Listen to the unedited recording: https://join.wisdom.audio/i9PN
We primarily address what meditation actually is while spiraling up, around and back on this topic to also include:
- Examples of what is and isn’t meditation
- Mind training
- Intention
- Stop being aware exercise
- Consciousness
- Awareness
- Focus
- Familiarity with the mind
- Heart qualities
- Wisdom
- Aspiration
- Development
- Self-help
- Addressing ego’s yearning for control
- Vipassana
- Investigation and inquiry
- Samatha
- Con-CENTration
- Stillness in the eye of the storm vs excluding
- Western notion of concentration being tight with a lot of effort
- Jhana
- Mind spaciousness
- Pros and Cons of goals and attainments
- Wendy’s practicing with viewing and responding to retreat organizers canceling and not returning all the deposit
- Ego:
- Positive ego
- Negative ego
- Superior ego
- Inferier ego
- Spiritual ego
- Responses to the statement “Emotions are thoughts” in Wendy’s discussions with a meditator:
- Dogs crying tears of joys for their owners after long separation
- The human animal
- Labeling emotions vs the actual emotion
- Overly identifying with thoughts
- Is hurt and pain a thought?
- Yogācāra or Chittamatra school of Buddhism
- Blindspots
- Theory vs lived experience
- Involvement of perception
- Heart quality balancing
- Wisdom:
- as capacity to see interrelatedness of everything
- Everything empty of any inherent quality in and of itself
- Qualities arise interdependently
- The ultimate unhappiness of materialism
- Chögyam Trungpa
- Spiritual materialism
- Scoundrels and charlatans in spirituality
- Conceit
- Foolishness
- Social connection and belonging
- Emotional mirroring
To calendar add and directly join the next live “Meditation Q & A” on November 30, 2022 at 7:30pm Central: https://insig.ht/VmKTuPXyGub or join via downloading the free Wisdom app in your app store or via: https://wisdom.audio where I’m @integratingpresence
*There’s naturally an ongoing open call for meditation (related) questions for the (roughly) monthly “Meditation Q & A” either by the various social media means listed on the site; integratingpresence[at]protonmail.com or just showing up on Insight Timer live or Wisdom App to type/ask live. It’s cliché but there really are no dumb questions.*
Meditation Q & A Series Background
Regular, current and past visitors to Integrating Presence may recall the monthly series “Ask Us Anything” I did with Denny K Miu from August 2020 until January 2022 — partially including and continuing on with Lydia Grace as co-host for awhile until March 2022.
For a few months thereafter I did various Insight Timer live events exploring potential new directions and/or a continuation of the Ask Us Anything format while weaving in other related teachings to these events.
Then, after chats with meditation coach Wendy Nash, it became clear to start a new collaboration similar to “Ask Us Anything” simply and clearly called “Meditation Q & A” especially due to the original intent of the Ask Us Anything’s being “discussions about meditation and related topics.”
Past chats with Wendy:
Audio: What Is Meditation? | 11/2/2022 “Meditation Q & A With Wendy Nash” #02
The raw unedited YouTube transcription of this podcast:
all right wholeness welcome this is Josh dippold of integratingpresence.com and today again I have uh the lovely Wendy
Nash with me Wendy how’s it going yeah good thank you I think I’m I’m not muted I’m muted
oh I can okay you can hear me it’s going okay it’s just I’ve got the inside timer it
says tap to unmute so I’m going I don’t know what to do but I’ll just if you can hear me this is all good it is yeah
don’t unmute on insight timer um okay all right that’s it’s I’m new to this so yeah to our listener listening
and people other everyone involved um I apologize for my lack of technical
expertise there you go yes and so the other thing is I’ve got
this kind of rig very interestingly we’ve got uh Zoom going on I’ve got my
external microphone getting Wendy’s um audio so it will go into insight
timer because if you look at inside timer it’s just me so um but the video will be available later
and yeah thanks for all who joined last time and yeah here we go so
I guess we we did not get any questions to start off with which is okay because
I have plenty of uh great questions to start us off with and um if anybody
could just that’s here could just chime in in the chat and see they can hear okay and anything like that that would
be great um so the first one is the the most basic
and obvious right and I’ll drop the question in the chat too what is meditation
treat the other day it was just a half one with beginner people can you hear me okay yeah yep great I moved my mic to be
a little bit better okay um and that that’s a common question
and and I’ve been really reflecting what is it because there’s a whole lot of
info out there and people have ideas about it and the I uh one time I had a neighbor and she
said my kind of meditation is reading a book and that is relaxation so that is not
meditation so I can say that is not meditation somebody else I know said I like in my
form of meditation is to take a stroller along the beach and two and I’m like that that’s not
meditation that’s relaxation somebody else said I like to sit on the
bank and watch the waves go by and just let my thoughts you know come and go and
and all the rest and that is also not meditation that is contemplation so
