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Ep. 252 – Equanimity: A Direct Path to Liberation
In Episode 252 of the Insight Hour, Joseph Goldstein explores the concept of equanimity as a vital aspect of mindfulness practice and its role in achieving liberation. He discusses the balance between...
Ep. 252 – Equanimity: A Direct Path to Liberation
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There's a whole range of ways we can just figure out how to extricate ourselves from unholsom
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to what happens, whether it's enough with that end or cowboy armor or whatever.
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It plays an explorer and see for yourselves what will work, but it's helpful to develop
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some skills and some tools for how to come out of recurring unholsom patterns.
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Welcome to the Joseph Goldstein Insight Hour.
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This podcast is an expression of our shared interest in self-discovery.
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Join Joseph as he shares his deep knowledge of the path of mindfulness.
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Joseph.
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So this next one, so when in our practice do we let go and when do we investigate?
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For example, things like when we have obsessive thoughts, and can you also say more about how
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to let go?
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Did you say obsessive thoughts?
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I'm contemplating something.
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What I'm about to say is provisional, so I might change my mind.
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But I'm not sure that investigation and letting go are opposites.
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Let's just put that out there and we'll consider it.
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I also want to just make a distinction between insight and investigation, because in one
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way it's the mental factor, and now I'm talking, it's a little Buddhist jargon, but the
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mental factor of investigation, there are seven factors of enlightenment in the Buddha
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and the seven factors which will have to be cultivated and brought into balance.
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Things like mindfulness, investigation, effort, imagery, and rapture, and calm, equanimity,
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concentration.
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So investigation is the wisdom factor of mind.
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So wisdom, the wisdom factor of mind is also what gives rise to wisdom.
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We're seeing things, understanding things that we didn't see before.
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So this wisdom, this insight can happen in two ways.
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Sometimes it's just intuitive.
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It's not that we're necessarily, we haven't necessarily chosen to investigate anything
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in particular, but we're just going along, sitting, being with a breath, other object
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arising or walking.
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And we're doing our practice and all of a sudden, oh, it's like, we're just seeing something
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that we hadn't seen before.
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So the wisdom is there, the insight is there, but it's not necessarily from what we would
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call investigation, which is the word in English at least applies to a more active energy.
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And intuitive insight is often a more receptive energy, where it just arises.
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The place where investigation I have found to be most helpful in what I talked about
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the other night, when I was talking about don't waste your suffering, that is such a fruitful
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place for investigation.
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Because at that time, if we're suffering, it means we are not being reset to that moment.
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We're caught up in some kind of mental drama or conflict or, and we're just lost in it,
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which is why this I'm kind of distressed with some kind of suffering.
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So at that time, an active investigation can really be helpful.
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And I do this a lot, it's like when I'm feeling just out of balance in some way or I'll just
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ask myself, well, what's going on in my mind now that's causing the distress?
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And it's never about what it is that's happening.
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It's always about how I'm relating to what's happening.
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And this is the key point of meditation practice.
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How often do we get caught in the idea?
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You have a sitting and not on the retreat, but maybe at home and then somebody asks you, how is your
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sitting?
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I had a good, it was good sitting.
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What does that usually mean?
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It means it was pleasant.
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Right?
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The body felt okay.
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The mind was good sitting.
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Or restless, painful.
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How was it?
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Oh, terrible sitting.
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That is completely the wrong measure.
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But this is what we do very often.
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Because we could be having a very pleasant sitting and hardly be mindful at all.
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We were just enjoying it and going in the flow.
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This is nice.
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I hope this lasts.
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And we could have a really difficult sitting and really investigating and learning from it.
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But it's very hard to get out of that conditioning that pleasant means good and unpleasant means
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bad in terms of meditation.
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And this is just so essential to come out of that frame because the pleasant unpleasant,
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that's just following its own laws in our life.
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We don't have much control over that.
