foreign spirituality with a Twist so we are back uh talking about the Dalai Lama uh we had this kind of sequence we were doing we like to do things in a little series spread across the weeks and so this is the one we were doing on the Dalai Lama and his his way of presenting what enlightenment looks like so it was all kind of sparked by this idea that we thought well we should talk about what this Enlightenment thing might be you know as I was thinking about the episodes Daniel I was like well we're doing some sort of a buddhisty point of view Enlightenment like we said in the beginning might be in different things to different people but we wanted to talk about what this thing kind of is at least in the Buddhist way because it gives you some feeling of what this might look like uh just overall something like that yeah all right so we got to the point where we were talking about one of the really creative things that struck me when I started studying in this Dalai Lama School was the idea that you meditate on enlightenment that's your meditation right and so meditation it works kind of in both ways how do you get to this like special more enlightened State well you meditate on it you know what's the purpose of meditation well to create this thing so it kind of like it's two sides of the same idea and um so we started to talk about this a couple of weeks ago and we were looking at how the Tibetan book of the uh the dead or the book of the Bardo is a big influence in this this idea that um uh you meditate in all the more superficial parts of yourself falling away this body these emotions these Concepts and thoughts these inner goals and drives all the deepest parts of yourself to the very like subtle aspects you're very subtle yin and yang aspects if you want to talk a little Chinese with it and then eventually you'll hit this thing which is sort of the root of every human being which is this idea of this clear light mind would if you listen to Dalai Lama that's how he will talk about it you could also just use this little handy phrase Buddha nature and Eric um is our you know audience like the episodes that you're talking about you're referencing uh would be like the episodes that we called them separation of Yin and Yang and then probably one known as uh emanations of Enlightenment so if if you haven't heard those episodes yet and Eric is talking now and you're like what's he talking about those are the episodes that we kind of you know we talk about this through various means in different episodes but those were specifically the ones that that are that you're referencing right now yeah kind of like around the Dalai Lama especially too yeah we're always in this a little bit of a funny thing here Daniel and I because we're like where do we start talking about this stuff right because we don't want to be redundant the previous episodes too much because you're like I already heard that [...] in the previous episode entertain me monkey well it's also like blah blah blah about the thing I already did so anyways um so this is this idea of Buddha nature I you know I like uh we like taoism too you know just you could call this your original Shen or your Yuan Shen right um I know I mean no matter what tradition is probably a word for it right yeah I mean we've got a word for this everyone will have a word for whatever this thing is right yeah I mean we kind of you know soul is sort of like in the general lexicon you know I think whether that translates or each culture has a different definition you know of soul I think you know not just in the Chinese medical tradition but in other cultures some Mongolian cultures uh I was talking about with Mary Kay and she's like they also have aspects of the Soul just like how Chinese medicine does you know and for people who are Chinese medicine folks they'll understand this and if you're not a Chinese medicine falcon or just you know kind of tuning in basically like there's different aspects of the Soul like how light has different colors as if you know like the rainbow is a different aspects of visible light so you know when we're talking about the Shen or the soul uh there are various viewpoints and we have you know not Ad nauseam but like you know talked about these things a lot and this is kind of where our foreign I think like in uh in uh Kabbalah they'll have different parts of the person right you'll have it in like uh Sufism and things like that right Oracle favorite stuff you know it's going to be like this is a I know what you call it like it's a quintessential idea right yeah and Eric what was it in Kabbalah I know I've mentioned it before but you said they view it kind of like the the soul is like a part of a like a mirror that has been splintered and that we are re-app capturing oh there is this whole thing about like the whole universe is kind of shattered there we go yeah I guess we'll do that when we do our big like uh cabal episode then we have guests who want to come on to talk about that too so yeah more to come on that subject matter yeah I think for me it's just like uh in my travels of doing this which is you know what inspires us to do a lot of this stuff here is you start to realize all of these similarities yeah and you're like oh this is very satisfying because obviously people comment at this from different perspectives seem to come up with very similar conclusions which if you're like oh there's probably something here or in any case it like it feels satisfying to learn from different people you're like this is awesome yeah because you learn even if you come to the similar conclusions you learn different things from different people it's definitely been my experience yeah and it sort of helped helps to fill in the gaps you know you're like oh I never you know the way they look at it that makes total sense to me which is you know a beautiful thing really I think came up we talked about a few times that came up in our Bobby T episode but I learned a lot just from the Kabbalah and like there was like one phrase in this old book called The bahir that like clarified a ton of [...] for me like in once one little paragraph I was like holy [...] but then you know like uh there's other things I think this is like a certain period of my life because around that same time I started really reading llama yeshi again and I was like [...] this is all coming together for me there's this Tibetan guy talking there's some hobless who's been dead for whoever many Millennia and it's like piecing together the universe is reconstructing for me yeah my little universe or something like that I just said I don't know it's such a joyful experience I'm sure you and I talk about the joy of just learning like you learn in this area you just feel so happy it's one that I don't know it's epiphanous and happy yeah I know is there anything better than a good Epiphany I don't know I think that's one of the most happy moments you're gonna have you know epiphanies are great I mean they're they're orgasmic you know they say that like what do they say there's eight moments that you you touch like an enlightened State throughout the day or like have like an orgasmic I don't know what they call it I'm gonna talk about that last episode too yeah like at the tip of a yawn you know at the peak of an orgasm upon waking upon sleeping the sneeze you know um these are all times but they never mention an epiphanous moment yeah but for me an epiphanis moment is a relief it's a release you know it's like these two little wires are like so close they're like back and forth you know you're watching a movie the hero's trying to grab on the heroin or whatever and then finally clicks and then just the whole thing lights up you know really it's it's something that that thing is like sexual and it's very yeah yeah yeah yeah I got it what was our phrase shedgasm shengasm that's right yeah so uh yeah it's so true and like you were kind of talking you know in these different states where people feel close to the core of who they are that was like we started like talk about that last time and it sort of like flowed the conversation flowed that way and uh you were talking about some of the women that you knew tantric meditators and they were saying like well you know sex is okay but this meditation thing right it helps that's that's a rock star yeah and um and I think there's something to that like if you really look at yourself maybe your epiphanis moment is just as happy as your best orgasm or something probably true I can say for sure and those two things combine together