(upbeat music) This podcast is brought to you by Free Buddhist Audio, the Dharma for Your Life. Our work is funded entirely by donations from our generous listeners. If you would like to help us keep this free, make a contribution at freebuddhistaudio.com/donate. Thank you and happy listening. - Yeah, it's really lovely the way it should occur to you about the kind of historical and archetyping and mythic dimensions of panisamber this morning and then brought it a bit into the experiential sphere. And it was a bit daunting actually. It hasn't been a tall and easy talk to write this. Panisamber is such a rich figure and there's so many different aspects that you can go into. And what I've decided to do in this talk is to really focus on what I see as a core central aspect, which is the power of present moment awareness. So I'm going to particularly focus on the power of present moment awareness. One quite significant thing happened on May the 4th, 1979. - Star Wars? - Star Wars. - Pardon? - Star Wars was released. (laughing) - Was it? - I don't know, I guess. - It was not here. - What did you say? Yeah, there was a general election. Check that out, maybe Star Wars was released on that day as well. But generally, the 4th of May was when Margaret Thatcher was elected, which might seem quite a strange way to start a Panisamber talk. (laughing) But she transformed or revolutionized the political environment, you know. So that was in 1979. So it was a year in this country of a lot of change and a bit later in the year in October, Sanger Aksheta was at the London Buddhist Center. And he was scheduled to give a talk on Panisamber of the day at the London Buddhist Center. And he lost or forgot his notes. I heard Sabouti talking about this event in 1979. And as Sanger Aksheta was about to go up and give the talk, he just had three words on a piece of paper for the whole talk. Sabouti didn't know what those three words were and either do I. But he gave this particularly kind of rousing talk on Panisamber of the day. And so I just wanted to read out an excerpt from that talk. So this is Sanger Aksheta in 1979. Let's try to realize that the spiritual life is essentially one might say, integrally a process of subjugation and incorporation and integration and transfiguration of all the, as it were, grosser, but very powerful and potentially very rich energies of our own consciousness. The collective unconscious, even of humanity, as well as of the world in general. If we think of the spiritual life in this way, we shall arrive at a very, we shall arrive at a sort of very heroic conception of the spiritual life. A spiritual life is not a running away. A spiritual life is a facing of these energies, a facing of these forces, these processes of subjugating them and transforming them. So yeah, that was what he said. And there is much that we want to transform, isn't there? It seems like being humans is, there's a lot of things we want to change. In ourselves, it might have problems of our digestion or we suffer from a lack of self-worth or we find that we really lack energy. We find that we really flare up in anger and we kind of feel the pain it causes us and other people. And then just at a kind of household level, if we live with others, there might be things in the household we want, a few smiles. We want to transform like the washing up or slamming doors and you've probably got your own lists. And then on a neighborhood level, I mean, I'm part of this starchy neighborhood forum and there's discontent in the neighborhood about parking. (laughs) You know, and about noise at night and so on. And then at work, it might be management styles or workload pressures. And then globally, you know, there's all kinds of things that might cause us stress and unease, you know, climate change, conflict, inequality and so on. So this issue of transformations is quite central to being human. You know, no doubt we go through our lives. There's a lot we want to transform. And Padma Samba is sometimes called the master of transformation, you know? So transformation is particularly associated with Padma Samba. And it's very human, is it, to want to avoid suffering? You know, we all want to avoid suffering. And generally, we want to be, to experience more ease, more creativity, more connection, more aliveness. You know, these kind of urges that we kind of have within us. But where do we direct our energy? You know, where do we direct our effort to try and bring, you know, the desires of our heart about, you know, what do we believe in that will take us in that direction? So the traditional term for this is going for refuge. You know, what do we go for refuge too? And I think it can be an interesting area to reflect on that in your lives. You know, where do you feel fulfillment lies really? Or contentment or ease, creativity and so on. And unavoidably, before we have any kind of self-consciousness, we are born into particular paradigms, aren't we? Or