---
ai_generation_date: '2026-05-28'
ai_model: gemini-3-pro-preview
audiodharma:
  talks:
  - date: '2023-02-05'
    mp3_url: https://audiodharma.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com/talks/17682/20230205-Ying_Chen%2C_%E9%99%88%E9%A2%96-IMC-practice_sincerely.mp3
    speakers:
    - speaker_name: "Ying Chen, \u9648\u9896"
      speaker_url: https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/333
    talk_start_time_seconds: 0
    title: Practice Sincerely
    url: https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/17682
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location_city: Redwood City, CA
video_unavailable: false
youtube:
  id: _C7RD2cZYVM
  imprecise_upload_date: '2023-05-04'
  title: Practice Sincerely
  upload_date: null
  uploader_str: Insight Meditation Center
  uploader_url: https://www.youtube.com/@InsightMeditationCenter
youtube_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_C7RD2cZYVM
---

# Practice Sincerely - [Ying Chen, 陈颖](https://www.audiodharma.org/speakers/333)

*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.*

## [Practice Sincerely](https://www.audiodharma.org/talks/17682)

A warm welcome again, everyone here at IMC, as well as those who are online on YouTube from all over the world.

I just came out of a week-long online retreat on Friday, and so I'm still feeling some rippling effect of it. At the end of the retreat, I got an opportunity to share a gem that arose out of it. What came to me very strongly over the course of the retreat was this deep sense of trust and rootedness in sincere practice. The sincerity of the practice.

In the context of the retreat, we had a retreat theme, and that was *samādhi*[^1]. Some of you know this is translated as concentration. Just by naming *samādhi*, so often our mind immediately goes to, "I want to get that," or "I want to have that." And so that becomes a goal of the retreat, you know, we want to get concentrated or be in the bliss of *samādhi*.

The teachers knew this very well. On the very first day, Phillip Moffitt, one of the teachers of the retreat, said this: "We need to be cautious that we don't turn this retreat into a hunting party for concentration. We're learning to recognize that concentration naturally arises as a felt sense." Such wisdom.

We have a theme of *samādhi* awakening, and we can so easily get caught up thinking that that is something that we're getting. Phillip would lead a guided meditation each morning at 8:00 AM. In these guided meditations, he would offer a preliminary preparatory process to prepare our body, mind, and heart so that we're ready and open to the whole process of the meditation. This preliminary process is called the "arriving sequence."

I won't be talking about the arriving sequence, but I wanted to share something I learned from this process. Usually, this morning sit is an hour or a little over an hour. Phillip would offer microscopic, minute details of what happens as we arrive on the cushion, on our seat, with tiny little shifts in our posture, and some shifts in our mind and heart. In great detail, this arriving sequence could be fifteen, twenty, thirty, or thirty-five minutes. Sometimes it feels like forever.

This was an experienced student retreat, so many people have heard about this arriving sequence and practiced it many times—maybe hundreds of times. Sitting there, just being with the arriving sequence was not easy. Wow, that was not what we expected. Our minds wanted to get to *samādhi*.

But what a teaching. One day, sitting in this timeless arriving sequence, it just dawned on me: wow, what a sincere practitioner. What a sincere teacher. He wasn't going to rush over it. He wasn't actually going anywhere. He was just there with what was present right in front of him, with him, while he was offering and sharing pointers with the rest of us who were practicing with him. There were no shortcuts, no fast track. Just arriving.

I was so touched and moved by that. When I recognized that, all of a sudden my body relaxed, my heart softened. It was humbling and inspiring. I had this immediate sense in my being that I finally arrived, and I didn't have to go anywhere.

So that's what I thought I was going to share today: the sincerity of the practice.

It's easy for us to come to Dharma practice using the same attitude that we may have in engaging in all kinds of other aspects of our lives, right? We're here to get something or to achieve something we want. Or we come here to get rid of something that really bothered us—the bad stuff, bad habits, or the lousy neighbors, who knows.

We can come here with the attitude of getting or getting rid of. I don't want to diminish that, because all of us probably come to the Dharma through that. We had something that connected to us and we needed something. And yet, as we begin to have some understanding of the Dharma teachings and begin to engage with the practice ourselves, we might soon find out for ourselves that our usual patterns of attitudes don't work. They just don't work. They actually hinder how we practice.

What is asked of us is something quite drastically different from our usual attitudes. I would say what is asked of us is to learn to practice sincerely. I'm intentionally pausing here. Just to practice sincerely. Nothing else, period. Practicing sincerely, period.

