Being Lost

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Being Lost - Gil Fronsdal. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on August 27, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Being Lost

I spent a good part of the summer in the wilderness or the edges of wild places. Recently, I was at one place where there were some people who were quite skilled and had wilderness skills, and they were going to help some of the people who didn't have much skill. They talked about how to navigate in the wilderness, and one of the skills is what to do when you're lost. So I want to talk about that.

Later, there's a friend who studied with an Indigenous person in Canada. This Indigenous person herself told the story of her Elder finding someone who was lost—a boy who was lost. This story really had a big impact on her and helped her Buddhist meditation practice. So this idea of being lost has come to my mind. I think it's not such a stretch to think about how being lost is a metaphor for how people are confused, lost, or don't know how to find their way in their lives.

It can be being lost in relationships—confused, uncertain, asking, "What do we do now?" It could be a loss of sense of purpose in life or work. It could be in oneself, one's identity, what's important for one, or what we are supposed to do. It can be being lost with our emotional lives. Emotional lives are quite difficult and often not obviously rational, or obviously there for a clear reason that we can address. Some people feel lost in their emotional life. This idea of being lost is a common human phenomenon.

These two stories that I've been living with about being lost might be a nice reference point. The wilderness guide, who is telling people what to do when they're lost, explained that the best thing you can do as soon as you realize you are lost is to stop and stand still. In the wilderness, the people who get really lost and are not found easily are the ones who stumble along trying to find their way. They keep going, but they don't know their way, and they end up going deeper and deeper into the wilderness, into places where maybe it doesn't occur to others to find them. But if you stop as soon as you're lost, then you're relatively close maybe to a place where other people go, or where people think you've gone.

So the idea is to stop and be still. That's counterintuitive because you're lost, it's dangerous, and you feel you have to do something. You want to keep going, keep searching. But this emphasis was really to stand still and wait. Someone will find you, especially if they know you're out in the wilderness. If you didn't tell anyone, that's a sign of not being skilled in the wilderness either.

This idea of standing still when you're lost I think is quite a wonderful thing in life in general. One of the things that standing still does, and what it's a metaphor for, is not keeping going and not spinning. In the wilderness, if you stop and stand still, maybe there's an opportunity to relax, settle, catch your breath, and begin looking around the environment. You can ask, "What's going on here?" People who panic when they get lost don't think very well and don't study their environment very well. But if you stop and stand still, then all the surface tension—all that extra stuff that we add on top of the situation—has a chance to settle.

If you have a meditation practice, maybe you even sit down and meditate for a while to really let the surface, all the extra agitation, emotion, and spinning of the mind, settle enough so when you open your eyes, maybe you can look at the situation more clearly. You notice, "Oh, it's kind of quiet, and now I can hear better. Quietly in the distance, I hear that river. That's where I came from; I crossed the river, and I know its direction." But you had to be quiet enough to hear it. Or it's quiet enough to think, "There's a hilltop really close by. I wonder if I go there and get an overview of the place, maybe I'll have a better sense of where I came from or the direction to go." So just being calm and settling down is powerful in all kinds of places when we feel lost in our lives.

One of the things stopping does—whatever we do, stopping and being still, maybe meditating—is that we begin to shed or allow to settle away all the stuff that is extra, that's not needed, that gets in the way of our clarity, our wisdom, our seeing what valuable landmarks there might be for us to find our way. A big part of what meditation and mindfulness practice can do is not what it gives us, but what it helps us to let go of. We shed all the extra stuff—being agitated, afraid, caught up in what's going on, spinning—so we can see clearly.

This happened to me. I wasn't lost physically, but I was in the wilderness when I was living in a Buddhist monastery. I spent a lot of time walking in the mountains by myself. We had days off in the monastery, so that's when I went walking in the wilderness, sometimes on trails, sometimes off trails. The first year in the monastery, a lot of what I did during these days off was be kind of miserable. That's when I was left alone enough to start thinking about what I was going to do with my life. What should I do?

