For this month’s regular open-audience, open-discussion “Ask Us Anything” — continuing discussions about meditation and related topics — (despite some technical snafus) Denny and I pick one topic each we’ve yet to discuss much publicly — the Eight “Touches”, and wholesome sexuality(/sexual energy), respectively. (Amended) show notes are as follows:
(From Josh):
What is Kusala (Wholesome) Sexual Energy?
- Five Training Precepts are about refraining from — as in refraining from misusing sexual energy by avoiding breaking up relationships and sexual activity only in committed relationships
- So what’s the opposite positive version? Skillful and appropriate relational energy [6/8/2021 UPDATE: Equating relational energy and sexual energy may be my (mis)interpretation from hearing Ajahn Sucitto. I’m still re-listening to several talks for more references. Plan to post more clarification here if found]
- Most anything of sexual nature is taboo in the West for both skillful and wise reasons as well as unskillful and unwise reasons
- Cognitive dissonance of hyper-sexualization promoted in mass media and culture but along with #MeToo, sexual repression, dress codes, “princess code/programing“, “toxic masculinity”, emasculation, gender confusion, using sex to gain power, and “battle of the sexes”
(From Denny):
Five stages of mind practice
- Knowing
- Quieting
- Contemplating
- Deconstructing
- Emancipating
Eight “Touches”
- Movement (動) : interaction of all four elements, earth, water, fire and wind causing either regular or irregular movement or gyration of body
- Itchiness (癢)
- Cold or Coolness (冷)
- Hot or Warm (暖)
- Weightlessness (輕) : exaggeration of the wind element, body feels light, like cloud or dust, as if flying
- Heaviness (重)
- Smoothness (滑) : body feels smooth as butter or milk, can sense bright light
- Roughness (澀) : body feels rough, like sandpaper
Josh mentions similarities of Eight “Touches” to Four-Elements Meditation as taught by Venerable Pa-Auk Sayadaw. See page 114 on PDF of Knowing and Seeing and Mindfulness of Breathing & Four Elements Meditation [PDF]
“Tapussa the householder, here, has said to me, ‘Venerable Ananda, sir, we are householders who indulge in sensuality, delight in sensuality, enjoy sensuality, rejoice in sensuality. For us—indulging in sensuality, delighting in sensuality, enjoying sensuality, rejoicing in sensuality—renunciation seems like a sheer drop-off. Yet I’ve heard that in this doctrine & discipline the hearts of the very young monks leap up at renunciation, grow confident, steadfast, & firm, seeing it as peace. So right here is where this doctrine & discipline is contrary to the great mass of people: i.e., [this issue of] renunciation.’”
“So it is, Ananda. So it is. Even I myself, before my Awakening, when I was still an unawakened Bodhisatta, thought: ‘Renunciation is good. Seclusion is good.’ But my heart didn’t leap up at renunciation, didn’t grow confident, steadfast, or firm, seeing it as peace. The thought occurred to me: ‘What is the cause, what is the reason, why my heart doesn’t leap up at renunciation, doesn’t grow confident, steadfast, or firm, seeing it as peace?’ Then the thought occurred to me: ‘I haven’t seen the drawback of sensual pleasures; I haven’t pursued [that theme]. I haven’t understood the reward of renunciation; I haven’t familiarized myself with it. That’s why my heart doesn’t leap up at renunciation, doesn’t grow confident, steadfast, or firm, seeing it as peace.’
[1] “Then the thought occurred to me: ‘If, having seen the drawback of sensual pleasures, I were to pursue that theme; and if, having understood the reward of renunciation, I were to familiarize myself with it, there’s the possibility that my heart would leap up at renunciation, grow confident, steadfast, & firm, seeing it as peace.’
“So at a later time, having seen the drawback of sensual pleasures, I pursued that theme; having understood the reward of renunciation, I familiarized myself with it. My heart leaped up at renunciation, grew confident, steadfast, & firm, seeing it as peace. Then, quite withdrawn from sensuality, withdrawn from unskillful qualities, I entered & remained in the first jhana: rapture & pleasure born from withdrawal, accompanied by directed thought & evaluation.
“As I remained there, I was beset with attention to perceptions dealing with sensuality. That was an affliction for me. Just as pain arises as an affliction for a healthy person, even so the attention to perceptions dealing with sensuality that beset me was an affliction for me.
[2] “The thought occurred to me: ‘What if, with the stilling of directed thoughts & evaluations, I were to enter & remain in the second jhana: rapture & pleasure born of composure, unification of awareness free from directed thought & evaluation—internal assurance.’ But my heart didn’t leap up at being without directed thought, didn’t grow confident, steadfast, or firm, seeing it as peace. The thought occurred to me: ‘What is the cause, what is the reason, why my heart doesn’t leap up at being without directed thought, doesn’t grow confident, steadfast, or firm, seeing it as peace?’ Then the thought occurred to me: ‘I haven’t seen the drawback of directed thought; I haven’t pursued that theme. I haven’t understood the reward of being without directed thought; I haven’t familiarized myself with it. That’s why my heart doesn’t leap up at being without directed thought, doesn’t grow confident, steadfast, or firm, seeing it as peace.’
Selection from:
Aṅguttara Nikāya
Book of the Nines
9.41. To Tapussa
Many people shaken by fear go for refuge to mountains and woods,
to places with beautiful trees.
That is not a secure refuge,
that is not the refuge supreme,
nor is it the refuge to come to that liberates from all suffering.Whoever has gone for refuge to the Buddha,
Śaraṇavagga — Bhikkhu Ānandajoti
the Dhamma and the Saṅgha,
and who sees as it really is the four noble truths.
That is a secure refuge,
that is the refuge supreme,
that is the refuge to come to that liberates from all suffering.
