Bye. Thank you. Thank you.

[01:46]

I've made it to see and listen to. This is a good way to realize the signs. When I find my name, God, I don't, which we say, this is a witchery with blood, blood, and [...] blood. I'll be in the end to see the end of the sense of you. You can dream up where I miss the subject. I'll be in the end of the night [...] of the night.

[08:13]

... ... ... I had the opportunity to be here for three weeks in January during the intensive. And then an expected invitation to come this morning came.

[09:15]

And I'm just feeling very, very happy to be here. And I'm feeling very happy that everyone is here. So welcome. And my name is Sese Meg Levy. And I lived here for a long time, about 15 years. And then off, did various things. Right now I'm running Stone Creek Zen Center up in Sebastopol. And we only chant that once, so I was ready to go. But it's like, oh no, no, it's three times. But it feels good to be here, so thank you for coming and for the invitation. Thank you. It's very important. It's very important that we come together like this. And a deep honoring for whatever it is in your heart, each person in this room that you are listening to.

[10:27]

And you might not even know what that is. Or maybe your partner said, no, no, we have to go. I was like, okay. But still, even that. Like something knows, but what does it know? And something yearns, but what does it yearn for? But it was strong enough out of all the different things you might be doing right now. Here we are. And I remember a long time ago, my own teacher, Tenshin, Rev. Anderson, sitting up here in a seat about to give a Dharma talk. And he said, you know, I, as I remember it,

[11:32]

He said, you know, I have my role and I prepare and I have what I think I'm going to say. And then I come and I sit down. And then everybody comes and sits down. And then depending on what's happening in the room with the people, that affects what actually comes out. So we all have our different roles in being here. But we're co-creating this right now. The words that are coming out of my mouth right now, I was not thinking about last night. Words I did think about, but not these words, but here they are. So this is a great creative experience, experiment that we're pulling together at this moment. I've been noticing lately when I ask people how they're doing, some people have been saying, well, I personally am doing great.

[12:35]

My life is great. But it feels really strange to say that. The world. But the world. But I'm doing great, but the world. So how do we hold this? What does it mean to be in our particular lives? doing the best we can, which may include a lot of joy and well-being and allowing that, and then also keeping the heart open to the bigger picture or our own moments of fear or despair or confusion or duress. And I think this instinct to say, oh, but the world, this already is a deep empathy, a deep understanding of the interdependence of everything, that we all know on some level, however wonderful our private life might be at a given moment, it's not separate from other people and from the whole world and from the earth.

[13:55]

We know this on some level. And, you know, when times are difficult or some fear they may become more difficult, Buddhism was actually made for this. This is the whole point. Yikes. The world life is yikes. We can't get away from that. So what are we supposed to do? You know, in the story of the historical Buddha, whatever the historical facts, the story of it was his life was going great. You know, he had the palaces and was going to be a ruler and all the stuff he wanted. But he saw, he saw, oh, wow. Even though my father's trying to protect me a lot, I see that people get sick, people get old, people die. I better deal with this now.

[14:57]

And I heard a teacher say once, it's like, it's better to practice while things are okay because then when things start to get more difficult, you're ready. So like if it's like a crab about to go into a pot of boiling water and you're saying, oh, wow, I better practice now. That's a really hard time to practice. But if you've been practicing... you have that ground, you have that understanding in your body, in your life, then as challenges come up, it's easier to meet them, to have an appropriate response. I studied Aikido for a while, the martial art. And, you know, of course we do all rise to the occasion on some level. The adrenaline starts flowing, et cetera. But I remember this teacher said, she said, it's not so much in a way that we rise to the occasion as we fall to the level of our practice. So if you've been practicing Aikido and you've been practicing rolling and all of that, if you trip or somebody pushes you, your body knows what to do.

