https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=GfrjsR7KgrM
Welcome to Meditating with John Verbeke. We live stream this every weekday morning at 9.30 a.m. Eastern Time. Mondays alternate between a Dharma Day, where I teach a new lesson building on previous principles and practices, and Uppaya Day, in which I review the entire ecology of practices. Yesterday, which was a Monday, was Dharma Day. I’ll review what we did yesterday, tomorrow. If you’re joining us for the first time, welcome. For previous lessons and sits, see the description in this video. I recommend strongly going immediately and doing Lesson 1, and then you can join us every day, and then every Saturday or Sunday doing another one of the lessons, and you will eventually catch up with us. Please like this video stream to increase its visibility on the YouTube algorithm, so I can help as many possible with this ecology practice and this very wonderful sangha that has been forming around it. At the end of every sit, there are Q&A. Please limit the Q&As at that time. Please limit the questions, I should say, at that time to questions that are specific to this course, the Ecology Practices. For more encompassing questions, please come to my live streamed open question Q&A, which is the third Friday of every month at 3 p.m. Eastern Time. So I think that’s everything we need to cover off for our announcements. So let’s set your phones to do not disturb. Let’s get yourself into your basic posture, and we will begin when I say begin. Begin. Begin. Slowly come out of your practice, trying as best you can to integrate what you cultivated in your practice with your everyday consciousness, cognition, character, and communitas, perhaps by reciting the five promises to yourself. Okay, so we have some time for some questions. A question from the pleasure of doubt, Brett. First of all, I wanted to thank Brett again for shepherding me through the Discord Q&A last night. It was wonderful. I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was engaging and enriching. And I thank Brett for all the work he’s doing on that, and also Todd for all the work he’s doing and helping facilitate that with practice. Thank you very much, Brett. What should we do about yawning during the meditation, treat it like a distraction, apply the five factors? Yes. It also is an indicator that you’re probably not getting enough oxygen into your bloodstream. So check your breathing. You might be breathing a little too shallow. Check to see if you’re engaging any other markers triggers of sleep, like your head is slouching, right? Your consciousness is getting sort of warm and fuzzy. And it’s a sense of withdrawing its scope. Check for those. You might want to increase the movement practices, maybe do a couple times before sitting. But generally, if the yawning, not so much the yawning, it’s a physical act of breath, but your mental, physical state around the yawning, because it took you away, right? From following your breath, it’s taking you into, it’s taking you out of that sensitive alertness that you cultivate in reading. And it’s putting you on the path that is leading towards the opposite. And so you want to try and note that difference. So when you say apply the five, when I say apply the five factors to yawning, I don’t mean so much to the physical sensations. I mean to that shift in mental and physiological framing that is orienting you towards sleep. I can’t quite read it on the angle. Have I mispronounced your name? I’m sorry. I can’t decide how to place my hands during sitting. I sit like you do on a pillow on my knees, hands on thighs, resting on groin, or like you on my stomach. So I’m not quite sure what you’re asking me to do. I can’t say, well, you should do this, or they’re all equally good. So in terms of objectively, in terms of what they are, I can’t recommend one over the other for you. I do recommend that you decide and then stick with it, even if you’re getting the impulse to move around. Because these kinds of ruminating decisions, they’re monkey mind. They’re a way in which monkey mind slips in and gets us distracted and gives us something interesting to do in contrast to actually doing the practice. So whichever one it most embodies the principles for you, increases your sense of stability, keeps your chest open, your shoulders down. I like, like I say, this one is good because I can touch there and feel or the chin mudra because I can count my pulse for maybe a couple of breaths to really trigger the insulin. This one does give an increased sense of stability. So play around with it for a day or two and then choose and then stick with it for at least a month. And then after a month, if you think, no, I should try another one, then try another one. But don’t daily or every couple of days keep switching around and definitely don’t switch in your sit because these