Hello, everybody. Good afternoon. And welcome again, dear friends. I want to thank you once more for joining today's or for joining our weekly online practice sessions. And it's a honor and a gift to be together with all of you and to mutually support our practice together. So I want to begin our session today by letting everyone know First, that due to a retreat that's coming up, something called the Genzo A Retreat with a Dogen scholar by the name of Shahako Okamura, that we're going to be holding the week of is August 10th through the 17th. So it's two weeks from now. We won't be holding online practice sessions on Tuesday and Thursday of that week. Okay, so that's not... this coming week, but the week after, the second week of August. So there'll be instead a 40-minute period of Zazen that starts at 5.30, followed by a short service.

[02:08]

So I want to give a heads up to people now so that they're aware of that, so they can plan accordingly. I hope you will also join us for Zazen. You're sitting together. Just know there won't be the usual darn net as part of our time together. So that's the first thing I want to say. And then the second thing is, as many of you know, usually we begin these twice-weekly practice sessions with about 25 minutes of zazen, or silent meditation, followed by a dharmat, or a short dharma encouragement. However, I'm going to do something slightly different today and instead begin with my dharmat as a way to offer something for you to explore during the meditation period that follows. And then after the meditation, we'll open up the room for you to ask any questions or share something that you've been practicing with right now. So what I'd like to encourage you to do is please make yourself comfortable. You're welcome to actually take a meditation posture and do Zazan while I'm speaking.

[03:12]

And then that will just help you to more quickly kind of flow right into the period of meditation that follows. So I'll be talking for maybe about 10 minutes or so. And then we'll go from there. Okay, so I'll start by saying one of the things I like to encourage people to consider whenever they sit down for zazen and meditation is to understand that zazen is fundamentally an act of radical inclusiveness. Think of zazen, meditation, as an act of radical inclusiveness. When we meditate, we're invited to fully acknowledge, witness, open to all our experiences, whatever they might be, even if they're unpleasant or unwanted. So this includes the full range of physical, emotional, and mental experiences.

[04:15]

And all of our experiences, especially what is, you could say, difficult or painful, maybe what has broken our hearts or our bodies or our relationships with others and particularly with ourselves, cannot be fully healed and integrated until it is seen, acknowledged, accepted, and fully understood. And this depth of understanding comes from understanding fundamentally that it's empty. all experiences empty of their own being. There's nothing separate here. It's just one unfolding flowing of existence. That everything is simply an interdependently risen, you could say, product of countless causes and conditions, right? So we might ask ourselves then in our meditation, in our mindfulness, how inclusive is my meditation?

[05:21]

How inclusive is my mindfulness? How wide is my Zazen? What do I leave out or ignore or turn away from, both in terms of internal experience as well as our experiences of the so-called external world? So rather than engaging in our habitual ways of resisting what is or of limiting or prescribing what it is that we're willing to experience, practice asks us to consider deeply how we might cultivate what Sharon Salzberg calls a heart as wide as the world. You could say a heart-mind as wide as the world, and even wider, as wide and as inclusive as the whole universe, right? able to fully receive, acknowledge, and meet the entirety of experience.

[06:27]

Not as a separate self, but just as the whole universe experiencing itself. So often when I give Zasa instruction, I use the analogy of a spotlight for the way in which we might understand how we can focus and widen our field of awareness to be more or less inclusive of experience while also maintaining a certain degree of composure and stability. So I think many of you or some of you may have heard me share this analogy before, but I really find it very beneficial. And I'd like to kind of go through it again. So mindfulness can be described as a flashlight, as a means of shining a light inward, seeing more closely what's inside.

[07:30]

Then we turn the light inward to study the self. So first, in the beginning of our meditation, we're going to set the intention to step inward, to take a pause from our everyday activity and instead stop for a moment, become quiet. In turn, our intention inward to develop awareness and stillness. So using the flashlight of awareness to see what's inside, to see more closely into, you could say, the dark corners, and particularly how reactivity might arise in relationship to those dark or unseen corners of our experience. But it is that we're resisting or pushing away or trying not to acknowledge in some way any aspect of our experience. And mindfulness meditation is shining a light onto ourselves to enlighten all of our internal territory. And as we do so, we might start to uncover some habitual emotion thought patterns that have become part of our way of engaging with the experience and engaging with the world.

