The Patron Saint of Householders

You don't need a retreat, a monastery, or a perfect morning routine to practice.

In this episode, Jacob explores what it means to stop running — not from responsibility, but from the present moment itself. Through reflections on early mornings, financial stress, gig work, and parenting on tired legs, he unpacks the difference between surrender and avoidance, and why real practice happens right in the middle of your ordinary life — not outside of it.

At the heart of the episode is the story of Dipa Ma, a woman who lost everything and found profound spiritual realization while raising a child in a tiny Calcutta apartment with no door on the bedroom. Her life points to a simple but demanding truth: you don't need to escape your circumstances to wake up. You need to meet them fully.

This episode covers:

• Meditation in daily life and what it actually looks like
• The identifying trap and spiritual bypassing
• Surrender vs. passivity — and why they're not the same thing
• Parenting as presence
• Acting from stillness (wu wei)
• Closing with Tao Te Ching Verse 48

If you've ever felt like you need to fix your life before you can practice, this episode is for you.

Transcript

Welcome Back

The Paradox of Talking About It

What Running From Now Actually Looks Like

The Identifying Trap

What Zazen Actually Is

The Truth Is Always Now

The Patron Saint of Householders

This Is the Path

Sit and Sweep the Garden

Jacob 0:01

Oh my goodness, what a pleasure to be sitting in front of this microphone again, recording another episode. This is awesome. I took a week off last week, and I'm very happy to be back. I avoided planning this episode last week. I'm not very good at taking time off, but that avoidance is pretty much the episode. I've been going through something. I haven't taken a full week off from doing the podcasts on top of my regular working hours in quite a while. And it felt good, it was natural. I didn't want to record, and I felt guilty about not wanting to record. But I needed it. And now I'm pretty much overwhelmed with the desire to record. So I'm very happy to be sitting in front of this microphone right now with you guys. Welcome back to Standing Nowhere. This is Jacob, your host. Very much, very much a pleasure to be back with you today for another solo episode. There's there's a paradox about the topic of this podcast. And I suppose with all spiritual niche podcasts, if you want to call this podcast spiritual, it is. A podcast to talk about that thing. You see the incredible irony and paradox in it. And that's why it can become very difficult for me to plan some of these episodes, because whatever I say is not the thing. There's an old Zen saying that says, if I speak, I tell a lie. But if I remain silent, I'm a coward. So I started a podcast about presence, about the Tao, about God, about love, whatever word you want to put over it that is not the thing itself, you know what it is. You know what it is. But I can't I can't quite put the finger on it. And it's interesting, I I practiced this thing for several years before starting the podcast. I was overwhelmed with a desire to talk about it, not only with solo episodes, but interviews with guests and see how they relate to it, you. But I sit down to meditate and the thoughts that race in my head now, since starting this podcast almost eight months ago or beyond now, are filled with thoughts about what I'm going to talk about. The thing. I'll sit down to meditate and thoughts will appear like, how do I explain how to meditate to people who don't meditate or are new at it and are looking for helpful tips? I I'm not a meditation teacher by any means, but I do enthusiastically practice daily sitting meditation. And what is meditation? Well, one way it could be described is being aware of what is. Perhaps you're on a walk or sitting. It would be an awareness of what is happening around you. But it's a little more complicated than that, and it's also infinitely more simple than that. Well, let's start with this episode and how I took a week off. In my mind, during that time off, I was running. Like I said, I'm bad at taking time off. At least enjoying it and being with it. And I'm practicing getting better at it, but what was I running from? Well, you see, that's the thing with meditation. Meditation is the opposite of running. It is being exactly where you are. When we run from the moment, either by dwelling on the past or worrying about the future, we are running from what is. And meditation, the whole point of it is to surrender and be with what is. You see, that's another way of describing being aware is surrender. Like, take for example, right now, some of you listening might be hungry, some of you might be full, or some of you might be neither hungry nor full. But whatever you're feeling in regards to your hunger, that is what is. Perhaps some of you are worried about something coming up. It's been on your mind. Perhaps it's a person. Does this person like me? Will that bill get paid? Whatever it is. Well, the reality is that thing is real, and that worry that you might be feeling right now is real. So meditation or surrender would be to fully accept whatever that thing is. Take me, for example. I've had plenty of months where I was dreading the first of the month coming up for rent. And it became a very stressful thing in my life. But over the last few years, I have practiced being with