[6] Preparing for Death and Dying: Reverse Meditation and Spiritual Transformation

12:47AM Oct 27, 2023

Speakers:

Alyssa

Dominica Roberts

Keywords:

meditation

experience

practices

pain

rinpoche

reverse

feel

book

deconstruct

people

life

path

relate

form

means

death

suffering

reification

die

sessions

Oh, hello, everybody. It's so fun friends, friends and enemies I like to call myself to know and every time I say that, nice to see everybody, I'm back in town. I was away for two weeks. I did that I'll tell you about in a second. I did some really fun stuff. Talking about it. Now I did a weak invitation of Richie Davidson. Some of you may know him. He's neuroscientists he has a center for the investigation of healthy minds. So I'm where I first met him. I don't know 15 years ago. So he's my friend and he invited me to come out and do a weekend there, which I did my first weekend program on birds meditation book, which is pretty cool. And Rich came up. We spent an afternoon talking about this stuff together. And one of the really cool things that we talked about, we'll see if it happens we're in conversation now is a possible study with his team studying the abilities of the reverse mutations. And my conjecture with him my hypothesis is that we can get people to a pretty advanced age what's called funnel decoupling, which is usually associated with meditators when they do 20 30,000 hours of meditation. They can functionally decouple from from adverse circumstances and therefore deconstruct suffering back into pain. In my conjecture with Richie is that with guided instruction in reverse meditations, we can get them there a heck of a lot faster, and this can be tested. So stay tuned. This would be pretty cool. Scientifically verify this, this is no small thing. So I spent a week there, which was great fun. Then I literally hopped on a plane, flew right from there to Charlize co presenting with Tenzin. Wangyal Rinpoche and a couple other people, neuroscientists from Ken Pallars lab that does Dream Yoga study, Franklin University, I'm connected and doing some stuff with them. A young young guy which is really cool Tibetan visit and so we have a really, really fun to fun day for a week and we really hit it off and we did some super fun things. He invited me to join him every morning to do these cold plunges. So we drop into this pool it was like 50 freakin degrees, then it was cryotherapy. So it was just a gas. I had so much fun with him. So he's sitting there and I'm like, freezing my ass off. And he's like, I mean, it was great. It was great at breakfast. Every morning. It was just such a fun thing. And so he invited me to potentially collaborate with him in the future and do some co teaching with him more directly, maybe initially in Europe or here, I don't know. But it was just so fun. And I may actually have a special session for nightclub people. They just download a little bit of some of the stuff I learned with Him and He's amazing. He's so cool, because he is I mean in the last day, you know, he's talking about how llamas how Rinpoche is in gurus and whatnot can sometimes just get stuck and blind and it was like amazing, so humbling. And you know he's open are doing them a number of years or continuation over them the series on Dream Yoga, where he brings in other so called experts in the array of disciplines and traditions and has conversations with them in a public format and it's just it's awesome. So it was really fun. It was a delighted, delightful experience with me. David Germano was a moderator. He's a big hitter dollar professor at the University of Virginia. So that was really great. In terms of little upcoming events, the only thing that's on the docket is to Costa Rica event that's a week in March and dreaming and lucid dreaming. We just literally today are fentanyl advanced Dream Yoga program. Which is now in Colorado Bartos. drala Mountain Center May this year that's usually in August for AI innovation stage meditations, the role of the fund and Buddhism and patriarchy and all kinds of blind spot stuff. So it was it was really cool. So I got to write that up and post it that'll be coming. It's appeared a couple of weeks ago. But that's it for the kind of update. And then what we do if you haven't been here before, is we are going through this book preparing to die. Well, that's the other thing. Oh two things. Oh my gosh, I forgot two more things. The next round of the preparing you die program we're about to list that. The first one was oversold so we're super excited about with all the stuff we learned from the first time that'll probably be happening in February. We haven't launched the dates yet but that's coming up. And also this is this is I guess decided. So a bunch of people have been asking me to write a book about this stuff for complete lay people. People that aren't Buddhist that have no covert meditation, spirituality gig. I've had this request for years and always. So here's the way I think I'm going to do it and this is where you can help. I'm going to request from all people you know if you're if you're like, what a three, five or even more questions, what are your top questions? What do you really want to know about how to prepare for the end of life and so book thing isn't his way but his next book which he sent me the manuscript it's not out yet. This is he asks there autodidact so you, not auto didactics but it auto book auto free. So the author gets the questions that either asked by the author, but at least they would be coming from people like you. And then the book is actually just a series of responses these core claims and so this would be super helpful to me if you if you have friends just out and you can send them to me at Andrew and Andrew holidaycheck.com. That's, that's my email address where this will be funneled to me. And then what I'm going to do all these responses and then basically, if there's enough there, they're structure a book based on this, and I think that could fly be of some benefit. So lots of stuff happening. So we're going through the read this for five minutes, and then questions, comments. You can either submit them as bar, I'll take some questions and that was emailed but then we can have a little bit of dialogue about anything, basically. So it's just a way to hang out and talk about a book that's deeply connected to the nocturnal meditations. The fifth of the five practices, you know, liminal, dreaming, lucid dreaming, Dream Yoga, sleep yoga, part of yoga. So this book is a book on Barbra yoga, which term includes all four and therefore it has a lot to do with standard lucid dreaming in August. Okay, so we left off last time on page 29. Here what an interesting place to stop and the reverse meditations. So this is the first time I ever really mentioned this term way back when there was book Stein tangley out right I'm Tom Linde, is is part of a family of practices we could call reverse nations. So this term comes for those of you who haven't read my book yet in one of the four principles schools of Tibetan Buddhism, which is Kagyu Karma Kagyu Buddhism. I learned it in the context of my theories, like literally one super short paragraph. I never heard of this term before. And I wore it in depth when I was in retreat, because there's so many practices coming so fast, but I put a big emphasis and so I came back to it in a pretty big way, which probably resulted. So that's where the comes from. They are called reverse because with these practices, we do things that are the opposite of what we associate with meditation, right meditation, we usually want to just get Zen chill out, become completely tranquil. Hey, that's great, that's fine. But it's a very limited part of meditation. What do you do when you're dying? What do you do when you're sick? And you get Parkinson's or you're falling apart? Where's your Pacific meditation at that point? So the reverse practices really the way I riff with them now is designing and wondering is is onto the path to actually accelerate your spiritual development. So since you were previously obstructed your path and now accelerated, and so like I write in the book, by putting your meditation in reverse, you will find forward and so archetypically what's the most unwanted all experiences? Right? Old age sickness, end of life death. We that's the most unwanted experience for many people. So some of the practices or activities, where you can bring these unwanted experiences onto the path to actually accelerate your path. Reverse meditation is to expand our sense of meditation or prepare us for death or based on this tenant. You can bring unwanted experience into the sanctuary of sanity provided by meditation. You can transform that obstacle into opportunity and so I can't remember if I said this year in this book are in a riff on it. Super interesting for me, you know, I love word origins, like where stuff comes from. The etymology of the word dharma comes from the Sanskrit DHHR which means to hold. And to me, this is super compelling, because it means to hold in two regards. One is to hold us in containers in light isn't holding environment. So the Dharma is that which can hold in that regard. But dharma also is to hold to means also means like to see with impulse to hold habitual reality and that kind of thing. But it's very interesting to create these kinds of holding advice, which is really what Bardo, you'll get does. That's the aspiration of this book is to create a new environment, where I relate to these challenging situations at the end. Of Life in a completely new kind of alchemical soul crucible. Seeing these teachings and then the practices that support that, okay, hold on a second bite can hear I'm scratching so I gotta bring Tashi and otherwise he's gonna start barking

