--- ai_generation_date: '2026-09-24' ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview audiodharma: talks: - date: '2020-05-25' mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/11447/20200525-Gil_Fronsdal-IMC-guided_meditation_mind_like_water.mp3 speakers: - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: 'Guided Meditation: Mind Like Water' url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11447 video_unavailable: false location_city: Redwood City, CA video_unavailable: false youtube: id: VtTbmw3hDoY imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04' title: 'Guided Meditation: Mind Like Water' upload_date: null uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTbmw3hDoY --- # Guided Meditation: Mind Like Water - [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: Mind Like Water](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/11447) ## Introduction Greetings from sunny Redwood City. To begin this meditation, I'd like to introduce an ancient idea: one of the primary metaphors used for the mind is water. Lots of different images of water come into play in trying to describe the mind in different settings and different ways. One of them has to do with the Five Hindrances[^1]. When we're caught up in the passions of desire, it's like putting red dye in the water, so the ancient texts say. When there is a lot of ill will and anger, it's like the water is boiling; the mind is boiling. You can't really see into the mind clearly if it's colored or if it's boiling. Sloth and torpor are like algae covering the water, so you can't see into it. Restlessness and regret are like a wind churning up the top of the water. Again, you can't see into it. And doubt is like the water filled with mud. So again, you can't see into it, and you can't make your way through it. But when the mind is clear, as an ancient text says: _"By water, we should understand the mind. By mud, the mental hindrances. And by magic stone, confidence. As soon as confidence arises, it makes the mental hindrances disappear. And the mind without hindrances is clear, pure, and unsullied."_ So, the mind is not a solid thing. The mind is a fluid, liquid phenomenon. If we can leave it alone, things settle, the mud settles in the pond, in the lake, and the mind becomes clear. This idea of leaving things alone in a radical, full way is really the direction in which practice goes sooner or later. Leaving everything alone and letting things settle, release, resolve, or dissolve themselves. ## Guided Practice So, to begin this meditation, prepare yourself so that we can begin leaving things alone and the mind can settle to become clear. Take a meditation posture that you believe will allow things to settle for you. Allow your body to release its holdings, constrictions, and resistances. Giving some care and attention—the beginning of mindfulness—can be how you attend to your posture. Perhaps there can be both a lifting, an upward energy, if you tuck your chin down a little bit and the back of your head up, finding some kind of upward direction. And then there's a settling downward. If you're sitting upright, letting yourself feel as if you're resting on your sit bones, your bottom, with your legs and your feet on your cushion, your chair, or your floor. Perhaps it's easier to leave things alone if you close your eyes. With your eyes closed, you give them a vacation. You don't need to use your eyes while you meditate. Meditation is a little bit more related to feeling and sensing than it is to using the eyes. To do the ritual of establishing yourself here and now, you might take a few long, slow, deep breaths. As you breathe in, expand the rib cage in all directions. As you breathe out, a settling, maybe even down to a very point within your torso, deep in your hara[^2], deep in your belly. Now, let the breath return to normal. With normal breathing, become aware of the movements in your back rib cage. The movements of breathing there are probably much more subtle. If you don't feel anything in the back rib cage, you might breathe a little bit deeper—just deep enough so you start feeling how the back rib cage moves, expands, and contracts, and how there's more space between the ribs as you inhale. Usually, there's much less sense of controlling the breath in the back rib cage. You can maybe get a sense of just allowing the back rib cage to move as it does in response to breathing. Then, move your relaxed, allowing attention to experience the breathing where you usually experience it. Experiment a little bit to see if you can notice a difference between allowing the breath to breathe itself versus controlling the breath and _doing_ the breathing. Bring your attention to your mind. See if you can just treat the mind as a lake of water that's filled with mud. All kinds of thoughts, ideas, impulses, and reactions are there in the mind. Leave it all alone. See if there can be a non-judgmental awareness, a non-reactive awareness. If anything, make lots of room, lots of breathing room for what's happening in your mind. So, the part of you that's in the mind—which is intentional—is not involved in the thinking and thoughts, but rather is involved in making space and awareness for your mind. Allowing things, leaving things alone. Not being bothered by anything. Treat all things[^3] as if they can feel whatever is happening in your mind, as if they can feel there's lots of room. Infinite space for it to settle, unwind, dissolve, let go. Letting the mind be open, fluid, and relaxed as possible. Make space in the mind, allowing whatever comes into awareness to simply be in the mind and awareness. Whether it's the breathing, the body, or whether it's sounds, thoughts, or feelings. Whatever occurs, be okay with it. Step away from it. Allow it. Make room for it. Do this so that you can leave things alone, regardless of whether you like it or don't like it. With confidence, leave it alone. Notice how you get involved in things. How you get involved in thoughts and feelings. How the mind gets pulled in. Keep opening awareness, opening it wide. And in that wide open awareness, a wide open mind, you're not involved in things. But things are allowed to be as they are. They're allowed to naturally settle, relax. They're allowed to be. The treasure is that openness of awareness. It's the knowing that knows the experience. Stay with the treasure, without getting pulled into the stories, ideas, and thoughts. Breath arises. Sensations in the body arise. Thoughts and feelings. Allow them to come and go. Very gently, if it supports you, very softly, you can say the word _open_. Just open awareness. Open to what is. Keep opening. The more we can allow things to be in an open, clear mind, the clearer we see what is, the less we're involved, and the better positioned we are to recognize what is there and to allow it to settle. ## Dedication As we come to the end of this sitting, I'd like to recommend that you dedicate the sitting, and the benefits from the sitting, for your care and goodwill toward others. One way that this meditation can spread well-being into the world is that we can also be open and allow ourselves to open to other people. We can allow others to be how they are. There is an art to allowing people to be how they are, so they can relax. So they don't have to try so hard. So they feel respected, held, and cared for as they are. Whatever degree of experience we have with meditating and allowing ourselves to be, may it also be used for knowing how to stay present and open, and allowing people to be how they are—provided they're not harming us. May all beings experience their own goodness. May all beings everywhere experience their own capacity for peace and contentment. May all beings allow the healing forces within them to bring reconciliation, healing, and generosity of spirit in all directions. May it be that our meditation practice is for the welfare and happiness of all beings everywhere. --- [^1]: **Five Hindrances:** In Buddhist teachings, these are five unwholesome mental states that impede meditation and insight: sensory desire, ill will, sloth and torpor, restlessness and worry, and doubt. [^2]: **Hara:** A Japanese term often used in martial arts and meditation referring to the physical center of gravity in the lower abdomen, considered the center of vital energy. [^3]: Original transcript said "Put all things", corrected to "Treat all things" based on context.