Why Meditate? With Joseph Goldstein – Insight Hour Ep. 250

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Join Joseph as he shares his deep knowledge of the path of mindfulness.

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Well, hello everyone. It's really good to be with you all. uh

even if it is via Zoom.

Um so today I would like to address a very simple question which at one point or another

may have occurred to you and the question is why meditate?

Why am I doing this?

Is it about reducing stress, having greater ease in our lives or is there something more?

In the opening lines of the dharmapata which is as you know one of the collections of the Buddhist teachings in verse the very first line of the first

verse says mind is the forerunner of all things.

So that immediately gives us a clue as to why meditate.

Mind is the forerunner of all things.

And here me mind means more than just thoughts or intellect.

Mind in the Buddhist sense consciousness is the basic capacity to know to be aware.

And it also includes all of the different qualities of mind which in Buddhism are called mental factors which arise in every moment of

consciousness coloring that awareness in a whole variety of ways.

So for example, concentration, love, restlessness boredom joy happiness compassion, all of these are mental

factors qualities at different times and they color the consciousness according to their own particular nature.

So these qualities that are arising in the mind are the manifestation of our own particular conditioning.

What we have either knowingly or unknowingly cultivated in the course of our lives.

You know have we cultivated love? Have

we cultivated aversion? Have we

cultivated uh fear or joy? So our mind is the manifestation

of all of this uh conditioning that we are all manifesting in the way we live.

And this condition thing sometimes u manifests in um sometimes unusual ways because the same

experience of sights or sounds or tastes or sensations in the body.

Different people may have very different reactions to the very same stimulus depending on their particular conditioning.

So I had one very striking example of this early on when I met my first year chairman Indraji in India.

He loved hot chili peppers. The hotter

the better.

And so he we'd be eating together and he would be having these hot chili peppers.

And once I just tasted a little bit of one and my whole mouth was on fire. It

was burning.

And I asked Maninja, do you really enjoy these? Because the

experience seems so unpleasant.

And he explained in his way of understanding the hot chili peppers were very good for health.

So the way he was experiencing it, even though the stimulus, which to me was very painful and unpleasant, he had it in the context,

oh, I'm doing something really good for my body here. This is healthy. And so he was enjoying them. And you just struck me because it was such a good example of

how we each filter our experience through our own particular background, our own particular conditioning.

So when we say mind is the forerunner of all things, it's more than an abstract philosophical principle.

what we do, how we feel, all of our aspirations, all of our regrets,

they're all expressions or manifestations of the mind. The mind is the forerunner of all things.

So I was first introduced to intensive meditation practice when I went to India. It's about Gaia. This goes back

India. It's about Gaia. This goes back long time 50 years or more.

And I met my teacher Munaj.

And he said something when I first met him that totally captured my interest.

And I was young at that time. I was just I think 23 years old. I didn't knew very little about Buddhism.

But when I first met him, he said something so simple.

He said, "If you want to understand your mind, sit down and observe it."

And the common sense of it was so striking to me. There was nothing to join. There were no rituals. There were

join. There were no rituals. There were

no ceremonies.

Nothing. If you want to understand your mind, sit down or in any posture and observe it because how else could we understand

our minds except by doing that.

So again, this is another response to the question of why meditate.

So we come to an understanding of our own minds.

As we do this, even from the very beginning, there's one insight of insight meditation

which becomes immediately apparent.

So if there are some of you who are wondering, well, I've been practicing insight meditation and I'm still waiting for the insights to come. Well, you've

all had this first insight and that is

Noticing how often the mind wanders.

Has anybody not had that insight? I

think not because you know we give it this very simple object of meditation.

You know, might be the breath or certain sensations in the body and then very quickly the mind hops on these trains of association,

you know, and pretty soon our mind is off in some completely other place. It's

like we hop on the train, we don't know what that we've hopped on.

And because we didn't buy the ticket, we don't even know where the train's going.

And so after some time we find ourselves by the end of that particular thought train we could be in a whole different

inner mental environment because of this wandering mind.

