[ 146 ]Developing Equanimity and Detachment through Mindfulness and Awareness – with Jeffrey Stevens

1:13AM Feb 6, 2024

Speakers:

Jeffrey Stevens

Jerry Glowniak

Audience Member

HAMISH

Barbara

Keywords:

equanimity

detachment

mind

meditation

practice

experience

attachment

develop

mindfulness

awareness

instructions

object

life

meditate

thoughts

learn

attention

teachings

long

buddha

This is nice today I'm right here by my computer so I can actually see the comments. No, we're not quite sure what it was. could have been anything. You know, we eat monkey and, and cat, you know, but uh but we don't actually harm the animals which means that they're still alive so they might not be, you know suitable to be eating. Okay for those of you who have never seen me before, this is a very bad way for me to introduce myself so I'm going to get down to business I'm going to get down to business. So tonight I've been doing a lot of my own study, going through some of the early teachings of meditation, the early foundation of the instructions that were formulated around 100 years after the death of Siddhartha Gautama. There are some very interesting teachings that he gave which are not they're not parallel by any of the contemporary teachers that his day as we know, like we're all this is a meditation night. So we're all going to begin we're all going to begin meditation pretty soon and we're doing something that as far as we know, began sometime between three and 5000 years ago. And we know almost nothing of the history. of meditation until the fifth century before the Common Era. And then there were a few meditation masters who came to attention. The most famous by far is Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha, and then I'm gonna forget his name varia maybe someone knows the head of the Jains. What's his name? Someone has Wikipedia there, but I'm just going to look at the anyway, they were contemporaries, as far as we know. We know that people were meditating 1000 years before then but we don't Mahavira Thank you, thank you. But we don't know what they were doing. We have texts that are more in line of prayers or imagery, poetry and so forth. But we know that they were meditating. We certainly know that there was a very high culture of meditation, when the Buddha was about 40. And he left his luxurious situation to go learn about the great matter of life and death in the forests around his father's palace. That is when we get a new body of meditation instructions. And that new body of meditation instructions is not particularly religious. It's technical, and it talks about the way we both the way we interact with the world and the people around us, but also how we interact with the moments of experience that we have. When we apply a very subtle set of skills to our mindstream. We start to change the way we perceive. We also change the bandwidth of our intelligence of great degree. So we become I think the only word that really makes sense in a modern context, we become far more intelligent than we were before we begin meditating. And this is accomplished through stabilizing our attention. So stable, the stable mind or the mind of Samadhi. meditative absorption has the function of developing an increasing intelligence. freedom from suffering and freedom from confusion is not a spiritual blessing. Oh, thank you so much. I was just gifted a carbonated beverage for my stomach. freedom from suffering isn't something that is a particular it's not necessarily best seen as a spiritual accomplishment. It's more the the outcome of an insight into what we are and what our experience as human beings is. That insight is a moment of tremendous intelligence. You could say it's the smartest thing we've ever done, or that we are at our absolute best if we were to measure our life on a graph, the moment that we have an insight that frees us from suffering would be our eureka moment. It would be the moment where we go down in history as great geniuses. And interestingly, in other cultures that value meditation. People do go down in history as geniuses by freeing themselves from suffering in the western culture. They don't We don't measure that or acknowledge that or particularly value it although many 1000s of us are beginning to you know, I had never heard of any of this stuff when I was in my 20s. And then, as soon as I did, it became the most interesting thing to me. Now, just because of the way this has happened before, is my audio synced with my video? Is everything seen or am I in a Jackie Chan film? Okay. And you're hearing me in English, is that correct? Because due to my meditative attainment, I speak in whatever language my listener Well, you wouldn't know that because you all speak English, so I guess you just have to take that on trust. Anyway, pardon me here. I'm getting a little ahead of myself. So in those early years, when we started to get this new teaching of meditation, what we were getting was technical knowledge of how the mind operates to either increase the opacity of the mind, which would enable a confused and missing a misinterpretation of reality, or to thin out the opacity of the mind so there's greater lucidity. And so for the first time, we have a we have documentation of how to work with the mind, not according to what a God or spirit told us, but what what just works and the person who we would look to as proof of the pudding would be the meditation master Siddhartha Gautama who was so good at what he did that he he's now called the Buddha, which is quite a title that would be similar to in early 20th century popular music or mid 20th century music. One might call Elvis Presley, the king. So this is sort of similar to them. So I have been going back over those early teachings for my own meditation practice and also to make sure that I'm able to I'm meeting a lot of new students now who have trained through things like Vipassana or mindfulness, and they don't have a spiritual orientation. They have more of a practical or psychological orientation. And that's a new thing for meditation teachers really I welcome it because honestly, that's a little more the orientation that makes sense to me. The spiritual dimensions of all of this are very inspiring and very deep, but it's not easy to talk about it that way in the culture that I live in, I always having to do translation and find ways around that stuff. And in these many years of doing so, I've learned that you can, you can actually, you don't have to denigrate the spirituality of meditation. But you don't have to emphasize it. You can get a lot of the same thing across by using language that bridges between educated people who haven't been exposed to Eastern stuff, and those who have so tonight we're going to talk about two qualities of the mind that are active in every moment of our life, but are most particularly identifiable when we meditate and those two factors are called detachment and equanimity. And when I say that there are factors of the mind, I don't use that loosely, in the same way that we would say the bicep muscle and what else we have in here, I guess the tricep muscle.

