Audio recorded at Buddha House Adelaide. Transcript auto-generated and AI-corrected; may contain errors.
About this talk. In this 45-minute talk, Ven Jampa Gendun opens with a line from a Lama Zopa Rinpoche card — “there is nothing to trust in seeking happiness from outside” — and builds from it a sustained argument that awakening is not becoming something we are not, but uncovering what is already present. He examines two complementary images of the path: cultivating seeds of wisdom, love, and compassion toward fruition; and the unfolding lotus, revealing a perfection that lies obscured only by temporary afflictive emotions. Asaṇga’s nine similes for Buddha nature — gold in a rubbish heap, treasure beneath the earth, a Buddha image wrapped in dirty rags — give the second image concrete weight. An Oliver Sacks patient briefly emerging from decades of neurological dormancy stands as the talk’s most striking illustration of how ordinary peak experiences offer foretastes of awakening.
File metadata (for organising)
File: 01 HMA 1997 07 02.mp3
UUID: 6bd2ca7a-1c3f-41ab-ba70-9cd99c496aa9
Teacher: Ven Jampa Gendun
Collection: The Heart and Mind of Awakening 1996-1997 (Ven Jampa Gendun)
Date: 1997-07-02
Recorded at: Buddha House Adelaide
Duration: 45.0 minutes
Words: ~5,726
I thought I’d give an exam on the awakened heart. We’re gonna hook you all up to an EKG machine. ECG ECG. And see whether you’ve been doing your homework. Yeah.
I’m gonna actually, I have a little gift for you. I’m gonna pass these out in a little while. You know, we you probably He’s very lazy and Tough minded, kind of refusing to do anything about myself, to change myself. Anyway, I there was a sometimes from time to time we get a card from, Lama Zopa Rinpoche who is the spiritual director of the the foundation for the preservation of the Mahāyāna tradition of which which is an umbrella organization protecting us all from the reign of delusions. An organization made up of I guess it keeps multiplying of about seventy or eighty centers, Dharma centers, very much like Buddha House around the world and memories and monasteries and retreat centers.
I think he was here last last year. And he sends these cards to us from time to time with these strange drawings that he makes. So that I meditate and work for others. Wow. How happy I am.
Anyway, there’s usually these very pithy kind of quotes or teachings from some of his talk inside. One of them struck me this week. I’m having a tough week, I guess. Anyway, there there is nothing to trust in seeking happiness from outside. You will only become exhausted with suffering which is without satisfaction and without end.
You know what we very much are talking about each week in terms of this reorientation of where we’re going to seek our happiness, where our treasure lies. I think we have have to acknowledge and begin to recognize the depth of the degree or the power of our habituation to seeking to seeing our problems outside of ourselves and therefore the answer is residing in the same place where in terms of the people about us, in terms of our where we live or our lack of possessions in one way or another. About the world around us is deficient and is a hassle that’s causing us problems. And if only and that if only is pretty much associated with the world about it. If only I had the right partner, I had the right therapist, I had the right I had more money, another degree, better job.
The endless list changes from time to time. But even when we do get that if only if things do change according to our design, we the same themes of dissatisfaction, disappointment, frustration, boredom, insecurity, fear, anxiety, on ad nauseam and keep returning to ourselves in one one form or another, one way or another. The outside world perhaps keeps changing in terms of the people and situations, the geography, you know, the the props, the scenery, but the plot remains very much the same. So in looking at this verse by this quote by Lama Zopa, you know, we continually expend our energy and trying to to manipulate the people and the things about us, we’re just going to wear ourselves out and in vain to no avail, to know real inner. You know, it’s not to say that shouldn’t work with the people in order to and to work with the outside world, let’s say the world outside of our minds in skillful ways and and relate with them in meaningful manners and and develop significant relationships and meaningful types of work and comfortable homes and know, some degree of material prosperity.
And then never forgetting the fact that it is very much our opinions and our attitudes about those people, those things, those material prosperities, our work or whatsoever, which are going to determine the quality of our experience. It’s not so much the people, the things and the situations about us which cause us problems, but our opinions about them, about these people, those things, those situations which are problematic. And therefore, there’s just no getting around it if we’re able to find any real satisfaction in our lives, fulfillment and meaning, whatever, you know, whatever constitutes the good life for ourselves, and the absolute necessity of changing our minds, becoming a habit, making a habit of the type of person that we want to become, the type of mentality that we would like to experience somewhere down the line and making that a part of our mental hygiene program a priority. You know, we were talking about the six perfections last week. You know, these these vast activities of Bodhisattva.
