# Day 0 Saturday - Evening Talk - Samatha File: 2020-07-11 19.57.59 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 ###### day-0-saturday-samatha-meditation-posture - **posture** - imagine you want to paint a picture which is going to take about an hour, and you don't want to move a lot. You'd want to get in a comfortable position in which you don't have to move a lot. The same way we want to think about hour meditation posture. It's not necessary to sit cross-legged. It could be a chair. The only think we'd like to avoid is lying down. - **present moment object** - we'll use either a body or sounds as our present moment object. For some people, being in the body isn't an easy place to be. ###### day-0-saturday-guided-samatha-meditation - **Guided Samatha meditation** - recognize, there's a body in your awareness. - we can notice the movement of the breath. - where do we notice that the most clearly? - whichever is the most obvious, rest your attention in that area. - try to nice the beginnings and ends of the breath. - see if you can be with the whole in and out-breath. - and then just relax completely. - then again with fully one cycle of breath. - and again, just relax. - try three breaths in a row. - 3 minutes silence. - invitation again, try 3 breaths. We want real sensitivity, intimacy - check if any tension is built up in the face, if so relax that. - relax the shoulders. - letting out the belly. - 2 minutes silence - see if we can do 7 breaths in a row. - but the main goal is the sensitivity and intimacy. - when the breath is all the way out, just increase the count. - wait again to get sensitive for that next in-breath. See if we can get up to 7. - 3 minutes silence - if you get to 7, then just rest - intimacy and sensitivity is more important than counting. You don't have to count. You want to as close and intimate with breath. - add gently metta, a little bit of welcoming, friendliness towards the sensation of the breath. Either to the sensation coming to the body or towards the body coming to awareness. - so, it's very likely the mind will wonder away to a story. Feeling there's something more interesting to think about or imagine. - this isn't a problem, it's in the nature of the mind to do this (Anicca). Sometimes in our practice, we have the feeling to rush back into the present moment. But I encourage you to go slowly. - if the mind wonders away, we just notice - 'oh, ok'. We're not disappointed. It's what minds do. - this moment of noticing we've wondered away is actually already a moment of some freedom. - a moment where we can be calm and alive (Samatha) through the whole body. Inviting to relax. - with this relaxed body, let's invite three rounds of the 7 breaths for the last 3 minutes of this meditation. - really relaxed, really intimate. # Day 1 Sunday - Morning Talk - Samatha File: 2020-07-12 09.33.03 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 - important elements of the experience - the object (breath, sounds) - the way of relating - remembering to - be with that chosen object of our attention (support mindfulness - Samatha) - also be with the atmosphere, space of awareness, that which knows, way of relating and start to **support more space** - f.e. you observe a person, but you can also observe the space around them, and we can observe what does that do to **the way** we're receiving that object when we include more space. - what is interesting is how the **space supports the intimacy** - this is something we don't notice in our life. If we're in a relationship, and we say 'I need more space'. We won't necessarily hear it as - 'So I can be more intimate with you'. - getting comfortable getting lost in mind. It's much more important to be playful and patient, rather than annoyed by not being perfect. - in this spirit of playfulness and patience, when you notice you've been lost, it's actually a moment you've been found. Just be leaning too much on being lost, lean on being found :), being present. And when you do, you can use the opportunity to cultivate metta. You're found, and you can cultivate the metta flavour towards the object of attention. - commonly held idea is that there is breath, and we need to be with it the way it is, without interfering with it. There can be the feeling that the object - breath exist separately from the atmosphere it appears. But you can invite yourself to explore the idea, or maybe just loosen around it, that perhaps the way the breath appears is really dependent on the way we relate to it. - the invitation is to see the breath (and/or the sounds) as a source of well-being. So the present breath can be a pleasant breath # Day 1 Sunday - Evening Talk - Samatha File: 2020-07-12 16.01.35 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 - calm aliveness, energy in body - all parts of ourselves are normal. Even the dirty, nasty stuff. It's important to normalize them, as without doing so, it's hard to get being them. - we have experiences which feel like hindrances to us. They obstruct our ability to be free. And all of those are **the way we relate to an experience**. And there's always the possibility for another way of relating. - the Buddhist teachings are focused on liberation from Dukha (stress, tightness). The same principles apply to gross examples of greed and anger, all the way through subtler and subtler of **pushing and pulling** in life. - but there are ways to relate that make life smoother, softer and lighter. - observe and be sensitive to the push and pull within the body, heart and mind and learn how to be more wholesome, balanced and nourishing. - learn how to go from habitual (Dukha) to more caring and kind (Metta), from **reactive to responsive**. From too much energy or not enough energy to **calm aliveness (Samatha). - in experience, it's also important to address **doubt**, confusion, uncertainty. You can experience getting out of balance and in such moment you can doubt your ability to get out of that situation. Or we can also doubt that there are teachings or practices that could help. Or doubting any person that suggests that freedom is possible. You don't have to discard scepticism, as long as you can also still experiment and explore - is something possible if I apply certain practices to my life. Doubt can be eased by actually experiencing what happens, when these methods are applied. - you may know these experiences as 5 hindrances that can stop smooth progressing. You can see opportunities in challenges, or challenges in opportunities. So we could call them 5 opportunities to liberation. - there can be too much energy - we call that restlessness. Or not enough energy - we call that lethargy, dullness, sleepiness. The question is - could this be more in balance? But these states are not independent from the **amount of space**. ###### day-1-sunday-samatha-too-much-energy - when you have a glass that's overspilling with water, you get a bigger glass. Similarly, if you have too much energy, you can get more space, rather than trying to change the amount of energy. - any experience is appearing in a space of awareness. F.e. the feeling of body is appearing in some space. We can tune into (be conscious of) the space around the body and slightly increase the space. And you can layer this a be aware of more space around that and so on until you reach the 'healthy' space, enough space for the experience to unfold itself. And then you can play with this. Increase the space and let it go and repeat and see what does that do to the restlessness. - what is interesting is that this is very counterintuitive. When we feel like there is too much energy we don't want it, and we squeeze down, we tighten on the experience. Often times we go with the muscle strength, which brings more tension, more anxiousness, more energy to the system. - the energy is not the problem, it is good. The problem is to skillfully work with it. - desiring, wanting very strongly is also an experience of a lot of energy. Or we can be in state where we think, oh I can't wait to get rid of this thing, get it out of my life. That also has a lot of energy. And of course that energy can be agitating which can be unpleasant, and so we're trying get away from that by going into the story of what I'm gonna get or what I'm gonna get rid off. - the invitation is to see, if we can drop the story and tune into the energy behind the story. And then we open the space and allow the energy up and out through the being. - **summary:** Energy is good, fantasy of desire or aversion comes, we let go of the story, tune into the energy, open the space and up and out. ###### day-1-sunday-samatha-not-enough-energy - get interested in calmness, you can rest and at the same time not disengage - airplane/balloon analogy - you can save energy - not by getting into meditative state repeatedly, which requires a lot of energy (similarly to plane taking of, blowing up a balloon) - but by staying in it (similarly to plane cruising, keeping your balloon blown up) - so when finishing meditation, keep the mindfulness, the Metta, you've acquired - don't be too warm, can make you sleepy, body thinks it's bedtime - you can ask and image - how can we invite the feeling of energy into our system? - f.e. with breath, can we imagine, that the in-breath has this brightness, this bright light, which is waking up the cells - certain meditations don't like the usage of imagination, because it can lead to thinking, so be it's good to be aware of that and try to imagine skillfully - or see if you can imagine that the breath doesn't come from the nose, but it actually originates in the belly, comes up through the system and when breathing out imagine it goes out through the top of the head. Try it and see if this movement brings more energy. ###### day-1-sunday-samatha-summary - work with too much or too little energy to get to balance - too much energy - expand space - sometimes we can feel too much energy, because we feel remorse due to past actions. Remember we all make mistakes. Forgiveness can help here and also dedication to the intention of acting differently next time - "I don't want to do this again". - - too little energy - look for ways you can engage with movement. The calmness can be disengaging, and we want to get interested in it and movement can help - get to state of interesting calmness - calm aliveness - Samatha - sometimes we can feel too little energy can be a wish to not exist, wish not to be here present with the experience, type of avoidance. Here it's good to remember - **we can only heal, what we can reveal** and hindrances is the way experience reveals itself. - drop the story, relate to the energy of the heart-mind-body system - let's see if you can keep the balloon inflated # Day 2 Monday - Morning Talk - Dukha, Vedana (Negative) File: 2020-07-13 09.30.04 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 - in our experience, there's always an object and the way of relating. Many times, when the object is unpleasant, we try to push it away. But this means, we double the unpleasantness, because the object is unpleasant, but also the way we relate - pushing. - one of the approaches in meditation is to change the unpleasant reaction/way of relating - so the experience is also shaped by the way we relate. We don't know experience independent of the way we relate - we know how pain is with resistance (pushing) or attempting to escape from it (pulling something else in). One exercise would be, what's pain like when we open to it, allow for it. - there are two ways to do this. - first, we can simply allow that pain can exist. And in some sense bringing this sense of kindness towards what's painful. - or we open around the pain. Open towards the space around it. Whether it's in the body, or it's the sounds. - this way of practicing is still dependent on (Samatha) - **being present** with the body/sounds - while remaining sensitive to the sense of **possibility**. - possibility because there's always a way of relating happening. And the way of relating is shaping how things appear in experience. But it's not fixed, **the way of relating is not fixed**. So **we can** open the space and bring in the flavour that is more wholesome, more caring. - what we'll notice is that we occasionally hit upon something that's painful and unpleasant, and we begin to shrink. It's hard to bear unpleasant sounds or sensations. - we've mentioned that it is possible to perceive breath as energy (part of Samatha practice), not only as anatomy. And if you feel an area of tension or pain in the body right now, you can see that as the rhythm of the breath occurs you can imagine breath going in and out through this area. So either we're feeling it, or we're imagining it and then imagining feeling it, it doesn't really matter. **Whatever we conceive that's also what we perceive. What we think about, that's what we feel.