[08:46]

And when we're able to illuminate these long-held habit patterns, then we can take the opportunity in the moment, right then and there, and we acknowledge that, to choose a new response or a new approach to meeting our experience. So imagine your mind as a spotlight with an aperture. But you can adjust to varying degrees of narrowness or width, depending on your need or your preference. So think of the aperture itself, the part that can do this in and out, focusing as mindfulness, tool of mindfulness, and the light or the luminosity as awareness. So mindfulness is directed attention to or attending of an object of perception of the mind. And awareness is the We call it the luminous knowing of or revealing of whatever it is that has entered the field of mindfulness, entered into the spotlight.

[09:57]

And our natural state awareness, I think of it as the capacity of knowing, of illuminating, of knowing what is, is ever-present, and it's without limits. And it's said, actually, this quality of knowing, Boundless knowing, boundless luminosity, it's brightness, right? There's no end to it. It's what's experienced when the lens or the aperture is open all the way, and there's no framing device whatsoever, right? The aperture just completely falls away. Now, it's helpful, particularly when we first start a meditation practice, to actually have a narrower aperture of mindfulness. of directed attention. In this case, we'll choose an object, for example, the breath, for the mind to narrow down to and focus on. And we continue directing attention in a narrow focused way on this chosen object, trying to stabilize our attention, trying to, you could say, stabilize the light, keep it where we wish it to be.

[11:12]

This is how we train the mind, train the spotlight, to focus on what we wanted to focus on in terms of our experience. So it doesn't kind of go all over the place. And if the mind wanders, say to a thought of the past or the future, some fantasy or some worry or something along those lines, then when we notice this has happened, when the light has kind of gone off from where we've directed it, this noticing is a moment of, you could say, waking up. And when we recap, we simply redirect the spotlight of attention back to the object in which we have initially set the intention to be focused on or to follow. So we keep doing this practice, right, until the mind stabilizes, until the spotlight stabilizes and stays focused, you know, for a long period of time. For example, we start with the breath.

[12:14]

And when we notice this, when we notice the way that the spotlight can stabilize, we notice with it comes a deeper sense of stillness and quiet and calm that kind of follows. That steadiness of the light, steadiness of awareness, has with it a sense of steadiness in the mind-body altogether. Now, perhaps after a while, once we've been able to kind of keep a steady focus or steadiness on the breath, we might choose to experiment with widening the aperture to include a wider field of experience. For example, the experience of the breath throughout the whole body, not just where it kind of enters into the body or in the chest or the heart, but throughout the whole body. Or you can notice the whole body as a field of awareness. And again, when you widen the aperture, the process is the same. If the attention wanders and we have difficulty maintaining light of awareness on the particular kind of body breath or area of focus that we've kind of been directing the spotlight onto for a period of time, then we bring it back.

[13:29]

Or you could say we narrow the spotlight, narrow the aperture again until the field of awareness stabilizes once more. So if, on the other hand, that we find that we can maintain attention and relative continuous contact or stability with the focus of our awareness, we might choose to widen the aperture even further, to include a wider field of experience. For example, maybe the environment beyond the body, into the room, or even beyond the room. So as we widen this aperture, this field of awareness, it takes off this quality of that kind of sky-like awareness, boundless, coming back to its original kind of form in which awareness, the field of awareness is wide, open, vast. And any objects such as thoughts, feelings, body sensations, or other phenomena are simply kind of witnessed or illuminated as passing through this wide open field of awareness

[14:41]

or luminosity. Everything is illuminated. And I'll just say this here, everything itself in time is known as luminosity. There's no separate object there that's being illuminated. What is seen is itself awareness, is itself luminosity. It's itself this quality of luminous knowing. I don't want to go too far down that road. So as long as our attention doesn't get caught on or involved in any of these phenomena or objects that appear in our awareness, as long as it can maintain a sense of stabilization, the aperture, however narrow or wide it is, has a stable quality to it, then everything's fine. It's a subtle easefulness, you know, a samadhi of experience. But if at any point in our mindfulness or open awareness begins to kind of get shaky and unsteady, fluctuating around the edges, then we can choose to narrow the aperture of attention once more to a smaller diameter, perhaps again the breath, and maintain focus there until we gain once more a measure of stability.

