Awakening! A series of short talks for Bodhi Day

Well, if it goes really badly and you don't want us to use it, let us know.

I trust it will go well. That's why I'm recording it.

So welcome, everybody. We're really pleased to have a few short talks now by people who have been in the community for a while. And so we're beginning, gonna begin with, uh, Keima. Should I say, do I need to introduce? Keima's been practicing with us for about 7 years and, uh, trained with us as a priest way back in the old days and Looking forward to hear what you've got to say. That, Mummy?

Coming over there?

Yeah. Popping the tea?

And then I'll just go in your seats.

Perfect. Swap. Keeping it warm. Morning.

We've just discovered that I'm not the only one that started thinking about this on Thursday evening. So happy Bodhi Day. Waking up, awakening. I'm going to read from my phone because my printer wouldn't work. It wouldn't wake. So yeah, hopefully that— okay, so I don't get lost. Otherwise I might ramble on. We'll still be here half an hour later. So what I've put on— wait, so Longing for awakening can be a place of sadness or suffering for some, and perhaps such unhappiness might account for people who perhaps once practiced the Buddhist path that might give up or drift away. But thankfully, many of us stick with it. And we believe in that possibility of awakening. We do our practice, we read, we listen to the Dharma for those words that will unlock our minds, deepen our meditation practice, and we strive for that shift in the way that we understand the world and where we sit in the world. And if we have patience, If we sit with it, no matter how long it takes, things change. And hopefully we can break free from that fog of our own expectations. And yeah, and get there. Something Dogen says, trying to put in a few quotes.

Thank you.

And this came from Treasury of the True Dharma Eye. He said, those who have great realization realizations of delusions are Buddhas. Those who are greatly deluded about realizations are sentient beings. It is said then that awakening experiences like kensho, is that right? And they're like initial insight, seeing one's true nature, if you've not heard that term before, are just like the first stages of waking up. And there's always more to see. And the little insights along the way. And this is something Roshi Kenneth causes, called Moments That Make Us Dance. And I love that, these little insights. And I know how dancing makes me feel, so I love, I love that. And these insights aren't, are not in essence different from the big transformative insights. And that is, these little insights are moving us in the direction of enlightenment, where there's no time, effort, or experience being wasted. And we all do it differently. All of us do it differently. And something I read by Kaigen Carlson— I'm going to be terrible at if I'm saying these names, described his Kensho experience. His was big and dramatic and something that he had in very early on in practice. And it was like a big wondrous flower that burst open overnight. Brilliant if that happens. But like I explained, for many, It's like a slowly opening flower, which each petal opens one by one. It's very gradual. And you just, as I say, that patience. So when I was sat thinking Thursday evening, maybe Wednesday, a little bit on Wednesday, but mainly Thursday about what I could talk about in relation to this for a whole 10 minutes. And why on earth did I agree to do this in the first place? 'Oh my God, I'm too busy. When will I have time to prepare?' All those weeks before, after Casper's email. 'I've got nothing inspiring to say.' And those usual doubts. So I lent into Amida, um, I lent into our Buddha of Infinite Light, and I felt, I felt their love, and I felt joy. Um, and I'd been staring out of my bedroom window at that beautiful bright sunrise a few days before, not the last couple of days, it's been very misty. And about that inner feeling when I witnessed that wondrous golden sunrise every morning. And I'm very lucky, I live just up here, so I see it from my bed. And that feeling that fills my heart when I see that, and that feeling is love. That feeling is joy. And joy is a word I use. It's a practice I have. It's something that helps me make decisions about friendships, about do I wear this? Do I give this away? Some of you may have that practice as well. And I was thinking about joy. Will this joy, will this talk bring me joy? Will this talk bring you joy? It's only 10 minutes. We'll see. So joy is in the heart. Happiness is in the face. Joy is of the soul. Happiness is of the moment. Joy transcends. Happiness reacts.

Thought they—

that was sort of beautiful.

