This: is the ten percent happier podcast palmdale? Hence my fellow suffering beings how you doing holidays today, where to tackle one of the best known, contemplative, cliches being in the present moment inhabiting the now. This is one of those vaunted states where exhorted too, aspire to, but are rarely given any practical information about how to actually achieve now Obviously, there are lots of reasons why you should want to be in the present moment, because really that's you The time it ever is, but my guest today is going to make a very specific argument for the utility of being in the now

in terms of your own, psychological well being is a fascinating argument. You you'll hear him make it. The him in question here is you ran over. This is his second appearance on the show he teaches retreat, said spare iraq and other buddhist centres. In this conversation, we talked about what being present actually means what to do when the buddhist teachings or meditation instructions feel out of reach, and then we start compulsively self. Assessing against these teachings sounds familiar to me what to do when a memory arises in meditation, especially hard won the brains at times exhaust thing and evolution airily wired tendency towards prediction: the benefits of going on meditate retreats and distinguishing between false alarms. And real ones just as before,. I've been here. This episode is part of a two week series were doing. There were calling deep cuts where we given to our archive for some of the strongest and most popular episodes that we think might give you a dose of sanity during the holidays.

A few weeks ago, several families that we know got together we'll stayed in an air being b, on the side of a mountain, a beautiful fall weekend and it was really magical. I love a hotel now and again, but when you're with a bunch of families, we really want to spend time with, I think it's great to all, be under the same roof to not have everybody retreating to their own personal lairs. At the end of the day, it really was a great bonding experience, and I love when we do that by the way. That's not the only way to use air indeed, as you know, the holiday in his here, which means travelling to see family and friends and hear something you may not have, since before, while you're out of town, maybe your place could be an arab and we think about it. You could be so not an air being be and not even know it. It's a smart, simple way to make some extra money, especially over the holidays, when a lot of us are away from our home.

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yeah. I know it's it's what the shirt say. The shirt say be present, but that is a deep question. She chalet and do we understand the present as a kind of sliver of time that is sandwiched between the past and the future How long is now is the present just a metaphor, usually when people say be present, that's just a kind of job. action not to be identified with discursive thought that we our present, when we are not identified with the narrative of the moment and to not be pressed and is to be absorbed and identified in the story of now. Whatever there story is and then to be present is to re, establish mindful to have some better cognitive awareness of the phenomena. A world of what's arising,

passing moment by moment and so usually to be present just means, don't be stuck in that bubble of thought right, but to be present is, a pretty radical gesture and its one that take yes through all of the past and one that requires that we radically surrender the vigilance we have about the future and so to be present in like the most radical way. I was thinking actually during many. Station this morning, this is what came up to be present is to be willing to die witches. I may be jarring way of formulating it, but actually be present To surrender the sense of vigilance of

orientation of tracking phenomena as threat and opportunity and to be this like just profoundly porous, defenceless, embodiment, and that's a lot to swallow in a way tat s? Not how this not the tagline fur thou, though that wouldst thou, where we put on the flyers, further meditation classes and of I want to live, but there is a sense of just to be radically open in that way a entails, a willingness to care more about awareness sends one's life, even if just for a moment, even if just for a moment. How is that for a starting point? What have I done well, we're knives can be a nice light. Conversation frothy already enjoying it. So I guess we're my mind, goes a melema ngos in a million directions on. I hear you say that, but one of them is damage

Maybe I've never been present after all these years and meditating, maybe by this definition, I've never been pressing, well how we define mindfulness, how radically we define, presents that's an open question and sometimes I it's very useful to define mindfulness in a very workable, excessive, away. But then there are other definitions of safety. The polly word for mind from this that are much more radical and for me in a way We have to start the mind from this path by defining it, but to understand one mind from this is in some senses the fruition of the path, not the starting. I dont know what mindfulness is. I don't know what you're going to ask me dan or how stumped I'm gonna be I dont know what I have already back to myself into here in these first two minutes. It's like we.

Discover facets of mine from this every time we set every time we practice, and there is a kind of freshness of that and we keep refining and bringing it more and more deaths and nuanced sophistication to what we even construe at the present moment or to be in some kind of presence. And so I do feel like One of the complexities of practice we get so habituated and a climate ties to the notions of all this is mind from this is my technique is what I practice that it can bring a kind of stillness in, and so I sort of challenge myself like ok, I'm supposed to know of mine from this, as I imagine meditation teacher, but made I dont, maybe I adopt what are the radical possibilities on offer when we

actually open up in this very year. Strategic undefended way to what is actually here. If anybody who is listening. The way- I am you know in a completely self centered way of hearing use, the bar really high, firm, mindfulness or being in the moment being present. Whatever terminology you want to use free, Where is listening, like I haven't thinking? Oh, I don't know, I've never know I don't know how to do that. I think what you're saying is with all of these ancient terms, my fulness concentration compassion. You can have a kind of beginning definition for my vote. I often say it's the ability to see what's happening in your head and in your body right now, without being carried away by it. You can have a beginning definition. It serviceable and works, but these are such a rich, complex.