slightly different but similar somebody
um so somebody else said you know I get
when I’m in a bad mood I sit at the piano for a couple of hours and then my thoughts clear
and I come out and I’m like a new person and I said yeah that’s flow that’s not meditation
and he also said you know I used to get really angry in the traffic and when
somebody went past I’d be like right I’m really angry but I’m training myself so
that every time a car goes past I just don’t react and I said that is
meditation because it’s training the mind so even though it’s a very short
moment it’s just an instant it’s this guy driving past he’s really making the
effort to think how do I want to be in the world and bringing Consciousness and awareness to his behavior to retrain the
mind to be less angry so that’s what I would say what about you Josh
you know you think that if I would ask this question and I’m gonna co-host the show I would have a better answer and I
love this answer Wendy how you gave real life examples of working with people of
their definition of meditation and if I can just jump on and amplify the Mind
training aspect of it you know um now if we were to look at the
attention or awareness aspect of meditation in a way the prior examples
um I’ve heard someone say before that we’re always meditating on something meaning that are um it’s probably not a
good definition but our attention is somewhere all the time so we so we can
we can test this out right now with this classic uh example okay I want you to
just stop paying attention for a second just stop being aware just just cut it out and stop it all together okay give a
few seconds like it’s impossible right there’s no
way we can really do that and even when we’re lost in thoughts are entangled there’s some kind of attention going on
and this is a fascinating thing too I’d like to maybe pick up on like but then we kind of like wake out of uh wake up
out of it and then we’re like oh wow I’ve just been lost in thoughts for like five minutes or 10 minutes or who knows
how long or I’ve been just entangled in this emotion I didn’t even really realize it until I’ve got this reference
point of oh yeah that’s not happening now so yes so I think I’ve um I’ve kind of
kind of skirted the question here just a little bit um but if you want to pick back up on
that and before you do I wonder if we we’re just going to go ahead with the
recording here but for whatever reason it’s saying one meditator present in the inside timer room so I’m wondering if
that leads me to feel that it’s something’s not going on do you see a status count
I can just see one meditator here so that’s uh that’s highly unlikely I’ve never really had that before because it
should be two at least it should be you so um if you if you’d like to keep and I’m
going to try this again we’re going to stay on zoom and keep talking but okay do some rejicking
so this is very interesting so this is like what do two meditators do when
there is a technical glitch yes you just and this is the nature of it
you know like we are kind of um stuck in this I think there is no one
here like I don’t I think we’re in a room of our own yes I don’t I don’t get
it there’s really no other option and it seems to be this I wonder if inside timer is having technical difficulties
or what’s going on here but uh anyway it’s it in my dashboard that’s
the only option I hit enter it seems like it’s going um I guess the other thing we could do
really briefly is uh just hop back on Zoom do you want to do that should we do that all right I’ll come
back on okay let’s try that all right
again there was potential technical difficulties there could just be nobody’s tuning in right now either ah
because I really didn’t it didn’t look much different and now it still says uh one meditator here it’s just Wendy and I
but anyway it’s okay so even if nobody shows up we’ve got some people on Webster map listening and also uh the
recording too so we were talking about what is meditation and uh we don’t have to go over that again because we’ve
already um talked about that and I can stitch this the recording together and
um so we were talking about we’re always paying attention to something right there’s awareness all the time and
sometimes when we wake up out of what we’ve been uh what we’ve been entangled
in or lost in do you have any how to address that I’m I guess in practice or just some overall comments and wisdom
about that I think that is consciousness like there is always consciousness
and the Consciousness and awareness are not the same so for me they are really
different and focus is not the same so I guess I think for me I like the I like
the Tibetan Buddhist approach sort of idea of it so the Tibetan Buddhist word
for meditation is gone which is familiarization you may know this which
is how familiar are you with the mind and their definition is that it is about
mind training because you know I’ve thought about if you sit on the side of the there are
people I know who the the person I know who said oh I sit by the side of the river and water and
watch the you know just let my thoughts subside is to me
the problem with that is it’s not actually thinking ahead how do I want to
be in my life ahead what sort of qualities of heart what sense of wisdom
how can I learn from this what can I change what can I develop and I guess that’s a bit kind of what do they call
