--- ai_generation_date: '2026-10-31' ai_model: gemini-3.1-pro-preview ai_prompt_hash: 2d625dd6 audiodharma: talks: - date: '2026-10-30' is_meditation: true mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/26534/20261030-gil_fronsdal-imc-guided_meditation_calm_orientation.mp3 section_slug: guided-meditation-calm-orientation speakers: - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1 talk_start_time_seconds: 0 title: 'Guided Meditation: Calm Orientation' url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/26534 video_unavailable: false - date: '2026-10-30' is_meditation: false mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/26535/20261030-gil_fronsdal-imc-dharmette_gil_s_story_pt_2_5_of_5_the_place_of_practice.mp3 section_slug: dharmette-gils-story-pt-2-5-of-5-the-place-of-practice speakers: - speaker_name: Gil Fronsdal speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/1 talk_start_time_seconds: 1835 title: "Dharmette: Gil's Story Pt 2 (5 of 5) The Place of Practice" url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/26535 video_unavailable: false collapsed_sections: - guided-meditation-calm-orientation location_city: Redwood City, CA video_unavailable: false youtube: id: gHU57OKzMPI imprecise_upload_date: null title: "Guided Meditation: Calm Orientation; Gil's Story Pt 2 (5 of 5) The Place of Practice" upload_date: '2026-10-30' uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHU57OKzMPI --- # Guided Meditation: Calm Orientation; Dharmette: Gil's Story Pt 2 (5 of 5) The Place of Practice - [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: Calm Orientation](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/26534) Hello and welcome to this meditation. Today, this week, a lot of the meditation is focused on breathing, awareness of breathing, mindfulness of breathing in different ways. And I would like to continue that today. But today I want to emphasize certainly being present for breathing, but to do so by reorienting the mind. There's a part of the mind that operates from contraction, from tightness, from pressure, maybe from fear and anxiety, maybe desires, maybe stories and preoccupations that involve somehow a tightening or a condensing or solidification of something that we call the mind. For some people, it's kind of in the frontal part of the mind. And for some people, it can feel like the place where thinking arises, if there's an inner voice where the voice speaks, or if it's in images where the images either appear or from the projector from which they're projected. And focusing on the breathing activates that place, and there's more control of the breath. We're trying to be present for the breath from the very place in the mind that tends to spin out in thoughts. So if that's the place of the mind we're using, it's easier to kind of just be involved in either thinking about something else or thinking about the breathing and what should happen, in a way that doesn't allow us to be really linked to the breath or joining the breath from the mind. So for some of you, it might work to feel where your center of gravity is in the mind, and to shift your attention to some place in the mind that's further back, or deeper underneath the mind, or deeper in the center of it. Some different place that is not associated with thinking, with wanting, with fear, with contraction, with searching, or trying to understand, or trying to do. Find that different place in the mind, a different center, a different focus. It might be the back of the mind. Sometimes with the eyes, we're so focused forward, looking forward into the future, forward into the present, but let the eyes rest. Let the perception in the mind rest to a place in the mind that's not so busy or active, and orient the awareness from there. Let that be the way to organize awareness, organize your mind in a wider, softer way, in order to connect with the breathing. And imagine it's like a kite on a long string. As the winds move back and forth, as the breathing rises and passes, inhales and exhales, that's like a gentle wind which is blowing the kite. And a good kite operator keeps the string of the kite taut. You can't pull it too tight, or you pull it out of the sky. You can't keep it too loose, or then maybe the kite will fall. Just the right tautness to have fun with the kite and enjoy it and be with it. But there has to be that kind of attention to the hands and the right tautness there. So in that back of the mind, that new orientation place, keep just the right tautness to stay with the whole inhale, and then when the wind changes, stay with the whole exhale. So, assuming a meditation posture, gently closing the eyes, refamiliarizing yourself with your breathing and what it feels like for your torso, your body, to be breathing. Or if you're aware of the breathing in your nostril, what it's like there right now. On the exhale, softening your body. On the exhale, calming your body. A calming wave, spreading it through the body. And as you exhale, softening the mind. Calming the mind. Sending a wave of calming through the mind, and then sitting quietly. A quiet mind, if you can, for just a few breaths—three or four or five—to connect to