when you come in and you have to be introduced, you have to do a lot. Okay, this is Tashi. Some of you may know him in the universe. So lucky Albarn has a dog this is we call him the non dog dog. He's a roadeo dog. You're a day of drive dog. He has a little Gucci purse. He's Sophie. I mean, it's like the most like give me a break kind of Beverly Hills oil pop in cash. I wonder how we got that way. So anyway, there he is. You'd be a good bloke he's had. He has he has abandonment issues worse than I do. I bought he's out of the house for 10 minutes emails down. So anyway, he's my teacher, or she's my teacher. Okay, where was that I was distracted. Yes, this approach to the path, you can flip it into enlightenment.

The most unwanted experience transforms into the most coveted experience. Tomlin has a classic reverse meditation because it does because it takes in the darkness of unsend operates. And then pain meditation. This is the big one, right?

Pain meditation is a reverse meditation that prepares us for the painful part of dying, in addition to the emotional pain of like a hole, that's why it's called a painful Bardot. Darn right because the mind is so sticky. We're so attached to everything. It's painful because it hurts to let go. That's why it's painful. In addition to the emotional pain of letting go, there's often physical pain associated with disease. To prepare for this pain, we voluntarily bring it into our experience now not right so you titrate it right? You bring these unwanted circumstances now you drip it into your experience, establishing relationships who an inevitable lifetime partner so that then when things really hit the fan, you have a whole new set of practices that can support you. Reverse meditations are done within the context of structural practice the seating I'm sorry, the sitting practice of meditation slash mindfulness.

This provides the crucible the holding environment for establishing a proper relationship to the unwanted experience

for the pain meditation after doing shamatha for a few minutes, you can bite your lip or tongue dig your fingernail into your thumb or the nation go into the pain. And so I'm not going to say too much about because again, this was just like, I mean, this meeting they unfolded on it. But what I relate to here is just a super condensed form which I am packed in the book with four stages, four stages of reverse meditation. The first is the observational stage. You bear witness to it. You differentiate from it not shaped differentiate, you get a better beat on it. Before you reverse your strategies and go into it. Second step it briefly as you you literally be with it, you come alongside it image. I got this from Sonia Rinpoche, which is I think I got it from him. The image is an interesting one, which is if you've ever seen boxers fighting right, if boxers are six feet or more apart, in the ring, they can throw a punch right and this word lentils come from seeing boxers get so entangled with each other. In other words, they're so close that the best they can do is just throw a few little harmless punches in the rib right. And so the second stage being with it is like that. You step to it you get so intimate and close with it, that you start to take the punch out of it. These are preparatory phases for the really deep deep dives which are the third and fourth phase, fourth phases. So the third phase is the examination phase you inquire not just merely cerebral or cognitive inquiry, but true somatic, the passionate analytic meditation where your body does the inquiry. So you examine it you ask the questions like What is pain? Like what is it made of emotional or physical? Like really? What is this lifetime partner? Have you ever really spent getting to know this thing? So this inquiry is really quite compelling it acts as a bridge to the final phase. And the fruition investigation is the inquiry not only like what is this pain really and so by doing this you're deconstructing both the experience and the you can observe and they therefore this into each other in the last stage, which is the unification stage talking stage. This is where the The Wanted experience becomes non dual and therefore become spiritual. You can use your physical pain as a deep dive non dual experience. So the acronym here is observe it be with it examine yoke obey. It's I was quite delighted when I put this together. It's like well, there's kind of a cool acronym. So it's a basically obey New Order relationship to an unwanted experience and basically relating to this these difficult situations and a completely non dualistic way. whole book on this maybe after we finished this one, we can explore that we'll see. But so much to say, but just briefly. Yeah, so this is just the summary from way back when I wrote this thing go into the pain. What is it? What is it made of what happens? If I reverse meditations are not pleasant, but neither is death? I'd say these practices are elective you don't have to do them right. Heartbreak elective is pain elective is lateness and death elective yet. I didn't realize I spoke Russian right, yet. No. And so do you want to ring a more heightened elevated relationship to difficult situations if you do your real spiritual warrior? These practices or treasure? You do them for short sessions and remember the masochism is not the point while the pain may not disappear the suffering does so this is these are demolition derby meditations, right the point is, pain is suffering as a construct. You can deconstruct suffering back to pain, for sure. suffering and pain are not the same thing. Suffering is an inappropriate relationship to pain born to resistance, deconstruct back into pain. And then in the highest stages. You can even deconstruct pain, just raw, intense sensory awareness. That's it. So these are fantastically powerful deconstruction practices that help you realize that your pain is a construct. Your suffering is a construct and therefore so much that we spend so much of our lives just basically an agonizing about are basically of our own making.

