July 10, 2025 • 45 mins
What if your thoughts are thinking themselves? In this third episode of Standing Nowhere, host Jacob Buehler guides you through a simple, anywhere practice—on a cushion, a chair, or even while commuting—to watch the breath, notice thoughts arising on their own, and taste the quiet, sky-like awareness behind them.
You’ll hear how presence (awareness) and love are two sides of the same coin; why “suffering = pain × resistance”; and how prayer—understood as presenting what is—meets meditation in everyday life. Jacob weaves insights and stories (including a raw 3 a.m. moment of financial fear and grace), along with reflections from Kalu Rinpoche, Meister Eckhart, Jesus, the Buddha, and Alan Watts to invite a grounded, compassionate wakefulness you can live right now.
In this episode:
- A 5–10 minute experiment to notice breath, body, and thoughts—without controlling any of it.
- Seeing that thoughts “think themselves” (disidentification ≠ dissociation).
- Presence as love: why full attention is the most generous act.
- “Suffering = pain × resistance,” dukkha, and learning to surf the waves.
- Prayer as offering what is—meeting mindfulness in daily life.
Try this today: Sit upright (upright, not uptight), feel the breath, notice thoughts come and go, and gently return—sky behind the clouds.
If this brought you a little peace or a new angle, follow the show and share it with one friend who might need it—it really helps others find Standing Nowhere.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jacob (00:01):
Go ahead and say to yourself, I won't think a single
thought for the next tenminutes.
And let me know how far youget.
Hello and welcome to the thirdepisode of the Standing Nowhere
(00:31):
Podcast.
I am your host, Jacob Bueller.
I wanted to try somethingdifferent with you today.
Instead of me giving you a wordsalad about reality or
yourself, I wanted to invite youto experience it for yourself.
(00:53):
Experience yourself foryourself.
But in order to do this, you'vegot to go along with me, at
least for a little while.
I want you to try anexperiment.
This experiment will show yousomething about yourself that
(01:23):
you've always known, but youreally haven't known, or you
haven't experienced yet.
So let's pretend that you'reand we can just pretend.
Let's pretend that you'reinterested in what I'm about to
say, what I'm about to ask youto do.
At some point in your day, Iwant you to sit down.
(01:45):
It doesn't matter if it's on acushion on the floor, with your
legs crossed or on a chair, butI want your body to be in a
sitting position with your backupright.
A dignified position.
Not slouching.
I like to say upright, but notuptight.
(02:10):
So that you don't fall asleep.
Now while you are sitting, Iwant you to bring your attention
to your breath and your body.
It can be primarily with yourbreath, but if you feel other
(02:34):
sensations in the body as well,just simply be aware of them.
Don't try to influence yourbreath in any way.
Don't try to slow it down anddon't try to speed it up.
In fact, if you feel anyresistance or weirdness about
(02:56):
your breath, as in you'restruggling with not controlling
it, let that be as well.
And just notice that.
Maybe your breath feelsrelaxed.
Maybe it feels a littlestrained.
(03:16):
I'm not asking you to doanything.
I'm asking you to do nothingbut watch.
Just watch.
Now during this process, whenyou watch your breath, you will
notice that thoughts willappear.
(03:37):
I don't want you to judge thethought.
The many thoughts.
I want you to do nothing aboutthem at all, but simply be aware
of them.
See if you can notice beforethe thought arises.
(04:02):
When you're completely withyour breath or your immediate
surroundings, the feelings inyour body.
When you're with your breath,see if you can notice the
thought just before it arises.
(04:22):
Is there a feeling like I'mabout to think something?
Of course, it doesn't come outin words like that, but you know
the feeling, and we can'treally put words to it.
Or did you catch the thought inthe middle of it?
Or perhaps you caught itafterwards.
(04:46):
Whatever the case, it doesn'tmatter.
I'm just asking you to noticewhen you notice.
Notice what it's like whenyou're carried away by a
thought, or in the middle of itand consumed by it.
And notice when you come out ofit and you remember to come
(05:10):
back to the breath.
Now you may be driving, andthat's okay.
If you're driving, watch yourbody as it drives.
Just notice it.
Notice how your body knows whatto do.
(05:32):
Just like if you're sitting, itknows how to keep the muscles
erect to keep you in a sittingposition from collapsing to the
floor.
You may notice little quirksabout your body.
This part hurts.
Oh, this part was moving, and Ididn't notice it.
(05:54):
But now I do.
Just notice.
If a thought arises and carriesyou away, don't judge that,
don't judge yourself.
Just come back to the breath.
If you're carried away in athought, and then another
(06:17):
thought arises, darn, I gotcarried away by that thought.
Just notice that thought aswell.
Notice that judgment.
What you'll notice over time,and this is something that you
(06:38):
must experience, because whatI'm about to tell you will make
sense, but you have toexperience it.
You will notice over time thatyour thoughts are simply
thinking themselves.
In other words, you are notdoing your thoughts.
(07:03):
Your thoughts are doingthemselves.
And I don't I don't just meansome thoughts.
I mean all thoughts are doingthemselves.
All of them.
(07:24):
The good, the bad, the neutral.
Your thoughts will be veryseductive.
They won't quite say literallythis thought is you, but you'll
(07:45):
feel without words that yourthought is you.
That you're the one doing yourthoughts.
If that happens, just noticethat as well.
(08:06):
Some of you may worry that thisis some form of disassociation
or disidentifying.
And in a way, it is.
But not in a way of avoidance.
(08:27):
No, no, no.
This is the deepest form ofgrounding that you can get.
Because you're simply watching,and in the process of watching,
you come to realize that yourthoughts are not yourself.
(08:49):
You'll start to notice that ifyour thoughts are not yourself
or me, you almost have aweightless feeling that you're
the sky and the thoughts areclouds that pass by.
(09:13):
Whereas before, you took yourthoughts very seriously.
You identified with yourthoughts.
They made you feel a certainway.
They moved you throughout yourday.
