Spotkanie naszej sanghi z gościem specjalnym Delsonem Armstrogimem.

I think I don't need to introduce, but this is Delson Armstrong. The guys, you know it, but I just give you the floor to you, and if you can just share a few words about you, my sangha knows you and knows your videos. Yeah, I always recommend you as a really good teacher, and we have the same way of teaching meditation, so we feel like part of a family, even though we are here in Europe and not in the US. So, the floor to you.

Thank you. Yeah, it's nice to see everyone here. Yeah, so you probably know who I am and what I do, but basically I've been teaching meditation, TWIM practice, Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation, since 2020, meditation since the last 20 years or so. And I've had training in yoga and Vedanta and Tantra and many other things. But I'm primarily focused on Brahmavihara practice and teaching that, because I see how effective it is for people to get a very still mind. And with the still mind, it's possible to then experience some very interesting states. So that's who I am and that's what I'm about.

Thank you for this introduction. To be honest, I don't have any plan for today. We usually have a meditation at the beginning, but I just spoke with people and we commonly share that it would be really good to talk more and use this occasion. And I don't know if you prepared something, or you want to just have a talk, give a talk, or receive a question for us, because we also have questions for you. So let me know what is the most comfortable way to lead this meeting for you.

Yeah, I think, probably, for the next hour, we can probably just go over some questions because you guys have probably seen my Dhamma talks, and you have access to many of my talks and meditations and things like that. It might be a good opportunity to think about some questions that you've been wanting to ask and discuss. So let's do that. Let's do a Q&A. Okay, Q&A. So, ludziska, ktoś pierwszy? No. Okay. Ja mam dużo pytań. Ale dobra, Andrzej, ty pierwszy. Dawaj, Marzena, pierwsza. Okay, so let's go. So I had some thoughts about this meeting. And of course, I'm listening to your Dhamma talks. Of course, they are just great.

And first of all, thank you for being here, because it's a great pleasure and honor. And I think everybody of us thinks the same. But to the point, I was wondering, not to talk too much, because I am known for that. But what is my main problem with sitting? It's like, I know a bit of jhanas. I have access to these states and so.

But I think it's not unusual, but I always come to the point during meditation that I get this strange fear, you know? The heart is beating fast and so. It's like I'm always wondering, something's going to happen, something's going to happen in a moment, I don't know what, you know? And I'm always getting stressed, and what to do about this? What to do? Is there anything I can do? So I have a few questions for you. Number one is, when you're doing your practice, how do you start your practice? How do you start the sitting, and what is your object of meditation there?

Like, at the beginning it was like meta, so I was... Yeah, it was meta, but... Later on, when I'm like, you know, sitting for a year or so, I started to do nothing. Like, I'm only sitting with this, what comes to me, and trying to, you know, accept this. just like this and it's getting me to the to the genres um have you have you done um radiating in the six directions yes and now it's like you know from time to time now it's it's like my mind is deciding on its own when to start radiate so i don't it's like i don't decide anymore you know it's like and going from time to time not always okay and so when you say that you you wait until the intention comes for radiating how when does that happen does that happen you know in the middle of the meditation does it happen fairly quickly does it take some time

I would say it happens very quickly. Well, I'm grateful for something, or for nothing, it comes and starts automatically. Okay. So the reason I'm asking these questions is to understand where you're starting, so then you know what's going on as you get to these spaces. First of all, for anybody who is experiencing the thumping of the heart or these kinds of situations, first you should know it's not a panic attack, it's nothing wrong with the practice, it's nothing wrong with you. It's just that as your mind gets quieter and quieter, these things become more apparent. They become more visible in the mind, they become more tangible in the mind, and what happens is the sense of self, the ego structure, starts to collapse. You're getting deeper.

And because of that, the sense of self is grappling, is gripping as best as possible. And the best way to do that is to create a sense of fear, which creates some kind of anxiety, creates some kind of discomfort in the form of the heart or breathing or other things like that. So the way to deal with it, if you're not able to just see through that this is just the self doing this and be able to just let it go by relaxing, if that's not happening, then my suggestion is actually to take a step back, one step before.