[16:06]

It can roll. It can recover. So in taking time to have a regular practice, to study Dharma, to have a Sangha community, then as there are difficulties, there's a resilience that's been built. You're in shape in a way. And I think in the world, as there's more unknown, more challenge, of course, there's always been unknown. There's always been challenge. But wherever we are now, I think as people who have access to practice, to Dharma practice, there's a certain responsibility for our own practice and to connect with each other. There's almost like a fabric of resiliency. And then as you're going about in your day, people will sense that in you. If you're settled in the midst of, oh, wow, maybe I can settle too. You don't have to talk anything about meditation. It's just you being grounded in yourself.

[17:09]

And this is something that practice is a training for. curious, how many people know who Dogen, that word, that name Dogen? Anybody familiar? Okay, some, some, some. So, Ehe Dogen Dayosho lived from 1200 to 1253, and he's considered the founder of this particular school of Zen in Japan. And I learned recently, I mean, I'd heard this, but I looked a little more deeply, and I'm not a scholar of Japanese history at all, but that the times that he lived in were quite tumultuous, really quite difficult. He was in Kyoto, and there was a big power struggle going on between the aristocracy in Kyoto, and then the shogunate, the military government in Kamakura.

[18:17]

And also a lot of the big religious establishments were involved in all this. So there was a lot, there was war. There was famine. There was epidemics, even to the extent that there were bodies in the streets. And the Buddhist institutions were a mess, and they didn't have time to deal with the funerals and bodies in the water and all sorts of things. So it was a really difficult time for quite some time. And his... And he didn't feel met by the religious establishment there. And so his response was to go deeper in Dharma. And he ended up going to China, a very dangerous voyage, to try to seek out a true teacher. And eventually found one. And then came back and went deep in the mountains and founded Iheji Monastery. And in a way, it's... I think there's a range of appropriate response.

[19:18]

Sometimes we think, oh, we have to stay involved, and I think that we do. And sometimes taking a step back from the narrative, the chaos, may be the greatest gift, too. So he took a step back, a very deep step back, and had a lot of insight and wrote some really beautiful things, which we're still drawing on 800 years later. And also reading about some parallels, but in Kyoto, the idea of there had been a bureaucracy, but it had gotten a little out of touch, more imperial ritual and all of this, and that allowed time for the military to arise. And the shogunate was focused on maintaining power rather than public welfare. So even if you're still in the world, what are we supposed to do?

[20:32]

And we talk about taking refuge. And we talk about refuge as to fly back, refuge, fly back, to come back home in a way. And you can take refuge in Buddha, the historical Buddha, but also the enlightened sense in ourselves. take refuge in Dharma, the teachings, and then take refuge in Sangha. And it's always struck me that Sangha is up there with the three jewels of the triple treasure, along with Buddha and Dharma. And I think this is part of why we're coming together right now. There's this sense of community. And again, being part of a smaller community up in Sebastopol, I'm continually touched by what it really means for people to have a place to come and a place to gather, and a place to do this really strange thing of just sit down and be quiet and drop in and listen.

[21:36]

And then something happens out of that. And that this is something that needs to be cared for and that we can care for each other in this way. And from this base, we can care for the world. How many people have heard of Thich Nhat Hanh? Okay, a little bit, a few more. So, late, great Vietnamese master who was quite prolific in his writing and able to, I think, relate to people in the world in a really wonderful way. But there's a book I keep coming back to, and I think it was maybe the last compilation or near it of his teachings of Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet. And I really recommend it. There's a lot of depth in there and core Buddhist teaching, but with some different angles. And it was co-written by one of his students.

[22:41]

And she talks at a passage in there about just appreciating his sense of rhythm, just even in doing work. So again, he wrote a lot. He translated a lot. He taught a lot. Very, very productive. But she said that he really listened. So he would be in his study, reading, writing, translating, et cetera. And then every few hours, he would stop. And he would put it all down. And he would go outside. And he would take a walk very mindfully. Sometimes he had a hammock. He would lie on the hammock just looking at the leaves. And giving that time for the mind, the body to rest, all of that to integrate deeply. And if we're getting pinged at all the time, we don't have a chance for that. And then he would return to his writing. And she said, you know, that he would teach that, I think this is really important. As a practitioner of meditation, that's us, it's up to us to assert our right to be free.

