[Music] and hey fell and tears those of us like our spirituality with a Twist so for this episode we were doing things on Cara mudra but one of the things we've you know we're interested in doing is if we get a question from a listener that seems really interesting we want to like reply and sometimes do episodes around things that people point out it's kind of an ongoing plan so uh we happen to have a good one and we thought we would take a little time within our Karma mudra series to talk about uh this particular question so I know do you want to do the question Daniel you want me to try to walk through it um you can walk through it you can walk through it okay I mean I tried to give it a good read and you can tell me if if you think there's parts that should be added in as I read the email from The Listener who said hey if you could answer this or maybe chat about a little bit during an episode yeah yeah um he kind of like to me it's kind of read in a couple of parts one part was kind of like him asking what about words like pleasure ecstasy Bliss what are those about and are those the same thing or are there you know differences between them so maybe there's something to say about that and I tried to do a little you know project of just seeing if I could frame some of the semantics around that and we'll do the best we can of doing what we can with it in true gin and chantra style and then the other one I got was sort of his idea of like well so if there is bliss what is the role of that what does that mean is that like a byproduct of spiritual practice or is it something that you use as a tool or kind of where does it fit so I guess the big question is about these ideas of pleasure Bliss and then he's yeah well but he also he also asked like specifically he's like are they a key to Enlightenment or are they a path towards it or are they a secondary a secondary yeah I think I was trying to say that in different words or something right that same idea right yeah yeah like where does it fit in is it a tool is it a uh you know trinsic part of the path right what was the third one you said is it is it a by product or is it is it essential is that the idea is is it a master key is it is it is it on the path or is it a nice secondary effect of uh as he put it walking the way towards Enlightenment which is a you know very eloquent way of stating it yeah that's very nice um okay so we'll take a tomble at it um yeah I'll go through I tried to do a little bit on the semantics of this because you know we have these kind of Trio of words out there pleasure ecstasy and Bliss and I thought well maybe one of the things to do is just kind of look at like the kinds of words that are used sort of in the sources for these kind of things that we're trying to present you know so maybe to go back and look a little bit at the language and you know yeah my home base is going to be more in like the Tibetan Buddhist world but a lot of these words are kind of out there and it's good to have a sense of sort of what they are and what they might mean overall so I'll throw it out to you you can tell me what you think as you go yeah but the one that popped out to me that you might have more to say initially even than I do would be the sort of sat [...] Ananda idea right which is you know that kind of Trio of words so I was like okay well what would be one of the words that would be pleasure Bliss or ecstasy and I thought of Ananda right and that word Ananda shows up as Bliss but in these sort of Trio of words they're not used as much in like the Tibetan Buddhist tantric context but of course they're big words in Indian culture right yeah especially relating back to Brahma so um sat has more this idea again I'll be curious what you say about this too Daniel but I think of that as sort of like being in the existential sense you know reality and being and truth right but being maybe in the philosophical sense like the ground of reality or something is more sat and then [...] being more like the meaning of of Consciousness yeah and then aanda having more of that meaning of like Bliss or ecstasy or something like that right and then these get kind of tied into I guess the most profound experience of the Divine you might say if you're talking about like Brahma it would be the direct experience of Brahma or something where from a certain point of view you feel now it's interesting because sat is sort of like just being in reality itself kind of with the idea that everything is kind of Brahma or something at least that's the way I think about it or everything is like Divine energy yeah that I think yeah Divine energy yeah really Vibes well with how I would think of you know Buddhist Tantra things and stuff like that I think that's maybe you wouldn't personify that you would maybe call that a Divinity like a Brahma or something but um you know I certainly can relate to that idea and then you know chit being sort of like the experience of your own Consciousness and your own awareness of this right yeah n being sort of the the Bliss of experiencing this ground of being and the ground of who you are kind of uniting together or something um you you do you [...] with that way of talking about it yeah I'm [...] with that yeah yeah yeah yes it's like the the exper you know so sat if we're going to do if we're going to just take a little detour here and do satand SAT is like the experience of your authentic self so the yeah I heard it that way too which is interesting I haven't always heard it that way but I like that just yeah I like it I'm going to use the Tibetan um word for yogan which is Nour which we've talked about on here before and Nour uh the the one of the definitions that I like for it now maybe this is incorrect if it is I don't care I like it I'm using it anyways it's one who establishes and maintains the authentic state of mind so this is like a practitioner of some something that is able to not only um generate or establish this kind of uh clear mind right but then they're also able to maintain it and this is the practice so the practice is the building and the maintaining of so this is the kind of like s part is that you are in this sort of space of of who you are right this kind of um I don't know how to say it like no ID you know your your identification is is sort of lacking specific for those for those moments you know and then the chit is the Mind obviously but but it's the conscious part of your mind that is like seeing reality around you not just for the mundane uh accumulation of bouncy balls right but as the the kind of you know potential field of possibility that is like you said that is that is Brahma that is divine energy that is the potentiality before it becomes something more gross right you're able to see you're able to be in that kind of a field you know um and then andand yeah like this is the the experience of all of this simultan like the the the that part is the is the first two combined together so as you in the act of you doing that you're experiencing it's a blissful state for you to be in and we have we know we haven't talked about it and I don't think we should go too deep into it now cuz it will take us down another 12 minute rabbit hole but you know it's kind of like the three bodies in uh