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Meditation Instruction: Knowing What You Know

So, good morning everyone. Welcome to IMC, both to those of you here in person and those of you online. I will just share some brief comments about meditation before we start, and keep it mostly silent during this time.

An interesting kind of instruction for mindfulness meditation is to consider that we're doing one of two things. One is we're knowing something in the present moment, like knowing the breathing, knowing our body, just knowing what's happening in the present moment. But in a way where the knowing is clear enough that you could say to yourself, "I know that I know."

So it isn't just a casual checking it off, like, "I'm kind of aware." It's like there's a clarity, a brightness, or a fullness in the knowing: "That's an in-breath." You're not necessarily saying those words to yourself, but it's almost like, "Oh, that's what it's like. I'm really clear." It's almost like you allow yourself to really know something; you make room to know it all. Let that knowing be relaxed. It doesn't have to be a strain.

The second thing is to know when you're not doing that. To know when you get caught in your thoughts, wander off, daydream, and get preoccupied with something. When you know that that's happening, don't make it a problem. Really know that, so you can say, "I know that I know." There's a clarity, there's a brightness in the mind: "Oh, that's what's happening."

So in this way, you don't have to be concerned with being distracted or caught up in your thoughts. You just fold it into the knowing. So it's a little bit of a trick, right? You just stay present in the knowing, and then rather than thinking that thinking is a problem, it just becomes the reason to know something clearly: "Oh, here I'm thinking. I'm distracted." But you're no longer distracted if you say that; you're present with that. So you can smile when you say, "I'm distracted," because you're not really at that moment. You can appreciate it. You can love it, even.

So two things: either know the present moment, like the breathing, or know that you're not present. And if you're not present, really know it.

So taking a comfortable, alert posture. Perhaps letting there be a gentleness to your posture, a softness while being alert. Closing the eyes. And to relax the body some, as you exhale, soften on the exhale. And as you inhale, a little bit of opening, lifting, energizing into the body. Connecting to your body in a fuller way on the inhale. Relaxing as you exhale.

[Silence]

And then perhaps just settling into breathing here. Becoming familiar with your body's experience of breathing. And to know breathing with clarity. It might be more mental, it might be physical, it might be both. A clear feeling, sensing of breathing. Clear knowing.

And whatever occurs in the present moment is not a distraction, if you take it to be just one more thing to know clearly.

[Silence]

And as we come to the end of this sitting, maybe appreciate that whatever ability we have to be more aware, to show up for our life with attention, is also an ability to show up with care, respect, and attentiveness to the situation of others as much as to ourselves.

May it be that this practice of attention supports us in bringing kind, compassionate, caring awareness to this world of others. In doing so, may we better care for the world.

May this practice we do be for the welfare and happiness of everyone. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

[Music]

Announcements

So to make a few announcements before the talk. The first is that in a few moments, my plan is to take off my mask. The custom in a number of Buddhist centers is for the teacher to take off their mask when they're teaching, and then everyone else leaves their mask on. I think the idea is that with everyone but the teacher wearing masks, it's safe for everyone. It's safe for the teachers because you're wearing masks, and safe for you because you're wearing masks. We have all these air purifiers and fresh air coming in, so I think it's pretty safe. But if those of you who are sitting close by would like to move, please do so freely. It's completely fine. You can sit further away if you don't feel comfortable with me taking my mask off.

And then the other is, before the pandemic, we used to make announcements about things that are happening here at IMC that might interest people. We're kind of out of the habit of it, but one of the foundations of what we do here at IMC is the Intro to Meditation class. We just started doing it again on Thursday, after almost two and a half years, in person. Some of you might like to know that it's on Thursdays at 6:30. You'll miss the first one, but that's okay, you can come to the second one, or it's on AudioDharma so you can listen to catch up.

Okay, so that was the announcements, and then this goes off. And then I'm probably clearer too, speaking this way, not so muffled.

