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Guided Meditation: Awareness with Pleasure

So, welcome to our first time back after our latest pandemic pause. Those of you who are here, welcome. It's very nice to be together. I think I under-appreciated how valuable it was to be together as a community. I always valued it; two years ago, I would have said of course it's valuable, but now I feel it's a whole different dimension of value. Just sharing and being together, there's something almost like... if you're thirsty and you drink some refreshing water, ah, that feels good. There's a whole feeling of being a community that I get now, that's something I didn't know needed to be satisfied or satiated. So welcome back. And for those of you online, welcome back, and know that there's about 25 people here at IMC. I'll have both the people here in my mind, and also all of you online.

For the meditation today, I want to offer a variation or a dimension of this mindfulness practice. I think it's a relatively common human phenomenon to get preoccupied with something, to be fixated on something, or to be concerned with something. They say that some of us have negative biases, so sometimes we get focused on what's negative, difficult, or off. Sometimes when we hear the meditation instruction like "just focus on your breathing," some people translate that to themselves as, "Oh, this is another time I'm supposed to be fixated, narrowly focused on something, just be with that." Then there's this tension between being narrowly focused—because it's an effort to do that—and the mind wanting to wander away.

So there's an art to not having the meditative attention fixated, to not translate one-pointedness to holding the attention tight on something like the breathing. Rather, to have the attention have a softness to it, a floating quality to it that allows you to take in the wider context of what's happening. It would be a little bit like if you're walking in a park with a friend. You're involved in the conversation with a friend; that's the focus of attention, the center of gravity of attention. But you're also taking in the park as you walk, because you have to make sure you don't step on a rock or a fallen branch. You don't even think about it, but you're synchronized. So you come to a curve in the path, you both curve around together. You're taking in the wider context, maybe even the niceness of it, the beautiful greenery, the peacefulness of it. It just feels good, taking in that relaxed feeling, inspired by the park setting. As opposed to walking next to the freeway on the shoulder with your friend, the cars rushing by—it'd be very different, right?

This ability to take in the peripheral context of the situation can be very helpful for meditation. As you're focusing on the breathing, it's not just important to stay with the breath, but to do so in a relaxed way, almost like you're opening attention up. You're also taking in the wider context of you sitting there. One of those contexts is that which is going well, that which feels pleasant, where there's some sense of ease. Chances are that somewhere in your field of attention, in your body and your mind, there's probably something that feels pleasant or enjoyable about sitting quietly here. What might be loud is something that's not enjoyable, not pleasant. Can you be open enough in your attention not to deny anything that's unpleasant or difficult, but to be wide enough that you can also include what is pleasant, what's easeful, what's enjoyable about it all?

If you're focusing on the breathing with relaxed, soft attention—kind of like you're resting on the breathing without working at it too much, just gently open—there is some kind of embodied context for breathing that feels nice. It feels good, pleasant, or easeful. Even if you feel lousy today, we're not denying you're feeling lousy, but you might feel lousy and still find a wider pleasant context. Does that make some sense?

Let's try that a little bit. Assuming a meditation posture in a way that feels nice for you, can you adjust your posture so that it feels nice to be in your body? For some of you, it might help to relax something. For some of you, it might mean sitting up straighter, sitting up in a way that feels more confident. Then, as if you're going to enjoy yourself doing it, slowly, luxuriously take a few long, slow, deep breaths. Maybe exhaling in a way that feels enjoyable or pleasant. Maybe part of the enjoyment is, as you exhale, to relax your body.

Then letting your breathing return to normal. Perhaps you can continue relaxing on the exhale, but if you're able to soften or relax some muscles, take the time to feel the pleasure of that, the goodness of that. Relaxing the muscles of your face. If you can soften your shoulders. Does anything in that softening feel pleasant? On the exhale, relaxing the belly. And perhaps on the exhale, a global relaxation of your body.

Then sitting here quietly, notice if there's any global pleasure or pleasantness that resides in your body. Even if parts of you feel uncomfortable, maybe there's a subtle global feeling of aliveness, awareness in the body. A tingling or vibration that has a kind of subtle pleasure to it. Maybe it's global, or maybe it's very specific. Sometimes it can be as simple as a feeling of pleasure with the lips touching, especially if you make a little half-smile.

