The Heart Of The Buddha's Teaching - Episode 5

I'll briefly introduce myself.

My name is Sarah Satie.

This is book club with me,

Sarah Satie.

We come together once a week.

I read from a book that's been chosen.

Right now we're in the middle of reading from Thich Nhat Hanh's,

The Heart of the Buddhist Teachings,

A really valuable book and a really timely choice because Thich Nhat Hanh,

Of course,

Just passed and his work has been so uplifting to humanity,

So wonderful to be able to work with this book.

You don't need the book.

Just as a reminder,

I do the reading.

After the reading,

We sit for a brief contemplation and then after that contemplation,

I offer you some practices to take with you for the week to begin to ingrain these teachings into your own heart and your own mind and your own body.

If you were with me last week,

Hopefully you had a chance to explore the homework that I offered you,

Which was really to look at what unwholesome seeds you already have in your conscious mind,

What wholesome seeds you have in your conscious mind,

And what are some ways that you can begin to water those wholesome seeds and allow those unwholesome seeds to go back to sleep so that you can live a more fulfilled,

Uplifted life experience.

This point in the teachings,

Today I'm going to finish up the second section,

Which is on the Noble Eightfold Path.

At this point in the teachings,

We've now covered the Four Noble Truths and now we are finishing up the Noble Eightfold Path.

If you've been with me before,

But even now I'll just give you a brief background.

The Four Noble Truths,

This is really the essence,

The heart of Buddhism that we see that suffering exists.

We see that there's a cause of suffering.

We see if there's a cause of suffering,

There's a cure to suffering,

And then we see what the cure to suffering is.

Suffering can sometimes be interpreted as something very heavy,

But it can also just be low-level dissatisfaction with life.

If you're not somebody who has a deep suffering,

But you do have this sort of feeling that things just could be better,

That's also a form of suffering.

Life should feel joyful.

The Buddha gave us these teachings on the Four Noble Truths.

From there,

The path emerged,

The path to well-being.

The Four Noble Truths really center around looking at our own suffering and recognizing our own contribution to it.

Whereas the Noble Eightfold Path is all about recognizing well-being and how to generate more well-being in our lives.

So up until this point,

We've covered six of the eight steps on the path,

And we'll finish with the steps today.

So it may be a shorter session today than normal.

I want to make this point.

I don't want to forget this point.

What hopefully you're seeing at this point in the teachings is that each step in the Eightfold Path contains all other steps within it.

And that's actually an important point with Buddhist teachings.

So the way we know an authentic Buddhist teaching from an inauthentic Buddhist teaching is that each teaching should contain all other teachings within it.

So if you look at a teaching separately,

And that's what we're doing here,

We're breaking what is really one big teaching down into smaller parts so that it's more easy for us to digest.

But if you look at it,

It's really like the Buddhist teaching in itself is like the ocean.

And all of these parts of the teaching,

This one teaching,

Are like waves in the ocean.

So the Noble Eightfold Path emerges like a wave.

The Four Noble Truths,

It emerges like a wave.

It seems like it's a separate teaching,

But actually it's part of a much larger body.

So the Four Noble Truths,

They are both the ocean and the wave.

They contain all the teachings within them,

And they are or can be seen as their own separate teaching.

And this is true for the Noble Eightfold Path as well.

So if you aren't already,

I want to encourage you to start really looking at the teachings and challenge yourself to see how each teaching expresses all the other teachings within it so that eventually you can kind of let go of this worry that you need to study a lot of different things or many different sides of Buddhism or spirituality or self-development.

You should be able to choose one and then from that one capture everything.

And that's why we hear the Buddha gave 84,

000 practices because there are so many different types of minds in the world.

And so you have a unique mind,

You have a unique constitution,

And you need a unique practice to work with that.

But don't worry because whatever practice you choose,

If you choose an authentic practice,

It will contain all other practices within it.

I hope that makes some sense.

Okay,

I'm going to begin with Chapter 15,

Right Concentration.

Just listen,

Just we talked about this in the beginning.

Open your heart,

Listen with the mind of compassion,

Listen with the intention to heal yourself and to uplift humanity.

And let go of working too hard.

Right Concentration.

The practice of right concentration is to cultivate a mind that is one-pointed.

The Chinese character for concentration means literally maintaining evenness,

Neither too high nor too low,

Neither too excited nor too dull.

Another Chinese term sometimes used for concentration means the abode of true mind.

There are two kinds of concentration,

Active and selective.

In active concentration,

The mind dwells on whatever is happening in the present moment,

Even as it changes.

This poem by a Buddhist monk describes active concentration.

The mind whistles in the bamboo and the bamboo dances.

When the wind stops,

The bamboo grows still.

The wind comes and the bamboo welcomes it.

The wind goes and the bamboo lets it go.

The poem continues,

A silver bird flies over the autumn lake.

When it has passed,

The lake surface does not try to hold on to the image of the bird.

As the bird flies over the lake,

Its reflection is lucid.

After it is gone,

The lake reflects the clouds and the sky just as clearly.

When we practice active concentration,

We welcome whatever comes along.

We don't think about or long for anything else.

We just dwell in the present moment with all of our being.

Whatever comes,

Comes.

When the object of our concentration has passed,

Our mind remains clear like a calm lake.

When we practice selective concentration,

We choose one object and hold on to it.

