Interview: Andrzej Stasiak with Delson Armstrong-Jhanas through Awakening

Let me just, yeah, we're good to go. I just wanted to make sure that I am, yeah, it's recording, because it's not... it wouldn't be disappointing. Yeah, perfect. So here we are together, wanting to give people some interesting pieces of knowledge regarding states of awakening, regarding meditation, regarding what awakening means on a personal level, what awakening means in terms of the benefits, let's say, because in the world that we live in nobody does anything unless there is some kind of benefit for it. So here we are. I will introduce myself, and then I'll ask you, Andrzej, to introduce yourself.

My name is Delson Armstrong and I am a meditation teacher. I've been practicing meditation for the last... it has been about 20 years, a little over 20 years, and I've been following all kinds of different traditions since the age of 16. I started my journey when I explored yoga when I was in the Himalayas with my teacher. I learned yoga philosophy, Vedanta philosophy, Sankhya philosophy in those three or four years. And later on, I was initiated into Kriya yoga. I've done a little bit of Tibetan practice, including Dzogchen and Mahamudra, and some Tantric practices.

But my main focus of teaching is really understanding what awakening is and utilizing the core teachings of the Buddha. We can say the earliest Buddhist texts, which are known as the Pali Canon. And I teach from there when I give retreats, mostly in the US, Europe, and some parts of Asia. So what are the early Buddhist texts? They are basically purported to be what the Buddha taught in his lifetime with regards to what the Four Noble Truths are, what suffering is, and what the end of suffering is.

And the two or three main things I teach from there are essentially jhanas, which we will get into, what awakening is and freedom of mind, and something called dependent origination, which is a vast topic, and we will see if we touch upon that, but it might be for another episode. So this is who I am and this is what I teach. Hello, I'll hand it over to you, Andrzej. Okay, thank you. So my name is Andrzej Stasiak. I teach meditation in Poland. I've been practicing meditation for almost 10 years, and the turning points in my practice were meeting TWIM, which you probably know, and the relaxation, and from this moment my meditation exploded. It was really fast progress. I experienced this progress especially through jhanas, and this is the topic of today. So I just want to talk more about it, because when I first met jhanas it was like

I was looking for a meditation teacher, and my first trial was trying this absorption, jhanas, and then I found TWIM, and when I tried this method it was mind-blowing, really nice progress. My teaching is based mostly on my struggles with life, because I've had lots of experiences, so-called bad, that I never thought would be a power for me in the future. Now I see it completely differently. It's like those opportunities, like addictions, severe addictions from drugs, alcohol, and problems. And this is funny stuff, because when I first met meditation I thought, that's a new idea for building a new id about myself: oh, I'm gonna be a meditator. And then I didn't know what I was assigning, and then, oh, this is like the construction. I was struggling with anxiety and stuff, and I teach mostly from my heart, and I have an approach that is slightly mixed with psychology, but I like talking about Dhamma with very easy approach

like being more yourself, which could be understood in a different way, but what is most important in what I'm teaching is just this: we struggle too much to get something and to get somewhere, and we always imagine who we're going to be with meditation. What I've learned from meditation is that the gateway to understanding, that's our great way to understanding dependent origination, is being yourself, because when you can be yourself the tension is relaxed and then you can open to something deeper. What would this really mean, being yourself? Not in terms of psychological why, but in terms of Dhamma, how the Dhamma manifests in this way. So my approach really is funny: meditation, no struggle, because I was struggling, and because of addictions I was really tense, and to this day I experience the factor of control.

which I think is a big problem for many meditators, that we're trying to control, and we control the control, and we go into an infinite loop with controlling mind, which is probably a problem for many people. And I think that's what I want to say about me, to start. Yeah, yeah, perfect, perfect, thank you. So, something that struck me when you were talking about yourself is that you mentioned something regarding absorption, jhanas, versus the jhanas you learned through TWIM. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you mean by absorption, and how you understand it, what it was like? It was like, you know, forcing your attention on the object. I never got far away with this stuff, but I was trying to get on, and I found even the teacher, who was a former monk and was trying to teach me how to get it. It is jhana, but this creates only more struggle with me, and I had

really tense body and the factor of control, lots of control in me. So when I was trying to get somewhere, the meditation was getting me worse, feeling worse and worse and worse, and there was no insight in this. It was like, you know, just trying to calm the mind and just get rid of experience, which is bad, because when the mind is really concentrated there is a bliss, really. It's a nice... and you could be really easily attached to this state, especially when you have, like me, some inclination towards pleasant states. So it might be, because addiction is some inclination to pleasantness and avoiding something painful. So I was clinging to getting somewhere, getting somewhere all the time, more tense, more tense, more tense. And then I met the teaching of Bhante Vimalaramsi. I was looking for a metta stuff on the internet and I found relaxation, and it was like, wow. At the beginning I wasn't convinced, because my mindfulness

changed, and I felt like, oh, it's too easy. I was, how to say, I was not so comfortable, which is easy stuff to do. The mind was like trying, no no no, we need hard work, hard hard hard to get somewhere. And yeah yeah yeah. I think this is very important to understand, because a lot of people take meditation very seriously. You see, oftentimes you go to monasteries and they're all very serious and solemn, and they feel like they're at peace. But I think when we look at something like TWIM, which stands for Tranquil Wisdom Insight Meditation, it comes from the distillation of the teachings of the Buddha in accordance with what's known as tranquilizing formations.

And this is different from what has happened over a period of time as the meditation community, teachers, and even practices have evolved. You see that a lot of the traditional Buddhist circles rooted in Burma, in Thailand, in Sri Lanka, take a lot of their teachings from something known as the Visuddhimagga, and not necessarily originally from the Suttas. The Suttas here are the early Buddhist texts.

And in this Visuddhimagga there are a lot of practices that are provided, but they come from an understanding of being super concentrated, as you were saying. I think that has become the norm for a lot of people when they start out in practice. Even in Indian practices, it's like, focus over here, or focus over here, and put all your attention there. Or when you're focusing on the breath, put all your attention there.

And as you mentioned, Bhante Vimalaramsi struggled quite a lot to find what was the way that seems to work in a natural way, in a way that is progressive. He spent many years in Burma and Thailand and went through the process of what's known as insight practices. Insight here is just vipassana, in a very dry way: focusing on the breath, looking at the arising and passing away of things. But what he found at the end of that is that he didn't notice any kind of personality change, and he didn't notice any kind of happiness, really.