So again in answering the question why meditate one response might be well it's just to make sense of all of

this. You know as we begin to look at

this. You know as we begin to look at our minds to observe it and see everything the mind is doing it can be confusing. There's so much

going on.

So we meditate to come out of the confusion, to come out of all our habitual

reactions into a space of greater wisdom, of greater clarity.

We begin to see much more clearly what actually is going on in our experience rather than being lost in it. we begin

to see what it is that's shaping our lives.

So the first step in this whole process through meditation is calming the mind and collecting the attention.

So it's really strengthening the steadiness of mind, the the ability or the capacity for the mind to stay steady

on whatever we're attending to.

When we do this, instead of unknowingly hopping on all these chains of associations, we become much more aware

and much more aware more quickly of when the mind is lost in a thought, when we're carried away by different feelings and emotions,

and when we're actually being mindful of them.

And even just this very simple thing, being aware of when we're lost and then when we're actually being mindful

really highlights for us what mindfulness means.

And this is why sometimes in practice I really encourage people when we're lost in a thought and then wake up from being lost

to pay attention to that very moment of waking up. So lost, lost, lost. And

then oh, thinking right there in that moment, instead of either judging ourselves, oh, lost again, we can actually have delight in the fact

that we're now awake and have a very clear sense of what wakefulness means, what awareness means.

Like we've just gone from being deluded to being awake.

So one piece of encouragement here is that for as many times as you get lost in thought that many times do you

awaken.

So why not delight in all those moments of awakening rather than judging oneself for having been lost.

That was a little aside for me that moment of transition is really powerful and it's one that we often just pass over. We don't we don't highlight that

over. We don't we don't highlight that moment and what can be learned from it.

So at first we may notice and become mindful most easily of kind of the loudest thoughts or the longest stories that we're

engaged in or the more dramatic emotions.

Of course given the state of the world these may be coming with greater and greater frequency these days.

But what's interesting that both in stillness meditation and in walking meditation and also in our daily lives,

we may be missing the more frequent but quickly passing thoughts, the lighter ones.

And I had a really interesting experience of this recently a few years ago on a self retreat.

I was just going for a walk but with the intention and application of being mindful as I was going for the walk. So it

wasn't the it wasn't the vapasa creep of lift move place.

It was just walking at a you know more or less normal pace but being mindful as mindful as I could.

What was so surprising to me in doing that and this is after many years of practice, how many

quickly passing thoughts would arise even in the even in terms of one step.

And in those moments, even though they were quickly passing, in the moment that they were going on, I was not mindful of them because they

were so light.

They were underneath my radar.

So this was really interesting to me, this undercurrent of thought.

So I want to read just a little teaching from uh Dujo Meet. It was one of the great Tibetan masters of the last century

because it really uh points to this experience and the importance of becoming aware of this undercurrent of thought.

This is what he wrote. When you are meditating, it is easy to identify your coarse thoughts when they arise suddenly.

But until a few of your subtle thoughts have arisen and are recognized, you do not know that they are there.

These are called the undercurrent of thought. And I love this next phrase.

thought. And I love this next phrase.

They are the sneaky thieves of meditation.

And for that reason, it is very important to post the guard of mindfulness.

So I love this the thieves of meditation because we think we're meditating. We

think we're being mindful and yet underneath and we are we are to some or even a large extent. But

underneath there are these pretty frequent

arising of these light thoughts. And

what's interesting is that for me, I saw so many of them in one way or another

were referencing a sense of self.

It could be a plan or a memory or a comment or a judgment.

And so unknowingly with these thieves of meditation, we're reinforcing

this view of self, this view of I.

And so I really began to appreciate with interest. It it really captured my

with interest. It it really captured my interest to watch not only in times of meditation formal but throughout the day

just to notice the many times these undercurrent of thoughts are present and that that is one way of tremendously deepening our practice.

We're we're dropping down to a more subtle level. We're

subtle level. We're training the quality of our attention.

You're refining the quality of our attention.

