Kimbala

A talk given on the last day of an 8-week meditation group in Acton, Massachusetts. Mentioning my good spiritual friend, Kimabala (Stephen Graham), this talk reflects on the monastery and how to bring spiritual life into daily life in a successful way.

Transcript

So,

First of all,

I'm happy to be here in this basement for our last class together.

This has been also for myself a really special group and a special experience.

I don't know what it is about Acton.

I have a meditation group yesterday and then one today both in Acton.

So it's like Acton's,

I don't know what,

Got Talent or something.

There's something going on here that there's people that are interested and hungry for this.

So that's a really cool dynamic that is going on around here.

So that's really nice.

And I've also found that the practitioners that I've been able to sit with in Acton have also been very serious about their practice.

That I've led a couple,

You know,

Four,

Five and eight,

I think even week groups over there and that you guys are doing this regularly.

So it's just really beautiful to see that somebody's kind of holding it down for the practice to be happening regularly over here as well.

I,

Actually,

I just deleted my Facebook app on my phone today,

This morning,

Realizing that it was intruding too much on my mental space.

But what actually got me to do that was reading something on Facebook.

And a friend of mine,

We were in the monastery together in Australia,

The venerable Achand Brahm.

So this is a monk,

He actually is from England originally.

He went to Cambridge University,

He was a theoretical physicist there,

So very bright man.

And he went to Thailand.

And he was thinking about looking at a monastery and suddenly he saw these monks walking and they were smiling.

And he goes,

Oh,

I want to go where the smiling monks are going.

So he kind of followed them and ended up with this teacher,

Achand Shah,

Who is one of the most renowned Thai forest monks in history.

He was just in the last generation.

He also,

You know,

Briefly taught Jack Kornfield,

Jack Kornfield ordained under him as well.

And so some of the other teachers that we know as the kind of Western forefront of meditation teachers also kind of were in the same group in Sangha together.

And what I was reading on Facebook from this monk,

This brother of mine,

Is he wrote kind of a reflection,

A little story about his time in Australia.

And when I met him there,

I did a three month rain retreat there.

And the rain retreat is during the time of the Buddha.

They were in India,

So they had the monsoon season.

So for three months out of the year,

It's raining.

And the monks in the Buddha kind of decided during that time,

It doesn't make sense to be wandering and going out and you're,

You know,

Stepping on things and killing them.

And it's just kind of miserable and wet.

That for those three months,

They should actually just stay in one place and practice more intensely.

And then after the rains pass,

After the monsoons pass,

Then the monks can continue their wandering.

And so every year for these three months,

Traditionally monks kind of congregate and they just stay in one place for three months of intensive practice.

So I was over in Australia with Achambhram for the three month rain retreat over there,

The Vasa it's called.

Vasa means rain or water and Pali.

And this monk,

His name is Kimbala.

We became really good friends.

He was about my age.

I at that time was a monk already for eight years,

I believe.

And Kimbala I think was about two or three years.

But very insightful guy,

Really kind of practiced diligently and wholeheartedly and with a lot of devotion.

And we spent a lot of really good time together talking and reflecting.

And actually on one of the nights where I had my deepest meditation experiences,

I came out of it and I felt like I was dying.

I thought I was about to have a heart attack.

So I like went through the forest in the middle of the night and found his hut and kind of banged on the door.

And I was like,

Kimbala,

Kimbala,

And he was up and I went in and I just started crying like in his bed or on his floor.

I was just so terrified because this incredible shift had just taken place and I didn't know what it was.

When I eventually told Achambhram,

He said,

Oh,

Very good.

He said,

You've never really meditated until you've been terrified.

And his teacher Achambhram said,

You've never meditated until you've cried.

So I kind of checked them both at once.

Because I went to such a deep place that everything that I had ever known had dropped away and it was beautiful and powerful and really intense but simultaneously terrifying.

I just didn't know what was going on.

And I kind of then slowly got guidance about it.

So today I was reading about Kimbala's reflection.

He also disrobes,

So he's not a monk anymore.

And he wrote about his time there as a monk.

And it was this really beautiful kind of story about how him and some of the monks went together wood.

They had to burn the wood in Australia because there's horrible bush fires there.

So the monks collect the wood from the monasteries and they have to burn it together.