So this is no small thing. This is again, one reason I think Richie and his team may be interested I mean, if we could really substantiate and I think we can the transformative capacity of these practices. no small thing.

meditation helps a trooper MPJ negativity, which is the resistance to pain right? Here's the equation I have you you guys have heard me say this equation more important than E equals MC squared. For us. S equals P times are suffering equals pain times resistance. Do a little basic drop the resistance you deconstruct the suffering, right. What are you left with this thing called P pain. What is that? Well, you can even deconstruct that What you resist persists. So don't resist open to it, you dissolve it. Negative negativity is like being shot with two arrows. This is a classic Buddhist analogy. parable. The first arrow hits you physically hurts you physically if you can stay with that. Pain and relate to it directly. It will still hurt but not as much when as best when you bring your storylines that you story ones are what created your dramas your your self inflicted dramas, which we actually pay for right? I mean, we pay for this crap because the thing is we actually pay for this it's amazing. The second arrows little commentary poncha conceptual proliferation, the transform simple pain into complex suffering. Oh, and here's the here's the punchline. Yeah, this is good. By becoming one with your pain. There is no one hurt boy, this is one you want to write down. But another sticky note, put it on your fridge, put it on your forehead. This is really quite compelling and dare I say profound by becoming one with Hey, there's no one to hurt. There's just this thing this phenomenon arising this raw intense sensory awareness can reify we append the label pain to that and therefore we reify the pain and then by reifying pain by immediate implication we reify the experiencer and this is precisely why ego was perversely invested in maintaining this sick relationship to payment. At least it's something man and so the closer I know again I get so don't get into the whole book. But this stuff is this is no no small thing by becoming with your pain. There's no one to hurt the non dual traditions the New Age people. They're all for non duality. They're all for unity. As long as the unity and non duality is psychically or physically delicious. Oh, I can be one with that. Well, where's your non duality when you're just in a heap of hurt right? Where's your spirituality goes then. Becoming what is their pain don't want to hurt and the character of the pain changes that's deconstructed. This practice radically alters our relationship to discomfort reverses it the next time you get a headache, turn that pain into meditation. Watch the pain transform before your eyes totally does. 100% Reverse meditation is required diligence not only diligence, but levity humor, kindness towards yourself. It's actually it's actually a practice of metta reversed meditations are actually the practice of metta Maitreya loving kindness, and you may wonder what what going into my pain is a practice of loving kindness what? Well, the kindest thing you can ever do is speak and live the truth. And when you're in pain being real with that speaking and living the truth is a form of advanced meta Maitri. Instead of trying to slip it under the rug or whatever, you're willing to deal with it, face it. It's to kindness. We would rather sit in tranquillity than plunge into pain. Yeah, like no kidding. But to establish a healthy relationship to 100 experiences, we have to spend time with them to become familiar with them the very definition notation Gong do em to beer with it's always easier to do so on our own terms that the titration thing we may think we'll be able to relate to pain or death just by reading having read about it, but that edits you seldom realize when we actually hurt or die. Why? Well, because it goes it goes against the monumental body the forces of the dark side, the for nature and nurture. We're conditioned culturally to avoid any discomfort This is the basis of the multi trillion dollar entertainment industry to buffer us from our pain. It also goes against the imperative the biological imperative of nature. We're biologically hardwired to fight, fight or freeze against unwanted experiences. That's fine for a biological point of view. But this evolutionary imperative flips into devolutionary retardance. When is transposed into the into the spiritual domain, and this is what I would conjecture. This is one of many reasons why there are so few awakened people. Because in order to really come up, you gotta let all this crap up, you gotta go through the intense di ng D frosting, D reification. That detox and that is no day at the beach. And so these practices therefore also help us really understand the challenges coming up and why so few people are willing to go all the way to the finish line. Because the deeper you go, the more it's going to hurt because all this hurt has been stuffed into your unconscious mind. And there is there's right. So these practices have so many layers of applicability. Sasha and Paula Rinpoche I think this is probably from his book mind beyond death.

