Lankavatara Foundations (1)

*transcript generated by AI

All right.

So actually, today, you know, the things you’ve been talking about, there’s a little offline conversation about integral and integral Zen and this whole framework.

And I do want to point out that one thing that working with the Lankavatara shows us, or shows me, rather, that was critical to my development in Zen, was that Buddhism, as a religious spiritual culture, as a practice, was not fundamentally anti-intellectual.

And the Lankavatara and the Yogatarans, in fact, actually demand a remarkably high degree of intellectual rigor, despite saying that the realization is not available to logicians, and that the realization is not available to logic, but it has to be acquired through meditative awareness.

Despite that, you have texts like the Lankavatara Sutra, which are probably in, I don’t know, the Lankavatara is probably one of the top 10 to 15 most difficult, intellectually robust, philosophically challenging, linguistically complex spiritual texts in the world, not just in Maya, but in the world.

And this was one of the foundational perspectives that gave rise to Zen.

And we’re going to see in the next section, actually, we’ll get to that in a second, but we’re going to see in the next section that the Buddhist presentation of these teachings directly fits into the debate culture of India at the time, right?

These are what’s put in the Buddha’s mouth, right?

This is most likely not teachings directly from the Buddha.

That’s apocryphal, which is fine.

It’s just later Maya at the moment.

But the point being that intellectual rigor is a critical basis by which we can challenge the falsity of our projections and our views and understand how cognition is fallible and all of these types of things.

So we’re going to see in the next section that basically they use logic to invalidate other styles of teachings.

And they say, well, if you say this and then you say that, that doesn’t make any sense.

Therefore, your whole basis is foundationless because you’re being irrational.

And so whatever their critiques are, you can guarantee that even though it’s non-rational, it’s not irrational.

Just because it is difficult to capture in words doesn’t mean it’s anti-intellectual.

And I think that’s a really powerful thing to recognize in a world where somehow, not necessarily somehow, but mostly by DT Suzuki, bless his soul and all of his efforts, kind of kicked off the West in a very anti-intellectual bent as part of the 60s movement and the way that he presented imperial Zen.

But that isn’t necessarily true.

Zen doesn’t necessarily have to be anti-intellectual or lack words to describe its perspectives.

So there’s a little opening foray.

If anyone would like to chime in on that, you’re welcome to.

Yeah.

What did you say at the beginning?

You said that there’s a sentiment that I’m going to say this in my words, enlightenment is not achievable through logic alone.

Is that a good summary?

Oh, you said it’s not available to logicians or these genuine spiritual insights are not available to like logicians alone.

Right.

Yeah.

That’s the framework of the law.

What I understand this is that even a blind man can become an expert on color.

Well, I want to challenge that sentiment about logicians.

I’m not sure, Umi, if you’re even agreeing or disagreeing with it.

You’re sort of just stating that is where they’re coming from.

Right.

But we froze right after a blind man can become an expert in color.

If there was a response to that, we didn’t hear it.

From me or from Shane?

From Shane.

Shane said a blind man can become an expert in color, and then we didn’t hear anything after that.

Well, yeah.

I was just saying that the blind man can read a braille text on color and all of its properties, its wavelengths, its frequencies.

They can come to understand deeply color, but without the experience of color, they won’t know what color is.

Ah, I totally see what you’re saying, Shen Ye.

And I see the relevance to it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So this plays really well to what I wanted to say.

I kind of wanted to challenge the overall sentiment that spiritual insight is not available to logicians.

Because with me personally, it was unavailable to me until I had a logically coherent way of understanding it.

And that’s not to say that, well, that is to say logic for me was the gateway to the direct experience, given that if I am capable of having the direct experience, right?

So it wasn’t purely like a logical phenomenon, but in any school that I’ve been where there was a lot of kind of logical incoherence or incongruence in the teachings, that ended up blocking me from having those direct realizations.

Exactly, yeah.

That’s why the Lankavatara exists.

It’s basically a giant tomb, or a giant tome, wiping out all logical incongruencies is preparing you for the direct experience of insight.

An analogy that’s come to mind for me with this is like, it’s like in construction, like the intellectual endeavor is like building the scaffolding that eventually comes down after the structure is built.

It’s like, it’s the framework that’s there for you to rest in it, and then you get rid of it and let it go, deconstruct it.

