So, when you're ready, slowly letting this come back to stillness, and I'd like to invite you to re-establish yourself in the sitting posture once again, if it's hard to be on the cushions, take a chair. Noticing how you even get down on the chair or on the cushion. And then putting all your writing materials or anything else aside, and establishing yourself in a posture that embodies dignity. And let's see if we can simply drop

[01:14]

yourself into this moment as it is. This moment as it is, has a huge richness to it. Multiple dimensions, and we will visit them. Let's begin with the breath itself. Just letting your awareness feature any aspect of the breath moving in the body that is vivid for you in this moment. Because it's so basic, without pushing or pulling the breath or having any kind of ideas about it, see if you can just settle into what I like to call riding the waves of your own breathing.

[02:18]

At your belly, at your nostrils, anywhere the breath sensations are vivid. And simply resting in the awareness itself. So that rather than you're doing that breath and then the we that is attending the breath, observing the breath, see if you can just be the attending itself. So that there is simply breathing, and we don't have to fabricate a breather and an object. So the subject and object, just letting them be habits of mind. And right now we're going to rest in the present participle, breathing, which is what's actually going on, breathing. So being breathing, and the knowing of breathing. And as best you can, not only in the attention on the breath,

[03:40]

but localizing the attention on the breath, but sustaining, letting the attention sustain itself as best you can on the breath. Moment by moment by moment. And of course if the mind does go off, which it certainly will, then when that is noticed, then the awareness is already back, and you're noting, and you're noticing. And you can feature once more the breath center stage if you like, in the field of awareness, while everything else is in the room. And in a sense the whole universe becomes breathing, and knowing, breathing.

[05:31]

Moment by moment by moment. As best you can, if commentary about the meditation practice comes through, and judging or assessing how you're doing, just letting all of that be kind of like coming from the wings, and you're simply featuring the knowing of the breath. The knowing of breathing. Center stage. Allowing it to be uncontrived, enforced, and actually effortless. Because breathing is happening all the time, isn't it?

[07:16]

It's not always just breathing and knowing coming together. Moment by moment by moment. Moment by moment by moment.

[08:36]

Moment by moment by moment. Moment by moment by moment. Moment by moment.

[10:10]

You feel like it if you feel like it, and you can always just stay with breathing. But if you feel like it, you can play with expanding the field of awareness around the breath, to include a sense of the body as a whole sitting or breathing. Just the awareness just gets bigger, and now it includes the entire spectrum of sensations associated with the body sitting and breathing. So the entire envelope of the skin, the carriage of the body in space, the movements associated with breathing, are all held in awareness. And we're just resting in awareness itself. Sitting, breathing, knowing. And if you like, you can follow in hearing, because it's hearing, right?

[11:37]

And if you like, you can follow in thinking, because it's here anyway. And if you like, you can follow in feelings, in the sense of emotions, needs, because that's here anyway too. So the awareness just gets very very big, and can hold the arising, the lingering, the passing away of any of it, and all of it. But as best you can, maintain the undistracted, unfabricated, non-meditative, open-hearted, moment by moment, wakefulness, that is attending, knowing,

[12:58]

independent of any objects arising. So aware of what's seen, felt, known, moment by moment by moment, without pursuing anything, without pushing anything away, without judging. In fact, allowing awareness to be so big, so sky-like, so vast, that anything and everything, within the body, around the body, within the mind, around the mind, beyond the mind, is instantaneously seen, felt, known, in awareness.

[14:05]

Because the awareness itself has the quality of being nameless, spacious, empty, and utterly, utterly vivid, so that nothing moves in the field of awareness without being recognized, instantaneously, and without thinking, without discursive thought, known, without claiming, without craving, without pursuing, and without rejecting. Just clear, present, wakefulness, just sitting, nothing more,

[15:20]

moment by moment, by moment, by moment, by moment. Now, of course, if you're experiencing huge turbulence and strife and striving,

[16:33]

please remember that one feature of the practice that's very, very important is kindness and self-compassion. And awareness is not something you have to seek elsewhere, it's here already. But if it's unfamiliar and unstable, and you find yourself with a very turbulent mind or a very uncomfortable body, you can feature the breath center stage in the field of awareness and let everything else kind of be in the awareness, and rest in the awareness of breathing with full intentionality and open-hearted presence,

[17:41]

and continually bringing the mind back to the belly or to the nostrils when it wanders off, when it's captured or hijacked by some stray thought or idea or whirlpool in the mind. Otherwise, simply resting in what the Chen people like to call silent divination, just awareness, where our original mind essence, nothing missing, nothing extra, nothing personal, just the knowing.

