foreign spirituality with a Twist so we are continuing on with our series on enlightenment and related to that this idea of uh the multiple levels or aspects or they say bodies of Enlightenment or bodies of a Buddha and we've been doing this little series we like to work in a little Series right to do a little deeper dive on things and we knew the whole time we we had a great closer we knew we were going to end strong our closer is the Dalai Lama so we wanted to end and say what the Dalai Lama has about this it's kind of like having like uh who was it Mariano Rivera was that the closer for the Yankees back in the day Mariano Rivera Marian Rivera you have the strong closer at the end right Dalai Lama throw in the cut fastball doing this thing is that a nasty it's funny because it's so funny because uh oh he's throwing you some curves too um so uh I was talking with my daughter it was her birthday during this week and uh she was saying every guy knows something about sports and I was like yeah they all do every single guy will know something about sports no matter who that dude is he knows something about it right and she's like I know nothing and I was like yeah it's a little bit of a handicap you know you might want to work on that a little bit at least know something but anyways uh okay so a little bit personal on like the Dilemma for me um I just wanted to talk about him a little bit uh so I what I found about him in the beginning is you know when I first was you know becoming when you first became a become aware of him you always get this like public persona where he's talking about love and compassion and he sorts he seems like a nice guy you know and uh but I wasn't like overwhelmed or anything I was just like okay there's some guy to Dalai Lama you know I was already interested in Zen and stuff I was doing things and I didn't have any sense of like probably the parts that we're going to talk about the deeper part of what he teaches I just thought well he seems like a smiling person kind of relatively cute old guy walking around and I didn't get the depth of it and I remember talking to another faculty member on one of the campuses where I teach and he had the same experience he was like oh my God I started reading the Dalai Lama holy [...] this stuff is so deep I had no idea I thought he was just like sort of a nice friendly guy who talks about Compassion or something so I just want to like bring that up my you know we like to do things personal and how we got it like kind of exposed to things so my first exposure to the Dalai Lama were like yeah I think my dad bought me a book about like the Dalai Lama and how to be you know more compassionate at work or something and I was like I never read it and that's just like okay um but it was nice for my dad to do it you know I mean I appreciated that you went and did that thing but um uh what happened was I was on a road trip I think I was out in like around Colorado I was going to climb on the Continental Divide and I sometimes like to stop at bookstores and stuff and I imagine I was in Boulder maybe you know but I stopped at this bookstore and they had this Dalai Lama book called yoga Tantra uh uh keys to magical Feats or something like that and I thought well that's a badass title for a book I should read this and I didn't know anything about the Dalai Lama's connection to Tantra I didn't know what this Tantra even was I don't think really fully and uh Pathway to magical feeds and I got the book and I was like oh my God this dude is so deep so that was sort of my experience of the like my my eyes being opened up to kind of like who the Dalai Lama was I know what's your experience with that how did you become aware of him you know I mean I think like most people he's a he is kind of a pop culture figure yeah in a sense that he's known but I would say probably more in the last like 10 years just a little bit before I kind of started down the the path if you will on the Buddhist trajectory I'm you know somebody gave me a book by him called like the 365 Dalai Lama and there's like one quote per day per day yeah yeah you know and I think that was kind of like the first and it and it's not I mean yes a lot of it is on compassion but there's other things in there that are that are far more like insightful not to say that passion is not insightful um but it's a you know different kind of thing things to think on things to meditate on you know and it's sort of opened it opened the I don't know it opened the door in a sense that like again he's more than just a figure who's known for one particular thing you start to see the Nuance actually and what really what he's known for is all the other things to people who follow him you know what do you think makes sense what I'm saying because I really had the feeling like he just seems like a happy kind of person and you know obviously the bed has had tragedy and he seems to be handling it in a very uh uh you know with a lot of equanimity or something like that I mean you could respect him just based on you know but I don't know like the depth of it really didn't hit so yeah yeah okay and once you know once people learn his you know once you learn you hear his story you know you learn about his life and all the things that have happened it it changes the game and it's and and to the credit of all these Tibetan llamas who left Tibet and came to the US or went to other parts of the world all their stories are crazy heroic oh yeah yeah for sure like it's it's wild so just these people are having to flee out through the mountains and stuff like that and there live in India and yeah they're incredibly heroic yeah yeah you know I mean to be honest my whole experience being around to like but you know especially the kind of like that generation of Tibetan people they're like impressive and they are you know that generation is not in existence anymore you know that was a particular yeah it's going to like be passing it's gonna be passing so it's a very particular you know set of people who went through a very particular set of experiences obviously