Lankavatara 2:VI (part 2)

*transcript generated by AI

We’re all on track.

Great.

We are today on Chapter 2, Section 6.

Chapter 2, Section 6.

Last talk we were, we got through Section 5, talking about the different ways that self-nature kind of arises or presents itself in a way that we can take as a self-nature.

And then we opened with 2.6, where we talked about kind of these different, almost like milestones in meditative insight.

So, Shishashen, if at some point you feel so inclined, I know you’ve had an incredibly interesting period of time within which to practice universal reverence.

Do you have any reflections for us about how that went, in terms of inviting this mindset you talked about?

Well, it’s a good question.

To be honest, I left with the intention to do that, and it did not occur to me once, until I’m sitting here now.

So, that’s what happened, or what didn’t.

Fair enough.

And so, in these different kind of…

So, I’m going to start here.

We’re going to start with 2.6 again, and I’m using my own translations for these.

You can find those on the website.

If you have the Red Pine version, this starts on page 69.

And so, furthermore, Mahamati, there are seven aspects of the ultimate principle, which are the realm of mind, the realm of wisdom, the realm of knowledge, the realm of perception, the realm surpassing dualistic perception, the realm surpassing the ground of universal reverence, and the realm of the Tathagata’s self-arrival.

Mahamati, this is the nature of self-nature, what all Tathagatas, worthy and fully awakened across time, embody as the ultimate principle.

So, that’s where we got to last time.

We’ll go ahead and continue on with the next two sections here, and then we’ll pause and see what’s arriving.

With the mind of the ultimate principle, the nature of self-nature, the sacred eye of wisdom is established, seeing into individual and shared characteristics of the Tathagata’s world, beyond the world, and in the highest dharma beyond both.

As this is established, it does not align with the distorted views of externalist schools.

Mahamati, what is the thesis of false perception shared with the heterodox?

The distinctions between falsely imagined, self-generated realms and the appearance of one’s own mind are not understood.

Mahamati, the ignorant, deluded, and unenlightened, formulate dualistic positions of nature, non-nature, self-nature, and the ultimate principle.

Oh, there’s just one more line, let’s just say, finish this section.

Furthermore, Mahamati, the cessation of deluded cognition and the suffering of the three realms, ignorance, craving, karma, and conditions, the mirage-like realms manifested by one’s own mind are perceived accordingly.

I will now explain.

It’s a lot of intro here.

We know that the next section is going to do explanation, and that’s what we’ll start with next week.

Before we get into the explanation and section seven, it gets to be, it’s pretty important to understand the framing.

So, is there anything that stuck out, any terms that like caught your attention, like, hey, what is that, or any terms of phrase you’d like to dig into a little bit?

Yeah, sure, I’ll go.

The last things you mentioned was like craving, conditions, and was there one others?

Yeah, so that particular list is the three realms, ignorance, craving, karma, and conditions.

The mirage-like realms manifested by one’s own mind are perceived accordingly.

Okay.

So, is that being brought up in context of like, that’s the it’s the barrier?

Yeah, I think you said that.

So, it’s like, the point being that once we get into the ultimate principle, and the dharma eye pierces through all these different realms, right?

The world, the Tathagata’s world, beyond the world, the highest dharma beyond both, as we’re penetrating through these, we’re penetrating through these barriers, the three realms, which are the past, present, and future.

I believe, you know, there’s some argument there, I think, about what the three realms are.

It could be the world of form, formless, and realm of desire, form, and formlessness.

So, sometimes those three realms can be either ignorance, craving, karma, and conditions, mirage-like nature, or mirage-like realms manifested by one’s own mind.

So, this is what allows these ultimate principles, these aspects of the ultimate principle allow us to penetrate those different forms of confusion, which lead to suffering.

Oh, that’s an interesting view, if what I’m understanding you.

I don’t know.

That all sort of sounded like a preamble, and I’m like, yep, tell me how to knock down the walls with my laser beam dharma eye.

I do need a clarification.

The Red Pine version you shared with us was really kind of a lengthy, poetic piece, and I think you said it was verse 10.

Is all of that winnowed down by you to this version here, everything that was in there, this was your interpretation?

So, what I read was a part of chapter 2, section 9, and what we’re on right now is chapter 2, section 6.

Well, didn’t you say section 10?

I’m sorry.

I misspoke.

I said section 10, but that was part of section 9.

Okay, okay.

So, yeah, I mean, I reached the point here where it’s like, you know, going back to the old Zen wisdom, Buddha allows brambling briars to escape from his mouth to seduce you into this way.