[18:57]

The emptiness, the empty essence that allows for the arising of anything and everything. Just as the sky allows for light and darkness and birds and clouds, just calm, going, justice, just as the air allows for light and darkness and birds and clouds,

[24:22]

Just dropping on the breath and noticing how graceful and instantaneous that transition can be. Because the awareness is one seamless continuity, one seamless whole. Just feeling the mellowing of breathing, the feeling of breathing. Just noticing how graceful and instantaneous that transition can be.

[25:34]

Just noticing how graceful and instantaneous that transition can be. When we have a break for lunch, we're just going to eat. So don't think of it as a break, think of it as just the next aspect of your life unfolding. You can bring the same quality of attention that we've been cultivating here to the searing of the food, to the actual serving of the food to yourself, all of the choices that get made in those instants, and the tasting of the food, and in fact if this winds up being, there's usually, is the first ten minutes silent and then the rest is talking? Is that how it usually works? Okay, so the first ten minutes of the meal will be silent, and then we'll be talking. When the talking comes, that's what we call advanced training, that's like green beret training, to actually eat and talk and not miss the meal.

[27:08]

Okay, so, and then to take some time to walk in the garden if you like, we haven't actually talked about walking meditation, but let me just give you in a nutshell, doing your body walking, and letting the feet kiss the ground, caress the ground, so that you're really in your body walking, not in some kind of stylized, self-conscious way, but just walking. The body already knows how to walk. So can you get out of your way and just be walking in the same way as the moving, of course breathing will be happening, and I'd like to leave you with a little fairy tale. Okay, and then we'll have, continue in the afternoon with more practice and also more breathing and of conversation, and isn't it amazing how fast the time goes by when you're practicing nothing, or non-doing.

[28:11]

So my suggestion is that, you think if we stop at 12.15 and then we can reconvene at like 1.30, that that's enough time for us to get everything done and still have some time to go in the garden? Okay, because I want to have as much time together as possible, given that four o'clock is going to be rolling around before we blink twice, and that's always something of inevitability. Nevertheless, there are an infinite number of moments between now and four o'clock. An infinite number of moments between now and four o'clock, same number of moments as in the rest of your life, no matter how much, how long you're going to live. Okay, so see if you can be here for a few of them, without beating yourself up over the ones that spill over the dam, because there'll be plenty. So here's the fairy tale. This is long ago in ancient times, in a kingdom where the king has a very, very beloved only

[29:25]

daughter, a princess. And the queen is never mentioned, the mother is never mentioned in the story, so I apologize in advance. I've just done all by the mother. So the king, probably being a single parent, wanted to please his daughter in all things. And one day, when his daughter was going down the path to bathe in the pond with her attendants, she stubbed her toe on a root that was protruding out of the ground on the path. And she became very vexed. Not quite apoplectic, but the word that is used is vexed, which I love. I love this word, the vexation set in. Okay, so we can attend to how much vexation sets in in our lives. When we feel thwarted, things don't go our way, we stub our toe.

[30:25]

So she got very upset, and she went to the king and demanded that he pave the entire kingdom in rubber so that she would no longer have to, in leather, I'm sorry, in leather so that she would no longer have to stub her toe as she was walking along anywhere. And the king, of course, wants well enough to please his daughter in all things, and he was about to sort of decree that they were now going to pave over the entire kingdom in leather, when the prime minister, who's been meditating at Gungulch for a very long time, makes a kind of a suggestion, diplomatic interjection, Your Highness, perhaps it might serve all parties better if rather than paving the entire kingdom with leather, which would

[31:34]

have certain significant liabilities associated with it, perhaps we could cut out some pieces of leather in the form of the princess's feet and attach them with adequate thongs to her feet, and then wherever she went, she would have the benefit of leather between herself and the ground, and the rest of us could go about our business. And that is said to be the origin of shoes, and everybody agreed that this was a significant step in the right direction for many reasons. And so the world was saved by the deep insight of the prime minister, who recognized the value of applying the remedy at the point of contact.

[32:40]

So the toe stubs the ground, and the vexation in the mind arises with the stubbing of the toe, so that's where one applies the remedy, rather than the whole kingdom. Apply the leather to the feet, and then there is protection. In the same way, we bring mindfulness to the point of contact, the arising of anger, frustration, sadness, grief, sound, smells, taste, touch. We bring mindfulness right there. Then the concatenation of vexation, distraction, fabrication is arrested right there, which is always here, we can chop the T off that word, right here, and then does not create a continuing stream of stuff that we then have to recover from downstream, down the road.

