*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.

The post Lankavatara 2.IX:Verses part 1 appeared first on Open Door Zen.

Below are these notes in their raw form.

Umi reflection: Having read through the 10 bhumi a few times, I’m by no means an expert. But, here’s my key takeaways.

The 10 stages are kind of like transcend and include developmental milestones, you can tell where someone is by which characteristics are present in their being. This means that their not discrete, sequential advancements. Rather, they are interpenetrating aspects of what happens as we live this path.

1. Extreme joy
   1. Profound joy arising from firm roots in good practices, caused by no fear due to realized selflessness and inspiring thorough commitment to the mastery of awakening practices.
2. Purity
   1. Keeping the precepts, kind, practicing hard to cultivate good karma, compassionate for those who create suffering for themselves, aiming for buddha-hood, still doubting they can. 
3. Refulgence
   1. Precepts are natural (established in virtue), begin contemplating things like impermanence and suffering. Seeing the peace of the buddhas, they begin pursuing the spiritual life more earnestly, sharing what they know. Realize liberation is in personal understanding of buddha-wisdom… and they’ll do anything to get it. Become adepts at meditations (jhanas 1-4). 
4. Blazing
   1. Personal realization of formless meditations, too late now! Fully integrated with Buddha, Dharma, Sangha. Reflecting on teachings of samsara/nirvana/phenomena/non-origination/nature of being. Actualize viryaparamita, vows to attain to buddha knowledge for all beings, non-attached to gross, gentle & kind, coachable, willing to learn, purify practice attitudes, release final doubts about their ability to become buddha. . 
5. Difficult to Conqurer
   1. Stable in mindfulness, pure intent to attain Buddhahood, well established in paramitas. Deep dive into two truths, characteristics, distinctions, structures, nirvana, the path, etc. It all becomes overstood, not understood, and they increasingly show up in the world with kindness and compassion. Become conscientious, hence awake, and full of wisdom. Double down on mastering the skills required to share the dharma. Energetic, contributing to society through knowledge in arts and skills, sciences, writing, medicine… whatever serves. 
6. Presence
   1. Realizing emptiness, signlessness, aimlessness, non-origination, etc. (i.e., understanding what was overstood in stage 5). Equanimity and non-attachment to gross and subtle phenomena. Overstanding conditional creation is not causality – action has no agent, projections are dense clouds. Desire, Form, Formless are one mind. 12 links are becoming in one mind. Penetrating the 12 links. Increasing wisdom – seeking out buddhas to train with. 
7. Far-going
   1. Cultivated realization of emptiness, signlessness and aimlessness, quick access to samadhi, teaching ceaselessly to develop skills to maturity, cultivating the perfections properly (finally) through enough experience and integration of projectionlessness. 
8. Immovable
   1. Stabilized projectionless granting the ability to remain in suchness while contemplating all teachings and awakening pracitces. The ability to effortlessly look in to all forms of wisdom as meditative awareness and the desire not to remain in the deep, peacefull bliss of suchness but compassionately compelled to bring forth the teachings. “It is not by suchness that buddhas appear in the world, but only by vast knowledge unattached to past, present and future.”
9. Good Mind
   1. Certainty in knowledge, commitment to compassion, strong willpower and zeal. Intuiting constructed projections and the resulting strengths and weaknesses of practitioners according to their habits, set beings free by turning them to the path through skillful instruction. 
10. 10.Cloud of Teaching
    1. Deep knowledge of all the teachings and practices which support awakening, profound presence and intellect, and the ability to skillfully articulate the teachings appropriately to the audience. 

Rephrasing the transitions in the poem with this framework we can learn some things. 

The Cloud of Teaching becomes Extreme Joy, Extreme joy becomes Immovable.

Good mind becomes Far-going, Far-going becomes Immovable. 

Purity becomes Refulgence, Blazing becomes Difficult to Conquer

Refulgence becomes Presence, How many times is there absence of characteristics?* 

*they’re all dependent and imagined. They’re all manifestations of suchness, playing off each other as needed for us to walk the path of never-ending unfolding. Knowing this they’re all perfected. 

To the question about the stages being projectionless – projectionlessness is a state that is applied to discerning the nature of being. It’s the reconstruction and integration of this insight into relative function that is our particular flavor. Stages 1 – 7 are preparations for being able to use projectionless states effectively, which is stage 8. Stages 9 & 10 are the maturing of that insight as teachers. A compassionate motivation to attain to Buddhahood allows buddha knowledge to be used for something other than personal liberation. 

The post Notes on 10 Bhumis appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript produced by AI

All right, so here we are, glad to see you again.

Welcome back, Robin.

It’s your last few weeks.

So we’ve been chipping away at Chapter 2, Section 9 here, and we will keep chipping away at it.

There’s not a lot left, but enough left, we probably won’t finish it today, we might finish it next time.

Finishing it today would be a challenge because my translation’s not done.

But we are well into it.

So we’re at a section now where we’re kind of critiquing dualistic, people who practice the dualistic Buddhist yoga practice, and the Lankavatara Sangha, the non-dual Buddhist yoga practice.

And these are kind of the things that get us stuck in the dualistic yoga practice.

One of those is that yogins who enter into Samadhi are not aware of the fact that whatever their Samadhi is, is just another seed, perfume, expression of interpenetrating consciousness.

So they take altered states of meditative absorption as having a fundamentally liberative quality.

There’s a cessation of consciousness that happens to result in those meditative absorptions.

And this is just kind of a wrong view.

And the liberating view is, in fact, not that any of these altered states are liberative, but in fact, going through them, investigating them, we come to discover that they’re all just a dynamic interplay of consciousness with all of its various attributes.

And so then we stop kind of like being so worried about it.

And that’s what causes a cessation.

Now the text doesn’t specify what kind of cessation that causes, it says it is the absence of grasping after revolving realms that causes cessation.

I believe, I impute that that’s the cessation of ignorance, thereby the cessation of suffering, but the text is nonspecific.

So that’s kind of the most recent thing that we were discussing, is that right, Matt?

Yeah.

I don’t know if my, can one of you guys say something, because I don’t think my speakers sound very loud.

Testing.

One, two, three.

We do have a technical issue.

If we could get turned down by any chance?

No.

That’s probably not.

I just plugged in some external speakers.

So let me switch to those.

And can one of you say something now, please?

Testing one, two, three.

That is significantly better.

Okay.

Okay.

So any questions about anything that we’ve gone through in the section up to this point, long-term, general, life, metamorality, non-dual ethics, any of the fun topics, or shall we just keep on?

Just a very minute question.

What was the chapter you were reading earlier?

That was 83, I think, on page 240 of Redline.

Thank you.

82.

Cool.

Okay.

Shall we done?

Shall.

Well, okay.

Where there’s my… Did you see my paper that we were doing in the office?

Oh, there it is.

Aha!

Okay.

So continuing on, the verse does a little bit more of like, hey, this is where most people stop at, and there’s a place that we’re not, and that’s not where we’re going to stop, we’re going to keep going.

And a little bit of description of the kind of the fruit of that, and then it starts to recap the verse, which I gotta say, it was lovely.

So earlier on in this particular verse, we talked about chitta, manas, and vijnana, and I said that there’s a relationship between chitta, manas, vijnana, alaya vijnana, and one of the dynamics there was that it was kind of like chitta was like the whole ocean, and like alaya was kind of like a part of it.

So, making consciousness and stitching together consciousness as part of it, and like thought consciousness as part of it.

And when they recapped it in verse, I realized that metaphor was close, but now it’s going to get adjusted.

So, hopefully we get to that.

But if we don’t, please remember that that’s something that we have to update, because working closely with text I realized that metaphor wasn’t quite right.

Interesting.

All right, so here we are.

The Buddha has just told us that it is the absence of grasping after revolving realms that causes sensation.

And then he goes on to say, Mahamati, such is the ultimate boundary of the subtle alaya vijnana, except to Tathagatas and abiding bodhisattvas, the power of the samadhi prajna that all Srivakas, Prajna Gurus, and heterodox practitioners attain through their practice, all of them cannot measure or determine the prajna characteristics of the remaining bhumis, skillful and expedient Thakalva, and it decisively expressed that meaning and principle.

So, that’s a really long sentence with lots of compound words.

So, for all of its fanciness, it’s basically saying that the investigation of repository consciousness is really subtle and tricky.

And so it’s only the most advanced practitioners that get it, which is a little bit of kind of like gaming, I think it’s exhorting us to our own practice, you know, like, keep going.

I think it also is trying to break people, shock people from like the idea that an arhat has the ultimate realization.

It’s got multiple rhetorical values here.

But one, there’s two really interesting things that I want to just kind of rip off of and discuss before we move on.

One of them is that this is one of the few places that’s traditionally considered a negative or a unskillful characteristic of the mind, which is the Thakalva.

Thakalva is kind of like discriminating consciousness.

And that’s generally considered a function of ignorance.

Here, Thakalva is put together with the idea of skillful means.

So it’s like skillful means discriminate consciousness.

Closely followed by the idea of expressing the meaning and principle of the non-dual stages of practice.

So we get here a really powerful clue into this next level of teaching that we’re being invited into, which is that your normal functions of consciousness that are ignorant when you don’t see through how they work, are the basis of your skillful means when you do see how they work.

Particularly, and this is one of my favorite ones, particularly language.

Language entraps us and liberates us.

I think it was Dumbledore, who had one of the best quotes of all time, who says, I believe, words are the most inexhaustible source of magic.

And I’m paraphrasing on something that I wrote, something like that.

So the idea that our language is inadequate is contradictory to what it means to be a Buddha.

A Buddha can skillfully use language to get the point across.

And to get people looking in the right direction and have it to be an effective use of language.

So I think that’s a really interesting thing that shows up here.

You don’t usually see it used in a positive sense.

Thank you for you.

Anything about that before we go on to the next bit?

Yeah, just to clarify, they’re not saying language is inadequate, but a Buddha can use it.

It’s saying language is not inadequate or language is inadequate and a Buddha can use it.

I’m looking for a but or a and.

It’s saying that language is a part of our skillful means.

Gotcha.

Just as much as it’s a part of what traps us in ignorance.

I feel like it should be like a when used correctly asterisk.

Sure, it can be liberating when used correctly or at the same time, it can be used to stay ignorant or remain in ignorance.

And it can be used to subjugate others.

It can be used to liberate others.

The key here is expedient kalpa and this expedient qiaobian fengdie, qiaobian is quite literally like fortunate, fortunate effect, fortunate result.

It’s the kind of wupaya, if you’re familiar with the Sanskrit term, wupaya, this is how the Chinese translate skillful means.

What was the Chinese word?

Okay.

Okay.

Is it?

Oh, sorry.

Yeah, yeah, Matt, um, you should go ahead and go after.

I was gonna ask somebody a question.

And I’m sorry, I’m saying time.

I mean, is this like in the same vein, we as saying like, you know, like the ego and trap up, but a healthy ego can liberate us like it’s it’s used for good or evil.

Most in the sense that both the ego structure and the function of language are, in my view, not necessarily in the view of the yoga chara, but I think I came to this through you through studying which our perspective is that these are fundamentally neutral constructs, they’re fundamentally neutral mechanisms.

Yeah.

So your ego structure is not good and it’s not bad.

It does not suffer and it does not liberate.

It is just one of the many aspects of human being that is part of our experience.

So we can experience the ego as doing this or being that or whatever.

Likewise, language is just a functional construct of humanity.

No different than having a hammer and a saw or whatever, right, it can be used to build a building or can be used to tear one down.

That’s kind of more the vein I would like to encourage us to think in.

So all of these different aspects of consciousness are just descriptions of the mechanisms by which reality happens.

Claire.

Yeah, it’s really funny that you just said that about ego because that’s kind of like the lines I was thinking along.

I think that ego and language are inextricably linked and as in languages and abstraction of, you know, real world things and ego is an abstraction of identity, kind of fixated abstractions of things.

But if we take Umi’s thing he just said, I forget what it was exactly, but he was like language is necessary for this, but also for this.

We could almost interpose the word ego in there and say the ego is necessary, is a necessary part of being in a state of ignorance, just as the ego is a necessary part of being in a state of enlightenment.

You couldn’t have either one without it.

And it’s neither good or bad.

Right.

And we just went into heresy, where millions of Buddhists all over the world are disowning us from their practice lineages by saying that they need to have a Let’s leave that there, because that’s, that’s a big one but that’s mostly a conversation for people who aren’t in here, because the people in here are understand what we’re talking about, so we don’t need to parse the argumentation against the perspective that we generally all align with, unless somebody disagrees in here, in which case it’s worthwhile.

Or unless somebody is going to go to an interfaith dialogue group within the next 48, within the next week, and prepare their argumentation, that’s also fine.

But there’s another piece in here that I think is really juicy, which is about these boons.

Okay, and I think this is one of the things that I love about the yoga tar in practice is that it fundamentally states that your experience of gnosis is immediate, non rational.

Right, they’re like holds all of the characteristics of mystical gnosis.

Practice methodology.

It says, there are steps you go.

There, there is a.

Right.

And it basically says that like, yeah, on step one, you need to do these things on step two, you know you’re on step two because you did these things and now you’re trying to do these things.

And they’re a little bit fractal and they’re not necessarily perfectly linear, but it’s pretty cumulative process of training.

And the result of it is Buddha.

Even though they’re saying that your, your gnosis process has all of the characteristics of a spontaneous mystical experience.

They’re also saying that you can train to have it.

will have it, and that the evolution of turning from a lost suffering being into a home flown Buddha bodhisattva is mapable and clear.

This particular ideas of 10 stages, and that’s the dust of me.

That’s the sastra, I think is something like that, which is after 28 ish of the flower ornament scripture if you want to go read about it in more detail.

I could have some of those details wrong but that’s where you’re going to find it.

But there are these 10 rounds or 10 stages, and the first six are shared with the pressure box, they’re shared with the arts, right.

And it’s basically like you’re doing some karma yoga you’re cleaning up how you think you’re cleaning up how you eat your blah, blah, blah, blah.

And basically, you go through these six, and that six is when you start to what, let’s say at five, you’re starting to really like, be able to be stable in somebody.

Actually, through them all in detail if we want to, but I don’t know if that’s everyone’s time.

Oh, okay.

Unless anyone has any objections to expounding on that.

No objections.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you for this is this is your space after all.

So the 10 Boomi stages are roughly, and I can put you know what I’ll do also I have an article that I wrote, really for me, that I’ll share so everyone here for more context, but these are kind of like one sentence ideas here.

So the first Boomi is known as the joyous stage or ground.

And it is the initial generation of the mind to awaken.

And it has an emphasis on renunciation, and your various kind of like aesthetic practices of kind of separating yourself from the world so you can begin your spiritual practice.

And then the second stage is the stainless, and this is where you’re really working on your sila paramita your ethical discipline, overcoming karmic formations, by seeing through things right and just starting to adopt the philosophy of not self and impermanence and suffering.

And using that, like, pick your poisons, so to speak, choose your karmic activity.

The square.

development of insight, so this is the third ground development of insights into projection for human and recognition of your discursive languaging as delusional right so basically we’re starting to recognize how interconnection interpenetration creates ignorance and delusion for deepening and self experience and starting to get an allergy to knowing and reification and all that kind of stuff so that’s the, that’s the third Boomi.

Any questions so far.

The fourth Boomi is known as the radiance.

And this is kind of like a deepening capacity and force money, starting to really have like kind of altered experiences and meditation that are showing you that the different realms you’re experiencing are illusory.

And this is where you start to get a little bit of wisdom attitude a little bit more detached to conquer.

And this is where you’re starting to have some money project going off at real time, and feeling like those kind of some cars, those subtle defilements those.

You’re no longer like really doing things out world that are unskillful but you still have a bunch of unskillful stuff going on inside you, you have a lot of control but stuff still leaks out.

But you’re really able to like maintain your witnessing intelligence in real time.

Stage six is the manifest.

And this is where you’re really starting to get non duality.

Right.

This is where you’re starting to see the kalpa as a tool, rather than delusion.

That is where you’re starting to realize that you can construct and engage in your karmic experience, good and bad don’t really make sense morality doesn’t really make sense.

And this is all just the unfolding of business, right, that’s kind of language you get in a safe stage.

Seven is the far going.

And this is where you’re able to be in any type of experience and not get enmeshed in it, which gives you a lot of leeway with your expedient means because you can really be in a state of suffering, and then like still show up or you can really be in a place of temptation, and still show a great role model and character, you could even potentially indulge in temptation with a witnessing perspective for the purposes of being of service to others who are in that particular place right This is where you’re starting to think about people like your team, going into the brothels and serving the prostitutes, which regular are hot would never do.

This is kind of where that starts to become more available without experiencing a sense of like confusion or spiritual dirtiness or the eighth will be your stage.

This is where you’re persistently aware of interpenetration, you’re persistently aware that subject object is co arising with the relationship to each other.

You are actively working with the perfuming seeding process to transform the storehouse consciousness into something illuminated, and that you’re emotionally engaged with is going to be the perfect intelligence.

It’s kind of like, Now you can say all the shit.

You can, you can articulate the drama scope with your audience, you are able to kind of be with your own egoic experience without becoming enmeshed in it, and then you kind of way shape or form.

And then stage 10 is the drama cloud which is just that there is no the gap between absolute and relative, and the functions of non dual reality as skillful or ignorant like all that just disappears, and you’re just in the flow of how consciousness is expressing itself in a divine interplay of light and showing up however you need to show up and whatever given moment, that is it right so that’s Dharma cloud state.

Those, those framings are somewhat are greatly adapted for gravity, as they relate to the content that we’re currently studying, you go read that particular sutra it’s quite long and these have a lot more detail and months in them.

So that’s something that you’re interested in.

That is a rich area.

I’m assuming there’s not going to get blasted for going here for using the time.

But I’m assuming like it’s, you know, hey I’m in stage one there’s not a do this for a year.

So to this for whatever.

It’s just a gradual unfolding.

In a way it’s gradual unfolding but in another way they’re really well defined.

Okay.

And because they’re well defined, like, you can be really.

Okay, if you know what the stages are you know what you have to cultivate some sorts might be really hard it might take you a long time to cultivate this particular quality of that.

But like, still know what you have to do.

Gotcha.

So, and then the later ones, when they start to get to like direct experience and gnosis and deep meditative states, that’s where it starts to get really unpredictable, because who knows how long you have to sit people clicks.

Right.

In my, in my experience and with my belief, our instruction greatly accelerates that process, you know, and doing a 90 day intensive training period can can do a lot.

And I think that that’s really important and different from what we’ve done historically, because we have such a wealth of information in terms of techniques and phenomenology and what’s actually happening in the miracles theology that we can just be more efficient teachers.

So, what do you call these state stages.

No, these are more embodied than that.

So these are going to be more like altitudes of development than they are going to be.

If I remember my terminology integral terminology.

Yeah.

No, it’s just like the the general thing I was thinking is like, would it be possible to have a taste of one of these without being persistently in it right a temporary peak experience of one of these higher stages without being in it or is that is that, you know, disqualified.

First, that.

Sorry, I think you were keep free.

Yeah.

Okay.

Last we heard was, is it possible to have a peak experience of these stages without being persistent.

Yeah, or, or is that disqualified because that’s the main distinction that I took away from like the integral, you know, the state first stage distinction is like states you could pop into a level 10, and then out of it but stages you can’t.

I would put this much more in the category of stages than states.

Now that’s not to say that you can’t have a peak experience that’s equivalent to what the Dharma cloud stage is experiencing all the time.

A peak experience that’s equivalent to what the Dharma cloud stage is experiencing all the time.

But these are to me these are functionally integrated embodied ways of being, and not big experiences.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think I’m understanding it correctly.

So I would say that question is like, you know, you sit on a random day.

And for whatever reason, the environment, the whatever you know sit just like you said any other day, but that particular set you have a super deep somebody, you know cessation experience come out of it.

But it’s like, hey man that came up nowhere.

What was that, and then you sit the next time you’re like you know that’s not a thing.

Yeah.

My question then would be, you know, are you, is anyone at some point of development just going to get to a stage where like, hey, I’m going to sit and that’s how I say, every time.

Yeah, people can do that.

I don’t know that’s super common.

Right.

So then that would be kind of what I took from this question was, you know, yeah I can every once in a while, maybe I’m lucky.

Everything lines up.

It’s not right and I think you’re talking about the states of consciousness, as opposed to a way of consistently being in the world.

That’s true.

Yeah.

That’s where integral theory makes the difference between states, where you can have a state experiences, and then stages, which are like integrate respectable changes that alter how you behave.

Gotcha.

Gotcha.

And, and one of the arguments is that, for example, if you are a Neolithic shaman, and you have a state experience of light, and you interpret it as divine blessing, because of where you’re at and your ego development, and then build a whole persona and religious authority around the one has experienced the light.

It’s kind of like the birth of certain types of religious environments.

Right.

But if you have the same state experience from a postmodern perspective, then you’re going to interpret that phenomenal logical experience of light, completely different than a mythic level.

So that’s, that’s where integral theory really contributes a lot to the developments paradigm separates these two.

Gotcha.

Yeah, and I think they later added on the concept of a state stage, which as confusing as that might sound they had to indicate that there’s also a progression of locking in of consistency of states, which sounds kind of like this like, like that’s part of it right.

Yeah, this, these later ones map to the third tier stages and the final one being supermind is very similar, very similar to what like Sri Aurobindo would say is supermind and Wilbur supermind would be, they’re different, but also very similar.

