[Partial AI assisted show notes:] On Oct 22, 2024 I spoke (again this time online) with David Johnson, a meditation practitioner with over 13 years at Dhammasukha. David reflects on his interactions with renowned meditation teachers such as Mahasi Sayadaw and Deepa Ma, as well as his evolving meditation journey. After practicing what’s considered by some as Vipassana for many years, David found the results insufficient, prompting him to explore new methods under the guidance of Bhante Vimalaramsi, a monk who developed a meditation style called Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation (TWIM).
Key Points:
- Shift from Vipassana: David discusses how his exploration of TWIM came after realizing that pure Vipassana wasn’t fully aligning with his expectations. He describes Bhante Vimalaramsi’s method, which blends concentration and insight (Samatha and Vipassana) based on Sutta 149 from the Pali Canon.
- TWIM Practice:
- TWIM focuses on combining Metta (loving-kindness) and mindfulness meditation to lead to jhanas (meditative absorptions) while applying the six Rs:
- Recognize the wandering mind,
- Release the distraction,
- Relax the tension,
- Re-smile,
- Return to the object (Metta),
- Repeat.
- He emphasizes using Metta as a pleasant feeling to cultivate mindfulness, allowing it to naturally deepen into jhanas.
- TWIM focuses on combining Metta (loving-kindness) and mindfulness meditation to lead to jhanas (meditative absorptions) while applying the six Rs:
- Relaxation and Insight: The key in TWIM is not to force concentration but to gently relax distractions, allowing insight to arise. The method emphasizes acceptance, rather than suppression, of hindrances (such as restlessness or doubt).
- Jhanas and Mindfulness: David touches upon the difference between concentration-based jhanas and what he calls “aware jhanas,” which allow practitioners to maintain mindfulness while progressing through meditative states.
Instructions:
- Start with Metta: Focus on bringing up feelings of loving-kindness toward yourself, then extend it to a spiritual friend for 20 minutes.
- Six Rs: As the mind wanders, apply the six Rs to gently return to the object of meditation without force.
- Progress through Brahma Viharas: Once mindfulness is strong, cycle through the four Brahma Viharas (Loving-kindness, Compassion, Sympathetic Joy, and Equanimity) to deepen the practice.
I also ask David for advice about openly inviting and allowing phenomena (using a metaphor of living in a house of snakes) vs guarding the sense doors.
A big highlight for me was this definition of samadhi:
- Sa – meaning “together” or “unified.”
- Ma – representing “the mind.”
- Dhi – denoting “to hold” or “to place.”
Thus, samādhi means “holding the mind together” or “placing the mind in unification,” highlighting its function of concentrating the mind on a single object without distraction
David’s Guru Viking episode I mention toward the beginning that I draw on for follow up from it https://www.guruviking.com/podcast/ep212-path-to-nibbna-david-johnson
We also get into differing camps over the importance, or lack of importance, of the Abhidhamma, the commentaries and sub-commentaries and how we still don’t have English translations of all of them.
I forgot to ask about the role of light in jhana and in meditation practice in general and forgot to make the point that perhaps the Abhidhamma and Visuddhimagga are about knowing and seeing the three characteristics of existence — inconsistency, stress/unsatisfactoriness and not-self — in deep, vast, expansive, comprehensive, profound and exhaustive detail on the micro and macro levels so as not to have any gaps in one’s wisdom
We also touch on reconciliation amongst Buddhist schools. David mentions the Buddha as a commonality and I mention the four Noble truths, or at least acknowledging them (to later say there is no suffering like in The Heart of Prajna Paramita Sutra). And again I forgot to ask David’s opinion if right effort / skillful means could be an explanation to perhaps why there are so many Buddhist practices / traditions to address proclivities, dispositions, and variations of the myriad beings, locations and time periods.
Lastly, I bring up truth in the contexts of conviction, admitting errors / getting it wrong and being open for deep investigations of the nature of reality.
Find David and much of what’s mentioned at https://www.dhammasukha.org
Audio: Aware Vs Concentration Jhanas, Buddhist Reconciliation And The Six R’s (To Dissolve Distractions) With David Johnson
Or listen via Insight Timer (app or website)
The raw unedited YouTube transcription of this podcast:
holess welcome this is Josh tippled integrating presen and today I have David Johnson with me David what’s going
on great uh everything’s good and happy to be with you um I’ve been here at
Damas sua for jez around 13 years Lucky 13 and before that I was practing
practicing vipasana I’ve met mahasa I met Deepa Ma I had I took film of them
back in the 70s I’m that old I know manindra I know Joseph I Know
Jack you know I I know the whole whole crew with the vasana not so much in the goo world I’m not that familiar with it
but I spent like 20 years going through the the vasana um system I was very impressed
because there’s a book about how to do it and what would happen at each stage and that really drew me in and I
thought well if this is being laid out then I’ll just follow the process and attain enlightenment
well I did that um in terms of I did follow the process but what come came
out at the end of it it wasn’t really what I was thinking
I I thought I had done something but later my mind was just as kind of crazy as
before but in any case so I uh ran across Bon vimma Ramsey and he’s
practicing something very different I went to his website he’s got something like you know you have to smile you have
to laugh and it’s like oh that’s not serious at all and I thought well there must be something something’s up with
this so I got a hold of him I’d known him uh in his lay person days for a long
time back in the 70s we were all doing vas and uh he was always laughing so I
he he did carry that trait forward but he’d become a monk and he he was a monk 12 years and he went to upand all the
vas the world and all that so uh I got a hold of him uh somebody let me know that he was available so I
got a hold of him and and he wrote to me and and I and I asked him what is all this stuff you’re doing here this ey
doesn’t look like Buddhism to me and he wrote back oh no I’ve given up the mahasi style I’m G I’ve developed my own
style but it’s based on the sutas it matches it’s and I call it tranquil wisdom Insight Meditation in other words
yoking U Vias and somata together and not just vasana
not just concentration but putting them together because that’s in the sutas in
sutta 149 it says SAS yolked together is what the Buddha taught not either one of
those he tried both of those but then he realized it was all together so in case
I I tried it and I wrote him some more emails and I got convinced I needed to um check this thing out and and I did
this during work I was in the tech World in Silicon Valley um and I I got amazing
results and I immediately got sold on it and I’ve been doing it ever since and
did many Retreats and wrote a book about it and uh and now teach it so got any
questions for me yeah this is cool so David is kind of what I do a lot of times is just turbocharge drop a lot all
at once and that’s cool because I if you want to get the expanded version of this and kind of the more paced liner linear
version of the background that David talks about there’s a a really popular podcast out there for people going in
these circles and I think you you’ll probably know what it is maybe I’ll I’ll link it um and so all that David’s
covered before so I just wanted to actually ask a few things based on that
interview too and and uh so but before we do that um since we can kind of skip
more of the detailed background here why don’t we just and by the way David and I have met I think it’s been almost a half
a year now and I uh I was looking for meditation Retreats for the two weeks
before my fiance came back to Missouri from Denmark and I was looking around for Retreats and I was reminded of
damasa and the first time I heard about it was at mid- americ Buddhist Association which is a Buddhist
monastery of soueast Missouri too and um I just have to say it was almost like U
somebody brought it up there like one of the first few times I went there and they were the the whole mood and air
changed for some reason and I won’t go into because I don’t remember too much but I was like okay this is really
