Inner Landscape 2

This three-part talk is a three-way conversation between our direct experience, the Buddha’s comments on experience, and science. It explores the components of phenomena (khanda), how to work with them, and ways to skillfully alleviate suffering.

Transcript

So,

This is a bridge from last night as we were talking about the khandhas and this is a little passage on the third khandha,

Which is perception,

Labeling.

This is from Chuck Laurie.

People know Chuck Laurie.

He's a sitcom producer.

Dharma and Greg,

Grace Under Fire,

Two and a Half Men,

The Big Bang Theory.

I haven't seen any of them.

I think I've seen little fragments of a couple of shows here and there,

But apparently at the end of these,

As the credits are coming to signature pieces,

He does a little monologue as the credits are going by and some of them are really lovely.

And so this is one on labeling.

The human mind is very adept at labeling.

Left to its own devices,

It will label situations,

Things,

Places and people.

It's a pretty handy app,

Except when it comes to people.

Over time,

Those labels tend to solidify.

They become all we see.

They become what we experience.

The true depth of a person,

The breathtaking miracle of their very existence is replaced by a word,

A sound,

An assemblage of vowels and consonants,

Ink or digital letters on paper or screen,

Which is why I sometimes try to look at people and see them,

Witness them,

If you will,

Without immediately attaching a mental label.

This is especially fun to do in crowded public places.

After a few minutes of practicing non-judgmental looking,

I find my heart filling with affection for total strangers.

It's an extraordinary experience.

I encourage you to try it sometime.

Be warned though,

When you feel affection,

You can't stop smiling.

This may cause total strangers to react fearfully or in New York City say,

What the hell are you looking at,

You friggin' freak?

Friggin' freak being your new label.

Chuck Lorre.

Yeah,

He's got a website or something.

I had a yogi who sent me one of his.

It was just wonderful.

So I looked at it on there and he has all these published out there and they're just by the date with no labels or anything.

But some of them are really sweet and he has this lovely sense of humor about it all.

So last night we were exploring the inner landscape,

What it is that we experience when we look inside,

Close our eyes and meditation at other times.

And we've been doing this as a three-way conversation between our direct experience,

The Buddha's commentary on this and in science,

Particularly evolutionary psychology and the neurology of consciousness.

And to keep us from wandering aimlessly in the wilderness,

I wanted to start this thread with Buddha's primary concern,

Which was alleviating suffering.

So right away we have this question,

What is suffering?

And we agreed,

At least I agreed,

I hope you agree with me,

That suffering at the very least is something we experience,

Which raises the question,

What is experience?

And that took us into the exploration of the khandhas,

I don't know what to call it,

Taxonomy of experience of these five khandhas that together cover everything that we can possibly experience.

And so we went through them all last night,

Looking at the Pali and exploring the terms,

Except we went very lightly over the second khanda-vedna.

So that's what I want to pick up tonight.

It's important to remember,

I'll just remind you again,

That vedna is usually translated as feeling,

And when you see the word feeling in Buddha's text,

They're usually referring to vedna.

And in English that's a little confusing because it's not emotion,

They're really talking about sensation and the tone of the sensation,

Which is classically,

We'll expand on that a little bit,

But classically it's painful,

Pleasant,

Or something that is neither painful nor pleasant.

So vedna is the stepchild of the khandhas.

It's misunderstood,

It's overlooked,

And I'm coming to believe that it is really central and very,

Very helpful in deep meditation practice.

The Buddha said all things converge on vedna.

All things converge on vedna,

Meaning that feeling,

Tone,

Or vedna is one of the most important aspects of our experience.

Vedna is the second khanda.

Vedna is the seventh length independent origination.

Vedna is the second of the four foundations of mindfulness.

The four foundations are considered to be rupa,

Sensation,

Raw sensation,

Raw experience,

Vedna,

Mind,

And mind objects.

And that's kind of the bedrock particularly of Theravada Buddhism,

Including insight meditation,

Et cetera.

Despite their importance,

The Buddha says hardly anything about it.

So in the Satipatthana Sutta,

Which is the discourse on the four foundations of mindfulness,

The Buddha goes on for many pages on body,

Including lots of exercises and meditations and descriptions and explanations,

Lots and lots of stuff on mind and mind objects.

But this is what he says in there on vedna.

This is the entirety of what he says in that sutta on vedna,

Which is for those of you who want to look this stuff up,

This is Majjhima Nagaya number ten,

The Satipatthana Sutta.

Verse thirty-two says,

How does a person abide contemplating vedna as vedna?

That is seen vedna in its own terms.

Here,

When feeling a pleasant vedna,

A person understands,

I feel a pleasant vedna.

When feeling a painful vedna,

They understand,

I feel a painful vedna.