Yeah, yeah.

Very nice.

That’s a great analogy, metaphor, simile.

I never remember which one’s which, but it’s a great one of those.

So in the spirit of that, I was working on the next section that to come up in and translate, and I’m not pleased with how Red Pine does it, so much so that I really don’t even want to try and use it to do the articulation, or to do the investigation.

Part of that is because Red Pine is initially a poet, and he makes beautiful prose and writes beautiful language that is just really exquisite as English.

But to accomplish that, he kind of obliterates the initial, the original Chinese.

Not necessarily in a way that’s wrong.

I’m not saying he’s misrepresenting the teaching, but he just like flattens it and smooths it out and does all of these things to it to make it pleasant to read in English.

That just kind of like rips all of the teeth out of what the teaching is, in my opinion.

And what I found was the next section that took me almost seven hours to translate like, I don’t know, like eight sentences.

And part of that was just because it was so just absolutely loaded with highly technical language.

And what I thought would be a horrible disservice was to come in here and read part of a section where each section has 13 technical phrases in it.

And we all haven’t gone through the process of understanding what the technical things that they’re talking about are.

So I figured it would be probably smart to pause and just be like, okay, well, what’s a list of really important Yogacara, Lankavatara terms that if we don’t know as a basis, it’s going to make it really freaking hard for us to engage in this text because we won’t have the assumed knowledge base that the text assumes for us.

And we as a group won’t be in one of the terms I love from Greek, semantic alignment.

I’ll be saying things that will mean something different to me, even to you, because we won’t really have gotten into the basis of the teachings.

So is that okay if we just pause for a second and do that?

Oh, go ahead, Michael.

Well, I had a couple of quick questions.

Please.

So whose version did you read today?

What did you read today?

So that was Red Pine chapter 364, I think.

Oh, okay.

And yeah, I was hoping to get to because I had a real good question formed.

So hopefully we can get to that before we close today.

Okay, I’m going to leave with that.

That’s fine.

I always prioritize what’s allowed for the group over my agenda.

So go for it.

Okay.

So do you want to do that now?

I don’t have any.

Does anyone strongly object to addressing Michael’s question first?

Okay, so I just want to get the major concepts here because, Udmi, you’ve heard of me speak before.

A fundamental view of mine in the Dharma is that everything is causes and conditions arising.

And I shared that with you and other teachers.

And so I just want to see if my version of what I consider clauses and conditions is what you believe is coming from this text.

And because he, as the text says, it’s all mind.

Everything is mind made, which I also fundamentally believe and understand.

But so like everything is causes and conditions, but that lead to habituation and attachment.

So we want to free ourselves of those having the attachment and habituation of projecting what we perceive it through our causes and conditions, right?

So far, yes.

But there’s a really critical thing that causes and conditions don’t actually exist.

They don’t actually exist, other than in the way we perceive them as a mind entity.

Right, because the cause and the condition are both unreal conditioned objects of experience and perception, which means that they’re both composite.

And so each cause is a composite composite lacking its own self entity.

And each condition is a composite lacking its own self entity.

And so they don’t actually exist.

So we experience a dynamic interplay of causes and conditions.

But that’s really just kind of skillful language to describe what’s going on.

It’s not.

But there is no fundamentally real cause and no fundamentally real condition that arises from it.

That’s atomism.

That’s a wrong view.

There’s no cause and condition from any phenomena that I can perceive and project anything onto or derive anything from it, basically.

Okay, I agree with that, like in the most deeply realized state.

And it’s like in the text, he said, even thinking of your, you think you have teeth, but you don’t have teeth.

And what I view that as is fundamentally, we are all, even thinking of ourselves as a human is a series of causes and conditions that things are just as they are.

Consciousness is just as it is.

We are just kind of born into causes and conditions and we keep that kind of narrative alive of we’re human or the family I come from.

But to see into that clearly, that’s actually arising from pure awareness.

So yeah, so we’re not quite tracking on the same page, but we’re close.

And the nuance here is ludicrously subtle.

Okay.

And so I don’t even know if I’ll really be able to say more about it in a way that makes sense.

So one of the things I just said, and you said, tell me more about is, I said, there are no discrete things.

Okay.

That would be dualistic.

It would be dualistic to say that there is a discrete thing.