that uh self-helpy which is sort of a little bit where we’re at but
to me I guess the really big thing is is
it addressing the egos yearning for control
it’s big but remind me of that again I want to pick up on some of the things and said there and what yes it’s
there’s got to be a point to it right I mean there’s so many pointless things we do in our lives are seemingly pointless
it seems like there’s an intent and a goal involved right a reason a purpose for
um meditation um and I think a distinction that might be relevant to be brought in here is
um in tarabada things and I’m not going to
go too much into the vipassana but from what I understand with just the summit to training is it is just bringing the
attention back over and over again so it is a type of training right so there is a even though it’s very simple you’re
doing one single thing over and over again there’s a point to it it is to increase concentration or a samadhi to
to cultivate samadhi and it’s like unifying the Mind Gathering the Mind
collecting the mind and I guess yeah unifying and calming as well and this is
for uh at least in the Buddhist perspective it’s not just because it just feels good which it does and this
also relates to what Wendy was talking about earlier about you know reading a book why these things often feel good is
because we keep our attention focused on one thing over and over again not exactly the same thing here though but
this is in um service to building up the Mind
strength so it can be TR um so it can focus like a laser
sometimes that’s one perspective of it another way is it just um kind of unify gather collect the mind
and feel good you know a pleasant abiding so but on the laser approach when that’s when that’s built up that
faculty is built up then it can be um aimed at things for investigation like
things in papasana right um so it’s it’s often like into a tripod
and maybe I’m going too many different directions here but um the stabilization of
um sambata is like having this firm grounding and base
to able to aim that attention wherever we want that’s one approach of it
now Wendy’s comments about addressing the ego was it at the end there
yeah like the point isn’t to get to a particular state of mind that’s right so
because I just want I just want to say something that my understanding of is that it’s not about it’s not
concentration as in super tight narrowing it’s concentration as in it’s centering in
the midst so think of the eye of the storm and that’s that Gathering Fusion
kind of thing so it’s not excluding it’s just holding still in the midst of the
storm and I quite like that that and I would say that is that I personally
don’t like I got to shamita this morning meditation this morning and I was going this is kind of boring I’m full on an
Insight person I love the personal style of like investigation and inquiry
because I really I used to be really angry and I and I want to understand how
to not be angry anymore like that driver so anyway I digress
same way because it’s I find it boring as well and just have to know that this is a training and it’s a very important
point because a lot of teachers say they put this Western notion of concentration or you really got to Bear down and
tighten up and focus really tight on one thing so uh I this Con uh centration
right like you’re centering yourself it’s such a beautiful way so um yeah it’s kind of a quick and dirty
interpretation to say concentration it’s not what we usually mean here in the west but by that as well so and that’s
the thing so um a lot of times we’d like to go with our
strengths and there’s this notion that we should continue with our strengths right and and build them up uh because
you know um so we don’t get too distraught and discouraged on the on the other hand
though you know those weaknesses also need to be addressed somehow I feel
um so this is something I probably have to do more of as well is this
summer time practice in yeah because it can I mean this is the
thing that goes in can go into Jana too um which I’m gonna put set aside because
there’s so I mean it’s like a Buddhist trigger word I think we’ve mentioned this before um so many people have so many different ideas about what Janna is
and what isn’t things like this of course I’m always open to hearing people’s I just hesitant to say myself
just because it’s so no that’s not that’s not uh that’s not Jonna you know
okay and the monastics and terrible tradition from what I understand they’re not allowed to disclose their
attainments anyway right so they can’t say if they’ve had second genre third genre and we’ve I’ve talked about this
before the pros and cons of that as well yeah yeah so I think you know like there
were I heard about this these Retreats that the CEOs and you know San Francisco
like Tech gurus they go on like a week they get all wired up in the mind and
then they get into these Blissful States and so they have this idea that this is enlightenment
but Enlightenment but they have done nothing about the
sort of egoic Yearning For control for engaging for for being right for having
a very dualistic mind so the ego will divide into good and bad you know when
you’re at the second level of Jannah so Jana just to unpack that for people because I see we’ve got four meditators
here so thank you very much to our four meditators um for joining this call
um but Janna is a sort of a particular