A Bodhisattva is someone who has awakened their heart, who aspires to to become all they as many others in as many ways as often as possible with this exceptional attitude of the awakened heart. And now I guess we can I guess we can begin to question? I think we should question, you know, what what is the relevance to a lot of our discussions together, a lot of what seems to be theology and some of the the more abstract doctrine of Buddhism. You know, is it are these just kind of ancient writings which have been handed down over time which are divorced from our actual experience? Or do they bear some kind of relevance to our everyday lives?
Is there something practical about most or all of these teachings? Is it just some kind of religious fiction some way or another? I think it’s useful to question in a kind of a healthy manner in describing what amounts to a radically different approach to life, to the living of our lives, are we trying to impose upon ourselves some some mode of life and thought which is unnatural and impractical to ourselves and irrelevant to ourselves, to who we really are and what is our actual lived experience. A great deal I think of our thinking, of our values and our beliefs. Marginalize our own experience.
By that I mean, they’re not integral to our actual lived experience. They but still we it is if, you know, trying to put ourselves into some frequency straight jackets of ways of being prescribed for ourselves either through, you know, cultures or religions or society in one way or another. And people do a great deal of violence to themselves in this way and trying to impose upon themselves ways of thinking and being which which we might say are unnatural to themselves and are not reflective of who they are as a person in their actual lived experience. You know, but beginning if try to look at who we in fact are and what we can truthfully acknowledge about ourselves and what we do experience and try to work out from there into what might be the best course of action and what might be desirable ways of living our lives in terms of our actual lived experience and our present value. You know, we all have some wisdom, we all have some knowledge, some experience of reality, however faint, however obscure that wisdom might be.
So that’s like we’re trying to take an inventory of ourselves in a way and trying to see if what we’re talking about is in some way related to who in fact we are. We all have some feelings of love and compassion, however limited and exclusive those feelings may be. We all have some personal power, some kind of energy, some kind of mental and physical vitality to our being. However, weak and unrefined. We all have some skill and means, that is to say, some creative expressions of our wisdom and our love and compassion in our own personal power in our everyday life in in in terms of our relating with others.
However, you know, un spontaneous and imprecise these expressions. However, imprecise and un spontaneous our skill and means that may be expressed. So, you know, the the point I’m trying to to begin to work with here is that all of us naturally possess the potential for awakening because awakening is nothing more than the extension of who we already are and beginning to acknowledge that within our own experience. And every one of us, whether we are aware of it or not, whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, whether we feel it, And I acknowledge the fact that we are and we should be aware of that we often feel about ourselves differently than the actual facts about ourselves. Whether we feel it or whether we believe it about ourselves, we are all Buddhist to be as far as Buddhism is concerned.
And whether it’s not a matter of doctrine, we can begin to look into our own lived experience and through this, you know, taking kind of an inventory of ourselves. The seeds of consummate wisdom, you know, that’s what we mean by Buddha. These these these seeds of consummate wisdom and love and compassion and personal power and their creative expression in our everyday lives are within us right now. That is to say, Buddhahood is not only possible but it is our birthright. So all of these teachings and all of these pieces of paper that I drag out every week, all of the eighty four bundles of teachings that the Buddha gave are simply are only designed to extend ourselves as we presently are to to to nurture the seeds of who we are at now, not to to impose us upon ourselves some unnatural modes of being, to indoctrinate ourselves, to put ourselves in some kind of spiritual straightjacket, something which is unnatural to our very being, who in fact we are.
You know beyond all the various conceptions that we may harbor about ourselves, and we do have a and we have to acknowledge that, have a vast array of conceptions about ourselves. Many of these conceptions have nothing to do with who in fact we are, but still we hold on to them. You know, the art, how are these these constantly shifting self identity and then one day after another, our attitudes towards ourselves and who, you know, our value and how we hold ourselves. Beneath you know, it’s like this this you know, beneath this constantly churning waves of our preconceptions, our ideals, our self images that we that we have about ourselves and how we’re going to how we’re going to get what it is that we went out of life. This idea about ourselves, this constantly shifting notion about who we are.
