Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 Welcome to my Bob Thurman podcast. I'm so grateful. Some good friends enabled me to present them to you. If you enjoy them and find them useful, please think of becoming a member of Tibet house us to help preserve Tibetan culture. Tibet house is the Dal Lamas cultural center in America. All best wishes. Have a great day.
Speaker 1 00:00:27 This is episode number 18, titled advice on Mahamudra meditation.
Speaker 2 00:00:36 I think that's very important to know, uh, because otherwise this kind of Mahamudra thing, zing or Shama ahead of IPA sort of thing, which are sort of shamatha is ahead of IPA. There is a tendency to, because it seems easier at first it seems like, okay, I'm, it's all empty. You know, it's all space. It's sort of marketed that way actually by teachers that some teachers that, you know, what is all these complications, you just like you like, uh, floating face and they'll cure your problems. And that is actually deceptive. It's not cur not really true. It won't help that much. It might help like blood pressure and it might give you it's a palliative type of thing, but it, it is sterile in a certain way, cuz it can't really change anything. The, the, um, went to bring another book. I forgot it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 00:01:46 I can do it by memory. Daba has a marvelous passage in his, um, essence of true eloquence. The thing of you did any of you go to the beacon theater last fall? Did you go to, there's a really remarkable passage in that text, which was in there, but by that time it was toward the last day, not too short of time to try, do all that, but it was really off. Anyway. Anyway, there was this amazing passage that says that the, that the human being has three perceptual habits or three kinds of perception. I mean, there are many ways of course of saying that, but, uh, that, but, but in this particular there particular three walks, which is very, very interesting. He says that is perceiving something as if it intrinsically exists. And that's the habitual ignorant perception of things as if they exist essentially or with intrinsic substance or intrinsic reality or objectivity or identifiability, there are different levels of refinement of that notion of intrinsic existence.
Speaker 2 00:02:54 So there's perceiving things as if they intrinsically exist and then perceiving things as if they intrinsically do not exist as intrinsically non-existent, as you know, essentially ultimately non-existent and that's sort of like the disappearing state, when you have been looking for the, the intrinsic reality of something and then the whole thing disappeared and then you feel, oh, it really didn't exist at all. And then the third thing is the perceiving thing without qualifying it as either intrinsically existed or intrinsically non-existent that's the third one. And then it says the person who it doesn't say enlightened person, but it says the person who has achieved a realistic worldview, you know, the first branch of the eightfold path, right. You all know the eightfold path, come on. You really, you do know that, right. You know, they all, I think the first branch is, uh, people say right to worldview.
Speaker 2 00:03:59 I hate that cuz they right and wrong, right. Means that it seems, seems to be conforming to a certain rule or dogma. So that's why I don't like right. Or maybe just because I'm always wrong. I don't know why I don't like, whereas if you translate some yuck in could some yuck or ye dark bar ti Britain as realistic or real real, so a realistic worldview is so much better a worldview that is that corresponds with reality of, but it's the view, you know, that', that's so much more real. I, I have to say a Wallace. I first heard that in the word of a Wallace's and I have to thank him for that. I have to give him attribution usually translate so jealous of each other. They never give attribution to except mm-hmm <affirmative> so I have to set a good example.
Speaker 2 00:04:51 So realist <affirmative> so realistic and unrealistic is much better and it fits with what Buddhism really is, which is realism. So sustained exercise and realism. Okay. So it says the person who has not yet achieved the realistic worldview of these three perceptual habits only has the first and the last, that is the per habitual perception of things that intrinsically existent and the perception of things without qualifying as to existent or non-existence like, for example, peripheral. One of the examples people give is peripheral vision. If I'm looking at you and I peripherally, see the painting here on the wall, I'm not really looking at it. So my mind doesn't ascribe to it, intrinsic existence. It's just sort of notices it without getting into a judgment or a sort of description of its quality of existence. That's one of that. Okay. Then it says the person who has the realistic worldview has achieved the realistic worldview has all three of these habit patterns, the perception of intrinsic existence, the perception of intrinsic non-existence and the perception without qualify.
Speaker 2 00:06:19 And then it ha he have, he gives three things that I may not remember. Exactly. And if you, if you understand that, it says then you will reject the argument that before achieving inside into emptiness or selflessness, cultivate worthlessness cultivation of the spirit of enlightenment, of the mind of enunciation, of love and compassion or the mind of renunciation is we're useless and worthless because it's just more, more intrinsic reality perception. So they're useless and you will not agree with that. And you will not agree with the idea that after some kind of enlightenment, then all activity is spontaneous and there's no thought it's all just like impulsive and that will be wrong. And then there's a third one, which I can't remember. I had it the other room, but I forgot to walk in with it. That's old age, but nevermind, I'll finally play you later.