Qualities of mine that over time you can see have ass, they are and you can raise the bar higher and higher and you're. Just when you discuss, I truly being present it is, is in a way being ready to die. Well, that's just a profound understand of quality there. All of us have been able to cultivate to one degree or another. Yeah yeah, and I don't mean to sort of deify some exalted notion of mindfulness and it's not like every time I sit. I like cancer, my lunch plans or something you know it's like. No, I want to live, but there is this kind of radical surrender, and that is something that we can approve shit over time, and we don't have to set that as some bar, that were always striving to achieve an almost invariably failing. That is just actually. compounding the sense of self

in the moment and that's really not necessary, and so I feel like we hear certain teachings that feel kind of remoter, there's some kind of reach for us how we relate to that is really important, and if we turn that into another lesson about our own insufficiency. It just gets old and its painful. It's not so inspiring. It's like ok, I hear latter teachings all the time myself as a student and I'm just like. While that is there's a quality of curiosity and wonder, and there's not this sense of me little matthew, this incompetent meditation person, who is spiralling to some idea. Tat is just more static in the system. And so yes, just whatever comes along I've in one's heart, just follow the thread of that sincerity still

here- you describing mindfulness are being present in this way. Don't get caught up in china measure your practice against. It here? It led a wash over. You and have it be something of a directional in sport, asian check and see in your own practice is that so. You can relate to do you see people since some moments something approaching that stuff arising in your own mind. Yet it sounds good. We have to be very careful what metro we use and apply and how often we sample the moment to assess our progress against some men track. You know, do sort of like what are our barometers, fur meditative progress and I think the tens c is too

If one barometer and to be checking it very frequently, far too frequently it's like after each breath, we check back to what our metric of spirit Progress is and ask, am I bet my more mindful I more concentrating. Am I more like that thing I heard on temper and happier you and they like. This is a call for one for patients. Of course we have to adjust and we get feedback on our own practice, and we change course in these things, but we don't want to be sampling data after every breath to see how we're doing and then the other pieces, then usually focus too exclusively on one kind of barometer. Am I mindful in this way that I think is supposed to be helpful, or am I come and traded in the way that I think is supposed to be helpful and the press

has so many mechanisms of action there. So many ways it gets under a scan there, so many ways in which it heels us and wakes up that to focus exclusively on one bad trick does a disservice to all the other ways in which practice may be found your name and so is just a caution about beamed. the single minded about how progress unfolds and been to compulsory about. Measuring that progress, a pitfall into which at which I have experienced many many times and continue to experience. So let's go back. Let's veer away from, at least for now from what char mutual friend Joseph Goldstein calls the practice assessment is that many of us run as veer back to the subject of being in the moment that apex, predator of all contemplative cliches, and I'm I cant figure where to go from here, Give cashmere, who is the

amazingly named human being, who is one of our indispensable producers on the show? Is the one who teat up this interview with you and he was inspired by having heard you gave a talk, honour meditation, retreat that he attended at your leading recently, the title of the talk was memory, prediction becoming and the present. So I started at the present the end of the list, but less work. Our way through the beginning of the list list are with memory because, as you said, I think a lot of us feel like if memories are surfacing in meditation will then that's proof that we're doing wrong because we're stuck in the past instead of militant lee focusing the here and now so say you visited memory and meditation well at sea. level. We could think about the present. meant as the culmination of the entirety of the past, the present moment is the kind of wave crest, to end the ocean is the past

What is here now? What is the present moment made out of other then The sum of the past of all causes in conditions and cities. notion that we just sever ourselves from the past from memory in some automatic away, and we force her mind into some slot that we define, as the present is, to my mind, the mistaken notion and the path of meditation the path of mind from us. The path into a deeper sense of presence takes us through men.

we and the past. It takes us through the anticipation and prognostications we have about the future, and so the sense that we should just utterly seclude ourselves from the past is not really viable. I would say we we really actually heal, are passed through meditation practice. There's some saying somebody said forgiveness is giving up hope for a better past or something like this, but this Proof is that we remember from a deluded viewpoint and in where's the experience the intensity of any given life are just, they're just more than we could digest, and so life can feel like a meal that is too big to consume. Basically- and we have these unfinished undigested

business of memory of habits that have incredible inertia and part of meditation this is actually transforming our very sense of the past, and we don't do this explicitly were not trying to re narrate our past as we practice. But, of course, as we set, and we try to be present What arises is the kind of whatever is undigested from our day or are weak or are year or a lifetime, and what is kind of undigested? What has not been metabolism what is still kind of electrified in our own histories needs to be known and blessed with presence. We bless are passed with wisdom and love, and so were their innocently trying to be still too far

