foreign spirituality with a Twist so we're uh back kind of revisiting a final episode on the subject we had talked about kind of we like to do our little Series so we had done this series just on the whole what exactly is Enlightenment anyways we took this kind of Buddhist attitude and we looked at a lot of kind of what I thought were really deep important kind of Buddhist takes on this question and we had gotten to the point where we were talking about the Dalai Lama a little bit but kind of the hallway they talk about uh uh enlightenments sort of from that perspective from that school of thought from that Tibetan vantage point and um I wanted to say a couple less things about it and Daniel was nice enough to agree so we go back a little bit and like maybe talk a little bit about this this sense of this um the big thing for me with at first Daniel was just something like maybe we'll just say a little bit this idea of meditating on the enlightened form I think the thing that really kind of blew my head open from the Dalai Lama directly was when he was talking about what meditation is he was talking about meditation is like you're meditating on what enlightenment is in a certain sense you're kind of like practicing it or rehearsing it in your mind um becoming acquainted acquainted with it or something teaching your mind and then you know maybe even the more Transcendent parts of you we like to use the word Shen nice Chinese medical word spirit kind of teaching those parts of you like what it is you're kind of helping yourself do that and so I think that was one of the big for me with Justice hearing him say that made me think even differently of what I even thought meditation meant and what I thought what I thought I was trying to do anyways I'll throw it back to you yeah Zen uh the that author that you know we've read a couple books on uh Brad Warner you know it was a Zen Buddhist he he talks about that too you know that his teacher told him that like the Zen form of meditation and maybe all forms of meditation I can't I don't want to be so inclusive but you know something like this is a pra is is practicing in that enlightened State it's a dress rehearsal yeah so you're not answering his teacher actually say that that's interesting yeah he says you're not aiming anywhere you are being it you're not maybe you're not quote unquote enlightened in that moment but you are be but you are that's that's the that's the takeaway you're that's it this is that's that is Enlightenment is is in that is in the practice is in repeating it and having it be step like in the shamanic practice you might have um some help or spirit that you're acquainted with okay and in that realm what will occur is that you will you will merge with this thing so let's say you have a a bear that you work that you do some you know and Native Americans talk a lot about these animal spirits that they do right and that you will what they call merge with this Bear right and you will become one you will be bare right so you'll look at your hands you have claws and you'll feel like bear you'll be you're you the bear is like symbolic of something else though right a certain quality of energy in the universe in nature and it is like not just like the bear it's like right but it's not presents something you know even beyond that or something right for sure it's a manifestation of a particular signature of energy as everything is right but it's not just a bear it's they'll never say it singularly they'll say yeah yeah so every right you know what I'm saying so in that way you merge with this bear and and whatever that bear is is representing for you in your life or whatever it does for you if it's healing usually it's a Healer then you merge with that bear now you have all of those healing abilities access to you because you two are becoming one there's a union that occurs right and so this is the way that I look at this is like with this enlightened state or this Enlightenment being that is latent within all of us or latent or we're sleeping and that's awake I don't know what whatever something's happening but that you take this opportunity and merge with the Enlightenment with Enlightenment you merge with the enlightened being the infinite whatever however you want to look at it you know and that's the practice I got like two things that like uh I'll follow up with you on that maybe one would be we're going to talk about the idea of a yidum which are these Enlightenment images and to me this idea of bear in yidum is like okay that's kind of the same concept to me somehow right you know um so if you look at like Tibetan Buddhists are obviously going back to India you know and it's Roots they'll show like these figures that look all Extraordinary you know all the arms and the heads and the eyes and this and the that potentially some of them look really simple they have a variety of ways they look right yeah but you know they're they're magical looking beings right but like you know when you tap into that you're tapping into those qualities the same way if you were tapping into bear or block or eagle or fox or wolf or whatever it is right that's part of what the practice is about right the yidum thing seems very similar to me right you probably think that way too yes yeah the other part that I would just ask and this is just a question of like curiosity because one of the things I think that happens when you think about like what you're going to connect with in um you know like you're going to choose a practice to meditate on so say you like someone's listening they're like okay I want to do this Tibetan thing I can listen to this podcast I'm into it let me try it like a cool so then one thing that will happen is sometimes it's just luck at the draw the practice that becomes available to you is the one that becomes available you know and then you also say well there's probably some meaning to that right like when we went out to Ann Arbor to do the thing with Gala grinpoche the first time you were out there right um there was sort of a question