Speaker 2 00:07:09 Now I had one Lama who brilliantly, brilliantly used to put things in a way that you could understand the territory for. I think Joe also knew him in his previous life. He's still reincarnated with a younger person who I don't know well, but his former life. And he said this, he said that our intrinsic reality Haven of seeing everything as a kind of essential, absolute having its own absolute nature of being what it is so that like it's, it's, you know, that plastic cup, you just put down it's cup wood is sort of just jumps off it and it's sort of intrinsic in it. So what that is is that's our intrinsic reality investment in the thing has been so wrapped around our perception of the cup sort of as if forever from, although it thought it was learned at some time in life. And actually from both sense, brought from instincts of formal life.
Speaker 2 00:08:05 But it's been wrapped around our relational perception of that cup is just a cup without transcribing to it, any kind of quality of existence or non-existence, it's been wrapped around so long that when we don't find the cup as being like that, by investigating its causality process, investigating its part and whole it's composition process, you know, investigating its designation process, you know, it's labeling its naming process and so on. Um, when we don't find it, it disappear, then, then that intrinsic reality perception of it intrinsically real perception of it takes the relative perception of it out with it.
Speaker 2 00:08:49 So when the distorted or exaggerated perception of it intrinsically real disappears, it also takes the relative perception of it with it. And everything seems to have disappeared. Do you follow me? Because they've been so entwined together for so long. So what we think is it's valve bursting into reality, which is just vast space is nothing but the perception of the intrinsic non-existence of that thing we were looking for, if you follow it, which actually is it's equally in itself is still delusionary. Cause it's like now we think it's really not a Clearent we follow. We don't just think, well, we couldn't find it as really existent, but we think, no, it's really not existent to follow. So we've added that middle of the three perceptual habits we've added the middle one to fall.
Speaker 2 00:09:44 And, but if we have experience, we experienced that we have achieved, we have achieved something which is called the realistic worldview because when we deeply achieve that, even though it's still a distorted experience at first, we be, we have the basis of developing the non-dual intuition of the non-duality in a way of the, of the, of its existence at non-existence. So actually it comes to exist in a way that the exaggerated existence and the exaggerated non-existence cancel each other out. And we begin to just relate to it in a way in the third way, really of not qualified, but, but we do qualify, but we qualify both ways at once. So the two cancel each other out if you follow me. So it's, it is non-duality by persevering in a balanced duality, it's a moral thing. It's like not a double bind. It's a quadruple bind.
Speaker 2 00:10:51 It's a kind of quadruple bind, which enlightenment awareness is something more like that our tendency to is to associate alignment with deep sleep. Actually our escape is tendency because as differentiated human beings and the big differentiation between between self and the universe, which is other than the self is so strenuous, actually, that's why we can always stay awake 12, 14 hours a day. And then we collapse. It's like, we're like that endless statue down at Rockefeller center there on fifth avenue. You're like, uh, holding up this world that is not us holding it off, holding it up, whatever, you know, and trying to keep our position in the breathing a little bit in it. It's so, so strenuous, constantly refreshing, you know, like, you know, a television screen, you know, the, the, the Sony three color gun that goes, you know, which is why when you film a television thing, it looks all weird, you know, but it looks stable when we look out because the photos are being shot by this gun.
Speaker 2 00:12:02 It's being constantly refreshed. This is like that. So our, our brain is constantly refreshing our perceptions of things based on our concepts of them. So that the things seem to be perceived in a way organized, according to what concepts we have about that. Right? So we feel we're in our familiar world. So we feel safe in our familiar world. So, so, uh, but this is a very, very important thing. And to understand this conceptually and inferentially is really important when you do Moham to meditation, that's why I'm dwell out when you go at it or when you go at, when you meditate in general. And when you go, especially at the thing where before doing a lot of like nagarno's 27 critique chapters of the wisdom book of Nagar Juna and things like that before you sort of embody and learn a way of being critically analytic of everything by doing analytic meditation, which is not PO of just being mindful of while you counter breath, but it's going into the nature of everything and it all kind of dissolving under analysis around you.
Speaker 2 00:13:17 And, uh, but before you do that, it's very, very important to have this kind of, this, the phenomenology of the potential experiences. You can have a little bit under your belt, where you have the, especially having what they call the Royal reason of relativity, that anything you, since you are a relative being a relational being, and there is no non relational component of yourself or your mind or anything, there's a concept in your mind of non relationality, but that's itself a relational thing. And when you know that, then you have any kind of experience that seems like I, you ran into the absolute, your mind will automatically know, well I'm experiencing this. It's not abstinate it's relational because experiencing means relating to it. Even it seems if it seems to be having an experience of something that seems non-relative, I always think of 2001, 2010, you probably saw that film my hope.
