Since we're a small group today, I was going to, I mean, I think we should still get to this at some point, but I'd also like to just check in and see if there's anything that's like burning for anybody in terms of, you know, things that need to be covered in our time together today, as it pertains to the Dharma, which also means the way we live our lives, because the Dharma is nothing other than life.

I seem to be coming in clean myself, so, other than the anxiety, so I'm good.

A cat is pushing the hand that's trying to control the mouse.

This is a simple question.

Energetically, theoretically, the transition from doing Jigong to sitting, should just be dropping into the third genre, correct?

Not necessarily.

Potentially?

You could go straight to four.

You could sit in a second.

It is, I would say that for those of us practicing Jhanas and having a regular Jigong practice, doing Jigong before Zazen should basically mean sitting right into the Jhanas.

You still have to go to Axis Concentration, and that's probably, you must have had a rough day.

Right, well, I asked because it was like, I sit, and I start going to Axis Concentration, and it's like, why am I doing this?

So, thank you.

There you go.

That's it.

You're pulling yourself out of it.

Were you talking, Michael?

No, okay.

So then we'll go ahead and we'll jump into our Dhammapada starter here and see where we go.

So, chapter two, verse four.

I'm just going to go until it kind of seems to switch ideas here, which I think is probably another three verses.

So, chapter two, verse four.

The fame and fortune of the man who is vigorous, aware, unsullied, acting with consideration and restraint, become ever-growing.

The wise man, by rigor, mindfulness, restraint, and self-control, creates for himself an island which no flood can submerge.

That was verse five.

Let's keep going.

Verse six.

The foolish, the unwise, surrender themselves to negligence, whereas the wise man protects mindfulness as his most valuable possession.

Verse seven.

Don't lose yourself in negligence.

Don't lose yourself in sensuality, for it is the mindful and meditative man who will experience supreme happiness.

That seems like a coherent set of verses there, and I think the next set there kind of starts a new idea, though related.

Yeah.

Did something jump out at you, Michael?

Yeah, I'll throw in a few thoughts.

I just find it very interesting.

I love this old Theravada because it does kind of set up a you're in or you're out mentality.

Before we get to Mahayana, Vajrayana, and everybody and their wild ways are acceptable, the Theravada is like, you know, you've got to, which side of the fence are you going to land on?

You're going to clean this up and be straightforward, ethical, really kind of rigid.

And then, so yeah, I like that.

I like it.

There's a kind of purse pull into it if you really want to follow this path.

So.

And just I think for accuracy's sake, this predates Theravada Buddhism.

Oh, well, so this is Pali.

And so the.

From what I understand, this is about.

Well, this was an old tradition that informed the Pali canon, but the Theravadan Buddhism, I believe, so much later.

There were many other forms of Hinayana Buddhism that eventually all kind of like did their thing and died out.

And then the Theravadan one is the one that we know today.

And I think it's the only surviving and that kind of more dualistic Buddhist lineage.

But I'm pretty sure that.

OK. OK, I'm I'm actually going over to my chat.

Do you mind?

Please fact check that crap out of this.

And the Pali canon.

Earliest collection of the Buddhist texts.

I know it was also known as I don't know if it's, you know, it's like the first words of Buddha.

Like that's the starting point, if I remember correctly.

Yeah.

The foot of the Dharma, I believe is attributed.

I believe it's attributed to this text.

This is the earliest known written collection.

Aha.

At least that's the assumption that I've been going after.

This is from the Pali canon.

I thought Pali canon was linked to the Theravadan path.

Well, it is.

But I think the Theravadan actual, the actual form of Theravadan that exists today is a later development.

I don't think that that actually because there was the Sarastavadans.

There were there were all sorts of Hinayana sects that were not Theravadan.

And then they all like slowly died out.

And the Theravadan is the one we know today.

Just like there were many different forms of Zen.

But the only two who survived to today are Rinzai and Soto.

Although you could also say that there's the Obaku.

But is the Obaku really different?

Yeah.

OK. OK. Well, yeah, I'm clear enough on that for now.

Thank you.

It's great.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a great question.

Requires definitely more scholarship.

I think, you know, it's interesting because we have this, at least commonly, there's the perception that a lot of the Mahayana paths and the non-dual paths don't have a dualistic distinction in them.

Right.

But I really think they do.

Because, you know, if you look at the second koan on the Blue Cliff record, it's a teaching on how you got to take care of your business and you got to be karmically clean.

