---
ai_generation_date: '2026-06-10'
ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview
audiodharma:
  talks:
  - date: '2022-08-22'
    mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/16846/20220822-Diana_Clark-IMC-samadhi_in_the_path_of_practice.mp3
    speakers:
    - speaker_name: Diana Clark
      speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/240
    talk_start_time_seconds: 0
    title: Samadhi in the Path of Practice
    url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/16846
    video_unavailable: false
location_city: Redwood City, CA
video_unavailable: false
youtube:
  id: Iw-oCzeG5ho
  imprecise_upload_date: '2023-05-04'
  title: Samadhi in the Path of Practice
  upload_date: null
  uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center
  uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter
youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iw-oCzeG5ho
---

# Samadhi in the Path of Practice - [Diana Clark](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/240)

*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.*


## Introduction

Good evening. Welcome, welcome. You know, there's not so many of us in this room. Maybe it would be nice just to say your name and where you're from. You don't have to, but it might be nice. Maybe we can... I don't know if we need the microphone. Sir, we can start with you. Oh, maybe we do need the microphones, having the masks on.

**Sveta:** Hi everybody, can you hear me? I think so. I think we can hear. My name is Sveta.
**Sally:** My name is Sally from Menlo Park.
**Kathy:** Kathy from Redwood City.
**Ambuja:** Ambuja from Milpitas.
**Edwina:** Hi, Edwina from San Bruno.
**Anne Rose:** Hi everyone, Anne Rose from Redwood City, but San Bruno, that's my sister. 
**Diana:** Oh nice.
**Nathan:** Nathan. 
**Robert:** Robert Schwartz.
**Kevin:** Hi everyone, I'm Kevin from San Carlos.
**Phil:** Phil from Redwood City.

**Diana:** Great, great. Thank you, thank you for that. It's nice to know the names, and I'll try to remember, but chances are not high. A test after? Yeah, I think... oh, you're Kevin, right? Yeah. Okay, I got that one. Phil, Kevin, Nathan, Kathy. I don't remember your name... Ambuja? Ambuja. And what was your name? Edwina. Anne Rose. Edwina and Anne Rose, Sally and Sveta, and I'm Diana. I remember that, that's a good sign, right?

## [Samadhi in the Path of Practice](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/16846)

Okay, so welcome, welcome everybody. So tonight I'm going to continue on... I'm doing the series on the seven factors of awakening, and last week I talked about samadhi, and I'm going to stay on samadhi again. I'm going to kind of flesh it out and talk about it a little bit more today.

Samadhi. I'm using the Pali word, not the English word, because I think the English word has a lot of associations that might not be so helpful or has some baggage along with it. So let's give the definition that I would like to give, and there's a number of dharma teachers that use this definition, so it's not 100 percent a Diana-ism. But it's a way that I think is a little bit fuller and helps us appreciate it. Samadhi is the mind and body feeling unified, settled, and steady in a state of well-being. There are three different elements there. Mind and body—and I'll talk about that in a little bit here, the body's definitely involved—settled, steady, and unified. So not distracted or not split with our attention going anywhere and everywhere, and then with a state of well-being, a state of some niceness, we might say. I'm using kind of these vague words, "niceness" and "well-being," so that we don't have to get so caught up on exactly what it is. Maybe, maybe not today, but maybe next week I'll unpack that a little bit more. But for now we'll just use this kind of "well-being" samadhi.

I will say that often the English translation that's used is "concentration." But right when we hear this word "concentration," we kind of think of this narrowing and this burrowing down and straining and huffing and puffing and trying to really stay on the object. We don't think about well-being, we don't think about the body, and we have these ways of how we think about samadhi. So I'll be using this word samadhi.

And I said this last week, but I just want to emphasize it again: it's not one thing. I mean, I described it as a state, but it's not like in or out, you have it or you don't. It's not like that. It's a spectrum. And so we could say here's this more unified, collected state, and here's completely distracted and in terror and disembodied, right at one end. And then the practice is just to move in the direction towards more collectedness, more settledness, more well-being, and in a way that includes both the mind and the body. It is kind of a way of being unified.