Thoughts are not a bad thing.
(09:33):
Thoughts are not the enemy.
Identifying with your thoughts,that's where problems can
arise.
I want to read something toyou.
It's a quote by Kalu Rimpache.
(09:56):
He says, We live in illusionand the appearance of things.
There is a reality, we are thatreality.
When you understand this,you'll see that you are nothing.
(10:16):
And being nothing or no thing,you are everything.
That is all.
Now why do I bring that up?
The reason I bring that up isbecause some of you before
(10:40):
hearing this assumed that youwere your thoughts and whatever
you were thinking.
But after you do thisexperiment where you sit and you
watch and you watch, you startto realize that you, the real
you, your real self, is not thecontent of the thought itself.
(11:05):
But you are that which iswatching the thought arise.
The more you practice this, themore you accumulate what I like
to call and what many callself-realization.
Because you are doing nothingmore than realizing what
(11:30):
yourself actually is.
And your self, as you willrealize, is not a thing.
It is not a thought, it is nota body.
Then let's put that to thetest.
Go ahead and say to yourself, Iwon't think a single thought
(11:57):
for the next ten minutes.
And let me know how far youget.
This is a liberating truth.
Perhaps you've heard that wordliberation before.
They call it sudden awakeningwith gradual realization.
(12:20):
For some people, this makesthem laugh hysterically for a
while.
It did for me for a little bit,not in a crazy manner.
But when you really just slowdown enough in this crazy busy
world and just breathe with yourbreath, and just watch and rest
(12:45):
into that watchfulness, youstart to realize that you are
not your thoughts.
And that is incredible, thatfeeling.
They still come, but they comeand go like clouds.
The only difference is youdon't identify with the clouds
(13:11):
anymore.
You realize that you are thesky?
There's an interesting quotefrom the Christian mystic
Meister Eckhart, who said Theeye through which I see God is
the same eye through which Godsees me.
(13:34):
Does being aware of my thoughtsand my words change things?
There was something interestingspoken by Jesus Christ.
Well, many things he said wereinteresting, but one thing in
(13:55):
particular I found that was veryinteresting and very curious,
he said the words that I'msaying to you right now are not
from myself, but from him whosent me.
And of course the source ororigin of all life they
(14:19):
personified as a father figure.
Some people don't like that,and that's okay.
But the point is he said thewords that I'm saying are not
from myself.
That's interesting.
I quote Jesus sometimes becauseI grew up in the Christian
(14:42):
tradition.
And I rather like a lot of thethings he said.
I try not to go over them tooquickly, but really stop and
sink into them.
Now, some people listeningmight find that upsetting.
Let's say you were like me andyou were raised a Christian, or
(15:04):
you fell out of the faith, andyou prefer atheism or nihilism.
Whatever your beliefs are,there's no judgment, but going
back to our experiment,observing thoughts and realizing
they think themselves, is yourview something that you decided?
(15:28):
If you decided to believe whatyou believe, when did you decide
to decide to believe that?
Can we look at them as justbeliefs without you attached to
them?
Jesus said something else thatwas interesting in this context.
(16:01):
He said to deny thyself andtake up the cross.
Those who would follow me.
Deny thyself.
Deny yourself.
Hmm.
How do you deny yourself?
(16:22):
I would imagine the first stepis to notice what you're doing,
what you're thinking, whatyou're feeling.
On this concept of self, goingback to that Buddhist quote that
I gave you, we live in illusionand the appearance of things.
(16:46):
There is a reality, we are thatreality.
When you understand this, youwill see that you are nothing,
and being no thing you areeverything.
That is all.
To the Western ear, beingnothing sounds a little scary.
(17:11):
Nobody.
What does it mean to be nobody?
That's a curious word, nobody.
Hmm.
Perhaps you are that which iswatching this body.
Another curious thing thatJesus said he said he who
(17:39):
believes in me, Jesus does notbelieve in me, Jesus, but in him
who sent me.
Let's look at that again.
He who believes in me does notbelieve in me, but in him who
(18:02):
sent me.
You see, there are people inthis world that we refer to as
realized beings.
And some of you listening maybe familiar with that term, and
some of you it may sound totallyforeign.
What is a realized being or afully realized being?
(18:23):
This language points to thosewho have walked this earth in a
state of inner stillness, innersilence, and through that were
able to realize their truenature.
And these figures have comefrom all different walks of
(18:45):
life, through all differenteras.
As I mentioned, SiddharthaGautama, the original Buddha, he
came from the Hindu tradition.
There is suffering in life.
There it is.
Look at it.
(19:07):
To those unfamiliar withEastern tradition or the
Buddhist tradition, it may soundvery foreign, very other.
You may have intense fearsabout what you believe, or
perhaps you've thrown the babyout with the bathwater, as I
mentioned in the last episode,and all spiritual traditions
(19:31):
just seem not worth the effort.
But in Buddhism, the wordBuddha means one who is awake.
The root in Pali or Sanskritword meaning awake, I believe is
Bodhi, and I may be wrong onthat.
(19:53):
But the idea is wakefulness tobe awake.
To be aware.
To be aware that you are aware.
Most people they go throughlife thinking that they're
awake.
You wake up in the morning, I'mawake.
But are you really awake?
(20:14):
Are you watching yourself?
Are you really aware of whatyou're doing?
Notice going back to ourexperiment earlier, when we
watch our breath, it makes iteasier to see when thoughts
arise because we sort of make adeclarative statement to
(20:38):
ourselves when we sit down in adignified posture.
I will watch my breath.
And it's not a gruntingstruggle where we're clenching
our jaws I'm gonna focus on mybreath not at all.
I describe it as a relaxedalertness.
(20:58):
We're focusing on what is, andwith watching what is, the
background becomes more apparentbecause the foreground is also
more apparent.
We're taking a stance ofwatching.
(21:19):
We're sitting down, we're beingstill, and we're watching.
We're not doing, we're justwatching.