Some—

somebody else's words. So this led me to further exploration. And then I was reading about joyful enthusiasm for practice and starting meditation, um, with joy in our hearts. And I think it was one of the magazine article, probably. I've got it somewhere for the reference if anybody wants it. And the nights have been drawing in. I'm feeling fatigued. And having a regular practice is harder. Work hasn't let up. I want meditation, my practice, to be something that I look forward to. I don't want to feel a failure if I don't do it. And certainly for me, the sunrise, being in my bedroom, being a more reasonable time at the moment, and that way that it helps me feel joy has certainly helped. So I've been reading about this lovely practice about joyful awakening and awakening to joy and igniting joyful enthusiasm to our practice, our practice for the Dharma. 'And arouse joy.' This is a quote. 'Arouse joy and rest in its natural radiance. Not only is this the heart of the path, but indeed it is the heart of awakening.' Well, that was beautiful. So joy is an incredibly important aspect of our practice, as I'm sure you all know. And it's one of the four immeasurables and characteristics of the enlightened mind. And there's equanimity— I can never say it, you know what I mean? Love, compassion, and joy. It's also one of the 7 awakening factors of awakening, which are mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, tranquility, concentration, and equanimity. And these are the qualities of the mind that when cultivated in a balanced way can lead to enlightenment. And whether we're beginners or more advanced, it is possible to It is impossible to accomplish any of our practices without joy. In essence, without joy there is no enlightenment. So, you know, we need more joy. It's the nourishment that helps our practice. It helps our practice grow strong. It helps our practice grow stable. And if we think of our practice like a seedling, joy is the water that makes it grow. Without it, without water, it will wither. And that was a quote by Jamyang Tenpe. I could probably said that completely wrong way. So joy is present inside all of us. It's an untapped reservoir of content, of potential. Our hearts are already naturally joyful. So For us, it's about connecting with this intrinsic quality that we already have within us. Um, but it can be crowded out, can't it, by constant activity, pressure of daily lives, that chatter of our overburdened minds. I'm sure you can— sound familiar. But by bringing joy into our hearts, in the beginning of our practice, it can give rise to these immeasurables. And joy is actually the easiest one really to grasp, so it's a good one to start with. And once, once you have this regular experience in our hearts and the quality of our practice, um, we can begin to feel more loving kindness, more compassion, more calmness, composure, more balanced mind. I've only got 10 minutes, so I can't go into detail about the wondrous article, but I can give you the reference. But the path of joy begins by choosing an object by choosing something that brings us simple, uncomplicated joy. A flower, a bird. For me, it's that sunrise. Um, and we place our awareness and we calmly observe it. We want to rest the mind on that object that touches our heart, that— and we feel it in a relaxed and carefree way. And by connecting with something external that brings us joy, then our inner joy will shine through. We simply rest our awareness on it without clinging to it, without grasping at it with our minds, and just sit and rest the mind at ease on the object in the present moment. It's an exercise in allowing joy to begin to resonate, resonate with our, with our being naturally, so that when we sit and meditate, our hearts will be open and be receptive to whatever arises. We're not trying to force it. We're not trying to fake it, but rather we're allowing this joy to effortlessly rise in its own time and in its own way. It might sound a bit intellectual, a bit mind-based, but actually when we sit and meditate like this way and with this practice, our hearts will be more receptive to what rises. And over time, this practice will be felt in our heart. And Buddhist practice actually naturally leads to joy and can take years to, you know, to get to this place. But by invoking joy each time we sit, we meditate, we're almost jump-starting this to a point where our practice and joy are inseparable much, much sooner. And we feel more warmth and kindness towards those we meet. We're more capable of dealing with difficulties and resilience, composure and acceptance. And most important, if we do this, this joy practice each day, we can feel our hearts opening up more and more into our capacity. Our capacity for compassion and love is boundless. So in other words, joy leads to recognition of our true nature, which is the union of realization of emptiness. Which is wisdom, and limitless compassion that is the bodhicitta, the awakened mind. Nam-myoho-renge-kyo.

Nam-myoho-renge-kyo. Thank you very much.

Thank you to all the articles that I've read that supported that.

Yeah. And hopefully we'll get lots of opportunities to practice joy today.

Yes.

On the walk, in the curtain, lots of external things to joyfully give our attention to. So I'll invite Angie up next. Angie's been living here for about a year now, practicing with us, and before then was studying with Caroline and Enrique, and lots of other experience as well. Over to you.

