[Music] hey fell and tears those of us like our spirituality with a Twist this is gonna be a funny intro because Daniel and I were just talking about the first times we got high but that's not what this episode's about no but it but it happened it definitely happened that definitely happened in our teenage years uh all right so we're back for another action- packed episode of Jin and Tantra we're trying to talk about Karma mudra but who knows where this is going to go because we have episodes where all kinds of feels came up in different ways yeah um but our idea is to talk about Karma mudra which is the use of relationship sexuality love for Spiritual Development right and uh we're kind of walking through kind of basic questions you know Dr Nita in his book on Karma muja does a good job of just laying out like fundamental questions people might have and so we're using that as sort of like a conversation starter and we got to the one y the book is uh by Dr it's karmamudra the yoga of bliss yeah yeah yeah I know we I know we talk about it in the episodes but I just want to put that out in the beginning yeah cool yeah yeah yeah I'm kind of like chipping away at it in different ways to get things eventually we're going to talk about the whole idea of the subtle channels and the vaja body there and I think he says some interesting things about that so more to come G and tears um but okay so we got to the part where we got to one the Daniel and I's favorite subjects I don't know but subject that you before before you go there you know there's um this is a this is a a favor and as a reminder there's there's a you know a good number of people who watch us on on a pretty regular basis who are not subscribed so if you're consuming our content I just ask that you uh subscribe to the channels because it helps our helps our visibility helps us get on other guests and things like this so just it's helpful to us so uh if you would do that uh right now that'd be great yeah hit the button as they say right that's right that's right smash smash it yeah the big pitch at the beginning yeah there you go yeah I was wondering if I should start doing that um but usually the person the pitch so I'm glad you did it well I wait to the end usually but you know whatever yeah say it like 12 times during the thing mind I don't want to be annoying but I want to be assertive so there's a there's a there's a middle line in there somewhere that I'm working on in my life and I'll figure it out hopefully before I die yep yep yep yep there's some political commentary on that but we're gonna leave that alone because we don't want to go down that we don't want to go down that well no no things are yeah so okay so we're funner subject matters Karma mudja sex love relationship spirituality that's what this is about so uh he gets the part where he asks this question of you know patriarchy and you what's the relationship between Karma mudra and patriarchy so I don't know we both have our ideas I kind of jotted down some of mine sure um maybe I'll get the ball rolling but I know you have feelings about this one too so okay so for me you know the thing that popped out for me first is the thing to bring up and I'm going to use this as my little prop here I'll hold it up to the camera this is one of my little favorite books on this thing passionate and enlightenments and this is one of the first things I actually read about this subject matter way back in the day so uh it's women in tantric Buddhism but she just does a very good job that the author's Miranda Shaw I did reach out to her to come on to the show but she doesn't seem like she has much of a social media Presence at all so you really can't find her so I haven't had much luck but she's kind of an really interesting person um I first stumbl across her in like an old magazine they used to have back in the day what is Enlightenment and uh so you know her stuff was kind of featured there on on an and an issue of the magazine they did on sexuality and spirituality overall so I was like H interesting and so I stumbled across this book and she was kind of like an academic person but she was kind of trying to bridge that gap between academic stuff and your genuine spiritual stuff just not being just an academic but also being someone who wanted to be a practitioner and you know want to go deeper in things and there are a number of people like that I'm going to reach out to another lady who I think will hopefully will have her on and I'll save that for when we get further um but I'm trying to we're trying to reach out to different voices within this subject matter so that's the plan for upcoming episodes you know we're talking about Karma mudro and we'll Karma mudra and we'll talk with people about it but anyway the book was pretty influential for me so I can recommend it to folks yeah and also it she makes a big argument in terms of the patriarchy thing which is that there's a sort of a stereotype of patriarchy that's not to deny that there aren't patriarchies Within These cultures that we're talking about yeah they have issues yeah so I don't want to get to the thing where we're idealizing them we try not to do that either right corre and even some of the people we love like I love Robert Thurman we love Bobby T but sometimes he idealizes on some level we can be honest right yeah I mean a little bit he emphasizes the positive right yeah I was just gonna say he's emphasizing the positive and I think anytime that you are passionate about something or that you you believe in something or something has been very kind of influential on your life for a really long time you are going to see the the the more positive the brighter sides of that particular thing because that's what you're interacting with um but I think for us we're intentionally trying to highlight the positives but then also you know as as the kids say keep it a buck oh I hadn't heard that one before uhuh that's is that a genzer thing or is that a millennial thing you know what what's what is what what are Generations anymore you know what I mean it's just you and me no but but we want to keep it real in terms of saying well there is everything everything in manifest form has a light and a dark side full stop right our americ kism in this in this scenario um and so we have know regardless of what that is it's important to understand some of the potential pitfalls that are out there so that you can a avoid them but be learned from learn from them because if we're taking life as the guru you're taking life as your teacher then and you know some of the potential uh obstacles that are are there then you can you can go right to them and say what can I learn from these things you know in order to avoid them but more importantly to take things from them because you're already going to take things from the positive stuff anyways because that's it's not easy but you're going to flow with it and the areas where you're going to have some stagnation or some difficulties I mean