[3] Navigating the Bardos: Preparing for the Journey of Life and Death

12:27AM Sep 1, 2023

Speakers:

Andrew Holecek

Audience Member

Keywords:

mind

death

bardo

dream

meditations

called

emptiness

happening

stages

experience

die

practice

read

book

question

reality

study

yoga

love

write

Dream. Do you go anywhere when you dream? Is there a pre existing dreamscape waiting for you every night? No. It's just your mind free from sensory constrained mind becomes reality. Exactly the same thing happens when you die. You're going anywhere. No, you're just taking a journey into the dream at the end of time. Seeing the inside of experience, experience inside of your being from the deepest possible perspective. You can do this now. You don't have to wait till you physically die to do this. That's the great gift of the barter. Yoga right there. Once again, the journey through the Bardot's is a journey of the mind. Trungpa Rinpoche is incredibly beautiful short book, 140 50 pages. Journey of the mind I highly recommend that book is one of the top five best books out there. So any meditation that allows you to become familiar with your mind the very definition of meditation, right? To become familiar with will prepare you for death. Because two things happen when you die. All the advantages defilements all all the the stuff that is not you the real you. In meditation you become familiar with that madness or not this the via negativa releasing all these false levels of identification the stains on your mind, until eventually reality is pointed out the true nature of mind is revealed exactly what's going to be real revealed at the moment of death. And then the second aspect of the path is becoming familiar with that. That's the via positiva. The apophatic way is just a cat a phallic way the via positiva where now you become familiar with who you really are. Newcomers may be intimidated by the wealth of meditations available for sure. Excuse me, all these different practices are mentioned. Because the Bardo experience is challenging. For the unprepared mind, right. Like any intense trip, things may not go as planned. So pull up our materials about this in his book if plan A doesn't work during the Bardo of dying, we have Plan B for the bardo damata Plan C for the Bardo becoming. With so many meditations at our fingertips, we can pull out something out of our emergency kit and turn a bad trip into a good one. And so I have a little my riff on this these days is that the Bardo teachings is incredibly, unbelievably valuable and important as they are there. They're actually in my languaging they're actually insurance Dharma and I'm a I'm a cheap insurance salesman. I shouldn't say that. That's a pejorative. That's a derogatory term for someone who is insurance. Forgive me. I'm an insurance salesman. When I teach the Bardo Yogo I'm teaching insurance Dharma and so what this means is, if you are doing your main practices, whatever it is, you're doing your main practices fully completely. That is a magnificent preparation for death. And in fact, when I learned these practices, originally in my three year retreat, in what's called the sixth yogas of Naropa, last year, there are four there's que yo yo goes for daily life. John dolly and Alyssa reform to yoga is for dream that Sleep and Dream Yoga. And then there's two Yogi's for death, Bardo and poet. And so Bardo and Paul are considered supplemental they're not even part of what are called the four root diamonds. They're adjunctive. They're supplemental. The idea being just like I said, you do your main thing properly, and you do it. Well. You don't need this parachute. You don't need this insurance, but it's there for a reason. For many reasons, actually. But here the ideas concentrate on what you're doing. Concentrate on your main practice, part of yoga Bardot teachings, for sure, magnificent contribution. Fundamentally, the core teachings that's where you want to place your emphasis the most important thing is to prepare. Yeah, so the Tibetans have a really interesting humor or sometimes it translate sometimes it doesn't. Often when I attend teachings and a great, wonderful teacher will throw out a Tibetan joke. It's like Stephen Colbert on a bad night it just falls flat. I mean, like nothing. So here's here's Chaga Tulku who I knew when you have to go into the bathroom, it's too late to build the latrine. Okay, high five, right. The Dalai Lama summarizes the spirit of our journey in this way. So this again is his introduction to this massive, complete translation of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Since death is the state when all the girls levels of energy and consciousness had been dissolved right, earth under fire into water into wind into space. And only the subtle energies and consciousnesses remain. We'll see this later when we go through the eight stages. It is indeed possible for an advanced yoga and or yogini male or female to meditatively induce a state which is almost identical to the actual experience of death. This can be achieved because it is possible to meditatively bring about the dissolution of the gross levels of energy and consciousness. When such a task is accomplished, the meditator gains an enormous potential to progress definitively in his or her spiritual practice. Here's the point normally in our lives, if we know we're going to be confronted by a difficult or unfamiliar situation, we prepare and train ourselves for such a circumstance in advance so that when the event actually happens, we're fully prepared. We're ready. The rehearsal of the processes of death, and those of the intermediate state Bardo and the emergence into your future existence lies at the very heart of the highest of the path and Highest Yoga Tantra is called Otara, Yoga Tantra. These practices are part of my daily practice also. And because of this, I somehow feel a sense of excitement. When I think about the experience of death, I mean, how was it was that right? Okay, so check this out. So here's the Holiness the Dalai Lama, who engages in reflections on Buddha yoga, every day. Right? So if His Holiness the Dalai Lama is doing this, I you know, maybe it behooves us maybe the invitation is G's may not be such a bad idea. So this is one one reason I think I said this in the two weeks ago, so a month ago, when I first was getting into this stuff, some 2025 years ago, I used to read it the big center here in Boulder, an annual reading of the Tibetan Book of the Dead every year, every year for like 10 years. We gather I used to read all the introductory stuff and then and then the whole thing that took about eight hours that got a little long, so I cut out all the introductory commentary stuff and I just read the text proper takes a little more than three hours to be three and a half, four hours depending on how fast you eat. And so every single year, we brought people in, we'd read the text, people would volunteer they'd be for a couple minutes. I would paying a little commentary and every now and again, but year after year after year, again and again and again, just getting this stuff downloading it right installing the second GPS, this doctrinal Global Positioning System maps so sophisticated, that according to these teachings, it's downloading into your system. This is what's going to come up so all the stuff that comes up when you die from the unconscious mind again, doesn't have to be bad. It can be really good. This GPS that you're that we're installing, it's more going on than meets the outbound eye here. It's kind of self help notion. This map will come up when you need it the most. That's what that's the kind of secret aspect of doing this stuff. It's working on you at deep unconscious levels being implanted in a certain sense, waiting for you like a gift wrap right leaving yourself a nice gift wrapped present on the other side of the death process. Okay, here we go starting from kind of Ground Zero practices and teachings to help you prepare for death right shamatha tranquility. We essence or in Pali Samata just get rid of the H. There are two central themes repeated throughout the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Actually three. The two, the one that isn't mentioned here is emptiness cannot harm emptiness. That that comes back later. The most important guidebook in Tibetan Buddhism for the Bardot's The first thing is, Do not be distracted if you've read this book, how many times does it say this over and over and over? Do not be distracted? Guess what? This is something you can practice. You can practice non distraction now. So that habit carries over Don't be distracted. Now. You're not going to be distracted them. This relates to shamatha which is the ability to rest your mind on whatever is happening.

