This week, I've been giving a brief overview of the teachings, of how I talk about it, Buddhist teachings, Vipassanā teachings, and today I wanted to speak about the basic attitude of spiritual practice. And often when I talk about attitude, I speak mostly about equanimity and also sometimes kindness. And those two qualities are really an extension of what we've been speaking about the last few days. Because when we're in touch with the ethics training, Selah, the attitude of kindness follows naturally.

And when we're in touch with the meditative training, the attitude of equanimity naturally follows. Through these basic trainings of the path, we learn how to meet the moment, meet life in a relaxed, caring way. And attitude essentially means a way of relating to something. And along a spiritual path, we learn how to stop blindly reacting to life and start relating in a more intentional way. Kindness and equanimity are absolutely core to that.

But like I said, today I want to talk a bit more broadly about relating to being on a spiritual, Buddhist, or meditative path. I'm going to start with a quote from the Zen teacher Norman Fisher. I did a retreat with him 13 years ago, and at that time he had formerly been the abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, and at that point was more of a traveling teacher, would do retreats and writings.

And I was just so taken by him. I'm very down to earth, very wise, very humble. And having the thought, if he was still running a center, I would go there. I want to learn from this person. And so when I heard this quote recently from him, I just was like, yes, this guy lives that. And it's what a great way to capture the spiritual path. So I read this.

he says, when you actually enter the path and go down the road a little way, and then wake up one day and realize, to your surprise, that you are actually committed to this. When that happens, a whole other life comes into view. You find that you have formed your life literally around the practice, and you actually begin to forget about the life you wanted, the life you thought you were making, the life you were hoping for, or the life you thought you should have been having.

Instead, practice becomes your life and life becomes your practice. Practice is no longer something you do to enhance your life or help it along. It is your life.

One day, you kind of realize this and you lose the life you thought you wanted or the life thought you had, but this is very liberating. This is really great. It's wonderful to disappear into your practice. It's wonderful not to have to worry anymore about being someone or something, which is a struggle. You no longer have to work overtime to avoid life's difficulties. People work their entire lives to avoid life's difficulties, and they are never successful at that.

You can give up that effort altogether. You don't have to defend or protect yourself anymore. This is great. I can't tell you how great this is. It's not dramatic. It's not colorful. It's not a big deal. It's very subtle. Maybe. Nobody even notices.

This is the quote. And one big nugget I take from that is the arc of being on a path like this is we begin to tear down the wall between our spiritual life on one side and then everything else on the other side. Our work, our hobbies, our relationships, whatever we do. As we go on, our life starts to feel less compartmentalized. It's just our life. It's not glamorous or showy.

It's just, It's very simple, very wonderful. What I've seen more personally is two big things have really faded, and this was gradual over many years. One is this cultural FOMO of, oh, I want to go to whatever the latest thing is. I want to go to this concert, and I want to read that book, and do this hobby, and learn this project, and study with this teacher.

I want to go travel to this country. All of that stuff that we're just bombarded with in the world of advertising. It's imbued its way into our culture of happiness means doing all the things, going all the places, having all the stuff. That whole view just starts to get shattered. And it's like, wait a minute, maybe I don't actually need all that to be deeply at peace and happy.

And by extension, something that starts to fall with it is busy, busy, busy. We're such busy bees culturally. And we see a lot of it is rooted in the sense I need to do all this stuff.

another thing that starts to fade is seeing life as a fix-it project. Like, well, me, I'm this broken me, and so I need to do some spiritual practice and some self-help and some emotional work. I need to, you know, whatever it is, I got to get rid of all the things I don't like about myself so that I can be a totally put-together me. There's a quote I love from Pema Chodron.

She addresses this. She says, we already have everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. All these trips we lay on ourselves, the heavy-duty fearing that we're bad and hoping that we're good, the identities that we so clearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy, and the addictions of all kinds, never touch our basic wealth. They are like clouds that temporarily block the sun. But all the time, our warmth and brilliance are right here.

