Austria 2025 | Escaping the Matrix

Just to review what we spoke about yesterday, we looked at what is actually all of the elements of what the Buddha would call new karma. That is craving, clinging, becoming, birth, and suffering. So today we'll start with feeling, or what is known in Pali as Vedana. Vedana is that which, it's to know something, Vedana. It's to experience something, to sense something.

And as I was saying earlier, I prefer to use the expression experience rather than feeling, because feeling can be misaligned to what it's supposed to mean. Some people may think it means just emotional feelings. Others may think it's just physical feelings. But experience includes everything: mentally, in terms of senses, in terms of physical, and so on, emotional.

And the Buddha categorized feelings in many different ways. He categorized them as three types, as six types, as 18 types, as 36 types, and as 108 types of feeling. And feeling is generally, the main three types are pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral, or neither pleasant nor unpleasant. And so a pleasant experience is that which we find to be pleasant. When we say pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral, that is a labeling of the experience.

And that labeling process is perception. In Pali, to perceive is to recognize what is being experienced. So saying that this is a bowl, this is a bottle of water, you are perceiving that. You are seeing the bowl and you are seeing the bottle of water. But along with seeing it, you are recognizing that this is a bowl, and that's the perception.

And you are looking at this water bottle, seeing plus the perception that it is a water bottle, the labeling of that. And in the sense of you observing something and seeing it right now, when you see this bowl, when you see this bottle of water, it's a neutral experience. It's neither pleasant nor unpleasant. It's just a neutral experience.

A pleasant experience is something that causes a sense of joy in us. It is pleasing to the senses. It is pleasing to the mind. And in reality, it is just pleasing to the mind, because the mind is the base for the reception from all the other sense bases. When something is said to be unpleasant, it is because it annoys us, it irritates us, we don't like it. It's something that is unpleasant to our senses, something that is painful to our senses, to our mind, to our body.

And neutral here is just seeing. You're just experiencing. You don't have an opinion or an idea of it one way or the other. It is just an experience. We have internal experiences related to the body, and we have external experiences related to the sense bases, related to the mind, where we have experiences that are uplifting like jhanas, and experiences that are not that uplifting like hindrances. We have experiences through each of the sense bases. So the eyes, through the eyes we see, there's seeing. Through the ears there's hearing. Through the nose there is smelling. Through the tongue there is tasting. Through the body there is something tangible. So we are feeling, in the sense of through the body, internal or external pressures.

And through the mind, there's cognizing going on. So the process of Vedana is a process. It is a verb. It is something that is happening. So then the question arises: how does feeling translate to craving? It's just feeling, right? What is it that has the transition from feeling to craving? And it is what is known as underlying tendency.

These underlying tendencies are related to the quality or perception of an experience. There are seven underlying tendencies. There's the underlying tendency towards craving. The underlying tendency towards aversion. The underlying tendency towards ignorance. The underlying tendency towards habitual tendencies. The underlying tendency towards conceit. The underlying tendency towards views. And the underlying tendency towards doubt. And this is the bridge between feeling and craving.

So in the case of the underlying tendency towards craving, which is what? It is the mind that says, oh, this is pleasant, this is nice, I like this, I don't want it to stop. That is the beginning. I want it to continue. I want it to stay the way it is. I want to control how it is. That is the underlying tendency towards craving.

And it happens, obviously, underlying a pleasant sensation, a pleasant experience, a pleasant state of mind. The underlying tendency towards aversion is where the mind says, this is not that great, I don't like it, no, I don't want this. There's a repulsion there. There's a resistance there. And the mind pushes. It says, I don't like this. I want to control this by changing it so that I can either avoid it, or I can change it into something pleasant. I can escape it and go to something pleasant.

And so obviously this underlying tendency to aversion is underlying an unpleasant sensation, an unpleasant experience. And the underlying tendency towards ignorance: ignorance here, for all practical purposes, is the lack of mindfulness, the lack of the mind's ability to be in the present moment. That generally happens when the mind perceives or misperceives something that is impermanent as permanent, something that is liable to cause suffering as happiness, and something that is not self as self with a capital S. So that ignorance, that lack of mindfulness, basically means that I am not attentive, I am not aware in this moment of what feeling is arising. I'm just being the feeler. I am being the feeler. The identification with that process is the underlying tendency towards ignorance.

