Mindful Practice Of Body, Qi And Mind – 1st Annual Review | (4/27/2021 — “Ask Us Anything – LIVE” With Denny K Miu)

For this month’s regular open-audience, open-discussion “Ask Us Anything” — continuing discussions about meditation and related topics — Denny and I review the 63 consecutive weeks of online practice Denny continues to lead. The original (amended) show notes are as follows:

(From Josh):

(Depending on temperament and experience level, some may find this chat tedious, overwrought, boring, too specific; or fascinating, affirming, inspirational, connective; or even redundant, low level, missing the mark. Please take only what is helpful.)

• General summary and overview of Denny (and Josh’s) practice(s)
• Review of Denny teaching pretty much everyday online since Co-V
• What are any common themes?
• Goals?
• What’s been learned?
• Challenges and rewards?

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Practice questions:

• If I’m remembering correctly, on 4/10/21 Denny mentioned Metta as mindfulness of mind. This is a first for me. Maybe mindfulness of heart, or heart-mind? I would like to hear more details of this. And maybe if Denny feels there is a significant difference between more a more Asian definition of “heart” and “mind” and Western definition of “heart” and “mind?”
• Why only 3 breath exercises in chair?
• How does one find energy points on the inside and outside of legs? By noticing what areas are more sore or sensitive than others?

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Some of my experiences and views while practicing with Denny (to be taken with a grain of salt):

• It is usually not immediate, but my back adjusts (automatically) sometimes during standing meditation. Tension releases and back aligns.
• During the microcosmic orbit my attention currently seems to go up really quick but seems more of a challenge to go down.
• For Yi Jin Jing . . .:

. . . it seems important to me to also remember to remove “daggers” after “stabbing”.

. . . also, the perception of opening the heart came to me during the “tearing the phone book” portion.

. . . and sometimes instead of “swallowing a universe” I occasionally hold a view of gathering and re-collecting all the energy requiring a redistribution then lawfully doing so — recirculation on a macro scale.

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Miscellaneous views/observations:

• It is interesting that a significant gallbladder point is on the shoulders far away from gallbladder. Also interesting that so many energy points converge on the inside of the elbows.

• My 6 year old niece says I look like a chicken for the part sliding up the hands alongside the body right before jumping forward!

• I’ve heard one definition of the word Ānāpānasati broken down as the “pāna” portion is Pāli for the Sanskrit “prāṇa” and “prāṇa” is perhaps the Sanskrit equivalent of Qi or “breath or respiration; the breath of life, vital air, principle of life; energy or vigor; the spirit or soul.”

• If this perception is not totally distorted, maybe today’s version of yoga could be like getting a sort of living experiential connection to the historical Buddha’s general background practice environment during that time period. And maybe the meditation he taught (like Ānāpānasati) could be like a current day, living, direct experience that in a way links us to the Buddha’s awakening process by providing a container, a space, and groundwork for realizing his teachings.

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Other mentions:

• Pranayama [the yogic breath practices I was trying to remember]
• The Last Dance: Michael Jordan Documentary 2020
• On Contradiction by Mao Zedong
• Shiva’s 112 Ways to Attain Enlightenment
• The Way of Shiva and Buddha – Sadhguru
• My comment to Denny after watching the above video but before watching What Happens if 114 Chakras are Activated?! | Occult & Mysticism | Sadhguru | Adiyogi:

Ah but with the handful of leaves teaching the buddha likely knew all these [112] ways and all the ways of the the other extreme [eternalism] of brahma and went beyond both and knew that the most pressing important issue here is suffering and what he taught went directly to suffering and the end of suffering

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Related Ask Us Anythings:

• Qigong and Daoyin | (1/26/2021 — “Ask Us Anything – LIVE” with Denny K Miu)
• Chán, Zen and Yi Jin Jing | (3/30/2021 — “Ask Us Anything – LIVE” with Denny K Miu)
• Corona-19, Hypertension and Qi | (2/23/2021 — “Ask Us Anything – LIVE” with Denny K Miu)
• McMindfulness and The Mindfulness Industrial Complex | (12/29/2020 — “Ask Us Anything” with Denny K Miu) [Where Denny talks more about Sati the Hindu goddess]

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Currently, for a chance to experience, practice, and receive Yi Jin Jing instructions from Denny plus more mindful exercise join in free on Saturdays:

• https://dennykmiu.com/Insight-Timer
• https://dennykmiu.com/Facebook
• https://dennykmiu.com/YouTube
• https://dennykmiu.com/LinkedIn
• https://dennykmiu.com/Patreon

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The raw unedited YouTube transcription of this podcast:

hang on just one second good morning good afternoon

welcome to another episode of um aua ask us anything and uh welcome josh

hold ms denny what’s going on how are you hey i’m doing good i’m doing good

this one i didn’t really have to prepare you did all the preparation work which is great most of it yeah so the idea here is that

um we if i count my fingers we have done 63 episodes

of of our weekly practice another 63 weeks of weekly practice

in english so we actually started in the very beginning of of 2020

uh in in january timeframe actually before the country kind of shut down and

of course then after that we we did it very consistently and so we thought that maybe maybe this

would be our annual review you know to kind of talk about what we have done

and um uh and and so forth and so this this is going to be a bunch of questions

most of them are asked by josh uh and some of that was asked by some

students that i summarized so so um the the title of today’s talk

is uh mindful practice of body chi and mind so now just keep in mind that

this is already a slight deviation from our our original teaching which is

mindfulness of the body mindfulness of the feeling mindfulness

of the mind and the mindfulness of the body so we’re actually taking a slightly

different approach and i’ll talk about why that is much of that has to do with just my own

practice versus the needs of my students and so we are kind of taking the

mindfulness of body and kind of expanding it into the mindfulness of body chi

and mind and we’ll also uh talk about some of our personal experiences with practice that’s that’s really the point

that’s really important so this this reflects our personal experience yeah if there is a personal experience

right so all there is yes on one level yeah so

um so that’s that’s generous summary and overview um so why why don’t you take this one

yeah i was just this is the question i came up you know where to well even with this too um how many

i guess how many sessions have you missed uh every i mean you’ve only missed a couple right a few every

day since then right and then and then also we’ll just tie it in with this question that’s on the screen now what are the

common themes that you’ve uh noticed in the past 62 weeks that come up during practice and you’ve

touched a little bit of that well um one of the one of the theme uh for the last six to two weeks is that

because of the uh pandemic we were forced to

stay home and so um we don’t really have an uh a venue

anymore uh to get together practice now given that we never did uh with the english one right so this is

actually the english one is is actually a reflection of what we do in with the cantonese version of that

and the cantonese version is essentially non-stop uh at one point seven days a week at one

point it was seven days a week and now we have the saturday devoted to the english

and sunday i kind of take a day off because i want to reserve that for eventually when we go back to

prison work but so so essentially we we have five days of cantonese practice

and then one day of english practice both the morning and afternoon now the

afternoon of course came much later but the morning one we started pretty early

we’re starting early so so the theme um number one is in the beginning in the

beginning it was just a place for people to um relieve their initial shock and

and and stress due to the the shelter in place so so we actually have

very different set of students in the very beginning a lot of people just got stuck at home

and so the english class in the beginning was actually quite popular with that new set of students now i did

i remember at one point um one of the students asked if we could bring in if if she could bring in her

mom [Music] who who actually uh doesn’t speak english and so then we started the

bilingual it was actually kind of weird that we started english first and then became bilingual and then eventually the

cantonese class took over and then and then we went back to english only on saturday so so so the

theme is the progression of theme the initial one was just taking care of people’s

very obvious needs or having to have a place to practice to relieve the stress

and the anxiety and then i think that that’s that lasted a few months and then

you know things start to open up and people start to understand how they can um go back to quote unquote normal life

so a lot of the students were were also professionals you know in terms of healing doing um

all kinds of physical therapies and so forth and so they eventually find a way to go back to to work because they’re now considered

essential workers and so that initial wave for students kind of dissipate and i don’t remember

even having a single one anymore from that initial batch then it kind of as it as it became the

the cantonese then the uh then then we have a group of what i always

call the small army of cantonese speaking grandmothers and and my mom

become sort of the surrogate student for me because around that time my dad was

having a lot of issues with his health and my mom was always been the the caregivers but

now become much more intense and full-time and and so she started to have a lot of physical pains and so forth and so our

