Five Spiritual Faculties: Effort And Concentration

This is a talk given by Lloyd to the Insight Community of Denver, Colorado on one of the Five Spiritual Faculties: Effort and Concentration. This is a highly engaging, thought provoking, and profound talk on wisdom, mindfulness, and insight into how and why reality is structured the way it is. Note: As this is a live recording, there is minor background noise.

Transcript

And order for them to have their desired effect.

Those five are faith,

Effort,

Mindfulness,

Concentration,

And wisdom.

So those of you who know,

Have some grounding in Buddha Dharma,

Know a little bit about the Buddhist teachings of the reality or the existence of suffering,

Especially self-induced suffering of the mind.

What brings it about,

How it can be brought to cessation,

And the means by which one does so.

The means are this eightfold path.

And the eightfold path consists of like three sections,

The meditative factors,

The wisdom factors,

And the purition factors,

Or the living in harmony with factors.

Sometimes also referred to as the morality or ethics.

So the meditative factors are concentration,

Effort,

And mindfulness.

The wisdom factors are basically a cultivation of insight into how things are and why,

Including how we are all the causes and conditions that gave rise to who we are up to this moment in time.

Insight into intentions,

Which is insight into all the causes and conditions that are going to go together to decide who we're going to be in the next moment.

And then the fruition of intention in the form of speech and action and way of life.

So of those five spiritual faculties,

You see that all but one of them is already embedded within the dharma wheel.

The effort and the concentration,

The mindfulness are all there in the meditative factors,

And then how many other wisdom factors we find in this other faculty that arises.

They arise quite naturally and they're reinforcing.

It's not like first you do one,

Then you do the other.

So in this presentation tonight,

The first time we were together going over these teachings,

I just focused on the faith element,

Also called absolute trust or trust in mind.

And for the rest of our time together,

Tonight I want to talk about faith in relationship to effort and in relationship to concentration.

And then when we next get together two weeks from now,

We're at the end of the month,

I'm going to talk about faith in relationship to mindfulness and faith in relationship to the wisdom factors.

So that way we will have pretty much covered the board.

So in the Buddhist teachings on how one comes to the dharma in the first place,

How it is you happen to find yourself sitting here in your chair tonight or on your bench,

What brought you here,

He talked about a motivational force that the word is samvega in the Pali,

And it's variously translated as urgency or motive force,

Sometimes as anxiety.

And the sense of samvega or urgency or fear or anxiety or whatever,

Arise when it begins to dawn on you that the Buddha may have been right.

It's like,

Huh,

You know,

If I really have a look at what the mind's up to here,

It's mostly all about attachment,

Aversion,

Delusion.

It seemed to be pretty much programmed to seek out that which I want,

Avoid that which I don't want,

Ignore everything else.

And then arises the question,

And how's that working for you?

And it occurs to you,

Maybe not so well.

Maybe this kind of prime directive of the self,

Seek pleasure,

Avoid pain,

Live forever,

Has got some flaws in the software.

Maybe that's not going to really be such a great guidance system going forward,

Because unfortunately it is not capable of addressing things like aging,

Infirmity,

And death,

These inevitabilities that arise.

And so the sense of samvega arises when it's like,

Oh yeah,

Eww,

You know,

Aging,

Infirmity,

And death.

The ego's prime directive doesn't seem very well matched to learning how to relate to those things.

And so there's this realization that I need to find some means of relating in a meaningful and positive way to these inevitabilities of life.

And so if you find yourself so caught,

You embark on a study and practice of Buddhadharma.

You embark on the eightfold path.

And as you do so,

However,

A very interesting phenomenon begins to happen.

Because when we stop and think about how it is that we were trained to learn from a very,

Very early age,

Either by our parents or our teachers or our employers or wherever we find ourselves,

You know,

Yielding up a certain amount of our power to.

Generally speaking,

The way we were conditioned to think and behave the way we do now is that we were rewarded by the powers that be for doing things that the powers that be wanted us to do.

That we were punished for doing things that they didn't want us to do,

Those in authority.

And they didn't seem to pay much attention to us either way if we weren't either doing something that they really wanted us to do so we get pats on the head or doing something they really didn't want us to do so in some way or another we get smacked around and get some demerits or whatever.

That way of thinking about ourselves,

Thinking about how one makes one's way in the world is pervasive,

Very,

Very deeply ingrained in us.

And so when we undertake the study and practice of Buddha dharma,

There is this inevitable tendency,

Okay,

It's quite a natural one,

To approach it in the same way.

