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Intro to Mindfulness Meditation (4 of 4) ~ Thinking - Diana Clark

The following talk was given by Diana Clark at Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, CA on July 16, 2024. Please visit the website www.audiodharma.org for more information.

Intro to Mindfulness Meditation (4 of 4) ~ Thinking

So, good evening. It's nice to see you all. As many of you know, I'm continuing this introduction to mindfulness meditation series. Today is class four; it'll be the last class on mindfulness meditation. I'll be continuing on in other weeks after this with some other topics related to meditation, but the introduction to mindfulness meditation was the four weeks. [Applause]

So maybe I'll just give a brief review of what we talked about the first three times we met. The first time, I emphasized mindfulness of breathing—just resting the attention on the experience of breathing. I'm emphasizing this word "experience" or "sensations" rather than thinking about breathing, rather than imagining the breath going in and out or some other things. That's another way to meditate, but for mindfulness, we're just staying with actual experience. This alone can be a practice to distinguish, "Well, what is it to think about breathing, and what is it to experience breathing?" For me, I sometimes would consider that the experiences don't necessarily have words; it's just an experience, whereas to think about breathing is words, primarily. So that could be one way to make a distinction. When I'm doing guided meditations, I'm often talking about the sensations of breathing rather than the breath or breathing, just to highlight this embodied experience of just the body breathing. The body knows how to breathe; we're just tuning into it.

That's at the core of this mindfulness meditation, at least in this mindfulness movement, we might say. And certainly here at IMC, we have that as the default: mindfulness of breathing. For some people, the breath is not such a good object because it's not very neutral, in particular if you have asthma or something. You might have associations of not being able to breathe well or something. In that case, we can recommend doing mindfulness of sounds, just kind of opening up and listening to sounds. It's surprising that even though we're all sitting here silently, there are plenty of sounds—outside, inside, all these kinds of things. So that can be an alternative to the breath.

Then on the second week, I talked about mindfulness of the body, recognizing that sometimes the body is uncomfortable. In fact, if you were to just notice, or maybe if there were a video camera on somebody who was just sitting in a chair, no audio, just a video, you would notice that their posture adjusts every few minutes. It's just what we do, and the reason why is because there's a little bit of discomfort. We don't even notice; we just shift our posture. But with mindfulness meditation, we're for the most part maintaining the same posture, and then we're noticing, "Oh, yeah, that's uncomfortable." You know, an itch, or my knee hurts, my back is bothering me, or something like this. Of course, we don't want you to injure yourself or push yourself beyond what's appropriate, but there is an opportunity to see if you can learn something about your patterns of behavior when there's something uncomfortable, and to stretch your capacity to be with things that are uncomfortable. It turns out that this human experience has a lot of uncomfortableness, and there's freedom to be found if we don't always have to avoid it, but instead we can acknowledge, "Yes, this is uncomfortable," and not have to run away and not have to make it be different.

So that was the second: the breath and then the body. One way they work together is we have the breath as the anchor, and if the body becomes compelling—I'm saying knees and back because this is what's very often uncomfortable when we're starting a meditation practice—we just let go of the breath and be mindful of the body, the bodily experience, feeling it, sensing it, tuning into it. When it's no longer compelling, we just come back to the breath. So in a relaxed, easy way: breath, body, breath, breath, breath, body, breath. Could be something like this.

Third week, last week, I talked about emotions, recognizing that emotions are a beautiful part of the human experience, and sometimes they're troubling too. Freedom in this arena is to have the freedom to not be afraid of any emotional experience, to have the confidence that I can feel terrible grief, I can feel rage, I can feel envy, I can feel bitterness, whatever it might be. So to have this way that, okay, I can experience them, but I won't feel overwhelmed. I don't have to act them out, I don't have to avoid them. Instead, I can allow them to arise and pass away. One way that we do that is to tune into what I like to call the somatic signature for each emotion. How does anger feel in the body? Often, for example, there's heat in the face. Sometimes there can be this energy in the hands. Sometimes the body leans forward a little bit. It's not necessarily the same for everybody, but there are some common things that we might recognize with each emotion. Then to tune into the bodily experience and let all the thoughts just do what thoughts do—they spin around, we'll just let them do that—and we'll tune into the bodily experience. In this way, we are honoring and respecting our emotions, taking care of them. We're not repressing them, we're not pretending they're not there, but we're also not falling into them and being pushed around by them. Instead, there's a certain amount of dignity. Maybe I've done plenty of meditation with tears, with sadness. I've also had tears of immense joy with meditation. So, to tune into the bodily experience... part of the reason to tune into the body is it's so much more tangible. It's just easier to feel bodily experiences, sensations in the body, whether it's tightness or tingling or heat or throbbing or the sense of wanting to jump out or a sense of wanting to collapse. All these things are so much easier to tune into, and we often have less judgment about them. So we can hold them like, "Yep, sadness feels like this," and to feel it and allow the emotion to rise and pass away.

