--- ai_generation_date: '2026-09-11' ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview audiodharma: talks: - date: '2020-09-10' mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/12078/20200910-Gil_Fronsdal-IMC-mindfulness_of_emotions_4_of_5_quality_of_the_inner_life.mp3 speakers: - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: Mindfulness of Emotions (4 of 5) Quality of the Inner Life. url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/12078 video_unavailable: false location_city: Redwood City, CA video_unavailable: false youtube: id: d6aBb_dF7KE imprecise_upload_date: '2021-05-04' title: 'Dharmette: Mindfulness of Emotions (4 of 5) Quality of the Inner Life.' upload_date: null uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6aBb_dF7KE --- # Mindfulness of Emotions (4 of 5) Quality of the Inner Life. - [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._ ## [Mindfulness of Emotions (4 of 5) Quality of the Inner Life.](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/12078) So this is the fourth talk on mindfulness of emotions, and I'm going through what the Buddha called the Four Foundations of Mindfulness to offer four different perspectives on what in English we call emotions. In a sense, we're also kind of deconstructing them a little bit to look at the component parts of what builds up to what we think of as an emotion. The value of that is that when we see an emotion as a solid, unitary thing—as an entity almost in itself—it's much more complicated to relate to it sometimes than it is to actually see and be sensitive to the different pieces that come together to add up to the emotion we have. And when we look at these Four Foundations of Mindfulness of the Buddha, there's actually a very important distinction that's made. Because it's a literary set of instructions, it has a kind of literary structure. And that structure has a pivot, and that pivot has to do with the distinction I talked about yesterday between "feelings of the flesh" (with the language of the Buddha) and "feelings not of the flesh." Some translators will translate it as worldly feelings and spiritual feelings. I kind of like to think of it as surface feelings and deep feelings. So for example, if you're sitting having a wonderful meal in a friend's kitchen, and it's a very cozy, nice, warm, friendly, peaceful, and loving place. If you're sitting there and really enjoying and savoring the flavor of the food with your tongue, that's maybe nice, but that would be "of the flesh." But to feel so peaceful and content, and feel like you can relax and really settle into who you are, and that deeper feeling of deep settling that comes with being in such a safe, friendly place—that would be considered "not of the flesh." That's something deeper inside. If someone says mean words to you and you get angry, that might be considered a little bit more "of the flesh." It's more on the surface of our life. It might touch a place where we feel insecure about ourselves, and when someone's angry with us or says mean words to us, we react because it's touched a sensitive place inside where we feel insecure. So its kind of surface response might be anger. But deeper inside, there might be different layers that are going on. We might feel hurt, we might feel phenomenally uncomfortable. And when we react from our discomfort, or we react because we're trying to protect ourselves from our hurt, to turn in and go deeper in and feel the hurt rather than staying with the anger begins coming closer to what the Buddha might call "not of the flesh"—that which is the inner, the deeper. The place where we feel hurt might itself represent a symptom of something even deeper: a place where we feel a desire for safety, and that might come out itself as a desire for self-care, which is a beautiful thing to have. And so to begin not staying on the surface of things, but to be able to start being mindful enough and sensitive enough to find out what's going on inside more deeply, is part of the art of mindfulness. This pivot of the Buddhist instructions moves in the direction of becoming aware of what's deeper inside. This plays itself out in the Third Foundation[^1] in a variety of different ways. The instructions there are divided into two categories. One I like to think of as being the motivations, the desires that come with some emotions. Emotions many times are part and parcel of the motivational movement of people, what we want and what we don't want. And so emotions can be deeply connected to our desire for things, and when our desires are frustrated we get angry, for example. And so to start tuning into the desires that are there. Some desires are wonderful, healthy, and appropriate, and some desires are causes of suffering. So the Buddha then starts making a distinction between those kinds of desires that are wholesome and not wholesome, helpful and not helpful. He says that—to interpret him for this purpose of emotions—we want to notice: is there craving? Is there unhealthy desire for something? Or is there desire against something, to want something to go away, which the Buddha calls _dosa_[^2], or hate? For desire he calls it _raga_[^3], which I like to think of as craving. It is very strong, it borders on lust, somewhere between lust and passion, so I think of craving. Or is there a lot of delusion and confusion and perplexity and uncertainty around the emotions we have? The other side of that divide between what's on the surface and deep inside are those motivations, those desires which come from some deeper place of health at the inside of us. So the Buddha just calls them non-craving, non-hate, and non-delusion. But it's well understood in these ancient texts that the "non" refers to the opposite. The advantage of saying non-craving is that rather than saying, for example, generosity, it allows for a bigger span of positive emotions than just naming one. And so in the language of the Buddha, this non-craving implies all the opposites. Generosity is a kind of desire too. And goodwill is a kind of a desire. And wisdom is not quite a desire, but it's the opposite of delusion, which is kind of understanding what we can do and how we can benefit the world. So it's possible to notice in the emotions we have: is there a desire? What kind of desire is there? Are there wanting desires or aversive desires? Are those