Teacher Training weekend 160625C on Pure Awareness and Vipassana

June 25 2016 Saturday, Teacher Training Retreat

Barbara on Vipassana and Pure Awareness Meditation

Barbara: With vipassana we watch objects arising and passing away, and we stabilize the continuity of presence, of consciousness. We watch how a physical, emotional, or mental object arises into our experience and passes away; a lot of wisdom develops that all objects are impermanent, not of a nature of a separate self. There's nothing to contract about or fix. It's simply the expression of conditions, though sometimes very pleasant or unpleasant in presentation.

We watch the chain of dependent origination, observing this object come into contact with our physical or mental sense organs. Pleasant, unpleasant or neutral feelings may arise about this object; emotions may arise about it. This whole chain of becoming rolls along, non-stop. The Pali wordpapança*. Do you know that word? Like popcorn! This arises, and then from this, that arises, and then another "that" arises. It seems like fireworks where you see the bright streak shoot skywards and suddenly many blossoms fly out of the streak. Then from that second blaze, hundreds of other little explosions of light emerge. Then it fades away and the black sky is there again. Then there's another brilliant streak. This is what our mundane experience is like.

• From Leigh Brasington, excerpt... Bhikkhu Bodhi  translates Papañca as "mental proliferation". The mind takes the simplest thought, jumps on it, and runs off in all directions. Just as the ear hears without any effort (and in fact it takes a lot of effort to make the ear not hear), the mind proliferates effortlessly, and it takes a lot of effort and/or training to hold this tendency in check. It's the unbidden "going" of the mind to so many different subsequent thoughts that is important, rather than the diverse places it goes.

When we practice vipassana in a skillful way, eventually we may have an experience where we begin to see that everything has literally arisen out of the myriad conditions that came before, that we cannot pin any one cause to what has arisen. Each object arises and passes away, impermanent. We still may see objects arising, but it's just seeing. There may be no thoughts about it. Eventually there's no going out to it or aversion. It just is. This experience is often called access concentration* because as mind focuses in this way, thecitta or consciousness that can perceive the Unconditioned become accessible.

*For more detail on access concentration see the 4-part class series in the archives, 2007, Consciousness and its Objects, beginning with:

http://archives.deepspring.org/Aaron/ClassSeries/2007/September182007.php

This awareness may lead us to an experience where objects temporarily literally cease to arise. Mind has moved past the conditions. We say the conditions are purified. There are no conditions leading to the arising of a new object. This is sometimes called a cessation experience. I'm moving though quickly, not going into detail here, but as the mundane world no longer holds our attention, we may have a direct experience of the Unconditioned.

This chain of experience can lead to the erroneous belief that the Unconditioned is somewhere way out there, and the only way to experience it is through the vipassana practice. This is one powerful way to experience it. But usually when we have that "Pow!" experience, it's not very stable. We come back into the everyday mind, and where is that experience now? Where did it go? It's not accessible, except in memory.

The pure awareness tradition –  this is drawn from the Tibetan dzogchen tradition, but I do not teach it as Tibetan practice or Dzogchen –  recognizes the always-present pure awareness mind that's always been there. There's nothing we have to get. Rather, we just relax into it. It's this, that we've done so many times, (holding open the fingers of the hand; watching them move; then looking through the fingers into the space)  seeing all the mundane objects, and looking through. When you look through your fingers that way, you can see the sky, you can see the lake. It's always been there. If you focus on the fingers, you can't see what lies beyond. When you relax your gaze and look through the fingers, even though the fingers are wiggling around, you can see through and see the lake, see the sky. It's always been there.

So the recognition in the pure awareness practice is a lot like that exercise. It's recognizing our true nature. Recognizing what is innate to our being. Let's call it spirit, for lack of any other word– essence, or ground of being.

The practice is traditionally taught in three parts. The first is seeing the view, which is just seeing this spacious awareness, just connecting with it. The second is stabilizing the view. There are specific practices we do to stabilize. The third is bringing it out into the world. This is what Aaron was talking about this morning, how we can bring this out into the world and live it.

Let's practice with Step 1, and just do it for a few minutes, sitting here, and then practice a little bit with Step 2, and then go down to the lake and practice more with it, and just getting a touch of it.

