*transcript produced by AI

All right, here we are, another lovely Sunday.

I always love coming to practice with you all.

What’s up?

What would we like to explore today in our discussion period?

I don’t know if it’s discussion worthy, more just a comment of gratitude for the practice of the jhanas, the grounding-ness of it.

I’ve had a tumultuous couple of weeks here, and it’s admittedly really thrown me, but when I come to the cushion, and that makes the challenges not less present, but less, the word weighted.

They’re there, but there’s more space, and they ain’t got it.

No doubt.

Can you reflect a little bit on the difference that you notice when you’re coming to the cushion, either if you remember doing it prior to having training in the jhanas, or when you don’t come to the cushion with the intention to practice jhanas and life is difficult?

What’s the difference in the quality of your meditation?

I don’t know quite exactly how to frame the question.

Right, right.

The ability to put aside one’s thoughts.

You know, in the past, things would have kept cycling in, and I would have continually been either feeling pulled or fighting being pulled, and now the difference is, if I experience that, there’s different tools to move that aside more quickly so I can just get into a space of the thoughts just becoming wispy and disappearing, instead of feeling controlled by them.

Or emotions, same thing.

Boom.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wonderful to hear.

I think you touched on something that’s so important in our modern conception of practice and meditation, you know.

This understanding of meditation doesn’t seem to be as nearly as widespread as it used to be, or, I don’t know, if it ever was in the West, right?

But the open awareness meditations and, you know, the idea of disciplining the mind and concentrating the mind and pushing and being able to sit and detach from thoughts and emotions and watch them go away and go into a meditative space at will, on purpose, you know.

This is not how it seems to be talked about very much, which I think is interesting.

I could be wrong.

If you all know something I don’t about the way it’s typically talked about, please let me know.

Most popular teachings I hear treat that as something that’s very difficult to attain.

And so instead it’s always framed in the when you get distracted, celebrate that you noticed and come back.

No one ever says, well, train yourself to not get distracted.

Yeah, I admittedly, you know, don’t have a lot coming in outside of this group anymore.

But in my past experience, it was that was not talked about at all.

At all.

It was you just were supposed to, I don’t know, by osmosis, by stepping into the room, pretend that you were already there.

I don’t know.

I certainly did not get it.

Yeah.

Knowing who was leading that space, I don’t think that was any shortcoming first.

I mean, I compare this now to the mindfulness training, MBSR, and there it’s a lot of, yeah.

Get clear about what’s distracting you, get clear about the hindrances.

I mean, we have them in Zen too and in Jhana practice as well as we move through it.

And maybe it’s sometimes like, can I say, the social fear about too much discipline.

That’s what I would point to when I hear or listen to you, Umi, when you say people don’t instruct others to just train themselves to not get distracted.

Because that feels maybe for some of the, I would call them an exclamation mark sensitive people, too harsh, too pushy, too, I don’t know.

And then it might be just better for their, I don’t know, traumatized souls to get to know that’s okay to be distracted, to first ground themselves in what is instead of right away.

There is another way to live because this is way too far ahead.

That’s at least my experience.

So at least that I know about what is all possible.

I experienced, experienced and experienced myself limitations, embodied limitations, which don’t get me where I want to, even though I know that.

And for example, with the Jhana training and the experience of PT, which did not fade anyhow, this sit.

So I was shaking all like the whole time.

It’s not that much, but there is, this is a constant waving and shaking and whatever of my whole body and I’m just with it.

This does something to me, what I would call, how can I say it?

So I’m a little bit like the second procade, the expanding the container, though I’m finally in a process of allowing my body to show me what’s happening.

And so distractions are something for me that are showing what’s happening.

And if you just say, hey, don’t get distracted, we don’t acknowledge what’s there maybe.

And so this is what I have in my mind.

And you’re shaking your head.

So I’m listening.

Yeah, well, there’s that’s the that’s the miss.

That’s the misconception about the statement.

Train yourself to not be distracted.

People hear that and they think that immediately on your next set, you just don’t get distracted.

That’s not training yourself to not be distracted.

Right.

Training yourself as a process.

And part of the process is going through your system, clearing out all of the things that are distracting.

Right.

And the Jhana training, call it karmic purification, fires of purification.

Right.

And so in training, you go through extended periods of time where you are not comfortable on the cushion.

And you are distracted and your energetic system is reharmonizing itself completely independently of what you would like consciously.

And it’s not fun.

You know, and I think that is part of why people shy away from it, because going through that is really uncomfortable.

And and yeah.

And nowadays you can get sued for that.

Right.

People can show up at your retreat and they can be re-traumatized and they can try to litigate because you didn’t take appropriate psychological care.

So there are like real reasons for that.

I think my my largest concern that I want.

Us as a group of teachers to be aware of is that there is.

Appropriate beginner level instruction.

And then there’s limiting people to being forever beginners because you never show them what is next.

And this is what I see is the biggest problem in popular mindfulness meditation systems is that they treat people with baby gloves for decades.

Yeah, I agree.

Totally.

So I agree also with like the the apricot instructions or the core training instructions or whatever.

So every time when you teach things, then there is always like the the highest goal or the biggest end or however you name it.

It’s just there without saying you need to reach this now.

But just, hey, this this is probably possible.

And now you start here.

And at the beginning, just that, you know, I mean, it’s not nothing else than having a vision board.

Even though it’s not there yet, but you have an idea of what it could look like and how it could feel like.

And so this all.

Makes your whole system adjust to the possibilities.

Yep.

Because the biggest thing that we do is we limit ourselves and through our instruction, we unconsciously limit our students.

And if we want to liberate ourselves and liberate people, then the number one thing we have to do is look at our self limiting beliefs and remove them.

And we need to make sure I personally am highly convicted that when I speak to you, I do not reinforce or impose any self limiting beliefs.

That’s more important to me than you being comfortable.

Right.

That’s my job.

If I have a job, it is to destroy self limiting beliefs.

And that sucks sometimes.

What I’m enjoying about this conversation or appreciating is the emphasis on training, as opposed to spiritual bypassing.

That acknowledgment that it should fucking suck to be on the cushion for, you know, until you clean your shit out.

And if it doesn’t suck, then you’re doing something else.

And that is very scary.

And for that, Mitra, I love what Umi likes to say.

I mean, as long as you do it on purpose, doing something else.

So if getting on your cushion is you want a daydream and you want to have a good time and this is your purpose for that, have fun.

But if you don’t, if you want to establish something else, then you have to wonder about, then you have to get a teacher, then you have to discuss what’s happening, what’s really going on.

I know Umi smiles.

What’s cracking me up is that Bailey, every time, so Bailey and I will get into really deep discussions as part of his ongoing martial arts training and the combination of Zen and sovereignty that comes into how he’s learning martial arts in that particular container.

Right.

Because just like we teach that here in the Zen container, we also teach it there in the martial arts container.

So we’ll have the same kind of discussion.

And almost every time we might go through a cycle of two or three classes exploring an issue.

And then eventually he goes off.

It really is just pay attention and do it on purpose, isn’t it?

Yeah.

But it’s important to really explore the ramifications of that because it can become a catchphrase that we then hide behind.

Right.

And because what does it really mean to pay attention?

What does it really mean to do something on purpose?

Right.

Because our ego structures are so tricky and are so quick to justify and explain like it knew it beforehand.

And if we’re really honest with ourselves, we can recognize, actually, this is me trying to tell myself I was paying attention because I have an ego structure that will be hurt by admitting that I wasn’t paying attention and didn’t do that on purpose.

And so my I’m trying to protect my identity by telling myself that I was paying attention and did it on purpose.

And therefore, I’m justifying it ad hoc and accepting that.

And part of training is getting rid of that whole process.

Right.

And recognizing that whatever your identity structure is, it isn’t as important as being an integrity with the way.

Again, that’s deeply uncomfortable.

I think my life’s purpose at the moment is to catch myself and doing that.

And also become skillful at recognizing that somebody else is doing that and not throwing fuel on a fire.

How to be able to present it, acknowledge it and not have it go.

Yeah.

Yes.

Yes.

Wow.

Sounds advanced.

So if it’s OK, I would like change the topic a little bit.

And just pointing to my to the sit that I had, because it was very interesting.

I mean, after I did the leading of the Qigong and sat down and just saw that sometimes you were faster than me.

So I had something in my body and when I sat down, it only took me like two breaths or something like that until my body started shaking.

But I don’t know.

I mean, two breaths.

I mean, yes, I did Qigong practice.

That’s nice.

That is something concentrating.

But also it could have been some kind of anxiety just because of what I just felt.

However, it felt very similar to other moments of practice when I’m in a concentration mode and the body keeps shaking.

You know what?

The body keeps shaking.

Just see what happens and concentrate on the shaking.

And I went with that.

And it was interesting because I still could notice here and there some kinds of hindrances, some things that I didn’t want and I wanted and I doubted.

And I’m less tired anymore.

So in the beginning of meditation, I always was tired, but this isn’t there anymore.

So I’m wondering how much is that really something that you would call PT or is it just my body doing stuff which feels like that?

And how can I discern?

So how can I understand?

Yeah.

So the phenomenological difference and what we feel in our body between being really revved up in our nervous system and having a feeling of PT is not necessarily that different.

But when we look at the mental qualities, then they become different.

Right.

So if the mind is experiencing rapture and bliss and is fundamentally happy and content, then what we’re experiencing in our body would be more likely to be PT.

If what we’re experiencing as a quality of mind is movement and reflection and thought and concern and going towards things and going away from things and stuff like that, then we’re still in the shamatha practice and our nervous system is presenting a state of anxiety.

Right.

Which is actually great.

FYI, I’m moving from the depression side of the scale where when you go into shamatha, you fall asleep to the anxiety side of the scale where you go into shamatha, you start twitching and freaking out and having a whole bunch of mental activity.

That’s actually great progress.

So I’m really excited to hear that.

But that’s how you know, because when you’re in shamatha and you’re staying focused on your concentration object and the mind is quieting and stilling and it rebels against that and your body is having its nervous system reassert itself, put itself into a parasympathetic response because of your shamatha practice, then it has characteristics more like what you just described.

You can still be quite deep.

You could probably be in Chuladasa’s 4, 5, 6, 7th stage of shamatha practice and be having those type of nervous system reactions and still have your mind pretty well anchored on your concentration object.

But it’s not going to become a jhana state until the mental qualities, the hindrances have dropped off and you’re experiencing fundamentally a quality of mental bliss and joy and ease and stuff going on where you’re like, oh, this feels so good.

Like if you’re not sitting there going, oh, it’s probably not PT.

Can you define shamatha, please?

Calm abiding.

We typically call that calm abiding or the stopping practice, which is what we’re doing when we concentrate on like our breath and we count malas prior to embodied absorption in the first jhana.

Sorry, I said jhana?

Yes.

I would say, as I remember, it was a dance between amazing and great.

Just like, oh, what my body does here.

And then sometimes it got more tense.

And then it was like, oh, what’s happening?

And then it was again like, oh, yeah, great.

So it was a dance between, I would guess, those two states in a way.

I don’t know.

So it’s very, very interesting.

But the biggest progress I see for myself is I’m okay with just observing.

This is like amazing that I’m able to just sit there and be there and don’t run away from it.

Like, ah.

Yeah, that is amazing and wonderful and huge, especially with a history of really being coy about big emotional experiences or what might be interpreted as a big emotional experience.

So that’s huge.

That’s huge.

So what you just described here probably puts you at like a 6-7 in shamatha where you weren’t really distracted in the sense of having those distractions pull you away from your concentration object.

But sometimes you’re in embodied absorption with PT characteristics when the mind state is absent of the anxiety and tension.

And then sometimes you’re back in the shamatha 6-7 phase when the mind state has the anxiety and stuff.

Because that’s kind of the defining characteristics of whether or not you’re going into jhanas and the further jhanas will present themselves.

So there’s a little bit of what we would call, well, I think the term instability is a good term, although it has some negative connotations that I don’t like.

But it’s kind of like competing mind modes.

And they’re like flicking back and forth in these competing mind modes about how you interpret the sensations that are happening in your body.

And you have a very ingrained mind mode that says, this is scary.

And you’re building a new mind mode that says, this is fun.

Right.

And so those kind of do this.

They go back and forth.

Right.

And that’s lovely.

And the more you just sit and observe that and understand each of these mind modes, the more you’ll be able to be like, I would like this one, please.

And then your system will serve you that one.

Because it’ll follow your intentions more readily.

Okay.

So this is, that will point to maybe the next question of mine.

Like, okay, when I observe this, what can I do to support my system to relax and get to another mode of mind?

So just, yeah.

Yeah.

Seeing it as something.

Okay.

In core training, we would say that you’re going to work at the sensation meaning making identity layer.

And the sensation is going to be the experience of embodied absorption and agitated bliss that arises as you become deeply present in your own system.

That’s the sensation that’s arising.

You have two competing modes of meaning.

Which are, this is freaky and this is great.

Right.

And then that, those lead you either to stay in shamatha or to move into jhanas.

And so you just set your intention to choose the meaning you want to give it before your sit.

That when embodied absorption and agitated bliss arise, I will choose to give it the meaning of, yes, this is arising.

That’s great.

And when I notice the other meaning arising, I will choose not to engage with that meaning.

Right.

And that’s the intention that you sit with.

And then you’re using the core training model with your meditation practice to.

Yeah.

That’s great.

And now while you say this, and I see that we are on time.

I texted you last time that I feel anxiety when there is nothing.

So when, when, when I would go further after like next jhanas.

So now I know why, why I’m better into the shamatha practice than into the jhana practice.

Ah, thank you for that.

Yeah.

Great, great, great questions about meditation practice.

I’m grateful that we’re able to kind of have a technical discussion about meditation.

Because that’s another thing that, especially when you get into the Zen community, they just don’t do.

But other schools of meditation are better at talking about the technical details, but then they turn it into something that’s like, you know, it’s like, it’s not that special.

It’s just.

Anyway.

Make sure you want to go ahead and make any final remarks and lead our closing check in or if you have a checking in.

As usual, I’m very grateful for the practice, and your guys’s presence, and I need to go find out why my phone is blowing up.

Have a wonderful Sunday.

You as well.

Hopefully nothing too serious.

Great.

Um, yeah, thank you for the practice.

Thank you for having me latching on and learning and sitting together and discussing stuff.

That’s always great.

I mean, let me check it in with joy, gratitude, and a full bladder.

So I’m looking forward to closing up and going pee.

Have a beautiful week.

Thank you.

See you.

The post From Permanent Beginner to Developmental Practitioner appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

Voila.

Great.

Okay.

So, hi everybody.

Thank you for coming and practicing with me today, with each other today, with yourself today.

Anyone have anything particular for our discussion?

Such obliging Zen students.

Only that this version of Qigong sitting, Qigong only at the deeper and then coming here, is like, hey, wait a moment, I’m not done with meditation yet.

So, I mean, yes, there is never an end to meditation.

Like what?

Yeah, it’s interesting, isn’t it?

Creates a really different experience.

So, which is really, I think, fascinating because, you know, we spend an hour and 15 minutes in total doing Qigong and meditation.

And somehow, even though it’s like so rich, it’s not enough, you know.

This is funny because like, wow, that’s an hour and 15 minutes.

If you say that beforehand, like, hey, I want you to spend an hour and 15 minutes in contemplative movement, breath and silent meditation.

Like an hour and 15 minutes.

Oh, that’s a big commitment.

I don’t know, you know.

Hey, shut up when you’re doing it.

Why is it over?

Again, this structure feels very different than completing the brocades and then having a sit and then having a liturgy, right?

And that creates a very different kind of like, there’s a more staccato flow as you’re completing an exercise, then you’re doing a different exercise, you’re completing that, you’re doing a different exercise and you’re completing that.

It’s more segmented, which through its staccato nature, allows us to have clear boundaries, right?

And that structure is very holding.

And it’s also less like real life.

Yeah.

Which makes it wonderful.

And also, you know, something to be cautious of.

I argue with that a bit.

Right.

Because the staccato nature of it changing, changing, changing, that is life.

That is how life unfolds.

The needing to adjust and then adjust and then adjust.

Well, at least in my life, the adjustments happen without clear transitions.

True.

And so they’re not really staccato.

It’s more like one minute I’m working on my book.

And the next minute, there’s a dog that has a need.

And my consciousness wants to stay with the book, but I need to move to take care of the dog, right?

And then the dog’s done doing the thing and the kid needs a thing.

And so it’s like, is my mind still with the book?

Is my mind with the dog?

Is my mind with the kid, right?

Like, yes, it’s constantly doing this, kaleidoscoping.

But at least in my particular life circumstances, I don’t get to be like, I’m going to spend 75 minutes working on my book.

And then I will take a five-minute break, and I will spend the next 45 minutes taking care of the dog.

And then I will take a 10-minute break.

And then I will take 15 minutes for self-care and meditation.

Yes, true.

And simply my body says I never do anything in my life, usually in that depth.

So I never felt my body like this when I worked on something or whatever.

So the shifts and the states I’m in in usual daily life are more light.

Instead of what I just experienced in this meditation, I usually don’t have.

So this is the big difference for me.

Otherwise, that’s true.

And when this happens, when it really happens that I do something with so much concentration, so much focus, and then something interrupts, I’m usually very confused, like I am right now.

Well, how perfect.

Yeah, both in two ways, right?

One, in the invitation to bring yourself to a greater depth of presence in your day-to-day life and recognizing how much more depth you can be living.

But then also to name the conflict in your consciousness with the idea of interruption, which I believe is kind of an unfortunate word.

Yeah, especially because I experienced at one point of my meditation practice that there isn’t really any disturbance or interruption.

It’s just another moment.

And then comes another moment.

And each moment looks different.

So it’s just then this, before it was that, and now it’s this.

So yes.

Yeah.

What I see, I don’t need any interruption from the outside.

I’m able to interrupt myself.

Let me just say, for example, I go to the kitchen and want to, I don’t know, get the salt or whatever.

I go into the kitchen and, what did I want to do in the kitchen?

So this is why I’m thinking about the next step.

Not this, what I want to do now, but I’m thinking, the next step is I want to go something elsewhere.

And I forgot what did I want to do now in this moment.

And so the interruption does not come from the outside, but from the inside.

Yeah.

Yeah, that’s part of the great work that we do in meditation, right?

This whole idea of unification of mind, Akagata, or Ekagata.

I never know where the stress is in Sanskrit words.

But we experience it when we practice our meditation, especially if we have a procedural meditation like Jhanas, where we’re going through and we’re bringing ourselves to concentration, and then we’re shifting our states, and we’re doing these more subtle things.

In order for the process unifies the mind, and in order to move through the process, the mind has to be unified.

And so that’s a very strong reinforcing container that kind of gets all of the different parts of our brain to agree to do one thing.

And that’s part of what makes meditation feel so good, because generally speaking, we’re so internally divided and conflicted.

And that even if we haven’t done a big individuation process in Jungian terms, where we’ve reconciled all these parts to be more cohesive, a meditation kind of gets our brain doing the thing, right, which is interestingly, the same thing that happens under anesthesia.

Brainwave studies in anesthesia also show that the mind ends up settling into a very coherent brainwave state, right, at a certain rate, which is what puts us under, so to speak.

And so one of the things that we could say, one way to frame what we’re doing in a practice like what we have, is that we are unifying our mind through our formal training period to move through life with a unified mind, right.

And so when we notice those interruptions, what we end up really noticing, whether we name it or not, is our disparate parts, how disunified we are.

Right.

And then it’s like, oh, well, that’s great.

Now I’ve got a real concrete inner phenomenon that I can say, this part wants to think about the future.

This part wants to worry about the past.

This part wants to be focused on the present, right.

That’s a very, we have more parts than that, but that’s the general spectrum, right.

And what we find, what I find, and what the meditation traditions teach us, is that as we get these unified, the individual capacities don’t disappear.

And this is what most people are afraid of.

Most people are afraid to die to themselves because they’re afraid that their capacity to plan for the future or remember the past will disappear.

And so it’s like, what precious part of me am I willing to let die, is really a question that kind of is supposed to move us through a process of bringing everything together.

Right.

And we see that all the time in alchemy, your solar consciousness and your lunar consciousness, right.

Mixing the yin and the yang and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whatever metaphor you want to use.

It’s not about discarding that capacity and discarding that capacity so that we’re left with this very narrow band of now.

It’s about making now include the entire past and the entire future.

And that gets to be pretty trippy.

Yeah.

In a cool way.

So energetically, that would require much more grounding and intention than what I bring to my day-to-day life, regular races.

Always something.

Yeah.

And also, Zetian and I were talking about this the other day.

It sounds like something you have to do more of, right.

It requires more grounding and intention than I typically bring.

It’s more like foregrounding the unconscious processes that you’re always using.

Okay.

Right.

Because in simple terms, it’s pay attention, do what you’re doing on purpose.

That’s like the most basic form of instruction, but it’s so basic that it actually makes it kind of hard because like, okay, what does that mean?

Right.

But that’s where you get into like, what is, what must be, imagine, attempt, realize, assimilate, resort.

You’re already doing that with every activity that you do.

And you’re already doing all of those activities through your body.

So it’s just being with yourself, doing the thing that you’re already doing.

Right.

And from a meta perspective, that includes being with yourself while you’re distracted, doing a thing that you’re doing.

And when you’re watching yourself from that kind of like fifth person perspective, right, that’s a technical term in developmental psychology, a fifth person perspective, developmental psychology, a fifth person perspective, which is to see yourself in the context of time.

Right.

And to be able to bear witness to yourself and your environment in the context of past, present, and future.

Right.

Is, is the kind of zoomed out meta perspective that we’re talking about.

And then it doesn’t matter because even if you’re with yours, even if you’re distracted, which you can’t be distracted or disembodied, which you can’t be because you’re in a body, if you were disembodied, you’d be dead.

Right.

So you see all these things and now you’re paying attention and then you choose like, okay, do I want to continue thinking about Swiss cheese while I pet my dog?

And then you say, well, yes, I do.

And then you’re zoomed out so that you’re thinking about Swiss cheese and petting your dog.

It’s not you yourself located in the you who’s fantasizing about Swiss cheese and your body absentmindedly petting the dog.

You’re fully with both experiences because you’re bigger than those experiences, which is already true.

And already that’s not an advanced capability.

That’s actually what’s happening.

Right.

It’s just not contracting into one localized set of identities and experiences.

It’s staying expanded, but you have to be expanded to contract.

You can’t contract into something that you haven’t already included.

And it is a letting go of unconscious reactive patterns, because when you know what you’re doing in the moment you’re doing it, even if it’s three times or three things at once, then you know that you’re doing three things at once.

I had another thing.

I mean, this is especially the meditation experience today.

So I was a little bit tired.

And I just found myself, oh, look at this.

I’m thinking about things.

Do I want to go back and concentrate on something?

Oh, yes, actually, I want.

I want to do this.

Good.

And it’s very interesting that my current experience is that the different stages of the jhana practice are like, they are a little bit like in a window screen.

So they’re all available.

And I just kind of like, I think this one would be nice.

I have a sense.

It’s not already there for this.

I need to concentrate and then let it come.

But it’s like, oh, next.

Something like that, which I find very interesting.

So this move, I would call it like this, moving my consciousness to something that’s already there, but wasn’t in my view before.

Maybe, I don’t know if that’s a way to name it.

Moving my consciousness to something that wasn’t already there, but that was already there, but wasn’t in my view.

Yeah.

So this is that whole attention, awareness, focus, right?

Attention is a spotlight.

When you spotlight something in a dark room, you don’t see the rest of it.

And then you move the spotlight and you see the thing, right?

But the thing was always there.

You just didn’t see it because your spotlight was lighting up something else.

So then it’s being the master of who holds the spotlight.

And then it’s realizing that actually, it doesn’t have to be a spotlight.

It can be a light bulb, right?

And then now we have a much more meta perspective.

But then it still requires focus, because even in a perfectly lit room, you don’t see everything at the highest resolution all the time, right?

Because I’m focused on the screen, I don’t see with perfect clarity in the orchid in the center altar, the Lego orchid in the center altar.

I still have to put my focus on that, right?

But I know it’s there.

I have a relationship with it, right?

If it were to get up and start dancing, I would see that.

So I think this is, for me, it’s a very helpful metaphor for understanding the process.

It’s like, and then we get our basic words, enlightenment, right?

Become very, while borrowed from a totally different tradition, become very helpful.

Because it’s like, we’re just lighting up the room that we’ve already been in for our whole life.

My experience in the meditation was a little bit similar to Susanna’s.

I know to a certain extent, I’m not a very good meditator, but I’m not a very good meditator because I know two different states that I call meditative.

The one is to be concentrated on my breathing.

And the other is, sometimes when I wake up and I don’t get up immediately, but I stay in a state of letting go my thoughts.

It’s just the sort of flow that I’m in, which is not concentrating.

And what, but I experienced it as a meditative state.

So, this, yeah, this are two forms, two forms of meditation for me.

And what I experienced in the meditation today was, it was a mix.

Sometimes I was in this flow, I got a little bit tired, and then there was the focus on my breathing.

And sometimes I get confused about these two states.

So, to decide, where do I go to, where do I want to go in, you know?

Yeah, yeah, well, it’s interesting.

So, there are two different, my understanding is that there are two different brain modes.

Yes, it’s exactly.

So, one is, one concentration uses a certain set of our brain and one open awareness uses a different set of our brain.

And depending on your lineage of meditation instruction, they bias one or the other.

And the, but the results fascinatingly end up being the same.

So, in Zen, we have the Soto lineage, which biases open awareness, open and awareness, but with a little bit of a twist, because the nuances of the posture and the breath are so specific, that they are anchoring the mind in a very specific and concentrated way, which is kind of like allowing it to be in a state of open awareness, right?

Which is kind of the prerequisite for open awareness meditation, is that you’re not following or chasing any of the things.

And Soto uses the posture and the embodied posture to anchor the discursive consciousness, so that you can be in a true state of open awareness.

Rinzai uses concentration meditation, more like a yogic style of concentration meditation.

But when you hold either long enough, PT arises.

Agitated bliss, a fullness of mental process, right?

So, when you come into yourself deeply, and you’re just within your own experience, deeply enough, then there’s a real sense of pleasantness that arises in the body.

And that happens regardless of which mode of meditation you use.

Now, in my experience, and in my experience mentoring people, it’s much harder to stay in an open awareness style of meditation, because invariably something that you’re allowing to come up from your unconsciousness grabs you.

And the second it grabs you, when you start daydreaming, and fantasizing, and going along with that thought, you’re no longer in open awareness, you’re in discursive thinking.

And so it’s for PT to arise.

That’s why I typically teach concentration meditation, because it’s so much easier to tell when you stopped doing what you wanted to do.

That it keeps you coming back faster and stronger, right?

And then PT arises, but then PT just takes on, and then the jhanas take on.

And so that’s how Soto and Rinzai Zen both produce the state experiences of realization and insight.

Because eventually you go through the jhanas, which is the name of the school.

Jhana, jhana, jhana, jhana, zen, right?

Which is just a cool technology for investigating our lived experience, reality, who we really are in terms of consciousness, you know, what is suffering, all of these types of things.

I guess to more directly respond to you, that’s awesome.

I’m glad that you have the capacity for both.

So I didn’t catch it?

I just said to more directly respond, that’s awesome.

I’m glad that you have capacity for both, and that you practice.

Yeah.

And you might find it beneficial to really set a strong intention to do one or the other before any individual meditation period.

Okay.

Before.

That little bit of accountability goes a long way into making sure that you don’t kind of like get bored and switch your method halfway.

And then never really get into a deeper state, because you keep changing between different modes of mind.

Yeah.

Yeah, usually in the morning before getting up, which I now I’m able to do because, you know, I’m retired and I don’t go to work anymore.

So this, I can stay in this state of flowing and in the afternoon, for example, I can make the decision to make a focused and concentrating meditation.

Yeah.

That’s a good idea.

Thank you.

Have fun.

Yeah.

What you said about anesthesia, whenever we’re getting the brain to function together.

So my immediate thought is also that we’re anesthetizing ourselves.

But I think there’s truth to that.

But then what would I struggle with?

We get our minds unified and, you know, shifting awareness from a broader perspective and focusing in.

The more challenging it becomes in real life to engage in things that you don’t want to do.

And there’s so many things in life that are, you know, that you need to be responsible and functioning and dah, dah, dah, dah, dah.

For myself, it has become more challenging.

And so then to, I struggle with how do we use what we glean from meditation practice to put that focus on paying the bills, right?

Like to focus on something that is fundamentally necessary, yet unfulfilling.

Yeah.

So what I hear in the subcontext of your question is deep meditative states are like addicting in a certain way.

And the more transcendent experience you have, the less engaged you want to be with the mundane world.

Yeah, exactly.

And this is one of the age old spiritual questions.

And in my experience, right, part of it has to do with our philosophical orientation.

Okay.

And so I finally found a tech, the technical term for a view, a non-dualistic view that I have found most helpful for this.

It’s called panentheism.

It’s called panentheism.

Yeah, panentheism.

And basically what that means is, so you have frameworks where there’s the material realm and there’s the God realm, okay?

Like a transcendent theology.

And then you have pantheism where the material realm is exactly God, right?

Panentheism says that the divine is a bigger than everything that we can experience materially, but everything that we’re experiencing materially is within God, within the divine.

And so I emerged at this experience through meditative insight and have been living this way for a long time.

And that’s what has me flipped into realizing that.

And this is what Zen training does too, in its own way, that taking care of the most mundane thing with care is loving the divine, is a transcendent experience, because it’s the only way that we can really know it, right?

While also at the same time honoring that our transcendent experience really is transcendent, right?

Which is where the pantheism thing gets really challenging because it’s like, wait a minute, this experience doesn’t fit here in this category of existence.

So what’s going on here, right?

And so when we take our meditative mind into caring for our life, then we are realizing the truth that every material thing is exactly a part of the transcendent experience that we found on the cushion.

