Are we trying to find inner peace the wrong way? Gil Fronsdal discusses cultivating an all-inclusive awareness that embraces each experience and sensation without resistance or judgment.

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In this episode, Gil Fronsdal provides insights on:

• Figuring out what our life’s pursuit is, and, if we are chasing the wrong things
• The Buddha as a doctor of freedom, the inner life, the illness of suffering
• How child-like wellbeing and openness lead the Buddha to the path of freedom and the end of suffering 
• Integrating adult stability with childlike openness, curiosity, and joy
• Cultivating openness and inner strength when facing temptation, emotional pain, or adversity
• Using mindfulness to expand awareness and include all aspects of our experience
• Practicing nonjudgmental and non-discriminating awareness—welcoming all emotions, thoughts, and sensations equally
• Shifting focus from what we’re mindful of to how we are being mindful 
• The problem with hyperfixating on the self and identity 

This recording from Spirit Rock Meditation Center 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.

“What I feel is most sacred in Buddhism is not something outside of you. Not a shrine, not a statue, not a text. But rather, what's most sacred is an awareness, your awareness, when it has nothing outside. There's nothing outside, nothing which is unacceptable for it, nothing which is shut out from it. Everything is allowed to be there in your awareness. When awareness is all-inclusive, with no outside, I think that's sacred.” – Gil Fronsdal

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