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      section_slug: training-in-freedom
      speakers:
        - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal
          speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1
      talk_start_time_seconds: 0
      title: Training in Freedom
      url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11641
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location_city: Redwood City, CA
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  title: Training in Freedom
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youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1m9v5VovZoE
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# Training in Freedom - [Gil Fronsdal](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1)

_This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers._

## [Training in Freedom](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11641)

It's a good day everyone. It's nice to be here in this way, sharing the Dharma[^1], sharing the practice, and sharing maybe our care for each other.

Today I want to begin by making a distinction in Buddhism between what can be called "practice" and what can be called "training." The word for practice, _bhāvanā_[^2], can also mean cultivation or development of something. We practice mindfulness to develop mindfulness; we practice concentration to develop concentration; we practice love to develop love. There's a lot of emphasis in traditional Buddhism to practice as a way of developing ourselves, developing capacities that are wonderful. But at some point, there's also training.

The distinction that I'm making here is that the word "training," I'm using to mean that we have an activity that we're doing, and we're training in that activity. Or to say it differently: we have a sense, we know something about what this life is about, and then we train in that life. But we have to know what that life is about. We have to know what the activity is that's really valuable that we're focusing on here in practice.

Many people have a logical idea or have some sense or intuition that Dharma practice is a good thing, and they'll engage in it. They can do the practice. And then at some point, something happens where there's a clear enough experience of a different way of being. A way of being that is characterized in Buddhism by the language of freedom, characterized by a sense of liberation or freedom. Sometimes it is characterized by a feeling of profound peace. Sometimes by a profound feeling of happiness and well-being, and sometimes as a clear experience of selflessness or lack of selfishness.

This then becomes a reference point for how we practice and train, how training then goes. They say traditionally in Buddhism—and you don't need to take it too seriously for yourself—that it's when a person has a personal feeling or experience of freedom that now they know for themselves what the training is about. Until then, practice is partly an act of faith, partly a good idea, or perhaps it's just a nice way of calming down or stress reduction. There is nothing wrong with that, but at some point, it becomes something much more significant.

The difference between these two is quite big. When people come to practice, it's rare that someone has had a profound peace in life someplace, maybe accidentally, so that they do have that reference point before they come into practice. Generally, if we don't have that, then it's hard to know what this experience of freedom is like and why it's hard to happen.

To know what it's like is difficult because we tend to focus on our lives in a somewhat self-centered way: "What's in it for me? Me, myself, and I; me, mine, and myself." We have an orientation that it's about my experience, my being saved, my being better, my being successful, my being healed, my being free. The freedom that Buddhism is pointing towards doesn't really fit into any model of self-centeredness.

It's a little bit like a caterpillar. It probably doesn't know it's going to become a butterfly when it forms a cocoon to be in. It can't imagine what it's going to be like. But then when it comes free of the cocoon, it has wings and flies. It has this freedom it could never have imagined when it was still a caterpillar.

In the same way, it's hard to imagine when we're still a caterpillar and we're still living in what we're taught and oriented to growing up. For many of us, there is a certain kind of self-centeredness. In extreme forms, it is a selfish life. But even people who are not selfish, who seem actually very generous and kind and supportive of others, can still be in a healthy self-centeredness. This orientation operates from the point of view of how we define ourselves, how we see ourselves, how we engage and assert ourselves in the world. In extreme forms, this self-assertion is self-aggression: wanting something, getting something.

This is maybe an interesting distinction between the kind of freedom that Buddhism focuses on and the kind of freedom that's often popular in the United States. I think this today, the day after Independence Day. At a time where many people in America are insisting that they should be free to do whatever they want, and not wear a mask, and not have anyone tell them what to do, there's an emphasis on a certain kind of freedom which at times has been important for this country and at times is a problem: the freedom _to do_ things. It is the freedom of unfettered activity without any limitations on what we do. The freedom to vote, freedom of assembly, freedom to bear arms, freedom to shop. It's representative of an unfettered freedom to be a consumer, to have an unlimited credit card, to have the freedom just to have all our desires met.

The freedom that Buddhism talks about is a freedom _from_. The freedom from attachment and clinging, the freedom from hate, the freedom from craving, from delusion, the freedom from fear. It is a freedom from all the ways that we are limited, the way we restrict ourselves in some way.

If you have an open hand, the hand is finally opened and relaxed. The hand is open and it feels good to have the hand open. But it feels so good that we want to grasp it. As soon as you grasp the open hand, the open hand is lost.

Selfishness is like that. There can be an ease in life, but as soon as we want it or appropriate it for ourselves, there is a contraction that goes on, and we actually lose a certain kind of freedom. We lose it in the assertion of self, the aggressive assertion of "me" and what I want, or tightening up.