So this week, I'd like to build on all the three preceding weeks and talk about mindfulness of thinking. Of course, thinking is such a big part of our life, our experience. And there's a reason why it's the fourth week and not the first week. There's two primary reasons. One is it's not so easy, so it helps to have had some practice with mindfulness in general before we turn towards mindfulness of thinking. Because usually what happens is we are just turned towards the thought and off we go. We're just lost in the thought and the planning, what the groceries we're going to get, or rehearsing that conversation we had earlier that irritated us, or whatever it might be. So one reason is just to have a little bit more experience with mindfulness before we turn towards mindfulness of thinking. And a second is, it turns out that the body—mindfulness of the body—is a tremendous support for mindfulness of thinking.

Also, in some ways, this is a false dichotomy, but we can consider that the human experience has the bodily experience—the somatic, kinesthetic, embodied experience—and there's the mental experience, where there's the thoughts that just do what thoughts do. They go around and round, try to solve things, make things better. Of course, they're a beautiful thing, thoughts. But I'll touch on that a little bit later tonight, about how mindfulness of the body can be a support for mindfulness of thinking.

The Riverbank Simile

But before I do that, I want to just ask you to imagine something. This isn't necessarily a guided meditation, but just to imagine that you're sitting on a riverbank. I got this from Gil Fronsdal; I learned this so many years ago, but I just love this. So you're sitting on a riverbank, and the temperature is perfect. It's warm, you're not in too much sun, but there's a little bit of breeze. Maybe you just had a very nice lunch, so you feel content. Nowhere you need to be. You're sitting on the riverbank in a way that's really comfortable, whatever way is comfortable for you, on a bench or something, and you're just enjoying watching the river go by. Maybe you hear the birds, the water is just passing by. It's lovely. It's a very nice sense of ease, contentment.

And then you see a big ferry boat, and there's a huge party on this boat. There's dancing and singing, all this loud music. There's buffet tables, there's food, you can see all these people. And before you know it, boom, you've jumped on this boat, and you are at the buffet table, singing along, dancing, and having a great time. And you continue to be dancing and singing, but it just starts to get feel a little empty, a little bit. And then you remember, "Oh, right, I was sitting on the riverbank." And then you go back to the riverbank, sitting there. Wow, it's nice to just feel like nothing needs to happen. Just peaceful.

And then a battleship comes. You can see the cannon on board, and the soldiers are marching, and there's all kinds of artillery, and there's people with binoculars looking out. And before you know it, boom, there you are on this warship, strategizing and all this planning of how we're going to make everything safe and take care or retaliate or whatever needs to be done. And there's so much work to be done on this battleship, and to check all the artillery and make sure everybody knows their orders. And then this gets tiring. "Oh, yeah, I was meditating. I was sitting on the riverbank." And then you find yourself on the riverbank again. Phew. [Music] Just sitting there, enjoying it.

And then you see this poor, beat-up raft. It's just barely floating by. It seems like it's held together with bubble gum and shoestring. It's just barely floating, this poor thing. It's dilapidated, not taken care of. And before you know it, boom, there you are on this raft, trying to hold it together and make sure it doesn't sink, hoping desperately that it'll stay afloat, paddling with your hands. This poor raft, you're not sure if it's going to make it. And this gets exhausting, a certain type of tiredness. And you realize, "Oh, yeah, I was meditating," and you find yourself back on the riverbank.

Probably doesn't take too much imagination to this simile of the boats on the river, as often we jump on what I'll call these boats that are just going by. And there's a way that we jump on them and forget everything else and get completely lost in them and get caught up in whatever is on that boat: entertainment, anger, revenge, poor me, poor raft. There's a way in which we might have a pattern of jumping on certain kinds of boats, might have a pattern of preferring to jump on some boats, and other boats we just let those go by. But the other ones, you jump right on them.

