[142] Cultivating Inner Sanity Through Meditation – with Jeffrey Stevens

1:04AM Jan 9, 2024

Speakers:

Jeffrey Stevens

PremDas

Brooke Belcher

michaeldent

Tzu Moy

alejandro

anita pantin

Keywords:

meditation

meditators

mind

teachers

meditating

practice

years

teachings

experience

awareness

feeling

retreat

maha mudra

path

practitioner

dharma

emptiness

body

types

long

I'm coming to you from day nine of either COVID or a cold. And so I think I'm through most of it. And I'm ready to spit fire, but I am a little weak and feeble. So if anything seems to be off, I'm just going to lay the blame on biology. That's where the blame will be laid. But you all look well Wow. You look young and fit. fresh faced, bright eyed. I envy you all. Let's just start off tonight. With settling we're going to talk about some of the more practical elements of the path of meditation. But they're really only practical from within the platform of knowing ourselves that comes from meditation. So let's just settle you can close your eyes or keep them open doesn't really matter.

Those of you who've, who are familiar with how I talk about meditation, are probably aware that I present the human condition as an interaction between three realms of what we are we are body which is the domain of feeling sensory feeling, not emotional feeling, although emotions can give rise to sensory feeling and then mind which is the conceptual realm, mental images, memories, and the root of emotions, the root of emotions arise in the mind. And then awareness, which is the domain of knowing, knowing or cog cognition or not really cognition in the Western sense, cognizance, knowingness, awareness. And when we meditate, we use all of these, but we have to make a decision at the beginning of any meditation session. We have to decide what we're going to be doing. Which part will be emphasized? And I'm going to suggest that for right now, and just for right now, whatever meditation you do, in your daily life, of course, it take precedent, but for tonight, please relax your mind. And don't worry about awareness and just fall into the feeling of your body. Feel your body fall into the feeling of your body so that it's not easy to climb out of it. Just keep landing in the feeling of the body.

If we've practiced meditation in the past that emphasizes the breath, then it may be our habit from training that we go directly to the breath. And usually that's the idea. That's a good way to do it. But here let go even have that. Try not to direct feeling you are the observer and the feeler. And you have no idea what's coming next. Just let the body present feeling to you. As it Will.

When you feel your body the way that you know that you are feeling your body is awareness. Awareness is what knows that this feeling is taking place

the simplest state we find ourselves in throughout the day is the combination of awareness and feeling.

You may notice that even though your intention is just to feel many of the feelings that break through to awareness because we're not aware of every single feeling we can become more and more aware that that takes real training. merged, just aware of the things that are breaking through. And when they do, the mind interacts with them. And that can be completely benevolent. Just a natural function. Something that helps us keeps us alive. But it can also come to dominate. And it can determine what the body is in a way that is not. And this happens, it develops what we call the psychosomatic body or the thought body or it's the body we imagine that we have the body that we relate to through imagery and thinking and identification and that's not the same body as the body body the mass of feeling.

So becoming skilled in meditation involves recognizing when this is happening and with a friendly attitude just accepting that this the mind does this but not going along with it. Not following the lead of the mind in this instance, and that pops something and an opening emerges and we can fall through it. We fall into the feeling of the body

for those of you who have done my retreats, you know this as the instruction to relax at the moment of thought.

Those of you who've known me for a long time might recall this as the atomic flash the flash of awareness, which sends us tumbling through the space of awareness out of the grip of the mind and into the atomic body.

And for those of you who have studied traditional Buddhist teachings, we would be talking now about the first foundation of mindfulness, mindfulness of body. This is very, very important. We'll talk about why a little

recognizing when thought has begun to pull us out of feeling and with an attitude of mercy and friendliness, just relaxing, not letting it happen. It's not an enemy. It's not a criminal. It's not a dictator. It's just doing its job but it's also well, it's not doing the best for us. We want to stay in touch with feeling we've given over too much to the mind. We have to take a little back in invested in feeling the body

so cultivate a sense of light hearted intention to continually relax when the mind tries to pull us out of feeling in a light hearted way, just smile and relax. And yes, that thought will break apart but no thoughts are hurt. In this exercise. They'll come back

when you're in the body, and you'll know listen for the sound of being

engage hearing listen

now, to sense faculties have come together with the same intention to feel but how do the ears feel? Well, they don't but they hear usually when we hear we apply thought to whatever we hear but what happens when we don't

we can feel the ground of what we are and we can hear the ground of what we are. And we can join these two in meditation and it can become very sensory richness.

Thought can never touch the ground of what we are. That's okay. It's like the dogs and cats cannot sit at the table. They don't belong there. Cats will climb up and we have to deal with that. Our mind our intellect is very powerful. Very helpful in many things, but not in this. If we don't exercise, the capacity of feeling the ground of what we are we will not know the ground of what we are.

And what is it that knows? knowingness cognizance awareness not mind

this isn't how we were raised by the way, you probably know that. Some people were our teachers were I mean if you have teachers like I have teachers, they were taught this from childhood some of them mastered it. The same time I was trying to get my driver's license

and their lives are different because of it. Their mind is a healthy apparatus within a much larger structure

the mind is like our smartphone or computer. You can open it, you can close it and you should you should do both of those things. My wife often will close my laptop while I'm working and my head will go down to keep working until it shut because it's time to sit on the couch after dinner never do we need to shut the body off. It will shut off at night when we sleep. It's natural and never do we need to shut off awareness. Although because of our relationship to the mind, we lose awareness so frequently that discovering and identifying awareness is a milestone on the meditators path. We have basic awareness we all experience that but the deeper awareness that we could have. Well, that's a gift that we unwrap, through practicing meditation skillfully. And oh boy. Do we delight in seeing that gift when the paper comes off

the more awareness we have the more we can hear the ground. And the more we can feel the ground. And as our practice matures, some of us can see the ground. We see with our eyes and hear with our ears. And feel with our body the same ground

and that ground is said to be beyond the body and beyond the mind. But we feel it. We must be feeling the edge of it. If it's truly beyond but that's a very, very good place to be feeling hearing and even seeing that ground

if you're looking for directions when the mind goes silent What do you hear? What do you hear beneath the atmospheric sound?

