Presented By: Mark CollinsOctober 31, 2013

Someplace ElseApplication of “The Method of Three

Hands”During the Transition From Corporate

Americato a Blissful Retirement

Someplace Else“Do not stand upon the shore.

It truly is a sad and lonely place.”

Mark Collins

Someplace ElseImagine that you are driving and that the driver in front of you is

braking unexpectedly. The bumper is getting very close, very fast. This is

the analogy that we will return to through this presentation.

How is this similar to leaving corporate America and entering

retirement?

Situation:

Corporate America mandates a focus on the physical world.Profits are disconnected from spiritual growth and harmony.

People often are focused on groceries, mortgages, and 401(k)’s.

Leaving Corporate America can cause suffering … due tothe new environment that incorporates more of other worlds.

Examples: How do I fill my time?

Why should I get out of the bed?What is my purpose?

How do I restructure relationships and priorities?What matters?

The Method of Three HandsA Primer

Returning to the analogy …

.. You are the car and the bumper is your retirement.

The Method of Three HandsA Primer

Resolution:

Suffering exists, acknowledge it.Understand that suffering has a cause.

That cause is a loss of awareness.With awareness, suffering does not need to continue.

The Method of Three HandsA Primer

The Three Worlds (The Three Hands):

PhysicalSpiritual

The Acceptance of Invitation

The Method of Three HandsA Primer

The Three Worlds (The Three Hands):

Physical Heart (It’s Heart Beats with Blood)

Spiritual (It’s Heart Beats with Peace)The Acceptance of Invitation (It’s Heart

is Indescribable)

The Method of Three HandsA Primer

Continuing the Analogy:

Our Spiritual Self is to the Physical Self …As a Driver is to the Car.

Our physical death and decay provides sufficient evidence that eternal does not reside in our physical.

The physical self is a land of beginning and end.

Push and Pull.

The Method of Three HandsA Primer

Body, Mind, Thoughts, Ideas,

Emotions

First HandThe Physical State

I am happy.No, I use happiness. I use sadness.

Return to the analogy of the car and driver.Change the radio station … sadness to happiness.

I have thoughts.I do not become those thoughts.

These thoughts are used, like tools.

Self Restraint … A Blessing or a Curse?

First HandThe Physical State

Spirit, Values, Religion, Awareness,

Sense of Peace

Second HandThe Spiritual State

Spirit, Values, Religion, Awareness Greater Clarity Between “It Is” and “Right/Wrong”

… or … is it wholesome.

Be wary of those that provide too much description.

Example of spiritual state at full potential.

Second HandThe Spiritual State

We can only achieve these things if the first hand, the physical world, does not distract and does not

interfere with the spiritual world.

Consider the implications of:being still,

inconsistent breath,stress and anxiety.

Second HandThe Spiritual State

The Problem of the Physical: To Cling, To Crave.The indispensable providing the dispensable.

“If the roots remain untouched and firm in the ground,a felled tree still puts forth new shoots.

If the underlying habit of craving and aversion is not uprooted

suffering arises anew over and over again.”S.N. Goenka Moral Conduct, Concentration and Wisdom

Second HandThe Spiritual State

Continuing the Analogy:

Our Spiritual Self is to the Physical Self …As a Driver is to the Car.

Our physical death and decay provides sufficient evidence that eternal does not reside in our physical.

The physical self is a land of beginning and end.

Push and Pull?

Second Hand

And a coin is flipped into the air, mind is one side and body is a second.

The person of spirit is able to, figuratively speaking, stop that coin in mid air as if time had stopped. Or

perhaps better said … they are able to make the coin disappear in midair as if it were magic.

And the spiritual self, we must recognize, is exactly that which flipped the coin into the air. Or perhaps,

had dropped the coin unable to identify its usefulness.

The Second Hand

Indescribable, Undefinable, Unmentionable

Third HandThe Acceptance of Invitation

The first two hands provide awareness of the self.

Everything else (if there is an everything else), is the third hand. And this hand is providing an invitation to become aware of how the self relates to everything

else.

We have traveled inward. Now let’s travel outward.

Third HandThe Acceptance of Invitation

So the bumper is of the car is closing in very, very fast.

The bumper is retirement.Your physical self is the car.

Your spiritual self is the driver.

The invitation is that red cardinal on the tree branch, appearing somewhat disinterested in the collision.

What else may be lost?

The Method of Three Hands

The sooner we apply the brakes, the better we can …

The sooner we turn off the radio, the sooner we can …

The sooner we observe the red cardinal, the sooner we can …

The more capable we drive, the more capable we …

The greater the context around us, the greater the …

The more knowledge the driver has of the car, the more …

And if there is a collision, we should …

The Method of Three Hands

Awareness of or spiritual self and our physical self …

allows us to accept the invitation of relationship with the cosmos, with the

universe that is all around and within us.

The Method of Three Hands

Hand one physical – the shoreHand two spiritual – swimming close to shore

Hand three – someplace else, with land not insight.

The Shore“Do not stand upon the shore.

It truly is a sad and lonely place.”

Mark Collins

Hand One (Physical) – The ShoreHand Two (Spiritual) – Wading in the Water

Hand Three (Someplace Else) – No Land in Sight

Someplace Else

There is no someplace else.

There is other awareness.

And this is a matter of different practice,not different location. For if there is only water, what relevance does “different location” have?

Someplace Else

Your path is not to avoid fear and pain.

Your path, your practice, must be based on developing awareness of more than the company’s accounting

books.

Your path, your practice, must be based on developing awareness of how the three hands can be coordinated.It is a question of balance, mindfulness, and … practice.

Establishing Your Practice Today

Reinspection of the Second Noble Truth:

“… the cause of suffering is craving, desire or attachment. The problem seems to be that we are always wanting something, feeling we are lacking something, or wanting an existing something to go away. We could say that the cause of suffering is a

generalized mentality of poverty.”

Bercholz and Kohnn, An Introduction to the Buddha and His Teachings

How have we been thinking of poverty?

Establishing Your Practice Today

“Our suffering stems from ignorance. We react because we do not know what we are doing, because we do not know the reality of ourselves. The mind spends most of the time lost in fantasies and illusions, reliving pleasant or unpleasant experiences and anticipating the future with eagerness or fear. While lost in such cravings or aversions, we are unaware of what is happening now,

what we are doing now.”S.N. Goenka Moral Conduct, Concentration and Wisdom

Establishing Your Practice Today

The importance of now …

How can our spiritual self proceed with our physical self caught in the past, captured by the future? Truth, we reside both as a physical and spiritual being. Perhaps this loss of awareness creates our greatest divorce.

“There is no past, no future.This simply changes.This, in rearranges.”

Mark Collins

Establishing Your Practice Today

The Method of Three Hands: A Policy

The Method of Three Hands: A Procedure

The Method of Three Hands: Work Instructions

Establishing Your Practice Today

No … a something else.

Different awareness.Different peace.

Someplace Else