During sitting and walking meditation,

Whether alone or with others,

We practice.

We know that the sky and the birds are there,

But our attention is focused on our object.

If the object of our concentration is a math problem,

We don't watch TV or talk on the phone.

We abandon everything else and focus on the object.

When we are driving,

The lives of the passengers in our car depend on our concentration.

We don't use concentration to run away from our suffering.

We concentrate to make ourselves deeply present.

When we walk,

Stand,

Or sit in concentration,

People can see our stability and stillness.

Living each moment deeply,

Sustained concentration comes naturally,

And that in turn gives rise to insight.

Right concentration leads to happiness,

And it also leads to right action.

The higher our degree of concentration,

The greater the quality of our life.

Vietnamese girls are often told by their mothers that if they concentrate,

They will be more beautiful.

This is the kind of beauty that comes from dwelling deeply in the present moment.

When a young lady moves inattentively,

She does not look as fresh or as at ease.

Her mother may not use these words,

But she's encouraging her daughter to practice right concentration.

It's a pity she does not encourage her son to do the same.

Everyone needs concentration.

There are nine levels of meditative concentration.

The first four are the four dhyanas.

These are concentrations on the form realm.

The next five levels belong to the formless realm.

When practicing the first dhyana,

You still think.

At the other eight levels,

Thinking gives way to other energies.

Formless concentrations are also practiced in other traditions,

But when they are practiced outside of Buddhism,

It is generally to escape from suffering rather than to realize the liberation that comes with insight into our suffering.

When you use concentration to run away from yourself or your situation,

It is wrong concentration.

Sometimes we need to escape our problems for relief,

But at some time,

We have to return to face them.

Worldly concentration seeks to escape.

Super mundane concentration aims at complete liberation.

To practice samadhi is to live deeply each moment that is given us to live.

Samadhi means concentration.

In order to be concentrated,

We should be mindful,

Fully present,

And aware of what is going on.

Mindfulness brings about concentration.

When you are deeply concentrated,

You are absorbed in the moment.

You become the moment.

That is why samadhi is sometimes translated as absorption.

Right mindfulness and right concentration lift us above the realms of sensual pleasures and craving.

When we find ourselves lighter and happier,

Our world is no longer gross and heavy,

The realm of desires.

It is the realm of fine materiality,

The realm of form.

In the form realm,

There are four levels of dhyana.

Mindfulness,

Concentration,

Joy,

Happiness,

Peace,

And equanimity continue to grow through these four levels.

After the fourth dhyana,

The practitioner enters a deeper experience of concentration,

The four formless dhyanas,

Where he or she can see deeply into reality.

Here sensual desire and materiality reveal their illusory nature and are no longer obstacles.

You begin to see the impermanent non-self and interbeing nature of the phenomenal world.

Earth,

Water,

Air,

Fire,

Space,

Time,

Nothingness,

And perceptions inter-are.

Nothing can be by itself alone.

The object of the fifth level of concentration is limitless space.

When we begin to practice this concentration,

Everything seems to be space.

But as we practice more deeply,

We see that space is composed of and exists only in non-space elements like earth,

Water,

Air,

Fire,

And consciousness.

Because space is only one of the six elements that make up all material things,

We know space does not have a separate independent existence.

According to the teachings of the Buddha,

Nothing has a separate self.

So space and everything else inter-are.

Space inter-is with the other five elements.

The object of the sixth level of concentration is limitless consciousness.

At first we see only consciousness,

But then we see that consciousness is also earth,

Water,

Air,

Fire,

And space.

What is true of space is also true of consciousness.

The object of the seventh level of concentration is nothingness.

With normal perception,

We see flowers,

Fruit,

Teapots,

And tables,

And we think they exist separately of one another.

But when we look more deeply,

We see that the fruit is in the flower and that the flower,

The cloud,

And the earth are in the fruit.

We go beyond outward appearances or signs and come to signlessness.

At first we think that the members of our family are separate from one another,

But afterward we see that they contain each other.

You are the way you are because I am the way I am.

We see the intimate connection between people and we go beyond signs.

We used to think that the universe contains millions of separate entities.

Now we understand the non-existence of signs.

The eighth level of concentration is that of neither perception nor non-perception.

We recognize that everything is produced by our perceptions,

Which are at least in part erroneous.

Therefore,

We see that we cannot rely on our old way of perceiving and we want to be in direct touch with reality.

We cannot stop perceiving altogether,

But at least now we know that perception is perception of a sign.

Since we no longer believe in the reality of signs,

Our perception becomes wisdom.

We go beyond signs,

No perception,

But we do not become perceptionless,

No non-perception.

The ninth level of concentration is called cessation.

Cessation here means the cessation of ignorance in our feelings and perceptions,

Not the cessation of feelings and perceptions.

From this concentration is born insight.

The poet Nguyen Du said,

As soon as we see with our eyes and hear with our ears,

We open ourselves to suffering.

We long to be in a state of concentration where we cannot see or hear anything.

In a world where there is no perception,

We wish to become a pine tree with the wind singing in our branches because we believe that a pine tree does not suffer.

The search for a place of non-suffering is natural.

In the world of non-perception,

The seventh and the eighth consciousnesses continue to function as usual and our ignorance and internal formations remain intact in our store consciousness and they manifest in the seventh consciousness.

