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Find freedom by welcoming and letting go
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Welcome Every Moment
Thomas McConkie
Watching Now
Welcome Every Moment
Welcome Every Moment
Thomas McConkie • 22:40

In the practice of mindfulness, we are urged to view ourselves as the host of our experiences rather than the guest. The way we handle life's ups and downs might vary dramatically as a result of this small shift in our perspective.

Imagine that you are the innkeeper of a hotel, receiving visitors from all walks of life. These visitors are a representation of our ideas, feelings, and sensory perceptions. As the host, we foster an atmosphere of inquiry and openness so that these visitors can arrive and depart without feeling confined or resisted. We treat them with love and acceptance, understanding that they are only passing guests at our inn.

We gain a better appreciation for the character of our experiences when we embrace the role of the host. We let go of the impulse to control or cling to some guests, knowing they will ultimately depart. With this change of perspective, we feel more liberated, which enables us to completely engage with each moment and be present in it.

Therefore, keep this in mind the next time you find yourself swept away in a wave of ideas or feelings and assume the position of the host. Accept the ups and downs of life's events while remembering that you have the ability to build a warm environment inside of yourself. You may develop a sense of calm, acceptance, and delight in every moment by being the host.


View Transcript
- Hello and welcome to another episode of "Mindfulness+," I'm your host, Thomas McConkie [Mindfulness Teacher]. Thanks so much for listening today. I wanna talk about being the host of every situation. This is a teaching from the Chan tradition, early Chinese Buddhism. It didn't originate in early China, but it came into a more full-throated expression in Chan Buddhism. To talk about what I mean by being the host of every situation, I want to read a passage, a sutra, from the early cannon, the Samarang Sutra of early Buddhism. I'll give it to you a couple times so you can relax, enjoy, even hit pause and jump back to hear it again and again if you'd like. Just to clue you in, the first word, foreign dust, in this sutra, it's referring to that which moves in consciousness, that which comes and goes as opposed to that which does not come or go. "Foreign dust is like a guest who stops at an inn where he passes the night or eats something and then packs and continues his journey because he cannot stay longer. As to the host of the inn, he has nowhere to go. My deduction is that one who does not stay is a guest, and one who stays is a host. Consequently, a thing is foreign when it does not stay. Again when the sun rises in a clear sky and its light enters the house through an opening, the dust is seen to dance in the ray of light, whereas the empty space does not move. I deduce that that which is still is the void, and that which moves is the dust. Consequently, a thing is dust when it moves." So a couple images, couple different metaphors going on in this sutra complimentary to one another, but I want to focus on the first one with the guest and the host one more time. "Foreign dust is like a guest who stops at an inn where he passes the night or eats something and then packs and continues his journey because he cannot stay longer. As to the host of the inn, he has nowhere to go. My deduction is that one who does not stay is a guest and one who stays is a host." One who does not stay is a guest, one who stays as a host. So why do they say in Buddhism "Be the host of every situation." in the Chinese. Well, in a given moment in consciousness, in conscious experience moment to moment in life, we can be identified with that which is coming and going, AKA the guests moving through the inn, where we can learn to identify, stand as the host, the one who has nowhere to go, the one who neither comes nor goes, but through which all things come and go. In short, the sutra is pointing to our capacity as human beings in our conscious experience to open up like space, and when we open up like space and we're not interfering with the flow of foreign dust, the flow of guests through the inn, the flow of sensory experience, through open awake awareness, we experience freedom. This sutra, this teaching from the Buddha about guests and hosts, is one of freedom. What more can I say about it? In a sense, it's that direct, it's that simple, and we're gonna practice with what is it like to be the host in this moment, in this situation be that which does not move, does not come or go as opposed