Delson's True Path, Message to Dharma Community – Tales From Nibbana Episode 4 with Delson Armstrong

Where do we begin? Well, I guess we start off with Welcome to Tales of Nibbana. Or Tales from Nibbana. It's much more the thing. Which tale from Nibbana do you have for us today, Nelson? I guess I want to clarify some things that I've said in previous interviews, like the Guru Viking interviews. And also, in some sense, address the TWIM community and talk about just myself a little bit. So I think maybe we can start off with what I want to say to the TWIM community, that I would like them to see me as somebody who is, what's the word, fallible, not infallible. In other words, somebody who makes mistakes, somebody who isn't perfect, somebody who has his own pains, griefs, suffering, all of that. So now it's been, probably, since I started the Guru Viking interview, the very first one, in November of 2021.

I'm not sure when it was released. But ever since I did that interview, I've not felt totally open with everybody, let's say. And the reason is because when I did that interview, it gave this perception of this idealistic sense of who Delson is. And it's caught me in this sort of loop of being on a pedestal and others seeing me on this pedestal. And so it's put me in this, I feel, like this box where I can't move around one way or the other without making sure that I don't make a mistake. What does a mistake look like? Being irritated. Being upset. Challenging somebody, let's say. Being more confrontational. You mean challenging their ideas of how you're supposed to be.

Exactly. Or in some sense, feeling like I have to adhere to certain traditional ways of behaving in order to keep that image going. That sounds like quite a burden, all this time? I felt like I could continue to do that, but I also realized that it was unfair to me and unfair to everybody else to not be able to see a Delson that's basically just human, right? In other words, I am somebody who has a mother and a sister who I am very close to. I'm somebody who has had their own griefs, with the death of my father, for example, and other things. And I'm not somebody who shies away from wanting a relationship.

So there's a lot of things I have said in the Guru Viking interview that we should probably clarify in order to make sure that people know that the idea of arahatship, which I'm still claiming, and beyond that other thing, is different from what, let's say, they read traditionally in the suttas. Wow, so many interesting threads to pull out. Maybe before anything else, the thing that I'm most curious about, and perhaps the setup for all this: what do you think made you show up in this way that later had you feel so constricted? So what happened was, it starts really in 2020, and this was at a time when I did have a peak experience, which I would consider to be some kind of, let's say, akin to an awakening experience, seeing the links of dependent origination and so on. And it was such clarity, very similar to what I was experiencing when I did the Mahamudra practices and the emptiness practices.

And so in my mind it was like, wow, this is great, this is wonderful, and I'd be telling somebody about this, and I did. I emailed David. So the impression that was brought on by that, because of my email, was that, okay, he's done, he's done what had to be done, birth is destroyed and everything, because that is what I wrote in the email to David. So after that there were a lot of questions about how do you behave, how do you act, and this and that and all that, and also about dependent origination. So there was a whole email thread about origination. And then I was invited, after I went to the Himalayas and everything, I was invited to visit with Bhante Vimalaramsi, or visit Bhante Vimalaramsi, after you went to the Himalayas to do your stints of six days of cessation in the cave. Yeah. So I came back and I was in Cambodia, and then I started working on my book, started working on some retreats and things like that.

At the time, there was the Suttavada Foundation, which has helped me immensely and supported me immensely. And at the time, just so you're aware of how things went, we were still sort of in the midst of the pandemic in Cambodia. And, my father, he owned a few businesses, which included businesses in the tourist industry, so like hotels and restaurants, and wasn't doing so well. So I figured, while speaking with the founder of the Suttavada Foundation, why don't I start teaching and I could start conducting retreats there. So that started becoming a source of income for my family. I'm setting this up to let everybody understand what's going on.

So that started, and then my name sort of got out there, initially through a few weekly Dhamma talks, and then some retreats that I did, physical weekend retreats, and then online retreats with people from Europe and the US and Asia. And then I started working on the Dependent Origination books, like in mid-2021, I want to say. And at that time David said, we would love for you to come visit Dhammasuka. And I said, yeah, that would be great. And so now I felt like I was being accepted into a community, and I didn't want that to change, right? So people now, through my words and through the way I was representing myself in order to fit that ideal, were looking up to me, right?

So I had already begun creating this pedestal where I wanted people to accept me. That's basically what it was. So with that in mind, let's go to what happens later. And I just want to say, and I know that from our previous conversations, being accepted, being part of a community is something that you were sorely lacking throughout your life, from the very early on, I'd say. And that's, I mean, I don't want to go ahead into that whole process, but I will just say one of the things that was a core wound for me, let's say, was betrayal, right? And so I wanted to make sure whatever I did, or it probably was an unconscious drive, to make sure that whatever I was doing was so that I was accepted and I didn't have to go through that betrayal.

And so I think it was late or early fall, somewhere around September, October, November, I went to visit Dhammasuka. And I met with David. I met with Bhante. And the first meeting with Bhante was... I'd already met Bhante in 2017 in San Francisco. And that was a whole other sort of thing where we had a big conversation about Dhamma and stuff. So anyway, when I go to see Bhante, I sit down and then he comes out of his cabin and he's like, you don't bow?

And the first thought I thought was, what is he talking about? And he said, you don't bow. And I said, oh, what am I supposed to do? And so he said, you're supposed to bow to me. And then I sit down and I thought, this guy has a big ego. That was the thought that I had. Enforcing? Enforcing, yeah. It was like he had an expectation of me submitting myself to him, right? He had the teacher role, so he probably felt like I had to continue to be his student, which I will say I'm not, and I'll clarify what that means as well. Anyway, I was there at Dhammasuka, and everybody was very happy to see me, and I actually gave a talk at one of the retreats on dependent origination, and I felt, wow, this is great.

And now at this time, now I felt like this was an avenue for me to be supported, because I didn't know anything else to do at that point but to teach, because I'd been doing it for about a year already in Cambodia. So now here is the larger TWIM community that I can access through David and Bhante and start getting their support. And they have been very supportive. And I'll explain what that means, because later on, in the story or in this whole series of events, my father passed away. So I'm jumping around a little bit, but I'll give you some more clarity. When my father passed away, we were trying to figure out what to do with regards to the family business and so on.

