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SF-01852
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drop in
can the experience of being here this morning
and welcome
well come
one and all
and before we begin just
reflecting for a moment or two one
how would you stay you come to be here this morning
can you hear me at the back
and
just resonating with the energy that it has already taken this morning could get the body from whatever it was too green gulch
and so taking a few moments and simply
settling
dropping in
realizing that your intention to be here
he's already
approximately realize
what giving yourself over to simply
potentially being completely here
and letting go of whatever the motivating factors were that have brought you
when attending for a moment or two to where we might call the soundscape
the fact that sound the spaces between sound
are always presenting themselves continually to our years
and to the
consciousness
associated with the ear
that know but effort is required
happen to be present
not so much striving
to listen or for reach out to sound
but the simply allow the sounds
to come to you were of course they already are
sounds near sounds for our sins
little literally saw
delicate
so just sitting with hearing for a moment or two
huh
immersed in the air and therefore in the soundscape
whether sounds and the spaces between sir
huh
huh
i'm noticing that the in the arising on
the sounds they are met in a certain way
in awareness
and recognized known
even before
thinking
well up
have we start to interpret in may my experience
does the bear actuality of hearing itself without preferring one sound to another
about seeking anything
simply resting in attending
in hearing
just what's here
to be heard
huh

huh
huh
huh
huh
he's then sir
the sounds
whatever they are carried to us through the air
bathe
us
in the soundscape
having our awareness for a moment to to to include the experiencing of the air
around the body
cameroon
her letters were here drinking and the sounds we
realize the world so
bathing in and drinking in
breathing in
air
coextensive with with with my coffee air escape
the fluid
in which we continually
move
are embedded
and upon which we
the pan for
every and in particular this
very
life
giving
vital
bruh
so allowing the awareness to hold
the entirety of the soundscape and the air escape
how would we as well as in way
you care to see those is too
which of course they're not
in any fundamental way
when rather than identifying with sounds with the air or with the brat
home with the here are older the nowhere
have any of this
resting in the knowing the hearing
the briefing itself
in other words in
wakefulness
in
awareness itself
in being itself
he the only moment
it has ever available
to us
this one
huh
huh
huh
huh
huh
when you're ready if you care to allowing your eyes to open for that good now drink in
whatever presents itself
who the year
three i
and allowing that awareness to be coextensive with the year when
the breath awareness
the air awareness
including the skin
he just allowing this for where else to
when fold moment by moment for the entire day
even as we move in another barrier
aspects of what we will be engaged in encountering and over
so welcome
it's really nice to see you all here
and let me just suggests that if you care to come up closer
you're welcome to and a bike ah it's really nice to see a full house on the sides you know
people just going for the cushions
ah
not that there's any virtue in sitting on the question but you're welcome
ah if you think there is virtue it
but say could be a problem but
but sitting on the cushions is no problem at all i'm in any only do it to the degree that if you're sensible for you to do it so i don't get into
hello i'm an absolute agony but they're on the questions or i bet he found the christian you can always get up and sit on the chair or for that matter lie down on the floor if you want to this space for this time is our own and we can be in it and you're invited to be in any way
sitting standing walking pacing wire down
sitting on chairs
so the subject of this gathering today workshop and you'll notice i'm reading this
coming to our senses the body door into chicken taza and queer present wakefulness those wooden terms don't mean anything to you don't worry
how many of you are my top last night
i'm glad you were there i guess i wasn't a hidden of in a certain way the whole pok was about ah how easy it is to to not see what's actually going on and i think i completely embodied that unwittingly and without knowing it to my ult
ahmet chagrin
i sense that the time that was some little energy that i wasn't really understanding and i get home i get home to here at the end of the evening look at the description and the title of the talk and i actually stated last night that i was giving a talk that was the title of this workshop coming to our so
is instead of american karma american dharma and evolutionary perspective on how he can heal ourselves in the world through mindfulness
so
i guess you get in every moment exactly what you need you know noted to wake up and it's not that i would have given a very different talk
because really i've discovered over the years that i'm always saying pretty much the same thing
no matter what avenue i start from
but
but it was actually quite humbling to realize that
that i hadn't for various reasons bothered to look and just made an assumption about what the subject to talk was so i had two hundred and fifty three hundred people there last night who came with one expectation and i was the only one the room that didn't know it and here i am talking about how easy it is to not know something in finance
receive something
so
winston churchill once a you know observed that i said i had i've had to eat my words many a time and i have found the diet to be quite nourishing
and while it's not a question of eating my words i don't disavow anything that i that we touched on last night it was a perfect object lesson on how easy it is too uncertain way be slightly out of touch
especially when you get into thinking that you're in touch
where that you know what you're supposed to be talking about without may be checking
yeah and i always check i have no explanation for why that happened both of them and i mean i can create millions of 'em but
i'm not inclined to do that but to simply say that in a way it's the
the heart of what what what i was talking about anyway and nations can do that you only have an opinion about who they are what they are and
and their own goodness and value of what they doing in the world than just be completely off and everybody else knows it but we don't know it it's just read the foreign press some time
so
so that was very interesting for me to reflect on last night
the subject of this workshop is in fact coming to our fences and they're intimately related i mean the the fact that this is happening in america that there is and centers like this in america that people practice in monasteries in america that people devote
using years and use of their lives to doing this kind of work in places like green gulch