Just to give you a brief history of what happened as TWIM evolved, or came to be, as far as I have understood: Bhante then went to Malaysia and met with a monk named Bhante Punnaji, who has now passed on but was a very well-respected monk in Malaysia and those parts of the world. He's, I think, originally a Sri Lankan monk, and he suggested to Bhante, why don't you start teaching from the suttas themselves? So Bhante had an opportunity to spend some time in a cave, reading through what's known as the Majjhima Nikaya, the middle-length discourses, and he tried this process of relaxing the tightness and tension in the body and in the mind wherever he went. He noticed when he did that, his mind was clear, his mind was uplifted, and then when you add the smile, the mind gets even more uplifted, the mind gets even more mindful.

So he took all the different pieces that he saw from the Majjhima Nikaya, which is the distillation of whatever you need in order to understand the path of practice within Buddhism, and it was later that this developed into what's known as TWIM. TWIM is really just the English short form for what's known as samatha and vipassana. The samatha here is the serenity, the collectedness of the mind, the mind being focused, the mind being calm, the mind being tranquil. And then the vipassana is the insight that arises when you understand how your mind moves, how your mind creates its own suffering, how your mind creates craving, and when you let go, how the mind experiences release, how the mind experiences freedom, how the mind experiences happiness. So the tranquil wisdom insight is the samatha vipassana meditation, and the jhanas that are present in this particular

Understanding of the practice is differentiated by the fact that it is about letting go. When we concentrate and we try very hard, what we're trying to do is construct a state of mind. We're trying to bring up something, whereas this practice is all about letting go, and through the process of relaxing, the mind actually enters into these different states known as jhanas. So speaking of jhanas, how would you see what jhanas are? What is your experience of jhanas? At the beginning, I didn't know what jhana is. I was thinking more like some states of mind, but now I think the jhanas, it's like the level of relaxation.

It's just, this is the level of relaxation. And if we take what you said about TWIM, that this is the insight and samatha and vipassana together, it's like relaxing and being aware. Like the Ajahn, who the Ajahn says, he says it in a different context, but this is really what we are talking about. We're talking about the relaxed mind and open awareness that allow every object to arise and pass away, and that in this way we can have an insight and see. Because when I was looking for understanding of what is dependent origination, what is awakening, at the beginning I was thinking about understanding something intellectually, like, okay, how to understand what is dependent origination, what is it, it's this self-sense arising? And to understand meditation, we don't need to let go the intellectual mind and see how the intellectual mind arises.

So we need stability of the mind, which we call concentration, but really it's, I think, a misleading word. For me it's a better word, sorry, because my first language is Polish, and I understand more like stability of the minds, of them, when the mind is composed, when all objects can arise without the movement of the mind. And to do this we need relaxation, and the jhanas, it's really the level of how you can relax, how the mind is relaxed, until the point that mind is completely relaxed, and it's gone, and we're going into nirodha and nibbana. And we can think about the level of relaxation, level of composement, or like the mind is collected, or the level of insight, as well as, one day I said I heard from you the level of cessation of suffering too, because this is connected, so we can

talk about it in a very creative way about jhanas. For me it's a way of... it's a level of relaxation, how much the mind is relaxed to experience deeper and deeper samadhi. Yeah, yeah. And I think the question that arises for most people is, what are these jhanas in the form of, like, what will they do for me? Because a lot of people come into meditation for different reasons. A lot of people come to retreat for different reasons. Maybe they are dealing with stress at work, or they're dealing with having broken up with someone, or some stressful situation, or maybe they just want some time off from their life so that they can spend more time in what they feel is a peaceful environment, where they can experience greater degrees of relaxation. And that is the key. And some people may be coming from a more traditional background, and they may come from, let's say, going the style vipassana

or Mahasi style vipassana, or maybe they're coming from the Zen tradition, or whatever it might be, and maybe they come in with certain ideas of what it means to be on a TWIM retreat, or what it means to be on a retreat with myself and with you, because I know we have our own styles of teaching and our own styles of talking about these things. But I think it would be important for people to understand what do we do when we're on this retreat in relation to jhanas. The way I would see it, I would say that

Yes, jhanas are levels of understanding, their levels of cessation, and jhanas help us to really start to notice that there is another form of pleasure or joy that is not dependent upon the outside world. So one of the ways in which the Buddha has contextualized this is he said there's this world and there's the other. When he says this world, it's the world of the senses: the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, and the body. And the other world is the world of the mind. The mind is that which is the chief, as they say, the forerunner of all states. So if you're able to bring an innate inner pleasure in the mind, your mind automatically disengages with the outside world. So the idea here is we're dealing with what are known as hindrances. Hindrances are like sensual craving, aversion or hatred, restlessness, sloth and torpor, and doubt, the uncertainty of what's happening in the mind.

So when we learn the process, like for example in the TWIM practice, there's something known as right effort, and this is usually called the 6R's in English. It's to recognize, to release, to relax, to re-smile, to return, and to repeat when necessary. So what does that actually mean? It means that when you are noticing, as you're meditating, whatever object you take on, that the mind gets distracted and goes somewhere else, as soon as you recognize that, that's the first step. You regain your mindfulness. You become aware of what that means. You become aware of the mind having moved somewhere, instead of it being on its object. And after you recognize, you release that state, that, let's say, unwholesome state, that state of distraction.

And you relax any tightness and tension. So if your mind has been trying too hard, if it's becoming constricted, you relax that. And re-smile, because you start off the practice with smiling a little bit. When you see the image of a Buddha, you'll see a little smile, and this helps to uplift the mind. And then you come back to your object, whatever that might be, and stay with it for as long as you can, without trying too hard, just relaxing into the object is the way I look at it. And the more we do this, what happens is there's something called the first jhana, and the factors of that first jhana include certain things. So first of all, what is jhana? How will we define what jhana is? I'm somebody who has studied Sanskrit in the past, who has looked at many different texts, so for me the understanding of Pali is very synonymous with Sanskrit, Pali being the language of the early Buddhist texts.

And if you look at the word jhana, it comes from the Sanskrit dhyana, which means to put your attention onto something, to place your attention on something. So placing the attention and focusing, or trying too hard, really are two different things. I think it's about resting your attention so that the attention stays stabilized. Instead of us forcing our attention to be somewhere, and then putting down something to force it to be there, we're just saying we're bringing our attention gently onto the object, and we're remaining there as gently as possible. And when it gets distracted, we use the 6R's to relax back into that. So this is how we work with the attention.

