Ep. 168 - Big Flower, Small Flower with Gil Fronsdal

Distinguishing commentary from direct experience, Gil Fronsdal helps us break free from the conventions and comparisons that the mind makes.

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In this episode, Gil Fronsdal speaks to listeners about:

• Paying homage to those who have purified their hearts
• Direct experience versus attempting to describe things
• The way that comparison arises
• Self-image and appreciating our own suchness
• Resting in the part of ourselves that is not an idea or a concept
• The conditioning that can happen from society
• Wisdom from sitting with physical pain
• Living in the present moment instead of the stories we tell ourselves
• Letting things be as they are
• Seeing God in our simple, direct experiences
• Coming back to the breath and practicing all throughout the day

This 1998 talk was originally published on Dharmaseed

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.

“Most of us know the wonderful smell of a rose, but if you could try to describe in words what that fragrance is, you’d have a hard time I think. The actual sense, the direct experience of smell, is something we can all experience; seeing this flower as it is. In Buddhism, there is a lot of emphasis on seeing things as they are.” – Gil Fronsdal

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