[Music] do you respect the tie dear brothers here in the hall dear Sangha today is Mother's Day and I would like to send my love to my mother for supporting me all the time in so many ways to be here right now all the conditions she had prepared and was there for me and I want to also thank her mother and the mother of my mother's mother I want to thank the ancestral stream of my blood ancestors going far back and I also want to thank our teacher ty for nourishing me for being such a transformative and meaningful also mother to me with a lot of love and care teaching me how to handle life how to take care of myself and I would also like to say thank you to Ty's teacher and the teacher of Ty's teacher and the stream of our spiritual ancestors going far back to the Buddha who is sitting here behind me very peacefully and having my back literally and I feel safe and at ease knowing that both my blood ancestors we have an altar here for our blood ancestors and my spiritual ancestors on the other side with the Buddha having my back I know I can be very grateful I want to share my story with you mmm a classic Zen story about a man and a horse and you might know it there is a horse and this horse is galloping very fast racing and the man on the horse it looks like he needs to go somewhere very important maybe his wife is giving birth or he has an urgent message for the king to deliver their racing and there is a man standing at the side of the road seeing that and as they come racing by this man shouts hey where are you going and the man on the horse replies I don't know ask the horse off he goes and this man stands there asked the horse ask the horse so the title of the talk today I chose his taming the tiger within and you might ask why taming the tiger with him well I don't know ask the tiger in in Buddhist teachings the horse stands for habit energies and the same as the horsemen it just carries us away and we don't know where it is going these strong habit energies they take the choice from us they are running running us away and we don't know where we will get to and the tiger stands for strong emotions within us and the tiger is a dangerous animal and so can be strong emotions they can threaten us and threaten the people around us and I believe in these times where we are staying more at home that our habit energies show up more often and awesome more strong being with people around us for a longer time being closer with family and I remember my dad telling me when when I was a little kid he said people are habitual animals they get used to everything habitual animals that's a German word and it translates into creature of habit in English but in German you say governor I'd steer habitual animal and I remember I was confused when he said that people are habitual animals as I was confused I was a kid of five or six how can a human be an animal and just didn't sit right with me but now I see the Horace a tiger maybe he was referring to that and also he said they're getting used to everything and I see nowadays we are getting used to everything they say stay at home save lives we stay at home and we save lives and some of us I got used to go out and they struggle a little bit but if it takes longer we will get used to that too we got used to not going to baseball games anymore we got used to not going to rock concerts anymore so this metaphor of the horse as a strong habit energy I found this a little bit outdated I mean nobody has an urgent message for the king anymore we don't ride horses so I want to offer maybe a more modern or a more accurate version of that which is a moving walkway imagine in the airports so you come there with your trolley and you can walk like the hundred-yard so you see there's this walkway and that makes it much easier for me so you go with you Charlie you step on that walkway and it does everything for you you don't need to think you don't need to do anything no to move your legs but also you cannot do anything it will just take you basically like the horse now you find yourself on that walkway and you slowly are walked forward and then you think I haven't had a coffee maybe I'd like to buy a coffee and sure enough on the right side of the walkway there is a coffee shop but not for you you are on the walkway there is no exit then you you walk or you get walked a little bit further you think wow this is a long flight maybe I want to buy a magazine or a book and yes there is the bookshop to your right passing by not for you maybe later and you need to see the restroom really urgent and the restroom is right there but you cannot access it I mean you can like jump over the handle but we know it's not legal and it's also dangerous and you could turn around and run or walk against the walkway but if you ever tried to walk or saw a kid walking against the walkway you know that you don't move if you stay at the same place so we have to wait until that walkway unloads us somewhere in the future we have to be patient and without control and choice until the end of the walkway and I find this makes more sense to me so as you can imagine it's going to be in the direction of habit energies today and let us have a closer look what kind of habit energies we have we often look at other languages all the languages if we want to describe things in sutras or or teachings because they often offer us the roots of the word or the meaning of the word so we look