Speaker 2 00:00:14 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 dial Lamas cultural center in America. All best wishes. Have a great day.
Speaker 3 00:00:48 This is episode 299 with Dr. Mark Epstein and Robert.
Speaker 2 00:01:16 And I thought tonight I was going to what you might enjoy. I thought was, uh, something on this Satana, you know? Mm. Uh, how many of you who have done mind? Mindfulness meditations sort of regularly and look lots of you. Yes. Wait, how many, some, and how many are brand new about it? Brand new <laugh> oh, that's good. That's good. And, uh, it's kind of a CRA you know, nowadays there's like mindfulness teachers and now they're all doing the ones who do, they're all doing teacher training. Yeah. So they're competing with the yogis. So I have a son who's an actor. And, uh, but he he's a yoga teacher. Also. He's a certified yoga teacher. And, um, but he says that it used to be here in New York, that all unemployed actors were waiters or waitresses in restaurants. And now they're all yoga teachers. So I'm, I'm really, I'm really happy that now with all this teacher training going on, now, there can be a, you know, can be the option of mindfulness here that it's coming.
Speaker 2 00:02:17 It is, it is. It's like tell them what this, what Sati Pana is. Cuz people won't know the world. Yeah. Well, okay. So I could talk about the suture we chanted, but oh, how many of you are here tonight are coming tomorrow. Can you hold up your hands? Uh, not so many. Okay. So, okay. So, um, well the, the, the, the heart just briefly, before I go to the sat, pat sat Botana is poly language for Tyana, which is the Sanskrit and the M good and SMU or such means memory. Yeah. This is very critical for psychoanalysis. I think that it's actually the meaning of the word is to remember or remembering. And, uh, also pat, I'm sorry. I have to quibble because I'm a translator. The foundation translator is really not good. It's no good. I know it's terrible. Yeah. Or, or pat intali, but Sana means to closely place.
Speaker 2 00:03:17 So it means to focus on something. So it isn't stand on something it's to focus on it. So there's the four foci of mindfulness actually is what it is. Although people tell me, you can't say that I, I was battered in my youth, in an English sort of oriented school where I had to learn Latin in the third grade. So I will tend to say FSI, but people tell me you shouldn't use Latin plurals in English. You have to say focuses. Really. That's what I was told by editors, but maybe not. Oh, you all are probably overeducated too. So it's probably alright to say FOI, but anyway, they're the four foci of memory. And then it seems strange. You used memory to remember something that's right here in the present. And then what I was thinking when you were talking about the mom coming or not coming, you know, cetera.
Speaker 2 00:04:11 And, uh, I trying to think about my experience. My mother also was an actress mm-hmm <affirmative> and, uh, when she had a part, she didn't come in evening. So I, I would stay up as late as I was actually, which I was rather good. And then when she didn't have a part, she would come and help put me to bed a little bit, but all I had governances and different people like that, you know? And, um, they didn't, they weren't originally by the clock. Luckily, you know, probably I, I didn't get enough sleep, but, um, my companion was, I had a, an imaginary lion under my bed called Richard Richard, which I used to pronounce Richard Richard. I was told
Speaker 4 00:04:51 It was imaginary. It
Speaker 2 00:04:52 Wasn't a stuffed animal. No, there was no, no, no. Well, I might have had some stalls in there. Not really. I think it was imaginary Uhhuh because he really was there because he would jump out and grow at any kind of thing that would bother me in bed. And then he occasionally demanded when my mother was there. I would go and demand milk and cookies for Richard if he needed them to keep, to be happy. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So I was thinking about that. And then in the mindfulness thing, in relation to remembering those things and finding sort of the undercurrents and the embedded reactions that are, you don't know where they're from later, when you grow up that in a way this Murty taking memory and, and focus bringing it into the present and remembering where you are now, all the, all the components of that you usually ignore, like remembering that you have a back and then what's wrong with your back.
Speaker 2 00:05:43 So, you know, I love Ilham, right. As you know, I'm really, really fond. I don't consider, he was so cool through the forties. I think I Rodee on a motorcycle there, but he had gone already, you know, really Organon in Maine, in Maine. Yeah. In Maine. But I did, we didn't find, I went with some friends. We didn't find the Oregon Buster, the cloud Buster that he had mm-hmm <affirmative>, which he used to shoot down spaceship. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, like aliens and his old age, he went a little wacky. Of course he was persecuted by fascist and communist and, or, and, and McCarthy S and McCarthy and McCarthy at and of the McCarthy Americans in the fifties. So, and he had this brilliant theory that fascism would never be gotten rid of in the planet in some form or another, until these sort of inner psychological armoring was of people they weren't shut off from their own sense of themselves, you know?
Speaker 2 00:06:33 Yeah. He, he did. That was he, I know he actually SP bluntly stated that after being beaten down by different fascist organizations and life, you know, fascistic organizations. So, um, anyway, I was thinking, so Theano, so the focus of memory, you know, which we, we call mindfulness, which may not be the best translation. You know, you could say, we say mind awareness or wakefulness or something like that. And, um, the four foci, and then the first is the body, you know, Buddhist like to go and walk around these monuments, which remind them of the presence of the Buddha there. The St uh, the, the, the stupa as it's called a kind of certain shaped thing is, uh, some of them huge like towers, but they're solid. They're like Ary things almost, but they are said to represent the mind of the Budha. So you have the sense that the, the subliminal message and so society is that, that the Budha is still present.
