--- ai_generation_date: '2026-05-03' ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview audiodharma: talks: - date: '2023-11-15' mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/19214/20231115-Diana_Clark-IMC-faculties_of_fearlessness_saddha_3_of_5_guided_meditation.mp3 speakers: - speaker_name: Diana Clark speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/240 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: 'Faculties for Fearlessness: Saddha (3 of 5) Guided Meditation' url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/19214 video_unavailable: true - date: '2023-11-15' mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/19215/20231115-Diana_Clark-IMC-faculties_of_fearlessness_saddha_3_of_5.mp3 speakers: - speaker_name: Diana Clark speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/240 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: 'Faculties for Fearlessness: Saddha (3 of 5)' url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/19215 video_unavailable: true location_city: Redwood City, CA video_unavailable: true youtube: id: ct-hNlv1SIE imprecise_upload_date: null title: Faculties for Fearlessness (3 of 5) with Diana Clark upload_date: '2023-11-15' uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ct-hNlv1SIE --- # Faculties for Fearlessness: Saddha (3 of 5) Guided Meditation; Faculties for Fearlessness: Saddha (3 of 5) - [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.* ## [Faculties for Fearlessness: Saddha (3 of 5) Guided Meditation](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/19214) Welcome, welcome everybody. It's lovely to be here, very lovely to be here. We are going to be continuing on our exploration of these faculties for fearlessness, vectors of faculties for fearlessness, for freedom. I don't know, I'm just getting a kick out of this alliteration. We'll start with just a simple guided meditation. So, settling in. Just bringing our attention and our body to meditation, whatever posture feels comfortable and is available to you right now. And is there a way that the posture could be just a little bit more comfortable? For me, it's bringing a little bit more uprightness to the spine so that the limbs can just hang from the spine, letting the shoulders just relax, and tucking the chin backwards just this tiny, tiny bit. It allows the neck to be a little bit more aligned with the spine. For you, some other tiny adjustments might be needed. And then, let's open the senses. Bring awareness to the senses. If your eyes are closed, just notice if there's any shadows or patterns behind the eyelids. Nothing in particular needs to be happening, we're just noticing. And the ears, noticing the sounds. The sound of my voice, other sounds you might hear. Just allowing them to be received. We don't have to go out and get the sounds, just opening to them. They're welcome too. There might be scents or tastes. Sometimes it's more difficult when we're sitting in meditation, but it might be coffee, toothpaste, tea. And then the sense of touch. Noticing where the body is contacting whatever it is contacting. Whichever surface, whether it's the cushion or chair, couch, bed. Feeling the pressure against the body. Feeling the contact. We're here, and this contact is the foundation of our posture. Feeling connected, grounded. And then noticing any obvious areas of tension in the body, resting awareness there. It might be that bringing awareness to the tension allows a little bit of softening, but it might not be. Also, can we be okay with that? Maybe tension around the eyes, or the jaw, neck, shoulders. Opening the chest just a tiny bit. The belly softening back. Legs. Again, feeling the contact. Feet. Arms. Hands. Maybe sensing a sense of aliveness or presence, tingling, vitality in the hands. Can we be okay, as best we can, with however the body is at this moment? And then resting the attention on the sensations of breathing. The movements the body does as it breathes. You might feel it primarily in the chest stretching and the release of the stretch, and the belly moving out and in. Or maybe the nose, feeling the cool air go in and the warmer air coming out. Just choosing one of those three areas and resting the attention there. And when the mind wanders, as it's apt to do, we don't have to make it be a problem. Just very simply, gently begin again with the sensations of breathing. And we do this movement back to the sensations of breathing with kindness, with warmth, with care. It doesn't matter how many times we have to return to the sensations of breathing. The practice is about returning, beginning again. Don't worry about how many times, just begin again. ## [Faculties for Fearlessness: Saddha (3 of 5)](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/19215) Morning, good day, good evening, wherever you are, whatever time it is. Welcome, welcome. So today I'd like to continue with this sense of the faculties for fearlessness. I just want to recognize that fear—I think we all know what fear is—but it shows up in our lives in so many different ways. Maybe in some ways in which we're not really connecting with fear. One of them is perfectionism. This always finding flaws that need to be fixed before we can share something or show something, always trying to fix everything. Or maybe there's a sense of like, "Well, I have to wait. I can't do