So I told David and he actually was gracious enough to sort of let everybody else know what was going on. And I had a lot of support from different people in the community. And so they actually helped us in our first year financially. You and your family? My family, yeah. And I felt like I have to be part of this community more so. And so in some ways I felt indebted to them. But let's go back to what happened. So then David said, there's a guy named Guru Viking. He has a podcast. Do you want to get on it? And do you want to talk about your experiences? And I said, sure, let me do that.

kind of market TWIM as a tool or as a methodology that is very successful. And TWIM has its uses. In no way am I denouncing TWIM. All I'm saying is there are limitations to TWIM. But in my interview with Guru Viking, I basically talked about my experiences with regards to when I did my online retreat with David and I had these different, let's say, experiences and fruition and so on. So we can start to unpack that if you want.

The thing that I would want to hear from you, and I'm sure at least some of our viewers, is you taking more responsibility and owning that you made a choice to present to him and yourself in a certain way. And we spoke about the karma you were carrying around, betrayal, rejection, and so on. But I find that it's very useful, both in terms of one's personal development and to really claim and own that. That's what you did for the purposes of moving forward, for the purposes of fully letting go of that baggage. Not sort of like pushing it under the rug, or like, yeah, you know, that happened. But let's talk about now, to fully say, I made a choice at the time to speak in a way that I knew was not a higher percent presentation of reality or the truth as I knew it.

And if you have any remorse, if you want to apologize, if you want to speak to the damage you think has been done, I think that will be very useful. That's the sort of thing that, as someone that I want to be able to place my trust into, I want them to. I want to see them acknowledge it, fully, fully taken. So what I will say is, what you're talking about, first and foremost, I think when I told the story about how this whole thing happened, this is the rationale that I went behind. And yes, I take full accountability for having presented myself in this way. So in no way am I sweeping it under the rug, of course. Yeah, I'm being very open about it. So what I want people to understand, and what I want people to see, is how I feel about it now, which is I feel more relieved by talking about it, first and foremost.

And I hope people will see that my intentions were not to deceive, although it might seem like it was deceptive in some ways. Because obviously I said something or represented myself in a way that fit, let's say, the traditional model of what it means to be fully awakened. And in order to appease, let's say, or in order to be accepted as well, I continued kind of being in that sort of sphere. So the one takeaway I want people to have is that I'm not denouncing that I'm fully awakened, but also at the same time that I'm taking responsibility for misrepresenting what that means. You said your intent was not to deceive. What then?

My intent was to inspire that this was possible. But there was no deception. There was no kind of idea of, I want people to see it in this way. Although it seems like that when I represented myself on Guru Viking. So what I want people to understand is whatever I did was pedestalling, obviously, bringing up this idea of a perfection, an idealization. And so I take responsibility for that. But at the same time, I also want people to know that I had no intention of making it about me.

Yeah, I didn't have the intention of making it about, I'm an arhat and everybody has to now listen to me and so on. I created that as a platform, yes, so that people can come to the retreats and be inspired. Huh. I don't fully buy that. First, regardless of how awake someone is, I never buy this is not about me. It's always about you. 100% of the time, subconsciously driven by some old wounds, some fear of betrayal, wanting to belong. All very human things. And I want to be clear, I'm saying this not to hound you, blame you, shame you.

It's more an opportunity to fully claim, to fully own, to fully bring to loving awareness the motifs in your body and mind that led you to, on the record, so to speak, who wanted to follow in your footsteps, something that you did not fully believe was true. And of course there's the more noble motivation of inspiring people to do the thing that at the time perhaps you thought was best, or a contender for the best, even though we know that's also not fully true, considering the other experiences we've had that we can talk about later. And then the bottom line of it is, only when you fully go into claiming your part in it, the way that you did something that served you, that was about you, can people fool and you're and of course yourself fully see the thing in a way that would allow them to trust you that you're not going to do it again. Saying this is not about me is a way of sweeping it under, that it was the circumstances, I was a passive observer, I was a victim.

I'm not saying that's what you're saying, right? It's sort of an exaggeration. The circumstances, I had to do it. I was following orders. I was a victim. David told me, whatever. Sorry, David. I'm not saying it's your fault. We're going to take out all of this because we'll start over with that process. But I get what you're saying. Yeah, you sure want to take it out? No, I mean, I'll redo it because I want to make sure that it comes out in a way that's me taking full responsibility. I understand. I'm just saying I think this bit is also useful, both in terms of the core of this message and also it's another way of showing that you're human.

It's like even wanting to speak about it fully, to own it, to claim it. There's a way that it's hard to fully take responsibility and say, I did this thing that was out of alignment, and I did it knowingly. Some of it, of course, was subconscious, because it benefited me. It was about me in these ways. And in my mind, this is okay. This is not making you look bad or at fault. In the same way that we're doing another iteration of you speaking about yourself, about TWIM, about your path of awakening, we're also doing another iteration right now on camera, in some sense, and now we're doing another iteration that's 100%. Of course, we can decide later, we can watch and see, and I'm saying, I think this is still valuable.

Maybe without the editorial comments. But as a process, I think it's worth, wow. - Yeah. - So the thing that I'm curious about, and I think many of our viewers are, especially with the existing models of what it is to be an arhat, or an awakened being, and you mentioned earlier, even beyond in some senses, what is it that prompted you to go on the record, so to speak, and say things which were not fully in alignment with what you know about your practice, about TWIM, about Bhante as a teacher, about the experiences that you've had before you ever discovered TWIM, and then the way that you presented your attainments as coming through TWIM. What's at the core of it?

express yourself in this way that's truth adjacent? So let's break that down. First, at the very core of whatever it was that I started off with in terms of that Guru Viking interview, it was essentially to be accepted by the community. And so that's the core reason, or the core rationale. And I'm taking full responsibility for that, right? And saying that it's been a misrepresentation of what it actually means to be fully awakened. In other words, whatever I said on Guru Viking was for a myriad of different reasons. Outside of the core was to amp up TWIM, because now I was part of this community, being accepted by this community. And I felt like I wanted that to continue, because the motivation behind that was, let's say, a fear of not being accepted, a fear of being betrayed.

That's really at the core of it. So I want people to know that whatever I said in the Guru Viking interview was a misrepresentation of a few things. And I'm holding myself accountable for that. What I would add to that is that my other intention was definitely to inspire people. It was to inspire people to say, hey, that this is possible. And definitely through, let's say, the TWIM approach, because I was part of the community.