As I said, I'm talking about samadhi in terms of it being an awakening factor. So it's the sixth of seven awakening factors. I'll just list the other ones here; I'm not going to talk about them, but: mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, samadhi, and then the next one will be equanimity. So these are nice supports for awakening. When I'm using the word "awakening" here, I'm pointing to this really greater freedom that's available. This freedom from whatever it is you feel like you need freedom from—anything and everything, literally everything. We might even think about it as a spectrum. 

I remember I heard Gil[^1]... gosh, this was quite some time ago... give this little analogy about freedom which has stuck with me all these years. Maybe it was because he said it right at the end of a retreat and our minds are a little bit more settled in a retreat and things come in and stick. But he gave this little story of... he was kind of describing freedom, and he said that in his household it was the tradition that on Sundays they would have waffles, and that he would make the waffles. So every Sunday he makes these little waffles. And one of his sons liked to have syrup with his waffle. That's perfectly reasonable. But they wanted syrup in every single one of those little squares, and not any on the plate. So there was this particular way that the syrup had to be right in order for the waffle to be acceptable to be eaten. And so there's a certain amount of suffering between the son and the father who's trying to make these waffles and make them just right for him. But then he said, you know, as his son grew up he just kind of outgrew it. It just didn't make so much sense anymore and he stopped caring so much about this syrup having to be in exactly every waffle. And so Gil was pointing to how sometimes freedom is like that. You just kind of outgrow it, or you just naturally let go, or it's not such a big part of your life anymore—some of these things that used to be a source of suffering. I'm using "suffering" in this really broad way: difficulty, uncomfortableness. 

But also what's interesting about this story: so this son kind of grew up and had this shift in his idea of how his food had to be, so he certainly had more ease. But his father also had ease, right? He didn't have to make the breakfast be perfect. So when we find more freedom, it affects those people around us. And this is part of why we practice. Not just so that we feel better, but to make the world a better place. The world ends up becoming a better place, whether we want it to or not, by the more freedom that we have.

So how does this samadhi tie in with this freedom, this greater freedom? Maybe this is one thing that I can say, and I pointed to this also last week, that as the mind and the body start to settle—less distractedness, less restlessness, less agitation, but still with some real brightness and clarity. So it's not a dullness, it's not like we've kind of fallen into a stupor or some cotton ball where we don't feel anything. No, samadhi has a real quality of, yeah, I use this word "brightness." There is a real clear seeing. As the mind settles, as the body settles, there's this increased clear seeing.

And we can see a number of things that, just like that story I told with Gil and his son, kind of shift our relationship. Once we see that, then our relationship to it changes. We aren't holding on to it in the same way. It just feels natural to stop, just let go. So this letting go happens, and it turns out letting go leads to more freedom, absolutely every time. But the letting go has to come from a place... well, I can't make blanket statements like this because of course an exception showed up in my mind. But for the most part, the direction to go is towards letting go. Because we know that clinging brings suffering. Grabbing on, snatching, this kind of holding on really quickly, that does not bring more ease.

Okay, so what are some of these things that we see that allows the letting go to happen, which allows the freedom to happen? I mentioned this a little bit last week, and I'll just say this briefly again. As the settling starts to happen, we start to notice how our experiences are not always the same. We might have this feeling, "I'm a happy person," and we might not be noticing the times when we're not happy. Or, "I'm a sad person," and not really noticing the times when actually we feel perfectly fine, when we're in the shower, cooking breakfast, or taking the dog for a walk. There are moments during the day that are maybe neutral; we don't feel sad. 

