Gil Fronsdal

And it's significant that p- that what I was pointing to just before, that this is what-- how we're spending our time and energy every day.

Because as Gil Fronsdal points out, in general, the things that we do repeatedly have much greater consequence than the things we do only once or a few times, and the effects may ripple further out into society and deeper into our hearts.

Because what we do repeatedly, it strengthens those pathways in our heart and mind.

So if we can really bring the teachings into every aspect of how we live, that turbocharges our practice.

So we're exploring the Dhammapada again, which again is just, um, this one in particular is translated by Gil Fronsdale.

Um, and it's a book of teachings of the Buddha and verses.

And so tonight we're doing chapter 12, which is entitled one self.

I want to start with a quote from Gil Fronsdale.

Where in my life do I postpone kindness until non-well-being goes away? What shifts when I practice well-being that includes non-well-being? A helpful way to practice this is to treat moments of non-well-being as worthy of care, rather than evidence of failure.

When irritation, sorrow, fatigue, fear, or disappointment arise, let them be included in the field of kindness.

Essentially, it's the idea that in our practice, which, you know, could have a beneficial forward quality, we are hindered by certain things.

Interestingly, I've learned from Gil Fronsdal that a way of translating the Pali word, P-A-L-I, in early Buddhism that's translated routinely as hindrances is as coverings.

Coverings.

Isn't that interesting? These are coverings over the beautiful true nature that is inherent in all of us but is covered over by various things.

There's training in wisdom, there's training in meditation, and there's training in what we could call ethical practice.

One of my colleagues, who's a teacher in England, Nathan Glyde, uh, likes to use the word, instead of ethical practice, training in care, being caring.

Some, for some people, the t-term ethics means following rules, and it sounds like a little bit tight, right? So use the language that, that works for you.

Uh, but we can, we can see that, you know, when we look at the teaching of the Noble Eightfold Path, there are, uh, actually two wisdom factors, wise, uh, understanding and wise intention, three meditation factors, y-you know, wise concentration, wise mindfulness, and also wise or skillful effort.

And wise speech is also quite wonderful, uh, in that when we take wise speech seriously and have it as a primary form of practice, we suddenly have many hours a day for spiritual practice.

You know, I think I asked the question last time, how many people have complained, "Oh, it's really hard to find a half an hour for meditation"? Anyone ever complain like that? Yeah.

And guess what? If you practice wise speech, or what one of my colleagues called right yabbering, [laughs] uh, if you practice wise speech, you may ...

And that just includes, uh, speaking online and so forth, digital speech, so to speak, uh, we suddenly have multiple hours.

We're working with a particular translation.

I just wanted to share some of this since this is our first group.

This is by Gil Fronsdale, a teacher.

And the reason we wanted to go with this translation is he talks about it in the preface.

There's so many translations of this text.