of how we were. They had no idea that I was doing it. It wasn't out of scale with how many people can be, at least seemingly.

But when I was at the Zen center, the senior practitioners there were unresponsive to my attempts. I was amazed, and they became mirrors, so I saw myself much better, what I was trying to do, because they weren't participating in it. And I saw how much I was building myself up, how much I was engaged in the process of "selfing."

I think some of us who are old enough to have watched the growth of the selfie, the growth of social media, the growth of smartphones with cameras on them, it's remarkable to me to have watched how much self-preoccupation has come into play, where "me, myself, and mine" becomes bigger and bigger. Taking a selfie of oneself wherever we go—we never took selfies. We always took pictures of something else. To put ourselves front and center as the subject of photographs was kind of a foreign idea just 20 or 30 years ago.

And I see people who are young who seem to spend an inordinate amount of time, from my point of view compared to the past, with posing for photographs, presenting themselves in different ways, having certain clothes that are a little bit more glamorous, very much concerned about how they are presented, who they are, concerned with how many friends they have on Instagram. All this concern with self has grown in a way that would have been unbelievable for me when I was in my 20s.

So in a sense, it's a growing preoccupation with self, who I am, how I appear. I also see it in the way some people talk. It seems so natural to them. It's kind of like no one has an accent in their hometown; for themselves, no one has an accent. Everyone else has accents because it's just the normal way of speaking. In the same way, the normal way of being self-concerned, self-preoccupied is so integral to society and oneself that people don't even see it. I'm a little bit astounded sometimes how many people, when they talk, are constantly using the word "I," constantly being self-referential. My impression is that that has increased over the decades, not decreased. I think that the advent of the web and social media and all kinds of things has increased people's self-concern about their presentation, who they are, how popular they are. That is tiring, is a strain, is fragile.

For the Buddha, one of the things we do is we add on a conceit on top of any innocent idea of "I am something." "I am of this age." "I am of this gender." "I am of this nationality, of this ethnicity, of this educational background, of this profession." There are many things that are accurate enough, but once we say it, once we live in it, it becomes a magnet for conceit. And conceit is stressful. Conceit is extra work. Conceit is tiring. Conceit is selfish.

So part of Buddhist practice, or insight practice, is to start seeing, knowing, recognizing the extra layer of conceit, of stress, that's on top of the innocent idea "I am." The Buddha went on to say that anything that you can say that's really specific, that you can specifically see, touch, feel, it's extra to add on top of it, "I am this."

So right now, I'm sitting. If I add on top of it, "I am sitting," that's accurate enough, and there's not really any stress. "I'm a sitter." It's accurate enough to say I'm a sitter, but it's a little bit awkward to say it because we don't usually say that in English. It comes out of my tongue a little bit effortful. And why would I need to say it? Why is that important news for the world that I am a sitter, that that's my current status? It kind of feels like a little extra in the moment to say it. So if I'm sitting in meditation and repeatedly the thought comes up, "Boy, am I a sitter. I'm a good sitter. I'm the best sitter. I'm a lousy sitter," it starts to take me away from my direct experience. It starts putting on layers and layers of stress on top of the present moment experience.

So, I'm not pointing today to deny the value of statements that say "I am something," but it's the layers of tension and extra that we put on top of it and the preoccupation with it which takes us away from our direct experience. The Buddha encouraged people, especially in meditation I believe, to do the opposite: to not be caught up in "I am this," to not live in "I am this-ness." Let "I am whatever" just be there in the background, because any preoccupation with it interferes with a deeper kind of presence and peace that's possible in meditation.

So part of the insight of insight meditation is to see that stress, to see how it's extra. Certainly, there are times when "I am this" is appropriate to say, but maybe think of it as a jacket you put on and take off. If you have a profession, then when you're doing the work, you can say, "I am this." When you're not doing it, maybe take it off. It's not that important to say, unless there's a neighbor who needs help and you say, "Well, I'm a plumber. I can help," so they have some confidence in you. But don't sew your "am-ness" into the very fabric of who you are, but rather see it as just a light jacket you're wearing that you put on and off as needed.

Be very sensitive, not to the idea that you should never have to say "I am" anything, but to notice the stress that's added, the clinging, the conceit, how it becomes this wind drag, how it becomes unnecessary. There's an unnecessary amount of selfing going on.

So, one of the ways that might be interesting for you—it's a little difficult to do, especially in English—is you might try doing for the next 24 hours, in a way that other people maybe don't notice, an attempt to use the words "I," "me," and "myself" less in your conversations or maybe less in your writing. Maybe you could try for today at least to avoid a lot of talk about me, myself, and mine, and see how that is. See how that affects you.

Some sentences might be reworded. Instead of saying, "I am cold," it's fine to say that, but for this exercise, say something like, "Wow, it's cold here." Of course, everyone understands that you're cold that way, but you're not putting the focus on you; you're putting the focus on the situation. Or if someone says they're cold and you immediately follow up, maybe to empathize with them, and you say, "I'm cold too," for today, try not to follow up with "I am." Just say, "Oh, should we go stand in the sun?" so that you're responding to them, but you're not responding with being self-referential.

So, try today, the next 24 hours, and see what you learn. It might be very hard. Maybe you do it in small pieces. Maybe you take five or 10 minutes here and there where you try to do it this way. Exercise this and then see what difference it makes in the conversation, in the relationship to others, and more importantly, in yourself. I suspect that if you do it all day, at first it's going to be very difficult. At first, it's going to be tiring, but maybe by the end of the day, you'll go to sleep more at ease. Something will have relaxed deeply.

So thank you very much, and I look forward to tomorrow.