So first, Step 1. I know many of you may have done this with me before. I'd like you to sit in a relaxed way. You can sit up straight; you can lean back. Ahh... Eyes open. If you have glasses on, take them off. We don't want to see every distinct leaf and so forth, but more the entirety of the view. Let the mouth hang open just a little, not forcing it open, not holding it closed, just relaxed. Let the tongue hang loose, not touching the teeth or roof of the mouth. Relaxed body, mouth relaxed. Eyes not squinting and trying to pick up details, not closed, open eyes, but relaxed. Effortless effort, present but free of strain.

Let the breath flow out. You can use your arms in the beginning to help get it, opening and closing them. Ahhh... As the breath goes out, release everything– all sense of self, all thoughts, ahhh.... And then, when we breathe in, we breathe it all back into ourselves. When I breathe in, I'm not breathing in this piece of air, I'm breathing in all your exhales, I'm breathing in the whole universe. All the energy the trees are pouring out, the birds, everything. Bringing it into myself. And then again, ahhh.... You can use a vocal ahhh at the beginning. Mouth slightly open, tongue hanging loose in the mouth, just ahhh.... And inviting it back in. That's it for Step

Now, three more small pieces of instruction. If you feel resistance to allowing things in, pause and note any subtle resistance. Breathing in, I am aware of the resistance; breathing out, I smile to the resistance. As you feel that physical body resistance going, then just return to ahhh... and breathing it in. In the same way there may be resistance to releasing. The habitual old armoring, whatever it is we're holding onto, that doesn't want to go out with the ahhh... If you feel it as subtle contraction in the body and feel resistance, pause, with mindfulness, "Breathing in, I am aware of the resistance. Breathing out, I smile to the resistance." Breathe in and out to the resistance, whether it's with the inhale or the exhale, until it gradually opens. And then just return to this ahhh....  this presence practice.

That's as far as we're going to go right now. Five minutes of practice. If we hear birds singing, little baby sounds (there is an infant present) or even a loud cry, just hearing. A bird flies right past your face– seeing, seeing. Present with it. No need to do anything with it. So we're very present, but we're present with a part of us that's not usually there, a part of us that's just really willing to be with things as they are, to stay spacious and open to things as they are.

Five minutes... mostly silent....

(tape paused)

As you look out, you'll see trees because of where we're sitting. Don't try to see individual leaves and branches. Don't try to distinguish tree, sky, lake. Just relax and take in the whole picture.

(tape paused)

bell:

So this is the first step of the practice, just seeing the view, which is a way of saying, resting, catching, "Ah, this is awareness," maybe just for a second. And then it's gone again and the everyday mind is back. We're  just getting to know what it feels like to rest in awareness. Some of you may have gotten that, some may not. We'll do more practice with that down at the lake. So I want to go on to Step 2.

I'm going to email this audio file out to all of you so you can hear it again, and in sharing it, please use really simple instructions, similar to what I've just said. I find that most people have experienced this, and it's basically giving a known experience a name rather than helping them experience something new. For many people, they've lain on the ground as a child and watched the clouds drift by. There were no thoughts, just clouds. That's resting in awareness.

So Step 2 is stabilizing it. Because we're in these human bodies, there's a mental body, an emotional body, a physical body along with the spirit body. These sensation, emotions and thoughts come up, become predominant– a strong body sensation, a thought, an emotion. This takes us back to our basic vipassana, noting. I'm sitting here and let's say, for example, a bird lands on my shoulder.(humming birds are at the feeder just behind Barbara, coming very close to her) Oh! What is it?  Bird. A lot of stories coming up. As soon as I note contracting, sensation, thoughts, and simply ask myself the very simple question– it's not really a simple question, it's a profound question, but, is there anything here that is not a direct expression of the Unconditioned? Say the question... (they repeat it together) Is there anything here that is not a direct expression of the Unconditioned? The bird, clearly the bird is a direct expression of the divine, the Unconditioned. My contraction, it's just expressing out of conditions. And because the conditioned world is a direct expression of the Unconditioned, anything that arises in the conditioned world is a direct expression of the Unconditioned.

Through this practice, we really come to know the ground of being so that we watch how objects arise out of conditions and pass away, but in our vipassana practice we don't look for, "Where is this object coming from?" I don't mean in mundane terms, but we don't deeply understand this is just the Unconditioned expressing out. The trees blow a bit in the breeze. Anything there that's not an expression of the Unconditioned? Breeze and stillness, both part of the Unconditioned. Sunshine and lack of sunshine. Contraction and spaciousness. Do you understand what I mean by this, at least intellectually?

