Sex as Path – Tales From Nibbana Episode 3 with Delson Armstrong

Okay, Nelson. So, let's cut to the chase. What's the fastest way to awakening? The fastest way to awakening is to have sex. With who? Anybody. With anybody? Anywhere. All the time. Why did we go to all this trouble? Do you know how many hours I spent on the cushion? I know, man. Thousands of hours. It's the wrong cushion. What's the point? It's the wrong cushion. It's supposed to be a bed. I see now. Yeah. All right, tell me more about sex as the fastest way to awakening.

Well, I think when we talk about sex within the spiritual community, or a lot of spiritual communities, it is seen as a detriment or as an obstacle. Now, there are monastics who decide that they want to be celibate, and that's fine for them if that's the choice that they make. What I have noticed in a lot of my is that going to come through? Of course it is, but you know, that's part of the Indian charm. There we go. So, in my experience with a lot of people who come on my retreats, like on the TWIM retreats for example, one of the things that they have a lot of anxiety about, and this psychic tension, is, you know, it has been said that if I get to a certain level then I will lose interest in sex. So what does that mean for me and my partner and my relationship with them, and so on? And it has always been difficult to maneuver that, but I think the easier way of looking at it, or the

more comfortable way of looking at it for people, is that you shouldn't really worry about that kind of stuff. You know, if it is a detriment to awakening, I would see it as a detriment only because people become so obsessed by, or become fetishizing, you know, where it's like, 'Oh, I can't have sex,' and it becomes this constant obsession, 'Oh no, I had sex and now I won't be able to do this and I won't be able to do that.' Now, so there's anything to be let go of? It's all of that, all of those conflicts with that. Essentially what you're saying is, desire good, craving bad? Yeah, yeah. There is a difference between craving and desire. What is the desire? It can be just you wanting this, like I see a plate of food and I'm hungry and I desire to eat that, or I'm thirsty and I look at my bottle of soda and I desire to have that. But the craving, what arises, is the obsession over something.

and all of the tension and thoughts around that: that if I don't do it this way, this is going to happen, if this happens, and you know, it's this continual proliferation that causes the craving, and hence the suffering. Yeah, I can say that on my path, sex has been a crucial part in bringing all of my faculties of awareness into every part of the act, including the desiring, the act itself, and following that, and seeing where every moment, both on the highest and lowest time resolutions, time scales, see if there's the craving, see if there's a part of myself that's objectifying something and then is burning impure fuel to go towards it. Does any part of me leave other aspects, other parts of myself, behind, moving out of integrity, both in terms of my pace, my more complete desires, and in terms of the desires of my partner? If, because I am focusing on one thing like a goal, some agenda, right, or even a sense of, if I have sex with this person, this is what it will say about me.

Right. If I'm holding that very tightly, making that the object, right, then I'm blinding myself to the grander being that's in front of me. And so, having sex with someone who is also aware, and who uses that as a practice, as a way of cultivating greater awareness, greater integrity with themselves, can also offer wonderful mirrors. And you know, it's the sort of thing that can happen on really fine time resolutions, right? Like the

tiny micro expressions, right? Like if I'm moving a little too fast and I get just a flash at me, and I'm like, 'Oh, right, I was caught in a thing,' and the dance immediately changes, and it becomes really as fine as a dance as you would on a dance floor, right, when you slip, make two angles more of a twist in a certain direction, lose balance, and sure, just catch yourself and move yourself back. And if it's done in awareness and with contact with the body, hopefully there's also learning, there's a transmutation of the process of the samskara that was looking towards grasping, grasping something, and though for twisting a little bit out of alignment. Yeah, that's interesting that you mention that, because that shows that actually it's in itself a meditation, right? Because you can catch yourself either out of the awareness or making things too objectified, yeah, and then releasing that, or just coming, relaxing, back into the actual experience. And you know, I see the benefit in the more renunciated

paths about taking a break, let it go, because in some sense we're born, our entire being is based on us being sexual entities, right? Procreation, and having something to offer to the other sex, and then the consummation of it, so to speak, in the act. So it's so intense, enticing, it's so gripping, it's so related to everything that is me, right? My conception of myself, how I show up in the world, how I prove that all of the samskaras that are online are deserving of being online and representing the grand being that is me. And so letting that go can be very useful on some parts of the path. And truly approaching sex as a spiritual practice in this way requires a lot of existing commitment to this path, a lot of capacity for continuous and fine awareness.

