Our last class was on the basics of meditation and this one is the next round and as I mentioned

in recent years I've been teaching meditation differently and whereas in the old days I had primary

emphasis really on technique, how do we do this? What I found is that far more important than

technique, than skillfulness than the how-to is the quality of our heart, our attitude

and how we approach it. I found that over the years this has been decades and decades now that unless

you like to meditate you won't keep doing it. I know that sounds really like okay but I love

meditating and I've gone through phases where I've done it in a kind of type A way but even then

there was underneath that a profound interest in coming into presence and understanding the

nature of reality and this part of me that just something in me knew that life would be more rich

and full if I could be here more, you know that kind of simplicity. If we go at meditation and

there's attention and there's a sense of should on some level it's going to feed the part of us

that can easily feel like we're falling short. Once again we're not meeting a standard. It's such a

pervasive suffering in us that please if you can bypass that one and approach meditation as this

this incredible gift to your own soul. This way of coming home and you can go at it in whatever

creative way helps you to want to pause for a little bit of time or a lot of time and sense what's

here in this moment. That's simple. So we meditate so that all of life becomes real life.

And that's why we practice. It's not so that we can have a it's not the kind of church on Sunday

thing where we're just get you know doing our time in the morning and then on to regular staff.

I remember hearing that Suzuki Roshi was once asked by a student what you know what he suggested

as end practitioner do with his spare time. So Suzuki first looked really perplexed and then he

repeated the phrase spare time and he repeated again a few times and then he began to laugh

up rarously. There was no answer to the question. You know it's like we're not meditating for any other

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