something right now because there has to be a time when things are more comfortable." So maybe we're holding back something we want to do with our life, or say to somebody, or start that more healthy behavior. Or maybe there's a way in which fear shows up in which we're trying to avoid uncertainty. We're trying to have everything planned out beforehand, or understand it, and have it be known in some kind of way. This fear of the unknown, so we're trying to make sure there aren't any unknowns. But of course, we can't be certain about everything. These are just some of the ways in which fear shows up; it turns out to be such a big part of our lives. And then I'd like to offer these five faculties. Many of you will know this; this is a very conventional list that we talk about in early Buddhism. However, I'm going to talk about them a little bit differently. I'm not going to do it in the usual order, and I'm going to highlight particular aspects of each faculty that I think can be a real support for us to bring to fear. Just as a brief summary: I started with Sati[^1], and I highlighted this quality of noticing for Sati. That is, we first notice maybe the environment—the desk, the chair, the computer—and this way we get oriented. Then notice our present moment bodily experience, the feeling of contact with whatever surface we're in contact with, maybe the breath. As I lead us in these guided meditations, I'm often doing this movement. But then also, Sati to notice the sense of, "No, I don't want this fear," or "No, I don't want to do this," and maybe the fear is making us not want to do it. The sense of resistance, noticing that too. Often they're conflated and confused and not even recognized, but is there a way that we can tease them apart and know there's fear and resistance to fear? And then to go even more internal, or inside, to notice what is it that's feeling threatened? Do we have a self-concept, a sense of what we think of what it means to be a good person, or what it means to be a good practitioner, or a sense of how we think the world should be? Is that feeling threatened? To just notice that, notice what's feeling threatened. So Sati is noticing from the more external to the more internal. Some of you may know that Sati is conventionally translated as mindfulness. And then the second that I did yesterday was about Samadhi[^2], and that was about bringing the sense of collectedness, centeredness, this wholeheartedness, like a gathering of our attention. But in particular, when we're working with fear, to bring this gatheredness, this abiding in, to the resistance to the fear. Not the fear itself—often that's too overwhelming, it's too much, and we're like, "No, we don't want to do this." But the sense of "no," and we might have resistance to the resistance. That's okay, bring this collectedness, this gatheredness to the resistance to the resistance. Or maybe we have resistance to the resistance to the resistance, it's okay, whatever iteration that we have, to bring this collectedness, this gatheredness around this sense of "No, I don't want it," in whatever way that shows up. And it shows up in a countless myriad ways. And then today I'd like to introduce a third faculty, and that is Saddha[^3]. German teachers often pronounce it as "Sada." In Pali, it would be "Saddha," but in Dharma teacher Pali, it's "Sadda." And that is that, having practiced with Sati (mindfulness) and Samadhi (this gathering together), there can be this recognition that, "Oh, this noticing and this gathering together is helpful." The consequences of this turn out to be a little bit beneficial, and we gain confidence in the practice. We gain some confidence in the approach that we're taking. We gain confidence with this sense of having this presence, of showing up for the fear and the resistance to the fear. And this confidence, I'm going to say, is Saddha. This confidence gives us strength to engage in this practice, to meet the fear, to meet the resistance with the Sati and Samadhi, with the noticing and the collecting. So this confidence in the practice, that there are some benefits to it, noticing that there are some benefits, and having this willingness to engage with the practice. But we also need not only confidence in the practice but confidence in ourselves that we can do this. Sometimes maybe this is a big part of practice: to gain this confidence, which implies that we don't always have it. I know that certainly was true for me, certainly at the beginning of my practice. I just didn't think I could do it. It seemed like everybody else could do it, and they looked like they had it all together, and clearly they were enlightened or on the brink of enlightenment if they weren't already, because they were sitting so still, and here I was so wiggly with my mind going all over the place. So if we don't have confidence in ourselves, we can borrow it. Borrow it from others. And this is part of the power of practicing with others, practicing in Sangha[^4], just like we do here at 7 a.m. These people that are leaving comments, right, you're greeting one another, but you're also kind of giving us confidence that, "Okay, yeah, you're showing up again and again and again, we can do it." And by this warm-heartedness that we see in the comments, we can see that, "Oh, okay, the people that are doing this are kindhearted, well-wishing, caring. They