To refer to those in a human arm isn't vague or poetic, it's technical. There are those muscles. I'm told that if I were to peel off this skin, this blue skin that I have, which I've developed through my meditation, tough skin, you I would appeal that off, I would see the bicep muscle attaching, you know, on the bones here and here and then I would also have the tricep muscle their muscles that allow these movements that my arm does in the same way. We have these factors within our mind that enable our our intelligible experience as human beings. We have more than just these two, we have a lot more than just these two. But these two are really, really powerful. And when we see them in meditation, and learn how to develop them, it changes our meditation but it also changes our life. It also changes the way we fall asleep. At night. Very interesting stuff. Now, everyone here has heard of mindfulness. Mindfulness is another one of those factors of the mind. So we have all kinds of things and for those of you who are looking for a reading list, these are the books that I'm that I'm studying right now. This one for the umpteenth time. I don't even know I got this in graduate school. I can't even tell you. This is such a popular book among me and some of my friends that we have inside jokes about it. But this is a translation of elements of the Abhidharma which is the it's the kind of the technical stuff that the Buddha taught. It was remembered by one of his students. One of his students was a real tech geek, who wanted to understand how the mind works. So whenever the Buddha would talk about elements of the mind, Shari Putra, would remember these things. So sorry. Patro was the master. He was sort of the IT department of the early community. He remembered all this stuff, and he helped the Sangha, which would be all of us retain this knowledge and make use of it. Other things like the meditation instructions. are remembered by the by the Buddha's relative Ananda a Nanda remembered the sutras so all the sutras we have to ananda to thank for he's the one who memorize them and then recited them at what was called the first council after the Buddha died where all of the teachings were gathered together. So that would have been 24 2500 years ago. So Shari Putra remembered the Abbe Dharma, the higher Dharma, the technical Dharma, the knowledge that if you have it, you should be able to sort out any type of confusion you experience or any type of weakness, or any type of addiction. Any type of misery can be addressed through understanding how experience is composed. It's the chemistry the periodic table of human experience. So let's now just briefly meditate and here's how we should do this. Just get comfortable and what I would ask you to do is to let go of any effort to direct your mind in any way. We're just letting go practice, but we want to maintain enough awareness. So that we can report out about what our experience was. The intention for our practice is to simply abide free and clear. Not by leaning against anything in particular, like not the breath, not a mantra, not a visualization, but just to abide free and clear of any disruptions of the continuity of fresh nowness. So we'll do that for a few minutes. Is that good? Good, good luck to me too.

I'll set my timer here. So that our now nest doesn't go on too long. Nothing worse. than that.

Okay.

When someone teaches meditation they get to hear what people struggle with the most. And what is the question that comes to mind? I mean, what is the question that you think comes up the most? When someone is learning meditation and has been given instructions goes away to meditate for a little while and then comes back?

what is it that people it's funny because it wasn't what I used to ask my teachers. It's probably what I should have answered, asked but

we go three for three. These days people have a different way of talking about this. Oh, drowsy versus education. Yeah, that can happen. That's usually a little later on. For most people, but some people that's right off the bat. People want to know how to stop their thoughts or how to empty their mind and there's quite a bit of joy just peer to peer advice that you find on social media. I here's how I empty my mind. Here's what I do to stop my thoughts. And you know, any meditator anyone who's actually actually meditated knows that it doesn't work that way. Isn't, you don't, you don't actually have control over that just like you don't have any control over the wind. So we do have to work with our thoughts. Yeah, I understand how that goes.

