So thank you all for your sharing.
What comes to mind is there was this meditation teacher in Thailand,
His name is Achon Cha,
And he was one of the great forest masters of,
You know,
I think he was around in the 1960s,
1950s and 60s like this,
And,
You know,
He spent a lot of his time just alone in the forest in the jungles of Thailand,
And he really worked on making practice practical,
Of really confronting his mind.
He has books and books and amazing quotes,
None of the books he wrote himself,
It's just his students wrote down things he said because he didn't write.
But you know,
He said things like,
If you've never cried,
You know,
During meditation,
You're not practicing it kind of things.
Or he would use similes of the forest around him and he would say,
You know,
Happiness and sadness,
It's like trying to pick up a snake.
If you try to grab a snake by the head,
It'll bite you,
And if you grab it by the tail,
Then the head will swing around and bite you anyway.
And he said,
So it's like happiness and sadness,
If you're chasing happiness,
Eventually you're going to get hit by sadness,
And if you grab on to your sadness,
You're just going to get bit too.
So he said kind of put down the whole mechanism.
So he had these ways of taking these principles of how our mind works,
How our emotional bodies work,
And making these really beautiful similes and metaphors from like just this forest life and things around him.
And he built up all these,
You know,
These students started coming and living in the middle of the jungle with him just because he was such an amazing teacher and it built up like a whole community.
And a lot of the famous Western Buddhist teachers,
They actually practiced with him.
One of my teachers,
Achim Brahm,
He was a theoretical physicist in Cambridge,
And he went over to Thailand and he thought to go to a monastery and he saw these monks walking and all the monks were smiling.
And he goes,
I want to go to their monastery.
They seem to be the happiest ones,
Right?
So he kind of asked them who their teacher was and found Achim Cha.
And Achim Cha was also kind of like a Zen master.
He was like a community leader and he was known for being very like wily,
They say,
And like cunning.
And he could be very kind of like strict and harsh,
But also very funny.
You know,
Like there was a monk in his monastery and a storm kind of came down and crashed a bit of his roof off of this monk.
And the monk,
Instead of repairing the roof,
He just sat in this kind of half-broken hut for a couple of weeks.
And when it rained,
It rained in his hut.
And Achim Cha eventually came by and he said,
What are you doing?
And the monk said,
Well,
I'm practicing letting go.
And Achim Cha looks around and he goes,
I think you're practicing stupidity.
Clean your hut,
You lazy monk.
And he walked out.
And he had a way of just kind of getting right to the point of things.
But one of his teachers once,
One of his students once stood up and he had questions and answer sessions that are also recorded in a lot of these books.
One of the students said,
You know,
I see that sometimes you give us advice and you say do one thing and then,
You know,
The next week you tell us to do the exact opposite thing.
And he goes,
I don't think you're enlightened at all.
You know,
And this was kind of like all the students like,
You know,
You know,
To speak out against your teacher in Asia.
It's like,
Oh my God,
You know.
And Achim Cha kind of looked at him and he's like,
Well,
It's a good thing that I don't seem enlightened because then you'd stop looking for the Buddha outside of yourself.
And he said,
What I do is let's pretend that you're walking on a path in front of me and you're blind.
And I see you starting to walk towards the left and you're about to fall off the path into a ditch.
So I tell you,
Go right.
And you start heading right,
But then you're getting to the other side of the road and you're about to fall off in a ditch on the other side.
And I say to you,
Go left.
And then you turn around and you say,
Well,
Which is it,
Right or left?
And he said,
Well,
It's both and it's neither.
It's relative.
It depends on where you are and what you need to hear.
And this is one of those interesting teachings where it really brings up relationship and perspective and that there's no one right or wrong way to do any of this.
It's just what do we need now?
What makes the most sense now?
What's the instruction that we need now?
So if I were to sit in this room,
I could take a lot of different lenses or different perspectives.
So I could right now take the perspective of gratefulness and I could sit and say,
Wow,
This is so great that we're here together.
This is wonderful that we have this church to practice in weekly.
This is really this anchor for my week and for all of us to meet.
And it's so great to have this really friendly community and snowing outside,
But we're inside and it's warm.
And I can look at everything with this gratefulness and let that build this positivity in my mind.
I could also put on the lens or take the perspective of what needs to be done.