practice start to gear towards fixing those uh physical pains as opposed to just

like a spiritual practice and so the idea of chi the idea of the 12 energy lines the yin

and yang start to come together and then over time that sort of became the theme

and then so at the end of last year then we tried to get back into having more english students

because for a while all the english students were just cantonese speaking students who are

capable of speaking english and it was kind of strange because we actually had a class that everybody was

able to speak cantonese but we kind of artificially made it into english class even though the students are the same

and we try different things to kind of open up their forum we had we had some initial experiment

with zoom you know they started having this on zoom platform but it turned out not to be so

successful and then i was then uh josh you were the one to suggest to me that encouraged me probably to hey how

about this thing called the inside timer because we and i both know that that this is a good tool for our own practice

but at around that time they started to have these video

live cast so it took i applied for it i remember you you told me and and i applied right away but then it took

time for them to eventually went through the orientation so by early part of this year

um we we were able to um uh stop using the platform and then

that just opened up the the floodgate and so like i remember josh you and i were talking about now i know

now we’re finally preaching to the choir and so now after

probably close to i was i’ll say almost 20 weeks now of of having our saturday practice done

on the inside timer and then live stream on both youtube and facebook we have

close to 350 students between the two classes

and actually the students are very generous you know they know that we are raising money essentially for

maba mid america buddhist association and they were very generous donating money to us

even you know inside timer takes a pretty big cut but on the other hand you know we got

everything for free and so the idea that the thing has evolved and so right now we kind of uh focus on

this there’s three things you know so um there’s three things that really makes up for

what i would call health as opposed to just being unsick you know unsick is sort of the western

concept of healthy which is you know come you know go to the doctor if you’re sick and he’ll make you unsick

but that’s a very different concept of being healthy and so in our concept the healthy is really

being healthy both in the physical domain you know this this physical body being very healthy

and then the other one is being in the energy domain the energy dimension which is the qi dimension

and then finally it’s it’s get towards the end it’s it’s also the mind you know so i think

we have over the last 62 weeks or so you know

we have to kind of develop a pretty nice uh platform i say yeah

yes indeed so and that goes along with the next slide what you just wrapped up there with our goals and

you know joining with denny i just i my pers i mean maybe this is off but

i just noticed so much fear when we first started so this was so

important and then one thing denny’s also done for part of it uh is the meta practice the loving

kindness practice which is just so lovely it’s such a protective practice as well

and it brings in deliberately attention on good energy and just friendliness

and wishing people well and that helps with the whole fear thing and now i i’ve noticed how

maybe it was a practice that helped transform some of that fear or maybe it’s just people have

gotten uh more accustomed to how things are now or maybe a combination of the two

and you know when i joined uh first i was going like maybe every day there for a little bit i

want to say and uh also i even joined one of the cantonese only classes it was able to

go along as well and yeah and you were you were actually improving your cantonese quite a bit

which is not hard to do when you don’t know zero i know shifu i know yes that’s one right so well uh you’re

improving on your cantonese almost as well as my mom is improving on her english because she comes on

saturday which is amazing yes isn’t it she just comes on saturday too and she’s just following it’s just

it’s great because it’s a visual thing so if you’re a visual learner there’s not much of a language there’s much a language barrier anyway so you

can just follow along visually right and get it and you get a lot of surprisingly surprisingly um

uh it’s it’s the same as like going to a uh i i’ll tell a story so um

one time i i brought my son who didn’t who doesn’t really speak that much chinese definitely doesn’t read i brought my son

to taiwan for like a three-day kind of

buddhist practice where you just like other than the couple hours that you sleep at night it’s

all chanting and you know all that and i look over and he was having a

great time and i couldn’t understand why because he doesn’t understand the language and it’s just like you said josh

sometimes the the the having

full uh utilization of your faculty your ear your eye is actually a

distraction it’s it’s actually a distraction so so come back to to the slide goal so so i will talk

about my personal goal and hopefully much of that

aligns with uh josh’s own other goals and i i think we do my personal goal is is

is um we have we have a pretty robust sanka for the cantonese speaking um in

uh it’s surprising that it hasn’t grown that much it’s just very hard for people to just

come and practice every day like that but we have grown we have grown the good news is that we haven’t lost a single

customer so you know it took a long time to add one and then we don’t lose one you know so that that’s

you know i haven’t been a businessman i know i know that’s that’s that’s important but but this this the cantonese one has a

life zone um that that is serve a community and i think when the neighborhood temple opens up

now we really get to be more exposed to the other cantonese students than than

that that takes on a life its own the thing that i focus more is really on the english speaking the saturday one

and and i want to go back to uh the the evolution so we started in saturday morning and so of course a lot

of the saturday morning is is great for people in north america right because it’s eight o’clock so it’s

it’s only 10 o’clock or 11 o’clock in in the east coast and it’s good for people

in europe so it’s actually late evening for them so it’s great so we actually get a lot of students from

from the european europe europe european countries but it’s very very tough for the people in asia so so of course a lot

of students says all right you know when are you going to do emailing class and i know why i know why even for us

sometimes it’s just hard for us to juggle so having an evening class was good but then i didn’t want to just have another

evening class because then um i you know i

haven’t been in business for a long time i don’t believe in consumer choices

you know it’s like the costco idea you know don’t give them too many choices because then they have a hard time to choose so i didn’t want to make the

morning and afternoon identical and then somehow this idea came because one student actually came and he says

hey you know i i i i i’m actually a a caregiver for my brother

and you know a long story so i said well how about we we create another class in the in the afternoon six o’clock we turn

to be perfect for the people in asia and so the morning and afternoon now has its own characteristics

the morning tend to be much more i would say like dynamic much more energy energetic so we sit for

30 minutes and then we stand for 30 minutes and then you know for those who want to follow we do this

jin jing you know for the lack of the brother word is the mother of qigong very intense very very very

energetic and then we sit again so by the time we finish it’s it’s hour and a half you know by the time we finish it so the

the the evening class uh is it’s it’s all sitting

which time to be grateful for the elderlies uh and it’s great for the people who are

bound to chairs or wheelchairs or bed or whatever and it’s great for people who are

caregivers who are trying to learn something that they can then use for for for their endeavor

um but because we don’t we can’t sit we can’t we can only sit um so we can’t put all the stuff in that

one hour the side benefit of that is that we actually have a little bit more time

and it’s a little bit more leisurey and and what that means is that we can then focus more on the mind by the time in the

morning by the time we’re done with all the little you know movements we really don’t have time to

work on the mind right and so the so so as as things evolved the afternoon class tend to be

more more and more on the mind and i’d like to continue to do that and i think that the the thing that that josh mentioned

about you know leaving some room for the meta and then to you know and which which by

the way is is really really important for both caregivers and caretakers

you know i care care providers as care receivers because i know for for i know for a fact

that for example my dad is suffering both diabetic diabetes and dementia but the hardest part is not

even the body the hardest part is just deal with all that emotional pain and so

this is a common theme because if if the overall theme of a morning afternoon practice is

about healing self-healing and i think one of the things you said josh was very good

in that if you just let your body just let your body be free it will heal

by itself because all animals all species in the kingdom the animal kingdom is capable of

self-healing and so what we’re doing is by working on the qi and the energy line is

really allowing the body to heal itself and then all we’re doing is is taking

a logical extension of that to say hey how about healing of the mind and healing of the mind really starts

with trauma that we all have trauma and now now if

you take that further these are trauma from the past

you know even from your past life so so the buddhist teaching we call that karma but karma is is is essentially

um karmic trauma and so how do you heal that and so this

idea of meta and we did that a few times just that i and and i think we will continue to do

more and more as really like the closing parenthesis on the afternoon practice

is to bring out that that matter so that would be my personal goal and i think that i’m using i’m using

josh you know as as a reflector to you know making sure that i’m on the on the right path and i think that more

or less coincides with your goal as well doesn’t it it does and uh these are all that’s why

i’m you know involved in this and denny will patch me in on the insight timer things uh through audio through zoom so we kind of

get away with that i don’t know if you can’t getting with it but you know i chime in at the end and we take questions

on saturday and yeah the meta you know because everything starts with the mind right the first line of the dhammapada

the translation i like is all phenomenon is preceded by mind

led by mind and made by mind so that it all starts with the mind as well however

you know we have to the mind is rooted in the body too but the great thing about these

brahmavir practices these heart quality practices like meta and compassion too

these are really important just to tie everything together and i think a forgiveness practice is