in the Buddhist you know I guess you could see it within that way dharmakaya Soka Kaya and monakaya for people who've listened to previous episodes of us blah blah blah and about that yeah yeah yeah yeah so a little bit a little bit in this way you know because you're talking about pleasure you're talking about reality and you're talking about Consciousness and whatnot so so when you know like when the listener brought up a I was like oh yeah yeah then so that's a thing to bring up this sitot Ananda I hadn't heard the SAT part being talked about the authentic self or maybe You' say Atman or something with that you know want to be that way yeah you know I've somehow got that more emphasized in my mind and I claim know that again I'm more coming from the Tibetan Buddhist World Language this would be used but I still find it fascinating right yeah so I've more thought of it as like Brama itself or like being itself just as a little sidebar point you know one of the things I did read with this sort of his the core is um and I'm just gonna throw his name out for people who might be interested in like a cool read so there's a guy named David Bentley Hart he's actually an orthodox Greek practitioner but he's not from like Greek descent and uh he seemed to have converted over into this Orthodoxy for maybe being like Presbyterian or something but the back story for me was he wrote this book called the experience of God and he's a real smartass writer so I enjoy that kind of thing and he was particular Daniel like targeting like the new atheists back in the day like the people that were that kind of explosion of new atheist kind of they were smartasses too so they deserved a smartass reply so this would be like the Christopher Hitchens and the Richard Dawkins of the world was people Dawkins and there was this really aggressive form of atheism which always annoyed me yeah because it was so smart assy and it was so dismissive of everything else I didn't care for it that much personals I understand that they were fighting against or Orthodoxy in some ways and I guess I can appreciate that but in any case you know I was in France I was in Paris and then the first arism mon they had like an englishspeaking bookstore like maybe it's the Shakespeare book company or something and I stumbled across this book in Paris and like kind of like one of those things where I kind of jumped off the shelf you the experience of God what the hell is this and the subtitle on it was sit chot aanda so I think I was really influencing in somewhat the way he was talking about that too so people want to read there's a read that's kind of good and he's a genuine smartass sure you can kind of do a little bit of YouTube searching on him and he's definitely like he's funny right so I guess in that sense I always thought of thought it's sort of like being but I could also see you could talk about Atman or something like that sure sure and what like you see like yourself is like aspect of Brama or something is that a right way to put that you think or Co equivalent or something uh yeah that I could I don't that I'm not sure I mean you know again I'm I'm using the Tibetan correlate of like one who is who is establishing their own authentic state so whatever you're doing in order to get that is going to be dependent upon your particular practice so like if you are you know finding yourself you know I'm just think I'm just thinking of an audience member who is not in you know into the kind of Tibetan thing you know like if you're finding yourself in a state of prayer or connecting yeah we'll just say prayer because all religious um practices have prayer in them so if you're in a very kind of connected State uh during prayer that you know your sense of self is dissolved in the act of devotion that like you can move Beyond limitations that you might have upon yourself you know what I'm saying and you feel like this connection with a the larger sense of divinity all around you the the pervasive sense of divinity so that you can like how do you say like uh transcend the you know your own beingness in itself you merge with all all all of reality essentially a larger you even if a sense of a physical expansiveness if we're going to go that route um that then that that becomes that you can use that as a thing so then how do you see yourself I don't know because those people are not they're not visualizing that I'm aware of anything there you're in a state of prayer but if you can totally get to that these kinds of places I believe in prayer if you are if you're regularly practicing and conscious of your breath and and you know whatever I mean the thing that speaks to me and what get to the an a part of it too right because that's the you know in the question but yeah I like kind of feel like on the one hand if you say authentic self you're getting to something you know uh like a Buddha nature idea or something like that inside of yourself right if you start talking about all being you're kind of talking about not you but you're kind of talking about like the whole shebang right yeah and then maybe feeling that connection between all of this stuff so I think there's something to be said about do you feel this to be your authentic self if we bundle that through where I'm going to try to take this in the future then you're feeling your own Buddha nature or something own being if you're talking about like being overall in the big sense and this David Bentley Hart makes a big deal about this you know okay what is everything around you well it's Divinity so then you're getting to something that isn't just like the core of who you are but like kind of the Hidden reality of everything is kind of like that and I think you know then when you get to the Anand part like to realize that is kind of blissful right so that's a certain kind of bliss that has a certain function or something I guess that's an experience I so we'll kind of try to build on this to try to get to the answer for the question but that's kind of like uh like an end reg goal state or something right yeah well and like and like intricately intricately unlocked in the experience you wouldn't just say sat [...] and you would you wouldn't leave the Ananda out because without the Ananda that's not the complete experience right part of the experience intrinsically is a kind of Ananda a bliss feeling so I I don't have your notes in front of me but you know we'll see how we'll see so we're you know we're recording live and and sometimes we we we share notes and other times we don't because it's it's fun not to but I'm just I'm wondering if you have this written down or if you've thought about it is the experience of of bliss and this is part of the question is it in is it inherent in the experience of merging with the infinite or and I don't mean to put it in a binary way or on the other side but but on the other side of the coin is there the faith that being in that state is blissful do you understand what I'm saying being in that state of being united with all of the stuff is blissful yeah so is that inherent is that is that an an inherent quality of that state right so once you're so in that state it's Blissful or on the other or on the other side do you do you have to be Blissful in order