your breathing. A soft connection. And as you're aware of breathing, maybe directing the mind to the breath, what in your mind is activated for mindfulness of breathing? Is there any contraction or tension or pressure coming from the mind that's either associated with mindfulness of breathing, or just associated with how your mind is right now? And then let your awareness almost take two steps back, deeper into the mind. Further back, deeper to a place in the mind that has no tension or pressure associated with it. Maybe there's very little sensation because there's just quiet peace, spaciousness somehow associated with the mind. Let your breathing breathe into that place, through that place, accompanying that place. As you exhale, relaxing into that place where the mind is spacious and calm. Maybe still, absence of pressure. And then from there, orient your awareness to your body breathing. A relaxed line of attention, like a soft thread that's connected to a kite, where the body breathing is the kite. And gently, without any tension, keep a kind of soft tautness, a soft continuity of attention. From this peaceful place in the mind around which the mind is organized to be with breathing softly and continuously, like a kite flyer would feel the tautness of the string without getting tense. Stay there quietly with the breathing. Giving yourself over to a peaceful orientation of the mind oriented on breathing. A quiet place in the mind oriented to a direct connection with the sensations of breathing. Maintaining that continuity of attention, the whole inhale, the whole exhale, like a direct line between the mind and breathing around which everything else can relax and soften. As we come to the end of the sitting, checking in with yourself to see where within your mind, your heart, your body, there might be the quietest, most peaceful place. Maybe it's quite still, maybe spacious, calm, someplace that is distinct from where your mind contracts, the heart resists or is closed, or where the body is tense, bracing itself. Can you find a place within that might be a refuge? Be peaceful. That is a welcoming place to rest. Center yourself. A place that's not associated with doing, protecting, judging, being for or against. A place of just being can be very small, at the center of all things in the back room of your mind, and with nothing you have to do, or are responsible for, or nothing that calls on you to react in any way. From there, gaze out upon the world. From there, like sitting in a relaxed chair, gaze out across the world in whatever way your mind thinks of it. A world of suffering, a world of joy, a world of love, and a world empty of love. A world where everything is found. And from your peaceful place for a few moments here, gazing quietly on this wide world. And gaze with care, gaze with loving-kindness. As if love and kindness and care is the very medicine that this world needs. May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be free. And may we, as we go through our day, remember that kindness is the great medicine for the world. Thank you. ## [Dharmette: Gil's Story Pt 2 (5 of 5) The Place of Practice](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/26535) So, hello and welcome to this maybe final talk now in my practice history, stories of my practice. I mistakenly said yesterday there were two more talks, thinking it was Wednesday, but it was Thursday. I practiced in Burma for eight months, and at some point, the concentration started to wane there somehow, and my connection to the teacher U Pandita[^1] wasn't going so well. I'd had very deep practice, a very deep letting go that made a big impact on me. But somehow after that, it didn't really build the practice or continue in a good way. I mean, the practice was really fantastic, but slowly over four months it kind of began to wane until I realized I needed to take a break. It seemed like the teacher was never going to recommend that. So I tried taking a break, but the pull back towards meditation was so strong that I couldn't, oddly enough, stay in the break. I started to read a little bit, and after each day that I read a bit, I read less and less. I just wanted to meditate all the time, but it felt like it wasn't really right to be meditating anymore. I needed something else. So, I decided I should go back to the United States to work with insight teachers who spoke English. I wouldn't have to work through a translator and could have a much more direct connection. I wanted to go back to IMS, Insight Meditation Society, to work with Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein, who I had met in Asia. So I disrobed and came back to the United States. I had a girlfriend who kind of came along to Burma. She came two weeks after me, and we had almost no contact there except being in the same room when there were dharma talks. She returned two weeks after I returned. Whereas I had a wonderful time in Burma, she had a difficult time, and she wanted to go close to her Zen teacher who lived at the Green Gulch Zen Center (part of the San Francisco Zen Center) just to recover. One of my best friends was the manager of the farm there then. So he gave me his old Volkswagen