[16:09]

And when that happens, we can then, then once more, after that stabilizes, widen the aperture to take in a full range of field of experience. And when we're able to find equanimity or balance between mindfulness, what we also call a shangta, and awareness or clear seeing, also called a vipassana or passionate, then we're coursing we say in Zen and Shikantaza, the full expression of our Zazan. So I hope you find this analogy helpful for your mindfulness practice today, your meditation practice today. So let's go ahead and transition into the meditation itself. So if you haven't done so, I'd like to invite you to take your meditation posture, get settled, And as usual, finding an upright, attentive posture that best accommodates your body.

[17:15]

Again, this sense of giving yourself fully over to both the physical posture, but also a mental posture that is attentive and yet relaxed. So allow yourself to become aware of and connect with and relax into the present moment experience, whatever that might be. I'm going to ring the bell three times to begin the period of meditation, and then one time to end it. And as I ring at the beginning, please allow your awareness to kind of just take note and illuminate the full expression of the bell sound, including the sense of vibration throughout your body. So notice when you first hear it, notice its duration, And then as it fades away. And as usual, I encourage you to be aware of what is it that remains when the sound itself is no longer present.

[18:18]

So here we go. develop that same quality of attentiveness, the way that mind's aperture narrowed and focused just on the sound of the bell.

[19:38]

Redirect that same focus to bringing attention to the breath, to illuminating the breath, illuminating the sensations of the breath, or maybe the sounds of the breath, whatever helps you to be in contact object of meditation if the breath for you is not something that works as well. Something that helps you to just stay focused and attentive. And if you're following the breath, just breathe naturally. Allowing the natural flow of the inhale and then the exhale. It happens on your own core. Again, using the breath as a focal point for the flashlight in mind.

[20:39]

And seeing if we can allow breath to be felt as an embodied experience that's being illuminated with awareness. focusing the mind's attention in this way. We're helping the mind to settle and stabilize. We're using the breath as a touchstone for constancy. We're also giving the mind something other than our usual thoughts or habit patterns to attend to. Because it's our thinking that can make us feel more unsettled. tense inner actions usually. Given the nature that thinking has this quality of grasping and clinging, holding on to things.

[21:43]

So we simply allow that energy just to settle in something other than thought or an embodied experience of the bed. But keeping the aperture of mindfulness beginning of the meditation narrow enough to stay focused and stabilized on the full experience of breathing in. We've been breathing in, being ready in-breath, and breathing out, being ready out-breath. Sometimes it might even be particularly beneficial to focus on the space between the inhale and the exhale. You focus on that moment, and the inhale transforms into an exhale. That pause there for a moment, and then the exhale transforms once again into an inhale.

[22:47]

That even helps our mind to focus a little bit more the flashlight of awareness or mindfulness wanders away from the breath. You find it's become occupied with faults or worries or something else that's distracted. That's okay. Just notice that this happens. It's what minds have a tendency to do. They have a tendency to wonder. So we're retraining mind. So you notice it's just gently and without judgment.

[23:51]

redirect mind's attention back once more to where you wish it to be, to the breath, for example. And most likely, for most of us, this will happen again and again throughout the period of meditation. Notice we set an intention to follow the breath, to stay focused, to have a Take the degree of aperture, and at some point, the flashlight, the light wanders. You notice it, and we bring it back. Focus it once more, what we wish it to be. If you notice in time, the mind has a tendency to have become a bit quieter and settled in that its attentiveness to the breath has somewhat stabilized.