I'd been accepted to graduate school and contacted them to ask if I could defer for a year. I didn't tell them the important thing that came up was going to a Buddhist monastery, but they said sure. So I knew they were waiting for me. I wondered if I should go to graduate school. It was a graduate program to be of service to the world in an important way. The idea of being of service almost felt like, "Should I do that?" I questioned my motivation: "Is this the right thing to do? Should I continue in Buddhism? What should I do with my life?" I was in my twenties and was wondering what to do.

Because I couldn't figure it out, I had a lot of doubts about myself and my ability to choose. I was lost, I was confused, and I was miserable with how I was. This went on for many months. At some point, I was on some trail, doing this usual rumination, questioning myself, and wondering what to do. I said to myself, "Gil, you're spending a lot of time—and more and more time—in your imagination of other places and other times, what you're going to do in the future, and where you might go. This is just your imagination; it's not actually what's happening or what would happen." I felt kind of hopeless after all these months of reflection and thinking. I felt like I couldn't find an answer that way anymore.

So I made a decision to be still. I think I still walked on the trail, but I decided to really stop all this movement of the mind, imagination, and doubting, and just take the next step. Just show up for the next thing that was there. On this trail, the next step was literally the next step. And then it was time to get back to the monastery. When you get back to the monastery, it's all choreographed. They ring a bell, and you have to go meditate. They ring another bell, and you go eat. I was really lucky that I made this decision to literally start my life over. I don't know, maybe it's kind of naive to think you can do that, but I'm naive sometimes, and that's okay, it sort of serves me sometimes. I said, "Okay, I'm going to start over."

To start over in a Buddhist monastery is kind of unusual. I feel so lucky that's where I was because the next thing I had to do was meditate when the bell rang. What a great thing to do! And then the next thing was to do the work I had to do, living that monastic life. It just kept opening doors. In some very real way for me, my life did start over again at that point. Because I started in a monastery, it really informed how my life then unfolded as it opened up step by step. And now I'm here with you because of that choice, so that's not so bad, is it? I think it's great.

This kind of being still, stopping the rumination, stopping the spinning of the mind, the doubts, and emotions—learning how to quiet all this so that we can see differently and start fresh—allows some different decision to come that cannot come when we're lost and spinning around. I think this is true in relationships, too. It's so easy in relationships to be spinning, agitated, afraid, angry, and doubtful. Learning to stop and be still is maybe sometimes essential in relationships. Maybe not in the moment when it's difficult, but if the relationship is going to last for some time, maybe you'll find some way to stop and be still. Let the agitated mind and heart quiet enough so that something different can happen, some different seeing.

So what's the different thing that can happen? This is the second story, from the Indigenous person in Canada. Her Elder had spent a lot of time in the wilderness, working and living in the woods. At some point, his homeland became a national park in Canada, so he continued being there. At some point, a young boy got lost. The park rangers spent two days looking for him and couldn't find him. So they went to this man, Jim, and asked, "Can you help?" He said, "Take me to the place where the boy was last seen."

They took him there, and he stood in that spot for half an hour without moving. He stood still, maybe just studying the spot. Then he started walking into the woods. He just had some sense of where to go and followed it. He went alone for some time, and at some point, he stopped and hollered. Something hollered back right there next to him. It was the boy, but the boy was petrified.

What he did was just sit down next to the boy. It took about half an hour for the boy to thaw and calm down, to be able to have a conversation and be ready for the next thing. Then he brought him back to the world. Later, they asked him about that experience and how he managed it. He said, "Every living being is unique, and you have to find what is unique about whoever or whatever it is, and then maybe you can follow them." What he meant was that the boy had unique footprints. He knew the footprints of all the animals in the woods, so he knew how to differentiate them. Standing there for half an hour, he was looking around to see what the footprint of this boy was like. Then he started following the traces of those footprints that he could find through the woods, and he found the boy.

This act of just stopping and being still with the boy, accompanying him, allowed the boy to relax and calm down enough after two terrifying days in the wilderness to be able to come along.

