QNTNs.com Podcast

“Cats in the cradle,

Time unending is

I wanna be free as you are free,

Are we not Gods? Every monotheistic religion believes we’re made in the image of God, that God created the universe. We can only conclude from these testaments that God has become us, and that, through our individuality and soul experience, God expresses and experiences God’s Self anew.

Just as a good Rembrandt uses the chiaroscuro of light and shadow, so the universal design uses the chiaroscuro of good and evil, love and fear, to paint the contrasting lines of life with heroes and villains so that we may perceive on this grossly plane what is right from what is wrong. Though it is all God, there is, ultimately, the truth and the foundational essence: there is who we are versus how we pretend to be. Evil is us playing make believe; love and beauty is who we are.

Given this, I ask, “Why do we content ourselves with “Builder’s Grade,” when clearly, its only purpose to exist is to show us who we are NOT. It is the villain, the shadow, the fear that runs rancid in our hearts, falsely worrying us that we don’t deserve or can’t afford what is good, distorting our wisdom to think we need quantity over quality, and convincing us of the misery producing assumptions that, “No one will notice,” or that, “People don’t care.”

People do care. People do notice. Even if they can’t articulate why. Walt Disney said, “People can feel perfection.” Let’s be perfect, even as Christ is perfect, for “…he that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than me shall he do; because I go unto my Father.”

We cite this to say, it’s time to surrender the safety and sadness “Builder’s Grade” has afforded our selves in the capital west. It’s time to get it right the first time instead of demolishing the bad immediately upon building it wrong, effectively doubling or tripling the price and the waste under the guise that, “We couldn’t afford it [the first time].”

It’s time for God Grade, made by God, of God, for God. If what we make will do for the sophisticate and the rube alike, then it is right. Their experience will be the same. Both will say, “Wow. This is nice.” Sure, they might still say, “This is not for me. This is not my style,” and that is their choosing, the glory of our individuality. This is not an argument for uniformity. This is an argument for quality, for doing good.

Even the atheistic religions attest that this is our only life, that you only live once. We must then ask, “For your one life, must you really accept the popcorn ceiling, the hollow bedroom door, aluminum Venetian blinds, and the coil cooktop?!”

I was once on a first date in a home hardware depot, nevermind why. As we walked towards our quest, we passed kitchen appliances. There, amongst the good, they sold the ugly, the baked enamel white box fridges that our tenement selves know too well. I reasoned, “These fridges are so depressing. We would do well as a people to excommunicate them from our society.”

She looked at me concerningly and paternally, supposing she had something to teach me about life. “No. We need fridges like this. Not everyone has your privilege. This is the only fridge some can afford.”

“No,” I chided. “They sell beautiful glass bar fridges (what some would call a mini fridge) for half this price. Not to mention, commercial box freezers serve twice the volume and top load, doubling their efficiency since the cool air does not escape upon opening. Even better, when you adjust this freezer’s radiator to output fridge temperatures, the efficiency doubles again.”

She rebuked, “Commercial grade? How’s that not uglier than this?”

“Because the commercial unit is perfect in its function, which gives its own beauty. This fridge has neither good form or good function. It’s simply cheap. It’s sad, like a vacation to an amusement park: thrills and fortified flower. The nutritional requirements add up on paper, but in application, our bodies know it’s fake.”

I piqued my date’s interest, but there would be no lasting relationship. I was too weird.

So be it. Let’s be weird together and set a precedent that inspires us to live well instead of drowning our repressed sorrows committing slow suicide, distracting ourselves with cheap media, liquor, drug, and vice.

There’s always another way. Should we build always with God Grade materials, the environments where we live would be so inspiring that we would figuratively “jizz our pants” at life’s every turn, no Viagra or Vyleesi required.

This essay is focused on the home. Here’s the list of Builder Grade tropes we will firstly expose and henceforth dismiss for the alternatives that would do well to go in their place.

Builder Grade → God Grade

* Ducting → The central air will have split channels for air conditioning and heating. The AC vents will be in the ceiling, and the heating will be at ground level (either in the walls near the baseboard or in the floors).

* Flooring → There will be no carpet. The ground and basement levels will have heated floors.

* Doors → There will be no hollow doors; all doors will be solid.

* Cabinet Nobs → Cabinets would have handles.

* Blinds → Metal Venetian shades are out. In their place, use sheer, cellular, or Roman shades.

* Bathroom mirrors → All wall-mounted mirrors will have a frame; no unframed, clip-mounted mirrors.

This list will change. There are many more, but we will leave it at this for now and add as we set new intentions for our selves.