The Epiphany during the boom yes to both worlds that's the best of both worlds but yeah you know the funny thing about like epiphanies is that they they last longer than an orgasm right so that's that's one and they have a more I'm gonna argue they have a more profound effect like it's a it's a deeper it's a kind of a deeper I don't know drop into the water and you know that it creates more ripples throughout your life uh if you allowing because we still have uh it's so ironic in the title of this show but we still have like all of this tantric sexuality things to talk about and price ones too and all that uh give meditations for people to try and and you know some of those things are like they're sexual but they're super epiphanous too so that's where you try to like weave those two things together Tantra means to weave yeah so you're trying to weave these things together yeah yeah well that does get to where we were at because we were talking about this idea of like different moments when this Buddha nature sort of like pops on the scene yeah some of them are again like really kind of weird like the sneeze a yawn it just has to do with how the energies in the body move for that little window of time or something just a brief glimmer so that's kind of funny stuff to talk about up the road too and then sexuality is obviously more powerful and enjoyable thing than the sneeze and uh uh so anyways we'll talk about that stuff as we go yeah so I think yeah so kind of where we were at so um the whole idea then is then if you like again listen to The Dalai Lama you want to learn some of this stuff is that all these what happens in those experiences is again these more superficial Parts Fall Away sometimes for a brief moment and so like it's well obviously it's not like your body disappears during your sneeze right this is the idea that for a few moments the flow of the energies within the body create this little glimmer of this deeper part of your shelf shining through yeah and so when your awareness pulls away from all these more superficial parts then boom this clear light can appear and then you know the Dalai Lama's point would be and he's like reflecting Buddhist Tantra is that you can kind of meditate on that experience so maybe not all the Gory details now because I think we got to do something on you know the disillusions maybe it's more of a thing later on yeah so there's a way of even trying to visualize what this is like you know maybe we'll save that for a little bit up the road but you kind of visualize all these parts kind of like dropping away until you hit this deep part of who you are that's you know one of the big ideas of how to meditate on this so yeah so speaking of epiphanous moments I'm having sort of one at the moment and you know we're kind of talking in generalities about like you know meditate you know meditating yourself towards Enlightenment and having Enlightenment be the and meditation be the practice for it you know and because I think you have to understand that that's what you're being asked to do otherwise yeah that's even that's kind of like yes for me that was something like oh the Dalai Lama was telling me that what I'm really doing is I'm meditating on the on the enlightened form oh [...] no one ever said that to me that's like an epiphany moment for me and so I think that like from people who don't have a practice like this it might it might it's hard to sort of take this abstract idea sensation feel it whatever and move it into right and me being Capricorn person uh you know I'm not a goat person right I wanna I have this idea and I think that the the best way that I could probably put it it's as if you when a person is watching a movie or listening to a story that there are some moments when you are so engrossed in the story it's as if you're part of it right you could see it you can feel it it brings up emotions it does things and to your point you forget that you're you forget maybe that like you have your own suspension of disbelief they call it or something like that yeah but that's so much that's the point right is that you have to suspend a disbelief that like you that there is something that that lasts Beyond this finite not life and that there is a state that one could reach that I don't know extends Beyond time or space yeah and so the more that you practice that you suspend the disbeliefs I all you know I like to say I always but I regularly think I'm one realization away you know I'm saying and I always step into that I'm like I'm so close oh I'm so close you know even during the day I'm like oh my God I'm such an idiot I'm so far away but like really when I sit down and I practice I'm like no no I'm really close actually despite what my brain says that advice is is good advice though anyways you know it's an optimistic point of view sometimes I say like this whole Buddha nature thing is to like make people feel optimistic otherwise you could walk around feeling I'm such a I'm such a like a dope goof and a clown you know and what I do but you know it's supposed to be like no you got the Buddha nature you're right there right you're so close it's so close you know uh I think uh milorepa says something about that you got to be optimistic about it right right because otherwise all your internal doubts will [...] your head up yeah very raw full of like weird kind of funny thoughts in our head which I think yeah do get better as you do more of this stuff I agree like this this like uh dissolve themselves too because they're part of like some [...] ego thing anyways right [Music] um okay so that's the idea of this and then uh you'll hit this uh clear light experience yeah I guess the reason why you know we're talking like parts that were important for each of us this was important for me to hear because I had done a lot of Zen and I had done a lot of that with stuff and I felt like I had had approximation experiences of this Buddha nature experience but I didn't have a clear sense of like what the heck it meant or something like I could get into some special places and I'd be like oh this is really cool and it feels awesome and uh but I don't think I saw the context that the Dalai Lama put out for this that oh no this is like this is what this means in this context and it gave me a feeling of like what the overall picture was supposed to be where otherwise you know maybe you have experiences that are cool but you have a hard time slotting them into a big picture right well I think that's I guess the part that's important for me to kind of share in some of these things is like okay I got a big picture feeling out of studying what these Tibetan folks were talking about that maybe I didn't quite have before sure you have a big picture feeling uh that complemented the individual like moments of experience you know right when those again when those two come together uh all right so so then they talk about this idea that you're you know you're not going to necessarily always like uh hit touchdown every single time right you know it isn't always going to be like you go to some like a deepest possible experience of this core of Who You Are but you're kind of like approximate to it um so this idea that you're getting approximations and the approximations will kind of get more and more close to the experience the farther you go that's kind of I think motivating too yeah right because you can feel like okay you know I'm working towards a more clear and clear sense Vision experience of this core part of who I am and I'm approximating it out so I think that's kind of inspiring it's expiring and inspiring and eventually you will expire and uh you'll feel this thing just on the totals um yeah so sometimes I'll use this idea of like example clear light mind experiences again if you try to read a Dalai Lama there's all this it sounds a little jargony but that's basically the gist of it you're getting like more and more close to this right uh okay so then you make that point of consciously meditating on this experience and you get closer and closer to this experience of Who You Are and then in terms of what we're going to talk about in the Dalai Lama School four aspects of the enlightened uh Forum or person or something like the light and state is that they call this like the Nature body which we haven't really dropped this term in any of these previous episodes so it's just a way of talking about this experience of the core of who you are as a person uh By Nature you know and uh then we'll add in the other pieces to this thing but this this idea