Shall we move on?

So after all that is basically saying, all your arhats are only in stage six, you want to hook up with a real Buddha, who could talk intelligently about four stages of your dharma practice so that you can be able to and you don’t get stuck at the arhat stage.

So then the recaps like what you need.

What do we need to train.

I want to get this out before we leave so that you can have this in the back of your mind for the week, what do we need to train.

The most exalted boundless good root matures, when.

There’s five things, when with the practitioner.

Separated from one’s own minds manifestations of erroneous Wang Xia.

Okay.

Meaning that our experience, our experience of metacognitive self awareness is fundamentally separated from how our minds manifesting the subject object experience that is ratifying and making real and taking us real.

That process doesn’t stop, but our identity is separate from all of that mechanism.

Okay, that’s part one.

Part two.

So it’s peacefully sitting in a mountain forest, which is a ongoing metaphor for being internally composed as a renunciate and practicing in deep meditation.

It doesn’t physically mean that you have to go to a, to a mountain forest means you have to have an internal attitude of a renunciate and investigate these experiences through deep meditation.

So what are we investigating through deep meditation.

We’re able to see one’s own mind.

One’s young low and the lower middle and upper practices.

Okay.

And lower practices are based on like relative concentration and sexual view and sort of a dualistic mind practices of early meditation where you’re like watching that.

And then there’s cultivation of pendant nature and discerning Velkova and that’s where you’re like really like you’ve done the shots apart and you can turn your mind off now you’re doing the passion apart and you’re investigating inner penetration.

And then there’s upper practices where you’re having more of like a non sexual realization of suchness, this is where you’re having your mystical gnosis and so on.

So you’re, you’re, you progress through these groups of meditation practices, and yoga, meditation practice.

And the key is that you are able to watch how they are all just an expression of reified subject object experience that you’re taking is real.

So you’re recognizing that they’re all just altered states of consciousness and it doesn’t matter which state you’re in the mechanisms, there are fundamental mechanisms that are still happening.

That stops you from grasping at any of these states as being fundamentally real more real than the other and therefore more liberating.

As you do that, you go through all of these different realms remember we talked to technically realms are your like various states of experience that you are having.

So now that you’ve gone through all of this training.

You can be in whatever realm you’re in, which is a Buddha realm, the limitless fields because there are so many diverse experiences, and we feel consecrated or anointed in them.

It’s like, Oh yeah, I belong here.

Yeah, I belong in this one.

I’m good here.

Right.

And then through that, we obtained self realization self assuredness right self realization of my own business, or the business of this particular process that is experienced as an individual me.

Despite that individual me arising co arising with everything that is defining the me.

And then our spiritual powers and response.

So that is the process of having all of our, our good bodhicitta or good commitment to awakening actually take root, grow and thrive.

There’s a lot in there.

So I was going to recap it.

Pulling the mind back from its activity.

Separating the mind, and this is where the idea of the new idea of Chitta is a helpful.

Chitta is the dynamic nature of the ongoing interplay of forces, it’s the quality of mind that is dynamic.

Not necessarily that’s the whole ocean but it’s the quality of mind that is dynamic.

So we’re separating one’s own mind, one’s own Chitta, one’s own dynamic experience from the erroneous flummoxion that’s happening.

Okay.

And you can do that all the time.

That’s a basic meditation that you’ve been doing all the time just witnessing your ongoing insanity.

Then take time for meditation, commit yourself to a spiritual way of life, engage in your renunciation practices that keep you devoted to your detachment and your wisdom and your compassion.

Keep in mind that whatever you’re experiencing in any state you’re experiencing is just this process.

So that you don’t start to think that some states are superior to others just because you like them more.

Look for the fundamental value of this process in whatever you are experiencing.

And really experience that.

That will allow you to engage the mechanism of that process, which is your self-realization and your liberation, which presents to others a spiritual power.

It seems like, wow, how are you so insightful?

Wow, how do you know what’s going on?

You just read my mind.

Wow, you really feel like you saw the future there.

It’s like, no, I just saw the shit happening.

Okay, but it seems like spiritual powers and so on.

So that’s the process.

It’s actually not that complicated.

It’s super easy.

But it is relatively easy.

You mentioned those three different, I don’t know, modalities.

Is it possible to go deep enough in one of those that this end result is attained?

Yes.

Sorry, you said yes?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Because there’s two ways I take this.

One is like, I need to become this really broadly skilled at recognizing this through all the modalities.

And the other way is to go deep enough in one that, I don’t know, I would still need to be able to recognize it in the others, though.

Yes.

And really, that’s kind of like a false argumentation in a way, because it’s like if you’re going to invest, say you’re going to pick the mental practices, because I know you would think that you would want to investigate truth as like your primary method of meditation.

Well, in order to get to the point where your mind is cleared up in order to investigate truth, there has to be a shaman practice.

There has to be something that’s taking you out of all of your discursive thinking so that you can really focus and investigate and concentrate on the thing.

Well, that process of becoming that concentrated on your investigation of the truth is the lower practices.

And as you’re investigating the interpenetration of reality through this profoundly investigative scheme, the paschima practice, well, eventually that dissolves into non-conceptual awareness, where you’re directly perceiving the non-dual interpenetration of phenomena, which takes you into the other.

Yeah, that makes sense how they’re all connected.

We can almost call these, you know, dharana, concentration, lower practice, middles, insight.

And upper practice is what?

Deep formless absorption or dhyana or I forget the word, but you have a whole program on these.

Yeah, it’s very close to dharana and dhyana samadhi.

It’s very close.

Okay.

The biggest difference is that in your, so there’s dhyana-fueled vipassana.

And that would be what we’re looking at in the middle practices here, which leads to an advanced absorption.

And, you know, so when you do the dhyanas, you’re doing these three stages of practice.

Define that.

Which one?

Dhyana-fueled vipassana.

Which one?

Dhyana-fueled vipassana.

Yeah, so there’s dry vipassana, where you don’t go into a tranquilized state before you begin your investigation.

Right.

So that’s your basic coding practices like touching, sensing, right, via very superficial vipassana investigation practice.

Or if you start investigating the qualities of the breath and the impermanence of the breath from the mind that you typically function at, that’s dry vipassana.

Dhyana-fueled vipassana says that first we are going to engage in a concentration meditation to take our mind to a non-conceptual state where there is no recursive thought.

From there, we are going to unleash the power of our mind onto an investigative experience.

And through that, absorb with the experience for direct knowledge of that object.

And so that’s where it would be like first I’m going to come into a state of pure equanimity, an incredibly still pacified body-mind experience.

And then I’m going to activate the investigation of the breath.

And it allows us to track a much more subtle layer of experience than they do when we start from our regular mind.

Sorry to interrupt.

It’s funny you put it that way.

That’s the one I’m missing.

That’s the one you pointed out about me, but it’s like that dhyana-fueled vipassana.

Like something like mahasi noting, I would call dry.

And I’ve practiced that a lot.

And also the concentration practices a lot.

Typically the concentration practices immediately give way into the more formless, like start give way into the dhyanas.

And it doesn’t seem to be a big middle ground for me where I’ve really explored investigation of something in a vipassana manner with that level of concentration as the base.

Sounds like you’re going to have fun this week.

No promises.

It’s challenging.

I don’t know why that’s been so challenging, but it’s interesting to look at it and see the blank spot in practice.

Yeah, we’re way over.

Do we need to go?

Because I would wrap this up by sharing a trick to do that.

I’m good.

Yeah, I’m good.

Can’t speak for anyone else, but I can stay a little longer.

What’s the trick?

Yeah, wouldn’t miss it.

I just.

So, it’s actually really.

I get this from Western alchemy, and the way that alchemists were to meditate or contemplative prayer, and actually functions, very similarly phenomenologically.

Now, the object that they’re working with is very different because I have a very different purpose, but it’s very, very similar.

So what you do, and what I do with the Lama Mithara or any of these structures, you can take any psychoactive material, is you dive into it.

And you’re reading it, and you’re chewing on it, and you’re contemplating it, and you’re turning it over, and you’re finding the moment in the material that lights you up in some way.

And that can be a light where it’s like it reaches into you and it just twists you up, and what the fuck does that mean?

Or it can be something that blows you up and be like, yes, that’s it.

So you find that particular hook in the material, in the text, in the contemplative prayer, in the devotional concentration, in the devotional intellect on some problem.

And then you just let your mind go blank.

In the ecstatic feeling of that intellectual intensity, the mind goes blank.

And that is functionally similar to the jhana, the concentration, the buildup into the release.

But because you formed your concentration around something that’s fundamentally koanic in nature, psychoactive in nature, when you sit in that concentration state, all of that’s going to be going while your ego structure is turned on.

And then you’re going to have a moment of genius where you go, and you penetrate the experience.

So very similar to koan, very similar to koan.

However, what we can do is we can translate that to something that we feel is going to be more specifically liberative.

Where a koan, for example, comes from a moment in Asian history that has a very obscure relationship to the Dharma.

We don’t have a direct teacher to work with, so it doesn’t make sense.

A sutra, for example, or a particular verse in the Dhammapada, or, you know, like those types of things can all pop you into that stage of investigative consciousness.

And then once you learn how to do that, then you can do it with any question.

Okay, well, how does my mind?

How does it?

What is the process of perfuming and seeding that we’re learning about?

What is that?

What is going on?

How is this vision that I’m experiencing actually produced by my own mind?

It’s in here, it’s not out there.

What’s going on, right?

And then it’ll catch you, it’ll swirl you up, you’ll pop.

And then when you reconnect, you’ll have an insight into that experience.

Now you’re doing all of this from a meditative, it is.

It is.

It reminds me of like Greg Tao, my audio practice, yeah.

Yep.

So that would be very different from my normal sense.

My normal sense is usually pretty centered around like super pointed concentration on the breath or on, you know, whatever else.

And so at that point, I mean, I can hit it pretty decently, still quiet, you know, one point of focus.

But the second you’re like, where’s my mind?

Then like somebody wrote the full board on the frigging jet engine and now we’re off and running.

And then that one point of concentration is like, well, maybe it’s actually in the mind.

So are we talking two different types of the meditative state?

Or you go into the one point of concentration first and then make an active choice to fall over whatever the topic was.

So you can do that.

And if you’re really investigating where your mind works, what you’re… Or whatever the…

I find the most expedient means to take your own conscious experience as your meditation object.

You meditate on consciousness itself.

What is the capacity for being self-aware?

And you meditate on the experience of being self-aware as your concentration vehicle into your meditative state.

You don’t need the breath, you don’t need to meditate on color, you don’t need to meditate on embodied experience.

You just meditate on the experience of being self-aware.

And when your mind takes consciousness as its own…

When your mind takes its own consciousness as its own meditation object, then you are doing in the awakened faith called the objectless meditation.

And then you enter into samadhi with your own consciousness.

And samadhi is a conjoining with to achieve understanding of.

And then you see how your mind works.

That sounds like self-inquiry.

Again, very similar.

This is an interesting topic.

Now that you’ve put it this way, I’m like, oh, I’ve been meditating my entire life.

Couldn’t stop me since I was a kid.

But it takes a very intellectual starting point.

So yeah, okay, I am going to experiment with that this week.

Good stuff.

So we are 10 minutes past.

Thank you all for staying extra to rip on that.

One of the weird things for me about this is that I deliver a lot of content.

We have less dialogue than we used to have.

But I do appreciate that you all chime in when you do.

Please always feel free to make the conversation your own.

I don’t need to talk nearly as much.

Okay.

Let’s go ahead and do our closing round check-in.

Let’s go with Matt, Robin, Greg, Brian.

Hi, Matt, check-in.

Yeah, let me win.

Yeah.

Sometimes it can just be so silent.

But like, yeah.

In a way, it’s just like I can’t explain.

Like, it’s like, like, at the core, you know, I can feel it.

Like, I don’t know.

There’s something magical.

So I really appreciate that you can go in here, take a chance whenever you want.

Sit and listen and chime in whenever.

But, yeah, no, this is, there’s so much being absorbed.

And I’m sure there’s so much, like, even subconsciously being absorbed through these talks.

It’s like, it’s, it’s wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Robin checking in.

Yeah.

Great to be back after missing a few weeks.

Wonderful conversation.

And I’m going to scoot because I have chickens that will get eaten by raccoons if I don’t get moving.

So good night, everybody.

Good night.

Okay, Greg.

She’s in checking in.

And subsequently checking out.

Just kidding.

There’s no checking out internally in.

No more words.

Till next time.

Ryan checking in.

I don’t think I have time to say this week, to be honest.

Certainly is about that.

So, all over.

Looking forward to continuing with everyone.

So I’m eternally grateful.

I’m not.

Thank you, everyone.

Just a happy guy.

Thank you all very much.

It’s a delight to practice with you.

Hey, there isn’t a quick afterthought.

I just want to say.

I’ve had constant pain and a lot, a lot of sitting.

And so I decided to make that pain the.

Object of concentration.

And sort of Samadhi with that.

And I won’t get into the story, but that.

Was a life changing experience.

There is definitely something on the other side.

I think pain is the language of my soul.

I’m interested to hear this.

The medicine hides in the pain.

As someone who.

You know, it’s up in a not small amount of pain.

You’re most of my sense.

I’d be interested to hear this.

I mean, like.

You’re in like the.

The Tibetans and they’re sitting like, would talk about like.

Digging their nails into their thighs.

So they can work with pain.

Cause apparently they’re so comfortable sitting.

That they’re forcing themselves into pain so they can work with it.

So I, yeah.

It’s like, great.

We already have it.

Yeah.

Wonderful.

Like play with it.

What a gift.

Yeah.

Congratulations.

The post Lankavatara 2:IX:9-10 appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

Good to see you, Greg.

Yeah, likewise.

Likewise.

Good to be here.

We, we missile missile.

Nope.

The audio is really acting up for me.

Do you hear like a fan person.

No, there’s, there’s just a lag.

And it’s pretty unclear.

Can you hear me okay Greg can you hear me okay Greg.

Yeah.

Is anyone catching that echo echo.

Yeah, I hear us echoing through Greg’s system.

No.

No echo.

Do you want to turn that down.

The microphone.

I’m just going to keep it.

I’m just going to keep it on mute unless I’m talking but yeah there, there seem to be like some.

Well I don’t know.

It’ll work out.

Yeah, hopefully this is better because I might have been fighting with the fan.

That is better.

That sounds better to me.

Yeah.

I’m really glad that we don’t have our fan.

I mean maybe you just put it on low.

It’s okay.

It’s not that little sweat won’t hurt anybody.

Yeah.

Nice thing about not trying to be impressive.

Exactly.

So, for context, we are on chapter two section nine, which is pretty frickin fun.

We’ve gone through about the first four paragraphs, I’m just going to read through that just so that we’re on the context of where we are before we pick up where this left off.

I’m going to pause there and just see if anything’s alive for anyone in terms of, you know, living Dharma, because once again it’s very important to recognize that for me, the suture study is a training practice, this is not an intellectual process this is a, an actual symbolic reconstruction and training practice.

So we can kind of anchor the insights and the instructions that were being asked to investigate.

And that’s very critical.

So, here we are.

Chapter two section nine.

Mahamati asked the Buddha saying the Bhagavan speaks of Chitta, Manas, and Vishnana, five Dharmas, and self nature characteristics.

All practices of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, seeing one’s own mind is equal, and that objective realms are not manifested through the sequential compositing of Dharmas.

All these are said to be characteristics of reality.

All Buddhas call this mind.

For the great Bodhisattvas dwelling in the oceans and mountains of Malaya, in the land of Lanka, share the Tathagata’s praises of the Dharmakaya, of the realm of ocean wave storehouse consciousness.

At that time, the Bhagavan told Mahamati Bodhisattva, due to the four causes and conditions, the I-consciousness evolves.

Which four?

They are.

One’s own mind’s manifestations are gathered and received in ignorance.

Beginningless errors pass through the perfuming forms.

Consciousness’s individuating marks are conceptually objectified.

The desire to perceive many fold form characteristics.

Mahamati, these four types of causes and conditions are situated in a flowing stream, and the Alaya-Vishnana’s churning produces waves.

Mahamati, just like the I-consciousness, all sense capacities co-arise along with subtle dusts and gross form.

Indeed, they are all like this, just like a mirror manifesting all the different forms and appearances.

So that’s the section of this sutra that we’ve kind of discussed in our previous sessions on this section.

Is anything alive for anybody in their practice, in their life, related to this or not, that feels like it deserves our attention?

Well, being the pedantic semantic, point at words.

But there was one word that stood out to me, and I’m curious, maybe it’s a translation issue, but realm.

He said the realm of, maybe it was the realm of Tathagata.

What do you think?

Yes.

What do you think they’re pointing at when they say realm?

So realm is a turn.

I think we’re getting an echo through your system.

As a multivalent term, it’s a little bit hard to know for sure.

But actually, later on, it becomes very important to understand how realm is translated.

So I actually have a note here that I’ll just read.

Realm here is related to the Sanskrit word alambana.

If you wanted to do a little more digging.

India is being translated as realms, which is a multivalent word as alambana, it refers to the supporting basis of something, especially the connection between a sensation and the perception that it excites.

It is a sphere of conduct, wherein one’s actions bear fruit.

It contains notions of mood, mental state, feeling, sensation, viewpoint, etc.

As yogins, it is also the practices we engage in to realize the gross form or the manifest form of the eternal ineffable emptiness.

Wow.

That’s incredible.

Can you send me that definition sometime, do you mind?

It is on the website.

2.9, the translation.

It’s in the article.

Yeah.

Okay.

I appreciate how that’s a…

I would say that’s more like a state of mind or an ontological state than it is a place, you know?

Yes, it is.

So realm here is the ontological experience.

And it’s kind of like interpenetrating totality.

Yeah.

And that’s one of the things that I love about it is that it’s both ontological and epistemological.

So it’s like a being investigation and a knowing investigation, and it doesn’t really like prioritize one over the other.

It’s like you can’t have an ontology without an epistemology and you can’t have an epistemology without an ontology.

So the whole thing is blending these two together, which is I think what makes it such a powerful training menu.

Basking.

Nice one.

I got nothing, just basking.

Let it happen.

Hopefully not in my fragrance, as we are in a pretty sticky… 137% humidity today.

So that’s where we’re at.

And the next little section here.

Anything else?

My read of the room was that we were ready to move on.

Okay.

Always feel free to interrupt me.

I love this line here.

I think it’s really beautiful and it also frames a really critical Yogachara perspective about liberation.

And self-realization in the context here.

It says, Mahamati, like a fierce wind blowing on the water of the great ocean, the winds of the external realm buffeted the chitta ocean, the mind ocean, and the waves of consciousness arise without end.

Mahamati, like a fierce wind blowing on the water of the great ocean, the winds of the external realm buffeted the chitta ocean, and the waves of consciousness arise without end.

And it might be worth it to just kind of like, let that soak in and move on to the next section so we have a little bit more here.

The thing that I want to make sure everyone hears there is that the waves of consciousness arise without end.

Really critically different than a lot of perspectives on consciousness and the ideas of cessation and the idea of extinguishment.

What it’s saying here is that that seeding, perfuming process, the interaction of our interior and exterior, kind of this liminal interpenetration, is always happening.

That becomes important as we get a few more paragraphs in.

Because constructed nimitta…

Okay, so nimitta are conceptual perceptions or perceptual appearances.

It’s like when you see something, before it has meaning, it’s like a sight sensation.

And it becomes a perceptual experience as that image turns into something that we give meaning to, and then we create a subject-object relationship with.

So that’s kind of what we’re talking about by nimitta.

Because constructed nimitta are different and not different.

For example, seeing the Lego orchid and seeing the Buddhist statue are different and not different.

They’re different in the sense that I label them different things because to me they appear to have different forms, blah blah blah, yada yada.

They’re not different because they’re both an experience of sight nimitta.

They’re different and not different.

Essentially the same, superficially different.

And because nimitta arise according to karma, meaning they arise according to causes and conditions and seeds and perfuming, bearing fruit.

They arise according to this unfolding chain in these discrete moments, not a series of moments, but in a discrete sense.

One enters deeply into fixation, into conceptual fixation.

And what that means is that our subjective experience of that being a Lego orchid and that being a Buddha becomes so reified and so fixed that it’s extremely difficult to convince ourselves to perceive those things as other things.

Maybe someone somewhere is deep enough in their own consciousness where they could convince themselves that the Lego orchid looks like a Buddha statue and the Buddha statue looks like a Lego orchid and they magically make those things switch positions while they’re sober.

I don’t know.

I can’t do that.

So that conceptual fixation of relative experience because of the interplay of causes and conditions like we just really like deep and it’s profound and it happens prior to myself in process.

So I am built out of those experiences.

It’s not that there’s an I who’s having those experiences.

If there’s an I who’s having those experiences, then I would be able to change those experiences.

I arises in relationship to those experiences.

And so it is not possible to comprehend the self nature of form, etc.

And in this case that’s referring to the five skandhas.

Therefore, the five sense consciousness body transforms and what that means is that, therefore, we are kind of riding on the waves of the ever evolving sensing perceiving mechanism at the basis of our human process, which metaphorically wins water questions, comments, concerns about that and juicy nutty.

Hmm.

No, that one seems to that seems fairly straightforward compared to some of the previous.

Yeah, you know we’re deep when that’s straightforward.