When feeling neither painful nor pleasant vedna,

They understand,

I feel neither painful nor pleasant vedna.

So you got it?

That's it.

He actually says the same thing three times.

He talks about vedna and then he says the same exact word except to call it a worldly vedna.

What worldly vedna refers to?

Painful or pleasant sensations that come from sensory experience.

And then he says that the last time talking about unworldly vedna,

Which is jhana,

Painful,

Unpleasant,

Painful,

Pleasant,

Neither painful nor pleasant vedna.

And that's it.

In the Samyutta Nakaya,

It's another collection of suttas,

There are a few short passages on vedna,

But they don't say anything more than that.

So that's it.

That's it.

So tonight,

Rather than starting with what the Buddha had to say about it,

Well,

We started with what the Buddha had to say about it,

That's about all of it.

I want to come at this from the standpoint of science.

So remember from last night.

Yes.

So the vedna that's neither pleasant nor unpleasant,

I have a hard time noticing that.

It seems like there isn't a vedna.

Do you notice that?

We will get to that.

No,

That's really important because even that little bit is confusing because neither pleasant nor painful vedna says what it's not.

It doesn't say what it is.

But we'll unpack all of that.

So from the perspective of neuroscience,

They have this kind of working definition of experience as the tip of the iceberg,

The upper level of the information that flows through our system.

So there is more information,

There's more signals going through our system than we can possibly,

Possibly pay attention to.

So it's just the upper layer of it.

And so within all of that,

Vedna is a signal that goes through all that information that says,

This piece of information is important.

This is one you really need to attend to.

So it has this function of drawing our attention to something that we might otherwise skip over.

And the Buddha said there are three kinds of vedna.

There's the pleasant,

The painful,

And the neither pleasant nor painful.

And what I always thought,

What it sounded like to me,

He was saying actually there's one vedna and it's on the scale from painful to pleasant with neither painful nor pleasant being somewhere in the middle.

It's a neutral thing.

And most teachers and other people,

I mean,

I've heard talk about it,

We're all kind of treated that way.

But if you read the text very carefully,

It's clear that he's talking about three different kinds of vedna,

One that's painful and there's another whole another kind of painful,

Of vedna,

Which is pleasant and then there's another kind of vedna,

Which is neither of those.

But it doesn't go much further in saying what that's about.

What really blew me away was to find out that what the Buddha was saying 2,

600 years ago is now being documented by neuroscience,

That these are actually distinct kinds of sensations.

So let's look at them and we'll see what they are.

So vedna is a signal that says,

You know,

Your organism,

You've got to pay attention to this.

So what are going to be the most important signals that we ought to pay attention to?

Just from an evolutionary perspective,

What's the first and most important?

Danger.

Right.

Something that relates to our safety,

You know,

To the integrity of the organism.

Right.

Here there's a bear in the front yard.

There's a rattlesnake on the path.

And this could also be a psychological danger,

You know,

An insult or a sense of imbalance.

I had this yogi who walked into a class once and he was wearing this shirt and the shirt said on it,

I'm CDO.

He said,

I used to be OCD until I rearranged the letters the way they ought to be.

So,

Yeah,

OCD is famous for that kind of imbalance.

Somebody says,

You know,

Who put the teacups on the second shelf rather than on the first where they belong?

And you can feel there's a sense of threat there even if,

You know,

In some ways it sounds a little crazy.

Daddy,

Billy's putting his hand on my side of the car seat.

You know,

Those are all different kinds of threats.

There is a neural system in the body that specializes in picking up painful sensations.

That's all it does.

It just picks up painful sensations.

And it feeds those sensations into the lower brain,

Mostly into the lower brain,

The very most primitive part of the brain.

And so then the question is,

What do you think these signals are?

How do we experience them?

Tightening.

Anything that's related to the safety of the organism.

Fear,

Yeah.

Pain.

You know,

These are the things that grab our attention right away.

So these are all related to safety of the organism.

So when your safety is in danger,

Fear,

Pain,

And what else?

Anger,

Right?

Sense of threat,

Etc.

So these are all painful vedna.

They may not be physically painful yet,

But they're actually,

You know,

Pain,

Anger,

Uneasiness.

Even that sense of imbalance is uncomfortable.

And so what goes on here is it's supposed to grab our attention.

We're supposed to pay attention to this.

And as I said,

It feeds into the lower brain,

The most primitive part of the brain,

And those sensations feel pretty primal,

You know,

When you're under threat,

Something like that.

So the next,

So that's painful vedna,

Pleasant vedna.

If the organism's immediate safety is no longer in question,

What's the next most important thing to have signals about?

Food.

So it's actually long-term survival.

It's not immediate.

Food,

Shelter,

Reproduction,

Sexuality.