Patna Dhammapada
13. The Chapter about Refuge
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The raw unedited YouTube transcription of this podcast:
so that that we left off our uh the last month uh by denny’s saying you know we’ve done
enough damage for today and um and i said well we’ve done enough good for today so i thought we’d just pick up with that
and say well it’s time to do more good here so here we go so we uh talked and we
originally thought that you know well what about because danny and i we not really ruts fall into but we tend to
bring up kind of similar things often so we thought you know why don’t we pick topics that
we’ve never talked about ever before on the show and we said you know let’s pick three topics each
and then limit it to an hour which we’re gonna it’s gonna be really hard to do now that we’re a little bit late on this but um but maybe just an
hour in length and uh denny only came up with one though and i said if we only get to one that’ll be okay um
so i’ve got two actually and if there’s any time left maybe we’ll throw in a wild card there um so um
yeah so i guess we’ll just yeah so let me let me share this
so um so today today’s topic uh actually i picked the
topic after we decide on the three points
and i had originally titled the show light lightning round or uh light rain
three questions each and that actually came from real quick uh a thai saying that they uh the royalty asked
ajahn chah for a bio because they were gonna give him a real high honor and he’d been he put him off and put him
off put him off and finally he got back with his bio and it was sometimes there’s thunder and no rain
sometimes there’s rain and no thunder and apparently that’s a thai saying that it means that i heard this from
ajahn amamura which is a funny you know british monastic but very charismatic too but apparently the thai saying means
that you know sometimes there’s a personality type but there’s no nourishment so like
thunder right but there’s no rain there’s but then sometimes it’s the opposite where it’s a real
nourishing beneficial thing but there’s no really um you know uh figurehead or you know
really strong personality to drive it so i i don’t know let’s play on that anyway so
so yeah so it so we’ll we’ll see um so i guess i’ll just kick it off here
jenny right okay so the first topic is what is kusala
sexual energy what’s in kusala means wholesome skillful right and kind of wise um because we
hear about um i guess we can go to the next slide denny and then we you know we hear about
the five training precepts and they’re framed in uh
refraining from right so it’s like what you’re training to not do so it’s kind of framed in a negative not
in negative overall sense but just as you know positive negative affirmative or whatever so um
so it’s usually talked about refraining from misusing sexual energy well when i hear that and some other
people too it’s like what does that mean well i guess some of these and i’m going to throw it back to dinner here in a second after this but
and see what he gets by that but from what i understand here uh it basically means avoiding breaking
up relationships that already established right so if somebody’s married obviously you’re not going to go
you know trying to break up that marriage and then also having sexual activity
only with in committed relationships so that makes things a lot
a lot less disasters can happen that way right so um you know so i’m going to ask denny
here about that and also i’m just going to lightly touch on this topic because of it and we’ll get into
that on the next slide but danny what would you say what is uh not misusing sexual energy what does that
mean to you well the problem is
so i i tend to go i tried to go back to
the united states
it was essentially a yogi right and i i said you know what how
what exactly was he trying to accomplish um and so i think if we go back to
the the saying about who just wholesome how do you live a
life that is good for you as opposed to living a life that lives up to the
standard of some external evidence then it’s really a set of behavior
now josh i’m going to mute you for a minute because you have a lot of uh air conditioning okay so when you when you talk when you
want to talk just raise your thumb okay and um so so the so the so the so the question is really
how do you live a wholesome life and so again it depends on who you ask because
the the um the the sexual part wasn’t even the first
one right the first one is really more about killing more about killing so it’s not even
about um eating meat it’s about killing so you can actually there are there are ways that you can
eat like you know if you found it on the side of the street if um if uh
if it was a result of some animal uh you know fighting and then there’s caucus you know that
you can pick up so there’s all kinds of way that you can actually eat meat but it’s almost it’s all about killing
and it’s all about stealing and when it eventually gets to the sexual part it’s really all about behavior and so i
think the idea of one man one woman and the idea of sexual relationship or
sexual activity is really solely for the purpose of reproduction
so that’s a very strict very very strict way of defining uh misuse of sexual energy so if you do
that that’s even exclu homosexual behavior that can exclude you know like annual
sex and masturbation all that because dosa has nothing to do with production so it depends on your ass it really
depends where you are but at the very minimum i think the you know having sexual relationship outside of marriage is
definitely not something that you wanted to do if you want to have a crusa alive
then the question is that well what does that mean does that mean sex before marriage is a bad thing
it really depends who you ask and i think what’s more important is that the buddhist teaching is not
about a strict set of rules that you have to apply to in order to satisfy some outside
governing body it’s much more about you and
how you think you want to live and how that helps your practice towards a better human being this is
oops sorry sorry sorry josh i thought you were i knew okay okay that’s i mean that’s a great point
because the um the first precept is you know non-harming and that’s kind of like the
base of it all right so how can we not not harm
around our sexual energy right so that’s but even the first one even the first one when we say no
killing it also depends on intention oh yes if you’re you know if you’re in the
forest and the lion charged towards you and you have to kill the lion
you know for the purpose of protecting yourself and your family then it’s killing but with the intent
but without a bad intention so it it varies you know it’s really i i think again the importance is
is that you are your own master and this is another you know you we hear that example about
you know if you step on an ant and you have no idea you step on it it’s not going to create a car
a negative karmic effect as if you saw the ant and then you had hatred towards it and
then you intentionally went out of your way to kill the ant that’s different right yeah so so even for example the chinese
because because actually for example buddha never was never a vegetarian because
they’re you know there are essentially beggars you know they have to go on back
for food so um and also the way that they do that is that they don’t repeat the same
location so they you know each day they would choose a different direction so there’s no expectation that they would
be there at a certain time of the day and so people don’t kill for them that’s right we i
remember talking about this before and the the exception is that if they know for certain that the person has killed
the meat just for them you know killed the animal just otherwise the chinese food is take it to
a different level and they basically says they’re you know we have to be vegetarian and and so there are people who cannot
be vegetarian or you know transition to being vegetarian they can eat meat but they cannot go and point to a live
animal and says kill this one you know like they can’t do that right so then then people would say well what
what if i send my friend to kill for me whether there’s no no no because the intention is wrong
that’s right you’re inciting someone else to kill for you yeah and all it depends where you live
too i guess with monastics there’s some areas of the world where people just don’t you know get it and they won’t even get
requisites so then they have to do things that aren’t true you know traditionally you have to go by other means like you know
you know sometimes there’s just places where they just go on alms rounds they don’t keep any food overnight where they
live in other places do you know and it it some people they have lay people bringing it out sometimes they
don’t so um from what i’ve heard anyway so i get it yeah so i guess my my take on um
miss uh sexual energy or sexual appropriate sexual activity i i would
just say that back to intensity that’s a great way to frame it yes in the modern society you know what is
the that’s right does it leave towards our happiness and long-term benefit and the
happiness and long-term benefits of others or is it the opposite right yeah so so that i i think that
that’s one then the other one is that i think we spend way too much time arguing at the gate oh yeah
right as opposed to just you know walk across walk over the threshold and just focus
on the practice and let the practice guide you as opposed to you know trying to adhere to a set of guidance
and you know and thinking that if you do that that that is a practice that is not the practice
that’s right you know a lot of this is almost even theoretical too which i mean it’s so it has its place
but practice outweighs it in my opinion as well um so what the these
so like i said these are usually couched in the negative so usually when there’s a negative
there’s also a positive right um but i mean um like refraining from okay
but now what do you is there a way to what you actually i think this is a very important point
think of yes we think of them giving up things when we think of
monastics we think of them having to live in a very restricted
lifestyle you know and and so when we think of the five precepts you know
starting with no feeling no stealing no lying no sexual misconduct you know no
intoxicants intoxicants we tend to think of it as negative okay don’t do that don’t do that don’t
do that and then you could and then because because once you focus on that then the next thing you focus is that what was
left right what can i do and maybe if i just do that and that’s you know that would that would be
that would be the gate to the to the heaven or whatever it is that you go after i i tend to think of the
precept being positive and positive and it’s this is especially true when you go
from the five precepts to what we call the buddhist precepts and when you look at the buddhist
precepts there’s almost you know half of like 64 of them and and so if you if you
look at that and you say well wait a minute you know i go from 5 to 69 or whatever number it
is i forgot that and so i mean does that mean that it’s 10 times just more difficult