is very unusual and fairly new it's like really one generation
and so there is an interesting karmic thread that's moving in america that in the direction of dharma and the real challenges is a dharmas come to every country in asia it goes to a transformation and becomes
part and parcel of that country it's not a skin graft it's not an add-on for the street and so i challenge in the west now is to understand what american or western
dharma actual years and take of course from their traditions an honor the source in every conceivable way but at the same time
not fall into some kind of period parochial understanding of what what practice really is that it's it's son
we really digest that we really in by bit we
live it
so how many of your brand new to meditation this is like your first exposure
welcome great so you have no idea what i'm talking about anyway
ah welcome especially to you folks basically what i am talking about is a living our life as if it really mattered while we have it to live and if you start to pay attention you'll notice a it's unavoidable that we wind up noticing that ally the time
we're kind of zoning along on auto thinking we're pretty much present but it's mostly thinking and then all sorts of things can happen which are really are outside the realm of our immediate awareness because with too absorbed in what we think is happening
and so we can actually work at practice reclaiming our capacity for being
fully embodied in our lives as they were unfolding and as i was suggesting in this brief meditation practice
although it's become something of a cliche it's nevertheless
i'm you know
the crunch of her to believe that the case that we only have moments to live
we think we have forever but what we have our moments and a lot of em like spill over the dam and our last was because we are much of the time is owning along as they said on autopilot and out of touch
if you start to pay attention to
where the mind is from moment to moment of a lot of the time you'll find it it's in the future
how many who would say that
worry is a major part of your life experience just worry just raise your hands if those thinking
we practice worrying we get really good at it
and what about blaming yourself like attributing things that have happened to particular causes and then beating yourself up everybody do that i noticed like last night that that was like i was right for that i wanted to like how could i possibly not look at the program
see what i was supposed to be talking about since i was the one that gave it that title in the first place and and because i really wanted to give that talk at the zen center
so you know when it comes to see at a point that yeah you can do that too but it really is not to be sort of taken personally
micah was like just happened
so no need to be anything but generous with yourself and maybe laugh and smile and realize how easy it is to miss what's right in front of our faces the whole theme of last night i showed for those of you weren't there i showed a lot of slides of things changing in
pictures
and of
many people actually never saw what was changing in the picture you have one picture another picture flashing on known as the same picture but one thing changes between the one thing in the other and it's unbelievably hard to see even though it's right in front of you
so that you can actually you know look without seeing and the same is true you can listen without hearing anything
we're eat without tasting
what touch without
being touched at all or know that you're touching
or
get caught up in your expectations of what you think the title of the talk is and make that the reality or anything else and so know or think you know without knowing it all
and even said last night deniers is kidding around i said you know know none of the women have any questions
said something about well think your knowing and not saying you know i wish somebody had actually said to me hey john about the talk that we came for her
but you know you were too kind
yeah
thank you thank you i did almost
i almost did and you know it's a funny thing when you're teaching
even if you do know what the title of the talk is you know before the talk you have an infinite number of ways that you can sort of painted
and by the end there to talk you've got to talk that you gave
all the ten thousand possibilities collapse into the one that you have
so people that were how is your talk now
the plus you can see minus you know and then you sort of like you have some idea that you could impose on it you know i mean we're so conditioned to do that with grading ourselves or whatever but the fact that the matter is that it's beyond that it's just what it is
and we are so conditioned to want to judge and frame everything in one way or another that we satellite cells with incredible burdens and part because we take everything personally
so thank you for your observation about that and the fact that the matter is that you know i as i said i i always say the same thing so it doesn't matter what i title would you know but except that there are nuances around it and and so there were certain things that i just realized in my own little grasping mine that i could have done quite
differently if only i had gotten up on the stage realizing what i was what everybody else was therefore ah yes
that's that's also possible and i'm not saying this in some way i'm not actually even bringing it up as a mere culpo or you know sort of an apology i'm using it as one more example because there is a tendency to always put the person who's sitting up here on something of a pet
and say well
and it's very humbling when you start practicing mindfulness because you're not looking at anybody else's mind
you're looking at your own mind than you take a deep gulp at times and realized my god
it is so easy to be off it is so easy to actually be blind
even though you see and when i was studying with this korean zen master one of the things he used to do here this incredible then stick carved out at some completely demented distorted piece of work you know if you've never seen as thick like this and when he would give dharma talk
this is sonsini in something maybe some how many of you know about him or seen him or incompetent
nobody anyway
and he had a very unusual way of speaking he never bothered to learn english he just made it up as you went along which made it much more interesting than if he spoke english so he would take this sense they can you hold it up this is how we begin as dormitory just hold up as and stick and then shouted the audience they go see this
and then they take it the bang it right down on the table that was in front of them a piece of work you know sort of the surface into
do you hear this
and you know what you're hearing a talk that begins that way it's like you know do you see this well of course i see it is what do you think i am blind or something what is he talking about do you see this
and then bang it down on the tables and do you hear this year this i mean what are you doing to that table you know it's like don't you realize that somebody's property