Thanks. Oh, thank you for really opening the floor with such a beautiful and joyful and inspiring talk, Kaim. I really appreciate that. And happy Bodhi Day, everybody. Um, yeah, so I thought for this talk that I would play with the metaphor of waking and sleeping. Keep it nice and simple. So with obviously with sleeping being the way in, uh, which I can go through life and not see and not be aware, and waking up being obviously Awakening. So there are definite limitations to this metaphor in that if I die in the night, then I'm not gonna wake up in the morning. And, um, if I die during the day, then the morning will come and I won't be alive to wake up for it. Yeah. But the good thing about the real deal is that, that there's no exceptions and there's no limitations. And, um, Yeah, it goes well beyond the metaphor. Okay. So I thought, what are the conditions for waking up in the morning? What are the conditions for me waking up in the morning? So if I wake up naturally, which quite often I do, it's because the cycles within me have come to a natural point where it's, I'm ready to wake up. Yeah. And that's. Not something I have any control over. Yeah, I can influence it. Like if I can go to bed at certain times and, you know, have a bedtime routine, which is supportive to good quality sleep or whatever, but I can't really control when that natural sleep cycle's gonna come to an end and I'm gonna wake up. And if I'm worried about waking up or worried about falling asleep, then both of those are harder to do. Yeah. And if, if I'm woken up by an alarm, it's similar to what Cain was saying when we might have a really big experience that just cuts through, cuts through and wakes us up. But I find if I'm not already to the point where my being is ready to wake up, even after an alarm, I can fall back to sleep again. Okay. So I might have this amazing event, it might cut through and I have all these realizations, but then, you know, if I'm not really at that point, I can drift back into sleeping again. And I go through this cycle of falling asleep and waking up many times in a like really literal way. And in a subtler way, I go through many different states of consciousness. Within one single day, and my brainwaves move through different frequencies. And sometimes in the more relaxed states of consciousness, I'm actually closer in a way to a spiritual awakening. I'm more, I'm, I become more aware. I wake up to other aspects. So those are conditions for me literally waking up. So what are the conditions for me falling asleep, which is also a condition for me waking up? Because I'm not asleep and I can't wake up.

Yeah.

So to fall asleep, I need to settle into my experience. I need to let go. I need to surrender. My mind, body, and all the systems within it need to quieten down to the point where I can drift into sleep again. Unless I've taken a Downer, that's not something that I can force to happen. Yeah, it has to happen naturally. And as I said before, the more worried I am about waking up in the morning or falling asleep, the harder it is to get to sleep. So the more the more tense I am, the harder it is for me to move naturally through that cycle. So waking up is completely dependent on falling asleep in the same way that nirvana is completely dependent on samsara. To paraphrase, because I can't quite remember the quote, to paraphrase a little bit of Shinran, the ice of samsara becomes the very spring, the very waters of nirvana. So they're completely dependent on each other, completely dependent on each other, and mostly when I fall asleep at night, I have an average level of trust I'm gonna wake up in the morning. Sometimes I don't, you know, there've been times when I've fallen asleep and I thought, oh, I'm not sure if I'm gonna wake up in the morning depending on what state I was in when I was falling asleep. Mm-hmm. But most of the time I have a level of trust that I will wake up. So for me, I'm thinking, how would it be to let go into my experience in the same way that I need to do in order to fall asleep, combined with the same level of embodied trust, or ideally a much deeper level of embodied trust? That I will wake up, that the awakening is already assured in a way that is more than the metaphor of me simply waking up in the morning. Namamitabhu.

Namamitabhu. Thank you very much. I'll be thinking about that as I Going to sleep. Maybe that would have been helpful to have heard that talk yesterday when I was asleep. And then awake for an hour in the night going, oh, I guess I'm just awake now. So, wahando te Whi. Most of you know Whi. She's been coming in for about 7 or 8 years, basically since we opened 10 years ago. And for a long, long time it's been her stalwart of the bell.