But still, what we're asking is how do we gain some composure? Some staying power with our intention to just be free and clear in the flow of Now notice, if that's the instruction we're given, then how because thoughts are interfering? Another instruction we're commonly given is to follow the breath and don't follow thoughts. Or watch the mind. And that's a good instruction. Watch the mind don't follow the mind but stay with the breath. It's really hard to make it through the preliminary period of training, when the only thing you're told is to recognize when you're distracted, and come back to your object. Another instruction would be when you find that you're distracted, you just relax. That would be an awareness based instructions. We have these two systems in our world right now, and they're both traditional, they work together. But still, if that's all you have, and you don't have any context, then it takes a certain dedication that not everyone's going to have to make it through that desert until they do have the capacity to do that. The answer to that or the antidote for that is that people are given the body of knowledge about what's going on in the mind that makes it so distractible. What is it? And while there are many ways to approach that, we get down to these elements that are either developed or not developed, just like we all have. We all have biceps muscles. And on some people, it's very clear that they have by they look like they have maybe two or three biceps muscles in each arm. They're very, they're very well endowed. And other people, you know, theoretically, they must have biceps in there, but it's not evident. It's not clear that they do, but they probably do. Well we have these factors of mind, which when they are strong, won't get caught up in thoughts. They don't have to do anything they just won't get you will not get caught up in distraction when they're strong. Now mindfulness is comes to mind right away. Mindfulness is kind of what we train to be able to hold to an intention. Mindfulness is our way of holding to an intention. So if the instruction is remain free, and clear and the flow of naturalness, we rouse an intention to remain free and clear, and not to direct our attention in any way to just be and then mindfulness tries to participate in whatever it can and in this case, it doesn't have something tangible like the breath to follow. That would be easy for mindfulness. But what it does have is it has an intention to remain free and clear. So mindfulness checks in with that intention and tries to see if things are still going well. But mindfulness is very much an outer faculty. It isn't quite as subtle. It's not as powerful. Detachment is a faculty of mind, which avoids entanglement with things that are just passing through. It avoids entanglement. It recognizes entanglement, as like losing your balance when you're walking on or on the road. You will avoid losing balance and because of that, if your sense of balances healthy, you don't fall. You don't have to worry about continuing to get up or to hit the ground carefully. If you just don't fall to begin with so in order to begin to not be distracted, rather than have to worry about how to work with distraction. We develop detachment and detachment is going to when we start to develop detachment, we will come face to face with the part of us that is so desperate and so confused. It's like an animal within us. It's attaching to anything at all rather than not be attached to anything at all. We're desperate. And it runs the show in our life. The opposite of detachment, no surprise is attachment and attachment is the primary condition of human beings. It actually it would be said that it's the primary condition of any being that we share this world with. This is the realm in which beings who have strong attachment are born. This is the desire realm is what it's called. Now in order to have attachment you also have to have one other factor that we're not going to go into which is ignorance or not knowing the nature of things. If we knew the nature of things we wouldn't attach, but we don't know the nature of things. So we either could attach or we could develop non attachment or detachment and not attach. That was very wordy there. But essentially what I'm, what I'm saying is that for those of us who are not awakened from fear and suffering, yet like people like me, we're not Buddhas. We can still develop the faculty, which will keep us from clinging to things which aren't real or aren't helpful or aren't worth our attention. By cultivating detachment. So detachment is one of the most important factors for release the release. Hamish what is that? Oh, release the release. I'm trying to think here. Go ahead. Unmute yourself and give me some commentary there.

I don't know if I should say anything more about release the release. But that's, that's that's my experience of detachment and equanimity. And then just a few minutes there. I'm scared to say this too, but I attained a certain release of the releasing so that I am in a state of equanimity. But at the same time, I don't depend upon it.

