True Letting Go

Hello, everyone. Hope everyone's doing well tonight. So first time meditation. May I ask how it was for you? Amazing. Was it good? Peaceful. Was it beneficial? Awesome. Yeah. So there are many types of meditations. The meditation we practice here is to train our minds to be present and to be open. So mindfulness, in another word, is open awareness. I like to call it open-hearted awareness. You've heard mindfulness before, right? Yeah. Mindfulness, another definition is to pay attention. to present moment non-judgmentally.

The way I like to put it is to keep a watch on ourself. Maintaining the awareness of ourself with open heart. So I've heard from the practitioners that here that have been practicing for a while. getting frustrated because you can't stay present, getting caught up in your emotions, you know, not being mindful. Okay?

That's being judgmental. That's not being mindful. So you're adding additional layers of not being mindful for not being mindful. So, it's really just about

seeing and knowing. Having that discernment. So thoughts will continue to come and go. So we're not trying to stop the thinking. We're just letting everything be. So why do we practice this? We're training our minds to be present and to be open. Why? Because we're always distracted, first of all.

Right? And always reacting to what's happening. That's what's causing the suffering. That's what's causing the mental ailments. That we're always either in the past regretting our mistakes or fearful or anxious about the future, right? Or just purely ruminating incessantly. That's not very beneficial because we tend to ruminate negatively.

So we're training our minds to be present and focused on the task at hand. What do I need to do now? What do I do now? Is the question you should be asking. And whatever that happened, we need to allow it to be.

Because as soon as we start resisting what already is, is when that stress comes about. Our suffering, our stress happens when we start to resist. Right? Just imagine a time when we're stressed. With whatever that's happening, there's always resistance to that. So, allowing that to be doesn't mean you become passive and becoming submissive. We're just being open- hearted to allow that to be which it already is, right?

And then ask, "What do I do?" If there was a mistake that was made, then we learn from that. And the past is only as good as the lessons we learn. That's it. That's all it's good for. And let it go. Let it go means we don't dwell in it.

And the future doesn't exist. So there's no benefit in just worrying and being anxious about what might happen. It's better to focus on what do I need to do now to create that supporting conditions that allow the future to manifest. Right? Does that make sense?

But it takes practice. It's not as easy. Right? Because as you just experienced, when you try to focus on the breath, and only on the breath, what happens? Thoughts come and go, right? You get distracted. And you follow the thoughts for a little bit, and you catch yourself, and you come back.

That's the exercise. Everybody's done exercise before, right? Repetition, you know, push-ups, and running, whatever it is. You gotta do repetitively, right? In order to strengthen your muscle. Same thing, we have to repetitively come back to the present moment. Because our mind is so used to being out and about.

Other than resisting the present moment. Because just being right here is boring. It's boring. I'd rather think about all these exciting things. Get stimulated, you know? And do all this dopamine release by, you know, continuing to scroll and see and enjoy and laugh.

We're not judging that. You just have to understand the ramification of it in our mind. Right? So we have to retrain our mind to be present. And I mentioned this before, but neuroscience is proving over and over again that just practicing mindfulness of repetitively coming back to the present moment, trying to stay in the present moment, strengthens your prefrontal cortex, which is the CEO of your brain, and actually reduces the power of your amygdala, where it tries to portray the threat. Even though it's not a life-threatening situation, we always react with fight or flight.

defense mechanism that creates havoc in our health. So, we need to discipline our mind, retrain the mind to be present. So, that's the whole purpose of our meditation, is to retrain the mind so you can heal from your suffering, which is derived

from your own projections of what I want and what I don't want. We always like to blame what's outside. It's only if he didn't do this, she didn't say this, only if this worked out. So we're always giving up our choice of our own beingness to others and to the situation.

So as soon as we recognize that and we make conscious choices and take that choice back is when we become master of our life by taking responsibility for all of my experience. All of my experience. And that may be hard to accept because there's a lot of people that are annoying and that are triggering us, you know, making us angry, right?

But it's a choice, whether you make it unconsciously or consciously, it's a choice that we have to decide how I show up. My own beingness, how I feel inside, is my, should be my choice. Should be. We give it up so easily and we've been doing that for so long now that we've trained to be affected by what other people say and what other people do.