We need all of that. This this, you know, this the image that comes with mind. This this surface of this constantly churning ocean at its depth, our original face remains unchanged. Yeah. Like that, it’s still motionless depth of the deepest parts of the ocean.
We, you know, by we, I mean you, each of you, and I included, all of us are basically intelligent, decent, caring human beings. That is to say and this is the stuff that Buddhas are made out of. And this is the the primal material in which we can shape Buddha. We can shape the type of person that we want to be. There’s no and this is to be driven home again and again.
Buddha is very much trying to empower ourselves. You know, said that mental health or psychotherapy is about power and competency. And by all means, a great deal of the path is simply and empowering ourselves and developing the competency to get what it is that we want. And if they get the happiness, they get the satisfaction, the meaning, the meaning, they get the good life for ourselves to change and actually become that. There’s no qualitative difference between ourselves and Buddhists.
There’s nothing unbridgeable. There’s an unbridgeable gulf between them and ourselves, between them them and us. What we call this paradigm of another order of being, the supremely, healthy, loving, sane human beings. It is only a matter of degree and not of kind. And that degree is open to change.
The degree between ourselves as we presently sit here with all our delusions, with all our dissatisfaction, you know, whatever, and a Buddha as represented by, for example, this this painted image, this this this model of sanity. It’s only a degree, you know, between him and all of his great Buddha, them and us. It’s only a matter of degree. It’s not a matter it’s not qualitative. They’re not qualitatively different, only quantitatively so.
And this degree is open to change. It’s not intrinsic to our nature. It’s even even this degree. That it’s a matter of nurturing seeds and their eventual flowering and your eventual coming into fruition. That’s all.
There’s nothing more than that. And this situation is totally workable. We can do something. We don’t have to continue. We don’t have to persist in in our present state.
But there’s another there’s another metaphor. So you’re talking about this way of thinking about seeds being nurtured and maturing them into some to fruition. That’s a nice image, isn’t it? You know, and we can work with these metaphors. They’re quite useful in thinking about our our our our practice and how we’re going to approach Buddhism and and change in general.
But there’s it’s just a metaphor, but it’s useful. Metaphor is a way of think it stands in for our experience, and it’s a way of thinking about things. There’s another metaphor that we can use in answering our concerns about the reality and relevance of what we’ve been talking about in the awakened heart and the awakening mind awakening in general. Here, awakening, it’s viewed not in terms of the cultivation of these seeds and their development, rather as a revealing of a perfection that has always been. So it’s a different it’s a different way of approaching.
It’s like a diamond has many facets, many faces. It’s the same entity, but we can look at it from different ankles and get a different light reflected. And so we can we can work with another metaphor. That of the like the image of a lotus. And this is this is made use of throughout Buddhism in its imagery.
You know, the petals unfolding. We’re exposing hidden within it ourselves as the Buddhists that we already are. You know, this idea that nothing needs to be worked on. That only that there’s some kind of awakened presence at the very center of our being. Some kind of something which is already perfect, doesn’t need to be nourished, which doesn’t need to be changed and refined in any way, simply made manifest.
Something hidden from myself at present as it were. Of course, human life advances from day to day and regresses and we do see different faculties develop and watch them wither. Still, the innate image of your fate holds all in the co presence of today, yesterday and tomorrow. Your person is not a process or a development. You are the essential image that develops.
If it does, as Picasso said, I don’t develop, I am. So, you know, I think this is a I think it’s very difficult. But I think it’s worth, you know, taking consideration, thinking about this. In in this metaphor, there’s nothing that needs to be cultivated, nothing that needs to be improved on, only the making manifest of something which is naturally whole, complete and pure, but which presently lies obscured just like the central part of the lotus requires the unfolding. It is not because awakening is far away or extremely near or because it moves here and there, but because it lies shrouded in veils of afflicted emotions that it remains unrealized.
I think one of the advantages of using this image from time to time and depending upon your situation where your mind is at the time, you can make use of different images and ideas about the nature of your journey and what what you’re what you’re up to. Because sometimes, you know, we have this we see ourselves down here, awakening up high up on the mountain peak. And it’s a huge journey. And it sometimes we we get a bit tired and weary, and we just keep looking up and it just stays, you know, never quite gets very close to ourselves. It always seems the peak is somehow further and further out there.