significant what’s what’s going on here why is there this kind of response or reaction to to this other Buddhist
Monastery not too far away and so I didn’t think much about it didn’t investigate much about it but fast
forward you know and I we we met and we we we hung out and talked Dom there wasn’t a re a retreat going on there
anything but I really en enjoyed her time there and um David met some quite
like he said a long list of kind of well-known and advanced yogis and
meditators too so and and being an accomplished one himself and uh so twim
that’s what I to talk about for people that don’t know all the things and references you you drop people that aren’t super deep into the world of
meditation especially more of the the terab um in Southeast Asia and things
like this let’s just we can we can skip all that um pretty much but let’s talk about twim because this is the the thing
that’s being brought forth at damasa for the most part and there’s now people in
India right there’s there’s there’s online things there’s um quite um I
would say the teachers involved in this are really you know yeah so so there’s
damasa India there’s damasa Indonesia and now there’s damasa UK okay uh what
else things very slowly are growing so what is twim though so and then let’s
talk about the is it the six RS and actually um I should have known this and I should have looked more into the
formal process and actually done this practice before but I haven’t so if David could just kind of walk us through
um in more detail this is what what is twim yeah what what is the sixs well
like I said it is bringing uh a not a concentrated mind but a collected mind
with uh insight and so you’re you’re you’re doing concentration and you’re
doing Insight both at the same time so how how yeah how so how do you do that
so there’s two objects that the Buddha taught now the one that everybody thinks about is is breath I mean yeah breath
anapanasati um that is your your classic meditation of breathing yes yeah well
the Buddha taught it but what we found is he didn’t teach it he taught it a
little bit differently than what is being used today so we’ll come back to that so there’s breath but there’s the
Brahma of eharas and the first of those Brahma vhar is meta the other are meta
uh Compassion or karuna mudita sympathetic joy and
equinity so there’s the Brahma vihara practice you go through all those Brahma
vhar or you can use breath and you just go through all of the Jas through
through those and the Buddha taught that there was uh these eight Jas or you can condense it to
four so how do you get your mind collected well your object uh and I’m
going to use meta because I think we found that it’s faster it’s more fun it’s Pleasant and it’s just easier to do
because it’s a pleasant feeling and as a side note I’ll say that people say well meta isn’t that very serious it’s trying
to just lighten the mood and it doesn’t really lead anywhere well that’s absolutely not true meta can lead you to
nibana it can lead you to Awakening it’s in the sutus it says it right there
however you have to practice it right and what I think B Bonte em Ramsey did as he figured out how to do that so uh
the process though is you bring up this feeling of loving kindness and you gently put your mind on
it you smile this brings up an uplifted mind you think of something in the past
that made you happy and you let your mind sink into that feeling you let yourself be there you
get you do this let’s say you’re doing a a sitting and it’s 30 minutes 30 minutes minimum you sit you you bring up the
feeling of meta for 10 minutes to yourself give yourself some meta may I
be happy may I be free from suffering you can use some phrases but don’t turn them into a
mantra and then the next 20 minutes you change from yourself and you bring up a
friend a spiritual friend the Cita in other words somebody that is defined by
their the same sex or at least somebody is just you don’t have any you know lustful thoughts or anything like that
somebody that’s a friend you just sit down and have coffee or tea with them somebody when you meet them you smile
you go hey I you know it’s great to see you again they’re alive and that’s it so
you bring up this friend who you’ve picked and you don’t deviate once you pick them and you radiate Lov and
kindness to them you can put them in your heart and hold them like a baby and
just stay with seeing in remind them that they are loving and kind and they’re smiling they’re happy okay well
you can do this for 20 minutes and then you’ve got 30 minutes done but there’s a key here and that’s as Josh talked about
six hours the Buddha said there’s a very special way to eliminate these mind
wanderings these hindrances now in concentration your object is to just
clamp down on that object and and don’t let it go with twim your your uh object
is to see that object and to see the mind let going and let it go but then
release it and just relax your attention smile
again and then bring up that feeling of love and kindness again so it’s not a
suppression it is allowing the mind to do what it does but don’t chase it don’t follow it just accept that it’s there oh
I have some anger or I’m thinking about lunch those five hindrances you know sensual desire
aversions sloth and torpor doubt restlessness as those things come up you
release release your attention to them you relax just for a moment just give it a
second and then res smile and bring up that feeling and go back to the
spiritual friend holding them in your heart now if you do this in a very
consistent um gentle way your mind will very quickly come into a collected State
and that collected state is called Jan and that’s referred to in the anapat suut and in the anapat asuta it says
that you’ll go through eight different janas actually it’s four and then
there’s four bases of the fourth jna and there are certain things will
come up up as your mind enters in those Jonas and don’t think that this is really hard to do when you use the six
RS releasing and relaxing instead of pushing it away uh you go right in you you you’re
accepting everything we want you to be happy content lots of sleep uh plenty of food
this is not an aesthetic practice the Buddha gave up asceticism and he gave up pure
concentration and he came to a middle way and that middle way is making sure
that you’re you have an object you you can’t do this without an object you have to have something that you can see the
mind moving from if you just sit in this awareness and just watch the
mind the mind’s going to dull out it doesn’t have anything to do it’s just
that’s is a good step to accept I mean some of the uh people out there will
talk about just accept what’s happening and let it relax and that’s good to a certain point but the
next thing though is you have to figure out where you actually are and anchor yourself to an object U so then you bring up your six
RS and where does six RS come from well in the anap sua oh no I’m sorry anapanasati sutta
amazingly enough the key is right there and it’s called tranquilize the bodily
formations and it’s also again in satian tranquilize the bodily formations
it says that he breathes in he knows that he breathes in he knows that he breathes out he knows that he breathes
in he knows he is sitting and then later it says he knows when he’s walking he knows when he’s going to the bathroom he
knows when he’s eating this is simply knowing it’s not concentrating on anything but knowing the the processes
when the mind wanders uh you tranquilize what does tranquilize
mean it means to tr it means to uh release it relax just let it go so when
that mind comes up to wander release relax it’s right in the sutta know when
your breath is coming in and out if it goes and and disappears then tranquilize
that bodily formation now it’s not just the breath the bodily formations but
it’s also in the anop Sati suta it says tranquilize the mental
formations is that thoughts yeah that’s thoughts so let all of these things go
come back to your object and continue so stay with your
meta and watch the mind moving from one thing to another as it goes away
tranquilize and come back and that’s another thing is what is the definition of mindfulness mindfulness is watching the
Mind move from one thing to another but we have to have an anchor so then we
here’s the mind now we’re not mindfulness the mindfulness the way it’s taught today is just watching watching
this object and forgetting everything else and the mind is focused on this
well with the mindfulness in the sense that it’s taught in the saan you watch the mind moving from here