In case you don't know,

That's a pretty powerful drive for humans.

And so the experience of these types,

The signals that come with that are all pleasant.

There can be like an experience as a sweetness,

As a liking,

As a,

Mmm,

Boy,

I want,

You know,

Yum.

So that's pleasant vedna.

So neither pleasant nor painful vedna.

So what would that be about?

So what's,

Anybody want to take a guess?

It took me a while to sort this out.

So this is my sense of it,

And this is a little bit my own invention,

And I've run it past a couple teachers and they all kind of agreed with me,

But like I say,

There's not much on this in the text and there's nothing on it in the commentaries.

But,

So the organism is,

There's no arousal from threat,

There's no arousal from,

Let's call it need satisfaction.

So the arousal systems are quiescent,

You know,

They're quiet.

So when the mind is quiet,

Relaxed,

Undisturbed by pain or need satisfaction by threat or safety or need satisfaction,

Excuse me,

The mind can become quite equanimous,

Right?

It can be very sweet pace,

It can be quiet attentive,

Etc.

But we can also be quiet,

Soft,

Very little arousal,

And inattentive.

Okay?

Pardon?

Inattentive.

And if we're inattentive,

There may be something that's related to safety or need satisfaction which we're missing.

So we're in risk of delusion or confusion,

Right?

Just by not picking up what's there or not by processing well.

So how would we experience those kinds of signals?

What are those like?

Confusion,

Boredom,

Torpor,

It's all those qualities that have that kind of thickness,

Ohumness,

Foggy mind.

And you notice these are not pleasant and they're not unpleasant.

They could be very,

Very mildly unpleasant,

You know,

Boredom is not particularly pleasant.

But it's not painful.

Depression?

Yeah.

Well,

Curiosity would be the opposite of what's being called pleasant,

You know,

So it's indifference.

So we were talking about dispassion the other night where there's a whole lot of equanimity,

But the difference between dispassion and disinterest is with dispassion there's still interest.

You're just not betting on anything.

Whatever way it goes you're just fine about as opposed to disinterest which is just like,

You know.

And you can sit in meditation,

You know,

That kind of ohum mind,

You know,

It's not very attentive and just kind of drifting along.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Except,

And it's the problem with the label of neither painful nor pleasant and lack of awareness is there is a signal that's in there and it's this kind of thickness which is a signal that there's not enough awareness.

Okay.

So,

Do you all know Rick Hansen?

So Rick Hansen is a psychologist.

He's actually not a neuroscientist,

He's a psychologist but he's a sort of avid consumer of neuroscience.

He's probably his best known book is called Buddha's Brain.

And he speculates,

I can't find another teacher that agrees with him but I think it's very,

Very provocative and I think it's worthwhile reflecting on,

That there may be a fourth kind of vedna that we're missing which is connection,

Need for connection.

It's obviously a very strong force within us but it doesn't really deconstruct into safety needs or satisfaction needs.

It seems to be different.

And it can be positive or negative,

You know,

So it doesn't even have plus or minus but it's a very powerful signal.

So just to give you some ideas of what I'm talking about,

There was a friend of a friend,

Some of you know this story,

A friend of a friend who was out on a whale watch and there were these three grey whales that they saw out there who were protecting some seals from orca,

From killer whales.

And so he was watching this whole scene go on and he was thinking,

Well in evolutionary terms,

Why in the heck would some grey whales be protecting seals from orca?

It just doesn't make any sense.

And I got to thinking about it,

The more you think about it,

Actually the more sense that it truly makes.

So in intelligent species,

Where does that intelligence come from?

It comes from these very complex neural networks which take a long time to mature.

So bees are born as adults.

Intelligent species have these long infancy and childhood periods in which the brain continues to mature at a really powerful rate.

Well if we use our intelligence to take care of our safety and our satisfaction needs and survival and all that stuff,

Then it leaves the infants and the children,

The juveniles of the species really,

Really vulnerable.

So the only way this whole system would work if there is a very strong urge for connection from parents or parent types.

And one thing about intelligence is it's general,

It's not specific.

So it makes a lot of sense,

You know,

That you'd see these whales that have this general sense of taking care of small baby-like creatures like seals.

But isn't that,

Couldn't that also be like the way that we have,

We herd our animals,

Our food source because the grave whales eat seals?

No they don't.

They don't.

They don't.

And they were clearly protecting them.

Can we go back just a minute or two?

Probably not.

We can only go forward in time.

But in explanation this is a question.

You were talking about the middle or neutral vedna and you said there was a lack of attention,

There was sloth,

There was what could be considered boredom.

Every word you used in my mind is slightly,

Slightly on the unpleasant side.

Would there not be a neutral position that would be slightly on the positive side?