Yes, that makes sense to me. And and if you are practicing and I remember that we've we've talked before you this is not your first rodeo. I'm aware of that. One learns how to abide before attachment can kick in. Yeah, and that actually is called equanimity. Okay, yeah, that's the second thing that we're that we're talking about here. So detachment, so thank you. Detachment is the way when we walk through where might we go where there are hucksters everywhere. I mean, where, where can we go to get away from them really, but you know, there are always going to be remember years ago, I had a business with a business partner and we decided that we'd go to the Chamber of Commerce meeting. Why? I guess we thought that's what you do. Maybe you did that in the 50s. I don't know. But so we went to this chamber of commerce meeting here in Colorado. And we just thought we're gonna make friends and ask them you know, for advice. Hey, do you know a good accountant or what was it like starting your business? Everybody was trying to sell us on something, everybody who came up to us at these functions. It was just so tiring. We never went to another one again. It was just so predictable and I had to learn how not to be stressed. When I realized that what I thought was a genuine interaction turned into a sales pitch. I just had to not worry about it. I couldn't really prevent them from coming up to me. But I I could prevent myself from that. That change from openness to protection. Detachment would would very much have protected me from that. It would I just wouldn't have any expectations. But at the same time, I wouldn't need to get out of the environment. I could still be there. I mean, for me, this is often what it's like when someone is listening to the radio or I haven't watched television since 1986. So I have no exposure to modern advertising. But when I go to someone's house who has the television on all the time, it's one of the most challenging things for me, because it's just it's the most incredibly manipulative thing that I've ever seen. And it's on constantly and I have to work on it. And what I'm working on there is a combination of detachment, and then the next quality, which is equanimity. Now, if I'm at say, My aunt's house, and she's got the television on, and I'm seeing the advertisements, the incredibly descriptive and the amazing advertisements for toilet paper just blow my mind these days. Nothing like that existed when I was a little kid. We just wasn't necessary. We didn't really need that or whatever the latest thing at Burger King is just it's mind boggling to me. My managing myself while that is on and not taking the bait is non attachment or detachment. It's me working on that. As soon as I feel the stress, I relax and I cultivate detachment by relaxing in the face of something that is lowering or agitating. I'm cultivating this factor called detachment. That's how you build it. Eventually, you get to the point where it doesn't even rouse you. You can experience it and nothing doesn't bother you at all. That is equanimity. Equanimity is when you can experience the horrors of the world and it doesn't move you in an it doesn't mean it doesn't diminish you. It doesn't minimize you. It doesn't trap you. You don't feel that you have to protect yourself I mean, unless you do have to protect yourself but that's should be obvious equanimity prevents those waves from getting in and penetrating you. It's something that is built from the inside out. So you're not you're not developing a thicker skin. You're developing a much bigger core. So things aren't going to be able to get through to you. It's kind of like when you when your neighbors next door are having a party. You can hear the bass frequencies. But you don't hear the treble you don't hear the guitar or whatever. Maybe they're listening to loud orchestral music, so you don't hear the clarinet to the violins but you do hear the bass and the tinny and things like that. The deep frequencies penetrate the walls and they come right into you but the high frequencies don't. Equanimity makes everything's frequency higher in that analogy. That is why Andrew recommends horror movies. I didn't know that he recommends horror movies and recommends horror movies Hmm, that's what nightclub is. Seems like that's not the kind of nightclub i would want. But anyway, I'll leave that up to him. I recommend excellent Japanese and Italian movies. That's what I recommend. I just saw a Federico Fellini's Amarcord at the at the Art Theater here and that's what I recommend. So I guess that's how he and I are different. But anyway when we understand that a healthy mind number one will not become entangled with thoughts. And number two, will not be moved by the presence of thoughts. It won't be entangled with it, but even beyond that, it doesn't even care. It's like when you walk through the spring, that you chill in the air doesn't bother you. But when you walk through early winter, the chill in here might. It just means something. It's different to you. When it's springtime. Ah doesn't bother me at all spring is coming. Both of these are created within us by our response to things that either entangle us in attachment, or disturb our equanimity and yes, actually in that case, I would see why Andrew would talk about horror films, interesting horror films.