to identifying with everything that comes and goes and therefore being subject to suffering. Well, to extend the metaphor, one thing I want to say about this passage is that if we're talking about guests, and if we're talking about being the host, the tendency in human life as the host is to not be very hotly towards our guests. Our hosts become hostages too often, which is to say those guests, those aspects of experience that we love, that we identify with, we do not want to pass on. We do everything we can to force them to stay, but the guest by his or her, their very nature, they cannot stay. They come and they go. That's what guests do. So when we make, as a host, when we make our guests into hostages, it's as if to say this perfect moment in my marriage or relationship, this perfect moment in my career, or at the peak of my wealth, or influence, or fame, or glory, or self-esteem, et cetera, this particular guest I do not want to leave my inn, so I try to coerce the guest into staying, but the guest has an agenda all his own. He has to move on. He's staying for breakfast, and then he needs to get back out on the path. She spends a couple of nights, but then she really must be going back east, and so forth. Think about all of the hosts in your life. In other words, sorry, think of all the guests in your life as host that you wish would stay longer. You wish that relationship lasted longer. You wish somebody you deeply loved didn't leave as soon as they did. Whether they died of an illness or moved to the other side of the world, you wish that particular guest didn't leave, but they did. This is the nature of human life. As the host, we want certain guests to stay and we make them our hostages. On the other side of the spectrum, there are the guests who we would love not to stay at all. We treat them like vagrants, we treat them like criminals. We treat them like lepers and loiters. Even if they glance at our inn funny, we tell them to keep moving and they have no business here, and it so happens that that particular leper or loiter has an intention to stay in our inn for several hours, several weeks, several months, several decades. Think of a situation in life where there's a condition present that you would love not to be present. There's nothing you can do about it. The condition is present, right? It's a health condition. Perhaps it's a financial condition, a relationship condition, the condition of the world in all its climate change, and armed conflict, and poverty, et cetera. These are conditions. I'm certainly not saying we shouldn't take action, that's another episode. But for now, as the host, the idea is to actually not be in denial that this sensory experience is upon us. We're having the experience of being full of grief. We're having the experience of being full of rage. We're having the experience of being full of regret and sorrow, loss, envy, and so on. When we're the host, we become as open space, everything coming and going, but as the host, where could we go? The host cannot go. Those moments in life, I notice these often in my own life. Stuck in traffic, here's a common one. I'm stuck in traffic and I'm in a hurry. I want to get home to my wife and my son, and I want to enjoy dinner with them but I'm stuck in traffic, and the host in me collapses into a guest. I have this experience like I'm impatient and I just want to push my way through, and pushing only makes more impatience. But when I open up as host, suddenly my awareness becomes spacious. The impatience, this guest has room to just be present, to inform the host, if you will , to influence the host, to be in relationship with the host for a moment, and at some point, it passes. At some point the guest leaves. As we practice in this episode I want you to reflect on all of the sensory experience in this moment coming and going, moving through your life, all of the sensory experience of late coming and going, all of the guests coming and going through your inn. Which guests do you make into hostages? Which guests do you treat as vagrants and criminals? Who are you trying to hurry out of the space of your inn, your open awareness? What's remarkable, and the Buddhist tradition does a good job at teaching us this. It's not the only tradition that teaches it, but they have a unique voice when, in this tradition, they ask us to be the host of every situation. In a sense they're saying, "Don't mistake yourself for something small, something that comes and goes, a fleeting condition." Remember that as the host, you are openness itself. You can host any experience within you, and hosting any experience within you, you can be fully informed to show up in life how you want. That's the taste of the