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Guided Meditation: Safeguarding the Good; Dharmette: Ten Protectors (2 of 10) Study - Gil Fronsdal

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on October 03, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Safeguarding the Good

Hello everyone, and welcome. We're here to meditate for 30 minutes.

One of the associations many people have with Buddhist practice is that it's important not to become attached, that we're supposed to somehow let go of our attachments. This, of course, has some truth to it, but it leads people to sometimes let go of things that don't need to be let go of. We let go of the things that don't have to be let go of—it's our attachment to them that we let go of, the clinging to them. Sometimes people confuse holding on to the things which are healthy and appropriate to hold, to keep close, with attachment or clinging. There is a healthy way of holding things closely: to prioritize certain things, to emphasize certain things, to hold on to certain things in a non-clinging way.

One in this family of things that is sometimes not seen as appropriate is safeguarding. There are some things that are worth safeguarding, protecting, maintaining, and maybe even developing. Wholesome qualities, a wholesome sense of being alive, and ways of being that feel peaceful and calm, or wise, joyful, happy, and connected even.

In meditation, sometimes there's a deepening sense of intimacy, calm, peace, or inner well-being of some sort. Some people feel that they have a connection to a spiritual dimension of life, a Dharma¹ dimension. All these might be very wholesome to have, and part of the path to practice is something that supports the ongoing movement through Buddhist practice. These should be safeguarded and protected to some degree. Not with attachment, not with holding tight, or with a kind of disappointment and grief if we lose them, but we also don't have to be casual about it. We don't have to let them come and go as they wish.

When we feel something positive, useful, or significant through, say, meditation practice or mindfulness practice, there's an art to keeping that close. To appreciate that this has priority in our life, and not to give it up easily by doing something that overrides it or pushes it to the side. Some of the things that we do in daily life maybe are not as important as the kind of spiritual connection we feel in meditation, or when we're present and calm for our life. To safeguard that, to not give it up easily, is part of the art of this practice.

Meditation can also be this way. As we settle into meditation, you want to safeguard and protect the mindfulness that's developing, the sense of calm or subtleness that's coming. In meditation, we mostly watch our mind and are very careful not to become interested in thoughts, stories, ideas, and feelings which maybe have less value for us than staying close to the ongoing practice of meditation—being in the present mindfully with the breathing. We're allowed to safeguard, we're allowed to prioritize, we're allowed to stay close to something and not give in to whatever whim comes up in the mind.

Assuming a meditation posture, maybe rocking a little bit back and forth, or forward and backwards, in order to help you find a midpoint. If you're sitting upright, find where you feel balanced and aligned in your body. If you're lying down, maybe there's a way of adjusting your back or your shoulders, your shoulder blades, that makes it a little bit more comfortable or alert for you to be on your back.

Lowering your gaze, and if it's comfortable for you, closing your eyes.

As if you're gently stroking a cat, or stroking someone's hair, or gently cleaning a surface with a soft cloth, gently allow yourself to take a few deeper breaths. Maybe there's a smooth movement of breathing as you breathe in a little bit more deeply than usual, more fully than usual. Breathing in more deeply, and then a little longer exhale. A gentle flow of releasing, letting go, and settling.

Letting your breath return to normal. And continuing to relax. Remember, with every exhale, soften some part of your body. As you exhale, soften the thinking mind. Maybe a quieting of thinking.

Somewhere within you, maybe somewhere deep within, below where you're thinking, below maybe even some of the difficult emotions if there are any, might there be a place of calm or quiet? Or a place of some kind of sweet intimacy or gentleness within? Or some way of feeling, sensing yourself here, alive and breathing, that feels good to you, that's worth safeguarding? To have that support your mindfulness, and your present moment mindfulness supporting staying close, maybe to a wordless place within that has a wholesome quality, or a welcome feeling of being alive and breathing.

Perhaps safeguarding or protecting your attention to this place, so it supports your ongoing practice of mindfulness.

Safeguarding your practice is to not allow your mind to drift away in thoughts and concerns which are second best to being here, close in. Safeguarding a way of being that feels more connected or intimate.

As we come to the end of this meditation, is there some way that you're settled, or calm, or quieter? Some way that your inner life has shifted or changed that feels satisfying, or feels right, feels good to be this way? Maybe the mind is quieter and more grounded here in the present.

