--- ai_generation_date: '2026-10-05' ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview audiodharma: talks: - date: '2020-07-17' mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/11697/20200717-Gil_Fronsdal-IMC-guided_meditation_stability.mp3 speakers: - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: 'Guided Meditation: Stability' url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11697 video_unavailable: false location_city: Redwood City, CA video_unavailable: false youtube: id: Nm8hizb2inM imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04' title: 'Guided Meditation: Stability' upload_date: null uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm8hizb2inM --- # Guided Meditation: Stability - [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._ ## [Guided Meditation: Stability](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11697) So good morning and welcome to our morning sitting. I want to begin with an analogy. If you want to hold a big telescope in your hands to look at the moon, you probably can't hold it steady enough to be able to keep it on the moon. You might pass it by as it swings. But if you put it on a tripod, then it'll be steady enough that you can focus and study the moon with your telescope. If you're holding that telescope in your arms or your hands trying to look at the moon, and you're also standing on a boat in rocky waters, it'd be even harder to keep it focused on the moon. So in the same way, if our mind is agitated and unsettled, it's hard to really focus on anything, to really have a clear perception, awareness, or steadiness of attention. And if that mind is on an agitated, restless body, then it's even harder for our ability to focus to help us to really see what's here and find our way to freedom. So an important part of meditation practice is, in fact, to bring a steadiness or a stability to the body and to the mind, to support our capacity to see clearly and deeply. But one of the ways of doing this is not so much to hold or make yourself steady or stable, but if possible, to begin by looking for where you're already stable, where there's already some degree of steadiness in your body and mind. So as we're sitting here beginning this meditation, you might begin with your body and see if you can find some place in your body where there's a degree of stability, a degree of steadiness—or if you prefer, maybe the word stillness is comparable. It might be where your body touches your chair, or your cushion, or the floor. Where your body touches the surface or object which supports you from the pull of gravity, and the weight of your body sits on this chair, cushion, bed, or floor. Maybe you can feel some solidness there, some stability. Some people appreciate the concept of being grounded or rooted. To be rooted or grounded in a particular place, and to feel that groundedness, that stability of the body, the weight of the body. Maybe there's some place as you go up from where your body is resting on a cushion or a chair where you can feel somehow the weight and substance of your body. And maybe that weight lends itself to a little bit of stability, steadiness, or groundedness within the body. Some people find stability in the area around the pelvis, the waist, or the lower belly, maybe by relaxing and softening the belly and letting the weight of the body settle into the pelvic cavity. There can be a lot of very subtle movements in the body, and that's fine. At the same time, deep inside of your body, is there any place of stillness? Any place of steadiness, no matter how small? And then as you exhale, relax into any place of stability and steadiness, as if you're surrendering yourself to this stability, allowing yourself to be held by the steadiness, the groundedness. Perhaps your inhales begin at a place where things are still, steady, and grounded within your torso, in your body. And as you exhale, you return to that place. As you exhale, relax the mind, soften in the mind. Is there any stability, no matter how small, to be felt in the mind, seen in the mind? And perhaps as you exhale, you can allow your mind to settle into a place of stillness, stability, a place where the mind is unagitated. An imperturbable mind. It's a big word and concept, but is there any little corner, center, or place in the mind where you have some reference point or feeling for what an unagitated mind is like? An imperturbable mind? As you exhale, surrender, let go into that possibility. A steadiness, a stillness of mind. By this stillness of mind, your thinking gets quieter, your thinking becomes calmer. Thinking becomes less important and begins to recede to the background. What comes to the foreground is this steadiness, stability of resting with your breathing. A stability that supports you to be steady with breathing in and breathing out. A steady awareness that's filled with the experience of the body breathing. Recognizing the stability that's here already, however small, and trusting it. Trusting it and letting that be the vantage point from which you're aware and mindful. A steady and stable mindfulness, a steady and stable awareness. Awareness of the body breathing. ## Reflections As we come to the end of this sitting, one of the values of discovering stability within oneself is that it might be possible to be still and gaze upon everything kindly. Perhaps one of the purposes of Buddhist practice could be summarized in the idea of being still, peaceful, and looking upon the world kindly with care and compassion. As we come to the end here, in whatever way that's easy for you, bring to mind this difficult world we live in. See if you can let yourself be still, stable, and not so agitated by it all. For a few moments here, be still and gaze upon it kindly, caringly. Perhaps you can evoke into the middle of your meditation practice the wish that this practice that we do is not only for our own benefit, but may it also be for the welfare and happiness of all beings. May this practice that we do bring forth from within us our care, our love, and our caretaking and generosity for the sufferings and challenges this world has. May our practice be for the welfare and happiness of all beings everywhere. May all beings be happy. May all beings be free. May all beings discover the possibility of peace in their hearts.