So the jhanas are these different states. There are four jhanas, and from there, certain other states that are known as the formless states. And the first jhana is basically withdrawing the mind from sensual experiences. So we close our eyes generally, we sit in a silent space, and there are very few sensual experiences happening for the mind, and we are withdrawn from those unwholesome states, from those hindrances that I was referring to, as a result of which the mind relaxes and experiences a joy because of that seclusion, and what's known as piti, that's the joy and comfort in the body. We start with bringing up an object, whether it's focusing on the breath or with loving kindness or any other object, and that process is known as vitakka and vicara. It's the placing of the mind on an object and keeping the mind on the object. And after a while the mind experiences what's known as ekaggata. Now, generally the consensus is that ekaggata means one-pointedness. Actually it just means that the mind's attention is unified, it's collected, it's composed. So when we have that

Um, we are basically entering into the first jhana. Yeah. So, because I'm trying to summarize what you said in simple words, what we are going to provide in this retreat, it's like we can think about jhanas like a useful map to know where you are in the practice and what to do. Because when we talk about five hindrances, they usually start with craving, like a first, but I don't know why I would put at the first place doubt.

interesting yes i would because this is my personal experience and i know uh how important is to know how to practice yeah if you don't have a map and you don't have a tool and uh and when when we are talking about six hours which is a right effort it's uh it's a like a like a heart of of this uh whole practice and if we do this in a wrong way and we don't know how to do it and we didn't know and we don't know where we are going

we are really in doubt, we're thinking how to practice, when I'm in my practice, what to do now. So, to simplify what you said, the jhanas are just a really good map to know where you are, really easy to know where you are and what to do, because the practice is really simple, what we know, what we need to do. Which is, I think, what is really hard in meditation: to have enough saddha, which is called like a faith, but I don't know if it's a good translation, because I understand it not in a way like failing something, but some confidence. Yeah, some confidence to do the practice, as a teacher said. Because I've been struggling for a very long time, and I had a problem understanding that what I need to do is just stay with the object of meditation and do the 6R's in the right way: recognize, release

relax re-smile and come back to many uh to object of meditation and that's it and know where i am so just have this uh damma vichaya factor to just observing and knowing when where i'm in my practice because when we go into second jana there is slight shift in your awareness and it feels like going more into flow because in the first jana is like there is just a little bit effort to maintain this feature if you track your attention or job object meditation and in one moment you feel that the words when if you wish or if you stay in other object meditation you feel that you go more like automatic way like more natural the mind is going into flow and then the second jana open and if you have this information because the map you know what to do because you can if you don't have it if this map at the beginning you can just struggle and unwishing or trying to uh put more effort in this than just allow to

To begin or evolve this, the second jhana, and we of course go further and further, so the map and how to bring your attention back is really important to know, and this is what we provide in this system of meditation: simple explanation and simple tools based on relaxation and kindness. Right, right, yeah. I think that's a great way of bringing in how we look at the progression of this path. So kindness, you brought up a very important word there. We often think that a meditation retreat is basically that we're just focusing on meditation, but I personally like to teach it in very much the same way as the Buddha teaches in the early texts, which is that he starts off with what's known as sila,

and there's this progressive path of sila, samadhi and panna. So sila is, part of that, is kindness. Are we kind to ourselves, and are we kind to the people around us or the beings around us? It's really about understanding that not causing ourselves harm and not causing another person harm.

And so once we start to develop that understanding, that we want to be truthful in our conversations, we want to be honest in how we deal with people, we don't want to cheat people, we don't want to lie, we don't want to cause any kind of harm, we don't want to steal, we don't want to take things away that are not given, these kinds of things. This is really the golden rule, if you see it from the perspective of it being a universal process. You see this in all traditions: you do to others as you would want to be treated. And most people want to be treated with respect, with kindness, with acceptance, and being seen and heard.

So if you want that, then spread that to the world in your behaviour, in your mind, in your speech and in your actions. When you have this, it's very easy, or it's easier, for the mind to start experiencing samadhi. So sila, the word sila means foundation, that's the foundation of the path, it literally means the bedrock of the path. And samadhi is basically even-mindedness. Sama here is the equilibrium of states, and sama is 'same', and dhi is the intellect, the mind. So the even-mindedness then allows us to enter into jhana, and those processes of the jhanas that we're talking about are incorporated within the umbrella of samadhi. As a result of which we experience insight, which is panna, the insight into the true nature of reality, the understanding of what this process that we call life and existence is, and that's the vipassana part. As a result of which we become awakened and experience some freedom from suffering.

So the transition then from the first and the second jhana, as you rightly put it, is that there's more flow in the mind. The mind experiences a lot more confidence. You talked about saddha, that's a good word, I think, confidence, a certain kind of autopilot mode where you don't have to keep thinking about the object. Now the object stays with you, the awareness stays with you, the mind remains alert and calm and collected, and the joy that's there, the uplifted state, becomes deeper, it becomes a little stronger because of the collectedness. And after a while, as we're in this space, here's the interesting thing: a lot of people expect that the joy only gets bigger, or the joy only gets more profound, and we experience bliss. In many traditions we may take the idea that awakening means we're always in bliss, but through the process of jhanas we see that bliss is just another conditioned state, joy is another conditioned state.

After a while you see that joy disappears when you get into the third jhana, and what replaces it is a further deepening of comfort and ease in the body, a deepening of clarity, a deepening of contentment. This experience of tranquillity and contentment and serenity is much more long-lasting and much more sustainable than bliss, and so people realise that, oh, this is actually something I can take with me wherever I'm going. I think that's the beauty of the six R's, or right effort, and the process of jhanas, which is: I can access these states just by relaxing and letting the mind calm down and collect itself. And I can use the six R's in situations which are agitating, which are difficult, which are causing me anxiety.