It just gets very florid, and there’s a million ways to grapple with it, a million and seven ways to grapple with it.

But yeah, and so, I’m thinking, you know, Robin had said a few weeks ago, where’s the practicality in the profundity?

And I had also pointed, I brought that up a while back, so we’re all on the same page.

So, could you speak to that, please?

I’m sorry, speak to what?

Like, we can really kind of explore the nuances of all these things, and I’d be happy to go there or try to, but like, when I read this verse, what’s the practicality for me?

Well, this particular verse, section 6, is setting up what we need to realize, what we need to see, what we need to investigate in order to free ourselves from the confusions or from the various forms of suffering that are known as the three realms, ignorance, faith, and karmic conditions.

And how do we actually perceive, how do we realistically, how do we not just be told, right?

I think this is a critical distinction.

Lots of teachers and teachings will tell you your reality is illusory.

They will say to you, your reality is illusory, and you are expected to take it as a matter of faith, as a matter of doctrine, as a matter of principle, as a matter of, I can see how that makes sense, and then you’re supposed to follow on with the rest of their saying.

The Lankavatara doesn’t do that.

It says, your experience is consciousness only.

And that’s not enough.

It’s not enough for me to tell you that.

I need to give you the steps along the path for you to come into your own direct contact with that truth.

And so the Lankavatara is taking its time and it’s saying, hey, you know what, this is what we got to figure out.

We need to actually explore the realm of mind, right?

You need to get into the realm of mind, the realm of all the activity, into the realm of wisdom, into the realm where, so prajna is the realm where we cut through to shunyata, right?

So this is more in your voidness experiences.

If you’re in the jhanas, you’re talking about extended periods of the cessation of thought, further shutting down other sensory experiences, really blinking out, mind and body dropped away.

And through that, through that barrier, then you enter into the realm of knowledge, the realm of jhana, the realm of spontaneous perception of reality as it is.

And then you enter into the realm of perception.

What is the realm of perception?

The way that I understand the realm of perception is that it is the mode of meaning making, right?

So the jhana is the spontaneous perception of reality as it is.

The realm of perception is actually witnessing how our sense organ encounter the sense object and how that generates a sense consciousness, which is then perfumed from the storehouse consciousness to create meaning that then we set ourselves against in order to create an eye structure so that there’s a subjective experience in an objective world, right?

Now we’re in the realm of dualistic perception, the realm of perception.

And then that’s not enough.

That would be a profound insight for lots of people who stop just with the realm of wisdom.

Most zen teachers get to the realm of wisdom and they’re like, cool, we did it, yeah.

That’s only step two.

That’s step two, right?

So then what?

The realm surpassing dualistic perception, we have to, in our experience, break down the perception process so that we can see how it goes the other way, how what’s coming into me creates me and what’s coming out of me creates the interpenetration of individual karmic characteristics and shared karmic characteristics.

We actually have to see that in real time.

And in that, we end up having a very altered state experience of realizing that everything is creating us.

And now for the first time in the teaching, the heart breaks open and we enter in a realm of universal compassion.

And then when we surpass the realm of universal compassion, we start to get into where the Buddhas live.

That’s when we get into the self-arrival, right?

So that’s intuition.

Yeah.

Wait a minute.

OK, hold on to you.

Yeah, right.

So you’re going.

So I see all of that.

The previous step is all about cessation, cessation of all of these ways you all these things going through your conscious experience.

And then then we say and they say you go into surpassing of each of those which we discussed last week.

And then in your interpretation, the sacred wisdom is established, seeing into the individual shared characteristics beyond the world and the highest dharma beyond.

So what is that surpassing in the highest dharma beyond all of these surpassable things?

A question.

So there’s lots of I think there are several ways to say that the actual words here are that to talk about the realm of the world and the realm surpassing the highest dharma of the world.

And I actually haven’t encountered those terms anywhere else.

So what do they mean?

OK. My suspicion, my suspicion here is that this has something that this is the same as the Trisabha Baha.

So is anyone familiar with the Trisabha Baha or the three-self nature theory of layover charm perspective?

Yeah.

Shane, you want to teach us for it?

You want to teach it for us?

I’ll say what I recollect.

And the three natures, there’s an imaginary nature, and this is the realm where we ascribe labels like tree and bush and flower, these kinds of things.

And we understand that the thing that we’re calling it is not the thing itself, and it doesn’t actually exist.