dharma. That's the taste of freedom, and that's what being the host is all about. Let's practice. In a given moment in life, we tend to identify with the thinking mind. We think that we are our thoughts. In the words of the Samarang Sutra, this is equivalent to forgetting that we're the host and thinking we're a guest. In this moment, I want you to identify with open, spacious awareness. Never mind if you think you know what that means or think you don't know what it means. Just open up into a sense of spacious awareness so you're not focusing from the thinking mind, not focusing from thought or operating in thought, but it's as if you fall behind that whole activity in an open space where you're simply curious to see what the next thought might be. Curious to see what the next sensation might be. Curious to see what the next sound might be, the next sight. Just curious about experience emerging moment to moment. In other words, as the host, you're just curious about the flow of guests through the inn. As awareness, just openly curious about the flow of sensory experience coming and going. If you are objectively safe in this present moment, like the self is not at risk of sustaining any injury or bodily harm, the house isn't on fire . Hope that goes without saying. Then you can remain as the host just letting the guests come and go, come and go. Be the host of this situation. Sensory experience all of the guests streaming through the inn. Some stay a little bit, some stay longer, but all guests move like foreign dust. All guests come and go. The more we open up, the more sensitive we become to the coming and going of guests. And even guests we especially mistake ourselves for as hosts, they reveal themselves to becoming and going. We think in our mind that we're a body, but the sensation right now arising as the body is brand new, is a new guest just arriving, and what sensation was present in the last moment as a guest, already leaving. We think we've always been this body, but we're not the same flow of sensation in this moment that we were, say, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. All guests are coming and going, all conditions changing, but you, the host, awareness, you neither come nor go. As it says in the Sutra, where could you go? You're the host. You're simply aware, open, awake, awareness. If we mistake ourselves to be an angry guest, we feel angry and we're consumed by anger. If we mistake ourselves to be a jealous guest, then we're jealous and consumed by jealousy. A guest who feels lack, we mistake ourselves with this guest and we feel like something's missing. But when we remember that we're the host, we simply see this fear, this anger, this lack, this sense of lack coming and going. They stay for a meal, a cup of tea. They stay for the night, they stay for 10 years, but they are not us. They are not the host. They are not the inn. As the host, there's room for every guest. What does it feel like to not try to convince certain guests to stay, certain guests to leave. Stay in this place, open, luminous, large-hearted curiosity as the host. Which guest is on their way out? Which guests are newly arriving? The space, the inn, is completely untainted, uncolored by their coming and going. Infinite space, freedom for them to come and go. As the host, bring your awareness to a guest who's been staying a long time now, and you've really wanted this guest to be moving on now. And feel that there's all the space in the world for this guest, which is to say, you can feel this way, you can feel this presence, but it's not who you are. It's a temporary blip. What about a guest who you hoped would stay? A guest who left a long time ago now, and what would it be if you just let that guest go because they're already gone? It's not to deny yourself any feelings you have about this particular guest. It's to just not be in denial that this guest is gone, this particular condition you were attached to. No more hostages. No more shooing vagrants away. All the guests are welcome. They stay for what time they're meant to stay, and then they go and move on. And you are the host of every guest the host of every situation. Thank you. Good practice today. Oh, I'm feeling tender being the host. It's not always easy. I noticed some guests I have not been as hotly to as I could be. I hope in this mindfulness practice, you also noticed your relationship to the guests of your life, to the fullness of your sensory experience, and maybe found a little more room. Praise and thanks to the beautiful wisdom teachings of the Buddhist tradition to bring us this great teaching, be the host of every situation. I'm Thomas McConkie, this is "Mindfulness+." We'll be back next week with more.