Bug, and I had no money again. We went out to live there, and I was kind of there in a spouse/partner category where I think I paid a little bit of rent maybe, and I could stay there. I would drive into San Francisco to work at a restaurant every day to earn some money to go to IMS in the fall. This was probably in May. And by midsummer or something, I felt this deep weariness in my whole system that I associated with those eight months of practice in Burma. That was a quite intense effort, quite fully on for that time, and so it made sense to me: "Oh, I'm deeply weary." I just couldn't go to IMS, so I canceled my reservation. And here I was back at San Francisco Zen Center as a Zen priest there. With nothing to do, I told them, "Well, I'm not going to IMS immediately." They asked me to be the head of the meditation hall, a position of responsibility. So I said, "Sure," I had nothing else going on, and I happened to be living there. I did that for a year. It was a wonderful year, but during that year, an American monk who had been in Burma at the same time as me came to see me. I think he had disrobed by then. We went for a walk in the countryside around Green Gulch, and we talked about our times in Burma. He was a little bit there, I think, to kind of convert me back from Zen to Theravada Vipassana[^2] practice, but it wasn't that intense. In that conversation, in describing my practice in Burma, I understood for myself that I was imbalanced when I was there—a little bit too much in the direction of concentration rather than the direction of insight and mindfulness. As soon as I realized that, my weariness just vanished, and now I was ready to go to IMS. It was quite remarkable. So that weariness was kind of maybe a protection, maybe some deep knowing that I wasn't ready to go back because I was somehow imbalanced and didn't know it. So then, in the fall of '86, I went back to IMS to practice with Joseph and Sharon. I had practiced alone in my room in Burma for the eight months, so I wrote to IMS and asked them, "Could I have a single room because I'm used to practicing alone in a room?" And they granted me that. But then when I got there, I was surprised that I almost never sat in my room. Somehow I was drawn to almost always sitting in the hall with people. I continued the practice, and I went through the same cycles of practice that I had done in Burma. Though, just like U Pandita was a little bit pushing me to strive or try, Joseph Goldstein was a little bit kind of offering me wonderful little ways of working a little bit better, practicing more or something. At some point, I asked him to stop tinkering with me because coming out of my Zen practice, I was just trying to sit, just sitting most thoroughly. I was trying to follow the instructions, but it was not so much to get anywhere, but really just to open and be present here in a deeper, deeper way. And in that opening and not trying to go anywhere, the path of Vipassana opened for me. So it was this wonderful combination for me of not striving for anything, but the path opening up. So I told him not to tinker with me. Near the end of that time, my practice was quite deep, and the primary thing I was paying attention to then—at some point there was nothing else really, just a very simple, radically simplified experience of life—the most salient thing to be aware of was the Seven Factors of Awakening: mindfulness, investigation, energy (effort), joy, tranquility, samadhi[^3], and equanimity. I was just kind of paying attention to those and a little bit bringing them into balance. Joseph told me a few things. The first thing he said to me was, "Gil, this is very interesting how you're cruising along in these Seven Factors of Awakening and you're telling me about them, but you never mention equanimity." So, that was a kind of wake-up. And then after a while, he was listening to me report back, and he repeated to me what I told him. He said at some point, "Gil, don't tinker with your practice." So, you know, I was a little bit trying to balance them, trying to make something happen. At some point, the kind of deep letting go I had in Burma happened again. But in some ways, it was more clear, more complete, more full. I came out of that, and the first thing that I realized, or came to my mind as this deep letting go happened, was, "Wow, I have a lot of practice to do." Now I understood what practice was about, and the dedication was to keep practicing the same practice. But now I knew what it was about, and that wow, this is now maybe a lifetime of work. The other thing that somehow became very clear was this world that we're living in—that's what there is to practice in. That's what there is. There's no other world, there's no other concern for other times, other worlds, other lives. This is the world for practice. And this deep letting go in this world, finding how to work with everything that goes on in our life, and not exactly embracing it, but seeing it as the place of practice. This _is_ the place of practice. And so that, in retrospect, made a huge impact on me, and it came to have a bigger impact over time as something began working inside of me, and maybe somehow it became clearer