Like that just makes sense.

Yeah, that’s an interesting point.

That’s an interesting point on me.

Sorry about that.

It’s, we know when that’s perfect.

Sorry, as soon as I turn on the mic, it starts echoing I guess that that’s validating to hear because it really reflects what I feel is like a deep intuitive understanding that I’ve not really ever been able to articulate that way.

Can you re articulate it for us in your words, please.

Sure, there’s the real time perception is often as though there is an eye that is witnessing this that is separate from what’s being witnessed, but in reality, they are inseparable and that sense of an eye does not arise without the interpenetration of what’s happening as it’s very ground.

I think you’re right.

Yeah, nicely said, that’s, that is a critical step.

Critical insight.

Well said.

Let’s go ahead and move on, because I think that this, we’re right.

I think we’re ready.

So, the next section of this sutra says Mahamati, the five sense consciousness body arising in conjunction with differentiating and partitioning cognition of perceptual appearances nimitta should be known as Vijnana.

Vijnana is like a discursive knowledge.

Causing your body to evolve.

Now, when I was researching the commentary around, first off, the Lankavatara, there’s very little accessible commentary on it.

Also in very challenging Chinese.

So the body here Suzuki treats is, and then the word here is actually like pores.

It’s like very much the gross physical body, and Suzuki treats it as such he actually says pores red pine I think there’s something a little bit more abstract.

And I just want the body.

So I think it’s really good to explore what we are really talking about here.

And what I think, or what I would like to offer from my contemplation of this is that as our sensory experience engages in its dynamic interplay and unfolding.

Okay.

This is what allows our physical experience to take on the impression or to take on the expression of continuity of change in continuity.

And what I mean by that is we have the experience of being a self being a person who persists through time.

Because we kind of like know that all of these separate things are happening to me.

And this body.

And this form.

And what I know about my experience is directly creating my physical experience.

Okay.

And we see some signs of this and the power of placebo.

How do we know something will make us feel better than it does.

Right.

But how do we know that it will make us feel better because we experience in our five, our five sense consciousnesses shifts and change that we continue to relate to over time.

And this metacognitive capacity to stitch together moments and hold it in a consecutive narrative that’s happening to me.

That allows my physical expression to feel like a coherent evolution of a single person.

I think that’s the mechanism that it’s talking about.

Yeah, I’ve heard the language use like the you know the illusion of a permanent separate self as ego.

I think they’re talking about that process I’ve heard an analogy of like the, the fluorescent light that we perceive as like one constant light stream, but it’s actually flicking on and off really really fast.

And, and then we manufacture the perception of continuity.

So, that’s playing out at the level of, of self, I can see, are they also saying that’s playing out at the.

It’s actually playing out at the physical level, like like there’s something there that’s keeping this whole body together as though it’s one physically continuous thing.

I believe so.

The language is pretty unambiguous that it’s talking about gross materiality.

But it doesn’t really go on to elaborate on the point, I don’t know if it.

I don’t remember that it digs into that much later in the sutra but I am going to be keeping an eye out for it because it’s kind of just like dropped in there I was like, Oh, by the way, your consciousness is creating a physical form.

Is that crazy for sitting here going like, Yeah, uh huh.

And no I don’t think so.

Okay.

It does feel like it’s just kind of like, okay.

I was like that’s, yes.

Makes sense.

Where are you going with nowhere.

Okay, cool.

Not just me then.

I’m going somewhere with it, but the, the whole like nugget about this being a relationship with materiality is just kind of like thrown in there, and then they do shift back into the, the never ending, you know, waving quality of it and the ever evolving nature of things by criticizing the shit out of not out of meditators who think that their state shifts are liberating.

So that’s where it goes next if we want to just go into that.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Matt Do I see you in the same.

Okay.

What’s that.

Massaging my knee.

As I was listening.

Just this whole section feels like.

Sorry, I’m not trying to interrupt there’s some.

The whole section feels like reminiscent of, like, Trump Rinpoche is cutting through spiritual materialism, where they’re talking about like a certain stage in, you know, spiritual, spiritual development where the ego starts to take these experiences and ideas and then turn them into a separate self but but that really, there’s something more beyond that and this seems like, you know, the medicine for that in their way.

Yes.

I’m going to come back to this specifically in a little bit where it talks about the boonies and the stages of practice, and, you know, the shared ones between Mahayana and Hinayana vehicles and then what happens after the realization if you continue training and that actually is in just a couple paragraphs.

Yeah.

We’re back.

Okay, so here we go.

Quick terminology check.

Yeah.

Just a.

Just on a rising moment of consciousness right.

Chitta is another multivalent word that seems lots of different ways.

And this particular sutra, I find it to mostly seem to indicate like the entire experience of, of a mind only moment.

Chitta would be like the thing that they described through eight consciousnesses.

Okay.

And it’s like a Chitta is flowing, right, right, it’s the ocean that’s moving and movement of the ocean is described in the eight layers of consciousness.

Chitta being a singular would be each of those waves in the ocean.

One, or at least one after the other.

Yeah, yeah.

We want to, we want to kind of think of fluidity but we also want to think of discreetness.

Right.

So these are like not completely separate, but not completely continuous as light ends up being a great more for for its particle and wave.

Yeah.

So, we can kind of think of as the light thing of mind.

Okay.

And the eight consciousness is kind of like spectrums, or areas on the spectrum.

Again, all metaphors are.

Okay.

So, so this one is the next thing here, it says, Okay, they, and they, after lots of digging is people who are not self realized according to the London stars teachings.

Okay.

And they’re basically criticizing dualistic meditators, or the hand on a vehicle.

cessation realization.

Okay.

They, the not self realized, don’t think I develop and evolve nimitta causes my own mind appears turning around to elusive constructs arising from karmically purpuing to tendencies, appearing as subject to object experience and mistaken as real that are sequentially composited reified and clung to the people who are not self realized don’t think like that.

To be fair, I don’t think anyone nowadays is going to think like that because that was a mouthful.

But it was like a very short summary of what it’s saying realized perspective is.

Okay, so they don’t think like that.

And they’re every decaying characteristic also turns, such as separating realms, so so the decaying characteristics are that there’s like a maturation and abiding a decaying and an extinguishment right so there’s like this fourfold process of a phenomenon every discrete moment.

Right.

And so they’re saying that these decaying characteristics are constantly turning the impermanence is constantly turning and such as separating realms, which is like taking those ontological realms of experience that we were talking about and saying, Oh, this was one of those and this is one of those and my sadness is of this quality and my happiness is of this body and this is different from that right so they’re separating their realms of ontological experience.

They’re partitioning, they’re partitioning, and they’re differentiating, and all of this is known as revolving there, or we would say that their mind is spinning or turning with a CH you are, and right.

Okay.

So, they don’t do that and then take these yogins who are entering Diana Samadhi, which is like the Jonas.

Okay.

Subtle perfuming revolves, and they are not aware of that knowledge.

It happens when my consciousness ceases it happens when my self referencing consciousness ceases.

Right.

And there’s a subtle, there’s a subtle something that continues all the way through the genres because otherwise we wouldn’t be aware of that experience and when we have cessation experiences, then we don’t have self referencing.

But we can’t be aware of being in just a body, somebody during a cessation experience.

Right.

It is not that consciousness ceases, and then the honest somebody is entered the perfuming seeding doesn’t stop.

There is no cessation.

The text doesn’t say this but parenthetically, in that way.

Right, there is no cessation of the flow of mind in that way.

It is the absence of grasping after revolving realms that causes cessation.

And again, it doesn’t say cessation of what but because we’re a Buddhist, we’re going to say cessation of ignorance, because that’s the sociological basis for our practice.

So, self realization occurs when we are so clear on how all of these realms, these ontological experiences that we know epistemologically arise and fall away, sharing the same essence, and therefore we don’t grasp after this one and run away from that one.

We no longer see it as me having a self which is having this experience we see them as interpenetrating arising causes and conditions in real time noticing the multitude of Indra’s webs gems reflecting each other to create this discrete experience blink blink blink blink blink.

And now we’re self realized.

Beautiful.

That makes sense.

It’s actually surprisingly straightforward.

Yeah, it is.

Actually, strange noises.

Oh, that was getting a drink of water.

Oh, that was that strange.

I don’t know if I have a ton of.

Seems to be pretty straightforward.

I think it’s critical that it’s such a critical difference from thinking that there is some altered state we’re going to achieve where thoughtlessness is some like super awesome thing.

Yeah.

Is it wrong me to, like, I mean, since we started here like my, like I keep coming back to dynamic energy.

There’s that, you know, going back to the first analogy there’s dynamic energy of the wind.

There’s the dynamic energy of the waving.

There’s, you know, there’s this the constant perfuming process there’s the constant interpenetration, like recycling process that’s happening and then even the comparison to like hitting on a path like then, you know, criticizing their, their claims of sensation of it’s of it stopping because of a thing happening not recognizing that, that there is still that dynamic energy at play.

But then I, like, then it crossed my mind it’s like it.

Well, is that like stating that there’s like permanence of dynamic energy, like his dynamic energy impermanent to.

Or is it just impermanent in its in its dynamic energy.

Right.

Yeah, there’s no stasis.

Yeah.

And a lot of in the cultural milieu of these texts what it was being contrasted to was an ever permanent unchanging bliss in a world of constant change what were people seeking they were seeking stability and stay.

And if you follow the.

So the yoga training, which yoga turns practice demands, you do have altered state experiences of cosmic oneness that seems like a permanent ontological basis of light and bliss, and etc.

And they’re held up as a separate state and they say that non dual is merging with his yoga is union with that sublime.

And so the way that artists is evolving is basically saying well the sublime itself is the function of the dynamic interplay of that light.

I do still say that the fruit of spiritual practices, tongue tingle up, which is permanence purity self and bliss.

So in this tradition that is still the fruit of spiritual practice but that’s arrived at through the realization of the constant unfolding inner penetrating nature of that basis.

And not by clinging to it as a abstract state experience that we enter through deep concentration meditation.

Yeah.

Makes sense.

I think, yeah.

Like, like, again back to the ocean again like the wind can die down in the water can settle but the wind’s not going to stay died down forever like the external world that’s winding like is dynamic it’s always changing.

And so it’s always going to be interacting, you know, like in everywhere.

from a slightly different perspective and say that even if the wind dies down.

That’s not necessarily going to stop a lot of the wind, the water still has current so our water.

Yeah, still water has momentum.

Yeah, it’s like that analogy of trying to stir the water it’s like yeah you just got to like stop stirring it for a while like it’ll settle, you know, it’ll settle over time, you know, based on like just dampening.

Slightly different teaching that teaching is specifically related to selling the mind for the purpose of entering into meditative absorption, which is different than the context of what is the nature of reality.

So in the nature of reality we’re using the ocean, and the ocean represents our internal karmic perfuming, which is inherited from the beginning was passed.

And so there are constant transpersonal currents that can occur, even without there being any wins.

Ryan’s question about here having an earwig and hearing a tune in his head in the absence of any external source of sound.

There is a current moving in his water feel there doesn’t need to be wind externally to produce that movement of consciousness.

That’s a nature of reality thing.

Greg want to chime in here too so I don’t want to keep him cut off for too much longer.

Well I don’t want to jump in just, just, just yet I’ll wait.

I mean but isn’t that like the tinnitus or the ringing or the earwig or whatever we’re talking about like isn’t that a like a result or lingering result of the wind in the first place.

You could say that when it comes to tonight is yeah that’s a real lingering result of a rather explosive external wind that I don’t get to experience for the rest of forever, annoyingly.

So this is why it’s non dual right because the visa, the seeds become the perfume.

Yeah.

So at the point where there is no longer an external source.

There’s no seed.

The seed is the perfume itself, which can happen.

And we can say that the perfume itself can produce its own seed, which we would typically call memory.

And that memory can come back and perfume.

Right, so they don’t have to be external to our physical skin barrier, these can be external to our sense of self.

That’s right yeah they’ll they’ll transform, like, and so they can all once they’ve transformed and they can go out in either direction, play with either Yeah, my, my take on this is that they’re, they’re really just describing the substrate of reality, right like the substrate upon which everything exists, and they’re going into enough granularity to describe the mechanisms, such that it’s adequate to when you engage that epistemological understanding can have an ontological shift towards an experience of cessation, or all experience, but all of those are occurring within this greater substrate that they’re describing.

I wouldn’t call it permanent.

I’d say it’s without end.

So, ever moving dynamic energy with no end.

If we want to call that permanent is a different kind of permanent than the experience of permanence, because there’s nothing outside of it.

That’s my take but what comes up for me is interesting.

It’s a little bit philosophical, which is very strong ping.

It’s like okay.

And why.

Why, why is it this way why all the complexity.

What’s the purpose.

I don’t know if they address that and I don’t know that they’re even trying to, but that’s what comes up for me.

I mean, why are they going to such great lengths to describe the substrate of reality of reality.

No, no, no, no.

Why are things, why is reality organized this way.

They’re talking about what is, but I’m like, like, I want like, like, like, I really appreciate the Vedanta, like Advaita Vedanta kind of worldview on some idea of a all conscious all organizing principle, the all right that that needs to have.

A, it needs to be this way so that it can experience its own nature.

Right, something like that.

Do they get into that philosophical aspect at all.

My experience of this tradition is that it does not do metaphysical cosmology.

It does not do metaphysical cosmology is solely focused on what stops you from living in this incarnation as a delusion ignorant suffering be.

And it kind of says, we don’t really care, because we can’t really like nothing that we investigate through our direct experience has revealed that to us, except for the recognition that whatever we’re experiencing is a projection of our own mind.

So when I’m having a deity yoga experience and I’m merging with green Tara, or I’ve unzipped, and all of a sudden I’ve manifested into a giant blue Shiva.

These kind of altered state experiences have no liberative quality, in the sense that they do not fundamentally reorganize the way that I relate to my mundane experience.

So what’s the point of those altered state experiences.

Well, this system would argue that there isn’t one.

There’s kind of cool fair.

That would be aggressive.

Sorry, I wasn’t trying to interrupt.

What’s the point of the whole thing.

Why is this even happening.

I think, I think we all get to make up our own reason for that.

Give us the answer me.

Chapter three section two paragraph.

Let’s go.

We’re closing check in, we all have the opportunity to share our current metaphysical answer to, to that question, just as a, as a way to connect because this is highly individual and is not is not a part of this practice, that’s something that we are left to determine for ourselves through our own investigation.

So, I would like to invite us as a as a connection as a connection point to share where we stand on that very religiously significant spiritually significant metaphysical question.

And I want to go first.

Hello.

It’s not obligatory obligatory.

You can choose not to share, it’s not that I wouldn’t share that I love a good answer.

Fair enough.

I get to have something to reflect on.

Yeah, I guess I’ll go first.

Yep, checking in.

I can’t, I can’t prove this, but it really seems to me like there’s a telos.

There’s a direction that everything’s going in.

And it’s evolutionary.

And it’s also cyclical.

It might just be one big circle but within that circle.

It’s, it’s like we could put a start in a stop point.

And the stop, the stopping point would be when all inorganic inorganic matter in the universe is incorporated into a single life form.

It’s, it’s like there is separation and division and division in the material realm.

But it’s always moving towards life, becoming more and more complex life integrating more and more things into an interpenetrating system, which is sort of a reflection of this deeper truth that’s the nature of everything already that they’re talking about, but it’s being acted out in a physical realm in a progressive way there’s a progression to it.

So, that’s, that’s my answer that’s.

Yeah, that’s what I feel.

Ultimately, we’d have to all just be for fun.

That’s right.

Beautiful.

Thank you.

I’m at checking in.

I’m at checking in.

Yeah, like the way you just ended Greg.

I always take me back to like, I like to remember the place where I first heard Alan Watts say like, life is a play of energy now.

And with the emphasis on play.

And just there’s so many fun ways to take that.

And that’s wonderful.

Yeah, it seems, you know, I think another thing that like I’ve been sitting with as we’ve been talking today is like, it’s, it really I mean it’s something that like it’s so ordinary we take it for granted but it’s fascinating.

Like it’s so fascinating like watching like how like physical interacts with information, you know, like information like you can’t point to it you can’t touch it like you can’t hold it like, where does it exist.

But it’s like they’re this back and forth like information into into the physical and I don’t know, I, I find this whole the whole perfuming process like just memory, it’s like, it’s like, yeah, we have these supernovas were this, you know, creation, you know, and then eventually it’s come, you know, like, even just like cosmically like back into a black hole, you know, or back into a singularity.

And it’s all crushed again.

And then in between there’s just memory and information, you know, like that’s like the experience of it.

And, yeah, like on the on the macro and on the micro it’s like it’s, I find the whole thing fascinating.

Seems like we’re like agents of entropy, almost.

But, um, but yeah like back to that like just seeing how information is interacting with physical is is also still like it just to me like it’s a small clue, like, or maybe a giant clue that there’s.

Yeah, like what what’s behind that, you know, like this, this human realm is human experience like, you know, is it, is it some sort of like training ground or something like that, you know, or until we can sit with positive and negative infinity and be unbothered, you know, like our mind is still like in training, you know, where, you know, and I don’t know, all the ways that the mind works.

It just kind of pops up from itself and, yeah, it almost seems like there’s other dimensions at play, you know, it has to be even like you talked about quantum but yeah why I don’t know I like I like I’d like to sit back and just think of it as play as well.

At some point, not some objective not something to be accomplished, you know, but just a play of the dynamic energy, you know, and it’s like, if you can harness it you know, then, then yeah like you’re creating universes.

That’s pretty wild.

Thank you.

I wish I had a succinct answer to that question.

But I don’t.

So, I, where I land on it.

Because it is an infinitely bothersome question, like not have a direct answer to it.

The closest that I’ve come to that’s that I’ve been able to be vaguely okay with is all of this is the only way that the mind works.

The only way that the divine gets to experience itself.

And to just be a little itty bitty part of that is.

It’s awesome.

Blessing every day.

Look at it that way.

It kind of helps a little bit to take the edge off of all the crazy in the world and recenter back on what each of us happens to be so meaningful.

So, yeah, but it’s the way I got nothing.

I mean, not a clue just glad to be a part of it.

That’s all I get.

Thank you.

I have tried on many different, many different metaphysical positions cosmology wise.

The one that I think has happened, or the one that’s been most persistent for me and the one that I feel most related to right now is that there is a spark.

Right.

And that spark is like a spontaneous combustion.

Drifts just a little bit.

And somehow, and a miracle of itself.

It remembers that it was from one place to another.

Now the line becomes a triangle.

And from that drastic manifestation.

The capitalistic emanation framework.

And once that began once, once the divine once the sublime started playing with itself.

Right.

I mean that euphemistically.

Then, then we all came.

And we get to live out the orgasm of creation.

And that’s pretty cool.

Right.

So, to get more complex than that in terms of how that beautiful orgasmic moment of itself playing with itself is going to turn back into impregnating itself.

Right.

There we go again.

Right.

Yeah, so divine love.

Creative capacity.

Why?

Because it just feels good.

So that’s me, coming with that, and deeply grateful to all of you for this ongoing conversation, we covered so much juicy material.

This particular section changes, we’ve got a little bit of prose left and then it turns into verse.

And I’m very interested to get into working on the verse I haven’t gotten there yet.

So next week we’ll probably pick up with that.

And should be lots of fun so hopefully to be able to see that.

Have a great week.

Do come again.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Oh, God, what is this?

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh,

The post Lankavatara 2:IX:5-8 appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

All right, so welcome.

Delightful practicing with you so far in our qigong and our longer than typical sit, but it’s good to stretch those out from time to time.

Um, anything that you’d like to pick up from our last conversation, um, which ended up with a, with a rather dramatic fashion, um, before we, before we pick up with where we left off in the long term.

Um, I mean, there’s, there’s a ton to unpack there, but, but very briefly, um, but yeah, I think it’s, it’s just a good reminder not to stick to any of the extremes, um, and to find yourself like, you know, always, you know, you know, that like razor sharp edge, you know, of the middle.

It’s like, how do we, how do we sneak our way in there?

So that was, that was, you know, in a very general way, it was kind of, um, more, I felt that that discussion took me afterwards.

So, yeah, well, good.

That’s a, that’s a good direction to be taken.

People always used to say, and this is, I mean, this wasn’t his original saying, but he was very fond of the middle way is like threading the eye of a needle.

And at the same time, caravans of camels can pass through.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lots of unpacking.

I love it.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Well, you’re welcome.

Thank you.

And, uh, anything else that you want to pick up or related tangential inquiries about meditation, the style of practice, um, whatever, before we dig in, not at this moment.

Okay.

Well, if they come up, just let me know.

So last time we had gotten to the point in chapter two, section nine, where, um, the Buddha was going to start singing his praises of the Dharmakaya of the realm of the ocean wave storehouse consciousness.

And he starts by saying, let’s break down our experience of sight.

So we can kind of see how things work.

He said that that has four characteristics.

It arises due to four causes and conditions, right?

Due to the four causes and conditions, the eye consciousness involves evolves.

What for one’s own mind manifestations are gathered and received and ignorance spent quite a bit of time talking about different ways we can understand ignorance.

So that’s the first cause and condition.

The second, which I don’t believe we got to enroll is where we’ll pick up today.

Is that beginningless errors pass through the perfuming of forms, beginningless errors pass through the perfuming of forms and errors here, you know, in retrospect, as I’m with it today, this particular word shoe is, um, it’s almost more like contradictions.