that feeling. Don't resist it. Don't become antagonized against it. You accept it fully. This is not to be confused with passivity. Let me go about this another way. Earlier I said I was going through something. What does that look like? Well, for me, I wake up and my early morning is very different than my evening hours. When I wake up in the morning, it's usually at 6 30. My family is still asleep at this time. So it's a little dark out. You know, the dawn is starting to rise. You can hear the birds outside. In my mind, it's just come out of sleep. So it's very clear. It's very simple. And of course, the thoughts come rushing in like they do for anyone. And a lot of the first thoughts that come in are usually the most important ones, the biggest worries, quote unquote, of life, which for me happens to be very much financially loaded. So worried about rent, worried about the gas bill, the power bill, this or that bill, etc. People I owe money to that I need to pay back. These things they come in pretty quickly. And since the morning is quiet and still and everyone's asleep, I don't have much to distract me from those things. There's not a lot of easy ways I can run away from them. There's a lot of intrusive thoughts, craving loops, self-doubt. Now, when I sit down to meditate, I am practicing surrendering to them and being present for them and allowing them to be and not run from them. However, later in the day, my mind is very distracted. I've worked for several hours, usually at least six, most of the time 10, 10 to 12. I've been juggling three apps all day with Uber, Doordash, Grubhub, Instacart sometimes, GPS, swapping between all the apps on an old iPhone 10R from seven years ago that barely keeps up. Taking pictures of people's food when I drop them off, only to have my phone crash when I take the picture, and then take about 30 to 60 seconds to reboot the app while I'm awkwardly standing there at the door. Coming home in gym attire, which is thoroughly soaked with sweat, especially in the summertime. There's a lot of busyness through our days. That's just what my days look like. Driving a stick shift car. Your day could look totally different, but I'm sure there's a lot of motion. There's a lot of motion in the day. And that motion creates distraction. It's an easy way for us to run from what is inside or how we feel or what is going on in the world. And when the day gets quiet, where there's no distraction, what do we do? We reach for something, don't we? Our phone to fill that silence. Oh. That terrible silence, that terrible stillness. Gotta fill it. We get home and we have nothing but the ability to contemplate, which we don't want to do. We've got to turn on the rectangle, the TV, and fill that stillness with something. Or look at the phone or do something. Have a drink, have a smoke. We've got to get out of now. We've got to run. And for a lot of us, it's tough to be to be practicing the idea of not running anywhere. Because like I said, it's tough for me to even have time off, right? What am I doing? My thoughts start changing during my time off to why aren't you out there? Do you really need this time off? You could be making more. Wow, you're $200 short of that bill. If you only worked yesterday, you'd have the money for it. You see, some of us when we when we embrace the moment, the mind will say, Well, is this peace or is this avoidance when you're feeling okay when the bills aren't paid? That's a good question. If I feel okay when the bills are not paid, is that peace or is that avoidance? Well, it's peace. But avoidance is the evil twin brother or sister of peace. Passivity. You'll hear certain traditions talk about this, won't you? Faith without works is dead, right? Other traditions say the same thing in um the Gita, for example. It says you take action, but you don't attach to the outcome, but you take action. So can I is it possible for me to be at peace when I know my bills are not going to get paid? And there's the potentiality of me getting in trouble paying extra fees, etc. Is it okay to have peace with that and still take action? It's not easy. This is the practice. This is the the trap that we can find ourselves in, the identifying trap. For example, when I'm having craving loops, let's say I I've worked a long day, I just want to come home, throw a frozen pizza in the oven, and 20 minutes later, voila, I've got a pretty decent tasting dinner. May not be the best for me, but it's easier. I crave the simplicity of it. I do desire um happiness through being healthy, but it's a convenience. Now it's real easy for me to identify myself as somebody who is lazy and doesn't want to cook, or somebody who's lazy and doesn't want to work when I take a day off. There's an identity trap. But here's the problem. We what we want to do is not identify with our cravings or our shortcomings, and still acknowledge that we do want we do desire change. So, in my case, I desire to be that person that comes home, cooks a nice healthy meal, you know, spend 15, 20 minutes cooking, consume a nice healthy meal. That's what I want. But when I don't do it, when I come home and I cook a frozen pizza, can I still do that? Can I still give in to my desires, but not identify myself as a lazy person? You see, it's very subtle. It's very easy to say, well, the pizza is being made, there's no one making it, the pizza is being consumed and enjoyed, but there's no one enjoying it. I'm not, I'm