And then he went and then he ate.

And how they just sit and how they eat the food very carefully.

And they look at the teacher and how as he was eating and chewing and he realized he was going for a second scoop before he'd finished the first scoop.

And he said,

Oh,

No,

Just one thing at a time.

Be present.

And just reflecting on how these little actions that we do throughout the day are teachers for us when you're present.

That your own mind can actually be your greatest teacher if you're present.

If you're in the right space for it.

And it was kind of this beautiful,

Really nicely worded and crafted story.

But it kind of gave me again that insight into what it was like to be a monk.

Kind of that simplicity.

Where really just the way you're eating your food or the way that you're walking or the way that you sit or you breathe.

You almost are downloading information.

You're starting to see things clearly and understand all volumes about yourself just by the way you do one thing.

Just by watching how the mind expresses itself through your behaviors.

And I spoke to him afterwards and I said,

You know,

It was really beautiful reading that.

But it's also kind of heartbreaking for me.

Because I remember what that was like and I miss that so much.

And it's a form of grief I guess.

It almost feels like the best I can compare it to.

It's like when you've lost somebody or broken up from a really amazing or intense relationship with somebody.

That there is this amazing thing in this place and this connection that I had that I've now lost somehow.

Now I'm kind of in the worldly life and I'm trying to make money and I have a relationship and it's very busy and I'm always driving around and doing all this stuff.

And I'm working on keeping present and all of that and navigating that and using that as my practice.

But my God,

It's so much easier when you're just sitting in one hut for three months and you have that space and that time and people are bringing you food.

The whole monastic life was crafted specifically to streamline those experiences.

To give you as much space as you can to really drop in and to reflect and to understand things and with the teachers in such close proximity as well.

It's really all of these conditions to help you grow kind of in one spot.

Whereas being out of the monastery you really have to search and seek and strive to reconnect to those things.

To find the right conditions.

I wrote to Kimbla and I said how hard it is,

How painful it is.

He said it was really painful for me to write that.

And I'm always thinking about going back.

I'm actually having nervous breakdowns about it constantly.

I was like,

Yeah,

Actually so am I somehow.

I have dreams about being a monk still.

In my dreams I'm wearing a robe and I'm looking down and I'm like,

But I'm not a monk anymore.

So it's still this kind of weird splinter in my psyche or personality or life.

Was that a dream or is this the dream?

What's going on here?

It's just so different and so difficult to process.

And it's really allowed me to start reflecting about practice in the world.

And also my own life and my own personal practice and my own approach to practice.

And somehow it's fitting that I'm going through this at the moment.

And I told some of you I just dropped my girlfriend off today at a ten day Vipassana retreat.

And I'm dropping her off and in my mind I'm thinking,

God,

I would love to do this actually.

But I purposely orchestrated it because I wanted her to experience this and see kind of,

I think it would help her relate to me also.

But just to gain all that you can from the ten days of being in silence and really practicing.

And it's interesting that on the last day of this as we're kind of ending and we ended our other class last night.

And this kind of feeling of,

Well,

What does it mean to move forward into the world and how else can you practice besides sitting in a basement with a little group like this.

And right,

What's with the positions or what's with this.

But it all often comes back to the same question.

It's just what is practice and how does it work?

And that's a question that's really on my mind at the moment as well.

And one of the things,

It was interesting when I went to see Tony Robbins,

He brought up,

He said,

If you want to become the best at something,

He said every day you need to do it and at least for ten minutes in two sections a day.

And he said whether that's reading books or listening to talks or practicing whatever you're doing,

But at least twice a day for ten minutes to keep it in your mind,

Learn a little bit,

Get a little more information,

Keep your mind on it.

But then also a couple times a year you need to really go immersive into it.

So like you guys are going to be doing a retreat once I'm gone with my friend William who is a monk with me in Germany.

And I actually just wrote to Spirit Rock in California and filled out an application to see if I could be part of their advanced practitioner's program to do like three immersive retreats next year.

So to kind of find how we can create that balance between living our daily lives,

Being a part of the world,

But also realizing that the world doesn't care about dharma,

Doesn't care about practice,

Doesn't care about the peace of your mind,

Doesn't even necessarily care about you at all.

Yeah?

A lot of the world,

They want something from you.

Right?