Even if I say that my tooth is a composite of a root, that’s an enamel, set in a gum, set in a jaw, actually just named by discrete things.

That’s not non-dual.

That’s dual because these are different things that came together to be a tooth, right?

So the Yogacharans have said, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Causes and conditions, that’s not really what they are.

And one of the places that we can see this is that we’re going to look at how this idea of there being discrete things coming together to produce something gets kind of broken down.

There’s a term called trisomalia, which is like the three conditions.

And it’s a particular model where people would say that consciousness or a perception or a discrete thing arises from the conjunction of a sense organ, a sense object and consciousness.

Now, that actually sounds pretty good, right?

It says like, well, these are the three components of perception.

But what happens in heterodox views or in non-Lankavatar terms is that what they’re saying is that my eye is a real thing.

What I see is a real thing.

The consciousness that merges it all together is a real thing.

And the three of these together generate a real thing which is a moment of visual perception.

And the Lankavatar explicitly negates that.

It says, no, that doesn’t work that way.

But why not?

Okay.

Critical question.

I’m like, yep, yep, yep, uh-huh, no.

Okay.

So, yes, I mean.

I don’t know, it feels relevant.

Looking down at the text, I think approximately where we are, and one of the things I have highlighted in the abandoned version of Red Pine is Mahamati.

If the skandhas, dhatus and ayatanas exist, then cease to exist in the present or the future.

This is due to the projection or view of one’s own mind, not to a cause, this is why they don’t continue to arise.

Yeah.

That is the section that’s kind of negating it in Red Pine’s translation, which is basically saying that if this were true, then visual consciousness would cease as soon as I don’t have an eye or an eye object.

And we can say that that’s not true, simply because when we close our eyes, we still have a visual consciousness.

Or if Ryan were to disappear, I would not lose my capacity to see.

I would lose maybe a consciousness of Ryan, but visual consciousness doesn’t depend on an object.

And so if it doesn’t depend on an object, then you can’t say that it’s the three conditions together that create a moment of perception.

So in a way, this is a really kind of deep and subtle form of logic.

Sense object, sense organ, consciousness.

And so to get to your question here, so these map to the first seven, the first seven layers of consciousness that the Yogatrans talk about.

And basically what they’re saying is this, this schema is missing the eighth consciousness.

Okay.

And that’s, that’s the alaya, there’s not the alaya consciousness, the storehouse consciousness.

The storehouse consciousness is like, it’s not like a separate mind and it’s not like the totality of mind.

It’s like the basin within which mind grows, or it’s like the soil that, that mind things happen in.

Okay.

And because of the nutrients in the soil, then when a seed is planted, that seed gets nutrients from the alaya, which turns into a conscious experience.

So it’s the, it’s the perfuming of the storehouse consciousness that allows consciousness to happen.

And that persists through time and space, if there were time and space.

But that is the thing that kind of like ties, or kind of like floats around and allows all of these different things to appear to be happening.

Right.

It’s kind of like when we do Qigong, you’ve done Qigong with me and I say, put your mind in the stillness and the silence and notice all of the other things arising and falling away in the container.

Right.

Selfless awareness, that idea.

Okay.

Now you’re talking about the lie.

Without that, then you create discrete objects.

You get rid of inner penetration.

So that’s, that would be one of the… What would be a discrete object in what you just described there?

Like, what?

So what do you mean?

Like, like when I, when I, when I, as you say, if I dropped in Qigong, just see what arises, but I am making kind of a discrete thing of, oh, there’s a feeling, oh, there’s a feeling that I always think about, or there’s a frustration, whatever, there’s a discrete object I’m making of experience.

So that’s the function of what’s called the kalpa, which is the ongoing process of erroneous cognition.

And basically that’s the thing that is said to be the problem, which is that our, our natural tendency to slice and dice things and put boundaries around things is the root of our misperception, the root of our selfing ownership and the root of us being bound to karmic influences.

So that very function of mind that says this feeling is discrete, meaning this feeling is separate from all other feelings and has its own self nature, right?

So that, that process of slicing and dicing reality is what creates the fundamental confusion that Buddhism is aiming to resolve.

Right.

And then, and I, this is always that point where like from my studies before is that, it’s yes, I get that.

And you, this is where we’re like going to, well, just really, really getting out of all this self concern and self activity.