of what the practices were exactly going to be that were going to be introduced right they didn't yeah you went yeah you went to this thing and they didn't tell you what was going to happen you just went there and that was it what was the what was obvious the other one they actually changed you know and when I was when we were there there was sort of a funny thing of like even in like on some intuitive level it was like okay he changed this for some reason you know the one part was sort of more like a feminine wisdom energy figure has a lot to do with like probably sexuality desire you know using about those energies and usually you do an introductory practice to that which is the same when the Dalai Lama did this past year and you do those as kind of a set but you didn't do it you flipped and he did one that actually spoke to you yeah really deeply he did it for me how auspicious it was like he did it for Daniel [Laughter] but who knows he probably did for a lot of people but anyways you know there was this thing you know um and it isn't that crazy of a thing to say when I was out there I did The Meditation Retreat on the one that you Vibe with which is this very strong powerful figure and um and I think probably we even talked about this maybe last episode or something but anyway so this is one of the ones that really Vibes with you and um when I was out there doing The Retreat on that because I did do that out in Ann Arbor I did the whole Mantra Retreat you say hundreds of thousands of these things or whatever a lot and um it was a great time and uh as I was like hurrying to finish before the end of the retreat this is my Mantra movement I'm not like doing a Pez or something playing a video game I was actually concentrating on these mantras and uh one of the ladies walked past and like he was giving some extra time and she said uh oh he's doing this for you and I was like I doubt it not just for me everyone's monitoring away but it was nice that she said it you know what I mean right yeah it was nice that she said it and it like you can get the feeling that a great teacher is like figuring out ways to connect to the students are going to be there right yeah so anyway I brought it all up because there is this question of like if you're listening to this you're like oh I'm getting into this this sounds cool maybe this speaks to you think okay what am I going to do sometimes it's just things will appear like that and they'll be appropriate sometimes um it's more like you're drawn to something that speaks to you like I was kind of drawn to certain of these these zitas I was like oh this Vibes with me you know so um doubling back to the the idea of bear or this when we've talked about this before obviously part of this the way you've talked about it certainly comes from the idea of like there's just some uh intuitive connection the person feels with this particular spirit animal or something like that right or maybe it just appears right so within your frame but I'm also wondering like why do you think people are drawn to one or the other you know what I mean that was well they'll get the Buddhist take on it then when I'm done yeah yeah so I was going to ask the same question I I in the shamanic sense I can't say I can't say why certain people are drawn to certain things now truth be told I don't have um all of people's like astrological information to maybe to look at how that might work I don't know if that really matters though I mean I'm sure it all matters but like I don't know if it's you know you're like oh you're a fire sign so more water creatures will come to you or like I don't know that that's a I don't know that's the thing how interesting but it's going to happen that way anyway so it's like kind of like uh okay that's cool that we found out maybe some reasons why but this is how it happened anyways right exactly right that's exactly right and so but I think the difference is in the journeying space in that particular meditative space it comes to you now maybe you're being drawn towards it and then it comes forth but like generally you're doing your thing and then I saw a face of an owl and then I went back in and there it was and we had this communication and this relationship so it's being drawn there there's a Synergy there but you're putting yourself in its Zone to be called to and I think that's the difference that like in normal life you have to pay attention to your surroundings and be open to your surroundings speaking to you because if not then you won't hear that subtle call you know you'll never you'll miss it it'll be part of something however if you are paying attention then it definitely I believe will speak to you and will find you because it has infinite ways of manifesting itself in order to connect with you you just have to be willing to like take the leap and go do it in your normal waking state yeah it's kind of interesting because you're basically saying then there's like a kind of an altered state where you're going to be receptive to things that you wouldn't normally be in your waking yeah that's the yeah yes I feel like some of this excuse me I feel like with some of this what happened for me was I definitely thought connection to sort of like certain kinds of like goddess energy Vibes and we've done podcast episodes even around some of those questions around that and so I was drawn to that and sometimes even in my I'd be driving in the car or like driving down like um 290 which is when the terrible expressways in Chicago like it's stuck every single [...] second on that thing so the fact that you're moving a doll is a miracle but yeah congrats I'd be driving down that thing and I would sometimes like look in the sky and I would feel like there's some kind of feminine divine presence up here you know it's like an old song from The Talking Heads that I would think about too where it's like talks about the world moving on a woman's hips and like she's moving and all of space is moving with her it's a very like hypnotic song you know now that would kind of flip through