I guess uh way of a sort of a particular spaciousness in the mind a quality of
spaciousness and there are different um they call them attainments it sounds
so like you’ve got it and Merit you know it’s all these these funny words that have this we’re so driven we think okay
you’ve got to be a good person and you’ve got to attain this as if it’s some sort of University degree or
something like that so I think it’s just it’s not whatever we think it means in
English it doesn’t so so it just it’s just like something that happens and you
know you can train the mind to have that but I often wonder how much of that can
still keep the ego in check because as eckatiel says if the ego can sneak in by
the back door and I know that from my own self and and I know that from others
so yeah I think we have four meditators more I would really love to hear what
it’s if somebody one of the four of you hello could just ask us a question that would be really lovely
um that would be very nice so please do okay so that’s why we’re waiting for
questions here it could be anything I mean it could be from the basic thing don’t you know I won’t call you out if
you don’t want or you know not call out I mean say your uh username if you if you wish not to too so we can just leave
that Anonymous unless you’d like um so I want to pick up though on the the Jonna thing as attainments and then
ego too so these are really big topics um attainments on I totally agree everything when you said at at the same
time on the other end of the spectrum the the polarity of this is well you know the positive side of attainments if
there can be one is that it keeps people that are goal driven and something to look forward to however just that in
itself can be a challenge for some people because they don’t know how to help
um I think that there can be challenges in trying to uh set goals in meditation
although I think they sometimes are needed to keep people on track right these different stages of in life and
things like that they can be Health helpful reference points or markers or things to
um I guess benchmarks in order to talk to teachers and friends about but it’s
yeah before all that have to look at am I clinging to attain this am I overly
striving to attain something am I put putting the importance on the attainment or lack of attainment so those are all
issues and potential trouble spots at you know at the same time
um if those are very helpful if those attainments are something that help the practice overall and Lead towards
addressing the ego properly and Lead towards our long-term happiness and well-being in the happiness and
well-being of others and everyone then I would say um yes just be careful how you go about
these attainments that are mentioned that you hear meditators talk about and at the same time we don’t it’s really
tricky because one of the reasons I’ll just say now that that monastics don’t talk about their attainments is because
it gets it can well can get into competitions if you have one monk that’s more attained than the others well then
they might give him more food they might pay more attention to him and neglect others so there’s it’s a whole big ball
of wax I would just say investigate this for yourself um and the human it just what it says is
The Human Condition and just just meditating for 20 years and you’re
a monastic doesn’t say anything about whether you know your dirty tricks you
know Tibet was a feudal system they the sort of the government was you know all
Buddhist but it was very futile and lots of murders and skullduggery and by the
senior community um yeah people in the community and you
know we all know that you know there have been Mis misbehaviors by senior
monastics and actually I had an interesting so here’s here’s one for you Josh just on a
slightly different note so um I um
I signed up for a retreat and it cost quite a lot of money
and the retreat got canceled because something big happened by the people and
they they said actually we we’re going to have to not only postpone this but we’re going to cancel The Retreat and
they aren’t holding another one so there’s nothing else to do and I have a bit of a deadline with regards to it I
can’t go into it but but just that and so they refunded everything but a
hundred dollars US dollars they said we’re not going to do that because it’s a unrefundable registration
fee that’s what you ticked when you signed up of course I thought well if I
opt out that means I won’t get a refund of a hundred dollars and that’s I kind of get that but they canceled it and
they’re saying no we’re not going to give that back so it’s very interesting to look at that from a Dharma
perspective so this is a Dharma organization offering a Dharma Buddhist retreat
and I’m a Dharma practitioner and I’m going
what do I how do I respond to that actually because you know like I a
hundred dollars in Australian dollars that’s a hundred and fifty dollars it’s over 100 it’s like 158 dollars for us
that’s that’s you know like um
three weeks of food for me so that’s a lot of money and
so I’ve got that but then I’m thinking well it’s the Dharma but then they haven’t given me a choice and it’s very
interesting to have to sit here and go well how much are my identifying with it
how much am I going this is my right this is unacceptable which is plenty and
it’s a complicated question so yeah I would I would I mean I’ve said
this is just really not the go you cannot do that like really I’d like my money back you you guys canceled it and