and clearer. But I came back from IMS, and I don't know if it was lucky for me, but rather than just going back into the world, I was invited to go to Zen Center's Tassajara Monastery to be the head monk, kind of a rite of passage for someone who's ordained or been there a long time. That was wonderful because the head monk is kind of the model monk who just meditates a lot with everybody. So coming from IMS and going there to sit was really good. Then it became clear to me that this was not the time to continue being in intensive retreat mode. For ten years of my life, I'd been in intensive retreat monastery centers, engaging fully, and I'd kind of completed a cycle of something. I wasn't going to be living at these places, and I wanted to find some way to live in the world. I decided to go to graduate school. I had not studied Buddhism very much, so I thought I would go someplace to get a master's in religious studies, specializing in Buddhism. So I went to the University of Hawaii because there was a wonderful scholar named David Kalupahana who worked in the philosophy department there, and he was a specialist on the Mahayana philosopher Nagarjuna[^4]. His orientation to studying Buddhism I really liked, so that was part of the reason I went there. There were other Buddhist scholars there; I discovered wonderful people when I came there. While I was there, I got a phone call from Jack Kornfield inviting me to be in teacher training with him. I think I said this, but it was like the puzzle pieces of my life clicked in; my whole life kind of made sense or fit together in my body, and of course I said yes. And so then I started going regularly to Jack and teacher training. It was a wonderful training for me. I learned a lot, and it opened me up a lot to much bigger parts of the dharma than I had learned in my long meditation mode. I came to love and appreciate people, their complexity, the fullness of their lives. And through Jack, I began to learn something about meeting that as a meditation teacher, as an instructor, as a dharma teacher. One of the things that Jack said at the very first teacher training meeting, he asked us, "What's the difference between a meditation instructor and a dharma teacher?" That was an invaluable distinction to make. He was interested in training us as dharma teachers, not simply meditation teachers, not simply retreat teachers. That really worked well for me with the way that I had been trained at Zen Center, which was much more life-encompassing—the whole life—in a way that the long retreat practice with U Pandita and places were not. I loved them both; they were very important for me. And then that summer, I think I said, I started teaching the sitting group in Palo Alto, and that grew to become IMC. Finally, as this continued to develop, my practice, my training, my role as a teacher, at some point it started to dawn on me that something from the deep letting go that had happened in my Vipassana retreats was still with me, and it was beginning to work me. It was beginning to point something out to me. I referred to it to myself—I had this idea that it was like a bookworm slowly working through my body, finding where there was clinging, and kind of eating it. It was doing me slowly, slowly. The other was, slowly it began to dawn on me that there was a way to be present with awareness that I couldn't look at. I couldn't focus on it, but it was like peripheral awareness. Right there, there was an aspect of awareness in which there was no clinging, no craving, where there was a profound peace that was free of self, free of attachments, free of something. And that was accompanying me if I wanted to kind of notice it, but I couldn't try. It was more like I had to let go, relax deeply. And that felt like the remnant or the continuity of this deep practice I had done on Vipassana retreats[^5] that was also showing me something, working on me, developing me, and that continues to this day. So that's my practice history and a little bit the context for how I began as a teacher. That's a whole story in itself, to talk about my growth as a teacher. Everyone should become a teacher because many times the teacher grows more than the student, and it's been wonderful for me to practice a continuity of my practice in this role of being a teacher, and I'm very grateful for it. So I hope these two weeks were interesting for you and useful, maybe supported you in your practice. The best reward for me would be that you were inspired to engage in your own practice. Thank you very much. --- [^1]: **Sayadaw U Pandita:** (1921–2016) A prominent Burmese Theravada Buddhist monk and Vipassana meditation master. [^2]: **Vipassana:** A Pali word often translated as "insight," referring to a meditation practice that involves clear seeing into the true nature of reality. [^3]: **Samadhi:** A Pali term for concentration or unification of mind, a state of deep meditative absorption. [^4]: **Nagarjuna:** (c. 150 – c. 250 CE) An influential Indian Mahayana Buddhist philosopher known for his teachings on emptiness (Shunyata). [^5]: Original transcript said "three post retreats", corrected to "Vipassana retreats" based on context and phonetics.