What would it be like to just stay on the riverbank and watch the boats go by? Maybe even be amused by the boats going by. Turns out that much of our lives is lived on one of these boats. Sometimes we don't even remember that the riverbank is available to us, a place of some quiet and contentment.

Guided Meditation

So, I'm going to do a guided meditation here.

Taking a meditation posture, a posture that has both some alertness and some ease. Feeling the pressure against the chair or the cushion, where the body is contacting it. We're here. Feeling the pressure on the back, the backside, the back of the legs, and feeling what the feet are touching. Feeling connected, grounded.

Then rest your attention on the sensations of breathing. Tuning into the experience of breathing. Feeling the body move as it breathes. And when the mind wanders, as it's apt to do, for now, we'll just very simply, gently begin again with the sensations of breathing.

Just hanging out with the breath. Nothing in particular needs to be happening. We're just noticing the experience of breathing. Just coming back to the breath, stabilizing, quieting the mind and the body.

And now, when you find yourself waking up after being lost in thought, just notice: Is there a category, a type of thought? Is there a type of boat? Planning? Remembering? Entertaining? Just make a small mental note, like a whisper in the mind, "planning," and then come back to the sensations of breathing.

We don't have to turn thinking into the enemy or something we have to get rid of. For now, we'll just note the type of thoughts and come back to the sensations of breathing. It doesn't matter how many times you do this.

Post-Meditation Reflections

In some schools of meditation, thinking is considered something that you absolutely don't want to do. But in this style of meditation, it turns out this whole idea, this whole notion of distraction doesn't exist. Instead, we can just turn our mindfulness towards whatever is the most compelling, whether that's emotions, bodily sensations, thoughts, or the experience of things. In a moment, I'll talk more about how to be mindful of thoughts, but there's this way in which it's about a shift in our relationship to thinking.

With meditation, we're not making thoughts the enemy, nor are we just following them and doing whatever they say, like we often are doing during the day. Instead, we're taking a third stance. We're noticing them, but not getting involved with them, not necessarily believing them, not necessarily following whatever they are saying. But instead, just like with emotions, honoring and respecting them, and yet keeping a sense of stability. It's not so easy to do this. So often, we are identified with our thoughts, and we might even feel like, "Well, who am I?" or "Does the world even exist if there aren't thoughts?" or something like this. I'll talk about that in a little bit, too.

Q&A

But before I go there, I'd love to hear from some of you. Are there any questions about what I've said so far? Or did you notice, was there one type of boat that you liked to jump on more frequently? And did you know that about yourself? Was this new? Or this whole notion of even the possibility of being on a riverbank rather than on a boat, was that a new idea? Anything you'd like to share?

Audience Member 1: The boat I realized I was jumping on was like a worrying boat. And, yeah, I just find it interesting just realizing that. But a question that I have is, is the point of meditation trying to realize when I'm jumping onto that boat not when I'm meditating, like in my normal day or another activity? Or is it a goal that I should just focus on while I'm meditating, like realizing the thoughts that I'm having and just come back to the breath? It's just that question: is it something that I can also apply on a day-to-day basis, or is it only during meditation?

Diana Clark: Yeah, thank you. This is a great question. So I would say meditation is more like a laboratory in which we can explore and learn things, but it's really for our life. It's really for our whole life. And maybe the direction we're going, the orientation we're going, is for more freedom, for more ease in our life. It turns out sometimes we get stuck in thoughts where we're just thinking the same thing over and over and over again, and the 5,000th time we think it is just not helpful. Or there's a way in which we are always planning and feeling like our whole life is just one long to-do list we've got to take care of, and meanwhile our life is passing us by.

So first is to just recognize what we are doing. And then meditation helps the mind and the body to recognize, "Oh, yeah," working with this simile, "it's possible to sit on the riverbank" while doing our chores, while working, while doing anything, talking to people that we care about, getting in an argument with people. Whatever it is, it's possible to be embodied and connected and steady and not be pushed around. Thank you. And I would say maybe that's the freedom: to not avoid and the freedom to not be pushed around. I mean, life is going to bring us what it's going to bring us. We don't get to control the universe, of course. Wouldn't it be great if we could? Anybody else have a comment? [Applause]

Audience Member 2: For me, especially this week, it's been election stuff. There's been just so much insane stuff on the news, and I feel like I've spent some time this week realizing I'm on that boat. And I've also spent some time this week choosing to be on the boat and choosing to get off, but sometimes that's not so conscious for me. So I've been having kind of both experiences.