but actually when you look at the bodhisattva precept they’re not actually precept as much as their valves you know
there are commitments that you make to really live the booty software path
right and so you really have to look at the five precepts not as restrictions and
you know and but more like a commitment more like about and you have to look at it in a very
positive way and say you know if i do this it would just help with my practice
so the commitment you should make is to your practice and not to these set of rules because if you make the commitment to
the practice then the rules would help you they’re like a field that will tell you along that path and also remember the
practice is leading towards even a higher happiness right so that famous saying well yes there is
happiness in everyday life but that’s a lower form of happiness if you were given the chance
to give up a lower form of happiness for a higher form of happiness would you do it and i think that’s the
key question and the ground level here is these five precepts and you know back when i was living a
very unwholesome unwise uh life lifestyle you know i would have just kind of laughed at these and said
that that’s just too prudish you know that’s ridiculous how we’re going to have any fun or enjoyment with these and
unfortunately you know unfortunately or unfortunately um things got rough where
then i started learning about these things and i’m in it gradually can see more and more how
these things aren’t there to limit and restrict us but they’re actually there to
help us get to a higher happiness right but you can’t really convince anybody about this you just
have to kind of see the wisdom in it and then you have to try it out for yourself right you have to see how these things
can actually lead to a higher happiness for yourself yeah yeah that’s right josh um if i may
i’d like to just add one thing to what you said would you which i agree with 100 percent
uh that is it’s actually my experience is that it’s actually very difficult to
have a conversation about happiness because each person has his own definition of
happiness that’s one and the other one is that in order to seek happiness you have to start with
unhappiness and each one has its own definitions and pain threshold for what is unhappy so
it’s my experience my own experiences is actually very difficult to do that so what i choose to do is not to talk
about happiness but talk about freedom of choice
freedom of choice so when we talk about this country uh you know being the land of liberty what we’re really
talking about is choice you can choose right so you know as simple as
as the definition of patriotism the true patriotism is giving everybody
a choice you can you can choose to burn the flag and i don’t i won’t call it unpatriotic
because that’s that’s true patriotism is that you do have that choice within boundary okay so so my my
thought on that is is the conversation i typically have is is is less about my uh happiness because
that that tempting my limited ability to communicate is that you tend to kind of
went sideways but instead i asked the question is how important it is to have choice
and and and and how important is that choice not only on material but also
on spiritual matter and so i’ll give you an example so one time i was in mainland china with
massachusetts and in the evening we had these very lively discussions with the students
because they they know i come from america and they know i’m a businessman and all that so they like to hear about
you know america and also because master had already went into his own chamber so so now we are free right
so so we were talking about and they’re very careful about saying things and so they have to be
they have to get you know a lot of comfort levels and so eventually we talk about freedom
and so of course the the the answer is that you know communist china is not free and so
when i say that no i’d actually think that china is a very free country because you
have a lot of choices and so they kind of look at me and says well you know remember we went to the
supermarket today look at all the choices you have you know in terms of you know like if
you go to a china you just wouldn’t believe that this is china i mean they have more choices in the supermarket than anywhere else in
the world you know as much as even if not more than america they have everything we have plus what they have to know
so if you define freedom which then indirectly define happiness as choice you have to start
out with material choices and so typically when i talk to people who
wrote it and talk about happiness i say well you know let’s talk about material choices right
the freedom to choose now what if how the the the
ability to choose your material well-being is obviously important right but what if what if there’s a
possibility of true of of choices in your spiritual manner
you know how do i choose right what does that mean that’s that’s the conversation you can have which is which is how do i how do i choose i
i remember you you said it very well when you said you know like if somebody shoots you with the arrow it
hurts but the first time it hurts you lay the blame on that person who
who hurt you but typically we continue to hurt you know we took the arrow out and then
we keep stopping ourselves right because because when somebody said something bad to you you know that was like two weeks
ago but it still hurts but who’s hurting you now and so so the question is well
what if you can actually choose what can you what if you can actually choose any mental action
right so that to me is the ultimate freedom because it’s the ultimate choice i can
choose to be miserable right but i can also choose not to be miserable but if you don’t have these
other choice then you are stuck you’re not committed to your misery you are stuck in your misery right what
do you think this is a great point and thanks for reminding me because that is it supersedes happiness in my opinion as
well because you know and it is great to have external choices and america is uh you know it’s decent
in that the thing is that those external choices can distract so many people
into thinking that is the ultimate real freedom when it’s just kind of a farce where the
the real ultimate freedom is what denny was talking about the end is that choice to have that in well
first the choice to pursue your own spiritual practice right that’s where the real freedom’s gonna
come from but so many people think that they’re gonna have this external freedom and it’s only just a little tiny taste
of what’s available when we start to free our own mind and through our own practice right
right right so so so to summarize this slide um i would say that our practice the
practice is about developing the skills so they can we can make these
free choices okay in terms of of how emotional emotional or spiritual choices and the
precepts are tools that allows you to make progress along that path and
these precepts are positive they’re not negative they’re not so i think it’s wrong to look at one
side of the coin and says oh they’re so restrictive all these things i couldn’t do let’s figure out what i can do and you know thinking that you know if i
could just find that crack and then now you know i can still live my
life put uncle and do this too right they’re set up to cause positive results
in our lives yeah they’re there to help you okay so so should we go to the next slide sure so but if we were to couch you know
um the what is the skillful use of sexual energy then i would say
instead of what we’re not supposed to do with sexual energy i would say it’s skill skillful and appropriate relational
energy and now we’re going to come back to that because that’s kind of what i can talk about more but i just wanted to skim
uh with the next slide some of the and touch into um just kind of exploring more
um what this this sexual energy is or whatever um okay go ahead so we’re going to go to
the next line okay so yeah most anything of um sexual nature in the west here is taboo
and sometimes it’s for good reason sometimes it’s not you know sometimes there’s there’s skillful and wise reasons for
that sometimes there’s unskillful and wise reasons of why sexuality is taboo
in the west here and i’m sure plenty of the world as well well um the west is different from the
east the west is different from the east and let me you know i i spent a lot a
long time really understanding the difference so it turns out that in the west
we don’t have a separate and standalone set of morality
we say moral moral you know morality it’s it’s we don’t know how to separate
morality from religion right so in order to talk about moral we
have to say well how is that how does the church define that so
so what happens is that you have this this this imbalance between what the church defined as
morality and what yourself might define as morality okay and so the church defines anything
that is sexual as immoral and most of us don’t accept that well
let’s say most of it except some of it but not all of it and so there’s there’s always this this this
dichotomy or or or contradiction you know between being sexual and being
immoral and if you go anywhere else in the world or even big part of europe
that’s not that’s not always the case that being sexual is not necessary being immoral
now that’s especially true if you come to asia because asia actually has a standalone
set of morality that is independent of religion in fact you can go as far as saying that in china
we have never we never had a tradition of religion because most of our conduct
it comes from confucius and the the purpose of that is not so that
you can go to heaven or the opposite but rather than that that it is
it is it is a set of rules that you adhere to in order to have um harmony in the society
okay so it’s very easy then for us to separate
sexuality from morality that way and so what you this slide is is you said it correctly that is
its important part is that it is in the way this is the problem in the west yeah
that’s right i was just going to say that it is important and i didn’t point this out what denny was saying and i
i i forget this sometimes that you know the even though less and less
people are religious you know increasingly so here in the west that kind of what denny was talking about is
still really established in western society those codes from the church
and it reminded me the old joke around religion is here in the west is you know uh having
sex is filthy and dirty and shameful so save it for the one that you love
you know so so you know it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s confusing and it is uh the next
slide we’ll see it’s cognitive dissonance a lot of it um which basically so let’s just talk
about how the buddhist views how does the buddha view sexuality versus morality
josh oh i thought that was a rhetorical question you were gonna answer it so that means you have to
answer it so that’s that’s great you know because obviously you know in buddhism and
informal there’s there’s a monastic community and then there’s the lay community and obviously the lay
