Greetings. We offer these podcasts freely and your support really makes a difference.

To make a donation, please visit tarabrock. Welcome. Thank you for being here. So this is our final session in this

intro series on mindfulness, on heart presence.

I can still remember the moment early on in my first 10-day retreat, mindfulness retreat,

having this sense that this practice, these teachings, can carry me the full way through my whole life is all

I need on a path of awakening love, awakening wisdom.

And it still feels true these many decades later that over these 50 years of practicing that I keep coming back over and over again

to just what we're exploring during these weeks of this introductory program, the very basic

instructions for bringing presence and heart to the moment.

So these last four weeks we've been really looking at the basic elements in formal practice,

you know, the ones that really are done as a deliberate pause from regular activity,

often sitting still, although walking meditation is wonderful also.

But the blessings of this path are found through awakening presence during all of our

activities, all of our moments in daily life. And that's what's going to be our focus today.

There's a Zen master Suzuki Roshi who was asked the question,

what should a Zen practitioner do with his spare time?

And Suzuki, at first he looked perplexed and then he repeated the phrase, spare time.

He said it a few times and then he began to laugh uproarously, you know, like as if all

the moments of our life aren't real life that they don't count.

I often think of this psychologist who went to Las Vegas and then came back with that sign saying,

you must be present to win. Remember that? So it's true. It's true in relationships. We need to be

present to have relationships flower. It's true in work. it's true in play in all parts of our life.

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