This is not my typical letter. No, this is the first of its kind. A letter to QNTN, not a letter from. I have been wanting for some time to publish these, lest my wont to purge destroy the evidence of my having been cared for by so many. Nevermind their insecurities to share what is destined to be public knowledge when we reclaim our omniscience. In the end it is all Us. I will, however, give them the courtesy of humility, anonymity, and will only their words. If you know, you know.

Thank you for thinking of me.P.S. If you should have me humored, send an MP3 of yourself reading this letter 😉

Dear QNTN,

Watching many home videos your father has unearthed, I’m reminded of just how long we’ve been friends. It’s a simple fact, and maybe an obvious one, but it gives me a small feeling of security knowing I’ll have a friend for life.

Thank you for my parting presents as I make my way to a new world, a new life — adulthood. In one breath life is easy and helpful. In the next breath it is threatening and fearful. I ride new waves and face myself in the opportunity to evolve in ways I stagnated while in Atlanta. Still, I miss the easiness, the comfort it provided. I know we came here to do important work, though. So let’s get to it. Plenty of time for spiritual “whole being” orgasms together once we evolve a little more. I am happy we have met up again. I needed some support as I know I can be of equal benefit to you. Tell me how I can support you. Thank you, again, for supporting me. I am looking forward to the seasons to come. May you be in love. Love, Quentin.

I had gotten distracted,

I think back on my favorite and maybe only desired remembrance of Harry Potter: the Expecto Patronum spell, Latin for “I await my protector.” The spell produces a Patronus, which is the protector, yet the “fuel” and energy for the spell requires a deep memory of love. In Harry’s case, the Patronus is both the fuel for the Patronus, and the Patronus itself.

It comes to pass that Harry has no memory of love strong enough. The dementors feed on his soul, killing him once for all. Yet not. A Patronus does appear, a dear, a wizard sending forth its spell. A Patronus so powerful, the light dispels Azkaban’s full stock of dementors.

Harry finds himself in the infirmary, recovering, wondering, “Who was the wizard who casts such a light?” Through a side quest thereafter they time-travel, finding themselves on the observing side of Harry’s near-death. They have traveled back to that point in time where Harry was once saved. Now Harry is in the company of Hermoine, insisting, “Any minute now. The Patronus is coming. The Patronus is coming. This is about when I remember the Patronus saving me.”

“Harry, no one is coming.”

It struck him then, the Self-realization that he is the wizard who casts the spell, and knowing he has already done it, does it for the first time per the memory beyond time of his doing it. His Patronus is fueled by the knowing of his own Patronus. So the Patronus is both the deliverance and the deliverer. It is one. Expecto Patronum: I await my protector, which is me. I await my self, who is both saved by my self and surrending to my self to be saved.

So it is that I seek out Patronuses of all kinds. What is the knowing embodied of the love that overcomes my suicide? What is the knowing embodied of the essence of deep meditation that returns me to my inner stillness? What is the knowing embodied of my love for friends, my love for all, my love for my love. This knowing embodiment is the Patronus.

So it comes to pass

To my worried co-workers, friends, and family: I have completed my vipassana retreat.

To my curious co-workers, friends, and family: allow me to explain what one does at a vipassana retreat.

To my future self: allow me to help you remember what you have learned at your vipassana retreat.

The Context

Like a circular pool, there are any number of ways we may enter the waters of this subject. Jumping in, we see that vipassana is Buddhist. This practice is specific to Siddhartha Gotama, a Buddha. “A Buddha” because Buddha is a title given to one who is fully awakened, similar to an “arahant,” which is a Pali word for “liberated one.” Yet a Buddha discovers the path without a teacher and then teaches it to the world. An arahant reaches liberation by following a Buddha’s teachings.

Buddha is like Christ in that it describes a state of being. It is not the name of an individual. There is Jesus the Christ; there is Krishna the Christ. Any one of us may, and must, achieve that Christ consciousness along our path towards full liberation.

There have been many Buddhas before the time of Gotama the Buddha. There will be Buddhas again after Gotama the Buddha. We remember Gotama specifically because Gotama’s offering is unique to this world. He taught the world how to use bodily sensations to first connect mind and matter, and then to transcend them. He taught vipassana: “seeing things as they really are.”

The Buddha’s motivation was to relieve the world of misery and suffering. Though the world will always have its pains, it need not have misery. Pain is merely a sensation, while our reaction to pain is what creates misery.

The weather blows cold in winter. Chapping our lips. Numbing our face. Running our nose. This is pain, a mere sensation. Coming, going. It is only when we react with aversion to the pain that misery begins. We want the pain to end and are distraught for however long it lasts.