Speaker 2 00:07:30 His mind is still present, even though in that kind of TETA society, they think Buddha left town like the lone ranger after having done something, which they lament, you know, unlike some other Buddha society where they feel Buddha is still here, like in Mah, they feel the Buddha, the mind of Buddha, because a mine never is existing anywhere without a body, but the Buddha has a weird body, which is everything <laugh>. So poor Buddha has to stay here worrying about everybody and talk about the good enough mother and a Buddha. You Buddhahood is defined as becoming the good enough mother of every sentient being, which is really quite preposterous in one way. And in one way, if possible, quite extraordinary. So, okay. So, so I was reading this Maha sat, pat SUTA. So that is the great discourse on the foci of mindfulness and, uh, as we were translating or memory remembering and, um, um, because I was in a Tebo country.
Speaker 2 00:08:38 So I wanted to do that, you know, and also there's a lot of complaint from Buddhist about the mindfulness craze that they're not really doing them remembering properly. You know, they're just like relaxed, you know, do a body scan, relax and breathe a little bit and calm yourself down. And like, sort of don't distract don't, don't pay attention to your distracting thoughts and come back to this breathing. And if you just keep breathing, but you breathe while remembering that you're breathing, then you won't worry about it. You'll diminish your focus on worry, worrying about things, you know, which is really too simplistic, you know? And so I thought I, I would look at the source, you know, mm-hmm, <affirmative> in a more careful way I had read it. So
Speaker 5 00:09:21 For this suture comes from the Teboda tradition. So not from not to
Speaker 2 00:09:25 Bet. Well, no, it's in all the traditions.
Speaker 5 00:09:27 Yes. But
Speaker 2 00:09:27 The one you're, but this version of it is, but it's not just Terra. It's not just Teva. Okay. There difference between the Tebo tradition and the Maha Ona tradition, which is really my, my own tradition, um, sort of, uh, or, I mean, I'm an aspirin to have something to do with it, but, um, one is called you can one call one dualistic, formally speaking, one will call itself dualistic and women call itself non-dualistic. And the dualistic one is what people mostly understand Buddhism is about because in English speaking world, the British and Sri Lanka, the Teva was the first notion of Buddhism that they learned about. They didn't really know what, who Buddha was the Indian people that had forgotten who it was you, the British were in India. And, uh, then some weird thing was going on in China, but they didn't use the word Buddha.
Speaker 2 00:10:15 So they thought it was some. So that's what they really think Buddhism is. And what that dualistic means that relief from suffering, you know, release from suffering, liberation, from suffering is in some other place. So Nirvana or Niana as they call it is elsewhere from the world of differentiated beings who all suffer. And so the whole idea that like the poor Pope, um, Benedict and, um, he'd frightened poor, poor John Paul, because he was John Paul's inquisitor. He was John Paul's, um, head of the office of the doctrine of the faith, which is the inquisition new name for the inquisition. And he wrote that book, the hope of something of faith, hope of faith or something, faith at hope. Anyway, he, he had a chapter on other religions and then the, he expressed in the, in the voice of the Pope, how sad it was to be a Buddhist, how he couldn't understand how people could just accept being miserable all the time. Since those folks in Vatican were so jolly <laugh>.
Speaker 2 00:11:25 And how could people, how could people accept, uh, a, a religion as you thought it was, where what you would accept is that suffering is inevitable and you just have to suffer because everything is suffering, cuz that's how people morally understand Buddhism. And then there's this place that is somewhere else that you can be free of it. But as long as you hear you're gonna suffer. So Mayan doesn't agree with that. Mayan has says, right here is the land of bliss. This is near Bana right here and now is Niana because Nirvana is not created. It's the reality of here and now. So if you understand the, if you overcome the ignorance that makes you suffer or the mise, the misunderstanding of what you are and what the world is that you then will, when you really know it's reality, then you will be blissful and yet still here.
Speaker 2 00:12:14 So that's, which is a huge difference, actually, really, really huge. And of course I find that in the Satana. So, and that's, that's what I thought you'd enjoy. And I'm, I'm gonna, I'll tell you a little bit that, but now the other thing I should say is that any Sutra in Buddhist literature, what they call SJA, it's a little different from what Sutra means in, in Hinduism. Sutra means a discourse of the Buddha. Usually, although in the case of the heart, suture would be channeled. It's a, this, this bud, who's actually a Buddha, but he's pretending just to be a Buddhi. He is AEST bud, because bud means being more like other people. So they won't think it's some remote thing, you know? And, um, he's considered the universal compassion of all Buddhas. And so in that suture, the Buddha just goes into meditation and he lets Salva talk, but he's in the meditation on the illumination of the profound.