systems of thought and belief around what is a good life? You know, what is a successful life? I mean, for a good point of view, we come with a momentum from our previous life of what we prioritized or privileged, you know? And we have school and parents. And, you know, we come into a cocktail of kind of programming about how to get the best out of your life and things. So we do live in quite individualistic, materialistic times. I was thinking of this as the promise of acquisitions. You know, we have the, we're in a culture which holds a lot of promise for acquisitions. You know, if I have that partner, that job, that place, that income, that experience, then, you know, there's a lot of that, isn't there? And trying to engineer our lives to avoid certain people and places and jobs and experiences and so on. So there is an emphasis on kind of curating our lives on the basis of likes and dislikes. I remember when I was in Manchester and I was walking down this road and I saw this big billboard advert and it said happiness is a regularly serviced boya, boyla. And I was just kind of thinking, are they really thinking that we might feel that and then buy it for happiness? Or is it a joke? You know, I wasn't kind of sure. Happiness is a regularly serviced boyla. It is, yeah. Thank you for sharing what you go for efforts to do. So obviously, you know, it's good to put effort into, you know, finding work that, you know, feels fulfilling, you know, having loving connections, you know, living in a nice house, that, you know, they're all very important things. But if our perspective is just at that level, you know, in terms of putting together certain conditions and putting our energy into that, for a Buddhist point of view, that's going to lead to, it's going to make you extremely vulnerable to suffering, you know. And that kind of, if there is just that perspective, then it can very easily kind of pittest against each other, you know, because it's a breeding ground for sort of jealousy and rivalry, you know, getting caught up in your self-agender and not seeing other people and so on. So the Buddha speaks quite eloquently of this in the Atadanda Sutter. He says, seeing humans flopping around like fish in water to shallow. So hostile to one another, you know. Seeing humans flopping around like fish in water to shallow, so hostile to one another. Yeah, it's quite sad, isn't it, really? You know, it's quite sad. This kind of competitiveness and self-focus, really. And it's the water we swim in, you know. So from the Buddhist point of view, whatever is subject to arising is also subject to passing. You know, so even if we get what we want, it's going to be taken away, you know. And so the emphasis in Buddhism is much more on that seeing what primarily blights our lives is the power of the three poisons, you know. So the focus is much more on how we relate to what arises and passes in our experience rather than a grasping or a craving to get the right arising, you know, in experience. So greed, wanting, contracting and wanting what we haven't got. So I'm not used to wearing glasses when I'm giving a talk, so I'm still going. They're kind of bifocal, so you're kind of going in and out of focus, I'm not used to it. And hatred is contracting and not wanting what we are experiencing. And then delusion is just kind of ignoring, really, ignoring, you know, ignorance, ignoring. And it's at this level, this deep level, the three poisons that Paramasamva is particularly powerful in symbolizing. So he actually, if you look at this yangar, this star, there's three severed heads there. You know, how he's defeated the forces in him of greed, hatred and delusion. And I guess many of us have come to the center because we're disillusioned with ideas, perspectives we get from our culture. You know, we feel there must be something more. You know, and it was that that, you know, the Buddha went forth from, you know, he felt there must be something more than just old age, sickness and death. And Buddhism does present a radical alternative. It has practices that show us how the forces of greed, hatred and delusion limit us in our lives. And through these practices, we see the suffering, they're causing. So I think this is really key. Traditionally, it's called the defects of samsara. You know, the defects of living an unawakened life is that Buddhist practices reveal what we're doing to ourselves really, the suffering we're creating for ourselves. And the practice help us cultivate and discover awareness, compassion to transform ourselves, you know. But there's a mystery here. What on earth would it be like to be free of the traces of greed, hatred and delusion? You know, what would it be like to be open, sensitive and present in the moment to experience without contracting, without aversion, without grasping and without ignoring our experience? And that includes grasping at the belief in a separate self. So, you know, it was, I never even