And the whole interview was basically a way to put me up in a way that shows to people that, hey, here's somebody who's done it through this TWIM methodology. And so, again, the motivation was, of course, for people to accept me and to be seen in this way. But that's not the whole truth. And I want people to know that the whole truth is completely something else entirely.

means to be fully awakened, and second, that TWIM is not the only path, or it was not the path. It was a process that allowed me to understand how best to teach him. Yeah, and also to come to some realizations which I had already had in the past in regards to emptiness, in regards to Nibbana, and so on. One of the main things that I got from TWIM was an understanding, not that I hadn't had an understanding of dependent origination before, but a much deeper understanding through some, let's say, meditative experiences through the jhanas. And then I did have cessation experiences. That doesn't mean I didn't have cessation experiences before TWIM. So I want people to understand that whatever I did was primarily by a community, perhaps not just TWIM, but the overall Dharma community.

And my intention was also to inspire. So with that in mind, I do want to clarify the statements that I made in the Guru Viking interview, or let's say series of interviews, if there's other things that we have to look at. And I want to be completely open about what it means in my experience, to be fully awakened. So before that, yes, once again, I'm taking full accountability and taking full responsibility for the repercussions of what happened after that, which is to say that there was a pedestalling of me as the successor to Bhante and as this awakened teacher of TWIM and so on. And I want people to see that that's not completely true.

In the sense that what I was representing was a traditionalist view of what it means to be fully awakened, and that was limiting to me, and it felt constricting. So I'd like to now just be more open and direct about all of my experiences and to clarify whatever statements feel like they need to be clarified in those interviews.

So one thing that I want to bring to your attention is the impact that this has had on me, and I know many of the people who've seen this interview, which is that it made me believe that the TWIM path could allow myself to reach the same heights of awakening that you had. And it's only later on, speaking to you directly, that I understood that first, you did not wake up through TWIM, and in fact there's no person who has completed the path based on TWIM practice. No one has completed the TWIM path, even as described by TWIM, certainly not in any other way that you can describe someone as being awake. So as I'm, even though we spoke about this before, right now perhaps because I feel in a role of representing some of those people, like I'm seeing the place in me that's upset and angry with you about the time that was wasted, about the way that it's diverted my practice into a vehicle that at the time I did not really need.

And I want to know what you have to say about that, how this showing of impact is impacting you. Upset anybody else who is upset by my words and representation of TWIM, or let's say misrepresentation of TWIM. I do want to contextualize what happened on my first online retreat. Maybe that will help, or maybe even go prior to that, which is that my experiences with awakening happened in different traditions. For example, for those of you who might be following my channel, or who know about me, or who have read some description of me, know that I've also done Kriya Yoga. And I've done Mahamudra and Dzogchen practices as well. So when I did Kriya practice, I experienced cessation there.

When I did the Mahamudra and Togal practices, I experienced the clear light. I experienced rigpa, I experienced the emptiness. And prior to that, in between those states, let's say, I was studying emptiness. I was studying Madhyamaka philosophy. I was studying Nagarjuna and so on. And that was more than 10 years ago. That would have been starting in 2011.

So it's been, yeah, more than 10 years ago. That's right. And when would you say that you've had the moment of awakening, let's say, the clear transition? In New York or New Jersey, let's say New Jersey, this would have been sometime around 2012, where I had my first decision experience by doing the Kriya practices.

And that was a non-dual state where the experience was like the self as I knew it became submerged into, let's say, the cosmic ocean, or however you want to put it. Nibbana, right? And then I had subsequent experiences with the Kriya practice. And my interpretation of that, based on the teachers that I understood from Kriya practice and from the Vedanta philosophy that I was studying, was that it was a union of Atman and Brahman. So in that regard, this is what I thought was the case. I explored Dzogchen and Mahamudra, and in the interim I was studying emptiness in terms of not-self, like anatta. For example, there's a really good book which I would recommend, it's called Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness, and I recommend it to some of my students as well. That's a great introduction into the experience of emptiness. I had also been part of this forum called Liberation Unleashed.

I think it was called Liberation Unleashed. And this would have been somewhere towards the beginning of 2013, where I was being helped or guided through understanding the emptiness of the five aggregates, or the emptiness of experience in general. And that brought me into a deep level of anatta. And that was a period of, like, integrating into it. Like, what does that mean, and how does this whole experience, what does it mean for me now? So I saw the world in a completely different light. So what does it mean? Sorry? What does it mean, this anatta insight? How did you see the world differently? I basically had a lot more non-dual experiences. In other words, for me, it was like there was no separation between what's out here, so to speak, and what's here.

And so the boundary is, of course, the skin and everything else you see physically. But in terms of the awareness and the consciousness, let's say, it's like boundless. No borders. Yeah, like experience being continuous inside and out, or what's classically described as inside and out, and therefore also no in-between, so to speak. No border that you have to present your passport with as you move from here to... Yeah. Yeah.

I remember I had gone to Atlantic City with my family, and I just was sitting there watching the swans on the lake, or wherever it was, on the beach, and just residing in that, or abiding in that experience. And I did more of that continuously. What I wanted to do was really understand this from deeper philosophical angles. So I studied, like I said, with Nagarjuna, and then I was introduced to Dzogchen and Mahamudra. I was just kind of researching it, and found Lama Lina and got the pointing out instructions, did the different preparatory practices. But when I spoke to her personally, I talked to her about my experience, and she said, okay, then you can just let me give you the pointing out instructions, but you also do this, which is the Togal practice. And so I did it in different ways. There's, you know, you can go up and look at the sky, for example.

You could do it in darkness as well, like a dark retreat. Or you could do sun gazing. I had done... Don't stare directly at the sun. Don't do that. Yeah, please. Okay. I don't want to misrepresent that either. When I did the dark retreats, this was prior to anything else. So this was back in 2007 and 2008. And there I saw some interesting things, like mandalas. We called them tiglis. So that was the experience. And then I went and did that again in 2013 and 2014 when I was in San Diego.