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And the Buddha gave one teaching on this which is really just so direct that he said,
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as long as there's attachment to the pleasant and aversion to the unpleasant liberation
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is impossible.
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That is, it's direct appointing to what we need to be cultivating in our practice.
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But it so goes against our conditioning.
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Because we all like what's pleasant and we don't like what's unpleasant.
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And that's why I got back to what I was saying earlier, that stage of equanimity
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is so powerful in our practice because when our minds has kind of reached that level of understanding and experience,
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it is non-reactive to pleasant and unpleasant.
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Is it pleasant and unpleasant?
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And we're experiencing both.
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It's not that we're unaware of whether it's pleasant or unpleasant.
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But that's not the source of any reactivity.
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It's just, there's an impartiality.
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What's the question?
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What is sh...
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When do you let go and when do you investigate, for example, with obsessive thoughts?
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So investigating when we feel contracted in one way or another, that is really a good time to investigate.
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And investigating the way we're relating to whatever the experience is.
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Am I holding on? Am I pushing away?
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You know, am I ignoring?
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So we just, we really take a little bit all that.
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With obsessive thoughts,
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over the course of many years of practice, I have developed so many different techniques.
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So I'll just, there's a whole range and this actually can go back to the question about investigation.
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I would encourage you, I'll share with you some of the, the ways I've worked with them, but I'd really encourage you just to explore.
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You know, when that's going on, you try different things.
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And my basic mantra for meditation technique is whatever works.
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Right? So you just try this, try that.
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Okay, so a few examples of obsessive thoughts.
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So this comes back quite a few years, but at one point in my practice earlier on,
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a theme that is not unusual is having a lot of sexual fantasies.
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I'd be sitting, mine was still in a certain kind of way.
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And just all these fantasies and they were really enjoyable.
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You know, the hour went really quickly.
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But after a while, come on, just.
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But they were so seductive.
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You know, it's almost.
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So I thought I was just playing with a lot of different ways with that category.
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So one of them was.
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I started using the phrase dead end because I realized they're not going anyplace.
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It's not that they're going to get fulfilled.
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I was just sitting there, you know, my mind was spinning in them.
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And then finally they'd come to an end and I'd be back, you know, feeling my breath again.
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So it was like a dead end.
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So I started using that note at the beginning of them raths than weight.
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You know, so when those fantasies or desires would come up, I would remember.
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And that was a time that was enough to.
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Okay, this is not going any place.
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You know, stay with the practice.
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So I was one approach.
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Another approach I used at a different time was.
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You know, in the Tibetan iconography, this is this great bodhisattva man,
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one point these were going on and on and I said, okay, enough.
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You know, it's like I took out my sort of wisdom and enough.
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The key in doing that is not to do it with a version.
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Right, because how one does it is important.
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But sometimes, you know, in meditative circles and meditative, meditation teachings,
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there is a lot of emphasis on the yes.
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Yes to things, allow things, be open to things.
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But so a lot of emphasis, which is necessary,
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reinforce, just be open and receptive and allow.
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But equally important to the yes is the wise no.
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You know, where we see this is not skillful.
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This is not helpful.
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It's not leading any place.
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So it's, oh, okay, just allow it.
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No, at that time, no, enough.
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You know, so it would be like raising a kid and never saying no.
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You know, you'd have a monster.
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Well, I'll mind a bit like that.
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So just learning that.
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Okay, one list.
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This one is my favorite, actually.
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But I have to say, the language may be slightly politically incorrect.
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I'm not, it's on the board.
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So I was on this one retreat, two months, a self retreat, me and a couple of friends.
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And skipping all the details, something happened.
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My back was hurting.
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I thought I'd go for just getting adjustment, counter-pactored adjustment, which I had many, many times.
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So I went out, I had this adjustment.
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It was disaster.
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For whatever reason, it seemed like it was just an ordinary thing.
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Body went into shock.
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This was a three year.
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It was really, really difficult.