interesting as well so uh you know we can forgive others who have wronged us

or perceive that of wrongness so we can and then we can ask for forgiveness from them and we can also forgive ourselves too

and and only when it’s time it feels right to the extent that we feel

like we can do it authentically right so there’s a whole other practice for that as well and that just it’s not so much for the

other person it’s almost like taking a burden from us that we carry around like a

grudge i know i’ve had grudges in the past with people but it doesn’t do anything towards them

but when we can forgive and it’s just like setting that burden down because we don’t need to carry that anymore

i think that’s a another healing of you know body spirit and mind and energy as well

so yeah and denny you know in the the physical aspect is very important because i pretty much quit doing

um like a weekly yoga practice that i had and this is taking the place and i i find this

just as helpful if not more helpful than just a regular asana yoga practice not to

actually at the beginning and we still do some some a few exercises that are really

similar to yoga and you know denny and i have talked about um you know how um yoga ties in to this

and also we’ve got that plan for the uh part of the rest of the uh show here too so yeah

yeah so come on just just briefly coming back to to kind of take some of what you said

and kind of emphasize a little bit coming back to this idea of being a

caregiver so um my my mother-in-law passed away as you know

and so now out of the two sets of parents four two have passed away and now

only my parents are left and so um my kids came home for the funeral and

other siblings other cousins came home and more than one of them came up to me

and well the one i can talk about is my daughter and and and her boyfriend came up to me

separately on this on their own and says hey you know i really learned a lot about how you and mom take care of your

parents you know take care of the grandparents the compassion and the loving kindness that you show

and so um at one point i explained that um and this is something again about the goal is is to really

hopefully taking what we learn and eventually find a community or fellowship of uh caregivers in in

in in care receivers um and really um

take what we do and kind of um uh using the business term is vertically

vertically market you know vertically packaged for that you know and and so so i i am of the opinion that

if you think of your responsibility as a caregiver

as a responsibility or service that is going to be

very very tough on you it is going to be very exhausting and eventually you will burn

that candle because you are burning it from all ends and it would it would extinguish and it’s a

very very tough thing so statistically those who are caregivers

uh have a high very high probability of them or themselves being um the reverse

you know because they’re they’re so it’s so emotionally draining so my experience and this is again my

goal is to to try to convince people that they need to

think of this the caregiving as a spiritual practice that this is in fact a practice

it is out the ultimate practice of meta right but not so much meta as in giving

but meta as in receiving which is kind of weird because as you are providing care for someone

you are actually providing care for yourself so when we talk about forgiveness

the prejudices for forgiveness is tolerance and you have to learn to be tolerant of

your own um pain and and your own shortcomings so

so one of the i don’t want to talk too much because i there’s so much that we can talk about but when we talk about goal and for

example i like to think that 62 weeks from today you know we’ll be in a place where we

have a fellowship of caregivers and care receivers who

who can really treat this as a spiritual practice and we’re basically doing all the same

thing you know the the the the the sort of the the physical

practice the physical uh exercise the physical fitness the the is is to strengthen our body strengthen

the our our family’s body then the cheese is you know another aspect of that and then

finally the mind you know so but ultimately one has to really think of this as a spiritual practice

yes and this is a great platform too for something like that because we’re not segregating out the caregivers

and the care receivers right they’re both um both of those demographics are

uh join us on saturday evening as well right and it’s so powerful because um it it

you know it’s not draining there it’s recharging the new the new term the new term is

called care partners ah okay so you cannot really think of it as

giving and receiving you really have to condition and educate yourself both of

you as partners okay because otherwise it’s like it would be like the the the the

it it’s clashing so number one is that it’s clashing okay much of the pain that the caregiver

receive is they care too much and then the care receivers the same way you

know i i can’t do all that right that’s one the other one is in addition to crashing

is that you’re both diving you know so the person who needs care is already

at the bottom of the pit in in terms of the emotional pain and now if you can’t control your own pain

and the best you can do is you dive in and you can’t help someone when you’re both at the bottom of the pit

anyway instead of diving down we want to lift them up right you want to lift them up we want to find

that firm ground that’s right and care for yourself too careful ourselves so we have to start from there yes because

we can’t take care of anybody else we talk about this all the time yeah for those who are listening i just

want to add that josh has has been the caregivers in the past yeah somewhat you know not speaking

you’re not speaking from vacuum entirely that’s right my grandmother you know i visited her i definitely not as

intensively as denny but she was on a very strong painkiller for many many years she was

her bones were deteriorating from osteoporosis my other grandmother did suffer dementia too so the things

that denny have experienced i’ve some similar experiences as well um also i want to say the other two

brahmaviharas which are kind of neglect neglected more is the uh sympathetic or

empathetic joy because it’s it’s good to have joy for other people’s joy that’s you talk about brightening

one’s spirit and lifting up when we get a chance to be happy for other people’s happiness

which is the most challenging one for me but then equanimity too that we realize that okay this is like a

grandfatherly love where i’ve seen this been there done that and i really want to care

however we notice that there is past actions involved from the people and that they’re uh who are caring about

and they’re also responsible for their actions right and we’re not responsible for their actions but we can

still care on a balanced level so yeah so one of the things i talked about in the past is

is um i i i i haven’t worked in the prison for a little bit over a

year and a half of course before 2020 before the epidemic

um one of the things that i was so impressed and so humble is the number of people who are

volunteering you know so the san quentin prison where

i was was uh volunteer um have um somewhere between 4 000 and 4 500

maybe even less prisoners inmates separate into three groups the

about 700 of them are live are people who are who are on death row because it’s only

prison in california and california still has death row so that’s that’s that’s a big part of

populations and then the other part you know the people who wear the orange color they’re the

revolving door you know they come in for six months and then they leave so that’s called the reception that’s very violent and in the middle of

the permanent residence you know they they’re basically there for life or life with possibility parole

so so it changes the dynamic because they have a chance to be paroled so they are going to work

hard and so they’re we are actually very welcome i don’t want to talk about that too much what i want to talk about is i am so

amazed by the number of volunteers there are actually more volunteer registered than there are inmates

there are like close to 5 000 volunteers registered and on sunday we have to wait in line to

get in because there’s so many different groups now so so you have to ask you know what

what what drives people to volunteer in such an adverse environment well of course they

want to do good but because but in addition they feel good

they actually feel good so this is coming back to to um to what josh said is that you know if we

practice the four immeasurables you know it’s it’s the it’s the compassion love it’s the love

and kindness the common kindness is meta the the compassion the empathy empathetic

joy and the equanimity so so these are the things that we want to introduce to at least to our afternoon class you

know step by step okay all right what has been done we kind of covered

that didn’t we yes okay challenges and rewards okay

we talk about that too i think rewards is a little bit yeah think about i think of it as my

spiritual practice so the reward is immeasurable you know we happen to pick up a few

bucks we’re actually getting paid at minimum wage now on a saturday practice

and we’ve talked about the challenges with language barriers and things being shut down and yes yeah yeah

so but there hasn’t been you know some of the we haven’t really been challenged really hard you know which is interesting i don’t i don’t

feel or well well i mean it’s a lot of time involved i know look if if there is no

challenges then there’s no reason for you that’s what i’m saying yeah yeah so so it’s a good kind of challenge it’s

just like you know we always talk about the good kind of pain so that’s that we talk about that that’s where growth comes from yeah okay

so so josh has a bunch of questions so like always right or like usual

go ahead and question oh yeah yeah so this was i i remember denny talking uh one time about

um i got more elaborate notes here but he talked about meta being mindfulness of mine and i was like

this is really interesting i haven’t really heard of this before denny do you know what i’m talking about here oh yeah i do i do so let’s talk about it

yeah so let’s talk about um i hear echo yeah i don’t know why

you turn yourself off i think you turn off your voice yeah i muted the microphone are you still getting echo

yeah a little bit okay so so i want to go back to what we meant by mindfulness of the body right

so i want to talk about mindfulness to begin with so what is mindfulness so so if you go back to the very

original translation um which is like the very end of the 19th

century it was actually an accurate translation in that mindfulness just

means memory just means remember that’s all it means it doesn’t

mean anything else so so the word mindfulness the the the sanskrit word or the pali word is

satay satay means satay is the name of a princess

who who was born as a princess but he’s actually a goddess and when he became the daughter of the