And we would not have the lack of attention,

We'd have attention.

When the arousal that is created by a safety need or need satisfaction,

When that arousal is quiet and there is a lot of attention,

If the awareness is very active,

We experience that as equanimity which can be very sweet but in an almost neutral way.

What about reverie or danger?

Yeah,

That can certainly be pleasant.

Or but still neither pleasant.

Yeah,

It can be pleasant or unpleasant and there's a question of,

So we're looking at vedna as a kind of a signal for the organism that something needs to be paid attention to.

And so with reverie you don't necessarily have that.

And believe me,

Some of this is a little bit speculative but I'm just trying to make sense and put it all together.

So.

So in the best of the pyramid of needs,

It sounds like these feelings or these vedna that you're talking about kind of would cluster in the upper spheres of that pyramid of needs where as the pleasant,

Unpleasant,

More intense side of the spectrum would cluster in the lower level of the.

.

.

Yeah,

I would say they would spread out over it because,

You know,

Talking about Maslow's hierarchy of needs,

Right.

And so the painful ones are going to be,

You know,

Pretty baseline that this when there's a bear in the hallway,

We don't pay attention to much else except for the bear.

It sort of takes precedence over everything else.

And then if that stuff is taken care of,

Then if there's a strong need of hunger or something,

That begins to take over.

And so I don't remember if I said this,

But the need satisfaction tends to mostly feed into the midbrain of the limbic system.

And when they're satisfied,

It produces dopamine.

And then the connection need,

Which is very complex if you think about it,

Actually goes into the cerebral cortex,

The neocortex.

It's the higher brain functions.

Talking about reverie and daydreaming and in relation to it being something that is brought to awareness,

I think that there's definitely a relationship there,

But it's more like the long term slow awareness.

We daydreamed for a long time about something that you're not making necessarily fully conscious of.

And I think that's a really important part of that.

And then gradually you realize,

I need to put a window on that wall and I need to put a window on that wall.

That's how we get ideas or branch out into things that we have thought of before.

So when someone hasn't taught you,

You're just,

What's in there to come to?

These are all good questions,

But I'm going to have to think about this more.

I'm not sure how that goes together,

But those are provocative kind of thoughts about how this works.

I have to share with you my favorite example of connection needs in higher species.

I woke up one morning and I've been sleeping on my side like this and our cat,

Lila,

During the middle of the night,

Had crawled into bed and she was sleeping literally right up against my heart.

And she had her front paws on my shoulder and her chin was resting on top of my chin and I opened my eyes and there she was sound asleep.

So that's the poster child for connection needs,

You know.

And it can go across species.

And you can see it in humans too.

You see how we respond to babies of any species,

Right?

You know,

Show them pictures.

Oh,

Look at that sweet little baby turtle.

Baby turtles are not sweet and cute,

But there's something about just recognizing as an infant that you can feel that taps into this something that just,

You know,

Needs to connect.

I think I know this is true,

And I think you all do as well,

That infants that are not touched or not met when they have a trial or ultimately could die.

And so I don't know where that would fit in with this,

With looking at Vedana.

Because I'd like to hear more about how you can incorporate a forth Vedana connection.

I mean,

It's utterly essential.

I mean,

Utterly essential.

And it's real.

I guess it's,

I mean,

Just like a pleasant or unpleasant feeling is as real as real can be,

So is connection.

Yeah.

And for existence.

Yeah,

And I would say this area stuff,

I heard Rick Hansen talk about this,

And I was very touched because I can see it inside my own self,

And it helped me straighten out a lot of stuff that was going on in my practice.

But this is,

Well,

You know what they do in science.

You know,

Somebody does some experiment stuff,

And they write it out,

And they put it out,

You know,

For distribution among all the scientists,

And they wait for input.

And so there's this whole kind of exchange and vetting.

And this whole stuff around,

You know,

Connection,

I think is pretty new in terms of this whole vetting process and figuring out all these places that fit into it.

But there is some very practical stuff that we can do with it.

And I thought,

I feel lonely because,

You know,

I had the first time I experienced it here where,

You know,

There's been no meaningful,

Not really,

With you,

But not really.

And,

You know,

There's this sense of isolation,

And it just,

It's right there.

So did you all feel that when she said the word lonely?

Because you feel the sort of contact.

Yeah,

So I mean it touches something that's,

I wouldn't call it primitive,

It's not primitive,

But it's pretty core.

Yeah.

So,

Yeah.

It's okay.

You know,

I think it's human being.

It's just fate.

Yeah,

Yeah,

No,

And we feel this stuff.

And so that kind of,

Because my next question,

And you sort of anticipated a little bit,

If safety needs are experienced as painful,

And if satisfaction needs are experienced as pleasant,

How are connection needs experienced?