Then there’s the other dependent nature in which we realize that me experiencing the flower is in a process of co-creation, and that the flower extends or the tree extends beyond the idea of the tree into the earth, into the sky, into the animals.

So we see this vast interdependency that is coalescing with everything that we see.

And then the ultimate realized nature, which includes both of these, but is also independent of them as well.

Pretty good.

And so does anyone else feel like those kind of overlay to the idea of the realm of the world?

We have desire, form, and formlessness as the three realms from Red Point, is how he’s describing it.

He says desire, form, and formlessness?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I think somewhere else I saw that was past, present, and future.

So that’s kind of like imaginary, other dependent, and ultimate realized.

See that?

I don’t know if I go there with that.

I would say that the world, the realm beyond, or the realm, the totality of this world, the world, and the world surpassing the dharma of both would be the Trasubhaha, with the totality of the realm being the absolute perfected reality, or not the perfected reality, but kind of like the, in the other dependent, the realm of the world being the imagined, and the realm surpassing the dharmas of both being the perfected.

I see part of the imaginary realm as a realm of desire, because it’s what we want to create something to be.

So what’s interesting here is that the realm of desire is also just the realm of karma.

And the Yogataras negate the realm of karma.

They say that we function within the realm of karma.

Karma is just always functioning.

It functions as a byproduct of the storehouse.

It’s not dependent upon the storehouse, but the storehouse is where the, I mean, that’s where we get the seed theory, right?

If I plant an acorn, I don’t get a pineapple.

Right.

And the karma is not imagined.

The seeding and perfuming process is not imaginary.

No, it’s just a natural function.

Right.

So that’s where I’m saying that the desire realm and the imagined realm probably don’t go together.

Yeah, I guess I was looking into it as desire.

Some languages have a hundred words for love, and some languages have one or two, you know?

Yeah, yeah.

I’m suspecting two different groups of three, though.

It seems to me that the imagination, maybe I’m just thinking of more contemporary terms and not Buddhist terms, is like the imagination and conceptualization and desire realm are three things.

Like I could have an imagination.

I could sit here for an hour and imagine different things in my mind.

Like I can imagine sunsets and I could imagine, you know, all kinds of things.

That’s my imagination at work, and then that drops.

Or I could imagine visualizing all of my body parts as an archetypal Bodhisattva Buddha, try to transform that way.

And the conceptual is just seeing anything immediately and going with our habitual, as they said earlier, in Red Pine.

We’re going into habitual relationship to above.

Oh, that’s blue, brown, and orange, this photo.

I like it.

I kind of dislike it.

I miss it.

This photo, I like it.

I kind of dislike it.

I’m indifferent to it.

And so it’s kind of pulling apart those specific mind processes.

To find the, you know, now we’re into the subtler, the realms of subtlety, wisdom, genuine knowledge, perception, dualistic perception, surpassing it.

So it’s seeing those ordinary things or characteristics, functions of mind as cessation occurring and then transforming at some point.

It could be.

Okay.

I’m not, I think that it’s, for me, that’s kind of more like a simile, where we’re saying it’s like this and not…

When it rains, you get wet.

What’s that?

I said, when it rains, you get wet.

When it rains, you get wet.

Yeah.

I want to open the mic for Matt and Robin and Ryan, because we’ve been dominating the conversation.

But I do just want to drop in that desire, form, and formlessness typically refers to normal mental states, the first four jhanas, and then the formless jhanas.

So when we see those terms throughout Buddhist literature, those are typically referring to those meditative states.

So they’re showing up here.

I think that would be interesting.

That’s interesting.

Right.

And again, Michael was saying about the differentiation between imagining and then conceptual proliferation at the more basic level, right?

That’s kind of another twist.

So these are all different twists and they’re all different ways that we’re examining consciousness.

And they’re all good ways to examine consciousness because the key to the Yogataran methodology is that you’re investigating the mechanism of consciousness.

So you can identify how it traps you and then learn to work with it, learn to be not trapped by it, but recognize its function.

That’s why there’s so many magician illusion metaphors.

Illusion, it seems like it’s this way.

You get behind the curtain and you see how it actually works.

And then you get to go be the magician.

Right.

So anytime that we’re looking at how do I work and investigating consciousness this way, we’re doing what the sutra is asking us to do, which is far more important than whether or not we actually get the technical terms right.

So I just want to make sure we’re oriented towards the reconstructive properties that are happening as we have these conversations, not staying oriented into does the text mean this or that.

So let’s go ahead and swing over.

