Guided Meditation: Breathing with Aspiration; Dharmette: Aspiration (1 of 5) Aspiring to Stop Suffering

This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video Guided Meditation: Breathing with Aspiration: Aspiration (1 of 5) Aspiring to Stop Suffering. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

The following talk was given by Gil Fronsdal at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on July 03, 2023. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Guided Meditation: Breathing with Aspiration

Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's time together to sit and to explore the Dharma^[1]. Thank you for being here. I'm delighted to be back after being gone for a month. It feels like a homecoming, in a certain way, to come back to IMC and sit here, able to be together with you this way, reflecting on the Dharma. So, thank you.

Some of you, I'm sure, remember that in the weeks I was here before being gone for a month, the overall topic was compassion. I had divided compassion into five different aspects with the idea that if we're aware of the richness of these different aspects, compassion becomes more embodied, wholehearted, wise, considered, and practical. If we don't have these five things in mind, it's very easy for us to have a narrow idea of what compassion is, and maybe have it be a call to action that isn't always so wise.

These five general categories are awareness, attunement, appreciation, aspiration, and action. Action being the last one; we often associate compassion with the need to act quickly, but we have this be the last, after there is time for some kind of deeper consideration. I was going through each of these five, five days on each of them, and now we're at aspiration.

Aspiration is a beautiful quality. I love the word "aspiration," and I'll talk more about that later. But for now, perhaps we can consider aspiration as a kind of desire that fuels a certain inspiration—a motivation that is not tied to the outcome. It's a little bit like a wish that something happens. You can act on an aspiration; it's not just wishful thinking. But it has an open-handedness and open-mindedness to it that sustains us in action without having us tripped up around the expectation of what will or should happen.

The same thing applies to sitting in meditation. We can have an aspiration for sitting and being present. There are many aspirations for sitting in meditation, but in mindfulness practice, there is the aspiration to be mindful, to be present with a clarity of awareness to what is here—even if that means there is a lack of clarity, a lack of ability to be present, and a lot of distractions. The aspiration to be present is even, for a moment, to recognize clearly, "Oh, my mind is really cloudy or fuzzy here, and there are a lot of distractions and thoughts." In that moment of recognition is the beginning—or fulfillment for that moment—of the aspiration to be present.

Then, to aspire to let that desire to be present come from a deep place inside so that we keep coming back to it, being fueled by it. The word aspiration comes from the Latin word for breathing. Maybe with every breath, every inhale, there is the aspiration to be present, which is found with every exhale.

To assume a meditation posture and gently close your eyes if that's comfortable. Take a few long, slow, deep breaths, relaxing on the exhale, relaxing the body.

Take a deep inhale that aspires to be connected here to yourself, and relax the body on the exhale.

Then let your breathing return to normal.

Perhaps before anything else: what is your aspiration? Sometimes we ask, "What is your inspiration or intention for meditation?" But what's your aspiration?

If you drop in as deep as you can within, is there an aspiration and inspiration? In Latin, aspiration literally means to breathe out, and inspiration means to breathe in. The two words are closely related.

Relax further in your body. Maybe on every exhale, relax the face.

On the exhale, relax the shoulders.

On the exhale, relax the belly.

Perhaps also relax the thinking mind. Any contraction or tension, any tightness or pressure in thinking or in mental efforting. Is there any mental efforting that you can relax and soften, maybe let go of?

Then sit quietly, breathing with your body.

Allowing the body to breathe, which your body has done for a long time. Accompanying the breathing body. It is almost like you're making room in your body for breathing to do its thing.

With every inhale, maybe connect to some deep sense of aspiration. It might be a clear wish or desire to be present, to be here, to be kind, to be generous in being aware of the present moment. Or it could be an aspiration that doesn't have any words. It's there, but it doesn't lend itself to words or a clear idea.

And on the exhale, be inspired to follow through on that aspiration. Give it space and room to support you to be here, mindful and present.

Perhaps your aspiration is modest, something that can be fulfilled with each breath, or can be fulfilled in the time it takes to breathe in or breathe out. No bigger goal, just this: to be here, with some degree of clarity and recognition. Here, this, now.

What might be the aspiration, the desire that's carried along with each breath?

As we come to the end of this sitting, the dedication of merit^[2] that is often done at the end of practice is an aspiration. It is an aspiration for the goodness and benefits of whatever practice we do to be shared with others. It isn't that we lose it then; because it's shared with others, the benefits kind of get magnified because the heart opens in generosity that has room for others, care, and love.

May it be, as we aspire, that not only our practice but our lives are lived for the benefit of all, including ourselves. Recognizing, maybe, that such an aspiration does tremendous benefit to ourselves—breaking through the shell of self-centeredness and self-preoccupation.