It’s a, it’s a term that’s used for like, when somebody is one way to your face and then another way behind your back, or when, um, what they say and do isn’t in accord.

Right.

So it’s not just errors in the sense that it’s mistaken.

It’s like in coherences, things don’t quite line up.

It’s like our, we bring stuff from our perfuming and we super impose that on our sensory experience.

And we give it all this extra stuff that it doesn’t have on its own.

And that may or may not be, but often is incoherent to what’s actually happening in the moment.

Okay.

So this is obviously speaking towards a lot of it, you know, memory storehouse consciousness.

Is it, is it fair to say that this also goes back to ignorance?

It’s just like ignorance from the past.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that, and that’s where we were talking about how ignorance can, sometimes it means, you know, not seeing through.

And sometimes it seems to just refer to like the natural function of, of individuated experience.

And I think that’s kind of closer to the realm that we’re in right now, when it’s talking about this particular form of, of ignorance and then beginning this errors pass through the perfuming of forms.

Cause it’s not, it doesn’t seem to be indicating that there’s anything we can do about it.

It seems to be saying that this is how site works.

Yeah.

What do you do about something that’s beginningless?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that’s a really great question.

And a key phrase that I think is really critical for us to unpack.

So one of my teachings that I don’t really do in this context, it’s part of evolutionary sovereignty, which is a more syncretic paradigm is being, becoming tapestry.

And basically what we discover through the wisdom literature is that there’s like a being of becoming and the becoming returns to the B and the being that’s happening after the becoming is influenced by the becoming process.

Right?

So it’s kind of like saying if we, if we have an apple tree and it falls and apple seed hits the ground and it grows into an apple tree and it produces an apple, like the next apple that falls, like in a way it’s returning to being, it’s a seed returning to the earth, but it’s a different generation.

It’s been pollinated, potentially cross-pollinated with another type of apple.

It’s subtly different.

So the apple that grows in its apple tree that grows out of that seed, is its own becoming process based on its own being process.

And the whole function of its becoming will be a part of the next being moment.

Right?

And so what it’s saying is that we’re in the cyclical process and that’s beginningless, right?

Because no matter, you can’t, there’s no beginning or end to a circle.

And then it’s like, so a lot of times people psychologize this and they say, well, when can we know where our trauma really started?

Right?

Is it our birth trauma?

Right?

You know, is it our great, great, great grandfather’s trauma that we’re living out?

And I don’t think that’s what beginningless means.

And then sometimes people turn it into like a mythopoetic cosmology that just says like, oh, well, you can’t know, so fuck it.

You know?

So like, don’t worry about digging into it because you’ll never know because it’s beginningless.

And over the years, to me, it’s present in investigating the cycle and the wisdom traditions.

I think it really, all it’s saying is like, it’s just this perfuming, being, becoming, being, becoming, being, becoming thing happening all the time.

And it doesn’t matter where you are in that process.

Once you see it happening, you can be with it wherever it is in its process because it is being, becoming at the same time.

Right?

It is, if we go to a short enough duration of time, it is static and exactly what it is.

But in the very next instant, it has changed.

So it has become.

But then when we pause it, when we check that exact instant, it’s just being again.

Millions of times a minute.

Which I find very empowering because it says that, well, any time that I recognize anything that’s going on, I can interject something into the process.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In this case, the beginningless contradiction.

So beginningless perfumings, beginningless imputations, uh, automatically get connected to that direct experience, make meaning so fast.

We have to, um, yeah, it’s part of what happened.

Yeah.

So we’ve got one’s own minds.

Manifestations are gathered and received in ignorance.

Beginningless errors pass through the perfuming of forms or beginnings, contradictions or incoherencies or imputations.

And then, and then this is where it gets really interesting.

Consciousness is, I mean, not like it wasn’t interesting before, but I love this one.

Consciousness is individuating marks are conceptually fixed.

This is that reification thing.

Yeah.

We’re thirsty for things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

We want to know, we want to name, we want to put in buckets.

We want to classify.

We want to take what we know and treat it like it’s real so that we have a stable foundation to operate from.

So we can feel like safe and in control.

Yeah, exactly.

It’s the illusion of control.

Like if I can name it, then I understand if I understand that then, you know, I’ve, I can, you know, I’ve now established it, you know, and so it’s no longer a threat in some way, you know, like it’s just this, like, it’s to pacify our own minds, you know, by labeling everything.

Yeah.

And then it’s, you know, in a way it’s kind of just a functional thing because it’s very useful, you know, to name a door and to know that a doorknob opens the door.

You know, when I see a door with a doorknob, it’s good to not have to like, reevaluate it every single time to figure out what’s going on with that thing in the wall.

Right.

Part of our superpower is pattern recognition.

Yeah.

And we mistake the pattern of process with the pattern of things.

And then that’s where we get sideways.

Yes.

Right.

Especially when it relates to our subject object experience.

Taking ourselves as a subject to an object.

That’s the one that seems to cause the most suffering.

When we take it too seriously.

And we kind of naturally let into the fourth causing condition, which is the desire to perceive many fold form characteristics.

So within these four causes and conditions, one of them is the very simple desire to experience.

And if we think back to section 58, is that what it was that I read?

It might have been 68.

The mother, right?

The mother in that section was.

Well, heck, if I can find it again.

Yeah, 58.

So the mother is the desire and joy together with the thirst to be reborn.

It’s like life is kind of fun.

So the mother of our experience is kind of that joy and desire and the multiplicity of things.

Killing that is part of liberation.

But it doesn’t mean not experiencing it.

It doesn’t mean ending it.

In a way, it means ending it so that you can have the yogic experience of unity with the sublime.

But then it’s like from that experience, then we recognize that that’s the process that’s happening.

And now we’ve seen through it, like we’ve used before with the gem and the colored paper.

And now we can now we’re not in darkness.

We’re not ignorant of the process anymore.

We come into being almost for experience.

And I get hypnotized by experience.

Yeah, exactly.

We forget.

Yeah, yeah.

Which, of course, has many parallels with things like the esoteric understanding of original sin and cleverness leading to nakedness and Christianity.

So it’s interesting sometimes to understand these parallel development mythologies that happen across cultures.

Yeah, I mean, in what way?

Just explain that a little bit more.

Oh, so when you get into the Hebrew.

I mean, like watching.

People’s expressions of that same function, you know, or their understandings or their ways to capture it or their experiences of it like that we’re talking about, like the multiplicity of that experience.

Yeah, just kind of how the same the same issue lies at the core of multiple religious traditions, basic perspective, you know, and for me, I think that’s always a fascinating clue for the for the essential threads, regardless of the the form that the religion takes overall or the language around it or the cultural baggage that goes with it.

I don’t know if I’m quite a perennialist that says that there’s only like one human wisdom tradition, although I’m probably pretty close to sitting in that camp.

I find it those things are the things that I end up kind of zeroing on because of the people in this time and place and the people in this time and place identified such similar characteristics through their through their meditative practice and their investigation of their human experience.

And they’re basically saying the exact same thing that seems worthwhile.

That seems worth investing.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, it’s it seems to me like the the deeper your practice becomes, at least like my experience, like and it seems to be other I mean, I’ve heard this iterated from other people as well.

Other masters as well.

Like it’s the.

It’s like they’re all pointing like they’re all pointing at the same thing.

You know, it’s just not all of them have like the proper context or some get off the ride early, you know, thinking they got to the end, you know, and you can kind of see it’s like, yeah, there are I can see what you’re pointing at, like and it lets you connect into that religion and like, you know, even like just eavesdrop on the teachings, you know, and in here and deeper, you know.

But, yeah, like it does, it is it does reinforce, you know, to hear this like individually, you know, materialize all over in different forms.

So, yeah, there is a bit of a backup, you know, that’s gone there.

But but, yeah, it’s just like, how do you explain the ineffable, you know, and so we all have our pathetic ways of doing it, you know, and some are better, and some have gone deeper, you know, but doesn’t necessarily mean like they’re not true, you know, it’s just like, yeah, like, you know, a for effort, you know, on your on your doctrine or whatever.

Yeah, yeah.

And then trying and being sensitive enough to understand that, you know, everything was kind of created for a specific purpose.

And it probably does whatever its purpose is really, really well.

Right?

So then it’s like, well, what, what purpose is this serving?

And then how does it do that really well?

And then let’s take that nugget and see how that can enrich our practice.

You know, that’s, I think, really, a beautiful way to engage in cross or interfaith dialogue or cross examination of our practices.

Obviously, since this is the one that I chose to stick with, I think it’s the best, because, you know, why would I, why would I do this, right?

And arguably, we would say that non dual Mahayana, East Asian is the most is the deepest.

Right?

So when we look at like, taxonomies of religious forms, or or like integral theory that specifically tries to map like states of consciousness, and what people are describing, and, you know, give it a hierarchical structure and stuff like that, we find that to be kind of kind of true, is that non dual Advaita Vedanta, Mahayana, you know, those are pointing to the deepest states of human realization.

Anyway, it’s very tangential to our conversation, but I think it’s important because I think it all enriches our understanding of the material.

It sure does enriches the practice to their times, like it was like, just this last weekend, it was it was an Advaita Vedanta guided meditation that like, you know, really, like, for me, it’s been like, it’s especially effective at severing the attachment to thought and their way of describing thought as the expression of the essence, you know, just like, like, everyone’s got their, you know, their keys to the door, you know, and, and yeah, it’s like, you know, you have to universally buy in on every single word or every single teaching, you know, but like, they listen, because you never know, like, what, what does it for you, you know?

Yeah, and it’s really, yeah, so then, so then it’s just not getting confused.

Right?

Yeah.

They can be done.

I mean, Advaita Vedanta, what we’re doing here, very, very, very similar.

So that’s not a great source of confusion.

But there can be, you know, even there’s actually probably more confusion to be found within Buddhism than there is to be found between what we’re doing and what an Advaita Vedanta teacher would do.

Because they were both fundamentally working with nana yoga, but then you get, yeah, there’s like, trying to keep track of what each one is used, like, when they say the mind, you know, it’s like 100 different ways to use that word, you know?

Yeah, yeah, it can get pretty wild.

It can get confusing, but yeah, you just want to get wrapped up in it, just listen deeper.

Yeah.

Okay, so we’ve got to bring us back to the sutra here for just a little bit, because this, we went through four conditions, which is that we gather and receive our minds manifestations in a form of ignorance, which is basically in the context of subject object illusion.

Our perfuming impacts the way we understand the direct experience.

Then we take that imputed meaning and our direct experience together, and we have a reification of an object that we have a subject relationship to.

And in that there is an ongoing desire and joy in the multiplicity of form.

You know, it’s kind of like, why do we exist?

It’s because the all got bored and decided to make its own babies, you know?

That’s the thing.

So with this, on this basis, then he says, the Buddha says, Mahamati, these four types of causes and conditions are situated in a flowing stream.

And the alaya-vijnanas turning produces waves.

So it’s kind of, what I’m getting here is, it’s kind of saying that direct experience itself is just that being becoming loop.

And that’s just cyclically happening in kind of a flow of consciousness, that chitta, mind stream is just flowing.

And then it is the activity of the perfuming that comes out of the storehouse consciousness, that’s actually creating the individual waves of experience.

And that might be why when we have a strong concentration meditation practice, we feel as though everything gets really still and calm, but also at the same time, it’s not static.

I think that’s one of the great mistakes of a lot of language around meditation instruction is it emphasizes stillness and quiet.

And a lot of times that’s left to be understood as static, which is different.

It’s still dynamic.

It’s just so smooth that the dynamic nature of it doesn’t impact us in the same way.

Stealing the monkey.

Stealing the monkey?

Killing the monkey.

Killing the monkey.

Yeah.

That’s where the stillness is.

It’s like the stillness of the mind, but even the mind’s still going.

It’s just the monkey mind.

Yeah.

Run into all the windows and looking out the window.

Yeah.

Or like another great teaching.

Have you read about the ox herding pictures of the elephant?

Maybe not.

I don’t think so.

Okay.

Well, the elephant’s a little bit different, but there’s an ox herding, 10 pictures that come from the Zen tradition.

I think it actually came from Chan before it was Zen anyway.

But it shows this delightful process of finding out that you lost your mind, that your mind is represented by an ox, and then a search for your mind, and then getting a little whiff of it here and there, and then eventually finding your mind, and then having to go through a process of taming your mind, because your mind doesn’t want to walk on the path that you want it to walk on.

But then you actually get it to behave and start following you.

So then this ox becomes docile, so you can lead it down the path.

And then you can actually get on the ox and ride the ox.

Right?

So now the mind is serving us.

It’s not just that we’re controlling the mind, the mind is serving us.

That’s a big milestone in practice.

And then we find out that there actually never was an ox in the first place.

And then we come back to the marketplace and, and, you know, we’re the fat, happy Buddha.

So if you haven’t seen those pictures before, you should look them up, because I’m sure you would like them.

Yeah, that’s interesting.

I love that.

It also ties back into a little bit of last week too, you know, just like, in that being becoming processes, and in that recognition, it’s like, it is like the, it’s the intentional guiding, you know, like, that can get you there, you know?

It’s like, yeah, we have to find some way of being shown, you know, and until it’s been stabilized, you know, we have to keep at it.

Yeah.

That’s fine.

It’s like he said, we forget.

So it sounds like that’s, you know, we talked about earlier about like the analytical, I mean, it’s really just boiling down to like, okay, if you can understand the mechanics, and you can understand the storehouse consciousness, and how it functions, and how it feeds into, you know, site in this discussion, for example, like, it sounds like it’s just like the skillful gardening type stuff, like, you know, we’re bound, like, we’re all these residual impressions, like, you know, like an echo come back, you know, and some are delayed responses, and some are immediate responses.

And, you know, it’s just, but like, it seems that that storehouse is, I haven’t really taken it here yet, but maybe it’s a good question for you, then.

So does it seem more that it’s like, the, I don’t know, like, I don’t know how to, I don’t know how to write words for stuff, but it’s called like the path to Buddhahood, or, you know, original nature and all that.

So it’s, is it is it a lack of purification, as the storehouse consciousness processes is working real time.

And it’s like, you get like 10 years behind you, you know, of, like, non entangled, you know, experience, you know, and that seemed to free us, you know, because we don’t are constantly being like, bombarded by, you know, those residual impressions, you know.

So like, if it’s, if it’s been if it’s purified on the way in and out, in a way, I don’t really know how to describe that.

But it seems like it’s like that.

That prevents future problems with the storehouse, I guess, or, or like, it’s like, when it does perfume, you know, how does it perfume, did it perfume purified?

Or did perfume, you know, confused or diluted, you know, because that’s how it came in.

And that’s how it was stored in the first place.

Yeah, so this is a great question.

Very profound question.

And it’s kind of at the center of our sociology, right?

So how does this end up delivering on the promise to liberate us from suffering?

Because that’s what the practice is all about.

We suffer.

So what is the end of suffering?

And, and I think there’s a couple things that are going on here.

One is, it’s not just understanding the mechanics, understanding the mechanics has a twofold process, because we understand what the mechanics are that we’re looking for, because we understand the description of the reality from the Buddha’s perspective.

Now, when we’re sitting in meditation, we know what we’re looking for.

So then when we have the direct experience that matches what the Buddha is describing to us as reality, then we can see it.

Otherwise, we would never see it because it’s so subtle.

So doing studies like this is preparing our mind to see, to know what to look for when we’re doing our meditation.

And then we have that direct experience.

And now we can begin to work with the mechanics.

Okay, and this gets more directly to your question.

The working with the mechanics has a couple different qualities.

One of them is that when we can see how we’re perfuming, we actually can like, change the perfume, we can we can call on different perfuming, or at the very least, we can recognize that we’re perfuming this event in this way.

And we’re taking this relationship to it.

And it’s inspiring this kind of activity.

And then we can, at the karmic level of thought, word and deed, intervene, we might we might still be having impulses to behave unskillfully.

But because we can see the mechanism that’s driving the unskillful behavior, we become detached from the identity that in that moment, and then we have freedom to choose a different karmic expression, which, which is kind of like what you’re saying is a purification.

Is this like the distinction between like, okay, so we, we perfume in now.

And changing it from a poison to a medicine, you know, like, I perfumed some afflictive emotion, you know, or some, some, something that reifies the self, you know, or, you know, has hatred buried in it somewhere or something like that.

But like, if I can notice the disturbance, then that then that becomes the medicine that becomes the teaching.

And so I can work with it that way.

But I feel like that’s still like, dealing with past, you know, like, the beginningless, you know, aspect of it, where it’s just like, all of this is kind of, it’s baked in, and not all of it was was taken in skillfully.

Yeah, like, if I’m experiencing, you know, more skillfully from seeing through, like, as the experience continues, like, then the that what gets stored at that point, then becomes, I guess, purified or cleaner or something like that.

So that when it perfumes, again, it perfumes, you know, less, just less distractive, or less confusing, or less diluting, you know, like, it came through clear the next time, I don’t know, something really limited on my language here.

But no, you’re doing great.

That’s pretty much the idea.

There’s a couple things that I want to touch on, though, around this topic, because they’re, they’re quite important.

And I think if you take them, and now it will be really helpful to you.

It took me a long, a lot of reading, I’m condensing a lot of experience into this piece here.

So hopefully, it doesn’t come out too garbled.

One of them is that remember, when I said that, that error, beginningless errors, isn’t really errors, it’s more like incoherence.

So purification is really about appropriateness.

And it doesn’t necessarily mean that there are some mental qualities that are bad, or negative, or inherently unskillful.

They, they can be deeply unpleasant to our personal sense of what we would like to be experiencing, but they might be exactly appropriate to the conditions.

Right.

And in that case, it’s still a pure perfuming.

Right.

And then it’s like, okay, so this thing is happening, and I find myself in a state of disgust about this experience.

And I’m personally disgusted.

Somehow, even though it’s appropriate to my circumstances to be disgusted by that, I can express that karmically in ways that are skillful or unskillful.

Right.

And that’s where we want to watch, right?

That’s because that becomes the future, future perfume, unskillful actions become perfuming that creates more unskillfulness.

And that’s the whole mind garden concept.

And, and we are, I for a long time was tempted to think that if I did this hard enough, long enough, then I could like, stop.

And it would just always come out beautifully every single time, and I’d have to stop thinking about it.

But Huineng, in his Platform Sutras, has a section, and I’m paraphrasing, but it basically says an ordinary being who’s awake is a Buddha, and a Buddha who goes to sleep is an ordinary being.

If in one moment, you manifest love and compassion and wisdom, you’re a Buddha.

And if in the next moment, you manifest greed, anger, or ignorance, you’re a demon.

So impermanence is fundamental, and that includes our Buddha, that includes our state.

Our state is constantly changing.

Every discrete moment is a moment that’s being perfumed that requires skillful action.

And you could be the most awake dude in the world and have been working on your liberation for years and have been cut from the 10 fetters for like months.

And then something happens that touches some deep conditioning that you didn’t even know that you had.

And then all of a sudden, bang, you’re doing this thing.

And you’re like, what the fuck was that?

And so in that sense, we’re constantly engaging in these discrete moments of the being becoming process.

And we want to fall in love with that, because otherwise it feels, to me anyway, until I fell in love with it, it felt very onerous.

Like I always had to be on guard, and oh my god, and like, I’ll never be done with this shit.

And oh, this is awful.

But then we just get to fall in love with showing up.

And that actually feels really, really good to just fall in love with like, living.

Sutra talks about exactly about this kind of like, whatever’s arising is appropriate, and the sense that whatever’s arising is exactly the structure that can arise, based on the seed and the perfume combination that’s happening.

So I just want to bring this in.

So it’s part of this particular conversation, since we touched on that says Mahamati, just like the eye consciousness, all sense capacities co-arise along with subtle dusts and gross form.

Indeed, they are all like this, just like a mirror manifesting all the different forms and appearances.

And this is our, when we look at non-possession, when we look at non-characteristic, right, those stages of perception, as illusion samadhi, what we’re getting at, one of the beautiful things that happens is we recognize that life is exactly the only way it can be, including our judgments of whether or not life as it is right now is any good or not.

And when we get that, and we recognize that our ability to be self-conscious is a pure mirror, showing us exactly the structure of what is, then we can recognize that when we are willing to look, we can see whatever we need to see.

Yeah.

It’s like, how could you, how could you understand or even really experience light without darkness?

Right.

So that being the coming process as part of that, like oscillation, you know, because there it’s, it’s, it’s also part of the, it’s also its own like duality, sort of like this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The, the, the, if we, if we think of the yin-yang symbol, the tai chi, it’s a, it’s a monistic symbol.

It’s saying that all is one, but the mechanism by which all is one is in the interplay of opposing forces.

And that’s what the being becoming process we’ve been talking about is like, it’s, it’s all one and it’s, it’s mechanism is this being becoming opposing force.

Right.

Yeah.

Or how could you possibly be awake unless you were dreaming before?

Right.

Yeah.

It seems like I like appropriate, which reminds me of like understanding correct function as well.

But yeah, appropriate, like seems to be a good, like a good stepping stone.

Just try to like transcend right and wrong and good and bad.

And those types of judgments is such as you respond appropriately.

Yeah.

And appropriately is always changing to appropriately doesn’t stay fixed either.

Like, this is the way you respond to the situation.

Like, right.

You responded based on who you are, you know, all the, all the, all that’s from within here, you know.