There's a lot of people on top with a lot of money and a lot of power.

And then there's a lot of people that want something.

And even our families and friends often sometimes it feels like everyone just like wants something from me.

And it's to the point that all of us are even very kind of careful or vulnerable or irritated to everyone around us.

And I actually just wrote a bunch of emails saying that I'm now teaching meditation online so I have my own sephmonk.

Com meditation mastery program and I'm putting it out and I sent out these mass emails to all of the people that I had in my Gmail account that I've connected to.

And I've had some people sign up and other people say,

Oh,

That's great and thank you and it looks great.

But then I've also had a couple people who just wrote,

Spam,

Unsubscribe me.

Or what is this bullshit,

Spamming people and all this.

And I was like,

You know,

Never for a moment,

I was like,

Spamming people.

I don't feel like I'm spamming anybody.

I feel like I'm sharing what I'm doing and seeing who wants to be part of it.

But I get it because their email box is full of spam.

It's full of people wanting something from them.

It's full of people trying to get something from other people.

And you know,

As a monk and as a practitioner,

You also,

You know,

A monk,

We would walk with our food and people had to give us food.

A monk is not allowed to have money.

We couldn't pick food off of a tree.

We could only get food if somebody gave it to us.

So we actually relied on the community.

There's a dependence,

A conscious dependence on the community to survive and to move forward.

And for that,

Then the monks would give teachings back.

And they would help out people who,

You know,

Were maybe stuck in their lives,

Who didn't really want to be a monk or be wandering or go live in the forest but still wanted to practice and wanted some peace and some freedom and some wisdom.

And so that dependence was actually built into the monastic structure from the very beginning.

Also,

This was a way for the Buddha to make sure that the people and the monks stayed in contact and the monks didn't all just run off to the forest and,

You know,

That was it.

So for myself,

I've really been looking more and more about the world around me and seeing that there's a lot of aimlessness,

Right?

There's a lot of people who are quite lost.

A lot of people don't actually even know what they want out of life.

They don't really know who they are.

They don't really know where they're going.

Yeah,

There's a lot of people that are just kind of doing something just to be doing something.

And a lot of it's kind of ridiculous.

Some of it's even very harmful.

But they're just kind of doing without reflecting.

Then there's different levels of reflection that people have.

And some people kind of know what they want,

But then they don't actually do it or act on it out of fear or out of limiting beliefs or conditions of their lives or things.

And then you have even fewer people who know what they want and who they are,

They know the direction,

And then they take steps for it,

Towards it.

But then it's still really hard because you're still then having to establish yourself and put this energy out and create it and do it and then upkeep it.

Myself and my girlfriend,

We bought this car to travel across country with and something was leaking with it and we just bought it two weeks ago or last week.

We brought it in to the Chrysler dealership and then they just gave us this list and it's going to be like $2,

000 of stuff to fix it.

We just bought this used car and we thought it was fine.

And it's like you could even,

And you work as hard as you can,

You do all these things,

You make these good decisions,

And then still something comes along.

All of us know this and a lot of times in the question rounds at the beginning of this class,

You guys even mentioned like,

My life is falling apart.

And my girlfriend started to kind of freak out a little bit and I looked at her and I said,

This will be the rest of your life.

Things are never going to happen as we want them to happen,

So all we can do is just how do we want to respond?

What are the steps we want to take?

How to move through it?

And that kind of just clarified the situation a little bit.

Okay,

Accept it,

Now what?

But the world around us,

The world coming in through us,

Even when I was in the monastery on retreats,

I was doing my silent retreat.

I remember,

I think I've told this story before,

But I was in my bedroom doing my 100,

000 prostrations on a wooden board in my bedroom for three months just alone,

Going deep into my practice and I stopped eating for two weeks to just see what happens when you don't eat and I tried fasting and I got really skinny and then I felt like I started dying almost and I was doing these prostrations and I was kind of falling over and then I stopped drinking water too to see what happens and then I kind of brought my body back and when my body felt relatively healthy again,

Then I tried to stop sleeping.

And instead of,

I took my mattress out of the room and I put a drawer from my dresser on my bed and I'd sit in the drawer at night so I couldn't lay down to sleep and that lasted about three days and then I freaked out and I couldn't do that anymore.