there's a lot more there to pull from so anyways yeah no it's good yeah we don't want to do some like skib Ohio kind of a thing that's jenzy sling yeah yeah yeah we're not and we love Bobby T he's the rizzler man he's Mr Sigma yeah yeah yeah he's so we're not we're not we're not in any way hating on him you know I love love love Robert Thurman but you know we are trying to like because if you for what we're trying to do if we if we don't acknowledge those things then it's it loses a certain amount of authenticity and we want to keep it as real as possible so okay so anyways you know it's not like that but she you know again going back to Miranda Sha but her point is something like if you really go back and you look at this and she's trying to challenge like even other academics in this book or you know people who who have that pedigree behind them she she's throwing out a challenge which is that if you really look at this these relationships were much more equal between the partners involved in it you know and C the kja Partnerships you mean kja Partnerships they were much more equal relationships and in many situations it was the female partner we're talking about heterosexual relationships for the most part literature doesn't have to be but that's what we're talking about here you know those women were the teachers right and you know part of the argument would be that it sort of had to be that way because you know if you if these are you know sincere people you're getting something where they both have to have the necessarily like the necessary qualities the necessary skills the necessary insights that's not a sexuality thing even that's just like we have to be both passionate to be enlightened for this book's title right right we have to be pursuing that and you need two people who are in that head space and two people who feel that same level of dedication yes and really want to work on themselves and want to like like connect with another person in that way so you know that's how it is and you could she does a good job and maybe we'll do a separate thing you know there's a number of these little books I'll hold up to the camera that are just kind of interesting about this yeah and maybe we'll do a whole separate one on some of her stuff like she has one of the yoginis who I'm really like I love the little bits of poetry that she does that she has in this book I'll mention her a little bit later on uh but anyways you know uh to be more covered maybe about this particular thing but that's her big argument you know and she tries to go through and really show and I'll give a list later on of some of the names but like a lot of these great female teachers either in India or in Tibet you know can it was and so that's that's the position you know I did another kind of interesting thing with this prop number two tantri Quest from Daniel OD so again maybe something to be done as a sort of a separate episode up the road so just a little that one called again little sampler it's called tantri quest okay he's an interesting guy and I I had a like just as far as like the scheduling goes Monday night you know which would have been last night was the special day on the monthly calendar for the Buddhist goddesses so I was thinking about this episode I was doing my special meditations for the day of the month I do my Buddhist goddess day meditations yeah wisdom goddesses there's a thing that you can kind of like self-empower they call it if you've had a tantric initiation you reinitiate yourself if you've done a retreat on it so I do that a couple times a month um just for people who interested in the practice aspects of this but I like was thinking about our episode and I pulled this book off the shelf and there's a number of things I like to talk about in it but the backstory is is he's a kind of a french guy and he was really interested in Asian culture and philosophy especially India especially like the the um the shite ones kajmir shiism right things around Shiva and then he traveled also he studied with some Tibetan Buddhists you know and he did some different things I didn't know his whole back story totally um but I'm learning about him more in the next last couple of days and then he traveled to India and he met this female teacher and you know they had like this very intense relationship of teacher student and she was the teacher right and his point so I I searched out I found an interview with him actually in between my meditation sessions last night I was up like late night on Buddhas godess day and yeah he was basically saying you know yeah that that's the tradition you know that it was a lot of females who were the more dominant part of the lineage and he makes this kind of argument that you get about Indian culture that it goes back to like the older older Indian culture thousands of years ago right where it was still a little bit more matriarchal and those lines still continued even after the rest of the culture shifted you still got these lineages still going through so that's kind of his position on this too and but you could take whatever attitude you want about that you know some people believe in that some people don't whatever but the thing is still happening and this was sort of in this dude's actual life you know so I was listening to him talk about it just on Monday so another kind of I just want to show a couple of things where this question gets brought up and you know you want you want equality between the partners you certain don't want to be you know a a patriarchical thing between those two people and so what can you say about this in the end yeah to my mind I would say okay all these little things I think deserve their separate episodes because these are good books and good interesting people talked about yeah but to me the take-home message is something like was this a perfect thing no but is there a truth in the fact that there was more equality or women who were teachers that seems to be true too and for us in the now trying to do these things in the now we can do this in a way with that attitude you know with that as our underlying philosophy let's make these things equal between people right and that's going to be the healing way to approach it so I know you got stuff on this you want to say yeah you know I guess I I'll reflect some of Dr Nita's points in his book which were that like that this potential PR that this practice has the potential to be an opportunity for people to take advantage of others and and specifically he was referencing male teachers and female students right so we wanted to I mean that's kind of like you know there's inuendo with what we're what you're in what you're talking about as the opposite but that I think more in line with maybe Western ideas of teachers there's probably the the the male sitting at the front you know preaching or teaching and then taking advantage of potentially not always but potentially taking advantage of uh his students and so this is um what you're