Yeah.

It’s always different, but there’s still like a, I think I, I don’t remember which Sun master set up, but I think it, I think it was the one who started the, I can’t remember his name.

Anyway, it was like, there is no right and there is no wrong, but right is right.

And wrong is wrong.

I’ve always loved that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Correct function responding appropriately to the situation, you know, like it’s like, it’s, it’s, it’s honoring this whole thing, you know.

Yeah.

Anything else is like to, you know, like a dismissive of it, you know, or fully embrace it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then realizing that it’s beginningless.

So it’s like, okay, well you did the only thing that you could do at that moment.

It was appropriate because structurally that was the only reaction that you knew you had available to you.

Then you go, well, did I like that one or not?

Did that, did that have the desired effect?

Or was that, is that the karma that I want to repeat again in the future?

And then you go yes or no.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I’ve, I’ve found that, I found that part interesting too, because like it seemed times like, you know, if you can, if you can see this while you still have like, I don’t know, emptiness channeled it in some way, you know, then like it leads to an easier path of forgiveness.

Right.

You know, but then it’s not just like, you know, everything gets a hall pass either, you know, like there’s some balance where it’s like, you know, understanding that, like, well, I don’t know.

I almost feel like it’s like this, this whole thing seems to be this, like a natural inclination towards harmony, you know, because we’re all looking for happiness.

We’re doing it in a lot of unskillful ways, you know, but there is, but it’s like, yeah.

So if you’re ignoring it, then you’re ignoring, you know, like that inclination towards harmony.

It’s like, I, the way I think about it is like, you know, like Buddha and a band, you know, like, yeah, it might be like, you know, and then solo, you know, but it might be completely disruptive, you know, to the rest of the band, you know what I mean?

Like, if you’re just doing your own thing and then excusing it the whole time, you’re not listening and starting to dial and settle into everything that’s happening, you know.

There you go.

You got it.

Yeah.

We got it.

We got to play in the band.

Right.

Because we’re not, we’re not solos.

We’re never, we’re never alone.

We’re never disconnected.

Everything that’s happening is connected to everything else.

So we, harmony is our interdependence and our right function, our appropriateness within that tapestry.

Yeah.

Hard to believe it, but we’re already five past the top of the hour.

It always flies by.

It always flies by.

Yeah.

So.

That’s part of like, I remember like, when I went back and listened to last week’s, and then at some point along the way, it was like, well, then why are we here?

You know, why are we going through the sutra?

You know, and I just want to share this because like, I feel like this keeps coming up in different avenues.

I’ve heard this before, like, I mean, it’s all just kind of the chase.

Like it’s to me, to me, it’s like, I don’t know if it’s like, because it’s truth is enjoyment or something.

I don’t know, but it’s like, like, be personally, why am I here?

It’s like, cause I love this shit, you know, like, it’s my favorite thing in the world, you know?

So it makes it easy, you know?

And I remember like, like, you know, like in the yoga environments, I hear that as well.

You know, everything’s like practice, practice, you know, like it’s all like, everything’s hard work.

It’s like, well, it’s not really hard work if you’re enjoying it, you know, like, right.

Like, it’s like this play, you know, and then that’s where the Alan Watts, you know, play of energy stuff starts to ring in my head.

And it’s like, yeah, it’s life, life was play, you know?

And, and yeah, this is play.

It’s like, play for the mind, you know, until like, until like, it’s, I don’t know, I’m just exhausted, you know, like, I’ll have some fun, or almost.

It’s like the body, like with yoga, it’s just like, well, all right, let’s, let’s, let’s play with this body, you know, and like the embodiment practices.

So, so yeah, that’s, that’s fly by, like, why do this, like, and yeah, it’s like, and I, and then it makes me think like, well, why, why is this so enjoyable, you know?

And I don’t know, I think, like, I don’t know, I just, I don’t know.

I guess it’s inherited practice and talk about the stages and bliss shows up all the time, liberation, those are all nice things.

Maybe it’s just that, that inclination towards it, you know, but, but yeah.

Yeah.

All the things that you just said.

And I think there’s this, the fun thing about playfulness, I just got to say this, the fun thing about playfulness is remembering to play when you’re having a really bad time.

That’s still a game too.

Yeah.

Always on the playground.

Sometimes it gets pretty intense, but it’s still a playground.

Yeah.

All right, my friend.

Thank you.

Our Dharma discussion for today concludes.

Do you have anything for your closing check-in?

I think that was a good way to leave it for me.

And for me, eternally grateful and excited to be on the playground with you.

We will see you next week.

Yeah.

All right.

Take care.

Enjoy your afternoon.

The post Lankavatara 2:IX:3-4 appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

That’s been quite what makes the better internal clock, yeah.

The Mahler was a point that my hamstring gives out completely right about the 30 minute mark.

Like, nope, we’ve gone from like just a sensation to pain.

We’ll sit this for a while.

I’m hearing a lot of session of sensation in here.

There’s a lot of possession and representation.

I can drop that sensation in the jury job session.

That’s what we’re here for after all.

Welcome Welcome everyone to our second conversation on chapter two, section nine.

The last week we really had actually, oh, you know what, I don’t know if I ever got last week’s posted.

The last week’s discussion was quite lovely.

The first majority of it was around kind of the difference between or thoughts on what we’re doing in this space training yoga turns them.

And the contrast to emotional support groups spent quite a bit of time on that particular conversation.

There are some other rich nuggets in there.

And then we also took up the beginning of 2.9.

As the prime movers of our liberation vehicle, and also the list of the five Dharmas, which is nimitta perceptual appearance, Nama, which is naming that perceiving her naming that perceptual appearance.

which is array of fine discrimination that arises as we take the name, or the abstract concepts to be a real thing.

Some snap, which is the non dual recognition of that process.

And then, now, we’re room, which is, you know, no direct notice of suchness, no longer needing a watcher, but just a pure nowness.

So that was kind of where we were at last week.

Anyone coming today with kind of one grounded life based questions or after experimenting with seeing nimitta, Nama, vikalpa, samsara, jnaya, in their reality, any insights or realization.

This is a moment for you all to direct the conversation before we pick up with the seat.

Cool.

So, this opening of this section, like I said, it starts with a bunch of stuff.

And the stuff, Mahamati says, are all said to be characteristics of reality, all Buddhas call this mind.

So in a way, we’re getting a big definition of what mind means here.

Now, this isn’t the only definition and isn’t necessarily the most exhaustive definition, but this is a spot where Mahamati is really just opening up the idea of mind only as self-realization.

And we already talked about some of those characteristics, citta, the mind stream itself, manas, the stitcher together of experience, and vijnana, our various forms of discriminating intelligence, and the five dharmas that I just listed.

And then it goes on to say self-nature characteristics, self-nature characteristics, all practices of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, seeing one’s own mind as equal, and that objective realms are not manifested through this sequential compositing of dharmas.

So we can dig into these quite a bit if we want to, don’t necessarily have to, there’s a lot of juicy stuff in this sutra, or in this section.

But do any of those, do any of those grab anybody?

Like, what the heck is that?

Or, oh, that, or any of those phrases warrant some, have some resonance or dissonance?

Yeah, Greg.

Yeah, I forget the words you used on the last one, the something progressive accumulation of dharmas.

Yeah, so that’s, that objective realms are not manifested through the sequential compositing of dharmas.

Okay.

How are they using dharmas when they say that?

That is a great question.

So, in this case, I understand it as the actual phenomenology of conscious experience.

Yeah, so it’s, it’s, it’s like, ambiguous, in a way, because it can easily be read dharmas as in, like an atomism type of a theory.

Like we talked about earlier, where there’s an essentialism that’s happening.

And it’s like, okay, so an atom comes up upon another atom, and these two atoms interact, and there’s a sequential compositing of dharmas, or there’s a sequential compositing of time.

So it could be dharmas in that way.

It’s not specific.

It also, this general idea of samsarga, which is what this, my phrase here is translating in the Chinese, it just has, you know, are not manifested through samsarga.

Samsarga is kind of like things stacking on top of each other.

Okay, built up in a causal link.

And, and what it is, I believe, is more like the phenomenology of our conscious experience.

Okay, because when I think of dharmas, I think of, well, teachings, you know, maps, like, dharma is the part of it, that’s the abstraction that represents the, the thing.

I think they’re actually by saying dharmas, they’re saying the subject of the dharma is not the abstraction itself.

I understand it to be like, there’s capital D dharma, and there’s lowercase d dharma.

Like capital D dharma being like, I mean, Rumi, correct me here, like the way versus, or, you know, or teaching, like you said, Greg, versus lowercase d meaning like phenomena.

Those are two, those are two pretty good distinctions.

It’s a really dharma has a wide semantic range.

Okay, natural law is also another one that shows up a lot.

But I don’t think that’s where this particular usage is because it’s related to samsarga, which is more like little d dharmas the way magician.

Okay, yeah, that like, uppercase D and lowercase d dharmas, thinking about it that way helps, actually.

Yeah, thanks.

Nice.

So self nature characteristics, all practices of Buddhism bodhisattvas seeing one’s own mind is equal.

And the last one we just talked about.

So I think seeing one’s own mind is equal and warrants a just a tie in to the previous section when we talked about Pajnaparamita.

So a lot of times when we hear equality, seeing things as equal in the sutra, they’re talking about Pajnaparamita or the quality of wetness, but just seeing that, like, all of your conscious experience is fundamentally identical in the way that it is an illusory constructed phenomenon.

So that’s kind of a big, that particular concept is a really big deal in this teaching, even though we’re not Madhyamikan.

Yeah, Matt.

Yeah, before I lose the thought because I will lose it.

Circling back for a quick second.

I just was reminded of, I think it was Sun Master Subal, could be that or his, or Hwangbo directly, but love the quote.

The quote was, the entire dharma realm is equal.

I think it was Sun Master Subal, could be that or his, or Hwangbo directly, but love the quote.

The quote was, the entire dharma realm is preaching the dharma.

So one quote with two, the big D, little d. Just throwing that out.

They’re so sneaky.

It’s such an occult way.

This is the reason why I don’t resonate with a lot of the occult teachings.

It’s like they go out of their way to be indirect and unclear.

Especially in short verbs like that too.

I’d love to get a hand on the original and see what was going on in the conversation around that quote.

I’ll go back.

I’ll find it.

Yeah, please.

That might very well change our understanding of what the teaching is.

Okay, so if we’re all good on here, basically Mahamadhi is introducing, you got all y’all Buddhas who talk about this self-realization stuff.

We’re talking about mind and mind only and mind basically has these characteristics.

And then he basically says, will you please share, it says, share the Tathagata’s praises of the Dharmakaya, which is the dharma body, which is kind of like the self-realization of suchness.

Of the realm of ocean wave storehouse consciousness of the realm of the Chitta.

It kind of gets into Alaya-Vijnana and it kind of merges the terms Chitta and Alaya here.

And last time I talked about how Chitta is kind of like the main mind stream that includes all of the activity.

And then Alaya-Vijnana is kind of like specifically the storehouse part that holds the different perfumes that we get.

And it’s really interesting here how they changed terms here because you would almost expect them to stay with Chitta, the mind stream.

But instead they turn to the realm of ocean wave storehouse consciousness, which makes sense in the Buddha’s response.

That’s what he responds to.

But there’s a really subtle shift there.

And I think it’s important to say that even though the teaching of mind only encompasses all of this activity and the response we’re about to get, the Buddha is really talking about the transformational processes that turn this storehouse unconscious perfuming into what we take as an objective experience.

And so that’s what this particular teaching is going to be looking at.

How does our latent karmic capacities, our latent perfuming, turn into what we perceive as an objective experience?

Okay.

Do you want to parse any of that?

No, I don’t think.

The only thing that caught me slightly off there was why the repeated use of like referring to storehouse consciousness, or is it the ocean wave?

Why the addition of ocean wave?

It’s the first time it’s been put in reference to storehouse consciousness.

So what differentiates that from the other previous mentions?

So it’s mostly just setting up the metaphor that the Buddha is about to use?

Yeah, fair enough.

I didn’t know if there was anything deeper than that or if it was just a little like, no, it’s just a little teaser.

So when we look at non-dual Mahayana teachings, consciousness as an ocean shows up a lot.

So the same idea is like consciousness as a river?

Yeah.

What’s that, Matt?

Yeah, I was talking along like sky and empty space.

Yeah, I was always into like the whole like consciousness as a river, like no man enters the same river twice because neither the man nor the river are ever the same.

The only thing is there’s an ocean I always feel is like I feel like shoreline, and then it’s always like out and in and out.

This is more that.

This is more that.

So the river is more like an impermanence teaching.

Right.

And the sky is more like a prajna pure awareness teaching.

And now we’re actually getting into the, the mechanisms of minds, seeding, perfuming in real time.

Ah, there’s the, gotcha.

Okay.

The ocean, like accepts all streams and rivers.

This isn’t quite where that’s going.

So more about the wave part.

Yeah, it’s more about, we’ll just get into it.

So we’ll put a pin in that and let’s, let’s get into a little bit.

So, the opening of the Bhagavan’s response was due to the four causes and conditions, the I consciousness evolves, which for.

And so this is how we see that the Buddha is taking this as a direct inquiry into.

Okay, if all the shits mind only how do I have an objective reality.

Okay.

And so the Buddha saying, well, let’s take your experience of seeing things.

Okay.

We’re going to teach this based on your sense of sight, which is also a very common way that this works, I think in the Surin Dhamma Sutra there’s a whole big section on it, it’s quite beautiful.

Okay, so the four conditions that cause the site to appear as an objective realm.

One’s own minds manifestations are gathered and received in ignorance.

So here’s a little bit of a tie into the ocean collects everything like indiscriminately collects everything, a little bit of a time to that one’s own minds manifestations are gathered and received in ignorance.

Beginningless errors pass through the perfuming of forms.

Beginningless errors pass through the perfuming of forms will break these down but I’m going to get all four hours.

Consciousness is individuating marks are conceptually fixed.

The other condition is the desire to perceive many bold form characteristics.

We’re going to, I like, I kind of think of this as a table.

The top of the table is kind of like what we see.

And then there’s four legs.

One’s own minds manifestations are gathered and received in ignorance, there’s a lot going on.

Ignorance is a particularly loaded word.

I think we should spend time with but before I dive into my notes on ignorance.

Is there anything immediately jumping out for anybody, so we don’t lose any thoughts.

It occurs to me.

And by the way, I don’t necessarily want a tangent and expect an answer to this right now.

But I don’t have a good understanding of some of the terms that we’ve been using, and I don’t know what background I’m missing with terms like storehouse consciousness perfuming seeds etc.

I know that I sort of jumped into this at some point, and I’m missing some background context, but I don’t know how easy that would be to just give me a gist of what those things mean or if that’s something we should put off till later but I feel I’m missing that context.

I can’t imagine it would hurt anybody to review some of those things.

So, we’ll just, we’ll just do that there is one of the discussions on the month of charge through your page on the website is the talk on foundations, where I believe a lot of those terms are lost more fully.

But for now we will just run through a couple ideas so there’s eight conscious in this model.

There’s eight consciousnesses.

Five are the consciousnesses associated with your sensory experience.

The sixth is your consciousness that is involved with making sense of those sensory experiences, including thoughts, and probably emotional balance, although that doesn’t get talked about too much, but likely emotional balance.

That’s kind of in a fuzzy range though between the sixth consciousness and part of the perfuming.

So, anyway, the seventh consciousness which is like the stitching together, that gives me a self object relationship that kind of seems to persist over time so that stitches together discrete moments.

The eighth is a storehouse consciousness which is kind of like your unconscious perfuming of experience based on your conditioning.

Okay.

And that’s kind of what perfuming means is that there’s a, a conditioning that we bring to the moment from the inside out.

So we perfume our experience based on that conditioning, but then there’s also seeds which are coming through our sense experience and being dropped in to that storehouse consciousness, which then become the ingredients for the future perfume.

So the perfume impacts, the type of seed that gets built out of our sense experience and perfuming, but then the seed turns into what becomes the perfume.

So this is a very non dual recursive structure, constantly evolving.

Yep.

So those are kind of the big terms that I heard you mentioned were there other ones that we said that are outstanding.

Yeah, those were the main ones, it was like storehouse consciousness seeds and perfuming were the concepts I felt were missing.

So yeah, that helps.

Thanks for asking.

Any other questions.

I want to move on a big topic which is ignorance.

So, if you’re familiar with Buddhism and the Four Noble Truths you will probably have heard that clinging is the cause of suffering.

It’s not like the Mahayana say that’s not true, but it’s way deemphasized from what I can understand, or what I from what I found in the sutras that I believe inform the non dual Mahayana tradition.

What is everywhere.

Instead of clinging is ignorance.

If we want to think of this a certain way we could say that looking at how we cling is kind of like a mid level accessible gateway for insight and realization into the Buddha Dharma.

However, as long as we are ignorant, we will be selfing, and as long as we are selfing, we will be clinging.

So Mahayana says, great, you can understand that you’re clinging causes all of your problems, and you can do all sorts of aesthetic practices to try and make yourself not cling by developing all sorts of emotional and psychological endurance by subjecting yourself to ridiculous amounts of hoopla.

Or you could just see through the delusion of your ignorance, and how you’re selfing isn’t worth clinging to, and then you just naturally won’t cling.

There will not be a process of clinging and relinquishment, there will not be a grasping that’s happening because you will no longer be so tricked by your experience.

So this is probably the primary definition of ignorance is to be living from a place where we are unaware of how our, how our mind only world functions, and through that lack of awareness we take our concept, our concepts as real, which gives us all sorts of stuff to cling to in terms of our emotional valence and our opinions and our, our possession and all that stuff.

So you get rid of the ignorance you get rid of the clinging, therefore you get rid of the suffering.

This is like, I’ve wondered this is this synonymous with like lacking right view or synonymous with wrong view.

Did they freeze.

I’m still here.

I think, I think they froze.

And I can see Robin.

They’re just in such deep stillness that up and there’s movement.

And you guys are on mute.

You’re muted again.

That’s test.

All right, I gotcha.

That was the universe giving us a demonstration of ignorance.

Man, they’re frozen again.

Audio frozen or just the video, just the video.

We can still hear you.

All right, that’s, that should be a pulse.

All right.

So, did, did the overall definition of the overall idea of ignorance come across.

Did you hear my question to me.

Not.

Okay.

I was asking is ignorance synonymous with lacking right view or wrong video.

I can you be ignorant, holding right view.

I’m gonna say that they’re different enough schemas where they’re not synonymous.

Okay.

Although they are related.

Anyone.

Could somebody just pop open the definition of right view real quick.

So I’m pretty sure it has to do with the four noble truths, and a non stop and impermanence selflessness and suffering.

I’m pretty sure that right view has to relate to those specifically.

I think that my definition of ignorance jives pretty well with what you just gave, which is the art of ignoring or aka the art of not understanding reality.

Some aspect of reality.

So, so my AI overview just punching in Google here.

It refers to a correct understanding of reality, particularly as it relates to suffering its cause its cessation the path liberation spot developing a deep understanding of the nature of existence and how to live in a way that minimizes suffering so yeah I guess it’s more geared towards the Noble Eightfold Path.

Yeah, so it’s not like it’s, it’s not like they’re not similar, but it really is handed out handed out or hooked on the Eightfold Path Noble Truth.

And I think we froze again.

I gotcha.

That would be a good research paper is the Mahayana ignorance.

How different is it from right view.

My gut says they’re actually pretty different.

If we had some data buttons here and we really started digging into it, we could agree on a lot of stuff but then we would start to feel pretty uncomfortable as we dug into the nitty gritty of those of those two, like they’re superficially very similar but and and parts that matter they get quite different.

There’s a really fascinating thing that I’ve discovered through reading this sutra and the faith, and I keep going back and forth on this I don’t have a totally solid perspective yet.

Sometimes it seems like what they’re saying is that all of our relative activity is samsara, and all samsaric relative activity is ignorance.

Sometimes it sounds like you literally can’t function in a relative way without ignorance, which is a fascinating way of putting it but it seems very true.

It seems very true because it’s like, if I do not assume that the subject object relationship is real.

Then my relative functioning will be greatly hindered.

Right.

If I really think it’s all mind only, and then I will be like completely oblivious to danger and you know like all sorts of crazy things happen.

wouldn’t have a basis for anything.

At that point, because if it’s all in my head.

Then there’s nothing saying that I can’t just go walk in front of the car and kneel it to stop and just keep going.

Right.

You’re gonna find out real fast that you’re going to get a whole lot flatter when that car doesn’t stop.

And so at that point, it’s an interesting so what hangs me up on this whole thing is the difference between like subject object.

You know, I see that it’s a bell, I see that it’s a microphone, it’s a laptop, it’s an X, Y, Z, is okay well if it’s all, you know, if consciousness happens in the mind only.

How do we get into to personal relationships, family, reproduction, small children, the continuing of the species, like but you know their whole, if the entire thing is just here.

There has to be a relation with the rest of it, like that.

Form is engines.

Yes, so this is where there’s a couple things going on here.

One of them is that in this, in this worldview consciousness is not limited to your body.

So that’s very important.

Consciousness is non localized, and it will be more akin to say that consciousness is our, our limited access to the fundamental of the cosmos, if you’d like the rest of crucial perspective which I do cosmic consciousness which is vibrating and it’s great, and there’s an individual consciousness vibrating it, that’s great and mind is the place where those vibrations kind of interact with each other.