[33:47]

Okay, get it? Okay, so then the practice becomes, when we're here, that there'd be only the head, in the ceiling, only the ceiling. The only way we can have the ceiling, give rise to the ceiling, is through the intersection of awareness, otherwise we won't see, we won't taste our food, we will go into the garden, and we're thinking about this, that, and the other thing, and you can check and see when you're in the garden, if you are in the garden. Chances are you may not be in the garden. You may have a whole group of people in there with you, in your mind, that you're arguing with. Mindfulness applied in the present moment, at the point of contact, with huge open-heartedness and generosity, not forcing, not straining, not fighting, not bewildering yourself,

[34:50]

but simply the lightest of touch, a moment, a moment, a moment, a moment. Not thinking about your eating, although that will certainly arise, but just eating. As the Zen people like to say, when walking, just walk, when sitting, just sit. It turns out that the just is a significant undertaking. So I'll leave you with a little poem by Ryokan, which I take great delight in, because of one line that I think is very refreshing. When you think about, like, Ryokan was like, I guess, 17th century, no, 18th century Japan. And I don't know who knows anything about 18th century Japan. All of the stuff that preoccupied people in 18th century Japan

[35:55]

is probably in the domain of a few Japanese scholars, certainly none less so than you know. But everybody knows Ryokan, who was like a hermit who lived in the mountains, and was really a good for nothing. All he did was play with the children all day long, get criticism from everybody. He's remembered 200 years later, 300 years later, all that other stuff. And the line in the poem is, no news of the affairs of men. I love that. No news of the affairs of men. The women, I'm sure, love that too, you know. A lot of trouble. My heart lies in the middle of a dense forest. Every year the green ivy grows longer. No news of the affairs of men. Only the occasional song of the woodcutter. The sun shines, and I mend my robe. When the moon comes out, I read Buddha's poems. I have nothing to report, my friends. If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things.

[36:59]

I love that. I have nothing to report, my friends. If you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things. So I mean, illumination is not someplace else. Your eyes are already illumined. Your ears are already illumined. And just recall, how many of you chant the Heart Sutra every morning, or used to, or did? They do it here, right, several times? Morning and evening? Or just morning? Okay, the Heart Sutra. We'll talk about this maybe in the afternoon. But, you know, this is like core Mahayana practice. No eyes, no ears, no nose, no tongue, no body, no mind. So here you are saying, come to your senses. Be present with eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, mind. And here the Heart Sutra is saying, no eyes, no ears, no tongue, no body, no mind. And then it just goes on. No suffering, no stopping the path.

[38:05]

How does it go? No suffering, no cessation. No stopping the path. It's a form of the truth, Saparambha. So, not getting caught up in any of this, but resting as best we can, right through, until we come back at 1.30, in awareness itself. And we can have lovely conversations, as part of it. So, the food here, if you haven't been here before, tends to be quite wonderful. And so, see if you can be touchable, and let it touch you. And I just want to say, I'm delighted to be here with you folks today. It's really wonderful to be exploring this territory together.

[39:08]

And it's also really wonderful, there's at least one mother-daughter combination here, and grandfather-son-mother combination here. And I always love to see what's happening with the generations. So welcome then, and welcome now. And so, remember, this is not a break, this is just much more complex practice, than just sitting on your back. Thank you. Since we're really talking about an experience that's beyond time and beyond space, and being here, and now,

[40:15]

and I could be anywhere, everywhere, and always, becoming accustomed to really just dropping in in no time at all. So if you don't think, well, I'll just rev up, and get my momentum going, and in 20 minutes, maybe I'll show up. Right here. So this meditation will be about three minutes long. There are an infinite number of moments in three minutes, about a clock. So see if you can drop in on yourself, and rest in awareness of anything. And be the knowing, outside of time, outside of space, and outside of thought. And just forming the intention to do this,

[41:26]

and to drop into silence, itself a very, very powerful shaper of awareness. Of the quality of your attention. Okay.

[42:54]

Okay. Okay.

[44:19]

So how about another three minutes by the clock, another infinite stream of moments. Could we handle it? Okay. Open and spacious awareness. Being in time, space, and thought. Knowing whatever arouses, whatever lingers, whatever dissolves. In the arousing, in the lingering, in the dissolving. Every moment and new beginning, every in-breath and new beginning, every out-breath, a complete, letting be.

[45:23]

Unconditional surrender to things as they are. Or as Suzuki Goshi liked to say, things as they is. One of the rich dimensions of us coming together like this for a day is that when we are in silence we are attending to the moment-to-moment non-reactive, non-judging unfolding of life experience. And when we are talking and listening we can also collectively be present moment-by-moment and at least aware of any ways in which we are being reactive or judgmental.