And really an understanding of oneself that helps you go step by step through this process, in a way that respects the participants of the dance. Yeah, and the movement towards, let's say, greater spiritual heights? Right. Right, yeah. Yeah, you know, I think about it in the perspective of tantra, like Indian tantra, which also talks about the chakra system. For example, in our sexual organs, male or female, or how we want to put it, resides in this area, the pelvis, and so the sacrum

And it's so interesting, because they talk about how the sacrum, in certain traditions, is a powerhouse of creativity. So sexual exploration is also a creative exploration, or a sharing of creativity and play, and coming together and connection. But also, I think there is something to be said about the renunciate path, in so far as certain levels of understanding. Like, for example, in certain yogic traditions, now, I don't think it's a value judgment, but it might be seen as that. It had been seen that you want to be, not necessarily celibate, but you want to be somebody who is discerning when you choose partners. And the reason is because, according to that tradition, the energetic processes that happen in the sexual act, or in coming together, actually is an exchange of energy.

And it's an exchange of karmic energy, too, which means that if I'm with someone, we are interacting with each other and we are exchanging karmic energy. Not only that, all of the partners I've been with, and all the partners the other person has been with, their karma also is coming into that stream. So I might pick up something, so to speak, in terms of a karmic energy that I have to deal with, which is not really my own. So it reminds me of those old educational advertisements: if you had sex with this person, you also have sex with that person's ex, and that person's, and so what is the equivalent of a spiritual condom? That's right, if you will. I think it's important to understand that sex is also something that's an expression of love. It's an expression of wanting to connect with another person. So I think if you are in an emotionally fulfilling relationship, perhaps not as a deterrent towards miss exchanging karma or whatever you want to say, but as a sort of like

border or boundary, where in this consummation it's not just a consummation of raw sexual energy, but it's a consummation of emotional heart energy as well. So where there is this cliche, where there's sex with love, it's more satisfying than loveless sex, right? So how does sex with love protect you, or help you not take on the type of karma, the type of energy that will be harmful on your path? So the way you look at it is, the heart. When you talk about the heart center, I see it as, and this is perhaps my personal opinion but also conditioned by what I have learned from the traditions and my experience, is that the heart is where it's literally like this, it's literally like the center from where everything is sort of purified, whatever energies are coming from up and whatever energies might be coming from above.

start to kind of connect together here, and at the heart, which is perhaps the seat of, you know, karmic exchange or karmic sort of give and take of emotion and energy, and so on. But it's also a dissipation. That's why even within kriya yoga, when you go to higher levels of kriya yoga, you work with the heart center, and you're purifying your karma through centering your attention on the heart. And you will notice for yourself, if you are sensitive enough, that when you center your attention to the heart there is a sort of balance of energy that happens, and so it's also balancing the sexual energy and other energies above or below it. So, you know, as we were speaking about this, in my mind is the context of the way that in the TWIM community, and of course based on Bhante Vimalaramsi's instructions, at some point the sexual drive, not just because you want to be a spiritual exemplar, so to speak, or fully wake up, sexual drive fully drops off naturally.

So I'm curious about your thoughts about this. I know in the past you spoke about this, and I said that this is in line with your experience. Well, I'll say that when I said it at that time, in the Guru Viking interview for example, it was asked, how to let go of sex. In my mind I truly thought I did. And what's interesting is within the community, or maybe even the larger traditional Dharma community, there's the idea that if you become an anagami you lose sensual desire, which includes sexual desire. But does that mean that you're incapable of experiencing sexual union? That's another argument, or another point of contention. And there are people within the community who believe that the sexual desire perhaps might be transmuted, so it's no longer obsessive about sexual expression, but it's more like you can be more in tune with sexual energy. And I'll say for myself, at this point in time, there is sexual energy, there is a desire, let's say, for sexual expression. Yeah.

So in other words, back then I might have felt that way, but as I've been looking at myself, so to speak, I do notice that, yeah, I do want to be in a relationship, and I do want to interact with somebody who I can exchange this loving energy with and consummate that in some kind of sexual experience. That's right.

