Guided Meditation: Peacefully Aware; Dharmette: Wise Listening (4 of 5) Listening Beneficially

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Peaceful Awareness; Wise Listening (4 of 5) Listening Beneficially. 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 September 07, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Peacefully Aware

Hello everyone, welcome.

A few words about meditation before we start. It can go without saying, maybe, that in the context of a community that practices mindfulness, mindfulness is important. But I think it's probably often the case for all of us that we don't appreciate how important it is. Our capacity to be aware, to be attentive, is important, but how we pay attention, how we are aware—that's the real key.

The goal of Buddhism is found more in the freedom of awareness. It is found where awareness is not hijacked by our desires and our aversions, where awareness is not drowned out by our self-preoccupations, and where the way that awareness can enliven us is not lost by a focus on what we're aware of.

So, pay attention to how we're aware, and see if we can find some degree of freedom in the how we're aware. Some degree of nourishment, some degree of peace, some degree of coming home where it feels really right to abide in awareness. To simply be aware and not be tricked into thinking that what we're aware of is the important thing. What we're thinking about—these things are important, but what we're thinking about or what we're aware of is not the solution, where we have to fix these things or have a better relationship to them or better mindfulness of them. We need to be mindful of things, but how we're aware of them, how we're mindful, is what matters.

So, assume the meditation posture, and gently close your eyes.

To begin the meditation, check in with yourself as simply as possible: how are you? It could be as simple as a scale from one to ten, where ten is really good and one is feeling pretty lousy. Where are you on that scale?

As you recognize how you are, are you reactive to how you are? Are you judging how you are? Are you somehow entangled or concerned about how you are? Or is there a way of just knowing how you are, and letting the knowing be? So really simple, almost as if the part of you that can know doesn't feel the way you are. The knowing is just peaceful and quiet, open. And maybe not—that's okay.

Take a few long, slow, deep breaths, relaxing as you exhale.

Let your breathing return to normal—normal enough. And continue, as you exhale, to soften and relax into your body, settling here.

As you exhale, relax the thinking mind, softening in the mind.

Then, become aware, if it's there: where in your body might your reactivity still remain? Where in the body are you emotionally activated, either in ways that are pleasant or unpleasant, challenging or comforting? Gently let that part of your body soften as you exhale. Not to make it go away, but allow it to be there in a soft way. It's okay.

Take a few moments to feel your global body, the way your whole body feels as a whole, as your attention roams around inside the body.

Then, as if it's in the center of your body, become aware of your breathing. Center yourself on the breathing so that as the inhale expands, feel like the whole torso core breathing fills your body. Feel the global body as you breathe in, letting it all return to the center within as you exhale.

As if breathing is a gentle hand that's accompanying you with however you are, without being reactive, without being for or against anything. Just there. Breathing with, breathing through.

Then notice how you're aware. Are there some adjustments you can make to how you're aware, so awareness is more peaceful?

You might have desires, but awareness doesn't. You might have aversions, but awareness doesn't. You might be all kinds of ways, but awareness is like the space within which all things occur. Let your awareness be like space, or let your awareness be peaceful. Awareness knows, but it doesn't react.

As we come to the end of this sitting, check in with yourself again like at the beginning: how are you? How are you on a scale of one to ten? Keep it that simple. The simplest recognition of how you are.

See how you can recognize yourself without reactivity, without judgment, without holding on or wanting it different. Just aware.

But also, become aware of how things have shifted for you from the beginning of the meditation to now. Has how you are changed?

Is there a way to know yourself here as you meditate that is an act of care, or respect, or even love? Just to know. Allowing yourself to be as you are, but to know it. Knowing that's not impatient, knowing that's not filled with wanting. Just knowing.

Then, turn that attention out into the world. Into open awareness to this complicated world we live in. Let the knowing be simple. Let the knowing know itself as peaceful, as calm, as open and spacious. Just aware of all things—the ten thousand sorrows, the ten thousand joys^[1].

Find a home in awareness. Find your good fortune in awareness.

And extend that awareness out into the world so it can be a channel for your goodwill, your well-wishing. You don't have to love others to wish them well. But understand that meditation is here to help us benefit ourselves and benefit the world.

May it be that whatever we've learned in our meditation for how to be present, how to be attentive—may it be the channel for our goodwill. May it be part of our heart's joy to wish people well, to see them, to appreciate them in their inherent value, in their preciousness.

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

Thank you.

Dharmette: Wise Listening (4 of 5) Listening Beneficially

Welcome to this fourth talk on wise listening. The fourth topic is to listen so that it's beneficial—to listen for what's the most helpful for others.

In the ancient language, in terms of speech, the fourth criterion is to speak what is beneficial. The word being given for beneficial is attha^[2], which also means the goal, and the goal is freedom. The goal is to be free of suffering, classically in Buddhism. So we apply this to listening: to listen from a place of freedom, the best that we have.

Listening from a place where the benefits we receive through meditation become a reference point to how to listen to others. For example, for me, there are a few times when maybe I'm having to go someplace and I'm a little bit late, but someone wants to talk to me, and I can feel inside I'm impatient. I've learned to recognize that my impatience is my own, and I shouldn't in any kind of way project that onto others and somehow think poorly of them, or think the problem is with them.