I would say that another thing that you can expose yourself to, but you want to be careful, I mean, this this isn't like you don't want to do this as a practice if it starts to ruin your life, but you expose yourself to things which stimulate you into fantasy, because much of our lives are probably not living in terror of an immediate threat. But living in preoccupation with how things could be better. So some of you have heard me talk about how every year when my wife and my brother and I go spend a week with my father. We go to Los Angeles and we stay in Los Angeles in the beach communities. And he walks up and down the strand in Los Angeles at the multimillion dollar homes. multi million isn't even anything there. And then he tells us, I'm playing the lottery. And I want you guys to think about what we're to do. If I want $100 million and gave it to you and I am horrified by this. Like he's almost that's almost pornographic. Like don't do that to me, because I know what happens when I play that game with him. How my life is so dark for three days. Because I start thinking i What would I do with 100 million dollars it's that type of thing has ruined equanimity. And what is it that ruined equanimity attachment? So when we are meditating, now this is particularly the type of meditation which we have to have relaxation going on, because we have to let things come in mindfulness practice, can tend toward being tight and focused. And we're doing we're closing the gap. So that distracting influences don't get in and that's a good thing. It's just like if you go out in a in a thunderstorm you want you want to be protected. You don't you don't want the top of your hat to be open. You want it to be closed. You don't want the stuff to get in. But in this case, we we do we want to make sure that the that something is open so that the agitating components of our life can get in and we can develop equanimity and we can develop detachment. So Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai is also probably the best film ever made, actually. I'm going to read to you the definition of detachment, and then and then the definition of equanimity. Detachment is a distinct mental factor, that when referring to an object within conditioned existence, which is just our every day it acts as the actual remedy for attachment toward it. being removed from the object, it remains detached and one does not grasp for it. It has the function of preventing attachment and increasing the remedy for it. Attachment is the tendency of the mind that desires to possess a particular object, whether it is animate or inanimate, for as long as we allow ourselves to be subjected to its demands. We shall only obtain disappointment and suffering never the satisfaction that we seek. Thus, detachment is the opposite of attachment. It withdraws us from a compulsive involvement with the object to do an understanding of its true nature. Thereby it eliminates this grasping and clinging to possess. Being under this is pertinent being under the influence of attachment. We find ourselves driven here and there in the pursuit of transient pleasures, lacking any real value. With detachment, though, we are enabled to see more clearly and objectively and thereby focus our attention and energy on the accomplishment of truly worthwhile aims. You could say that detachment is how we pick up on things that could trick us and we aren't tricked. We can't get rid of them. But we start and it says this inherent unimportant thing is the mind of detachment has not already invested in the thing that is going to try to attach it. It's in a neutral position to begin with. So when something new comes in, all it has to do is not give over to that thing. It doesn't have to be rude. It doesn't have to be aggressive. It just doesn't give ground to this new thing. It holds its own. It holds its own. And by doing that, things that come in and water and attention, they have to retire to the periphery of our experience and wait. And what happens when they do impermanence kicks in and they dissolve. It's very powerful to understand what happens to distractions when we simply don't respond to them, but make them queue up. They can't do that. They might think they're waiting their turn, but five seconds from now. They might come back up and do it again. But detachment keep saying I'm not taking visitors now. Very powerful. Now let's talk about equanimity. Equanimity is really, really exciting for a meditator because equanimity is the natural state of abiding in wisdom. That is equanimity. Our ultimate nature is equanimity. But if we don't know that ultimate nature are not out of luck, we can generate something similar within the mind called equanimity. And that can train us to resemble our natural state. And that's how meditation works. True equanimity wouldn't be a product of meditation, it would be a product of non meditation you've probably heard me talk about that before. So equanimity is a distinct mental factor that without having to exert a great effort to prevent excitement and sinking does not let the mind be affected. By them. It's a quality ascribe to a state of mind in which detachment is present. It has the function of settling and leaving the mind in rest upon a wholesome object. So what would the wholesome object be for us it would be this natural flow of nowness. In equipoise, what is it oh equanimity equanimity is in a relationship with a natural experience of now notice. And it doesn't get involved with something else. It's involved with this. It doesn't get involved with that nothing disturbs it. Non attachment on the other hand, is just not getting entangled with those things that come up, not getting entangled, not getting entangled. It's almost like you have someone outside of your office when you're writing your great work, sending people away Geoffrey's not receiving visitors right now I just put your name here thank you. No, no, Geoffrey is not receiving visitors you know the paparazzi and all that. And then you are just doing your work you are in equanimity you are engaged with your wholesome activity and detachment is preventing anything from being able to disturb you. The stronger one is, the stronger the other is. And this is the subtle magic of meditation. So let's close with one more session of meditation and this time, observe. Are you attaching to things are you aware of when you're attaching to things or are sometimes are you so in the flow that nothing is going to take you out of that? Are you experiencing equanimity? Are you experiencing detachment? Or are you experiencing their opposites?

