Good evening. So we'll start with the sutra opening verse. An unsurpassed, penetrating and perfect dharma is rarely met with, even in a hundred thousand million kalpas, having it to see and listen to. to remember and accept. I vow to taste the truth of the Tatataka's words. So welcome to our third class. This feels like it's going by so quickly. Next week is the last one. And I've been thinking about, and hello to everyone online. It's good to see you all. I was reflecting again this week on the title of the class, which is Appropriate Response, Speech as a Field of Intimate Practice.

[01:04]

And it's the intimacy that we're practicing with is both with ourself and with others. It's being intimate with our own experience and what supports us and what might challenge us or stand in the way of being present and intimate with others. So last week I mentioned the Heart Sutra, and the opening line is, Avalo Kiteshvara Bodhisattva, when practicing deeply the Prajnaparamita, perceived that all five skandhas in their own being are empty and was saved from all suffering. And I wanted to pick up with that because I I don't know what Avalokiteshvara specifically was practicing when he was practicing Prajnaparamita. However, I feel like this practice that we're talking about, about practicing with speech and working with the five skandhas, is a way of practicing with the five skandhas.

[02:18]

And I want to talk about the kind of... interplay or overlap between that and the book Difficult Conversations. It's not an exact map, but it's really interestingly close, which makes sense because when you look inward at the mind, this is the field that comes up. These things tend to come up, which is why science is showing the same things that the Buddha did just by introspection, just by looking at his own mind. And then we'll look at the five skandhas a little bit and then at the three conversations that difficult conversations talks about as being like every difficult conversation could have aspects of these three conversations. The what happened conversation, the feelings conversation, and the identity conversation. So we did what happened last week and we'll do feelings and identity this week. And particularly... around what they call identity quakes, where something really gets touched deeply and it kind of puts us off balance, how to manage with that when that happens.

[03:31]

So the five skandhas, is everyone relatively familiar with the five skandhas or not so much? Okay, great. Then I will... We chant them often enough that you're like, okay, those. Okay, cool. That's good to know. So the five are form, feelings, perceptions, formations, and consciousness. So form is like the form body, the literal acts of body and speech that are observable. It's like phenomena. It's what you can see. It's what you can feel. It's the material world. So that's the first one. And that somewhat corresponds to the what happened conversation. You know, like who said what, who was there, you turned your back, whatever. This is all happening in the concrete material realm.

[04:36]

But it's not just that because it's all the meanings that it has for each of us. So the next one is feelings. And that's the translation. But that's the usual translation, so I'm going to go with that. It's very similar to what we refer to as feelings, but it has some nuance that I find really interesting. So feelings in this case, as the second skanda, is sensations or sensory feelings that... accompany all moments of sensory consciousness. Like through your six senses, there is a felt sense of it. So it could be your heart beating or adrenaline pumping or a sense of calm or whatever it is, but there's a physical, bodily, somatic component to that. And it could be the physical or mental sensations.

[05:44]

I really wanted to know someone who's practiced deeply with this. Like, what's a mental sensation? But I think it's like the... Well, the practice associated with feelings is to identify whether they're pleasant or unpleasant or neither pleasant nor unpleasant, which I like because it's not quite... usually say neutral, but I think neither pleasant nor unpleasant. It's like, is it really neutral? Well, it's not one or the other. So it's like, how do we know that? So that's kind of the mental or the sensory thing is because we're having an experience of it. So it's not thoughts. It's not ideas. It's a felt sense of how that is for you. So if... If you are awake and aware, you're having sensations or feelings.

[06:45]

And so like the breath, it's always there. And it's something that you can be aware of from moment to moment. Like, actually, how is it in my body and mind to be in this body-mind right now? What's the quality of it? And... You can also pay attention to, if it's pleasant, is there any reaching or grasping toward it? That would be the next step. But the pleasant is what we tend to want more of, and the unpleasant is what we tend to want to back away from. And the neither one, we often just ignore or don't pay attention to. And it's different for everyone, of course, but the things that kind of don't register. It's like it's not quite there. So noticing that, like, oh, that's interesting. I'm not even paying attention to that. So the next, the third one is perceptions. That's discriminating awareness or like conceptual identification, like it differentiates and identifies objects.

