Guided Meditation: Wholehearted Effort; Dharmette: Compassionate Action (5 of 5) For its Own Sake.

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Wholehearted Effort; Compassionate Action (5 of 5) For its Own Sake.. 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 04, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Wholehearted Effort

Good morning, hello. Good afternoon for those of you elsewhere, and good evening.

In preparation for this meditation practice, I think a wonderful principle for engaging in meditation is to have some confidence in the instruction—in what you're doing in meditation. Have some confidence that what you're doing is wholesome, healthy, and a good thing to do, and then do it wholeheartedly.

Wholeheartedly does not mean to make a superhuman effort or to strain in any kind of way. It means giving yourself over to the activity so that it is all you are doing. You give yourself over to the activity so fully that you almost become the activity. Your self-consciousness and self-conscious concerns fall away. Concerns about other things, other places, and other times fall away. It is akin to doing a hobby, reading a book, playing a musical instrument, or being involved in sports or play of some kind, where you give yourself over fully to the activity. That is part of why it's so refreshing: it's as if all the stresses and preoccupations of life fall away, and you are just doing the activity. You fully become the activity because you give yourself to it.

It is possible to do this with meditation. Give yourself over to being mindful, to being present for breathing, and present for your body here and now. You can enter into it almost as if you are entering into a new world for the period of the meditation, and you enter into that world fully. You step into it, leaving nothing behind.

There is a kind of self-forgetting that can happen in wholehearted effort—a healthy kind of absorption or engagement in what we're doing. This is possible with meditation, and the deeper one goes in meditation, the more it has that flavor and characteristic. It is a giving of ourselves where there is a self-forgetting of all the different self-conscious ways we can be, in favor of fully being here.

To begin this wholehearted effort, assume care in your meditation posture so that you are doing it in a wholehearted way. Choose a posture in which you are going to be not only alert and mindful, but one that manifests that engagement and alertness. For people sitting in a chair or sitting on the floor, it might mean sitting with a straighter back, sitting in such a way that the whole torso feels alert and present at a relaxed attention.

If you're laying on your back or laying down, there might be ways of aligning your body so it's more centered, which also gives you a feeling of being more attentive. Maybe pulling up the knees if the legs are straight out. Or, if you are being supported by a bed, couch, or floor, having your forearms pointing to the ceiling so that there is some effort and engagement. It could be adjusting the upper back so that the chest feels more open, and maybe the shoulders can be turned down and back.

In whatever posture you have, close your eyes. Take a few moments to appreciate that the sanctuary, the temple for meditation, is this body. Enter into this body—where else would you be? Sometimes we are in our thoughts, which take us away from any direct connection to our body.

Take a few long, slow, deep breaths, relaxing as you exhale. Take a deep inhale, and maybe on the exhale say the word "here" as you settle into the here and now. Then let your breathing return to normal to further relax the body and mind.

As you relax the body and mind on the exhale, let it be a kind of slipping into the body. Relax and settle into this body as the playground, the temple, the musical instrument you are going to play.

Then, enter into the world of breathing. The body's experience of breathing is multifaceted; many sensations come into play. Different parts of the body move as you breathe. Breathing is connected to our emotional life and to the ways we are thinking. Enter into a kind of curiosity and simplicity. Be with the breathing in whatever way it is. Be with it so completely that there is no room for judging anything or wanting anything. Things don't have to be different—just this breath.

Be so fully with this inhale that there is no future and past, and no thinking or imagining. Just the inhale by itself, without any comparison to what it should be like. Wholeheartedly be mindful of how it is. Allow it to be as it is, and you are just aware.

With the experience of exhaling, there is no future and past, no concern about trying to do something or getting concentrated. Just the simplicity of entering into the world of one exhale, allowing it to be as it is. When you are so fully in the breath and in the exhale, there is no room for judging it or wanting it to be different. Whether it is comfortable or uncomfortable makes no difference to the attention that attends to the body breathing.

If you find yourself thinking, notice how that takes you away from breathing, from the body, and see if you can reverse the direction. Enter back into the body and breathing. Give yourself fully over to the simple activity of breathing, to being mindful of what is here and now.

In the last couple of minutes of this sitting, can you in some way surrender into the practice of presence and attention here and now, as if this is the most important thing to do? Caring for oneself, caring for the world even, through being fully present to your experience. Not straining, but giving yourself over to being attentive so fully that self-concern falls away.

Perhaps more often than we realize, self-concern is a source of stress, tension, and suffering^[1]. To drop self-concern for an instant, and instead to live fully present here in our experience, is to experience a happiness and freedom from that self-concern.

Realize that people all over the world suffer because of their self-preoccupation, attachments, wants, and aversions^[2]. Wish for all beings to be free from that form of self-concern and self-preoccupation, which is stressful and unhelpful.

May all beings be happy. May they be safe from painful self-preoccupation. May they experience the peace when stressful self-concern has fallen away. May they be free from all the attachments related to oneself. May all beings be happy.

Thank you for spending this time together.

Dharmette: Compassionate Action (5 of 5) For its Own Sake.