And then there’s still the truth to the fact that we’re called to do certain things and we’re not called to do other things.

And we always have to ask the question, what do I need to let go so I can live my calling more completely?

And what do I need to take care of in support of living my calling most completely?

And this is where Ignatian spirituality, I think, has a great term magus, which is like doing what’s best.

And in that context, it’s like we all align with God’s will and weaving the way it is integrity, the integrity with the way there’s only one true integrity with the way, right?

And that includes all of the things that support that form of integrity.

But there’s like, there’s forms of integrity that are really close.

There’s forms of integrity that are like good, better, but there’s one best, you know?

And so magus is the idea that we’re going to we’re going to do whatever we have to do to be in the best alignment and the best integrity, right?

And sometimes that causes us to make really difficult decisions.

And sometimes we realize that, well, actually, to be in the best integrity means that my bills are paid on time.

And now it becomes spiritually fulfilling because it’s an expression of the unfolding of the way as you are called to live it.

So perception shifts to have the pain of the bills be part of the transcendent experience.

Will the bills stop being painful?

But this isn’t a blind perspective shift.

This has to be one born of inquiry, which is like, is the pain of these bills actually because what these bills represent is against my calling?

Or is the pain of these bills just because I would rather be blissed out in meditation?

You know, we have to answer that question because that like pain is always a guidepost.

Pain is always bringing us more into integrity.

And the more sensitive we are to pain, the more sensitive we are to misalignment, the clearer we can discover the best.

But again, it has to be born of inquiry and investigation, and it has to match up with a rational intellectual process and be able to be articulated.

Or else it’s just baseless ego preference.

Thank you both, because this conversation helped me to gain insight in something in my meditation.

Because, how can I say?

There is a sense of what’s next in the meditation.

So is it going to the concentration back or letting go?

So very, very, how can I say?

Subtle perceptions and like small decisions.

I just saw, I don’t know if I can use the right words now, but it feels as if even there, but it’s true.

Why not there?

There can be more alignment in the meditation with this thing of, okay, the next would be is just like an illusion.

I don’t know what the next is.

If I feel what the next is, I know what the next is.

Then I can just open up for the next whatever thing I need to be, to do, to let go, whatever.

I know what I’ve spoken about in my body, but I have no idea if you have any ideas of what I was talking about.

Were you talking about the difference between sitting down with a process you’re going to follow and being like, okay, now I do this.

Now I do this.

Now I do this.

And the difference in feeling between trying to do it that way, where you are following a process, regardless of where you’re at in your body versus the experience of the same steps unfold the same way in the same order.

But now it’s more like the steps are coming to you and through you, and you are not trying to go find the steps.

You’re not going to do the steps.

You’re taking the step as it presents itself to you.

Right.

Yes.

Knowing the process allows you to identify those steps when they come to you.

But we don’t go try to take those steps because that disrupts the meditation.

Wonderfully said.

And now I remember earlier times when I did the jhanas, that it was so amazing for me when I let go of the, it must be one, two, three, like it must be in order.

And just to let it go.

And then I just hopped back and forth.

And at one point I was just stable at one thing, and then it moved on.

But I remember like, what’s happening here?

Oh my gosh.

Is this okay?

Oh, no, no, no, no.

And then, you know what?

Fuck that.

Come on, let’s move on and see what happens.

So, yeah, a nice reminder.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

And the same for the builds, for example.

Like, oh, no, not this now.

I don’t want to do this.

Okay, maybe this is what it’s now.

So, and if you just do it, then do, do, do.

Oh.

Right, right.

As soon as you get focused on something and get into doing it, whatever it is, can be a fulfilling experience.

It’s the mindset of the resistance that’s placed in there prior to.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Well, that was a beautiful kind of like dancing, flowing discussion around a wide variety of things.

So, thank you for that.

Really, for me, enjoyable and pleasant conversation.

I trust that it was exactly what everyone needed to get today.

Let’s go ahead and do a round of closing check-in as we are at the noon hour here on U.S. East Coast time.

And that’s when we can close.

So, let’s go with Harald and Susanna, and then we’ll go to Mitra.

Harald, checking in.

Yeah, sometimes I have a little bit difficulties to understand, but I think that it was a very helpful thing for me with this decision thing that you told me.

That’s really great.

And I was really enjoyed to meet you again in the sangha and to have the opportunity to make the meditation with Susanna.

Yeah, so I’m feeling very glad.

I’m in it.

Swaha, thank you for joining us.

Loving the silent expression of life force flowing through me.

I’m in.

Beautiful.

Mitra Ravan, checking in.

So gladdened by that expression that I don’t need to add to it.

I’m in.

Y’all have a beautiful rest of your day.

I look forward to talking to you soon.

Bye.

Bye.

The post When Practice Stops Being a Place You Go appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

All right, good morning, everybody.

Morning.

Let’s see.

So nice to practice with you and then I get to see you again.

And a little bit too, right because we kick off our, our john a training period today.

So, that’s very exciting.

I think that’s something that is worth discussing today is, is john has some relationship to our formals and practice that we’re doing here since the john a training is not necessarily a part of formal Zen practice.

Another topic that was already mentioned is the, the way that the open doors and suture book is evolving and even if it’s called open doors and really maybe it’s living refuge Zen or something like that.

When open doors and is like the sanctuary of a practice community that practices this living refuge Zen that’s emerging.

So there’s definitely a lot we could talk about those veins.

Both those sound entertaining enough for this morning, or does anyone put something else on the table.

Yes.

Mr.

Thank you for the spontaneous, letting me lead that you go.

What me, me.

Okay.

And then I remember, I don’t want to think it.

I don’t know, probably a year ago that I that I let you go on in English, so usually I do, but I did it in German, so like, oh, oh, oh, oh well.

You did pretty well.

So thank you for leading that allowed me to get a little bit more deeply into my own practice, which I deeply appreciate the opportunity to do some of the brocades are quite complex.

By the time you do all the subtle body mechanics the breath and the visualization, so not having to speak through it gave me a chance to feel into them again in a way that I, I don’t typically get to feel into them right before I sit.

Unless I do it myself but I usually don’t have an hour and a half to sit.

So then it’s like, so thank you.

Yeah, yeah, I would appreciate to alternate here and just do it more often.

So, I love to, to, to lead this, this practice.

Yeah.

Robin.

Cool.

You can do that.

Amazing.

That’s great.

The frozen speck.

The icy wind blew open my door, so I would prefer not to sit with the freezing wind blowing into the dojo.

Yeah, so your other two topics are amazing.

For me, I don’t know about Mitra.

Yeah, yeah, both of those topics sound delicious and very curious about both of them or, or I should say I’m.

I love the changes in the suture book so any discussion of like how that’s evolving and moving is like really exciting.

And then also then how the other practices tie into formal Zen training which is something that I was partially sitting with, with the genres and then because I’m working on Tarot, Tarot was there and it was like, okay, like, there was this step, this moment of like, Oh, yeah, this is Zen, I’m supposed to Zen, concentration, like, like, this is not where I’m at.

And then it’s like, well, what gives a fuck this is my practice and this is what I’m doing.

So, anyway, yeah, how it how it all ties together works.

You know, I think we each as our individual selves have our way of doing that.

But how does it work formally?

Interesting.

I appreciate that next level of the inquiry right and broadening it out once broadening it out one step further, which is a question that I constantly work with too.

So maybe we’ll get into that too.

I think.

Let’s, let’s start with the suture book, a little bit.

And we’ll just kind of take it organically from there.

But in terms of suture book, I’m just going to discuss Atatipa through the Three Refuges, because that’s plenty, and I’d like to leave room for Jhanas and stuff too.

So the first big change we noticed from the inherited suture book, which for those coming to this Dharma talk in the future who might not know, this practice evolved from Hollow Bones Zen.

And Hollow Bones Zen suture book was developed by Junpo Dennis Kelly and his practice community.

It got locked in, I think, pretty early.

But, you know, it was something that was revised a few times from what I understand, but was pretty locked in by the early 2000s.

It was a suture book format that evolved from Daibosatsu Zendo.

And so we’re kind of continuing on in that lineage in so far as we are, I would say that formally we’re broken from that lineage, you know, and like, I wouldn’t say we’re continuing necessarily in that lineage, mostly for political reasons.

The people who know Junpo and know me are kind of like the people who are formally continuing his lineage or continuing aspects of it that they told him they would continue.

And I would be the marrow, I would be taking in the depth practice and continuing the spirit of his practice, which is a nice thing to have reflected back to me from people who know enough to be able to say that in a way that I trust as being well informed.

So with that, the first thing I changed in the suture book is the Atadipa.

So in the HoloBones version, it starts with a call and response, you are this light, and then a version of it that has no naming, no pronouns, pure selfless awareness, rely upon selfless awareness, do not rely upon concepts of self and other.

And then it goes into response where the community chants it together with an I structure, I am this light.

Okay, well, that’s all fine and good.

That’s a certain way of doing things.

But one of the things that I thought was really important is to recognize that we are this light, to bring interpenetration as a co-created reality.

We co-create this reality, we are this light, our intersubjective experience is the manifestation of consciousness.

And so while Atadipa comes from a story where Buddha was telling his practitioners to be a lamp unto themselves, I don’t think it’s possible to place ourselves as a lamp without understanding that we’re in community.

And so yes, I am a lamp unto myself and I will illumine myself, but the purpose of that and the way that I know myself well enough to know whether or not I am a lamp is to know myself in community.

So I can’t be, there is no reliance on selfless awareness without also understanding that we are interpenetrated and interconnected.

So we just do it once, there’s no call and response, there’s no persona dramatis sitting in the center of the circle, holding this authoritarian role, calling and responding, it’s just in community, we say that this is what we are.

The next thing you’ll notice is that I took out the hollow bones mission statement.

We are a sacred order, bringing to being a harmonious and loving world into the practice of meditative, compassionate awareness and mindful stewardship is a lovely mission statement, but I feel like it created a certain, for me it created an energy in the wrong direction.

Of separation.

We are a sacred order, bringing to being, right, we are a sacred order, not everyone else, we are, which also created an in-group persona, which hollow bones has been accused of being very cult-like.

And part of the cult-like quality of that is this kind of like spiritual elitism of practicing this refined form of Zen that engages emotional maturity and, and then the Jumbo was very charismatic.

And so I was just kind of wanted to take a break from that we might come up with a mission statement I think that manages to be more individual while being interpenetrating in the future at some point.

So, because we are named do have a common goal in this practice which is to be a living refuge.

But for anyway the mission statement dropped off when I was remaking the sutra book at this point.

And then we use the same purification, because it’s beautiful and it’s something that everyone should be doing every day is some form of purification practice confessing and coming into discipline on resolving what we’ve recognized as our greed anger and ignorance.

Right, so that’s still very important.

I was kind of preamble, just to get us to the three upper refuges which was the main topic but is there any reflections on on the Alta Dipa mission statement and purification.

I would say the Alta Dipa I just, I just let it sit there for the mission statement.

When I translated the sutra book into a German version for Smiling Hearts Zen.

Then I found that, yeah, there’s this, we are some elite, and no other can do this, and you only can do this when you are here in this group of whatever.

And also, this was the most, I can say, was the most resistance probably also from participants who have no idea of, of such a practice like wow, what’s that, everything else like okay, why not but but this, this has some resistance, I still have it in there.

A little bit different, but I still have it.

Because I also see some kind of, I reframed it at least in my mind, and tell everybody else who’s practicing with me that this is not, this we doesn’t mean it’s just this little group of people.

Like, this we points to all practitioners who do something like that, doing Zen practice or doing any Buddhist practice or doing probably any religious practice who is creating something good in the world.

So, and in that case, it sounds different for me.

Sure.

It’s definitely one of the options for, for working with it in the post-Junpo world.

Origin story that came out of mankind project, and it was part of creating internal coherence and adhering to some mankind project principles about giving men purpose.

And so it, you know, historically, is not a universal week.

Yeah, and adjusting it to be a universal we is fine.

Right, and saying everyone who practice meditative compassionate awareness and mindful stewardship is, is the sacred order, right, we can do that.

So, definitely feel free to play with.

And I, I have objection to using a different organization’s mission statement.

Glad to have it out of there.

It’s part of the clarity that we have, and we’ve been discussing walls engine has been on sabbatical, is that we’re very clear in the fact that we are not part of hollow bones.

And so I think essentially is still reconciling her relationship and understanding these types of know you’re good.

You’re done.

So when I, when I did it, I wasn’t this in this in the middle of things, but after I did the retreat and came back and whatever so since autumn.

I’m out of this.

Oh, good.

Good in the sense of clarity, not good in the sense of value judgment about your decision.

No, exactly.

It’s just, it’s just a clarity and I still have, I still see value in the time that I was there.

So, it’s not that it wasn’t but it’s good to say, this is, this is what it was and this is what it’s now.

And that’s my mom.

Beautiful.

So, the next thing that came up was the three refuges right I take refuge in the absolute purity of this awakened mind I take refuge in this practice of pure selfless awareness wisdom compassion and skillful means you’ll notice that these two are the same.

So the big change comes in the refuge of sangha.

Okay.

And there’s two things happening here.

One is that the first two refuges are already framed in the secret meaning of the refuges.

They’re not framed in the historical teaching, where we’re taking refuge in the in the Buddha as a historical devotional figure.

We’re not taking refuge in the Dharma as the historical Buddhist teachings so we’re already have two refuges that are framed in the secret meaning.

So, it was for me it was a point of consistency, do I do I move those refuges to match the refuge of sangha and being more of an outer meaning.

Or do I move them all to kind of an inner meaning that’s kind of like in between or do I move them all to secret meeting, so that was kind of the first question, and I decided that the secret meaning was most resonant with me.

So then we take the hollow bones.

I take refuge in the truth of what I take refuge in this awakening community, and our realization and the truth of the interconnection interpenetration and interdependency of all sentient and in sentient beings.

Well, so this is already incoherent, because it’s not a secret meaning, it’s kind of like half secret half not secret half secret half outer half secret half inner half outer I don’t know it’s just kind of weird.

And then it very much creates the energy of this awakening community.

And for me the refuge of sangha is not refuge in human relationships, because human relationships are one of the things that drives us to practice.

So it’s a deeply confusing to people to say that we take refuge in a set of human relationships, because we, that’s not what the refuge is.

Now in not not non dual Mahayana ecstatic tantric practice which is where we’re at, you know, if we want to take refuge in a cloister of monastic individuals who are renunciate and committed to following the Vinaya and stuff like that.

Well then we’re in the outer meaning and that makes sense but none of us are doing that.

So the sangha that we end up taking refuge in is the cult of personality that Jimbo created, which is the sacred order.

And so for me, those things both tied into that kind of exclusionary spiritual elitism and just pointing us in the wrong direction of of human relationships, and then this icky Midwestern Protestant failure to hold people accountable when they fuck up, you know, because it’s between them and God, you know, well, it’s between them and God, my job is to forgive and get along.

Right, and it’s like no fuck that our job is to hold people accountable as good spiritual friends.

And so anything went so taking that out.

What was left well what was left was the secret meaning the secret meaning of sangha is interpenetration and interpenetration isn’t just about beings sentient or insentient, which I think can be confusing conceptually, because not every Westerner feels like nature is a being.

Right.

A lot of people come to practice with it separated.

And also, that’s kind of whatever, because really what we’re talking about is form and formlessness the interpenetration of the immaterial and the material.

And so that’s how it became, I take refuge in the truth of the interpenetration interconnection and interdependency of all that is manifest material and all that isn’t formless immaterial.

And now we get away from sticky human relationships we get away from any cult like language we get away from any incoherence between secret inner outer meanings of the refuges.

And, and here we are.

So that’s the rationale into how it became what it is.

Not that I actually disagree.

Point of agreement, that’s fun.

I guess that all that is includes sticky human relationships includes the, you know, the natural world it’s, you know, it’s, I like this statement because it is inclusive of all that is not only the sticky human relationships.

And importantly, we’re not taking refuge in the sticky human relationships, we’re taking refuge in the truth of the interconnection interpenetration interdependency.

Right.

Yeah, kind of flip the order.

Yeah.

I hadn’t recognized that there was an inner and an outer like that the refugees, the refuge at different levels of meaning, so to say.

So now when you say like, yeah, indeed, that’s it.

Yeah, now I see.

Before this explanation I was like, ah, okay.

Good.

Well, there’s always room to improve.

Yeah, I think the Vajrayana tradition is very good at like laying these things out very clearly.

Here’s the first turning meaning here’s the second turning meaning here’s the third turning meaning, like and they just, or here’s the outer here’s the inner here’s the secret, right.

So when we’re looking for really kind of scholarly rigorous analysis of the Buddha Dharma, especially in the context of the evolution of thought over time, I find that the Vajrayana teachers tend to be the most like articulate for this type of expression.

Yeah.

About the this part of this future book before we potentially jump on to the Jhana train or anything else.

The only thing that comes to my mind is that your translation training was weaving the way, and also some influences on the new way of seeing the sutra book, I guess.

Oh, yeah.

And this is I think maybe part of the Jhana conversation too, it’s like, what are we really, right.

I’ve been reflecting on that a lot, because part of, I received an inspiration that it’s time to collapse all of all of what I do into a single organization, which I think is, in one sense potentially very challenging, but another sense, not challenging at all.

So anyway, but it is part of this broader question of how do all of these things interrelate.

Right, because if we’re just doing non dual Mahayana Buddhism.

Well, that’s a pretty big category we can sneak in a lot of stuff.

But if we want to allow there to be a non dual Mahayana Buddhism that isn’t syncretized, and, you know, perverted from that perspective, then it’s important to understand all the things we do that aren’t that.

Right.

And that’s one of the reasons I refuse to say what our practice that our practices Rinzai.

I’ve been really adamant about that for a long time, because there is a Rinzai Zen that is very specific and they’re doing something that freeze.

So, you know, so it’s kind of like okay what are we really doing.

And when we look at Jhana training.

It’s kind of, you don’t really see it in Zen.

Now, Zen practice will generally produce the Jhanic states.

But they aren’t taught as such.

And one of the things that that does is that it allows practitioners to be lost in their meditation.

Because you can think that you’re sitting Zazen, but actually just be daydreaming, or sleeping, or check, you know, going into trance, or any of these things right which is not truly Zazen.

But then again, what is truly Zazen, this is very difficult to identify because, you know, the Soto sitting method is concentration on posture and breath, and then to just allow, right, an open awareness practice.

So that and that’s a branch of Zen and then you have the Rinzai branch of Zen which is a concentration practice.

And that was organized around Koan because the whole idea was to gain insight it was concentration to enter into absorption with reality in a way that yields liberating insight.

Right, so that’s how Rinzai moves people toward Buddhahood, in a certain way.

Well, the lineage that we inherited stripped out most of the Koan work.

Right, and started focusing on our life as our Koan.

Our life as our Koan.

Well, that’s so big and broad, and it’s very interesting, right.

Jumpo was a yogi and had a deep monastic training so for him concentration meditation was held in a more yogic concept, Dharana Dhyana Samadhi.

He used the eight limbs of Ashtanga and the yogic language to point to what we were doing in meditation.

Well, that’s much closer to Jhana training.

Right.

So then it’s like, well, if we honor the fact that Jumpo was a yogi, and he used Dharana Dhyana Samadhi language to describe his meditation practice, and he took out the Koan structure.

Well then, why not use something that the Buddha actually used for his liberating insight.

Well, what did he do?

He went through all of the states of consciousness that were available to him, all the way up to turning his relative mind completely off.

So that he could realize that any mental state was a form of rebirth, and there was no final liberation.

In which case, all that we are is living our life.

All we are is showing up in wisdom compassion and skillful means, which means we’re fully detached, and in our full fully detached state we recognize that everything is interdependent.

It’s just, it’s just karma unfolding.

And then we become active agents in the production of positive karma for ourselves and others.

Because that’s it, that’s all life is the purpose of life is to live it well.

And so, dhyana practice and tarot practice is something very similar just from a different cultural context, is about becoming very intimate with our different types of mental states, and then being able to manipulate our mental states so that we can be skillful.

And eventually, hopefully, realize a couple things.

One is to actually see through the way that we work, so that we are no longer bound by the mechanisms of the way we work, but we start to operate the machinery of how we work.

Right, the dhyanas can do that, which is where core training came from.

And then the other big thing is that like, when you, when you discipline your attention to this degree, and you go through such training, it just fundamentally changes the way that you work.

If you can effortlessly hold your concentration on wherever you place your concentration, then you can never be disturbed.

Because when something comes up and grabs your attention, you have the power to say, No, I don’t want to focus on that.

Or you have the power to penetrate through whatever that is, see how it’s working and adjust your karma accordingly.

Right.

And so the dhyanas are deeply liberating, not because any of the states are liberating, but because of the way they train our consciousness and train our relationship to our own consciousness.

So, you know, there’s preamble, but I’ve already talked a lot and we’ve got 10 minutes left so I’ll turn it over to discussion.

I guess where, where I’ve been in my practice is recognizing that I’m continually adding skills to my toolbox.

So at any given sit, you know, whatever’s going on in my life, or just, you know, where I’m at, that sit, like, what tools do I need to put into place to have this be a worthwhile sit.

To have it be, you know, to align and have insight, which then I can take back out into my life, which is incredible to be able to have new tools, other than, you know, this, you know, continuing to hit that nail with a wrench, you know, it’s just.

So, then my question becomes, where, where do we put the divide?

Where do we, and is that divide necessary?

If we are practicing as a community, if we are practicing Zen, if we are practicing Mahayana, blah, blah, blah.

Like, when we sit down and practice together, do we have a responsibility for our internal practice of following the same process, following the same, like, whether it be, you know, Jhanas, if we’re working on Jhanas together, or if we’re, when we’re sitting in Zazen, you know, do we have a commitment to practicing Zazen, like, as it is formally introduced?

Like, it all, it becomes kind of vague and wishy-washy for me, and then I just do my own thing, and, which is what I always do anyway, and then I feel like there may be a lack of accountability.

So that, somewhere there’s a question in there.

I think I hear it.

I think I hear it.

And it’s a really critical question.

And it’s, I mean, the answer in it is, I think, the inspiration to put everything under one banner.

Because it’s kind of like, when we’re here, especially this group, who’s done Jhanas, who’s done Tarot, who’s done core training, who’s done all this stuff, we’re not really doing Zen anymore.

Because we’re practicing sovereignty and somatic coherence and integrity with the unfolding of being-becoming.

And that’s fundamentally different than the objective of Buddhism.

And so, I think it’s important that we acknowledge that.

And then we allow a container to emerge that actually allows us to formally practice that new thing together.

You know?

And then we don’t have to feel like we’re in silos.

If we’re here and we want to talk weaving the way, we talk weaving the way.

If we’re here and we want to talk Tarot, we talk Tarot.

Because it’s all part of our toolkit in this practice of sovereignty.

Which, again, is fundamentally different than the ideals of Buddha, right?

Buddha is someone who has seen through the nature of reality for the purpose of liberation from suffering.

And believes that to liberate others from suffering, they need to see through the nature of reality.

And that’s kind of it.

We’re resolving our ignorance so that we can end our suffering.

Buddhism, as a framework, doesn’t really have…

It kind of gets into it when you say, like, this is on behalf of others.

I’m doing this in service to others.

Right?

And we turn into, like, now we teach other people how to see through their ignorance so that they can be free from their suffering.

Then it has some directionality in it.

But it’s not anywhere near the type of directionality that we’re talking about with sovereignty, where we’re really saying being becoming.

You know, Buddha is really about a being process.

And then becoming is just left to be as it will, because we believe that, or Buddhists believe that if you are being to the depth of being that a Buddha is being, then the becoming process will take care of itself.

History has shown that people who have been widely regarded as Buddha-like or Buddha-adjacent were highly realized did not become in a way that was Buddha-like.

And that’s part of why we exist as a rejection of that fundamental idea of Buddhism.

And now it’s gone to a whole nother level about, well, no, we have a being, we have a set of being practices, and we take those very, very seriously, because that’s critical.

Yin action, we must be before we become.

Otherwise, our becoming is fundamentally flawed, because we’re putting a head on top of our head.

We haven’t truly seen through, so we’re fundamentally confused, so we must be first.

But that becoming is something that we are very active participants in.

This is not something that will just unfold spontaneously.

And we can become totally sideways if we listen to the wrong voice.

And this is where a lot of the Catholic teaching and the tarot and stuff becomes so important, because you have a responsibility to discern the quality of the spirit that is moving you.

In Catholic teaching, you’re moved by Satan or you’re moved by God.

And the opposer is fucking tricky.

And it can make you think you’re doing something really good, but it might take you in a direction that’s not quite your actual true purpose.

Even though it’s something really good.

Like you can say, you’re really tired, you should sleep.

Or it can say, you’re really tired, you should still meditate.

Both of those things sound really good, but one of them is aligned with your true purpose and will, and one of them is not.

And your true purpose and will in our cosmology is God’s true purpose and will.

Is the one stream of unfolding being becoming that is not tangled.

So in weaving the way terms, it’s just that somatic coherence, that true integrity from the ground of being all the way up through our thoughts, words and actions.

Again, fundamentally different than the Buddhist perspective.

So why not name that?

And just when you showed with your hand this alignment of everything, that brings me back again to the Jhāna practice, where it says you need this alignment, this like inner coherence, stability, whatever, to be so that it’s possible to enter any Jhāna state.

So here it comes back.

Yeah, exactly.

Because when we’re, when we’re up here, right, and we especially ill will and restlessness, these are kind of the two, the two things that pull us out of our center most is some sort of resentment, resistance, depression, or anxiety, discontentment.

Right.

And, and so, if these are going on, we’ve got so much static, that there’s no way we can go down and into truly be.

It’s like, this is why I always do that.

Being becoming are like, they’re not.

But then I mean, it’s learning Tarot, that’s like where the static is, where, where am I at in the static?

What path am I taking to get back?

Exactly.

I can choose which route I want to take, which way is more expedient and which way may give you more information.

And which is the harmonizing force, right?

If I know that I’m inhabiting over inhabiting this Sephira, right, well, then I can use this Sephira, I can, I can intentionally take this path to this Sephira as the harmonizing quality, right?

Precise.

I think you were about to say something, and then we should probably.

I had a thought.

I know it’s gone.

So it is.

Well, let’s go ahead and do our closing check in, and we can come back in an hour for our, our Donna training.

I’ll start by just saying thank you so much for letting me take so much of the space to kind of articulate all of these things.

And I appreciate the feedback and reflections and discussion that ensued by it.

Very energized and deeply grateful to both of you.

Much love.

Thank you.

Much gratitude and love.

I’m going to go fly around like a nut, so I can join you later.

Thank you.

Lovely discussion.

Wonderful new insights.

And I’m very curious where this journey goes.

I’m in.

See you in a little bit.

The post Beyond Zen: Toward Sovereign Practice appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

Good morning, everybody.

So we are here in the first practice of 2026, which is exciting and wonderful, and also just another practice, because that’s how it is, actually.

Does anyone have anything they’d like to bring forward for discussion, or to set the tone of a riff, or whatever?

First of all, I want to say hi.

Long time no see.

It’s been a while.

A whole year.

Last time when I joined Open Door Zen was 2024, and the whole 2025 without me.

And it’s really interesting, because you know some of my things are going on in my life, so how can I say?

I have sometimes the feeling that the last year was more like a dream, wasn’t like an extra box, something separated.

Because now it’s interesting, I come back to stuff.

I’m sitting here, back in my shared flat room, where I didn’t start my life really last year.

So now I’m back, I’m back here, and different other things.

So I’m wondering about this time, especially time, what is it?

Why do I feel some moments like they’re not connected to the rest of the life?

Why do I feel moments sometimes very disconnected, and at the same time very attached, dreamlike, and so on and so on.

So probably you have a lot of answers to this, but first of all, thank you for practicing together.

First off, thanks for coming and joining us to practice again, that fits into your schedule.

Being aware of some of your journey, I encourage you to take a sabbatical from practice, quite assertively actually.

So this is the natural arc of things, and so it’s good to have you back.

And it’s also good that you went on sabbatical.

And now we get to look at what does that mean?

Why do we do that?

How does that work?

And then to your point, how can it feel like already such a different lifetime, different distant memory, dreamlike quality, when in fact, the biggest changes happened only just a week ago, 10 days ago, something like that.

I think there’s a lot going on there that can help us understand ourselves and the way we work, right?

You both have been here enough to know that my primary focus is on understanding the mechanisms by which we experience reality, so that we could see through those mechanisms, release us from their control, and instead leverage those same mechanisms to live our lives in a way that allows us to manifest our Buddha nature, right?

So this way of participating in our ultimate reality is kind of what it’s all about.

And so when we have experiences like this, it’s great to just stop and reflect.

So what happens when we have an experience that ends up feeling dreamlike?

What’s going on there?

Any ideas?

First idea that I have is comparing it to lucid dreams.

So you know that you dream, but you have no handle on it, you have no ability to do something in it.

So there is a part of me that has some consciousness about what’s going on, but another part that seems to be the sovereign guy, so to say, the one who really can do something, is still asleep.

So autopilot comes into my mind, and other useful words that might fit here.

Yeah, so that can be a big part of it.

I mean, depending on the quality of our experience, we can be looking at a period in time where we are conscious, but we’re no longer necessarily consciously engaged.

And so we can have whole stretches of our life that are like that, you know, a fugue state almost that we live on autopilot that we wake up, we go to work, we come home, we participate in the same cycles in relationship, right?

And we’ll have moments of awakening in there, of moments of truly coming online.

And then this will go on for a while, it’ll be like a whole chapter in a book.

And a lot of times for me, when I’ve noticed that in my life, those are periods of time where when I reflect on them, there were times where I didn’t engage intentionally in spiritual discipline, I let my anchor go, right?

Or I kind of build up a direction, and I lashed the udder, or not the udder, the rudder, lashing udders is a different fun time.