Finding Freedom in Attentiveness: Five Faculties

So, welcome everyone. Nice to have you here and be together this way, and to have a little bit of a celebration about the whole pandemic time, to see so many people coming back to IMC this way and coming sitting in community. I really appreciate the chance to practice together and be this way. So, thank you for being here.

The central feature of this mindfulness practice is attention. Attention involves a number of different faculties; we have different capacities that come together under this umbrella term "attention." I'm aware that in this modern, technologically centered world that many of us live in, there's a fair amount of conversation now about how there's a lot of money, effort, and intelligence that goes into tricking human beings' attention. Capturing people's attention, the more clicks you can do, or the more you'll surf, the more maybe you'll consume. There's a whole industry for getting people's attention and keeping it on their monitor, on their screen.

Many of us willingly participate with that whole enterprise, and maybe spend hours a day on a monitor, sometimes caught by the news, caught by social media, caught by the advertisements, or searching for something. There's a feeling among some people who are studying this that it's a problem for our society that so many people's attentions are captured and being pulled along.

If you go along willingly, it can even feel like you're free: "I can just go along and go anywhere I want to go freely into surfing the web." But in fact, it's not that free of a mind. In a sense, the Buddha 2,500 years ago was addressing the same issue, but what was capturing the mind was not social media or monitors, but rather desires. Desires in the human mind, in one form or another, would hijack our attention, take it over, or pull our attention into a black hole of wanting something or not wanting something on the flip side.

From a Buddhist analysis, we don't want to put the responsibility or the blame on the people on the other side of the monitor who are dreaming up all the ways to capture our attention. From the Buddha's point of view, you are responsible for your attention. Certainly, there should probably be a lot of changes in how social media and computers are presented to the world, but from a Buddhist point of view, we are responsible for it. We have probably the same problem as in the time of the Buddha: somehow or other, desires or aversions catch us in their grip and push our attention. Sometimes our attention is held hostage or hijacked by these strong forces of the mind.

As I said earlier, it can feel the same way: if you give yourself over to your desires or aversions completely, it can feel like, "I'm so free." It's like having an unlimited credit card to spend; you can feel free to go into the shopping mall and just buy everything. And if it's too much for you to carry, that's okay because you have a credit card, you get sherpas to carry everything for you, or the modern equivalent, robots that follow you around and carry everything back. You feel so free. It's so great to be free.

When you sit down to meditate, you discover that that kind of mind is not that free. You want to do the simple thing of sitting down and being present in the moment, maybe present for the breathing, and in fact, the mind doesn't want to do that. The mind has a mind of its own. In a certain way, it's not your mind anymore; it's not a mind that you have some control over, some authority over, or some choice over. You get pulled away, pulled away, pulled away. It's a powerful lesson to meditate to see that, to see how unfree the mind is, whereas we thought we were free the other way.

Now do you have a choice? One choice is to come back to the old way. On the web, if you have a monitor to look at and the web to be connected to, it's almost like you have an unlimited credit card. Even with no money, you think you have unlimited ability to just search, search, search, and feel free. But hopefully, when people meditate—or even just going for a walk in a park, or having a sabbath day and doing nothing—we start reclaiming our capacity to be at home in ourselves, and not have the mind incessantly searching, wanting, doing.

The mind comes to some profound, meaningful rest and ease. It's a kind of reclaiming the mind, rediscovering the mind, or the heart if you prefer, discovering ourselves. Some people are really out of touch with themselves because of monitors—they work on monitors, they spend all their time on monitors, and it's kind of a way of being disconnected. Reclaiming ourselves, reconnecting to ourselves, discovering what freedom means in some deep inner way, where we feel like the mind has become our friend, our companion, and a support for the fullness of our life.

So attention becomes the medium, the means for freedom, because how we use attention is a measure of where the freedom and the lack of freedom is. Attention is mindfulness. So we're developing this capacity to be mindful for the purpose of this freedom that is a reclaiming of ourselves, coming back to ourselves, and being able to breathe easily again, freely again, and openly. I don't know, maybe I shouldn't say "again," because in some of the deeper ways we discover it, it's like for the first time.

