So,
As we meet this new day,
I would like to offer some support for your mindfulness practice.
One of the great teachers in this practice is simplicity.
To find ways where we can just be simple with the circumstances that are happening.
Pay close attention to your life right now,
Your daily tasks and your relationships.
Pay attention to the movement of your thinking,
To the expected future that keeps popping up in your thinking.
And be simple with conversations,
Simple with the activities that we're doing.
Simple just being alive.
Keeping things simple and then see what happens.
It can be very hard to keep things simple,
You know.
There can be a lot of momentum in the mind,
A lot of activity in the mind about things that need to happen or that should happen or that shouldn't have happened.
Or it's important that they don't happen in the future.
And the practice is to pay attention to what matters here and now.
Know how to take care of yourself,
Know how to take care of your friends and your family.
A lot of desires and fears can be operating.
And so with the reference point of just being simple,
You can start seeing all of these voices and beliefs in the mind.
And maybe start questioning them.
Sometimes it's hard to question them because we're often just living into them.
We can't see all the ways we have expectations for the future.
And our views seem very fixed,
Very right.
When we remember,
You know,
Just to keep it simple,
Even when life around us is confusing and complex,
Infused with fear,
Simplicity,
Not knowing and resting in it is one of the ways the heart and the mind can come to rest.
One of the great goals of any spiritual life is the experience of being at peace.
And peace is something which is simple.
There's a great practice that I've been using during this time of political change and cultural unrest and grief.
And it might not be a practice to use all the time,
But it's been helpful for me.
And that's this phrase,
This phrase that right now,
Nothing has to happen.
Right now,
Nothing has to happen.
Try that.
Nothing needs to happen.
And you can try it out in different circumstances and see what happens when you do.
When you're caught in something needs to happen,
It can have an addictive quality to it,
You know.
So we're checking the news a lot or checking social media,
Checking,
Checking,
Checking.
And that creates more agitation.
And the agitation actually builds with our compulsion to know.
Instead,
Allow for the unfolding and see what happens without anxiety.
You might learn more about being at peace with how things are.
You might learn that we don't have to be in control or figure things out or hatch a counter movement or fix anything.
When right now,
Nothing needs to happen.
The whole dimension of stability and peace that is so nourishing and meaningful and useful for our inner life belongs in this realm where we're not trying to fix or make things happen.
So that nothing needs to happen is a very profound teaching.
And when we can relax with that,
You know,
What I've found is this practice coupled with mindfulness of thinking,
Aware of what's being produced in the thoughts,
I get to see the surface motivations of the mind.
Those judgments,
Those unmet expectations,
The ideas,
The disappointment,
And how that is experienced on the level of the senses,
The felt sense,
Is an agitation in the body.
And when I can relax with the agitated body,
The anxious body,
Underneath that,
I get to this next layer,
Down under those surface motivations,
Those surface motivations that are created by the thinking.
Underneath that is grief,
And that gives way to compassion,
To compassion.
Underneath that surface agitation,
There's disappointment,
And that disappointment,
It gives way to kindness and intention.
And we can trust that deeper motivation within ourselves.
And what helps is that we have to settle.
Nothing needs to happen right now.
I think some people think that if nothing needs to happen,
Then I'll just be a couch potato and I'll just do nothing,
Passively sitting there,
Not doing anything,
Kind of falling apart.
Like that implication is,
Oh,
I'll just,
You know,
Won't be able to take care of myself.
I won't be able to take care of my responsibilities.
I won't be able to respond to life if nothing needs to happen.
But you might be able,
You might be surprised,
You know,
When you're able to really rest with nothing needs to happen right now.
You might be surprised to see what does happen.
It makes space for something deep inside to come forth.
Some wise action that moves you.
It's quite possible that what comes forth from that place of stillness will be significant.
Whatever comes from the depths of us is significant and needs our attention and needs our care.
Once you start with nothing needs to happen,
You see what does happen,
And then you might have a better understanding of what needs to happen after that.
Oh,
This is how I can meet this life now,
This next thing.
I'm going to close with a poem that I read to the group yesterday by Padraig Otuma.
The poem is called Facts of Life.
That you were born and you will die.
That you will sometimes love enough and sometimes not.
That you will lie,
If only to yourself.
That you will get tired.
That you will learn most from the situations you did not choose.
That there will be some things that move you more than you say.
That you will live,
That you must be loved.
That you will avoid questions most urgently in need of your attention.
That you began as the fusion of a sperm and an egg of two people who were once strangers and may well still be.
That life isn't fair.
That life is sometimes good and sometimes even better than good.
That life is often not so good.
That life is real and if you can survive it well,
Survive it well with love and art and meaning given where meaning's scarce.
That you will learn to live with regret.
That you will learn to live with respect.
That the structures that constrict you may not be permanently constricting.
That you will probably be okay.
That you must accept change before you die,
But you will die anyway.
So you might as well live and you might as well love.
You might as well love.
You might as well love.
Can we love this moment?
Can we recognize that it's like this right now and that is the way of love?