The seventh consciousness is the energy of delusion that creates the belief in a self and distinguishes self from others.

Since the non-perception concentration does not transform our habit energies,

When people emerge from that concentration,

Their suffering is intact.

But when the meditator reaches the ninth level of concentration,

The stage of arhat,

Manas is transformed and the internal formations in the store consciousness are purified.

The greatest internal formation is ignorance of the reality of impermanence and non-self.

This ignorance gives rise to greed,

Hatred,

Confusion,

Pride,

Doubt,

And views.

Together these afflictions produce a war of consciousness called manas,

Which always discriminates self from other.

When someone practices well,

The ninth level of concentration shines light on the reality of things and transforms ignorance.

The seeds that used to cause you to be caught in self and non-self are transformed.

Alaya is freed from the grip of manas and manas no longer has the function of making a self.

Manas becomes the wisdom of equality that can see the interbeing and interpenetrating nature of things.

It can see that others' lives are as precious as our own because there is no longer discrimination between self and other.

When manas loses its grip on store consciousness,

Store consciousness becomes the wisdom of the great mirror that reflects everything in the universe.

When the sixth consciousness is transformed,

It is called the wisdom of wonderful observation.

Mind consciousness continues to observe phenomena after it has been transformed into wisdom,

But it observes them in a different way because mind consciousness is aware of the interbeing nature of all that it observes,

Seeing the one in the many,

All the manifestations of birth and death,

Coming and going and so on,

Without being caught in ignorance.

The first five consciousnesses become the wisdom of wonderful realization.

Our eyes,

Ears,

Nose,

Tongue and body that previously caused us to suffer become miracles that bring us to the garden of suchness.

Thus,

The transformation of all levels of consciousness is realized as four wisdoms.

Our wrong consciousness and wrong perceptions are transformed thanks to the practice.

At the ninth level of concentration,

All eight consciousnesses are functioning.

Perception and feeling are there,

But they are different from before because they are free from ignorance.

The Buddha taught many concentration practices.

To practice the concentration on impermanence,

Every time you look at your beloved,

See him as impermanent and do your best to make him happy today.

If you think he is permanent,

You may believe that he will never improve.

The insight into impermanence keeps you from getting caught in the suffering of craving,

Attachment and despair.

See and listen to everything with this insight.

To practice the concentration of non-self,

Touch the nature of interbeing in everything you contact.

This will bring you a lot of peace and joy and prevent you from suffering.

The practice of the concentration on nirvana helps you to touch the ultimate dimension of reality and establish yourself in the realms of no birth and no death.

The concentrations on impermanence,

Non-self and nirvana are enough for us to practice our whole lives.

In fact,

The three are one.

If you touch the nature of impermanence deeply,

You touch the nature of non-self and nirvana.

One concentration contains all concentrations.

You don't need to do everything.

In Mahayana Buddhism,

There are hundreds of other concentrations such as Shirangama Samadhi,

The Sadharma Pundarika Samadhi and the Avatamsaka Samadhi.

Excuse me if I pronounce these wrong.

Each is wonderful and important.

According to the Lotus Sutra,

We have to live in the historical and ultimate dimensions of reality at the same time.

We have to live deeply our life as a wave so we can touch the substance of water in us.

We walk,

Look,

Breathe and eat in a way that we touch the absolute dimension of reality.

We transcend birth and death in the fears of being and non-being,

One and many.

The Buddha is not found only in Girdhra Putta,

The Vulture Peak.

If you were to hear on the radio that the Buddha is going to reappear on Vulture Peak and the public is invited to join him for walking meditation,

All the seats on all the airplanes to India would be booked.

You might feel frustrated because you want to go also.

Even if you were lucky enough to get a seat on that plane,

It still might not be possible for you to enjoy practicing walking meditation with the Buddha.

There would be so many people,

Most of whom don't know how to practice breathing in and out and dwelling in the present moment while walking.

What is the use of going there?

Look deeply at your intention.

Do you want to fly halfway around the world so that later you can say you're with the Buddha?

Many people want to do just that.

They arrive at a place of pilgrimage,

Unable to be in the here and the now.

After a few minutes of seeing the place,

They rush to the next place.

They take pictures to prove they were there and they're eager to return home to show their friends.

I was there.

I have proof.

That is me standing beside the Buddha.

That would be the desire of many of the people who would go there.

They are not able to walk with the Buddha.

They are not able to be in the here and the now.

They only want to say,

I was there and this is me standing beside the Buddha.

But it is not true.

They were not there and that is not the Buddha.

Being there is a concept and the Buddha that you see is a mere appearance.

You cannot photograph the real Buddha,

Even if you have a very expensive camera.

If you don't have the opportunity to fly to India,

Please practice walking at home and you can really hold the hand of the Buddha while you walk.

Just walk in peace and happiness and the Buddha is there with you.

The one who flies to India and returns with his photo taken with the Buddha has not seen the real Buddha.

You have the reality.

He has only a sign.

Don't run around looking for photo opportunities.

Touch the real Buddha.

He is available.

Take his hand and practice walking meditation.

When you can touch the ultimate dimension,

You walk with the Buddha.

The wave does not need to die to become water.

She is already water.

This is the concentration of the Lotus Sutra.

Live every moment of your life deeply and while walking,

Eating,

Drinking and looking at the morning star,

You touch the ultimate dimension.