I'm going to set up a system of rewards and punishments for myself.

I'm going to decide what it means to be a good yogi.

I'm going to decide what it means to be a crappy yogi.

And I'm going to figure out ways to reward myself,

Although those seem to come to you in the far between,

Or ways to smack myself around if I don't think I'm doing a very good job.

And so we do,

Unfortunately,

Tend to do a lot more of the latter than the former.

And then at some point it begins to sink in.

This really isn't working.

There's really something amiss with the way I'm trying to go about studying and practicing Buddha dharma,

Because it said right there on the shingle,

At least,

The cessation of suffering,

But that doesn't seem to be what's happening.

You know,

I seem to be kind of frustrated.

And at this point in time,

Trying to use the discursive mind to achieve that of which it is not capable,

Begins to lead to some significant self-doubts.

Or doubts about the dharma,

Or doubts about how it's being conveyed,

And it can start to feel really kind of bogged down.

It is an almost universal predicament of anyone who sets forth on the April path.

It's just one of the places,

You know,

There's a place in North Carolina called the dismal swamp.

And there is a certain kind of dismal feeling to this.

I don't know if anyone else ever finds themselves there.

It tends to be geography I'm very well acquainted with.

And it is a period of,

It's a stressful period when you get there.

You know,

When you're exerting what you thought to be your wisest and best effort,

But you seem to be encountering a lot of resistance and a certain amount of frustration.

Fortunately,

In Buddhadharma,

There's an app for that.

And it was written about six centuries into the Kamenera by a Chinese philosopher named Seng Span.

And the text that he wrote is called the Sin Sin Ming.

The verses on the faith mind is how it's usually translated.

Stephen Mitchell translates it,

Verses on the mind of absolute trust.

It's also translated as trust in mind.

And it was a text written by somebody since then,

Used to be called the Third Zen Patriarch.

Now he's referred to as the Third Zen Elder.

And his whole intention,

It seems as you read through the text,

Was one of seeking to address the very problems in the states of mind that come up once one really begins to seriously undertake studying practice of Buddhadharma.

And he's seeking to provide some guidance,

Kind of pointing out when your effort can't get there from here,

Great cosmic joke of the Dharma,

And how to soften or transmute your effort in such a way as to make it possible to come closer to or begin to really experience in some kind of deep way the essence of what the Buddha had to offer,

Not clinging,

Letting go.

So,

Actually before I took up or got into Buddhism,

And I was looking at various,

You know,

Exploring various non-Western paths.

First I tried out tantric yoga for a few years,

And then I went from there to the Taoism,

Joined a Shaolin temple and martial arts,

And started to pick up,

You know,

These five noble arts they talk about,

Developing acupressure and calligraphy and there was P'chi and P'u.

And got quite grounded in and really touched by,

Moved by the Taoist texts and Taoist philosophy.

And then from there I found myself getting pretty immersed in Buddhadharma and the Theravada tradition for the most part.

And as I did,

I would start reading these texts and I would find that they were really resonating with what was being said by the Taoists at about the same time in history when they had no means of being in connection with each other.

And then when Buddhadharma did make its way to it,

It came to China in several different forms,

But when it came to China again in the fifth,

Sixth century common era,

It became admixt with Taoism.

For me,

The texts that came out of that admixt here,

This Shuanghu was in,

Always had a kind of a special place in my heart I guess.

So as I was thinking about reflecting together the night on wise effort and on concentration,

These old texts started to come to mind.

And basically what the Buddha taught,

What Sengs Dantat taught was that whether effort,

Concentration are skillful or not,

Whether they're useful or not,

Depends pretty much entirely on the intention underlying them.

What is it that leads you to exert the effort in the first place?

So this is one of the poems by observations in poetic form by one of the Taoist masters,

Shuangshu.

If a butcher is shooting for nothing,

He has all his skill.

If he shoots for a brass buckle,

He's already nervous.

If he shoots for a prize of gold,

He goes blind or sees two targets.

He's out of his mind.

His skill has not changed,

But the prize divides him.

He cares.

He thinks more of winning than of shooting.

And the need to win drains him of power.

So,

You know,

In Zen practice,

They take up archery,

Right?

And the reason they do is as a way to embody this teaching.

If you're all hung up from the outset as to whether or not you're going to hit the bullseye,

You're already lost.

So that practice is about coming back again and again and again just to process,

Just to pay attention to what you're doing,

Just mind-fellows in the moment.