But I lashed the rudder in place, and then just kind of forgot that I was sailing, because I liked the direction that the boat was going, and it was all good, right?

And then after a while, we kind of forget that we’re the ones steering the ship.

And this is another way of saying talking about how we go back to sleep, and how awakening is a choice, awakening is a process, awakening is momentary, meaning that we have to choose awakening over and over and over and over again.

And so when I look at the periods in my life that have the quality like what you’re describing, they almost always are points where I realized that I stopped doing my things.

I stopped my martial arts practice, I stopped my meditation, I stopped my prayer, I stopped all my stuff.

And for a while, it usually goes really, really well.

And then it eventually doesn’t, right?

And that’s that process, then wakes us back up.

And then when we come back, we look at it, and we see ourselves having done all sorts of things that we were conscious of doing, but not conscious of choosing.

And so it feels dreamlike.

Just like you described, it feels like, when we look back on it, we were there.

We were participating, we had lots of great times, we had lots of hard times, some days were nightmares, some days were euphoric, right?

But there wasn’t that quality of awake awareness in our experience to allow us to feel as though we were truly engaged.

So this is one way that we can feel the difference between being asleep and being awake.

And one mechanism by which that might happen.

There are other mechanisms too, maybe less spiritually significant, but equally important in terms of understanding the Dharma.

When we have a period of time that has radically different causes and conditions, it can feel like that, because we have a set of continuity.

So our seventh consciousness is about continuity, right?

This is our meaning-making self-being consciousness that creates a subject that has an experience, switches moments together, and says, okay, this is my life, this is my reality.

But when we have something very abrupt happen that shifts us into totally different causes and conditions, then that creates enough space and moments that it feels like we’re living in a different life, right?

So that happened to me in China, that every time I would go to China and come back to the States, when I was in the other country, it felt like the other place didn’t really exist.

Because the causes and conditions of my self-making experience were so radically different.

A lot of people experienced this in COVID and found it very disorienting, where their COVID year, their lockdown year, feels like it didn’t really happen.

It’s like a black hole.

We forgot what year it was, because I was like, no, it’s still 2020.

And they’re like, no, it’s 2021 now.

Because the causes and conditions of our life change so dramatically.

And then we come back to something that’s more normal, or more typical, and it feels like life picks up from where that typical was, because those other causes and conditions are no longer present for our meaning-making, right?

And so that can create a really strong disassociation or fragmentary consciousness, but really it’s just a fact of that meaning-making eye structure, that stitching moments together for a period of time had, as its basis, a totally different set of perfumes and seeds, right?

So that’s another way that we can have this dream-like quality, which is how we can sometimes have these experiences where we don’t lose our awake awareness.

We’re not going awake asleep, right?

Because you can have that happen and be awake the whole time, or have that happen and be asleep the whole time.

But like I said, so that’s two different mechanisms by which we experience the type of phenomenon that you just brought to the inquiry.

Thank you.

I like both.

And yeah, I mean, it’s true, I wanted the sabbatical, and you also pointed me to it.

And it was really, so the beginning of it was really interesting because I had, like the first time after I started with my intense Zen practice, to really experience what’s happening without the practice.

So what’s going on here?

What is it that I really have trained myself for?

What is it that really has integrated?

Where did all those flashes of, oh, yeah, this is it, came just naturally.

So this was really great and really fun.

But there was this time, especially this, why am I the whole time, like, well, what you said, you’re consciously aware, but not consciously choosing.

So I could see everything most of the time.

But I was like, what’s that?

Where are my hands?

Where’s my mind?

What’s gap?

It’s behind a wall, behind a screen, behind glasses, like, I could see it, but there was no influence as I wanted to have influence.

But I’m with that.

I’m not even sure if I really wanted to have that influence.

Mitra, maybe you have something to say about it.

Oh, I just can relate to that very well.

Yeah, and this whole conversation, it all comes back to intentionality, right?

Like, it’s observing how the mind works and dreamlike or engaged.

It’s all the same.

It’s all the continual ebb and flow of the structure that we live in.

And they had to consciously choose, what am I doing here right now?

Without practice, I very easily fall into, I don’t give a shit about what I’m doing right now.

I just want it to be fine.

That’s all I care.

And then the dreamlike state becomes normal.

So I very, very greatly appreciate how you articulated this question.

And also, Zenshin, well, again, wonderful to see you.

And also bringing this forward, at this point, I almost can’t even imagine what it would be to have that experience for a year after some month of holiday crazy and disengaging from a lot of my regular practices is so disorienting.

And I feel like you need a little helmet to protect yourself.

Anyway, great question, great discussion.

Yeah, and I think, in a way, we’re touching right into the core of what’s the point, right?

Because it’s like, every different spiritual structure, religion, however you want to say it, I think that’s important to just pause for a minute.

In my worldview, there’s two kinds of training that I’m doing, okay?

There’s a yoga, which is a union with, right?

There’s a training that’s non-dual.

There’s a training that brings me into direct contact with the process, with reality, right?

And then there’s also like a religious training, which is a binding to, right?

Which is, you know, so these terms have different meanings, yoga, union with, religion, binding to, right?

And so for a long time, I was really emphasizing this yogic practice, this union with practice, this release into the flow of the cosmos and the dissolution of self into the reality.

And as you know, in that, I discovered sovereignty.

I discovered that we are active agents.

It’s a participatory belief structure, right?

And anyway, the point of that I’m trying to get at is that each discipline has at its core, a specific purpose.

And this was the reason for your turn.

Some people are looking like Robin said, I just want it to be fine, right?

We’re just looking for like a fundamental okayness, fundamental wellbeing, the end of suffering, right?

Which is a great purpose.

And the spiritual training that is for that is a lot of these East Asian wisdom traditions, right?

And then they create in that sense of detachment, the ability to witness from a non-dual perspective or to mindfully create distance from our experience.

They actually decrease our intentionality.

They decrease our sovereignty because we can experience okayness without engagement and we become morally and ethically ambiguous.

We become less concerned about who we are because we trick ourselves into thinking that we have no self, because that’s what the teaching says, right?

And we use all of these things, not necessarily as bypassing, because a lot of times we’re directly in the experience we’re having when we’re well trained in this method.

But what it results in is a lack of, or it can result in something that’s morally ambiguous or disengaged and detached.

And through that, we obtain the fruit of the practice, which is okayness.

It’s okay.

Oh, well, that sucks.

This person’s being a real dick, but you know, there is no them to be a dick.

And I’m not somebody who’s offended by that because I don’t have a me to be offended.

Who’s really worried about this?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Right.

Um, then there’s other systems that have a totally different attitude and they’re looking at, um, you know, fear of eternal damnation to produce a sense of moral obligation.

And in a lot of those systems, you outsource your virtue, you outsource your morality to something that you think is higher than you, that then dictates what you should do to you.

Right.

And in that you have something different.

You have like a relational wholeness where, uh, you get to sin against something and you get to be afraid of that sin.

And then you get to receive grace and you get to repair that relationship.

And now your whole motivation is different.

And what you actually get is something that’s very sweet because when you align with those virtues and when you live your life, according to that, you have a feeling of being in love with something divine and that divineness taking care of you and loving you back.

And it’s beautiful.

And then when you fracture that relationship, you feel so awful.

You have to do something to make up for it.

So you go to confession or you fast or you engage in what other, what other form of reparation, verbal contrition, renunciation.

Right.

And you try and live your life a little bit differently, but it’s all externalized.

And so again, we’re abdicating a certain amount of authority and sovereignty to something else.

And so a lot of us chafe against that because it’s like, Oh, how do you know what my virtues are?

Right.

What do you mean?

You’re going to damn me forever.

That doesn’t make any sense.

I just like, I fibbed a little bit right here and now I’m in eternal damnation as you know, right.

And like, what’s going on here.

And so, um, those structures can be really difficult.

Okay.

But when we combine them, we get something really beautiful.

Right.

And when we step into sovereignty and what we have at our core is integrity, right?

So you hear me talk about being, becoming tapestry.

There is an unfolding of life.

There is an unfolding of the divine, which is happening through us that we are a part of.

And when we are aligned with that and integrity with that, we feel so skillful, we feel clean, we feel clear, and we naturally produce a moral uprightness that is appropriate to the circumstances because we’re really consciously engaged.

Right.

And when we mess up and we find out that what we did was not skillful, then we can’t not come back and do what we need to do to make it skillful, which sometimes means going, I missed that one.

And we have, you know, cause sometimes there is no penance that can be done.

Right.

So then we get into a different thing, which is actually just an ongoing sense of integrity and a deepening internal compass that allows us to align with this being becoming process.

And now we are bound to that through integrity.

And we are also in union with that through presence.

Right.

And now we have a self, not self reality that is closer, I think, to the bone of what we actually realized when we, when we get engaged in practice.

But if you don’t want that, if you don’t want a strong sense of inner integrity that allows you to live your life as a sovereign, then, you know, this practice will get really annoying for you.

Oh, very, very interesting to listen.

I’m currently working myself through some stuff about detachment theory and, and just the, the two ways of like being totally detached because there is no self and being in a way attached to someone who tells us what’s right or wrong.

And made in my mind, at least some resonance to attachment styles.

So if you miss that one, if you sort of say, then, then you really can go down the rabbit hole.

So does it like, oh my gosh.

And so, um, as you also both know, I’m, I’m over and over in this, what is awareness practice mindfulness practice?

What is Zen practice?

Where’s the difference?

What’s the, what’s the benefits of it?

And where are the, where are the traps?

Where can you like blindfold yourself and go just stupid ways.

And I think I will, I will just, yeah, let it, let it sink and, and see what happens.

Yeah.

Let it, let it sink and, and see what happens.

But it has made some, some interesting connections in my mind.

Um, because yes, you, you, you really, or I can, I can really think about this.

Is it, is this a tendency to give myself up in a relationship?

Is this trained by some of my Zen ideologies or is this because of my attachment style?

Or was one and the other just combining yourself and pushing it?

Or what is it?

Where’s my consciousness and all that.

And where is my own understanding of me in this moment?

So you need a stable and healthy ego to deconstruct it.

All those things combine here.

And yeah, I’ve goes on delightful inquiry.

The, over the last year to change my relationship with the annoying parts, lean into them.

That’s where the growth is.

That’s where, where the, where the changes.

It finally took me to recently having a conversation with somebody else to recognize that it’s the things, even though you hear it, right.

If here, here, here, here, it really is the things that piss you off.

It is the things that you absolutely hate and want to flail against that you learn from.

God damn it.

And so to be able to admit it, right.

Get out of the way and see what’s there.

Um, so yeah.

Gratitude for, for this practice, gratitude for having spiritual friends that can piss you off.

And just so much gratitude to see you sitting there essentially laughing and you have no idea, no idea.

Thank you tangential, but I’m excited to, uh, welcome Mitra back to the show.

Back with the exclamation point, right.

A reclaiming, a reclaiming and recognizing this morning that I was going to, to use it.

And I did, you know, I forgot to put it in and like, it didn’t matter.

That’s where the exclamation point comes in.

It didn’t matter.

How did it not matter?

Because I dropped the story.

It was wrapped up in it and then creating, I don’t want to say a new story.

Letting it unfold and claiming my seat.

This is my practice.

This is my name.

Not somebody else’s ideas.

Beautiful.

Oh, yes.

This naming is quite good.

And as you see, I don’t wear my rock shoe right now because I don’t have any idea where it is.

So, however, also for me, I think also with the sabbatical, the more mindfulness practice, the more different things, some of those things have detached really beautifully.

And now it’s, this reclaiming is from the inside, from the, oh, yes, this is it.

And it’s beautiful.

So, I mean, Zen Chin and also the other name I got, Ji Zen, they are just born whenever.

I guess not when I got the name, but they are here.

They are here.

And so, whenever I need a good friend who is telling me good things, when I’m lost, this part of me, then I can count on them to get a little bit more clarity in my mind.

So, it’s more not an automatic use, but use it wisely.

Remember and choose wisely.

This is what I take because of the naming stuff.

Yeah, yeah, of silly names.

The thing that’s sticking with me is the process that you’re going through.

You both, Mitra, you just said it too.

You went and you had the holidays and the holidays intentionally or not disrupted a lot of regular practice.

And so, you got to feel a period without regular practice, right?

And Zen Chin, you very deliberately dropped most of your practices, right?

I remember at one point, I don’t think it was this time, but at one point we had a conversation.

I was like, and you had like 13 things you were trying to do every day because they were all good for you and all these practices.

And it ended up causing a huge amount of stress and some of them didn’t fit anymore because they were really old and some of them were really aspirational and you weren’t actually ready for them.

And it was like really messing you up because you had all these practices.

And so, it’s like, I think that’s one of the reasons why I love it when we get breaks, when life takes us away from what we’re used to doing because then we get called back to something.

The Kolkatan, in my internal language, I adopted a Hebrew phrase.

It’s called Kolkatan, which is like the little voice.

And that’s how we hear God.

We hear God in the little voice, right?

And it’s like the most silent of silent whispers.

And that’s one of the things I love about Zen because Zen cuts out everything that prevents us from hearing the silence, right?

And it’s so direct and it’s so exquisite.

And that cutting away other things are cut out too.

But anyway, we don’t have to go into that.

When we are living a life without regular practice and things happen in our lives, then we end up getting called back, right?

And that’s when we find out which practices are the ones that are really essential to us.

And they change over time.

At different parts in our life, we need different practices.

But we get in the habit, we get disciplined, and we get structured, and we do them this way.

And then we stop listening to the voice.

The practices get too loud to hear that inner guidance and that inspiration, right?

And so it’s my hope that in the way that we’re practicing here and the different combination of things that we do and the different ways that we have dialogue, that we always remember that it’s that integrity with that alignment starts with the pure being.

And it says stop and come back to being, come back to union, and listen.

And when you listen deeply, you will know.

A lot of traditions say that, but a lot of times they stop there.

And this one we say, and then you must do, right?

You must enact it.

It must manifest through you.

If you listen to a voice and you say, oh, that’s great, thank you very much, but you don’t act on what the voice says to you, then you just ignored it, right?

And if we do that with each other, we get really upset.

So why do we do it with our own inner wisdom, with our own heart, with the guidance that’s coming through our heart?

Whatever metaphysical belief we want to have about it, that’s the phenomenological reality.

When we get really silent, we hear our heart’s wisdom.

So we get to come into integrity with that.

And that might mean a return to deep Sazen practice.

That might mean something else entirely.

And we get to support each other in whatever that is.

And I think that’s something that’s really precious.

So I’m excited to hear as you go what practices you get called to that are really, truly supportive for you.

And you brought it full back circle to life feels dreamlike when you’re not listening to that voice.

Way to close the loop.

Thank you for making that connection.

And just like that, it’s time to close this loop.

We have arrived at the noon Eastern time mark is the end of our practice period.

So let’s go ahead and have our closing check-in.

We’ll start with our returning guest of honor.

Ascension, we are closing check-in, please.

Ascension, checking in.

It’s beautiful to feel and see and experience the smile on my face.

I’m in.

Checking in.

Just so happy to be here with both of you this morning.

And I look forward to carrying this joy into the rest of my day.

And I wish you all a beautiful day as well.

Only checking in with a great deal of joy and gratitude.

So wonderful.

So wonderful to practice with you and to and to be in the space and container and on this way with you.

And also knowing that right about now, you’re going to be getting an email for Jonica Depps asking you to go dig into the orientation material and get ready because next Sunday, we kick off on our meditation intensive.

And I find myself deeply energized to re-engage the jhana practice specifically.

So looking forward to that as well.

Look forward to seeing you next Sunday.

Have a wonderful week.

And I think I’ll see both of you actually in between now and then.

In any case, much love.

Have a great day.

The post The Way between Yoga & Religion appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript produced by AI

Welcome, everybody, and thank you for practicing today.

I’m excited to start exploring this new open door zen sutra book with you as we kind of figure out our way of moving through the ritual service.

And now we’re here for Dharma discussion.

I think, Cass, you said you had something to kick us off with.

Yeah.

So it was kind of coincidental.

So we were sitting doing the 30-minute silent sit.

Usually I have trouble just focusing on my breath.

My mind wanders a lot.

So what I ended up starting to do was like a compassion meditation, which was sort of like a loving kindness thing, except like, I wish for you to be free of your suffering and blah, blah, blah.

And then we did the sutra, or the chants, and it was like, we don’t rely on concepts of self and others, and we just rely on pure selfless awareness.

And I kind of thought about how a lot of those common, like I didn’t come up with like meta practice and stuff, you know, like it’s very common to have like, oh, I wish for all beings and myself.

And it’s kind of like a concept of self and others was kind of built into that.

And then I was thinking, I guess, about the difference between being aware that this is how the world around us and the people we deal with conceptualize things and working within that framework and relying on that framework, I guess.

Does that make any sense?

And I guess that was the comment that like popped up is like, how do I better become cognizant of, you know, interdependent kind of sunyata reality and I guess kind of find that middle point between pure selfless awareness and the social realities we have to navigate in life.

The fundamental question, yeah, and it was as well-framed, right?

And we see this, we see that actually this contradiction kind of, well, the so-called contradiction or so-called paradox all the time in our practices, right?

And doing metta, loving kindness is certainly a wonderful thing to do and I encourage anyone to do tonglong practices or metta or anything like it because of all the powerful qualities that it brings to our lives and the positive effects, right?

But then we have this, the truth that nothing’s really separate and we have the realization that our boundaries are completely arbitrary and that I don’t exist without you, you don’t exist without me and this we space only exists because both of us are here, right?

And it’s like, whoa, what the heck?

And so the way that I’ve kind of come to recognize it is that it’s really about seeing through, right?

So it’s like, and what that does is it just breaks down any rigidity that forms when we rely on frameworks.

So it’s not saying don’t have concepts of self and other that appear, concepts of self and other will appear as part of the unfolding of reality.

And one way to talk about that is the difference between being and becoming.

So since being is a moment of pure awareness, there’s movement, movement creates a subject and an object that’s witnessed, that witnessing creates an eye structure, which includes certain things and a you structure or a not eye structure that includes everything else.

And then we go through a process of having a preference and having an emotion and having a behavior and having our thoughts and doing our actions in the world.

So that’s all part of the becoming cycle.

The actions happen in the world and it falls back into that pure moment of experience, which is pure selfless awareness, which is the interconnected truth of all of this just kind of divine interplay of light.

And then it sprouts another seed and it becomes a whole becoming process, right?

And that’s happening thousands of times a second.

The frame rate is so high that it seems like there’s never really a being because we’re always becoming.

But when we slow down in our meditation, we can see the being moment and we recognize that that’s what’s going on, right?

So we have this process.

And basically, kind of a long way to get into my response to your question, when we know all that, right?

What we’re asking ourselves to do is to rely upon or to integrate that realization so deeply into our consciousness that while we’re in the becoming part of things, while we’re in our daily relative interactions, we are aware of the totality of reality all the time.

And so we rely upon the truth.

We rely upon the insight that’s gained through practice.

And we don’t forget that in favor of all of the stuff that’s going on.

And that’s kind of the balance that we’re looking for is to integrate that insight into our relative consciousness.

So our relative consciousness functions from the place of insight.

Okay, I just want to make sure that I’m conceptualizing this right, or that I understood what you were saying, right?

It’s basically like, yes, there is the pure selfless awareness, which we rely upon, but that relying upon that doesn’t make it so these other structures of self and others don’t manifest necessarily.

They’re still there.

It’s just that I am not making them the basis of my understanding.

My cat’s being a little bit of a brat, right?

Can I share a short Vanka thing that comes to mind with that?

Like an image in a mirror appears, but isn’t there in the mirror projection, fools all see their double.

So that for me is like, sometimes helps shatter the fabrication, getting stuck in a subject object situation when I think about it that way, seeing my double.

So it was pure awareness, seeing your double as far as pure awareness, the mirror.

Realizing what is my projection, realizing what is your projection and how can you remove yourself from your projections?

Well, there’s nothing to remove.

It’s just a different way of seeing, I suppose.

You said a second ago, it’s seeing through it.

It’s there, it appears, exists, but it does not exist, but yeah, I can see through it differently.

At least that’s, I mean, it’s like a chapter behind where I am in the Vanka, so it’s still fresh.

And when I sit, that has like reverberated in some of my sets recently, but yeah, that’s kind of what it does to me is like, is like to help drop into that vision of seeing through the cognizing of duality, I suppose.

Yeah, and exactly, the Lanka is teaching us that liberation is in understanding the mechanism by which reality unfolds.

And now that we recognize the mechanism by which reality is unfolding, it no longer traps us and no longer creates the same suffering, right?

And so the mirror analogy, and it was well said, how do you escape your projections, right?

I was actually hoping for you to say some asinine crap, but you didn’t.

You said, well, no, I mean, it’s just recognizing that that’s what I’m seeing.

I’m just, I’m just seeing me in the mirror and now that I see me in the mirror, I relate to it entirely differently because there’s the confusion, the illusion hasn’t sucked me in, right?

And that’s it.

It was really actually quite simple.

Oh, that got me thinking of like something else that I do a lot where I’ll be reading a story or watching a movie or something and I’ll be like, man, why does this character feel like it’s insulting me just by existing?

And it’s like from him talking just now, I was like, oh, because I’m projecting myself into it.

How do I stop myself from doing it?

I don’t need to do that.

I just need to recognize that it’s just a projection.

And so that was like a little thing that just clicked from that exchange for me.

Yeah.

Love it.

What a great domain of practice, you know, when we get sucked into a movie or a story that we’re reading and just like having that moment where we get to snap back out of it and then realize, oh, that’s.

Are you lagged?

I think it’s frozen.

Yeah, I froze.

I don’t know.

You said get sucked into this moment was the last thing I heard, you get sucked into this moment and you can do the same thing as you snap yourself out of the illusion, you snap yourself out of being so enmeshed, boom, detachment.

Now we’re no longer dwelling.

Now we’re liberated.

Now we can make skillful action.

And for my experience, that requires great discipline and practice because of our sitting practice meditation, because otherwise.

It’s so easy to just fall back and becoming completely consumed and absorbed by your story, your identity.

So it’s remembering.

Remembering why we do this and do it.

So you can snap out.

Yeah, I don’t mean to cut you off there, sorry.

No, it’s all right.

I love that because it’s contextualizing sitting practice is so important.

Why do we sit?

If we’re sitting for state experiences, then we miss out on the practical function of sitting, which is attention training.

That’s why I prefer concentration meditation so much more than open awareness meditation, because an open awareness meditation, you can spend your whole time daydreaming.

Right.

And in the Jhanas, the Jhanas are great because they really teach us, they refine our concentration by going to increasingly subtle objects and having to hold our mind concentrated on things that are increasingly.

Attenuated, right, which is very difficult and it really hones our attention, but and then we get these awesome state experiences, too, which is super cool.

But the point of the Jhanas isn’t the state experiences, the point of the Jhanas is the honed concentration so that you choose how enmeshed you are.

You choose where your attention gets grabbed.

Right.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And without that framework, we can sit for a long time and not have any liberation whatsoever.

We might be somewhat awakened.

There are opportunities to awaken without having that context, but there are very few opportunities for liberation without that context.

Lower version of your regular crazy, a lower order version of the regular crazy.

Awakening without liberation, that’s about what it is.

Right.

One thing, like one cue that has stuck with me that like, you know, it’s good for like kind of cutting through like the momentum that conceptual consciousness can can get for me is something Lock Kelly says, he goes, it’s like, what does it feel like when there’s no problem to solve?

And so like that kind of like, you know, is like the challenge of like, you know, like, what is it like to be able to solve a problem?

And so like that kind of like, you know, is like the checkmate move of my conceptual consciousness, and all of a sudden it goes, oh, and then it’s quiet, you know?

And again, like, like training the monkey, you know?

I like that one.

I mean, I’ve never heard that one before, but my immediate reaction was, well, when there’s no problem to solve, my mind will just create a new one.

Well, because it’s like, I don’t know, it’s it’s such a weird thing.

Like having no problem to solve is more uncomfortable for me than being in a disaster, because like being in a crisis is such a constant thing in my life that at least in that mode, I feel comfortable and I know how to confront it.

Whereas if there’s no problem and all I have to do is just sit, my brain, my brain just freaks out.

It’s like alarm bells everywhere, like, what am I not seeing?

That’s a problem.

And it’s like, I mean, it’s an anxiety disorder, obviously, but but it’s just so weird to me that like being comfortable and being happy and having nothing to deal with.

Feel scarier to me than everything crashing down around me, and I like that just was such a cool realization that just hit me, it’s like, I don’t have to do that, I can just stop, you know?

So this is this is a fascinating intersection of what is bound by karma and what is not bound by karma, OK?

And because of the work that we do, this is a really critical distinction.

Your nervous system is bound by karma.

Which means that it has to go through its cause and effect cycle, it has to bear the fruit of what was previously planted, right?

Your mind is not bound by karma, so you can make the realization that I don’t have to do that in your mind right now and mentally never do it again.

But your body has to go through an acclimatization process of getting comfortable in peace, and so your nervous system is still going to feel like it’s freaking out and then your mind is going to be like, well, we’ve chosen not to do that anymore.

And your body might take weeks, months, years to actually downregulate into a place where it’s comfortable without having a conflict.

Right.

And so so many times in practice, we hear this kind of like radical transformation, and that’s true, too.

It can be radical.

Right.

But there’s also just the truth of the fact that your nervous system is entrained to a certain state and your mind can make decisions about that.

But your emotional cycle still lasts 90 seconds.

You know, if you don’t feed that emotion, it’ll go away pretty fast.

But when you have all of that somatic experience of agitation, it generates mind activity.

That’s the relationship.

And so it takes like exceptional discipline and really like a huge amount of grace with ourselves to say, OK, I have to go through a process.

It’s just kind of like going through any other addiction where we have to get used to not having the thing that we feel normal doing.

I guess for me, the realization was when my body starts feeling that anxiety, I don’t have to pick the anxiety up and run with it.

I can just be like, yes, that’s anxiety.

I’m feeling it.

We can let that go instead of like, oh, I feel all this anxiety.

I need to help manufacture a problem to justify the anxiety so I can go solve the problem and make the anxiety go away.

Does that make sense?

But yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And that’s kind of that’s what I’m trying to really like tease out here because that process of sitting with the somatic experience of anxiety, right, is going to like there’s you got to give yourself a lot of grace for that, you know?

Yeah, I kind of I get what you’re saying.

It’s like even if I’m going to break this down into another neuroscience term is a system one and system two thinking, even if like my intuitive or my logical system to thinking knows that picking it up and running with it is a problem, those intuitions are still going to arise and I’m still going to feel them on a visceral level, even if mentally I know to respond to them differently than I have been.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it just takes time.

It’s great to know where it arises in your body, but if it’s tension in the diaphragm, tension in the shoulders, because then you have something to do.

But instead of externalizing the problem into something that you can artificially resolve to temporarily relieve anxiety, you actually de-queue the system.

Right.

So it’s like I get tension in my diaphragm a lot.

And now instead of interpreting the tension in my diaphragm as a bracing against conflict, I don’t go create conflict to brace against.

I consciously release my diaphragm.

So now my system one still has something to do with the experience, but it doesn’t translate into something that system two knows is a bad idea.

It also has helped me to reframe the feeling of the physical response.

It’s like an analogy that I can use there is like, like in my yoga practice, like when the moment finally clicked for me that like, 75% of the way through the practice, and I get into a more challenging or a deeper version of a pose or something like that.

And then that’s when like, the real like fire starts in the body and like the resistance in the mind and and stuff like that.

It’s like, once I finally clicked it, like, that’s the reason I’m here.

It’s like this, this now came forward, it’s like so I can experience that panic, you know, and that like, urge for my to change pose or to, you know, to relieve whatever is in pain.

It’s like, that’s why I’m here.

It’s like, did all that work to get to this one spot to feel that just so I can go, it’s okay, you know, and just be with it.

So it’s like, all those negative emotions that could be reframed that way for me, where it’s just like, okay, great.

It’s the whole reason I’m here, like for this to come up or for me to like, process it differently.

So the next time it comes up, it’s not as, I don’t know, not as much of a panic.

I don’t think it is a negative thing, not necessarily that it’s a positive thing, but it’s just like, just to burn something up, I guess.

Yeah, I love that, Matt.

Yeah, that’s definitely my experience when pushing myself to change myself.

Pushing myself physically, you know, yeah.

Experiencing that panic, you know, whether it be yoga or on my bike and recognizing like, oh, yeah, here it is.

This is why I love this hill, because there’s the part of me that absolutely freaks out and thinks I’m going to fall over and I have to stop and I get to quiet that and keep going.

Yeah.

Yeah, not that it’s all nonsense.

There are some things that guide us and protect us, but in a controlled or semi-controlled environment, I suppose, we can play.

Yeah, well, and the thing that comes to mind is like, yeah, sometimes my anxiety is helping me predict something that I need to be aware of.

Like if I’m not, my rent’s going unpaid and I need to take care of that, like, OK, maybe I should be a little anxious about that if it’s motivating me to keep a roof over my head or like my anger.

Maybe it is keeping someone who’s trying to hurt me away.

But stepping back and looking at how many times is that the case?

Like my cat was earlier, was sick earlier this week, and me and my family were all fighting.

It’s like, how much is me worrying about my cat really fighting the infection?

Like it’s I mean, the doctor already gave me the meds.

Me sitting here ruminating on my cat being sick is not going to help her get any better.

So why do I do it?

Or me yelling at my family?

It’s just going to make them yell back at me.

And it’s just then I’m going to yell back at them and we’re all just going to keep going until everyone makes each other so angry we can’t leave our rooms.

And it’s like, so how much like, yes, these emotions can have helpful applications, but how helpful are the applications that I’m using them for is something that I have to look at a lot, because like even if like on some philosophical level, I’m right to be angry.

Is screaming really helping me get that problem solved?

You know, it’s like and so that’s why like and I mean, screaming might make the anger feel better, but that moment of relief is what makes the anger addictive.