some silence and whatever is incomplete in our own history calls out for our attention and it calls out for a new kind of understanding, cause out to be known from the perspective of wisdom known with awareness and love and this is actually how we complete our past and so we don't have to do some explicit life review in our meditation practice, but it will or ghana clean happen. It will, or ghana clean happen, that the lecture fight, memories of often some kind of pain, some kind of awkwardness, some kind of shame some

and some loose end of our life that feels problematic. This will arise the harm that we ve done. The harm that's been done to us. This will arise and just over the course of the hence and years of practice. We will be asked to habituated to all of our memory at one time or another. It will all return and people feel like this. an interruption, kind of injury. illusion in their practice, but is actually what Would say is one of like the core mechanisms of how we cultivate around being on this path, and- Our past starts to become more and more hole and

in this way it becomes less and less sticky. It becomes blessed with the wisdom and love that we ve cultivated now that we did not have when we experienced moment right, and so there is the sense of like integrating gathering up the shards of our own history, and essentially right eating and re writing are autobiography and it happens quietly it happens quietly. It doesn't always happened so explicitly, but for time. The sense of our are very life are passed, is written In light of, we would say you know, in light of this path of practice, coming up matthew bent over it

point his contention. That mindfulness practice is a kind of exposure therapy and key illuminates the brains, exhausting tendency toward constant prediction, and he explains What is meant by the phrase liberation is the cessation of becoming coming as a kind of verbiage you hear escaping the lips buddhists all the time and he will impact. my family, and I are always looking for ways to make meal prep and healthy eating easier. That's why butcher box has been such a great fit for us A variety of high quality meets at an amazing value, delivered right to our door. Put your box offers one hundred percent grass fed beef free range. Organic chicken fork raised great free, I can't see food all know, antibiotics or hormones. Shipping is always free, as I said before,.

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That's a may you, I n, u ivy v e, I s, o n dot com, slash happier. This event, in it sounds write to me as a amateur meditator, but I'm going oppress you to get really practical about some. The rather grand terms you use that's, not a criticism, but they are sort of big words like you talked about blessing the past with presence and wisdom of an awareness. What is that actually mean, and how is it get done? Yes, So memory arises, and sometimes it's in the form of some explicit episode from our past Hence it feels like just some lingering

emotional, affective agitation. nor some energy coming through the body and in those times its image wharton, to be willing to experience the past in the present moment. So we give this kind of radical permission for the past. arise that memory. Those images that we have the associated feeling a fact in our body we give permission for all of that to arise without any sense of contention and are fighting with it, and so We are allowing the fullness of the past to be known in the present moment and for me it's like we're, just allow, that the past almost like an energy that is wire bound.

tightly in our own heart. Mine body to just unfurl in the space of awareness and so it's not even explicitly trying to re conceptualize something that happened in the past, its allowing the energy, the intensity, the stickeen s of memory, just to be discharged in the present moment. And sometimes, of course, will get stuck back in it and will be real living it in a way that feels very first person. You know all the sun, I'm there I'm real living it and what he said. What these which she said were in the kind of the protagonists of the movie without being conscious that were watching a movie and then we reestablish some mindfulness. Ah, my body feels like this

There are memories of that and the kind of an effective flavors of the mind and body feel like this. We become conscious of all of that- and we become willing to just absorb the kind of body blow of the intensity of that and we, as one of my teacher, shins and young, says we love it to death. We love it to death. We normally try to hate thanks to death, but here we love to death, and this doesn't require us to tell some elaborate new story, it's like the intensity. The sticking out of the past is digested in this way and over time it less and less of our past feels electrophone in the same way it may retain all of its poignancy. We are not severed from our past

Something like this. We have learned a lot from it. We have learned what and who we can trust what and who we cannot trust. We have learned so much, but The kind of gripping re experiencing quality of the past is transformed, and in this way I often say mind from this practice is a kind of. exposure therapy yeah. It is an exposure therapy. Normally we in the clinical world, you do exposure therapy for some thanks. eighty or post traumatic stress of one kind or another, and the idea is that avoidance and catastrophic thinking and ideas about our own lack of resilience keeps the psychological pain in place.