So one example of the impact of this undercurrent of thought, the example that came to my mind when I began to observe it in myself,

it felt like the soundtrack of a movie or a TV show.

And you know, this is probably a fairly common experience when I'm watching a movie. Sometimes I

can be so absorbed in the story that I'm not even consciously aware of the soundtrack, the music in the background, and yet that soundtrack

is powerfully manipulating our emotions.

The music is a certain way and we get tense or another way and we feel happy or light. So all of this is going on in

or light. So all of this is going on in the background and we're hardly even aware of it and yet it's having this tremendous impact on our lives.

This is the same and this is why I'm emphasizing so much and why it's been of such interest to me to really uh

emphasize within our practice of mindfulness keeping an eye out for these very light thoughts.

Sometime sometimes it can be really amusing because we become aware of these random thoughts that just pop up in the mind.

One time I was on retreat with Sido Pandit was in Australia and you know as many of you know he was a very strict and demanding teacher and everybody was really trying to be impeccably mindful.

We were online for lunch and I was second online.

We're going through the lunch line and the person in front of me, reaches the table with the food. He takes the lid off the pot

and puts it down. But as he put the lid down, it fell to the floor and made this big clattering noise in the midst of all the silence.

And the first thought in my mind just in that moment was it wasn't me.

I mean one a sense of humor about one's mind is essential in this whole path of practice

because um as one as one yogi had told me in an interview once as he was observing his

mind he said yeah I've discovered the mind has no pride It will do anything. It will just But we do not have to be caught by it

all, right? We don't have to be

all, right? We don't have to be identified. If we're aware of it, we can

identified. If we're aware of it, we can really have a sense of humor about everything the mind is doing.

So with this attention to the nature of our mind and what's arising, not our thoughts or emotions, we also begin to get very clear

about the deeply conditioned particular habit patterns that have been developed over the course of our lives and that are driving our

lives.

So for example, are the conditioned patterns that we see come up again and again? Is it obsessive planning?

Is it worry?

Is it anxiety?

Is it the judging mind either of ourselves or others?

Are our actions motivated by generosity, by love?

Are they motivated by desire or by anger or probably some combination of them all?

So again, this investigation and understanding this is not a theoretical exercise through the mindfulness of them all,

it's showing us so clearly how we're leading our lives. So instead of just acting out mechanically the patterns of our

conditioning, we're really beginning to see what's going on in whatever we do.

We might ask the question, what quality of heart and mind, what qualities are being cultivated?

What is becoming habituated? What is

being strengthened?

And what makes this entire exploration so transformative and this is really

this understanding is what imbuss practice with tremendous power.

It's the profound realization that we have agency in this whole process.

So it's not that we're condemned to just act out all the patterns of our conditioning.

As we cultivate mindfulness and we see with greater clarity what's going on and not so lost and carried away by it,

that's when we can exercise some discerning wisdom and see, okay, what's skillful? What should be cultivated?

skillful? What should be cultivated?

What's not skillful? What should I let go of?

Through the power of mindfulness, we begin to see that our minds can be trained.

So this is a tremendous understanding because I think most people in the world don't understand that.

You know, we're just living our lives and we are who we are and we act it all out without the understanding that the

mind is a dynamic process that can be trained.

And it's mindfulness of what's going on in our minds that allows us to make wise choices.

So the question then for all of us is trained for what?

Right?

We are transformed but transformed in what way?

So again the Buddha in one statement he pointed out in one very simple statement he pointed out the various possibilities

when he said our minds can be our best friend or our worst enemy.

And I think we've all had experiences of both of those.

When the mind is in a wholesome state, it becomes our best friend.

And when the mind is in an unh wholesome state, especially in an extreme case, it can become our worst enemy.

So with this understanding, we see the causes of either great happiness and fulfillment in our lives or the causes

of great suffering. and the realization we have agency in that. So that that's a powerful recognition.

So as another answer to the question why meditate we can say to make our minds our friend

and I love that.

What could be a more intimate friendship than friendship with our own hearts and minds?

