Guided Meditation: Gathering Ourself; Four Noble Truths and Our Contribution to Suffering

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Gathering Ourself; Four Noble Truths and Our Contribution to Suffering. 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 November 09, 2021. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Introduction

Good evening, everyone. As we come here today, a few things come to mind. One is that it was 20 years ago, just about now, that we bought this building, so it is a little bit of an anniversary. It is also the first time for me to come back and teach here with people in person in a year and a half or more. Before that, for almost 30 years, I taught almost every single Monday. So that was a big gap, and it is wonderful to be back on Monday evening. I am so happy to see all of you that I know who are here. Thank you. And to those of you on YouTube who are watching, thank you for being here. I see the names in the chat, and it is lovely to see the ones I know.

I will do a little bit of an introduction to the meditation, and then we will sit quietly. One of the ways of understanding meditation is that, initially, it is preparing the ground so that we can see in some clear way. We are preparing ourselves to be able to have that clarity of insight, that clarity of seeing.

The variety of things we do at the beginning are a kind of settling in. Some people like the language of "settling in," "letting go," and doing less—just being. Some people like the language of "constructing," like we are constructing our temple. We are gathering together and organizing ourselves in such a way that we are here in a qualitatively identifiable way. It is a feeling of, "I am really here. I am not wandering off, not thinking about the day anymore. I am really here."

The greater the ability to really be here in the present moment, the more that opens the door to seeing in a new way. I will talk about that in the dharma talk. In a sense, this meditation is a preparation for the seeing that will be emphasized in the talk.

Guided Meditation: Gathering Ourself

So let this body of yours become the meditation hall. The real meditation hall is here in your body. Take a few long, slow, deep breaths in order to begin establishing yourself here.

Let your breathing return to normal.

For many people, the beginning of this process of arriving here is to relax. And not just relaxing the muscles, the face, the shoulders, and the belly, but relaxing into this time and place now. Settling into being here.

In a gentle, loving, and perhaps caring way, begin gathering yourself together. Collecting yourself here in this time, in this place. If the mind wanders off, gently, lovingly, and unhurriedly invite it back. Bring it back. Collect the mind. Bring it back here with the body in the present moment.

Bring the mind into the body so the mind is not wandering off in thought, just here. Slowly, steadily gathering yourself, collecting yourself here at this time, at this place, moment by moment.

[Silence for meditation]

As we come to the end of the sitting, one of the descriptions of meditation practice is collecting ourselves here into the present moment, gathering together all of who we are, so it is all together here in a singular package of presence and attention.

One of the advantages or opportunities with this is that when we are gathered together and not scattered, distracted, or disconnected from ourselves, there is more of us to meet others. There is more presence, embodiment, and receptivity. There is a greater capacity to listen and to attend. There is more of us gathered together to care and to be kind and respectful of others. There is more of us here to love. It is a gift to give more of ourselves over to be with others, so others can feel met, seen, heard, known, respected, and cared for.

May it be that this meditation we do this evening supports us so that we can bring ourselves more into full human connection with others, at a time when many people still feel very disconnected and isolated. May we bring ourselves to greater kindness and support for this world of ours.

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

[Music]

Thank you.

Four Noble Truths and Our Contribution to Suffering

Good evening again. I am delighted to be meditating with people in the same room. For the last year and a half, I have delighted in sitting with people who were on the other side of the camera, and I appreciated seeing their names and greetings in the chat. That was quite lovely, but it is also very nice to be here with you all. Thank you for coming.

It is a beginning that hopefully will continue to develop, where we can open up and start gathering together as a community. The idea is for us to continue on Mondays being open the way we are, with people who are registered and signed up to come. Diana has been holding down Mondays throughout the pandemic—thank you, Diana. The idea for the next while is that we will alternate teaching here. Diana will be here next Monday, I will be the following, and so on. That is the general plan.