[07:54]

That's a post or a pillar. You know, this is a Zafu. You know, I can see this and that is different. I can feel this and that is different with my senses. That capacity to differentiate through the six senses is what helps us orient in the world. It's said that information is a difference that makes a difference, and it comes in through the six senses. And interestingly, all of these can be used as objects of meditation. So... I found out that perceptions can also be used as objects of meditation, like perceiving impermanence. Like you can be noticing impermanence, like as things are rising and passing. And I'd never thought of it that way before. I thought of it as being aware in a different way and then somewhere noticing impermanence rather than practicing with noticing impermanence. I'm very curious to try that now.

[08:57]

Or it could be a perception of danger, you know, just like noticing when you perceive danger. Or if there's a revulsion or repugnance, what is that like? What is the experience of that like? And the fourth one is formations, mental formations. This is like, in a passive sense, it's like... all conditioned things. It's like the conditioning, like how everything comes together. But we usually think of it as the mental formations left in the mind by how we think about things, by how we meet things and we have an idea about them. Like if you had a scary encounter with a dog, then you might have a mental formation around... dogs generally or large dogs or black dogs or, you know, whatever it is. And that's kind of the traces in our minds that we then react to.

[10:01]

And becoming more aware of these is very helpful when you're trying to get more clear in communication because we carry so much with us that we're often not even aware of. We're often aware of what other people carry. Because it's a lot easier to see. If it's about ourself or about others, it's like, wow, so they just think that. And you don't notice that you do too. So turning the light and shining it within can be really helpful in terms of empathy. When we see that we do it, it can be easier to acknowledge that other people may not have... necessarily bad intentions, they may, but they also might not. It might be just habitual things, but we can see it. And this area of mental formations, I think, may be the area where we have the most

[11:11]

most potential or capacity to grow and learn and develop because it's really learned. It's not kind of at the base level. It's more up here, so it's more workable. It's more available to us. And on the 12-fold chain of causation, of dependent origination, where like how we get from ignorance to suffering, there's specific points where it's easier to intervene, like the... The body feelings, it just happens. You know, it's just a response. But then there's other places where it's like, oh yeah, there's something I can actually do here. I can have an intention and I can move toward transforming this. So from a, you know, difficult conversations is obviously from a very Western point of view. and a very 90s point of view and more of a business point of view and a very cognitive point of view.

[12:18]

It's not like body-based. It doesn't really talk about that very much at all. So I wanted to say just a little bit about... Well, because for one thing, when I started looking this up, I'm like, so what's the difference between feelings and emotions? Because they're used pretty interchangeably in my experience. But from a more scientific point of view, like researchers or people who study this or work with it in various ways, and they're thinking about the differences, from a Western point of view, emotions are subconscious. They're automatic. And they're physiological body reactions triggered by the amygdala, which is our brain's arousal system. That's like the alarm. goes off the warning light in response to either internal or external events. Internal events like, oh my God, I just realized I'm supposed to be somewhere five minutes ago.

[13:23]

That's a completely internal event. Heart rate jumps. I had that experience once years ago and I was sitting on the floor in a group and I was literally on my feet before I knew what was happening. You know, it was just like, boom. Yeah, so that's the, and I would have thought of, I wouldn't have thought of it that way. But anyway, that's emotions, which comes from the Latin imovere, which means literally to move. So it has this kind of body feeling. It's like, yeah, like my body took me up, my heart's pounding. And it can be measured objectively. So you can measure heart rate. You can measure brain activity. You can watch people's facial expressions. It's like this is observable stuff. Feelings, on the other hand, are the, in the skandhas, it's the mental formations.