Okay, gretchin Goodbye. short session. Ding

Okay. One thing I want to say about these types of observations are that if we have been practicing, using the mind, which would be mindfulness practice or the Tera, Vaada, and practices usually emphasize this. Concentration practices, that kind of thing. equanimity and detachment, though, we will develop those but we will develop those probably farther down the path. As a benefit, though, of the practice that we're doing, we will develop other things on the front side of the path. So we'll develop a type of strength and attention and clarity and a very real experience of relaxation because of that, but it isn't the same type of relaxation that comes when we start having real insight. And on the other side, if we had been practicing using awareness instructions, Mahamudra or Zog chan or probably some Zen traditions are like that. It's likely that we will have experiences of equanimity, real equanimity because we're recognizing the basic awareness and expression of that awareness. When we simply drop our effort and be we will experience the real thing real equanimity and real detachment, what we might not experience powerful mindfulness that will come down the path for us. So each type of path has things that show up early and things that show up later. And like I am an awareness teacher, all the meditation stuff that I emphasize is coming from the Maha Mudra tradition. So it's more awareness and relaxation. In this style of teaching, we experience equanimity, that it's a powerful, wonderful thing. But we might not feel that our mind is very stable. We might still be wrestling with a monkey mind, yet, not wrestling with it the way we used to because we're beginning to get glimpses of the profound inner nature of what we are. So it's just good to know that these practices have their own. They have their own journey. Whether you're doing mind based practices or awareness based practices shouldn't shouldn't really matter. It's if you have found a style, any teaching tradition that rewards you that you like, we'll just keep doing it. Just know that some of these things will either be later or sooner. And same thing with their counterpart. Mindfulness comes a little bit later for awareness practitioners. But equanimity and detachment come early, and it's the other way around for I can't speak for everyone but that's how those types of practice are going to are going to unfold. So I'd like to open up the floor before I do in case anyone is just going to bounce out of here. Over the last couple of years, I've just paid attention to the types of questions that people ask all the time here and elsewhere. And people are always asking me where they can read more. And I'm not very good at recommending books. Most of the books that I have read are pretty technical books that are books that people read in graduate school, and I've learned that you can really disappoint people when they spent 30 bucks on an obscure title and yeah, I will I will and I definitely will. I'm gonna get Okay, I'm gonna get to the questions in a second. Um I'm in the process of thinking through what books to recommend because there are some good ones but in the meantime, I have written some things and I'm starting to put them in places where people can read them. I've got lots of stuff, probably 100 pages of writing that I would like to get out over the next couple of months. But the first stuff I have are the questions that everybody has the fundamental terminology of meditation and that if you go to the website that Alyssa mentioned, there's an email course you can sign up for that it's free. All it's going to do is send you articles, and they're short emails that give you the basics of a term. And if you want more, there's a link where you can click to a much longer article. And this is something that if you're looking to read if you want to know more, you can just do that there very simple articles to read. So the mind and its function by functions by geshay robbed him geshay Robson was an amazing scholar. I think he died in the 90s. He also happens to be one of the coolest looking people. So he was a looks like a Tibetan linebacker that this was a deeply knowledgeable human being and he trained Stephen Batchelor, who's a popular writer. And so this is a translation says technical is a very technical thing on some of the seminal documents of the higher studies within meditation, so the mind and its functions and then this is a more modern translation of the same material by Steven Goodman who just passed away not long ago, but it's called the Buddhist psychology of awakening. I think this book is fantastic. I would recommend this book to anyone who is going to power through some you know, this is everyone can understand this, but it's not light reading. So those are the books that I came here with tonight. Let's see if I have any other books. If you want a really extremely dry book. This is called the central conception of Buddhism by Terry Schabowski, who was one of the great early 20th century Russian scholars and I don't recommend that you get this unless I don't know maybe you're gonna do a master's degree or something. Otherwise, give this one a miss and just just buddy up with someone who've already read it. But if you're looking for a Dharma text, or real dharma text, it's going to take you from A to Z. I recommend this right now. indisputable truth by chokyi Nyima Rinpoche I just can't recommend this enough. It's one of the first books I read back in the 90s or that well, once I started getting into the deeper stuff I just picked this up because it said indisputable truth and I thought okay, well let's see what you got indisputable truth. We'll see. I had studied classical Greek philosophy before then and so I was ready to take it on. And then I guess you know, that was what 30 years ago, changed me. I am the man I am today because of this book. And we just spent my wife and I just spent a summer with him. He's now in his 70s he's an excellent teacher. And I just couldn't believe this. The topic for the retreat was this. This is one of the most prolific teachers in the in the Tibetan scene, and he decided that he was going to teach this this topic. It was wonderful. Anyway, any question? Oh, yes, there are questions. Um shamatha meditation with an object isn't this strengthening attachment to the object, Laurie it is, it is strengthening attachment, but this is where it gets interesting. It is strengthening attachment with a virtuous intention. And so it doesn't develop the wayward unhealthy form of attachment. But it does contribute to the tendency to think that attachment is a necessary component of wisdom. So that's why someone eventually drops that practice and just practices relaxation. In the Mahamudra tradition. They will say that after doing shamatha, which you should do for 20 years or whatever. After doing shamatha you have a hangover and relaxing and the nature is what will cure that hangover. Interesting. Okay, the books Yes. Did that. Thank you. I always learn something new with you. That's That's wonderful. Deidre Okay, that's it. Any questions? The floor is open?