In this chapter,

Thich Nhat Hanh is explaining right concentration.

He is basically talking about there is wrong concentration.

What are you placing your mind,

Your attention on?

Then there is right concentration.

What are you placing your mind and your attention on?

He is speaking of right concentration to be placing your mind and your attention on ultimate reality,

On looking beyond the surface of things,

The signs that exist and instead trying to understand reality at its basic essence.

This is where the Buddha gives various practices like non-self and impermanence practices.

Again,

You can hear that Thich Nhat Hanh is describing all of the practices are contained inside this one,

But that is not just true of the Buddha's teachings.

That is true of life and that is the practice of interbeing.

So I invited you to look at the Buddhist teachings as exploring how each teaching contains all other teachings,

But now I want to push your mind a little further.

I want to push your mind a little further and now I want you to start looking at all of life in this way.

This is a big jump because if you go from just seeing,

Okay,

Yeah,

The Four Noble Truths contain the Noble Eightfold Path,

The Noble Eightfold Path contains the Four Noble Truths and then more teachings we'll get into.

Interbeing is the idea that everything is connected with everything else.

It's the idea that there is nothing separate,

Nothing independent.

You cannot extract the sun,

The water,

The soil from the flower.

You cannot extract the viewer,

The person looking at the flower from the flower.

You can't take the flower out of the person that's looking at the flower's mind.

This is interbeing.

Everything is related.

Nothing is separate and standing alone and it's this misperception.

It's the concentration on yourself as an independent entity that causes so much pain and suffering.

And so we have to challenge ourselves to look deeper than that,

To see that I am not standing alone here.

I'm not Sarah by myself.

Who am I talking to?

If not talking to someone.

Everything that is existing is existing inside of us and outside of us simultaneously and is deeply and richly connected.

And when we start to pay attention to that,

Then we challenge our wrong perception of how the way the world works is.

We are seeing the world very one dimensionally,

But there is not one dimension here.

There are myriad dimensions.

And so we should be pushing our minds to look beyond that.

And inside of that pushing,

We should relax.

We should relax.

We should relax.

We should look deeply.

We should observe.

And we don't have to let go of anything because everything that comes goes.

And when we look deeply like that,

That knowledge,

That wisdom that emerges for us,

We don't have to look for it.

It just comes.

And that's why the practice is so important.

So much more important than reading.

So much more important than taking notes or studying.

The practice of meditation,

Of mindfulness,

That is where wisdom blooms.

Okay,

The last chapter in the section on the Noble Eightfold Path,

Right livelihood.

I think this is a big one for a lot of people.

To practice right livelihood,

You have to find a way to earn your living without transgressing your ideals of love and compassion.

The way you support yourself can be an expression of your deepest self,

Or it can be a source of suffering for you and others.

The sutras usually define right livelihood as earning a living without needing to transgress any of the mindfulness trainings.

Not dealing in arms,

In the slave trade,

In the meat trade,

The sale of alcohol,

Drugs,

Or poisons,

Or making prophecies or telling fortunes.

Monks and nuns must be careful not to make unreasonable demands on the laity for the four requisites of medicine,

Food,

Clothes,

And lodging,

And not to live with material requests in excess of immediate needs.

Bringing awareness to every moment,

We try to have a vocation that is beneficial to humans,

Animals,

Plants,

And the earth,

Or at least minimally harmful.

We live in a society in which jobs are sometimes hard to find,

But if it happens that our work involves harming life,

We should try to find another job.

Our vocation can nourish our understanding and compassion or erode them.

We should be awake to the consequences far and near of the way we earn our living.

So many modern industries are harmful to humans in nature,

Even food production.

Chemical pesticides and fertilizers can cause a lot of harm to the environment.

Practicing right livelihood is difficult for farmers.

If they do not use chemicals,

It may be difficult for them to compete commercially.

This is just one example.

When you practice your profession or trade,

Observe the five mindfulness trainings.

A job that involves killing,

Stealing,

Sexual misconduct,

Lying,

Or selling drugs or alcohol is not right livelihood.

If your company pollutes the rivers or the air,

Working there is not right livelihood.

Making weapons or profiting from other superstitions is also not right livelihood.

People have superstitions,

Such as believing that their fate is sealed in the stars or in the palms of their hands.

No one can be sure what will occur in the future.

By practicing mindfulness,

We can change the destiny astrologers have predicted for us.

Moreover,

Prophecies can be self-fulfilling.

Practicing or performing works of art can also be livelihood.

A composer,

Writer,

Painter,

Or performer has an effect on the collective consciousness.

Any work of art is,

To a large extent,

A product of the collective consciousness.

Therefore,

The individual artist needs to practice mindfulness so that his or her work of art helps those who touch it practice right attention.

A young man wanted to learn how to draw lotus flowers,

So he went to a master to apprentice with him.

The master took him to a lotus pond and invited him to sit there.

The young man saw flowers bloom when the sun was high,

And he watched them return into buds when night fell.

The next morning,

He did the same.

When one lotus flower wilted and its petals fell into the water,

He just looked at the stalk,

The stamen,

And the rest of the flower,

And then moved on to another lotus.

He did that for 10 days.

On the 11th day,

The master asked him,

Are you ready?

And he replied,

I will try.

The master gave him a brush,

And although the young man's style was childlike,

The lotus he drew was beautiful.

