Delson Armstrong: awakening is individual, & the future of dharma

Where in India are you? I'm in Mumbai right now. Oh great, working or just relaxing? For now I'm at my mom's place, and in about a couple of weeks I'll be heading to the U.S. to start retreats. Oh great. I've had several friends recommend speaking with you, who come to your retreats or followed your teachings in one capacity or another and hold you in high regard, and I saw an interview you did with Guru Viking years ago, which I really enjoyed as well. So it's a pleasure to meet you, and not quite in person, but as close as we can get with the distance. Yeah, no, I'm glad we're doing this. And a couple of your friends, I remember specifically, I think had sent a message, and someone else, I can't remember who.

But yeah, so here we are, and I'm glad we're finally doing this. So thank you. Yeah, fantastic. And in Mumbai, do you do any work there, or do you get involved with the meditation community or anything there? Is it purely family? Mostly family, but there is the University of Mumbai, where they have a department of Pali studies and Buddhist studies, so every so often I will go there to give a meditation workshop for about three or four days, and sometimes they'll organize retreats somewhere in the forest. Of Mumbai, sorry, not Mumbai, Maharashtra.

And currently there's a foundation that's working here in India. They want to set up a couple of retreats in India, so India is very sparse compared to U.S. and Europe in terms of retreats for me to do specifically, but I like it that way, because then I can find India to be a place where I can, you know, relax and be with family, friends, travel for leisure, these kinds of things. You have quite a full teaching schedule typically? Yes, this year I have about 10 retreats.

It's from now until the end of the year, so it's going to be quite busy. By the way, I'm curious about your name. Amir, is that Iranian, or is it... my mother? Although I was born in new, my mother's from Israel, and we have five children, and four of us got Israeli or Semitic names from that. Oh okay, yeah, because we have Amir as a name in India too, and I know I have a couple of Iranians who have that name, so that's why I was guessing. But that's cool. And it doesn't mean, like, a rich person, or it has a certain... Yeah, it means wealthy or rich person, right? Right.

In Hebrew it's just the peak of a tree, the crown of a tree. Ah, so it has a kind of elevated etymology, but no money, unfortunately, perhaps spiritual wealth, because it's, yeah, better than nothing. Oh great. And so you're of Indian... were you born in India? I was born in Mumbai, and both my parents are Indian, but I think my great-grandfather was from Scotland, and that's where the Armstrong name comes from. He worked with the British East India Company, and then moved to Calcutta, and then fell in love with my great-grandmother, and then there was a whole Indian side of the Armstrongs that grew from there. Oh amazing. Yeah, I was just wondering about Delson, as a... if it had a meaning, if it had. It doesn't sound like it's an Indian background. No, it's not. So my father's name is David, and my mother's name is Elizabeth, and so I was originally going to be named Aaron,

but at the last minute, as they were putting the name in the form, my dad said, how about Delson? It's a combination of Dave and Elizabeth, so Dave and Elizabeth's son. And she said, oh, that's great, let's put that in. So that's how it started. Well, that's lovely. Are you familiar a bit with the Bible? The Old Testament? Yes, definitely. I used to be an altar server when I was in the fourth grade. Oh really. Yeah, so we grew up Catholic. Yeah, I've not read the Bible or engaged in those teachings for a long time, but my vague memory is Aaron was the codifier. Basically Moses would channel the teachings and Aaron would codify them, and so it sounds like you almost had that role, and then at the last minute got to do something else. Yes, that's right, that's right. And I wonder, so I don't know, obviously I just know, kind of, a few bits about you. I know that you used to teach at TWIM,

which again I just know through friends, and I've followed a couple of YouTube videos, and I found that very nice, but I believe you've left that now. And so yeah, it just sparked in my mind, okay, maybe you had a codifying role there, of following, but you know, person there, but then you escaped, yeah, rather than... So I actually spoke with a couple of the people at TWIM, and I said, look, if you still want me to continue teaching, I'm okay with teaching, but I need to do it my way, and I need to do it in a way that's not so, as you say, codified or so dogmatic.

And I do go to that. I do go to Dhammasuka, which is the epicenter for TWIM, but I teach it in a way that's less dogmatic and more based on my experience, and of course based in the Pali canon, in the Theravadan suttas and stuff, but less so about the idea that TWIM is the best or TWIM is the only way. I don't subscribe to that kind of view. Yeah.

I've started up a couple of meetings and classes here, and I'm noticing the natural tension of, okay, if I want something to persist that's not just me, then it needs some kind of structure and codification, but then I can say, okay, but if this ossifies, becomes dead or becomes restrictive. And yeah, I, again, all I know is a little bit of each tradition, but my understanding, and maybe I'm mixing up, uh, Star Wars with the Zen tradition and I'm getting them confused, but I think in some Zen traditions you only ever have one master and one student.

You don't have groups. Again, I might have got that confused with the same, but I can see the wisdom of that, of like, okay, you totally do it your way, in a way that's very specific to that student, and when they've kind of got it, they go off and they find one other person, and as soon as you're teaching to a group anyway... I'm talking a lot, but it's a lot. It's a long way of me asking. My understanding is you've gone through a couple of different traditions, you were part of an institution, and now you're doing your own thing. It's a big question, it's a huge question, but I wonder if you want to speak a bit about what your current conception of the path is, and the goal, and, you know, what you think people can aspire to in this realm.

Yeah, I think I'm still learning myself, let's just put it that way. So I haven't concluded on one particular way or one particular methodology, and that's not to say that I'm dismissing anything that I've learned before. In fact, I stand on the shoulders of what I've learned. I've spent now two decades in various different kinds of meditation traditions. To your point about the one master, one student, this is also something that we see in a lot of tantric traditions in India, especially some places, like in the Sri Vidya tradition, where they say that you want to be able to follow just one teacher for the time being, because otherwise it will be like you are a honeybee going from flower to flower and just not really getting the best from one particular track. And they go even further, in Sri Vidya especially, they talk about how you connect with different deities.

And there are a multitude of different deities that we practice in that tradition, but the idea is one deity and one mantra, and you do that for whatever time you need, until your teacher says, okay, now move on to this. So instead of doing a hogwash of many different things, there's always a singular focus on one particular thing. But coming back to my experience, what I see is that the definition of awakening, it's, I think we can say that the idea of awakening has some commonalities, specifically the understanding that we aren't just this body, we aren't just this mind, we aren't just the senses, that there is something that is beyond that, or that is not just that. So for example, in Vedanta there's the idea of Brahman and Atman, and especially Advaita Vedanta, the notion that I, as the self, is the same as the big cosmic self of Brahman, and I see that as a positive outlook on the idea of what awakening is. The other side, which is the via negativa,

of, let's say, specifically Buddhism, which says you are not this, you are not that, you are not the body, you're not feeling, you're not form, you're not consciousness, you're not intentions. So it doesn't conclude on a specific merging of a self with a big self, or a specific larger kind of self that's there. But it's interesting that when we say Buddha, it means somebody who has awakened, and awakened to what exactly? Right, that's the idea. And in my understanding, in my experience, I believe that when we say Buddha, we're really pointing out to awakening from the sleep of ignorance, which is being completely overtaken by our

emotions, by our thoughts, by our conceptual proliferation, overtaken by the ideas of, this is how I must be, this is how the world must be, and this is how people in my life must be. I take this, I borrow this from Albert Ellis, who talks about it beautifully, but the idea is, if you are free from that, so awakening also has that connotation of freedom, of liberation. And what is that liberation? What is that freedom from? It's the freedom from identifying with those things that limit us to a life that feels painful and full of resistance and suffering, and so on.

