In todayand#8217;s FBA Dharmabyte, and#8220;Facing the Truth,and#8221; Vidyamala leads us through the art of being with change in the moment. From the beautifully strong and popular talk, and#8220;Dying to Live.and#8221;
Vidyamala shares from her own practice of living with chronic pain comes a sane and unsentimental perspective that affords us all a measure of genuine optimism as we meet the trials of the world: bereavements and losses of all kinds can be met with a kindness and awareness that gently ease the burden, allowing something of peace to enter our lives again.
(upbeat music) Dharma Bites is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for your life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. So okay, how do we gradually learn to face the truth of spiritual death in the here and now? Now how do we pull ourselves away from these incredibly seductive strategies that we've got for keeping us out of the present moment? And I think the key, the whole key is staying with actual experience in the moment. Not our ideas about our experience, but our actual experience. The constant ebbing and flowing of sensations, feelings and thoughts in the moment. The tantra says in relation to the wisdom of exsopia, reality is our experience with no ideas added on, which I really love that. I think that's fantastic. Reality of our experience with no ideas added on. So we can let go towards our experience as it is with neither grasping nor aversion and be thoroughly grounded in our experience. And it's only on that basis that we can begin to really see into the impermanent, insubstantial and unsatisfactory nature of things, rising and falling like waves on the ocean in the here and now. And not as things to cling onto or things to deny, but just as experience and an expression of reality. So I thought I'd get you all to close your eyes now. You just do a little exercise. So the baker's been saying in the meditations this question, what is happening now? So just say, are you breathing? Are you aware of your breathing? Are you aware of your body on the chair? And what are you thinking about? And try not to judge it, don't think, oh, I'm distracted. Just think, oh, I'm thinking about lunch or on board or whatever, just note the thoughts. (crickets chirping) And just allow it to change. Okay. So I think we can actually do this sort of thing a lot in our daily life. Just ask ourselves, what's happening now? What am I thinking about? Am I aware of my breath? I mean, it's shocking when you start doing it, how often you're not aware of your breath. Am I aware of my body and you realize you're very tense? Is my face relaxed? Are my hands relaxed? Is my throat relaxed? Just ask ourselves these questions and then that will help us stay with what's ever going on and just notice if we're judging it and noticing it if we're thinking it's bad and I shouldn't be doing this or that, just let it be as it is and learn from that experience. We can learn a lot about ourselves by where our mind goes. So if we discover, when we do this sort of exercise, please discover, we're always thinking about the same sorts of things. Then we can learn, oh, that's a tendency I've got. That's what my mind does. And that's very good information that we can then work on. So obviously, crucially, I think, in a spiritual life, it is in sitting meditation, informal meditation, that we get an unparalleled opportunity to train ourselves to do this sort of inquiry. I was thinking, in a way, meditation's a bit like a laboratory situation 'cause we go into the meditation space, we close our eyes, we reduce the input from the senses, we don't move about. And we are in a quiet place and we stay still and we try to create the conditions where we can simply be with our experience in a naked and undistracted way. That's probably not possible in the other time, actually, 'cause in the other time, there's always going to be some kind of sensory input. And I think, for me, when I'm doing this kind of investigation and meditation, just for who am I, what am I, what am I thinking, what am I feeling, what's happening now, I find it really helpful to think of letting go. But I think for some people, the phrase being present might be more helpful. So I think we can use either of those phrases, either letting go or being present with our experience in the moment and just allow it to continually come into being and pass away and just notice all the times that we tighten around it and react to things and fix things and then just let it go and just practice this art of being with change in the moment. - We hope you enjoyed today's Dharma Bite. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com forward slash donate. And thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