As the mind and the body start to settle, we start to see, not only in our daily life but really deeply in meditation practice, how things are changing. Ideas we had about ourselves are not so solid. Things aren't so constant and stable and like square black boxes, like, "Okay, this is good and this is bad," or, "I'm this way, I'm not that way." We start to see, oh wait, some of these things actually aren't as solid and stable, and many of them are flickering really fast, or maybe slow. These ideas of solidity and continuity that we have about so many things—in some ways about everything—we realize they're not solid. They're not continuous in the way that we thought. And when there's this deep seeing, we realize it just doesn't make sense to be really grasping on to something that's really changing and isn't solid like we thought it was. It turns out that when we're really grasping, we're actually grasping to a concept. Those are the only things that are really solid: concepts. But other things turn out not to be as solid as we think. I'm not going to get into all the physics and the metaphysics maybe about that, but just this recognition that things are not the way that we imagine that they are or that we're experiencing them as. As our relationship shifts, then the clinging shifts. We don't have to stop the clinging, it just naturally happens that way.

One way maybe a little bit more specific, if we're doing meditation practice, and as the mind starts to quiet down—often this doesn't happen until somebody's on retreat and they have these extended times of meditation, maybe a few days. Maybe it's different for different people, maybe it's not on a first retreat, but for some people it is. We're so different. But the whole experience of having a body starts to shift too. This perception of the body changes. The edges don't seem quite so definite. It doesn't quite feel as heavy. In fact, maybe there's times when we don't even feel like there's a body at all. Or maybe it's just filled with this lightness. Lightness in terms of lack of heaviness, but also lightness in terms of lack of darkness. 

Then we might say, "Whoa, what's happening with the body?" And then we might just check, like we could open our eyes, "Oh yeah, okay, it's actually here the same way, but it feels different." And we just might feel into that. And then we could just ask, "Well, it definitely feels different, but I know I don't always feel this way." And we can look and say, "But my body is still here and it feels different, so which is the real body? Like, which is the real way it is?" "Well, it feels real when I'm meditating, it feels a certain way. When I'm not meditating, when I don't have some samadhi, it feels another way." And so this is also one of the things that we see with samadhi, is our perceptions can change. Something that seems one way can seem another way in another setting. And we just start to see this in more and more things.

What I'm saying is not anything new. Everybody knows this in some kind of way, but maybe we haven't really thought about it. We know that when we wake up on the wrong side of the bed, so to speak, and we're just grumpy, then everything that day just feels irritating and bothersome. We aren't our best selves and are impatient with people or whatever it might be, just because we're grumpy. And then maybe you get an email and it makes you mad. But if you woke up that morning feeling refreshed, you had your waffles exactly like you liked them, and the day was good, then you know that same email is, "Okay, yeah, maybe that other person was in a bad mood. No problem, I'll just respond to this." We don't have the same reaction. So which is real? Is it the way that it's perceived when you're grumpy, or is it the way that it's perceived when you're in a good mood?

Samadhi starts to help us see, oh, maybe there isn't one way. Maybe perception changes depending on how the mind is. And we know this, but when the mind settles we start to see this more and more clearly. And then also there's some letting go. I'll just use this grumpy example: this email arrives and you feel grumpy, but you might also recognize, "I'm just in a bad mood today. It'll feel different." Like we have this expression, "Oh, just sleep on it, things will feel better in the morning." There's this recognition that it's not always just one way. But we start to see this in more and more things and a little more thorough and pervasive way. And this supports some letting go. I don't have to hold on to it because I know that it can be seen another way. So there's some letting go, and with that letting go there's some more freedom.

Maybe I'll say a little aside about this idea of the body. It turns out that the body is really important in samadhi practice. And certainly in the first stages of samadhi, we might think, "Oh, it's just the mind and you just have to focus the mind." But it turns out that actually it's integral to have this sense of the body. Right now I can point to a few reasons why that is, but one is samadhi doesn't arise if we are over-efforting. "I gotta get it, dang it, I'm supposed to get settled, and why is my mind so distracted?" And you know this kind of irritation or frustration with ourselves, and trying willpower, and trying to make that mind stick. But sometimes we don't even notice that we're doing this because it's a habit. It's how we show up in the world in so many different ways. And of course we do, because sometimes it's helpful to do that in our daily life. But we try to take what works in daily life and apply it to meditation. Some things work and some things don't, and this is one of those things that doesn't. We might not notice that we're doing this until we pay attention to the body and we notice that maybe the shoulders are up. For me, I notice I get tension in my hands and I'm making a little bit of a fist or something. Or maybe there's this way in which we're really leaning forward or the chin is really up as we're striving, trying to make something happen. So sometimes it's not until we're really aware of what's going on in the body that we know some of the subtle stuff that's happening in the mind. And as long as these things are happening, the samadhi won't arise. Samadhi arises with a letting go, it's a softening. There can be a certain amount of focus that you can force yourself to do, but it's not really sustainable and that's not the same as samadhi. So maybe that's one reason why the body is helpful.

