Delson Armstrong PtII Dependent Origination Intellectual Content of Enlightenment & Core of Buddhism

Welcome everybody to this Edge of Mind podcast, where today we're going to be really edgy. I'm beyond excited to have my second opportunity to chat with Delson Armstrong. And because I introduced him somewhat extensively in our first podcast, I'm going to refer you to that. And I want to say at the outset, I've talked to Delson briefly about this. This is going to be a unique podcast in that I have agreed to really go deep into arguably one of the core teachings, if not the core teaching, in all the Buddhist tradition. So I wanted to say just a couple of introductory comments around the centrality of this topic of dependent origination, and then turn it over to Delson and his story skill set to explore this not only in a doctrinal

I hesitate to use the word philosophical. It's not philosophical or theoretical. It may initially appear that way simply because we haven't experienced it yet. But this is arguably the intellectual content of enlightenment. You could say that this is, in fact, what the Buddha discovered the night of his awakening some 2,600 years ago. Delson, with your kind indulgence for a second, I want to set the stage for this presentation and then turn it over to you. I took the liberty to present my favorite thangka. Excuse me. I have about a dozen or so in my house. And this is the one. It's interesting. This is the one I pull out more than any other, for obvious reasons.

So this is the famous Wheel of Life, the Bhavachakra. And I'm not sure what it's like, Delson, in the monasteries, the gompas that you visited in Thailand, Burma, and whatnot. But in India, Nepal, Tibet, all the places where I traffic as a student of Tibetan Buddhism, you will find this depiction at the entrance to every single monastery that I have ever seen. And it's interesting, it's on the outside, not on the inside. So it represents, in a certain real way, a mirror of samsara. And also adults, and when I traveled throughout Tibet in particular, they would have these colossal thangkas. So imagine this, the size of a football field, and they would have a hillside where they would literally unfurl this Bhavachakra. And as you know, they would teach on it for three, four, five, six months, because there's so much here. And so, as I'm sure you will discover, there are ontological, epistemological and soteriological implications behind this. In other words, this brings about the description

I often think of Buddhism as fundamentally a description of reality. And so this is the reality described. So it describes the origin of being, that's the ontology, the origin of knowing, even perception, that's the epistemology. And then all in the service, most importantly, of soteriology, which is the doctrine of salvation and liberation. And this is really important because as we get into the weeds a little bit in detail here, we always have to remember what the Buddha said: really, I teach one thing and one thing only, suffering and the end of suffering. So everything about this rift is street-level gritty practicality. And so I wanted to also show you just briefly, to our listeners, just the extent of this. So here's the classic rendering. I have several dozen, from Pa-Auk, a classic rendering from the Theravadan tradition, Mahasi Sayadaw, a wonderful rendering.

This is from volume two of the Abhidharmakosha, Vasubandhu's monumental exposition, which is translated in four volumes, some 1,600 pages, of which a colossal amount is attributed to that. The Dalai Lama, the meaning of life from a Buddhist perspective. This book from His Holiness the Dalai Lama about the 12 links, and this may be of some interest to you: Luminous Emptiness, Understanding the Tibetan Book of the Dead. So my dear friend Francesca Fremantle, who penned this book, she spends an extensive amount of time starting with 12 and working back to one. And so this is a foundational teaching for understanding the Tibetan Book of the Dead. This particular rendering, this is one of the best ones I've ever come across, Delson, from Joanna Macy, Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory. And this one is particularly brilliant in my opinion, because Joanna Macy is one of the greatest living ecologists, deep ecologists. And so again, this has such practicality. These teachings are the basis of the ecological crisis in the world.

And what Joanna does with such brilliance is in fact tie this in to working with the environment, and how this deep ecology, really, that's one way to look at these teachings. The deepest of this ecology has immediate application to what's happening in our world today. And then finally, a dear friend of mine just sent me two massive volumes, 900 pages: Gary Buck, Seeing the Dharma: The Subtle Energy Dynamics of Dependent Origination. And so what Gary does here is explore this in a wonderfully juxtaposed manner between Theravada, inner yoga, and tantric approaches, using subtle energy systems. And so there's more to say, but I want to turn it over to you, Delson, so we can start to explore this topic.

I think you get some idea of just how critically important this topic is. And so I'm really delighted to have this opportunity to explore this with you, Delson. And so with that introduction, perhaps we can start by having you share with us how these teachings came into your life and the role that they have played and continue to play in both your practice and your study of the dharma, of the truth. All right, great. Thank you. Well, first I want to say that, yeah, thank you again for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. And, yeah, I mean, dependent origination really is the heart of the dharma if you think about it. Sariputta says in one of the Pali suttas, in Majjhima Nikaya 28: those who know the Dhamma know dependent origination, and those who know dependent origination know the Dhamma.

So this is really a very subtle and profound understanding of reality, as you put it. It was a wonderful introduction that you put into it. So in terms of how I was introduced to dependent origination, I had no idea about dependent origination when I first started out my practices, from the age of 16. So where I started out was really with regards to yoga practice and Vedanta and so on, and there they have different understanding of how mind works, how perception comes to be, and what their idea of liberation is. But it is also very similar in the sense that they have some elements there, like nama rupa, mentality, materiality, or name and form, however you want to put it, mind and body.

And then they break that down into even deeper parts, like the intellect, the ego, and other aspects to it. But my real introduction to dependent origination came about when I started looking into the TWIM practice in 2016. That was where Bhante Vimalaramsi would give these different discourses, dharma talks, on a daily basis while I was on online retreat. So there were recorded videos of his discourses. And as you get deeper into the retreat, about day five or six, he starts talking about dependent origination. So he gives a very good introduction to dependent origination with regards to what is consciousness, because we think about consciousness as this dependent entity, but his introduction to dependent origination, his consciousness itself is also dependent.

It's dependent upon the fuel that gives rise to it, and so on. And then he goes even deeper and he talks about clinging and craving and feeling and the mechanics of that. Now, when I first started this process with the TWIM practice, using right effort in the form of the 6R's to get deeper in the, I had no idea what dependent origination was, what he was talking about. But then you realize, as you get deeper into your meditation, you start seeing the links of dependent origination. You start recognizing your behavior patterns. You start recognizing what your triggers are, if you will. You start recognizing, oh, here is the feeling. Here is the vedana.

Oh, here is the sparsha. Here is the contact. Oh, here is the intention behind that, and so on. And then, as you get deeper through the jhanas, and then you start looking into these different states of mind, when you get into cessation and perception, feeling and consciousness, and you come right back out from it, you actually start to see how reality is created through your mind. So you start to see how sankharas arise. You start to see how consciousness comes to be dependent upon those sankharas. And you start to see, oh, here's the contact with Nibbana, and then there's this feeling of joy and relief that arises.

And then you see that whole wheel spinning up. And then you can recognize craving, you can recognize clinging and becoming, and let go of that. So the idea here is that as you progress deeper and deeper into the practice, you start recognizing dependent origination on much subtler levels. So not only in your daily life, but even in the mechanics of how your mind is made up, and how it makes up reality.

So my experience has been that as you go through each of these different levels of cessation, and then as you get into these levels of attainments that are there, you start seeing it even closer, with a stronger magnifying glass, as it were, a stronger, deeper microscopic lens. And eventually you start to see it. In my experience, you start to see, as they talk about in the Pali suttas, the forward order and the reverse order. That is to say, with the arising of this, that comes to be; with the ceasing of that, this ceases; and so on. So you actually see it in the forward order, and you start to see it in the reverse order. And it's how your mind interprets it. Your mind will interpret it in some level of symbology. You might start seeing certain symbols, you might start seeing certain lights. But also, on an experiential level, that is to say, you're actually... We recognize the arising and passing away of these formations and consciousness coming to be.

And then you actually, it's like you're out of space and time. So it's like you're beyond that and you're starting to see, you can kind of rewind and forward what's going on in terms of the links of dependent origination. And that gives you such deep clarity that you realize that, yeah, dependent origination is really the mechanics of samsara.

And, you know, we talk about the 12 links of dependent origination. But when you start walking this path, you're also developing what are the 11 links of transcendental dependent origination. So we're talking about 23 links here. Fantastic. And the very last thing you said reminded me, I forgot this book is it was buried. This will come back into play. Yet another incredible rendering of this completely related to what you just finished saying, The Embodied Mind, Cognitive Science, and Human Experience. And in this book, Delson, they use the matrix of the 12 links. And so this is an MIT publication, hardcore academic text that has been accepted widely. And again, the universality, the applicability of this is without peer.

So you mentioned a number of things that I'd like to already start to unpack a tiny little bit. One is at the very outset, you talked about consciousness, which I suppose you could say almost slash mind. I think one thing that I've discovered with this, curious how this lands with you, is how the 12 links also help one determine that this thing we call consciousness mind is not a monolithic reified entity, that it's actually arising moment to moment with the dharmas.

So it's not mind, it's minds. Every moment arises a fresh mind, a fresh set of insights and experiences that therefore we have, once we understand it again, the term that we introduced last time, remember the quantum phenomenology, that's another way to talk about it, just this granular microscopic ability to discern. And so that to me has been a major insight for me. And also just to put an exclamation point, this is so important.