Speaker 2 00:13:06 So that's the means. He creates a field of people being aware of being mindful or remembering the reality of what is here. And then he dis discourses on what the reality is. But, but I'm the reason I'm saying this is that therefore Sutra is a guided meditation is where, so in the sat, Patan the Buddha speaking to the Mendis, they're not monks like cuz that has a Christian connotation. They're Mendis they're dropouts and Mendi means that they live on free food. They're sympathetic to the wealthy Indian society, Asian society of those days in that they only ask for lunch, but, and they get as brunch actually, cuz it has to be eaten, eaten before noon and then they don't eat any other food. Don't ask for dinner. They don't ask for breakfast, just brunch. And um, so they don't over strain. The, the people who are cooking the food, you know?
Speaker 2 00:14:02 And um, so that means Mandiant, you know, which is, and they're quite, they're not like monks, like they were not unhappy. They're not serious. They're cheerful. The being a Mandiant in a Buddhist society is like whoopy is like a MacArthur grant, lifelong <laugh> it's not a handsome, it's not hundreds of thousands of dollars, but it's free food and free space, no taxes, no family duty, no babysitting, uh, no, uh, no tax, no, no military service. If you're male and if you're female, no service of your mother-in-law or husband or husband, which, uh, which the early Mendi female mannequins were very happy to get away from their husbands actually. And many of them tell poems about how, oh, but, uh, I'm so happy. You have me escape from my kitchen, my bowl, my bent over mother-in-law three crooked things. My pestle that I used to have to pound the rice to Husket crooked Pele, my bent over mother-in-law and my hunchback husband. Thank you bud. She says, if this is not Niana it's good enough.
Speaker 2 00:15:10 You have poems like that from their early period. So, so anyway, so the focus of mindfulness and, and, but what I was thinking in psychoanalytically is precisely that Joseph's fear. Yeah, we wouldn't start crying, you know, you're whatever it was about you, you worry about your PhD or whatever it was or, or the wiggle worm, whatever <laugh>, you know, what is they are right here in the present and anyone that's distorted, if you remember it in the present, cause that's, it is here. It's not somewhere inaccessible it's here. And if you put your mind on everything that is here, we will find everything that ever happened to us. And actually of course, in Buddhist, we'll find all many S largest things that happened to us as well. When we get really more advanced in being able to remember really everything that's here to, to, and then the other second big difference with Buddhism and, and the modern psychoanalytic theories is that, uh, that, uh, Budha definitely preceded Freud by discovering that there's a huge unconscious, you know, and that the conscious mind is tip of iceberg, you know, but the difference between him and Freud is that he was not just trying to find any excessive repression there and kind of vent it or sooth it or, you know, and then leave it unconscious and realize that that's the case before have a thing, one of his papers about you either donkey or something, you don't want to beat it to death, or you want, you have to learn to ride it, but you can't really control it, but you make the, some kind of like a pack animal or something, which is the, as a metaphor for the unconscious drives.
Speaker 2 00:16:46 You know, whereas for the Buddha, you have to become conscious of you're unconscious, that's the human opportunity. And as the human responsibility and the reason that the, for the difference, I bet Freud, would've gone further about it. Mm-hmm, <affirmative> pushing it more. But the reason for the difference is that your unconscious goes with you into your next life, from the Buddhist point of view. And in a way, therefore you get driven by your drives. Your unexamined drives into embodiments that you might not want. And so when you conscious as a human being, you must use those times of consciousness to become re remembered, to become mindful of everything that in your, in yourself, which you can do. And you can find not only conscious craving and hatred, and, but you can find Eros and Thanos and face them down and, and, you know, turn their energies, uh, you know, to, into vehicles in a certain way, without being driven into expressing them or being destroyed by them, which they will destroy you otherwise, according to them.
Speaker 2 00:17:51 So even though only a few, so that's why people, when they, they sort of got that hint from Buddha, they would drop out from anything else in life. And, and they were lucky to be in a wealthy enough society compared to west Asia or China or Persia. People don't realize that they have that idea that the indu Indian Indic countries, Indic some kind is all poverty stricken. But by far the richer part of Eurasia in India's got garden of Eden is indu valley. You know, five rivers of in this valley, Ganges norm, all of them, they were much richer than, uh, people in other parts of your ratio. So therefore they had a free brunch for everybody land of the free lunch or a free brunch <laugh> and you could be Mandiant and on lifelong scholarship, but which required learning and self memory. Anyway. So here he, he begins.
Speaker 2 00:18:44 So in other words, when I read this and tomorrow we're gonna work on actually doing mindfulness more, and I am, we're gonna read it in a sense of trying to practice it as we go along. But here's what he says. He says, um, he was staying somewhere. There was say where in a town. And then outside of the town actually is where there was stayed. Four stone throws outside of town. They would never go far in the forest cuz you couldn't get brunch in the forest. And they weren't into self torture, like some silos. And you didn't wanna live in town cause it's too distracting. So four stone throws where you could go in from brunch and then you would move from town to town. So you wouldn't over straight a particular town, you know, the, the colon, a particular town. So they were there and he addressed the Mendis and he said, Mendis, you know, I retranslated this changing of the terms mm-hmm <affirmative> myself like, so, you know, Microsoft word mm-hmm <affirmative> PDF mm-hmm <affirmative> you put it in there, it's a translator's dream.