I had a lot of time on my hands, so I would just meditate in darkness as best as I could and go through these processes. So for me, the most profound experience was the understanding of emptiness, or the experience of emptiness, the understanding of the, you know, impersonal nature, or the not-self as it's traditionally seen, the non-self, or however you want to put it. But I think emptiness is a good word. I prefer to use the word emptiness. Emptiness of self over anatta. Yeah, emptiness of self. Or you could say a non-dual state if people prefer saying it that way. In essence, just realizing the true nature of reality, so to speak, that it's a continuous process of composites coming together and there's no separate self there.

That which we call the self is conditioned through that process. So what I'm saying is I've had awakening experiences way before TWIM. And when I came into TWIM... Before we go into that, I'm curious to know, what was the final flip, so to speak, into continuous, uninterruptible, it's called non-duality, or experience of pervasive emptiness? What was the practice? What was the difference between having it come and go and fully locked in?

This should have been somewhere around 2013 or 2014. The years are mixed up, but in any case, the experience was while I was in San Diego, and there was just this seeing of the arising and passing away of experiences or thoughts or patterns or whatever, and then realizing through the experience and through the observation that they are self-arising and self-liberating. So there's no controller there. There's nothing I have to do there, and I can just rest. And so that realization just allowed me to rest in it. And it was accessible at any point in time. Accessible? Meaning you still had to incline the mind this other way? Meaning when it's dormant, when there's nothing going on.

Even when there's something going on, seeing through things with emptiness, right? Or seeing through the emptiness of things. But when, let's say, the system is idle, then it's in, like, this sleep mode of just being in that emptiness and nothing else on top of that. Yeah. Maybe rest versus sleep, right? Yeah. Yeah, rest mode. Wide awake. Yeah, of course, I'm wide awake. I'm using sleep mode as an analogy for a computer, let's say. Yeah.

And I was doing Togal practice? That was, yeah, so Togal practice I continue to do, right? And I saw the different things that we would see, like the tiglis and the Buddha and all of that. And then eventually go through and see the clear light, right? And then go through that, and then there's nothing left at all. And then there's just this rest and the stabilization in that rest.

Awesome. Let's move on to TWIM. In the interim period, between now and then, between what we're saying and then TWIM, my whole process was to collect as many techniques as I could. In that process, I went back to the Yoga Sutras, and there's a chapter in the Yoga Sutras which is called Sadhana Pada, which means the process of practice, or the steps of practice. And there it talked about different samadhi techniques to, let's say, experience different siddhis, or iddhis, or to experience different kinds of things. And one of the things there was about loving kindness, or the brahmaviharas. So in the Yoga Sutras, the brahmaviharas are mentioned twice. One is that they are used as tools to stabilize consciousness.

So go from the mutable consciousness to the immutable consciousness. Then another part talks about samyama, which is engendering the mind with the qualities of loving kindness, to then be in that consciousness, that unmoving, unestablished awareness. The whole idea was, okay, how do I do that? How do I understand the brahmaviharas? And so I did search for it, and then I came across Bhante Vimalaramsi. And I had no experience with the jhanas, by the way, right? In terms of what the experience of jhanas are, or that there was something called the jhanas. Because my entry point into emptiness was direct seeing through, you know, Mahamudra and the steps and so on. But I'm assuming at the time you did do some mind-collectedness practices.

I did. Before you do Kriya properly. Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. So back then I wouldn't have been able to contextualize it as jhanas, let's say, because jhanas are basically levels of collectedness. Yeah, and deconstructedness of mind. Yeah. I really was enamored by Bhante's description of Nibbana as relief in these experiences of cessation. Again, like I said, with Kriya practice, I had these cessation moments where my mind just blanked out, for a short moment, for an immediate. Just immediately. And when I came back, it was like, oh, I went somewhere. Like maybe I went to God or something. That was my first interpretation of that. And maybe I had become God, you know, and all of these other ideas.

But then as I started discovering emptiness practices, it later re-contextualized the experience for me, and those were blackout cessations. Blackout cessations, okay, guy just gone, without reminder. Yeah, we could say, well, again, that's, we have to get very technical about that, but that's a whole other discussion. Yeah, we spoke about this like two episodes ago. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Anyway, let me ask you this. Before, when you were looking at Bhante's conception, you said that you still had the curiosity, you still wanted to collect all the techniques to get a better understanding of different flavors of this path. I wonder if for you personally, in your subjective experience, there was still something that felt missing or needed to be done, needed to be complete, more complete.

Maybe it was more of like a confirmation, like to confirm the experience. There's a really interesting person named Paramahansa Ramakrishna. I don't know if you've heard of him, but he was somebody who was like a Samadhi master back in, let's say, the mid-1800s. And he was a teacher of Swami Vivekananda, who inspired a lot of people in the U.S., and then inspired Paramahansa Yogananda to come to the U.S. and teach. But coming back to Ramakrishna, what he did was he went through each path and saw through its end. And so I was inspired by that as well. The idea that can I also do the same thing? Yeah. So in some sense, it was to verify and confirm, but also collect at this point data and see what matches up and what doesn't match up.

And also wonder if at that time you already also saw yourself as a bodhisattva, meaning there was a clear mission, let's say, to gather more practices, more skillful means to teach with, which to help people through the path? Yeah, I'd have to go back and think about that, because I didn't directly think that I wanted to be a teacher. I didn't have the idea that I would be teaching back in 2013 and 2014, but I think the foundations were laid out for that, where somewhere maybe subconsciously I felt like I could be someone who could convey this to people. So maybe that is what motivated me, if at all. It was primarily curiosity and to confirm the experiences. So I did this, and like I was saying, in the Yoga Sutras I looked at the sutras on Brahmaviharas, and I searched for Bhante, and I was enamored by his description of Nibbana, which is about relief.

And this was a very interesting audio, because he was talking about meeting with Deepa Ma, and she goes into cessation for a long period of time, and he asked, "Why would you want to do that for?" And she said, "Relief." And that sounded like a very good answer to me. So I wanted to do a retreat with Bhante. He wasn't doing any online retreats in San Diego, because I had work and other things that were going on. So it was difficult to attend a physical 10-day retreat, but I saw that Dhammasukha was conducting 10-day retreats.