contemplated the fact ever before I came across Buddhism, that the sense of like me being here and Hannah being there, or me being here, and Mary being there, that sense of separation could be conceptual, could be a belief that I'm believing in. You know, so what on earth would it be like for that to be seen through, you know, and that separation could be seen as illusory and causing a lot of suffering? You know, so there's real mystery here. So, I want to focus on the, the transformational power of awareness, which Padma Sanva symbolizes. And I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna try and do it. I haven't done this before. By picking up a core text of Padma Sanva. So, this is a text called Seeing Self Liberation, so, Seeing Self Liberation through, Self Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness, Self Liberation from Seeing with Naked Awareness. So, this is a text that was written in the eighth century by Padma Sanva by this great figure. And then he hid it, as was his custom, and then it was discovered, I think it's about six, yes, six centuries later by Kathamma Lingpa. So, it was discovered six centuries later. And it's an, it's only a short text, but it's extremely deep and profound. So, I'm just gonna pick out a couple of aspects of it, and just try and communicate some of the spirit. So, in verse 10, Padma Sanva says, it's certain that primal awareness, which is one's intrinsic awareness, is unceasing. You should look at your own mind to see whether it is like that or not. So, all the way through this text, Padma Sanva is saying, it's not saying, go away and think about it. It's not saying, go away and discuss it. He's saying, look at your own mind in this moment to see if what I'm saying is true, yeah. So, what I thought I'd do, we'd just do a little exercise here. We'd do a little investigation of looking at our own minds. So, if you'd just like to just sit reasonably, comfortably, it's only a short exercise. Have you got, yeah, you just kind of close your eyes a bit? (bell ringing) Okay, that's the end of the exercise. Was there anything anybody noticed? (laughing) - I was trying to learn how to work badly. - Yeah, so you heard a bell, did you? - Oh. - Much, sir? - All right. - Did anybody else hear the bell? Yeah. - The gong. - The gong, okay, a bell or gong? Did you have to use any effort to hear the gong? Or was the gong just heard? - It was a bit loud for me, so I had a little bit of like... - You had a response to it, yeah? - Bit of a version. - You had a bit of a version, so that would have followed the hearing. So, there was a sensitivity to the arising of sound without an effort to be aware of the sound. Are you good? So, we can tend to think awareness comes and goes. But maybe there is a background awareness that's always here, you know? So, let's do one more little exercise on this. We're just testing this little bit of the verse. Can you be completely unaware for the next 20 seconds? (laughing) Turn off awareness. (laughing) - More awareness. - There was more awareness. - If one could sleep. - Yeah, exactly, that's all right. - Yeah? - That's all right. - It's going to be a broken sleep immediately. - Just in that 20 seconds. - I was trying to force my mind ahead to what's been annoying me recently. - Yeah. - You know, the things that normally sort of go round and round in my head, which take me away. - Yeah. - Quite honest at the present moment. It's actually quite hard. Well, I can't be aware. I've got to think about this, this, this, and this. - That's it, yeah. - I know, so it's just kind of quite interesting because I thought I had to think about being aware, but I don't. So, I experienced my mouth. And I had to think about it. If I'm really interesting. - I was just going, okay, what does that mean? Not to be aware, but then awareness was already there. - Yeah, so, good. So, I'd like to move on. We've still got a bit more of the text to go, but just, if you can just bear that in mind. So, verse 17, your own awareness is intrinsically knowing, intrinsically clear and luminously brilliant. So, when we have thoughts about ourselves, do we include this kind of view? Do we have this sense of ourselves? We don't learn it at school. It wasn't part of, generally part of our culture, but we don't learn it at school. It wasn't part of the, generally part of our culture. So, it's just, you know, we're not going to talk about it. But generally part of our culture is that this view of innate purity, but it's very strong in Buddhism, you know? So, the text draws that out. And then in verse 13, it gets even more mysterious. This self-originated, clear light, which from the very beginning was in no way produced by something and decident to it, is the child of awareness. And yet, it itself, yet it is itself without any parents, amazing. This self-originated primordial awareness has not been created by anything, amazing. It does not experience birth, nor does exist a cause