[46:30]

So it's possible to have a conversation when we are with a large group of people and it's the outer counterpart of the meditation which is, you could say, a lot of the time just the conversation with yourself until you drop into pure listening when there is nobody either talking or hearing. It's just... it's just hearing. But that's known as dialogue. Krishnamurti talked a lot about it. The willingness to mindfully be with other people in conversation without judging, without condemning. So deep listening, so to speak. And that's very different from the way we usually have conversations. We call them discussions, actually. We say, OK, now we are going to discuss the meditation practice. I don't think so. Discussion comes from the same root

[47:36]

as the words percussion and concussion, which means, actually, if you look it up, to shake violently until it comes apart. That's what discussion means. So let's have a dialogue. I'm curious, before we go any further into the afternoon, whether there are any questions or observations about what has arisen this morning that are relevant to your reason for being here in the first place. And I'm also interested in your reason for being here in the first place if you know what it is and could say anything, and care to say anything about it, because that will help us in some way to shape the afternoon. And also, by giving voice to what's going on with you, you're actually giving us all an opportunity to learn from you.

[48:36]

And this is, as I said last night, when we reviewed all of our work at the Medical Center, I mean, medicine, we see our patients as miraculous beings when they walk in the door. Oh, another miraculous being has arrived. As geniuses. And we have a tendency to ask the most of them rather than the least of them, on the assumption that if you ask a lot of people, you'll get a lot, even if it's not as much as you ask. If you ask a little of people, the most you're going to get is the little that you ask. And the kinds of anguish that bring most of the people we see to the Stress Reduction Clinic really require a willingness to just be completely encountering and embracing of what it is that they are carrying.

[49:39]

And to suffer means to carry. And we all carry a great deal. And I'm also interested, because I had conversations with a number of people at lunch, and they all turned out to be physicians. How many of you in this room are physicians? Just raise your hands, if you don't mind. And how many of you work in health professions? Wonderful, wonderful. You probably are aware that mindfulness is moving more and more and more into virtually every aspect of medicine, health care, even surgery, which has its own mindfulness tradition, of course. We all hope. It's helpful if the surgeon is there, and the operation is actually happening, and it's your body. So anybody have anything that they'd like to share, observe, ask about?

[50:44]

And again, the reminder to speak as loud as possible. And how is the tone here? Are you having any trouble hearing me? No, okay. If you want, you can stand up so that your voice projects more. And if you don't, don't. I'm aware that when I'm aware that it's very, very fragile. It's something that can move very quickly in a lot of different directions. So my question is... What is very fragile? Awareness. How do you protect it? Same way. How does awareness... How can you sustain awareness under challenging situations? Well, let me ask you a question in return. Challenging situations.

[51:49]

My question is how can you sustain awareness in challenging situations? What happens in challenging situations as a rule if you don't sustain awareness? It narrows. I get caught up in something. And the outcomes? And the outcomes are narrower. Yes, my options are few. Okay, so your options are few. So in a sense, that's motivation enough. If you have spent any time observing what happens when we are less than fully awake in our lives, it's a very strong motivator for being more fully awake. Now, if you get really a high level of resolution in your awareness so that you can see when what the Tibetans like to call unwholesome factors arise, like, you know, anger, hatred, greed,

[52:49]

and tripping out into some kind of delivery state that is contracted in the way you just described. When you begin to watch often enough what that gives rise to in terms of its consequences, unwholesome actions usually give rise to unwholesome and untaught consequences. After all, just get tired of that. It's actually easier to rest in awareness or to recover it fast. And you get good at it. You know, just the way when you go off balance, you recover it fast. I mean, you know, we are actually quite skilled at that even though we don't practice all that much. The older you get, the more your balance can be compromised. I was talking to somebody at lunch about machines that actually help elderly people or anybody to recover balance more quickly. So this is, if you will, the benign compliment to that.

[53:50]

The more you are thrown off balance, the better, because then you get to practice. So, in a sense, you don't need to protect awareness. Awareness is always available for protecting you. In the same way, very often when you first start meditating, there is a sense, and it's inevitable, that you are meditating. That you are doing the practice. We like to say it that way. I'm doing the practice, you know. After all, it feels more like the practice is doing you. And that you could no less give up than you could give up so brushing your teeth. You know, it's that simple. We don't need to make it into some highfalutin thing. It's just like things get better. It's natural. It becomes second nature, but never automatic or taken for granted. It's a way of being and that's what I like to put it.

[54:51]

Meditation is not a technique or even a collection of techniques. It's a way of being. And it's a way of being that has qualities of transparency so that we don't take things personally and we are not caught by name and form nor by philosophical ideas of emptiness or nihilism. But we see the interplay between form and emptiness and we can navigate in ways that are scareful and that rather than feature or notice the unwholesome which is a normal part of our human repertoire. It's not just those bad evil people. But actually we can water what's... Thich Nhat Hanh likes to use the image of watering the seeds of wholesomeness. And if you water them, you water over here and beautiful things grow like the garden.