But the second is I keep on talking about this well-being. And often this sense of well-being also shows up in the body. I'll talk a little bit more about this next week I think, but I'll just say there's often maybe literally a little energetic, effervescent glee, maybe I'll use that word, that just kind of shows up in the body. Like, "Oh yeah, this feels good." That's kind of a feeling. So I just want to kind of throw that in there, how the body is part of samadhi practice and how part of it supports us with samadhi.

Another reason how samadhi helps us with more freedom is when the mind is settled, it's more malleable. It's not so brittle. And what I mean by that is there might be this recognition of, "Okay, when I meditate I do this. For example, I have the breath as the anchor, and when the mind wanders I come back to the breath, and then when the mind wanders I come back to the breath." Perfectly fine to do this practice, and it makes absolutely no difference how many times you have to come back to the breath, honestly. But we might not notice how the way that we're coming back has a little bit of irritation with ourselves, disappointment in ourselves, frustration. It might be really slight, but this little bit of ill will or a little bit of, like I said earlier, "Dang it, why is my mind not doing this?" And so what might be helpful is to open up to some warm-heartedness. Maybe do a little bit of loving-kindness practice. You can also open up by doing mindfulness of sounds. Samadhi helps the mind to be malleable in terms of it can be open to different ways of practicing, to be sensitive to what's helpful here, what's helpful to support this sense of unification, this sense of settledness, the sense of well-being, the sense of being connected or embodied. It's not stuck in one groove that can only go in this one gear or can only go this one way, but it can be flexible and try new things. 

This malleability also goes with this shift of perspective or shift of perception I was talking about earlier. We might see things differently, and if the mind is malleable we can play with that a little bit. "Oh, I notice that I'm a little bit angry about that thing that that person said earlier today." Then we might have this, "Well, can I soften around that?" And there might be this sense of malleability that, "Oh yeah, I can shift my ideas about that." And that brings more freedom. So that's another way that samadhi helps us with some more freedom.

But also as the mind starts to settle, as we open to a little bit more settled level, we remember what was less settled. We realize, "Oh yeah, there is a little subtle dukkha[^2] in the less settled state." There was a little bit of agitation, a little bit of suffering, that this level definitely has less dukkha. But I didn't feel like I had any dukkha before. But now that I'm a little bit more quiet I can see the subtle dukkha of this subtle unsettledness, dissatisfaction, a little bit of tightness, wishing things were different or something like this. So as the mind settles, it helps us to see more and more subtle levels of dukkha. And where there's dukkha, there's clinging. We can almost say they're synonyms. And so when we start to see that, then we might have a little bit of curiosity, "What is that dukkha about?" And maybe we can shift our relationship to it a little bit, or let go, soften whatever it is that's supporting that dukkha.

Here's one other thing that we can see with samadhi practice and as we gain samadhi, is it starts to become abundantly clear how little we get to control what the mind is doing. We all would prefer to have this collected state of well-being, like why not? But we can't make it happen. We can't just say, "Okay mind, do this." It doesn't work. And we will try. [Laughter] We will try and try and try. Of course we will. But what we start to see is that actually we don't control what we think we can control. Instead, we can help create the conditions in which it is more likely that it will happen. We don't get to make things happen.

