Latest / Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast / Why We Struggle to Commit (and How to Change That)

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Why We Struggle to Commit (and How to Change That) · Buddhistisches Tor Berlin Podcast

0:08
Yeah. So it's nice to have the the
0:10
beginning there with the mention of the Rotaburg, this idea for a
0:14
new retreat centre, and also how we're trying to raise the money
0:19
to make that happen. Because what we have there is a
0:21
vision. We have something that doesn't
0:24
exist, yeah, in its potential form, but we have a vision.
0:30
And the fundraising lunch is just one of the many things
0:33
we're trying to do to make that vision actually come into being
0:38
and to actually manifest. And in a sense, the talk today
0:43
is all about that, not not specific to the rotor board, but
0:46
about having a vision. And how do we actually make that
0:50
vision come into existence and come into being.
0:54
And this is, it's really a continuation of, of a theme that
0:57
we've been looking at all this month so far in January, which
1:03
is commitment, the theme of commitment.
1:06
And we've been talking about commitment very much in grand
1:09
terms, this idea of having a vision, having a path, finding a
1:14
community that share in our vision, whether that's Buddhism
1:18
or something else. We've been talking on that kind
1:21
of level. So what is it that we want to
1:26
give our lives to? What is it that we want to do
1:30
with our lives? What is it that we want to
1:32
become? What are we committing to?
1:38
And as I said a couple of weeks ago, that's the word.
1:42
Commitment can have some heavy sound sometimes to some people,
1:48
but in Buddhism it's always voluntary and it's always coming
1:52
out of inspiration. So what are we inspired to give
1:55
our lives to and commit ourselves to?
1:59
What are we voluntarily turning towards?
2:03
Yeah. And we might not know, so that's
2:06
fine. It's an open question, but we've
2:09
been pitching the question in those kind of terms.
2:14
And yeah, I thought today maybe to end this month long
2:19
exploration. We talk about something very
2:22
practical and how do we commit very practically?
2:28
Because I know for myself, I can have the vision and I can be
2:32
very inspired by it and then I can forget it.
2:37
Yeah. I might pursue that vision and,
2:41
and start doing things to help that vision come into existence.
2:44
And then something else comes along and I forget it, you know,
2:48
for for however long that might be.
2:51
So how do we remember? Would be another way of putting
2:55
it. I'm hoping I'm not alone in
2:58
that. Yeah.
3:00
Thank you. Reassurance, some laughs.
3:03
So we we have the vision, we forget, we remember and it's a
3:08
kind of process or a cycle of remembering, forgetting,
3:12
remembering, forgetting. So, so how can we engage with
3:17
that process of remembering and forgetting?
3:20
What are the things that we can do to help with that and how can
3:24
Buddhism help us with that? And I want to explore that by
3:30
looking at this image, which is an image of the, I think it says
3:35
it somewhere, the Tibetan Wheel of Life.
3:38
And it's actually the same image as the one we have on the wall,
3:43
on the red wall as you come into the Buddhist centre.
3:46
As I said in the WhatsApp message this week, sometimes we
3:50
miss it, even though it's maybe it's so big that we can't quite
3:54
take it in and we don't see that there's a a full image there.
3:58
But on the red wall Artiketu has painted this huge wheel of life
4:06
for us in gold, which is fantastic to have.
4:09
Sometimes I come past the centre at night and the lights are on
4:12
the red image and it's so good to see from a distance this
4:17
gleaming thing like this. So what is it?
4:26
Because we might see it, we might look at it when we come
4:29
in, but what is it actually communicating to us?
4:32
Yeah. So I appreciate you won't be
4:37
able to necessarily see this, especially if you sat near the
4:40
back. So I'll talk through some of the
4:43
relevant pieces. But before I do that, I'll just
4:46
mention that we have the image there for a reason.
