Well, again, thank you for the comment. I noticed on the board there that Rev. Anderson, one of the teachers here, is doing something with tango, you know. And if you read just the blurb, okay, it's like finding the stillness in the movement and finding movement in the stillness. So they're not really two different things. So sitting meditation you could think of as tango, you know, if you really understood it. But it's very hard to understand silence and stillness because we're such an agitated, kinetic society that we just have a really hard time with what looks like nothing, you know, like non-doing, stillness. We get impatient. All sorts of mind states come up that we don't like that are reversive. That's the most powerful reason for doing it. Because now you're cultivating intimacy with all of those aversive mind states that run your life anyway. Tango or flamenco yourself as much as you want. You'll still run into aversive mind states, right? You won't go

[01:29]

as well as you thought, you know, or whatever it is. So the power of recognizing aversive mind states and having a myriad of ways to recognize them and handle them and hold them and not get caught in them is profoundly liberating and can't but influence the spontaneity of your life. One reason I called my book Full Catastrophe Living was because it was a phrase that Zorba, the Greek, used. And Zorba was the quintessential get-up-and-dance in the face of anything, you know, success, failure, you would get up and you would dance. It didn't matter. Okay. And so that's really the heart of it. And you have it already. And so does everybody else in the room. And we each have it in our own way. So this is not an either-or. This is, in some way, looking in the places you most don't want to look. And the way you can tell is that's where the most

[02:30]

resistance is. So the challenge is, do you want to just go like where you're most drawn, kind of where it's easiest, but still your humanity includes all of it? Or do you want to look in the places where you sort of, in some way, most try to go gently, lovingly, with tremendous kindness, not some kind of, you know, heavy-duty, macho, punishing trip of any kind, but simply attending to the basic apparatus that gives rise to dance, thought, speech, breath, everything. So it's kind of the ultimate adventure or the ultimate dance. And you don't even need a partner or the whole world is the partner or your own best partner. You're keeping, you know, you're learning how to be your good company to yourself and sit with the impatience, frustration, boredom. But it's not about sitting. It's about living your life

[03:36]

as if it really mattered. So in a sense, it doesn't matter what path you take, as long as you keep your eyes open and come to your senses. And then the hard times will be, you know, your teacher as much as the transport of time. I want to ask a question about the center stage and the wings. My question is, are the wings just sort of intrinsic to the nature of the multiplicity of, you know, that we are, that we have multiple mind states at the same time, or is it, you know, not in a sort of, you know, super goal-oriented way, but is there something about concentration in center stage that's deeper in the practice, and not sort of,

[04:45]

you know, like... Good question. Very, very good question. Can you relate to that question? Did you hear it about the wings? I said something about featuring the breath center stage in the field of awareness, let everything else be in the wings, but then gradually we invited everything else to be like center stage, so there's no, there's nothing that's not center stage, there's no center really, there's no periphery, it's just one seamless field of awareness that can, that immediately knows whatever is arising in it. So the question had to do with, well, what about this center stage and the wings, and is there some virtue in just cultivating concentration center stage on one object? Is that right? Yeah, yeah, I mean, is the multiplicity in the nature of, I mean, are the wings part of the nature of mind, or is it about... No, the wings aren't part of the nature of mind, it's more like a skillful way to keep certain things in abeyance, so that you can develop concentration. It's not like the things that are happening off stage are any less important to you

[05:55]

than the thing that you decide to feature. It's more like, and this is one way to think about it, if you want to study the stars through a telescope or a radio telescope, you have to establish a stable platform so that you'll be able to find the star or the planet that you want to look at, and then sustain the look long enough so that enough light comes through, so that you can see it, photograph it, measure the spectrum of it, and so forth. So you need that stable platform. So now, if you want to use the mind to inquire into the nature of mind, if the mind is completely unstable, it's like putting your telescope on a waterbed and then trying to find something. You shift your weight and the telescope goes like this. So that's what happens when we have not cultivated mindfulness or concentration and stability of mind, is that we can't really look at the mind, because as soon as we look at it, we get carried away by it.

