Facing The Pandemic With The Support Of The Dharma 2/26

How can we deal with uncertainty and fear around us and also within us? How can Dharma teachings support us? How can we deepen understanding and love for life amid the chaos? This series of teachings offers reflections on possibilities that are available to each one of us, including practices we can engage with, lean into, and cultivate.

Transcript

So,

Today is a very,

Very important day for me in my life.

And I will tell you a little bit why and it's very much linked to this seminar.

So first,

Well one reason is that today is Buddha Purnima,

Is the Wesak festival in Asia.

So it's the full moon of the Buddha.

It's the full moon of May,

Is the full moon where the Buddha is born.

That's the history at least,

The story or history I don't know but doesn't matter so much.

It's the full moon where he's born,

Where he got realization,

Enlightenment,

Call it the way you want it and where he died.

Same full moon of May.

And because of that this is a very important day in the world of Buddhism and although I'm not,

I don't feel I am Buddhist or anything else,

I am deeply impressed and touched by this tradition and I learned a lot from Buddhism and from the figure of the Buddha.

So it's an important day for me and what I have been doing the last years is to organize on the land full night meditation because that's what millions of people do tonight.

Many people just sit through the whole night and so it's been cancelled,

This full night meditation.

Usually I invite people and we're a bunch of people sitting through the night on a big tent on our land near my village and it's been cancelled because of the coronavirus but still this is a very important night and I find it interesting.

I didn't actually remember that I didn't see that this seminar starts that night.

I find it very auspicious.

And it's something just to realize that this night so many people will,

It's so important this night for so many people.

So also because of the full moon of the Buddha I encourage you to sit as long as you want after this.

I will sit longer and yeah.

It's another,

It's an important day in my life also because a teacher of mine just died this morning and I felt from the heart very closed and very,

Very connected to his teaching.

I was so inspired by him.

His name is Robert Baer.

He was sick,

He had pancreas cancer since a few years and he was very beautiful the way he was sharing about that and he was seeing his death coming and he was a person.

Of so much depth of understanding,

So much,

I found so much clarity and inspiration in his teaching.

I felt so connected,

Met him only twice but I felt so connected and so there is a big sadness in me today and I was even a bit confused.

I was in a strange place for organizing this meeting and just before I had the second meeting with the French participants and I had one hour in between and there was a very strange thing to do.

His sangha had organized,

You know when someone dies you can go and see the body in a room.

There they had placed a camera and you could go with a zoom.

Very strange but again,

It's like seeing you,

It touches me,

Seeing him just let down like this moved me a lot.

So it's just like important for me to say that part of what I'm sharing with you has been inspired from him these last years and what he has brought to me is a fantastic new ways of exploring the Dharma,

Opened new path,

New area of interest and clearly explained and that made,

That created enthusiasm in my practice and I think this is major.

This is what I'm so thankful for him,

To him is because of the enthusiasm that I,

That his teaching raised in me.

Like the willingness to really like a renewal I would say in the way I'm practicing and that's what happened for those of you who practice since a long time and also if you practice music and art and sport,

We have that.

There are sometimes we could say plateau and sometimes there's something that comes in because of a situation or a meeting or something and again the passion comes,

Happens in couples also when you're long,

Long life together,

You know.

And so that's what happened with meeting him is just like I'm practicing meditation in the morning,

Early morning and since I have met his teaching,

I met his teaching long time ago but since I heard exactly where he wanted to go,

Since I understood something then again the passion came and getting up in the morning was so much easier,

You know and that's a big topic,

No,

Because it's not easy to get up in the morning for practice.

So what I,

What I would like and what I wish in this seminar is that it brings this kind of willingness,

Interest,

Curiosity,

Newness for,

For really going for the meditation.