This is the core of the practice, coming deeply to know whatever arises as an expression of the Unconditioned. This takes us right back to our vipassana practice and the way the judging mind comes in and says, "I shouldn't feel that. I should feel this." Why? That's just conditioned thinking. Everything that's arising is arising because the conditions are present, and those conditions are expressing out of the Unconditioned. Everything is an expression of God, is one way to say it. Or, everything is an expression of Buddha nature, awakened nature, the divine.

We really start to trust that this essence is. It's not a matter of brainwashing ourselves. It's a matter of paying attention and starting to see how deep this ground is. Everything that arises in the conditioned realm is illusion. I'm sitting here, I was meditating for a few minutes, looking at the reflection in the door behind X. The reflection of the lake, the trees, of the little breeze, the trees moving, and aware, it's all an illusion. This is simply an image of the lake. Well, if I turn the other way and see the lake, is it any different? It's all illusion! And it's all real! The lake is simply expressing, the trees are expressing, the sky is expressing, out of the Unconditioned.

So we start to trust this ground of being and develop the capacity to rest there more stably, even when something is shaking us. At this point, I'd like any questions you have about that. (There are none.)

Now we're going to go down to the water. You can sit on the dock. You can take a boat out. You can float on the lake on your back or with a noodle. You can stay in 2 feet of water near shore. You can swim out to the middle of the lake. If you have sunglasses, you may want to put them on, especially if you're going to be lying on your back in the water. But you don't have to. You can just look up at the sky and keep your face away from the direct sun. Obviously, don't look at the sun even with sunglasses on.

Start by this establishment of the view, just ahhh.... As you start to feel settled, so that a lot of thoughts are not coming up, so there's not a lot of self-identification with physical sensation, move into Step 2 of the practice, so when something pulls you out of the spaciousness, just ask, "anything here that's not a direct expression of the Unconditioned?" "Well, yeah, there's a jet flying across the sky. How can that be a direct expression of the Unconditioned?" How can anythingnot be a direct expression of the Unconditioned? We don't have to trace it back. Simply, everything that arises into the conditioned realm has a ground of the Unconditioned.

Q, do you by any chance have the bookOpen Secrets? (No.) I will send you a couple of quotes by email that are from the bookOpen Secrets by Rabbi Rami Shapiro*. It's a beautiful little book on non-duality. I think you'll find this "everything is expressing out of the Unconditioned," that he expresses this very clearly, from a different tradition, obviously. Not a Tibetan or Buddhist tradition but from a Jewish tradition.

From "Open Secrets"Open secrets, Rabbi Rami Shapiro, printed by Human Kindness Foundation, 4th printing, 1999

On Amazon:https://www.amazon.com/Open-Secrets-Letters-Yerachmiel Yisrael/dp/0974935921/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1469144691&sr=8-1&keywords=open+secrets++rami+shapiro

Some would argue that God is a divine spark inside each being.  Others would argue that God is above and outside creation.  I teach neither position.  God is not inside or outside.  God is the very thing itself.  And when there is no thing but only empty space, God is that as well.  Picture a bowl in your mind.  Define the bowl.  Is it just the clay that forms the bowl or the empty space that fills with soup?  Without the space, the bowl is useless.  Without the walls the bowl is useless.  So which is the bowl?  The answer is both.  To be a bowl it must have both being - the walls, and emptiness - the space.  It is the same with God.  For God to be God, for God to be all, God must manifest as being, Yesh, and emptiness, Ayin.  Yesh is the manifestation of God that appears to us as separate entities - physical, spiritual and psychological.  Ayin is the manifestation of God that reveals all separation to be illusory: everything is simply God in differing forms.  God is all.  There is nothing else.  This teaching is called shlemut, the completeness of God.  To be shlemut, God must contain all possibilities and paradox.  To be shlemut, God must transcend the notion of opposites and reveal everything as complementary.  God must be both Yesh and Ayin, being and emptiness, simultaneously.  Yesh and Ayin both reside in and are expressions of God's wholeness, shlemut.  These three terms are crucial to understanding God and almost everything else.  It is vital to everything we will discuss that you understand these three words.  They are the key to your spiritual awakening and tranquility.  Learn them well.

Are there any questions about what we want you to do?

Q: Just to review, we're going to go out there, and we're going to rest in the space, to allow it in and breathe it out. And if there are distractions or contractions, we welcome the contraction in and release it, and go back to pure awareness by taking it in and releasing it out.