And my recommendation is to start with equanimity, if you are familiar with the feeling of equanimity, and to actually start radiating that for some time until the mind gets to nothing again, and then relax and not do anything. Okay, yeah, thank you. Yeah, I need to add that, you know, what I teach here is mostly a backcraft style, so most people know them, the metta, but I think most people practise rather just relaxing, interest into the stuff, and practising metta too. So that's for a better understanding of the context of how we practise here. But everyone knows metta, of course.

Yes, of course. We have spent a lot of time radiating metta. Yeah. And if we want to ask about something, I have a question from the students. Błażej, maybe your question will be now. So I'm going to ask. Okay. The question is: translating is really difficult for me. The question sounds like that: how to not do meditation and avoid getting tense and headache when I meditate, because when I'm using 6R, it's tiresome for me and it's like not leading to calm of mind. As I need, ask me and I'm going to translate if there is a language problem.

Okay. Yeah. So the first part of the question was doing-nothing meditation. I was trying to figure out what that is. The question is really good: how to stop doing meditation? Yeah. Because it's tiresome when we do meditation. So the question is how to stop doing meditation. Yeah. Well, you know, first of all, we should understand no matter how strong our intention is for something, it will only last for a little while, by nature of the fact that everything is conditioned, and we can't always keep the same conditions for everything in our practice.

So trying to stop meditation, or stop doing meditation, doesn't happen just because you intend it. It can happen for a while. But the idea is always relaxing, right? I mean, there is a space in your practice where there's a, you can say, an awareness or something in the background that is aware of everything else that's going on. If you can find that space behind everything else and relax into that, then you're not doing meditation. The meditation is just happening. Control, you trying to do something, or trying to stop the meditation, or trying to even be in that background awareness, it's about relaxing into it. It's like being able to see the things that are coming up.

And you don't need to 6R completely. You can just see it and relax. Relax is the essential key here, the process of relaxing. The one thing that I like to use is called drops. This was also developed by Bhante Vimalaramsi. Don't resist or push, soften and smile. So whatever you are seeing that comes up, you're not resisting it, you're not pushing it, you're not doing anything with it, you're just softening. What does it mean to soften?

On a physical level, you know when you have a fist that's very tight, as soon as you let go, you relax, that tension goes away. And so the key there is to notice the tension, volition and intention to just soften it. That is the essential right effort. Anything else where you want to construct an experience, or you want to stop doing an experience, is still coming from an intention rooted in the me and mine. But the right intention, when we talk about the traditional understanding of the Eightfold Path, is about letting go, is about relaxing. And so if you want to be in a space where no... Błażej, did you understand? I told you exactly what I wrote on this question.

Don't use the steps, just relax yourself. So don't try to keep your intention, but just relax yourself, because all the ability to relax yourself. If you try to do a lot of steps, you just construct your experience. It's exactly what I wrote. Jeden krok, relax, just relax, nothing more. Okay, thank you. Okay, okay. So anybody... I wonder, sorry, me again. I wonder if it will be a personal one: if you ever had hard times in meditation, like these, as they say, dark nights, and did you get any knowledge out of this, or how did you manage? Do we have to do something with this, because it happens, it's fluctuating? Yes, all the time. It's better, and we're... You know, yeah, this is a good question.

From my own experience, what I've seen is the more we resist the unpleasant experience, the worse it becomes. The moment we are not okay with the experience, let's say it's a dark night experience or something like that, the more we try to stop it, the more we try to do something with it, back on us. If you think about a lot of situations, the other day I was reading a book, Power of Now by Eckhart Tolle. In the beginning, he talks about his own experience where he was on a park bench. And I think he experienced something similar to a dark night, where he was in a very, for many weeks or many days, he was under depression.

He was experiencing an overwhelm of depression, depressive feelings, but he didn't do anything with it. He just questioned it. He just saw, where is it coming from? Who is it? And then after some time, it just fell away. And what was replaced with it was a sense of relief and joy. If you look at the example of the Buddha, where he goes through, in the traditional story, the daughters of Mara coming to him and then the armies of Mara attacking.