Not just like maybe you heard about the seminar and maybe it's kind of a,

Oh why not like a little plus in the day or maybe something I would like to explore a little bit or maybe you feel very new and feeling oh I'm gonna see what it's about or maybe the some,

Some of us who are long-term meditators seeing this as a,

Okay it's,

It's kind of a,

A like one more step on my path,

You know or just I have done so many retreats,

It will still be good for me but not like wow,

Like this is a,

This is kind of a new start and it can be,

Yeah and that's,

It depends very much on how much you want to engage in this.

So maybe you had the plan to engage just a little bit hearing the talk and doing the guided meditation and maybe trying to,

To do the guided meditation at least once a day or fine,

Great but it can also be much more and I want to reopen the door to questioning how much do I want to engage in this exploration?

Yeah,

This is your question.

You can,

You can answer yourself and because this clarity of intention will bring about the result.

So you,

All,

All of you,

You have to know how much you want to really engage in time,

Energy and,

And really to be willing to dive into this.

Yeah?

So that's something I think is,

It's very important to,

To reflect upon.

So that's linked with the question of a,

Sorry.

What is the inner attitude towards this seminar,

Towards your practice,

Towards meditation?

Like I was saying maybe for the newcomers often what happened is like it's kind of a little bit,

It can be like not so much engaged,

I will see,

I will try and I will see what it is.

Yeah?

Which is fine,

Try it and it's very good to be curious and to have no preconceived ideas but,

It can be from trying a little bit like this coldly to really going for it because I want to know what it is.

And but if I have this idea,

Oh,

I'm a beginner and so,

Some people here are practicing since maybe 20 years.

I cannot go very deep or understand as much as them.

Then this is reducing the ability to understand and go deep.

You're already setting up limits.

So what I want to bring here is,

Can you see and check if in this beginning of this seminar you have already placed some limits?

Something like,

Oh maybe I'm not in the right context.

Maybe many people are confined and have time but I have to work so I will not be able to benefit fully from this seminar and engage as much as I want so I won't get that much for instance.

Or maybe it can be that for the long term as I was saying I have done so much,

This is just one more.

This is reducing.

It's like if we can see this is just a new opportunity that never existed,

It's not just one more in the continuation of something that is reducing.

So maybe we have the idea that I have tried so many times,

I'm still so much full of thoughts,

I'm so crap with concentration.

I'm not good enough,

Oh it's still good for me,

I'll do it but I'm not good enough to really go somewhere with this.

This is reducing.

We already keep ourself in a box.

So check in your mind for these kinds of thoughts and if there are thoughts like this that reduce the possibilities,

Recognize them as unuseful and don't believe in these thoughts.

That would be my advice.

Maybe I'm not in the right context because I'm with my family,

It's not silent enough.

You know so I cannot really fully engage.

I will still get something from it but I cannot engage.

So anything that you're kind of driving with the brake,

You know,

And if there's possibly to take away the brake and accepting the situation that brings us to accepting.

Okay,

We are all in different contexts.

We have different abilities,

Abilities of concentration,

Abilities of understanding,

Abilities of dealing with emotions,

We all have abilities.

Can we just start with what is there,

With the conditions as they are?

Not saying oh I could go deeper if,

You know,

These are not useful thoughts.

So one nice example of this that I always use because I love it,

It comes from Zen and it's about cooking.

So when you invite some friends and you want to make a very,

Very special dish and then you arrive in front of the kitchen and you realize oh you're missing this and you're missing that and this ingredient and that ingredient,

You can't do your dish.

So how does that feel?

How do we feel when there's something like this?

So there are two,

Of course first we feel disappointed,

Fair enough,

But how do we go about?

There are two solutions.

Even we say oh I dropped a story called My Friends Said They Don't Come or whatever,

You know,

Or we will do something but we're disappointed and we feel it can't be as nice evening.

Yeah?

Or there's another way of saying okay,

That's how it is,

What can I do with what I have?

And we start with what is there rather than staying with the feeling that I wanted things to be different than what they are and not really going with what we have and do our best.

If we find a way to do our best with what we have,

We'll find success,

We'll reach.

So if not we're driving with the brake.

So accepting the conditions and going for it.