my head and then I feel so I felt like later on when like it came to be these practices were the ones that I was like yeah you know that seemed very like uh there were obviously preludes to that for me or something like that you know and obviously some part of me that was drawn to that and like just as another way this might happen if you you know are you listening you get curious sometimes you can like it wasn't I wasn't thinking about doing any Tibetan Buddhism I was studying TCM and I was studying with my teacher from China but I went to the big library in Chicago the Harold Washington Library and I happened to like stumble across one of these Tibetan Buddhist books and I opened up to one of the you know again these Enlightenment figures and I was like oh and I just looked at it like this really speaks to me you know it was just kind of but that's like being I guess attentive in your waking state or something you know it took a long time for it to fully happen but I mean it's weirdly enough when I met llama Glenn that's what he passed on to me that one and llama Glen became like the name of my llama Glenn Miller translator Buddhist teacher and uh all around amazing character um and like uh for me amazing teacher for sure like you know really so that was when I got from him so there was a certain like apropogenous about that but I guess like part of what I was curious about when you when you have a student and then they find like oh it's owl or whoever it is right is there something like then you see well I wouldn't have necessarily known that but now I can see why it's right for that person is that the experience too once the person no I I think it's not like that interesting yeah no it's not like that because that means that you inherently have a knowledge of all the various infinite manifestations that could be and that you would know why that would be the case it's actually outside of rational thinking that's why it's even better because so like like post-hoc you can't go oh well I wouldn't have predicted like Hawk for that person but yeah now it seems like that would be a good one for them because so here's the deal that way no no no no because the difference because the reason is is that there is not like a archetypal um hawk or raccoon or whatever mermaid that that you can go to some external source and find out oh here's its attributes here it's strengths here's its you know hit points or some you know right because some vibe to it though otherwise they'd all be the same no they're they're infinitely they're they're infinitely different and even the way and what makes it unique is that like even the way in which let's say I have I have a bear and you have bear well the way in which you interact with bear and the way in which I interact with bear are different because we're different people and we have different work inner workings and that that being draws those inner workings out differently within us then we have a different working relationship maybe there's some similar attributes because some things are similar you and I are both healers if we have this thing this is probably going to be a healing faction between us you know so we're going to be drawn towards it just like if we're drawn towards some feminine deity in in Buddhism there is going to be so that but the way in which you connect with her and the way in which I connect with her even though it's the same practice are going to be infinitely different because it's just you know this experience is far more experiential there's not like a set of uh I guess guidelines to help people to get there which is why like I you know me loving the the freshness and newness of all the experience it's it's nice because it it leaves any form of structure other than your own dedicated time to practice outside and then you develop developed a relationship with whoever it is that your guide or your ally is whatever that is no one can tell you you could certainly like I have tons of students who will want to look it up online oh I found I have a shark I work with a shark I'm gonna look up what a shark does online I'm like then then don't come back don't why are you coming here to be to leave what you think that you know behind to interact with this thing only to go back and look at what somebody else tells you this thing is is or isn't going to do for you you have no idea you know what I'm saying so um that's that's the kind of the main that's one of the main differences and it's really quite nice I got two kind of reactions to it one is you know we've talked about this word here and there this emptiness word and that like that is emptiness too the fact that like you know a Buddhist philosophical point which is that bear doesn't have any intrinsic quality that's right buddy you're different the other person who connects the bear is different bear is different for everyone too yes that's yes right so if you've been like you know this word pops up here and there you know you sort of figure okay when can you use this practically that's an example of that that's great I feel like that's probably also true about like again like something like connecting to a certain Enlightenment figure in uh like a Tibetan or Indian Buddhist world within that tantric world because like they're going to mean different things to different people yeah right like the way I'm going to connect to Tara may not be the same someone else is going to connect with Tara it's not going to be the same for them it's going to mean something different for me and their Tara will not probably be exactly my Tara and the thing about it is and I do get what you're saying one of the things that can happen especially if you start going down this Tibetan world as you can see feel like wow this is so structured right yes that where's the room for my creative involvement yeah with this process so I I think it's a perfectly fair thing to bring up right a lot of that tradition obviously has come from like um people within monastic settings nuns monks preserving these things wanting to keep