What do you feel behind the particulars of what your body is doing?

For many people, this is an AHA and for many other people, this is bewildering, but that's okay. If this is bewildering, you just need more quiet you'll hear it

you'll feel it

the body can touch the ground of what we are and awareness can recognize the ground of what we are the mind can infer and can comprehend analytically. The ground of what we are but it's inferential. It isn't direct. Ultimately, it is awareness that will have direct access because it is the ground of what we are. It just has to remember itself. The body can help that the body is the best friend of awareness and then awareness best friend to the world. But we have to start at the ground, work our way up or work our way in.

In closing, if you ever feel frightened, anxious, impossibly lonely, any painful distressing state relax into the ground of what you are and listen and feel. That ground of being will be like a warm blanket put over your shoulders

you'll be getting just a taste of meditative absorption by doing this. So imagine what meditative absorption that which discovers wisdom and frees us from confusion. Imagine how nourishing that would be how encouraging that would be

lucky indeed are those of us who have come across these meditation teachings because most people have okay,

this isn't a beer

right now i I'm making the prediction that in the coming year or two or three, that platforms like nightclub are going to be more and more important. To people. Right now. It's us. And we're already interested in these things. Many of us have been pursuing these things in one way or another for many years. Many of us already have a great deal of knowledge and familiarity and trust and experience in meditation and in maybe what we would call the spiritual life or the life of awakening. But there will be many, many people who are shocked into looking for direction and looking for community and looking for some type of grounding practice. And they'll come here you'll see more and more unfamiliar faces. And I think there are a lot of these platforms so that's a good thing. I don't think that there are maybe as many as there could be. And some people and I understand this. They don't want it to be online. They want it to be in person. And so the effort to make that happen is a great effort. I know Andrew does that. I think Andrew just had a long retreat in Mexico

but things like archives of teachings are going to be a lifeline for people and so I think that just when I show up here, I want to make things clear from the beginning. I want to put some structure into what I'm talking about. I know that I am just one of I don't know how many teachers on nightclub but I get a lot of emails from people who watched one of my talks and they want to know more on where did I talk about this or where did I talk about that? And so I just want to start out by saying that in general. There are two activities that meditators engage in. There are those activities that ripen the mind and shape and encourage health and wellness and relative wisdom. And then there are those activities that probe into the nature of reality. And those are what cause freedom. The passion Maha Mudra Zog Chen Shinya Tah majolica all of those types of practices are what one of my teachers said when you're ready to go in for the kill is a gentle person. Those are important it's very important to know that those are the practices that will liberate us. These other practices. They don't have the result the function of liberating us, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do them their role is to ripen us to prepare us to strengthen us so that we have a chance at liberating ourselves. So there are practices that cultivate virtue and there are practices that uncover reality. I just said the same thing in a new way. You could also say that there is the full body of practices called shamatha, or calm abiding, and the full body of practices called the passion or insight True Seeing the Buddha, who's probably the most famous source of meditation teachings, not the only one but certainly one of the big ones is said to have said, All meditation is either shamatha or Vipassana. And so when we study meditation teachings, it's very important that we know what we're hearing, are we hearing teachings on shamatha or are we hearing teachings on Vipassana? And if we're hearing teachings, say on the posh Anna, are we ready for these teachings on Vipassana? Because that answer isn't automatically Yes, just because we're listening to them. In the same way, some of the teachings of shamatha are very unlike following the breath they could be bringing the channels into the into the lower gate or generating heat, or have those inner energetic exercises to mow and things like that which 99% of meditators will never engage. They're just so demanding, but those are not proportionate. Those are shamatha. And those are not things that all of us really want to be doing. But there might be someone we're attracted to who's teaching those things. We have to understand if we are listening to teachings that are appropriate for us, that's what I'm trying to say. We have to know where we are on our path. If this is just a hobby, if we're just listening to interesting teachings, then I guess it's all fine. But that's not going to liberate us from fear. And confusion. If we are on this path, we have to understand that teachers are not always guided to teach what we the individual needs. It's hard it's hard teaching the Dharma out of a one on one context or out of a small group of people who the teacher has gotten to know. So they tend to take a curricular approach. They'll teach a little bit of this, and then they'll take it forward and so on and so forth. I know that in my life, I've spent decades, hearing teachings that are really not appropriate for me teachings that I'm not going to engage in. It's just that the teacher thought for the sake of completion that we should all hear this stuff. And then I've also heard teachings that are exactly what I need from the same teachers. So it's important to know what you are practicing what you need to be practicing and what you need to take that practice to a next stage. And most of us need to be developing the health and wellness of our mind. We need to be developing the wholesome qualities of the mind because those keep us grounded and they keep us sane. No, they don't penetrate into the nature of reality like the really deep teachings. But they keep us out of trouble and if we don't have those working in our favor. We're not going to be able to do those deep teachings. We really do have to understand the elements of the mind. And interestingly enough, one of the most important ways of developing the strength in the wholesomeness of the mind is to give our attention over to the body to minimize the dominance of the mind. And to give our attention over to just feeling many, many good things happen when we do that. If the mind is dominant, completely dominant in our experience, nothing good comes up that it's just, I mean, I'm speaking as a meditator from a meditation tradition, and I'm echoing 2500 years here. I'm not saying the same thing that we would see on you know, Meet the Press or you know, some intellectual talk show, which are, you know, fun to watch. The mind needs to know its place and it needs to understand that it isn't the only way of navigating a human life. It isn't the only tool. But for many of us, it is the only tool. It's the only tool. We didn't even know what it means to be guided by anything else. That's amazing. That's, it's almost like we are the products of some kind of experiment to see what happens if you cut human beings off from body and awareness. What happens and now we know. So we can take this into our own hands. We can begin to bring back some of the strength and wellness that a human being can foster on their own through their own decisions. We can develop virtues, we can develop the strength of attention and we can develop an appreciation for reality. We can also engage in the specific practices that move us formally officially in that direction shamatha and proportioner. Those are the general categories. But it's important to know where we're driving when we get into our car each morning. If you need to get to work, you have to know the way to work and you have to drive to work. You can't just get in the car and drive and end up at work. And you can't just sit down on your cushion and move your life forward on a spiritual path. It takes a little bit more than that. So it's important to know

