The Heart Of The Buddha's Teaching - Episode 6

Good,

So I'll briefly introduce myself.

My name is Sarah Satie and this is Book Club with me,

Sarah Satie.

And during this Book Club,

We read from a book that was chosen already.

This is The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching.

That's what we're working with right now,

The Heart of the Buddha's Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh.

Each week,

I read a few chapters.

I discuss at the end of each chapter a little bit about the chapter so that you can get a little bit of like a synthesis of the chapter.

And then at the end of the reading,

I offer a practice where we can put the teachings into our own heart and expand our understanding of them.

And then I close with a short homework assignment that I invite you to do for the week until the next session.

So today we are moving forward in our teachings.

Last week,

We finished up with The Noble Eightfold Path.

So we've covered the Four Noble Truths and The Noble Eightfold Path at this point.

I'm just going to dive right in.

If you were with me last week,

Hopefully you had an opportunity to do some of this homework of stopping and stop trying so hard and letting go of the effort.

I want to remind you,

That's how I encourage you to listen today.

I encourage you to listen with an effortless mind,

Not striving to understand anything,

Not striving to practice too hard,

But rather allowing yourself to just be present for the experience and trusting that what is important will gravitate towards you and will settle into your heart so you don't have to work too hard today.

As I said,

We finished up with The Noble Eightfold Path last week.

This was sort of the end of the surface level teachings of Buddhism.

So now we're diving deeper into the ocean.

And if you imagine Buddhism as like a way to understand lived experience and non-lived experience,

Then we can say,

Now we're diving deeper into the ocean of experience with some of the additional teachings that the Buddha offered.

So I'll read,

I believe,

From chapters 17 and 18 today,

Just chapter 17 and 18 today,

Two different teachings that give us quite a bit.

I think it's important to recognize that often,

And Thich Nhat Hanh will talk about this in chapter 17,

We're drawn into the teachings of the Buddha because of something that we've read or something that we've heard or something that we've understood with the mind.

So this is really what the Four Noble Truths and The Noble Eightfold Path have given us.

They're like a gateway into deeper teachings.

And what they do is they offer us an understanding of the reality that suffering and joy exist together,

And the reality that if we can look at suffering deeply,

Then we can see that there is a way to end suffering and that the Noble Eightfold Path is the way to allow our minds to relax away from the suffering state that they're often in,

Even if it's a low-level experience of suffering.

So now we get there.

They're really like the teasers,

The Four Noble Truths and The Noble Eightfold Path.

They're like a teaser,

And they resonate.

We say,

Yeah,

I do suffer.

So suffering does exist.

And yeah,

I see that suffering comes and goes so that I can admit suffering must have an end.

And I see that if it must have an end,

Then there must be a way I can end it.

And the Noble Eightfold Path steps in and says,

Well,

You know,

Probably you're part of the problem.

And it gives us all of these tools to say right thinking,

Right action,

Right perception,

Right effort.

These kinds of things,

When we start to do them more,

When we start to practice with discipline,

Then naturally much of our suffering is alleviated.

And so again,

We're like drawn into the teachings because that makes sense to us.

And when we start to practice things like right speech,

When we start to practice things like right effort,

We notice,

Okay,

Yeah,

That's true.

I don't feel so bad anymore.

My mind isn't quite so wild when I start to do this.

And so now we're in.

And once we're in,

We still feel like often there's something missing.

So we're understanding reality on one level,

But still something is missing for us.

Our intuitive inner self is looking for more.

And these are the additional teachings that the Buddha came with,

The later teachings that the Buddha came with,

To satisfy not just very surface level experience,

Which is the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path,

But to satisfy that deep longing for understanding reality at its very,

Very basic essence.

And so we'll do some of that understanding today with Chapter 17.

So I'll get started.

Chapter 17,

The Two Truths.

According to Buddhism,

There are two kinds of truth,

Relative or worldly truth and absolute truth.

We enter the door of practice through relative truth.

We recognize the presence of happiness and the presence of suffering.

And we try to go in the direction of increased happiness.

Every day we go a little further in that direction.

And one day we realize that suffering and happiness are not two.

A Vietnamese poem says,

People talk endlessly about their suffering and their joy.

But what is there to suffer or be joyful about?

Joy from sensual pleasure always leads to pain and suffering while practicing the way always brings joy.

Wherever there is joy,

There is suffering.

If you want to have no suffering,

You must accept no joy.

The poet is trying to leap into absolute truth without walking the path of relative truth.

Many people think that in order to avoid suffering,

They have to give up joy and they call this transcending joy and suffering.

This is not correct.

If you recognize and accept your pain without running away from it,

You will discover that although pain exists,

Joy also exists.

Without experiencing relative joy,

You will not know what to do when you are face to face with absolute joy.

Don't get caught in theories or ideas such as saying that suffering is an illusion or that we have to transcend both suffering and joy.

Just stay in touch with what is actually going on and you will touch the true nature of suffering and the true nature of joy.

When you have a headache,

It would not be correct to call your headache illusory.

To help it go away,

You have to acknowledge its existence and understand its causes.

We enter the path of practice through the door of knowledge.

Perhaps from a Dharma talk or a book,

We continue along the path and are suffering lessons little by little.

But at some point,

All of our concepts and ideas must yield to our actual experience.

Words and ideas are only useful if they are put into practice.

When we stop discussing things and begin to realize the teachings in our own life,

A moment comes when we realize that our life is the path and we no longer rely merely on the forms of practice.

Our action becomes non-action and our practice becomes non-practice.

The boundary has been crossed and our practice cannot be set back.

We do not have to transcend the world of dust in order to go to some dust-free world called Nirvana.

Suffering and Nirvana are of the same substance.

If we throw away the world of dust,

We will have no Nirvana.

In the discourse on turning the wheel of the Dharma,

The Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths of suffering,

The cause of suffering,

The cessation of suffering,

And the path.

But in the Heart Sutra,

The Bodhisattva Abhilokitesvara tells us that there is no suffering,

No cause of suffering,

No cessation of suffering,

And no path.

Is this a contradiction?

No.

The Buddha is speaking in terms of relative truth and Abhilokitesvara is speaking in terms of absolute truth.

When Abhilokitesvara says there is no suffering,

He means that suffering is made entirely of things that are not suffering.

Whether you suffer or not depends on many circumstances.

The cold air can be painful if you are not wearing warm enough clothes,

But with proper clothing,

Cold air can be a source of joy.

Suffering is not objective.

It depends largely on the way you perceive.

There are things that cause you to suffer but do not cause others to suffer.

There are things that bring you joy but do not bring others joy.