the the king and the queen he she made them took a vow that that

that they would never disrespect her as it turns out when she grew up she

married shifa and which against the the who’s not considered very high cast

you know as a so so so the the the parents the royal friends um

disinvited them to their um the the birthday party and so uh sati came

and told and remind them that they they should they had promised they had vowed not to disrupt her and then she jumped into the

fire and then eventually became a goddess again and then eventually reborn as the

second wife of shiva and we’ll come back to that because if there’s one question that is related to

buddhism versus the north indian religion that that shiva comes back or by that time his

name parvati anyway the word sati

by the time buddha was using the word means it just means um

remember you know you remember something and you commit to your your memory in fact satay is the name of

a ritual where when the husband died the wife would jump into the fire with

him because she is so dedicated to her spouse that’s all satay means it’s just

remember and so how does how how do we use the word uh

mindfulness in the pro in in the practice so when we when we use it in the practice

it’s called sate patanya patanya means foundation

okay so therefore we have what we call the seven the four foundations of mindfulness that’s four ways

that you can use force for four that you can use to remember to to really understand where your mind

is so so we have to understand that it’s for us it’s like i use the example back in the days when

i first came to the country united states people had just started to transition from a manual

transmission to automatic okay and so you see a lot of people especially the older guys we drive with

two feets because they they grew up with driving a manual transmission so you know they have to nowadays our

left foot just sits right so you would see cars driving down the street with the brake lights on

because they’re tapping on the brake light that’s the that’s their habit of driving

i think it was the foot clutch yeah yeah yeah yeah so so uh you’re still getting echo i

don’t know why oh i hope that doesn’t come out on the on the recording so you might have to temporarily

mute yourself okay so so the idea is that a mind and a body is not of one

a body does something and the mind does something else all right so so the classic is when people talk

about oh i can multicast i’m multitask well actually that’s a fancy word saying that

your mind is nowhere to be found you’re not focusing on anything okay so so a mind and a body is like a

left foot in the right foot they’re not coordinated you know it’s like it’s as if you’re driving the car

with you know full acceleration and full break that’s how our body works and

so the beginning the very very very beginning of your practice has to be

mindfulness remembering always remembering you or your mind is now because we can go further and talk

about why that is so so that’s enough to say that that’s a my so for

the original definition of mindfulness is just that it’s just a practice so that you know

where your mind is so there are four places where you could do that and

there is the mindfulness of the body now in this case the body is actually gaia k-a-y-a which are the six

sensors the six sensors okay the six sensors are eye nose tongue

ear body and the mind so most people don’t

understand that and they think that the mindfulness of the body is just the body no the mindfulness of body is in fact the

mindfulness of the form all the physical all your physical faculty now

master has has actually talked about that and he says he actually says that i remember i i

wrote something a lot along that line where he said there is no mind

in other words as a as a human being as a physical living organism

the only thing the only time that we can we know where our mind is is through its effect on the body

and only one only way that we could manipulate our mind is again through the faculty so

so after i heard that and i said you know what this is this is exactly what we how we teach gravity is that there is no

gravity there is only the effect of gravity and that’s why when

when newton discovered quote unquote gravity it’s just that he discovered the effect

of gravity and that’s why by the time it gets to einstein einstein is able to rewrite all that

because no one has ever seen gravity it’s just like no one has ever seen the mind so masters teaching

is very clear that you have to start with the body okay and then even when you go from body

to feeling it’s about the bodily feeling and he actually said some point that the

the mind part of the feeling and the mind is completely outside of realm

it’s outside ramp this is this is when buddha was teaching entities that are outside of what are

called the kama ram and then now when you finally get to the the

the the mindfulness of dharma that’s even more difficult to understand because dharma in this case is really

consciousness it’s really the seven and the eighth consciousness the uh the alaya and and so so that’s even

further out and so a lot of times it’s it’s a mistake and i see that all the time that they

think of this full foundation as as if they you know it’s a checkbox and they just say that okay we got to go

through the body okay we’re done and then we go to the feeling now and that’s a very dangerous practice because

because when when you think of the body as the body as opposed to thinking of the body as

the gaia which includes your your brain and you don’t spend enough time and

training on how you mindful of your brain then you go to the feeling and now you’re this is dangerous

this is actually very dangerous right and so so that’s one and so so master never actually talked

about the mind part except he just very briefly mentioned he just very briefly mentioned that

there are other practice there are other practices for example chanting amitabh buddha

and he just mentioned very briefly that that like the practice of the four immersibles

that would be mindfulness too even though they don’t use the word but it will be closer to the mindfulness

of the mind okay so so the four immersion was against it is meta which is loving kindness which

is the beginning and then and then the compassion and and and sympathetic sympathy

and the economity now when we have a chance we’ll talk about the four immeasurables

the four immeasurables can be think of as a conduit for practice or it can be think

of as the result of a practice so we talk about zen

which comes from the word chan which comes from the word chan na which actually is jhana

and jhana on one level it means sentimentations how do you take your part your negative energy and just let it

settle because the reason you you let it settle as opposed to try to filter

has to do with your comic trauma if you believe that your your your your

your your comic trauma is of limited quantity then you can future but if you believe

that your comic trauma is immeasurable that is so much of it that you can’t

there’s no possibility of filtering then the best you can do is is lettuce

sink lettuce sentiment sentimentation that’s what jhana means on one level and another is that it also means the

four level of practice that are beyond the common realm and so

as you practice your meditation you actually get to a point where you’re outside of your body and later on we talk about

you know where this all these yin and yang come from and that’s that’s related to that then you start to see the

the effect of your practice and the first one is is actually meta then it’s you know

compassion and so forth right so those are in fact pure mental qualities

because by that time you you don’t have you have no use for your body you’re already emancipated your body

right yeah so so it it kind of makes sense for me that this is this is sort of related to the

mindfulness of mine yeah it does now that you say this the other thing that came up is um

you know um the heart mind in this question so you know um i can see where it’s both

the heart and mind and how however now i know that isn’t it am i right that the asian perspective of

of heart and mind is kind of a little bit different than the the heart and mind perceptions that westerners

usually have this this is a this is a this is a really really good question

and and it it and and now i would say this um you know um in the western culture

we have this thing called the uh renaissance right and it’s from the renaissance that

we have all the western science and the western medicine okay and so now there’s there’s a couple

reasons for that the renaissance came after the dark ages okay and so but but in the transition it

was still done under the control of the church and so galileo is an example of someone who

proposed something that violate the teaching of the church and for that he was he was he was uh he he was house arrest

until his death right and so that that history of focusing on just the

physical science and leaving the mental signs to the church that’s the

that’s the tradition okay related to that is the idea that that

the europeans were under this this control this this mind control

for so long more than 2 000 years i mean think about it it started with the roman empire right then then after

christ it took a long time before it became the catholic church and and you know so and so forth and so

on and the church was very very so it it it had two you know

almost 2 000 years of dark ages where we’re not we’re not we don’t have free thoughts

now this never happened in asia we never had that we never had that okay and so what

happened is that is that once they got out of that that dark ages

the intellect becomes important because they never had a chance to exercise the

intellect okay so the idea that that that everything has to come from the mind right

and in this case the mind means the thinking mind is that in their case the mind actually

means the the the brain okay that means the brain so in the western

culture when you translate the hot sutra it really should be called the mind sutra

because that’s what the mind is right that’s what the heart means in the western culture because that’s all they

that’s why the western medicine you know we talked about this before the show is that it has it it has limitation

because it’s only about the body and nothing else right it’s only about the dead body even right

now when you when you look at the other side in the in the asian culture the mind

versus the experience are equally important equally important

so so for example last saturday you i don’t think you were there or maybe you were but i was i was i was doing the the

energizing of the energy point or something like that and immediately one student and i think he was even there for the

first time he immediately asked a very long question he says well what if i do one here and one here

you know would that be better all right and and so in the back of my mind i’m

just laughing but i didn’t want to say anything but but this is very western it’s very

western that you know that they completely discard experience

that this is all about intellect i can think this one better than you can so this i i tried this and it worked for

me what’s wrong with this as opposed to saying well if the person is teaching something from experience let me just see if it works

for me if not i would develop my own experience as opposed to intellect okay so the idea of of a culture that is

based on intellect versus a night and a culture that has the yin and yang the balance between

both intellect and experience and again understanding that the intellect comes from the brain

and the experience comes from the spiral core

every single nerve ending ends in the spiral core not in the brain

okay so so i i talk about the samurai uh and but but let me talk about the

professional basketball player player who has to shoot that last three point

or two point i don’t know the game warming up but you know the game is tied and he has to shoot