4:51
So it's outside on the wall as you come into the Buddhist
4:55
Center for a particular reason. And if you go to any temple, I
5:01
imagine, because I haven't been, but if you go to any temple in
5:05
Tibet or Nepal, probably outside of the shrine room, the main
5:11
temple meditation room, you'll see an image of the Wheel of
5:15
Life. Yeah.
5:16
So it's always on the outside of the main room where the practice
5:22
happens. And the symbolism there is that
5:26
this image, in a sense is a kind of mirror.
5:29
So we walk into the Buddhist centre and it's like looking in
5:32
a big mirror. There's something about the
5:35
image that is communicating what we are like.
5:40
Yeah. What our life is like, what our
5:45
making an assumption here, our unenlightened life is like.
5:51
Maybe a simpler way of putting that what our limited life is
5:56
like. So again, an assumption.
5:59
But I imagine that most of us feel, at least some of the time,
6:04
like something in US is limited, that we have more potential than
6:08
we're currently able to bring into being.
6:12
Our vision for ourselves is not being fully made manifest.
6:16
Yeah. So this is a depiction of what
6:19
it's like to feel a bit limited and stuck in our lives.
6:26
So by leaving that at the door and coming in here, the
6:31
symbolism is that we're leaving this behind.
6:34
We're leaving the limitation behind.
6:37
And instead we're coming in here and we're looking at this image,
6:41
which is what our life would be like if all of those limitations
6:45
had disappeared. Yeah.
6:50
Not literally, but symbolically. That is a representation of our
6:57
life if all of those limitations were gone.
7:01
So there's this movement away from something towards something
7:05
else. So what is it then?
7:07
I'm, I'm not going to talk so much about this.
7:10
I'm going to talk more about this.
7:13
What is it that we are looking to move away from?
7:16
What are those limitations and really importantly, how do those
7:20
limitations actually come into being in our life?
7:27
So often when we look at this image, we start here and we
7:30
gradually go outwards. I'm going to reverse the
7:34
tradition and start at the edge and and move inwards today.
7:39
Just novelty. So round the edge here, we've
7:45
got 12 different pictures in a, in a sequence and these are
7:52
known as the 12 nidanas or 12 links.
7:55
I'll just, I'll just go through the pictures.
7:57
We can't talk about all of them. But at the top here, the first
8:00
one we have is of a blind person with a stick walking around and
8:05
not really knowing where they're going.
8:08
They're feeling their way along the wall.
8:11
Then we have a Potter. So somebody making ceramics, a
8:16
Potter's wheel. We have a monkey in the
8:20
treetops. We have people on a rowing boat,
8:25
I think there are five of them. Then we have a house with six
8:31
openings, SO5 windows and a door.
8:34
We have a couple kissing. We have a man with an arrow in
8:40
his eye. Start to get a bit more
8:43
unpleasant now, but man with an arrow in his eye.
8:47
Then we have a woman offering somebody some water.
8:53
This one is of a woman reaching up into the trees to pick fruit
8:58
and put them in a basket. Then we have a pregnant woman, a
9:03
woman giving birth and then a man carrying a dead body on his
9:09
back. And then we're back to the image
9:13
of the blind man. So that is the sequence of the
9:17
12 nidanas. So they all represent something.
9:22
So I could have, I could have told you that sequence without
9:25
the pictures and just told you what they were conceptually.
9:29
Personally, I find the images help me to remember them and
9:34
they say something in themselves.
9:37
We can't go into all of them. I'm just going to pick out some
9:40
of the key ones. Yeah.
9:42
So I'm going to start here with the image of the house and the
9:45
six different openings, the windows and the doors.
9:49
So this is a a pictorial representation of the senses.
9:55
The fact that we have senses. Yeah.
9:59
So Buddhism says that there are 6 senses.
10:03
So there are the five physical senses.
10:06
Help me if I get stuck seeing, tasting, touching, hearing,
10:12
smelling. Thank you.
10:15
But then the 6th 1 Buddhism says is the mind.