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So I went back to retreat and I knew something really bad had happened.
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And my mind kept going on and on obsessively.
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How could I have been so stupid to go in the middle of a retreat to get this adjustment?
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And look what happened.
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So I was just be raiding myself, having done something so stupid with that consequence.
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So I was lost.
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Those thoughts would come.
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And I could be lost for half an hour in that train.
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It was really hard.
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It was one of the hardest times in my practice ever.
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There's certain point when I realized I was just getting caught again and again.
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I realized that the thought, and it was the particular thought, how can I have been so stupid?
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It was that thought that was so seductive, because I thought it was true.
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That if I didn't catch that thought, I'd be gone.
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So I developed what I called cowboy dharma.
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Every time the first words of that thought came, how can I...
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How can I...
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It was a may, it worked.
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Because I realized I cannot give that thought any air time at all.
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Because there was so obsessive, you know, that so obsessive and seductive.
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So feel free.
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And I...
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You could actually...
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I found it helpful to actually use the mudra.
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Here you might want to not have the sound effects.
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But you could use it.
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And so I just want to give an indication.
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There's a whole range of ways we can just figure out how to extricate ourselves from unholesome thought patterns.
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You know, whether it's enough with that end or cowboy dharma or whatever.
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It plays, you know, and explored and see for yourselves what will work.
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But it's helpful to develop some skills and some tools for how to come out of recurring unholesome patterns.
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Because who's suffering? We are the ones who are suffering.
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And so that itself can be an inspiration to really explore and investigate with interest.
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Yeah, thank you.
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And so this will be the last question of the evening.
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Knowing that there is a people and division in our country with consequences that are rippling out across the planet.
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In this situation is social activism a part of the bitest path and what might that look like?
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So I think there are two really important qualities that we can develop in our practice that can provide a framework for engaging with the world in a skillful way.
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And one is talking a little bit about it, is the development of equanimity.
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You know, so that we're not responding out of our own reactivity, which generally just adds to the confusion.
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Right?
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We want to come in some way to find a place of balance in ourselves in the midst of all the turmoil and the suffering that's going on.
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And people find different ways of doing this.
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For me, and again, I can't remember what I spoke to you about this and not.
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For me, one way of, well actually a couple of ways, within the midst of everything that's going on to come back to some greater place of equanimity.
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One way is just a deep historical perspective on things.
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This stuff has been going on forever. It's not that it's new to this time.
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Did I mention the book that I've been listening to the fall of civilizations?
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It's really an amazing book.
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This guy has just traced civilizations from ancient Sumeria through the Assyrians and the Phoenicians and the Romans and the Chinese and the Indians and the Aztecs and the Mayans.
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And just throughout the centuries, all around the globe, and he traced and described civilizations coming into being, flourishing, powerful, declining and collapsing.
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And he described the conditions of how it happened in each case.
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What were the causes of these powerful civilizations declining?
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And it was so powerful just that I was listening to it, unordable, to see.
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These are historical cycles, just like we are born and grow old and die in societies and civilizations go through the same cycles.
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And largely for a lot of the same reasons, it was really interesting.
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A lot of the decline of many of these civilizations happened because of some degree of climate change in that particular area, where they could no longer sustain the growing population from their flourishing time.
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I believe that became drought or different climatic changes, which another was the chaos from the successions of leadership.
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You know, it can be very stable and then leadership changes within the old days of the kings.
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And if it's not the same wisdom or the same understanding, often results in tremendous decline and chaos and conflict.
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So it's just when I listen to this, it just, it helped me understand what's happening now in a larger context.
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Yeah, this is just part of a long historical unfolding and is inevitable.
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It's not an aberration. This has been happening always.
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So that's why just getting some sense of equanimity.
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Are you from then another, beside the historical framework, another framework that brings about the sense of equanimity for me is the cosmological one.
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The familiar at all with the famous essay by Carl Sagan, the blue dot.