their own unique individual experiences but it was born out of that kind of trauma you know the occupation obviously of Tibet which then opened this open Buddhism up for the rest of the world and it's it's shaped many many many many many people's lives so that's kind of like the weird Karma of it in some ways even though this country was lost it ended up creating this explosion I thought this like the Dalai Lama's like one of the key figures or the key figure in this whole thing right the older generation is kind of amazing and I'll talk about being at the Dalai Lama's Monastery just kind of briefly at the end just to encourage people maybe to go but there were these couple of like older Tibetan ladies and these are some pretty Saucy meditations uh and then you would do the mantras and most the time when you do mantras they're kind of Silent you know people like start the Mantra going and then you just kind of do it silently for yourself you know kind of in your own inner voice but uh we were kind of doing them as a group and they were singing These Tibetan kind of Melody versions of this kind of like playing off of it it was these like it would be like you know your great aunt or your grandma there and the Saucy Tantra Retreat belting out these little Tunes it was really it was really Charming yeah I'm very endearing so um yeah all right so uh uh I also was impressed you know once I got more into the dilemma I kind of about the openness of his spiritual thought and style he's very like I guess you'd say ecumenical he's very open to like different ways of thinking about things certainly within the Tibetan Buddhist world and this has created even some controversy because he'll accept things from other of the four major schools of Tibetan Buddhism that you know people maybe if they were more purist or something in the galuka style might not even really like that he does that but he's very like kind of open and laudatory about all these different things so he's kind of non-sectarian in that sense too you know what I mean and um um and there is a part part of this is gonna be related to this idea called mahamudra which we'll probably do a separate thing on at some point yeah it translates as like the Great Seal but I got these teachings as kind of a transmission from galic rinpoche and it is part of the Dalai Lama school and they're very open they talk about how you know they this this Dalai Lama School took from all the major Tibetan schools and they recognize all them as being really good and so I like that spirit I like that Spirit of like openness and willing to learn from different places obviously that's a big deal and like what we do here right trying to go through and keep an open mind to what can be learned from different points of view and all that and it has that quality to it it's very inclusive in that way and I really like it yeah um I was like I haven't prepped it I prepped it when we do our did our old interview with guy Newland right Buddhist scholar and I was looking through the that the Dalai Lama's sort of commentary on this same thing that I got from gal Group which is sort of like an overview of almost like all of Tibetan Buddhism uh tantric Buddhism and it got to this point where he's like even like making reference it's a joke and we talked about with guy Newland back in the day he talks about like well maybe this is like what they mean by the Holy Spirit or something and he's dropping little pieces of like Christianity there in kind of a playful way but not in a disrespectful way you know uh and I thought okay this is cool this person is very open um okay my last thing on this is just to talk about visiting the monastery in New York I've been out there a few times and it's a really great experience and what I would say is it's kind of really open to all so if you go on the Dalai Lama Monastery uh website I think if you just look up Dalai Lama Monastery in New York online it'll pop up or otherwise it's Nam gal if you look that up it'll definitely pop up and um you know going out there they were very warm very welcoming and it wasn't like you had to have a lot of background it seemed like to go in sometimes there is this idea if you don't have a lot of experience and it's a higher level Retreat or something people might be a little bit more reluctant to let you go or you know there can be that attitude but yeah it's gonna be like that at all they were just like you want to come come on in you know uh welcome to everyone and so uh you could go in there you know regardless of like where you were at and sort of what you had learned so far it was kind of cool and they were all cool about it I had already had like tantric empowerments and things like that so you know there are some things I really wanted to learn about and they happened to be doing them and I was like I'm going you know for sure and those were like great experiences in my life as far as well I mean spirituality and just in general they were great times but I just wanted to say that it's really uh they're very it's very open place so if you get interested in any of this kind of stuff from the point of view the data Lama it they're really they are welcoming you know and it's something you can go in there you have to feel nervous about going in there and will people be you know um I don't know uh looking it was scans because you don't have as much experience or something no one's going to do that and the students were cool too and there was a lot of the Tibetan people there who are you know obviously part of that whole institution who are really nice so yeah I could say I had really great experiences there and uh and I did uh ultimately I've mentioned it before it was one of the the head monk there and I had promised him if the Dalai Lama gave tantric empowerments I would do them and so I can't say like in terms of my personal appreciation of the Dilemma I've done like two of those with the Dalai Lama and they meant a lot to me you know we'll talk about that too much but I just want to say consider him kind of be an important I don't know him