This is an AI-generated transcript from auto-generated subtitles for the video above. It likely contains inaccuracies, especially with speaker attribution if there are multiple speakers.

Guided Meditation: Shifting to Sensations

Starting a few minutes late. So encouragement now is to check in with your heart, your mind, your body, and come into presence. Taking a moment to feel whatever tension or relaxation is present, to greet yourself here. Welcome all of who you are.

Taking a couple of longer, slower, deeper breaths and allowing your attention to move inside. Notice any thoughts or emotions, judgments, attributions, impulses. Refreshing your awareness, shifting it to the body, to the overall quality of the moment. Hearing warmth or cool. The weight of your body grounded in the moment.

Checking your posture that there's balance. Not too much leaning forward, leaning back. That there's a balance between relaxation and alertness, not a slump or too much tension. And then, too, checking in with the internal posture of the mind and heart, the mood, the general sense of what's here. Including that, too. The internal weather into your mindful awareness.

Allowing your attention to anchor on some dimension of embodied experience. Attuning to breath, the field of sensations of the body, and allowing the heart and mind to settle into the work of this moment.

Noticing whatever is arising in your heart and mind. And if distractions, emotions, or thoughts arise, when they arise, meeting them with kindness, allowing simplicity. Encouraging your attention to a loving awareness of the work of this moment. Present with whatever arises.

Maintaining continuous contact with the breath, with the body, with the moment. And returning with dedication each time mindful awareness re-emerges.

In the last moment of this meditation, turning your attention to any feelings of connection to your embodied experience with the moment. Any glimmers of steadiness, mindfulness, kindness, goodness—letting your being soak in them. Savor, trusting the goodness within, good intentions, and watering the seeds of goodness with appreciation for your practice.

And then turning those good wishes, that appreciation outwards to the others in your life. May they be safe, happy, peaceful, and free. And may our practice here together be a cause and condition to greater love, liberation, and peace in the world. Thank you for your practice.

Dharmette: Mindful Days (4 of 5) From Chores to Clarity

So thank you, everyone, for joining us, and we are now in the fourth session of this series on mindful awareness. So this fourth session is on mindfulness and work. I like to think of this as chores, increasing clarity, reclaiming time that often people will talk about being, quote unquote, "wasted time"—time away from practice. "I wish I didn't have to do this because I want to get back to my practice or get back to my life."

However, there is a move we can make, and that is to shift from resisting daily work, from resisting daily labor or chores, to treating every physical moment that we can, that we have access to—like sweeping, washing, even typing—as an anchor for awareness, an anchor for presence, for building samadhi^[1], steadiness of mind. And this is not always easy to do. However, we can begin to strengthen the muscle of mindfulness and clear comprehension, sampajañña^[2], to start to include everything.

So one little spoken phrase that might work, or one or two we'll try. For example, "this time is awareness in motion" or "washing dishes, sweeping floors, cleaning the space outside, calming the mind within," in a way, cleaning the mind within.

So, I got the top three questions I've seen—questions and concerns about daily work—and hopefully some of these will resonate for some of you.

By far the top one that I hear is something like, "How can I practice mindfulness when my job or my chores require speed or multitasking?" So here are some ideas.

First, noticing busyness itself as a mind state. Feeling into the difference between physical speed and mental rushing. It's possible to sweep or clean briskly, to switch tabs to check on technical things while remaining aware, while keeping your mental center stable.

So the advanced practice that I listed there is the typing or the computer work. It can be very challenging to maintain embodied mindfulness, especially if there are interruptions, either alerts on your computer or people walking up to you. So, it can help to set an intention or a phrase. For example, before I type, "breathe in at ease, upright," or the intention to turn towards and meet every communication, every arising as another contact point with reality. Noticing the response in you—physical, mental—and regrounding.

Taking micro-breaks. Checking in: "Am I aware?" Taking a deep breath. Remembering to be aware is the challenge, not awareness or mindfulness itself. Those moments are easy. You can build in micro-breaks. I used to build them in by setting a timer with a really beautiful automated mindfulness bell, and that can be the reminder. You can build in mini-breaks as well, a little longer than micro-breaks. Movement, snacks, short walks around the block, a few stretches—something that gives your mind and body an anchor in the moment.

It can also be helpful to hook a specific activity of work, for example, changing screens or veggie chopping or wiping a counter, to the intention to be mindful. You can even leave a note for yourself at that spot. Grounding yourself in the physical mechanics of the body movement. And gradually over time, the reminder will build the habit, the beneficial habit for awareness, mindfulness just to emerge as that activity takes place.

Let your task switching be a moment of presence. Allowing the shift itself to be a moment of presence.

Another thing that's helpful for many people is to practice what I call single-tasking, which isn't doing one thing an hour, but rather doing one thing at a time with wholehearted presence. Many people find it helpful to interweave periods of single-tasking in through the day, maybe twenty minutes at a time, thirty minutes at a time.

And then the last thing about this question: work or chores can feel like a tangle if we're in a mental rush or distracted when your identity is implicated. You can untangle the tangle by giving wise attention to the threads of this moment here. This is from the connected discourses: A wise person grounded in ethics, developing mind and wisdom, a keen and alert practitioner or mendicant. They can untangle this tangle.

Second question. "I feel resentment towards mundane domestic tasks. How do I drop the bitterness?" Well, resentment often arises from living in the narrative of "I shouldn't have to do this." If you shift, however, to the bare sensory reality of the dish, the broom, the water, the attitude often shifts, too. I find it really helpful to let the physical work itself, the rhythm of it, the action of it, steady the mind. And these moments of mindful sensory connection can begin to build practice momentum rather than momentum of negative stories. Work and chores can invite more and more moments of awareness.

The ancient awakened practitioners even speak of simple daily life chores as doorways to waking up. This is from Gil Fronsdal's translation of the Therigatha^[3], Patacara^[4]. She writes, "With feet washed, I watched the footwashing water flow from high ground to low. With this, the mind concentrated like a thoroughbred horse. Taking a lamp, I entered my hut and looking out over the bed, I sat down on the bed. Taking a needle, I pulled out the wick. And as the flame went out, the mind was freed."

Notice how a simple daily chore, washing feet or hands, becomes a direct meditation on impermanence, on cause and effect. These moments can build momentum towards freeing the heart.

So last question. "Isn't chores as meditation just a trick to tolerate boring work?" Answer: no. There was a venerable monk^[5], one of the monks in the Theragatha^[6], one of the original practitioners with the Buddha, who was famous in his day for not being able to memorize, perhaps not even understand the deeper teachings of the Buddha. So the Buddha gave him the practice of sitting and simply rubbing a cloth and seeing the process of the dirt coming and going, rubbing and washing, rubbing and washing. He became absorbed, immersed, developed a really amazing samadhi and eventually woke up completely.

So for us, wiping a surface or an object can show us impermanence in nature right in our hands. We can watch mental afflictions, distractions, physical clutter arise and pass away. And by letting yourself become immersed, chores and work can become an opportunity for greater clarity, concentration, and freeing of the heart and mind.

So thank you for your kind attention.