For a few moments, let your global awareness float around your body, touching into wherever in the body it feels comfortable, feels pleasant, or where there's a sense of ease. Not so much looking for it, but just allowing your attention to float and settle, float and touch in randomly wherever it goes. Letting that be the peripheral attention. Center the awareness on the sensations of the body breathing.

Almost as if the breathing body is like a wave in the vast ocean that goes up and down. The wave is part of this larger ocean, so the sensations of breathing in and out are part of this wider global experience of the body. Is there some way that you can help the attention be enjoyable? A soft floating awareness that floats along with the comings and goings of the breath, not fixating. An attention which is receptive, loose awareness. So that part of the peripheral awareness is a very simple pleasure of being aware. And as you focus on your breathing, the central focus is breathing, and all around it, peripheral awareness supports you with a feeling of pleasantness, however subtle it might be.

[Silence]

If your wandering mind has caught a thought, if you quiet your thinking mind, can you feel better the pleasure of being present here? Have that pleasure support the attention resting on breathing.

[Silence]

If something within you is a little bit calmer or settled than when you started meditating, perhaps you can feel the pleasantness of that calm or subtleness, no matter how subtle it is, and gently breathe with it. Breathe through it.

And then from whatever is pleasant, enjoyable, or has a feeling of rightness within you, from that place, turning your attention outwards to the people sitting in this room, to the others who are sitting online meditating now. See if there's a simple way to consider the people around you in the context of your pleasant feeling, perhaps wishing for them some of the same pleasantness, calmness, or ease that you're experiencing now or that you have experienced in the past.

And to end this meditation with the aspiration, the wish for the welfare of others: May all beings be happy. May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. And may all beings be free.

Dharmic Pleasure

So hello everyone, and welcome. The topic for today is dharmic pleasure—the pleasure that comes from dharma^[1] practice. One of the principles that I'm going to offer is the principle that sometimes what is unpleasant can be overcome by what is pleasant. Sometimes pain can be overcome by pleasure, or dealt with through pleasure. But not just any pleasantness or any pleasure, but what can be called dharmic pleasure.

So what is that? There's a story in the suttas^[2] about the Buddha's cousin, who is a layperson. He comes to the Buddha and says, "I have this preoccupation that is getting in my way and I can't really make progress in the dharma because I'm overly attached to sensual pleasure. Sensual pleasure is an obstacle because I'm constantly thinking about it, imagining it, wanting it, or concerned with it." The Buddha says, "That's the way it is. If you're preoccupied and caught up in sensual pleasure, it's really hard to make progress on the dharma path."

Back in ancient India during the Buddha's time, there were other religious traditions that saw this as well. They saw that sensual pleasures of all kinds were an obstacle to spiritual progress, and they advocated asceticism—sometimes a radical denial of all pleasure. Sometimes they advocated intentionally taking on pain, as some people believed that you can only overcome pain with pain. The Buddha agreed with the man that preoccupation with sensual pleasure can be an obstacle. But then, remarkably, the Buddha said that before he was enlightened, he also was preoccupied with sensual pleasures in a way that interfered with his practice. He knew intimately for himself how this can work. Then he said the way to overcome this preoccupation and concern is through pleasure. It is through what I'm calling dharmic pleasure. He doesn't use that exact term, but he implies that there is a kind of pleasure you can cultivate that is an antidote to the preoccupation with sensual pleasure.

One way to see this is that there is another kind of pleasure—a feeling of wellness, of goodness—that is a reconditioning factor. We're very strongly influenced by the conditions in which we live, and we can be conditioned by them. It's a lifelong kind of conditioning. People who live with constant threat growing up can be conditioned to be afraid and anxious. Wherever they go, they have their eyes open looking at how to be safe because that's what they've taken in. There are people who have been horribly wounded or emotionally scarred by what happens to them, and that leaves a lasting impression and a perspective in which they look at the world, like the world is a dangerous place.

There is all this series of conditionings we have. Some people receive the conditioning that you're successful if you have a lot of pleasure, and you get rewarded for having sensual pleasure. So you want to have lots of pleasure because that's how you feel good and feel like everything's okay in the world. Over and over again, that's been reinforced in different kinds of ways. These kinds of conditionings can lead to an intensity around the pursuit of sensual pleasure of all kinds. It can be sexual, it can be the pleasure of alcohol and drugs, it can be the pleasures of the intellect, pleasures of adventures, or the pleasures of a daredevil who is fully absorbed in something that brings their attention fully into the present moment and clears out everything else. It feels so alive and connected. Doing things that are frightening brings an aliveness they don't have at any other time in their life, and it feels so good to have that aliveness.