[14:30]

It's our interpretations. So they still have both of these things, but it's just a little bit different way of dividing it. But it's still the same. I mean, it's human stuff, so it's the same basic territory. One of the reasons I find this really helpful is in looking at the relationship between the mind and the body. I think it's pretty clear to most of us that our minds affect our bodies when we think about things. But our bodies affect our minds. too, and that's a relatively recent discovery, is that the nervous system, especially the vagus nerve, which is like face, around the eyes, neck, jaw, down the throat, around the heart, the lungs, and a lot in the gut. So this is like our gut brain, all these nerves. So it comes down this way, but it also goes back up to the brain.

[15:30]

But it's just giving basically the the second skanda of like pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. And often what we're the information we're getting is not pleasant. It's like arousal and happiness, but it could be excitement too. But it's, it's, it's just that sensation. It's, it's sending that up to the brain and coloring like how we see things. So our interpretation changes our physical experience and our physical experience colors our interpretation. But where we can work with it is in the interpretation, is in the understanding. And then the fifth skanda is consciousness. And there are six consciousnesses, eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body, and mind. So that's our usual five senses, and then the mind is considered the sixth consciousness or the sixth.

[16:31]

And there's sense, you know, these all have, they're different things, and they're all in the Heart Sutra. But there's also in Yogacara, which is also in Soto Zen, the seventh consciousness, which is manas, which is like the self, the small self. And it's often called klista manas, which translates as afflicted mentality. I'm like, oh, yeah, you know, the little self that gets defended and tight and is trying to protect us. Freud said the self or the ego is a defense mechanism. It's trying to keep us safe from threat or being abandoned or not belonging or all of these things. So it's like how we manage that becomes like a self, a little hard shell or a little tender shell.

[17:32]

And then there's the Also, there's the eighth consciousness or storehouse consciousness, the Alaya Vishnana, which that's a whole other topic. So tonight I'll talk about the second and third conversations, feelings and identity conversations. Yes. Thank you for explaining. It's on. The emotions. That's very helpful. I'm not sure if I understand the subtlety between the difference between feelings and emotions. Emotions, I can understand. They arise. We don't have control over that. When they arise, we could have some control over what we do as a consequence. I'm not quite sure.

[18:35]

Could you... explain a little bit more about the feelings? Like how does that differ from emotion? Yes. Great. I mean, in our everyday, the everyday way we use it, it's completely interchangeable. Okay. We tend to use them both ways and we tend to think of them as both together. But when people are studying it, they break it apart and they look at the two aspects of it. So they're looking at the bodily response and also the interpretation that we give to it based on that. My heart is pounding. And depending on whether I'm seeing someone I'm really happy to see, it could be interpreted as excitement or whether I'm perceiving that I'm in danger, in which case it has a very different interpretation. But in your body, it's the same thing. It's adrenaline. So the feeling is your mind's interpretation of your body's sensations? Yes. From a scientific point of view, that's how I came to understand just recently that it's used.

[19:40]

Okay, thank you. That helps. That would not have necessarily been what I would have thought. Linda? I'll just mention that Joko Peck defined an emotion as a sensation plus a thought. That was sort of short and elegant. That's great. Yeah, and I think that's very much the feeling of how we generally use that. If anyone has any questions online, if someone could, whoever the host is, could let me know so I look toward you. Nothing so far. You reach your digital hand. Mostly the point was just that there's these two sides to feelings. There's your body side, which is just doing its thing. And then there's your mind, which is interpreting it. And that shapes how a lot of things unroll.

[20:43]

Am I safe? Am I not safe? Is this exciting? Is it boring? Whatever. Okay, so I'm just going to go a little bit through the... give you the highlights from the feelings conversation and the identity conversation. Okay. So there's what happened. There's the what happened conversation. you didn't show up when we were going to meet. Which one person could say, I was really trying to get there and I couldn't get there. And the other person says, you blew me off.

[21:45]

So this is what it means. There's what happened and then there's what it means. And what it means is where we have feelings. So if that's present in the conversation, it's really important to address it because you're not going to get at it by just establishing the facts. It's like, how did it land for each person? And how to, of course, how to listen is so much in there. I mean, we're talking about talking to each other, but the other side of that is listening, of course. So unexpressed feelings can leak into the conversation. Ever had that experience? You're feeling a lot. For whatever reason, you don't feel like you want to say something to speak to it, but it's like present. It may come out in your tone of voice or your facial expression or your body language. I thought this was so interesting.