Because if you mess up, you'll get cursed and turned into a fox for 500 years.

Like no one wants that.

And it's definitely like you want to cut off greed, anger and ignorance.

Like it says that there are these poisons that you have to cleanse and purify.

And like, yes, enlightenment arises in them.

They're not two in the sense that you can't have enlightenment without ignorance.

But they are very much two distinct things.

And they're two distinct ways of being.

And the ignorant person is not the same as the enlightened person.

Right.

Even though ignorance and enlightenment are not two, they're also not the same thing.

Yeah.

And that's where it comes back to.

There's always been a tradition, a kind of, you know, you're trying to transcend.

The transcendence is the goal.

But you're also kind of working on yourself, your personality, your character.

You know, you're becoming a more whole, integrated person.

While there's a lot of focus on just transcendent.

And so it's kind of goes all the way through, I believe.

That's why it's a failed plan.

It's a bulletproof plan if you follow it.

You know, if you can really pull out from all of the, you know, multitudes of sutras and texts and teachings.

I think so.

Yeah.

I like the ginseng as the basis.

See your nature.

Become Buddha.

What are we doing?

Seeing our nature.

Becoming Buddha.

I think that seeing nature is a very non-dual experience.

But becoming Buddha is a very you are, you aren't experience.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Cleaning up the ego.

As we say in contemporary language, you know, doing the ego work.

Cleaning up the ego.

Is that what you would say as well?

I like the more sophisticated view than that.

Oh, which is?

Well, before I launch into my tirade on my angst with contemporary language around ego structures and cleaning it up.

Let's check in with Robin here before we get too far into one-sided dialogue.

No, you're good.

You're interested in my angst around cleaning up the ego.

So.

I think I think to at any point to treat the self as though it is a monolith.

And ego.

Violates the fundamental principle of nature.

Fundamental principle of nature is that there is no single separate thing.

So how can we say that we believe in non-self, selflessness, emptiness, and then say that we have an ego.

That completely rejects the dynamic nature of the interplay of light.

That is our structure, our divine figment of imagination.

Right.

So, you know, the Mahayana path says that there are there are, you know, thousands of discrete moments happening every second.

And that continuity is an illusion.

That's what that's what makes non-self actually work.

Well, if that's true, then we can't clean up an ego.

Hmm.

Right.

Because in each discrete moment, you have a different set of causes and conditions that are arising to create the particularly identified divine figment of imagination.

And if we pay attention, I'm different here talking to you than I am when I go in and talk to my kids that I am.

I like to think that there's a coherent ego structure that's in place, but it's not.

Upon investigation, it's not.

Yeah.

Well, it's the it is the it is the causes and conditions of your life that create your ego, your sense of self.

And I would argue that perhaps even as you come into the womb, you're bringing stuff with you.

There's another argument there.

But you have causes and conditions.

One is dealing with specifically your culture, society, mom and dad, school systems.

And and when and when I speak of ego, I just think of it in the ordinary sense of it.

It's the organizing principle.

So I can, you know, my the way my thoughts and feelings function.

I can function as a social being.

You know, it's just the way I organize reality and all of this insight and lack of insight.

It's so it gets a little iffy that does that does that.

I would say that the organizing principle is a higher self, which has no has a limited sense of individual perspective.

And within that context, there are dozens of structures that give meaning to experience that organize into emotional patterns, behavioral patterns and thought patterns.

Because just upon examination, we can have conflicting voices in our head.

So whatever the organizing principle is, can't be either of the conflicting voices because they won't be conflicting if they were organized.

Hmm.

OK.

But you have an ego.

And I call it a current eye.

So at any point in time, I have a current eye structure and that current eye structure may have a duration like the current eye structure that I use to get through this two hours of practice.

Or it may be a very instantaneous eye structure that arises in the moment of a trigger.

Right.

And that may arise and fall away very, very quickly.

Or it may arise and then hijack the system and then take over for a duration.

So there is within within our current eye.

It can be either chosen.

It can be either a meaning making process that we engage in intentionally to create an identity that's suitable for the moment.

A chosen eye structure or it can be a conditioned eye structure, which is the habitual patterns of behavior that we've been programmed to follow because they kept us alive for whatever.

Whether they were good or not at keeping us alive, they kept us alive.

And so we rely on these patterns and those are the conditioned eye structures.

And so this is my more sophisticated notion of ego, because it allows us to always have a currently functioning sense of individual identity.