community is um procreating and the monastics have a strict code where they refrain from
sexual activity right so now you the the the question you asked was um
now say it one more time oh so so basically you answer the question which is it depends on whether you talk about
the householder or the monastics the monastics is
is is that not only do they have to be moral that they have to be asexual but
they don’t but they don’t do that because they equate sexuality with morality it’s just that it’s just their practice
that they have to be moral all the time and they have to be asexual all the time and not because the two are
related right and whereas what the expectation of the householder is that they don’t actually talk about
the sexuality part as much i saw as they they fought into the more the
morality part they focus more on morality and if that turned out to be
sexual then that’s not essential that’s right in your bedroom is your
business yes i totally exactly and you know it with it just makes things so much simpler with the
mastic of refraining from sex altogether then you don’t even have to go into these questions that we’re going into right
you know it just you save so much time not even after you know this is the way it is you know and you can see the benefit and that’s the way
it is and they even encourage lay practitioners on occasion you know to do the same thing like
during retreat and during certain uh i don’t know um maybe full moon days in different sits during during the year
as well so yeah yeah there’s always a saying that you know what would jesus do
you know the idea is that you know this is the conversation that people have among the protestants or the catholics
which is you know should we discriminate against the the gays and the lesbians or you
know should we do you know because then the question you know what would jesus do
and and the first the people who asked that question basically they’re telling us no jesus
would never do that jesus would never discriminate against you know people who are different
because jesus the historical jesus at least here when you look at his teaching is based on
compassion and loving kindness and empathy and so i think
the modern buddhists forget about you know the traditional and the interpretation of what traditional
buddhism mean but at least today the modern buddhism is one word we tend to focus more on compassion
loving kindness and empathy and rather than talking about
you know all these little technical issues on you know whether they you know is it moral is it immoral to
have annual sex is it immoral to have masturbation is it more to have sex before marriage is it normal to have sex with
more than one woman you know all that mind might not be important but what is more important is
going back to compassion living kindness and empathy because without that you shouldn’t even call
yourself a buddhist i couldn’t agree more denny that i mean
i think what kurt vonnegut that said too is the kindness is the only rule in life you know because that supersedes it’s
just about everything especially in in everyday life and we’ll come back to that too with the relationship
i would say that kindness is the only reward in life i said only rule but yeah and reward too
it is a reward as well reward as a rule yeah why
why do we do what we do because we recognize it as our reward our ultimate that when you’re
kind to someone you have to be kind to yourself you’re the first beneficiary
you know okay but you know and i don’t even really look at it as reward and punishment it’s just like
that is our natural human state like when the defilements fall away that’s just our natural way we don’t
even have to try you know and some people say the baseline of loving kindness is just an absence of
ill will that’s it yeah you know exactly exactly it’s like last time i talked about
when i asked my my my students my small army of cantonese speaking you know grandma’s
and i asked them we talkfully i said well how is the sun today it’s all there is no sun how was it yesterday well yesterday was
great the sun was out and i said no the sun is always out your compassion loving kindness and
empathy are always there and it’s just like you said josh is that when it’s when it’s when it’s over
covered by the hindrances the black cloud you don’t get to see it you don’t get to see it so so when you
are kind to someone then essentially you’re pushing away that black cloud and the person
the first person who benefit from that that the shine that comes from you
within is yourself you know forget about changing the world benefiting the world you know that’s
just how about me and ironically it doesn’t it’s you know
that actually does change the world even if you can’t see it it does yeah yes yes okay okay so the next thing is
just real briefly here if anybody’s interested in any of these um things and they can contact me i haven’t
decided if i’m going to link to them yet or not in the show notes but you know we talked about the cognitive
dissonance of this which basically means you’re holding two opposing views in mind at the same time and sometimes they make
people go you know haywire sometimes because it’s hard for people to hold two contradictory views
in mind um some people can okay and that’s actually very beneficial because we were
confronted with that throughout daily life a bunch so there’s a cognitive dissonance of you turn on a tv which i don’t own a tv
anymore but there’s this hi at least the last time i watched it there’s this hyper sexualization
and it’s promoted in the media right so you see all these famous people and how they’re they’re dressing they’re
behaving they’re you know they’re trying to sleep with everybody sleep their way up the corporate ladder or whatever and
all this just very kind of uh ridiculous type of behavior in my opinion um are i would say unskillful and
unhelpful you know and obviously on whole awesome but then again it’s it’s on tv so is it real is it not
who knows um and then there’s also but then it’s then there’s so it’s just like people are i guess
a program they call it television programming too well if that’s how they see people on tv and they’re
getting ahead well then maybe i should behave like this maybe i’ll get ahead but then when you get into you know
reports in the media about this metoo movement where these women are finally coming together
and speaking out on how they’ve been sexually harassed and actually it can be the reverse too men
every once in a while can get sexually harassed too but then there’s also these all these different conflicting things like sexual
repression you know you have um you you have people that are afraid to express their sexuality too so
it goes to the other extreme um you have dress codes which can be both ways like some people can say
they’re too strict some people say they’re not strict enough you want to some people cover head to
toe some people you know are just walking around almost halfway naked and then you have
one camp saying you shouldn’t do that in the other camp saying you shouldn’t do that to the other camp so then there’s also this thing called
princess programming i tried to uh look for my uh my six-year-old niece not too long ago um our previous
birthdays and you go down a toy toy aisle and it’s really nothing but princesses
at least the last time i checked right there’s all these different disney princesses and um there’s hardly any other toys for
for young girls and i really won’t go into that much now but they’re basically
other than to say they’re kind of being conditioned to act like a princess um sometimes we can see the good things
in that but we can also see now can everybody be a princess or should everybody be a princess and what
can that lead to i’ll just i’ll leave that up for your own exploration there’s this term
toxic masculinity and i see that sometimes and i also see how that can that can
also just turn men and women off from each other altogether are you know where people get that
condition and they just think all males are all masculinity is toxic right which is not the case there’s some
kind of emaciated uh masculine types where they’re over feminine and they’re disempowered and
they’re afraid to embrace masculinity but then there’s also the other extreme like the
toxic masculinity where they go too far and they just they they act out and you know
so we can see that the the next thing is a huge topic and especially university crowds this
i’m calling it gender confusion um and you know i
that’s that’s a whole i mean that’s a whole another show as well um so i’m
just gonna i’m just gonna leave that topic i i’m sure people can kind of interpret that as well um
all the things that go on with that and then the battle of the section as i kind of mentioned already and that’s been going on since
time immemorial right men uh women you know the you what are a lot of old sitcoms based on you know
these this this fight between the man and the woman right between you know
that just you know whole shows and books and just tons of culture have been on this so
yeah yeah so so uh after you you showed me the slides that you prepared
and knowing what i wanted to prepare i decided that the topic for today should be called
practicing in the desire realm so the word desire actually comes from the
um the sanskrit word called comma k-a-m-a which actually is more than
desire it’s actually called sensory desire and so the idea is that once you have these sensors
and the sensors are not just the eye the ear the nose and the tongue and the body but also a thinking brain okay
so these are the there are windows to the material world and once you have
those then it creates desire and stimulants and and and um and reactions and excitements
and all that right and so everything that you talked about which was a very very uh good list i thought um and they’re
more is that they’re they’re talking they’re really talking about these these these sensations and stimulants in
this material world and they’re there because we are equipped with
the centers and therefore the desire right and so there are people out there you know they’re
either they do it either for money they do it for fame they do it for all kinds of reasons
for their own ego that create this kind of intoxication right there they’re no different they’re
a little different than you know your your cocaine your lsd and your marijuana and your opium
that they’re there to kind of put you in that state of uh of uh excitement and to certain extent
enjoyment and the ups and downs and the downs right so people do that because there are
there are their audience for it you know our last president was the president because there was audience
right now i wanna do you remember a tv show called taxi yes i was
that was right around the i’m still old enough to remember that one other thing real quick yeah go ahead go ahead i was just going
to say another thing too that i left off this list is well they do it are for power as well and people will
have these they’ll either withhold sex or they’ll uh they’ll bait people with sex and then they can use that as kind
of a an ego thing of getting ahead in power too you know so so so in this tv