That's a symbol for the dark night coming up, trying to challenge our mind, let's say. And then being able to just be present and not doing anything. Because the more we try to fight it, the more it pushes back. There is an interesting quote by a guy named R. Buckminster Fuller, inventor and scientist. And it's a very good quote because it applies to practice. It applies to even Buddhism. And it is: you don't change the existing reality by fighting it.

Instead, you put a new model in its place so that the old one becomes obsolete. So the thing that led to the dark night is just passing through the mind. And the moment we fight it, it persists. The model in its place, which is to be passive, to be relaxed, and to keep your mind as open as it can be to more wholesome objects. I myself haven't really experienced any kind of dark night. I've experienced some anxiety in the past, and what I've noticed is when you have anxiety or any kind of anxiety attack or panic attack, the first thing to do is to notice what's in the room, because when you do that you are now being more present with what's going on. As you become more present, your mind starts to relax on its own automatically, and then you have better manageability of the anxiety or the panic. Thanks. Okay, what do we resist? Just persist. Anxiety, if I can, when you are talking about anxiety, about panic attack, it's something that happens now in a short time, for example, I don't know, a few minutes, yes?

But my present experience is anxiety, which is my constant. Yes. And I'm very disappointed, because after about a year of meditation, I was thinking that it's far away and it's gone. And I know that few of us in our Sangha have this anxiety, feelings, fear from time to time. So it's not only about me. It's something constant. Yes. And I'm sitting, and I'm trying to meditate. It's growing up, it starts to be everywhere. Yes, it's like a panic attack. Yes, but it's something constant. Yes. When I'm eating I feel it. When I'm talking with somebody, with my husband for example, there is a feeling, me, and it's constant. Yes. What do I have to do with it? So my question about that is what is the cause of the anxiety, what brings up the anxiety? Actually, this, you have to look. I don't know, really. It just happened. Yes, maybe some problems, some stresses, etc., some problems with my health. But it just happened.

Yeah, but if you investigate into it and look into it, generally what do we mean by anxiety? The anxiety means that we're waiting for something to happen. There's an expectation of something to happen in the future. In other words, anxiety is about, oh, what could happen? Anxiety arises, which is like, anything bad could happen at any point, and that expectation, or that looking into the future, or when we're just even sitting in meditation. This is the thing: meditation is not a tool. It should not be considered as a tool to deal with anxiety or with depression. In fact, meditation is only about

understanding how our mind works so that we develop wisdom that liberates us from the cause of the suffering. So in this case, if you reframe the whole thing and you see that the anxiety is the suffering. So if you think of it from the Four Noble Truths model, which is there is suffering, there's a cause for it, a way in which there's relief from it, and there's a way that leads to the relief. So if you use that as your diagnosis for your own self, as a way of understanding, first you understand that there is this anxiety that comes up. What is the cause of that anxiety? Why is it coming up? Is there a certain habit that the mind has of looking to the future or expecting something to happen?

And can you let that go? Some relief, because I'm sure at some points in the meditation you're probably experiencing some relief from that anxiety, and if you are, you have to look back and see what did you do that let you see what was the cause, or what did you do that let you let go of in that moment. And generally speaking, you have to see if your mind is overthinking about things, if your mind is going in different directions, or if it's able to stay present with what is going on here and now. So what happens in your mind in this present moment? Just reflect on that. Right now, in this moment, what is going on in your mind?

Yeah. We'll be polite if I add some commentary to your... Because I've got lots of experience. When you see anxiety, and this has really helped me in the past, was seeing the sensation of anxiety, to just go into the sensation and see the sensation without the stories, because it's stories like a loop of karma. There is a sensation, faults, and more sensation, and there is a loop. Just a cut, the loop, to go into sensation and see sensation as it is. It's the same as what Delson said, but I'm just trying to phrase it in different words. And seeing the sensation, because sensation is not permanent. It's just changing all the time. And when you can see, we can see that this is just unpleasant feeling.

