“There is only choice,” as Michael has pointed out. Even not choosing is a choice. Even in spontaneous expressions of joy or pain, we choose how we will relate to the ways in which we meet these experiences. When we open to the truth that all things are temporary, our choices begin to take on a different kind of quality; one in which we consciously begin to see that all of our choices either take us into the light of awakening or away from it.

With this in mind, Michael points out the ways in which we cling to the very things that prevent enlightenment. Past and future orientation, for example, in addition to preferences, will always point us in the direction of our attachments. These attachments end up defining the boundaries of our delusion. But the gift of these limitations are that each of them shows us what we need to get past in order to awaken to the Truth that lies beyond name and form.

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ISmile322 - Conscious Choice [ 39:04 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (913)

In this evening’s talk, Michael discusses the opportunity that each and every life event, no matter how great or how small, how wonderful or how dark, gives each of us the chance to awaken. He points to what is always prior to any experience and equates this “priority” to the teaching at the core of the Zen koan: What did your face look like before your parents were born. From here the talk points to our tendency to cling to all aspects of our mind: our memories, our convictions and our plans. Tending to our awareness of this clinging is precisely, according to Michael, what frees us from it.

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ISmile321 - It All Starts With Forgiveness [ 49:31 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (2247)

When we commit to directly knowing, as we say in Zen, our True Nature, we have to be willing to give everything up. Everything. Lingering attachments work to insulate us from a full exposure to this very life that we are leading, according to Michael in this evening’s talk.

“When awakening happens,” he says, “there is the realization that all form is experienced within the emptiness of the True Self… this is Buddha.”

To what extent are we committed to uncovering this realization? Do we hedge our bets as we approach our spiritual path by clinging to whatever doubts or excuses we may have no matter how subtle they may be? These and other questions provide the structure and inspire the content of this Dharma talk.

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ISmile320 - Living Without Insulation [ 44:30 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1235)

In this talk, Michael addresses several issues; among them, how we often lose the view we’ve been offered by insight. He’s written about this and calls it “The Rubber Band Effect,” and suggests that we take pains to examine its source. Doing so helps us see not only how practice helps us develop a greater steadiness as we meet the world, but also our meditation helps to cultivate deepen our acceptance of what is actually happening in each moment.

He also addresses an article that was shared with him in which Joseph Goldstein offers a way for busy people to “turbocharge” their practice in nine minutes a day. While this isn’t enough time to get at the roots of our delusion, both Michael and Joseph Goldstein agree that the exercises application can do wonders to deepen wherever we might be on the path.

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ISmile319 - Rubber Bands and Shortcuts [ 39:38 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1026)

To begin with, all of us at Infinite Smile offer each of you well wishes as we begin the holiday season. We also are so thankful for all of your support and participation in this project of awakening. Recognizing our gratitude elevates our experience as human beings, so taking this time to appreciate all of the blessings each of us has seem appropriate. The fact that you listen and support us as a community makes a difference to many people.

With this in mind, we seem to be trained in this culture to always want more, or less, of things and experiences. We seemingly spend very little time appreciating what we have in the here and now. What’s more, the nondual teachings of “Emptiness” and how it appears to be an utter void to the mind, can be experienced as total fulfillment to our deepest sense of being. Michael approaches this evening’s talk with this paradox and offers up pointers on how to bring about the fullness of Emptiness in the midst of every single experience we might have.

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ISmile318 - Thanksgiving and Emptiness [ 38:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1075)

Regardless of our tradition, we can reduce our spiritual practice to its component pieces and find that Buddhism’s Four Noble Truths offers us a path toward freedom.

We first recognize our anguish, we then see it’s cause as our clinging, we then realize a freedom from our clinging is possible and finally we see that there is a teaching that helps support a stabilization of this realization of freedom.

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ISmile317 - Stepping Beyond Heart and Mind [ 42:25 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1102)

Michael begins this talk with the following quotation from Rilke’s Duino Elegies:

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so,
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.

This sets up his talk by making the point that it’s in our desire to categorize and compartmentalize experience that we defile what’s being offered. He goes on to say that “if we don’t mess with suffering we free ourselves from suffering’s mess.” While this may sound counterintuitive, it is the path offered to each of us as our meditation practice deepens.

Gaining a sense of safety is usually what attracts us to practice. We seek an escape from what our reality is offering and initially meditative work can offer us refuge. But at some point, what initially appeared to us as a refuge begins to reveal itself as something entirely different. As our practice deepens and our individual consciousness is loosened on universal awareness, we begin to see that all manner of negativity and resistance begins to arise the more exposed we feel. This is precisely what meditation is designed to do: force a deepening realization that we can not get any closer to Spirit than we already are. Facing this beauty and then accepting all of its implications allows for Rilke’s point to settle within our hearts, thereby offering us up as continual expressions of love.

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ISmile316 - Meditating Through Life's Mess [ 45:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1340)

In this talk, Michael speaks about how the One Precept of “Doing No Harm” can actualize the potential of awakening in any situation. Along these lines, Michael openly shares how he and his wife have separated so that their marriage might be exposed to a more powerful expanse of clarity. He relates this shared decision to the One Precept and how both he and his wife wanted to make sure that the resistance patterns that arose out of their ten-year relationship didn’t adversely affect their kids. The process of difficulty and illumination continues, as he says.

As the talk progresses, Michael elaborates on Zen’s Grave Precepts: Not killing, not lying, not misusing sexuality, not lying, not abusing intoxicants, not criticizing others, not being arrogant, not being greedy, not harboring anger and not diminishing the Triple Treasure (Buddha, Dharma and Sangha). By doing so, he points out how we can examine our own tendencies toward harming ourselves and others in very subtle ways. Making amends if we have gotten off track, it is suggested, can be a powerful antidote to suffering as long as we don’t attach to an outcome.

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ISmile315 - The One Precept: Do No Harm [ 46:38 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1496)