And the only place to go from here is like, well, you know, just go live in the monastery, give it all up then, because we have to come back to and start describing in more ordinary terms, you know, things like feelings and what frustrate us and, and the causes and conditions that create something that we want to change and have more agency over.

So this is just, to me, I’m just sharing with you, it gets into this point where, okay, so we’re, we’re really dropping it all, we get it, but what’s the point if we can’t have compassion and skillful means in the world?

Yeah.

So that’s called parivritti, alaya parivritti, which is turning about the base or ground, turning ground, reversion, right?

The reversal of the ground.

And basically, this is the whole point, is to go deep enough into our experience to deconstruct it to the point to deconstruct it to the point where we, and we talked about this before, we have a cessation both of characteristic, meaning we have in meditative experience, a direct experience of no longer having separate moments of experience, right?

Like, can you listen without, or is there listening with no opinion, right?

And like, there’s just a bird noise arising and falling away, but there’s not even a recognition that it’s bird noise, right?

Cessation of characteristic.

Okay.

So that’s a step, that’s one step, right?

And, and there’s, this is, that’s vikabana nirodha, right?

So that’s the cessation of erroneous dualistic perception that happens in meditation.

And then there’s a next step that has to happen, which is alaya nirodha.

Alaya nirodha is the cessation of continuity.

So that’s actually when we concentrate so hard and we’re so present that there is so little duration of perception that we actually experience the system shutting off.

Okay.

And this is where we get into your point.

At a certain point, yes, I can’t do that.

That is a system, that is a system that happens as a carry-on from the activities earlier in the process, right?

I have to relinquish any striving in order to have that happen because that’s a ripple.

But anyway, once we have those two things met, then what we have is called maya darshana, which is like seeing through maya, seeing through the illusory process.

And at that moment, then the alaya vijnana, which is kind of seen as like a storehouse, almost like a factory kind of mechanistic process, becomes the tathagatagarbha, becomes the womb, right?

And it’s illuminated and it becomes a place where the interpenetration of all things naturally express themselves as their skillful means.

And there’s no longer a sense of selfing that makes those processes good or bad.

Everything really just is, right?

And then we can talk about emotions in a totally different way because there’s absolutely no judgment.

There’s no need to be palliative about the emotional content.

It’s simply like, yeah, well, your dog died.

You’re grieving.

Grieve.

Right.

Yeah.

And so at that point, with that realization, that’s where real deep compassion and the lack of judgment comes.

Like everything is due to causes and conditions.

Why would I impose some kind of control or frustration on something rather than try to skillfully work with it, right?

Yes.

And that’s where the Lankavatara goes silent and the rest of the stuff that I teach comes in.

The Lankavatara and the Yogatara school, just like many other Mahayana schools, push us really hard to this realization.

And then they go silent about what life is like after the fact.

Oh, that’s not good.

They basically just say that you’re spontaneously skillful.

Oh, right.

But what we’ve seen is that that’s not necessarily true from integral theory and all this kind of stuff.

That’s not necessarily true.

There’s still shadow behaviors and karmic residues that persist.

And your alaya-vijnana, even though it’s illuminated and you can watch yourself, have an experience and perfume it with your conditioning so that it comes together into the particular moment that you’re having, which is another big thing, seeds being perfumed, that perfuming process giving rise to our specific flavor of a conditioned experience.

That’s called vasana, bija.

Anyway, what’s really critical about that is that that doesn’t stop.

The teaching isn’t that the process of interpenetration stops.

The teaching is that now it continues with our full awareness of it and a lack of self-grasping.

And then it’s like, OK, well, now what?

And then it’s like, OK, if I just follow this train of thought one step further, then I realize that the perfuming that’s happening is based on the seeds that fell from the fruit of the previous moment.

That’s how it has to work, right?

If we think of a moment as a microsecond, I think somewhere in some text somewhere in this tradition, I saw that they counted 4,600 moments in a second.

So that’s 4,600 times a second that a seed germinates, sprouts, grows, makes fruit, rots, falls back into the earth.

Well, why not plant my own fucking seeds?

If I got a mine garden full of cucumbers and I don’t need any more pickles, how about I figure out how to plant an orange seed?

Because some citrus would be really good.

Yeah.

So you do the 4,600 times a second.

Logic brain kicked in there for a second.

You’re like, yeah, great in theory.