into Pali Sanskrit or Chinese and I looked up habit in Chinese to see what what it says and usually we have two characters in Chinese different words that come together as and build a new word and from these two words you can see where it came from so let me write down habit in Chinese for you I remember I don't write Chinese maybe I should make the other habit but I know someone who does rather minion will you be so kind and write habit in Chinese just here in the upper middle please brother minion is my roommate and he's excellent in Chinese he's writing calligraphies and I see him diligently studying studying amazing and his name translated his brother kindness and I find this is very kind of you to help me out here in this situation Wow this is habit huh okay that's good enough for me I wouldn't I wouldn't have seen the difference thank you very much rather minion so two characters what I do know because I looked it up that the word habit in Chinese consists of this character here which means learning or and receive training in that's pretty clear and like goes into a certain direction to learn something like a habit we we learn something we receive training and something practicing is another translation the second word means no I don't have too much space but we will get around to be used to haha or to be accustomed to accustomed to also make sense for the world habit it's a nice combination so we're learning to get used to something we received training in in to be accustomed to something to learn a habit and to me it sounds like little by little these continuous drops where a stone little strokes fell big Oaks right we learn something and we get used to it so we'll come back to that later to that meaning what kind of habits do we see or face in our daily lives and when I look at my habits I see some of them are like a ritual I'll make a ritual out of it dedicate a time and some are more routine as we said to save time to save energy like stepping on the walkway and instead of walking I want to save energy so we have ritual let's say versus routine can you read that from over there and a ritual is something you practice with awareness you're very awake let's say awake versus asleep when you do a routine and you do it just for the sake of not wasting much thinking you don't have to be really there so we can say the first one is like mindfulness versus forgetfulness from Ed fulness and to give you an example like a ritual can be like a tea ceremony and we all like to drink tea and we know how much care and these tiny little parts it demands and having this wonderful roommate brother kindness he doesn't only have Chinese skills he also has Japanese skills because he's a matrimony natural master and it's amazing to watch him making tea he takes only a little amount of this green powder and he puts it there then a little amount of water whisking not too much and he really has to be there in order not to do too much or too hard or too and and it becomes a ritual versus let us say coffee tea and coffee everybody knows I guess when you wake up in the morning and you find your way to the kitchen to where you assume the coffee machine was yesterday half asleep and you make your coffee and sometimes you would feel the water into the bean hopper or the coffee ground into the container where the water goes because you are still asleep the other day and brother mignon was making matcha I wanted to put the beans in my grinder and I spilled it and they were everywhere and I was like oh why is this always happening before coffee you know and the answer is because it is before coffee after coffee these things wouldn't happen you would be awake mindful so this is a difference between ritual and routine just to give you like a example another kind of habit energy there are good habit energies should I continue just hear the word have it already good habits versus bad habits and because that sounds so bad let's say we have helpful habits that contribute to our well-being helpful habits versus harmful they harm us and what do they harm I mean we are talking in terms of practice we are practitioners I guess everybody who is watching Dhamma talk has something to do with mindfulness and is eager to develop its practice so helpful whereas as harmful means to establish a practice body more mindfulness to go deeper and what are good habits and bad habits oops this God have it do you see then God habit is surely a good habit so as practitioners is the best habit as practitioners let me get my energy cable right here as practitioners for sure a good habit to cultivate is to follow your breathing first thing waking up you know you wake up in the morning and if you don't follow your breathing first thing if my your mind might take over like the horse and carry you somewhere for example to the coffee maker saying okay you know I have to get out of this bed I have to go there make this right turn left to the kitchen the coffee maker I guess is somewhere there and if this thinking kicks in you're basically already lost from the very thing in the morning so a good habit follow your breathing follow your your belly rising and falling your the air flowing in and out naturally to your body and during the day we can continue another good habit during the day is what we do here in practice centers is stopping to have else of mindfulness to have reminders to make a stop our thinking our actions what we