When the pain does end, as all things always do, pleasantness relieves us. The pleasantness is also a sensation. Coming, going. It is only when we react with craving that the pleasant becomes the miserable. We want the pleasant to stay, but are distraught when it inevitably leaves.

At the intellectual level, I have heard this lesson many times: do not crave or avoid life. Allow life to be because life will so rarely go exactly how you please. If you need life to be this way and that way, you will be disappointed.

We hear this. We logically grasp this. Yet we do not understand. The winter of our lives arrives, and we are depressed in varying degrees. We lose the sun: small depression. We lose our health: bigger depression. We lose our loved one: big depression.

We carry on, but acting from misery begets more misery. The Buddha shows us that we treat only the symptoms of our misery, pruning only the limbs of this poisonous tree that bears poisonous fruit. Never do we take the tree out by the roots. We trim the canopy of our sadness by distracting ourselves with this relationship, this life event, that drink, that new sensation. Then the relationship ends, the era passes, the bar closes, the sensation leaves, and the sadness returns. Whatever was trimmed regrows.

Cravings and aversions run our lives. The best of us see the symptoms, but so few treat the cause. The doctor who treats only the symptoms will never cure the disease. To cure the disease, cure the cause. Trimming the trees of misery will not do. We must take the trees out at the roots.

You have the habit of swearing when things go wrong because you have the habit of craving the perfect outcome. You have the habit of drinking too much because you have the craving to feel free. You crave freedom because you have imprisoned yourself in an ever-shrinking cell that blocks out all that you avoid. Keep this up, and soon every experience will be unnerving and unbearable. No life change, relationship change, exercise change, possession change, job change, financial change, cultural change, political change, religious change, or otherwise will give you unassailable happiness. What is outside of us cannot cure us. The cause and cure are within.

Vipassana is a meditation technique that cures misery. The secret: we are already peace and joy. There is nothing to gain. Instead, this technique teaches us how to uproot our mind’s subconscious habit of reacting and miring in our woes. It is this reaction that churns the waters of our mind so greatly that we lose sense of our own true nature.

The Retreat

I was at another retreat in a yoga ashram two years ago when I first heard about vipassana. On the porch of our duplex, lied my neighbor’s barefoot shoes, just like my own. “A friend,” I thought. Indeed. We met and were at once acquainted. He told me, “This retreat is so different than a vipassana retreat, which is what I normally do. I’m not used to such a leisurely meditation schedule.” He went on to explain the vipassana retreat, its strict “Noble silence” for nine days, its 10 hours of strict meditation per day, and hints about the technique that he described as “raw.”

Those words, “vipassana,” rang in my ears. I did not know when, but I knew that. I knew that I was fated to go. I would come to know this friend, Yoga with Ethan ॐ, and would come to hire him to be my “yoga coach.” Wrong, I was. The year of our working together was not actually yoga coaching, but vipassana training.

This was training for good posture, training for eating rightly (eating light-ly), training to embrace the metaphysical, the spiritual, the hologram of the body, the glimpses of the deeper mind, and the ever-inspired pursuit to “Know Thyself.”

The retreat’s aim is to provide the perfect first dive into the ocean of what will be a very long swim to shore. This technique is three-fold:

* Sīla: morality and right living.

* Sammā Samādhi: right concentration.

* Paññā: intuitive wisdom.

Sīla is done for you per the environment of the camp. The five precepts are (1) no killing (and more broadly, no harming of life), which we achieve through kindness to our neighbors and vegetarian diets; (2) no stealing (and more broadly, owning nothing), which we achieve by our free attendance; (3) no sexual misconduct, which we achieve by our busied schedule and separation of men and women while at the camp; (4) no lying, which we achieve through silence; (5) no intoxicants that includes any and all drugs. The importance of these precepts cannot be overstressed. One feels them working for you during the strict 4 AM to 9 PM schedule focused on the singular aim to know Thyself.

When you are focused on doing good for others, you purify all your actions. When you are focused on not stealing, you are actually surrendering your ownership. The campus has no locks on the doors. You cannot pay for your attendance. The food you eat is charity. The beds you use are charity. The resources for you are charity. You own nothing. You are taken care of, but more importantly, you surrender your possession, craving, and preference. The adage, “beggers can’t be choosers.” When you forgive all sexual passion, your creative energy is brought to higher centers of love, art, focus, and ultimately, deep, deep awareness of Self. When one does not lie but speaks only truth, the reality one perceives comes ever closer to the truth. You practice vipassana by “seeing what is truly there.” Finally, when you forgive all drugs, alcohol, and intoxicants, your mind is clear to feel its true sensations.