[06:56]

Have you noticed that? I mean, it's like, and then awareness, like five minutes later, we remember, oh yeah, wait a minute, what about the breath? God, the breath, where was I? And then you begin to realize, just as William James did, the mind is continually coming here, there, everywhere else. So it's very hard to develop enough stability so that you can actually aim it, never mind sustain the looking, beneath the surface of appearances. And that's what we're doing when we attend in the present moment, is we are actually being with the full spectrum of an experience, rather than just being caught in the surface of it. Being caught in the surface of a thought would be believing the content. Believing the content. And then spinning out on the content, so that rather than just one thought and then it comes and it goes, there's like a hundred thoughts about whatever it is. People mentioned various things this morning. So there are two aspects, really, that are involved in cultivating

[08:00]

mindfulness. One is cultivating a certain degree of stability of attention, so that awareness can be sustained. And you do that by featuring one aspect of your experience, the breath is typically a very good one, center stage, and just stay on it. You could do that for the rest of your life, and it is an unbelievably powerful practice, and gives rise to everything else. And the Buddha himself taught that, called the Anapanasati Sutra, in the Buddhist teachings, and it's like everything, all of the Buddhist teachings comes out of just attending to the breath. On the other hand, you can expand the field of awareness, and as we did this morning, rest in a much more spacious field of awareness, kind of like a big mirror. And the mirror has the property of whatever comes before it is reflected. The mirror doesn't say, well, go away, I don't like that, I want this, I want more of this. The mirror doesn't cling to what comes or goes,

[09:02]

and it doesn't advertise or pull for anything. It's just like that. So when we speak about the field of awareness, it's not really a mirror, but it's more like, you could say, an electromagnetic field. But anytime something moves in the electromagnetic field, it is immediately recognized and known, without thought. Just like a bird moving through the sky, or a cloud, or something like that. So shakantaza, or clear present wakefulness, which is in the title of talk, this workshop, is about resting in that kind of open, spacious, luminous wakefulness. Well, it's easy to say, just rest in awareness. Easy to say. It only turns out to be the hardest thing in the world. So that's why we cultivate it. But at the same time that it's the hardest thing in the world, it's infinitely available in any moment. All we need to do is get out of our own way. And the way we get out of our own way is by noticing how much we get in our own way.

[10:08]

And then, just by virtue of noticing, that noticing, that aspect that knows, is awareness itself. And it's always here. What does disassociating mean to you? Yeah, right, okay. And what does meditation mean to you? But present, being present, not leaving, not checking out. So, can you check it and see whether you are disassociating or just being present? How would you know the difference? Yeah, that's why this workshop is called the body door, okay? Because in a sense,

[11:30]

if you can be with the body, then you're not lost, okay? You're grounded. And that's the first thing the Buddha taught in the four foundations of mindfulness, is mindfulness of body and breath. It's like really grounded, really grounded, and something you can always come back to if there's any question about disassociating. And you're already, you're rehabilitating yourself, you're establishing residence once again in your own sphere, and learning how to be at home. And what are the qualities of being home? At home, well-being, relaxation, comfort, and a sense of peacefulness, not being disturbed. Loss of hope, being at home? Feels like loss of hope to you? Say more about that.

[12:38]

If you're at home at the present moment, do you accept what is going on and what you have? And can you bring your gift? And there's no need to explain anything else. Because you're already complete? Ah, okay. That doesn't sound like loss of hope. That sounds like complete fulfillment, if you're really at peace with things as they are. What I don't want is for us to get confused on this point, because being at peace with

[13:44]

things as they are doesn't mean that you shouldn't act in your life to make changes when things as they are are harmful, or causing suffering to yourself or others. So it's not some kind of passive acceptance that is not at all wise or discerning. That would be ignorance. That would be highly toxic. So it's being able to really discern what is going on, which is very different from judging, like, don't like, but really call a spade a spade, and then choose to move in a direction that is nurturing wholeness, kindness, wholesomeness, as opposed to damage, more suffering, more pain. And that's a choice we can make virtually moment by moment by moment. Yeah? Well, I wouldn't say just. It is keep coming back to it, but just, it's very hard work. But, yeah,