that one penalty shot he is not using his brain he is what’s

called in the zone because he’s completely in sensory mode he’s completely not

blocked out from everything else he’s just completely focused on that not using his brain so the idea the

difference between the brain and the experience and the idea of the mind this is probably

i forgot the original question yeah but happens to me a lot no the the

illegal question yeah the the the the western versus the eastern yeah the western versus perception of

heart and mind and yeah yeah okay so so why does that work why does that

single word translate into mind versus translating to heart all right

because that so one reason that they translate into mind in the western culture is because that’s

all we have in the western culture it’s all about our intellect it’s all about the mind the heart just has it’s

just an organ it doesn’t think right now

the easy culture is very different remember we talk about the heart actually is separate into the heart

versus the versus the pericardium right the pericardium is the is the

mechanical function of the heart the heart energy line it has to do with more the the thymus gland

so that actually controls our emotion and our thought process and so that

makes sense that in the eastern culture they translate that single word into

heart because it encompasses both your intellect and your experience

so it’s called um some people just combine those two words with a hyphen or dash is it heart mind

the heart which is okay it it it differentiates from the brain now that’s right it differentiates from

the brain right so in western culture you know mind it can mean you know are

some people must already think that’s synonymous with brain and heart is not only a physical organ

but it can also mean kind of the emotional qualities our emotional experiences it’s actually very very much an emotional

part it’s actually it’s very very much emotional and not only that feeling too so like the actual

visceral sensations of our experience like you know uh without the overlay of

different perceptions on them too just how it feels in the body painful pleasant or unpleasant

as well like vaden yeah so that’s right so so expanding on that again going back to

the western science western medicine is that there’s a causality there’s a cause and

effect so the cause you know so if if i’m upset of someone

it’s because that someone appeared in my in my vision right you know if that person didn’t

appear i wouldn’t be upset okay so the idea the causality is that the external

stimulants causes internal reaction which is what we call our our emotional

reaction right the buddhist teaching is is is is not

that the buddha’s teaching actually it’s that’s why the the the the word um um

uh in a dependent origination see no one ever explained that word well how is that

different from causality because cosologist means that if you have a you have b

right at most it would be because in order to get to b you must have the right condition but

it’s a very strict path i tell you no one explains that better than cha uh machadon

margin has a writing i grew up with it it’s called on contradiction no one

explains that better that you have to have the right condition the right stimulus

to have the right result it’s a it’s it’s a it’s a it’s a uh uh it’s a uh materialistic

right we call it the no one explained that better than than mao so how is that different from buddha’s

teaching buddhist teaching is a little bit different he says well you have the stimulus in

if you want to have a certain result you have to provide the condition but keep in mind that once you have that

result it leaves a memory a cosmic memory a comic memory and that’s what we call

karma the next time this time exceeds actually inference

your thought process as much if not more than the outside stimulant so when a person picks up a gun to kill

someone who’s looking for you know someone of asian origin you know went into a

massage parlor and start shooting that didn’t come because of the chinese

immigrant that came because of the hatred in his mind

and he just happened to pick on some chinese lady who’s working for a living as opposed to

some other arabic americans or whatever you know that hatred comes from within

that hatred is his karma right the three poisons yeah no ill will

yeah so so the whole idea of of what we call um

i like that i don’t mind using the word heartmind because what it does is it opens up the

discussion right so we don’t we i think i think that’s uh we can come back to that okay

okay we can knock these other ones out fairly quick i wanted to mention to denny mentioned about the basketball

thing and there’s this documentary i have bookmarked to watch it’s by michael jordan anybody in the 90s know how

amazing he was it’s called the last dance it’s a documentary kind of about his flow state and whatnot so

okay so here we have so we do these three uh usually it’s five breathing

exercises but in the evening sometimes i do only two now okay so yeah so why is that because i i feel

that there can we there can be a version of it but i’d like to hear well i actually um i haven’t seen master

giroux for more than a year now the last time i saw him was was right around right after new year uh the the the

what’s the new year in 2020 at the beginning of 2020 after he finished um maybe no no sorry

it was actually at the end of 2019 he was rushing back to maba to conduct the new year ceremony

and so that was the last time i saw him and i mentioned to him that i’m starting to have students who

who who can only practice from a sitting position and so he said he’s going to think about

that on how to evolve the fight breathing exercise into something that is suitable for

those who are bounded to chairs and so um having

since that was that was the last conversation i dare not to invent [Laughter]

that’s one the other one is that i try all five on the sitting position and they’re not

they’re not that they they don’t they don’t feel right and so i didn’t want to introduce

something that that is so this is one of the only thing that i try to do is is

and i think you even notice is that every week is a little bit different from the week before

and it’s really because i really focus on the immediate effect you know like

if i do something i want to i want to you know make sure that it has an effect and not just

you know movement for movement sick and the reason is that every week i guarantee every week more than half of

students are first-time students maybe at least a third and so so this is this

is the this is the thing that we need to do is is as much as we you know want to retain the returning

students we got to make it so that it’s accessible to the new student and so i thought this through and i said if i

just blindly run through a five knowing that less than half of them are

effective in the sitting position or immediately affected insisted that’s not going to help a cause

and so that’s why i one reason is is i did that to you know just study and and the other

thing i did is is uh you notice that i i always you know i always use the word baseline so i always you know ask you to

do a deep breathing exercises and now remember that you know we’re gonna do one more and then see how the improvement

you know this is this is the this is the sesame streak of uh of

mindful practice you know you got to make it entertaining and accessible and

and measurable okay this is this is this is my business ahead coming through okay and and accommodating and dealing with

all these this juggling of all these different dynamics going on that dinner yeah yeah yeah so for now actually i i even

do sometimes i even just do two you know just do the the first one and the butterfly that seems to work

really well and then i think as we as we progress where we start to

focus more on the meta i think that’s probably all the time we have anyway yeah so that that answers your

question okay the next one how does one find energy points on the inside and outside

the legs uh there’s something we go along uh tapping on the insides and outside the legs and there’s like

what three different uh at least no is there six on each outs inside and outside but i’ll

just let you okay so so so let me generalize the question is that how does one find

energy points period all right okay so so the easiest one it turns out

to be the governing vessel so if you look at your spiral core this is the only energy lines were

both the physical and the qi coincides they’re directly one to one and all the pressure points are at the

interface between the disk so if you have to find the energy point for

your governing vessel that’s easy okay now everything else is not so

obvious everything else is not so obvious and it’s even um different from person to person

and it can even be different from hour to hour and so when acupuncture is come find

your your your energy points he he or she has to feel it she has to feel

it and and i’m starting to i know a lot of people who who are who are really good at this and i but

even for me i can feel it a little bit because now my mom’s feet are swollen all the

time just from all kinds of reasons and i need to give her massage on the energy points the the one

in the inside that has to do with the splint and i can feel it i can just like touch it i can feel it because

initially you feel a little bit of texture under the skin and you can work on it and the texture

goes away and so you will find that a lot of these energy points they they’re slightly different in

in i would say in when you press it down they feel different coming back okay so

a lot of this energy one has to do with some valley somewhere and and just let’s let’s look at what is

energy point what is energy point what is this chi thing that we talk about

the chi is magnetic field you see our entire body has

has electrical field right the only time you don’t have electrical field is when you’re dead and so that’s why if you study your medicine from a

cadiver you will never find she there’s no more electricity now if

there’s electricity there’s magnetic field and so even if you have a very simple uh electrical

uh pattern like just bloods traveling from your shoulder to your finger your fingertip

it generate very complicated magnetic field and um i

i actually i wrote the book actually i actually wrote the book um and this i finally got my own copy

so this is the first book that i wrote many many years ago it’s i wrote it when my son was born

and he’s now 30. so that’s a long time ago and in there it talks about electromagnetic field talks about the

maxwell equations and all that the one distinction between electrical field

and magnetic field is that there is no source there is no source for magnetic

field so so the source has to be in this the all magnetic field has to be in the circle

has to go out and come back has to come it has to it has to we call the well i don’t want to use the

mathematical term but the point is that if you look at a line for quote unquote magnetic field

it would have eventually find itself back because there’s there’s no source there cannot be a source

okay whereas the electrical field is different you can actually have an electron a free electron and generate electrical field and it

doesn’t have to come back so all magnetic field has to come back so as a result you have what is called dipole

so when you have even the simplest electrical field it already generate very complicated magnetic field