Like ALAN WALLACE puts it you know their nine stages there's so much to say about shamatha the nine stages of shamatha definitely worth knowing Ellen's wonderful book, the attention revolution, probably the best exposition on the nine stages. And he has this wonderful image you know that one of the fruit missions of the stages of shamatha it's like you get your mind has a capacity like a beanbag. I love this image that wherever you drop the beanbag, your awareness, it stays there. I like to know so I want to have a beanbag mind right. So whenever I put my attention on something like a beanbag it just stays there. That's stability right there. That becomes your body stability. of your mind, just like in a dream. You know, you have a dream at night. It's unstable. It's not clear. It's fleeting. It's bopping all over the place. Where's that lack of stability coming from? Where's that lack of clarity coming from your mind? Same thing is going to happen you can fire and brimstone right? Can't put the fear of a creator principle into you because there isn't one can't put the fear of God into you in this tradition. But the traditional wholesome fear puts the fear a fear of karma which is wholesome fear. You know, look at your mind now How stable is your mind now? I was found I was found then you want to have a stable experience when you die. Work to stabilize your mind whatever clear lucid experience when you die, create clarity and lucidity in your mind. Now, what is found that was found then, so logically makes so much sense. The stability gained through shamatha and shamatha. Again, I don't want to get too much in the weeds. But where does mindfulness fit into shamatha mindfulness is really worked with and accomplish it the fourth of the nine stages of shamoto. So people are wondering like, what's the relationship? Shama transcends but includes mindfulness. So it has three stages prior to mindfulness and then what five stages after the stability game through shamatha enables you to face any experience life or death with confidence in life, and especially in depth distraction is a big deal. Yeah. Are you kidding me? I mean, like I Rinpoche says, To end distraction is to end samsara. Distraction is the essence of samsara. Or conversely, to amp. Distraction to amplify distraction is to amplify samsara. You don't think that's happening in the world? Today? You know, the Kali Yuga. The Dark Age is borne by the insidious signature of distraction. That's why we're in such deep trouble. Distracted people don't notice things, man. I'm just like Rumi say something like I think it was Rumi. You know, we're drunk and dancing on the edge of the roof or something like that. Despite that people don't notice things like global warming, like ecological devastation and read the polls. It's astounding to me how many people still don't believe in the ecological crisis still don't believe in global warming. Are you kidding me? Okay, to get riled up. Let's take a sip of space. One little sip of space, one breath meditation. Otherwise I get too passionate, right, separate space one breath