We do not actually learn the important new lessen. The fear is kept in place by patterns of avoidance and so The idea is instead to approach and to systematically desensitize oneself to whatever the feared object is in meditation practice its systematic desensitization practice. It's really unsystematic descent. If the decision is unsystematic exposure, meaning whatever can disrupt my peace will, but that is a core element of practice. Whatever can disrupt my peace will I just have to sit long enough and what disrupts my peace is. Not my fault and nor is it an accident. The nature of the pain that arises for me is print than yours, and it's not an accident,

that it arises in this particular constellation for me. Nor is it my fault. I don't know, there's something about that word blessed saying that I'm not an especially religious person in many respects, but that word feels right just in the sense of I have this image of memory arising and like the way somebody that's. Nice did or something like that. I don't even know what I'm talking about, but it's like I think, of a sword, touching ones, shoulder and another, and I have this image of yeah with memory. It's like. We touch with wisdom with a deep understanding and we touch with love. and in this way were were really the two it and to everything that might disrupt our peace anyway, I'm using you said get caught.

And maybe I'm using more grandiose, lay down so do something for them, something here's what I will do. I like, I really like everything you're saying I'll do thing of just dumbing down even further, because that's how I understand things at the dumbest possible level and build from there, and so I would say would the way I'm taking him. What you're saying is I'm sitting there meditation kind of focus on my breath coming now. I might then get ambushed by A memory of some horrible thing I did in seventh grade and the blessing with wisdom and love and awareness and a sound out of reach to some people, but really it's pretty down to earth. It's like, okay, what's love, if not acceptance right, I'm not fighting it! I've! Just alright! It's here! What's wisdom, if not the decision,

I have to take it personally, so I don't have to see this as my memory. I don't have to get sucked up in the story of it. I probably will for a few nanoseconds, or so maybe even ten minutes At some point of my pop out and be like, I have this is what is this memory consist of maybe a few shards of visual data, maybe some feelings in the body, so that's love that's wisdom is all happening right now. That's the present moment and of course all this is awareness and then, once you ve loved to death, meaning you haven't thought it. You ve seen it for what it is a set of sensations, and then you go back your breath and then maybe something else comes up, and then you do this process ad infinitum and in this way, you're, really healing your relationship to the past. Anyway- is that a recapitulation that is dead bear some resemblance to the original absolute. Yeah, I'm not pointing to some ethically sophisticated mode of practice, its more describing

Think what is happening when we do practice and we think that all the goodness comes from being with the breath of the or of attention, but so much goodness comes from migrating from it. Discovering the sticky ness of memory and beginning tat actually understand our past. In light of our current wisdom, because that the painful episodes of our history- some level they get encoded in a kind of more primitive frame of reference and We really want to understand a certain kind of the innocence of our pain. What made that painful? We want to import some

the wisdom we have now into the lack of wisdom we had in that moment. That's would help stay just this, and this happens. I think, just in a coordinated way is over the course of practice. It's not a project, We have to do, we don't sit down and say: ok, I need to heal my passed in this way. We just are willing to learn from everything be softened by everything and then, of course, we start to see that part of our fixation about the past may be some small sliver of it is purely about the past. But so much of what we are doing is trying to leverage the power asked in order to ensure our future that we find ourselves to the past and the future in art. to secure the safety of the present moment

and so the past is often not meaningful, just in it right we're trying to extract somewhere. sense in order. to ensure that our future might be all right, and this is also such natural habit of mind- and we see that we do tie ourselves to the past and to our future in the present, feel very squeezed by the rest of all time. You know what is passed, what is future and the present gets very claustrophobic, and so some part of our practice is about healing the past and then there is this other dimension of letting go of the future and entering the bottomless ness of the present. but maybe we're getting to the second one, I don't know what the title. Why so I don't know how

you you we are getting to the secondary to your very, very kindly doing my job. For me, the title of the talk that the aforementioned dj heard on his recent meditation retreat, which you relating was memory prediction but coming which I'll get you to define at some point and the present so talk about memory and are you brought us to prediction and I believe one of the things you learned in your research for this talkative generally, I know you're very interested in certain or asylum is at increasing, we know, scientists are thinking of the brain is a pretty she's machine and how else to form your predictions, if not mining the past and the present yeah. So there is a lot of currency around prediction and predicted processing- and this is a key the theoretical and empirical approach to understanding a brain function that your other guests could speak much more alex

we about is really above my pay great. But I came to it through the sense that the emphasis on prediction queues very closely to the phenomena logical experience of trying to be present- and the sense of just the lure of the future this sense of tumbling forward. The sense of the word kind of vigilance which we don't even really notice until we sit down and try to be still, but then we actually can sense just how profound Lee are motivational systems are oriented around ensuring more moments and this makes This is an animal contending with this tiny animal me tending with unimaginably vast forces of nature, of change of entropy and