An Introduction to the Four Noble Truths

Thinking about a talk for today, I thought that since this is a new beginning here, a really good place to start is with the Four Noble Truths. They are considered the core teachings of the Buddha, and it seems pretty symbolic and evocative for me to start with them. It is said that all the Buddhist teachings can be subsumed or held within the Four Noble Truths. The ancient analogy from India is that, just like the footprints of all the animals in the forest can be held inside the footprint of an elephant, the Four Noble Truths are big enough to hold it all.

Down through the ages, there have been many understandings or interpretations of the Four Noble Truths. There isn't a singular understanding. In fact, the Buddha suggested that there are innumerable explanations for these Four Noble Truths. They are very rich. Rather than taking them as a singular thing where we only learn the basic idea, we learn to apply them to ourselves and to our lives, to discover what they mean for us.

There is a Mahayana^[1] Buddhist teaching that in this universe of ours, there are lots of world systems with people who live on planets all over the cosmos, and all of them have the Four Noble Truths. There is a long text that is mostly just a list of all the different formulations of these Four Noble Truths that could exist in all those different world systems. So, I will offer you one formulation, which is based on the early Buddhist tradition, and you will see if it is a nice fit for you.

The Blaring Radio

Say you rent an apartment somewhere, you move in, and everything is good—except in the corner of the living room, there is an old radio that is really grimy. Someone must have spilled food on it long ago, and it is not very nice. But someone forgot it or left it there. Curious, you say, "What's that doing here?" The thing is, the radio is on. And it is tuned to the kind of radio station you would never want to listen to.

You look at it and say, "Wow, this is not right." Maybe you get angry at the people who were there before. Maybe you write a self-righteous letter to the landlords and say, "This radio was left here and it's a real problem." Or maybe you go out and buy a bigger radio to put in front of it to hide it. Or maybe you try to find another apartment. All these thoughts go on for days and weeks, trying to figure out what to do about this radio that is on all the time.

Then one day, you finally realize, "I could just turn the radio off." At least you won't have to hear that terrible radio station all the time.

It is possible to see all kinds of things wrong in our world, in our society, or with ourselves, and miss the fact that there is a little button where certain things can be turned off. Maybe that is a little bit too dramatic of an analogy, but it prepares us for what I am going to say. With the Four Noble Truths, we are trying to understand ourselves to see what we can do to stop suffering—to turn off the button of our suffering.

To do that, we have to understand our contribution to it. What are we doing to contribute to the radio being on, and where can we turn it off? There are lots of things wrong with having the radio there: they left it there, it is dirty, they didn't clean it, it is the wrong station, what was the landlord thinking, you paid a deposit and this is what you get. You can do all those things, but the radio still blares. The fact that you weren't treated nicely or respectfully by the previous tenants might be true, and not to be denied. But if you want to sleep at night, you want to turn the radio off.

The Four Noble Truths offer a schema—a description of four steps or areas by which we can understand our life to help us understand our contribution to our suffering and distress. What are we doing that is adding to it? Your contribution to your suffering is something you actually have some ability to do something about.

Whether you can change the world around you is uncertain; maybe you can, maybe you can't. Some people will spend an inordinate amount of time trying to change the world around them—changing their family, their work, their boss, their coworkers, their friends, trying to get them all to behave just right. Sometimes the success rate of changing the world to accommodate ourselves is not so high. It isn't that it shouldn't be done, but if it overlooks where we can make a difference, it is a little bit sad. The art of it all is to look and ask, "Where can I make a difference? Where can I change something?" This has to do with our contribution to our suffering.

Understanding the Four Truths

The four truths offer perspectives to get us into the territory so we can begin understanding what our contribution is.

The First Noble Truth is stated very simply: it is the Noble Truth of Suffering. In the ancient Buddhist language^[2], the word for suffering literally means painful.^[3] It acknowledges that there is what is painful; there are painful things in this world. But what we're looking at now is where the suffering is. Where is the emotional pain? Where is the distress?