** - the invitation is to play with our conception of what is a breath? And what does breath can do. - we can also transfer this to sounds. See if you can perceive sounds as vibrations arising and passing. Even the unpleasant sounds. They're just vibrations. - even the unpleasant sensation in the body. They are just sensations. The sensation of pain, is it anything other than pressure and heat, temperature? And yet we label certain pressures, certain temperatures, as pain. And then it gets conceived in a certain way. - noticing this opens out a range of freedom for us. But with this skill we also need to be responsible, sensitive and caring. - this body is a gift to be cared for. The ears are a gift to be cared for. So we can have a skill where we can tolerate more pain, tolerate less pleasant sounds, but sometimes we also need to move the body, or we need to move to a different area or cover the ears. - so we want to be sensitive to have wider range of body sensations and wider range of sounds that we can tolerate and be with. - but please don't use this as a way of harming yourself. - so when you get into a posture, recognize - this body is my friend. Making is stable, comfortable. - And so we're interested in what's available for us rather than shrinking away from or pushing away or even denying the unpleasant. - also, incorporate Samatha. You don't have to pay attention all the time to the painful. So invite longer deeper breath, wider sounds and so on. - some of the time, with very clear, gentle sustained effort, see if you can increase the tolerance. - so again, a bit of playfulness, quite a lot of patience - Can I breathe with this unpleasant sensation for maybe 2,3,4, breaths? Can the breath almost massage the pain? - by imagining the breath going around it, or even right through it at times. - and as we do this, we have to be aware, with this powerful skill, that we could be 'ah, I know how to get rid of pain. I breathe around it, I breathe through it.'. Something like a strategy starts to happen. - but we want to see this more as an act of compassion towards the unpleasant, towards the painful. - because if it becomes a strategy just to get rid of it, you can see there's aversion in there. We're back to aversion. - so **we'll practice this primarily with the body or hearing right now and develop our skill with something that is not too complex.** - and we can expand it later. You might already want to, but we'll do that later. - same strategy can be used towards thoughts and emotions. But they are very, very subtle and often taken very personally. - so let's not rush into it. Let's choose the body or sounds for now. # Day 2 Monday - Morning Practice File: 2020-07-13 09.30.04 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 [comment]: <> (Practice start at 25:10) # Day 2 Monday - Evening Talk - Dukha, Vedana (Negative) File: 2020-07-13 15.59.31 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 [comment]: <> (Talking about Dukha starts at about 9:00) - Buddha said - life is suffering - life is Dukha - but he elaborated on in what ways is it suffering - the word Dukha carries a lot of meaning in Pali language - anything that is painful or unpleasant, is called Dukha - Buddha primarily talks about psychological suffering. Meaning that Dukha exists in the relationships, in the way of relating. F.e. when beautiful things come to an end, or unpleasant things arise (sounds, loss of a friend) - but how does this psychological Dukha (suffering) arise? - it is of course supported by the way we evolved - avoid unpleasant and hold one what's lovely, keep close what's pleasant - but this way we end up in a struggle against life, because life includes painful things - so this way pleasant things that don't last or unpleasant things that arise when we don't want them are causing stress - we habitually contract and withdraw from this type of experience - so comings and goings of painful and pleasant phenomena is certainly unavoidable - but it's actually our resistance to it which really increases the amount of pain and difficulty - this is basically the first noble truth of Buddhism - these truths are called noble, which is a word that is not used much anymore - it comes from a Pali Aria - which has a few meanings - it can mean deserving respect or worth attending to, worth paying attention to. Meaning of all the truths you could be paying attention to, these ones actually uncover really liberating teachings - other meaning is that they are virtuous - they bring harmony and well-being. Because they explore how Dukha comes about, they shape how we shape and interact with those around us. They open to us ways of being happy that is not dependent on getting or getting rid of things - in our existence we can often feel the urge to have only pleasant experiences - if I could only have pleasant experiences, then I'd be happy - and we can carry that to our meditation practice - if only I had a calmer mind then I could practice meditation - if only my back didn't ache, then I could really meditate - which is a beautiful lie that we tell ourselves, but it's important to know it is a lie. It's been probably really helpful in terms of evolution and surviving, but maybe we're not as happy and satisfied as we could be from this position - life is kind of calling us to wake up to a deeper wisdom, so we can have more tolerance, more skillful and compassionate responses - so the first of these noble truths is that in life there is Dukha. If you're alive, you can experience Dukha. - in the first Sutras, Buddha actually calls this first noble truth of Dukha by a different name, which is something really relatable - quarrels and disputes, arguments - this isn't just limited on an argument with another human being (if only), we're usually in a conflict with life itself, the way life unfolds. Only wanting pleasant experiences and not wanting any painful experiences, that's quite an argument. - baguette metaphor - we'd be like someone who buys a baguette and says - I only eat the left side of baguette - because of that as soon as we walk out of the shop, we tear it in half and throw away the right side of the baguette. Then we hold our baguette which is now half as long, and we realize that still a half of it is still the right side. So what do we do? We tear it in half again, throw away, tear in half, throw away... there's always going to be an unpleasant experience in life. - from dao de jing: You call something good, you give necessarily rise to bad. They arise only in comparison - so why is it that things are sometimes Dukha? The term that is used is Tanha. Which is often translated as craving (desire). But it refers to the tearing in half of the baguette. Trying to keep all the pleasant and get rid of unpleasant. But maybe craving isn't so relatable and the word I currently use (Nathan) is demanding (dožadování se), the of demanding on life. But we could also say that it is demanding something that is not possible. Something that life can't do. Which is lining us up for this dispute, argument with life - but Dukha is an avoidable experience - Dukha is arising dependent on demanding, and we don't need to demand, it is optional - some relief can be found in tolerance towards something bad - and it can also be applied to not pull towards that's pleasant, try to own it, try to keep it - the less we demand of life to be other than the way it is the more happiness we have - **it seems to us** that we get happy when we get what we want, but what Buddha is suggesting is that happiness comes from no longer demanding that thing - if we don't pull towards or push away with great intensity that level of Dukha just doesn't arise - in the dharma teachings this is also described as a second arrow - we are shot with an arrow, a painful experiences arises, but rather than taking care and cover and removing that arrow, we manage to shoot another arrow into ourselves - the arrow of "this shouldn't have happened to me!". - it comes about because we take certain things as dear and desirable and of course other things as not desirable. This ties into a teaching which we can also explore as a practice. - there's a certain process that happens every time we contact the world - it is referred to as Vedana - vedana is classification of experiences into pleasant and unpleasant (nice or not nice **to me**). This is decided very quickly decided through the sense - nice, not nice, nice, nice, not nice... all the time - there're two types of Vedana, but there's also third, which in modern life is called 'nah'. It's things that aren't nice they're not not nice, they're 'nah', not for me... - so underlying the demanding (which causes Dukha to arise) is this process of Vedana - something arises we contact it with our senses, let's say it's something nice (Vedana), I'm gonna get it, I'm gonna get some of that, that's the Tanha (demanding), which already is Dukha. It's stressful. But then it turns out that maybe I can't get it. And that's not nice, I don't want that! So there's pushing away in this experience as well. And it goes on... that's Dukha and that's Dukha... the way that we contact, the way that we relate brings Dukha - the freedom that comes isn't in stopping having Vedana experiences (good and bad), but we get wise about the process. We try to not take it so personally. We recognize, ah, there's this, and it seems nice from perspective, but I don't need to get it, that doesn't need to happen. Interestingly, we can still enjoy it as it rises and passes. But the wisdom key here is just not to believe in it quite the same way. It's the blind belief that's really the core of the problem. - we're not trying to get rid of Vedana, we're just trying to relate to it skillfully - and that is the practice - once we open to these three types of Vedana, I (Nathan) don't know if it's possible to have an experience which isn't pleasant, unpleasant or not unpleasant and not pleasant. - but it's important to know - **Vedana is added on top of contact** - f.e. car horns are always unpleasant. That's the Vedana of car horns. But what if someone you love turns up outside your house - beep beep... Vedana, is added on, so we don't have to take it so seriously - vedana has a bit of emptiness teachings in it. The Vedana that we add on is empty of belonging. In other words, the experience doesn't have to have that Vedana - f.e. we love sunshine until we're burned, we love our favourite food until we don't - if we notice, that Vedana is not fixed, we open doorways to more life, more possibilities, more flexibility of ways looking at experience. F.e. we can feel connected, friendly towards people even if we don't know them - thich Nhat Hanh has this saying: "The miracle is not to walk on water, it's to walk at all". Isn't it true, that walking is amazing? But it's probably been getting 'nah' Vedana all day long - so to get back to the second arrow. The Buddha says, a skillful practitioner doesn't fire the second arrow. They are able to hold their experience in much more wise and skillful way. Not firing the second arrow really means going against the stream of our evolution, habits and culture. - but to be honest, we don't only fire a second arrow. When we fire the second arrow, which is also painful, we might fire a third. And noticing that, we might fire the fourth. Which really builds up the experience of more and more arrows every time we have unpleasant experience. More and more difficult to bear. - remember, the possibility of possibilities is always there. Even if we have fired 60 arrows, we don't have to fire another one. - in short, these are Dharma teachings. Tendencies of tendencies tranformed into possibility of possibilities. This is the direction towards freedom # Day 2 Monday - Evening Practice File: 2020-07-13 15.59.31 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 [comment]: <> (Practice starts at 54:50 - 3290 sec) # Day 3 Tuesday - Morning Talk - Vedana (Positive) File: 2020-07-14 09.30.37 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 - in general, we're interested in finding wha't **appropriate** for us. - we might think 'ah, I should be doing more advanced practice', but it'd be much more skillful to do an appropriate practice - first night, we were talking about **three aspects of Dharma practice** and how they were different doorways to freedom: Samatha (calm aliveness), Metta (developing the heart's ability to be kind to more and more), and today is gonna be based again on an insight, Vipassana, deep understanding, in particular about Vedana phenomena. - don't forget about generally developing our gathered attention, we still need that - intimacy with direct experience (body, sounds), can keep developing - there's real beauty in getting more refined more sensitive to what's present right now - hopefully, heart and mind is enjoying this calm and steady attention and softening tension in the body and allowing whatever remains of tension to still be met with kindness, with Metta - so in the sense of being appropriate, if counting is still useful to support that intimacy, keep using that. It's not only for beginners, or only for failures. ###### vedana - sights, sounds, smells, tastes, physical sensation and event thoughts get very quickly categorized as pleasant, unpleasant, or not so pleasant or not so unpleasant - this is normal, habitual and maybe even unavoidable - two important things: It's this way **to me** (nice to me, for me) and it's still **added on** an experience. It's a personal perspective, and it can change. Object can remain and Vedana can change. - so we can play with this - When something is categorized as pleasant to me, we might want more of it. We might grasp at it, cling onto it, pull it towards the sense of self - and you can feel this activity is contracting - this doesn't mean, you have to reject all pleasant things, because they lead to attachment - but it's an invitation for a wholesome relationship to what could be called pleasant and delightful - yesterday, we practiced with unpleasant things which automatically feel like "I want to get rid off that, or escape