And so I think great masters like the Buddha, or maybe even Shankaracharya in the Advaita tradition, or even Jesus Christ for that matter, who were giving these different teachings, later on they were codified, as we were talking about earlier, to such an extent that they did become fossilized. And I think the tradition, although we say it's a living tradition, I think what has happened is, in my circle of understanding and in meeting with people, teaching them and discussing with them, it's like some things are blasphemy, some things are taboo to say, because that's not what the scriptures say, or that's not what the great master has said as per that particular scripture or whatever.

But if my experience says something else, should I not be able to question it? And so that's really where I'm coming from. I have great respect for the wisdom traditions of the past, but I think in order for them to be a living tradition, we need to contribute to it, we need to continue to evolve it. And I know people will say, then how is that a tradition, how is that secure? But that's the only way we will continue to evolve. I don't believe that the lessons that were learned from 2600 years ago by the Buddha necessarily always apply to the modern world. The Buddha, Jesus, Moses, the Shankaracharya, they all grew up according to their particular culture, and so I think some aspects of the teaching continue to adapt as per the culture, or should adapt as per the culture.

Are you familiar with Rob Burbea? I have heard the name a few times amongst friends. He's part of the Soulmaking, or he's the one who created or founded Soulmaking Dharma, I believe. I believe so, yeah. I'm more like the honeybee that you mentioned, where, as you can see, I get a little bit of Buddhism, a little bit of Advaita, a little bit from Star Wars, whatever inspires me that day. Not very disciplined or consistent. But Rob Burbea is someone I've engaged with a little bit. He's passed away, but there's many recordings, and I have lots of friends who love his teachings.

And he gave a lecture that resonated with what you said, because he asked a group of Westerners to put their hands up. It would be interesting to hear your comment on this, so I'll give you my synopsis of it. Who here believes in reincarnation? And being Westerners in England, probably it was 20 years ago, maybe out of 100, three people put their hands up. It's not a common belief system here.

And so he said, okay, well, we need to question the project we're doing here, because his understanding of the Buddha's project was to not reincarnate again. That was the whole goal. So if that's the goal of the path, but you don't believe in reincarnation, how are you going to follow his goal word for word? So instead, he invited these three conceptions of truth. One is the religious conception, that Moses had the truth, or Muhammad, or Buddha, or Jesus, and we want to recreate what they had and be very faithful to it. And then there's a scientific conception of the truth, which is through the intellect one day we'll arrive at the ultimate truth and resolve quantum physics and relativity or whatever. So at some point it's in the future, it's not in the past, it's in the future, but we'll get there, give us time.

And then there's the kind of truth that artists speak of, where you look at a painting and a painter will just know, I just need to change one little thing and it feels right. It has a truth with a capital T. It's subjective but intersubjective. It's inspired by past artists, but not it's part of tradition, but evolves with the tradition. And then other people can also feel like, yeah, that art speaks to me in a way that I can't pin down or just replicate, to be true in 10 years as well. And he invited, if I've understood him, to approach the possibility of the dharma in the same way, of finding your way or your truth of what feels alive. And of course that can get way maybe too post-modern and too messy and too honeybee-like, as you said. But I was curious.

If that would, and I can't, it was a two-hour lecture, so I might not be doing it full service, but I wonder if that conception of dharma or the approach to this resonates with you. It's all, as they're not being one goal, but there can be many ways of finding each individual's way in and how it comes alive in their own life. Yeah. Um, I sincerely believe that the path to this project of awakening or liberation, or what have you, is first and foremost very much individual, and so the fact that we have the ability and freedom to be like the honeybee is a wonderful thing, in the sense that we can pick and choose. There has to be, at some point, of course, a certain level of dedication and discipline towards one thing, or at least a couple of years before we can say that, well, this isn't for me. And I think we are in a place in the history of the world where we're so inundated

with so much information, and now with the upsurge of ChatGPT and Grok and Gemini and all of these different AI tools, we can just have a question and all kinds of information will come up. And so we believe that we don't have time, at least I'm speaking from my perspective of how the collective seems to be, in the world of Twitter and Facebook and so on, where I need enlightenment now, I need awakening now, I need to be liberated now. And it's a wonderful idea, it's a wonderful motivation.

But I also believe that it does take time. It takes time to see what works for you, and you need to have time and patience to go through the practice, to see, to make a fair assessment, and say, you know what, this isn't really working for me, and at a minimum give it six months, but I think an ideal would be at least a year to 18 months before you can really give a full judgment on it. And some people may be more conservative than me, like my teachers and their teachers, and say, no, no, you need to dedicate five years, ten years of the practice. And it was a different time back then. People seemed to have more time on their hands. People seem to have the idea that, what, even if it takes me 20 years to get there, I will do it. But I believe that people feel like, no, I need to get it done in 10 days, I need to get it done in 20 days, I need to get it done now.

And that's, I don't, the sutras talk about this, that if you can be focused and be mindful 24/7, then in a week there is a possibility of you gaining full awakening, and if not, at least what they call is being an anagami. And those are interesting claims. So far there have been people who have felt that that was the case for themselves, me included. But if I was to gauge my own experience with the ideals or the concepts around what that means as per the suttas, then as per the suttas I'm not, and I'm okay accepting that fact. This is why I say that, I think if we continue to learn and if we continue to keep deepening

our interest and our practice in one particular aspect, we will see something there, but I think it's also important, and it's risky, to become too inundated with the perfection ideal of it needs to be this way. If I'm not there, it's because I fell short here and there, and there's humility in that and there's a good level of wisdom in that, but at the same time I think we need to be level-headed and say, maybe this is something that is more of a projection of cultural ideals than it is of, let's say, something that would be completely beneficial for human society, like the notion that if you are going to be fully awakened

that you will never ever experience any kind of ill will, never ever experience any kind of anger, these kinds of things. But I think emotions are a way of helping us to know where our boundaries might be crossed, where the things aren't getting not the best. I have a certain intuition about a certain person, and if I can go beyond just the fear factor of it and say, okay, there's something about this person maybe I should be more cautious about, and if I choose not to listen to that intuition, maybe I will find myself in deep trouble. I say this from experience. I've experienced this a couple of times in my life at least. So I think the idea that somebody who's fully awakened will never ever experience any of the hardships of life, will never ever experience any kind of suffering or pain, is just as childish as somebody saying that, okay, if I just do this, then I will never age or whatever.

It's just a fact of life. And I think awakening is allowing us to deepen our levels of acceptance about the world, not that we become apathetic, not that we become lethargic, not that we become passive, but that we let go of these unnecessary idealizations and come to a certain level of wisdom, which is, okay, this is what I'm feeling, but I have brought more awareness into it, so it causes me less pain because I'm more aware of what it is, and by that virtue I won't cause others pain. And I think that's the healthier, in my opinion, more practical approach, rather than vying for and trying to chase after a certain ideal, which I've seen in many people causes a lot more suffering than the ideal itself.

Yeah. I've certainly had that experience in the past, and maybe just reading Eckhart Tolle's book, for example, and this description of a very radical shift in perspective and advice to be in the present, which is good advice a lot of the time. But in my case, it came along with a lot of self-judgment every time I wasn't feeling great.

