The Subtle Body In Tibetan Buddhism

From the podcast Letting Grow, Buddhist teachings like the Tibetan Book of the Dead describe four transitions, called bardo states, that we pass through in the process of death and rebirth. In this episode, Dr. Simon Cox talks with Claire about the subtle body as described in Tibetan Buddhism.

Transcript

I'm so pleased to bring you this conversation on the Buddhist subtle body with my friend and colleague Simon Cox.

I met Simon when he joined Rice's Department of Religion Ph.

D.

Program,

And then I got to know him when he took two semesters of my Introduction to Tibetan Language and Culture class at Rice.

Simon wrote his dissertation about the subtle body,

So he's the perfect person to give us a deeper dive on that topic.

Simon spent five years living and training in China under Master Yuan-Xiu Gong at the Wudong Taoist Traditional Kung Fu Academy.

While there he studied kung fu,

Tai chi,

Qigong meditation,

Herbal medicine,

Taoist music,

And ancient and modern Chinese language.

After returning to the West,

He received his Ph.

D.

In Chinese and Tibetan Mysticism at Rice University.

You can read more about Simon and see some awesome pictures of his training in China on his website,

Which you'll find in the show notes.

He's brilliant and great with languages,

And I'm so pleased to share this conversation with you.

Before we jump in,

There are a couple of things I need to explain because this episode gets a little more academic than most.

First,

We'll be talking about the Buddhist tantras because that's where you find descriptions of the body's energy system,

Or subtle body,

So it'll be helpful to define tantra.

What we're talking about are texts that have practices associated with them,

Often what's called deity yoga.

These are typically rituals in which you imagine that you're in the presence of a Buddha,

Receiving blessings from that Buddha,

And then you become that Buddha and try to keep that sense of living from your most awakened and wisest self.

Also,

We talk a few times about epistemology,

Which just means the study of how we know what we know.

For something like sight,

It's pretty straightforward.

The Tibetan tradition would say that our eyes perceive the shape and color of an object,

And then our conceptual mind labels it so we know what it is,

Like a desk or a flower.

With something like the subtle body,

It's less clear to what extent we're noticing something that's already there,

And to what extent we're bringing about the thing we're noticing as we notice it.

In qigong,

They say that where the mind goes,

The qi flows,

So even as we pay attention to the subtle body,

We're already changing our experience of it.

Finally,

A few words about a school of Buddhism we're going to talk about.

It's called Yogacara or Chittamatra.

Yogacara means practitioners of yoga,

And here yoga means transformative spiritual practice.

Chittamatra means mind only,

Which refers to this school's philosophical view,

Which is that the main cause of our suffering is thinking that we're separate from the world around us.

If you want a deeper dive,

See the show notes for a link to an article on Yogacara.

Welcome to Letting Grow,

The podcast about one of the spiritual journey's most difficult and courageous moments,

Letting go of who we think we should be so we can grow into who we most deeply are.

I'm your host,

Claire Villareal,

And I appreciate your joining me today.

Well thank you so much for being on the podcast today.

You're definitely the most qualified person I know,

Personally,

To have this conversation with,

About subtle body.

I did an earlier episode on the death process in Tibetan Buddhism,

And I kind of mentioned the subtle body,

But I feel like it's such a big topic that it'd be super cool to hear a more in-depth description.

And I know you wrote your dissertation on this.

So yeah,

Would you just share with us what is the Buddhist description of the subtle body,

And we'll just go further.

Well,

To say the Buddhist description,

I mean,

As you know,

Buddhism is a massive kind of umbrella category that contains multitudes.

So I think as far as when we're talking about like,

Thanatology or narratives of death and dissolution of the body,

Really the kind of highest form of it in Buddhism,

Of this discourse,

Is in the Vajrayana stuff,

Specifically in Tibetan Buddhism.

This is really,

Really a topic that lots of people are curious about.

It seems starting around the kind of 12th century,

There's just this great flowering of authors who write their kind of own versions of what the subtle body is,

Its structure,

Its function,

How it comes to be,

And then how it dissolves.

So is that the sort of stuff you want to get into?

Yeah,

Absolutely.

Yeah,

So I actually didn't realize it was around that time.

In Tibetan Buddhism,

There's always this narrative of like,

This text that you're learning comes from the Buddha.

And obviously,

That's not factually or like in a Western historical sense,

Correct?

So yeah,

Could you just say a little something about that time when this is all happening?

Like,

Does anybody have a guess as to why that time was such a fruitful time for this kind of speculation?

Yeah,

Yeah.

So I mean,

The historical context,

Which as Americans,

This,

I think,

Will kind of,

Will have an intuitive understanding of how this sort of was going on in Tibet,

Because starting in the seventh century,

There's this movement kind of,

Of the kings essentially in Tibet,

Coordinating translation of texts from various languages,

Actually Persian,

Chinese,

And Sanskrit at this early date.

And then later on,

They kind of like narrow it down,

And they say,

Oh,

We only want this stuff from India.

But that's kind of another story.

But there's this great movement of this tantric literature from Bengal and from kind of present day Pakistan,

These different areas up through the Himalayas into Tibet.

