https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwB9epf6_e8 (Contd) Seniors: Don't Waste Your Last Years on These 4 Meaningless Things | Buddhism : Dharma Path Lotus and again in our minds long after they have ended. I should have been a better parent when my children were young. I 33:1433 minutes, 14 secondsshould have taken that chance. I should have apologized sooner. I should have said I love you more. 33:2233 minutes, 22 secondsI should have. I should have. I should have. 33:2633 minutes, 26 secondsDo you hear how much of life gets consumed by those three words? Here is what the Buddhist teachings offer us. 33:3533 minutes, 35 secondsNot as comfort but as truth. The past cannot be [music] changed. Those moments are complete. They have already happened. They are in a sense perfect. 33:4633 minutes, 46 secondsNot because they were good, but because they were real. They were part of the river. 33:5233 minutes, 52 secondsBut this is equally true. Your relationship to the past can change. The story you tell about those moments, the 33:5933 minutes, 59 secondsweight you assign to them, the meaning you draw from them, all of that is alive. All of that is movable. All of that is in your hands right now. 34:1134 minutes, 11 secondsThis is not about pretending the harm wasn't real. It is not about dismissing genuine grief. Grief is sacred. Grief is 34:2034 minutes, 20 secondslove with nowhere to go. The Buddha honored grief. 34:2534 minutes, 25 secondsBut at some point, and perhaps that point is now, we are invited to transform regret from a chain into a 34:3334 minutes, 33 secondscompass to say, "I carry the lessons of that experience. I do not need to carry the punishment." 34:4134 minutes, 41 secondsThere is a beautiful practice in many Buddhist traditions, the practice of meta, of loving kindness, which begins 34:4934 minutes, 49 secondsalways with yourself. Before you can send love outward, you must first offer it inward. 34:5734 minutes, 57 secondsPractice for this teaching. 35:0035 minutesI want to invite you to do something this evening or tomorrow, whenever feels right. Take a piece of paper and write a 35:0735 minutes, 7 secondsletter. Write it to yourself, to the version of you who made the decisions you now regret. Write with the voice you 35:1535 minutes, 15 secondswould use to speak to a dear, struggling friend. Acknowledge what happened. 35:2335 minutes, 23 secondsAcknowledge the pain and then gently if you can offer forgiveness. 35:3135 minutes, 31 secondsYou do not need to send this letter anywhere. You do not need to share it with anyone. This letter is between you 35:3935 minutes, 39 secondsand you because the most important reconciliation you may ever make is the one with yourself. 35:4935 minutes, 49 secondsIf regret pulls us backward into the past, anxiety pulls us forward into a future that has not yet arrived and may never arrive in the form we fear. 36:0236 minutes, 2 secondsThe fourth thing the Buddha taught us to let go of is anxiety about the future. 36:0836 minutes, 8 secondsThe Buddha's teaching on an impermanence is often heard as a dark or sorrowful truth. Everything changes. Nothing lasts. And yes, there is grief in that. 36:2036 minutes, 20 secondsThe Buddha did not pretend otherwise. 36:2336 minutes, 23 secondsBut there is also, and this is what many people miss, profound liberation in that same truth. If everything changes, then 36:3236 minutes, 32 secondsthe suffering you fear is not [music] guaranteed. The illness you are afraid of may not come. The loneliness you dread may transform into solitude you 36:4136 minutes, 41 secondscherish. The loss you are bracing for may arrive in forms far more gentle than your imagination has drawn.
