Guided Meditation (71) Radical Simplicity; Mindfulness of Breathing (71) Seven Factors of Awakening

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Radical Simplicity; Mindfulness of Breathing (71) Seven Factors of Awakening. 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 April 07, 2021. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation (71) Radical Simplicity

So a warm hello to all of you, and those of you who are writing your names in the chat, hello. It's nice to see your names. And those of you who are not, a warm hello. It's so wonderful to have this time together.

I find that this meditation practice, mindfulness practice, is a little bit of a miracle and kind of a natural wonder. In its essence, it's very simple. In some ways, the simpler you can make it be, the more wondrous it becomes. The more amazing and, well, maybe sometimes immediately miraculous it becomes. It is this art of learning to be aware, but be aware in radical simplicity.

In a sense, just be aware and do not add anything to it. Do not build stories around it or hijack your awareness with desires and aversions. Of course, we have stories, desires, and aversions, but it isn't that we have to be free of those. We include them in this radical simplicity of awareness. Rather, include them in the sense of knowing it, as opposed to having them somehow color, take over, or influence how we're aware. So, radical simplicity.

Some of you have been doing all these last 70 talks on mindfulness of breathing. It was a lot of information and a lot of ideas. Now, as we're coming to the end, I want to evoke the idea that there is a path through all these steps. The ideal path, I think, is not to make much effort to do so, but just to rely on the radical simplicity of awareness, and then watch how these steps develop. Watch how practice unfolds, but without any expectations, demands, or efforts to make it so.

Finally, there is an image that I've learned from Buddhist teachings that was very meaningful to me for this simplicity: the idea of taking a backward step. Just stepping back and then watching and looking. Stepping back—how far do we have to step back in the mind so we can just observe, just be aware in the simplest possible way? Sometimes it's taking a step back and turning around 180 degrees^[1], just looking at how we're aware, and appreciating how simple it can be. Just aware. In its essence, awareness is very simple.

As some of you have heard me say before, if I gave the instructions for you to stop being aware, for many people, when they hear that, they can't turn it off—unless you distract yourself somehow. In fact, the instruction to stop being aware, for some people, heightens their awareness. It's kind of always there in some form. In the simplest possible form of it, just be here with this. Maybe here with your breathing.

So entering into a meditation posture, and maybe adjusting your posture some. Part of the adjustment is just a reminder that you'll be here now. Gently closing your eyes. Then, take a few gentle, slow, long breaths, three-quarters full, as a movement towards being here in this body. Simplifying yourself from all the concerns of the day, yesterday, and your life. Just simply here, in this body.

Breathing in, and in a long gentle exhale, relaxing at the end of the exhale. Releasing more. A longer exhale.

Then letting your breathing return to normal. As you exhale, move through the body from the top to the bottom, settling yourself and relaxing as you do. On the exhale, relaxing the muscles of the face, around the eyes, the forehead, and the jaws.

On the exhale, relaxing the shoulders. A small adjustment in where your hands are in position might free up the shoulders a little bit more.

Softening the belly, releasing the belly. Softening and releasing the legs, the holding in the thighs or the calves.

Then, within the body, as part of the body, becoming aware of your breathing. Breathing in a simple, ordinary way, but perhaps on the exhale, for a few exhales, releasing and relaxing at the end of the exhale so that it's a little bit longer. Let there be a little pause before you inhale. A very little pause. Just long enough so you feel the body's natural urge to breathe in. Allow for that urge to manifest as an in-breath.

Then with the breathing, just the breathing, how simple can you be aware of it? Perhaps a simplicity that allows a fuller experience of breathing to have space in awareness. It's not crowded out by other concerns and things.

As we sit here today, no matter what is happening for you as you sit and meditate, maybe there can be a refuge for you in the simplicity of awareness. The simplicity of just being aware, just mindful. Taking a backward step so you're less involved and entangled. A simple recognition: "Ah, this is how it is. Okay." A simplicity of awareness where nothing is a problem, just something to be aware of.

Whatever is happening to you, it's all right to limit yourself to simply knowing it, simply being aware. Taking a backward step to not be involved with it. Just be aware.

...