[23:52]

It's up to us to assert our right to be free, to be a simple human enjoying being alive on a beautiful planet. I'm going to read that again. As a practitioner of meditation, it's up to us to assert our right to be free, to be a simple human enjoying being alive on a beautiful planet. Think of this as a counterweight, like a counterbalance. We have lots of narratives and stories and things happening and yikes and die. But yes, even now, asserting our right to be free, to be simply human on a beautiful planet. This fills out the picture. If we're allowing ourself that spaciousness, that connection with nature, with others, with vastness,

[24:54]

When we meet the news, we meet whatever comes, we meet the fires, we meet the whatever, there's a resource. And she said, Ty, as he affectionately was known, when he was invited to speak at a congress or parliament, he always insisted on leading an outdoor walking meditation at the end of the program. At Harvard, at Google, and at the World Bank headquarters in Washington, DC, it was the same. Tai wanted everyone to touch the peace and freedom of being aware of every breath and step and being fully present while walking through familiar streets, gardens, and plazas. And I can tell you it's true. Because I was at Google one day. where I was doing some work at a time when he did a day of mindfulness. And these people fill, everyone fill this big sort of central room.

[25:58]

And he had been giving some teachings. And it was time to do some walking meditation. So about 250 people got up. And we all very quietly walked out of the corporate headquarters into the outdoors. And we did all that. Very, very slowly. Like, I don't know if you know the walking meditation here, which is very slow. It was about half of that. Very slow. And then finally, we all kind of duh, duh, duh, duh. And he stopped at sort of an open area and sat down. And all these people sat down just on the ground. And he didn't say anything. And we just sat there. And then he got up. And we all got up, and we walked very, very, very slowly back. This is a great gift of possibility. And since I'm in that area, I'll just share one more story around that and him coming.

[27:09]

I had a friend named Mario, and he grew up in Spain. And when he was a boy, he really wanted to understand the human brain. How does the human brain work? And he decided to understand the human brain, he should become a doctor. So he went, and he got a medical degree, and he became a doctor in Spain. And then he thought, no, that's not going to do it. I need to really study the brain. So I'm going to become a neuroscientist. So then he went back to school, and he got his PhD in neuroscience. And he ended up coming to the United States, and he was actually running a lab at Stanford, doing quite well. But then he started thinking, I don't think the neuroscience are going to get it. And he thought, I think I need a whole other tack. And he was very single-minded on this quest. He said, I think it's art, and the humanities understand the human brain, maybe in a different way that you can't get to in science.

[28:10]

So he left Stanford in neuroscience, and he got an MFA in filmmaking. And so he was becoming a filmmaker and learning to do all that, and how does the brain work in stories, all of this. And then he ended up getting hired at Google as a videographer. Not your usual career path, but he was at Google as a videographer. And then one day it happened that his office, his desk, was near... this place where Thich Nhat Hanh was coming to do this day of mindfulness. And so he didn't know anything about mindfulness or meditation or Thich Nhat Hanh, but he stopped and he listened to this simple monk teacher in his brown robes talking about the brain and talking about mindfulness and emotions and being human and practice. And he thought... this person knows more about how the human brain works than anybody I've talked to so far.

[29:14]

And so at that time, there was a program that had started and that I was involved in called Search Inside Yourself, which really used practice as a base for developing emotional intelligence and leadership. And so he got involved in that and ended up running that program and teaching it for a long time. And then eventually he thought, I don't really like ritual. I want to go deeper, but I don't like ritual. I don't like bowing. I don't like da-da-da. But eventually he sort of opened up to that and went to study with a teacher and do some of the contemplative neuroscience. And then eventually said, you know, all I really want to do now is go back home and live in a small house on the coast of Spain near my family and have time to practice. I'll just say one more thing about that because I thought it was quite interesting. When he really made that decision, like, okay, I've had enough of corporate stuff. I want to have create space. Just actually I have the resources. I'm just going to stop not actually knowing what's next, like allow some space for that.