Speaker 2 00:19:39 Then you substitute the words <laugh> for the proper words. So, uh, blessed one, they say, and they, I didn't change blessed Lord mm-hmm <affirmative> which I'm sorry about my son. Doesn't like translating Bavan as Lord. He says we're importing like a European, medieval feudal term in there, like the landlord, like C I L my landlord we're putting that on Budha. <inaudible> what they call Budha means the lucky one, the fortunate one doesn't mean Lord, you know, mm-hmm, <affirmative> like something above everybody, but so, but anyway, that's what people in the west translated. So blessed one, I'll just say to just the mannequins and blessed one, they said, and they replied and the blessed one said there is mannequins this one way. And that's what they say up in burial all the time. This is the only way. Yeah. This one way to the purification of beings for the overcoming of sorrow and distress for the disappearance of pain and sadness for the gaining of the realistic path, for the realization of Niana that Nirvana means blowing, being blown away, just like it doesn't mean to be destroyed or, or killing yourself, becoming nothing, something, it means being blown away.
Speaker 2 00:20:52 Like when you go to a concert in this crowd, I would say probably Mozart at the met rather than rock and roll <laugh>. But, but, uh, and it was really good. You might say to someone in the younger generation, oh, I was blown away. Mm-hmm <affirmative> by the symphony or whatever, you know, I, I just lifted out of myself. So that's what Niana means it does. And it doesn't mean you're people get killed or they destroy theirself. It just means their sorrow and pain and sadness and distress is blown away. Inana like that hip hipster language translates ancient sense quite well. Sometimes <laugh> no really like that, those man that mantra that we, the chanted GTE GTE para GTE part of GTE means gone. So what that means is gone, gone super gone, super, totally gone, enlightenment, all hail, you know, so, you know, don't they say in the jazz new Orleans, they say, how was it really gone, man?
Speaker 2 00:21:55 And don't they say that mm-hmm <affirmative>, I'm not really a jazz Fe, but they do say that. So then he says, what are the four focuses of mindfulness foci of mindfulness here in Menka se abides, contemplating body as body aren't clearly aware and mindful having put aside hanking and freting for the world. He or she abides contemplating sensations and sensations. I didn't change feelings. The feelings is really wrong too. I'm sorry, because it is only pleasure of pain. It neutral. Yeah. It's not the emotional reaction. Right. It's and, and I know why they do it though. I figured it out. Mm-hmm <affirmative> the reason they do it is that in, in our psychology, we don't allow there to be a mental sense. Mm-hmm <affirmative> like a visual sense. Mm-hmm <affirmative> because we don't think there's a separate organ. That's a mental organ. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and actually, so it's in Buddhi psychology.
Speaker 2 00:22:48 What the mental organ is, is rather complicated has to do with time, rather than, than some physical object like this, the neurons, you know, in the eye or in the, in the, in the nose or in the tongue, you know? So it's not phys it's, it's not quite physical in this in a course way, let's say in atomic way. But anyway, so they call it feelings because they can't in English. They feel well, how could you have just pure pain in the mind? Mm-hmm, <affirmative> it, you know, or pleasure in the mind that wouldn't be emotional, but you do actually according to them, you know? So that's why they, I think the British ancient times said feelings and all of Tebo people are stuck on that, but it should really be sensations mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, so mind does mind. So, uh, contemplating sensations at sensations, aren't clearly aware and mindful or remembering having put aside hanking and fretting for the world.
Speaker 2 00:23:43 She abides contemplating mind as mind ENT clearly aware and mindful having put aside hanking and fretting for the world. Hanking and fretting is an old fashioned way of saying attraction and aversion, you know, like desire or hate or, or hate, you know, lots or hate Aeros or OLS. That is so putting aside those and cheer, Bidens, contemplating mind objects as mind objects aren't clearly aware and mindful having put aside hanking and fretting for the world. So those are the four photo high. So the first way you start, which very so interesting is you just remember your body and that's where in the popular mindfulness, this whole concept of the body scan comes in. Because when you meditate like this, now let's meditate. Now just taste it for a few minutes. Okay. Go into meditative mode, which is sitting in a chair means, put your hands together and cross your ankle and try to sit up straight and let your eyes be half close is ideal and, uh, breathe through the nostrils if you can sort of peace peacefully, you know?
Speaker 2 00:24:50 And, um, but you're thinking now about the body and focusing on the breath is just one aspect of the body. The breathing function, the lungs, you know, the nostrils, you know, the sensation of the air coming into the nostrils and so on. Uh, but um, basically focusing on the body as body means, thinking around, feeling more parts of your body sense, where are the sensations like when you, right now, you sit, contemplate your body and the way you do it is what, where do you feel your body? Like, I feel my feet on the floor and that, but that's only the balls on my feet. Maybe the toes, if you feet are flat on the floor, you feel it down, down the outside of your arch and then your heel. And you feel where you have contact with the floor, otherwise to feel the arch of your foot, you don't have anything touching it.
Speaker 2 00:25:51 And there's, it's sort of neutral. So you don't feel it at all. So you only can imagine your picture in your mind of having a foot sort of from being inside it. And then you work up the calf and the muscles and the bones and the ligaments and the joints. And you go up through the body and you come to the, to the body and whatever your picture inner picture is about the spine, the nerve path, the blood system in a circulatory system, the lymphatic system and the intestine, colon, upper intestine, uh, then the pancreas and spleen and liver and low bladder and lungs, the mother lung, and the sun lung, the heart, and then the, you know, the musculars and the back and the shoulder blades and the shoulders and the fingers, etcetera. So you really start feeling. And when you do that, you'll begin to realize that you, a lot of the time, you don't sort of notice much of your body.