[22:49]

It said, few people can detect factual lies, but most people can tell when someone is distorting, manufacturing, or withholding an emotion. Apparently, you know, how they study this, I have no idea. But I have read several times that over 90% of our communication is nonverbal. Which, that means it's like 7% to 10% is the words that you say. But it has so much to do with how you say it. You can say, oh, I love that dress. Or, come on. I love that dress. I mean, you can say it lots of ways. And what do you believe? You don't believe the words. If there's a conflict between those, if they don't line up, you don't believe the words. Because we know somehow we learn to relate with other people before we ever have words.

[23:55]

We pick up our parents' emotions and body language, and we mirror them. We can tell what's going on, you know? Unexpressed feelings can burst into the conversation. So it's not so much a matter of holding it in, but of having some outburst and suddenly expressing it. And maybe not quite in the way that you would have hoped. And this can be not so much because you just generally tend to express feelings a lot, but because they're held in and then they come out. And not expressing feelings can make it difficult to listen because you're just managing a lot of stuff internally. And they can also take a toll on how we feel about ourselves and our relationships because we're not speaking up for ourselves or sharing what's really going on.

[24:57]

And over time that can feel crummy. So the suggestion is basically to study the self. to get curious about what are your feelings? Are they hiding? Do you know what they are? Can you be with them? Are they tolerable? Feelings we are uncomfortable with disguise themselves as emotions we are better able to handle. I'm hurt, but I look angry, or vice versa. Feelings we're uncomfortable with disguise themselves as emotions we are better able to handle. So it could be making a joke about something, making, you know, true words are often said in jest, because I can make jokes, but I don't want to say I'm hurt.

[26:01]

I'm going to, you know. Yeah. And feelings, unexpressed feelings can turn into judgments, accusations, attributing things to the other person. If we weren't colored that way, our thoughts weren't colored that way, we would probably not wish to do. So studying the self is like, how do you deal with feelings? What's your style? What's your family style? What's your own style? What did you grow up in? There's regional styles, cultural styles, generational styles. And where are you in relation to other people? And what's comfortable for you? What's not comfortable for you? Some people have the assumption that even having feelings is...

[27:09]

kind of a bad thing or should be controlled or like really managed and other people have ideas that you know feelings are to be expressed and shared in a large way and you know it can be funny awkward watching two people who have very different styles meet at a party and they're kind of moving around like this one's kind of approaching and trying to be warm and get closer and the other one's backing off and they're just kind of going around. And it's just, it's like there's not, there's no right or wrong style, but it's how does it fit with the people around you and are you familiar with your own and your own preferences and limits. So since feelings just are, how do we... How do we work with them? How do we express them when it's appropriate to? So this is assuming that the difficulty in the conversation is at least in part due to feelings.

[28:16]

So knowing what you're feeling actually is a first step. But it's also important to think about, is it appropriate? Do I want to express it? Is it appropriate? Why or why not? Some people have, yeah, Jeremiah. I'm sorry I was late. I listened to the first class online, so I was like, oh, I gotta go. And then the appropriate response would have been on time. And I was late, so I'm sorry. But I just want to say that how do you deal with sensations, I mean feelings? You know, when I go to work, like I walk into a building, a prison that if it had a nervous system, it would be on high alert, the building itself.

[29:23]

And all the bodies in there are agitated and tense and filled with like anxiety and holding, whether they're staff or they're incarcerated. Holding, you know, just like... you know, there's a lot of holding your breath, not breathing, really short, shallow breaths, right? Because the nervous system inside so many bodies in there is just constantly agitated and doesn't remember how to down-regulate, you know? So, and I think of it as like, you know, the internal weather of the person, right? And how can we affect climate change, you know, inside that person? Because a freaked out body cannot respond appropriately. Yes. And so your question, like, how do you deal with sensations and feelings?

