Ep. 285: Sitting on 5-12-26 (Talk 2 on Song of the Grass-Roof Hermitage)

So, um, so last week, and don't worry, we're gonna sit, but at this, I wanna begin by talking about a, a line or two that really, um, uh, gives us some instruction about how to sit.

So, um, so last week I only talked about the first line, right? "I've built a grass hut where there's nothing to value." And, you know, I emphasized this idea of, um, that, that Zen Chan is really asking us to contemplate the benefits that might come from not acquiring more and more for this, you know, sense of self that we have, this, the, you know, the mental hut.

You know, not these, uh...

I mean, and, and even, like, little plaques on our, on our inner mental wall that might say, "I'm a good person," or, "I'm a spiritual person," or, "I've had really good meditation experiences," or, "I'm a meditator." Like, what would it be to really not be acquisitive or materialistic in that way, right? Um, and I think it's challenging.

You know, but what I'm saying, it's like it's, it's, it's pointing us in that direction.

And not just about, um, material, you know, not just, like, ordinary sort of, um, uh, physical materialism, but even psychological materialism, like pictures that we, we want to hold onto about who we are, um, self images, but also spiritual materialism.

Yeah.

There's a wonderful book I encourage everyone to read at some point called Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by a Tibetan teacher named Chogyam Trungpa, which is really on this topic.

He came from-- He's part of the T- Tibetan diaspora, came to the United States in the '60s or '70s and saw spiritual materialism rampant everywhere.

All the students who were so keen on, on gaining spiritual merit points, right? And he's saying, um, "The way you are going after this practice is the very thing preventing you from tasting its fruits," you know? Um, so anyway, he was pointing them to that, okay.