Ep. 184 - Meditation: Awareness of Awareness with Gil Fronsdal

Through meditation and lecture, Gil Fronsdal outlines how the awareness of awareness is more important than the content of an experience.

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This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Gil Fronsdal explains:

• Giving too much importance to our experiences
• Being mindful of whatever is present in a given moment
• The authority we give to our fixations
• Dropping into the experience of the body breathing
• Knowing our feelings and thoughts and noticing when we are distracted
• A guided mediation from Gil to develop awareness of awareness

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.

“In some ways, it doesn’t matter that much where you bring your attention, what matters is that you’re using it. You can develop just as much clarity of mind and presence of mind on the rain sound as you can on your breathing, as you can on almost anything.” – Gil Fronsdal

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