Speaker 2 00:14:24 And remember they, they ran up this big black stones that hum there, everybody freaked out. Then the stone actually created seven new sons or something. I don't know what, and that's a perfect idea of a concept of an absolute thing that does relative things. It's the same psychotic concept of God, you know, distributed as a theologically, as a, and therefore irrationally as a, as an absolute being that creates a relative things without relating to them and matters to relative things without being related to them, which of course is just making the terms relative and absolute contradictory and meaningless that you follow.
Speaker 2 00:15:12 So if Moses had the Royal reason of relative to that was David and some Bush, not a member of the Bush crime family, but the earlier Bush, Bernie and talking and telling him to go do crazy things, like try to confront the Pharaoh. He would've said, you say you're absolute, but you're talking to me. So if you are absolute, I, I wouldn't see you. So you must be relative. So you're just a bigger guy than me. If you can burn like a Bush. So you go deal with Pharaoh, you stay here in the desert with my flock and my family <laugh>, but it'd been a little different history, but human beings want to find absolutes because, you know, unlike human beings, this is Buddhist psychology, you know, Buddhist psychotherapy because human beings feel that inside themselves is some kind of absolute self that's the source of our whole time. So that therefore the difference within ourself and others is an absolute difference. And therefore others all have absolute cells and objects of absolute cells. And this makes it unmanageable our relationship with them problematic and unmanageable.
Speaker 2 00:16:30 It's actually really fairly simple. Okay. So now let's look at this as usual, you know, in these kind of practices that are supposed to be so simple, like Chen and Muhammad Mora and great seal, there is, it's really simple. You just like focus your mind on both subject and object on the, on emptiness, but which is the great seal, cuz it's it's shapes everything. It's, it's envelopes everything in emptiness. So you're enveloping, you fold, but then they get into the preliminaries after saying it's all simple. And then they're all very complicated. So you, but you know, a lot of this stuff, right? Muhammad of course the word mudra is means a seal. It can also mean a gesture mudra, but it here, it means a seal. And um, it also means in, uh, tantra and there's a tantra Moham, Mora, and a Sutra Moham. This is more dealing with Sutra line.
Speaker 2 00:17:39 That is to say exo and esoteric. And the difference between exo and esoteric is, uh, simply in this kind of simple context, is that the exoteric the sort of duality of the practitioner and the goal that the practitioner is seeking is preserved in the practice. So it's called causal vehicle. So what you're doing is seeking some understanding or realization with the allowing in leaving in text, the presumption that you're, you don't already have it, but you're going, but it's there. It is possible to achieve and you're going to get it. That gives you a motivation to go down the path. So that's the cause it's causal vehicle. The, the other one, the ESO Exter esoteric is what's called a gold vehicle or a fruition vehicle in the sense that you, you're not thinking that just by adopting that vehicle, you are already there, but you are creating a dissonance in your mind that although it's a path that you're on the path involves imagining that you're at the goal so that you then are dealing with the dissonance that you're dealing with is not, there's something wrong with where I am.
Speaker 2 00:19:01 And I have to get somewhere in the way of like I am. I know where I am, which is not at my goal, but you're even showing that concept of, I know where I am into question. And you're saying, well, Buddha thinks I'm at the goal. I don't feel like I am, but since the buddha'slightened or all the enlightened being are enlightened teachers, enlightened Budha, enlightened, whatever, you know, but your daughter is enlightened. And if they think I am, then I must be, even though I don't feel like I am. So I'm simulating being at the goal. And I'm dealing with my feeling critically with my feeling of not being Al in a way where I placed myself under greater dissonant stress or tension to, to, you know, to eliminate the veils and the blocks of my feeling and experiencing that goal. You follow me, that's called a fruition, or I like to use the word gold vehicle.