Diana Clark: And if you had to give a general tone or mood or attitude for the boat, what would you say? You said "election stuff," that's more content, but is there a...

Audience Member 2: With the election, or maybe lots of things that are on the news, I think there's this feeling like there's something urgent going on that I can't do anything about. So there's definitely this feeling of a sense of urgency, but without anything specific. It's not like planning, where if I'm planning a party, I can think about what tasks I'll do to get ready for the party. Whereas with the news, it's sort of like there is that urgency, but there's not, at least for me, there's nothing specific that I come up with right in the moment. It's more just I kind of ruminate on thoughts about what other people are doing and what's happening far away.

Diana Clark: Yeah. You didn't use this word, I'm going to use this word, but this feeling of helplessness. Like, "Wait, there's all this stuff going on, and what can I do?" And it's just happening. Yeah, it's an uncomfortable feeling, and it really grabs us. And as a society, we've created these news outlets who are designed to do this, so they're very effective, right? This is Diana's opinion, but they are for-profit businesses. So they're going to do what they need to do to be profitable. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Anybody else have a comment or something they'd like to say or question?

Working With Thoughts

So maybe I'll talk a little bit about how to maybe help us to not get so swept away by thoughts, or maybe not to find ourselves always jumping on the same boat, or if we do find ourselves jumping on the same boat, what's something that we can do.

One is that usually—I don't know if I can say 100% of the time, but it certainly is my experience and many others'—is that if there is a certain pressure for thinking, a certain sense of "I have to think about this," maybe even a sense of urgency or that something needs to be done, and then we just find ourselves in this loop and not really going anywhere, we can ask this very simple question. We could just drop in the question: "Is there any emotion that's underlying this?" Chances are, yes. Fear, sadness that we don't want to feel, anger that we don't want to feel—these types of things are like underneath, like little volcanoes supporting all the thoughts happening up here. The emotions are fueling them; that's the energy behind these boats and what maybe also propels us to want to be on those boats.

So one thing, if we find ourselves kind of stuck with our thinking, is to just drop in the question, "Is there an emotion underneath this?" And it's not so much that we absolutely have to find the precise answer at that moment. It's the asking of the question, because the asking of the question is this turning towards with respect, an opening up to listen to or feel into what's happening. It's something other than thinking, because what the mind would like to tell you is, "No, no, no, no, you have to think about the thoughts." And then you just think about thoughts, and that's just thinking. So it's a way to shift our relationship and to change the experience from being lost in thought to being more embodied. So it might be sadness, and maybe just the word or maybe a sense of sadness shows up, and then we practice mindfulness of sadness. "Oh, yeah, there's a lump in my throat, pressure behind my eyes, shoulders feel heavy." And just be with the bodily experience. Let the content take care of itself. Thoughts will just do what thoughts will do. We don't have to worry about them, but we can be with the emotion that's fueling them. Because once the emotion has a chance to be seen and recognized, then it'll stop fueling the thoughts. So instead of trying to put out a flame, we're going to just take out, you know, put the cap on the gas hose. You know what I mean. I was thinking about those in Kuwait, remember when they had all those oil wells, they couldn't put the fires out. It feels kind of like that, where there's just all this fountain and this fueling coming up. So that's one thing to do.

Another way is, during that guided meditation, I encouraged you to maybe make a little note: "planning," "imagining," "remembering," or something like this. Making a little note can be really helpful because to make a note creates a little bit of separation. There's the one who's making the note, and then there's the thinking. And that little bit of separation helps us to have a little bit more breathing room, so to speak. So even if you don't make a note like "planning" or "remembering," you could even use something like, "Oh, thoughts." This is sometimes what I'm doing. I'm just saying like, "thoughts," and then just come back to the bodily experience. It doesn't matter which bodily experience. Often it can be pressure, because that's the most obvious, so pressure on the bottom of the feet or pressure against the buttocks. Or another one, say, "Oh, thoughts," and then maybe turn to sounds and tune into whatever the sounds are, maybe the birds. The point is to interrupt the momentum of the thinking. More thoughts will arise, and that's perfectly fine, but we want to just not be lost in them and just following one after the other, from when we wake up until we go to sleep, just being pushed around by them.