And so,

Over the course of a few centuries,

They get tons and tons of tantras.

And a lot,

There's a problem is that the tantras don't all agree with one another.

So they all have these different depictions of the body.

It has this many channels,

It has this many chakras and stuff like that.

And so it really became sort of,

People wanted to be like,

Well,

What's the real nature of the body?

And so you have all of these different intellectuals approaching it in kind of different ways.

And so one of the early formulators,

This guy,

Yang Gompa,

His strategy was,

Well,

I'm going to go and sit in a cave for 11 months and see what my own kind of experience tells me about the nature of the body.

And so he comes out kind of with his own way of talking about things.

A number of books about him have come out recently,

Really excellent scholarship on him.

And he does stuff like,

Oh,

The chakras have this many spokes,

They're this color.

Another scholar,

Rangjung Dorje,

The third Karmapa,

He has a very kind of different way of doing things.

And he kind of goes back through the old tantras and kind of synthesizes some information to arrive at his own thing,

Which he does this wonderful kind of 70 page poem on the nature,

Arising structure and dissolution of the subtle body.

And then still another guy,

Lung Chenpa,

He,

Well,

His version of the subtle body is kind of gifted to him by these sky-going convos,

These deities that he's kind of in conversation with.

And he has a very unique subtle body kind of layout that I translated part of that in my dissertation,

Actually.

So it's basically in the 12th century,

13th century is this time when a whole bunch of literature had come to Tibet,

And people were really trying to sort through it and figure out what was really going on.

And there's a lot of systematizing that happens at this time of different sects,

But also systematizing of the structure of the subtle body is a major thing.

Wow.

I mean,

So I personally practice in the Lung Chen Yingtik lineage,

Which is Lung Chenpa's lineage.

So I had actually no idea that his vision is maybe atypical or unique.

So I can totally relate,

You know,

You mentioned like modern people in the US will probably be able to relate to this.

I can totally relate because it seems like we get a lot of different images of the subtle body.

And a lot of times people will even use the terms prana and chi and lung,

Which is a Tibetan for energy.

They kind of use them interchangeably,

And it seems like there's so much out there that it can maybe be difficult for people to realize that these are different systems.

So what would you say,

Well I guess to continue your story about how people were trying to synthesize this,

Was there,

I kind of know the answer,

But I'll let you say it,

Was there one system that people came to?

Or how did the Tibetans kind of reconcile these different systems they were inheriting?

Well the story with the nature of the body is quite interesting.

Because like I mentioned earlier,

As far as Buddhism was concerned,

There was this famous debate that happened in the 8th century where a Chinese monk came and there was an Indian monk came and they had a debate.

And according to the Tibetan chronicles,

The Indian monk won.

And so then everyone in Tibet was like,

Oh we're going to go with the Indian stuff,

Let's keep all this Chinese Buddhism stuff out of here because it's clearly inferior.

We've actually found other records of that debate in Dunhuang that say it was a tie.

So what actually happened is still a matter of speculation.

But Tibet made this definitive shift towards just getting their Buddhism from India.

But the same king that hosted that debate between these two religious experts also hosted a medical conference where he invited Indian physicians,

Chinese physicians,

And then physicians of the school of Galeno,

Which sounds like Galen,

The Greek kind of guy.

So it's thought that it was probably some kind of Persian form of Greco-Persian medicine that came.

But with the medicine,

They didn't have a debate.

They had a conference and they all got together and they just synthesized everything.

And so whereas they were very kind of like picky about their religion,

They only got it from India,

With the medical stuff they were extremely practical.

And so they just took everything and threw it all together.

And this still lives on in the kind of Tibetan medical tradition.

It's highly syncretistic,

It has aspects from Chinese medicine and obvious aspects,

Inheritance from Ayurvedic medicine.

It fuses this stuff together,

No problem.

It's the same in Tibetan astrology,

Actually.

They have like a totally,

They pretty much all of Chinese astrology and then like all of,

You know,

Vedic astrology.

So it's like this insanely complex astrological system.

And the same could be said about Tibetan medicine.

It's extremely complex because they have this kind of synthesizing attitude.

Wow,

That is amazing.

I never heard of the Galeno aspect.

Like you hear about,

And you can also kind of see the footprints in like Tibetan descriptions of the subtle body,

If you want to call it that,

Of like the Indian and the Chinese systems.

I had no idea about the potential like Western influence on that.

Wow,

So the Tibetan medical system becomes like very syncretic and just kind of tries to fuse all these different influences into one.

I know I've read different,

You know,

Tantric descriptions of the energy system of like the channels and the winds.

And it seems like everyone has their own description.

So did,

Like for the purpose of Dharma and tantric practice,

As opposed to medicine,

Did people end up sticking with like different descriptions for different tantras?

Yeah,

Yeah.

So kind of the medical stuff is really nailed down by Yutok Yuntin Gompo,

The younger,

Who was also I believe a 13th century physician who wrote what's called the four tantras,

The Gyushi,

Which really have a heavy kind of the imprint of Ayurvedic medicine based on some older Sanskrit texts.

And that's like,

That becomes like the medical view of the body.

But when you actually read the Gyushi,

They're quite like materialistic,

You might say.