[30:28]

I think that with the people that I'm working with right now, you know, don't talk first. we're not using words. In fact, I met a breath worker in here two years ago who came to the prison and at this point she's come every month since and her teachers have been coming from New York and Mexico to come there too and they've established this entirely unbelievable thing that we call breathing beyond bars and it's all about settling the body. It's all settling the body. And the only person talking is her. You know, no one else is talking until at the end of the session. Then they'll pass the mic and talk about, like, unbelievable things that were going on inside their body. But it's, like, all about being open to the sensations and feelings you have that are related to awful traumatic things. And never discussing the traumatic things.

[31:31]

Never, ever discussing events. but only trying to get people to be able to sit with patiently and lovingly with all the awfulness that's in them. And then over time, you know, like literally trying to bring your breath to this, whatever that feeling is, and then exhaling and trying to feel spaciousness around that place. and then inhaling again, and then exhaling and trying to find spaciousness, and then going to a place in your body that doesn't have that feeling, that feels much easier, you know? And going and breathing in there, and then going back to this one, and then going back to this one, and just over time, like over long, long periods of time, trying to settle people's bodies so that they can not explode when anything happens, you know? So, yeah, I just want to say that it's like we, you know, the body practices.

[32:35]

And since this, I've been thinking about, like, what I've been doing here. Like, you know, this is a really calm place. You know, sitting zazen and just trying to be open to sensations without stories. You know, like letting go of stories, but just feeling the body. Like if you can get your posture to a place where you can, you know, be open to sensations and feelings. It's like for me, I mean, for five years, it's been like, I think for me, like a whole re-education of my nervous system. You know, just trying to let go of all these stories and just like be open to actually feeling it and breathing, you know. Anyway, so... Yeah, I think that there's like a... And I'm into this whole book now by this guy who just does all this stuff, body practice, without words, you know, except the guide.

[33:40]

So, yeah. Yeah, well, you anticipated one of the things that I... No, that's a beautiful... That was great, because I was going to recommend a couple of books. Unshakeable, which is... A lot of this comes out of trauma. Trauma Work, which also started in the 90s. It had these two very different paths. So this is by Joanne Rosen. It's Trauma-Informed Mindfulness for Collective Awakening. It's in the library. I'll put it back shortly. And Hax has read this. I haven't read that much of it. And Hax turned me on to it. It's really interesting. The author is a student of Thich Nhat Hanh's. And their communities are really focused on this kind of body work and being present. And it comes out of Thich Nhat Hanh's experience, you know, post-war of realizing that the monks that he was trying to work with didn't have the capacity to sit or heal because of all the trauma they'd been through in the war.

[34:49]

The American War, as they call it there. Yeah, and the practices that he developed out of that. So this is mindfulness and body regulation. When I first started sitting, my body was profoundly not a safe place to be. So sitting and being present with my body was challenging, to say the least. And it would have been a lot easier if I... had a teacher that could have worked with me in that way. So I think that's something that's really developing because so many people have, well, I think it's probably the case that people have had trauma, but trauma is when it's not healed. It's not like the bad experiences. It's not what happens to you. It's what you do with it, and it's how it's met by the people around you. in our culture that's often not well, you know, not met so well, that doesn't exist or, you know, doesn't, you know, just keep going, it's not that bad, whatever the messages are.

[36:04]

And especially these days, you know, the world's getting wilder and more trauma happening, so calming is really helpful. Linda and then Julianne. Linda, and then Julianne. If when you started practicing, your body was not a safe place to be, and it was very difficult, why did you stay? I have no idea. Don't tell me you have no idea. Okay, okay. Do you really have no idea? If you don't, I'll step back. It... Most of what I did in my early years of practice didn't make any sense to me or it didn't make any sense to other people. You know, like plopping myself out by myself in the middle of the desert, having really no idea what I was doing for two weeks, for example. I just knew that I had to do it. I knew, you know, I'd read some Zen and it was like, this is true.