10:19
Yep. So just as with hearing we hear
10:22
sounds, with seeing, we see sights with the mind, we
10:28
perceive those things that seem to arise within us.
10:33
So images, memories, thoughts, they're all being perceived by
10:39
the mind sense. So here we have the 6th senses,
10:45
and then the next picture is this couple kissing.
10:48
And that represents contact. Yeah.
10:51
So because we have these six senses and because things are
10:56
going on around us, there's contact.
11:01
And it's very, if you like, intimate contact.
11:04
I wonder if that's why it's a picture of people kissing.
11:08
So it was interesting at the start of the meditation there
11:11
was a sound, which we all probably registered.
11:16
So if there are sounds and there is hearing, but there's contact
11:21
and it's immediate, it's very close, it's very intimate, it's
11:25
unavoidable in many ways. We hear, we see because there
11:30
are things to hear and things to see.
11:34
So senses contact. And then we get this horrible
11:39
image of somebody with an arrow in their eye.
11:43
And that one represents what usually gets translated as
11:47
feeling, you know, maybe better feeling tone.
11:52
So the parley word is vedana, so feeling tone.
11:58
So whenever we sense something according to this model, whether
12:03
it's a sight, whether it's a sound, something we smell that
12:07
has a particular feeling tone, which is one of three things,
12:13
it's very simple. Pleasant, unpleasant, neutral.
12:19
Yeah. So we hear the fire engine or
12:22
the ambulance, maybe it's unpleasant.
12:25
Yeah. We see somebody we like
12:27
pleasant. We kind of semi register
12:34
somebody we know nothing about and there's a kind of neutral,
12:39
not pleasant, not unpleasant, just neutral.
12:43
So all of our experience carries this basic feeling tone, either
12:49
pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. Then on the basis of that, I'm
12:56
going to put these two images together because it makes it
12:59
easier to me. On the basis of that feeling of
13:02
pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, we have some basically we have
13:06
some kind of reaction, yet there's some response to the
13:11
pleasant, the unpleasant or the neutral.
13:15
So traditionally these, these represent tan ha, which is
13:20
thirst. Hence the water being offered
13:23
and then grasping. So hence the woman reaching up
13:27
to pick the fruit and put it in the basket.
13:32
So if you like this, this idea of thirst, it's like we
13:36
experience something pleasant or something unpleasant or
13:40
something neutral and there's already a kind of movement
13:43
within us, something beyond just registering the raw sensation of
13:49
feeling tone. There's some kind of movement in
13:53
a particular direction which then carried further goes into
13:58
as either reaching out for something, pushing something
14:02
away, or you could say maybe just wilfully blocking.
14:07
Yeah. And that that then creates a
14:13
habit. So the way we react to things
14:17
creates a habit or a becoming. So technically, this is actually
14:22
the Tibetan wheel of becoming, not the wheel of life, the wheel
14:26
of becoming. So it's describing how our
14:29
identity forms in relation to all these different sensory
14:34
stimuli, the fact we have contact with them, the fact
14:39
there's a pleasant, unpleasant neutral roar experience.
14:44
And then what we do in response to that creates our whole
14:50
identity, creates our whole sense of who we are, what we
14:56
are, what's happening, which keeps the whole thing going.
14:59
Because then who we are determines the things we might
15:03
look towards here, how we respond again to pleasure,
15:09
displeasure, neutrality. And it's a wheel because that's
15:14
just going round and round and round.
15:19
Good news is that it can be broken.
15:23
Yeah. So Buddhism teaches us that this
15:25
cycle is not unbreakable. It's not invincible.
15:31
And in fact, the the place where it's strongest, the the link is
15:37
said to be strongest is between the feeling and the response or
15:42
the reaction. It's strongest there because
15:52
it's strongest there because that's where the the making
15:59
happens. So everything prior to that we
16:01
can't do anything about. You can't stop yourself having
16:05
senses. Even if you go into a sensory
16:09
deprivation tank, which exists. They exist, don't they?