to get into that state I think I think I do have this [...] in the notes I figured you did I figured you did because and I tried to look at it from both angles you know the trippy part and maybe a nice synchronicity with this listener's question is like this was the kind of stuff I was dealing with in My Last Retreat oh okay when I head over the break I was wondering about these exact things so okay we'll do a we'll do a slow hand here we'll do a slow build yeah well to it but like yeah I think that's both there's something to both of those things right and Eric I know like so by the time that this episode gets published it's probably GNA be right I in fact I'll make sure that I publish it right before the election okay you know what I'm saying so we are not doing this in in a bubble right this again we say numerous times it's not a political podcast we say that Eric because both Eric and I are definitely like to keep up uh with all the happenings because it's it's like you know I don't know it's a weird not not healthy Obsession not Obsession but like interest I guess I probably better way of putting put it you know um but we we don't operate in a vacuum we're both um you know we have our own beliefs we have a lot of things that we believe together but what I'm I'm saying all this so that like people who are listening and people probably know us by now but I just want to acknowledge that like we are people in this world we are people of this world we are people for this world you know what I'm saying and so as we're talking about these things we're also practicing these things we're also trying to teach these things or about better yet share these things and you cannot we cannot remove ourselves from our surroundings you know in in this way and so even though there's kind of Madness kind of happening all around us you know from all the things that are happening all over the world simultaneously right now right and what's going on in here the divisiveness all the election season and all that other [...] you know this is still people's responsibility anyways I believe you know if to pursue this kind of spirituality yes yeah okay yeah I'm down with that yeah and so the the driving Factor you know and one of the answers to the question is this here you cannot I don't believe there are very few people and Eric's a very disciplined person I'm a very disciplined person discipline alone cannot get you over the hump it just cannot but if you find something that's worth repeating maybe something that's pleasurable then maybe that can get you closer or at least you can hump a little bit more you know what I'm saying so yeah hump to get over the hump it's a pun that's right that's right yeah um yeah yeah I hear what you're saying I mean you wanted to acknowledge the fact that okay we're sitting here talking about Bliss and talking about these things and there's a lot of chaos going on in the world but that doesn't that isn't in the context of being blind to those things it just corre this is what happens and like correct probably we haven't done a thing on E the great Japanese poent Gen Master Zen master specifically but you know some of his poems you know there's a lot of funky [...] going on in Japan when he's writing and he has poems where like shit's going bad but he still has to keep on keeping on yeah in this thing so yeah I get what you mean we're not being blind to those things especially if you're sitting talking about Bliss at a time when there's so much funky [...] going on you don't want to be like you're you know being indifferent to that or something I no yeah no we're not think that's it no it's not being indifferent it's maybe with the hope that spiritual practice transforms us as individuals and maybe also trickles out starts to make a little bit better stuff in the world I mean you keep your fingers crossed on it that's the Hope bod a way of life or something yeah yeah I mean we got to let the people who are doing what they're doing do it you know on some level yeah okay so I think part of the thing was just looking at this word Ananda right and trying to see what they say about that so that's one of the words you get if that helps The Listener out you know that's one of the words that they use for Bliss and then it it is part of this famous Trio right which gets described as this very ultimate Bliss that I think is intrinsically entwined with like experiencing the natural reality yeah and I'll make the argument I think from when we get to like sort of the Tibetan stuff too that I think that is the case that the experience of reality has a bliss to it kind of at the core yeah so then it would be necessary to experience that somehow right so that's kind of maybe that part the other word that pops up a lot is Suka you know so I've looked up that one too just to see because it struck me as like The Listener was saying hey there's these different kinds of words and I thought well let's Trace these back to some of the source language things right so Suka is one of the other big words and um it means things like happiness pleasure Joy what's kind of interesting about this and I don't know this is a little embarrassing but it never clicked for me before but it's kind of the opposite of Dua it is the opposite du yeah so I don't know if that ever really fully resonated with me in that way I must have heard it before but it I don't know it is the opposite of Dua yeah the unsatisfactory the dooka part and then the Suka part right yeah they talk about this since like many like a yoga teacher trainings which is how I'm you know familiar with yeah yeah yeah I don't know if they always make a huge point in like the L room about that but and what I also like found interesting about it is it's kind of like literally translates as good or bad space so do Suka means like bad space and Suka means like good space so interesting in the semantics of it right so the and so this is not necessarily my way of thinking about this but I thought I would just share if this speaks to The Listener at all because I think he was asking are there like stages or levels of this and that seemed to be kind of an important part of his question too like are these the same thing or these things with different levels or something like that you mean in terms of like pleasure ecstasy Bliss yeah like are these words mean the same thing are there are there like are there differen between them are there kind of levels so I thought maybe we'd talk about that a little bit sure right so I just did a little bit of words for happiness in Sanskrit just to see what they say about this right and they said Suka they kind of put a little bit lower so they kind of talked about that being sort of more like a fleeting pleasure experience it's not gonna be quite the same when we get to the Tibetan Tantra stuff it's a little bit different so that was interesting for me um and then they use a word called santosha I guess which mean something like more of a contentment thing contentment exactly and then they had one that was mudita which is kind of a little bit more has the connotation of a spiritual happiness which I'm very interested in that concept as we go along even though I might not use this exact language so does that word speak to you