Once you see this very clearly with samadhi... often, if not every time in the beginning when samadhi arises for people, it's a surprise. Because if you're really gunning, trying to make it happen, it won't happen. So usually when it arises it's a surprise because you weren't looking for it, and yet here it is, it arose. You start to see, "Oh, so many of these things arise when I'm not trying to make them arise." But I'm settling, I'm relaxing, opening, softening, being with what is in this gentle way with a real commitment to practice, with a loyalty to the object, but with also softness and openness. Then we start to see that things can arise, and we also see that things end. We don't get to control when they end even if they do arise. This recognition that things are not controllable... we start to see how many things in our lives are not controllable. A part of us knows this, but we start to see it in a deeper way. And it becomes glaringly obvious if we're trying to quiet the mind.

So these are some of the things. There are a few more things, but maybe I'll save those for another time. But the way in which this kind of samadhi can be a support for greater freedom. It's perfectly natural to think, "Okay Diana, if I've convinced you or anything, it's like, okay, it sounds like a good idea, and I'd like to try it, but how do I do it? How do I make this happen?" As I said, it's about having a steadiness to practice that has an orientation to well-being—which isn't the same thing as pleasure, they're definitely related, but isn't exactly the same thing—but with some softness and openness. And this takes some practice. How can we be sincere and persevere and consistent and have ease? How can we not pounce on something and think, "Okay, I'm gonna hold on, I'm gonna be with this." But how instead can we just with some ease just come back and come back to the object?

Maybe I'll end with this poem that points to this. This poem is by Matty Weingast[^3], who's a poet who was inspired by some of the poems that were written by women thousands of years ago. It's quite something. Buddhist women thousands of years ago. This is the oldest literature by women that has survived to the modern time. And Matty Weingast, he's inspired by these women. So this isn't exactly what the women said. I looked at the Pali, what he's referring to, it's not exactly the same, but the mood is the same. Okay, so here's this poem. This is a nun speaking.

> When everyone else was meditating,
> I'd be outside circling the hall.
> 
> Finally I went to confess.
> "I'm hopeless," I said.
> 
> The elder nun smiled.
> "Keep going," she said.
> "Nothing stays in orbit forever.
> If this circling is all you have,
> why not make this circling your home?"
> 
> I did as she told me and went on circling the hall.
> 
> If you find yourself partly in and partly out,
> if you find yourself drawn to this path and also drawing away,
> I can assure you, you're in good company.
> Just keep going.
> Sometimes the most direct path isn't a straight line.

"Sometimes the most direct path isn't a straight line." I appreciate this so much. Like, okay, if you're restless and just all you're doing is circling the hall, walking, walking, walking, or whatever it is, okay, that's what it is. This practice isn't asking us to be somebody we're not. It's not asking us to be completely different. We start where we are, we work with what we have, and we don't have to be different. We just work with what's available. Of course we do. Like, how could it be otherwise? So I just love this poem. I think it's an encouragement that even if you just find yourself circling, just keep going. And this elder nun who is Paṭācārā[^4]—we sometimes have a statue of Paṭācārā that sits here. So Paṭācārā was just encouraging, "Okay, just make it your home."

So samadhi, in a number of different ways, is a support for our practice and a support towards greater freedom. It's part of the way in which it's one of these factors of awakening.

So if you'd like, we can take some questions now. And if there aren't any questions, that's okay too. Sveta, I don't know if you can see if there are questions on YouTube. 

## Q&A

**Sveta:** There's actually one question. Okay, Jesse is asking, how is samadhi related to the four jhanas[^5]?

**Diana:** Yeah, so samadhi... I'd say the four jhanas is a subset of samadhi. And I'll talk a little bit about that, I think, next week. For those people who don't know, jhana is an absorptive state. It's a particular meditative experience or state. And so samadhi has a broader definition, but jhanas are definitely a part of samadhi.

Anybody else have a question? Yeah, maybe we'll use the microphone.

**Questioner 1:** So I heard in an earlier talk that you can think of Buddhism as having two wings: cultivation and letting go. And sometimes I notice when playing with letting go and just letting things arise as it is, there's this space and just, you know, things are how they are. And like, oh, you can add in things like equanimity or whatever. And I'm just curious, as you're adding things in, these qualities, then it's harder to let go. It's hard to do both at the same time. I'm curious your thoughts on the balance between that.