That understanding the dependent origination helps us realize the role of the mind is a magnificent creator: that on one level you and I, Alissa, listening, everybody listening, where each of us is a creative genius with powers of the mind we can hardly imagine. That is why I like working with this in the arena of the dream. But here, moment to moment, we co-create our world, and therefore we are not the victims of reality; we are the victims of our co-constructions. So if you want to blame someone for your agony or your ecstasy, look in the mirror. Take responsibility. So to me this practice is like a peaceful transfer of power back to its rightful source, to us in our role as a magnificent creator. So these teachings for me have been highly empowering teachings. They give me a sense of my role, my responsibility.

For the construction and therefore deconstruction, because if something is constructed, you said you mentioned a reverse and forward order of this, right? Second and third noble truths of the Buddha. So again, how central is this? Can you talk to us a little bit more? One thing that you did say that was somewhat new to me: you mentioned that, as you went through this journey, at an experiential level there are instances where you notice lights.

Can you say a little bit more about that? Because this is a new contribution, and immediately my mind cascaded in certain arenas, but I want to make sure that what I'm extrapolating from that comment is in fact resonant with your own experience of this. Yeah. In my experience, and in a lot of people's experience who go through this practice, when they come out of cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness, they actually start to see, or they might see, certain kinds of lights. And what we're talking about is just very brief flashes of lights.

Now, there comes a point in the realm of infinite consciousness where you do see the arising and passing away of consciousnesses, and they can arise in the form of flickering lights. But what I'm talking about here is completely different: light, or fragments of, like, pieces of light that just come up and then you... those are really the sankharas that come up, and your mind being so purified, being so clear, is able to magnify and start to see and reflect back on what's happening in the mind as it comes up. So your mindfulness is so clear that you're actually able to see the rising of the sankharas. So these lights that come up, sometimes people will have even deeper clarity and they will be able to see other kinds of symbols.

And when you see these lights, they can be interpretations of the mind of how sankharas arise. Some people see, things like the symbols of the yin yang, for example, or some people see the symbols of the flower of life, is another one that they see. And it's like somehow, reality arises based on these symbols when you start to see formations, and then it's just the next thing that happens is this contact with nibbana, and the contact with nibbana gives rise to an experience of joy and relief, and so people actually feel that that is the vedana that arises dependent upon the unconditioned contact with nibbana. So just to get a little clearer on that, that means that when you come out of cessation, your mind is completely unconditioned.

It's been deconditioned of all kinds of conditions. So there's no more feeling, no more perception. So when it comes back up, the first thing mind does is it makes contact with something. But that something is not really a something. You can't pinpoint it. It's just the cessation of conditions. It's the unconditioned, the absolute, the deathless, whatever you want to call it, however you want to point at it. But having made contact with that, then you start to see the formations that arise from that. So what I'm explaining is that dependent origination is not just a serial linear flow, but it's actually wheels within wheels within wheels. So there are intersections: pure formations, pure sankharas that arise, which you see, which then give rise to the experience of the joy and the relief that you feel.

So those sankharas that you see are the lights that come up. And usually when people see that, the first thing they think is, what was that? Because it's just so fresh and so new to their mind that they have no way of perceiving or recognizing or interpreting what they saw. The experience right after that is feeling and joy, the feeling of joy and relief rather. So the experience is feeling dependent upon that unconditioned contact, which is said to be signless. That is to say that it is not an object. Nibbana cannot be said to be an object. It is undirected because there's no intention to be there in nibbana. It's just there. And finally, it is empty or void in the sense that it is not a self.

You cannot say that this is myself or you can't say that that's mine. It just is. And so having experienced this kind of contact, the feeling that arises is just this relief of having destroyed the fetters of, let go of certain kinds of fetters in the mind. And so what happens then determines whether the links continue, which is to say, people will say, oh, that was great, and identify with that feeling, and then craving comes up, clinging comes up, becoming comes up. In the mind of somebody who is fully awakened, they'll see it for what it is, which is that unconditioned state. And therefore, there won't be any craving, clinging or becoming, which means for such a mind that is, let's say, quote unquote, fully awakened, there is no link of ignorance.

There's only formations that come up dependent upon prior karma. Then there is consciousness that arises that's dependent upon that, which gives rise to the experience of nama-rupa contact, the six sense basis contact, and then feeling and perception tied to that. But because that mind sees everything as it is, and has an unconditioned experience of it, then there won't be any identification with it. And there won't be any craving mindset which says, either I like this, and I want this, or I don't like this, and I don't want this, or I am this, I am this person, which then further gives rise to the clinging and the becoming and so on.

Yeah, that's really so rich. And one thing I didn't depict here, Delson, as we're talking about, because you're already suggesting it, is that in this Wheel of Life, which, by the way, is held by Yama, the Lord of Death, are the 12 links of dependent origination. They are the outer perimeter of this wheel. And maybe we can get into the granularity and actually start to unpack 12, 1, and 2. I think those are perhaps some of the most interesting ones. So these 12 links are 12 chains. These are, like you mentioned, the fetters that bind us, the whirlpool of samsara. But what you suggested at the end is actually at the center of this wheel, which is the rooster, the pig, and the snake.

And these feed on each other. They're at the center of this, using Tibetan Buddhist languaging, mandala of samsara, right? We basically do circumambulate around these three principal... I call them the spark plugs of samsara, or the three primordial inappropriate relationships to phenomenal arising: passion, I want it; aggression, I don't want it; ignorance, indifference, I could care less. Yeah. And fundamentally, again, the invitation, I think this is also important for our listeners: don't take our word for it. Don't take the Buddha's word for it. Look, find out for yourself. That's where the impact comes from. So see for yourself: is it not true that when you relate to phenomenal risings, internal or external seemingly, this is the primordial palette of inappropriate relationship, grasping, pushing away, or ignoring?

One thing that you said, again, Delson, I'm just putting highlights on some of your really provocative comments. What came to my mind? And again, I want to remind our listeners that one of the great joys I have talking to Delson, as we did last time, is that he's approaching the Dharma from an extraordinarily rich Theravadan point of view. My bias, my predisposition, my karma has been from a tantric Tibetan point of view. And I love both the cross-pollination and the slight rub around this, because this is, again, like I mentioned last time, this is where I really see things.

But one thing that I wanted to share here, you were talking about these lights in the Tibetan array of practices, this kind of discovery of the pixelated nature of reality. I think that's the other thing that takes place here, right? The cognitive scientists actually call it kind of a flicker fusion, that we don't realize that reality, really in the form of light, like we said at the outset, is arising and dissolving at lightning velocities. And it's really the untamed, untrained speed of the mind that literally confuses, confusion confuses the discrete pixelated nature, the pointillistic. Like this reality is like a Seurat painting, right? It's pointillistic.

And so by slowing down, decelerating, we start to de-automatize, we start to deconstruct, we start to seize. So we can return to that because I think this empowers the role of meditation in this. But the one thing I didn't want to say is that in the Tibetan tradition, Delson, there's a very provocative practice in the Dzogchen teachings called Togal, the practices of crossing over, where one literally goes into dark. When one goes in, it's dark. One goes into dark retreat, you go into a sensory deprivation situation for weeks on end, and interestingly enough, one of the things that one starts to see in such a heightened contrast medium, literally of total sensory deprivation, one starts to see lights arising.

And so I had never thought, I've done this practice, I had never thought of those lights in relation to dependent origination. So that's a wonderful contribution. The one thing I would like to return to just a little bit is the role of speed of mind. Because, again, to me, this empowers the place of meditation, that meditation puts the B-R-A-K-E on mind to allow the B-R-E-A-K to appear, right? We put the brakes so we see the brakes. So talk to us a little bit about that, how meditation acts as a process of deceleration, de-automatization, right? We're running on automatic ignorance, right? Until we slow down and start to see exactly what these 12 links depict.

So can you share a little bit more about your experience and understanding of that? Yeah. Definitely. So the understanding, or my experience, has been that when you get to this point, which is known as the plane of infinite consciousness, it's really infinite consciousness, because what you're starting to see is that the mind starts to slow down, or the perceptions of mind start to slow down. Or another way of putting it is that the mind becomes even clearer, so that it starts to recognize contact. Because what I have experienced, not just in meditation but even being in this state while walking around, for example, is that you start to recognize the contact, which happens literally, you know, millions of times per second, let's say, or more than that. Which is to say, you're starting to see that the light, that is to say the photons that hit the retina of your eyes, that's happening at an incredible rate. That's happening at an incredible rate.

And it's creating for you this sense of reality that whatever you see around you, the rods and cones in your eyes, they are interpreting the colors that you're experiencing. They're interpreting what's going on. And that's all happening at the level of mind. So the eyes, the ears, the nose, the tongue, the body, they're receiving all of these different information, which are really just molecules and vibrations, photons and all of this. They're taking all of that in and then creating this multi-dimensional image and experience and sense of reality. So that is why one can say, from the suttas, that the world, as we understand it, is just these six sense spaces. That is to say, the five physical senses and the mind itself. Now, does that mean that there's no objective world out there? I wouldn't go as far as to say that that's necessarily the case, but however we are experiencing realities, however we're experiencing reality.

