Volition and Non-Self

*transcript generated by AI

I got a couple things that I could riff on, but I’d rather see what’s alive for the group first.

So does anyone have any dharma-related inquiries, be they, how do I live this, what’s going on with X, Y, Z, or I read about this, let’s talk about it.

Uh-oh, seems like we sat too deeply.

Yeah, I think I’m talking particularly quiet today.

It’s okay.

So there’s two things that are kind of alive in my space that I’d like to riff on.

One is, I’m pretty on fire at the establishment and the decontextualization of the anatman teaching and also the vilification of the individuated process that happened in dharma circles over the last, you know, 60, 70, 80 years.

So I could riff on that, that’s a little bit of a fiery one.

And I also heard a really wonderful podcast, it was very short, maybe 12 minutes, but Vince Geeks talking about what he coined in the ninth jhāna, which was a little bit more of a riff on meditation practice and what we’re doing when we’re sitting.

So those are the two things that are alive that I feel like are pretty much constantly in a space of confusion.

So I’d be happy to riff on either of those, if any of them sound interesting.

Yeah, both do.

Let me start with the first one.

Okay, well, so I run into a lot of confusion with anatman and non-self, and I have no self.

I’m like, who chooses?

Who does the thing?

Which kind of goes hand in hand with this whole idea that if we’re operating from a self-referencing perspective, we must not be awake, right?

And there’s this whole, just like massive confusion around what living from emptiness means and the role of anatman in practice.

And it’s really pissing me off, like I just got to say, it’s really, really hurting my knob up to 11.

And people’s practices are retarded for really long periods of time due to confusion on these topics.

So what I’ve come to discover is that one of the primary sources of confusion is that anatman, not self, emptiness, shunyata, have kind of gotten like all mixed up.

And one of the main things to realize, or at least one of the main things I think people should understand is that when the Buddha was teaching anatman, he was reforming or departing from, depending on your perspective, a tradition where anatman was central.

So anatman is the idea that there is a discrete metaphysical essence that lives within you that is a part of a larger metaphysical essence.

And Buddha was like, I can’t find it.

No one I know has found it.

We have a shared phenomenological experience of something, but to call it a self is logically incoherent because if there was a self that we could abide in, that was the controller of the cosmos, then the cosmos would respond to the directives of the self.

That’s the logical argument.

So it can’t be a self because if it was a self within me, then I could tell my body not to be sick and my body wouldn’t be sick.

So anatman is the idea of a discrete metaphysical entity that lives within us that controls the physical world as an extension of a larger metaphysical entity, brahman.

That whole cosmology and metaphysics was being attacked by the Buddha.

That’s part of a larger reform against brahmanical culture and the idea of that ritual purity and performing rites and rituals would lead to some sort of a liberative pseudo-relogical outcome.

And Buddha was like, no, you actually got to live your life.

It doesn’t matter.

The karma of your life is going to be what dictates what happens to you, and it’s not about, you know, putting some ghee in a clay pot and breaking it at the bottom of a lake in order to liberate dead people.

Right?

This is the, what are we doing here?

Right?

So there’s a major criticism against this idea.

So anatman was originally a teaching to break people away from that cosmology and to step people into a different ideology, right?

Which also encompasses Anicca, impermanence, and Dukkha, suffering.

So this is all part of the transformational moment where people are stepping into the reality of their existence, whatever you want to believe about it, this is the reality of our existence.

So let’s train from here and let’s actually train in the context of this reality, right?

And how do we, how do we do that?

Well, we train in the jhanas and deep meditation so we can investigate the nature of these phenomena.

And in so doing, we experience the liberation.

Now in early Buddhist context, that liberation was cessation in the road to samadhi, where we greatly attenuated perception to the point where we cut off the self-referencing experience.

And what do we collapse into at that moment?

We collapse into voidness and cessation and the absence of any self-referencing narrative and we turn off and we turn back on, right?

And so parinirvana, the final nirvana, is death for the mind that is controlled enough to not re-enter cyclic existence, and that was liberation in early Buddhism.

If you look at the teachings of early Buddhism, they also go along the line with how do you investigate this?