for its death, amazing. Although it is evidently visible, yet there is no one there who sees it, amazing. Although it has wandered throughout Samsara, it has come to no harm, amazing. Even though it has seen Buddhahood itself, it has not come to any benefit from this, amazing. Even though it exists in everyone, everywhere, yet it has gone unrecognised, amazing. Nonetheless, you hope to attain some other food than this elsewhere, amazing. Even though it exists within yourself and nowhere else, yet you seek for it, elsewhere, amazing. So this is quite good news, isn't it, in a way? (laughs) This is quite good news. That for all the difficulties we have in our lives and in the world, this is saying that we have a dimension within us, that whatever we've been through is radiant qualities, qualities of awareness. And it exists, so to speak, exists always a bit of a problematic word in Buddhism. It exists in everyone, so it's not just the clever people, it's not the monks, it's not just people who've been practicing 30 years and so on. It's a dormant potential in all of us, which, so it can't be harmed by anything that arises in it. So we return here to some of the symbolism of the Papasamva, and you'll see he's often holding, as Shuddhikirti was earlier today, the Vadra, which the diamond thunderbolt, it's symbolising the indestructibility of our true nature. And it's full of qualities. So in Buddhism, there's the five wisdoms that signify five dimensions of qualities that this intrinsic awareness has. And often the Papasamva's got this on his own cap, you can see he's got these five jewels here that symbolise the five wisdoms. So in some ways, the Bodhisattvas have the Samava, they can easily seem quite alien and exotic. You know, they come from foreign lands and they've got funny clothes on and we can project all kinds of things onto them as figures. But then I prefer to see them as like a mirror. It's like they're mirroring back to us of what we don't, we're not conscious of, our deeper nature, you know. They're mirroring back our potential and what we truly are, you know. But we've got confused. So, and as we begin to break through of the entanglements of kind of thoughts of the past and thoughts of the future, and as we start to kind of transform the three poisons, this jewel to use that language is gradually, can be gradually uncovered. And then its qualities, this radiant luminous awareness, starts to kind of shine through us into the world. And then help us transform the demons that are still kind of limiting us, you know. So Sangha actually put this in three words, which I thought was great. He said awareness is revolutionary, you know. Awareness is revolutionary. So this is the point where I surprise you all, apart from Eve, who's seen it before. So, come on out, come on, there we go, wow. So this is the most dazzling per part I've ever seen in my life. It's from, it's kindly on loan from Vadroloka. And Pamela Sangha's often got it kind of tucked into his belt. You know, probably not one quite as big as this. Which is really, really rich in symbolism. And it's got three blades, one, two, three. And they symbolize the three poisons, agreed, hate for intelligence. So cutting through the three poisons. And it's funny, I was walking up the road with this and I was thinking, I could actually get apprehended. (audience laughing) I was thinking, or I could get into trouble with it, you know. So I was a bit nervous walking up the road with it. So this symbolizes the potential of our intrinsic awareness, our awareness, to cut through greed, hatred and delusioniness as Shudhakurti was sailing this morning. But it's not a offensive weapon, you know. It pins down, it doesn't kind of attack, it pins down. So our demons can be seen, you know. So it's a bit like a museum exhibit with the pins, you know. They're kind of, ah, and then they're kind of held under, over time, under the power of awareness. You know, and they're really seen, you know, clearly. And in that, seeing clearly, they lose their power over us. They just discharge energy, unfold. We experience relief in the body. And then they become awareness, you know. They're transformed into awareness. So the Vajra gets a bit more powerful with each demon that's transformed. So again, we've got the indestructible Vajra there as well. And endless other bits of symbolism. So I feel more confident holding this. And I'd like you to feel more confidence. I'm going to ask the noble Shudhakurti. Would you better, do you want to hold it for a while and then pass it around? It is very heavy, actually. - It's heavier than Shudhakurti. - Yes, we, that's it. - What's it called? - Perba, Perba, yeah. - How does that spell, sorry, P? - P-H-U-R-B-H-A. It's partly, because it's Tibetan and it comes, and there's a nomadic culture. So they, you know, they live a lot in intense and temporary things which were pinned down. So they think it has that kind of link, you know, with their