So, you know, we as humans have certain limitations in how we experience reality. A dog's sense of reality is through the sense of smell. Their sense of smell, or a mouse, for example, a falcon or a hawk, their sense of sight is much sharper than a human's, for example. So bringing all that together, my experience has been that when, what seems to be the case, where the mind decelerates, as you put it, or slows down, is you start to recognize and perceive these rates of contact that's happening, the phassa between the photons and the eye, and the vibrations and the ears and odor molecules and so on. And you actually start to recognize vibrations in the skin as you're experiencing air pressure and everything else.

This happens when the mind decelerates to that point of infinite consciousness. But like I said, one time I was walking in the kitchen and I actually started to see reality at a slower frame rate, if you will. Like I started to see, when you have the old film reels and you start to slow them down, you start to see individual frames. So it's like when people are under a strobe light and you see every second movement that they're doing. So reality seemed to slow down to that extent. - Yeah, that's really fantastic. And again, to gain some support from our scientific brothers and sisters, this is where science really needs spirituality, in my estimation, Delson. Science helps us understand outside in, Buddhism helps us understand inside out, and they meet at the level of perception here.

And so this really warrants, I think, an exclamation point, because yet again, this will empower the place meditation that they talk about. You talked about this notion of slower frame rates that scientists have actually studied, using, like you mentioned, what they're called, tachistoscopes, fancy strobe lights, where, for instance, in my room, we don't see that there's an alternating current at 60 hertz, 60 cycles per second. This current is flickering back and forth.

It's happening so fast we see it as continuous. And yet, in the mind of a meditator, studies have shown, they've studied, like Francesco Varela and colleagues, have studied mind moments. In an untrained mind, roughly, the resolution, what they call the attentional blink, is about 250 milliseconds, where a millisecond is a thousandth of a second. Meditation at depth, 10 times faster, they can resolve reality to 25 milliseconds of reality, even slower. And it's exactly like you say, you start to deconstruct the seeming continuity of a reality. You start to see, in fact, this pixelated nature. And therefore, and again, in tantric language, those are what are called the bardos. That's the gap. That's a bardo in the microgenetic expression.

And the reason, well, people say, well, this is all like armchair philosophizing. Oh, no. In that space lies liberation, right? Because once you have the recognition of that space between the contents of mind, between the rising of the world, you realize that in that space lies freedom. There you then have a sense of perspective. We often don't see things like the inside of our eyelid because it's too close to us. We don't see that we don't see. Mixing metaphors, because there's no space.

So when you slow down, the mind starts to breathe, not just relax. The middle mind opens, starts to breathe. And in those tiny gaps lies a choice: either capitulating habitually to reactivity that creates and sustains the karmic generation of the wheel, or, in my languaging, the space allows response ability. Have the space, the perception, to respond instead of react, and right there we break the chain of causation, isn't it? So the reason this is so important is because this can seem like I'm speaking from my own experience, initially, as some distant thing. Oh, I have to attain these samadhis. I'm not dissing them, the samadhis are incredibly important. But the samadhis, in my experience, have simply pointed out, in a slightly more extended gap, the ability to discern and recognize these gaps moment to moment to moment.

And so the empowerment, again, is what we're talking about phenomenologically, is happening right here, right now. So I'm curious, does that speak to your experience as well, this replacing karmic reactivity with the responsibility which no longer generates the karma? You start to have the opportunity for choice. You can take either voluntary rebirth, as we talked about last time, or capitulate to involuntary rebirth. So I'm mixing in a number of different doctrines here, but I'm curious how that settles with you. It really resonates, because the way I look at dependent origination, and another angle of looking at dependent origination, is the mechanics of karma. That is to say, there is something known as old karma, which is the vipaka, which is the fruition or the fruit of previous choices that you've made.

You can't do anything about that except experience it. But there's also what's known as new karma, which is the actual active sense of the word karma, which is the kiriya that you do, in the sense of the choice that you make. So the way I look at it, and the way I've understood it and experienced it, and then read it in the suttas, is that the Buddha talks about the ear as old karma. The eye is old karma. The five physical sense bases, the mind itself, is old karma, insofar as it is something that you inherit in every moment. In other words, the eye is not the same eye it was just a second ago. The nose is not the same nose as it was a second ago. It's always changing in every moment, which means that whatever you're experiencing right now is old karma. The eye is to be experienced and felt, the ears to be experienced and felt. That is to say, any contact that arises, any contact that gives rise to vedana, to a feeling, to an experience.

That's all old karma. So that is an experience that you are met with, so to speak, that you have to deal with. And then there is a choice in every given present moment of whether you want to continue that cycle of karma, that is to say, reacting to it in a way that personalizes it, reacting to it in a way that says, I want more of this, in a way that says, I am this, which is then the craving, the tanha link, which then you rationalize in your mind, which automatically rationalizes saying that, I like this. So the statement, I like this, is the craving. Then the statement that says, because of so-and-so, is the rationalizing, the association that happens, and that's clinging.

You're digging your heels deeper and saying, no, I really like this, so and so, and so. And then the bhava, that is the becoming, that statement is translated as, in your mind or the rationalizing, "I like this because," so "I like this" is the craving, because it is the clinging, and whatever the reason is, therefore "I am so and so person." That "therefore I am so and so person" is the becoming. Now I have become something, from which there is then the birth of reaction.

which is really jati. When we talk about jati, which is not just the birth on the cosmic level, let's say, but the birth on the micro level, which is a birth of action. And this birth of action then further causes the whole process of suffering, which is to be experienced as old karma in a future moment, in a future experience.

So that choice of reacting will lead to craving, clinging, or becoming. Or the knowledge and wisdom of understanding this process to be dependently arisen, therefore something that is impermanent, therefore if holding on to will cause suffering, therefore it's to be seen as not me, not myself. When that wisdom is there, then that wisdom allows the mind to respond from that wisdom, which is to say, now there's a response: I see it for what it is. Arise over and over and over. That's why the awakened mind doesn't have those links of craving, clinging and becoming. It just has the formations that cascade down into consciousness, which then ultimately is experienced as an actual experience of the sixth sense basis. And the choice lies there, which is: do I take this personally and say I want more of it, or do I understand it for what it actually is and just experience it as it actually is? That's fantastic, because it's such an elegant summation, Delson. Because if you do take it that way, that is a mistake, right?

That generates it. So what came to mind here, again, this is really dazzling, is that this old karma reminds me of what James Joyce, the great British author, once so famously said: history is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. And so, isn't that fantastic? And so we have this old karma that brought us into this human soup, versus my cat suit or my dog suit. I'm in this human suit because of particular karmic predispositions.

And so in a very real way, we can't do anything about that arising, but what we can do is alter our relationship to that arising. And so this becomes really important for me, Delson, because let's say for instance, I wake up and feel like total crap. That doesn't create karma. What's the arising of karma? And so if I feel like total crap, so be it. That's what I've inherited. The invitation then is, well, what are you going to do with that? If you contract and react against it, well, guess what? You're just going to keep the karmic wheel alive.

If you open and are able to recognize that as the fruition, in fact perhaps even the enhanced purification of previous karma, can relate to it, and then begin the process of karmic purification. And so for me this is incredibly important, because it's like my teacher Trungpa Rinpoche once beautifully said, a dazzling definition of meditation: meditation isn't a sedative, it's a laxative. And by that, what is meant, maybe you've noticed this, I noticed this when I did my long retreat, is that on a real level, check your spiritual contract, bring your spiritual attorney, before you sign on the path, right? Because you're asking for it. And so to me, when the mind opens, meditation habituation, the openness, the heart opens, well, guess what? All that crap comes up. And so if we understand that, then we have a precious, if not painful, opportunity to accelerate our psycho-spiritual evolution by relating in particular to these unwanted experiences. And therefore, really, in my experience, the crap show, so to speak, is accelerated.

And if that's understood, that's really good news. But what we're providing here is the matrix for proper relationship to that arising, so that we don't continue to generate it. So the other thing here, Delson, then I want to pause and see how this all settles with you, is for me, this also is incredibly important in terms of decision-making processes.

And so again, bringing just a tiny bit of neuroscience into this, people like Bruce Lipton and other scientists, you've probably heard this data: 95 percent minimum of what we do is dictated by unconscious processes. So on one level we're actually talking, using that vocabulary, about these unconscious processes, and this is of such importance that really, unless we gain access to these unconscious processes and bring them into the light of consciousness, we remain victims to those processes. In other words, what takes place here decides for us, chooses for us. Our karma, if we don't become aware, lucid to it, our karma decides for us, just like in a non-lucid dream. Or when we die, according to the Bardo Tibetan teachings, if we're not lucid to that experience, what dictates that experience?

Your bad habits, your karma. Street value here, using psychological language, this is part of the 95 percent of the unconscious mind. In a very real way, this is what it meant when the Buddha is the awakened one. By contrast, we're the sleepwalkers. What does it mean to be asleep? To be asleep means to be asleep to these processes and to basically react to these constant unconscious impulses. So I'm curious if that's played out in your own experiences, and if that resonates with you.