And even if hard things do come, and let us be honest, after 60 we know that hard things do come. You cannot protect tomorrow by suffering today. 36:5936 minutes, 59 secondsRead that again slowly. You cannot protect tomorrow by suffering today. All the worry, all the rehearsing of worstc 37:0737 minutes, 7 secondscase scenarios, all the sleepless nights, spinning through what might happen, none of it changes what will happen. It only takes today from you. 37:1637 minutes, 16 secondsAnd today, this day, this morning, this ordinary and unre repeatable moment is the [music] only place where your life is actually occurring. 37:2637 minutes, 26 secondsI think of a grandmother I once met who told me she had spent 15 years worrying about her death. Every ache was a sign. 37:3337 minutes, 33 secondsEvery diagnosis was a door closing. And then she said something shifted. She realized that in her terror of dying, 37:4237 minutes, 42 secondsshe had stopped fully living. The very thing she feared, losing her life, was already happening. Not through illness, through worry. 37:5437 minutes, 54 secondsThe Buddha taught his monks to meditate on impermanence. Not to become sad, but to become awake. to feel the 38:0238 minutes, 2 secondspreciousness of this [music] breath, this moment, this person sitting beside you, this cup of tea warm in your hands. 38:1138 minutes, 11 secondsWhen anxiety rises, and it will rise because we are human, try this. Place 38:1838 minutes, 18 secondsboth feet flat on the floor. Take three slow, deliberate breaths. And with each 38:2638 minutes, 26 secondsbreath, name one thing that is real and present right now. 38:3138 minutes, 31 secondsThe chair beneath me, the warmth of this room, the sound of birds outside. 38:3938 minutes, 39 secondsThis is not avoidance. This is return. 38:4238 minutes, 42 secondsReturn to the only moment where peace is ever actually possible, which is this one. After 60 years of living in 38:5138 minutes, 51 secondscommunity with family, with colleagues, with neighbors, with society, most of us have developed a very sensitive internal 38:5938 minutes, 59 secondsradar. We know almost instantly when someone is pleased with us. And we know 39:0539 minutes, 5 secondswith equal precision when someone is not. And without always realizing it, we have organized much of our lives around 39:1439 minutes, 14 secondsthat radar. We make decisions based on what our children will think. We hold back our true feelings to avoid 39:2239 minutes, 22 secondsdisapproval. We perform versions of ourselves that fit what others expect. 39:2939 minutes, 29 secondsAnd then we wonder why we feel so tired. 39:3339 minutes, 33 secondsThe Buddha described eight forces he called the worldly winds. Ata loca dhama 39:4039 minutes, 40 secondsgain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and disrepute, praise and blame. These 39:4839 minutes, 48 secondseight winds he taught are always blowing. They blow for every human being who has ever lived. Regardless of how 39:5639 minutes, 56 secondsgood they are, how hard they try, how spiritual their practice. The question is not how to stop the winds. The 40:0440 minutes, 4 secondsquestion is whether you have built something inside yourself stable enough that the winds cannot knock you over. 40:1340 minutes, 13 secondsSeeking the approval of others is like trying to control the weather. You can dress for it. You can hope for it. But 40:2040 minutes, 20 secondsyou cannot command it. And organizing your life around the hope that this particular weather will stay pleasant, 40:2740 minutes, 27 secondsthat people will always approve, always praise, always be pleased, is a recipe for suffering without end. 40:3640 minutes, 36 secondsHere is what I want you to consider.
After 60, you have earned something. You have earned the right to be yourself. 40:4340 minutes, 43 secondsNot the self that was convenient for others. Not the self that fit the mold your family needed when you were young. 40:5040 minutes, 50 secondsYour actual self, the one that has been quietly waiting sometimes for decades. 40:5740 minutes, 57 secondsThat self does not need a round of applause to be valid. It does not need permission to exist. It simply needs you to stop apologizing [music] for it. 41:0741 minutes, 7 secondsPractice for this teaching. Each evening this week before you sleep, ask yourself this simple question. Did I live today 41:1541 minutes, 15 secondsfor myself or for the audience in my head? Not with judgment, with curiosity. 41:2241 minutes, 22 secondsBecause the moment you notice the pattern, you have already begun to change it. Ah, this one, this one is for 41:2941 minutes, 29 secondsevery parent of an adult child, every person who has faced illness, every human being who has made careful plans 41:3741 minutes, 37 secondsand watched life arrive differently than expected. Let go of the illusion of control. The Buddha taught a principle 41:4641 minutes, 46 secondscalled paticha samupada, dependent origination. It is a teaching about how everything in existence arises in 41:5441 minutes, 54 secondsrelationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. Nothing happens because one person willed it completely 42:0242 minutes, 2 secondsinto being. Your life, my life, is woven from 10,000 threads. Our choices, yes, 42:0942 minutes, 9 secondsbut also the choices of others. The weather of history, the body we were born into, the timing of things beyond 42:1642 minutes, 16 secondsany person's reach. And yet we try to control. We try so hard. 42:2442 minutes, 24 secondsWe try to control our adult children's decisions, their relationships, their choices, their health. We try to control 42:3342 minutes, 33 secondsoutcomes at the doctor's office. We try to control how others see us, how events 42:3942 minutes, 39 seconds[music] unfold, how our final years will look. 42:4542 minutes, 45 secondsAnd when control slips, as it always does, because it was always an illusion, 42:5242 minutes, 52 secondswe feel not just disappointment, we feel failure. 42:5842 minutes, 58 secondsI should have prevented this. I should have done more. [music] Imagine holding water in your palm. Now 43:0743 minutes, 7 secondsclose your fist tightly around it. What happens? 43:1243 minutes, 12 secondsThe harder you grip, the faster the water runs through your fingers. But open your hand. Keep it steady. Keep 43:2143 minutes, 21 seconds[music] it present. Keep it gentle. And the water rests. 43:2743 minutes, 27 secondsLetting go of control is not the same as giving up. Please hear that clearly. The 43:3343 minutes, 33 secondsBuddha was not teaching pacivity. He was teaching precision. 43:3943 minutes, 39 secondsDo what is yours to do. Act with care, 43:4143 minutes, 41 seconds[music] 43:4243 minutes, 42 secondswith effort, with love. And then release the outcome. 43:4943 minutes, 49 secondsPlant the seed. Water it faithfully. And release your grip on when it blooms. 43:5943 minutes, 59 secondspractice for this teaching. Find a phrase that becomes your anchor. 44:0644 minutes, 6 secondsSomething you return to when the urge to control becomes overwhelming. 44:1244 minutes, 12 secondsHere is one that many people find powerful in its simplicity.
