In this Dharma talk, Beth Sternlieb explores why learning to truly relax the body and mind creates the conditions for wisdom, resilience, and freedom. Drawing on the Buddha’s teachings, she explains the relationship between calm (samadhi) and insight (vipassana) and how a relaxed mind allows us to meet suffering with clarity instead of reactivity.
When we actively pay attention to relaxation, it’s very natural to become aware of tension. If that’s what happens, it’s not a problem. It may not be pleasant to be aware of tension, but we need to release it, or it just accumulates.
To be able to actively relax, to give the body permission to relax, is a very important skill. It allows us to be with what’s happening with more capacity to stay. We’re not always at the edge, tipping into extremes. Relaxation broadens our sense of stability and resiliency.
When the Buddha went on his quest to understand the end of suffering, the meditation masters he studied with were very oriented toward the development of samadhi, often translated as concentration — though I prefer the phrase calm abiding. The Buddha became a master of samadhi himself, and his teacher asked him to teach.
But the Buddha realized that, in terms of his quest to come to the end of suffering, samadhi — concentration — was temporary. He could enter very deep states of tranquility, calm, and bliss through the cultivation of samadhi, but when he stopped practicing in that particular way, his suffering came back. So he continued on his journey of exploration.
In the end, when he became awakened, he recognized there was another key factor alongside samadhi: vipassana—mindfulness, clear seeing. Clear seeing of impermanence, suffering, and interbeing. We could also say imperfection and interbeing.
Sometimes meditation instructions can seem confusing because there are so many traditions. I like to think of it like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Each room expresses the same human condition in a different way. Each Buddhist culture has its own language and style of expressing the teachings, but they all share these foundational skills: developing samadhi and developing mindfulness.
Some traditions cultivate deep states of samadhi before turning to vipassana. Others develop mindfulness first, allowing samadhi to grow naturally. Still others teach the two simultaneously.
As I was deciding what to teach today, I kept coming back to samadhi because I remembered that I really got interested in it because I was suffering. And a lot of people are really suffering right now. All of us are agitated in one way or another.
So it’s powerful to know that we can calm ourselves through meditation by practicing vitakka and vicāra—aiming and sustaining our attention. A traditional image would be aiming as striking the meditation bell, and sustaining as listening to the sound.
In the classical teachings, vitakka and vicāra gradually give rise to rapture, or mental comfort. I think of it like leaning into an ice cream cone. There’s that feeling of complete, joyful absorption. We already know this quality. We just may not give ourselves permission to enjoy and be inspired by our practice.
From there comes tranquility—deeper tranquility than we’re familiar with in everyday life—and then what is often translated as “one-pointedness.” I don’t really like that translation because it’s not pointy. Unification is a better word.
I once read a Thai Forest teacher, Ajahn Mun describe the Dharma as the language of the heart. Because it’s expressed in words, confusion arises. Everyone has different backgrounds, histories, cultures, and associations. We hear the same word differently. One person walks into a yellow room and loves it; another person hates it. The same thing happens with Dharma language. Words like rapture, patience, or renunciation can evoke very different reactions.
Patience, for example, was always a difficult word for me. I thought patience meant gritting my teeth and enduring. But patience is really a result of tranquility—a calm that comes from understanding. Understanding that things take time. Understanding imperfection. Understanding that you can plant a seed, but you can’t make it grow faster. This is so important in Dharma practice.
The Buddha said, “Patience is the supreme austerity.” Austerity is another word people often struggle with. Sometimes it’s translated as restraint, renunciation, or letting go. I have my own reactions to all of those words. But one of the beautiful discoveries that comes through samadhi is that letting go becomes a source of happiness. As distractions and habitual patterns fall away, we return to what, in this tradition, is sometimes called the normalcy of the mind—an untangled, unagitated mind where we can simply rest.
The Buddha’s entire quest was to understand suffering. The First Noble Truth is the truth of dukkha: suffering, distress, imperfection. He wasn’t saying life is always suffering. He was pointing out that stress is inevitable because of impermanence, separation, aging, illness, not getting what we want, and getting what we don’t want. This is part of every human life.
But the Buddha didn’t simply describe suffering. He gave an instruction for each of the Noble Truths. For the First Noble Truth, the instruction is: Suffering is to be understood. Of course, we’d all like to understand suffering without actually suffering. Sometimes mindfulness can sound like we understand suffering by thinking about it, analyzing it, or figuring it out intellectually. But the Buddha’s instruction is different.
We understand suffering by observing it. Even something as simple as reaching for another handful of chips and pausing long enough to observe the urge can be surprisingly difficult. When the pull is strong, observation itself becomes challenging. This is where samadhi becomes so valuable.
When we’re more relaxed, we have enough steadiness to see: “Oh… I don’t actually have to do this.” That discernment takes practice. Sometimes the discomfort we experience is simply the discomfort of learning a new way of being. There is a kind of suffering that perpetuates more suffering, and there is the temporary friction that leads to freedom. There is a certain rub of restraint. But it’s that pressure that creates the diamond of wisdom. By not always following our habits, the mind gradually becomes familiar with another possibility.
I want to end with something Desmond Tutu wrote in The Book of Joy, his conversation with the Dalai Lama. During COVID, when many of us felt especially isolated, I often read these words:
“Much depends on your attitude. If you are filled with negative judgment and anger, then you will feel separate from other people. You will feel lonely. But if you have an open heart and are filled with trust and friendship, even if you are physically alone, even living a hermit’s life, you will never feel lonely.”
This is something we discover through developing meditative skills. We begin to see that it is the quality of the heart that determines how we experience the world. Our view is shaped not only by what we see, but by the state of mind with which we see it.
Thank you for reading,
Beth Sternlieb
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Join Beth Sternlieb and Matthew Brensilver for the Refuge of the Heart Retreat, 5 nights, coming up September 15-20 2026 at Big Bear Retreat Center