Many years ago, I saw a documentary about a man who had spent his early adult life riding his motorcycle all over on the weekends. That's how he cleared his mind, got ready for work, and enjoyed just driving his big motorcycle around. But then he and his wife had a baby, and he couldn't spend the weekend away on his motorcycle. He had to find a quicker way to clear his mind and start fresh. So he took up the sport of paragliding—or BASE jumping, maybe. He could pack it into a backpack. Early in the morning at dawn, he would sneak into these skyscrapers that were being built in his city, climb up to the top, and jump from the top into the street below where there was no traffic yet. He had a friend with a getaway car waiting down below to drive him off. That's how he cleared his mind! Something good happened, and he felt alive, good, and present.

There are all these ways in which we pursue some kind of feeling of aliveness, and that sometimes involves the pursuit of pleasure. But sometimes those kinds of pursuits don't really fulfill us or meet some deeper need that we have. In fact, we almost need to repeat the same pleasure in order to be distracted from some deeper wound, some deeper loneliness, some deeper angst or depression. So people repeat the same thing, yearning for more and more.

The Buddha said that way doesn't work. In order to not have this pursuit of sensual pleasure be an obstacle, you have to experience a non-sensual pleasure—a pleasure that's not of the physical senses, and a pleasure which is not unwholesome or unskillful. What he used as an example for this was the kind of pleasure that comes from meditation practice. A certain kind of joy, well-being, and happiness can well up from the inside.

This idea of welling up from the inside is a very different source for a sense of well-being than the well-being that comes from getting stimulated by good experiences from the outside in. It might feel really good to have a tasty meal, your favorite meal. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you're simply taking in the pleasure of it, it's only of the senses. However, if the person who made the meal for you did it with a lot of love, and it touched something inside of you—like, "Wow, I can feel the generosity and the goodness of this person"—that touches something that's not of the senses. That might touch your heart, and that has a very different impact on us than the conditioning that comes from just the physical pleasure of the food. It's not the food that we're benefiting from the most, it's rather the goodness of it.

A story I like to tell—a lasting impression that's still with me, which probably conditioned me and had a lifelong influence on me—is about staying at my grandmother's house when I was somewhere between seven and ten. Waking up in the mornings to beautiful light, staying in bed in this all-wooden room in Norway with a Norwegian comforter. The bright Norwegian light coming in through the window, being all cozy, reading Donald Duck magazines in Norwegian. She would bring in a tray with toast, butter, and cheese on it. I would stay in bed eating the toast while reading the magazines. Unbeknownst to me at that time, I was taking in the goodness, the safety, the warmth, and the love of that situation and of my grandmother. I still carry that feeling, that memory of that goodness with me. Certainly, the toast with cheese was pleasant sensually, but it was some deeper feeling that wellspringed from inside. Something deeper was born, awoken, or allowed that did something special—just a simple thing she did.

To awaken this wellspring, a goodness and pleasure that can arise from the inside out, rather than continually looking for it in the world, is the path of the dharma. Certainly, my lifelong pursuit could have been to find someone who was just like my grandmother, get the right kind of comforter, the right kind of wooden bed, and make sure they brought the toast and butter in every morning at the right time of day when the light was shining through. Just to get everything set up and have someone who's just like my grandmother! But in Buddhism, that's just trying to get the world of the senses organized around you to replicate something.

In dharma practice, we're not looking at the external world for this. We're looking to see how we can awaken something inside that becomes a reconditioning factor that dissipates any attachment to sensual or physical comfort. Any attachment to physical or sensual stimulation of any kind, including intellectual stimulation. The Buddha said you can't really overcome this preoccupation with physical and sensual pleasure without this dharmic pleasure. He called it a pleasure not of the flesh, meaning nothing physical was being stimulated.

Have you had any experiences where there was enough sense of well-being, safety, quiet, or comfort, and the environment was just right, that you felt nourished? It wasn't so much nourished from the outside, but it allowed something inside to settle, to open, to be at ease, to feel safe. So that there was a wellspring within that began to flow and move through you. It requires being in a different way than most people are in their ordinary life, where maybe we're keeping ourselves busy with a to-do list, or keeping ourselves entertained. Like binge-watching—staying up all night to watch ten episodes of a series. That might be physically pleasant, a pleasure of the senses, but it doesn't create the environment or context that awakens something from the inside out.