from it" we could see that we could open here - ...we don't have to react in that wa y, and it can make what's unpleasant a little bit more enjoyable to be with - that's probably also true for pleasant things - we could have more space with pleasant things, and they could become more delightful - so we don't have to pull pleasant and push unpleasant - and then there are experiences somewhere in between - not pleasant nor unpleasant - this is interesting because it's not of interest to the self - we could say that in evolutionary terms the Vedana might react to the level of "is this a threat" or "is this a meal", or you can understand Vedana "is this lunch" or "am I lunch" - and so the rest is "I don't need to pay attention to that, I can just ignore it". Interestingly, this is also contracting, this is also Dukha. - and we can see that because we can open to more and see delight in what we're already ignoring - when we're ignoring something, or we have to be with something that's in that range that's not particularly interesting to us it can lead to boredom. Or course, we don't want boredom and becomes unpleasant Vedana - in our practice, the Vedana is part of mindful way of looking at phenomena - by bringing attention to this phenomena, we can go beyond the reactivity that leads on from them > In secular mindfulness practice, can one have the same level of discernment when one doesn't know this way of perceiving and doesn't know it's possible to observe these features of consciousness? - vedana arises any time there is a contact and that can be a seed for reactivity - the goal of the Vedana practice is to notice - this is pleasant, this is unpleasant, this is neither nor - and we use what we've learned in the practice just to open, just to soften, just to relax with that - and we'll see that reactivity and Dukha are the same - so when the reactivity lessens Dukha lessens - if we find this to be true, we find that we're able to navigate our experience to more well-being, there's more easy, calmness, maybe more friendliness, then really welcome and allow yourself to remain in that space, to notice it, to feel into it - it's one of those place where those three doorways (Samatha, Metta, Vipassana) come together - so we're having an experience - Vipassana - there's must be Vedana, tune into that - insight, - Samatha - that calm aliveness, I can just rest with this, I don't need to react and that supports more rest and relaxation - metta - that softens the heart to this quality of Metta (kindness) - this is really important to remember, because sometimes we want to just solve more problems and not rest in the resolution - and sometimes we might even feel "ah, it's not that special" - Buddha would use this description of stream that's just got one drop maybe every 5 seconds it falls - seem very insignificant. But if you play water jug, it will fill - another insight here is - **what we pay attention to expands** - it's very challenging but very worthwhile to just try to stay with any sense of well-being, allowing it to expand - so very practical way of using this practice is to get this out of difficult situations. - at some point in your life, maybe even on the retreat, you will suffer from something in the teachings which is called Papancha. It's a kind of an escalation of thinking, an obsessive cycle of emotions. And this can feel really overwhelming and there's nothing I can do with it and it just takes over. But if we can remember, we can ask this question: What's the Vedana of this experience? Oh, it's unpleasant. And this could be a key in the door to notice - ah, I'm probably reacting to this, I'm probably pushing this away. And that pushing away is actually turning this circle of thoughts and emotions, it's part of the engine of the Papancha. - so there are two parts of this practice - one is we're not so identifying with the thoughts because we're looking at them as having a Vedana, - so less identified and also less reactive - Papancha is a good example of Dukha of everyday life, strong sense of reactivity and strong sense of self # Day 3 Tuesday - Morning Practice File: 2020-07-14 09.30.37 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 [comment]: <> (Practice starts at 32:00 - 1920 sec) # Day 3 Tuesday - Evening Talk - Anicca File: 2020-07-14 16.00.10 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 - topic: front edge of now - the practice of Vedana is teaching us to really be present with whatever arises and passes (positive as well as negative). The practice has been called 'living at the front edge of now' - vedana offers a gift of less reactivity, it begins to open up the possibility of increasing the range of things we can be with - at some point in the practice, we'll experience things that may be too pleasant, and we'd like to learn how to open to that too - reduce reactivity, increase range ###### anicca - all things that appear to us, that we experience, they come, and they also pass - this is obvious, and it's a truth that's present in any spiritual or scientific practice - nevertheless, bringing our attention to this phenomena of transience if really freeing - because even though we know this, it's as if we forget it quite regularly - when there's something really difficult in your experience, we have to notice "the making of time" - the future we imagine when something is a problem is a big part of why it feels like a problem - f.e. some part of our body aches during meditation, and we think "oh, this isn't really pleasant", but in such moment, we're already with it, we're already tolerant of it, but then the thought comes "how long is this gonna last" - it's that future thought that starts to really cause the contraction - and if we could say "oh it's only gonna last like a half a second more... ah, great!" - and if someone says "no, for the rest of your life, it's gonna be like this"... "ahh, I can't bear it" - it's the sense of time that adds the problem - so great deal of our sense of a problem about any problem is that it's going to last - the following is a skillful practice we can develop, to open the range and soften the reactivity - Buddha wanted to make clear that all phenomena are **inconstant** - inconstant is however different from impermanent. Impermanent which is the word being for Anicca - this practice, and it means that phenomena rises and passes, nothing lasts forever. And this is one aspect. But better translation would be inconstant which means coming to the sense that even within the thing that does come and go (pain, emotion) - in other words, the appearance comes and during it's existence (before it disappears) it's inconstant, it's changing within itself. - so to give an example, the pain that may arise in our knee during meditation is always changing. The feeling of temperature or pressure or any other aspect of it keeps changing until it disappears again. Or we can imagine we have a memory that comes to us every now and then over long period of time. Every time it comes to us, we remember it, it may seem it's the same. But it's not, it's not the same. Life doesn't repeat. There are too many causes and conditions that give rise to something for there to be repetition. - and we can always ask what causes and conditions are coming together to make this appear like this? - as we said, the object is not separate from the way of relating to that object, to the way it appears - in this view (Anicca), life is much more dynamic, as it comes into and out of being - the past is really, fully, deeply, profoundly gone in that shape and form - when we remember that in this body, heart and mind in this present condition it will appear a certain way - this is part of the reason we can heal in the right setting, even deep traumatic experiences - in the wrong setting we re-traumatize, or develop a trauma from minor things - but even before we get to traumatic experience, we can acknowledge it's important **how we meet experience** - which is one of the reasons we bring a lot of Metta along with the insight, it's not a dry insight - a lot of love, warmth, a lot of kindness as we investigate - whenever we're having present life experience we have to see it's made up of other stuff, of other factors - there are many parts making up the present experience and all of them are also inconstant - there's inconstancy all the way through ###### short-detour-to-anatta-no-self - this is a really helpful insight which could lead off to a beautiful exploration of the rising sense of self - everything we think we are is made up of parts and all of those parts are actually inconstant - and yet we usually have a feeling of constancy "I've always been me" - but nothing in this body, heart, mind is constant and nothing at all in the world of experience is constant - so it doesn't make much sense this feeling of being a constant self - if this feels disorienting, disconcerting, remember, lots of kindness, you can generate kindness, soften the body, open the space ###### back-to-anicca - how can we use this insight to the lessening of Dukha from reactivity? - in a certain way that whatever is appearing is Anicca (inconstant, always changing) is simpler than looking for the Vedana - during trying to identify the Vedana of something, sometimes we may feel very hesitant, not knowing if it's positive, or negative, or something between. But we might simply say, yes, it's Anicca, it's inconstant - and see what happens - if we add Anicca insight into a Vedana practice it's also really powerful - if something is pleasant, but it's also Anicca, it doesn't make much sense to pull it towards us - or if it's unpleasant, but it's also Anicca, it doesn't make much sense to invest our energy into push it away - whether we see it's Anicca because it's impermanent, or we see it's inconstant, dependent on the relationship as one of the factors why it appears this way - this can further aid the fading of Dukha, and it also softens the sense of self, because the problem and the sense of self rise together. When the feeling of problem fades away also the sense of self quietens down. - maybe in the background we can also notice that also the appearance of the thing changes - all of these practices are supported by more sensitivity, more stability in the body, heart, mind by the Samatha practice - once there's stability, start dropping in these 'insight practices' (Vipassana - Dukha, Vedana, Anicca, Anatta) and see what happens - interesting is that more insight start to come from more Samatha practice - from the place of calm we can more easily see how everything is changing - just as someone who is still at one location can notice how things are moving with more delicacy and sensitivity - but furthermore in our practice, we will actually also see that when we bring the insights in we'll actually have more calmness and aliveness because the insights frees the heart and mind - to make it more clear, let's take an example - sometimes seeing that things are Anicca doesn't lessen the reactivity that leads to Dukha - we might see a slice of cake, and we look at it and think "that's inconstant" - it doesn't mean I want it any less. "I can see it's made up of lots of inconstant parts, yes, this is true". "And the fact that it's glistening and looking delicious is affected by the way I'm looking at it". "But I'm gonna get it on the front edge of the now - as soon as possible". - so now let's explain why the last half an hour of teaching wasn't waste of time - the really important thing to see (btw it's fine to enjoy cake every once in a while) is that the Buddhist path is interested in a **lasting happiness** - you can't have a lasting happiness from just collecting things that don't last - even if you get a really, really, really good piece of cake, how long is the happiness? - so here's the trick from really getting the most of happiness out of a piece of cake - you give it to someone else. And they eat the piece of cake, and you feel really happy - making another person happy is a much longer lasting happiness - because if we really think about it, the thrill of our taste buds, the sugar and fat, is really short-lived. After that you have to chew and make this cake mush in your mouth and get it stuck around you teeth. Then you have to make all your neck muscles to squeeze it down into the stomach and then it sits there for a really long time being heavy - if you eat with mindfulness for a really long time, you realize it's an illusory way of finding happiness - in terms of pleasurable experiences that a human being can have, fulfilling ones own sensory desires really is not in the top 10. Way more joy is available in life. - happiness is in the skillful, wholesome and loving way of relating - our desire for sensory things which can't last, also can't last, it's also just passing through - you can notice through today, all the different mind states you've been in. All the uplifting states "ah I really know how to meditate, I'm doing" - it didn't last. Or any feeling of "this is really difficult, I'm not good at this" it didn't last - no mood, no mind state lasts - it feels so serious because we think "ahh, this how I'm gonna feel forever" - just keep remembering throughout the day "ah, this mind state won't last, whatever it is... it's just a visitor" - and hopefully the resistance will soften - remember, even if there's the slightest relief, it's a sign we're heading in the right direction - the insight is working even if it's working subtly - subtle