Consider, as you come to the end of the sitting, what are the ways that you can easily, appropriately safeguard how you're feeling? Keep it close in, close by, so it's not completely lost as you go on to the next thing that your life will be about.

As we finish this sitting, may whatever benefit we've received through this sitting—any way that we feel more settled and more connected or content, any benefit we've received—may we also consider how we can share that with the world. How we can, based on that, offer more kindness, friendliness, and generosity to the people we encounter. That we somehow walk through the world benefiting the world with how we are: our friendliness, our kindness, our respect for others.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be safe. And may all beings be free. And may we somehow contribute to that possibility.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Ten Protectors (2 of 10) Study

Welcome to the second talk in a 10-part series on the Pali² word translated into English as "the protectors"—that which we can rely on or call upon for a certain kind of protection, safeguarding, and support. These things support and safeguard our inner life and our outer life. It's a way of living in the world protected from harm: inner harm that we cause ourselves, and outer harm.

It's an interesting list that the Buddha came up with for this purpose. Yesterday, it was virtuous conduct: that if we live a life that doesn't harm others or harm ourselves, there is a kind of protection. We're protecting something that is protect-worthy in ourselves—the sense of compassion, care, and respect we have for ourselves and others. Also, we tend to lessen the anger, hostility, and even violence that others will do to us.

Today, the second from the list is to be "well-learned." In the ancient language, the literal meaning is to "have heard a lot." Why it's worded that way is because, in the time of the Buddha, there were no books; people weren't reading. The only way to learn something, to get information, was to hear it. So, to have heard a lot means to be well-learned.

For people who are doing Buddhist practice, I think this implies learning about Buddhism, learning about the Dharma. This can have benefits, but doing too much learning, too much studying of Buddhism, can also be a distraction. It sometimes becomes an abstract exercise in philosophy and doctrine. But there are many ways in which learning about the Dharma teaches us where to be oriented, the values we want to have, the practices we want to do, and the ways of being in the world that protect us from ourselves, mitigating the possibility of harm from the world around us.

For example, it's one thing to learn mindfulness. It's another thing to learn how mindfulness is integral to the Eightfold Path³: Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and then Right Concentration. Learning these, and learning how to practice them or bring them forth into our life, helps develop mindfulness more strongly. It gives kind of feet to the mindfulness. It also shows us more of how we bring ourselves into the Dharma more completely so that the mindfulness can be more effective. It can be more effective in recognizing what's going on inside of us and outside of ourselves, so we're living a lifestyle that is more beneficial. Studying the Dharma and learning the Eightfold Path provides that kind of support.

Some people come to Buddhism with erroneous ideas, some of which can be harmful for them. I've known people who've come to Buddhism from the religion they grew up with, where the understanding was that if you're part of a religion, you had to believe everything the religion said, and there was no questioning it. So they come to Buddhism and they think, "Well, now I have to believe all of this." And some of Buddhism is hard to believe for many people. Then they're struggling and think, "Maybe I can't be a Buddhist."

But if you study Buddhism, you realize quickly that there's no need to believe all of it. Buddhism has a pragmatic, practical side that is the emphasis. We study Buddhism in order to help us on the path to liberation, to freedom—freedom from attachments. We can pick and choose a little bit within Buddhism what we want to study, what helps us, and what supports us. There is a vast supply of teachings and practices in Buddhism, and then we are responsible for our own practice, navigating the different choices of practice, and finding what teachings are most useful for us.

Learning well might be to learn not only mindfulness practice but learning loving-kindness⁴ practice, compassion⁵ practice, or equanimity⁶ practice, and then knowing when those are useful to practice and when they're useful to support us.

It is also helpful to learn that we don't have to believe all of Buddhism. Some people come to Buddhism and believe that the precepts are these hard and fast rules, that if you commit yourself to the precepts and break them, you're kind of doomed. It's almost like you create so much bad karma or sin. Again, these are people coming with other religious ideas and using them to understand Buddhism. In Buddhism, the precepts are actually literally called "trainings." To learn that they are trainings rather than commandments can make a huge difference to how people approach the Buddhist precepts.