nomadic culture. So if we've got this great dazzling jewel to call it that in us, why do we suffer still, you know? So I'm going to go back to the text again here, pick it up. So verse four says, "Even though its inherent nature has existed "from the very beginning, you have not recognized it. "Even though its clarity and presence has been uninterrupted, "you have not yet encountered its face. "Even though its arising has nowhere been obstructed, "still you have not comprehended it." Yeah. So it's very, very clear, isn't it? This goes right back to the eighth century, you know. Some of you will be familiar with the jewel in the lotus parable. Sorry, the jewel in the robe is parable from the white lotus sutter. So where this, the jewel within is put into a parable. But this jewel is not a thing. You know, we tend to think in terms of objects. You know, there's me and then there's this thing that's a jewel. This is where the language kind of can get in the way. It's maybe more what's looking, you know, what looks. Invisible, formless, empty, void-like, shapeless, but luminous, with qualities. And if you think of awareness itself, awareness itself, like we're familiar with being aware to some degree, does awareness have a shape? You know, does it have a color? Can we touch it? You know, all the normal ways we relate to objects don't seem to apply with awareness. It's mysterious. But our present moment awareness, the moment you're awareness is a gateway, it's a sliding gateway into this intrinsic awareness of the dazzling, kind of full of dazzling qualities. So let's go back to the text. So why do we suffer what's gone wrong? By not recognizing the intrinsic awareness for what it is, you will then search for your mind somewhere outside of yourself. If you seek for yourself elsewhere, outside yourself, how can you ever find yourself? For example, this is just like an idiot who going into a crowd of people and having let himself become confused because of the spectacle does not recognize himself. And even though he searches for himself everywhere, he continually makes the error of mistaking others for himself. Similarly, since you do not see the natural condition of the real disposition of things, you do not know that appearances come from mind. So you are first, once again, into Samsara. So again, we're confused. We have an experience, but we're kind of confused. And Pamasam wants to lead us out of this confusion. And I'm aware when I talk about this, it can seem very abstract and remote, like just words. But I think it can be really helpful to just understand it at the level of view or a paradigm because it can help us even on a rational level, a conceptual level, just hold a bit more lightly the sense that self and other are real and unquestioned. Hold on a bit more lightly the fact that things that matter exist and that there's solid objects. And hold more lightly the view that, if anything has any value, it's seen. So this is an invitation to consider the possibility that there's a whole dimension to our experience that we don't see that is formless, but is full of qualities. That when we start to see, it starts to transform us. You know. So I want to look a bit more at the being blinded by the spectacle, you know, this marketplace and getting blinded by the spectacle, which leads us back a bit into the demons. So one way of looking at this duel of intrinsic awareness is that it's covered with demons. You know, we were looking at those this morning, I mean, it seems like I'm not alone that other people have things, you know, demons and things they'd like to transform. And sometimes these demons are called like karmic obscurations or the Buddhist tradition calls them adventitious defilements, it's not really worth, adventitious defilements. And these demons manifest a behavioral level, don't they? We know that in ourselves and in people around us. Unskillful behavior, selfishness, cruelty, insensitivity, aggressiveness, blocking people, you know, getting infatuated with people, and so on. But according to Buddhism, everything is driven by something else. And a lot of our behavior is driven by emotions, you know. Behavior is driven by emotions, you know. And a lot of our unskillful behavior is given by unresolved, painful emotions, you know, like anger, shame, like a self-worth, loneliness, fear and so on. And then the grooves of these emotions and behaviors are often laid in childhood, you know. Their soil in a way is childhood consciousness, you know. As kids, we're very, very sensitive and feel things strongly and easily get overwhelmed. And to the degree we're not in a kind of self-held, safe, held, loving environment that can easily go into the body, you know, behind tension. And so they could be hard to see because we've grown up in them and of them, you know, and so on. And then we know now through science that the unresolved emotions that have got some exercise, so to speak, in our body, they don't just drive