these things alive and yes authentic way on the one hand of course that's very cool because you get that feeling of like authenticity from it right it's like I've heard people talk about like Flamenco I play guitar my little Flamenco uh but anyways you know I play guitar and like I uh um Paco Pena was talking about that's one of the great Flamenco players he was like well you know when you play this music you can feel all of that energy coming into it you know that authenticity of it right um but he also made the point that you could still be creative within it you know and he was mentioning another great guitar player in Flamingo is Paco de Lucia who's a little bit more out there but he still has the root you know and I thought about that kind of stuff a lot I'm using a musical example of this right but I agree with you because I think in the end you have to feel your own creative involvement with Tara or yamantaka or call a chakra or you know yeah any of these uh Enlightenment images that you might feel a connection to because your relationship with them is going to have to be personal and then I guess one of the things I've gotten more confident on doing this podcast over time is to say like yeah let's be let's okay we're Western people let's be personal with this too let's learn stuff that people are teaching but let's be personal which is what we try to do here we're trying to say like this is what this feels personally right not just playing not just like and I don't want to mock it I'm not being pejorative in any way but not just you know we can't just reiterate what great people have done in the past correct to be able to like to keep this alive right vital we have to be able to do this in our own ways now which means that you know like same way you were talking about with bear or shark or whatever the example is it's going to have to be personal yes right and someone that's going to have to be a creative Endeavor to feel that that that personal thing and if it gets too much of the okay I'm just taking on just the tradition thing then it's going to be smooshing right it's going to feel smooshing and burdensome right yeah or limiting or or maybe even like a flat you know yeah you don't feel alive to you right that's correct yeah it won't feel alive well I've had that thought of this you know so I'm just stranded out there you know no matter what you do you're doing Zen you're doing this you're doing that you know we've talked about that in our personal conversations about these things there has to be room for some creative part of yourself yeah which isn't like your ego being like uh snarky or something no if I had less ego I would like you know because what happens in the end is people start to feel flat because the practice doesn't feel like they're all you know I mean it doesn't speak to them it isn't like activating their own harsh Spirit it isn't acting their own enthusiasm you should feel something with it yeah [Music] I think llama Glenn is a teacher for me was a great person for that because he left that space right but the other thing Gala grimbache was a great teacher for me too because he did leave space you could talk with him about but he also mentioned wanted to make sure that you had the authentic vibe so I ended up with these kind of two people doing this thing well this is an interesting conversation yeah you know uh uh you don't always know where this is going to go but this is good on that thing llama gun had part one of his bookstore where he was just saying like Okay you know you don't have to read every Tibetan word that's right yeah yeah yes that's right you have to do that it's fine you know and he had one of his Mongolian teachers who said yeah yeah sometimes you can change every single word and the meditation text or something like that and do it like still in the fill in the blank numbered paintings and connecting the dots and all that in some kind of way but he was like no you should really just memorize it in your mind and then just see it in your own mind you know and I was like oh Hallelujah right that's what I want to do I want to like see it through my own mind and then right that connection in that way and that will make you feel alive and the spirit will grow well we're pretty we're pretty deep today yes it's better for us okay we're trying we're trying we're trying um okay so on this Dalai Lama thing then the one thing that they do which is kind of like what it means to sort of um rehearse on this thing is it has a lot to do with sort of like the structure of a person about living thing and it has a lot to do with the idea of um of even like the things in the Tibetan Book of the Dead which we've done episodes on the Tibetan book of The Bard or the between so um it kind of like divides people up on kind of like four levels or divides this Enlightenment stayed up in the four levels and then I guess the shamanic take would be interested on this too the first thing is this idea that everybody has kind of like this Buddha nature equality every living thing has this and it is just kind of naturally there they sometimes use the word clear light mind for this in the Dalai Lama world because I think that's the experience of it clear light probably formless would fit in here in some way you know it makes sense even from a reincarnation point of view because like if your true form was just like Eric if my true form of that then I'd just always be Eric forever right but I'm not gonna be and even Eric is an Eric the same way all the time Eric is a changey thing but anyways you know this this whole Buddhist philosophy idea so anyway so that's part of it and when that gets fully activated they call you know when you read the Dalai Lama or something that will be called The Nature body kind of meaning it's naturally there you know it's the natural Buddha nature essence of a person um and I kind of I looked at what the Dalai Lama was talking about this and you know I wanted to try to capture some of his words with this so in a certain sense it's kind of like a discovered thing