And this can underlie a pleasant experience, an unpleasant experience, or a neutral experience. The underlying tendency towards habitual tendencies: very similar to an experience I've had in the past, so I say, oh, this is interesting. So I create a habitual pattern, or I bring up a habitual pattern based on that experience, and I act from that. And when I act from that, I will identify with it. And when I identify with it, I will either crave for it or I will have aversion towards it, the quality of the experience.

In the case of the underlying tendency towards conceit, this is an interesting word, conceit. It can mean pride, it can mean identification, it can mean ego, it can mean a lot of things. But the original Pali of conceit is mana, and that means to measure, to compare. This is the comparing mind. So I had an experience here, and I compared it to a past experience.

Or I experienced something and I compared it to somebody else's experience. Why is their experience better than my experience? And so I wish to claim a better experience. I crave for a better experience, if not an experience that's equal to that other person's experience. Or I have an experience that is better than the other person's, and I say, wow, look at me. I'm in the fourth jhana right now, and that person's only in the second jhana.

I'm experiencing love and kindness, and that person's only doing forgiveness. I'm experiencing compassion, but that person's only experiencing metta. So that comparing mind is conceit, in the idea that I'm equal to all, the I am is what the Buddha would call conceit. I am, the desire to identify with something, the desire to be something, the desire to own something as me, mine, or myself, is the conceit. And this gives rise obviously to craving: that person has something better than I do, so I want more of that, I want that.

Or that person has something worse off, and I want to prevent that from happening. Or a person feels like they want to be equal to everyone. Everybody should be equal. But there's still an identification with that process. Then the underlying tendency towards doubt. When we say the underlying tendency towards doubt, what we're talking about here is the lack of discernment.

There is an experience, but there is a confusion about what kind of experience I'm having, and there's a lack of discernment. Or in the experience, there's a lack of discernment of whether this experience is wholesome or unwholesome, or whether my intentions in relation to the experience, that arise from that experience, are wholesome or unwholesome. And so this is obviously interspersed with the underlying tendency towards ignorance.

The inability to perceive reality as it actually is. And that can spiral into, I want more of this, or I want to push this away because it feels uncomfortable, or I want to hold on to this as me, mine, or myself. And then the underlying tendency towards views. The underlying tendency towards views is: I have an experience.

When we have an experience for the very first time, we don't generally have any views towards it. But we develop a certain opinion about it based on the quality of that experience. And now our desire is to repeat that experience, to have it the same way again. Or to have an opinion about the experience, insofar as inheriting opinions from our parents, our grandparents, our elder siblings, from our teachers, from our peers, from our friends, from the news and the media and social media. And we create opinions about how an experience should be. And so this is interspersed with conceit.

We compare. Social media is the very cause of that comparing mind. And that opinionated mind, where it's like, oh, this experience, I'm having the best experience, but then social media says, no, no, no, it should be this way, it should be that way, and I create an opinion based on that. I inherit opinions based on other people's opinions of the experience.

So I'm never content. I'm never satisfied, because I don't think for myself, and I only think about what others may say about the experience. Or I hold on to an opinion about the experience and I'm stubborn about it, and I cannot see beyond my opinions about it. And when I hold on so tightly to these opinions and I'm so stubborn about them, then there's a tendency to identify, and there's a tendency to go towards craving or towards aversion, depending on the perception of the experience.

So very simply put, to summarize all of this, what we're talking about, the underlying essence of all of these underlying tendencies, is the inability to completely be in flow with the experience, adding any kind of sense of self to it, or an agenda to control how the experience should be or shouldn't be, or how it should reflect based on the image I have of myself.

But these underlying tendencies can be seen, can be understood, can be let go of, can be relaxed. As soon as we notice that the mind wants to control the way the experience is, the mind that processes in such a way that it wants to control and identify with an experience, we can relax. And what do we relax into?

We relax into that space beyond or behind all of the conceptual frameworks of the mind that wants to think about things. The silence behind it all. The mind can have a vantage point from. And from that space, there's no me, mine, or myself there. There is just an experience. There is just a witnessing of the experience and observing of the experience.

As soon as I'm in that flow, flowing with the experience, and it is streaming without any grasping, any agenda, then there can't be craving there, there can't be aversion there. The craving only arises because I feel like I want more of this, I'm not fulfilled by what it is that I'm experiencing in this moment, uncomfortable with this experience. Nothing wrong with feeling uncomfortable, but can we bring space to that discomfort? Can we say yes, there is discomfort right now, this is an unpleasant experience right now, for example fear or anxiety? When it comes up, can we come back to the moment and feel into the fear and the anxiety and say, what is it being anxious of, the mind?