when we sit down we should be able to tune in and ask ourselves, What am I experiencing right now? am I experiencing the residue of emotional states that I had earlier in the day that are biasing me in this way or that? Because if we are and we often are we're not going to be able to make much progress in our meditation if we haven't seen that. It's like if someone else had a steering wheel in our car that we didn't know, and they could sort of they're getting in our way we're trying to get to work but we keep veering off over here. shamatha practice helps us with that. Awareness practice helps us with that. But we have to recognize who are the major players in our mind. Who are the positive players and who are the kind of the detractors. And right now I'm going through a lot of preparation for some things I'm going to be teaching and I've decided that this year, and I'm sure I'll do this next time I'm I'm on nightclub, but this year, I'm going to really emphasize what's called the RB Dharma, the Abbe Dharma is prime here prime is probably like, Oh, great. Yeah, you are. The hobby. Dharma is the list of the Abbe Dharma is the technical understanding. Of what we are. It's sort of like I went to cooking school, so I know how to cook the French way. And I used to cook before I went to cooking school. But I I guess it was mostly a mystery whether things turned out well, and I didn't understand that. All the principles in the kitchen are very clear to people who are professionals. I just didn't know that. I don't know why. I don't know why that didn't occur to me. But once I learned how to cook and went through the whole training, everything became clear. Just so clear. I can. I can, you can invite me to dinner at your house and I can know how skillfully you prepare the meal that night. It's been a real pain. Actually, I don't enjoy restaurants anymore. But the fact of the matter is that there are principles that really are in operation cooking isn't magic. Even when grandma puts her heart into that all day. You know, marinara sauce isn't magic, actually. It's heat and time and concentration of ingredients and that kind of thing. Meditation has that type of knowledge to And traditionally, or maybe I should just say the normal procedure for someone becoming a meditation teacher, is to learn that stuff. There are many things you can learn about meditation as a meditator, but if you're going to be a teacher of meditation, you have to learn the Dharma because that's kind of like the periodic table. of meditative experience. And in my training, everyone was given the opportunity to learn this stuff. In other words, people were not selected as you're going to be a teacher and you're going to there was maybe a little bit of that too, but everyone needs to know this stuff. And then you can become your own meditation teacher. That was kind of the the idea, but one of the things that was most surprising and ultimately, life changing, was understanding the map of the mind that had been passed down by meditators. So when you hear me say, we are body, mind and awareness, that's a summary of the Abbe dharma. The Abbe Dharma would say, Indeed, there's nothing else nothing else that any of us is experiencing. Other than body, mind and awareness. You we all at first go Oh, no, that's not true. Now, there are things that I'm experiencing that aren't those. But well demonstrate that. And so we all had to go through this for years really. And then what's interesting is that you can drill down and really understand what are the components of the mind or the body awareness doesn't have components so you can't really break that down. But understanding what is in the soup of the mind will change your life. And so I'm just going to read a little list of things. Within the mind. There are 50 Odd characteristics and everything else we experience is seen by these meditation manuals as combinations of those elements. Just like we have the periodic table and then we have molecules that are made of those elements, I think, pretty sure that's what it is. Well, the mind is that way, in the mind has some factors that are virtuous and wholesome and it has many, many more, that aren't. And the tradition would say, and it has said this all the way back to the time of the Buddha. The entire path, laid out by the Buddha is how to bring forward the wholesome qualities and leave behind the unwholesome qualities. And if you can do that you will naturally tend towards the discovery that will set you free. Now that that is incredible. Once you see what is possible there. So here for your hearing, are the 11 mental factors that are wholesome, ready. Faith, and it doesn't mean any type of faith that we in our culture have, but that's how everybody translates it. Strada is the sense with faith, self respect, consideration for others, detachment non hatred, aka love. Non bewilderment, enthusiasm, suppleness, conscientiousness, equanimity, and non violence, aka compassion. If we are able to form a sensitivity and a relationship to those 11 and to assess are they present in our mind right now? Are any of them present? And if not, to raise the relevant ones up? We will change our life and we will change our life more tangibly than just by meditating. If we meditate and don't do this, I can tell you this from having been a practitioner for 30 years. And a teacher for 20. If we meditate without minding that nothing's gonna happen. We're just gonna get older, and we're going to be pissed that nothing has happened. And if our character tends toward exaggeration, or deception, we will at some point begin to pretend that we do have changes that we don't have. That happens. That's a very well recognized pattern among meditators who've been doing it a long time and nothing's happened. They ape the qualities of those who have been transformed. I think I probably did that for a while. But not anymore. No, I've seen the light. Basically, I just got older and now I realize that every minute matters. And I see in my own teachers lives, how dramatically meditation works, and trying to shortcut myself cheated me out of a lot of growth I probably could have had at this point. But I don't want you to make that same mistake.