He had become the lotus,

And the painting came forth from him.

You could see his naivete concerning technique,

But deep beauty was there.

Right livelihood is not just a personal matter.

It's our collective karma.

Suppose I'm a schoolteacher,

And I believe that nurturing love and understanding in children is a beautiful occupation.

I would object if someone were to ask me to stop teaching and become,

For example,

A butcher.

But when I meditate on the interrelatedness of things,

I see that the butcher is not the only person responsible for killing animals.

We may think the butcher's livelihood is wrong and ours is right,

But if we didn't eat meat,

He would not have to kill.

Right livelihood is a collective matter.

The livelihood of each person affects everyone else.

The butcher's children might benefit from my teaching,

While my children,

Because they eat meat,

Share some responsibility for the butcher's livelihood.

Suppose a farmer who sells his cattle as meat wants to receive the five mindfulness trainings.

He wants to know if he can in light of the first training to protect life.

He feels that he gives his cattle the best conditions for their well-being.

He even operates his own slaughterhouse so that there's no unnecessary cruelty inflicted on the animals when he puts an end to their lives.

He inherited his farm from his father,

And he has a family to support.

This is a dilemma.

What should he do?

His intentions are good,

But he has inherited his farm and his habit energies from his ancestors.

Every time a cow is slaughtered,

It leaves an impression on his consciousness,

Which will come back to him in dreams,

During meditation or at the moment of death.

It is right livelihood to look after his cows so well while they are alive.

He has the wish to be kind to his cows,

And he also wants the security of regular income for himself and his family.

He should continue to look deeply and practice mindfulness with his local sangha.

As his insight deepens,

The way out of the situation where he finds himself killing to make a living will present itself.

Everything we do contributes to our effort to practice right livelihood.

It is more than just the way we earn our paycheck.

We cannot succeed at having right livelihood 100%,

But we can resolve to go in the direction of compassion and reducing suffering.

And we can resolve to help create a society in which there is more right livelihood and less wrong livelihood.

Millions of people,

For example,

Make their living in the arms industry,

Helping directly or indirectly to manufacture conventional and nuclear weapons.

The U.

S.

,

Russia,

France,

Britain,

China,

And Germany are the primary suppliers of these weapons.

Weapons are then sold to third world countries where the people do not need guns.

They need food.

To manufacture or sell weapons is not right livelihood.

But the responsibility for this situation lies with all of us,

Politicians,

Economists,

And consumers.

We have not yet organized a compelling national debate on this problem.

We have to discuss this further,

And we have to keep creating new jobs so that no one has to live on the profits from weapons manufacture.

If you are able to work in a profession that helps realize your ideal of compassion,

Be grateful.

And please try to help create proper jobs for others by living mindfully,

Simply,

And sanely.

Use all of your energy to try to improve the situation.

To practice right livelihood means to practice right mindfulness.

Every time the telephone rings,

Hear it as a bell of mindfulness.

Stop what you are doing,

Breathe in and out consciously,

And then proceed to the telephone.

The way you answer the phone will embody right livelihood.

We need to discuss among ourselves how to practice mindfulness in the workplace,

How to practice right livelihood.

Do we breathe when we hear the telephone ringing and before we pick up the phone to make a phone call?

Do we smile when we take care of others?

Do we walk mindfully from meeting to meeting?

Do we practice right speech?

Do we practice deep and total relaxation after hours of hard work?

Do we live in ways that encourage everyone to be peaceful and happy and to have a job that is in the direction of peace and happiness?

These are very practical and important questions.

To work in a way that encourages this kind of thinking and acting,

In a way that encourages our ideal of compassion is to practice right livelihood.

If someone has a profession that causes living beings to suffer and oppresses others,

It will infect their own consciousness just as when we pollute the air that we ourselves have to breathe.

Many people get rich by means of wrong livelihood.

Then they go to their temple or church and make donations.

These donations come from feelings of fear and guilt rather than the wish to bring happiness to others and relieve others of suffering.

When a temple or church receives large donations,

Those responsible for receiving the funds must understand this.

They should do their best to help the donor transform by showing him or her a way out of that wrong livelihood.

Such persons need more than anything the teachings of the Buddha.

As we study and practice the Noble Eightfold Path,

We see that each element of the path is contained within all the other seven elements.

We also see that each element of the path contains the noble truths of suffering,

The making of suffering,

And the ending of suffering.

Practicing the first noble truth,

We recognize our suffering and call it by its name,

Depression,

Anxiety,

Fear,

Or insecurity.

Then we look directly into that suffering to discover its basis,

And that is practicing the second noble truth.

These two practices contain the first two elements of the Noble Eightfold Path,

Namely right view,

Right thinking.

All of us have a tendency to run away from suffering,

But now with the practice of the Noble Eightfold Path,

We have the courage to face our suffering directly.

We use right mindfulness and right concentration to look courageously at our suffering.

The looking deeply that shows us clearly the basis of our suffering is right view.

Right view will not show one reason for our suffering,

But layers upon layers of causes and conditions,

Seeds we have inherited from our parents,

Grandparents,

And ancestors,

Seeds in us that have been watered by our friends and the economic and political situations of our country,

And so many other causes and conditions.

Now the time has come to do something to lessen our suffering.