is that something you hear a lot and that's not something I hear a lot no I mean I've heard it before but it's not something that I I like if I'm teaching class or anything like that so I just thought it was interesting because there is kind of a staging this of this and that was something that the listener was kind of talking about so you do get that idea yeah even though it may not be exactly the way I think about it I just wanted to present it to folks so you can decide for yourself yeah yeah yeah they framed it in this particular kind of like step step by step sort of pleasure ecstasy Bliss like can you know are they is that is it a you know I mean they were asking is this a a stepbystep thing or not and so we we you know we took the question as the we framed the question in the way that they presented it right yeah yeah so that's why're that's why we're doing it this way it's not that this is the way it's just the way that they presented the question and if I'm looking at it I think like let's you know because we're in our sexual series now right with the karma mudra we did karma sutra before a little bit um pleasure is something that is akin to like um foreplay I guess we could say or you want to do it like in the uh in the kind of the levels of intensity of feeling yeah yes okay um and then ecstasy obviously is the for me anyways it's the it's not just the peak orgasm it's the moments before you know like it's not just play of course pleasure is is the base is the base of all of it right um and then ecstasy is kind of like the state that is the kind of like apex of the of the of the peak if you will right it's not just the tip of the peak it's the the top you know if we're using a a bell-shaped curve right you know it's like the the top round the top part of the Bell right and then but then it's not a curve actually it doesn't because it doesn't come down Bliss at least in my perspective levels off just below kind of like an ecstatic State and it's stable so it no longer has these kind of like ripples if you will and doesn't have these Peaks and troughs but it's very it's a very high kind of place and Bliss comes from change again my interpretation of it uh that that those things build on each other that you you have to have pleasure regularly in order to Prime you for ecstatic experience experiences for Peak experiences of any going to like ecstasy is this exploding Peak experience thing yes but you have to Prime yourself to this you know you have to read you have to prepare the ground right which is which is ground path result right in a sense and so the path is is the kind of like the path of ecstasy right and so as you but so the more that you get into those States the deeper that you can experience them the more sensual you become the more you sort of I don't want to say leave the mind but you access different pieces of it such that you can be in the in these states for longer periods and they are changing you they are changing your nervous system they're changing your I mean they're literally changing your oric field they're changing your electromagnetic field around you you know we could say physiologically why well your heart rate is changing your heart rate variability is changing your respiration is changing your blood pressure is changing the hormones that are getting released are changing and all those are having uh uh uh Cascade effect on your physiological body simultaneously you are an electromagnetic being so you are then changing your electromagnetic resonance right and then all those two then those things are going and working in tandom to create a different kind of experience for one who was practicing in this way so you so I don't use these words in this way so I'm cool with the words being used in that way I when I saw that Trio of words they didn't have a specific meaning to me like the way you're doing with it I think it's cool so the way you're framing it though is like the Bliss the thing that's sort of the part that gets more enduring and more transformative is that's how you're thinking of it okay yeah I'm cool with that um so okay so then this kind of blisses like maybe that's the Ananda because they do like a four-part thing they go okay well there's this Suka thing which in this case is pretty fleeting uh the santosha thing which is more of the contentment this mudita which is sort of a spiritual happiness and then finally the Bliss right each of these pointing to some different level of happiness or different level of bliss that's happening or something like that right what is the word in in Sanskrit for Bliss they give uh Ananda oh it's an oh Ananda is the word okay yeah yeah yeah yeah got it so I was like when I heard this the wier's question I was like well let me go back and see like how they use these words right and maybe that's you know um because you know as he acknowledges there's a translation thing happening here right totally yeah yeah and he does say that well there's translation stuff happening you know either from Sanskrit into whatever our languages that we're speaking right yeah so I was like well let me at least try to present some of the language around this right yeah yeah probably my home base for this is like more the Buddhist Tantra thing so I'll just kind of throw that out too just from the the language but as we talk through it it'll give a feeling for how these different words are used right mhm it's not a simple question right you could answer this in different ways yeah totally yeah so I'm like um when you get to the the Buddhist language you get I you hear less Ananda or whatever the reason is uh or not that's wrong you do hear aanda and you also hear this thing that they call mahuka so mahuka Maha is that word that's in Mahayana if you know people are familiar with this we talk about Mahayana Buddhism the great vehicle or something you know this word Mah Maha mudra Maha mudra the Great Seal right yeah so this idea of um Maha so you're talking about something like supreme or ultimate greater right so this is this notion of supreme Bliss and then in the just to get this from the point of view of like path maybe right in a lot of the Buddha Buddhist tantas there's this idea of how do you generate these int intense states of bliss either meditatively using sort of your own sexual feeling for yourself to generate these subjective meditative states without a partner which is still considered to be practice for when you're going to do this with a partner right part of the vajana so you learn how to generate these things in yourself so you can share that with another person right in the en in the energetic exchange with someone else or of course you can do this with a partner too right you're trying to like build this up and so it's really common to talk about like these four blisses right now they'll use mahuka for the big one but they do use Ananda sometimes for these stages this right and it depends on like how people decide to translate this for sure but these are words that are used in both the Sanskrit and then when they end up in tibetan right and so sometimes they'll talk about Joy or Bliss right and then they'll talk about Supreme Bliss so the joy they're using is aanda they're using that word right the same from the