this Nature body when all this other stuff starts to Fall Away then you hit this Nature body experience and it's just another word for like the experience of Buddha nature the experience of the core of who you are your soul or Shen or Spirit or whatever word you want to put in there that works for you so in some ways it's interesting because on the one hand it's kind of naturally uh just kind of hanging out by itself just the way it is right it's there in every single person and it's naturally sort of just you could use the word pure probably if that word works for you but if that word doesn't work for you whatever word you like you know and then in that sense it's kind of discovered so this is sort of maybe the part in the the way we presented in the Dalai Lama School the Buddhist Tantra like how this would be described this moment of discovering this part of yourself that's always kind of existed it's been doing it the whole time and as you kind of let the other things kind of fall away you can have these experiences of this thing and I guess when it gets to the really deepest version of this it'll like just Shine On Crazy Diamond it'll just be its thing that you'll probably be aware of all the time but even if that's not happening now that's what you're working on right you know you're working towards that experience what you could actually do during your day I mean you could walk around saying oh yeah I have this clear light mind and you try to feel like you have a little feeling of it you know I think the Dalai Lama recommends things like that and every experience it's kind of like hanging around yeah behind the scenes corporately there yeah that's this idea all right so that's this Nature body thing and I think uh yeah and prepping like my part of this I went back and that kind of looked like what did the Dalai Lama say there's one little book where he specifically goes over this it's I think he wrote it when he was really young it's an interesting thing he just kind of very methodically just lays this stuff out so anyways this is what I'm referencing in this right but it comes across in all these Buddhist teachings would talk about this this idea of uh of course he did but this idea of you know this kind of Buddha nature though he didn't always use that word but this Buddha nature clear light mine that's kind of just naturally there you know it's the Nature body you got anything you want to add about that one no yeah okay um I mean other than it speaks it speaks for itself yeah I mean other than I think you can hear something numerous times and like we've talked about this before but sometimes it clicks so I think you know I've listened to tons of different people teachers you know teachers in in a you know in a group setting whether they're actual teachers or not who knows but if I'm learning something from you then you're my teacher in that moment you know yeah um that they talk about this like natural state of being now I don't know that they're referencing that particular state or if they're referencing more like a natural state of like a joyful Pleasant Human Experience you know and kind of like a jovial child-like manner of experiencing the world you know but I think there's for me in my mind there's a differentiation between something that is not bound to physical experience that is like the Natural State like of a being period not an embodied being but just a being in and of itself versus like a a pleasant jovial satisfied happy state of existence while being human at the same time it's really interesting because I was talking to some students about this and we have you know one particular person who's going through these uh Taoist Buddhist protocol acupuncture Chinese medical stuff and we had I had to like I felt like they had that conversation because there's two different things you could be working on and they're both good one could be the thing of like okay let me find my own core Buddha nature that's a big statement that's this thing the formless pure aspect of my own Spirit or something like that the other is like kind of like finding a comfortable way of being yourself in the world right be natural in the world I'm going to function in the world in a natural and flowing way you know and those are I think in like something like Zen or Dao's and complementary ideas right in the sense that you can find the deepest part of who you are and you'll probably also flow more in your everyday World those two things kind of feed into each other but they're not quite the same thing right and I have had conversations with people where you sort of like from my side at least I have to realize okay we're not quite talking about the same thing it's cool and everything that everyone's talking about is important yeah you know but like these are just kind of two different sets of experiences and it's like kind of two different projects in your life that are both really important and valuable and I was kind of just trying to frame this for these students recently just when it's like okay at least this is how I'm thinking about so we know we're on the same page with this and I want you know I want both of these things for this patient for sure those are both important things to realize who am I authentically in the world meet you know me as Eric or you as Daniel or that person is that person who am I right so I can be an authentic version of who I am I got like a Taoist friend TCM person to have on this podcast at some point I'm not gonna like mention the person yet until they agree to come on they will they've already agreed we just haven't had the chance to do the episode yet we got like we got guests in the queue lining up but um he likes to you know he talks about wanting to be authentic and I think that's what he's meaning in that he wants to be naturally authentic an expression of himself in his life in the world but he's not talking about his Buddha nature at that moment exactly it's it's you know that's what kind of like fits into what you're talking about right yeah yeah no without a doubt I think um an example I don't know if it fits here perfectly but an example they use in like the yoga tradition is the idea of like the koshas or the shells you know around somebody and that like the the light of being is like a light bulb and that there's these different like lamp shades wrapped around them you know physical body energetic body so on and so forth you know and that like the the FI the lamp shades are sort of like our own Mosaic of personality you know and so having them more in alignment can can emit the light in your own more natural way yeah because some people doesn't really admit at all and it's very hard to kind of connect to People's Light and you know we talk about the shining in someone's eyes or how they present themselves in the world you know that they're not so closed off um but that is in reference to like the being in the world and I think what this I'm referencing is the light itself the light bulb or the light that's coming from the filaments in the in this analogy on its own you know independent you know what I mean um so or the current that's plugged in you know what I'm saying like you get yeah that's yeah that's it yeah the thing about it is um you know again we're like we're talking from different places and they're all kind of like similar right yeah but I think like the thing in Zen and I can remember talking about this back in the day with people and it's it's a funny point but like they would say well yeah the more you tap into this Nature body of who you are Yeah the more it's going to kind of impact your life and then you're gonna feel like when you're doing your activities that they're gonna flow yeah right yeah you were talking about like being in the state of watching a movie or something like that when you get super absorbed that's like a flow state right yeah I'm flowing along with this story you're watching everything everywhere all at once you Daniel because you love that movie so much and you're like I'm flowing along with this [...] I am in every little scene you know I'm following it you're completely absorbed right and uh uh so it's kind of a flow thing so they kind of make this you know one of their spiritual ideas is the more you can spend finding this Nature body thing the more it'll start to like give you this experience in your life of feeling this flow and authenticity sometimes in general talk about like the spontaneity that happens right once you feel this thing you feel kind of like spontaneously who you are it's