For the cultivation of this attention in our practice, we consider that there's an ecology of the mind, or an ecology of the heart, that's operating. There are different faculties, different mental capacities that are cooperating and participating in this endeavor of setting the awareness free or reclaiming it. Appreciating that this occurs, there's an ecology. There are all these different pieces of the mind that support attention, and which attention cultivates and develops.

What I'm going to talk about today is something called the Five Faculties. The Five Faculties are five functionings of the mind, five processes of the mind, or of our inner life. They're operating for you right now; it isn't like they're strange, mystical states. Your capacity to be attentive is being tested here as I give a talk, because you're either attentive because you want to be, or because it's so fascinating what I'm saying that you're just captivated and caught in the drama, waiting on the edge of your seat for the resolution. Or your mind is drifting off in thought, your mind is lost. Or maybe you've decided that you're thinking about really good Jeopardy! questions, and that's the best use of your time sitting here.

You made a choice. This very thing I'm talking about, the ecology of attention, is operating here while you're living here. You might want to listen just enough to then reflect back: how is it operating for you now? Are any of these factors, how are they living in you now as you're listening?

I'll first name the Five Faculties, and then I'll talk about them in different ways, maybe more creatively than the classic language. Most commonly in English, they're described as faith, energy or effort, mindfulness, concentration, and wisdom.

What I want to highlight first is the importance that mindfulness is in the middle; it's the third factor. The first two factors—faith and energy or effort—are considered to be activating, energizing. Faith is meant to be inspiring, to bring energy. That's the function of faith in this practice. The fourth and fifth on the other side of the middle mindfulness are concentration and wisdom, both of which are supposed to help with a settling, a freeing, a relaxing, a de-stressing. So they're activating and settling qualities.

It is said that mindfulness in the middle helps bring those into balance. As mindfulness develops, these other four qualities can follow in its wake; they get stronger as mindfulness gets stronger. But it also works the other way: the other four are the foundation that we create that supports mindfulness. Like a scaffolding we build to have a lighthouse on top so the lighthouse can spread light in all directions. These other four, as they become strong, hold up the awareness so it becomes strong for us as well.

The list begins with the Pali word saddhā^[1], which is most commonly translated into English as faith. I like to think of it as wholeheartedness: what you put your heart into. What do we do wholeheartedly? What our heart wants to do in our life is really important. If you really ask your heart what you're going to put your heart wholeheartedly into because you really love it or it's really meaningful for you, it's probably not going home to your monitor to search Amazon for what's on sale. Your desire might want to do that, there's energy there for it, but if you really tap into what you want to put your heart into, it's probably not that.

What do we do wholeheartedly? When would we put our whole self into what's really valuable, what feeds us and makes the heart sing? That's what I associate with this word saddhā, faith. There's an idea that in the centuries before the Buddha, the word saddhā meant hospitality. That is also a very nice idea: what you're willing to be a host for. What you're willing to be present for and invite in. It goes hand in hand because the idea in meditation is to put your attention wholeheartedly into reclaiming yourself, to be here with yourself. This is important. To have the faith to be the host, to be hospitable to all things that occur.

Faith, since I used the word wholehearted for it, is the most emotional quality of the Five Faculties. There's an emotional quality of inspiration. We're inspired by this: "Wow, I can't do it yet, but I'm going to find my freedom, set my attention free, reclaim my attention for myself. That's good. I want to do that. This is important."

Then the effort part is to put some energy into this. Not just to have a good idea—"Yeah, this is a good idea to be wholeheartedly present"—but to say, "I'm going to do this. I'm going to really give myself to it." The unconventional idea that I like to associate with this word is to inhabit. To inhabit our aliveness, to inhabit what we're doing.

I like this for myself because then it's more than just a mental thing, like "just bring your attention and know what's happening." To inhabit, for me, is to be embodied, to be present in a fully embodied way: "I'm here with this experience." There are more faculties of attention than just what goes on in the mind. A part of the faculty of attention involves all the nerve endings that pick up sensations in our body. They're just as important for embodied, fully developed attention as any capacity of the mind.