Speaker 2 00:26:50 As you said, mark, you, yoga teacher told you, you sort of dealing with your trap, but if you're a doctor, I guess you had to study anatomy. So actually you can move your mind around, within a more detailed picture of your innards and your outers and, um, and really try to be aware of it. And then, and, and you sort of learn something, but what he, he, first thing he says, they do the breathing, they begin with the breathing, you know, and it's sort of boring repeats it because it's very repetitive. If you read it or you hear it red and tomorrow I will read it in detail, but I'm not gonna do that today. Cuz it's, it's sort of incantatory, it's like I will breathe out conscious of the whole body. I will breathe in calming the whole body, the process. I would breathe out, calming the whole body.
Speaker 2 00:27:43 And then some me some similes about, um, um, Potter, how they shape, how they shape the pot that they shape as it's or, or how turn or no means on a LA, how you shape the piece of wood in a certain way. So you're shaping being in your body. So actually you're, you're working on your mental picture of your body, but it doesn't focus on that at the moment. And you're sort of trying to occupy your entire body and in a way, when you do that meditatively, actually, if you think about it, you know, if you, if you connected to a Vil hem re that knots in your memory, traumatic of traumatic residues of traumatic experiences are not only just in some neurons in your brain, but they involve certain cramps in the subtle neuro cramps in your, what you call character armoring or neuromuscular emotional armoring in your body.
Speaker 2 00:28:40 So if you remember being, remember the body, you be mindfully focused on being completely your body. You'll begin to find you'll some parts will be not at all from your awareness actually where you can't, you don't feel them. You don't sense them, but you're not focusing on that right away. You're just working on the body. And the breathing is the easiest thing to start in the middle of it. But it is not at all. It's just the beginning. And then you do mindfulness. You remember that there is a body it's present is present or the, or the, the, the me, the memory that there is body is present to him just to the extent necessary for knowledge and awareness. And, and he abides the Mendi, but he's talking to a bunch of mannequin. So he's using the third person, but you could put it as you abide independent, not clinging to anything in the world.
Speaker 2 00:29:34 So you really just content to be your body. And that Mandiant is how a Mandiant abides, contemplating body as body. And then you move around when you walk, you know, you're walking when you stand, you know, you're standing when you're sitting, you know, your sitting, when you lie down, you know, you're lying down in whatever way the body is disposed. You know, that that's how it is. And so you abide contemplating body as body internally, externally, and both internally and externally. And you abide independent, not clinging to anything in the world. And that Mandi says how Mandi abides, contemplating body as body. And then I'm just gonna skip a lot of stuff because you know, then they go into a whole thing about what's the like to be in a body and actually to generate a sort of de glamorization of the body. There's a very detailed in this body.
Speaker 2 00:30:29 There are head hairs, body hairs, nails, teeth, skin, flesh, seniors, bones, bone marrow, kidneys, heart liver, flu, whatever the heart spleen lungs, mesentary bowels, stomach ex experiment, bile, blood, sweat, fat tears, TA saliva nuts and over fluid urine. And on urine just as if there were a bag open at both ends full of various kinds of grain, such as hill rise, pad green, grain, green gram, a kidney be Sesame hu rice and a man with good eyesight were to open the bag and examine the bag saying, oh, and all the grains in it then would say, this is hill rice. This is Patty. This is green gram. This is a kidney beans. This is a Sesame. This is how sorry. So true. Amend can reviews that vari body in this body, there are et cetera, you know, wrong list. And then this gives the more one does that, the more one in a way first occupying the entire body.
Speaker 2 00:31:29 And then second becoming aware that the mind in the body is not the body and getting more freedom of the mind because at the end of it, he keeps saying this thing about you abide independent, not clinging to anything in the world. And that is how you do, you know, and independent and free and like carefree type of thing. So you're kind of bringing your mind to where you can really feel your mind almost separate from body, but the bridge to feeling the mind as if, as if it were in a way moving around in the body, therefore, actually not the body in itself is you go to sensations. So the bridge between body as object as body, although experiencing yourself as a body is making it subjective, kind of is you focus on sensations and then it's quite short, the whole thing of sensations.
Speaker 2 00:32:27 And so, you know, the awareness that, you know, he says you abide contemplating arising phenomena in your sensations, vanishing phenomena in your sensation, both arising and vanishing phenomena in your sensation or else mindfulness, simply that remembering something that there are sensations is present to you just to the extent necessary for knowledge and awareness. And then you abide independent, not clinging to anything in the world. That is to say, you don't grab at your sensations and you don't shrink away from some negative one. You become sort of more balanced about them because you become independent. You don't cling to them. And that's how, how that mannequins is, how a mannequin abides, contemplating sensations and sensations. Then he, he does mind itself and here, he only goes down deep into, he says, here as a mannequin, you know, your lustful mind as lustful, you mind free from lust as free from LUS.