Once we know what is feeding our suffering,

We find a way to cease ingesting that nutriment,

Whether it is edible food,

The food of sense impression,

The food we receive from our intentions,

Or the food from our consciousness.

We do this by practicing right speech,

Right action,

And right livelihood,

Remembering that right speech is also listening deeply.

To practice these three aspects,

We take the mindfulness trainings as our guide.

Practicing according to the mindfulness trainings,

We see that when we speak,

Act,

Or earn our living,

We do it with right mindfulness.

Right mindfulness lets us know when we say something that is not right speech or do something that is not right action.

Once right mindfulness is practiced along with right diligence,

Right concentration will follow easily and give rise to insight or right view.

In fact,

It is not possible to practice one element of the Noble Eightfold Path without practicing all other seven elements.

This is the nature of interbeing,

And it is true for all the teachings offered by the Buddha,

And it is true for everything.

The nature of interbeing is true for everything.

And that is the essence of the Noble Eightfold Path.

When we invite this into our lives,

When we stop running from what is scary,

Thich Nhat Hanh talks about we don't need to apply an antidote.

And this is what the Buddha says also.

Many other traditions have right concentration,

Thich Nhat Hanh was saying.

Many other traditions have right concentration in them,

But often they're to avoid what is true.

They're to avoid what is real for us.

And what the Buddha is saying is that we need to dive into what is real,

Into what is true.

We need to look deeply at what is scary.

We need to look deeply at what is painful.

And from there,

Truth will reveal itself.

And from the revelation of truth,

We are able to then start to step more fully onto the path of wellbeing.

And it's not just wellbeing for ourselves.

You may be here thinking,

Oh,

I'm practicing.

I'm practicing meditation.

You're on Insight Timer.

Maybe you're practicing with people on Insight Timer.

Maybe you have a little community that you're a part of,

And you're thinking about healing yourself.

And that's a valuable,

Valid thing to be thinking.

We want to heal ourselves.

But it's not ourselves we're healing when we heal ourselves.

It's a long line of ancestors from before us.

And it's a long line of ancestors from after us.

And it's every person we touch while we are here on this planet.

When we take on the work of finding wellbeing,

Of transforming our suffering,

That is when we start to heal humanity.

So you don't need to look outside yourself.

You don't need to be an activist on a street corner.

If you start to engage these eight steps on the Noble Eightfold Path,

You find that right away you are helping to uplift humanity.

You're no longer consuming in ways that cause destruction.

You're no longer supporting livelihoods that cause destruction.

You're mindful in your actions and your words.

You take silence more than you speak.

These kinds of things help to transform everything around you,

Including the systems that are so flawed.

Because we can admit,

I mean maybe you want to argue on this,

But we'd have a pretty big debate to have.

Especially in the United States,

The systems are broken.

There are many broken and flawed systems.

And so many people I know think,

Bad system,

Bad system.

If we apply this to right livelihood,

People think,

Bad job,

Bad job.

My work is wrong.

My work is flawed.

And so they spend all of their time complaining about what is outside of themselves,

Rather than turning the eye around and looking at themselves and how they're contributing to the problem.

And what the Noble Eightfold Path does for us is it lets us see that actually we are contributing to the problem on a daily basis.

And if we start to practice in this way,

We begin to stop contributing to the problem and the problem gets smaller.

We don't have to think about what our employer is doing wrong.

We can look at what we are doing.

And in that way,

We have control and freedom and we can find well-being not just for ourselves,

But for everyone on the planet.

It's time that we start to transform ourselves for the upliftment of humanity.

And we need to do that on an individual basis.

And what we find,

What's so beautiful,

Is that because of the nature of interbeing,

There is no individual basis.

So every single one of us that is here right now is doing something for humanity in this moment.

You think you're here for you.

It's just your ears that are listening.

But because your ears hear this,

Because your brain encodes this,

You are more likely to engage with other people in loving and compassionate ways today.

And that is a beautiful thing.

Because you engage with them in loving and compassionate ways,

They are more likely to feel heard and seen and feel better and in that way engage with others in loving and compassionate ways.

And we are truly the domino effect.

But there's no single domino.

All the dominoes are connected.

It's a lot of stuff.

And I think the bigger point here is that we want to not worry about concepts.

We want to not be caught up in the conceptual mind,

The thinking mind.

Like I said,

Taking notes and reading,

Reading,

Reading.

I mean,

I'm definitely to blame here.

I don't know,

Blame isn't the right word.

But I read and read and read.

And the real work happens in my practice.

Reading helps me clarify some of the things that I learn and some of the things that my teachers tell me.

But the real deep clarity comes from sitting in my practice.

So let's do that.

Let's practice.

I want to remind you of the five mindfulness trainings and last week's work.

So last week I asked you to,

In this practice that we did together,

To explore where resistance developed when we pretended like we were taking the five mindfulness trainings.

Those were reverence for life.

I think this is a big one for a lot of people who still eat meat.

And I'm not saying eat meat or don't eat meat.

I don't eat meat.

The Dalai Lama eats meat.

So you can make that choice for yourself.

We have to think about the bigger picture in making our choices.

But I know reverence for life is a big one for people.

True happiness,

True love.

This is how we engage sexually and also romantically,

But also just with touch and physicality,

Attachment,

Intimacy,

Nourishment,

How we feed ourselves on all the various levels,

And then loving speech and deep listening.