Thank you, Casper. Thank you, everyone. This isn't the talk I was originally going to give. When Casper first asked me to do a talk at the extended Dharma Glimpse, I thought, I'm already working on the Dharma Glimpse, I'll do that. But then when Casper said it's on the theme of waking up, I thought, yeah, what I was looking at was a little bit downbeat for today. So I started again on something else and came up with the not very catchy title, uh, Personal Take on Two Practices. For the theme of waking up, I wanted to take a personal and admittedly quite subjective look at a couple of different practices that have really benefited me since the time I first started coming to the temple. And perhaps if you don't already, you might be curious about them and either revisit them or try them out for the first time. When I first started coming here, we used to do the Nei Quan, Qi Quan more often. And to recap, this is where you are invited to meditate on what you have received, what you have given to others, and how your existence might have caused trouble to others.. And then the final step is to hand over what you have learned over to Buddha. And you can consider the period of the previous 24 hours, um, to consider these things, or much, much longer, like a lifetime. Um, and I found this really quite powerful and important, and I got a lot out of it. I always find a lot of healing when I focus on being aware of the gratitude to people around me. And beyond that, to be aware of the wide things I have received from the universe. Um, be it a warm day or a beautiful view or uplifting birdsong just when I needed it. Like this morning, we were walking around the garden, you know, the birdsong was there and I thought, oh yeah, that chimes with what I'm gonna say later. Um, it's also very illuminating to focus on the balance, uh, between what I feel I have received and what I have given. Inevitably, I feel in debt. But for me, the most revealing step was considering the trouble my existence and my actions had caused to others. And often there will be inevit— an inevitability to this friction, because suffering is an escapable part of our existence after all. On a trivial level, I might cause trouble to my colleagues by mithering them for the fifth time for some data that I need for a report when they have other priorities for their time. And while I do need this from them, by being aware of the inconvenience I cause them in doing so, I can see things from a wider perspective, and I can develop more of a tenderness towards their annoyance with me rather than resenting it. On a serious level, it is part of our Bambu nature to push back against the idea that we have caused problems to others, and it's useful to unpick that. It feels like this is a strategy to protect our ego, a denial that we are fallible. But what I learned from doing this is that the protective shell we put around ourselves can get in the way of moving forward. We can get stuck in resentment if we always push the blame onto other people for what happened in the past. And an honest reappraisal of our own shortcomings and what we contributed to past problems can actually be very liberating. That honesty might not be easy, but laying down the burden of resentment is worth upsetting the story that our ego has told us over the years. So for me, practicing this aspect of the Nei Kuan helped me to come to terms with a burden of resentment from a failed relationship from a long time ago. In such circumstances, it's very easy for our egos to tell us the story that the other person was to blame for the failure. It was their abuse, controlling nature, et cetera, et cetera. And I carried that resentment with me for a long time, and it was poisoning myself. So finding this practice that helped me lay that, lay that down was actually very liberating, and it helped me move forward and interact with this particular individual in a much more healthy and positive way. I'm very thankful for that. And the final step of chi kwan, of handing what you have learned about yourself over to the Buddha with this new knowledge, um, it left me feeling so much lighter. And the second practice I wanted to mention that I found very valuable is not one I received directly from the temple, but it was put before me as these things often are, about a year ago when I was in great need of it. It was a time of my life when I was in a lot of mental, emotional pain, and the Buddha clearly felt that an antidote should be put in my path. This took the form of a practice suggested by Pema Chödrön. I always stumble over her name. Her history is a bit more complicated than this, but she's an American nun, uh, following the Tibetan tradition, who has many books and talks to her credit. And a couple of my Chöd Ratna friends are big fans of hers, and one of them happened to share an article on Facebook. And I wish I could go back and find the link, but I haven't managed to. But the practice itself is very simple. Over the course of a journey, in my case my commute to and from work, you are invited to project good wishes towards anyone you see on the way. And I like to include all sentient beings in that, not just the humans I see, as I also see a lot of dogs being walked at that time in the morning, as well as the cows and the sheep on Castlemorton Common. Although wishing them well seems a lot more poignant, as I know it's not going to end well for them. Sometimes I just say, look, I hope you all escape and end up in an animal sanctuary. But it is possible that spiritual practice can happen even in the course of your drive to work. I've been doing this for over a year and I haven't crashed the car yet. And You can play around with finding the best words that resonate for you. After a while, and this is obviously a little bit of a phrase of the day, I decided that the phrase I liked best was, "I wish you joy today." It sounded good in my head as well as being simple and sincere. And it also feels important to wish all these strangers joy equally without any form of judgment. Inevitably, there will be some passersby that I feel more connected to than others, because if I see someone out for a run, they might get an extra joyful wish. But in the circles that I move in, I do sometimes find myself in the company of people who have become very cynical for various reasons about their fellow humans. Typically, That may, might take the form of hostility towards, for example, meat eaters or climate change deniers. And while I understand that reaction, I can also feel quite uncomfortable with it. As don't we wish that all beings will awaken regardless of where they are right now? So it does not feel healthy to fall into the delusion of thinking in terms of us. Us and them. So to play around with the freedom of sending all these people loving kindness equally can feel like quite a liberating counterpoint to that. And what I love about this simple practice is that it takes us beyond the self and its preoccupations. It cracks open the shell that we live in and invites us to become more aware of our connections with others. And experience a tenderness towards them. I don't honestly know if the people I wish joy upon have any idea that this is actually happening. I would like to think on some level that they do, or maybe they're just wondering why on earth that woman in this slightly grubby corsair is smiling at them, because I actually find it impossible while projecting that these thoughts not to smile.