whenever my mind gets a little speedy, which happens a lot, they get all congested, sometimes literally in my mind is like bumper to bumper traffic jam. I pause, take a little sip of space. Like little one breath meditation to let my mind breathe. Keeps me from getting distracted. The French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote this is great distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries and yet it is itself the greatest of our miseries. What a great line, right? shamatha removes the misery shamatha are calm abiding meditation literally qui essence tranquility. So shamatha means and Sanskrit Shinae. And Tibetan is a fundamental form of mindfulness meditation. Actually, that's a slight mistake. I would have to correct myself. It's the other way around, actually. But close enough mindfulness is a powerful preparation because it does not disintegrate a deck, at least the highest forms don't referential shamatha shamatha based on form that does disintegrate because that's still a mental factor. The really subtle dimensions of shamatha called non referential shamatha that does not disintegrate. That's formless so when we enter the shamatha path, we start with the gross levels because that's what we're most familiar with, like a tricycle. We work with that then we kick off the training wheels. We ride on these formulas, dimensions. Those are the qualities of the mind that do not disintegrate because they're completely formless. If we cultivate proficiency in this one practice alone, it will act as a spiritual lifeline that we can hold on to during the Bardo, and it will guide us through their perilous straits. Well, here again, what are the perilous straits right so that literature talks about? The perilous straits of the Bardo, you read the supplemental versus all the scary things? Well, again, is there a pre existing perilous state there? No, no, it's just your mind. So it makes the Bartos perilous is your mind and your inability to write it and have stability and so there's no pre existing peril they're just like a dream. One of the best preparations for death is learning to accept it radical acceptance right? And to be fully present for it being fully present. That's the essence of mindfulness, which is developed through shamatha correct stage four. Because that is uncomfortable. It's difficult to be with it is Woody Allen says such a great line. I'm not afraid of death. I just don't want to be there when it happens. That's fantastic. Most of us aren't there for our deaths and therefore make it more difficult. To get a feel for this we call how hard it is to be fully present when you're sick. Most of us just want out. Even for an advanced practitioner, it can hurt when the lifeforce separates from the body. Resistance to this hurt. This is where the book I just published on the reverse meditations. Boy someday if I rewrite this book, it'll be 600 pages I'm going to throw in the reverse meditations is that is basically part throught for this book. Because the reverse meditations, these puppies are really helpful when it comes to the end of life. Absolutely incredibly helpful. Resistance to this hurt to death or to any unwanted experience is what creates suffering, right? S equals P times are an equation more powerful than equals MC squared. Suffering equals pain times resistance. Drop the resistance you drop the suffering you're left with pain you can deconstruct suffering back into pain by dropping the resistance and then even further you can deconstruct pain itself. Suffering is a construct pain is a construct. You can deconstruct that to raw intense sensory awareness. There's still something there for sure. There is this raw intense sensory awareness to which we attend the label pain to which we further resist and create suffering. Suffering is an inappropriate relationship to pain. We can change our relationship and deconstruct suffering, for sure. We can prepare to embrace the discomfort of death by embracing every moment with mindfulness now replace opposition with equanimity. It's duction polarimetry says he's one of my main teachers. When we are a dying person, we should be a dying person fully. Don't try to be a living person. When living is not what's happening right being a good practitioner is being with whatever's happening. If dying is happening, don't try to be a living person when dying is what's happening be a dying person fully. Mindfulness is initially cultivated by practicing shamatha with form or referential shamatha that's using your body and your breath, a candle or some other reference to study the mind. The idea is to use a stable form, body candle breath whatever why we still have it is a hitching post thinker. When physical stability disappears at death, mental stability becomes our primary average or only refuge. When we die, the anchor of the body is cut away the hitching post is pulled out and the mind is sefie you finally get whatever you want. You know everybody wants freedom, freedom, I want freedom i want to be free. Well, at the moment of death, you're going to get that ultimate freedom. But as Erich Fromm wrote in his influential book, escape from freedom, political rendering, or dust the F ski and The Brothers Karamazov, the fifth chapter of the Grand Inquisitor political escape from freedom. We can't handle the space it's too open. There's no place for personal identity in that space. It's too free to open and so we panic we contract and right there right there starts the rebirth journey. Boy I need to write a new I need to write a new edition of this book, man. I mean, there's so much I get add now. This is great. All this stuff I could throw in make it make it three times as long. Hey, why not? Imagine being tossed Exactly. If we're not prepared for this freedom. We may panic. No, we're not. We may not we will panic. We will panic. And I had I share this experience. This is this is a great experience. I had this this this year. This was a real teaching for me. I share this a lot because it was a big deal. So it was it was I live in Colorado. Oops. We need to close this up. I live in Colorado we get a fair amount of snow. And I was walking down this little kind of ramp thing. And I didn't see there was a patch of black ice. I didn't see it. And so what happened was I hit the ice my feet went right out from underneath me and thank goodness they were guardrails. You know, I just I reflexively reached out to grab these guardrails. And I mean, thank goodness because I could have really seriously split my skull open and my heart was pounding and the minute it happened that instant that happened, I said holy crap. This is exactly what's going to happen when I die. Because when you die, Bartow is rug being pulled out from underneath you. That's what Bardot's are. When the rug of conventional secure reality is pulled out from underneath you. Well, what is the most intimate rug what are we not metaphorically? What are literally attached to that metaphorically? Literally, what do we attach to physically this body? And so I realized, oh my God, when I die just like slipping on this piece of ice. My body is going to slip out from underneath me. And I'm going to be sent flying and my reflex, you know, survival level instinct to just grasp to keep from hitting the ground. I said, Oh my god, this is exactly what's going to happen in the Bardo. The rug of my body is going to be pulled out. It's going to slip out from underneath me. I'm going to be sent into space. And if I'm not familiar with that space, favorite definition of meditation, habituation to openness, what am I going to do? I'm going to contract and that very contraction that panic is what's going to freeze the space and becomes the fabric. The embodiment is called first ganda in Buddhist terms, that becomes the fabric of my very body. Literally embodied contraction, panic fear. That's what this form is. If you think about this, this is pretty revelatory, so much. There's another reason I need to write a new updated version. Your body is embodied panic fear, born from the inability to be so open. So what do we want to do? Practice openness, practice releasing, practice letting go now. So yeah, maybe just a little bit more because I want to have a little time for discussion. I don't want to rush through this. so much here yeah, if we're not prepared for this freedom, we may panic No, we will panic I promise. Imagine being tossed out of a rocket into outer space or imagining slipping on ice. The ensuing freakout impels us to grasp it, anything that can reestablish the sense of ground, it is the grasping itself, the contraction itself that creates the illusion of ground that's what the self is. The self is embodied, grasping embodied contraction. Born of fear.