And we but but then we look back down at ourselves here in the valley. If we are able to look within our own mind, their presence is what we’ve been searching for. It’s there’s no no journey to be made as it were, where the journey is simply a matter of unfolding the the primal perfection that is preexistent within our own mind. Then I think maybe there’s some kind of inspiration inspiration that can arise from that when we get when we get a bit forlorn, when we get a bit weary of having when we see this berserk mind of ours and this garbage mind of ours and we so I haven’t changed over all these years. I’ve been struggling.
You you’re you’re not one, you’re not two, you know. All beings are exactly like myself. They too want to be happy. They too do not want to suffer. All over and over and and still this berserk mind.
Sure that becomes apparent. You know, when we want to relate when we want to relate with the sun, first off, we have to relate with the clouds which obscure the sun. But we can begin to get some kind of confidence that there is a sun, you know, even the most overcast of days when it’s dark and, you know, it’s drizzling and it’s gray. That, you know, if we were to, you know, like, when we go up in a plane and break through the clouds, the sun’s always been there. There’s never been a time when it wasn’t, you know, even though even though it may not be apparent to ourselves at times upon the ground.
That’s, you know, that’s to do temporally changing situation and not being so taking what is merely a temporal aberration as being your very nature, the nature of the situation. So this idea of awakening using the metaphor of the unfolding of a lotus. So it’s not a process of nurturing and maturing with some kind of potential going over into actuality, which is a useful metaphor. Necessary to use that at times, that way of conceptualizing how we’re going to to get what it is that we want. Going to we are on this journey and we’re going to have to develop ourselves and we’re going to have to implement a lot of methods and we’ve got to we have these seeds and we’re going to put them in the earth and we’re going to we’re going to nourish them with water and soil and all these techniques and doctrines and studying.
A necessary useful way of looking at it. But there’s also the other image that that revealing, that coming to the full conscious awareness and the integration of something that’s always been within our own mind, but which presently lies hidden. And the and the use and within Buddhism, they use in talking in this way. They use many one of the great spiritual masters of India, Asaṇga, uses a series of similes in talking about they were talking about Buddha nature. Now we can we can call it we can use other words, but this is the one that’s generally the way it’s usually referred to.
And talking about that which is innate within ourselves, which came with the package, this primordial perfection, this completeness and purity and wholeness, which is who is which is our very nature, but which presently lies hidden like, as Asaṇga goes on to say, a Buddha hidden in a muddy lotus, honey in a bee’s honeycomb, grain in a husk, gold in a rubbish heap, treasure beneath the earth, a bean in its pod, a Buddha image wrapped up in dirty rags, a future king carrying the woman of an ugly woman, a precious object buried in the ground. Similarly, the element of Omniscience. Omniscience is an epithet of the Buddha. The element of Buddha abides in all beings, obscured by the adventitious stains of the afflictive emotions. Adventitious.
Aventitious means accidental or temporary. And it’s not it’s not part of the nature of the afflictive emotions. Emotions such as attachment and hatred, ignorance, spite, jealousy. That’s all. You know?
There’s no difference other than that between Buddhas, these tremendous things, healthy, loving, sane human beings, ourselves. Nothing other than that. Nothing more. Nothing other than that. Or we can put it another way.
We can look at the geography of the psyche and understand the religious life in a new way. It is the same religious faculty that approached with a different language. We can see that this ego, this so called conscious mind, is like an island in a vast ocean of psyche. Out there in the ocean of being, outside the limits of ego’s world, and beyond what it knows or can see are the missing parts of our total self. We are psychological beings.
The greater portion of our totality is not physical but psyche, and most of that lies in the unconscious. Contrary to our popular notion of psychology, the unknown and the unconscious parts of our totality greatly exceed the conscious parts. We do not find our sentient beings, wholeness, or fulfillment within this tiny ego world. Coming back to our own lived experience to validate whether this, what we’re saying is has meaning for ourselves, whether it’s relevant to ourselves. You know, looking at our our life’s finest moments.
