today, I want to continue giving a bit of an overview of the teachings of Buddhism, meditation in general, also specifically to how I share it. And, you know, on a high level, what it's about is establishing and deepening people in the Noble Eightfold Path. In the three trainings, sīla samādhi paññā, ethical conduct, meditation, and wisdom. And the point of this is right there in the noble truth right at the start of the eightfold path it just had the end of suffering the end of stress dissatisfaction friction and if not the absolute total ending the lessening of it the ability to live our life with one percent fifty percent less stress less affliction and proportional to how much we can release and let go there is peace there is freedom there is love there is care.

I kind of work like that. Today I wanted to focus in on the part of the path on meditation and wisdom. I'm going to essentially combine them and maybe talk about them a little bit different than how they're formally listed in that text. And really Buddhist meditation we could think of as this term Samatha Vipassanā. Sometimes these are talked about as two different practices. They'll say samatha is the practice of calm abiding or concentration.

Pick something like the breath and you hone in and you get concentrated. And then vipassanā is the practice of insight, where you look more closely at something, you investigate it, you study it, you gain wisdom. I love Thich Nhat Hanh just calls these the practices of stopping and looking deeply, capture something very essential. But the way the Buddha seemed to talk about Samatha Vipassanā wasn't so much as these two different practices, but more so as two qualities we bring to bear that we can apply in our meditation practice.

Similar to how we probably wouldn't think of patience and kindness as two meditation practices, but two qualities we bring to bear in our meditation. And so the quality of samatha stabilizes the mind. It anchors and roots it in the present moment. The quality of vipassanā looks a little bit more deeply. What's going on here? To start with, samatha practice essentially uses some anchor to ground us in the present moment.

And it could literally be anything. A mantra, a visual object, a sound, anything you could come up with, really. But the Buddha especially recommended the body, whether that's the breath, that's a body scan, that's a specific body sensation, some other combination in the body. And there's a variety of reasons why, but I guess where I've taken it over the years is unless there's some other object that particularly calls to a person, maybe in a moment or over their career, you know, the body is a good starting point.

There's something very fruitful about cultivating a relationship with the body. And so we bring attention to the body. And the practice isn't to try to control or change whatever our object is. It's also not trying to absorb into it and block everything else out. It's a center point. It's an anchor, some heather amidst the storm of the mind in the world. And so the object is there in samatha practice, but so is everything else.

You know, in the periphery, we have sounds, you have sensations, you have thoughts, you have impulses, and we let it all be there. It comes and it goes. It's not a big deal. And we have our tether. And really, we're learning how to be present in a relaxed, alert way. Simple, but very, very, very profound to be here now in a relaxed, alert way. You could add something like counting or noting or asking yourself questions or giving yourself challenges.

These things to boost alertness and interest. You could do that if it's helpful. I mean, really, the way I see Samatha practice is it's just a big playground. You know, what's supportive of being here now in a relaxed, alert way? Let me try things, see what works, see what doesn't. And U Tejaniya, my teacher, he talks about right effort. He says, well, you apply as much energy as needed to be aware.

So sometimes maybe that's being with the breath and counting. Sometimes things are cooking along. you're like, wow, I'm really present. I don't need any object at all. I can just abide in awareness. Maybe every so often I just pepper in, is there awareness? Just to check, just to remind myself. But it's to say we can be flexible, adaptable, fluid. The point is to be aware how we do it is less important.

And so running parallel to all this is the Vipassanā practice. And my teacher emphasized how really before you even start practicing, it's helpful to have a sense of the view of what are we doing? What's going on? Why are we doing this? And so one view we can start with is that in the meditative lens, there's just awareness and objects. Awareness is the thing that notices and the objects are the things we notice.

Sight, sounds, touches, smells, sounds, and mental activities like thoughts and emotions. So really it's five senses plus mind stuff. And so he says, if you start to notice that, really get intimate with the view that all the things you could possibly notice, no matter how intimate and personal they might seem, no matter how distant and removed they might seem, all of it is just nature. Your deeply grooved emotional pain is just as much nature as the wind rustling through the trees.