And I saw David Johnson as sort of like the second-in-command or, you know, Monte's right-hand guy. So I thought, I'll wait until I get an opportunity to do a retreat with David. Bhante, I tried going through the suttas, and at that time I'll say it was like another language for me. And I've said that to people very often, like when I first started this process of TWIM and going back into the Pali Canon, it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And so that was my fresh perspective on it. You know, when I mentioned beginner's mind in the Guru Viking interview, what I basically meant was that whatever technique I did, I didn't allow any other experience that I had done before to color my perception of what I was experiencing now.

So that's what I mean by beginner's mind. Not that I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but experiencing the jhanas in the way that they were described, and then going through it, was really helpful to basically collect another modality or methodology. And I experienced cessation by nothingness. I talked about this as well. It did catch me by surprise, in the sense of like, oh, I went into cessation. Like, again, there's the mind tapping out again. And when I came to, let's say, in that brief moment when I came back, I did experience these like glimmers or whatever, are the links of dependent origination. So based on that, I figured this is what it is, the links of dependent origination.

But now, in retrospect, the more I've sort of seen my own experience of this and the more I've seen how this process works from the TWIM angle, I think the emphasis of wisdom being the process of seeing the links of dependent origination is misguided. The reason is because wisdom is the understanding into the nature of reality. And you could use the five aggregates, you could use the six sense bases, you could use the links of dependent origination as models to that experience of emptiness, or to that experience of seeing the nature of reality. So in retrospect, this is the way I've understood it. Now, going back to that retreat, so I had that first experience and I thought, really cool.

I want to replicate that again. So I was now deep into TWIM, because I was like, oh, this is really great. Experiencing loving kindness, experiencing the jhanas. What's interesting is, yes, with the jhanas that they're describing with regards to infinite space, infinite consciousness, nothingness, they have the correlates in the Yoga Sutras. So I did recognize those correlates, right? But the experiences I was having, that's why I'm saying that I don't want to discount my experiences with TWIM. What I am clarifying is that TWIM is not what got me to awakening, because I had prior awakening experiences before TWIM. So later on, I did experience those deep dives into cessation again within the context of the retreat, the online retreat.

And because of the way it was described in Bhante's terminology, it made me think, oh, so there's a Sotapana, there's a Sakadagami, there's an Anagami, and then there's an Arahant. And so for me, these were all very foreign words. I didn't really understand these distinctions. And so I just went with the flow of what Bhante was saying. Again, I'm not blaming Bhante. I'm just saying that this is how it was contextualized for me. I can also understand that for Bhante, he probably used the commentarial literature and the suttas. - And then of course for you, you were just going along with it, because if you had those experiences, then based on these words and the suttas, that means you were this and this and that.

- Right, exactly, exactly. So in that retreat then, based on the number of cessations I dipped into, I would be considered an anegami. And that happened in 2016. And then I met Bhante in 2017. So from that period of 2016 until the Guru Viking interview, I was just living my life. Like no interest in teaching. Exploring to him further. Because then they had me go through like being able to go into jhana for a specific amount of time, you know, predetermined amount of time. doing all kinds of intellectual, not intellectual, sorry, mental gymnastics, like meditative gymnastics.

And I was doing that. And then finally, I had a very profound experience in 2020, which I always ascribe to as Arahatship, but it was a very deep understanding of dependent origination, or seeing through links or frames of reality, and all of that. Mistakenly, let's say, I ascribe that to being like, okay, that's the final fruition. Yeah. But did anything change about your experience?

All it did was get me into that level of, beyond Rigpa, the level of just coming back into the emptiness. You know? Meaning once I went through the jhanas and did the jhanas, and then, so this was 26 January 2020, early in the morning. I was doing the regular practice of going through the jhanas with loving kindness and all of that, and then expanding my awareness, and then going into cessation. Coming out of that cessation, there was this whole trip that I went through, which I later described to David in an email. And in my mind, with the terminology and with that whole landscape, to me it felt like, okay, that was what it meant to be done.

To have gone through this whole process of seeing the links of dependent origination in that manner, backwards and forwards, and then being outside of space and time and being able to see the karmic streams and all of that, sort of, let's say, a kind of extrasensory vision arose in me. And so I ascribe to that meaning final fruition. I see. So you did not actually change your ongoing experience. It gave you access to this perspective of the karmic streams, but then also, if I understand correctly, allowed you to see your previous lives and so on. That's something you did not see before. - Not see before. That was when I saw, as I say, the threefold knowledge, right?

Seeing into my past lives and understanding karma in that way. Seeing others' karma, the arising and passing away of beings, and so on. So that was the thing that unlocked on that day. But I, let's say, again, I'm saying mistakenly ascribe that to Arahatship, within the confines of Sutta-based language. And in the Suttas, an Arahat doesn't necessarily have to have those knowledges, right? Not necessarily. It's like one of the powers. One of the powers. The first two are one of the powers, and the third is sort of like the destruction of basically ignorance. Right, which has already happened before. Yeah. And I'm curious, if in seeing those past lives you had a sense of more karma releasing, evacuating, or if that was superfluous at that point?

I think the way to look at that is that it gave more clarity into why I did the things that I did. Like the context of your life and choices? Yeah. Whether it released karma, I did feel relief. I could have been karmic release right there, possibly. But it was such a profound experience that I had to, like, let David know about it. Like, this is what happened. And so then that's where it was like, okay, now that means I'm an Arahat, right? That means now I'm fully awakened and all of these things. And so in order for that, let's say, that idea to continue or to flourish within the context of TWIM community, I did further explorations for myself.

So I went, that's when, in 2020, I went to the mountains. And we are here in the mountains in Uttarakhand. But this is probably west of here, in a place called Uttarkashi. And I had a cave there, which I only got to use one time because of the pandemic. But I experimented with going into cessation for six days and then coming out, and all this other stuff. What was the longest that you've done before that? I think it was maybe two days or three days. Maybe a little over two days. And was there in fact more relief the longer that you stayed in, or was it just in and out? No, it was just to experiment and see for myself if I can do it.

So that is a question that's often asked. If you do it for longer periods of time, does that mean that you feel more relief? No. It's just that you are able to silence the entire mechanism of the mind body for that period of time. And so in that process, there would be one day where I'd be active and doing things. So that was when I got my connection to Suttavada, and people were trying to ask me questions about the TWIM practice and all of that. So I became so deeply entrenched in TWIM that it was basically being a TWIM teacher. That was all that I was, teaching in the context of jhanas, in the context of the 6R's and relaxation and experiencing cessation.