So I'm going to be teaching this stuff a lot, because and this is where I just I have to say this. I feel like any meditation teacher these days has to be willing to talk about reality, practical reality. 2024 is going to be a really impactful year on all of us, because it's the year where we are going to experience the fallout of no longer being able to determine whether what we are seeing is real or generated. That's really happening and there's nothing we can do about it. And we're also all more tied to the internet than we used to be. So what do we do? We have to know how to find the sanity within us. Now, we might think that, oh, well, I'll just put my phone down. And probably a lot of us because we're meditators. We don't want that anyway, you know, we're sick of smartphones and iPads. I mean, we're still on them of course, but we are just ready to let go of them. That's great. That's a good mental hygiene. But everyone around us isn't going to do that. So you're going to be talking to people who have been very confused by what they've either seen or heard. And no one's going to know what to trust anymore. I mean, I think I'm just telling you what you already know. But what I'm telling you this for is not to scare you. But it's to say you have a way of finding sanity in immediately if you know how to find your ground. If you invest in the ground of what you are, and can distinguish body from mind, mind from awareness and so forth. You will have a refuge within you. And that peace and that confidence that wholesome sanity that radiates from you will be very useful to the people in your life and it will be very useful to you. But as you make a decision to become more and more human. You have to kind of know what you're doing. And I don't know anyone else who knows this as well as 2500 years of teachers who've been laying this out for us. It's very doable. And if we stick together, which we always have for 2500 years are called the Sangha, the assembly of practitioners, we will be able to help one another out, will speak the same language will experience the same challenges and will talk to one another and stay in touch and platforms like nightclub and others will really be places where people can find sanity. You as elder practitioners, even though you might not think of yourself that way, will be the most refreshing voice that a person has heard. I just think it's very important and we should be prepared. We should have a sense of what do we need to do to become sane because we this is a time where we should all we are as human beings we are not ai ai is AI. We are human beings. That's all we're going to be and maybe we won't be the most intelligent things on the earth but there you have it. That's what we are. There's still quite a lot for us to do. There's a whole tradition that saying hey, you don't want to be aI don't worry about that be a human being. It's a very good thing to be it is a very good thing to be

I left five minutes for conversations that I'll probably go over a little bit. So what's on your mind How are you all what would you like to talk about?

Yes, young man with the glasses

the illusion of youth is part of my illusory nature. But anyhow, my question is about the different presentation. In the Abhidharma of all the virtuous and non virtuous factors of the mind, but it seems like in the in the foundational presentation it's sort of into the three poisons. And then in in in the larger Jana gets expanded to five poisons. And so if you want what are your thoughts on the on the different ways of presenting the tendencies of mind?

Right, well, you know, I guess there are there are always two approaches that and we can take to responding and I these days I just I would say honestly that probably, probably the differences are more characterized by changes in how teachers began to see teachings affecting students. So a preference was given perhaps, to emphasizing something and it worked. And so that was picked up. And then the oral tradition would reflect that. I for example, I don't know any vaudrey on the teachers who would be talking about like the five Buddha families and the five things like that, who wouldn't be able to spin the whole thing out, according to the Abbe Dharma to what what we hear as formal teachings. And what we hear as oral instructions from those who train us are usually different, but they're there in relationship, but one is kind of like a structure with a mnemonic device or a collection of them so that we can remember a lot of teachings like you have the five skandhas in the 12, links of dependent origination, and however many how many dharmas are there Prem is there's like 100 in the Mahayana. But what is it like? How many in the AVI Dharma you know?

Every phenomenon is is every every mind moment of experiences is a Dharma or something right?

the list of them you know, we have, we have the five skandhas are the collections of the Dharma. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. All I'm saying is that I think that these distinctions are evidence of successful trends that gained momentum over centuries. And have been sustained to this day. So if you talk to people who are terrified and practitioners, they will never have heard of the five wisdoms and that kind of thing. They probably wouldn't have but if you observe their meditation or their conduct, you might find that they have the same understanding. They're, they're navigating their life according to a clearly related set of principles and it has a similar perspective. I mean, similar outcome. So then there, then the other approach, why are they so different? Is because well, it's you have to ask the tradition itself. Why where does this come from? And so in the vaad, Rihanna these things these teachings come from the wisdom beings of the vaad Rihanna, so they come from Bhadra sattva. They come from garador J. They come from Padma Sun bhava, they come from Baji, yogini, and so forth. It's like, wow, that's just crazy to someone who's only been exposed to the Tera Vaada ones, where everything is very nice as a human tradition from the Buddha who was a human, but then you look at the at the outcome of the vaad Rihanna, does it produce enlightened people? Uh, yes, it does. So it might seem far out and out there, but it works. And then when you look at the, at the Tera, Vaada ones, they seem to be producing quite a few incredible human beings to they have a system that works. It's a lot simpler. I don't think it's simpler than Maha Mudra. I think Maha Mudra is probably a resumption was probably the simplest, but and the most profound, but all of these things. They share the intention I talked about earlier, to cultivate what is wholesome and to remove that which is unwholesome and to position oneself. To open to awakening, that's the intention. But it took me a long time to realize that most of my teachers were never referencing for example, the Eightfold Noble Path which is all you ever hear about when you read, you know, the Buddha taught the path The path is the Eightfold Noble Path of Right, Right View and right intention and speech and livelihood and concentration, all that stuff, but none of my teachers ever talked about it, and one day I just asked why, why aren't you guys talking about this? And they, the response I got was, oh, that's just from one little text. We're talking about the path from this perspective, which is much faster the five paths would want you to go in but there was no disrespect, meant. I just, it's hard for us to wrap our head around 2500 years of continual, unbroken communication about this, I was thinking about this. This is not just to your point, but I just would I want to say this to everyone who's exploring meditation, that I believe that meditation, I'm not saying I believe, my I was trained in anthropology. That was my topic before I went into into indo Tibetan Buddhism. And I think that the conversation that began 2500 years ago, and then it was enriched by all of these meditation masters, the conversation about meditation and what it can do to a human being has never been broken. There. was never a period where it went fallow, and then was, there was no renaissance of meditation has always been intact. It has always been deep and elaborate, and it has always attracted the best minds of its era. Like you Prem. But it's also, I think, one of if not the oldest living conversations of our species. Prove me wrong. I go on YouTube and do that prove me wrong. It is the holdest continual conversation and it's about the highest subject matter we have. If that isn't something to rah rah rah about I don't know what is. I mean, I know that we've been doing a lot of other stuff, but I don't I'm not aware of a continual conversation. I went to this place called The Great Books College, St. John's College in in Maryland, where they talked about the Canon as the great conversation beginning with Homer and going all the way through the 20th century with Einstein and Heidegger and all of that, and they talked about it as a great conversation. It's bullshit. It's not I mean, those are books that are passed on. There were huge spans of time when no one was reading Aristotle. So it wasn't like a conversation that was passed along like meditation. You can be sure that if you're studying with someone who's from a lineage, and they whisper instructions into your ear, those instructions are warm with the breath of 100 Generations, which is about 2500 years. So I think that's amazing. And I think we need that plug that into your chat. GPT. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for giving me a little platform to just riff. Sometimes when I'm feverish I like to do that.