To recognize, "Oh, that was a sound outside," for example, there's also the whole embodied sensory apparatus that takes in that sound. We haven't had it for a while, but occasionally it's really great to have cars drive down with a really deep bass boom box, because then it really feels like embodied listening. The whole body is shaking, sometimes even the building shakes.

In the ancient language of the Buddha, he associated this effort or engagement with courage. To do something courageously. Sometimes this practice requires a little courage. I love the idea that courage comes from the French word for heart (cœur). So we don't feel like we're striving or overriding what's happening, but rather courageously showing up for ourselves and feeling what's here. That's hard sometimes; our emotional lives are difficult and challenging.

Then on the other side of mindfulness, there is concentration. Concentration is probably not the best translation for samādhi^[2]. Samādhi is often associated with tranquility; it's also associated with letting go. When I went to Thailand to engage in this practice, one of my first lessons was talking with some of the monks. They were a little bit critical of concentration practice, saying, "Oh, that's just about letting go," as if that's a very small thing. But the idea was that developing deeper states of concentration has more to do with letting go than it does about laser-focusing your attention.

The word that I like to associate with concentration, which is a translation of an ancient teaching, is to be settled. Concentration is to be settled on your experience. You can feel how the idea of settling, letting go, relaxing, and tranquility means that concentration is the calming effect of the Five Faculties.

We inhabit, we engage, we're inspired—but that can be too much sometimes. It comes into balance with relaxing, settling, and letting go. Bringing those into proper balance is the art of mindfulness. If we let go and relax too much, we start falling asleep and the mind wanders off too much. We need the engagement, we need the inspiration, the clarity. We're navigating this ecology in our ecosystem, figuring out which one to bring forth.

The fifth one is wisdom. Wisdom has a lot to do with having insight—really seeing in the present moment. It's not wisdom that you carry with you, like you read a book and now you think you have all the wisdom you need because you have this knowledge. I think the word "insight" probably works better to translate paññā^[3], in the sense that it emphasizes what you're seeing and understanding in the lived experience of the moment. That's where the wisdom is.

One of the primary forms of insight here and now that this enterprise is about is to be able to recognize the difference between stress and not-stress. The difference between when we are adding stress to our mind, to our body, to our heart, and to know there's a possibility of not adding that stress. Stress is not healthy in the long term; stress is not where freedom of attention is discovered. We don't reclaim the fullness and the ease of ourselves by being stressed.

Rather than thinking of wisdom as this complex Buddhist philosophy, it's actually always something very simple that we can see and know for ourselves. One of the primary ways to say it in modern terms is to be able to see clearly when what we're doing is stressful, and to know that we don't have to do that. We might not be able to stop it, so don't add stress on top of stress, but to see that, to know that, is to start having wisdom. "Oh, I'm striving and pushing. I'm resisting here. All that is stressful." Okay, so now I have to be aware of this. I have to be attentive to that. I have to know that. At least I have wisdom. I don't know what to do about it, but at least I have wisdom about it.

Another form of wisdom that becomes more and more important as the capacity for attention becomes stronger is to have more and more clarity about how, moment by moment, our experience is constantly changing. Why that is important is that when we really see that, then we're willing to surf on it, as opposed to holding it like "this is the way it has to be." One of my delusions has sometimes been, "I've arrived! This is how it's supposed to be." In meditation, for example: "Okay, finally I'm concentrated. This is it." Or, "Finally, I feel some sense of calm and relaxed and happy. I've got it made. Don't breathe, you'll mess it up."

But really, life is more like being on a surfboard. You finally caught the wave, you don't say, "This is it!" You have to be very attentive to the changing nature of the wave to be able to stay on the board. Or riding a bicycle. You never say, "Now I got it made on the bicycle, don't move!" You're constantly navigating, negotiating, shifting your weight, and adjusting everything. By really starting to appreciate the intimacy of the changing nature of experience here and now, this whole enterprise of the Five Faculties becomes involved in not fixating on anything, because any fixation is stress.