ah
and and there he'd already you know case made case complete you see but you have all these are the hey nice thick when do we got this thing i think i'd like that is thick like that
things would go better if i was like had to stick like that and
or banging them on the table you know and this cascade of thoughts about like doesn't he realize you know i mean
but that was the whole point that we never just really see because this cascade of thoughts comes in
liking disliking this opinion that opinion or hearing cascade of thoughts come in why did he make so much in a single course we can hear
but the fact that matters we hardly ever just
we hardly ever just here
and we're and we are hardly ever just here
most at a time where kind of here and the little bit somewhere else
and if you some that up over a decade
you can miss a lot
you can actually miss what's most important
which was what i was trying to demonstrate last night in wedding and button unwitting ways namely that you can see see these things that on the slicer right in front of her eyes and it takes a while to see them if ever once they pointed out to you you'll never not see it again in that in that picture just never not
see
so
we can actually use what is available to us to cultivated greater intimacy with the unfolding of our lives and it turns out
as i said last night there were only six things happening at any one moment from the point of view buddhism you're only six things ever happening so that's not that many things to keep track of
seeing smelling a hearing tasting touching
and then knowing
and the knowing is important to you won't see you won't hear you won't smell you won't pay so than knowing has the neat contact be completely a in touch with
the gates through which perception happened and both outwardly and inwardly so you can call it the landscape the soundscape the air escape the mindscape the body skate
in a lot of time with
i really hope yeah
not at all

yeah
yeah right
oh my god
better
but sounds like you
already understand
so thank you for that observation and yeah i mean lots of people rush to meditate they've gotta get to their meditation class so rushing to get to be where they already are in a minute
so this is actually a hard one for us to learn because everything in our lives is really conditioned around getting someplace else
yeah

yes well i mean that i will have a number of things to say about about it how many of you really want to practice in your lives but it just so hard to do or so annoying when you do it
okay so this is a strong motivation to set a habit and is this something that you have practiced from time to time or

the morning
right
right so like pretty soon you have liked for five hours of meditation practice to do before your ten hour work they had he lived with room for your life yeah so the short answer right now is it's all your life you can be there for all
of it and that's the real practice real practice is not sitting on your bud like this for twenty minutes or an hour and twenty minutes although as you are suggesting there's something of value and you've tasted it that's why you want it because you've already tasted that if you can arrange your world so that you plunk your body down
for a period of time and just give yourself over the present moment without anything else happening and without having to do anything or be anywhere then that in some way is profoundly a restorative and and frames the whole rest of your days
unfolding
the that's why people live in monastery everything in the monastery is oriented around
mindfulness everything every sound you know when they hit them mud talking the the crackers and the bells and you don't need a watch here because you know the bells tell you what time it is you know it's time for sitting time for walking time for eating time for cooking thankful working and god
arden whatever it is it's like the present moment is completely available in the real practices can you be here for
yeah so that when you're in the garden and nothing on god i wish i were in the zendo and then you're in the zendo fantasizing about the garden
so you know you can always wind up being someplace else say it's always better someplace else and that's why the formal practice is so important

first of all when you're exercising if you go the gym in your regular exercise person and k you can turn that entire thing into a meditation practice
k mean to be there for it
but it's very easy to go the gym and be completely mindless
not even in your body i mean just look at the number of people exercise with something going on in the end of the room and know i'm going to put the body on the treadmill but the mind is gonna read newsweek
and you see that they have those plastic things that go over the treadmill so so that you don't have to be there while your body is you know doing it several big thing
haha
a wonderful
lends itself
okay
well they forget about the almost you know if you if you if you intend for it to be meditation than it is so it's more a question of are you willing to show up with that kind of spaciousness and attend to what's happening and then you know i sometimes think
it it's valuable to throw out the word meditation altogether
because when you are sitting like this and you think i'm meditating his little bit of a problem with that
and i'm meditating oh yeah what am i supposed to do
three then
be thou
watch the mind wander get on back to the breath there and so you're giving yourself a continual stream of a commentary and commands about what is actually unfolding
you know so you think that's meditating or is that dude riding herd on yourself in on giving yourself lots of instructions
yet that's totally necessary to do that and that's what i refer to as scaffolding near with night
we need supports of various kinds in order to and it's ironic in order to be where we already are and be awake to him
so the practice has that element of kind of riding herd on ourselves as a kind of third person and giving ourselves advice about set up a little straighter get back to the breath feel the breath deep in the body and when you know somebody's guiding the meditation they're doing it for you
you know leave the driving to us in my greyhound
ah and that's for all fine well and good but at a certain point it's important to just see
just here
yes no
so sometimes i say to people in the mindfulness-based stress reduction classes or with it will ever be because this is often their first exposure to meditations by like they spent six or ten years in a monastery and the they come for a stress stuff and that does happen to but for the most part
the very new to meditation practice and say listen
best thing is to just give up the thought that you are meditating all together and just be here
that's why the zen people like to call it just sitting which is a
translation of on taza just sitting nothing more
it's hard to just sit it's it's hard to just sit as it is to just see what it just here because they say well you know could you turn up the birds a little bit more and the little bit down on the walking on the platform you know his psych that was a great minute that would have been at great meditation if only the birds with more co-operative