Speaker 2 00:20:06 So it's a mean there's means, or you could say means end. You know, you, you use the means of to get to a goal or you use the end as the means to get to that goal. Like that. That's the difference between the two and the reason that the esoteric therefore is esoteric is that the person who practices the esoteric version is allowing themselves to feel a, to imagine or simulate a sense of the kind of confidence of a being who is enlightenment and that's, and it esoteric because if you, if you take, uh, our own unenlightened semi psychotic state, and we then say, well, now I'm enlightened. Then, then I'll be enlightened psycho <laugh> <laugh>. I will be stuck in the feeling that I'm enlightened. And then I'll really be out of touch with reality more than I was before. So one has to have understood to some strong degree, the real prerequisite for eing into tantra and esoteric practices is having really a firm inferential based rational conviction of the Royal reason of relativity. So that, which is the bomb or the medicine or the immunization against absolutizing, anything that could possibly happen to you. Even if you, I mean, you see, it's hard to imagine maybe, but although you all have meditated, you're all like people seeking to know your minds. So some of you may have had experiences like indeed meditation, where like you suddenly were in a vast realm of pure golden space
Speaker 2 00:21:50 And you felt divine and godlike and you felt, or you had a vision of something like God, you know, people have these experiences. And so they <affirmative>. And so then you get a conviction that if you don't have the Royal reason of relativity, you feel, oh, that was absolute. And then I'm looking for that, you know, type of thing. So me, the altered states you can achieve through meditation are extremely cosmic states. So it's very important to have this understanding that if it's a state that I didn't have before, there's a boundary between it and where I was before. And it doesn't somehow simultaneously incorporate everywhere. I've been, then it's only a relational state. If I've heard it, it's relational. In other words, really strong conviction on that. Cuz if there's nothing absolute about me, that could somehow just be absolute sort of thing. Although in a way, you know, you have to, we get to this kind of area, you have to be careful about any kind of formulation of whatsoever because in a way that mirror experience, based on the, the strange double binding of the double bind of the relative in the absolute of the existent and the non-existent,
Speaker 2 00:23:18 Uh, system, uh, is sort of like somehow intuitively without being able to grasp it as an experience that you had realizing you always had it or something
Speaker 3 00:23:33 Like that.
Speaker 2 00:23:35 And then even finding it always had been with you. So it was nothing it's not new and realizing that you're made of it almost so that you don't need to know it. I can't explain again. I, no one can explain it. It's it's explainable. <laugh> you know, they're famous people like KTI Sutra. Did you read the stra at, in this class? No, not yet. Oh, are you? I hope you read it. Not only because I translated it better than other people, but, and I can improve it. That's not, mine is not perfect. I I'm gonna make a new, new addition, but sooner someday. And, and um, but uh, you know, there's this famous thing where people heres ask about the nature of non-duality and he doesn't say anything after 32 people have said things, which we're all good, but, but then he doesn't say anything and then that's better.
Speaker 2 00:24:24 That's best because, but he, while not saying anything, he is, he's in a state where he feels that everyone else is already there. That's why it's good. There could be a silence where he was not saying anything, cuz he was thinking they couldn't understand it. That wouldn't have been good. That's a, that's a, that's an exclusionary silence, but it's silence where he doesn't need to say anything because he's perceiving them all at the place where they always knew, know it themselves, even though they don't know that they know it, then that's a good silence. Okay. So number of Moham hail the great seal, and this is not the seal on the central park zoo also. Yeah, I was gonna say the seal is also in tantra. That's why I got off on Tura. The seal in tantra is a concert and that's why sometimes you can translate the great seal as the great embrace because the metaphor for the seal for the great seal is union with the universe as a cons. So it's like a kind of communion with the entire universe as if the, the unity, the dualistic non-dual unity of self and universe was like complete bliss, like the bliss of sexual union of the ideal sexual union. So their seal can also mean that Moja with gratitude. I honor my Peerless mentor, Paragon of mastered, who nakedly revealed inevitable minds, diamond realm, inseparable from the great seal, pervasive nature of all. Okay. So that's easy.
Speaker 2 00:26:04 And uh, he's talking about Sanjay Yei this is, this is the great, um, pension Lama who wasn't a pension Lama. Originally. He was, uh, Los gal. He was the reincarnation of one of Alba's major disciples, but he created the D Lama institution. Um, he, he elevated the fifth D Lama. He, he was the one who managed the elevation of the fifth D Lama to be the, to be the responsible for the country for, to be, you know, in the six, seven 16th, 17th century, a marvels person. I write this introduce the great seal lineage of master Darra. Darra was a Yogi kind of mystic, uh, disciple of, um, I think it's, that's a grand grand disciple of song. Ha a church doge. His name was it ti be the name was Abe. Name, the gun, cut your tradition of instruction. Intestines of all teachings, public and private. My comments covered three aspects of practice, preliminary points, actual practice and including points. Okay. But that's pretty straightforward.
Speaker 2 00:27:25 But you know that, all the stuff that I said before about Ts and those three FA those three types of experiences and how they balance each other, how you must take a disappearing experience or space like echo points, experie occurrence as being the discovery of the ultimate is just the opposite of the habitual investment of intrinsic reality and differentiating things in a seeming state of non differentiation. But that, that state is differentiated from the state of differentiation. So it still is differentiated. So therefore it's not, it's not emptiness, but it's a good stepping stone to emptiness in that it balances the distorted exaggerated perception of differentiated objects as being non empty. But it is also empty. In other words, that's just a key point.