relief is still relief - there might be often this feeling of "I should be able pay attention to everything", we feel bad that our mind still wonders. Of course mindfulness and presence is so important in practice. It's what brings us to the doorway of possibilities, that we can open possibilities, once we see what's here. But **mindfulness, or attention, or even presence, is Anicca. Sometimes it's there, but very often it's gonna. Which is so important to appreciate when it's here**. - attention is such a gift. It's what makes everything possible. But it's also Anicca - this isn't defeatism. There are things we can do. We've been extending our ability to do. We see that the mind attends to what it's interested in. - you may have noticed that the heart and mind enjoys intimacy with experience - even when you're listening now, you can feel how much more enjoyable it is to be sensitive with the breath or with the sounds - or we can remember the exercise with counting, so the mind doesn't wonder away so easily - but at a certain point, the mind's gonna wonder to something else, because it's creative, it likes to try out new stuff - so let's not be anti-mind, against the behaviour of the mind - instead, this is another opportunity to notice Anicca - mind wonders, get lost, we might think about hating ourselves, or thinking we're useless, but we can just remember "ah, Anicca!", this is meant to be happening. Let that insight go deep - remember to relax, soften and get interested in something that is present - meditation is listening to life and what we hear is a load of inconstancy - body sensations, just like sounds, they just come and go, come and go - we just establish ourselves in this location, and we just watch things arising and passing - hopefully that feels quite enjoyable - vedana we contribute to anything we contact is also inconstant - thoughts that come and go through the mind, even the ones that feel really difficult, they're Anicca. Interestingly, nothing is as fleeting as a thought, nothing is a sticky as a thought either. What an interesting combination. What is a thought. And yet thoughts shape what we do, they shape our life. But they are really hard to pay attention to, because they are inconstant, and they're very subtle. Also, we take them very personally. So it might not be the right time include working with thoughts yet. - few final points: - anything that appears is inconstant (Anicca) - everything that appears is made up of other parts which are also inconstant. Like a sound is made of vibrations, and the vibrations are also inconstant. And it's Anicca all the way down - and there can be this thought "I need to get to the most subtle Anicca possible". But the freedom comes from the letting go, letting it be, not reacting. We only need to see as much Anicca as we're already seeing - it's enough to see inconstancy only there where we previously thought there's constancy - seeing the inconstancy opens the demand (lessens contraction, Dukha) - so we don't need to go Anicca, Anicca, Anicca - just as much as brings the freedom - anicca is also sad aspect of reality - everyone we love is Anicca, everything we appreciate and is dear to us, is Anicca, including ourselves. So there's something really precious, but also quite sad - here we can recognize the Vedana of what is it to acknowledge the Anicca of all things - letting that practice expand and open around the contraction if possible and support ourselves with more Metta to nourish the heart, offer ourselves really nourishing breath - use all the doorways available to you, see what is appropriate - we can open to the whole human experience as we rest in the front point of now - as alive as we can be - with this long tail of Anicca behind us and long line ahead of us, in some mysterious way this now popping into existence - may our practices and our understanding support us to open to this aspect of life - in ways that support something really lovely in relationship to all things - (No long practice in this video) # Day 4 Wednesday - Morning Talk - Anicca File: 2020-07-15 09.29.32 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 - in the Buddhist teachings he (the Buddha) would encourage us to regard all things as Anicca - this isn't so that we don't want to have anything to do with life - but it's bringing us into tune with the way that life unfolds - as mentioned yesterday, seeing that everything that we experience also passes is obvious - but it's something that doesn't actually get a lot of our attention - so the practice today is to really have a clear sense "this isn't lasting" - and as we do that, I hope that experience opens out, that the heart and mind feels more liberated - and our sensitivity to life gets even deeper - we do this practice deliberately paying attention to inconstancy (ever-present change) - in the beginning to specific things at the moment but eventually to anything, any appearance - anything that comes through the sense doors and even things that we don't normally hold in our attention - i.e. sense of self or sense of awareness - again, we're interested in making up of time - f.e. pain in a body, when we think it's gonna take half a second, it doesn't seem like a problem, we can feel like it's already almost gone and when it's gonna, it's really completely gonna, just a memory of it is left - but often times we build up the pain "ah maybe this will last for 5 minutes or an hour or whole day" - sometimes it'll be appropriate to move when the pain is lasting of course - but what we also want to learn how to do in this practice is **the power of just looking at it as inconstant** - seeing if we can reduce the sense of it being problematic by reducing the sense of having a long future - more and more we attune the attention to the ephemeral (pomíjívý) nature of appearances, that they just pop into and out of the present moment - the spirit of seeing inconstancy can bring such a degree of lightness - lightness as an opposite to when there's Dukha and the experiences build-up, heavy - maybe you can already see it, but we'll see it through the practice that this way of looking reduces the sense of things being a problem - it softens the sense of demanding for the problems to go away - which amazingly allows it to pass more quickly - also it lessens the demand on the pleasant to be held onto and owned as mine - and amazingly, that can allow it still to touch our heart but also move through with such grace and ease - and when we bring this lens towards this third quality of the Vedana, the overlooked, it really allows us to deeper sense of sensitivity, its very light arising and passing nature - this is something we can bring attention to through all the sense doors - primarily, we've been working through touch, the body sense or through the sounds, and they really clearly reveal Anicca - once we become stable with that sense, what about the visual field? Notice that it's also Anicca - when I'm moving my hand, you don't see a trace behind, it's always a new place - since everything is changing, it's good to have a practice that is steady - for many of us it's helpful to have a note (a reminder) offered towards the experience - we might be saying f.e. 'Anicca' as we're experiencing something, or 'inconstant', or 'impermanence' - the skill here is to find out what's the volume, what's the intensity of that note that's most helpful for you - you might need to ease it off, or even stop it altogether at times, so the primary attention is with the sense of change - we've been training for this with the intimacy, and the counting we were practicing on the first day or also with the meditations we've been doing in the evenings - so like with the counting, we do it in the background, the main thing is the intimacy with the experience - or it might be a little bit in the foreground as we feel this sensation "ah it's Anicca" and then feel it again - it's like we're sticking a sticker onto something, we also want to feel it - as in Metta, it's in the feeling, the meaning of words ("may you be safe" or "ah, it's Anicca") - obviously use your own words, your own language, so it's efficient, effective for you - the understanding in the practice is "I'm probably taking this as permanent" to some degree, and I'm reminding myself, it's not, it's inconstant, and we're really just feeling "how does that shape experience when I drop that in" - even if we fully don't recognize that whole process or even fully believe it's Anicca, observe what happens when we declare it is - it should up open the attention and diminish the demand - we don't have to be sensitive to very rapid Anicca, that's not necessary - we can allow for the fact that things are very, very fast coming into and out of being - the freedom comes when the recognition of Anicca is deep in the being - look after your heart in this practice - when the practice is working well, it brings a lot of liberation, there may be lessening of contraction and maybe even a feeling of deep happiness, but be aware that other emotional responses may come up when we're contemplating change - we could at times feel saddened that this is changing, or a bit distant or indifferent - this might depend on what aspect we're reflecting on, our relationship to it will be a factor there, the Vedana of the experience - so let your heart and sensitivity guide you as you open to more difficult areas of life. You could f.e. can come away from insight practice (Vippasana - Vedana, Anicca...) to breathing, listening to sounds (Samatha) - develop any nourishment and pleasantness through the heart, mind practice - you could also switch to Metta practice or bring Metta flavour to the Anicca practice # Day 4 Wednesday - Morning Practice File: 2020-07-15 09.29.32 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 [comment]: <> (Practice starts at 33:08 - 1988 sec) # Day 4 Wednesday - Evening Talk - Dukha File: 2020-07-15 16.00.42 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 - let's talk about our talks ###### first-thing-about-talks - you may have noticed that sometimes a talk can feel a little like an argument - the whole premise of sharing wisdom teachings is dependent on telling something they don't get it right, they get it wrong - if we follow the Buddhist teachings all the way through, we'll see that there's clear reason why we're suffering, why there is Dukha - and that is because we have Avidya (ignorance), non-wisdom, non-knowledge, misunderstanding - misunderstanding such as that we take things that are impermanent, and we think they are permanent at times - this is a very specific kind of misunderstanding - but we still can feel like the Buddha is calling us stupid - and we can feel "who are You calling stupid?!... I'm quite clever!" - so maybe it's possible to take this as an invitation to see what it's like to look at life through these wisdom lenses - because we can sometimes feel like we're replacing misunderstanding with right understanding and that might be the end of the path - and that seeing that everything is Anicca is actually really true and right and correct - and maybe it is - but of course maybe it's not, that remains - and yet what's really more significant is - **Is it useful to see things as Anicca?** - meaning - Is it helping us to feel more free? Does it bring joy? Does it bring more connection? Does it bring more of a sense of harmony? Does it, so to say, wake up the spirit? Or expand the heart? Or what else that you really value in life. - so it's true that some of what makes wisdom wise is in the knowledge, the information, but we could say that it becomes **an insight**, it's in the feeling that it brings, and those feelings we just mentioned, feelings we value ###### second-thing-about-talks - some of the content of these talks may sound life it's anti-life - and I think by the end of the talk it'll be clear that I'm not anti-life and the talk neither - but more that there are quite interesting experiences available to us if we do adopt some useful but really quite unusual attitudes and intentions - some of which could sound like rejection of things or devaluing things, making them seem less than they are - so as we speak about these, just remember they're being done with love and care, and also a lot of intimacy and sensitivity ###### Dukha - so now, we're gonna explore Dukha, the stress, the tension, the dissatisfaction - we're exploring Dukha for the liberation of Dukha - all the practices we're doing here, they all build on each other - an extension of the Anicca way of looking is to see that things don't last and therefore they can't bring lasting happiness. And because they're inconstant, they're unreliable. Because we're looking for something reliable, they are Dukha. - we already see looking through the lens of Anicca, it encourages us to not seek happiness in things - soften that pulling towards, pushing away or overlooking - so in a sense this isn't something radically new, it's like an evolution of a practice, but each time we're getting more directly to the point - we're building a skill and developing the shortest possible way to release Dukha - just as before with the Vedana way of looking, **we don't need to decide which Vedana it is we just know that it's Anicca, it's more direct** - we see that this phenomena is Dukha, it's unable to bring lasting satisfaction - we'll open up why it would be helpful to have more immediate response - but if this feels like we're going too fast, you don't need to rush this process - all the practices we've been exploring do support the qualities we want to see in the world - f.e. the intimacy counting, even that releases Dukha as we become more present, the longer, more enjoyable breaths release the tension of Dukha in the body - the Meta practice and other practices really open the tightness in the heart and mind using the field of friends - we can release contraction, with the core idea that Dukha is contraction - another way we can express Dukha is unable to bring lasting satisfaction - the way the world unfolds is stressful for being seeking easy - the Buddha would share a horrible image at times of us being like too many fish in a very shallow pool - getting hooked in the mouth, hooked in the heart and pulled around by the things of life - just like Pema Chödrön named one of her hooks - Don't bite the hook - in other words, seeing things as Dukha - seeing that things don't bring lasting satisfaction is to understand that **the real source of the happiness is never in the object, happiness comes in the relationship** - and interestingly, relating to things as if they are Dukha (unable to bring lasting happiness, contracting nature) brings freedom - it can sound so life-denying, depressing, as if nothing's worth anything to me - but this is offered as a pathway to real and lasting happiness - we could imagine it in this day and age as a web page, which is called "real-lasting-happiness" where we either buy the thing or click and open the article and inside is says "Just call everything Dukha!"