it
you know i'm talking about like if we were in an aviary than where are you know what why did he even choose hearing when he has hardly anything to hear
so the mind is always wanting to improve on things you know if only i had this like great situation then i'd have a wonderful meditation
but the situations never really great so it's very hard than to meditate because it's always the wrong time
get something better to do but when i get finished with all of that then i'll meditate with by then i'll be exhausted
so in some way it's good to throw out the thought i'm meditating and and maybe even just think of it as another yoga posture this is very slow
three hours
okay of yoga posture
in
the tibetan tradition
i recently learned that there's a whole sort of vocabulary associated with his option practice which is and of what they called the great natural perfection they have such colorful names for the meditation practice catch up be just sitting and as to be the great natural perfection
tis great
but the the characteristics of the great natural perfection now that it is first of all undistracted so the you know meditation is all about paying attention but paying attention is something that when you start to pay attention to it sounds very hard to pay attention
have you noticed how many have you notice just a short sitting and i didn't say anything about bringing the mind back how many have you noticed that it was very hard to stay i'm hearing that the mind went off into one thing or another we're very hard to stay on the breath or the touch with the air for the sense of the body you noticed that raise your hands again on just
yeah what was the mind doing and you know speak what was the mind doing
a little louder
thinking of a dream the night before
so kind of reminiscing yeah
neck pain
strategize is trying to strategize and what that one
oh okay
ah right ok so he you are sitting on the cushion it saturday isn't it yeah you're not at work strategizing about work shameless the mind could just like this just who just do this forever all of our minds yet
ah
move-in okay right
anybody else notice yeah
oh yes that would be serious
haha
anybody else
not a what what did you notice about the mind where did it stay on the breath or this the hearing yeah
going over an early argument yeah that's a favorite that's a classic
so do you see that in the way we are continually distracting myself
it's like the the ideas just stay with say hearing gay i expanded a little bit but let's say just stay with the hearing more the breath okay breath is great cause
there's no you can't leave home without it
it's better than the american express credit card
it's portable goes everywhere it's intimately related to emotional
fluctuations in the heart and mind you get agitated the breath gets agitated
ha
so we just give ourselves a task i'm going to sit down and i'm i'm not going to call it meditation and you know but i'm going to just a to the breath
and before you if your strategizing citing is something better than the breath
some argument that came up and you know so
the mind is like that in the next moment it will be something else next moment it would be something else in the next month so we are continually distracting ourselves and interrupting ourselves from an intention that we ourselves formulated i'm just gonna city
that is nothing wrong with that that is just the nature of mine
the untrained mind
minds are just like that
they tend to wave a lot
with this or that have you noticed that it's either this or that
and it hardly matters what the this is where the that is it's gonna be something that's gonna come up trip you catch you up a absorb you and just like oh what about the breath it's a good thing the breath is fairly automatic because if our lives depended on us actually being in touch with the breath we'd have been dead a long time ago
no matter how important the breadth is we just like forget it the mind is just like incorrigible it just refuses to settle down
he fuse it's always got someplace better to be so in a sense you know when when you talk about say of the army corps of engineers
diverting river which they did with the mississippi river you know at some point they diverted it and particular kind of way so that it would be less flooding
you
you changed the course of your diverted well that's what we're doing with diverting ourselves continually with distracting and diverting also meaning entertaining myself
when numbing ourselves were anaesthetized ourselves with this constant chatter can it's just the nature of the untrained mind to do that but at the same time when you start to practice in this way whether you've been doing it for fifty years or fifty second
there's also one very interesting thing that is immediately observable and that is that sooner or later you know that you diverted yourself put it that was just to put it that way somebody knows that the
mind is gonna that's interesting who it will know who is that
you you haven't used just a pronoun you start to look
add that it's like who's hearing
who's seeing
first you can see me and say well who you and then you say your name what's that
the heart yeah but the heart
the heart
he isn't hearing the heart is pumping and with the physical height
would you see any name any word is gonna be an adequate
because you know you can say well my heart but who's saying that
so ultimately you know we don't know to mr
so so much of our life is actually a not knowing
but we have this capacity for awareness which is just extraordinary we can be aware of not knowing where aware of how easy it is to become unaware
and that's the dorian
awareness itself
so the challenges can we actually cultivate deep intimacy with what is already completely at our disposal little times except the we distract ourselves in divert us
ah
william james who is the founder of american psychology made a very interesting observation about this and eighteen ninety ah
in his book principles of psychology he said the faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention over and over again is the very root of character judgment and will no one is compass sui if the had it not in other words you out of your mind if you can't bring you know if you can't
of bring back a wandering attention over and over again and you're really out of your mind because it's always somewhere know
no one is compulsory if that how you haven't not an education which should improve this faculty would be the education products laws but disease you to define this ideal than to give practical instructions for bringing it about this is like obvious that he never heard of like what the buddhists were up to for twenty five hundred years
because it's like it's all based on watching the wandering mind and then bringing awareness to it and in the awareness you already back you don't have to actually lasso the mind and bring it back to the breath because the breath is and what's most important it's the appending that most employer