The Second Noble Truth is stated very simply: it is the arising of this painful thing, the arising of this suffering.

The Third Noble Truth is the ceasing of it, the ending of it.

The Fourth Noble Truth is that there is a way to the ending of that suffering.

The middle two—the arising and the ceasing—are very important to see. This is where we understand that our suffering is not hardwired in. It is not like we are born with this suffering and therefore can't do anything about it. It is something that comes and goes; it appears and disappears. It might seem like it is constant and solid, but in its own nature, it is actually something arising and passing. That is the good news! If it were solid and unchanging, there would be no hope. But because it comes and goes, we have some possibility to do something about it.

The First Noble Truth acknowledges that life has pain. The classic texts give lists: birth is painful, old age is painful, sickness is painful, separation from our loved ones is painful, not being separate from people who are difficult is painful.

The Second Noble Truth asks, "What is the suffering that arises within you?" This is the idea of your contribution. Where is the suffering that has its genesis in what you're doing, or where you left the radio on? The text points out that the suffering you can do the most about is craving. The classic, original word is "thirst,"^[4] which is meant to describe a kind of thirst for power, a drive, or a compulsion by which people are not free. This drivenness, where we can't put something down or stop our behavior, is the genesis of the suffering that we can do something about.

We want to understand this craving, this thirst, this drive, not only because it brings about suffering, but because it is suffering. It is painful to be caught in the grip of craving. Meditators have developed a pretty good sense of this. It is one thing to go about your day and feel like you can't put something down, but when you sit and meditate and see the mind churning away with its preoccupations, concerns, and drives, you say, "Wow, this is powerful. This is suffering."

Sometimes the promise of getting what we want, and the imagination of it, hides the fact that it is actually distressing and uncomfortable to be under the yoke of compulsion. If you think, "I have to win the California lottery, then everything is going to be okay," you can just imagine building a swimming pool with three temperatures, and it sounds so great. But you don't see that the drive itself might be a kind of desperation coming out of loneliness, fear, or insecurity.

As we meditate, we start seeing this. At some point, we see that it is not solid. It is not fixed. It is porous and inconstant. But in order to see that, we have to be somewhat quiet, gathered, and collected. That is why one of the functions of meditation is not to sit down and instantly have deep insight, but to settle and quiet us just enough so we can start seeing the porousness of our suffering, its inconstancy, and the coming and going of it.

Turning the Attention 180 Degrees

As we see that more and more, we realize that it is possible to be without it. It can cease. We taste that, perhaps very fleetingly, and say, "Wow, I've had this resentment for two years, and I thought it was solid. It's like a mood that I carry around with me everywhere. But now I see there are flickers of times when it's not there. Wow, it's not always there."

In Buddhist practice, the idea is to appreciate those flickers. That can be hard to do because an absence like that doesn't count for much, and the drive, the craving, and the stories we tell ourselves come so quickly that they override the flickering moment of peace. It's like waves that come constantly, preventing us from seeing the small gaps. But as we start this meditation practice, we start seeing those gaps. It is porous. It is not as solid or constant as we thought.

This gives tremendous hope and inspiration: "Oh, there's another way." At some point, those little gaps and flickers begin showing us that we can be at peace. There is a little peace here, a little bit of ease. Even though it is only a flicker, you know it is there. Now the task is to begin to grow it, to recognize it more.

The task for doing that with mindfulness meditation is to just do the same thing over again: keep settling, keep looking, keeping present. But know where to look. If you are still writing letters to the landlord about the radio, you are looking in the wrong place. You won't see the switch to turn it off.

You need to learn how to settle and turn the attention here to yourself. I like to think of that as turning around to become intimate with yourself. Get really close and intimate. Get to know yourself well, feel yourself, sense yourself. Allow yourself to get collected and gathered together. It is a wonderful thing to do for yourself—to feel yourself unified, where the mind, the body, and the heart are all operating together in the same time and place. Primarily, that is the task of the mind, to come into the place where the body is. The body is always in the present moment, but the mind often is not.