In our life’s finest moments, you know, during during the those those rare peak experiences that that we have. They’re rare, that we have them from time to time. In a in a very in a in a limited but very real way, we we get a foretaste of what awakening must be like. You know, moments of and then we can go on, can’t we? And if we could only share these moments with each other, we can make a a series of we can begin to see all these we can begin to see all the many facets of this jewel of awakening, how each of us has seen it from a different angle, a different light, in a different reflection.
You know, the the the moments of freedom and openness, the the clarity, of freshness, some kind of power at the an intensity of being, at the center of our being. You know, moments of awe, moments of reverence, moments of wonder, you know, moments of the the the experience of the sacred in our lives in some fashion or form or other. You know, moments of of noble moments when we’re when we’re filled with great dignity, when we’re feel filled with unimaginable courage, moments of vision and insight when we’re when we have wordless understanding, depthless with wisdom. The creative moment filled with the with the exhilaration of giving birth, of of bringing something new into the world that wasn’t there before. The moments of rapture when we’re carried away by music or or removed by the arts, moments of of self forgetfulness when we’re sharing in the enchanted world of a child.
And joyful moments of of touching another human being or another being and a being touched in return. You know, when when the the communion with a friend, the ecstasy of union with the beloved. When, you know, they experience some kind of wholeness, some kind of a oneness with when the when the world reaches deep into ourselves and we like a co mingling co mingling, when there’s a deeply felt peace. You know, that and when there’s nothing more that needs to be happening with when for just a moment in the ceaseless restlessness of our constant struggle, we find a moment’s rest. When we find a moment’s peace and just to be alive is enough.
Nothing more need to be added. An enoughness about our experience of being in the world. When we be, just that, that experience, the experience of our innate nature in some small but real way. You know we it’s like coming home. It’s a beautiful metaphor I think the idea of coming home.
Belong. You’ve been searching for a long time and now you’ve found what you’ve been searching for. It’s a very sweet feeling, said. Very sweet and easy and peaceful. I am grateful for each moment for being itself.
Maybe, you know, if I preface this where this quote comes from, it’s that it is a book called Awakening by Oliver Sacks. And these were these were people who had a type of probably something of Parkinson’s disease. But it was they had it for many many many years, Many of them forty or fifty years. It had been a coma or com comatose like for years and years. And then they used a special drug, L-DOPA, and they awoke from their experience, what they had been going through.
It was only temporary, but they awoke from it. And that’s where he derived the name for his book called Awakening. And this is a description during this temporary experience of awakening by one of these patience. It’s very sweet feeling he said, very sweet and easy and peaceful. I am grateful to each moment for being itself.
I feel so contented. Like I’m at home at last after a long hard journey. Just the warm and peaceful as a cat by the fire. And this is exactly how he looked at that moment. And in this quote, that was a quote from Awakening by Oliver Sacks.
In the actual book, The Awakening, he goes on to quote a poem by D. H. Lawrence called Pax. He goes on to say, like a cat asleep on a chair at peace and peace and at one with the master of the house, with the mistress at home, at home in the house of the living, sleeping on the hearth and yawning before the fire, sleeping on the hearth of the living world, yawning at home before the fire of life, feeling the presence of the living God like a great reassurance, a deep calm the heart, a presence as if the master is sitting at the board in his own and greater being in the house of life. The transcending moments full of meaning and vast feelings.
You know, we all had such moments. And maybe you haven’t had many. Maybe they’ve only been fleeting. Maybe just a moment, ten seconds, maybe fifteen years apart. Doesn’t matter.
But still they’re there. They do occur. And their occurrence points to something, you know, beyond themselves, to a dimension, to a depth and dimension of being a mystery at the very root of our life. And there’s something dwelling close beneath the surface of our own mind that they do occur, and we can’t dismiss them that we do. We forget them as it were.
We get on with the the mundane routines of our lives, and we begin to imagine that this this is all there is, all that we habitually all that we have been become habituated to and we we we lose our way. It’s still there’s never quite the possibility of losing our way completely. So there’s a there’s a searching. There’s a restlessness for something more. And there’s other possibilities inherent within our own mind, another order of being.
And this is what Buddhism calls awakening. Could we could call it enlightenment or it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t really matter what we call it. But it’s there nonetheless. Aside from, you know, the self validating nature of the message that these experiences hold for ourselves, that rather than becoming as something we are not, awakening, enlightenment, growth, this path that we’re on, is the becoming more and more of something that we already are.
