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

To make a donation, please visit tarabrock.com. So I've been reflecting about how on every continent and through history, people have been doing what we're doing.

They've been gathering, sometimes not in a Unitarian church, a bunch of people, you know,

but they've been gathering and

intentionally quieting, intentionally listening to their hearts, to their minds, just being

present. It's not a big percentage of people. Not everybody thinks it's the way to spend

an evening, but more and more and it's getting so much more attention. So it's

an exciting time. And if we really investigate, you know, what is it that motivates us to

do these kinds of practices? I like the way one teacher put it, Mnindraji. He was asked, you know,

why he practiced and he said, well, it's so that when I walk into town I'll notice

the tiny purple flowers by the side of the road. He says it's to live the life fully

and to really know who we are.

And I think the image of the Bodhi tree in the Buddhist mythology is a powerful one

because it quite simply has to do with the sacred pause, with just stopping,

stopping our busy tumbling into the future, do you know what I mean?

Just stopping and deepening our attention to what's right here.

And there's an understanding that it's really only in this full presence that we can feel love. It's like love is nowhere else.

It's only when we're present. We can have ideas about it. But the visceral sense is right here.

And same with creativity or joy. So there's a kind of commitment to presence and an understanding that when we can

stop and arrive, our lives then flow from presence. It's not about being inactive. It's

like the way we speak and the way we engage, it flows from that presence. A famous Zen teacher, Suzuki Roshi,

said that on the fourth day of Shashin, that's a retreat,

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