I sit down, and I say or cable. we lack of the past. To let me let go of planning worrying in the future station. Let me just be with the breathing, but there is a kind of ambient vigilance of any animal that issue. Oriented around survival and protection that is oriented around safety and safety is always about the future right. I'm safe now in this moment, but is the next moment going too

safe and so safety is about the future, which means safety is about prediction, it's about what is happening next. It is about the trajectory of this moment and does that portend, a keenness for me? Does it portend more moments? Is this moment on a kind of trajectory towards more safety and one of the effects of that it feels like the present moment is only ever a canary in the coal, mine of the future. I know that is a weird image: or metaphor some, whatever analogy, I dont know what it is, but that's what came to me as, like? Oh yeah, each moment. The present moment just feels like the canary in the coal mine of the future and so

just trying to send slake is everything. Ok, like is the landscape of threat and opportunity. Ok, and to do this were modeling our sense of self four modeling our sense of time were modeling the job general trajectory. You know the trajectory of this moment and were asking so compulsively. Is this? Ok? Am I o k? Will I be o k, and this happens. At the depths of our brain and are being, and so we start to. come sensitive to this curative around survival, around protection, around vigilance and the king have lower of the future so to be present is to contain

with these super potent forces of memory of the future of safety of protection and the path into deeper kind of presents takes us through all of this. So let me pause for a moment. That description of em- I ok, I'm ok, it's got a rock me back in my seat because the I think that's what coursing through my mind all the time, and it got me wondering I doubt whether there's a link between am I okay and the obsessive self evaluation that you referenced at the top of this discussion, that many of us bring to our meditation practices and everything else, this kind of perfectionism. Is it linked to anxiety, as I say it, of thinking that pretty obvious question. But what say you yeah yeah? I didn't make that connection, but I think you're right. The

compulsive measuring using the whatever metric barometer of success of our meditation practised. The success of our life is about ensuring that were on the right trajectory and that may be a base is linked to safety. Survival and the integrity of our own body, and all of this and yeah, we think we're just Checking in on how concentrated I am, but were Really asking am I I'll be alive in the ex moment or something like this is my life headed right direction. Is this moment headed in the right direction and is so innocent. We want to appreciate the innocence of that movement of the mind, and we want to appreciate the claustrophobia of it too, and the confinement loosened hallucinating the sense of self that needs fix?

saying that is headed somewhere that has a past and is moving towards a future. I just become this enormous self improvement project and I'm a mess. I'm always going to be a mess that from that view there are always going to be loose ends, and I'm always going to be this discrete entity that is basically broken that is aspiring towards some less broken state and the whole guiche stalled of that state has some suffering in it, and so it's so innocent, but it's a very confined state when we find ourselves in the trenches of them it. Maybe when we are able for a few moments to drop, the ammo

Okay, am I okay? Am I okay? Am I doing it right? Am I doing it right? Am I doing it right? Maybe that is the readiness to die that you discussed earlier yeah exactly exactly to be. President, is to consider what future less moment would feel like an that's almost impossible to even conceive But this is part of why we have contemplations about death. Some of it is about the poignancy of whatever time we have left. Some of it is about cutting through the pettiness that will matter bizarre zero on our death bed? But some of it is to consider what? would be here. How deeply might the heart surrender, if this moment, where future glass, yeah, and so that is a very

surrendered state that is a very poor state that is very undo did all the ways in which we fix save the sense of self and we fixate a sense of time of this is what just happened. This is where I am now. This is what is coming the way we fixate and orient do what we like what we don't like. What is pleasant? What is not pleasant where the threats and opportunities are of this all of that just become incidents like incredibly compelling, but claustrophobic cost sir and so to be willing to like live this moment as if there is no future requires a lot of trust and a lot of devotion in a certain way. It's like we put all of our hope into the present moment.

And this is why we practise in places that are conducive to safety, where we don't have to be especially vigilant? This is why the ancestors of this lineage practiced in seclusion, for example, And this is why we take the precepts we agree at the retreat. Where dj was we take them, precepts, meaning we agree at the very first evening. We agree we are not going to harm each other, we are not going to harm each other. No one here needs to fear one another. This is their commitment and explicit ethical commitment that we take, and there are many reasons we do that, but part of it is that there is no way to relinquish vigilance. in the absence of some modicum of safety, and as we become more and more

safe, as our inner life becomes more and more safe. We render more deeply into the present moment and strain Actually that also prepares us to deal with the lack of safety. That is, the human condition and to contend with the force of impermanence of unreliability. This is we're training ourselves to do, but in a way it's like kids are much better able to open to the contingencies the uncertainties, the unpredictability of human life if they have been protected from those forces. For a time you know if a parent insulates, a child from all of the forces

of uncertainty of hardship of suffering. They are insulated from that and that protected experience. Hopefully, if they are fortunate that protected experience allows them to actually open to the truth. universe? More fully, and so in the same way with we'd need to seclude are hard to actually open to the intensity of the human condition. Even more fully do we need to be an retreat to access the depths of what you ve been talking about in this conversation, retreat is helpful, but I dont think it's strictly Sorry, I feel, like everything I'm saying is on offer in the just the rhythms of our practice, but retreat is for most people is in in despair.

