Hello friends.
Today I want to talk a bit about Tiknot Han.
I'm standing on the banks of the Rio Grande River,
Very close to my home in Albuquerque,
And I'm looking at the beautiful Sandia Mountains,
Which have quite a bit of snow on them this time of year in January.
So,
Back to Tiknot Han.
So,
He came into my life because of night terrors,
And about 20 years ago we were on a ski trip with a family to Durango,
Colorado to a ski area called Purgatory.
Kind of a funny name for a ski area,
Might make you question whether or not to go there.
Really it's quite lovely.
And one night I just shot up out of bed feeling like I was in the blackest abyss,
Just probably like the feelings one might have.
Thankfully,
Not many of us will ever have this experience of being buried alive.
I wanted to get out so bad of my own body that I can hardly even describe the level of terror,
Panic,
Just some of the hardest feelings I've ever dealt with.
And I've had these night terrors where I just sort of shoot up out of bed scared to death for 20 years.
And when these began,
Sometime after they began,
I was searching for anything and everything I could find because they got to the point where I was scared to even go to bed.
And then laying down I would feel that panic.
So then that led to insomnia and a lot of nights too afraid to lay down,
Just to the point where I would break down with my wife crying and,
Man,
Difficult teacher.
We've often shared pain as our best teacher.
And so I just started searching for anything that might provide relief and I discovered Thich Nhat Hanh.
I'm not even sure exactly how,
But I remember just listening to one of his books on tape,
I think it was.
I don't even know which one it was.
He's had 90 plus,
I think.
But I started just listening to him and learning how to connect with the breath,
Learning how to concentrate.
And Thich Nhat Hanh takes very complex ideas and concepts and make them so accessible,
So easy to grasp.
And I think a reason he's so adept at that is because true teaching needs to be experiential.
It needs to be realized.
Can't just be in the cognitive mind and the conscious mind.
It has to permeate our being.
I say has to.
It doesn't have to.
But ideally,
If we're to achieve what we're all searching for,
Which I think everybody's searching for pretty much the same thing,
And that's to feel good,
To be happy.
And so Thich Nhat Hanh has been one of my primary teachers for a long,
Long time.
And I want to share one of his practices right now.
And it's based on a Gatha.
And a Gatha is a poem or a series of short phrases that helps direct us to truth,
To peace,
Towards reality as it is.
And this particular Gatha is very famous,
But it's been near and dear to me for a long,
Long time,
And part of my regular practice.
So it starts like this.
I have arrived.
I am home.
In the here and in the now.
I am solid.
I am free.
In the ultimate,
I dwell.
The first line,
I have arrived.
Connecting my mind,
My body,
My spirit through the breath.
It's really a practice.
It starts with a statement,
But we're practicing arriving,
Being where we're at now.
Jim Rohn,
The great motivational speaker,
My mom sent me to see him when I was 17 years old,
And he made a comment that stuck with me now all these years,
And it was,
Wherever you're at,
Be there.
Wherever you're at,
Be there.
Well,
Take some discipline and take some practice.
Actually,
It probably takes forgetting the way we've been conditioned and just flowing the way we were meant to flow,
Because if you watch little kids playing and having a blast,
Which they love to do,
You see that they're in the present moment.
They're not thinking about the past,
The present.
I mean,
The future,
The past hurts,
All that kind of stuff.
They're really into whatever they're doing,
Usually,
When you watch them play,
Especially.
So I think a big part of spirituality is not so much about what we're going to get or what we're going to learn or what we have to memorize or what we have to practice.
It's really about remembering.
Thich Nhat Hanh says that a lot,
Coming out of forgetfulness,
Remembering who we truly are.
So who we truly are,
If you're a Christian,
Is somebody who's created in the image of God.
If you're a Buddhist,
It's somebody who has that Buddha nature.
If you take all of the religion out of it,
There's this core to our being that is so playful,
That is so loving,
That is so free.
And spirituality,
To me,
Is about letting go of those parts that weigh us down,
The heaviness,
The anxiety,
The fears,
The insecurities.
All of that stuff's very natural.
Almost every person I've ever met suffers from these things.
But if we can remember our true selves and come home to our bodies and mind,
I have arrived.
It's a practice.
I am home.
Well,
Where am I home at?
In the here and in the now.
And in the now.
I am solid.
I am free.
In the ultimate,
I dwell.
I have arrived.
I am home.
In the here and in the now.
In that space,
The here and the now,
I am solid.
I am free.
In the ultimate,
I dwell.
So there's the historic dimension,
Time dimension.
We grow,
We age,
We become sick,
We die.
Everything is of the nature to rise,
Stay for some time,
And return to source.
We rose from the earth,
We grow up for a period of time in our lives,
We return ultimately to the earth.
This is all the historical dimension.
The infinite dimension,
In the infinite,
I dwell,
Is that timeless space,
That infinite ultimate space,
That primordial space that's endless,
That's without beginning,
That's without end.
And there is a part of us,
Our true essence,
Our true nature,
That dwells in that space,
In the ultimate,
I dwell.
So these Gathas are reminders,
They're practices that help us understand the truth.
And I love that verse in the Bible,
You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
Now what I'm not trying to do is preach Christianity,
Preach Buddhism,
Preach any of that stuff.
I'm trying to teach you the truth.
I'm sharing with you practices that I've cultivated for some of them decades now.
The relationship with Thich Nhat Hanh started from immense suffering in my life.
And even today,
I'll have one of these night terrors,
And they're sometimes in my back of my mind,
Terrifying me that they might happen again.
Whenever I'm in that space,
I'm living in the fear of dread.
When I can come back to,
I have arrived.
I am home,
In the here and in the now.
I am solid.
I am free.
In the ultimate,
I dwell.
So as I'm saying,
Trying to connect,
Absorb myself into this Gatha,
I'm no longer out there in the future with the dread of these night terrors,
Panic attacks,
Whatever you want to call them.
So people say,
Well,
Why do you practice so much?
Well,
Partly because for the most part,
I really enjoy it.
But secondly,
I need to so that I don't destabilize and fall apart and not be able to function in my business for my family,
For my friends,
For the people who depend on me.
This is like need-based.
And so I've been averaging about one of these a year now,
And they tend to be really rough emotionally for one,
Two,
Three days,
Sometimes more afterwards.
But they were getting to the point where it was almost constant.
And I've learned that if we can concentrate on our minds,
On that which is wholesome,
That which is nurturing,
Right and true.
And as we practice,
We get better and better and better at staying.
What do I mean by staying?
I mean the mind,
The body,
The spirit aligned in one place at one time.
And the mind wants to shoot off a lot,
Go out there into thinking about things,
Stories we tell ourselves,
Stories about people,
About places,
About things.
And our mind is one place,
Our bodies are elsewhere.
What Thich Nhat Hanh continually talks about in almost every message I've ever seen,
Breathing in,
I know I'm breathing in.
Breathing out,
I know I'm breathing out.
The knowing the in-breath,
The knowing the out-breath,
Fully concentrated from the beginning of the breath through to the end of the breath.
Breathing in,
Breathing out.
Breathing in,
Out.
And I love the last part of this.
Breathing in,
I know I'm breathing in.
Breathing out,
I smile.
Thich Nhat Hanh 101.