**Diana:** So the balance between cultivation and letting go, yeah. I would say that we are cultivating qualities to support letting go. And I would say that letting go is part of the way that we cultivate qualities. So the way that you heard it, there are kind of these two movements of the mind, maybe: cultivation and letting go. They definitely go together, and in some ways they're the two sides of the same coin. 

I definitely would say that this practice sometimes, the way that we teach it, can feel like, "Okay, I have to acquire or attain something. Samadhi. I have to get this and this tranquility thing or this mindfulness thing." So we sometimes feel like we have to acquire. But this practice is really about letting go, kind of shedding. But in order to really allow some of the deeper letting go, it's helpful if we have some other qualities. If we have some steadiness, if we have some well-being, if we have some understanding of what is underlying the difficulties in our lives, if we have some understanding of what are the things that we can let go, if we have some understanding of what is letting go, and stuff like that. Is that helpful?

**Questioner 1:** Yes, very. Thank you. [Applause]

**Questioner 2:** I have a question. So I know that tranquility... I've heard many times tranquility is supported by tranquility, right? Tranquility is supported by tranquility. So if there's tranquility there can be more. What do you think about samadhi? Do samadhi experiences kind of train our mind to maybe experience it more?

**Diana:** Absolutely, yeah, they really do. If you spend a lot of time in samadhi, in some of the deeper stages, it really becomes some of these stages that are really pleasurable and just really satisfying in a way that our regular thinking is not. It gets so that you can just remember them, and you're having that experience just because you brought it to mind again. But it's not until you have those experiences, of course, until you can remember them. So yeah, it definitely does.

**Questioner 3:** This might be going back to the first question about the jhanas, but is there a relationship between samadhi and stream entry? Like when you enter that phase of awakening. Because I've heard of stream entry being a part of awakening as well and there's samadhi too, so I get a little confused by the terminology sometimes.

**Diana:** Yeah. So stream entry is the first level of awakening, and it's kind of like you enter the stream of the dharma. It's kind of a clunky nomenclature. And so a question often arises, do you have to have jhanas in order to get stream entry? This is a common question. And I would say you have to have samadhi for stream entry. You have it, maybe not all the way full into a jhana, but you have to have a samadhi definitely, some settledness. Stream entry is just the first stage of awakening. If you want to go to later stages, I would say probably some jhana is required for that. Is that helpful? Is that kind of answering your question?

**Questioner 4:** Hi Diana, I'll be quick. I just wanted to say thank you. Last week I was a bit upset about my meditation practice, and you had brought up the measuring thing and that that's what I was doing. And for this sitting I was just kind of letting things be as they are, and I wasn't waiting for the bell. And when it came I'm like, "Oh, there it is." And just that less of the resisting, you know, and just kind of letting it be. Not that I experienced a state of samadhi, but I kind of understood like, "Okay, if I'm gonna circle or I'm gonna do it, and I'm just gonna let it be as it is and see where it takes me." 

**Diana:** Fantastic. Thank you. Yeah, I'm happy to hear this. Thank you.

Maybe one more or one last question? Did you...? Nope, okay. Okay, so thank you all, thank you all for your questions and your attention. It's a delight to practice together, I really appreciate it. And may you have some sense of well-being, some sense of collectedness, and maybe some embodiment to you in your days and your meditation. Thank you. And if you'd like to come up here and talk to me, you're welcome to do that too. Thanks.

---
[^1]: **Gil Fronsdal:** The founding and principal teacher at the Insight Meditation Center (IMC).
[^2]: **Dukkha:** A Pali word often translated as "suffering," "stress," or "unsatisfactoriness."
[^3]: **Matty Weingast:** Author of *The First Free Women: Poems of the Early Buddhist Nuns*, a contemporary adaptation of the Therigatha.
[^4]: **Paṭācārā:** A notable figure in early Buddhism, recognized as a leading nun and teacher, often associated with helping others overcome intense grief.
[^5]: **Jhāna:** Deep states of meditative absorption or concentration.