So meditation, for the Buddha, was presented as the means for this deeper healing pleasure. He didn't have Netflix; he didn't have all the things we have in the modern world that people use to try to assuage their uncomfortable feelings. The Buddha did not teach that you overcome pain with pain. He taught you overcome pain with pleasure. He did not say you overcome pleasure with pain; he said you overcome pleasure with pleasure. And "overcome" here means overcoming our attachments, preoccupation, or fixation. Whether the fixation has to do with things that are pleasant or things that are unpleasant, both are healed through feeling this dharmic well-being, this dharmic pleasure.

So it is the art of discovering a way of feeling a certain kind of inner pleasure or well-being, and letting that be the context in which you experience your life. I'll give you an example from me. It's not dramatic, but maybe you can fill in a way that's meaningful for you. It's probably something like this, which happens to many of you: Sometimes I've had a busy day doing a lot of things, or I have a lot of feelings going on, and I sit down to meditate. I discover that my breathing is not relaxed. I'm contracted in the chest a little bit. If I sit and feel that, it actually feels unpleasant at the top of the inhale. But what I do is relax a bit around it, and I feel a subtle sense of well-being or pleasure in the wider, global body. Part of it is a pleasure that comes from just the goodness of being conscious of things, of being aware. It feels good for me. And then, as I stay focusing on my breathing, I just contentedly feel the discomfort of my breathing without making it a problem. I feel the discomfort in this wider field of pleasure, pleasantness, and goodness that's there. So I can end up feeling very content while feeling the discomfort, because it's not the whole picture. I'm not fixated on it.

Early in my meditation practice, many years ago, I would have gotten so caught up and preoccupied. "Oh, I shouldn't be breathing that way. This is a problem, I'm a bad meditator. What do I have to do to stop having this discomfort? I'm not supposed to have it!" I would tie myself in knots around these kinds of things because of this negativity bias, or this idea that I'm supposed to fix these problems and everything is supposed to be different. Now I just think, "Oh, look at that. I guess due to the conditions of the day, my breathing is a little bit uncomfortable." And it's okay. I feel that discomfort in this wider feeling of pleasure, and that has healed my tendency to be preoccupied. The shoulds, the judgments, the idea that I'm wrong—something relaxes that way.

This dharmic pleasure is a pleasure not of the senses, not of the flesh. It belongs to a wellspring that we open up to, and then we allow ourselves to be conditioned by it. There's an art to allowing ourselves to be influenced by that. Perhaps in your daily life, there are moments and situations where you feel something like this, but maybe you don't linger long enough in it. You just have to go—you have your to-do list. "Okay, let's go to the next thing." You jump in your car and you're tense driving. The fact that you just were in the park with a friend going for a nice walk and feeling peaceful is beside the point once you get in your car to go to the next important thing.

But what about lingering or staying with these feelings? We benefit the most if we take them in and let them be. "This is good." In spite of the fact that I feel unhappy today, there is also this goodness here. If we get preoccupied with our unhappiness, we're probably more likely to be negatively influenced by it. But if we allow ourselves to be unhappy, but feel it in a wider field of something that feels easeful, pleasant, or open, then that can be an influence that heals some of the unhappiness.

So what are some of the things that we can feel? Some of it is a global awareness of the body that's bigger than any particular place where we feel uncomfortable or feel pain. It's not always available to us, but there might be some feeling of subtle vibration, subtle energy flow, subtle tingling, or subtle spaciousness. One of the things that's happened to me over the years of practice is that I have a lot of space in my body now. At least, that's what it feels like to me. It feels like a very spacious, beautiful, big place in there. I closed my eyes and was so surprised when, some years ago, I went to a community college nearby that has an anatomy lab where they spend time with a cadaver. It's all cut open so you can see the inside. I was so surprised—there's no space in there! [Laughter] It's just packed with organs and everything. Like, wow, they don't have any space, but I have lots of space! This space is not physical space, but I experience it. I feel very spacious inside and around. That spaciousness feels nice. When I was younger, I wouldn't have thought that space like that was something to focus on. Now I feel that it's kind of like going into a big, sacred space with high ceilings, which makes the place feel sacred, quiet, or peaceful. To feel the spaciousness within is a positive conditioning force for me.