I do my best. [music] I release the rest. Say it slowly. Say it like you mean it. Say it until your shoulders actually [music] drop because they will. And now we arrive at the seventh, the deepest and perhaps the most important of all. Let go of the fear of death. I want to say something before we go further. I understand if this one makes you want to look away. Death is not a comfortable subject in our culture. We are skilled at not talking about it, not looking at it, not sitting with it. We surround it with euphemisms and move past it quickly But the Buddha placed death at the very center of his teaching. Not to frighten his students but to free them because he understood something profound.sitting with it. We surround it with euphemisms and move past it quickly. But the Buddha placed death at the very center of his teaching. Not to frighten his students but to free them because he understood something profound. How we relate to death determines how we live. There is a story I love. A man of advanced years came to the Buddha one day and said, [music] "I am terrified. 45:4045 minutes, 40 secondsEvery morning I wake up and the fear is the first thing I feel. I don't know how to live with this fear of dying. The 45:4745 minutes, 47 secondsBuddha looked at him gently and said nothing for a moment. [music] Then he pointed to a small lamp burning in the corner of the room. He said, "Tell me, 45:5545 minutes, 55 secondswhere does the flame go when the lamp goes out?" The man was confused. He said, "I don't know." The Buddha smiled. 46:0246 minutes, 2 seconds"Neither do [music] I," he said. And that is exactly the point. The fear of death is at its deepest level a fear of 46:1046 minutes, 10 secondsthe unknown. And the [music] honest teaching of the Buddha is not that he has solved the mystery of what comes after, but that we have been so busy 46:1846 minutes, 18 secondsfearing the end that we have forgotten to live the middle. The ancient Buddhist practice of Maranasati, mindfulness of 46:2546 minutes, 25 secondsdeath, sounds frightening in name, but its purpose is beautiful. When we sit quietly and allow ourselves to acknowledge that this body is 46:3346 minutes, 33 secondsimpermanent, that this particular form will not last forever, something remarkable happens. The trivial falls 46:4146 minutes, 41 secondsaway. The grudge you've been holding suddenly feels very small. The argument that seemed so important loses its grip. 46:5046 minutes, 50 secondsThe morning light through the window becomes genuinely, not poetically, extraordinary. 46:5746 minutes, 57 secondsThe Buddha was not teaching us to be morbid. He was teaching us to be awake. 47:0447 minutes, 4 secondsEvery tradition, every honest human heart has always known. It is the awareness of endings that makes things 47:1247 minutes, 12 seconds[music] precious. It is because the rose blooms briefly that its beauty stops our breath. 47:1947 minutes, 19 secondsYou are a rose in bloom. You have been blooming for 60, 70, 80 years. That is not a small thing. [music] That is magnificent. 47:2947 minutes, 29 secondsAnd the invitation of this teaching is simply this. Stop spending your bloom worrying about the petals falling. Let 47:3647 minutes, 36 secondsyourself be fully, completely, unapologetically open. Each evening for just 5 minutes, 47:4447 minutes, 44 secondssit quietly. Allow yourself to acknowledge, not with fear, but with gentleness, that this day will not come 47:5147 minutes, 51 secondsagain. that the people you love are precious, that this ordinary evening is in fact extraordinary. 48:0248 minutes, 2 secondsLet that truth land softly. 48:0548 minutes, 5 secondsAnd then notice something lifts, something relaxes, some weight that was keeping you just 48:1448 minutes, 14 secondsslightly contracted, just slightly behind glass begins to [music] ease. 48:2148 minutes, 21 secondsThat easing is not resignation. That is freedom.