And clearly it was because my mind would go of the past and future and uh i'm not blaming Eckhart Tolle but that is a feature of those teachings and i've seen that played out in lots of friends as well whereas um i understand buddhism you talk about the two arrows but it would kind of it would be a third and a fourth arrow of like not only am i feeling bad but i'm feeling bad because i know some guy on oprah is not never feels bad so how could it be so stupid to feel bad because i'm thinking about the future and the path you know in this uh circle of torment so what it like what because even in regular therapy right in western therapy ideally someone's might have a big emotional charge around something and then by talking about it they get a little bit of distance they feel a bit more objective and they're able to disidentify that's one lens of looking at it for some therapies so what's what do you feel i'll ask this question in two ways i'm wondering what do you feel is unique about what

meditation can do, and maybe that's only, I don't know if that's the only practice you teach or do, and maybe along that, like, what would your, if it's not too personal to ask, what would your ambition be, if there is one, for yourself to be of, like, okay, well, I ideally in five years, right now my mind works like this, my consciousness is there a direction you want to go? Oh, those are great questions. I imagine that's the direction you teach. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and this is actually a reflection of how my teaching continues to evolve, and I think, you know, opportunities like this allow me to get to a broader audience, so that those who do come to teach know that, hey, I'm not just being dogmatic, or I've let go of being dogmatic in a certain way, or whatever it is. So my teachings will continue to evolve.

And so, because that's based on my perception of reality and perspectives that continue to change, so where I'm corrected on certain things, and if I reflect on those things and I say, okay, yeah, I see where this might be an error in judgment or an error in understanding, then I can re-gauge how I'll continue to teach. So I think being a teacher is a big responsibility. It's a huge responsibility, because a person is coming to you in some ways being very, very vulnerable, because they're coming in. Most people who come for a practice of meditation

are doing so because, you know, they'll say, oh, I want more calmness in my life, I want to be able to focus more, but there are people who come from a lot of emotional turmoil. They're looking for a way out of suffering, and this is what Buddhism also talks about in its suttas: that person only comes to the practice when they've recognized that they're suffering and they want a proper way out of that suffering. Coming to the question of meditation first.

Broadly speaking, I see meditation as categorized into two buckets. You can have, and this is just technique-wise, let's say a broad understanding of technique-wise, that there is a meditation in which, to the exclusion of all other thoughts, you just take up one thought or one idea or one object that you place your attention on. So for some that could be focusing on the breath, for some that could be focusing on the third eye, or some that could be focusing on a mantra, for others that could be focusing on feelings of loving kindness, the Brahmaviharas, which I primarily teach. And then the second one is that you are completely disengaged from all aspects of thought, including that one object. So one is, in let's say, a meditation with object and a meditation without object.

And so the meditation with object is primarily what most people will teach, and may gradually lead to meditation without an object, which is you become aware of your own awareness, and you can actually see the flow of your thoughts as they're coming. So you have some space between you as the witness and the observer and the thought forms and the stream of thoughts that are coming in, and so there's a certain level of equanimity that's developed because of that. There's a certain level of wisdom that's developed because of that, and so meditation has its uses, to be able to bring a certain level of collectedness, a certain level of concentration, a certain level of focus in the mind, so that the mind becomes steady.

And so, in both Hindu and Buddhist traditions, there's the idea of something called samadhi, I think even in the Jain tradition, and samadhi essentially means even-mindedness. Sama is same, it's equal, it's even, and he is the short form for buddhi or the intellect, and so samadhi is being even-minded. And so why do we need to be even-minded when we have that even-mindedness? Then we can clearly see, or as best as possible clearly see if possible, the blind spots that might be there, be able to clearly see what are the things that do trigger me and how can I change them, how can I let them go, how can I revitalize them into something that's more wholesome. And so why I seem to always gravitate towards Buddhism is because it's got that wonderful structure, where there's that old joke that Buddhists love lists.

And there's so many lists, you know, 37 requisites for awakening, the eightfold path, the seven enlightenment factors, the four foundations of mindfulness, and so on and so forth. But all of this matrix of different structures allows for the mind to know where it's heading and how to do it, how to actually apply it. And that's why I keep going back to it, as I said. And so doing the practice in this way allows the mind to settle to such an extent that that wisdom that's, I believe, deeply within everyone already starts to shine out. And that shining out of that wisdom is our intuition.

And so we are going from an overly, let's say, rationalistic, overly materialistic mindset to getting more intuitive about things, and we've all had that in our lives at some point or another, where we have a feeling about something, and so we learn how to actually engage with it in a way that allows life to be less suffering and more about, you know, acceptance and less resistance and more about flow, having more flow. So meditation definitely has its value in allowing people to emerge in a more empowered state of mind, let's say, in a more empowered state of being. And as for me personally, the things that I really find myself kind of like a pendulum going between one and the other is what they would call jnana and bhakti in Sanskrit. Jnana is knowledge or wisdom, and bhakti is devotion or emotionality, devotion specifically. But what I mean by that is, because I have been exploring tantric traditions over the last 18 months, and because I have always had a great deal of interest in Indian philosophy but also Indian spirituality in general

that my sort of personal take is this: it will be interwoven for me as I continue to explore the path of bhakti, of devotion to a specific ideal or deity, in a way that brings more opening of the heart while also having jnana and wisdom, which is where I have that third eye opening, or whatever it is. And I'll give you a very grounded, practical example of that. For example, now, more recently, I've been very fascinated by the tantric traditions of Sri Vidya, as I kind of talked to you about earlier,

and going deeper into certain aspects of Devi Upasana, which means the practice of connecting with the divine feminine, which is generally understood as being very flowing, very emotional, maternal, these kinds of things. And at the same time, I'm also interested in philosophical pessimism. And so I've just begun reading Schopenhauer, just begun looking at Nietzsche, and these kinds of things.

and so maybe it could be just continuing ricocheting off of the two, but I believe at some point these will help me personally on my own spiritual journey, on my own personal path to awakening, because I believe, you know, when we say it's individual, or I say it's individual, it's according to one's karma, which means it's according to one's inclinations, it's according to the makeup that one brought into this world and grew up with. And so for me, my karma is to explore the depths of the mind in every facet, from the divine feminine to the divine masculine, and to also bring a certain level of, for lack of a better word, rationality to it, through philosophical pessimism, through Advaita Vedanta, through even Charvaka, which is a philosophy of absolute materialism,

but there's some wonderful things in there that help to temper the over-idealized aspects of certain schools of spirituality. Are you familiar with Sadanuswar Timalsina? I'm probably mispronouncing it. I love that guy. He is a very interesting person to me, and I am actually a member of his Vimarsha Foundation, what do you call that, membership, where you can learn more about different Kashmir Shaivism and Tantra and these kinds of things. And I'm hoping to, at some point, cross paths with him. I have to say, though, I've been very lazy and I haven't been keeping up with it because I've been wanting to get deeksha from him. I would have been wanting to get initiation from him, but that requires a dedication of at least three months of going on his website and looking at the courses.