and that magnetic field would have this dipole what we call a dipole where the minifigure comes together and go out

those are the those are the energy points now think about how complicated your electrical field is

and therefore how complicated your magnetic field is so jumping ahead one of the question is

that i always point to this one and says well this is the energy point for the gallbladder and

by the way you know your hip when we do yijing jing you know pointing to the the g1 only the one tail that’s another

energy point for the gallbladder and then now they runs along the end and the answer and the question is

that wait a minute how come it’s so far away from the gallbladder so so

number one the the the energy field the the gallbladder

are named after the energy field not the earlier iran so they discover the energy field

energy line they discover first they discovered the the correlation the the correlation

between the body and the the celestial and how

the tie and because we’re we’re 75 percent it’s 67

water so if it affects the tide it affects us all right so our body is actually affected by both

the solar cycle and the lunar cycle okay and so they discovered these energy lines

that eventually they said well there’s six branches and then there’s eight main ones okay

the six branches six the twelve branches the six originate from the hand and then twelve

originated six originated from the toes three of them are yin and three the yang because

three are affected more by the sun and three are affected more by the moon and all 12 each one that is active for

two they discovered that first then they kind of named them because it

turns out that one has more to do with this particular function and one has to do with

that particular function okay now but again this is this is a two

three thousand years ago and it’s only the last it was i think it was it was it was

less than a hundred less than 150 years when western medicine started to come to china

less than that it was it was actually at the end of 19th century so when they come to china they they

understand these names of you know kidneys and so forth and so they have to they have to

they have the translation and they say oh yeah we have we got something like that over here and so they named kidney with

that word okay but that doesn’t mean that there’s a one-to-one correspondence so so for

example the kidney is a very good example of of how in the chinese tradition the

kidney function is so much broader than just the mechanical function of a western kidney

right but and then the idea that you have to have yin and yang and so for example i just talked about

this morning in my in my cantonese class that you know the the

the splint is is also responsible for the um

the immune function the the lymph node okay and the nymno is responsible for

returning water back to your heart and so so the splint

is is a very important organ for controlling everything that has to do with water like yours your your your your

uh your if you have a runny nose you have mucus in your lung if you have swollen whatever okay but the splint

and the stomach is one pair one is yin and one’s yang so you actually have to work on your splint

energy line as well as the stomach energy line because that’s the yang line

that complements the yin line now that kind of concept doesn’t exist in the western culture it’s a much much

deeper concept and so this idea of this question of why this has to do with the gallbladder need to be asked

the opposite way which is now that you have an energy line what do you name it after

and it turns out that it they they name it after the gallbladder because by working on this energy line that runs

from the top you know 100 metering all the way down to your to your to your shoulder all the ways down to your butt

all the way down to this has to do with that energy line has to do with the function of the gallbladder

it’s fat it’s fascinating you know it is extremely fascinating and it seems like chinese medicine and

this technique is more kind of like the original or one of the original holistic because it’s not one thing can be considered

really in isolation right and then also you have the dualistic thing of the ying and the yang

interacting with all this holistic uh you know uh systems as well yeah the

problem the problem with the word holistic is that most people think of holistic as

non-scientific whereas holistic is really the with the with the w is the whole yes that’s that’s the

proper that’s the proper i such as people think that chinese medicine is the alternative medicine no the western medicine is the

alternative medicine we’ve been here before and it blows my mind how these perceptions have already

been these wrong percep are these um i guess unskillful perceptions and unhelpful perceptions have been built into the

american because we don’t need to go into you know how that happened or who that benefits right so

but yeah yeah i think it’s important for me to to repeat which is i am not against western

medicine i myself is a diabetic i take western medicine but

i understand western medicine and i understand how medicines tend to treat symptoms

and i also understand that western doctors are essentially salesmen they’re part of

the the distribution channel for the pharmaceutical industry

whether they like it or not because the medical doctors is that one traditions

where after they get out from medical school the re-education in their entire career

is controlled by the vendor and denny of i have done a whole show on

this too so if anybody’s interested we can go back on this and we’re pretty danny and i see eye to eye on this uh same way you know i don’t

have anything particularly gets just more honesty transparency around everything yes i i be

[Music] okay i call it i used to call

uh i forgot what it’s called i used to have a very good but the point

is be your own uh prime contractor

be your own contractor be your own prime contractor for your own health and treat everybody else as some contactors

if the doctor wants to subscribe to you i just find out that that that the medicine that my father

was taking as a sleeping aid was actually a medicine that it that that is meant to

treat schizophrenic it just happens to have this side effect

that put you to sleep so i’m saying what the f you know what’s going on here right

they can do off-label stuff yeah yeah you know be your own prime countries listen to

everything study everything and and expand your horizon understand the difference between

western approach and the eastern approach and try to find something that is work for you and your loved ones that’s all we’re

asking that’s right and remember there’s informed consent so they have they’re they’re required to tell you uh

the pros and the cons and then you have a choice about what medicines are prescribed you also have a right to a second

opinion as well yeah and and now i have been a part of a prime contractor before so i know what that

means when you’re prime contractors don’t argue with the subcontractor if they’re not right for you just walk

away you don’t need to win them okay so don’t go to the don’t go to the western doctor and and talk about

supplement very good point danny yes they don’t believe in this so why waste your energy arguing with the subcontractor okay

all right what are some uh okay uh your turn okay yeah what are some of josh’s

practice experiences that’s me uh with denny so i’ll just go through these briefly so yeah this is just some things i’ve

noticed when practicing with denny in the in this practice we’ve been talking about my back adjusting during standing meditation sometimes when we stand there

i’ll notice just um just after a few moments a lot of times how the back will be tension held in parts of it and

then it just kind of naturally releases and the spine kind of aligns more just

uh standing there in this the microcosmic orbit uh denny goes into

details on this uh technique but i noticed for me recently um i’ll back off a little bit from that yeah

recently yes oh you have so yeah for me i noticed that it was just uh we’re going up the spine it goes uh my

attention and awareness goes up really quick but then it’s almost like i have to force

down the awareness down the front which i thought was yeah so so so um i also kind of break in the idea

of being mindful of your body as opposed in addition to being mindful of your mind so so the idea is that when you go

up you pay attention to your body you bring your body with you you adjust your posture maintaining this thing called the one

pillar supporting the sky which means that you’re actually leaning back a little bit tucking your chin

right so this point is straight up and so there’s you know you can draw a straight line between the two energy

point one on the very top of your head not very top but just in the in the back of that and then the other one is is the energy

point between your sexual organ and the opening of your bowel and you draw a straight line

and so that’s how you maintain posture okay it’s very important that so as you breathe in you you you focus

you start to walk up you know that’s that’s why we call the the wandering dragon

chasing the pearl you just walk up your spine you adjust your mind you’re very mindful of your your body you’re

adjusting your body and when you reach the top you know and if you can

don’t come down right away just relax right because we there’s this is something that we talk

about that when we talk about that in a minute on on on anapanya satay

remember that there is thing called satay so as you relax don’t rush into the outbreak right away just let the

outbreath comes naturally and as you come down be mindful of your mind this is now the yin part this is

the parasympathetic nerve and just let it drop and and visualize this glass of water

with debris or this lotus pond with debris and just let it drop let it jump don’t force it down don’t

force it down let it drop relax and until it comes down to your your don

ten then you kind of switch back and and you can either apply forces on your

adrenaline again or just goes back straight up yeah cool that’s really helpful and just sitting

here doing uh why you said that because what i’m trying to do is force it to sync with the out breath

down and until i’m completely more relaxed that this is not going to happen so just until but then when it does happen it

syncs up so yeah okay this is the last thing about so so when i do it i because i i i was taught by message you who

taught it in terms of the wandering dragon tracing the pearl is that you know as you bring you

it’s just you just it’s a natural thing you don’t force it you just like you let the let the breath comes in and that’s the

pearl and so the pearl is rising on your spiral core and you’re just chasing it you know just go up with it

and i even visualize like when it goes up to the top of my head it’s like

the dragon disappear into the cloud and then they wander around and then it comes back and i’m ready to breathe out

again it just follows and then when it goes down to my abdomen i make 180 degree turn

again that’s you know where i’m pausing i’m just waiting for the the in-breath and i even visualize the the dragon you

know pushing his legs against my my uh my adrenal gland you know that’s that’s what the master

says so i often skip that part where your proper sitting position is after you straighten up your

