Ep. 162 - Mental Constructs with Gil Fronsdal

Exploring mental constructs, Gil Fronsdal describes how we construct the relationships to our experiences.

This recording from the Insight Meditation Center was originally published on Dharmaseed.org

On this episode of the BHNN Guest Podcast, Gil Fronsdal talks about these topics:

• A four line Buddhist chant in Pali
• The impermanence of all constructed things
• Mindfulness and the practice of noticing
• Exploring one’s relationship to the present moment
• Moving our attention with a deliberate calmness
• Meditation instruction as the antidote to relating negatively
• Our attitudes and how they affect our experiences
• Non-reactive awareness in order to avoid new constructions
• Identity and the stories we tell about ourselves
• Allowing “I am” to stand by itself

About Gil Fronsdal:

Gil Fronsdal is the co-teacher for the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California; he has been teaching since 1990. He has practiced Zen and Vipassana in the U.S. and Asia since 1975. He was a Theravada monk in Burma in 1985, and in 1989 began training with Jack Kornfield to be a Vipassana teacher. Gil teaches at Spirit Rock Meditation Center where he is part of its Teachers Council. Gil was ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1982, and in 1995 received Dharma Transmission from Mel Weitsman, the abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. He currently serves on the SF Zen Center Elders’ Council. In 2011 he founded IMC’s Insight Retreat Center. Gil has an undergraduate degree in agriculture from U.C. Davis where he was active in promoting the field of sustainable farming. In 1998 he received a PhD in Religious Studies from Stanford University studying the earliest developments of the bodhisattva ideal. He is the author of The Issue at Hand, essays on mindfulness practice; A Monastery Within; a book on the five hindrances called Unhindered; and the translator of The Dhammapada, published by Shambhala Publications. You may listen to Gil’s talks on Audio Dharma.

“To quiet these constructions is happiness. To be able to question these things, and slowly perhaps, maybe even imperceptibly, to allow these constructs to calm down, relax, not buy into them as much. Maybe not buy into them as much because we notice them.” – Gil Fronsdal

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