So faith is in the forefront: "Wow, I'm so inspired by this." Or, "This is what I realize is most important for me, and what I'm willing to put my wholehearted attention into." It's not necessarily the activities that you do, but rather how you do those activities. That's the secret of Buddhist practice, I think. It's not what you do, but how you do it. That's where this inner freedom is really found.

That's why when we do mindfulness meditation, it's not exactly the meditation that's important. Don't think you have to become a great meditator. Rather, it's what you're learning about how you use attention. As you learn how to use your attention in meditation in this simple laboratory, it'll start spilling out into your life.

When you go home to wash your dishes or clean the kitchen floor, it isn't about getting the floor clean as quickly as you possibly can so you can get back on your monitor. It's discovering that you reclaim yourself; your freedom is found in being fully present for washing the kitchen floor, as if there's nothing else to do in the whole world. There's no stress about the next thing. There's no stress about "Why do I have to do the kitchen floor? Didn't I do it last week? Someone else should be doing it." These are all ways that interfere with just inhabiting, being wholehearted, being relaxed and settled, letting go, not adding stress, and seeing where the non-stress is.

You wash the kitchen floor being present with attention for this activity, and by the time you finish doing the floor it's like, "Well, that was great." Not because the floor is great, not because the particular activity is the greatest thing invented by human beings, but because of what you brought to it, how you were with it. That's the trick. The freedom of mindfulness practice is portable into anything that you do, where what you do is less important than how you do it.

It's absolutely true that what you do is important, and you might love doing some things more than others, but the wholeheartedness, the faith, where we inhabit, where we are settled, is in how we are with our attention. How we are present with our attentiveness for what we're doing.

You might consider how there's a way of being wholehearted in the attentiveness you bring to what you do, and that's easier to do if you don't equate what you're doing with the attentiveness itself. Some things are hard to be inspired to do in and of themselves, but what's inspiring is the attentiveness by which you engage with them.

Some of you have been parents. Some of those things we have to do are not inspiring at all. The things I had to do as a parent, I never dreamt that I had to do. One of the big surprises was when my kid was really young and sick, and he started throwing up. Without any horror or disgust, I just put my hands together and cupped them to receive the vomit. It just seemed like the most natural thing to do. So occasionally, we have to do things which are not necessarily something you would think ahead of time to do wholeheartedly, but it's how we do it.

To be present for whatever wholeheartedly. To inhabit—the energy factor. To attend to with our capacity to be present and know. To do it in a way that's easeful. I like the word ease—it's almost a synonym of concentration. To do it with relaxing and ease, letting go. Letting go of what? Letting go of what we learn with our wisdom. Wisdom shows us where the stress that we carry is. Over time, as the practice develops for us, we see more and more where all the stress lives in our body: in our eyes, our jaws, our hands, our belly, our minds, our brains. We learn not to give in to that stress; we learn to relax it.

These are five faculties that you have, that whether you knew it or not, were somehow present here listening to this talk. Maybe some of them were in short supply, maybe they were all present in a wonderful way. I hope that it at least gives you some idea of the landscape of what mindfulness is about, the map of the different faculties that come into play. It might seem like a lot to keep in mind, five different things, but you're using them all the time anyway.

As you become more aware of this, at first it might be like riding a bicycle—it's awkward and feels like you're now even more stressed out because you have to keep all these things in mind. But as you keep doing this practice, you'll see these things become stronger and become more second nature. Sometimes it becomes like, "Oh, this one's weak," or "This one's overdone. I think I'm trying too hard here," or "I could use a little bit more inspiration here. What do I feel wholehearted about? What's really important for me?" Realizing what that is brings some more juice to being here attentively, finding my freedom in my attentiveness.

So that's my talk. May the Five Faculties be treasures for you that you realize are in you. It can be your wealth. So, thank you.