So that is sort of worth reflecting on when we look at how we think our practice is going.

And the problem is,

And the one that can cause the doubt and whatnot,

Has to do with the discursive mind having some kind of image of what it means to be enlightened.

What it means to make progress.

What it means to achieve spiritual perfection.

And as long as that's the goal that we're trying to achieve,

It ain't going to happen.

Your motor vehicle may be very efficient and effective at bringing you to this meeting and getting you back home again,

But it can't heal a wounded relationship.

It can't help you come to terms with your own mortality.

It's not what it was designed to do.

And so it is with the discursive mind.

It's great for accomplishing certain kinds of objectives.

When it becomes necessary to kind of inhabit the self,

Kind of like climbing into a space,

Running around pretending to be just there the other person isn't,

But I'm great.

But there are certain things in which it's not capable.

And one of the things the discursive self is not capable of doing is letting go of the self.

There are other aspects of mind that can,

But the discursive construct is not wanting to.

It's like Jack Cornfield says,

The self wants to be around for its own funeral.

But that's not the nature of this practice.

So I'd like to pause this for a moment now and ask if there is anything that I've said that you found yourself resonating with or if you have any questions about it.

Please.

Yes.

Buddha,

Buddha,

In the Thai force meditation master,

And reflecting on everything I said,

It's important to learn to distinguish between wise wishes and foolish desires.

So there are,

There are noble and altogether beneficial and skillful aspirations,

Having to do with cessation of suffering,

With learning how to be kinder to yourself and others,

With learning how to be more mindful in the way we speak and act and conduct our lives.

Those are all extremely worthy goals,

You know,

And the Buddha advocated them,

You know,

For sure.

But the means by which they become attainable are simply not the same means by which we've been normally conditioned to lead our lives.

And so an awful lot of Buddha Dharma is allowing that to kind of sink in,

You know,

To realize that how we've been conditioned all our lives to learn and do and achieve and accomplish the faith was great for the purposes for which those attainments were made possible.

And so far as Buddha Dharma is concerned,

An awful lot of spiritual maturation is all about gradually letting go of that way of thinking and doing things and realizing that it's simply not capable of the kinds of transformational ways of knowing that the Buddha Dharma has to offer.

And so in some ways it's like we're in transit,

You know,

From one to the other.

And the sense in me,

The same sense says,

When you try to stop activity by passivity,

Your very effort fills you with activity.

As long as you remain in one extreme or the other,

You will never know oneness.

Do you think that recognition,

I think that the analogy of the archers of our building,

Where they come from,

Analogy,

Do you think it's something that you have to learn experientially that you cannot set a goal on and become enlightened,

And you have to learn experientially that you can't get there rather than be left?

In my experience,

Yes.

You know,

In my first 10 years of Dharma studying practice,

I probably heard the words of him speaking this evening several hundred times.

And I said,

Oh yes,

Yes,

Very well,

I understand that.

Yeah,

Not really.

Because there was a part of me that just wasn't going to let go.

I was totally into being there for my own funeral.

I wanted to be able to celebrate the enlightened moment.

And there are different systems of spiritual score keeping in the different Dharma traditions.

And one of them,

The Theravada,

They talk about stages of enlightenment.

And the first stage is what's called entering this dream.

And one of the sort of the trick questions in there,

You know,

If you ask somebody if they've entered this dream,

They say,

Oh yes,

I have entered this dream.

And that's not how it works.

Because there is no I to do so.

So it's taken us right to the edge of who we were trained to think we were all of our lives right up until we run into this completely different way of understanding what may be going on.

The more you talk and think about it,

The further astray you wander from the truth.

Stop talking and thinking,

And there is nothing you will not be able to know.

The more you talk and think about it,

The further astray you wander from the truth.

Stop talking and thinking,

And there is nothing you will not be able to know.

What's he trying to get at there?

What meaning does that have for you to hear the words?

There's an obstacle in the yoga tradition called doership,

Which I'm relating to while you're saying that.

It's something I would work with.

It's like when you do something and you have an expectation rather than just doing it,

Just to do it.

And so I had that intention to not come from doership.

So I would do things and then I would find I was disappointed because it didn't turn out the way I wanted.

So in the process of that I began to discover my hidden motivations that I wasn't aware of.

So I think it's a thing of skillful means.

You just work with it and as you work with it you begin to know your own mind and see that.

I think the most important thing is a lot of things are driven by our unconscious that we're not aware of and those begin to come up.

Thank you.