And what you're suggesting,

For one thing,

Is that they can be positive or negative,

And so loneliness is one way that the vedna can be experienced.

What are some other ways that we,

Longing?

Well,

I was just thinking,

When I was working with emotionally disturbed kids,

Kids who were neglected were way more screwed up than the kids who were beat.

That's right.

On a regular basis.

Yes.

I mean,

It was really incredible.

Yeah,

Yeah,

No,

And you see that with adults too.

The ones who have been abused have a lot of stuff to work through,

But the ones who have been neglected,

You can't even develop a therapeutic relationship with,

You know,

And so they sort of drift off and just kind of disappear.

So what about the more positive sides of connection need?

It's like sort of get what that actually feels like.

It's satisfying.

To me,

It belongs in with the survival needs,

With food.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah.

The lack thereof leads to other things.

If you don't have the food,

You don't have milk.

You don't have cash,

You don't have dry.

Right.

And there's also another part of this connection stuff is actually the draw to connect,

And what does that feel like?

What is it that we're looking for?

To be seen.

Well,

It could be Kanha.

To be seen.

Pardon?

To be seen.

To be seen.

Yeah.

And to be affirmed.

Yeah.

The phrase that Rick Hansen used with this,

And I didn't like it,

It sounds kind of incomplete and partial,

But I can't find a better one,

Is what we call heartfelt.

You know,

We want that heartfelt sense of being with another person.

And that's the kind of sort of signal that we get when it's being satisfied.

And that's something that's really disruptive in autistic?

Yes.

Yep.

Yep.

And since they've got the executive functioning disruptions,

I mean,

It makes sense that,

You know,

That's all more in the upper part of the brain.

Right.

And the other little piece of it is wild children.

You know,

There are very few examples we have of children who are raised without other humans,

But raised by wild animals or something.

And a lot of that upper function just is not there,

You know,

Without having this ongoing stimulation,

Even though we're physically able to survive.

Other thoughts and comments?

Again,

I'll just say whether or not this is officially VEDNA or whether it's something that's VEDNA-like,

I want to spend a little time with it because I think it is the functional equivalent of VEDNA,

And I'll let the philosophers figure out whether it really is or not.

I noticed,

As I think I said the other day,

That a lot of my random thoughts feel like the voice in it is like explaining something to somebody.

And when they're strong,

There's almost an earnestness,

Like if I can just get them to understand,

You know,

Then I can connect with them.

And I just may be hypersensitive to relationships,

But I suspect there are other people as well.

So the— Can I ask another question,

Please?

Yes,

You just did.

Well,

Then another one.

You've talked before and just a couple of days ago about how it takes one negative to overcome or to submerge maybe five positives.

How does that fit into the VEDNA scale?

Oh,

The negatives are painful.

So painful VEDNA overrides everything else.

So,

But it seems like,

I guess,

The middle would be—it's hard to see where the middle is if there's so much more on the negative side.

Yeah,

I don't think the model of the middle path applies to a specific kind of VEDNA.

You know,

If we're feeling like,

You know,

We really want to get to know each other,

You know,

And a wolf walks in,

You know,

The room,

Sort of saliva,

Forget the connection and,

You know,

It goes right to the survival,

Just overrides it.

But so it's not necessarily balanced that way.

How all this stuff comes together,

You know,

We'll see that.

But,

You know,

I just thought that's not necessarily true because you find that in times of war,

There's deep connection among people where safety needs or sometimes even secondary to safety.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Yeah,

I hadn't thought of that,

But you're right.

And,

You know,

The places where,

You know,

Somebody will run into a burning building,

You know,

For the sake.

So that connection is very,

Very strongly there.

There's not a lot about it in the text,

But it's not absent either.

This is from the Samyutta Gita.

This I heard,

On one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling with the Sakyans.

And just a footnote here,

The Sakyans is a clan and the Buddha was a Sakyan.

So on one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling with his clansmen.

I didn't understand that.

I mean,

I couldn't hear that.

The Buddha was a what?

Sakyan.

Sakya,

It was the name of a clan.

So not the Hatfields,

Not the McCoys,

But the Sakyans.

I don't know if they were armed.

Yes,

They were.

Actually,

They were warriors.

It was a warrior caste,

So they better believe they were armed.

So the Buddha was born into a caste of warriors.

Some other time.

On one occasion the Blessed One was dwelling among the Sakyans where there was a town of the Sakyans named Nagaraka.

Then the Venerable Ananda,

His cousin,

Was also a Sakyan and he was the Buddha's personal attendant for the last half of his ministry.

So you know this is late in his ministry.

And then the Venerable Ananda approached the Blessed One,

Having approached,

He paid homage to the Blessed One,

Sat down to one side and said to him,

Venerable sir,

This is half of the holy life.