Mm-hmm.

So in summary, I really value the experience that both these practices have given me. Um, they help to open up cracks in the defenses that we've built around ourselves and reinforce our connections with other sentient beings, which I think is an important first step when we are thinking about the subject of awakening.

Namamita. That's right. So I was just counting them from years, from, I think, 15, nearly 16. Yeah, it's a long time, isn't it? Yeah. Anyway, it's really lovely to have you here. Namaste.

Morning everyone. It's lovely that Caspar has given us the two words of waking up and there's like a little thread that's woven through the first three. Um, it's like we've all found these little parts of the path without even speaking. We haven't spoken to each other about what we're gonna talk about.

Mm-hmm.

Um, but we've all got these little moments and everything. So, um, I've written about waking up to the middle way. Uh, there's a moment in our lives when our awakening begins, and for some it can be the first few years of life, and for others it can take decades, but some event will start this process of awakening and questioning. And when this opportunity arises, we don't always take it. And this comes to your awakening and, and sleep moments. So why, why don't we take it? And the obvious answer is because, uh, the problem with our lives is that we become too comfortable in our own skins and our feet ground us to the floor. You just feel your connection with the floor even as you're, you're sitting there now. And, uh, from the moment we begin to walk, we start to feel the floor and it feels as each step is secure and it's purposeful. And, uh, you know, our feet take us in the directions that our minds want to go in. And life generally stays that like that for quite a long time. Um, until some disaster strikes, and our bodies might physically fail us and cause us disease or impairment, or we might encounter some emotional suffering such as the loss of a partner. And it, it doesn't really matter what that loss is. It's just the fact that it's something that sweeps us off our feet. And we try and get back up again and we try and walk again in, in the same way, but the landscape that we once knew has changed and our feet don't grip the floor in the same way anymore as they did. And we can try and dig our toes in and we still can't feel the earth as it was before. And this agitation arises. And at that moment we do one of two things. So we either face the situation and we start asking the important questions about the meaning of our lives, or we throw ourselves back into the distractions. So our retail therapy, our social media, watching television. Um, this is all sounding familiar to you because I can see lots of smiles. We've all been there. This is, you know, where none of us are perfect, um, to this one. So our reaction is not that dissimilar to the Buddha Siddhartha some 2,500 years ago. You know, he lived a comfortable life and he ticked along protected by his family in the walls of the palace. But there must, despite that protection, there must have been one point where he started to feel some agitation. Something happened that made him start to question, um, and he knew something wasn't right. And, you know, and as we know from his story, he started to go out of the palace gates and, um, saw different aspects of suffering and you know, his servants that went with him or his aides, you know, tried to cover it all up and make excuses and try and distract him. But, you know, he, he couldn't do it. There was something about that experience of suffering that trickled into his consciousness to the point where, you know, this was no longer the walls of his home. He had to leave. He had to go and have this this experience that he did. So, um, you know, the Buddha took his questions and went through some really extreme practices to the point of near starvation. And it was finding contemplation and meditation that eventually led to him being fully awake, and he developed his teachings of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. So that we could all wake up and be liberated. Um, you know, he did all the hard work for us, you know, and we, we are really blessed. And it, and today of all days when we come together for Bodhi Day is the day where we can be really thankful for that, that he gave us the opportunity to, to wake up if we choose to. And, um, when we study the Four Noble Truths, We begin to understand about the ground beneath our feet, that it's never secure. You know, even though you feel this sturdiness below you, it is not there really. Um, you know, our bodies aren't going to last us forever. You know, lovers leave, jobs finish, and we have to accept that impermanence is part of our life. And when we do that, that peace starts to come into our bodies and we start to feel calmer about the world. And if we acknowledge that it's not the