Yes, definitely. I think the difference between somebody who's awakened and who's not awakened, for example, is exactly that. That's the ignorance that we talk about, which is you're actually ignoring the Four Noble Truths. You're ignoring the idea that this suffering, first of all, is dependently, or stop taking it personally. Number two, it arises. The short form of that, number two, is it arises because of craving, something personally, identifying with it, and then saying, I want it or I don't want it. But the elaboration of that is really the arising of dependent origination. How does suffering arise? How does craving arise? Well, it arises because of these habitual tendencies, these underlying tendencies, which incline towards the craving mindset, which incline towards the aversive mindset, or which incline towards that mindset, which says that I am this and holds on to identity.

But the third noble truth, which is the cessation of suffering, is not only the deconditioning of the links of dependent origination, but it's also a process of whittling away at ignorance, which means that you become aware, you become awake to those unconscious habitual tendencies, unconscious underlying tendencies. Have any control over them? Even then, once you become awakened to them, it's not like now you can let them go. It's a process of experiencing them, acknowledging them, understanding them, and then they go away through the experience itself. If you add to it, if you identify with it, then you haven't learned, then you haven't actually awakened, because then at that point you're only again adding to that 95 percent of unconscious habits.

Now, the fourth noble truth is really, we talk about it as the way leading to the cessation of suffering, leading to the elimination of suffering. And that is traditionally understood as the eightfold path. But the eightfold path is interwoven in what is known as transcendental dependent origination, which starts with understanding that there is a way out of this process of suffering. And that ultimately leads to the liberation of the mind.

And it doesn't change anything, except you becoming more aware, more conscious, more awake to these processes, which allow you to make better choices, enlightened choices, if you will. Well, I love this because it's just so experientially relevant. And so what I derive from this, Delson, and let me know if this is what you're saying, is that one of the ways to purify the arising is to, in fact, experience the arising fully. It's so interesting. Suzuki Roshi, the great Zen master, said, you know, we should each be a good bonfire. We shouldn't be a smoky fire. In my languaging, we should cremate the experience as we live it. Because in so doing, it self-liberates. It doesn't leave a trace.

It doesn't leave not a carbon footprint, but a karmic footprint. And in Hindu tradition, they have this wonderful phrase, Delson, it's called hatapaka or alangrasa, pardon my bastardized Sanskrit, but it literally means sudden digestion. And what they talk about in that language is that one way, and we can come back and unpack this incredibly important term, sankhara or samskara. It's a massive, multivalent term in Buddhism and Hinduism.

But in Hindu schools, talk about samskara is impression, and then what that arises, the way to purify that. And this is counter-instinctual for us in the West, so infected with our comfort zones: to stay in the fires of experience. Da Free John said the fire must have its way. So I'm harping on this again because this is so important when you're on the spiritual path and your life is falling apart. My dear friend Pema Chodron has made a career out of this, right? That's really good news. Sounds good on paper, not so great in experience. And so if you're armed with this right view, everything we're talking about here is right view. If you have this right view and the crap show starts and you're willing to stay in the middle of that, that's spiritual warriorship. That's how you purify the karma. But you have to have a crucible that can hold the heat. The crucible is the crucible of understanding, right view. So that then again, right now, in this day and age, Delson, this has such applicability.

So much pain, so much hardship. In fact, I would say if you're not feeling anxious and full of discord, you don't know what's happening. But then the issue is how do we relate to that, what do we do with that? And if we repress it, reject it, try to throw it away, those are those three root inappropriate relationships. That's the spark plug for samsara, that's going to keep the wheel going. If we feel it, we open to it, we allow ourselves to stay in that bonfire, that's how we purify it. So to me, this is so colossally important, because it can help deep divers on the spiritual path understand why things can get so bad before they get better.

And then in understanding and relating to that, we can actually quite literally accelerate our cycle of spiritual evolution. Wow. Yeah, absolutely. I completely resonate with that. Again, I don't mean, this is different from my usual podcasts where, again, more dialogue, more pinging ideas off each other, because this is, I think, where we can go deep. One thing that I would love to do with you is, because the topic is so vast, we've been tossing about a bunch of the actual links themselves. Let's start. With your permission, Delson, because again, this teaching is so important.

Let's start with 12, 1, and 2. Let's start with 1 in Tibetan, Ma Rigpa, and then slowly start to work our way around some of the core links. Because again, when people start to understand and articulate some of these terms in relationship to their experience, they will gain an understanding of the immediacy and applicability of what we're talking about here. So, with your permission, let's start at ground zero, so to speak, and let's start with ignorance. Oh, it's perfect, you froze, it's fantastic. My computer system just went ignorant on us. He started. Yeah, so sorry listeners. We had somewhat of an interesting, auspicious timing, just as I was inviting Delson to talk about ignorance, his face froze in the stupefied look, everything went blank. So I invited Delson to talk about the first link, because we're pinging about a bunch of terms that now I think warrant some granularity.

Let's get into it a little bit so people can understand exactly the nuances of these 12 links. So talk to us about Ma Rigpa in Tibetan, ignorance. Ignorance, yeah. So in Pali and Sanskrit, we talk about it as avija or avidya, which is the lack of wisdom, the lack of knowledge. And really what that means is it's not knowing the four noble truths: not knowing that this suffering is dependent, there is not knowing that there is a cause or condition for this suffering, and not knowing the way out of it, and not knowing the way leading to the cessation of it. So very simply put, it just is the ignorance of the four noble truths. Now, there are certain suttas, like there's one called Majjhima Nikaya number nine, which is Right View, which is all about Right View. It's called Right View. Samadhi says that ignorance itself has a condition, which is, in that sense, the taints or the fermentations

which is translated from asavas or asravas. Asavas are really the inclination towards sensual experience, the inclination to become something, and the inclination to ignore, and that is to say, the ignorance of reality as it actually is. The way I teach students, for example, is ignorance, practically speaking, equals the lack of mindfulness, the lack of awareness, the lack of attention.

Every time, whenever you are met with old karma in the form of an experience, every time you have lack of mindfulness, which means you have lack of attention rooted in reality, which is my translation of the dependently arisen nature of everything that you're experiencing. Every time you are not aware of the impermanence of the nature of whatever it is you're experiencing, every time you're unaware of the understanding that this can cause suffering if you take it personally, and every time you are unaware that this whole process is impersonal, then you're adding and feeding to that link of ignorance.

So that happens through the Asa. Oh, no, not again. If you have a desire to be something, that is to say, I want to be a good meditator, or I want to be a millionaire, or I want to be, you know, every time you have that statement, I want to be, that is the desire for bhava, that is bhavatanna. the desire for not wanting to be you know i don't want to be this i don't want to be part of this family part of this country or i don't want to be you know i don't want to or i want to be or i don't want to be these are statements related to bhava and every time you have that you're feeding into more of that maritma more into that ignorance and ultimately that lack of awareness of this which is that that asava ignorance continues to feed into it And then Sariputta goes on to say, okay, so then what are the conditions for the asavas?

What are the asavas dependent upon? Ignorance. That is to say, there is an interdependence. Every time you have lack of mindfulness, you're feeding to that ignorance. And because of that ignorance, it causes you to be not mindful. So therein lies the choice. Therein lies the right effort. Therein lies the understanding, which is: I used to be ignorant of this experience as being dependently arisen, but now I choose to be aware of it. And therefore, because of that wisdom, I let go of any craving and I experience freedom of mind.

That is just so spot on. A couple of things, Delson, come to mind. One is the extraordinary genius of what the Buddha articulated here, as philosophers use the term, problematic: that when the Buddha came in, he inherited the problematic of linear Vedic thinking, and so in a very real way the rebel, radical Buddha discovered this non-linear approach to reality. Again, using Joanna Macy's beautiful term, mutual causality. For most people, like, that's an oxymoron. The cause has to proceed the effect. So the reason I mentioned this is the asavas, and I'm curious how this lands with you. I've reflected a great deal about the primacy of the first link, and again, recollect, not recollecting, keeping in mind that it's a somewhat arbitrary, quote-unquote, it's not the right word, but somewhat arbitrary starting point. The point, the genius of the 12 links, is that each is conditioned by the preceding and conditions the succeeding. And so what I've reflected on is how does, taking the asava principle that Sariputta mentioned, taking it back, here's a Bardo interpretation of this, Delson.

I'm curious how this lands with you. Because to me, I'm very interested in death, 12th link. How does death condition ignorance? Well, one way I've looked at it, and I'm curious to see how this settles with you, is that at the moment of death, it's a rapid descent into reality, where all the whirlpool dissolves, the deconditioning. It's, in a certain sense, a forced openness, of forced relaxation, and in Tibetan Buddhist languaging, a descent into the dharmakaya, the truth body, the body of truth. And so what I have played with a little bit is that in a real way, if we're unprepared for it, if we haven't died before we died, then when that radical truth is revealed at the moment of death, literally body of truth.