My friend took this story, which was very impactful for her, and applied it to her meditation. When she's lost, she has to stop and be still, and then search for the trail, the traces in herself, to find a way forward. One of the ways to do that, which I find very helpful for me in my meditation, is to be quiet enough and then ask myself: "What inside of me is asking for attention? What inside of me is calling for attention, or inviting or welcoming my attention?"

Rather than having some idea that I'm supposed to pay attention to something specific—sometimes I've done that in a very assertive way, like, "By golly, I'm going to get concentrated here! I'm just going to zoom in!" or "I'm going to get rid of this pain!" taking a bazooka or grenade approach to mindfulness to just blast it away. That's not a very good approach to mindfulness. The idea is to be still and quiet, and then ask, "What wants attention? What's inviting me in?"

Often for me, when I begin meditation, it's my breathing. But it's a very different relationship to breathing when I'm still and quiet and ask, "What is this that invites me?" And then it's like, "Okay, now that I've been invited, what are the tracks I'm following?"

The idea of following something is very different from the idea that I'm trying to make something happen, build something, or attain something. It's more like I'm not the one who has designs on what's supposed to happen, or the one trying to get something for myself. There's a track to follow—the track of the invitation, what's calling and inviting me to follow it. I'll tune in to the breath, and it's more like, "Okay, I'm the tracker, or the visitor, or the person who reads the invitations."

There's a track inside that we follow. Sometimes it's the breathing, sometimes it's sensations in the body, sometimes emotions, sometimes the state of the mind, or the content of the thoughts I might be having. There's a sense that I'm not so much in charge; I'm more in charge of the tracking, of listening for the invitation. I do have a role, but I'm learning how to read the traces inside of myself.

Just like this Elder said that every living creature is unique, each moment we show up for ourselves, our inner life is unique. Let's discover what it is each time, rather than coming with a preconceived idea of what it is. Many people come with preconceived ideas. When I was walking those trails outside the monastery, I showed up with preconceived ideas about my inability to decide what to do for my life. I felt I was condemned to being a doubter. I showed up with a preconceived idea that I couldn't do this. Is that really listening to the invitation or to what's called for? No. You have to figure out how to stop and be still enough so you can see in a fresh way, without carrying your prejudice, bias, and preconceived ideas. Stop and be still.

The Buddha gave a wonderful analogy about being in the woods and finding something. The analogy is about a forester who wasn't lost but spent a lot of time in the forest. He found the tracks and traces of an ancient road that the jungle had overgrown. He followed the traces, cleared a little bit, and slowly came to a great ancient capital city that had been fully overgrown—maybe like the long-lost cities they're still finding on the Mayan peninsula in Mexico. This forester leaves the forest, goes to the monarchs of the realm, and tells them, "I found traces of an ancient road and this ancient capital." The monarchs are happy, and they arrange for the road and the capital to be cleared, and they all move back into the happy-ever-after capital.

It's an allegory meant to be a metaphor for yourself. The ancient capital is our own freedom, our capacity to find a place where the heart is free of its distress, troubles, and suffering—a liberated heart. But to do that, we have the path that exists within ourselves, which has been overgrown. The path was overgrown with attachments, clinging, fears, anxieties, hatred, condemnations, resentments, and all kinds of things that grow over a lifetime. For some people, these can grow unabated without limitation. By the time we reach a certain age, something in us has been overgrown so thoroughly that we don't even know the inside of us is this wonderful capital, this wonderful home, this safe place of being found.

This invitation, or way of practicing, assumes I'm going to follow the traces of what is asking for attention right now. It doesn't mean rumination, thinking more and more; it means being still and quiet enough to listen to something deeper than thoughts, to listen to what lies underneath your thoughts. You listen quietly, and then: "Oh, it's my breathing. Oh, there's my heartache. Oh, there's a tightness in my belly. Oh, there's a lot of energy, agitation, and thinking that wants my attention." Let me hold that and be with that. Then what wants attention? Maybe more of the same, or maybe look at that—it's beginning to calm down. That calming seems to want attention. We stay with that, and slowly we find our way.