The Four Noble Truths were presented by the Buddha as a relative truth to help you enter the door of practice but they are not his deepest teaching.

With the eyes of Interbeing,

We can always reconcile the two truths.

When we see,

Comprehend,

And touch the nature of Interbeing,

We see the Buddha.

All conditioned things are impermanent.

They are phenomena,

Subject to birth and death.

When birth and death no longer are,

The complete silencing is joy.

This verse was spoken by the Buddha shortly before his death.

The first two lines express relative truth,

While the third and fourth lines express absolute truth.

All conditioned things includes physical,

Psychological,

And physiological phenomena.

Complete silencing means nirvana,

The extinction of all concepts.

When the Buddha says the complete silencing is joy,

He means that thinking,

Conceptualizing,

And speaking have come to an end.

This is the third Noble Truth in absolute terms.

The Buddha recommends that we recite the five remembrances every day.

1.

I am the nature.

I am of the nature to grow old.

There is no way to escape growing old.

2.

I am of the nature to have ill health.

There is no way to escape having ill health.

3.

I am of the nature to die.

There is no way to escape death.

4.

All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change.

There is no way to escape being separated from them.

5.

My actions are my only true belongings.

I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.

My actions are the ground on which I stand.

The five remembrances help us make friends with our fears of growing old,

Getting sick,

Being abandoned,

And dying.

They are also a bell of mindfulness that can help us appreciate deeply the wonders of life that are available here and now.

But in the Heart Sutra,

Avalokitesvara teaches that there is no birth and no death.

Why would the Buddha tell us that we are of the nature to die if there is no birth and no death?

Because in the five remembrances,

The Buddha is using the tool of relative truth.

He is well aware that in terms of absolute truth,

There is no birth and no death.

When we look at the ocean,

We see that each wave has a beginning and an end.

A wave can be compared with other waves,

And we can call it more or less beautiful,

Higher or lower,

Longer lasting,

Or less long lasting.

But if we look more deeply,

We see that a wave is made of water.

While living the life of a wave,

It also lives the life of water.

It would be sad if the wave did not know that it was water.

It would think,

Someday I will have to die.

This period of time is my lifespan,

And when I arrive at the shore,

I will return to non-being.

These notions will cause the wave fear and anguish.

We have to help it remove the notions of self,

Person,

Living being,

And lifespan if we want the wave to be free and happy.

A wave can be recognized by signs,

High or low,

Beginning or ending,

Beautiful or ugly.

But in the world of water,

There are no signs.

In the world of relative truth,

The wave feels happy as she swells,

And she feels sad when she falls.

She may think,

I am high,

Or I am low,

And develop a superiority or inferiority complex.

But when the wave touches her true nature,

Which is water,

All her complexes will cease,

And she will transcend birth and death.

We become arrogant when things go well,

And we are afraid of falling,

Or being low or inadequate.

But these are relative ideas,

And when they end,

A feeling of completeness and satisfaction arises.

Reception is the ability to go from the world of signs to the world of true nature.

We need the relative world of the wave,

But we also need to touch the water,

The ground of our being,

To have real peace and joy.

We shouldn't allow relative truth to imprison us and keep us from touching absolute truth.

Looking deeply into relative truth,

We penetrate the absolute.

Relative and absolute truths inter-embrace.

Both truths,

Relative and absolute,

Have a value.

Sitting in the northern hemisphere,

We think we know which direction is above and which is below,

But someone sitting in Australia will not agree.

Above and below are relative truths.

Above what?

Below what?

There is no absolute truth of above and below,

Old age and youth.

For me,

Old age is fine.

It's nice to be old.

There are things young people cannot experience.

Young people are like a source of water from the top of the mountain,

Always trying to go as quickly as possible.

But when you become a river going through the lowland,

You are much more peaceful.

You reflect many clouds and the beautiful blue sky.

Being old has its own joys.

You can be very happy being an old person.

When I sit with young monks and nuns,

I feel that they are my continuation.

I have done my best,

And now they are continuing my being.

This is interbeing,

Non-self.

This morning,

Before giving a Dharma talk,

I was having breakfast with my attendant,

A lovely novice monk.

I paused and said to him,

Dear one,

Do you see the cow on the hillside?

She is eating grass in order to make my yogurt,

And I am now eating the yogurt to make a Dharma talk.

Somehow,

The cow will offer today's Dharma talk.

As I drank the cow's milk,

I was a child of the cow.

The Buddha recommends we live our daily life in this way,

Seeing everything in the light of interbeing.

Then we will not be caught in our small self.

We will see our joy and our suffering everywhere.

We will be free,

And we won't see dying as a problem.

Why should we say that dying is suffering?

We continue with the next generations.

What is essential is to be our best while we are here.

Then we continue to be through our children and grandchildren.

Motivated by love,

We invest ourselves in the next generations.

Whether birth and death are suffering depends on our insight.

With insight,

We can look at these things and smile to them.

We are not affected in the same way anymore.

We ride on the wave of birth and death,

And we are free from birth and death.

This insight liberates us.

All formations are impermanent.

This sheet of paper is a physical formation formed by many elements,

A rose,

A mountain,

A cloud,

All formations.

Your anger is a mental formation.

Your love and the idea of non-self are mental formations.

My fingers and my liver are physiological formations.

Look into the self and discover that it is made only of non-self elements.

A human being is made up of only non-human elements.

To protect humans,

We have to protect the non-human elements,

The air,

The water,

The forest,

The river,

The mountains,

And the animals.

The Diamond Sutra is the most ancient text about how to respect all forms of life on earth,

The animals,

Vegetation,

And also minerals.

We have to remove the notion of human as something that can survive by itself alone.

Humans can only survive with the survival of other species.

This is exactly the teaching of the Buddha and also the teaching of deep ecology.

When we look deeply into living beings,

We find out that they are made of non-living being elements.

So-called inanimate things are alive also.

Our notions about living beings and inanimate things should be removed for us to touch reality.

The fourth notion to be removed is lifespan.

We think that we exist only from this point in time until this point in time,

And we suffer because of that notion.

If we look deeply,

We will know that we have never been born,

And we will never die.

A wave is born and dies,

Is higher or lower,

More or less beautiful.

But you cannot apply these notions to water.

When we see this,

Our fear will suddenly vanish.

Within us,

We carry the world of no birth and no death,

But we never touch it.

Because we live only with our notions.

The practice is to remove these notions and touch the ultimate dimension,

Nirvana.

God,

The world of no birth and no death.

Because of the notions we carry,

We are unable to touch it,

And we live in constant fear and suffering.

When the wave lives her life as a wave deeply,

She touches the dimension of water that is within her,

And suddenly,

Her fears and notions vanish,

And she is truly happy.