suffering that's our problem, but our reaction to it, that's when we can start to heal. So, um, If I share a personal example for a moment, um, both my twins were born with disabilities, and I felt immense suffering. And I tried to apportion blame on myself and on the medical profession because I'd lost my old life at that point when I knew there was a problem. Everything changed for me and my, my feet, I realized, were not strong on the floor anymore. This was, this was my, my big waking up, if you like. And I was mentally and physically scarred by a traumatic childbirth. And I was left caring for two very sick children. I lost my job, I lost my sense of self, and suddenly I was thrown into a life of a carer. And I was really angry and really scared. And I would say that it's, it's taken me years to accept my life as it is now. But when I started to reflect on my life and probably, and you know, properly absorb the teachings of the Four Noble Truths, I, I stopped focusing on what I didn't have and instead started to appreciate the life that I did have. And, you know, it was, it was in that moment that my suffering started to diminish. So the Four Noble Truths lead us to the Eightfold Path, and this is described as a path of action. And when we live our life on the path, we start to accept and appreciate life as we experience it here and now. And we learn to accept even the parts of ourselves that we don't like. And everyone's journey along the path is different. And, you know, we've all given some insight into how we experience the path this morning. So for me, it's about writing and reflecting on what I've been through. I meditate, and the chanting practice as a Pure Land Buddhist. So for me, I feel that the chanting, or nenbutsu as we call it, helps to bring an awareness of my fragility as a human being. The process, when you immerse yourself in it, softens the heart, and it allows me to sit with what I'm feeling without being full of anxiety. And I'm not afraid of the parts of me that I'm uncomfortable with. And connecting with Amida through the Nembutsu tells me that it's all okay. Even the stuff that's difficult is all okay because the Nembutsu, I feel, tells me that it does. So the Nembutsu is this way of bringing together all the elements of the Eightfold Path. So right view, right intention, and right concentration. Through that sound, through, we connect through that sound with Amida. And if we walk the Eightfold Path, then we choose not to be right and not to be wrong. Um, which means we try and keep an open heart and an open mind. And this is not an easy path, but you already know that, right? So when we sit in the middle way, it means not holding onto a version of ourself so tightly that we stop our hearts from being open to the possibility of something else. And in the middle way, there's no extremes of thought or action. And it's such a challenge to stay on the path and awake. That's why so many of us fall off and fall on and fall off and fall on again. And if we sit comfortably between the two directions of right and wrong, then there are no extremes of emotion based on our expectation. So to get to that state of mind, we have to loosen the grip on what we think ourself should be like. So for an example, um, I grew up like a lot of people, um, in a society that suggested I would get married, I'd have a healthy child, they would grow up and be healthy themselves and have a happy life of their own. But those expectations that society maps out, um, are not everyone's normal. And I think that if I had grown up in a society that showed an understanding and an empathy for other versions of family life, then perhaps it would have been less of a shock when my own life changed so traumatically. But sadly, we live in a society that for decades has hidden disability. We rarely integrate disabled children into mainstream schools. We provide limited job prospects for disabled adults. It's a list of divisive inequalities that are created in a society that, that just goes on and on cycle. And, um, I see disability as not an inability. It's just a different way of living. And if we normalized disability and created equality, there'd be less suffering. And when we take a wrong view, we shut down any possibility of any change taking place. You know, this is why I give this example. So when our society only peddles this one view of the world, which is largely neurotypical, ableist, then we have no chance to make it fairer for anyone. So the path allows us to reframe our world. It allows us to rise to the needs of others with empathy. And compassion. And you can see by my own reaction that it is so easy to get caught up in the energy of right views and wrong views. We can stir up our egos if we're not too careful. But if we can hold on to the middle way and we can stay steady amongst all these difficulties that life presents us with, then we can have a wholesome, positive life.