satand Ananda uh par paramanda uh paranda paramanda uh which is the Supreme Joy now I know these things more in English I don't look at these translations that often but you know they'll usually say Supreme for that and then they'll say special or extraordinary which is another anando word veram manand and then they do this really last thing which they call Innate and this is one of my favorite words in like all of this language which is called sahaja Nanda sahaja and that gets to the idea of bliss being kind of an innate property of reality which is part of that thing we were just talking about before right so okay so they have these ideas these four levels of bliss which gets to the idea like are these things kind of staged there's a way you can talk about that but in a lot of the tantas Buddhist tantas the ones I'm familiar with they do um this in terms of like activation of different energy centers yeah either a meditative thing or through a sexual practice with another person right so either you again you use your own sexual feeling and energy to generate this or you can do this with a partner and in a certain sense it's probably different structs for different folks or you know what works for you with this right but the haaja Tantra is really big on this and I think most people say this is the source of this one of the Buddhist tantas but it kind of ends up being in a lot of the a lot of the Tibetan tantric stuff and the you know the the sources back in India and things like that and so the basic idea of it is it has to do with how either with sexually inspired meditative activity or sexual activity itself the throat chakra gets activated as there's almost an imagination of a flow happening from sort of the crown chakra descending down to the throat chakra and as that energy or you know that that flow downwards hits the throat chakra there's a feeling of bliss right yeah yeah from that chakra going pop yeah right this is actually in Dr Nita's book too so we'll get to this stuff even more detail later on but sneak preview sneak sneak preview yeah actually Daniel and I will probably do a retreat on this you you you you took the you took the words we're planning on doing this so our first J and TOD transpired Retreat we're kind of got that in the this is happening and you know and I could I could speak from experience it's do it's it's doable you know even a even a lug like me because they have these nice feelings yeah yes so sure so there's sort of like a you know as the flow goes down and hits the throat chakra there's a bliss thing that happens right that they'll call Bliss when it hits the heart chakra they'll call that Supreme Bliss right so the flow you imagine it going downwards when it hits more uh you know kind of the chakra in the pelvis you know you'll get uh this extraordinary Bliss and then as it gets to you know male physiology assigned male at Birth sort of the tip of the penis the sh the energy kind of there you'll get this innate Joy sahaj aanda Ananda or you know if you're more in a female form or a signed female at Birth different interpretations on that either like kind of like the G-Spot area or maybe clitoral you know however you want to frame that right there's discussions of that and it's probably one of those things that you'll find that own special space inside yourself that's right or you think that works right your body you find it for yourself that's right take charge folks your body your choice take charge so uh but so there's this whole idea of this downward flow and if you get involved in doing these Buddhist tantas you'll do these things every day right you'll just kind of go through and either with a partner you know or even in your own meditative practice because it becomes kind of something you learn how to do within yourself right it's not just something with like sexual activity with another person awesome but also awesome to learn how to do it just within your own being I mean Eric I think realistically you should be able to do it on your own before you do it with a partner really I mean that would be the training that would be the training when you do it together you are doing you're both doing the same thing but with a partner now now with the partner yeah so so the whole idea is this kind of travels downwards in this kind of downward path and then you kind of have this upward return of this right yes so there's a downward version of these four states of pleasure a bliss or Ananda and then you kind of get to this upward thing and then it kind of does the reverse order when it hits this sort of more energy center chakra thing sort of more in the pelvis you get the Bliss thing the Ananda and then you get the one at the heart and that still becomes sort of the Supreme paramananda and then you get to the throat chakra baram manand and then you get the sahana when it hits the crown so I mean if that helps the person who's asking the question and we're all talking about this just for all of us learning this there is kind of a yogic path then using this bliss now this is the Bliss kind of being a tool right and sometimes you'll you'll get different language around this but that mahuka thing that Supreme Bliss is like the pop when it hits to that sort of innate feeling of Joy right or innate feeling of bliss and then this word sahaja is so interesting uh because it has this connotation of innate which means that when you're inducing this you're getting kind of an innate feeling of bliss that's innate to reality sat aate to the experience of the truth of things that's like the underlying thing of reality is that you mean that that is that at the like the at the end of the genitalia you mean I they sometimes put it there or sometimes they'll put the reverse when it hits the crown chakra but you know wherever you generate the version of this I think they're using the word innate to suggest or to like not even suggest just to say that this is the innate quality of reality when you hit it right so on the one hand it's kind of like a tool and we could talk about more the tool aspect of it sure but when you say sahaja you're saying like innate right yeah an innate Bliss yeah I like how you know uh Bobby T AKA Robert Thurman uh you know talks about people and it's been maybe he's not the only one I've heard it a little bit more now but I like to use this kind of language to to help to try and Empower people to feel like they can get their practice started that like the state of Enlightenment is your Birthright like it is it is absolutely inate it is so when I hear innate I hear innate as like natural this is one's authentic that there a connotation of that sometimes I use the word natural when they translate that into English that's true yeah like this is the natural state of being un when it's un un I guess unperturbed if you will you know unsullied with uh you know whatever attachment aversion ignorance all the you know all the kind of various poisons all the yuckies boo you know um and so yeah so anyways I have other thoughts but I'll let you I'll let you finish this yeah so I mean I mean as I was hearing you know the listener's question I was like oh okay so now we got these two words Ananda and Suka being used right and uh Anand could be used to describe