We have walked a long path together today. 48:3148 minutes, 31 secondsSeven things, seven invitations to [music] release. 48:3548 minutes, 35 secondsLet me walk back through them gently one more time. Not as a list to memorize, [music] but as a landscape to remember. 48:4548 minutes, 45 secondsWe began with the invitation to let go of who you used to be. to meet yourself fresh in this season with curiosity instead of grief. 48:5648 minutes, 56 secondsWe touch the peace that becomes available when we release the exhausting need to be right and choose instead to 49:0349 minutes, 3 secondsbe at rest. We sat with regret that heavy companion and offered it something it may never have received before. Your own forgiveness. 49:1549 minutes, 15 secondsWe breathed through anxiety about the future and found our way back to the only place where peace lives here now. 49:2449 minutes, 24 secondsThis breath we looked at the applause we have been chasing and realized we were always 49:3149 minutes, 31 secondsalready enough with or without [music] it. 49:3549 minutes, 35 secondsWe opened our hands around the illusion of control and felt the strange quiet power that comes from releasing it. 49:4349 minutes, 43 secondsAnd we sat bravely with the fear of death and found that on the other side of that fear, life becomes more vivid, more tender, more worth showing up for. 49:5649 minutes, 56 secondsSeven openings, seven returns to yourself. 50:0050 minutesYou have spent 60 years or more gathering, learning, building, carrying. 50:0650 minutes, 6 secondsAll of that was necessary. All of that was the journey. 50:1150 minutes, 11 secondsBut there comes a time and perhaps that time is now when the journey calls for something different. Not more
accumulation, not more doing, [music] not more proving. Returning, returning to simplicity, returning to the present 50:2650 minutes, 26 secondsmoment, returning to the self that has been quietly waiting beneath all the noise. 50:3350 minutes, 33 secondsThe Buddha called this path the ending of suffering. Not the ending of pain. 50:3750 minutes, 37 secondsLife will always bring pain, but the ending of the unnecessary weight we carry around that pain, the weight we chose, the weight we can, with wisdom and with practice finally put down. 50:5150 minutes, 51 secondsYou don't have to do all seven things at once. Please don't try. Pick just one. 50:5650 minutes, 56 seconds[music] The one that landed in your chest today. The one that made you exhale just a little more deeply when I described it. Start there. Start [music] 51:0451 minutes, 4 secondstonight. 51:0651 minutes, 6 secondsSee what shifts because something will shift. I have walked this path long enough to promise you [music] that. 51:1551 minutes, 15 secondsBongba the Vietnamese say it beautifully to let go to release. In Pali we say in English let go. 51:2651 minutes, 26 secondsAll of these words point to the same truth. Freedom is not something you find by holding tighter. It is something you discover by opening your hands. 51:3651 minutes, 36 secondsYou are not too old to be free. You are, if anything, perfectly positioned for it. 51:4451 minutes, 44 secondsThank you for walking with me today. 51:4651 minutes, 46 secondsFrom the bottom of my heart, thank you for showing up, for listening, [music] for being willing to look at things that 51:5451 minutes, 54 secondsare not always easy to look at. [music] That takes courage. That is itself a form of practice. 52:0352 minutes, 3 secondsIf this teaching has spoken to something in you, if something shifted even slightly, I invite you to stay on this path with us here at Lotus Dharmapath. 52:1252 minutes, 12 seconds[music] 52:1452 minutes, 14 secondsSubscribe if you haven't yet and ring the bell so that each new teaching finds its way to you when you need it most. 52:2352 minutes, 23 secondsNext time we will explore what the Buddha said about peace in the changing body. How to find stillness, dignity, 52:3152 minutes, 31 secondsand even gratitude in the physical changes that come with age. I think [music] it will surprise you. 52:3952 minutes, 39 secondsUntil then, I leave you with these words. Ancient words, simple words in the language the Buddha himself may have 52:4752 minutes, 47 secondsspoken. Subbeankara anita. 52:5252 minutes, 52 secondsAll conditioned things are impermanent. All things that arise pass. 53:0453 minutes, 4 secondsAnd in that passing, [music] in that beautiful, inevitable, honest passing, 53:1253 minutes, 12 secondsthere is freedom. [music] Sadhu. Sadhu. Sadhu.