and going over here and going over here but you always release and relax it and let it go and you come back this is like
this story about the monkey who’s you’re trying to train your monkey mind and it’s like a monkey and how do you train
a monkey you tie him to a post and that monkey tries to go away and he’s his
string is is keeps him from coming back so we don’t want to it’s our string is
that releasing and relaxing but we also come back and pretty soon the mind just
it’s moving around moving around and then it becomes collected it doesn’t want to go anywhere
and that’s the true state of a non a non- craving state which is jna and joy
will arise when it happens and happiness arises and all the rest of it that you can find out now so that’s T yeah great
David thank you for uh expanding upon that um a few things I’d like to ask you before we jump into Janna which as you
know can be quite controversial in these topics and I before I even get there um
the uh how important do you think holding on to that image is because um
you know I I’ve heard uh meta taught so many different ways and uh some people
claim that you have to have a really strong object of the person you’re practicing medic for the entire time
some people just you know just the feelings enough um some people say the phrases but then some people say well
the the phrases are just to reinforce the image so like as as far as that goes and then um as as
far as the practice goes the hardest thing I think uh at least the most challenging thing for me at this time is
the recognition part the the recognizing when the mind has gone away because a
lot of the times there is just no just wake up out of the Mind
wandering and that’s only when it when it recognizes now if I sit and have the
intention to actually just watch the mind as things arise in conscious and pass away or it jumps from one thing to
the other like a monkey mind then it’s easier for me to pay attention but even that you know mindfulness itself is a
kind of a conditional State you know sometimes it just seems like there’s more mindfulness present sometimes there
not sometime I’m able to catch the Mind wandering sometimes I’m just completely lost in thought for a while and then I
wake up to oh the mind’s been wandering oh my gosh you know that was it just doesn’t seem like I have anything to do
with it you know it just it just happens and so there’s it seems to be a variation and there’s so many
definitions of mindfulness I like yours but I like some other ones there’s uh a definition where the ability to Bear
something in mind you know the so if you linger over one particular object uh and
allow it to be in mind that’s another definition another definition I think is knowing what’s happening in the moment
as it’s happening but whatever definition we want to use um this is uh you know they’re all you know they’re
all kind of maybe different facets so again the the image on the meta the importance of that holding an image in
the mind and then the the the the waking up to the wandering mind or recognizing
that the mind is wandered well the image is is again the
Buddhist said you can’t have one or the other it’s you have to have it’s the middle way you have to have both you
always have to have an object now you can’t bring up a feeling of loving kindness without somebody having it go
to or or your you can’t bring up uh something with with nothing there to Bas I mean like
how strong does the the image in the mind have to be right so you bring up that object say of your friend well at
first your mind’s 100% on that object there’s no feeling yet so as you smile
in your in your mind to your friend and you bring up this feeling and you smile
then there’s some feeling that starts to come so now so your your object is out here and and or your attention’s out
here on your friend and now it’s starting to come in here to the feeling now now
uh the feeling is like be can become 80 to 90% of where your attention should be
and and the friend is still there don’t let go of the friend he’s just kind of there he’s hanging out no need to
visualize full color like this Buddha right here we don’t need to have that
just kind of you know as as mindfulness it says know that the friend is there
you don’t have to focus on each individual piece so the friend is generating uh
that feeling so the feeling should be almost 8 80 to 90% of what’s there when
things are going well and that feeling will start to develop around in the heart now this this feeling is very
specific um people teaching meta are not most of them are not they’re saying well
have a nice feeling but actually this is your object of meditation so notice the
feeling put your mind on the feeling let go of if if the feeling’s there let go of the phrases there’s no need for the
phrases there’s not much need for the the friend himself or or yourself in that just let your mind sit with that
feeling because the way this meditation works is you stay with the feeling and
the feeling will do all the work for you it will change it will go up into the
head and it will change into karuna and compassion and it will change into um
Mita into this appreciative Joy a sympathetic joy and then it changes and
it goes very deep and it goes into equinity all you need to do is watch the feeling
sixr as as your mind wanders off and then come back to that um and as far as mindfulness
I think I’m talking about a mindfulness that’s pretty specific it’s just it’s
not focusing on the object but focusing on your mind that’s focusing on the object focusing on what’s Happening Now
The Way Way the meditation works is that you go through these Brahma viharas but
you’re not you’re not done yet somebody’s uh you’re not done yet so
what happens the Mind becomes so calm now there’s only a quiet mind and the the idea the or the feeling of equinity
just disappears now we’ve reached Insight we’ve reached full Insight we’re leaving
the somata behind because now the mind is powerfully quiet and now all we’re
doing is we’re watching just things arise and pass away and we’re sixing and we’re releasing those things and we’re
getting to a point where everything goes completely completely quiet and there’s
no movement at all uh there’s some people report there’s like a black
screen it’s like watching a movie and there’s nothing plain but you’re completely entranced the mind doesn’t
wander at all and if it wanders Let It Go Don’t hold it there because that will
actually just that will add tension you hold anything that’s the problem with concentration you you hold something
you’re holding it with tension and tightness you can’t do that you have to be relaxed and let it be
there now I’m not sure if I answered the last question or not but well kind of
it’s it is and because when you said equinity dies out I thought that that was one of the jna factors uh even in
fourth Jan and I don’t know if it’s present there in the arupa Jas present in all the janas to certain degrees the
fourth J is where there’s really only equinity present and that’s the that’s
the coloring of the jna but then later that equinity um it just disappears as
well um now this is very true for meta if you’re if you’re following the breath
the coloring The Meta the the loving kindness the equinity these kind of
things are not there you’re just with the raw ja of factors which you know
which are Joy there’s applied in uh yeah all of those things and there’s there’s
none of the the feel the Happy Feelings that you’re going to get from meta they don’t color the mind but the jna factors
is still there the J is still happening and you still arrive with breath you arrive at the same place you arrive at a
quiet mind okay so yeah the the the the thing was um tips for the wandering mind and
waking up and knowing because uh yeah cuz sometimes the mind will just wander off and you can’t really see that it
wanders off right and so then we just have to wait or what do you recommend well you become aware you know you go oh
all of a sudden you know you come out of the wandry mind which you will eventually and as you meditate you come
out very much faster and much faster but for example you can use this uh you’re at the grocery store and you’re standing
in line and there’s a there’s a line and your mind starts to wander you know what
am I going to do next where am I going to go and then as soon as you notice
that the mind is is off then you could recognize that and release that so
recognize release relax relax your desire to keep thinking about that and
remile you can smile in the grocery line and uplift and bring back an object of loving kindness you can be radiating