We, ego, as the embodiment of fake news, can't handle the luminosity of the bright news. This is real news, literally luminous bardo of dharmata. And so therefore, the way I look at it is that at that moment of death, the light is too bright, the truth is too dazzling. PTSD, but in this case it's post-truth stress disorder. That's what samsara is: post-truth stress disorder of the limited self sense, to acknowledge the truth of its inherent non-existence. It's anatta, that it doesn't exist. And so when that is revealed at the point of death, literally the no body, miss nidana, it's too much because it's too little. And what does ego do? It's blinded. I bet that 95% can't handle it.

So it's blinded, stunned by the impact of its non-existence. It contracts out of fear and ignorance, and hence 12 conditions one. So to me, to take this notion of asava from a kind of Tibetan lens, this is what lands with me. And therefore, just like the somatic therapist will tell us, this post-traumatic stress disorder is then actually eventually lodged not only in, but as, the body itself. So we'll get back to that when we get to nama-rupa. But to me, I think this is important because it shows, yes, number one, provisional number one, but is powerfully conditioned by 12.

And to me, it helps me understand the whole Bardo journey and what I might expect if I'm not prepared. And so let me just say one last thing here about His Holiness Karmapa, the head of my Karma Kagyu tradition. A few days before he died, he said to one of his disciples, he says, nothing happens.

And so for someone like His Holiness Karmapa, nothing happens because he's already dead, right? He's already died to his false self sense. And therefore, someone like the Karmapa, nothing happens because he's already gone through the deconstruction process. So before we even continue, I, this is my contribution, interjection, from a Tibetan approach of how tantric rendering of the 12 links, how 12 conditions one. Do you find any dissonance with that? Is there something that seems somewhat antithetical to your understanding or approach? My understanding is actually very much concordant with it, and the reason I would say that is because the way I understand the process of dying, we touched upon this, I think, the last time, but when we think about death, it's basically a process of dissolution of the mind and the body.

And as you're going through that, you're experiencing the bardos and you're experiencing the different things. But what's happening there is, if there is ignorance, that is to say, if there is no right view installed in the mind, because that's really what has to happen, ignorance has to be replaced by wisdom, has to be replaced by right view, which then allows you to have the right intention forth in the eightfold path. But if right view is not present, there will be a tendency for the mind to see that and then take it personal and say, oh, what's going on here, and what happens there? Because of that reactivity of craving or aversion or identification, that gives rise to sankharas, that gives rise to certain sankharas, that then give rise to a certain kind of consciousness, a certain kind of vinnana, which then descends into the new nama-rupa. So this is completely concordant with that whole process.

That's fantastic. And again, to just show you the elegance and the genius of what the Buddha did, as you know, when he taught these, he depicted each of the links with an iconography, an image, which to me is really compelling. And so when we talk about this, Delson, this has traction, because how is the... in the Tibetan world, the first link is depicted by a blind grandmother, and that blind grandmother is unsighted. Talk about wrong view, it's no view, right? And so that blind grandmother, then we'll talk about this shortly, then conditions the other links. But in my rendering, not my rendering, my working with this principle, there's Prajnaparamita, the sighted mother of all the Buddhas. And so the way I play with this is that what an understanding of the links does is it replaces, transforms, the blind grandmother to the sighted mother of all the Buddhas, and therefore, talk about right view, she has more than 20/20 vision; she can see through all appearances, right? And so the iconography here is genius.

So when you talk about right view, the whole thing is archetypally represented by the grandmother who has no view. And therefore, the journey is to bring about this x-ray vision of the perfect mother, Prajnaparamita, right? And then lest we think, where is she? Well, she's the mother of your own mind. She's actually the lap into which you will return in Buddhist renderings when you die. You return to the lap of the primordial mother. Anyway, I find this personally so exhilarating because not only does it have such explanatory power, it's just exciting to have a doctrine that has such a capacity to both understand samsara and nirvana.

Anything more before we transition from the monumental step of how ignorance then conditions samskara? Any final comments on how 12 effects or conditions one? Well, the other way of understanding it is that just one last part of that is, because this is going to transition into formations or some samskaras, that that is one of the reasons why we do meditation as a practice.

Meditation, I see, is a preparation for death. It's a process of dying. It's an actual process of ceasing different capacities for life as we understand it, so that you have a great practice of what to do when you do die, so to speak. So, just to tap into what you were saying earlier about the Karmapa's experience, is that yes, I mean, once you have a fully awakened mind, what do you awaken to? You're awakened to the non-reality of a self, which means that nothing actually happens, because what actually happens is to a sense of a self. Understand that, then when you have that fully established right view, then any samskaras that do arise won't give rise to any kind of contaminated consciousness which then continues that cycle of samsara. Yes, and the other double entendre with what His Holiness said, this may be of interest to Tibetan Buddhists, is that emptiness openness is a synonym for emptiness, and so for Tibetan Buddhist listeners, Nagarjuna, the principal proponent of emptiness in the Mahayana tradition

basically said the 12 links that is emptiness, and so when His Holiness says nothing happens, yes, the double reading is emptiness happens, right? And so that gives a deeper understanding of exactly what you just said. So it's almost like His Holiness is talking in code language, that nothing happens means nothingness, emptiness, the 12 links. So again, it's all these layers, these kind of stealthy layers of wisdom that are embedded here. So I wanted to say one last thing here, and not one last thing, but interject one thing. You said something very interesting a few minutes ago about how revelatory it is when we say, I want, and how that's kind of an explication of the ignorance. Wouldn't it be fair to say, Delson, that we could even go back just one step further and say it's not even just I want, but whenever there's I, whenever you, whenever you even think, feel I, that's already Marika, that's all? Yes, that's already ignorance. Yes, I'm in complete agreement with that. Yes, yes. So let's make this fantastically powerful transition from one to two.

And also interject to our listeners, and again, I'm curious how this lands with you. I'm not as savvy as you are with the Theravadan approaches, but my understanding from the Tibetan lens is that in the 12 links, one and two represent the past, three through 10 represent the present, 11 and 12 represent the future. So when we're talking, again, this is my understanding, when we're talking about one and two, we're talking partly about this 95% of the unconscious mind. So is that also your understanding that one and two occur in the so-called past?

Right. Yeah. That's how I would interpret the past: it is the unconscious aspect of the mind. So that's the stuff that you can't do anything about. You can't change your past on a timescale, but you can't change the unconscious either. arising dependent upon the present. So the present being the nama-rupa and the consciousness with it, and the contact and the feeling and perception tied to it. Absolutely. So talk to us now again. I think in so many ways, sankhara, samskaras, this is one of the most brilliant contributions of the whole length. So we could spend days on this, but let's unpack a little bit the extraordinary importance of the second link. Yeah. So the way I look at samskaras, this is the way I would look at it from an experiential standpoint, is that they're all carriers of karma. Now, traditionally speaking, there are three categories of samskaras: you have the mental, the verbal and the bodily. So the mental gives rise to the actual experience that you have in terms of vedana, feeling, and sanna, which is perception.

How do you recognize and experience? The verbal formations allow you to express whether that's through actual speech or through your mind. That is to say, you're experiencing something, and now you're recognizing what that is, and there are thoughts that arise to communicate what it is that you're expressing. This is conditioned by verbal formation, by verbal samskaras. Bodily samskaras traditionally are to do with the breath, the in-breathing and the out-breathing, the inhalation, the exhalation.

But I would say that, broadly speaking, they are to do with any kind of bodily process and to do with action in terms of how you move, where you go, and so on and so forth. So samskaras come about because of intention, because intention is what gives rise to karma. Intention is, in fact, karma. So it is through chetana, through inclination of the mind, that samskaras flow. How you want to experience something, how you want to express something, and how you want to move about through your body in itself.

I also see samskaras as neural pathways, as synapses. So there are samskaras that are rooted in ignorance or conditioned by ignorance. These are samskaras or synapses that continue to see the mind from that I perspective, that continue to see the mind as craving for something or having aversion towards something. So samskaras can be rooted in the akusala, can be rooted in greed, hatred and delusion, or they can be purified and made to be pure samskaras, which is to say wisdom rooted in right view. Come about, then they give rise to a consciousness that is uncontaminated, a consciousness that is unestablished.

So in the perspective of day-to-day life, the choices that you have are related to how are you going to influence the samskaras that arise next? So are you going to continue to feed the same synapses that continue to give rise to craving and aversion and identification? Or are you going to respond with wisdom and therefore recondition, first of all, decondition those samskaras, decondition them out of ignorance, out of greed and hatred and delusion, or are you going to continue to react in such a way that they continue to be embedded in that greed, hatred and delusion? So the moment you decondition that by making the choice of responding in wisdom, you're doing two things: your deconditioning, and then reconditioning the next arising of samskaras, which are rooted further and further in right view, which means they're further purified.

Now, I also see samskaras as things that are beyond your control as well, so to speak, in the present moment, which is to say, when you look at it from rebirth from one life to another life on the cosmic scale, on the macrocosmic scale, that is to say, at the point of death, if a person, if a being, if a mind takes that experience to be personal and says, this is me, this is mine, this is myself, then certain samskaras tied to that reaction arise. Those samskaras give rise to a certain kind of consciousness, which then embeds into the new nama-rupa. That new nama-rupa, for simplicity's sake, let's say that it's from one human birth to another human birth.

birth, one human existence to another human existence, that nama-rupa arises dependent upon the joining of the sperm and the ovum. Now that's the new nama-rupa, and that's the genetic material. But samskaras are transported from that new consciousness and embedded into that nama-rupa, which means samskaras are not just synapses, but they're also gene expressions. In other words, what kind of genetic inheritance you have is dependent upon samskaras as well.

