Hello,
Good day again,
Welcome to day 10 of Beginner's Mind,
The last day of Beginner's Mind.
I'm so happy that we've all made it this far.
I hope it's been rewarding for you and I hope that again as always you're carrying forward some of the information from the last days and that you'll continue to carry it forward through the rest of your life and through the rest of your practice.
Today on the final day we're going to very briefly touch on an absolutely huge topic of impermanence.
Now if you've ever dabbled in meditation before or if you're a spiritual person or done any readings of that like,
Then you've probably heard the topic of impermanence before.
Impermanence is something that's rooted in a lot of religious philosophies but from those we can draw some really practical and secular advice.
In Buddhism for example the Buddha taught over 2500 years ago that everything is impermanence and I mean he was talking about everything from us to the earth to the sky and the stars.
We can still take some logical advice from that kind of revolutionary and massive sentiment.
So over the past nine days you've meditated every day and you've watched your breath come and go an inconceivable amount of times and you've probably watched distractions come and go just as many times.
So if we take a second to examine what actually happened during either of those things,
We can start to see evidence of this ancient advice given so long ago.
Essentially if we look at breathing the body draws in air and only when the air is in the body can we call it the breath and then the body expels air again back to the seeming nothingness that it came from.
And distractions are very similar,
Distractions seem to come from nowhere and after we let them be and go they seem to dissolve to nowhere again.
And so how do we apply this practically?
Well Steve Mariboli once offered a famous quote,
You must learn to let go,
Release the stress,
You are never really in control anyway.
And hopefully after these last nine days you can start to see evidence of the Buddha and Steve Mariboli's advice and you can start to see how true it really is.
How many times in a day do you try to control something that is actually outside of your control and all it gets you is frustrated?
And it ends up making no more sense than being frustrated at the sky for being blue,
Something else you can't control.
And these,
The breath and thoughts and feelings are an automatic process that automatically results in feelings.
So why try to control it?
Why feed into that cycle?
If each breath is impermanent and each distraction is impermanent,
Then why allow yourself to get caught up in that cycle?
If you were able to,
Would you not choose to remain outside of that cycle?
Allowing these things that are ultimately kind of hollow to just come,
Be and go and stay in your more stress free,
Peaceful state.
I hope that after the last nine days and after this course that you start to see that some of these stressful things that we try to control,
Being that they are outside of our control and impermanent,
Make no sense to try to control.
And as you learn to release them,
You start to come to a more peaceful state in your body and in your mind.
As always,
Thanks for listening.
Thank you so much for your participation in this course.
I would encourage you that if you have questions,
Please continue to ask them.
You can ask them after the course.
Reach out to the community,
Reach out to myself.
Please ask your questions.
Please continue meditating.
Remember it's about consistency and perseverance.
Thanks again for listening and enjoy your practice.