almost hard not to on some weird level yeah I was gonna say like it's hard not to be yourself because it feels fake yeah I was gonna say at some point you probably want to connect those two right like the natural state of existence the natural state of being it emanates as your natural state of existence I guess you could kind of like figure out what all the Gory details of that would mean but they definitely in this Zen and Taoist thing says like let's say you let's say you decide okay you listen to this episode or you already decide this for yourself or whatever I'm going to meditate on this natural state of who I am yeah and try to experience this thing then they're like the Zen kind of doused vibe would be something like okay now when I go out in my life I'm gonna be much more smooth and fluid and effective in a way and you want to make the whole meditation thing about effective because that's what's happening in our culture all the time yeah yeah you'll be like 12 more happy and 15 more effective or something your bowel movements will flow 12 more efficiently we've done some studies we show this yeah that's right okay increasing urinary output of 14 okay awesome BL2 Max is going up idle volume increased yeah like it's like exactly what our culture would do with this stuff yeah but I will say like but it is more it's supposed to be more fluid and there's all kinds of stories about you know um I know in uh Dallas and they have the idea of the person who's like a butcher and like yeah in this flow state so they can kind of like they never have to sharpen their their nose again because they're so like fluid and everything they never hit a bone or like hit the gristle wrong or I'm not a butcher I don't know but anyway that's the story everything works really great for them when they're butchering yeah yeah or whatever else you're up to but right yeah you don't have to be a butcher to be in a flow state so I think yeah the whole like yeah you could definitely talk only reserve for pictures it's really it's really um funny because you know this is the first Zen school I was telling it was very Samurai and it was part of the idea like even when you're in the state of like going into some sword combat or something you know you can get into this Flow State and you'll probably be better at like stabbing the other people or whatever but the same boat no matter what the state is you know it's it gets more flowy yeah the same goes for artwork I mean your channel yeah you know you're channeling something that's more than just your finite limited sense of self right that's the that's the point I think yeah I think that's right and then this other part of who you are TAPS in and those two things kind of fuse and all of a sudden you're able to be more spontaneously expressive in your art or something yeah maybe in the way that you wouldn't before yeah and maybe that just has something to do with like the more uh obstructive parts of who you are aren't there sure so your speech gets more spontaneous and authentic or something something like that yeah if you're teaching like we do you know or um yeah you're art or your music just like flows right well you're increasing the volume of your inspiration yeah I think that's right the source of it somehow right that's your that's your beaming through the different colors or something yeah right the beam gets turned up really big and all the colors start to shine this is good I have fantastic imagery right now I hope the audience is with me because I'm I'm like I'm I'm on it's all visual we're butchering there's light shining everywhere yeah we need to we can grab a sword and just all of a sudden go all yeah ninja yeah and then later on we could pick up the loot that's right lightly make a spontaneous verse and then make love deep into the into the wee hours of the night that this sounds like a great day and if we happen to sneeze boom even then that's right and our bowel movements will be 12 more effective and we'll remember where we left the keys to our car in an epiphonous moment oh that's right in my shoe it's funny because you know even in those moments like we both play music and I can remember the joy when people playing music when it really clicks I mean that's a special Joy too but they would say oh that's when you're that's that flow yeah you know it in that moment you know you're feeling that thing you're kind of in a subtle way also making that door open to this deeper experience and maybe your Nature body so yeah you're not always like saying pure Blissful light shiny everywhere yeah all right so that's the Nature body thing and I I guess that was something I was thinking about too Daniel like okay if I'm not gonna like hit the jackpot of massive Enlightenment you know every single day but what's the value of doing this and this is the value of doing this yeah right it's a training that helps you like be more effective in your life too but not in the like uh I get like a more optimizing my promotion necessarily not in the neoliberal American sense so it probably helps that too to be honest yeah okay you could say effective or maybe I would say effortless spontaneous flowing effortless that all sounds good yeah because when you're you know when you are in this you know I mean it's also it comes in sports it comes in art it comes in artwork it's better when someone when you do it without thinking or the flots the thoughts flow very smooth the thoughts flow very smoothly yeah we'll say neurotic thoughts of your mind don't like clunk it up yeah I mean the smooth thoughts of your mind flow yeah yeah yeah and you're and you can react or react in a natural way that is not you know because sometimes when I talk with students about I use like the Michael Jordan example from like back in the day yeah because he could just flow and they actually like the guy who wrote the book called flow actually talk with him about that this idea that you get into this weird state where you're like you sort of can even anticipate what's going to happen and everything goes very effortlessly for you I could say for sure um that you know when I've been part of various ceremonies you know plant medicine or breath work you know whatever I think we use cacao so there's still some plant medicine there you know um at some point things come Supernatural that I don't even I don't even think about it and as they're coming I'm like oh wow that's sort of amazing you know and someone will say usually well how'd you know to do that I have no idea you know yeah I I couldn't tell you where that it just came it came as a thought that was I guess it's my own now but it definitely was not how I think traditionally yeah and you you love like you personally Daniel loved that experience of like I love spontaneous inspiration yeah that's one of your favorite things it's amazing when we do these episodes if you could crumple up all of my notes and just light them on fire and just like everything just spontaneously flow you would love that uh well no I mean I I'm [...] around yeah maybe only half and then I could do the rest we both have to have our rolls on this thing yeah yeah but no we both we both like it you know I love those moments of like just like spontaneously being who you are yeah and then weird still happen you'll say [...] where like someone's like why did you say that to me because I was exactly just thinking about that thing sometimes you almost be reading people's minds and stuff it's a funny experience that yesterday I was like uh doing a student clinic and I was like I wonder if this one student's ever listened to any West African music so I walked out I don't know why you know it's funny you don't even know why you think it right so I walked out and said have you ever listened to West African music and she went I just started taking West African dance and I was like wow okay so what's funny is I have a friend over right now and and she just started taking West African dance so this I think we're going to talk about young a little bit up the road but this is the synchronicity thing yeah that's his idea when you get to this Nature body State um everything will flow better and all of a sudden those synchronous moments synchronistic moments which are sort of spontaneously happen because they are spontaneous that's the whole that's the whole gig of it all right because you ready to do wisdom body let's do it okay so this uh this wisdom or sometimes people say truth body uh Dharma this is the Dharma body you know that word Dharma means like a million things we talked