This is, again, I have to curtail my excitement, because this is to me, when you start talking about the truth, I just get so jazzed. This is amazing. So before I have a couple of comments, let's define specifically, we're circumambulating, we're intimating the definition of samskara, but formations, right? Pretty much. You call them formations, some people call them preparations. If you think about sankharas or samskaras, one of the ways they talk about it is cooking up something.

So the mind starts to cook up something. And that's what predisposes the mind to look at and experience a certain way. So it basically conditions the consciousness, which is like a stained glass window. So that consciousness is stained by the paints of the samskaras. Samskaras are pure, if there's no paint to them, then you're looking through a clear window. Then there's no taint, there's no stain that conditions how you experience reality. Beautiful. And so also, Delson, my understanding is that samskara, again, is one of these very rich multivalent terms. It has so many different meanings depending on context.

One, again, the refinement, the granularity is important, is that on one level, samskaras are active. On the other level, they're passive. In other words, they also denote forming and formed. In other words, they're that which forms. Yes, so it's both a noun and a verb, and that's helpful to understand as well. And so when you're talking about the death thing here, I, this is my languaging, I playfully say, when you die you will meet your maker at dv. That's right. When you die you will meet, yes, absolutely. These are your makers. And here's the kicker, again, in a fractal iterative way. Another genius application of the 12 to Don is that we haven't really overtly said it is they operate on these different temporal levels from life to life, or really more empowered moment to moment.

And so when we talk about meeting your maker, you don't have to die to meet your maker. You can meet your maker in meditation. You can meet your maker in that space that we were talking about before, and therefore have the option of relating to a particular situation instead of from it. So the one thing I want to ask you here, Delson, and I'm really curious about this, there's such an emphasis on nirodha and this quality of cessation. But I'm hearing two different things from you. On one level I'm hearing about the cessation of ignorance, that somehow when we enter nirodha samapatti and these other nirodhas, it's contingent upon the level of the cessation of the first link. And again, I'm testing my understanding, but you're also seeming to intimate, and this second part you just mentioned is more consistent with Tibetan approaches, that it's more... we may have said this in our last session, excuse me, it's more about transformation versus cessation, because cessation seems to denote the eradication of something, and again that has provisional validity.

But to me, what you said later, just recently, makes a little bit more sense for me, that it's not so much cessation as it is transformation: that you take the first link, ignorance, and you transform it into wisdom. And then, if you do that, and then we'll riff on that for a second because this is colossal, if you go all the way to the end, once you've done that, what do you do at the end? You replace death with enlightenment, where therefore death then becomes the revelation of the truth body, the Dharmakaya. So that in itself is monumental. But the way it applies here is, again, the genius of the iconography.

The second link is the potter. And the potter will basically throw into form whatever clay it has been given. So if we give it the clay of ignorance, you get me, a confused sentient being, right? If you give the clay of wisdom to the potter, then you get a tulku, a Buddha, or the awakened ones. And so to me, on one level, I'm not sure if this lands with you. I don't think we can say some scholars are neutral, but there is a type of neutrality in this regard: that whatever is given to the potter, it will throw into form. And in my tradition,

using the tulku or nirmanakaya principle, at the awakening of the 12th link, that's the truth body, dharmakaya, that transforms ignorance into wisdom, then what happens is wisdom is thrown into form voluntarily, not out of karmic impulse. In the Tibetan tradition that's called tulku, or voluntary nirmanakaya: someone who comes back into form moment to moment, life to life, out of love. Wisdom embodied, love, wisdom and compassion, voluntarily, instead of being driven by karmic impulse, which is what we generally know as our involuntary process. So does that resonate with you, and in particular this dance between cessation versus transformation? I'm curious how that lands with you. So the way I look at it is, it is through a process of ceasing craving that the ignorance also ceases, or it's a process of ceasing ignorance that craving ceases. In other words, you have that choice, and that transformation of one samskara to another samskara. So some samskaras in and of themselves cannot be ceased to that extent, that they're destroyed or eradicated or eliminated. Some samskaras are always going to be carriers of karma; before, they used to be karmic impulses, as you said.

But now that they are rooted in wisdom, that means what has ceased is the cessation of the greed, hatred, and delusion in the samskaras. So that has been gone. So that has been eradicated. So in other words, but also on a practical approach, when you recognize that there's craving in the mind, you can cease it by letting it go. By abandoning it, it ceases, which means the rest of them also cease. In other words, it's not that they cease, but they're no longer there. So if you cease craving, when it arises, there's no fuel for clinging. Therefore, there's no fuel for becoming. So the practical approach here is you can only deal with cessation in regards to craving, clinging, and becoming.

The way I look at dependent origination is like a stream, a river. The little streams that are the asavas come about, and then there's ignorance, and the karmic impulses and formations and so on. And these are all little whirlpools. And then eventually there's a waterfall. But the bend of the waterfall is the becoming, the inclining to become something. And then the waterfall itself is the birth and the death and so on. You can't do anything with this. There's no way for you to cease any of this.

But you can cease the becoming, the clinging, and the craving before that, so that the waterfall does not happen, so that the stream stops, and now you are safe, you don't continue that process of becoming, birthing and dying. And another thing to look at in terms of the samskaras is that for an awakened being, so to speak, yes, now instead of the death there is the awakened state. There is a revelation of what this whole process is, and it feeds back into right view. And so any samskaras that happen, they're not karmic impulses, but they're karmic carriers; that is, awakened beings will still have to deal with the karmic repercussions of choices they made prior to full awakening. So those repercussions, the vipaka, the fruit of those choices, are carried forward through samskaras and experienced in consciousness, contact, feeling. But because there's no more craving, clinging and becoming for the awakened being, they don't continue to add to that karmic fuel.

That is really brilliant. And so therefore, one way to say this, which, actually, and again, let me see if this is accurate, this begets the notion of self-liberation, sahajayana, the highest form of liberation, where basically, with a mind that is so open, so vast, or using the image of heat, hot with awareness, whatever arises is purified instantaneously, like a campfire spark dissolving harmlessly into the nighttime sky, right? Yes. With the untamed mind, it doesn't dissolve into the nighttime sky. The spark lands in a vat of gasoline, right? And so the reason I say this is because perhaps, and I'm curious to see if this is true for you, that in the mind of an awakened one, there can still be this shine, this Rolpa, Lila display, like you're just talking about.

It's the relationship to that display that is the key, right? And so on one level, the implication is don't try to control your mind in this muscled, contractive way. Control your relationship to the display of the mind. Yes, absolutely. The idea, the notion is that for awakened beings, they're becoming like robots or automatons, you know? It's like they don't have personality. But the samskaras that were related to or rooted in their behavioral tendencies before, where if they were pranksters, they'll still continue to be pranksters; if they made jokes, they would still continue to make jokes. The difference is now the relationship with reality as they see it. And again, that's so perfect, because we in the West tend to have these idealistic projections of what a Buddha would be, this totally sterile, antiseptic being who has no color or flavor or personality. But like you, I've been with people I consider pretty awake, and they are some of the most vibrant, alive... you can't say the word passionate without the negative implications.

But when they're angry, it's a pure type of anger, and when they're passionate, it's a pure type of passion. And so I think this is very important for us as Westerners who tend to project our versions of what the awakened state would be, somehow thinking that thoughts are the enemy: I've got to get rid of them, I have to become this whitewashed, you know, samadhi, whatever. And therefore we realize, no, these beings actually live with the pile with the gas fully on, and therefore they're really vibrant, alive sentient beings. So one thing also that you said, very interesting languaging, Delson.

Literally the inclination to become something, the inclination to become somebody. What came to me around that is that for many people who still have this habituation, it's better to be somebody rather than nobody, even when that somebody or something is bad. In other words, oftentimes something bad is better than nothing. And so the inclination, actually, to incarnate to be somebody is a really interesting generative impulse, and how some people can become career victims, for instance. They can attach to extremely negative states, because even then, being bad is better than being nothing, right? Tell us about, if you would, the relationship of samskara in this context, because there's a lot of confusion around this.

In terms of samskara, again, is the fourth skanda. So what are the similarities and differences between samskara in this context and samskara in that context? Yeah. So when we talk about samskaras in relation to, let's say, becoming, or the inclination to become, again, that's dependent upon choices you've made in the past. So in other words, on a micro level, on a microcosmic level, when you're relating to the world, how you relate to the world is dependent upon who you want to be or who you want to portray yourself to the world, and that's dependent on choices you've made in the past. So these samskaras are dependent on those choices you've made, which is sort of like the inclination of where your intention goes.

And then acting upon it is that process of habitual tendency. So a habitual tendency will divert the rudder in a certain direction, and that direction then feeds the samskaras and gives them a push that propels them to become something in the form of a self. Now, the samskaras, in terms of this, are happening in the process of dependent origination to become something. But samskaras also are like a storehouse in that sense of different choices you've made. So that's the aggregate of, or the skanda of, samskaras.