Well, you investigate with this, with the skandhas.

Well the skandhas say in it that there is form, feeling, thought, volition, and consciousness.

So what constitutes our experience?

Well, no, there’s no self that constitutes our experience, but our experience is constituted of these five skandhas, or piles, or heaps, form, feeling, that’s our feeling tone, our attachment and aversion, thinking process, cognition, volition, willful action, and sentience, consciousness.

So the Buddha said there is no self, but what you’re going to experience is going to have these five qualities.

Does anyone notice anything interesting about these qualities that most modern dharma teachers try to get us to reject as bad?

There’s two specifically that I feel like get targeted in modern dharma that everyone tries to get away from.

Formation.

Well, form gets its whole slack as being like maya, and it catches you up and it sucks your attention out of your body, and you know, yeah, people vilify the world of form too, but those aren’t the two that I’m thinking of in this context.

Form, feeling, thought, volition, and consciousness.

How many people think thinking mind is bad?

Yeah, I said a mental formation, I guess volition is the word you’re using.

Yeah.

Well, when you said formation, I didn’t hear the mental part, so I thought you meant a formation.

Yeah, sorry.

Yeah.

Okay.

In that case, we’re more on the same page, right?

Mental formation, volition.

It’s like, these are parts of our experience, but how many things are telling you that your thinking mind is bad?

How many teachings on non-self are telling you to basically to abdicate your volition?

If you have an action that you want to take from your self-referencing perspective, like that’s just selfish, that’s bad.

Volition is an aspect of your experience.

There’s skillful volition and there’s unskillful volition, sure.

We can make judgments like that, but to abdicate volition is to take one of the skandhas that was used to prove the anatman perspective and try to delete it.

It’s just fundamentally incoherent within its own schema, right?

What are we doing?

What we’re doing, when teachers train this way, they have a purpose.

I’m not saying that they’re bad or malicious, they just have a purpose.

The purpose is that we get so caught up in our different heaps that we don’t really see clearly.

When they’re doing these extreme absolutist teachings, they’re trying to deconstruct the student into is-ness, suchness, the purity of being, which allows us to experience the flow of life as a dynamic interplay of light, which we say in The Awakened Ones, that.

And that’s fine as a training objective.

It’s not fine as an ultimate objective.

That’s an intermediary step.

You still need to live.

You’re right.

Exactly.

You still need to live.

You still are living.

It’s not you still need to live.

It’s like you still are living.

Even as you step into the training that is absolutist, as we move through the progression of states into pure being, how are you doing it?

You are doing it by updating your cognitive process.

You’re doing it through a volitional action of yourself, stepping into training, right?

And they would love us to believe that the people who do it are karmically inclined and the people who don’t do it are karmically disinclined.

And no one has any say in the matter and some sort of weird predetermination, which abdicate, which, which abandons volition, which is one of the aspects of experience.

If you don’t sit your ass down to meditate, and then give up on purpose, right, radical acceptance, willful surrender, you use your volition to dissolve yourself into the sublime.

And even if you want to play mind games about, well, no, I can’t actually dissolve myself into the sublime.

That’s an act of grace, right?

Well, sure.

But you still sat your ass down and opened yourself up to grace to do its work.

And if you refuse that, then grace won’t happen.

No matter how you slice it, that’s a step in the process that includes volition.

So the vilification of individual process and ego identity and the confusion that not self means no person.

Not self means no activity.

Not self means no individuality.

It’s just like, it trips people up so hard.

Yeah, it’s like, yeah.

It’s so, so ironic that that’s what you’re sharing right now.

Because like, it’s literally everything that I’ve been going through since I got to the property last Monday, Monday night.

I mean, we talked a little bit last week, that same curious anxiety came back again, like the first couple nights I was here.

And yeah, it’s like, first of all, being able to notice it in the first place that it’s happening and to realize like, it’s okay, you know, and there’s not a problem, you know, like that lets you think a little bit more clearly about it.

But yeah, it’s been like kind of crescendoing up until today.

And like last night was, I went to the coast and stayed in the coast overnight to drop off a car and, and yeah, stared out like at the Black Horizon, the ocean all that.