[55:52]

Water over here, anger grows and over consequences of anger, bitterness, resentment, despair. And that's like our choice. We can blame the whole world on it, why we are the way we are. And I sometimes like to say, do you remember when you were younger, those of you who are older? Because I know some of you are actually too young to remember when you were young because you were already young. But for those of you who are older, do you remember when you had some idea of how it was going to turn out for you? Remember the efforts that you made to make it happen so that it would turn out? Well, the news for you, it's already turned out. This is it. We've already turned out. That's a sobering thought. But we often don't realize how deep the dimensionality of our being is,

[56:55]

or our genius. We don't recognize it. We don't inhabit it. We don't live inside it. The meaning of the word rehabilitation is not to re-enable. It's from habiter in French, which means to inhabit. It's to learn to live inside again. It's rehabilitation. It's to learn to live inside again. Most of us forgot how to live inside again a very long time ago. Even if we are totally healthy, we just forgot a long time ago how to really inhabit the body, how to really inhabit the senses, how to reframe the mind so that we're not entrapped in its machinations and fabrications. So that's a worthy practice. It's a lifetime's work. But it's also, from my point of view, what else is there to do? What else is there to do? And in a sense, if you want to live a long life,

[58:00]

well, the more moments you inhabit, the longer a life will be. The more moments just go by unnoticed, the less rich and in summary, the shorter our life will be. In fact, we measure time as the space between significant or milestone events. So it seems like... How many of you have experienced as you get older that time seems to be going faster and faster? Why? Why? Because there are fewer right-on-the-bad events. There are fewer milestone events. So it seems like, God, it's been a long time since fill-in-the-blank. But when you're a child, when you're a baby, the milestone events, I mean, just sit and watch a Wonder World for a day. The milestone events are happening moment by moment. Every single one of them move. You think that's any different for you? I don't think so. Except that we're missing them.

[59:03]

So if you can now begin to see how many milestone events you have in a day, like a walk in the garden, or the caress of the air on the skin, or the sound of the birds that are coming to you, and you're really here for it, then time expands and becomes virtually timeless, like in childhood. It's just that day seems endless, summer vacation seems endless. For us, summer vacation seems like no point in even going. By the time you get there, you have to come back. Besides with my brain. So we're so caught up in thought that the milestone events, they're not noticed, and so it seems like, oh my God, time is going really quickly because nothing's happening. But the more that you see... Have you ever gone away to some exotic place for a week and it came back and it seemed like you were gone for three months?

[60:05]

No? No, why? Because everything is new. So you can think about when you go out walking, it's not about sightseeing, and going on vacation, a lot of time it is about sightseeing, but really, what is sightseeing? It's seeing sights. So instead of sightseeing, if you were to see sights and let them register in you, you'd have nothing but milestone events in relationship to your body, to nature, to other people. It's like one grand adventure that we sleep through constantly. Or we want something better. So this is not a milestone enough of an event. I want a better event. Other comments, questions? Yes. I grew up in New York City in the 1950s. And it does not happen

[61:07]

that I'm a particularly touchy person at times. Touchy like what? I take things personally. And particularly vexes me when people make comments about New York being that way. Because I, for one, know that if you put my family in the middle of a fight and it turned out this way... Yeah, there's a genetic component here, isn't there? It's a very hard to swallow. So I had a good sense of freedom to marry and then do this. Sort of like my thinking skills, I figured by buying a cookbook that would wear off. Have a beco. Well, eventually. But I'd have to speed up the mindfulness. My question is about mindfulness in relation to relaxation. And they're both things I'd like to achieve. And I've noticed that when I sit, zazen, when I sit, I usually get pretty uptight. However, I've also noticed

[62:10]

that this is not a pitch for yoga. I'm not doing much yoga, but I've also noticed that at the end of a yoga class, let's say a physical workout, where you've been into your body and you haven't had really to think very much because there's a teacher who's leading you and you're just feeling your body. At those moments at the end of the yoga class, there's a corpse pose, a shavasana, are incredibly relaxing. And I don't have to worry about the thoughts in my head on occasion, but it's because I'm just so glad that my body is in this pose. So I'm wondering if there's a difference between relaxation and mindfulness. Yes. The way I like to put it is meditation is not relaxation, it's both differently. So that's what I like to find out. So relaxation is a particular state that we consider to be desirable, usually, and that if we don't get there, we are very often frustrated by not getting there,

[63:10]

like something's wrong. Trying to do with a guided invitation tape and there's either something wrong with the tape or with me or with the method. So when you get there, it feels great and wonderful, and when you don't get there, it doesn't. And so we're still at the mercy of causes and conditions. When they go their way, great. When they don't go their way, not so great. Meditation is about beyond causes and conditions. Just no matter what's happening, can you be with it as it is? That's the ultimate relaxation. When people come to the Stress Reduction Clinic and they say, I need to learn how to relax, I say to them usually, we're going to teach you how to be so relaxed that it would be okay to be tense. It's just a much, much bigger field. And people very often misunderstand meditation as being some kind of special state. I go into the meditative state and then my mind's a complete blank. And it's just really completely wrong.