[15:25]

in a sense, what choice do you have except to rest in awareness in those moments and maintain openheartedness, you know, but not get caught up in your own anxiety. Usually what happens in a relationship is somebody gets anxious, so you get anxious. Have you noticed that? Somebody gets angry, so, hey, let's help the situation out. I'll get angry. I'll take it personally. You can't say that to me. And there we are, fabricating, once again, a condition. And then we, of course, have to attribute causality and blame. So you made me angry. I don't think so. We have to take responsibility for our own participating in this upwelling. And so very often we're in complex relationships with people, but we're not attending to how easily we fall into these horrific habits, many of them genetic. So, you know, like, it almost feels like, oh, my God. You know, you see it in your

[16:26]

brothers and sisters. I know it's true for me. It's like, you know, it's just, oh, my God, the curse of being, and then you plug in your name, the last name. It's like, because it's in the generations. It sometimes skips a generation, but, you know, that stuff, that deep genetic karma. And when the proverbial stuff hits the proverbial fan, that's the first thing you'll come up with. You'll turn into your mother, or your father, or your sister, or your brother. And you'll hear stuff come out of your mouth that you just will not believe. Yes. Okay. And does he want to be helped? So titrated to that extent.

[17:29]

But you can see that that's a yoga. You know, that's a yoga. You don't want to overshoot. You don't want to undershoot. And in order to do that, you have to be very, very, very sensitive. And then let's say he lashes out at you because you overshot. Does that ever happen? Okay. Too bad. I have to choose another example. It doesn't matter. But is there ever a time when he kind of finds fault with you? Okay. But do you take it personally when he does? Okay. So there's your answer. There's the answer to the question you just posed. Try to be right here with it all and be a little bit more transparent in terms of taking it personally. You don't have to latch on to it. It's like you can't, that kind of thing. Just like,

[18:35]

okay. This is really hard work. It's much easier to just sit on a zafu. To be in relationship, I mean, it's really hard. And to maintain moment to moment, spacious awareness. When you do it for days, weeks, months, years, and decades, what starts out feeling like really effortful, and in fact, people call it deliberate mindfulness. We're cultivating mindfulness, but we're doing it very deliberately. I'm going to meditate now. I'm going to go through my period of mindfulness. I'm going to be mindful in daily life. I'm going to tell myself and remind myself to be mindful in daily life. Keep telling myself to come back to my breathing. All of that scaffolding is absolutely fabulous. But you will find more, the more you practice, the more you will find that it's just kind of like happening effortlessly. That it's just more of the way you become. And then when you fall in a hole, guess what?

[19:43]

You acknowledge that you fell in the hole. You lost it. And you just climb out of the hole. And then you could beat yourself up for the next 10 minutes or 10 years about that, but you don't have to. It's a choice. And then just move on. Next moment. Fresh. Yeah. Sense of sight. I don't know, like, I don't know how, but, like, you know, I'm not, yeah, I can notice things.

[20:45]

I just, I was trying to figure out, like, labeling stuff. I don't know. Of seeing, yeah. Well, it's, yeah. Why? So, how do you know that? How do you know things are changing? Yes, so you're already doing it.

[21:58]

No, I guess it's just, you know, I get up, you know, I get up, and I walk around, and I don't know. I guess, well, what do you want? How would it have to be for it to be satisfying, or really seeing, or whatever you want to label it? Yes, well, it is, and if you have any intuition that it might be valuable, keep doing it, because it's something that grows.

[23:12]

I mean, take somebody like Monet. He spent a lot of time seeing. In fact, there's a famous story about Monet, that he was, he was lying in, if you've been to Giverny, he's got these huge gardens, which is where he did a lot of his painting, the water lilies and so forth, and part of the garden fronts on the sidewalk, and so somebody was walking by, a neighbor, and he was sitting in a chair with his eyes closed. And the neighbor says, Ah, Monsieur Monet, I see you're resting. And he says, No, Monsieur, I'm working. And then another time he came by, and he saw Monet, and he had a whole bunch of easels out there, painting the pond at the different stages of the day, and he moved from one to the other as the light changed.