about that in the last few episodes Building up people can translate that all kinds of ways because it means all kinds of stuff wisdom truth reality I know teaching give me all kinds of stuff but in any case so this is the experience of so here's what the Dalai Lama says here's this for a quote I decide I better just say this verbatim yeah so he says this is the experienced state of directly perceiving all modes and varieties of objects of knowledge as if they were directly in front of oneself so there's a certain quality of a Clarity with this right where you can kind of like see everything with this maximum clarity and it even does like I think what you were talking about earlier seeing to the spot the defy ideas of even time and space in some ways if you get to the deepest idea of this because everything's going to appear to you you know in this very uh natural way again of just you know having insight I'm telling you man that movie should be called Dharma right you could see it everywhere all at once everything everywhere all at once I mean it really it's it's uh you know yeah yeah I mean I think they're I mean they're probably some person who has some Eastern philosophical Vibe within that right oh for sure so this thing includes this idea of kind of transmitting space a little bit maybe kind of transcending time a little bit if you get to the deepest part of this but you can kind of get to the other part of this was a little bit we were talking about earlier on a more minor level you could be just like more clear and seeing things you know your perception clarifies but then the deepest idea and I think uh Lama Glenn got an H Mullen like one of our beloved teachers and one of my dear dear Dharma friends and yours too um likes to talk about this idea of interconnectivity people don't always say that but in this moment you have this idea of like okay I'm a little Tran there's a part of me that transcends space probably transpends time right and then there's a part of me that kind of recognizes the infinite degrees of interconnectivity between the whole things something like that and that's how he would say it too yeah almost with those exact intonations yeah that's my llama blood impression but no one you have to watch the episode even know how he talks we got an episode with him if you want to watch it but um the interactivity of all things um so there's this thing called indra's net which is one of the big images for this right um so indra's one of the you know Indian deities if you haven't heard Indra ever in your travels but it's this image of like he has this huge net that expands throughout everything and it's all these little beads and each little point is a bead that will reflect every other bead in this whole infinite net so it's like all these beads that are you know reflecting with one another and so like if you get to the interest net thing you can kind of like be your own little bead but like see all the other beads reflecting because everything has this interconnectivity idea right sometimes I think in the jokshan thing which we talked about before they'll talk about like a crystal and the light shines and the Crystal and that's your Buddha nature coming through and it'll shine out of the crystal stuff like that but then they'll also say that this Crystal will reflect everything else going on around it so this is kind of this wisdom truth body idea right everything will be kind of inter interconnected in this way and you'll see this whole thing I like that llama Glenn uses that word because sometimes they don't use it you know he uses this word interconnectivity or something like that when he talks about wisdom and Buddhism so he doesn't always use like just emptiness or something he almost purposely doesn't do that you know if you read between the lines he's making the point of like yeah you can say everything is Lex inherent existence that shouldn't it the thing which we've done episodes on here and there you know but he really likes to emphasizes the idea of interconnectivity so that always jumps out to me yeah you know when someone says something in their own unique way it hits you you're like oh he's making a point here he's not just saying the thing that people usually say he's saying something a little different because he's trying to point out a different side of this or something that everything is interconnected and I and I think maybe I want to just add something on to indra's net because you know because of the language of today like I think and that sounds confining you know as if everything is wrapped up but I think if we just add Network just work at the end so interest now yeah yeah then it seems like things are connected which then is how it is because this and I could say this because this is how I experience it you know is that like it's as I make my way through the various layers and I get and I reach that point it's like everywhere I look all the things are sort of like attached not in a negative way attached but connected we're all at once all of it it's all connected no matter what where I look or where I it doesn't it doesn't matter it's all it's just all there you know all connected yeah I like the network thing it's good yeah that works for me it does like you know you like that's like one of your goals in this you always want to come up with like what's the way that people would say this right now yeah right tapping into the the vibe of the day right I mean you could say like it's a matrix but that has that Keanu like dark connotation now and you're like so that word I was like sounds a little ominous or something right yeah yeah it sounds like structured or rigid or something I'm not like I don't think it sounded that way until that movie came out probably not and that has that feeling to it you know and then like you know people at the age is confining Right feels good yeah and like the the game theory that we're living in a simulation you know what I'm saying you know yeah yeah it has that weird like it has that weird connotation but yeah Network yeah so you know it's funny about when we did the Llama Glen episode I didn't realize he had all that physics and Engineering thing in his undergrad days back in the day I just actually didn't know that even though I knew him like years decade and a half or something before we did that episode but that came up then and I was like oh because really it's a deep statement about the nature of Nature and we like to do some Physics we have some Physics episodes back in the day and like it's kind of like entanglement yes everything is entangled right and not that you see it like through your your day-to-day eyes they're not designed to pick up on that no they're designed to pick up on like uh squirrel skunk tree whatever they're doing something else you know attractive object of my desire that's squishy toys yeah beautiful object that I should flee from I'm not designed to do a different thing yeah you know but uh and yeah when we had llama Glennon he kind of referenced the Einstein quote that I think we both kind of love there's an optical delusion to all of this right yeah you know Einstein says it you think you're not connected with that mountain over there but that's just a delusion of your senses you are you just think that you're not yeah so yeah that's that whole idea like in the if that works for you too I think that was compelling for me yeah because I kind of came from a physics place I there's obviously a lot of Truth in physics and then when you saw that the truth in physics overlap with the truth in this part of the world you're like oh this is very satisfying epiphany whatever but yeah they just kind of went to those feelings like that was very satisfying so if the physics thing speaks to you you know then you're like in that headspace already right and again it's using you know something that you're familiar with something that that speaks to you literally to make these larger connections because we're relation we're relative creatures everything is relative you know dude had the theory called relativity yeah right yeah Nature's relative but the in Buddhism that's called the dependent origination or interconnectivity right it's part of dependent origination everything is entwined together in this way so everything's affecting each other even though we don't see it with our senses in that way right like it's like the roomy thing too because we were talking about love in last episode and yeah like you're even when your beloved is away even Rumi and charms are together