that in your meditative practice you discover holy [...] I got this thing who knew and that I guess I feel like I had obviously those kinds of experiences starting doing Zen and then continuing on you realize there's some other part of yourself and I think a lot of people when you meditate you'll find this part of yourself which is I think what we were trying to say before which is why this is good even if you're not like enlightened now because you're still tapping into those parts of yourself and it's going to make your life better in the immediate too you know I think we agree on that part too it takes a bit for that idea to click I'm not just rehearsing some hypothetical thing for the future I'm actually changing myself now by doing this it's going to make my life different now yeah so anyways you can find this part of yourself and I think in a way the idea is that it's kind of a little bit obstructed this is a big deal obviously in the Asian spiritual World things are a little bit obstructed you have to like it's there but you have to kind of uncover it so you can uncover it and discover this thing and in that sense it's kind of um naturally I think in the Dalai Lama he'd use the word maybe like pure or naturally they're waiting to be discovered this kind of a core of who you are but it's also kind of in the process of being kind of like cleaned up through your practice you're just going to like unobstruct it more and more and more and so they call this idea like the nature aspect the Nature body aspect Enlightenment I like to use the word body but it's probably like different aspects or something of a person right so that's the Nature body part and I guess when you're when you're in your meditation and you want to make this like a rehearsal like we were talking about earlier well then you try to imagine going back to this place but I mean the whole idea is you imagine going back to a place that actually exists right you know so you're kind of getting a more and more clear view of something that is there already you know if you're not fully feeling the full flower and force of it and then the next idea is this idea of you got anything on that one you want to add Daniel no it's a shamanic aspect of that like how does that talked about that piece let's go through all the other ones and then then I'll kind of circle okay okay yeah Circle back okay but also just also time two okay so then there's this idea of the wisdom truth body um and this is so here's how the datalam describes it he says it's the experience or state of directly perceiving all modes and varieties of objects of knowledge as if they were directly in front of you which seems cool to have that uh obviously at this place at this point you're kind of like imagining this in a way right and you're trying to develop some intuitive sense of what this would mean this obviously includes you know when you talk about kind of ideas of like space in this Nature body and in this wisdom body if you don't they're not bound by space in the same way you know I was talking thinking about this this week talking with somebody close to me about this very close person to be about this because you know you can have that feeling of another person even if they're like far away it could be on the other side of the city they could be on you know maybe even the other side of the country you know but you could still feel them and you kind of like what's happening there you know and it's part of this idea that these most subtle parts of who we are are not bound by space in the same way you know they're not done by time in the same way right and you can even have that subjective experience with yourself I think a lot of us have had that right there's someone you really love and care about and you're like you feel them right sometimes you can even know like what they're doing right it happens you know like you know like oh they're doing this now or they're doing that now you kind of know right how do you know it's because you know there's a part of you that is like not as confined by just being in this particular space right now party is you know um uh but you know part of you is not that so so it has that idea it also has this idea of like interconnectivity right this idea that you're entwined with everything um sometimes there's this metaphor of this thing called indra's net indra's one of like the old uh Indian deities but the idea that all of reality is this huge net of interconnected beads yeah we did uh we did an episode on that one we called it indra's Network are we talking about like uh social media too no we didn't do it there oh you just did it because it's a great Riff on network yes yes yes because that makes more sense than a net because Annette is inherently finite not in drugs not interested it just keeps going I guess right but all other ones yeah yeah the injured Network great great so um so the idea like all the beads reflect one another or something you know there's this whole idea there's sometimes I'll describe it like a crystal this comes up in like uh this thing called zochen practice in Tibet um the great Perfection we talked a little bit about that too but we haven't done a ton of that but that's sometimes imagine like a crystal and the Crystal reflects everything you know it's like kind of has an infinite reflective quality so this kind of like interconnectivity part probably comes up here probably the first part the nature thing seems to be like more formless clear or something like that and this Morehead this idea of interconnectivity because that's how you would know how to directly perceive all modes and varieties of all types of knowledge as if they were directly in front of you that's what he's trying to say there right [Music] um so then you know the question is uh oh you know we didn't I wanted to just mention this because we did episodes on the physics of things too and this is kind of like entanglement right uh you know in physics things entangle particles can be on opposite ends of the universe and still like affect one