Yeah, there it is. Geez. Okay, so this was a premonition 10 years ago, like catching ourselves just before taking a bed spill on a patch of ice. That's what happened to me. We reflexively reach out to grab on to anything that keeps us from falling this grasping reflex can spur us to take on an unfortunate form, and therefore an unfortunate rebirth. Anything to put ground underneath your feet, like a body. I don't care what kind of body it is. Just give me a body. And so it's like Superman J said I'll close and then we can have a discussion. Tomorrow, which I said around this again, the inevitable one liner. The bad news is you've heard this bad the bad news is, this is happening now. Just not when not when you die. It's happening now. The bad news is you're falling through space without a parachute. The good news is there is no ground. I mean, that's like genius, right? That's just genius. That's unbelievable. That's emptiness. Amazing. The bad news. We're in a freefall right now. The bad news is you're falling through space without a parachute. No reference points, right. The good news is there's no ground. Amazing. This guy was amazing. So notice if this is where we're going to pick up next time, because I don't want to rush this stuff. I mean, there's there's so much here. So I'll put a note but this is where we'll pick up and there was a question that got piped in. I will address that and then any questions or comments doesn't always have to be a question comment or offering more than welcome. But let me get to this one. So this is from Patrick. For people who listen deeply, is there an intuition or inner knowing of when death is on the horizon? Maybe there's a number of questions here. So I'm going to take them apart as I go through this. Maybe Patrick, it depends on who you ask. There's a particular book it's called Living in the face of death by Glenn Molen. It's a really interesting book where he translates a number of really esoteric texts from the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, and in this kind of wild book, which I really groove on. He talks about there's a whole chapter on on omens importance for impending death, some of which have to have to do a lot of them actually have to do with dreams, and the type of dreams that you're having and dream signs and the like. So in that particular rendering, and this actually makes a lot of sense to me, because karma, right karma ripens, even Carl Jung knew this. Karma ripens at the level of the eighth consciousness before it before it manifests in reality. Karma is germinating and ripening at the level of the eighth consciousness, the DNA, the blueprints of your mind of your reality. And this is often why people have dreams of the called prodromal dreams or dreams of precognition dreams that foretell the future and then you read the literature. There are 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of these and I've had them, some of them. I mean, I had a couple a year and a half ago. No, two years ago, they completely predicted this major health issue I had last year, I mean to the tee. And so, according to yogacharya structure of mind, when karma is ripening is ripening from the eighth consciousness we talked about more than later in the book, and you can gain a pretty powerful intimation at the level of your blueprint, the level of the DNA, before it's manifested or constructed in physical reality. And so therefore, you can gain a profound intimation not only of your impending death, but of impending whatever your dreams can literally save your life. Literally if you know how to listen to them. Your body don't want to get you to anthropomorphic ear but sending messages constantly constantly. And so with a sensitive relationship to your your mind, your unconscious mind in the dream state, eighth consciousness that what are called the beaches, the buck Chuck, the Layton propensities held in their deepest dimension of your mind, they come up. And if you have a sensitive relationship to that you can gain a very powerful intimation of not only when you're going to die, but what's going to happen to you and in regular life. This is one of the deeper workings of Dream Yoga where you can start to get this and so I had the kicker for me, I've had so many of these dreams soulmate. But two and a half years ago, before I was diagnosed with this, not so great little condition. I had a dream they utterly completely predicted the whole thing, but it was it was baffling for me. It was so complex, that dream was so labyrinthian I actually did I've never done this before, but it was that dream was not lucid. But what I did was I woke up from that dream in the middle of the night. It was like I knew right off the bat. I said, Whoa, write this on down study. It isn't a big dream. I knew it right off the bat. And what I did was I went right back to sleep and I actually incubated a lucid dream. I said, Okay, I can't I can't figure this dream out. I want a second dream that will help me understand the first dream. And indeed, I had one. But even with that, I still wasn't able to completely to decipher the dream. And even if I had it wasn't sure if I could have circumvented the onset of this condition. But this is one way where you can get this portent yeah through intuition inner knowing dreams, through the machinations of the eight consciousness before manifest reality. It comes from the eight consciousness the unconscious mind, you gain a glimpse of that. Absolutely. You can know about this though. Okay, he continues our skilled bongs able to determine this for themselves, some of them Yes, absolutely. For sure. And these monks are the same as you they have the same mind as you do. You can do it there in any special Berry, so I guess that's my dear friend. Barry. sponder I suspect that's him. He's a rock star nightclub. Beer. He shared a video amongst dining sitting up while in deep meditation. Can you talk about this practice? Yes, I can.