um series called taxi which is one of my favorite uh all-time favorite there was a character called doc
you know doctor and he’s the same same actor that was in the back back to the future series
remember that and so his character he was a driver but he’s his character is that you know he’s
always out there he’s always on trump he’s always there like that and so one time the story was that they
found a bag of drugs pills or whatever in the backseat of the car and so
all the drives are getting very exciting should we turn it in should we you know what should we do because you know
obviously i i it could have been marijuana or something and doc walked by and kind of looked
over and they see all that excitement you see all that excitement and then so everybody’s looking at him
because he’s the expert on you know these these these uh drugs that
and so he just kind of say there is only one problem with drugs there’s a really bad side
effect and everyone’s looking at him and say wow what is he talking about side effect you know
this is they eventually weigh off
so all these so when i talk about these stimulus all the things that you talk about all these all these
contradictions and you know and and struggles that we have in this desire realm okay so you gotta
limit yourself to this desire ramp that we lived in okay all these things will eventually wear
off all these highs that you get from you know the dress and the toys and you know
i’m thinking of buying a porsche and all that stuff they’re great i i’m not discounting any
of that i will not ever discount the power of money and because they will buy you happiness
they will it’s just that they will wear off and so what we’re talking about practicing in a way is
is is working towards graduating from this desire realm
ultimately to have joy and that maybe we’re a little less or maybe
would never well we don’t know great point there’s a classic saying
even a reign of gold wouldn’t wouldn’t be enough yeah because however much we have we want more
yep and it wears off that’s right so now back too well what is that what is
um you know appropriate or our skillful sexual energy and this is where it’s into relational
energy and i heard this recently from a talk uh by um ajahn and this this kind
of sexual energy this kind of um urge to connect right
so instead of you know acting on it or it’s repressing it all the time or in
in on wholesome unskillful unwise ways could it be possible to use this energy
to connect in a appropriate way you know not just in our intimate relationships
um that’s where it’s a little more obvious of the sexual energy but this this energy to connect in all of our relationships
like with our friendships with teachers and students but obviously it’s not going to be the same type of
way we connect with all these different relationships right um
but how are we relating because our entire practice too is about relation relationships
right we um and life is all about relationships too how am i well internally and externally
so uh internally you know how am i relating to my breath in my practice if that’s my practice my
breath are my mind what’s the relationship with the mind um what’s the relationship to a sitting
practice what’s the relationship to our environment uh the times we live in
you know um the media we come across our acquaintances strangers everything in life is
relationship so what is the best way to be in relationship with
everything we’re pretty much presented with that arises and then passes away in our experience
yeah and then relationships that go away the separation too so it’s just like and one the way i find
is bringing a curious kind presence to whatever we’re um
um presented with basically right
okay so and yes and so i just touched on all those uh briefly we didn’t dive in
depth and let if you’re familiar with the 12 links of dependent origination we didn’t let it go too far into feeling
right we just kind of made contact or touched into it so um for better or worse that’s a segue
into uh denny’s topic here take it away okay yeah so so again i want to make sure that the
people who are listening to
that you understand that um the topic of today is is practicing in the desire realm
okay and so i think josh talk about one aspect of that
which is if you’re in the desired realm you know how do you how do you deal with all the um
contradictions in the tutor wars of your desire and with understanding that you are
within the designer so so what i want to talk about is if you actually commit to a practice
and and so there’s two aspects to that commitment one is that do you know where
you’re going do you know what’s objective of your practice the second one is that in that in that commitment in your
practice do you understand the difference between what happens in as part of your journey
and what happens when you finally reach the destination because a lot of times we confuse the journey from the
from the destination and so the my my topic has to do with it touches
and i’ll come to that in a minute but i want to lay the groundwork by
really talking about what exactly is the desire i am by talking about
what other what are the dimensions of our existence because we typically um think of our
existence as a body right a material existence a physical existence so
so i wanted i want to mention i wanna say that you know in order for you to explore a spiritual practice you
you have to understand the definition of the spiritual part of your practice right
you know so we all understand that that there’s one dimension of our existence is the
physical part and so we often use the word body now i want to add the word
gaia to it because the english word body is used in multiple places
it’s used like the body which is like the skins and the sensory that associate your skin but it’s also
used as all material and so i want to go back to the gaia which is which is everything
that are physical about you and so we summarize that either by talking about it in four
elements the earth the the the the water the fire and the wind
all we talk about in terms of our six sensors the eye the nose the tongue
the ear the skin which is a better word for them than the word body
and your thinking brain okay this is important that the body actually consists of your brain
so that’s one one dimensions of your existence and so if you follow our practice or our
saturday practice then you know that we’re talking about energy and
i choose the word chi which is a chinese word not another vegan would chi as in energy as in
circulation that’s intensive energy and then finally we talk about the word mind
and there’s actually a multiple word uh multiple sensitive word and the one i choose it’s called
so we at least you have to accept that you have to accept that there is more than one dimension because if you
if you don’t accept that then there’s nothing to talk about because then spiritual practice doesn’t
make any sense right so because if if spiritual practice means
your brain well that’s psychology that’s not a spiritual practice okay so it’s very important that you
accept that that we live in more than one dimension whether you include the qi or not that’s up to you
now um being a a modern educated engineer the physicists also
define these three levels of existence they start with the particle then they also talk about
the wave which is the energy and then more recently with the quantum physicists they talk
about quantum information now i want to just kind of briefly touch on what does that mean what is information
information is data right so what they’re talking about is that is that for example josh is an
individual so am i so we have our composition of material right we have so
many carbon atoms so do i have so many hydrogen and oxygen that mix up into water
and so so in addition uh he might have his own energy for you and i have an energy field but what if we were both
jumped into a black hole and now everything kind of breaks down
into his elemental form so his carbon atom now is no different from mine
and and so forth and so so what stephen hawkins and his his fellow scientists are saying well
that can’t be right because we have to be able to recompose them somehow
and so there has to be some kind of dna that defines who we are and so this
is called quantum information that there is something out there that that really what defines who we are
that somehow if you that becomes the code and if that’s that’s that if you know that then you can put it back together so
so i mean back in the 70s when i was watching star trek you know that was how the that
was how the the the the what is that called teleprompter or no not not telephone but
they did what is that called we know what you kind of go from one place than ever oh the the fate well they had phasers
but it was uh teleporting teleporting how the teleporting work right so anyway
so of course you know we talk about the duality between wave and particle so every particle
depending on how your perspective how you look at it then it can be a wave or a particle now this
turned out to be very important in our practice this has to be very important in their practice because a
lot of students ask is that well who who was the one that either defined or discovered the qi
right because we talked about the six energy lines that originated from your fingers six energy lines are reaching
from your toes one that runs in the front who who was the one that discovered that well it was actually people who uh
who are meditators who are meditating so so actually um if you if you attend the the 10th day
republican class at the very last day they talk about things that you experience that you
when you leave the retreat center that as you practice you have this coil i
believe it’s called vodka where you start to your body start to dissolve
that you can actually see through your body because what happens is that you’re so uh focused and calm
and and you reach certain states of your meditative
level that your body start to dissolve and so this is this is essentially the particle wave
duality that what you think is is particle can actually be weighed
and the these energy lines these meridian lines were actually discovered by people who have reached that level
that they also you know they don’t they see beyond the body and they start to see these energy lines
so um yeah i was good so i’m going to jump in
real quick and that’s what i hear too from advanced vipassana meditators that there really is even when you reach that
level and there is no really nouns anymore everything is a process so the
the perception that we normally experience life is that kind of falls away or goes deeper
into what denny was just describing of seeing all these micro particles and this constant flux
and everything’s changing so quickly that nothing can really solidify even on a
par you know even what you know we talk about that we look at a solid object but actually
if you could see it in a different way or a more accurate way that it’s that’s actually just small particles and
waves you know uh in a lot of space right so right right so so we so to you know
the full disclaimer is this for myself this is all i hear saying okay