Brooke

Hey, oh, I just wanted to say thank you, because it's been very, very powerful evening and very helpful. And I look forward to this next year now. Yeah. Lots of more deeper understanding, like these and retreats, and I don't want to go into it now. But I've often wondered, you know, when we use the term, the nature of mind, then like those things that you were just listing well that's the nature of mind in a certain way, but then, isn't it referring often to the Buddha nature and the larger anyway? I'd love to look into that. But that probably take too much time right now.

Well, I can summarize it in a few sentences just because you brought it up. Those are the elements of mind. Those are things within the mind, but the nature of mind is the underlining mode underlying mode of the mind and that is emptiness or Yes, Buddha nature, or rigpa or Maha Mudra. All those words for it, but the nature of mind would be like the water within wine.

Great. Thank you.

You bet. good I'll see you at the retreat Yeah.

As I'm sitting here, my wife is upstairs talking to another group of meditators on her own zoom call. She's a participant, not a teacher tonight, but this house is full of Dharma conversation right now. But she has to stop hers because it's her job to make tuna melt. You know. Those of you who haven't heard me teach before it's it's an inside joke. I apologize for that. It's an poor taste. Really. It excludes people all right. Nothing. Nothing okay. Oh, I see you there.

I guess thanks for the class really taking a lot away from I'm also just wondering your name, Michael. Yes. Okay. I

can't really read it on the screen. Oh.

I've studied many different types. of meditation. And when I have a group that I'm working with, or an instructor that I'm working with, they're providing structure for me. And I tend to go very deep into the meditations then but when I'm just practicing on my own, I do feel kind of aimless drifting sometimes. And so I'm wondering if you just have some basic advice for providing structure for yourself? Sure.

