Starting at about minute 23:00:00 and going to minute 26:25:00
23:07: This sutra is a meditation manual. We're meant to ask ourselves how can I put this into practice? How can I walk through this door? and when we speak of meditation
sutra we're meant to ask ourselves how can I put this into we're actually practicing three separate skills I call them the meditators toolkit the first tool is called learning to stay with the object of our meditation now if you want to see how your capacity for concentration is I invite you to stay with your breath to notice your breath breathing in and breathing out the simple physical sensation of your breath it's a skill we need to develop we've built up the skill of being able to do seven or eight things at once to have our breath on one track to be aware of the things we hear to start planning what we're going to be next to be doing next to think about what we had for breakfast all at once and we noticed this we're continuously carried away so one of the first skills of meditation that we develop is the art of coming back of learning to stay I like to call it to rest under the shade of a tree on a hot day leaning against the trunk nowhere to go nothing to do to keep coming home the second aspect is recognizing in the sense of recognizing when we've drifted off that's another skill many times we're carried away and we're on a whole narrative of thought and we haven't even recognized that we've been pulled away so as a meditator we want to develop the capacity of deciding where to place our attention I want to be very clear here that wouldn't Buddha did not teach mindfulness let me just tell you that the Buddha taught appropriate attention appropriate mindfulness you can be mindful in a not so wonderful way about with your resentment for years I know people that have been angry for years that's holding something in consciousness in a certain way the Buddha taught appropriate mindfulness where we may like to direct our attention in order to transform so recognizing when we drifted off and coming back home is the second skill the third skill is returning returning to where we decided to place our attention for example our breath the flower this conversation our step the food without blaming ourselves or saying it's bad or what recognizing that it's a tendency of our mind to run and then over time as we engage in developing this skill set the ability the capacity to rest to stay to return become something natural just like when we want to learn to play the piano it's a skill set don't immediately unless you're Mozart I'll be able to go over to the piano and play everything you have to learn the scales so in this 