In the Dharma^[1], the way we find is discovering that the path itself is so precious. It's so wonderful to have a path of practice. Getting to the capital may be secondary; just the fact that we are following a path like this is an expression of freedom. Manifesting our freedom might not happen initially, but as we keep doing it, being mindful of what's here, we start seeing that the act of mindfulness is an act of freedom.

An act of mindfulness means we're no longer caught up in that moment—caught in our preoccupations, emotions, our past, or the future. We don't deny those things, but we're not caught in them. Wow, this is what's happening; there's freedom here. As we keep making this movement of being still and quiet enough for mindfulness to be full, where mindfulness can be there together with freedom, we begin appreciating more and more that simply being on the path is something to celebrate. It's a refuge.

Some people will find, "Now I've found my home. Now I have a sense of belonging in this universe, because with this I belong in that freedom." Freedom is letting go of all the non-belonging, the ideas that I shouldn't be here, or other people's ideas that I shouldn't be here. We let go into that freedom: just this, just this.

For people who are Buddhist, that movement of freedom each moment is represented by the idea of going for refuge. The Buddha talked about how you don't find your refuge in temples or sacred groves. You find refuge in this practice, in how you see being caught and how you see being free. This is how you find your freedom.

If you see that, then he says you can see a path, and the path you need to clear is the Eightfold Path^[2]. The Eightfold Path is not something outside of you; it's really something inside of you. For example, three parts of the Eightfold Path are ethical. You start seeing the invitation here is to not cause harm; that's what ethics is about. Is there a rightness, something inside that calls for that? If you're still and quiet enough, and can really be mindful and pay attention, I think within all of us there is an invitation, a request: don't cause harm. When we intentionally cause harm, we're covering over our depths, covering over the capital with more debris and weeds. We're actually closing something down when we're hateful or hostile, and that doesn't feel good. If you really pay attention, you're going to feel how we're diminished by that. Ethics comes naturally through this practice because that's what the deepest invitation is.

Each of the steps of the Eightfold Path is really an expression of something that's already in us. It's not an imposition from the outside.

So the value of stopping and being still is that maybe if you're lost, something will find you. And what will find you is the invitation, the traces, the tracks, the call. Here is where to bring your attention. Here is where to attend, to feel, to be. This is where to walk. We follow the traces and the tracks, and something beautiful begins happening, something free. Now I've been found. Even if it's not a geographical place—maybe it's never a geographical place in Buddhism, it's always here and now in yourself—you bring that with you wherever you go. So even when you're lost physically, you're not really lost to yourself. Isn't that nice?

I hope that made sense for those of you who occasionally get lost. And if you don't get lost, great, enjoy the potluck anyway!

Thank you very much. We have a few minutes before we usually stop here. Does anybody have any questions they want to ask, or testimonials about being lost that relate to what I talked about? Then I have a poem to read, but maybe I'll take some questions first and end with a poem.

Q&A

Caitlin: Hi, I'm Caitlin. I was thinking of being lost in the sense of trying to find purpose, which I think many of us find on our journey through life. I was watching a YouTube video about this, and a lot of it was about how when you are constantly putting your attention on the outside world, which modern society pushes us towards, you actually lose sight of what's within, what your values are, and what's important to you. So part of finding your purpose is looking within, which is very much in line with what you were saying.

Gil Fronsdal: Wonderful, thank you. Part of the importance of that is that there are all kinds of messages from culture, society, or family about what the real purpose of life should be. Some of those don't serve us; they're not a match for who we are. But if we think we have to be that way, there is a dissonance between who we are and that thing, and it can cause a lot of tension. I have to be rich, or I have to have a career—there are all kinds of "shoulds" that we struggle under.

What happens if we can listen deeply within, become free of those social messages about what our purpose should be, and find out what makes our hearts sing? What makes our hearts feel happy and delighted so that we wake up in the morning happy to do what we want to do? The answer for some people—and I think this is what spirituality often points to—is that while society says the answer to the purpose of life is a "what" (a career or a relationship), spirituality points to a "how" (how we're going to be in the world).