But anyway, finally, like I could stare long enough into that, that space and kind of see it’s like, oh, yeah, it’s all moving.

And then I kind of realized like, like that started to like quiet it all down.

And what I’ve what I’ve reflected on is like, I think what was what was happening as part of this was the runaway thinking mind.

It’s so it is like the siren song, you can get so swept up in it.

And like when I was trying to make the journey and like, you know, coordinate so many things in a different language, like my mind by thinking problem solving mind was like on overdrive.

And I didn’t realize how long I got swept up in it.

So it’s like, it’s, it’s like a drop, you know.

So yeah, like, find like finding some sort of mechanism to like, find the quiet, you know, and then to see again and go, oh, yeah.

You know, it’s just like coming up for air for a little bit.

Yeah, but it’s like, I think it was when you reminded me of a like, I think the first one I joined in on we’re talking about this, the same sort of thing and, and, and I really like the analogy of like the volition as like, you know, as the scaffolding, you know, it’s it is something that you can erect, you know, while you’re building the home, you know, and then you’re less you’re, you know, then once you’re, you can inhabit your new home, the scaffolding can come down and you’re less dependent on the constant thinking and you can just use it when it’s necessary, you know, but you use it to like kind of break through.

Does that make sense?

You make sense.

I’m just contextualizing it, the overall arc in my mind to see what I want to say about it.

Because you got to the, you got to the point of traditional trading paradigms.

And I want to invite you just ever so slightly past into what I’m doing as the advanced training paradigm, which is that your cognition and your volition, don’t go away.

You don’t start relying on them, you don’t need them less.

It’s just that their role shifts because now they don’t sweep you up.

They’re just constantly held in right relationship.

And that’s, that’s the, that’s the goal of the training, right, is to have all of our if we could say it this way, it’s not typically my language, but we could say that part of the goal of training is to have our skandhas in balance so that we aren’t over-relying and over-identifying with a particular skandha, which then throws us out of whack, you know, and like you said, so that it takes volition to do an action to cut through the thinking mind so that the thinking mind can realize that the thinking mind is only a small part of your experience so that you can get into your feeling tone.

You can get into what’s actually manifest in your reality, you can get into the bliss of consciousness, and now you have all five skandhas active again, they always were, but you kind of like drive them out.

Sometimes our feeling time that we get way into our attachment and aversion and our feeling tone will hijack our system, right, and then we lose balance that way too, we lose balance in consciousness and be so blissed out in pure consciousness that we lose balance, which is what most people really want to do, right?

We can lose balance in form and we can get involved in hedonism and being fully invested in what’s happening in our sensory experience, right, so any of the skandhas can suck us away from a balanced perspective, so I think that’s the appropriate harmonization of these five elements is liberation in a certain way.

There’s more to it than that, especially if we’re talking about Buddhist psychology and what liberated qualities are and blah blah blah, but in a simple way, that’s a good training practice.

Wait a minute, am I in balance, right, am I holding everything in its relative importance?

And just that check-in can zoom us out, you know?

Yeah, I think of it like I was talking, like so yeah, if we’re, you know, kind of playing with the way you described it, like if you have the center of a five-pointed star, like, you know, I felt that like I got sucked into the thinking mind extension and I realized, like I said, that was the siren song, that’s how captivating, like it kept me in there, you know, so yeah, I’m not necessarily denying that it’ll go away, but like it had me sucked out, you know, to one extreme because I was, I got lost in problem solving and then I started to spin out, you know, into, you know, past and future and stuff like that and mainly future.

So it was like problem solving all of these infinite scenarios, you know, it just, you know, really, it really ran wild for a bit and then yeah, then, you know, I think I was listening to one of my favorite, oops, sorry, are you guys there?

Okay, one of my favorite people to listen to is Jetsuna Tenzin Palmo and she mentioned something that like, you know, was that like come up for air moment where she said, she was talking about presence, he’s like, you know, the thinking mind can’t experience presence, it can only think about the present, you know, so that was like enough to create that separation, go, oh, you know, like and I kind of snapped out of thinking mind, you know, and realized like, ah, presence, you know, and I felt it again and like, so yeah, turn back towards the center of that five point star.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Lovely.