So I'm saying that's right because in my mind this is so obvious and always has been. I see the way that the translation about the eradication of sexual desire is such an outstanding and long-standing mistranslation of the whole thing. And in my mind I'm thinking about the immense amount of damage that it has done, people who are then seeing their desires come up at some point, even subconsciously, right? And they're not just meaning it with suppression, because they think to be a spiritual exemplar, to wake up, it should not be there. So in advance they're already pushing it down. And of course that is the cause of suffering, meaning arising fresh phenomena with, oh no, it should be different, and it's not. To say that there's no right effort, so to speak, when the rising phenomena would cause more harm, right? There's room for

intelligently, with wisdom, moving through the world and seeing what karmic action will lead to more karmic action, versus effort that would reduce karmic action. But even in this context, suppressing the sexual urge, it's never a good idea unless you really have a good understanding that if acted on it would cause harm. You would continue spinning yourself in some karmic cycle, would inflict your karma on someone else. Yeah, yeah. And maybe it's not worth getting into, but I do want to comment on that part, which is that suppression can be quite dangerous. We see that in not just the Buddhist spiritual tradition but any spiritual tradition, where it has caused the monks or the priests or whoever is the sort of religious order to act out in ways that are sometimes shocking to the rest of the community, and it causes waves of doubt and shock and sadness, right? Because of course anything in you that you suppress, instead of coming up upright, right, in full view and transparency, in alignment with

everything that you are. If you press it, it's gonna come out sideways, just leak out, even under your own radar sometimes, right, in ways where you make something inappropriate, move or touch someone without their consent, right? Then you're not seeing it, because it's an urge, it's not allowed to be fulfilled normally, upright. And so, I think it's worth mentioning in the context of our discussion about the way that the pure sexual desire, the eros, or even life force, some traditions call it, right, associated with the sexual drive, with those energies coming from the bottom and circulating through the body, and what gets refined is the obsession, is the thirst, right? That's the word in Pali, tanha. Yeah, yeah. Translating it as anything like desire or will or wanting, right? That that's a crime. The whole point is something, and you think it has to have exactly that shape of object, otherwise it will suffer or it will not even survive, as if you're truly

looking for water, right? As if it's truly a survival issue, you're gonna die if you don't have it, right? That's where you narrow your perception. That's where you're so, that's what gets out of the way. And in my understanding that's in line with everything else in the path, right? Like, in my conception of the path, as you let go of old traumas, release your karma, allow your system to organize in a way that's more in integrity, right, more and more as you're coming into this coherence, sometimes we call samadhi, like the continuous money, not the samadhi, or just meditation, then we become even greater expressions of our human being, versus letting go of capacities, letting go of urges, letting go certainly of needs. In the same sense that we do not let go or dissipate or destroy or approach or suppress a desire to eat sweets or a desire to be playful or to use our human bodies in all sorts of beautiful ways. Likewise, the desire for sex, for union with the other person, for intimacy, for seeing and being seen

not only does that not go away, but it also becomes free to express itself in more and more beautiful ways that are respective of the wholeness that is all of the beings who you're involved in, whatever dance it might be. - Do you have to say? - Okay. In that, I think it might be interesting to explore a notion of craving. I've been working on a book that has less to do with a fundamental bug in the system, so to speak. Or in some sense, in the West in particular, been imported to be congruent with the notion of craving somehow being directly related to some notion of original sin. I was just thinking that, yeah, or some way that we're born faulty, we have to redeem ourselves, we have to cover up for some ancient crime or such.

And instead the way that I enjoy seeing craving, and the whole baggage of, and that means you're bad and you have to suppress yourself. Right? Like the notion of suppression comes and is tied hand in hand in the Judeo-Christian moralities, and the way that they've been infusing Buddhist understanding in the West, the notion of suppression goes hand in hand with the sense of: we're wrong, we have to fix ourselves, something is not okay, God doesn't love us unless

And the switch that I'm proposing towards seeing craving as, let's say, an early developmental move, meaning in the same way that when you're a child you don't yet have a theory of mind, and so everything is mine, right? So I don't so much consider you, your perspective, your desire, your wants. When there's craving in the system, it's likewise unaware of other sankharas, of other motifs in the system working to get their own needs met. And so there's this continuous clash between different forces looking to exercise their strategies, whether to continue assuring our survival, right? Like truly some lion is chasing us, so that it's going to push away everything that has to do with procreation or food or shelter, and so on. Or in day-to-day life, if I'm, do I want the chocolate cake or do I want to pick up my phone, do you want to have sex or do I need to put more time in the book I'm writing? Chocolate cake, always the Delson answer. Doesn't second jhana or chocolate cake? Chocolate cake. Fourth jhana or chocolate cake?