[25:09]

The flash light and the aperture kind of stays where you want it. You might wish to kind of explore by widening or opening the aperture of awareness to a wider field. Again, to include awareness of the breath perhaps throughout the whole body. So illuminating the whole body, the experience of breathing throughout the whole body. Again, in time, there's some constancy or sense of sturdiness, the aperture of awareness of experiencing the whole body as breathing.

[26:19]

You may wish then to explore widening the aperture of awareness even more, to include the space around and beyond the body, into the realm, into the grab spot. seeing how wide you can allow the aperture of the spotlight to become, how inclusive by the full range of experience that's being experienced in this moment. with a dimension of aperture. It's kind of like the sun shining on the entirety of the world of experience. Everything is illuminated. feelings and body sensations that arise and manifest in this open and filled awareness.

[27:45]

We're simply melted and allowed to come through. There's no need to grasp on and get caught by the event. Simply allowing our experience to pass through this open, luminous awareness. knowing that at any point, mind's attention becomes unsteady. Knowing that we can narrow the aperture once more to a smaller field of experience, allowing it to settle and stabilize there for a period of time, and then once we're ready, widen the spotlight again to be inclusive of the fullest range of experience

[28:54]

doing our best to stay inclusive, as inclusive as we can to the full range of complexity of the present moment, as it's showing itself to us. Now, continuing in this way for the rest of the period in silence. Thank you, everyone.

[42:30]

Let's take a moment to kind of stretch a little bit, adjust as you need. Roll your shoulders, your wrists, your arms. Just allow the body to come back into animation. We have about 15 minutes or so for you to share anything that you'd like to share, either... questions that you might have about something that I spoke about tonight, about your particular experience during the meditation. What did you discover? What did you notice? And what's coming up for you in your practice right now? What's alive for you? So this is open time for all of you. And Matt has put into the chat field instructions... how to raise your hand. You guys know about the blue hands, yeah, in the participant field? We all have blue hands. So you're welcome to raise your hand if you'd like to share something.

[43:35]

I see Michelle. Michelle Ferrer. Hi, thank you. You're welcome. I'm trying to find you on the screen. No, I'm on audio only. I'm sorry. Oh, that's why. Okay. Thank you for your talk today. Lately, I've been a lot more stressed out with a lot of changes in my life. And I realized that when I sit in Zazen, I can be very mean to myself when my mind goes into a thought. I've been trying to welcome it back. Like, oh, hi, you're back again, instead of being mean. But my go to is to be really mean to it and think, oh, you did it again. And just kind of be mean to myself. And then I realized that makes me even more exhausted. It makes me really tired of being mean to me because I'm trying to balance all these things. And on top of myself, I'm not making it on top of it all.

[44:46]

I'm not making it any easier for myself. And I mean, so how do I work with that? Because it seems really loud right now, especially that I'm aware of it. Yeah, it's often the case. When we finally become more aware of something, we hear it more. We see it everywhere, right? When we first become aware of our thinking, suddenly it's like, I didn't know I bought that much. You know, we purchased a new car and we see the same brand of car everywhere, right? We just begin to notice it more. So the best thing is to take up the... a practice of compassion, self-compassion, and really finding ways to offer yourself a compassionate expression, but also a voice. So I really try to study how am I talking to myself whenever I find that the mind wanders, right? So the mind isn't me, right? Whatever's going on in my thoughts, feelings, and body sensations aren't what I inherently am.

[45:48]

So it's just kind of conditioning kind of doing its thing. So I can just notice that and treat it as, you know, like a puppy. Sometimes we talk about meditation as training a puppy. So if you were to kind of, you know, gently encourage puppy, come back, sit, stay, and treat it with love and generosity and just a tenderness, knowing that this is what puppies do. They wander off. to get into trouble. And when we notice it, we say, stop, come back, sit, stay. But we do it from a place of deep care, a deep love, knowing that it's very likely that the mind's going to wonder again. So this kind of gentleness that we give ourselves again and again, finding ways to support that compassionate way of being with ourselves. And so I try to find words that actually are, you know, when I use self-talk to myself.