[64:12]

There's not one meditative state. Every mind state is a meditative state if it's held in awareness. And every mind state is a hell realm, basically, if it's not held in awareness, because it's going to eventually lead to suffering, really very, very proximally. Because if it's a pleasant one, then it's going to go. And if it's unpleasant, it's already unpleasant. So... Now, about yoga. At the end of yoga class, you just feel fantastic. I mean, the mind falls away, the body falls away. You said that traditionally they do it in corpse pose, right? So why do they call it the corpse? Because you're dying, you die. You die to the past, you die to the future, you die to I, me and mine.

[65:14]

You could do the corpse pose at the beginning of the yoga class. It's not like the yoga set you up for this great transcendent experience. It's like if you really die, it's okay. It's like what dies is the attachment to everything and then you're here in the present moment. So it's not like you have to do a two-hour yoga class to kind of get there. It's always right beneath your nose. It's infinitely available. So I like to say, die now and avoid the rush. Seriously. Die to the voice inside you that's never satisfied. By die, it means recognize it and then don't cling to it. Easily said, not so easily done, but can you see that that kind of dying is actually being born in a way? It's allowing the present moment to continually be fresh and new. So then that's really relaxed because nothing has to happen next. You know the cartoon, I have to say it in this setting

[66:21]

because it's a New Yorker cartoon of Zen monks sitting and wearing cushions like this in the Zen go and one is a little bit elevated over the other and that's the older one and then there's the younger, obvious novice monk just starting out. And the younger one is looking up at the older one. The older one is obviously talking and the caption is nothing happens next, this is it. So whenever you come to the present moment, what do you get? You get this. Well, I don't like this. I need to rearrange the causes and conditions of my life so that I have the right this. That's relaxation. That's what relaxation is trying to do. And usually what happens is relaxation carries with it no systematic sustained awareness or the insight that follows on it. So you can be very relaxed and happy that you're relaxed but it doesn't carry with it insight and so when you're in a state of pain or grief or agitation,

[67:26]

you may want to be relaxed but you have no way of dealing with what's actually happening because relaxation is not available to you. But if you embrace the mind states and body states as they are that you experience right here, you'd be relaxed with grief, you'd be relaxed with all of it. It doesn't always feel good but then if you ask yourself the question is the awareness actually in pain? Would anybody do that since I posed the question? Anybody notice anything about that? In any of the infinite number of moments since I posed it or not? Okay, just I'll pose it again. It's always possible. So does that answer your question adequately? If I were interested in this lifetime in penetrating to the absolute core of what it meant to be human, I wouldn't be particularly interested in relaxation but I'd be very, very interested in mindfulness.

[68:28]

And that doesn't mean that I would be immune to relaxation. I think that there would be a huge, you know, sort of that relaxation is kind of like a byproduct when you're so relaxed that it doesn't matter what the causes or conditions are. Coming back to the princess, you bring mindfulness to the point of contact whether it's pleasant, unpleasant or neutral and right there the chain doesn't go any further. Liberation. But if it's like pleasant, oh, I love this, I can't wait to get back to it, I wonder how long it's going to last. Or if it's unpleasant, oh my God, how long is this sitting going to last? Do you know what I'm saying? It's like, God, why would I come here? I could be in a happy yoga class. Or if it's neutral, don't notice the experience at all. The air around the body, never notice it. The tone of my own voice, never notice it. The genetic thing that we were talking about that only you would know what the particular qualities are of your family,

[69:34]

that you could even be in Kansas and still have all that education, your particular name branded on it. And everybody's got their own... There would be no awareness of that. In awareness there's freedom. Anything else that's like wishful thinking or grasping for some other state, that when I get there, then it will be okay, you can do that happily into your real grave. So, Thoreau said, and I love to quote him on this, because rather than a complete, incredibly elegant rhapsody about mindfulness, I went to the woods because I wish to live deliberately to affront only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what I had to teach and not when I came to die, discover that I have not lived. So that's why it's good to practice the corpse pose, or the lats, you know, a lot. And just to say, I'm a big advocate of lying down meditation. There are four classic postures for practicing meditation.