How are you going to do it 4,600 times a second?

You don’t have to.

But it’s happening 4,600 times a second, which explains why sometimes it’s so hard to change a habit.

You’re preaching quite early there, sister.

I know.

OK.

Right.

But if you’ve got 10 years at 4,600 times a second, and then you start being able to insert your own perfuming once every 10 minutes, you’ve got a mine garden that’s full of the stuff from the last 10 years you got work to do.

So let’s give ourselves a little grace for the process of happening that happens pharmacally.

We can change our mind in an instant, but the karma that comes through our thoughts, words, and deeds has to go through a process of being tidied up in the mine garden.

And that just happens.

Yeah, it happens fast 4,600 times a second.

You stay on it.

You’re going to make a lot of headway.

But it also means that a lifetime of doing something has a lot of growth in the mine garden.

So I feel like I’ve been dominating the conversation, and I didn’t mean to.

So I’d like to just pause here for a second and check in with Shani.

I have to slow it way down.

It’s 31,536,000 seconds in a year.

Yeah.

Each of these seconds is a moment to our perception, and each of these moments are an opportunity to say yes to love or something more deeply.

And to what Michael was saying, I couldn’t help but thinking about, like, this is where the koan structure is so helpful.

Because you’re talking about causes and conditions, but what I don’t like about causes and conditions is it is not speaking about intention and effort.

And it’s like, there is, like, a great cow that is passing the window, but its tail cannot pass, and it’s, why?

You know, if we start to see that everything is interrelated, interbeing, that the bee is there because the flower is there, why are you here?

What is your function, right?

The cow goes moo, the horse goes neigh, the bird goes whistling.

What are you here to do?

Why are you here?

You know, and what is your function?

You know, this is from spending lots of time with an old Korean monk whose practice is older than I am, but all he ever kept telling me is go straight, only don’t know what is your function.

And to me, that function is something that each of us have to come to understand.

I think that this is where we’re being pointed in this text today.

Thanks for that, bringing it back down to the core.

Yes, that’s what I was getting at.

Absolutely.

You know, and even in kind of an investigation, this kind of unpacking of the experience is very different from, like, say, a Rinzai Zen koan, because there’s something about, we can do this, but now to be present with other beings, a whole diverse range of beings, there’s an emotional, there’s like emotional things that come up as well.

And that’s what I like about, like, a good Rinzai koan, it just cuts immediately right through all of the reactions and just finds the immediate, compassionate response to things, skillful.

And rather than being a very dry kind of, oh, I’m just experiencing things, or, you know, whatever that is, it gets juicier.

And I’m just thinking out loud for myself.

Thank you.

Well, I mean, I guess if I could play off that for half a second, I think that kind of comes back down to the previous comment on, you know, there’s the flower, there’s the bee, there’s the, you know, why are you here?

What’s your function in all of that?

I think that’s very dependent on where you’re at.

You know, if the comment is, you know, hey, this is kind of very dry, this is, you know, there’s not a ton of emotion in it, your function in that can be very dependent on whoever else is present there, you know.

To use Umi’s language, what is your north star?

Yeah.

Oh, I talk about north star.

Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

The light, the purpose, the light which is illuminating your world, which is different than a destination.

Yeah, makes perfect sense.

Like that’s, I don’t know, that’s just, that’s what immediately had popped up there is, you know, that our function is going to be dependent on situation, I think.

Totally.

That’s what’s so beautiful about actually getting this realization is you end up free, truly free to sit in the moment and go, what is my purpose here?

What do I need to bring?

You’re not attached to being the one who’s always loving.

You’re not attached to being the one who’s always smart.

You’re not attached to being the one who always is an edgy asshole.

You’re just like, what do I, what does this mean right now?

Right.

You know, and then it’s like, okay, I’ll show up as that.

Right.

And then you get to go, well, do I want to?

Yeah, not really.

I’ll be the edgy asshole.

You know, that’s part of your power too.

And I think that’s what’s so scary about this form of liberation.

But I think that’s, that’s the, that’s the skillful means the case.

Yeah.

Because you’re usually talking about.

If you look at, I mean, I would take a situation in my child and go, okay, you know, how am I going to show up in this, you know, what, what does this particular moment need?

Is it, you know, there’s, there’s the whole, oh, be gentle parents.

Sure.