And if you just go really into it, it starts to be just a sensation. And for me, what was keeping me in this loop of anxiety for a long time was, I don't know, it's for me it's the same, because for me anxiety is this. It's a brother, or the serb brother, or whatever we call it, doubt, because when the anxiety arises, you immediately, I don't know which is doubt or anxiety is first, but you immediately doubt that you overcome it. Oh, it's staying, it's not going. And when you can see this doubt too, and just relax into that, the mind starts to get some confidence to go, to cut this.

Because when I saw this first time, I was like, what was relieved to seeing that my problem was like being in a loop of doubting because of anxiety, and I was creating all the time the sensations. And when I saw the doubt, I just immediately, doubt, there's anxiety, and I relax into it. It was helping me. Thank you. I have a question from Ania. So the question sounds like that: the crucial moment where we can break the wheel of suffering is the gap between feeling, vedana, and craving, tanha.

When something unpleasant happens to me in daily life, an automatic contraction, discomfort or tension instantly arises in my body. Momentarily, my mind reacts with anger or resistance, and suffering is created. Discomfort is appearing, but the anger hasn't erupted yet. How can I effectively apply relaxation right there? Okay, a couple of things. One, you have to understand that, yes, this is right, that in the moment you capture the experience of the mind identifying with the feeling, then craving and clinging and so on comes up, so that gap is crucial. Very important, absolutely. But look at what I just said, which is the identification with the experience. You see, when we have real mindfulness of every moment, every given moment, then there is a flow that's happening. The moment you see there is a gap in that flow, that's when you're able to come back. You see, when you see the tension or you see the contraction, another kind of gap in the flow, and then when you see the anger, that's another kind of thing. First of all, you should be okay with the anger coming up.

You see that we're making the problem the anger, and we're identifying with the anger. If you treat anger as just another impersonal sensation, that this anger doesn't belong to me, then it's less about whether the anger comes or not, and it's more about: am I identifying with the experience? Am I identifying with the emotion and being able to let that go?

So it's okay whether you find yourself catching the contraction or catching the moment when the mind identifies with the experience, or catching it when the anger comes. The suffering is not the anger. The suffering is you having a problem with the anger. And if you change your perspective and see anger as just an impersonal process and let it go, then it goes from, oh, here is this big anger, to, oh, it's just this anger here, I can just let it go. One question more from number six. Okay, this is the question. Tradition like Dzogchen speaks of the mind resting in its own pure nature, rikpa, pure awareness. How does this state, when the mind simply is pure, unconditioned awareness?

Awareness free from concept, look, from the perspective of early Buddhism and the practice you teach, what needs to happen in the relaxation process, or what other techniques should be applied, for the mind to simply rest in itself, meaning pure awareness? Really good question. Yeah, that's a very good question. So in early Buddhism this is known as, in Pali, and this is also translated as luminous mind. So the Buddha has said in Anguttara Nikaya, I think it's probably the first, the Book of Ones, where he says, luminous is the mind, but because of defilements the mind becomes covered. And so our job is to uncover the natural luminosity of the mind. Self-luminous mind, right, without empty of any kind of personalizing.

Now, in order to get there, there are a few things you can do. This is what I talk about as the three gates of liberation. There is something known as the signless, the undirected, and the empty. And to realize this, one has to first, in order to get the signless, understand impermanence. That means any object that I finally take up is impermanent, so you let go of holding on to anything, even the concept of a luminous mind. The second is the suffering, the true characteristic of suffering or dukkha, that any intention I take ultimately will lead to suffering, because even if I bring up something that's wholesome, once I let go of that, it's gone.

So there is suffering in the fact that that happy state is gone. So I stop directing my mind anywhere. And then the third is realizing that ultimately any kind of control, any sense of identification with an experience, is going to cause further suffering, is going to cause an attachment that is a wrong kind of attachment. And so to be unattached is the experience of anatta, to see that all experience is ultimately empty of any structure of an ego. So I let go of that completely.