are the sneaky ways. It’s kind of playful, right? It’s like a puppy, maybe like a kitten too. These are the sneaky ways in which monkey mind finds a place to distract you. And so again, don’t get angry or upset about that. Just, oh, that’s what’s happening here. Oh, that’s playful. I’m just going to stick with this for a month. Holly Hamilton, why do you say ecology of practices? Is this to include the many influences that inform your teaching of meditation? Part of it is that idea, but part of the idea is what an ecology is. So if you think of ease practice as analogous to an organism, they have, there’s a dynamical system, a self-organizing system in which they regulate and afford each other. So they provide and limit each other. And it’s the whole system is self-maintaining, self-generating, autopoetic, self-correcting. And so I’m trying to evoke on one hand that whole notion of an ecology of practices, and then I’m trying to remind us all that dynamic, that dynamical system of practices ultimately is situated within our cognition that is inherently embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended. So it’s both that the practices as a whole form an ecology, and it’s to remind us that our identification with that ecology is ultimately an ecological identification, not a merely mental or theoretical or even just practical in the utilitarian sense identification. Karima, hi Karima. Is there any reason to not get the Hypatia book as Kindle? By the way, the author lives an hour from me. Oh, really? That’s cool that he lives an hour from you. There’s no reason to not get it on Kindle. No, not at all. For me, it’s personal preference. I own a Kindle and I downloaded hundreds of books on it. I used it for over a year and I need the physicality of a book because the technology, when I read a book, I see the book. I put things in the margins, I underline, I use the note paper at the back of books, that’s what it’s there for. So I really try to have a dialogical relationship with the book. And when I was using the Kindle technology, it wasn’t sufficient for that. So that’s just why, so it’s just my personal preference and proclivities. Why I presented the physical book to you, an eKindle version would work just as well. All right, everyone. So thank you, Karima, for reminding me of that. So I can remind everybody to please get the Wisdom of Hypatia. And if you can get a Kindle version, great, because then you can get it right away. Like I said, I prefer the paper back, but that’s just personal preference. I want to thank everybody for joining, as always. It is nurturing and nourishing to be involved in this Senga. I want to thank my dear friend and Technomajor Mar for making many things happen, as always, and for my beloved son, Jason, who’s behind the scenes, coping with any unexpected contingencies. Please subscribe to this channel to be notified of the next video. You’ll find when you subscribe to the channel, you’ll also find links to the lecture series Awakening from the Meaning Crisis and the D-Logo series, Voices with Ferveki, where you’ll see these ideas developed in depth and situated into a broader way of life for the cultivation of wisdom and responding to the meaning crisis. Please invite others who might benefit from this series to join the series, point them to the lessons. Again, I’m trying, and you guys have been, so my request is not meant to imply that there isn’t been a lot of help that you have made available. I appreciate that, but I want to encourage everybody to keep doing it so we can help as many people as possible. As I mentioned, the last night I was on the bi-weekly Q&A on the Discord server. Again, deeply impressed. I’ve watched, sorry, I’ve listened, and I guess I’m watching the video, but all I’m doing is listening to the audio. I’ve listened to the Q&As with Jordan Hall, Christopher Mascappietro, Guy Sandstock, Leymah Pascal, Paul Van de Klen, they’ve all been wonderful. I’ve read a document the last couple days. There’s a community on there doing work on the religion that’s not a religion. It’s very impressive. I know there’s people that are here, like Brett and Mark, that go from the Sangha to meet up with the people that on the Discord server were doing the meditation, doing some of the Qigong practices beforehand. There’s lots of communities there discussing so much that I think is really important. If you get a chance, please get involved with the Discord server community. A reminder that we’re doing this every weekday morning at 9.30 Eastern time. A reminder that continuity of practice is more important than sheer quantity of practice. There is no enemy worse than your own mind and body. There is no friend, no ally, no true companion on the path better than your own mind and body. Be lamps unto yourselves and to each other. Thank you, everyone. Take good care. I’ll see you tomorrow.