That is good friendship,

Good companionship,

Good conradeship.

And the Buddha responds,

Not so Ananda,

Not so Ananda.

This is the entire holy life,

Ananda.

That is good friendship,

Good companionship,

Good conradeship.

When a monk has a good friend,

A good companion,

A good comrade,

It is expected that he will develop.

So you hear that?

It is expected he will what?

Develop.

That his practice will mature,

He will mature spiritually.

And you will find references to this throughout the text so I obviously believed it was important.

Still.

That strikes me as such a strange thing for him to say given his own path,

Like his awakening being when he was not practicing with anyone else.

Yeah,

But right up almost to the end,

I mean even when he had given up on teachers,

You know,

There were his five meditation buddies.

So when he went off to practice by himself,

Quote unquote,

He ended up with this group of half a dozen of them that practiced together.

Neither of them were the teacher.

And you know,

There is this scene that really touches me in,

I know it was a kasambhi,

But there was this bhruha going in on one of the sanghas and they were fighting and squabbling and doing all this stuff.

And so they are getting a bad reputation around town because these monks are always fighting.

And the Buddha came in to try to untangle this.

And so there is this text where he is talking with them and he says basically,

You know,

Please stop fighting.

And they say,

Well,

Don't worry yourself about this.

We will take care of it.

And he says,

No,

You have got to hear me.

And he says,

No,

No,

We will take care of it.

And then he stands up and for a teacher to speak standing up is very unusual.

And so,

You know,

He stands up and he scolds them all and then he walks out of there and he spends the next six months living alone in the jungle with a family of elephants.

Yeah,

You know,

So you don't know about this stuff,

But you just kind of feel that.

So the need for,

And when that's not working,

He has got to find it someplace.

He goes with the elephants.

Or grieving or looking someplace where he can,

You know,

Have some kind of connection.

Very social.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it's an interesting question.

This is a little bit of stuff from Rick Hansen again,

But he says,

Why isn't there more in the suttas about this?

And he says,

Well,

You know,

The Buddha was a guy.

You know,

If the Buddha was a woman,

Maybe there would have been more of this in there.

Right?

I love this little piece of research.

It's a little bit of a diversion,

But there were these people that were doing research with neonates.

So a neonate,

You know,

When a child is born,

Typically they lose weight and then the weight comes back on.

So a neonate is the period from when they're born to when they're back up to the birth weight,

You know,

A couple days to maybe a week or something like that.

So these were brand new infants.

They were not conditioned by anything.

And they put them in these baby seats that were like car seats that needed full support.

They had everything.

And they put these TV screens in front of them.

And on the screens they had,

You know,

These bright balls moving by and all this,

You know,

Attractive stuff to look at.

And so,

You know,

Babies would look at that and like that,

And then they would turn it off.

And what they had done was they took a string and they tied it to the baby's wrist.

And the other string went to the on switch.

So if this attractive thing that the infants,

You know,

Found wonderful to look at,

I'm just thinking of our grandson that was three months old.

And his favorite thing the whole world are fans,

You know,

Ceiling fans who just stared them for hours.

So they're looking up at all this interesting stuff that goes off and they start thrashing around.

And pretty soon,

You know,

Without knowing what they're doing,

They do it and so it turns back on.

So it's there again.

And then it goes off and they thrash on it.

And pretty soon they learn that if it goes off,

They just move the hand,

You know.

So that's the setup for the experiment.

And then what the real experiment was after that was after they've learned to turn the TV on is then it stops turning the TV on.

So they thrash around and nothing happens.

And so they're interested in observing to see what the babies did next.

And what happened was all the little boys got really kind of focused and sort of moving and sort of going like this,

You know.

And all the little girls started to cry.

And be careful with this because,

You know,

Sissies and all that stuff in the culture,

But the cries are a signal,

You know,

To draw help.

And so if a baby is in trouble,

Is it more intelligent to work it out himself or to call for help?

So again,

These are neonates.

This is not cultural conditioning.

There's something that's,

You know,

That gets wired in.

So perhaps if the Buddha was a woman,

They would have been more about it.

But I suspect that what's more likely the case,

And maybe I just want to give the Buddha credit,

Is that the problem is that all this stuff was passed down through patriarchal cultures.

You know,

In the text a lot of it wasn't finalized.

Some of it not written down for a couple hundred years and not finalized until as long as 500 years after the Buddha.

And so as this stuff is being,

You know,

Passed along and rewritten and put together,

The stuff that didn't seem so important would tend to drop out.

And so if it's going through this misogynistic patriarchal culture,

That drops out.

So I just share all this to say that there may be a little bit of a correction that's needed for what happened to this stuff historically.

And that is maybe to pay attention to this connection to Vedana as well.