So we have to retrain our mind to stay present, stand our ground right here and choose how I feel. Choose loving-kindness because that brings joy in our heart, right? So it's always a choice. We're making choice moment to moment. Even if we don't do anything, we're making a choice, really.

We're choosing not to choose. That's still a choice, okay? So that's the choice that we're making with our mind is creating direction. We call it karma. Direction of our life. So in order to reset that direction, change our experiences of our life, we have to set that intention, okay? Intention is what creates the flow of our life. How do we want to show up to this world?

So I know people that have been attending heard this before, but the intention should be at least, at least, if it's not a spiritual intention to become awake, to be liberated for the benefit of others, at least, set this as a purpose of your life, to make positive impact on other people's life.

Whatever you do, whatever your profession, it doesn't matter, and you don't have to wait until you become

influential or powerful. You can do it moment to moment, orienting everything that we do, purpose of our life, to make positive impact on others. That's when our life becomes more enriched and becomes more meaningful and more purposeful. That's how we find true happiness. By focusing on other people's happiness, we benefit.

But how do normal people live? Always chasing after their own happiness, right? Their own gains. Whatever it is. Big house, nice cars, you know, a lot of money. For what? For themselves. Never satisfied. After achieving certain things, never satisfied. They got to get more, more, more, more, more.

That's why life is never satisfactory. There's always fear of losing what we have, because we're only focused on ourselves. But when we start focusing on others, then our capacity to make a difference also improves, also grows. And it actually positively benefits our own life.

Does that make sense? I know you've heard this repetitively, but that's how we direct our life to make it more positive.

Make sense? Too easy, right? Now everybody's going to be happy, moment to moment. You know the secret now. All we have to do is focus on helping others to become happy. To make positive impact on other people's lives. How do we do that? It's a question you have to ask yourself.

With what I do right now, how can I help others? It could be just a gentle smile. It could be greetings. It could be a helping hand. Picking up something they dropped. Just random act of kindness. Okay? It brings warmth in your heart.

Yeah, start there. It's not too difficult, right? Just to be kind to somebody around you. to those that are triggering, that are annoying in our workplace. Allow them to be without judging them. That's being kind. What does that do? It allows your heart to be happy.

You're not bothered anymore. We can allow others to be. So it takes training. It takes discipline in our mind to be present. To allow everything to be as is. And I say this over and over again during the meditation, right?

And that's what it takes. Training, allowing everything to be. There will be a lot of noises sometimes when you're sitting and meditating. Let it be. All we're doing is paying attention to ourself. Yeah. And we do that as you get trained and get better at paying attention to ourself. That's when you start to gain insights into your own self.

Increase that self-awareness. Become more and more aware of our own tendencies so we can choose something different if it's necessary. But if we're not even aware of my own tendencies, how can you choose? Right? Yeah. So the practice is to pay attention to ourself. That's what right mindfulness is. Not just mindfulness, but the right mindfulness is paying attention to my speech, action, and thoughts, which include emotions, okay, our feelings.

We pay attention to that because those create karmic vibrational energy that manifests into our experiences. So we got to pay attention to ourself. The reason we continue to look outward for problems and solutions is because we're so used to getting information from outside, right? Look at our senses.

Out of the six senses we have, you know, eye, ear, nose, taste, touch, it's all pure. Looking outward to receive that information. As we're always looking for solution outward, but the true solution is within. Your solutions always come from your mind, not from outside. Problems also come from our own mind. Because it's how we perceive what's happening, not what's happening itself. That's a

problem. Right? So we have to pay attention to our mind and understand our own tendencies. Anybody find the answer to that question? What is this that is aware? Anybody? What am I? What can I truly claim as me? Obviously, this body continuously changes. As soon as you claim it, it's something else.

Your mind continues to flow like a stream. So what are you claiming to be me when you say I? If it's not the body and the mind? Yes? Present being? What is that? Light? Where is that light? White? The light is white? Light is white? Where is that at?