But in either case, if you understand those samskaras, whether they are a fluid process that continues to make the mind become something or continues to incline the mind to become something, or as an aggregate, as a solid thing, of samskaras that are sort of baked into the framework of the mind, in either case, if you take them personally, then you're going to cause yourself suffering.

But in either case, and in both cases, if you allow the mind to see what they are, which is impersonal, that aggregate that continues to condition how you see things, in either case you're no longer bound by them. And that's really the freedom. It's the freedom from being bound by some kind of identification process propelled through the samskaras. This is so great. And so, is it fair to say, if I'm understanding you properly, that we can detect the presence of a samskara, at least on overt levels? Because I think on one level, like bhava samskara, the actual root samskara for habitation, the ultimate habit, is the habit for habitation itself. Right? That's the primordial, in a certain sense you could say that's the primordial samskara. I'm curious if that lands with you. Right? That one perhaps may be a little bit harder to identify, because it's so insidious, it's so constant. It's actually the very sense of I-ness itself that we take as axiomatic and given. But in terms of, like, deconditioning, and then eventually deconstructing even that.

Isn't it fair to say, Delson, that we can register the karmic carrier or the trigger in any moment of reactivity? In other words, if we're relating to phenomenal rising in an equanimous fashion, with a sense of dispassionate equanimity, then that in fact begets a purified relational approach to reality that doesn't create karma, right? You're relating to everything in this one taste quality. Tibetan language.

And the reason, and so let me finish this train of thought. So in a non-equanimous mind, my mind, I go for a walk. I see some dog poop from my neighbor. I don't relate with equanimity. I relate with a contraction. a reactivity and then emotional proliferation and the whole thing cascades so is it fair to say that anytime my buttons are pressed um i first of all have installed those buttons right but what i'm trying to do is make what can seem a somewhat abstract principle completely applicable for people yeah anytime you feel this reactivity anytime you feel this your buttons being pressed that's one way to actually

connect to this process that, hey, this is the samskara that has just been activated. Is it fair to say that? Absolutely. I mean, one of the things I tell people is if you want to understand the quality of your samskaras, that is to say, what is the content of your samskaras? Pay attention to the choices that you make. Pay attention to the intentions that you have.

Yeah, so when you recognize those buttons, you're recognizing, oh, here's a samskara rooted in aversion, here's a samskara rooted in greed, and how do you choose to deal with that? Now you can recognize. I mean, that's going back to the 6R's that I mentioned earlier, which is: you recognize it, you release your focus on that, relax or tranquilize the tension. So that means, instead of contracting the mind, you expand the mind, making the mind basically expansive, so that then you can re-smile. Re-smile is just a short form, shorthand way of saying replacing that samskara with something that is wholesome, something that is rooted in wisdom, and then returning to it. That is to say, stay with that and then act from there. So a very, very practical approach to this is: you're met with somebody who is upset about something that you might or might not have done, and they're accusing you of something. Now, reaction is to recoil from that.

So that's the tension that arises, the contraction that arises, and the mind says, no, I'm right, I didn't do anything. Or now you want to get into an argumentative stance. If you can recognize the samskara that arises, that percolates up in the form of that thought that wants to defend itself, and then not only defend itself, but then attack the accuser, then you can recognize that. If you can recognize that, shift the focus, release your attention from there, shift the focus, relax the mind and body, literally relax it so it becomes more expanded, then come back to a smile, not necessarily have to smile at the accuser, but come back to your wholesome state like loving kindness or equanimity or compassion, and then speak, and then respond. Then you have broken that fetter, that chain that ties you down to being habituated to defending yourself in a way that causes suffering. You let go of that habit, and now you're replacing it with a habit that's actually rooted in wisdom, rooted in compassion.

And then isn't it also fair to say that this is so, so helpful, because I love the immediacy and the applicability of it. Now we're talking about moment-to-moment applicability of what can seem to be an abstruse, archaic doctrine. This is like, well, now we're talking about my life. And so is it fair to say then that every time we have this fresh, new relationship to experience, and we don't react from it, right action, literally in Tibetan the word is las, which literally means action, and so therefore when we have this capacity, and this then becomes our new practice, this is how these samskaras are exhausted? Because eventually that momentum is allowed to course through you, using subtle body processes, the energy that is previously constipated in your body. Because in inner yogic language, Delson, when we talk about the unconscious mind, where is that?

Here, it's our soma. And so all these knots and constipated energetics are actually embodied in our subtle body system. And so when we say yes to experience, course through us, the knot, that is another way to talk about samskara. In this inner body yoga point of view, it ties you into knots: this contraction and tension. When that's released, the energy flows through you, you feel lighter, freer, more open, energized, because the energy is no longer trapped. And then eventually that samskara is purified, because the energy is properly digested and metabolized without all these contractive reactivities.

Right. Something like that. I so enjoy this break, because it allows me to dance off of, like in this case, the tantric inner yoga point of view, because they have this wonderful subtle anatomy and physiology that the inner yogic systems, the inner heat yogas, are all designed to do. And so I like to bring this into play, so that we can again cross-pollinate between Theravada and tantra, where we realize, hey, in the tantric traditions we're doing exactly the same thing, we're just using a different framework, in this case inner subtle body processes. But again, for our listeners, this is real cash value. Right? Something comes up, your button gets pressed. You've installed that button. Open to it, allow yourself to relate to it instead of from it. That energy is then purified.

And then this is gradually, patiently how we purify our karma. So say a little bit about the role of metta, maitri here. Because Delson, when I do this, I have to say, this is somewhat painful. Because the more aware I am of these processes, the more humbled I am of the extent, the virtuosity of my life. Ignorance, the virtuosity of my default mode network, how I'm such, I have accomplished samsara, and so on. On one level, on one level, when I hear these teachings, they're diagnostic, prescriptive, and they're actually painful, because to me it's like, oh my goodness, here I am yet again contracting. And so I love the smile. Talk to us about the role, the importance of metta, maitri behind all this, because that's a big deal in my opinion.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I would say it's not just the maitri, but it's also the karuna, it's also the mudita, it's also the upekkha, which is to say it's the brahmaviharas. So now the brahmavihara is actually very universal. It's not just a Buddhist thing. You go back to the Yoga Sutras, for example, there are at least two references to the brahmaviharas.

Patanjali, in the Yoga Sutras, for example, talks about how the brahmavihara is our way to cleanse consciousness, if you will, and come to a point where the consciousness goes from being mutable to immutable, goes from being something that is reflective to non-reflective, as at war. Then he talks about how, when he talks about the siddhis, he talks about how, when you have metta in your mind, or karuna, or mudita, and you engage with it, that becomes your mind, that becomes you. You are in that moment metta. You are in that moment karuna. You are in that moment mudita. You are in that moment upekkha. So the way I look at these are like tools. Now, you can start. When we do the twin practice, for example, in our practice, they are natural progressions. In other words, you start with metta, which is loving kindness, which is just wanting to be open to the other person and wanting good for them.

You know, same way you have a best friend and you want the best for them. The same way you have a sibling and you want the best for them. The same way you have a child and you want the best for them. That's the expression of metta, and you use this as an object of meditation in samadhi, which naturally progresses into karuna. And karuna, which is compassion, the way I experience it or understand it and explain it to people, is that it is in infinite space, boundless space, that you experience compassion. The reason is because when you see somebody in pain or somebody suffering, you don't look down at them with sympathy and pity.

You don't look at them and say, oh, poor that person. You actually engage with that person, give them that space to evolve out of their suffering. In other words, you don't become a crutch. You don't become somebody who they depend upon, but rather you become a tool for them to come out of their suffering. So that could be in the process of supporting them and guiding them. But ultimately they have to walk the path leading out of suffering.

This is compassion. So you understand there are people suffering out there. You react to people from a sense of how could they do this to me. You realize they're doing it because they're suffering. Somebody's accusing you of something, somebody's being angry at you. It's not that they're angry at you, it's just that they have no way of relating in another way. They themselves are suffering, they themselves have hatred in their mind. So the compassionate, and I'm letting go of any reactivity to it, and I want to help you by disengaging your mind from that hatred by re-finding the way you're looking at things, because if I add fuel to the fire of the foundation continues to become an argument.

then I'm only adding to that person's hatred but if I understand from a compassionate mindset that this person is suffering then I deviate the conversation towards a resolution that allows them to let go of their hatred. That's the passion is empathetic joy or altruistic joy. It's the ability to see a person's successes and actually engage in their celebration of that. This is why it is a great antidote for jealousy and envy. That is to say, when you have mother you can recognize people's successes all over with them in a way that causes you to be jealous, but rather engage with them in a way that says, hey, I'm very happy for you that you have this.