Before I say anything, I want to open it up to Robin, who has been delightfully pensive, and I think at various points ahead, there you go, a great description, um, just having this image in my mind of when talking about the five pointed star and the, yeah, the importance of training and recognizing, you know, the, the rapidity of when we’re starting to get out of line, you know, of pulling it in before it gets too far, and then moving the whole, not staying just stuck in the star, because we have to live, we have to exist and be able to move the whole thing forward together as one unit.

That’s the goal, right?

Yeah, it makes life so dynamic and fun.

And I think that’s, that’s the, that’s the switch, right?

So when we think about chanting for love, permanence, purity, self and bliss, the characteristics of nirvana in our Mahayana tradition, like, when we say those words, it can create a really confusing picture.

But really, it’s just describing the felt experience of living with these elements in harmonious balance.

This is what it feels like, you know, there’s, there’s a sense, even though we’re, we’re in the river of is-ness, and we’re, we’re recognizing with startling rapidity, the way that things arise, abide, degrade, and cease to exist, you know, we’re, we feel that instant by instant.

But in that, in that flow, the flow itself is ever flowing.

And so there’s a sense of permanence, even in the constant change, the purity, the purity of it is just this, you hear me talk about appropriateness, purity is just the appropriateness of this moment, because this moment can’t be anything other than it was because of the endless combining of causes and conditions.

And so there is no set, there can be no sense of impurity, when you are in touch with the flow of the moment, because the moment, obviously, has to be this way, it is purely exactly what it is.

And that is such a delightful experience, even when it fucking sucks.

It’s like, oh, yeah, obviously.

How could this be anything other than what it is, it is pure.

And it’s in its expression of the moment.

And that’s just so explicit.

So, well, the self isn’t the metaphysical construct that exists in perpetuity, outside of the system, the self is the expression, the dynamic expression of the individuality engaging in this process, you know, and I’m, I’m a more tantric guy, not an Advaita guy.

So for me, the self is the dynamic expression of all of life, making love with itself, which is all me, which is all you, and it’s like, oh, yes, so good.

So then you get to love, bliss, yeah, you know, it’s like you’re at a groovy party, man.

Great riff.

While we were sitting, I, one of the things that like, I thought about that reflashed was, it’s like, how, how real a dream can feel.

If you really understood what that means, you know, like, really appreciate like, how mind creates, you know, and like, really puts all this into perspective.

So like the Lanka, you know, like the back, it’s the image of the Red Pine book, you know, that dark green cover, like comes into my mind.

So funny.

Yeah, it’s good stuff.

The word that came to me during this morning’s sit was safety, that in order to fully surrender and turn inward and turn inward and turn inward, there has to be safety and therefore there has to be, there has to be faith.

And then through that faith, then the light can shift from shining in to illuminating outward.

That continual cycle is the process of, of living, you know, through the continual shifting.

Because we are all part of the continual shifting.

And that’s so delightful, even if you’re saying to me, even when it’s fucking sucks and it’s painful and sad or whatever, you know, it’s, it is.

It’s a nice reminder of why you’re such fucking weirdos that sit here and do nothing.

When we are, at least Matt obviously has a beautiful day, I have a beautiful day and we hope you have a beautiful day.

And it’s like, why are we sitting here?

We could be out there, but it is, without this, out there doesn’t shine as bright.

I’ll stop all battling now.

No, it’s like, I loved what you said, but it’s like, I see it more because like I was sitting by this, this property’s got like a river at the base here and which is a wonderful place to sit.

But yeah, it’s like, it’s more just like, yeah, it’s a beautiful day.

Like how deeply do you see it and appreciate it?

You know, it’s like, you don’t have to do anything, we don’t have to go anywhere.

It’s like, it’s like, no matter where I go, I’m always home, you know, so then you look around with that view, and then you see the beauty and everything, even when it’s not a beautiful day.

It’s like, yeah.

Yeah, actually, I do have a question, now that I think about it, Umi.