your spine okay you actually should lean forward and then lean back

without moving your hip so you maintain pressure on the adrenal gland

and that’s uh in the yoga yoga sitting posture too i’ve been instructed oh yeah they’re all the same

they all come from the same source anyway right yeah so i mean i i just i just saw a video of a cantonese speaking

grandfather 97 years old who who learned the towers qigong and when he was 57 you know he

started learning when he’s 57 and so he was practicing you couldn’t tell that the difference between the taoist qigong

from the hatha yoga wow yeah well it’s it i mean of course

they’re different but the idea is the same yeah that’s right they a lot of them yeah they all intersect interweave

so going to the jinjing practice and denny of i have done at least one show that addresses this and it’s been it’s

cropped up on other ones there’s one um move when uh uh it’s often said to stab you know in the

shoulder what i just what occurred to me is um it’s also important to remove the dagger on this one too so i just thought i said

oh oh oh i see i see i see so you know i i i don’t know i i need to go back to the

video tape and see how master does it does it does he actually remove no i don’t know well i mean

you you’re you are you have to i mean well since your hands aren’t sticking there so i’m assuming that it might be an okay

perception to when you move the hands this way not not only are you

stabbing with a dabber but you’re also removing it then because your hands so i don’t know i i

so so here’s my intro because i’ve been watching his videotape and and also remembering the times that

i i i was his attendant where he was teaching uh because he teaches a little differently

every time anyway and so i i come to i come to the

the interpretation that the yijing jing is really about generating electricity

it’s really about acting you know so again if you go back to the the the chinese medicine they they talk

about the body consisting of you know the bone the muscle the tendon and and all that you know

the mirror and all that you know lots and lots of parts and every single one of them are

piezoelectric so when you look at him so the one good example of when he do the cross if you watch it

again he would do the cross and then you would hear the crackling sound

you would hear the crackling sound the crackling sound doesn’t come from the part where he’s he’s stretching

it comes from when he’s holding right so he would stretch and then he

will hold and then when he holds he he hears a crackling sound the crackling sound

is the breaking of the stiction between the the connective tissue and the

underlying muscle so when it when we say chi gong what

what is what is about chi chi when you have blockage or qi is is when that layer between the

connective tissue and the underlying muscle or the underlying body parts

are are stuck stuck because of either

information or somehow dehydrated okay and so if you just watch him he

would stretch and then he holds and then all of a sudden like this

right and it’s because that that connected tissue is is what we call it’s both

piezoelectric and viscoelastic viscoelastic means that all you have to do is hold it

and that material will creep see it’s like if you take if you take a

piece of metal and you you bend it if you hold it it will stay there

but if you take a piece of rubber and you bend it and you hold the force you didn’t even increase the force just hold

it it creeps it starts to sag it just takes time that’s why it’s called visco

viscoelastic and so i i i come to the the recognition of my own interpretation

that a big part of the egg has to do with the holding the force because that’s when you generate

electricity and that’s when you break the the distinction between your connective tissue and the underlying structure

and so when you talk about the snapping usually what i teach is is i i ask people to open the shoulder and

stab and hold and then release

so the release part is also very important this is something that master talk about over and over again you got to stay

for the duration of two birth because you have to energize the

parasympathetic nerve you have to go from the yang back to the yin right you got to let your body recover

from the stress hormone that’s what i was going to say too is you know we are generating

piezoelectricity however that’s either going to be stored or stored and then are discharged

or used in a certain way so that’s what you i i have this crazy idea that the jump at the very end is to

uniformly distribute the electricity well that’s the same thing that that’s what i gathered as well and uh you mentioned

the um oh the crackling and i’ve experienced this firsthand the last retreat i guess it was last summer it was small retreat

out in maba and when we were doing e jinjing it’s just like from whatever it just even the first over the hands i

could just hear crackling and i was like yeah well is that his knuckles popping but it seems like it’s more than that no no

no it’s not his knuckle it’s it’s really the shearing between what’s called the myofascia the

the the connective connected tissue of his muscle and the underlying muscle so when the

fist when he uses his fists i can audibly hear it i know i have a pretty good hearing and i can hear really plain as day you know yeah

especially when he turns it turns it up a little bit you know what i mean yeah so yeah yeah yeah so he does it for for effect that’s

right right because it gets people that it gets their attention and gets you know the time we have how much i know that so

let’s let’s blow through this uh how much time do we have yeah we probably ought to wrap it up here at about ten uh

okay so under 15 minutes so the hard opening one i was just gonna say real quick with the tearing the phone book i

thought maybe that was you know it’s more like you’re kind of like or it’s not more but it’s

not another perspective as you’re um opening my heart up here so i thought yeah that just came to me

and actually actually i i i spent a little bit more time on the chinese uh original chinese

description of these two moves so the one where you like the bar and you’re lifting your

head up so that’s made out of two words the first word is up and the second word is

koi which is another way of saying the head so you’re lifting your head yeah that’s

that’s one the other then the second one which is the first word is is lower so it

distinguished from the upper and the lower the second word of that is when you release the arrow

it’s the same word that we use for releasing an arrow so so sometimes i i use the phone book just

just for fun the football analogies were fun but the more accurate one is the one that master uses which is you’re pulling the arrow

i remember that yeah because you’re pulling it back and then pulling it back because that word that that word meant to release

that makes sense and i won’t you go the last one was there was i don’t know if this is advisable or not so please call me out or anybody call me

out if it’s so it was just basically um using this at eugen jing as kind of like an energy

practice so you you put certain intents into what you’re doing especially at the

end um to um whatever you want to accomplish energetically

now i don’t know if that’s advisable or wise but maybe that weekend that’s a topic for another time so we’ll move on here any miscellaneous

views observations and questions so um what why is it why is this okay we already addressed

this the first one about the gallbladder about why it’s uh certain places and not just so we went into that in depth

i just wanted to share some other things uh on the thing where at the end of the jinjing when the the

arms are going up the side like this this is where my six-year-old niece says you look like a chicken when you do that

and i just thought that was so funny not only that because this is also used in um uh like a preliminary to kung fu right

and so here’s my kind of niece you know you know poking and prodding at me

yeah so how about how about we make this the last slide okay because i have more but i think

that could be a standalone show that’s a stuff that i added could be a standalone show because that’s right we need to we need to explain some of that

here okay so so um so the next one here okay so so the one

year about the chicken um actually a lot of the moves in the yijing jing

find its way into different styles of martial art so like the the spread boosting palm

you see that all over the place um the this one you see it all over the

place so so actually you you come up the finger actually master talks a lot about the finger

and how you’re supposed to be like this you’re supposed to like this and you come up like this

okay so so so this is th this is actually if you are translated literally means

hip is the underarm and the next what is more important is that you’re raising the energy so

it’s like you’re raising the energy now of course we don’t do it right i don’t do it right so i don’t i don’t i

don’t get the effect but on the other hand this i this style of this thing you see it in many many martial arts

yeah in many many so so this part is actually quite important that that looking like a chicken one is actually

quite important but but master did elaborate on how your hands has to be like this i don’t

know i don’t know if i could turn it right so it’s a it’s like you’re holding it’s like holding a

chopstick sort of and then you just lift your energy now but of course

i don’t i don’t i’m not to a point where i can feel the energy for the same reason that when you swallow the don i don’t feel it

yet that comes from years and years of training and that’s even you know with people’s practices so

deep just the subtle changes of mudras for some practitioners can have a significant

energetic effect when you’re at that level so i hear right so yeah i’m obviously not there either um so moving

on here to the next one uh and this is interesting you know diddy and i didn’t especially have talked about

anapanasati and just one other thing that i heard recently i thought was interesting is the pana part of anapanasati is

supposedly what i’ve heard is the uh pali word for the sanskrit word uh

piranha and prana you know as the yoga practitioners know this is kind of like similar to the word

uh chi right the the life force energy the um but breath because there’s um

um what’s the lemon yoga that just deals with specific controlling of breath

exercises it’s called um i’ll remember here in a second but so i just thought that was an interesting

thing that i heard that it’s actually uh dealing with the kind of not just the in and out

but also just the kind of energy the breath energy that comes along with it and energy circulation in the body perhaps

yeah i’m not sure they’re the same word but i definitely believe that they’re that they’re related but going back to

the word anapana satay it’s actually made of three words the last one is satay that’s mindfulness

then you have panna then you have anapana so the a is always the opposite so

if the partner is out then the a partner would be in or vice versa right so so so that’s