I can just recognise that, release the attention from that, relax, bring up a smile if I need to, and then come back to the present moment. And when I have that, I'm activating my prefrontal cortex, I'm activating the part of the mind that can do what needs to be done, as is required for the situation at hand. So I'm acting out of wisdom, I'm responding from wisdom rather than reacting. And so the third jhana, and this is what it says in the texts, the third jhana is the state of the noble ones. It says he has a pleasant abiding, and that's what the noble ones talk about. When you say noble ones, we're talking about people who are, let's say, awakened. So that's the natural state of the mind, where the mind is calm, collected,

free of hindrances and has a lot of contentment yes and you touch a very important thing because our human minds really like to think about meditation and awakening like the state that we can just attach and grab it and when we go in this and we progress through these genres we can see that even genres are impermanent and what is really and it's what is open when it's when we go from this transition now from the third jana to fourth jana it's really what changes it's the deep equanimity which arises because when we think about uh meditation yeah when i've met meditation first time i was thinking that i'm going to grab something

and it's going to stay with me. Oh, and I was always disappointed when I didn't get what I wanted, and what I couldn't get rid of in my life. And when I was progressing through the jhanas, I saw that even jhanas are impermanent. What we are really practising is just a community, being really a community, what is arising. Because we can get rid of, um, our senses, our nervous system, and it is responsive. I'm a very sensitive person, for the food, for everything, and I was hoping that meditation was going to erase this. And then I discovered it's not about the arising sensations and stuff, it's just having space. And this is what changes when we go in this transition. In the third jhana we thought that some parts of the body sometimes disappear, and so on, and then we go further

and the body starts to almost all disappear, because I think the whole disappearance of the body, it's like in the fifth jhana, when the spaciousness is open and we have more spaciousness in this place. But how I feel the transition from the third to the fourth jhana is like all these tensions and hindrances, and I would say the reaction of the mind to the feeling, pleasantness or the painful vedana, it's like going into the background. Suddenly it's not a big deal to just stay, it's just the feelings. And this is where we start to feel, oh, this is a community, it's not the same. What is tranquillity? It's something different. It's a very clear mind, it's a very clear mind that doesn't react. You feel that the best thing that arises in my mind, let's say, is like in a glass, but I think it's not a good explanation, because we don't create a barrier. The feeling is that they just flow, and the mind has stopped grabbing pleasant feeling and stopped avoiding

unpleasant feeling. And if you're really balanced, really balanced, you can feel this balance in your meditation progress. And I think this for jhana is necessary to see subtle things, when we start talking about dependent origination, because this is like the foundation for the Buddhist teachings. And if you want to see how it works, we need some stability of the mind, because when the mind is haphazard, buffeted by hindrances, because of awareness, because of doubt, we go into a stream of faults all the time, and we don't have a space to understand how it works, because

one day I got to the realisation that awakening really happens in a place when you get distracted. When you start meditation it's like you're distracted, off, on, off, on, but when you progress in the jhanas you see, oh, there is no off, on, there is a contact, there is a feeling, there is a craving, there is an upadana, there is a bhava, oh, again suffering, again the self arising, and kamma. And it's in this space of how we get distracted that we need enough stability of the mind to see the process of distraction. Because when we think about it, when we first met meditation, I'm distracted or not distracted, but this is not true. There is a field of phenomena that is arising and passing away, and if you can just see how it works, this is really going to give you a deep insight into how suffering and kamma rise and pass away. Yeah, this is a very, very important point about this practice, which is the jhanas.

As you, as you put it, are impermanent, you start to realize that the jhanas change on their own based on causes and conditions. There's a beautiful sutta called the Anupada Sutta, the one that goes one by one as they arose, and this is the journey of Sariputta, one of the chief disciples of the Buddha. He talks about how he actually looks into the states of the different jhanas, and he says, having arisen, he saw them arising; having passed away, he saw them pass away; and he saw that there is a greater state than this, there is a greater escape than this. There is also the investigation, which happens quite naturally. You're pinpointing towards, as you said, contact, feeling, the craving, the clinging, the becoming, and the birth of action, which is really the mechanics of karma. The whole process of the Buddha Dhamma, the teachings of the Buddha, is to alleviate suffering by understanding karma.

And we start to see this for ourselves in the practice. When we're meditating, the hindrances that may come up, the craving or the doubt or whatever might come up, that is karma. That's something we're meeting right here, right now, in the present moment. How we choose to deal with that will determine whether that hindrance becomes stronger. The initial reaction is to push away, or slap away the hindrance, and say, I'm going to come back to my object. But that's a reaction that causes more suffering. That's a reaction that may suppress the mind. You may feel like your mind is experiencing a lot of great concentration, and you may experience a lot of joy, maybe some contentment through the day, but then one little trigger happens and there's a whole cascade

of reactions that come up, which is dependent origination. So by dealing with the hindrance in this way, it actually has an effect on how we deal with the hindrance in everyday life. The mind, when we're in meditation and when we're in jhana, is really like a laboratory. We're testing out how the mind is working by seeing the arising of a hindrance or the passing away of a hindrance, the arising of a jhanic state and the passing away of a jhanic state. And so, as you say, the fourth jhana, you have a deeply contemplative mind, and it's a deeply mindful awareness.

in fact the the sutras they talk about it as it's the purity of mindfulness due to equanimity it's a very interesting statement purity of mindfulness due to equanimity which means that it's neither here or there it's neither good or bad neither pleasant or unpleasant the mind is just seeing things as they as as they are it's not holding on to anything it's not pushing away anything it's just completely free of that duality of push and pull it just observe things as they are and in observing things as they are there's a deep clarity uh you know in terms of the body if we're working with something like loving kindness the metta practice which is generally how you know i would teach uh for an object of meditation that what are known as the the Brahma-viharas.

The brahmaviharas are essentially the four sublime states of mind, or the four sublime attitudes of the mind. One is loving-kindness. The second is compassion. The third is empathetic joy. And the fourth is equanimity. So we usually start off with loving-kindness, which is a recognition of our own wholesome states and a recognition of the goodness of others, like a friend we may think of who uplifts the mind when we think about them. The practice there is to cultivate that loving-kindness by keeping the mind resting in it. After a while, there's a somatic experience

where we feel warmth in the heart, or we feel this energy or vibration of loving-kindness in some way. We may feel the loving-kindness start to expand. When that's happening, we're entering the deeper jhanas, the third and fourth jhana, where we might be starting to lose awareness of the body. Maybe the body feels lighter, or the body feels very rooted and grounded.

And then by the time we're in the fourth jhana, the mind starts to become more expansive. So we're more over here, generally speaking. The loving-kindness feels like it's starting to rise up. And when we're in that space, further instruction is given, where we learn to cultivate that loving-kindness and send it out to all beings indiscriminately, to all beings, no matter who they are or what they are. We send it out in the forward direction. We send it out in the direction behind us, to the right, to the left, above us, below us, whatever order we want to do it in.

