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.

Introduction

Good morning, everyone. This is a sound check. Warm greetings. Happy to be with all of you. Happy to see all the greetings in the chat, and to welcome you to our week of meditation together. I appreciate that this is an oasis, a really beautiful, warm place. This little morning meditation sangha^[1] is an oasis in your morning, a sanctuary. A place for all of us to connect with mindfulness, open heart, community, and awakening.

I am glad you can hear me. This week the focus will be on mindfulness off the cushion—our practice, the depth of your heart and mind's practice off the cushion. I'll go through some daily life mindfulness suggestions and ideas, both from the ancient Buddhist texts and from the experience of practitioners like you, from my own experience, and maybe from each other's experience. We'll explore this. But meanwhile, it's time to meditate. So, connecting with your heart, connecting with your intention.

Guided Meditation

Allowing your feet to be grounded on the floor or cushion. Your body to be rooted, grounded in its place. Noticing breathing sensation. And allowing the breath to deepen, open. Opening to the texture of this moment. Relaxing into hearing temperature, warmth and cool. And allowing your attention to settle in the sensory experience of the moment. Steadying the attention.

On breath. Embodied experience. And tuning in. To your intention. For meditating today. What is the heart's request? Greeting your heart. Your mind. Your whole being. With warmth. Open hearted. As you drop that intention from your mind. Into your whole being.

Then inviting^[2] your attention to gather, coalesce as you offer it completely to the moment. If thoughts, planning, momentum arises, monkey mind, turning towards the process of being with the thinking with gentle awareness, noticing it and returning to the felt sense of the moment. Reconnecting and sustaining that connection with your heart's request, intention.

Relaxing the body. Releasing into this moment with an open heart. As the attention steadies^[3], the mind and body and heart unify in this moment. Allowing the goodness, the simplicity of breath, present, calm, to radiate through, ripple through your experience. Grounded, simple, here.

In the last moment of our meditation together reconnecting to your heart's innermost intention. Appreciating it. Nourishing it. Perhaps experiencing a bit of joy or resonance. Or strength from it. And letting that move through your whole body. Attuning. Listening. Offering.

Grounded in the moment, settled in your body, offering a sense of connected presence outwards towards the others in your life. Feeling the goodness of offering all of your being to the moment, to the morning, afternoon, evening. And offering the wish, "May others be happy, safe, peaceful, and free." And may the benefits of this practice ripple through my own mind and heart and life to all of the lives we touch, and all of the lives they touch outwards and outwards. May all beings know love, kindness, liberation, and peace. And may our practice here together increase these beautiful qualities in the world. Thank you for the sincerity of your practice.

Dharmette: Mindful Days (1 of 5): Waking to Presence

So, again, warm greetings, sangha. Warm greetings to our week, our five days of mindfulness off the cushion. Daily life mindfulness. I wanted to do something a little different this week and respond to common questions I've seen about bringing our practice, integrating it into the day, into the week. And weaving these beautiful heart qualities all of you have been cultivating, weaving whatever mindfulness you've been cultivating into your day, into your week.

I believe the audio is now fixed, so we'll be talking about this, exploring it together this week, and how to integrate this practice with things like waking up, moment-to-moment life, mindful eating, heartful eating, wholehearted work, or connecting to chores as a way of deepening connection to the moment, to ourselves, and to our practice. How to integrate practice in moving through the world, including physical movements, and also transit, commuting. And how to bring mindfulness and kindness into relationship, connecting with ourselves, with others, listening and communicating with harmony.

I will bring in bits of ancient wisdom, as well as some bits of science. And I just want to name that in part I'll be weaving in and inviting you to weave in gathas^[4], little sayings, little poems, inspired by Gil's^[5] presentation of his translations of the elders nuns' poems last week. So, that's where we're going—real-world mindfulness woven with ancient wisdom from the suttas, from the canon.

And this morning, I'd like to talk about mindful mornings. Waking up. It turns out that waking up—in terms of opening the heart and mind to more vastness and more freedom—has neurological correlates with physically waking up. So, we shouldn't underestimate this moment in the day. Connecting with the very, very first moments, even seconds of the day, softly, is very helpful. Relating to the moment of awakening with an open heart and noticing whatever is there. If there's openness and relaxation, soaking in it, appreciating it. And if there happens to be any anxiety, stress, overactive planning, or runaway mental loops, otherwise known as papancha^[6], to release them and to step into the simple, grounded way of being in the day.

Even before getting out of bed, even before moving, intention is powerful. Intention is powerful. Those first seconds of consciousness, before even opening your eyes or rolling out of bed, are an open field of possibility, a threshold into the rest of the day. And how you orient the heart—how I orient my heart in these first quiet moments—can set the internal climate for the whole rest of the day.