Before that,

Her happiness was just a kind of band-aid.

The greatest relief is to touch nirvana,

The world of no birth and no death.

The third holy truth is about relative well-being,

Which is impermanent.

Your toothache is impermanent,

But your non-toothache is also impermanent.

When you practice deep Buddhism,

You remove all these notions and touch the world of no birth and no death.

With that insight,

You look at birth,

Death,

Old age,

Ups and downs,

Suffering and happiness with the eyes of a sage,

And you don't suffer anymore.

You smile,

No longer afraid.

The fourth noble truth is the cessation of the causes of suffering.

When we put an end to our suffering,

We feel relative joy,

But when all of our concepts of suffering and not suffering cease,

We taste absolute joy.

Imagine two hens about to be slaughtered,

But they do not know it.

One hen says to the other,

The rice is much tastier than the corn.

The corn is slightly off.

She's talking about relative joy.

She does not realize that the real joy of this moment is the joy of not being slaughtered,

The joy of being alive.

When we practice the four holy truths in the dimension of relative truth,

We obtain some relief.

We are unable to transform our suffering and restore our well-being,

But we are still in the historical dimension of reality.

The deeper level of practice is to lead our daily life in a way that we touch both the absolute and the relative truth.

In the dimension of relative truth,

The Buddha passed away many years ago,

But in the realm of absolute truth,

We can take his hand and join him for walking meditation every day.

Practice in a way that gives you the greatest relief.

The wave is already water to enter the heart of the Buddha.

Use your Buddha eyes,

Which means your insight into interbeing.

Approach the heart of the Buddha in the realm of absolute truth and the Buddha will be there with you.

When you hear the sound of the bell,

Listen with your ears and also listen with the ears of your ancestors,

Your children and their children.

Listen in the relative and absolute dimensions at the same time.

You don't have to die to enter Nirvana or the kingdom of God.

You only have to dwell deeply in the present moment right now.

The Avatamsaka Sutra says that all dharmas enter one dharma and one dharma enters all dharmas.

If you go deeply into any one of the teachings of the Buddha,

You will find all of the other teachings in it.

If you practice looking deeply into the first holy truth,

You can see the Noble Eightfold Path revealed.

Outside of the first holy truth,

There cannot be any path,

Holy or unholy.

That is why you have to embrace your suffering.

Hold it close to your chest and look deeply into it.

The way out of your suffering depends on how you look into it.

That is why suffering is called a holy truth.

Look deeply into the nature of the path using your Buddha eyes.

The truth of the path is one with the truth of suffering.

Every second I am on the path that leads out of suffering.

Suffering is there to guide me.

That is why it is a holy path.

This book began with the sentence,

Buddha was not a god,

He was a human being.

What does this mean?

What is a human being?

If the trees and the rivers were not there,

Could human beings be alive?

If animals and all other species were not there,

How could we be?

A human being is made entirely of non-human elements.

We must free ourselves of our ideas of Buddha and of human beings.

Our ideas may be the obstacles that prevent us from seeing the Buddha.

Dear Buddha,

Are you a living being?

We want the Buddha to confirm the notion we have of him,

But he looks at us,

Smiles,

And says,

A human being is not a human being.

That is why we can say that he is a human being.

These are the dialects of the Diamond Sutra.

A is not A.

That is why it is truly A.

A flower is not a flower.

It is made only of non-flower elements.

Sunshine,

Clouds,

Time,

Space,

Earth,

Minerals,

Gardeners,

And so on.

A true flower contains the whole universe.

If we return any one of these non-flower elements to its source,

There will be no flower.

That is why we can say a rose is not a rose.

That is why it is an authentic rose.

We have to remove our concept of rose if we want to touch the real rose.

Nirvana means extinction,

First of all.

The extinction of all concepts and notions.

Our concepts about things prevent us from really touching them.

We have to destroy our notions if we want to touch the real rose.

When we ask,

Dear Buddha,

Are you a human being?

It means we have a concept about what a human being is.

So the Buddha just smiles at us.

It is his way of encouraging us to transcend our concepts and touch the real being that he is.

A real being is quite different from a concept.

If you've been to Paris,

You have a concept of Paris.

But your concept is quite different from Paris itself.

Even if you lived in Paris for 10 years,

Your idea of Paris still does not coincide with the reality.

You may have lived with someone for 10 years and think that you know her perfectly.

But you are living only with your concept.

You have a concept of yourself,

But have you touched your true self?

Look deeply to try to overcome the gap between your concept of reality and reality itself.

Meditation helps us remove concepts.

The Buddhist teaching of the two truths is also a concept.

But if we know how to use it,

It can help us penetrate reality itself.

So in this chapter,

Thich Nhat Hanh is talking about this teaching of the two truths,

The ultimate truth,

Absolute truth,

And relative truth,

The four noble truths and the Noble Eightfold Path really being that gateway through relative truth.

Most of us are looking out into the world from the perspective of relative truth as though things are born and they die.

And it's this perspective of relative truth as though it's all there is that causes this feeling of suffering and especially suffering at loss,

Death,

Sickness,

These types of things.

So now we're diving deeper and we're being exposed to the truth that there's something beyond the relative,

That there's something that is bigger or deeper than the relative.

And this is the absolute truth.

And I love this example of the wave and how Thich Nhat Hanh refers to us as though we are a wave.

If you can imagine that the fabric of experience is just this inner woven fabric,

Which science says that it is.

So these are not just Buddhist teachings.

These are also proven by science.

And of course,

The Dalai Lama says,

If science ever disproves something in Buddhism,

Then we will change our perspective.

But these are concepts and they're also real truths that we have been able to look at.

So if everything is interwoven and connected,

Then what is your birth but just a wave popping up from the fabric and then descending back down into it.

And it's these truths when we can look at absolute truth that allow us to relieve our suffering on a deeper level.

But again,

It's not a concept to be had.

It's not something to just be thought about.

It's to be practiced,

To start to see the absolute truth in everything.

So to see the nature of interbeing,

To see the nature of non-self,

Which this next chapter deals with more fully.

And when we can see these things,

When we can see the truth on the very,

Very deepest level,

The very core level of ourselves,

Then we naturally act in these right ways.

We naturally protect our environment,

Other people.

We are naturally drawn to a compassionate heart.

And so we don't have to put effort into it.

If we put effort into just seeing reality as it is,

I love this sentence,

Look deeply to try to overcome the gap between your concept of reality and reality itself.

And honestly,

I think this is what like LSD and psilocybin and these kinds of hallucinogens have done for so many people.