Joseph Goldstein tells the story of when he was first doing intensive practice in India.

When he would go into town to the market to get food,

One time he was buying some fruit and this little beggar kid came running up to him and asked him for some fruit.

So Joseph gave him an orange and the kid just turned around and ran off.

And in that moment he realized that he was sort of expecting.

Little kid,

Oh that's a big thing to do.

He just grabbed the orange and ran.

And there was just that,

He didn't realize he was watching the mind carefully for some time and had all the intentions and motivations and all that.

He thought he was making this generous gesture.

And then it turns out there was a little hook in there that he hadn't seen at all until he didn't get what he wanted out of this kid.

And then it was,

Oh okay,

Interesting,

Interesting.

So we can have significantly mixed motives.

And again one of the minds preoccupations is with perfection.

So we adjudge ourselves to be good yogis if our motives are absolutely pure.

Instead of there still being some kind of little undercurrent,

A little half teaspoon of meanness mixed into the recipe.

That's the last thing to go folks.

And the Theravada means the spiritual is working.

The end stage when someone is finally is said to achieve full and complete enlightenment,

The last thought one has is,

Oh I am becoming enlightened.

So it's going to go down swinging,

It's going to hang in there right till the end.

And then that's the last thing the mind just lets go of because it's all about letting go.

Which is of course where Singh's dance is trying to come from.

Opening stanza says,

The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.

When attachment and aversion are both absent,

Everything becomes clear and undisguised.

Make the slightest distinction however and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

To set up what you do like from what you do not like,

Singh's dance says,

Is the disease of the mind.

And it's not necessarily as if we can keep that from happening anyway,

Right?

Pretty much all about preferences.

Whether it's for food or politics or anything,

We can find absolutely anything that's like,

Not like and not terrible.

And so all Singh's dance pointing out is whenever you find the mind going to that place,

There will be some difficulty.

And if it's possible to experience life without immediately finding yourself falling into that trap,

It's going to work better for you.

As an academic,

This is one of those pieces of advice that really I had to wrestle with quite a long time.

Do not search for the truth.

Only cease to cherish opinions.

Do not remain in the dualistic state and avoid such pursuits carefully.

There is even a trace of this or that,

The mind essence will be lost in confusion.

What's that about?

Do not search for the truth.

Only cease to cherish opinions.

Please.

I've had a lot of self resentment throughout my life that I grappled with about being an introvert.

And I felt like,

Boy,

If I just tried harder then I could talk to people and be like,

Oh,

You know.

And that really stuck on the idea that I have a good intention,

Which is to want to bond with people.

So why can't I just deliver that by being able to talk to them whenever I want to talk to them?

But also you said something about you want the method of that bonding to reflect what you've seen in the world.

And I've always been rewarded for talking,

You know,

If I'm being quiet and all of a sudden I pipe up,

Oh,

Good job.

And I think it's helpful to try to let go of that or try to think that there might be a different way that I don't understand where maybe my intention could be fulfilled and just having that intention is helpful to me.

But not get so wrapped up in my conceptions of how that should go.

When we first moved to Denver almost 30 years ago now,

Our younger daughter was in kindergarten.

And it mocked you and turned out to have an amazingly skilled kindergarten teacher.

And one of our first conferences with her in the fall of that first year we were here,

She was saying,

Well,

You know,

It seems that your daughter is a shy person.

And at first it sounded like,

You know,

Kind of a diagnosis of mental illness.

Here's a problem we've really got to work on.

And it was not that at all.

She was just saying,

You know,

I've got all different kinds of personality types in this class.

You know,

Some are boisterous and outgoing and whatnot,

And some are shy.

You know,

They are not all about broadcasting themselves into the world.

They're about keeping their own counsel.

They're about careful observation.

They're about being pretty careful who they want to connect with.

And she was talking about it more almost as a kind of self-care,

You know,

And not as a personality trait that there is any problem with.

And so,

You know,

That's pretty much in line with,

I think,

A lot of where the Buddha Dharma is coming from,

Which is,

You know,

Meeting yourself where you are,

You know,

And really feeling some value for yourself as you are,

All of you are,

Everything.

Rather than getting selective about those things that are okay,

And those things you've really got to work on and you've really got to change and whatnot.

Because again,

That's a means of doing things.

It doesn't actually turn out to either be very effective or very kind to yourself at all.

To live in a great way is neither easy nor difficult.

But those with limited views are fearful and irresolute.

The faster they hurry,

The slower they go.

And clinging and attachment cannot be limited.

