Gil Fronsdal returns for a guest episode on the importance of our quality of mind and explores self-discovery through our actions.
“You study yourself, you study what you do in body, mind, speech, and those actions show you that you know yourself. You know yourself through your actions, through what you do, not by what you are.” – Gil Fronsdal
In this BHNN Guest Episode, Gil Fronsdal speaks on:
- Being still and befriending the self
- Self-discovery and our motivations
- A story of the Buddha and his son
- Actions as a mirror to the self
- Learned behavior & conditioning versus the truth
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.