loving kindness to the people that are there um so you can use this as a as a
all day all the time type of process um in that in that sense
cool and did did Bon um detail how he came up with this did he ever write
about the inspiration to the process and how it I mean did he get it all as one download or was he experimenting a lot
and refin it he found it in the sutas and what happened was he wasn’t really
happy he left Burma he was he was studying with a number of the the most famous masters of the vipasa world and
he went to Malaysia and M he had been there before and he
knew um a monk there casri domanda who invited him to come and stay at his
Monastery and some people said oh Bon you know vipasana so well they they say
that you know it and you can teach it now and he says well I don’t want to teach it any uh anymore uh I will teach
meta I’ll so he tried meta first and um there’s a point where you
know there wasn’t really a lot of progress so he started he he met a guy named punaji venerable punaji and punaji
says forget the vudi Maga forget all the later commentaries about the Buddha and
just go back to the Buddhist words to the Buddhist teachings so then he he found the anapat sua the Su B Jas and he
found he went back and reread the Sati patana and the anapan Sati suas and he found this tranquilized the bodily
formation and tranquilized the mental formation and he was like wait nobody’s
ever talked about this so he tried it he would walk up and down the streets the
Malaysian streets and every time his mind would go into thought which of course it will you have a thought and
then you go yeah oh well what about this and pretty soon you’re having a conversation and and you’re debating
this back then he’s he knows okay let me tranquilize what does that mean Let It
Go just stop thinking about it it you know it’s like you’re walking stop and
your momentum is such that you’re going forward still relax so he tried this his
mind stopped he relaxed he continued forward he started thinking again he
stopped relaxed he noticed there’s this quiet space there and the mind wasn’t
moving at all and he hadn’t stopped it on purpose and so he thought well here
there’s something going on here and then he got the and then there’s the famous
uh story of the bowl of mangoes that he got and he says well let me try eating
some mangoes and applying this system and so he’d eat some mangoes and
his mind would wander he go oh release relax or he’d think oh that Mango’s so
good I I want to get some more mangoes so he’d have another bite well pretty soon he was onto his second bowl of
mangoes and he was understanding ah release
relax so what does this release relax do it just brings you into the present
moment and so he realized all you have to do to be in the present moment is to actively let go of the things that are
taking you away from the present moment you can’t go and find the secret uh
sator the secret state of Enlightenment that is going to just zap you and all of
a sudden you’re going to become fully enlightened you have your mind is completely pure you have no craving at all uh-uh you have to let go of the
craving a little bit at a time but if you do that and you change your mind from thinking thinking thinking to turn
it around to release relax it’s very fast you can let go of things as you in
in that process very quickly thanks for um sharing that now I want to look at
some of the other things in the sutas and how this Stacks up with this because you know the bo the historical Buddha
talked about guarding the sense doors so when you think about guarding you know that do that sounds like there’s a lot
of a you know effort involved and it’s kind of framed in a you know uh a really
you know heedful uh you know don’t let things pass kind of thing and then you on the other end you get this oh just
allow everything to come in you know if snakes are in your wanting to come in just open your door allow the snakes
come in and they can curl up around you you know you won’t have very many mice in the house and you know the neighbors
might but don’t feed those snakes don’t feed them don’t feed them and don’t don’t uh don’t pay attention to them so
that’s that’s the key here but David they’re living with you are they ever going to go away so So eventually
they’ll dis that’s a good point so so there’s this notion of guarding the sense doors you know not um going after
sense indulgences all the time and you know some
renunciation how do we balance these things yeah so what so the Buddha in actually in in suta number two the Maj
Naya number two um it talks about the hindrances the distractions and it
defines all of the distractions very very uh carefully and it says well how
do you eliminate these distractions well you abandon them you remove them uh
you eliminate them but there’s only one way that you need to do this and it’s
all the same is you six are it you notice it is there you don’t keep your
attention on it release it and let it go come back to the mo present moment you’re you’re you’re guarding in
the sense of your mindfulness part of mindfulness is remembering to come back to the present
and practice and and do what it is that you’re trying to do when the mind
wanders you remember when you recognize you remember oh I can’t I I don’t want to
continue this release you remember to release so every moment when you uh come
back to the moment you’re remembering to let go so uh guarding all of these words
now keep in mind the Buddha he spoke in poly and he created words for seeing
things in the mind that the western western science has no clue about what
they are the research here is like you know kindergarten as far as what’s going on in the
mind uh but the Buddha created words uh for all of these things we don’t have any words for them so we’re trying to
put words in uh that we can like mindfulness is Sati exactly and one of
the definitions is remembering for Sati that’s how another translation remembering but most of the people you
know uh uh the English translation was done in the 18 about around 1850 or so
by rice Davies and some others and they you know they didn’t know what
mindfulness was they didn’t practice it so they thought well it sounds like you know keeping your mind on an object so
they said well what’s the word that’s closest to that mindfulness okay we’re going to be be mindful so everybody pick
that up because this is where it came this is where our understanding of mindfulness came from it came from those
English translators yeah and you look at the definition of mindful or the etimology of mindfulness it doesn’t
really break down the way the the best word for it I’ve I’ve heard somebody translate it as body fullness which I
think is a really interesting way to to to to put it too I mean it’s a madeup word but yeah so poly is another huge
thing I mean I’ve gone over and over a lot of this from my understanding uh a lot of people say the Buddha didn’t
actually speak ply it was that was the language that was invented to write it
down but he spoke something very similar procrit some kind of procrit or something I don’t know exactly but the
dialect of magadi okay which which magada was where he was and they had a
special di dialect but and then it was yeah I mean there’s but it’s we call it
it is such a beautiful language to to listen to but it’s also very complex
very exacting and yet it sounds very pleasant to the ear to hear as well um
now the next thing uh I wanted to get into here I guess with this is is the commentaries Okay so we’ve get uh I i’
I’ve heard so much on the this is another huge polarizing thing I think I mean you have the I guess more people in
Burma were say the the commentaries in the Abid dama are very important to
understanding the sutas themselves and well we don’t even have English translations of the commentaries then
there’s sub commentaries so for me to write those off right away I can’t because there’s not even English
translations and like you mentioned even the poly them the poly itself we know we have various translations some are more
helpful but poly from my understanding which is very little it is so rich and so nuanced um that translating it word
for word really doesn’t do it justice a lot the context you know the um the the
the the subtle things going in there our lack of kind of mind power and wisdom
and understanding in the current age compared to the time of the Buddha so this is another thing but then we have
this whole other Camp uh like in maybe the the tforce tradition which I’m more
familiar with that they don’t put hardly any emphasis on the Abid dama you know um and they don’t do the the the vui
