2022-12-12-Gil-Insight Pentad (1 of 5) Things as They Come to Be

7:48AM Dec 15, 2022

Speakers:

Gil Fronsdal

Keywords:

gladness

insight

fixation

process

change

flow

iceberg

fixated

happening

meet

arising

coming

dwelling

practice

week

static

regrets

tranquility

letting

awareness

Hello everyone.

Today being Monday we start kind of a new theme. In some ways the theme this week will continue last week's theme. Last week was what's called the gladness pentad. These five qualities of the gladness pentad – gladness, joy, tranquility, happiness, and concentration – also appear in a longer list that continue the pattern, continue the flow of the practice for five more qualities. These can be called the insight pentad, the five factors that arise in the wake of insight.

This is insight meditation that we do. And here in this teaching last week, the idea is that there's preparation done for real deep insight: the insight into suffering, insight into the constant nature of our experience. Some deep kind of paradigm shift, that the first insight of the insight pentad is seeing things as they've come to be, knowledge and vision of things as they've come to be.

Often the Pāli expression, "yathā bhūta" – "yathā" means as. This is a past participle. It means that not things as they are, but things as they come to be, things as they have come to be. And the focus here is not an insight into how things are as things, things as things, but rather focus into the process, things as processes, things as dynamic and changing.

And it's very easy for us to be concerned with particular things, ideas, experiences. Sometimes we hang on to an experience for a long time, carrying our resentment or desires around it, our regrets. And we may be carrying some fixed idea of what happened, somewhat fixed. But we're kind of focusing on that, as opposed to the process of thoughts arising, memories arising, thoughts of regrets arising.

And if we're settled enough, we see that these are actually a relatively inconstant process in the sense that it's repetitive. It keeps reappearing and reappearing. But it's not a static, flat preoccupation be concerned with. The mind is constantly regenerating itself in terms of what it focuses on, what it thinks about.

But we get enamored, we get caught in the ideas, the ideas of things being a certain way. They're fixed. This is how it is.

And the alternative offered by the Buddha is that nothing is everything is a process of becoming, everything is unfolding, so that there's always a possibility for change, always a possibility for something new. The world is not you know, our suffering, our personality are not static, big icebergs that don't change. They are more like water that is constantly moving.

To the degree to which we live in an iceberg, we live as an iceberg, the gladness pentad is a process of thawing, of relaxing the places of tightness and holding, the places where we're caught, the places where we're fixated on things. And this practice of the gladness pentad is to free the fixations of the mind, the fixations of the heart, so we're available, ever available for what's happening now, what's happening next, what's happening in this moment.

And if we able to see the constant arising and passing, the constant things as they come to be, then we live in a world that is full of potential, full of possibilities that grow the less we fixate. The possibilities, the potential of how we meet any situation not only becomes more and more creative, and more and more varied, it becomes meeting reality with freedom. A fixation, focusing really tight "This is how it; it has to be this way," is not a space where there's freedom, for freedom of the heart, the openness, the availability, the readiness, for something.

But if we see it, "Oh, this is not how things are; this is how it's coming to be," then the fascinating and powerful question is, given it's coming to be this way, let's see how we can shape it, how we can let it become something next, be something else. How do we respond creatively? How do we respond with newness to allow things to keep unfolding in a good way, to take everything that appears as not a fixed thing, but as a platform, or a means or a condition for responding in a new way.

So for example, if someone offends you, it's easy to get upset and angry. And then this person has offended me and that offense has become a thing, a static. But if rather we see it as a process, an ongoing process, then we ask ourselves, Oh, that seems offensive, that hurt. Given the flow, like the flow of water, how do I now navigate in this to make it better? How do I navigate this, to understand it better, to be myself be better with it, and to maybe respond to the person in a better way? If I meet it with resistance, then I'm stuck. Maybe there's less flexibility. But if I meet it with something fluid, then maybe something different can become and arise.

So I can't do this necessarily so well, but I know people who will meet offense with humor, and it deescalates it quickly. It kind of changes the whole nature. I know people who will meet offense with curiosity. What's really going on? Lean into the person, what's happening here for this person? I know people who meet offense with letting people know, "Well, that's happening to you. Let me tell you what's happening to me. I feel hurt. I feel afraid. I feel concerned, I feel angry, given what's happening."

And so we're kind of expressing and talking about what's happening in the moment as they come to be. So maybe saying, "Wow, this is how it's come to be. This is a difficult situation that has come to be here. Given that that's what's come to be what's next for us? Given that this was difficult to hear what you had to say, what should be next? How do we go forward from here?"

So always this movement, how do we go forward? Where's the dynamism? Where's the movement? That is more difficult to happen if we're dwelling fixating on "this" is how it is.

So things as they come to be in meditation can be done. meditation becomes a dynamic place of change. Everything is coming into being moment by moment. We don't dwell anywhere. Sometimes this in Buddhism is called non-dwelling awareness, non-abiding where we kind of float on the river of change and time. Being the change, being the changing flow of the present moment. We become it as opposed to think about it, be something, step apart from it.

Is this easy? Not necessarily, but the the ability to kind of be in the flow of the dynamism of things coming into being is built on a continuity of the gladness pentad, the teaching from last week.

So if we can't do this, then we step back and we go back to the beginning, where practice is. We may go all the way back to the place where we're fixated and suffering and challenged. And we hold that with kind nonreactive awareness, maybe feeling glad that we have a practice to do so.

And then with that gladness, we can engage in the practice of really trying to see more clearly, practicing more nonreactive awareness, which maybe brings the kind of warmth to it all, that begins to bring some kind of ease, tranquility, maybe begins to thaw the iceberg of how we're frozen in some kind of concern or preoccupation.

And when the whole iceberg has melted, then we're resting in this wonderful pond of water, a lake of samādhi, from which we then can kind of be with the fluidity of the water, the changing nature of it, meeting the currents, meeting the changes as they come to be, as they flow.

So this is one way of talking about the insight into impermanence. The Buddha's language, he literally said, insight into inconstancy, how things are in constant motion, constant change. And one of the purposes of this deep insight is to begin letting go, to begin letting go of resistance, letting go of clinging, letting go of fixation of this is how things are. Nothing is this is how things are. It's always this is part of a process of change. This is a part of part of things coming into being.

And when we see it that way, then it may be easier to be interested in given how this is coming into being now, how do I participate in this for the greater good? How do I step into this changing river of phenomena and contribute something really wholesome, valuable, wonderful, beneficial into the mix?

Our job is to let go and contribute what his good, let go of our clinging and flow along, letting the current be an expression of our goodness.

So this is the insight pentad. And as we start having this insight into change, shifting the orientation from things as they are to things as they change, as they come into being, this has an impact. That's a condition for something to begin to thaw, to change, to move. And that's a topic for tomorrow. The way how we're affected by the deeper and deeper insight that comes from this practice. So thank you very much, and I look forward to our time together tomorrow.