[46:52]

Just like, you know, okay, dear one, come back. Simple as that. And just find some term of endearment that really expresses a tenderness for you. And meet that one that wanders away with that same kind of tender compassion. with a sense of understanding, oh yeah, this is what minds do, they want to do, right? So the more we can cultivate that self-compassion and really find self-compassion practices, and there are many beautiful self-compassion practices around Pema Children, Sharon Salzberg, Tara Brach, Justin Goldstein, and there's many wonderful teachers that have self-compassion practices that we can try on. I would encourage that as kind of an addition to your meditation practice in some way.

[47:53]

Is that supportive at all? Yeah, I really like that you made my thoughts external to myself, just noticing how we don't really have... I think I want to have control over a lot of things, and I think... externalizing that and making it feel like it's out of my control and just being okay and accepting parts of that, I think, sounded different for me, so thank you. Yeah, not to personalize it, not to make a self out of your thoughts, feelings, and body sensations. That's truly what we're discovering. Thank you. Thank you. So I see Charlie... I believe it's keen or kind. Hi, Charlie. This is my first time sharing, so. Welcome. I guess I really enjoyed the analogy of the spotlight.

[48:55]

I thought that was a really great way to play with the focusing on just one thing and then kind of broadening out. But then I kind of thought about the idea of the efforting of creating this light of awareness. And then I kind of was playing with the idea of maybe the awareness is like a black hole. And so the sight kind of comes towards the awareness and not pushing the awareness out. So instead of an effort towards just naturally these sights and sounds and feelings in the body, they just come in if you're at that point where you can allow that to happen. So that was kind of what I played with in this meditation. And also kind of the idea of, well, it could be a single star or it could be like the whole universe, you know, coming into that awareness and into that kind of like

[50:06]

an idea of a black hole or something. If you find any analogy that really supports you in the practice of being as inclusive as possible in your experience, work with that. So the metaphor, the analogy of a flashlight or a spotlight and kind of directing, widening or narrowing the aperture to focus attention, in order to, again, that tension is into control experience, is to be able to, in time, be with as much experience as possible, as wide a field of experience with equanimity, right? So kind of what you were describing as this kind of black hole, you could say it's just this wide open sky, you know? So what helps you to have a wide open mind that includes all experience? as possible. So whatever works for you in that sense.

[51:08]

So I'm constantly looking for new metaphors and new analogies that help me kind of express my experience in some way that I can then convey it. So yeah, so continue playing with that, seeing what works for you. Thank you. Thank you. And Nancy Jane Andrews. This is my first time with you. I've been trying to, on my own, develop a walking meditation practice. And usually I go for about half an hour, 45 minutes, and I go outside on a similar route every day. every day. And I follow my breath. And I'm asking, I'm hoping that you could perhaps direct me to some other places where I can either read about ways to do this and deepen my practice, or maybe this is not a good way to start.

[52:17]

Well, walking meditation, you know, the Buddha taught many forms of walk meditation, you know, sitting, standing, lying down and walking. So walking meditation is a beautiful meditation. In Zen, we call it kinyin. You know, that's the name we use, and we also combine it between our periods of meditation. So sitting meditation, then a walking meditation, a short, usually about 10 minutes, and then a longer sitting period of meditation. You might want to... Google, go to Google. Google's a great place, you know. And Google just walking meditation. And I know not too long ago, a couple years ago, there was an article in Tricycle magazine, which is a Buddhist magazine online that had instructions for walking meditation. So I would just say, you know, Google walking meditation instructions. I have not a very good memory. So I know there's lots of books that also kind of, you know, talk about walking meditation. But again, the kind of effort is to really stay attentive to your embodied experience.