And that's why they have regained even more popularity in terms of therapeutic offerings.

And that's because it's a tool that removes the veil that compartmentalizes things.

And concepts are compartmentalization.

There are ways to say this is this and that is that.

But when we remove that and everything blends together,

Then we naturally see this interconnected reality.

And from there,

We feel a deeper sense of yes,

This is right.

This is what is true.

And then we can relax these fears that emerge from our misunderstanding that relative truth is all that there is.

The three Dharma seals.

This is a longer chapter,

So just relax.

Just relax and listen.

It's an important chapter.

The three Dharma seals are impermanence,

Non-self,

And nirvana.

Any teaching that does not bear these three seals cannot be said to be a teaching of the Buddha.

The first Dharma seal is impermanence.

The Buddha taught that everything is impermanent.

Flowers,

Tables,

Mountains,

Political regimes,

Bodies,

Feelings,

Perceptions,

Mental formations,

And consciousness.

We cannot find anything that is permanent.

Flowers decompose,

But knowing this does not prevent us from loving flowers.

In fact,

We are able to love them more because we know how to treasure them while they are still alive.

If we learn to look at a flower in a way that impermanence is revealed to us,

When it dies,

We will not suffer.

Impermanence is more than idea.

It is a practice to help us touch reality.

When we study impermanence,

We have to ask,

Is there anything in this teaching that has to do with my daily life,

My daily difficulties,

My suffering?

If we see impermanence as merely a philosophy,

It is not the Buddha's teachings.

Every time we look or listen,

The object of our perception can reveal to us the nature of impermanence.

We have to nourish our insight into impermanence all day long.

When we look deeply into impermanence,

We see that things change because causes and conditions change.

When we look deeply into non-self,

We see that the existence of every single thing is possible only because of the existence of everything else.

We see that everything else is the cause and condition for its existence.

We see that everything else is in it.

From the point of view of time,

We say impermanence.

And from the point of view of space,

We say non-self.

Things cannot remain themselves for two consecutive moments.

Therefore there is nothing that can be called a permanent self.

Before you entered this room,

You were different physically and mentally.

Looking deeply at impermanence,

You see non-self.

Looking deeply at non-self,

You see impermanence.

We cannot say,

I can accept impermanence,

But non-self is too difficult.

They are the same.

Understanding impermanence can give us confidence,

Peace,

And joy.

Impermanence does not necessarily lead to suffering.

Without impermanence,

Life could not be.

Without impermanence,

Your daughter could not grow up into a beautiful young lady.

Without impermanence,

Oppressive political regimes would never change.

We think impermanence makes us suffer.

The Buddha gave the example of a dog that was hit by a stone and got angry at the stone.

It is not impermanence that makes us suffer.

What makes us suffer is wanting things to be permanent when they are not.

We need to learn to appreciate the value of impermanence.

If we are in good health and are aware of impermanence,

We will take good care of ourselves.

When we know that the person we love is impermanent,

We will cherish our beloved all the more.

Impermanence teaches us to respect and value every moment and all the precious things around us and inside of us.

When we practice mindfulness of impermanence,

We become fresher and more loving.

Looking deeply can become a way of life.

We can practice conscious breathing to help us be in touch with things and to look deeply at their impermanent nature.

This practice will keep us from complaining that everything is impermanent and therefore not worth living for.

Impermanence is what makes transformation possible.

We should learn to say,

Long live impermanence!

Thanks to impermanence,

We can change suffering into joy.

If we practice the art of mindful living,

When things change,

We won't have any regrets.

We can smile because we have done our best to enjoy every moment of our life and to make others happy.

When you get into an argument with someone you love,

Please close your eyes and visualize yourselves 300 years from now.

When you open your eyes,

You will only want to take each other in your arms and acknowledge how precious each of you is.

The teaching of impermanence helps us appreciate fully what is there,

Without attachment or forgetfulness.

We have to nourish our insight into impermanence every day.

If we do,

We will live more deeply,

Suffer less,

And enjoy life much more.

Living deeply,

We will touch the foundation of reality,

Nirvana,

The world of no birth and no death.

Touching impermanence deeply,

We touch the world beyond permanence and impermanence.

We touch the ground of being and see that which we have called being and non-being are just notions.

Nothing is ever lost.

Nothing is ever gained.

The second Dharma seal is non-self.

Nothing has a separate existence or a separate self.

Everything has to inter-be with everything else.

The first time I tasted peanut butter cookies,

I was at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in California and I loved them.

I learned that to make peanut butter cookies,

You mix the ingredients to prepare the batter and then you put each cookie onto a cookie sheet using a spoon.

I imagine that the moment each cookie leaves the bowl of dough and is placed onto the tray,

It begins to think of itself as separate.

You,

The creator of the cookies,

Know better and you have a lot of compassion for them.

You know that they are originally all one and that even now,

The happiness of each cookie is still the happiness of all the other cookies.

But they have developed discriminative perception and suddenly,

They set up barriers between themselves.

When you put them in the oven,

They begin to talk to each other.

Get out of my way.

I want to be in the middle.

I'm brown and beautiful and you are ugly.

Can you please spread a little in that direction?

We have the tendency to behave this way also and it causes us a lot of suffering.

If we know how to touch our non-discriminating mind,

Our happiness and the happiness of others will increase manifold.

We all have the capacity of living with non-discriminating wisdom but we have to train ourselves to see in that way,

To see that the flower is us,

The mountain is us,

Our parents and our children are all us.

When we see that everyone and everything belongs to the same stream of life,

Our suffering will vanish.

Non-self is not a doctrine or a philosophy.

It is an insight that can help us live life more deeply,

Suffer less and enjoy life much more.

We need to live the insight of non-self.

Tolstoy wrote a story about two enemies.

A suffered greatly because of B and his only motive in life was to eradicate B.

Every time he heard the name of B,

Every time he thought about B's image,

He became enraged.

Then one day,

A visited the hut of a sage.

After listening to A deeply,

The sage offered him a glass of refreshing water and then he poured the same water onto A's head and washed him.

When they sat down for tea,

The sage told him,

Now you are B.

A was astonished.

That is the last thing I want to be.

I am A and he is B.

There cannot be any connection.

But you are B,

Whether you believe it or not,

The sage said.

Then he brought him a mirror and sure enough,

When A looked in it,

He saw B.

Every time he moved,

B in the mirror did exactly the same.

The sound of A's voice became the sound of B's.

He began to have B's feelings and perceptions.

A tried to come back to himself but he couldn't.

What a wonderful story.

We should practice so that we can see Muslims as Hindus and Hindus as Muslims.