Speaker 2 00:33:26 That is sort of craving some kind of more. If you have some pleasant sensations, you crave more of them. And that's is at the deepest level. Lustful, a hating mind is hating a mind free from hate is free from hate and there your aversions to any painful thing. Uh, you, uh, you, you, you don't cling on them and therefore you free yourself on them by becoming aware of them. And then a diluted mind is diluted. Not as that focuses on the neutral sensations. In other words, you don't appropriate the neutral sensations as yours. And so an undiluted mine is undiluted. And then he add a few things, a contracted minus contracted, a distracted minus distracted, a developed mine is developed an undeveloped minus undeveloped as surpassed minus surpassed and unsurpassed. Mine is unsurpassed. A concentrated mind is concentrated and unrated nine unrated, a liberated mine is liberated.
Speaker 2 00:34:20 Andd mind ISD. And so you abide contemplating mind as mind internally, externally contemplating arising things in the mind, vanishing things in the mind, both arising and vanishing things in the mind or else finally, that you remember that there is mind is present just to the extent necessary for knowledge and awareness. And you are bind detached, not grasping at anything in the world. You're just, you are the mind, you're the mind, and you don't have to grasp. You don't have to, you don't have to crave. You don't have to, to hate you don't have to be Lutful. You don't have to be aversive. And that mannequin is how a mannequin abides contemplating mind as mind. Then he comes to the big category, which goes on, on, on mind objects, or really there are things. And at this point, you realize that your awareness of your own body is actually except unless you're looking at someone part of one of your limbs or something, or looking at your face in the mirror, you really are not aware of the whole content of the body.
Speaker 2 00:35:26 It's impossible. You, what you are aware of is a picture, which is an idea, an image of your body. And if you're a very detailed image, if you're, if you're a Mandiant who has gone into detail or a doctor who has dissected corpses or something, then you know how complex it is, and you have a very complicated picture. And so even a sensation, you located within that picture and in a way you're having a concept of a sensation. And even the fact of being a mind, you have a notion of a mind. So when you get into mind objects, you're going more deeply. And you're beginning to realize how the content of your mind is where you spend your time. And they go very complicated. And then I I'm skip, skip, skip, because I wanna show this one thing to mark I, which I love.
Speaker 2 00:36:10 And then, you know, they went through it all in the heart suture. Remember it said, there are no, you know, sense media, no con no eye sense, media, no consciousness sense media, you know, go through all these things. And this, this is where you, when you meditate on the mind in more detail, you break up your normal consciousness into six sixfold process, where sometimes it's aligned with your mental, your visual consciousness, sometime aligned with your audio consciousness sometime alive. When smelling with old factory, sometime with gustatory sometime with textile, you know, the things, and then sometime just reacting to things in the mind. But the, the mental sense is often aligned with one of the other senses, which is why sometimes if you're very intensely looking, you don't hear something floating away in a concert. Maybe you don't see anything. You know, we, because we pick out different ones to align ourselves, but even though data comes into all over the five senses all the time.
Speaker 2 00:37:09 So, so then, so, but anyway, finally, the last bunch of mental objects he says, when you're getting really more sophisticated about the incredible complexity of your mind is the four noble truths, which is Buddhist, original diagnosis, his medical diagnosis of life. And the first one is the truth of suffering and that he does in great detail, connecting it to craving or lust actually, and how, and he goes in detail, how you remember how you felt something pleasant, and then you wanted more of it. And then it sort of it disappeared. So it, it, it, uh, it changed into its opposite or it faded and that annoyed you and you felt dissatisfied. So they call that kind of pleasure suffering of change because it doesn't last. And they're very, that's very important in the, in overcoming attachment to, to, to surface pleasure. Uh, pleasure accompanied by craving is that the craving will crush the pleasure actually very quickly in, into turn it into dissatisfaction.
Speaker 2 00:38:18 And, um, the craving arises in agreeable and pleasurable phenomena, mind objects in the world. It's agreeable and pleasurable there. This craving arises and established itself, and that is the noble truth of the origin of suffering. So then the source of the suffering, he analyzes and you meditate on when you're in the fourth focus of mindfulness on how you're grasping at your sensations and the positive ones and pushing away the negative ones. That's the origin of the suffering and turning positive ones even into suffering. But, and, but then this is the one. And what mannequins is the noble truth of the cessation of suffering, the, the izing and suffering, the blowing away of suffering. It is the complete fading away and extinction of this craving. It's forsaking an abandonment liberation from it, detachment from it. And how does this craving come to be abandoned? How does its cessation come about? In other words, where is the cessation of suffering? In other words, where is Nirvana? He's saying like, what is it? Where is it? You know, he's saying you're, and this is the he's leading them into meditating on that. The Mendis wherever in the world, there is anything agreeable and pleasurable. There its cessation comes about
Speaker 2 00:39:48 Lot of, I don't like the translation fully because their, the cessation of suffering comes about mm-hmm <affirmative> he doesn't mean the agreeable and the pleasurable ceases mm-hmm <affirmative> he means the cessation comes about mm-hmm <affirmative> because it is the craving of more agreeable and pleasurable that destroys agreeable unpleasurable. So the cessation, it just is its so the reference of the its is bad in English here because person translating this is being dualistic mm-hmm <affirmative> and thinking that neurono means you extinguish your sensations, but this doesn't say that. Yeah. He says where you, so what is the difference? In other words, between pleasurable sensation, including mental sensation and suffering sensation, which is the suffering of change, it clearly says it's where the craving crushes the sensation by grasping it and, and it, then, you know, it's like you grasp the pleasure and then it disappears. And when did you ever have a great time in a concert or at any kind of experience, any kind of sens or sensory experience you're having a great time. And then you thought, how great is this
Speaker 4 00:40:58 <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:40:59 And when was it more great or how could it have been more great? You're instantly dissatisfied. You know, that's like when you, you, in the old days you would sit up and have a cigarette
Speaker 4 00:41:11 <laugh>
Speaker 2 00:41:15 Nevermind. <laugh> but the point is it's here. He, he doesn't say Nirvana. Yeah. Is when you have ceased and you're no longer breathing and you know, and you leave the world. He doesn't say that mm-hmm <affirmative> he says the cessation is wherever. There is something agreeable and pleasurable. And they're the cessation of suffering cuz it's the cessation of suffering that's revert to here. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so the agreeable and pleasurable. So now when you, when you, when you're blown away by pleasure and by agree, the agreeable, you just flow, float away on, it takes you away. It blows away. You are craving for more. That's when you're temporarily satisfied and you, because you don't think this is my pleasure. You know, it's just Wells up
Speaker 5 00:42:09 Spontaneously
Speaker 2 00:42:10 From within because you're no longer grasping. And so when the cessation, when the craving, the lust for more agreeable and pleasurable ceases, then the agreeable and the pleasure in itself is, you know, what is there in the world that is agreeable and pleasurable? He, because he then led proves that my point, because he said, well, what is it? The eye in the world is agreeable and pleasurable. The ear in the world means in, in relation to its objects, the ear is agreeable pleasurable the nose, the tongue, the body, the mind in the, in this world, that's what's agreeable. And there, this craving comes to be abandoned and there it cessation is cessation of suffering comes about and then eye conscious ear, conscious nose, tongue, body, mind conscious in the world is agreeable and pleasurable. And there, this craving comes to be abandoned. And the cessation of the craving comes about and sound smells, tastes tangibles, mind objects in the world or agreement I'm there. This great comes even. And there comes about, he goes on all the long list of all this complex things that when you become a true, mindful, aware, and you, and you truly remember the field of your existence in life right now in all of its detail. And you realize that when left alone by either grabbing or pushing away, it's fine. Mm-hmm <affirmative> and that's where Nirvana is. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so that's the non-duality of Nirvana and some are
Speaker 5 00:43:41 The, the mind that does not cling.
Speaker 2 00:43:45 Yeah. This is the freedom. Well the mind lets itself go anyway. There's no attainment of a mind that doesn't cling, but there's no, non-attainment mm-hmm <affirmative> because the mind without craving in aversion, doesn't cling actually right? The mind is present and everything is just a revelation. And, and there's a, there's a, there's the inner, the inner bliss. That's a noble truth. Noble in truth, there means reality. It doesn't mean a proposition, the reality of the cessation of suffering and then the noble truth of the way. So that that's, that's a revolutionary grounding of the non-duality of, you know, NA's famous statement or the president parer famous statement that, you know, gone, gone, gone is the suffering super, totally gone mm-hmm <affirmative> and all hail alight right here. Mm-hmm <affirmative> you know, you know, and then I'm gonna do something really dairy. Now. Now you are a wonderful book that, that I thought isn't that that's kind of a backbone of, of tomorrow a little bit.
Speaker 2 00:44:46 Sure. It could be it's your current backbone. You didn't write another one. No, no. Right. You know, it's sort of your message, your kind of thing, right? Mm-hmm <affirmative> your stick with Awin right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> so you use the full and the advice not given. Yeah. So you're kind of, I mean, of course you don't wanna make it your back home. Cause you're a professional, but I pushing you to give the advice, not given naturally mm-hmm <affirmative> right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> but you don't have to give it to everybody. I give, I give it freely. I mean, you can give it freely, but a lot of people will not even hear it. A lot of well, people, people hear what that's a great thing about secrets. That's right. They keep themselves, you know, and in a way they're not <affirmative>, you know, and in a way that non, like Buddha, himself, he had advice not given for 400 years.
Speaker 2 00:45:33 What do you mean? I mean, he said to his Maha assemblies, he said, okay, you manys who hear this? And some divine beings and S and weird creatures, you know, that show up when he gives teachings, supposedly in the Mariana, he said, I'm teaching you this, but I don't want you to spread it about in India. And around 400 years from now, someone with Naga word Naga and their name will show up some mind and they will, they will retrieve these the record of these teachings. And they will then spread it about, but for 400 years, I don't wanna spread it about because the dualistic one that you have to get out of life to be free is needed for those years to build up a, these continuous support in the society of people dropping out of getting educated, you know, because unfortunately, most spirituality in the world even still today is people becoming psychotic.
