learn
the road

huh

tomato wanted to talk about here
and that in particular
here
it goes along with to practice

for some unknown reason practice has gotten all mixed up with ideas about religion
and beliefs and ideals
but actual practices a lot more like on
one of those people who used to get a very small boats and set out on the ocean
to look for new worlds and i probably more when they got to the edge they were going to drop right off

the first talks i ever heard
about medication
i compared medication to being an explorer

and i was told right there at the beginning that it was gonna take a lot of courage but of course i didn't listen
that kind of discouragement obviously and encourages more encourage the encourage you
more

we may not realize that in your own practice but
i think
we probably have an awful lot
our ideals
and probably have an awful lot of
assumptions that you've come along with and that's probably true rather you just started practicing are very recently or where they've been added for a long time
when they were on green moines or the old comedy the old timers
we still have a a lot in common
and if that for the commercial said beginner's mind that's the best
and it's the best because ah we imprison ourselves and most curious ways
and are one of the ways in which are bound to get imprisoned is with the believes that go along with our practice
in that
caravan tradition we talk about that
mindfulness
and that in then we talk about emptiness and in vijayawada we talk about energy
he learned his traps
because whether we are just have begun or whatever been at it for a long time we somehow feel that we never quite measure up to these words that we keep hearing about
and ah
what a shame but because of human nature the yeah
catchings become on
i'm just another thing that we're trying to measure ourselves against
therefore i and so common
what practitioners that when we find ourselves are once again very humanly angry or jealous or whereas a row and one from another
and that we feel we have somehow a misunderstood practice that we don't measure up and we do this at called good number on ourselves
of course i'm mindfulness has a lot more than a word and emptiness is lot more than a word
and i energy
as a lot more than a word
what want do these words need
in virginia we talk a lot about loudness i've given many talks on malice but what does known as really mean what does ah
what does even the truth of suffering me what does even ah
happiness mean what does when we talk about a
peace what does that way
my our own experience of practice is a bad to continually i'm finding out that i didn't understand what any of this meant
and i i think all the things that happen says you have been practicing longer is that a will once again realize that you didn't understand
out
we began to get the hang of the fact that that's what it's all about that continual not knowing
but i it's certainly play these tricks again and again
these tricks alga turning the dharma into a security blanket
and that a woman can become quite arrogant and if one has been around for any quite a short time at last longer than that someone who's just arrived or one can find oneself or using the dharma using the teachings using the practice as a way to a
hold oneself up
and that
and
like one has that so kind of authority or know something or other
the truth is that when you really want to begin exploring you're going to be very lonely and you're also going to be continually humbled
and there's not going to be much room for africans and the arrogance that inevitably does arise was i going to be continually shot down by your own courage to once again
step out a little further
because really a kind of discoveries that are made
have nothing to do with
belonging to anything on being part of anything
it has much more to do with
having the courage
two
guy i suppose has in the best way to same approach to die continually in fact i once heard a quote from circulation which said that
one should be willing to die again and again and again
and i just that was his definition in this particular quote it meant practice
what does that mean
i think as long as you're on satisfied with any answer you're in trouble
because it this kind of satisfaction feels good but it feels good in a very old habitual way
the kind of satisfaction that comes from finding answers to the questions what gives you this kind of warm
feeling inside
a tends to be an
supporting our blindness of some kind or supporting some kind of old way of maintaining the same old view
i've always been so curious about the fact that even the smallest little same enemy or little insect doesn't like to feel pain you notice those ones that don't you go to the
ocean and he just put your finger near them and they closed down
and everything goes then
so it doesn't seem like such a
terrible thing that we feel fear mean there's the threat of pain
it seems to be poured over being alive being a living being
is that there's going to be
hi
a reaction against discomfort
that's very curious to me why bridal set up like this
but it's also are part of a specialist of the whole thing that it makes no sense whatsoever
and rather than that senselessness or meaninglessness being a depressing thing
hey meaninglessness if you put it a whole different convocation on that word of meaninglessness
that would actually answer
ha i discovery that you might make and then discovery would be that the world is the human experience is very vast
can it's always warning that we give to everything that keeps it so small
what i'm sure you've all heard this kind of teaching lab this is what they call buddhist teaching
but what's so seldom gets talked about as the fact that it does mean that if you really want to explore
if the really want to keep questioning if there's a gentleman investigation of of whatever is happening
rather than these are this kind of a pleasant assumptions about everything
if there's raleigh kind of daring investigation which i think is required
you're going to experience fear they'll look and only explore you can only really continue to explore took a degree that you
have befriended fear
to the dobro that you can communicate with fear
to the degree that when for comes up you can somehow agree with it
nationally on a lot of self help type are ways of thinking talk about conquering fear
that would be the equivalent to a kicking a big bat a baseball bat by your bed and hitting yourself over the head with it every time you've called any discomfort
which in some senses right people do with alcohol and drugs and everything you can imagine the keep hitting themselves over the head
i'm knocking themselves out
so that they don't actually have to experience right dot com boom she used to cover vividness i'm experience
personally my my own experience of practice over the last year's is that
if there's a commitment to really wanting to
ah not rest anywhere but keep growing
if there's this commitment to exploring are investigating or
an open question

