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...Right? Be aware of that.
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So when you're doing it,
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when you're not conscious about it,
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what you're doing is you're grasping it.
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Your deep insides are saying,
"I hate this."
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Very quietly, but "I hate."
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But if you're conscious of it,
in that moment,
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you look at a famous person,
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you look at them from a place
of openness.
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You have to look at the image,
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because the image is where you're storing
that information and emotion.
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You look, but you're trying to look
from a different place
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You're reprogramming it
you're restructuring it.
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You are healing the relationship.
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So if you look with that openness
to that same image,
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At some point that image will
have different meaning for you.
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It will not carry the same meaning.
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If you look at it in your own body,
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if you look at it in your health,
probably the same thing
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You know, wherever the cells are in
your body
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producing a kind of disease,
like a cancerous cell,
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if you look at that, if you're being
aware of that in your body
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aware of yourself, the whole aspect of
yourself,
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it will begin to give different
information to the rest of your body.
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And therefore, that information
helps begin to restructure
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your biological conditions.
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It is what we believe, how to understand it's going to happen to the body.
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Reproduction of cells, like cancerous
cells, the same principle.
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That's how the cancerous cell knows how
to reproduce the cancerous cell.
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It will do wonderful thing if it
forgets one day.
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And it's producing some new cell.
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Probably that's what happens
if the deep pattern of identity
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it shifts something inside you
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It shifts what it brings in the body.
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So the principle here is
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the power of openness and awareness
is able to change things
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in our body, able to change the way
we identify ourselves,
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it's able to change the way we relate
to the world,
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it's able to change everything.
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That's why it's called vision, it's able to
cut those things.
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So that's a bit of explanation.
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Any questions?
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I'm happy to see that many European
people are staying up really late.
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They are participating with us.
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So any questions?
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Do you think that in openness, there's a
possibility to maintain curiosity?
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Curiosity? Yeah, and there is some degree
of curiosity in ourselves.
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And there's also curiosity on some
survival level, you know
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I'm curious to know what I need, and
so on.
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Curiosity has a lot of playfulness,
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and you cannot have playfulness
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if you're not open to it.
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What we use, what we say,
we are serious.
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That's what happens in a relationship,
when people are very serious
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in a relationship, that is the beginning
of divorce.
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[laughs]
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They are curious about each other? Yes.
Too curious about each other.
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They are not that curious, they are very
open to each other,
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that doesn't mean
loyalty and things like that.
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There's some sort of sense of openness
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and that brings a lot of playfulness.
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I was in a place in a country
where people are usually serious,
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and I was making a little joke, saying,
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"How are you going to be a little more
playful here?"
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So how are you going to be a little
more playful? Of course,
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first thing, you kind of have to go
inside yourself, wherever this
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seriousness is stuck. You have to go
to that place inside and loosen that up.
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You have to feel some confidence.
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I think that confidence is clearly a key
to be playful.
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So if you're confident that you can be a
bit more playful, if you're playful you
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can have humor, and you can have
curiosity in a good way.
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If whatever you're curious about is
not showing up, you're curious
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why it's not showing up!
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Rather than feeling pain that it's not
showing up.
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You're open to every direction.
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So yes, I don't think openness prevents
anything.
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Openness makes life richer not poorer.
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Openness is the source of knowledge, more
than the knowledge we conceptually know.
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There was a study in Netherlands about these
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executive people making big
decisions about a big company.
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The research was based on, did they make a
better decision when they're taught alot?
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Or did they make a better decision when
they didn't think much?
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The conclusion was, they made a much
better decision when
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they didn't think much.
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So of course, people who think a lot,
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they believe we have to think.
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we have to think to not to think.
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But, some sense of these practices call
for a direct path.
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Direct path means you don't have
to think about it.
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You can just be aware of it.
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Any other questions?
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We have a group of people in Brazil
who we've met with before,
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they're asking, "Please, what do you mean
by the essence of sky?"
-
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[laughs]
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[he repeats the question.]
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First, when I say essence, the sense
or meaning of essence is "the truth"
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the truth of the sky, the truth of the
phenomena, the truth of the mind.
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So in some sense, the essence of sky I
mean, the truth of the sky.
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So what is the truth of the sky?
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It's that boundlessness. When I'm gazing
the sky and I'm aware
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of that boundlessness, because the sky
is boundless.
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When I'm aware of that, it's something
deep.
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Psychologically it does something to me
inside.
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I feel that boundlessness.