It's very difficult to transform an experience of suffering if we have no basis for working with pain to begin with. Therefore, it is initially necessary to work with minor pains and illness and discover how we can bring these to the path. Then as more severe sicknesses come to us, right, leave kindergarten, go to grade school, high school, grad school. We're able to bring those to the path because we're familiar with it all. Eventually on cable bringing even the most debilitating conditions to the path.

If you become accustomed looking at the experience of pain, if that looking is genuine and you can rest your mind in the pure sensation, that's all it is. You will see a difference in how you experience the pain. When a greater sickness strikes us we will not be hit by it in the same way. You will not be such a problem or a shock.

We can face even the pain and suffering of dying with greater confidence because we are facing familiar territory unknown.

When the actual moment of death arrives, we will be able to look at that pain and transform it. And so those of you who have read many refugees beautiful book and if you haven't read it, you have to in love with the world amongst journey through the bank or somesuch title. When Helen sent me this book, I helped her with a little bit. When she first sent me the first draft I said Helen, this this whole book is the reverse meditation book. So we introduced that term into the book and the whole book is really a journey of that and there's a line early on in there. Where means you remember Jay says of his charter to do this he was really into animals died on the streets of India. It's amazing line of water to put myself in such an amazing say. And so as it's precise to use and they're very processed a familiarity begin the demolition derby begins the deconstruction process, huge aversion to Oh crap. It's very interesting. The next time you're going through some physical I'm sorry, emotional duress. These reverse meditations have a ton of traction around emotional pain. Here's one thing I

try to make it as bad as you possibly can. I'm gonna start this new church right this church of masochism. Just kidding but I this this part is not a kid this part is not a joke. The next time you feel like whatever some some fear, some heartbreak some whatever, as an experiment and you know there's you sign this waiver before he came on to this this

little session here right? So you can't see me trying to make it as bad as you possibly can. Like why why on God's earth would you do this because you want to fight fire with fire. And by making it worse by actually trying to exaggerate what you're feeling what what will you discover you discover the whole thing is your creation. You'll discover the whole thing is something you've made up. Now that doesn't mean there isn't something there. There's definitely something there. But it's not what you think it is. And if you sit there and you actually try to make it worse, you can deconstruct it, it actually becomes kind of a reductio ad absurdum. You can get to the point where you realize wow, this is this is a joke, you know, and it's actually very odd, you know, like you're grieving. Again, I'm not I'm not dismissing the validity of these human states. I'm not I'm not being that nihilistic. Let's say you're feeling some grief. Feel it as fully as you possibly can better run from it. Try to flit as fully as you possibly can. It's actually Dzogchen feeling it's great perfection feeling. We practice I talked about this in the in the ribs meditation program, we practice what I playfully now call The Great imperfection tradition. Right? So hey, right. These teachings come from the Dzogchen tradition, maha mudra Xhosa, in the great perfection, the great completion, super lofty and credible, right? Very, very profound teachings. Well, one way I think that we can apply the great perfection, great completion Teachings is to experience especially hardship is perfectly and completely as we possibly can. This will reveal to you how our default is the great imperfection tradition. We we perceive and experience everything perfectly. And right there ever and I can't go anywhere. I have to be careful. It's like I keep saying I'm not going to do this, but I keep doing it. We experienced it and partially why. Because we're flickering. We're always referencing the experience back always. The reference actually the reference is actually on to nothing. You think you're referring the experience back to yourself, but there isn't one. It's actually the act of referencing itself that creates the illusion that there is a self. I say that again. The experience is actually referencing contracting on to nothing, no thing emptiness. It's the reference contraction itself that creates the illusion that there is a self what's the self is embodied contraction referencing? That's all it is. That's what creates the static of the great imperfection tradition, which we all experience. That's what we live by. How does this experience relate to me? What can I get out of this? It's always me, me, me, me. Me. Right? Mantra Me me me me me mee everything is flipped back into ourselves creating the very sense of and therefore this this thing, the experience or not just the experience is also made up. That's also made up it's just mascara on reality. really badly pit right. So when you realize that both the experience and the experience are constructs made up, guess what? You can deconstruct it, all of this stuff is profound, right? Okay, have to slow down and get too excited. Let's take a sip of space. Right you know this patient session. This is one way bully. For me. It's when I get speedy which is like happens all the time. We get too excited. Pause take a little sip of space one breath meditation session. Here we go.

eautiful we're going to add a little thing to this. This is from Eric pomoc concern. You may know him translator Tokujin Rinpoche amazing. He does a lot of variation on this. Which one I heard it was like high five Eric This is so great. Take a nice big inhalation. And then this side this is like and then he just rest in this open relaxed space at the end of that side. So one breath sigh meditation Okay, here we go

fantastic. Right here is we can start to deconstruct, slow down deconstruct the narrative. One breath meditation one breath sighing meditation. Fantastic. A Yes, instead of my knee jerk aversion to pain it almost becomes it doesn't almost become spiritual spiritual becomes non dual.

My throbbing toe reminds me to meditate which alters the intensity of the pain and beginning to bring pain onto my path. Another reverse meditation is to create as many thoughts as possible and this is where I first learned it. So when I did the Maha Mudra training, this was the instruction. And it was like, wow, this is great. I finally get to do what I've always wanted to do in meditation, right? It's almost like flipping off meditation, right? It's just amazing. I'm going to sit here and I'm going to create as many thoughts as I possibly can. Hey, let's do this. This one is short enough we can do it. Okay. This is pretty cool. So for the next 45 seconds 15 minutes or so. Why you to create as many thoughts as you possibly can, right? Okay, finally, yet to do what you've always wanted to do after some.