when things get very vivid
are they get up so close that you don't any longer fear of at it's out there
eventually things get visit and up emotionally things get vivid and i are the all your senses things get very vivid
sometimes yeah you read about that sounds pretty good sounds like it would be actually quite enjoyable
wow

remember

how does the euphemisms i think now this openness on an emptiness in an energy even line for it's more from isms
for what

i remember when i first started to practice my son was fourteen
and i began to tell him proudly about buddhism
he said it sounded like a something for and sour old men
stop me in my tracks were that statement
is it really grim to talk about suffering as it is a grim to talk about that fear accompany our company's exploration
it often sounds pretty grim
is it a ground talk about these things or is it ah brave to talk about them or as just a sensible
where is it stupid
you know it could be
i don't frequently haunted by this now that i've adapted this whole get up and i hadn't promised during identity going
mayday ah it's all wrong and how that better
i if it isn't wrong i i would have no one to a but my teacher who continually told me something like that was the case
i think it was wrong in some sense that the way we think about it anyway as all along i'm always been told by i know people who come in however dharma has been explained to them
the as rothesay
but because so often what you believe what your pregnancy what you want to be true in comes out of your mouth as the teachings of the buddha

so let's just talk about real stuff a kind of stuff that stops us in our tracks are where are in this building or never even heard of medication
and let's talk about what maybe is there little precious
tip it that we've been given that might distinguish us from everybody else who also in feels all these things
at it curiously enough we get stuck in exactly the same process as everybody
and that is we get stuck when on
when all the stuff that is on top of fear comes up all the are conflicting emotions range bitterness resentment jealousy
self pity depression
i'm feeling left out
was your name it i'm sure each of us has our ah
the sad character that we wish it was someone else but unfortunately or fortunately ah ah
just when we felt we had it all together some innocent remark and a part of as somebody or some app occurrence in our life completely throws us for a loop
and i think it is the definition of her
maybe i how you progress along the path as and beginning he might feel like you're swimming in some kind of mess of being from for a loop at every second of your life and then had like this sort of vague an overwhelming continuous know
noise and then as you progress and it's a twenty years later
when he was a more space around these real humdinger that come up and adjust
for you
what i actually something else a changes to and that is that ah that vividness of that humdinger that flattens you the bat out of nowhere ah
you just find yourself
he was so embarrassed because you've been practicing for a long time and so you see very clearly what you're doing there's nowhere to hide your consume it will see it as well as everyone else better than everyone else it's completely humiliating you're supposed to be someone over that people look up to and
basically you're you're having a tantrum

i was down it
but ah it comes
to your realization that even though you were having your tantrum in a way that there's no way to make it look pretty nevertheless it's some kind of them
gateway to really understanding everything that you've ever heard spoken by any teacher anywhere in any book in any chanting you've ever done and any anywhere you want to understand emptiness
will you will probably find it when you fly off the handle on your inner rage but you're not able to blame it on any one and you're also not able to repress it and you're also not able to act it out and find yourself
in the middle of a flame
and you find yourself ah
the edge of a pin maybe that's that the how high is that flagpole but when you get to the top of it he ran the question where do i go from here
hundred fame
hundred feet
fly polls even get higher than that she didn't either
i will find yourself there sometimes sure sometimes it's in sir
and as sometimes it sir in the times of solitude
ah that's the easy part even if it was a tough session even if you were very alone in solitude that's the easy part you can also find it right in the middle of crisis whether it's major crisis like death or serious illness or in betrayed
or something like that where the ground rarely falls out in a major way or whether it's just this crisis of identity when this
a persona of yours is completely shattered by your own ah
upheavals by your own childishness by your own
can protect

