Ep. 232 - Contentment On The Buddhist Path with Gil Fronsdal

Connecting to the timelessness of the present moment, Gil Fronsdal offers practical steps towards the only source of true happiness: contentment.

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

• Seeing the timeless present through photographs 
• Enjoying the preciousness of our limited time here on earth 
• How corporate, capitalist America prefers people who are discontent
• What the Buddha said about the vital importance of contentment 
• How many desires often dissipate on their own if you ride them out
• The ways in which desire alienates us from ourselves 
• The embodied quality of contentment and being in touch with ourselves
• Freedom in the Buddhist sense: freedom ‘from’ rather than freedom ‘to do’
• Cultivating contentment by valuing it and seeing it as an important part of life
• Activities which encourage contentment versus remaining frantic
• Facing discontentment head-on so that it does not drive us 

This recording was originally published on Dharmaseed.

“Contentment is a falling away of anxiety, restlessness, reaching forward, fear, being fragmented, and disconnected. It is a kind of settling. If we’re driven by desires, fears, preoccupations, or fantasies, often our energy, our center of attention, is upwelling in an unhealthy way. As we are contented, we feel the settling down, settling down into the center of gravity.” –Gil Fronsdal 

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. 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.

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