it's the awareness so we can easily get into the object of attention and that's part of the scaffolding we'd pick out objects and we say i'm just going to stay on this object of attention for the next half hour the next town and they say like okay this me watching the breath do itself or the mine come and go
but what is more accurate as perhaps is to say awareness is simply here
and then goes and then it comes back and it goes in awareness could hold anything it could be the breath it could be the body it can be sounds in besides smells tastes anything but without awareness none of that is available to
ah and then when the mind kicks in and starts creating stories of one kind or another it's very hard to see what's actually happening because we far prefer the story of what's happening to what's actually happening so we create these stories and we live in the story some how many of you have ever had the story flow through your mind i'm inadequate
they will either
that's a story that you're telling yourself and if you tell herself you if you tell yourself that a lot and you know it's not just bike i'm inadequate then new marshal evidence for it
right and you can bring my yeah i mean
you can marshal evidence for real evidence for it gave a whole talk on a different something
a you can beat yourself up over the head the beat yourself up over and over and over again for things that happened and then create a big story around that and none of it's actually accurate it's only accurate with degree but it's not the whole story the whole story really can't be told the huh
story can only be manifested it's like your life and do you realize how many people love you and accept you more than you do yourself have you been in that situation where like there are other people on the planet that really love you and care about you but but that's just because they don't realize who you really are
if they realized to you really i then they'd realize how inadequate you were
have you ever had that experience that can just sort of feeling
so there's so many different ways and we can get caught with that we can get caught in the story of me
and coming to our senses would mean literally and metaphorically sort of getting simpler not creating all the story but just being the knowing being but knowing that you already are when you see you are already seen them before you have to philly and all zen stick when to where he got it
that's really nice that's all thought but in the moment of seeing is just the same in the moment of hearing is just the hearing

and if you spend the rest of your life hearing you will never be any better at it
then writing this moment because your ears already do this
and your awareness already is perfect
in this moment
in the next moment nice bell ha or i don't like that bell so much or too loud
i'm thinking pores in judging pores in emotions arise and and we get the story
do you catch my drift
okay so let me come back to the tibetans for one moment just to complete that line of things we were talking about non meditation they have they have a a phrase or a technical term that's called nine meditation that happens when you get through with all the meditating
the great natural perfection is giving up all the meditating and resting in non meditation could call it just living
but it's a particular kind of non meditation it's undistracted
undistracted so that's easy to say okay now be undistracted
and then within five microseconds you'd distracting yourself k so that requires a certain kind of working out
the the the attention muscles
practice practice practice mine goes off bring it back microsoft bring back often
back and you can stabilize your attending and get much more familiar with it so that like any breath will carry right
into it in no time because it's never not available to us it's not like oh if i get good at this and i come to design center for the next twenty five years then maybe before i die i will wake up
if it's not about now
in it's not done
that doesn't mean that
if you spend the next twenty five years
cultivating this intimacy that it doesn't deepen and many many different forms and many many different places that you might do that but there's no one right way to do it and if you choose somebody else's way you'll be miserable
the challenges in so my finding your way with the capital w
so undistracted and then they have another term on fabricated
i'm fabricated with damn name
i'm just looking at this audience and trying to judge like the average age i grew up in new york city in the fifties and so i was a by young adolescent in new york city and
it wasn't it's crazy i think as it is now but it was pretty tough like you know it was like everything was a challenge and and for teenage boys the way they challenge each other is like kind of and kind of to bang into each other like billiard ball so you're not going to chest that chest or whatever it is in on site
verbally as was well as physically
on purpose and then you challenge the other person you wanna make something of it
usually followed by another word you wanna make something of it
and i come to realize like this this is a very advanced and training actually doing this kind of thing that that in fact you know these are this is like dharma combat because if you don't take it seriously and it doesn't have to be banging chests are punching or sunlight that
you could just be saying something fairly uncomplimentary about your mother which was a very big favorite
so you insult somebody's mother and then see if they wanna make something of it
now there's a way of being transparent enough in this teenage new york dharma combat
where like you know it just goes right through you you know that they said something just dastardly about your mother and you just don't take the the cock you don't bite
and they see that and it's totally cool you don't have to make anything of it but if you have a seizure how dare you say that about my mother
you've already made something of it in your mind
and then something else is gonna happen as a consequence
usually fairly violent
and that's the way we grew up in new york city you wanna make something of it deep deep insight into fabrication
because fabrication means making
and with fabricating all day long
you wanna make something of
he get it i mean what is it that we aren't making something of the story of me why i'm here today and i'm curious about why you're here today i want to hear and but like you know
we're continually fabricating this or that the story of like my trajectory toward self improvement enlightenment well being health
and i'm not character caricaturing any of it i'm not putting any of it down i'm simply saying that when we start to pay attention we observed that a at a time we're creating this universe that's slightly
inaccurate
i'm no good fairly inaccurate statement i'm inadequate
i'm in so much pain
oh you know this novel
can you feel those self statements as kind of nails and a particular kind of coffin