They're all about like ailments,

Physical channels.

So they're not really taken up with these esoteric conversations about like,

Oh,

How many petals are there on the crown chakra and stuff.

That's not really super urgent when you're actually dealing with sick people.

So yeah,

That establishes like you kind of implied a kind of unique medical tradition.

And then alongside that,

There are these kind of tantric views of the body.

And just as you mentioned,

We have all of these different tantras.

And as sort of,

You know,

Around the 11th and 12th century,

There was sort of this guy Naropa came along,

And he kind of did like a greatest hits of the tantras and created what we call that the six yogas of Naropa kind of organized these.

And so you have these kind of one of them is the inner heat yoga,

Which is just straight up the out of the Havajra Tantra,

Which has its own vision of the body.

But then you also have the kind of yoga of illusory body,

Which he pulls out of the Guhyasamaja Tantra.

And so and then there are some from the Chakrasamvara Tantra.

So he's pulling from these different,

Sorry,

I'm getting am I getting too academic here?

I'm loving it.

Okay,

Cool.

Cool.

So the six yogas of Naropa are kind of,

They draw from all of these different tantras and kind of that have different visions of the body and different structures and functions and stuff like this.

And so it becomes kind of,

There's an extremely practical spirit when you actually read people writing about the subtle body in Tibetan stuff,

Like Tsongkhapa,

He writes his own commentary on the Guhyasamaja Tantra.

And he's like,

Oh,

In this Tantra,

There's this many chakras,

In this Tantra,

There's this many chakras.

And he's like,

There's no problem.

It's just like when you're working with this Tantra,

You do you do what it says when you're that one,

You do maybe four chakras.

And the same thing shows up in Longchenpa.

He's like,

Look,

The conventional thing says there's five chakras,

You can do that.

But then these khandros,

They told me that there's actually four.

And so then you do the four when you're doing these practices.

So because this has been like,

I mean,

Like the the American parallel is like,

Lots of people are taken up with this in the kind of New Age discourse.

And in Tibet,

You know,

They inherited this vast trove of tantric literature in America in the 21st century,

We have with the internet,

We have like everything.

We have like hermetic philosophy and like the Indian stuff,

The Tibetan,

The Chinese,

And it's just all matched together.

And it's like,

No one really knows what to do with it all.

People are trying to synthesize and like,

Push things together.

And then you end up with these kind of like,

Pseudo Christian,

Like,

You know,

Creatures.

So yeah,

I mean,

It's a very interesting time.

So this was these kind of strategies that people developed over centuries in Tibet for synthesizing and systematizing this information.

I find it so fascinating.

This is maybe a bit of a tangent,

But I find it so fascinating that Tibetans,

Like,

Because you know,

For back then,

Their transmission of Buddhism was so compressed,

It was a couple hundred years,

You know,

And they really developed like these ways of how do you compile things?

What do you try and systematize?

What do you leave separate?

It's kind of a nice playbook,

Honestly,

For people nowadays trying to figure out like,

How to slog through all the spiritual smorgasbord that we have available,

Like,

Okay,

Sometimes you don't put things together,

Or sometimes they are really similar.

And you know,

You mash them together,

Because it's very practical.

Yeah.

It's really fascinating.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

So I'm kind of curious.

I mentioned in an earlier episode of the podcast,

And you often hear references to like the body's channels.

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Now let's get back to the good stuff.

Like the traditional description of the energy system is the channels,

Winds and bright orbs or tealei.

Could you maybe just explain what those are?

And how they function?

Because I think that's probably the hardest aspect of a Tibetan model of a person for a Westerner to kind of grab onto and understand.

Yeah.

So kind of based on my own expertise and research,

I will be talking about the kind of tantric presentations of these things,

Which does differ slightly from the kind of medical stuff.

Yeah.

Because there are trained Tibetan medical doctors to this day,

And their knowledge is like,

You know,

Astronomical.

It's pretty incredible what they know.

And so I won't even kind of pretend to be able to speak on the kind of medical side of this stuff.

But since I've read these tantras and commentaries and stuff like that,

I can kind of talk a little bit about how it works in those contexts.

Yeah,

That'd be great.

Because that is where you find instructions on the death process and how to train for it.

Yeah,

Yeah.

And so,

Yeah,

Maybe the easiest way would be to do the kind of narrative,

Because it starts from birth,

Embryology,

To create your physical being,

And then the kind of fanatology or disillusion as you die.

And the death process is just the mirror image of the birth process.

So this arising and kind of passing away are kind of the same process forward and backward.

And so typically,

You know,

You've talked about bardos and bardo beings and consciousness wandering through the intermediate states.

So if there is a kind of wandering bardo consciousness,

Based on karmic tendencies,

It will feel attraction toward the white and red substances produced by the male and female.

So these are the tigles,

Like you mentioned,

Which tigle is an extremely kind of problematic term.

Is there a translation that you go with,

Claire?

I think Anne Klein,

Who is an advisor to us both,

I think her current translation,

Or at least the one that I'm familiar with from her translation of the foundational practices text is bright orbs.

I mean,

It's a text,

You can't really explain it with a translation.