So I asked you to take these five mindfulness trainings to imagine and then see where resistance developed and that's where the work needs to be done.

And now we're moving into the Noble Eightfold Path.

And I'll put them in order.

Thich Nhat Hanh has them out of order.

I'm going to give them to you in order.

Right perception.

You can imagine this is like the ground,

The ground where the seed is.

And then the watering of the seed and then the flowering of the seed.

As I described this,

Maybe that visualization helps.

Right perception,

Right thinking,

Right speech,

Right action,

Right livelihood,

Right diligence,

Right mindfulness,

And right concentration.

So from these early seeds,

From our right perception,

When we have perception right,

Right thinking follows,

Right speech follows from right thinking,

Right action follows from right thinking,

Right speech,

Right livelihood comes from right perception.

All of these things are connected to one another.

But again,

It may be the case that as you look at these,

There's one that stands out as an area that you could work on more in your life.

But I want you to think about that in your life as you're moving forward.

I'll give you a practice after we do a little seated meditation together.

But this seated meditation is more about relaxing,

Is more about letting go,

Is more about making space for the wisdom mind to present itself to you.

You don't have to search for it.

It's there.

It's right next to you.

It's on you.

It's in you.

It's breathing.

And all you have to do is shift your vision just a little bit so that you can see it.

So let's practice together wherever you are lying down or sitting up,

Lengthen your spine.

Open yourself,

Broaden yourself,

Expand yourself,

Eyes open or closed either way,

No big deal,

Whatever is comfortable for you.

Just relax in this expanded,

Open,

Conscious way.

Stop trying so hard.

Stop trying so hard.

Just stop.

Take a deep inhale,

A few deep inhales,

One after the other,

And then with a big open mouth,

A deep powerful exhale.

Make noise,

Sigh and let it out.

Do it a few times.

Feel your shoulders rise up on the inhale.

Feel your body drop down on the exhale.

Few more times,

Inhale.

One more time.

Just be.

Drop the baggage.

Drop the thought that you know,

Drop the thought that you know anything.

Drop the thought that you need to know.

Drop the thought that you need to know anything.

Stop trying so hard.

A thought comes in.

You're feeling good.

You're focused.

You're inside the meditation.

A thought comes in.

Now you're disrupted.

So what?

Who cares?

Let it go.

And notice you don't have to let it go.

Thought comes in.

It disrupts you and then it leaves on its own.

It dances in.

It dances in like a happy little clown,

Like a little teddy bear in a clown suit.

It dances in.

It may be a sad thought or a mad thought or an angry thought or maybe a grief thought or maybe a happy thought or an excited thought.

It dances in however it is and then just as you attach to it,

It runs out laughing because it was nothing.

It was just a figment of your imagination.

See that.

Stop trying.

Stop trying to drop the thought.

Stop trying to let go of the thought.

Stop trying to drop the feeling.

Stop trying to let go of the feeling.

Stop trying so hard.

You are on the path to ultimate well-being.

You've already made the choice.

You've already made the choice so you can stop trying so hard.

You're here.

You've arrived.

Your choice to be on this path,

That's enough.

That's all you need.

Nothing else is happening to you so just stop trying so hard.

Your job is not to try so hard.

Your job is just to look deeply.

Look deeply at yourself,

At your suffering,

At your joys.

Challenge what you see.

That little teddy bear comes dancing in,

A thought,

A feeling,

A sensation.

You can smile.

You can laugh.

You know the truth.

Whatever dances into that mind of yours,

It's going to dance right out.

In this way,

You become like the relationship between an empty house and a thief.

When the thief enters the empty house,

There's nothing to steal.

The empty house has no fear because it has nothing that can be taken.

This is you.

So you can stop trying because trying is the problem.

See your thoughts arise.

They come up.

They dance in.

Try to grab them.

Try to hold them.

Try to keep them somewhere.

They just go.

They go.

They go on their own.

Everything that comes leaves.

The breath comes.

It goes.

The heart beats.

It stops.

The lover is there and then they're gone.

It's just the way things are.

So you smile.

You smile at the dancing bear.

You smile at the feeling.

No matter what kind of feeling.

No matter what kind of thought.

You're beyond that.

You are on the path to ultimate well-being.

So you relax.

You just relax.

Relax.

Let go.

Relax.

Stop trying so hard.

Keep breathing.

Deep breath in.

Deep.

Deep breath in.

Deep breath out.

Slow.

Long.

Expressive breath out.

One more time.

Deep.

Deep in.

Deep in.

Be with yourself.

Pain,

Joy,

Suffering,

Sadness,

Grief,

Excitement.

Be with yourself in your fullness.

Deep.

Deep in.

Deep.

Deep in.

Long.

Slow out.

You're doing enough.

You great.

You're wonderful.

You're awesome.

Life has been hard.

It's been good.

It's been all of those things.

It's been all of those things,

You know,

And you're here.

You're here right now.

You've already made the choice.

The choice was made for you.

Something happened in your life and the choice was made for you.

And because of that,

Here you are.

And so now you can relax because you've arrived.

This week's practice is sort of different.

It's a little different.

I feel a little emotional.

Okay,

So in this week's practice,

Last week we kind of focused on that feeling of resistance and seeing where resistance exists inside of you.

And then looking more closely at what you can do with that resistance.

That's what we did in our practice.