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But when I'm looking at the sky I have
to be aware that that's what I'm feeling.
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That's what I'm seeing, that's what I'm
experiencing, that's what I'm aware of.
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Very often people will not be aware
of it.
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I gave one example where people were
doing a sky gazing practice in New Mexico.
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Everybody was having this wonderful
experience!
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But one guy was getting really agitated
about it. He looked around,
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and it seemed like everyone seems
like they were having a good time.
-
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He's wondering why they're having a good
time and he's looking up at the empty sky
-
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And he said, "What am I supposed to see?"
-
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[laughs]
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Well, he's not seeing the essence of the
sky.
-
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He's not seeing the boundlessness of
the sky.
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He's expecting some stuff to show up
right in front of him,
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what he would desire.
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So that's what I mean.
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I saw a cartoon in New York Times
one time,
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there was this wall street person,
and he's in Tibet with all the
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hiking shoes and all those things, and
really getting up in the mountain.
-
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And on top of the mountain he sees
a clear vision of himself;
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Not with the hiking shoes. He sees
himself with the suit and tie
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and breathless with this pure vision.
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So, no matter where you go, you might
see your impure visions
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you're not even able to see what you're
seeing.
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You're only seeing what you're wanting
to see.
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Yeah.
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[asking question] This is somewhat
related.
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Kelly is in Vietnam right now, and she's
watching the broadcast.
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She says, "Here in Vietnam I'm more
lonely than I was even in the dark retreat
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Everything truly appears to be illusion.
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How can I keep myself connected when
there are so few supports?"
-
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It seems like she's in a place where she's
lacking support.
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Sure. Well, you know,
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the opportunity for you to be
completely open to the
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lonely person in you.
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So that basically means what we were
saying earlier when we said,
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"It really hurts me. I really feel lonely,
I really feel lonely."
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And probably that sense of loneliness,
probably everybody feels it.
-
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At some times we have to go so
far away to feel it really strong.
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So when you feel it really strong,
you have the opportunity to
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to know that.
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And to know that will be fully open
to that
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and when you're fully open to that,
it will go away.
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When it goes away, the voice saying,
"I'm lonely," and the energy
-
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bringing a sense of loneliness, and the
one who's thinking, "I'm far away,"
-
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or "I'm thinking maybe to move away,"
-
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Out of all those voices and cards and the
way you relate to yourself,
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all those somehow are like a cloud.
-
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The way you let them go away is by being
fully aware and connect.
-
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Connect with them, so it's like a loving
mother sending this love to this
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napping child. So radiate the love and
attention with your open awareness
-
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to that lonely experience in yourself.
-
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That awareness, when you open to that,
it will help.
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It will dissolve. And when it dissolves,
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you come to a place where you don't
feel that loneliness.
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So you need to become familiar with that
place where you don't feel familiar.
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The question is, how do you get to that
place where you can feel
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"it's okay." So that's what I was saying
earlier that pain body.
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The principle is the same.
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And we all, right now with the internet,
you're not lonely, you know?
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Everybody's together. Yes?
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[questioner:] Could you comment on the
role of medical diagnosis
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when one experiences certain aches
and pains? Does seeking that
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diagnostic action from a Western medical
practitioner, is that a way of
-
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staying attached to the story of the pain
rather than being with it
-
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and allowing it to disappear?
-
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Well, I think in the West, all the doctors
are trained to tell some sense of truth.
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So people say, "Okay you only have five
months to live," or something like that.
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So if somebody has 5 months to live,
do they really need to know that?
-
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I mean, how important is it for a doctor
to tell you you have 5 months to live?
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From my point of view, I don't think it's
that important.
-
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If you have some suggestion about what
you can do to do something,
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so somehow the way people...
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bring this kind of energy, there's a sense
of harshness. Maybe not a lack of
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compassion, but maybe it feels like
a lack of compassion and attention
-
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because there's so much time pressure
of so many patients he needs to see
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So, the point is, when somebody labels
themselves as something,
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or "now I am this," I think it's terrible
for sure.
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So how you don't do that? Again,
You have to try to be open.
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If you're not identifying with being
something else,
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why do you have to identify with being
sick?
-
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You're sick maybe, but you don't have to
identify with that.
-
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You know, last moment of breath for a woman,
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you can live with full sense of joy,
no matter how sick you are
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or how much pain you have, that awareness,
that joy, that openness,
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it doesn't take away. But again, the point
is how we can feel confidence
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to know that is the case. To even attempt
to try,
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that have glimpse of experience.