Watching Now
Welcome Every Moment
Welcome Every Moment
Thomas McConkie • 22:40

In the practice of mindfulness, we are urged to view ourselves as the host of our experiences rather than the guest. The way we handle life's ups and downs might vary dramatically as a result of this small shift in our perspective.

Imagine that you are the innkeeper of a hotel, receiving visitors from all walks of life. These visitors are a representation of our ideas, feelings, and sensory perceptions. As the host, we foster an atmosphere of inquiry and openness so that these visitors can arrive and depart without feeling confined or resisted. We treat them with love and acceptance, understanding that they are only passing guests at our inn.

We gain a better appreciation for the character of our experiences when we embrace the role of the host. We let go of the impulse to control or cling to some guests, knowing they will ultimately depart. With this change of perspective, we feel more liberated, which enables us to completely engage with each moment and be present in it.

Therefore, keep this in mind the next time you find yourself swept away in a wave of ideas or feelings and assume the position of the host. Accept the ups and downs of life's events while remembering that you have the ability to build a warm environment inside of yourself. You may develop a sense of calm, acceptance, and delight in every moment by being the host.


View Transcript
- Hello and welcome to another episode of "Mindfulness+," I'm your host, Thomas McConkie [Mindfulness Teacher]. Thanks so much for listening today. I wanna talk about being the host of every situation. This is a teaching from the Chan tradition, early Chinese Buddhism. It didn't originate in early China, but it came into a more full-throated expression in Chan Buddhism. To talk about what I mean by being the host of every situation, I want to read a passage, a sutra, from the early cannon, the Samarang Sutra of early Buddhism. I'll give it to you a couple times so you can relax, enjoy, even hit pause and jump back to hear it again and again if you'd like. Just to clue you in, the first word, foreign dust, in this sutra, it's referring to that which moves in consciousness, that which comes and goes as opposed to that which does not come or go. "Foreign dust is like a guest who stops at an inn where he passes the night or eats something and then packs and continues his journey because he cannot stay longer. As to the host of the inn, he has nowhere to go. My deduction is that one who does not stay is a guest, and one who stays is a host. Consequently, a thing is foreign when it does not stay. Again when the sun rises in a clear sky and its light enters the house through an opening, the dust is seen to dance in the ray of light, whereas the empty space does not move. I deduce that that which is still is the void, and that which moves is the dust. Consequently, a thing is dust when it moves." So a couple images, couple different metaphors going on in this sutra complimentary to one another, but I want to focus on the first one with the guest and the host one more time. "Foreign dust is like a guest who stops at an inn where he passes the night or eats something and then packs and continues his journey because he cannot stay longer. As to the host of the inn, he has nowhere to go. My deduction is that one who does not stay is a guest and one who stays is a host." One who does not stay is a guest, one who stays as a host. So why do they say in Buddhism "Be the host of every situation." in the Chinese. Well, in a given moment in consciousness, in conscious experience moment to moment in life, we can be identified with that which is coming and going, AKA the guests moving through the inn, where we can learn to identify, stand as the host, the one who has nowhere to go, the one who neither comes nor goes, but through which all things come and go. In short, the sutra is pointing to our capacity as human beings in our conscious experience to open up like space, and when we open up like space and we're not interfering with the flow of foreign dust, the flow of guests through the inn, the flow of sensory experience, through open awake awareness, we experience freedom. This sutra, this teaching from the Buddha about guests and hosts, is one of freedom. What more can I say about it? In a sense, it's that direct, it's that simple, and we're gonna practice with what is it like to be the host in this moment, in this situation be that which does not move, does not come or go as opposed to identifying with everything that comes and goes and therefore being subject to suffering. Well, to extend the metaphor, one thing I want to say about this passage is that if we're talking about guests, and if we're talking about being the host, the tendency in human life as the host is to not be very hotly towards our guests. Our hosts become hostages too often, which is to say those guests, those aspects of experience that we love, that we identify with, we do not want to pass on. We do everything we can to force them to stay, but the guest by his or her, their very nature, they cannot stay. They come and they go. That's what guests do. So when we make, as a host, when we make our guests into hostages, it's as if to say this perfect moment in my marriage or relationship, this perfect moment in my career, or at the peak of my wealth, or influence, or fame, or glory, or self-esteem, et cetera, this particular guest I do not want to leave my inn, so I try to coerce the guest into staying, but the guest has an agenda all his own. He has to move on. He's staying for breakfast, and then he needs to get back out on the path. She spends a couple of nights, but then she really must be going back east, and so forth. Think about all of the hosts in your life. In other words, sorry, think of all the guests in your life as host that you wish would stay longer. You wish that relationship lasted longer. You wish somebody you deeply loved didn't leave as soon as they did. Whether they died of an illness or moved to the other side of the world, you wish that particular guest didn't leave, but they did. This is the nature of human life. As the host, we want certain guests to stay and we make them our hostages. On the other side of the spectrum, there are the guests who we would love not to stay at all. We treat them like vagrants, we treat them like criminals. We treat them like lepers and loiters. Even if they glance at our inn funny, we tell them to keep moving and they have no business here, and it so happens that that particular leper or loiter has an intention to stay in our inn for several hours, several weeks, several months, several decades. Think of a situation in life where there's a condition present that you would love not to be present. There's nothing you can do about it. The condition is present, right? It's a health condition. Perhaps it's a financial condition, a relationship condition, the condition of the world in all its climate change, and armed