[Dan Slife]

Greetings, Zak.

This link didn’t work for me. Is there another route to the content?

Best,

Dan

[Dan Slife]

Thank you, Zak.

I was lucky enough to be present in the audience for this talk at Duquesne back in 2016. So glad you made this available!

[Dan Slife]

Hi Don,

Yes, I think so. It was seeking something I had always taken as an inaccessible abstraction, and seeing in it a living breathing newness in the moment.

Thank you for sharing the story of unexpected silence. That gets at part of the experience I had: that the trees were speaking, that the ground was speaking, that an ancient presence is always speaking a mysterious language, and its heard only when the monkey mind is willed into silence.

Best,

Dan

[Dan Slife]

Hi Mary. It came to me in an aha moment, which was much more magical than it’s reduction to words!

Back when I started reading TMWT last fall, it struck me that, being sedentary, I must start walking every morning. So, just like that, I started going for daily walks of a few miles. It was on one of these walks that I discovered a little hidden forest connected to a pocket park. I began wandering into this forest and meditating each morning when I had time.

It was in this little forest that I started praying the Lord’s prayer each morning as the sun came up through the bare branches. And one day this experience of it came over me.

In all honesty, it wasn’t a great leap from TMWT, but the newness with which I felt/experienced these old words, worn into my head. It was like I for the first time glimpsed an inside experience of this prayer. The first time it was attesting to the present, something tangible and ineffable at the same time, rather than the inaccessible after and beyond I thought it had solely represented.