So once I got introduced to the Suttavada Foundation, they started supporting me to do Dhamma talks, weekly Dhamma talks, while I was in Cambodia. So I came back to Cambodia during the pandemic to stay with my parents. My parents were in a tourism business, and it wasn't that great because of the pandemic. So I thought I can help support them by conducting retreats at one of their hotels. So we did that, and Suttavada supported that. And so now here I was trying to earn a livelihood. Because to be very frank, until then I was not earning a livelihood. Even while I was in San Diego, that's a whole other story, in which maybe I'll do it in the memoir or something.

But that's where I didn't earn a single cent, really. I was given money and this and that, but it was, yeah, that's a whole other thing. So here was an opportunity to help support my parents in this time of need, and Suttavada was helping with that, and this was somewhere around 2020 to late 2020 to mid 2021, where I was doing online retreats in the TWIM style. And then I started working on a mind without craving, and then I started working on the dependent origination books. The mind without craving book among the TWIM elders wasn't well accepted, but now it's become something that everybody is reading at this point in the TWIM community, and that's probably because of the Guru Viking interview, which we'll get to. And then I did some of those dependent origination books, and then I was invited to come to Dhammasuka. And so now there was this idea that there is an arahant out there as a result of the TWIM practice, right?

And so I continue to live out that identity, or continue to present myself with that kind of an identity, as being an arahant. - Including supposedly fitting in all the ideals as mentioned in the texts from 2000 years ago. - Right, that's right. And so when I met with Bhante again, and I met him again in 2021, I think it was October of 2021, the fall, late fall. And David, it was like on their turf, right? It was on their territory. So Bhante was like the super teacher and sort of like the leader. So when I went to see him, I sat down, and he came out from his cabin and he walked down, and he looks at me and he says, you don't bow?

And that kind of shook me, because I thought I was being accepted. I thought I was, like, okay, I'm being welcomed and all of that. And I thought, okay, this guy has a big ego. But anyway, I consented to bowing and all of that. I sat down, and then we had a talk, and he had some talks. He had some little criticism about the dependent origination books, but he said for the most part, it was great. And then I was there for some time. I don't remember exactly how long, but at least maybe a week or so. Because in the interim, I was also in the Netherlands doing the research for the cessation study.

Anyway, so while I was there, David mentioned getting on a podcast with Guru Viking. So I went on Guru Viking, and the whole idea for me was, now I'm here, part of this community. So this is an opportunity for me to be included in this community, and possibly being accepted as a teacher, because I gave my first sort of live Dhamma talk at Dhammasuka during that time, which was dependent origination, and it was, I guess, well received. Actually, Bhante was in the audience listening to the talk. So I gave the interview on the first Guru Viking podcast, and that one, I represented myself as the idealistic sort of awakened person, actually talking about our hardship at all. I did talk a little bit about my past experiences, but I didn't go into the emptiness practices. I didn't go into any of that. There was no nefarious intention behind not talking about it, but it was more like, now here I am with the TWIM community, so I want to make this my home. Yeah. And so that was sort of the intention, was to bring that up.

And now I realize the repercussions of that are manifold, but mainly one is misrepresenting myself to, first and foremost, the TWIM community, but also misrepresenting myself to the larger community who might want to do TWIM. And again, I won't discount TWIM, because it has its utility. And people have experienced cessation and so on. But I think it would be wrong to say that it is the only way, or that it is the way that takes you to full awakening. Granted, because now that we've contextualized it and understood that I've gone through Mahamudra practices and had other cessation experiences through Kriya and so on. And I want to say, in other videos, we are discussing the limitations, or the slants, of TWIM practice and our recommendations for how to patch over them, so to speak, or to do other practices that are supplementary.

through some of the statements that I made in Guru Viking and start to unravel that. But before we do that, I just want to say that, again, I do not wish to further propagate the idea that I'm primarily a TWIM teacher and I became fully awakened through TWIM. And that when I did that, it was because I wanted to be accepted. I felt like I wanted a home with this community. And I take full responsibility for that. So I'm sorry for misrepresenting all of that and hurting people along the way. Thank you for saying that. And I do much better understand now that some of the things you said were not misrepresentation of your experience or the truth in some way, but those were actual experiences that you've gone through, even if some of them were contextualized in different ways than you now understand by the people who are the leaders of that community.

A very natural way of expressing yourself, of course, of your knowledge at the time. I wonder if during those days when you're sort of playing the part, how much of you truly believed that this is how you were then? I'm not even going to say this is how you're supposed to be. You believed that that's what you were, versus there was a sense of, I know I'm not this, but I'm going to wear the jacket and see if it fits for a while. Yeah, yeah. I would say I wholeheartedly believed it. Right? Because the experience I had was so profound. I was like, that's it right there. So I took on that as, yeah, I'm an arahant.

An arahant with all the definitions in the suttas, like you're not supposed to do this and that. Yeah. And then what happened is that I found myself pigeonholing myself into those ideals. So that's very interesting, right? Because even from this place of having fully awakened by every definition and through the standards of having finished multiple paths, still there was a capacity for self-suppression and even self-delusion in some way. This is how I'm supposed to be, compressing yourself, and of course it did not last, right? None of those things can ever last for too long, but for a while it was how you thought you were. Yeah, yeah. I would say that I was so, excuse me, I was so into the ism of the Pali Canon, and what I mean by that is all of that, that includes the belief that and all the other stuff, that it actually made me forget about the other things that I had experienced in terms of the concepts of what it means to be fully awakened.

Because the idea of arahatship is just a concept. It's just one particular concept within the traditional idea of the Pali Canon. But there's also correlates to it with the jivan mukta or, we were talking earlier about Kabbalah in Judaism, about the Sadiq and so on. And those correlates or those analogs don't exactly match, so there's idealizations, right, in every particular tradition. They match in terms of the actual description of your immediate subjective ongoing experience, the thing that truly matters. Yeah, but then there's an overlay, layers upon layers of maps and conceptions and what this means. And yeah, and I think the reason is not to stray away from what we're talking about here, but I do want to address that. Look back at it, I do feel like a lot of the things that are there in the suttas are very much cultural.