By doing that, my mind experiences what in Pali is known as vinnanam anidassanam, the non-reflective awareness. This is known as nibbanic consciousness, the awareness that is touched and made contact with nibbana. So that is the same as Rigpa. It's the letting go of any identification, letting go of any object, not because you just let go completely. It's because of the insight, the knowing that this object is ultimately impermanent, that any intention is ultimately leading to suffering, and that all things are impersonal.

When I have this understanding at a deep level, into Rigpa. Okay. So it's like being in an objectless awareness. It's like non-meditation to be... That's it. That's exactly it. And I have a question to you, because this is really interesting, because I was thinking about this vinnanam anidassanam, because recently I just recall I was missing something, and because the vinnana is divided knowledge. And I miss this. I know it, but I missed this. And I got, yeah, vinnana is divided knowledge. And this is my question to you, because non-reflective awareness, vinnanam anidassanam, for me, means like non-dual?

Yes, that's exactly it. It's non-dual. So vinnana is like, it's not in all cases, but we could just, in the chain of dependent origination, we can just understand vinnana like dual. Yes. Yes. So it's like, it's like, yes. I'm stupid. After many years, I got this: vinnana is dual and non- Right. And so another way of looking at vinnana as being dual is that jnana, which is the pure knowledge, is without subject and without object.

Yeah. So that's the non-dual aspect. So this is something I want to point out to everyone with regards to Rigpa or vinnanam anidassanam or anything, is that we still have a concept in the mind of what that looks like. You see, when I told you guys about the three gates of liberation, and when I said that, you know, letting go of any object, there is a concept in your mind of what that means. There is a concept in your mind of what objectless awareness means, in your mind of what undirected means, right? So then what happens is objectless awareness becomes an object.

Undirected intention becomes an intention. And being free of emptiness becomes a base for the self to be. So very important to catch the mind before it goes into that dualistic space of vinnana. And just don't do anything at all. Just the realization of these three, and then not attaching any concept to it, that is the non-conceptual Rigpa, that is the non-conceptual mind, the jnana mind. Instead of the vinnana, it's the jnana, which means wisdom. That's it. Yes, this is dual. It's just dualistic. It's embarrassing that I was missing at this point. We translate vinnana like consciousness in English. It's like it's awareness. But the meaning is like divided. So it's like dual. That's the problem when we just learn this, because English is not my first language.

And sometimes I miss the point. And after years, I realized something very simple that I was missing. Yes, this is because I was reflecting about sanna and vinnana anidassanam, because previously I got the experience that when the perception is gone, sometimes there is still... I was feeling that this is a perception too, so in almost pure awareness you still can just feel separation, and I was thinking that this is the part of, and I was missing this point, because this is vinnana, not sanna. Sanna is just labeling, and then I was, oh, this is it, because divided knowledge. So vinnana and sanna is not this, this is pure awareness. And it's embarrassing, but I'm sure that's true.

We are laughing, you know, because Andrzej was to translate something for Jurek. He went to English. I have this intuition, as you were talking about explaining this, like still when you're sitting, this intention still you see, when you're sitting you have these expectations, yes, and as I, from my experience, like I got to see this non-duality only by sitting, and when everything collapses, like you, you can get this inside here, and as for me is the only way to understand it, like to see it, because

Like with your mind. Yeah, I know what you're talking about. I do understand it. But like without sitting, you cannot get there. Yeah? No. Am I right? That's right. You need to have a mind where you can relax and sit and reflect on what's being said, and then observe what happens when the mind makes that turn and makes that move. And then catch the mind before it makes it into another object.

Yeah. And then once you're stable in it, then that can become the background experience that saturates your lived experience. You can actually bring that into everything that you're doing. You can speak from there. You can act from there. You can do whatever it is from there, with the sense of I being completely attached. So there's no doer. There's no speaker. There's no experiencer. There is just a flow that happens. But first we must sit and reflect and see that for ourselves. - Yeah. - Yeah, we need some practice, practice, practice, practice. - Yeah. - And then don't have a problem with having self, sense of self, because this is, as it arises, it's just natural, and just seeing.