But that identity could be conditioned.

It can be chosen.

And that makes a big difference.

Oh.

Okay, you young guys.

Okay.

Okay.

You're next to the next generations coming up.

Okay, I like the.

I, I can accept this in peace for now and myself.

Reflect, you might find that you have several conditioned eyes running.

And then you have a chosen eye that you're using to regulate them all and manage your life.

And then you actually see that, well, in this particular moment, I'm not individuated.

I'm actually not a monolithic ego structure.

I'm multiple ego structures living in one incorporated system.

And I have another super ego structure that's managing all of the other ego structures.

And at any given time, those might switch places if I'm not paying attention.

Right.

To say you have an eye, just, I mean, it doesn't track with my experience.

So, yeah, I am.

I am.

Let me see.

So I web I need I want I, I need to speak to you.

There's a, you know, there's.

Okay, so I need to do something, you know, in a very ordinary relative sense.

I need to go here, go there.

But.

I think we're just arguing choice of words.

Overall, it's just I agree with you is there's.

There's this environment.

And it could be vast, whatever you bring to it, like the archetypal psychology or sub cells, you can find all of these is what you're saying.

You find all of these nuances of a self that arises and comes and goes and gets triggered or gets healed and integrated.

Mindful and some of them are negligent and some of them are striving and some of them are lazy and some of them have restraint and some of them don't.

Uh huh.

Okay.

Okay.

Robin do you buy it.

Do I buy the chosen and conditioned I versus ego.

Yeah, sure.

Yes, because we are multitude.

What was that.

Today it's Robin.

Pretty sure there's a famous poem that says something like, there is, there is, I can't tell you what it is though.

Yeah, so song of myself, there are multitudes in me.

Yeah, right.

Yeah, yeah.

Huh.

Okay.

Okay, so we got over here in this area with all of this.

Now what.

Tying it back to the system here tying it back to the Dalai Lama is really fascinating because, especially in verse five the wise man by bigger mindfulness restraint and self control creates for himself an island, which no blood can submerge.

I always like to change this to the wise person by bigger mindfulness restraint and self control creates for themselves an island, which no blood can submerge, because this was never gendered so gendering it in English is always weird.

I mean maybe it was gendered and Sanskrit I guess Sanskrit has gender, but whatever.

Anyway, like, even in Jungian transpersonal psychology or anything else like what's the task the task is to burn up all the shit and collect yourself, and to individuate, and to stop being divided, and to find yourself in a coherent unified mind.

Well, how do you do that, how do you create that island, not an archipelago.

How do you create an island.

A long chain of island.

Okay, okay.

Ah, okay.

Our bigger mind must restrain self control.

Our bigger mind must restrain self control.

Bigger mind must restraint and self control unifies the mind brings all the disparate parts together, gets rid of the dross purifies the gold.

I like that it's a collective.

Because if you just have one, or just a couple of any of them, it's all beneficial but it's not balanced.

They all need to be in place for it to be a sustainable island.

Yeah.

Becoming an island unto yourself and I remember when I first read this, when I first started practicing and it was so relieving to me it was so.

It was so nourishing in that.

Oh, I need to.

I need to do this for me.

And here I am years later still struggling with it, but it's very.

It's very.

Yeah, kind of cleaning up one's act.

Becoming an island.

And it's very interesting when I, I don't know why, when I could come up with an image around somebody who's like an ideal like this like outside of Buddhism.

I just think of a very kind of solid kind of conservative.

Like they're just, you know, they're self.

They're self reliant, there's a lot of self agency they don't, you know, they just, they take care of me and then the world will take care of itself.

It's interesting.

Strange things.

I like to think of it as, like, are we the tuning fork that was that strikes.

Right, like if you ever seen the tuning fork phenomenon where tuning forks with the same frequency can like start each other off.

Okay, so there's really cool thing and resonance, and you can actually experiment with it on your own by like singing at your bell, and if you hit the right vibration your bell will start sounding right.

There's all sorts of cool stuff that you can do with this but one of the really cool things is that you can take tuning forks that are at similar frequencies or the same frequency.

And if you start one, you put it next to the other it will get the other one vibrate.

Just, just by the power of the vibration and the frequency and the resonance and all that kind of stuff.

So I like to think of our practice as when we when we start, most of us live our lives, being the tuning forks that's getting vibrated to somebody else's tune.

As we see our nature and become Buddha, we become the tuning fork that's starting off the other ones.

