Yay!
Well.
.
.
I'm really happy to be back.
Um,
As many of you know,
I've been gone almost a month.
I mean,
It's been the longest period of time that I've stepped away from teaching other than to go on retreats.
And I was on retreat.
And then as soon as we got back,
I got back from retreating in California.
Two days later,
I got on a plane and my family and I went to Europe.
And it was really wonderful.
It was nice to step away from the regular routine of life.
It's always kind of a pleasure.
Um.
.
.
But in the same way,
I think that if I weren't a Dharma teacher,
I would be a cultural anthropologist.
Because I'm just so fast,
I just observe.
Observation,
Mindfulness practice,
Paying attention is so part of my life that I love just to be in observation as a way of being.
And so I had time to observe my mind.
In another country and other cultures and how people are living.
And just sort of.
How culture Like what really was alive in my observation was how culture shapes the way that we experience life.
And so I'd like to share a little bit on those reflections that I had during my trip.
Um,
And I want to use America and Europe is kind of like an archetypes.
For not so much as like for geographical places,
But as symbols for the two tendencies of the mind.
Two tendencies that we have in the human mind.
Um.
.
.
In my observation,
America represents the youthful mind.
You know,
Ambitious.
Future-oriented.
Productive.
Innovative.
Always becoming,
Always interested in becoming the next thing,
Right?
And Europe represents.
.
.
The mature mind.
Rooted in history.
Willing to linger.
Comfortable with pauses.
Aware that life is not merely a project to be completed.
You know,
America is only a few centuries old.
And the America's Psyche is inherited from kind of this frontier spirit of,
You know,
It asks questions like,
What's next?
Or what can we build?
How can we improve this?
And there's tremendous beauty.
In that energy,
There is.
It has fueled such incredible innovation.
Creativity,
Exploration,
So many,
Many possibilities.
But much of what Europe has wrestled with are the same questions.
And they've been wrestling with those questions,
Those innovative questions,
For thousands of years.
You know,
Europeans sit in cafes that are older than our country.
They walk streets that are warm,
Smooth.
By generations of feet.
The European psyche often asks different questions.
Like,
What's worth preserving?
What's already enough.
What happens if we slow down long enough to enjoy what's here?
So one consciousness leans towards becoming.
And the other consciousness leans towards being.
And of course,
Both qualities,
Both.
Um,
Cultures.
They inhabit both of those qualities,
Absolutely.
And I don't want to romanticize Europe.
Or criticize America.
That's not the intent here.
These are two simple,
Useful mirrors.
And more importantly,
They are tendencies.
That exist in each of our minds.
They exist in us.
There is the American mind and the European mind inside of every practitioner in this room.
And one part of us is always reaching,
You know,
Reaching for the next thing.
We know this in ourselves.
And another part of us longs to rest.
To what is already here.
And the Buddha speaks directly to this tension.
One of the greatest insights of Buddhism is that suffering arises when becoming being.
Energy of becoming completely eclipses being.
And The Buddha seems surprisingly uninterested in helping us become more efficient human beings.
Like the teachings,
There's nothing about efficiency.
He doesn't offer strategies for maximizing productivity.
It is an offer,
A plan for optimizing our lives.
Instead,
He repeatedly repeatedly points towards simplicity.
When walking,
Know you're walking.
When standing,
Know your standing.
When sitting,
Know you're sitting.
There's almost something shocking about the simplicity of those instructions.
There's no self-improvement program there at all.
No productivity system operating in the background.
Just attention.
Simple,
Direct,
Immediate attention.
That's it.
So the American mind,
The youthful mind within us,
Often asks,
What can mindfulness do for me?
I was meeting with a practitioner yesterday and he was expressing that he wanted to get something out of mindfulness.
Like,
What's the point of doing this?
What can I get out of this?
Will it reduce stress?
Will it improve my relationships?
Will it help me sleep?
Will it make me happy?
And these aren't bad questions,
You know,
But the Buddhists seem to be asking something much more radical.
What happens when there is no me?
Trying to get somewhere.
What happens when we stop relating to the moment as a means to an end?
What happens when we stop treating our lives as a project?
So one of the themes that runs through the Pali Canon,
The writings of this early teaching is that craving always moves towards the next thing.
Always moves towards the coming.
The mind says,
When I'm finished with this,
Or when I achieve this next thing,
Or when things finally settle down,
Or when I retire,
Or when I get through this week,
Then.
Then.
I will look for.
Peace and tranquility and ease.
So craving.
The second noble truth,
Suffering is caused by craving.
Is always kind of whispering in the background that fulfillment is later.
It's later.
