Welcome back to Practicing Human. This is the podcast where every day we're getting a little better at life.

I am your host, Corey Muscarra, and in today's episode I'm going to talk about how all of your experience of life is nothing more than six things, and why understanding this can be incredibly liberating.

More to come on that cliffhanger in a moment, but first, let's settle in with the sound of the bells.

I'll ring them, you listen, let the sound bring your attention to a more refined quality of presence. Okay, so I'm going to start this episode by sharing a very famous talk given by a very famous meditation teacher. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. His name was

Buddha and this talk that he gave is often considered one of the shortest but most powerful talks he ever gave.

And the story goes that a bunch of monks were sitting in a room.

He came in, gave this talk, and then left without saying anything.

And everyone was there sort of scratching their heads.

So I'm going to read it to you, and then we're going to explore the wisdom in it. The talk is called the all, a-l-l and it goes like this. The eyes and sights, the e and sounds, the nose and smells, the tongue and

flavors, the body and sensations, the mental activity.

This is the all.

Now imagine if I just shared this with you and then ended the episode, walked out,

and left you to explore what is this to mean? Well, I don't think we could fully understand it without first taking into consideration the title of it,

the all. The reason this is called the all is because The all of your experience of your experience of life. In every moment there are sights there are sounds there are smells there are flavors

There are sensations and then there's the mind's mental activity in relationship to all of it.

This is the awe and the Buddhist claim and I will stand behind this based on my own experience and exploration is that there is

nothing else to your experience of life this is it this is all of it, in every single moment. It can all be reduced to these six main categories,

sights, sounds, smells, flavors, sensations, and mental activity.

So as you're sitting right now,

see if you can drop into the truth of this. Not something that you're going to take a face value, but really

explore it for yourself. What is here? If you can see there's what you're seeing. Since you're

listening to this, I'm assuming you can hear,

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