desires wholesome and useful and nourishing, or are they actually not so nourishing, not really deeply connected to what's deep inside? For example, sexual craving, as biologically important, powerful, and physiological as it is, all too often will lead to a kind of a surface movement, even to a point of some kind of alienation from ourselves, and even from other people at times. But if there is generosity or love or goodwill that's also part of sexual expression, then there's a whole different way in which that plays itself out than just a surface pleasure, versus some deeper kind of wellspring of something going on. So to ask ourselves, what's the nature of the desire that is in play in the emotions I have? Or what's the nature of the aversions that we have? What is going on here? To make that distinction is to be able to then differentiate between what I'm calling surface and what starts to become deeper and deeper, welling up from the deep health of our inner life. It also begins tuning into the quality of what's going on inside of us. The quality of craving or the quality of hate that goes on inside is not comfortable. The quality of generosity, the inner characteristic of love, feels so much better inside. And so to be able to distinguish between these and be sensitive to that requires us to stop being externally focused only, wanting things out there and having things out there. It requires us to stop being at the surface level of judgments, interpretations, commentary, and stories about what's happening, and instead dropping down deeper to really feeling what's going on here. How do I really feel? So in this Third Foundation of Mindfulness, the Buddha instructs people to notice: is there craving or is there non-craving? Is there hostility or is there non-hostility? Is there delusion or is there non-delusion? He goes further and notes another kind of dichotomy between things like: is the mind contracted or is the mind expansive? Is the mind settled or is the mind unsettled? Is the mind concentrated or is it not concentrated? Is the mind liberated or is it not liberated? So it's possible to feel the quality of the mind or the awareness generally. If we're really preoccupied with unhealthy desires like real craving or real hate, and you really start getting sensitive to this inner life, we'll start noticing the mind gets narrow, tight, and constricted. But if we're really kind of resting in, or allowing in a generous way generosity and love and wisdom, there's a way in which that is more conducive to an expansive mind, an open mind. As we meditate and we're less preoccupied, the mind becomes less narrow and small, and starts feeling expansive. Some people call it "big mind." It just feels like the mind has no boundaries and feels very spacious and very open. Or when the mind is caught up in greed, hate, and delusion, it's often unsettled. As we practice, we start noticing a deeper settling, relaxing into ourselves. To start feeling that difference between unsettled and settled is an important part of becoming a caretaker for the inner quality of our inner life. And then there is this thing about being liberated—this beautiful feeling of being free, of not being caught in the vise of things and the grip of things. Not being caught in preoccupation, not clinging, not being glued to, not having this compulsivity or drivenness in the mind that takes over and doesn't really allow us much choice or freedom. And to feel what that's like in the mind, and then to feel what it's like for the mind to be free, the absence of those things. The mind gets to find itself and have choice and freedom in what it does, and have this spaciousness, openness to possibility, and ease to it. To be able to understand a liberated mind and an unliberated mind speaks to this kind of surface and what I'm calling deeper inside, that an unliberated mind is usually caught up in the surface of the mind in a sense. The liberated mind is not only deep, but it's expansive. And this is where what I said earlier in the meditation comes in: that Buddhist meditation practice is to discover and awaken our inner life, and then shine that out into the world. Saying "inner life" might sound like we're disappearing from the world, going into a little kernel inside and tuning everything else out. But it's more like we're turning ourselves inside out. We're going in deeply and becoming free, and that turns ourselves inside out. We are now sensitive and in the world with that inner life. It's no longer just inner then; inner and outer, it's whole. So to start tuning into what feels like it's on the surface and feels uncomfortable, and what's deeper inside or freer or more expansive, is part of what we can do with emotions. And one of the things that's interesting about that is it's a kind of stepping back from whatever emotions we're having, finding some degree of freedom in order to recognize what's there. And when we recognize what's there, we can start making a distinction between what is "of the flesh" and "not of the flesh," what's on the surface and what's really deep inside, deeper and deeper. And those are part of the distinctions we can make to really start deconstructing what an emotion is. It is not disrespecting emotions, but to really respect them and see clearly what's actually happening in this domain of our life. So thank you. ## Announcements And so we have one more talk on these emotions, the last foundation that the Buddha gave, and the one that's most connected to liberation. Before we end, I just want to mention that tomorrow after we finish at this time, those of you who would like, we can switch over to Zoom and have a community meeting for our YouTube community. That Zoom link will be listed in different places on "What's New" at IMC's website, the calendar at IMC, and also a couple of times here in the chat. I look forward to those of you who want to come tomorrow and just hang out a little bit and have a meeting together. So thank you. --- [^1]: **Third Foundation of Mindfulness:** Refers to Mindfulness of Mind (_Cittānupassanā_), which involves observing the state of the mind and its various qualities, such as whether it is contracted or expansive, with or without craving. [^2]: **_Dosa_:** A Pali word commonly translated as aversion, hate, or anger. [^3]: **_Raga_:** A Pali word meaning craving, passion, or attachment.