But I tried pushing myself in all these ways and there was one night,

There was like a lightning storm and I went and sat out on my balcony and I thought,

You know,

If the lightning strikes this balcony,

I'm going to die.

And I said,

I have to make this a mark in my mind to say that my practice is the most important thing and I will happily die practicing.

And I really pushed myself and like went for it,

Right?

This kind of young man striving for enlightenment kind of energy,

Right?

And I went for it.

And it was powerful and really beautiful and I got a lot out of it.

And I remember I was sitting one day in my room after my set of prostrations and I was meditating and we had people that came to our monastery to drop off the food and things like this.

And I was sitting there next to my window and I remember I was in this really peaceful meditation and then this kind of truck just comes roaring up the driveway and comes in and it's playing this song from Smash Mouth.

You know,

It's like,

Hey now,

You're an all star,

Get you get,

You know.

And I'm just sitting there in meditation and this music is just booming and blaring and my whole body is just shaking with this and it's,

You know,

The delivery for the kitchen is right below my bedroom.

And I was just kind of shaking my head and it's like,

You know,

In a monastery on a mountain in the middle of nowhere and this deep retreat that I haven't talked to anybody in three months and,

You know,

And the world still just bursts into my room and just throws its crap at me,

You know.

It just dumps its stimulation and its noise and its mindlessness on me and then drives away because that's normal.

And then I was sitting there with that stupid song stuck in my head for the next four hours,

You know,

Under absolutely no,

You know,

Fault of my own.

So it's this really crazy thing that even when you try to get out of it,

The world still comes to get you because that's the world we live in.

It's everywhere.

It's so pervasive.

And it takes a lot of effort.

It takes a lot of effort to create,

To carve out this time and this space to practice.

And like you said,

The first class here there was 50 people,

Yeah,

And then slowly it became 15 people,

You know,

And then I'm sure some nights there's five people.

And I don't think it's because those 50 people were not interested in this practice.

They came because they were interested.

But they stopped coming because it's hard.

It's hard to take this as a priority.

It's hard to keep putting effort and energy into this.

It's hard to discipline ourselves.

It's hard to not let life sweep us up.

And I'm sure all of you know that.

I'm sure even some of you today were thinking like,

Am I going to go to class or not tonight?

And if not today,

I'm sure last week or the week before.

That there's times where you're like,

I would just rather lay in bed and watch TV,

Right,

Or go home or go eat ice cream or anything.

I don't even know what.

Yeah,

It takes effort and energy and discipline and determination and will and motivation and intention to be able to be here.

And it's not easy.

And I'm the first to acknowledge that.

And slowly then it's up to us to say,

What do I actually want for my life?

What do I want my life to look like?

And how do I want to build that life for myself?

So the questions that come up often on the last meditation classes that I do,

Even last night when we did our class,

It's kind of like,

How do you do this in the daily life?

You know,

How do you meditate besides just sitting here in meditation?

I was today actually listening to a talk from Thich Nhat Hanh.

If you go on YouTube,

It's the Art of Living.

He has two talks,

Part one and part two.

And each one's like an hour long.

Tensions of talks that he's given,

Really great stuff.

And Thich Nhat Hanh,

He's all about mastering that kind of synthesis between practice and daily life.

And I lived at Plum Village for a couple months and I was in the hut kind of two down from him and every morning I'd see him walking to meditation.

I'd kind of walk behind him and just be like,

Wow,

I'm walking next to Thich Nhat Hanh to meditate.

Like,

That's so cool.

You know,

And everything the man did,

He did at like a turtle speed.

You know,

He would walk slow,

He would sit slow,

He would eat slow,

He would talk slow.

That every single thing in his life that he did,

He did it in slow motion.

One of the teachers that practiced with him,

He said,

His way of describing it,

He said,

Thich Nhat Hanh is a cross between a turtle,

A cloud,

And a piece of heavy machinery.

And I think that probably sums him up really well.

That he went really slow,

But simultaneously he was so light.

There was this lightness and the softness about him.

But simultaneously he was as solid as a mountain.

He was just a really solid dude because of his practice.

His presence,

He'd walk into an auditorium of 10,

000 people and the whole place would just stop.

Because his presence would just bring you down to the ground,

Anchor you to the moment.

And he talks about things like washing dishes.