6 comments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwB9epf6_e8
(Contd) Seniors: Don't Waste Your Last Years on These 4 Meaningless Things | Buddhism : Dharma Path Lotus and again in our minds long after they have ended. I should have been a better parent when my children were young. I
33:1433 minutes, 14 secondsshould have taken that chance. I should have apologized sooner. I should have said I love you more.
33:2233 minutes, 22 secondsI should have. I should have. I should have.
33:2633 minutes, 26 secondsDo you hear how much of life gets consumed by those three words? Here is what the Buddhist teachings offer us.
33:3533 minutes, 35 secondsNot as comfort but as truth. The past cannot be [music] changed. Those moments are complete. They have already happened. They are in a sense perfect.
33:4633 minutes, 46 secondsNot because they were good, but because they were real. They were part of the river.
33:5233 minutes, 52 secondsBut this is equally true. Your relationship to the past can change. The story you tell about those moments, the
33:5933 minutes, 59 secondsweight you assign to them, the meaning you draw from them, all of that is alive. All of that is movable. All of that is in your hands right now.
34:1134 minutes, 11 secondsThis is not about pretending the harm wasn't real. It is not about dismissing genuine grief. Grief is sacred. Grief is
34:2034 minutes, 20 secondslove with nowhere to go. The Buddha honored grief.
34:2534 minutes, 25 secondsBut at some point, and perhaps that point is now, we are invited to transform regret from a chain into a
34:3334 minutes, 33 secondscompass to say, "I carry the lessons of that experience. I do not need to carry the punishment."
34:4134 minutes, 41 secondsThere is a beautiful practice in many Buddhist traditions, the practice of meta, of loving kindness, which begins
34:4934 minutes, 49 secondsalways with yourself. Before you can send love outward, you must first offer it inward.
34:5734 minutes, 57 secondsPractice for this teaching.
35:0035 minutesI want to invite you to do something this evening or tomorrow, whenever feels right. Take a piece of paper and write a
35:0735 minutes, 7 secondsletter. Write it to yourself, to the version of you who made the decisions you now regret. Write with the voice you
35:1535 minutes, 15 secondswould use to speak to a dear, struggling friend. Acknowledge what happened.
35:2335 minutes, 23 secondsAcknowledge the pain and then gently if you can offer forgiveness.
35:3135 minutes, 31 secondsYou do not need to send this letter anywhere. You do not need to share it with anyone. This letter is between you
35:3935 minutes, 39 secondsand you because the most important reconciliation you may ever make is the one with yourself.
35:4935 minutes, 49 secondsIf regret pulls us backward into the past, anxiety pulls us forward into a future that has not yet arrived and may never arrive in the form we fear.
36:0236 minutes, 2 secondsThe fourth thing the Buddha taught us to let go of is anxiety about the future.
36:0836 minutes, 8 secondsThe Buddha's teaching on an impermanence is often heard as a dark or sorrowful truth. Everything changes. Nothing lasts. And yes, there is grief in that.
36:2036 minutes, 20 secondsThe Buddha did not pretend otherwise.
36:2336 minutes, 23 secondsBut there is also, and this is what many people miss, profound liberation in that same truth. If everything changes, then
36:3236 minutes, 32 secondsthe suffering you fear is not [music] guaranteed. The illness you are afraid of may not come. The loneliness you dread may transform into solitude you
36:4136 minutes, 41 secondscherish. The loss you are bracing for may arrive in forms far more gentle than your imagination has drawn.
And even if hard things do come, and let us be honest, after 60 we know that hard things do come. You cannot protect tomorrow by suffering today.
36:5936 minutes, 59 secondsRead that again slowly. You cannot protect tomorrow by suffering today. All the worry, all the rehearsing of worstc
37:0737 minutes, 7 secondscase scenarios, all the sleepless nights, spinning through what might happen, none of it changes what will happen. It only takes today from you.
37:1637 minutes, 16 secondsAnd today, this day, this morning, this ordinary and unre repeatable moment is the [music] only place where your life is actually occurring.
37:2637 minutes, 26 secondsI think of a grandmother I once met who told me she had spent 15 years worrying about her death. Every ache was a sign.
37:3337 minutes, 33 secondsEvery diagnosis was a door closing. And then she said something shifted. She realized that in her terror of dying,
37:4237 minutes, 42 secondsshe had stopped fully living. The very thing she feared, losing her life, was already happening. Not through illness, through worry.
37:5437 minutes, 54 secondsThe Buddha taught his monks to meditate on impermanence. Not to become sad, but to become awake. to feel the
38:0238 minutes, 2 secondspreciousness of this [music] breath, this moment, this person sitting beside you, this cup of tea warm in your hands.