It's called Duck Damn. T Hu KD Am I think I think I say a couple things about this later in the book. I'm going to recommend a couple of things. There's a new documentary that just came out this year. I know the guys who produced it. It's called between two worlds. We showed it at the draw the mountain central program I did last week. You can rent it for like 495 It's a video based on the research that they're doing, studying this thing. And so here's a little riff on this. But 15 years ago, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in his pressions asked his friend who was also a dear friend of mine, Richie Davidson, one of the leading leading neuroscientists in the world studying the interface between meditation and the sciences. He has an amazing lab called the Center for actually used to be called the Center for the investigation of Healthy Minds. I'm not sure what it's called now. But he's a remarkable guy. And so his holiness asked Ali asked Ricci to study it. At this point, I was doing some studies with Richie back in Madison, and he flew me out and I actually it was one of the most interesting meetings I've ever been at. He invited me to come out to an address a team of scientists, in terms of like, you know, can this phenomena actually be studied? It was one of the most baffling it was it was amazing Evan Thompson was there Courtland Dahl was there all these rock stars were there. And the ease hardcore, I'm amazed they even showed up because Richie status I believe, as a giant. So all these hardcore molecular biologists and forensic pathologist, I mean, you name it, secondary immunologist, all these people were there, and I have to give them credit because they were sitting there with eyes like in deer like you know, stuck in DEERS and a headlight. These people just had no idea what to make of this stuff like are you kidding me? And so I was there when she asked me to come in and talk about the phenomenology of took down from the Tibetan point of view. What is actually happening in a yoga capacity. And so I gave her a riff on this. And so check out this film between two worlds. The phenomenon is called took time and it's a post death meditative absorption. Boy, so much to say here, but for sure really advanced practitioners can maintain you can also see a video. One of the first intimations of this was 2530 years ago a video called The lion's roar. Were at the end, the very end of this His Holiness 16th Karmapa those of you know this film, you remember. He died he's in the hospital, right? We allowed him to stay in the hospital room for three days, which is really unusual, but everybody loved this guy. And when my friend Mr. Levy was in there, who's a physician attending. Every day the monks would take Mitchell he bring bring Mitchell over to his holiness, He was lying. In state and they put his hand Mitchell's hand over Karmapas heart 2470 4072 hours after death. Heat over the heart center, right? No soluble autolysis no degradation, no smell. I mean, the guy looked like he was sleeping. He wasn't took them. So it actually happens more than you think it's not that rare for especially for enlightened beings like His Holiness Karmapa. But also for relatively advanced meditators. They can rest again they know where they're going. And for reasons that are beyond the scope of talking about now like well, why did they do this? That's a little bit more than we can talk about now. But the reasons they'll do it sometimes to inspire students left behind. Sometimes they'll do it to finish certain aspects of their completion stage meditations. So it's wildly esoteric, but the data they're accumulating is very complex longitudinal study, where they're collecting this data and I think the Dalai Lama has enough pressions to realize that if this can actually be substantiated, this is a paradigm shift or this changes everything. I mean, what do you do from a Western point a materialistic point of view, when you've got a flat eg a flat EKG, no brain activity no heart activity? Nothing. And yet the body isn't breaking down in the heat of India. What do you do with that? That's where paradigms are shifted when you get data that don't fit the prevailing paradigm. And so you know, the really big complex study, watch the film you'll learn more about it. And that's, that's what took comes about. The video says that the bodies did not decay the same way. That's true. Um, days, sometimes even weeks. Let me see some of this I'm going to skip because there are personal names mentioned here. Next thing you say I can't say here, I can say something about this that talks about people who are diagnosed with terminal illnesses. You know, this is this this book cured by Jeffrey rediger. I know his work. When we actually occurred against all odds without medical treatment, are the stories legitimate? 100%. You can eat read, there's a big literature here you can read another book called Radical remission, which is written by a PhD Kelly something or other I don't remember her last name. She lists 10 factors that in her studies that she had determined for people with advanced age terminal cancers. That have spontaneous so called spontaneous complete remissions. I recommend this book. The 10 factors are really interesting. It's worth looking at. Also the Institute of Noetic Sciences ions, you go to their website and you will read a little bit of coming around you will find a vast database of people experiencing spontaneous remissions. So are these stories true? 100% their true 100%? So, okay, any questions or comments? Most rich question, I will check to see what's in the chat column. If you have a question and want to raise your hand you know how to do that. Who wrote again journey of the mind? Yeah, that's Truong Gucci HR a Ngu. Trungpa Rinpoche is one of my main teachers he died about two months ago. An amazing individual and amazing book. Highly recommended. Okay. Question for Andrew. Which translation of the Tibetan Book of the bed do you think is the best? Jimmy Dore Jays complete translation even though my favorite my favorite translation is still Francesca Fremantle and chicken Franco. I just have a deep personal affinity to that one. But I think I think even Francesca will tell you the gear may Dr. J's is the best, but it's a big one right? There's literally a dozen of them out there.