It's kind of like if a person is fairly relaxed, the diaphragm might be moving freely and nicely, and that's very good. We know that the breathing is very adaptable, very changeable, affected by our mood and activity. But if we get afraid, the breathing changes. You can feel the contraction and tightness, and the uplifting of the breathing tends to become a lot of chest breathing. Anger affects our breathing. Selfishness and aggressive wanting affect our breathing. And so the breathing no longer feels relaxed and easeful; there's a contraction, a tightness, a different breathing pattern with excessive selfishness.

If someone is very attentive to the effect, they'll feel how the selfishness has contracted something. It might be the chest or the breathing. It might be the shoulders. It might be the jaws. Or it might be the eyes that are looking in a certain way and zeroing in, tight or very focused. Or it might be a contraction in the brain around "me, myself, and mine": "I have to have my way," or "my way or the highway." A tightening down or an insistence that all feels like a contraction, a limitation.

Someone who is very selfish might be able to assert themselves in the world and have a lot of freedom in action, but they do so at the expense of losing the freedom of their heart and mind. If we're not attentive to that inner life, we won't feel the impact that has. We won't feel how limiting it is and what a dramatic loss of freedom it is. We won't notice that the hand has become clenched, and therefore there is no more open hand.

As we practice and begin discovering more and more freedom, one of the magical, very special things that begins happening is there starts to be an orientation or understanding about a life which is not self-centered. I like to think of it as being "situation-centered," where we're open and very present, very attentive to everything that's here. There is no denial of what's here within us or around us, but there is no contraction, no tightening around it.

As mindfulness works on us and affects us, we start feeling that, getting the feedback system of noticing the impact on how we behave, what we do, what we feel, what we want, what we don't want. We notice the impact of our inner dialogue and how it undermines us or limits us, the ways in which desires work or hostilities work within us. We start feeling more and more the personal cost of that.

Then at some point, maybe we start relaxing more deeply, settling more deeply. We start going into the cocoon, having been a caterpillar of self for so long, and we don't know, we can't really know how we're going to come out. In fact, the idea that the practice is about "me getting something," even the idea that "I'm supposed to be peaceful," can be too much of an idea that goes along with the old idea of self: "It's up to me," and measuring yourself, "How far have I gotten? Have I gotten as far as the person next to me, and other Buddhists that I know?" All this self game goes on.

At some point, there's a deeper letting go. At some point, there's a falling away, shedding the more or less traditional idea of this self, where there is a profound experience of letting go. I don't want to use strong language today. There's enough experience of letting go that there's a different reference point. Rather than a reference point of self and self-assertion, or self-denial, or self-protection, there is a reference point of freedom that's available. There's a reference point of some kind of peace that is maybe not so personal.

Some time ago, there used to be a lot of discussion about transpersonal psychology. This transpersonal peace, or non-personal peace, it's certainly here, but it's not so easy to associate with this self. The open hand, it's hard to find it if the hand is contracted. And to figure out what the open hand is like when the hand is always contracted—we won't have any sense of what it is. But when the hand is finally open, "Oh, now I know what it's about. Now I know I can keep my hand relaxed." There might still be a bit of contracting there, but now the person knows a potential, a possibility they maybe didn't know before if they spent their whole life contracted.

Then the training becomes a training to stay with an open hand. This training is to realize that—yes, using the analogy again—the diaphragm is relaxed as I breathe, and I know it's possible to be relaxed in my breathing in a way I never knew before. Now let me see if I can let that ease and relaxation spread up into the chest, where it's still tight. The training is to expand that relaxation. It's possible to do that in self-centered ways, but you could just feel that there's a momentum inside, a direction that wants to go towards greater freedom. It's not necessarily a personal thing. It's more like this wants to work on us. This is the direction that life wants to take. Life doesn't want to be contracted; it doesn't want to be limited. Life wants to be free.

But the freedom of life is not necessarily the freedom _to do_, from the vantage point of self, "me, myself, and mine." It's an inner freedom to live _from_. It's an inner freedom to live from a place of no craving, no attachments, and even a place where there's no self there, at least no self-centeredness. And to know what that is like without having experienced it is kind of like the caterpillar trying to figure out what it's like to be a butterfly. Maybe you can't figure it out at all.

So at some point in this practice that we do, there is enough of an experience of this absence of self-centeredness, this peacefulness, this mind being at ease, that we know this is possible. "I had no idea that this kind of inner freedom was possible, and now that I know this is what the practice is about, now I can train." Now I know what the training is. The training is to live with this peace, this freedom. The training, that's the activity of freedom. And the activity of training is the activity of living from a free place, without all these inner limitations or constrictions that we have.

And then how do we start expanding this place? How do we expand the peacefulness, the ease, the freedom to all the different parts of who we are? It's one thing to have a glimmer, to have that door open up a little bit, but then the practice, the training, becomes finding out how to expand it wider and wider and wider. It's kind of like we have a toehold in freedom, and with that first toehold, then we begin to expand that outwards into all the areas of our life.