What is the mind afraid of? Is there something I can pinpoint in right now in this moment? Or is it just an experience of fear and anxiety because the mind is not able to control the unpleasantness of this situation? We can't control experience. We can't control the experiences that are happening. We can't control people around us. We can't control relationships. We can't control moment-to-moment experience. All we can do is observe and perceive and flow with experience, through experience, and this is how we manage karma. When we talk about dependent origination, dependent origination is the programming that runs the simulation of the mind, that runs the matrix.

And the engine that drives it forward, dependent origination, the engine of that is karma. So dependent origination is the mechanics of how karma flows moment to moment to moment. So the ability to manage karma is, as seemingly simple as it is, allowing experience to flow without interfering with it through a sense of manipulation. The Buddha has said karma, old karma. So new karma is craving, clinging, becoming, obviously the birth of that new action and the suffering.

Old karma is the karma that we inherit in every moment. And it is, its termination point is at feeling. Old karma is to be experienced. The way through old karma is through experience. I'm not going to go too much into karma because we'll talk about that at a later time. But just understand, once you see what dependent origination is, it is not some kind of big, complex theory of the universe. It is a management system.

How do we deal with karma in every given moment? And karma is as simple as experience in every given moment. What we choose to do with that experience, how we choose to interact with that experience, how we choose to relate to that experience, will determine, will condition whether craving arises, or clinging arises, or habitual tendencies arise. If we engage in a way that we want to control from the sense of me, mine, or myself, then there is the likelihood, because of that process, that we will experience the renewal of that karma, of karmic patterns, continuously.

But we can stop. We can stop at craving. We can stop at feeling. We can stop at clinging. We can stop at becoming. Just before we act, we can stop and say, no, we're not going to do that. We're going to let go and see how the intuitive mind flows. The intuitive mind arises when the karmic output of mind is relaxed through the process of what we are doing here in the training.

In other words, the intuition that flows will allow us to act or speak in accordance with the Eightfold Path, which is, as per the Buddha, the way out of karma, the cessation of karmic patterns. So if our intuition is rooted in that, it means all we have to do is let go. Let go of control. Surrender into the moment.

Surrender into the experience. So, this old karma that we inherit in every given moment, being terminated at feeling, when it is seen as just that, then obviously we will see that the more we try to do something about it, the more it continues to progress. But as soon as we let go of trying to change it in any way through the sense of self, then we start to see it weaken. A good example of this is in meditation: when you are meditating, a hindrance arises and you get frustrated by those hindrances. Why? Because for some reason you think that the hindrance is affecting you, affecting my mind, affecting my meditation, affecting my jhana, affecting my metta in a certain way.

But if you see the hindrance as what it is, which is old karma, it is an experience that's happening in the mind, then you let go of the desire to control how that hindrance should leave and whether that hindrance should leave. You just let the hindrance be. So what are you relaxing? You're relaxing your desire to engage with that hindrance.

You're disengaging from that hindrance altogether, not by putting it aside, but by redirecting your attention, by relaxing back into the moment, relaxing back into your object of meditation. And when you do this, the undue attention that is given to the hindrance is no longer strengthening, fueling, nourishing that hindrance. And because of that, that hindrance atrophies. It weakens.

So that when it arises another time, it is not as strong. And you keep doing this until the hindrance just subsides. Same with life. Same with the habitual patterns. Same with the different kinds of behavioral patterns, karmic situations. The more we try to do something with it, the more we become reactive to a situation, the more it strengthens.

But if we have wisdom and realize, the moment I let go of control or trying to control the situation, the moment I let go of identifying with this pattern, the moment I let go and surrender into the moment. If it's an unpleasant situation where somebody is arguing with us and we let go of the desire to defend ourselves, we let go of the desire to have to change their mind about something, we let go of the desire to show everybody that, no, I'm right and they're wrong, then you have left the game.

And that's a great place to be. You no longer have to play the game of karma. There is a different kind of nonchalance in life that you experience. You don't care about the outcome. You don't care about what happens. Not because you are apathetic, not because you have any kind of aversion, but you have a higher perspective. Experience now on the relationship, on the people around you, and this is something that you will see as you keep doing this. It's not something that happens immediately. It's not something that you will see right away necessarily. But once you start to see that you stop playing the game, you stop interacting in a way that you are a player in the game, then that's freedom.