It's almost like you have to explain it with like a small teaching on it.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah,

Or even like a,

It means very different things in different contexts.

So in this context,

When the bardo consciousness encounters these these tigles,

The white one for men that corresponds with semen and the red one from the woman that corresponds with uterine blood,

They fuse together and the kind of the heat of sex kind of melts them,

And it becomes really,

Really kind of yummy to the bardo consciousness.

And it latches onto these and Rangjung Dorje,

The third karmapa,

In his text on this,

He says that it's like the bardo consciousness becomes drunk.

It kind of latches onto these tigles,

And it becomes like really drunk and just disoriented.

And boom,

That's how you incarnate.

Oh my god,

I love that so much.

I've never heard that drunkenness description before.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I actually in my dissertation,

I use the term congealed essence to translate tigle.

And Klein,

Our advisor was like,

Oh,

This is kind of a weird translation.

Where'd you get that from?

And it's actually kind of a funny story because I was,

Well,

You know,

That Ewoks,

Ewoks speech of ettin.

Yeah,

Yeah.

In Return of the Jedi.

Uh huh.

Yeah,

It's like some,

There's like recordings from some like guy's fieldwork in Omdoh or something like that.

I think.

What?

Yeah,

Yeah.

And like,

You know,

When they find like first encounter C-3PO,

They're saying,

Oh,

And it's actually like a prayer to Amitabha.

And so when C-3PO later,

He's telling the story of kind of Han Solo and Frozen and Carbonite to the Ewoks,

He says,

Han Solo,

Tiglo carbon.

And tiglo,

I was like,

Oh,

Tiglo,

Frozen.

And so I look it up in this kind of like a Sino-Tibetan etymological dictionary and tik all has this meaning of like congeal or frozen.

Oh,

Interesting.

And so I was like,

Oh,

That really makes sense.

These like,

They're kind of like frozen substances,

These tiklates.

Yeah.

Because they are like the essence of your of your,

Like,

Well,

Body,

Right?

Yeah,

Yeah.

Like the most essential essential of energies,

Basically.

Yeah.

And so one commentary I read talks about how tik means like frozen congeal,

And then lei means like spread out.

So it has the dual aspect to these.

Wow,

That is so fascinating.

I don't think I've ever gotten such an in depth explanation of just the term tigle.

So this is amazing.

Thank you.

Yeah.

So thank you,

C-3PO,

Right?

The Dharma of Star Wars.

Yes,

The term of Star Wars,

Chinese or Tibetan etymology and Return of the Jedi.

Yeah.

So anyway,

So to go back to our narrative of the kind of arising of the subtle body.

And this is mostly in accordance with Rangjung Dorje's text,

The third Karmapa.

Because like I said,

There are different texts.

And if you go into like Longchampaville,

His text is totally unique.

Yeah.

And his tikdunza is the text where he goes through this stuff.

And his is very interesting.

But so in the third Karmapa's kind of telling,

This kind of bardo consciousness gets drunk on these combined melted red and white essences.

And that's when the whole thing begins.

So then these essences,

They kind of congeal a little bit again,

And then they separate.

And their separation,

A little channel forms between them.

And the white essence goes up and the red essence goes down.

And in between them,

A blue central channel arises.

And then from this central channel,

Over the course of the kind of natal periods,

The chakras form on it,

These kind of like wheels that then have spokes,

And then the spokes have spokes.

And these form this sort of like capillary system of energetic channels.

And so you have chakras and then channels,

And then different kinds of winds start moving through this channel network.

And at this point,

There's still not really a physical body yet.

This is just the energetic substrate on which the physical body eventually arises.

And so once all the winds have formed in the channels,

You have an upward moving wind and a downward moving wind.

And these cause the whole energetic structure to kind of start rattling.

And this rattling is what starts,

What gives rise to the physical bones that grow on this structure.

And so then bones,

And then flesh,

And then your sense organs,

And eventually you have the whole baby gets fleshed out.

And so,

You know,

Then you have a baby and it's born and becomes a person.

And so in this way,

This is why the subtle body is really significant for these different kind of tantric practices,

Because it's kind of halfway between you as a physical being and that traveling bardo consciousness that you're kind of like trying to get back to.

And so the path to your kind of pure experience of consciousness is through this subtle body that forms.

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It's really great to kind of pull together these different pieces of the tradition.

Like I created a course on the Bardo states and more recently what they have to say about transitions and specifically the COVID-19,

And I kind of dove into Tibetan embryology on my own,

But I'd never heard some of these details,

Like it's actually the separation of the white and red tigler drops that creates that channel between them.

So I guess this kind of leads into the next question that I have,

Which is in this system and this way of thinking about a human,

There's obviously body,

Which is the most gross,

And then energy,

And then there's mind.

My understanding is that energy kind of holds all three levels together.

Mind is extremely subtle,

But there's still something,

If we're talking about conventional mind,

There's still something tied into our energy system about it.

So could you explain how energy holds all these three levels together,

Or what role does it play?

Yeah,

So one of the unique things about this kind of Vajrayana subtle body discourse that separates it definitively from say like Taoist discourses or even Hindu ones is that it's all based on the kind of this specific philosophical school that arose within Mahayana Buddhism in the 5th century,

The Yogacara metaphysics.