Maga uh the commentaries aren’t you know they’re kind of almost written off wholesale I shouldn’t say that entirely
so these are quite polarizing things and and I actually can see pros and cons of each approach you know um so uh I I kind
of know your feelings on this but do you want to add any anything to this because we don’t even have the English
translations yet for the commentaries and sub commentaries you know well the commentaries not realized the vudi Maga
is a commentary any anything written after the Buddha died about the Buddha is is a commentary sure bonti Mor Ramsey
explained that vudi Maga is a commentary but there are sub commentaries okay
which are commentaries written by uh monks from that time but I think there’s a commentary for like every single suta
almost isn’t there I mean yeah I believe so yeah but we we don’t have those translations no we don’t uh some of them
are buried in a cave in uh Sri Lanka where they’re very closely guarded they on Papyrus sheets just like you see in
Egypt uh but they’re untranslated and they’re not going to let anybody in there to get them in Burma they have a a
lot of things that are written down and but those are they’re in Burmese and and then they’d have to be translated so
there’s a lot of issues with translations so those commentaries aren’t even allowed out of that I mean there’s not even a um uh what is it
single version of them it’s like a museum it’s like I see okay hey I need to take a look at that uh uh that
Egyptian artifact and and go oh no you’re not touching it you know and and
so unfortunately they they’re treating it like you know an artifact and and really it needs to be treated like a
like a living document that they can translate belongs in we have enough we
have we have five huge books uh the maju Naya the Dig Naya the angut Naya the
samut Naya several thousand Pages a piece there’s plenty there for for us to
get our get our heads around um cool so and and and the and the
commentary the major commentary that most practices are built on these days
is vudi Maka or the path of purification and he outlines the J of practice uh he
outlines um the stages of insight that are in there in the vipasa practice and
there’s things that are in there and you say oh well it’s all the same no it not definitely is not the same it will definitely it will not match the sutas
so if you have the Buddhist said if you if you are practicing something that doesn’t match what I’m teaching you even
though it sounds like it does but it really doesn’t then it’s not what I taught and don’t follow that because
it’s like a cake recipe if you add in too much milk too many eggs too many
it’s not going to rise and that state of collectiveness will not develop in the
way that it needs to develop what can happen with the the meditation from the commentaries is it’s
developed it’s based on concentration and concentration is going to take you to a different place it’s it’s a place
that’s the Mind clamps down and it there’s lots of joy and there’s lots of happiness but it’s very impermanent and
it doesn’t change your mind when you are able to see and let go of hindrances as
they come up you’re purify in your mind and eventually there’s a point where those hindrances just stop they actually
stop coming up because you’ve seen with Insight that they’re
unpleasant and they are impermanent and that there is no self there so you
really are seeing uh the the the real story here which is that everything is impermanent
and that because it’s coming and going it’s dooka it’s it’s suffering and if if it’s coming and
going it there can’t be any Essence there can’t be any self there and so when you see this this is the
whole point of the JIS and to watch the mind is to see the nature of reality itself is
unsatisfactory even Pleasant feeling is unsatisfactory why because when you get
your bowl of ice cream and you eat it and you go oh that was really good but then it’s gone oh I better take another
one oh it’s gone again well uh you go to your second bowl of ice
cream and okay but it’s not as good as the first bowl and you’re on to your
third bowl of ice cream and now you’re starting to get a stomach ache so not only is Pleasant feeling leads to
unpleasant because it disappears but unpleasant feeling leads to a a stomach that’s upset so pleasant
and unpleasant lead to suffering and so in a in a in to look at the entire
samsar to look at everything in the mind and everything is perceived from your mind it’s all constantly moving around
and it’s not staying in any one place and therefore it is Dua or it is
suffering and when that happens the Mind sees that with insight and it let lets go of that and it and it goes into a a
place of complete quiet and cessation and then what arises as a
result of this is the nibana element this is called an element in the sutas
just like there’s air and there’s water the nibana element arises when the nibana element arises it wipes out these
hindrances there’s a like four different levels of this but when this happens all
those little things that are making your mind crazy all the neosis and the negative thoughts and all this starts to
get eliminated and that’s the whole point of the meditation the Buddhist
said there’s the first Noble Truth that there’s suffering this is what I’m talking about there’s suffering
second Noble Truth is the origin of suffering it’s all of this craving I want this I don’t want that I’m sleepy
I’m Restless it’s just like this craziness in the mind so that’s the
craving and the third Noble truth is the truth of cessation the truth of letting
go of craving and and well how do you get there well that’s the fourth Noble Truth The eight-fold Path and that’s
what we’re talking about right now but the Buddha identified things has suffering but it isn’t that it’s all
suffering it’s that when our minds are full of craving it’s suffering when you
can eliminate the craving in your mind your mind is happy it’s content it’s at
peace and that’s the point of this whole meditation is to come to that level of
Peace you know some people say well Awakening is seeing cosmic rays and Cosmic this and that well you can see
all of that stuff in meditation but it’s impermanent also what you want is is is
you is you look at the Buddha and there’s always this little this little smile like yeah I got it everything’s
everything’s chill everything’s good and that’s where we’re we’re trying to get to so yes and uh for my understanding is
that the kind of the Abid dama and the vudi manga and I don’t know like to for
me to write that off or to to completely go all in on that either extreme there
it I would have to practice both um because right okay so let’s talk a let’s talk a little bit about so the Abid dama
um is another set of books um was translated the third Basket in the polyc Canon talking about suas and then the
other one is the vinea Vania which are the monks monastics code these are the three baskets yeah but Scholars and I’m
not talking some conspiracy theories but many scholars say the Abid didn’t exist
during the Buddhist time it was developed in the third Century students time of King
isoka and and and there Stories the Buddha taught his mother the Abid dama
um when she was in heaven well the question is why uh his mother died seven
days after he was he was born and she went into the Heavenly realm and so he
shot up and taught her the Abid but see in the suas themselves which are have been memorized for 2600 years now in
Burma by monks there’s no mention of any Abid dama so how can this possibly be
the second thing is the Abid dama ideas in the Abid dama do not match the
sutus uh for example the idea of that the state the path knowledge is
followed by the fruition knowledge the the knowledge of nibana the Su to say
it’s no it’s not I mean this gets into the weeds here uh but there the Abid
defines all these states the budha didn’t care about all definition of the states Just Let It Go six are it doesn’t
matter you don’t have to break down everything into you know every single little item uh it’s it’s like you have
some time in your hands go and study it look at all doesn’t matter that’s that’s
why uh when I was researching the terava tradition I found that there was there
was 18 sects of the terava that had grown out after the Buddha now one of
those sects was actually called suada and this is the this sect there’s
three things that this sect was known for and one of them the most important one is the uh the fact that only the
sutus and the vinia were used as the basis of what the Buddha taught now the
other thing was that that there is a self but it’s not permanent called a
