Dharma Talk: Choice

I posted a new dharma talk last night:

kennethfolkdharma.com/2011/04/nyc-talk-choice-19-april-2011/

It's called "Choice." Give it a listen if you have a half-hour or so and leave me a comment there!

-Kenneth

I just listened to this while playing ball with my Dog. This is my new favourite dharma talk by you or anyone else. Very profound and effective. This practice is becoming more and more a part of my daily life. I feel like I finally get something that had been eluding me for quite some time. What I found particularly helpful, above and beyond the distant ships pointer, was the image of standing in a doorway with the manifest world in front of you and emptiness behind you. There was a lot of tension in my body before I tried this (I suspect I was going through the dukkha nanas) yet turning to that nothingness and sort of relaxing back into it resulted in an instant and deep burst of joy and laughter. There were even a few tears in my eyes. Turning the other way there was still quite a bit of tension and aching bodily, but when I turned around it didn't matter at all.
Thanks for a wonderful 33 minutes!

(I posted this on your new site as well)

So glad you found it helpful, Jayson. Metta and mudita to you. (And your little dog, too!)

-Kenneth

Just beautiful, another outstanding piece of work which cuts to the heart of this whole thing.

The title of this talk made me remember a lyric I wrote about five years ago in a song called "Choices", hope you won't mind if I post a bit of it here as it seems moderately relevant:

I can wait, I can give and take, and yes I know I make mistakes,
Lessons learned the hardest way,
I could stay, take the hand I'm played or turn my back and walk away,
Everything will change.

And everything just passes on, I'm done, I must discard this.
You want and need, but then it's gone, I'm done, I must discard this.
The make-believe of holding on, I'm done, I must discard this.
My selfish need went on too long.

It just popped into my head so I posted it, I'll remove it if required if I'm distracting from the thread.