Of course. Right? They're like projections of the culture at the time. Right. Same with the ideal of the jivan mukta in Vedanta. Possibly even, I don't know exactly how much of that is, but in the concept of the siddik and so on. Yeah. And not only cultural projections, even, I would say, selling points. Because if you're in this and that culture and someone wants to urge you along in the spiritual path, they baby you a little bit. You're going to grow big and strong if you eat your vegetables. I'll say one more thing just to kind of complete that thought. There is, like, the first five arahants supposedly that are mentioned in the suttas, where it's the Anattalakkhana Sutta.

And so the concept there is that the Buddha is walking them through the emptiness of the five aggregates, essentially, because the end of that is seeing that, and seeing that the mind is liberated. And then they experience our hardship nowhere. There does it say that they broke the ten fetters or anything like that? So what I'm getting at is the idea of the ten fetters could possibly be that as well, like a later addition to build up this cultural to be perfect. Right. Because we spoke about this in the first episode, I think, the way that becoming an Arahant doesn't necessarily clear out all of what we could call the fetters, or craving, or still remnants of it.

And the Arahant perspective or state of mind allows you to then speed up the process even further, fully clearing out all of that gunk. Yeah. One of the fetters that's talked about being broken is sensual desire, as a lack of sexual desire as well. So I'll say it right here, right now: I do have sexual desire and I want a relationship, sir. If anyone's looking, look me up. And we can take that out anyway. Why? That's beautiful. Ladies, look at this catch. Do you know how much attachment trauma getting fully awake just washes off of you?

That's amazing. That's right. You're secure in your attachment now, right? Anyway, now coming back to the idea of sexuality. I do want to address a few things, and this might come off as me giving a Dharma talk, but it's something I want to express in any case. Yes. It's sex, money, and power. These are the three things that are most fetishized in any spiritual community, one way or the other. There's some kind of discomfort with sex, discomfort with money, and discomfort with power. So before we get into that, all I want to say is, yes, I have sexual desire, and does that mean that I'm not fully awakened? No, it doesn't mean that I'm not fully awakened.

And we spoke about this in another video: the horrible mistranslation of tanha to desire versus craving. Craving, which is an obsessive sort of, like, I need to have that kind of thing. So that's one thing I want to clarify. Now, at the time when I was doing the Guru Viking interview, I didn't have any real relationships or prospects or anything like that. So in my mind, I didn't have this idea that I was a sexual being anymore. But things are different now. I see that it's a very limiting thing to be, and it's suppressive to the system, to say that I don't want to have sex, or I can't have sex, or I can't do this or that, or whatever the idea is.

So there's a lot of conceptions or concepts about what it means to be an Arahant, including, like, you can't wear gold. Look at all the bling that I've got on me. You can't carry money, or you can't have money, or these kinds of things. I have a family that I want to support. Again, very grateful for the support that I got from the TWIM community, and all of the other people that have helped me to support my family, which I want to continue to do. And power. That's an interesting one. So I can honestly say that I didn't want any power over anybody, right? Yes, I wanted to be recognized as somebody who could be a teacher as I started to grow into that role, but it was never to dominate anyone.

And I'm going to tell you what to do. I never came across that way, and I never had any intention to be that way. Then, of course, it's important to make the distinction between power over or under, and just having power. Right. Or power with, I could say. And, of course, there's nothing wrong with that. If anything, with one, someone who has attained to full awakening and has cleared his karma and has studied the types of things that you've gone through and learned about the various wisdom traditions of the world, to have power, to have the capacity to affect change in the world, to teach, to show the world how it can be. Yeah. And in that regard, in terms of the power dynamics also, there's that teacher-student relationship.

So I've been sort of placed into that box of being a student of Bhante. So, on a technicality, I'm not a student of Bhante. I learned the TWIM practice from David Johnson. Secondly, I don't consider Bhante as my teacher in one way or the other. And for that reason, I wanted to let everybody know in the community, whether it's the TWIM community or at large, I don't speak for Bhante, right? There's been many, some questions here and there about, you know, Bhante said this, Bhante said that. Just like me, Bhante was fallible, and he might have made mistakes, or maybe he had his own opinions about things. But we cannot give power to a teacher to the extent that what they say is the ultimate word on something.

One. Second, I don't speak for Bhante. I only speak for myself. So let everybody know that whatever Bhante has said is whatever he said, and there's nothing we can really do about that. And so, there are repercussions for what he said, but I don't want to be the person to clean up his mess. One thing worth mentioning that I think might, let's say, clear this confusion even beyond just your and Bhante's relationship, is often when a teacher gives an instruction, it is for that time, for that context, for that person. And making that into some ultimate truth, making that into the highest practice, the highest whatever, that's something that would just lead to misery, and for people just going off of the actual productive path.

So never mind even trying to reconcile what Bhante said with what you're saying now. Don't even try to reconcile what Bhante said with your own experience right now, or with what Bhante said at a later time to another person, or even to yourself. The essence of the path is in its freshly arising phenomena, in what is true now.

In the relationship that exists between me and the person that I'm with, between any entity that's like merging, flowing, in the process of colliding in every given moment, yeah. And so in that, I would also imagine that you would not say that you are representative of ultimate truth or the Dharma or the suttas or anything of the sort. And generally, I want to say, if anyone does say that they're representative of the suttas, run very far away and find someone like Delson who would teach you from their own direct experience, not just of themselves and their perspective, that's, let's say, more free, closer to truth, closer to the metal of reality, so to speak. But also that has the capacity to perceive you as the entity that you are and your place on the path, and in the immediacy of how you're showing up, be able to reflect to you what might be a skillful move for the next step you're taking.

Yeah, yeah. And to that point, I will say that, initially, I was teaching in the style of Bhante, which is going through the suttas and then kind of explaining line by line, or from my own experience, what that means and contextualizing the suttas. But more often now, in more recent times, I've been speaking mostly from my direct experience, right? And what I would love to do, moving forward, is to incorporate all the practices that are supportive for awakening. And so when I come to a student, and this is now what I can say, is that I am an ocean of teachings, right? So all of the rivers of wisdom can flow through me.