Matt, at this point, is there anything you’d like to jump in with or just give us a barometer check?

Is this, you know, how you feeling as we kind of dug in and got weird?

No, I don’t.

I’m tracking with the conversation.

I really appreciate the dialogue and the questions.

Yeah, I mean, it seems, at least I felt like I was understanding or hearing what was going on, which was a, you know, when we give rise to our projections of our perceptions, is where we get into trouble and we start to get lost.

So, yeah, I mean, I know we’re leading into the next section here where he’s about to teach, but no, I didn’t have any specific questions on terms or anything like that.

You’ll have to forgive me, but I’m going to just invite you to twist the language just a little bit.

So it’s not that we have perceptions that are a problem.

It’s when we don’t understand how our perceptions work and we take them to be real.

That’s true.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because if you stopped perceiving, then you’d be dead.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

That’s, I guess, the eye of wisdom there.

Yeah.

Or you’d be in such a deep state of cessation that for all intents and purposes, you’re dead.

But when you come back, you’d still be in the same the same world that you were in before your cessation started.

So, yeah, it’s critical to keep that in mind that this text is not teaching a type of nirvana that we may understand from different styles of Buddhism.

Yes.

Yes.

Understood.

It’s correctly seeing the perceptions for what they are.

There you go.

Robin, anything alive for you right now?

No, not really.

I don’t have anything to contribute or questions.

I’m really looking forward to being able to read your translation.

I absorb things much better by seeing them than by hearing them.

So.

Should have put up as soon as I can.

Thank you.

And Brian, I want to talk to you, but I also see a notification that my battery is dying.

So I got to plug in the laptop.

If I ignored that perception, then our time would be much shorter.

Which might need to get to everyone.

I don’t know.

So I guess I’m out of time.

And actually, I don’t I don’t have a time to contribute.

Actually, surprising.

Yeah, I mean, it’s not a text that I’ve dug into prior to this.

My.

My, my readings have always kind of been in the really traditional kind of like stopped once Chan became Zen in Japan.

And so digging significantly further than we have basic working, you know, like basic working understanding of what I thought was a basic working understanding.

But I didn’t really spend a ton of time digging into.

Especially this.

Yeah.

And so it’s nice to just sit here and listen and go.

Now’s the time for this to stop.

It’s not a bad thing.

So I appreciate it.

Okay.

Thanks for checking in.

And before we go on, is there anything that you want to say?

Yeah, I appreciate how you said.

And I realize now you’ve you’ve said this multiple times, like this text is a sort of investigation oriented thing where you whereby you arrive at these states of realization through investigation of the apparent reality and, you know, layer by layer by layer.

And so my question is, I’m certain it is to see that I’m starting to get the sense of that.

And I’m an investigator, just psychologically, in a lot of ways, I appreciate that kind of approach.

And yet every investigation oriented thing requires a methodology.

And I’m that’s what I’m just curious about at this point, like, is the reading of it like is what we’re doing?

Like, is that the methodology?

Or are they laying out some concepts whereby they’re now going to say, now here’s the microscope, you know, by which you examine this, come to realize what we’re saying.

Beautiful, great question.

Thank you for asking that.

That ties into what you were asking me the other day, which is about meditation method, right?

So this, this book, this sutra, as far as I recall, does not teach how you have these state experiences.

It gives no meditation instructions.

Okay, but it does say at various points that like a bodhisattva at this stage will have attained this type of samadhi.

A bodhisattva at this stage will be able to enter this kind of dhyana, right?

And so there are clues sprinkled throughout the text about the practice that was going on here.

And so when we combine that with what we know about the Yogacara system overall, and what we know about what Bodhidharma taught, and then the future of the dhyana school, and dhyana, dhyana school, dhyana school, and the evolution of samadhi training, we can see what’s going on here.

And so the technique by which I believe, or I have worked with this text and felt like it has made profound changes in my life, is the dhyanas.

It is progressive states of subtle absorption that are very well articulated, although articulated in very different ways throughout the Pali Canon, but then also held as the core of Zen training and of Mahayana practice in general, which is, or if you’re familiar with Dzongchen or Mahamudra, it’s very similar.

Rigpa, pristine awareness, it’s very similar.

The one major difference between the Yogacara perspective and the other schools that evolved later that took dhyana as their core, is that the Yogacaras are specifically using the razor sharp mind to dissect the conscious experience.

They’re asking questions like, can I watch my phenomenological, can I watch the re-arising of my experience from a state of cessation to gain clues into what persisted over the course of cessation so that when I come back online, I’m still me.

