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Review the Day's Lessons

Lesson 10 from: Meditation for Everyday Life

David Nichtern

Review the Day's Lessons

Lesson 10 from: Meditation for Everyday Life

David Nichtern

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Lesson Info

10. Review the Day's Lessons

Lesson Info

Review the Day's Lessons

There's a pacing, obviously to hold this rome wasn't built in a day, so we're trying to gradually sort of feather in some ideas about meditation on dh, hopefully that's at a pace that, you know, we can integrate them and feel comfortable with, um, digging in a little bit deeper if we go on. Duh. I just like to again welcome everybody back from your break and welcome the, uh, online audience back in case you're joining us for the first time, I guess that's possible, isn't it? Somebody could just be tuning in right now, so welcome anybody who's coming in fresh and maybe use that opportunity to give you a little bit, uh, of what we've been talking about together. So, you know, sometimes I ask, uh, he did meditation, teacher or student, what are the most important points, you know? And in the my tradition is called pith instructions, so one of the ways of thinking about is if you were, um, about to expire, and you had your friend there where your child, what would you say? You know, that w...

ould be really, truly important. All right? So I'm curious, out of all the things we've talked about so far, uh, what's stuck, anybody's mind so I wanted to take a minute and just go around and then I'll sum up after that. But what are some of the highlights of what we talked about so far as faras? What really stuck into your mind and, uh could maybe start with the people here live and they will go to the audience outside and then all of a I'll try to sum up sum of things that I thought were important. Okay, so does anybody yeah, julie, when you were talking about the states just passing through that really landed with me having faith fit, like whether it's boredom or agitation are sleepiness no, and you know, for me it leads back teo having compassion so so that those were kind of two things I guess you know, uh there's a very famous buddhist teacher named karmapa who was you may have read about it, but he's the head of one of the main lineages and tibet and I knew the previous on the sixteenth come up but now there's a seventeen come up whose lives in india and he's been to the west a couple times he's only twenty four or five years old but very profound teacher already and the previous karma but they asked him, well, what does an enlightened person experience? So of course that's a sixty four dollar question it was like that remember that commercial where they said, you know, the guy from the brokerage firm would say something and everybody in the like that and so he said impermanence so that's interesting thing is that you know, we're gonna talk about that a lot more tomorrow, but the notion of things, the transitory nature of ourselves and all the things around us is a very powerful thing to wrap our minds around we're going to talk about that quite a bit more tomorrow, but I think that's really what you're looking at it has an upside you see people think there's a downside to impermanence like, oh, I'll lose everything I have but in last space, you know, for for the next thing to happen, doesn't it? For musician and permanence is a very important thing you're still playing last year's hit your thing? Yeah it's already old news, right? Yeah think about that all the sow and the fact that there's some relief and also did some compassionate quality to it, you know? Oh, usually we relate to the kind of sad quality of losing things, but there's a you could say the upside of it, you know? Well, I've certainly experienced that on gigs on recording sessions you know, the elation or the embarrassment of mine a clam, and then both things just pass on by I've often thought about that, you know, for those who you don't know what julie just referred to when a musician makes him a steak it's called a clam I don't know why that is I feel bad for the clam, the poor, innocent little wait could of course, go there, you know? What do you call? What do you call a musician without a girlfriend? You know, you know you so we could do a million of those, but we're going to keep moving on what else? Poke its head out you some impermanence or transitory nous and kind of the relief quality of that, uh, as being part of the experience of meditation? Uh, yeah, well, uh, you know, uh, a couple things one of them being no matter how long you've been meditating or practicing that's the same thing you come up against when you day one you know, there's a lot of similar things about that and and then also wake up before you fall asleep, wake up before you fall asleep. Yeah. That's kind of interesting. So, yeah, just the fact that we're going to be working with some of these things for a long time. So what virtue do you think might be cultivated ble through that perception practice well, yeah, about patients absolutely, which we're going to talk about tomorrow it's like we're in a hurry you know there's a lot of enlightenment intensive in america and in the rest of the world I don't teach you know this is going to be you know, there's gonna be some, uh, sense of slowing the whole thing down and gradually cultivating so I think that's the essence of appointed gradual cultivation and patients your participation rather than anticipation wow, did you make that up just now? You know, I've heard that before, but it applied very ok very keenly, you know what events you said that I thought of a ketchup bottle, a new catch a bottle you know, meditating is a lot like turning a new catch a bottle upside down a little drop of ketchup, so yeah, the notion of not simply looking at life as a way of getting to somewhere else yeah, like that's a very powerful transition that a lot of us can make you know, we've got a pretty goal oriented society and culture going on, so the idea of actually kind of slowing that down to the point where actually appreciate where we are right now, what we're doing right now, okay, yeah thie idea of creating space and the potential that you confined in that space and then also you mentioned very briefly the goal of eliminating the scene between meditation and every other aspect of life and so bringing that space into every aspect the whole thrust of our workshop and it's going to be the thrust of this last session to so thank you for bringing that up we have any you got a comment from michelle actually michelle was joining us earlier on from off the from not from anywhere in europe should talk about the breathing on she says I found david's comparison of focusing on your breathing as how it feels like you would a massage extremely helpful until now I have bean like one of the studio audience member put it in a rating my breathing narrating narrative so I tend to say things in english I'm sorry proper english tennessee coming out together you'll be happy to know that my teacher told him trumper embassy who was tibetan insisted actually that we learn proper english of students of hiss even though he himself was tibetan he he actually learned his english in great britain uh he was training americans to speak english language properly thie irony of that has become the dominant english in the world it's and it's perfectly acceptable I mean I do I do say things like I just said with my tongue very firmly in my cheek it's you know the language of alls yeah it's uh uh interesting one so yeah, the idea of feeling I think it's a very important idea um that uh that she's bringing up there there can be and I'm gonna talk much more about this tomorrow the idea that it's a mental pursuit, you know, you just meditating mentally, you know, as opposed to with your whole body with you all of your, uh, and emotional body as well. So it's a complete practice in that in that sense, we're going talk a lot as a whole session on that tomorrow, so thanks for raising that was another one. Yeah, you want to hear a couple more from seth says starting where we are was a revelation and then kala gator, thirty for me, it's the idea of creating space and everything all right, well, it seems like we're kind of all in sync so far. Um, those are some of the core themes that we covered, um also the idea of being, you know, gentle to yourself and kind to yourself, I think, um, we can't stress that enough, and even if we're looking, then as we move forward towards how we interact with others, the idea of gentleness and kindness and tomorrow and the next they were going to talk about compassion, actually, that the whole thing is not about generating one more thing that we can sort of tighten up on and, you know, and push forward through, but some kind of softness and softening into the practice softening into who we are softening into feeling our world more fully one of the things people could say maybe about the modern world is we're not feeling the world properly anymore we're not in touch so that has to start with touching our own hearts our own world more uh thoroughly and and um making contact in that way and then also the precision element of it you know that were actually developing some kind of clarity about how we're working with our own mind you know, there's a certain amount of uh then you know if you take one of those little thank you one of those little balls that has a city in it in the snow in and you shake it up and it's sort of not clear anymore and sort of like the whole you can't really quite see what's in there but if you leave it settled for a while the snow settles down and all of a sudden you see very very clearly so a certain element of precision in terms of working with mind it is really important dimension of this uh and then you know, we were talking about some common things that come up in the last session irritability, boredom you know, all these things that we considered to be like things to be avoided at all costs and flipping the view that maybe those air gateways towards and more subtle uh, you know, kind of way of working with our our world. So that's sort of gets us up to the present moment, and we also very clearly, I hope, outlined the meditation practice itself. The classic shama, tha, uh, mindfulness, meditation practice. How to actually do that, um, taking the seat one, too. Placing attention on the breath, yeah, awareness of the breath and three labeling thinking so that's, I decided, actually, this was yugos on. When I was in japan, I thought I could do this without speaking at all. I could give meditation instruction, so first one is taking your seat. Second, my first breath going in. Now. Third, I want two, three. If somebody knows, then they could start to practice that that way. First, take the seed to feel the breath going in up three back, so that's our whole practice, you see.