not a fast food person, and the fast food is, you know, it's spiritual bypassing, is what they call that. Where you take some things you've learned about spirituality, what it means to be a spiritual person, to be aware, to be meditative, and you say, Well, there is no me. I there's no separate willpower that is me. There is just pizza being eaten. The Buddha taught me there is no self. Jesus taught me to deny myself. There, you know, there it is no longer I who live, but Christ within me. So the pizza is just happening. You see what I'm getting at? That is spiritual bypassing. That is the ego clothing itself in spiritual clothing, saying, I don't really exist, it's not on me. And the the hardest part about it is, well, in spiritual traditions, there is some truth to that. But the the e the ego is hijacking the practice to its own desires. It is not easy to become an ascetic. In other words, to deny yourself all bad things. There is simply this thing called being human. So when I say you need to surrender to what is, I am not saying surrender to your desire, eat the pizza, don't feel guilty about it. I'm not encouraging you to feel guilty either way, but I'm encouraging you to be present with how you feel, with what is. Take me, for example, in these situations I'm giving you, after I eat the pizza, do I feel good afterwards? No, not very good. It's hard for me to go to sleep. I have to stay awake for another hour and a half to let the food digest TMI here. So how do we break out of this identity trap? Because if I tell you to be present, let go of your thoughts, the first thought that's going to come in your head is, well, if I don't worry and I don't plan, nothing's gonna change. So what do I do? My zazen practice, what does it look like? It's very simple. In the morning, for 30 minutes, I sit on a cushion, I let my hands, my left hand sit on my right hand, let my thumbs touch gently, like I'm holding a piece of paper between them, let my arms hang. I keep my eyes uh just barely open. I keep my back erect, upright, not uptight, and I bring my awareness to my breath and my posture. Now in the course of that 30 minutes, as you can probably guess, my thoughts will go places. That bill is not paid. I did I said something really stupid yesterday. I feel like crap right now. I don't want to meditate, you know, and a lot of these things, they're not verbal, but they're feelings. I can feel it. Like um, there's plenty of times where when I go into my meditation session, I don't want to meditate. Now, take away the words. I don't want to meditate and just leave the feeling of not wanting to do something. Maybe you're listening to this and you're on the way to work, and you really don't want to go to work. That's okay. The trick with this practice and meditation in general is to not push away the feeling that you don't want to go to work. Experience that feeling. I don't want to go to work. I hate my job, whatever it is. Don't add words, but just feel how you feel right now and allow it. Surrender to it. Just surrender. And don't do it in a way where you throw your hands up and say, fuck it, whatever, I'm going to work. Don't do that. Just embrace the feeling of not wanting to go to work. Let it be. That is what it means when you hear the word meditation. When I sit down on that cushion, I am not sitting to meditate to do something. I am practicing non-doing. The Taoists refer to it as wu wei, not doing, non-action. The bet I think the best way to describe it in English is not forcing. And what I'm telling you is not something that you need to conceptualize into an abstract philosophy or concept. It's something that you can experience right now. The things that I'm saying to you? How do they make you feel? Feel. Don't add words. Just go inside. How do you feel? Let that be. You see? The idea is not like when you sit or you practice meditation, the goal is not to clear your mind and force thoughts away. Not at all. The goal is to see what there is. Yes, you do tether yourself gently to your breath and your posture if you're doing zazen or your breath in most meditation practices, like the Theravada with insight meditation, but the reason you do that is because the breath is the one thing in existence that sits very gently on the line of voluntary and involuntary. What do I mean by that? Well, as you've been listening to this podcast episode, you've been breathing. But were you breathing? Or was breathing happening to you? Or was it just happening? Well, obviously breathing was happening. And now that I'm bringing your awareness to breathing, well, you can quote unquote control your breathing now, right? You can hold your breath if you want to, you can breathe really quickly if you want to, you can do whatever you want to your breath. So there's this fuzzy line where the breath sits on control and no control. Voluntary, involuntary. And of course the word breath is what the word spirit means to be spiritual. Breath. This is not a coincidence. In all things spirit, spiritual, it's because of that line, that fuzzy line between voluntary and involuntary. You'll notice in all traditions, one of the biggest things that's mentioned is the idea of grace, that you are saved not of your own doing. In Christianity, regardless of what version or interpretation you hold to, the universal agreement is that you cannot save yourself. And it's the same thing in all traditions Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity it doesn't matter, take your pick. Judaism, Islam, Taoism. You cannot do it yourself. So you hearing this podcast or any other spiritual teachings or anything in the spiritual realm is from grace. Or if you don't like that word grace, not of your own doing. Circumstances bumped into one another until you arrived here. And now you are here. Don't have to call it grace, can call it luck, but you cannot call it your own willpower. He was a Christian mystic. He has a quote that I love that says, To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God. If you've ever worked in the corporate world, the good old fun corporate world, they will teach you active listening, quote unquote, where you are not thinking about what you are going to say in reply when you are listening to somebody. You are actively listening to them, just to listen. No idea what you're going to say in return. And that is the mind state that all spiritual practices try to teach you to be in at all times through your day. And of course, we will fail at that. The Buddha has said that to reach that state, full enlightenment or full realization is more difficult than fighting a thousand people and winning a thousand times, or something to that effect. And the reason it's portrayed like that in such a difficult way is because the ego cannot overcome the ego. In Zen, they say to become enlightened is a spontaneous thing outside of your control. It's an accident. However, meditating will make you more accident prone. You see, the truth is always in the now. This moment, you and I both know it's true because we can see it, we can hear it, we can smell it, taste it, touch it. It's right here. There is no arguing with what is now. But the truth is only ever now. We've heard that term. The truth will set you free. Or in the Bible, God is served in truth and spirit. The truth is now. Not last year's truth, not tomorrow's truth, no past or present truth, but now. And yes, we can we can be wordsmiths and say, well, Jake, there are some truths like the sky is blue and this and that, but no. The only truth is now. And if I look at the sky and I see the color blue, well, blue is a word, right? So ultimately, the word blue isn't true, but it points to the truth of the now. And this connects back to what I was saying earlier, with running and avoiding all the avoiding of what is. Because you can only ever arrive here now. This is where you will be always in the now. You will not be happy when you get a new car. You will not be happy when you get that promotion. You will not be happy after the thing. Insert whatever into the blank. You can only experience true lasting happiness right here, right now. This is good news. This means you don't have to wait for it or do something to get it. It's already here. You've already arrived. This is where you'll hear some people in certain traditions, especially like Advaita Vedanta or the a lot of the non-dualists on uh on the internet these days saying, Well, there's really nothing to do because you're already enlightened. If you read a lot of scripture from the Buddhist tradition, especially in Zen, they say there you are already an enlightened enlightened Buddha, you've just forgotten it, or you don't realize it yet. And yet, unless we seek, we won't find. Like it says even in the Bible, in the biblical tradition, seek and ye shall find. So there has to be that point where you look around and you're wondering what is the truth of this mystery? And you'll slowly start to realize, most people, it's around the age of forty, that they start to realize that there is no truth or lasting happiness in anything material. Anything external, and that's when you start to look within. And that is why you can never run away from it. You can fill yourself with food, with smoke, with drugs, with screens, and you will only become more and more and more miserable. Because you're always in the now and you can't ever get away from it. I love the metaphor in Dante's Inferno. The only way he could find his way out of hell was through the direct center of it. That's the paradox. If you want something other than this moment, you will be unhappy. And yet the desire to improve yourself or achieve or this and that is very real. And it's very um, it's very valid. But if you tether yourself to the material, you will always, always suffer. And I don't care what tradition you are: atheist, nihilist, Christian, or Buddhist or Hindu, or whatever. All traditions point to the same thing. If you're a Christian or a Jew, uh open up your Bible to the book of Ecclesiastes. One of the first things that the teacher writes in that book is that vapor of vapor, all is vapor, something to that effect, or vanity of vanities, all is vain. It's all here and then it's gone. So if you tether yourself to material, you are setting yourself up for failure because as it says in the Buddhist tradition, whatever has the nature to arise also has the nature to cease. Everything, every star, every galaxy, everything in this material universe will end. There's people in 2026 that argue whether Jesus existed, whether he did miracles. Why are we talking about this? Let's read what he taught. Even if you think he Jesus didn't exist, the words on the pages are Jesus. The teachings are Jesus. If you think the Buddha never existed or enlightenment isn't real, irrelevant. Look at the teachings, test them for yourself. What did Jesus say