So do I really want to go through that and like further reinforce the act of anger in the future when it’s this unhelpful, you know?

Yeah, absolutely.

And that’s that’s where I like just really getting concrete about what skillfulness is.

It’s like, am I being who I want to be while I’m doing what I choose to do?

And is it having the desired effect?

You know, these are three totally concrete questions that you can that you can check yourself against to determine if something was skillful and then it and then it kind of doesn’t the rest of it just kind of doesn’t matter.

It’s not high minded.

It’s not philosophical.

Am I being who I want to be while I did what I chose to do and did it have the desired impact?

If it did, it was skillful.

If it didn’t, then it wasn’t.

If it didn’t, then it wasn’t.

It doesn’t matter what your emotions are.

It doesn’t matter what you thought about it.

It doesn’t matter what your plan was.

It was or it wasn’t right.

And and then.

It’s amazing how fast that can help shift things.

It’s been fun to recognize when I’m not being who I want to be and be able to take a step back and see that like, yep, yep, here’s the habitual self.

Here’s the batshit behavior and be able to.

OK, I need to switch, be who I want to be.

And with practice doing that, it becomes easier and easier to do.

That doesn’t mean that I still don’t like melt into a puddle, but it’s less frequent, which which is fun.

It’s fun to grow up.

And and then it’s like if you melt into a puddle, if that’s who you want to be and what you chose to do, it’s having a desired impact.

Well, then you can say it’s skillful, right?

But there’s another part of looking at that, which has to do with, you know, a meta awareness over time.

Like, yeah, that was who I wanted to be.

That is what I chose to do.

And it did have the desired impact.

And there’s the meta question of like.

When I pay attention to my environment, is that really the path that I want to continue walking, you know?

Get a little bit more.

Well, let’s go.

Yeah.

I’m glad to hear that you’re practicing that and you’re noticing that it becomes more available.

Spaciousness, who knew?

I think so.

This could potentially sound like we’re wavering away a little bit, but I want to bring this back to something that all of you I know of her, which is practice is realization and realization is practice.

And what that really means is the way we live our life is our realization and our realization is in the way we live our life.

Practice is life, right?

So often our context for what practice is gets blurred.

And we think that like having a regular sitting practice is realization or we think of, you know, some particular subset of things as having a practice as like what that means is the way we live our life demonstrates the depth of our realization and our realization is only a realization if it shows up in the way we live our life.

That for me is a wonderful mirror because I could be saying that I have had this realization, but then I look at the way I interact with this or that and I say, well, clearly I haven’t actually had that realization because my concrete behavior is distinct from what I’m saying I know.

So then I need to go do some integration work.

I need to look at that.

I need to figure out where the disconnect is.

What’s a cognitive structure that isn’t actually manifesting in the way that I live, right?

So anyway.

I think, well, just the thought that comes to mind for me, the most pervasive rationalization I use is this person is telling me that what I’m doing is wrong and I know what I’m doing is wrong.

So obviously they understand it’s wrong, but they’re also doing the same thing.

So I’m going to show them that I can be worse just to show them how they need to be better first.

This kind of two wrongs make a right.

And it’s like, I’m never going to convince them to be their better selves by being my worst possible self.

And they’re never going to do the same.

So one of us has to stop eventually.

And it’s just such a when I break it down into all its parts, it’s just the way I rationalize being angry when I know I shouldn’t.

That’s beautiful because you get to see that moment and then you have the power of choice Actually, fuck it, I’m going to be my worst self this time again, at least you chose.

Informed consent and all that.

Hey, you’re planting cactuses.

So later on when you get pricked, you’re like, yep, that’s what I did.

I planted that cactus right there.

All part of the plan.

Yeah, I knew that I needed to get stabbed a lot more times.

And I think this is, you know, there’s there’s this teaching about like a stream entry or seven times return or once return or non returner, right?

These like stages of your progression and the path and are hot.

And over time, they became these metaphysical structures about how many times you reincarnate before you actually achieve liberation.

But when I look at the phenomenology of practice, and you all can probably relate to this, I think it might be more true that the benefit of that teaching is recognizing where we are and the number of times and like, how often do we do that?

And like, how often we forget the truth.

And the non returner is the one who’s just constantly recollected to the truth of the way reality works in this projection mechanism and all this stuff, and therefore, skillful.

The once returner is the one who kind of like, forget sometimes, like the practice has developed enough where they like, don’t really get caught up in anything too often, but they forget like once in a while.

Right, and then your seven times returner is the one who like, who really knows it, and can maybe have like, two, three, four months of living it.

But then they have like six months of not living it, and they have like a week of living it, and they have like two weeks of living, not living it.

And then, you know, they’re bouncing back and forth all the time.

And your stream mentor is the one who’s like, heard about the stuff.

Oh, yeah, I’ve heard about that stuff.

I would like that stuff.

But my reality is that I don’t actually know that yet.

I haven’t viscerally realized any of these truths.

So I’m just kind of like, in the water playing with the big boys.

But you know, kind of like that.

And from a from an actual phenomenology of practice, and the way we understand the boomies of the bodhisattva path, and when we look at the whole Mahayana context and Theravada and Mahayana context for Buddhist praxis, I just found that to make way more sense than worrying about the number of times that we reincarnated.

The rest of it doesn’t really quite track with the whole idea of like, the Eightfold Path is liberation.

So let’s Eightfold Path in this life, but then still have to reincarnate seven times because like, the cosmology just doesn’t match that way.

Well, and I mean, I think looking at well, you actually explain this concept of reincarnation, where it’s like, in every moment of becoming we are reincarnating in that moment.

And so it does, what you just said does vibe with that kind of rearranged concept of reincarnation.

And just for me, the idea of I need to reincarnate seven more entire lives that are each 90 years long after this or whatever.

The problem with that is, I’m now kicking the can down the road.

I’m not actually saying I’m chasing liberation here and now.

I’m chasing it at some imagined future life that I’m never going to actually experience.

And when I’m doing that, it feels like I’m deferring responsibility off myself for working in the moment.

Does that make sense?

If I had an emoji, that would be that red 100 one with the squiggles under it.

I need to get cards.

The Olympics.

Yeah, no, precisely.

And thank you for bringing up that idea of reincarnation for each becoming cycle is an incarnation.

And those are happening.

Click, click, click, click, click, click.

So yeah, we can live billions of lives.

Hey, there’s that.

Yeah, that’s in the reaction.

It took some work to find it.

Oh, but now it’s in my freaking leaves.

Yeah.

How are we doing?

I mean, anything else alive for anyone or are we all incomplete today?

Yeah.

Matt, it’s been a while since we heard from you.

Just want to check in specifically.

As a closing check in.

Oh, there’s a just to reinvite you into the conversation.

You’ve been in listening mode for a while.

I’ve had enough of those like half moments where I’m like, I could say something, but is that just me saying I could say something?

What’s the word?

Well, you’re invited to say the things now if you like.

Yeah.

No, nothing.

Nothing like really subtle.

I mean, nothing really like concrete to, you know, I was just kind of bouncing in different directions as Cass was talking about the concept of reincarnation or about like that ability or that possible result of being a procrastinator with the Dharma by reading that stuff, you know, but like, I don’t know.

It’s like, yeah, seven more 90-year lives.

It’s like, well, that’s an assumption.

It says it’s going to be a human birth.

Sometimes I like the way that speaks to me a bit is like, you can see it in some people, you know, I mean, I have had family members, you know, I’m sure we all do where you can kind of see it’s like, there’s so many layers of shit, like the real hope in this life that in this lifetime is like, is dwindling, or I’ve got a grandma’s like this close to passing, you know, like, and it’s been that way for like, three years.

You know, and he’s still like, you hold out this little like that she’ll have some sort of release, you know, that she needs.

And, you know, so it’s like, yeah, like, okay, like, there is this process of like, it pop up, you know, and it actualizes or doesn’t and, you know, try again, try again, you know, however, you know, what’s the roomie like, come, come again, right?

How many times you’ve broken your vows type of thing.

Anyway, so that was just what was running through my mind as Cass was speaking.

To toss out maybe a content, well, this is a little bit late in the game, given the time, but like, you know, to what’s the word you usually use?

Like spitballing, or just getting stuff rolling, riffing on stuff.

A fun thing that I never really got, like to any sort of conclusion or didn’t play the whole thing out.

It was just something that came as I was on my flight across the Atlantic Ocean that I thought was fun to play with for a bit, but I was contemplating the five skandas.

And, and that idea that popped up was like, well, and then I kind of wrote like a step progression of getting there.

At first, it starts with like, well, like the main point of it is like, is it not all just contact?

And because it started with looking at like perception and mental formation.

I can understand each of those, like in their definition state, but like, when you try to draw the line of what’s perception and what’s mental formation, like in a spectrum, it gets blurry in the middle.

And obviously, there are not clear divisions of these things.

But then that got my, it got me thinking.

It’s just like, well, it’s like, I, then I went back to, to sensation and to, and to form.

And I was like, well, is there, you know, are those not just forms of contact, like contact with the eyes, you know, with a certain vibration, contact with the ears, with a certain vibration, touch as a contact.

Then I was thinking about like the perception is like, is that just a primitive form of a mental formation?

You know, and then thinking about mental formations is that’s just like contact of thoughts, repository consciousness, that’s like contact with a memory, you know, so there’s like this formless contact and this form contact.

So, so yeah, just, you know, I was like, well, is that just like, is that just a form of just, and that went into some other ways that were like really more difficult to understand.

It was more just a feeling.

But, but yeah, even like, even our, like the, even just consciousness itself, is that like some form of contact as well?

Like, so I don’t know if that does anything for anybody, but I had fun thinking about the skandhas in a different way or playing with it.

I know ultimately, like, this is all just like, these are like fabrications of the mind, but I thought it was fun.

Well, they started out as skillful means to get people to realize the truth of interpenetration.

Right.

And so when you engage in such an investigation, you integrate into your intellect a realization of interpenetration.

And that sounds like that was working for you.

And so that’s good.

Wonderful pastime.

Good way to spend an airplane ride.

Yeah, what else am I doing?

Talking about not procrastinating.

So thank you all very much with that delightful invitation to contemplate the skandhas.

Let’s go ahead and do a round of closing check-in.

I’ll start with Robin, then Cass, then myself.

Robin checking in on a fall morning that unfortunately stopped raining.

I was looking forward to a rainy day.

Now I feel the pressure of sunshine.

Very grateful to be here.

Wonderful to see you, Cass.

You look great, by the way.

It’s been a while.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Many things going on, lots of pots in the fire.

And it’s wonderful to have a space in the community to take some time to slow down and remember our purpose.

I’m in.

Yeah, Cass checking in just outside Cleveland, Ohio.

Yeah, it’s good to be back, first of all.

So I mean, I guess for me, I mentioned my cat getting sick conflict between my family.

It was a week of chaos up until about Wednesday or Thursday morning.

And I was talking to Dan, and he just happened to mention.

And I was like, you know what?

I do feel like that all this and how poorly it got handled by not just my family, but also me primarily, because that’s who I need to look at.

Because I can never control anything they do.

So it was like all this and the messiness and unskilledness of it, I feel like was a call to get reconnected with communal practices that I’d kind of let fall by the wayside when my life started improving.

It was kind of like a warning shot.

Like, if you don’t handle this now, the next time this stuff happens, it’s going to be a disaster.

So I was like, you know what?

I need to get back into that.

So it’s good to be here.

Yeah, it was nice.

I definitely feel like I’m leaving with a lot to think about and maybe reinterpret different situations that I find myself enmeshed in as I go throughout my life.

I’m not just at home, but just in general, just a lot of new lenses to look through, which I always enjoy.

So, yeah, feeling optimistic.

I’m glad to be here.

It’s good to see all you again.

You look great, too, as well, Robin.

And yeah, I’ll pass.

I’m not checking in.

Cass, great to meet you.

Great to practice together.

Yeah, I can’t help, but kind of, and then this has been present this weekend specifically.

It’s like, I can really feel the descent into the darkness and to the cold and knowing that we’re going to the journey around the sun.

And the timing just feels so perfect.

I’ve done some running around and went to the other side of the planet for a bit.

And yeah, the rest of this year, aside from, which is also perfectly integrated with this feeling of our taking our plunge into silence in a few weeks here in session.

And so, yeah, all that’s kind of present.

And it gives me this feeling of peace, of this returning to quiet and to turning inwards and reflecting when there’s not the sun that’s showing us everything outside as much.

Yeah, and grateful along the way to be able to sit with you all this morning.

Thank you, everybody.

And I’m in.

Let me check in from Columbiana, Ohio, where it’s getting ready to down board.

So that’s exciting.

Yeah, always delightful to share in the Dharma.

Thank you all very much for keeping this practice close and convening and being together in the Dharma.

On we go.

I’m in.

Have a nice week, y’all.

Hi, everybody.

Bye.

The post The “paradox” of self, other, and Interpenetration appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

I got a couple things that I could riff on, but I’d rather see what’s alive for the group first.

So does anyone have any dharma-related inquiries, be they, how do I live this, what’s going on with X, Y, Z, or I read about this, let’s talk about it.

Uh-oh, seems like we sat too deeply.

Yeah, I think I’m talking particularly quiet today.

It’s okay.

So there’s two things that are kind of alive in my space that I’d like to riff on.

One is, I’m pretty on fire at the establishment and the decontextualization of the anatman teaching and also the vilification of the individuated process that happened in dharma circles over the last, you know, 60, 70, 80 years.

So I could riff on that, that’s a little bit of a fiery one.

And I also heard a really wonderful podcast, it was very short, maybe 12 minutes, but Vince Geeks talking about what he coined in the ninth jhāna, which was a little bit more of a riff on meditation practice and what we’re doing when we’re sitting.

So those are the two things that are alive that I feel like are pretty much constantly in a space of confusion.

So I’d be happy to riff on either of those, if any of them sound interesting.

Yeah, both do.

Let me start with the first one.

Okay, well, so I run into a lot of confusion with anatman and non-self, and I have no self.

I’m like, who chooses?

Who does the thing?

Which kind of goes hand in hand with this whole idea that if we’re operating from a self-referencing perspective, we must not be awake, right?

And there’s this whole, just like massive confusion around what living from emptiness means and the role of anatman in practice.

And it’s really pissing me off, like I just got to say, it’s really, really hurting my knob up to 11.

And people’s practices are retarded for really long periods of time due to confusion on these topics.

So what I’ve come to discover is that one of the primary sources of confusion is that anatman, not self, emptiness, shunyata, have kind of gotten like all mixed up.

And one of the main things to realize, or at least one of the main things I think people should understand is that when the Buddha was teaching anatman, he was reforming or departing from, depending on your perspective, a tradition where anatman was central.

So anatman is the idea that there is a discrete metaphysical essence that lives within you that is a part of a larger metaphysical essence.

And Buddha was like, I can’t find it.

No one I know has found it.

We have a shared phenomenological experience of something, but to call it a self is logically incoherent because if there was a self that we could abide in, that was the controller of the cosmos, then the cosmos would respond to the directives of the self.

That’s the logical argument.

So it can’t be a self because if it was a self within me, then I could tell my body not to be sick and my body wouldn’t be sick.

So anatman is the idea of a discrete metaphysical entity that lives within us that controls the physical world as an extension of a larger metaphysical entity, brahman.

That whole cosmology and metaphysics was being attacked by the Buddha.

That’s part of a larger reform against brahmanical culture and the idea of that ritual purity and performing rites and rituals would lead to some sort of a liberative pseudo-relogical outcome.

And Buddha was like, no, you actually got to live your life.

It doesn’t matter.

The karma of your life is going to be what dictates what happens to you, and it’s not about, you know, putting some ghee in a clay pot and breaking it at the bottom of a lake in order to liberate dead people.

Right?

This is the, what are we doing here?

Right?

So there’s a major criticism against this idea.

So anatman was originally a teaching to break people away from that cosmology and to step people into a different ideology, right?

Which also encompasses Anicca, impermanence, and Dukkha, suffering.

So this is all part of the transformational moment where people are stepping into the reality of their existence, whatever you want to believe about it, this is the reality of our existence.

So let’s train from here and let’s actually train in the context of this reality, right?

And how do we, how do we do that?

Well, we train in the jhanas and deep meditation so we can investigate the nature of these phenomena.

And in so doing, we experience the liberation.

Now in early Buddhist context, that liberation was cessation in the road to samadhi, where we greatly attenuated perception to the point where we cut off the self-referencing experience.

And what do we collapse into at that moment?

We collapse into voidness and cessation and the absence of any self-referencing narrative and we turn off and we turn back on, right?

And so parinirvana, the final nirvana, is death for the mind that is controlled enough to not re-enter cyclic existence, and that was liberation in early Buddhism.

If you look at the teachings of early Buddhism, they also go along the line with how do you investigate this?

Well, you investigate with this, with the skandhas.

Well the skandhas say in it that there is form, feeling, thought, volition, and consciousness.

So what constitutes our experience?

Well, no, there’s no self that constitutes our experience, but our experience is constituted of these five skandhas, or piles, or heaps, form, feeling, that’s our feeling tone, our attachment and aversion, thinking process, cognition, volition, willful action, and sentience, consciousness.

So the Buddha said there is no self, but what you’re going to experience is going to have these five qualities.

Does anyone notice anything interesting about these qualities that most modern dharma teachers try to get us to reject as bad?

There’s two specifically that I feel like get targeted in modern dharma that everyone tries to get away from.

Formation.

Well, form gets its whole slack as being like maya, and it catches you up and it sucks your attention out of your body, and you know, yeah, people vilify the world of form too, but those aren’t the two that I’m thinking of in this context.

Form, feeling, thought, volition, and consciousness.

How many people think thinking mind is bad?

Yeah, I said a mental formation, I guess volition is the word you’re using.

Yeah.

Well, when you said formation, I didn’t hear the mental part, so I thought you meant a formation.

Yeah, sorry.

Yeah.

Okay.

In that case, we’re more on the same page, right?

Mental formation, volition.

It’s like, these are parts of our experience, but how many things are telling you that your thinking mind is bad?

How many teachings on non-self are telling you to basically to abdicate your volition?

If you have an action that you want to take from your self-referencing perspective, like that’s just selfish, that’s bad.

Volition is an aspect of your experience.

There’s skillful volition and there’s unskillful volition, sure.

We can make judgments like that, but to abdicate volition is to take one of the skandhas that was used to prove the anatman perspective and try to delete it.

It’s just fundamentally incoherent within its own schema, right?

What are we doing?

What we’re doing, when teachers train this way, they have a purpose.

I’m not saying that they’re bad or malicious, they just have a purpose.

The purpose is that we get so caught up in our different heaps that we don’t really see clearly.

When they’re doing these extreme absolutist teachings, they’re trying to deconstruct the student into is-ness, suchness, the purity of being, which allows us to experience the flow of life as a dynamic interplay of light, which we say in The Awakened Ones, that.

And that’s fine as a training objective.

It’s not fine as an ultimate objective.

That’s an intermediary step.

You still need to live.

You’re right.

Exactly.

You still need to live.

You still are living.

It’s not you still need to live.

It’s like you still are living.

Even as you step into the training that is absolutist, as we move through the progression of states into pure being, how are you doing it?

You are doing it by updating your cognitive process.

You’re doing it through a volitional action of yourself, stepping into training, right?

And they would love us to believe that the people who do it are karmically inclined and the people who don’t do it are karmically disinclined.

And no one has any say in the matter and some sort of weird predetermination, which abdicate, which, which abandons volition, which is one of the aspects of experience.

If you don’t sit your ass down to meditate, and then give up on purpose, right, radical acceptance, willful surrender, you use your volition to dissolve yourself into the sublime.

And even if you want to play mind games about, well, no, I can’t actually dissolve myself into the sublime.

That’s an act of grace, right?

Well, sure.

But you still sat your ass down and opened yourself up to grace to do its work.

And if you refuse that, then grace won’t happen.

No matter how you slice it, that’s a step in the process that includes volition.

So the vilification of individual process and ego identity and the confusion that not self means no person.

Not self means no activity.

Not self means no individuality.

It’s just like, it trips people up so hard.

Yeah, it’s like, yeah.

It’s so, so ironic that that’s what you’re sharing right now.

Because like, it’s literally everything that I’ve been going through since I got to the property last Monday, Monday night.

I mean, we talked a little bit last week, that same curious anxiety came back again, like the first couple nights I was here.

And yeah, it’s like, first of all, being able to notice it in the first place that it’s happening and to realize like, it’s okay, you know, and there’s not a problem, you know, like that lets you think a little bit more clearly about it.

But yeah, it’s been like kind of crescendoing up until today.

And like last night was, I went to the coast and stayed in the coast overnight to drop off a car and, and yeah, stared out like at the Black Horizon, the ocean all that.

But anyway, finally, like I could stare long enough into that, that space and kind of see it’s like, oh, yeah, it’s all moving.

And then I kind of realized like, like that started to like quiet it all down.

And what I’ve what I’ve reflected on is like, I think what was what was happening as part of this was the runaway thinking mind.

It’s so it is like the siren song, you can get so swept up in it.

And like when I was trying to make the journey and like, you know, coordinate so many things in a different language, like my mind by thinking problem solving mind was like on overdrive.

And I didn’t realize how long I got swept up in it.

So it’s like, it’s, it’s like a drop, you know.

So yeah, like, find like finding some sort of mechanism to like, find the quiet, you know, and then to see again and go, oh, yeah.

You know, it’s just like coming up for air for a little bit.

Yeah, but it’s like, I think it was when you reminded me of a like, I think the first one I joined in on we’re talking about this, the same sort of thing and, and, and I really like the analogy of like the volition as like, you know, as the scaffolding, you know, it’s it is something that you can erect, you know, while you’re building the home, you know, and then you’re less you’re, you know, then once you’re, you can inhabit your new home, the scaffolding can come down and you’re less dependent on the constant thinking and you can just use it when it’s necessary, you know, but you use it to like kind of break through.

Does that make sense?

You make sense.

I’m just contextualizing it, the overall arc in my mind to see what I want to say about it.

Because you got to the, you got to the point of traditional trading paradigms.

And I want to invite you just ever so slightly past into what I’m doing as the advanced training paradigm, which is that your cognition and your volition, don’t go away.

You don’t start relying on them, you don’t need them less.

It’s just that their role shifts because now they don’t sweep you up.

They’re just constantly held in right relationship.

And that’s, that’s the, that’s the goal of the training, right, is to have all of our if we could say it this way, it’s not typically my language, but we could say that part of the goal of training is to have our skandhas in balance so that we aren’t over-relying and over-identifying with a particular skandha, which then throws us out of whack, you know, and like you said, so that it takes volition to do an action to cut through the thinking mind so that the thinking mind can realize that the thinking mind is only a small part of your experience so that you can get into your feeling tone.

You can get into what’s actually manifest in your reality, you can get into the bliss of consciousness, and now you have all five skandhas active again, they always were, but you kind of like drive them out.

Sometimes our feeling time that we get way into our attachment and aversion and our feeling tone will hijack our system, right, and then we lose balance that way too, we lose balance in consciousness and be so blissed out in pure consciousness that we lose balance, which is what most people really want to do, right?

We can lose balance in form and we can get involved in hedonism and being fully invested in what’s happening in our sensory experience, right, so any of the skandhas can suck us away from a balanced perspective, so I think that’s the appropriate harmonization of these five elements is liberation in a certain way.

There’s more to it than that, especially if we’re talking about Buddhist psychology and what liberated qualities are and blah blah blah, but in a simple way, that’s a good training practice.

Wait a minute, am I in balance, right, am I holding everything in its relative importance?

And just that check-in can zoom us out, you know?

Yeah, I think of it like I was talking, like so yeah, if we’re, you know, kind of playing with the way you described it, like if you have the center of a five-pointed star, like, you know, I felt that like I got sucked into the thinking mind extension and I realized, like I said, that was the siren song, that’s how captivating, like it kept me in there, you know, so yeah, I’m not necessarily denying that it’ll go away, but like it had me sucked out, you know, to one extreme because I was, I got lost in problem solving and then I started to spin out, you know, into, you know, past and future and stuff like that and mainly future.

So it was like problem solving all of these infinite scenarios, you know, it just, you know, really, it really ran wild for a bit and then yeah, then, you know, I think I was listening to one of my favorite, oops, sorry, are you guys there?

Okay, one of my favorite people to listen to is Jetsuna Tenzin Palmo and she mentioned something that like, you know, was that like come up for air moment where she said, she was talking about presence, he’s like, you know, the thinking mind can’t experience presence, it can only think about the present, you know, so that was like enough to create that separation, go, oh, you know, like and I kind of snapped out of thinking mind, you know, and realized like, ah, presence, you know, and I felt it again and like, so yeah, turn back towards the center of that five point star.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lovely.

Before I say anything, I want to open it up to Robin, who has been delightfully pensive, and I think at various points ahead, there you go, a great description, um, just having this image in my mind of when talking about the five pointed star and the, yeah, the importance of training and recognizing, you know, the, the rapidity of when we’re starting to get out of line, you know, of pulling it in before it gets too far, and then moving the whole, not staying just stuck in the star, because we have to live, we have to exist and be able to move the whole thing forward together as one unit.

That’s the goal, right?

Yeah, it makes life so dynamic and fun.

And I think that’s, that’s the, that’s the switch, right?

So when we think about chanting for love, permanence, purity, self and bliss, the characteristics of nirvana in our Mahayana tradition, like, when we say those words, it can create a really confusing picture.

But really, it’s just describing the felt experience of living with these elements in harmonious balance.

This is what it feels like, you know, there’s, there’s a sense, even though we’re, we’re in the river of is-ness, and we’re, we’re recognizing with startling rapidity, the way that things arise, abide, degrade, and cease to exist, you know, we’re, we feel that instant by instant.

But in that, in that flow, the flow itself is ever flowing.

And so there’s a sense of permanence, even in the constant change, the purity, the purity of it is just this, you hear me talk about appropriateness, purity is just the appropriateness of this moment, because this moment can’t be anything other than it was because of the endless combining of causes and conditions.

And so there is no set, there can be no sense of impurity, when you are in touch with the flow of the moment, because the moment, obviously, has to be this way, it is purely exactly what it is.

And that is such a delightful experience, even when it fucking sucks.

It’s like, oh, yeah, obviously.

How could this be anything other than what it is, it is pure.

And it’s in its expression of the moment.

And that’s just so explicit.

So, well, the self isn’t the metaphysical construct that exists in perpetuity, outside of the system, the self is the expression, the dynamic expression of the individuality engaging in this process, you know, and I’m, I’m a more tantric guy, not an Advaita guy.

So for me, the self is the dynamic expression of all of life, making love with itself, which is all me, which is all you, and it’s like, oh, yes, so good.

So then you get to love, bliss, yeah, you know, it’s like you’re at a groovy party, man.

Great riff.

While we were sitting, I, one of the things that like, I thought about that reflashed was, it’s like, how, how real a dream can feel.

If you really understood what that means, you know, like, really appreciate like, how mind creates, you know, and like, really puts all this into perspective.

So like the Lanka, you know, like the back, it’s the image of the Red Pine book, you know, that dark green cover, like comes into my mind.

So funny.

Yeah, it’s good stuff.

The word that came to me during this morning’s sit was safety, that in order to fully surrender and turn inward and turn inward and turn inward, there has to be safety and therefore there has to be, there has to be faith.

And then through that faith, then the light can shift from shining in to illuminating outward.

That continual cycle is the process of, of living, you know, through the continual shifting.

Because we are all part of the continual shifting.

And that’s so delightful, even if you’re saying to me, even when it’s fucking sucks and it’s painful and sad or whatever, you know, it’s, it is.

It’s a nice reminder of why you’re such fucking weirdos that sit here and do nothing.

When we are, at least Matt obviously has a beautiful day, I have a beautiful day and we hope you have a beautiful day.

And it’s like, why are we sitting here?

We could be out there, but it is, without this, out there doesn’t shine as bright.

I’ll stop all battling now.

No, it’s like, I loved what you said, but it’s like, I see it more because like I was sitting by this, this property’s got like a river at the base here and which is a wonderful place to sit.

But yeah, it’s like, it’s more just like, yeah, it’s a beautiful day.

Like how deeply do you see it and appreciate it?

You know, it’s like, you don’t have to do anything, we don’t have to go anywhere.

It’s like, it’s like, no matter where I go, I’m always home, you know, so then you look around with that view, and then you see the beauty and everything, even when it’s not a beautiful day.

It’s like, yeah.

Yeah, actually, I do have a question, now that I think about it, Umi.

Just it’s more of maybe interested to get your take on it.

So part of part of what I saw in what was creating, like where my anxiety came from again, it was like, I had enough, like enough force of things that were like knocking me out of stability.

And then when and which made me like, less like my vision was clouded, and I couldn’t see things and interpret what was happening like a certain way.

So but like, so one of the things that like I was struggling with is like, when I got here, like the first few days, it was mostly rain, it’s like a very light rain, but it was just wet kind of all the time.

And so the this driveway kind of like does a switch back on on my property that gets up to the road.

And it’s like mostly the grass is a couple areas of asphalt, it’s pretty steep.

But but there’s slugs and snails everywhere.

And so like I had, I didn’t have the keys for a bit.

So I was walking up and down and, and which gave me enough opportunity to see how many slugs there were.

But I was like, I had to be eyes down at the ground, like to avoid, you know, squishing them, you know, or crunching a snail.

And it’s like, it’s precarious, like it was really, you know, because there’s a couple times it like it was dark, or I just I’d lose focus for a second, come in a gate and then like, you know, crunch, you know, like, and like, fuck, you know, just, just crunched a snail, you know, it’s like the worst feeling.

under my foot, you know, when that when that happens.

And yeah, like, there’s a trail that goes up and down.

So you see, you know, squished slugs here and there.

It’s like, I have a, so that was really, like, hitting me heavy.

I was also I saw, I saw I’ve got some termites, termite damage in some of the wood.

