Transcription
There's a richness that comes into your life, and it is a dimension of enjoyment of life that unfortunately most humans miss all the time. If somebody is totally in the grip of their opinion, they don't even know that it's an opinion. They call it the truth. If you know it's an opinion, then you're already a little bit free. But many people who have lots of very strong opinions don't know that they are opinions. It's the truth. That's how it is. Let me tell you how it is.
So that's all wonderful. And here you can practice because they've got nothing really that important to talk about. No business deals are going on here, or some intricate problems have to be solved. What are we going to do about this? All the questions that arise here is, um, what am I going to choose to eat now for lunch? Nothing big. So it's again, it's easier to practice to bring stillness into personal interactions. Be a still presence while you listen and even while you speak. There's still an underlying spaciousness there. You're no longer in the grip of thought. Oh God, thank you. That's another liberation.
Another thing, and this is usually overlooked as you're here, you can pay attention to that, but most people wouldn't usually in their daily life. We've spoken about nature, interacting with nature, being still with nature, other human beings interacting and bringing stillness into your interaction. And then what else happens here in the retreat? You also, what else do you interact with? You interact with objects, all kinds of things continuously, not only on the retreat, in daily life, but here you can actually pay attention to it and see what happens when you pay attention to the way in which you interact with objects. And what is okay? You every minute of the day, you pick something up, you put something down, you unbutton your shirt, you take off your shoes, you lift this, put this there, open your back zipper back, you look inside, take something out. Can you feel it? As you take it out, can you feel the texture of that? And then you put it on the table. It makes a sound as you put it on the table. And then you have a glass of water, and the light is reflected in it and it moves. Perhaps you drink, and it tastes, and you put it down again. And then you look at a familiar object and instead of using it always as a means to an end, here you have the luxury of occasionally just taking an ordinary object that you handle every day and just for a few seconds, give it give it attention and acknowledge its being just as that as that object. Just feel it, see it makes as it makes a noise as you put it down. And again, you bring in sense perceptions. Getting dressed in the morning, putting pants on. They make a noise as you put them on, a little bit. Listen. Do things. You pick up the toothpaste. You hold it for a moment. Open. Put the cap on the sink. Click. And then turn on the tap. And then while you brush your teeth, you turn off the tap because you don't want to waste water. But that's not part of the exercise. It's a natural thing. And and it's you can actually begin to like and to enjoy the tiniest things around you that would normally be completely overlooked.
As through the way in which you interact with a world of objects, and that brings a richness into your life that doesn't depend on how many objects you own. You don't need to own them to interact with them. And so here you acknowledge their beingness, and you sometimes you might just put your hand as I'm doing now. Here's a table. It's wood, and I'm putting my hand on it, and for a moment, I feel the smooth texture surface of this table, and it feels very pleasant. And I don't, but I don't need the mind to tell me that. I can sense that. And the strange thing is, even so-called inanimate objects, in a strange way, have a life of their own. We wouldn't we call them inanimate because we believe that inanimate means no life. We believe that there is no life in them, but that is not true. There is a life in every object. Every physicist, I believe, would agree because the physicist knows that if you go, if you look very deeply into the structure of any object, you encounter an intense aliveness of molecules and atoms and vast amounts of empty spaces in between, in continuous motion. And that's a table. Inside the table, it goes on and on. But we call it inanimate because to our senses, it looks dead. And and the more you impose conceptualization on it, the more dead it becomes. Because when you live, when you interact only through conceptualization, it's you no longer have a direct relationship with the table, only with the your concept of table and what your mind says about it, but you no longer know the table.
There's a richness that comes into your life, and it is a dimension of enjoyment of life that unfortunately most humans miss all the time because they are looking for something more significant than the insignificant objects by which they are surrounded. So maybe they're thinking, okay, I need to, I want to buy this wonderful thing. But in the meantime, they ignore all the wonderful little things around them. And here again, the retreat setting is an opportunity to bring a new dimension into the way in which you interact with all those little things that surround you and acknowledge them by giving them just briefly attention. That attention is presence. So you and then you begin to enjoy. It's hard to say, are you enjoying the object, or are you enjoying the presence that flows into your perception with the objects? It's more the presence, but it's a it's a different way of looking at it. You can say I enjoy this table, but or do I enjoy the the presence that's behind the perception? It doesn't matter. You can look at it this way or that way. No matter.
So, and this is another way. I mean, you you know there's a lot of talk, and this is wonderful these days in spiritual teachings about gratitude. And usually people think gratitude means they have to say in your mind, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, or they have to say, I'm so grateful for this, and oh, I'm also grateful for that, and grateful for that. That's fine to re for reorientation of your mind. That's fine. It's a temporary stage. I wouldn't get stuck there because you don't want to say for the next 20 years, thank you. Thank you. You don't you don't need it. There's a there's a deeper gratitude, and that is to acknowledge the beingness and appreciate the beingness without needing any words. And that is how you can live in continuous gratitude without ever even calling it gratitude anymore. Somebody asked me, I'm a Buddhist. How can I say thank you? Because when you say thank you, you say thank you to God, don't you? But I don't believe in God because I'm a Buddhist, he said. And so, you don't need that. Just bring appreciation into that and acknowledge the being of things.