-
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It's true, and people do have those trusts
in themselves to not be influenced
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by those labels. For sure it's a challenge
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The question is practice.
-
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Angel from Paris, Texas is asking,
"Can we access emptiness through
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the experience of the boundless space?"
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Well, I mean, the word emptiness in
Buddhism is used a lot.
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And sometimes in the West I think that
people... When we were in the
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monastery growing up for 15-30 years,
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we were studying about emptiness,
we never felt emptiness was something
-
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wrong, that there's something wrong with
emptiness, but here,
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when we use the word emptiness, it's
like, "Oh.." So it doesn't look so good.
-
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[laughs]
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So, in a way the word emptiness, the word
emptiness and fulness no differences.
-
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Because in order to be full, it has to be
empty. If it is not empty, then it
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cannot be full of the right things.
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So, we were talking about finishing our
5 day retreat,
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And one of the things we were talking,
is that there's a concept in tradition
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the great perfection tradition,
that means that everything
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is spontaneously perfected. It basically
means that everything is perfected
-
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in us. So for example, that means joy,
it's not going to hinder itself
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in light and quality.
-
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Let's go down to one simple quality like
joy and quality that we all know
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about it, right? So, joy, is it perfected
in us?
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Yes. The only way you're going to
truly experience your true joy -
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true joy means joy of being -
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is to experience yourself clear from who
you are NOT.
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Probably right now, the way you feel
who you are is occupying
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so much of space, that it's not
allowing you to feel who you are.
-
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Therefore, probably you don't have
so much of joy,
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or joy of that being. But you maybe do
have some joy of becoming, having,
-
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of being something which is not
necessarily who you are, but it's being
-
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better than who you think you can be.
-
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It's still in your mind. Or, "I'm better
because I just finished a project!"
-
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So finishing a project is better than
someone who hasn't finished the project.
-
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Right? So, I'm happy.
-
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Today is a Friday afternoon so I'm happy,
so Monday I will be sad.
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So, all those conditions you create
to yourself are simply a condition.
-
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Through that you can have little joys, but
true sense of joy is joy of being.
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So what do you need to have joy of being?
-
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You don't need to have anything to have
a joy of being, you simply must be aware.
-
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If you simply look this very moment,
close your eyes, feel the stillness
-
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in your body, draw attention inward, do
you feel the joy?
-
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Of course you feel the joy!
-
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It's there.
-
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Especially when you're open to it.
The power of openness.
-
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When you're open to yourself, you
feel that openness in you.
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In that openness, everything is perfected.
That means joy is perfected
-
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Can you be aware? Yes, if you're trying
to be aware, it's there.
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That means it's perfected there.
Is that joy equally valuable then
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to possessing a new car? Far better.
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I guarantee far better.
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Do you trust that? For sure we will
not trust that much.
-
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[laughs] I want to have that joy but also
want the joy of a new car!
-
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But at some point you need to have
confidence enough to know that it's truly
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better. This is better than the car.
-
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That confidence you got to have one day.
One day, we have to look for
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that confidence. When that
confidence comes, it's life changing.
-
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So basically the question about emptiness,
it's basically a fulness.
-
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It's a perfection that's spontaneously
perfected.
-
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What kind of perfected? All the qualities
of perfection like joy.
-
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In order to feel that joy, one has to feel
that empty or clear or open
-
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otherwise that joy of being is hard
to feel.
-
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For example, in that space, talking
about the loneliness.
-
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In that space, if you're open to it
and look inside there,
-
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you feel one important quality. You feel
connectedness.
-
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Because you are connected to that essence
of mind, to that openness in yourself.
-
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You are connected to yourself.
-
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When you feel that connection to yourself,
you feel that connectedness.
-
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When you feel that, you don't feel
very lonely.
-
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But when you don't feel connectedness
yourself, you're seeking a connection
-
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from elsewhere that's not inside yourself.
-
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Therefore, elsewhere means all the
familiar places when you're out in
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the country where you don't know people,
then you feel disconnected.
-
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You'll feel very lonely.
-
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Loneliness is a magic experience, same as
connectedness.
-
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You can be middle of the family,
you can live with somebody,
-
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but for a lifetime you'll feel
disconnected!
-
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Or you could be alone and connected
with everybody!
-
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The way you look, the way you experience
the world
-
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has nothing to do with your
circumstances so much.
-
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That's the beauty. The true realization
has nothing to do with the
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circumstances. I think that's beautiful
news. Very good news.