They’re starting to ask questions like, how does that work?

But they do that from these extremely refined, subtle states of consciousness and these deeply advanced meditation practices.

Okay.

So the methodology is jhanas, and jhanas leading to cessation, specifically with the purpose of watching the mind shut off and watching the mind turn back on, and through that process, seeing all of this stuff happen.

It’s a little bit different than persistently kicking our mind into a state of pristine awareness, and then just watching our karma unfold.

It’s a different type of liberation, right?

The Tsongchen Mahamudra will say, now that I’m awake, I watch my karma unfold, right?

Yogacaras don’t really do that.

They say, well, this is a mechanism of reality.

Now I can play in it.

Now I can use karma proactively.

Now I can self on purpose.

I don’t just have to unfold according to my conditions, right?

Again, a very different approach to what liberation is.

Some of you have been through jhana training.

Some of you have been through different forms of deep meditation practice that weren’t based on jhanas.

I think it would be great if we’re going to continue working with the Lama Tara that we really answer any questions we have about meditation, because being able to sit down and actually shut down and then watch yourselves come back online is how you investigate what the text is teaching.

Yeah, Michael.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Hello?

Hi.

Oh, you know, yeah, it’s very interesting.

You mentioned this, you know, there’s something in there when we say it’s shutting down.

And I see in this language, like the cessation process is happening that occurs through subtle meditation, attention, presence, things that all those qualities and characteristics of mind are ceasing.

And when you say it’s shutting down, it doesn’t make sense because who’s shutting it down?

You’re getting to the root of the self.

I mean, so that’s a bizarre question to me.

So I shouldn’t say bizarre, that’s a non-functional question for me.

So what’s your actual question?

I see it’s cessation sounds or a sensation is occurring, shutting down that you bring up.

It to me implies there’s an ego doing that somewhere in the conscious experience.

The ego is part of the process, and it’s the part of the process that decides to sit down and engage in practice.

And it’s the part that disappears in cessation.

And it’s the part that reconstructs itself as it begins having experience again.

And that’s the only thing that any of us function from is some sort of relative subjective experience.

So, you know, talking, I’m saying that the ego doesn’t have anything to do with going into cessation is kind of inane because the ego is the one that decides to sit and come to practice, right?

So if you’re choosing where to place your attention so that you can meditate, then your ego is doing that.

Yeah, it’s an entirely different conversation.

I think I won’t eat it up here, but I still don’t fully agree with that.

But it’s interesting.

You don’t have to.

It’s basically just an opinion about who drives practice.

And if anyone drives practice, I find it much more functionally true to say, Umi decides to sit down.

Umi decides to put his attention on the thing, right?

That’s a totally rational way to talk about what I’m doing.

If I were to say that no one sits down and no one puts their attention on nothing, then that’s just a bunch of mystical mumbo jumbo to me, right?

So that’s why I talk about it the way I talk about it.

But you don’t have to.

I don’t care if you agree with me.

No, I understand.

And I’m not trying to be difficult.

It’s just a very subtle thing that doesn’t stick right for me, but that’s okay.

That is totally okay.

So would you—I think of this like an insight meditation practice.

It’s more like a conceptual framework to set you up for insights with certain types of meditation practice.

So not Vipassana in terms of like—I think that’s insight practice.

It’s very prescriptive, right, in terms of techniques.

This is like completely non-prescriptive in terms of technique, but it’s giving you the sort of cognitive maps to use in conjunction with something like jhana training.

Yeah, exactly.

So it’s kind of like koan work, where you sit down and you prime the pump of your meditation, so to speak, with this koan, and then you go and enter into state, and then eventually the state aligns with the koan, and then there’s an insight into the teaching.

So it’s the combined—in Chinese it’s zhiguang—the combined stopping and seeing, where we enter into samadhi with the intention of absorbing ourselves into the target of our meditation.

Samadhi is bringing things together for deep understanding, right, and then through samadhi with consciousness itself, a non-objective form of meditation that’s just meditating on the consciousness itself, that intimate absorption with it brings knowledge of it, and that knowledge is liberating, and that’s the insight.

Mm-hmm, I love it.

Okay, thanks for helping explain all that.

You’re welcome.

Yeah, I like the approach a lot.

Me too.

Does everyone know how to enter meditation?

Does everyone have a method that works for them to get to a state of meditation where you have extended periods of thoughtlessness?

What do you mean by extended periods?