And this is variously called like mind only school,

This is a translation of Chittamatra,

Or you know,

Kind of phenomenological ontology,

If you're being really,

Really pedantic about it.

But basically,

In this kind of telling of things,

There's this base level of consciousness that's like,

Contains everything.

And then there's a kind of like energetic wave that causes ripples in this consciousness.

And the consciousness for split seconds,

Will forget,

Will see a wave and forget that it's part of itself.

And for like,

Boom,

There's a moment of duality that arises.

And that's the,

What the third Karmapa talks about in this context is that there's this originary consciousness,

And then there's what's called Nonyi or Klesha Manas,

Or like the this seventh consciousness in a consciousness of Yogacara.

And there's the energetic movement causes a ripple that causes this moment of disjunction between subject and object.

And then everything is kind of like built upon that.

So this like,

Afflictive,

Energetic movement is the only reason that we have this perception of duality at all.

And everything kind of arises from that.

But this is a really kind of abstract and metaphysical answer to your question,

Perhaps like too abstract.

So that there's like lots of different kinds of energy in the body,

Right.

And so even when I mentioned this kind of like formation of the subtle structure of the body,

These five winds start blowing through the different channels.

These are the lungs,

Which people sometimes like into prana or chi,

Which I mean,

That's okay,

I think you can do that.

And so these different lungs have different functions.

But yes,

The point I was getting to,

I think,

With this wave causing form of formative mentation is how some people translate it,

Is that that then becomes what's called your Sok Lung,

Or life force lung,

Which is like based in your heart,

And it is the energy that kind of keeps you alive.

And so when that lung dissolves,

That kind of corresponds with your the death of the physical body.

So the thing that keeps you alive is the very kind of like problematic wave causing lung that,

You know,

Stirred things up in the first place.

It's such a fascinating and like such a Buddhist perspective on,

On like what our life depends on.

It basically it's karma.

I mean,

You didn't use a word,

But it's sort of it's karma.

It's it's a moment of disjunction and then following after that in some way that creates actually the quasi physical support for our life.

Yeah,

Yeah,

A moment of ignorance.

Yeah.

Which is why you want awakening or enlightenment.

Kind of get back.

So it sounds like from your description,

This Sok Lung or like this sort of the life energy that creates the impetus for our life,

Creates a life force that keeps us alive.

Yeah,

That in a way that's that's what kind of drives us into each lifetime.

We wouldn't be here without it and as soon as it breaks down,

This lifetime is over,

Right?

So from there,

I guess also from this model of embryology,

It sounds like the first thing that develops is the energy system,

Winds,

You know,

Lung,

This energy begins to flow through the developing channel system.

One thing I'm curious about,

I want to ask about the connection with the body in a second,

But one thing I'm curious about is that the mind,

Obviously,

Like the ultimate mind is not dependent on any of these quasi physical bases,

But the conventional mind is.

And I'm curious,

Could you say more about the connection between energy or these winds and the conventional mind?

Yeah,

Okay.

So yeah,

There's,

So mind is,

We have this term mind in English,

Right?

And it's just extremely broad,

Right?

There's so much that's contained.

And you and I have had this conversation so many times,

Claire,

About the kind of like epistemological poverty of the English language,

Which English is such a rich language.

We have so many things tossed together.

But when it comes to talking about mind and the nature of mind,

We're really quite poor when you compare English to something like Sanskrit,

Where there's,

You know,

There's like 15,

16 different words for all these different kinds and levels of mind.

And Chinese as well and Tibetan.

Even Tibetan,

Yeah.

Yeah,

We're talking about this stuff.

So when you talk about the subtle body and its formation,

Different kinds of mind arise with the different chakras.

So for example,

When your navel chakra grows on that central channel,

It's kind of,

It's thought to correspond with your eye consciousness in some systems.

Different people have different correspondences here.

But it's sort of like eye consciousness from the navel chakra,

Ear consciousness from the heart chakra.

I think throat is just like bodily heat or something like that.

So it's like heat consciousness at the throat chakra,

And then tactile consciousness kind of at the secret chakra,

At the genitals.

So as each of these things arises,

These different sensory awarenesses,

Which correspond with different forms of mind is how they think of it in Tibetan Buddhism,

A kind of form at the same time.

And so your mind is totally kind of dependent on these kind of energetic nodules in your body.

And when they form,

That form of consciousness expresses.

And so then in the dying process,

When your kind of sight grows dim,

That's the dissolution of your navel chakra.

And when your ears kind of have problems hearing,

Then your heart chakra is dissolving,

And so on and so forth.

And so there's this kind of like losing of all of your senses as you approach death.

And that corresponds with the dissolution of your chakras.

They actually like these energetic centers are dissolving,

Dissolving,

Dissolving,

Until eventually they're all gone.

And you have no kind of sense consciousnesses whatsoever anymore.

And then those red and white tigles that separated to form your central channel,

The white one starts to descend,

And you'll have this experience of like brilliant blight.

And then the red one will start to ascend,

And you'll have this like red,

Like a sun blasting right into your consciousness.