Notice another curious thingthat Jesus Christ said in the
Gospel of Mark.
(21:40):
When he was praying the nightbefore he was to be executed,
and he knew it was coming, hisdisciples kept falling asleep,
and he said, This I say to you,I say to all stay awake.
(22:03):
Stay alert.
And you will notice in allspiritual traditions, the core
emphasis is always to stayawake, to stay alert, whether
it's on the nose with the titleBuddhism, which is another way
(22:25):
of saying wakeful ism or stayingawake, watching, or in
Christianity, in the traditionof Jesus Christ, where he says
to stay awake, but also to lovethy neighbor as thyself.
Now why do I bring up love whenthe emphasis is on wakefulness?
(22:49):
Well, well, well, you willdiscover that love, elusive as
that word is, and compassion,you know in the deepest fabric
of your being is nothing morethan the same exact thing that
being awake is.
(23:10):
What do I mean by that?
Let's take children, forexample.
Do children enjoy when you areattentive to them?
When you are awake to them,giving them your full attention?
Yes.
Human beings in general, notjust children.
(23:32):
We crave to be seen, to be inthe awareness of another person.
How about it's a curiousphrase, isn't it, when we say My
mother, she cooks with love.
What does that mean?
(23:54):
Well, obviously it means thatyou are cooking with attention,
with clarity.
What about when someone gardenswith love?
You do you see where I'mgetting at?
So love and awareness are twosides of the same coin.
(24:20):
You might say awareness clearsout the stuff to allow the love
to flow both in and out.
Wherever there is awareness,there is love, there is
gentleness, there is calmness.
Notice how when you are calm,you are also more aware, you are
(24:45):
more in a state of flow.
There is a s there is a sayingslow is smooth, smooth is fast.
There's a wonderful examplegiven by Alan Watts in this idea
(25:08):
of clarity and awareness, andthat is the idea of what we mean
by clear.
And this is a wonderfulmetaphor.
When I say the word clear, whatcomes to mind?
Well the first thing is totaltransparency.
(25:28):
Like a lens wiped clean, noblemishes, no smudges, nothing
whatsoever to obstruct thevision of the lens.
Now the next thing you'll thinkof is of clear is perfect form,
(25:49):
focus.
Everything is clear, sharp,articulated in a very precise
way.
Is the image clear?
You see?
Two sides of the same coin.
(26:10):
When you are clear, when youare nobody, in other words, when
your mind is uncluttered,unfettered by various thoughts
that weigh you down.
What remains?
Where do you go?
Well, you're fully there,completely in focus.
(26:37):
When you are listening to yourfour year old tell you about
Minecraft or his monster trucksor playing games with him fully
there, fully clear, then you arecompletely in focus for your
(27:01):
child or your spouse or yourmother.
You're there.
You're there.
And they feel it.
When you are listening to yourfriend with complete attention,
not at all thinking about thenext thing that you're going to
(27:21):
say in response to the person,no matter who it is, they can
feel that connection.
They can feel that love, thatcompassion, and that is where
you want to dwell in that clearstate.
They have that analogy with theword mindfulness.
(27:46):
Is your mind full of things?
Or are you mindful, as intaking in your surroundings?
The person in front of you.
If you are fully with and awareof exactly what you're doing,
(28:07):
you'll always be okay.
Always.
Because the first noble truth,as I mentioned from the Buddha,
is that there is suffering inlife.
However, there's a phrase thatI really like that really
(28:31):
encapsulates what the Buddhameant by dukkha or suffering, as
we translate dukkha, which isthe Pali word, which means
suffering, amongst othermeanings.
There is forgot what I justsaid.
So oh yes, the the reality isthat there is suffering in the
(28:55):
world, but there's a phrase thatI love, and that is that there
that suffering is pain timesresistance.
Pain times resistance.
How do you resist pain?
How do you resist things thatyou don't like?
(29:15):
You avoid them.
That's the only way to resistthem.
You run from them.
You run to a bottle and youdrink.
Or you run to your pipe and youlet your mind get high.
(29:37):
You run.
Run, run, run.
We all run.
I run.
But that's resistance.
Fighting it.
Suffering arises when we areout of sync with.
(29:59):
Whatever is arising in ourlife.
We hear the phrase like getwith it, man.
Get out of your mind and cometo your senses.
Isn't that interesting?
Our language always points usto the truths that we know deep
down.
Or when your spouse may say, Itfeels like you never listened
(30:24):
to me.
You see?
So perhaps what we perceive aspain or the down moments in our
life are not really suffering,but a cry for us to pay
attention to it, to be with it.
And this is not to say that wedo nothing, become passivists,
(30:50):
as many people misunderstandspiritual traditions to be.
Passivity.
It's quite the opposite, is afull embracing of what is what
is.
It's interesting.
Prayer and meditation are oftenmentioned together, but what is
(31:10):
prayer?
We've mentioned meditation andmindfulness, and how that is
really the other side of thesame coin of love.
But the word prayer in Aramaicis salotha, and that means not
asking for this or that, butpresenting whatever is giving
(31:34):
you difficulty or challenge orstruggle in life, and saying
here it is and opening up.
I'll give you a vulnerableexample of this.
And of course, there's manyexamples in the Bible if you
(31:58):
read the story of Jesus Christ.
He went off by himself to prayquite often.
In fact, he spent forty days byhimself in absolute stillness,
prayer and meditation.
Here I am.
Here I am.
This is what I have to do.
(32:19):
Here I am.
I had been struggling to pay myrent for years, still am.
More than you know.
So I had been struggling to paymy rent for a long time.
And it got to the point where Imoved into an apartment that
was charging me almost $2,400 amonth in rent.
(32:42):
In my job, I was losing a lotof income at my place of
employment or my my gig workdoing deliveries.
Business was going down.
Long story short, they werecutting pay.
And I'm I've been adjusting topay cuts over the last few
(33:03):
years.
But it had reached aculmination point where I
couldn't even sleep.
