Gil Fronsdal explores how Vipassana practice helps us embrace change and release attachment, transforming the way we experience ourselves and the world.
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This week on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Gil Fronsdal shares:
- Change as the heart of Vipassana practice
- Delusions of permanence and having an ‘upside down’ perception of reality
- The freedom in holding things more lightly
- The juxtaposition of perfection with room for improvement
- Breaking down our attachment to the way things are supposed to be
- Being challenged in the dharma and questioning our identity
- Individual culture versus collective culture
- Watching thoughts arise and pass away
- The problem with retrospective thinking
This recording 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. 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.
“People tend to see permanence in what is impermanent. They tend to find self in what is not self. They tend to find happiness in things that are not really that happy. The path of practice is to perceive things in a way that things aren’t distorted. The task of mindfulness practice is to break through distortions so we can see more directly.” –Gil Fronsdal