Just it’s more of maybe interested to get your take on it.

So part of part of what I saw in what was creating, like where my anxiety came from again, it was like, I had enough, like enough force of things that were like knocking me out of stability.

And then when and which made me like, less like my vision was clouded, and I couldn’t see things and interpret what was happening like a certain way.

So but like, so one of the things that like I was struggling with is like, when I got here, like the first few days, it was mostly rain, it’s like a very light rain, but it was just wet kind of all the time.

And so the this driveway kind of like does a switch back on on my property that gets up to the road.

And it’s like mostly the grass is a couple areas of asphalt, it’s pretty steep.

But but there’s slugs and snails everywhere.

And so like I had, I didn’t have the keys for a bit.

So I was walking up and down and, and which gave me enough opportunity to see how many slugs there were.

But I was like, I had to be eyes down at the ground, like to avoid, you know, squishing them, you know, or crunching a snail.

And it’s like, it’s precarious, like it was really, you know, because there’s a couple times it like it was dark, or I just I’d lose focus for a second, come in a gate and then like, you know, crunch, you know, like, and like, fuck, you know, just, just crunched a snail, you know, it’s like the worst feeling.

under my foot, you know, when that when that happens.

And yeah, like, there’s a trail that goes up and down.

So you see, you know, squished slugs here and there.

It’s like, I have a, so that was really, like, hitting me heavy.

I was also I saw, I saw I’ve got some termites, termite damage in some of the wood.

So I immediately started thinking about like, fuck, I’m at the fog, because I don’t know, I haven’t researched, I don’t know any other way of dealing with termites, you know, like other than like tenting, you know, and like, if there’s probably a million spiders in this house, like at least, you know, amongst other things, and it’s their house, and it has been their house, you know, like, and just the thought of that, like, you know, genocide, you know, like, it would take place, like, just fucking killed me, because I could write just the night before, like, I got settled in for the first time with a guitar and got to play, you know, a song that means a lot to me, like, it’s actually one of Nick’s songs, All Life is Sacred.

I’ve got to play that, you know, for all the creatures and in this place.

And then yeah, right.

I actually think then like, the tent thing comes up and just anyways, it just really like, it hurts, like, it hurts a lot.

And when I and because I wasn’t in balance, it really like started to kind of, like I said, spin me out.

And yeah, just like that, that predicament, you know, of like, being the elephant that is squishing stuff all the time, you know, like, but having the like, the awareness of it, like, I find that like, super challenging, like, or at least it’s like, it’s, it’s super challenging when I’m not totally in balance.

But anyway, I’d like to hear kind of Umi how you see that stuff, because like, I’m also like, you know, everywhere I go, I’m watching the Not Step On Ant and stuff like that.

I’m not delusional about, you know, like, all these creatures, all these creatures not being separate, you know, separate objects, separate things.

But still, you know, it’s like, it’s the same reason like, I love, you know, myself so much, you know, like it hurts, you know, to like cause pain and suffering, you know, and so how do you, how’s your experience been with that type of thinking or experiencing?

Yeah, well, that’s a, that’s a great question.

Before I answer, I want to tie in with something Robin said, or answer directly, I’m going to start with an indirect response based on faith.

Faith is preceded by doubt, you can’t have faith without doubt.

And so it is looking at the doubt that allows us to build the faith to go down with it, to know that it’s going to be okay, even when we don’t know it’s going to be okay.

I think that that’s central to your question, in a certain way, because there’s a there’s a space where we just don’t know, there’s a lot we don’t know about the great web of life, and ecology, and the impact of our actions.

And most of the time that ignorance is bliss, or unaware, massive amounts of pain and suffering we cause through our existence as human beings.

But then we do come into spaces like what you’re in right now, where you know, you know that for you to properly inhabit your home, you’re going to have to displace or kill hundreds of thousands of insects, or more, right?

And we can we can think that that’s a horrible thing.

I’ve spent a couple years in a train where like, I didn’t kill anything.

I did not kill anything.

We had an infestation in the house.

I did everything I could to to clean it out without killing anything.

I would let mosquitoes eat off me, I let bees sting me, I wouldn’t kill anything.