Part of learning is to learn the importance of the motivation for which we're practicing. Learning about motivation is very important. Then we do the inner work of ourselves: "What is my motivation? Is my motivation useful? What motivations does Buddhism encourage us to have, and why?"

For example, the motivation toward liberation—liberation from suffering. There are some people who feel like the end of suffering is not really spiritual. The end of suffering is nice, it's therapeutic, but it doesn't connect us to what they think is a spiritual world of deities, or cosmic ultimate meanings, and different things. Why does early Buddhism put such a big emphasis on the end of suffering as being the ultimate goal of the practice? Knowing that can help refine how a person is involved in Buddhism, or maybe help them decide that Buddhism is not for them. They may have other purposes they want, and there are other completely worthwhile religious practices and orientations that a person could have. By studying the teachings of Buddhism, a person can know, "Oh, this is actually not for me, and I think I would rather have some other approach to how to live my life."

To study well in Buddhism, and also in daily life, is to not take things on faith. Not to read something or learn something and have opinions about it without having studied it. I know in my life, I've had opinions about things that I actually didn't know much about, and then I felt quite concerned about myself that I would do this.

One of the purposes of reading and studying is so that we don't rely on unfounded opinion, even if those opinions seem logical or seem like a lot of people believe them. There are all kinds of opinions that travel around our society, around politics, economics, racism, and all kinds of things. Some of these opinions and ideas don't even present themselves as opinions and ideas; they're presented as the truth. And if some person of authority says them, then they must be true.

But to go behind, underneath, and see where the ideas come from and what history they have is important. It doesn't mean you have to do an extensive study of something, but even a small study, a summary of some of the background for some of the opinions people have, can be eye-opening. It can be a safeguarding of the truth—safeguarding ourselves from holding on to opinions tightly without really knowing. If we keep the opinion, then we're better informed, and so then we're safeguarding the truth.

When we say, "I believe this because I read it in this book, or heard this teacher say it," or "I believe it because I've reasoned it out; my reasoning leads me to believe this"—the Buddha emphasized something called "safeguarding the truth." It means being really clear about the basis upon which you have an opinion or a belief. The same is true for Buddhism itself: on what basis do you hold your beliefs? Is this something you know from experience? Is it something you know from a book? Rather than saying "Buddhism says..." or "The Buddha said...", you can say "The Buddha said in a particular [context]...", and it creates a little context for what you're doing.

I like to think that this teaching on learning a lot, learning well, is not a way of becoming complicated and filling our heads with ideas. Instead, it's guided by the idea that if you study well, it actually allows the mind to become simpler and quieter. Not simplistic, but wisely simple. Appreciating the depth and the great value of showing up with the simplicity of being, with mindfulness and care in all the situations of our life.

It is safeguarding our inner simplicity of being, or any inner sense of being at home with ourselves, at peace with ourselves. We study to learn a little bit about the beliefs we have that take us away from that. We study to understand how it's appropriate to find a simplicity of being to rest in, and to be with that. There's so much goodness that flows from that. That simplicity of being protects some of the most beautiful qualities of who we are, so they can be shared with the world.

I do recommend that people who want to do a regular Buddhist practice spend a little bit of time studying Buddhism, getting the basic ideas. One of the consequences of that is that even if we don't understand all the teachings now, as the practice continues and matures, we'll be able to identify and recognize what's happening to us because we have the language, the context, and the concepts to say, "Oh, this is good. This is what's happening."

One example was that I had learned a little bit about mettā⁴, loving-kindness—just the ideas of it. At some point in my meditation practice on retreat, this unusual feeling arose in me. At first, I didn't know what it was. But because I had learned about loving-kindness, which I had no idea about before I started Buddhism, I said, "Oh, this is what it is." Having that simple recognition made it come alive and really let it grow for me.

Part of the purpose of being well-studied in Buddhism is to learn the basic ideas so that, when appropriate, we can recognize them and see how they grow in us. Another example would be to learn what the Seven Factors of Awakening⁷ are. As you practice, at some point each of these seven factors of awakening might appear for you, and you can recognize, "Oh, this is what it is. This is useful. This is something to safeguard."

Of these Ten Protectors, the second one is being well-studied, well-learned. I'll continue with this series tomorrow.

Thank you.