So I immediately started thinking about like, fuck, I’m at the fog, because I don’t know, I haven’t researched, I don’t know any other way of dealing with termites, you know, like other than like tenting, you know, and like, if there’s probably a million spiders in this house, like at least, you know, amongst other things, and it’s their house, and it has been their house, you know, like, and just the thought of that, like, you know, genocide, you know, like, it would take place, like, just fucking killed me, because I could write just the night before, like, I got settled in for the first time with a guitar and got to play, you know, a song that means a lot to me, like, it’s actually one of Nick’s songs, All Life is Sacred.

I’ve got to play that, you know, for all the creatures and in this place.

And then yeah, right.

I actually think then like, the tent thing comes up and just anyways, it just really like, it hurts, like, it hurts a lot.

And when I and because I wasn’t in balance, it really like started to kind of, like I said, spin me out.

And yeah, just like that, that predicament, you know, of like, being the elephant that is squishing stuff all the time, you know, like, but having the like, the awareness of it, like, I find that like, super challenging, like, or at least it’s like, it’s, it’s super challenging when I’m not totally in balance.

But anyway, I’d like to hear kind of Umi how you see that stuff, because like, I’m also like, you know, everywhere I go, I’m watching the Not Step On Ant and stuff like that.

I’m not delusional about, you know, like, all these creatures, all these creatures not being separate, you know, separate objects, separate things.

But still, you know, it’s like, it’s the same reason like, I love, you know, myself so much, you know, like it hurts, you know, to like cause pain and suffering, you know, and so how do you, how’s your experience been with that type of thinking or experiencing?

Yeah, well, that’s a, that’s a great question.

Before I answer, I want to tie in with something Robin said, or answer directly, I’m going to start with an indirect response based on faith.

Faith is preceded by doubt, you can’t have faith without doubt.

And so it is looking at the doubt that allows us to build the faith to go down with it, to know that it’s going to be okay, even when we don’t know it’s going to be okay.

I think that that’s central to your question, in a certain way, because there’s a there’s a space where we just don’t know, there’s a lot we don’t know about the great web of life, and ecology, and the impact of our actions.

And most of the time that ignorance is bliss, or unaware, massive amounts of pain and suffering we cause through our existence as human beings.

But then we do come into spaces like what you’re in right now, where you know, you know that for you to properly inhabit your home, you’re going to have to displace or kill hundreds of thousands of insects, or more, right?

And we can we can think that that’s a horrible thing.

I’ve spent a couple years in a train where like, I didn’t kill anything.

I did not kill anything.

We had an infestation in the house.

I did everything I could to to clean it out without killing anything.

I would let mosquitoes eat off me, I let bees sting me, I wouldn’t kill anything.

And I invested, so I investigated this question for a couple years.

And what I’ve realized, you know, there’s a good quote from the Dalai Lama too, which I think helps put it in context from a more, not from a more authoritative position, but from the Vajrayana authority, he says, mosquito, wave it away the first time, wave it away the second time, third time, best luck for a good rebirth.

And so it’s like, we go through, like, we try to do our best to let everything live its life, but ultimately, to sacrifice our own health or well-being, or to deprioritize the health and well-being of our family, our other animals, the greater ecosystem is wildly skewed, right?

So we make the best decisions we can.

And that includes that our own personal sense of comfort and well-being is included.

Like if you live in a house with a million spiders and termite damage, that’s not good conditions for a human to live in, right?

And so to love yourself includes relocating those organisms, right?

And the suture book, affirm life, I respect all sentient and non-sentient beings and always act with compassion toward them.

In order to live, it is necessary for me to take life, in doing so, I do not take my own life for granted, or something like that, right?

And the key here is not non-killing, it’s non-violence.

And for me, that was a really big point of inquiry, the difference between non-killing and non-violence.

When you step on a snail in the dark, you’re not being violent, you’re not less compassionate because you didn’t know that you were going to step on a snail and you accidentally snapped on him.

Your volition was fundamentally oriented towards not killing the snail and accidents happen and you’re bigger the snail lost, right?

So when you go into, I’ll wrap this up, when you go into looking at like dealing with a termite problem, you know, you can cut out the wood and replace the wood, which requires a great deal of technical skill, time, money, and labor, and then you have to relocate the infested wood far enough away from your home so they don’t come back, right?

You can use insecticides to kill them, fogging for spiders, you know, relocating that.

You can do a lot with spiders, you can leave a lot of spiders, sometimes you’re going to not want to leave spiders, right?

There are poisonous spiders that shouldn’t cohabitate with you and your other animals.

So it’s just, you just affirm life by making the best decisions that you can.

Yeah, but I guess, so it’s like a couple points.

How are we doing on time, by the way?

We’re typically past time.

Fuck, okay.

Well, do you want to hear a response?

Robin, would you like to close or would you want to finish the conversation?

I’m fine with finishing the conversation.

I just want to add that for myself, because this is something that I too have struggled with.

For me, that’s where atonement comes in, you know, a sense of reverence for all life and knowing that in order to live, I need to take life and not doing so frivolously.

And if I crush a snail and, you know, my heart breaks a little for that snail, I give that in its moment and move on because we can’t stay stuck in that.

We’re doing a disservice to ourselves and not helping the snail at all.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, one, who was it who gave the mosquito example?

I believe that was the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama?

All right.

I take exception with that.

With the Dalai in that case.

I mean, what’s the deal, like, with the mosquito?

Like, even if it, you know, it does come back twice and then it, like, continues to drink blood, you know, or do its thing, you know?

Like, I feel that, like, we can use that to, like, dismiss and justify our impatience and say, well, I gave you a warning.

Start treating insects like they have our same cognition.

Like, I gave you two warnings.

Don’t you know that the third strike, you know, means death?

You know, it’s like, fuck, of course not.

You know, like, it’s like our projection, you know?

And so, like, I think that’s just, like, in so many cases, it’s a lack of an ability to really embody that creature’s existence and to be, like, compassionate towards it.

And compassionate towards it means, like, yeah, like, if this beetle wants to, like, hang out on my arm for, like, half an hour, then that’s what it’s going to do, you know?

Like, and this, like, this snail thing, like, I totally get, like, you know, the, you know, it not being on purpose and the violence part of it.

And yeah, like, when I do, like, I do, like, internally apologize and I do, like, say I love you and, you know, and that stuff helps.

But there’s another element.

I think I just, like, sometimes I think we just quit when it gets too difficult, you know?

So, I mean, understand, like, I did the same thing.

Like, I take care of the ants in my house, you know, like in Bisbee.

You know, I. I want to, I want to refocus you on it.

So, where you’re skewed is that you’ve abandoned yourself in the equation.

And so.

How so?

Well, there comes a point where there comes a point where.

You are equally important as the mosquito.

Sure.

I’m not in danger.

Well, you might be.

Mosquitoes are more humans than pretty much any other insect as far as I understand by a huge margin.

Right.

So, and this is all.

Yeah.

That’s all.

That’s all.

Not the debate that we need to have.

This is an invitation for you.

Sure.

This, this hang up.

And I’m going to call it a hang up.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, we’re gonna, we’re gonna wrap because I want you to think about it.

I don’t want to discuss it with you.

I want you to really truly investigate the idea that I’m sitting here saying there’s a point where you just kill the fucking mosquito.

The Dalai Lama sitting there saying, well, there’s a point where you just killed a mosquito.

Right.

There’s a point where.

There’s a point where you are important to.

There’s a point where it makes more sense for you to live the way that you need to live in your comfort, and not abdicate that to the beetle, because you project that you’re failing to account for the Beatles capacity to understand that it needs to be relocated as a projection of you as a failed human being.

Right.

And I mean, investigate that.

There’s something in there that’s not so.

One thing is that I didn’t, I didn’t finish I went too long and didn’t land the plane.

The example I gave her was going to give us.

So, long walk home from from town, super dark, it’s wet, everything’s out and yeah like I’m kind of like hopscotch on my way through.

I finally get in, I’m home like I dodged all the bullets, and then like, in that moment of thinking that like I made it.

I let my guard down and crush one right on the bottom of my step on my way up to the house like all that, you know, so to me that was more of like, like, I see what my distracted mind can do, I was, I had focus.

The entire walk, you know, that’s the wrong lesson to take away brother.

Okay.

The lesson is in the inevitability for you to live, things will die.

Oh sure, I yeah I’m not oblivious to that and I’m not, I’m not discounting it like I understand like I said like, what is, you know, being the elephant, you know, like just right, but you judge it out of yourself for being the elephant.

That’s the, that’s the key.

No, I just, I just recognize the difference between someone who’s oblivious and someone who’s aware.

And if on a walk I don’t have anything else to do but to look where I put my feet, then that’s my meditation.

Sure, you can do that as opposed to just playing with my thinking mind and crushing stuff the whole way home so I see one is more compassionate than the other.

It depends on what you need to think about.

But yeah, if there’s an emergency but if I’m just walking home, like for no reason like pay attention, you know, and don’t pay attention like until the last step until the last step like finish the meditation, you know, then, then resume your thinking down and you step on a spider.

Yeah, I mean the accidents happen, I get it.

I get it but but there is some sort of effort of awareness, but you don’t get it at the same time you’re saying you get it.

But the emotional contraction you have in the rejection that you have is that you don’t get it.

You have an incongruence in your presentation that I’m going to call out.

And I’m going to invite you to step into reconciling.

You are presenting as an incoherent person right now, saying one thing and doing another.

Really, you’re saying that you get it, but your presentation of your experience says that you don’t get it.

Okay, it might be my ability to communicate, but I don’t think so this is pretty obvious.

This is this is saying that really what you have integrated is a story of compassion that is so radically non violent that stepping on something is a big deal.

And then you’re telling me you get the fact that you’re an elephant and things have things are going to die.

But you’re not presenting is a is a very, very firm conviction that an accident is a problem.

But you’re saying that an accident is not a problem.

These are these things are not matching up.

I think I’m, I feel very misunderstood.

I’ll, I mean, nonetheless, I’m going to sit with it but i think i think you got me wrong there me a little bit, at least like, or, I mean it’s not your fault.

It’s, it’s my ability to communicate.

But I guess that I understand you very very well, because I’ve sat in your shoes, we’ve had this conversation with my teacher.

And I, I’m looking very deeply into what you’re expressing, and I, and I do understand the disconnect between what you understand as your perspective.

And the way that you’re presenting your position, and the way that your behavior is living those two things out.

I’m taking it all in.

I’m really seeing you, I understand the perspective of radical compassion I’ve read the tales where the people are using their tongue to move maggot from a piece of meat, so that they can eat the meat without hurting the maggot.

Like, I understand the depth of compassion.

I’ve been in that space.

Right.

And I’m, I’m, I don’t believe that I’m misunderstanding.

I’m sorry that you feel misunderstood.

But I don’t believe I’m misunderstanding you, I do believe that I am inviting you to integrate a more robust version of this insight and actually embody what you know to be true.

And what you believe to be true, and how you live your life, so that these things are causing this question within you.

Yeah, yeah.

So, to, for it to feel heavy is is wrong.

It’s not that it’s wrong, but it shows that your understanding is as yet incomplete.

Okay, because the heaviness isn’t held in the, in the complexity of the web of life, the way that you know the complexity of the web of life is intellectually, your emotional body is not caught up to your intellectual body.

And that’s altering your behavior in a way that could potentially be unsafe.

Interesting.

Okay, I’m so I’m so I’m so tempted to keep going but I have already pushed past time and I’ve already pushed past your shut up and meditate on this invitation.

But this is a really good one and I’m challenging you so I want, I would like Robin as our witness to come in and offer what she sees as a clear perspective, or whatever.

Yeah, don’t beat the elephant Matt.

Yeah.

No, I’m, I like I’m, I have compassion towards myself, like I do.

I just, I was just saying like, it’s just like the fields, sometime it’s super deep, you know, and like, that’s part of the drive, you know.

That’s part of beating the elephant.

That’s the emotional body not catching up to what you know to be true.

What level of aversion shows a lack of embodiment of what you understand of the nature of life.

Really.

It’s like, I was debating going into town for dinner one night and I was like it’s wet and raining, when it’s wet and raining, they’re all out in the driveway.

So I was like, I don’t I can make food here, you know, so I chose not to, you know, so when I’m hearing from you who me is like that that’s unskillful and I should just get in the car and go when I want to eat.

But I don’t have to eat there I could eat here tonight you know when it’s dry I drive, you know, like, I, I’m just trying to find that middle ground and dance with what’s given, you know, and make right choices along the way.

I didn’t realize that.

So unskillful.

It’s unskillful.

That can be skillful that can be unskillful.

Right.

It can be skillful and it can be unskillful.

Now if you stayed home and you ate a can of beans.

That would be unskillful.

A can of beans is not a nutritious meal.

Right.

So, so if you, if you had enough food at home to make a healthy and nutritious meal for yourself, and you chose not to go out, out of compassion for these organisms, you could say that that’s an expression of a bodhisattva.

Yes, correct.

If I started to like inflict damage on my body, then I understand that I’m hurting myself as well.

Again, right.

And so the same action in different contexts is skillful or unskillful there is no, there is no current way going forward.

This is the right choice.

And that is the moment.

So it truly has to be.

Does this account for my health and well being as much as it accounts for those creatures, health and well being.

See that’s what I was saying I think sometimes we quit, you know, and just take the, take the off ramp, you know, and I see a lot of people choose not to quit when they need to, because of a value system that they don’t update regularly.

Yeah, yeah, it’s where we define, you know, you say can of beans is bad I see can of beans is like, it can be one dinner, like it’s just one meal.

I ate lunch, a big lunch, you know, so it’s like, it’s always, you know, it’s always situation dependent, you know, I think we move, we move the goalposts and sometimes we just give up and take the easy path, you know, instead of, you know, like, you know, I’m not getting what I want, like okay fine.

You know, I don’t get what I want it’s not hurting me I’m not doing any damage, you know, no harm no foul.

In case of a can of beans and some slugs maybe not but in case of what this means overall for your relationship to life as a whole, there’s a very slippery slope there.

Yeah, yeah, that’s what I’m saying.

We’re saying slippery slope but in different directions, you’re saying it’s a slippery slope that we continue to abuse the abuse life.

And I’m saying it’s a slippery slope that we continue to allow ourselves to be abused.

No, I understood that.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah, I want to, I want to make sure because I don’t want to leave with confusion after all.

Which I really appreciate by the way.

It’s a heavy topic.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

Thank you Robin.

Much love.

Have a wonderful rest of your day.

Bye.

The post Volition and Non-Self appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

So, Robin, did you have any specific inquiries that you’d like to, for our discussion today?

Yeah, something.

And I came up with it in a discussion with a friend of mine who is an incredibly spacious person who just came out of a very trying relationship not just like a year plus ago.

And we were talking about how she was very angry with her, with her yoga practice because because she could hold so much space she felt as though it caused her to tolerate or live with things that she never should have, which is something I can deeply relate to.

So how, I don’t know what the question with that is, is there in building spaciousness knowing where a line still exists.

Yeah, that’s a critical input.

We were actually, this came up spontaneously just last week, two weeks ago on the evolutionary, on an evolutionary sovereignty training call, where we’re talking about triangulating truth.

And this is critically important for those of us who have equanimity practices and who value equanimity and non reactivity and spaciousness and bias towards East Asian wisdom traditions.

Everything that we’re doing is basically the way that works is that that deconditions our psyche from having a large emotional valence to stimuli.

Okay, so there’s two things happening here on the one hand, we are fundamentally training ourselves not to leave center.

We’re training ourselves not to have a big emotional valence towards our experience on the one hand.

On the other hand, because we sit in equanimity.

We’re also training ourselves to tolerate a very big emotional valence without leaving center.

So we’re doing two different things that mess with, and I’m using that very specifically that mess with the natural human proclivity to have emotional responses and reactions.

That’s how we generate equanimity.

And so, most traditions are like yeah that’s great.

That’s like the end all be all of it, we just bias that so far that the rest of it gets left behind.

And so, it becomes increasingly important to pay attention to subtle cues in our physiology that we wouldn’t necessarily have an emotional reaction to.

Right, there are valence that we can tolerate so we can respond intelligently, but they’re still happening physiologically.

We can still feel the emotional like boundary violation, we can still feel the anger rising we can still feel the grief and subtle physiological cues.

And if we don’t honor those.

Because we have this level of equanimity, one, we might not even notice them if we’re not paying attention because our equanimity can be so great that they just go on notice, or two we can tolerate them to such a high degree that we ignore them for other reasons and we think, and we live according to some other value system and we’re not honoring the intelligence of our, of our physiology.

So that’s a critical part of our training.

And as a non dual framework, non dual Mahayana to unify absolute and relative, so that we can be responsive to the relative from an absolute position, not ignore the relative because we’re grounded in the absolute.

So the way that I found that to work most effectively is by being like we do in our Qigong practice, being really attuned to all of the information that’s happening in our nervous system, and being really curious like, okay, my heart beats elevated.

Why is my heartbeat elevated.

My breath has taken up a different texture.

What does this texture tell me about my life.

Right.

Normal people normally just have their nervous system do a thing and then their body does the thing, and they, they’re just following the emotional valence and a very normal kind of attraction and aversion cycle.

We have to learn other ways to deal with that.

That answers my question, and realizing that it wasn’t a question because I already know, but it’s always good to have reinforcement.

Yeah, it’s so it’s so under discussed.

Yeah.

It’s just because the started out as a primarily monastic practice, at least in terms of like interpersonal relationships boundary, you know, questions of boundaries and what have you.

Wasn’t quite as prevalent in a monastic setting as it would be in a lay setting.

And that’s a huge part of it.

Personally, yeah.

I think another contributing factor is that most people, and in a lay setting or in a Western setting.

Most people aren’t really ever to get to the point of equanimity where that’s actually a problem.

So the huge majority of people are still just looking for peace.

Right.

So to have peace and then to realize that sometimes you need to make sure that you’re not so peaceful that you’re ignoring the signs and symptoms.

It’s kind of an advanced topic, and I think that’s part two of why it doesn’t really get talked about.

That’s a fair point.

I’m wondering if there’s also a component of.

Well, I think you already said it just like that that’s the end all be all like you get to that point, and then that’s it.

And so, yeah, there’s hasn’t been enough.

Exploration or discussion or reinforcement of living life in a very constricted and confused state as long as you’re can maintain your balance, per se, or at least pretend to maintain your balance, like that’s good enough, like, no, not good enough.

Right.

Right.

And again, that would be, that’s actually kind of another we’re saying it out loud to me that that’s a corruption of the Mahayana bodhisattva path, and it collapsed into the lesser vehicle of personal liberation.

And actually we see that all the time.

Well, I’m spacious enough to deal with this stuff.

So it doesn’t really matter.

I’m spacious.

I can deal with my anger.

The fact that, you know, I still have space around my anger and I might occasionally react.

Well now it’s up to you to deal with the impacts of you.

Why aren’t you spacious enough to deal with your emotional reactivity to my emotional reactivity.

Right.

That’s about as far from the Mahayana bodhisattva ideal as it can get.

Well, if I’m causing you suffering through my behavior.

Well, that’s bad.

Yeah, that’s not liberation for all baby.

Yeah, yeah.

But gosh, I mean there’s just a beautiful podcast.

Who was it.

Oh, no I’m blanking, or really, really famous mindfulness teachers been teaching for a long time he was on the Ezra Klein podcast just came out with a new book which is why I got on the Ezra Klein podcast.

And toward the end of the conversation Ezra Klein was kind of pushing him on this interpersonal aspect of it.

And that’s literally exactly what he said.

And he’s like, Well, after all these years of practice, I can better forgive myself for my reactivity.

You know I still get angry.

And then, you know, that’s kind of like up to other people to deal with.

You’ve been a mindless Buddhist teacher, leading the field for 30 years and you’re going to get a podcast and say that’s the ultimate ideal that’s that’s the fruit of practice.

So I’m very grateful to Ezra Klein for kind of being like, Is that it.

Is that really all we get to look forward to after doing this for a long time.

But yeah, it was actually most of the podcast was very good but there was a point there for like the last 10 or 15 minutes where it was like it was really shocking.

I mean it might just speak to learn on that personally and my practice, but I feel like there’s still always going to be a line there, regardless of how spacious what I like you’re you’re always going to have a boundary of some kind, or you’re always going to have situations that arise that like, yeah, I’m not going super far off the center.

But if somebody walks up and punches my wife in the face.

There’s still going to be, you know, there’s going to be reactivity.

It’s not going to be a, you know, very non reactive response.

Like they’re still going to be like, Hey, you know, my compassion for my wife fully outweighs my compassion for you, who just inserted yourself in the situation and did X, Y, and Z, or what happened.

So I think there’s still you know regardless of the relation, even if it’s a, you know, interpersonal relationship where there’s still probably going to be a boundary there where you’re, you’re going to hit a point where just intuitively you’re going to be like you know what enough is enough.

Or what happened.

Yeah, it’s going to be a little bit longer than it should be.

But, you know, and then that’s kind of what you started your inquiry with to right it’s like, you know, being able to know.

Well, I can hold space for this, and what action am I going to take.

Right, which is the constant question.

And I think there’s a couple one that ties into what I was wanting to talk about so we might switch to that a little bit, but it also ties into this other idea that’s been very alive for me which is kind of the second thing that I wanted to talk about.

So that’s kind of interesting.

But I think one thing that’s really important to remember is that the basic purpose of.

Let’s say this way.

We’re collapsing some sort of Nirvana.

Right.

We are removing the things that prevent us from seeing life as it is and engaging with it with radical acceptance and to freedom and joy.

Right, like that’s that’s the goal of the path.

Okay.

When we look at the definition of that in our tradition.

The condition, which is the place where we experience suffering is marked by impermanence, not self impurity and suffering.

Okay.

And the definitions of those are the characteristics of Nirvana permanence bliss or permanence purity bliss and self.

Those are the characteristics that define whether you’re in some sort of Nirvana, the condition or the absolute.

Right.

So, at a basic level, all these questions that we’re talking about are kind of outside basic framework of what liberation is.

But I think it’s really important to note, like the Buddha.

Sure, we’ve got some stuff that kind of help us navigate life, but the whole point is, are you going from being attached to impermanence impurity suffering and non self.

Are you confused by all those things do you not understand how they work.

Are you in ignorance of your true nature and therefore captured by this conditioned realm, or are you aware of your true nature.

Permanence purity bliss, and so, and no longer ignorant to it.

That’s, that’s it.

That’s the thing that we’re doing these other questions are kind of like okay well what does that look like in a relationship was that look like in navigating the world what does that look like.

But that doesn’t mean you’re liberated or not liberated that doesn’t mean you’re awake or not awake.

Awakeness is, are you aware of permanence purity bliss and self.

That’s Nirvana.

I don’t think it’s a matter of like, is, is this are your reactions to those things that function or indicator of your level of Exactly.

It’s more of a, like, a how I navigate this knowing this already.

How do I navigate this without letting too much air, you know, or, or inadvertently putting oneself in a situation that can cause suffering or something.

Well, and you can’t.

Because you’re going to cause like karma and suffering are part of the conditioned experience.

Right.

That’s where it gets increasingly interesting.

And if you don’t believe in karma and transmigration and all these other things, then a lot of the whole framework falls apart, right, because like causes that causes and conditions, bear fruit.

And so it’s not about, like, you can be in Nirvana and do something incredibly stupid.

But you are the recipient of that karma.

Right.

And so causes and conditions bear fruit.

So that is the realm of what regulates our interactions.

It’s like, what are the causes and conditions.

Like what, what fruit do I want to eat.

And it’s kind of like, well, if you really like oranges, make sure you’re planting orange trees.

Because you’re not getting apples.

You look around you like I want to fucking apple and you’re like, well, I haven’t been in any apple trees in like 35 years so you know, and then even better, we carry it further and then you’re finally like I would like to eat some apples.

You still have to plant the apple.

You have to wait for the tree to grow.

The tree has to mature before you get the apple, and then because we get mad because like well I planted that sapling yesterday how come I don’t have my apples.

You know, we live in America and capitalists.

For now.

That’s a good point.

I mean, I, I took the question is just, you know, how you’re trying to be as spacious as possible.

Yeah, or can you still draw.

And if you draw a line, or you drop it soon enough or you like it.

You know, when I get a negative situation play out longer than it should.

I think it’s different.

Personally, my answer to that would be it would be different for everybody.

I don’t think there’s a concrete answer to that like but I think you get what we are like now.

As much space as I can hold for this there still have like no, no more.

Well, and that’s the, that was the root of the question right it’s like when you have so much space, and that edge gets pushed so far.

And you allow so many transgressions because you can tolerate so much right.

How do we, how do we bring it back to like a healthy.

Normal boundaries are going to be like this like a nine feet wide lane, right.

All of a sudden we’re to four lanes wide, and like lots of stuff’s going on, you know, we’re like, well we’re still on the road.

Self reflection, kind of thing like yeah you take a look at like I well is this something that.

And obviously like it’s way easier to, you know, say it out loud and it is to put it into practice that that’s that whole self reflection thing they’re like okay well because there’s something that I’m comfortable with.

Is this something that I’m okay with on a day to day basis and the answer is yes then rock on.

If not, then take steps in the other direction, whatever the steps.

Yeah.

When it comes to that.

Also helping to realize that like no interpersonal relationships perfect.

Most of them are far from it.

It’s kind of a little helpful, but, you know, excuse me.

It’s helpful, it’s helpful when it’s fundamentally healthy.

Right, right.

I think that’s where a lot of so many so many things get flipped, you know where it’s like, sure, the person that you’re in relationship with is a healthy individual doing fundamentally healthy things but there’s just friction.

We want to have lots and lots of grace.

Right.

But not every relationship is built.

Yeah, and that’s, that’s where it gets much trickier.

It’s like, well, does this fit in a forgivable category or does this fit in an unforgivable category.

Right.

And ultimately we make those choices.

And that’s what we have precepts to try and make it just a little bit easier.

What did you just say, that’s what we have precepts precepts.

Oh, I thought you said free sex like well that would make it easier but I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about.

Free sex.

That kind of call Robin.

Oh, I need to remember that this is being recorded.

Precepts.

Yes.

Yes.

And just for those of you listening who don’t know, Jimbo founder of hollow bones and had a very interesting sense of humor and have had a long history of free sex as a child of the 60s and 70s, and the countercultural movement and open marriages.

And he would call it the group, it was the four on one massage, but it was a lot of physical contact in a way that it was coed.

It was by most measures, crossing boundary lines and putting people in very vulnerable positions that this part of the culture, mostly that part of the obvious aspect of that has disappeared and hollow bones.

But that’s something that we’re not continuing.

And, and, and so instead of continuing that topic, I do want to just drop into how we relate to precepts.

Because I think a lot of this can help us navigate some of these issues.

And this is a place where we can find solace in the arbitrariness of our decision making.

So, you both know that I have this thing about sovereignty, which means that all of your reactions are appropriate, and all of them are arbitrary, they’re appropriate because your structure makes them so like they happen because your structure was what it was.

Therefore, it’s appropriate if you reflect on it and it’s crap and you don’t want it to be that way you have to change the structure, you can just hope it’ll be different next time, because that’s appropriate for the structure you have.

It’s arbitrary because the structure that gets built up in our conditioned space is one that’s built up of your own choosing.

Many structures were built up before you had the capacity to choose when you’re asleep, they get built up on their own.

When you’re awake, you consciously build them.

Right, so they’re arbitrary.

Okay.

Now in that world, there, it’s a metamoral perspective.

That’s just, am I choosing who I want to be, is what I’m doing aligned with that choice, did my impact match my intention.

If those three things are yes, then I don’t care what you do.

Right.

And even if I completely disagree with it.

Like, if your, if your intended impact is to cause me a great deal of harm, and you were being the person who chose to do that and you did exactly what you wanted to do.

I can’t fault you as a sovereign individual.

That doesn’t mean I won’t try and stop you.

That doesn’t mean I approve of it.

That doesn’t mean I have anything else.

It just means that that’s a metamoral perspective, not a moral perspective like everything’s okay but a metamoral perspective.

So, as Zen practitioners, when we take our vows, there’s 16 vows.

And when we take those vows we’re basically saying I’m agreeing to adhere to a specific set of moral principles, which is really helpful for kind of like shedding out like a lot of the decision making process about what’s okay and what’s not okay.

Super helpful.

And then we can decide whether or not we hold other people accountable to those precepts, because, you know, we can decide that.

And then if people violate those precepts because they violate our code.

Well now we have a clear way of being like that’s not okay.

Even if we can’t touch our, our energy space because we’re so spaciousness we don’t feel the reactivity or whatever, we can be like, was this a violation of this basic code of ethics.

If it is, I don’t want it.

If it’s not cool.

Right.

And then if I have a problem with it but it doesn’t violate the code of ethics that’s my way.

Right.

So we get to abdicate a lot of decision making authority to a tradition, when we take precepts.

Now I encourage everyone keep in mind that critical thinking skills and stuff but I think that’s a really beautiful actually and helpful thing to have in a religious structure, like Zen or Christianity and having the seven virtues or whatever.

All of a sudden virtues are so vague they almost aren’t applicable but that’s what the whole 10 commandments thing or the 10 commandments yeah the 10 commandments probably a little bit closer than the virtues but anywho.

So, just to be clear, the 16 precepts are, we have 17, because we added one.

The, there’s do no evil.

Do good, back to others.

Refuge in Buddha, Dharma, Sangha, that’s six.

Then we have the all to Zen.

Affirm life, act generously, be loving, manifest truth, respect authority, honor silence, celebrate others, be giving, embody compassion, steward the earth, and manifest this way.

So those 16 things for your friend she’s a yogi, they have their own yamas and niyamas and other things that aren’t part of their structure.

So, for us, when we are evaluating a life when we’re introspecting when we’re deciding whether or not something needs to be done about a particular thing.

We can just look down this list is what I’m experiencing somebody refraining from evil, doing good, benefiting others.