And I invested, so I investigated this question for a couple years.

And what I’ve realized, you know, there’s a good quote from the Dalai Lama too, which I think helps put it in context from a more, not from a more authoritative position, but from the Vajrayana authority, he says, mosquito, wave it away the first time, wave it away the second time, third time, best luck for a good rebirth.

And so it’s like, we go through, like, we try to do our best to let everything live its life, but ultimately, to sacrifice our own health or well-being, or to deprioritize the health and well-being of our family, our other animals, the greater ecosystem is wildly skewed, right?

So we make the best decisions we can.

And that includes that our own personal sense of comfort and well-being is included.

Like if you live in a house with a million spiders and termite damage, that’s not good conditions for a human to live in, right?

And so to love yourself includes relocating those organisms, right?

And the suture book, affirm life, I respect all sentient and non-sentient beings and always act with compassion toward them.

In order to live, it is necessary for me to take life, in doing so, I do not take my own life for granted, or something like that, right?

And the key here is not non-killing, it’s non-violence.

And for me, that was a really big point of inquiry, the difference between non-killing and non-violence.

When you step on a snail in the dark, you’re not being violent, you’re not less compassionate because you didn’t know that you were going to step on a snail and you accidentally snapped on him.

Your volition was fundamentally oriented towards not killing the snail and accidents happen and you’re bigger the snail lost, right?

So when you go into, I’ll wrap this up, when you go into looking at like dealing with a termite problem, you know, you can cut out the wood and replace the wood, which requires a great deal of technical skill, time, money, and labor, and then you have to relocate the infested wood far enough away from your home so they don’t come back, right?

You can use insecticides to kill them, fogging for spiders, you know, relocating that.

You can do a lot with spiders, you can leave a lot of spiders, sometimes you’re going to not want to leave spiders, right?

There are poisonous spiders that shouldn’t cohabitate with you and your other animals.

So it’s just, you just affirm life by making the best decisions that you can.

Yeah, but I guess, so it’s like a couple points.

How are we doing on time, by the way?

We’re typically past time.

Fuck, okay.

Well, do you want to hear a response?

Robin, would you like to close or would you want to finish the conversation?

I’m fine with finishing the conversation.

I just want to add that for myself, because this is something that I too have struggled with.

For me, that’s where atonement comes in, you know, a sense of reverence for all life and knowing that in order to live, I need to take life and not doing so frivolously.

And if I crush a snail and, you know, my heart breaks a little for that snail, I give that in its moment and move on because we can’t stay stuck in that.

We’re doing a disservice to ourselves and not helping the snail at all.

Wow.

Yeah.

So, one, who was it who gave the mosquito example?

I believe that was the Dalai Lama.

The Dalai Lama?

All right.

I take exception with that.

With the Dalai in that case.

I mean, what’s the deal, like, with the mosquito?

Like, even if it, you know, it does come back twice and then it, like, continues to drink blood, you know, or do its thing, you know?

Like, I feel that, like, we can use that to, like, dismiss and justify our impatience and say, well, I gave you a warning.

Start treating insects like they have our same cognition.

Like, I gave you two warnings.

Don’t you know that the third strike, you know, means death?

You know, it’s like, fuck, of course not.

You know, like, it’s like our projection, you know?

And so, like, I think that’s just, like, in so many cases, it’s a lack of an ability to really embody that creature’s existence and to be, like, compassionate towards it.

And compassionate towards it means, like, yeah, like, if this beetle wants to, like, hang out on my arm for, like, half an hour, then that’s what it’s going to do, you know?

Like, and this, like, this snail thing, like, I totally get, like, you know, the, you know, it not being on purpose and the violence part of it.

And yeah, like, when I do, like, I do, like, internally apologize and I do, like, say I love you and, you know, and that stuff helps.

But there’s another element.

I think I just, like, sometimes I think we just quit when it gets too difficult, you know?

So, I mean, understand, like, I did the same thing.

Like, I take care of the ants in my house, you know, like in Bisbee.

You know, I. I want to, I want to refocus you on it.

So, where you’re skewed is that you’ve abandoned yourself in the equation.