Yeah. Well, it's, you know, it. It really comes down to a knowledge so structure has to serve a purpose, meditation practice, the spiritual life has to serve or that there's some intention there, right. It's not just that oh, I'm going to be do more spiritual things. There's kind of a process that we go through. Meditation isn't the thing itself. It's something that brings us deeper and deeper toward awakening. So and of course, there are some types of meditation which really are the thing themselves. So the types of practice where you do nothing whatsoever and you just ABIDE and slowly the layers of confusion, just slough off. That is also a type of practice and that is, in a sense, the practice of enlightenment anyway. They'll feverish the structure that a meditation practitioner needs is what we call the path and a path has milestones. A path has seasons, a path would have activities. So for example, if you're a meditator it's good to have a I want to say goal, but I just because I don't I don't know everybody on the call. Sometimes that just sounds so a goal. But like, for example, for me for many, many years I had two big goals every year to get into solitary retreat, which I did every winter. And then to go study with my teachers for a month or two during the summer. Those were goals that you know, they do further my path. But knowing that I'm getting ready to I used to go into retreat for the whole summer for the whole winter, in a cabin in the mountains, very rustic. So I was my wife would be in another cabin always away. And we'd be practicing away be hard, it would be challenging, but knowing that that was a few months away, I'd really reflect like, Am I ready to go into that retreat? Do I have all the instructions? Do I know what I'm going to do? So I might meet with instructors or teachers and say, you know, I'm gonna go into this retreat. What do you think ah, you'll be fine. Really? Okay. Anything you want to suggest? I know, you'll be fine. That's often what they would say. But sometimes there would be a little bit of very personal stuff like yeah, I really think that you should, you know, be softer on yourself during this retreat or something like that, but I would have a set of instructions. And I would under I would also have trained this is the knowledge component to know what should I expect from going in to an intensive of these types of practice? Then knowing that I would go and study with my teachers I would be preparing myself am I really, am I ready to go and just swim in these teachings and practice with people who are fit to guide me? And it would keep me going, I did that I still do that. I do that every year. And it is. I mean, it's the light of my life. And so the structure could be as simple as having those types of benchmark experience or benchmark experiences to look forward to so that you know, that even if you have to miss practice today because of work or family or whatever, it's still you know, you're gonna be going into this retreat, or you're gonna be studying this course, or that with this teacher. But all of this presupposes that you are on a path, a path not a bunch of paths. Not sometimes this path and sometimes that path, because there's no structure there. Things will undo one another, even if they're good paths on their own. You kind of have to know this is what in some Asian traditions, they'll say, you have to have a root and then once your root is firm, you can explore other things. You can blossom in other ways, like my teachers would always tell me you've got to know what your main practices because I've been trained in four traditions within the Buddhist tradition, and it can be overwhelming like what do I do? Do I do visualization practice because I get a lot of that stuff. Or do I do Maha Mudra or zoek chan or do I do the basic stuff of the sutra Jana like meditating on emptiness? What do I do? My teacher to see you have to know what your main practices and just rely on that? Then you can explore these other things a little bit, but you find what they they call it the root of blessings. You have to find your root of blessings, not my favorite term. But the meaning is that you know, what you're about, you know what you're doing? And you know what that path requires because you study and learn. If you're a Maha Mudra practitioner, for example, what is the life of a Maha Mudra practitioner? What should you be doing now at this stage of your life? What have you done in the past? What have the results been? You need to you know, get smart and kind of strategic even it's fun. And then the other thing I would say is to do what you're doing now, to be part of a community. It's important to be well, it's important to be a part of a community no matter what right? I mean, it's just really important, especially like minded people, but then you have to be part of a community that is gathered around the same set of instructions that you're using. Otherwise you become isolated and you will wander part of my teaching life has been meeting people every year, who started this wonderful meditation path 20 years ago, but then they just kind of got lost and now they want to do it again. But they don't know how to start. They don't know what went wrong. Well, what went wrong is they became isolated. And when you become isolated, meditation is done together. It's not done in isolation. Going in retreat, yes, that's been that's doing it in isolation, but you go into retreat coming from a traditional lineage a sangha. So I would just, I would check in you know, what, what are your support systems? Because the path I mean, I understand you get really into it when you're with a teacher or with a group but then when you're on your own kind of wonder that happens to us all. But can you? Can you see what the unfolding path would be for the path you've chosen? I guess that's what I would. I would ask, Do you know what it means to be the type of practitioner you are? You have someone to talk to do you have other people who are on the path where you can call them up and say, Hey, man, look, if we just zoom with me, I'm lost. I have friends who are all my old graduate school friends, I dropped out. I got good advice. I got a professor said Jeffrey. You don't want to be a professor. It's not going to make you into a better person. It's certainly not going to make you into a better practitioner. You should get out now I wish I had one of my professors told me that so I did. I was also going into debt, but I have friends who wouldn't? And they I have one friend who's close to 50, which is still young. But he was a hardcore practitioner with me 25 years ago, but he pushed through and he still doesn't have his PhD. He knows Sanskrit. He knows Tibetan. I don't know what all the other stuff he knows and he gave up practicing a long time ago. So every once in a while, I'll get a call. And we'll talk and you can just see just it just people friends need one another. So you need friends. This is all like what you would expect your parents to tell you if you're like born in Bhutan or something. But that's my job tonight. Is that helpful at all? Michael?

Sorry, I muted Yes, that's perfect. Thank you.

Yeah. Good luck. Oh, okay. Hello. Yeah,

I would say I am sort of a beginning meditator in that. I meditated when I was four and then I did a lot of actually self hypnosis stuff in college, like a national champion level and then I, we literally go out of it. And then the thing that I had is I was a member of SGI. The reason I'm giving you this background is that 2022 And in between then I sort of had what one would call a psychotic break. Oh, yeah. But the thing is that it was similar to when I had been at the Monroe Institute. And I got to a point where you see like the light and then somebody a light being said, this is your last time and I don't remember what happened. I came back. And there was another time where I had that. I was very serious than if this is my last go around. And I don't know what I'll come back as, how am I gonna show up for my life? And really weird stuff was happening. Like disappearing from my apartment, I had all these things like rearranged in my apartment. So I go to men law and Bob and Alberto voluminous shaman are there I'm like, really like what the hell's going on? And I asked you know, Robert Thurman, if I can only practice one way, and if I have to train my mind, should I do shamanism or Buddhism? And he said, Well, you're I have three medical degrees. He's like, Well, you sent your shot science. I think you should do shamanism. Alright, so I'm like, Alright, I think you know, but part of it too is the meditation. I do have, like 30 years of SGI Buddhism like the chanting Nam Myoho Renge Kyo, and I have the background of Transcendental Meditation from four to 13. And then But then the other stuff for sports was self hypnosis, I mean, to the point where you go out of your body and you see your body moving when you go back into your body, but it also was in the context of serious abuse by coaches. So now that I'm starting to do a lot of shamanism. On and off, they also have meditation and I don't know enough to really do a meditation path and I think I need a supportive Sangha to do some lucid dreaming I as a dark I'm a physician, as a doctor, I used to have stuff where I'd wake up from sleep and go to the hospital like I have to go. And about 60% of the time somebody would be crashing or something comes I think from it's another level of consciousness, but I don't know what the hell I'm doing. And physically for this, actually, I lost contact. I have a lot of physical aches and pains. And I'm sort of lost with all this stuff. It's kind of like I'm lost.

Yeah, I first thought something simple. It's could be very very helpful. Simple and embodying would be very, very helpful. You have so much else going on, and a lot of stimulation and a lot of experience that, you know, not you don't need any more of that. You don't need anything elaborate. You need something very simple and grounding. And you know, the meditation I don't know what you know, Dr. Thurman. You know, I don't really know the context you he probably had much more of a sense of of your your situation. But learning meditation learning shamatha practice will consolidate your executive functions in a way that nothing else can do. I mean, other things can do them but not like that. And meditation that is particularly uses the approach of relaxation. So there are two types of shamatha one is based on concentration, and one is based on relaxation and they arrive at the same thing. But the relaxation like Maha Mudra shamatha is or what I teach is is similar to that, what Andrew I think Andrew teaches that I really well, I would expect it he does and he wrote this book, reverse meditation. Those types of things heal, they heal the frazzled pneus of our nervous system. They cultivate a sense of relaxation and a very deep level, while bringing our mind into stability. I think that you would fall in love with that type of practice and it would it would fit into whatever else you're doing.