Just take a moment to feel into your being, your heart, and your mind. What does that feel like to you? I've had many moments when this was said, and my mind would go, "What? Don't we have to sincerely practice in order to get something, get somewhere, and have something happen to us?" We have lots of plans. Are we okay to just practice sincerely?

I'm very fond of the Zen story that Gil[^2] tells us sometimes. I think many of you have probably heard this. Someone asked Suzuki Roshi[^3] about enlightenment, and he responded, "If you practice it sincerely, it's just as good." How is that possible?

I wanted to unpack this sincere practice a bit, in a few different dimensions. This is just something that arose from the reflections of the retreat that I just came off of. It doesn't mean that those are the only dimensions; there may be many other dimensions associated with this as well.

The first dimension of practicing sincerely is to become aware. To become aware of what is happening here, how we are practicing, and what is here right now. That's the very first thing. So even right now as we're all sitting together, I'm speaking, and you're listening. What's here? Are we aware? What's in our mind, in our body, in our heart?

If we are preoccupied with some plans, projections, or interpretations, we are not aware of what is actually happening. Whatever arises might just be habitual patterns out of our storytelling mind, our impulsive mind. So the first thing is to become aware and make contact with our lived experience, not something in the past or in the future. That's the first aspect of sincere practice—to become aware and come in contact with the lived experience here and now. When we're not aware, we can't be sincere. I'm going to say this again: when we're not aware, we can't be sincere, because we don't know what is truly here. We're only going to be living on the surface level of our stories, ideas, and imaginations.

Now, once we're aware, the second dimension of sincerity is that of truthfulness and honesty. When we practice sincerely, we're aware, we come into contact with our present lived experience, and what's called for immediately following that is to meet those experiences truthfully. Not how you prefer, not how you'd rather, but whatever is happening right now, here—this is the truth.

If you're sitting down and you find yourself having aches and pains in the body, there's a truth to that. Can we be with that honestly? Or if there's something in the mind—I'm irritated, or I have a certain fear coming into my mind—is it okay to be with that just as it is? To meet with this truthfully.

We all know that our minds tend to skip over things that we don't want, the unpleasant experiences. Of course, we don't like that, and it's not comfortable. My mind tends to have this habit of turning away. Reflecting on our Dharma teachings, we often offer these lists and maps. When we offer a list of eight, our mind can't stay at one or two; we jump to number eight. If within the first ten minutes we're not getting to number four, we think something is totally wrong with us, right? [Laughter] But sincere practice asks us to be true to where we are and how we are, just as it is. We're not moving away.

Do I dare to stay true to this? This is another phrase that Phillip used very often on this retreat: "Do I dare? Do we dare?" Sometimes we're afraid of what is here, so we run away. Do we dare? It takes courage, trust, and integrity to really be here.

I really like the Chinese translation of sincerity. I don't know if any of you would know this, but its meaning is something like "what our heart and mind can trust." When we are sincere, there is a certain kind of trustworthiness in our heart and in our mind. Maybe it's because we can stay true to what is here. In this way, our heart and mind can trust it.

The third aspect that I'd like to speak about—after being aware of what is happening and staying true or honest with our experience—comes in the form of being open to what is here. I had this sense of a gesture. I don't know if some of you may do yoga, but it's the mountain pose. In mountain pose, you stand on your mat with your hands open, heart lifted, and you're open to what comes. This is that kind of gesture. We're open to this experience fully, wholeheartedly. Not half-hearted or partially checked out, but really here fully. I'm also fond of this one-liner that Gil sometimes talks about: in order to get from A to B, you stay at A fully.

It's the same sense of opening up to embrace and stay with the experience fully. We probably all have lots of examples of how we might be experiencing what's happening half-heartedly. You may have had the experience where you are with someone who is keeping company with you, but they're not really there. Maybe they're on the phone, and their gesture is that they're not looking at you. They are kind of there, but they're really not there with you. We all have experienced this.

We can be experienced with that part of ourselves in our inner being. Some aspect of us that we may prefer not to be here, is here. Maybe somebody said something about me, and that defensive part of me is here. I don't like it. I really want to wiggle out of this hurt feeling, but it's here. Can I be with this? Can I allow this to be here without shuffling it around and pushing it away?

I remember on a recent retreat that Gil gave a long, extended posture instruction. I was struck by the minute details that he offered in this posture instruction—different parts of the body, the energetic field, the jaw, the eyes, the eye sockets, just kind of everything. What struck me was how attuned he was with all of this just sitting. It wasn't just for one sitting, but over decades and decades of practice, he was paying attention to how posture shifts and changes. It's as if you're meeting this as an old friend, at the same time as a brand new friend.