these kind of four levels of bliss that happened in a kind of a yogic sense trying to generate these things totally right yeah and so that gives the idea that oh yeah there might be different levels of this but it's also kind of the the practitioner the student the yogi is being proactive trying to learn how to reduce these things in themselves right and then when you get to the idea of a Nate they're saying that you're trying to get something that approximates what reality is right yeah because there's an innate level of bliss to just being itself right Bobby T might something like might say something like you're living in this great sea of bliss we just don't recognize it or something like that yes yes because it's innate right yeah thereby so that that you know kind of brings me back to the my previous idea of tuning yourself into that right so like so the listener's question was like is this a key to the path is this a part of the path or is it a byproduct of the path and I think the answer is yes to all of them yes the answer is yes to all of them yeah that seems true to me too yeah re and and you know and we've touched on it but not maybe not in a succinct fashion but in a succinct kind of fashion yes to all of them because it's required so it's required to bring you back to practice such that you want to do something that feels good so you will show back up for you will show show back up doesn't matter the most disciplined person you know few and far in between but there's some people who are very very disciplined and can take themselves very high levels of of athleticism very high levels of AC Academia or artistic creativity or whatever base solely on discipline solely on discipline of course there's some Divine influence I I know this but like I'm going to just say discipline but for this particular conversation and what we're talking about as we are we have been in the kind of throws of the Tantra part of JY and Tantra that this is the path of bliss that's that's what this specific thing is and so you know in in using pleasure as a means to as a means to get you into the path yes it's it's required as a as kind of a a key to the path again goes back to the Ecstasy uh discussion from a little bit ago those Peak experiences expand your capacity for I believe they expand your capacity for comprehension they expand the potentiality that you have to embody deeper and deeper States further and further breaking the the chains of conditioning if you will right conditioning from society conditioning from Humanity really the the conditioning not just from our external surroundings but of our internal surroundings I.E our own limiting kind of beliefs on what a being is or is not right and on The Duality of being right this essentially the separation between beings themselves and between from being to environment you know and then as a byproduct of the Enlightenment State as a byproduct of the Bliss state in that it Alters the way in which that you see things because of your previous experiences right the ones that we were just passing up along the path and so your interpretation your understanding and more importantly your application of your experiences change and shape the way in which that you now teach change in uh the the shape in which you interact with other people and more importantly change the way in which you interact with yourself which then gets expressed to the rest of the world in your artistic creative way of living right you shape your reality to view more of it how you perceive it to be and therefore you surround yourself with different kind of things um different paintings different people different kinds of music different settings and things like this it changes it changes you so this is my these are my thoughts it kind of goes back to what you're talking about before though because as you're doing this you're kind of rewriting your inner being right now you can frame that in terms of like the physical nervous system which you were doing right different hormones different ways that the brain is going to rewire itself under the influence of these experiences and so on and you can also frame this in terms of like the subtle nervous system of you know the yogis right the chakras and the channels and these all more subtle things they start to like reframe and rewrite themselves totally and so that gets to the listener's point too you're trying to learn how to do that so you're using these Bliss experiences that you're trying to generate using the tools of the nervous system right yeah these subtle channels that are going to get activated as this flow happens up the central channel right and you're having those Bliss experiences but they're also rewriting how you experience yourself right and then I mean then you I think what you're also saying if I hear you right is you're getting the psychological benefits of that in a way right I'm gonna feel more authentically me yes feel and that's kind of like we go back to our psychology that's kind of our kyl Rogers thing I'll feel more authentically the the best version of me somehow and that's a good feeling yeah right as my own individual psychological nature feels good about who I am right I'll also feel maybe creative and inspired and that kind of reminds me of the willhelm Reich stuff right because I get myself more straight I'll feel again those feeling I can love more I can create more I want to do more things I feel like I want to be a proactive force in the world right in a good way and the argument is like that's core to who we are that's an eight this is an eight yeah yes when you really hit the ground of who people are they're much more like that rather than how sometimes we appear to be to one another right but then you know if you get to the car Yung event all of a sudden you have expansiveness of Consciousness and you can perceive more right yes within yourself and in the world around you so anyways you can kind of frame this in different ways it's all for the good yeah right and that you know but the tool is the Bliss thing and you I've said it in different episodes but when I was going to do Zen I mean that's kind of badass right Zen's tough Zen you're doing like a trial thing but I realized as I was doing that there were a lot of bliss States in there and I had the thought that you were talking about like well on the one hand I had the thought maybe my inner tantrica speaking out as I was doing the end practices like now this Bliss is inherent to reality inherent inherent to who I am inside myself both of those things are true right my authentic self is bliss and reality around me is bliss so [...] it I should be working on that yeah you know and that was both a tool to keep going right o my phone is doing something that's my mommy um and then uh and then um on the other hand the feeling of uh you know that's the that's the ground state yeah and sometimes in the tantas and vajra Yana Buddhist Tantra they'll they'll say it's the path of bringing the result into the path yes yes yes try to bring the Bliss the resultant State into the path and then they fold into one another right kind of collapsing the story in a way I'm like bringing the end result I'm already meditating that during the path stage right and try to