16:14
You still have your mind sense going, don't you?
16:16
So there's no avoiding that. Even if you go to sleep.
16:24
We dream, so the mind sense is active and we might wake up
16:27
because we hear a loud bang. So there's no getting away from
16:31
senses. There's no getting away from
16:33
contact because there's always something to for the senses to
16:37
respond to. The 2 are intimately connected,
16:41
and there's no getting away from the feeling tone.
16:44
That's automatic. So whether it's pleasant,
16:47
unpleasant, or neutral, that's just coming with the experience.
16:52
There's nothing we can do about it.
16:55
But then the reaction happens. Yeah.
16:59
And that's when the making happens.
17:01
So if we keep reacting in the same old way, we keep
17:04
reinforcing the whole thing. But even though it's the
17:09
strongest place, it's also the weakest place.
17:12
Yeah. So we can break the whole thing
17:15
here. So if we experience something as
17:19
being pleasant and we know that habitually that means we want to
17:24
have more of it, and we don't do that, then we can change the
17:30
whole thing. Yeah.
17:32
If we experience something as unpleasant and normally we would
17:36
attack it or push it away and we don't do that, then this can't
17:41
keep spinning. If something is neutral, and
17:45
normally we'd kind of willfully ignore it, but we take an
17:48
interest that breaks the whole thing and we end up off the
17:54
wheel and on what we call the spiral path, which I'm not going
17:58
to say anything about that. Someone else can give a talk
18:02
about that next time. So the strongest link is
18:05
actually also the weakest link and we can make a free choice
18:10
here and that breaks the whole thing.
18:14
Sounds great, doesn't it? Like really easy.
18:21
It's genius. Like, this is genius that
18:24
somebody or some group of people in the past have looked at what
18:30
happens in our minds and identified, well, it's the
18:34
senses, and then there's contact and then there's this feeling
18:37
and then there's the reaction. I don't know if I could have
18:40
worked that out if that hadn't been told to me.
18:44
Yeah, maybe some of you could. It's genius for its simplicity.
18:51
And in my case, I can't deny that this is true.
18:55
I look at my experience and yeah, that's quite clearly what
18:58
is happening. The problem or the issue I have
19:03
with it is that it makes it sound so simple, and then I try
19:08
and do it and it doesn't work. Like, I know that if something's
19:13
really pleasant and I would normally reach out and try to
19:17
hang onto it, but that's not going to end well.
19:21
But I still do it. The hand still goes out.
19:27
I know that pushing things away that I don't like doesn't work
19:31
because they come back. So in mapping it out like this
19:37
and making it simple for us, which is extremely helpful and
19:41
valuable, the trap is that it fools us into thinking it's
19:45
easy. And then when we can't do it, we
19:49
think we're failing. Or we think that we're.
19:53
Yeah, we're just not good enough to make it work.
19:55
And we're bad at Buddhism and we go and try something else
19:59
instead. But I think if we if we look at
20:04
this wheel 1st and then we work inwards, I think it helps us to
20:09
appreciate that what it's actually getting at is really,
20:12
really complicated. Yeah.
20:16
So just bear with me because I'm going to make it all worse.
20:20
I'm going to describe how the situation is worse, but then
20:24
we'll come back. Bear with me.
20:28
So the next ring that we've got is divided into 6 and these are
20:33
known as the six realms. So there, a realm is a place
20:38
outside, isn't it? So this, this set of 12 links is
20:42
all about us and our individual experience, our kind of inner
20:47
life and experience. The six rounds is saying that,
20:51
yeah, that's happening to us as an individual, but because of
20:56
our experience and our reactions and how that cycles around, that
21:00
then creates the world we inhabit.
21:05
Yeah. Or, and the other people I
21:09
inhabit a world with, this is also going on for them.
21:13
So they're also creating a particular type of world with
21:18
me. Yeah.
21:19
So instantly it's more complicated.