That's liberation. You know, they idealize liberation and the freedom of mind and heart and so on as never being affected by anything, being always equanimous and, you know, transcending everything and all of these highfalutin. But there is some element of truth without the idealization of that, which is when you stop playing the game and because you don't care anymore, indeed your mind remains unaffected.

It experiences the pain of the emotions. It experiences the pleasure of whatever joys there are. But it's not invested in how that joy has to continue or whether that pain will go or not. It is just aware there is pain. In this moment, there is pain. In this moment, there is anger. In this moment, there is doubt. In this moment, there is shyness. In this moment, there is joy. In this moment, there is desire. In this moment, there is craving.

But when you have that space where you are taking refuge in the silence of your mind, which is the birthplace of intuition, intuition will automatically flow. And that intuitive mind is a mind that remains completely uninvested in playing the game. This is very important to understand. This is very important to see for your own peace of mind.

There is no need to get to a state of perfection. There's no need to go into some idealized sense of self. There is just dealing with the moment as it arises, and seeing the moment from this perspective. So this vedana is dependent on what is known as contact, phassa, or sparsha in Sanskrit. This contact is made up of three things, as I've mentioned before.

The sense base, that is the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, or the mind. The sense base object, that is the color and form for eyes. Sound waves for the ears. Odors for the nose. Tastes for the tongue. Tangibles for the body. And objects of mind, like concepts, ideas, thoughts for the mind. And the underlying or corresponding awareness dependent on the two. So the example I had given is when you are all looking at me, there is light bouncing off of me entering into your retina, your photoreceptors, and the mind interprets that as an image. But the ability to see that and be aware of that is the underlying eye consciousness or eye awareness.

Eye, meaning EYE, the eye consciousness, the ear consciousness, the nose consciousness, the tongue consciousness, the body consciousness, the mind consciousness. And that is directed by attention. The example I had given is when you look at the image of the Buddha, your attention is now on the Buddha, and therefore your eyes make contact with the image of the Buddha, and there is a new underlying eye consciousness dependent on the two, based on the movement of attention from my image to the image of the Buddha.

So experience is dependent upon contact. And contact is happening in every moment at different rates per second. We won't get into the technicalities of that, but what's understood is each individual contact is an opening and closing of a sense door: the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, and the mind. And some people experience this in certain states of mind, like what's known as infinite consciousness, able to see the gaps between one seeing and the next seeing, one hearing and the next hearing.

And there is a gap, meaning they see the space between one contact and the next contact. And this contact, when we talk about contact, is the process of receiving sensory data, the traffic of sensations that are happening all the time. The mind is the main mechanism through which everything is taken in and formulated as an image, as something of discernible sound, of a certain kind of taste, certain kind of odor, certain kind of tangible, and a certain kind of concept. So what we see out here, what you think you are seeing, is just whatever your mind is predicting in every given moment based on previous experiences.

And it is very fluid. When you see me move around, it's very fluid. When you look at the birds in the sky, it's very fluid. When you hear a wonderful symphony, it's very fluid. When you taste delicious food, it's very fluid. There's a continuity, supposed continuity, to that process. But if your mind were to get very deep, it can start to see the breaks in that continuity.

It can start to see the individual frames of seeing, of hearing, of tasting, of touching. It's not necessary for you to have to experience that, but understand, in terms of the framework of dependent origination, all data bits of sensory information that are coming in, and the things that are receiving that, are the sense basis, and therefore contact is dependent upon the sense basis. So the matrix of samsara, the world that we are experiencing, is mind. Mind is samsara. Samsara is. We're not talking about some kind of solipsism, that there's only one experiencer here and everybody else is just NPCs or agents of the matrix. We're not talking about that.

What we are saying is, yes, there is a consensus reality in which we all recognize and perceive the same things. Or we seem to see that this is, let's say, there's a color red. We all say this is the color red. And there's a consensus reality that this is the color red. Or this is the color blue. Or this is a bowl. Or this is a bottle of water. And so on and so forth. So we do have a shared collective consensus. Senses reality.