[30:18]

And when he would tell people he was leaving and they would know about what's next, and he would say, I don't know. And people had no idea what to do with that. And so the story was, oh, Mario's retiring. He wasn't retiring. He was just opening up to the unknown, and there was no framework for that possibility. But can we open? Maybe that's part of our freedom. We can open sometimes. I don't know. I'm listening, but I don't know. One more thing I have to say about that that I still remember, which was his close collaborator, sister, I'm not going to remember her name, a venerable teacher herself, was leading part of the afternoon when he was away talking with others.

[31:23]

And it was around 2 o'clock in the afternoon. And as you might say, or might not know, for most human beings, human bodies, there's a circadian rhythm, and we tend to naturally kind of dip around that time. And if you're used to being in a work environment, often it's like, okay, everybody after lunch, you know, get the energy, have the chocolates, do whatever we need to do, let's push through. And she did something different. She said, well, if there were room here, I would have everybody lie down. But since there's not really room, just like lie back in your chair as much as you can. And she led this meditation, which was kind of like a lullaby. And she was very grandmotherly. And it was honestly one of the kindest things I've ever experienced. I felt like I was in kindergarten naptime.

[32:24]

And... It was so honoring of being human. It was so honoring of the fact that, no, we can't push ourselves straight through 24 hours. We have rhythms. We have more energy in the morning. We have lunch. We need a little rest. Of course, certain cultures know this. But she gave space for that. And then coming out of that, we all felt so refreshed and so cared for for the rest of the day. As a result of this, I will go way out of my way in my schedule never to schedule anything at 2 o'clock. I really do. I say I'm available at 1, I'm available at 3, and I leave time for at least a 20-minute nap around 2. And I know I need this to function. And I know that I'm just not good. I just don't do well. I'm not helpful at 2 o'clock.

[33:28]

So I would much rather... be with people when I can best be with people, take care of being a human, and then return again. So again, this is our choicefulness. I think we need to know we can have choices. We can say, I'm stopping, I don't know what's next. Or I really am following this path because it's an important question for me. Or I need to rest now. Or I need to not be online for three weeks and be on retreat or in nature. I can do that. We need to do that. And it's a great privilege to have the opportunity to do that. I know not everyone can. And when Thich Nhat Hanh created, I was reading, he started it in 1966, but then it didn't, no one else was ordained for some time later, but something called the Order of Interbeing. and there were young activists in Vietnam, but this sense of 14 mindfulness principles that really honor interbeing or interconnectedness and how to be in the world in an effective way to be of benefit.

[34:41]

And one of the things that people take on, and this is for lay people or monks, nuns, but also for people in the world, is 60 days of mindfulness practice a year. That's kind of a chunk. And if you're familiar with Yuval Noah Harari's work, so he's an Israeli historian who I think is a very important voice in our time. And he has written the book called Sapiens, A History of Humankind, and Homo Deus, I think, and Nexus, which is a history of information systems from Stone Age to AI. So I think he's seen pretty clearly. More clueless than many people about what's coming. But he's talked about, you know, he's also been a vipassana, a meditation practitioner for 24 years. And this is quite remarkable, I think. He sits for an hour every morning and for an hour every night and goes on two months of retreat totally offline every year.

[35:50]

And he says that's absolutely necessary for him to do the work he does. to have that clarity of mind and perspective to see a little bit more clearly what's happening here what's evolving how do we respond because if you're it's not it's not like okay I never look at the news and I'm just going to be my little cocoon over here I mean some people should go on retreat forever maybe but in general you know we're going to connect but it's like I bet if you're in it if you're in the swirl all the time it's very hard to have perspective So what's possible here? And sometimes if we get in our habits, and we have our phone, and we check, and da-da-da-da-da, and then when we start to step away from that, it can feel kind of strange. Every so often, I try to go for a walk in the woods without my phone.

