Mindfulness of Breathing (34) Tranquility and Liberation

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Dharmette: Mindfulness of Breathing (34) Tranquility and Liberation. 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 February 18, 2021. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Mindfulness of Breathing (34) Tranquility and Liberation

In these 16 stages or 16 steps of mindfulness of breathing, as I've said, they are organized in groups of four called tetrads. The last step in each tetrad has to do with something in the family of letting go, freedom, or release—whatever language you like to think of that is.

In step four, it's calming the bodily formations. Sometimes it's translated as "tranquilizing." I love the word tranquil, but tranquilizing I associate with something you do with animals, so it doesn't really evoke an obviously positive response for me. But it is bringing about tranquility of the body. In the eighth step, it's calming, relaxing, and tranquilizing the mental formations, the mind. We'll see in a while that in the 12th step, it's freedom—releasing the mind, freeing the mind. And then in the final step of the 16 steps, number 16, it's something called relinquishment. Maybe it's a big word that doesn't really inspire so much, but it involves a real qualitative, transformative experience of freedom and liberation.

The movement towards greater and greater freedom begins with this simple thing of relaxing the body. It's beginning to learn the lesson of freedom. It's beginning to have a reference point for the goodness of what it's like to not be tense and not be caught. I think for many people, this physical relaxation is a little bit more accessible than full-blown liberation, but we're beginning to get a little taste of it—an embodied taste of it. Most people don't associate simple physical relaxation with Buddhist liberation. But liberation is a matter-of-fact thing. The greater liberation we have, the more it is seen as—I don't know if ordinary is the right word—not such an unusual or otherworldly thing. It's just a very profound experience of what we're beginning to experience as we begin to relax the body, as we begin to experience a physical tranquility.

Those of you following along know that I give a lot of emphasis to relaxing the body at the beginning of the meditation. "Relaxing" is maybe a little bit too limited in describing the sense of tranquility that can come as we continue deeper and deeper into this Anapanasati^[1]. Looking for tranquility, calmness, or the serenity that can exist in our practice is said to be the support for greater tranquility. We're not making calmness or tranquility the be-all and end-all, but it's a wonderful foundation that begins to soften the hardness of the heart and the hardness of the mind, where we are stuck and things don't move. Tranquility begins to create a sense of inner safety where things begin to release more and more.

I like the word "tranquility" more than "calmness" in my use of words because calmness can lend itself to the idea of becoming too calm—so calm that you fall asleep. In my vocabulary, tranquility has an alertness to it. Tranquility is not just calm, but it's also a harmonious energy. There is a calm kind of aliveness, a tranquil aliveness that can be here in an embodied way.

I say all this as a way to encourage you to begin appreciating the influence that relaxation has in your daily life. As you go about, if there are times when you notice your shoulders relax, your belly relaxes, or you sit down at the end of a long day and finally let down all your preoccupations, drive, and momentum, and you feel more relaxed—see if you can appreciate the influence that has on you. See if you can begin to feel some of the initial feelings of a certain kind of freedom, a kind of release, of no longer being limited, bound, or caught in something. Feel what it's like physically. Begin to appreciate the small, little movements of freedom that can be here.

As you get the hang of it, you might find that there are actually a lot more little movements of freedom, little movements of not being caught, that are happening all along. They may often be easy to overlook because they are not particularly valued; getting something done might seem more valuable. But there might be a lot of little movements of just, "Oh, that's great." You might step out of your house after a rainstorm, the rain has passed, the sun has come out, and something inside of you just releases in that feeling of being in the sun, being outdoors in the fresh air. What is that influence? What is that effect on you in the body to be there and to appreciate it? Don't hang on to it, don't get too complicated around it, but just start feeling the little movements of freedom, release, relaxation, tranquility, and peacefulness that seem to emanate from the movements of ease that happen.

The more we start recognizing this in daily life and in meditation, it reinforces that movement. It reinforces the value of not being tense. It reinforces the value of not being caught up in preoccupations, driven, bracing ourselves against things, closing down, or trying to run away from things. It begins to question those movements of mind—those ways in which we are the opposite of free. Doing that in the small areas of your life, in ordinary things, is a wonderful stepping stone that supports us in finding it deeper and further along, until the deeper areas of letting go and freedom that Anapanasati is taking us to become more natural, accessible, and understandable because of what we've taken in earlier on in the practice.

So, not just simply in meditation to experience this, but in other times of the day as well. If you really want this Anapanasati to deepen, this movement towards freedom can become an ongoing sensitivity, an ongoing attention that we have. It's not being self-preoccupied to do this. I hope you don't think it's selfish, because the freedom is beginning to turn ourselves inside out. In that freedom, I think we are naturally going to be more sensitive and more caring for the world around us.

Tranquility, letting go, release, relaxation, and calmness are all connected to this family of experiences and movements connected to liberation. Become a connoisseur of this. Become sensitive to it, informed by it, inspired by it, and in touch with it regularly—maybe even so it becomes a little bit of a habit, so it can grow and develop in you.

May this practice that we do lead you to greater and greater experiences of freedom, and in doing so, may it be for your delight. Thank you so much for today, and we'll continue this tomorrow.