And so.

How so?

Well, there comes a point where there comes a point where.

You are equally important as the mosquito.

Sure.

I’m not in danger.

Well, you might be.

Mosquitoes are more humans than pretty much any other insect as far as I understand by a huge margin.

Right.

So, and this is all.

Yeah.

That’s all.

That’s all.

Not the debate that we need to have.

This is an invitation for you.

Sure.

This, this hang up.

And I’m going to call it a hang up.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, we’re gonna, we’re gonna wrap because I want you to think about it.

I don’t want to discuss it with you.

I want you to really truly investigate the idea that I’m sitting here saying there’s a point where you just kill the fucking mosquito.

The Dalai Lama sitting there saying, well, there’s a point where you just killed a mosquito.

Right.

There’s a point where.

There’s a point where you are important to.

There’s a point where it makes more sense for you to live the way that you need to live in your comfort, and not abdicate that to the beetle, because you project that you’re failing to account for the Beatles capacity to understand that it needs to be relocated as a projection of you as a failed human being.

Right.

And I mean, investigate that.

There’s something in there that’s not so.

One thing is that I didn’t, I didn’t finish I went too long and didn’t land the plane.

The example I gave her was going to give us.

So, long walk home from from town, super dark, it’s wet, everything’s out and yeah like I’m kind of like hopscotch on my way through.

I finally get in, I’m home like I dodged all the bullets, and then like, in that moment of thinking that like I made it.

I let my guard down and crush one right on the bottom of my step on my way up to the house like all that, you know, so to me that was more of like, like, I see what my distracted mind can do, I was, I had focus.

The entire walk, you know, that’s the wrong lesson to take away brother.

Okay.

The lesson is in the inevitability for you to live, things will die.

Oh sure, I yeah I’m not oblivious to that and I’m not, I’m not discounting it like I understand like I said like, what is, you know, being the elephant, you know, like just right, but you judge it out of yourself for being the elephant.

That’s the, that’s the key.

No, I just, I just recognize the difference between someone who’s oblivious and someone who’s aware.

And if on a walk I don’t have anything else to do but to look where I put my feet, then that’s my meditation.

Sure, you can do that as opposed to just playing with my thinking mind and crushing stuff the whole way home so I see one is more compassionate than the other.

It depends on what you need to think about.

But yeah, if there’s an emergency but if I’m just walking home, like for no reason like pay attention, you know, and don’t pay attention like until the last step until the last step like finish the meditation, you know, then, then resume your thinking down and you step on a spider.

Yeah, I mean the accidents happen, I get it.

I get it but but there is some sort of effort of awareness, but you don’t get it at the same time you’re saying you get it.

But the emotional contraction you have in the rejection that you have is that you don’t get it.

You have an incongruence in your presentation that I’m going to call out.

And I’m going to invite you to step into reconciling.

You are presenting as an incoherent person right now, saying one thing and doing another.

Really, you’re saying that you get it, but your presentation of your experience says that you don’t get it.

Okay, it might be my ability to communicate, but I don’t think so this is pretty obvious.

This is this is saying that really what you have integrated is a story of compassion that is so radically non violent that stepping on something is a big deal.

And then you’re telling me you get the fact that you’re an elephant and things have things are going to die.

But you’re not presenting is a is a very, very firm conviction that an accident is a problem.

But you’re saying that an accident is not a problem.

These are these things are not matching up.

I think I’m, I feel very misunderstood.

I’ll, I mean, nonetheless, I’m going to sit with it but i think i think you got me wrong there me a little bit, at least like, or, I mean it’s not your fault.

It’s, it’s my ability to communicate.

But I guess that I understand you very very well, because I’ve sat in your shoes, we’ve had this conversation with my teacher.

And I, I’m looking very deeply into what you’re expressing, and I, and I do understand the disconnect between what you understand as your perspective.

And the way that you’re presenting your position, and the way that your behavior is living those two things out.

I’m taking it all in.

I’m really seeing you, I understand the perspective of radical compassion I’ve read the tales where the people are using their tongue to move maggot from a piece of meat, so that they can eat the meat without hurting the maggot.