My mind was so full of worryand dread about where this money
was going to come from for thisparticular month.
And I woke up at two or threein the morning, sweating,
(33:26):
thoughts racing.
And this is a good year, yearand a half into my spiritual
practices that I had picked up,you know, being with my
thoughts, meditating in themorning, trying to be actively
aware of all the activities andthoughts I did throughout my
day, what the Hindu traditionmight call karma yoga, releasing
(33:50):
the fruits of my actions toGod, or whatever word you have
for God, and just focusing on myaction, what I can do.
So here I was, 3 a.m.
A mind riddled with pain andsadness and worry and fear.
How am I going to pay the rentfor my wife and my three kids
(34:13):
and myself, this supporting thisfamily?
And I got up out of bed and Iwent to go pray, as they say, as
the Aramaic meaning of the wordpray from Jesus' time, Salotha.
Presenting what is to God orhigher power or just being with
(34:37):
what I was experiencing.
So I put a meditation cushionon the floor in the living room.
Everyone's still sleeping, thewhole world is still asleep.
And I sat on that cushion, andI focused on the feeling of my
financial shitstorm.
(34:59):
Not with words, just being withthat feeling in your chest.
And anyone listening that knowsthe struggle of financial worry
knows that feeling and exactlywhat I'm talking about.
And even if you've neverstruggled financially, I'm sure
(35:20):
that you've had some struggle inyour life.
And if you reduce or eliminatethe words that go with that
struggle and just focus on thefeeling in your chest, that's
what I did.
I sat on that cushion and I satwith my breath and I held that
(35:42):
feeling, that incredible, strincredibly stressful feeling.
I held it with open arms.
I said, Here I am, and I gavemy stress a hug, and I just held
it, and I cried, and tearsstreamed down my face as I was
(36:04):
sitting there on that cushion,and I just sat with it because I
didn't know what else to do.
I didn't know where the moneywas going to come from.
You see, that is prayer on thedeepest level, where you're not
crafting a a a well-wordedpetition to God, fix this.
(36:27):
You're sitting there with yourfeelings, without words, and
you're just experiencing it.
And later that day, you know, Ifelt a little better after the
(36:48):
session was over.
I sat for probably a good fortyminutes with it, you know, and
I didn't push the feeling away.
I didn't drink it away, Ididn't smoke it away, and no
judgment to anyone listening ifif you struggle with addiction
of any kind, because theproblems in life are very real.
(37:11):
But it's like Dante's Inferno,the only way out of hell is
straight through the middle ofit, without trying to fix it,
without knowing how you're gonnafix it.
That's what prayer is, that'swhat meditation is.
The two are really verysimilar.
(37:31):
They just hail from differenttraditional backgrounds.
So later that day, when wheneveryone woke up, I texted my
family and I said, I don't knowwhat I'm gonna do.
This is my situation, and Ijust want to share it with you
(37:52):
because I'm lost.
I want other people just toshare my pain with me.
And you'll notice the wordcompassion, that's what that
word means.
Suffering together.
That is the definition ofcompassion.
(38:15):
Literally, that is thedefinition of compassion.
Suffering together.
I think passion meanssuffering, compassion, suffering
together.
But compassion that's where youopen up yourself to the pain
and suffering of others, and youexperience it with them.
(38:37):
And perhaps you know a way offixing it, and you help them fix
it, or you don't, and you justare with them completely.
And I shared the way I feltwith my family, and my sister,
God bless her, she tookimmediate action.
(38:57):
I mean, all of my family wasthere for me, and they always
have been.
My sister in particular, shetook immediate action, and she
reached out to a church that wego to, and they gave me a
thousand dollars to help me paymy rent, and it was like within
that day or two.
You might call it a miracle orlucky, whatever.
(39:26):
And there's plenty of peoplewho will go through something
like that, and there won't be athousand dollars at the end of
it.
And that's okay too.
What else can we do but be withwhat is?
Moving towards the finish linehere.
But I wanted to point out toyou guys in a still
(39:52):
compassionate way what it meansto be alive, to be human.
There is suffering.
And in Buddhism, that word isdukkha, and it it also means
sort of a misaligned wagon wheeluh axle.
(40:13):
Like you're you're sitting,you're going through life and
it's a bumpy ride because you'reout of sync with life, you're
not with what is.
There's a wonderful saying thatI've heard you can't stop the
waves, but you can learn how tosurf.
And that, my friends, is whatmeditation is.
(40:38):
That is what prayer is.
You can call it prayer, you cancall it meditation.
That is what love is.
When you stop and you reallyget with yourself, you are
loving yourself.
When you're really with theperson that's in front of you,
you're loving that person.
(40:58):
When you're cooking and you'rereally with what you're cooking,
you're cooking with love.
Love, love, love.
Love is all you need.
So whether it's Jesusemphasizing loving everyone and
everything, as he says, love thyneighbor as thyself is the
(41:21):
greatest commandment thatfulfills all the others, and of
course the second, love the Lordyour God.
What does Lord mean?
Lord means I am, to be, toexist.
Love your existence with allyour heart, mind, and soul.
Love your neighbor.
The Buddha.
He says less and emphasizesstillness and watching.
(41:46):
Is that any different?
Hinduism, releasing the fruitsof your actions, you know, with
karma yoga.
They have many traditions.
You know, I'm I'm not trying tosimplify or reduce all the
traditions, but if we distillthem down, they all tell you to
stay awake and to havecompassion for everyone and
(42:06):
everything that you come across.
Jesus says if someone strikesyou on your cheek, turn and
offer him the other one.
If he steals your cloak, offerhim your shirt.
Love people.
Don't be selfish.
Well, I hope that this foundwhoever it needed to find.
(42:32):
And my parting message is toslow down.
Look at your life.
Watch it.
This is your life.
Be there for it.
Don't be in your head abouttomorrow.
Be here now.
It's okay to plan for tomorrow,but do it mindfully in the now.