When we become the tuning fork, it, it influences the other one, like we ripple out kind of thing.

Uh huh.

And when you have a lot of people who are into their tuning for reality is a different, you know, energetic exchange, perhaps.

And we can become the loud clear note that goes, and smooths out all the other dissonant frequencies.

That's, to me, that's what being Buddha really means is that you're, you're the big rock that gets dropped in the pond and smooths out all the other little rebels and all the other little rebels are like, yeah, let's wave like that.

Yeah, I just recently started turning, I always kind of turned away from the whole notion of vibration and stuff, and I'm really kind of integrating it more because it's, you know, like there's talks about like, in essence, everything is kind of sound waves.

And like, if you look at a lot of cathedrals and like the, a lot of the little details in the temples and cathedrals are actually images of sound waves.

And they think people were very aware of this back then, like this got lost in time.

But, um, but yeah, so I, I, I'm trying to integrate that myself, the whole notion of vibrations and sound and energy exchanges.

I've got to go inside.

Rich exploration.

Robin's recently been diving much more deeply into energy practices.

Into energy practices.

Oh, uh huh.

Is there anything that you'd like to share from that experience over the last months?

Hmm.

Well, I would say as one who habitually very easily resonates with other people's frequencies.

Learning to, to experience and know and sound my own takes a lot of practice and it's quite transformative.

And it leads to, to confidence and less regret on decision-making.

What I've experienced so far and also makes it very, very easy to tell what frequencies you resonate with.

And which ones don't want to have anything to do with.

Yeah, it's a very, uh, full body experience.

It's not, it's not just a purely conceptual thing.

So, that's about all I have to say about that.

Thank you.

Didn't Forrest Gump say that?

Possibly.

That's about all I have to say about that.

We can totally hear it now.

Yeah.

Oh, there you go.

Okay.

With the, what do you find this vibration that you're very aware of this?

Is it, do you have to find yourself putting up boundaries?

Is it something, you know, you just have to really, you become overly sensitive, perhaps?

I'm recognizing where boundaries are necessary.

Whereas in the past, I was completely oblivious to that.

Uh-huh.

And you feel stronger in that now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I, you feel stronger in that now?

Yes.

Good.

Good.

Oh.

I shouldn't say completely oblivious.

Ill-prepared.

Like I could recognize, this is where a boundary is needed.

I feel the need for a boundary, but I don't know how to do it.

And so I'm not going to.

Now you know how to do that.

Yeah.

Good.

The energy work you're focusing on, is this out of Buddhism in some way or something, another offshoot or.

I think Umi could probably talk to that about that better than me.

Okay.

I would say that, this, and the Buddha, and the Buddhist, and there's a, what are they called?

A business?

No, that's not right.

There's a term for these powers that happen when you meditate deeply.

There's like clairaudience, clairvoyance, clear, whatever, you know, you can fly, you can do all kinds of things.

You can fly.

You can meditate.

You can meditate.

You can meditate.

You can meditate.

You can meditate.

You can meditate.

You can meditate.

You can fly.

You can do all these things.

Right.

Right.

And so that's kind of the realm that it exists in, in Buddhist thought, including, you know, ideas like PT and energetic field and Suka and contentment and these mental qualities that arise as you deepen through meditative absorptions.

And so all of these things are kind of the Buddhist version of this stuff.

I would say that what we're working on is a little bit more Taoist in nature, a little bit more shamanic in the sense that, of opening up kind of a second site and, or Egyptian, even awakening to the intelligence of the heart, as we learn to drop our mind into our body more profoundly, which again lives very much in Zen.

It's in the Mando Kalan process, you know, clear, deep heart mind, dropping your heart.

Right.

So I would say that any proper tantric yogic system, shamanic alchemical process is going to have their version of these things.

I think it's a little bit harder to find in classical Buddhism.

You have to get more into the Tibetan, more into the Dzongchen Mahamudra, Hathi yoga of Zen before you really start to hear it.

And, you know, that's written about very little, but a lot of what I received was oral transmission from Jungbo or through martial arts training.

Which my martial arts training was Buddhist informed and Daoist informed.

Oh, okay.

So, yeah.

So you're doing very specific practices now to find these subtle energies in yourself.

You're suggesting, and perhaps these subtle processes like clairvoyance and clairaudie, clairaudie.

What was it?

Clairaudia?

Clairvoyance and clairaudia.

I don't know.

I forget now.