I'll be okay if there are no questions. Don't do it for me. Just like there's one cat for you. What's that? Oh?

All right. Music. Barbara, I'm looking for you. I don't see you. Are you is your camera off. Camera on there you are. Music huh? What kind of music

could be anything?

Is it just a constant like every time you practice sort of thing?

Most of the time? Not absolutely every time but sometimes it I mean it could be. Could be songs I like songs. I don't like themes to television shows commercials.

The commercials are the worst ones. Sometimes my wife and I play jokes on one another when we're in retreat where actually I play jokes on her. She would never do this to me. Or I go up to her. And I'll say some jingle from some commercial that we had as kids. And boy, there goes her practice for a couple of days. I don't do that anymore. But here's the thing about that this is such I can relate to this. I can. One time I was going into a five week retreat in the mountains and no electricity no anything. I was ready. I was so prepared. I was really going to make the best effort. And on the way up I listened on repeat a three hour trip to the Rolling Stones album sticky fingers and that was the theme of my retreat. I could not get it out of my head. And I mean that's some pretty you know, that's about as dark as rock got back then. And you know, I don't want anyone to know that I was listening to that. I listened to it all the time. But that was a reality. I mean it was real. I couldn't get its constant and was such clarity to. So here's the thing. There are two approaches to meditation that we're going to have one or we're going to have the other and you'll know which one you primarily have. If we are using the mind and directing our attention toward an object and holding it there with the development of mindfulness, we're resisting things that aren't our object and up to a point they will get stronger and stronger as they try to pull us away or interrupt our experience. Now there will come a point where we cross a threshold, and then they shrink down. It's almost like they're absorbed into the fabric of the mind. That's at the beginning of samadhi or the fourth stage of the nine stages of shamatha. Don't worry about that though. If that's not what you're doing. If you are developing mindfulness using an object, you just have to keep going and you have to learn how to relax but stay foot but stay on the ball. Keep your attention on your object and don't fight the music. But if you just don't do anything, other than the music's just going to come in especially because it's it's having an effect. If you're doing awareness practice, you in awareness practice you can't manipulate the mind. That's the fundamental instruction. You simply welcome it and now this might seem like that would be that's like being in jail with your enemy or something like that. But through relaxation and accommodating whatever arises. You are taking away its platform by not resisting it. Now the question is how long until it goes away? Well, who knows? Who knows? But when the when your objective is for that to disappear, you aren't really relaxed. And so you either have to completely open to it, or you have to just persist and don't fight if you're doing mindfulness practice. Both hands should be on the wheel, not one hand on the wheel and one hand out the window fighting it with a sword. But this is something that probably all of your all of your distractions all of your discursive thoughts are banding behind that. It's like a third party candidate that's trying to separate you from your objective and I'm not going to elaborate on that. Don't worry. I can, I can appreciate it. You know, this comes up all the time. comes up all the time. Tibetan teachers thought that was very funny. They didn't hear it as a problem. People would say things like, Oh, I always have music in my head when I'm when I'm trying to practice and I remember one Tibetan teacher said you must be a very romantic person. You didn't understand No, you don't understand this is hell. Especially when it's you know, obnoxious I mean, any mute anything that you don't want, that's there constantly is, I mean, if it was original creative music that might not be so bad, but yes, it would still be distracting, though. That's true,

but I could Yeah, do something it. Sure.

That would take you away from meditation. There's so many people who they want to know what to do with their brilliant thoughts, their brilliant ideas for a novel or a concerto or whatever it is, while they're practicing. And the only true thing is you got to let them go. When you're practicing. You're practicing. You're not taking notes for your magnum opus. But I wish you luck. I really think that if you if you apply either of those. You will, you will get past this. But it's just a skillful approach. And Don't tense up against it. That's the main thing.

Yeah, continuing with it. I have tried both but perhaps not long enough. Thank you. You're welcome.

All the other times of the day, all the time. Evelyn, it sounds like you're a very romantic person. Okay. Okay, Jerry, how are you?

