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2021-04-23 Harmony of Zen and Vipassana (5 of 5) Prescriptive and Descriptive | Otter.ai

2021-04-23 Harmony of Zen and Vipassana (5 of 5) Prescriptive and Descriptive

Insight Meditation Center17min

Gil Fronsdal

00:09

My friends, we have come to the end of this week. For these days I have been presenting the basic, simplest way of teaching mindfulness that we do here at Insight Meditation Center and parts of the Western vipassana world.

Gil Fronsdal

00:54

The so-called instructions in mindfulness practice – instructions to be mindful of breathing, body, emotions, and thoughts. Instructions to be aware of the Four Foundations of Mindfulness: body, feelings, mind states, and what is called dharmas, the inner processes that either lead to suffering or to freedom.

Gil Fronsdal

01:23

There are other instructions – "This is what you do," "Focus here," and "Focus your attention this way." This can give the idea that we are doing. That this is a doing practice. We are doing something with awareness and attention, directing it someplace. It is a fine instruction to do that. It is wonderful to be engaged, fully involved in whatever the task is at hand. It could be for meditation as well. But the doing sometimes comes with extra baggage. There can be a lot of self involved in any kind of doing, even as simple as bringing awareness to something.

Gil Fronsdal

02:12

We are checking ourselves out as we do it. "Am I doing it the right way?" "Am I doing it well enough?" "I can't do this." "The person next to me meditating is probably doing it better." Or "I'm the best one," or something. All these can be very subtle, almost subconscious, these little attitudes like, "This is too difficult for me."

Gil Fronsdal

02:37

When I was a young student, I had the idea that if it was happening to me, it was not the right experience. I could never get it right, because I had this subtle, almost subconscious idea, that it was never right, because it was where I was. It was painful. It is painful even to say that I used to be that way.

Gil Fronsdal

03:00

Or the subtle idea that there was always somewhere else to be. Somewhere else that was the "It," the experience to have. Always this kind of dissatisfaction with what was happening. And that came along with that doing.

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