Here? Here? Are you sure? So if we open you up, we can find that light? I don't know. Don't know? Okay. That's a good answer. Yeah. Once you can admit that you don't know, you can start this journey to find out. Okay? There's a lot of concepts, right? We have a lot of ideals and conceptual. Maybe it's this, maybe it's that, but those are just thoughts or beliefs or what we've

heard. But do we really truly know what we claim to be me? Do we really know? Or are we just living in all these conceptual ideals about myself? Right? Something to think about, right? Something to contemplate on. All of our lives, we just live and claim this ideal concept of me without truly knowing.

Yeah. So, that's what we are devoted. To find that truth. And once you see that, then truly all sufferings will be lifted. Because all suffering in our life derives from this misperception. Yes? Question? When you know. When you truly see it. But what do we pay attention to, though, throughout our lives, throughout our day?

Everything that we sense from this, right? That's it. When do we really pay attention? When have you really looked inside? Inward. Bring that attention inward. To ask this question. What is this? Other than when we meditated today. What is this? So-called "I", self.

We don't really pay attention to it. We just live according to what we've been, you know, trained by our society, our culture, our parents, you know, our belief systems, without truly knowing our own self that we claim to be. And we just continue based on our illusory belief or assumptions, conceptualization. They're all thoughts. Thoughts come and go. Just like dreaming.

When you dream, you don't think this is a dream. You live that. Your identity takes over that situation in your dream, right? But what happens when you wake up? You realize that was a dream. It's not real. What if you're dreaming right now? How would you know?

How would you know whether you're dreaming or not? Until you wake up, right? That's what we mean by wake up. Wake up to the truth. That once you realize what your true self is, what you can truly claim as a self, you will wake up. It's what we call enlightenment, realization.

We're no longer in the dream of this illusory belief about me, myself, and I. So that's the ultimate, absolute truth. There's relative truth that we can rely on to

make our lives a little bit better, to find that peace and joy, to heal, transform. And we can do that. But ultimately, we have to ask that question. What am I? What is this? Self. Yeah. How can we claim to know anything when we don't even know our own self?

Right? So, that is our journey. That is our journey. It will take some time. Yes ma'am. I believe. You believe? I believe. Okay. At least imagine if that is what you believe. I think that I connect with a feeling that feels strong. A strong feeling that inside here, in my heart, there's this soul, right, entity that chose to come into my body and live this life. And it chose to do this to learn important lessons that this girl here has done, you know, like mistakes and anything that I've done in my life, right, and well, like learning all that, and you know, like signed up for this, this experience, and then when this body dies, the spirit, soul, will go back to where it came from, with all the spirits, all the spirits, you sign up for every soul's, every body's life, to get together and say, "Hey, this is what happens, you know, this is what happened to me, this is what happened, this is what I learned, and we're all together as one." So that's, that's just what my, my belief at the moment, but that's like also, what I'm thinking, you know, that's what I made up.

And there's nothing wrong with thinking that way, but is that true?

- It feels true. - It feels true? - It feels here, right? - Yeah, that's, that's what we call attachment to our ideals, our positionalities. And what we're asking is to see if it is true. You can find out. Instead of believing even what I say, see it for, see it for yourself if it's true. In fact, Buddha is probably the only spiritual leader out there that said, don't take my word for it. Don't believe what I said. Don't believe just because it was in ancient books, just because a noble person said it, just because you trust the person. Don't just take that for what it's worth. Look at it and see it if it's true for yourself.

Because otherwise, we're only going to believe in things and then become attached to that belief. We're not going to investigate to see if it's even true. That's why everybody has their own positionalities or personal opinions or ideologies, and they get so immersed in that they refuse to see what's the other potential.

That could be true, right? That's why there's always confrontations and conflicts between our ideologies. What I believe to be true, what you believe to be true, is different, therefore we're no longer friends, you know? There's that confrontation because of that. And none of this is necessary if you really find out for yourself what it's true, what it is, you know? So, where is it at? Is it really in my heart? So if

you dissect it, can you see it physically? If it's not physical, then where does it really reside? Where did it come from? What does it look like after this body dies? Where is it going back to? All of those that we're going to just make assumptions and believe? Or are we going to see it for real? Right? So that's what whole Buddhism is really about. And I tend to describe it more of it as a science of mind than religion.

so we can investigate, to look, we call it the penetrating insight, insight to see and know what the truth is. Otherwise, we're just going to go on on our beliefs and then you see something that's more, you know, appealing, then you're going to believe that and then just going forward back and forth between beliefs or just hold on to my belief, I'm right or wrong, instead of really investigating into it.