And then, as we come to the end of this sitting, the simplicity of awareness can also teach us about the simplicity of love. Sometimes when we are alone, like in meditation, it's a kind of personal situation where you don't have to speak to someone or interact with someone, where it's a little bit safe. Sometimes this is where we can discover the simplicity of love, the simplicity of kindness or goodwill.

It is a caring quality of the heart, maybe an appreciative quality. A way in which our heart delights, appreciates, and values someone that doesn't require us to say anything or do anything. The person doesn't have to even know it. So it can be free. We can be freer to love, freer from complications, and discover the simplicity of love. It can be a great lesson that supports us in how to care, love, and have goodwill for people when we are together.

So as we sit and end this sitting, perhaps you can touch into the simplest form of goodwill and well-wishing, or our appreciation of others. Maybe it's a wordless appreciation with just a warmth or a softness of the heart. Maybe it can feel quite lovely to allow for that softness, the warmth, the love to be there without needing to do anything about it. It's just there, vibrating or glowing.

Then, to whatever degree you can in fact feel some simplicity of care or love, see if these words I speak resonate with that place:

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

And may my love, my goodwill, my kindness, and my care, wordlessly flow from me out into the world. May whatever benefit that has come from this morning's meditation, this day's meditation, in fact be for the welfare and benefit of all beings everywhere.

Mindfulness of Breathing (71) Seven Factors of Awakening

So having covered the 16 steps of mindfulness of breathing, the Buddha's instructions in this practice continue by first explaining how mindfulness of breathing comes along with the fulfillment—a powerful word, fulfillment—of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness^[2].

As I said yesterday, each of the four parts, the four tetrads of the 16 steps, is directly connected to one of the four foundations of mindfulness. If you do the first tetrad of just connecting to the breathing, feeling the breath body, and relaxing the bodily formations, doing that well and fully entering into that also fulfills the first foundation of mindfulness: mindfulness of the body. And so forth.

What's interesting is what the Buddha says next. Fulfilling the Four Foundations of Mindfulness fulfills or evokes the Seven Factors of Awakening^[3]. The way that it does that is that if you fully do the first tetrad, it fulfills the first foundation of mindfulness. The fulfillment of the first foundation of mindfulness then awakens or brings along with it the Seven Factors of Awakening, and the Seven Factors of Awakening then lead to awakening.

The implication here is that each of the tetrads, each of the four steps of Anapanasati^[4], can be complete in itself. You don't have to go through the 16 steps one after the other. It's enough that your practice is just staying with any one of the four. For many people, just staying with the first step—the first four steps—is enough. They are not elementary or remedial steps where you want to get to the higher steps. You're supposed to kind of guide yourself through them. The first four steps can take you all the way to awakening, just doing that.

After the Buddha died, there were early commentaries, and they went on in a similar way to say that if you just do the first tetrad, it also fulfills the other 12 steps. Somehow, just the simplicity of being present for breathing in the body, relaxing the body, calming the body, and doing that fully brings about all the other benefits, all the other movements of practice.

To me, this has a lot to do with the simplicity of all this practice. The simpler we can be, and the less entangled we are in trying and wanting, just being here in a very simple way is onward leading. It sets the water flowing down the mountainside like a river. You have to put up big boulders and blockages to stop it. You can do that, but it's a lot of work. If you remove the obstacles, water will flow. This practice of Anapanasati, mindfulness of breathing, is a practice of becoming simpler and simpler, in that we step away from and release all the obstacles. Then something unfolds and moves and deepens.

The meditator doesn't have to be so concerned about that deepening, but just go along for the ride. If we can really stay intimate, connected, and trusting of this mindfulness of breathing, being in the body, letting the body relax and soften around this breathing we do, and not get caught up in other things, it gets simpler and simpler. Just breathing, just breathing. Focused, settled, steady, and composed on the breathing. The idea is not to force that, but to know that a lot of that has to do with letting go. It's just allowing yourself to become simpler and simpler.

The Buddha says that the fulfillment of the first foundation of mindfulness fulfills the first of the Seven Factors of Awakening, which is mindfulness itself. When mindfulness is fulfilled, the language is very interesting. The language is more like what naturally flows out of that or what arises out of that, as opposed to what we're supposed to do. It continues this process of simplicity. We're just getting out of the way, and something begins to bubble up and unfold—this miracle of the dharma.