This is who we really are. And so we start to see the arc of our spiritual meditative Buddhist practice isn't so much about being a totally put together me who's got it all figured out and has solved all my problems. It's about finding that basic brilliance and radiance and warmth and wealth beneath all the noise of the ego. It's like, oh, maybe I don't actually need to figure all that out to be worthy and enough and whole.

U Tejaniya, my main teacher, he often says, the basic reason we practice is to understand, to realize the deeper truth of what is. And the more we develop that wisdom, that understanding, that realization, we start to shed all the layers of the things holding us back, both internally, externally. And as I say often, this doesn't mean that we're not addressing personal or global wounds. It doesn't mean that we're not taking action.

But it does mean we can address those things and take action, not from a place of, broken and I need to fix this thing to make me whole. That whole delusion just gets thrown out the window. I take action because I care, because wisdom says it's a good thing to do, not because I need it to be okay. Reminds me of the quote from Suzuki Roshi. He says, you are perfect just as you are, and you could use a little improvement.

I feel like for me, a big arc of spiritual practice has seen how both of those can simultaneously be true yeah already enough already whole and i can see there's still some delusion and craving and aversion in this heart and i can apply myself with the deep sincerity to awakening those can go together U Tejaniya has something he would often point to as he said a reason that a lot of lay people are held back in the buddhist practice meditative practice, is because they see that the meditation temple or retreat center or the saṅgha, whatever it is, that's the place where practice happens.

Or that little cushion I have in the corner of my room, that's where practice happens. And he said, and then we see everything else, our life, our house, like, oh, that's for being comfortable. And that's for lounging. He said, it's just a view. It's just an attitude we hold. And when we take that away, what we see is, what if our home was a practice center? When that view starts to shift, well, the deepening naturally follows.

And I've noticed little things creep in. Like often when I go take a walk or I drive, I have a long drive fairly regularly. These days, I rarely listen to anything. I used to always put something on to keep myself occupied. And I just find it so nice to just sit in silence, meditative. Maybe if I just have a few minutes free between activities, I don't need to pull my phone out to scroll to give me some stimulation.

When an icky feeling arises rather than how do I get rid of this not feel this the first movement is oh this is interesting okay can I just relax with this. Sometimes just these random thoughts come up send someone a nice text message call my mother donate some money to a given non-profit clean the kitchen counters. In the past what I noticed is that these would come up and I would just completely ignore them and now I don't act done them 100% of the time.

I'm not perfect. But more and more, it's like, oh, the intention to do something nice comes up. I just do it. It's this dividing of this wall between our good ideas and our actual life. U Tejaniya would often say, you know, wisdom always knows we can go deeper. It doesn't settle. This path, it's for the long haul. We're not doing this to get some relative comfort and ease and say, okay, I checked off meditation.

On to the next thing. Now I will work on knitting sweaters. And then you do that for a while, check, move on to the next thing. It's like brushing teeth. You don't have a one month teeth brushing binge and say, check, I've got it. This human life, I learned how to brush teeth onto the next thing. No, we do it for life. The Dalai Lama talked about evaluating our spiritual practice in five-year intervals.

He didn't say constantly check in on yourself day after day. Am I better than I was yesterday? He said, no, after about five years or so, really sincere practice. Just check in. Feel like anything has changed. Am I kinder, more patient, more discerning? I said, whatever you notice, don't judge yourself about it. Just kind of put that to the side and keep going. Check in again five years later.

And it just points to the arc of this practice. Like Norman says in that quote, it becomes our life. I love that. He says, I can't tell you how wonderful this is. It's great. It's so great. And maybe nobody even notices. It's not this big show we paste on Instagram. Look at me in my full lotus posture. It's letting go of the pretenses and the self-importance and the ego striving and attainments.

And it's just learning how, as this community is called, to practice with sincerity. a deep wholehearted earnestness sincerity a commitment to goodness to learning to growing to understanding a willingness to be comfortable to realize to be uncomfortable and to realize what hasn't been realized so anyhow i want to stop talking we can just bring that depth of sincerity to our our meditative practice today i really want to be here i want to be with this experience in this moment that's why i showed up so we'll see you in a bit