Sometimes it's the goodness of what we do that has a positive influence. Being generous—not just giving, but a giving that is truly generous, or a giving that has a feeling of love with it. Or honesty—not the honesty that's a duty, but the honesty that sets something free inside. You're not hiding or contracted; it decontracts us. To feel the goodness of honesty, of truthfulness. The goodness of kindness and compassion. Again, there's not a "should" or a duty. Not a, "I'm a good Buddhist, I'm supposed to be this way, I'm going to buckle down to be kind." Rather, it's discovering how to open and allow for a softness and tenderness where, of course, you want to be kind. Of course, that's good.

Learning how to do these things in a way—discovering your own way, not someone else's way—so that as you go through life and do things, you act in ways that feel really good for you from the inside out. Sometimes in Buddhism, they talk about actions which are beautiful. I think the beauty is not the external grace with which you do things, but rather the feeling of beauty from the inside out as you do them. And what does it take to do things in a beautiful way? I don't think you can do them in a hurry. I think hurry interferes with any of this deeper well-being that can recondition us and heal us. It requires something of us, and one of those things is non-hurry, taking the time to feel and be present.

One of the primary forms of dharmic pleasure that the Buddha emphasized for this reconditioning purpose is the well-being that arises when our attention becomes unified and organized. To be fully engaged and absorbed in one thing. I say those words very carefully, because I could have said "when we just get concentrated on one thing." But for some people, "concentrated" means getting fixated, bearing down, narrowing down to really stay present. That is not the unified, composed attention with which we get organized around being absorbed in something. Some of you have felt a wonderful feeling of well-being while absorbed in reading a good novel. It just feels so good to be pulled into the novel while the world around you falls away. Or maybe doing a craft, where you're absorbed in the craft, but you're not fixated on any one part of it. The whole phenomenon feels good. Your mind hasn't stopped thinking, but everything is organized around the craft, or playing a musical instrument, or doing art, or going for a walk in a natural setting.

In meditation, that's the kind of absorption that is possible, that the Buddha was emphasizing. It gives birth to a deeper wellspring of joy, happiness, and delight. We're allowed to feel dharmic pleasure; we're allowed to feel good! In fact, being fixated on what's uncomfortable and difficult—emotionally, physically, in the world—is a bad influence on us. The fixation is stressful. We don't have to ignore the difficulties we have, but we can hold them in a different context than the one created by being fixated on them.

Using meditation to begin relaxing the fixations, softening the way we get preoccupied by things, and developing a soft, receptive, floating awareness allows us to become aware of the peripheral context of our situation. When I say peripheral context, I mean that if we're involved with our breathing, for example, that's the primary center of our attention. We're not only taking in the breathing and hanging on for dear life, but our peripheral attention takes in the goodness and subtle pleasure of the situation we're in. Physically feeling where it feels good. There is often more goodness and pleasure available than most people take advantage of.

Here's an example that I find fascinating: If I feel tense in my body, it feels uncomfortable. I can relax my attention and then notice that I'm tense somewhere else, and try to deal with that as a new problem. But what happened was that I ignored the fact that as I released the tension, there was a feeling of subtle pleasure and relief in my shoulders. What should I focus on? The painful tension that I'm glad went away, or the pleasure that replaced it? The relaxation happens, but do I keep focusing on what's negative, or can I focus on the positive side of it? There are many situations where I learned to relax and feel the goodness of the relaxation, which I wouldn't have done early in my life because I was barreling ahead with one preoccupation after another. Check that off, relax the shoulders, what's next to do? What's the next thing to worry about?

Taking the time, chances are there's more non-sensual pleasure, dharmic pleasure, available at any given time than you recognize. I've sat at meetings and been impatient, and the impatience didn't go away. But by settling into my body, I could feel that there was a wider sense of feeling a little bit alive, vital, and relaxed. That created a different context for feeling the impatience. Earlier in my life, I would have just been caught by the impatience. Now I know better. Now I think, "Oh, I'm impatient. What else is going on here? Can I feel that larger context of just the pleasure of being alive right now?" Now I breathe with the impatience, holding it in a wider context so I'm not fixated on it.