The ball in the development of some of the understandings, and I dont think its strict lee, absolutely necessary. But for most people, just the sense of what mindfulness is the radical, potentials of awareness don't usually dawn on people and they have some days of seclusion and certainly in my own experiences, it was easy to think that I knew what mind from this was because I've been practising for a couple years. I think, before a set of fir tree, but I don't feel like. I really started to appreciate.

A multi dimensional depth of even what mind from this is until I started to sit in retreat with some seclusion with these artificial set of conditions that help us relinquish? Some of the vigilance agree that I think you can get enormous benefits from doing my phone, it's on a day to day or daily basis, but get even more if you go on retreat. Much more. My interview with Matthew rents over coming up right after this. quick reminder. We ve got a great new year's coming up on J a third right here in the pot cast featuring the non negotiable where we compile some of the smartest people. We know and ask him about their must have practices and principles featuring astaire corral, jog habits in permit children and more

and over the ten percent happier app, we ve got a new year's meditation challenge for people who are imperfect, meaning everybody that kicks off. On january, eighth,. Let's go back your list we ve covered memory and protection, one and two on the list. The third was becoming that's a bit of a term of art in the buddhist world. What does it mean? Big? coming is this sense of the continuity of self across time and the impelling force of the future, the future. That is pulling us into it moment by moment that sense of what we have been discussing, that sense of the present moment merely as a kind of down payment on some future.

we live like that, so profound, We without recognising the sense of never exactly arriving, that sense of happiness always being momentarily deferred. That sense of I will get there some time. You know this moment is about some future when I might finally allow my heart to rest, but we never arrive its forever. Deferred and we can live our whole life in that way, and there is a kind of tragic quality to that of never allowing the heart to fully rest, because the present is only

ever a down payment on some happiness, some time somewhere, and so that sense of me located here happiness located out there and I will get there and it will be a journey. I will journey the Matthew within Matthew. The little matthew inside will go from point a to point b and then I will rest that gives some flavour of the sense of become and we can have that, in our lives, of course, but also meditatively of just leaning into the next moment to the next. Well, let me

it's called little more concentrated here, lemme get a little more insight or what was dan talking. Let me get a little bit more of that. Let me get a you know. All these things ray, we have sort of tried to extract something from the moment, and the gesture of awareness is to offer the heart up rather than extract something, but that process of x attracting something and getting somewhere of moving somewhere of finally arising of finally being able to climb up on the back of some Sarah. You know the bank of this. men. Realm then never comes were always forever contending with the says of change. There are no banks in this river and its, egg to invest,

Our happiness is only ever being when we can call, up on that bank is becoming is becoming less sounds deeply ingrained. But how would one even begin to transcend see through drop this pattern? I dont know to him That's not what you're supposed to say. Oh, that's, ok, we'll cut that. Definitely added got out here. We leaves us no, it is really deep, really deep and I do not claim to have anything like uprooted. That happened. I really feel like that is such a radical relinquishment of the urge for another moment it is in the deepest sense like,

Oh total surrender of all territory of self, and that is not my experience, but I have a kind of reverence for what that might be, and we can have some intuitive hit of what that can feel like in our own practice that sense, actually in one of the suit, is one of the buddhist disciples said, liberation Is this cessation of becoming liberation? Isn't me banner the cessation of becoming that humbling forward that sense of leveraging the past in order to ensure a future of being stuck

In time we can have a sense of what it is like to be freed of this and the kind of profound openness of just in some degree of freedom from that tumbling forward from that becoming, and that doesn't mean that we are indifferent to death, life, for something like this, that doesn't mean that we do not still appreciate whatever type Whatever moments we have, that doesn't mean we don't plan organize our lives and organise efforts to help alleviate suffering. We can do all of that, but there is a sense of respite from

only ever living smashed between the past and the future and there's a lot of relief that comes from this, And- and this is, I feel, pepper, patients die too. It is. We are actually a climate ties in two moments that don't feel stock in time in the same way that feel without future- and maybe I don't know- but may me this is of use when we really don't I have another moment. Maybe this is of use when it is our time and I feel kind of compelled to develop my heart in such a way that it retains its integrity, even as my life ends just to pick up on that phrase of a