What I so appreciate about the Buddhist teachings is the clarity with which he sorted all this out.

You know, I'm often struck by, you know, in meditation, we give the mind a simple I'll just be with the breath. And it's hard enough

just to do that to to link together five or 10 breaths, you know, with with strong mindfulness.

And yet the Buddha was able to see the entirety of the mind and all the ways it manifests. And he thought with such

manifests. And he thought with such clarity it's like he gave us a map and this is one you're very familiar

with. I think

with. I think he taught and we can see for ourselves when we act motivated by greed or by

hatred or by delusion suffering follows.

And when we act motivated by generosity or by love or by wisdom, it's the source of happiness in our lives.

So it's in this regard that his holiness the Daly Lama said, everything rests on the tip of motivation.

In our investigation of our own experience, of our own hearts and minds, we need to really focus and understand and

become aware of the motivations behind our actions.

But this is not so easy to do.

You know, we might understand on an intellectual level. Yes. motivation

intellectual level. Yes. motivation

is really an important aspect and and that understanding aligns with our values.

But how often do we actually apply it in our lives?

In the midst of our in the midst of our daily lives, do we stop and reflect before we act, oh, what's the motivation here?

Um, probably not that often, you know, because motivations can be very subtle, you know, and

sometimes hard to see. They're often

mixed.

Here there's a powerful intersection between the understanding that everything rests on the tip of motivation

and our mindfulness practice.

Because while in the course of our normal lives, motivations may be hard to pick up if we

haven't trained ourselves.

We can in meditation through mindfulness, through practicing being mindful of motivations, we get a lot more skilled in becoming

aware of them even outside of meditation just as we're living our lives.

So there's one arena of activity of life in which I found to be very fruitful

for beginning this exploration of motivation and that is the whole arena of speech.

Now, of course, not when you're on a silent meditation retreat, but in the midst of our daily lives, we speak a lot. You know, in terms of all the

lot. You know, in terms of all the interactions we have in a day, speech is a very

prominent part of our life experience.

And just as an aside, one of the many lists in Buddhism are the 10 wholesome and unh wholesome actions.

Of the 10, four of them have to do with speech.

So that that's the importance that the Buddha gave to being mindful and aware and

discernment about our speech and the motivation behind it.

So again, as as many of you know, he outlined four types of wrong speech. You

know lying backbiting gossip, and useless talk.

And I'm not a poly scholar, but the word in poly for useless talk is my favorite poly word.

some papa lapa because it sounds just like what it is.

And I have found that to be well as the other three of course such an interesting place to practice.

I can be hanging out with friends just in a social situation, you know, we're we're just hanging out and conversing

and so often I can see in my mind an impulse to say something that is totally useless.

It has no bearing on anything except perhaps to say here I am announcing my presence.

At those times when I can see that impulse the motivation to sum paple up and I'm

mindful enough to refrain it always feels great. It felt oh yeah that was would have been really useful.

It feels like it's a conservation of energy rather than a dissipation of energy.

So again, this is I was going to say humorous or it's it's a fun way of playing because we really have a direct application

of seeing the importance of being mindful of our motivation before we speak or before we act.

So what's so significant about this whole process, the whole process of exploring our minds and our actions

is that none of it depends on blind belief or dogma.

And again, this is one of the things that first attracted me to the Buddhist teachings. It was not about, he wasn't

teachings. It was not about, he wasn't saying, come, you must believe this.

It was always framed in come and see, come and investigate for yourself.

This is my understanding coming out of my realization of what brings happiness and what causes suffering. Check it out.

And I love that because then our entire lives become the laboratory of our understanding. We're testing out

in ourselves for ourselves in our own experience.

Okay. So there's really focusing giving emphasis to becoming aware of motivation

before our actions.

another arena of investigation of our minds of our experience which

I found hugely helpful in my practice and in my life and I've talked about this a lot in these last few years.

It's condensed in one phrase which I now use a lot.

Don't waste your suffering.

Don't waste your suffering.