Chocolate cake. Seventh jhana or chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, chocolate. There you go. What was I saying? And so different forces trying to, in the winner-take-all environment of the mind, right, like a very, I don't want to say entrenched, very pronounced or prevalent mechanism in the brain, there's this continuous competition, a battle between the different participants in the society of mind to tell the story, to make the movement that the other participants see as the highest expected value, is the thing that most is most likely to answer the need, or the most amount of needs, right, all the way up until the thing that we call the self, right, which is under its umbrella has the various contractors, various other winners, in every strata of brain. So in the mind at every moment this winner-take-all paradigm makes it so often the victory that one sankhara, one coordinator, I like to say, this contractor pulling together senses, motor functions, social brain, emotions and so on, narrative, to craft its story into

action tends to do so, leveraging what in the Pali suttas are called the underlying tendencies and infusing its behavior in the type of movements that then in the meditation we might also identify as the hindrances, right? Craving, aversion, doubt, sloth and torpor, and restlessness, my favorite. And these are all in my mind representative of less developed strategies. In the same way that as a baby, in the beginning, like this is my ball, and later we learn to share, also in the mind in the movement towards awakening, more and more of those coordinators, bringing together various aspects of self, learn to play nice with one another. And of course the way that ignorance applies here is twofold. One, those different coordinators, those different sankharas from which craving may arise, are ignorant to the way that the other coordinators in the system are part of the same team, are part of the same mind.

And it's the same ground of being. And that's one form of ignorance, right? In the same way that the baby is like, it doesn't know. It doesn't know not only that there's another actual entity there, it doesn't know that there's a way today in playing a non-zero-sum game that can meet each other's needs more reliably, more sustainably over time. Then there's also the ignorance of the ability not just to continue fighting to be the top dog, the highest level coordinator, but also the capacity to let go, drop down all the way into the ground floor of existence, so to speak, into nibbana, and then allow a new act of coordination to spring forth, such that instead of having before, like two coordinators in battle, let's do this first, let's have something completely new come up that utilizes all of the wisdom that's available in the system to provide a more complete solution for behavior moment after moment.

Yeah, I want to just touch upon what you said about the craving part of it, which is, perhaps when we look at the translations of the suttas or any of the so-called sayings of the Buddha, there is an emphasis that craving is something that's a natural part of the mind. But again, we have other suttas where the Buddha says that the natural state of the mind is to be luminous, and we discussed this some time ago, that this perhaps refers to a mind that is the Buddha nature. And so that's an interesting dichotomy, because we have the Judeo-Christian idea of original sin, and that's how craving is perceived amongst, let's say, most people when they come into this practice. Whereas from the other side of it, in the Tibetan or Mahayana or even Theravada, there's the idea of Buddha nature or the dharmakaya, which is that you are already

pure. You're already so-called pure, or you're already that, without craving. Yeah. So it's just a matter of reminding you of that, or it's a matter of resting in that understanding. Yeah. And then in those vehicles it's just a matter of continuously recognizing the innate primordial purity of all things, including in the thickest moment of craving, right? Because this recognition is then what informs the samsara, the coordinator, that there's not just forward movement, so to speak, a movement towards greater proliferation. And if I get that and this object, then I can finally rest. Oh, right, ground of being. To say a little more about the way that craving, in its cessation, is a path of development, you're also connecting those ideas into why in TWIM and in the approach design, developing the core way to organise the mind into consensus and collectiveness is through the brahmaviharas. Whatever positive qualities of mind allow for easier collaboration and coordination between the different participants, because initially, if we're just starting our practice, we not only do not have the capacity to rest into

nibbana. We also don't know what it is, that it even exists, right? It's a faraway, faraway story. So the first order of our business is just to bring all of the mind into the same room, sitting around the same table, and starting to discuss the next move, right? But there has to be first some ground of compassion, of kindness, of charitability. Forgiveness, something you speak about very much, is a way to allow two parts to come into the distance where they can even communicate.

Because if one is accusing the other of this old trauma, or this one is holding some idea or some lie that the other will never accept, there's no way to even begin the conversation. So those qualities, the brahmaviharas, gratitude, forgiveness, allow these things to start vibrating together, right? Instead of trying to be the opposite of one another, and even trying to suppress one another, curating the activity that would annihilate, numb, suppress, this, right, again, the hindrances, and bring them together to have the ground from which there's more continuous awareness, and then whatever activity is in integrity is more likely to arise naturally, right? So there's less disagreement, there's fewer schisms between the participants of mind, and then the person is ready to do emptiness or lack of inherent meaning practices, and so on and so forth on the path. Yeah, I think it also just feels good.