Following these precepts in wordly life is actually quite difficult. In fact, I can’t say I ever have till now. Now having done so, I speak from my personal experience, not from scripture or Judeo-Christian judgement. From my newfound paññā, or wisdom, I attest that following morality such as this is in my own best interest. It is the bedrock of my escape from misery. Henceforth, it will be my inspired aim to keep helping others (per this previous lesson), to continue in sobriety, to continue in truth-telling, to continue in creative passions over sensual passions, and to continue sharing and giving everything I own with everyone, understanding that nothing is truly mine.

The benefit to all this is an equanimous mind that prepares us for step two: samādi, or concentration. Yoga had introduced me to the term samādi as part of Patanjali’s eight-fold path, where samādi is the final step. That samādi is total absorption of the mind and what I had relegated to an experience exclusive to high saints. “I can’t enter samādi yet,” I thought. This must be a different, more attainable variant.

It is. It also is not. In this sense, samādi is concentration. We can have TV samādi when absorbed in our show, hunting samādi when tracking our prey, competition samādi when swept up in a game, and sammā samādhi, where sammā means purified, when we are absorbed in meditation.

The truest and deepest states of samādi are quite elusive, quite subtle. They are reserved to the breathless state. You will know you are in the deepest states of samādi when your need to breathe stops, and so eliminating your heart’s need to eradicate carbon dioxide, so bringing your entire body to complete stillness. This state of stillness gives direct perception of the infinite and of your true Self. Arriving here brings us to paññā, or wisdom.

The first three and a half days of the retreat are dedicated to developing concentration. You do this by limiting the area of your focus, sharpening the caliber of your mind’s attention. To focus on the body at whole is too large and would only produce broad or gross insight. Focusing on the whole head, the whole shoulder, the whole navel is too large, too broad. The prescription begins at the nose. Focus on the triangle of the nose. Focus on the breath. Focus on the sensations of the breath entering the nose, passing through the nostrils, entering the nasal walls.

The breath is the link between mind and matter, and thus the link to God. The breath is the bridge between the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. This is so because the breath can be either autonomic or voluntary. We can control our breathing when we are conscious, just as our breathing acts of its own accord when instructed by our subconscious.

It is our breath that first responds to our emotional state. Passionate thinking increases our breathing. Equanimous thinking decreases our breathing. Breath awareness is the first cue to our state of mind. Following the breath is the perfect anchor to take us deeper and deeper, subtler and subtler to the depths of our subconscious self.

Each day of meditation brought new instructions from our teacher, S.N. Goenka. Each instruction asked us to sharpen, narrow, and shrink the area of our focus. From the full nasal triangle we reduced our focus to just the nostrils. From the nostrils we reduced our focus to just the area above the upper lip. We watched the faintest sensation of air passing. We observed the breath like a scientist, methodically notating the characteristics: warm, cold, strong, soft, fast, slow. No judgement. Merely watching.

This intense focus develops our ability, serving pre-requisite for the actual technique of vipassana. We would begin on day four with new instructions. First, we were to sit with “strong determination,” called adhiṭṭhāna. No movement for at least one full hour at a time. No opening of the eyes. No opening of the hands. No shifting of the muscles. Absolutely still. Second, you are to scan the body, every inch of the body using the same attentive scalpel we had developed by focusing on the subtlest sensations of our breath, a technique called ānāpāna (ānā: inhalation, pāna: exhalation).

You make yourself as comfortable as possible. My friend, Ethan, had disclosed that adhiṭṭhāna was to come, so for the first three days I practiced my sitting still ahead of the actual “strong determination.” Here I was in a bolstered cross-legged pose, one among twenty men in the left side meditation hall, divided and adjacent to twenty women. The male teachers before us; the female teachers before them. No matter how comfortable you began, a critical threshold would pass, usually around thirty to forty minutes after beginning. Pain would splinter forth from the nerves. Aching. Heat. Misery, it would seem. This is when the practice starts.

The Buddha’s goal for us is to escape our misery, to destroy the latent seeds of our misery at the root level. Otherwise, those seeds will grow into the trees of our future suffering, sowing fruits ripe with more suffering, in perpetuity, in a vicious and compounding cycle till the misery usurps our lives, till we have pinioned ourselves in sensational hell. The means of escape is to train our subconscious mind not to react.