38:1138 minutes, 11 secondsWhen anxiety rises, and it will rise because we are human, try this. Place
38:1838 minutes, 18 secondsboth feet flat on the floor. Take three slow, deliberate breaths. And with each
38:2638 minutes, 26 secondsbreath, name one thing that is real and present right now.
38:3138 minutes, 31 secondsThe chair beneath me, the warmth of this room, the sound of birds outside.
38:3938 minutes, 39 secondsThis is not avoidance. This is return.
38:4238 minutes, 42 secondsReturn to the only moment where peace is ever actually possible, which is this one. After 60 years of living in
38:5138 minutes, 51 secondscommunity with family, with colleagues, with neighbors, with society, most of us have developed a very sensitive internal
38:5938 minutes, 59 secondsradar. We know almost instantly when someone is pleased with us. And we know
39:0539 minutes, 5 secondswith equal precision when someone is not. And without always realizing it, we have organized much of our lives around
39:1439 minutes, 14 secondsthat radar. We make decisions based on what our children will think. We hold back our true feelings to avoid
39:2239 minutes, 22 secondsdisapproval. We perform versions of ourselves that fit what others expect.
39:2939 minutes, 29 secondsAnd then we wonder why we feel so tired.
39:3339 minutes, 33 secondsThe Buddha described eight forces he called the worldly winds. Ata loca dhama
39:4039 minutes, 40 secondsgain and loss, pleasure and pain, fame and disrepute, praise and blame. These
39:4839 minutes, 48 secondseight winds he taught are always blowing. They blow for every human being who has ever lived. Regardless of how
39:5639 minutes, 56 secondsgood they are, how hard they try, how spiritual their practice. The question is not how to stop the winds. The
40:0440 minutes, 4 secondsquestion is whether you have built something inside yourself stable enough that the winds cannot knock you over.
40:1340 minutes, 13 secondsSeeking the approval of others is like trying to control the weather. You can dress for it. You can hope for it. But
40:2040 minutes, 20 secondsyou cannot command it. And organizing your life around the hope that this particular weather will stay pleasant,
40:2740 minutes, 27 secondsthat people will always approve, always praise, always be pleased, is a recipe for suffering without end.
40:3640 minutes, 36 secondsHere is what I want you to consider.
After 60, you have earned something. You have earned the right to be yourself.
40:4340 minutes, 43 secondsNot the self that was convenient for others. Not the self that fit the mold your family needed when you were young.
40:5040 minutes, 50 secondsYour actual self, the one that has been quietly waiting sometimes for decades.
40:5740 minutes, 57 secondsThat self does not need a round of applause to be valid. It does not need permission to exist. It simply needs you to stop apologizing [music] for it.
41:0741 minutes, 7 secondsPractice for this teaching. Each evening this week before you sleep, ask yourself this simple question. Did I live today
41:1541 minutes, 15 secondsfor myself or for the audience in my head? Not with judgment, with curiosity.
41:2241 minutes, 22 secondsBecause the moment you notice the pattern, you have already begun to change it. Ah, this one, this one is for
41:2941 minutes, 29 secondsevery parent of an adult child, every person who has faced illness, every human being who has made careful plans
41:3741 minutes, 37 secondsand watched life arrive differently than expected. Let go of the illusion of control. The Buddha taught a principle
41:4641 minutes, 46 secondscalled paticha samupada, dependent origination. It is a teaching about how everything in existence arises in
41:5441 minutes, 54 secondsrelationship to everything else. Nothing exists in isolation. Nothing happens because one person willed it completely
42:0242 minutes, 2 secondsinto being. Your life, my life, is woven from 10,000 threads. Our choices, yes,
42:0942 minutes, 9 secondsbut also the choices of others. The weather of history, the body we were born into, the timing of things beyond
42:1642 minutes, 16 secondsany person's reach. And yet we try to control. We try so hard.
42:2442 minutes, 24 secondsWe try to control our adult children's decisions, their relationships, their choices, their health. We try to control
42:3342 minutes, 33 secondsoutcomes at the doctor's office. We try to control how others see us, how events
42:3942 minutes, 39 seconds[music] unfold, how our final years will look.
42:4542 minutes, 45 secondsAnd when control slips, as it always does, because it was always an illusion,
42:5242 minutes, 52 secondswe feel not just disappointment, we feel failure.