[37:10]

I know it. I know it in my core. in my heart, in my being, that this is true. And it says it's something to do with meditation. And I believe this. So I'm going to go try to find that. And I gave up multiple times. I just felt like I was a dog eating medicinal herbs. Somehow I knew there was something there. And then when I finally did a long retreat, and it had... So I had several days to settle, that my nervous system could just settle. It's like, oh. But that did not happen immediately. So you did know something. That was very Socratic. Julianne. Well, I just was thinking about the concept of formations, and I just wanted to see, like, so I feel like maybe there's a connection.

[38:19]

Are you suggesting that there's a connection between trauma and formations? Like, just to give you an example, I am going through this kind of stressful thing with... some group of people right now. Um, and I just harp in my mind, I just harp on it all the time. Like I'm thinking about things that I want to say to one person or another. And I feel like that maybe it, does that qualify as a formation? Like, am I, I feel like I'm piling on almost to a point where I'm creating trauma for myself. Like, is, is that like to, just because I am having a hard time letting go of the experience. Is that like what a formation kind of is? Interpretation, you know, story, all of that stuff, what it means, you know, how you understand.

[39:21]

Like many of us want to understand, you know, because that gives you some sense of control. I mean, it's no... that keeps saying, just not knowing. Not knowing is most intimate because we don't like not knowing. We're not wired to be in not knowing. That could be dangerous. Our nervous system wants to identify things correctly. If we identify it incorrectly, we're going to get eaten back in the day. Or you want a resolution of some kind? Yes. Like a closure? Right. Like, and this won't happen again now. Right? It's fixed. It's closed. Because we, I think, our bodies yearn to be regulated, yearn to be calm. And we're trying to find, and we know that's what we need, but we don't always know how to find our way back.

[40:24]

The Buddha talked so often about his teachings as being against the stream, like going with the karmic stream is like, I'll get more of what feels good, and I'll have less of what feels bad. And if I do that really well, then it's all going to be good. And I said, no, let go of what you want. Let go of what is pleasant, because the clinging is suffering. And allow in what is painful, not to be overwhelmed by it, but to be able to see it clearly. So this is continually going against the stream. So I thought we could break up into small groups. So three or four. And I think that was too long last time. So we'll do like three minutes each. And if there's any time left over at the end, then you can just talk among yourself.

[41:26]

And if you only need like two minutes, that's fine too. And... You can talk about what's alive for you in this conversation, what's coming up for you, both what you're recognizing about yourself or what you've always known about yourself and what you're curious about. But I really encourage you to include how you'd like things to be, what you're interested in. I think more accurately, what you'd like to turn toward. Not just like, oh, this is really hard, this is awful, but what's some vision of that? Something about this is pulling me. So what pulls you as well as challenges you? Clear? Questions? Okay. So for online folks, that would be like, let's do 12 minutes total.

[42:31]

Okay? Someone can... Break you up into... I'll do it. And if you could start the countdown at 11 minutes, because it takes a full minute for everyone to come back. I can't hear anything.

[56:30]

Can you hear me? we can hear you yes okay let's come back together so how was that? anything to Share, report, something you learned, something that surprised you about yourself or anyone else. You don't have to say who it was if it was someone else. Acts. But we can't hear Hax at all.

[58:22]

Still not hearing. I'm not sure they're hearing us. Let me try getting in touch with this endo. This is a great example of 90% nonverbal communication. Yes, not hearing. This happened last time. Maybe we should all start waving. Yeah, it worked.

[59:38]

We can't hear you. Can't hear. Can you hear us, Linda? Nope. Yeah. I think I saw something that Berkeley Zen Center left. So whoever that was may have been the tech. I'm not sure if they're there now. No, Gensan's the tech. He's trying to reach somebody in the Zen Dove. Oh, okay. I thought that was ASL for a second. I think it was supposed to be. And chat doesn't work, so we can't go in through chat.

[60:46]

Okay, can you hear me now? Something happened when we weren't hearing you in here. Okay, good. I'm sorry you missed that. Other bit, that was great seeing like all the hands waving. Good communication. Jake, did you want to say something or were you just waving? No, I was just going to say, I thought with this small group, can you hear me? With this small group and as... Just as with the small group of last week, I felt a tremendous intimacy, and I don't feel as if I could possibly want to talk about it to the group, just because it was so intimate both times, very personal.