Then we kind of skip the next three because we don’t know whether or not they’re taking refuge and it doesn’t really matter.

But then we go down the list, are they affirming life, are they acting generously, are they being loving, are they manifesting truth, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And the answer to any of those is no.

Then you have a point that you need to address.

And if they refuse to adhere to these precepts, then you have a negotiation.

Well, these are really important to me I’m not going to tolerate being in a relationship where this thing happens the way that it does, because that’s my boundary line.

Well, that’s not my boundary line.

Okay, well we’re in relationship so there’s no boundary line and it’s not your boundary line then where are we going to meet, right, we get to negotiate that.

And obviously if we all have the same moral structure in our relationship and it becomes much easier because we can all just be like oh no, that was clearly out of bounds.

This is not a me you problem this is just like no.

I don’t think you would work like that.

You would think you would think right until somebody has a notion of superiority and says that they understand the precepts more deeply than you do and that you should just shut up because you don’t know anything.

Right.

Which violates most of the precepts.

I did that really quickly because I wanted to get back into discussion, but I think that’s, it’s important, we don’t go over them a lot in here, but I think it’s important to remember that part of Zen is those precepts, because they really can help us out.

And we’re navigating so many of these issues and deciding when to give ourselves a hard time and when to give ourselves some slack.

I’m curious to see the other topics that you wanted to dive into.

Those are the two precepts and then the characteristics of the condition.

Kicked off perfectly by the spontaneous question.

Funny how that works.

You know me, I’ve got something.

So one of the things that bothers me about the characteristics of Samsara Nirvana is that we have this thing not self and self.

And then we have the yoga tradition that we come from that has the Atman.

And it’s all very confusing.

So I thought that I don’t want to interject my confusion into other people, but does anyone else have any sense of like WTF around the idea that there’s Atman which is a self which is Brahman and Buddhism rejects Atman but then says a characteristic of Nirvana itself.

Yeah, that’s something I’ve been playing with in my noodle since I was a teenager and started studying this stuff.

And I have moments over the years of great clarity and understanding of it.

And then the rest of time it’s like, what?

What, um, because some, you know, things continually arise and perspectives are continually shifting.

And so then to be able to maintain that division.

I think for me, the best way I can understand that is no permanent self.

But then what’s the cell.

Then what’s the cell.

And is the self equivalent to the soul.

These are the questions.

Right.

But, but what’s your definition of the soul.

Exactly, because that’s very tradition dependent.

I mean, I, that’s all I do because I work from home, as I’ve said, I work, and I listened to like for this theological podcasts and what have you.

And it.

I think that’s kind of the thing is that, you know, the, the self that we think of as.

I doesn’t exist.

But what about the eye on what the witness, the witness, the awareness of I, the witness so right.

Well, that I think so that’s that’s where it gets interesting for me, because I can say, you know, there’s an understanding there and like the self is an impermanent thing.

Literally, every second it’s not the same.

There is no continuous.

I may.

Well, but when it comes to the, the observer, or the.

Yeah, because they, you know, you have an aspect of consciousness.

That’s this observer things.

Oh, you know, I’m technically not the thoughts in my head.

I’m not the body that I’m kind of.

Okay.

But there’s still something that is this on there somewhere.

Exactly.

And the question that becomes, you know, if that’s still the observer that’s recognized them that that gets into the whole discussion around like that.

All sorts of things, because then it’s then it’s not like okay well you know it’s been proven pretty.

I mean, yes, as concretely as you can prove it that something continues.

There’s been studies on, like, Tibetan monks that have been declared clinically dead but have meditated for like hours.

And they’re still shown consciousness, to a degree.

So there’s still something from an energetic perspective that passes on that into the general consciousness that then it happens a new body, but is the thing that it has that new body the same I that was in this body, or is it, you know, that’s that’s the whole.

That’s the fundamental question that none of us are going to be able to answer until we get there.

And so where I’ve come to land on that, rather than being terrified is never going to know so I’m gonna have to find out what I get that if the lights just shut off.

Okay.

It is nothing I can do about it, or there’s nothing this body can do about it, or this consciousness.

So, part of that whole radical eccentric saying I guess.

Yeah.

Brings into a larger metaphysical inquiry.

So I’m going to bring it down, and then two minute, two minute.

Just technical terms, because I think it’s super helpful to be precise with language.

Okay.

So there’s a body.

Body is awakened.

What do we awaken to.

We awaken to our true nature.

Okay.

Now, in the Vedic traditions that was awakening to witnessing intelligence was positive as an actual metaphysical substance.

There was a, there was a metaphysical substrate at the basis of reality which was one.

And the goal of yoga was to realize the unity of that small piece of metaphysical substrate that lives within us that gives us witnessing intelligence and bliss.

Right.

Recognize the oneness of that with problem.

The whole, but the whole as a metaphysical right substrate and quality of ever new ever conscious bliss such.

Okay.

So, they also reject the conditionality of the ego, as some scars as mental impressions as fabrications as all of this other kind of stuff.

So the idea that their ego structure is impermanent and built out of conditioned impressions and sense contact and all that kind of stuff that’s not new to Buddhism.

Right.

What’s new to Buddhism is the idea that Aakman as a metaphysical essence permanent unchanging essence that lives within us is rejected.

So the Hindu idea of soul is rejected.

Okay.

And that’s what is called on not on not.

So then we come back into and so we ended up a whole.

The whole philosophy changes, so that the liberation in the Vedic tradition is the realization of that Aakman with Aakman, the reunification of our small part of Rahman with the whole Buddha is saying that actually liberation comes from deconstructing craving and in our conditioned psyche, so that we can realize and be with the unfolding of interpenetration, which is ultimate reality.

Okay.

And so that’s where self comes back in self is the is the body of the Buddha, the body of the Dharma, which is the interpenetration that we discussed in the yoga Tara perspective.

So it’s not self in the sense of a small metaphysical essence that lives in the size of your thumbnail in your heart region, right, as the medics would say.

But it is actually the interpenetrating unfolding process of the dynamic interplay of light, as we say in the Awakened One’s vow, the dynamic interplay of light as a positivistic expression is self.

And even though it’s super dynamic.

It is permanent, because all that is, is the dynamic interplay of light, so it’s not permanent in terms of static.

It’s permanent in terms of eternal.

When we touch into this we have unreasonable joy and bliss.

Right.

And then when we recognize that we have purity.

What, what is the purity, the purity is not a sense of moralistic good or evil.

Impure is a, a masking of that phenomenon through our mental conditions so the filters that happen in our sampharas that condition our experience, make it impure.

Even if we’re functioning from a conditioned reality that’s letting us do good in the world.

It’s impure, because we aren’t actually in touch with the interpenetrating reality.

Purity is just that we are in touch with a line was spontaneously emerging from and as the interpenetrating reality, even if that means that we have to punch somebody in the face.

Right.

And I think that that is just like, like, if you just eat that.

I like just really like eat that and and and digest those terms and those differences there’s so much beauty in having a belief in Atman, and, and unifying with Brahman, and as a practice, it contributes greatly to our experience.

And with just some few shifts in language and a slightly different insight about how the witness can only arise in relationship to what it is witnessing, like we studied in the Lama Vajra Sutra.

Then you shift over to the Buddhist perspective.

Right.

And now there’s not a permanent metaphysical essence there’s just this dynamic interplay of light, which is also full of bliss and also full of freedom, and also full of purity and liberation.

So, there’s my four minute technical breakdown on some stuff that might be pretty complicated so I hope that that was helpful.

So, it’s essentially the shift from something nugget.

Just constant movement.

Yeah.

I’m thinking that we’re a vessel with some water in it.

That breaks and goes back into the ocean.

Just a reason for just the way in the ocean.

Yeah, so it’s takes us that father.

Yeah.

I’m sure they would want to argue with that.

They can go right ahead.

Welcome.

That gets extremely close to the Maya perspective, the only difference is that the Vedanta, the Purusha, the Absolute, the unconditioned is held as hierarchically superior and property, everything on the other side of the veil the conditioned reality is Maya is the is, is a problem right as hierarchically inferior, whereas the Mahayana just says like the absolute expresses itself in the relative and the relative returns the absolute in this dynamic interplay of light, they’re hierarchically equivalence as one totality of And so again that would be the, if we’re looking at East Asian wisdoms from a more philosophical perspective.

That’s a clear distinction to keep in mind.

But then, most importantly, holding that into your, into your perspective.

And you can actually both are really beautiful.

Anyone can live in either perspective and really benefit humanity greatly this and there’s not a superior or inferior perspective from from what it does to us developmentally as people, but that’s a great inquiry to take into how am I seeing world.

Am I seeing this moment of conditioned ego structure as an inferior defilement of the absolute.

Or am I seeing it as an expression of the absolute that came through a structure, which is itself the absolute that through my connection to the awakened consciousness.

I can now engage with consciously, not defiled not impure, not, not doomed to be imperfect, but just this ongoing dynamic interplay of life.

Thank you all for that lovely Dharma discussion.

For one feel full of gratitude and enriched and recharge for my day.

We are several minutes after, so let’s go ahead and do our closing check in and let everyone get about their Sunday.

Robin start with you.

Oh, Robin checking in on what is a gorgeous day.

And just looking forward to bringing this this understanding and light into a little time with my son and then canoeing with some friends.

And recognizing how the ability to bring that light in with the people we love what a gift that is for ourselves and others.

I’m very grateful for the sangha in cultivating.

The mutual glowing of the embers, so to speak.

I mean, just with immense gratitude as always, it’s always great to come in and have a nice kind of reset or, or charge for the week coming up and I’m sure it’s going to be interesting.

And so it’s nice to have a good anchor point.

Okay, I’ll move forward from there.

So, for a great program.

Let me check in.

Yeah.

So fun.

I look forward to seeing y’all.

Not next Sunday.

Next Sunday is Labor Day.

We’re camping.

So, we won’t be here.

This room is always open though so if you guys want to connect and and have a practice on zoom with each other, that’s fine but I won’t be able to participate.

Oh, actually, I’ve got people coming from out of state.

So it’s good.

Things.

Yeah, all the things.

So yeah, eternally grateful to you all in two weeks.

Have a good one.

Yeah.

The post Equanimity, Boundaries, Precepts, Self appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

I’m getting a big pop-up, what’s that pop-up say?

Would you like to use Microsoft AI?

Hey, I’m back on the other side.

Yeah, I did click that one.

All is right in the world.

Well, good evening, everybody.

Glad to be with you.

We had a couple weeks off, which was hopefully nice.

Also, of course, missed you, missed the practice.

And a little bit of a regularity as we go forward, too, and we transition to Sunday.

So we’ll have this practice.

We’ll have the next practice on the 14th.

And then we won’t practice on the 21st, but we’ll convene on the 24th from 10 to noon.

Before we met from 8 to 10 on Sundays, which was a little bit rough.

So hopefully 10 to noon proves more sustainable and makes it able for more people to be consistent.

And yeah, so that’s the housekeeping item that needed to be put out there.

Otherwise, so I’ll have to see what weekend that is.

If I have my dad’s statement.

Yeah, it’s every other week.

So I did not because I’m Robin and Matt earlier I did not prepare more longer guitar section.

I figured that if we chose to do that, which is totally fine would be a great project to keep working on.

I’d wait until you’re kind of into our Sunday grew to get back into the, you know, really chugging through the content.

I figured we had like a lot of longer than our study without really pausing for integration, or to kind of just check in with how our life practices are unfolding.

So for the next couple weeks, or for this discussion next, and maybe our first one on a Sunday.

We’ll just have it be more open forum.

So, a chance to just kind of talk about what is it whatever is a live person or practice.

Of course I can take prompt and riff on it and then we can have a discussion, or anyone has a specific inquiry.

This is really just a place to understand how to live this way.

Right, the time of discussion.

Whether we’re doing a lot of guitar or another text or not is all period about investigating how to be live this.

What does this mean.

So yeah.

Where we at.

What’s the line.

Okay Matt checking in.

Yeah.

So, I took the, the inquiry of.

Is there something some ideal state, propping up and waiting for, or.

Yeah.

And I really couldn’t find that there was something I, like, specifically was nailing down on like this as an ideal state.

But what I, what I was realizing is that I wasn’t, you know, allowing, like the present moment to be that ideal state.

And that little revelation there kind of said a lot like that, even if, even if there’s not something specific that I’m still waiting, you know, or still feel that like that is yet to yet to come, you know, and so I’m creating a little bit of distance.

You know, and just in, in being opposed by doing that.

So, so anyway that that has been present this past week, for sure.

Rock on.

You passed the call.

Thanks for sharing.

So what does that mean to you.

It means I’m really not even like permitting myself to like fully inhabit reality, thinking that like there’s still more to do or still more to realize or still more to like, you know, I don’t know, like for peak experience to be like more regular or something.

I can’t.

Like I said, it’s really difficult to put my finger on like what that is that I’m creating that space for but like, but yeah it’s like it’s, it feels like a bit of a distance, you know, in just being who I really am.

So, so yeah it’s like it’s an inhibition is an additional veil that I’ve dropped, you know, over my own view, and I don’t know I think that’s a little bit of like, or it feels like it’s a bit of.

Maybe a very subtle level of like persistence like due to like some form of Western shame or something like that, you know, like, you know, identifying with consciousness, you know, and.

And yeah, I don’t know.

It’s something that I still I’m disengaged but.

But yeah, it’s, it’s an inhibition.

And it’s unnecessary the fabrication, it’s an idea, you know, doesn’t exist.

I mean, this is a form of, you know, my thought expression, you know, but, but that’s not me, you know, and part of what what’s closely related to that.

Is kind of like trying to spend more and more time, reminding myself that I’m not this body.

And so that they, they’re, they’re a bit, you know, they’re more than a bit related.

But, but they’re, but they’re still separated in their own ways, but.

But that’s kind of built through that if the first one was one day like the second one wouldn’t be as far as, like, what has been most present and what I’ve been like playing with, I guess the most.

And, and actually kind of dovetails that thing I mentioned before I’ve got that like community circle thing that I participate in as well.

And mostly it’s been like in a like support and participation role.

But we’ve got some questions that will be tossed directly towards us this week and that first question was something like, if there was some idea you could let go of what would that be, and if so, if you did like what, what would that show you or something that takes me right back to the same thing like I like what the idea of like, I am this body, you know, like that’s like, and body mind is like maybe a bit of a closer way of describing that but, but, but, you know, starting at the basic start with the body I suppose.

But anyway, I found that even that’s that’s like my honest truth to that answer.

But I find myself in this circle.

different, you know, ideas and degrees of woo.

I’m not really sure how much, you know, like, I think how comfortable I feel like just getting the real like that with this group and kind of opening that door or kind of like announcing, you know, like look how sophisticated this answer is, you know, or something like that.

So there’s a bit of resistance, you know, and being truthful in that space which to navigate.

I, you know, I ultimately just leave up until, you know, the game time decision like.

Anyway, that’s a lot of going on here.

Thank you.

Ryan or Robin have something that you’d like.

Let’s go, let’s just go around we’ll go around the horn first let’s do opening comments, opening comments.

So, Robin, do you have any opening comments either tying off to Matt, or on your own in terms of opening comments.

And I’m going to ask you a question if you don’t have any comments.

Yeah.

I’m leaning into what Matt had to say and and recognizing that voice in myself that has gotten much quieter that I’m not getting.

It’s not enough.

Something’s missing.

Recognizing for myself how much that voice is really quieted and I’m sure increase sitting over over the winter doing the Janice training, and also the the recognizing on a very visceral but just on a almost comical level.

How much all of our attempts to try to fix that.

That doesn’t work.

I’m not sure what else to say about that.

I love it.

Yeah, that’s beautiful.

Thank you for sharing that and, you know, you’ve been training hard, even trying to really hard for the last 12 months, 13 months, you know, and so to be able to sit here and take a meta perspective and to recognize some of those very self constructed barriers to your own awakening and liberation like they’re getting thinner.

Some of them have fallen away, they’re less presence, you know, so I think that that’s such a beautiful thing to just step into and name and Matt this, you know, kind of bringing this up to this, to, to be a place that is not filled with that false humility Westerners, you know, this is like, Oh, the training works, you know, and we get more awake, and we get more liberated.

And if we didn’t.

What are we doing here.

Practicing a very strict form of numbness.

Yeah, that’s exactly if that’s all it is I probably probably wouldn’t still be here.

There are more interesting ways to make my legs go asleep.

Thank you.

So, Ryan, opening opening statements from you.

Oh, my practice lately has been kind of an interestingly mixed bag of kind of making sure that I’m still very consistent in my practice you would care I’m going to sit, and it’s going to be strictly sitting, and, you know, breath counting whole nine yards at the same time.

Also, branching that out into the rest of my day.

So like being a dad of a young kid, also being musician that I’ve been kind of neglecting for a while I cracked a couple guitars back out.

And I’ve just been playing with the, the similarity between like improvisational playing and just that whole like musicians call it like flow state, or what you know whatever the same thing in martial arts.

Just kind of playing with the similarities and the differences between the two were, you know, every once in a while you’re playing you have moments where you just check out.

And then a minute, 30, whatever it is.

Okay, I don’t know what happened.

Then you record the whole thing you’re like, Oh, hey, that’s great.

Okay, that was.

But it’s an interesting, the, the, the conscious state between the two, it’s a very interesting entry play to kind of have that very present mindset between the two without actively like, Hey, what am I going to do next.

I’m going to do this.

What am I well in three bars I do this, you just moment after moment after moment.

And then I find that after I do that.

After I do that, you know, I’ll either sit before I’ll sit after.

And just, I don’t know, it’s been an interesting comparison between the two, between like very strict practice versus taking that kind of same idea out into other aspects of my day.

So, I mean it’s not exactly the strictest of Zen practices, but I think it’s still.

Or maybe not related between the two.

What’s the.

Was it.

I can’t remember what it is.

I can’t remember, there’s an acronym, basically means it’s like breaks down to like Zen and then it’s the Japanese word for like sword, and the Japanese word for like Zen can show think like all of them being connected.

As far as like the state of mind that you’re in while doing all three.

Yeah, it’s very Japanese.

Yeah.

And it’s like, I’d like to invite you and everyone to really be careful about what we call practice and what we call meditation.

Because meditation is one of the aspects of practice, practice and meditation are not the same thing.

That’s really a big, that’s a drum that I’m beating these days.

Yeah, it’s not a new drum for me to be on, but it’s to be very alive lately, right so like these two hours here are not our practice.

These two hours here are a gathering of like minded individuals where we get to come back to the well to appreciate the fact that we are not alone on our path.

And to have community in a period of time doing activities that we enjoy that are otherwise hard to do in community because the people around us don’t certainly enjoy them.

Right.

That’s what we’re doing here.

Right.

This is a community space to share in our, in our love for the Dharma.

The way that that’s expressed in Qigong and meditation and discussion is, is really relevant.

It’s embodied, it’s intellectual, and it’s still in silent.

Just like the rest of our life right so it’s a microcosm.

Practice is going out and being intimate with life.

That’s practice, the practice of Zen is being intimate with life.

So, when you are playing music, and you’re intimate with life, you’re practicing Zen.

When you’re in a discussion with your partner about something challenging that’s deeply unpleasant.

And you’re really locked in and right here and aware of your judgments and your, and your projections and all this stuff.

And you’re navigating it with the most skillful means you possess, including owning your failure for skillful means.

When you’re being intimate with life.

That’s practice.

Your kids being a horrible little demon, and you just want to choke them, not to death.

But until they stop being a horrible demon.

And you choose not to.

But you’re honoring the fact that that’s the dynamic that’s present.

You’re practicing Zen.

Intimacy with life.

Meditation is one of the greatest intimacies of life because we aren’t doing anything else except for being alive.

Right so meditation is just a flow state on not dying.

That’s really what meditation is.

And that’s why we get so many insights into life when we meditate, sit, don’t die.

Just flow state not die.

Great.

Now get up and do that in a more complicated way of like opening a door.

Okay, can you be flow state opening door not die.

Well, now, now you’re really advanced.

Now can you be flow state, having difficult discussion not die.

Now you’re in this.

I always thought it was a flow state dying.

That’s an interesting idea.

Interesting idea.

Same thing.

Yeah.

Depends on depends on our relationship to the ego.

And that and that circles right back around the map, you know, when when you think that this moment.

Isn’t it.

This moment isn’t your awakening this moment isn’t your liberation this moment isn’t complete as it is.

Well then you’re not with flow state with life, you know you’re not as intimate as you can be with life, you’re separating yourself from it through conditionality and should has and what isn’t good isn’t ifs and only buts, and all of these other processes.

This is the trick.

Okay, this is the thing that makes it so fucking hard is that you take just one step further back, you can have all of those should have could have would have only if buts being present in your mind and radically accepting them as part of the intimacy you’re having with life.

And you’re, you’re right here.

Even our deepest miseries are completely sublime.

That’s where it gets hard.

Or that’s where it gets easy to buy into.

Juicy.

Yeah.

So, I was reading an interesting article on, like, especially like lay practitioners as far as like, very strictly practice rather than the whole idea of like, especially when you’re first starting more you put you know like yeah I haven’t been practicing for a decade the idea of chasing can show chasing it you’re going to find it, you’re actively looking.

It’s not a thing.

Like, you’re like no you’re gonna have a moment of awakening.

Sometime.

Maybe.

Maybe you already got.

Maybe there is no.

And like it’s just this whole.

There’s just this whole article on like, you know, starting out like hey you’re potential trying too hard at this whole thing.

And I just an interesting read.

Yeah, especially for someone who’s never really like I’ve never sat and have like a. Oh, like there’s no clouds there’s no little big wings trumpets, whatever.

Yeah.

Okay.

Sit until something happens, or doesn’t happen, or just going to keep on keeping on.

But it’s, yeah, it’s an interesting, interesting topic to me, as far as like my personal practice goes like I’m just going to keep sitting.

Yeah, because I get a benefit.

Absolutely.

But as far as like some like the rooted getting experience.

Couldn’t say that it’s happened personal.

No.

But yeah, that’s a little necessarily where I’m going.

Outside of like the kind of nice of the day.

Yeah, like, we go to check that box off.

Yeah, outside of an intellectual understanding of the whole thing.

You know, but our intellectual understanding of the whole thing is what either enables or inhibits the thing from happening.

You know, the mind, only perceive, but it’s prepared to proceed.

And that ends up being really tricky.

And so, it’s worth, you know, it’s worth discussing because we are a branch of were founded from a rinzai perspective.

Right.

I run this from a rinzai perspective because that’s the Zen training that I received.

Although we’ve, in a lot of ways.

We’re kind of post lineage, because we don’t do a lot of like the rinzai form, because the awakening isn’t in the form I think the awakening is inhibited by the form for lay practitioners, you know being go be in the monastery and you can be in a really tight clean container for a really extended period of time the form really holds you, but our life is not structured that way.

So to try and think that we have to hold a strict form, when we come to the Zen though.

I think that anyway it just doesn’t appear beneficial.

But regardless, it’s still like we are here to see our true nature.

Each set is a set to see true nature.

And that’s a Kensho.

Okay, a Kensho is seeing nature.

What’s interesting is that’s different than a Satori, which is an awakening.

And you get different schools of thought on this but a Kensho is kind of like flash like a glimpse like a like lightning strikes.

There’s a, Oh, kind of a moment about it.

Whereas a Satori is when it’s like dawn has broken, and the space is just lighter, you just see it more clearly all the time, because it’s more illuminated.

Right.

You’re not drowsy or death.

No one here is dead asleep.

I know for a fact no one here is dead asleep, but we’ve all got crusties in our eyes to a certain extent.

And so the sun is rising.

So I think it’s important to feel that difference and then it’s important to recognize like what exactly that is because it’s really confusing.

If you investigate this topic in literature, you will find so many descriptions of Kensho that are contradictory and unclear and vague that you could be left thinking that is it, it’s a peak state of oneness.

Right.

A lot of Kensho experiences are peak states of oneness, which is actually not really what our true nature is.

Okay.

Asterisk.

Okay.

Oneness is a big part of that.

But more importantly it’s emptiness.

But then it’s like well oneness arises through emptiness.

That’s a much deeper form of Kensho than just feeling a unification experience.

There’s a whole group of people who think that cessation and blanking out completely is Kensho.

And you see your true nature once you’ve had a cessation experience and you realize that you just don’t exist.

of theology and a whole bunch of different metaphysics and cosmologies if that’s what you take as your true nature.

Right.

So what you are identifying as the intellectual construct of true nature greatly informs the type of meditation that one should be doing, and what you’re because you might have had many times what I would call a Kensho experience.

But if you were thinking a Kensho experience was this moment of like spiritual orgasmical oneness, which is not my definition of Kensho, then you would have missed my Kenshos.

Right.

So what’s a Kensho?

Definitely had some aha moments in there.

Right.

I mean that’s, it’s much easier to have it like, aha, no, that absolutely makes sense.

From an intellectual standpoint.

Well, what’s the difference?

Intellectual versus experiential.

Yeah, but if you’re going, aha, then you had an experience that you could intellectualize.

What are you, what are you intellectualizing that you haven’t experienced?

Fair enough.

I don’t have an argument for that at all.

Fair enough.

These dichotomies become really interesting.

And that’s what it is.

It’s a very interesting, like the more that you read into it, you’re like, somebody come up with a definition.

Like the point of a definition is that there’s one of them, not 75 of them that are all just slightly different.

And then it becomes this whole like, well, in my experience, well, in my experience, well, in this, I just have a meeting, agree on one of them.

Robin, do I see you getting ready?

It’s impossible.

And that’s the word of the problem.

It’s ineffable.

We just have our best, best attempts.

Oh, man.

I don’t know if anybody else watches.

What was that?

How I met your mother.

Ineffable.

Could you just call me?

I’m the only person that got that.

Never mind.

Moving on.

Robin, did I see you leaning in to say something?

Yes, I’m not sure what it was anymore.

But just kind of what our experience is, is what our experience is.

And that experience continually shifts and shifts and shifts and shifts.

I know I am guilty of wanting to block off the intellectual part of it.

And I have my reasons for that.

I always go back to if I can, if I can’t play in the dirt, if I can’t work in my garden and be completely present with whatever it is, what’s going on, then what the fuck am I doing?

The garden test is the ultimate test in my little world.

And so it doesn’t matter what fucking definition I have.

Can I be fully present?

That’s a description of attention.

Yeah.

Or even rather probably measure of awakening.

And I, and this, this is a context where Robin has found, like, a place to, like your music, right?

I’m sure you have a place like this too, where you can feel yourself drop away into a direct experience of what you’re doing.

And whether or not you have intellectual activity during that process is not the deciding factor.

It’s, are you able to witness the interpenetrating rawness of reality that’s happening right now.

That is the, that’s, that’s the meat of it.

All of the koan that are meant to deconstruct your conceptualization, all of the anti intellectual rhetoric is all based on stripping us away so that we can be fully engaged with what we’re doing.

And what we’re doing includes really radically intense intellectualization.

And that’s okay.

That still works.

That’s, that’s still an intimacy with life.

The only time it becomes seated.

Yeah, the only time it becomes a problem is when that’s inappropriate for the context that we’re in.

And that’s it.

It’s about this appropriateness and intimacy with the moment, and what the moment calls for.

And so, like for me it’s fight.

What set me on the spiritual path was fighting as a young man, and having out of body experiences where I was watching myself fight in third person and then having all these really trippy things happen.

And just being able to drop it to a close date and just fight for felt like for forever.

And that context, starting to think about my girlfriend was a problem.

That was not an appropriate time to engage in that form of intellectual activity, and it resulted in pain.

And I learned very quickly how to stay very present in the fight no matter what distractions are going on in my life.

Right.

But that doesn’t mean that when I was with her.

Thinking about her fully and completely was an inappropriate form of intimacy with the moment, right, it’s contextual appropriate.

And it’s arbitrary.

That’s the other thing there is no fixed way that skillful means happens there is no fixed form of appropriateness.

We have to be in tune, we have to be intimate with life to understand what is appropriate for the situation.

And now I feel like I’m getting ready to sell my book.

So, you can look for that leading the way it’s in the editing process.

Amazing.

Fingers crossed.

2020.

Yeah, little plug for that too.

I mean, like the cheerleader over here.

Now weaving the way is.

If you haven’t spent time with it.

Do.

Admittedly, prefer to read the passage without any of the introduction or commentary.

Just feel around with that.

And then pleasantly surprised usually like oh this is where this was going.

To get that internal resin.

Resonation is that the word I’m looking for.

With with that text.

It’s like a it’s a practice in itself to, you know, where, where is the juice here, where, where does it where does it the words cause you to align it right there.

To those who me Shambhala publication would be fantastic.

Oh my god.

Thank you.

Because basically, thou, thou is the, like the dynamic unfolding of life, we would call it the target of Garba, right, just like the dynamic presence of this is this suchness that was that’s the data generative force.

Right.

And it’s just our, it’s translated as integrity and the book, and it’s just the alignment to that.

And sometimes, and that’s what’s so radical about our way of life is that nothing is outside of the possibilities of what is required to be an integrity with the generative force of life.

So there is no morality, there is no violence is always bad there is no, you can’t yell at anybody that you know there’s none of that, there are definitely lots of, you know, checkpoints like hey, most of the time that’s going to create some damage.

So be sure that it’s worth the ripples you’re going to create.

But you may be the one who’s called to put the hammer down.

That might be your role in the harmony of the moment.

So be open to that possibility because that’s the only way you can be an integrity.

That’s the appropriate thing in that moment right and so there’s the text is this beautiful unfolding over 81 verses of stepping us into endow is cosmic unfolding as being a receptive container for all that is that also generates all that is, and then walks us through almost 40 verses of, like, what does that look like to be a human being that that is in touch with that in any given moment.

Yeah.

I love it.

And it’s remarkably relevant to this conversation.

I’m noticing that we’re already at time.

So let’s go ahead and do a closing check in.

Right.