We see our emotions at the surface level. We see the actions of our rage, or see the purchases of our greed, or feel the sadness of our grief. We see circumstantially that our environment dictates our moods, well-being, actions, health, materials, and lives. We see our fatness and say, I must stop eating junk food. We replace sweet cookies with sweet apples. We work at the surface level. The Buddha wished for us to understand, “Where does my desire for this sugar originate?” When sitting in adhiṭṭhāna, after focusing the mind with ānāpāna, the vipassana begins when we are instructed to focus only on our sensations.

Focus only on your sensations, seeing them how they really are, keeping an equanimous mind, understanding that all sensations change, change, change, just as nature changes. “Anicca, anicca, anicca,” is what we heard time and time again. Change, change, change. Everything is change. When the unpleasant sensation arises, when my hips were on fire from my posture, we do not move. We sit with strong determination and we notice, “This is an unpleasant sensation, a gross sensation. Let’s see how long it lasts. Let’s watch it change. Anicca, anicca, anicca.” Then, after some time of watching, of remaining curious, of going deeper, subtler, subtler into the sensation, the exact quality of the sensation, the exact epicenter of the sensation, moving from the skin of the hip, to the flesh of the hip, to the inside bone of the hip, to the molecular cells of the hip, to the atoms of those cells, to the very source of the sensation, all visualizing, feeling, feeling, over the course of hours, days, and seemingly beyond time, the sensation dissolves from gross pain to subtler warmth, to subtler tingling, to subtler bubbling, to subtler vibrations, lightening, lightening, lightening.

These vipassana body scans would take our attention part-by-part, inch-by-inch across the entire bodily plane, from head-to-toe, from toe-to-head, from out-to-in, from in-to-out, from left-to-right, from right-to-left, again-and-again, this rounding, rounding of our attention on the body watching our sensations dissolve from gross pain to subtle vibration.

As we traversed into the subtle vibrations, we so traversed into the subtleties of the subconscious mind. At this level, we work at the roots of our mind. We see that no matter how comfortably we sit, no matter what the pose or posture, this gross, painful sensation arises, then changes, then passes. It would seem that if I sit in an uncomfortable position, the pain would only worsen, worsen, worsen and never resolve, but this is not so. The pain does dissolve, leaving in its wake a beautiful and pleasant sensation of flowing energy coursing through the body. The noticing of this change proves to yourself, experientially, that life is ephemeral, ever changing, ever changing. Realizing this, you acquire the personal confidence that you can conquer anything because no difficulty is insurmountable. No difficulty is forever. No matter how painful the difficulty at present, you develop the faith to know that pain is only a sensation and will not last.

Just when you think you have scorched your nerves for good, scorched your muscles for good, truly injured yourself, you stand, you break your strong determination, and miraculously, to your surprise, the pain flies away. Immediately gone. “It was all in my mind,” I realized.

The eradication of misery begins when we see these sensations, some pleasant, some unpleasant, and we surrender our aversion or craving for the sensation. When a gross and painful sensation rises to the surface of our body, we notice it for what it is. “This too shall pass.” Changing, anicca, focusing, we watch the gross dissolve into the subtle. The painful dissolve into the pleasant. After sitting in pain for quite some time, the spontaneous relief of all pain is quite pleasing, quite euphoric, quite tempting to crave. “This too shall pass.” Changing, anicca, the pleasant experiences will also pass. Like this, we remain equanimous, neither avoiding nor craving the sensations in our body.

By maintaining our equanimity, we do not feed the mind, the ego. Just as the body must be fed with food and water, so the mind must be fed with cravings and aversions. This feeding of the mind is what the Buddha discovered as the fetters of our imprisonment in the jail of our misery. When we maintain an equanimous mind, the fetters of past aversions, past cravings rise to the surface of our experience. These chains of past karma, suppressed and repressed experiences, emotions of craving and aversion, manifest in the body as sensation. How we react to the sensations becomes the habit of our mind, our saṅkhāra. Every impression on our mind results in a saṅkhāra. Every moment of our life. Most saṅkhāras are described as “writing on water.” Their impressions dissolve as they are written. Other saṅkhāras are like writing on sand, dissolving in a day upon the next change of tides. Still other saṅkhāras are like writing on rocks. They are deep, deep, impressionable, and they remain with us for our entire lives.

The reactions we keep with us for life and beyond are the reactions we have cut into our minds with chisel and mallet, striking day-after-day, year-after-year, life-after-life, the same cravings and aversions, addictions and character traits. To practice vipassana is to practice the retraining of our mind at the subconscious level to not hold fast to the good and push away the bad, but to allow life to pass through us, flow through us harmoniously. Doing so allows our previous saṅkhāras to rise to the surface. In this deep meditation we experience the root sensation of our habits and moods. When we recognize that our every action begins as a sensation in the body, when we recognize that all sensations are passing, we recognize that we can be free of any addiction, any character trait, any mood. “This too shall pass.”