May it be that our time together this day, meditating in this community, encourages us as individuals and as a community to consider ways that we take the benefits from this meditation with us into the world. May we bring benefit to others with an aspiration, care, and attention to doing so.

May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings everywhere be free.

And may we aspire to see this happen, to support this happening.

Thank you.

Dharmette: Aspiration (1 of 5) Aspiring to Stop Suffering

So, hello everyone again. The topic for this week's exploration of compassion is the role of aspiration in compassion.

A common definition of compassion is to recognize suffering in the world, have a feeling for it, and have a kind of resonance with that suffering. To feel it, to have some sympathy or empathy with it, and to have a desire for that suffering to be alleviated. That is a hugely important part of compassion: a desire for it to be alleviated. Compassion can exist without us necessarily being the person who is going to alleviate the suffering, but the desire is still there.

In certain circumstances, it makes sense that we have the desire to do something, the ability to do it, and it's appropriate to do it. Maybe sometimes there is no one else who could help with the suffering people are experiencing, and so we offer to do something. So, the common definition does involve a desire.

But "desire" is a somewhat vague or broad word, so I prefer to call it "aspiration." Part of the reason for this is that generally, aspiring to do something doesn't come along with duty or obligation. An aspiration comes from some place deep inside. It's an inspiration. It's a welling up of an inner desire that arises freely, without need or a lot of ego and self-centeredness. It has a deep source within.

There's an open-endedness to aspiration. It's different for me than hoping or wishing. Aspiration wants to see something happen but knows that it might not. Aspiration is not attached to the outcome.

Acting in the world compassionately from aspiration is a wonderful gift because it frees us from that tightness and pressure of accomplishment and succeeding. Sometimes, when we're compassionate to others, it's enough for them to know that we have the aspiration to help. We're making the effort to help, even if we don't succeed. The idea that someone cares about you enough to make an effort to support you is sometimes the medicine that is needed more than the outcome.

The other reason I like aspiration is because the word is connected to breathing. It has this idea of having a deeper source within our body, within our heart, that's different from anything the mind comes up with—the thinking, logic, and analysis of the situation. It has some kind of deeper upwelling to aspire.

When we're in the presence of suffering or feel it, we can take the time to not rush to judgment, obligation, or the feeling that "something has to happen here"—when that rush is motivated by our own distress, discomfort, or self-centered obligation. Instead, we can take the time to relax with it, be present, and see what aspiration flows out of us. What's the desire that has this open-endedness and freedom to it? Not something that puts us back in bondage, clamps us down, or narrows us, but something that makes us feel we can breathe more easily, as opposed to getting stressed, tight, and having our breathing become contracted.

This week, I'll talk about these different aspects of aspiration. For today, the simple idea is that part of the aspiration, when it's compassionate, is to want suffering to stop. Our own suffering, or if someone else is suffering, to want it to stop.

We want it to no longer be there because we know that life doesn't have to be suffering all the time. We don't have to always live under the pressure, tension, hurt, and stress of what life brings us, with our own struggles, difficulties, and heartbreak. There is an outcome. There is a way of coming into a very different relationship with this difficult world we are in—one in which we don't enact or add to the difficulties of life. The suffering of contraction, the suffering that comes with attachment and clinging—we can learn and practice that we don't have to do that.

There's another way of being. As we learn that, we learn how to have an aspiration that's free of attachment. An aspiration that's free of force, assertiveness, or conceit. It's a beautiful quality to have a compassionate aspiration. Being motivated by that beautiful aspiration is very different from being motivated by obligation, duty, or responsibility that many people get caught in in a way that's not beneficial.

We can have a wish not just to simply be present for the experiences and situations we encounter in the world—not just to learn to be mindful of it—but to let the awareness of it come along with a care.

I learned yesterday that the word "awareness" comes from an Anglo-Germanic source that actually means to care. I looked it up in my native Norwegian, and sure enough. In Norwegian, sometimes what's a 'W' in English is a 'V' in Norwegian: ta vare^[3], which means to take care. I love this idea that awareness means to take care.

In that caring, we also care enough about ourselves. When we encounter suffering and are present and aware of it, we take the time to look for the aspiration. Where is the inspiration? What desire comes out of inspiration around the suffering, just for it to come to an end?

I would encourage you to spend some time exploring your desires. Think about when you have the desire to end or stop something that's painful and suffering. See the quality of that desire. Does it come along with something that is stressful, grating, or somehow diminishes something inside of you because of the need or attachment that's there? Or, when encountering suffering, is there some place where there's a sense of aspiration or inspiration that supports the desire to stop or bring this to an end?

Those are my thoughts today. Maybe from having been away for a month on a silent retreat, I don't have many more words, and we'll stop early today. I am very happy to be here and look forward to continuing this series on aspiration in relationship to compassion over these next days. I will be here on the Fourth of July, so I don't know what you all are doing, but I'll continue for the whole week. Thank you.