Hello and welcome to another episode of Mindfulness Plus.

I'm your host Thomas McConkey. Thanks so much for listening today.

I record that introduction

fresh every week and I try to say it a little bit differently every time and it's amazing

how much habit energy goes into saying hello and welcome to another episode of Mindfulness Plus.

It's like even if I'm trying to say it differently, I say it the same way I do every week.

But it's nice. There's a little order in this universe, grooves that guide us in our behaviors. That can be a good thing or a bad thing.

Well, that's a good segue into our show today.

We're talking about mindfulness plus.

We're talking about the practice of transformation, of waking up, of growing up, of breaking our hearts open and giving it to the world and selfless service.

I love this topic.

There's a subset of this topic that I want to share today that means a lot to me.

And just to introduce the topic, I want to first acknowledge that we live in a time, this

podcast is one of almost countless examples.

We live in a time where we have the Dharma, we have teachings at our fingertips, we have

invitations to transcend ourselves, to transform in ways that we're just not available

even a decade ago, two decades ago, let alone 2,000 years ago.

It's amazing to me to read about the ancient Chan masters of China.

This is a country I've lived in and a tradition I've studied.

People who yearned to receive teachings, they would wander in the wilderness.

They would trek across the entire country on foot.

They would take up into a monastery during the rainy season because it was too perilous to travel

...