And I could look around and say,
Oh,
This room could probably be swept a little bit more.
We could probably make some more of these nice Christmas lights around the room,
Some more atmosphere.
Oh,
We could probably get bigger cushions on these chairs or something.
And I could think of a million things that could be done that aren't done yet.
And there's an infinite number of lenses that we can take.
So like we were saying before,
It's like I can look around at this room and see how everyone in this room is really a special,
Unique,
Valuable person.
I can look around this room and see like,
Oh,
We all need a lot of work.
We're all kind of falling apart.
I could look around this room and say we're just bodies who are dying.
I can look around this room and say,
Wow,
We're bodies who are alive right now.
How special.
And each of those different ways of looking,
Each of those different perspectives and lenses and ways of using the mind,
It'll bring up different emotions.
It'll bring up different parts of my own belief system.
It'll bring up different resistances.
It'll also push me forwards in different ways.
There's some times where the Dalai Lama,
Someone asked the Dalai Lama,
You know,
When's a good time to think about death?
And he said,
Usually I just think about death when I'm feeling really inspired.
Yeah,
So the Dalai Lama,
Just when he's feeling really inspired,
Then he'll think about death and like what that process is like.
He doesn't think about that when he's feeling depressed.
He doesn't think about that when he's lying in bed at night.
It's just when he feels inspired.
That's when I'll take that lens and start to look through that lens.
And this is what it means to become skillful with our mind is to everybody for themselves to know which of these lenses is the one to use at what time,
Kind of like what you were saying.
It's like if you're sitting there and you're looking at,
You're having these existential feelings and you're like,
This isn't helping me,
I'm getting heavier.
Then you're like,
Well,
What would be a more productive way to use my mind right now?
What actually feels like it's lifting me up and moving me forward?
And that's called being skillful.
It's called being mindful.
That's like the next level of mindfulness.
Mindfulness isn't necessarily like I'm sitting here and I see the seltzer in my hand and I drink it and I feel the bubbles in my mouth and I swallow.
That's one level of mindfulness.
It's just being present with my physical behavior.
But really the deeper level of mindfulness is what is my mind doing?
What are the mental,
We call it in Buddhism,
The mental formations that are coming up and how am I reacting to them?
How am I becoming overpowered or a victim of the things in my own mind?
How much am I in control of my own mind?
And that's something that we each need to look at is to realize that look,
I have control over my mind.
I can start to bring in different aspects.
I can change the lenses and the filters.
When I went to see Tony Robbins,
That was his big thing.
Actually if you really get into it,
His whole thing is about just changing your perspective,
Seeing that life is happening for you and not to you.
It's like this life coach mentality.
It's kind of like how do you get empowered?
Well you just change your whole way of thinking about something and suddenly you're in a different space.
So that's a really important thing for all of us to kind of recognize is just what is the lens that we have and which lens and how do we want to use the lenses?
And not every lens is helpful for everybody.
So I totally understand.
If I'm sitting here and I'm saying we're all dying,
That some people can just get pissed off at that.
They're like,
I didn't come here to hear that I'm dying and I don't matter and I'm empty.
I'm out of here.
This is ridiculous.
And I totally get that because some people,
They don't need to hear that.
There's other people that are maybe a little bit more prideful that maybe forget that kind of thing.
They maybe think that they're the best,
That a lot of people are really ego-driven in this world.
And if you look at those people,
In the Buddhist time he talked to the king and the king came to the Buddha and he was like,
I have everything.
And the Buddha said,
Oh,
And you're also going to lose everything someday.
The Buddha himself,
He talked about one of his past lives and he said in one of his own past lives,
The Buddha had this ability to recollect his past lives.
He said in one of his past lives he was a king and he was walking in this big kind of like ceremonial promenade through like the gardens and the jungles and kind of going through with all of his people.
And he walked and they were walking down this long road and they walked under this mango tree and the mango had these amazing,
Beautiful,
Succulent mangoes,
Full of mangoes.
And the Buddha as a king,
He saw as they were walking into this tree,
He goes,
Oh,
You know,
I'm going to come back later and I'm going to sneak out and I'm going to get some of those mangoes for myself.
They look so good.
But he was in his,
You know,
Promenade so he had to keep going.