That's the kind of attitude that we're bringing in through sincere practice. We embrace this so wholeheartedly that it is as if we have never met this moment before. We just give ourselves over to it, bowing down to it.

And then the last dimension comes in, which is to be content with this. Now that you're aware, present, honest, truthful, open, and receptive—be content with where we are, how we are, just as it is.

It is easy for our minds to feel that somewhere else would be a better place to be, just not this. But sincere practice asks us to check: can we be okay with this experience? Whether it's a pleasant bliss experience or a very uncomfortable one, whatever is happening is good enough. It's good enough.

Our minds are tricky; we don't always have clarity. So an invitation for this sincere practice is to also open to this as an ongoing learning process. That's part of the sincerity. Sincere practice brings humility and modesty to our practice. Setting ourselves up against high standards only brings suffering to us.

I want to share this poem that I just heard this morning. This is from a little book called *The First Free Women*[^4], poems from the early Buddhist nuns. This is from a nun whose name is Rohini, and the title of the poem is "Wandering Star":

> You don't become the cloth
> just because you put on robes.
> You don't turn into empty space
> just because you carry a bowl.
> The sun doesn't bow down,
> trees don't throw flowers at your feet.
> Birds don't start answering when you call.
>
> The path will hold even the biggest mistakes.
> The path will make room for even your deepest regrets.
> But you don't become the cloth of the robe overnight.
>
> You can begin very quietly,
> something you barely even notice,
> like the touch of water on your skin,
> like a knife in a drawer,
> like the next five minutes
> unless they are your last.
>
> The path isn't a line on a map.
> It's a great shining world.
> Enter wherever you like.
> You might get thrown back once or twice,
> but if we push through the outer layers,
> oh, my siblings,
> then you will know the true welcome
> that is the very essence of the path.

So we can always begin to enter wherever we like.

May we all practice sincerely.

## Reflections and Q&A

**Ying Chen:** Hmm, so we have a little time for some reflections and or questions. Let's see. Nancy, please.

**Nancy:** Thank you. Hi Ying, thank you for being here today. I was wondering, since we have this auspicious occasion of you being here, if you can tell the greater Sangha a little bit about the Asian Dharma Circle?

**Ying Chen:** Oh, okay. Thank you, Nancy, for bringing that up. Yes, IMC has many different affinity groups, and I'm specifically part of an Asian Dharma Circle offered through IMC that happens on Sunday afternoons. It's usually twice a month, and you can check our calendar. This is for those who self-identify as having an Asian background. We usually have a very simple format: we meditate together, we have short Dharma reflections offered, and then we engage as a community to discuss the Dharma. So we welcome anyone who wants to join. Please just check the IMC calendar and the website. Thank you, Nancy, for bringing that up.

Okay, any other announcements? If not, we have some time for reflections and questions you may have.

**Questioner 1:** Hi, I'm just curious to know what the name of that book you read the poem from is? I really liked that poem.

**Ying Chen:** Yeah, *The First Free Women*. This is the book, feel free to come up and take a look if you'd like, but it's called *The First Free Women*. Thank you.

**Questioner 2:** I want to thank you for your talk, and that poem was very moving as well. I think I liked the difference between being *content* with something versus something being *okay*. For me, "okay" is less judgmental, or it's not as warm and fuzzy as "content." And yes, can we be okay with things just as they are? So yeah, great, thank you.

**Ying Chen:** Yeah, great. We find our own words. You know, words are tricky. We have our own associations with them, so find the words that work for you. For me, sometimes it's just, "Oh, this is good enough. That's enough." Yeah, great.

Well, you are very quiet, and if there are no other comments or sharing, I guess we can end. So maybe we'll end with a dedication of merit together.

Just take a moment to gather ourselves and allow a sense of gratitude to arise. Being grateful to be able to practice together, sharing Dharma together. Grateful for our own presence right here, our courage to be here.

And may whatever benefits and goodness that arose out of our practice together and our sharing together, may they be shared all around in all directions with all beings.

May all beings be well.
May all beings be happy.
And may all beings be free.

---
[^1]: **Samādhi:** A Pali word often translated as "concentration," "unification of mind," or meditative absorption.
[^2]: **Gil:** Gil Fronsdal, the founding teacher and co-guiding teacher at the Insight Meditation Center (IMC). Original transcript mistakenly said "Uncle".
[^3]: **Suzuki Roshi:** Shunryu Suzuki (1904–1971), a highly influential Soto Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States. Original transcript mistakenly referenced "Suzanne".
[^4]: ***The First Free Women***: A contemporary poetic adaptation of the *Therigatha* (verses of the elder Buddhist nuns) by Matty Weingast.