[24:14]

He said, Ah, Monsieur Monet, I see you're working. And Monet said, No, Monsieur, I'm resting. So, to cultivate eyes of wholeness that can drink it in without having to have it be a certain way, and to see the light and the shadow and the form and the color and the movement and everything else, your eyes already do that, but they tune it out all the time. Start here, I'll give you an assignment, okay? Start looking for, and really I mean looking for, reflections in your life. Walk down a city street, and just see how many reflections there are that you tune out. Because they're everywhere in glass, and most of them are distorted, so that they're not actually like mirror-like reflections. They're all sorts of phantasmagorical distortions of whatever is being reflected in windows and car windshields

[25:20]

and everything else, and car bodies. There are reflections everywhere, but we never see them. Why? Because when we see a car, we don't see the car as it is, we see our idea of car, oh yeah, Honda, we don't actually see that car. This is a wonderful exercise to do with children. When you're parenting, for instance, parenting, in my view, is one of the most powerful forms of spiritual practice, of meditative practice, mindfulness practice, because it's like you have live-in Zen masters, and they're going to push every single button. And at the most inconvenient times for you, just when you thought you were going to get a moment, you're going to get a moment, all right, but it's not the one you thought you were going to get. So can you see your children for who they actually are, as opposed to who you want them to be, who you think they are, who you're afraid they are?

[26:23]

Very powerful practice, and not easy. So since you say this is your first day of trying this, just keep practicing, keep seeing, keep attending, and see where it leads, see what happens. Yes? Related to that, I just had this thought of, I think a problem for me is, when you just see or just are, it's like you're in a no-man's land, there's no reference point, it's just pure experience or pure feeling. And the mind wants to get something out of it, or it's feeling in some way, or maybe it's important, so I'm going to get rid of it. The mind comes in and initiates. Absolutely. That's a wonderful insight.

[27:26]

So knock it off already. Give yourself a break. You see, you're actually acknowledging that you have the capacity to rest in awareness, with no center and no periphery, and no floor, no place to stand. So float, or fly, or just be, you know, beyond all concepts. And then, yeah, the mind will intrude and say, well, you know, how can I earn money at this? Or whatever. Whatever. I mean, it's shameless. But then when that too is recognized, then after a while, when you get really sort of more stable in the awareness, those thoughts that knock on the door don't actually intrude, because the awareness is so stable that it's immediately recognized, and it's thought-intruding, and it's just like touching soap bubbles.

[28:31]

It arises, and you touch a soap bubble, and what happens to it? Poof. Okay? So thoughts coming up in the mind, another image that's used classically is water, bubbles of water in a boiling pot. You know, they nucleate at the bottom, and then they come up through the water, and then poof, like that. So you just watch the thoughts in your mind. You know, in this sort of spacious field of awareness, thoughts, they have a beginning, they have a middle, and they have an end. Every single thought you will ever think, no matter what the content of it, there's a beginning, a middle, and the end. Can you be there for it? Try to live to see that. That's what Kabir said. Try to live to see that. Then all of a sudden, its content won't have a grip on you the way it did. It'll just be one more event arising in the field of awareness, one more inaccurate event of what, you know. I mean, you know, if you have two or three thoughts in a lifetime that are really profound, you're ahead of the game.

[29:32]

A lot of the thoughts that we have are just like, they're like the plague, you know. They're like little secretions, little secretions of this and that, much of it clinging, wanting, that kind of thing. Yes? I just want to acknowledge the prior to this year's meeting, that is, some of the things I was supposed to have picked up, the labels to it, I now know as awareness. I used to carry a camera on trips, especially, and I didn't particularly care about seeing pictures once I had brought them back and resolved them, but I liked what happened to me when I carried a camera back and looked at the pictures, and things didn't happen to me, I was very successful. I used to have to look before I took a new class or read a new book, and I now realize that perhaps that was successful.