[70:39]

Four classic postures for practicing meditation in Buddhist tradition are sitting, standing, walking and lying down. And you'll see statues of reclining Buddha. So there's an awful lot of practice that can be done in your bed, lying down. And since you usually wind up in your bed every 24 hours, the time between going into deep sleep and the time coming out of deep sleep before your feet touch the floor, you can extend that a little, so I don't have time to meditate. Nonsense. How about being in your body just for those moments? And just as they are. Very often, we're in the bathroom before we know that we got out of bed, and we're already anxious, thinking about the day. When you're in the shower, you can check and see if you're in the shower, because usually you won't be. Or you'll have your whole nine o'clock meeting in there with you. And you'll miss the water on the skin. You'll miss the whole experience.

[71:43]

So it doesn't have to be sitting. But die now and avoid the rush. Did I see a hand someplace over here before? Okay. [...] What?

[72:52]

Can anybody else relate to this? There will be times like that. And if it's not one thing, it's another. So for you it's this. Have you ever taken care of anybody close relative with Alzheimer's or dementia? Dealing with the aftermath of somebody dying. Do you realize we all die? And someone's going to deal with our aftermath? Every single one of us. So what you're going through is just part of the human condition. And it's like if you weren't doing it, someone else would be doing it. And you're doing it, I guess, because it's yours to do. And so you can notice how much you'd like it to be over. And what a bad time it comes in. How could you have rather have died at such a bad time since you were already going through stuff? It's never convenient.

[74:11]

It's always just the way it is. So there's a certain resistance to the way it is. And you're going to get through it and get over it. And there's nothing wrong with that. So just be aware that that's part of the landscape, is that those thoughts, that aversive feeling, like I want to get on with my life, get through it and everything else. And then, since you still have to deal with it, just drop into when it's over, it will be over. And you don't know what else is going to appear. Because every moment something else could appear. And you say, wait a minute, I thought it was bad before. Now I'd just like it to be the way it used to be. Because I didn't count on this, I wanted something else. Have you had that experience? And then if two or three of those things happen, then you begin to think that God has it in for you. And you will never be happy again. And the real challenge of this practice is

[75:13]

to consider the possibility that happiness isn't some other time in some other place, that it just isn't. That's one of the fictions, one of the fabrications that we tell ourselves, that this is it, and can we actually be happy doing this, or not forget the full dimensionality of our being? Probably some of you are aware that when the Vietnam War was going on and Thich Nhat Hanh was responsible for various monasteries in Vietnam, he used to remind the monks when they were carrying the bodies to the charnel grounds or the cemetery to be sure to see the flowers along the side of the road, and not just be completely inundated with the grief. Don't miss the flowers, don't forget the grief, but don't miss the flowers. It's like that now, I'm sure.

[76:16]

But we tend to just see, oh, I've got a problem, and when this problem is over, then everything will be okay. But the problem is a fabrication, it's just what is in the aftermath of what happened. And people run from it and from it to the other, and that adds up to a life. The challenge is, can you be there for it? And then, really, what's going to be here for it? Because there is no there. Now, you said this is really hard. Do you all agree? Well, in the interest of full disclosure, you know, like, when you go to see the doctor, you have to sign an informed consent. I apologize, it's very irresponsible of me. But the informed consent here is, and I've got news for you folks, this is the hardest work in the world. To be awake, to come to your senses, it's simple, but it's not easy. It's the hardest work in the world. Why? Because we're so conditioned to go on autopilot

[77:18]

and obsess about the future or the past or just the difficulties of seeing things in sort of certain constrained frames that we only see with the shadow and we don't see the light. So we train over and over and over again, every moment becomes an opportunity for that. And the mind will tell you, this is going to go on forever, it may not. It may be over before you know it. And so the challenge is to actually be in it and let it do you, let it learn from it, let it shape you. And let the grief shape you. Do you know this poem by Antonio Machado, the great Spanish poet, of the turn of the 20th century? A really moving grief poem called the...

[78:23]

Well, it doesn't have a name, it's just known by the first line. It goes like this. The wind one brilliant day called to my soul with an odor of jasmine. In exchange for the odor of my jasmine I would like all the odor of your roses. The wind is in this condition of reciprocity. It wants an exchange, it's asking for an exchange. In exchange for the odor of my jasmine I would like the odor of your roses. I have no roses. All the flowers in my garden are dead. Well, then I'll take the withered petals and the yellowed leaves and the waters in the fountain. And the wind left and I wept and I said to myself, what have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you? Now, being mindfulness practitioners, we'll put it in the present tense,

[79:24]

not the past tense, and say, maybe, what are we doing with the gardens that are entrusted to us? So, name a few. What are some of the gardens that are entrusted to you? Body. Yeah. Anybody disagree with that? I mean, that's a pretty amazing garden out there, right? You think it... You think it eclipses this? This is an amazing universe here. So, the body. What else? Okay. Consciousness also needs to be tendered like a garden. The mind. Our children. Our children. So, we even have the word kindergarten. So, kinder means children. Kindergarten. What did you say back there? A community.

