Guided Meditation: Quiet and Steady

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Quiet and Steady. 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 March 16, 2021. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Good day, everyone. Or perhaps we could say, a good year. It is a good morning and a good beginning of this new year for us on this 7:00 a.m. sitting and teaching. I am happy to be here for this anniversary day.

We will have a Zoom meeting afterwards. For those of you who don't want to be on Zoom, I think I'll just keep the YouTube on. You won't necessarily get all of it, but you'll get half of it—myself responding and talking a little bit. The Zoom link is at the very top of the chat, and I'll post it near the bottom when we finish here as well. It is also found on the IMC website in two places: in the calendar section where it is listed as an event, and under "What's New," where there is a little notice on the bottom right-hand side of the homepage.

If you use those links, you have to use the password, which is metta^[1] (m-e-t-t-a). If you use the link that's in the chat, you get the picture right there. I won't turn it on until I finish here, so there might be a minute or so in between.

Guided Meditation: Quiet and Steady

As a child, I spent a lot of time swimming in water. I loved to go underwater and swim as far as I could while holding my breath. That perhaps explains a little bit why I pay a tiny bit of attention to people who do free diving—people who set records for diving underwater for the longest time, or going the deepest distance down into the water or the ocean, or swimming the longest underwater. I believe one of the records for staying underwater without breathing is about 11 minutes. It's kind of phenomenal that people can train to do that.

One of the things that people who do that learn to do is to quiet their thinking. Thinking takes up a lot of oxygen. You need a lot of energy to think. They're certainly aware and engaged in what they're doing, and very hyper-attentive to it in a very particular way, but their ordinary, energy-draining, battery-draining "app" has been turned off—the discursive thinking and the commentary that they do.

This also happens in meditation. It's one of the reasons why, in deeper meditation, it seems that we stop breathing. There's very little need to breathe when this heavy "app" we have, that's going on all the time in the background—one of these apps that kind of takes over and works behind the scenes, our thinking app—is turned off.

As we get into meditation, the idea is to enjoy it, settle into it, and settle into that enjoyment, contentment, quiet, and peace, even if there are just hints of it. It is a paradigm shift where we're orienting towards something else besides our thinking. We're orienting towards the breathing, the peacefulness, the quiet, the stillness, the joy, and the contentment that comes from developing samadhi^[2].

With that, there's a shift away from the thinking mind, the commentary mind, the mind having discussions, plans, memories, and all that. Appreciate the value of that. Appreciate how good it feels to let that part of the mind go quiet. If these deep-sea divers can do it, certainly we can do it as we do our own version of deep-sea diving, which is dipping into samadhi. Deepening into these kinds of states of goodness and wholeness doesn't require us to think a lot. When we realize how safe, good, and nourishing it is, then we begin to let go of the tremendous interest the mind has with this app, the thinking app.

To assume a meditation posture... and to relax. A tremendous amount of what we're doing in going into samadhi is, in fact, relaxing. Letting things become tranquil. Not only letting go and relaxing the body, but also taking some of the mental apps offline. They're not needed; they're energy drains for the human battery, and they can come back online again later. But we're letting go, relaxing, and doing less and less, except for settling in, steadying ourselves on the breathing, and enjoying it.

So, taking a few long, slow, deep breaths. On the exhale, think of it as turning off so much of the unnecessary apps we have running. Turn off the tensions in our body. Softening the shoulders especially. Softening the belly.

And if you are taking some deep, slow breaths, then as you stop that, appreciate that you are letting go of that effort. Now you're just letting yourself breathe in an easier way.

Then, continue relaxing the body a bit. The surface body: the shoulders, the face, the belly. And deep in the body: the deep holding, resistance, bracing. The deep holding of ourselves—even holding ourselves together.

And then, also orient yourself to the quietude of the mind. Let yourself become aware of the ways the mind is quiet, clear, relaxed. As you exhale, settle into that quiet. Letting go of the thinking mind. And if it doesn't let go completely, it's okay. For now, let it recede into the background.

And then, let the mind land on your breathing. Have the attention establish itself to be steady on the breathing. Steady the mind on its focus on the breathing.

Much of our physical experience of breathing is, in fact, silent. It doesn't require thinking. The silent feeling and sensing of the body. Steady yourself on that experience of sensing the changing flow of sensations as you breathe.

As you exhale, letting go of your thoughts, and letting go into a quiet steadiness on breathing.

And if you use any thoughts at all, let it be thoughts of counting the breath—counting up to one, or up to three, or up to ten. Or simply the word "yes," said so quietly in the mind that it's almost like you imagine you're saying it.

Steadying yourself on the breathing and whatever good feelings come with the quietude and steadiness. Breathing in and breathing out.

Appreciating the quietude that's here. Even if your mind is thinking a lot, look past it to the quietness and steadiness of attention on breathing. A paradigm shift away from your thinking mind, to a quiet, steady awareness of breathing—and whatever goodness is in that attention.

Switching from thinking to a quiet seeing. A quiet sensing, aware of breathing. Steadying yourself on the breathing.

And then, as we come to the end of this sitting, appreciating the paradigm shift from thinking to seeing. Seeing with the quietness of the mind. So we're not seeing through the filter of our thoughts, ideas, and opinions, but we're seeing through the quietness, steadiness, and safety of simply seeing. The simple awareness of what is.

In the comfort and safety of meditation, can you turn the gaze of this quiet, steady, seeing awareness to the people in your life? Those who are close and you have contact with, those who are far away and you don't have direct contact with. Those who you know personally, and those who you don't.

See if you can simply, from meditation, gaze upon them quietly. Silently. Without the judgments, the stories, and anticipations of what it means. Just gazing on them quietly.

And see if that gaze, that awareness, can be kind. In the quiet, safety, and privacy of your own meditation, a kind, steady gaze. Be still, and gaze upon everyone kindly. Not complicating it with your stories, ideas, memories, and plans. Just the simplicity of others.

Perhaps that kindness, then, can be expressed in words of kindness. You might repeat after me:

May they be happy.

May they be safe.

May they be peaceful.

May they be free.

May all beings everywhere be happy.