What stages open awareness is the eight stages of shamatha. Yeah, boy, great question Pam. Open awareness transcends the stages of shamatha Right. the very highest stages, stage eight and nine are resonant to have the great gift of open awareness. Pam is that even though it's considered a non referential shamatha it bleeds into the passionate in the formless meditations very quickly, so lower levels of open awareness. are connected to the higher levels of shamatha. There's all these kinds of gradations like electromagnetic magnetic spectrum, but open awareness, which which eventually goes into full blown formless practices eventually transcends all the stages of shamatha. Okay, my understanding from Tim or the practice of Dream Yoga is that it can eventually can actually lead us into a through the Bartles. Absolutely. For sure. If that is true, how do we know when we have passed from our own personal imaginative mind into the actual true Bardo? Well, we're always in the Bardo. So it depends on which borough you're talking about. Only Bartos existence samsara um so you're always in a Bardo. Tim, until you attain awakening is awakening. It's only an enlightened state that there are no Bardot's. So when you're talking about Bartos, you know, Bardo like dream is it's a manifestation of mind. You're always in a Bardo. And so I just assume here how do we know if we've passed from our own personal mind into the actual into Bardo? Well, that's what the Bardo yogic practices are all about. There are some differences. It's not completely isomorphic there are some differences. I'm not sure you know how I can bullet point that even more than that one is. Let me just hold on.