But he didn't know that some of his,
I don't know what they're called,
His assistants or his people and the promenade at the way back,
You know,
When the king was way out of sight and they were kind of the last ones,
They saw the mangoes too and they got sticks and they beat the tree and they got all,
And all the mangoes fell out of the tree and they collected the mangoes and they took them and they ran off for themselves.
And so later when the Buddha snuck out and he kind of came to the mango tree ready to get his mangoes,
The tree was just bare and it was broken and it was leaves and branches everywhere and he was just like,
What the heck,
You know?
And he just sat in this really intense feeling of loss but also kind of realized,
You know,
I am a king and I have all of this money and because of that all of these robbers are always trying to get in here.
I am a king and I have all of this power and because I have this power all these people are trying to like manipulate me and use me and maybe kill me.
And he sat and reflected and he said,
Although I'm a king and I have all of these things,
Everything that I have it creates a negative pull towards it,
Right?
Because I'm this rich,
People want my money,
Because I'm powerful,
People want my power.
Yeah?
And he said,
If I really want to live a life of peace I need to actually let go of this.
And he took off his crown,
His robe and he became like a wandering kind of spiritual like ascetic.
There wasn't Buddhists at the time but he became a spiritual practitioner and he gave up.
He resigned from his position as king.
He was like,
I'm taking off and I'm going to go wander as an ascetic.
And people asked the Buddha,
Well who is your teacher?
You know,
You're this ascetic,
Who did you learn from?
And he goes,
My teacher was a mango.
And he always said that he was like the mango or the mango tree was his teacher,
Right?
Because he as the king,
He really needed to know that lesson that you know life is temporary,
That all these things that I have that make me so special and important and powerful,
Those are the direct cause of my suffering.
And that was his lens that he needed to find liberation.
For some of us,
I actually just watched this amazing talk and it was Obama and Steph Curry from the Golden State Warriors and they were talking in Oakland to a group of,
I think it was mostly like young black men from the community and they were just talking,
A lot of it was talking about how important it is to have a father,
Growing up without a father and what that means and a lack of role models and community.
And they sat up there and their whole thing was to tell this room full of young men,
Hey,
You are valuable,
You matter and I'm sorry that your father has left you.
I'm sorry that you didn't have those people in your lives that were supposed to tell you that you matter.
So we're here to tell you,
You matter.
And people told Obama or people told Steph Curry,
When they were young,
He wouldn't have ever thought he could be president or Steph,
He would never think he would be leading the all-star game in basketball.
But they had people that believed in them.
They believed in themselves,
They internalized that voice and then they just kind of pursued it and then they got to these different really high stellar places.
And the medicine,
If you will,
The medicine for that room,
For those boys was to let them know hey,
You are important,
You're valuable,
Don't throw your lives out because somebody else gave up on you,
That's their stuff,
That's not you,
You're amazing.
And that's what they needed to hear and it was beautiful,
It was a great talk.
And that's kind of like what this is all about is that there's just so many different kinds of medicines.
I guess what this talks about medicine is that what is your medicine?
What is the medicine that you need?
What is your specific sickness?
And then what is also the medicine for it?
And as I came down,
Some of you were talking about getting a personal trainer saying that yeah,
I feel like I want to be more active and I want to do something but my specific problem is that I can't motivate myself really.
So you've recognized,
You've kind of established here's my difficulty and now I'm going to get a personal trainer and that's going to be like my medicine,
That's going to be the thing that's going to help me get better again and move forward.
And what meditation hopefully does is that I wouldn't say that meditation itself is the medicine although it could be.
There's a lot of people that that's all they need is just to sit,
To shut up,
To close their eyes,
To not do anything,
Just to be here.
For some people that's all they need but what happens is we start to uncover deeper and deeper and deeper levels of that.
That we have things like resistance,
We have things like these desires to do something that's not right here.
We have worry and doubt and just restlessness,
General restlessness or kind of torpor,
Just kind of dullness,
Right?
That the mind just wants to go in all these different places.
And it's up to us slowly over meditation times to just realize and acknowledge what those things are.
So like the question you were saying to me before,
You know that you're watching your thoughts go out like a clothesline and it feels to be working for you but then that's thinking.
So then are you not supposed to be thinking and then it is working but it's thinking so is that right or is that not right?
And when I hear that question I see multiple levels.
On the top level you're looking for some kind of like it's okay or it's not okay answer but if I go deeper into what is actually going on I hear doubt.