Hello, Jeffrey. This question is very much in line with you know, some of this stuff that's in the chat column. I have a I'm not sure the best way to describe it. Let's say a hearing problem. Where you know, even if I get very relaxed and I put a meditation object in front of me, and the thoughts go away, but what remains is I have a problem with my hearing called tinnitus, you know, ringing in the ear and the more the thoughts go away, the louder the tinnitus comes. I mean, I can clearly clearly hear my heart beating. And it's it can the more the thoughts go away, the louder it becomes.

This has been diagnosed as tinnitus Yeah. You know, your physician aren't you know, you know, you know how to diagnose yourself. I don't know that there's anything that can be done. I will say that people can meditate and develop even with chronic pain. So chronic sound would just be another variation of that. You know, as we, as our body begins to tire out and break down, it coincides with the stage of life where we are most able to meditate. inwardly we are ready for wisdom. We have we have seen through that, the tricks and confusion of our early life and we're no longer seduced into a small story. We're ready. But our body is a ticking clock. And we're all going to have something I was I just found out last week that I have arthritis in my hip. I've been sitting too much too long, and it's not going away, Doctor so we can't do anything about your pain. Eventually you just have to get a hip replaced. A day before then I thought I was young, and I'm old for the very first time. But uh, I think that it's probably going to be something like If music is there or if chronic pain is there. Relax. Awareness is not the physical body and you don't only have your physical body you also have awareness, awareness grows, it becomes vast in the body just remains what it is. So if we only have this much awareness than anything that the body does, hurts, but if we have this much awareness, it has more room. And if we have more and more awareness, we can accommodate the suffering that we're experiencing. So yeah, I am sorry to hear about that.

Well, I mean, your birth certificate. The only thing your birth certificate indicates is that you're gonna die.

At the very least.

Yeah, Andrew has a course on preparing to die. I tried to sign up for it. But by the time I got to it, it was all sold. Out.

Yeah, but all those people next year there'll be plenty of space

Andrews been the man for that for a long time. We used to joke that like at some point. He's gonna die. Then some younger person. I mean, this is back on. We're all part of a big community. And I used to think is that going to be me because I was starting to take on some of that when I was the head of a center here. Like I was doing. I was talking I was like, 40. And I was, you know, but it's very important that the meditative knowledge about preparing for death. It's very important that we know that that's available, so that we can move to that when we feel ready for it. It's very be very unfortunate if people didn't even know that their meditation practice. I wouldn't say that it's cradle to grave. I'd say it's middle aged to grave but I think it's really important to understand that last part. There are teachings all the way to the end. My teacher has meetings every year with people who think they're going to die. He started to have programs for people who are either they're going to be I can't remember what it was. I think he's opened it up. But it was, you know, people who have who have been diagnosed with something or people beyond a certain age, or people now it's people who really also want to attend these teachings. And he talks very frankly and very encouraging. Lee about how a meditator can die and you know, nothing super magical nothing secret, you learn to relax with what is arising by remaining in awareness. And that's what Andrew will teach in this. I promise you he'll call it child luminosity recognizing the mother, but that's what it is. And if you're learning meditation, now you're learning what to do. But not mindfulness practice. That's that's very good to do. Just like it's very good to do. Pull Ups and planks and deadlifts. But when our life reaches its end, that's not what we need to be doing. Anyway, it's 730 and I'm hungry. So hope to see you all next month. We are having another finding ground meditation retreat February 24. And we are we have introduced some and are introducing some of the next instructions that come along with that. So please keep in in touch with that if you are doing those practices. And if if you're looking for something to read, go to Jeffrey the meditator.com and get that email course I should have put that out years ago because that answers all kinds of questions that I ended up having to say again again, but everybody happy February

look forward to seeing you all again. And bring your questions. Oh, I guess I should say this April my wife April and I are relaunching what were known as the finding ground Dharma talks, which are there talks like this a little more formal and very particular Dharma teachings that we did them and we got a lot of response and it just was like, Oh, I think we need to prepare for this next time. We need to be a little more ready to receive all the questions and all of the stuff that comes along with that, but we got that ready. And so we'll be sending out you'll either see it on our website or in an email that I send you that the finding ground Dharma talks are going to be beginning again, I think in March. So Oh, and they're about these the virtues of mind. The virtues of mind those are the topics for the first few. So everybody needs to eat. You all look hungry. Get out there and have some fun. And those of you who have got got that song going on. Enjoy that while you're eating. Okay, I wish you all the best.

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