We should practice so that we can see Israelis as Palestinians and Palestinians as Israelis and Ukrainians as Russians and Russians as Ukrainians.

We should practice until we can see that each person is us,

That we are not separate from others.

This will greatly reduce our suffering.

We are like the cookies,

Thinking we are separate and opposing each other when actually we are all the same,

Of the same reality.

We are what we perceive.

This is the teaching of non-self,

Of inner being.

When Avalokitesvara declared that eyes,

Ears,

Nose,

Tongue,

Body and mind are empty,

He meant that they cannot be by themselves alone.

They have to inter-be with everything else.

Our eyes would not be possible without non-eye elements.

That is why he can say that our eyes have no separate existence.

We have to see the nature of inner being to really understand.

It takes some training to look at things this way.

Non-self means that you are made of elements which are not you.

During the past hour,

Different elements have entered you and other elements have flown out of you.

Your happiness,

In fact your existence,

Comes from things that are not you.

Your mother is happy because you are happy and you are happy because she is happy.

Happiness is not an individual matter.

The daughter should practice in a way that she can understand her mother better and her mother can understand her better.

The daughter cannot find happiness by running away from home because she carries her family in her.

There is nothing she can leave behind.

There is nothing she can get rid of.

Even if she runs away and tells no one where she is going,

Her store consciousness carries all of the seeds.

She cannot get rid of a single one.

The teachings of impermanence and non-self were offered by the Buddha as keys to unlock the door of reality.

We have to train ourselves to look in a way that we know that when we touch one thing,

We touch everything.

We have to see that the one is in the all and the all is in the one.

We touch not only the phenomenal aspects of reality but the ground of being.

Things are impermanent and without self.

They have to undergo birth and death.

But if we touch them very deeply,

We touch the ground of being that is free from birth and death,

Free from permanence and impermanence,

Self and non-self.

Nirvana,

The third Dharma seal,

Is the ground of being,

The substance of all that is.

A wave does not have to die in order to become water.

Water is the substance of the wave.

The wave is already water.

We are also like that.

We carry in us the ground of interbeing,

Nirvana,

The world of no birth and no death,

No permanence and no impermanence,

No self and no non-self.

Nirvana is the complete silencing of concepts.

The notions of impermanence and non-self were offered by the Buddha as instruments of practice,

Not as doctrines to worship,

Fight or die for.

My dear friends,

The Buddha said,

The Dharma I offer you is only a raft to help you cross over to the other shore.

The raft is not to be held onto as an object of worship.

It is an instrument for crossing over to the shore of well-being.

If you are caught in the Dharma,

It is no longer the Dharma.

Impermanence and non-self belong to the world of phenomena,

Like the waves.

Nirvana is the ground of all that is.

The waves do not exist outside of the water.

If you know how to touch the waves,

You touch the water at the same time.

Nirvana does not exist separate from impermanence and non-self.

If you know how to use the tools of impermanence and non-self to touch reality,

You touch Nirvana in the here and now.

Nirvana is the extinction of all notions.

Birth is a notion.

Death is a notion.

Being is a notion.

Non-being is a notion.

In our daily lives,

We have to deal with these relative realities,

But if we touch life more deeply,

Reality will reveal itself in a different way.

We think that being born means from nothing we become something.

From no one we become someone.

From non-being we become being.

We think that to die means we suddenly go from something to nothing,

From someone to no one,

From being to non-being.

But the Buddha said there is no birth and no death,

No being and no non-being,

And he offered us impermanence,

Non-self,

Interbeing,

And emptiness to discover the true nature of reality.

In the Heart Sutra,

We repeat over and over that there is no birth and no death,

But reciting it is not enough.

The Heart Sutra is an instrument to investigate the true nature of ourselves and the world.

When you look at this sheet of paper,

You think it belongs to the realm of being.

There was a time that it came into existence,

A moment in the factory,

It became a sheet of paper.

But before the sheet of paper was born,

Was it nothing?

Can nothing become something?

Before it was recognizable as a sheet of paper,

It must have been something else,

A tree,

A branch,

Sunshine,

Clouds,

The earth.

In its former life,

The sheet of paper was all of these things.

If you ask the sheet of paper,

Tell me about your adventures,

She will tell you,

Talk to a flower,

A tree,

Or a cloud,

And listen to their stories.

The paper's story is much like our own.

We too have many wonderful things to tell.

Before we were born,

We were already in our mother,

Our father,

And our ancestors.

The koan,

What was your face before your parents were born,

Is an invitation to look deeply,

To identify ourselves in time and space.

We usually think we did not exist before the time of our parents,

That we only began to exist at the moment of our birth,

But we were already here in many forms.

The day of our birth was only a day of continuation.

Instead of singing happy birthday every year,

We should sing happy continuation.

Nothing is born,

Nothing dies,

Was a statement made by the French scientist Antoine Lavoisier.

He was not a Buddhist,

He did not know the heart sutra,

But his words are exactly the same.

If I burn the sheet of paper,

Will I reduce it to non-being?

No.

It will just be transformed into smoke,

Heat,

And ash.

If we put the continuation of the sheet of paper into the garden,

Later,

While practicing walking meditation,

We may see a little flower and recognize it as the rebirth of the sheet of paper.

The smoke will become part of a cloud in the sky,

Also to continue the adventure.

After tomorrow,

A little rain may fall on your head,

And you will recognize the sheet of paper saying hello.

The heat produced by the burning will penetrate into your body and the cosmos.

With a sophisticated enough instrument,

You will be able to measure how much of this energy penetrates you.

The sheet of paper clearly continues,

Even after it is burned.

The moment of its so-called dying is actually a moment of continuation.

When a cloud is about to become rain,

She is not afraid.

She may even be excited.

Being a cloud floating in the blue sky is wonderful,

But being rain falling on the fields,

The ocean,

Or the mountains is also wonderful.

As she falls down as rain,

The cloud will sing.

Looking deeply,

We see that birth is just an ocean and death is just an ocean.

Nothing can be born from nothing.

When we touch the sheet of paper deeply,

When we touch the cloud deeply,

When we touch our grandmother deeply,

We touch the nature of no birth and no death and we are free from sorrow.

We already recognize them in many other forms.

This is the insight that helped the Buddha become serene,

Peaceful,

And fearless.

This teaching of the Buddha can help us touch deeply the nature of our being,

The ground of our being,

So that we can touch the world of no birth and no death.

This is the insight that liberates us from fear and sorrow.

Nirvana meets extinction.

Above all the extinction of ideas,

The ideas of birth and death,

Existence and non-existence,

Coming and going,

Self and other,

One and many,

All these ideas cause us to suffer.