(42:59):
If something pops up in yourhead, because thinking will
always happen, it just happens.
This is not some clinical badcase of disassociation, it's
simply a realization of thetruth.
You are that which watches.
But just before I do, if thisepisode brought a little peace
(43:35):
in your life or a new angle,please follow the show in your
favorite app and share it withone friend who might need it.
It helps others find the show,and I'd appreciate it.
And now from Lao Tzu.
Can you coax your mind from itswandering and keep to the
original oneness?
Can you let your body becomesupple as a newborn child's?
(44:00):
Can you cleanse your innervision until you see nothing but
the light?
Loving yet not possessing,working yet not taking credit,
guiding yet not controlling.
This is the supreme virtue.
(44:23):
Blessings
Go ahead and say to yourself, I won't think a single
thought for the next tenminutes.
And let me know how far youget.
Hello and welcome to the thirdepisode of the Standing Nowhere
(00:31):
Podcast.
I am your host, Jacob Bueller.
I wanted to try somethingdifferent with you today.
Instead of me giving you a wordsalad about reality or
yourself, I wanted to invite youto experience it for yourself.
(00:53):
Experience yourself foryourself.
But in order to do this, you'vegot to go along with me, at
least for a little while.
I want you to try anexperiment.
This experiment will show yousomething about yourself that
(01:23):
you've always known, but youreally haven't known, or you
haven't experienced yet.
So let's pretend that you'reand we can just pretend.
Let's pretend that you'reinterested in what I'm about to
say, what I'm about to ask youto do.
At some point in your day, Iwant you to sit down.
(01:45):
It doesn't matter if it's on acushion on the floor, with your
legs crossed or on a chair, butI want your body to be in a
sitting position with your backupright.
A dignified position.
Not slouching.
I like to say upright, but notuptight.
(02:10):
So that you don't fall asleep.
Now while you are sitting, Iwant you to bring your attention
to your breath and your body.
It can be primarily with yourbreath, but if you feel other
(02:34):
sensations in the body as well,just simply be aware of them.
Don't try to influence yourbreath in any way.
Don't try to slow it down anddon't try to speed it up.
In fact, if you feel anyresistance or weirdness about
(02:56):
your breath, as in you'restruggling with not controlling
it, let that be as well.
And just notice that.
Maybe your breath feelsrelaxed.
Maybe it feels a littlestrained.
(03:16):
I'm not asking you to doanything.
I'm asking you to do nothingbut watch.
Just watch.
Now during this process, whenyou watch your breath, you will
notice that thoughts willappear.
(03:37):
I don't want you to judge thethought.
The many thoughts.
I want you to do nothing aboutthem at all, but simply be aware
of them.
See if you can notice beforethe thought arises.
(04:02):
When you're completely withyour breath or your immediate
surroundings, the feelings inyour body.
When you're with your breath,see if you can notice the
thought just before it arises.
(04:22):
Is there a feeling like I'mabout to think something?
Of course, it doesn't come outin words like that, but you know
the feeling, and we can'treally put words to it.
Or did you catch the thought inthe middle of it?
Or perhaps you caught itafterwards.
(04:46):
Whatever the case, it doesn'tmatter.
I'm just asking you to noticewhen you notice.
Notice what it's like whenyou're carried away by a
thought, or in the middle of itand consumed by it.
And notice when you come out ofit and you remember to come
(05:10):
back to the breath.
Now you may be driving, andthat's okay.
If you're driving, watch yourbody as it drives.
Just notice it.
Notice how your body knows whatto do.
(05:32):
Just like if you're sitting, itknows how to keep the muscles
erect to keep you in a sittingposition from collapsing to the
floor.
You may notice little quirksabout your body.
This part hurts.
Oh, this part was moving, and Ididn't notice it.
(05:54):
But now I do.
Just notice.
If a thought arises and carriesyou away, don't judge that,
don't judge yourself.
Just come back to the breath.
If you're carried away in athought, and then another
(06:17):
thought arises, darn, I gotcarried away by that thought.
Just notice that thought aswell.
Notice that judgment.
What you'll notice over time,and this is something that you
(06:38):
must experience, because whatI'm about to tell you will make
sense, but you have toexperience it.
You will notice over time thatyour thoughts are simply
thinking themselves.
In other words, you are notdoing your thoughts.
(07:03):
Your thoughts are doingthemselves.
And I don't I don't just meansome thoughts.
I mean all thoughts are doingthemselves.
All of them.
(07:24):
The good, the bad, the neutral.
Your thoughts will be veryseductive.
They won't quite say literallythis thought is you, but you'll
(07:45):
feel without words that yourthought is you.
That you're the one doing yourthoughts.
If that happens, just noticethat as well.
(08:06):
Some of you may worry that thisis some form of disassociation
or disidentifying.
And in a way, it is.
But not in a way of avoidance.
(08:27):
No, no, no.
This is the deepest form ofgrounding that you can get.
Because you're simply watching,and in the process of watching,
you come to realize that yourthoughts are not yourself.
(08:49):
You'll start to notice that ifyour thoughts are not yourself
or me, you almost have aweightless feeling that you're
the sky and the thoughts areclouds that pass by.
(09:13):
Whereas before, you took yourthoughts very seriously.
You identified with yourthoughts.
They made you feel a certainway.
They moved you throughout yourday.
Thoughts are not a bad thing.
(09:33):
Thoughts are not the enemy.
Identifying with your thoughts,that's where problems can
arise.
I want to read something toyou.
It's a quote by Kalu Rimpache.
(09:56):
He says, We live in illusionand the appearance of things.
There is a reality, we are thatreality.
When you understand this,you'll see that you are nothing.
(10:16):
And being nothing or no thing,you are everything.
That is all.
Now why do I bring that up?
The reason I bring that up isbecause some of you before
(10:40):
hearing this assumed that youwere your thoughts and whatever
you were thinking.
But after you do thisexperiment where you sit and you
watch and you watch, you startto realize that you, the real
you, your real self, is not thecontent of the thought itself.