absolutely same here you know i can i i’ve had gradations of getting there but nowhere
anywhere close obviously either you know so and then the quantum thing i wanted to say too quantum information
that’s on the kind of the micro scale right there’s also a macro scale as well
for information okay so i just want to lay some say some groundwork so let’s let’s at
least agree because when we before we can talk about practicing in the desire realms these are things that we have to agree to or
at least open to so we have to be open to the idea that we live in more than just the physical
dimension now whether it’s three or five or you know that’s that’s that’s up to you right but it should
there should be more than one the other thing is that is that we talked a lot about yoga or the yogic
tradition and i mentioned how um what we do on saturday uh is actually um a direct
uh um uh consequence of this uh tradition because we learned a lot
about from buddhism right he was the first patriarch of um
of of zen buddhism and he was a he was a yogi you know he brought
that set of skill to to china and in fact when he when he brought that meditative
meditation skills to china it has completely changed the game for the chinese scholars
that they start to really focus on more on meditation because until then they would they were
alchemists you know so the word ban actually come means red you know there’s another
way of saying red is actually the wax that you put around the pill that you swallow you know so they
until then they that’s called the external dye now but you know internal diamond means that the energy within you
so we’re talking about yoga and it’s important it’s important that um
that in that what we call yoga in america this is
again you know making sure that we understand we are on the same path on the same wavelength what we understand is yoga
in america is either hatha yoga or asanas right and it’s it’s a very tiny part
of the yogic tradition yuki’s philosophy and i i use the word it’s like it’s like chop
suey to chinese cuisine it’s uh i’m not gonna deny that it’s not
part of chinese christine but it’s this definitely not representative of chinese cuisine and it at most it’s a
very tiny aspect of it so when you then look at the yoga this is a what is called the limbs of yoga the american yoga exists
in in the bigger picture that this is called zanus but look at the similarity between what
is called the yoga the yogic practice and what’s called the buddha practice for good reason right because the
historical buddha was yogi himself and so for example i think josh mentioned the other day that there is
something called the breath the parayana which is the practicing of your breath
there is also samadhi there’s you know it’s just it’s it’s all there just different ways of
interpreting the same thing so i think it’s important that we understand that what we call yoga the original
uh indian word it’s called huge or youtube ygjj that one of the uh it comes from
the the the word called york right or the equivalent of english which is the
harness that the indians put in front of the oxen so that they can be synchronized as
into the car so the whole idea of yoga is to create a union between the body
and the mind okay or or having to uh develop a harness between the body
and the mind so for that for that i if we go back to the last graph then the chi i i call the chi the harness
between the body and the mind so i think it’s important that we understand that that even
the yoga is not just a set of fitness exercises right yoga is actually a spiritual
practice so finally kind of bring it home so what we learned what josh and i
learned from a master message you is the stages of mind practice or mental
practice and so it starts with just knowing your mind you know always do you even know you
know what you do are you sitting are you standing where is your mind then once you know your mind then you
start to acquire it and quiet means that you don’t follow you know this is going back to what josh
said he said you know if it hurts understanding the difference between pain and suffering
you know pain is when pain is a physical uh pain but suffering is when the pain
is already gone and you might you still your mind should suffer so so in that case it’s quieting means
don’t follow you know let it appear and then don’t follow so i always use the example uh way back
when i was a child growing up macau and i remember it was a big event
when a western hotel first appeared and there were two um
indian guards seat guard that had these um covering and they were they had they
actually had shotguns and it was very very big and so i always thought about that i would always remember them
and and i remember them because it really better best describe quieting which means that
they’re like the guards you know you you’re like the guards to your scent stores
so your eyes your nose your tongue your ear your mouth you know these these are all your scent stores
and you’re the you’re the dormant guarding these zen stores so what does the government do well when
someone appears you know when you hear the disciples people do like this you break it like
the doorman will treat you but once it’s gone it’s gone you don’t you don’t follow that person to the elevator
okay so this is what quieting means and then eventually contemplating observing
and then it goes beyond that and so i think that i believe that the first three stages which are not
linear they’re more like a circle a little bit of knowing a little bit of quieting a little bit uncomfortable in
fact master always said that if you are moving then you start observing before you get
the quiet thing and when you’re stationary you start requiring you know and so it’s a circle i
i i’m pretty convinced that this is what master had in mind when you talk about my
body again body as in gaia okay so mindfulness is satay and body is gaia
so it’s very important that when you talk about mindfulness as a body you include your thinking mind now i’m
not go ahead oh yeah i just wanted to jump in here real quick and uh you know a few things these tend to
to ki interrelate too right because we can you can um when the mind quiets or in
the minds quieting then it’s easier to contemplate the mind it’s easier to know the mind when you know the mind it seems to quiet
down and then you can contemplate it more if you know a little bit more and they just all kind of reinforce and build each
other now denny got the advice some time ago by shifu master jiru that don’t get involved with your breath well
that option also exists when we’re in meditation for our mind we don’t have to get involved with the mind right
and then one other thing is that there is a classic image for um uh uh mindfulness and and i’ve mentioned
other ones before but i think one i left out maybe or maybe not is like a guard at the gate like guinea was
denny was saying that if you it’s like a watchtower guards at the city walls you have one gate and
you have a guard there uh watching people come in and out right yep so it’s the same kind of elevator
metaphor exactly exactly thank you okay so so with that then i want to dive into
this idea of the desire around okay and because i think from that they
explains what what george was talking in the early part of the presentation and then it kind of brings up these
other things which i call the big touches so this is a very complicated picture
and um so i want to simplify it for you so what we this is this is the pot
i would call this the the possibility of existence that it’s
no this is a complicated picture that i said so what’s below this red line is what we call the desire
ram or the to sensor which actually um is separated into the human this is
the human realm or the default realm so this is actually a heavenly realm or called what we call
the diva ring so when you die okay now this is very important that we
understand how how the buddhists think about uh your eternal life that
it’s different from other religions in that the buddhist doesn’t accept the possibility of a soul
a soul is actually a standing stand-alone energy form if you like that actually can go from
one living vehicle to another that’s not what they’re talking about they’re not talking about that they’re they’re
talking about information that is passed on from one entity to another not the energy
this is this is important this is very important that that when we talk about the three dimensions
of um of our existence when you die your body sees to exist
as a whole it still exists as atoms the atoms go back and they know
your energy disappear because it it leads the the living body
what remains is the inflammation that’s what we call karma okay and so when we talk about dying
and eternal life and how when we die uh something remains that gets passed on to
another living body we’re only talking about karma we only talk about the information part
so this is it says that you can you can live as a human or you can live as a diva or you can
live in hell or you can live in what’s called the hungry ghost or you can live as an animal okay
or you can live as a zero so just just but for us for those who are watching you know this is this is the teaching and all that is
called the desire ram okay the sense desire now it turns out that
you can go beyond that and what beyond is what’s called something called brahma
realm now some people get confused because the word brahma exists also here and they tend to think that this is
brahma so that’s not true the brahma realm is everything beyond the desire
okay so the word brahma is actually the name of a god
in the indian tradition who is associated with the creation of
the universe okay so the traditional um
religion not not the hindu religion the traditional indian religion is also monotheist that there is only
one god so it’s very similar to the one modern religion and in that case even that
now this this could be different round and then that actually is separate into two as well and so now you notice that
there’s eight layers one two three four and then four more so these are called the four samadhi
the eight samadhi sorry the eight different levels of samadhi and we separate them into
the form realm and the formless ring so this is the one this is the realm
where you no longer have a physical body and what remains is pure energy
so by form that’s what we meant is it’s a there’s no more material so if you don’t have any material then
there’s one then there’s energy now here this little um this doesn’t
mean i don’t believe that it means no energy i think it means
something that is less energy okay now keep in mind that the historical buddha actually achieved the
upper two the alpha two right but he decided that
even if you can achieve that platoon that you can live beyond your physical dimensions and now you go to the energy
dimensions and then even beyond the energy dimension to something else you’re still not awakened
buddha was the one that after he had achieved the very awkward two layers he came back and invented his own way and his own way
is actually the ninth samadhi the ninth samadhi so they’re they’re eight here in the