Yeah, well, here's the deal. I mean, if if you're a completely awakened being, there's no difference, right? So there's no difference between waking dreaming sleeping and dying. Those powders are all the same. For someone like us what what will transpire is, you know, the, the degree of the groundlessness will be more accentuated. So there will be no reference capacities whatsoever whatsoever to any level of ground. So hopefully, I'm just trying to cut through these questions. Because there's a number of them here.

Yeah, so that's more a comment. Well, why have a premonition if you can't do something about it? That's a really interesting question. I can't tell you why. It just happens, right? It's just nature doing its thing. Why does it happen? I don't know. But very often, you can't do something about it. I mean, the live shows is also very replete about people who have had these prodromal dreams but could have dreams and they do act on them. They do have premonitions, it's really interesting. You know, it's like we don't live even though there's many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. I don't believe in that one. There's no not one iota of evidence for that. It would be great if we could somehow have parallel universes, right? So we could do a little bit of a study like what would it be like, right? What would it be like? So why do we ever premonition if you can't do something about it, boy, I can't answer that. They just happen. And sometimes you can do something about it.

Okay, and just go through this real quick before I get to Dr. J. Yeah, radical remission. Yeah. Hi, Kelly. I can't remember Kelly's last name. Okay, Dr. J. Let's get one or two and then yeah, we're at the witching hour. Um, you yourself my friend. Hi, can you hear me? I can.

Well, two things one is that apparently starting last session? I could no longer see my picture up there on you know, approaching seven barbed and I just sent a message to Alyssa and she said there's apparently some problem with Zoom and other people are writing her and telling her the same thing. Do you know about this or what the problem is?

Tech questions are way above my paygrade and I defer to Alyssa and Bob. Bob's not here. I have no idea. That's an easy one. To answer I have no idea.

Alright. Secondly, before I went to bed last night, I'll often you know go on the internet and look up stories like at the New York Times or you know, Yahoo News or something. And I saw an incredible article. I think it was the New York Times but I'm not sure. It's the story of a man who was about maybe in his 30s or 40s. Who by trade was an electrician who had fix, you know, like cables, you know? They go up in these you know, these cars and the interview, you know, wasn't showing the whole thing was just him talking. And he said he never in his life self that life had any meaning whatsoever. He felt the life was meaningless. While he was up on the card fixing a cable. Something happened I don't know if a wind came along or something. And it knocked him off the you know his car and he fell to the ground and hit his head and seriously seriously injured himself. They rushed him to the hospital. And I think they pronounced him dead, you know, in the emergency room, but he said while this was happening, he had what something like an out of body experience where suddenly a figure appears at a at the entrance to the emergency room door and it leaves him down like this tunnel. And at the end of the tunnel. It's nothing but beauty grace.

Death Experience absolutely happens all the time.

And he says he arrived at a place where the greatest piece he had ever experienced in his entire life. And I mean, for me, the thing that amazes me is you take someone who's a complete disbeliever and then, you know, has this experience.

It happens all the time. I'm read Evan Alexander's book, read the trilogy irreducible mind consciousness Unbound, beyond physicalism. He stars stories are commonplace. One experience like that will change the course of even the hardest. Skeptic listen to my podcast interview with Federico hygene Oh, yeah. You had one experience that changed them forever. So this is common and it's fantastic, right? I mean, sometimes even the most hardcore materialists can have a complete change of heart when they get in contact with reality. Fantastic. Okay, well,

thanks so much for your time. I mean, it wasn't my favorite program on the internet.

You said it so prime does I'm gonna get George first because he has not asked a question that I'll get you and then I have to draw the line after PEMDAS because I got something I'm already late for it. But George go ahead my friend and then we'll get some dots.