It arises and passes completely out of your control. You really don't sit down and say, okay, today, I think I'm going to have a big thought storm and then a surge of anxiety. And then in about 17 minutes, it will drop away into a deep bliss state. And I think I'll hold onto that for about 20 minutes. And then just to keep myself honest, I'm going to have some massive back pain and then I'll take a nap.

Like it doesn't work like that. It just kind of arises out of this vast web of incomprehensible conditionality, does a little dance and dissolves into the abyss of the moment. And so the more we see this, we see that, oh, I don't need to fix the moment.

I don't need to get entangled in this constant grasping and resisting and grasping and resisting. It just doesn't help. It just adds more stress and suffering to the picture.

So what U Tejaniya would often say is a big shift. He said, typically we pay attention to the storylines. This is anxiety and it's about X, Y, and Z and it means this and that. This is what this thought is saying. this is what I need to do. This is this judgment and it's saying this thing about me and this thing about the other person. We take the content seriously.

We say, you know, I need to fix my shame and fix my excessive thinking and fix my sleepiness, fix my comparing mind and my judging mind and my anxiety. And he would just say, none of that. He'd say, instead, just see that nothing you can observe is yours. It's just nature doing its thing. So pay more attention to the process of experience than the storyline and what that means is how it comes and goes how it's out of your control it arises it does a little dance and it dissolves can you just witness that and the more you can witness that in this kind of relaxed alert way you see even more deeply you really don't need to fix it it's really just coming and going on its own terms so rapidly so rapidly you can't even fix everything.

It's just coming and going and coming and going, out of your control. And the more you see that, and the more you see just how it is so deeply conditioned, so much like nature, a part of the system just starts to release, to let go. One teaching I love from U Tejaniya, he says, okay, you've heard all of this stuff so far, and you go into meditation, and then some problem comes up.

Like, yeah, yeah, I get all that stuff. Okay, it's all just awareness and objects, just nature. Not me, not mine. Just let go. Just observe. But there's this one little problem. Yeah, you know, that's good. But this one problem I have, I need to say, ah, have a problem for an advanced meditator? Change your attitude. No more problem. And sometimes it was infuriating because you'd really feel like your problem was across the threshold of all that stuff he normally talks about.

But this is a real problem. Is it really? Yeah, maybe sometimes. Maybe your one story I love from Steve Armstrong. He sat with U Pandita, this great master from Myanmar, and he would always, for there was a stretch, he kept going in talking about this intense knee pain. He's like, yeah, I'm sitting for three hours, four hours. It's so excruciating. I'm just observing it, observing it. U Pandita, who's a pretty austere meditator, he just keeps saying, okay, okay.

And then one day after some while, he says to Steve, you know what your problem is? And Steve was very happy to finally learn the problem to this excruciating pain. And he said, you sit too long.

And so sometimes there is a problem. Stop sitting so long. You're just causing yourself unnecessary pain. So that's true. But for the most part, the deeper teaching is this attitude. Is this way we turn our life into problems to be fixed? So one question I love to just toss in, we regularly can pepper in. In this moment, is there craving or contentment? Craving being the quality that grasps, resists, identifies, gets entangled, creates problems, wants to fix, and all that.

And contentment just, oh, just things happening. And curiously, even if you notice all of that craving, if you can observe it with awareness, you're not it anymore. The craving is there, but you are not the craving. It's, oh yeah, that's nature. That resisting, that's just nature. It's not a problem. So this is why we take refuge in awareness. We cultivate a home in this clear-seeing awareness, a view that holds everything is nature, that invites this deeper release, this deeper relaxing into the moment, to be comfortable in our own skin, to see this end of suffering doesn't happen 10 years in the future after a bunch of retreats.

The end of suffering happens right here, right now when I can take refuge in awareness and see it's just all nature. It's just all objects coming and going, arising, doing a dance, passing away. No me anywhere in that. So yeah, may this exploration of meditation serve you in our sit today and we'll see you all in a bit.