Speaker 2 00:46:39 That is to say oneness with God, by mystics, in theistic systems, Nirvana and dualistic, Buddhist systems, you know, oneness with Krishna and Hindu systems. You know, the union with the Dow and Dow systems, all of that people are fantasizing that they're going somewhere else. Mm-hmm <affirmative> because they can't imagine that being entangled with everybody and everything could be blissful because everybody's such a pest and a bug and their own body is a pest and a bug. And after a 9,000 years, a minute, they've ready to leave it. Call Jack Cavor kid, like, get me outta here. <laugh> because they, of course, they only think they're going into nothingness, which shows the insanity of the materials culture to think that nothing is a place you can go to. Haha. You know, but never mind on that. We won't belabor. I will belabor that, but not tonight <laugh> I always do so.
Speaker 2 00:47:40 So, so he, he therefore kept the advice, not given that everything is fine right now mm-hmm <affirmative> to people for 400 years because, because the two, the misunderstanding of the nonduality of freedom from suffering and suffering is that, oh, well I can just have an idea that I'm free of suffering and go around and do anything cause any pain or harm or anything that I don't care. You know, it doesn't matter what I do. You know? So a kind of thing. And then also Kings who like to monopolize and terrorize their subjects and monopolize all their life's energies would say, well, it doesn't matter. You don't have to go be men and be fed by me, free lunch. You don't need my free lunch. You can produce more. Well for me, if you can conquer some countries for me, so nonduality can be wrongly misinterpreted as monism mm-hmm <affirmative> do you know, like the bein monism where it's all one.
Speaker 2 00:48:31 So you're the untouchable, I'm the Braman. So clean my Larin, you know, mm-hmm <affirmative> and you're still that's God's work. Mm-hmm <affirmative> you know, and you don't have to think about becoming liberated. I don't want you to be, because I want someone to clean up for me type of thing, you know, and men over women, you, so he, that, that can be misunderstood in that way. And so he left it 400 years to establish these beach heads for people to ly themselves, which is what the Mendis were doing. They were not belonging to a religion. Really. They were rebelling against the religion at the time, which was the VA religion they were seeking. They were educating themselves to, just to become mindful of the reality of their life. And I'm mindful of the reality of time <laugh> and it is time. Okay, should we stop? But isn't that fun? We just, I'm not. So isn't it fun? It's in the pleasure
Speaker 5 00:49:30 To see, I know I love
Speaker 2 00:49:31 That the extinction of the suffering is in the agreeable thing. Mm-hmm <affirmative> if you don't grasp like them mm-hmm <affirmative> so this, I have to elaborate a tiny bit. I'm sorry, my own stick. Since I know some of you aren't coming tomorrow, I just have to elaborate. So this, this is my key thing nowadays, which I meant to get into, but I didn't cause I was enjoying conversation, but, but is that Buddha's discovery is main discovery is Nirvana not suffering. Everybody knows about suffering. Just people define it different ways and react to it in different ways. Buddha discovered that there is truly possible ability of being really free of suffering and being really able to help others find their own freedom. Unfortunately, you can't force them to be free of suffering. You can't blast them with bliss or something. You have, they have to do it through their understanding and it, and that reality.
Speaker 2 00:50:26 And why is that possible? Was his discovery because the reality of the world is blissful. We are very lucky beings. We live in a, not every being in the world, but our, our level of being in the world, you know, being in a perfect world where there are plants, radiating oxygen for us to breathe and absorbing our carbon. If we don't give it too much, you know, and, and growing food and cetera, in other words, and other beings who are loving and we are loving of them and mothers who will accept us in a womb in their wombs, you know, for free, without him paying any rent, you know that there that's a, that is really actually life is fabulous is what bud discovered. That's why he was smiling. But when we misunderstand it to think it's a struggle and it's us versus everybody else, you know, cuz it's ourself is the main thing and nobody else agrees that ourself is the main thing.
Speaker 2 00:51:23 Not single. One of you agree that mark or I are the main thing in life and you are paranoid agree about yourself, cuz you think you are the main thing and you know that nobody else agrees with you except an occasional lover for a while. And also the good enough mother for a while. Mom did think so. And dad did think so at one point, right? But otherwise, and mammals do you know, the mammal life is really fun too. Anyway. So, so, so you know, that's, that's, that's my thing. So I just have ran over time a little bit to underline the thing about the mentality. Yes. Because you know, he, he didn't give the advice for 400 years. Mm-hmm <affirmative> because he did, he didn't have a society like ours with a universal education for people of supposedly every cast, although course ours is imperfect. That's where noticing with the, you know, the oligarchy people cheating to get into Harvard. But nevertheless, we have this ideal and we are, everyone is so, so educated. They can't stand that. They don't wanna learn anything more. And they think that meditating is gonna solve their problems. Cuz at least it's not more educating. It's being trained, which is nonsense. It's part of it. It's a higher education. It's it's more education actually. Or it won't work if you don't learn more about it. So. Okay. Thank you so much for coming. Okay. All the best.
Speaker 3 00:53:00 Thank you, Bob. This podcast is produced under a creative commons, no derivatives license. Please feel free to share like and repost on your favorite social media platforms and has brought to you through the generosity of ape house, us men, LA membership, community, and listeners like you to learn how to support this podcast by becoming ape house us Menlo member, please visit our
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