Class Materials

bonus material with purchase

Cultivating Mindfulness E-Book
Cultivating Compasion For Yourself and Others
Simple Meditation Instructions for Ordinary People

Ratings and Reviews

Sean Newton
 

I've tried to develop a meditation practice in the past and signed up for this course because of the title ..'everyday life' This course works!! I'd like to thank David and the Creative Live crew for providing a life enhancing course. At first I was a little impatient as I thought the sessions were long, drawn out and repetitive however, half way through it 'clicks' (it made sense) and what may seem as a long-winded preamble is in fact laying a firm foundation for understanding and progression. Hastily wanting to skip to some perceived 'good bit that helps hedge fund mangers etc ' is like sprinting to the end of the rainbow instead of appreciating the various colours. (Your own perceptual colours even ;-)) Anyway, a worthwhile course - so stay the course and feel better for fit

a Creativelive Student
 

David is an amazing teacher, he has a gift for relating the principles of mindfulness in an accessible, relatable way. Plus, he's really funny. I'm super psyched to participate in this workshop. Thanks CreativeLIVE!

Griffin
 

Also found this through the DTFH podcast. What a wonderful, powerful, and approachable course in meditation. Highly recommended to anyone interested in starting on this path. It's chock full of practical information and ways to apply meditation to your life.

Student Work

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