And the unfolding of an awakened presence at the center of our being that has always been and will always be. And no matter how we may conceive of ourselves, no matter what no matter what identity we may may be hold we may hold to, no matter how we, you know, how much our mind may be clouded, clouded, how how obscure the sun may be, still it’s there. You know, acknowledging and responding authentically to the message of such moments constitutes a journey a journey a journey of growth. It needs some training. It needs some discipline.
Sincerity is not enough. We we have to do something. If we’re in using in talking about what needs to be done, you know, in in terms of these images that we’re making use of, In in in the image of cultivating a seed, you know, cultivating a flower, we need to systematically nourish the seeds of wisdom and love and compassion and personal power and their creative expression in our everyday life. That’s the way that we water our awakening. That’s the way we proceed in our journey along the path.
And then this that’s and all of what we’re doing, listening, reflecting, meditating, and make putting implementing these various practices. I like just applying more water and fertilizer, helping sunlight to nurture something that’s already present within our mind, those seeds, and help them to grow till they actually flower into the unimpeded awakened experience. But using the other metaphor, the image of unfolding that lotus petals. We need to methodically remove the the afflictive emotions, the adventitious obscurations, the the obstacles preventing the continuous and unimpeded expression of our awakened being. So either way, I think so it’s useful from time to time to use one image for another.
When we become disheartened and when become discouraged and weary. And there’s no teacher around to inspire and touch our hearts. We have to inspire ourselves. We have to find some kind of inspiration within ourselves and look to those moments when we did have a foretaste of awakening. And try our best even if it’s only limited limited to acknowledge and to think that it’s there.
It’s obscured. But I situation is workable. So, you know, in this process, the inner focus of our life becomes this awakening which personified we call a Buddha, ourselves as Buddha, ourselves as the awakened experience. And we work with the various methods, various means to the Dharma, the truth of things, know, either as a means of nourishing the seeds or a way of helping to unfold the petals, either way to actualize that Buddha. And this process occurs within the social context of a spiritual community, the Sangha, who validate our Buddhist story for ourselves, who assist us in the process of nurturing, of unfolding, and trying again and again to raise the level of motivation and the why behind it.
Purpose for it all to including not only one other person in that conception of what the good life is about, everything that happens to someone other and ourselves in addition to ourselves. And working from there on outward to include that wider circle of others. I was trying to think of quote I heard, a quick phrase. It was something like it is the exceptional which is the exceptional which tells us more about the ordinary than the ordinary tells us about the exceptional. It is these moments which tell us more about life and all of the ordinary that we’re continuing that we the majority of our life is spent within.
It is these exceptional it is Buddhists who tell us more about our own our potential than than ordinary individuals. It is the extraordinary which helps us to understand the ordinary. Because within the ordinary, what is possible is obscured. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings.
To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the supreme community, I go for refuge until awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of the Buddha for the sake of all living beings. To the Buddha, the Dharma, and the spring community, I go for refuge into awakening. Through the creative potential of my listening to the Dharma, may I achieve the state of a Buddha for the sake of all living beings. Reverently, I pay homage with my body, speech, and mind, and present clouds of every type of offering, those actual and imagined.
I disclose all my destructive acts accumulated since time without beginning, and rejoice in the skillful actions of holy and ordinary beings. Please remain until cyclic existence has ended and turn the wheel of dharma for living beings. I dedicate skillful actions of myself and others to the great awakening. I have a I have a gift for you. You’ve been tremendously patient with me.
So I’d like to reward your patience. Anyway, so these are I’d like to give you each a gift. I thought we’d read part of it now as part of our meditation. This is something I helped in translating a number of years ago. And if they’re I think I have a copy of it.
Okay. If there’s any left over, can I have one? You guys took them all. I think they’re very useful if you’re meditating the awakened heart. They’re just excerpts from two different prayers.
They’re both sutras. Sutras are discourses of the Buddha. So these are the excerpts from teachings of the Buddha. And the first is very much Concerning with compassion. And the second very much concerned with love.
So I find them useful to kind of familiarize my mind with these these feelings. Would you like to stand up for a moment and we’ll we’ll stretch and meditate?