behavior and feeling states, they dysregulate the nervous system, you know. And the nervous system is making sure that our kind of digestion system works, you know. It's making sure that we've got the right hormonal balance and all kinds of syndromes and bodily issues can come from, as we know now, in science, you know, big studies have been done from not processing emotion that has been trapped and held in the body. So what did demons need? What did demons need? So I think demons need to enter deeply into the realm of Padmasamava. That's why I think demons need to come into relationship with the healing, accepting, mysterious, fearless, safe, loving, non-judgmental, spaciousness, the present moment, awareness. You know, I don't know anything else that is more healing than bringing our painful emotions into relationship with present moment awareness. Allow their energies to come into relationship with the qualities of awareness that we all have, you know, to some extent. And this is where the demons can be fully met, seen, felt. Where their sort of tango, cargo of emotion, beliefs and energy can be brought into the light. And I think on a deep level, the demons come to us, you know, they're seeking this, they want to be liberated, you know, our feelings of shame, grief, sadness, anger. They're all in kind of, they're often kind of young, child- frightened emotion, you know, in age. And they want, from their side, to be out of that constriction, you know, in that suffering. And they're drawn towards the qualities of awareness. You know, if you can cultivate a sense of mindful presence and cultivate a sense of being curious about experience, you know, being sensitive to your present moment experience, they have a way out in a way, they have a way out of the body. That's interesting, isn't it? Because I think sometimes when you meditate more, and when the demons come up, you think that you're going off-track because all the stuff comes up. Yeah, yeah. Well, actually, because you're holding a space ball and it should sort of be liberated. Yeah, yeah, meditation's a great, great space for this. You know, just say hello. But this, oh, I'll skip something here. So yeah, I wanted to give a personal example here. It's a bit of a dramatic example for my own life. I've never shared this before publicly. But this happened a few years ago, actually. I was, it was a couple of years ago, two or three years ago. I was in, I've been doing this training course in Germany. Because of the pandemic, it was, you know, we weren't allowed to meet in person. So we started going to Cologne. I went and stayed with the friend in Edinburgh who I was on the course with. And I went quite a good mood. You know, I think the weather was good and I was looking forward to seeing him and lots of nice restaurants nearby and things. And we had the first day of the training and things. And I thought it was fine. I went to bed. And this is the time when what's held in the body can arise. You know, I think a lot of the problems with people's sleep is often unarrived, resolved emotions coming into the space, disrupting the space of sleep. But I just woke up after an hour or two. And my, what was arising in my body was strong energies and strong emotions. And I was taken back. My body went into this kind of thing where I went back to this playground. So what happened was that when I was, I grew up, I went to school, I'm in junior school in quite a small kind of village. And then when I got to about 12, I think it was, I went to this big London overspilled town and went to this huge secondary school. And within the first few days of being there, I got into this conflict with this guy in the playground. And I don't know what your schools were like, but in my school then. As soon as there was any prospect of two people fighting each other. It became like a Roman amphitheater. And so within, people would literally say, scrap. And then across the playground. And then literally, I don't know how many people surrounded us. And I'm just a first year, you know, from this little village and suddenly in this massive school. And I froze actually, you know, and me and this other guy had a standoff and we were being goaded to fight and I froze. And it had a massive impact on me, you know. It was like from that morning, I, more my confidence went, you know. And I became much quieter and much more withdrawn. And that literally went on for years, you know. I felt so much shame, I couldn't talk about it. And humiliation. And there's all kinds of stories about what I should have done. Anyway, I'm in Edinburgh 40 years later, almost 40, is that right? Yeah, 40 years later. I'm back there, you know. And there was all, one of the things was it was what my body would have wanted to have done if it wasn't in freeze, you know. So I started to get this hunger and fight energy. And I just decided to stay with it. I could have just got unsettled and, you know, gone off and went for