And then they both move towards your heart,

And they kind of squeeze your consciousness in between it.

And in this squeezing thing,

It's like complete darkness.

And then they combine,

And you experience fully the nature of mind in that kind of moment.

So yeah,

Your consciousnesses,

Your different forms of mind are completely dependent on these different energetic structures.

Wow.

I've heard the analogy so many times that mind rides on energy.

I'm curious to hear,

Because you've done a much deeper dive on this than I have,

I'm curious to hear more about that relationship.

You know,

Is mind made of energy?

Is it a subtle form of energy?

Like what does it mean for mind to ride on energy?

I mean,

Like,

I guess I should just maybe explain for those who are less familiar,

You know,

What you're describing is each of these sense consciousnesses is dependent on an energy center.

And you hear often,

You know,

In descriptions of meditation,

Like you want the body's energy to flow smoothly so that your mind and your attention,

Your concentration can also be smooth and,

You know,

Robust.

But I've never heard like an in-depth description of what it really means for mind to ride on consciousness or to,

You know,

What,

Is there something riding on it?

Is it the same thing?

Like what?

Tell me,

Simon,

Just explain,

Explain the nature of mind to me,

Please.

So on that specific metaphor,

Once again,

We're kind of invoking the epistemological richness of the Tibetan language.

The very,

The form of mind that rides on the horse is the Yi mind,

Y-I-D in Tibetan,

Which kind of really miraculously corresponds with what's called the Yi mind in Chinese.

It's the same exact word and both of these kinds of minds,

They ride on horses.

Wow,

Interesting.

Yeah,

And it's a bit different in China that the Yi mind kind of lives in your spleen.

But it's a totally different system,

The way they think about mind and the body in China.

But it also rides on horses,

Yi Ma in Chinese.

You talk about Xinyue and Yi Ma,

The monkey mind up here that lives kind of in your heart,

And then monkey mind Yi that lives in your spleen.

And so but in Tibetan,

We talk about the lungtao,

Right,

The wind horse.

And so it's like you have these winds,

They're blowing through your body.

Kind of like,

I mean,

To invoke another horse metaphor.

I hate doing this,

But you could talk,

Think about it in terms of like the Freudian id,

Which he likens to a horse that's like kind of out of control.

And so you need a rider to kind of like rein the horse in.

And that's what the Yi does.

It kind of like you have all these energies moving through your body.

And if you use your Yi,

You can kind of harness these energies and use them in fruitful ways.

Otherwise you're just kind of like all over the place.

You become the kind of like,

Maybe ideal capitalist consumer.

Just buying,

Consuming.

So yeah,

It's this specific and that Yi is also is the same kind of mind that caused that original wave in the kind of originary,

The kunshi,

The kind of nature of mind.

So it's this,

He kind of causes problems,

But at the same time,

It's the very mind that you use to kind of pull in your energies and steer them.

And in internal practices,

This is the kind of mind also that you use to lead energy around your body and stuff.

So once again,

To use the Chinese kind of analogy,

There's a saying,

Yi Dao,

Qi Dao.

So where the Yi mind goes,

The Qi flows.

And so this is the one that you're leading stuff around by using this sort of mind.

If I'm hearing you correctly,

It sounds like there's a lot of executive function to this Yi mind.

I mean,

Again,

Yi is like this word in Tibetan that has different uses in different contexts.

I've never heard it quite explained in this way before,

But it sounds almost like there's,

I don't know,

A sense of like agency that isn't dependent on the energies,

It's more leading the energies.

Is that correct?

Yeah,

I mean,

Insofar as in the embryological narrative,

This form of mind actually exists before the formation of the energetic structures.

Oh,

Interesting.

So this is the one that causes that original wave,

And then that launches the whole process of the embryological kind of development.

So there is a sense in which the Yi is kind of above the energetic structures of the particular chakras that give rise to the different forms of sense consciousness in mind and stuff like that.

Wow.

Similarly,

In Yogacara,

It's also the seventh of the eight consciousnesses.

So it's the closest consciousness to your base storehouse nature of mind consciousness.

Just hearing that description,

It strikes me that that Yi capability is what maybe many of us would think of as ourselves.

It sounds like it would be difficult to discriminate the difference between that sort of guiding function.

Well,

I mean,

It sounds like that guiding function is the one that really kind of stands out for most of us as who we are.

And it's,

You know,

Well,

I guess,

Let me ask this as a question.

So during our lifetime,

This Yi is kind of either corralling our horses of the winds or it's not.

And then what happens during the death process to this Yi aspect of us?

Because there is a moment at which there's nothing there but Buddha nature.

So where does it go?

Yeah.

So,

So in the death process,

Right,

So as you're being born,

Your chakras arise,

And the different chakras correspond with the arising of different forms of sense consciousness.

And so these sense consciousnesses,

They also correspond with elements.

As the body is born,

It's kind of this process of the creation of the elements as well.

And so out of just pure consciousness,

The kind of wind moves,

And then you have the kind of wind element.

And then from wind,

Fire is born.

And then from fire,

Water is created.

And then from water,

Earth is born.

And this corresponds also with the arising of the chakras and the development of this energetic substructure of the human organism.