like we sort of know people who know him funnily enough yeah so we're not that many degrees of separation away but um uh but you know it's he's meant a lot to me you know in terms of clarifying things and and the books aren't always easy days writing when he's really going for it they're complicated like he doesn't pull punches on it he'll go and say the real thing you know and if you don't understand it it's up to you to go farther so if you get to the Deep stuff he's not necessarily sugarcoating or softballing things but if you want to know it's very deep and he's been like just a ton to me so a little like shout out of gratitude and now we consider him to be like into Tibet in Buddhist world one of the probably three major teachers who meant a lot to me I don't know what do you think you got anything you want to say about the Dilemma for your own point of view I mean the I think probably one of the best stories that I heard and you know you probably heard this too I forgot who it was who was giving an interview but they were they spent some time with him and they were just commenting on how nice he was to all the people who worked for and around him so the drivers the waiters the the wait staff at the hotels and the restaurants and the this person basically said like what he's doing is not an act yeah this is who he is and I can tell you not because of what he says but of how he acts all the time all the cameras even when the cameras are Anonymous or something like that right when especially when the cameras are not like there's there's no this is how he is to everybody and you know hearing that it really drives home this idea that like there's been some internal change you know that he's not on and there's no on and off switch it's just more on more and more and more the cameras are on so I'm gonna act Dalai Lama and then when the cameras are off I'm just gonna like yeah I'm some random [...] whatever you know smoke and whatever you know like whatever um yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and so the perhaps Blue Ribbon yeah that's right throw me a chorus whatever yeah yeah just drinking it up but you know that that kind of story really highlights I think the nature to someone's character and so then when you know that about somebody then the other things that they're saying have a effort from to me anyways have a deeper weight because they're living it you know um and that that carries for me because I think for you know those of us who have a meditative practice or have you know are working on ourselves in some developmental or psycho spiritual kind of a way we want the change to be real you want the change to be in your life you know if you're doing yoga you want to have more flexible legs or whatever but it would be nice if when you bent down in the morning to tie your shoe you didn't throw your back out like that's how you know your yoga you know what I'm saying the physical part of your yoga is working right when you go to achieve that bizarre Kamasutra sexual position your hips will go there your hips will go there you won't cramp that you don't know cramp it up in the middle exactly so I think yeah yeah just not just saying it's alive like the practice what he's talking about it's alive in his life and therefore if it's alive in his life well then it could and should be alive in anybody else's lives should they choose it to be that way yeah yeah I think it's part of the the tantric philosophy in this too that you see everyone is an emanation of uh whatever you want to say Divine energy Enlightenment energy right the Supreme the Supreme Source per our uh last episodes yeah but you see everything like that and then you know you could tell that he's probably really living that right he probably really is seeing everyone as you know whoever the whoever he's Roger yugini or Amitabha or whoever it is for him I don't know yeah um yeah I heard it's kind of an amazing thing maybe it was llama Glenn Glenn Mullen uh one of our favorite uh tantric teachers and uh it might be from him that he was talking about there was a bunch of people they were doing one of the Retreats teaching Retreat and dilemma lecturing and everyone's kind of getting tired it's the end of the day they're taking questions from the audience and then one of the the people yeah everyone wants to go at this point you know and he's retired your back is tired you want to go you're hungry you want to go uh even though it's the Dalai Lama so uh people are asking questions for the audience and then I think they said what exactly the question was but it was a question that came from the audience that would just make you groan potentially because you're like uh I can't believe this person asked a question that like good to seem kind of stupid and so that's the Dalai Lama in this question and of course he's been sitting there the whole day but uh the impressive part of the story was that he sat there and like answered the question in this very deep way giving it full respect and import and kind of took it to places that you know were implications of the questions that maybe even people in the audience who maybe knew more wouldn't have gotten and he gave this whole incredible dissertation on this question and then dismissed everybody but he respected the question you know and uh you know uh we teach I teach and I I when something comes up I try to remember that thing right he took people's questions seriously he didn't just let go that was a dumb question let me answer it like with like a word or two treating it like it's a dumb question he like actually I took the question seriously and I think about that seriously I'll be doing some zoom and there'll be some question and maybe you're supposed to go on break and someone asks something you're like okay I'm gonna take this question seriously yeah but anyways so uh okay uh talking about uh Enlightenment and the enlightened State and this idea of these different aspects or dimensions of Enlightenment which has been our conversation for for weeks now uh so I think the most important idea that got