We are afraid of death because ignorance gives us an illusory idea about what death is.

We are disturbed by ideas of existence and non-existence because we have not understood the true nature of impermanence and non-self.

We worry about our own future,

But we fail to worry about the future of the other because we think that our happiness has nothing to do with the happiness of the other.

This idea of self and other gives rise to immeasurable suffering.

In order to extinguish these ideas,

We have to practice.

Nirvana is a fan that helps us extinguish the fire of all of our ideas,

Including ideas of permanence and self.

That fan is our practice of looking deeply every day.

In Buddhism,

We talk about the eight concepts,

Birth,

Death,

Permanence,

Dissolution,

Coming,

Going,

One and many.

The practice to end attachment to these eight ideas is called the eight no's of the middle way.

No birth and no death,

No permanence and no dissolution,

No coming and no going,

No one and no many.

In the 13th century in Vietnam,

Someone asked Master Thu Trung a question following a Dharma talk and he replied,

Having offered complete release from the eight concepts,

What further explanation could I possibly give?

Once these eight ideas have been destroyed,

We touch Nirvana.

Nirvana is release from the eight concepts and also from their opposites,

Impermanence,

Non-self,

Interdependent co-rising,

Emptiness and the middle way.

If we hold on to the three seals as fixed ideas,

These ideas also have to be destroyed.

The best way to do this is by putting these teachings into practice in our daily lives.

Experience always goes beyond ideas.

The 10th century Vietnamese master Thi Anh Hoi told his students,

Be diligent in order to attain the state of no birth and no death.

One student asked,

Where can we touch the world of no birth and no death?

And he responded,

Right here in the world of birth and death.

To touch the water,

You have to touch the waves.

If you touch birth and death deeply,

You touch the world of no birth and no death.

Impermanence,

Non-self,

Interdependent co-rising and the middle way are all keys to open the power of reality.

There is no point in leaving them in your pocket.

You have to use them.

When you understand impermanence and non-self,

You are already free of much suffering and in touch with Nirvana,

The third Dharma seal.

Nirvana is not something to look for in the future.

As a Dharma seal,

It is present in every one of the Buddha's teachings.

The Nirvana nature of the candle,

The table and the flower are revealed in the teachings,

Just as their impermanent and non-self nature are.

Imagine a meeting in which everyone is stating his own opinion and disagreeing with everyone else's.

After the meeting is over,

You are exhausted by all these ideas and discussions.

You open the door and go out into the garden where the fresh air is.

The birds are singing and the wind is whistling in the trees.

Life out here is quite different from the meeting with its words and anger.

In the garden,

There are still sounds and images,

But they are refreshing and healing.

Nirvana is not the absence of life.

Drishtadharma Nirvana means Nirvana in this very life.

Nirvana means pacifying,

Silencing or extinguishing the fire of suffering.

Nirvana teaches that we already are what we want to become.

We don't have to run after anything anymore.

We only need to return to ourselves and touch our true nature.

When we do,

We have real peace and joy.

This morning,

I wake up and discover that I have been using the sutras as my pillow.

I hear the excited buzzing of the diligent bees preparing to rebuild the universe.

Dear ones,

The work of rebuilding may take thousands of lifetimes,

But it has already been completed just that long ago.

In the sutra of 42 chapters,

The Buddha says,

My practice is non-action,

Non-practice and non-realization.

It means that what we seek does not lie outside of ourselves.

Any teaching that does not bear the mark of the three Dharma seals,

The four holy truths and the Noble Eightfold Path,

Is not authentically Buddhist.

But sometimes only two Dharma seals are taught,

Suffering and Nirvana.

Sometimes four Dharma seals are taught,

Impermanence,

Non-self,

Nirvana and suffering.

But suffering is not a basic element of existence.

Repeat that.

Suffering is not a basic element of existence.

It is a feeling.

When we insist on something that is impermanent and without self being permanent and having a self,

We suffer.

The Buddha taught that when suffering is present,

We have to identify it and take the necessary steps to transform it.

He did not teach that suffering is always present.

In Mahayana Buddhism,

There is also the teaching of one Dharma seal,

The Seal of the True Mark.

The teachings of one,

Two and four Dharma seals were all introduced after the Buddha passed away.

We practice the three Dharma seals to realize liberation.

If you memorize a 5,

000 page book on the three Dharma seals,

But do not apply the teachings during your daily life,

That book is of no use.

Only by using your intelligence and putting the teachings into practice can they bring you happiness.

Please base your practice on your own life and your own experiences,

Your successes and your failures.

The Buddha's teachings are jewels,

But we have to dig deeper in order to touch them fully.

There are other criteria that can help us navigate the sutras and determine whether a teaching represents a correct understanding of the Dharma.

These include the two relevances,

The four standards of truth and the four reliances.

The first of the two relevance is,

Is relevance to the essence.

The essence is the three Dharma seals.

If someone teaches the Dharma,

What he or she says must be in accord with the Buddha's teachings on impermanence,

Non-self and nirvana.

When you understand the three Dharma seals deeply,

You will bring them into every situation of your daily life.

The second relevance is relevance to the circumstance.

When someone shares the Dharma,

What she says must fit the situation and the mentality of those she is addressing so that the teaching is appropriate.

If it is not appropriate,

It is not the true Dharma,

Even if it sounds like the Dharma.

She mustn't just repeat some words of the Buddha.

If she acts like a tape player and just pops in a cassette,

That is not speaking in accord with the relevance to the circumstance.

She must ask,

To whom am I speaking?

On what stage is their life set?

What are their beliefs,

Concerns and aspirations?

Looking deeply this way will bring love and compassion into whatever she says.

One cannot offer the right medicine without knowing the patient's illness.

When you are in a Dharma discussion,

Each word you say should be relevant to the essence and to the circumstance.

Please speak in accord with the teachings of impermanence,

Non-self and nirvana and speak directly to those present,

Taking into account their experience,

Their knowledge and their insight.

There may be things you consider important but cannot say to this particular group.

The two relevances require you to speak with skillfulness,

Tolerance and care.

The Four Standards of Truth are another guide to help us understand the Buddha's teachings.

The first standard is the worldly.

The teaching is offered in the language of the world so that those in the world will be able to understand.

We have to take into account the contemporary cosmologies,

Arts,

Philosophies,

Metaphysics and so forth and deal with them.

For example,

We call the days of the week Monday,

Tuesday,

Wednesday,

Etc.

We divide them into days,

Months and years to express truth for our convenience.

When the Buddha tells us that he was born in Lumbini,

It is in accord with the first standard.

The second standard is the person.

We must remember as we read the Buddha's discourses that his words varied according to the needs and aspirations of his listeners.