I fully expected this retreat to be hellfire. Just think, and in just this life, I have cut deeply into the rock of my mind the habit of anger, rage, self-loathing. How many tennis rackets have I destroyed? How many bones in my hands have I broken from the walls that I have punched? How many times have I stabbed my legs, cut my thighs, crashed my car? How much money have I wasted in pursuit of destitution, self-sabotage? How many drugs have I taken to feel free from these pains, and secretly to further feed this habit of self-defeat? Manifold. “And you’re telling me that all actions taken, unless experienced with equanimity, are stored in my body as units of trapped energy, knots in the spiritual body, saṅkhāras?” This is true.

The students next to me, some of them would disclose to our teachers in our momentary group interviews, “I’m writhing in pain and I am enraged. Where is this rage come from? I am furious.” The teachers would respond, “Good, good. You’re allowing your stored emotions to rise. Let them pass. This too shall pass.”

“Where is all my rage,” I would think. I’m sitting here equanimous, I’m waiting. I’m watching. I hated myself so much. Where is that suicidality? Where is that rage? I allow it to come. I allow it to pass.

It never came. I realized, then, that seven years ago this month, I was voluntarily admitting myself into a psychiatric treatment center. This month, seven years later, I had admitted myself into a voluntary prison of my deep subconscious mind, a true mental hospital, metaphysical mental surgery, a vipassana retreat. That surgery should have, would have, resulted in many complications for me had the last seven years of my recovery not been so effectual, so painful and in its own way, relieving. Through dialectical behavior therapy, the countless psychiatric drugs, therapies, and trials, the transcendental meditation, then raja yoga meditation, then karma yoga through the service of working in a grocery during the pandemic, then more karma yoga through the service of working in a uniquely challenging job, then vipassana training with Ethan (not mentioning the thousands upon thousands of subtler remedies occurring in the moments of all interactions), I realized through all these things that my vipassana, my allowing these saṅkhāras to pass with an equanimous mind has been a journey of seven years and will continue to be a journey till the end.

The retreat closes with a day of reintegration. After nine days of silence, the final day is given to help us wake up from our mental surgery. The day is called metta day, metta meaning goodwill or unconditional care in Pali. The day begins with continued noble silence, but instead of our traditional adhiṭṭhāna at the morning meditation hour, we learn and practice a group metta (loving, kindness) meditation. Now imagine: a room of sixty meditators who have worked in the trenches of their minds, training with the discipline of warriors, sharpening their conscious attention to a razor’s edge, redirecting all this energy to their heart, to their goodwill for themselves, for each other, and for the world. Imagine the love felt in that room. It was experiential truth that I felt what modern physicists are proving in labs that the heart sends an electromagnetic signal not unlike a radio transmitter, and that these heart waves are measurable and measurably impact the hearts of all living creatures and beings. We felt in that room the synchronicity of sixty hearts matching the frequency of love, resonating like the strings of a perfectly tuned orchestra. Perfect coherence. Powerful, peaceful, loving.

Soaking in that space we one-by-one stood up and went out into the courtyard grounds under the full sun and clear blue sky. This would end our noble silence. Quite naturally, circles of chattering formed. When I exited the meditation hall, cushion cradled to my chest, relieved to have made this journey, to be done, I was swept up by one of the groups. We shared our names, our congratulations to have completed the course, and we laughed and talked as good friends, hearts full of love, not a drop of social fear or otherwise. Pure peace. Equanimity. How easy. You feel you can conquer the world because you know nothing can conquer you. All is changing, changing, changing.

The Lessons

* Ānāpāna (observing inhalation, exhalation) is the way to God, the key to the bridge connecting and transcending mind and matter.

* “Equanimity is the operating system of the mind,” which is a quote taken from a speaker hosted by my last company before I had attended a vipassana retreat. Anything other than equanimity creates a “virus” and “bloatware” for the mind’s operating system. To operate in life with peace and purity requires equanimity.

* Mastery of self, of habits, moods, traits, and total success in liberation begins at the sensational level of the atoms and wavelets of energy within the body. In order of importance: what we feel, what we think, what we say, what we do. Observing the subtle and letting it pass is how all difficulty and misery is overcome. Vipassana is the conscious technique to habituate our subconscious mind so that day and night, while awake and asleep, we will have attained mastery of equanimity, non-reaction and smooth passing of all experience.