[36:54]

That almost seems dangerous, doesn't it, now? Like, what if I had to call somebody? We used to do that all the time, right? Or at least, like, turn it off and put it at the very bottom of the pack and not have that. Or to be comfortable with silence. And that's actually one of the things. I raised my daughter here. She lived here from age 2 to about 15. She went to school in Mill Valley and things, but she grew up in this environment and people being silent a lot and community. At some point as she was growing up, someone asked her, well, how was it? What did you learn growing up in this community or this unusual way? And I remember one of the things she said was, I learned not to be afraid of silence. I learned not to be afraid of silence. So what happens when we sit down?

[38:07]

I think a lot of different things can happen, but one of the things that Dogen says, and he's quite poetic. Somewhere he says, you should cease from practice based on intellectual understanding. Pursuing words and following after speech. So it's good. We're doing speech right now. I'm talking. You're listening. We read things. We think about them. All that's important. And then he says, then you stop. And you settle. And you're silent. And he says, learn the backwards step. Learn the backwards step. that turns your light inwardly. Learn the backward step that turns your light inwardly to illuminate yourself.

[39:15]

Body and mind of themselves will drop away and your original face will be manifest. That's very Zen speak. Your original face, what's that? And then another place he says, to study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To study the self is to forget the self. And then, To forget the self is to be actualized by the myriad of things. And I think that what that means is then we find our true self. We have to walk around in the world, it's whatever our name is, but we're not really just that. We're really all of it.

[40:24]

And Thich Nhat Hanh in this book also talks about that. We are the cosmos. Can we remember that? Mindfulness is about and mindfulness as it's taught in various ways is helpful. But this is also mindfulness. Mindfulness of remembering we're not ever, ever separate. And again, coming back to what brings us here. What are we listening to? What do we know in our body? What is that deep yearning for connection or to remember we're already connected? And even the really hard things and the really hard people and the things we hate and the things we're afraid of, that's not separate from us either. What shifts when we remember this? There's a Tibetan practice, and whether or not this is literally true in some way, I certainly can't say, but there's a Tibetan practice of each person you meet sort of imagining, oh, in some previous life, in this vast cosmos of infinity that I can't comprehend, this person, whoever they may be, was my mother.

[42:07]

It's an interesting experiment. And I think sometimes these teachings, whether you say, oh, is that true? Is that not true? They're pointing to something that's very true. And if you imagine that, how would that change the person you're talking to? And also, what are your practices? So people are here. You got here this morning. That's good. And you're going to... Some people will stay. Some people will get in their cars and go do something else. And then what? To have something that keeps reminding you. It's like, remember, remember, remember. For myself, I am not living in a Dharma center right now.

[43:14]

But I have an altar. And in general, in the mornings, at some point, before I do anything else, before I look at my email, before whatever, I will light a candle and I sit. And then bowing is part of my practice. I do bowing. And often I will do some free writing journaling because that really just opens my mind. And then I'll do some reading, some kind of inspirational reading. And then once that's done, the day is good. Day is good. And the day is different. The day is different if I do that or I don't do that. And it's very obvious. Because you're settling in your body, in your mind, in yourself, in the vastness, in your deep intention, in your connection. And then whatever you do during the day comes out of that. So this is something that can be done. And I try to remember even in the evening just to stop for a moment. maybe some gratitude or resettling.

[44:17]

This becomes a practice field, too. So even if you don't make it every Sunday, is there a way to hold that? Also, one thing I learned, I have an iPhone. You people have iPhones. I have apps. I have the New York Times apps. I appreciate the New York Times app. And it was very easy to... Okay, I'm not feeling good. Let me read about something worse. That'll distract me. And it was not so helpful. So two things. Now I have a personal rule, and this does not have to be your rule. My personal rule is I will not, unless I'm coming to teach something and I don't want to be blindsided about some big event, but in general, I don't look at the news until afternoon, 12 o'clock. this helps me personally tremendously. Because if I look at the news first thing, you know, everything from disasters to political stuff to restaurant reviews to whatever, my brain is like a big chunk of it is just processing that on some level and trying to make sense of all those different things.