I said it a minute ago and now I can't think of it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They're kind of side effects.

They're not really the point.

They're more side effects.

But the bigger point is that it's like through intimate self-knowledge and feeling your own truth, like a viscerally embodied truth through the energetic flows of your body, which we play with a lot, in April Gates Jigong, the way that we practice it.

So, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Unless you come to a martial arts with me, and then we do it.

Much more complicated.

But anyway, when you, when you do cheek almost way repeatedly, and then you sit deep into the meditative absorptions, especially the on a framework, all of these things permeate your body with an awareness of the energetic flows that are going on.

And that kind of awakens a second site that awakens a clear.

So.

You're suggesting that.

So, And then when you start to intentionally use that to engage in an interpersonal space, then you can just like, you just know things about people.

And like, you both have had experiences with me where I say, or do something or ask.

Certain types of questions.

That's kind of like, well, nothing that I said like that's kind of non-sequitur, but it's actually like, right to the point.

I'm using.

That.

Whatever that other shit is.

That second site stuff.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's safe, it's safe, it's safe, as it kind of also brings up, uh, kind of intuition.

And being able to kind of just like I've shared with you before about certain things as I just get a deed on.

I just get a strong gut instinct about something like that.

So highly refined intuition is definitely one of the things that arises.

That's another way to think about what we're talking about.

Um, the, the interesting thing about intuition is that intuitions can be fed to us through our energy body and be really accurate and intuitions can be fed to us through our deep subconscious pattern structures and be highly inaccurate.

So we have to check our intuition against reality,  in order to know whether or not our intuition is reliable and we have to go through, uh, I was held in a space where I had to check my intuition against reality for years before I was allowed to trust my intuition.

Um, it was constantly like, okay,  you had that premonition.

Was it true?

Now, was it actually true or did you make it happen by behaviors that you engaged in in order to produce that particular outcome through self-fulfilling prophecy?

Right.

You know, so like a really highly investigative mind checking your intuition against what's happening, including our own behaviors and our own predispositions and stuff like that.

So without that, we can just get really fricking crazy.

Yeah.

And you said you, you, you dedicated some time and practices to that for a while in life.

What's the outcome for you after all of that?

Like what, what value?

Well, I trust when I know, and I also am naturally skeptical about what I think I know.

And so I get to move through life with a supreme degree of self-assurance and confidence while also being incredibly open to being wrong.

Huh?

Huh.

And that has been really helpful.

Interesting.

Very nice.

Yeah.

And the number one space that I've got developed was in the ring where my intuition said, this person's going to throw a jab and I moved before they threw it and it worked and I jabbed him back and it was awesome.

Or Hey, this person's going to throw a jab and I moved and I ducked right into a hook and got my face smashed.

That actually happened.

That Oh, a lot of times that is, that is the number one container where I developed this skill was in, it was in physical conflict.

Aha.

Aha.

Interesting.

Cool.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sort of.

Not for everyone.

Well, it is what it is that everybody.

Oh, I don't know.

Just right up there.

Um, so anyway, but that's, it doesn't have to be developed that way.

There are lots of ways to develop it.

And we do a lot of them here when we do our deep meditation, she going practice and we open our mind to different possibilities.

And the investigation into our ego structure is a critical part of understanding what frequencies are happening in our body, which ego structure is alive and what part of our body so that we can start to associate somatic experiences with certain thought patterns, behavioral issues.

Um, and the more we connect all those dots and the more that we investigate this phenomenon, the more we permeate our body with awareness, the more sensitive and attuned we can be to the way that we feel in our body, the flows of energy in our body.

And then those become remarkable guides for us are in our relationships, both to ourself and to the world.

There's your summary statement because we're at time.

It's good.

Okay.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

I don't know if we really touched on much of the, uh, a couple of verses of the dog, but it was a super fun discussion.

So thank you.

Yeah.

We got off on something there, but it was, it was good.

It's good.

I spoke a lot.

So I'm just going to check in with gratitude over to, uh, Robert and Michael Webster.

Yeah.

Check in with gratitude as well.

Interesting conversation.

And, uh, I don't know if you can hear my stomach.

I'm going to go eat some, uh, crackers or something and lay down because way too much motion for me.

And, uh, Michael check again with gratitude.

Great to connect with you guys and, uh, yeah, two hours of, uh, healthy connection and conversation and meditation.

So thank you.

Look forward to next time.

Sounds good.

Yeah.

You too.

See you guys.