If you know anything about the way I tend to frame the meditation practice, this won't be a 15 minute talk about it, but the real meditation practice is your life.

So if the whole conference isn't your meditation practice, I'm sorry.

But you know, that can transform itself in one instant by simply intending to not miss this moment and not turn meditation into some special moment.

Because every moment is insanely special and privileged in the sense that this breath coming in, there will come a moment when it will not come in again.

And we don't know when that moment will be.

So to really appreciate that, as so many teachers across the ages have said, the preciousness of this very moment, the miracle of mindfulness, to quote Thich Nhat Hanh.

And so without taking anything for granted or some narrative about mindfulness and my practice or anything like that, just dropping into being fully present in your body as it is, as you are.

And at the same time, in the space of all of us being here together, with a very strong intentionality.

So can you feel the entire sensory universe of the body as a whole, W-H-O-L-E, sitting here.

With the body exactly as it is.

And the universe of sensations associated with this breath coming in and this breath exiting.

And the larger sense of the body as a whole sitting here.

And keeping in mind that no matter what the object or objects of attention are that you give yourself over in any particular period of formal meditation practice, the invitation, let's put it this way, it's never about the object of attention.

Whatever it is, whether it's the breath sensations in the belly or at the nostrils or a sense of the body as a whole sitting here, or sounds or anything else that one might attend to in the domain of human experience, it's never about the objects of attention primarily.

What it's really about is the attending itself.

And did you hear the degree of silence in the room just dropped after I said that?

So the invitation is to actually take up residency, if you will, in awareness itself.

Let it become your default mode, your address, your permanent residence, so to speak.

Your dwelling place, your abode.

And then silence and awareness become fused.

Silence and wakefulness.

Silence and the beauty and the miracle of life expressing in this moment in the form of you.

And in the form of all of us together with some degree, I think a strong one, a very common intentionality.

And in that sense, if it resonates with you, taking your seat in this way, metaphorically as well as literally, be a love affair with this moment and with the to transform the world.

Because if each one of us shows up in this moment in our fullness, guess what?

The world is already different right in this moment by virtue of us showing up in our fullness.

It may sound tiny, small, insignificant.

And it may be tiny, but it's hardly insignificant.

And in fact, it may be the only leverage we have to heal and transform the autoimmune disease that humanity has created on planet Earth in all its various nightmare forms.

And in all of the beauty that ironically accompanies it all seamlessly.

A love affair with this moment.

In the midst of the pain.

And embracing it in some sense or other.

Maybe, just maybe, finding a new way to be in relationship with it that is healing, that is not separate from taking a stand and enacting in the which is dying for us to enact.

And it's all right here in this timeless present moment we call now, underneath thinking.

So in that sense, the silence is undisturbed and undisturbable.

And awareness is completely coextensive with it.

And with that, your innate beauty, genius, potential for healing the wounds of the world and the wounds that we carry.

Not in some contrived future, but right here in this moment.

And in the remaining few moments of the meditation practice, if your eyes have been closed, I would you to open them.

And drink in whatever in front of you.

Just letting it all appear and recognize it as appearing.

And then letting your head, because we have such degrees of freedom of motion of the head and neck, letting your head just kind of drink in what's around you, moment by moment, with full awareness.

And drinking in the faces and the feeling of the people around you.

All in silence.

And recognizing that although we may come from all over the planet, and we all have our individual dwelling places that we call home, hopefully, because many people don't.

And many people in this city do not.

It's a huge challenge.

Social challenge.

To the degree that you can be at home in this moment, to that degree, as it was suggested earlier, the world's already different.

It doesn't mean you have to be completely in alignment with the actuality of things, because sometimes it requires standing up and taking a stand.

But who is it that's taking the stand?

That's exactly what the world is dying for, starving for, is for every single one of us to be the beauty that we already are.

So in these final moments of the meditation, just drinking in the beauty of the people next to you.

The beauty of the people around you.

And you don't have to do it through the eyes alone.

You can do it through simply feeling of knowing there's a human being next to you.

Maybe somebody you've lived with for 60 years.

Maybe somebody you haven't been next to for 60 seconds.

And just to say, I stood by the doorway coming in, just to get out of the wind, and a whole bunch of people came up to me.

And it was just incredibly beautiful.

And people expressing gratitude in one way or another.

And I just want to say that I understand that, and I love it, and it warms my heart.

But I also want to say that the gratitude needs to be extended in all directions.

That the reason, it's like umbundu, I am because you are.

The reason I write books, to the degree that I can't even understand why, it's to express something that will resonate in you.

Not because of me, but because of you, or because of we.

And so there's no way to really express gratitude that's really meaningful other than paying it forward in the world.

And that's kind of like COVID.

Like it's a kind of viral expression, but it's instead of being toxic, it's healing.

And the more you can pay that forward, pay the gratitude, pay the awareness, pay the loving kindness and the compassion forward, in small but not insignificant ways.

And as large a way as you can, you know, imagine.

We're all the selves of the one-body politic of the planet.

We all need an adequate blood supply in order to live.

And we all need to recognize that we are whole ourselves individually, but part of larger and larger circles of wholeness.

And when we honor that, that becomes the real meditation practice.

And then, as you can see, no bells were necessary to say, okay, now we're meditating.

No bells to say, okay, now we're not.

That's not criticizing people who use bells, by the way.

But to just say, I know everything can be interpreted through whatever lens you want to throw at it.

But to really say that there's no moment of your life between now and the moment you take your last breath, that's not the meditation practice.

And who's to say which ones are worthy of missing?

I would say, how about none?

That would be worthy of none.

But then don't make a big deal of it.

Because the nature of our minds is that, you know, now that I've said that, I'm going to fall unconscious.

Until I remember that I told myself not to.

And then here I am again.

Okay, so it's humiliating.

It's depressing.

I know.

And it's also hysterical.

And then, has the awareness held it all?

Yes, it has.

So it's not like, oh, I was meditating, and then I wandered, and then I forgot, and then I got back to it.

No.

That's a nice story.

But if you rest in awareness, if that becomes your default mode, as the neuroscientists like to say, then the entire thing is meditation practice.

And then life and all our relationships and interactions, and the question of how to live in this world.

With integrity.

And not be morally compromised.

All of this becomes the curriculum at the moment.

So, thank you folks.

And let's have a marvelous day.