42:5842 minutes, 58 secondsI should have prevented this. I should have done more. [music] Imagine holding water in your palm. Now
43:0743 minutes, 7 secondsclose your fist tightly around it. What happens?
43:1243 minutes, 12 secondsThe harder you grip, the faster the water runs through your fingers. But open your hand. Keep it steady. Keep
43:2143 minutes, 21 seconds[music] it present. Keep it gentle. And the water rests.
43:2743 minutes, 27 secondsLetting go of control is not the same as giving up. Please hear that clearly. The
43:3343 minutes, 33 secondsBuddha was not teaching pacivity. He was teaching precision.
43:3943 minutes, 39 secondsDo what is yours to do. Act with care,
43:4143 minutes, 41 seconds[music]
43:4243 minutes, 42 secondswith effort, with love. And then release the outcome.
43:4943 minutes, 49 secondsPlant the seed. Water it faithfully. And release your grip on when it blooms.
43:5943 minutes, 59 secondspractice for this teaching. Find a phrase that becomes your anchor.
44:0644 minutes, 6 secondsSomething you return to when the urge to control becomes overwhelming.
44:1244 minutes, 12 secondsHere is one that many people find powerful in its simplicity.
I do my best. [music] I release the rest.
Say it slowly. Say it like you mean it.
Say it until your shoulders actually [music] drop because they will.
And now we arrive at the seventh, the deepest and perhaps the most important of all.
Let go of the fear of death.
I want to say something before we go further. I understand if this one makes you want to look away.
Death is not a comfortable subject in our culture. We are skilled at not talking about it, not looking at it, not
sitting with it. We surround it with euphemisms and move past it quickly But the Buddha placed death at the very center of his teaching. Not to frighten
his students but to free them because he understood something profound.sitting with it. We surround it with euphemisms and move past it quickly.
But the Buddha placed death at the very center of his teaching. Not to frighten
his students but to free them because he understood something profound.
How we relate to death determines how we live. There is a story I love. A man of advanced years came to the Buddha one day and said, [music] "I am terrified.
45:4045 minutes, 40 secondsEvery morning I wake up and the fear is the first thing I feel. I don't know how to live with this fear of dying. The
45:4745 minutes, 47 secondsBuddha looked at him gently and said nothing for a moment. [music] Then he pointed to a small lamp burning in the corner of the room. He said, "Tell me,
45:5545 minutes, 55 secondswhere does the flame go when the lamp goes out?" The man was confused. He said, "I don't know." The Buddha smiled.
46:0246 minutes, 2 seconds"Neither do [music] I," he said. And that is exactly the point. The fear of death is at its deepest level a fear of
46:1046 minutes, 10 secondsthe unknown. And the [music] honest teaching of the Buddha is not that he has solved the mystery of what comes after, but that we have been so busy
46:1846 minutes, 18 secondsfearing the end that we have forgotten to live the middle. The ancient Buddhist practice of Maranasati, mindfulness of
46:2546 minutes, 25 secondsdeath, sounds frightening in name, but its purpose is beautiful. When we sit quietly and allow ourselves to acknowledge that this body is
46:3346 minutes, 33 secondsimpermanent, that this particular form will not last forever, something remarkable happens. The trivial falls
46:4146 minutes, 41 secondsaway. The grudge you've been holding suddenly feels very small. The argument that seemed so important loses its grip.
46:5046 minutes, 50 secondsThe morning light through the window becomes genuinely, not poetically, extraordinary.
46:5746 minutes, 57 secondsThe Buddha was not teaching us to be morbid. He was teaching us to be awake.
47:0447 minutes, 4 secondsEvery tradition, every honest human heart has always known. It is the awareness of endings that makes things
47:1247 minutes, 12 seconds[music] precious. It is because the rose blooms briefly that its beauty stops our breath.
47:1947 minutes, 19 secondsYou are a rose in bloom. You have been blooming for 60, 70, 80 years. That is not a small thing. [music] That is magnificent.
47:2947 minutes, 29 secondsAnd the invitation of this teaching is simply this. Stop spending your bloom worrying about the petals falling. Let
47:3647 minutes, 36 secondsyourself be fully, completely, unapologetically open. Each evening for just 5 minutes,
47:4447 minutes, 44 secondssit quietly. Allow yourself to acknowledge, not with fear, but with gentleness, that this day will not come
47:5147 minutes, 51 secondsagain. that the people you love are precious, that this ordinary evening is in fact extraordinary.
48:0248 minutes, 2 secondsLet that truth land softly.