21:23
The other thing I should have said is that this cycle sounds
21:27
so simple because it's as if I'm just sat here and I'm not really
21:32
doing anything. And then I hear a sound and then
21:37
I have a pleasant, unpleasant neutral, and then I have a
21:40
choice about what to do with it. But actually the reality is
21:45
there's probably hundreds of things, like now I'm suddenly
21:51
aware of all of you much more acutely.
21:54
I've got all this stimulus coming from every pair of eyes
21:58
that I might catch. There's all the sounds, there's
22:01
the sound of my own voice, there's the feeling touch of my
22:04
own body, things kicking off internally.
22:08
So if you've got hundreds or thousands even of these things
22:11
happening in very quick succession, where's the gap?
22:16
Like where do you actually get into that if it's just layer
22:20
upon layer upon layer? Yeah.
22:22
So that's happening for me, that's happening for everybody
22:26
else that's creating worlds. And here we have 6 realms, 6
22:35
worlds. There's the God realm where
22:38
everyone looks like they're having a great time, wearing
22:42
togas and things, flying around, playing musical instruments.
22:49
Then there's the the realm of the jealous gods, who are
22:52
looking at these gods having a great time, but they've got
22:57
swords and bows and arrows and Shields, and they're going to
23:01
war with the gods. They're jealous of this pleasure
23:06
that's happening up there. Next we have the realm of the
23:10
Hungry Ghosts. This is horrible.
23:15
There's pictures of beings with swollen bellies trying to eat
23:20
food but not able to ingest. I don't know if I've made this
23:24
up but when the food goes in the mouth it turns into dust.
23:27
Have I made that up or is that a traditional?
23:31
Anyway, it's like that. They can't get the nourishment
23:34
they need so they're just constantly hungry.
23:38
Then we have the hell realm which looks even more
23:41
unpleasant. So fire, monsters, people having
23:47
a terrible time. Let's not dwell on it too long.
23:52
Then we have the animal realm, different animals, looks like a
23:57
zoo. And then we have the human
24:01
realm, which looks sort of familiar, if familiar as in
24:08
ancient India, with people sitting, meditating, plowing the
24:12
earth, riding horses, that kind of thing.
24:16
So 6 realms, and probably we recognise all of them.
24:21
I could hear some people responding as I described them.
24:26
So we could look at these as being six different ways in
24:30
which we experience the world. So sometimes it's really
24:35
pleasurable, isn't it? We're just chilling.
24:38
We can even be a bit intoxicated with the pleasure.
24:42
We think it's going to last forever, and that's what's
24:44
happening here. The gods think this is paradise
24:47
and it's just going to last forever.
24:50
Then there's the jealous gods attacking, feeling they don't
24:55
have what others have and wanting it.
24:58
There's the hungry ghosts, where however much we put in, this
25:03
happens literally with food, doesn't it?
25:05
However much of the pleasurable food I eat, it doesn't satisfy
25:11
the deeper longings of the human heart.
25:16
Then the hell realm. Yeah, I'm sure we've all been
25:20
there in some way, shape or form.
25:24
The animal realm where we might just be interested in basic
25:29
needs, food, sex, sleep. And then the human realm where
25:34
it said things are difficult, but things are also pleasant
25:40
too. So we get a bit of both.
25:43
And that's said to be really fortunate.
25:45
If you're, if you're in the human realm, in a sense you're
25:48
in the right place because there's enough pain to realise
25:52
there's more to life than this, but there's also enough pleasure
25:57
to inspire you, keep you going. Life isn't just a waste of time.
26:04
So the more we can inhabit this human realm, the better.
26:10
But even that is limited. Yeah.
26:12
So these are all limited realms. So that's why it's complex for
26:18
us, because this is going on. And it's also the world we
26:22
inhabit. It's also the worlds we have
26:25
inhabited. Past tense.