nicer one so now now before i talk about the night samadhi
what buddha described as samsara which is the reaper
is everything here everything here not so you could be you could be a diva
and come back as a diva come back as an animal or come back as whatever
or you could even beyond the desire and then somehow eventually come back so
you could be anywhere in here if you if you’re one of these and that’s what stems are you cannot escape
and without all the teaching is that how do you escape the some time how do you escape from the three rounds
and the six uh six uh region okay so just a quick uh quick comment on that
denny um oops is that your mic anyway so yeah if just for bookkeeping purposes
it’s sometimes referred as the three realms and you saw denny’s lines of three different uh delineations there
and i think it’s all each individual one is is there 31 is that what it is yeah okay yeah
the other thing i would say instead of maybe uh coming back or well in a way it is just taking taking
additional birth right the next birth a re uh a rebirth because
you know in buddhism it’s not known as reincarnation it’s known as rebirth right there’s a
there’s a distinction there yeah well very subtle very subtle
and by the way when we say reincarnation it’s the word that it’s the face word is
incarnate so before you jump into that and say
remember that jesus was incarnate that is in the bible okay
so so anyway um so some of some of us we look at that
and say well that’s a bunch of crap you know how could that be okay so again you know i want to bring
you back to modern science so in modern science um
we we talked about the different scientists that came away we talked about newton who discovered the effect of
gravity he didn’t discover gravity he discovered the effect of gravity and in that case he defined gravity as
the force between two mass that is that that is that’s proportional to
the mass inverse proportion of the distance that’s how you define it when when einstein came along he
threw all that out of the window because what he was interested was the absoluteness
of time and therefore what he developed different discovery is called relativity
so basically he says that time should not be absolute the only thing that should be absolutely
the speed of time in history so i’m sure someone else came along and so now when the time is developed it
means that we can each have our own time okay
it’s not random it’s not arbitrary and the time has to do with material
so he even go further and says well because you have again he’s talking about the different domains of existence so if your
existence is in the material with the desire then material has to have
decay you know it would it would it would come into existence and it would decay into the non-existence
that’s the nature of material and because of that you need time but as you move away from
that and you go towards the regions where there’s less material then in a way material is like a
contamination and when you finally get to the singularity where there’s no more
material that everything is energy and there’s no need for time and so he caught that singularity that
black hole now you know the understanding is evolving now people start to talk about
that that’s not the case that we shouldn’t call it a black hole and we shouldn’t call it a big bang you know we are modifying understanding
but the point is that you can define your universe in terms of time
that and if you take all the universe together that has the longest time stand
then that actually corresponds to the regions where there’s less material and this is in a
model where uh like time is the fourth dimension too right so if there’s dimensions beyond that maybe time will
operate differently or not even apply as well right i just wanted to say that you know even if you’re not there’s no requirement as
far as i understand in buddhism to believe this right so you don’t have to believe i don’t have to believe it
exactly it is a consequence that’s right so that’s another good point consequence yeah so i wanna i wanna i wanna go to i
always go to this movie yeah let me let me just real quick danny a comment on the other one
um you know that uh another thing is that advanced yogis okay it’s interesting how
what i hear they will their teachers and stuff will send them into these realms to report
what they experience and it’s interesting how a lot of their reports will seem to line up even though they
haven’t ever even met each other yes and then yeah then he talks
about subtle matter too you know so in these higher realms maybe it’s a form of matter but maybe
it’s not the same type of really dense heavy matter here uh that’s another thing i hear as well like a
subtle yeah so you can go to youtube and listen to talks by different gurus and so one of
my favorite is um talks about how um there are multiple occasions where he
was in the mountain and he thought he was away for a couple of minutes
and when he came back you know all of a sudden he saw everybody around him worship him because it turns out that he
was gone for three weeks you know you hear this kind of story all the time
there’s even a phenomenon they call it missing time some people refer to it as that and in fact massachusetts would talk
about his own experience that when he was when he secluded himself for three years in that in that
in that trailer in maba that one day he was walking he was doing walking meditation
and as soon as he stopped um he he saw he was he woke up because
there was very bright light in his eye and he realized that the sun was shining
through the window and he couldn’t understand it because he had just started
he had just started his meditation walking meditation in the middle of the night and so in
other words the total amount of time was gone you know he he was probably just out for
a second and he came back to six hours so so the point is that
this this was actually depicted in a very famous movie interstellar who was uh co co-written
and and by a very famous scientist who recently received a nobel prize for
gravitational wave he was a professor at cal tech and i was there for three years so i actually saw him
almost every day with stephen hawkins having lunch together but of course you know i was at the kids table
at the faculty club you know dave david but the point is that the story was that um and this is
according to um the technical team who are all scientists from california
this is this is this is true there’s to the science in that the astronauts actually landed
in a planet called planet miller which was opening a black hole and so if
they had some delay and they were there for three hours and then when they came back
to the spaceship which was opening outside of the influence of the gravitational field
his companion had aged at age tremendously because every hour on
the planet miller was seven years on earth now the buddhists have the same thing
the buddhas have the same thing that when we talk about the diva realm you know the one that was still
inside the desire realm that each layers have a different time
and so planet miller every 24 hours is 168 is somewhere between
the yama and the shita sushi somewhere in there so this is i’m not saying that it’s
true or not i’m just saying that at least they’re consistent with another all right i’ll go back to
to the teaching of the historical buddha what was the what is it about the the ninth samadhi
what is what is he trying to say to us so just a couple days ago we was even
yesterday uh i got my new toy working my apple tv so i was able to
watch something on apple on on apple tv and they had this great documentary called the first 2000 days
so they they actually had children from all over the world and they were observing them from from the day that
they were born today when they were ready for kindergarten and one other thing that struck me was that before the
kids were two years old they have no idea who they are so one one segment of the movie was was
the baby was looking at the mirror and she saw herself and her mother
and she didn’t recognize she recognized her mother but she didn’t recognize herself she had no concept of herself and she
she was actually interacting with the other baby as if it was just another baby they had
no concept of property you know it’s not their toy which is someone else’s toy and so
i got to think about that a little bit and i said you know that’s the difference between the spiral core
and the thinking mind the brain that a child in the early stages of
development the brain hasn’t been developed yet but the spiral core are very uh fully
developed so they’re capable of sensing but they’re not capable of intent
okay but as they get older all of a sudden they recognize that that’s what they are and so all the
poor uncle human characteristics would come out they start to argue with you know their parents they don’t
want to do this they want you know this is what they want they don’t you know all that and so if you if you
want to understand that in terms of the buddhist teaching we talk about the five scandals
we talk about the form as being everything that is physical not just with us but also with outside world so
this is when we talk about the eye the ears the nose but also talk about this the sound the the sight the smell and so
forth so everything that is physical is called form and so when our eyes touches
the outside world when the physiology engages the physics it
generates neurology and so the whole thing of a sensation is really creating those neural signals
neurosignal now keep in mind that all nerve endings are at the spiral core okay so the
spiral core if it’s a co-equal partner of to the brain then it is the part that
receives one for sensation now it’s only after that it collects all the all that uh
uh electrical signal that it delivers something to our central brain to our thinking brain
and it’s at the center it is at that stage called perception which is which is really what we call
the mind and the mind has two parts it has the physical part which is called the thinking mind the
brain then it has the the mental part the the the the spiritual part which is actually
what we call the seventh consciousness for those who are interested in studying further that’s what we call the
ego or the self this is when this is when we start to
engage right and so what buddhist is talking about is that the only way that you can escape
samsara the only way that you can become a wiccan is to understand the difference between sensation and perception and what he’s
talking about right here is no thinking mind no thinking like
that sensation with no perception or intent attention without intention right so so this is this is our practice
this is our practice is how do we get there how do we experience it now keep in mind that all the athletes if
josh and i were coaches and we’re trying to coach people to swim or to run or whatever that’s what we
would say is that you know don’t think about it just do it
one way i’ve heard this put denny is um there’s a difference between our experience
and our interpretation of our experience right right because our experience is this
sensation for the most part right what these sensations are and then when we go