Namaste.

Thanks everybody, really, really lovely to listen to. Years ago I was reading a book by, uh, that was a dialogue between a Buddhist monk and a Christian monk, I think. I've tried for years to find this exact book and I haven't been able to find it. But in one section they're talking about this analogy that, oh, you know what they say about all faith traditions, just lead to the top of the mountain. We've just got different paths that we go up. And, and, uh, one What do you think about that? And, and one of them, whichever one it was, replied and said, oh yeah, it's fine, but actually I prefer to think of a much bigger landscape. Here's a mountain, here's a forest, here's the coastline and the sea, here's a swampland. And that maybe different faith traditions teach us about different places in this landscape. And like on the theme of waking up, actually we can wake up to lots of different things. There's lots of things that are true and important to be aware of. It's impossible to explore the whole landscape in one lifetime, unfortunately, but we have heard some different— from some different places in the landscape today, which I really appreciate. And I think when I first started practicing Buddhism, one of the things I've got caught up in is, is this right or wrong?

Understandably.

And, and I would dip, you know, over the years I would dip back in and out of that. Oh, is this right? But this Buddhist tradition says this, and this one says the exact opposite. So how do you square those things together? And even within Pure Land Buddhism, you'll find very different things, very different takes. The traditional Shin Buddhist view of Amida as the savior who you hand over complete responsibility to. Or the, um, some of the teachers that we've been reading recently, the disciples of Manjushri, who are much more about kind of, well, Amida is a symbol for your own awakening, and you have to— there's something that has to happen from over here as well as over here. And actually, when I first started reading this other view, it really threw me, um, again. I was like, oh, I don't know what's right anymore, wrong. And I was just really in a state of sort of frustration and despair, just like literally about 10 days ago, this was. And, um, and then I had this dream that I told you about, Isi, and I won't go, I won't share all the details that I shared with you because it was really weird. Yeah, Philip was there as well, so you could ask Philip as well if you want. But in, I mean, I told Philip, not that he was in the dream, but, but the end of the dream, I had this really strong message like that felt like it was coming from the outside, and it was a sense of, don't worry, everything's going to be taken care of. I was like, oh. And I woke, I literally woke up, uh, from my sleep and I guess had a kind of allegorical metaphorical waking up. So I was like, oh yeah, I'll try and, try and remember that. And I forgot, of course, you know, within a few hours or something irritated me. I was like, oh, this thing needs sorting out. No, everything's gonna be taken care of. And I think when I'm in a more relaxed place, rather than trying to think about what's right or wrong, or what's true and isn't true— is this teaching true, is that teaching true, is it like this, is it like that— now I think much more about, oh, this is describing an experience of one person's waking up that was really important to me and for and this is describing another person's experience of waking up that was really important and meaningful and helpful. And maybe those things will be helpful for me right now, or maybe they were helpful and something else will be different and helpful. And just try to remember how vast that landscape is, that how many different things there are that we can wake up to and, and how small our— we are as sense organs, you know. We only see such a small range of the visible light, you know. The visible light spectrum is much smaller than the whole light spectrum, and the same is true of our ears. And I can only touch what's around me, and how could I possibly expect to understand you know, to wake up and to comprehend infinity. And sometimes we have a bit of an experience like the flower blossoming, but then it's sort of landing back in consciousness and going, well, I'm not entirely sure what that was all about. So I suppose this is an invitation to welcome all of these things and if possible to hold them lightly and try not to make the mistake that I make of trying to work out which one is true and which one isn't true, and just treat them all as different meaningful experiences of waking up. Namaste. So we've got some time in small groups now. Yeah, I'll stop recording. Thanks for joining us on the recording.