I get it I understand and but your insurance is going to cover it so we live in this commercial world where this
is what is the deal so yeah cough up and so but it’s interesting to see that so
you too have that response and I was telling my partner and he too had that response
but but sort of what is acceptable if I had given an option for it if they had
said okay we’ll take five ten dollars you know as just to cover our costs because it has cost a bit of money to
set up but it but there was something a bit hard line about it which made me feel like that’s the ego you know the
ego we talked about the ego before Rises up and when I feel like I’ve met the ego I too rise up with the ego and it
becomes this kind of kabang in the middle then what was interesting for me is historically I’ve always kind of yielded
because I thought oh well I can’t ask and they’ve decided that and I’ll just get angry and whatever but I’ll just
walk away and this time because of my Dharma practice I said
I I am not happy with that outcome and this is
this is not right so it’s interesting to look at the role
of money in this in this world and the Dharma which says you shouldn’t
be attached to money and material Goods but we need money because I’ve got to go out of the supermarket and buy things
so I’ve got to pay rent all that sort of stuff very fascinating question with something that doesn’t interest me too
much however in this case is is extremely important I feel because yeah
well at so many levels as well then we bring in the spirit of generosity right in the Dharma practice right you’re
giving from the spirit of generosity we’re talking about a deposit here right we’re not talking about uh okay we’re
asking for donations here right not at all uh we’re talking about okay well you
know who does the onus lie on you know so this the obvious to jump right to a fix
you know because I like to fix things right um so this is something I haven’t seen people written it right at their policy
uh this needs to be addressed I feel like it really would be simple plainous day to write it in there if the retreat
is canceled by any reason so and so this is how it works out right if you don’t agree to those terms of conditions not
so it seems like it happened upon a gray area where they hadn’t written that into the agreement right I think that is to
jump to the to the end here they didn’t say anything about okay if we cancel this is what happens or did they did
they say that they may have said you know it’s a couple of months ago I don’t really remember and um and you know whatever and for me
I have to do this Retreat because it’s part of some other part of process and I have to do it by a particular deadline
and they aren’t offering an alternative Retreat and all you know so it’s basically they’re
not offering an alternative Retreat so yeah so it’s very interesting to kind of sit here going actually I’m really not
happy about this yeah I’m really really not happy and so I have a I have an
expressive kind of clingy character and I have an aggressive tendency and an angry tendency so I’m sitting here kind
of I’m really pissed off you know and I’ve worked with anger for 20 years and
just to sort of see that arise but what I do notice is that even though I am very angry about that decision
there is nonetheless still something which feels calmer than it would have
been less temper tant for me than it would have been so yeah it’s it’s a it’s a it’s a
complex it’s an interesting situation but yet the sort of the basic understanding is that when you sign up
for a retreat if the retreat is canceled of course they will fully refund
that’s right and and so because you can’t just go setting up Retreats and can’t I mean if there’s no not nothing
to address that then people can set up Retreats all the time until people catch on and nobody joins them because they’re
canceling their treats and taking all them taking the deposit money so that’s this the obvious like realistic part of
this but like when he’s talking about the even deeper significance of this is when we’re tested in life and this comes
up right and then this ties into the ego too one way to look at ego is like a positive ego and a negative ego and even
further is a um by negative I mean by positive ego I mean so we can walk around in life and our name or like our
social security number in the states right and we can we know that we’re like interacting with people and that this is
called Josh or whatever people call this Josh things like that right and that uh but there’s also like an inferior
inferior ego and a superior ego and then we get into spirit spiritual egos too so
I like this delineation as well so so then we can see this when things like
this happen and how we respond and Wendy I would say um you don’t seem like there’s any kind
of trace or shred of Anger from this at all it seems like and at the same time
it’s not like you’re cold and emotionless either it seems like this is really a well-balanced process it was it
was viewed and responded to you know very healthily so we’ve got personality
types that are they need more assertiveness then we have some personality types that there I’ve
started way too much right they probably need to maybe back down a little bit or you know so that goes with this inferior
in Superior ego and which I feel this type of meditation practice helps first