Barbara: But not forcing your attention back to pure awareness. Just, it's like being in a place where the sun is shining and suddenly a big cloud comes in front of the sun. You understand the cloud is going to drift away. The sun is always there. The blue sky has not gone anywhere, I just can't see it for the moment. But if I relax, the blue sky and the sun will come back. So it's that kind of energy. But in the beginning it takes trust.

I used to teach this with the question, "What is it? Anything there that's not an expression of the Unconditioned?" A friend of mine, Ajahn Viradhammo, I was sharing this practice with him, and he said, "Then you have to have a considerable amount of practice experience to be able to answer that. To know there's nothing there that's not an expression of the Unconditioned." I thought about it, and I think he's right. So, teaching it to you, you have that practice experience, so it's a useful question.

Teaching it to beginners, Ajahn Viradhammo had a good question, He phrased it, just, "What is it?" So, not the "Anything there that's not an expression of the Unconditioned?" but simply,  "What is it?" Really, what is this puff of breeze? What is this jet trail in the sky? What is this fly hovering around my head? When we ask, "What is it?" it takes us to a different place. So you can try it either way.

Don't get too mental about it. Don't try to figure out, "Well, it's a fly. It's an organic creature. It came from an egg." Just, "It's a sentient being. Ah..."

Q: The pitfall I keep on stumbling into is trying to get at pure awareness through the breath and the eyes, as if it's out there. And then I've been inviting breathing in and out through the heart. Some armoring around the heart releases, and the energy is more helpful.

Q: I find it's helpful to remind myself there are no borders, no boundaries. And so, when I'm noticing my breath and the wind, they become one, and the breathis my wind and the wind is my breath, and it moves out and out. And the waves in the water, they come in and they move through me, and I move with them. And I relax my boundaries, I relax my borders. I open up. And there's a sense of merging, where whether it's my visual field or the breath sensation with the wind and the air, or the sound sensations, these sounds are all around us, and they come through. They touch my eardrums, but they move out, there's a sense of merging where the sound is just sound and is just moving with me like my breath and the visual field. So it's a reminder for me to just relax my borders, take it all in, and just open up and relax that. So the boundary is temporarily relaxed.

Barbara: Thank you Q. This is really a core of it, the release of boundaries. When we're caught in the conditioned realm, and we often are when we're doing vipassana practice, even a very skillful practice, there's still this subtle core of self and boundaries. As we practice pure awareness, the boundaries fall away, and that can be very frightening to some people. If it's frightening, simply note contracting, fear. Suddenly everything is dissolving and I'm out there, and I'm the sky and I'm the trees and I'm the lake – Oh! Just note, fear, fear. It's okay. Because that will come up.

I want to share a poem from Alan Ginsburg.

Follow it out as far as it goes.

You can't think straight and you don't know who to call.

It's never too late to do nothing at all!

That's it! Doing that nothing.

I like to watch body contraction when I practice. With pure awareness practice there's still subtle contractions. As soon as I see that those contractions are simply expressions of the Unconditioned, just normal for being in a human body, and I stop tensing about them or trying to control them, then the boundaries open. Then I release into the fullness of being.

Let me say one more thing here. The difference between this and access concentration. Access concentration grows out of vipassana. You all know what access concentration is. (Q: Review it.) With access concentration, as we focus, objects still arise and dissolve into and out of our experience. They may be pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, but there's no longer any going out to them or pulling back from them. There are no longer aversive thoughts or grasping thoughts. So the mind is very focused, very present with arising and passing away of objects. We see each object arise– this one, and that one, and that one– and mind is very focused on each object as it arises and passes, and there may be a space and then a new object arising. There's very little spaciousness, but very focused.

This practice is totally different. It's really relaxed, way out there. Spacious. Aaron and I did a whole year class on "Consciousness and its Objects" including on pure awareness versus access concentration, (twice 2007 and again in ?) 10 or 15 years ago, and I'm pretty sure it's all in the archives. I will email it out, all the transcripts and instructions and so forth, to anyone who wants to go deeper into it. It was not deep practice in pure awareness meditation but understanding the difference. The class was called "States and Stages of Consciousness." It was about the different levels and kinds of consciousness that arise with practice. So one important focus was pure awareness versus access concentration.