Where do you find social is called shamatha. Where do you get I mean, I'm kind of clueless Where do you would you would you go for that?

Well, here is a place I you would have to I mean, you're a member of my club already. So I would actually ask someone like Alyssa was here. You know, email her Alyssa, could you raise your hand cuz I'm not sure. Yeah. What is your name by the way? I don't know your name.

Me I'm soon.

Okay. Okay. All right. You can also Where do you live?

I live in Washington Heights, Manhattan. Oh,

well, man, you have every conceivable thing you could need there. You could look into if you want to study if you want to learn in person with someone you could go to the Insight Meditation Society, you could go to upasana group. You could go to I'm sure any Zen group would be very welcoming of or not actually, sometimes then groups don't seem welcoming because that's their style, but they are welcoming. These are how to get in person guidance. You could also talk to, you know at the Vedanta society, there's Swami Saba Priya Nanda, who is an incredibly knowledgeable and wonderful person who you could just put before him your situation, ask him what he he's friends with Andrew, and that's an amazing, he's just an amazing resource. And because you're there, if I were where you are, I'd be going down and talking with Swami Saba Priya Nanda. He's, he's a treasurer,

and he are bug free. And he's, he's,

he's at what's called the Vedanta society. In where is it? I've been there, but I, you know, I don't know the city well enough. That was a long time ago. It's yeah, the Vedanta society is a very legitimate old Vedanta community that was established in the probably the 40s third, I don't know when but he's, he's a great resource. Basic shamatha meditation shamatha means calm abiding. And I would recommend that and I, it sounds like working with someone in person. Might be great if you want to, if you if online is fine with you. You could there are a lot of things you can take a look at one of my retreats, I do retreats every month that teach this called Finding ground. We have one coming up in the 20th. These are all things that you can explore. They're all going to be very similar. So you won't be if you invest in one and then go into another it's not going to be that different. It's like maybe driving like a like an Audi and then driving a Toyota. They're not going to be the same but it's the basic thing.

I mean, this is a lot. This is good, I think so. This is a thing and then I went to the chat and screenshots because it's not got any

good. Yeah, you can always reach out to me and go to my website and just say, hey, it's Sue. I have a few questions. And I'd be more than happy to repeat what I said. If if I were in Manhattan, man. Oh, there's so many resources there.

Right. I mean, I think what was really strange was those things going on around my house. I mean, really, I was like, freaking out.

That would discombobulate me. I mean, there's stuff like that going around on my house, but it's but it's me.

Yeah, I don't know if it's me, or if it's something else and that's what really, you know, I don't know if it's my subconscious or, I mean, it's really I was like, what's going on? You know, I'm saying,

Yeah. Any of those resources, I mean, that's just it. goes for everyone. Any question that anyone has always should have an element of find some Sangha. You don't have to join anything. Just find some some people who are very, you're already doing that. You're talking to Robert Thurman. He's a practitioner and that kind of thing. Just be around people who are making an effort in this way and are knowledgeable that's always important. Then and then from there, you'll doors will open.

Thank you so much. You bet.

It's nice to meet you. So Allah hundra did I say that right? You Oh, what did I just tell it? How is it? Say it

so good. Well, it's, it's a long story, you know? We have a little time here. So, okay, bring it on, but to bring a question up, I, I was I heard about betting on the boy. And I thought, yeah, that's, I'm gonna ask about that.

Right meditating on the body. Is that what you just said? On the bike?

On the bike? The what? On the on the boys on emptiness? Oh, the void. The void. Sorry, now, okay. They can by the English.

Now. Now it's,

so I'm asking about that. And maybe you can if you can give a comment on that. That would be great. But then you nail it. Afterwards. You just nail it. You know, you, you. You said just exactly what is happening to me that I started meditating, isolated. Wonder you mentioned that this way and now I barely meditated at all

on that, so you your meditation is a void.

No, no. I felt like what are you asking about? Meditating on emptiness. If you're eating, you know, so start resume editing. And then you'll ask about the boy and the boy. Yeah, boy.

Oh boy, you so what should I wish I respond to?

Anyone you like all right.

First of all, your you nailed it. Meditation is something that we got to make friends with it and not feel like it's a big thing like we got to do it or we we didn't do it. You do have to do it. No question about it just like you have to eat. But meditation is not going to solve our problems right away. It's not going to give us an immediate experience. It's going to change our life we wish and if it does, 99 times out of 100. It's not really what we think it is. And it just creates complications. Meditation. One of my teachers once said, we've got to understand that meditation is like drinking water, not like drinking alcohol. When people come to meditation, thinking that it's like drinking alcohol, they bring all of these expectations of I wonder what it's going to feel like or what's going to happen? Nothing. It's not like that. Meditation is becoming familiar. With the ground of what we are. So if you just relax and just drop everything and just be and then just, that being can then become the basis for elongating that being and that would be called meditation. By making space in your life, to just be you are a meditator. And by just being you are moving your experience toward seeing reality, and one of the unfortunate translations of that experience is the void. shunyata is the word that is translated as the void emptiness these are not good translations for. I mean, they make sense. It makes sense why they're translated that way, but that doesn't convey the experience. Nothing's going to go away. When we experience emptiness other than fear, fear will go away. fear arises by not seeing the nature of things and by imputing or imagining things or some other way. Emptiness is the emptiness of that conceptual mistake. Meditation just moves us in the direction of becoming whole. We will experience all of those things naturally. We don't have to do something specific. We there are practices of doing that. I'm going to do I'm now going to do this meditation on emptiness now I'm going to do this meditation on the luminosity. Now I'm going to do this meditation. We're not from meditation culture, so we don't have time for that is the long curriculum of someone in a monastery. That's what that is. We have to use oral instructions are the pith instructions, the the the they're called the oral instructions. The best instructions anyone has ever had have always been the folksy assistance of knowledgeable teachers who push the books aside and tell you how it is and what to do and then tell you to come come back in a in a couple of weeks and we'll take it a little further. That's all you need. You don't need to master all the knowledge and do all the enumerated types of meditations that are in the books. That isn't really how it's done. It's far more natural than that. It's far simpler and more doable than that. But it is a long game. And so the best time to start is now or the best time to start is the day after we were born. That was the best time to start. But we didn't. The next best time was two days after we were born and so on. But you are alive now and you're young and you're gonna have a long life and you can unfold a tremendous amount of wisdom in the time that you have. You just got to fall in love with meditation. Again, it's so simple. Yeah, again, that's the thing. It doesn't go away. It won't be upset with you. And if you had any genuine experience of, of your being when you were meditating, it's gonna be waiting for you. You have to you know, there's some weeds that will have grown up a little bit but that's okay. You'll get through them. I