[30:36]

Awareness, that kind of thing. Absolutely, absolutely. It's cultivating the art of seeing. And of course, when you try to draw something, or even photograph something, it's very humbling. It's very, very humbling, because it's revealed to you in a way that before you try to draw it, you realize you don't even see it. There's a wonderful story in Joseph Goldstein's book, One Dharma, that's of the naturalist Louis Agassiz, I believe. And when he trained his students, there's one story of, he made the student draw a fish. But first he made him sit with the fish for like three days or something like that, and just look at the fish, before he let him draw it. And every imaginable emotion came up.

[31:37]

Because who wants to look at a fish, a dead fish, for three days? But when he drew that fish, he really drew the fish. And if you know the book Zen and the Art of Archery, a wonderful book, the teacher made the student draw the bow for about three years with no arrow, before he gave him an arrow. Just draw the bow. And be able to stand at the point of highest tension with no effort and no aim. When you can do that, then maybe you can have an arrow. So, yeah, it's very much that. And then if you develop it foreseeing, well, what about the other five senses? Can you develop it for smelling, tasting, touching,

[32:39]

hearing, and knowing? And they're all one. It's not like we have these six senses. They're all happening in real time simultaneously. And that's called synesthesia. I mean, the multiplicity of the senses all happening simultaneously. And there's some very interesting studies or reports of people who are missing a sense. There was a big article in the New Yorker about this, maybe a year ago. Some guy who has been blind from birth, but who has an incredibly developed proprioceptive sense. So he feels where he is in space to a remarkable degree. And he has the capacity, if I remember correctly, to, through the feeling, create a world that's like felt, but not visualized. So he doesn't see it the way we see it, but he knows where things are. He decided that he would repair his roof one season,

[33:50]

and he did it at night. Drove the neighbors nuts. He was up there on the roof at night, because he didn't need to see. And he didn't fall off. So the senses, we have the potential to extend the senses remarkably. It's said that the aborigines, you know, could see the moons, the large moons of Jupiter. Their eyesight was so keen. And in fact, if you have been following the literature on neuroplasticity, the brain actually changes in response to repetitive training. Repetitive training. So for instance, the right motor and sensory cortex

[34:52]

of somebody who plays the violin or the cello, with the fingering being the left hand, and that's controlled by the right side of the body, that the spatial representation of the fingers in the brain of a violinist, an accomplished violinist who's been playing his or her whole life, is much larger, just spatially, just in terms of the amount of size it takes up in the brain, as somebody who plays the trumpet. Or say the other side, where it's just the bow, which does require some, but nothing like that. Or London taxi drivers. Do you know the story of the London taxi drivers? There's a part of the brain called the hippocampus, which is associated with many, many different functions, part of the limbic system, but part of it is synthesizing multiple kinds of information. And it turns out they did a study where they just measured the size of the anterior and posterior,

[35:52]

that's front and back hippocampus, in London taxi cab drivers, and in people who are learning to become London taxi cab drivers. And London's kind of like a medieval city. It's a very complex street map. It's not like Minneapolis, or even San Francisco. And it turns out that the licensed London cab drivers have a very large posterior hippocampus and a much smaller anterior hippocampus. The novice cab drivers have a much bigger anterior hippocampus, so the ratio is very different. And as they learn the street map, their posterior hippocampus gets bigger and the anterior hippocampus gets smaller. So there's a suggestion here that the brain is continually remapping itself. And there are also examples from people who've lost limbs and so forth, and the brains that are attendant to those limbs and phantom limb stuff.