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For those of you who aren't, he was just describing what the earth looks like from, I mean, out of space.
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It's just this tiny, tiny blue dot in the vastness of the cosmos.
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And he goes on to describe how everything in our lives, in the world, the drama, everything, the great things and the difficult and the suffering and everything is just happening on this tiny little dot in immense, immense space.
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So from that perspective, I really appreciate sometimes, you know, go out at night and just look at the stars and what am I upset about?
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You know, we're just, it's just so small in the vastness of things.
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So it changes, changes how I'm holding things.
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So that's one half of it.
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The other half, from that place of equanimity, somewhat greater equanimity or somewhat greater sense of peace with it all, then is compassion for the very real suffering that's going on as all these changes taking place.
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So it's not to just withdraw into kind of cosmic, into cosmic indifference.
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Well, we can use the equanimity then to allow us to connect with the very real suffering that is going on for so many people.
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But not so much from a place of reactivity or anger, which in the long run doesn't help.
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But from a place of compassion and the phrase that I've used a lot was the title of a book by Ram Dasen Paul Guam,
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and back in the 70s or so.
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The title of the book was, how can I help?
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And I love that phrase as a way to live one's life.
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But can we go through life with that phrase being our basic motivation in terms of how we relate to other people to the world?
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Okay, well, how can I help?
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So then it's a question of really seeing, okay, where and how can I help?
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And there are many things, many situations of suffering where there is nothing we can do about it.
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It is beyond either our capacity or domain or where we have no agency or no influence.
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And that's where, okay, resting in the equanimity, okay, this is how it is.
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But there are many arenas where there is opportunity to help.
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And I think if we really hold that question in a very untreatant way,
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because maybe it's just helping a friend or helping in a local situation,
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or an active generosity, there are so many ways in our lives,
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very immediate ways that we can help.
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And sometimes people are inspired and have the capacity and capability to help on a much larger scale.
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And so then does the energy do that?
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So for me, I think the way of dealing with the turmoil in so much of the suffering in the world
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is precisely the balance of these inequalities, of equanimity and compassion.
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So that we're not adding to the confusion and we're responding in whatever way we can.
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And so this is really a beautiful thing.
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And this ties very much into the wisdom of the practice,
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and particularly the wisdom, even beginning understandings of selflessness,
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because there's one teaching.
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And when we realize the selfless nature of phenomena,
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the energy to bring about the good of others, dawns, un-gondrived, I'm effortless.
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And I love that, and I really found that to be true.
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And we know it in a very mundane, ordinary way,
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just our usual understanding of a selfless person, just how we would use it colloquially.
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Generally, we see it as a very admirable quality.
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It's not somebody who's self-centered, the selfless,
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and in that selflessness, there's more engagement with other people.
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Well, if we take selflessness to its ultimate realization,
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not just as a kind of personality trait, which is a beautiful one,
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but if we take it to the depths of understanding the truth of non-self,
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then our life becomes a manifestation of compassion and action.
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And a phrase that I like might be a good place to end.
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So in Buddhism, we use the term emptiness a lot.
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And in one of its most profound meanings, it means empty of self.
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So started really understanding compassion
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as being the activity of emptiness.
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So it's not that I'm being compassionate.
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It's the more selfless we are, the more we understand selflessness.
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Compassion is the activity of that state.
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And so everything you're doing here is precisely cultivating these qualities.
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You know, and it's of course of great benefit to each one of us,
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but also of benefits to the world, because it provides the frame
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for understanding how to engage in the world from a selfless place.
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Okay.
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We went a little over.
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So let's sit for a couple of minutes.
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Topics Covered
BetterHelp
World Mental Health Day
self-discovery
mindfulness
investigation and letting go
obsessive thoughts
Buddhist teachings
seven factors of enlightenment
wisdom factor of mind
meditation techniques
unwholesome thought patterns
equanimity
mental health support
mindfulness practice
therapist support