use the tools to get to that all right cool I guess I'll do we probably cover it but I I'll kind of share my little bit experience over the break and there's other stuff to add into this you know when I was doing my little Retreat so I was working on kind of two tantas specifically one called the guya garbar the secret Essence and the other called the guya samaja the secret assembly so those were the ones I was studying that wasn't the main practice I was doing but they're sort of like the teaching tantas right yeah they fit into the meditations I was doing and the one thing that hit me in the reader question was in the listener's question was that the nature like the guya Garba Tantra the secret Essence talks about experiencing kind of that ground of being again kind of that sit shot Ananda thing and it basically says the ground of being is Purity or the ground of being is the Mandela or the ground of being is in this case Bliss right so you know part of that is you use the different states of bliss to sort of approximate that experience of hitting that ultimate state that Ananda or that mahasa thing or that sahaja thing right the sahaja thing yeah the sahaja Ananda thing where you use that as like a tool to keep kind of approximating yourself towards that and I think the the Buddhist tantas do a pretty good job of like trying to describe that you know you may not hit that state immediately or something but as you get more into this ability to I think you were saying tolerate stronger states of bliss within the nervous system of who you are tolerate more expansive States Of Consciousness you're getting closer and closer to that thing there's probably more to say about that but you know you know in that Contra and in the commentary I was reading about that they make that point the Bliss then become sort of a tool for this right approximating approximating what this touchdown feeling will feel at the end or goal if you happen to be more in a soccer country no well we're not the listener might be I don't know so whatever it is you know but I like that that seems very true to me this idea that you're approximating and approximating this feeling you get closer to it as you go I think that's always made a certain sense to me you know and the closer you get that's the feeling of what do you want to call it the ground of being sahaja Brahma God Allah Adonai the light of the Endless the da that always seem truth to me right so in that sense it's kind of a goal but then a tool along the way and then in the other one I was working on you got more on that Daniel I don't know I was kind of let me leave space I'm just saying like all after after some more part to add but yeah all all of these practices that are moving you towards a state of of of bliss right so you know pleasure ecstasy Bliss the way that we framed it earlier but that are moving you towards Ward the the state of bliss which is you know maybe I can maybe say it a little bit differently a little bit more expansively in the state of positive change you know a state of of being in continual positive change is done and you know because I know our time is wrapping here a little bit is done in order not in order but in part because of the place that we are doing it in is one of great suffering so we began this conversation or at least I brought this into it I don't know if I could say we began it but I brought this up to say that we are doing this during a period of of great tumult and that is not to say that again we are exclusionary in our views of this it is to say that we are intentionally inclusionary I don't know if that's a word but it is now of this practice in that period so essentially you know there's a there's a book by um the guy who wrote Jonathan Livingston Seagull is uh oh yeah yeah yeah maybe maybe bach johathan bach Oran Bach yeah I think that's right yeah um and I forgot is the the oh The Reluctant Messiah short read good read um but in it there's just like some random quotes and essentially what you're doing doing is in my mind is this in the in that book there's a quote that says what the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly and so there still is other caterpillars while butterflies exist and so in this practice in this on this trajectory which takes multiple lifetimes there are plenty of other caterpillars that exist even as you're in the process of becoming this said butterfly and then hopefully creating a butterfly effect but a positive one not a tornado in Kansas when a butterfly flaps his wings in Thailand you know what I'm saying and that you're doing this in the midst of the suffering that you're surrounded in in the in the middle of this kind of like yuck Fest uh if I could use that language um you know you know you're you're you're changing yourself in the middle of all this disc Comfort because that's the only place that you can do it on a on a consistent basis of course you have opportunities in the Bardo and stuff like this in the you know the moments before death or whatever but this is where this is the substrate that we have to operate within and so we're not operating in a place of ignorance to say oh everything is perfect no it's not but life is is this a point that you made to me Eric a long time ago actually a couple years ago when talking about some regular life stuff you were like life is coming it doesn't matter what you're doing life is coming anyways so you you're either going to be prepared for it or you're not so the choice is is I mean at least for you and I and for probably our listeners is obvious the choice is obvious it's it's do it it's it's we're doing it yeah I made this deal with myself back in the day when I first started doing this in my 20s which was like okay I'm not going to resign from the world I don't know if you even can because even if you run off to some monastery still going to have to deal with the people in the monastery or the nunery and maybe they're jerks and you know like there's no way around it kind of on some level right you're going to exists within this reality so I thought okay well I'm going to have to like take care of business in the reality whatever that means in terms of our own individual lives and that I might have something I got probably another 15 minutes maybe to do this because there's a couple more things left to say sure but I knew that was going to be a thing but I thought I can't I can't get off of this this particular thing either I gotta stay on this course I can't lose that you know and you know maybe that's something we all can figure out how to handle and and like how we'll try to do that and I've been pretty consistent with it over the years but I thought okay if I have to deal with the things of the world I got to but I'm not losing like my trajectory of this spiritual practice I'm not going to do that and that's the deal I made with myself you know you know that you negotiate with yourself I'm gonna keep myself honest with this Eric keep yourself honest on this point which I've tried to do you know so anyways yeah yeah yeah I never thought we'd bring up Jonathan Livingston Seagull my dad used to listen there's a Neil Diamond album which I'm sure Daniel has never heard in his life that's just the Jonathan Livingston Ste