I often find that when I have a theme or something I know I'm going to kind of be

exploring in a Dharma talk that inevitably it's something about it brings me to

my own edge in practice as I'm kind of reflecting on it which is why for years I

didn't pick death and dying. So theme tonight has to do kind of carrying forward

from James's wonderful talk last night really going deeper into what does it

mean to embrace the life that's here and I had brought some notes with me to

retreat and had planned to use the afternoon and you know I wave an internet and

on you know my laptop and print out a talk and the internet was down and I

ended up having a meeting I hadn't expected and various other things so

I watched what I think is the essence of what we do which is we forget and then

we remember and then we forget and then we watch the forgetting and going into

this kind of trance of oh no I'm not gonna have it together I'm gonna let people

you know my whole spiral into tightness and anxiety and then wait a minute this is

what I'm talking about I'm talking about being kind or say oh it's okay sweetheart

and then it could be like two minutes later and I'd be back in the same

cycle of turning forgetting so yeah and I just it was really honor in the groups the

beautiful practice I can see here just in two days as we intentionally deepen

our paying attention the seeing of the forgetting and how it happens and how

we get caught in suffering in these cycles and so many have described as one

of their more revealing insights what I call sometimes the tyranny of the judge

this incredibly persistent judging mind that judges forgetting you know as we

forget and we come out of thoughts and along with whatever we're coming back

...