Hi Can you hear me? Okay?

I can. Okay, good.

I just finished your course that was available through tricycle magazine The Pardo's Okay, cool. Yeah. And I'm really grateful for I thank you very much. I have I have a question that though. In not so I was a Buddhist monk for for quite some time. And I've had some experience of the of the emptiness when I meditate. And my experience of it is that there is a sense in it of there being an underlying mystery. And that and that it's pervaded with love. And I in in your account of the in your account of the Barbados and the death process. I didn't hear you talk much about there being love and compassion, kind of the root of things. And I'm wondering if there's a different understanding of that. Oh, no. I'm sorry. I didn't

mean to cut you off. Sorry. Please. Yeah, no, no. It a couple of things. Well, first of all, I'm wonderful for you for having these experiences. Thanks for sharing them. There is an affective component, you know, so, here's, here's the deal with is more and more of these days, I do talk about this much more overtly in the sense that you know, the essence of reality. One way to talk about it from the Buddhist point of view is emptiness. Well, I often say these days emptiness is just a funny Buddhist way to talk about love. An effective expression of emptiness is love. Yeah, so we read the book. One of the best Bartel books in the last number of years in love with the world amongst journey through the Bardo, living and dying you have to read this book. But it's about ninja Rinpoche is amazing near death experience on the streets of India. And the conclusion of his book is just so beautiful he's you know, he's Yeah, you know, I look up at the trees in the in the trees are made of joy and love and, and so it's fantastic. You know, this aspect of component to reality is not just this cold, antiseptic, serene, emptiness thing, what is this emptiness thing, right? No, it's just emptiness is a funny Buddhist way to talk about love. And so the nature of reality is love when you fall into love, you're falling into reality. It has a very powerful, effective tone and from that then is born applied love, which is compassion and kindness. So this is super important. Also listen to if you haven't my conversation, both with Federico hygene this hardcore scientist physicist, basically, you know, hard headed guy has an experience he realizes the world is made of love. Are you kidding me? And they listen to Chris beige is five hours interviews on edge of mind podcast that I did with him. psychedelic experiences, he talks about discovering the same thing that he felt like he was always guided and held by a beneficent, beneficent, loving, lifeforce throughout his entire journey. And so I say it a little bit more directly these days than I used to, because I don't think in fact, I know I can speak from my own experience that the Buddhists in my estimation aren't fearless in proclaiming the centrality of love and this whole business you know, Buddhism can be so complex and so intellectual and so cerebral all these lists the numbers, great, but the fundamental affective component of all this is discovering a reality. Is this beneficent, loving, kind, compassionate. That was

when our when our Zen master died. We, you know, we, the tradition, we sat with her body for a week and then had the ceremonial and the barrier and the experience for days was just as if being blasted by a fire hose of love, then just overwhelming love and it made me really understand where, where the teaching had come from. And so anyway, thank you I was sharing I really got a little word from now you can relax it's all

and they say that about a great teachers you know that when they die their love and their blessings are more available. So for you to have both those experiences is fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing that it's just lovely.

Thank you for your thank you very much. Very much. Okay, my

friend from das one last one and then I've got a school Shawn, always nice to see you from

you, sir. Quick comment in Dino the effect of component of emptiness being love. Shouldn't be a thought I don't go home from the pregnant but anyhow, my question is, all your excellent articles that you've written in, you know, tricycle and other publications. Do you think you'll ever bring those together in some sort of anthology, so I don't have to track each

year is very sweet. Oh, lordy. You know, I don't know maybe that's a really nice. Yeah, you know, it's actually not a bad thought. Maybe you can help me You can be my editor. You can gather them together. And I have fundamental electrical, intellectual property, right. So maybe I haven't thought about that. But you may have planted and I see because I guess over the years, things do pop up all over the place and putting them together and creating like a narrative weave or thread between them. Might not be such a bad idea. So appreciate the kind words and maybe you've planted a seed here, my friend. Okay. Hey, great to see everybody. If dedication of merit means anything to you. What we do at the end is we just gather anything. If we've done anything of any value, we give it away the only way to keep merit is given away. So we dedicate the merit and whenever we means anything to us, and until next time, take care of yourself be well, it's like my friend Lester Holt says he may not realize he's my friend. At the end of his programs, please take care of yourself and each other. I like that. That's how everybody till next time recording stopped