And then in our homework,

I had you identify ways you can water wholesome seeds and allow unwholesome seeds to go to sleep.

You can go back and listen or watch if you missed it.

Fast forward to the end if you just wanna get the practice.

In this week's practice,

I want you to look deeply at the Noble Eightfold Path.

And so if you don't remember it from here,

You can always Google it,

It's everywhere.

Beginning with right understanding,

Beginning with right perception,

I want you to ask yourself,

Excuse me,

I want you to ask yourself where you feel you are doing the best.

What step on the path you feel like,

Yes,

Shining here,

Getting it,

Understanding it.

Doesn't mean you're necessarily acting in it fully,

But it just means that you're really understanding it,

You're absorbing it.

Where in the path do you feel like you need the most work?

And that can just be like the most clarification.

The step in the path doesn't really make a lot of sense to me.

I'm not really understanding it.

I can't utilize it adequately in that way because of that.

So I want you to look at those two things.

The first thing to look at is,

You know,

Where you feel like,

Yeah,

I'm really getting this.

And then the opposite is where do you feel like I'm not really getting this in terms of the noble eight.

And then I want you to let it go.

I want you to really let it go.

June,

Thank you so much.

I want you to let that go completely.

And I want you to spend the next week sitting every day in deep relaxation.

So I want you to take a minimum of five minutes a day.

I'm not talking listening to a guided meditation.

I'm talking like with yourself all alone,

Just by yourself,

Relaxing,

Stopping and letting go.

And you can say to yourself in your mind,

You can say to yourself in your mind,

Stop trying so hard.

And you can use this as a mantra.

You're sitting,

You're relaxing,

You're letting go.

The mind comes in,

You're trying,

You're trying,

You know,

You're trying to meditate or you're trying to relax.

And every time you find yourself doing that,

I want you to just repeat the mantra,

Stop trying so hard.

So this week's work is five minutes a day of this kind of relaxation.

And in this way,

I want you to let go of any desire to achieve anything,

To be anything,

To learn anything,

To do anything,

To grow in any way.

And when something from your list comes up,

So when something from your list comes up,

Like from last week,

The wholesome seeds or the unwholesome seeds at any point in your life,

So this is kind of a second part of the practice,

Or a third part,

If you will,

At any point in your life,

When something comes up from the wholesome seeds or the unwholesome seeds,

I want you to look at it deeply.

I want you to experience it fully.

And I want you to do nothing about it.

And I want you to start to really observe that when you do nothing about something,

It changes on its own.

Ah,

For those control freaks among us,

You know you may say,

No,

No,

I have to do something.

I have to do something.

But I want us to challenge that.

I want us to stop trying so hard.

I want us to challenge that we have to do anything.

And I want us all to absorb this deeper truth that when things hurt,

They stop hurting.

And when things are great and wonderful,

They stop being great and wonderful.

And all we have to do is sit in the background.

Let me,

Yeah,

Let me repeat it one more time.

So there are three steps to this practice this week.

Step one,

Just observe where on the Noble Eightfold Path you're doing really well,

Or you're really getting it,

And where on the path you're not doing so well,

Or you're not really getting it.

Just be aware of that for yourself,

Clarify that for yourself.

And then I want you to take your practice internal.

I want you to spend a minimum of five minutes a day stopping,

Calming,

Resting,

Stopping,

Calming,

Resting.

And when something comes up,

When you notice yourself trying too hard,

I want you to say to yourself,

Stop trying so hard.

I want you to really use this mantra.

And you can use this mantra outside of that relaxation.

You can use it all week long.

Anytime you see yourself trying too hard at work,

At home,

With family,

With friends,

With yourself,

Stop trying so hard.

So five minutes a day of deep relaxation,

Stop trying so hard.

And the third part is that when anything comes up in your life about the Noble Eightfold Path,

About one of these unwholesome seeds or wholesome seeds,

I'm referring to last week's practice and teachings,

Anytime something like this comes up in your life,

I want you to look at it deeply,

See it clearly,

Be with the experience.

So a wholesome seed pops up,

Be with it,

Look at it.

An unwholesome seed pops up like anger or greed or jealousy or whatever.

Be with it,

Look deeply at it.

And then I want you to do nothing.

That's it,

Just be with it,

Just look deeply at it.

I want you to do nothing.

And I want you to do nothing as a practice in recognizing that whether you do something or nothing,

The experience ends on its own.

And actually it's the act of doing something that usually keeps that experience hanging on much longer than we want it to.

Okay,

So three parts to this practice.

Hopefully you understood and got them all.

I made this little group on Insight Timer.

I'm still kind of learning how to use these groups.

So if you leave me a comment there,

Just know that I'm like figuring this process out.

But if you wanna leave a comment or question,

Or you just wanna be part of a community where we're diving through these teachings together and exploring how they're impacting our lives together,

That's awesome.

Hopefully you can go there to do that.

And otherwise I will see you not this Sunday,

But the following Sunday.

I made it at 8.

30 a.

M.

I'm just kind of playing with it.

Is 8.

30 a.

M.

PST better than nine or what?

I'm not sure.

But hopefully you will join me.

I think that's March 5th.

I'm not 100% sure on the date.

You can find it on the page.

And then we're gonna move into the teachings beyond the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path.

So hopefully you can join me for that.

Until next time,

Live mindfully,

Be well.