and they are self fulfilling prophecies if you believe them so thoughts are unbelievably powerful because they make a reality
make a reality
so undistracted on fabricated non meditation will be just sitting
don't make anything
you can go home now
an awareness has when one and awareness has that quality awareness itself christine awareness is simply not fabricating anything but it's knowing fabrication when it arises is not distracted at diverted but it knows when the
the impulse to go off comes up and because it's spin stabilized in some way
you can actually rest in the awareness itself only it's inaccurate to say you anymore
because there's no point in making it personal because awareness is in person
it's just knowing
hence the phrase be the known
that you already are
so you don't have to get anything acquire anything strive will get rid of anything because none of it is the pet is necessarily toxic or harmful even very very afflict of emotional states because when they are recognized when they are seen when they are known and you don't get caught or built on them then you are
already free
it's true that they have an emotional tone and over time the more you nourish the awareness rather than being caught and that emotional time the more they were actually wither on the vine and you just outgrow it you take things less personally so it just blows my mind that we were doing that as teenagers in new york city it's like it's it's just hide
donna combat
with no awareness whatsoever of its relationship to a dime
but very much a kind of ponting around and i guess teasing isn't some way the same thing that if you bite your dead
if you don't bite you already free is the other person's mind that's waving why should you mind wave as well
do you do can you feel that can you sense it
and it doesn't happen at some future moment that happens right now but the more there's an emotional edge to it and you have like a little seizure about you can't do that to me or i am i'm horrified by what i did myself
and then you judge it and condemn it all that extra what happened happened and sometimes we have to really own it yeah was unwise it was harmful
to myself or to other people and then the it awareness of it is already free of it
so here's here's an exercise how many have you found that just that very short period of time that we sat and we're going to sit more but will stand up for us to the it's not total torture how many have you found that pain arose in the body or discomfort arose in the body anybody
so the challenge but arrested a day does more pain arises in the body haha just joking
yeah
the challenge but earth to the day bring awareness to what somebody is calling pain
let it be just a sensation
embracing awareness embracing sensation and see if the awareness is in pain or suffering
so that's like homework for the rest of the day and we'll talk about let's see if the awareness itself is in pain or suffering and as just as true for an emotional
ah
whirlpool
what eddie
if you can embrace it and awareness just put the welcome mat out for anything
awareness itself as a potential to be
untouched by
so therefore free now liberal already liberated it's the only thing that
is imprisoning is our own
a version not wanting it to be that way or her own and grasping after because we want more of or whatever we get like buddhists the buddhist of very very

graphic and down to earth in their choice of terms were describing how the mind works
and you can be look on the lookout for what they call the three poisons the the things that poison the well of the present moment
they are greed
can agree it's a pretty heavy work you know
but they just such as burgess plane i mean greed can be like just one thing something but if there's a greedy element to it like grasping element of this concrete so you can be little greed agreed medium sized greed
but to recognize that it of our base of eds green hunger how much of your hunger is greed
we saw well fed
but we get hungry
start to look at that one know it was very often it's the mind that gets hungry and no amount of food is gonna satisfy
and in this society in particular
you know we haven't huge issues around food and body and body image and eating disorders and all of that a lot of it of course is due to trauma
because we live in unbelievably violent and an unbelievably disregarding society and so it's no wonder that we sometimes feel like were inadequate because the carrying round enormous wounding
but the core
even in the face of huge wound is untouched
free
what carries the scars
but often we don't know that so that part of the biscuit so they talk about greed clinging grasping they also talk about hatred not one thing they just call it hatred or anger in also pushing away like a version
and the third poison collusion thinking you know when you don't
thinking you know when you don't
or making it into black and white so you know it's all one way it's all the other with a good people there the evil people
do you know what i'm talking about scientist whoever it is their the evil one because it de nos were good
but what about looking at our own shadow fight
because
human beings for the most part or wired up the same it's true there are like there is severe pathology at the extreme
but for the most part we're wired a pretty much the same but how we wind up creating mayhem violence harm i mean it's not just you know those people that the extremes that is doing that i mean look at family life
very often we're not careful we're winding up harming the people that we love the most in the last month either by omission or commission why cause a lot of them will do with the wounded were living in our own world that we fabricate ourselves and do better conform to my view of how you should be especially fear
one of my children
get it
you know so we often don't even see our children because we're seeing idea of them what about your part same thing
very easy to fall into the habit of like all i know who you are because we've been living together to someone but that's a form of violence
to make assumptions that the person has to be a certain way into be able to relate to them because then the who grow he can go
so let's take a few moments in yes

comes
can everybody here at the back know try to let's let's agree that will speak as loud as possible maybe even stand up because the the beauty of working in this kind of away is that if everybody here is what everybody's saying there's so much wisdom in what everybody's saying that it's much more distributive than if it just comes from me
i think sometimes about how mindfulness
that you're a lot of feeling just one percent
you just want to provide for just a gesture so
sometimes i feel it it's a anger comes out training comes up that going back to the breath is like pushing it yes there are way
making for example anger
the object
yes i'm aware of calories in my body and staying with it absolutely do not know that i do not know oh well that's a wonderful question so let me just say that you're right on target and what you said yeah i mean you can be up your teaching because yes the whole point is
