BHNN Guest Podcast Ep. 246 - Gil Fronsdal on Practicing in Accord with Nature

Gil Fronsdal explores practicing in accord with nature, showing how mindfulness and honesty help us release resistance and move with the natural flow of the Dharma. This time on the BHNN Guest Podcast, Gil Fronsdal lectures on: - Being in accord with the dharma, with truth, and with nature - The painful attitudes that we often bring to change - Accepting our feelings rather than pushing them away - How resistance to reality causes more suffering - Mindfulness: creating the ideal conditions for the natural process of healing - Floating down the stream of Dharma rather than struggling up a mountain - Studying nature rather than rushing into conclusions - Becoming an observer of our own lives with child-like openness and adult-like resolve 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. This recording was originally published on Dharmaseed "We're in this stream of the dharma, this stream of practice. It is not fighting up a mountain and struggling so much. It is finding a place to rest in the stream and we find ourselves being carried along beautifully into the ocean. The ocean is so big it can hold all of us. Isn't that nice? It's not like you're going to be king of the mountain. We're all going to be brothers and sisters in this great ocean of the dharma." –Gil Fronsdal