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Hello, and welcome. This is the Zen community of Oregon, making the teachings of the Buddha
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Dharma accessible to support your practice. New episodes air every week.
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We've been talking about transforming problems into wisdom, but we've had a very, very busy time,
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so I kind of can't review my notes on that. But I want to talk about something else this evening.
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Joseph and I were, as you can see, is online. Joseph and I were at a visiting someone this afternoon
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who is terminally ill, and they're on the way down and out. So what can we offer? What do we do when
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we look at our own lives? We look at the dystopia of our particular culture when we look at friends and
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relatives who are not doing well. What do we say? How does practice become alive? How does it make
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something meaningful? And because if practice is not meaningful, if the spiritual path is not
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useful in these really difficult situations, what good is it? So I think it's very important that we
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examine this kind of situation. And we all have been there. We all have had friends or families or
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parents or loved ones who we knew there was no hope for them. They are going to die. Or we've seen,
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you know, a company comes to the end or a job comes to the end or a relationship comes to the end,
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and we know it's passing. So how do we practice? Well, practice with what do we say to somebody?
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How do we meet this so human situation? Everything comes to an end. It's not surprising.
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Part of the agreement we all make with the universe is if we're going to be born, we're going to die,
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right? And there's no escaping that basic agreement. So what can we say and what can we do and how
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can we practice with that truth about our life? At some point, we'll be the one in the ICU.
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At some point, we'll be the one in the retirements in the elder care facility. So we'll be the one
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who is. What do we do? What's important? Now, the first thing that we've talked about when we
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were doing the Transforming into Wisdom, when this is very important, pieces, while we have the
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opportunity, we calm ourselves down, we stabilize the mind, and we look directly. Because if the
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mind is just agitated, if all we think is what's real is our thoughts, then we never can find
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the stability, we never can find the clarity, we can never find the equanimity to actually see
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any of the deeper truths. So, regardless of what we're facing, come into the present moment, calm
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the mind down. Now, that calming the mind down piece, sometimes I've given a whole talks on,
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you can't believe your thoughts. Believe some of your thoughts, maybe, but you can't believe
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them all, for sure. Part of it, you can think anything. You can think you're a white turtle,
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you know, it's just a thought. You can think you're a complete failure, it's just a thought.
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So, it's really important to examine the nature of thought. If you look at thought, self-liberating
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disappears, comes out of nowhere, goes nowhere. We can think anything. When we actually realize that,
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we can think anything, and we think, why do I believe any of my thoughts, much less all of them?
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And why do I believe the dystopian self-deprecating, dysfunctional thoughts? Why do I believe the
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thoughts of hopelessness and despair? So, part of the practice is calm down, be in the present moment,
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and really have an appropriate relationship to thought. Thoughts are tool. There's something
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that could be used. We could pick it up, we could analyze things whether we could take apart the
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toaster and put it back together again if we have a certain state of mind. But it's not a tool to
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be used for everything. So, part of practice is we come in, we sit down, we breathe, we're in the
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present moment, and learn how our relationship to thought. Now, in the present moment, right here,
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right now, if you're not thinking about what might happen tomorrow, or thinking about some ice
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storm, or thinking about some political thing, or thinking about some dystopian future,
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not thinking about the economic collapse of the universe. Right here, right now, seeing this room,
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things pretty much okay. You know? A few aches and pains, I was going to be with some back problems,
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their knee problems, but you know, the scale of things. So, one thing we can all observe,
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we can all observe is if we calm down, pay attention, there's a place where it makes okay.
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That's right here. Now, an interesting practice I was reflecting on is, and you might try it right
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now, maybe it'll work best with the visual field. If you close your eyes and you look at the visual
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field, the visual field is not blank, it's not black. If you look at the visual field, look
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at it very closely, you'll see it's made up of texture, it's made up of dots, it's made up of
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spots, it's made of red and white and black, it's made of little pixels, micro pixels.
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Now, if you're looking at your visual field with your eyes closed,
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zero in and see if it's possible to focus on one tiny spot. Is it possible?
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Maybe not be. Is it possible in that visual field to only focus on one tiny spot?
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Check it out. And whether it is or is not, move your attention to another part of the visual field
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and focus on one tiny spot if it's possible. And then, is there a difference between these two
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spots? Any spot in the visual field? When we are looking at something with a microscopic
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mind or zeroing in, there's some very interesting things that are revealed.
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Now, you can experiment with that in the day or night if you want to experiment with that,
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but the same thing is true with time. So, we're sitting right here. What's the smallest
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fragment of time we can be aware of? Right now, you have to still mind. Don't believe your
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thoughts, even if they may be bubbling. What's the smallest fragment of time? Now, if you have a
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heartbeat, it goes thump, thump. Sign wave. Sign wave is a whole increment of time. What's the smallest
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amount of time? Take a minute and check it out. What's the smallest amount of time you can
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experience, feel, know? You say, ah, ah, is it beginning, middle, and end? What's the smallest
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fragment? Ah, we can actually attend to.
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Thank you for listening to the Zen Community of Oregon podcast. And thank you for your practice.
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