If you're like me and there's not an intentional orientation to the moment, the heart and mind can easily default to whatever is up, or whatever the oldest or most unhelpful habitual tracks of mind are. Or if you've been practicing a long time, old helpful habitual mental energy. It's really easy when waking up that we might not have full access to the groundedness and power of the practice, because the mind is tired and not totally focused. We might not have much capacity for clear seeing or insight just yet.

This can happen to anyone. Sometimes it happens to me: the morning to-do list starts to take over, or there's a habitual sense of momentum. And I've talked to people who've been retired for ten years, or are in a completely different phase of life, who still find that momentum and those mental loops predominant in the morning. It is just the habit energy. It can persist well after waking life, these mind states. But it's possible to shift it. It's possible to shift it. To choose simplicity over speed. To choose presence over papancha. Mindfulness over mental activity and anxiety.

This isn't about goal setting or holding yourself to a standard of perfection, but rather a simple, kind, gentle decision to meet the day with intention and awareness, rather than rushing into what I think I need to do. To check in: "Am I aware?" And perhaps to say a little morning phrase. You can use the now famous one in some circles, "Today is going to be my peaceful day," as is in the chat. Or something that you invent for yourself. Maybe something like this: "Waking up, I connect with my heart. Before I rise, I touch a yes within." Something that connects with your heart's innermost intention. You don't always have to use those words or any words.

A beneficial habit some people have experienced, and that I often wake with, is to spend a few minutes radiating your favorite heart quality. Just tuning into it, letting it flow in a simple way, before going to anything else. Even if it doesn't feel like much in the moment, this sets the beginnings of a shift of habit and begins to invite our whole being to show up in a different way. These kinds of intentions and heart energy can replace unhelpful habits in the moment. And they can replace unhelpful habit energies over time.

So, first, intention is powerful. Just set one, connect with one, your heart's inmost intention. Second is to connect with your body. Sometimes people talk about feeling an internal acceleration, even anxiety, before thoughts even start. And here a little bit of the science is helpful. The morning rev-up that some people feel is known as a cortical arousal. It's largely physical. It's an awakening response that our bodies naturally do. There's also often a glucose surge designed to wake your body up. It's like the engine is starting. The forces of your life energy are gathering together. So, it's not a problem. It doesn't necessarily need to be anxiety or any other negative response. Noticing the relationship with the sensations and noticing them as physical sensations—what the feeling tone is, whether it is pleasant or unpleasant, and the attribution that I'm making towards feelings in my body—can shift them to something that's helpful or unhelpful. Noticing with kindness whatever is there.

If you're like me some mornings, there might be a lot of extra thoughts. Sometimes it can be helpful to offload them. A common question I get is, "If I don't start reviewing my to-do list now, if I don't think about this, won't I be unprepared for the day? Won't I forget the important thing? Won't I forget the inspiration that came from that dream?" So it can be helpful to just jot down a few words on a sticky note or a pad nearby. One or two words of top priorities just to offload them and set them aside. This allows a calmer sense of presence to be accessible, to not fall into the discursive pattern of believing all of those words.

Ajahn Chah^[7] said something like, "This moment gives birth to the next. If you care for the mother, she will care for her child." In other words, the mind state of this moment invites the next moment. If you choose calm presence now, it invites more calm. If I put all of my energy into the mental churning of papancha, that begets more mental churning. So, to invite physical contact with your day, if there's churning happening, be a circuit breaker cutting through: a splash of water on the face, attention to simple touchpoints, like your bare feet on the floor. And return to the quiet of the morning moment.

This is from the ancient verses of the elder awakened monks, the Theragatha^[8]: "Arising early with a resolute, unhurried heart, before the world wakes into frantic noise, I protect the mind as a precious jewel, living awake, presence as my companion."

Connecting to the senses connects the mind to presence. Shifting from story to sensation, anchoring directly in the senses, choosing the tactile and real over mental stories or the digital. Pressing the button on the kettle, waiting for the coffee to brew, taking a pause. A three-breath pause is possible no matter how many needs start crowding into those moments. It just takes a second to connect.

This is not about taking a bunch of time out of your morning. It's about connecting to the physicality. Connecting to the body. Noticing muscle tension or relaxation, warmth, or noticing the contact with your companion animal. Noticing the little things that need to happen in the morning routine as a way of connecting. Seeing, hearing, a sip of something warm.

Dropping the rush to the future. This is from the Dhammapada^[9]: "Let go of the past. Let go of the future. Let go of the present."

So, returning to where we began, the power of setting an intention at the start of the day. A very simple micro-meditation, a micro-practice. An extra two minutes, or thirty seconds, relating to your morning can turn a routine morning task into a tiny secret pause. So consider, even in the imperfect mornings where you wake in a rush, what might one morning micro-practice be for you? Consider it, and then if you have the time, craft a little two-line phrase, a daily life phrase or gatha to anchor that moment for you tomorrow. You can share it with a friend, share it with yourself by posting it with a sticky note, or share it online with the community. And remember it.

Thank you for your kind attention.