have what we want the world to be like, they have what we want to be with ourselves." So if you feel like you don't have some confidence, can you borrow the confidence? Either from those here at the 7 a.m., maybe you have a meditation center where you practice, maybe you have a small group of friends that you practice with, whomever. Maybe you have teachers. Maybe you don't have personal relationships where you know people, but you just know of people. That's okay, borrow the confidence wherever you need to. Be inspired by other people coming back again and again. Be inspired by the confidence they have in themselves or in you. There's this way in which this confidence in the practice and the confidence that we can do this is contagious. So allow yourself to catch the confidence in some kind of way. Other people can believe in you and believe in the practice even when you're feeling like you don't quite have it, you're not sure. And here's part of the beauty about this idea of confidence: we only need just enough confidence. Just enough. Just enough to be present for the next breath. Just enough to show up for the next 7 a.m. Or just enough confidence to not click away. Just enough confidence to be curious about what's going to arise next, or curious about what's being pointed to by other people or the teacher. We do not need heroic confidence. We do not need confidence that's unshakable and that we have 100% of the time. We just need enough for the next moment. Saddha is confidence in the practice and in ourselves. But I'd also like to introduce a second aspect of Saddha, and that is trust. You could see how these are related, confidence and trust. But there's this progression of practice. As we learn to be present and be carefully attentive, and maybe relax into what's happening, we discover that there is more going on within us and that there's this—if we allow it—there's this movement towards healing, towards wholeness, towards goodness. We start to trust, "Oh yeah, if we can create the conditions in which this can unfold, there's this natural inner process towards wholeness and freedom." And it turns out we don't have to make everything happen. We don't have to insist or engineer, manufacture, create all the goodness, the healing, the freedom. A big part of practice is trusting. And this trust is part of what creates the condition for this wholeness and healing to happen. Trust that Dharma practice enables and allows and makes room for this natural process to happen. Maybe in the same way that when we have a cut or an injury, right, we have to take care of it. We have to clean the cut and put a Band-Aid on it, or take an antibiotic if it's infected, or do what the doctor suggests, physical therapy, whatever it is for whatever injury. So we definitely have to apply ourselves, but there's also a way in which, right, we don't actually do the healing. It's a natural process that's already happening; we just have to help make it happen. And so much about practice turns out to be this. At some point, what is needed from us is just to get out of the way. So I don't want to suggest that no effort is ever needed. There is certainly effort that is needed, but it's not always this really striving, straining effort. There's an effort to create the conditions in which we can allow, in which we can trust the depth of what is possible within us. The trust that this inner process is not only inside us, but it's inside others too. We don't have to fix them, we don't have to try to heal them—even though we want to, of course we do—but they have this inner process too, even though they may not know it. But is there a way that we can give space not only to ourselves but to others? Saddha as confidence and trust is a way that can help with the fear. So even though it sometimes is uncomfortable, it requires a certain amount of letting go of a sense of control. And part of the art of practice is knowing: when does there need to be some effort, some real showing up, even though it's uncomfortable? And when does there need to be some letting go, some trusting? And there's always a combination. Maybe there's a little bit more effort and a little bit more letting go and trusting at other times. And this is that part of practice that the more we practice, the more we start to recognize. But maybe even hearing this word Saddha, confidence and trust, helps us to be sensitive to when that's already unfolding in our own lives. So the third faculty, often translated as faith or confidence, is Saddha. Confidence, trust in your process. You don't have to make it all happen. Thank you, thank you. And wishing you all a wonderful rest of the day. --- [^1]: **Sati:** A Pali word commonly translated as "mindfulness." It signifies presence of mind, attentiveness to the present, and awareness. [^2]: **Samadhi:** A Pali word generally translated as "concentration," "collectedness," or "meditative absorption." It refers to the gathering and centering of the mind. [^3]: **Saddha:** A Pali word often translated as "faith," "confidence," or "trust." In a Buddhist context, it is a confidence born of conviction and understanding, rather than blind faith. [^4]: **Sangha:** A Pali word meaning "community" or "assembly." In Buddhism, it often refers to the monastic community of monks and nuns, or more broadly, the community of all practitioners.