Lankavatara 2:IX:9-10

*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.