It doesn't have to be a dramatic experience of enlightenment. There are ordinary experiences in life that can give us a feeling of freedom, the feeling of peace that is what we're training for. A couple of days ago, my wife and I went for a hike in the mountains, and we spent a few hours next to a beautiful, clear little mountain creek with boulders around it and little fish in it. I could have spent the whole day just looking at the pattern of the water flowing on the surface, flowing down this creek. There was something very captivating, relaxing, and easeful—the clear water, the clear sky, the beautiful mountain stream in a peaceful place. Just looking at the stream, my eyes were not tight or zeroed in. My mind was not tight and concerned with anything. My mind was kind of floating, like the river. Kind of floating on the river, very peaceful, very easeful. No particular subject of thought preoccupied me. Certainly, there were thoughts, but everything was very still and quiet and peaceful.

Maybe some people have it looking at the ocean, or laying on your back and looking at the clouds above. It can give a feeling for a kind of a peaceful, easeful place that is very meaningful, that can provide a deep satisfying feeling, contentment, and ease. That is a reference point for noticing how we lose it. Noticing how we get caught up by things, or preoccupied, or the mind starts spinning and doing all this stuff, and then remembering that, "Oh, that's a possibility, that is the place to live from."

In Buddhism, when people start doing the training, they have this reference point: this is worthwhile, this is a valuable place to come to. In fact, sometimes this reference point is so strong that a person realizes that to live any other way is not worthwhile. Any degree of stress, any degree of pushing or selfing, any aggression, any hostility, any craving, any lusting for anything is just not worth it. There's such a huge loss; what's most precious and most valuable is lost in that.

This freedom, this profound sense of peace or happiness that can come, it can't be selfish, because as soon as we're selfish, we've closed the hand into a fist. To feel that interface between the peace and the tendencies to be selfish again is one of the great challenges of practice. Because we can't just give up our self-centeredness that easily. But to feel it happening on all the emotions that come, all the layers of the mind—the comments, "Well, I'm supposed to be angry or hostile, I'm supposed to want something. What's wrong with having more things? I deserve it"—and all this stuff that goes on in that meeting place between freedom and where we're not so free.

Where we're not so free insists on having a freedom _to do_, not realizing that it's in that doing that we lose the freedom _from_ craving, from selfishness. So there starts to be this dance, this meeting place. When we start training in Buddhism, we can expect we're not going to be perfect. We're going to have all kinds of material to look at and be honest about, and to work our way through all kinds of attachments and clingings and selfishness that operates. We have this reference point now, and there starts to be a dialogue, a meeting place, an influence from one to the other.

The training is to have the influence go from freedom into that place where we're not yet completely free. To let the freedom, the peace, the happiness, the love just begin to move into those parts of our lives where they're still not there. To have this kind of selflessness, non-self-centeredness, spread into the rest of our life. And in the process of doing so, to learn that this non-self-centered place can be the origin of how we live in the world, what motivates us, what helps us take care of the world, what helps us take care of this being that's here, ourselves.

There's a whole different foundation for choosing how to live our life that's different from the foundation of selfishness. This foundation, it can still be about this being here, it can still be about this body, this heart, this mind, but we're no longer self-centered. Now we can be situation-centered. We're at the center of our personal situation, and we're aware of everything here, including what's here in ourselves, and we know how to take care of what's in here. What's in here is as important as any other being out there, any person out there. But we start discovering that to really take care of this being well, we engage in the training of freedom, the training of non-attachment, the training of non-craving, non-hostility, non-lust.

We have a practice that we do, and we have a training. The practice is to cultivate these qualities of mind that support us: to cultivate concentration, cultivate mindfulness, cultivate patience, cultivate honesty, cultivate generosity, cultivate kindness and compassion. There are all these qualities that we can cultivate. But then the training is to train in freedom, to train in liberation, to have a feeling for liberation. And with that feeling of liberation, begin to expand that feeling or that sense or that experience until our life just feels free.

Then we'll find that there's plenty of motivation within. Chances are then your life will respond appropriately to what's needed within yourself and around you. The idea of living appropriately for the welfare of all beings everywhere, for the welfare of oneself, the welfare of others, the welfare of self and others, and the welfare for the whole world is what the Buddha was talking about.

So may your practice bring you to the point where you know what the training is about, what the practice is about. And then, when you really know that for yourself, the Buddha said you become independent in the Dharma. When you have a clear enough reference point for the training, a clear enough reference point for freedom, then you become independent in the Dharma, because you know now for yourself what it's about.

Those are my thoughts for today, on this Independence Day weekend that some of us are celebrating and some of us are not. But let's always celebrate the possibility of inner freedom. Thank you for being here.

---

[^1]: **Dharma:** In Buddhism, the Dharma (Sanskrit) or Dhamma (Pali) refers both to the teachings of the Buddha and to the underlying cosmic law and order that those teachings point to.

[^2]: **Bhāvanā:** A Pali word typically translated as "development" or "cultivation." In Buddhism it is often used to refer to meditation or spiritual practice.