I call this the peripheral attention. To float the attention between the central focus and the peripheral. To focus on what needs attention, but to hold that with the peripheral attention of what feels good and pleasant. That supports this ability to get absorbed, composed, and unified about something. And then, lo and behold, staying very still and quiet and absorbed in something like the breathing starts producing these deeper wellsprings. I keep using the word wellsprings because the Buddha, when talking about this kind of absorption, uses the analogy of an underwater spring in a lake—a wellspring of water that flows into the lake from below. I think he uses that metaphor purposefully because that's how it can feel inside of us. This wellspring flows from someplace within and outward through the body. This vibration, energy, tingling, warmth, or glow.

So give yourself time and make room for some other way of feeling. Take the time and room to feel dharmic pleasure. In this way, pleasure overcomes attachment to pleasure. Isn't that convenient? The Buddha was very specific in the context of ancient India that we don't use pain to overcome pleasure, and we don't use pain to overcome pain. We use pleasure to overcome the preoccupation with both pain and pleasure.

How might this work for you? I suspect that I probably didn't speak about this in a way that was specific enough for everyone, but I hope it at least turned the mirror back to yourself. To see if what I'm talking about would be useful for you to take more time with and make room for. Not to be in a hurry, not to be tricked by the mind's preoccupations, to-do lists, and previous conditioning that keeps you on the treadmill. Being able to shift gears allows for a healthy, appropriate new influence and conditioning that allows you to benefit from the deeper way that mindfulness can gather you together. Being really present for your experience brings more nurturing, healing, goodness, and pleasure in the practice.

I hope this is something that you can identify in yourself and find useful. Thank you for being here today.

Q&A

We have a couple of minutes. Would anyone like to ask any questions about this, or clarifications, or anything else? Here behind you, Bill. Those of you online, I'll try to look at the chat and see if you have a question.

Questioner: This question may be somewhat unclear even to myself: What are the gray areas between dharmic pleasure and sensual pleasure, where you can't tell the difference which one you are engaged in?

Gil Fronsdal: The gray area where we can't tell the difference between dharmic pleasure and sensual pleasure... sometimes they come together. That's part of the reason why it's not so clear. It takes some time to be able to allow for both to be there and not assume that it should only be one or the other. There's nothing inherently wrong with sensual pleasure. In Buddhism, we're not dismissing sensual pleasure offhand; it's the attachment to it that is the issue. Dismissing it or feeling that sensual pleasure is wrong doesn't allow us to see how they operate. They can operate together; they can both be there. Thank you very much.

Questioner: Gil, I remember a quote that I think is from the Verses of the Elder Nuns^[3], I'm not sure. That part of your talk reminded me of it: "I take delight and attention to all suffering states." That's how I remember it.

Gil Fronsdal: Well, that's a great one. Yeah, that's fantastic. I think it's a common assumption by people that if you're suffering, that suffering is all that's going on. Because of this negativity bias, because of the preoccupation with it, our thinking gets so pulled into that world that we're just thinking about it all the time. But to learn to not be caught in thoughts, to learn how to open up attention into a wider field, and discover the preciousness of being conscious, of being mindful, of being aware. Awareness of something can feel pleasant, enjoyable, or just right. There's freedom in the awareness of it.

So it's possible to be aware of suffering states and actually feel joy. Like when I talked about feeling my discomfort with my breathing, sometimes when I turn towards it with a spacious mind and body and feel it, just my ability to do that sometimes brings a little smile. "Oh look at that, it's so good to be mindful!" In the past, I wouldn't have noticed that. So as you say it again: "I take delight in attention toward all suffering states." Yeah, it's a lot better than the alternative.

Questioner: Are you speaking about leaning into the pain?

Gil Fronsdal: Leaning into the pain... well, you know, with the right kind of mindfulness and attention, that could be fun. [Laughter] But I wouldn't rule it out, though I'm not really encouraging people to lean into the pain. If you have pain to begin with, you want to be wise about it. You want to have lots of options and be able to find your way with it. One of the ways to find your way with it is to hold the pain in a wider field of pleasure, well-being, or freedom of attention. Just hold it in awareness without being caught by it.

One of the things that does is it allows us to see the pain more clearly so we can be wiser about what to do with it. There are lots of options. It might be that we should take an aspirin. It might be that we should ignore it. It might be that we should really bring careful attention to really feel it closely and intimately. There are so many choices, but you first have to stop long enough to check it out. Anyway, that's my response to that question.

Okay. So maybe that's enough. I kind of feel like I just gave you a hot potato and now you have it to practice with! Hopefully, you get dharmically warmed by it in a nice way. Thank you very much.