* Morality. Despite my having no enemies, despite my desire to improve myself, despite my love for all humans, I have not been living a moral life. A true moral life, though the precepts are simple, is subtly difficult, requiring one’s full attention, courage, and determination. Consider just the instance of eating meat. The raising of the animal, the slaughtering of the animal, the pain the animal feels, the feelings of those animals impacting the cattlemen of the farms, the butchers of those butcher houses, creating for them the deeply suppressed avoidances that they are doing harm and taking the life of the living, harming themselves and harboring that misery which leaks into their daily lives, polluting, in the most subtle ways, the people-of-people who they interact with, and ultimately our entire population and society. “Morality surely isn’t so subtle,” I think to myself. No. It is. It is very subtle, even more subtle than this. However, consider the good that would actually manifest on our planet if we recognized that even a few perfect precepts can change the world in all ways.

* Dhamma. It is the law of nature. It is one with all. It is truth. To be with Dhamma, and to have Dhamma work for you, to practice Dhamma is to live in harmony with what is tru e. Dhamma does not belong to any sect, any god, any religion, any person. It is the universal law of liberation. The “religion,” so to speak, of India is called Sanātana Dharma, or eternal truth, eternal way. We all walk the same path back to God, though every path will be different.

Sīla is a Pali word for morality and ethical conduct. In this context, the lessons are “spiritual,” but spirit being spirit is never separate. The lesson of 100 “sīlas” is a reminder. You add to this list as the lessons are discovered. You return to the list as you forget the lesson.

* Do not change your mind. | You say you will do this, do that. You say, “I will change this habit.” Then the habit of old rears its head, challenging you in the least, yet the least is enough for you to change your mind. Stop. Do not change your mind.

* Choose in each moment how you want to express yourself. | “Who are you? Who do you hope to become?” I will choose my highest nature in each and every moment.

* Do not deny yourself. Instead, choose how you want to express yourself. | Denying leads to suppression. Suppression leads to pressure. Pressure eventually ruptures. Expression does not mean without jurisprudence. As the rotor of a helicopter is always running, yet can climb or descend the same, so the flow through you is always flowing, but per the pitch of your blades, per the pitch of your expression, so you fly through the skies of your life. Never deny the rotor’s flowing. You determine with wisdom whether to collect or let pass the rotor’s power.

* Remember who you are with evenmindedness. Equanimity is your operating system. | You may have your applications, your hardware, your mentations, body, and will, but it is no matter if the system running all this is running wild with no balance or calm.

* You are nowhere.

* You are obliged to no one any more than you are obliged to your higher self. Life is never an obligation. | Duty, dharma, responsibility, and commitments are choices that support the nature of how we want to be. When who we want to be changes, so we must forgive, surrender, and move past previous promises.

* Right and wrong is infinitely relative. Forgive judgement. There is nothing to learn. We already are. The reason we are here is to experience who we are so we can be us. Ourselves. Still, right is right and wrong is wrong, but no one is ever wrong given their model of the world. | “What gives?” While there is right and there is wrong, we cannot see what is so till we have the proper perspective. If your perch of life affords better discrimination, do well to share your advantage point, all while forgiving judgement that they cannot see what is impossible for them to see.

* The two poles of emotion are love (light, truth) and fear (darkness, falsehood). | The candle (soul) cannot experience its flame as part of the infinite allness of the sun. So the candle banishes itself to the cave so it might experience its nature relative to the sun. Fear allows us to choose and experience love. Then, knowledge and experience in hand, we may be love.

* Enjoy yourself. You are free at any moment to enjoy yourself. All there is to it is remembering. | A time will come when the circumstances of present will steal our attention. The senses of our lives will so overwhelm our awareness that we will forget our power to choose how we are aware. Will you be aware that you are free to be aware as you please, free to enjoy awareness’s innate peace, or will you grow unaware, subjected to the forever whims of what may be?

* We are beings, not doings. | When we do, be. Do not forget to be as you do. It matters not what you do, for what you do is never who you are. How are you, then, during everything you do? The answer to what’s the matter is always the matter.

* Want nothing, neither having preferences nor needs.

* Live simply so others may simply live. | Said another way, if everyone did what you are about to do, if everyone lived the way you are about to live, would the world be sustained?

* Give all. Seek nothing.

* Make every moment an outpouring of love.

* Live the way of “High thinking. Right living.” | Use every moment to think the highest thought, say the highest word, and do the highest deed.

* Every person who has ever come to you has come to receive a gift from you. | Whenever you are approached by someone always ask, “How can I help? What can I give to you?”

* Joy. Paradox. Change. | This is the nature of nature.