Set, go. D can you make your mind how many thoughts more more more more? don't meditate on me now. Amani thoughts more thoughts more thoughts, more thoughts, more thoughts, make any thoughts more. Make your mind as wild as you possibly can. More or crazy mind insane mind wild mind. And then drop it on breath meditation

Do you or you can sit in the silent center of this voluntary cyclone and not be swept away by the contents of your mind. Play with it. Fantastic for insomnia. A way to bring up the path. So way to bring wild states of mind and no no small thing. Instead of calming your mind down with it up. Again start with shamatha we just did a one breath shamatha before

then make your mind as stormy as possible. Think of yesterday think of tomorrow visualize Paris New York or the Pew as quickly as you can. Now's your chance to do it. You always want it to do on the cushion. go hog wild mentally

doing where the gales of Carnival will be able to sail and stormy seas later. Notice that you can sit quietly in the center of this voluntary cycle and be moved by it. See that's not your friend. Boss which is the movement of the mind literally involves your Yana tantric language. That's how thought is defined. Movement of mind during how to hold there's Dharma hold. You're practicing how to hold your seat in the midst of mental chaos. What's going to happen when you die if you've been around situations hospice hospice worker or you know oftentimes, intimate caregivers in the family are losing it. So if you're going to hold it, keep it all together because you've done the sort of practice done a silly practice like this. You're practicing hold your seat in the midst of mental chaos. Don't buy into the thoughts and emotions. Another way to look at this is hit the mute button. Right I think I've shared the story with you. The Kevin I walked down the main street on the Pearl Street Mall and Boulder thing. And so I came home one day and I haven't it's a tent thing I was just turning the TV on the watch something else. But here he comes. He's out there, you know, just stipulating slobbering spitting all over himself. I mean thing is just like are you getting into? I don't know where it came from. I grabbed the mute button and I hit it. And all of a sudden, like I completely deconstructed the drama here he was he's still up there spitting and slobbering and gesticulating, but because I hit the mute button Nana my gayness perspective, this lucidity and the whole thing just became solicitation helps you hit the mute button on your mind. So you have this more spacious relationship and you're not entangled we get into these practices or disentangling practices. There's so profound. Just watch the upheaval. This practice expands the sense of shamatha because even though your mind is how you're able to maintain inner peace, is the sage Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj says from his book, I am that liberates. Do the meditation for a minute rest and shamoto then do it again. Because reverse meditations are intense short sessions prevent resentment. Don't underestimate the power of short missions. ponlop Rinpoche says quote, we usually view anything small is unimportant or not really worth doing. For example, if we only have five minutes to meditate, we tell ourselves, five minutes is nothing. Not going to last for at least an hour. And quote, well, an hour is fine. Three years is fine. But what a moment about A little drip of sanity, a little sip of space. short sessions repeated often is a classic time and jokes are mudra this helps you mix meditation with post meditation helps you bring your meditation into life and death. short sessions sessions repeated frequently. But with this meditation is short and sweet, or in this case, short and sour.

It's like running you don't start with a marathon. You start with short runs and work your way up. short sessions repeated frequently are just as effective if not more so, as long as sessions done infrequently.

And when it comes to mixing vacation and post meditation, ie life, which is how to transform your life into meditation. Short frequent sessions reign supreme. Okay, let me just do one more page. And then we can chat about this. Especially mistakes yourself and allowed and overly stimulating environment and work with staying centered or if you have family with cancer your life right? Flip on the television and crank up the stereo turn on the alarm clock and sit with a cacophony go to a loud and crazy place and meditate if you have kids this environment of your life. One of Tokujin Rinpoche sons he had four of them all to gurus once complained to him how hard it was to meditate in Katmandu, Nepal can noise and distractions. If you've been there, you know, oh my god, especially at night all a dogs come out and their horn means insane. Rinpoche said to him practice under these conditions. How will you ever practice in the Bardo Write pipe dream

as with all reverse meditations find the silence and the noise this listen the motion even if you never do these meditations just know about them helps you to reverse your relationship to unwanted experience. The next time you're in a crazy environment like Subway station or Time Square Congress, you might remember these instructions and transform the mayhem into meditation.