A period of thoughtlessness that’s long enough for you to go, Oh, wow, it’s been a while since I had a thought.

Yeah, okay.

So if you—yeah—if you pay attention to some—oh, sorry, who was that?

I still use the no-colon, hollow-bone-style no-colon or listen-colon, but when I do it, it’s directly with silence.

So I guess you could call that like a silence samadhi, but it’s like I direct that attention into the silence, even if there’s noise.

It’s the in-between silence or it’s the underlying silence or whatever.

That’s a technique I use that I’ve just come back to again and again and again, like concentration on silence itself.

Yeah.

Okay.

That works.

Yeah.

So that’s just holding it.

So if you can get to that state of thoughtlessness, then the practice is just maintaining thoughtlessness for longer and longer and longer periods of time.

Because what that basically means is that you’re not attaching to any movement of your sense experience.

And therefore, you’re not stirring the karmic field, which means that the waters are becoming increasingly still.

And over time, you will experience different degrees of cessation and go into different depths of absorption into consciousness.

And then, really, I mean, watching yourself shut down or having no one perceive anyone shut down is cool, but it’s not nearly as interesting as when everything comes back online.

So that’s the key flip.

Most people are so focused on our concentration process.

And what happens to most of us, or for me, anyway, the times that I did that is that the online process, the coming back online process was more like a than it was like a gradual coming back up to see things start to like click back into place.

It wasn’t until I could, until I stopped being freaked out by like, gone-ness to slowly come back up and start seeing into these different states that are being taught.

I’m laughing because, and maybe this is an inappropriate thing to say, but in terms of all the plant medicines that I’ve ever engaged with, ketamine is one that I literally use it for that purpose, because it shuts down all of those selfing processes, like if you take enough, like completely.

And then what I get to do is I get to watch all of those things start to come back online.

And it is like stages and layers.

And I really enjoy that process of watching the whole ego and self and perception, everything like start to reconfigure itself.

It’s like, you know, bootstrap itself up from nothing.

And back to where I’m then, you know, Gregging again.

And I love watching that process.

And it never occurred to me to do that, like, like using this as a lens, like, like, look, like, like, actually, you know, preloading my intention, the same thing as meditation as what you’re talking about, about watching it come back online, although I get, I’m not as reliable in my ability to shut everything down first, when it comes to meditation.

So, gosh, that’s a cool idea.

I would love to be able to meditate that reliably, that consistently, because I really love to watch all these layers of self and perception and whatnot assert themselves again.

It’s very interesting.

Okay, I got some cool ideas now.

Inspiring.

I would say, Greg, do the Khyatas training, and then you get to watch it go out and then come back every day.

I love that.

You know, one of the, what’s coming alive for me, as you guys are talking about this process is, I’m not a card carrying member of the NRA, but I find it to be an apt analogy of when we fire a rifle, right, it becomes dirty, and we take it apart, and we clean each piece, and we put it back together, not only so that it continues to function, but that it can function in its optimum ability.

And this unselfing process is kind of like, this is how I’ve experienced, where it’s like, we’re taking the whole thing apart.

Each piece can be cleaned, or, you know, and the gunk can be removed.

And then when we put it back together, it’s with a renewed intention to continue to operate at our optimum, correct function.

We do that with, you know, our intention, and, you know, our aim, you know, we want to hit the target in our life, which is, for me, you know, compassion, wisdom and skillful means.

I like that.

Thank you, Nick.

Yeah, Umi, just wanted to say a quick thank you for that.

Yeah, it’s one of those things where it now seems so obvious.

You know, there’s been trying to work with that stability of, you know, as those Janus states come in to not be reactive to it, and to find stability in that space, but I haven’t even occurred to do it on the way out, you know, but that seems more like true balance, you know, is way in and way out.

So that’s a different level of stability that I’m very interested to try to explore.

So thank you for sharing that.

Yeah, thanks for taking it in.

So just like that, 45 minutes of Dharma discussion have flown by.

I love that we got to the point where we were discussing, okay, what’s our meditation practice, right?

Because if we are doing our meditation practice daily, like Yogachara and Zen yogis are wont to do, then it will greatly support this, because we can, like we’re doing here, we can read this, allow it to wash through us, to take us into our access concentration, and then through our deconstructive process, and up, back through, and we’ve got stuff to look for, to verify through direct experience, or to challenge, or to check, or to see what’s real for us, right?

And if you’re doing that regularly as part of your meditation practice, then the sex will come alive in a totally different way.

And that’ll be, I believe, profoundly useful to your life.