that the breath could be used as a kind of escape and and if you get the meditation instructions wrong at the beginning or that you have a very big stake in not wanting to go certain places because it's just too emotionally painful you will use the breath is a nice little hang out
you know so that you never have to actually go near your rage
because rage is pretty terrifying
and that's just one emotion but there could be many so the real practice is not about breathing the real practice is about awareness of what is arising and so of anger is arising
then it can be entertained as a welcome guest why because it's the things that we don't pay attention to that wind up
circling back and
and grabbing us by this room for the back of the neck
as take not harm likes to say the reason we have to practice or cultivate mindfulness is because all day long with practicing the opposite
k and you get pretty good at it because practice makes perfect so if would continually getting angry get really good at being angry
and if you are continually stuffing your anger than you can get really good at stuffing your anger
so the real practice is to when anger arises to be with it but don't go off with it in other words you can be suppressing it is extremely unhealthy physically and mentally and just succumbing to it is also extremely unhealthy and usually never wise
but we never even think to just simply hold it
and embrace anger in the same way as we were embracing sounds remember i said you don't go out there hunting scavenging for the sounds because they're already coming to your eardrum so in the same way when anger is arising it's already here so can we stop and in some way put out the welcome mat and
give ourselves over to a new even said feel it in the body well that's exactly what the instruction as feel it in the body and let it actually observe the coursing of the sensations associated with angle which will of course affect your breathing profoundly when it's arising
k so that is applicable to any mine states anger fear
irritability
sadness grief
depression or exhilaration joy gratitude
to actually let the emotions
play in the field of awareness
and be known be met be seen be no
okay and in the moment of their rising or as quickly as you can manage because you may not pick up on the moment of arising or moment you'll find the next moment you just ready to kill somebody
and a cat can happen like that
very interesting how fast it can happen and how and how much we can get caught i was in berkeley yesterday just to give you an example as in berkeley yesterday and
i parked in a meter early in the morning that know that cars on the street and then i took
five to ten steps away from my car before remembering oh yeah i better put money in the me i return meanwhile this little mechanized card comes up and and and the guy is computerized so he's punching in the license plate number and giving me a thirty dollar ticket when i had arrived like to say
seconds before but because he's so fast and digitized
and because he didn't believe anything i said to him anyway
ah he just gave me a thirty dollar ticket
and it was like on my timing was a little off you know i was like i actually ran back to the car because they saw him coming but and he saw me running didn't give a shit so to speak
and like you know and i saw the impulse to go apoplectic
after i was raised in new york city you know like
and i like to sort of believe that things can be negotiated with some sort of sense of reason you know
so you know basically so there's the impulse to arising to just or to just get depressed or you know upset or whatever and i just thought wow
maybe you should we give me a sixty dollar ticket this is a fantastic teaching because it all happened in no time i mean i've never gotten a ticket that fast you know it's like it's almost as if he read my mind i wasn't going to put money in the meter and three
he gave me the ticket for thinking that i wasn't going to put money in the media me i think that i'm going to put money in the beater i remember and i get back there but too late these people in berkeley i think they've all been trained advance center and they just very much on them on the money should i say
it's all the time
any circumstances any situation if it's not going your way
we resist
we wanted to be different hold on one second we wanted to be different so there's a distance between the way it should be for me to be happy and the way it is ah
you know that feeling and there's a kind of contraction around it emotionally contract the body usually gets attracted the heart gets involved
the jaw gets involved so can you be aware of that and then as pick not on saying hey hey another teeth fantastic teaching of mindlessness in this moment practice makes perfect okay what about bringing awareness to that very moment that very seizure
and that's that's the meditation practice that's coming to your senses than anger is just like the hearing is just like sound is like hello
you have a lot of choices in this moment except if you collapse into
not seeing not knowing not remembering
and then you'll create this story of how
an immense and plus the stories of how for me the world with different i would be having a good friday the thirteenth
now i know your if you want to ask a question but you were asking earlier awesome
it's a little louder to just think about the people in the back listen is you the saying
his medication
just
is it like that
i'm not sure i understand your language so you need them pack it a little bit me what does just processing well experiencing adapted yes so the answer to that is yes are you relatively new to meditation so the answer to that is yes okay experiencing without judge
mint is a very very nice encapsulation now what was the metacognition with a metre while the netherlands if i don't just focus on work is happening
thinking about it later than intelligence
i'm thinking yeah
yes although that's going to happen to i mean we're not immune to that would continually thinking about our experience and thinking about
the sort of relationship to experience so it's it's also once removed there's nothing wrong with that because awareness is infinitely expandable
did you notice how in that earlier guided meditation we started with hearing and then we kick went to the air and then we went to the breath
it's like awareness is like really
amorphous like it can be as big as you want or it can be as narrow and collimated as you want so that's incredibly valuable to get comfortable with expanding and contracting awareness you know ah
because at different times it's very appropriate to collimated or to expanded if you're going off a ski jump for instance
which kind of awareness with you want to have the collimated kind or the cosmic consciousness
was that
yeah you're not carrying like where are the tips of your skis and what is the relationship if that filthy your body through it because you only got a second or two i mean it's even faster than the meta man you know in berkeley and so be therefore it k you're not thinking wow i wonder how my mom is seeing me now you know
ah
why
yeah