All I hear is that you're doubting,
You're doubting your experience.
That you have an experience that seems to be working and then you're doubting it because you think you've heard that you're not supposed to be or that something should be different.
So as a meditation teacher I wouldn't even answer that question for you I would just say that sounds like doubt.
Trust your experience.
If what you're doing is making you more peaceful do it.
Yeah,
I'm not in your mind.
And the Buddha had this amazing ability where he could look at people and he could see because he was enlightened.
He could see exactly what people needed to hear so in the Buddhist text he would sit in groups like this and he would give a talk and at the end of the talk everybody in the room would be enlightened.
Yeah,
And I'm so sorry that I can't do that.
Seriously,
So sorry.
Yeah,
I would like I'm working on it right.
When will you be able to?
I'll let you know.
No pressure.
And you know and that's and that's how it is right is that he could see people's minds so clearly.
He could he was out you know he said like listen it's like if you're in quicksand and then somebody else falls and then right you're talking about quicksand earlier if you're in quicksand and somebody else falls in a quick stand next to you how are you gonna pull each other out if you're both in it?
Yeah you can't.
He said you have to first get out of the quicksand and then you can pull somebody out.
The Buddha was out and he could pull people out.
I'm like in it but maybe I have like an arm out or something but my teacher said if you have a penny you can share a penny.
So my teacher said you know conversely if you have anything at all to share,
Share it.
Don't wait until you're the Buddha to share.
Share as soon as you get it because people need it.
So that's kind of my approach and I found that it works.
But you know if we could see it clearly it should be so simple.
There's even a story that the Buddha it was I mean take this for what you will but there was two brothers one of them in the text they say he was of lesser faculty so he was stupid.
There was a stupid brother and an intelligent brother.
So the intelligent brother became a monk and the stupid brother also wanted to become a monk.
And the intelligent brother looked at him and he said you're so stupid you're never going to how do you want to be a monk?
You need to like learn stuff and practice you have to memorize all these things.
That's not going to work.
And the stupid brother he felt really like rejected and dejected and he kind of felt all discouraged and he decided just to like run away from home and just to leave and you know he was worth he felt like he was worthless he didn't matter.
So he just packed up stuff and he started leaving and the Buddha again being this amazing being he had extrasensory perceptions so he knew the story what was going on he had telepathy he could see what was going on.
They used to talk about him scanning that the Buddha would wake up in the morning and with his divine eye he would scan to see what's going on around him where could he what are the conditions that are building around him that maybe he could go and best serve.
And he saw this happening and he goes up there's somewhere for me and he gets up and he walks and as this you know man is walking he meets him and the man falls to the Buddha and he said you know I I you know I wanted to be a monk like my brother but I'm just stupid and I can't.
And the Buddha said you know stand up stand up and he had like a white cloth and he said hold this white cloth.
And the man held it and he said rub the cloth between your fingers and then the man rubbed the cloth between his fingers and he said now say again and again out with the dirt out with the grime.
And then the Superman just rubs his cloth says out with the dirt out with the grime out with the Buddha goes okay great and he goes keep practicing he left and the man just sat there and he just really intensely was doing this and rubbing his cloth out with the dirt and as he was rubbing the cloth and saying this again and again he started to see that like the dirt and the grime from his hand started going into the cloth and then the white cloth started becoming darker and darker and it started getting dirty started getting dirty.
And he watched and he was watching this process happen and something in his mind clicked and he reached enlightenment.
And he also in his enlightenment gained various superpowers.