bringing up is the you know the kind of opposite effect and this goes back again to our episodes that we did man like I don't know dude a year and a half ago you know on our kind of femininity episodes when we had Joanie Osborne on and we were going over that book uh when God if God was a woman and this was one of her or at least when I was going over that book because I read that for in prep for those episodes that like she had brought that point up that that specific thing that that the the Fe in a more matriarchal society or she used the term egalitarian you know but not so much like a hierarchy but more of like a a kind of a communal based living tribal type you know with a you know a group of Elders or whatever that was in charge as a more again a feminine you know dominant place because women were viewed as the givers of life because they didn't understand understand you know how life came to be and even if you understand how life comes to be that it shouldn't be any less you know that shouldn't be it shouldn't be any I don't even know if there's a misunderstanding how life comes to be that's kind of interesting question I don't know if it's that so much but is that what she was saying yeah that's in part what she was saying because because it seemed that like you know of course you have you know you have sex but then it was the woman who birthed life who created life who made you know or whatever and again according to her that the men were kind of useful tools you know that's interesting take okay so anyways yeah right but so stuff to talk about with that but that's not the main point but the point is that they had that that women had a much great stronger stance in society than you know even much more than now you know what I'm saying and that this was a different place and so you know to I guess to hear it I just want to like say it is it is a different it's kind of a mind switch to think that like there would be um tantric teachers you know sexual yoga teachers who would take on a a partner in this way you know students I don't know I don't know how it would work I don't know if you have many students or so I mean I'm assuming you have to build a bond with people you can't just like I don't know how this you know Daniel Oda was talking about the idea like it was pretty intense like they spent a lot of time together and it seemed like it was a very intense relationship you buy anything that had to do with sexuality it was just like she was going to train him yeah and it was very very intense and and listening to him describe it because I just happen to hear him talk about it yesterday night you know um he was Bas saying like she did a lot of things to sort of keep him off balance too so sometimes she'd wake him up in the middle of the night and say Hey you know we're we're doing a spiritual training session now not sexual one just like hey you know Chop Chop we're doing this and sometimes she'd go 20 hours like forcing him to do these meditations and difficult things like so she was pretty demanding on him you know which I was like okay cool you know I did Zen stuff I can understand that you know she was pushing him trying to get him to grow and develop but yeah in that case as far as the time and the commitment and the involvement from a teacher student thing in that context it was you know pretty intense yeah yeah um yeah so this is an easy question I mean you know realistically yeah there certainly you we can't as a honest actors trying to share things we can't say there hasn't been abuse or potential for abuse that wouldn't be right right and I have to say some of the things you know do look kind of negative to it would look kind of negative to us now you know there's the there's a kind of a thing we haven't done separate episodes on it of what they call Crazy Wisdom Dr neita brings up that in his book as well right which is sort of like and I I think the idea has a lot of good to it that you have to challenge the things around you more on that to come in this episode right uh as a way of producing wisdom you challenge the expectations and how people think things should be but but some of that stuff even when I read that literature as a person's open to that you're like well that doesn't feel right now some of that stuff when you read these older texts they read kind of weird you know where you're like well that doesn't seem like okay I guess that's could be considered as crazy wisdom but that just seems like over-the-top behavior that doesn't seem good and that's also kind of like we're not g to talk about too much but that's kind of like the trun qu rache part too where people have questions about him you know but anyway so that stuff is real but I think Miranda Shaw's point is like if you through the whole tradition overall there is an egalitarian streak in it yeah right and we would want to represent the egalitarian streak in it right and you know like so that would be sort of the idea okay so let me throw out some of the names of some of the great female teachers just for the have it and maybe people end up talking about in the future so yesi soal is uh Associated as being the partner of guro rache pamba uh so maybe an episode to be done I have a great Tonka like one of those Buddhist paintings of one of the really great figures Machi gab drum um with the great poetist I was talking about was sahaja Yogi ninta U actually this Daniel odier the French guy I was talking about specifically talked about Naga so there's all these great people and these names don't mean much to people who are listen to these episodes now I think they deserve separate episodes later but the point is like these are really famous people it would be like I don't know what the equivalent would be you know because they don't even have great teachers in the western tradition but it would be a saying like St Paul or something you know like you'd be like oh that's an important person you know or whoever the names would be roomie you know this would be that the equivalent level of that person of that level of import and that level of importance so but the other thing that hit me in this with the patriarchy thing and uh would be that there is a big emphasis though on women kind of breaking out of systems of control so that's a another theme that seems to come up in these in these stories related back to this whole idea of like what is patriarchy right and I had a really interesting conversation with somebody I know about this because we were talking about this whole issue issue of what does it mean to establish yourself as kind of like a tonric person and to what extent you have to like break through things and establish your own identity kind of individuate yourself right want to use some yian language and I got curious as to who are the female voices if you go back to these older tantric stories you know how many female voice voices you got so I pulled off one last thing which is this masters of mahum mudra mahum mudra being sort of the uh I know