Editor's Note: When I asked participants for feedback about our recent Contemplative Care Retreat, one person told me that the talk we share with you today, given by Chodo Sensei during the retreat, was the best she had ever heard him give. Naturally, my interest was piqued.

And as someone who has listened to many of Chodo's talks over the years, I understood what she meant. This one is wide-ranging and deeply personal, moving through stories of Chodo's upbringing, addiction and sobriety, fear, impermanence, pleasure, aging, and death, with plenty of humor, tenderness, and even music along the way.

The recording began a little late, so from the very first moment you'll hear Chodo already in the middle of a story about his mother and his childhood. It's an abrupt, intimate opening that somehow feels perfectly suited to what follows. We hope this talk moves you as much as it moved us.

“Can I love something without requiring it to remain? Can I receive something without turning it into mine?”

At the heart of the talk is a deceptively simple question: What are we really afraid of losing?

Reflecting on the Buddha's teachings on craving and the Five Remembrances, Chodo explores how easily our love of life's pleasures can become a demand that they remain. A beautiful morning, a body that feels good, the people we love, the feeling that everything is okay—what happens when we remember that none of it can be kept?

The practice, Chodo suggests, is not to become suspicious of pleasure or less alive, but to learn how to receive what is here without holding it quite so tightly.

As he puts it: “Perhaps the deepest freedom is not getting to keep what I love. Perhaps it's discovering that I can love what I cannot keep.”

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‍MUSIC

‍Heart Sutra by Kanho Yakushiji – Buddhist priest and musician of the Rinzai sect and Imaji temple in Imabari, Japan. In 2003, he formed “KISSAQUO”, a songwriting duo based in Kyoto.