26:28
Yeah. I think that's significant that
26:30
if we have, and we all will have experienced these different
26:35
realms at different times in our lives, that gives us or has
26:40
conditioned us to react and respond to things in a certain
26:43
sort of way. So it includes our whole past as
26:47
well. OK, this is where it starts to
26:51
turn round for the better. So I'm going to jump into the
26:56
middle ring 3 animals, a cockerel, a snake and a pig.
27:04
And they represent what Buddhism calls the three root poisons.
27:09
Yeah, not very pleasant. But what is it that's spinning
27:13
this whole thing round? It's a way of encapsulating that
27:18
grasping out, reaching out, pushing away and wilfully
27:22
blocking and ignoring. I'm going to do a sidestep and
27:30
talk about something from another point of view.
27:34
So these three animals, they were reminding me in the week of
27:39
well, I've been doing a bit of research into neuroscience.
27:43
My general disposition is anti scientific.
27:46
That's kind of my general way of relating to the world.
27:50
But I've got more and more interested in neuroscience
27:52
recently for reasons I won't go into.
27:56
And there's this, what is now kind of rubbished a bit by
28:01
modern neuroscience. There's this idea from the 60s
28:04
of the triune brain. Anyone heard of that?
28:09
OK, so it's it's this idea that our brain has three levels or in
28:14
evolutionary terms there were three phases.
28:17
So the last phase was the more human phase where the brain
28:20
became capable of playing instruments and all that kind of
28:25
thing. Before that there was the mammal
28:27
brain that is involved in fighting and running away.
28:35
So assessing situations, responding with, with fight and
28:39
flight. And then the reptilian brain,
28:43
which is freezing. So, so if you think of a
28:48
reptile, they can't necessarily fight back if they get caught,
28:52
they're just going to a frozen state.
28:56
So that's, that's an oversimplification apparently.
29:01
I don't know so much about these things, but it's a useful
29:04
metaphor, I think, for giving us another insight into how this
29:09
whole thing works. Yeah, What it says to us, first
29:14
of all, is we don't have to morally judge ourselves for the
29:17
fact that we are limited as human beings and not fulfilling
29:21
our own potential. It's not that we are walking
29:25
bags of greed, hatred and delusion.
29:27
Yeah, which is sometimes how this can come across.
29:32
There are physical things that we can do nothing about
29:37
physiologically, that condition, how we react to certain events
29:44
in our lives. They did an experiment on
29:47
people's heart and the nerves around people's heart.
29:50
They sat them in a room and then they were going to have people
29:54
enter the room that they liked and disliked.
29:57
And before the person had even come in the room, the heart had
30:00
responded, yeah, with some kind of reaction.
30:07
So things are going on for us at that kind of level.
30:11
Of course, we forget to do the right thing or to do the thing
30:16
we would want to do logically. This conditioning is not just
30:22
about how we act. It's also about our whole
30:26
biology. Yeah.
30:28
So I think that's a useful additional perspective to what
30:33
the Buddha is teaching from a more modern scientific point of
30:37
view. Doesn't mean we can't take
30:39
responsibility for that, but we need to know it's more
30:43
complicated than just choosing what to do and doing the right
30:47
thing. It's more complicated for us so
30:49
we can give ourselves a break. And it's more complicated for
30:53
other people, so maybe we can be a bit more forgiving for others
30:57
too. Yeah.
31:02
The other reason I think that perspective helps is that it
31:05
gives us a way of getting into that gap, gives us another
31:10
perspective on how to get into that gap because there might be
31:16
certain things we need to do just to calm down our whole
31:20
system so that we can respond in a more helpful way.
31:28
Yet basic things. And the good news is that
31:32
Buddhism supplies some of those basic things.
31:37
The whole of Buddhism, you could say, going to take a leap here.
31:41
The whole of Buddhism is about getting us into that gap between
31:47
feeling pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral and how we respond.
31:52
It's giving us multiple ways in whether that's ethics.
31:57
So if we're trying to live according to loving, kindness,
32:00
generosity, simplicity, truthfulness, mindfulness, it's
32:05
a way of interfering here, intervening in that gap.