And then you have, like, being in two places at the same time. You are still here. You have a sometimes less or more sense of self. Sometimes it's completely gone. Sometimes it's, you know, more tense. But still, in the background, you can just feel it, this place, and it's not about grabbing something, it's just knowing your true nature. It's knowing who you are or who you're not, yeah, or something between. Generally you can't understand it by your intellectual mind. You need to just feel it. Yeah, feel it.

So then a question can arise from someone. Then why are we practicing? What is the purpose of practice? What is the purpose? Because that's always there, right? That space, that jnana, that non-dual space, is always there. We just have to uncover it. So the question is, then why do we have to go through jhanas? Or why do we have to do any practice of brahmaviharas? Or why do we have to even sit?

Has anybody reflected on that question? Any reason, any idea why we do that? Because it's covered somehow by, right, by I don't know, tensions, I don't know, but it's covered. It's covered. But why do we actually do the act of meditating itself? What is the purpose of it? Why do we do meditations, if it is already there? Because the idea is like a drama to the consciousness. The idea is a drama to the consciousness, like a guide to pure awareness.

Yeah, in reality, there is only one mind. In reality, the experience of the absolute is that there is actually no mind. It's beyond mind. And the thing is, our lives are lived in the mind. Now, that does not mean that there is no objective reality out there. There is a consensus reality of what is the color red and the color green, and what is this and what is that, rules and so on and so forth, and that there is this body and the nervous system and so on. When you talk about mind itself, we are experiencing everything through the mind. Right now, when you're listening to me, you're listening from the filter of this mind. But what kind of mind is it? You can think of it as the pure mind, which is the luminous mind, that Rigpa as one element, but the covering. That is the filter with which you experience reality, with which you experience the world.

And the identification with that mind is what causes the suffering. Now, when we do the practice of meditation, like when we're going through metta, or we're sending out metta in the different directions, and we stay on one object, and then we go through the jhanas, let's say, or we go through very refined states, to occupy, to make busy that filtering mind so that it finally rests, and what is revealed automatically is the luminous mind. So it's like throwing the bone to the dog so he can keep playing with it until it becomes tired and rests. So we're just keeping that mind busy until it rests on its own. It's some kind of bio-hacking, it's a mind-hacking, right?

Exactly, exactly. And the only reason I bring this up is so that we don't take the meditation so seriously, so we make it into a game. It is an exercise of hacking the mind, the filtered mind, so that the luminous mind can shine on its own. That's it. Eventually, the filtered mind becomes less and less and less present as we become more and more and more stabilized in the luminous mind.

And that's the real practice, is to bring that luminosity into everything that we do, in everyday experience, in everyday life. That's the actual practice. But I had to rethink what was said right now, because it was something big. Because I'm wondering why are we doing this sometimes, and what are the practices, and what other ideologies are doing, like yoga, for example. Because Buddhism seems to treat everything as impersonal and impermanent.

But yogi seems to have something which is self. So what do I consider by self? Are you familiar with the Yoga Sutras, or have you heard of the Yoga Sutras? Just a little bit. The Yoga Sutras are the prime text for the practice of yoga. There are four chapters, and in those four chapters are many different statements. You can even boil it down to two main statements. The first statement is yoga chitta vritti nirodha. In Sanskrit this means yoga is the cessation of all movement of the mind. The second is tada drashtu swarupam avastam, which means then the true nature of self is seen.

To me, I don't see this as different from what we are talking about. If you look at what the Yoga Sutras are saying, the fluctuations of the mind is the filtering mind, is the covering. And the true nature of self is the luminous mind. That's it. It's just that they have attached the senses. Wow, that's great. That's a great explanation. Thank you very much. Yoga mówi o tym, że yoga to zatrzymanie ruchów umysłu, więc jak zatrzymasz ruchy umysłu, to poznasz to, czym jest prawdziwe ja, więc generalnie to wskazuje na to, że te ruchy umysłu to jest ten umysł, o którym rozmawiamy, ten filtrujący, ten mind, a poniżej jest rikpa, czyli czysta świadomość, czyli w zasadzie on mówi, odnosi się do tego samego po prostu.