deepest meditation Traditions the deepest meditation approaches and also these Mah sitas the people who are sort of like these powerful kind of historical yogic figures with all these amazing backstories right so I thought maybe just for a second I do like we haven't done it in a bit like a little G g&t Story Time Break where I'll tell the tale of a couple of these ladies because I got interested in looking at it the question became something like what you know like do you have to like break out of patriar patriarchy do you have to break out of things in order to get yourself spiritually moving forward I think that's another question of patriarchy too to what extent you have to challenge it and like pop out and transcend that so I I was just looked it up and I was like huh you know like are there any females amongst these very famous 84 Midas this is kind of a famous thing you know Legends of the mahasa and these great tantric Buddhist yogis and yoginis because there are yoginis now in a weird way I looked it up and there were only four of the 84 but there were at least four right which you could go in other places of the world and get none so I was like okay at least there's four here right uh and then some of them some of the other 80 of these figures who are dudes they do have female teachers and things so okay but maybe aren't the prominent characters in the stories uh as far as g&t Story Time Goes what I thought was interesting about it was like I look at these kinds of things as being teaching Tales you know what I mean did they happen who knows right but the tradition has sort of preserved them and now that becomes sort of a teaching tale that we can try to relate to now and see what we get out of those things and I don't know how you feel about this Daniel but I feel the same way about you know even like a roomy thing he comes up a lot in our episodes like it's kind of like a teaching Tale in a way though maybe that story happened you know yeah more recently in history there's more factual veracity behind it or something but maybe it doesn't matter one way or the other I look at them as teaching things and the tales have their morals behind them so is that the way you think about that too just out curiosity yeah I mean any story that survives uh time in order to be told and retold again has value what that value is I think is going to depend on the individual but if it survives that there's probably a reason it survives especially the the the length of time that these stories have survived and the amount of people who are engaged in them so I think I'm I'm thinking of like maybe Bible esque type stories which are um and I use this word lovingly regurgitated ah ah but like from like a baby from a mommy to a baby bird that kind of regurgitation yes yes acknowledging the Deep suffering of conditioning that goes along with this regurgitation and I mean that in a negative sense no yes and if that bothers you then go drink some water you know there's a little something t toxic in that regurgitation yes there is there's a little bit of bile in there comes up you know um but so some of those I think are are structured in the way in order to kind of like habituate some people but given that these stories were not not just passed forth from a different part of the world and I Bible stories were too also but these are old often older and then translated into English to a much smaller AUD a much smaller audience that there is some other kind of power in them you know that somebody had to have a passion in order to do this and they're not making a lot of money you know they're not it's not in it and I get Bible stories can also be the same thing but there is so many stories of so many yogis of so many different Traditions you know that were that were passed forward again then have to be translated into English there has to be well it doesn't have to be in my but for me there is something from them and regardless of the story for whichever um side of religiosity or spirituality that it comes from are designed to pass forth something of value now that something of value is going to be interpreted by the you know by The Interpreter by the person who's hearing it and therefore trying to use that into their life so all of these stories are passed forth in order to CH make a change in the person or teach them a particular kind of a lesson and I think that like there's there is value in them because they sort of transcend um modernity you know in in a way that they will be able to maintain their momentum so long as people keep talking about them because they're not they can't really be brushed off in in the same way that you could by someone saying oh this happened and that happened and then because then then you you move more into the realm of logic and the enlightenment era where people have to put things into boxes and then you can wipe off someone's you know deep story about their life where they learn something and they want to tell you about it as anecdotal right oh that's anecdotal so I don't need that evidence because it's oh I see what you mean yeah it does it's not like a statistical study it's just an anecdotal story that doesn't carry the same yes weight behind it then whereas these stories which are often you know told in the in a style of like a parable often are sometimes riddles or sometimes you know put in different ways that transcend logic and if you can do that then you have to use a different part of your mind to understand and extrapolate pieces from those stories and then you therefore you can't clearly categorize what it is that it's trying to teach you because it's deeper you know and if you're willing to digest it and engage with it it will offer you more than just the tail on The Superficial level you will begin to realize that there that the energy and the intention and the teachings go beyond simply the words that are being expressed there's a meaning behind it there's a dance behind it the teachings are Tantra it is not what you do but how you do it and so it isn't it is it is in the telling of the story as it is the story itself yeah I feel like it's a little bit of a flashback to some of our like kind of Joseph Campbell conversations from some years years back where like you know why do you have a tale why do you have a story like I'm GNA look at four of these right and you know they're they're partially like they're teaching devices right as much as they are anything else yeah and then the other part that hit me about this as I was thinking about this maybe it's because we're clinicians in a certain sense I can't say their case studies exactly but they're trying to illustrate case study principles yeah right yeah and it's weird because even in the episodes we do like we did episodes on Carl Jung and for the purpose of our little podcast he was a case study for us you know he was like an a a that you watch him trying to develop himself and then his life is as much a mahamudra story as like any of these mahamudra