So we just completed the Eightfold Path over these past couple of months really.
In the beginning of the year we started with the Four Noble Truths and now we've moved into the Eightfold Path and today we're going to pause.
This week we'll take a bit of a pause and integrate what we've learned to some degree.
I want to explore with you kind of why we walk this path of practice,
Why this map is important,
Why understanding these truths make a difference in our daily life.
There's so many motivations that people have to come to meditation practice.
Many,
Many people come to this practice just to relax,
To let the nervous system calm down and to settle and that's very beneficial.
Some people are motivated because they're facing something really hard in their life,
Some difficulty,
Something that's really hard to bear,
Some aspect of our conditioning.
Suffering brings people to practice and others have a really strong spiritual intention,
You know,
The intention to move through life with a little bit more fluidity instead of a tight closed hand,
More of an open hand,
A receptivity.
Some people are interested in community,
The building of spiritual community,
You know,
Engaging with people in a really very real way.
This is most intimate at times.
I feel that the silence,
The shared silence,
Can be most intimate.
And what's so interesting for me is that all motivations,
Whatever bring us to practice,
Are really in the spirit of the benefits that I just read after our sit.
I'll read them again so you'll hear what I'm talking about.
We practice within a wheel of giving and receiving.
May we keep this Dharma wheel turning to benefit all beings.
With whatever benefits we receive from practice,
May these serve us to benefit others.
With whatever benefits we receive from others,
May we receive them so we can continue to benefit others.
So we give so we can receive,
And we receive so we can give.
This is the wheel.
Remembering to share our goodness with others.
And may we receive the goodness of others.
And may we receive the goodness of ourselves and share the goodness.
And my favorite part of this sharing of benefits,
The aspirational piece for me,
May we be the still point in the center of the wheel.
Free from the turning,
Free to support the turning,
Always allowing,
Always remembering to let giving and receiving roll on peacefully.
So what this points to,
These sharing of benefits that was,
Was written by my teacher Gil Franstahl.
And during retreat,
These are often read at the end of a day of silence,
A day of practice.
What this points to is we're not practicing for ourselves alone.
We're practicing for the welfare of everyone,
Of all beings.
Our role in this human family is the role of giving and receiving.
And when we align our life from the understanding of giving and receiving,
We're living the Dharma,
We're living the Eightfold Path,
We're living the Four Noble Truths,
The Seven Factors of Awakening,
All the lists.
When we align ourselves from these simple words.
And the way we enter into this understanding of giving and receiving is through understanding our own minds.
When we can understand our minds,
The way it moves and it wants things and it doesn't want things,
The way we go to sleep at the wheel and we check out.
The more we see this movement with interest,
Receptivity,
Awareness,
The more we understand the minds of everyone else.
The manifestation of neuroses may be different.
My manifestation is different than yours.
The conditions,
The habits,
But it's the same mind.
My mind is the same mind as your mind.
May we receive the goodness of others.
May we receive our own goodness.
This is the direction.
What tends to happen is we get caught up in our individual stories,
You know,
But as we practice,
As awareness grows,
Our presence with life,
Our mindfulness develops and we start to understand the nature of our thoughts and the nature of anger and the nature of happiness.
It's the same for me as it is for you.
It's the same.
It's the same for people everywhere.
The nature of the mind is the same.
It's the stories that are different.
The stories.
This is such an important understanding that when we understand ourselves deeply,
We understand everybody and compassion,
It flows from that understanding.
The understanding that this person in front of me,
This person on the screen of our Zoom room,
This person is just like me.
They want to be happy and they want to be free.
We begin as we practice to feel the commonality of our suffering and it simply just gives rise to greater compassion.
So much of our care is often limited to just a few people and animals in our life.
We tend to view other people as different but when we get quiet in ourselves through our sitting practice,
Through our relationship to nature,
We begin to see that we're all the same and in this way we get to touch into the natural interconnectedness that is everything and our motivations,
Our effort in practice become for the benefit of something larger than ourselves.
But it takes practice.
This motivation takes practice.
It takes reminding ourselves.
This lineage is called insight meditation and in the language of the Buddha,
It's vipassana.
That's the Pali word,
Vipassana.
And I use these terms interchangeably.
So what is the insight in insight meditation?
I think the first insight is that we all kind of experience together is that how difficult it is to keep the mind steady on your object of meditation.
There's the first insight.
For many of us,
The breath is the object of our practice.
So we've already had the first experience of insight.
How difficult it is to keep the mind steady on something like the breath.
And this insight is seeing that it's difficult.
How easy it is to get distracted.
Until we stop and look,
We really don't have any idea what's happening in the mind.
We end up in the story,
In the drama.
All because we hop on to a thought or a feeling.
It's not difficult to be mindful.
What's difficult is it's difficult to remember.
It takes a little bit of training.
And the way we train is we can simply drop in the question,
Am I aware?
As soon as we drop it in,
We are.
What is known in that moment?
On the level of the senses.
And this is a way that we can practice all day long.
Just dropping in,
Am I aware?
You could be waiting in line.
You can be driving or sitting at a stoplight.
Am I aware?
And in this way,
You're building your awareness,
Your capacity for mindfulness.
When we cultivate awareness in this way,
We begin to see the patterns of the mind.
Seeing the patterns of the mind is the good news.
We start to see the deep conditioning of our childhood,
Our ancestry.
We become really clear and aware of our liking and our not liking,
And our relationship to liking and not liking.
When we are just aware and we're relaxed,
We start to see the patterns,
But we're not buying into the patterns.
We're not being dictated by the patterns,
And we're not condemning them.
We're just seeing,
Just aware,
And then noticing how the body responds.
Often the body responds,
Kind of bracing against experience.
You may notice this with not liking.
There's a bracing against experience.
Or you may notice that,
Huh,
You're actually in the flow of experience,
Not so entangled,
Kind of like an open palm.
Can you,
In the moment of awareness,
Remember to relax?
You can,
You know.
It makes such a difference when we can do that.
You know,
We practice,
As Socrates said,
To know thyself,
Right?
When we know our mind,
We know the mind of everyone.
And we are all aware,
To some degree,
Of the state of the world right now.
And it's important to remember that what's happening is the manifestation of people's minds.
The manifestation of fear,
The manifestation of hatred,
The manifestation of greed.
Actions come out of the forces of the mind.
And when we're not aware of that,
We're just acting out our patterns.
If we're not aware,
There's no choice.
We've talked about the fruit of practice as enlarging the container.
The container being what we as humans can hold and endure and meet our life.
We cannot control the bitterness of life.
But we can control the size of the container that holds it.
In this way,
We're developing greater and greater self-acceptance.
We're opening to all the different parts of ourselves.
And we can relax behind it all.
We can be the still point in the center of the wheel,
When we're receptive,
When we're not so driven to act on every impulse.
We're learning,
It's ongoing,
To rest in awareness,
To watch the show,
The daily presentations of the mind,
Feeling the display and noticing the relationship we have to what is difficult and what is pleasant.
And the lesson really,
The lesson in meditation is that it's okay to feel it all.
May we be the still point in the center of the wheel,
Free from the turning,
Free to support the turning,
Always allowing,
Giving and receiving to roll on peacefully.
Thank you for your attention and your consideration this morning.