puila it’s some idea and the other thing was that you can have two Buddhas in one Eon anyway those two are you know that’s
fine suada meaning we don’t look at the Abid dama we only look at at the the the
sutas of of the Buddha so so that’s why we’re trying to stay with the sutas and
with uh the vinia and the vinea is great I’ve read the vinia and it’s very interesting has many stories of the
Buddhist time and how he developed all these rules and believe me there’s when they translated the vinea they had to
actually leave out stuff because the monks really got into really nasty stuff you know they they were letting people
in much later on and these people were not pure and they just it was like a bunch of naughty kids trying to get away
with things so rules had to come into existence probably far more than we needed but in any case they did but the
Vinnie highlights how all those rules happened and the the end result of all
these rules is basically you’re a polite educated scholarly person living your
life in a in a very you know um very very nice way and and that is the
definition of somebody who is free of craving and and enlightened you know that’s the arot if you
will um so you you would naturally follow all these rules U so there’s
that’s why the Abid dama is put aside over here you can go read it but you you might get ahead after reading all this
stuff I I used to read it all the time thinking it was very cool CU all these mental States and chaas and the 52
States and and in the end it didn’t help me at all I I still was full of all
those things I I definitely um see this thing I mean I definitely see your points and they’re completely valid and
I think what you’re you’re talking about here is um the accessibility you’re talking about and uh we we meeting
people where they’re where they are and what’s what’s effective and the most practical and I I I totally get that um
some of I I’ve been looking in in in spending time with people that have gone into vudi Maga and Abid dama and this
type of thing in in based in Burma under the P tradition and um yeah and I I’m
also impressed by them because they start off with a really deep concentration that’s really specific and
based in the mind so I I see strs in this and there’s a whole step-by-step process and some people I think are um
have more of a disposition to to to to benefit more and it’s it’s yes it’s super detailed from what I understand
the the Abid dama was was created right or said after the Buddhist time and um
by uh disciples completed by Disciples of saruta it is very granular very
detailed very specific and most people are so far away from this level of
detail and attainment that it’s really not practical for a lot of people to
practice so I I for me personally I just I I just look at these things and I weigh them I see the pros and and cons
to all this this stuff and it really depends on I think who’s practicing and
what one interest what interests are I mean the jury still out on me so while
so more controversial stuff here is Janna’s to the point that uh I hear some people talk have turn thrown this term
around called the Janna Wars and I don’t I mean that’s it’s kind of maybe tongue and- cheek because you couldn’t get
anything further from war from the true Buddhist teachings that I find you know the Buddha actually tried to intervene
on a couple Wars sometimes even unsuccessful and some people think that might have been the the weight of their Comma just had to play out some way you
know it’s not that kind of War right exact I mean yeah of course not but it’s uh but but the thing is I’ve even on my
own I stopped talking about it because uh it’s that controversial however I will talk to people like you to get
feedback and to learn about this until I feel more comfortable talking about but the one kind of commonality I think I
found here amongst these these different camps is that it’s the absence of the
five hindrances and the five genic factors so if there’s an absence of the five hindrances and the and then the the
presence of the five genic factors then it constitutes this Janna no matter kind of what system or if it’s what they call
light Janna or you know or or some people call yours I think Su Janna and then they talk about vui Maga Janna you
know uh or maybe more of a body-based Jan versus a a mind based Janna with the
the nimita is another really controversial term when it comes to so Janna so um what what’s your take on all
this you know because I can see it both I can see we call the Janna that we we
creating as as an aware J because there’s really there’s
there’s two types of jna there’s the concentration absorption jna where you are actually just letting go or you’re
suppressing the hindrances and then there’s the aware J where you’re aware of hindrances arising and you let them
go and that’s what I’m talking about here um
um and there’s really these only two types and you can name off all the people that that teach all these all
these Jas and they’re all really based on the vui Maga because it gives you the instructions how to do it but let’s go
back to what you know it’s good to go back and find out what the Buddha said about this because you know we have all
our our ideas but look let’s go back and study what he found out so when he left
the palace he left his wife and young son and he says I’m done with this
Palace life I I see the aesthetic life as the way to go or the this the
renunciate Seeker after truth the renunciate the mendicant the monk I want to go out and find out if there is is
there more to this world you know I I now I’ve seen suffering I saw old age I saw sickness I saw death outside the
palace and now I’m ready to just go find out so the first place he went this is in suit the 36 is the mahasa sua it’s a
story of his um Journey so the first guy he talks to is arara Kama he’s a jna teacher he’s a uh this
is but this is course yogic uh concentration this is the same as what
we’re having uh is being taught today he taught up to the seventh jna of nothingness okay the Buddha uh learned
that he did that andar Kus says wow you’re a great student why don’t you stay with me and teach it The Bu said no
there’s got to be something else you know that just doesn’t do it so he went and found another guy
udaa he taught up to the highest state of Janna that you can get to which is the neither reception of the E CH and so
the Buddha did that but again he said no this is not it and udas there’s nothing
else this is it and of course you you have a nice state of mind and you’re very happy but it just wears off and so
the Buddha said no I’m going to keep looking so he he actually went and spent
six years with aesthetic practices of you know standing on one leg of
controlling the breath all the all what the yoga yogic on yeah yeah yeah know and you
beating himself up and and you know all of that kind of stuff and he thought he can control the Mind by controlling the
body and and uh get past Pain by enduring pain well it turned out that
really wasn’t it he was down to one piece of one grain of rice a day and he Us near death and the story was the Dava
so the Heavenly being saw that he was going to die and this was the Buddha they said they came to him and said
don’t do this anymore we’re we’re going to infuse Ambrosia Heavenly food into
you if you keep doing this he said okay I have no choice I can’t keep going I
either die I won’t die because they’re going to keep me alive so he stopped and
then suata this woman comes along with a bowl of of Kure of rice of sweet rice
and offers to he he eats it and he feels all of a sudden so much better and his
mind is is is better his body is starting to recover and this is near Boga and so he
he goes into this area which is now Boga and he sits down at a tree and he says I don’t know what to do
here I’ve done everything that I can do concentration and I’ve done
asceticism andm too right from this you grew up in a palace he probably did heathenism too before he left oh my yeah
he was very well versed in Hedonism yeah yeah for sure I mean he had a Winter Palace a Summer Palace he had all the
dancing girls you could ever want and and and all all of that so he sat
underneath the tree and he thought what am I going to do so then he real he
remembered a time when his father had left him there and I I don’t know maybe it was like 10 years old or something
he’ left him sitting while the father went to the plowshare festival and he left him sitting on this
couch and at that time the Buddha was just sitting there I mean sidartha is a
child and his mind got into this very tranquil aware state it just naturally