I frequently traveled to India actually I did a lot when I wrote this I was going least haven't been there in a while. A land of intense chaos. Instead of getting irritated when the flies heat noise beggars and pollution assaulted me. I tried to relax into the pandemonium. I reverse my usual defensive approach to these unpleasant situations and bring them onto my path. There are times I just can't do it and run away but even then I read my strange, bizarre quirky meditative intrusion. All the reverse practices culminate and equanimity, the great equanimity. So dear divers here on the seventh consciousness because it's the seventh consciousness from the yoga Chara. That's the flickering. That's the constant from consciousness. That refers everything back to the eighth consciousness, mistaking there for the sense of self, everything externally back in mistaking everything outside is other so the duality is born. Birth of duality is the constant contraction flickering from the seven consciousness so you're working when the seven consciousness is transformed. It's transformed into what the wisdom of equalled wisdom of equanimity. It's fantastic just the way the way to relate with the total democratic one taste economist relationship to whatever arises. Within the teacher relate to whatever arises without bias without reference without contraction, but a loop of say, when the mind is free of when one has become accustomed achieved one way to attain enlightenment, the highest stages of the path when the Lennie protests are calm some sorrow or nirvana is experienced evenly the great one taste a great equanimity also called the great bliss. positive experiences are not cultivated unpleasant ones are not shunned. As we have seen distraction is one of the biggest problems in life and death. are one of the most important instructions is Do not be distracted, right? How many times is that mentioned in The Tibetan Book of the Dead? Do not be distracted. The reverse meditations are a formidable way to end distraction, because they bring distractions onto the path they show us how to reach our relationship to distraction. Instead of feeling that our meditation has caught being interrupted by a thought, noise or even life itself. The reverse meditations bring these interruptions into our practice, they become our practice. Khenpo Rinpoche said if you're in retreat and hear a noise that makes you angry, it's a sign that you're unable to bring distraction onto your path. Oh, geez, I wish he hadn't said that. Oh, well, let's try. So we'll pick up here next time. I'll mark this. Yeah, at this point we should be able to get through this book and loved it's a hell of a lot more. And again, remember, it's all about me. If I run some commentary, make it a little bit more fresh, right? That's the whole point. Otherwise, why am I reading this damn thing? So at this point, there was one question that got piped in questions man's jokes. If they're clean jokes are welcome, but I will start with a question that piped in. Yes, I have to say I readily became an I have this is a first I've never had this question before. Okay, four years ago. I was at a local Buddhist temper temple. Checking out their small garden, I guess that may be hand maybe a monk who had given me two teachings via the freemium meditation days of mediation, but I think he meant meditation, stepped aside and talked with me he asked if I liked and I told him yes, so hate me three cuttings of two types. One died but the other two cons survived. And today one cactus is over three feet tall, and the other is in bloom for the first time. Is this a cya for to do an empowerment or cast a spell? Well, I don't think so. Is there really this original question? A great question. I thought I've heard all the questions. I never I'm not making fun of it. It's actually a good question. I feel like in in my time, so Wait, I gotta let my dog upstairs hold on

want to know who rules the roost around here? Damn dog, man. I'll get back to the question. I feel like in my time of owning the plants, my knowledge and respect for Buddhism and meditation has taken and grown tremendously. I mean, how wonderful is that? Are there in recent Buddhist texts that reference plant giving like this, not aware of if there's something out there I had come across it. Whether there is some like you know, pardon the pun transplantation of wisdom taking place via these plants idea, maybe I've never come across anything like this so I can't speak with any authority. I think it's a wonderful story thing it but I haven't come across anything like this. Thanks for sharing. It's cool. This is an original one. So I wish I could be more help but I haven't heard of this before. That doesn't mean there isn't something in the tradition about it. Hey, like mute or Salford and then I'll check the chat.

Where's my chat thing here? That's weird. Is No that's not it a pirate still there that? Yeah, I'm your fire away.

Um, I'd love to discuss real briefly our relationship to physical stuff, physical possessions. I feel like that is fits in very well you know people in a conversation about death and dying. A lot really attached to our physical stuff. And there can be a lot of hoo ha about that when you have to assisted living or nursing home and leave the Euro since there's no roof and then there's the whole like Swedish death clean evil as I've a lot of angst around my relationship with material possessions more than I think most people do. I have a lot of, you know, the extent to which it seems you know, I see the connection between my ego identity and my stuff as a way of sort of, if it bothers me, it's very sort of irritating and hot of sort of like how like angst about wanting to get rid of this stuff, but then feeling attached to it of having a house full of stuff. It just is totally claustrophobic to me, but then I think well, is that just aversion and I need that's just another form of attachment to stuff. aversion to having stuff is just more attendant to that your thoughts on that? In relation to our inevitable death and loss of all the stuff?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, this, this is good. This is good. So, you know, that which is just again, there's no funny way of looking at things. It's an arrested form of development. Basically, it lives on grasping attachment and reification that that's just what ego is and what it does, and so that's the very construct of the fabric of ego. It's based on this. It's based on this appropriation of all experience towards the center of experience. That's what I was talking about earlier. So it's defined by this, and therefore a no surprise that says what it does is it grasps and it grasps Astra things as if it life is as if it's life depends on it, because it does. It does depend on grasping. And so if we understand this, we can have a little bit of humor and levity around all this stuff that we've collected and then start to realize is you're doing now that if we don't relate to this in a healthy way, it can become somewhat difficult, right. And it's all born of this notion of solidification. reification and this insatiable appetite, we have to find some kind of ground. And we do that through through possessions through materialism. I mean, this what you're talking about is basically the ammo of the whole materialistic nature. But this this as you're correctly intuiting can become pretty darn problematic. Because like Nietzsche paraphrasing Nietzsche we are possessed by that which we feel we possess. And therefore you can look at it some of the most wealthy people in the world asks the Bezos, you know these multi billionaires. I don't know them personally, but I've hung around with their billionaires, and they're among the most paranoid unhappy people I know. They're materialistically, wealthy, spiritually impoverished. I've been to developing countries where the average income is less than $1 a day and I can't see this across the board. But the vast majority of these people are materialistically, impoverished or spiritually wealthy, because they never really counts. They know what really matters and so what I wouldn't recommend is is just fun query and start to work with this type of release strategy. This is actually a type of co op and barley yoga form of sutra Pola, which is basically about doing advanced directives even if it's on paper starting with with the weight of all these things that are holding you back. We want to travel through life and through the Bardot's we'll find the mind that's released from all these attachments. It's like what's the song I quote this from George Strait? Neck, right? I mean, anything with you, right? And the more you think you have and the more you think you can take with you, the more you're going to suffer. So it's a little bit of a detox it's a little bit of the painful part of of dying of letting go properly starting to intuit doesn't amount to a hill of beans and I would probably say it's so there's so much to say here about why we do this. Do we think abroad are bought by mature metaphor, we're actually happy when we stopped wanting. Let me say that again, when we get what we want, but we're actually happy when we simply stop wanting we confuse the satisfaction of one with his temporary transcendence. So what you want to do here is look at the phenomenology of materialism and the happiness and the misery that's built upon it. And then start to realize what you're really after is the state of mind. You're not after these objects, we conflate the object with the state of mind that it invokes and hence we think we need more and more and more It's not only problematic to you, my dear, is killing this planet. The Oregon consumes 200 times the world's average of natural resources. Why? For just this principle, they think things exist. They think happiness is contingent upon these things, and they basically just guarantee their misery. So perhaps the path that I might suggest for you is a path of inquiry to see if what I just said has some effects it actually is some truth to you, and then start the path of releasing letting go. I mean, the whole spiritual psycho spiritual path is a path of death and slow motion, letting go letting go dying before you die. And then when you get to this point, when you release it, what did actually Kris Kristofferson wrote the song Janis Joplin made it famous Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. So is it now? Now, you want to be happy? Drop it now. Easier said than done. Why? Because we're so effing attached to everything. That's just ego. So realize that the form of developmental arrest, smile at it. And then slowly, slowly pry your fingers open and release and release, let go, let God whatever you want to say. And you will probably start to find that those are the moments of real happiness that you're looking for. So I'll pause because this is such a great big rich question, but there's some of that sort of makes sense.

