Jack: Congratulations. You've just completed 40 sessions of the essential training in mindfulness and compassion. 

You learned practices that can steady your heart, train your mind and change your life like surfing. You've learned to ride the waves of sensations and sound feelings and thoughts. And when you fall off the surfboard, you know how to center yourself and begin again.

You've also learned to apply mindfulness in your daily life, why speech and mindful communication, generosity, trust, and gratitude. And see how these capacities grow stronger as you practice them. Take a few moments to appreciate all you've done and all you've learned. The capacity of appreciation will sustain you on your continuing journey. If mindfulness practice becomes a grim duty, your journey won't last long. So, it's important to find ways to enjoy it. Begin your sittings with a smile invite. In peace and calm. Tet the practice be refreshing.

And during those times when you stop to sit, as well as throughout your day, notice whenever there are any moments of ease, or release, or stillness. Pause to savor the sense of wellbeing and joy. By doing so, you encourage these states of mind to deepen and grow. They are not outside of you, they were born in you. And in everyone you meet this, innocence and goodness can't be taken from you. Remember, no one can imprison your spirit. Yes, there are difficulties global and personal and times of concern and tears

A powerful way to support your continued practice is through setting an aspiration and intention for the long-term. In this program, you've seen how bringing mindfulness and your best intention into conflict or speaking can transform a situation for the better. In the same way, you can create an intention to guide your heart over the years. 

For some, it may simply be a vow to:

Poet, Diane Ackerman, expresses her own aspiration in these lines,

“In the name of daybreak and the eyelids of morning and the wayfaring moon and the night when it departs, I swear I will not dishonor my soul with hatred but offer myself humbly as a guardian of nature, a healer of misery, a messenger of wonder and an architect of peace.”

How would you voice your own long-term aspiration and intention? In the meditation of this session, you'll have time to reflect on this.

Now in closing, there's one important thing left to say, you must practice. Like surfing, or playing guitar, writing code, or learning medicine, it is through regular practice that your skills and strength will grow and be available to you. One Indian teacher laughingly put it this way,

“Enlightenment is an accident, and practice makes you enlightenment-prone.”

In the supporting material for Mindfulness Daily, you'll find a list of 10 ways to support your ongoing practice, from finding a regular sitting rhythm to connecting with a teacher and joining a group to further courses you can take. Take your commitment to heart. It is through your own aspiration and your dedication to practice that these gifts will flower and change your life. May all you have learned in this course, and your own sincerity, bring blessings to you and all you touch. And may your Goodwill spread across the world, bringing healing and happiness to all beings everywhere. Tara and I offer deep appreciation and thanks to you all.

PRACTICE:
As a last practice together, let's begin with the core practice, mindfulness, and compassion, which will sustain you in the years ahead. Then we'll invite joy and set a long-term intention.

Begin by letting yourself get settled in whatever way supports presence, alertness, and ease. And using your anchor and mindfulness, include your breath and body and whatever experiences arise. As you continue your core practice, invite a sense of joy and add a half-smile. Come back to whatever's present with a mindful and easy heart to increase your sense of joy, let yourself remember one of your happiest days as a child, laughing, running, playing. Sense how this spirit of innocence and wellbeing and joy is still in you.

Now as you sit quietly, take time to reflect on your own long-term aspiration, setting your heart's best intention for the journey of life ahead. Your words can be simple, perhaps a few sentences or phrases, setting an inner direction to guide you as you move through the joys and sorrows of human incarnation. Let yourself reflect, listen, and sense what these intentions might be for you. And finally, as you breathe gently, shift to the practice of loving-kindness. And with each gentle breath, imagine you can send waves of loving-kindness and blessing out across the world to those you know and those many beings who don't know. Offer your well-wishing, spreading kindness in whatever way comes most naturally.

INTENTION
Now that this meditation is over, take a minute to write your long-term intentions on paper, save them. If you wish, it can also be empowering to show them to others who value these practices. Let these intentions become a compass for your life's direction, a valued guide. Turn to them whenever important questions arise. And with continued practice of mindfulness and compassion and your good intentions, you are perfectly set to sow seeds of benefit and wisdom wherever you go.
© Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield
Reprinted by permission