actually it’s it’s actually in that sense it’s actually two words it’s the breathing

and it’s the mindfulness and whatever you interpret the breathing is either in and out then the a is the opposite of that right

so it would be but a negates the na then or does it negate both panna too or you know um

is it on uh that’s right

how am i supposed to know but but it does it does talk it does talk about three things yes out

breath and then and then and then mindfulness right okay so with the with the remaining time

i want i do want to talk about the last one is that yoga and meditations as connections to buddha his teaching and

practice i talked about this last week it’s important to remind

ourselves that jesus of nazareth was a jew not only that

he was a rabbi because once you understand that then you go back to the history and you

understand that the social political dynamics of his time

only then you would understand his teaching right so by the same token it’s important to

understand that uh the historical buddha right

buddha is actually not his name is his title the historical buddha was a north indian he

was a yogi not only that but he was what we call a um

aaron aryan he’s an aryan meaning that he’s actually european so

his his people came from europe the the sort of the what we call now the

eastern part of europe and because of climate change they have to move down

and so they not only went to india they also went to uh persia and they also went to egypt

and so they became the ruling class that’s why they have lighter skins okay so the indians who are darker skins

actually on a dna level is very similar to the natives from uh from australia

okay so this is before the continent split okay so they’re they’re they’re very different people they have very different belief

their belief that is that there was once upon a time a god

named shiva who is one of the three guards okay and um the dr2 one is called brahma

or brahman shiva is called the adi yogi the original yogi and so shiva

was the one that actually started the practice and all yogis learned from that that

lineage okay now earlier i talked about satay who was the name of princess but before

that she was actually the goddess and so when she jumped after she jumped into the fire she reincarnate

she came she went back to her her her goddess status and then she became the second

wife of shiva she was also the first female student of shiva

and shiva actually taught uh i believe it’s called parvati now but

it’s the chief sati of the different name that there are that that we have

i believe we have um 72 000 energy lines the body consists of 72

000 energy lines half of them on the right have them on the left and that it has as these energy lines

comes together they form what’s called chakra chakra which is translated into a wheel the

wheel of the the energy line because even though when they when they meet they form a triangle but as they as the

energy emanate from that it becomes a circle a wheel and so shiva taught uh parvati or satay

that there are 114 chakras and every one of them

is is a point of entry for your enlightenment okay and our depth 114

shiva says that four of them was actually outside the body and so there’s only 100 and

there’s only i i misspoke um anyway there’s hundred and so so

out of that um there’s there’s 112 uh so maybe maybe two of them off i

forgot the exact things but i do remember that there’s and then i was 112

for them you don’t need to work so if you can discover one of the 108 then the other four

would come naturally so there’s really 104 and so it’s it’s an increment of seven so from

the 104 it becomes 21 and from the 21 becomes seven and so right now when we talk about the

current yogi practice is about the seven chakras but it’s actually part of the 108 and

114. buddha the historical buddha

as a yogi discover one of those

so his entire practice is based on that one chakra and that chakra has to do with

the recognition of how the brain and the spiral core

works together okay so in in buddhist teaching it always comes back to equanimity

and and the lack the opposite of in equanimity would be

any number words would be differentiating uh discernment

you know where you will you separate when you separate you from the rest of the universe and so this this is really as a human

being this is our identity this is the identity is in fact the source of our suffering

and so in buddhist teaching it talks about how the identity is actually part of your brain

okay that’s why we talked about earlier why so many people are drawn into being a volunteer

because through the volunteering process they’re now separating their brain from

the rest of their their central nervous system they no longer judge they don’t judge right

so this is actually the buddhist way is that i i always explain to my parents i said

look look at buddhist look at guanyin her eye never look at you her eye is

always looking on the ground because it doesn’t matter it doesn’t matter who she is so there’s so many different

ways of explaining that you can think of the brain as something that is very exclusive because that’s what we do wake up in the

morning the first thing we say is who is me this is me that’s not me

right whereas the spiral core is very inclusive now denny and i have talked about this

last point and we’ve shared information on it as well and i still if ginny could send me the

the if there’s any kind of detailed teaching on these all these different chakras what list i did find is all these

different ways that shiva has recommended for potential methods of enlightenment and how the buddha only

focused on one of these methods of enlightenment however i think that his method supersedes all those because

i think if i’m if i’m getting this right i actually haven’t studied hinduism as much as that they’re

they don’t oh i guess there is but the buddhists seem to go beyond you know levels of gods you know he went

beyond all of that even you know of uh even though i guess they might have been enlightened

he’s still these um they still have these status of a god but i i think that’s not accurate either

because there’s you know they say the some people say that uh the buddha was a

avatar of or one version of vishnu but that’s besides the point i wouldn’t um

so maybe we’ll include some links i i plan to include the link of the different shiva

things this is this yeah we’re so beyond a depth that’s true yeah

so if guinea finds it but i think i think i think we talk about it because it’s it’s really a great source of curiosity

it is right yeah so i think i think it suffice to to just remind ourselves that that

um the historical buddha was a yogi that’s right and that’s the point i wanted to circle back to here but

equanimity though for me one another way is just not being entangled you know being active uh and and living

in the world but not being of the world so uh we might have identities but we’re not entangled

with these identities right we’re not as identified as this idea is similar to what we said

earlier about being your own prime contractor right because think about it right

because all these years of development of spiritual practice was was done in a in a time where

communications were very expensive i mean to to to to to learn from a different teacher

means that you might have to walk you know thousands of miles and then even you might not find the person

now we take it for granted and then to if you don’t visit that teacher there’s

very difficult ways of of learning it from the book because you know books are very

expensive right and also um

how do you you know it’s learning is very difficult absorbing knowledge is very difficult

you know getting access to information is very difficult that has been the case for thousands of years

and that’s why you you get all these silos you know everybody who comes to a client

says is this qi gong and then i have to explain to them that well let’s not put a self into this silo

go got qigong yeah okay because silo means something very specific to somebody

on the other hand you know qigong with the hyphen just means the practice of cheese and that’s what we do

then the next question is that well is this tai chi or is it no because we’re so used to be put into

these channels and my message to everyone here is that be your prime contract be your own prime

contractors break down these these these walls yeah and with understanding that

everything comes back potentially to a single source now

in this case i’m proposing that shiva might be the single source but maybe not yeah it doesn’t matter it

really doesn’t matter be open-minded be open because yeah because often we’ll put a label on

something then we think we know everything about it there’s nothing because putting a label on something is the parenthesis of intellect that’s

right yeah so they can be held so now you’re permanently you’re permanently

you know into this one path and you completely forgot that the other path which is experience and and if you want to not to

be not experienced means that you have to be very open-minded that’s right so the original point i was

trying to make with this or the the thing that occurred to me even though you know let’s say that the yoga practice of today even just the

asana practice if if that has any semblance to what the buddha the environment that he was in well then

there’s some kind of connection today that we could have with a yoga practice of what his environment was like

even though from what i remember they didn’t he didn’t there’s no mention of asana practice however

the jhana uh the two teachers that taught uh different jhana practices we do know that there’s

a limb of yoga that deals with types of meditation like that so he was in that environment according to

the writings and also you know he did give detailed instructions on anapanasati

so when we practice that it’s just kind of like a living link to that time period and also that

experience and which brings it back into another point that denny mentioned that you know learning is difficult

however we’re just taught certain ways of learning what we’re not usually taught

in school is the meditation practice which is a whole nother level of how to open up the mind

and integrate other knowledge and see different layers

of it and also you know opens up new perspectives

um it gives an experiential uh experience of different types of

information that we’ve learned about before it can bring in new so this is a level of mind

and practice and information that most people don’t get the experience because they don’t have a meditation

practice right and i feel that maybe sometimes a lot of people are drawn to drugs because some of these drugs can

simulate kind of like the reverse versions of some of the states and experiences that meditation give as

well you know okay okay i think we should we should wrap it up what do you think very

good yes we’ve done enough damage haven’t we and enough good for the day

okay with that thank you for joining us we do have quite a few people out there watching if

you like you can send us a chat whether uh on youtube or facebook just

to say hi or if you have a questions for us uh you’re welcome to do that

okay all right thanks again okay thank you see you have a good practice

see you on saturday and we’ll do this again next month that’s the plan oh i don’t know about that uh well yeah

this yeah it’ll be a different topic more than exactly but yeah all right okay

okay thank you bye