Yeah, definitely. A lot of that, you know, sort of lines up with with my own feelings about it. I guess. The only thing would be if you could speak a bit more specifically to sort of feeling I have like, it's not just a an urge to let go but but it feels like there is an aversion to having stuff and in a developed nation having stuff is to not have stuff can sometimes add to a point be an inconvenience and it's also looked upon negatively by mainstream society. And so maybe it's just because of that, that I feel this pressure to have stuff and then this aversion comes up and I wonder about that just being another form of materialism that I need to get over.

Well, I might recommend that you know, this is the danger of the peer pressure if our materialistic culture and having the strength to just basically don't care anymore. You know, basically have the courage to be a Warrior Within your own self and relate to compassion with others who think they need to have to have possessions to be satisfied, but look very deeply again at the mechanism of what's really going on here. And there's interesting term and Tibetan

agent, which means definite renunciation, definite emergence. So it's what renunciation really means. It means definitely emergence, away from materialistic paradigms away from acquisition away from grasping, we're all at best partially emerged at Oh, you know, we never never quite given up, give up hope for samsara. That next whatever we'll fill in will make me happy that next that next thing, and so because we think a deficient form of emptiness, we feel like we have to say an apple in sage insatiable appetite. This is this is born of this deficiency drum. But if we understand that at the basis of our eating is this primordial wealth is natural, we already have everything we could possibly want. So as you start to you know what? William James says, Have you attend to and to the display, if you attend to form if externality you're going to be seduced into it yourself with it. So you want to basically transfer your identity disentangle from that display, really going on and that's what psycho spiritual practice is all about. finding out what's really going on here. And then you start to realize, whoa, the vast thing the absolute subscribes to the materialistic paradigm, that's why it's killing the planet. And so what if people look at you as slightly askance? You have to have the conviction and the heart within yourself to say, you know, I just don't doesn't, I don't really care what they think anymore. Be true to yourself. You know, follow the thread of the truth of your own experience. And then again, just inquire, don't take anything what I said at face value, just ask yourself these questions. Is it true, test it, test it? And if it's true and you have some experiential verification, then you'll start to make this transition to what's really happening. Then start to set your targets in the right direction, right. We're looking for love and happiness and all the wrong places when we're looking outside of ourselves in materialistic pursuits. You already have everything you could possibly want. Just set your targets reality is what you attend to, to attend to your own being your inner being and you realize the wealth you naturally possess and then everything else just becomes fundamentally either an element or if it's not a distraction, you realize that so you let it go. So you can still relate to these things. You can still have these sorts of possessions but you're you've been you've there's this exorcism that's taking place you know, your identity has been transferred properly. You no longer identify with these materialistic whatever's and therefore you'll find yourself lightening freeing, freeing, freeing, lighter, happier, this is this is part of the Enlightened process. Materialism is endarkenment, that burden someone's gonna get you download you down you have to take care of all of these positions in need more of them yet, get back to me in 10 years and let me know how that works out you're guaranteed your misery. So test these teachings see if they work against your experience and then sometimes the process of detox and defrosting whatever the icing is not so comfortable but with a proper view, you'll be willing to let go because you realize sooner or later, what are you going to do when you die? I'll finish with this last quote of from the ALAN WALLACE wonderful contemplation I recommend we all do it. Imagine that you're on your deathbed. as vividly as you possibly can. At that moment, of what value is your car? For me, my beautiful German piano? All your possessions of what value at the moment of death are these things? Zip? None. That's precisely their inherent value now. Now that doesn't mean I can't celebrate and play Chopin and Beethoven on this beautiful piano. It means I'm not attached to the display. Easier said than done. But take a really good look. Do these types of inquiries. These contemplations and they radically simplify your life and make you a heck of a lot happier. And also save you a ton of money and save this planet a heap of hurt as we stop extracting everything out of it to feed our insatiable appetites. Okay. Thank you. Okay lane for some reason I can't find the chat column here today. Where's my chat column Alyssa is bizarre.