... I think we'd want our time or money back. - ok, but I prepared you for this, **we're into what's useful not what's true** - so let's see, let's go against the stream, let's do what looks depressing or life-denying and see what happens - let's go a little bit down the track of how do things appear at all to a human being, why do they appear? - certain experiences can be really built up (heavy, many layers, we're too much involved, lost in them) and other less built up (lighter, more direct, clear), which feels more free - when the situation is more built up and there's more stress the object becomes really important to us, it's become really strong in perception - so it's the push, and the pull on the object that causes this building up to happen. The stronger the push the stronger the pull, the more it builds up - at what point are we seeing the object as it is from its own side? Because the way we're relating to it affects how it appears to us - if we lessen the push and pull the object because lighter and lighter in perception. You can notice this with f.e. the pain in the body. If you lessen the push and pull, the pain fades. Does that happen to you? - if we keep on letting go of any push and pull towards the object, you might think 'aw, it disappeared...', we might just think "ah, because it's Anicca, nothing lasts", but what the Dharma is actually saying is that when there's not a push nor a pull, even very, very subtly, objects do not appear - so when there's strong push and pull, object appear strongly and if there's more subtly push and pull, they appear subtly - if there' no push and pull, objects (phenomena) do not appear at all - it's logical as mathematics, but it's radical - the directionality of Buddhist teachings are really, really radical - Dharmapada says "phenomena are preceded by the heart", so the heart comes first and shapes phenomena, they are ruled by the heart, they're made of the heart - phenomenon means an appearance - what we experience is the **appearance** of the world - so we're gonna play with this. We're gonna call things Dukha, because they can't bring lasting satisfaction - and the practice is gonna be like opening the hands. From 'pulling towards' and 'pushing away' to 'opening the hands' relationship kind of experience - so we're trying to control less. We're not trying to control things in the same way. - this isn't ignoring. We're still intimate, we're still meeting life - the goal of the Buddhist teachings is non-experience - this non-experience, which is sometimes called the unfabricated, the non-made, also known as Nirvana. - which is a kind of weird goal. And it may not sound like our goal and that is fine. - but let's have a look what would this actually mean - another way of expressing this opening is a having kind of a **holly disinterest** in what's appearing. It's not rejection, it's holly disinterest. - it means allowing things to arise and pass, be here - the practice of holly disinterest comes from Rob Burbea - the holly disinterest is saying 'this is not the most peaceful, I could be' - and so the Buddhism is saying 'the non-experience is the most peaceful, I can be' - if there's an appearance, I'm having an experience, and it can't be the most peaceful I could be - so we're almost done, but now I need to give very good advertisement for peacefulness as a really good version of happiness, so that you click on my 'online shop' :) - normally when we think about happiness we might think of the **excitement**, when you get what you want. And that's lovely, really high energy we can get into. And it's high in two senses. It's quite high in energy and also quite high in the being, it's kind of around the head, quite buzzy - but we also know other flavours of happiness in our life. F.e. contentment, which feels deeper in the being, and it's also longer lasting. - and in a certain sense, this can be more enjoyable version of happiness - there's time it can really soothe the body, heart and mind - but there's something actually even deeper than that which we might call **peaceful** - like a real ease, easiness in the being, profound absence of worry and tension. It is even longer lasting. Maybe you can even feel it goes deeper into the being. Perhaps offering even more healing and loveliness - on one hand, there are times we're really drawn to fireworks, but the whole being really loves to linger in the longer period wave of this, we could say, love - we can notice that in the excitement, there can be quite a lot of self and self-interest and as move down through contentment to peacefulness, the self is fading, the sense of self is fading, softening. - and with that any sense of Dukha is also fading - and even the sense of any object is also fading - so if we're really interested to explore the deeper experiences at times, it might be skillful to declare 'this is not peaceful' - even say 'this is Dukha... this is not reliable for lasting happiness' - any object at all appearing in perception suggests we're not the most peaceful and there's more - this is **the middle way** (you may have heard about it). This is not rejection, nor attachment. It's this **nobble (Aria), spacious, and loving holy disinterest. # Day 4 Wednesday - Evening Practice File: 2020-07-15 16.00.42 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 [comment]: <> (Practice starts at 1:01:10 - just a few minutes) # Day 5 Thursday - Morning Talk - Dukha, Metta File: 2020-07-16 09.30.32 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 - the main point is to be appropriate - we'll see today how much of the Samatha is needed/useful - we're gonna add another instrument to our practices. It's relates to yesterday's talk. - you can try it and if you find it appropriate, you can meditate on it or return to previous practice - the practice is seeing things as Dukha, as unsatisfactory - we may feel instinctively 'this is not gonna bring joy' - but those who practice this type of meditation report it does bring joy - maybe we noticed yesterday that there was some release when we were perceiving all phenomena as inconstant. There was a release of demanding, craving, contraction, release of push/pull antagonism - and maybe we also noticed lighter sense of self - we might have noticed that this release of needing or sense of being able to get or get rid off phenomena brings more happiness and peace - usually we imagine only comes when we get rid off or get phenomena - but the practice of Anicca revealed (and this practice of Dukha will continue) how we actually get closer to happiness and well-being - when we get when we feel that we want there's a relief. It's quite a deep form of happiness this relief - and it seems obvious to us that the relief comes because now I got what I wanted. - but Dharma teachings are saying, the relief comes because you're no longer demanding - so today we're gonna explore if we can get that kind of happiness and relief by relieving the demanding. - the inquiry today is - can we find the possibility for really positive relationship with phenomena - yesterday we spoke about 'holy disinterest'. The word 'disinterest' might feel like a rejection, but the 'holy' is supposed to represent 'life-affirming', 'loving', 'warm' - so the practice today is really the extension of Anicca way of looking - noticing 'this is unreliable for lasting happiness'. It adds in this quality that there is something more peaceful, more joyful available - today part of the 'background' sense is that these things are Dukha because they are impermanent, because they are inconstant - so the sense is that we really wish for some lasting satisfaction in life - we wish to be deeply at peace with ourselves, with others - we wish that there is a deep peace, deep sense of harmony in this life - and pushing away or pulling on towards this object isn't the way to this deep ease - another way of referring to this practice is like a bit of a **stepping back and opening out** - as said before, Dukha is this contracted feeling and also overly focused on the object - if it makes sense to us, just feeling like we're opening the palm of attention - maybe we can feel open palm is this middle way between the extremes of rejection or attachment - so remembering this kind of quality as we're doing noting of 'this is unsatisfactory' - particularly if we feel our practice is getting really 'heady' (up in the head), or we notice the feeling of rejection in the space of awareness, the subtle pushing away - remember how we can relax the breath, relax the body, open the space - as we said before, all of these practices (Samatha, Vedana, Anicca, Metta) are supporting the relief of Dukha - so I encourage you today, try a few times really to bring this intention to see that appearances are unable to bring lasting happiness - so try to say even to the most beautiful thing 'you are unsatisfactory' - it's really radical to be saying - this is not peaceful and there is something more peaceful - and that we can tune into it, we can open into it, or maybe we can say fade into it, or dissolve, melt into this more peacefulness - so through this practice, more spaciousness and calm can come into the being - until we get more familiar with it, it's important to have supported some calmness in the being. - so keep on doing the Samatha practices - as before, it can be helpful to add a little noting. So see how it feels to say 'unsatisfactory' - there's something quite powerful in this 'word' experience - allow the note of your noting to be soft. It's not rejection, it's this open palm - whenever there's an experience, any perception of anything at all, to the very, very subtle end of perception, we can label it - it's not the ultimate peacefulness - the Vedana, Anicca, Samatha, they are all really wonderful but here we don't need to actually wait 'what kind of Vedana is this', we don't need to discern the quality of inconstancy or impermanence of this phenomenon. - if there's an appearance, there's Dukha that can be released - it could be strong, and it could be subtle, but there's some push/pull that can be opened, that can be released - one last point before the practice - sometimes we get a lof of relief from this kind of practice which may already be surprising - but sometimes it doesn't seem to be having much effect... and this is usually due to unseen, probably quite subtle aversion to the phenomena. In Dharma practice we sometimes talk of this as just 'letting go' - this 'letting go' can sometimes become "shouldn't you be going?" - so just seeing that if it's possible that the open palm also means **letting it be, letting it remain** - we're not trying change the object or the existence of the object, we're trying to change the way we're relating to it - our attitude includes, it can stay, or it can go - often times in that way of relating, it would actually disappear - but remember it's not inherently a problem - just see the object can't bring lasting satisfaction, so we don't demand it to and that is why we change the relationship - with space and with metta # Day 5 Thursday - Morning Practice File: 2020-07-16 09.30.32 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 [comment]: <> (Practice starts at 34:00 - just a few minutes) # Day 5 Thursday - Evening Talk - Dukha, Metta File: 2020-07-16 15.59.58 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 - one way of describing the arch of the development of the teachings and practices together is that we've been doing our practices in ways that lessen the demand on life's appearances - hopefully we've found this quite accessible and furthermore, hopefully this has been working - learning how to lessen the sense of problematic, lessening the sense of Dukha hopefully opens the sense of something quite lovely - these practices also lower the volume the sense of self and also the sense of any appearance at all - this all by just playing with the way we're relating to appearances - still, when something appears we usually react habitually in a particular way - push and pull, based on blindly assuming the Vedana evaluation - and then the **misguided urge** that we feel we can get happy by either getting this or getting rid of it - and moving from blind assumption and misguided urges to more wisdom - we change that habitual way, lessen the push/pull, and we enlighten (make them lighter) appearances and open really quite delightful being - this very nature of phenomena fades away into a profound peace - I (Nathan) fell this opens a really wide question, which I'm gonna leave open - **What is the true independent nature of these appearances?