Really enjoyed this one!
Some notes from the talk worth sharing:
- Clean dishes mindfully – ordinarily but mindfully. Try not to see it as something to be quickly finished so we can quickly move on to the “real thing”.
- Spiritual practice is about releasing and eliminating, not accumulating.
- The more you crave, the more you lose your freedom.
- Society doesn’t teach the danger of hooks like wealth, power, desire etc, but instead put them on high ground. Mindfulness helps us to stop and look at what these are doing to us and how’re they’re making us lose our freedom.
- Look at the things you don’t want to look at. Cultivate a kind of fearlessness in front of suffering and obstacles.
- Our views about other people become an obstacle to us because we’re not able to let them go.
- To cut off is to practise recognising things as they are, looking deeply and calmly, and letting go. Do it with a quality of love, a feeling of equanimity.
- Identity is very interesting – we identify so much with ourselves, that when people say something about us we don’t like, we get hurt.
- When you’re on the path, everything is fun. Don’t make it too serious.
- Train yourself to breathe and watch in front of a craving or habit.
- Be mindful of both the input from the world and our output to the world.
- The only thing that continues after we die is the energy we give out.
- Thought is an energy too.
- If something feels restless inside your body, examine your thoughts.
- A tree just needs to be a tree. A human can also just be a human. But society always asks more of us.
- Most important thing to do: Transform ourselves and then gather others, so you can create a positive environment where other people can transform themselves in.
- Sit with your suffering but also nourish yourself with joy. It’s not all about suffering. Suffering is not enough.
- Train yourself to reset your habit of looking for big happiness, but simply acknowledge – my eyes are in good conditions, I have the time to wash dishes, to take a walk slowly. Look at the ordinary, simple things that you’d forgotten.
- “We have a diamond in our pocket but we don’t know it. We think we’re very poor and we’re always running, always in need. But we’re the richest person on earth and we don’t know it.”
- Nourish yourself with nature, your breath, with stillness, with quiet. This will give you the energy to be with your pain and challenges.
- Put your heart into the practice.