When the Buddha taught,

He was deeply aware of the particular assembly and what he said was specifically addressed to them.

The third standard is healing.

When the Buddha spoke,

It was always to cure the particular illness of those he was addressing.

Everyone has some illness that needs to be healed.

When you speak to express healing,

What you say will always be helpful.

The fourth standard is the absolute.

The Buddha expressed absolute truth directly and unequivocally.

He said there is no self even when people did not believe or agree with him.

He said it is because he knew it was true.

Fifteenth century explorers said the world was round even when the community threatened to imprison them for saying so.

We can use these four standards of truth to understand the sutras as we read them.

A third list to help us study the Dharma is called the four reliances.

It was formulated by later teachers,

Not by the Buddha.

The first reliance is that we should rely on the teaching and not the teacher.

It means we can learn even from a teacher who does not practice everything he teaches.

My fifth grade teacher,

Miss Lien,

Often wore high-heeled shoes.

One day she wrote on the blackboard,

Never wear high-heeled shoes.

You might twist your ankle.

I couldn't understand why she did not apply that teaching to herself.

Another teacher,

Who was a heavy smoker,

Taught us about the health hazards of smoking,

Even sixty years ago.

The class laughed and he replied,

Do as I say,

Not as I do.

Later when I attended the Institute of Buddhist Studies,

We were told that if a precious jewel is in a garbage can,

You have to dirty your hands.

I just love that.

If a precious jewel is in a garbage can,

You have to dirty your hands.

Remember the monk who had memorized all the sutras?

He was not an easy person or a good practitioner,

But the other monks had to put up with him and encourage him to recite the sutras so they could write them down.

To me,

The relationship between a teacher and a student is based on the trust that the teacher has practiced and continues to practice what he teaches.

This is teaching by example,

By the way we live.

Perhaps the ancestral teachers thought it was so rare to find someone who could teach by his or her life's example that if we just wait for someone like that to come along,

We might miss the chance to benefit from the teachings that are available now.

The second reliance is to rely only on discourses where the Buddha taught in terms of absolute truth and not on those whose means are relative truth.

I feel uneasy about this standard also because it does not show us how discourses that explain by means of absolute truth are related to those that explain by means of relative truth.

In fact,

Sutras that teach absolute truth can be better understood in the light of sutras that teach relative truth.

We should not think that discourses about practical matters like the five mindfulness trainings are not worthy of our attention and that we only should study the Avatamsaka and Lotus Sutra.

We need to know how to go from down to earth sutras to less down to earth sutras.

When we train ourselves in understanding the most basic discourses,

We will be able to grasp more easily those that are esoteric.

The third reliance is that we should rely on the meaning and not on the words.

When we have an overall view of the way the Buddha teaches and understand the context and circumstances of a particular teaching,

We will not extrapolate inappropriately or use the Buddha s words out of context.

Then when there is an error due to inaccurate transmission,

We can rectify it by ourselves.

The fourth reliance is that we should rely on the insight of looking deeply rather than on differentiation and discrimination.

However,

It s important to be able to discriminate when we re reading the sutras so that we know according to which of the four standards of truth the Buddha is teaching.

We can rely on discriminative as well as non-discriminative wisdom.

The teachings of the two truths,

Three Dharma seals,

Two relevances,

Four standards of truth,

And three doors of liberation are important guides to help us understand the language the Buddha used when he taught.

Without understanding the Buddha s language,

We cannot understand the Buddha.

Okay,

So the teachings go on,

But we stop there.

Let's talk about this chapter just briefly.

This is called the Time of the Ten Thousand Fake Buddhas.

I don't know if you've ever heard that before,

The Time of the Ten Thousand Fake Buddhas.

And so I think it's for that reason that a chapter like this exists in this kind of book.

What Thich Nhat Hanh is really doing for us is providing like a counterfeit pen to check the value of the pages we re being handed,

The texts we re being handed,

The stories we re being handed,

The teachings we re being handed.

And in this way,

We can say that teaching is something that actually did originate with Buddhism,

Is coming from Buddhist thought,

And is something to be paid attention to,

Rather than a manifestation of someone's ego in the world,

And then presenting that information as though they know best.

I think that's really an important differentiation when it comes to Buddhism.

Buddhism is not about me saying I know,

And you don't know.

It's about looking at truth at a very deep level,

And in that way,

Helping all of humanity see reality as it is so that we can end this divisive thinking that leads to so much suffering.

And so in this chapter,

Thich Nhat Hanh,

The bulk of which he talked about,

Were these three things,

The Dharma seals,

The three Dharma seals,

That we can check all teachings against.

And I think when we look at these three aspects,

And they were impermanence,

Non-self,

And nirvana,

We can actually see also the interrelation between them.

Nervousness gives us the information we need to understand non-self,

And when we see non-self,

We naturally sit inside of nirvana.

And so we can use these again,

Not as concepts,

Not as just things to think about,

But as things to practice.

So in everything that you do,

You're looking at its impermanent nature.

Something that I do in my seated practice in the morning,

I sit with eyes open,

And I spend a little bit of time imagining everything around me crumbling and coming to dust.

I'm out in a big orchard.

I imagine a day when there are no more trees in the orchard and that land has been used up.

We can practice on a daily basis everything that we look at.

We can see it's impermanent nature.

And eventually over time,

That deeper understanding will settle within us.

And again,

The effort should be towards that practice,

Seeing that if I am not me outside of anything else,

Then there is no me.

I'm only made up of non-me parts,

And this is the concept of non-self.

I think nirvana is really confused in our world.

We really misunderstand the idea of nirvana.

People think I'm going to get enlightened and then I'm going to reach nirvana and it's going to be this like,

Oh,

Bliss state.

It may feel pretty blissful to be in a space beyond concepts,

But what Thich Nhat Hanh is describing is that nirvana is not really a place that you go.

It's actually the essence,

The ground of all being.

It's the space before or beyond concepts and no concepts.

It's the is-ness of reality.

And so we can touch that in every moment.

It doesn't take something special.

And that's when we go back to the first chapter we read today,

The two truths.

We see that our life is the practice.

Sitting meditation is very important,

But our life is the practice.

And if all we are doing is practicing when we are sitting them,

We are missing something.

So we need to make sure that we are taking our practices outside of our cushion,

Off of our cushion,

Out of our rooms,

And bringing them into our lives.

I know we're running long on time.

And so I'm actually going to do a short meditation just to bring these teachings into our heart.

I hope that you can sit with me.

But if not,

I record these.

And so this will be up online and maybe you can come back to it then.

Wherever you are,

Sit up straight or extend your spine if you're lying down and make yourself at ease.