For now, the important thing is, as you're doing this in a skillful way, space arises and opens. At first the space itself seems to be an object. But then there's just space, and there's nobody thinking about the space, nobody going anywhere in the space, just resting in space. But that doesn't mean that if you're lying there and a bird flies over your head, there's not seeing, noting, "bird, bird." There's no going out to it. So there's a mixture of access concentration arisen from pure awareness. Resting in awareness, eye seeing, "Bird, bird." Bird is gone. Back to the spaciousness. So the object is picked up, it's noted. If it's unpleasant, that unpleasant feeling might be noted, pleasant feeling might be noted. But there are no self or stories around it, as is similar with access concentration. But there's also no thinking about it. You're just resting in awareness. And that bird is one tiny object, and then it's gone and this vast space of awareness is back.

Okay, I think the best thing here is to really give ourselves an hour, even 90 minutes. Time to get down there and back, plus an hour in or on the water. Practice with it and then we'll come back here and talk about it. You don't have to be on the water, obviously. You can do the same practice sitting here...

(meditation at lake; then the group reassembled)

Aaron: My blessings and love to you all. Again, I am happy to be with you. I hope you enjoyed your swim and float. It was pleasant to watch you in the water.

I'm returning to a bit of what I spoke of this morning. You are spirit. There is a physical body, mental body, emotional body, all grounded in spirit. If you try tofix the physical, mental, and emotional bodies, it doesn't work; it's just more contraction, more ego, more suffering. If you simply rest in this ever-perfect pure spirit body and say, "Everything's perfect," this is denial. You do experience body pain; you do experience mental anguish. The human experiences these things.

I hope that Deep Spring can finally become a place that holds it all together – mundane and ever-perfect – and helps each human to do so: working with the vipassana, pure awareness, and clear light practices, and also all the other supportive practices such as the Brahma Viharas, energy and chakras, elements, sound, clarification of intentions, and so much more, with the intention of raising consciousness in ourselves and through the whole earth, really through the whole universe. And while I phrase this as "raising consciousness, it is really coming to know and rest in the already present awakened consciousness. You are that!

I said recently, many beings are watching what happens here on the earth. You are what your politicians would call a "swing state." Somewhere between positive and negative polarity. There's a lot of negative polarity on the earth. There's a lot of positive polarity. Beings deeply committed to learning love, to expressing love in the world and in their lives, and also beings deeply committed to bringing forth fear and hatred.

Those of you who are here (the teacher training class, just finishing their training) have the deep commitment to do no harm, to do only good, a deep commitment to service, to loving kindness. You are committed enough to do the hard work of your practice and to share it with others in whatever ways are appropriate, not necessarily a formal classroom, maybe just talking to a friend, or an angry person in the supermarket line, screaming at her baby. You see how upset she is. You say, "Why don't you let me hold the baby for a minute while you pay." The baby is screaming because the mother is screaming. This is sharing the dharma. So there are many ways to share the dharma.

But I repeat, the earth, is a swing state, and many beings are watching to see if you're going to swing toward negativity or positivity. All of you hold the intention that that swing be toward the positive. So what are you going to do about it? I'm not going to say, "Are you doing enough?" Clearly all of you are doing all that you are able. And I don't want you to come to this from a place of "I should." But rather, ask in this moment, in what ways could I be more loving? In what ways could I be more present? In what ways can I be not so hooked into the old habitual patterns? All the range of practice helps: vipassana, pure awareness, loving kindness, connecting with your guidance, hugging trees as we did earlier and sharing light in that way. All of these things help.

There is no one right practice. There is no one right spiritual path except one that is grounded in presence, in loving kindness and intention to non-harm. Beyond that, I hope that at Deep Spring we can build on each of your strengths, helping each of you to more fully become the teacher of your heart, bringing forth whatever is deeply in there, that wants to be expressed, to help bring light into the world. This is all we're doing in teaching. And then we offer support, helping you learn how to share this core of your heart, each of you working in the ways that feel most appropriate, based on your own interests and skills.

That's basically all I wanted to say, so not a long talk here. But I'm happy to spend a few minutes answering questions.

Q: I have spent my entire life so far doing what I needed to do to survive, or be the mother/wife/nurturer. I have no idea what my skills or interests are, that come from the inside of me.