Like, I understand the depth of compassion.

I’ve been in that space.

Right.

And I’m, I’m, I don’t believe that I’m misunderstanding.

I’m sorry that you feel misunderstood.

But I don’t believe I’m misunderstanding you, I do believe that I am inviting you to integrate a more robust version of this insight and actually embody what you know to be true.

And what you believe to be true, and how you live your life, so that these things are causing this question within you.

Yeah, yeah.

So, to, for it to feel heavy is is wrong.

It’s not that it’s wrong, but it shows that your understanding is as yet incomplete.

Okay, because the heaviness isn’t held in the, in the complexity of the web of life, the way that you know the complexity of the web of life is intellectually, your emotional body is not caught up to your intellectual body.

And that’s altering your behavior in a way that could potentially be unsafe.

Interesting.

Okay, I’m so I’m so I’m so tempted to keep going but I have already pushed past time and I’ve already pushed past your shut up and meditate on this invitation.

But this is a really good one and I’m challenging you so I want, I would like Robin as our witness to come in and offer what she sees as a clear perspective, or whatever.

Yeah, don’t beat the elephant Matt.

Yeah.

No, I’m, I like I’m, I have compassion towards myself, like I do.

I just, I was just saying like, it’s just like the fields, sometime it’s super deep, you know, and like, that’s part of the drive, you know.

That’s part of beating the elephant.

That’s the emotional body not catching up to what you know to be true.

What level of aversion shows a lack of embodiment of what you understand of the nature of life.

Really.

It’s like, I was debating going into town for dinner one night and I was like it’s wet and raining, when it’s wet and raining, they’re all out in the driveway.

So I was like, I don’t I can make food here, you know, so I chose not to, you know, so when I’m hearing from you who me is like that that’s unskillful and I should just get in the car and go when I want to eat.

But I don’t have to eat there I could eat here tonight you know when it’s dry I drive, you know, like, I, I’m just trying to find that middle ground and dance with what’s given, you know, and make right choices along the way.

I didn’t realize that.

So unskillful.

It’s unskillful.

That can be skillful that can be unskillful.

Right.

It can be skillful and it can be unskillful.

Now if you stayed home and you ate a can of beans.

That would be unskillful.

A can of beans is not a nutritious meal.

Right.

So, so if you, if you had enough food at home to make a healthy and nutritious meal for yourself, and you chose not to go out, out of compassion for these organisms, you could say that that’s an expression of a bodhisattva.

Yes, correct.

If I started to like inflict damage on my body, then I understand that I’m hurting myself as well.

Again, right.

And so the same action in different contexts is skillful or unskillful there is no, there is no current way going forward.

This is the right choice.

And that is the moment.

So it truly has to be.

Does this account for my health and well being as much as it accounts for those creatures, health and well being.

See that’s what I was saying I think sometimes we quit, you know, and just take the, take the off ramp, you know, and I see a lot of people choose not to quit when they need to, because of a value system that they don’t update regularly.

Yeah, yeah, it’s where we define, you know, you say can of beans is bad I see can of beans is like, it can be one dinner, like it’s just one meal.

I ate lunch, a big lunch, you know, so it’s like, it’s always, you know, it’s always situation dependent, you know, I think we move, we move the goalposts and sometimes we just give up and take the easy path, you know, instead of, you know, like, you know, I’m not getting what I want, like okay fine.

You know, I don’t get what I want it’s not hurting me I’m not doing any damage, you know, no harm no foul.

In case of a can of beans and some slugs maybe not but in case of what this means overall for your relationship to life as a whole, there’s a very slippery slope there.

Yeah, yeah, that’s what I’m saying.

We’re saying slippery slope but in different directions, you’re saying it’s a slippery slope that we continue to abuse the abuse life.

And I’m saying it’s a slippery slope that we continue to allow ourselves to be abused.

No, I understood that.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah, I want to, I want to make sure because I don’t want to leave with confusion after all.

Which I really appreciate by the way.

It’s a heavy topic.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

Thank you Robin.

Much love.

Have a wonderful rest of your day.

Bye.