He talks about eating a piece of bread and dunking it in milk.

When I was at his monastery,

One of their things is chewing your food 50 times.

So I would try it.

And I tried that for a couple of weeks and I chewed everything,

Everything I put in my mouth,

I would chew it 50 times.

I would sit there chewing it and chewing it until it just turned to like liquid.

And my God,

It took like an hour to eat a meal that usually would take me like five,

10 minutes.

But you taste a lot more and also you would see the different qualities of the food and my digestion became amazing.

I almost didn't have to go to the bathroom at all.

It all just becomes like liquid in the body.

I tried it once actually in college and that's what got me to stop eating fast food.

Is I read that book for a course in college and I went to Wendy's at night.

And I got Wendy's burger and fries.

I was like,

Oh,

I'm going to practice.

And I took one of the Wendy's fries and I put it in my mouth and I was like,

Yeah,

I'm going to try that 50 times thing.

And I put the fry in my mouth and I started chewing.

I was like,

Oh,

Oh,

Oh my God.

And after probably about 10,

Because the fries are made to be eaten really quickly.

They make fast foods to be like inhaled.

So it has this really big burst of flavor when I started eating the fry.

And then the flavor went away and then I got to the texture of the fry and I'm like,

Oh,

That something feels a little bit weird.

And then the more that I just sat there chewing it,

It kind of revealed itself to me.

And I felt like I was just eating a piece of old cardboard.

And I was just like,

Oh my God,

What is this?

Is this even a potato?

How long has this been in deep freeze?

This is the horse.

And I stopped eating fries.

I went to Wendy's like three times a day sometimes in those days.

And I stopped right there because I slowed down.

By slowing down and being fully present with my Wendy's french fry,

I made an experience of the reality that I had not been able to make because I was moving so fast.

And this is something that I got from Kimbalah's post and his sharing.

He was showing all these different things in the monastery because he had slowed down.

Because everything he did,

You just take a lot of time and care,

Raking the leaves.

Every talk you have,

You're supposed to only say things that are meaningful.

And important and pertinent to say.

So even our speech is supposed to be really kind of a crafted thing.

You're not supposed to just kind of ramble with each other.

That everything you do,

It's so slow and simple and careful and conscious that you're forced to really look at yourself.

You almost become like naked to yourself.

You start to see yourself so clearly.

You start to watch.

And the things that you don't see clearly,

The other monks can see very clearly in you.

And the teacher as well.

And that's also why often you need a sangha or a group.

Because we do have blind spots that we kind of need some support with.

So bringing our practice into our lives.

And again,

Plum Village,

Somebody asked Thich Nhat Hanh,

What do you practice in your monastery?

And he said,

Oh,

We practice sitting and walking.

And they said,

Oh,

Sitting and walking meditation.

And he said,

No,

Sitting and walking.

That they would just sit.

And then they'd get up and they would just walk.

And when you see a Plum Village monk walking,

They look like they're floating.

And I asked one of the monks,

I said,

How are you floating like that when you walk?

And he said,

Well,

I've been a monk for about seven years.

And one of my practices is that every time I step with my left foot,

I say the word here in my mind.

And whenever I step with my right foot,

I say the word now.

And as I walk,

I just say here,

Now,

Here,

Now.

And just by training like this as he walked,

He made it that every step he took was a step of total presence,

Of total decision.

His mind wasn't over here,

But his body was over there.

His mind was always present with his body.

And again,

Being in the monastery,

Of course,

There's always things to do.

There's always things to think about.

There's more real world stuff happening in a monastery than you could ever imagine.

But simultaneously,

The monastery environment is constructed and crafted in a way that you can really do that,

That you can just walk and say,

Right here,

Right here,

Right here.

And then you sit down and you can just sit and just sit.

And that's also,

I would say,

A cultural thing.

Because I remember when I was in college,

I went to Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota.

And I spent two weeks with the Native Americans there.

And I remember that we went into the house of one of the men that lived around there.

And he wasn't a Native American.

He just lived in South Dakota his whole life.

And he was sitting in front of the fireplace.

And we came in and he stood up and looked at us and he said,

Hi,

Thanks for visiting.

And we all came in and we introduced ourselves.

And then it was his turn again to speak.

And he kind of just looked at us.