and I know at this a trick I can tell that it's like playing the guitar in the way it's practice.

Yeah, it is.

It's practice. It's it's a very different guitar.

Yeah, it's a very different guitar.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. You're Of course I've learned with you here have kept me company. In

proud all 100 You should just take a look at the finding ground retreats. Just go to my website and just look at them. I'm not telling you to do them or anything but just look at them and know that every month a group of people get together and practice with the intention of keeping momentum. And they're designed for that it might be something that you're interested in, but it's good to see you again. You have a bear. Yeah, well, you're welcome. Good. Alejandra.

Thanks for that. Take care. Bye. Yep.

Okay, last one. Uh, Anita

Hello. Come in comment about what you said. Okay. It is not alcohol is not something that is gonna come like that. But and I was never, I have no so much culture about all these Indian words that you say and all that but I do feel that something is happening. And I'm pleased by lately I've been getting into these little by little more and more for years. But I am also surprised that once I was telling a friend, I'm getting somewhere and she tells me No, this takes years. Yes, I know that this takes years but I have a little surprise almost every day.

You have a surprise almost every day. Is that what you said? Yeah,

I feel like a little present. There is something new something exciting. is not new. No. LSD trip. It's that is something always very new. I think it I don't know. I don't know if it is only to me happened but meditating everyday gives you something. Everybody important is legal. But important. I think so. i It's not

I have no quarrel with that. I think that when someone meditates and they do it with they mean it when you meditate from your heart and you you apply yourself and you use instructions with a sense of humility, and duty or diligence are both that you are going to have results and it's not going to take 20 years or 50 years it it might take two days. It might be the first session you you have something surprises you That's normal. What what would be when someone is not your friend, because I don't know what your friend meant, but what is available to us through meditation ultimately is so mind bogglingly profound that we have to calm down and don't rush. So what often happens is that people have really exciting initial experiences that are real, they're real experiences. They're they're good songs. But they then think that must be what met what these deeper things are. And so one of the pieces of advice in in my tradition is don't rush to call it awakening or don't rush to call it enlightenment. And when you see the Dalai Lama said, you know, this is a Dalai Lama is a very accomplished meditator and someone asked him if people always ask him questions like, Are you enlightened, and I'm sure I can promise you that he would always say, oh, no, no, no, no, no. He's probably fibbing. But he said when I see how long the meditation path is to accomplish Buddhahood I'm overjoyed knowing how many years and lifetimes I will have on this path. I love that. I love that. That is courage. But it's gotta be said and I I like what you're saying. If you meditate, simply, with some humility and gentleness, but with some skill and knowledge, you will have confirmation that you're making changes, you will have experiences that will be very meaningful. It isn't something like way down the road. It's not all or nothing. And that's important, but I really think everybody who meditates should be able to everybody should have progress. There should be tangible progress. You should become a little more cheerful, a little less frightened. A little more simple, a little more heartfelt, and maybe wise, maybe brave. These are the signs that meditation is working. There are also very clear sort of almost technical diagnoses. Or is that what we would call them? There are ways like very skilled teachers, my teacher did this to me this summer. can assess you by asking you questions. And it can be really exciting because someone is looking into you. And you realize that they've done the same thing you've been doing, they've just done it a lot more. And you just feel like oh my god, there's someone out there who cares who can see it, and it's important to understand that you will develop through meditation. It's not like if you're the lucky one, meditation will work. No, you will work meditation does do this. Just like drinking alcohol does do something, unless you have tolerance and that's not good. But, you know, when you meditate, things happen and they happen in a predictable way. They don't happen in the same way for everyone. But meditation experience is well understood that's that 2500 year conversation that's never been broken. So yes, I want to confirm that. There's nothing weird about that. There's your friend who knows what your friend meant, but the final product of meditation does probably take years but you know, it's like you go out in the sun. You get a little tan. That's nothing unusual. Thank you. You bet. Good to see you again. All right, everybody. I'm so hungry and I can hear the rattle of the pots and pans upstairs. And I'm surprised that I haven't keeled over. I haven't even had to blow my nose once. That's amazing. It's also good because one more one more hearty nose blow and I think my nose is gonna fall off. Anyway, I'll see you all in a month. And anyone who's looking for a retreat to do come check out finding ground finding ground.org retreats every month. People are liking him I'm sure like him but I can't wait to see you all next time. Stay positive. As the world begins to tremble. People are really afraid. That's okay. People have always been afraid and we have something that we can do. We have a path. So please stay on your path. take it to heart and I wish everybody the very best 2024 signing off take it away Alyssa. Hi everyone.