Here's a third way. Thinking, we might say, has two parts to it. One is the content, the details of exactly what the thoughts are. And the second is, you won't be surprised to hear me say this, the experience of thinking. Often we don't think about this, but the question could be, when you have thoughts, are they images? Is it a voice? What are thoughts? How do you experience them? Are they all the same? Like, do all your thoughts have the same color, if they're images? And so this is another way in which we can shift our relationship to them so we're no longer lost in them, but instead we are a little bit separate. We have this gap, and we can see them. "Oh, yeah, that was a very interesting little short video there, just remembering something that happened today," or, "Oh my gosh, that was the voice of one of my parents yelling at me, here I am decades later still hearing this," or whatever it might be. And so that's another way in which we can honor and respect our thoughts. We're not trying to get rid of them, we're not saying they're bad, we're just no longer being pushed around by them. And again, we let the content take care of itself. We're looking at the process, the experience.

It's kind of funny to think about it, but if we were all to imagine kangaroos in this room—tall ones that have the small little arms and they're moving—we can just bring a kangaroo to mind. I was just doing that. But then I'm actually still here. The kangaroos aren't here, I'm just here. And you say, "Well, of course, Diana." But there's a way in which we tend to think that our thoughts are real, but they're not. They're just thoughts. They have no substance whatsoever. And you will have another thought in just a moment, whatever you're thinking now. We give them so much authority, and we let them define ourselves, and we let them define others. So much suffering is associated with that. So much suffering. They're useful, we need them, but we don't have to be pushed around by them.

Second Guided Meditation

So let's do another guided meditation. Taking a meditation posture. And this time, let's begin with just three bigger breaths, just as a way to tune into the experience of breathing and to relax.

Then letting the breath return to normal and just letting the body breathe. And again, we'll stay here for a little bit.

Maybe we'll just take a moment to acknowledge the brilliance of the thinking mind. A lot of evolution has come to permit us to think whatever it is we're thinking. And the thinking mind is amazing. But we're going to put it aside and just be with the sensations of breathing for now. You can pick up your regular thinking in a moment.

Can you settle into the experience of breathing? This feeling in the body, the movement in the chest, the movement in the belly. For now, we're letting the thinking recede into the background and the sensations of breathing be in the foreground. Can you give yourself over to the sensations of breathing?

And now, if you find that thinking is taking prominence, you can turn towards it with calmness, deliberately. See it clearly and maybe make a note: "thinking" or "planning" or "remembering," whatever it might be. And if it persists, see if you can look at the process of thinking, letting the content take care of itself. Is thinking images or a voice? If there are images, are they in vivid color? Are they in sepia, black and white? If it's a voice, whose voice is it? What's the tone of the voice?

And then returning to the sensations of breathing.

If there's a certain pressure with the thinking, you can gently inquire if there's an emotion that's fueling that thinking underneath it. And if the thinking has quieted down, you can just return to the sensations of breathing in a relaxed, easy way. It might take a little bit more effort or determination to not get swept away in the thoughts.

Post-Meditation Q&A

So, we've spent a lifetime developing this habit, this pattern of thinking, and primarily we've been concerned with the content. But during that guided meditation, I asked you to look at the experience of thinking and to look at it or consider it in a different way. With thoughts or images, or maybe you noticed... I don't know, I'd love to hear from you all. Did you notice if it was more thoughts or images or both? Was it clear? Was it not clear? Anybody like to share?

Audience Member 3: Thank you. Yeah, I can start sharing about my experience. So I see a lot of things, so I realized that in my case, it's images. They're colorful. And one thing that I realized is that when I acknowledged them, it was like, okay, they're still there, but they were pushing... it was as if I was pushing them a little bit away, or they were just pulling away. But in one case, there was this very intense thought, and even though I was acknowledging it, it was still there. It was not leaving. And I'm just curious, in those cases, what would you recommend me to do?

Diana Clark: So, what was your... I call those "sticky thoughts," thoughts that are a little bit sticky.

Audience Member 3: Yeah, it would come back. Even though I was like, "Yeah, I'm thinking, I see you, you're there," it wouldn't go away. And I tried coming back to my breath, and it was still hanging out there.

Diana Clark: And so what was your relationship to those sticky thoughts?