[45:31]

And then that is not available for whatever I'm actually trying to do or think or read or write or meet with people. And having a rule, again, my self-imposed rule, but a rule is very helpful because if I have that impulse of like, oh, let me just look at the news. Oh, it's 1030. I can't do it now. I just have to wait. I don't have to have an argument with myself, right? It's just like, oh, just wait. And then I can settle and be conscious and be more aware, too, of how it's impacting me. That's also kind. And then the other thing I did is on the phone, I have the New York Times app, and now I also have the New York Times cooking app. So if I have this habit energy of punching the New York Times, I go to the cooking app instead. And I can read about this really great pancake recipe or something. So I think we have to work consciously and creatively, especially as...

[46:39]

I think the barrage and the mental manipulation, I'll use that word, is going to, is intense already. And it's going to get more intense with AI. And I think we need to be awake. And I think we need to put practices in place to help individually and each other. And that taking time like this to practice is part of it. I'm going to close with goodbye to people going to do things thank you kitchen I'm going to close by a poem that's very well known by Thich Nhat Hanh that I'm sure some of you have heard but I think it's worth hearing again and again coming out of this deep understanding of I'm not just me separate and it's called

[47:47]

Please call me by my true names. Do not say that I will depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive. Look deeply. I arrive in every second to be a bud on a spring branch, to be a tiny bird with wings still so fragile learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in stone. I still arrive in order to laugh and to cry, in order to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that are alive. I am the mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river, and I am the bird which, when spring comes, arrives in time to eat the mayfly.

[48:54]

I am the frog swimming happily in the clear water of the pond, and I am also the grass snake who, approaching in silence, feeds itself on the frog. I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I am the 12-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. And I am the pirate. My heart, not yet capable of seeing and loving. I am a member of the Poliparo with plenty of power in my hands, and I am the man who has to pay his debt of blood to my people, dying slowly in a forced labor camp.

[50:01]

My joy is like spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom in all walks of life. My pain is like a river of tears, so full it fills up four oceans. Please call me by my true names so I can hear all my cries and my laughs at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by my true names so I can wake up. And so the door of my heart can be left open. The door of compassion. We now have some opportunity to share and talk together.

[51:03]

So if there's anyone who would like to offer. We have a microphone I think that we pass around. I would be really happy to hear voices. Anything that landed for you or questions or just what you're experiencing. I think we have one over here. I didn't see it. Who is it? Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for your talk. Ice cream cone. Okay, thank you for your talk. What you say about whether you believe what the Tibetan practitioners say about our mothers, that some sentient beings are our...

[52:10]

mothers, parents, or in previous life. I never give it much thought, but just think of it as a karma teaching. However, recently I have encountered, personally I find it quite powerful, and it has been invoking something in me so deeply that I... that I haven't quite able to make sense of it. The teaching is still... My whole body and mind are still receiving the teaching that I would like to share. So this teaching is from a Chinese practitioner, and he shared something which I found very bold. He said that if we look at our parents, Just think of it, 10 or 20 generations behind.

[53:14]

If we think of our parents, but 10 or 20 generations behind. Yeah, so it's like, so our parents do, and then so we, we have parents do, and then they are parents, and then we just make calculation back, backward, 20 generations. That would be the, we would have the direct... connection, affinity with over millions of people. That is our ancestor, direct connections. So if we just keep moving back the numbers, that is infinite. And for some reason, I find this teaching so powerful because it allows me to look at myself so deeply and also look at everybody. And that the connection, like even in this room, it's not coincidence that we are sitting here in this room. And even for those who are the first time coming here, listening to the Dhamma talk, and you being here, giving the talk.

[54:19]

So, and I just want to share this. Thank you very much. Thank you. I've also been looking into, just even from a scientific point of view, like all of our atoms, they've been lots of things before. They've been animals and plants and like, and they will be other things, right? So we actually just even look at what we think of ourself and the water is billions of, anyway, everything has been, we are a 100% recycled project, right? And we can be recycled infinitely. So just think of yourself that way. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing. further that I'm also thinking about cells and how cells regenerate every eight, seven years. And as well as we are solid and we are the same, we are also always changing and different. And sometimes I find myself stuck, worried about cycles.