Thank you. Here we are, which represent our entire conditioned world and suffering. So to put it simply, could we say that karma creates the world? It's the practice you teach about silencing this wind of karma so that the waves subside and only the pure, undisturbed ocean of awareness, pure awareness, remains. Good analogy. It's a very good image that she's brought up, and I will say that I tend to agree with what she has said, with one exception, which is that the quietness of the mind is always there. The wind, the ripples, the waves in the mind, the fluctuations, will come and go. So the practice really is to be in that space that's in the depths of the ocean, which remains untouched by the wind that's up there.

We cannot control whether the wind comes and goes. And that's really what karma is. We can't control what kind of karma comes up. But we can control, so to speak, our reaction or our response to the karma. So if our reaction causes more ripples, then we have suffering. But if we are acting from the depths of the ocean, humanist mind, then it's not that we're stopping the wind, it's that the fluctuations don't have any effect.

We are able to experience karma however it comes without adding more to the fluctuations, without adding more intensity to the karma, to the wind. So it's not about dealing with karma as a form of eradicating it. It's a form of dealing with karma in such a way that we're no longer identifying with it. And through non-identification, it disappears and doesn't come back again. Said to her that you answered this question because I didn't ask about this, but he was also asking. She was also asking about how to stop the karma, but I've already heard the answer. But if you can say maybe more about it, how to stop the karmic... It's an interesting question, because the question assumes that there is somebody who is stopping the karma, and that's what continues to Anja. It's about letting go of the person who is experiencing the karma, and the karma has nothing to hold on to, and it disappears.

Thank you very much. Our daily life, non-attachment. Very good question. How do we practice non-attachment in daily life? The only way to do that is through having awareness in everything that we do. Oftentimes what happens is when we get caught up in the activity or the action of what we're doing, we don't have full awareness. We think we do, but actually what we have is concentration. There is a difference between concentration and awareness.

Concentration means we become very focused and one-pointed with the experience. Awareness has a very light experience of just being present with whatever is happening. When we have that present or presence of mind, it's easy to catch when the mind starts to contract towards attachment, and we let go. So to practice non-attachment means that we are just practicing to see when the mind is taking something personally, and letting that go. And that is the practice that's ongoing all the time in our daily life.

Eventually, we have fewer things that we become personalized to, that we become identified with. And then those things are seen, and then we let those go. And at some point, the mind is able to notice that even the action of letting go is an illusion. It's a person that's letting go. So there are levels to this. First, what we do is we become aware of everything that we're doing, and then we let go of those things that cause us the attachment. Then letting go of the desire to let go, thinking that it has an effect on someone. That is ultimate non-attachment, where we don't have to do anything at all, not because there's nothing to do, but because we see through the illusion of doing something.

So the attitude, the intention with which we act, is that this is just a process, that this is just something that is being done. We do it because we're motivated by the fruit or the benefit of what we're doing. And that's why we do it. And that's why we get attached to it. But if we see the action itself as just a process, then we don't care about whether the reward is there or not. That's the true reason for identification: I only do something because it will get me something, or it will take me away from what I don't want.

But if I'm no longer bound by this or that, or pushing away something, then the action just becomes karma that is exhausted, and that's the best kind of action. So that's non-attachment: it is just seeing through the process of identifying and letting it go. It sounds like wu-wei. Yeah, yeah. Okay, thank you. If someone doesn't know, it way is, doing without the doing... I don't know how to translate it. It's from a towel. Yeah, it's okay. I just want to remind you, you guys, that we still have places for a retreat in October with Larson. So this is the time for advertisement.

I'm going to advertise our retreat in Poland. Some of you guys are already signed up for this retreat. So if we want to, and maybe someone who is going to see this video, please just send the message. What do you need to find under this video below? We are welcome for this retreat in Poland. I just thank you for you. It was lovely having you here in our Sangha for conversation, because many of us were watching you for a long time on YouTube, and it was wonderful to talk about Dhamma and have your wisdom here. So I thank you for your wisdom. Thank you.