[61:51]

And that's just my feeling that I recognize that. So that's all I wanted to say. Not that others couldn't share, but no way could I do that. Thank you. That's beautiful and kind of perfect, because what you shared was that it felt very intimate. And, you know, in this room, initially some kind of forgot what was going on, you get into it, and then there was a lot of laughter. And I felt like, oh, you know, there's some honesty, there's some epitome change, there's some connection here along with different people. There's also more connection, more intimacy. Anyone else have anything you want to share? Or not? Yeah, Dina. Thanks. Yeah, I think it's an interesting conversation to have, especially with people who don't know.

[63:09]

Because, of course, our emotions, this is my experience, is that I had to get over this hump of not feeling safe because of the unknown. Not that any of you are attending a car, of course, but it's just, it's a different thing to be talking to people you know about your feelings versus people you don't know. And it was interesting just to have that experience of trying to figure out how far I wanted to go with sharing. So that was part of the whole experience of talking about it, besides the emotions, which I thought was really interesting. I just wanted to share that. Great. I love the surprise. I think that's one of the wonderful things about about sharing with each other is, you know, we're limited in our own little mind and our own experience until we start talking to other people. It's like, whoa, there's another world there. Or it might be, there's a world similar to mine and I thought I was the only one, or I thought I was kind of uniquely not so okay.

[64:15]

It's like, oh, we all kind of feel like that in some way or another. Great. So we have just 10 minutes left. We lost you. Oh. Lost me? Go again? Okay. Good. Oh, okay. Great. I wanted to talk a little bit about the four right efforts. So, you know, the right effort, Eightfold Path. There's a particular... set of practices called the four right efforts, which I'm very fond of because it covers everything, basically. It's like when there are unwholesome or hindering or... Four right efforts. There's four conditions.

[65:17]

So two are positive and... Two are not. So if there are unwholesome, unbeneficial conditions that are present, that you're aware of, if they're already present, to let go of them or to overcome them. So you're angry, you're flustered, you're whatever. You're off balance. How do you meet this? And then there's the non-arising of... these states of mind. Like what Jeremiah was talking about in the prison, you know, how to practice with the breath and practice with awareness so that these states of being don't arise so easily. So it's, and often, you know, after you've been practicing with it for a while, you can catch it and you can be like, you know, I could go there in this moment

[66:17]

I could get mad, I could flounce out, I could do whatever, and I can see that, like I can see the energy there, and I'm not gonna go there. And you can actually make that choice to not keep moving with it. So those are the two. It's a present, overcome or let go, and just like, I'm not gonna go down that street, not gonna get on that train. And then similarly with the wholesome factors, wholesome and beneficial factors. In this case, calm, present, connected, clear, confident, whatever. Intentionally cultivating those factors, doing what you can to bring them more into presence and sustaining them. The ones we tend to pay attention to are overcoming unbeneficial factors that have already arisen, like it's already always so, you know, four alarm fire going on, and it's like, oh, now I need to stop this.

[67:28]

Or the things that we feel like we just don't have that we want, that we're trying to get, that we're trying to cultivate, and where we really don't pay much attention, which is why I like this practice, this set of practices so much, is that There's so often that we are experiencing wholesome or beneficial factors that we're not even aware of because they're habitual to us now. So we don't appreciate them. And whatever we give our attention and our awareness and our energy to tends to grow. So it's not just like, get less of this and more of this. I mean, where have we seen that before? That's our usual thing, right? but also the appreciation for and being grateful for what's going well. And these days, it feels particularly powerful to me because all the ways that our society, for all its problems, worked or still works.

[68:38]

I notice how grateful I am so many days. It's like the trash is getting taken out. You know? Things are just happening. There's this, you know, societal expectations are still flowing on. And, you know, I step into the sidewalk and into the crosswalk and most of the time people will stop. You know? I mean, not like in front of the cars, but, you know, it's like they'll be coming along, you know, and they'll stop, you know? Some of them barrel through and I'm like, okay, fine, whatever. But, you know, it's like so in your own lives, in addition to what you're working with, notice what skills you already have and what's already going well. And not only to like really highlight that and appreciate it and work with it and develop it, but also...