And he looked up and he smiled.

And he said,

Who wants to hear a joke?

And that was the speed that he was going,

Always.

And this guy wasn't a monk,

I think he was a farmer.

But because of the lifestyle,

The slow pace of things up there,

The space,

The spaciousness of everything,

He just became slower in everything he did.

And really importantly,

Which is what I realized,

He didn't feel uncomfortable with silence.

And I noticed that when he stopped speaking and he was just looking around,

I felt tense.

I was like,

Is this guy going to say something or what's going on?

This is weird.

This guy's weird.

I didn't know what's going on.

And then I realized,

We have this thing that we call an awkward silence,

Culturally.

Awkward silence.

But they didn't have awkward silences because for them,

Silence wasn't awkward.

And so what we are doing culturally,

And especially the Northeast part of America,

Especially around here near Boston,

New York City,

All of this,

When we meet people from down South,

The Carolinas or from Tennessee,

Whenever you talk to somebody from down South,

You'll even notice that they're talking probably about half as fast as we do up here.

You'll start talking to them.

And sometimes I've talked to people and they say,

Whoa,

Slow down.

We talk faster.

We go faster.

We're going,

Going,

Going,

Doing,

Doing,

Doing.

You have a moment.

You pick up your phone.

You look at things.

What else do I have to do?

Planning.

Boom,

Boom,

Boom,

Boom,

Boom,

Boom,

Boom.

And that's part of the whole New York,

New York,

I'm going to make it after all,

Or Boston,

Be somebody,

Or striving,

Or be successful vibe.

It's also because things are maybe more expensive here,

So people feel like they have to always be doing something or else you're going to financially not make it or something.

But even for those of us that are pretty happy in our lives,

That we're not striving for really anything,

That financially we're okay,

Our minds are still always just running around and jumping and bored and looking for things,

And that there's something about just being here that we can't figure out.

And meditation can happen in any position.

The Buddha said,

Standing,

Sitting,

Walking,

Or lying can be a practice of mindfulness.

You can be mindful of everything you do in all of the body's positions.

If you tried to meditate while standing,

You'd probably fall over.

If you tried to meditate while lying down,

You'd probably fall asleep.

And so we sit when we meditate to give us that nice balance,

That we're sitting and we're stable and we're relaxed,

But when we start falling asleep,

We notice.

I see some of you guys already,

Right?

It's a little bit hot in here,

It's late,

We start to kind of nod a little bit,

It gets heavy and tired.

So sitting for the meditation,

For our formal practice,

I would say is by far the best way to practice.

But also to think that meditation or to practice stops in this room,

It's foolishness.

Again,

Thich Nhat Hanh,

He said,

Peace is every step.

That everything you do,

Every single movement of your mind,

Every single moment is a practice place to make realization.

It's a place to understand,

It's a place to see more clearly,

It's a place to practice.

But that can only happen when we're here now.

And that,

I would say,

Is maybe the most simple way that I can explain how to practice after this class ends,

At least from my end,

You guys will keep practicing once a week,

Hopefully.

But any time that you're not here and now,

I would say you're not practicing.

And this Thich Rach Hanh Cha,

He said,

If you have time to breathe,

You have time to meditate because all meditation is,

Is breathing with awareness.

And so really as simple as that,

Finding that way to be more and more present with your life and what you're doing,

This will start to transform the way that you live your life.

It will start to transform your behavior.

You will stop doing things that hurt you.

You will start doing things that benefit you.

And if you are really present every step,

You bet that your life would start as a whole be lived in a more conscious way.

And we have to find for ourselves what that means.

We have to find for ourselves,

Like myself,

Deleting what app do I need to get rid of,

What thing in my life is actually just wasting my mental energy.

What things do I need to let go of release?

And then also on the other side of that coin,

What things do I want to bring in?

I'm releasing the things that unnecessarily create business in my mind.

And also I want to bring in structures,

Experiences,

Activities and acts that bring more presence to my mind,

That make me feel good about being here,

That give me that opportunity to simplify and see things clearly so that I can learn and understand.

So when you really start getting into it,

Meditation,

It's a whole way of life.

And for your practice,

For your sitting practice to really catch fire,

It has to be a way of life.

Yeah,

Achim Brahm,

I think he said that it's like a banana.