just kind of came down to this state and it turned out that it was very likely it was a
Janna but you know people said well that’s fine but you know he’s just a kid
and and of course he lost that and and he forgot about it and just went on to live his life he’s sitting underneath
the tree and he remembers this and he says how did I do that and how did I he
he didn’t get there by doing all these practices he got there by just letting his mind relax and letting it come to
Stillness on its own so he tried that he immediately got into the first Jonah
second third fourth Jonah and then the other part of this it wasn’t just all Janis he he actually
became the Buddha by TVA this is the triple knowledge first of all the the
first knowledge once you’re into the Jas you can go back and remember your past
lives it’s actually a practice that we can teach you um it’s hard to do for most people some people really they take
to it you remember your past lives and you see that you’re this is not just your only one lifetime that there’s a
lot more to go here that there’s a lot of things you’ve been in the past and you keep being reborn and reborn and
reborn and yet happiness never it’s always Elusive and then the second knowledge is
this you your your mind actually starts to visit other Realms and and it sees uh
in the he there’s heavens and there’s hell Realms and there’s the human realm there’s all these Realms and you can see
beings in other Realms and when you put your mind to to seeing how they got there you immediately know with
intuition now we’ve taught this to several people and it it does work like this you you are in this realm and you
look at somebody and you have like a download as to you see their past life
what it what happened to get there so then the Buddha had this ability and he could he of course he was the Buddha he
had worked on this for lifetimes and lifetimes and he saw that Karma was in
itable that there was no getting out of this you could do all the good things that you wanted to but if you didn’t let
go of it eventually you’d slip up and you go right back into the
soup and uh the Realms there’s far more lower Realms than there’s higher Realms
because the higher Realms people are good they’re following their precepts lower Realms they’re negative States
there’s a lot of you know a lot of beans in that state so he realized he’d be
stuck there and then because of that his mind attained nibana that’s the third
knowledge he let go of samsara completely and he became the Buddha he became fully enlightened right there he
just let go the whole thing and and so that that that’s how the Buddha attained
Enlightenment yes and the the it’s I’ll just threw a couple things in there too that uh you know he when he was asked to
teach by Brahma STI right he said no this is too too subtle too profound that
that there’s too many beings with too much dust in their eyes they’re not going to get it and what that points to
is that but they said no you know there there are some out there but and then there’s a handful of leaves too he knew
all this other uh knowledge out there but he only taught suffering the end of his suffering where did he how did he
find out all this other vast knowledge my my point with the the Abid dama is that I I did used to write it off a
little bit more in vudi Maga but it just seems like our current Society compared
to them is so dumb down you know that this uh intricate thing to me I just
don’t write it off right away there are some really Advanced yogis who can see all this vast detail you know and I’m so
glad you mentioned these these um I guess Supra mundane Powers with someone
because this you know this get in the west it gets relegated to comic books or
you know crazy people and so it’s just like or religious so it has to be studied under religion or in the context
of comic books or you’re a crazy person so I’m glad this is brought about because there’s some kind of taboo where
science dictates you know what’s possible and what’s not possible in the world and if they don’t have a device
and can’t measure it well then it’s either doesn’t exist or it’s all or it’s not relevant or it’s off the table for
investigation so I think these are really important things too and the other thing that came up was uh the
Buddha’s images for the Jas too like the first Janna is a soap powder which we I
don’t even think we have soap powder but it’s basically balling together something and having it Infuse the body
you know like you’re rubbing in or maybe you’ll know this metaphor more and then the second one is this um spring that’s
feeding a lake a Clear Lake from underneath so it’s doesn’t have like an outside Source but it’s constantly
refreshed and then the the third one is this underwater blooming Lotus uh that
BL looms under the water so it’s completely submerged and then the the fourth one is this being W wrapped in a
white cloth and some people teachers have talked about how these are could actually be instructions in and of
themselves these images um that he used uh for Janna and I totally see that I
and I see the relevance for just the standard very simple direct and the
Buddha was a huge pragmatist too he wouldn’t talk about theoretical things he wouldn’t answer metaphysical
questions he only concerned about suffering and the end of suffering and what actually worked in people’s lives
he would talk about depending on the people you know he would have talk he wouldn’t have gone through into the to
create an Abid dama it’s not it’s not useful if you go to the Abid dama there’s no practice instructions that
are really there it’s just you know somebody writing down what they see in
the mind and how all how it works sure to actually attain Iana so you
really only you want to go to the sutas and this is what he taught through the handful of leaves he says I know
everything in the forest all these leaves but I’m only going to teach you how to attain nibana this is this the
instructions now the the getting back to Jon’s the difference between and and and
I was getting to the point of basically that the Buddhist sat under the tree realized that it was the mind just
sitting on itself and being aware without movement was the true state that
he was really looking for if you look at the aware jna and then the concentration
J I think what you’re going to find it’s the unification of mind which is jna
factor in the aware J is true unification the Mind simply sits on the
object it isn’t doesn’t want to go anywhere whereas the concentration the
mind is is pushed onto the object and is held there and then it naturally it
starts to stick there but it doesn’t do that on its own it doesn’t all those
possibilities going off are just supressed so he noticed that all he had to do is just let his mind come to rest
really come into the present and all and the Janna States would arise so that and
you’re aware during those states of Janna now the other concentration jna is your your sense bases are gone well how
are you going to see craving and and if you suppress the hindrances how are you going to ever understand
craving if you’ve suppressed all the craving and and you you say well okay where what am I doing where you know you
and then you the suppression stops and you come back and all craving comes back but your your your mind is not it’s not
steady so you really can’t see it anymore so there there’s there is there’s to me there’s two types of Janna
there is the aware jna or there is the concentration jna and all the various
variety of of those genas uh they are based on one point in US of putting your
mind on an object and let and watch and keeping it there and sticking it there
of being mindful of the object instead of mindful of the mind moving around the
object yeah so it’s important to see that the difference there is there is two types of it is and so that’s call it
collectedness and not that’s a big thing too because samade the translation of
samade as concent ation is not really and a lot of people agree that that’s not a good uh definition of it this
unification this gathering this collecting you know this so that’s these kind of words are I think better for
this type of thing too I’ll say that Venable punaji said that Som samade is
uh actually made of two words Sama and d and it has nothing to do with
concentration it means Tranquility is some a su and wisdom is D or state so
it’s a tranquil state or tranquil state of wisdom and this is Janna yeah that’s
a good definition not concentration and he also said that the Buddha made up the
word samade but now since the Buddhist time it’s been trans it’s been pushed on to every state they’re not that they are