[55:25]

And one time I came to drama talk actually during the three week intensive. And I said something about it and I'd been thinking about it ever since. And I think we all struggle with the torture. Sometimes we put ourselves through, but also just life kind of finds of feeling like we repeat things over and over again. And we live in this existence between we're always changing, constantly changing, but also stagnant at the same time. And it's difficult, but it's also invigorating. And I don't know, it's just been on my mind. Thank you for sharing your thoughts. And that's that kind of inquiry of like, oh, thank you.

[56:29]

I haven't quite found a lot of peace with it, but I think settling with it. Keep inquiring and settling and inquiring and settling. And part of it, too, is this opening to this deep interconnection, kind of a core insight, I think, through practice and dharma is we have our sense of self that's very strong, and we need to have... some sense of ego and self to get through the world. But our tendency is to really believe it, you know, and hold on. Oh, it's just me and me against the world and I have to protect this thing that's me and da-da-da. And then, yeah, there's a me and I have to be in the world, but if that's actually softer and more porous and ever-changing and vastly interconnected and being recycled all the time, then there's less fear. there's less to hold onto and protect at all costs. It's like, oh, this is a flowing, and it's going to keep flowing, and we're flowing together.

[57:30]

So, of course, I have to make good choices and well-being and safety and such, but there's a bigger picture. There's a bigger picture. Anybody else? Somebody over here in the second row? Thank you. Maybe we could say... Maybe we could start to say names. If you could say your name, sorry. Yes, I'm Maria. Hello. Hi. And one of the reasons I came here this morning is I have found this perfect talk is I found myself in this sort of news cycle addiction. News cycle addiction, yeah. Anybody experience something like that? Yes, okay. Thank you. And I feel like it leads to other addictions. Then I have anxiety attacks and I go overeat. And I realize I'm right now like these kind of... I'm just doing things to feed dopamine and whatever the addiction, you know, that has started. And so, you know, in this practice, you know, how is this kind of our brain's kind of desire, really, for this?

[58:37]

Like, how do we create a practice to help us balance that out or not feed our dopamine desires? I mean, because that's... I mean, your talk was very much right on this whole topic, really. Yeah, yeah. Actually, there's a book I've been meaning to read. It's, I think, several years old now, but a Stanford professor called Dopamine Nation, which is all about this. So I want to learn more. So I don't want to have an exact answer for your question. But there is the, you know, the settling, allowing a spaciousness So that there's more room, I think, for experiencing a lot of different things. So experiencing pleasure, but also experiencing the difficult things with a groundedness. So there's less need to cover that up, you know, with a hit of something, right? So if there's a little bit of discomfort, like, oh, what is that? Can I settle with that? Oh, what opens with that? Oh, that changes.

[59:38]

And so I think there's more of a willingness, ability to be with a range of things. And we talk about being upright because our tendency is either to lean into something, like I want more of this or to, or to lean away. I'm trying to get away from something. And of course, sometimes we do need to move forward or move backward, but Can we do it in a way that's balanced and upright and we're not so spun around by it? And I think having the seat, the grounding, the capacity to stay with the fullness of experiences and the mind and the mind's, oh, let's settle it down. Let's go for a walk outside. Let's talk to a neighbor. Let's whatever. But you're able to be in more of the fullness of your experience. Try going for that walk without the phone. And then we can build into it, like, okay, for a 10-minute walk, or maybe an hour walk, or maybe it's a day, or maybe that's just into a retreat. And you can get used to not having that all the time. Oh, I can do that.

[60:40]

And now, consciously, I can look at this. And then I can let it go. Yeah. Thank you. Good luck. Yeah. Behind you. Again, if you could say your name, that would be lovely. I'm Natasha. I'm Natasha. So... I practice holistic healing, like I mentioned a couple weeks ago. And I wanted to touch on a few things that you guys mentioned about the struggle of the day-to-day getting so repetitive. And I practice also putting my phone away. I think that, first off, one thing we have to remind ourselves is that the age that we are in is literally called the experience age. and prior to that in the 90s, it was the information age because of technology. So it's just natural for us to want to consume everything that's going on. That's very exciting for us.