And I just haven't had the time, nor the... well, it's just laziness. I haven't really fully been disciplined to look at every single aspect of it. But yeah, you mentioned his name. What was the reason? We organized a dialogue between him and Bernardo Kastrup, who arrived at idealism through a more Western philosophical, analytical lens, but often quotes Schopenhauer, who he considers an idealist, which is, some would say, a Western version of non-duality, but kind of without so much peace. The one thing I noticed with these great Western philosophers, they often look very tormented, and you see the kind of Eastern, they look like they've ended up in quite different places. But it was a fascinating dialogue.

I can send you the recording with Shtana Schwan. I was very impressed where he was able to talk about these Eastern traditions with great clarity, but also quite critically of some of the spiritual salesmanships. Some things I thought resonated with what you said, and could bring that pessimism or anger around what's happening, and he's from Nepal, and the politics there, and so just to be, he felt very honest and vulnerable. But in other interviews I've just seen him, he looks like he's immersed in bliss, and he's just there talking about the bliss of creation. So I'm impressed by someone who can move between those two. Maybe it's because you mentioned the masculine, feminine, and I associate masculine with a bit more just kind of cutting, no that's wrong, something like this. But that's interesting. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts in future when you've engaged with that. He's been someone I've also been inspired by but lazy to follow, because when I've looked at his other talks

there seemed to be a lot of 'oh, you follow a deity and you visualize this thing,' and you might kind of do that for years, and I don't think that's likely to be my path, but let's see, I've surprised myself several times in the past. Do you have an ontology that you resonate most with, in terms of all this consciousness you mentioned, materialism? Do you gravitate more towards consciousness is primary, matter is primary? You kind of feel like, oh, it's a waste of time worrying about that, it doesn't alleviate suffering.

Well, I'll say this. I think, to some extent, I do believe that it is intellectual gymnastics. It's for fun. I see it as, is there... is consciousness the primal thing? Is it... what is it? What is consciousness? Advaita Vedanta will say, it'll say prajnanam brahman, which means brahman is consciousness, brahman is that intelligence behind all creation, and so on. Whereas a very staunch Theravadan practice, where Buddhists will say, no, you can't say that, because as soon as you do that, it becomes reified into a concept, and then that concept is dependent upon our mind's attention to be on it, and as soon as our mind's attention is no longer on it, for all intents and purposes it doesn't really actually exist. So we can't say it's fully permanent in the basis of everything.

And that's maybe another aspect of my life journey, to see how best, if at all, and it might be a fool's errand, to synthesize these two differing viewpoints. And in fact, I've actually written an essay on this. A friend of mine had invited me to, there's a Berggruen Institute, which had at that point an essay competition on the topic of consciousness, and what I wanted to do was actually explore through the two main lenses of Advaita Vedanta, and then even the Vedas, as what they talk about in terms of consciousness, and the different schools of Buddhism, broadly speaking, Theravada, Mahayana and Vajrayana, let's say. And what I've seen is that I think the language is where we get in trouble.

But I do believe that there is something that they're pointing at in terms of an ontology. For example, even in the Theravadan perspective, they have the idea of the Nibbana Dhatu. Now, Dhatu here, when we say Dhatu, that means it's an element. It's a thing. It's something. And maybe the Buddha didn't intend to use it in that way, but if you look at the context, he's basically saying that the basis of everything is this Nibbana Dhatu.

and that the Nibbana Dhatu is unconditioned, it's outside of the purview of dependent origination. Dependent origination is what explains everything in terms of that which is impermanent and not self, and that understanding leads us to the understanding of emptiness of self, and that ultimately rests the awareness in Nibbana Dhatu. This is also known as, for example, the vinnanam anidassanam, which is what I call the non-reflective awareness. So the essay that I have, it's called the mind beyond the mirror, or camera, the mirror beyond mind, but anyway. The idea is that awareness is reflected by that which it lands upon. So I'm aware of something, but I'm not aware of awareness itself. I may be aware of the concept of awareness that's being reflected. So non-reflective awareness, which is dependent upon something known as the Nibbana Dhatu, that's where the Buddha was pointing to. That's the vinnanam anidassanam. And so what I kind of conclude there is something known as paraconsciousness.

that the usual notions of consciousness, as we see it especially from the Advaita lens, is that it is aware, it means it's existing, it's aware, it's conscious, and it is the source of bliss, or it is bliss itself. But I think these aspects are actually, they are the effect or the arising dependent upon this more primal paraconsciousness. And I think that's where the Buddha is pointing out the Nibbana Dhatu, which is you can't define it, you can't put it into laboratory settings, you can't say that it's this or that. It's that non-dual, dual, non-dual experience, which you can't even point at, that as soon as you use language, as soon as you use concepts, it flitters away. And so my term for it is paraconsciousness. It's para in the sense that it's beyond consciousness.

It's one step before the arising of any kind of awareness, the arising of any kind of consciousness. And the only way we know about it is through our reflection on it, right, or a reflection that arises dependent on it. We can kind of understand that from the experience of emptiness. We can kind of experience that, or understand that, from the experience of when thoughts cease. But there's still an awareness when thoughts cease. What is that awareness aware of? Some people say it's awareness of awareness, so it's just awareness of the mind being free of thoughts. But if you go even a step below that, you let go of that, you get into what's known as cessation, cessation of perception and feeling, which I've experienced multiple, multiple times, and I'm able to do that willfully, volitionally, whenever I feel like. And so to me, in that experience, it's nothing. There's no consciousness there at all. And yet the body continues, the brain continues to function at some level, the heart continues to function at some level. Everything seems to be okay when it comes to the vital systems.

But no subjective consciousness is present. So to me, because of that experience, I believe that the paraconsciousness is still there, which is the mind is tapped into or emanating from that absolute paraconsciousness. This is great. I've got so many questions now. You're the first Buddhist I've heard speak to this in reference to the early canon. Are those terms that you mentioned in what's called the Pali canon? Yes, specifically Nibbana Dhatu and Vinnanam Anidassanam. Those two you can find in the Pali canon.

Because one thing that has come up in these, I've hosted several debates between people that are on either side of the aisle, in terms of what you described, in terms of Brahman or consciousness being primary, and those saying, no, it's an artifact of mind, it's just dependent just like everything else. And one thing they point to is how the Buddha would say, I think my Buddhism is really shaky, but I think there are five aggregates, and one is vinnana. And then some people on the other side say, well, vinnana is not the same as jnana. It's discerning awareness. It's more like left brain picking things apart. It's not the more oceanic, just taking everything in, even when thoughts subside.

Do you think there's credibility in pointing out that vinnana isn't the same as...? Yeah, I think what you're pointing out, as far as my Buddhism goes, in terms of how I understand it, is the vinnana, or vijnana as you call it, is divided consciousness. V is divided, jnana is awareness or wisdom, actually, or knowledge. So why is it divided? It's divided because it's dependent upon the eyes, ears, nose, tongue, body and the mind, and so the awareness is dependent upon that. And so we can say that there is an undivided awareness, which is leading closer towards that vinnanam anidassanam, which is anidassanam here is non-manifestative or non-reflective, as I like to translate it, which means that it's actually jnana more than anything else: undivided, unconditioned, unfabricated awareness. Which definitely the Mahamudra and Dzogchen style of Buddhism will point out too. And within that there is an entire school called the Shentong school, which you might be familiar with, which goes as far as to say that Nibbana is the same as Self with a capital S. There's a particular practitioner named Dolpopa

who mentioned this, which to many Buddhists was completely, you know, last blasphemous and shocking, but I don't see it that way, because I think when the Buddha points out, like, for example, in the suttas in the Pali canon, there are examples of people saying, I believe that it is this awareness that continues to take birth from lifetime to lifetime and is the experiencer of karma and all the things that are happening. And the Buddha says such a view is misguided. He calls those people misguided people.