Some people find tremendous meaning in how they live, more than what they live for or what they do. But that's a hard thing to justify to many segments of modern society. When people ask, "What do you do?" and you say, "I try to be kind," it's not what they're hoping for!

Margaret: Hi, I'm Margaret. You spoke a little bit about starting over or starting from scratch when you were in the monastery. Can you say a little bit more about how you did that or what that means to start over or be reborn?

Gil Fronsdal: It's possible I was pretty fortunate I did it in that situation because I'd already been there a year, and it was deep in the wilderness. We didn't get newspapers (except ones that were days old), and there was no internet or TV then. So much of the things I'd normally be caught up with had fallen away. That made it relatively easy compared to doing it in the middle of a busy life.

It also made a big difference that I was meditating a lot, so the meditation was a very deep, embodied, and heartfelt kind of letting go. By that time, I'd been meditating for about five years, so I had some skill in letting go. My mind from earlier in life had a lot of skills in picking things back up again after meditation. There was this constant pattern of letting go and then picking back up. But because I had learned to let go in meditation, I had a reference point for what it was like to really just stop. Having that reference point helped me find my way and gave me confidence in not needing to know, not needing to have all these plans ahead of time. I don't think my answer is very adequate for you, but that's the best I can do right now. It's a good question.

Questioner: I was imagining the path you were talking about, and I believe you said something about maybe being on the path is more important than getting to the overgrown capital. Then you mentioned the Eightfold Path, and that played havoc with my imagination, because I saw the path splitting into eight different ways. So I wonder if you could say more about how the Eightfold Path could help in our path towards finding ourselves?

Gil Fronsdal: It's kind of giving you a clue of what you're looking for in the jungle. The first step is Right View—the perspective from which we look at our lives. We ask what perspective is useful, what's the deeper request of the heart. The second is Right Intention, the attitude by which we go about our lives. More specifically, it's an attitude of non-harming, non-cruelty, non-greed, and non-lust. It's an attitude of being able to let go when appropriate, an attitude of kindness and compassion. That's the footsteps of the little boy who's lost; we try to find that attitude.

Then there's how we speak and act in the world. It turns out you're not going to find your freedom through killing, stealing, or sexual misconduct. That's a pretty big footstep to notice. Then there's what's usually called Right Livelihood. I think 'livelihood' is too modern a concept; it's more broadly the whole lifestyle that we live, which includes work but is broader. We ask if this lifestyle is in harmony, what the deeper request is, and what to listen to. Some people realize they never thought about it and were just going along with what they were given, but we start questioning the lifestyle we want to live.

The sixth step of the Eightfold Path is Right Effort—what we endeavor to do. The hint the Buddha gives here is not what we do, but how we do it. Is it healthy or not healthy, wholesome or unwholesome? There is a differentiation we see between what is healthy and not healthy for ourselves, and that's the how.

Then there's Right Mindfulness. We ask, "Do I have any mindfulness?" What is awareness asking of me, rather than me being the one who's mindful? And then the last is Right Concentration—a subtle, focused, concentrated mind. That's another footstep. So I have this view that the eight paths are in parallel, going in the same direction.

Poem: "Lost" by David Wagoner^[3]

Gil Fronsdal: I'm going to read a poem. This is a somewhat famous poem in English by David Wagoner, and it's called "Lost."

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here, And you must treat it as a powerful stranger, Must ask permission to know it and be known. The forest breathes. Listen. It answers, I have made this place around you. If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here. No two trees are the same to Raven. No two branches are the same to Wren. If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you, You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows Where you are. You must let it find you.

Thank you. Because we're having a potluck, it would be nice if you could take a minute or two to say hello and introduce yourself to the person next to you. Welcome whoever you're talking to, even if this is your first time at IMC^[4]—you've been here long enough to welcome the person! [Laughter] Then they can get the potluck ready, and we can do that. Thank you.