Audience Member 3: So I was feeling uncomfortable. I wanted it to go away. Like, "I've had enough of you, thank you." So, yeah, that's how I was feeling.

Diana Clark: Yeah. So of course, this isn't uncommon. When we start to see some of the thoughts that we have... we have crazy thoughts sometimes, we really do. And so sometimes it's helpful to notice and they do just go away. But often there are thoughts that don't, that are persisting. And then what we notice is if we are acknowledging them and being present for them, we often have an agenda: "I'm being present for you so that you'll go away." And this "so that you'll go away" is a way in which we're getting tangled up with the thoughts. And that kind of aversion is fueling them, just getting tangled up causes them to persist. You know, "what you resist, persists" actually turns out to be true.

So part of it is, is there a way that we can take some of the authority away from the thoughts? It's just a thought, or a family of 10 bazillion thoughts. And is there a way that we can say, "Okay, these are thoughts. I'm going to have different thoughts in just a few minutes"? So that then our relationship can shift so that we're no longer resisting them or aversive towards them, and then they will kind of start to peter out. But this definitely is not easy, and it's not fast or quick, right? We've spent a lifetime with our thoughts running the show, essentially. And for us to have a different relationship with them takes a little bit of time. But I appreciate your observation. It's great.

Audience Member 3: Oh, thank you.

Audience Member 4: I really appreciate the suggestion to observe the experience of the thought because I feel like that's a really quick way to help with my own cyclical thought patterns. I've noticed that I have thoughts that I'll continue going back to. So I'm just excited to try this exercise, that whenever a sticky thought pattern comes up, to just really take a good look at it. Because sometimes I feel like I'll want to do a deep breathing exercise, for example, to help me get out of that pattern, but that's not always accessible to me. But I think that seems to be an easier channel. And then maybe eventually I can get to a deeper breathing practice if I can first just observe the experience of the thought. So thank you for that. And I also just wanted to say that it was super relatable to hear what she was saying earlier, this lovely woman in front of me, about just feeling helpless right now. That is one of my sticky thought patterns. And yeah, anyway, it's more of a comment, but it's validating.

Diana Clark: Yeah, and I would say feeling helpless is one of the things that humans dislike the most. Nobody likes this feeling of helplessness. And so very often we're doing anything just so that we don't have to feel so helpless, and then a lot of unskillful things happen. But just to be able to acknowledge, "Oh, yeah, here's that helplessness feeling, and I don't like it." Even just to recognize that can make a big difference, actually, in one's life.

Concluding Remarks and Resources

So I have a few concluding words here. I'll just say a little bit about mindfulness. I talked about how we have this breath, body, emotions, thoughts. And often if you were to go to a meditation retreat, they would also kind of in that order give the instructions. If you wanted to really build on your mindfulness practice, a meditation retreat, of course, is a great way to do that. Not everybody's life situation permits them, or maybe they don't even want to go to a residential retreat for a week or so. But I think many of you know we have a residential retreat center associated with us, our sister organization down in Santa Cruz, Insight Retreat Center (IRC). Beautiful location.

But we also have, at least once a month here on Saturdays, a half-day where it's sit-walk-sit. They'll give instructions on walking meditation. So that is a couple of hours, and there's something that's really special that can happen if we give the mind and the body a chance to just get more and more quiet. We also have day-longs, like from 9:00 to 4:00, one Saturday a month. Those are also sit-walk, and they have different themes.

Everything here at IMC is freely offered in the spirit of generosity. Some people do like to express their appreciation, and so they would like to donate. If you're interested, absolutely no pressure, there's a donation box near the front door.

Also, our founder here, Gil Fronsdal, has written a number of books, and one book is freely offered. It's called The Issue at Hand. It's a great book, a collection of short little essays. They're near the front door. It's also freely available on our website, so there's a QR code if you want to just download it. Our website has so many articles that Gil has written, and probably you guys know about Audio Dharma—thousands of talks. It's quite something how many are up there.

Audience Member: The app is great as well.

Diana Clark: Oh yeah, so there's an app. A subset of the dharma talks automatically go up on an app with, I think, me and Gil and Andrea Fella and Matthew Brensilver and a few of us.

I'll be back next Monday. I'm going to talk about some Brahma Vihāra¹ practice next week. Loving-kindness and compassion, and kind of more heart-centered practices. It turns out to be quite powerful. Okay, so thank you all for your attention and your practice. Thank you.