stories for the purpose of what we're doing right because we're trying to extract extract those things that have psychospiritual value out of this dude's life now we know he was an actual person you know uh and the tale is much more one that we can all kind of look at but we can look at even his life at least I realized I was doing that now yeah so I'm just being honest about that I think that's something that maybe because you know we're clinicalm minded people yeah you know you can kind of approach it that way so I kind of look for okay so what's the moral of like Carl y's life yeah what are the morals what are the lessons we can learn from room's life you know or what are the morals or lessons we can learn from these little Tales right yeah yeah so I went in like kind of not knowing what they were going to be but like what I got in the end was like it's four stories of these four different women and they all pop out some way or another so every tale has this same theme of like they're going to get kind of like AES in what you call patriarchy or what you can call whatever you want to call it they're going to get am mesed and then some moment in the tale they they surge out and what was so interesting about them to me was they're still very real like to the now to me on some you know like it's still very much like the same issues that gets presented with every person yeah I'll give a couple right uh I got two of them are kind of tied together so g&t story time I'll tell us a few Tales so I you know uh again I curious because it was like okay how is it for people what do they have to do what are these stories staying we have to do to Psycho spiritually surge ourself forward um so of these four ladies one of the things you see in all of them is they all break with control convention they all do this and there's some moment where they have to do it and so the stories are very interesting then so the the one that you can kind of tell to tell together two of the four are kind of like entwined because it's kind of these two sisters and they both are married you know now this would have been you know uh you know an older time Indian thing so they're in these marriages they're married I think both to people who are in the boat the Boating industry or something but what was so interesting about it was at a certain point in the story it says they just get tired because they're arguing with their husbands right and so it's arguing arguing arguing and then they it just says in the story and then around the people around them the people are all just gossipy and kind of shallow and Petty and that's the story and I had thought yeah that's pretty much like a lot of human life like right there it hasn't changed that much at all same issues are facing these ladies as we could imagine facing lots of people Clashing of personalities arguing gossiping neighbors shallowness you know these kinds of things and so at some point they just break out and they meet um someone who's in the story kind of a very famous kind of uh tantric practitioner right and he gives them this empowerment and uh they go on to become these enlightened figures but there's this thing where call it patriarchy call whatever you want they pop out right um there's a little bit of like funny linguistic trivia in it um they're called the the severed headed sisters and you're like well what's that about and we'll talk about these things maybe later on but they have in India these kind of severed headed goddess figures where they'll like cut the goddess will like have her own head cut off and all of this surging of her own blood will be flowing out to all these different characters who will have these like sometimes skull cups or things yeah where they're they're capturing sort of the the vitality and essence of this goddess you know so if you don't know that tradition you'll be like what are they talking about but chinam mastra is one of the big divinities around this and she's part of this group of goddesses they called the mavas to be covered in some of the later episode around all this tantric stuff but you know so that's where the story comes from so they're kind of related back to this they kind of like are related back to this tradition of meditation on the goddess who like whose lifegiving resources are flowing out to everyone right and we could you know to just to touch on it like the reason for which she has removed her head is that at least in my understanding she has overcome the external senses of the human body right yeah and that it is she is no longer bound to the uh mundane sight mundane hearing mundane thinking mundane smelling mundane tasting mundane feeling even mundane life in such a way that she can remove her head and what comes out is life lifegiving is transformative is like you said is a the sort of V you know immortality Elixir if you will yeah the enlightenment Elixir comes like flowing right into your you know the Amita right yeah am yeah exactly so when you know if people you know for people who are interested in these kinds of things you'll see some images that are I get they look out of place in comparison to like art that comes from the enlightenment period or the Renaissance which is all very kind of like humanistic uh you know beautiful bodies sort of you know very chis old very clean and clear and you could see this Angelic you know kind of I'm thinking of artwork that's in Italy you know Renaissance people the Michelangelo types yeah yeah yeah that that defines almost kind of like what people think is like Fine Art you know and some different stuff Picasso whatever but this is kind of where people think about artwork but then when you compare it to like these East Asian Traditions uh it's very different you know the the the gods and goddesses I don't want to call them gods and goddess we say deities look very different because they're you their eyes are bugging out of their head they're holding weapons they're drinking out of cups that have are full you know skull you know human skulls um with blood overflowing with them there're they're Standing On Top of dead bodies um and it looks very like to the Western mind it's like whoa what is this how is this spiritual this looks terrible they live in the they live in the funeral P of like the dead people they wear dead people's clothing the the food that and the flowers that the family leave they they take it and they use it for themselves they cover themselves and dead people's ashes like this doesn't make any sense how is this Angelic how is this closer to Divinity how is this in any in any way shape or form closer to Spirit you know I'm just think you know because it doesn't make a lot of sense when compared with a sort of like I mean I get what you're saying you're not used to this imagery you're like what is this you know you can be so if someone was listening and you weren't familiar with this at all we might have people who are like that you were like oh I'll check this out and you're like whoa