And let’s just as a as a practice, see if you can somehow tie your closing check in to what you opened your check in with what what from the conversation loops back into what you came with to to iterate it.

Just, even if it’s just a small increment, like what’s, what’s maybe one little shift that happened in the same topic that you’re checking in.

tie a couple.

Okay.

Right.

You want to go first right and then we’ll go over to Robin and then Matt.

Right.

A couple of moments there.

You know, Robin’s comment on, you know, everyone’s experience of a given moment is their own experience and so there is not a single definition there.

That’s a great.

That’s a great little aha.

And that maybe there is no answer.

Your experience is the answer.

Your personal experience, because no one else is going to be able to define that outside of there’s, yeah.

I could tie a couple things in there.

I’m going to turn that for a while, which sounds incredibly fun.

Always grateful to be here, and I always leave with another fun.

Sometimes frustrating sometimes not so frustrating nugget that you want for the coming week so as always, I’m grateful for everybody.

Thank you so much for sharing the space.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I guess I touched on the the lessening of the, the doubting voice.

I think maybe what’s there right now with that is the importance of also embracing that voice.

Not necessarily listening to it, but honoring that it’s there.

Letting it set aside.

Thank you.

Yeah, for what you talked about a little bit earlier, about Ken Cho and Tori.

My personal experience has been, it’s not so black and white.

It’s this total gradient, you know, of sudden flash of something that sustains for a moment, something that sustains for minutes, something that sustains for hours, something that sticks around for days.

And, and so the part that’s been, you know, a bit puzzling for me is having a sustained moment of clarity, where everything becomes so obvious, you know, and so like, I’ve done this before.

I’ve gone here before.

And something that is so intimate, for it to go away, you know, over the course of, you know, like, days or weeks, it just kind of recedes and fades away.

It’s been puzzling.

But, but yeah, part of what I think is going on in the mechanics of that, which is leading to my experience is that as intimate as something could have been, I still have this, I have these residual impressions, I have this, you know, my, my repository consciousness is still holding on to some of these ideas.

And it’s not, there’s no, there seems to be no rhyme or reason.

But when the conditions are right, the thought pops up in some subtle form.

And then I start reinforcing that previous, you know, idea of who I am, what I am, and what I’m not.

And like, it’s below the surface.

And so I think what’s happening, like, as like, you know, okay, I have a type of understanding or whatever you want to call it.

And then yeah, there’s little opportunities to, you know, to dissipate that karma.

And, and there’s subtle, subtle things.

It’s not something overt, it’s not some blatant thought that happens, you know, just, it’s so, and it’s so wispy.

Like, you can’t even touch it, but like, but the reinforcement of that, and like recycling of that karma, it’s like, okay, that went back in, it’s going to pop up again.

opportunity to see through it, and just watch it and recognize this is my, that idea is my, I’m not the thought, I’m not this mind, I’m not this body, like, you know, and so I think I’m missing those little subtle opportunities.

And I got to be a little bit more consistent, you know, with, you know, in that case, with meditating on something, as opposed to just, you know, to being.

So yeah, I’m seeing, there is that, like, yes, like, I have been trying to, like, be more, I’m certainly not, you know, right, what you were talking about earlier about people who are like, squeezing it, trying so hard and meditating so much.

I’m like, I like slacking off here.

And kind of, yeah, like, I do need to, like, work on a little bit more concentration as I kind of hold that, like, what am I trying to change?

There is no one thing, you know, it’s not this destination.

But I’m not like, as present, you know, or reinforcing something, you know, that’s enough of that.

But I think you guys get the gist of what’s going on.

Oh, with that.

Thank you.

That was a very yoga Charan check in.

It’s like a little discourse on the lump.

When we check in with joy and delight, this practice comes at a good time.

For me, as I just, I just had a day where it’s just sick of everybody’s shit, you know, and I like I could feel, I could feel the sublimeness of just being sick of everybody’s shit, you know, and by and large, I’m pretty okay with the skillful means I employed, you know, patient voice in the patient time, like a more assertive voice at an appropriate time, like, by and large, I give myself like a B for the day.

If my kid bring home as a B on a school project, I’m not going to be yelling at them.

So like, I’ll give myself a little grace for this.

But it was a great conversation to have today and take back into the final weeks before school starts.

And there’s all the crazy and everyone wants everything all the time and all of the all of the stay at home dad stressors are kind of that max level.

And yeah, a real a real reminder for that intimacy doesn’t mean that it’s gonna be nice.

Doesn’t mean it’s gonna be pleasant.

Sure is going to be life.

I can, I can be intimate with it, whether I like it or not.

So those perfectly time for me.

Thank you all very, very much.

I look forward to seeing you next week.

Night everyone.

The post Intimacy, Practice, and the Many Faces of Awakening appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

Okay, our recording is in progress.

Welcome everybody.

Michael, good to have you back with us for today.

We have been working our way through chapter 2, section 9.

We were starting the verse portion.

And it looks like there’s a pretty good likelihood that today we will finish that.

So I think that’s pretty much where we’re at.

Before we dig into all this bidness, does anyone have anything that’s alive for them in their practice or around the Lankapotara that they’d like to discuss before we jump into anything new?

And also, I want to make sure we stop early enough to discuss what we’re going to do after chapter 2, section 9.

So I’m just going to bookmark that right now.

Yeah, last week you, near the end of the discussion, you were reading something from the Lanka, I believe, and you talked about revolving, the term revolving was used.

And I tried to find that and I could not.

Now, do you know offhand what that was?

Yeah, you tried to find it in Red Pine or you tried to find it in my translation?

In Red Pine.

I couldn’t find your translation.

Okay, this should be up on the website, but that’s okay.

All I could get was the past discussions.

But not last week’s.

Yeah, last week’s discussion never got up because my computer died before I could do that.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to get it up with this one.

We’ll see.

So Red Pine, where would he translate?

Let’s see.

I have the Chinese and mine here.

So let’s see how he translates the same idea.

All kinds of consciousness revolve.

He has breaks and swells again.

Okay.

And he just kind of skips over the technical term revolve.

There are other areas in the text where the same character is used.

Where in this one?

Yeah, is there something about that term in specific that you wanted to?

I would love to hear the line that it was in again.

So last time we were talking about the verse section, and I feel like this is out of order.

Okay, so I think it says, like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

I was wrong.

Let’s see.

Let me find the same spot.

Like ocean waters.

Okay.

So let’s see.

Mine is azure, red, every kind of color, alabaster, milk, and crystallized honey.

Delicate tastes, multitudes of blossoms and fruit, sun, moon, and radiant light are all not different and not not different.

Ocean waters rise in waves.

So too, seven consciousness and chitta co-arise and emerge.

Like ocean waters transformation, waves of every kind revolve.

So too, seven consciousness and chitta co-arise and emerge.

Call this the domain of alaya-vijnana, all kinds of consciousness revolve.

And he has the same section translated as blue and red in every color, milk and sugar and conch shells, fragrances and fruits and flowers, the sun and moon and light.

Like the ocean and its waves are neither separate nor not separate, seven forms of consciousness rise together with the mind.

Like the ever-changing sea gives rise to different waves, repository consciousness gives rise to different forms.

Mind, will, and consciousness, these refer to different forms, but forms devoid of differences, no seer or thing seen.

As the ocean and its waves cannot be divided, the mind and the forms of consciousness cannot be separated.

The mind, what gathers karma, the will, the mind is what gathers karma, the will considers what is gathered.

The forms of consciousness are conscious of five apparent worlds.

So you can see they’ve become quite different.

Right, right.

Now, one, your translation resonates and there’s a lot of confusion about what you’re saying.

One, your translation resonates and there’s a, there’s a visual revolving almost like, where it’s like the red pine is just like, what?

So anyway, thank you for sharing that again.

You’re welcome.

I’m glad that mine creates that visual, the gesture you’re doing with the hands is exactly the feeling that it’s supposed that it gives to me.

So right or wrong, at least I communicated the intention of.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It’s like spheres.

Yeah.

A Mobius strip of nesting sphere bubbles.

I have a question while we’re on that.

Can you guys hear me?

Okay.

I’ve been having trouble with my computer.

Yeah, you sound crystal clear.

Okay.

So the, so the Lankavatara, the Yogacara school is always referring to the mind.

It’s, it’s a mind-owned thing.

And so what you were just describing about all the, all these things return to this, that there’s no separation.

And so, and I know that the mind only is one thing here and then mind only that Bodhidharma picks up on and starts teaching is something different, as I understand it.

Yeah.

Could you say more about what mind only is in this, from this perspective, Yogacara?

Yeah.

So Bodhidharma was a Dhyana master.

Okay.

And this is my understanding.

Let me just preface that by saying, my understanding is that Bodhidharma was a Dhyana master.

Okay.

And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and so my understanding of your question is that Bodhidharma did not really teach the philosophy of Yogacara, or at least his, his recorded sermons did not record much in the way of the philosophy and the doctrine of the Yogatara and system.

Yes, I see that right.

However, his, his, uh, the sutra that he transmitted to his disciples was the Lankavatara sutra.

So all his recorded sermons do not record the, him teaching on the doctrine of the Lankavatara sutra.

What we get in his sermons is a type of pedagogy about how to have the direct realization of self-knowledge.

Yes.

And so I think what happens here is that when we put them together, we have the method of direct realization that Bodhidharma teaches, and then the doctrine and understanding of what self-realization is that he carried, that he held in the Lankavatara sutra.

And while his sermons don’t duplicate the information of the Lankavatara sutra, the overall philosophy and, um, we would imagine that the, the understanding, the worldview was Yogatara, even though the, the pedagogy and what he was recorded as teaching was the method of direct realization, not the contents of that realization.

Yes.

And it is my understanding doing a brief research.

I just, so, I mean, as it was conveyed to me is that, yeah, he, he didn’t, he goes, he, he did this wall gaze.

He started teaching wall gazing.

Just sit, just sit.

Don’t worry about all of the cosmology and all of the previous, uh, notions of what is mind only.

And, um, so it was the direct experience.

He was stripping away all the scholarly, you know, um, uh, verbose kind of journey through what is mind only, but, but going back to the Yogachara school, when they talk about mind only, like what is the essence of mind in that, in the Yogachara?

So they’re the, they’re the same.

So when he says, um, uh, he says, uh, Ekai, um, no, is it Ekai?

No.

Um, is that whoever his first disciple was that I’m blanking on right now?

The guy who chopped off his arm, um.

Bodhidharma’s?

Yeah.

Bodhidharma’s first disciple.

I think it was Huike or something.

Huike.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Huike.

So the famous koan from that exchange was, um, I can’t pacify my mind.

And Bodhidharma replied with bring me your mind and I’ll pacify it for you.

And he goes and he meditates for a long time.

He’s like, I can’t find it.

And he’s like, there you go.

It’s pacified.

Um, and I think what that tells us is that Bodhidharma was kind of a reactionary to people taking the philosophical doctrine of Yogacara and turning it into an intellectual debate.

And, um, once you have that basis, then you need to shut up and you need to go have the direct realization, because this is a realm of self-realization like the Lankavatara opens with.

Um, the very first discussion we had was that this is not for a rhetoric.

This is not for logicians.

This is only realizable through direct meditative experience.

And so both in both schools, mind is the dynamic interplay of seeds and perfumes and, um, the, the, the phenomenology of experience of interpenetrate the deep investigation of interpenetration and Chitta mind in this case is the dynamic quality of interpenetration.

And so in Yogacara, like that interpenetration of exploring through Jnana practice and, and, or resolving the dharmas and dhatus and all of that through that mind experience, you’re going to purify or something or come to a greater realization.

Yeah.

Well, in a way you can’t, there’s nothing to purify.

That’s where a lot of, this is where it starts to go into a lot of Zen talk.

Is that there’s nothing to purify.

It’s just the function of the mind.

And the, the only thing that there is, is there’s confusion about how the mind works and that confusion is what makes people suffer.

Right.

And when you’re not confused, then you don’t suffer.

And there’s nothing to purify.

Okay.

I guess I’ll let it go, but I’m still not clear.

Like what’s the essence of when, when Yogacara says mind only, you know, like we come back to Buddha nature, not knowing in Zen of, it’s not even thinking, don’t even think about it.

It’s just being present, presence.

Don’t think, you know, sit down, shut up.

Well, I had a question.

Shut up.

So that’s a methodology.

And, and, you know, frankly, one that can be very effective, but also one with a great deal of limitations, but it’s a method for direct experience, which is not what the yoga charns are doing.

So the yoga charns are laying out a doctrinal framework for the process of liberation.

They are not in the Lankavatara laying out the method by which one comes to direct realization.

The way that we’re using it in here is slightly different than what the yoga charn philosophical school was doing, because we are marrying it with our Zen lineage, which is to say that we are, I am inviting us into the text as a koan to use the language of the text to deconstruct us into the direct experience by, by directly pointing to what liberation is.

And that’s something that we’re doing here as a kind of, how do we use the study of doctrine in a way that aligns with the emphasis of direct experience?

I hear you.

I’ve got to, I’ll just put it simply, what is mind only from the yoga charn perspective?

And the answer to that question would be that mind only means that the only thing that we can experience is the contents of our own mind interplaying with itself.

Gotcha.

Perfect.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you.

I will say that my brief definition is somewhat lacking because it is both, it is about the way of knowing and an investigation of the way of being.

And so it bridges the categories of ontology and epistemology.

So, you know, it’s like all there is, is our mind knowing itself might be a little bit closer to what they mean by mind only, which is actually suspiciously similar to Buddha nature.

I guess, I guess to clarify even further, like, so they, you know, in that sutra, they’re talking mind only through the yoga charn school, which would be perhaps a break from what was being taught before.

So if they’re teaching mind only in this way of, what are they kind of pushing off against or refuting?

Is it more like dualistic teachings and devotionalism and things like that?

Yeah.

So they were, I would say that the yoga charn school was primarily looking, so against the Sarvastivadins and the Vasasthikas, those are two dualistic schools that had a form of kind of atomism, or they had some sort of creator, or they had, you know, some sort of basis, a dualistic reference for how things work.

And so this was a sharp break from their dualism.

And then in terms of Madhyamika, basically the yoga charns were dissatisfied by the idea or with the idea that there is no value in the use of language.

And so where the Madhyamikans would go into a, basically into a sentence of absurdum, you know, like negation to the point of absurdity, yoga charns would basically say like, well, there are affirmations we can make about the human experience that have value.

And they don’t say that the language themselves, you know, part of what we would get to if we stay with the Lankavatara is that language itself is something we need to be liberated from.

But they would also say that language directly points to self-realization.

And so to negate the entire relative frame in favor of the absolute frame is a form of dualism that is also unhelpful, right?

But that’s kind of the, even though the Madhyamikans are generally considered non-dual, they like fetish the absolute in a certain way from a yoga charn perspective.

And this is kind of a correction against that fetish.

Yes.

OK, I kind of see that evolution from, you know, prior to yoga charn.

It could be, you know, the Buddha’s out there or a dualistic teaching, perhaps devotionalism.

We can really get really into this long-winded view of what is the nature of emptiness.

And yoga charn comes on and says, well, we’re not even looking outward anymore.

We’re just realizing that this is all arising in our mind and we can deal with that.

And then Bodhi Dharma comes off and says, well, you’re still thinking too much.

Just sit, you know, and I don’t mean that in a negated way.

It’s like I almost see that he’s a precursor to scientific thought of just get out of all the philosophy of the religion and just be present.

Yes, yes.

And I and I based purely based on what ended up being his lineage and the rich philosophical Buddhistic underpinnings of his predecessors, he had to be teaching something else because even like some time, the third patriarch wrote the beautiful faith in mind piece.

Right.

Which was a beautiful mind only non-dualistic poem that is rich with doctrinal intelligence.

So even though the recordings we have of what Buddha Dharma taught are exactly like what you say, the subcontext of what he taught that didn’t get recorded had to have included doctrinal framing on mind only and what was going on from this perspective.

Right.

Otherwise, why would his almost immediate predecessors have the same kind of framing in their teachings?

You know, that’s that’s more of a logical deduction that I make.

But yes, in the in the recorded Anathalaya of Buddha Dharma, it’s exactly like what you’re talking about.

Yeah.

OK, I could get I could want to go into nuances here, but let’s let me open it up.

We could involve others here.

That’s fine.

Good questions.

Anything coming up on that conversation?

OK, am I am I understanding this correctly?

I’ve heard you use, Umi, and then I heard Michael use this like your mind or my mind, like to use that language.

Do you mean that like a part, like everything’s arising in in like my mind, like a personal mind?

Or are we really talking about, you know, what what like Genpo Roshi would call big mind?

And I don’t think he coined the term either.

What it sounds to me like it’s talking about is philosophical idealism, which is another way to say that, like the most irreducible substrate of reality is pure mind.

Meaning this is a mental reality like it, like we can examine things and break it down and break it down, but it can’t be broken down any further than mind itself.

But that’s not a personal mind in any way, although I suppose this experience of personal minds could occur within that larger thing.

Am I understanding it correctly or is this mind only terminology, which I was also curious about?

Is it talking about something a little bit different?

So far, as I’ve done my detailed examination of the Chinese, there is no possession of any of these qualities, but the framework is self-realization.

So it’s kind of saying in a way it’s like the mind that you realize.

It doesn’t really talk about who owns that mind.

Is it transpersonal?

Is it individual?

It doesn’t so far hasn’t gotten explicit about that.

And my readings of the English versions that I’ve read have never really clearly made any sort of metaphysical claim about whether it’s personal or transpersonal.

It’s just saying that self-realization is the realization of the function of mind without any possessive quality to it.

And there are Yogacharan branches that went into such a pure form of idealism that it got kind of weird, as in like they would try to refute the idea that other people even existed.

So then they started getting into all these debates around like, well, how can I know that you have a mind?

Well, I deduce that you have a mind because, well, first off, I can’t.

I can’t know that you have a mind.

So you might just be an NPC in my own mind and I have no idea that you are even real in any way, shape or form.

And this is pure idealism.

There is no external feedback coming into the system at all.

We are solely living in our own mental matrix.

The more mainstream Yogacharan school does seem to say that there is an external form seed that interacts with our internal perfuming, and that it doesn’t necessarily deny the validity of things outside of our physical body.

But it also does not locate the mind specifically within our physical body.

And these, I believe, are precisely the types of debate structures that made them go to China and sit on a mountain and say, shut up.

Who cares?

How about we just realize our mind and then we live from that realization and stop trying to answer unanswerable questions.

I like this guy.

Yeah, fair enough.

I think back a lot to Junpo’s insistence on certain language patterns, like saying this awareness.

So as to, you know, you could take a fake it till you make it approach there, but it’s kind of the difference between saying like my mind and this mind, like it does.

For me, at least the language I use does shape what my consciousness does or does not experience as well.

Absolutely.

And that’s very much a key central part of the Lankavatara’s teaching.

We’re actively creating our reality through the way we think about our reality.

Those become the future perfumes.

It’s very similar to Western ideas of logos and hermetism.

Yeah.

Yep.

Would you mind bounding on those a little bit?

I don’t know what those are.

Yeah.

So in Western spiritual heritage, there’s a school of thought, hermeticism.

You hear it different ways.

Hermeticism is usually what happened later.

Hermetism is usually closer to the Hellenic period where it evolved from.

So we’re talking about like early couple of hundreds A.D. in Greek.

And they had an emanation theory, which is the divine manifested into physical form.

And our job as physical beings is to return to the divine.

But in that they are kind of like radical monotheists and that we already are completely in the divine and we can’t be anything other than completely in the divine, which is very similar to saying that everything is mind only.

And then in their teaching, they express that logos, which is the divine word, creates reality.

And as we engage what we would think, what they would call theological practices, but we would call meditation.

They use mostly like mantras and visualizations, but it was fundamentally cessation experiences.

We say that they would say that we return to the source of logos and therefore our own our own words become the divine creative forces.

And therefore the power of language is critically important to those spiritual traditions.

Very similar to how we recognize that language shapes reality in the Dhammapada and in the Lankavatara.

Thank you.

Very similar time periods in history, too.

So a lot of parallel development going on.

What years did you say again?

About zero to 300 AD is kind of the rough range.

So when my ancestors were hitting each other with sticks.

Thank you.

Oh, yeah, Michael, go ahead.

And I’m kind of looking forward to like, after all of this kind of refuting in this Lankavatara, in this dialogue, Bodhidharma goes off and he creates, I think what if my understanding, one of the first texts that arises out of his teachings is the two entrances where he focuses on the entrance principle and the entrance of practice.

So it’s practice in principle.

It’s that very sharp, distinct, non-thinking, not anti-intellectual, but be more present and work with how present you can be to circumstances and how empty you can be doing that.

And so that’s where we get into those really economical, pithy kind of teachings unfolding.

Perhaps.

Yeah, what’s interesting about that sermon, if I recall it correctly, is that entrance by the principle is basically it’s like everything is your mind only.

You are interpenetrating, co-arising.

That’s it.

Have a nice day.

If you believe it well enough and you hear it and you’re done, then you’re done.

That’s it.

You don’t need to do anything else.

You’ve achieved the liberation that Buddhism provides.

And then through practice is like, okay, cross your legs, cross your eyes, sit down, shut the fuck up.

Also, by the way, there’s a whole string in there about how to respond to people who are violent to you and all sorts of like almost like karma yoga in the entrance by practice as well, if I recall that sermon correctly.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, it’s not just to bring a little piece in.

It’s not about that kind of dull, you know, whatever, whatever.

There’s the notion of the four practices like retribution, contemplation, realizing that your actions have results and acceptance of circumstances, basically not reacting to various circumstances, the absence of seeking, and then walking in accordance with the Dharma, the six perfections, generosity versus hoarding, discipline.

And so there’s a way and it’s just kind of more economically clear and like, you know, go get a job, stop thinking about all this stuff.

You know, that’s my humor, but it’s very, it’s very, go get into, it’s a very layman’s kind of view kind of.

Well, except for the fact that it requires nine years of wall gazing.

Yeah.

Well, they pulled that back after a while.

I think, take it out of three, but, but I, okay.

I’m just getting off into a different direction now with what Bodhidharma was doing.

So that’s probably now what we’re into.

So that’s great.

It’s, it’s relevant in the sense that it is to reconcile the difference between method and methods, right?

And so the method we’re using here is a little bit different.

But it’s also not really, I’m assuming that people are still doing things like living according to their precepts and, and embracing the perfections and fundamentally evolving their self on the personal relative spectrum, which are the preliminary practices of all bodhisattvas that have to be cultivated throughout our practice.

And actually in the verse that it ends with something along the lines of, oh gosh, where are they?

There’s a line in here that says practice reveals suchness, right?

So, you know, Dogen got really famous for the idea that practice is enlightenment.

Well, practice reveals suchness is a line in this particular verse as well.

So it’s what we use it’s what we do.

What we do is suchness.

We are suchness.

And there’s suchness that’s built off of dualistic confusion.

And there’s suchness that arises from non-dual self-realization.

And obviously this tradition biases the idea that non-dual self-realization is a better, is a more liberated form of existence.

Yeah.

Thank you.

How about I just read this and then we’ll have, we’ll have read all of 2.9 and then we’ll say the last few minutes for the idea as to whether or not we want to start doing something else.

Although Ryan and Matt aren’t here in their stalwarts, generally speaking.

So I’ll have to make sure we reach out to them before we pull the rug out from under them on the Lankavatar discussion.

But here’s, here’s the, here’s the English for the closing of chapter two, section nine and my translation.

At that time, Mahamati asked in verse, the characteristics of ocean waves, their drumming and leaping can be distinguished.

Alaya and karma are like this.

How then do we fail to awaken?

The Bhagavan replied in verse, ordinary beings lack prajna.

Alaya is like a great ocean.

Karma appearances, karma perceptual appearances are like waves.

Rely on this simile to understand.

Basically the idea is if our awareness and the contents of our awareness are all raised already separate, then how can we fail to awaken?

And ordinary beings lack prajna.

What’s prajna is developed by our meditation practice, right?

So that’s the short version of that exchange.

At that time, Mahamati asked in verse, the sun’s rays illuminate equally lower, middle and upper sentient beings.

Tathagata illuminates the world.

Speaking of suchness for the ignorant, having already distinguished all dharmas, why not speak of reality?

So Michael, this speaks a little bit to your question as why all this talk about the dharmas and not just going straight to suchness.

Then the Bhagavan replied in verse.

If one speaks about suchness, their citta lacks suchness.

Now the verse here is quite vague and I’m just going to pause for a second.

I believe that the there here is that it is the, when we speak about suchness, two things are going on.

We are separated from suchness, but that does not mean we can’t speak from suchness.

And also we can deprive others of their experience of suchness by confusing them through our speech.

It also means that ignorance and a lack of ignorance co-arise.

So there’s lots of different ways that this line could be interpreted.

It’s quite vague.

So anyway, if one speaks about suchness, their citta lacks suchness.

Like ocean waves reflected in a mirror or in a dream, all simultaneously manifest.

Citta realms are also like this, meaning the content that’s reflected and the reflection all simultaneously exist.

Because realms are not fully actualized, karma unfolds in sequential becoming.

Meaning if we don’t have enough prajna, then we aren’t fully actualizing the experience of our mind only process.

Therefore we experience karma as unfolding in a sequence.

Consciousness is conscious of what can be known.

Manas naturally takes it to be real, which is our selfing process.

The five senses manifestation lacks a set sequence.

So our five senses can manifest in any particular order or form.

We are conscious of what we can be conscious of.

We are only ever conscious of something.

Manas takes our experience to be real and separate from ourselves.

Like a skilled painter and their apprentice, adding colors to the outline of every image, I say it is like this.

I believe that’s referring to the fact that consciousness and manas are constantly filling in the picture of the outlines of our experience.

Colors essentially lack designs.

Neither brush nor silk have them either.

Meaning none of these things are functionally distinct in their design.

Just for pleasing sentient beings, they weave and color many images.

As a sentient being, we’re putting all of this together into a picture.

Our mind is turning all of this raw sensory input and our perfuming, all of these seeds and vasanas, is turning it into this ongoing movie picture we call our lived experience.

Speech and action are distinct.

Tathata, suchness, is separate from names.

Vekalpa, discrimination, responds to initial karma.

Practice reveals suchness.

So this is where it’s saying, it doesn’t really matter what you say about yourself, it matters what you do.

It doesn’t matter what you know, it matters who you are.

Even though you talk about suchness and you use it to describe things, it itself is not bound by any of your words.

However, vekalpa, which is our discriminating intelligence, responds to initial karma.

Our initial karma is thought, word, and deed.

And so we have this recursive loop of how the way we think about our reality, the words we use about our reality, condition our reality.

And then practice reveals suchness, which is basically the cultivation of the buddhadharma, the way reveals the direct experience of life.

The place where suchness, let’s just say suchness, the place where suchness self-awakens, awareness is separated from what is known.

This is spoken to the sons of buddhas, the ignorant, falsely discriminate.

All things are like illusions, though they appear, they lack reality.

Such are the various teachings, adapted distinctly to circumstance.

What is said does not necessarily accord, and for those to whom it does not accord, it is not true speech.

Basically saying if the teaching isn’t right for the student, then that student isn’t going to recognize it as true.

And so that’s why there’s so many different kinds of teaching.

Each sick person the doctor treats according to their condition.

The Tathagata, for sentient beings, teaches each in accordance to citta, in accordance to their specific causes and conditions and perfuming, in order to unlock the realm of self-realization.

Wangxiang is not a realm.

Sravakas have no part in this realization.

Sravakas, as we heard in the meditation, or the meditation reading, are those who build their reality based on the interplay of causes and conditions in a fundamentally dualistic way.

So they don’t see that their falsely discriminated subject-object experience that they take as real is not actually a real realm.

It’s illusion.

What the compassionate one teaches is the domain of self-realization, the domain of the realization of mind.

Chapter 2, section 9 is concluded.

Gong!

Six weeks later on that section.

So we are pretty much at the end of time for our session today.

If you just don’t say for our session today and just say we are at the end of time.

I like that.

I almost just let it linger.

There’s the dramatic pause.

So the question is, before we completely wrap, is there any reflections on the final section there?

Or questions, comments, concerns?

Well, just one clarification.

So is suchness the same as in other teachings of Buddha nature, pure consciousness itself, thoughts without a thinker?

That suchness is just the essence of one’s conscious, you can’t even say one’s, you know, it’s just the essence of consciousness.

The best that I could get to it is the dynamic interplay of light.

Is the dynamic interplay of light.

Which some people would say is Buddha nature, but in other cases that’s not what people say is Buddha nature.

Buddha nature gets used all sorts of different ways.

Right.

And it’s not pure awareness.

It’s not the experience of pure awareness either.

Suchness is the whole interpenetration of all that is, which is why it’s beyond all language.

So any labeling, any thinking of me as a being or suffering, or I’m looking at a tree, all of these labels are just human made mind constructs.

And it’s just an interplay.

Like in the field of quantum physics, down at the essence of quantum physics, it’s just waves.

There’s no, and we are waves, everything’s waves.

We’ve evolved into labeling and solidifying and taking seriously all this stuff, but in essence.

Yeah.

So right.

Suchness is saying that suchness is what you said.

And also we have evolved and the labeling slices and dices, what isn’t fundamentally sliced and diced.

Right.

And the issue from a Yogachara perspective is not that we slice and dice.

It’s not that there’s no, it’s not that I’m looking at a tree, doesn’t have a relative value that is functional and useful.

It’s just that as humans, we get more, we think that our sliced and diced reality is more real than the oneness reality.

And that is the problem.

Yeah.

So as long as we can use language while we’re fully aware of the underlying dynamic interplay of light and that we’re kind of playing a game to be functional, then it’s fine.

Okay.

No attachment.

See it as it is.

Right.

Okay.

We have to go.

Oh yeah.

Wonderful evening.

Okay.

Real, real quick.

Do you want to continue just a vote?

Yes or no vote?