And this is very similar to the kind of stuff that you’re hearing in the mind.

And what it’s saying is that it’s not saying that all that exists is your is your individual consciousness.

It’s kind of saying that your only ontological basis for being, and your only epistemological basis for knowing is your own consciousness.

And that is when we don’t get how it works traps us and ignorance and suffering, and when we do get how it works, we’re still functioning.

According to its principles so in that sense we’re still in ignorance, but we’re liberated, because we’re seeing through it.

It’s kind of like you know you’re really dumb.

And then you have good coping strategies.

Then, being really dumb doesn’t negatively impact you.

It’s kind of like that.

You’re going to be really smart, really strong.

Well, so I don’t know who said it.

Emptiness is form and form is emptiness.

Like, yes, that sounds very deep.

But just saying that and looking at it on Facebook it almost sounds, I don’t mean it’s any kind of festival whatsoever, but almost sounds like platitude, at that point we’re like well emptiness is form and form is emptiness and if you’re not understanding that then fine.

So at that point, like, okay, give me the like, that’s the title of the book.

Give me the rest of the book.

Like, I need to read the rest of the book in order to understand the title correctly.

Like I get the overarching idea.

But it’s always just an interesting.

So, this is where consciousness.

Yeah, it’s not just about being individuals one part of another part of it too is that being is becoming and becoming as being so follow my work on weaving the way of your bread like dining categories the light that shines to the universe, or any of these types of things.

That’s where you’re getting the idea that like, or if you like Kabbalah, and you like emanation theory, and you like how I saw for infinite limitless light bounces down through the various separate and gets its various light filters into dense physical reality, and that that’s physical reality bounces back up the separate into the divine, and there’s this dynamic cosmic interplay of God breathing into the cup into form and form breathing back into God and that they’re co creating each other and this kind of echo chamber.

If any of those resonate with you, then that’s forms.

This is no other than the divine.

I’m just going to say, universal, universal consciousness of the universe of consciousness as well as not separate performance also started to be proven there that like, hey, you can do this.

But, no, that makes sense.

Like it’s just always been one of those always been one of those phrases and I’m like yeah it sounds really cool but I like any context.

Yeah, deeper content.

It’s obviously.

I agree.

Only.

I keep trying to get your attention with my hand.

I just want to drop in a comment for Ryan as well like I actually much prefer the what’s called netty netty that negation approach, where they say not this not that.

So instead of affirming form is emptiness emptiness is form they’ll say no it’s not for me no it’s not emptiness, or like Suzuki Zen put it, not one, not to like the belief in either one is a trap.

Yep.

Oh, I know.

Okay, I know.

Yeah, I know where that the course.

Eventually you’d like to have emptiness.

But that also predicates that emptiness is understood as something.

What the negation approach does know that eventually you let go of emptiness.

Right.

So, let go of emptiness then to find emptiness for us that you’re letting go of emptiness as a concept of emptiness.

But what does that mean.

Okay means no self nature.

No.

And what does that mean.

Put me in a language headlock.

What I hear is I hear you saying terms that you mostly have a grasp of, but I’m not hearing you in, tell me what your embodied perspective is.

So now I’m asking you to say okay well if you’re going to let go of emptiness.

What the fuck is emptiness.

Like really, what does that mean to you.

I don’t think I’ve ever tried to put that into a sentence.

But I’ll give it a swing.

So emptiness meaning no self nature no self nature, meaning no fixed thing, no, no thing this I suppose.

No.

It’s like, it’s not.

It’s not one’s not many.

It’s like that.

Like psychedelic flowering almost.

Well that’s very much a thing isn’t it.

Well yeah it’s our, it’s our existence.

Yeah.

Yeah, I’m not necessarily denying existence or taking like a nihilistic approach there.

Like, everything, everything matters.

Yeah, and so this is really good because letting go of emptiness is a really wonderful cliche.

And it does have a significant meaning.

But at the same time it’s kind of nonsense.

Right.

And to let go of emptiness comes from a Zen tradition where people would sit into a stillness so deep and it’s called derived such as second term is derived such as, and people would take it and Robin seventh Jana.

When you drop into the seventh Jana, you are into a void like experience where your consciousness plays out in such a way that you almost feel like you drop into a void, and it’s terrifying, and it breaks you apart.

And so we believe that emptiness and shunyata voidness for the whole time you’ve been training refers to that experience.

And some people get stuck and thinking that Nirvana is the cessation of all conscious experience, like is criticized in sections 1819 that we just read.

Okay, letting go of emptiness as a term that came as a corrective for meditators who believe that their voidness cessation experiences were a more absolute form of reality than the one that they were currently living in.

Okay.

Yeah, I mean I guess I put it in the broader bucket of, if you’re, if you’re attaching to anything, or if you’re holding up a single view you’ve now divorced yourself from the original mind.

That would mean that all of our, our perceptual corrections that we’re going through in our yoga charm training would all be really bullshit.

Well yeah, there’s, there’s a healthy ego that is, you know, facilitating the awakening process but if I’m still holding on to empty emptiness as a concept that I’m never going to fully break through.

At some point, I have to set it down, just like I have to set down everything else.

Maybe, but if emptiness is the real time realization of the interpenetration of phenomenon, and the ongoing flux and flow of the ocean of consciousness interacting with it stimulus and it’s perfuming and our liberation comes from seeing that in real time.

I’m sure you’d let go of the concept of it because you have the direct experience of it but that doesn’t make the articulation of the concept invalid or cause for suffering.

No, it’s just not something it’s like the light switch, once you turn the lights on.

I don’t have to keep flipping the switch.

Right.

You do.

Well yeah, I mean what if your kid comes in and turns it off.

You know, I noticed I got lost in thought, you know, yeah it’s like, again, not necessarily negating the whole process of the storehouse consciousness, and how those those waves exist as the ocean, you know, like and being able to to recognize the mechanics of it so that you can live within it without being diluted.

Yeah, so then in that case we certainly don’t want to let go of the truth of interpenetration.

Well, yeah.

Do I, I don’t know, I okay.

Do you see what I’m doing with you here.

I’m not just trying to be frustrating.

No, no, no, I, yeah, I see it.

I see it.

All right, I think I’m seeing your, your subtle correction here.

But yeah, I mean I guess I still, I still take it back to you if I’m trying to analyze myself into awakening, you know, then, like, I’m just going to be spinning my wheels through useless efforts forever.

Well we’re at time.

All right.

I really encourage you to reflect on that position, because that.

And there I’m immediately thinking well what’s your definition of awakening.

What do you think awakening is and why can’t you analyze your way through it.

If this whole suture is teaching that right view and resolving ignorance, which is basically updating our conceptual framework is the path of liberation.

What’s the basis of awakening, what are you doing, what’s your practice.

And if you’re not going to embrace your analytical function then why bother with suture study.

I mean it’s not that there’s no use to it, but, like, are we really sitting here stating that, that there is a definitive path, like the way to do it.

We’re not saying that there’s a path but we’re there, we are saying there is a definitive form of liberation.

There, you can people come to this many, many, many different ways but what liberation is fundamentally has these characteristics.

Yeah, because if it was only one specific A and B and C and D and E wouldn’t have the difference in tradition that we have there wouldn’t be.

Right, it wouldn’t be what had it would just be this.

Like we were given expedient teachings but expedient teachings are like a yellow leaf, you know, well that’s where we have to understand the purpose of the expedient teachings, like, why was the, why was the phrase, let go of emptiness created.

All these, all these teachings are specifically you know for a specific audience for a certain set of circumstances and conditions.

Right.

And so, what would you, I’m going to leave this for you for your co on what would be the specific set of circumstances where the instruction to let go of conceptual proliferation be appropriate for the audience.

What is the specific context and a Buddhist paradigm for that instruction to have value, right alongside one of the most prolific traditions that involved writing down what the fuck it was talking about.

So how do those two jobs, make that make sense understand why that instruction exists because there’s a very good reason for it, and it’s a very essential one.

Did you just, did you just describe it to me.

No, it wasn’t able to getting stuck in a void in this, you know, and holding on to that.

No, that was, that was for let go of emptiness.

That’s what we’re talking about the question is what is the purpose of let go of all concepts analysis cannot lead to awakening, what is the context for that instruction is necessary.

Yes.

Someone who thinks that the, the answers are in the books.

They’re in the written word.

Could be, could be your close your contract.

Next step for that though.

Next step so when they start answers in the book, they start doing what.

And when they start doing that, what is an essential instruction that is required.

Okay.

I’ll try to play it out.

And sorry Greg Ryan Robin for the detour.

No, no such thing as a bad detour.

We just got to have some straight direct Dharma combat that’s way better than reading.

That’s, that’s how everyone learns evolves and grows.

And because maybe something in the conversation between the two of you then spark something in my head that would have been sparked had that conversation that happened.

So indirectly, I get to learn as well.

And so, yeah, never, never, ever bad.

I need to let go of the concept of let go of the concept of emptiness.

Get into like the realm of Zen, where like, it just gets redundant for no reason.

And it’s just a bunch of people in a Reddit forum going.

Well, everything is nothing and nothing is empty and everything is something like, let’s see who can try and coin, the more profound phrase that doesn’t actually mean anything.

And then you get back to kind of the basics of like, maybe all I need to do is just sit.

Now we’re getting our hour.

Beautiful.

Yeah, thank you very much.

And actually, this is what I’m hoping for every time I come prepared for a Dharma discussion is that one of these types of exchanges happen.

So, someone to point.

Thank you very much, clapping back as the kids.

I hope so, please.

And so we are five after so if anyone does have to go, I apologize for keeping everyone.

Once again, past time.

It’s just too it was just too good to go.

So if we may, and do our closing round of checking we’ll go with Robin, Greg, Matt, and then myself.

Robin check it in.

I’ve stayed quiet so long I can’t find words.

Just gets back to all of this.

And then just shut the fuck up.

But, yeah, just really, really appreciating the wisdom tradition and that there is all these minds, looking at this for, for so long, and that I first had to derive from an experience, and then define the words to describe it.

It’s something that’s so easily taken for granted.

And I greatly appreciate the opportunity to hear what you all, and what the, the old day guys as I say had to say about it.

I mean, okay Greg checking in.

What time is it five after the hour.

Or is it now.

Let’s fight about it.

Let’s fight about it with enough passion and good faith, we may come to the conclusion that they are true.

Another Suzuki Roshi and they’re like, what is it.

Say you’re going to eat lunch at one o’clock then lunch and one o’clock or the same thing.

You can just happen.

I wasn’t me.

I’m sorry.

Take a quarter, take a page from Robin.

It’s me.

Matt checking in.

And I appreciate I’ve done something out of every week, a little nugget here and there or a slight, slight provocation that that is a good course correction like back to the middle.

And, and yeah, I do appreciate it, I am, I am seriously like a, a noob in the, in any sort of a Zen battle sort of context.

I don’t have the language for it at my practice has been so solitary and so, like, outside of any structure that I’m not really equipped with the vocabulary, but it’s the utility is there I do appreciate it.

And I do, I do like that it pushes you to the, you know, pushes you to a boundary to an edge.

I’ve yet to see some sutra or a text or an account, you know, where a master, you know, got tongue tied.

So, you know, we can talk about language and the written form and the finger, you know, all we want, you know, but they can summon it.

And so I think like being stretched and being pushed is like super helpful.

So, so thank you for this, Umi, and the rest of you for sparking the conversation and pushing each other’s edges.

Uh huh.

Ryan checking in.

I don’t have anything to add that I haven’t already said at this point.

So, with that, I will come in.

So again, Let me check in.

Yeah.

Always, always a fantastic time.

And thank you Matt for willing to be willing to participate in a Dharma combat with me.

I will say, and then the others can close, but I’m just going to close with deep gratitude.

Gratitude for, again, I’ll probably say this every week for the next three years as we work through this freaking project, but without you all coming and taking this seriously and deriving benefit from it.

I probably would have already taken like a two week break from this fucking thing.

However, however, I’m really glad that I’m not, it’s gaining momentum and getting more familiar with the Finnish syntax and stuff.

And you all are driving my practice so hard.

You know, you don’t see me ripping my hair out trying to parse this and sitting with the koan like structure of these for hours turning over three, three characters to try and figure out what’s going on.

So, to come here and get to take out some of that on you.

But I do want to say that I’m appreciative of your capacity to understand the function of that type of exchange, and the rigor with which we bring to it.

And I also want to say that that’s one of the things that makes ODZ.

That’s one of my commitments to Dharma practice is to not lapse into soft squishy affirming semi correct statements type of thing.

Now, so I do want to say that that’s like a consciously chosen culture here.

If it ever feels confrontational or demeaning or frustrating or unhelpful.

Because none of those things are the purpose.

Right.

Now, it’s so critical that we understand that this type of exchange is supposed to be constructed and formative and deepening and stretching and breaking our brain in a really good way so it can be restructured.

So, my commitment to the space is to hold the energy of that, but it is not to not be receptive to feedback.

So please always feel free to let me know if it’s not going well.

Okay.

Thanks.

Good night.

Love you guys.

The post Lankavatara 2:IX:1-2 appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

Let’s turn to this.

I’m going to introduce this section with the opening paragraph.

There’s a lot in here and we’ll just take up a little bit so that we can at least get started on 2.9.

So it says, again, Mahamati asked the Buddha saying, the Bhagavan speaks of citta, manas and vijnana, five dharmas and self-nature characteristics, all practices of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, seeing one’s own mind as equal and that objective realms are not manifested through the sequential compositing of dharmas.

All these are said to be characteristics of reality.

All Buddhas call this mind.

So there’s a list there that I think is really critically important for us to understand because it’s naming the things that we’ll be investigating.

The first section or the first list is citta, manas and vijnana.

Citta is like the mind stream as a whole.

That’s why I don’t like translating it into English again as mind or as anything else because they carry Western philosophical and psychological connotations.

So citta is the whole mind stream, all layers of consciousness, all conscious experience, the so-called flow of mind with all of its parts.

In a certain way, it’s kind of synonymous with the alaya vijnana and the storehouse consciousness.

There’s a very close similarity but I would say that citta is inclusive of that but not restricted to that.

So the mind stream is like the capacity for seeding and perfuming to be happening where the storehouse consciousness holds the perfume.

So citta is like the capacity for perfuming and seeding, which is distinct from the kind of the warehouse that holds the perfumes.

The manas, that’s your selfing, that’s the one that stitches together all the experience.

I don’t know why Red Pine translated it as will, it doesn’t really have much to do with will.

It has to do with taking the combination of perfume and seed and then having a subjective experience to it and taking ownership of it.

So that’s what manas does.

Manas gives us ownership over the combined results of the seed and the perfume so that we have an experience of selfing stitched together over time.

And vijnana is your discursive thought processes.

It is the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and mind.

It’s all of your discriminating faculties.

Most particularly thought and emotion in this context but it does include the idea that thought and emotion are directly related to what we experience through our five senses plus what we’re selfing through the perfuming.

So remember all of these are interlocked and kind of like this practical menagerie of soup.

It’s not like clean layers and lines of things handing off to each other in sequential logic.

It’s just like a soup, like a river which means a medical utility.

Everyone okay with those chitta, manas and vijnana definitions?

Next is five dharmas and I love this list.

This is like one of my favorites because it gives us a quick hit into our direct experience.

So the first one is nimitta or perceptual appearance.

So this is like in other places this is translated as a characteristic.

So it’s like something is perceived pre-language, pre-naming, pre-whatever.

There’s a direct experience of something being perceived and this is nimitta.

Now nimitta in our tradition has lots of different words or different meanings.

Like when we do jhanas we take up a nimitta which is a mental object which takes our consciousness into a very subtle realm as we leave our primary sense organs and move entirely into a mind experience.

And the nimitta can be like a ball of light or it can be a visualization of a candle or it can be whatever.

But here it just means anything which is perceived.

Then the next thing that happens in the dharma soup here is that there is a language name, nama.

So nimitta or perceptual appearance is given a descriptive container through language.

There’s a layer of abstraction that happens with language.

And then the kalpa happens.

The kalpa is like reifying discrimination.

It’s the one that says oh that’s a buddha statue.

It’s the process of taking that name form abstraction that was given to that direct experience and making it a thing.

And it’s easy to do with certain things out there.

That’s a cushion.

Sometimes it’s a little bit harder to do when we look at our internal space but it’s the same thing when we go oh that is sadness.

That’s the kalpa.

That’s reifying discrimination.

That’s taking an experience giving it language and turning it into a thing.

Kalpa is in like the same spelling as like the long period of time.

Oh v-kalpa.

V-I-K-A-L-P-A.

V-kalpa.

Okay.

And I don’t believe that that kalpa is the same root as kalpa.

All right.

The next one is samjna.

S-A-M-J-N-A.

And this is if you look it up it’ll be a little bit weird because it has a lot of different meanings in buddhism.

The Yogacharins and especially the Lankavatara use it very specifically for non-dual recognition.

Okay.

So it’s the capacity.

It’s the dharma we have.

The capacity we have to recognize that the name form that we give the perceptual object co-create each other.

And that the reifying discrimination that turns that into a thing co-creates each other.

So we’re recognizing that all of this is co-creating.

We have direct knowledge of this co-creative process.

And then we recognize the non-dual nature of a mind-only experience.

That’s samjna.

I would prefer to say Chinese.

Okay.

And then we have jneya, ruru in Chinese.

And this is gnosis of suchness.

This is the direct knowledge of suchness.

So this is no longer a it’s kind of like in Tibetan where you have a watcher that would be like your samjna.

This is the one who can like see through the experience that happening.

But you experience it as a watcher, as a separate process.

And then you get into pure Rigpa, pristine awareness.

And then you have jneya, which is just direct knowledge.

You don’t need to do a separate intellectual process to break it down into a non-dual understanding.

There’s no active watcher present that’s doing a non-dual recognition.

It’s just direct gnosis of interpenetrating co-arising.

Okay.

And so this, I think, just is a beautiful little subset of like the faculties that we have online in our process.

And that’ll be… What was the term?

Can we do a recap?

Sorry.

Yeah.

Ruru is J-N-E-Y-A, if you want to look up the Sanskrit.

J-N-E-Y-A.

Gnosis of suchness.

That’s how I’m calling it in English.

And what is this collection of five again, like referred to?

It’s called the five dharmas.

Five dharmas.

So if you want to play for the week, which I strongly encourage you to do, hopefully you all spend at least some time on the cushion because that’s cool and fun and whatever.

But frankly, I don’t really care.

I would much rather you walk through your day having moments of direct perception, just abstaining from giving something a name for just like two fricking seconds, if you can.

And just have a moment where like that thing…

Right.

And then watch yourself give it a name and watch how that name confines it into a certain structure and box and it becomes that thing.

And in a way kind of may or may not lose its mystery, but then watch yourself be able to then reprocess that so that you can not be trapped in any of it, but also not lose any of those faculties.

That’s the beautiful part of zheng zhi is that you get to watch yourself put a nimitta and a name and reify it without getting caught up in it.

You have right knowledge of the thing, right?

You have non-dual recognition actively functioning.

So just try it.

Stub your toe, have a moment and just feel it before you start thinking about whether or not you pulled your toenail off or why so-and-so left the thing there, or how you could be so stupid to kick a door you walk through every day or all the languaging that happens.

Just see if you can stay on for just like two seconds in the direct experience of that pain.

Watch yourself give it a name.

Watch yourself give it a stubbed toe.

Watch yourself worry about whether or not it’s broken.

Watch the conceptual proliferation start and then recognize how that’s actually a non-dual conscious experience.

One of those a day is way better than an hour on the cushion daydreaming.

But that is the point of being on the cushion, right?

I mean, if you do remember this, well, creating space, it does create space to block the inertia.

And it also is your toe.

There’s a gap between your reaction because you’re training your mind to have that space.

Yeah, it absolutely has that impact.

And you can do this investigation on your cushion too.

You can take this perspective into sensation arising in the body, labeling it as a problem, making a thing out of it, watching yourself get uncomfortable, seeing through it, dropping it.

That’s falling away completely so that you’re just in the experience, coming out of that to create a new perception, right?

So you can use this whole schema as a way of watching your mind in meditation, which will also produce the beautiful result that Roland’s talking about, about giving you more space.

So I’m never going to tell you not to sit, but I’m also going to tell you that I’d rather have you meditate while you’re walking around.

Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, even being as that, like I was, whatever podcast or whatever it happened to be, or audio book, I don’t remember where I bought it from, but it was, if you were reminded, just in a discussion between you and I, if you take a look at the amount of time, you know, even if you sit an hour a day, that’s, well, it’s one 24th of your day.

The vast, and I don’t know if everybody sits an hour a day, you know, it’s in the grand scheme of things, the time we spend on the cushion is a very, very small part compared to the rest of the day.

So if you’re only doing the Zen thing when you’re on the cushion, you’re not doing the Zen thing, like most of your life, you’re most of the, you know, most of the day, it has to carry over.

And then, you know, I use this as like my, this is my getaway.

This is my like, you know, preparation in the morning and relaxation in the evening.

And then it’s time to like, do exactly kind of what Robin said, like, Oh, hey, I’m sitting, leg is killing me.

But is it though?

Is that actually pain?

Does it really hurt that bad?

Is it going to be better if I move it?

It probably won’t.

So let’s just sit here and see what and then you get to play that mental gymnastics of like, you know, let’s see if we can do it.