they're still connected because they're entangled no matter where in the vast everything everywhere all at once Cosmos Shams may be at the present time um you know you're still interconnected with the Beloved right yeah which is comforting if you happen to be separated from the Beloved yeah yeah uh you know it's funny because I teach in the class on this thing this semester on all this physics it's one of my responsibilities and my teaching thing to teach physics for traditional Chinese medical students Kind of a Funny gig but it's enjoyable for me and uh so I was just it was on my mind so I was talking to my son in the cafe during the week we go and he plays chess there's this little chess thing back over there and uh we go play chess and he goes to play chess I can't play chesswork [...] so no I can't but he's very good so he goes and plays in the cafe and uh uh but then we were chatting and I was like talking about this interconnectivity and it was interesting to see his reaction because part of it was like what you can see apartment's like what and he doesn't he's like I don't understand how that could be on some level you know but he's also intrigued so it's an interesting reaction maybe a lot of us who can feel that feeling like him this feeling of like okay it's I can't I don't see it that way but the idea is intriguing right and then I think in uh uh a Buddhist meditative thing you would say well that's how you start to overcome the optical delusion right I think perhaps the idea starts to speak to you when you're like you start to see you know you might be able to use the building of it does he play with Legos or did he used to nah I mean he used to uh he never was that into them okay he would build something cool if there was something to build but sure I mean I think probably I don't play chess so I don't know anything about it but I mean imagine even on the chessboard you feel the interconnectivity of things sure yeah I was just going to say that like if you have a thing made of made up of Legos like yeah now is a Star Wars ship but it's made of Legos and all the people inside are made of Legos and all those Legos are made of the same plastic you know what I'm saying so like in in a more confined space it sort of it always speaks to me the D that everything is actually sort of like Dao or the divine all around you or something like that right or plastic all the Legos that's just some artificial plastic right which is everywhere giant landfill and all the fish will choke and yeah which is everywhere all right I I saw something the other day the guy took a microscope to like a piece of like sliced American cheese wrapped in plastic and there's plastic particles all over this piece of cheese like all over the cheese so and random but you know it's kind of weird because I mean I think they're talking about like uh sperm counts falling in men yeah like whether or not there's just this toxicity that's happening that's building up that's the downside of interconnectivity I guess right there's your downside you lose your sperm that's right that's the downside of it group oh well ups and downs of internet activity maybe that's part of the environmental thing too right we have to recognize this it's hard to see it yeah um all right so the thing like it's cool that you said what you said earlier because then like you have to meditate on this thing you know you're supposed to meditate on this feeling of like okay I'm interconnected with all this other stuff and that's how as The Dalai Lama says I'm able to directly perceive all modes and varieties of objects of knowledge as if they were directly in front of me because in a certain sense they are you know even though it doesn't feel that way yeah yeah um so this that uh it's interesting then because this depends on this idea of having this realization right that your mind and energy have this interconnectivity quality with everything and then how do you visualize that or something and you were talking about your own experience of it yeah so that's a visualization of something like that yeah amazing kind of amazing all right so I think we're doing a decent job explaining these things I think so as much as they could be explained okay next on the unless you have more do you want you want to say anything more about this one are you good okay uh everything everywhere all at once so next is the complete enjoyment body or sometimes yeah enjoyment is how the Dalian will tend to talk about this I can't remember what we use for this was it reward maybe some times people do it like that yeah I we've used this we've kind of referenced different parts of the Buddhist world with this I just don't I just reward it's like different words that people will use yeah yeah I don't know I I don't really like either of those I don't like reward um because it has a punishment contestant you know well if you didn't get it you're not being rewarded you know um you know it's not Christian so you know what I mean but it might be true when these words go into different cultures all of a sudden you're like oh that doesn't sound good in our culture yeah and I don't I don't I don't know the word well enough and I haven't heard you know Bobby tier or llama Glenn kind of just go through pass it into the description first you know some bogacaya and what Bobby T points out that it's related to the word for like orgasm okay it has a similar root I guess in Sanskrit or something I'm pretty sure that's how he's talked about pleasureful I know the Sanskrit I mean it could be Bliss I suppose you could call a bliss body but you know like it's yeah it's supposed to have the connotation of like enjoyment and pleasure and all that because you're referencing this word that has to do with like um you know uh orgasmica that's root or something does that work for you though all right you got to come up with the danielism for this yeah because actually even saying enjoyment doesn't really kind of capture what it is no because like the orgasm is you have like the yin and the Yang side right you have the build up before you hit before before this you know you're building up one side of the bridge and then you have then the the outward ex you know sort of like explosion you know yeah of the of the release and but the release is equivalent to the build up um yeah yeah there's a certain like charge yeah yeah charge builds ups and releases yeah we haven't done an episode on Wilhelm Reich which I think we're gonna do at some point because he makes that point too if you can't build up a lot of charge it's hard to have a lot of release and it kind of like kills the intensity of the experience right yeah it's the other funny part about the the orgasm thing specifically is that's kind of a little bit more like Dharma Kaya you know it's formless yeah but this isn't really formless this is something else yeah but you know what's funny in the way that you know you're just like the way this episode is Flowing with this imagery of this connection like that you kind of start off with like two neurons connecting is that like it's so funny that nature repeats in the same way because it's a charge and a build up and up yeah you know and then stuff flows it's so weird that nature is just like that all the time it's at the same stop whether you're talking about like big scale or small scale like I said in a certain sense it's all connected to neurology and this in our little metaphor but you know like Nature's like that it like wants to connect it and it wants to go bang and you know it wants to be Blissful as I say Eric has Above So Below I mean the big bang is essentially the universe's first orgasm I I could remember when that first hit me I was doing these Dallas meditations and I was getting closer and closer to this feeling of like okay and then bang and I was like holy [...] that's the big bang you know like it hit me you know like oh that's what that is yeah it's the first like the first like big orgasm of the universe right and then you're going then you're on your way to like Taoist sexology and Buddhist Tantra and and or any Tantra really right yeah or like okay anyways we'll get to it we got lots of episodes to talk about this [...] but um okay so what is this thing then this thing of which we speak some bogakaya enjoyment reward or pleasure or Bliss or I don't know whatever we're going to come up with for it I think I think you get enjoyment a lot anyways you think it's too weak sounding enjoyment it just doesn't sound strong enough I get that all right so as far as meditations go