[36:56]

And so it actually spreads out to subtend other regions of the body. Christopher Reeves, who was paralyzed in his horse-riding accident, has actually recovered 60% of sensation, where he had no sensation from the neck down, none whatsoever. And for five years he had no sensation. Then he started in on a particular kind of computer electronically stimulated repetitive exercise program, and he started to recover sensation, and blowing the minds of his neurologists and rehab specialists, because he's actually recovering motor function and sensory function. They've never seen this happen in a C2 paraplegic. And not just him. It turns out there are now like hundreds of paraplegics who are going much further in the direction of recovery, rehabilitation,

[37:56]

than anybody had ever thought possible. No one knows what the limits of this are, but it's interesting that the nervous system actually responds in these kinds of ways and grows itself in the central nervous system in ways that were never thought to be the case before. And I mentioned last night that some of my colleagues and friends are studying Tibetan monks in particular, but we plan to get around to all sorts of meditation practitioners. But people have logged tens of thousands of hours of meditation practice, and their brains are just very different from regular folk. And so the brain seems to respond to repetitive training of one kind or another. And so even handling intense negative emotion under stress, you can actually improve the way you handle negative emotion under stress simply by staying present and practicing,

[38:57]

and coming to your senses, applying mindfulness at the point of contact every single moment that it happens. Now, of course, you won't, because who can remember to do it every single moment that it happens? But when someone comes along and gives you a ticket or whatever happens, those are moments where... and you'll find you get more and more of them. When you're in the shower, can you be in the shower? When you're in bed, can you take a few moments to actually realize that you're there? Can you be in your body? It's like never-ending. You eat a lot. Can you actually taste what you're eating? All of that. I would like to actually take just a few more questions and then practice, because we're rapidly coming on to the end of the day, and while this is a form of practice, I want to weave it in with other forms of practice. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, these studies with the monks are not randomized trials,

[40:04]

because at the moment they're so far out that we're just getting data on them and comparing what they can do individually in various sessions and then how they compare to each other. So they're not randomized trials. Yeah. Yeah. That's a very interesting question. Did you all hear the question? He's a graduate student in neuroscience

[41:06]

who has a desire to actually connect this with meditation practice, his own meditation practice, and also study it. So he was asking about, back in the days when I started this stress reduction clinic and mindfulness-based stress reduction in the medical school in 1979, which was a very long time ago, how did I deal with the environment that was not particularly conducive or friendly to that kind of thing? And I would say, in response, the short answer is that it was not unfriendly, for amazingly so, but a lot of it really depends on how you frame things. So, for instance, I didn't call it the yoga and meditation clinic. I called it the stress reduction clinic. If you know anything about Buddhism, often the word dukkha is translated as stress.

[42:07]

Dukkha means suffering, anguish, dissatisfactoriness. The first noble truth is the truth of the universality of dukkha, suffering. So we call it the stress reduction clinic. Who is not going to relate to that? I mean, the universal response is, well, I could use that. Where is that? So already you set it up in some way to succeed simply by what you call it. Then, when they say, well, what do they do in that stress reduction clinic? Oh, we do meditation. Oh, well, yeah, that makes sense. You see what I'm saying? Whereas if you called it the meditation clinic, people would roll their eyeballs. Or even the mind-body clinic in those days. Now you can use that terminology. And I like to point out that the words medicine and meditation sound a lot alike. Do you know that? Have you noticed that? Do you know what they mean? Okay, well, the root in Latin is medere, which means to measure, which means to cure. But the Indo-European root is to measure.

[43:10]

And it's like medicine is, it's not measure in the sense of holding up an external standard to things and measuring how long something takes or how wide something is, but more that everything has its own right inward measure. Kind of akin to homeostasis. So meditation is the restoring of right inward measure when it's disturbed or deranged. And meditation is the direct perception. What did I, did I say medicine is the restoring of right inward measure? Did I say that? You don't know. I just did. Before I said meditation, okay. So medicine is the restoring of right inward measure when it is disturbed. And meditation is the direct perception of right inward measure. Seeing what's already here to be seen, etc. So in terms of the neuroscience, I think if you can find a vocabulary for it that will not trigger a lot of, you know, airy-fairy kind of, you know,

