Have you ever made a mountain out of a molehill? Sometimes we have intense reactions when we are blind-sided by emotions that are stuffed. It’s like claws around your heart, and what do we do? We try to stop it. We have reactions that reinforce the sense of separation. Whatever is triggered needs to be played out in awareness. If you sit enough, your awareness that is not phenomena will begin to see what this actually is. Find out who you are, make friends with yourself deeply.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtHHyaaXzm4

“Well, I’m never going to get this right!”, “What problem?”, “I should be doing something else”, “It’s my fault/their fault”, etc. You could live your whole life trapped in incessant comments. You don’t have to get rid of them, just listen. Every time you sit, you’re prioritizing the witnessing part of your consciousness. Endeavor to look and see how much of the language coming out of our thought patterns is just ego rhetoric. To realize this is liberation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V91hxrU8QgE

In this dharma talk, Sokuzan gives more examples of Alternating Sense Awareness Practices (ASAPs) to support meditation as awareness practice on the cushion and as a way to help liberate your mind from subconscious gossip in your everyday life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_9ORXYMaXI

Horizontal thoughts are looking to elaborate, looking for reference points, what’s right, what’s wrong, gossip... it’s conversation like “What do you think about what I think about what you’re thinking I’m thinking?” Vertical thoughts are looking at that kind of structure and by training the mind to sit still and watch what moves eventually starting to recognize that the thoughts are just showing up in open space. They begin to transcend the self-centered mind. When that occurs the thoughts actually come and help you in your life.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMAkTEf_n4I

Meditation IS action. It is exercising the muscle of awareness and it shows up in your daily activity described in this dharma talk as three levels: 1. You sit every day, holding still with all the senses open and empower the meditation in action that is subtle. Your mind is more spacious, you are more likely to give others the benefit of the doubt. 2. You’ve been meditating a while and you have a personal crisis that comes out of nowhere but since your awareness is strengthening you can accommodate more difficulties. 3. Meditation IS action that is your preparation for death. It is seeing that who you really are can’t die. It is good to practice when you’re not confronted with something that is overwhelming. Don’t learn to ski in a snowstorm.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMalsk7OQrM

The initial insight that shows up as a thought or emotion may have a fair amount of clarity about what this is. But the ego mind, the grasping and judging, is looking for reification of its understanding and replaces the initial clarity. As soon as we step out of just this into something about this, we abandon the very insight that was arising. When you meditate it is your opportunity to witness your karma as it is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJa6h81wvKQ

Our awakened nature is receiving everything, everywhere, all the time without distinction. Our seeing it is crowded by concepts based on hoping things will get better and fear that things will get worse. The conceptual mind is a good tool, but it tends to be over used. When we over use the conceptual mind, this becomes an opinion. If you have to back up into an opinion, you’ve renounced your intelligence.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWsYAyURbMY

Just because we impute a self to the five skandhas: form, feeling perception, concepts and consciousness, does not mean you’re going to find someone there. You’ll find something to name, of course, we’re here, but we are not inherently existent, and that’s the frightening thing to ego. Look at something see if you can retreat a little bit, see if you can back out of your tendency to go right into it and start naming what you think it is. Because of the very fundamental nature of trying to find inherent existence it shows up as not finding and not finding to the self-centeredness feels like losing. From the point of these teachings, the not finding is the no self.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M7ysc1hAk4

How to make decisions. Start by not making any decisions. Don’t set yourself up to buy into fixation on right or wrong based on hope and fear. “I gotta make the right decision” is a set up for disappointment on some level based on our presumption of control that covers up the actual control.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3qFTgCwAc4

The expression “Enlightened Society” comes from Sokuzan’s teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and is now carried on by his son, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche. It is the endeavor to take the teachings of the Buddha, the teachings of generosity, consideration and respect for others, into society that functions in a sane, healthy and uplifted way so that people coming to join can work with their minds in a space of no warfare.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GVi_1zOOmo