there's this goddess and her head is surging blood everywhere yeah what is happening you know yeah or like the klie imagery and so on yeah yeah yeah but all all of it it's it's all symbolic everything is symbolic and so it's it's representing the the the transcending of as I mentioned before as the transcending the mundane transcending the things that we are normally attached to that how we View and experience life with they are these beings are depicted as Divine beings because they have transcended them and so now now they dance on the senses they don't they don't need to have the same kind of interaction with the reality that we have because they have a different interaction with a deeper sense of reality that moves beyond the kind of mundane uh appearances that we are normally used to being engaged with therefore they are depicted because they have done that and this is the depiction of of their Transcendent State it's the best way that they found out how to put that and then like the kind of the stories of these two sisters then that symbolizes that they become the goddess yes I am the goddess now see I can like sever my head and put it back yeah or whatever you know it's did that happen no you know but like it's it's a symbolic part of the story that shows the Transcendence of these two figures right in their spiritual path right some of the stuff that you're talking about too which you know we don't know where we're going to go in these we throw things out and we just kind of like vibe off of each other with this but some of that has to do with pure and impure like overcoming dualities right yes so if I'm in the charnal ground oh this is supposed to be a bad impure place but I'm going to prove to you that this is no less pure than you know the Brahman Temple or this is no less pure than Vatican City I'll show you that the fundamental ground of reality it's all pure right and so you know it's a big tantric theme right so sometimes some of that imagery that seems shocking is purposely kind of there to go okay we're going to push you beyond mundane appearances what you what you could like typically think right and will also push you into this place where the thing that you think is impure the thing that you think is you know the the bad thing no that's not the bad thing it's not you know this funeral ground is just as pure as any place else right and they have their own culture ways of showing it but like yeah that's it so then you can extract kind of the meaning of the story out of that right okay Story Time number number two so this is uh I am really interested in this particular figure I'm interested in all of these but this lockman Cara is really interesting uh she ends up being the founder of a tradition that I feel a lot of love for but I actually didn't know that she was the founder of this thing who is it it's lakshman Cara so it's not like we wouldn't know her you know what I mean even in our little special circles you know it's not a name that I there's a whole chapter of on her in this little book passion but yeah passionate Enlightenment for people who are listening but you know it's not like one of the names that immediately pops out even if you're familiar with Buddhist Tantra but the story is fantastic so and it shows the same kind of thing this kind of I think need for Transcendence or something right this need for Transcendence so in her tale she is sent off to be married by her brother she's from like royalty and um she goes to wherever the neighboring kingdom is you know to get uh to meet her betrothed and she sees him coming back in from the hunt and she's just like oh no oh no I'm not marrying this guy no no way I'm not doing this you know and so she has these reaction to him and I mean who knows what he actually looked like it's kind of interesting you know if you try to personalize it you might just look like kind of a douche coming in and she's like no I'm not doing this but at a deeper level you get the idea also like her saying something like no again I'm going Joseph Campbell on this a little bit right the mythology expert you really get the feeling like no I'm not throwing my life away on this no way I'm not doing that and you know her response is really like a great tale because what she does is she like fakes Insanity she pretends to be insane CU she like rips off all of her clothes and she covers herself on all of this sort of like gross stuff and she locks herself in the room and no one can get her out so she's completely doing this thing of like no I'm not going to do this she just completely like does this is I guess a kind of a protest but even like a technique like I'm gonna make myself unwed and I'm gon not I'm not going to do this the answer is no and then the tail continues she eventually escapes out of the uh of the you know the the the Royal Palace place she goes out into the world and she continues to pursue her Enlightenment which she gets right um and so the thing that she founds is something I want again this is another one where there's like lots of little things where I thought oh that's an episide too that we're going to do in the future but she founds this lineage that's sometimes called sahaj Yana related back this this idea of something called sahaja which is like the innate purity of things or something so it's another one of these ones where this Purity thing comes up the pure ground of like being or something so she becomes part of this Lynch and that deserves another conversation but that's tale number three right what struck me about do Daniel was this idea like it's another character and they're all like this where they're like okay I'm being presented with whatever you want to call it patriarchy or Mundus or something and no I'm popping out right and it happens in almost every story so you got more on this one before I tell the last one no go ahead okay so the last one is this character Nam mahib badra the final example and it's another one where she's also to be married and doesn't want to do it right um but she has encounter with a traveling tantrica this is not as well of a known person so I didn't recognize the name initially but you know they're talking and they stuck up a conversation kind of was about the meaning of life because she asked him what are you doing and why aren't you off like kind of doing the normal things of life and he says well no you know I'm a yogi and I'm trying to go through and this is my opportunity this is my human life and I want to take the best advantage of it as I can and I don't want to waste it and so no that would be a waste of my thing and so I'm going not to do this other stuff and she's like oh that sounds really good that's often happens in these stories right probably would call this a karmically fuit this meeting but she's really struck by this and so then he goes and he sees like oh she really has a feeling for this so she gives him the enlightenment to this she gives he gives her the initiation into this thing called The