Even to be attached to the idea of likeness is to go astray.

Okay,

Folks,

What are you going to do without?

Is there a key word here?

Okay,

This sort of is the central stroke for me in meditation.

You know,

There's a line by Dogen's engine,

I believe,

That says to follow the ways to study the self,

To study the self is to forget the self.

To forget the self is to be enlightened by all things.

So there are essentially two practices in this tradition.

One is Jonic and the other is mindfulness.

But in Jonic practice,

You do forget the self.

The self is dropped.

But when you come out of it,

It's still there.

There's that story that Jack Fuentio tells about the monk in his monastery in Thailand who was really famous for his capacity to venture Somali and to stay there for days on end.

And then he would come out of it and he'd be just a raging son of a bitch,

Just hollering at the dogs and throwing rocks at them.

So when I say this is the central struggle for me in practice,

What I want to do is to forget the self.

And yet,

When I'm practicing mindfulness,

I'm not forgetting the self,

Not in the sense that it happens in Jonic practice.

Yes.

Thank you.

This is a huge conundrum.

And what Don's referring to are states of mind,

Absorptive states of mind,

That are a certain form of concentration practice that allows for the temporary suppression of all the hindrances.

And once the hindrances are fully suppressed,

Then there's a lot of energy freed up.

You can feel it in your body,

You can find yourself in somewhat elated mind states and whatnot.

And there can be this sense that you nailed it,

A real kind of natural high.

And then,

Among other things,

Those are really easy states to get profoundly attached to.

That's one real problem with doing that.

But the real trick is what happens when you come out of the state,

Just as you were saying,

Because the Buddha didn't teach that realm of practice,

Which by the way he had a lot of difficulty mastering.

He didn't teach it just as a kind of a mental trip or as a way to space out or get high whenever you want to.

The whole idea behind developing deep samadhi practice is to get the mind so still and clear that it becomes a more fertile ground for insight practice.

So that the mindfulness is able to penetrate notions of self and just see everything in its entirety and in some ways its perfection.

In other words,

The ability,

It's what the Tibetans call unfabricated mindfulness,

The ability to be completely alert and open to and accepting of all existence without the filtration of self-interest,

Without attachments and versions and versions,

But just to take it all in.

So that's the intention underlying teaching the Jhans.

What can unfortunately happen,

And I think that's this guy that Jack's talking about,

Didn't quite get the memo about the second half.

He was obviously very good at the first,

But then kind of lost something in the translation when it came to being able to move from that into deep states of mindfulness.

When you're coming out of a Jhans state,

One of the things that becomes possible is insight into the empty nature of self,

Which is to say if what the mind has done is to temporarily cease self-construction,

You can actually sort of fabricate on that top and just get the mind of where it's just not doing it anymore.

And then when you come out of it,

Either the self can reassert itself in a big hurry,

Which I think is unfortunately the problem with this month,

Or if as you come out,

Sometimes you can see the mind seeking to paste the self back together.

The Skandhas start to assemble,

And it's almost as if you got a piece of clay on a wheel,

And you're kind of starting to recraft the self.

And sometimes the Samanis are indeed,

You can see that begin to happen,

And then relax the mind again and where it doesn't.

So you gain insight into how the mind goes about crafting the self.

So I think the two paths skillfully practiced aren't diversion or non-conflict,

But that one is intended to inform and enrich and balance the other.

And I think for all of us,

No matter how long we've been on the path,

There can be this,

I think sometimes it's an internal tension,

I think sometimes,

Like Wes Nisker is really good at making fun of it or not taking the whole thing too seriously,

But perhaps temporarily or for a little while feeling that sense of emptiness and of openness and really deep peace.

And then comes the thought,

Whoa,

This is really far out,

Right?

Bam!

You're right back in there again.

And the self is reasserting itself.

I guess it's one of the comforts I take from that,

In those descriptions of the stages of enlightenment.

If indeed it's true that the self is going to try with increasing levels of difficulty to keep reasserting itself throughout our lives,

Then for me,

I mean,

It's much easier said than done.

One of the most important things to let go of on the path is the expectation that through sheer effort we're going to be able to train the mind to stop self-harm,

Because that just doesn't seem to be how it works.

There's so much more,

It seems to be a matter of renegotiating our relationship with the self-harm mind,

Being kinder to it,

Being more understanding.

And there's nothing that drives the self nuts faster than non-self-loving,

Or our ability to say,

Oh,

Here we are,

Doing that one again.