[44:20]

reactivity on the part of people, like it's just a lot of nonsense. And part of it is just learning how to speak about it in ways that are sensible, talking about the studies that are already published about it. And just that you should know, we just held a public meeting with the Dalai Lama at MIT. I don't know if you know about that, do you? Yeah, the Mind and Life Institute. And we're going to hold a summer institute specifically for graduate students in neurobiology and others like yourself. So you might want to come and. Oh, good. Okay, well, great. So, but I had surprisingly little resistance for any number of reasons. But ultimately it turns out to be mysterious. And then the way I like to put it is before they knew what happened, the University of Massachusetts Medical School was more well-known by about a factor of a million for meditation and mindfulness than for anything else that was being done there. That's not the case anymore because a very profound discovery happened at UMass

[45:28]

a couple of years ago that I'm not exactly sure what it's called. It's iRNA, and I don't remember whether it's interference RNA or whatever, but some very famous, very interesting discovery of the regulation of proteins with RNA. But aside from that, they're known for mindfulness, and they have no idea how it happened. And they're not averse to it either because, you know, it's now seen as part of medicine. It's not like alternative medicine. I mean, I always hated alternative medicine, New Age, all that stuff. I mean, this is like just part of good medicine, recruiting, mobilizing the inner resources of the patient as part of the treatment. It should be a participatory medicine where inner and outer are brought together,

[46:32]

and that's what we're developing. So there was one more back there. I'm trying to remember what I thought was the first part. I was trying to say that I had a way of identifying this, but I'm trying to remember what it was. I find that when I'm reading about patients, I'm more like seeing them as a mental health care, or I see them as a medicine, so it's like, Well, this comes back to what I was saying earlier. When you say too painful to be mindful, what do you mean?

[47:42]

Can you be there for part of it? For small stretches? Or do you try to just obliterate the time by distracting yourself all the time? Until you... Yeah. Well, I don't want to seem facile about it, because this is, as I said, very, very hard work, but it hinges around that issue that I brought up earlier about is the awareness of your pain and pain. So, in a sense, what you're experiencing is a time of healing or a potential coming to terms with things as they are. And when you don't want the things to be as they are, or you have aversion to it,

[48:58]

then there's a tendency to sort of just contract or fall into the hole, but it's really also an opportunity to be with contraction and aversion. And that awareness that can hold contraction and aversion and the suffering and the pain is actually free from, in the present moment, from those elements, even though those elements themselves are very, very, very much present. So, in a sense, it's like a balm. It has the potential to actually soothe or heal what is going on in the present moment, if you're willing to step into it. But it's very counterintuitive, because you most want to just get as far away as possible until it's over. Then I'll pick up my meditation practice, but it's a tremendously missed opportunity. And you don't have to do this like gung-ho all at once. You can do tiny little stretches of mindfulness and repeat them many times.

[50:04]

So, just like, can you be here for one in-breath? Or one in-breath and one out-breath? Say, an hour. Then maybe two minutes. We did a couple of three-minute meditations. Did you feel like they were too fast? Or too short? You see, I mean, it really is outside of time. If you're willing to do that, okay, it's like, well, half hour would be better. They're okay. String a bunch of three minutes together and you've got 30 minutes. But if you're kind of waiting for something to happen and you're kind of just plodding on as the clock moves, well, that's not really meditation practice. So it's like, right in this moment, right in this moment, right in this moment. Tired? Take a little break. Actually, who knows that you're tired? That awareness? Right here already.

[51:07]

Who knows that you're hurting and can't stand to practice mindfulness? That awareness? Do you understand what I'm suggesting? So it's like, it's never not part of the repertoire, but it requires a kind of featuring. It's amazing how fast the day goes. Would you like to actually do some more formal practice? And we can't even see what the weather's like here, but how about we go out in the garden and we practice a little walking meditation and then come back and we have a final sitting together and we'll close before four o'clock. Would that be all right? So now, here's the assignment for going out there. I won't spend a lot of time on it, but if you're new to walking meditation, there are a lot of different ways to do it. Now, you can do it fast, you can do it slow, but what I suggest is that you get down into the garden and just walk at whatever pace you want to,

[52:11]

but it could be fairly slow, where you're just with every step and you're experiencing the foot making contact with the floor, with the ground, and then the shifting of the weight onto the foot, the back heel comes up and you're walking. Or go up to something in the garden, a flower, a tree, and simply practice standing meditation and just drink in what's in front of you. Don't sight-see, but see the sights. Okay, just look at the hill, look at a tree, look at a bush, look at a bird, and just stand there. Okay, and then I'll ring a bell to bring you back, but just to say, you know, it'll be about 15-20 minutes at the most. So don't slow walk out to the garden, because you'll never get to the garden.