This job of mindfulness—gathering yourself together—can be done with lots of love, care, compassion, and generosity toward oneself. Each of us is important and valuable, so it is worthwhile to show up for yourself, settle down, and become more embodied and present. In this process, the mind begins quieting, the gaps become longer, the porousness gets bigger, and we start feeling more than just flickers of peace and well-being. Moments become minutes, minutes become hours, and they grow.

Life is painful in all kinds of ways. Turn the attention to understand where that painfulness is here in yourself, and you will notice that craving, attachment, and clinging are painful. It is hard to appreciate that they are painful if we are too focused on what we are clinging to, what we want, or what we don't want. The art is turning the attention 180 degrees around to feel, sense, and be with yourself, realizing, "This is where my contribution to my suffering is. This is what I am adding: that craving, that thirst, that resistance, that hatred."

We feel it, breathe with it, embody it, and let the mind get quieter with it. You start seeing its porous, flickering nature. You see it appear and disappear. One of the great moments in this process is when you are sitting around, minding your own business, and a thought of something you are very attached to arises. You can feel the attachment come along with the thought. It wasn't there, and now it comes, and you see it happen: "Look at that. It wasn't there, and now it has come into existence." And because you have been watching it without identifying with it or getting caught in it, you are wiser than it. You see it arise, and then you might also see it disappear.

The Path to Cessation

If you are interested in extending those gaps and discovering how to bring this clinging to an end, then you come to the Fourth Noble Truth. The Fourth Noble Truth is the truth of the way to that cessation. It is not just about small gaps, but a qualitatively significant way in which suffering really drops away.

The classic description of that is the Eightfold Path^[5], which is a set of eight practices meant to encompass our whole life. If you really want to make these Four Noble Truths deep, thorough, and complete, it should relate to how you live your entire life: how you speak, how you act, what kind of work you do, how you live with your own mind, how you pay attention, and what attitudes you have as you go through life.

The Eightfold Path is Right View (or right understanding), Right Intention (or right attitude), Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, and Right Concentration. To be inspired by the possibility of bringing suffering to an end and making these flickers last longer, it helps to create a bigger foundation. Gather yourself together, be collected, and really show up for yourself. Live that Eightfold Path so that freedom is not just a flicker, but becomes something that is more regular. In fact, that is what becomes constant at some point: the sense of freedom from clinging, the freedom from this contribution we make.

A simple way of asking yourself this question is: "What am I attached to right now?" If you are suffering, ask, "Where am I attached right now?" That turns the attention around 180 degrees. Then ask not only what you are attached to, but where the attachment is. "Where do I feel in my body, my mind, and my heart the contraction, the clinging, and the tightness that I can do something about?"

In the long term, learning to understand your contribution to your suffering and learning to end that contribution is the most reliable thing you can do in the dharma. When you learn it well, it is phenomenal how it changes your life. It gives confidence, ease, peace, and wisdom for how to navigate and live this life.

We are interested in our contribution to our own suffering. I think it is a very mature thing for a human being to take up that interest and really study and look at it. Not enough people do it. Too many people are looking outside of themselves for how the world contributes to their suffering. That is certainly a worthwhile thing to do sometimes, but if that is the only thing we do, then we are going to live for a long, long time with that terrible radio station blaring. And it is nice to turn it off.

Those are my thoughts for this beginning. There are other dharma talks to be given on the Four Noble Truths and other interpretations, but that is what was here today. Hopefully, it was a fit for you and gives you something to think about and use as an orientation.

Thank you very, very much. I look forward to seeing you more. It is very nice to have you back and be together after all this time. And for those of you on YouTube, thank you very much for being part of this. I look forward to having this chance to do this with you again. Thank you.