(11:05):
But you are that which iswatching the thought arise.
The more you practice this, themore you accumulate what I like
to call and what many callself-realization.
Because you are doing nothingmore than realizing what
(11:30):
yourself actually is.
And your self, as you willrealize, is not a thing.
It is not a thought, it is nota body.
Then let's put that to thetest.
Go ahead and say to yourself, Iwon't think a single thought
(11:57):
for the next ten minutes.
And let me know how far youget.
This is a liberating truth.
Perhaps you've heard that wordliberation before.
They call it sudden awakeningwith gradual realization.
(12:20):
For some people, this makesthem laugh hysterically for a
while.
It did for me for a little bit,not in a crazy manner.
But when you really just slowdown enough in this crazy busy
world and just breathe with yourbreath, and just watch and rest
(12:45):
into that watchfulness, youstart to realize that you are
not your thoughts.
And that is incredible, thatfeeling.
They still come, but they comeand go like clouds.
The only difference is youdon't identify with the clouds
(13:11):
anymore.
You realize that you are thesky?
There's an interesting quotefrom the Christian mystic
Meister Eckhart, who said Theeye through which I see God is
the same eye through which Godsees me.
(13:34):
Does being aware of my thoughtsand my words change things?
There was something interestingspoken by Jesus Christ.
Well, many things he said wereinteresting, but one thing in
(13:55):
particular I found that was veryinteresting and very curious,
he said the words that I'msaying to you right now are not
from myself, but from him whosent me.
And of course the source ororigin of all life they
(14:19):
personified as a father figure.
Some people don't like that,and that's okay.
But the point is he said thewords that I'm saying are not
from myself.
That's interesting.
I quote Jesus sometimes becauseI grew up in the Christian
(14:42):
tradition.
And I rather like a lot of thethings he said.
I try not to go over them tooquickly, but really stop and
sink into them.
Now, some people listeningmight find that upsetting.
Let's say you were like me andyou were raised a Christian, or
(15:04):
you fell out of the faith, andyou prefer atheism or nihilism.
Whatever your beliefs are,there's no judgment, but going
back to our experiment,observing thoughts and realizing
they think themselves, is yourview something that you decided?
(15:28):
If you decided to believe whatyou believe, when did you decide
to decide to believe that?
Can we look at them as justbeliefs without you attached to
them?
Jesus said something else thatwas interesting in this context.
(16:01):
He said to deny thyself andtake up the cross.
Those who would follow me.
Deny thyself.
Deny yourself.
Hmm.
How do you deny yourself?
(16:22):
I would imagine the first stepis to notice what you're doing,
what you're thinking, whatyou're feeling.
On this concept of self, goingback to that Buddhist quote that
I gave you, we live in illusionand the appearance of things.
(16:46):
There is a reality, we are thatreality.
When you understand this, youwill see that you are nothing,
and being no thing you areeverything.
That is all.
To the Western ear, beingnothing sounds a little scary.
(17:11):
Nobody.
What does it mean to be nobody?
That's a curious word, nobody.
Hmm.
Perhaps you are that which iswatching this body.
Another curious thing thatJesus said he said he who
(17:39):
believes in me, Jesus does notbelieve in me, Jesus, but in him
who sent me.
Let's look at that again.
He who believes in me does notbelieve in me, but in him who
(18:02):
sent me.
You see, there are people inthis world that we refer to as
realized beings.
And some of you listening maybe familiar with that term, and
some of you it may sound totallyforeign.
What is a realized being or afully realized being?
(18:23):
This language points to thosewho have walked this earth in a
state of inner stillness, innersilence, and through that were
able to realize their truenature.
And these figures have comefrom all different walks of
(18:45):
life, through all differenteras.
As I mentioned, SiddharthaGautama, the original Buddha, he
came from the Hindu tradition.
There is suffering in life.
There it is.
Look at it.
(19:07):
To those unfamiliar withEastern tradition or the
Buddhist tradition, it may soundvery foreign, very other.
You may have intense fearsabout what you believe, or
perhaps you've thrown the babyout with the bathwater, as I
mentioned in the last episode,and all spiritual traditions
(19:31):
just seem not worth the effort.
But in Buddhism, the wordBuddha means one who is awake.
The root in Pali or Sanskritword meaning awake, I believe is
Bodhi, and I may be wrong onthat.
(19:53):
But the idea is wakefulness tobe awake.
To be aware.
To be aware that you are aware.
Most people they go throughlife thinking that they're
awake.
You wake up in the morning, I'mawake.
But are you really awake?
(20:14):
Are you watching yourself?
Are you really aware of whatyou're doing?
Notice going back to ourexperiment earlier, when we
watch our breath, it makes iteasier to see when thoughts
arise because we sort of make adeclarative statement to
(20:38):
ourselves when we sit down in adignified posture.
I will watch my breath.
And it's not a gruntingstruggle where we're clenching
our jaws I'm gonna focus on mybreath not at all.
I describe it as a relaxedalertness.
(20:58):
We're focusing on what is, andwith watching what is, the
background becomes more apparentbecause the foreground is also
more apparent.
We're taking a stance ofwatching.
(21:19):
We're sitting down, we're beingstill, and we're watching.
We're not doing, we're justwatching.
Notice another curious thingthat Jesus Christ said in the
Gospel of Mark.
(21:40):
When he was praying the nightbefore he was to be executed,
and he knew it was coming, hisdisciples kept falling asleep,
and he said, This I say to you,I say to all stay awake.
(22:03):
Stay alert.
And you will notice in allspiritual traditions, the core
emphasis is always to stayawake, to stay alert, whether
it's on the nose with the titleBuddhism, which is another way
(22:25):
of saying wakeful ism or stayingawake, watching, or in
Christianity, in the traditionof Jesus Christ, where he says
to stay awake, but also to lovethy neighbor as thyself.
Now why do I bring up love whenthe emphasis is on wakefulness?