when the rich man approached him and said, I've I've uh accomplished much in my spiritual disciplines, but what can I do to advance myself more? And what did Jesus say? Sell everything you own and give it, or not sell it, but give it to give everything you own to the poor and follow me. And what did the man do? He walked away crying because he could not give up his material possessions. But if you tether yourself instead, instead of material, tether yourself to nothing, to no thing, then something opens inside of you. And like I said, usually around the age of 40 is when most people see that the bubblegum flavor of life has started to wear off. And this doesn't mean that we need to become monks and sit in a cave and avoid all material happiness or pleasures. No, no, no. The Buddha taught the middle path. You can sit in the middle with perfect equanimity, just as happy when something comes your way as you are when something leaves. It's like the farmer and the neighbor. The farmer wakes up to see his horse has his favorite horses ran away. The neighbor says that's too bad. The farmer says maybe. The horse returns later that day with with two extra horses wild horses. That's wonderful, the neighbor says. The farmer says maybe. The son begins to tame one of the wild horses and he's bucked off and breaks his leg. The neighbor That's terrible. The farmer maybe. The army comes through the next day, conscripting young soldiers for a war. They can't recruit the son because of his broken leg. The neighbor, that's wonderful. The farmer Maybe. Can you sit in the middle, not tethered to anything and maintain equanimity regardless of what reality is throwing at you? Maybe you have to work fifty five hours a week. Maybe you are haunted by thoughts that will not stop. Maybe you are rich and you don't have to worry about any bill at all, but you have a huge hole inside of you. And it's okay if you feel equanimity, you know, your mind might say, Well, I'm not going to want to do anything or improve myself if I feel fine with the present moment. And I'm not saying that. That's very different from what I'm saying. Because out of the equanimity that you will cultivate as you practice being with the now, you will have all sorts of energy that will now flow through you because you're not at odds with the universe. You're not antagonizing against it. You're going with the flow. You are in harmony with the way of things, with the Tao. And in that state of equanimity where you have more energy, you don't even know what kind of desires will arise in you. And you don't need to squash every desire. In that loving equanimity, you might have a desire to do something, like start a podcast or a new project or whatever. And then you'll sit with that desire. And in that open, equanimous awareness, you will be much more able to decide whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. And you'll just know. You don't have to have this worrisome story in your head that you need to be constantly planning and scheming about the next thing you're going to do in your life. I love that quote. It's better to stand on the firm ground of nothingness than the quicksand of somethingness. Let me tell you about an example of somebody that came to mind over the last week when I was thinking about this episode. Her name is Deepa Ma. Deepa D-I-P-A-M. I believe it's Hindi or Sanskrit for the mother of Deepa. And the reason her name is Deepa Ma is because she had, I think, three kids. She was born in 1911. She was married at the age of 12. She lost multiple children. Her infant, I think two of her children when they were infants passed away. Imagine losing a child, much less multiple children. And then her husband died. And her husband was good to her, even though they married young. You know, it was the culture at the time. He was good to her. She loved him. She lost two infants and her husband. Her only surviving child, I believe, was Deepa, hence the name mother of Deepa, Deepa Ma. She fell into a deep, deep depression. She was bedridden. She had extremely high blood pressure, cardiac conditions. She was on the edge of death from all of these negative material circumstances. This is why I bring this up. Her doctor told her to try meditation. Now, some people when they meditate, they have varying degrees of suffering in their life. This woman, losing a child, in my opinion, is the greatest form of suffering a person can endure in this world. Much less two plus a husband in a short period of time. This woman's suffering was at max. She was on the verge of death. And she reached a profound level of realization or enlightenment in a short time. Many people who have been in her presence, they will say that she was, you know, what people in the Buddhist tradition consider a fully realized being or enlightened being, similar to figures like throughout history, you know, that have taught us many great things. She was the one who taught a lot of Westerners like Jack Hornfield, Sharon Salzburg, uh, Joseph Goldstein, uh, I'm sure Ramdas met her as well. She helped build American mindfulness for the West when a lot of people would come to visit her. She didn't go to a cave. She went home to her tiny little apartment in Calcutta. There's no door in the bedroom. She was known as the patron saint of householders. And her core teaching was that whatever you are doing, be aware of it. Whether it's ironing, cooking, driving, all of it. Be aware