That leads to your own happiness. You realize your happiness in that sense is not tied to other people's happiness, but rather it's not dependent upon you having to be recognized for something. Instead, you recognize other people and their happiness, and that makes you happy. And that doesn't only just make you happy, but what you realize deeper is that you're already happy, and therefore you can be happy for others. And finally, Upeksha, which is Upeka, that is equanimity. And that is the mindset that does that as they are, without engaging with them through a mind that says, I want this, or I don't want this. That is, I like this or I don't like this, to remind that either has grasping towards it or resistance against it. That is really which means these are mental states. The brahmaviharas are mental states that you can experience on a moment-to-moment basis, but you can use as tools depending upon the situation. So if you're met with a circumstance which allows you to experience jealousy, you can recognize that jealousy, let go of that and bring up mudita.

If you notice there's resistance going on, you can let go of that and bring up upekkha. If you notice that there's hatred coming up, you can notice that and there's compassion that comes up. Or if you notice that somebody you see as an enemy, you recognize that, let go of that and bring up loving kindness towards them. So these are just another way of reconditioning sankharas, tools that allow you to recondition the sankharas from those that are rooted in greed, hatred and delusion and recondition them with compassion, with wisdom, with loving kindness, with upekkha, with mudita, whatever the case might be. Fantastic. And what comes to mind here, Delson, is how this narrative of contraction keeps coming up.

I'm really big into this archetype, this metanarrative, because to me, when I look there's so many ways to kind of look at the irreducible aspects of the generative impulse of samsara altogether, but to me one of these, which I like because it's visceral, somatic, I can feel it, is contraction. And so with every one of these states that you were talking about, another way to sensitize ourselves towards the triggering or the ignition, so to speak, of the sankhara is these various degrees of contraction. And so, very interesting play on words, because if we capitulate in fact to that contraction again, we can feel that contraction. That's going to be the contractions of the samsaric mother that's going to give birth into these samsaric states of mind. And so if I'm hearing you, once we're sensitized to that, we feel the contraction, we transform obstacle into our opportunity. The contraction is then replaced with openness. That openness then is what in fact gives birth to the brahmaviharas, to the mental states. Yes, so to give birth to these awakened qualities, we open.

to give birth to samsara on the spot, we contract. And I love this because my one, I heard one rendering of Buddha, not just merely the awakened one but also the. And so by counter distinction, we're the contracted one. So I put a little exclamation point on this because of the somatic, visceral component. Once you're sensitized to it, and what meditation does for me, Delson, is it creates heightened contrast mediums that allow us to see things we haven't seen before.

And so by working with openness, meditation is habituation to openness. Diagnostic and prescriptive, it will show me something. This is the painful part. The more open I get, the more I realize I'm pinching myself constantly. And again, I think this is worth throwing into the mix, because sometimes people can feel like things are getting worse, again to that narrative we talked about earlier. I never used to be such a neurotic mess.

Well, yes, you were. You just weren't awake to it, right? And so now you see, the ubiquitous ways. This is the heartbeat of the ego construction, and it happens every moment to moment. In fact, the very sense of I that we talked about earlier is indicative, regulatory of how this contraction takes place. So maybe with your permission, one last tiny thing. There's so much more time back. We've only done three of the links. It's such a piece for me. But I mentioned earlier, um delson and maybe you can say a little bit about this my understanding is at the moment of death uh what makes the in the tibetan language what makes the journey they talk about the perilous straits of the bardos what makes the perilous straits of the bardos perilous is not some pre-existing bardo it's basically the release of the unconscious mind the samskaras the pandora's backs of samsara

without the mediating effect of the body. And my understanding is that of all these samskaras, the primordial samskara is bhavasamskara, the principal habit for habitation itself, the principal habit for housing, for body, for form. So is that your understanding as well, that that's what that primordial samskara is really what controls in a certain sense the fundamental habit that's the main whirlpool you're using that wonderful image from that whirlpool then all these secondary tertiary quaternary whirlpools samskara and spin out can you talk to us a little bit about that um primary contraction samskara and again how these secondary tertiary quaternary expressions can help us decondition this primary one does that make sense what i'm asking yeah yeah so so the way i look at it is you know the word bhava i uh which is you know becoming or identification or process of inclination whatever you want to call it this or habitual tendencies or the habit of habit as you say it's i think closely related to another word which in pali is uh mana which is which is uh conceit

So the way I look at conceit, we look at it from the model of the ten fetters. In the first, the higher fetters, rather, the five higher fetters are restlessness, conceit, the craving for certain kinds of existence, whether that's in form or formless existence, and ignorance itself. The way I look at it, conceit is closely related to bhava, closely related to this sense of habit, this sense of habituating a personal self to things, identifying with one or more of the skandhas, is what gives rise to further and further conceit.

And in relating to the world in such a way that you're projecting your preconceived ideas of what that is. In other words, everything that people experience, beings experience from the unawakened state, is basically just projections of what they already preconceived. So it's always a stale reality, if you will, experiencing rather than a fresh one. Once you let go of the conceit, this habit of wanting to identify with something as whatever it is that you see, or projecting your ideas of what reality is, once you let go of that, dependent upon that is restlessness, this anxiety, because anxiety arises from the sense of I like, I want to do it this way, or I can't do it that way, and therefore there's resistance there.

That restlessness and anxiety and sometimes even remorse of relating to the past and having guilt and shame about the past, that goes away. Dependent upon that conceit is also the craving for certain kinds of existences, because it's only the I notion that causes the idea that I exist in a certain reality, which either I like and I want more of, or I don't like and I want to let go of and get something else in place of that.

When that goes away, then ignorance completely fades away as well. So conceit is really that deep-rooted idea of I, that the mind continues to cling upon, even at depth. Even if it's not the body, it clings to it as a feeling, or as a perception, or as an intention, or as mind, or a component of the mind.

So once you let go of the conceit, that is the awakened state, is no more relating to the world from this one way, a sense of I am looking at it this way. Then reality becomes fresh and spontaneous. Then you're no longer looking at things, because you're no longer judging people, because even before you say anything to a person there's all of this percolation of judgment going on about who they are as a person, whether it's your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, your friend, your enemy, anybody. Away then, that person is just a being. There's nothing else. Not even a being. That sense of being goes away as well. That there is no person at that point. Not to shamelessly plug my book, but in a mind without creating cover, when you see the cover you'll see that it's just a Buddha there, but there's no students there, because there really is no one there.

There really is no sense of self there. So when the conceit goes away, then when you relate to the world, you're not relating to the world in a sense of this is this person and this is that person. It's just reality as it is. There's no relation to this is my brother and this is my enemy, this is my friend and this is my grandparent, parent. They're just processes. Not to sound like they're completely impersonal, but you are, and what they are eventually, I think they're, if you look at the etymology of person, persona means mask. So it is unmasked, so in that case it is impersonal, because it's unmasked.

Well, Delson, I can't tell you. This is such a thrill for me. I want to pay homage to your time, and perhaps a couple months down the road, if your fear is still up for it, I would be inspired to almost create a little mini track with you around the dependent origination narrative. Again, I mentioned this in our last session together: in my tradition of Tibetan Buddhism I only came across this like six, seven, eight years ago, and my first impulse was, why hasn't somebody taught me this before? This is so central. And because I roll in the Tibetan community a little bit, maybe our conversations can be a contribution to the communities that I spent some traffic in, and say, hey, look at this unbelievable heuristic, this incredible pedagogical tool that we have, as a way to bring augmented understanding from our perspective, and also, again, in a most beautiful way, cross-pollinating between these traditions, which, as we talked about in our first session, can sometimes, I wouldn't say, diametrically opposed.

But they're pretty opposite ends of the spectrum. And I love to drop some of the territoriality that can come about when people don't have proper understandings of even the brothers and sisters from the Buddhist tradition, let alone other schools, right? I mean, come on. And so with this kind of supplication and request, maybe a couple months down the road, we can revisit this because, hey, we still got another nine more links to talk about, right?

No, absolutely. Because we talk about craving, there's so many different types of craving. We talk about clinging, there's different types of clinging, even clinging to views. You just brought that up with the idea that I'm right and you're wrong. Or this is one end of the spectrum and that's another part of the spectrum. That kind of clinging also we should explore and understand how to let go of. Absolutely. So that you become fully awakened. And so there's a lot more to explore. There's a lot more to talk about. I mean, just very briefly, there's the self. The self is a construct. It's a narrative. It's a narrative immersion

scripted by a really bad writer. You're a writer. You're a good writer. Ego is a really bad writer, and this has a really bad ending. It's called death. And so we can alter that narrative. We can work with it and realize that our narratives are also ideological. You don't have to stick up. I have my story and I'm going to stick to it. Well, that particular maxim applies to the narrative structure that creates the sense of me, that creates a sense of my particular worldview. And also, what we can explore, Delson, is the humility around even Buddhism, that self-liberates, even the antidote, the emptiness of emptiness, that eventually even what we're talking about has to be released.

And so we still have a little ways to go. But really, such a deep pile of gratitude for me. This is so rich. I really treasure my time with you. Back in touch for perhaps another opportunity, because I think hopefully listeners are starting to realize there is so much here. And so my dear friend, I'm deeply grateful for your time and energy, your wisdom. It's a real contribution, personally for me and for my community. I'm sure they're going to celebrate what you have to offer. So big bottle of gratitude, and until next time, all the best to you, my friend, and I look forward to another venture together. Yeah, take care. Thank you very much.