So it says that after that he used to go and he used to play all of these practical jokes on his brother who was this monk who thought that he was all you know smarter than everyone else and he has this he would like you know like move objects around his brother or like you know there's all these superpowers you could like dive into the earth and come back up or you could like levitate and all these things and he would play things that his brother was driving crazy you know because he was like yeah you know he didn't think I was that smart and it even goes into how did that happen what was his past life and they say that in his past life the stupid brother he was a dog and that dog was walking around in holy sites and I think it was actually at the time of the last Buddha so Buddha's actually in the Buddhist canon they come periodically so there's not like this one Buddha and that was it that this Buddha that we talk about this is the seventh Buddha that there's been but they come very far spaced out so the last Buddha they talk about world cycles so he even knows what that means but they also talk about universal expansions and contractions which sounds a lot like the big bang but they talk about also then big collapses that the universe is always just expanding and then collapsing again and again which is what scientists now actually think is happening too so it's interesting that you know the Buddha talked about this but he said at the time of the last Buddha that after that Buddha had passed away they made kind of shrines they put his relics in these shrines and that the stupid brother at that time he was like a dog and he was walking around and he flung shit on he shit and he flung the shit onto one of these shrines and he was so happy to do that it made him extremely happy as this dog that he flung the shit on this round he's like he's super happy and this created a karmic basis of like that he made an offering out of joy to a Buddhist shrine and that gave him enough karmic connection that at the time of the next Buddha he was able to like connect with him and with this joy you know want to be his disciple and that's that's like how that all connected and how it was possible so also in Buddhism if you really take the text it talks also about karma and the Buddha goes how lifetime to lifetime to lifetime things change and we change and how our karma links all that and even the Buddha's two chief disciples they came like a little bit later on and all the monks got upset and they're like we've been here for so long how come these two guys come and they get to be your chief disciples and the Buddha's like that has nothing to do with me he said and there in the time of the last Buddha they were both there and they made these huge offerings to that Buddha and they said at the time of the next Buddha may we be his chief disciples they said in this life we can't do it but in next life and the next time there's a Buddha can we be his chief disciples and you know one of them offered food to the Buddha and his Sangha for seven days and one held a big like banana leaf or something over the Buddha's head as he meditated for a week he dropped in a samadhi for one week and this monk held this you know protected him from the rain or something for one week and after they made these offerings they said you know by the power of this offering by the merit of my offering may I be his chief disciple in the next life and so it was right they plugged themselves into that karma so also in Buddhism we call it dana which is donation giving is super important so like when I go to India when I go to Bodh Gaya where the Buddha is the Buddha was enlightened I spend a lot of my time there just making offerings I go around and I just I give things to people I get a flower and I give it to a monk or I get you know money and I give it to the monks to buy food with or I buy cookies and I hand them out that just giving and giving and giving and then as I'm there people are walking around and then they're giving you money and giving you stuff because everyone's trying to create merit right by making these offerings by donating you know by being generous generosity because it seems that karmically if you make an offering out of pure mind you you can not even have pure mind if you make an offering you can also decide where that goes where the energy goes so if you make an offering to somebody and then you say by the power of this offering may I reach enlightenment or by the power of this offering may I be healthy and well or by the power of this offering may I whatever it is that you want whatever you feel you can actually connect that energy into movement into direction so that's part of like how the Buddhist belief system works with karma and movement right and you know and I've made a lot of different offerings throughout my life and I've made all these prayers like may I help people may I reach enlightenment for myself and others that was my best way because I used to say may I reach enlightenment for myself and I was like okay that feels selfish may everyone reach enlightenment I'm like what about me so then I'm always like okay may I and everyone else like my way of doing you know but that's ultimately the way to move forward is really to to to really want it and to and to put that intention out there to do things enlightened activities so even if you're not really able to meditate what goodness can you do you know can you help somebody can you support somebody in some way can you give can you be patient can you be kind what are the different positive things that you can do to to build that that merit what are the different things you can do to help this world how can you provide medicine right all the different kinds of medicine that are needed right spiritual medicine emotional medicine physical medicine how can you support and help and heal what can you give to this world to feed that positivity and also with the with the intention through all this goodness that I do may we all together evolve you know may we wake up may we start to see what we're doing may we be able to help each other you know and that's kind of like this bigger energetic movement I guess within all of that and a lot of monks you know they they would go for alms they you know our monastery we actually had people that came and brought us food but a lot of monasteries you know the monks would take their bowls and they would go out every day in the morning collecting food at people's houses and some people you know they'd yell like at the time of the Buddha