But the reason he's saying that is because they're taking the vinnana that is divided amongst these senses as that. And the Buddha said, if we try to say that there is something there, then there is the risk of reifying it. There's a risk of making it into an object rather than just melting into that oceanic, whatever it is, awareness or consciousness or whatever you want to call it.

So I think the scaffolding of Buddhism might not be, you know, might not be suitable for Vedantins. And then the scaffolding of Vedantins might not be accepted by the Buddhists. And again, that's just because of the terms they may use. I think if somebody has had a good enough experience in both and has been able to tap into what they may term as Brahman in Vedanta and what they may term as Nibbana in Buddhism, if you let go of the concepts and you go to the very core of it, it is really the same thing. I mean, we could complicate things further and say that it's also referring to the Tao, you know, in Taoism.

the Tao that is nameless, that is unchanging, and so on. And to me, that points out to something that is unconditioned, something that is unfabricated, something that is not dependent upon another for its existence. But that all things that arise are dependent on it for their existence. Yeah. Yeah, so it's non-dual in that sense. I want to ask you about cessation. So you're, if I've understood, you're very adept at going into cessation. I had an interview on this channel with Ruben Laucanin, who defined it as the complete cessation. Because some people who I think are very deep into non-duality from the Advaitan perspective, who maybe arrive at those states where the mind gets very, very quiet, and there is just pure, spacious, zero phenomena, but there's awareness of awareness,

which maybe is only present in those moments where some reflectivity comes back and goes, oh, I was just kind of aware of nothing for a while back then. But he defined it as something beyond that, just as you said, where there's no awareness even of awareness. So I have two questions. I'd love to understand. Most people feel like they have experience at least a little bit similar when just by going to sleep at night.

I go to sleep and i wake up a few hours later and i've got no memory of anything that passed before then i wasn't i wouldn't say oh yeah i was aware of awareness i'm like i've got no idea what time it is until i look at the clock um so there's that and then much even deeper than that for some people is a general anesthetic i wonder if you've had an anesthetic and you could speak to the difference between what i experience i've not had the session but i've had a general anesthetic and feels like okay you click your finger kind of blink and it's five hours later or whatever and i only know that because i'm in a different place right so i'm curious how's this have you had a no i haven't and actually that that might be something to ask you about is what was that experience when he came out of that uh anesthetic i've had it twice as an adult uh the second time

my friend was there and I just asked her, okay, so when are we doing this operation? And I was a bit drowsy but not awake enough to realize I was drowsy. I was just aware that I'd blinked. My mind wasn't awake enough to kind of go, oh wait, I'm in a completely different room and my friend has suddenly appeared. I just felt like, okay, I blinked, and my main question is, okay, when does this start? So I was really aware of no passage of time. The second time I had the operation, I was like, okay, it's not going to catch me this time. I was kind of getting ready, like, when I open my eyes, if it's a different room, the operation is happening. And sure enough, I was able to immediately go, okay, it's happened, I'm still alive. So presumably nothing terrible happened, but there was no awareness of a passage of time. Some people say we should probably get an anaesthetist here, because they inject a couple of different drugs, and one is to stop any memories forming. Interesting. So some people say you do retain consciousness, but they inhibit any memory formation. Interesting. So who knows what's really going on. It would be fascinating to get someone with your meditation experience to be able to report that.

but they inhibit any memory formation interesting so who knows what's really really going on it would be fascinating to get someone with your meditation experience to have that be able to report but yeah how is cessation different from having a really deep sleep yeah this is a good question I think one thing to understand is at the very surface level, it's almost, it is the same where it feels like, okay, no time has passed at all. Like there's an intention to stay in that cessation for, let's say, an hour or two hours or three hours or whatever.

And your mind, you see your mind kind of dipping into this space, and then boom, you're out. And then when you come out, it's like no time has passed. So you're not aware of any passage of time. You're not aware that two hours have passed. You're just aware that I was gone for a moment and now I'm back. So at least it felt like a moment, let's say. But I think the thing about the cessation experience also is that there's a certain level of lucidity and hyper-vividness that happens when you come out. It's like the mind becomes ultra sharp and you're looking at everything in super 16K. So colours are very bright, sounds are crystal clear. Basically your senses have become resharpened to such an extent that you're just taking in everything in a very, very almost unfiltered way. And this

just before, no, after the cessation? Right after the cessation? Yeah, after. This is the opposite. Yeah, this is why I was asking you how did you feel when he came out, you know? Because that could be one major difference: there is an alertness of mind and there's an actual light that I can see when I come out. It's just for a moment or a few moments that it comes, and then there's just a burst of energy, a burst of joy, a burst of relief that comes up every single time when I do this. And so there was also an interesting fact, a little side note here: a couple of years ago I was giving the symposium on dependent origination

and Steven Zerfoss, who is one of the co-founders of Journey, I don't know if you've heard of them, J-O-U-R-N-E-Y, Journey. They're primarily all about getting people to jhana, or jhanic states. But before all of that started, he had come to my symposium with his team, because his idea was to create or reverse engineer how we could get into jhana. So he wanted to study the students there, their brainwaves, you know, get their neurofeedback, the EEG, infrared heat sensing, all of those interesting gadgets, to figure that out and then see if they can replicate that using some kind of a machine or system. But I think maybe it was too ambitious for him. He can speak for himself, but I guess that it didn't really work out, and so then they went into the idea of letting people just go to jhanas through the usual route.

But what was interesting is that in that time, I said to Steven and a couple of other people who were there in the room with the EEG, they wanted to see what cessation was like, so they saw that. And I said, hey, do you want to look at what nibbana is like? And they said, oh, that would be interesting. So I had the intention of going into nibbana, and then whatever the EEG picked up was whatever the EEG picked up. And on the last day, what's nibbana? Sorry, what is nibbana? Sorry, as opposed to... Yeah, that's a good question. So cessation is really a cessation of subjective awareness, right, subjective consciousness. The complete levels of perception and sensation and feeling, all of that is paused. All of that is ceased in that space.

Nibbana is that touching of the nibbana dhatu, which is that paraconsciousness that I'm referring to. So the fact that your mind inclines there and touches upon it, so there is an awareness there that arises based on it, and then goes back into it. The analogy that's given in the suttas, Sariputta, one of the chief students of the Buddha, says it's like when you throw wood into the fire, firewood into the fire, the sticks into the fire, there's certain embers that come up. So those embers are like just bits of awareness that come up, reflecting the state of nibbana. So it's like a coming in and out, coming in and out. You're touching nibbana, coming out, feeling the bliss of nibbana, going back into nibbana, and so on. So that's really what was going on, so

you know, they had to look at the EEG, and they went to, on the last day, they showed us my data just for the fun of it. And one of the people there was, I think, a neuroscientist, something to do with neuroscience. She was part of the team, and she said it's very interesting, because when you look at the patterns that were showing in cessation, and then you were looking at the patterns of nibbana, it looks like this person is in a coma, like this person is comatose. I think it was in both cases. But I, I mean, I believe he may have been referring to nibbana itself, because I think they were more interested in showing what nibbana looks like. And it was, the way the EEG was showing everything, it was like smooth, like butter, like there was no

what could we say? There was no, you know, variation, you know. So she was like, this looks like somebody who's comatose. That was her first sort of assessment on it. So the reason I bring that up is because I think then, in that case, our machinery, whether it's maybe even fMRI, because I've been under studies for fMRI as well with Matthew Sacchet at University of, I think, sorry, Massachusetts General Hospital. And there too they were talking about something happening with the brain stem and all of these things. But my point is, you know, we can only know so much through machines. We can only know so much through EEG and fMRI, and we can only kind of interpret the data based on what we know and based on what we can speculate and hypothesize.