Dias they’re concentration States yeah so yeah that’s what some people said
that samab will cultivate Samar and this notion of so my guess would be that the
story the Buddha going to the heaven realm to teach his mother is that the the dewas the deas the the brahmas they
have way more capacity than human beings so they’re able to get the Abid dama
more than humans because the average typical human it’s too much you know they can’t see it but the the the Mind
level of some of of a DEA or or a Brahma being is more likely to know that in our
Hots uh you know they have a way bigger capacity understanding than than we so
but but again you know what is practical and uh so so these are things so the
other thing I wanted to to ask you about before we start a few things before we start wrapping up um you talked about um
you know when when you went to this uh world uh conference Buddhism oh I forget
the exact title with with bante and you you found out why some of the other more prominent Western uh Buddhist uh leaders
and teachers didn’t go to and it seemed like just kind of a Big globalist Show or something and and it was touched by
you were trying to actually find the commonality the thread of all these different schools and you can see how we
we’ve got a little bit you know divisive on different types of Janna and
different areas of focus Within These teachings and things like that even though I’m I’m open to all these still
but the one thing you you mentioned the Buddha is in common but also I think even the foral truths even if it’s
Mahayana uh will reject them they at least acknowledge them right that there is no suffering there is no cause there
is no takes everything in sure but it really comes down to what do they
practice most of the Buddhist practices you know the Dal Lama all this they they accept the general philosophy of the
Buddha oh yeah but they don’t practice it that it was taught so that’s really
the difference in this conference the world Buddhist conference in Japan the first one was 32 countries and 32 of the
highest representatives of Buddhism from that country and uh then we went to another
one but I think it was the first one we got everybody into a room and uh it was
actually us that arranged this conference because we’re a little bit frustrated because we really weren’t talking about anything of of substance
we’re to temples and kind of for show and it was really not that useful but um
so we said okay so what do we have in common here and there’s there’s Tibetans
here Mayana Zen uh you know Chinese um Chan and all
kinds of different types of styles and the question was put out there and nobody had an answer say isn’t
there anything in common that we all agree on or we all practice and silence
finally Bonte says how about the Buddha and everybody yeah oh very good very
good very good so finally we got into a little bit of like that but it’s really
the and the conference itself the theme of the conference was going back to the
original teachings well this is the it’s a Japanese Buddhist sect and
and it’s a Mahayana sect and and the pure land and and um they they their beliefs are very different than say our
beliefs or the the sutas they don’t use suus they have their own group of texts
but in any case their idea of going back to original teachings was definitely different than our idea and everybody
else in the room and I don’t think we ever did get back to that that’s what we were trying to do is get get to the
original teachings um and I don’t think we ever did so it was fun um just to see all the
different styles and things but the Buddhist said you want to to understand
what really uh Buddhism is what it what leads to Enlightenment if it matches what I was
teaching and it works for you and it works in the sense that it leads to
nibana it is what I taught then you should use that practice but if this
practice does not lead to nibana it does not lead to the end of suffering and it leads somewhere else like some state of
mind then I did not teach that practice and you should not practice
it so look at things are they what the Buddha taught if not you know rethink
what you’re doing I did that after 20 years I wanted to know what the Buddha
taught yeah this is a Buddha he went through four mahak Capas of trillions of
lifetimes to develop his parmy so this is a guy I want to pay attention
to not somebody who’s just you know has an opinion that this is better and so
that’s I think what bont V Ramsey tried to figure out is what did the Buddha teach yeah it’s it’s a it’s a really
good point and there’s I think so much op uh so much getting in the way of that can potentially but if if there’s any
commonality I think it is the Buddha and then the dharm I think every school acknowledges Four Noble Truths at least
and then sa everybody prct practices in a community and sees the you know has
some kind of community or you know recognizes the importance of noble ones and and those practicing the other thing
is the Buddha was known when he left as a Seeker after truth and for me I I mean I always admire people that have such
strong conviction uh because I don’t you know the only thing I really have strong conviction in is the the importance of
what’s what’s true because if we don’t if something’s uh false then it’s it’s
meaningless it’s it it doesn’t exist it’s not reality and we cannot make
inform our choices if we don’t even know what’s really going on so if I have any kind of strong conviction it is in the
importance of um reality and and truth because yeah otherwise we’re just stabbing in the dark so that’s what the
Buddha was a Seeker after truth too so I’m um I I think and then being open to
being wrong like you you mentioned and I am too you know remitting the errors of my way and wanting to know the original
things right if there was this a being known as the Buddha and all these teachings came down then I think at
least for me I was uh when I was studying this I just I just came alive because it was not only was it it was
useful in daily life you know these I could remember the I couldn’t remember a lot of different things but I read these
and I could remember these things naturally because I was inspired and I can see how they could be applied to to
better one’s life so that’s what kind of inspired me when I was asked when study
a lot of this stuff so yeah well David uh thanks for joining me today um tell
people how they can get a hold of you if if you’re you’re open for doing
teachings uh Dam uh damasa uh books you know uh Retreats anything you want to
plug and then yeah just leave a message leave us with the message the fin if you want to know more
about this practice you know come to our website it’s do su.org is just dhamasa
means the truth Suka means happy so we’re happy to give you the
truth dca.org also uh YouTube there is
uh the twim meditation Channel you just look for bonty Vil Mor Ramsey uh Delson
Armstrong is a wonderful teaching he’s he he was trained here at damasa and now
he’s just become the teacher of of the moment and he’s his practice is amazing
listen to him definely I tried to write a book that would Encompass kind of
everything that we’re talking about and kind of wrap it all up and say this is how it happened this is what the
teachings are and this is what it leads to and that’s called the path to nibana
so um and the funny thing is you know yeah I’m kind of Hardcore because it
seems to work for me but I was very specific to say my publisher said now
path Ibana just make it really short and I said no it’s the path to nibana I said
oh yeah that’s cute but no I said no it’s the path to nibana it’s not a path
to nibana and okay fine it’s the path to neana you judge for yourself stick to
your but it highlights everything that we’re talking about so we’re also on podcasts um anything with Vima Ramsey
Delson Armstrong I mean myself I even have a channel so dsa.org cool and Retreats coming up
do you do you have one off the top that’s open that people can do December Retreat it’s a a short Retreats four
days four nights and uh we’ll give you an introduction to twim and get get you
some practice and then we start all of our Retreats we’re all we just ended a major Retreat season then we start again
uh next May and go through the summer gets a little too cold in the winter here cool and there’s online ones too
there’s Retreats everywhere also cool there’s UK Retreat coming up end of
November um yeah there’s you can you can look at our website Cool all right David thanks
thanks again for joining and it was cool catching up again all right it’s great talking to you Josh good to see you
again likewise bye
Integrating Presence 