(22:49):
Well, well, well, you willdiscover that love, elusive as
that word is, and compassion,you know in the deepest fabric
of your being is nothing morethan the same exact thing that
being awake is.
(23:10):
What do I mean by that?
Let's take children, forexample.
Do children enjoy when you areattentive to them?
When you are awake to them,giving them your full attention?
Yes.
Human beings in general, notjust children.
(23:32):
We crave to be seen, to be inthe awareness of another person.
How about it's a curiousphrase, isn't it, when we say My
mother, she cooks with love.
What does that mean?
(23:54):
Well, obviously it means thatyou are cooking with attention,
with clarity.
What about when someone gardenswith love?
You do you see where I'mgetting at?
So love and awareness are twosides of the same coin.
(24:20):
You might say awareness clearsout the stuff to allow the love
to flow both in and out.
Wherever there is awareness,there is love, there is
gentleness, there is calmness.
Notice how when you are calm,you are also more aware, you are
(24:45):
more in a state of flow.
There is a s there is a sayingslow is smooth, smooth is fast.
There's a wonderful examplegiven by Alan Watts in this idea
(25:08):
of clarity and awareness, andthat is the idea of what we mean
by clear.
And this is a wonderfulmetaphor.
When I say the word clear, whatcomes to mind?
Well the first thing is totaltransparency.
(25:28):
Like a lens wiped clean, noblemishes, no smudges, nothing
whatsoever to obstruct thevision of the lens.
Now the next thing you'll thinkof is of clear is perfect form,
(25:49):
focus.
Everything is clear, sharp,articulated in a very precise
way.
Is the image clear?
You see?
Two sides of the same coin.
(26:10):
When you are clear, when youare nobody, in other words, when
your mind is uncluttered,unfettered by various thoughts
that weigh you down.
What remains?
Where do you go?
Well, you're fully there,completely in focus.
(26:37):
When you are listening to yourfour year old tell you about
Minecraft or his monster trucksor playing games with him fully
there, fully clear, then you arecompletely in focus for your
(27:01):
child or your spouse or yourmother.
You're there.
You're there.
And they feel it.
When you are listening to yourfriend with complete attention,
not at all thinking about thenext thing that you're going to
(27:21):
say in response to the person,no matter who it is, they can
feel that connection.
They can feel that love, thatcompassion, and that is where
you want to dwell in that clearstate.
They have that analogy with theword mindfulness.
(27:46):
Is your mind full of things?
Or are you mindful, as intaking in your surroundings?
The person in front of you.
If you are fully with and awareof exactly what you're doing,
(28:07):
you'll always be okay.
Always.
Because the first noble truth,as I mentioned from the Buddha,
is that there is suffering inlife.
However, there's a phrase thatI really like that really
(28:31):
encapsulates what the Buddhameant by dukkha or suffering, as
we translate dukkha, which isthe Pali word, which means
suffering, amongst othermeanings.
There is forgot what I justsaid.
So oh yes, the the reality isthat there is suffering in the
(28:55):
world, but there's a phrase thatI love, and that is that there
that suffering is pain timesresistance.
Pain times resistance.
How do you resist pain?
How do you resist things thatyou don't like?
(29:15):
You avoid them.
That's the only way to resistthem.
You run from them.
You run to a bottle and youdrink.
Or you run to your pipe and youlet your mind get high.
(29:37):
You run.
Run, run, run.
We all run.
I run.
But that's resistance.
Fighting it.
Suffering arises when we areout of sync with.
(29:59):
Whatever is arising in ourlife.
We hear the phrase like getwith it, man.
Get out of your mind and cometo your senses.
Isn't that interesting?
Our language always points usto the truths that we know deep
down.
Or when your spouse may say, Itfeels like you never listened
(30:24):
to me.
You see?
So perhaps what we perceive aspain or the down moments in our
life are not really suffering,but a cry for us to pay
attention to it, to be with it.
And this is not to say that wedo nothing, become passivists,
(30:50):
as many people misunderstandspiritual traditions to be.
Passivity.
It's quite the opposite, is afull embracing of what is what
is.
It's interesting.
Prayer and meditation are oftenmentioned together, but what is
(31:10):
prayer?
We've mentioned meditation andmindfulness, and how that is
really the other side of thesame coin of love.
But the word prayer in Aramaicis salotha, and that means not
asking for this or that, butpresenting whatever is giving
(31:34):
you difficulty or challenge orstruggle in life, and saying
here it is and opening up.
I'll give you a vulnerableexample of this.
And of course, there's manyexamples in the Bible if you
(31:58):
read the story of Jesus Christ.
He went off by himself to prayquite often.
In fact, he spent forty days byhimself in absolute stillness,
prayer and meditation.
Here I am.
Here I am.
This is what I have to do.
(32:19):
Here I am.
I had been struggling to pay myrent for years, still am.
More than you know.
So I had been struggling to paymy rent for a long time.
And it got to the point where Imoved into an apartment that
was charging me almost $2,400 amonth in rent.
(32:42):
In my job, I was losing a lotof income at my place of
employment or my my gig workdoing deliveries.
Business was going down.
Long story short, they werecutting pay.
And I'm I've been adjusting topay cuts over the last few
(33:03):
years.
But it had reached aculmination point where I
couldn't even sleep.
My mind was so full of worryand dread about where this money
was going to come from for thisparticular month.
And I woke up at two or threein the morning, sweating,
(33:26):
thoughts racing.
And this is a good year, yearand a half into my spiritual
practices that I had picked up,you know, being with my
thoughts, meditating in themorning, trying to be actively
aware of all the activities andthoughts I did throughout my
day, what the Hindu traditionmight call karma yoga, releasing
(33:50):
the fruits of my actions toGod, or whatever word you have
for God, and just focusing on myaction, what I can do.
So here I was, 3 a.m.
A mind riddled with pain andsadness and worry and fear.
How am I going to pay the rentfor my wife and my three kids
(34:13):
and myself, this supporting thisfamily?