are doing what we're feeling just to check in calm down and get in touch with ourselves again seeing if we've been carried away if we've been on a horse on a walkway and if necessary to get off the horse or get off the walkway and how we do that we come later come to that later that's one good that's a good habit to another one and this is a funny one in a in a Sangha meeting in an online sangha meeting I asked the Sangha members to exactly do a change a habit change a habit like with a coffee machine and say put in the evening your coffee machine in another place just to change something so when you come to the kitchen in the morning asleep forgetful as a routine and you don't find your coffee machine because you're not thinking and then you will wake up and you will think and then you are awake and you can do your coffee as a ritual so Jim let's call him Jim right Jim said he did it and he he placed his almond creamer somewhere else so when he came the very next morning and as it happens again he was asleep he was forgetful he was in that I know how to make coffee thing it's an automatism is a it's an algorithm going on this-this-this it comes to the creamer and his creamer is not in the cabinet where it used to be he was really confused he said I looked again still not still not in there he looked maybe next door it was nowhere next door and then he remembered and said ah and that was this moment of awakening aha now I remember now I wake up I'm from my routine yesterday I put it somewhere else in order to come to this state of mind but where where did I put it and he forgot where he put it so he had to look a little bit around but finally he found and could enjoy his coffee with his creamer and we have bad habits on the opposite we also have everybody has bad habits nobody's free from that we try to make our lives more easy without much thinking or engaging save energy and huh strange enough often a habit energy is to to not being able to stop thinking and to actually engage all the time which is to me not saving energy but it can be so - I called that radio NST we listen to our radio NST all the time and NST is a station that means non stop thinking radio non-stop thinking we don't give us a break to come back to our breathing to be and to come alive to be there to be awake to be mindful but this thinking keeps us going and now I can do this and then I can do that and what happened here what happened there look at this and we engage ourselves all the time that's a bad habit that's why we have that good habit of stopping during the day another bad habit could be that we are not capable of taking care of feelings or thoughts that come up which are not very pleasant or difficult to handle or to accept and we tend to fight them put them away nope or we ignore them what is there a problem I don't see a problem or we cover them up saying oops sadness no no I need a peanut butter cake that makes me happy or I need this piece of music and we cover up by filling it filling in something else which is not the original thing that's a bad habit too because it is harmful it doesn't help us to get to know us and to get to lover ourselves we try to stay away because we find it unpleasant or discomfort discomfort and then there are other bad habits average bad habits everybody knows simply being late or being always right and we all know people in our lives who are always late or always right and no I'm not talking to anyone specific here but you probably know someone okay and then we have another set of habit energies but no more space on the board so I'll make some maybe we do I just need to go down a little bit and this is also very meaningful because now we come to the ancestral habit energy so when I go down to my knees I go down and kneel down in front of my ancestors so we have ancestral let's just make clear that this doesn't belong to this ancestral habits verses it's called them personal habits ancestral and this ancestral that's enough and we also all have them every family has inherited habit energies from their from their father's from their mothers and from their fathers from your grandparents and we need also know them and when we are young we say oh my dad is like that I will never become like my dad only like two forty years later I see myself doing exact the same thing and sometimes I open my mouth and my mom comes out saying you should wear socks you'll get a cold my dear say mom what are you doing here right so that there can be very strong be going because it goes a long way it goes our parents our grandparents great the stream of all our ancestors so we have two parents we have four four grandparents we have eight grand grandparents we have sixteen second grade grandparents and I looked it up by the time we come to our 18th great-grandparents they are 1 million ancestors having our back and that's a very strong stream there's a very strong current and this stream of ancestral habits carries helpful seeds and carries harmful seeds to helpful seats just cultivated by experience and by volition and harmful habits because we were not able to see our ancestors were not able to see it or they didn't have a practice to stop it so there was no recognition maybe there was there no kept of the capability of dealing with this and we just passed them on and it is difficult to say where it all started we can blame our parents we can blame our grandparents for doing it