32:10
Meditation, Dharma study, ritual, it's all helping us get
32:15
into there. I want to talk about another
32:20
practice and I want to talk about it for different reasons.
32:24
One thing is we never talk about it, and I think that's a shame.
32:30
The other thing is that if you look in all of these six rounds,
32:33
in each of the realms there's a Buddha, and in each of the
32:38
realms the Buddha is not sat down like this.
32:42
He's stood up on his two feet. So presumably he's moving
32:47
through these realms. So I want to talk a little bit
32:52
and then we'll do an experiment about walking meditation.
32:57
Yeah. So being meditative in the way
32:59
that we walk and in the way that we move through the world.
33:08
So I, I really like walking meditation and I do a lot of it.
33:14
And I want to encourage you all to experiment more with walking
33:19
meditation. The the number one benefit of
33:23
walking meditation is that we're walking all the time.
33:29
Like most of the time. So if you think about it, if you
33:33
need to do or get anything, you walk.
33:37
Yeah. So if you move from your seat to
33:41
the fridge to get something out of the fridge, you've walked at
33:44
least two or three paces. Yeah.
33:48
You walk to EU Barn, you walk to the Buddhist centre, at least
33:53
some of the way. Even if you come on, you bike,
33:55
you walk through the door. Yeah.
33:59
So it's something we're doing all of the time.
34:02
If we're not bringing our exploration of Buddhism into
34:04
walking, then we're missing a huge field of opportunity where
34:10
this gap is constantly presenting itself.
34:13
And we can get in there if we, if we apply our Buddhist
34:17
practice to walking, we can actually get in there quite
34:21
often. The other great thing about
34:24
walking is that it's so sensory. So we're back to the house and
34:28
the six openings. Obviously we can feel ourselves
34:33
walking on the ground, but our, our vision is constantly
34:38
changing as we walk with things going on around us.
34:42
The soundscape is there, smells, probably walking through Berlin,
34:49
different smells, different places, tastes maybe less, but
34:55
forget about that. There's a lot going on, and then
34:58
there's a lot going on internally.
35:00
So everything we're seeing as we're walking, everything that
35:04
we're smelling, everything that we're hearing is probably
35:07
producing thoughts, other images.
35:12
So all of this is going on all of the time, but in walking, I
35:15
feel there's a kind of easy way into it.
35:20
Yeah, it's, it's more apparent to us perhaps, whereas if we sit
35:25
down to meditate, it might be that our mind spins into this so
35:30
kind of easily or. Yeah.
35:37
That that actually walking just helps break the pattern a bit
35:40
because we're actually physically moving.
35:44
So rather than say anymore and give some talk about walking
35:49
meditation for the last 15 minutes, we're going to do some
35:54
and I'm going to throw in some pointers.
35:59
So in a moment, I'm going to ask you all to help clear the floor
36:04
because we've got all these mats and cushions.
36:07
There's a lot of people. So it's going to be interesting
36:09
this, but we'll clear the stuff away.
36:12
Some of our team are going to go to the ends if, if that's OK and
36:17
you can just pass everything back to the back of the room and
36:21
the team will neatly put it away.
36:25
This is a, an immediate opportunity to get into the gap
36:30
because it might be that the habit is, well, when I pack the
36:33
things away, I leave the Buddhist centre, but we still
36:37
have 15 minutes. So the, the gap here is we're
36:40
going to pack the stuff away, but then we're going to stay.
36:44
So it's a different, different way of working.
36:47
Obviously, if you need to go early, just go.
36:50
I'm not trying to shame you into staying.
36:52
I'm just saying it might be that we noticed that like, yeah, when
36:57
I've put my block away, then I go to the door so we can
37:02
immediately do a different response.
37:05
So then once we've cleared away, we'll just gather in the middle
37:09
and then I'll say some more and then we'll start some walking.
37:13
OK, great.