** - is there any way to say anything true about what appears - if the way it appears is dependent on the way that we look at it, the way we relate to it - if we absorb the insight that's in this question - it doesn't feel like a problem not to answer this question - almost like we can enjoy the mystery that is suggested by this line from the [Dhammapada](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhammapada) - 'all phenomena (all appearances) are preceded by the heart, are rules by the heart, are made of heart', which is to say they're empty to be in a particular way, open to be shaped by the wisdom of the heart, by the skill of perception. We could say, that is the Dharma. - so it feels like what we're left with is this sense of being **appropriate** - which brings with it another question - appropriate to whom or appropriate to what? And to this one, I think, we need at least some temporary answer - because without an answer here, we might go to some habitual modality - because there's always a way of relating, shaping the experience - it might be habitual and problematic if we don't direct it in a particular way - so a temporary answer could be - 'appropriate to' ... 'some kind of love' - and Metta being one kind of love that we can offer to the world, but we might want to leave it broader, maybe vaguer - just love - do you see in your experience how the sense of love increases as the sense of Dukha and all the rest fades down? - life has this mysterious and wondrous way of radical transformation - it tends to reveal love, it's the most people's experience - when we're not so focused on an object and getting and getting rid of them, we're not so focused on my self perspective and getting what I want or don't want, it seems something lovely comes into being - so maybe this is a kind of practice that opens love more and more - so this is the point where love and Metta and things being empty meets together - on emptiness: you may have heard in practice this understanding of interdependence, nothing exists independently, no country exists independently, the very boundary of one country is dependent on another country, to be Czech is only meaningful against other people not being Czech - so this sense of interdependence means nothing exists from its own side - and we can also go from the other direction and deconstruct that which appears to be something - the Czech existence is not independent from the land of Czechia, but it's also not the same as the land, and it's not independent of the people, if the people would decide they are not Czech, what would happen? - so we keep looking and looking what part is the center, but it's just a collection of parts which agreed upon, are conceived as (in this example) Czechia - to say that it's empty doesn't mean that it doesn't exist but when we look at it, it doesn't quite exist in the way that we thought it did when we didn't look at it - we can see that this is true for absolutely everything in existence - so this is a beautiful idea, but **empty** actually goes even farther than that - and what we're interested in terms of emptiness, is how things are dependent on the flavour of attention we bring to them - and that's primarily what we've been playing with in the practice - changing the flavour of attention - so I hope you've been enjoying the Metta practice each night (TODO: transcription for the Metta talks) - knowing how the heart can be expanded to bringing its care to more beings - how we can bring the care to ourselves and to others, even to people that we feel more neutrally about - we can see that maybe we can extend it to beings we don't even like that much, where we might feel a bit of push towards them - we can see that how they exist in our minds can be shaped, can be changed - hopefully we also notice, that as we bring kindness to more being, it feels good for this being - so what we're practicing is almost something like a generation of love (we're creating love), the making up of love, bringing into being of love - we can offer more love to more beings, and it feels good for us - sometimes we think of love like one of our natural resources, most of them are limited in supply - it seems obvious to say it, but we don't need to go buy the raw materials to make some love - sometimes we look on the world as 'oh, this person is getting all the love, and I am not getting enough' (polyamory reference) - but what the Metta practice shows is that we can feel love as we offer it, it actually nourishes us as we offer it - of course, I'm not saying "you only need to practice Metta, you don't need anyone to love and care for you and feel affection and have lovely relationship", I'm not saying that - but to really understand the nature of love, and the ability we have to generate - what we need to shape our intentions - we talked about intentions in the walking yesterday, noticing the Anicca of intentions - and this more a question of how to shape our intentions and empower good intentions - so all our thoughts and all of our activities include intentionality, they must - it's part of what we mean by "preceded by the heart" is preceded by the intentions - there's intention behind the way of looking and that shapes how appearances appear - so it's worth again to just come back to real practical application of this - I get the sense that one or two of use may still be thinking occasionally :) - so I want share what I think is one of the most profound teachings around thinking, so that we can have a really good relationships and thoughts and shape them to really wholesome intentionality - this would be like a 5-minute version of a very beautiful sutta which is really worth reading and studying, and it's called **two sorts of thinking** - before we get involved with our thinking we have to have a healthy dose of **non-identification** - so ... don't be thinking that you are your thoughts, in fact don't be thinking that you're fixed and definable, you're on the volumes - in English, we say "I am thinking", the Buddha said "the thought occurred to me", no ownership there, like the sound that occurred to me. There's a thought, I tune into it "ah, the thought occurred to me". The verbal fabrication of how we talked to ourselves really matters. - now, when we listen to the sound, and we think "oh, that's the please sound" or "that's an unpleasant sound", and we learn how to not push and pull, and then we enlighten (make it lighter) the sound, and we support loveliness in our being - once we're not so identified, we can evaluate, and we look at the thoughts, and we simply say "is this Metta or is this not Metta?" - and then more precisely "is this thought about sensual greed, feeding the sense?" - "is this a thought that is putting someone down?" - "is this a thought that wishes to cause harm in the world?" - those kinds of thoughts cause agitation in us, they cause friction in the world, disharmony and distrust - why would we want to do that when there's much more beautiful experiences available to us - so the Buddha encourages us to see into this, see where is this heading, where is the intention heading in this thought - you can see now, how important it was to not identify with the thinking - **you don't decide what you're going to think before you think it** - you don't wake up in the morning and think "you know today probably around 3 o'clock or, so I'll have a really negative thought about myself and then I'll have this thought about how stupid I am for having that negative thought again..." - so we have to know, the thoughts occur to us, they're not our, they're not who we are - so when we see that the thought which is occurring isn't leading to the well-being that we seek, we just drop it - and the Buddha had this really dramatic language, he says "it's wiped out of existence" which almost sounds violent - but of course we know that thoughts that aren't thought be anyone don't exist - as a practice we probably want to transfer from one thought going to another thought, not trying to go from "I'm having a really sensual greedy thoughts, and I'm gonna have no thoughts at all" - from thoughts that have sensual greed to thoughts that have renunciation (vzdání se) - the interesting thing about renunciation is it feels like we're giving up something that's really good for something that's not so good - but renunciation is actually upgrading - we give up something that can't bring real, delightful love and well-being for something that can - just as we give up unhealthy habit, because we value health - we give up things because we know there's a greater happiness - same thing with the unfriendliness and harmfulness, we upgrade those for kindness and compassion - so this is a skillful way of guiding our thoughts back to Metta, back to well-being - the thought occurs to use, we check "where are you going thought?", is this the most supportive way of having thoughts right now - another way of moving from sensual desire to more renunciation might be towards more generosity, towards giving away what's beautiful, what's lovely - so coming back to the intentionality, it's important to be clear about our intention because they shape the world, the intention shapes the atmosphere, way of relating and that shapes how appearances appear, including our self or any appearance at all - this is possible because they are empty - the emptiness teaching is very subtle teaching - we're going from thinking they do exist independently maybe to they don't exist at all - but we need to stay in the middle - what we're really saying is that they are arising on the flavour of attention - really important Dharma question could be for us "When something appears, how is it being fabricated and what might be more skillful way of fabricating through our way of relating?" - and oftentimes some aspects of that answer is gonna be "Metta" - the ability to really welcome and have the heart open in connection with appearances - and we want Metta because it's something that fades Dukha, frees us from Dukha and also fades the sense of self once it's gotten problematic, also softens objects, softens the sense of time - and Metta can conjure love because it doesn't demand, it invites, it opens, heals and supports connection - metta as a practice supports Samadhi, it can reveal how things are empty, it can be a pathway that brings us all the way home - as we practice more and more we'll see that it's also empty - when Metta comes forth and it touches what's painful in the world, it changes into compassion ([Koruna](../Zettelkasten/metta_koruna_mudita.md)) - when Metta is invited into a place where there's pleasantness, it erupts into joy ([Mudita](../Zettelkasten/metta_koruna_mudita.md)) - when Metta is brought towards all the rest with spacious intimacy it becomes this equanimity (vyrovnanost) - equanimity really giving that sense that we're right there in the middle of life, able to be there in the middle of life - in the Metta Sutta, there's some really beautiful images used that can support us our practice - they speak of this image of this really devoted, sustained love coming into being - like how her mother that's in her best qualities is able to care for here child - we can feel the focus and dedication, but also the softness in that image - we can see two threads (vlákna) in Metta practice - one is expanding the heart's capacity to include more - the other is really drenching (ponoření) the body, heart, mind and all appearances that appear in it in well-being - soothing, easing - to some degree, we've been doing both - we probably notice, there's always a little more we can do - and this brings us back full circle to not having fixed views about how things are - the Metta Sutta states: "...by not holding the fixed views, the pure hearted one (ten co má čisté srdce) having clarity of vision, being freed from all sense desires, is fully free" - so not holding to fixed views (extremes of existence or not existence) we awaken into love - meaning we don't demand on anything - we allow things to become subtler, including ourselves - and Metta is one of these ways for less fabrication, more bliss, more freedom - let's have this last quite minute to close however you feel to embody this (practice only from 59-1:00) # Day 6 Friday - Morning Talk - Dukha, Metta File: 2020-07-17 09.30.00 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 - less contraction (Dukha), more space (Metta) - t.S. Elliot said "we shall not seize our exploration" which reminds me of our practice - and the end of our exploration will be to arrive to where we started - and know the place for the first time - we started our exploration with sustaining the attention with this intimacy and counting - and then opening the space with long pleasant breath or wider field of sounds - coming back in the moments of