Thank you, said developing or cultivating your heart. I think, as we roll into the final sections of this interview, I wonder if there will be a sort of yearning on the part of listeners fur. Some thoughts about had operational eyes all this, because what you ve talked about has been incredibly in my opinion resident feels really true. As I keep saying it, I wonder if you some thoughts about how we can do a better job, with whatever amount of practice were up for to bring these things to life, for ourselves, Yeah, so I feel some some ambivalence, because on the one hand, I know I'm like super vague and impressionistic unkind of very clear about how to actually operational lies any of this, and this is a problem that I have as a teacher dan. This disease,

theme of self critique that I contend with various times, and I certainly try to save myself up to get more concrete and operational eyes something, and I can't always get myself to do it. I can't always get myself to make. It more concrete, so let me say a little bit so one hand, I am very sympathetic to the desire to have practice instructions, but I think one of the employees. Dozens of what we're talking about is that practice itself be hijacked by the tides of becoming an so some of what I am pointing to is actually do to have a certain faith in the practice that I'm trying to achieve. hack the mechanisms of it in a way that our hopefully resident- and this is the genius of this path. It's all

eddie encoded in the logic of the instructions. It's not something else that we need to do that. We need to busy ourselves with its happening. It is happening we, leslie, and that is just purely a reflection of this kind of lineage. You know and the the genius of it really but yeah there are also we can do better on you. Ve got a good eyes was grudgingly eyes do that. Bathes the audience here to serve a conduit, love love. It no- and I do feel like it's important for to be able to article it and concrete way, is to make sure that I understand it clearly enough. So I think we can look at this sense of,

It's a total non rejection of memory. This cut radical permission from memory to arise and for the effective resonance to blow through the space of awareness just to let it blow through, and then this whole of the future. the sense of this talk of ensuring that this moment is ok, that this moment portends more moments, arises as a kind of agitation and it arises as a kind of The way in which were modeling the present moment, literally sometimes in our own minds, were like with imagining the present moment, where imagine the outlines of our body, were imagine the room were imagining what's coming next, where imagining, where that pain in my knee, as I'm sitting,

where literally have like a model of all of this right and we're trying to translate that were like bridging bad model into a kind of estimation of the safety of this moment, and the practice is too. metabolize to economise, all the agitation of that all the phenomena of the predicting and the modeling of the self of the next moment. All of that is nominal arising in passing? It comes the form of subtle images we have of kind of dreaming of my own body. You know This is what it looks like I'm literally picturing that, with my eyes closed,

I'm literally picturing the room, I'm picturing, the bird of the sound that I just heard and trying to not be surprised or startled by anything. It's like How do I not be surprised by the next moment and that impelling force we recognize? There's the gestalt of a certain kind of here that to me is even more fundamental, then ignorance in our suffering. You know it said that ignorance is the kind of wellspring of all suffering. That may be, but to me for my money me even more fundamental. Is that kind of basic ambient fear this urge towards safety and secure de, and so we actually notice the start of that in our body and mind. We know that as phenomena arising and passing and if we

and feel safe enough if our inner life feel safe enough? If our past to feel safe enough, we can begin to surrender some of the vigilance and so for me, the way it looks is a certain kind of ambient an effective agitation or fearfulness or defensiveness. That I can, like sense, is that, Mr Collins, that you know it's like the sense of needing to defend of being vulnerable. You know and rather than try to shore up and become innovator about we become more vulnerable. We please move towards the vulnerable We surrender more and more deeply and they take some trust in this path of practice. Some trust in the logic of the practice by We are bringing mind from this equipment,

medea love to the energies of becoming. It's very helpful when teachers do what you just did, which is too name and crystallize a mental All trend are phenomena that, I may have a kind of ambient awareness of, but not actually any thing remotely resembling a clear seeing of, and so you ve just named it, and what we can do is bring that into our practice into our lives as something we can try to spot as it arises and bring a kind of warm acceptance of as a way to hopefully overtime turned a volume down on my close yeah. I think that's right. That's great! We greet the vulnerability of our animal condition with a lot of acceptance and love and patience,

rather than demonizing ourselves for always shoring up our boundaries always becoming tariffs. for real in one way or another. We will see that, and that is born of a certain suffering and compounds are suffering, but we see that in a kind of innocence of the movement of our money, and in this way and so yeah, of course we do this. Of course, we do this right and, of course, the urge around safety takes all these defence of forms and takes all these maladaptive forms and actually compound suffering, even in trying to alleviate. We just have a kind of infinite. forgiveness for our own human fallow, already and though these movements of our mind, we love him to death, Where are you on the gambit that some teachers and therapists will suggest of giving the fear or giving that animal listing self protective

character in our mind, a kind of name and greeting it Only when you see that character rearing its head yeah that the idea of like name it to attain that kind of like a better. give it a name, maybe even slightly playful, maim or something rather than just to be lost in a more fists. Nameless dread, yeah I'll, take a name over a more efficient. I think that's right and sometimes we have to appreciate Our labels can live their usefulness to that are Labels are useful for a time they concretize something, but then the flip side is then they kind of rio, five something so we just wanna be sense. If too, when R, our labels and when our kind of conceptual categories are useful and when they are actually solidifying. Something in us.