to my parents which did it to us but it's very difficult when you have after 18th generation you have 1 million people who to blame and you rather you rather take care of what is now instead of going back in the past and looking what went wrong and who did it there's an Italian saying in our Italian brother used to say it's not about the sinner it's about the sin so we don't want to point fingers to something but we want to do something in transform something so I have in my family also helpful and harmful habits and not really a harmful but kind of a bad funny habit in my family is food it's all around food my family lost food and why this is another this is another story probably but when we go shopping my mom my dad or me or my sister or together pest together we buy a lot we buy a lot of food and we say show me show me buying like one more cabbage maybe we need it yeah sure or better to take two packages of this sure go ahead you know and then of course we store a lot of food at home and we have a big pantry and a big storage and the basement in the kitchen everywhere and because there's this wish or you know always to have a lot or enough or you never know maybe guests are coming so we cook a lot you know in case somebody brings their friend home or you never know so you better cook more than two less and because we cook a lot we also eat a lot we'd like to eat and I learned later when I went to friends or in my monastic life to two different lay friends to their houses nobody eats as much as my family and I had to share this one day with my family yes and we are eating too much so I said what do you mean were you eating too much I said well nobody eats as much as we do and they couldn't believe me and because we eat so much but we of course we are no you see we are not like my parents are not very big or strong so we have leftovers we have also a lot of leftovers and these leftovers we have to freeze and yeah cook another day or warm them up another day and I have inherited this this habit energy when I was the shopper here Deer Park I was exactly like my mom I opened my mouth and my mom spoke now let's take one more box brother because you never know you know how many people will come for the day of mindfulness and the mind can come up with a lot of different reasons why and you can ask my cooking team here I'm always cooking too much because I'm staying there and I'm pouring in things into my pots and I think will this be enough like in counting the brothers seeing they're all young they're all strong they had working meditation I better better one more and I pour it in and fair enough I'm also eating too much I'm standing in front of the serving line and I'm doing my contemplations and I vow to be moderate and not to eat too much not to take too much on my bowl until I stand there with my bowl in front of the tray or pot and I do one spoon and two spoons I think it's only half-full I'm really hungry and I don't know what fear comes up there will I starve today is this the my last day because I didn't take a third spoon it's ridiculous but this is what is going on in me so I'm taking two more just to be sure and just to find out while eating no I'm full already there's still a half bowl in here exactly the amount I was I was starting to consider not to take any more and when we are cooking because I'm cooking so much we also have leftovers so now in a you know monastery with cooking or rotation you have another cooking team cooking the next day and so one excuse for me could be and that the cooking team next day has to cook less and some brothers are happy they're saying that's great cook as much as you want because they know me so I have less work the next day but others would also like to offer a dish like I'm I really love cooking and I really like offering dishes to to the brothers and I'm taking the chance for these brothers to cook their own dish because they have to warm up my leftovers so that's uh I call it funny but it's a bad habit and I'm still working on it on the other side my family has wonderful habits my family loves people very generous to help when people I need my family's just and engaged we had a lot of in my family we had a lot of monks priests from the Catholic side we had mayors we had politicians my dad is engaged my mother in the community my dad in politics so really just I'm a Buddhist monk and that's a beautiful habit energy that we hope we can pass on if not to my children then I can pass it on by my actions my deeds and words and personal habits so the ancestral have this strong current and personal habits are something I develop and cultivate my own life based on experiences or hurts I have experienced or just ideas ideologies that I take on and cultivate a habit that forms my identity too so a bad habit of mine which I have is money you don't want to give me money I cannot handle money and maybe this is a reason I became a monk because we don't have money we have a little bit of pocket money and I cannot keep money with me I just don't value it enough I never did my mom when when I was a teenager I started going out and I asked her if she has some money for me and for the weekend and she says how much do you need and I said whatever and she gave me she said for the whole weekend okay I'll give you 100 so she gave me hundred and she said don't forget to bring back the change I said sure so Sunday night I come back home and she