Q.

And do you think it's possible that it functions at a physiological level very much now?

And that builds a whole case for comfort animals.

You know,

That it's not just an abstract cheating thing.

It's a real thing.

A.

Yeah.

Good point.

I'm excited to hear that.

Pardon?

If I can bring my cat.

Bring your cat.

Do you have any way we could find that study?

That sounds really interesting.

Like keywords or something?

It's been a while.

The guy starts name with an L.

Settle,

Testing.

Cognitive development studies on antibiotics.

Yeah,

I would start with that.

I ran across this like 30 years ago.

The researcher's name starts with an L.

The last name.

The rest of it is gone.

Not in their best interest.

This little week old baby.

Yeah.

Well,

I think it was,

Well.

So what we want to look at is how to be more aware of vedna.

A couple things.

I'm just looking at my notes to see what I left out.

So vedna is just a signal.

And it's just a signal and it can trigger an urge or draw or something like that.

But it's a signal for a safety need,

A satisfaction need,

A connection need.

And we tend to notice,

So once the signal has triggered the drive to do something about it,

We don't need the signal anymore.

So the tendency is to actually look at the food,

To look at the saber-toothed tiger or whatever is the threat,

Rather than pay attention to the signal itself.

I think it's part of the reason why it's really difficult to see.

Because it serves a function and once it's done,

It best just go away.

If we sat there and say,

Oh,

There's a saber-toothed tiger,

I feel so terrible seeing it.

Oh,

This is,

You know,

I was having this lovely day.

Those genes will be taken out of the gene pool really quickly.

Look at that,

That fruit just makes me feel so sweet and so good.

The one who's going to survive in the gene pool is the one who goes up and picks it up and walks off with it.

So we tend not to see the vedna itself because it's served its function and it's gone and it disappears.

So another one of my teachers by the name of Tony Bernard developed this little technique.

He calls it a mental app.

He lives in Davis.

He's been,

He's a bit of a scholar on this stuff.

He also,

He developed this actually when he was,

The last three or four years he spent a time,

A lot of time working in Folsom Prison teaching meditation to the guys there.

And so these were some of the tools he was trying to figure out,

You know,

To sort of really get concrete and clear and stuff about this.

And so he calls his,

He calls this a mental app.

And this is how it works.

So you go into the doctor's office and you say,

You know,

I've been having,

I've got this pain in my wrist.

And what's the first question they ask you these days?

They say on a scale from one to ten,

You know,

Where one is no pain at all and ten is you feel like it's on fire.

Where does it fall?

And so you sit and you reflect a few minutes and say,

Well,

You know,

In the morning it's a two,

In the late afternoon it may be a six,

And right now maybe it's a three and a half.

And I think,

You know,

That's easy enough to do,

Right?

What is it that we're actually measuring with that?

No,

I think it's vedna.

It's vedna.

And the scale is completely artificial.

It's an ordinal scale,

You know,

It grades in intensity,

But there's not much more behind it than that.

So we could create a scale of pleasant vedna or painful vedna.

And you can also do the thing with pleasant,

You know,

So you have a scale where zero is indifferent and one is bliss,

You know,

Where does a chocolate chip cookie,

You know,

Fall on that scale?

Petting a kitten,

You know,

Where does that fall on the scale?

So we can rate all these things.

So the pain scale goes from pain-free to painful to pleasure,

The pleasantness goes from nothing to total bliss.

And this was,

I learned this from Tony before I really got into stuff about these three separate kinds of vedna,

So he put them all together.

And I think just for demonstration purposes,

And actually for practical purposes you can do this.

So the way you create this mental app is it's a mental app that you install in your brain rather than on your phone.

And the first thing you do is you imagine a scale,

And that you put pleasant and painful and neutral,

Someone there.

Tony loves cars,

So his scale looks like the speedometer on a car,

Where he goes from zero,

Which is painful,

To five,

Which is neutral,

And ten,

Which is pleasant.

So you can do any type of scale,

You can put any kind of numbering system on it.

When I first did this,

What I first imagined was just a flat linear scale with neutral in the middle,

And pleasant over here is a plus ten,

And painful over here is a minus ten.

So minus ten is the far end of the scale,

Is something that is the most painful thing you can possibly experience and if it goes over that,

You will pass out.

And the pleasant scale goes all the way up to the most pleasant thing you could experience before you bliss out.

I was doing this within a study group,

And there was another guy there who happens to be a neuroscientist,

And his first thing actually looked like an equalizer in a stereo system with these three scales,

You know,

That have pleasant,

Painful,

And neutral.

So that's the first thing you do,

Is you create this.

So,

Has everybody created a scale in their mind?