of it. And like I said earlier, being aware, which is what meditation is, being actively listening and receiving and being receptive to your life, that that state of mind can also be achieved by a radical, radical acceptance, complete acceptance of whatever is, no matter how subtle it is, and I'm talking about the whole spectrum. Whether it's the weird, subtle smell in your car or the feeling of your steering, whatever, a little thought form, little bit of uncomfortableness, headache, nausea, happiness, whatever. The core teaching, whatever you are doing, be aware of it. Accept it. Surrender to it. I'm on the road a lot. Can I accept that situation right now? Not in a passivity way. This is life. Oh well. Not gonna do anything about it, just gonna accept it. Not like that, but right now, this is my situation. Podcasting? It's It's the middle of the day. I worked my morning shift. I'm recording an episode. I'm about to go drop my wife off somewhere and go back to my next shift. How do I feel right now? My heart is beating? I'm nervous about finishing the rest of this episode, editing it, hoping it's good, hoping I'm gonna get my wife to where she needs to be on time. I feel that. I feel my heart beating right now. I feel the the nervous feeling inside. What am I gonna say next? Am I gonna wrap this episode up okay? Parenting? When I come home exhausted, and my son has limitless energy? Parenting on tired legs. That is what is. This is the path. And it shows up in our lives, the differences that this awareness makes. Like the podcast, I s I fully surrendered and accepted my doubts and my fears. But I know that I come alive when I hit record, when I sit in front of this mic, when I talk to other people, and I hear these amazing stories come out of them. And I'm already happy with it. You know, last week I was beating myself up for taking time off from work and and the and God, my first week, full week without doing a podcast episode. Imagine the doubts and fears that came up in my mind. But I accepted it. That was the present moment. I felt so terrible. I wanted to record an episode, but at the same time, inside of me, there was this overwhelming feeling that said, I just don't want to do anything this week. Is that okay? Well, whether it's okay or not, it is how I felt. And I didn't record. And now here I am the week after. And I'm just chomping at the bit to record. And that's what the reality is right now. And maybe I won't want to record in a few weeks or months. Can you just be actively receptive to your life? I took my son to the park a few days ago on one of the days I was taking off. If you have children, they are a wonderful opportunity for you to practice mindfulness and awareness. Being with them completely. I took my son to the park and I switched myself off. I became invisible. Jake didn't exist. I was just the blank screen on which my son and I were going to the park and having fun. And what arose out of that spontaneous presence with him? We went on a mission in the park. We were pretending that we were infiltrating this base. And we had to enter all secret codes to get in, and then the floor was lava, so we had to use the monkey bars to get across some parts. I mean, it was just so much fun. Snuck in and blew up the mainframe, escaped. I mean all I did was empty myself of things like I told you earlier with Meister Eckhart. To be full of things is to be empty of God. To be empty of things is to be full of God. I was empty with my son. I was an empty loving awareness, empty in a good way, empty of myself. And I was just pure presence with him. I watched it arise spontaneously, and he loved it. You want to talk about children building core memories in their lives. All they want is you to be there. Cause your children, they're here. They're now. Your friends, your family, they are here, they're now. They're not in the past and they're not in the future in your mind. It's some abstract concept. They're right here, right now. And if you don't stop running from the present moment, you're gonna miss them. And they grow up fast. Life goes by fast. What an amazing day with him. For free. Just took him to the park. You know, my job search, I don't know what I'm gonna find. But I know that I'm happy when I take care of my family. So I'm not gonna live in some dreamed up future in my head about what my next job is gonna look like and how they're gonna treat me. I'm just here now. And I'm feeling the anxiety about it, and I'm clicking the apply button anyways. Just moving forward. The state of the world, we don't know what's gonna happen, guys. There's a lot of corruption in the world. But it's the present moment. And that doesn't mean we roll over and accept it. You know, we some people feel called to stand up and go to the streets. That's their role at that time. But don't live in your head about things that have come before or what's gonna come up in the near future with things. I mean, everyone's talking about Epstein files and this and that. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot of crap in the world. But if you are running from the present moment to your phone, it's just gonna fill you up with crap. And it's not like you're just closing your eyes and plugging your ears and pretending it's not there. You can hear about it, educate yourself on it, and then hold it away in awareness. Understand that there there is corruption in the world and it's a perfect whole. The two can exist simultaneously. It's perfect as it is, and it needs improvement. We need to make things better. There's this idea of pacifism if we switch into this receptive meditative role. And I was reminded of it. I play um a video game with my wife called Overwatch. Uh, we we play that with our friends. It's like a first-person shooter, and there's a character named Soldier 76. And the character that I play is Zenyatta. He's like a Zen monk, but he's a robot. And uh, anyways, this soldier talks to him and he says, In this world, pacifism is foolish. And Zenyatta replies, What makes you think I am a pacifist? And Soldier 76 says, You sure talk like one. To which Zenyatta says, Perhaps it is assumptions that are foolish. And I wanted to mention that little dialogue in this in this episode because that's one of the biggest misconceptions about meditation or being spiritual, is that you will become this pacifist. And you won't, because you're still acting. I'm still applying, I'm still recording, I'm still parenting, I'm still driving, but I'm doing it from stillness from nowhere. Empty presence. The actions don't stop. The one it's just the one who thinks that they're the ones doing it that that is loosening its grip. In other words, the the heavy thought that I'm uh broke and working all the time and I'm not gonna get ahead, and that's who I am, that loosens its grip a little bit. And suddenly we just find ourselves in the present moment. And we accept it. And we're not fighting against it. Zhuang Zhu from the Taoist era, about twenty five hundred years ago or so, he says, quote, flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free. Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing. This is the ultimate. So as they say in Zen, we sit and we sweep the garden. That is to say, we practice our mindfulness while we are sitting, and then we practice our mindfulness as we sweep the garden, as we do our daily activities. Whereas Ramdas has said, we remember our Buddha nature and we remember our social security number and to pay our taxes, and we don't separate the two. If we are bored, we don't reach for our phone to fill the boredom. What do we do instead? We become interested in boredom. Wow. There's boredom. What does boredom feel like? The craving to reach for your phone, don't bring it with you in the bathroom. Or even better yet, let's say you you use the restroom in the morning for a few minutes, bring your phone with you, but put it just in reach, but put it down somewhere in the bathroom, just in reach, and just sit there and do your business and be with the experience of using the restroom. It might sound funny to you guys, but if you go back and look in Buddhist scripture, they talk about being mindful even when using the restroom. 2,500 years ago, they were writing scripture that said, When you are urinating, you are aware I am urinating. When I am defecating, I am aware I am defecating. And they are just with that. If you're eating your food, your dinner, you're just eating your dinner. Can you do that? I don't always succeed. There's a lot of times where I have to put the TV on, and then I'm feeding my eyeballs all kinds of pleasure from the TV and my mouth. Take a moment and stop and look at all the ways we've we try to cram and shovel pleasure into each of our five senses constantly. Don't need to beat yourself up about it. We are human, we desire things, and you don't have to never give into a desire ever again. But can you take a moment and become interested in boredom? You're feeling despair. Can you take a moment and instead of running from your despair, can you look at it closely? Curiously, the subtle edges of it. Doubt. I gotta tell you, I've been going through a lot of doubt the last couple of weeks about myself, my ability to do anything. This podcast, imagine trying to start a new podcast while you're already really busy, and there's so much to do in the podcasting world, promoting it and getting guests on the podcast. Am I good enough to interview this person? Will I think of anything good to say? But I follow it with curiosity. Follow all these things with curiosity. Not a manipulating mind. Boredom, let it be. Look at it closely. What is boredom? What is it? Don't manipulate it into something. Just be with it for a bit. Eventually, your desires will become more interesting to you than actually fulfilling them. When you crave something and you get the thing, getting the thing doesn't bring you happiness. It's the cessation of the desire for the thing that gives you happiness. If material objects brought you true lasting happiness, then you wouldn't need to buy more material objects, would you? But here in America, we are rapidly turning material into junk at alarming rates because there is a hole inside of us that cannot be filled with any external thing. There's no need to run or fill it with anything. That's the funny thing. But I'll leave you with the words of Lao Tzu. He was a little old man that wrote these words 2,500 years ago. And I'm going to read them to you now. He says, In pursuit of knowledge, every day something is added. In the practice of the Tao, every day something is dropped. Less and less do you need to force things until finally you arrive at non-action. When nothing is done, nothing is left undone. True mastery can be gained by letting things go their own way. It can't be gained by interfering. Blessings. Thank you for listening.