[53:28]

So focusing on the breath, focusing on the sensations of the body as it moves through space very slowly. Focus on your connection to the earth. With each step, just kind of raising the foot, the foot's moving through space. Notice the way that the body adjusts to accommodate this, you know, kind of moving forward. And then when the foot touches, notice what part of the foot touches to go out first. And then the shift of the body and the breath. And then again, the next thing. And you can do that. You can focus on just the breath, the breath throughout the body, the sensations of walking, and also widening the aperture to be aware of the environment around you as you're walking through space. But I would say first try to focus on the embodied experience of walking before you widen the aperture to take in the whole environment of walking. Is that helpful at all? Yes, it is. Thank you very much.

[54:29]

And walking meditation is particularly helpful, I find, when the mind is overly agitated. I find it's helpful to kind of move the body as a way to help it to the mind just to stabilize a little bit more. Thank you. Thank you. And Guy, where are you? There you are. Hi, David. Thank you so much. My question is, when in open awareness, how should we recognize when, or should I recognize when to focus in the aperture? again, if that makes sense. So what thoughts are the ones that I can watch come and go? And then do I wait until I'm fully engulfed and notice that it's taken over my entire awareness before? Okay, now I need to, you know, focus in or, or, or once I already see it trying to pull at me, should I already sort of pre, you know, focus in beforehand?

[55:44]

Is there any sort of cue for that in a way I think you need to experiment with it find out what what's skillful in that moment for your particular mind state and whatever the experience is it's going to vary a lot so there's no kind of hard and fast rule so it's a little bit like surfing I've never surfed so what do I know about surfing right but this idea of kind of being with kind of playing with right feeling the energy, right? And so you might notice just kind of the edges of awareness begin to get a little shaky and kind of this kind of clinginess. You could feel the impulse to want to follow the thought, follow the object, right? And you might notice that. The minute you notice it, that might be enough in and of itself to pull back the aperture and kind of open up and stabilize. But sometimes we kind of fall into it. We get caught by the thoughts. For a moment, we might need to touch... Use the touchstone of awareness of the breath.

[56:47]

Stabilize. And then again, widen the aperture. So just play with it. Experiment. See what helps in any moment, depending what the experience is arising. Some days you'll find it's very easy for you to be able to just to kind of, you know, stay on board. Right. Stay steady. Oh, sure. Equanimous, right? Right. It's always surfing. It's great, right? Other days, you're just getting tossed over again and again in the waves. It takes everything you can do to try to stay above water. That's the experience of the moments. So that's okay. That's what's happening. And it's not there's something wrong with your mind. You just notice in the moment, conditions for mind are such that some days it's more grounded, other days it's not. What can I do to help it to stabilize, to settle? A little bit more. Great. Thank you so much. That really helped. You're welcome. You're welcome.

[57:48]

So I see Mary has a question, and I thought I saw Ann's end up too at some point. Maybe it disappeared. I don't know. So how about Mary, and then we'll check in with Ann. May. I'm sorry, not Mary. May. I can't read so well on the screen. Thank you so much, David. Thank you. I've been here so many things about mindfulness and awareness. I know, you know, I shouldn't think about overthinking, but still, what's the key difference? For me, what I think of it as, and I was trying to describe it, I don't know if I did it so well. Mindfulness is directed awareness. It's a directed spotlight. It's focused. Mindfulness always has an object of attention. It's like the light of awareness is shining on an object deliberately.

[58:49]

That's mindfulness. Directed attention. Awareness is just the quality of light, the quality of luminosity itself. mindfulness is a skillful tool to bring attentiveness, to focus on something particular, and that the, I'm not sure how to say this, the essence of that is awareness itself, right? So that's one way that I use to kind of help. So, you know, often some practices, you know, really focus on being mindful of this, being mindful of that, you know, directing your attention to washing the dishes, directing your attention to, you know, how you're walking or how you're speaking and so on. Again, it's directed attention, right?

[59:53]

There's a focal point. There's an object of awareness. And in Zen, really the practice is more one of objectless meditation. So basically, the aperture is wide open, and all there is is the sunlight shining. And within that field, there are objects that appear, and they may be illuminated or known for a period of time, but awareness itself isn't necessarily focused particular or narrowed particular on one object. Does that help? It really helped. And then one more, just one step further is whether mindfulness is still associated with duality? Is it still, you know, concept? There is, because whenever there's an object of awareness, that's dualistic.