* God has no reason to say no. What if you didn’t either? | God has no reason to say no because God’s time is infinite. God is infinite. Are you not also an immortal with infinity on your hands? Why, then, do you live such a conservative, reserved existence?

* Habits can only be deleted in deep meditation. | If not deep meditation, then the habit can only be replaced. However, the habit happens at the level of sensation in the body. You may either react to the sensation with a better habit, or allow the sensation to pass out from the body once and for all. Should you wish to change the habit, remember the structure of any habit: cue + action + reward. If you wish to change the habit, change the action after the cue and before the reward.

* Humility is never forgetting that you are the soul. | That means others are also souls and as a soul to other souls, one should always serve with the poise of a dignitary, treating all with dignity. Talk to other souls, soul-to-soul. Meet others soul-to-soul. No matter what you do or have done, remember always who you are and the true power behind your doing. Remember always who others are. Do not let lesser actions deceive you. Do not fall prey to believing others are anything less than who they are: the soul.

* The troubles in our world come from a perceived lack of abundance. May we instead know everything we need can be ours and can be given to everyone. | When we live from a place of scarcity instead of abundance, we live from a place of fear instead of love. Instead of thinking how we can share with others, we think how we must protect ourselves from not having enough. Thus doing, we take too much, creating from our fear our very fears.

* Smile a lot. “It will cure whatever ails you.” | Sometimes, amidst all the thinking, doing, philosophizing of how to live, the simplest remedy for all is a good and unceasing smile shared with others and with self.

* Breathe. Breathe deeply. The love of God is breathing in you.

* All of life is a meditation with the divine.

* You cannot lose that which you give away.

* You teach what you have to learn.

* Success is how much you give. “Life is forgiving, not forgetting.”

* E-V-I-L is L-I-V-E in reverse. | In truth, living is all there is. No need to condemn evil for what it is. It also is.

* Do everything from a place of peace. Channel the subtler emotions.

* All are one. | We all come from the source, the same original thought and star dust. To hurt one is to hurt self. To help one is to help self.

* Tell the truth.

* Do what you say.

* Do what works. | Sometimes the social customs do not work. Nevermind. Do what works.

* Justice is not punishment. | We think of a justice system which punishes, but that is not so. Justice is filling in where the love was lost. If a criminal acts from a place of hate, we do not punish by hating or condemning. We rectify and justify what the criminal has lost: love and nurture.

* Live knowing sufficiency.

* You own nothing. All owns all. “What’s mine is yours.” | We are merely stewards. The best example of this is the air we breathe and the light we see. Always in and out, reflecting all around — shared.

* Spirit creates nature. Man creates machine. | These are but expressions of our creation. One is not good, bad, better, worse than the other. Instead, recognize their distinction.

* Kill no one.

* Make a sanctuary of your home.

* Do not poison yourself.

* Do not compete. | This is to say, do not play games where one person’s victory is at the expense of another’s loss.

* Have unconditional love.

* Use metaphysics. | Do not forget that this world is beyond the physical. Know this and live this.

* Meditation cannot be done. All we can do is set the intention to meditate. | May we merely come as we are. Sit. There, God will meet us.

* If you want to eschew darkness, focus not on the darkness. Focus on the light. | If you want to forgive a bad behavior, focus on the good behavior.

* Coincidences are not coincidences.

* Be mindful of who controls your mind. | Does Fox News control your thinking? Does CNN control your thinking? Does this YouTuber, that author, this friend, that parent all control your thinking? Maybe you want this professor, that teacher, this guide, that saint to control your thinking by programming your mind with more uplifting thoughts. Very well. Just be mindful of who controls your mind.

* . . .

Thank you for servicing this work. It does add value to the world. I echo this because it’s so easy for rain clouds — having watered the lands and dissolved again — to discount their value, so rarely seeing the growth their downpours bring.

I will trust then, that my pouring out of myself to this work has done good. I trust in this because I know that your pouring out of yourselves has done good. I know this because I am a beneficiary of your good, having benefited from working with you. I write this note addressed to every one of us. How special. Not a person here would I exempt, so I need no alternant notes.

We are all rainmakers. I hope the byproducts of our efforts — the thunder, the hail, the pressure, and our constant deliquescence — do not cloud the product: the good.

I’ve surfed but one of this company’s many waves. I’m quick to hear about waves of past. Bigger. Better. But this wave, for everything it was, was my perfect ride, bringing me safely ashore to the next island of my life. Crested, crashed, and the swash upon the beach, it’s time for me to wave goodbye before I’m swept up again by the undertow.

From Quentin 🙂