And so when you die,

Like I said in the beginning,

It's the reverse of this process.

So the navel chakra dissolves,

And then earth dissolves into water,

And then the heart chakra dissolves.

And you start having kind of like a dry mouth,

Dry tongue,

Your ear consciousness kind of vanishes,

And you become a little confused and agitated.

And then water dissolves into fire at the throat.

And then kind of you start becoming cold,

Your extremities become cold,

Your body becomes cold,

And then your mind kind of vacillates between clarity and dullness.

And sometimes you can't even recognize objects or people anymore.

And that's the kind of dissolution of the throat chakra.

And then you start having problems breathing.

And kind of exhalations get longer and longer,

Inhalations get shorter and shorter,

You start losing tactile consciousness.

And that's the kind of dissolution of the secret chakra at the genitals,

Which is wind going into consciousness.

And so once earth has dissolved into water,

Water into fire,

Fire into wind,

And wind into consciousness,

All that's left is this kind of consciousness,

But it's still a little bit disturbed.

And that's when this sort of like dissolution of the subtle body happens,

Which is when the white tigli moves from the top,

The red tigli moves from the bottom,

And they approach the heart,

Where the heart chakra kind of used to be before it dissolved.

And here is where you experience the white,

And then the red,

And then the total darkness.

And then that's when consciousness dissolves into space.

And you're in that completely dark place.

But there's still that wave of formative mentation.

But then for a moment,

Space dissolves into pure light.

And that is when you kind of get back to the full nature of mind.

And then all of these,

Pretty much everyone agrees,

This is like a fantastic opportunity to achieve enlightenment.

If you can recognize the nature of mind in this moment,

That's like the kind of most expeditious escape route from samsara,

Right?

I love it,

The most expeditious escape route from samsara.

Yeah.

Somehow my mind just interprets this into like a visual system where it's like,

You know,

You've got earth sort of at the top and then water and you're sort of getting subtler and subtler.

And it just feels like there's some really significant threshold that your consciousness,

Or you can't even really call it mind at that point,

That it crosses to dip down into that space with no yi,

Not even like a space element.

There's not even a question here.

I'm just trying to wrap my head around the awesomeness.

So I guess that was my question about the relationship between mind,

And there's all these different words for like conventional mind in Tibetan,

Yi or sem or loh,

Like all these different terms to convey like,

It's mind,

But it's not Buddha nature.

So clearly,

That layer of our being is very wrapped up with or like very connected with the energy system of the body to zoom all the way out to the other side.

What's the relationship between like the physical body and the energetic system?

Maybe I should preface that by saying like,

I feel like Western science has a hard time defining what life is.

And it seems like there's a different answer here.

So yeah,

What is that relationship between the wind and the body in the system?

Like what is the relationship between our physical body and the energy body?

Well,

I think the kind of the embryological narrative kind of illustrates how that what that relationship is that the physical body is just the kind of like,

You might say,

Like full phenotypical expression of the kind of energetic development.

But I mean,

So this is where we get into the kind of like Tibetan medical tradition,

Which I'm much less qualified to speak of,

Because there's extremely kind of well developed physiological explanations for a huge range of human behaviors.

Like I said that the medical tantras,

They're actually metaphysically quite materialistic.

They don't have all of these appeals to complex yoga,

Chakra philosophy.

It's about these kind of red channels and white channels that move through your body.

And so when you're doing kind of tantric practices,

You're actually only focusing really on like a few chakras and these three channels,

A blue one that runs through the center,

And then a red and a white one that are either on the left or right,

Kind of depending on who you ask and depending on what gender you are.

And so it's a pretty kind of like mean and lean subtle physiology you're using to do these energetic manipulations.

And it's pretty universal across even like the different tantras and stuff like that.

Whereas when you get into the medical tradition,

Like even in the tantric scriptures,

I'll talk about,

Well,

There are actually 72,

000 channels,

Or in fact,

These 72,

000 have subsidiary channels,

Actually 84 million.

And even these have subsidiaries,

Actually over 3 billion.

And so you get to these like wild numbers,

And usually they have some more sort of like neurological and astrological significances.

But this is really the kind of domain of the medical tradition.

And so extremely kind of complex diagnostic methods that are dependent on very complex understandings of the nature of your kind of structural energetic structure,

And its relationship with,

Yeah,

Kind of different etiologies.

So if I were to like,

Kind of simplify it,

I mean,

My impression,

And it kind of sounds similar to what you're saying is that we have this energy system.

And from our main chakras,

There's just an almost infinite proliferation of like smaller and smaller channels out.

I tend to,

I guess,

Almost unconsciously think of the physical body as like the outgrowth,

Like the logical outgrowth of the energy system and the way that it kind of feeds our whole being not just our physical body or our,

You know,

Our energy system,

Our mind too.

Is it fair to think of the body as being kind of like the almost just like a more like one layer grosser than the energy system,

And then the energy system just kind of feeds everything and keeps us alive?

Yeah,

Yeah,

Totally.

Yeah.

And like you said,

I mean,

It's all karma.

So the physical body that you manifest is a result of past karmas.

So the fact that you're human is typically a pretty good sign of Buddhism.