distraction with this kind, welcoming attention - all of these soften Dukha, ease demand for life to be otherwise and open possibilities for more lovely way of living - part of knowing the place for the first time, as T.S. Elliot was saying, is to see it through different eyes, to hear it through different ears - we could say that meditation is an act of listening - and there are many ways of listening, not just listening to sounds, but to any phenomena, any sense door - normally when we pay attention, it feels quite active, quite focused, we're going outwards towards phenomena, but that's not the only way we can pay attention - notice that maybe you can rest back, become gentle and really receptive, receiving - seeing it's possible at this moment to listen to sounds and let them come to you - we don't need to send our attention to the sounds, rather we rest in the ear, or the listening, and we let life come to us - you'll notice it's less active, but it's not passive - we might actually notice a lot of aliveness in the listening, a lot of energy in the being as we listen this way - and we can adjust the intensity of our openness to phenomena - we can get really open and incredibly available to the sounds, sensations, visuals while remaining rested in this space of knowing awareness - this is useful skill to learn that there are more ways to pay attention - and being able to modulate (move from one mode to the other of) our attention - it can really support us to opening contraction and welcoming whatever is known - supporting us in finding this middle way between pushing (aversion) and pulling (greed) - side point: it doesn't matter if it's a push, or it's a pull, we're just opening and welcoming - greed and aversion two sides of the same coin, they always arise together - if there's this pushing away of painful sensation, it's matched with pulling towards less painful sensation - and if there's pulling towards a pleasant sensation (if only I could have this), there's necessarily pushing away of this moment which isn't enough - that's to say, it doesn't matter if it's push or pull, that's not our main focus today - what's interesting for us is that demanding is Dukha, push/pull is Dukha, both - and Dukha is revealed as contraction, shrinking - this can be gross (zjevné) and it can be subtle (nepatrné) - we'll feel that in the body sense, or we'll feel in the space of awareness shrinking, getting tight - so if we have the sensitivity to the space we can notice when there is Dukha and when there isn't Dukha - we can see this actually is more immediate, but it can also go subtler than needing to check the patterns of thinking for aversion and greed - it's more immediate to check in with the body, and the space of awareness than needing to figure out "what's the flavor of thinking", - but it's also more efficient when the Dukha (the contraction) gets more subtle than thoughts > here Nathan probably meant that sometimes we might feel aggravated mentally somehow, but we're not able to put it into thoughts or label it with a word for feelings. > And for such cases it is easier to go to something less abstract and more, in a sense, tangible (body), or something more subtle (push/pull) which still captures contraction - Dukha. > One could also say instead of 'subtle' it's more vague, but I don't think so. It just allows not having to have the container of thought or feeling and rather notice the direction - is this going towards contraction (Dukha), or towards release/space (Metta)? > I think this subtlety is maybe at the level of neurons instead of connection between neurons, which may for the thought. I imagine it as this kind of blinking of neurons. - just being able to notice the slightest contraction in the space of awareness is really helpful for the long-term - there's way of tuning into this body-mind (awareness) mirroring each other - when the demand in the mind is high the body is more constricted, tight and the awareness is more shrunk - when demand fades, body is released, awareness expands - some more delightful feelings of love and harmony are released or felt in the heart - but also if the body is released, if the awareness is allowed to expand, then the demand fades - yesterday we noticed Dukha is unsatisfactory because it's unable to bring lasting satisfaction - and today we'll see that any appearance can be seen as Dukha (unsatisfactory) with a silent 'because of the contraction' - we'll see that this relates to the spectrum - stronger-weaker demand, more contraction less contraction, it's working away along this spectrum ###### day-6-friday-Dukha-practice - that's one part of the Dukha practice - working with the contraction - now I'll mention a bit about Metta and how we can incorporate it into this practice - in a sense, this could be viewed and a third way of practicing with Dukha - it's also something we can combine with the releasing contraction in a skillful way - it's always helpful to bring Metta into the practice - we can always ask 'could I bring more Metta into this moment?' - we feel what's lacking in demand and Dukha is that kindness, that welcoming - yesterday we talked about the holy disinterest, the attention being like an open palm - see if you can perhaps extend this to see Metta and releasing contraction, opening the space to have the feeling kind of like opening the arm > Holy disinterest -> less push&pull -> Open palms \ > Metta -> even less push&pull -> Open arms - so (...with Metta) it's not neutral. We're really welcoming the phenomena into our perception - welcoming to arise, to be present, to go - we can really play with the volume of Metta as well, really allow it to be much more wide than normally - we can tune into normal kindness in our attention - and let it be a bit more welcoming, a bit more kindness - letting every element of our awareness to be touched by Metta - let being the perceived appearance to get soaked in welcoming as it's held in attention - so allowing for these phenomena to be here, as much as we can - but in times we'll still find "it's too much" or "I don't want this", "it's not right", there'll still be a voice in the body, heart, mind - so at times can allow the Metta to reach that part of us that's not ready to open - can that be met with Metta? - so that's [the practice](../Zettelkasten/dukha_practice.md) - opening contraction - welcoming in - opening contraction - welcoming in # Day 6 Friday - Morning Practice File: 2020-07-17 09.30.00 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 [comment]: <> (Practice 35:15 - 1:02:35, 27:20 min) # Day 6 Friday - Evening Talk File: 2020-07-17 16.00.17 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 [comment]: <> (The talk about how not to practice starts at 1:31) - but how to live with more immediacy - that feeling that practice is something for the future - we're putting in the practice so later we'll live - which of course is not what we mean by meditation practice - even when we're on a retreat, and perhaps we're having experiences which really deep and significant for us - we still have this feeling that retreat is a fabrication, something we've put together, it's not like real life - yet sometimes it can be fun to play with those perceptions and say tomorrow we'll be going back to the not real life - maybe that can support the creativity in our life - I'm not gonna tell you how to live your life, I don't know that - and yet I don't want to tell something to vague, I want to keep it practical - I do have some practical practice life advice, at least things that have been helpful for me ###### Guitar metaphor - but first I want to share something from Mick Goodrick - he's not a Dharma teacher, he's a really good jazz musician, plays the guitar - in fact, he's a teacher of guitar - he's noticed that many people play patterns - and sometimes this happens to us meditators as well, we practice patterns - but in some cases, in real life, we want to practice more freely - so we may need to practice like that - what he does for his students is that he allows them to play only one string on their guitar - so all those patterns they've learned through the years which involve going up and down the string, they can't do them - he calls this play a unitar - so it's about finding the melody - so we have this technique, you get good, trying to find the melody, needing to think about what you want to play and then finding a way to play it in a limited form - then he flips it around and limits the student to only one hand-width of the guitar, you have to learn everything again - then we combine the two things, and he calls this the realm of the electric ice-skating ring - it doesn't make any sense, but it gives sense of full catastrophe - this interface between the fingers and the enormous vast world of music - I think Jon Kabat-Zinn, who popularized the mindfulness movement from which we're really benefiting from, has a book called Full catastrophe living - I have a couple of examples where I see this idea working (in meditation) - so going up and down one string could be playing with how we expand and contract the body sense, how we can perceive it lighter and refined or more solid and grocer - we could see that going across the string is like insight, bringing insight into one specific area, seeing Vedana, Anicca - and seeing the importance of getting both - when we use this one string approach - body lighter vs grocer, we get sensitive what we can do on that one string - or we can take the string of the breath and notice how in-breaths feel more energizing or out-breaths feel more releasing. It is useful to learn how to play up and down, the energizing, the relaxing, releasing - what can be interesting is to notice if we can relax on the in-breath or could we enthuse energy on an out-breath - of course that's less easy, but we can do it and maybe we should - at certain times the perceived breath might disappear, and we might still want to shape the experience - perhaps even the body will not be accessible - so it's worth playing with the things we think "eh, what's the point?" - there's an insight in this, insight practice - there's something about the way we imagine the breath, that allows it to be more powerful than the normal bodily fabrication - there's only the perception of the breath being energizing which makes it energizing - how things appear depends on what you imagine - how you imagine yourself also shapes your perception - just as a breath isn't really that way, it's just the way we imagine it, if you imagine yourself in one dimension, that's the one dimension you're focused on - you're not really that way, it's just a view - something that's really significant to us is how we image how is our future - it really shapes how you feel about life - but of course it doesn't really exist - and yet it really matters to us - I'm going to leave here one open question here: Do we have the freedom to imagine well. - whether that's the breath energizing on an out-breath or seeing ourselves in radical new ways - also, to see this practice in liberating new ways - the goal of our practice shapes the path of our practice - and the idea of our practice shapes the goal of our practice - so... what is it we're practicing for - coming back to our intentions again, being clear on our intentions and being clear what we are aiming for ###### three parts of a practice - ...so I have a pattern that I like to play. I call it three parts of a practice. - the first part is: you set an intention. Let's say it's gonna be: I'm gonna see my breath as energizing on the out-breath - the second part of the practice is: I'm gonna keep my attention shaped in that way. And when it wonders away, I'll bring it back. - and the third part of the practice is discernment, which is like an inquiry. - I'm interested in two things here: One, how well did I do. Two, what did that do to my body, heart and mind, and how I see the world - and like the advice from Mick Gudrick, playing up and down one string, I'm clear about what my practice is, the intention, and them clear about when I'm doing it and when I'm not doing it with the attention, and I'm keen to do it as well as I can and I keep practicing it for quite some time. - so we can't to expect to be good from the beginning, it really takes practice - but I really think that the intentions we bring to our practice are the key, key for the freedom - so how to make our intention appropriate for our life - are we willing to make our dharma practice personal (not individualistic) - somehow, we might want to adapt someone else's path, just be a member of a community, and we have the same practice - and if that's your choice, that's great - some of us will want to be outside of system's and structures and feel there's more freedom for us there - just coming in every so often for a little top-up of wisdom and then go off to your personal practice - in a way we could say it's your choice or maybe the choice is coming from something beyond us - either way it must fit your heart, what you're calling for in your life, authentic - we might wish to have a practice that supports us in our relationships - practice that supports healing - practice that supports peacefulness - practice that supports us being outside the world, not fitting in - practice that supports engagement with the world or living in community - maybe we struggle in certain areas of our life, maybe we can be creative in our practice to support us in areas where things