We may do this for a while, and we may feel a sense of expansion, so the body starts to become less and less profoundly experienced, and there is a spaciousness. This is what's known as the infinite space jhana. It's the formless jhanas, the arupa jhanas. They are actually the extension of the fourth jhana, so we're always in the fourth jhana at this point, but we're experiencing other things concurrent to it, like infinite space. We may feel the loving-kindness change, and it might change into compassion. In that compassion, the feeling is softer, gentler, more diffuse, and the experience of spaciousness is like there are no bounds to it. There's no boundary point. It just keeps going and going and going, and it feels very, very relaxed. It just feels like you have let go of the majority of

feeling in the body and when you do that any kind of pleasure any kind of pain is replaced by this sense of expansiveness yeah uh i would add that this is uh the spaciousness and infinite space is the is the moment that you really across uh the boundary between uh you and and and environment for me it's like it's dissolving this boundary because the spaciousness is like and if there is no spaciousness still is like some kind of a boundary in us it's like still it's all like i'm i'm just a little limited and of course anybody can feel this in a different way uh but there is like some kind of limitation this limitation is like dissolving and you feel much more spaciousness and and the spaciousness is is um is really uh curious and and important because this is the place that we really can hold everything and

in a straight way and uh and not in a straight way it's because the meditation is uh and i think about the practice and what i've learned from this practice it's like having space for for everything yes and yes like you know having space for all all the thing it's this so this is like when we go because i also experienced when i was practicing metal the change with the feeling for me it wasn't so vivid but i felt like the kindness is less warm and going into something with what i would call silk it was i think it was the beautiful i don't know if it's some kind of attachment but it was like the beautiful feeling like of compassion it was like silk if someone touch ever silk you know it's it's it's like it's has the quality of uh very smooth like very light because the metta is still like a bit more dense and there is like a lighter state like this compassion

and i think because there is more uh a community in this in this company in this uh in this state it like it's a bit deeper and that's why it is more cooler way i feel this more cooler way but what for me it's like that the important fact the limitation is gone you feel like more infinite and this is uh yeah yeah i like that description you know uh feeling like uh silk and i think you you bring up an interesting point about the infinite space is that's what compassion also is is to to hold space for another right i mean when we talk about compassion it's not just a qualitative feeling that we may feel in meditation but it's also uh compassion in action you know how how do we be compassionate with others hold space for them uh be able to just listen to what they have have to say some people just need that is they need somebody that they can talk with or talk to about their problems and we may not need to say anything just the holding of the space of listening

to what they have to say helps to relieve any of that tension they may feel any of that suffering they may feel so compassion is you know it's not about looking down at the other person it's not about having sympathy for the other person it's about the recognition that i am suffering and you are suffering and others are suffering and when we can connect through that then there is a special sort of um understanding of what compassion is that that i i i too suffer so i know what it feels like and i can empathize i can understand i can see and i can provide just space or from that space i can provide some wisdom some clarity some help uh physically whatever it is that comes to mind uh that doesn't that doesn't uh create a crutch for the person that's suffering but gives them the inspiration to come out of that suffering as well yeah that's that's my personal reason because um i used to think about myself that i'm really empathetic

for people but what was really true i i couldn't bear the sensations that i uh that suffering others evoke me and this space it was the uh for me it was the the place that i finally or eventually i could allow people to suffer and not trying to hope because when i was trying to hope really i was trying to erase my sensations and then this is and die that way i understanding this this this space like it's okay the suffering is common and if people want to suffer and they don't want to come out

uh i'm okay with that yeah i'm okay with that i'm really i have a heart to hope but if you don't wanna this there is a space for you and it doesn't change anything just if you need more suffering as many as many um spiritual teachers says say about it because this is true and even in my case i needed really really big amount suffering to to do something uh i'm okay with that and i can wait and see because this is a i think it's a really um difficult art for many of us because many of us have a role of parents uh and families and we see suffering all the time around us and we want to help sometimes and we want to sometimes help too much and we have a problem to just have this compassion and this compassion means having space for that having space that someone needs take his lesson on its own yeah and if yeah this is yeah yeah that's that's a great point i mean you know i'm not a parent myself but i've seen how parents

can be too controlling of children. I think I've been blessed with parents who have allowed me to make my own mistakes, allowed me to suffer, as you say, and allowed me to see that the consequence of my actions is that we're not going to be around all the time to help you, and you have to learn how to come out of it yourself. Of course they are there to give me food and shelter and love and everything else, but if we coddle people, you're just making them into babies rather than capable of being able to come out of it themselves. You know, I can give you an example when I was a kid, and maybe my father was a bit strict, but I remember when I was in the boarding school, an international school in India, and I was in the eighth grade, and we were doing our final exam for French.

uh that was one of the subjects and i was giving my exam and uh the guy who was sitting just to my right in front of me he started like looking back at me and he said hey Delson give me give me the answers to the to the test and I couldn't I wanted to ignore him but you know I was what only 13 maybe 14 so peer pressure and you know trying to be a good friend and all these things came up to mind so what we did was we the invigilator the examiner was moving around from one row to the other row, just making sure people. So every time the examiner's back was turned, we would move our tables a little closer, a little closer, so that I could give him my paper and he could quickly, you know, take his, put his answers and everything.

And then when the examiner's back was turned again, I took the paper back. He kept doing this, and we tried to bring the tables back to the original position. Anyway, what happened is a few days later, I was called into the principal's office. He said, "We know that you have been part of this cheating, because we see the answers are very similar in the exam, and we have photos of before, when the seats were where they were, and after. So we have seen that there has been some movement." So when my father came to pick me up, he came back from the US to India to take me for the summer holidays, and he found out about this from the principal and from my French teacher. She said, because of the cheating that happened, both the person who cheated and the person who provided the answers are getting a zero. They're getting an F.

So both of them have failed the final exam. Otherwise, I would have probably gotten a B plus or an A or something like that. But my father basically said, "That's good. That's good. And I think you should even fail him for the class." The principal was saying that that's a bit too strict. "No, no, we will continue, so he can continue in the next grade." But my father was just like, "Whatever has to happen has to happen." He didn't fight for me. He didn't try to save me. He didn't do anything. He just said, "This is the consequence of your action. And you should learn that when you do something that is wrong, there is a consequence to it."