a walk or read a magazine or something. But I just decided to drop into awareness and trusted myself enough to let it run its course. And I had all these waves of emotion and energy coming up over hours that night. I very, very tired the next day. I went on the course. And then the following night happened again. Hours. Different aspects, you know, that I got overwhelmed with and got trapped in the body. And then the next night, it happened again. And then, so I had, I was absolutely exhausted really, but something had opened up in me. Where, you know, these demons came into a really powerful relationship with present moment awareness, you know. And it kept kind of releasing and discharging. And now I feel able to talk about it much more easily. You know, it hasn't come back in meditations. It would sometimes try and come back into meditations and things. So that's an impersonal example there of liberating kind of demons. But it's not, as we know, this isn't easy. You know, it's easy to talk about it, but to allow our demons to be felt in the body with curiosity over time. Often emotions don't feel good. You know, these emotions don't feel good. Often there's a lot of fear that has been the reason why they've got trapped in us, you know. So we do really need all the support we can get, you know, in terms of doing this deeper work. You know, friendship, study, community, the treats, you know, whatever helps support us with this. But if we keep wanting to be elsewhere when these emotions come up, they'll never meet that healing ground, you know, within us. And often this is a gradual process. You know, we start with the more mild stuff, like the irritations that should occur to us talking about. And then over years we can develop more resilience or tolerance to stay, to bring present awareness in the body over time, and stay connected to ourselves where more difficult things come. So I do think there's so much to be gained from transforming demons, but it's not quick and it's not easy, you know, diverse. Not good, I'm not doing too bad at the time, that's good. So, are you still with me? I know I'm raffling through a lot here. So effort is an area that Padma Samma talked about. So let's go back to the text. Just as is the case with the sesame seed being the cause of the oil, and the milk being the cause of butter, but where the oil is not obtained without pressing, and the butter is not obtained without churning. So all sentient beings, even though they possess the actual essence of Buddhahood, will not realise Buddhahood without engaging in practice. So this isn't the case of just kind of relaxing and opening, because there's such a mementum, a karmic mementum, that's come out of ignorance and confusion, you know. So do we do somehow need to kind of step against the tide of the momentum and use some effort? So I think a really helpful question is, you know, what helps us in life to be a present and aware? You know, what helps us in life? When are we most present and aware? You know, what helps us be present and aware? Do we need to slow down, give more space? Do we need to actually do more, you know, than what we're doing? Do we need to meditate more? Do we need to be more in nature? Do we need more contact with friends? Do we need to study and get inspired? Do we need to go on a treat? Do we need to find somewhere in the house that's quiet? You know, do you see, and everybody's kind of different here, about what is it that unlocks us into a mode of being when we're more present and aware? So I'm going to suggest, there's four questions here. This is likely kind of inviting Padma Sam of her exercise. Four really simple questions. And it's based on the four foundations in mindfulness, this. So the first question that this can help us see what's in the way of our awareness, in a way quite simple, is to ask ourselves the question, what's actually happening? So for me at the moment, on the mental level, I'm partly wondering what you're making in my talk. And on a bodily level, I can feel some warmth in my hands, and it's quite pleasant, the contact of my legs with the mat. And I can feel a slight coolness because my shirt slightly lifted up on my lower back. So this is tuning into the knowing aspect of present moment awareness. What's actually happening? There's the thoughts and stories, and then there's the sight, there's the smell, there's the taste, there's the touch, there's the hearing, what's actually happening. So actually opening to the senses outside of thinking, which tends to dominate. And then the next question is, what's the feeling tone? So the Buddha talk loads about Wagner and feeling tone. So this is quite simple, is it pleasant, is it unpleasant, or is it neutral? So for me at the moment, my body is feeling reasonably kind of pleasant, I've got a bit of tightness in my lower belly, and there's a little bit of tightness in the upper chest, but broadly, my feeling tone is quite pleasant at the moment. I