And I got up out of bed and Iwent to go pray, as they say, as
the Aramaic meaning of the wordpray from Jesus' time, Salotha.
Presenting what is to God orhigher power or just being with
(34:37):
what I was experiencing.
So I put a meditation cushionon the floor in the living room.
Everyone's still sleeping, thewhole world is still asleep.
And I sat on that cushion, andI focused on the feeling of my
financial shitstorm.
(34:59):
Not with words, just being withthat feeling in your chest.
And anyone listening that knowsthe struggle of financial worry
knows that feeling and exactlywhat I'm talking about.
And even if you've neverstruggled financially, I'm sure
(35:20):
that you've had some struggle inyour life.
And if you reduce or eliminatethe words that go with that
struggle and just focus on thefeeling in your chest, that's
what I did.
I sat on that cushion and I satwith my breath and I held that
(35:42):
feeling, that incredible, strincredibly stressful feeling.
I held it with open arms.
I said, Here I am, and I gavemy stress a hug, and I just held
it, and I cried, and tearsstreamed down my face as I was
(36:04):
sitting there on that cushion,and I just sat with it because I
didn't know what else to do.
I didn't know where the moneywas going to come from.
You see, that is prayer on thedeepest level, where you're not
crafting a a a well-wordedpetition to God, fix this.
(36:27):
You're sitting there with yourfeelings, without words, and
you're just experiencing it.
And later that day, you know, Ifelt a little better after the
(36:48):
session was over.
I sat for probably a good fortyminutes with it, you know, and
I didn't push the feeling away.
I didn't drink it away, Ididn't smoke it away, and no
judgment to anyone listening ifif you struggle with addiction
of any kind, because theproblems in life are very real.
(37:11):
But it's like Dante's Inferno,the only way out of hell is
straight through the middle ofit, without trying to fix it,
without knowing how you're gonnafix it.
That's what prayer is, that'swhat meditation is.
The two are really verysimilar.
(37:31):
They just hail from differenttraditional backgrounds.
So later that day, when wheneveryone woke up, I texted my
family and I said, I don't knowwhat I'm gonna do.
This is my situation, and Ijust want to share it with you
(37:52):
because I'm lost.
I want other people just toshare my pain with me.
And you'll notice the wordcompassion, that's what that
word means.
Suffering together.
That is the definition ofcompassion.
(38:15):
Literally, that is thedefinition of compassion.
Suffering together.
I think passion meanssuffering, compassion, suffering
together.
But compassion that's where youopen up yourself to the pain
and suffering of others, and youexperience it with them.
(38:37):
And perhaps you know a way offixing it, and you help them fix
it, or you don't, and you justare with them completely.
And I shared the way I feltwith my family, and my sister,
God bless her, she tookimmediate action.
(38:57):
I mean, all of my family wasthere for me, and they always
have been.
My sister in particular, shetook immediate action, and she
reached out to a church that wego to, and they gave me a
thousand dollars to help me paymy rent, and it was like within
that day or two.
You might call it a miracle orlucky, whatever.
(39:26):
And there's plenty of peoplewho will go through something
like that, and there won't be athousand dollars at the end of
it.
And that's okay too.
What else can we do but be withwhat is?
Moving towards the finish linehere.
But I wanted to point out toyou guys in a still
(39:52):
compassionate way what it meansto be alive, to be human.
There is suffering.
And in Buddhism, that word isdukkha, and it it also means
sort of a misaligned wagon wheeluh axle.
(40:13):
Like you're you're sitting,you're going through life and
it's a bumpy ride because you'reout of sync with life, you're
not with what is.
There's a wonderful saying thatI've heard you can't stop the
waves, but you can learn how tosurf.
And that, my friends, is whatmeditation is.
(40:38):
That is what prayer is.
You can call it prayer, you cancall it meditation.
That is what love is.
When you stop and you reallyget with yourself, you are
loving yourself.
When you're really with theperson that's in front of you,
you're loving that person.
(40:58):
When you're cooking and you'rereally with what you're cooking,
you're cooking with love.
Love, love, love.
Love is all you need.
So whether it's Jesusemphasizing loving everyone and
everything, as he says, love thyneighbor as thyself is the
(41:21):
greatest commandment thatfulfills all the others, and of
course the second, love the Lordyour God.
What does Lord mean?
Lord means I am, to be, toexist.
Love your existence with allyour heart, mind, and soul.
Love your neighbor.
The Buddha.
He says less and emphasizesstillness and watching.
(41:46):
Is that any different?
Hinduism, releasing the fruitsof your actions, you know, with
karma yoga.
They have many traditions.
You know, I'm I'm not trying tosimplify or reduce all the
traditions, but if we distillthem down, they all tell you to
stay awake and to havecompassion for everyone and
(42:06):
everything that you come across.
Jesus says if someone strikesyou on your cheek, turn and
offer him the other one.
If he steals your cloak, offerhim your shirt.
Love people.
Don't be selfish.
Well, I hope that this foundwhoever it needed to find.
(42:32):
And my parting message is toslow down.
Look at your life.
Watch it.
This is your life.
Be there for it.
Don't be in your head abouttomorrow.
Be here now.
It's okay to plan for tomorrow,but do it mindfully in the now.
(42:59):
If something pops up in yourhead, because thinking will
always happen, it just happens.
This is not some clinical badcase of disassociation, it's
simply a realization of thetruth.
You are that which watches.
But just before I do, if thisepisode brought a little peace
(43:35):
in your life or a new angle,please follow the show in your
favorite app and share it withone friend who might need it.
It helps others find the show,and I'd appreciate it.
And now from Lao Tzu.
Can you coax your mind from itswandering and keep to the
original oneness?
Can you let your body becomesupple as a newborn child's?
(44:00):
Can you cleanse your innervision until you see nothing but
the light?
Loving yet not possessing,working yet not taking credit,
guiding yet not controlling.
This is the supreme virtue.
(44:23):
Blessings
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