Ep. 165 - Meeting the Dharma in Ourselves with Gil Fronsdal

Taking us on a pilgrimage through Buddhist teachings, Gil Fronsdal describes meeting the dharma in ourselves.

This recording from Spirit Rock Meditation Center was originally published on Dharmaseed.org

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

• Meeting the dharma in ourselves through direct experiences
• Going into the world with a phenomenal capacity for non-harming
• Looking at what really motivates and drives us
• The story of the Kalama Sutta
• Recognizing what brings welfare vs. what brings harm
• Breath as a form of assurance and how our easeful, relaxed breath can be our teacher
• Hindrances and what keeps us removed from ourselves
• Coming home to our selves, our bodies, our sensations
• Allowing the flow of experience to move through us
• Releasing all of the things we hold onto

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.

“It is so simple and so basically human, the capacity to recognize that we’re suffering or that we’re happy. In relationship to grand religious philosophies and ideas, it can seem maybe inconsequential to base one’s religious life on being able to recognize where is harm and where is welfare. But that relates at the heart to what the Buddha was pointing at. It points to something that we are able to experience and see and know for ourselves directly.” – Gil Fronsdal

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