Wheel of bliss which is a real common kind of Buddhist Tantra the Shakra Zara and so she goes and she goes back to her family and you know they're like no way and so they kind of force her still to go into this life you know that was sort of pre-arranged for her right and um and it's really interesting because you know all of a sudden now she's living kind of much more of a normal life for that time and probably a Normy life for this time too you know she's like kind of like a stay-at home mom right and they say it's described really interesting it's she's described as like controlling her body in speech by presenting this outward compliance and niess so she's doing this for this extended period of time and so I'm reading this thing I'm like okay interesting that's probably what human life is generally like right even down to the present day you know and so she's going through this and I I was thinking okay is this is that even talking about repression or something what is this saying but the story comes to its kapper she's going down to get some water from the river and she's carrying this you know this vase this vessel to carry the to carry the water back and you know she has the water and the vase slips out of her hand and it crashes to the to the crashes to the Earth and it breaks right and all the water goes around and then the you know the psych part of this was interesting to me because she goes completely catatonic and she's just there staring at this face and all it's the story says that you know her husband comes and other people from the family come and other people Neighbors come and they're trying to snap her out of this but she won't snap out um until eventually you know like it's getting towards the evening time the time of the goddesses and then she pops out and I'll just share the verse because I have it kind of marked in this little book right she pops out and she recites this verse which is really kind of capturing of things she says sent beings from beginningless time break their vessels their lives ended why did they return home today I broken my vessel but abandoning my samsara home I go on to Pure Pleasure verse and then in the story she goes kind of like flying up in the sky I love when they do symbolizing her Enlightenment right yeah uh yeah I got like a great painting you know of like it's like from the art ins of Chicago and it shows this female figure flying up into the sky and she's kind of like on the ground there's sort of like like a close like a clothes line and there's clothes hanging there it's kind of like flittering in the breeze and it shows this character flying up to the sky and it's say like written on it there's kind of like she longs to be one with the sky again or something like that really beautiful painting so that happens in this story and uh but then it seems like she comes back down or something she teaches people then she goes on to some you know full Enlightenment thing and that's the last of the tales so I was reading all of them in the context of our episode and I was thinking yeah in each of these there's some like and there's no exception to it there's not a one they all have the same theme to it of some person who's sort of like in that thing you know you want to call it patriarch or whatever you want to call it each of these characters are kind of in that and then they just explode out of it in some burst right every single one of them and I thought okay well that's that might be like one of the deeper questions of if you want to call it patriar patriarchy orever you want to call it you know that every story ends with the heroin of the story like popping out of their circumstances and transcending them in some ways and then going forward is something like an Enlightenment which I mean for me that's kind of one of the obviously one of the g&t themes right ever since our very first episode you have to write your own story right you have to write your own myth for our first roomy thing we ever talked about but it was really striking I wasn't I didn't know what they were going to be like to be honest I just went back I had a conversation with someone I thought well I should go back and look at these yeah where could I find the source of the tales of how people handle this and I went okay well I'll I'll look at this one masters of Maha MRA or Legends of the Maha CZ and the Tibetan and I was like okay yeah that's it and then when I was thinking about her episode it's like yeah every character like explodes out of this patriarchy right and that's sort of what is part of their Liberation story and that that really struck me yeah yeah you got something more on that one no I mean I I just feel like this is reminiscent of our uh nine things that could [...] up your life you know that it's yeah yeah that there is an onus on the individual to break out of the structure that they have inherited you know and I think in the context of what we were discussing at that time it was your family you know it was your current kind of I don't know just in inherited circumstances right and and those could be you know particularly familial and how you're again your intermediate family is working but it could also be extrapolated into uh societal and looking at how uh the expectations are set before you are born that you are to conf form you know and that there is almost a requirement I can say and almost in every one of these stories male female in this case but then male in other cases yeah I was getting to that too so I want to jump on your thought but it's interesting yeah yeah that like you it's all I mean I don't know about every single story but even the stories of householders even the stories of regular people who attain Enlightenment or attain these kind of States they are forced to tackle or to Grapple depending on you know what kind of sports you like uh with with this facet of existence and that it is it is the onus is on them to transcend those kind of invisible that invisible hierarchy whether you want to call it a patriarchy or whatever but an invisible hierarchy that exists in society as we live in it even way back when right because it did exist then I think like the thing that struck me about it was like when you get to patriarchy then if we want to use that phrase right like Dr Nita does what you start to realize and this was true even when I was listening to the interview you know uh Daniel odier the guy who wrote this tantric Quest book was doing you know it kind of traps everybody it's not just something that traps women it traps kind of everybody potentially you know and so we can call it patriarchy we could call it something else you know uh but some kind of whatever higher you kind of gave the phrase a few episodes ago you you took it you're taking it from my brain yes yeah the you know the religions were the first corporations or something right yeah and he just you know well as far as this Daniel odier guy he just basically says all these women all these religions really don't