Do you want to continue the Lankavatara?

I’m ready to be done.

Ready to be done.

Okay.

There’s one vote for moving on.

Great.

Okay.

Have a great evening.

See you, Robert.

Greg, where are you at on continuing the Lankavatara versus picking up something?

We don’t have to decide what we’re going to pick up because there’s, that’s not maybe the time for that, but more Lanka or something else?

Oh, I don’t know.

I’ve been rather enjoying it and it’s been something I’ve been wanting to explore for a while.

So I’ve enjoyed having the opportunity to explore it.

If you thought there was certainly more of value there to delve into, I would say, stick with it.

Okay.

So you’re not fatiguing of this particular type of discussion?

Oh no.

No.

I mean, I feel like we’re scratching the surface.

There’s a lot left if we wanted to keep going.

Yeah.

But I mean, I wouldn’t be heartbroken if we moved on to something else either.

That’s fine.

But I do like studying these, studying, just investigating classical texts this way.

Like I am enjoying that.

And if it turns out we’re as a group, we’re ready to move on, but you want to do that, if it turns out we’re as a group, we’re ready to move on, but you want to do that, and we can always do that offline or outside of the Sanghas training period.

Sure.

Potentially.

Yeah.

And Michael, do you have a vote that you would like to cast for more Lanka or something else?

Yeah.

Well, you know, first a caveat, I wouldn’t give my input too much weight because I think my attendance is going to be rather patchy.

And so, I’ll be dropping in for the intellectual stimulation, but if it’s this or a different way for a different study, I would be dropping in on either or, if it’s okay with you guys.

Yeah.

Open doors then.

It means that you can come and go.

Thank you.

Perfect.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, thanks everybody for weighing in.

If you have to go, please feel free.

We’re five after.

I don’t mean to keep you past.

And if you’d like to have a closing check-in, I would appreciate that process.

Michael, since you’re, what, do you just want to go ahead and do your closing check-in?

Oh, yeah.

So, yeah.

Again, thanks.

I enjoy the intellectual stimulation and the exploration and the clarification.

So, yeah.

Gratitude, enjoyment, enjoy the shared mind activity.

And I’m in, I’m out, I’m alive, and I’m dying.

And that’s all an illusion too.

So, thank you.

All right.

I don’t know where this came from, but it’s stuck in my brain.

It’s been stuck in my brain for a long time.

And this is about suchness, my understanding of it.

It’s called The Three Great Mysteries.

A fish unto water, a bird unto air, and a man unto himself.

And it’s the third of those that I think of as touching on suchness.

Yeah.

Anyways, I enjoy these every time.

And yeah, I am eternally in.

Let me check in with joy and gratitude to have completed this particular section of the Lankavatara and for all of the lovely discussions that it yielded from it.

And yeah, we’ll be here next week and we’ll see what we do.

Thank you all for weighing in with your thoughts and with your ongoing presence.

Take care.

Bye.

The post Lankavatara 2:IX verses part 2 appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

Good to see you.

Audio coming through okay?

Good.

For those of you unfamiliar, the reading today was not from the Mahatma Tara, as you may have figured out.

It’s from the 30 Verses on Consciousness Only, translation from this book, Inside Vasubandhu to Uttara by Ben Connolly.

It’s definitely worth a read.

Jay Garfield, I believe, Jay?

Somebody Garfield, has a translation of 30 Verses for free on the interwebs.

And it’s quite good as well, if you want to get another look at it without having to buy this book.

Although I would recommend this book.

So yeah, so there’s that.

As far as our Lankaputra study goes, we are progressing through Chapter 2, Section 9.

Near the end of the prose section, it’s about to turn into verse.

And there will be a bit of a recapitulation, but also not quite exactly, which is interesting, as it forces us to reconcile the information that we have gone through.

I believe last time, we talked about Bhumis, and we talked about the kind of like a five-stage practice method of maturing the boundless good root.

And lower, middle, and upper practices, and that’s where we were at.

So there’s one more verse, or one more section of prose, and the verse starts.

But before we get into any of that, does anyone come today with more thoughts on how to do that?

Or anything they’d like to check in with from their practice for the week?

Et cetera, et cetera.

All right.

That’s a good sense.

That’s a good sense?

That’s great.

It’s always nice when that happens.

Get a string of them in a row.

It feels like we might have some sort of concept of what the heck we’re doing.

All right.

So for context, let’s go back to little paragraphs, read it into the final paragraph.

I think that’ll help us kind of reorient ourselves to the material.

So we’ll start with this one.

Mahamati.

Such is the ultimate boundary of the subtle alaya-vijnana, except Tathagatas and abiding bodhisattvas.

The power of the samadhi prajna that all Srivaka, Pratyekabuddhas, and heterodox practitioners attain through their practice, all of them cannot measure or determine the prajna characteristics of the remaining bhumis.

The most exalted, boundless, and good root matures when, separated from one’s own mind’s manifestations of erroneous guamshyam, peacefully sitting in a mountain forest, able to see one’s own mind’s guamshyam flowed in lower, middle, and upper practices, anointed in a limitless field, and anointed in the limitless fields of all Buddhas, obtaining self-realization, spiritual powers, and samadhi.

And it continues.

This is the new study.

All spiritual friends, children of Buddhas, and their chitta, manas, vijnana, perceptions of their chitta’s manifested realms and guamshyam, birth and death existing as an ocean, karma, craving, ignorance, and likewise other conditions are thoroughly transcended.

It is thus, Mahamati, all yogins should draw near to the most supreme spiritual friend.

So in a lot of ways, that verse is pretty straightforward.

I think, well, there’s a couple things that jumped out to me that should probably chew on a little bit.

Anything jump out to anybody else?

It’s a little bit unfair, because I spent hours staring at this stuff, and then I read it and ask you to pick something out in four seconds.

Anything grab anybody?

Yeah, I suppose just that term, spiritual friend.

I’ve heard that before, but yeah, that jumps out.

Yeah, yeah.

That’s what I really wanted to talk about.

I’m echoing through your mic again, Greg, unfortunately.

So what’s interesting here is, so there’s Kalanya Mitra, which is spiritual friends.

And in a certain way, we can understand it in the historical context, in the exoteric context of being around a good teacher.

Like getting that satsang experience, the transmission, so to speak, seeing how other people see being in the presence of someone that we want to kind of become more like.

And that’s a really valuable thing.

However, it kind of feels like the Lankavatara appropriates that term and turns it into a more esoteric concept.

And I say that because of this.

So far, and everything that we’ve read up to this point, it’s all been saying that liberation only comes through the investigation of one’s own consciousness and no longer grasping at any particular realm as having any objective reality.

Right?

That’s what it’s been talking about over and over and over again.

Now, part of it might mean that if you surround yourself with a spiritual friend who gets it, and they’re constantly like living at you from that perspective, then you just kind of soak it up and that’s really useful.

But could it be that it appropriates that term for almost like a poetic reason.

Because if we look at it in the Chinese, it’s the most superlative knowledge of consciousness.

That’s a literal translation.

If we don’t assume that the Chinese are immediately translating the Sanskrit for the sole purpose of communicating the Sanskrit idea of Kalanyamitra, then just the four characters that are associated with that Sanskrit term are most superlative knowledge of consciousness.

So then I would say all yogins should draw near to the most superlative knowledge of consciousness.

And wouldn’t that be what you would draw near to if you were a yogi who had thoroughly transcended ignorance, craving, karma, birth and death existing as an ocean, perceptions of the chittas, manifested realms, and vaksya, chittas, manas, and vijnana.

If you transcended all of that stuff so that you were not attached to or sucked in by or enmeshed with any of those phenomenological experiences, once you say that you have a very superlative knowledge of consciousness, and as such, once you say that you are liberated in the Yogatarin sense of no longer experiencing any ignorance, seeing the gem and coloration and being able to flip it out and play with it and have the expedient gathalpa and be dancing in the dharmakaya stage of just embodying liberation, superlative knowledge of consciousness.

I don’t know if that’s what they meant, but when I read it, that’s what I got out of it.

That’s very juicy.

I also like that too, because it aligns across traditions with the inner and the secret meanings of taking refuge, where when we take refuge in the Buddha, we’re not taking refuge in an historical person, and we’re not taking refuge in an external deity of any sort.

We’re taking refuge in our own awakened mind.

The Buddha is our own awakened mind, and the inner and secret teachings of taking refuge in other forms of non-dual yoga.

So that, to me, seems also quite parallel to how they kind of use this term in a more esoteric fashion.

Any questions, comments, reflections on that idea?

Just a comment, because it’s something that’s come up this past week.

As soon as I almost start, and it’s not something you can start, but I guess that practice of without words or concepts, just kind of recognizing yourself as Buddha, it’s powerful.

As soon as it starts, it’s like, wow, look at the ego go.

But then it’s like, no, it’s the root of all the teachings, so you have to believe in it.

But yeah, it’s like, we’re all so, or at least my impression is like, we’re all so browbeaten with our ego, you know, that sometimes I feel like it almost prevents us from rising to the seat, you know?

But yeah, anyway, I just bring it up because, like I said, it’s something that’s come up this past week.

And yeah, it can really provide a real deep experience, you know, but you kind of have to go through some mental obstacles along the way, you know, like these reactions that happen as soon as you start doing it.

But yeah, like, I mean, we’re all trying to sit here and like wake up, you know, so at some point you got to start like embodying it, you know, as opposed to just like reaching for something, you know?

Anyway.

As long as you’re sitting here trying to wake up, you won’t.

I’m sorry, say that again?

As long as you’re sitting here trying to wake up, you can’t.

Right, exactly.

Yeah, because you already are, and you put yourself to sleep when you think that it’s something you have to do.

Yeah.

Right.

Right.

Yeah, and just the confusion, the idea that being awake is some super special phenomenon, that being Buddha has some sort of superlative superpower characteristics.

Like, it just means you’re sentient.

That’s all it is!

That’s why you’re already awake.

Because you’re sentient.

You are gifted with the capacity for self-awareness.

Therefore, you are a Buddha.

As soon as you know you’re self-aware, and as soon as you use that self-awareness to not be confused about your experience, you’ve awoken from the dream.

I can hear you.

I can hear you.

For those of us who have seen the major telemetry device.

Oh, see, I did.

I was.

That one, that one notch.

Sorry, I didn’t hear about it.

I can never gauge on, like, how well someone can partially deafen both ears.

So, like, me not being able to hear is a pretty normal thing.

Depends on how well everyone else can’t hear.

Oh, and they get along great, but I want to hear other voices.

White noise, tinnitus.

It’s a, it’s an interesting juxtaposition there.

In going like, yeah, wait, sentient, where, where, oh, that’s it.

And then there’s always, as you read through the text, read through everything else, it seems like it’s very big, not complicated, but like very detailed process.

Boil it down, it’s actually really not that, it’s not that complicated, really.

And it’s, it’s always an interesting, interesting juxtaposition.

The more that I read what a sutra happens to be, what the text is, what it’s said in general, whatever, you know, whatever it happens to be, there’s always this fun interplay between all of these states.

Sit there, just realize that that’s what’s happening at a given moment.

Yeah, and part of it is the confusion that arises from the term being multivalent.

So there’s original awakening and original enlightenment and acquired enlightenment and acquired enlightenment is not different than original enlightenment.

However, original enlightenment is the fundamental sentience that everything is imbued with acquired enlightenment is the process of spiritual maturation, where you actually embody the perspective, knowing that there’s an original.

So, Buddha is just an awakened one.

Just awake, like, like, stuck in the matrix grind it out and unselfconscious life.

But that awakening, like Zen training doesn’t begin until after you’ve had that moment.

So then there’s a fully realized, which is the one that has integrated all of the qualities and shed all the sun cars and the negative habits and is of service to others and you know has has all these like wonderful religious characteristics that we associate with.

And when we talk about Buddha, we’re talking about fully realized Buddha.

And when we’re talking about just awakeness Buddha, we’re talking about the original capacity for awake self awareness.

And so those multi that happens a lot in this tradition is these terms are multivalent and having carrying extremely similar meanings used in slightly different contexts, creates massive amounts of compute.

Right.

Interesting.

The sutra on complete enlightenment, I believe is one that really goes deep into original and acquired enlightenment, I might have that wrong, but that’s the one that comes to mind.

Really.

I got like four copies.

Yeah.

You would think that that would be more widespread.

But that’s the real shit for the nerds.

So, Bruce.

I want to say something or are you taking a note.

I’m gonna, I’d like to start the verse today, because I think it’s really fun.

I haven’t been able to translate all of it, because if translating the prose of this is difficult, translating the more terse and grammar bending style of it is, is.

No.

Okay, so here we go.

He says, at that time, the Bhagavan wanted to again restate this meeting, and said in verse, like great ocean waves that arise from fierce winds, letting waves pound the black of this without a moment’s cessation.

The ocean of Alaya Vijnana constantly abides moved by the winds of realms.

All of consciousnesses many waves leaping founding and revolving birth.

So that’s a chunk let’s just stop there and see if anyone has anything.

Yeah.

I like how they threw in the without any cessation in there.

Yeah.

There’s always that that almost seems a little backhanded or something, you know, lots of digs.

Earlier in this right it was criticizing the how the non stuff realized.

And like yogins entering the honest somebody so perfuming revolves and they are not aware of that knowledge they then give rise to the thought that consciousness ceases and then I entered my body.

And here he comes back in and he’s like, waves don’t stop people.

You can’t be conscious without content to be conscious of consciousness and the objects consciousness co arise, stop being stupid.

So, like it’s it’s easily understandable.

As far as the metaphor.

I’m glad I came across a big, big fan of the ocean of a wave metaphor.

I think that’s what Jimbo gave him the name.

Yeah, I mean, it’s ocean of waves, sea of waves.

Anyway.

Okay, so it continues on.

Red, red, red, every kind of color alabaster milk and crystallized honey delicate tastes multitudes of blossoms and fruit sun, moon, and radiant light are all not different.

Ocean waters rise and waves.

So to seven consciousness and Chitta co arise and emerge like oceans watery transformation waves of every kind revolve.

So to seven consciousness and Chitta co arise and emerge.

Call this the domain of a liar.

Now, all kinds of consciousness revolve.

I’m missing a chunk in there.

What seven Chittas.

Seven consciousnesses and Chitta.

Oh seven consciousnesses and missing.

Was like seven Chitta thing that we covered and I don’t remember.

No.

Okay.

No, we’re on the same page.

They use the term revolve in the last one and in this one quite a bit.

Is there a specific thing they’re trying to indicate with that.

Yeah, that’s a great question.

So, the, the character for that I’m translating as revolve has the feeling of like a real turning.

And, and that constant kind of like see becomes perfume perfume becomes see kind of like this interplay right of just this turning like turning with a CH you are and like like just consciousness is turning as that has a momentum and an inertia, and things feed off of each other and they interact with each other.

So it’s like this.

It’s just kind of like that.

So not revolving, but revolve.

Yeah.

So, okay, we’re not not revolving the circular meaning, but think like water.

Yeah, like the water.

forward, not.

Yeah, and if we want to have like an ascent and descent from like the ground of being to the surface of the ocean back to the, you know, like that kind of gotcha big revolving gotcha.

And it does kind of bring to mind to like cyclical existence, and the whole, you know, birth, or was it birth arising duration degradation cessation like all of these different cycles are all kind of wrapped up in that feeling, or the idea that anything else.

So here we go.

We’re almost to the end of what I have translated so maybe we’ll see what happens.

Right.

So here’s that says, say, it is by that vision, that the significance of limitless is contemplated.

I’m going to read it through and if we want determined definitions of technical terms we’ll do it again.

Say, it is by that vision, that the significance of limitless is contemplated.

There are eight non decaying nimitta absence of nimitta is just absence of nimitta.

Just like ocean waves, they are thus without distinction.

All consciousness and Chitta are like this different and unable to be grasped.

Chitta is described, Chitta is described as accumulating karma.

Manas is described as broadening the accumulation.

All consciousnesses, vijnana, and vishaya manifest equally.

And what’s our call, the five sense realms.

So that one had a lot of terms I chose not to translate.

Because they’re very precise so I was just going to run down real quick so vijnana is separating knowledge.

It is the gnosis of distinct objects of consciousness.

The capacity to know and perceive.

This nimitta are objects of conceptual perception.

It’s another way to think about perceptual objects.

Vishaya is that which is known.

So it’s the perceptive, it’s a perceptible object of the vijnana function.

So it’s the functional appearance of an external phenomenon.

So there’s vijnana, which is this kind of like gnosis of objects of consciousness.

That’s the capacity.

And there’s nimitta, which are the different characteristics of perceived forms through our conceptualization and abstraction of direct experience.

Like nama rupa?

Nama rupa is slightly different.

If I’m, if I am recalling correctly.

So nama rupa is name and form.

And that would fit more in the vishaya, which is saying, oh, it’s an object that can be cognized and it’s, and it’s like the external presentation.

For example, this would have a rupa.

Okay, this has a rupa.

I can interact with it.

Right.

The interaction is taking place entirely in my own mind.

And the direct experience of it is happening entirely in my own mind.

None of you are having a direct experience of touching this thing.

Right.

So that’s this thing’s, this Incan’s rupa.

The nama, the name, Incan, is projected onto it from my consciousness and gives it a distinct function that I use it for based on the name and I take it as real.

And I can say, this is an Incan.

And my kid can come in and say, well, that’s a bell.

And I’m like, no, you’re stupid.

Right.

If I’m overly attached to name.

Okay, so now, vishaya is the experience in my own mind of this object’s rupa.

So, like when this is sitting out here, it hasn’t disappeared.

Its molecules have not dispersed.

There’s still a collection of energy that is in a form that I could interact with.

But the experience of that object is happening entirely in my own mind.

And as a mental object, it’s a vishaya, which is different than its rupa quality.

You see what I’m saying?

So, yeah.

So it’s a little more internal by nature.

That’s the short way of trying to say what I’m getting at.

So vishnana is like the capacity to perceive this thing.

Vishaya is the thing that we experience ourselves perceiving.

And the nimitta is the characteristic of the thing?

All of the conceptual baggage that goes along with the thing.

Okay.

So the nimitta is the cognized perceptual appearance.

If I’ve got my definitions right, which I think I explained earlier.

Let’s see.

Yeah, perceptual appearance.

And I think this perceptual appearance is kind of like So the nimitta would be like the particular shade of brownish red that the handle is, is all a little bit different to us because we all perceive it slightly differently.

Right.

So that’s kind of where we’re talking about nimitta as perceptual appearance.

Okay.

Great question.

This is so reminiscent of semiotics.

This is like phenomenological semiotics.

Can you tell me what semiotics means again?

Semiotics is the larger discipline about language and symbols and meaning.

Semantics is sort of a subset of semiotics.

But they have a whole tiers of distinctions of the symbol and the referent and the referand.

It’s like the thing that the word is referring to and then the word itself as a thing that refers to something else.

And there’s so much nuance to it when you dissect the way that it works.

And this is like completely parallel to that, but in the phenomenological realm.

Yeah, it sure sounds like it.

No, the fascinating part.

I did not know.

Yes, not even a little bit.

You say that is not a topic I’m familiar with.

That’s why it’s fascinating.

Now I have more things to do.

So we’re still tracking.

I’ll read the closing, or not the closing, but the rest of what’s been well worked on so far.

So it says, At that time, Mahamati asked in verse, As you read every kind of color form, sentient beings give rise to consciousness, like waves of every kind of dharma.

Please say why this is so.

Then the Bhagavan replied in verse, As you read in all mixed colors, none are found in any way.

Accumulation of karma describes chitta, awakening all ordinary beings.

This karma is non-existent.

What one’s own chitta gathers is released, gathered, ungathered, the same as waves.

Enjoyment and establishment of the body is sentient beings manifesting consciousness.

And this manifests all karma, like waves of water.

I’ll take your word for that.

So is he saying the karma is not cumulative.

He’s saying that karma is gathered and ungathered naturally.

Like all.

It’s all coming and going, coming and going.

It’s like the, it bears its fruit.

And then it’s done.

The wave crashes.

Right.

And then it’s crashed.

And if you don’t own that crashing.

We talked about if you don’t grasp at that and take possession of that to turn it into a meeting with self referential memory, then it’s done.

Let’s take it real.

Let’s make it real.

So, yeah.

Alright, so this can be quite abstract but let’s think of it this way.

Right, if I came up to you, and I slapped you.

And the first time you were like, I need to do anything.

Okay.

Now if you genuinely forgot about it.

And I came up the next day I slapped you.

Genuinely completely genuinely completely forgot.

Okay.

And I came to the next day I slapped you.

Same one.

Okay.

You just go.

Okay.

Right.

However, if you didn’t genuinely forget about it.

And I stopped you face the next semester.

And the next.

And the next time, and you have a possession, you are gathering right gathering gathering gathering.

Eventually, it will bear fruit.

What is the fruit of your anger and resentment and be slapping you in the face probably a hit throw.

Probably something that doesn’t feel good to me.

Probably some kind of.

So then, like, say again.

I was stuck.

Retribution.

Why duck when you can get hit and then just lay me alive.

So, zoom that zoom that up farther.

From more of like a. I don’t know.

I can’t think of the word but I’m sure it ends up a logical standpoint.

You talk about every action has a karmic impact.

If you’re not gathering karma of one kind or another so then you have, you know, whole, even, you know, to talk about like, hey, you know, your karmic rebirth or your rebirth is based on your karma from previous life.

So if you’re not gathering and retaining any of that.

How does that karmic impact, or how does that karma that impact the future.

Well, that’s what hurts.

Yeah, that’s what the liberation from rebirth.

Because if you don’t have any karma and driving you to take up a next transmigration.

Then, you just one.

And then you’d be in Nirvana and that’s outside of the realm of manifestation, kind of like the process.

Right.

So okay, so what I’m saying that it karma itself is not something.

Right, we can decide whether or not to remember 32 ways ago.

Right.

This.

Right.

We can just have this wave crash and do whatever is appropriate in the context of that particular wave.

And then the next wave crashes and we do whatever is appropriate in the context of that way and then there’s never any possession or ownership.

There’s simply.

These are the circumstances of right now.

If something comes out of my thoughts, words, or actions, I will be producing another way, and I will be subject to that way of scratching.

What would I like to do.

We stand up for a quick second.

This idea of not creating karma is peculiar to me.

So I feel like it’s happening regardless.

I guess if you have like non action that still has its own repercussion, you know.

It’s just it’s I guess it further propels you into the fully enlightened state, you know, or stops you from being diluted.

The next time you get slapped.

So, yeah, I mean, where we did I catch that there is this this idea of like stopping karma or something or am I did mishear that.

So you didn’t mishear it.

So I think it is generally broadly accepted as a statement that a fully awakened being no longer produces karma.

And I believe that that is a corruption of the teaching.

Nothing that I found says that is true, but it says that a, an awakened being no longer accumulates karma.

And that is different.

Right.

And so as we purify our karma by having waves crash and responding appropriately with compassionate fruit that doesn’t further disrupt the environment and cause negative circumstances and blah blah blah blah blah blah, then that naturally leads us to, you know, who knows.

Whatever.

But it’s a nice way to live.

Yeah.

So I’m all for no longer accumulating karma, and just responding appropriately to what’s arising within the context of what is surviving.

And I think that’s really what the teachings.

I have my own verse for this.

Go with the flow and the karma will melt like desert snow.

It sounds like he’s saying go with go with the flow.

Just go with it.

You get.

And you say, Ouch, that hurt.

And that’s it.

Except for if the flow is out that hurt, I’m going to burn down your house and murder your children.

Don’t go with that.

Very nuanced responses.

Very nuanced response.

Got it.

Done.

So, to go further down.

That seems contradictory to because the boat stuff is both a fully awakened being who is consciously or is a, is a. There’s got to be a, like a new author that I’m missing, because that’s what they have the light.

Right, so you have an enlightened being who’s who’s purposely consciously choosing to not become fully awakened Buddha, for the sake of liberation folks.

Yes.

So the boat is off the boat is off of recognizes that there is no liberation individually.

Because we are all interpenetrate.

And so in order to really experience a genuine liberation, which is going to happen in this realm, it’s kind of a utopian ideal.

I have to continue impacting karma positively I have to continue engaging currently with the world, so that the interpenetration and the place where your sine wave and my cosine wave intersects eventually smooths out, and now all of humanity is vibing on this ideal of like we’re all one.

And now we’re liberated as a, as a, as a people’s because form is emptiness and emptiness is form and now form has returned itself to its state so the boat is that the ideal kind of it’s more in that category.

Whereas, Buddha is kind of just so far.

So there’s two ways to do it, you can say that a boat is that someone who can be a Buddha, but chooses not to go do what that takes which is to like disappear from life, and just sit in silence and stillness longer and just right, which is similar to an arhat, the differences of Buddha, almost by definition radiates outward, a portion of the Dharma that positively impacts the world around them, where an arhat, by, by the criticism of the Mahayana, their realization does not extend outward from them.

So an arhat and a Buddha are different in that way.

So we can say that, but it’s also someone who has the potential to be a Buddha, and chooses to continue to engage probably in the world through the recognition of interpenetration, and therefore, it’s going to continue cutting off people’s ignorance.

I don’t like liberate from suffering, by the way, I don’t think the Mahayana gives a shit about suffering, and it just cares about ignorance.

Right, because suffering is just part of the structure of ignorance, so you really want to end suffering you end ignorance once you end ignorance you end suffering, if you end clinging, then all you can do is you can moment, like, if you end clinging without ending ignorance then clinging just happens again.

So then you can only not cling in certain meditative states are under certain causes and conditions.

And as we know that’s not liberation.

And so, anyway, so we’re cutting off ignorance as both sides.

You can also say that a bodhisattva has to, like, get so embodied with the Dharma, to have the impact of a Buddha of just being and having that just being this transmit out around them to change the world around them.

Not if you live in the sociological cosmological magical realm of ancient Buddhism.

Because the Buddha is not doing anything.

He’s not actively having any self referential thoughts.

The Buddha speaks without speaking, because they aren’t talking in the sense of trying to communicate from ego to ego.

You know, their actions are completely selfless, in a certain sense.

So if you put that under any sort of logical scrutiny, then the difference between that and bodhisattvas is awfully thin.

And I think that, you know, from like a more like historical kind of you look at Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, living being.

Yeah, he was pathologized into something.

Right.

But who came to this, I mean, we all know the backstory there.

But all of those teachings in effort to liberate everyone else is going to have a karmic impact.

And that physical corporeal form is going to pass away at some point or whatever.

How is he not also a bodhisattva?

Right.

Yeah.

Good question.

We’ll ask your Theravadan friends.

I mean, along the same lines, I’m kind of there, too.

It’s like, you know, like, look at the impact that people like Milarepa had on the Tibetans, you know, like, I think, I think sometimes, like, it gets confusing talking about these different, like, I mean, like, in this time, they’re really trying to point to like, hey, we’re not all trying to just be arhat, you know, like, there’s the Mahayana’s beyond, you know.

But, but at the same time, like someone like a Milarepa or a wandering hermit or someone who’s not, you know, going around necessarily preaching the Dharma is still having, like, a profound impact.

And giving, like, millions of people in all these generations, like, hope and something to, like, aspire for.

So it’s like, I don’t know, I think sometimes, like, these, these, these attempts in these old texts to, like, deal with the problem of the time gives us confusion now, you know, it’s like, someone who, like, if we were aware of someone who was like, you know, embodying that level of wisdom, I suppose, but they were doing it in isolation.

Is that are we saying you’re bad bodhisattva, you know, just because you’re not like, being as active, you know, like, it’s just, it’s, it starts to become like, more of a conceptual thing, you know.

I don’t know, it gets, it gets messy for me.

These, these distinctions sometimes.

Yeah, I think we got to wrap because we’re over time, but I do want to, I do want to say just the other day I was having a conversation, and it was became very poignant, and it seems poignant here too.

Nothing that I’ve ever read said that bodhisattvas are all like apostles.

And I think our Western and nothing that I’ve read in the Buddhist literature carries any of that connotation around the term bodhisattva.

It’s just a form of non dual in life, awakened practice.

And that’s it.

You know, yeah.

So anyway, thank you all for this incredibly lovely discussion.

I very much enjoy how we can blow through 40 minutes like it’s nothing together.

So we’ll try and have the rest of section nine translated for next time and we’ll wrap up section nine and decide whether or not we want to keep going with the longer if it’s time to do something else.

Let’s go ahead and do our closing check in.

Robin, would you like to go first.

Robin checking in on a wonderfully stormy evening I wish you all could be here and be sharing the, the experience of sitting in the rain.

That’s peaceful and random thunder in the background, it was everything that we’re discussing tonight, very poignantly relevant and absolutely absurd.

Checking in practice is so important effort like I was a bit more active today in preparing for a presentation I’m going to give in like 20 minutes or so.

And, and just to watch the mind race for a bit, and the watch like, you know what happens after a little bit of practice like it’s, it’s so essential.

And yeah, this idea of being, I forget where I just read it maybe it was in Shanti Davis writings but like the being the, like, the protector of the mind, in a way, it’s like, it’s so crucial.

And yet today was such a good like, just to live it firsthand.

So yeah, thanks, thanks guys for for being here and helping call me back.

Good luck on your presentation.

Thanks.

Greg checking in from the Mojave Desert, where it’s in the hundreds.

Somewhere between heaven and hell.

My practice right now and has been just feeling everything as deeply as I can, and completely as I can without turning away.

Yeah.

But a quote comes to mind the bodhisattva purifies the land they walk on.

I don’t know where that comes from but I like it.

That’s it.

I mean, thank you.

Ryan chicken.

I haven’t had much these past couple weeks, so it’s fun to get the wheels turning for a little bit.

Yeah, stuff to take into the week and ponder in my own practice and moment.

I look forward to seeing where next week.

Yeah, I’m in.

Let me check it in.

Always a joy and delight to practice with everyone.

Hope you have a beautiful week.

See you next time.

Bye.

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