So become more open-hearted, open to what is and see for real what it is. If we don't know, then at least admit I don't know. That way you can choose whether you want to find out or not. When you truly want to know is when the journey starts, otherwise, you know, there's no point, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yes?

Why is the breath and the focus on so much? On the breath? Yeah. So you can, you can focus on other things that's happening right now, right here, right now. What else is there right now that you can focus on to bring your attention back to the present moment? You could say, "Heartbeats going on all the time, but it's hard to feel that." Breath happens all the time. So simply by asking yourself, when you're in a chaotic moment, you can just say, "Am I breathing in or out?" And just by paying attention to the breath, you're right here. Because it only happens in the now, right? Breath only happens in the now, and it's always happening, as long as you're alive, right? It's happening. And it also has a natural intelligence, where if you surrender to the breath, even when you're upset, it'll take you to where you need to be, to calm. That's why sometimes taking a deep breath to release the tension, you know, if you're tensed up because of what's going on, just take one deep breath, release all the tension.

And you'll notice that physiologically, there's a change, simply by breathing. Okay? Take a couple, if necessary. And if you just recognize, "Oh, I'm breathing in right now. I'm breathing out right now." Just because you are with what is happening right now, your attention is right here in this present moment. That's how you can come back. Does that make sense? That's why we use it as a tool. It's

not a breath work. We're not doing any breath work here. Some people think it's a breath work. It's not. We're just using it as a tool to come back so we can pay attention to whatever is happening right here, right now. Does that make sense? Yeah. We're not doing any kind of breath work like this. We're just, all you have to do is pay attention. Okay, I'm breathing in now. Just by simply doing that, you're right here. Now, focus on your task, but pay attention to yourself. That's the mindfulness, okay? And whatever is happening in your mind, all this chaotic, crazy, we call it monkey mind, that jumps from one subject to the other, become more aware of that. More we become aware of it, more we shine the light of our awareness in it, then you are returning, without identification with the thoughts, you're returning to your original essence, okay? So let's say you're angry, you know? Because somebody said something or did something, you're triggered. When you have that emotion, your anger, just got to look at it. Recognize.

That's what we talked about the RAIN technique, right? Recognize and allow it to be there. We don't try to suppress it, we don't try to, you know, and investigate into it, meaning we're looking at it. What is this energy that I'm feeling right now? Without any non-identification, without identifying, I am not this anger, right? Because you can look at it. As soon as you can look at your emotion, you're no longer in it.

You've already created that distance. Even though your body still has that pounding heart,

you know, energized sensation, the more you pay attention to it, you're separating yourself from being hit by the wave to stepping out to watch the wave. Okay? Then you can see it dissipate. That's how we let go. Letting go of negative emotion is not ignoring it, suppressing it, oppressing it. It's recognizing it that it's there, but without identifying with it. Oh, it's just there. Okay. Let me take a look at and continue to look at it, directly at it, and it cannot stay there for long. Okay. But if you keep feeding it with the story, yes, you can justify that. Oh, she said this, he said this, you know, only if this didn't happen. You can always justify that. Then that's going to continue. You're going to continue to feed it. If you don't feed it, just let it be, and it has to dissipate. Why?

There's nothing that's permanent, right? The law of impermanence. Okay? That make sense? So now you have a solution. Anytime you have a negative emotion, even fear, and anxiety, frustration, you don't want to feel that, right? Anybody want to feel that? Anybody think it's really necessary to be angry? It's

never beneficial. You may justify it, but it's not beneficial to my health, to my mental health, to my own beingness, right? So why? Why choose that? Why allow somebody else to trigger me? Any other questions? Yes. How can we continue to practice this in our own lives?