Sometimes it works.

Sometimes it doesn’t.

Find out the difference between what?

Now find out the difference between when it works and when it doesn’t.

Expand them.

Well, that would be the next step.

Because if sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, you can identify the difference between the two, then you can become conscientious about how you train yourself so that it works more often than it doesn’t.

Oh, as far as the not moving when it hurts?

Yeah.

Okay.

Because if sometimes it works, then why can’t it work all the time?

What should work all the time?

I think the times that it doesn’t work, you’re just, I don’t know, the nicest way.

I’m guilty of it probably more than anybody because I have short little stubby, terrible knees.

Just a lack of discipline is what I would call that personally.

Could be, but I can hear that you’re a conjection.

So your challenge is to investigate and come up with what makes the difference.

Precisely in the mechanism of your consciousness, what makes the difference?

What’s the button that you push when it works?

And what’s the button you forget to push when it doesn’t?

That’s the inquiry.

Or what buttons do you got to stop pushing?

I said, or what buttons do you have to stop pushing?

Or what buttons do you have to stop pushing?

Matt, you’ll notice that I pretty much always keep things in the active tense.

I know, I know.

It’s like, I mean, that’s been really helpful for me, Umi.

It’s stuck with me, I don’t remember if it was last week or two weeks ago, but I see that, the need for the balance of letting go, being free, but vigorous at the same time.

And yeah, that was a very keen thing you picked up on me.

So I really appreciate that.

I appreciate you appreciating that.

So once again, I’ve run us over.

This conversations are always just, they’re just so rich.

I don’t want to stop them, but I also need to be respectful of our time.

So let’s go ahead and do a closing round of check-in.

And if you do have to go, please go first.

Otherwise we’ll go with Ron and Michael, Matt, Ryan, and myself.

Robyn checking in from Wyalusing State Park in Wisconsin, the beautiful driftless area.

Thank you for the beautiful discussion.

I think there may have been more words in this last half hour than I’ve experienced in my last number of days.

So it’s a bit overwhelmed.

It’ll take a bit to process it, but always appreciative of how much good information is being shared amongst this group.

I’m off to enjoy the great outdoors.

Thank you.

Hey, Michael checking in.

Oh, and my energy saver just popped up just in time.

With gratitude for the time and efforts spent here together, resolving the issues, and I greatly appreciate it.

So I’m in.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Matt checking in.

What’s most predominant right now is this little song is so great.

I feel like a newbie still with this group, but like, but yeah.

Yeah, there is there’s really something to expanding this practice and recognizing like, you know, because it like, I think I’ve said this before, it can, it can, it can become it is it’s a totally personal, it’s like you have to ultimately do it on your own, like nobody else can do it for you, you know, so it is a very solitary inward thing, you know, but then like, it’s good to also blow it up and, and realize that this is a collective, you know, collective through the individual.

And so yeah, I love, I love showing up with you friends and, and talking longer and life and so, so thank you all.

I’m in.

Thank you.

Ryan checking in from, what, Columbia County, Ohio.

I think I’ll keep my message, I very much agree with what Matt had said that it can be a very inward solitary kind of journey, but it’s very nice to sit in that solitary journey.

So, thank you, as always, forever grateful, and forever.

When we check in from Mahoney County.

Yeah, we are.

Yeah, I don’t have any, you all said it also beautifully, so I’m just in and grateful and looking forward to being with you next week.

So, hope you all have a wonderful time, and we’ll talk to you soon.

Hey, take care.

See you guys.

Bye everyone.

The post Lankavatara 2:IX:1 appeared first on Open Door Zen.

• citta, manas, and vijnana, 
• five dharmas*, 
• self-nature characteristics, 
• all practices of the Buddhas and bodhisattvas, 
• seeing one’s own mind as equal, 
• and that objective realms are not manifested through the sequential compositing of dharmas [i.e, samsarga]. 

All these are said to be characteristics of reality. All Buddhas call this “mind.” For the great Bodhisattvas dwelling in the oceans and mountains of Malaya in the Land of Laṅkā, share the Tathagata’s praises of the Dharmakaya of the realm of ocean-wave storehouse consciousness.

*相 (nimitta – perceptual appearance)，名 (nama – language-name)，分別 (vikalpa – reifying discrimination)，正智 (samjna – non-dual recognition; Lankavatara special use)，如如 (jneya – gnosis of suchness)

Discussion on 2:IX:1 (June 5, 2025)

At that time, the Bhagavan told Mahamati Bodhisattva, “Due to the four causes and conditions, the eye-consciousness evolves. Which four? They are: 

• One’s own mind’s manifestations are gathered and received in ignorance. 
• Beginningless errors pass through the perfuming of forms.
• Consciousness’s individuating marks are conceptually objectified, 
• The desire to perceive manifold form characteristics. 

Mahamati! These four types of causes and conditions are situated in a flowing stream and the alaya-vijnana’s turning produces waves. 

Discussion on 2:IX:1-2 (June 12, 2025)

Mahamati! Just like the eye consciousness, all sense-capacities co-arise along with subtle dusts and gross form; indeed, they are all like this. Just like a mirror, manifesting all the different forms and appearances. 

Mahamati! Like a fierce wind blowing on the water of the great ocean, the winds of the external realm buffet the citta-ocean, and the waves of consciousness arise without end. 

Discussion on 2:IX:3-4 (June 19, 2025)

Because constructed nimitta are different and not different, and because nimitta arise according to karma, one enters deeply into conceptual fixation, and it is not possible to comprehend the self-nature of form, etc*; therefore, the five-sense-consciousness body transforms. 

Mahamati! This five-sense-consciousness body, arising in conjunction with differentiating and partitioning cognition of perceptual appearances (nimitta), should be known as vijnana, causing your body to evolve. 

*Likely the 5 skandhas: 色 (form), 受 (feeling tone), 想 (cognition), (volition), 識 (consciousness) 

They (i.e., the not self-realized) don’t think: “I develop and evolve nimitta causes, my own mind appears, turning around delusive constructs arising from karmically perfumed tendencies, appearing as subject-object experience, and mistaken as real (wàngxiǎng) that are sequentially composited, reified, and clung to (samsarga).” And their every decaying characteristic also churns, such as: separating realms*, partitioning and differentiating, this is known as “revolving.”

Take yogins entering dhyana-samadhi. Subtle perfuming revolves, and they are not aware of that knowledge; they then give rise to the thought: “Consciousness ceases and then I enter dhyana-samapatti.” Really, it is not that consciousness ceases and then dhyana-samapatti is entered. The vasana-bija doesn’t stop; therefore, there is no cessation. It is the absence of grasping after revolving realms that causes cessation. 

*Mindfulness here refers to smrti, which is mindfulness, specifically in the recollection of instructions.

**境界 is being translated as realms, which is a multivalent word. As alambana, it refers to the supporting basis of something, especially the connection between a sensation and the perception that it excites. A sphere of conduct wherein one’s actions bear fruit. Contains notions of mood, mental state, feeling, sensation, viewpoint, etc. As yogins, it is also the practices we engage in to realize the gross form of the Eternal. (Digital Dictionary of Buddhism, Charles Mueller)

Discussion on 2:IX:5-8 (June 26, 2025)

Mahamati! Such is the ultimate boundary of the subtle alaya-vijnana, except tathagatas and abiding bodhisattvas; the power of the samadhi-prajna that all sravakas, pratyeka-buddhas, and heterodox practitioners attain through their practice—all of them cannot measure or determine the prajna-characteristics of the remaining bhumi’s* skillful and expedient vikalpa**, and decisively express (consider: initiate others into) their meaning and principle. 

*There are several models of bhumis (stages of development toward buddhahood). The most common has 10 stages, the first 6 of which are common to dualistic and non-dualistic Buddhist yoga praxis. 7-9 constitute the non-dual stages of the bodhisattva. 10 constitutes the maturity of tathagata-realization. Here, stages 7-10 are considered the remaining bhumis. 

1. Joyous, 2) Stainless, 3) Illuminating, 4) Radiant, 5) Difficult-to-Conquer, 6) Manifest, 7) Far-going, 8) Immovable, 9) Perfect Intelligence, 10) Dharma Cloud

**Vikalpa here refers to expedient conceptual discriminations—constructs provisionally used to navigate or liberate from delusion. Even the sense of self, when understood as such, can be one such upāya.

The most exalted, boundless, good root matures when:

• separated from one’s own mind’s manifestations of erroneous wàngxiǎng  
• peacefully sitting in a mountain forest, 
• able to see one’s own mind’s wàngxiǎng flow in lower, middle, and upper practices.*
• anointed in the limitless fields of all the Buddhas, 
• obtaining self-realization, spiritual powers, and samadhi. 

*Lower: practice based on dualistic mind (relative concentration, conceptual view) Middle: cultivation informed by paratantra-svabhāva—dependent nature, discerning vikalpa Upper: non-conceptual realization of pariniṣpanna-svabhāva—true suchness, empty of projection

Discussion on 2:IX:9-10 (July 3, 2025)

All spiritual friends, children of Buddhas, and their retinue, their:

• citta, manas, vijnana, 
• perceptions of their citta’s manifested realms and wàngxiǎng, 
• 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.

At that time, the Bhagavan wanted to again restate this meaning, and said in verse:

Like great ocean waves,
  That arise from fierce winds,
Flooding waves pound the black abyss,
  Without a moment’s cessation. 
The ocean of alaya-vijnana constantly abides,
  moved by the Winds of Realms,
Diverse seeds–all of consciousness’s waves,
Leaping, bounding, and revolving birth. 

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.

Say, it is by that vijnana, that 
the significance of nimittas is contemplated,
There are 8 non-decaying nimitta,
  Absence of nimitta is just absence of nimitta.

Just like ocean waves,
  They are thus without distinction;
All consciousness and citta are like this,
  Different and unable to be grasped.
Citta is described as accumulating karma,
  Mana’s is described as broadening the accumulation.
All consciousnesses—vijnana* and visaya**,
  manifest equally in what are called the five sense realms. 

*vijnana: separating knowledge, the gnosis of distinct objects of consciousness, the capacity to know and perceive.
**visaya: that which is known, a perceptible object of the vijnana function, i.e. the functional appearance of an “external” phenomenon. 

Discussion on 2:IX:10-verses part 1 (July 10, 2025)

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?

Then the Bhagavan replied in verse:

Ordinary Beings lack prajna,
  Alaya is like a great ocean, 
Karma nimitta is like waves,
  Rely on this simile to understand

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?

Then the Bhagavan replied in verse:

If one speaks about tathata,
  their citta lacks tathata.  
Like ocean waves,
  Reflected in a mirror or in a dream,
All simultaneously manifest,
  Citta realms are also like this.

Because realms are not fully actualized, 
  Karma unfolds in sequential becoming,
Consciousness is conscious of what can be known,
  Manas, naturally takes it to be real,
Five senses’ manifestation,
  lacks a set sequence. 

Like a skilled painter,
  And their apprentice,
Adding colors to the outline of every image,
  I say it is like this. 

Colors essentially lack designs,
  Neither brush nor silk [have them either],
Just for pleasing sentient beings,
  They weave and color many images. 

Speach and action are distinct,
  tathata is separate from names, 
Vikalpa responds to initial karma, 
  Practice reveals suchness. 

The place where tathata 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 accord—
  and for them, it is not true speech.

Each sick person, 
  the doctor treats according to their condition, 
Tathagata, for Sentient Beings, 
  Teaches in accordance to each citta.

Wàngxiǎng is not a realm, 
  Sravakas also have no part [in this realization], 
What the compassionate one teaches,
  is the domain of self-realization

Discussion on 2:IX verses part 2 (July 17, 2025)

The post Lankavatara 2:IX appeared first on Open Door Zen.

*transcript generated by AI

All right.

So here we are continuing our work with the Lankavatara Sutra, chapter two, section seven.

Our next thing that we’ll study is section nine.

We might get to complete seven today, might not.

There’s still quite a bit of juicy goodies left.

Last week, as a brief summary, we covered the section of the sutra.

Our second discussion on this, so this will be our third.

We covered kind of like a progression of samadhis, right?

There was the non-possession, the non-characteristic, and then the as-illusioned samadhi.

And this was kind of like progressive states of perspective shift that were critical for liberation in terms of the Yogacara view.

And that conversation continues as we move through the rest of the section.

I was gonna do a little bit of a recap of that, but before I just start blabbering, is there anyone who’s coming with a particular question, comment, concern today?

As I will often do, it’s gotta be grounded in your life.

This is a training praxis, right?

So if you come with something that’s urgent for you in terms of a dharma inquiry or in terms of a life event, then that is first.

All right, well, if things come up that move us in that vein, please just bring them forward because that’s the material that we wanna work with.

We wanna get this pragmatic, because functionally it’s a very pragmatic thing that we’re doing.

So then to just refresh where we are in our liberative journey here, when we start with the non-possessive samadhi, that’s that shift in perspective that basically says, what I am perceiving isn’t me.

And the me that is perceiving that thing isn’t me because I can perceive the me that’s perceiving the thing, which means that that’s also an object, right?

And that ends up being this kind of like fractal flower for eternity that basically says like, well, where’s my identity?

There is no real identity.

So no one can really own anything because there’s no concrete I.

So it’s just phenomenon arising in consciousness, non-possessive, okay?

We just kind of take away our graspy clinginess to it because we recognize that there’s not really an identity here to grasp and cling with.

We don’t possess anything that’s happened.

And then once that really starts to settle in, then there’s the realm of non-characteristic, okay?

And non-characteristic or the realm of no characteristics is that’s where we start to realize that nothing in our field of experience has an inherent self-nature, meaning that it has no self-existent substrate.

Everything is made up of everything else.

Everything is codependently arising.

So there’s no fixed characteristics of anything in our experience, okay?

And that includes the fact that we’re perception, perceiving ourselves having a perception, right?

So not only do we not possess it, we see through everything that we see as being composite.

Now we’re in the no-characteristic realm.

So much.

And these aren’t necessarily only altered states on the cushion.

These are actual lived perspectives that we take through our day.

And then we get to the rule one, the absolution samadhi.

And that’s basically, it’s not just that because we see things are composite and not as they appear, we no longer want them.

We recognize that they’re just constantly changing and full of suffering, and they don’t bring us the purity, peace, bliss, and joy, and self of nirvana.

They don’t have the characteristic of nirvana, and so we don’t want them anymore.

It’s not just that we don’t want them anymore.

It’s that we fundamentally see through the whole light show as being like a lucid dream.

Like there’s nothing.

It’s not even that we don’t want it anymore.

It’s like, even if we do want it, there’s nothing substantial to want.

There’s no substance.

Everything is as illusion.

Okay, so there’s like a shift in the, or it’s not just a shift in the form of the knowing, but a whole shift in the way that we experience, the ontology of our experience completely shifts to being illusory, okay?

Now, there’s a lot in there.

Before we continue on, does anyone have anything that they want to zero in on those three stages of perspective shift that the Lankavatara has talked us into?

I have a question.

Yeah.

One of the earlier ones you said, I forget your exact words, something along the lines of like releasing the grasping of identity.

Is that a necessary step to say, get to the next one of these as a sequence?

And the reason why I asked that is because it seems to me that I could also continue to grasp at an illusory self while simultaneously realizing that that grasping for an illusory self is, well, it just becomes transparent.

So, I mean, it could just continue to happen, that selfing action could continue to happen.

And I just see that that’s not what it seems rather than letting it go.

Yeah.

So in this text, they are presented sequentially.

And it is saying that these are sequences of insight that need to happen.

And they build off of each other.

And in a way, I think that’s true, even with what you said, because it doesn’t deny the function of it.

So this isn’t saying from a non-possessive perspective, it’s not saying we no longer experience the function of having a subject object experience.

It is precisely that we don’t reify it, we don’t make it solid, we don’t take ownership of anything because we see through it as kind of, in Jimbo’s words, a divine figment of imagination.

And so there’s nothing for me to grasp in that state.

Right, and so that would be basically the same insight just described in slightly different language.

Got it.

I think that makes sense.

They’re not saying you’re stopping doing it necessarily, but that there’s a nuance to it.

Yeah.

You’re no longer grasping that as what it seems it is.

Exactly.

Or what it once seemed it was, yeah.

And I think this is one of the critical shifts that the Yogachara in teaching makes in it, is that there is no altered meditative state that equates to liberation.

So it’s not, while we have talked about cessation, cessation of characteristics, cessation of continuity, as phenomenological meditative experiences that prove these insights, those meditative states are not in themselves liberating.

And so when we get to stages like this that are really specifically talking about the process of liberation, we have to remember that the foreground of the text is that it is not any meditative state that liberates you.

It’s the way those experiences alter your perspective, alter your perception and understanding of the way consciousness works and how mind only functions.

So it’s changing your life.

It’s changing how you go through life completely, not just, show up on the cushion.

Well, we’ll get there in a minute, but yes, this section ends with attaining the body of the Tathagata by gradual turning of embodiment.

Excuse me.

So yes, it is embodied insight.

Let’s go, it’s a ball.

Yes.

Yeah.

Woo.

Carry on.

What I get from that is it’s not the experience on the cushion, it’s what the experience or what the breaking down of that experience or what the insight gained from that experience changes about your perspective of everything.

So you could have an experience, but not necessarily adopt the- That shit happens all the time.

Yeah.

So it’s not necessarily, I could sit and I could have like a full cessation experience, which for the sake of like, you know, transparency, I’ve never had a full cessation experience while meditating.

Like I’ve never had everything drop away.

Sight’s gone, sound’s gone.

You know, I’ve never had that like, you know, dying on the cushion, so to speak, and then coming back from that.

What I take from that is you could have that experience, but that experience, you know, even if you had that full, like, oh, holy shit, that was wild, that in and of itself is not liberation or liberating.

It’s what the exploration of that experience and the insight gained from that exploration of that experience does.

It goes to your perception of daily life or how you go through life.

So that then brings up, is it possible to have, or to have a liberation experience without going through that, well, that cessation experience while sitting on a cushion?

I would say, yeah, absolutely.

And I would say that the ability to maintain that perspective will shift in crisis.

It is much weaker if you haven’t directly seen through meditation.

So it’s like gnosis.

What we’re talking about really, we’re talking about gnosis.

If you have a gnostic experience that is your own direct experience that no one can take from you, it’s not a philosophical understanding, it’s not a functional form of truth-making, there is no doubt in your mind because you have personally experienced the deconstruction of the self into absolute cessation and you have watched it rebuild itself so that all of these principles are totally locked in as felt direct experiences.

When that is true, it’s very difficult to abandon it under stress.

I agree.

However, when it is just a belief, an adopted philosophy that is functional, even if it’s very embedded in an habitual way of seeing, at a certain point, stress can… Will break that.

Break it.

100%.

Right.

So that just proves my point of you can’t have that enlightenment experience or that liberation experience without having the cessation experience while meditating.

You have to cultivate that experience in order for it to be that deeply ingrained that it’s not going to fracture under stress.

I think it’s so… Well, I mean, impermanence, right?

So I think it will still fracture under stress and that’s kind of becomes the joy of like, what kind of situation is required to break my insight?

Can I hold this perspective under this kind of circumstance?

Or you think you’re awake, go spend the holiday with your family kind of a thing.

Hang out with your in-laws for months.

I think that’s the… That’s kind of becomes the joy in the practice.

And then that pushes us to sit more deeply.

And so it kind of like, what I’m saying is that there’s an ongoing process of direct experience, realization, embodiment, deeper practice, direct experience, realization, embodiment, deeper practice, right?

I don’t think that stops.

No, I don’t disagree there at all.

I don’t think it stops at all.

But I think you touched on a really good point of there’s a difference between like, hey, this is adopted philosophy.

And we said, well, I’ve been listening to the audio book we’re studying here.

So I can look at that and go, yeah, from an academic or a philosophical standpoint, I can absolutely adopt this because that’s like, yeah, that makes a ton of sense.

But without that direct experience, you’re only like, I don’t know, maybe halfway there, maybe a bit more than halfway there.

But the principles that you start to apply become more relevant in meditation.

So this is, okay, so we’ll tie it back in.

So if you start to do these things, when you become the one who sits and you are not grasping any of your experiences, nor are you rejecting any of your experiences because you’ve adopted a philosophy of non-possession, then your mind becomes quieter because you’re no longer in a sense of grasping and aversion.

So then through that non-possession, you get into a deeper meditative state.

And as that gets deeper, then you start to see in real time how these things are composite and how they don’t have any individual characteristics.

So then you start living your life recognizing that nothing is its own self entity.

And then when you come into your meditation and you’re sitting and things are arising and falling away and you’re not possessing them and they’re arising and falling away and you’re seeing how they come into contact with each other and as this codependent arising phenomenon, well, now you’re in a deeper state of meditation.

Now your perspective is that much more open, that much less concerned about what you’re experiencing.

Right.

And now you’ve got another meditative experience that then takes you further in your day.

And if we go backwards, I have it here.

Those are similar to the instructions for cessation of constant characteristic and cessation of continuity.

When we have the…

I think we did touch on this a couple of weeks ago.

Yeah.

I don’t know if we ever hit, is there a step A through Z?

Like here’s how to cultivate a cessation experience while sitting.

The discriminating consciousness is unfathomably perfumed.

The conceptualizing consciousness discriminates and grasps at perceived objects.

Right.