[53:13]

And then when you hear the bell, come back at a normal pace so that we get back in this room in time. Let's keep up a seamless continuity of awareness even as we come into the hall and take our seats. Sitting in this moment as if your life depended on it, so that there's nothing particularly lax or casual about it, but it's also not rigid, but simply being in your body in this moment. And finding that degree of expansiveness, of awareness that feels appropriate to you in this moment,

[54:16]

and settling into it. And we practice for no reason whatsoever. So without any attention, there's no agenda other than to be awake to this moment. In touch with the soundscape, the airscape, the smellscape, the bodyscape, the mindscape, the nowscape. Not pursuing anything, not rejecting anything.

[55:24]

Understanding that in some way this sitting here this willingness to stop, be present, drop in, is a radical act of wisdom, a radical act of self-compassion. A radical act of love. A radical act of compassion.

[57:50]

A radical act of love. Thank you. Thank you.

[59:20]

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So in the remaining few moments of this sitting, seeing if you can really bring

[60:51]

the full spectrum of your attention to the present moment. Allowing each in-breath to be a new beginning. Each out-breath a complete letting go of what has been. A dying, so to speak, to the future, to the past, and an embrace of the full dimensionality of this moment, which is often so opaque to us, or so covered by feelings or thoughts, vexations. And if any of anything,

[61:57]

any moment that we have spent together today or last night, resonates in some deep way with you, or even in some, not necessarily so deep way, but that there's a resonance here that may be related to what brought you in the first place, then this is a potential garden for you to nurture and nourish, to explore and to adventure in, keeping in mind that there's no one right way to practice. But finding your way with a capital W,

[63:02]

not driven by greed or aversion or deluded ambition. But perhaps by a deep yearning to be, to recognize your wholeness, to reconnoiter and map the terrain of the outer landscape and the inner landscape of your mind and heart and body and life, and live in a way that embodies authenticity

[64:15]

and wakefulness. Not merely for yourself, but to be of, in some way or other, be of service, contribute to the flowering of genius and intelligence and creativity and beauty in this life, in this moment, and in this world. And perhaps coming to see stillness and silence as profound allies

[65:26]

that can be cultivated. And the awareness that we already have, perhaps not merely an ally even, but ultimately the truest manifestation of who we are, and nourishing that. Moment by moment, breath by breath, day by day, as if your life depended on it. And I'll come back in 20 or 30 years and we'll see how it's going.

[66:32]

Taking a moment or two and just allowing your eyes to open as you maintain this awareness, and through sensing and drinking in the presence of everybody else in the room. Recognizing that in some profound way we all share the same heart and the same mind, and perhaps the same yearning for happiness, to not suffer, for peace, for wisdom,

[67:51]

for compassion, and for being a part of something larger. Where we can feel seen and heard and known and belong. The community of all of us, of all life on this planet. Expressing itself in the briefest of moments we call lifetimes. Lifetimes. And that has the potential to give rise to levels of creativity and beauty

[69:12]

and caring of which we do not dream. So in closing, I would like to simply express my deep appreciation to all of you for coming here today, for exploring mindfulness practice, and I leave you with the hope or the wish that perhaps something that you saw or heard or felt or sensed or knew

[70:20]

at some moment today spoke to you in a way that will have its own resonances and its own lingering, and that you can continue to in some way or other nurture, feed, and rest in the shade of And that's what we call the discipline of practice. So thank you for your attention, for your intention, for your beauty in this.

[71:26]

The Navos say, and I like this very much, may you walk in beauty. May you walk in beauty and know it as you already do. So thank you, folks.

[71:46]

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