Not that we can keep it from happening,

But if we can be,

I don't know,

Gentler,

Kinder,

More loving,

More humorous.

It's like,

Oh gosh,

I seem the same service once too often.

I remember you talking about when you were teaching Dharma after the inmates at Federal Men's Prison,

Using the analogy of rewatching movies of our own making,

And one of the members of the inmates was like,

Man,

I've been watching the same movie for way too long.

I just want to follow up with this a little bit.

I'm sure you're aware of the handy,

Chick-sent me handy,

And it's.

.

.

Say again?

You're most likely aware of the handy,

Chick-sent me handy,

You know,

I'm not sure if I have that pronounced correctly,

But he wrote a book called Finding Flow.

And what he's saying in there is that that state of total absorption,

Where you have forgotten the self,

Is the meaning of life in essence.

That's the argument he's making.

It doesn't matter whether you get there through meditation or through creating a work of art or working on all of your things,

It doesn't matter.

What matters is the state of flow.

When he describes flow,

It sounds very much to me like John's practice.

Yes.

And Eckhart Tolle,

I think a lot of where he's coming from is about that too,

You know,

Having himself found a way to live in the non-world state.

Yeah.

The.

.

.

That sounds awesome.

If I had a hammer.

.

.

So there is one Dharma,

Not many,

Saint Sten says,

Distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant.

To seek mind with a discursive mind is the greatest of all misgivings.

In this world of suchness there is neither self nor other than self.

To come directly into harmony with this reality,

Just say when doubt arises,

Not two,

T-W-O.

In this not two,

Nothing is separate,

Nothing is excluded.

So I think in some ways this really touches on what God was just pointing out.

In this world of suchness there is neither self nor other than self.

So we use these concepts,

We talk about the end of Buddha,

We talk about this I-making and he-making,

We talk about a lot,

You know.

Now you see it,

Now you don't,

It's like alternating current.

Which is why when people would ask the Buddha,

Well,

Is there a self or isn't there?

He would say yes.

Or worse than that,

In fact,

You know.

Which is he saying there's a self when you create one and there's no self when you're not.

The real call on for us,

I think,

Is the one of whether or not we have control over the creation of self.

And if so,

Who is it that has control?

Is it an automatic thing,

Okay,

Right?

Or is there really a big green giant head,

You know,

That can actually make it happen?

Is selfing a completely reactive automatic process?

Or is there some intelligence,

Is there some decisional factor at work in that place?

The Buddha's general sense of it,

It's like sticking your finger in a sea anemone,

Right?

That it is a reaction to certain stimuli.

Self arises because it wants something or because it's afraid of something.

But if you find yourself occupying the mind in which that reactivity is not present,

Then the creation of self becomes unnecessary.

And so,

A huge amount of this practice is all about us learning how to carefully watch the mind.

What are the conditions under which we self?

What are the conditions under which our version arises?

What are the conditions under which we catch our minds?

What are we not seeing because we don't want to see it?

And a little bit by little bit more and more and more,

As the mindfulness gets stronger,

Then everything starts to become more clear.

And we see that we do not need to be nearly as reactive as we usually are.

And as we see that begin to occur,

Then we also begin to notice that over time,

Maybe the self doesn't arise quite so quickly,

Quite so reactively,

Quite so strongly.

Maybe it's begun to become a little bit disempowered,

A little bit slower on the trigger,

A little bit less reactive.

And the reason that begins to happen is because we have begun to develop trust in mind with a capital M.

We have begun to live same-stance teachings,

The Buddhist teachings.

We have begun to learn how to trust the non-reactive,

Non-aggressive,

Non-cleaning mind that it's there for us in a way that we never even would have existed to be.

And it's a transitional process,

It's a graduate process,

It's a transformative process.

And it's why the Buddha taught the importance over and over again of trust in mind.

Let's sit for just one moment,

Please.

One thing,

All things,

Move among and intermingle without distinction.

To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection.

Thank you.

Reviews

Thankyou for this very interesting Dharma talk 🕉🌿💫

It was very difficult for me to hear. Do you have notes or a book I could get. What I could hear was my appreciated. Thank you so much for sharing this. Is there any way you could text me the books, authors that you mentioned, I could not make out the names or titles. I would be eternally, greatful. Thank you. 🌷

I have had the experience of no self in meditation and coming out of it to see that self construct is like a sand pile I am building beside the ocean, which was quite blissful. This is a beneficial talk and I am sorry about the terrible sound quality that made it a strain to listen to.