[80:25]

A community, yeah. It's a garden that can be nourished and fertilized and tended. Hurt feelings. Hurt feelings. Yeah. There are particular species of plants, flowers in the garden. My hurt feelings are here in this bed. We have a special bed for hurt feelings, a raised bed. And we should embrace them. Why? Because they are already here. So, because they are already here, we just welcome them. Yes, did I see some other hands? Gardens. Yeah. A capacity for listening and for giving voice. For speaking words. Yes. Those are tremendous gardens to be nurtured and developed. Yeah. Our work. Our work, yes. Somebody courageous enough to say it. If you're not completely utterly alienated from your work,

[81:28]

yeah, what a blessing that we have something that allows us to transmit our energy to the outer world in ways that may be beneficial to other people or contributes to something larger than ourselves. Ideally. Yeah. The planet, yeah. The ultimate garden. The ultimate garden. Ah. Yeah. So we're already in a garden already. Out here. And to recognize that not everybody has that opportunity. So it's a honor. And you know, even the word blessing, just to point this out, because I think language and words are very important, the word blessing comes from the French word blessure, which means wound. So blessings are not entirely just la-di-da, happy.

[82:32]

Sometimes there is an element of wounding associated with a blessing, like, who needed this blessing? But maybe we did. Any other comments or questions about what's come this morning or what brought you here that needs clarifying? Yes. I feel embarrassed to expose myself. I realize that I could do without that evening. When I first came in here today, I was extremely motivated. I had gone through a lot of trouble to come here. Sat there. Was doing well with, I think, settling into meditation.

[83:36]

I slowly became aware of feeling faint. And perhaps this is a question for the physicians in the audience, but it didn't go away, and so I went back and lay down and that feeling passed. But the main thing is that I was really wanting to do the experience, but it seemed like somehow my body was rejecting it. Hmm. Well, first of all, thank you for sharing that with us. And is this your first experience of pharma meditation practice? No, I've done a little meditation and yoga. You know, it's an interpretation that your body was saying,

[84:38]

you know, no, so to speak. Who knows what that was from? It's just, and you did the right thing, you went and changed your posture, and as you say, it passed. So that's how you write in this moment. Okay? So these things happen over time. You have some expectation, I'm going to come and have some great thing happen, and you rearrange your life to make it happen, and get here, and some great thing doesn't happen. You know what? That's great. The experience that you get is the experience that you get. It's not about, like, if you were only doing it right, then you'd have some kind of epiphany, and the scales would fall from your eyes or your ears, and everything would just be like, wow, knock your socks off. This meditation stuff is really... It's not about any kind of experience. It's about being awake to experience,

[85:40]

and there's a huge difference. So in that sense, there's no problem that you felt faint. There may be all sorts of explanations for that, none of which you need to go into, but it arose, you noticed it, you responded to it, you embraced it, it passed, and you don't have to give yourself a hard time about it, or interpret it like, oh, this isn't for me, or anything like that. It's just like, oh, something arose, lingered, passed away, and you were here for it, and actually acted appropriately, rather than tough it out, I rearranged my life to come here, and I'm going to just faint in my chair, but I'm not going to lie down. You know, sort of a macho meditator. It's not necessary. So a deep bow to you, both for the courage to say that, and actually, I don't think that's... In my book, I didn't call that exposing myself. It's just sharing one moment of what unfolded,

[86:40]

and it's really not even personal. It's just what happened. You can take it personally, but that's what happens when you have a body, and you have a mind, and there's sometimes like, of course, purposes. Thank you. Yeah? I'm just going to reassure you. It's nothing bad. It happens to you once in a lifetime. It's nothing bad. And you might be able to deny that, and pretend to focus on reasons, and people are hyperventilating sometimes, and get right headed. The easiest way to reverse that, is to recall that it's not... In case you were careful, it's not something bad that happens to you. It's nothing to you. It's a lifetime. That's it. At the point of contact,

[87:59]

brought awareness to it, it's now over, and you don't need to create any story about it. And now we're here, in this moment, and we'll still have that afternoon in front of us. Infinite number of new moments, fresh, could be met fresh. Yes? One of the reasons I came today, is the title of Donnie's book, and what I was hoping to find, is a way to make sense of which, the value of time and mindfulness, as a living practice and a concept. And the absolute joy I feel, in really indulging joyfulness and latent experiences, and the aversion I have to sitting meditation, where it's an idea of zan, and the austerity of the walls and turning inward, I feel as much of this as my Hijama suit. As much of it as my Hijama suit.

[89:01]

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