The focus of this talk is compassionate action for its own sake. Compassionate action is often considered to be focused on the welfare of others. Sometimes there is self-compassion, a caring for oneself alongside compassionate care for others. It is possible to have compassionate action and care for both self and others, maintaining an open-hearted vision of how to be in this world, wishing that everyone benefits and everyone is free, not just the specific parties involved.

There is a fifth kind of compassionate action that, in some Buddhist traditions, is considered the highest pinnacle of compassion. That is when we are so involved and engaged in the compassionate action that there is a self-forgetting. We are not sacrificing our own well-being, but because we know how to care in a healthy way for the world and ourselves, it is appropriate and beautiful to give ourselves over to it completely. The sense of self as the agent of the activity falls away. In some Buddhist traditions, they talk about the oneness of the compassionate person, the recipient of compassion, and the act of compassion itself^[3]. There is no division; we are so immersed in it that we don't have the thought, "It's me being compassionate and helping another person." Even the idea that this is a "compassionate action" can fall away. Once we have decided that this is the right thing to do, we give ourselves over to it fully, and there is a simplicity and a freedom in the action.

This is true for anything we do. If you wash dishes in the sink, there can certainly be a lot of self-preoccupation: "I don't like doing the dishes," "I wish I didn't have to do it," "I'm always doing it, it's not fair," or "I have important things to do, let's get this over quickly." There are many self-concerns. It might even be concerns about being the best dishwasher in the neighborhood, trying to prove to everyone that you're a good dishwasher. But there is also just washing dishes for the sake of washing dishes. Giving oneself over fully to the dishwashing means there is no resistance, full participation, no judgment, and no self-concern. Maybe no one is in the house with you, so you know you're not trying to prove anything to anyone.

This kind of giving yourself over to an activity is healthy and is one of the qualities of freedom or happiness. It is akin to being absorbed in reading a good book, doing art, playing music, or being involved in sports, where we almost forget ourselves in the activity. There might still be a lot of attention and monitoring of what is happening, adjusting ourselves as needed, but it's not filtered through the ordinary lens of "me, myself, and mine"—self-concern and preoccupation with "what's in it for me?"

This is one of the beautiful ways to practice compassionate action: to learn how to give yourself to something fully. When you participate fully, that wind drag of self-concern is not there. There is a refreshing quality that comes from dropping self-concerns. Much of the stress people experience revolves around "me, myself, and mine": "What's going to happen to me?" "What do people think?" "Will people still like me?" "Am I doing it right?" All of that is wind drag; it interferes. Instead, in a simple, relaxed way, we can give ourselves over to the activity at hand.

Often, this self-forgetting is not associated with compassionate action because the emphasis is usually on helping someone who is suffering, or on the act of doing something. A sense of obligation and responsibility can arise—"It's up to me," "I have to do it," "I'm the one who's going to help." But all of that is wind drag that adds stress.

If we have decided this is the healthy way to act, all the component parts we have been exploring over these last weeks come into play. All these things come together to inform compassion: a well-developed capacity for awareness; a well-developed capacity for attunement to others, to oneself, and to the situation; a well-developed capacity for appreciation and respect for others; and a well-developed capacity for considering our aspirations—what is the wish we want that goes along with compassion, what is the healthy aspiration? All these things then come together in the action that we do. We also consider what constitutes right action^[4], which encompasses the principles I offered earlier in the week. Over time, these qualities develop into second nature, requiring less conscious thought. Then, we can simply give ourselves over to the activity at hand.

Whether it is driving someone to the emergency room, cooking dinner for someone who is sick, going for a walk with a friend in crisis, or putting a Band-Aid on a child's scraped knee, there are countless ways to be compassionate in action. At some point, we give ourselves over to it entirely. We participate wholeheartedly, and self-preoccupation falls away.

The advantage of this is that the compassionate action becomes clean. It is unclouded and unagitated by things that are not compassion. More often than not, self-concern and self-preoccupation act as hindrances to true compassion. In this way, compassionate action also becomes a vehicle for our own freedom from self. We learn so much about letting go when we give ourselves over wholeheartedly to participate in healthy activities.

The culmination of this week's teachings is to come to a point where compassionate action is done for its own sake. Preceding it, of course, is the understanding that we are doing it for the sake of others, or for ourselves, but as we are acting, we can let go of all those thoughts and concerns. We simply give ourselves over to the simplicity of the act. In doing so, we benefit ourselves in a fantastic way by getting a taste of freedom from self. Then, the joy and happiness that can accompany compassion have the greatest chance to flower and develop. Compassion becomes a profound source of well-being and a path to freedom.

Conclusion

These are my thoughts about compassionate action for this week. For the last several weeks, I have focused these teachings around compassion. I hope it has enriched your understanding of its different aspects and the various streams of attention and reflection we can bring to it. We don't want to think of compassion in simplistic ways, jumping to act without recognizing the multifaceted richness of a compassionate world.

This will be the last week on this topic for a while, as I will be away for two weeks. We have wonderful guest teachers coming in my absence. When I return, we will see where the teachings go next—whether we continue with compassion, follow up with a post-compassionate topic, or start something new.

Thank you very much; I appreciate so much the chance to explore this topic with you all for these weeks, and I look forward to doing more of it.