Tell your child’s a gangster.

And then you’re like, all right, well, maybe not.

Like I, he knows I love him unconditionally, but he also knows that there are, you know, things that happen based on our actions.

But how I’m going to show up in a situation as a loving parent to my, to my son is very different than how I’m going to show up.

In a, you know, whatever the next moment, maybe at work or wherever.

But in all of that, it’s, I think that’s where intention comes back in.

And the more present that you are, the more that you can have the presence of mind or intention to say, okay, you know, I’m going to, this needs, I don’t know, apparently I can’t articulate my life for some reason.

What you’re naming though is exactly the process that’s being described.

Right.

And, you know, Cheney is starting to see how I’ve broken that down and articulating what that looks like, which is kind of like a, not really fit in as a container, but it kind of does because it’s the same thing in a way.

It’s just like, okay, what is, what must be, right?

What is, what must be.

And then you see yourself do it and you try it.

And after you see yourself do it and try it, and you get that information and you go, okay, what is, what must be?

And so you go do it and you try, you know, and you just keep going.

It’s a cyclical process of change.

And then that’s when you’re like, oh, well, what is, is that I want to be a firm, but fun dad who is generally gentle, but not afraid to lay the smack down when my kid’s being an idiot.

And then what must be, it’s like, okay, well, that looks a certain that that has certain requirements.

And then you look back on what you did it and see yourself do it.

You try it.

You look back and go, well, that didn’t work.

Right.

And then you go, okay, well, what is, what is, is I got that information and I got that feedback from my commute from my space.

And now I need to reset my north star.

I need to reset how I’m looking at the situation so that I can see different options so that I can step into a different reality.

Right.

And that’s the fluidity that happens when it’s no longer.

I’m going to do this.

It’s my role will be illuminated by.

And that, that ends up creating quite a fiction.

But that’s, it’s not a singular illumination.

Does that illumination can change this all the time?

Change based on.

North star changes all the time, including unconscious processes, right?

So if something kicks in and you get triggered, then that triggered person, that triggered identity has its own North star that it puts in place to illuminate your world according to certain options.

And then you play out that.

And that North star is Bhasana, is perfuming.

That’s if we’re looking for Lankavatar parallels and technical terms, that’s what’s going on.

And, and so then we’re like, well, let me, let me pick the perfume that I want to have.

Perfuming my experience.

Right.

Let me pick, I’m going to, why, why leave it to unconscious choice?

Why not pick it?

Yeah.

So, so far we’ve been talking about like Umi, you’re a thing and you can do this thing we’re describing.

We’re just taking that perspective on in as much as it’s useful, right?

Ryan, you’re a separate person.

You’re a separate thing.

You can follow these things and do this thing and become liberated through this thing.

You become liberated through seeing through the true nature of apparent thingness of things, including yourself.

And then you have choice into how you, how and where and why you drop those seeds, maybe.

And for me, I’ve found like so far, that’s not enough.

Something’s missing.

Because I see that together, we’re also a thing, a singular thing.

And that thing does not yet have consciousness like that thing at like a super organism level, maybe isn’t yet awake, even though we can wake up as individuals.

What are the conditions needed for this super organism thing to wake up?

Maybe that’s just for all the enough individuals to wake up to a tipping point, right?

But I’m fascinated with what is this bigger thing going to do with that liberation, with that consciousness and with that volition in terms of planting seeds, you know, on a bigger scale.

And is it really me that’s choosing what to do once I’m at this point of liberation, right?

I’ve had times when it feels like I’m very, I’d use the word sovereign, and that’s true, but that’s maybe true in the same way that it’s true I’m an individual.

And maybe there’s another aspect to this, that I maybe choice to maybe the nature of choice itself isn’t exactly what it appears to be, even from a liberated state.

I just thought I’d throw a bunch of wrenches in the clock.

That’s a lot to chew on.

Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

I love it.

I love the idea of when…

So for me, just because I have to wrap this up, so I might as well wrap it up with something to structure that inquiry.

I think one thing that the Lanta Vitara invites us to recognize is that whatever is going on in the we space, we ain’t gonna know about it.

We can only know our own mind.

And because we can only know our own minds, then we can only practice with our own mind.

And what we see happening in the world is just what we’re seeing in our own mind.