Aaron: Dear one, please consider getting off the survival track by learning to trust you are surviving. There's more than just survival and you're ready for it. I'm not saying to deny the fear, "I can't get through this! I have to get through it!" But begin to open your heart. Andperhaps your special skill is going to turn out to be to help yourself and other people find that which knows truth deeply, in your heart; that which knows and trusts love. That which has faith in the power of love and the power of intention, of imagination, of creation; to co-create that which you seek rather than feeling yourself to be the victim of forces which you must survive.

Just consider that possibility. I find that each person's life leads them into the heart of what they have come to share, often through a lot of pain. Now, use that pain as power to help you find what really is the core of your being that supports you and might support others. Spend some time just sitting in a quiet space and talking aloud for a few minutes to yourself or to somebody just like you, who comes to you crying, saying, "I'm so stuck. I'm suffering so much. There's so much pain. All I can do is try to survive." What might you say to this person?

That's it. Maybe there will be more words after a while, but first, just...  – this is something we have not talked much about, but consider the power of intention. Hold the intention not just to survive but to truly love. To truly hold the heart open. To find that which is of the divine, that which is radiant, pouring through you, and to allow it out into the world. Just finding that. Each of you has that capacity or we would not have invited you into this class in the first place. But I know your capacity, and this is why you were invited. It doesn't matter where you feel you are now. I see the potential, and that the suffering is a part of the path to realizing the potential. But you don't have to hold onto the suffering to realize the potential; it's time to let it go.

Q: For the fall, would you consider teachingNo Chain At Allwith Barbara?

Aaron: I I would love to teach theNo Chain at Allmaterial. And it's easy because there's a book ready-made that we can move through. But Barbara only has energy to teach with me a certain number of classes. So we cannot teachNo Chain at Alland the clear light class. It depends what interests people the most. I thinkNo Chain would be a wonderful foundation to the clear light, even to the point that we could do it for the first semester and then move into the clear light class. It's text that is ready for people to work with. It could lend itself to a class. Perhaps this is something Barbara and Dan should consider for their Tuesday night class.

Barbara can really only do four offerings maximum on an ongoing basis. One will be the ongoing classes with me, the Wednesday night classes. One will be the class she's leading with Dan, one will be the  Remembering Wholeness work with the Mother, and one will be whatever we do here, or what we do here with the video, so that it can go out to others.

One possibility would be to offerNo Chain at Allas an ongoing class on Wednesday nights, but I think that would leave out many beginners who would choose to come on Wednesday night and would not have a clue what we're talking about. Another would be to have one of you lead this, using the book, and with me as occasional guest teacher. So how to best manifest this is the issue.

Barbara while reviewing; This fall we will useHuman as class book, and Aaron will be speaking of non-duality. In his words:

Deep Spring Center's core teaching involves non-duality. Our mission statement reads in part:

To awaken to our true nature; to remember and practice wholeness.

To recognize the essence of Light in all sentient beings.

To live practicing the non-separation of all that is.

This fall I will speak to these points at our monthly gatherings, starting with the question, what do we mean by "non-duality"? How do we turn these words from concept to a living non-duality? We will explore real practices that help.

Certainly the human may experience physical, emotional and mental distortions. How do you remember your wholeness with no denial of the distortions, but also not giving them energy and power? Not "either/or" perfect or distorted, but both. You are the angel in the earthsuit. Both are equally real. The earthsuit is your ground for learning. The angel is your deepest truth.

This same is true of every sentient being. When you live recognizing this as truth, then there can be compassion and peace. I look forward to exploring these ideas with you and supporting your deepening in the true living of compassion and non-dual awareness.

Perhaps we will work withNo Chain at All,in classsecond semester.

(further comments not transcribed, by request)

Q: I'm at a place where I'm bored with meditation. This is a new experience to me. I was wondering if you can address that, because I'm guessing you've probably experienced that over your years or lifetimes.

Aaron: There are always new experiences! It's like going into a restaurant, ordering the same thing on the menu three times because you liked it, a menu with 100 items, and then saying, "I'm bored with this restaurant!" What are you ready to taste?

I think the clear light practice will appeal to you. But I don't want you to say, "This is better than that." They all go together. I have thought some, and I've shared this with Barbara and not yet with Dan, that rather than "Dharma Potluck," our class might be "Waking Up." And then any paths to waking up, which could includeNo Chain at All could be included

(further comments not transcribed, by request)

If nothing else, I'm going to end here. My blessings and love to you.

May the dharma nourish you and bring you home. Our newest circle member (the baby), my deepest blessings to you, N. May life give you every blessing and everything that you seek.

(session ends)