And the various perfumed tendencies of the last consciousness and deluded ceases are brought to cessation and so it’s felt like the faculties likewise cease.

Which is basically saying that when we’re no longer grasping at the proceeding perfuming phenomenon that’s happening, when we stop grasping in that because we’re in non-possession, that’s when we have the cessation of characteristics.

Right.

So it’s a little bit more recursive to now go back and see how these line up, but they do.

Something comes to mind, Umi, that might address what I think I heard him asking, which was the research that Jeffrey Martin did.

And like he called this state, I suppose, that we’re talking about persistent fundamental well-being or persistent non-symbolic consciousness.

And he interviewed people who were abiding in that state consistently and regularly, maybe under a lot of stress.

I don’t know if he didn’t do.

A lot of it was interviewing people, but some of those people had not necessarily gone through a meditation practice or a cessation experience in meditation as we’re describing it.

So just as a direct answer to his question, I would say that like, no, having what’s being talked about as a direct cessation experience in the context of meditative practice is not necessarily a prerequisite for the ontological shift that we’re talking about.

It could be, and it’s one of the sort of known systematized ways of doing it, but there’s occurrences where people did not go through that and they still possess the ontological shift.

Or at least, you know, to give a little bit more nuance to that, in Martin’s work, there are many different flavors of persistent non-symbolic experience.

That’s true.

That can be attained through various means, like cultivating devotional love in all situations, which creates a different kind of non-symbolic well-being that is distinct from the liberation that’s talked about in this, right?

So I think that that would be, I don’t have that research, but that would be an interesting thing to see if the different buckets that he put in or the locations of fundamental well-being, if one would map clearly to more like what the Lankavatara is talking about, probably location four, or really location five plus is where Lankavatara truly sits.

Whereas locations one, two, three are more of the ones that you could probably do without having a cessation experience.

Yeah, that could be true.

And he talked about that fork between locations three and four.

Three was like unity, Christ consciousness, and four was like this, what we’re talking about.

So yeah, yeah, you’re right.

I read the finders book and I don’t know if he articulated that somebody who did or did not have a cessation experience ended up in location three or four or that they were different.

Yeah.

So the finders is the book, it’s by Jeffrey Martin.

There’s also some published white papers.

He also has a couple of courses.

I’ve done two of them.

They’re fine.

Actually, Greg, we did the second one together, didn’t we?

Yeah.

Yeah, that was heart of bones.

Yeah.

It’s good stuff.

That’s good stuff.

He does the path of freedom.

His later developmental or his later investigation goes in the path of freedom, which are people who continue on to a path of wisdom, which would be those who kind of like disengage and stop necessarily having a strong felt sense of like karmic obligation to participate in the world.

And he has far less research probably because it’s far less common on what is being talked about here, which is the path of humanity, which is that our karma still remains active.

We’re still responsible for our intentions and our impacts and what we say, do and think still produces karma.

So there’s a responsibility that we hold in terms of how we care for that, which is more on the path of humanity side of Jeffrey Martin’s work if you go read his stuff.

I think you have those flipped because that’s the fork I was talking about.

The path of humanity was location three, and then it didn’t progress into other locations after that, although it could deepen in other ways.

And the path of freedom was location four, five plus.

Well, we’ll have to check.

I remember it as being one through four.

We’re like a block.

And then five plus is where he started talking about the freedom path humanity.

So somebody needs to back check this.

I will make you a bet on this, but I feel very certain like one and two, those weren’t part of the fork, right?

The fork only happens in three and four.

And then people would sort of split.

And the path of humanity was location three.

And what he called the path of freedom was four or five plus.

If I’m wrong, I don’t know.

I will give you… What should be the penalty for being wrong?

We don’t have any penalty for being wrong.

We can just all celebrate learning together.

So come back next week and tell us the finding.

Okay.

You got to come from Arizona to Ohio.

That’s punishment enough.

Yeah.

No, I got to drive through all the fields with aerosolized glyphosate and shit.

So, yeah, that’s…

In Arizona, stay there.

Much better than Ohio.

Beautiful.

Yeah.

So if we’re okay with those three ideas of those three perspective shifts, I’d like to go ahead and take up the rest, or at least the next couple of lines here.

Are we good with that?

Yeah.

So at this point, the Texas talked us into the as illusion Samadhi.

Okay.

So this is where we have a persistent experience of mind, body, and soul.

Okay.

So this is where we have a persistent experience of mind, creating matter, matter, creating, not necessarily mind, creating matter.

I misspoke there, but whatever is outside of us seeding our sense consciousnesses and whatever is inside us interacting with that.

And there’s this mind only experience.

And it’s basically just all this illusion, like dream, like phenomenological mind only thing happening.

Right.

And this is why none of the particularly interesting meditative States we can enter any of the eight genres or whatever remain that important in a certain way, because they’re all just other realms of rebirth, which are directly with the Buddha.

All realms of rebirth.

So then once that perspective is well-established, this is the next line here.

It says passing over the manifestations of one’s mind.

As not having any self nature, they obtain and abide in Prajnaparamita.

Now Prajnaparamita is probably a familiar word, the perfection of wisdom.

The perfection of wisdom is that there is no longer an absolute.

There is no longer a relative.

These are both fundamentally empty experiences.

And so it’s like, there’s a space now where it’s not nirvana or samsara.

It’s not even necessarily nirvana and samsara are the same thing.

It’s that the metaphor I like is that consciousness is water.

Sometimes it’s moving at samsara.

Sometimes it’s still that’s nirvana.

But now Prajnaparamita is just saying it’s all wet.

It’s not even that it’s all water.

It all has the quality of wetness.

And so Prajnaparamita no longer cares about the distinctions of absolute or relative.

It no longer cares.

It just says this is the process that’s happening.

And this is another really important ontological shift in perspective that gets us closer to non-duality.

Because there is no longer a biasing of stillness.

There is no longer a biasing of emptiness.

It’s that reality functions this way.

There’s stillness, stillness moves, movement becomes still.

That’s just, you don’t need to prefer one over the other.

You don’t need to worry about whether or not you’re one or the other.

Because it’s all wet.

I have a question.

So you’re saying that reality is this?

Is that from?

You’re saying reality is what’s in our mind?

Yeah.

Okay.

How do you operate from that perspective?

Well, that’s where we go.

So what happens then?

So that’s the perspective that we’re holding.

And this is just this.

We’re just in the wetness of mind only experience.

Detached and separated from skillful means based on other existence, they enter adamantine samadhi.

Vajra samadhi, the diamond samadhi.

And consequently, they enter the body of the Tathagata.

Following, they enter the changeless transformation of suchness, unrestrained supernormal powers, compassionate skillful means, and possess all adornments of the Tathagata.

I’m going to keep going because this is continuing to answer your question.

They enter equally into all Buddha fields, the domains entered by other paths, heterodox paths, and become free from chitta, manas, and manas vijnana.

This is the bodhisattva’s gradual turning of embodiment, attaining the body of the Tathagata.

There’s one more section here, but we’ll stop right there.

So basically, because we are no longer worried about stillness or movement or confused with the idea that I’m a me and you’re a you, and I have to have a plan to do this skillfully, and that compassionate depends on me doing something nice for you, and that I’m no longer just going to blindly assume the karmic forces that just push me along.

I’m not doing that anymore.

I’m not going to assume ownership of karma, but I am going to care for karma.

Once all of these things lock in, that’s the adamantine samadhi.

That’s where it gets unbreakable.

And then we’re realizing that we can have all the emotions in the world.

We can have all of the stresses in the world.

We can have all of the collapses in the ego relative realm in the world, and we can watch them happen, and then we can go, huh, that was interesting.

What needs to happen now?

What perfume needs to be perfumed?

What seed needs to be planted?

What’s next?

And as we do that, we’re in the changeless transformation of suchness.

Changeless transformation means that things are always transforming in these discrete seed-perfume moments of consciousness, and that fundamental being-becoming process is changeless.

It’s changeless because it always changes in this particular way, in this particular fractal pattern of being-becoming.

And now all sorts of crazy things happen.

True compassionate, skillful means can happen because there’s no self that’s trying to do anything.

There’s no other that’s believed to be real.

It’s just what does this moment call for?

I mean, if you’re all just – I mean, if you’re just saying, like, okay, it’s all just wet, you know, like you’re not really worried about the – you’re not, like, attached to the contents or anything like that, right?

How are you able to make a decision on what needs to be done?

So that’s where it’s gnostic in the sense that you just know, right?

But it also is a sense of, like, it’s an ongoing field of evolution, and so it’s fractal, right?

And in this particular context, there is an overall overarching vow of nonviolence and compassion that stays in place.

As a bodhisattva, we take these vows, and those stay in place, and that’s why they’re so important, because otherwise, you basically gain the power to do whatever you want, and that can be very dangerous.

So you begin by vowing to liberate yourself and all beings from suffering, and then when you get here, you have that heart seed, that deepest desire in your heart that kind of informs your decision-making.

So that’s the liberating frame of Buddhism.

And so I think a really interesting theoretical thing here is the Lama Tathagata is known for its eight consciousness model, right?

Where you have these six consciousnesses that, like, have experience and make sense of experience through the interplay of internal and external phenomenon.

Then you have the piece that kind of stitches it all together, right?

So in this frame, we’re free of that.

We’re not free of the process of it.

We are free from the compulsion of it, and that’s a really critical distinction.

Lankavatara is not saying that these processes stop.

It’s not saying that the seeding, perfuming process stops.

It’s saying that we are free from the compulsions of it, and now we can, in real time, tend our mind garden much more effectively.

And that is how we slowly embody Buddha, how we transform into Buddha, because we just are tending our mind garden.

We’re taking out all the weeds.

We’re not planting any more weeds.

We’re adjusting the vegetation accordingly.

We’re watering the stuff we want to keep.

We’re planting some new stuff that we want to have grow.

That’s it.

That’s the process.

And then when we realize that something is growing that shouldn’t grow, we go, huh, shit.

And we pull it out.

Then we realize that we planted something that we thought was a good idea at the time, and now it’s not.

We go, huh, well, pull that out.

Next.

So it’s quite lovely.

So Mahamati, therefore, one who wishes or suchness to infuse their being must abandon.

This is the closing line.

It gives us a few minutes to process it, which is great.

Mahamati, therefore, one who wishes suchness to infuse their being must abandon the mind’s apprehension of skandhas, dhatus, and ayatanas.

All right, that’s the five aggregates.

There are different realms of consciousness, sense object and consciousness, and the ayatanas, the combination of sense organ and sense object to create sense consciousness.

The skillful means fabricated through causality conditions, so we must abandon the skillful means that were built out of a dualistic perspective of like chains of causality events and logic.

And all false wang xiang of birth, abiding, and cessation.

So we must also abandon that fundamentally delusive view that we are a subject having an objective experience and taking that as real.

It goes back to a summary sentence that it’s like, if you want to be the Buddha, you have to abandon these things.

You have to stop thinking in dualistic terms.

You’ll never get there if you’re thinking that this builds this and this is that and that exists and therefore because that exists, this exists and because that happened and this happened and because I’m this way and that is that way and because this was this way in the past and this has to be that way in the future.

And if you’re thinking anything like that, you’re stuck.

So it’s not possession non characteristic illusory.

And then, Adamantine Samadhi.

That’s, that’s what we go through.

When we abandon our conventional way of relating to reality, and our conscious experience.

What’s up.

Like that.

That’s literally what I do, like my job.

I’d love to hear from Matt or Michael though I haven’t heard much from either of you today.

Go ahead, Michael.

What’s that?

I said, go ahead.

Oh, yeah, I, I’m getting a really bad signal.

Am I coming through?

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

I just, I, what, for me, I, I’m just tracking this with I’m realizing a junction non dual meditation, which, you know, Ryan was saying, is there one and there is one and it’s basically about dropping in settling the mind.

It is using visual is you’re using your eyesight and you’re looking up and you’re taking in the field, and you’re labeling the field suddenly that you drop labeling the field and you just see things as phenomena you drop all labels.

And then the next step is suddenly letting go of action of I am perceiving this drop that.

And yet there’s still a, there’s still, there’s still something happening, consciousness.

And then in the final step is, and this was a big one for me, I finally got was you drop the notion of distance of any distance between me and the field out there.

And it all just, you just get that you just any kind of distance.

And then you just see that also.

So that’s very, that’s one way of just.

Yeah, we lost you right at the end there but yeah that’s, that’s a good one.

That’s a good one, realizing that everything you’re experiencing is happening in your own in your own mind.

It’s not out there it’s in here.

It’s definitely a good process and that’s a great way to do it.

Thanks for sharing.

Encourage everyone to try.

I don’t really have a specific question for for today’s reading.

And the discussion really enjoyed it but but yeah it’s it’s kind of, it’s reinforcing for me the, you know, are the cause of our suffering is diluted views.

And so if we keep, you know, like you said reifying these delusions, you know, then that further propagates that feedback loop of the seating and perfuming.

So as long as we just stop, stop engaging.

You know, those habitual tendencies of grasping and accepting and rejecting, you know, with right view things start to settle the garden clears.

And then yeah you start progressing through deeper states.

Yeah, no, no direct question I don’t know if you had something you want to poke me with or whatever but Oh, I’m really, I’m enjoying the discussion.

I think the thing that I’ll always point out from my perspective is that One of the common things we hear in the teachings is that it’s very special to be born a human.

And it’s very hard to figure out why.

And what I, the, the, I think the thing that I’ll always point out from my perspective is that It’s very special to be born a human.

And it’s very hard to figure out why.

And the texts, they don’t really talk about why they say it’s really important human into encounter the girl.

And what I, the opinion that I’ve come through I just want to drop this into you because you, you kind of said something that I think abdicates this fact, the thing that makes us make it so special to be born a human, is that we have higher order processing that allows us to consciously engage in the perfuming seeding process.

makes it so special to be born a human, is that we have higher order processing that allows us to consciously engage in the perfuming seeding process.

We get to consciously tend to our mind garden.

As far as we know that is different from almost any other animal.

Maybe dolphins are doing that maybe whales, gorillas.

Right.

Maybe.

We can’t really know of course but from observation, they might have enough higher order faculty to be able to really change their behavior and to interrupt karmic processes.

That’s pretty special.

So I think when we want when I, when I hear people talk about the mind garden.

I really like to encourage people to, like, take it as an active project.

Yeah, I suppose, I guess the way I see it is those actions, you know, as opposed to, like, taking the 100% unprovoked, you know, I don’t know, purview of like trying to just okay I’m going to go get in the garden today.

You know, for me it’s more I can use my own reactivity as my clue, you know, or as a, like a teaching, you know, to okay there’s something that needs to now be actively addressed.

Otherwise, I’m not like, you know, running around the world I guess trying to seed, you know, like, in from that from that perspective I’m using my, my own, my own experience and my own reactivity as like my guide to understand where I need to make, make change, or to receive.

And then the only thing that you ever see is the stuff that smacks you in the face.

So the only weeds that you ever pull are the ones that you step on.

Yeah, so it’s like, yeah.

Yeah, I also have a stance on, you know, I know it’s an analogy but, you know, this idea of weeds, you know, I think is nonsense as well.

There’s no such thing as a weed.

All right, well that’s an analogy.

Unskillful, unskillful.

Weed is a metaphor for unskillful.

So, if all plants are valuable and beautiful, which I agree with, not all behaviors serve a function.

And our unskillful behaviors serve a function too, and that’s where it’s beautiful because we get to choose.

And then if they did, then was it really unskillful?

Yeah, it’s like, yeah, you see a dandelion, like, I don’t have to pull the dandelion up, like, it’s trying to penetrate compacted ground.

It’s serving a purpose.

You know, I can recognize, like, ultimately I’m not trying to sustain myself on dandelions alone, you know, but, but yeah, let them, let them serve their purpose, you know, because they’re doing something, they’re arising for a reason as well.

And you’re one step away from saying it’s okay to abuse somebody because they need to be abused because we have to penetrate their rocky soil.

Very slippery slope.

Yeah, no, it totally is.

You’re, you’re dancing a fine line there, you know, on, on when to intervene and when to, and when not, you know, what is, you know, that is a very slippery slope, I agree.

And that’s a tricky one to navigate this one, when to engage and when to let be, but I feel like that’s like the sharper the view becomes like the easier it is to make those discernments, right?

As long as we’re looking and engaged.

Like we’re passive.

And then we won’t.

I hear you.

What would be the difference between like say a therapeutic mind gardening process and process more oriented to what what you’re referring to therapeutic mind gardening processes fundamentally function from the fact that there is a self that can be improved.

We’re fundamentally looking beneath that at the structures that must be present for a self to exist.

Right.

And so we’re actually looking at the sun cars, the unconscious mental formations that creates the notion of a self that can have emotions, thoughts and actions about a particular topic.

So a therapeutic model is just going to look at, are you successfully navigating your world in terms of like, do you consistently function within the normal bounds of society.

Well then cool, and it’s never going to challenge the idea that the self that is created could be fundamentally different.

Right.

So, and the model we’re talking about here.

There is no such thing as a fixed personality.

There is no such thing as a fixed self to be improved upon as just an engagement with life as an unfolding process, and to look at the structures that must be present for whatever is happening to be valid, because it is whatever is happening is a valid expression of the underlying structure.

Okay, well that expression is unskillful.

Then what’s the underlying structure that needs reorganized, not how do I have a better coping mechanism to look overlay on a fundamentally unskillful proposition.

That’s a really good.

Yeah, really good answer it like I find myself thinking then what what motivates a selfless one to do any gardening.

It’s really some motivating force.

Because you can’t, you can’t not right so a lot of for me anyway, it became an obligation.

Because it’s like well if I see how karma unfolds.

How can I sit back and just watch karma unfold.

That’s, that’s kind of actually messed up.

So it’s like, now it’s like I get to move toward beauty.

I don’t just get to watch myself continue being a jerk because that’s my karma.

So, so why not live on purpose.

Right.

So it becomes an obligation to have an impact that matches with whatever value system I choose for myself.

The awakened ones bow right.

Yeah.

There was, I mean that’s a bit of been a bit of my journey is, you know, early on I had a, I had a wide open awakening process that lasted when I was studying years ago.

But then I came back down from it.

And I realized like, all my messes were kind of in my developmental psychology developmental thing so that whole psychology could not sustain an insight or, or it held it for a while because it was so strong but it couldn’t.

And, you know, I did my work had to be about going back into and stabilizing that ego and having a healthier sense of self and sorting things out in that way.

And that was, you know, just one person’s journey.

Yeah.

That was Jimbo’s journey as well.

Yeah, right.

Similar.

Someone similar period.

So anyway, I have let us go now several minutes over, I apologize for not naming that we are past time, I hope I didn’t make anyone late for whatever other engagements that they have.

But let’s go ahead and do our closing round of checking, please, and get ready for to take this into the week, and come back to pick up with to that will clean up anything on to that seven and I should have enough of to that nine translated for us to step into the next phase of our studies.

So if we could have.

Michael since you’re, you’re just speaking let’s have Michael and then Matt and then Greg, and then Bailey Ryan and myself.

Yeah.

Okay, Michael checking in.

Once again, really, you know, what is this an hour and a half meditation through dialogue and sitting really wonderful more integration.

A lot of good in integration actually based upon some.

It’s like I’m still, I’m still integrating from 40 years ago so it feels great and appreciative for everybody you know that again who me for your efforts to really kind of where you’re at.

I really appreciate you presenting this and everybody else I’m here with Greg Ryan.

I don’t know this young guy’s name.

Bailey.

So, good to see you all.

Thank you.

Bailey.

Thanks, Bailey.

And Matt checking in.

I just want to echo what Michael said, you know these.

This is this has been a valuable addition to my practice.

The reading seem to reverberate a little bit deeper through, I guess through hearing it come through you, me, and then through, you know, through discussion as well.

So it’s sinking in and penetrating well so.

Thank you for everyone’s ongoing contribution to this and I’m in.

Thank you.

Greg checking in.

I’ve owned a couple plants before.

And I treated them kind of like cactuses, I’d forget to water them for a long time and then I remember and give them lots of water and then have killed a few of them but I take really good care of cactuses.

I wonder what kind of plant my mind is most comparable to in that analogy.

Anyways, I’m in, and this has been a hoot, and I look forward to next week.

I.

This has been a very apt timing in my journey.

Yeah, that’s this is this has been this has been very great.

I think I’m going to rewatch this recording to get a little bit more out of it.

Yeah, this was amazing.

Thank you guys so much for coming.

Thank you.

Yeah, there’s always my, my favorite time of the week.

I always enjoy sharing them.

The same time and then you’re going to sit in one room and then we’ll get out of the hole.

So I enjoy it in this context.

I enjoy sharing this this space with all of you.

Every week and I just love weaving with 1000 more questions than when I walked in.

And a couple tidbits of insight.

I’m going to call that growth.

And that’s the goal.

So thank you all very much for for being a constant on this journey and I appreciate each and every one of you.

I’m in.

Thank you.

Umi checking in.

Like everyone else that is just really rich and delightful to be with you all in this process.

And to, to, you know, to get to really explore this and dig into it and answer tough questions like, how’s this different than a therapeutic model, you know, and to are we as our mind garden going to tend itself or do we need to tend it, you know how actively do we do this you know these are these are just such critical and poignant questions that have been relevant to spiritual communities for forever, you know, so for me to hear the depth of engagement just continues to power me and give me energy to to continue grinding this impossible fucking Chinese. See you next week.

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