So,
Good morning again.
This week,
I want to explore with you what is the heart of growth and authenticity and really transformation for us on this path of practice.
And that is the topic,
The action of investigation.
And many of us on this path,
We've done some cultivation of really clear seeing,
Of mindfulness,
You know,
Seeing our patterns,
Seeing our belief systems,
Understanding our conditioning,
But seeing in and of itself is not freeing.
It's like what Thich Nhat Hanh said.
Once there is seeing,
There must be action.
Otherwise,
What's the use of seeing,
Right?
And the action that he's pointing to is the action of investigation.
You know,
Curiosity is kind of the life of this practice.
The practice runs on it to a large extent.
We actually have to find it in ourself,
You know?
What can happen is we're operating from our stories and we don't get curious.
We don't get curious about them.
We're just kind of operating from them.
And then what happens from there is that we just live into the story.
Practice then becomes this exercise in looping,
You know?
And we just feel like,
Oh,
I'm not getting anywhere.
It won't be onward leading if we're just kind of ruminating around our stories.
If something doesn't grab our hearts in a way,
We won't ask questions like,
What is this?
What is this distraction?
What is this judgment?
And it's often difficult to stay with that question.
And so when we first look,
When we first start to cultivate mindfulness,
The first things that we discover is there's quite a bit happening,
You know?
This is the first insight in insight meditation.
We start seeing like,
Wow,
I've got a lot of issues.
And then the path of investigation is kind of like you wake up from the delusion or the confusion that you have.
My friend,
Matthew Brentsilver,
Who is a teacher on this path,
Says that delusion feels exactly like the truth until it doesn't.
Ignorance is such a source of suffering and it's really,
Really subtle.
So a lot of times,
It's us looking at the way in which the body gets contracted or the defensiveness that arises.
And then to ask in that moment,
And this is where the training really comes in,
Is there something I'm not seeing?
Is there something that I'm not seeing?
There's a very challenging teaching that when a person is really committing their life to kind of orientating around the values and the practice of meditation and the sort of the understanding of the Buddhist way,
That's when you start to see and the sort of the understanding of the Buddhist way,
The understanding of the teachings of non-harming,
Of understanding suffering,
Understanding change,
Understanding that it's not personal.
Then the teaching,
The challenging teaching is that this person no longer has anything to complain about.
Isn't that interesting?
Gil Fransdal,
My teacher says,
People who practice mindfulness don't complain,
They investigate.
So complaining is a contraction,
A physical contraction.
Complaining means there is resisting.
And in some ways,
It's kind of like when we complain about something,
We're giving up responsibility for it.
With investigation,
We're putting our effort into sort of like opening up.
Whereas when we're just criticizing or complaining what's happening,
It closes us down.
So investigation opens into what is this?
What is there to learn from this?
How can I learn from this mistake?
Or this happening?
How can I learn from what's difficult here right now?
And for those of us who have a particularly judgmental mind,
There's a real turning from investigating what's wrong with other people to what's happening here for us.
I have this practice that I do of checking in with my experience.
Asking periodically throughout my day,
What am I experiencing in this moment?
And how am I judging my experience?
Is my judgment of my experience impacting it?
What am I attached to?
What am I feeling?
What am I believing?
What's going on for me right now?
It's really useful to drop in that question.
What am I experiencing right now?
And how am I judging it?
And then what occurs is that the path begins to open and become more fluid.
And it doesn't happen all the time.
But it becomes a habit pattern.
You know,
We can't always be open and fluid.
But we can engage in the process of investigation and sort of support that habit into being.
What's going on here is a very different response than saying what's going on here is wrong.
You know,
We often go to what's going on here is wrong and I feel stuck.
And there's no way of going forward.
And so that actually leads to giving up or being oppressed or dropping out of practice or being a victim in our lives.
So we can,
You know,
Complain about ourselves and be upset,
Or we can just learn.
We can learn from our mistakes.
The approach of Buddhism is to continually say,
What can I learn from this?
The practice doesn't say that everything is just fine and dandy.
But rather,
We have a life with a lot of suffering and difficulties,
And we continually make mistakes.
And we fail,
And people around us fail.
And so how,
You know,
Things that are causing us harm,
How can we learn from these things?
So in mindfulness,
We don't complain,
We investigate.
This is a great slogan,
I think,
In a way.
There was a great signpost in the dining room of Spirit Rock for many years.
It was a sign from the cooks to the retreatants that said,
It is our practice to make the best food that we can.
And when we don't,
Then it's your practice.
You know,
So when the food got burned,
You know,
So when the food got burned,
Or had too much salt,
It became like the practice of the retreatants to work with that,
With their reactions,
And their judgments,
And their aversions,
Or whatever comes with that.
See what comes up and practice with that,
As opposed to tightening up around it and complaining.
So you might spend a little bit of time this week just noticing if you find yourself complaining about something.
You probably won't,
Right?
But just in case,
Just in case you find yourself complaining about something,
Notice that you're doing it,
And seeing if you can turn it around.
Rather than staying in the complaint,
Transform it,
You know,
What's going on here?
What's happening here?
Rather than saying,
I don't like this,
Shift it to what is this?
What is this?
What is this here with me right now?
What is my response to what's happening?
What is this?
You know,
That is the primary vipassana question.
What's going on here?
So my wish for you this week is that you get at least one good complaint to practice with.
And thank you for your kind attention.