Although external circumstances in our lives of course will impact our experience and sometimes there are very

troublesome or even harmful or unpleasant experiences that come in the course of a lifetime. No one is exempt from that.

But how we relate to those experiences are completely up to us.

No one makes us relate to difficult feelings or emotions or situations.

No one makes us relate to them in a particular way that's totally within our capacity

to see okay how can I relate to this in a wise way.

So it doesn't mean that unpleasant things are going to stop happening to us from time to time or even frequently.

But it does mean that we can train ourselves and learn to relate to these unpleasant experiences whatever they may be you know in the body or in

our emotions or relationships how we relate to them is up to us.

So one example of this is again one of my favorites uh is from the um Zen master poet

Rioan you and he lived I think in the 1800s something like that and he was this you know monk in Japan uh lived alone in the

mountains very poor and a lot of he he wrote a lot of haiku and poetry and he would wander around play with the village children and wonderful stories

about his life.

So he lived in this kind of ramshackle hut some you know up in the mountains someplace very few possessions.

One day he came back to his hut and everything had been stolen.

So what did he do?

He wrote a haiku the moon at the window.

The thief left it behind.

Now I wonder how we would be if we came back to our house and everything was stolen.

Would we be writing haikus?

Oh, the moon at the window. I'm so glad the people left it.

Probably not.

But I love the story because it just points to yes, our minds can be developed or trained to relate in

skillful ways, you know, and if we don't quite become great haiku poets, we might at least develop

and strengthen the quality of equinimity.

You know that realizing that Lots of things happen in our lives. Some

we enjoy, some we don't. Have we

developed a capacity to hold all of that without adding more mental suffering to the situation?

So this is particularly um revealing and it has been for me in my practice can be going along and for whatever

reason there's some suffering in my mind which really means some um difficult emotion you know might be frustration or sadness

or anger or desire or anxiety or there's a whole long list of So when I'm either in formal practice or

just in my life when something comes up that's disturbing you know my mind is no longer at ease

by don't waste your suffering I mean don't deny it or try to push it away.

Don't avoid it.

Don't waste your suffering means taking an interest in okay this unpleasant emotion is arising in me.

Can I investigate it? Can I explore it?

Not only can I explore the the energy of the emotion itself taking interest. Oh, anger feels like

taking interest. Oh, anger feels like this or sadness feels like this or anxiety feels like this. When we have

that interest in those moments, we're not particularly identified with that emotion. We're

actually being mindful of it. And so, we learn something.

And then we also want to check out what is the attitude in our mind about this emotion.

So just as an example, suppose there's anxiety.

Do we just have a version to it and not like it and try to get rid of it in whatever way we can?

Or if we if we're checking the attitude in our mind, we say, "Oh, there's a version here."

version here." and then settle back into that quality of acceptance, the the ability to open to it, to feel

it without reactivity.

So years ago, many years ago, the most afflictive emotion that was coming up for me in my practice was fear.

And it wasn't fear about anything in particular. It was just like free

particular. It was just like free floating fear but it was really strong.

I'm working with it for a long time.

Yeah. Noting at fear, fear, fear. But it

just felt locked in.

And then at a certain point, this took a long time for me to realize.

I was doing some walking meditation. The

fear was coming up. But then something something switched.

And that switch was reflected in the thought, if this fear is here for the rest of my life, it's okay.

It's okay. And I realized that was the first moment in all of that time that I was truly accepting of it.

Because even though I had known it was there and I was noting it, it was not being mindful.

And it highlighted the difference for me between recognition and mindfulness.

And we often confuse the two.

We think if we're recognizing what's there, it means we're being mindful.

But that's not necessarily so. We can be recognizing something through the filter of aversion

or through the filter of attachment.

Mindfulness means yes we do recognize what's there but then that extra quality of acceptance it's okay so for me it's

okay became the magic mantra whatever I was going through oh it's okay to feel this it's okay and that

acceptance then made possible the real exploration of So, I'm doing some editing as I'm talking because

I could see we could be here for an hour and a half otherwise.

Okay. So,

everything rests on the tip of motivation.