He says that when mindfulness has become well developed, what follows that is investigation. One looks more carefully with wisdom at what's happening. If mindfulness is clarity, investigation is really seeing more clearly, in more detail, what is happening. It's a great amount of clarity and investigation of discerning what's there. For the Buddha, the more we discern, the more we see clearly what's here, it gives rise to energy. It gives rise to engagement. It gives rise to interest, like, "Oh, this is good."

Partly, the more we investigate, discern, and see if we're really mindful, the more the path opens in front of us into where freedom is, what's wholesome, and what's beneficial. We follow the choices that are in the wholesome direction. Because we know what's unwholesome, we know that clinging, grasping, and aversion don't really work, we choose not to go there. We don't stop having those feelings, but we don't get involved. To the degree there is choice, we choose what's wholesome. For meditators, the wholesome thing can be as simple as just staying with the breathing. Being mindful of breathing is considered a phenomenally wholesome, healthy thing to do. So then there's energy in that, there's enthusiasm for that. It arises. It isn't that you have to be enthusiastic or interested, but it just flows out of this practice as it deepens.

As we have this interested engagement, what flows out of that is joy and delight, happiness about this. What flows out of that is something deeper settling and relaxing, feeling reassured. It becomes calm and tranquil—a deeper tranquility or serenity. That deeper serenity and tranquility leads to greater concentration, or more subtleness and steadiness, more composure. And out of that deeper composure, subtleness, and concentration, flows equanimity, a deep non-reactivity of the mind.

Equanimity is like the pinnacle of simplicity. That's where things are so simple: the awareness is just aware, and the awareness is not ruffled by any wanting and not wanting. Until we get to the stage of equanimity, awareness is not really completely simple. So don't worry about it. Don't try to have perfection, but let the movement be to just be as simple as you can.

We move through these seven beautiful factors. That's the miracle of practice, too: that simple awareness, just staying in the simplicity of it, can lead to these beautiful qualities of mindfulness, deeper discernment or investigation, energy or engagement, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity.

Part of the value of this deep equanimity is that it's a radical simplicity where we're getting closer and closer to where the mind is not for or against anything. It's just there: luminous, clear, present, fully here without wants and aversions, without building a self or being self-referential, like a self-help project. The self-concern or conceit just falls away because things have gotten so simple and clear.

That equanimity, because it's not doing anything, wanting anything, or trying to get anything, at some point allows awareness to discover a kind of rest, a kind of letting go, a kind of release. Any remnant, any kind of structure, personality structure, linguistic structure, any ways in which the mind is involved with things and thinking about things, just releases and lets go. There's an experience of freedom. It's of such a nature, this freedom, that people say, "Well, now I know what the practice is about. Oh, so this is what it's about. This possibility of being free from any attachment, any clinging, any agitation, any contraction at all. Wow, this is possible."

I would call it the ultimate fulfillment of simplicity. It's a simplicity which, rather than being boring or making us feel like we're missing out on the wonderful things of life, this is the wonderfulness. There's something of the peace, the clarity, the happiness, and the freedom that is just one of the greatest things in this universe.

When we really know this is what practice can do, this is what it's about, this is what simple, clear awareness is, it is said in the ancient world (and this is not meant to be discouraging, I hope it's encouraging) that this is when dharma practice begins. The first real taste of freedom is when we know what the practice is really about, we have no doubts about it anymore, and now we can start practicing. There's this huge confidence that arises. In the ancient language of the Buddha, a person at that point is called a practitioner. Of course, we're practitioners before that, and wonderful practitioners with a lot of benefit before this kind of freedom. But usually, in English, they translate the word Sekha^[5] as a trainee. Now a person is ready to train. Now a person knows what the practice is about.

But it all comes from this simplicity. We don't have to make it complicated. Even the very first step of Anapanasati, the commentaries say, is enough. Just stay there, be with it. That's enough to go all the way. You'll be taken, you'll be carried there if you do it sincerely, fully, and regularly.

The text goes on to one more teaching for tomorrow, and that's a teaching of what practice looks like after a person has become a trainee, when a person has become a practitioner in the way I'm talking about. How do we practice after the first glimpse of awakening?

So thank you very much, and I'm looking forward to being here with you again tomorrow.