Guided Meditation: Settling Thoughts

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The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on August 31, 2020. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Settling Thoughts

Warm greetings on this Monday morning here in California, and different times around the globe. Now, I want to begin with a well-used kind of analogy. If you take a jar that has in it some water and some mud, and you shake the jar, the mud will disperse, dissolve, and spread out into all the water. The water will be murky; you can't see through it. It won't be clear. If you then leave the jar still, the mud will settle until the water that's above the mud becomes clear, and you have clarity. If every few seconds or a minute or so you go back and shake up the jar, it never really has a time to settle fully and come to that clarity.

The same thing happens with the mind. If you'll forgive making the analogy this way, often the "mud" in the mind is thinking. Our thinking can be stirred up, and the thinking itself stirs up more thinking. In order for the mind to settle enough so that we can have a clear mind and see clearly, some degree of settling of the thinking mind is important. But if we try to settle it with more thinking, it just keeps it spinning in the solution.

Part of the function of mindfulness is to be able to be aware of thinking with more stillness than there is in the thinking mind. The awareness that holds it is the stillness. The mindfulness doesn't have to be completely still; it just has to be stiller than the thinking, so the thinking can begin to settle. As it all settles, the mind becomes more subtle, awareness becomes more settled, and there can be greater clarity.

One of the tools of mindfulness is recognition—to recognize what's happening. In relationship to thinking, it can be recognizing thinking. That might be a little thought or a subliminal thought: "thinking, thinking." If there's a particular kind of thought like planning, you would recognize, "There is planning happening," or, "Remembering the past." Very simple remembering. You don't have to put details into the recognition of what you're remembering, just, "remembering." If there's fantasy, you don't have to put detail on what fantasy you're recognizing, but just, "Oh, there's fantasy."

In that recognition, the art of this is for the recognition to be calmer, more spacious, more open, and more settled than the thinking we're recognizing. That allows things to begin to settle. So that's the instruction for today, for the sitting. The core thing is that if you should have some thinking during your sitting—especially if the thinking is quite strong and you get pulled into it—don't make it a problem. The job is to allow for the settling, as opposed to forcing it or expecting it to be instant.

One of the tools for that is to let the recognition of the fact that you're thinking be clear and calm. Be a little bit stiller, more like a sense of allowing: "Okay, there's thinking here." Really let that recognition be very clear: "Oh, there's thinking here," as if you're making space and room, and letting there be some context of subtleness or stillness for the mud to settle.

To begin, take a meditative posture—a posture which has some chance of supporting both clarity and alertness of mind, but also a relaxing and settling. Within this posture, take some conscious breaths. They could be either deeper and longer breaths than usual, or just very conscious, like you're entering into the experience of breathing within the body. And as you exhale, let the body settle.

It is almost like the body is the jar. We want to settle the jar, let it feel comfortable and still, relaxing any obvious holding patterns in the body that you can relax and soften.

Softening the belly. Softening in the chest. Softening in the shoulders. And softening in the face.

Then softening in the area of the brain, or the forehead, or wherever there might be energetics of thinking—the tension of thinking. Let it soften and relax.

Then very gently, see if you can experiment with having a quiet, calm recognition of yourself thinking. It is kind of like you're looking at thinking right in the eye, and recognizing it calmly.

Sometimes the thinking is done more in words, as an inner voice, and sometimes it's more in images. Either way, we call it thinking. If it's helpful, you can recognize it as words when it's spoken in the mind, or as images when the mind projects.

For a few minutes more, experiment and see if you can find a way that the recognition is calmer, more settled, and more allowing than the thinking is. So that some of the clarity is the clear recognition that you're thinking.

And now, experiment with bringing a calm and clear recognition—it could be a silent recognition or it could be a very simple word of recognition—to feel and sense the experience of breathing. As if how we recognize, how we're present for breathing, is itself the agent of calming, of stilling. How would you bring attention to breathing if attention itself was the very thing that calms, settles, and clarifies yourself in meditation?

Staying with breathing, but if thinking gets predominant and you get pulled into the world of thoughts, experiment with this function of recognition. Recognize clearly that it is happening, and see if you can do so with a recognition that's calmer and more spacious than the thinking itself.

Recognizing what's happening with a calm recognition, as if you have all the time in the world to recognize, "This is what's happening."

Dedication of Merit

What do you think would happen if calm recognition was the channel through which love, compassion, and care flowed? That calm recognition allows for the transmission of being of service to the world.

Perhaps calm recognition provides the clarity and peacefulness with which we can consistently come out of meditation, remembering that we're returning to the world, hopefully to make it a better place. So that the benefits, the merit^[1], that we have from our practice is something that we share with others. In such a way that we're working for the welfare and happiness of all beings everywhere.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be settled in their lives, settled in their hearts. May all beings be free. Unobstructed, without oppression. Free to allow what's good in them to come out into the world.