see that very clearly and know this and then also kind of course correct or bring it more into balance as well and
then when we set that aside well then we’ve got or I’ve got spiritual ego now right so and that’s a whole other ball
of Wax yeah yeah actually you know that that’s one thing I’ve been I’ve been
really thinking about because because I know somebody and he is very very clear
and yet we have these conversations and I’m like that’s pure ego
so it’s this very strange conundrum where he he sees the ego in its fullness
and yet his character is kind of hooked in and here’s a question for you he says
emotions are thoughts now I kind of go actually there’s a physicality to it so
some new researchers has came out the other day I was reading it and it said that when dogs
are rejoined with their owner after a time apart they had get tears to me so
they cry when they see their their owner because they’re so delighted and
physical tears watering yeah so they have physical tears of joy when they see
their owner they are connected with them and I think okay well if a dog has got
the capacity for joy and you know and my partner once saws um I would say
cockatoos or Galas or something like that parrots and they had apparently Just Had Sex he really said wow and one
and and and and he and his cockatoo just went with delight you know he was just like
whoa this is a great old time this is my plan is very very sensitive and he
listens to the birds and he’s really good and he goes oh they’re having a Nike time today aren’t they so he’s
really good at at kind of understanding what birds are saying and animals and
how they’re saying so I think actually if animals have got emotions
and we are animals how can an emotion just be a thought is
that the labeling of the emotion or is that the emotion so I was just curious do you have a perspective on that
so that’s right I see a delineation right and not going into the whole state
where um there’s no certain you’re not giving distinctions to anything right I’m not talking about this state of
consciousness and by the way we could maybe backpedal and Define consciousness awareness and attention which I feel is
helpful but for this particular thing uh it’s a fascinating thing I obviously I
would say this is an outlier I like to hear what he says about this because I’ve never come across this before and
it just it it makes me think about when I overly identified with thinking so
much that it was that the predominant predominance and it’s almost like
I wonder if this meditator lives in the mine pretty much and what’s that’s where
they’re comfortable and that’s what they think everything is related to that and there are schools where it’s Consciousness only mind only things like
that so I’m not talking about that either really because yes and so what
it’s even more fascinating about this is how can we how can we or I guess we
Wendy a meditation teacher address this so it can be experienced for oneself right
so um I wonder I mean just as an example I’m not encouraging to hit someone but like
if he experiences pain or something okay is that a thought I mean do you have a a an emotion of hurt or pain is that a
thought what would I wonder what he would say about that just a practical example yeah you know there he he is so
he when we were talking about it I would say he has the and this is uh so
apologies to people um this is the chicken Matra School the mind-only school he really you know I am
is the only single thing that you can say for sure I exist that is true that’s
the only thing you can be sure of it is a very Cartesian perspective I would say it would just be existence because who’s
the eye but we’re not going to that now I guess yeah yeah well you know but that
that’s right but you know he says that but everything else is kind of you cannot be sure of and so that’s why he
says that oh so you’ve been to school then he is in the school I thought oh this is
like a a new meditator or something oh no oh he’s like and he’s very clear like
he’s very very Advanced so I I’m always really curious in terms of my own Dharma
practice about my own blind spots and where you can get caught you’ve just pixelated by the way something really is
real is it is it better now uh no it’s all gone blurry and pixelated we’re still here because as long as you can
still hear me there you are there you are you’re back you’re back yeah I’m always curious not so much about what is
the theory of meditation because it’s great you can read it from book you listen to a talk and yeah I’m meditating
but then when it’s like how do you apply that what is that where do we get stuck
where are our blind spots so these questions that I’m asking and then I’m kind of these topics are raising that
Gray Line Between well is it isn’t it how do you respond so I’m a full human
being how do I navigate this space it’s very experiential sorry Josh very
much so maybe we can invite him on to talk because I really haven’t studied this school much you know and I guess we
could look at um this is perception as well so he’s well we’re perceiving that there are the
perception of of feeling and emotion as well as the perception of mind and
thinking right or um but then he’s only perceiving everything as mine or our thoughts right
in a way right so that’s in a way maybe this is more of a talk about perception
than it is those those things as well so the perceptual level gets very can get