to try to put either put images or language to that that’s our interpretation
of those sensations that’s a pers that’s a perception trying to describe our experience
yes yes that’s right that’s right now so i’m now ready to talk about the eight
touches or the eight context because um when when during the saturday class many
times the students at the end of the class would ask a lot of questions you know what do you think of this what do you think of
that and and i get asked a lot privately uh to direct text messages about my
experience with this my experience with this and and and all that and i think the last
time i talk about this is is i said those are all those those
those those um feelings in perception they have to do with our body okay
they are part of the journey don’t think of them as the destination of your journey you’re supposed to
get past that you know so one time i use the example i talk about how i was actually at maba with during the
winter retreat i was there for three weeks and and really getting into the practice and
and and i noticed that um when i after i finished walking meditation half my face
would not and so i went and i raised it on my hand asked to ask the question and then he
started talking about the eight touches and it’s just that that’s a consequence of you
quieting your body without quieting your mind see this is the problem this is i see
many many times that this this is the big problem with meditation there’s even an article that says that
meditation is bad for you it’s bad for you because if you actually walk that path
and you don’t understand that when you say body it meant gaia and gaia includes the thinking mind
then all you’re doing is quieting your five senses your eye your nose your mouth your ear
and your body without quieting your thinking mind and so what happened now is that you’re actually
supercharging your perception see as you walk down this path of form
sensation and perception you don’t know how to you don’t know how to put a you don’t know how to cut off
between the sensation and the perception so if you so josh mentioned the twelve lengths of dependent origination
it’s the same thing over there that if you start with uh ignorance which is a seed for your
your your hindrances and you walk down the path if you don’t know how to stop at the
contact point then it will continue this is actually samsara of our mind
okay so in our in our spiritual path it’s really really important that we
learn to shut off or at least tame our thinking mind
because if you don’t do that this is what happens
if you don’t do that then all of a sudden you have these these sensations these experience and
it gets very confusing and especially if you don’t have an instructor that can guide you like message you would guide us right
then this is actually very dangerous and i know many cases people actually hallucinate
okay now i would get in trouble but i would mention it many religious meditations they do it
for that purpose this is their destination that they want to be with god
and they think that by seeing light is the destination by seeing light is
their ability to see god whereas in our teaching light is weightlessness or
a combination of warm a combination of that so so i’ll break it down now some
people call this the egg context some people call it i just call it intentions because i don’t want to
confuse contact with something else because scientific is a different so these are the things that your center
door your sensory six sensors will start to feel without the sense because you’re so
completely successful in shutting yourself down that without shutting down the thinking mind this is the thinking
mind at work for example um there are people who say i would i would
i would i would meet somebody that i haven’t seen in in many years and i talk about
them how i get into meditation and jokingly only half japanese he says oh how many feet can you jump
there are people who can meditate and levitate themselves or at least jump up and down because this is one of the
big things this is one of the most common touches which is that it’s an interaction of all four elements
in your body that you you start to starting something move or start to gyrate or start to go up and
down okay so this is a big thing your body starts to feel itchy or numbness it’s it’s it’s the sensation
of your nerve system um feeling very cold feeling very hot uh this is the exaggeration of the wind
element which is you start to feel like i said you’re flying as you’re flying through now
i i don’t have this i actually have a little bit of the heaviness
that i feel like my half of my face is is not within my control anymore that is
it it’s uh i’m being cut off from it uh this is another thing the body feels light right so so
a lot of people said you know i want to i what a student came to me privately says i want to learn how to
practice because i want to be closer with god
where does where does god reside god resides in the brahmana space outside the desired space you know
it’s good maybe that’s that’s true i’m not i’m not saying no and you know
so i’m saying well just keep coming to class then
and then and then all that okay so these are the eight touches and they are a result as far as i
understand of us um not able to tame our thinking mind this
is going back to the to the last one now it’s very very important that you understand the five standards do you
understand how sensations lead yourself to perception that you understand that our practice is
is about not going to perception because the the original buddha
was the one that says that in order to break out of these three rams and go beyond the formless ram
you have to do this perception transition without perception
well and denny i think we’re going to have to wrap it up here soon i appreciate that i think i might have had to um
we’ll have to put off my sec uh the other topic i had potentially uh for another time perhaps now i want
to say leave some behind yes maybe a teaser for the next time oh
yeah and of course yeah uh letting go right so now i want to say a comment the eight
touches i guess i didn’t i wasn’t familiar with these and this is not an invalidation
um i will say that that was reminded me a lot i think there was only one that wasn’t on there
some of the four element practices i think maybe in the pa tradition during some of the samata
practices and some of the um the jhana practices uh part of it will
lead up to a four elements practice and one of the things is actually going through uh
like for the earth element paying attention and investigating in the body the hardness the softness the roughness
the smoothness and i forget the other there’s another one and then for air it is the kind of the pressure
uh and maybe movement and support and then for the fire it’s the hot and cold and then the water
is um i i’m forgetting that one as well but you know it’s really interesting because
i guess it depends on what type of practice what the intent is and then i guess also
what the practitioner’s predisposition is if it’s that certain practice is helpful
or not and then even more on an ultimate level of you know if you only have so much
time what’s going to be the most beneficial here so yeah i think i think yeah i’ll put i i just
put this slide up and i i wanna i wanna just repeat something that i said before that
um i i stay away from
understanding whether something is right or wrong yes i i stay focused on whether they’re
right for me or not right for me so each practice has its own history
and has its own groups of authorities so very often we get confused with the
practice with the practitioner okay so for example in our saturday practice
we talked about
i would say that that’s not the buddhist practice that actually is that prowess practice
but it’s a good for me it’s a it’s a good warm-up exercise it’s a thing that i use but keep in mind what what exactly
what is the objective of the balance the objective of the dials is very simple that after
the current life they like to be reborn as a diva so they’re completely focused on what is
called a heavenly ground and so so buddha actually talked
about this in the 40 forms of meditations where there’s one that
actually combines all four elements and that’s exactly the microcosm of it so there you actually are using your
thinking brain because in fact it is the thinking brain that provides the voltage potential that allows the electrons
to go from your content up your spine and and down
so there you that’s yeah now when you talk about the yogi practice
then when the word yogi actually they don’t separate the word mind from brahman so when they say it’s a
union between the body and the mind they are actually talking about the union between the body and the brahman so they want to
be with the problem this is this is going to talk about they’re talking about returning
yes to the brahmana state and this is what the few key points i left out with that is
that’s not a preliminary practice right so the from what i gather if i’m getting this right it’s to
build up a lot of stability to be able to go into that and not get so discombobulated
another thing is i just recently learned that that practice well another thing that practice you’re
not using the thinking mind you’re just uh you’re noticing without any kind of thought supposedly if i’m getting that
right too the other big key point and it relates to what you just said is i just recently learned that that stuff comes from the
vasuti maga and who wrote the vasudi maga was what was it buddhaghosa right
was it buddhaghosa and i heard that he wrote that because he wanted a rebirth in a
heavenly realm so the whole the suti maga if that’s the case was was his way to try to get into a
heavenly realm so that’s really important too but then i also feel that that for elements
practice is only practice with the intent that this is going to deepen concentration deepen penetration
into reality with the sole intent of reaching nibana not a rebirth in the heavenly realm all
right yeah so again again it’s important to understand the journey from the destination so
again if i put up this line again answering that question you know i want to learn my vision from you so i can be
closer to god so to be closer to god is the destination
then these it touches is the indication that you have reached your destination
but if your practice is so that you want to be something else you know
and there’s so many so much to choose from then this is just part of the journey
very well put okay all right denny i appreciate this was a
good this is a good show yes there are some technical challenges today well yeah i almost forgot about those
yeah we got through it we got to do it it’s good that it’s good that we have so many um
tools at that disposal when doesn’t work we try another one that’s right another key in the keychain
okay i gotta fix up something and then i’ll send you the link okay sounds good all right thanks again jenny thanks everyone thanks everyone
everybody out there yes we see you in a month yes take what’s useful and leave the
rest right from this [Laughter]
okay okay bye-bye
Integrating Presence 