So I find that was a useful gift from my parents, to be able to give me that space to see that the world is about action and consequence, and to learn what I could have done better, what I could have changed, what I could have prevented from happening. In the same way, we have friends, we have peers, we have students, we have different people in our lives, or different relationships, we have partners, and we give them enough encouragement, enough advice, everything else.

But we cannot take the action for them. We cannot be the saviour for them, where we are taking on their karma, taking on the consequences. We can't do that. We have to allow them to see for themselves, so that they can learn from their own wisdom and grow. So yeah, that was a little interesting thing about seeing compassion and action, and understanding that when you see the suffering of another, it doesn't mean you have to go in immediately and do something about it. You have to see with wisdom what seems to be the appropriate action or non-action.

So how do you see the transition then from the fifth to the sixth? Is infinite consciousness is very interesting. - Yeah. To be honest, this is the most enigmatic parts of the jhanas for me, because, you know, what I think my experience is that I felt uh the the changes of the perception of the space this is that that the perception we have like the perception of the space and there is a spaciousness and this is the place that from this place the spaciousness is like closing it's not closing it's still there but the perception is like going into more awareness like into for my personal experience is like going into into center like yeah this is my personal experience i don't know if other people experience this like that and for me it was like the mind i always had a problem to be honest to see really this i don't know why and my teacher uh that craft also like uh told me the same story that he passes or like skipping this this this janice and the banter so oh you were there i don't know i i i i

didn't noticed that and i said i also had the problem with with this stuff uh but what i noticed in my practice it was like the changes in this perception and more into like recognizing awareness and second it was the mudita but the feeling was uh this is a really interesting feeling with data uh because this is a joy but when we're thinking about joy joy is like usually energetic there is like we feel like more party and etc but mudita is like somebody have equalizer for joy and just cut at this ecstatic state and there is like soft pleasantness

Soft pleasantness is like... I'm looking for a good word. It's the soft joy. That's my soft joy, because this joy from mudita is more energetic, it's something different. It's sometimes, I wouldn't say harsh, but there's more energy, and here it is soft. We go from the silk to soft pleasantness. And in terms of the development of the character, because meditation is not only keeping your attention on the object all the time, because we keep it this way to develop our personality.

I don't know if people know that, because many people think about meditation as calming the mind, but really it's the level of your character. So the brahmaviharas are the development. I would even say something like this: this is an ancient psychotherapy. It wasn't only erasing self, but really developing this changing self, because if you just erase self, what is the point? Erase stuff completely? It's understanding that the self is not permanent, and still we operate in the world, and how we operate has a meaningful impact. So meditation is about developing your personality, and part of personality is being able to be happy with the success of other people, which sometimes is really difficult. I had really big difficulties in the past with this, to be happy for other people, because our minds like to judge, you know, and see people...

...like judging all the time. Mudita is seeing deeper. Maybe I'll tell you a short story, when I saw not the feeling of mudita, but this change. I'm really a sauna lover, and one day we ran the sauna with my friend and went outside the city, to a beautiful place with old woods, a house with a stone fireplace. Suddenly a group of people came out, younger people, really noisy, and we thought we were going to be only with my friends there, and then they came and they started to laugh and cry, and we were sitting with my friend, and my friend said, "Oh, this is really bad." And in my mind arose the thought, "Oh, this is joy. They have a joy." And then I understood, this is mudita. I was happy because

they these guys have a good time and and previously my mind was like oh i want this is money my place and i own i want only i can have a fun they just interrupt my fun and then i saw oh this is the modita because this these are all very responsible in a spontaneous way and was like this is okay people also want to have a fun and yeah and this is how i um can say a few words about the mudita that's uh and i experience this in a different in a different way because sometimes we see uh people that they have a nice cars and they uh do some stuff that is maybe not so reckless and let's say but we can we can judge this or we can see that they have a fun of course i'm not talking about taking responsibility how you behave but out seeing something deeper that sometimes we we forgot that we all like to have a fun uh and we don't see this and we also be jealous of that people

Have success in life, and if you just can see their joy, that this is like, feel, because recently I was giving a talk and said what meditation changed and how it was important for me, and what the mechanics in a simple way was in this stuff, because I was interested in the past in non-violent communication, and they teach how to see needs and feelings and get more empathy. I was interested in the stuff, which is nice, but meditation gave me something deeper, because I got the... I get from the mind, like thinking mind, to feeling. Yeah. And when I meet people I understand, and one day I understand that I more feel than think. And when I more feel than think, and someone is in fear, I don't judge them. They might still could judge, but when I feel this fear, I'm of moral compassion. When I feel that someone is doing something, I feel their emotions, how they feel.

And when I'm in this feeling, I avoid judging about, and so there is, like, natural empathy arising from this stuff. And what we do here is we go from the thinking to feeling, and even deeper to clear awareness, in a deeper jhana. But this transition, without it, it's changing how you behave, not because you understand needs and feelings but because you feel your humanness, you feel your being, and when you experience other beings you can just feel them. Which is, I think, we forgot about it, but this is, I think, one of the most wanted skills that we need to acquire in life, to just feel more and think less, because the thinking is overadvertised, that thinking solves your problem. Sometimes the feeling, when you can feel everything, it's also a way to intuition, that we probably want to speak about later too. Yeah, yes. That's, yeah, yeah. No, that's beautiful, because...

Being in touch with our mudita allows us to really celebrate in the joy of other people. And I think we have been conditioned as a society, whether it's in Europe or Asia or the U.S. At this point we are in some sense a global society, because we're all connected with social media, for example, and things like that. And it used to be always the case that there is a competitive world, that I need to be better than other people, I need to be seen as the top, or if I don't achieve this by this time then I'm a failure. These are things that always happen in the mind, in terms of we think that. And especially right now, social media, which amplifies this idea that my friends are doing much better.

And generally we feel terrible about that, because we're thinking, how come they're doing so good? What is wrong with me? Why am I not able to experience the success that they're experiencing? And it's not necessarily just the feeling of inadequacy. Then the other part of that is the jealousy or the envy. I feel not necessarily ill will towards them, but I feel jealousy.

