When you sit down and observe your own mind on purpose just for fun as a
kind of scientific inquiry into what drives you it doesn’t take long say if you focus
on say the breath is the object of attention and you’re riding on the waves of your breathing.
It doesn’t take long before you’ll notice that some kind of want comes up. Some kind
of desire. And maybe it’s because your body’s uncomfortable. So maybe you just want to fidget
a little or shift posture, you know, and just do it this way or that way. So it’s very
hard to sit still. Why? Because we’re antsy. Why are we antsy? Because we want to be comfortable
and we’re not comfortable. So rather than holding the discomfort in awareness because
why should we privilege comfort. Comfort, discomfort because there’s no ultimate comfort.
That’s why we shift from one leg to the other and we’re very shifty. But if you
actually train yourself to be embodied you get less shifty. I mean the mind just naturally
settles. The body naturally settles and you can be like comfortable. Just at home in your
own skin. But when you’re not and you want something we call that greed. I mean that’s
like, you know, it’s greedy, it wants something. Now that one thing to just be comfortable
that’s fine. But when you start to watch the mind you’ll notice that it’s got a
lot of agendas on the greed spectrum. I mean it’s – and greed is not quite the
same as ambition. It has to do with – greed has to do with more for me. More of what I
want for me. Then there’s this other thing that you’ll also notice which is you’re
sitting there and the opposite will come up. What I don’t want. What I’m afraid of.
What I need to keep at the door. Keep at bay. To push away. And that’s collectively referred
to as aversion or dislike or hatred, you know, when it’s really strong and directed often
at other people or whatever. So we’ve got greed on one hand and it is toxic. The more
you’re sucked into greed the more egotistically you become, the more it’s all about me,
the more you’re willing to lose your own ethical foundation to get a particular result
only to find that even that result is not really satisfying so you’re on to the next
result. And it’s a never ending trajectory. But nevertheless we have to admit it’s here
all the time. It’s not like oh, I’ve transcended greed, you know. I don’t think we do transcend
greed but we can transform how we are in relationship to it. And with awareness the greed doesn’t
have to run us. And even if it’s attenuated five or ten percent – wow that would be
its own form of liberation. Never mind 30 or 40 or 50 percent. And the same with the
aversion. Like what I don’t want. It’s so bloody boring to sit here and watch my
breathing. All right. So what? Who thinks it’s boring?
Have you looked at your boredom? So have you looked at your aversion? Then as soon as the
you that’s looking at your aversion that’s more like awareness. It’s like awareness
of aversion isn’t diversive. Awareness of greed isn’t greedy. So you’re free already
of those two toxic impulses. Then there’s another one which is like the madness that
passes for the scenario in our head. And that’s often spoken of as illusion or delusion. That
we’re kind of like got these completely half-baked explanations about everything and
who we are and where things are going and what’s wrong with the world and what’s
wrong with my family and what’s right – and all of that is kind of none of it’s true.
None if it’s true. But we believe it that that narrative mode and that mind wandering
default mode network that’s like, you know, our favorite pastime – the story of me.
And it’s deluded and it also drains a huge amount of energy. So we can bring mindfulness
to greed and the greed can be attenuated or liberated. Mindfulness to aversion and the
aversion could be attenuated or liberated. Or mindfulness to our own deluded nature,
thoughts and emotions and so forth. And that is liberating of them. Then what do you have
left? You. As pure awareness. Fully embodied. What comes next? I don’t know. You’re
writing the script. It’s not like oh then you’ll feel this and you’ll feel that
and you’ll be enlightened and everybody will bow down to you and you won’t ever
have to have any kind of challenges or difficulty. The full catastrophe will evaporate forever.
Nope. It’ll be the same old same old. Only you won’t be the same old same old. Because
you’ll be the same you. You’ll have the same bank account. You’ll have the same
social security number. You’ll have the same face in the mirror. It’ll be aging
every day but you will be in wiser relationship to your possibilities. And to your embodied
enacted unfolding of those possibilities moment by moment. And that means life lived fully
while you have the chance, while we have the chance. As far as I know you didn’t ask
to be born. This is pure gravy. It’s just a total gift even with all the pain and suffering
and the trauma and I recognize the profundity of that and the rending quality of that. Still
it’s a gift and you’re a gift and – silence in some sense at that point becomes wakefulness.
It’s radiant. It’s luminous. And it’s already you.