another defying laws of space and time um as a sidebar point this this idea really bothers my son I explained it to him he's perpetually like I don't understand there's no signal how could it possibly be and it might be a very clever boy but that is the question that bothered Einstein too um anyways we've done stopped talking about this I'm sure we'll do other physicsy episodes in the future but um anyways this is this entanglement thing so things are like entangled that that helps you to think of the physics of it sometimes it helps and Daniel and I both love physics so you know we love those things too uh so how do you meditate on this and um I think it's again this idea of imagining um uh Consciousness imagining uh the mind the spirit the Shen it's kind of like occupying all of this space and feeling this interconnectivity with everything that's the meditation okay so those are the two higher ones and there's kind of two that are considered like a little bit more yin to the Yang if Yang is more subtle this is the more Yin parts and they usually will say that like these two aspects of Enlightenment that you're kind of trying to visualize for yourself there are the ones that will really benefit more you right these other ones are more like how you project yourself out to be a benefit for other people but there's of course a joy obviously in the Bliss and being like like connected with others and helping others right so the next level of this in Dalai Lama speak is called the complete enjoyment body and this is the the tantric Buddhist Meditation of appearing in some subtle enlightened form this is a big deal in Buddhist tantras you know to imagine this too so you imagine yourself as this kind of formless spaceless thing but then you also try to imagine yourself as some enlightened subtle form and this is going to be different like in different Buddhist approaches different tantric approaches you know you meditate on this in different ways and again that's kind of what you were bringing up earlier Daniel there's ways of visualizing it you have to find your own connection to it but there are visualizations kind of recommended there and sometimes it might just like seeing yourself as like you know mondrashree the Buddha of wisdom and madrasa you know has a sword and carries a book and you might just see yourself that way radiating out wisdom to everybody imagining yourself doing that you know you're using your imaginative faculty in this and sometimes will be other things you know it depends on like kind of the details of the practice what they're going to ask you to do might be different visualizations a little bit the different steps in the visualization or something but the main thing in the end is you imagine yourself like this subtle being or this subtle aspect of yourself radiating out to everyone again and you're kind of like trying to flood everywhere with uh what might be like described as your healing Mojo just going everywhere trying to transform everything so that ends up being kind of the meaning I guess in this of like the tantric Divine figure or something it's it's you now it's not separate from you though there might be a separate tar energy or something but now you're Tara or you're whoever it is and you're reading this out everywhere and um then the Dalai Lama talks about this whole thing of like how you try to imagine this for yourself you imagine yourself as this subtle energetic tantric being with this subtle body in a transformed world or a world that you're transforming projecting out Enlightenment teachings to everybody trying to reach out to help everyone you're doing this without interruption you're just doing this incessantly until everybody gets it and um the idea is that you look like in a certain sense trying to like radiate out so people can feel this and connect to this in the very beginning we talked about the idea of Enlightenment you know it can be high really big Concepts in the beginning of this whole series back when we started or it might be you know different ways that you can think about this but this is obviously a pretty high vision of what enlightenment is right you're there with all these different aspects of who you are on all these different levels but the thing that got me that I wanted to make sure we talked about was like on an everyday level you just do this every day and it's transformative for you right it transforms your sense maybe of Who You Are it connects you maybe into different levels of Who You Are which is a pretty powerful idea and so you can kind of feel like it's happening like in the here and the now right it doesn't have to be uh just something that you're imagining something in the future it's also going to transform what your life is like in the moment because when you leave that you'll carry the remnant of those feelings in you even when you're going around doing your everyday stuff that everybody has to do you can still carry this feeling or you can start to try to reconnect into it right so this is called the enjoyment body what probably deserves to do a separate episode just on Carl jungeness because Carl Ying was kind of fascinated by these ideas the great psychologist and you know you had brought up the idea of the archetypes earlier what's the archetype of bear well maybe there really isn't one you know bear means different things to different people but young was I interested this whole idea of like archetypes and so maybe that's a worthwhile episode for us to do we're going to do something that young we haven't done it but to wrap it up uh and now like get your symmetic response the last part of this is this thing called the emanation body uh and the idea of the emanation body is probably even a more uh you know course or dense or again maybe yin to the Yang way if Yang is more subtle this is more dense and in the world but you also Imagine just yourself in a day-to-day level appearing as this divine uh figure two and you could kind of do this meditation in your day-to-day life in like the Tibetan book of the dead that's about