The following talk is given by Tara Brock, meditation teacher, psychologist and author.

Welcome and Namaste. This is the second of two classes that are introducing the basics of meditation.

In the first class we emphasized really over technique the essential element of attitude.

I said in some form that if I watch people over years what makes a difference between those that maybe plateau or get habitual or even drop meditation and those that keep on unfolding and waking up is a quality of a sincerity about practice, a kind of wholeheartedness that it's coming out of a love for waking up, not out of a dutifulness or I should be doing this.

Our others expect me to be doing this or it looks good to be doing this. So attitude and recognizing it's really a path of homecoming that we're practicing to come home to the fullness of who we are so that we really have access to our natural intelligence and openheartedness and creativity and love. It's its homecoming.

There's a story I love about Suzuki Rochi, great Zen teacher and at some point one of his students asked him well as Zen practitioners what is it that we should be doing with our spare time.

And Suzuki Rochi said spare time and then he just started laughing up rurously and that was it spare time. It's really not a church on Sunday kind of path where you compartmentalize and do a practice.

This is really living so that our whole life will be real life. We're not on our way somewhere else or leaving somewhere. Each moment really counts. This moment right now counts as much as any other movement in the world. It's not on the way to the end of a talk or filler.

Each moment is real life. So how does that happen? I mean how is it that we can really pause so that we can hear the sound of the wind and the trees. Those that live in this area we had a lot of wind recently.

Where we listening are see the kind of crystal brilliance of the snow in the light. I really hear the excitement in a child's voice. Are we here for this life?

So the theme tonight will be kind of exploring is bringing alive mindfulness in this second introductory class and really understanding that it affluos is every part of our life and particularly our relationships with each other.

This is attributed to Einstein although who knows says if you're driving safely and kissing a girl you're simply not giving the kiss the attention it deserves.

So we practice so that we're holy here for our life including the losing of life so we have a way to hold this living dying world.

And I think when I say that of a teacher who wrote some beautiful words as she was nearing her death and I wanted to share them with you.

My days are short and as I grow weaker I experience so much gratitude for my meditation not only the joy and ease it brought but the hard parts for every board and restless sitting and every fearful fantasy and every pain and itch I sat through and every itch I didn't scratch was a training for kindness.

A training for the muscle for bearing witness for the trusting spirit that carries me now as I face my death.

So we practice to live fully to love fully to discover that quality of timelessness and presence that really can hold our world.

There's a short reading from the desert fathers that I think is illuminating and a novice ask is there anything I can do to make myself enlightened and the responses as little as you can do to make the sunrise in the morning.

So the novice says then what use are these spiritual exercises that you're having me practice the response is to make sure you're not asleep when the sun begins to rise.

So it's as I it's kind of as I said last class that enlightenment is an accident practice makes us accident prone you know makes us available.

Last week I shared a line from the poet Rumi which I think can be a kind of container for our exploring which is do you make regular visits to yourself.

And I think if we're honest we know that we fixate on things and we obsess on things and we might notice when we're upset but we don't make the kind of visits of bringing a real friendliness to you.

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