We have a few minutes before the official ending for the talk. We can maybe take five minutes or so if any of you have any comments or questions. And then afterwards, I'll invite all of you to go out and continue having a discussion in the parking lot outside. We take the folding chairs out and sit in a big circle, and we can take off our masks out there if you want, and just have an open discussion. But before we go out, are there any questions or comments now that any of you would like to ask here? Thank you.

Q&A

Questioner 1: Hi, thanks for your talk. What I've been thinking was, I feel as my practice deepens, I start to notice more things. Maybe when talking to people, you start to notice patterns of thoughts that they have, and they're not asking for help or anything, but you can tell it seems like a trap somehow. I still don't know how to navigate that. They're not asking for advice. Is that something that you should tell them so they are aware of?

Gil Fronsdal: I see. So what you're saying is that as you're becoming more mindful and understanding your inner landscape better, you now understand other people better. You see, for example, that whatever they're doing now, how they're talking or engaging, they're involved in a stressful way. And so should you poke them and say, "Hey, you!"? [Laughter]

Questioner 1: I know, I apologize. I wasn't at all implying that!

Gil Fronsdal: I know, I wasn't at all implying that's what you meant! But the first thing that occurs to me to tell you is a story. When I was first doing this practice regularly, I saw how people were so caught up in their ego games and wanted to get praised, or back then the language was "stroked." I didn't want to play those games anymore. I had a girlfriend, a wonderful woman, who wasn't a practitioner. I didn't want to play those games, so the relationship ended.

Many years later, what I realized was that I had some wisdom—seeing how things were operating, and not participating in it—but what I lacked was compassion. I didn't care for her, I didn't understand her suffering, and I didn't understand how my behavior actually added suffering to her rather than taking it away, because she wasn't a practitioner and had no idea what was happening.

So you want to be clear if you see something in others: Are they ready to hear it? Do they want to hear it? Is it welcomed, almost invited? Is it useful? Are you doing it out of care, and is it the right time to do it?

Questioner 1: Thank you. That sounds kind of like the answer I've found, with compassion, and it's almost like an art form on when and how to do it.

Gil Fronsdal: And don't underestimate how valuable it is to be present for people, to listen to people. The inner system of human beings shifts and changes towards health when there's a lot of attention. When we give attention to ourselves—this whole thing I'm talking about today of really bringing attentiveness to our life—it tends to shift and move things towards health. When we bring a lot of listening and a lot of attention, just listening and being present for other people, it tends to move them towards health too. So don't underestimate how useful that is. Even though you might see that a person is stressed out, rather than telling them that, offer them the kind of caring, simple, relaxed attention that maybe helps something in them to relax, and then they might learn eventually on their own.

It's a very good question, and I just scratched the surface of all the answers.

Questioner 2: Thank you, Gil. This was an extremely valuable session for me anyway. Along the line of the thread that this gentleman initiated, there are times when people ask for advice but they really don't want the advice. I think perhaps part of wisdom is recognizing when there is room for advice to be given, and when there is just simply supporting and actively listening and just being there for them. How do you feel about that?

Gil Fronsdal: In Japanese Zen, there's a little saying or instruction. When someone asks you a question—and I think they mean a Dharma question, with a teacher, but it's maybe good here too—only give a 30% answer. Then see if they ask again.

The Buddha sometimes would not answer the first time someone would ask; they had to ask three times. Actually, in Zen monasteries, they have that idea built into the ritual of the Dharma talk. No one sees it, but before someone gives a talk, there's a ritual ringing of bells and bowing that's offstage sometimes, where it's meant to replicate the idea that the community is asking the person three times to give the talk.

So just offer just enough that you're responding, but not everything you could say, and then see if they want more. They'll come back with more and come back with more.

Questioner 2: Thank you.

Gil Fronsdal: Great. Is there a question today in the chat? No question in the chat. Okay, well, thank you all very much. Those of you who would like, we can go outside—there's a cabinet just around the corner, you can take a folding chair and we'll go out in the parking lot and make a big circle and hover, and then chat for a while together. Thank you.