somebody yelled at the Buddha and they were kind of like you deadbeat go get a job why are you you know and I felt like that you know there's a few times where I went out collecting food yeah I felt like I was looked down up you know you could be looked down upon you deadbeat collecting food from everyone somebody said that to the Buddha you know and it was a farmer he said to the Buddha you know I I plow and I till my fields and I you know do all this work that's how I get my food and the Buddha looked at him he goes I plow and I till my fields too just different fields you know saying that he just works on his mind he's really he's planting seeds in himself and he's doing a lot of his work but it's internal and by supporting the Buddha you're supporting his work but then you're also plugging into that karmic flow so a lot of people they say just by making an offering to the Buddha they you know jump started their practice right or they reached the level of enlightenment or something and just kind of shot them off because they plugged in his stream his practice stream right so take all of that for what you will as much as that makes sense to you or feels like it's in line with your own experiences but I'm happy that I told you anyway because I think it's a good thing to know so ultimately what this comes down to is really everybody for yourself see what it is that works because there's books the terra guts and the terra guts and these are the enlightened talks of the Buddhist monks and the Buddhist nuns and you can read through it and see these little quotes and excerpts from all these monks and nuns that were enlightened 2,
500 years ago you know and see what they say and they're all very different and some of them said you know I lived out in the jungle and I woke up in the morning and I heard the cry of the peacock in the distance and I smelled the fresh air and suddenly my mind was freed you know and it's like this person by like I was saying at the beginning like these lenses by taking this lens of freedom of living with the birds and nature and the wild it set them free deeply in their soul they realized they were a part of everything and nothing was holding them back and they were free there's other people that said you know through great struggle and great strain you know and focusing you know was I freed and other people they had to go to the cemeteries and sit at the charnel grounds with the dead bodies and watch the bodies decaying in front of them and that's a Buddhist practice too as you go and you sit and a freshly deceased body they lay it on the ground and they sit in front of it for months they go collect the food they come back and they sit and they watch the body decay and they have all the stages of decay you know they talk about the corpse and then the bloated corpse then the bruised corpse and then the corpse eaten by bugs and then the animals and then the bones at the end and how like by just sitting for four months and watching this body decay and reflecting like that is also like my body that's the same thing they say that as a cure for lust because it's kind of hard to watch that whole process happen and then to see an attractive man or woman walk by and think ooh la la you're gonna look at them and say you're a bunch of bones you know because that's the antidote for lust they say so in Buddhism there's all these antidotes here's the antidote antidote for pride antidote for lust antidote for anger antidote for laziness yes you have to see in yourself what is my main what is holding me back what is my main illness what is my main weakness what is my big blind spot and then you have to find the antidote and meditation can help you find your blind spot and the antidote if not that's also what a Sangha is for that's what other people are for if any of you are in a relationship or if you have parents or kids I'm sure they point your blind spot out all day long you just don't want to look at it but other people can also help us see that if we're having trouble but but yeah it's something we can work on together but but at least as you're meditating see what is my mind doing am I falling asleep right is my mind trying to clock out yeah or is my mind getting restless just thinking nonsense or is my mind going to lust things that I really want that aren't here or is my mind going to like aversion which is like pain and hatred and anger and am I just sitting here getting all pissed off for some reason right or am I doubting right and I'm just sitting and I don't know is this right no this isn't right this isn't right right am I judging judging judging judging judging what is my mind doing what is my specific form of neurosis yeah and we each have our own right each one of us has a little brand of craziness or maybe a couple different brands that are all working together and it's really about identifying that watching it not engaging seeing what my mind is doing being passive and watching the momentum the karma flowing flowing flowing seeing it watching and understanding it and then slowly letting it die yeah I'm sitting here and I'm watching my doubts and I say well instead of listening to my doubt instead of trying to appease my doubt I'm going to just let that doubt die yeah I'm going to let my anger die I'm going to let my lust die I'm just going to sit here I'm not going to feed them at all I'm just going to sit here and breathe and relax and see actually what feels good yeah because what is the antidote for lust yeah what is the opposite of lust it's actually renunciation it's letting go what is the antidote for anger right it's actually peace what is the antidote for doubt it's trust what is the antidote for restlessness it's tranquility the antidote for tiredness it's wakefulness so if I see that I'm feeling tired just sit up a little straighter yeah if I see that I'm getting really restless then bring my mind down feel my body a little more if I see that I'm getting all upset then maybe start focusing on thankfulness I see that I'm doubting then start trusting a little bit more yeah that how can I start bringing in the antidote what does my mind need how do I come back to that middle yeah and this is what a master right a Buddhist master a guru something like that's supposed to be for fortunately there's none of those in this room so it's really up for us to be our own teacher to be our own guru be our own master we have to watch our own mind and see what it needs so I would say that that's probably okay for today and yeah and let's meditate so sit with your feet flat on the floor