Keep practicing every day. So we have a daily practice guideline. You can take a look at that and see if you can follow that. We're going to send you a welcome letter, and that has a share folder link, and it has various different documents in there. And one of them is the daily practice guideline.

So, first thing is, you come to the session, continue to listen to this over and over again until it kind of sinks in. There's people here been for about a year with me, you know, um, still sinking in, right? And you know, Saturday session as well, Wednesday session as well, and then we've got to keep practicing. And one of the things that I have on there is morning puja, morning alignment to our spiritual goal, uh, Peng, uh, reverence or taking refuge in Bodhicitta Dharma Sangha, okay? Basically it's a chanting book, reading out loud, reciting page one through five. And then recommendation to meditate at least one hour a day. You can break it up into different, you know, 20 minutes here and there. And there's also, we include one random act of kindness, um, three mindful activities, okay? So take a look at that.

Once you receive it, and then come back with any questions you have. But it does take practice. It takes training of our own mind, right?

So you can't just go out there and start running a marathon just because you want to, right? You've got to get in shape. So I teach up at West Point and, um, and I emphasize, just like you guys do physical training, you know, you've got to do training for your mind, for your mental health. So I call it mental fitness training. You know? Mindfulness-based, mental fitness training. What do you do for your mental fitness? Anybody do anything for your mental fitness?

Three. Paying attention, being present, this whole meditation is really a mental fitness training at the beginning level. Once you become a certain level of a fit, where you can regulate your own emotion, meaning you don't just react, automatic reaction, where you can say, "You know what? Okay. Normally I would be offended by that, but I'm going to decide not to this time. Yeah. I'm just going to allow it to be, and to send a lot of prayers of loving-kindness to that person. If you can do that, then you're ready to go to the next step.

So reaction, it happens because we're trained that way. So we're retraining our mind to be non-reactive. Wouldn't that be beneficial? Yeah. So we always have to ask the question. We don't ask, is it good or bad? You know? Because that's just a judgmental way of looking at things. Is it truly beneficial for me and my intentions to make a positive impact?

Okay? So we should always ask ourselves, am I making a positive impact on other people's lives? And look for ways. That's why we include in there one random act of kindness per day. Just so that you can look around and see, what can I do for somebody else?

Even if it's just a small gesture. Everyone good? Anybody going through any suffering?

Not at the moment. Not at the moment? Remember, it's a choice. If I beg, I'd like to share something. Sure. So, for the past few months, I've been struggling a lot, just with myself, just my own demons. And last night, I think I finally surrendered to them. So there were things that I thought I already surrendered to, like stemming from my childhood, like all the abuses I've been through, just like all the negative things that I've experienced in my life.

The past few weeks, like even my addictions were like trying to find their ways, but I kind of like just let them be, and you know, I didn't, I didn't do anything in that sense, you know. It would have been easier for me to just do certain things, just to, to feel better for an hour or so.

And last night, I just, they just like all just, I was felt like I was being suffocated by them. And I started talking to myself, and then I just started crying and crying and crying and crying. And it's like I woke up and I feel completely different.

Like I feel like this shift. So I didn't know if that would help anybody. Yeah, good, good, yeah. And that's coming from your practice, right? You've been doing regular practice, sharing it also. And as our, as our spiritual practice progresses, I told you that we're going to face

obstacles, right? And sometimes all of those things that's been hiding inside, those emotions will come out. You're releasing it. So allow it to release. There's nothing we have to really do. All we have to do is put our awareness on it and let it be. Yeah, it's very simple instruction, but it's hard, right? Because we're always trying to avoid it. We're resisting it one way or the other, you know, or finding a way out. Like you said, if I distract myself from this feeling by finding something more interesting, you can distract yourself temporarily, but it's still in there, in your subconscious mind, that's gonna later on, blow up. So by shining the light of awareness to it, and allowing it to be, that it gets worked out on its own. Yeah. So that's good. I'm glad to hear that. I imagine like, just everything in a river just flowing, and I was just looking at it, and I was just like, just... Good, good. That's how we have to look at everything. Everything is flowing, right? Everything, even our body, our mind is continuous in the process of change. It's manifesting and going away. Rise and fall, rise and fall. That's all it is.