But I think subjectively speaking those experiences will always be different, even though it might look like a comatose patient, even though it might look like somebody is under the influence of anesthesia. Subjectively I think it will be different, and that's really dependent upon the alertness of the mind, the brightness of the mind, the vividness of the senses, these kinds of things, post that space.

And is the advantage of, do you need to do cessation to go to nirvana or vice versa? They can be two separate tracks. So one is just the solution of subjective consciousness, which is cessation, and the other is letting the mind incline towards nibbana, and then coming out, experiencing the bliss of that, and then going back in. But that happens not because you will it. It just happens that you go into nibbana, you experience the bliss, and your mind drops back in. So it's like a continuous process of dipping in and out. You don't consider the nirvana to be this paraconsciousness? You think that's there more in the cessation experience, where something must have been keeping the body alive? Did I understand you? Yeah, yeah. This is a good question. So I mean, it's basically, I believe that the consciousness of bliss that arises

in the second case of let's say nirvana is that nirvana itself is not bliss but nirvana is the paraconsciousness. So in both cases we may be touching, let's say, the nibbana element. In the sense that in cessation it's a complete lack of subjective consciousness, but there may be the mind kind of, you know, folding back into paraconsciousness or into nibbana dhatu. Whereas the inclination of going directly into nibbana, there's a reaction to that, which is the vinnana manidasana. In other words, there's a reaction to it with the awareness of having gone into nibbana that comes up. So that awareness is not equal to nibbana. That awareness is as a result of catching nibbana, which is why I think when we come out of cessation we're still feeling that bliss, but it might just be, you know, after cessation. Whereas this is like cessation or going into nibbana, coming out feeling the bliss, going back into nirvana. So it's like short trips back in and out, let's say.

Is that the one where the mind is completely quiet and all thoughts have subsided, or is that a third? Oh yeah, so when we talk about where all thoughts have subsided, then we have the awareness of awareness. And so we can say that the first category is cessation, right? So that means complete cessation of subjective consciousness. The second category is nibbani consciousness arises, coming in and out. And so the third category is more to do with an awareness of awareness itself, and it can be seen as a non-dual experience. But if there's somebody there to experience it, then you come out of it, right? But there's an awareness there, which is what I call objectless awareness or objectless meditation, where it's just pure awareness of nothing in particular, but there's just the knowledge of that awareness. So it's its own category, let's say a third category.

My friend who went on, oh, I might have to edit this out, but my friend who went on retreat with you said that they experienced cessation on retreat with you. And what they had understood from others is that it's relatively common for people to experience cessation on retreat with you, compared to, if you speak to people going to other retreat centers. Maybe it's happening, they're not talking about it. But potentially either your way of teaching, or maybe there's some kind of transmission, which, if that sounds too woo-woo for people, it could be as simple as there's mirror neurons, and we're picking up your state of consciousness a little bit, just by my facial muscles kind of mirroring yours a little bit. Who knows what's happening? Do you think that's true? Is that your intention? Do you think cessation is, let's go back to my original question. Do you think it's really important for people to experience cessation if they want to get the deeper fruits of

This, I mean, what's possible. Yeah, I believe it should be that people should experience cessation at least once in their lives. And I also do believe, this is my personal opinion on this, because there are a lot of opinions about, like, well, that wasn't really cessation, that was actually something else, and things like that. But I do believe that people may experience cessation without even knowing that they experience cessation, that it could happen for a split second. It's very nuanced, but if you know, to ask the right questions to pinpoint what they were actually experiencing, then there is very little doubt that it was a cessation experience.

And so that's where I come in as the teacher, let's say, or as the guide, during the personal interviews with the person, and be like, okay, but let's go deeper into it. It's almost like, from an analogy, it's just going, okay, just in that moment tell me, go back and tell me what exactly happened. And I realise that it's not necessarily an unflawed thing, because the person's memory at that point isn't necessarily the best. They might be just thinking back and being like, this, that. And so I'll never really say, okay, congratulations, you've experienced cessation, and now you're this and that. I'll just say, okay, there's, yeah, here's your badge, here's your certificate. But more of like, it's a possibility that you've experienced this. And I think then I'll tell the student, maybe you should reflect on how you're observing the mind and how you're understanding the mechanics of dependent origination, because cessation is one thing, you know, and jhana is another thing. Jhanas have been sort of

become glorified as these wonderful states of awareness where we can experience great amounts of bliss and awareness and joy and equanimity and calmness and so on. But if no wisdom comes out of it, then it's just a state. So that's where I think the pinpointing of what kind of wisdom is arising, what kind of insights, what kind of intuitive knowledge is arising, that can verify for yourself that indeed you had a very deep experience. So especially amongst teachers or practitioners, when I'm interviewing them, I'll say, oh, so you've had a deep experience. I won't even say cessation, because it's become such a glorified word, like jhana, and I'll just say, okay, you probably have had a deep experience, and if that's the case then reflect back on how do you see these points. And some of the points are like, how do you experientially understand dependent origination?

How do you see the emptiness of self, if you do see that, and how do you relate to the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha? And so the reason I'll do that is because that will then help them see if they're on the path towards, you know, the traditional understanding of stream entry. The traditional understanding is one has let go of self-view intellectually, so they've seen experientially that there's the emptiness of self, and they realise that there is, um, there is a confidence in the Buddha, the Dhamma and the Sangha, in terms of the community. And the third is that there's no longer the desire to, you know, be supported by or depend upon rites and rituals as the path to awakening, because I've seen this path of meditation and practice has taken them to a certain deep experience, and that it is actually, let's say, repeatable, so that you can actually go to it over and over. It takes time, it takes effort, it takes consistency, but definitely it is repeatable.

And so I can't speak for other, let's say, communities or schools, what they might be doing or they might not be doing. But I think TWIM has this history of being very open with what they would consider their success rate, of people experiencing these stages of awakening, the jhanas and so on. And a lot of people will criticise that and say, well, you shouldn't really be talking about it, because it can create a certain sense of confusion in the person's mind, it may create doubt, it may do all these kinds of things. And to that I say, fair point. I do understand that, and that's why I take a more balanced approach. I know in the past there's been a lot of emphasis on getting to awakening as soon as possible, and it's a wonderful intention. But I definitely want to bring that responsibility, that understanding, that experience fully into the student's hands.

This is why I'm just here pointing to them and saying, look at this, and look at that, and then you are your own experience, your own wisdom will clarify for you whether you've actually had it or whether you're just hypnotising yourself. And you spoke about an intellectual recognition of the emptiness of self.

I don't know how common it is in TWIM, but in some non-dual circles, they really, not all of them, but in some non-dual circles, I'll emphasise an experiential recognition of there not being a self, which can come along with a loss of any sense of personal agency, because there's no personhood to have the agency in the first place.

