Garma talks about seven tools or factors or skills that are necessary to achieve any degree of awakening or

liberation from suffering.

And the problem with having an important

darma idea that has seven factors to it is that it kind of sucks because to give a talk about

seven different skills isn't possible to do well but if you drag it out over seven talks, it's really firken boring.

I have to use firken because sometimes the stuff gets played on small radio stations and they get in trouble with the FCC when I curse.

I am a New York jubu, that's a Jewish Buddhist, and we love to curse, but they take my favorite thing to do right out of my...

All right, I have to focus.

So, seven factors.

One of the seven you do, I'm just going to summarize them really quickly, one of the seven is

done, is suggested to practice all the time, and that's called Sati. Sati is roughly translated as the word

mindfulness. It really means internal awareness knowing at every given stage of life whether you're

talking with someone whether you're eating whether you're watching TV whether you're going to work whether you're taking a

shower whether you're waiting for train every moment of life having some idea

how does your breath feel is the body do you feel

comfortable or uncomfortable what mood are you in what kind of thoughts are present in mind.

So that's what we're asked to do all the time.

If you think about like a rowboat with three oars on the left and three

oars on the right, mindfulness or internal awareness would be the boat itself. You have to stay in the boat. So that's the practice we do all the time,

developing internal awareness. But then there are the three factors that cultivate inner peace. Those three factors are one, being

able to focus the mind on something like we did the first part of the meditation so it could be

the breath or sounds or meta phrase or focus the mind on something. 2. Use whatever you're focusing the mind on to develop tranquility.

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