very very subtle um as well so yeah I haven’t studied I haven’t studied this much it would be
fascinating to have maybe a dialogue about this or talk about this maybe actually this is exactly what he says he
says it’s all perception so this is exactly you’ve hit the nail on the head so thank you very much Josh you kind of
answered my question because I feel like he’s very egoic in the middle of it and yet he has this phenomenal capacity for
awareness so I think it’s a such a conundrum to in his presence and I fully
like when I’m I’m in his presence and I I just go into this full awakened State
you know it’s really lovely and I’m like oh this is all ego this is really interesting I’m I’m kind of really
receptive to his his way of being but I feel like he’s not relating he also
doesn’t relate to people so he’s not listening to people in a really hard way
so you know into the emotional landscape yeah you go maybe he might ask you well
um why do you think it’s ego you know it it just I wonder if he he has never said
that but that’s true so how would he um how would this school um address the heart you know heart qualities as well
so that it seems like because this seems I’m more on wisdom level where it’s if it’s not balanced with heart quality it
gets really cold and like disconnected from reality and this is where the true
truth teaching I feel can be very helpful too there’s the conventional uh truth in that there’s an ultimate truth
right yeah no that work that explains so I mean um
it explains so much uh and can be applied so many different places to to
gain clarity now um how that’s how that teaching is laid out there’s there’s there’s levels of helpfulness about how
it’s done too but yeah so I just want to just um say for our 12 meditators who are
listening here that wisdom in this term is not about how much knowledge do you
have or anything like that wisdom is a technical term and it means the capacity
to see the interrelatedness of everything and that everything nothing has an inherent quality in and of itself
it is empty of any particular quality and that to have equality it arises
dependent on other things so everything is contextual and that is what how we
gain meaning and so when you see that you become wise to the kind of foolish
errands that we are all on thinking things make us happy and that thing can
be a person or it can be a relationship or a car not not necessarily materialistic in terms of a car house
whatever but there was a time about 10 years ago I was in a different relationship and
um I we came out of the supermarket and I said it was my birthday I think and I
said wow I’ve got a good relationship I’ve got a job I like I have friends I
like I’m getting on well with family I have good health physical and mental but
I’m still unhappy and um and so what I realized is that I had
been quite materialistic at some level about those things that they would give
me happiness now none of them are technically materialistic but I realized
that I had actually been expecting those things to give me happiness so that
shift of like that’s outside me and it’s going to make me happy I think is the
materialist perspective in some kind of way is it is that what you feel absolutely and I hear this more and more
I’ve had at least one guest in my podcast that come to this realization she had everything that Society told her
that she should have to be happy and they were kind of external things and so she dropped all those and yeah it just
uh it really is the case as far as I’m concerned this then I wonder if this even touches on spiritual materialism as
well I’m forgetting how some people uh Define that but that’s what came to mind when you were talking too yeah yeah I
think my understanding and spiritual materialism that’s a term um that charging trumpet uh came up with
and so he’s in the Tibetan tradition just to let people know and
hey that was something that so we talked before about the genres
a very very controversial figure he was he was he was out of the Samuel Ling in
Scotland um and that’s why he ended up in America but he actually went via from Tibet to
India he fled part of the occupation the invasion of Tibet he ended up in India and because of Frieda um Betty
um she had connections with Oxford because she’d been to Oxford and so she got him and a cup and another one called
up into Oxford and then they actually started a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery
called samueling in Scotland but changing trinka was such a drinker and
womanizer they just said we cannot have you here so and so he was like select
bang at the time of the sexual revolution in the 60s and he was having a whale of a time and so the yeah it was
all kind of I’ve heard even like a worse accusations or not I don’t even know if they’re accusations if they’ve been
proven or not I won’t go into that now but yeah I mean if that wasn’t enough what Wendy just said I’ve heard things
that are go beyond that even and far into the unskillful side but anyway go
ahead and well you mean we can argue I mean we could talk about uh different stages of the path too about but anyway
you to pick back up where you’re at there yes yes sorry so I you know what
that says is you know there are many charlatans and many Scoundrels in the
spiritual world don’t be foolhardy and just leap in not witnessing not keeping
your wits about you because some people are very charming and and they have a