But the idea is that experience that we're having is only limited by the capacity of our sense bases. Our eyes can only see so much, a very small sliver of the electromagnetic spectrum. Our ears can only hear so much. So many different molecules. Our taste receptors, only so many different kinds of tastes that we interpret as delicious or wonderful or terrible. Our body can only pick up certain kinds of pressures, internally and externally, and therefore the concepts that we have in our mind are derived from those limited sense experiences. See much farther than we can, much more than we can, beyond what we can in terms of that small sliver. That can hear much more, beyond the frequencies that we can pick up, which by the way start to decline as we age. So, to take that so much as me, mine, or myself

Why? Why get so caught up in the game? Because it's the only thing we know for a while. It's the only thing that we are conditioned to as we grow up. Consensus reality, consensus society, all of these things say, this is how we are. This is what it is. This is what we know. And the sense of identity around those experiences.

But if we reflect on this and understand it in this way and see that the sense bases are just that, they are just picking up different sensory data bits, to disengage from considering it to be absolute reality, we don't need to see beyond the matrix. We just have to understand we are in the matrix derived from mind and the sense basis. Maybe at a later point, we may be able to see that. We may be able to disengage completely and see beyond the simulation and see who the true simulator is.

But until then, that's all conjecture. That's all concept, known as mentality, materiality. Nama-rupa, name and form, mind and body. Rupa here refers to the four great elements in traditional Indian understanding, which is the earth element, the water element, the air element, and the fire element. And in a modern context, what that means is essentially solid molecules, liquid molecules, gaseous molecules, and heat or temperature.

So different degrees of that make up our body, make up this table, make up the water in the glass, make up the glass, make up this clock, make up all form that we are perceiving and experiencing. But aside from that form, there's what's known as nama: components contact, feeling, perception, intention, and attention. But wait a minute, didn't we just talk about contact? Didn't we just talk about feeling? Didn't we just talk about perception in the links that succeed after this? Yes, we did. There is a difference, and the complication possible, potential complication here is mistaking them to be one and the same thing, because they are the same word.

But when we say contact with reference to contact and mentality, it is the faculty of contact. The possibility of reception, the potentiality of reception, that allows for the process of contact to arise. It is the faculties of feeling that allow us to have the process of experiencing. It is the faculty of perception, the instrument that allows us to recognize, that gives rise to or allows for the process of perception.

It is the faculty of volition or intention, chetana in Pali, that allows for the flow of certain formations to come in. The faculty of attention, the instrument of attention, the spotlight, that allows for the flow and direction of awareness, the light that flows through the spotlight. Intention obviously changes that attention around, and so these correspond with the five aggregates: form, feeling, perception, formations, and awareness or consciousness.

So remember, these are all part of old karma. You can't do anything about them. We have inherited the way our sense bases are. They continue to change based on how we use them, based on environmental factors, based on a myriad of different things, causes and conditions. So in every given moment we are inheriting how our eyes perceive, how our ears hear, and so on and so forth. In every given moment the faculties may change. They may decay. They may get better. In every given moment the form changes. We lose weight, we gain weight, we develop diseases. We have to amputate our leg. Whatever it is, it changes the form.

And that's the inherited karma. That's the old karma that we have to deal with. And now we get into something that can be slightly esoteric, depending on how far out we want to go. What's known as consciousness. Now, here we can look at this in two different ways. The esoteric aspect of that is that there needs to be three things for life to come into being. You need the mother and father, in other words you need the sperm and you need the ovum, but that's not all. You need the descending consciousness for there to be life

In the new nama-rupa that is formed. And so consciousness is dependent upon the sperm and the ovum, the genetic material that constitutes nama-rupa, name and form, mentality materiality, for its continuance. And mentality materiality, the functions of the mind and the body, for it to continue, requires consciousness to flow through it for it to be active, for it to function.

So there is an interdependency. Consciousness conditions mentality materiality, and mentality materiality conditions consciousness. In order for the form to function in everyday life, in order for these faculties to function in everyday life, it requires awareness. Even when we have situations where we're aimlessly walking somewhere, mindlessly doing something, doom scrolling, still requires some level of basic awareness for the functioning of the faculties of mind and form.

