Four Immeasurables / Four Best Friends

In today's lecture, Alan gave a very brief reflection for when we finish this retreat. As we know, the still, sustained focus / samadhi of our attention will naturally diminish within a socially engaged lifestyle. However, the Four Immeasurables have no reason to do so and in fact can even be amplified and practiced all day within the context of our life. We then go into a free Four Immeasurable meditation, and I have a question for you valued listeners:Do you prefer for me to trim the silent meditations out of the podcast? Please comment on the site for this podcast episode. Keep in mind that I always place chapter markers so you can easily skip to after the meditation or just use fast forward. So please comment, I want to see what you all think! I left it in today, also because we had a great meditation-enhancing rainstorm. Unfortunately the tiny wire microphone I use for Alan obviously does not do it justice, but you can at least imagine meditating here with us in the rain :)After the meditation I stripped what will be the second sunday bonus, a continuation from yesterday. I say this again, you should be very excited for this sunday, just as if there was a big sports match or something. I left a brief question from Malcom about the different interpretations of equanimity between the Theravada and Mahayana views, and Alan added some very wise information on sadness and remorse at the very end.Enjoy!