I feel like envy, like I want that, and instead of being able to celebrate in that friend's happiness or that particular person's happiness, so mudita is a great deterrent against that feeling of jealousy as well. And one thing I'll add about the interesting transition from the sixth jhana to the seventh, from infinite consciousness to nothingness, is sometimes if we go deeper into the sixth with infinite consciousness we might start to see the arising and passing away of different kinds of consciousnesses. So sometimes we may see flickering behind the eyes, or we may hear a little flickering in the ears. It doesn't always happen, and the majority of people that I've worked with, and students who have come on retreat, they kind of pass by this and they don't necessarily always see this. So don't worry if as a practitioner somebody is not experiencing it. Don't worry, it's okay. The whole idea is to go to deeper states of mind, and if you don't experience it, you don't experience it, it's okay. But I just want to point out, like, some people will experience

the arising and passing away of this, and what they're seeing is dependent origination. They're seeing contact in every moment, coming and going, coming and going, and this brings the experience of understanding impermanence. And you're seeing that this arising and passing away becomes tiresome, and that's the suffering. That's like, when will this stop, when will this end? And then there's a realization that you are not in control of this process. There is just a process happening. I didn't cause it to happen, I'm not the owner of it, it's happening due to impersonal causes and conditions. So this experience can allow us to see the deepening of impermanence, or the perception of that deepening of impermanence, which then gives us a first-hand glimpse into the nature of suffering, which then allows us to see anatta, the impersonal nature of things, which actually generally will give us a very deep feeling of equanimity if done in this way. So that's the upekkha, that's the equanimity that starts to be experienced in the transitional point and becomes more apparent in the seventh jhana. So when this process of the arising and passing away of consciousnesses

starts to slow down, we start to see the gap between the awareness. We start to enter into this field of nothingness, or what a dog craft, as you were mentioning before, might call no-thingness. There's no thing that the mind is holding on to. You're not thinking about the outside world, you're not thinking about what's happening there. There's just an awareness of nothingness, and sometimes that might come in the form of a blank space, dark space or white space, or just translucence. It doesn't really matter how that manifests, but what's tied to that is the upekkha. And so this upekkha, we radiate outward in different directions, and it's a gentle kind of experience. It doesn't have to be very strong, like the metta. I like to give the image of bringing your mind to a point of very deep stillness, like a still lake, and you have this small pebble that drops into the lake, and it starts to create these rippling effects. So your intention of radiating upekkha is small ripples in the mind that continue outward.

And so when we say upekkha, I would say upekkha is the letting go of expectations, so we're seeing things as they are without projecting an idea of how things should be. If something is unpleasant we accept it as being unpleasant. If something is pleasant we just accept it as pleasant, and when it goes away we accept that it goes away. So upekkha allows us to be in a calm, serene, tranquil, very stable space that is just seeing things as they're unfolding rather than trying to control things. Yeah, yeah. This is a really interesting state, and I would add a few things to this, it's sixth jhana. Yeah, now we're going to the seventh. Yeah, sixth to this. Yeah. But in a sixth jhana there is no outside world, so this is like the outside world completely... Oh, that's the mudita. The outside world completely disappears. You don't hear any sounds. It's only the mind, and it's like only the flow. There is no separate things, like there's just flow of phenomena, and there's

you don't hear anything. You just, just, just flow, just flow, everything flows, and this is the moment that really... because you were talking about stories that we hold on to, of ourselves, that we are not enough and we are not important, etc., and this is just the stories. Yeah. And here, the stories, I think it's a place that the deconstruction starts, because there is no place for the stories. It's when we really arises to these prices, this is the place that the construction of the self starts, really starts. That's, it's, it's the place from this construction. And I was thinking about meditation at the beginning, that this is something intense, and then I recognized that the deepest states of meditation is the subtle space. It's not something that you said that this equanimity is subtle, yeah. It's not something intense, it's, you are very, very receptive.

and this is the really sublime and subtle states of mind, really, really, and to the point that in some moment you feel that this radiating, I don't like this word, dating, because for me it's creating some push to do something. I just, I use for myself the word that are recognizing in this way, recognizing in this way, recognizing this way, because for me it just creates more... it creates more tension, and then you feel that this recognizing or just sending, it's like to tense the mind, start to just tense, getting turns, and then you just stay with what's left, what's left, and you enter with a very interesting state, very interesting states, because at the beginning it looks like you're going into sleep, but there is lots of energy, there's lots of energy, and sometimes you don't know, even though you don't, you meditate because there is no you meditating, it's just the flow of the phenomena, and the mind needs some tension for perception, that perception is connected to memory to create this memory, so

the mind is so relaxed when we really don't know, sometimes they meditate and we do not create the continuum, continuum your mind. The mind is just going and everything with arising, it's like just, it's like on the, you use the word teflon, it's like sleeping. There is the mind is, and sometimes we can just mislead this state with sloth and torpor, but this is not something like sloth and torpor, sloth and torpor is very sublime, and you can only reflect when you come out from the state. So when you come out and see, it's like was, and I personally think it's a very interesting state, because

When you come out from this field, from this state, you feel some kind of a catharsis, yeah. That's my experience. It's like, for the better word, I use catharsis, because that's what's come up to my world, because you are so relaxed, there are no hindrances. And when you come out you feel, wow, there was really, really relaxing stuff. And this is important. If somebody gets to this state, you need to know they need to reflect: what took you from the state? And relax, relax back. And when you go to the quailman again, you go again to the state, again to the state, and finally you go to the more interesting stuff.

More interesting stuff, which is nirodha, and this is really interesting stuff, and nibbana. Because it's hard to imagine that, right? It's hard to imagine that. It's hard to imagine that for the first time. It's hard to... what is it really? To be honest, what is nirodha and what is nibbana? But yeah, as I know you are a words white specialist from this topic, so I give you the floor to talk more about nirodha and nibbana, because this is stuff that blows the mind especially. And I had one thing, because at the beginning, because I missed this: that coming back, relaxation back, when the age on or something took you from this state, which is really important, because cessation is not all. After cessation the craving kicks up again, and you need to have some habit in your mind to reflect this.