So, we explored that arena.

Whether it's through speech or any any other activity we do, don't waste your suffering.

Which means when we are suffering in some way that is a fantastic opportunity to understand on a deeper level the

patterns of our conditioning and what's causing the suffering and ways of letting go.

So there's one other or one more arena of investigation again in response to the question why

meditate and the Buddha highlighted this so often uh in his teachings.

the importance and many implications of seeing impermanence on more and more refined levels.

How do we relate to the simple fact that whatever has the nature to arise will also pass away.

And what has the nature to arise?

Everything.

Everything has the nature to arise and therefore will pass away.

So I recently a couple years ago I came across a phrase in the text which I had not um I had just overlooked. I hadn't come

across before but it highlighted this insight into impermanence. It made it more vivid just in in the language of

it. It said everything is always

it. It said everything is always becoming otherwise.

You know it's kind of an unusual phrase in English but because of that it just highlight yeah everything is be always becoming otherwise changing. So I could

be going for a walk and I don't know maybe I get a twinge in my knee and now oh becoming otherwise instead of oh why

did that happen? what whatever you know instead of ruminating about it all. No,

it's just things becoming otherwise all the time.

So there are two two phrases which encapsulate this understanding.

One is a phrase that I've used a lot.

Anything can happen anytime.

Right? things are not as stable as we would like them to be.

Anything can happen anytime going along fine, feeling healthy and all of a sudden you know some illness arises.

I mean there there are countless example of anything can happen any time and sometimes it's really good things that can happen at any time.

The other phrase which the Buddha emphasized in one powerful reflection which he said that we should really

cultivate or practice every day.

He gave emphasis to this reflection for the deepening of our practice.

So he said this is what we should reflect on.

Whatever has the nature to grow old will grow old.

Whatever has the nature to become ill will become ill. And whatever has the nature to die will die. This is just nature.

But here's the tagline.

And I am not exempt.

And I have found that to be so such a powerful reminder because as we go through our lives

with various expressions of becoming older and becoming ill and maybe even in a dying process and I see it in myself even with little

things even though intellectually I know I am not exempt.

I can see in myself that deep feeling, well, I should be exempt.

You know, it's refusal to acknowledge the dharma of all of this. It's just

nature. It's just the law. It's not a mistake.

But if we don't attend to that, then we get attached to things staying the way we want them to stay, the way we

like them.

You know, if we're attached to summer, how do you feel in winter? If

we're attached to youth, how do you feel as you're getting older?

If you're attached to health and vigor, how do you feel when you become ill?

It's so clear that if we are not aware in a living way, not in a theoretical or intellectual way, but if we're actually

living and practicing this that things are always becoming otherwise and we are not exempt.

As we integrate that more and more deeply in our understanding in our lives,

then we navigate all these changes with much greater ease.

So all of this comes out of our refinement of perception of tenage.

So one question that might arise at different times.

So we may wonder when we hear all this if everything's changing all the time and everything is always becoming otherwise what's the point of doing anything you

know having relationships or striving for goals or working for the good if everything is always in flux

what be what becomes the motivation you know for our acting in skillful ways.

So there are a couple of distinctions which are very helpful to understand in our lives and also specifically in our

meditation practice.

So the first is understanding the difference between attachment and commitment.

Attachment means we want to we want something to stay the way it is.

Whether it's a relationship, whether it's some pleasant experience, attachment or clinging stay this way.

Of course, that's impossible.

Commitment means that we can have a steadiness

towards an aspiration towards a goal through all the changes.

Right? So the commitment can be there.

I'll give you an example and this relates to another distinction which is between expectation and aspiration.

So an aspiration basically it sets the goal for our practice for our lives. We aspire to become more aware. We aspire to become

more compassionate. we aspire to be more

more compassionate. we aspire to be more generous. So the aspiration sets the

generous. So the aspiration sets the direction and the goal.

Expectation means that we want things to be the way we want them when we want them. So a

good example of this which I've experienced countless times in my practice.

I can be having a sitting and what we would call not in a very skillful way but we we all do it.