I don't have to be limited by just one stream, which is the TWIM practice. So I can utilize that, but there's a lot of other things that I want to talk about or show people, if it makes sense in that particular moment, for that particular student, right? done with that dynamic. And I also want to address, which has been part of, as an effect, let's say, or as a repercussion of my representation of being a traditionalist Arahant, is I've put myself, and then basically facilitated other people in the community, to see me in that particular box. And so it has felt limiting. It has felt for me like I can't fully express myself.

And again, it was motivated by those fears. It was motivated by the desire to be accepted, the desire to fit in. And so, moving forward, I would like people to know that I would like to be your friend more than anything else. Because it's through, maybe you can speak to that as well, which through our friendship that the teaching emerges in a natural, spontaneous way, rather than like, okay, now I'm going to tell you what to do and this is what you're going to do and this is what you're going to do. Sometimes it might be needed, but more often than not, I just like to be with people that I can hang out with.

Some beautiful sort of spontaneous dharma arises, and then you see the spark light up in people's eyes, where they have that insight or they have that understanding. And I love those moments more than anything else. It's really speaking to finding the human-to-human connection before we mount on the role of teacher and student. And if you always have to be in the role, whether you're the teacher or the student, there is something there that speaks to craving. There is something there that is attaching very hard, and it would be very useful to explore what it is that doesn't want to let go of the role and connect with less mediation, let's say. Right, right.

And again, just to hammer in that point, that has been through my own actions and through conveying the way that seems to be the most ideal way, that has limited me to be able to do that, right? And so there is a pedestal that I have created through this process, and that people have then kind of facilitated and continue to grow because they see me in a certain way. And now I'm saying, let's break all of that down, right? And just come to me as a friend and come to me and ask me questions. And if you feel like you want to know something, I'm more than happy to, within reason, right?

And also to redefine what it means to be fully awakened. The question would arise: what do I consider myself? As I said, I totally embody the capacity as a teacher in the sense of conveying the experiences that I've had, and then helping guide people with the array of techniques, the array of wisdom, the array of practices that I know, that I feel could benefit them based on my interactions with them. And so to declare myself an arahant would mean basically, no, I'm not an arahant, I'm not a Jeevan Mukta, I'm not a Sadiq in the sense of the cultural context of it.

But I am awake to the truth. Awake to this reality, this process. And that can mean different things for people. How do you like describing the sort of thing in different words? Because seeing the truth, that's very lofty. If you had to break it down. I am the all-powerful God, There you go. That's what I wanted. Essentially, it's a process of being here right now in this moment without any... I would call them projections, but without any kind of proliferation, of further conceptual thoughts about things.

So oftentimes I'll quote that sutta, Bahiya Sutta, and that is the experience that I'm talking about. In the seeing, there's only the seeing. In the hearing, there's only the heard. In the cognizing, there's only the cognized. So I think we had talked about this, and you were coming to, trying to define that for your book, unmediated consciousness or unmediated awareness is how I would probably point towards.

Awareness mediated through fewer maps and gross concepts and projections. That's not to say, I think, that saying direct perception is idealistic. It's bad epistemology. It's more so the capacity, the freedom to perceive more directly, of concepts. That's very useful, it's a feature of the mind. It's just that you're not confused, confused in the standard sense of marikpa or avidya, ignorance, with the concepts being actual reality, let's say. Or the concept or the idea of a subject or self being the locus of perception or agents or epistemological agent, the thing that knows.

So the knowing happens from before layers of perception, but of course there's never direct perception. It's still filtered, mediated through the senses and the way that they're combined, processed, integrated. Yeah, and of course there's also conditioning, prior conditioning, in relation to maybe some cultural context, also in relation to experiences prior to having seen that. Because there can be some kind of, oh, I see that's a brick, that's a red brick. That's always going to be there. It's not like I'm seeing through it and saying that those are the atomic structures of the brick and so on. Someone asked yesterday if when you see a hot woman in the streets, your propensity is to see her emptiness or to see through to the emptiness as if the emptiness is its own thing that you see versus the lack of layer upon layer of projection that would be there.

Seeing her emptiness is a way of avoiding the sexual desire, so to speak. And if she fits my constructs of what beauty is, essentially, then I'll say, yeah, that's a beautiful woman. I think that's a beautiful woman. And I feel like, oh, maybe that's somebody I want to develop a relationship with. I might give her my number or whatever. And of course, that depends on your own propensities, your character, let's say. All that has happened to you throughout your life and has conditioned you to show up a certain way, with preferences, with ideals, with thoughts about what's going on, good and bad, let's say. That sort of thing does not go away. Becoming an arahant does not make you a blank slate.

That's exactly it. That's exactly it. There is the idealization of an arahant, a fully awakened being. You'll see, for example, in some Asian shows of the Buddha, but you'll see this for those who have seen any movies about Jesus Christ, for example. You always see him as this very docile figure. Very, very quiet and doesn't do much. And the same with the depiction of the Buddha and all of these things. So because of those cultural contexts, people might have an idea that this is how an arahant should be, or this is how a fully awakened master should be. And of course, all of those depictions are more so used in service of the religions that are trying to keep people docile and in line, right?

Be peaceful, be calm, just smile. Spoke truth to power, they appealed on the existing religions of the land, they tried to educate people, they tried to show them how to think for themselves, how to go in much the same vein of what we've been speaking about, below the level of roles and ideas of how you're supposed to be, meeting each other with less mediation. And to spare you perhaps more questions than you were planning, where are you available to receive questions? Is it in retreats? Do we have your personal number down in the comments? Oh, yeah. I just want to make sure everybody knows I didn't agree to him giving my personal number, unless you're interested in dating me.

That's a different thing completely. But anyway, yeah, that's a good question. I mean, I do get a lot of questions. Probably the best is on retreats. I mean, sometimes email, but then the email is given to somebody else, and then they direct the email to me, and I'll respond, and then they'll forward my response. So primarily, it will be Dhammasuka. If you have questions, you can go to the Dhammasuka website, and there you can just go to info, I think, at Dhammasuka and ask questions. But if you want, you can come to my online talks or retreats and ask me a question directly. Up for personal one-on-one consultations, but for a fee, because my time is valuable. So yeah, and because this time is valuable, I also recommend reading the book before you ask a question, because the answer is very likely just there. Yeah, nice plugs, man, that's great. Oh, and I have a book. That's right, links in the description. Like and subscribe, you...