this is the meditation of appearing in sort of like a subtle enlightened form that's the idea of this which is a huge deal in like Buddhist tantric meditation again I don't know as much about Hindu Tantra with this how exactly this is appearing um well okay so let's talk about what it looks like and then we'll talk about like to whom but if you're meditating the idea is you're supposed to like meditate in your in your if we're doing a visualization everything everywhere all at once so what is it Nature body pure Bliss emptiness uh uh dharmacaya pure Bliss emptiness interconnected with everything all at once kind of formless this becomes kind of more form and um and then you meditate on the idea of appearing as some enlightened Buddhist archetypal figure so you know in the Dalai Lama school this is a big big deal to do this and some of this is tied to like particular practices and empowerments and things like that where they'll have different ways of how you're supposed to visualize this if you get into these things you'll probably do this every day you'll visualize this process of like appearing as this enlightened person but again it's hard to talk about all the details of this because they're kind of like empowerment things and and we kind of like the the Dalai Lama the DL the download this is the QT part of this you're not supposed to like go and you know talk about all the Gory details of any individual practice but you know that's the idea of this but we may have we do have episodes on empowerment two episodes actually oh yeah yeah that came out uh in August of of 22. so those were inspired kind of like by the Dalai Lama doing one of these empowerments right exactly so we do we do break this down uh and then following following that uh a few weeks maybe about a month or so later we did another episode called emanations of Enlightenment where we sort of dropped the seeds to this part of the conversation right here actually um it's sort of a refreshing of some of those in a way so when Eric is asking me for like what what about a danielism for this is because we've we've been over this and and trying to come up with language that fits with you know today's Vibe today's mind well that really matters to you a lot right that you care about that a lot because you're like well how do you speak about this and I've been it's gonna be in this episode I realized that that's one of the big goals for you how do I speak about this in a way that will resonate with folks now given the kind of way we're using language now we could like try to translate some old Sanskrit thing but that might not capture it for people right yeah yeah so it's one of these things where like the so like for me like in like thinking about this in this particular episode it was like supposed to be this idea like if you go through all the process of exactly how they do the specific visualization and like the guy samaja Tantra or something that's like not considered to be like a kosher thing to do because you know you're supposed to actually know that practice and get introduced to it before you start like doing that so it is tied to like you know each individual little tantric practice you might do might give the details of like how you're supposed to specifically visualize this a little bit different but the the basic idea in the end is that you kind of appear as some kind of Buddhist figure if we're doing it this way right so you might appear as like a subtle Tara if you like Tara you know one of the Buddhist goddesses so you appear as this like subtle Tara let's say and um uh and then there's this idea that like you you're supposed to imagine yourself having these various qualities because in some ways what the Dalai Lama is saying is that this is an exercise of imagination at this point it's a meditative thing you're doing right you're visualizing this process where you appear as Tara but this subtle energetic Tara and the idea is that you're supposed to like then sort of have your own kind of Tara energetic body that's radiating out everywhere all beautiful and funky and great and then you're supposed to like live in this transformed sense of the world around you there's now this tantric world and then you're like projecting all of these compassionate teachings out everywhere and this keeps going on without interruption until everyone gets hit and uh uh and you're doing it all the time right and it's visualization you know that you're doing this so you come from this huge formless interconnected place to this bang I'm readying out everywhere like uh this complete rock star like enlightened form going everywhere and it's a visualization right yeah and you can I think you know they use the word hero or heroine not the drug but you know hero hero and female hero yeah um but they use this word hero or heroine and seeing yourself as as a Tara figure or as an enlightened figure whoever you know whatever calls to you if it's whatever Jesus or some you know whatever you see yourself as you know I get organic argues that part you know at the moment but you know you see yourself as some as a something um that's coming from everything right so you're not coming from nothing you're coming from everything as this as this being and then you have sort of these like magical kind of like enlightening abilities yeah yeah that's the idea that I think they say technically speaking this will only be seeable to people who can see more subtle things or something like that but you're still doing your you're still doing your mojo you're still doing your thing it's you know I guess you know maybe a good way of relating it would be like as if you had a dream about somebody and that somebody had a dream that you visited them that you then went through this process right because Dreaming or going going to sleep is this idea of like you know sort of a mini death or mini transition if you will then your dreaming body leaves and goes and emanates somewhere in this person that's the analogy they give they give the analogy to the dream body for this right there you go yeah yeah yeah and so the so then I think they're saying that like being able to do that and we've talked about this before being able to do that is a reward and being able to see that isn't is enjoyable oral reward for the person who's being able to see it so both sides of the coin are sort of like I don't want to say the word privilege because that word has been you know coined differently nowadays but like but it it is and it's a privilege that we don't talk about based on Merit really based on like you know your ability to do these things because you've been practicing them everybody has the ability to but some people make the effort to practice you know and then and then do this on a regular basis I mean I think we started the whole thing talking about the idea of like different ways of what enlightenment might mean like high Enlightenment ideas low Enlightenment ideas not to say low in like uh a pejorative sense or something but people can't think of this in different ways and obviously this is a high idea yeah right like uh Rocky Mountain High choked out of your mind high it's a bet here's here's a good thing it's a benefit they could do it that way yeah yeah it's a benefit of your practice it's a benefit of your karma it's a benefit of you know the efforts that you've put into it yeah there's some idea like again people frame it in different ways some people say it's a reward of your practice in the sense that it's very enjoyable to you but also will help other people so that kind of you know fits the idea of that there's no doubt that it like in the Dalai Lama's point of view this is part of compassion too yeah because you're reaching out to other living visualizing yourself in this form I mean the word that they use is yidum y-i-d-a-m right and so this is part of the udem visualization you visualize yourself it's like okay now I'm not just Eric living in Chicago or whatever now there's a part of me that's like expanding out everywhere right in this Divine form and it isn't like the point that like uh even that you're supposed to become Tara exactly or whoever you happen to like it's just that you know you're you're meditating on what the Divine form is by using this visualization and it's and it's a transcendent it's transcending you the limited view of you the thing about the got me about this and kind of like again prepping my side of this thing was the idea like okay this is a concept of like what enlightenment is but on an everyday level it's like a meditation