[61:41]

But one thing that you said about ego that helps me is I differentiate the difference between ego and confidence. I think that that really helps me. Just try and continue flow. Thank you for sharing. I'll make this brief. What's your name, please? My name is Corin. Hi, Corin. And now it's two things. One is I just wanted to share how incredibly serendipitous or coincidental my day has been so far. of dreaming of my mother who's passed away for the first time in a long time. And then during Bowen, you flip to a random page, and it was about staying connected with one's mother. And then the share about mothers here...

[62:46]

has just kind of happened for me, paralleled with the talk is specifically about a book I'm reading called The Faith to Doubt, and he differentiates between calculating thinking, which is problem-solving, and meditative thinking, which is open-endedly engaging in the mystery of it all and having doubt and... having exploration, but really taking the time for that and not treating the unknown and the mystery as if it were a problem to be solved and having that sort of realization of separating the two because we constantly are in this calculating, separating the world in all kinds of little bits. So that was really interesting. And then the other book that I checked out of the library at the same time was Dopamine Nation. Oh, really? And that was mentioned, and I'm just sitting here like, wow, it really is all interconnected.

[63:49]

You know, I don't know what to think of stuff, but more and more, if things start to, like, overlap, I'm like, pay attention there. Like, I don't know, I can't explain things, but if things are overlapping or coming together, pay attention. That's great. Thank you for sharing that. Thank you. Yeah. Right behind you. We do have time for one more. One more. Thank you. Good at keeping time. Thank you. Thank you for your talk. You're welcome. I'm actually feeling resistance to some of the things that you said. Go for it. And I'm Curious about that because intellectually it all makes sense to me. And I think something that my mind is grabbing onto right now is part of the last part of the Thich Nhat Hanh poem that you shared of us being everyone in this world.

[65:02]

that suffering on both sides of the coin in every way. And then at the end it talked about, or he said, or whatever, that our joy is very big and our pain is also very big. And I think that when I... with teachings in that way i've allowed myself to sway and go on these like emotional roller coasters basically and um be like oh well i'm just being really intimate with whatever that is including my gigantic joy and gigantic pain and i got really tired of that And I guess I'm just asking about where that groundedness in ourself that you mentioned at the beginning of the talk is amidst that.

[66:10]

Yeah, actually one teaching I keep coming back to, it's actually from early Buddhism, and it's called, you may be familiar, the Brahma Viharas or called divine abodes, right? But the way I think of it and... So often the first one given is loving kindness, metta, so the sense of just general well-being. You're wishing well, a kind of general friendliness to the world and yourself. And then there's compassion, the next one. And that is the willingness to be open, to be with suffering, but with the wish that that suffering be relieved, which is actually quite different, a different step beyond simple empathy where you're just feeling the pain of another, where you can burn out. It's feeling it, but wishing that to be relieved, so that openness. And there's a pain and a joy, I think, in that book. And then there's sympathetic joy, where you're willing to share joy with others, and joy and wholesomeness.

[67:14]

But then the fourth one, very important, is equanimity. And I think of that, the first one sort of as an orientation of friendliness. Then you're able and willing to be with the difficulty and wish well. You're able to be with the joy and sympathetically share with that. But you're not spun around back and forth because you have this groundedness of equanimity, of balance, of being able to be settled in your seat and knowing that it's all a flow. So I think that may be an interesting frame for practice. But notice when you're doing that, kind of like, oh, wait, maybe just a very simple practice of settling, body, ground, breath, and then you can open up a little bit more from there. Thank you. Thank you. I'm also, I think we maybe have some tea afterwards.

[68:23]

And I'll be happy. And muffins. And muffins. And muffins. And I want a muffin. So I'm happy to talk with people afterwards, too, if you want. and shine equally extend to everything and place with a true merit of Buddha's way. The meanings of the number of us can't be given by hope to save them. ... [...]

[69:41]

He is a song of God in the past.

[69:46]

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