i feel i know the graziani and where we talk about
energy
it
actually these right mindfulness emptiness energy it's all getting at the same thing
which is a how
your experience and i think particularly
a really vivid ones like at least are strong emotions under which is this area very
ah pointed fear
but these things are what show us the real meaning of these words
because they nail us an email us right to the point of time and space that we are in and when you stop there and don't act out and don't repress it don't blame it on anyone else but also don't blame it on yourself when there's some
sense of ultimate coward
that's that's when there's just no place else for that place
yeah you're actually like one of those poor buggers on a appeared
just there
children was chaise to talk a lot about this and he used to assure us
that this made for very soft decent people
and i had to remember those are showing words many times because they were talking about is going into
here
and ah not as a way to solve problems
i'm not as a therapy
but actually as a complete undoing of old ways of seeing and hearing smelling and tasting drinking
no frontiers seem to be ah
right here all the time
and i we will know that people have all kinds of experiences of this and in fact a whole new age nauseating ah
praise on this in a way that i say nauseating because
it's like a pupil virginia to be onto something and then just making it into another belief system
but on the other hand i i can't feel too critical of that knowing myself as i do because this knowing ourselves was knowing humanness and i are you really know yourself
when you know everybody
and you know everything
and you realize that ah
no one ever tells us that when it gets really are sharp and really vivid
that we should communicate with that we should agree with that we should somehow a friend that everyone encourages us to spread softened it up serve it over and and we shouldn't be encouraged that way because that's what we do naturally read them doing that
yeah robin now we have any sense of past lives will have been doing that for rooms of years and if we don't have any feeling about past lives we've been doing it for every second since we came out of the world
her as long as the mind can remember it we've been doing this handy for the time we can remember anything we've been doing this we've been doing this ah escaping
so naturally when you're onto something
there's always gonna be that tendency and it's good to know that mount as a way of beating yourself up
what other
it's like a that's real compassion was when you see how you imprison yourself with everything her everything is a way to not really stay
live that pointed newness of vividness
so next time you have a tantrum in your own particular style which can be as cold as ice or as hard as the sun
it can create chaos like a hurricane or it can create a kind of deadly stillness like i
a stillness of the desert
there's all kinds of ways to say no to your experience
and the next time you find yourself there but which will probably be this evening
the
consider yourself lucky
everyone else would be very irritated with you to take the people who know you well because there you go doing it again and it's very unpleasant for the others
my precious where their courage comes in because i run over the yeah expression is that i've been nurtured on in the dharma is not afraid to be fatal
and that the reason for this is a power for one is because
you don't want to make a mess on the other hand
you don't know how like to do more i wanna know how not to make a mess to repress
or to just say her cares and just make a mess and those are usually only two options that we are know about
i think the essence of our practice in something in the middle of those two extremes
the famous middle way
whenever taught us how hot it was there
they were said it was cool hasn't been my experience
or if it is cool
it's unsettlingly cool
but
the degree to which you can continue with the exploration is the degree to which you
befriended or communicated or said ah
yes to that fear were just to say that actually
real our being
the kind of well being that we all get into this for revenge on that we are
we ever even start this whole thing
is because buddha sits there with his lovely smile
and there's some kind of promise that i were going to feel good
is that a why

i be

you just have to ask those kind of questions you have to just ask and ask
anda
the trick is though that you have to really keep asking and not bail out
even when you find out that something is ah
but not what you thought
that's what you're going to discover again and again and again from happening is what you thought
i think i could say that with great comfort
emptiness is not what you thought
neither is mindfulness are suffering even for that matter
compassion not what you thought
love
what a nature
medication

those are a code words for something you know know in your mind
sunday that am
anyone could experience
holzer our golden keys for am
what life really is when you're not a building in it all the time and thinking it something
sarah

i like a good enough for question

well
is it true that there isn't open and deductible
well i can tell you what i found out

hmm maybe i could tell you that there's nothing more comfortable
when this kind of explanation but you don't know what i mean when i say that because my know this idea of comfort you know which means on
hailing good
ah
the opposite of pain forth so on
but ah
many words are better like on your appetite grows
yeah a sense of smell gets better
ah
when you arrive
he began to notice at people's faces and you can tell what's going on in their hearts
that is very satisfying but i couldn't call it a comfortable exactly
but it sat make sure
glad to be live
hey grateful to your teachers
until the lineage of teachings that you ever stumbled on this whole thing
we feel like i'm
he got on the right train
and you have no idea where it's going
but at it seems like are you don't feel that era in a small dark prison anymore
hey
but the tricky thing is the question over
i fear that ah
what's part over that
waking up process and usually everybody feels that that's you've just made some major mistake
because of fears frequently covered over by a lot of other things like anger or jealousy or
all kinds of things
since it gets very hard to talk about it in ordinary language but alien we're not really talking about anything mystical at all
temper tantrums
he recognized that were here
considerable either so afraid
and you can see where it kind of young the world
i'm had of you are highly open them out without meeting our crew is up and question is knocking on