the book talking about reincarnation these are all kinds of things that have connect back to that because we come from the more subtle parts of who we are and then I appear as Eric and you appear as Danielle and we all hear who we are right so you know it's kind of related to that idea now we're in I'm emanating as Eric for now right but in my mind I can also feel like I'm emanating as Tara or I'm imitating as yamataka or I'm annotating his collar chakra or any of these things I can like kind of part of me can still visualize myself even though I know I'm Eric I can still like visualize on carrying that energy of Tara or carrying energy and this is I guess like the most dense part of this but this is probably even what you carry into your everyday world because part of the feeling then it's like as you go through your daily life you can take a little part of yourself and say no I can still visualize myself as Tara even though I'm walking around is Eric and I can still give those Tara Vibes and it helps your life it feels good you know and you know in this kind of imagination that you're doing right you can also Imagine other people are Tara too and you're kind of like a whole bunch of Tara's talking to one another you know in this world that we exist in so underneath the surface even though we are all walking around is who we are underneath it we're carrying this Tara thing or whoever you like you know whoever speaks to you right that's the that's the spirit that you connect with you know if you want to use the shamanic analogy so um so I think this is how Buddha has talked about Buddha shaky Muni the historical figure when the Dalai Lama talks about this the dog likes it uh dog is a Buddha shock Community fan so uh so anyways you know like uh Buddha's emanating this like what they call a supreme emanation of Enlightenment that's going to affect a lot of people but I mean to put the cap around the whole thing because we're gonna promise to do this it's a fun subject because there's also this idea of like different kinds of ways that you look not just like a teacher but you might be like what they call Artisan emanation bodies so you might like emanate in your mind like you're the one that you connect to is very musical so your emanate is a musical figure or you emanate as you know well different versions of this right you know you can take on whatever quality speaks to you and this could be kind of how you do your visualization of yourself so um you know that's the idea of it so then when you kind of go through and you do this whole thing as the dalama is saying it's kind of a rehearsal process that you're kind of imagining in your meditation when you're on your own these different layers of Who You Are different tantric practices will present Us in different ways right but you know you can Vibe along with that and make your own connections to whatever that practice is and then you can also carry this out into your life and it's kind of a rehearsal process but it's also the thing that you use to kind of transform your everyday experience of yourself and I I don't know my experience of this has been uh you know every meditation thing I've done has worked in its own way but I feel like this one has worked in this way too it has structured you've changed my experience in my world you mentioned this last week we got about five minutes or less um but you mentioned this last week with one of the practices I think that you said your zen teacher gave to you was to sort of at the end of your night of every night to reflect back on the day and think about all the good things that you know Master shangley Wong just to give him his prompts okay yeah yeah daoist Chinese medical teacher but so what that you know so I've been doing that and what that does from my perspective is it makes me a focus on the work the efforts that I put out to help others or whatever but on a days where that's more difficult I sort of have like this instantaneous resolve to make it easier the next night when I go back and look back at what I did I want to be able to think back more about the positive things so that means that from the moment I wake up I have to I start building that credit moving forward you know start building that energy going now I start building that energy moving okay this was a good day for me I did the things I can go to bed with like yeah and so as you as you kind of go through these practices or you know whatever it is that one's doing but you're you're preparing to do that thing where you're gonna eventually look back and and try and embody the things that you know we all believe to be positive Enlightenment qualities you know but you practice them in this way and then they sort of resonate then throughout the rest of the days and whatever it is that you end up doing and so in a sense you are the the action is the practice and the practice seeds the action you know in my in my sort of take of it and it's a worse it's a it's a worthwhile experiment because even if it's wrong let's just say all of it's garbage and it's totally made up and you know whatever we're all drinking right let's just say uh Bobby T Robert Thurman has this conversation too at some point I was thinking about it this afternoon too hence I'm smiling because like this argument's out there yeah right so let's just say it's wrong okay and and truthfully we'll only know when we're far closer to the veil than we are right now you know okay it's wrong so you don't do it well what's the consequence of that the consequence of that is that you're you know if we just take some Western you know physiological studies and the benefits of meditation and whatever you're probably more irritable your blood pressure is probably more higher your telomeres are probably a little bit shorter you recover less less efficiently all right that's fine uh or if you do it then then what well you're more patient you're happier you're more creative your connection to your own physical being and the network around you with human beings and otherwise is strengthened so