And so in a way, while the we space is a very real phenomenon in the sense that the collective power of individuals coming together is really palpable, ultimately, we’re all experiencing this in our own mind, according to our own perfuming.

And so in that sense, I think it’s an interesting inquiry to take forward for what is the ultimate relevance.

What is the ultimate relevance of being concerned about the actions of others?

Yeah.

Yeah, can I try to bring it full circle?

The intellect, the reading, what keeps coming to mind for me with all this discussion is speaking of logicians, the master logician Nagarjuna says, since things are as they appear to them, analysis is not required.

Yeah, that’s why the magic beacons and the yoga chants don’t get along so good.

But actually, they did.

That’s a joke.

All right, y’all.

Hopefully, everyone has something interesting that they can take forward, and that feels a little bit more grounded in the overall paradigm of the Yogatrana system, where we’re looking at how the mind only is a dynamic interplay of these things of light.

And there are no discrete events happening.

Yet, the only thing we can experience is in our own mind.

And our responsibility is to see through that process, so that we no longer get taken in, like an audience at the illusionist show, but we see behind the curtain to see how the magic works.

And in my view, then we become obligated to go make our own illusions.

But that’s my take.

Closing check-ins.

Matt, why don’t you go ahead and kick us off?

Yeah.

Yeah, I can feel the spinning of the hamster wheel, you know, start up and then slow down and then start up and slow down throughout all this, as well as in your in your reading and during the meditation silence with the bird sounds coming through, you know, on the speaker from your side, and then maybe hearing them like above my attic here and just trying to let all that sit and not try to, as the reading discussed, like to find to prop up something to go grasp at it and go analyze the sound and the vision of a bird pops up and the word bird pops up and all that stuff.

So it’s like, rise up and, you know, let it settle back down, you know, over and over.

So I love the discussion and thank everyone for the questions.

And yeah, thanks for being here again.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Let’s hop over to Shani and then Greg and Michael and then Matt.

I’m delighted to be here.

I wasn’t sure I was going to make it today.

Good to see everyone.

And yeah, it’s a life for me right now.

It’s one thing to know what Buddha nature is, and another thing to know what it does.

Why does the earth grow flowers, things that smell wonderful and things that have thorns, things that will heal you, things that will kill you.

That’s what it does.

And so just sitting with that going, you know, what is my function?

Do I want to kill or do I want to heal?

And I think I’m pretty clear right now, at least at this moment.

Good to see everyone.

See you next time.

I can’t tell if he just said he wanted to kill us all.

I didn’t clarify.

Okay, Greg, Xi Xi Xin checking in.

This is my favorite conversation so far in this.

But I’m kind of left with, you asked a good question, Umi, like what is the relevance of being concerned with other people’s behavior?

I guess that’s, again, my words, not yours, but I want to just make a note there.

Other people’s behavior is none of my business, but I’m very aware that I’m part of something.

And that I want the something I’m a part of to be beautiful.

Right?

Like, I don’t want to be a part of, like, I didn’t incarnate into a body to experience being a part of a cancer organism, a piece of that, functional piece of that, right?

It’s something else.

And I don’t think that purpose is given.

Sorry, I don’t think that purpose is chosen.

I think it’s given.

I think there is a lot of North Stars, both individual and at higher and higher levels.

And when they all line up, when it feels like they all line up, I’m happy to be alive.

So, I’ll leave it at that, but I’m in.

Hey, yeah, great.

Really enjoyable, insightful, inspiring to delve into this and come up with these insights.

And yeah, just Greg, to me, it all comes back to the context.

Like in some contexts, whatever anybody’s doing is none of my business.

And other times it’s really my business, depending on the context.

And yeah, and as Shin-Yi said, you know, for me, really experiencing and opening my heart, my eyes to the beauty of life in the world, and also being fully aware of the suffering and horror in the world, and holding those two together in the human experience that I’m having.

And what can I do?

What can I do?

So, with that, I’m in.

Ryan, check in?

I think I’m just going to leave my check-in as a response to Michael’s final words there.

And I think with all of the beauty in the world and the suffering in the world, what can you do?

Just do what you can in each moment to make that suffering just a little less.

It’s about billions and a half for the day.

So, I’m in.

And I’ll invite you all to just be beautiful.

I’m in.

Thank you all.

See you next time.

See you.

Yeah.

Good to see you guys.

See you next time.