That is actually that is indeed more amorphous, or something like that. Yeah end, and in this I mean it's important to say A lot of what we're doing is learning to distinguish true alarms from false alarms. Right, it's like in the end, were actually habituating to false alarms and true alarms, but it's important to acknowledge like each other. Body is the alarm bells are going off. All the time and so often they are actually false. Alarms, it's not actually an existential threat if it's just any going threat right and it's just a threat Were control or something like this? It's a threat to the sense that we should feel pain or whatever. But it's not a true alarm right. It's just the sense at this moment is a kind of prediction of future harm or something, but it

Actually, okay and so were learning to d SK the late, some of the erasmus all around these false alarms and then at some point we are really meeting the true alarms. The things that actually are a genuine threat that do represent the end of her life are practices, thus into that terrain too, but important way, there's millions of false alarms that we want to learn to de escalate because is one clinical model of pain. There's a saying like pain is the prediction of bodily harm pain? Is the prediction of bodily harm and to d asked? aid from the catastrophe. Phasing in all of this is like: ok, let's just use their framework. Ok pain is separate. Amber is this? Ok? Is this

actually represent tissue damage or some existential threat. No may need just hurts like to add a ten on the pain scale. I'm ok and so all right. I'm being told that this poor tens disaster, but can I d ask colleagues that and a lot of times we failed to, stinguished between the two out of ten and eight out of ten or something at all feels catastrophic, and so the false alarms need to be distinguished from what are really true threats and for the true threats that requires different medicine they really is often just about making sure people are safe and protected. Just the last question for me, we ve worked our way through the list of four. We started at the end of the list. Just as a reminder. The list is memory prediction coming in the present we started at the present. I want to end there and just open the floor. You just in case there's a way in which.

what a tie a bow around this and bring us back to the present moment. Is it perhaps correct to say that the punchline here and I don't want to be glib, but but I can't help, because that's just my wiring- is that if we. And bring this warmth and wisdom and by wisdom I dont mean like to conjure images of dumbledore in the minds of the listener. I mean just seeing things as they are seeing that there now the solid, as we might think they are that their passing etc so so bring some warm than some wisdom to whatever is coming up in our mind, daddy is being present. Yeah, what's coming to me, is that right, it just is embedded in the logic of the instruction. themselves, and so yeah we two under

stand. You know what is happening to us. What has happened, what we let go of, we have to understand the fruits of the practice. We want to get the kind of final vision of what we're doing, but it's ok to be patient and hold open questions, and instead just The practice I think share in salzburg said forever. Time. I was trying to do the practice and make it work and then, at some point I just was doing the practice. This is just a lot of brilliance in that room. frame from her. So where does this leave us, then? This is typical of me, but I wonder whether

you didn't really take the bade on it, but it does feel to me like if we can have what beneficent teachers call it open heart, not my preferred phraseology budget should have an attitude of as you keepsakes are warmth and wisdom toward what ever coming up. That feels like the way to inhabit the vaunted present moment more and more overtime, absolutely absolutely yeah. What the present is changes over time, the changes over time, but how we conceive of that. We experience that changes over time, but the other

it sounds great to me anything that you wanted to say that I didn't give you an opportunity to say no. I don't think so. I don't think so. We got off for words. We got all fell worse than that. I will ask you this since you've been on the show before you've. I've already subjected you to this, but it's possible that people won't remember what you said the last time. I asked you this question. So can you please remind folks if they want to hear more from you learn more from you? How can they do so? My website is my full name: dot, org, matthew, brown, silver dot. Org, though it'd be the best avenue, and if you don't spell that correctly, Google is your friend also the show notes of this broadcaster, your friend, because we'll put a link to it right there. Thank you for spelling my name correctly. Dan and Shauna.

yours, you're, assuming we will do that, but that we'll do our best and if we make a mistake, we'll hold it with the loving acceptance at heart. Yeah there you go dad just actually has a brain that yeah surrender. It's such a pleasure always matthew to have you on the show, and I really appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you very much. My pleasure delight to be with you and talk about these things. Thanks again to matthew great, to talk to him. Thanks to you for listen, Really appreciate that ten percent happier is produced by Justine davy, Gabriel sacrament, Lauren smith and terror, Anderson DJ cashmeres, our senior producer, Marisa Schneiderman, Our senior editor kevin o connell, as our director of audio and post production and can regular is our executive producer. Alisha he leads our marketing and tony magyar is our director of podcasts. Finally, nick thorburn of islands wrote our theme.

If you wanna, hear more of matthew, go to the show notes- and I will put a link to his other episode- gave you like ten percent happier I hope you do. You can listen early and ad free right now, by joining wondering plus a wondering app or on apple pie casts prime members. listen ad free on amazon music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling a short survey at wondering: dot com, slash servant.