what what is your experience of whip of how many you actually do when you push yourself with what actually happens
like silently a question sounds like you know how to do it that way so could you describe that like what's the
in the interpretation the wrong way to do i become very fire
by sliding along
if you're way ahead
nothing that
so what came before that feeling
no i mean any actual experience and
exam
what came after
a paper
the effective relief
me anyway
our new movies with the consequences of that
and you can sort of sin without
sit
yeah i mean basically i think it's like a process it processes you
an instruction you get his is
not to tighten our timbers you know don't repress it
don't act now don't act it out is easier because you know you can actually maybe bite your tongue or
but don't repress it that's harder but on the other hand you know what repression is so so then what well that's what you don't know that's the whole process that's the whole processing that's what i say i think it's via that's where you discover an emptiness and all these
words the true meaning of them
and including patience
but it so you actually do not know what to do
and then you know you remember all the teachings on not knowing as thing is great virtue
but either it doesn't feel very good maybe it feels like cement to describe it i was described as feeling like a fire
and basically when i'm in it it cause i can know when
no lose situation it's or or at least a no win situation
because my mind continues to come up with the same arguments you know it's like what i do you actually if i have the luxury to do this as i actually get in the meditation posture and i just sit with it emerged only does come the time you know when it's nighttime and as feeling is still with you and normally
he would go to sleep but instead i i just sit with it
and because there's something about the way at process of ceo
a process you in a major way because basically it's the yeah it's intense
one ego gratification

savannah say or what what should i actually you like what word should come out of my mouth what would be right action what will be right speech but even like brought the son that's what you do not know
you don't know and how do you find out you find out by this
why this ah
come on
i weren't
it can answer it
right it's like a really important one
and as you know he get plenty of opportunities because we're talking about our major
staff are major vividness where where were the thing that got us into the darwin of beginning and we go away tends to be like a
someone will had this analogy like a dog that puts his teeth in your arms and will not let go because basically it's teaching you how to die properly
and it's touching you are
it's teaching you about where you are
build up this whole boss persona and think it's separate from the rest of the world it's kind of all encapsulated in that way that we get stuck with its anger or depression or whatever it is that's like ah
this beautiful vivid clear picture of how we keep refuse to melt
so i guess at some kind of
bravery that's required there but so worth it because then you really understand what's being said
and why you're practicing
ha
his bike
not
the process
could you describe back
as i have it seems like a reliable accurate and correct way to
area over there right now i heard that the well very well so that i'll give us
a great get out of his career as a
and five years suggesting something out of them
not quite sure that you didn't have to give up yeah yeah that's right i a letter saying they give up the idea of well with right if you were there and you say they wouldn't be asked awful
i get even
i'm for the best question i have heard

i
it's like i i have kind of paget ask
hello
am i even when people have been around for twenty years as some will secretly think that they aren't gonna get night
will
the fact is eating know how you're gonna get
because it it actually is outside of the usual value systems i think it's a fair enough to say that an

what you're going to get inside
not imprison anymore
when to see the trick is that were imprisoned him as these lisa
preconceptions of what it means to be nice
he say he we have our own measuring sticks
but always different styles benefited others have the main thing is you a benefits what's like pulls the rug out when people need the rug pulled out and
so

one
we've been didn't want to be nine hundred the well accurately
the been fighting
hey
oh yes indeed
it's really embarrassing things about becoming so much more aware
can becoming more aware as
become more aware is very beneficial in a do see we see very clearly but you do and then
and the interesting thing about it if it sir it helps you to understand other people
i do find that it that everything is so
okay in the sense of her
hi lisa
unpleasant discoveries
seem to be necessary information you know in terms of just being more hall
in terms of being more or less apart from the rest of the whole thing
to tell you the truth i don't care anymore that all this stuff comes out
it just seems like that's part of being human it just comes up
and
when i look at teachers i see that they still have lots of staff you know it doesn't seem to be a that doesn't seem to be about it's all about us particular getting rid of the stuff but was home identity that goes along with the stuff usually
killing righteous feeling guilty and all that spin off step
ah this kind of real strong awareness and israel willing to keep questioning makes a definite bent in all that spinning off at fisher
but in terms of just
stuff arising
i think it doesn't matter at all
i think it doesn't matter at all
just as in dreams you know
in dreams if you are lots happens and i you go through all kinds of things
maybe you've been really kind of the set send the state of well-being for a long time and then in dreams there's all this peculiar anxiety and death
screaming at people or whatever goes on and will dream you know that the one who's screaming and the one was being screamed at and then can never be abuser and the abused and everything that's going on the dreams as all you and so after a while in the waking state so-called waking state
whether the person that's yelling is out there are over here and whether one that's feeling well being is over there are over here why does it matter
he know if something to do with a humanity and the
how communication between the whole thing is not not as saw separating herself so much

huh maybe we stopped