Lankavatara 2:VII:13-17

*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.