Is that something that TWIM or you aspire to, something that you experience? Because conversely, let's say, amongst some Rob Burbea students, they would say that's also just another experience. You can experience the total loss of agency, and you can experience it coming back, and clinging to either is just more clinging. Yeah, what's your, if you're happy to share, what's your view and experience of that? My first experience into the emptiness of self was much before, maybe a couple of years before I actually even did a TWIM retreat. And it was actually from reading a book called Progressive Stages of Meditation on Emptiness, and it's a book I highly recommend for practitioners.

And the first section of that was what he called the Shravaka school, which is really pointing towards Theravadin practice, and systematically going through each of the five aggregates and seeing through the emptiness of the five aggregates, looking at form and understanding it's made up of different composites and things like that. Same with feelings, same with perception, intention and awareness. And I had a great experience from that. When I reflected in that way, meditated on that, I was floating. I was in a non-dual experience, a non-dual state.

And even before then, I recall that there's a forum called Liberation Unleashed, and I had a guide on there who was pointing to me, when this I comes, what is actually happening, when the sense of I comes, when the sense of me, I'm doing this, what actually happens? And I had a deep reflection on that, and then the I disappeared and there was just this non-dual awareness. There was just this floating consciousness, let's say. So to that extent I can understand how people from that particular understanding will say it's just another experience or non-experience, or you can come back to self, you can be in a loss of personal agency. I think that's a fair point. I think that's a very fair point. But I also think that the understanding of the emptiness of self has great merit, because it changes a person's view of the world, and it should be very carefully done. So let me give some caveats, because if a person is not ready for something like that, it can be very destabilizing. They can actually go into the territory of derealization or depersonalization.

And that's a very scary place to be in, but if you can guide the student or the practitioner in such a way that the experience of the emptiness of self actually gives profound sense of peace and clarity, then you're bringing them on the right track. At least, this is how I would teach it. So for them they would need to have some level of meditative awareness, some level of good attention, have developed the parts of the mind that have joy and bliss and equanimity, lots of good equanimity, and then guide them through the process of each of the five aggregates. And then what happens is a lot of people experience cessation just by doing that. I have a video somewhere on one of these channels which is a guided meditation on the five aggregates.

And many people have listened to it, and of those many people a lot have experienced cessation just by listening to that video or to that guided meditation, because it's done in a very systematic manner. If I go to somebody who is just, and I'm not even a meditator, and I tell them, hey, there's the emptiness of self, you don't really exist as you think you exist, it's very destabilizing. It'll be like, what do you mean by that? And that's very, very important to understand. But once you do come to that understanding in the, let's say, proper mechanisms of the practice, then it's very liberating, it's very freeing, because then you are also able to see, oh, the thoughts that are coming up that are causing me suffering, causing me suffering, that are causing this sense of suffering, are just another experience. It has nothing to do with me, has nothing to do with the sense of me. It's just experience arising dependent upon causes and conditions. And so that helps navigate through afflictive states of mind.

Afflictive emotions, of course. There's also the risk of spiritual bypassing: oh, this isn't me, this isn't mine, this is not my myself, why should I even concern myself with the so-called self? And to those people I will say, you know, the sense of agency may be lost temporarily because of that state of seeing the emptiness of self, but we can look at the world as relative and absolute.

And so we need a relative self, let's say, a personality, an identity to navigate through the different facets of life. But we also see it as something that we take on as an experience in order to, like an avatar, function in the simulation that we call life. And then when we don't need it, we can just drop it and be in profound peace.

And what do you think of, do you know Gary Weber by any chance, or Angelo DeLullo? My understanding of their claim is that they permanently subsist in this no self, no personal volition state. And speaking of general anesthetic, Angelo is a general, I don't know how to pronounce it, too many syllables, anesthetologist, anesthetist. He has a job where he has to concentrate and be cognitively functioning, and Gary Weber, I think he's retired now, said he was much more present and much more capable without the sense of volition and self. He would say, I felt like I was the only person in the room actually paying attention to what was going on, because everyone else is so distracted.

They seem, if I've understood them, to claim, oh, this whole self thing is kind of like bad old software. It's like an app. I'm probably more aligned with you that there's a utility or a beauty, or there's something that that app does, of feeling selfhood, even if it's not ultimately true, whatever that might mean. Just to say, I want to hear your response to, even though it's not the one I currently personally most resonate with, but I'm intrigued by it. Like, oh, if it is true, and this whole selfing kind of mainly causes suffering and doesn't make you better at your job or relating or being a better father in one of their cases, yeah, why would we not just strive for just get rid of this?

Did you have that for a few years or months where you had no sense of future, past, self? Yes. Well, in my own personal experience, I had definitely also a lack of personal motivation to do anything really, and it was more of, okay, life is just flowing. It's a series of causes and conditions, and frames of life are coming and going, and so whatever happens, happens. And so that happened for a while, but I think because of my own life circumstances and where I was at that point in time, maybe it snapped me out of it, or maybe it just faded away, and then the world kind of came in and then there it was, as an identity

functioning in the world, but that idea or that understanding or that experience of the emptiness of self had not left, and so it was like a refuge that you can take, where if you can, you just let go of everything and then rest in that emptiness of self. Now, I know of Gary Weber, and I know I've seen some of his videos and what he talks about and the experience that he had when he was doing certain, I think, vinyasa or some kind of yogic processes. And then at some point everything stopped and dropped.

And I definitely don't doubt it. I'm sure he had a wonderful non-dual experience, or anybody else that you've mentioned have had great non-dual experiences. But I do question, not them personally, but just the notion of the static quality of the non-dual experience, or the fact that it can be stabilized to that extent. I think the non-dual experience is just that, it's an experience that comes and goes, but because you've had it before you can actually access it again and again and again. But for the purposes of working through life, navigating through life, yeah, there's the old software that's needing an update, an upgrade.

and to people like gary maybe even to gary directly i would say well if there is no you know no longer any of that sort of selfing going on then what would you say is that thing that knows that no selfing is going on you know and how would we categorize how would we is it reified or is it something else so it's not something you aspire to or recommend like it's good as an experience as a refuge to revisit but you're not necessarily aspiring yourself or advocating that people arrive in this permanent state of no experience yeah i i don't advocate it only because one is while i've had long bouts of experiencing that in my own personal experience.

I don't see it as having sustained to such an extent that it's a permanent condition. And I know a lot of people aspire for it as students and fellow practitioners. They're on their own journey, but I don't know. I doubt it. I just doubt the whole notion. Was the one, I spoke with Daniel Ingram five years ago. I think it was one of the first conversations I did. Maybe it was seven years ago.

and it was the one of the main bits that i i should probably bring him on and just debate him on that but the thing that i couldn't get my head around and still can't is the sense of do you know goethe's theorem no goethe uh he basically proved i'm not even going to restate it properly he proved that math i think he proved that mathematics or some parts of mathematics can't prove the axioms that allow them to prove everything else at some point you like a system can't prove itself and it seemed to be like a case of it have you seen these esher pictures where one hand's drawing another for example it's kind of like a mathematical version of that and this seems to me an example where you say oh i'm permanently enlightened what do you mean it means i've seen the impermanence of all things it's like well wait there's no self

And nothing's permanent. How could you have permanently recognized anything? Little knocked, it just didn't make any sense to me. So he's not here to defend that view, and I'm sure he's not the only one to take that view, but I wonder if you have a comment on that: can there be, can a human entity have any permanent realization of anything realistically, given the insight into impermanence? More and more, my experience, and maybe that will change over time as I continue to explore different deeper aspects of my practice and what I have known, and maybe other things that I might explore in the future, but right now, as I see it.