that you do you just kind of do this visualization and as I was putting this stuff together I was thinking yeah there's this big idea and I I definitely feel like in this podcast we should like as honestly as possible present the big idea yeah right but we also like want to talk about the the part that like what does this do for you on your everyday right and the thing is it connects to this energy level of a person yeah it's kind of based on the energy of the person and doing this visualization is considered to be transforming or purifying or sorting out of this energy level of Who so again even if you're not popping out as uh like Tara all over right and like you know you're still doing this meditation and it changes how you feel it changes it works on your energy you use your mind to work on your energy you know sometimes we work on our body to change our mind right this is like working on your mind to affect the the your life right kind of your idea of like um the you know you got your phone and you you kind of get the the new software download like through Wi-Fi or something yeah you got it right it's kind of like that you know this idea that you use your mind you know to affect the hardware you're doing the software to affect the hardware right so this is a software meditation you're meditating on this thing but with the with the theory the goal the idea that when you tweak with the software in this way you start affecting the hardware yeah you know start rewiring the hardware yeah so that's what's supposed to be happening here so even if you're like well I'm supposed to imagine like I'm as some like like Tibetan figure I don't know [...] about you know that's not really that's not totally the point no it's not that's not the point the point is that you're kind of doing these visualizations and these visualizations are tweaking parts of who you are sometimes and I guess it's like our this is our closer for this episode but yeah sometimes people will talk about this with Carl Jung the psychologist you know the idea of the collective unconscious and that these these figures that you're visualizing are like archetypal figures Tara is like a mother archetypal figure yeah yep yep or yo Yaman yamantakas like the Lord of overcoming death the destroyer of death yeah archetype you know the Shiva is an archetype and Shakti are archetypes they're Divine Play of you know uh polarized energy right could say male and female but you can make it more than male and female right two males two females it's all good you know but the whole idea that this is like sexual energy or something right they're archetypes of that anima and animus if you want to be all young about it right yeah and female things so that's the point that these meditations they're archetypals so when you go from this big okay this is my Buddha nature part of who I am now I'm interconnecting with everything everything everywhere all at once now I'm going to appear as this archetype and like like people read the whole books about oh yeah this is the young part of this thing you know you connected to this Collective unconscious and all of a sudden you know you're doing something powerful Yourself by working your mind you're doing the software to tweak the hardware out using your thing so probably place we gotta stop right Oh by last year I can't hear you oh whoops hello hello yeah so probably this natural place to stop I think so yeah is it recording this on Thanksgiving Daniel has to make a turkey but but is there did we do is the uh what's left is just a mnemonic High left yeah but it's probably a little bit so maybe what we gotta do is maybe just do one little mini episode on this back in the in the something we'll just like maybe do one big Capper for people okay fine does that work for you that works that works we've got the series rather than just like rushing it through oh yeah there's this other thing blah blah blah okay hello yeah yeah exactly we're done you know right we got some other stuff to do in between but we'll finish the series and yeah it'll be a little serious for us yeah well let's go with you Daniel does that right no that's perfect that's perfect all right cool well you know so there there's this was uh as always I love talking about this stuff because this to me is this is this is the bee's knees you know yeah yeah yeah this is the whole thing and this these are really deep teachings actually you know for people so I know we only have probably what 100 000 people who listen to us and you know in the grand scheme that's not a ton of people but for those select few uh I hope that they find Value in this because I certainly find Value in it even though like we practice it we talk about it we study it even going over it over and over and over and trying to find my own words to be able to like transmit it makes it real for me it it shares what I'm having what I'm experiencing in a way that hooks and sinks in more deeply and the hope is that that does that for other people so that maybe some other people who share it will share it with me in that way and whatever it is that they're teaching dolphin may have felt that way in this series like you know again in my kind of doing my side of prep for this I was like oh yeah this is really clarifying how to think about this and trying to communicate to other people it really clarifies so I've been really grateful for that for us in doing this so if if you know if for some reason like you don't get it the first time you hear it perfectly like don't worry yeah absolutely not don't don't worry you know just I think and even if it doesn't spark you to to try to do anything other than just listen to it that's awesome you know that that in itself is awesome because this is not being talked about you know and there's so many things that people could listen to fear porn aka the news political stuff social stuff News sports like they're just so you know there's so much so many conversations happening and um this is something that is literally the background of all of it you know and to not just simply get caught up in the manifestations but to to intentionally and purposefully try and Veer behind the the curtain which is actually kind of just sheer you could see through it if you look uh you know we're trying to do that you know we're trying to carve out a space to talk about something different yeah something isn't just like okay what did this political figure do or that political figure do or this is what the controversy of the week is or something like that right yeah yeah what did this person say what did this person tweet what did this person do like oh boy verbal vomit from an idiot surprise you know Drake that's what it happened again oh my God that the [...] did it again this week what stutter oh geez I'm gonna have to stop being surprised at some point yeah yeah yeah it's true anywhoes that's where we live in though that's where that's where we're operating that's the background are a lot of space to talk about something different yeah so Eric as always uh Bao thank you so much for coming on and and you know doing this with me for all these all this time you know what two and a half years in now for sure we're knee deep in the game I have I have a friend of mine who I saw at a party the other week and um she says when she wants to listen to us she opens up the app and just flings out of her phone and then selects one and just hits stop on one and she's like I'll listen to that one she goes unless I see it's like part one or part if it's part two then I'll go back and listen part one and then part two later it's synchronicity decide actually that's right of synchronicity decided that's that's exactly right that's exactly right so and and our audience you know thank everybody for listening it's it's just nice to get feedback from people sometimes so if there's anything that you know you need clarification on we'd be happy to do it you know either through the recording or you know just via one-off here or there um if you're watching us on YouTube what up give us a like subscribe share comment we appreciate all the other all the traffic can't call it foot traffic because there's no feat on the internet which is strange you have to have an only fans for that um you know but anyways yeah uh he would share our work with folks we definitely would appreciate it if you're listening to us on Apple podcast the reviews do help us rank a little bit better so we uh we appreciate that and that's it so for Eric this is Daniel we'll catch you guys in the next one peace