Anyway, Andrew Whaley. Hi dear. Hi. I was wondering what it would look like to grieve without self reference because for me when I'm mourning or, you know, a loved one, it's all based on self reference, how their absence relates to me. So how do you do that?

Boy, what a great insight What a great question. What do you think?

I think okay, I thought about it. To let you know, say like the Olympia don't feed it. So I'm thinking maybe to feel

you're broke up?

Can you you know, like really, really feel it fully. Yeah, sorry. There. That's good. Yeah, to feel it, feel it fully, you know, energy. Have it be energetically felt in the body and embrace it, you know, even get some benefit. I've heard a little bit about tonch. Use the energy for pause. I mean, you know that it's an energy of body. So that's all I can think of, but I don't know I want to know what day

I had. You just nailed it. I think that's it. Yeah. It's and again, this this this is a delicate one. And I'm gonna say this with as much care and kindness and compassion as I possibly can because I know what it feels like to feel grief. I've lost loved ones I am not immune to this thing called grief. But what I'm going to say again, just simply see if it's true for you. We suffer in direct proportion to our levels of reification. If you think something is really solidly real, and really possesses an inherent existence from its own side, you're going to suffer in direct proportion to how you've imbued that phenomena with a status it does not inherently have. And so this isn't meant to kind of somehow you raise the the preciousness, the beauty of the human condition and how it is that we feel grief and why we feel grief is basically to help us understand what's going on here. Why do we feel this grief and so let me share one story in particular there many here that there's one story in particular that I didn't experience it personally but in menorah people did. When Trungpa Rinpoche was told that his dear, dear dear Francis would be Roshi had died. He actually kind of wailed and anguish he felt this intense, intense pain of loss. But then he didn't he didn't mope around he didn't you know, get into this whole high like you were intimating Lane this constant self referencing, just exactly like you said, Oh, poor me. How does it relate to me everything is, at least to me, you know, he felt he felt it but he didn't feel it. So he felt this intense experience and he cremated the experience as he lived it see, and therefore the grief he felt it he knows what that feels like. But it didn't it didn't turn into this chronic situation of unnecessary grief, unnecessary, complicated grief, born in fact of these types of processes. So I think you answered it. Rest feel the grief as fully as you possibly can because something is there don't deny that return to your body. Feel as fully as you possibly can in your body. Your body knows how to deal with this energy. Will it come up later, of course it will come up. But every time it does and you relate to it fully what happens? It basically starts to have less and less of an adverse impact on you. So you still have the memory and the love and everything that makes the human relationship so beautiful, but you're no longer so adversely affected to the point where you can't even get out of bed in the morning when you have really complicated grief, or grief that can be turned can can actually in extreme cases become somewhat pathological. So I'll leave it at that unless somebody else has something to offer say around it, but it's a really wonderful, deep question that has a lot of applicability to the human condition and how we live our lives. Right.

Okay. Yeah. Thank you very much, Andrew.

Welcome. So, Alyssa, I, for some bizarre reason. I don't have a chat column today, and I don't know why. Are there any are there any questions in the chat column that I should know about? I'm trying to find it but it's like I think zoom did an update. So it's kind of weird, but there was one that came in. I can read it to you. Because I it's weird. I can I don't get it. Okay, fire away.

It says without the Dharma we experience confusion at realizing we have died before we experienced sorrows.

Yeah, probably. Probably, because we would be bewildered. You know, there's a the Bardot's are characterized by bewilderment. That's what makes them problematic lack of familiarity lack of ground bewilderment, confusion, it's unfamiliar territory. The territory free from self referencing it's a territory free of ground depending on which Bardo that you're in. And so, without some level of familiarity without some level of experience, then and it makes total sense to me just purely logically. When these unfamiliar states are revealed to us, we might react somewhat less than ideal, because we don't know what's going on. And we're just, you know, we're lost in the confusion of our own minds. And so this is the whole reason for the excuse me, this is the whole reason to study death and dying, which, hopefully you'll start to see is nothing more than studying the nature of your own mind, because death is a journey of the mind. And when I say mind, I also mean mind heart, right, that same thing, mind heart, so journey of the mind, heart. And so the more you can become familiar with the depths of your heart and mind now when that dimensionality that depth is revealed the death what is you know, what is found now is found then you want to get to the point where you can say I often playfully say this at the moment of death, the fruition of these practices, is to be able to say when we die, been there, done that. Been there? Done that. Then there's no longer any fear you had you have a really solid sense of what's going on, you can orient yourself. Negotiate the Bardot's with real lucidity. This is archetypal lucidity and therefore form your mind in your next replay. Not out of habitual pattern, ignorance karma, but out of love, kindness and compassion, then your experience in your mind and your next body are shaped voluntarily. That's the point. Okay. Alrighty, everybody. Hey, nice to see you all. It's nice to be back.

The usual activities are taking place around nightclub for those of you who are members, you know how that works. I'll be back for next signing of this particular book study group in two weeks. I'm pretty sure I'm around. But until then, where to find me on on the all these other little silly things that we're doing and to whatever extent dedication of merit means something to this become quite important. When we talk I think, appear lands.

We gather off whatever we have done here of whatever benefit we did. We send it to all sentient beings. I say this every time now if what we're doing here is not a relevance to other human beings sentient life forms on the planet of everything we're doing here is irrelevant. If we have to take these teachings and apply them for the benefit of this planet, or what we're doing here is just New Age field, good spirituality and that's not what this is about. So nice to see everybody. So shout out recording stopped