Right. Yeah, I mean, I always suggest for a lot of people when they come on my retreats, gratitude practice is such a big one, and it's something that I've learned in my own personal life. You wake up in the morning and you just thank existence, or however you want to put it, just be grateful for the fact that you can breathe and it's a new day, and whatever is possible. I have gratitude for this being that's there, in terms of the body, the mechanisms within the body, and so on. It changes the attitude towards life and the people around you and the world at large, and it's less constrictive. And I think that also helps when you have gratitude, when you have forgiveness. Forgiveness, I mean, I've seen a lot of people have great feelings of relief, great feelings of release, great feelings of just, okay, I see that I've been clutching to this for so long, and then just letting go. It feels so good.

And of course the brahmavihara is, I mean, loving kindness, the sense of being friendly to one's own people and to others at large, and compassion, with the idea of, I understand the suffering that another person is going through, and I recognize it, and so instead of feeling sorry for myself or for the other, I'm here to hold space and be there for them when required. Yeah. And an empathetic joy, which is a big one. Being able to celebrate in other people's joys is more expansive. And of course equanimity, where whatever is happening, the mind is just at equal poise. Yeah. And of course I think it would be

a missed opportunity if you were not to mention that of course any being that comes your way is another coordinator in your mind. Yeah, anything that you pretend to be another being is an entity, so to speak, or a coordinator in your mind that is doing its job, doing its service to the greater whole, making up this virtual reality image in your mind of something that is supposedly another being, supposedly outside, supposedly separate from you. Of course, any ill will, any of those maladaptive

destructive strategies that the coordinators that I'm identifying with myself are going to apply towards the coordinators that I'm saying are not self, they're going to be detrimental, both internally, in terms of the chaos, the restlessness, the agitation in my mind, and the way that I treat you, right? Of course, the way that I treat you, right? If I'm aversive towards you, if I operate from the underlying tendencies, then I'm generating more karma that's going to very likely come back and bite me in the ass, again, right? Your coordinator's going to be like, I'm not going to... So the me that's in your mind is going to get it from you, and it's going to come up to me, until we learn to play nicer with ourselves, with every level of our being, both internal, so to speak, the thing that we consider to be ourselves, and other beings, so that the greater self, so to speak. And again, I want to make the point that it doesn't matter how much, this is also reflecting on our jhana conversation, it doesn't matter how much you do

mind collectiveness practice, how much you do brahmavihara practice, how nice it feels in a meditation. Ultimately, as long as we're attached, and I'm not allowing the existing sankharas to relax into nirvana, there's not going to be the full freedom, because those existing structures, if they're not allowing themselves to relax, to let go, to subside, to dissolve, and we arise again from the ground from nirvana, then there's always going to be a little tinge in the way that they were originally constructed from a lower point in the developmental journey.

Yeah, and to that point, I do want to say, I have noticed with students that they have a tendency to have to make things a certain way. Like you talked about, we talk about, let's say, loving kindness or compassion, and if it doesn't match what maybe the teacher says, or they feel like they're just not getting enough loving kindness, and they beat themselves up for it. Yeah. And so it becomes another object of craving, so to speak, just like the jhanas themselves. There's the utility of jhanas, which we had discussed a few days ago, and this is the utility of the brahmaviharas: they are like the raft to take you to the other shore. So a lot of the time they will get caught up in the raft itself. Is the raft made well? Is it sailing properly? I don't know if I should have used cedar wood or oak wood, or whatever it is, rather than forgetting about the fact that it's on the way to nirvana. How much time do we have left?

Exactly five minutes. I was wondering if this is our exit music. It's funny, every day there's music, and every day it feels like it's coming from another place, right? It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, so many celebrations from there. Yeah, yeah, it's really sweet. Okay, let's see what else we have to say in this topic. So, an important thing to say, something that's important for me to mention, is that in some sense, every time there's this craving, this partial movement, part of me wants this and another part doesn't. And so the part that's craving, the part that's active, is sort of hijacking, or you know, they're taking control of all the faculties of the system and going towards something, the object that he wants. Of course this is why it's accompanied with tension and struggle and effort and resistance, and it feels like a burden. And then you get it, and even when you get it you're not satisfied, because of course you get it, and that coordinate relaxes, and then the rest of us is like, we've been buried under here for 10 years

Right, recipe for disaster. Underneath we spoke about ignorance, but there's also always some point of contention, some reason that the object was not something that the system could align on to begin with. And there's something to be said about the way that, from a partial perspective of the system, you necessarily can only create objects that are partializing to the system, right, that will never be under full agreement. But I'm going to put that aside, and more so speak about what is often the core of the conflict. If we have two or more coordinators here, there's always something tracing the schism point to some fundamental disagreement. Of course there may be lines of layers of disagreements. There's always