[69:46]

How did you learn to do that? And is there anything from that that can help you in the rest of your life? Years ago, I grew up swimming in open water, but when I started swimming in a pool, I'd never learned to breathe on both sides, and it was really bothering my neck that I was always on one side when I was doing laps. So I thought I'd learn to swim like three strokes, this side and then this side. And I about drowned at the beginning because I couldn't figure out how to get my left arm out of the water so I could take a breath and I kept breathing in water. And eventually I paid really close attention to what my right arm was doing. I was just like watching it, like, where does my hand go? Okay, where does this go? And my right arm taught my left arm. what to do it wasn't immediate but it was that was really interesting to me that there was I couldn't do it on both sides but one side could teach the other just by paying attention to what it was already doing so how do we learn how do you learn specifically what supports you what brings about your growth and your thriving I have a question

[71:13]

Karen. Hi, Linda. Hi, Karen. Nice to see you. I'm homesick today. That's why I'm online. But I really appreciate what you were talking about because I was telling my group that I had a couple of positive experiences today when I was out running an errand. And I did have this moment where I was like, oh, that felt really good, like holding an elevator door open for some people. I guess my question is, like, I'm feeling so undisciplined lately that it feels hard to kind of tell my body and my mind to remember it. And I'm just wondering what tips you have on how to really maintain that discipline and practice. Well, I need plenty of reminders, and I also like to make it fun if I can and pleasurable so that I want to do it and it doesn't feel like a chore. Yeah. And for me, writing is really helpful. There's something about like when I just think it, it's just kind of spinning and it doesn't.

[72:16]

But so long ago, I started realizing that if I wrote something down and then I would read it over, I could see what I was avoiding or what I was missing or what I hadn't seen. And it just, it works with, you know, it's like the physicality of writing. And sometimes I'd rewrite it into a short little reminder and then I'd put it somewhere I'd see it for the next few days so it would start working in there. But play with it. See what works for you. And even if you only remember for a day or two at a time and then you forget and then you come back, over time it will strengthen because we're just like... neurons that fire together wire together. Literally, they wire together. So this is what we're trying to wire them together. Last question, Jeremiah, and then we have to end because it's 820 now.

[73:18]

I didn't really have a question. I just wanted to say that we have such negative minds that it's hard to see things that are working that are positive. The negative versions of words fall away over time, like despair used to be a word the opposite of despair, but it fell out hundreds of years ago because we don't use it, and then we don't have it. And that's with so many words. We're left with the negative version, and the positive version is no longer here. And we have trouble seeing things that are working that are positive. But really what that is, is the power we all have to shine a light on something that's actually working. You know, it could be in your community or in your life or in your house or in whatever. But there are things that do work and they're hard to see. And if we start seeing them and start talking about them, more people can see them. People can't see them unless we see them and point them out.

[74:21]

And I also think that in terms of how do you keep things going, I think if you have a problem with waking up and opening your eyes and feeling gratitude, there are practices to grow gratitude. There are social scientists who have come up with all kinds of strategies for growing gratitude. Anyway, so that's all. Time. Blessings. Great. Thank you. It has been said that we are descended from the anxious apes. not the really chill, happy ones, who are like, dude, groovy fangs. So there's a personal downside to being anxious and running away from things and overdoing it on the fear side, but you don't die. You know, it's wearing on the body, but you get to procreate. So there's more of us like that because it was a survival thing.

[75:25]

So you actually have to work more to balance positive and negative because the tendency of the brain is this way. But it's possible to train it. Neuroplasticity. Okay, we'll do the vows. Beings are numberless. I vow to awaken with them. Delusions are inexhaustible. I vow to end them. Dharma gates are boundless. I vow to enter them. Buddha's way is unsurpassable. I vow to become it. Thank you very much. Oh, by the way, you can just like do an online search for nervous system regulation and you'll get like so much stuff.

[76:30]

Just extend the out breath. It's a great place to start. Okay. Good night, everyone.

[76:37]

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