me when I was trying to like throw my side of these notes together was the idea that this could be probably captured in this notion that Enlightenment this is like per the Dalai Lama Enlightenment is gained or realized or achieved by meditating at it rehearsing it and practicing it this is super interesting and I think this was an earful and a mindful for me when I first heard it because I thought oh that's interesting so when you're meditating what you're doing is you're practicing the enlightened state for yourself that's what you're doing and then in doing that you're also working on the different aspects of yourself that are going to be transforming more and more towards that it's a deep idea and as someone who had meditated for a while and thought of all the different reasons why people meditate I thought well this is a really a deep way of saying what the intention is if you say why do you meditate well you're meditating on transforming yourself achieving this thing you're meditating on this it's kind of a practice you know um and it has a lot of interesting statements in it to my mind and that's already interesting to me that was like huh uh but it was also the idea that it's stating something about the nature or the potential of a person or really any living thing that the potential is there to do this which I probably already believed but like it was an interesting way to think about it and we'll try to unpack this more in this little conversation as we go along uh at least it struck me about it because it's it's a deep idea so a lot of times I'll talk about this idea of uh there's going to be this final result and certainly in the way that this is going to be presented from The Dilemma if you kind of go further with this would be that this is the result of a path so Enlightenment is kind of the result the meditative path and your psycho spiritual path and all the things you're doing there is your path and this is going to get the result but then also there's the idea of what you might call the ground so this is the kind of famous idea of ground path result which I had never heard anyone really say like that outside of the Tibetan Buddhist world but I thought that was pretty impressive too just to say it so clearly you have a ground which is sort of like who you are as a living thing with your potential uh all living creatures have these potentialities and then there's the path involved which is the meditations and other experiences that you have teachings that you get trainings that you do and so on and then there's result which everyone is sort of in a way evolving towards you know this would be sort of like Bob Thurman's point right we're all evolving towards this in our own way and that's the result and so that's that whole idea of ground path results and so these ideas were like really I know very meaningful for me when I first learned them okay this what I'm doing with the meditating is I'm rehearsing the enlightened State I never thought about it exactly like that before it's a statement about like the potential for enlightenment in different ways in each person okay that I had thought about and then this idea of ground path and results but it said so clearly I was like I don't think I'd heard that phrased that clear you know like that's succinctly I was like okay I can see that that's put very and like to the point in the way that like I can definitely get what's being said so it's excited by some of my I know preliminary Impressions and learning this do you remember how when you were first hearing about these kinds of things okay so you related to yeah so you had given a lecture on this sort of Taoist Buddhist treatment yeah referenced Loosely on this podcast before maybe once prior so no no worries if you've never heard about that before it's not a big deal um but it's you know there's Dharma lectures involved and there's philosophy involved in but that was kind of the first time and that was at this point now I don't know like that would have been like yeah like 248 years ago 2014 at this point 15 16 I think is my dates on the notes on those things so it's kind of um it's an interesting use of language to put things in like a very clear sort of stepwise fashion that one I kind of love that even though there's a mysterious quality of things I love in this thing maybe for someone who has a little Virgo earthy part of me yeah have things said kind of clear yeah and bypass lives are Virgo and this is clear it's it's clear and it's it's clear in its ambiguity actually very clear and that like but it's as clear as you can make it yeah it's as clear as you can make it because you know explaining things that don't have boundaries that you have to arbitrarily put boundaries around them and so this is a way in which you can you know provide somebody with a very concise way of describing just the movement towards Improvement right that rhymes yeah yeah yeah that's pithy maybe that's going to be our spirit title at the end movement towards Improvement right but it also work as like an Xbox thing or something right right release distress movement for improvement yeah yeah um yeah I think for me it was because I had like maybe studied in like Zen things where it was like well we'll give you a bunch of cryptic riddles and that's fun too and you know that's a good time but I also then appreciate this like oh this is really clear ha you know it's not like uh I'm gonna talk about uh uh sound of one hand clapping or like uh some old Chinese guy hitting some guy in the head with a fan yeah he said something and then you know you know it's like a lot of those uncensories are awesome but they're also like a little bit cryptic and so this was refreshing for me after my experiences but on the other side pretty clear the other part is that like deep spiritual teachings relate directly to life like straight on head on you could just lay them right on top of this and ground path result is much of how we do everything all right so we'll use an example I'll use like from Fitness Eric you want to run a a marathon well yeah the ground