said where's the change and I said no change okay so next week I asked again and she said how much and I said whatever she says last time I gave you a hundred this time I give you fifty now bring back the change Sunday evening she says is there any changes there's no change the following week so he gave me 20 and then no change so my mother said I better give you nothing because I give you ten or hundred you spend it all like that's a gift but but I when I had a hundred I would treat my friends and if I had ten my friends would treat me so that that's the deal right but I you don't want to make me the treasurer of the Sangha the shopper was borderline already but I also have good habits I have good habits I wonder what are my flowers I recently cultivated a habit which I find is very sweet and helpful here in the monks residence we have a bathroom for them for the brothers and we have slippers so when you go into the bathroom they are waiting slippers and you do what you have to do and when you go out you leave them and leave the bathroom so what I'm doing in the last time I'm walking backwards out of the bathroom like a scuba diver so that the slippers would be in the right direction if the next brother comes he sees the slippers and he just slips in and continues to go and and does whatever he wants to do when he steps out like going against the direction but the other day I saw Fabio a we the two of us were in the bathroom and he exited earlier I came actually I was outside wanted to enter the bathroom and he just exited and turned around like a scuba diver and went out and we looked at each other and he gave me a big smile and it warned my heart so much and I thought wow this is so lovely I'm doing it to make the life of the brother behind me a little bit more beautiful and it was infecting brother Hawaiian and sometimes I forget sometimes the brothers do it sometimes not and it doesn't matter it just gives me joy when I step out of the bathroom like a scuba diver opening the way for the brother just to make his life a little bit easier so this is what I found concerning habit energies doing a little bit research within and without but I think the most important thing is to to look and to see if and how our habit energies are contributing to our well-being or if they give us choice not like being on the walkway or on the horse the Freedom and choice or even joy like the slipper thing really gives me joy and peace and if not how to break a bad habit maybe we can enjoy one sound of the Bell now [Music] how to break bad habits YouTube is full of it 10 best tips to break bad habits slaughter your dragon fight your enemy and I thought I'm in an action movie and I thought that movies mirror life but it seems like life mirrors movies in the meantime and we build our literacy around action movies so why should we break habits now looking at what we have discovered so far we can just like change the course of the ancestral stream for example divert it or we can stop the horse or tame the tiger we don't need to kill the tiger or the horse slaughter or break it it's really not needed and when I say tame taming the tiger I remember the book the little prince do you know the book the little prince if you don't know it you got to read it it's a must read it's a very sweet poetic manual for life and people you meet in your life very beautiful so in that book the little prince meets the Fox and he wants to become the friends the fox's friend but the Fox says if you want to be my friend you need to tame me you need to tame me and the little prince doesn't know and ask how do I tame you and he says you have to come every day to the same place here at the same time every day a little bit closer so I get used to you I become accustomed to you and then one day when this happens a lot learning receiving training studying practicing after repetition then we are friends and the Fox also says one only understands what one tames and that's also very eye-opening like if we want to understand something we need to tame it and taming meaning coming closer to it becoming accustomed to it learning about it let's say becoming intimate close which is a complete different approach than breaking or slaughtering it's much more gentle and I wonder how ty approaches habit energies what would I say when habit energies arise and I found it this is what I says to his habit energies we know this is so typical time dear habit I see you I see you I'm here with you I'm here for you I'm your friend we can tame each other I can tame you you can tame me we become close I see you there's this energy of mindfulness in Thai in a magazine they called him the father of mindfulness it's like the mother and he's the father of mindfulness he brings in and shines the light of mindfulness concentration and insight on that habit energy recognizing it and dealing in it with it very gently and kindly knowing that these habit energies these strong emotions or strong energies are nothing outside of us which we can just kill and then they are dead or we can cut them off but no they're inside of us and we have to attain them we have to transform them accept them and be with them in the right here and right now dear habit energy I see you so time when he's speaking about transforming habit energies changing the chorus or strong emotions he always uses the image of a mother taking care of her baby again the mother comes today and why does he do that taking the example of the mother and her baby because that relationship of the mother and her baby implies so much implies the unconditional love from the mother for her baby there is not much thinking this unconditional love there is compassion there is this care of a mother for her baby which in best case if we want to cultivate helpful awake mindful habits how to treat ourselves and how to be with ourselves is the way to go to go with compassion towards ourselves let me erase this quickly and then we will go through the process of the mother taking care of her child continuous drop cleans the Board continues wipes make it shine you see how resistant habit energies can be like like hear these words you really have to put yeah energy in it it's not like I just wish them to be away and they are away no I have to take care of them love and scrub them here a little bit left and right it's good enough thank you my dear I see you so ty uses the example of a mother taking care of a baby mother and let's say the mother is somewhere in the house and the baby is somewhere else in the house and it starts crying so the mother being on another place here's the baby crying and recognizes the suffering hearing suffering recognizes the crying of the baby hearing that it needs attention so that's always our first step right recognizing then we have more space here I need a bit more space mother recognizing recognizing so what the mother does is I hear you I see you and I will be here for you the mother will probably put down whatever she was doing right now and go to the other room and hold the baby so the thing is hearing crying baby recognizing the suffering putting down what I'm doing going to the suffering and I come to the room where the baby is crying and the mother would immediately take the baby in her arms and take care of it saying my dear baby but would not look right away as the first thing why does the baby cries it like to bride is it too dark is it took hold is the music of the neighbors too loud that all has time the most important thing is now the suffering of the baby I want to be here for the baby and she holds it and she rocks it and maybe she hums a song mmm it's it's fine it's gonna be fine baby I'm here I'm here for you I see you so that's embracing the baby embracing the pain embracing our strong energy our habit energy to be there with it may it be difficult may it be painful may be loud when a baby cries and doesn't stop it can be nerve killing like if it doesn't stop for half an hour you might be good rocking it for 5 minutes hoping that it will fall asleep again but it does not I'm really embracing it so the mother would hold the baby hold the baby and while the mother is rocking the baby is there and taking care of it and you see this tender image of the mother and that's exactly what we need to do with our habits with our strong emotions with feelings when they come up and they are not pleasant they are painful that's exactly what we can do being there and it is painful it is loud but I'm gonna do it and while mother is doing that she's looking deeply and she says why is baby crying and then she starts investigating around seeing is it too bright here in the room is it too dark was baby just alone or maybe it is hungry are the diaper is full and it's invested it's investigating so looking deeply looking deeply this marker is slowly not looking deeply anymore okay that's better and she's investigating investigating baby suffering babies suffering and just as I investigated what is the reason for these words not being so so bold I got an insight I got an insight that I'm may change the marker and it will be better so the mother gets an insight to investigating also holding the baby in her arm rocking it humming to it and then looking deeply what could it be what what is it what it is what baby needs what it is what I am needing right now you're automatically investigating things within and without again and you're checking the forehead as a temperature giving it a little finger and see if it sucks if it's hungry you're tapping the the diapers and sure enough looking deeply you will get an insight you will get an insight of what it is as a fruit of your investigation there is insight so the mother checking checking different possibilities fields oh my god yes the diapers are loaded right let's write this down see it brings us joy diapers loaded and with that insight the mother sets herself free from the suffering the mother has a choice you know from all that stream here we are looking deeply and now we have a choice and that choice is our transformation transformation and it's also liberating liberating us from being caught in that current in that stream of that emotion of that suffering and what we do is in this case we change the diapers and end the baby suffering suffering so from recognizing suffering happening by hearing something feeling something seeing something we go and take care of it that's the first thing and the only thing we want to do we don't want to know why the house burned down there's often we have this example of a burning house when you come to you back to your house and you see it in flames the first thing you want to do is to find water and and how do you say distinguish the fire and not the first thing you want to do is run around saying who put my house on fire I want to see and talk to that person what's happened here why is that fire here you want to take action and this is what the mother does and this is what we shall do the first thing when we experience suffering this being there for the suffering for ourselves rocking ourselves comforting us saying I'm here I'm here for you I see you I hear you we are here together and shine as ty the light of mindfulness onto this emotion Ty's inviting another seed to that seed of of suffering he's inviting the seed of mindfulness of compassion of presence so that seed of sadness is not alone and they are a Sangha they become a Sangha and our sadness cannot be that strong because the mindfulness is there I am here my awareness is there and by doing so we're then we then we have time to let it sink in and see what is happening here why is that happening and we look deeply into our actions into our thinking into the environment and we become an insight and see yeah sure because I did that I find myself here now and then I am free then I'm free to act and liberate myself from that stream now how does that look like with habit energies the topic we are here for how do we translate it into habit let's take my example of the food to have a concrete example so let's say it's my cooking day and I'm making spaghetti I'm making great spaghetti and I'm carrying spaghetti from the cabinet to the counter and something feels wrong I have a sense something is wrong like the mother hearing something but I hear it internally and then I think there's a lot of spaghetti here in my hand so I see I see something I see my suffering I see let's say a lot of spaghetti a lot spaghetti well this markers they are definitely not my family is that going to not a nice dream oh this one is good spaghetti a lot so now I hear something within I feel a concern something doesn't feel it's odd so I go to the counter put them down and I start I start stopping I start being there for myself I'm not continuing and opening all those packages something is odd and I want to be with it so what I'm doing is I will stop and start breathing start breathing and being there for myself and looking inside of me what is happening rocking my baby and by rocking my baby I also have the chance to look more deeply and see what is it why is it so so much spaghetti here in front of me and then I might investigate and see yesterday the brothers ate really a lot so maybe this is why I'm intuitively taking out more or I investigate is there a lot of leftover from yesterday or is there no leftover and I think I have to make more or is it at the end for coming from inside of me and it is my my ancestral habit energy to always cook too much ping and the same as for the mother at one point it resonates with you and you know what it is to get an insight so looking deeply is investigating - investigating of the causes and the inside is my ancestral habits the diapers are loaded I got them so with this insight this insight is my choice and now I have the choice to take two or three packs of spaghetti back to the cabinet or I can still cook them all but I have a choice I'm not caught in that stream in that current that pushes me and gives me no choice so now I would just say choice because now it's up to me I can transform it at least I have the power to do so and tie using mindfulness concentration and insight applied to this uses mindfulness to recognize and embrace a suffering to be there to be able to stop and be with it now we say where there's mindfulness of something there's concentration because when I'm mindful of my baby my mind concentrates on that baby and not why it Christ but my mind is concentrated on the suffering of the baby so it already starts here and goes into licking looking deeply here we go concentration and when you have mindfulness and concentration you're mindful of something you generate presence and awareness your mind is focus on that one thing you're able to look deeply and to see the root of your suffering so there's inside arising and from that insight you have the choice to liberate yourself to be transformed so from looking deeply we have the inside that helps us to set us free and that's the power of mindfulness that we don't have to wait for anyone to save us from who we are and by that the walkway and this moving walkway becomes more a freeway with this with the help of mindfulness concentration and insight and a freeway with many exits right we are on that stream with other cars and as many exits so each time an insight occurs an exit occurs imagine you're on that moving walkway and you have an insight and there would a door appear at that move and you could get out and get your coffee or your newspapers or go to the restaurant so each time we have an insight we have an exit we have the chance to get out of that cycle of that stream that is carrying us somewhere where we don't have a choice where we maybe don't want to even be so to conclude I want to summarize what we have gathered here today so first habit energies habit energies can be strong our stream don't give us choice but are not necessarily bad secondly there's nothing to kill or to cut off but rather to divert or stop or tame transform or liberate it's much more gentle and much more resonating and so third we need to learn how to be gentle and kind to ourselves in this very moment and cultivating mindfulness concentration and insight to create exits to liberate us and to set us free [Music] you