don't feel like I want to get away from it. It feels reasonably pleasant. So tuning into the vein level, the pleasant, unpleasant, neutral can import an aspect of this. And then this is the real gold, wow, I really love this, is how am I with it? So this could be great to do when you've had a vow with your partner or somebody that works really pissed you off or something, and you feel stuck in some contracted state. It's bringing the pleasant moment of awareness to it, if it feels within the range of what you can do, turning to it that directly, allow it to come into a relationship with awareness. So what's actually happening, I've got all these thoughts about what a bug on my bosses, and I wish they'd go, and la, la, la, but tune into the other senses. What is this pleasant, unpleasant, neutral? And then how am I with it? Am I trying to kind of spring in like something else that's pleasant on top of it? Am I fighting what I'm feeling? Am I trying to ignore what I'm feeling, the three poisons? And the fourth question, is anything else possible? So so often when we're experiencing dukkha or suffering, one of the three poisons will be strong. You know, there's resistance. You're fighting the moment, you know. So the fourth question is, is anything else possible? So this is an invitation to the qualities of Pam Samavan away. Can I be curious about what's happening? Can I be open to what's happening? Can I be sensitive to what's happening? Can I become intimate in the moment with what's happening? It's coming into relationship with. And so they're the four kind of questions. So that can help us see what's in the way of us being connected with ourselves, and also maybe a taste of what happens when we have a different response to what's happening, from what we might be used to. Samavan came into a deep profound relationship with experience, which wasn't primarily mental, emotional and energetic dimensions, and what lies beyond that. So I'm going to finish now. I just wanted to say a little bit about as healing deepens, or as transformation deepens. So as the power of our demons is transformed, in awareness, there's a spiritual death happening, in particular, weakening of the ego. So we're going to return to Sango Action here. Sango Action has said, the ego is not a thing, but a faulty interpretation. One is seeing something that just isn't there. It never was, and it never will be. And because it isn't there, one can't do anything with it, get rid of it, go beyond it, or whatever. And often the ego's talked about in those terms, isn't it? That was my bit, not Sango Action. If the ego is shown to be an illusion, one's fears on its behalf are extinguished. And how many fears arise out of belief in ego, you know? You see that there is no one to lose anything, and so you have nothing to lose. Do you know? So the ego is not a thing, but a faulty interpretation. One is seeing something that just isn't there. It never was, and it never will be. And because it isn't there, one can't do anything with it, get rid of it, go beyond it, or whatever. If the ego is shown to be an illusion, one's fears on its behalf are extinguished. You see that there is no one to lose anything, and so you have nothing to lose. And go back to Adam Samburn. He's normally holding a skull cap. He is on both of those, in his left hand. And this represents the death of the ego. And so as the grasping of the belief in the separate cell, separate cell loosens, spiritual birth, rebirth starts to arise. And this is symbolized by the blood in the skull cap. The ammeter of bliss, that the pammasam of a quaffes. So this is the fruits of insight awakening or bodhicitta. And so this is where the jewel really starts to shine through us. And the main obscuration of the jewel, the attachment to ego self, is seen through as Sengarachal was saying. And then we start to see that our ordinary mind is based in and of a vast open sky. Sky-like spaciousness that's percolated by love, kindness, a great mystery of not knowing, of wonder. And this is in a sense, is a symbolic representation of that. You know, these are figures of light, open, empty, spacious, skylike. But that open, empty, spacious dimension, shoonita, as it's often called, is percolated with qualities. So as humans, we tend to see the form aspect quite to some degree. We see the arising and passing of appearances and we call them forms. You know, we think they're solid. But we don't. And until insight happens, we don't see the formless dimension. You know, so this is really an opening into life. It's a deeper, deeper opening into life. So I'm going to finish now. Just with another, we're going to go back to the Ata Dandhasa to go back to the Pali Canon. If you do not grasp anything in the present, you will go about at peace. We hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Please help us keep this free. Make a contribution at freeputus.io.com/donate. And thank you. (upbeat music) (gentle music)