Eyes can be opened or closed,

No problem.

Allow your face to soften and your sense organs to relax.

For a few moments in silence,

Allow your mind to rest on the gentle wave-like feeling of the breath.

Continuing to keep your mind with this sensation of the breath.

You're not changing anything.

You're not resisting anything.

Just being in this gentle rocking rhythm.

Repeat the words after me silently inside of your mind.

I am of the nature to grow old.

There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health.

There is no way to escape ill health.

I am of the nature to die.

There is no way to escape dying.

All that is dear to me and everyone that I love are of the nature to change.

There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My actions are my only true belongings.

I cannot escape their consequences.

Be with the experience of your breath.

As you rest here,

Bring to mind a visualization of the ocean vast and wide.

Maybe a place in the world you've been and you can imagine yourself there now sitting at the ocean's edge and watching the ocean.

As you imagine watching the ocean,

See the waves as they rise up.

Ride the waves with your mind and be with the waves as they fall.

Keep visualizing in this way,

Looking out into the vast ocean,

Observing the waves as they rise,

Riding them with your mind and being with them as they fall.

Where does the wave begin?

When does the wave die?

Is there anything to feel sad over?

Is it wrong to feel happy or sad?

Can you love whatever experience you're having?

Can you see the beauty in it?

Even happiness will end.

It arises like the wave.

It falls like the wave.

Even sadness will end,

Arising like the wave.

It falls like the wave.

Where does it all go?

Expand your visualization.

See the ocean of experience across time and space.

See yourself emerge from this ocean,

Born into this world.

You grow,

You age.

Can you see it?

See your life magically intertwined with everything else that exists.

See yourself woven into the fabric of life.

Now imagine that you die.

See yourself fall back into the ocean of experience,

Just like the wave falls back into the ocean.

Where does your life begin?

When does your life end?

Is there anything to be happy or sad about?

Can you love whatever experience you're having?

Can you see the beauty in it?

Even happiness will end,

It arises like you,

And it falls like you.

Even sadness will end.

It arises just like you,

And it falls just like you.

Repeat after me.

I am of the nature to grow old.

There is no way to escape growing old.

I am of the nature to have ill health.

There is no way to escape ill health.

I am of the nature to die.

There is no way to escape dying.

All that is dear to me and everyone that I love are of the nature to change.

There is no way to escape being separated from them.

My actions are my only true belongings.

I cannot escape their consequences.

Just like me,

This is true for everyone and everything else.

That is because we are one.

Be with your breath,

Riding the waves,

Feeling the rhythm,

Settling in to yourself.

Let it slip,

Okay,

I've gone over time a little bit.

That's just because I'm really trying to get through the book and especially because I have another important professional task coming up.

So anyways,

I don't want to bore you with that stuff.

I do have homework for you this week.

I hope you're doing the homework.

You know,

I really think the value comes from,

From yeah,

You're here,

We're doing the readings,

You're understanding them.

Maybe you go back and reread the chapters.

That would be something really beneficial.

But then that homework is really where we start to practice.

We take it out of the mind and we put it into our lives.

This week,

I want you to spend time each day with the five remembrances.

So whether you have a seated meditation practice or not,

The book is The Heart of the Buddhist Teaching by Thich Nhat Hanh.

So whether you have a seated practice or not,

You don't need to own the book.

I always read from it,

But it's helpful.

You can go back and reread.

This week's homework,

Whether you have a seated practice or not,

I want you to recite at some point in the day,

The five remembrances.

These are,

And you can Google them,

You can Google the five remembrances.

It will come up so you don't have to write them down,

But I'll just remind you.

I'm of the nature to grow old.

I cannot escape growing old.

I'm of the nature to get sick.

I cannot escape getting sick.

I'm of the nature to die.

There's no way to escape dying.

Everyone that I love,

All that is dear to me will eventually change.

There's no way to escape being separated from them.

And then the last one,

My actions are my only true belongings.

I cannot escape their consequences.

So every day,

At some point in the day,

Maybe you choose even three or four times.

Maybe you do it in your seated practice or not.

Just spend some time reciting these things to yourself.

No expectation.

You're not trying any for anything.

You're just remembering.

You're just reminding.

You already know all of this stuff.

The wisdom is already deep,

Deep,

Deep inside of you.

So we are just opening up what's been covered over with relative for too long.

And we're opening up into absolute.

But it's there.

You don't have to work so hard.

It's just about remembering,

Remembering,

Remembering.

So that's homework number one.

Write them down,

Perhaps.

Place them around your home,

Car,

Your office.

Repeat them at the beginning of your practice.

Another great time to repeat them is any time craving or aversion come up,

Any time you're experiencing like a suffering moment,

Bring them in in that moment and practice them then.

Remind yourself of what is true.

The second piece of the homework,

Make some peanut butter cookies.

Okay?

If you're allergic to peanuts,

Maybe some almond butter cookies.

Make some peanut butter cookies.

Eat them and enjoy them.

You can make them gluten free and vegan.

That's what I'll do.

See the peanuts.

When you're eating them,

I want you to practice seeing the peanuts in the field as they're growing.

Try to see the ground they grow in and the water that waters them and the farmer that harvest them.

And allow yourself to see the complete picture of all the non-peanut elements that go into bringing those peanuts to that peanut butter jar that you are now using to make your cookies with.

Eat them,

Enjoy them.

See the non-cookie elements and relax.

Stop trying so hard.

Just live a life,

Reminding yourself of what is true.

You already know it at the deepest level.

You're doing a great job.

You're an amazing human being.

You're valuable and welcome and needed on this planet.

So remember that,

Remind yourself of that and then see that that's not just true for you.

If it's true for you,

It's also true for everyone else.

Thank you so much for allowing me to go over time again.

Next week,

Again it's back on Sunday,

Although maybe Thursday is better,

I don't know.

I'm trying this group thing out.

I've mentioned this before.

It's hard for me to figure out.

I have other tasks in life so I haven't put a lot of effort into it but I'm going to try.

I record these,

I screen record them,

I put them up on my YouTube channel and then I also put the recordings,

The audio recordings up onto Insight Timer so if you haven't listened before you can go back and listen to the other ones.

It's of great benefit as we develop our own open hearts and our own compassionate wisdom so that we can be benefits to humanity.

That's why we transform.

We transform ourselves,

Not for ourselves but if we really understand interbeing we are transforming ourselves for the benefit of all humanity.

Thank you so much for joining me today.

I so appreciate spending this time with you.

It has a transformational impact on my own life.

I hope that you have a beautiful Sunday.

Until next time,

Live mindfully.

Be well.