https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=MRmi-LSSfek
Welcome to Meditating with John Breveke. We live stream every morning at 9.30 a.m. Eastern Time, every weekday morning. On Mondays we alternate between one Monday as a lesson day, a Dharma day, and then the next Monday will be a review of the entire ecology of practices, Vipaya Day, the most recent Monday, Vizipaya Day. For previous lessons and for sits, see the description. If you’re joining us for the first time, go and do the first lesson immediately, then meet with us regularly in this ongoing sangha, and then perhaps every Saturday or Sunday do another one of the new lessons, well, new to you, do another one of the lessons until you catch up. That way you’ll be able to, this is indeed a progressive course that we are all on together. One thing you can all do to help me is to please like this stream to increase its visibility on the YouTube algorithm. I’m trying to help as many people as I can. I’m not gaining any income from this. I’m doing this because I want to make a difference and I want to help. At the end of every session there are Q&As, so please limit your Q&As to this ecology of practice, to the course that we’re on together. And for more encompassing questions, I have my live stream on YouTube Q&A every third Friday of the month. The next one is next Friday, which is tomorrow at 3 p.m. Eastern time. So go onto YouTube, find that, and then you can ask questions of a more encompassing or deeper or philosophical or scientific or existential or ethical nature. So I think that’s everything we need to do. Today is just a regular SIP day, and so try to get into your basic posture. Please set your phones on do not disturb. And we will begin when I say begin. Begin. Slowly come out of your practice. Do your best to integrate what you cultivated in your practice with your everyday consciousness, cognition, character, and communities. Perhaps by reciting the five promises to yourself. Okay. We have time for maybe one or two questions today. Thursday we have a part out. A little bit before 10. So we have a question from Kira Kroger. Hi, Kira. It’s good to have you here again, as always. Thank you for continuing to remind me that our sage doesn’t have to be the Buddha. I’m not Christian, but my experience with Jesus isn’t negative. And today I was able to connect to my mom’s Jesus, and that felt deeply nourishing. Thank you. You’re welcome, Kira, and thank you for sharing that. I want to encourage people to do what Kira has done. So Kira isn’t so much posing a question. Of course, please keep up the wonderful questions. That’s yes. But notice what Kira has done. She’s also, she’s, and I don’t mean she’s not doing this in any egocentric fashion whatsoever, but she’s sharing how she’s watering her Buddha, or to be more appropriate to what her comment, how she is watering her inner sage. And it would be wonderful if people, and I don’t mean anything at length because we have limited time, but in addition to questions, if they, you know, in a concise manner, shared by a comment, right, moments of connection, moments of insight, moments where they were celebrating in the religious sense of the word of celebration, the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. So Kira, thank you for that. This is something that I’ve learned, but my friend, my dear friend and collaborator Christopher Mastropiato has also put, he has such a lyrical, naturally lyrical and penetrating and perspicacious way of speaking, but he articulates this idea about how, just like we have our mother tongue, many of us have a mother religion. We come to reject it to some degree, or we don’t identify with it anymore, but nevertheless, like our mother tongue, it’s deep in us. And and Yunga actually also pointed to this point too, I think, in certain important ways. And so learning how to relate, I really resonate with what Kira is saying, because I was brought up a Christian, but in a form of Christianity that was actually deeply, I think the right word is traumatizing to me, but coming to re-appreciate, where I mean that word appreciation in the sense of my deep gratitude, but also that deep learning and transformation, like when people do music appreciation, and also the coming to sense the value of something, like when we say the value of something is appreciating. So I’ve come to appreciate Jesus. I hope that doesn’t sound pretentious at all, because it’s not my intent. I’ve come to appreciate Jesus much more profoundly. And so the way in which your inner sage will interact with, for those of us who have a mother religion, with our mother religion, or as Yunga might put, with our default, because if we weren’t brought up, we have a default spirituality rumbling around in our unconscious, I think is a very important part of this path that we’re on. It’s a very important part of this path. So thank you, Kira, for bringing that out and for sharing that. I encourage other people, please don’t get rambling. We have a limited time, but very concise shared comments of celebration and appreciation are also something we should be looking for in the Q&A section. That’s all. Unfortunately, we have time for today. We will be able to answer more questions tomorrow. I want to thank you all for joining. As always, I find this maturing and nurturing and nourishing, and I hope you all find the same. I want to thank my dear friend, Dr. Major Mara, who’s always working miracles, my beloved friend, Jason, who’s always here behind the scenes coping with the unexpected, very heroic task, right? I would ask you all to please subscribe to this channel to be notified of the next video. You will also find links to the lecture series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis and the Dialogo series, Voices with Fervake, where a lot of these ideas and practices and the philosophical foundations are explored in greater depth and development and set into a more encompassing framework. Please invite others who might benefit by sharing this series. I’m sure Brett is here. Pleasure of doubt. He will help shepherd you over to the Discord server. The link is in the description. And the Discord server is, like I say, it’s a vibrant and vital community, and it is a direct extension of what’s going on in this practice. So I encourage you to join and get involved. Reminder that we do this every weekday morning at 930 Eastern time. Also a reminder that continuity of practice is more important than quantity of practice. There is no enemy worse than your mind, your own minded body. No friend, no ally, no true companion on the path better than your own minded body. Be lamps unto yourself and iron to each other. Take good care of everyone. Hope to see you tomorrow. Bye bye.