after this because i didn't do this at the beginning of the few first time i was it was so powerful experience that i was wow yeah there was quite a lot ego and i i see in this because it was whoa what was it but right uh maybe you you can say more about it yeah thank you um well yeah i mean i i just want to touch base on on this uh understanding of what you were explaining which is you know it's a very subtle state this this transitional point and um you know the the sutras call them the neither perception or non-perception state and and what does that mean neither perception or non-perception it's like uh as you rightly put it feels like you're asleep but you're awake at the same time um

and maybe little things come up like patterns or disconnected thoughts or it's like maybe this is a past life me i don't remember ever having this experience different kinds of things come up a very fuzzy and it's like what i would call like a hypnagogic state it's that transition when you're about to fall asleep and there's these kinds of things but your mind is very alert uh which is also very interesting so so this might happen and you might go through cycles of this coming out and going in coming out and going in and the transitional point between equanimity to quiet mind it is where like the mind feels like it doesn't want to do anything now it just wants to rest in itself and you might try to bring equanimity again but the mind has a has a tension there so that's your that's the way to know for a practitioner that okay now i can just relax into the mind and i can just observe and not do anything and so

the important element as you mentioned is reflecting back what took you out of that space reflecting back when you came out anything that you didn't see that you weren't able to recognize that you can let go of and that actually brings deeper clarity to the mind but if let's say the mind is here and there's a transition into which the mind goes very quiet and there's very little vibration going on in the mind eventually it enters into something known as the signless and the signless or animita which means that there's no object that the mind holds on to there's nothing there and the mind just is like in pure awareness just looking but not looking at anything in particular and after a while because the mind is not holding on to anything and it's not paying attention to anything it experiences what's known as nirodha the cessation of perception and feeling and

it's like some people feel like they're kind of falling into it or there's like a tractor beam that's taking them pulling them in this direction like they're entering into a wormhole or like parts of their mind start to shut down sometimes they may experience heartbeat like they feel like their heart is racing but it's nothing like that it's really just the mind getting very very quiet that it's able to see this and it feels like dying for some people i mean that's how they describe it because it's like this last vestige of the self is trying to cling on to for survival but if you let go and if you keep relaxing keep relaxing without expectation

then as i always say with when you least expect it what happens is that the mind experiences cessation the mind just drops it's like there is a gap in the awareness uh of perception and feeling there's a gap in what's going on with regards to you know you experiencing anything so it's the total cessation of all perception of all experience of all feeling of all consciousness and so when you're in this space uh there's no awareness there there's no knowledge that you're in that space there's no um knowing that you have entered into that space it's only when you come out you realize that the mind had gone somewhere and when the mind is free of all conditions

then it naturally has the tendency to touch what is known as the unconditioned and that's the nibbana dhatu and it's like what we're doing through this process of going through the jhanas is to cease different coarser aspects of experience until we uncover all the layers and what remains is the unconditioned element the nibbana dhatu and when there's contact with that the mind experiences an explosion of joy and relief and as you rightly put it's like wow what was that and it's for a moment you know it's just for a brief moment the mind experiences this and it's like wow and some people may experience dots of light they may experience dashes of light and a lot of people will say that's the links of dependent origination i've said that in the past as well but i think what happens really is that the contact kicks in to see the feeling and the perception and the rest of the links and that's how it's being perceived retrospectively

retroactively and so after that you know if you experience this on retreat and people do experience this on retreat i'll tell them wonderful this is a great experience now just reflect on your mind what are you experiencing take some time to see you might see that the the colors are more vivid around you you might see that the mind is like floating it feels relaxed it feels like nothing can touch it anymore but reflect on the nature of how you see the emptiness of self like reflect on how you see the world a lot of people will report back that they do see the impersonal nature of things they have seen for them that consciousness is not self they've seen that the self is a collection of different ideas that come together that the self is a concept a construct to interact with the world but they themselves are not self they they see all of it as an impersonal process and this is a very liberating experience

and this is really the first level of of awakening where the mind is awakened to the dream of existence which is that this is me this is mine this is myself and now we start to we start to bring those layers away so we start to realize that actually no it's all impersonal yeah that that's the contact uh yeah the experience is gone that's that's that's i think it's hard to imagine what it what it really means that the experience is gone there is no experience so there is no talking about something everything uh what's it's important what happened after this this because uh we have a three three kind of elements uh rupa arupa and nibbana data this is that the rupa data arupa data and nibbana data and nibana data is tricky because rupa data it's like everything um what we can just touch material some material stuff to simplify and we have a rupa data it's on material stuff like a national emotion thoughts and etc yeah and we think that reality is just to do two things but there is something deeper and

talking about nibbana datu i i don't know my mind is like have error how to talk about it because it's it's not material it's not immaterial too you can only see the effects of this when you have the mind because when my my insight was something like that about this this first time because it was it was for me was very um powerful experience the first time and i i was like i um was more surprising than it was like very surprising stuff what arises what arose but then when i was reflecting this it was like i coming this it was like i don't know when it's this starts or this change of uh consciousness and in one point it stops and the mind arose again but no from the past conditions but arose from unconditioned on unconditioned state and it was like there is a just pure mind yeah pure mind no self no direction no everything just pure experience and then in the experience arises elements like

feelings father etc and this is the moment that the mind really have a some kind of like reboot because yes it it has opportunity to see all these five aggregates in a different way because for a moment we have access for a really arahan state like for the good state right and we can just see and reflect after this experience what really happened and how we how the mind and body and everyone we feels in this experience when we come up from the cessation and whether it's contact of nibbana because this this contact change how we see ourselves and when we reflect upon and probably everyone has a different insight and the way how we see this stuff we can reflect and see that this is not me this is not myself this is not so impersonal as we see uh in in words and this is really interesting this is really interesting stuff to talk because uh this this maps of jana we have a pure and simple and elegant map with steps with practice not complicated really simple relaxed to go from the

Level zero zero to experience nibbana, data to understand, because I don't even know how to talk about this stuff. I don't know what it's hard to imagine, material, immaterial, nibbana. So, but when you experience it, it's a different stuff, but still you have a maybe problem, maybe you have better words, but I don't know how to talk about this topic. It's mind-blowing for me, like in terms of, you can experience, you can see for yourself, if you take a place on the red street and

And you go from the state, but I don't know if I can, or you, or somebody could talk more about it. I think it's better to just experience this and see for yourself how it works. To be honest. Absolutely, absolutely. I think you're right on the dot about that, because the more we try to talk about it, the more it becomes within the conceptual framework. But I believe that this is a good point to end here, because this will allow us to kind of go into the next topic at some point later. You really talk about what awakening is and the nibbana dhatu, and what I call the three gates of liberation, and understanding maybe the mechanics of what's happening there, and vinnanam anidassanam, the non-reflective or non-manifested consciousness. So these might be topics for

Future exploration that we can discuss, but this is the journey that we've been on in this discussion, and I think it's been a lot of fun. Yeah, okay. Thank you for the lovely conversation there, son. It was a pleasure to talk to you. Thank you about this stuff. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay.