Kalu Rinpoche | Wisdom of emptiness in everyday life – quality of the awareness (Part 2)

Now the 3rd one is that you need to recognise what is the ordinary distraction and the subtle distraction.

So the ordinary distraction is when your friends are calling you and getting a phone notification. That is an ordinary distraction, you react, right? There is a sound, blink, then you react “What is that? what is this?” It is visibly there, you can sense that you are being distracted, very much easy to detect that, isn’t it?

Then the subtle distraction is that pure awareness is not there. In your subconscious mind you are saying “I am doing good, I am doing meditation” but you do not have an awakened mind, you do not have a fully awakened awareness. But rather you are just simply doing it, right?, part of the rules, commitments, part of the obligation, not with a great sincerity, not with the great awakened mind. But rather you are just doing it because sometime you can also do a lot of prayers from your mind but not meaning any of it. Sometime you can read a lot of teachings but not really focusing on anything.

So long as you can maintain the recognising of the subtle distractions and the ordinary distractions, that your mind is very much present with a sense of breath, whether it is an object that you are meditating on, whether it is breath that you are focusing on, maintaining that is very important.

Then eventually you will see the negative emotions as it is, not in the beginning. In the beginning the very existence will try to justify its own existence, right? Is it okay?

His Eminence Kalu Rinpoche in Riga, Latvia
How to understand and apply the Buddhist wisdom of emptiness in everyday life (Q&A 5)
Ganden Center – September 2024 (1h 05′ 16”)

To be continued…