well there are many many ways to be present in the world many many ways and certainly for new one race car driving it is one of them
there are also lot of technical aspects of at that you know are very complicated as opposed to just sitting without a steering wheel or wheels of any kind
yeah
having experience
you've experienced that too i'm not alone
more specific about what
yeah good question ah
yeah the question was this person said that she's very familiar with the parking people in berkeley and was interested in what i did in that moment that sort of the apoplectic impulsive rose and basically what i did was try to stay in relationship with the guy
gay and to stay in relationship with him means without anger but just sort of seeing the lay of the land and how much chance i had
the negotiate my way out and and basically i saw a very very quickly that i had zero chance because once you put it in the computer i mean they don't have as far as i know they don't have another option like mistake
cancel this tickets or the mayor cancel the ticket you know where they don't have that option so i saw right away that this was kind of like you know if something falls on you it's already happened so what's the point in getting angry about it so then i watched what else my
mine did because it didn't just go apoplectic it began to sort of feel a little bit humiliated it's like i like to be in relationship and be able to negotiate especially when i'm right
i mean that just felt like injustice to me but i also saw from his point of view that he saw the car there and then he saw somebody running to the car because he saw him and so if all he knows that car had been there for half an hour or three hours or overnight so i just realized like you know
no i have a lot of options here from the extremely violent to do just just bowing and realizing that was a fabulous teaching and so i chose that option and then the rest of it dissolved it's like when you don't take it personally and that's a hard one that not take personally
say you can't do this to be a i already did it to you it's already done or as sons and him used to say when in cohen practice used to say if your responses a little slow the arrow is already downtown
that's how he would talk the arrow is already downtown yell scream beat yourself up whatever but the arrow is already downtown and other words your timings of the law so
but any moment that presents that's kind of an extreme but i thought i'd mention it but any moment is is a moment to watch how those kinds of things can arise in a neat neat the arising impulse emotion thought feeling perception
right here in this moment and in that recognizing then you have degrees of freedom that you don't have when it becomes like a knee-jerk automatic reflex
reaction
and since those things opportunities come up endlessly not just with the parking people but just endlessly things will the not going quote unquote your way you have wonderful opportunities to practice oh things are not going my way and wonderful what is my way anyway
i mean i can't even say that was bad that that happened and it just happened
the these new see my point
so so if we were to take things less personally
and how do we take things personally start paying attention how much we take things personally and how much we use the pronouns i me mine without having the slightest idea do what we're talking about
you know before we go any further i think we should stand up and let's try to do that mindfully
and a
and let's just take a few moments and be in touch with the body standing
and in touch with you know is it possible to open these doors now it looks like the the the air may have
oh look at that is light and there's warm air
ah
thank you
if if if the voices get lost we can close the close it again but let's just a closer eyes and stand in the air
hey there were always standing at the bottom of a notion
who are living we live at the with bottom feeders were living at the bottom of the ocean of air
and see if you can bring your awareness to those places where your skin is exposed
caress of the air on your by
when the caress of the air moving in to the body and out of the body
when noticing if you bring awareness to the whole of the body standing including the feet loaded into the floor and through the floor by proxy into the earth
and with it sort of sense of the body elevating itself vertebra by vertebra right through the spine and right out the top of the head
in the spirit of the chinese or enneagram for between heaven and earth
human
i'm noticing how there's a certain kind of micro swaying of the by
that standing is an elaborate balancing act and that we know how to do it
but that at one point in our lives we didn't and we had do to cultivated
and so noticing that our awareness can hold the whole of the body and that it has an intrinsic appreciation of exactly how the body is configured in space
and were all of the different appendages and the entirety of the body actually is in space
and that's part of the sense of touch it's a kind of way of interior touching and it's called proprioception
the direct perceiving of oneself
inwardly
and let's begin to just move one arm now and take your hand and as if you were underwater just begin moving it and filling the air streaming through the fingers as if it was water but it is a fluid as we were saying and just see if you can touch the air don't have to korea
a wind but just caress the air with a hand so that you are really in touch with the air and noticing that is you touch the are the heirs of course touching you can't touch without the input
and then may be moving the other hand as well so that you're basically just feeling the or anywhere you like there's no right way to do this
but noticing how the arms you have to watch out for traffic if you're squeezed into a row but noticing how the arms have a huge a huge degrees of freedom and can move in many different ways he arms shoulders joint has the biggest
range of any joint in the line because the shoulder blade floats in the only place the whole thing is anchored is right here in the sort of medial aspect of the clavicle collarbone
everything else is moving your put your hand on the collarbone and just notice how it just comes right off the rib cage
and so we can make very sort of spacious movements being in touch with the air around the body and owning the space in the sense of not appropriating it but being in touch with the space that the body
ah is offered
and then if you liked just moving the rest of your body as well so that it's kind of like a piece of kelp waving undulating in the ocean
play anywhere you like in staying in touch moment by moment by moment with the whole of the body if you like even closing your eyes although than the air traffic problem intensified
but being in your body
moment by moment and breath by breath being in touch
with the inner landscape of the body
and with the air escape
he's just doing whatever you want to do with the body so that there's no part of it isn't engaged involved stretching
right through the toes straight through the here