As Ordinary As Your Own Breath

So in a way, this is, this is how, how do we let go of these notions? How do we let that self die and drown in the ocean or sort of come to life in the ocean? And this, this sort of bit of the talk, it sort of comes from, uh, recently hearing Maitreyabandhu talk on mindfulness.

And if, if you ever get a chance to hear Maitreyabandhu talk on mindfulness, uh, it's, it's really worth hearing him.

And he was, uh...

He sort of took, took us right back to sort of very-- the roots of how the Buddha would have taught, uh, about mindfulness.

So he's used this term prapañca.

Um, I'll say a bit more in a minute.

He encouraged his disciples to come, to come into their direct experience, what he called their primary experience.

And this is, this is sort of the very raw experience of just what you touch or the f- the, the feel of the breath as you breathe or, or an emotion, just feeling it, like, very, uh, at, at its rawest state before you start thinking about, before you start interpreting and telling stories about that experience.

What the Buddha encouraged was just to come to that very, uh, first experience of contact, uh, with, with the world and with yourself.

And he distinguished this from, uh, prapañca.

This is, uh, uh, I think it's a Pali word.

And that, that means something like proliferating thoughts, so that it's all the, all the kind of stories, all the associations that, that we, we start-- our minds start to spin off into.

Um, all the kind of things that go into this, this scaffolding in the symbol, these notions of ourselves, these stories about life, uh, rather than the actual experience of life.

To get to the sea, the, the sea, in a way, could be seen as this primary experience.

So, uh, just im-- If you were sort of immersed in the sea, you probably would, quite literally, if you were just dropped in the sea, you probably would become instantly aware of your primary experience and sort of your, uh, if-- particularly if it's quite cold or something.

Uh, and, uh, your, your stories would, uh, just sort of drop away by themselves because the, the experience is so strong.

That's often, often the way, I think, if, if you sort of have some strong experience that's sort of out of your ordinary, uh, day-to-day experience, you do, you do have that experience, like, that, that you do-- Your stories can just sort of stop, uh, and you're, you're, you're just...

You have to be just present with what's happening because sometimes you've just got no categories or no stories about the new experience, so you, you find yourself very absorbed in what's going on.