Rather, I've learned that my impatience harms me. My impatience is unfortunate, that I should lose a settled place. So I make it my practice then to return to a place of settledness, or openness, or freedom, where I'm not caught in the impatience. The byproduct of that is then I can listen without that impatience, which is a much better way to listen. I'm listening with the highest benefits for myself as a reference point, and as I practice with that, then with a little bit of luck, I can be available without that hindrance^[3] and just be there listening to others.

That pattern of checking in with myself about what hindrances I have, and freeing myself of them, means that I'm not just trying to act patient when really what's happening is I'm impatient. Or really what's happening is I'm caught up in my desires, or I'm caught up in needing to prove myself, or defend myself, or do something that gets in the way of really listening to someone.

Rather than insisting that I should listen, the practice is: "Gil, take a good look here. Become free of these hindrances, or at least free enough so that I can come into the listening without it." Then I'm a better listener. As a byproduct of doing this inner work, I might be motivated originally to be a better listener, but I know that I should check in and work on myself so that I can be a better listener.

So, to listen in a way that's beneficial. To listen in a way where we're tapping into the deepest benefits that we know are available, maybe from practice, or from our spirituality, or from our life. This is part of healthy listening, dharmic listening.

And then to listen in such a way that we have other people's welfare in mind as well. To listen in a way where we hear people out. For people to be heard out, to receive the gift of listening, to receive someone who holds it all spaciously—even if they have a tendency to over-speak and are dominating. There's a wonderful Aikido, a wonderful kind of movement, that instead of being reactive to that, you step towards it and open up and listen even better. It's the very thing maybe that I sometimes don't want to do because I feel I'm reinforcing their over-speaking, but sometimes to step forward, get involved in active listening, and get interested—sometimes people who speak too much haven't had that experience of people really being interested in them. Perhaps something deeper in them needs to be fed or needs to be met than just the words they're speaking.

The idea of offering the highest benefit to others through our listening is a wonderful reference point for being a listener. It doesn't have to be this way all the time, and maybe it shouldn't be this way all the time, because we shouldn't be naive and overlook the context. But this is one of the gifts that can come around this practice: really becoming not only a good listener, but listening in such a way that we're attuning ourselves or connecting ourselves to some deeper potential of freedom that's possible in the other person.

One form it takes is to listen appreciating the other person. Appreciating something about them that maybe they can't even appreciate in themselves. Appreciating their capacity for love. Appreciating, "Here is a tender person. Here's a person with life experiences that have been difficult, and they're doing the best they can given their challenges."

Yesterday I read the poem Song of the Open Road by Walt Whitman, and he has a wonderful line—I think the second line of the poem—that goes something like, "I ask not for good fortune, I am good fortune."

Rather than asserting out into the world, "Provide me with benefits, provide me with good fortune," he says, "I am good fortune." And this is the possibility of this practice: that we're not looking outside of ourselves to be happy or to be peaceful. We become our inner peace. We become an inner happiness; we find it in ourselves.

It takes some responsibility for finding it here. Listening in a way that's beneficial, that has the highest welfare in mind, can transform an individual so that we feel like, yes, all kinds of conventional misfortunes can happen to us, but we are the good fortune. We are the free heart. We are the open mind.

And that's so beneficial. Why would we allow ourselves to get carried away by impatience, or carried away by reactivity or fear, when we have a practice to help us go back and find that place of good fortune? Find that place of freedom, find that place of openness, and then from there listen to others. From there, take care of what needs to be taken care of in the world, take care of our challenges and our difficulties, but carry our good fortune with us.

To listen from the place that's most beneficial in us, to have some sense of that—that's one of the values of this meditation practice. To find some reference point of well-being that can help us listen, and with that be in the world, be present in the world, connected to that, open to it. "What's the highest benefit here for me?"

Certainly, I ask this for myself, and frequently enough I've been caught up in something that seems important, and it's not the highest benefit.

I had my car serviced yesterday, and I was a little bit concerned about the price, concerned about whether I'd be overcharged and different things. But I could see that—why would I come with that tension and tightness and cause myself this kind of tension with those kinds of concerns? So certainly I had those thoughts in the back of my mind, but I relaxed and just kind of stayed there and appreciated the service person that I was with. We had a very nice conversation, and I delighted in him. I think he started smiling and was happy as well.

At some point, he asked me, "How are you?" And I honestly said, "Oh, I'm quite happy," because I was sitting there quite happy; I'd done my work to be in that kind of place. And then I said, "Yeah, I'm quite happy, except I'm not so happy about the high price of the service." I wasn't asking for anything, but that was just true. "It seemed a little bit high and expensive."

And he said, "Okay, I'll take $100 off."

I don't know how much you want to make from that little story, but the important point was: here was a situation where I was going to be present. I was going to take care of myself in this situation and not sacrifice my own well-being because of my fears, because of my concerns. In a small situation like this, I was going to take care of the situation the best I could, but I was going to care for this place of freedom and not get caught by something that compromised it in myself. I kind of became my own good fortune in the way that Walt Whitman talks about.

So, to listen and be present to others from our freedom, and do the inner work that stays as close to that—that's a fantastic thing to do.

Thank you. We have one more talk tomorrow on wise listening.