conflict, and poverty, et cetera. These are conditions. I'm certainly not saying we shouldn't take action, that's another episode. But for now, as the host, the idea is to actually not be in denial that this sensory experience is upon us. We're having the experience of being full of grief. We're having the experience of being full of rage. We're having the experience of being full of regret and sorrow, loss, envy, and so on. When we're the host, we become as open space, everything coming and going, but as the host, where could we go? The host cannot go. Those moments in life, I notice these often in my own life. Stuck in traffic, here's a common one. I'm stuck in traffic and I'm in a hurry. I want to get home to my wife and my son, and I want to enjoy dinner with them but I'm stuck in traffic, and the host in me collapses into a guest. I have this experience like I'm impatient and I just want to push my way through, and pushing only makes more impatience. But when I open up as host, suddenly my awareness becomes spacious. The impatience, this guest has room to just be present, to inform the host, if you will , to influence the host, to be in relationship with the host for a moment, and at some point, it passes. At some point the guest leaves. As we practice in this episode I want you to reflect on all of the sensory experience in this moment coming and going, moving through your life, all of the sensory experience of late coming and going, all of the guests coming and going through your inn. Which guests do you make into hostages? Which guests do you treat as vagrants and criminals? Who are you trying to hurry out of the space of your inn, your open awareness? What's remarkable, and the Buddhist tradition does a good job at teaching us this. It's not the only tradition that teaches it, but they have a unique voice when, in this tradition, they ask us to be the host of every situation. In a sense they're saying, "Don't mistake yourself for something small, something that comes and goes, a fleeting condition." Remember that as the host, you are openness itself. You can host any experience within you, and hosting any experience within you, you can be fully informed to show up in life how you want. That's the taste of the dharma. That's the taste of freedom, and that's what being the host is all about. Let's practice. In a given moment in life, we tend to identify with the thinking mind. We think that we are our thoughts. In the words of the Samarang Sutra, this is equivalent to forgetting that we're the host and thinking we're a guest. In this moment, I want you to identify with open, spacious awareness. Never mind if you think you know what that means or think you don't know what it means. Just open up into a sense of spacious awareness so you're not focusing from the thinking mind, not focusing from thought or operating in thought, but it's as if you fall behind that whole activity in an open space where you're simply curious to see what the next thought might be. Curious to see what the next sensation might be. Curious to see what the next sound might be, the next sight. Just curious about experience emerging moment to moment. In other words, as the host, you're just curious about the flow of guests through the inn. As awareness, just openly curious about the flow of sensory experience coming and going. If you are objectively safe in this present moment, like the self is not at risk of sustaining any injury or bodily harm, the house isn't on fire . Hope that goes without saying. Then you can remain as the host just letting the guests come and go, come and go. Be the host of this situation. Sensory experience all of the guests streaming through the inn. Some stay a little bit, some stay longer, but all guests move like foreign dust. All guests come and go. The more we open up, the more sensitive we become to the coming and going of guests. And even guests we especially mistake ourselves for as hosts, they reveal themselves to becoming and going. We think in our mind that we're a body, but the sensation right now arising as the body is brand new, is a new guest just arriving, and what sensation was present in the last moment as a guest, already leaving. We think we've always been this body, but we're not the same flow of sensation in this moment that we were, say, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. All guests are coming and going, all conditions changing, but you, the host, awareness, you neither come nor go. As it says in the Sutra, where could you go? You're the host. You're simply aware, open, awake, awareness. If we mistake ourselves to be an angry guest, we feel angry and we're consumed by anger. If we mistake ourselves to be a jealous guest, then we're jealous and consumed by jealousy. A guest who feels lack, we mistake ourselves with this guest and we feel like something's missing. But when we remember that we're the host, we simply see this fear, this anger, this lack, this sense of lack coming and going. They stay for a meal, a cup of tea. They stay for the night, they stay for 10 years, but they are not us. They are not the host. They are not the inn. As the host, there's room for every guest. What does it feel like to not try to convince certain guests to stay, certain guests to leave. Stay in this place, open, luminous, large-hearted curiosity as the host. Which guest is on their way out? Which guests are newly arriving? The space, the inn, is completely untainted, uncolored by their coming and going. Infinite space, freedom for them to come and go. As the host, bring your awareness to a guest who's been staying a long time now, and you've really wanted this guest to be moving on now. And feel that there's all the space in the world for this guest, which is to say, you can feel this way, you can feel this presence, but it's not who you are. It's a temporary blip. What about a guest who you hoped would stay? A guest who left a long time ago now, and what would it be if you just let that guest go because they're already gone? It's not to deny yourself any feelings you have about this particular guest. It's to just not be in denial that this guest is gone, this particular condition you were attached to. No more hostages. No more shooing vagrants away. All the guests are welcome. They stay for what time they're meant to stay, and then they go and move on. And you are the host of every guest the host of every situation. Thank you. Good practice today. Oh, I'm feeling tender being the host. It's not always easy. I noticed some guests I have not been as hotly to as I could be. I hope in this mindfulness practice, you also noticed your relationship to the guests of your life, to the fullness of your sensory experience, and maybe found a little more room. Praise and thanks to the beautiful wisdom teachings of the Buddhist tradition to bring us this great teaching, be the host of every situation. I'm Thomas McConkie, this is "Mindfulness+." We'll be back next week with more.


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