A piece, and this is what we can call either karma or trauma, that has split the mind around some pain that one was caused, could not for whatever reason be fully metabolized by the system, to be fully accepted, understood, integrated in terms of the experience that that pain represents. Of course, when I say pain, it's only truly pain if at the time that signal could not have been metabolized, it could not have been integrated. There was no one there, even if we do not have the capacity to hold us in it, to give us perspective, especially at the time when we lack perspective, when we're just in the early moments of our developmental journeys as babies or toddlers. Sorry to get the hint. Let's see how to end this, doing this justice, and maybe we'll leave a breadcrumb with a bookmark one other time. And so we could say that anything that we call negative or unpleasant

sensations are always unpleasant from a particular perspective, and of course most people, up until a very high point in the path, cannot disconnect or have that perspective dissolve. So something that's unpleasant is almost always going to be unpleasant. And the thing that we want to do, the strategies here, but essentially it's dissolving the perspective complex, the coordinator conglomerate that has decided on good and bad, pleasant and unpleasant, even just a little bit, to allow the unpleasant sensations to arise and be metabolized in a more adult, more developed system, by ourselves or with the support of a therapist or community that's capable of offering us the space that's needed.

And so, by doing that, really allowing what's buried under there to air out, to allow the core of the contention to be seen again, and from the perspective of an adult versus a baby who could not get its needs met, was crying about it, was screaming, was doing all that it could, the little that it had the capacity to do at the time, without being able to get the need met, without being able to find a sense of safety

feeling the neglect from its caretakers, and having no choice, because it's so loud, because it's even threatening to overpower, to overwhelm the system and prevent other coordinators from carrying out their tasks and getting other needs met. The only route was to suppress, to push down, to say this is the bad thing and we're going to lock it down. Of course, in the mind nothing can always and forever be locked down, and there's always a part of us that is the keeper of that message, that is the thing that's like, I need to express this, I need to feel this, I need to get the full service about this. And this is the point of contention between the thing that had to suppress to survive and the thing that is suppressed and doesn't even fully understand why. This point of contention is the thing that layers and layers of coordinators and strategies and agendas and identities are, you know, a very shaky house of cards that, in this process, we start to dissolve, to deconstruct.

And more so, I don't love the word deconstruct so much. It's more so rescue the exiles, that's in IFS speak, or to integrate all of the parts, all of those experiences that we just did not have the capacity to at earlier times. And then lastly, I'll say, to make this pragmatic: any time in me I see a craving rise, and of course it's not trivial to identify this. This is why we need a very sharp, capable mind that has the capacity for discernment

and a continuous awareness, and so on. Every time I see craving come up, and when I can catch myself in this, then instead of going into the object, I need this to be happy, I need this to be fulfilled, I need this so that I can continue suppressing the bad thing, instead of doing this, I turn it back into that. Oh, what would I have to feel if I never got the object? What is the thing that I'm refusing to feel by engaging in this behavior? This type of inquiry, and this, without fail, some place in the body that is just unhappy, is unpleasant, that's sizzling, and just being with it like a mother holding a baby with tenderness and curiosity, it's enough for the sensations to start to come up, often intensifying in the beginning. That's why we need, you know, the brahmaviharas, online. We need a stable foundation, we need the resources of ourself, our community, and then all sorts of old stories about how we used to be. And then there's a whole process that I won't get into right now, but I do recommend doing this

inquiry when it feels safe and it feels like resources are available, at least starting to feel those sensations before anything else. Just be in touch with them, and in some sense this is the whole path. Instead of going from feeling into craving and clinging and becoming, and so on, you cut it at feeling, feeling the sensations that were previously classified as unpleasant. And it's okay if it's unpleasant, and it's okay if it's unpleasant. So good. It can be, I guess it is, I guess it is. This concludes another episode of Tales, we're still going with that. I think it goes from Nibbana, feels from Nibbana. Oh, we missed our, we missed what's called our corner, we missed our special, no, missed the questions from the audience. How do you call that when you have the burning

question, an interlude, long in the middle of the show? Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, we'll have that for the next one for sure. Are there no questions from the audience? Oh yeah, oh there are, it's like five more. All right, then we have a lot of material left. Good. All right, cool. See you there. I'll see you at dinner at 7 o'clock.