is the body and the and and what you have right now is the cardiovas vascular and physical strength base right that's that's who you what you'd write the path then would be your the people you who help you your coaches who help you along the way your nutrition that you do your breathing that you work on the stretching the running the pair the program that you get put on in order to achieve the result which is yes the running of the marathon but then the feeling of being satisfied when you're done the experience of having it all as part of your life you'll come out a different person it's not just that you ran a marathon you're not the same person anymore right right right you've gone through this transformational process and that's that's a description ground path result is it is a very distinct or succinct way of describing a transformational process yeah sometimes this whole tantric world is described as the path of transformation yeah right you're trying to transform something right uh so yeah it's it's a deep idea you know and uh I think the the clarity of it meant a lot to me and yeah okay um something else to say about that maybe and I'll come back if we need it right because we always come back if we need it so um so just real quick on this this is just kind of interesting thing because you know we've been talking about these different schools and just to pull this together there definitely is the idea that some schools will be described as sometimes more like a suddenist where you just bang you're getting some big realization and some schools are described and uh as more uh gradualist where there's sort of like a process this can also be kind of looked at being like more naturalistic like we had when we were talking about uh more of the zogchen vibe and the previous stuff you just sort of naturally letting things go and recognizing the condition of what is and you realize oh holy [...] that's Enlightenment you know something like that yeah where in the Dalai Lama thing it's much more gradual path and directed so there's kind of these two major ways of thinking about this and I just wanted to say something about it because we've been talking about these different points of view and if people get interested you're going to go farther and you'll start to recognize that that's happening you know so there's these two ways I think in the sudden one you're sort of recognizing that Enlightenment is sort of this hidden thing that you already sort of had and you just boom recognize that it's there kind of a natural Enlightenment State natural three values of the Buddha that's kind of just was there hanging around the whole time that's the funny part about that and I think the Dalai Lama does make this point you know because this is again shout out episode of The Dilemma and he's open to these ways of talking about things too he doesn't completely dismiss them you know what I mean even though that isn't the vibe of the main place he's coming from for the school that he represents but you know even this has this deep element of training or something to recognize this thing because in that case you're meditating to have a experience of recognition or Epiphany or something but you still have to do something right so there still is a process that's happening because this sense of realization is in some way obstructed and those obstructions had to be have to be cleared away for you to kind of have this experience right of recognizing this thing so I think the point that gets made here is that I think especially like if I paraphrasing maybe the Dalai Lama's attitude about this would be like yeah either way you're going to be doing some kind of training right something to do this and so maybe these things look a little bit more close than they might initially appear you know and the Dalai Lama will talk a lot about zokchen this thing that we were talking about with the Supreme Source he does talk about those ideas so he's open to them which is already a big step right to be open to different ways of thinking but he always like as he's framing it he's saying yeah you know there's like a an element of you need instruction and you need to go through experience even to have this realization if that's the way you're going to frame this question so maybe it's more similar to what it seems but I wanted to bring the point up because we've been talking about this from different points of view and there's no doubt that if you get interested in this subject you keep going further you're going to hit both of these kind of like lines of thought right yeah well and they have I mean and it's also it's lines of thought but it's all I also feel like it's a part of the experience that you as an individual are going to have moments of deep Insight aha moments if you will but those happen because you're along this path yeah you know so yeah Bob Thurman was funny in the interview with him because he gave me [...] about a couple of things first of all my hair they're probably my hat but there was one part where we were talking about like uh I was bringing up this issue of this gradualism thing a little bit and he was like well don't undermine the importance of epiphanist experiences and I was like okay well he just gave me a [...] again I can't say anything because it's Bob Thurman I can't give him any [...] back at all just have to sit here and take it okay fine um but he was making that point you know that you you can have these epiphanous moments no matter what you're doing right no matter which of these things you're on you're probably going to have epiphonous moments along the way which is how much more I don't know I get kind of hyped about these things how much more fun is that what's more fun than an epiphanist moment right it's as good as your best orgasm in a way right it's an orgasm for the brain yeah it's awesome uh so how to meditate on this so this is interesting if this thing is that you're supposed to be in this Dalai Lama school that you're supposed to meditate on the enlightenment State and experience like what's that about and I think