And in order for that awareness to be driven forward, it requires the instrumentation of the faculties of mind: contact, feeling, perception, intention, attention. Now, this consciousness, this awareness, this vinnana, is dependent on something known as sankharas. We've been talking a little bit about this earlier. Samskaras. There are three types: mental, physical, and verbal. Mental. Why do we call them mental formations? Because they are the processes allowing for or bringing up the experience of feeling and perception, and all feeling and perception is ultimately interpreted at the level of mind. Therefore they're called mental formations: whatever you see, hear, smell, taste, touch, and the level of mind.

Therefore, they are called mental formations. Physical formations are those that allow us to do in-breathing and out-breathing, inhalation and exhalation, and other bodily processes, such as walking, sitting, standing, sleeping, resting, whatever it is that we do with the body. Verbal formations. I want to use a different word. I have to find the word that might be best for verbal formations, because yes, I understand why they use the word verbal, but it's beyond just that. Verbal formations are related with intentional thought.

Verbal formations actuate the process of contemplating what it is that arises and giving expression to it. So it's not just verbal. It's about contemplating and thinking about it. When we have a plan of action, when we have a concept in mind that we want to create, verbal formations are in action when that process is going on. And so these formations are understood as being interlinked with intention.

Our intentions drive forward the kind of formations, the type of formations that will arise in every given moment. And furthermore, these formations are also carriers of karma. In other words, when the right causes and conditions arise for that karma to arise, then it will, but it will happen through these formations. And these formations will give rise to a certain kind of awareness.

These formations may be rooted in greed, hatred, and delusion. May be rooted in the process or in the element of identifying with an experience. And the consciousness that arises from it may be colored by certain kinds of so-called defilements. And that may give rise to the way we perceive an experience, tendencies that may automatically arise because of continually reacting to those similar stimuli and experiences in the past.

So these formations, when they are rooted in some kind of greed, hatred, and delusion, are done so because of prior intentions that have acted from those particular situations, those particular roots, let's say. And this process is cyclical. It continues going on in this way until we learn to disengage, to relax, to let go, to surrender into the moments.

Thereby, the roots of delusion start to weaken. And we can uproot some of that through the next arising of the formations. And thereby, at that point, the formations will only just be carrying forward whatever karma arises, dependent on the causes and conditions that come up in that particular moment. Now, these so-called formations are rooted and conditioned by what is known as avija, which is the lack of knowledge, the lack of wisdom, the lack of clarity, the lack of discernment, the lack of mindfulness.

Generally, this is called ignorance. Whenever I am unaware in the sense of mindful, present with every experience, seeing it for what it actually is, a lack of that, that whole process of old karmic generation through formations, consciousness, mentality, materiality, sense bases, contact, terminating at the experience arises. And when I have further lack of mindfulness of that experience, then craving, clinging, becoming arise to produce new karma, the new arising, the replenishing of that karmic cycle, the replenishing of that behavior, behavioral pattern.

And it is said that this ignorance is dependent upon what are known as the taints, the asavas. These are deeply ingrained roots of the mind. They are, as I would call them, viruses. They infect the essence of the awakened mind. Because as I put out there to you guys, the awakened mind is always there. It's always there.

But due to adventitious defilements. Due to whenever we don't see that, there is the potentiality, the proclivity towards sensual craving, the proclivity towards controlling the outcome of an experience because of a craving for a certain state of existence, the proclivity towards identifying with an experience, the taint of ignorance. This gives rise to avidya. This gives rise to lack of mindfulness.

And these two are, again, interdependent. So these whirlpools, as I was mentioning in the analogy yesterday, they are sometimes interconnected. It is not just a linear process when we talk about dependent origination. There is a lot of different feedback loops that are happening. Point we will try to create a 3D model of this. We'll see how we can do this so it's much easier to understand. So these stems, these viruses, which infect the awakened mind, that is to say infect our ability to see and be in the awakened mind to the rest of the series, and what we choose to do, conditioned by that at the level of experience in every given moment, will either weaken the arising of that old karma until it fades away completely, or strengthen and replenish the cycle of that karma through the ingredients that cook up that new karma: the craving, the clinging, and the becoming.

There's a lot of information. There's a lot I've said here. But to simplify, if you just are able to see for yourself this present moment awareness of every experience and disengage from it and surrender into what is always there, the awakened mind, then there's nothing else you need to do. Over time, you will be less invested in playing the game of this samsara. And that is where we talk about the liberated life. Not that you will be unaffected by anything. Not that you will be some saint. Not that you will be some perfected being. But that you will be able to surf. Seamlessly, in every moment, as best as possible.