It's the banana peel and the banana inside of it's ripening.

Our way of living,

That's the vessel for our practice to ripen inside,

For the mind to ripen.

And then he said once the banana's ripe,

You can throw away the peel.

You know that you do these practices and then once you've really established yourself in them,

Okay,

Now I can move on from that and do something else,

Bring in another quality,

Another aspect,

Right?

We keep learning and growing and transforming.

But the simplest way that I could tell you to practice is just to slow down and to do everything with your full attention,

Your full awareness as you're making your bed.

Make sure that you're doing it nice,

Do it slow.

As you're doing the dishes,

Slow down,

Feel the water,

See what's going on.

Whenever you drink something,

Look at it for a second.

Feel yourself holding it in your hand.

Yeah,

Whenever you're eating,

Maybe chew a couple more times.

Maybe if you eat dinner with the partner at home,

Maybe you say,

Hey,

What do you think if maybe once a week we eat silently together?

Yeah,

Or the first 10 minutes we eat silently and then we can talk after that.

What ways can you start integrating these practices into your life?

And that's really up for you and it should be creative and it also should be inspiring.

It should feel good,

Right?

It shouldn't be like the solemn thing,

Like you and your wife are sitting across the table eating,

Staring at each other.

How long has the timer buzzed yet?

It should really,

You should be doing things that really inspire you,

That make you feel good because there's millions of practices you can do.

It's countless.

Anything you do could be practice.

So what is inspiring for you?

What feels really good?

What makes you happy?

As I was chewing my food 50 times and I'd eat,

This was another practice.

Every and every bite I put my fork down.

Try that one.

Every time you eat,

Put your fork down.

Because usually you have food in your mouth and then you have food on the fork and then maybe you're even scanning the plate for what else you want to eat,

Right?

Three bites ahead,

They say.

Yeah,

Why not eat,

Put your fork down,

Just sit,

Chew,

Feel what's in your mouth.

Then when you swallow it,

Then you can pick up your fork and eat again.

Yeah,

Little,

Little,

Little things like that.

Just slowly changing the way that you do these very calm and simple daily activities could drastically change your mind,

Your experience of life.

Bring you deeper feelings of presence,

Of contentment,

Of peace,

Of happiness.

And that's it.

That's how you know that you're doing it right.

Yeah,

If you're not feeling happier,

If you're not feeling more free,

If you're not feeling more content,

You're not doing it right.

Yeah,

Practice is not supposed to be a burden.

It's not supposed to be a should or a have to.

Yeah,

It's supposed to really bring you joy.

It's supposed to feel good.

As a monk,

It felt so good to like sweep the floor and stuff.

It felt really good.

It felt so simple.

It was just beautiful,

Something so beautiful about it.

Walking meditation,

It should feel beautiful.

Walking in a way that feels beautiful.

For the last class that I'll be leading here,

At least maybe until December,

I would even suggest that for us for this meditation.

Again,

Kind of riffing off of this thing from Kimbalas,

Why not meditating in a way that feels a little bit more beautiful?

A little bit more simple.

Taking Thich Nhat Hanh in there.

Let's just sit to sit.

Let's not sit for some goal.

Let's just sit to feel okay sitting.

Let's breathe to feel content just breathing.

Let's see if we can simplify it down enough that just the act of sitting in a hot basement in a rainstorm,

Breathing,

Creates immense amount of peace and joy and happiness in us.

Because it doesn't matter so much about what you're doing,

It matters how you're doing it.

Let's change the quality of this practice today.

Let's really find the way to sit in a way that just feels nice to sit,

That we feel more at peace,

More relaxed,

That we're not trying,

We're not striving,

We're not even meditating per se.

We're just allowing ourselves to be silent and simple like the farmers in South Dakota.

Just kind of sitting in the spaciousness,

Breathing,

Nothing's really going on,

Nothing's wrong.

And just rest there.

And in that space we can also find something that we can bring into our daily lives afterwards.

So we all sit in a position that feels comfortable and stable.

Put our feet flat on the floor.

Reviews

Seth: I am glad you visited Pine Ridge Reservation. I did too. Thanks for sharing your travels and what you have picked up along the way. 😃☯️

Thank you for your insight and knowledge and the easy way you deliver 👍