Dharma teacher Pascal Auclair — co-founder of True North Insight, practicing since 1997 — on a permission slip most meditators forget to give themselves. "I don't want anybody to blame themselves for clinging, for getting tight around pleasure or displeasure. It's so natural. Very, very natural." The unspoken story most meditators carry: I should be mindful all the time, and when I'm not, I'm failing. Pascal cuts that off at the root. Mindfulness, he says, is "just now" — this moment, fully here. The next moment may not have mindfulness in it. That's not a bug. That's a mind. When you do notice the "ouch" of being caught again in clinging, anxiety, or fear of losing — that noticing is the practice. Not the perfection of staying. The willingness to return. Mindfulness isn't a streak. It's a return. Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/Oizv_MTktKs
Full Transcript
I'm talking to the listener here. I don't want anybody to blame themselves for clinging for getting tight around pleasure or displeasure. It's so natural, very, very natural. Mindfulness, when I'm really there with something, it's just now. It's just now. It's not conceived in the way of a timeline. It's just this is the experience. I'm fully there for it. And the next moment, then we don't know what's going to happen. >> [laughter] >> That might not be mindfulness. That might be habits of mind of clinging, of course. >> And in those moments when the mind swoops in and puts you back into the conventional timeline and the wanting of more and whatever, it's just about starting again and again and again. >> Yeah, and noticing the kind of ouch that we're caught again in like clinging, anxiety, fear of losing, which is absolutely [clears throat] natural.
Original Description
Dharma teacher Pascal Auclair — co-founder of True North Insight, practicing since 1997 — on a permission slip most meditators forget to give themselves.
"I don't want anybody to blame themselves for clinging, for getting tight around pleasure or displeasure. It's so natural. Very, very natural."
The unspoken story most meditators carry: I should be mindful all the time, and when I'm not, I'm failing. Pascal cuts that off at the root. Mindfulness, he says, is "just now" — this moment, fully here. The next moment may not have mindfulness in it. That's not a bug. That's a mind.
When you do notice the "ouch" of being caught again in clinging, anxiety, or fear of losing — that noticing is the practice. Not the perfection of staying. The willingness to return.
Mindfulness isn't a streak. It's a return.
Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/Oizv_MTktKs
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