Another time in the future,
Right?
Yet mindfulness It's only here.
And the Buddha talked about craving.
I'm using this word,
It's a Pali word,
The word is tanha,
T-A-N-H-A,
Tanha.
I mean,
It's.
Translates directly to unquenchable thirst.
And I'm quenchable thirst.
The thirsty mind,
The unquenchably thirsty mind is reaching beyond,
Always beyond the present moment.
It believes that happiness exists over the next hill down the road a little bit.
In many ways,
Our modern culture has industrialized this unquenchable thirst.
Our economy depends.
On dissatisfaction.
Everything is optimized to achieve more.
More grace.
More speed,
More efficiency,
More productivity,
More consumption,
More stimulation.
And it's subtle.
It's a subtle message,
But it's pretty constant.
What I have is not good enough.
Who you are is not good enough.
Where you are is not good enough.
Keep moving,
Keep striving,
Keep it coming,
Keep it coming,
Keep it coming.
So against this backdrop.
Mindfulness becomes something kind of extraordinary.
Because it's kind of an act of rebellion.
You know,
The Buddha offered something profoundly different.
He invites us to become intimate with the simplest thing,
Just our breath.
Our body sitting here,
A single step,
A moment of knowing.
What is the film?
What is the moon?
Not because this moment is a stepping stone for the next moment,
But because this moment is our life.
This is it.
This is it.
And this is where the image of the European siesta.
Becomes really interesting for me.
The siesta isn't laziness.
It's not a lack of ambition.
It's a cultural acknowledgement.
That human beings are not machines.
The day itself.
Contains pause.
That's how it's structured.
And an entire culture.
And it's not just in Spain,
It's throughout Europe.
The sun is high,
The body's tired.
The work can wait.
That's the message.
The sun is high,
The body's tired,
The work can wait.
So mature.
That just feels so mature to me.
And there's something profoundly wise about that.
And this is.
.
.
The way that the siesta becomes kind of a metaphor for our practice.
We can pause in the middle of our becoming.
Our doing,
Our productivity.
Our creativity,
Our innovation,
We can pause in the middle of it.
Interrupt that momentum of striving.
We can stop long enough to remember that we're human beings and not productivity machines.
And in this way,
The siesta,
For me,
Represents the middle way.
It's the middle way.
It's not indulgent.
It's not about endlessly striving.
It's about balance.
To got balanced.
A rhythm of effort and release,
Attention and relaxation.
Work and rest.
There's a beautiful teaching in the Buddhist canon also where the Buddha compares Practice to tuning a lute.
And a lute is an ancient stringed instrument,
Kind of like a harp.
Or maybe like a little guitar.
And if the strings are too tight.
The strings will break.
And if the strings are too loose,
The loop will not be tight.
Make music.
And so the art.
Practice is to find the right tension.
And I think many of us.
Have been taught to live with the strings to text.
Always planning and managing and solving.
And anticipating the next thing,
Making sure.
Wondering why we feel so exhausted.
It feels kind of obvious why now.
And then the mature mind.
Understand something that the youthful mind hasn't quite yet learned.
Life doesn't improve by moving faster.
Wisdom doesn't arrive often.
Wisdom arrives.
When we slow way down.
It's like.
.
.
The oak tree.
Grows completely differently than a sapling.
And then this metaphor again with this sort of like youthful The youthful mind that becomes is like the sapling.
And the mature mind is like the oak tree.
So the sapling,
What does the sapling do?
It shoots up,
Up to the sky.
And the O.
Concentration is on the roots.
The energy is deepening its roots.
The wisdom of this path.
Is much closer to the wisdom of the open.
We're not in a race towards some future version of ourselves.
You know,
This practice is an invitation to inhabit our life more fully.
And I think that all of us are here because we see that.
We've experienced that directly.
That somehow this practice allows us to inhabit our life more fully.
And perhaps the challenge of modern practice is not learning to do it right.
To do more mindfulness.
Perhaps it's learning how to stop long enough for mindfulness to just find us.
To find us.
You know,
Our culture is our culture.
Beautiful.
In some ways challenging in others.
Asking us to move faster and achieve more and optimize,
Optimize,
Stay busy.
But the Dharma offers another possibility.
The willingness to trust that this moment is not just preparation for the next.
It's not.
This breath is not preparation for the next breath.
This step.
Is not preparation for the next step.
This life is not preparing us for the next life.
To be fully known is to know that this is it and this is enough.
And that's perhaps the deepest maturity of them.
These are my thoughts on the travels.
The mind,
The young mind and the.
.
.
Mature mind.
Of our cultures.
And I thank you for your attention.