[60:56]

Got it. Thank you. Eventually what happens is there is no object. Everything itself is awareness. Right? So that's an experience too, right? It's like everything is the ocean. Every wave, every wave that appears on the ocean of experience is still the ocean. It just happens for a period of time to take the shape of. It's a modulation of awareness. Yeah, love it. There's no object. There's no separate thing that exists there. Okay. Thank you, May. Anne. Hello. You're still muted. There you go. Yeah, I did raise my hand, and then I started getting a lot of what people were saying, so I just, like, I decided not to, but then when you said that, I thought, okay, I'll... So, I mean...

[62:03]

So I'm just, you know, I'm at home, obviously, and I'm just doing this little bit of meditation, hopefully, you know, in the evening, but not always. But what I find is, and I'm probably the one of the best things you've ever told me is about the puppy and that you don't have to be harsh because that's, I love that, you know, and really learning it doesn't help. So, but within this frame of time, this amount of time, I mean, when I do a, like a one day, I never done, I'm not really hardcore. Well, most I've done is three, but the morning it's like all, it's just like, I, I think of it like guppies. They're just like, all the thoughts are just like shooting by. And then it's only by the afternoon that I can really get some peace, you know? So now I'm not doing that. I'm just doing like half an hour, you know? And there's not a whole lot of peace. Half an hour in the afternoon or half an hour in the morning?

[63:05]

Oh, I don't do it in the morning. I can't get up that early. Oh, I see. So half an hour in the afternoon. Yeah, in the evening. It probably helped out over the morning. But, like, so I tried. So, you know, I'm very hungry right now. So I was thinking about rice. And I was thinking about eating rice. And then I thought, well, no, I'm supposed to widen out. Yeah. Why do now just pull it back? I've never done that before. So I pulled it back and then I started thinking about rice in the world and rice patties and all the different types of rice and how I might prepare it. But I'm making a little balls. Should I buy pickled plums? I mean, it just, it really got, you know, pretty epic. And then it finally calmed down. But then there's something else. But I guess in this limited amount of time, it's hard to, I don't know. Because there's so many, I can't just, you know, not do my life, you know, so. Thank you.

[64:08]

Thank you for that. I want you, I would like to suggest you think of time as, there's no limited amount of time. There's always just now. There's always just this moment. So whatever the meditation is, this is this moment. This is the entirety of the meditation. So we may set a timer at some point and it may go off and somebody may ring a bell, but the meditation is always now and now and now. So this moment is a perfect moment for meditating, right? And so your mind was getting caught in lots of thoughts, a whole train of thoughts, right? There's rice and then there's what I'm going to include in the rice and how much rice I want in it. All that. So that's the way like we get caught on this train of thinking, right? And for many of us, it might be limited thinking. We just kind of go around and around and around, right?

[65:11]

And the minute we notice that's happened, right? That's a moment of waking up. Oh, I'm caught on the train. So in that moment, we can decide, okay, what do I do? I see I'm caught. The puppy has run off again. Who knows where the puppy is? The puppy's chewing on something. It's not supposed to be chewing on. It's yet again chewing on thoughts. Okay, puppy, I see you. Come back. Now, find something that helps to redirect the puppy's attention. So if you don't want it chewing on your shoes or thoughts, give it a different bone. Give it the breath. Bring the mind. In this case, it's very helpful to narrow the aperture and give it one thing to attend to, and not a thought, not a concept. Not a mental construct, but a sensation. Redirect mind's attention to an embodied sensation. That's how we ground the mind in the present moment. Not a thought about the present moment, but an embodied experience.