like women they really don't like women you know so he says that just as a flat principal okay I'm I'm down with that but you can also then say it's kind of something that can trap any spiritual seeking person correct right and I was going through it I thought well you know it's the same story for like the Buddha he has to like pop out of something right he has to make this this move away from whatever you want to call this thing you know whatever word we want to put on it you know and it's something that you could see it Beyond just you know men or women or any other you know person we might think of there's something where this is a thing how many I mean you know the question then is is how many men died during the Salem Witch Trials well yeah but you could also go we were talking about this earlier you know and I don't want to make equivalencies but we were having these conversations you get a bunch of dudes who say hey go fight those guys over there right and run into those guns you know so I so you know it's human suffering all over the place you know and that's the the Buddhist thing of it right I guess I was saying more in relation to like um spiritual growth as a threat to the status quo yeah yeah yeah okay I get what you're saying do you know what I'm saying like it seems like women might be the ones who might be the drivers of some of that you know yeah and therefore the the squelching of those well that definitely goes down with I mean we we were having different conversation almost you were talking not about like suffering overall but the squelching down yeah the of women who want to engage in spirituality we're going to crush them we're going to crush them that's a thing for sure right that's a thing for sure that's and that's what I'm saying yeah that's absolutely a thing for sure that's what I'm saying and that's like kind of like you know again Tantra Quest guy like that's the point he's making too you try to be a woman you try to do that well you know there's going to be forces that are kind of going to try to smush you down which I guess makes this tradition really interesting because it is female voices then I there's a at least four stories there women doing extraordinary things out of 80 that's subpar but it's actually a little bit misleading because there are a lot of female characters who appear in the lives of these male figures so but yeah at least there's something you know and uh yeah yeah yeah yeah and it's really interesting like I can kind of just quote it real quick because I got I knew there was a passage in here relevant to this I'm I'm using Daniel od's Book tantri quest and he gets his initiation from his teacher Debbie this female tantrica and she says to him like kind of like it's like one of the climactic points of the whole book right not the full sexual climax book that's a different part of the book but maybe in the in the glowing aftermath you know um but you know she says to him initiation so you enter in the spiritual path right your initiation also involves a rupture with the midst of the specific s in which you live establishing a profound and unconditional tie with all human beings there's your interdependent or nonpar leness that you were talking about even before earlier before we went on like Mike Daniel right you know feeling that connection with people but okay and with all this been previously seemed inanimate to you so almost the the Dost or shamanistic or Buddhist feeling of like all the world is now alive somehow and I'm connected to it right and then um initiation releases you from taboos and social dietary and sexual prohibitions and more importantly the prohibitions linked to ideas and thoughts I thought that was really well said too you know it's not just like how you're looking at the world around you but the things that are actually in your mind that you have to release right or get released you cut the head off well done Daniel thank you yeah um and it says it's a Liberation with regard to Dogma because we all know religions were the were the first corporations to to to belief to doubt it's Liberation regarded to Dogma to belief to doubt and to Theory the Tantra plunges themselves into reality with the whole body mind they don't skim they experiment I like that part too right um they live the teaching and by living they continue the flow of Tantra that's the meaning of the word Tantra continuation continuation of the tantric experience through the tantrica a chain of women and men who risk the real and are no longer subject to the compromises social beings submit to there's the patriarchy question right so anyways cool yeah so I just wanted to get to like that part of patriarchy too that part that like kind of applies to everyone right you know and like again not to deny the parts that are as you were so sagely pointing out you're a Salem witch guess again we got a solution for you yeah we got an let's see if you float right there's our solution for you right um but the thing that like kind of like bounds all kinds of people together all kinds of people and holds them down you know and the theme seems to be there so anyways I thought I would share the tales yeah of our mahamudra ladies and I was really struck by oh yeah it's the same story for these ladies too yeah so some point or another they're they're going to have to pop out and then you know they do and then they're the heroins of the stories right so little g&t story time for us a little Joseph Campbell flashback but uh yeah okay cool stuff to think about for sure yeah for sure well you know these things go where they go so you know that's how it yeah yeah yeah awesome well Eric as always thank you much my friend thank you to our audience for tuning in uh like comment subscribe you know share our work do our do your thing you know we we're sponsored by ourselves and so uh you know we appreciate the love hit us up Jin and Tantra gmail.com uh the Jin and Tantra podcast or you know leave us a comment in the YouTube section we will uh we'll get back to you uh at our earliest convenience which is you know sometime soon and sometimes not but we will for sure uh we appreciate everybody tuning in and uh you know the the engagement uh with with this in your own life uh so you know at any time you have any like questions or comments or something like this that strikes you funny or fancy uh you know please uh please reach out we we're always we're legitimately interested in the in the kind of communal piece to this uh because you know we're presenting these ideas but as we present them we're we're learning them and engaging with them and ourselves and it's nice to hear uh how other people are learning from this in their own life or other things or or resources that they might have um and or things you might want us to cover in general so you know uh we're always looking to grow so uh you know hit us up and uh yeah we'll take you all from uh from there so for Eric this is Daniel we'll catch you guys in the next one peace