I would have what I call the good sitting.

So what we think is good really means it's pleasant. Right?

it's pleasant. Right?

So, we're having a good sitting. The the

mind is somewhat concentrated. The body

feels at ease.

Yeah, it's all going along very smoothly.

And then we think, "Ah, finally, I got it.

Finally, I got this meditation thing."

And we get up and we can't wait to come back to the next city.

It's the very next sitting we can sit down and the mind is restless or it's bored or there's pain in the blood.

There's things are always becoming otherwise.

We can have the aspiration to greater ease, greater clarity, greater understanding with the understanding that there will be endless ups and downs. It's like a

sign curve. You're up and down and up

sign curve. You're up and down and up and down. But the slope of the curve is

and down. But the slope of the curve is going up.

Attachment or expectation is trying to fix things which is counter to the understanding of the great truth of change.

So I just want to say a few words.

I I couldn't let a talk go by without referring to an example at all.

kind of the the last area of exploration and answer to the question why meditate has to do with something which is very

subtle hard to understand really counterintuitive it goes against

our common understanding of things and that is the Buddhist teaching on selfless lessness or nonself.

We have the idea commonly that there is some essential self, someone behind all experience to whom it

is happening. And that's the eye. That's

is happening. And that's the eye. That's

the self.

And this felt sense of self is deeply habituated.

Right? Our lives evolve. lives revolve

around it. So it would be worth investigating.

We're worth investigating if there as the Buddha taught if there is no self no permanent

being to whom things are happening then it would be interesting to explore well how does that felt sense come about because it's so prevalent it's so

predominant how does it arise in the first place if it's not there so Understanding how it arises is not complicated.

It arises whenever there's identification with the momentary experience.

A thought arises.

I'm thinking, right? Or my thought. We're identifying

right? Or my thought. We're identifying

with it. or different emotions.

No love, anger, fear, joy.

I'm angry, I'm fearful, I'm joyful.

With all of these, the eye is extra.

Each of these experiences, whether thoughts, emotions, feelings in the body,

they're all arising impersonally due to various causes and conditions.

manifesting their own nature and passing away.

So it's love that loves, it's fear that fears, it's joy that jets.

The thought is the thinker.

There's no eye behind it. It's not that they are referring back to a self.

They're just arising due to the various conditions, manifesting the nature,

passing away when the conditions change.

But we're so habituated to identify with all of this phenomena.

And it's that identification which creates that very deeply felt sense of self.

So our practice really takes us to tremendous depth of understanding to

to a transformative way of understanding what this whole process is about.

It's important to to understand that this is not just a philosophic inquiry, although it it is also interesting on that level,

but it's a way of understanding that we can free our hearts and minds from the clinging and attachment and

identification that is the cause of suffering in ourselves. and other people.

ourselves. and other people.

And through this understanding, and this is what may be unrecognized for a while, this understanding

of the selfless impersonal nature of phenomena leads directly to a compassionate engagement with the world.

And there's just there's a a teaching by Dilok Ramch who was another of the great Tibetan masters

and this this is a teaching which it just it inspires me so much.

He said, "When you recognize the empty selfless nature of phenomena, then the energy to bring about the good

of others dawns uncontrived and effortless."

So I love that it's like compassionate activity is the manifestation of the realization, the understanding

of the empty selfless nature of phenomena. And so one little phrase I

phenomena. And so one little phrase I like, compassion is the activity of emptiness.

And so we just bring together this transformative realization about our own experience about

the nature of our own minds and body and see how that directly manifests in terms of caring and compassion for the world.

So all of this is really in response to the question why meditate.

Um so I hope it's some of this resonated with you and maybe help you know to create some areas of interest for

further exploration.

We'll sit for just a couple minutes. Let

all the words settle.

May all beings everywhere be at peace.

Thank you all from the East Coast.

Hope you continue to have a wonderful revealing rest of retreat.

It is a fantastic thing to be doing it.

It's really a privilege to have the opportunity to be doing it. Um so many good wishes.

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