certain level of accomplishment and attainment and Clarity but that doesn’t mean to say they don’t have Jinx in
their behavior yes yeah yeah yeah yeah so you know you
and me we’re we’re you know I am deeply flawed yes well yeah well I mean you’re
a little bit of tongue-in-cheek there but no I mean so yeah we haven’t reached full Awakening yet if it’s not obvious
so until we do right I am deeply flawed I am deeply flawed I am so far from
being perfect let me tell you you know so yeah but to go back to spiritual
materialism what you know think about to me it reminds me of that that question
that we had about the janas these States of uh presence of the mind which is what a genre is or a Diana it’s also called
just according to the language and um and that’s really saying I’ve reached
the first one so therefore I’ve got this kind of I’m this kind of quality of good
that is spiritual materialism I’ve had this kind of uh you know you meditate
and you have a particular sort of some something arises experience or Escape yes yeah exactly and then you say well
I’m a better person than you because I’ve had that and it’s very subtle you know it’s super subtle totally caught
that I’m so I still get caught there it’s so irritating
well yeah you know it’s like yeah so it’s just like that where did this
capacity and habit for comparing ourselves and you know because the
Buddha said that uh you know thinking I’m greater than someone is conceit well that’s obvious right thinking I’m less
than someone that’s conceit too and this is the people with like the inferior ego I’m not good enough I’m not as good as
them but the most subtle is thinking I’m just as good as someone right that says
oh I’m just as good as that person you would think well maybe there’s some equality there well I uh it’s subtle but
I could I could say this time and time again I could never imagine Wendy’s unique Brilliance nor she could she
match mine and that it’s where all the greater for that because if we were all on the same level it would just like
this gray blob hive mind of how boring and homogenized that would be as well right
so it was very interesting as you said you know Wendy’s amazing unique yes and I was going well I’m not really amazing
but I’m definitely more amazing than you Josh it was just like quickest so you had both you had inferior ego and
Superior ego right and equal rights
wow it was quick as a flash it just arose and I’m only saying this because
you know it’s just like this is just the nature of we are kind of yeah I’m deeply flawed I’m I’m not there I
guess the only thing I would say is you know I call it out and I’m like yeah I’m a doofus you know I might my favorite my
favorite line is you know about the Great Master it’s his birthday today and he said last year old fool this year no
change and I definitely feel that that’s I it’s more that I become more aware of how
foolish I am I suppose that’s what I would say well and then I would say that well I also I obviously did the same
thing and it’s like when I look at Wendy oh I’ve you know I’m here and she’s there or she’s here and I’m there and oh
but we’re here you know so but the foolish thing is I I love the way they
put it I mean it brings it right down to earth and at the same time just seeing that you’re just because you can see
that you’re no fool right well I’m still you know like you know but it’s it’s just it’s like the ego and
and why do we have this thing you know I I have everybody has an ego everybody
has it so there has to be a developmental component to it so that I really was like Wow everyone’s there and
I’ve been really thinking a lot about this and going actually what what I was on Retreat one time and I know we’ve
only got one minute and 56 seconds left yes um but I was on Retreat one time and
what I realized is that uh it’s the ego is a response to seek social Connection
in order to remain part of the group to have that sense of belonging and when we
have the emotional mirroring to support our sense of failure of not working out
you know we sort of feel ashamed or guilty or or just shame humiliate or
whatever it is disappointed then the ego comes in and says no you still belong
anyway but you need to if you have somebody to unpack the emotional part of
it going it’s very hard actually when we care about something and it doesn’t
quite come together so but if but you can get it later
um so just because I used to have quite a strong narcissistic experience where I
and I would say my my thing is um my reference points were external to
me and that to me is a marker of where the ego is at now I’m conscious we are less than one minute so what do you want
to do Josh oh yeah another thing that came to mind with that as well is that it could be also trying to control
things in order to belong right trying to uh yeah to have control over things
or that illusion so yeah I guess we’ll wrap it up here um we still haven’t set a a date but
it’ll neither be towards the end of this month again or the beginning of next month but we’re trying to get on
um last Thursday of the month whenever that might work out but thank you all for joining and thank you Wendy and uh
see you again next time guys and thank you to Alaska 16 meditators who came so thank you very much for all being part
of this it’s 35 on wisdom out bye now
Integrating Presence 
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