Hello and welcome to Mindfulness Plus.

My name is Thomas Mekonki. I'm your host.

If you're new to Mindfulness Plus, what we do here is pay attention to how we pay attention.

And you'll find in time that changing the way you pay attention can dramatically change your life.

And as it turns out, paying attention takes practice.

So we do that here on Mindfulness Plus.

I pull in teachings from the wisdom traditions, the east, the west, ancient, modern. And it's usually a good time, I'm told.

So I want to share a little bit of a story that leads into a little bit of a practice we're going to do on this episode.

This is an interesting story. I like to think I have an arsenal of interesting stories as a mindfulness teacher. And this one I say for very special occasions, which is this episode with you right now.

So first, a little background on the word, hallelujah. You hear this in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It's a Hebrew word that

essentially means praise God, praise to the Lord, let us praise the Lord. It's an

invitation to rejoice to really recognize the brilliance and beauty and divinity for

those who have that kind of worldview of the moment.

Hallelujah.

Why do I start by defining the word hallelujah?

Because this is a lesson and this is a practice today on hallelujah.

So zoom back to 2011 fall.

I'd been in China for years.

I decided after my sister's wedding that I'm going to stick around stateside and clear some skeletons out of the closet.

But before I take my traumatic childhood head on, I'm going to stop off at a monastery

for a little while. So I'm at Bodimonda Zen Center. This is in Hames Springs, the northwest corner of

beautiful New Mexico. And I enter into a training period known as Kese.

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