I think the idea and notion of trying to find something permanent or being in something permanent is also a kind of craving for identification. A craving for something permanent is also a craving for being, as we may say in Theravada Buddhism, bhavatanha. And I think I like to look at it from a broader perspective of life and death.

If somebody is enlightened, that's wonderful for them. If they're awakened, that's wonderful for them. If they've been liberated, that's wonderful for them. But going back to one of our very first points of discussion about reincarnation or rebirth, I do subscribe to a certain extent about that, which is that I think all of that will only come to full fruition in our final moments of our life.

Because I tell people this when I teach meditation, that meditation is a preparation for death. It's showing you how to die. It's showing you how to gracefully exit this life in a way that's full of peace and acceptance and equanimity. And so we may experience these states in our daily life and we may feel like they're permanent and wonderful for them if that's the case. But how does it translate in how we die? And I realize that this is something that's not necessarily everybody's thinking about all the time. And it's not something that everybody really cares about because they just want to know what happens now or they want to know what is the reality of things in their life.

How does it benefit their life? Well, then I would ask the same question. How does it really benefit to be in a permanent state of whatever we want to call it? There comes in, therefore, the idealizations that because we are in this state, we can never be forgetful, we can never be unhappy, let's say. We can never be angry, we can never be not full of bliss and so on and so on and so on.

Because what is the utility of being in that permanent space? Maybe we can say the permanent space of being, being in that permanent space, utility is that we have better concentration, we can make decisions more solidly, we can be less filtered through our emotions. But I believe that's possible even if you don't have that permanent state of awareness or whatever we want to call it.

So I think the real test of our awakening will be when and how we die. That's the way I see it. We spoke for an hour and a half, but I have one more question, if you're open to it, or you can leave it for another time, which is just, you spoke about spiritual bypassing. And I'm just curious if the equivalent of whatever they might have called that back in the day, is it addressed in the Pali Canon as, hey, you can't take this too far, or you can use it inappropriately? That's a good question. I think, to my memory, if I look back at the Pali Canon, one is that there have been people who may have overestimated their experience.

And so the Buddha may comment on that and say, you still need to go and sit and continue with the practice. But in terms of spiritual bypassing, I think that's a recent concept. And I think there's all kinds of spiritual bypassing you'll find in the Pali Canon, in Vedantic scriptures, many places. And I think the idea of spiritual bypassing is relatively modern where, hey, we've got things to do. We have emotions to look at. We have relationships to foster. And you can't just leave it all. You can't just bypass it all. You can't just do that or whatever.

And so, which I think is a step in the right direction, personally, because how could it be, first of all, in the Pali Canon, everybody who becomes fully awakened turns out to become a monk or a nun, and so they're not really contributing to life, they're not really contributing to the world as such in the societal way. And so the more arahants we have, the less the world will function the way it does. Maybe that's a good thing, maybe it'll function in a different way, but there's always going to be an economy of merit, as I call it. You'll still need lay people, you'll still need people who are looking for blessing or looking for guidance, in order to support the monastics, in order to support the fully awakened beings, whereas the fully awakened beings then therefore give them knowledge and wisdom. So this economy of merit continues to flow. So spiritual bypassing, I think you'll find lots of it in many different traditions, in the old scriptures.

And it's just the reality of the situation. That's what it is. But I think the Buddha hasn't necessarily addressed it fully, to my memory or to my understanding of the Pali Canon. And, as I know, I said that was the last question, but you've kind of brought us here so beautifully, which is a nice reflection to end on, which is: what is your hope? You've been in a few different institutions, you've kind of looked at a few different traditions, you're aware of the history of at least Buddhism, and you live in the modern age, and you've referred to that a couple of times. Do you have a vision for how traditions can move forward, or how we can continue to introduce these teachings, especially in the West, that maybe are less familiar with them?

especially in the context where what we mainly hear about in the news is when gurus do terrible things, which, for all I know, might be the minority. It's just the ones we hear about. I've got no idea. But, yeah, is it something you've thought about, beyond just your personal journey? Yeah, yeah, I definitely have contemplated on this. And one thing I'll say about it is, well, a few things. One is, I have seen the risk of what happens when we become too dogmatic about scripture. We've talked about this a little bit, but they become too dogmatic about institutions and scriptures. Yeah. I mean, at the very, very least it causes a rift in the community, or a rift amongst two people or something, and at the very worst we've seen that it causes wars, and it causes devastation and destruction.

So those blind spots that humanity has, I think, need to be addressed in some way, and this is where I love to bring in someone like Ken Wilber and his whole integral theory, because there we're looking at not just waking up but also cleaning up. And this process of cleaning up is not as explicit as it was, as it is now, as it was when we were talking about 2,600 years ago or 3,000 years ago. Yes, there is ethics, and yes there's sila, and that's wonderful. But there's also bad eggs, yes, and there might be not that many compared to all the well-intentioned practitioners. But I think the process of cleaning up is one part, and then growing up and showing up continues to evolve. So we should not make waking up a static thing; we should see it in tandem to growing up and showing up, both as teachers, like for myself, and the community. So some people love to be in satsangs or places where they're doing bhajans, where they're giving wonderful

offerings to the deities and these kinds of things, and then they deify the guru, and that's just their devotion, but that gives a very, very potent power trip, or can give a very, very potent power trip, to the guru who is, by all means, human, and that risks them being manipulated, abused, or whatever, by the group. So I think the solution to this is that the relationship between teacher and student needs to be understood not as, hey, I am higher and you are lower, but that, hey, I've been here and this is the stuff that I know. Do you want to tag along? Do you want to see it? And there are people who come and say, yeah, I want to know it, and we walk as friends. And so we walk with the understanding that our teachers can be failures and that our teachers may not know what they're talking about. I think if we have that tempered

viewpoint then we won't go wrong. And as teachers, for myself, if I understand that, hey, I can make mistakes, and if I can accept it with some level of willingness to change it, then the student is teaching me, the student is reflecting to me what I need to change. And that's the whole purpose of relationships, whether it's teacher-student, romantic relationships, relationship between siblings, parents and child. There's always a give and take. And that's where a lot of karma is exchanged in relationships.

So if you truly want to test out the idea and the notion of the perfected, enlightened being, as the joke goes, spend a weekend with your family and see how that goes. So that's why I say relationships allow us to continually evolve. If we have the humility and the openness to say, you know what, I was a jerk here and I probably should have done this and this and this, and I can do better.

I think that's the step in the right direction instead of where the guru is concretized and says, I can never make any mistakes. And the student also believes the same thing. That's a bad mix. Well, this notion of walking together as friends, I found very beautiful. And yeah, it's a wonderful thought to finish this conversation with. I hope I get to sit in retreat with you one day or have cessation. Maybe you can email this video that you mentioned. Maybe I'll have a quick cessation before dinner. Now, who knows? Where should people find you if they're intrigued? Yeah, they can go to www.delsonarmstrong.com and they'll have all the information about me, stuff that I'm doing and whatnot. Great, wonderful. It's been so cool to speak with you. I hope so. Thank you.