what's the where's the negative you know yeah it's kind of like um uh yeah there's an old kind of like philosophical argument about this kind of stuff like why not take a tumble on something that will give you a lot of benefiting if you don't know it's entirely true and there's there's a balance it's a good place to start but like to me when I started doing Zen it was like well I can't believe all of this that would just be fake but I can do stuff and try it out and see if it changes me for the better I think that's the pitch yeah that's the pitch right yeah there's there's this idea like you talked about earlier about like the structure being in place on things you don't want to feel like oh I have to do this because I'm not good and I want to you know there's like this drive of like self-improvement which is that last week you don't want to do stuff just like okay I feel shitty about myself and so yeah you know yeah like make some New Year's resolutions so I don't feel like such a like a asshat that's so great yeah so it's like you have to hold these kind of like you know as as practitioners we do this right where we have these two competing thoughts as in like the person who was in front of me that I'm interacting with is completely whole there's nothing wrong with them they're just here sharing but then also they yeah have these other things that are going on they have a rash and they have a cough you know and so I have to work on that but it doesn't diminish from their shine or whatever the case is and so I think we have to take this kind of same approach and that like yes I'm trying to make improvements but also I am as improved in this moment as I ever have been and I should be able to say that every day so I think like yeah I mean we're getting to the end of this episode obviously but you know the Capper for me is something like say when you're doing this last part of this you're you're imagining yourself in the world you know as Tara or yamantaka or whoever you love bear or whatever you like right then um you also you're imagining yourself as like part of this big mandalog what reality is right you're connecting to this thing right and you you feel this this kind of connection and the big thing in the end and this is like the thing within the tantras and one of the main problems they say for people is they just think like we could get in this problem if we think too small we think too small of who we are right we think too mundane about ourselves and they use this word like this phrase overcoming mundane appearances and conceptions so you make this Fantastical you know uh image of yourself right and on some level you can kind of feel like yeah this is this is Imagination in part right I'm doing the imaginative thing a creative imaginative act but it's also trying to get me to like transcend a little bit well like sometimes what you could feel are the limitations of things around us and even when we get to the point of view I teach this class I'm physics kind of every couple of semesters for TCM students and even when you get to the physics of it like the universe is amazing it's like it doesn't look like the way we see it through our own little rights where we're just taking care of our daily activities it's much more amazing than that yeah so like part of this is also tapping into the amazing part and you know from what you're saying if you go to sleep and you imagine yourself in this fully Fantastical way you go to sleep in that state and that's what they ask you to do and then in the morning there's more to it but you know a different episode but in the morning you wake up and you imagine yourself this way too and it helps you to overcome the limiting things some of those would be like just how we see and experience the world at a sensory level but some of it will be what you're talking about before like the negative feelings we have about ourselves because we're too hard on ourselves right or the negative feelings we have about ourselves because we don't see like what our full potential really is this is what these things are trying to shake up and you you know so you can go a little deeper and like through this imaginative Act start to like hold down some of that stuff and it's a creative activity it's imagination right and it's called creation stage you know sometimes because you're creating it with your imagination right yeah it's supposed to like shake this stuff up so you can overcome these limited feelings of who you are and then from uh shamanic or Buddhist point of view if you can do that then what's actually there is a lot more amazing yeah and that yeah and well and the other part is that it helps with it helps you to transcend the limited view of yourself that's right yeah I agree with you totally you know well Eric that way yeah well Eric as always thank you so much thank you um thanks for letting like doing this one last episode of course it's awesome it's always a series yeah no it's all good um yeah everybody who's watching on the on the YouTube or listening to us on whatever platform you're checking us out on you know hello hello thank you for tuning in uh what's up to our International audience we haven't said hi in a while hello hello we're from wherever wherever you are um I think they said you know maybe like 10 in Europe somewhere so what's up Europeans welcome back um if you're watching us on on YouTube you know like comment uh subscribe or not whatever if you're listening to us on the podcast the audio version you know uh definitely the reviews on on Apple Help they help to you know get the show ranked and we do appreciate it if you have any uh questions comments concerns uh or just you know want to say you suck you can do that or say you're awesome that could you can also do that give us a chance to meditate on our office this when you tell us that we suck that's right um practice this you can leave a comment in the in the in the YouTube comments or you could send us an email at gin and Tantra gmail.com and for Eric this is Daniel catch you in the next one peace