aren't going so well - the focus can go on what's not good and that can drain us out - but at times we want to open the range, so we go into these areas where we struggle, and we open the range - using the practice like Vedana to meet experience with more spacious awareness, less reactivity - and of course we're modern humans, and we want things done quickly - we want the results of today's practice yesterday - but everything can change through practice, really - nothing is fixed - not us, not the goal, not the path - they're all appearances, all perceptions - so as we practice, let's harvest the insights that are there - as we practice on the cushion, as we practice in our life, paying close attention to the impact on appearances of this way of looking, this way of relating we're bringing through - insight then can be lived. We harvest them and then we live them. Be an artist, not an art collector with insights - insights are not like trophies - they're like favourite pairs of shoes you wear all the time - keep exploring, what can be transferred, what can be transformed, how can I bring an insight into this situation - Buddhism itself is set up as a whole life practice - the path is called eight-fold path to cover all the areas of our life - our practice isn't just a meditation practice, it's wisdom practice, it's an ethics practice, it's also a meditation practice - they lead to each other, they feed each other - keep alive questions - how do I cause harm in the world? How do I act from selfishness? Is that enjoyable or not enjoyable to do? Do I want to have fun in life? What I do that confuses this mind? What do I do that misdirects this heart? What am I doing that's disrespecting this body that ultimately belongs to nature? - sometimes because we keep talking about meditation retreats and meditation practice that feels like maybe that's the goal of meditation practice - but maybe for some of us living an ethical, enjoyable, harmonious life is really the goal of practice - do you want more wisdom and knowledge, - do want more deep, amazing experience of the psyche and the mind and heart, - or do you want to live a life that brings more and more peace and harmony, well-being to all the living beings on this living planet? - don't worry, it's a false choice. You can have all three. - but it's a good question. What is it that we really want? - so I'll share one idea I have about how to bring our life into our practice and our practice into our life - we could keep using the skills, keep developing the skills with perception that we've been playing with on retreat - there's this amazing body, heart, mind system over here that can lessen the turbulence, the Dukha, the difficulty - so that we can find within us the source of happiness and well-being - becoming less and less dependent on things - so we're actually empowered to act from love, with love for what is really meaningful for us - whatever it is that is the goal in our life - (and I don't think it's possible to have a goal-less goal - that's still a goal) - how does our path look like compared to that goal? ###### Israel story - so I'm right now in Israel, neighbouring Palestine - and sometimes they have demonstrations for peace - peace and harmony with the neighbours - and of course some people are going there really angry, tired, frustrated - and it's interesting to see that sometimes our demonstration for peace is actually really violent - of course that's gonna bring agitation to the ones who we want to try to convince to be more peaceful - now I think we do need to find a way to peace - there's a man called A. J. Muste - who came up with this phrase - There's no way to peace. Peace is the way. - you may also know of Antonio Machado, who wrote this Spanish poem: ``` Pathmaker, there is no path; You make the path by walking, By walking you make the Path ``` - what we'll see that when our path embodies the goal each step moves us towards that goal - the next bit is really mysterious, mystical - the goal begins walking towards us - just have sense of being peace to bring peace ###### Israel story end - so the idea here is we're playing with our perception to feel more empowered - so that we can challenge others to open to more love and peace - so that they feel loved at last - it's not apathy - and it's also not reactivity - it's compassion in action - moving to soothe the pain that underlies so much further harm - when we see bullying someone else, we want to bully the bully - it really takes understanding - radical kindness also looks like a discipline at times, it takes discipline - at times, I hear from people - You know I'm learning to be kind to myself... and then I insert some action that's not really kind, like watching TV at night. - we definitely need to unwind at times. - sometimes we stay up late at night on unimportant things - we forget how to rejuvenate, how to revive this body and mind - we're not able to embody that wisdom, that kindness the next day for the really meaningful things in our life - so radical kindness also looks like loving discipline - it's not a dirty word I hope - discipline - let's develop our skills for the benefit of ourselves so that we can relate well to others also and change the world for good - some of you mentioned wanting to work in our relationships - to really seek that out there's a lot of people exploring how to devise wise relationships ###### Insight dialog - what I would recommend looking into is **insight dialog** (type of meditation) - using the words we speak as ways to awaken - it really works - the first ideas are - as you're speaking, remember to pause - as you're speaking or listening, remember to relax - invite yourself to open as you're speaking or listening - invite yourself not to know what you're gonna hear or what you're gonna say - Anicca - then listen deeply and speak what's true right now ###### Insight dialog END - so find things like that have already begun to make this journey of transformation - the last thing is - be in community - there's this wonderful moment where Buddha and his cousin talking to each other - Buddha is this fully awake figure, authority, leading this whole community - his cousin who's not quite as awakened is getting really excited about the community - and the cousin says - this Sangha, this community is half the holly life, half the support of the holly life is right here living in the community - you can imagine, his eyes are bright, and his heart really opened - and the Buddha turns to him and says - don't say that... being in community, being in Sangha is the whole of the holly life - the footnote here is - only if we're willing to learn from wise people - be inspired and go beyond the current images of ourselves - so get the all the support you can # Day 6 Friday - Evening Practice File: 2020-07-17 16.00.17 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 [comment]: <> (Practice 57:18 - 58:18) - I'd like to close with an excerpt of a short poem from David White, - after the poem, we'll just sit for a minute in silence ``` You must learn one thing. The world was made to be freeing. Give up all the other worlds, except the one in which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinment of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. ``` # Day 7 Saturday - Morning Talk - Dhana File: 2020-07-18 10.13.49 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 - we're really on the threshold of the retreat and our daily life - you've just finished you're last long meditation - there may have been times when you were looking forward your last silent sitting - I hope there's also some kind of feeling of softness and fondness about that feeling - (talking about the preparation of the retreat) - (7:24) In this point of the retreat, we're gonna talk about the Dhana (generosity, štědrost, dar) - I've just mentioned we've put a lot of effort over a long period of time and now there's this kind of pressure on you which isn't what we want - but hopefully we can meet this in the same spirit that it's offered - freely offered, freely received - I think it's worth explaining why we don't put a price. Why don't you just pay a price, and it's done, and we can not feel any stress or tension. - not any stress on me, I live on Dhana, that's what supports me, what pays my bills. - not stress on you, how much should I give, how much is not enough, how do I work this out. - there are real benefits of offering the teachings and practices on Dhana, on generosity, on donation - a really important one is that it makes it more conscious, it brings more consciousness into giving and receiving process - maybe I'll say more about that, but I hope you already get what that means - it also makes it more available to people - of course, we could have scholarships and reduced rates, but it still doesn't make it as available to people as just - you only need to cover your cost - another aspect is that Dharma is priceless - how do we put a price on this? - if we put a price one it, if we put it behind a paywall, you had to pay and then you get it, we'd deny it from some people, deny freedom from some people - so we could say, wisdom is freely offered because it's simply the wise way to offer things - so more couple of things... - who is Dhana offered to? - adam has decided to offer his time freely to us - deep bow for his support in this way - there is Dhana for me, for the teachings and practices, etc. - I live dedicated to sharing the Dharma and deeply appreciate the opportunity here. - as I was saying, the wisdom is priceless, like all the best things is comes through us, it doesn't belong to me. - I hope my personal way of expressing things has been accessible and helpful. - (talking about contribution to the Zen centre) - as I was mentioning before, doing it this way might feel like a drag, - but everything can become a practice, Dhana is also actually practice, it's a meditation - and practicing generosity, practicing giving is a gift - if it's done with sensitivity and not too much pressure, it can give the heart the chance to expand - if we're sensitive in that action, we can actually feel the joy, for ourselves and what we're giving to another - and also in the reflexion. Reflexion on our acts of generosity can be a great support for us - there'll be times in our life when we might feel - I'm never generous, I'm never kind, I never do anything worthwhile - we can remember those times of generosity which can be the support - we'll see if you read back through the records of the Buddha this is something he would always start people with - practices of generosity - it's also really helpful because it's conscious. Making it conscious, makes it practice. Making the exchange conscious. - when we fully reflect on - what did I actually receive here? What did I learn here? What did I develop? - I really hope it felt transformative in this last week - yet, these wisdom teachings keep on giving, they keep on giving. - it's really priceless quality of wisdom teachings. They keep on giving. - hopefully if I have explained the framework of teachings and practices well enough then you can actually return to what you remember - or to these recordings, which we're gonna make sure are freely available - in the Dhana process also don't forget yourself. Take care of yourself. - notice if it causes agitation. What helps with that? What practices help with that? - part of this Dhana principle is that it allows it to be more appropriate for us as individuals. - you know your situation well. - of course on top this, we have this Corona uncertainty life events. - I want you to feel good about the Dhana process as much as possible. - for some of you that will mean really taking care more of yourself and feeling satisfied with giving less. - and for some of us that might be stretching a bit more. Also knowing that maybe other can't give right now. - (talking about practicalities of donations on the retreat till 36:09) - let's take a minute to describe the practice - there's a three-step process, and just to say, at the beginning we're gonna get to the point of still like taking care of ourselves but in the process of feeling Dhana and generosity it kind of comes at the end to shape the reality. # Day 7 Saturday - Morning Practice - Dhana File: 2020-07-18 10.13.49 Bright Mind Open Heart 82884092920 [comment]: <> (Practice 37:08 - 42:08, 5 min) - so just feeling into the body, heart mind now... - ...with real dedication and as much clarity as we can bring. - just feeling - What have I received in this time? - what have I really valued in this time? - ...in terms of understanding and experiences and practices. - and in response to that - What do I wish - or - What would I love to give? - just letting the mind be free, be creative. - and then shaping that back - What am I able to give? - Being realistic. - really trusting knowing. There's no right or wrong. - today might be a good day for a stretch (stretching the ability to give to another), or it might be a good day for more inner care. - might be a good day for both. - let's see if we can give, so we can have no regrets. - don't forget your needs, but also don't forget your deepest aspirations. Final note: - the generosity practice can be really liberating, can be really joyful. - it's really understandable that it feels really heave when we get engaged with money and things we forgotten about for a week. - so you don't have to enjoy, but just see if you can enjoy it a little bit :)