[66:15]

So that's why the breath is such a powerful tool. Because you don't know the breath unless you experience the breath. That's an embodied experience. Experience that sensation in breathing. Use that as your touchstone, the physical sensation of the breath. That's when I say, get out of your mind into your body. The minute you notice, thinking, thinking, rice, yada yada, oh, there it is, thinking. Get out of my mind into my body. Find the sensation of the breath, wherever you notice that most easily. For some people, it's... You know, just a sensation of air entering into the nostrils. For other people, it's kind of in the chest, the sensation of the expanding, contraction of the chest, or the abdomen, or maybe down in the heart. But the felt, embodied experience of it. So that's the aperture. Until the mind, as you notice in time, can quiet down.

[67:19]

Because the puppy, you know, that extra energy, it's subtle. You know, after a while, the puppy's kind of like, okay, I'm here. I'm going to sit here for a bit. And every now and then it might twitch a little bit, but it's not really kind of wandering off too much. At that point, you're allowing the puppy a little bit more rage. Like, okay, you know, I will, for lack of a better word, give you a little bit more leash. So, and then see what happens. Okay. And maybe the puppy will stay. Maybe it'll be fine. And maybe it'll kind of like, oh, I'm going to go run off again. And then you bring it back. And you've noticed, it's wonderful that you've noticed that your mind is particularly kind of busy in the morning and that it's actually more supportive for you to sit in the afternoon. For some people, it's actually easier for them to sit in the morning when they first get up because the mind's not quite so engaged yet. You know, so finding what works for you, what's kind of a beneficial time of day.

[68:22]

And you can also experiment with bookending. Start the day with just five minutes of meditation. Just five minutes. And then do your longer period later in the day. So you can experiment with that. Is that supportive in any way? I mean, I guess the key difference is like when I way back when I first tried to do this, I mean, I was counting breaths. Like, and then, and then I find myself even when I'm in a stressful situation, I, I start counting my breaths in my head, but it's like, I'm still like hanging on. I don't, it's not working, you know, cause I guess it's still in my head, I guess, but really going to the body. That's part I don't, I haven't gotten it. I know you said that before, but I guess, yeah, it hadn't. Yeah. It's just this habit of counting, counting. That's going to get me back. Yeah. Counting is a concept. It's a mental construct that can be helpful. Yeah. It can help us to follow. We kind of take the mental construct of counting and we marry together with the sensation of breathing.

[69:27]

And that's a way to help the conscious mind to stay embodied with direct experience. But for some people, that's too busy. Like, I don't like counting the breath. It's too busy for me. So I just want to stay with the actual sensation. But it's a matter of skillful means. What do you find is helpful in this particular moment in meditation? And that can vary. So all of us, as we practice, we're discovering how to be our own teachers. Really finding out what works for us in any particular moment in meditation. So I'm just offering you some things that I've experimented with and I find helpful and I've heard others say, try this, right? But you get to try it on and then you figure out what works for you. And different things will be needed at different times. So there's no one size fits every moment of meditation because that's just, we're very complex human beings. So we're going to have a very complex way of engaging with our meditation, you know?

[70:33]

So- Yeah, this idea of experiment. See what works for you. It's highly encouraged. That's very helpful. Thank you. I'm glad I asked the question. Yeah, I'm glad you did too. So I thought I saw another question, but it's disappeared. And I noticed that we're past our time. So, excuse me. I want to thank you all again for being here, for our practice together. It's been a joy once more. And I hope you continue to experiment with this idea of what is it to explore this aperture or spotlight of awareness. Narrow focus, slowly widening it to a wider field of experience, and then maybe pulling it back to as wide as possible. And seeing what helps to stabilize that light. We begin to notice when's the first moments that the edge of it begins to get shaky, you know, and gets kind of pulled away into something else, pulled into an object of the concept of something like that.

[71:39]

So, again, thank you so much. So, appreciate our time together. So, there will be a Tuesday session next week, which is the 4th, I believe, but then the following week on that, I don't know, what is it, the 11th? That week, There won't be a Tuesday or Thursday session. Not just. It will just be meditation. Who could say that? There will be meditation. Okay, friends. Take good care. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye. Thank you. Thank you. See you later. Thank you again, Matt.

[72:48]

Thank you very much. Thank you. Good evening. Have a good evening. Bye.

[72:54]

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