Ep. 192 - Wisdom and the Path with Gil Fronsdal

Guiding us along the path, Gil Fronsdal shows how to develop spirituality into enduring inner strengths rather than solitary experiences.

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In this episode, Gil Fronsdal teaches listeners about:

• Developing personal, inner strengths
• The tendency of meditators to over-value spiritual experiences
• Wisdom as one of our inner strengths
• The clarity of awakening and seeing the functions of our heart and mind
• How something arises and how something ceases
• What it means to be awake in the here and now
• Recognizing all of the times we are in the past or the future
• Shedding, letting go, and simplifying our experience
• Finding the path in the present moment
• Remaining composed and settling our entire being
• How the Buddhist path does not have a destination

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.

This recording was originally published on Dharmaseed

“The right attitude, the right intention, is to begin finding that way of being that simplifies our experience. One of the right intentions is the intention of letting go, of renunciation. You can’t take a lot of baggage with you, even good baggage, if you want to walk the path.” – Gil Fronsdal

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