seagull like the album oh wow where the guy does the you know Neil Diamond does the the whole story I guess I don't even know what the story of that thing is but like there's all these kind of Neil Diamond songs oh I didn't even know that my dad would belt out in the car I am my son to no one there all right whatever yeah H my daddy so um okay the other big one was guya samja right so the one is talking more about sort of the innate Bliss nature of things guya samaja uses Bliss in a maybe a different way or some of the Dal Lama School tantas talk a little bit more like this right and then the Dal Lama school this secret assembly Tantra the guya samaja is one of their main ones that they think kind of capture the heart of what Tantra is about you know different ways of thinking about that but that's the one one that's the big one in the Dal Lama school and the idea there is that the the Bliss becomes part of a process that Taps you into your own deepest self so they talk about it in that way that the nature your own deepest nature whether you call that Buddha nature or your original Shen or whatever you want to call it right that core of who you are is pure light Bliss emptiness right it's kind of core of who you are and um the Daniel above Daniel the Eric above D Eric The Listener above listener or something the core of who we are is that so the this becomes a tool to realize that they also talk about it in kind of again in an energetic way and how it like Works through the subtle energetic anatomy of the body these chakras and channels that eventually the Bliss state allows things to dissolve but all those energies to dissolve back into the heart channel is usually how this is talked about that heart channel can pop open and when that heart Channel pops open it's a liberative libert liberative experience liberative liberative liberative yes liberative experience to the deepest part of who you are yes so they try to do it that way too if that helps The Listener out or anyone who might be interested in this right it kind of tries to do that and then then there's this moment of recognition that happens where you go wait a minute this is my deepest nature holy [...] this is the deepest nature of everything too yeah and then the two things collapse together and sometimes they'll call that like water pouring into water right the two what feels like the inside pours into the outside and vice versa there's a collapse of that and there's this feeling everything is kind of bliss you know which I know is really hard when things are [...] up right it's hard to feel that feeling you know you look at the world and you're like what am I seeing being here I remember Bob Thurman talking about this back in the day like lectures he did during the Iraq War you know around the 911 times things like well how can I feel this as Bliss bombs are falling you know on these you know mostly you know innocent people you know that're just stuck in the way of these things you know and and uh uh all these things are happening that are so off you know how can I how can I feel Bliss when you know Dick Cheney's in the White House directing all these terrible you know niacon political things right that are so destructive in the world or however you want to frame those questions right for yourself and like I think we all Wrestle with that but it's something I guess that's underneath that or something I think that's where the being part for me of the SAT Chanda part comes in it's a being aspect you know it's the ground of reality even if other things look [...] up you know the being of things at the core has this Blissful quality but I don't think that's easy and I'm glad you brought that point up I think that's a wrestling match right be like how do I feel Bliss when there's so many things that are screwed up you know why would I say this is bliss and relatively speaking it doesn't seem that way that's true I don't think there's any way to deny that right but it's more something that's like at the core of reality or something or like the ground of reality or whatever phrase speaks to you you're trying to tap into that feeling right right even though things relatively speaking might be very very ugly you know and injust and uh and violent and you know humiliating and disrespectful or whatever Litany of atives you want to put on there you know violent destructive yeah um well that seems like it's a closer okay you want to leave it okay then maybe we have one other little mini followup we'll talk about one other thing which I think I wanted to just when The Listener was asking the question I thought okay so how do you think about pleasure everyday pleasures and how do that fit into the path but to be continued yeah right because I think it's another part of the answer to the question leads to my mind yeah okay I'm glad you brought that thing up though about it's hard you know to like see it that way right yeah you know especially in times like now when things seem so chaotic and yeah there's so much wrong right can be painful right and it's almost a risk I guess it could even seem offensive or something how can you tell me this is bliss that's [...] rude you know oh yeah you know like you could feel all kinds of range of feelings like that I know people who do like I'm I'm thinking as we're talking of people know totally care a lot about the world care a lot about the injustices of the world yeah yeah no it's a it's a it's a righteous feeling honestly yeah but it's again I think from this point of view it's something more about not the [...] that people are doing you know but something more at the ground of being you know that it's at the core of reality you know yes yep yep yeah yes yes that's the promise of the spirituality I suppose and then you can share it and hopefully we can all find it at some point we won't have to like we'll have less of this right and ultimately none that's the hope that's the spiritual hope hope well Eric as always thank you so much uh for for doing this thank you to our listener who shall remain nameless but knows exactly who they are and where they're from um for for bringing this to us this this is a really great discussion um it definitely helped me personally clarify some of my own thoughts so uh I'm we're grateful uh to them for writing this email uh and for other people if you have a question that we you know we we we we look at everything that we get um but you know we we'll we'll address it specifically like this so you know please feel free um leave a comment or a you know question in the in the you know comment section of the YouTube videos or or hit us up at ginand Tantra gmail.com or on the Instagram the Jin and Tantra podcast uh we are you know we are listening and observing uh you know like comment subscribe share our work you know this is a labor of love we are sponsored by ourselves so you know the more love that you give the more that we receive and we give it back to you and it's just an endless cycle of uh you know goodness and and wholesome good stuff anyways for ER Tandra that's right that's right of pleasure it's a it's a wheel of pleasure yeah uh one that I hope to stay on as long as possible so um for Eric this is Daniel we got we'll catch you guys in the next one peace [Music]