It's continued to be a pretty lucky incarnation.

Some millennials might argue with that,

You know,

I can understand that.

Being a human is kind of a bummer sometimes.

But yeah,

Yeah.

And so yeah,

You're depending on your karmic seeds,

You'll develop a different physical body.

So that's the kind of why of why you have this body.

But yeah,

That relationship,

The physical one body is very much kind of subsists and is nourished by,

Sisosan is nourished by the different energetic flows through these kind of the channels,

The ca and Tibetan,

Which literally means like root.

So the Tibetan word is quite unique because it's root that has this like very capillary system kind of feel to it.

Whereas it's very different from the Sanskrit term nadis,

Which means,

You know,

Like river.

And the Chinese term typically is jing,

Which means like the weft in like weaving.

But they also have an aquatic metaphor mai,

Which means like vessels,

Like reservoirs in the Chinese ones.

But I think these different metaphors are important.

So the Tibetan one is roots.

So you can think of like a root capillary,

You know,

Rhizomatic system,

The delusium subtle body.

Yeah,

It's funny.

Like I know the word sa,

But I never thought of it before as like a root system that branches out in that way.

Wow,

That's a great,

That's a great description,

A great metaphor.

One final question.

This is a completely different topic.

But I'm kind of wondering,

To wrap up this section,

You've obviously done a really deep dive into the energy system of the body,

A lot of the systems that support these different theories of the body.

What does it what does it do for you in daily life,

To have this understanding to have all the practices that go with like this attention to the energy body?

Does it does it change the way you feel in your life,

Or the way you go through life?

I mean,

Like,

My life has been like,

Devoted to this stuff.

So it's like,

There's not really a separation between this line of inquiry and my life.

I sort of,

Um,

I talk about this kind of in my dissertation,

Which is a forthcoming book actually through Oxford.

The genealogy of the subtle body,

We're still working on a title title that's not totally nerdy.

But uh,

Yeah,

Like I tell the story of how I kind of started like any 1980s kid watching cartoons with the kind of mystical orient and then they had these kind of subtle anatomies.

There's an episode of Batman where he limbs like the touch of death and the whole thing is based on this,

Like these energetic structures in the body that he comes to understand them and has this great esoteric kind of awakening.

And I just basically took these things like way too seriously,

And explored these like,

Like very kind of dedicated my life to sort of lines of inquiry and learning kind of all these different languages to explore these things in their primary literatures.

So yeah,

I mean,

This absolutely affects how I live and see everything and,

But I mean,

I spent like six years in a Taoist temple.

I've done lots of meditation,

Your vision of reality just completely changes when we do these practices like a whole lot.

So yeah,

Does that answer your question?

It does.

In a way,

It's kind of an unfair question because,

Like for me too,

I started meditating when I was like maybe 20.

So it's kind of impossible to say like,

Oh,

What does meditation do for you?

Well,

What is air do?

Is there I breathe it if I didn't,

I'd probably die.

You know,

For myself,

Knowing this other dimension of like the body and dimension of the mind and you know,

Being able to sort of the more I work with these kind of practices,

The more I feel the connections beyond myself to,

You know,

To the seasons to the outdoor world around me.

And it's just such a source of like richness and profundity even in just,

You know,

So called ordinary,

Daily life.

And that is actually one of the aspects of your dissertation I really enjoy is,

You know,

What does this mean to you and to your life?

And I'm really looking forward to your book coming out.

So that we can maybe share links with everybody and they can enjoy a deep dive on this,

Too.

Yeah,

Sure.

Well,

So this this Tibetan stuff is like,

Mostly an intellectual endeavor of mine.

So I lived in the Chinese context and the practices I've done have been predominantly Taoist kind of,

You can call them yogas,

I guess people don't like that kind of sinosphere,

But Taoist energetic practices,

Meditations and stuff like that.

And so those have a very much more of a kind of,

You might say pastoral kind of nature based thing where you're really incorporated into seasons and cycles and stuff like that.

Versus this kind of these very kind of intellectual forms of the Tibetan Vajrayana that I've explored through graduate school and stuff like that.

So for sure,

Yeah,

It affects my relationship with kind of reality itself,

Down to plants and animals and people.

That is super cool.

Well,

Thank you so much,

Simon.

I feel like this is a real pleasure to get to hear such a lucid and accurate account of all this stuff.

And I learned a lot.

So I really appreciate your time today.

Thanks,

Claire.

That was a lot of fun.

I hope you've enjoyed this deep dive into Buddhist ideas about the body's energy system.

And in our next interview episode,

I'll talk to Simon about his own journey from childhood in Houston,

Loving Batman episodes that dealt with mystical topics,

To his time studying Kung Fu on a mountainside in China,

Training with a Taoist master,

To writing his dissertation on the subtle body.

Thanks for coming along for today's exploration of the process of letting grow.

If you found this episode helpful,

Please share it and subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts so you're always in the loop.

For links to more content related to today's episode,

Please see the show notes.

See you again next week.

Reviews

This was a very insightful talk. Thank you so much for hosting it.

Really like to hear you both talk ideas; feels as if I walked into a best friends conversation about what drives them the most. Thankx