you have to say that the Tibetan look at the Bardo the Tibetan Book of the Dead plays a big role in this in many ways right it sort of sets a framework for this um and we've done some episodes on that so people want to go back and pick those you know it could be something that complements this but in any case the idea is that everyone has this deep part of their Spirit or Soul or bind or Consciousness whatever you want to call it a lot of times if you're reading the Dalai Lama we'll talk about this clear light mind and uh it's kind of a little bit of a more bland way of saying Buddha nature but everyone has this deepest part of who they are and there is this general idea that it's kind of like obstructed it's not able to fully like shine out and you get lots of metaphors around this like it's like a hunk of gold that's like wrapped in some old rags or something you pull the rags away and the gold will shine out um this whole idea I'm thinking about when they open up like uh the Lost Ark of the Covenant and Raiders of the Lost Ark but that just melts a bunch of Nazi faces so I don't think that's the idea of this probably not well how do they how do they talk about this in the Kabbalah Eric that it's uh a broken mirror they talk about sometimes like the image of a lamp a lamp there you pump the holes in the lamp and the light will start to go everywhere right but the lamp was there kind of like the whole time right you have to like poke through those kinds of metaphors I'm also thinking about like when you open up the suitcase and Pulp Fiction and they don't show you what's inside right it just cleans out all golden yeah anyway so something happens or like okay so Samuel's all Jackson opens the suitcase and the Buddha nature shines out yeah yeah I'll tell you and say something what no or if you buy if somebody gives you some peanut brittle and you open it up and out pops uh you know what about what are they cloth snakes with springs on the inside is that in the peanut brittle you know it's the surprise toy at the bottom of the box of uh Cracker Jack uh Captain Crunch or something yeah Cracker Jacks Cracker Jacks yeah the little tattoo the little tattoo on the book the little box the decoder ring that you can't decode anything with it just says buy more Cracker Jacks like oh snap I ran out um so it's this whole idea of this like a deep part of the person is obstructed yeah we were talking about these Buddha Centric uh sorry Buddhist and Taoist Chinese medical type treatments and that's part of the goals of those things to give people like sort of a snapshot experience of this deeper part of who they are right that's the hope of those kinds of things um the other part that comes up in like this conversation is that occasionally this will appear in more unobstructed ways during certain parts of human life more naturally uh you know part of it's in the death and reincarnation process which is why this Tibetan book of the Bardo or the dead is such a big deal because the the notion that it's at some point during the whole process of death and reincarnation everyone's Buddha nature shines through as unobstructed as it's going to be right it appears very clearly as other things are sort of falling away it's kind of like the ultimate unobstruction and in that moment it appears so it's definitely part of the Bardo idea but it's also supposed to come up in things like sexuality and orgasm you know that this will kind of appear in kind of this dramatic way during the orgasmic experience which is why it's you know it's such a big deal with the tantric aspects of this but you know what's interesting about that we haven't done episodes on this we keep promising we'll do exercise more on sex right but the reason we didn't I was thinking about this is yeah we haven't is because we wanted to and it we didn't expect it to be so it takes such a long time we didn't expect to be such a tease you know well first we did episodes on love you know so we're we're doing a courting process very old school it's like a Jane Austen novel yeah yeah eventually you get to see the estate at pemberley we're gonna do an episode yeah on a real estate and property uh accumulation yeah uh to woo that's really like uh I think the reason why we didn't didn't do it in the beginning was because we wanted to like uh have a serious have serious conversations and not every everything to generate down into like uh here's a better way to perform cunnilingus or something like that not that those things aren't important in life they are important they are important you know um but in any case you know so I think though in this thing I think this is part of the explanation why sex is so meaningful and then you know fun though that's probably an understatement even what the idea is that because in that moment like the Shen of the person shines through and that's kind of what people are probably really longing for as much as anything else you know what I'm saying that's what you're longing for in that moment it's not just that you know those moments of like oh that felt good yeah yeah it's what you're really longing for is something deeper you're longing for the experience of your own Spirit yeah another person or something yeah you're longing for an opportunity to be vulnerable right and there there's a there's a power in that you know proverbial and actual nudity or relativity depending on how much time you have yeah right it's a busy it's a busy World Busy World yeah I can keep my shoes on never not I'm not gonna get out of here um you know but then there's also that but there's also the the sort of physical experience of like just being overwhelmed with sensation those are all true and I think like the more open you get I mean the way I'm thinking about this for this like you know this little thing like the more open you get the more your emotion will come through right you know but that's a sign of like an opening that's allowing something to unobstruct yeah the sensations of the body being so meaningful and strong that's like opening something something that wants to you know crack open but then like I think from this way of thinking about this this sort of toxic way of thinking about this when you get down to the the deeper part of this what's sort of happening is it's like this moment where everything else like flitters away sure and then you have this experience of your own Shen I mean that's that's the that's that part of it you know I mean this moment happens where you experience this amazing part of Who You Are so there's other things I don't know I mean just from this point of view the idea would be like that's kind of what the longing is for you know that's part of the sexual longing I guess right the experience of that not just uh that other other things that are also wonderful but this is like deep with the deeper longing is well then it what you know then what it does to the person who is experiencing afterwards right and then you get sort of like these great poets you know we talk about Ruby or you know hafez or any of these you know poets you know like the The Poetry that to me that's the deepest is the the stuff that's written about love you know the the words that people are willing to conjure to express their their longing their desires the way in which that the other person is affecting them in such a you know um intimately personal and spiritual level that many people almost probably every person has had has been in touch with at one point or another they could totally get it you know it's like a totally relatable relatable thing and that's the sort of like the residue you know of like the longing to be back in that kind of a state yeah there's kind of like I think that's the reason why we want to do these episodes on love before we want to do anything on sexuality it just it's like been really really delayed but like we wanted to do that because it's like that part uh sometimes I think in the tantras they can talk more about the sexuality aspect without the love aspect sometimes they do sure but there's also the aspect of like the heart being opened and the whole energetic system being opened by the fact that there's a real deep bond with another person that's the love aspect right this special thing two people really connect and Vibe and then this opens this thing up and then it's easier to kind of feel your own Shin but I think they would say that even in love you're kind of like you want to feel at least in part your own Spirit right sure yeah I think it's why in Rumi like when Shams is gone uh uh you know he still is like saying okay it's still always there you know I mean yeah I got I I got one thing oh um what about what what about when like people have you know love feelings towards like balloons or stuffed animals or cars you know what I'm saying but like not just like oh I love it like like like sexual desire for these kinds of things I Daniel do you have a theory about it I don't know if I have no I don't I just seen I've never seen a patient with it I don't know how often does it happen I don't know I've just seen some of these like real sex episodes you know oh serious yeah yeah yeah like some dude married his car some chicks some people love balloons they're called lunars you know I didn't know that oh yeah there's a whole different you know so I mean but either way maybe it's the the difficulty in connecting with other human beings but distilled the desire to connect with love for Love's sake well I think like you know the idea that you connect with love and then when you connect with love you connect with the Beloved but not just that person right with the divine right right because we did those episodes back in the day and like yeah you were making the point you know uh uh it's not just a connection with another person it's the connection with to the bind yeah yeah the universe of the other person yeah unified experience brings you to another yeah like it opens up some other part of your experience like it opens you up to the Supreme Source there you go everything is supreme Source it's it's a tool to help with you on to the Supreme source yes and we have you have those ex I mean I know we were okay we're talking about love we weren't expecting to but like you could have that experience when you're really in love with somebody you you see the world and everything looks like super beautiful you know yeah all the trees are just a little bit more green and if it's changing colors like in Chicago then you know they're getting more red or even if they're falling from the trees and drying up you're like that still looks so beautiful yeah look at that dried Leaf sitting on the ground in that puddle in the Chicago drizzle beautiful the way you're making it sound right now Eric it sounds great you know that's the that's but I mean I think that's the whole point right when you're in that zone yeah uh it has that effect it triggers something in the Shen right it triggers something in the Shen and then the idea is that like when that thing is whether it's sexuality or we went to the love part I think part of the underlying message is supposed to be what it triggers something in the shin and then uh you experience your own Shen's experience of the world and it looks pretty cheery right I mean like we do like uh uh traditional Chinese medicine it's not an accident they say Joy is the emotion of the heart right and the positive emotion of the heart when the heart opens so I guess what you were talking about with the sex thing uh sexuality aspect of it it's kind of like if you can emotionally open up then the heart's opening a little bit if you physically let like things go the heart is opening more and then that can open more and more and then the experience becomes more profound and whether it's love or sexuality or whatever it starts to it rattles things inside yeah yeah okay [Laughter] so uh well I mean that's episodes to do in the future for sure just about that right yeah okay so give it given our given our time and and where we are I think maybe we just do our little final wrap-ups now just let me just say one less thing it just comes up that you can meditate that you can also meditate yourself to this experience that's probably the closer on this okay okay so as an example you can have it like in the Tibetan book of the Bardo you can get there like in a kind of a thing that everyone's gonna go through through the dying process right as other things fall away but you can also have this Falling Away experience during things like sexuality or you can like what we'll talk about next time is you can try to meditate this thing yeah right and have these kinds of blissful experiences clear light experiences during the meditative process yeah okay so Cliffhanger for next time Cliffhanger for next time but I think to to the point Eric that you brought up you know kind of how we got down this this subject of this like great you know sudden experience versus a gradual State yeah that that sex would be a sudden experience but see this is from the Dalai Lama school so it's like they're saying that this gives you flashes of this yes yeah but like um I think with their I don't know long subject maybe we'll do it more next week but like the idea is that like uh in that experience you have this flash of something that's probably there the whole time but it's still part of it in the Dalai Lama's thing it's still part of a gradual path because you're going to lose that right but in the grab but then you'll lay there in the Afterglow and then it'll go away and you'll have to do some more stuff to kind of realize it or something yeah more dinners and like you know emojis no but like but that that is part of the gradual path it's like then the gradual path is the practice of continual opening so that when those so that when those experiences come you're more vulnerable You're More you feel safe being more vulnerable such that you can have less obstacles to experience that flow to experience in the context of experience is coming ah yeah the idea is like you know if you just do I think if you don't know that this is a thing we can all enjoy an orgasmic experience sure but they're trying to say like listen look more closely at that and what you'll recognize within that is like you deepest parts of who you are and that's I mean I don't know like no one pointed that out to me in sex ed class when I was in high school no no and I will you know some of my tantric teachers will say you know like you know the experience of Enlightenment it's like an orgasm for your brain for your mind it's transcends the the limitations of your body and I know a couple different you know uh yoginis some you know female tantric practitioners and they're still married and they have children but a couple of them are like I don't really they're like I have sex because my husband wants to but yeah yeah yeah I don't my I get my my release my connection through my practice so there is something about that like the meditative experience ends up being and this is not to like it's going to trash anybody's sex life but not that experience ends up being just as good or better than the sex experience that's a that's a thing like that's real um yeah orgasms for the brain yeah brain games yeah or against orgasms for the Shen right right yeah shengasm that's even better that's obscure reference because no one know what the [...] that means yeah right do you think the Chinese medicine the Chinese word for spirit and you put orgasm on it that's an entirely American euphemism you know but that's okay now we have like a whole book we got a title and they'll just sit there but what the [...] is this yeah yeah exactly collecting dust yeah it creates yep because it's it's a obscure title but yeah that's kind of what it is it's a spirit thing yeah and that might be I guess what you're saying in the suddenism that's because you're having a sudden realization like holy [...] this is me that's the suddenism of it that you're talking about oh again yeah yeah I hear what you're saying all right cool so more to talk about I guess this is uh uh I went to Lively places yes it did as it tends to go thanks so much Daniel always Eric thank you so much for uh you know doing this with me and thank you to our audience all the millions of people all across the world all across time and all across the Galaxy if you will uh we do appreciate everybody listening uh sharing whether you're watching this on YouTube or catching this with your you know whatever podcast app you're listening to us on if you're on YouTube you know uh as they say smash that like button oh you know I know but you know share with people uh if you want to leave a comment in the YouTube I definitely check uh if you want to hit us up uh email engine Tantra gmail.com if you would uh do us a solid and leave us a review on the Apple podcast it definitely helps out I think we get probably about half our listeners through the audio version actually on Apple podcast so it's a popular platform for people so that's a good way to to you know be of benefit to the show and uh you know yeah do your thing find yourself experience the shingasm this week yeah immediately yeah all right even while we're talking yeah why not all the time yeah yeah awesome well thanks again for Eric this is Daniel we'll catch you guys in the next one peace ethology and tears this week on Jin and Tantra we discussed the Dalai Lama Enlightenment Dalai Lama Enlightenment but most importantly we talked about the shengasm the role of sexuality and orgasm and allowing people to experience their own Shen and spirit But Eric people are asking but what's a shingasm a shengasm well fortunately we're here to break that down shengasm is a uh so Shen is a Chinese word for spirit and orgasm is an American word or English word for orgasming and when you put those two together you get a shingasm an explosion of experience and sensation for your spirit generally through your sexual orifices what do you want how do you want to call that is that how it works normally is there other ways well I mean like I think ultimately you're trying to get the whole uh the whole every chakra explosions from the entire body this and more on uh Jin and tatra yeah peace