It's how we perceive it, whether we try to hold on to it, that creates suffering. So it's our own creation, our suffering, our happiness. Right? So why not choose peace and joy versus anger, frustration, you know, anxiety, fear, all of those things that we don't want. Choose what you'd rather be. Right? You would rather be peaceful, right? Than perturbed, right? So choose it. If it doesn't happen naturally, then just admit that I need practice. And practice. Keep coming back and being open. Allowing

things to be is truly how we let go. Letting go is not this. Letting go is this. Just watching. That it's there. We're not going to do this. That's the letting go. So we practice. We train our mind to see for what it is without grasping, without clinging on to it, without being attached to it. That's true letting go. Okay? It's not this, but it's just this.

There's discernment that what it is, and you make that situational awareness, there's no judgment. It's not because we judge it, because we just prefer to be peaceful. And we know that by not attaching to it. Yeah. And some of you said, "I'm so attached, I'm so attached."

Let it be. Even our own tendencies, propensities that we've been developing, and we can recognize now because we're paying attention to ourselves, we're becoming mindful of how I'm attached. Just recognize that too. Just let it be. And watch, and watch, and watch, and watch. That's why we use the word, be the witness. Observe. Watch. See. They're different words, but same thing, right?

We're just becoming aware. We're being more conscious of what is about ourself.

That make sense? Yeah. So this really is journey, process, of paying attention to ourself, to gain more insights into ourself, so that we can make the choices that are beneficial for our life. That's how we reduce suffering. That's why we alleviate suffering, and we're making that positive impact that we want to. Okay? So really nothing you have to believe. Try it out. And see how it works out. And then from the experienced practitioners here, you can see. And this is why the Sangha, this community, is so important. Okay? The teacher, Sangha, and the environment is a necessity for this practice. You know, fellow practitioners that you can depend on. You know, the fellowship is all very important. Okay? Here you go. Now you'll notice the difference when you start meditating on your own. There's a big difference when you meditate in a group.

setting than when you try to meditate on your own. But you still gotta try meditating on your own. Okay? And if you ever want to come here and do your meditation, you're more than welcome to. I think after seven o'clock, um, most morning is open, uh, in the afternoon as well. You know, just let me know.

And then, uh, I'll let you know if there's something going on. Sometimes they do, uh, different type of rituals here, like memorial services and things like that. Just let me know. Okay? Everybody good? Is it beneficial? Yeah? Okay, good. Yeah, so, it all sounds good. You can agree to all this, you know, things that I'm saying, but it's all conceptual until you put it into practice. As soon as you walk out that door, you know, your life's going to be waiting for you to just consume again. Right? That's why we've got to make this consistent practice a daily practice. A lot of people forget. They come and say, "Wow, that's right." And you go out and you get hijacked by your life and forget all about this practice. But I'm glad you guys came back, you know?

But to make a consistent commitment is necessary, okay? But I don't, there's nothing to convince you on, nothing to force you on, but I wanted to, all I am doing is pointing you to the right direction. And it's for you to actually walk the path. Okay? You have to do all the work, actually.

All right. There's no more question then. We'll end it with our loving-kindness for you.

Is there any announcements that we need to make? Just one more reminder to everybody. On the 19th of September, there'll be the Yoga Fest in Nyack. Venerable SooSeong will be hosting a Meditation for World Peace at 2:30. All are welcome. It's a fun day. There's all kinds of yogis and stuff, but we really want to be there for World Peace. We need all the peace we can get. Elaine, they're still having practice in the morning, right? Yeah, we're going to do the practice in the morning, regular service in the morning, and then we'll meet again in the afternoon. And it's really going to be that whole loving-kindness meditation. When we do that together, we can energize that more powerfully and radiate that out. Okay, so let's end this with our loving-kindness prayer, so if you can bring your palms together and repeat after me. And think about everyone, all sentient beings, as we do this prayer. May all beings be safe.

May all beings be safe. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be peaceful. May all beings be joyful. May all beings be joyful. May all beings awaken to their true nature. May all beings awaken to their true nature. May all beings be free. May all beings be free. Have a great evening. Hope to see you soon.