48:0548 minutes, 5 secondsAnd then notice something lifts, something relaxes, some weight that was keeping you just
48:1448 minutes, 14 secondsslightly contracted, just slightly behind glass begins to [music] ease.
48:2148 minutes, 21 secondsThat easing is not resignation. That is freedom.
We have walked a long path together today.
48:3148 minutes, 31 secondsSeven things, seven invitations to [music] release.
48:3548 minutes, 35 secondsLet me walk back through them gently one more time. Not as a list to memorize, [music] but as a landscape to remember.
48:4548 minutes, 45 secondsWe began with the invitation to let go of who you used to be. to meet yourself fresh in this season with curiosity instead of grief.
48:5648 minutes, 56 secondsWe touch the peace that becomes available when we release the exhausting need to be right and choose instead to
49:0349 minutes, 3 secondsbe at rest. We sat with regret that heavy companion and offered it something it may never have received before. Your own forgiveness.
49:1549 minutes, 15 secondsWe breathed through anxiety about the future and found our way back to the only place where peace lives here now.
49:2449 minutes, 24 secondsThis breath we looked at the applause we have been chasing and realized we were always
49:3149 minutes, 31 secondsalready enough with or without [music] it.
49:3549 minutes, 35 secondsWe opened our hands around the illusion of control and felt the strange quiet power that comes from releasing it.
49:4349 minutes, 43 secondsAnd we sat bravely with the fear of death and found that on the other side of that fear, life becomes more vivid, more tender, more worth showing up for.
49:5649 minutes, 56 secondsSeven openings, seven returns to yourself.
50:0050 minutesYou have spent 60 years or more gathering, learning, building, carrying.
50:0650 minutes, 6 secondsAll of that was necessary. All of that was the journey.
50:1150 minutes, 11 secondsBut there comes a time and perhaps that time is now when the journey calls for something different. Not more
accumulation, not more doing, [music] not more proving. Returning, returning to simplicity, returning to the present
50:2650 minutes, 26 secondsmoment, returning to the self that has been quietly waiting beneath all the noise.
50:3350 minutes, 33 secondsThe Buddha called this path the ending of suffering. Not the ending of pain.
50:3750 minutes, 37 secondsLife will always bring pain, but the ending of the unnecessary weight we carry around that pain, the weight we chose, the weight we can, with wisdom and with practice finally put down.
50:5150 minutes, 51 secondsYou don't have to do all seven things at once. Please don't try. Pick just one.
50:5650 minutes, 56 seconds[music] The one that landed in your chest today. The one that made you exhale just a little more deeply when I described it. Start there. Start [music]
51:0451 minutes, 4 secondstonight.
51:0651 minutes, 6 secondsSee what shifts because something will shift. I have walked this path long enough to promise you [music] that.
51:1551 minutes, 15 secondsBongba the Vietnamese say it beautifully to let go to release. In Pali we say in English let go.
51:2651 minutes, 26 secondsAll of these words point to the same truth. Freedom is not something you find by holding tighter. It is something you discover by opening your hands.
51:3651 minutes, 36 secondsYou are not too old to be free. You are, if anything, perfectly positioned for it.
51:4451 minutes, 44 secondsThank you for walking with me today.
51:4651 minutes, 46 secondsFrom the bottom of my heart, thank you for showing up, for listening, [music] for being willing to look at things that
51:5451 minutes, 54 secondsare not always easy to look at. [music] That takes courage. That is itself a form of practice.
52:0352 minutes, 3 secondsIf this teaching has spoken to something in you, if something shifted even slightly, I invite you to stay on this path with us here at Lotus Dharmapath.
52:1252 minutes, 12 seconds[music]
52:1452 minutes, 14 secondsSubscribe if you haven't yet and ring the bell so that each new teaching finds its way to you when you need it most.
52:2352 minutes, 23 secondsNext time we will explore what the Buddha said about peace in the changing body. How to find stillness, dignity,
52:3152 minutes, 31 secondsand even gratitude in the physical changes that come with age. I think [music] it will surprise you.
52:3952 minutes, 39 secondsUntil then, I leave you with these words. Ancient words, simple words in the language the Buddha himself may have
52:4752 minutes, 47 secondsspoken. Subbeankara anita.
52:5252 minutes, 52 secondsAll conditioned things are impermanent. All things that arise pass.
53:0453 minutes, 4 secondsAnd in that passing, [music] in that beautiful, inevitable, honest passing,
53:1253 minutes, 12 secondsthere is freedom. [music] Sadhu. Sadhu. Sadhu.
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