The guy with the equalizer,

Did his,

You might not know,

But did his neutral,

Did it have degrees,

Or was it just neutral?

No,

They all had,

I don't know what it was,

But he described it,

His hand gesture,

He said there were these three scales that were like this.

So,

Everybody have a scale?

Neutral.

Yes.

Very neutral.

Well,

You know,

So what happened,

Well,

I'll tell you about it later,

We'll do some experiments with this,

Then we'll talk about it.

So,

Everybody has one.

So,

The next step is we need to calibrate this,

Which is a little bit just like learning to use it.

So,

I invite you to just close your eyes for a moment,

And bring up an image,

Or your sense of your vedna meter,

We're going to call it,

And just see how it registers various things,

Like chocolate ice cream.

Just see where your scale goes.

Child on a swing set.

A glass of milk.

A hug.

In-laws.

Don't try to set the meter,

Just sit back and watch it,

And see how it responds.

Your father.

Dog poop.

A sun on your face.

Donald Trump.

Your first grade teacher.

Stubbing your toe.

Okay.

Are your meters working?

So,

Once you have a sense of that,

Then you can just start applying it to momentary situations.

Like,

How does this moment right now,

How does it register on your meter?

I'm not going to ask you to reveal it,

So just be honest with yourself.

Okay,

So what I'd like you to do is just to turn to somebody next to you,

And I want you to spend just a few minutes talking about your experience with this,

And what you noticed.

I'd like to say one thing.

Somehow something about judgment came in,

What came through when you asked to do that.

I'm thinking this is sort of solitary effort in no way.

It just seemed like we're gauging,

And we're bringing judgment in,

Because we're evaluating it,

Aren't we?

We're seeing painful,

Pleasant,

Neutral.

The judgment is extra.

And if there was something in my voice or something like that that implied that we need to judge this and evaluate it,

I apologize.

I just wondered,

Because it's also what is good and right and just,

And what is.

.

.

So spend some time talking with each other,

And you can talk about that there.

I want to make sure people have time to share a little bit of their experience,

And then we'll collect this back together.

Thank you.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

Take another minute,

And then we'll come back back in a large group.

What was.

.

.

Okay.

Okay.

Okay.

We're done already.

Four things.

We're connected.

But I'm not.

Comments?

Observations?

Questions?

Yeah.

One of the interesting things that came up for me was the father and the scale that longing came into that.

Longing was a whole,

Took it to a whole different kind of thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it's all subjective.

Yes.

It is.

This is all internal.

There's nothing you can measure on the outside.

I previously tried to work with this before,

And it felt quite challenging because on the mental app an image would come up of whatever was a dog or a father.

Right.

But then I was looking for a feeling,

Like something,

Not an emotion,

But something tangible in addition to,

So that mental app would raise it perfectly.

But then I thought kind of with that image there'd be something else,

Like a tangible feeling.

And then at the moment,

But when maybe,

Say for example it was a work,

Molly,

And you had an argument with them,

The feeling in that moment is very unpleasant and very strong.

Afterwards my mind would bring up an image of the person,

And it's just an image,

But that feeling is not there.

But I know it's unpleasant,

But the feeling is kind of gone.

Yeah.

So the way this works and the way it works in meditation is that when you,

If you try to think it through and create images and work all that stuff out,

It's gotten way too complicated.

The Vedana is actually pretty,

Pretty,

Pretty simple.

And we are very drawn to concepts and ideas and all that stuff,

So it's quite natural to be drawn that place,

And that's one of the reasons it's hard to see it.

And what I found with this is that somehow from that scale something would register.

And I didn't know what it was,

But it was there.

Did that happen for you or did it just?

Sorry,

Jacob.

Did that happen for you as an image came up or as I said the word or something,

Did something happen on the scale?

Yeah,

Something could be quite extreme,

Like difficult to prove it's a zero.

Right.

But there's no feeling there.

I know it's a zero,

But there's no tangible like.

Yes,

Right.

So feeling as in emotion,

This is a feeling tone,

And if your needle goes to zero,

That's the Vedana.

And the reason it's so hard to see is that it's so faint compared to emotions and thoughts and everything else on it.

But if you could just notice the registering of it,

Then you've got it,

Then you've got it.

At any stage did you actually get to experience that?

You just did.

Vedana has very little charge to it.

So if you're looking for a charge,

That's actually Kanha that comes next.

But the Vedana itself is just a signal.

It's just a signal.

It's a wonderful tool.

The scale is a wonderful tool.

Isn't that,

Yeah,

When I first,

It just seems so simple,

I just thought of it simplistic.

And I was just amazed for me what happened.

I don't know how you understand it.

You don't understand it?

I mean,

Like the dog poo example,

When you say dog poo,

Yeah,

I registered one.

So are you saying that the Vedana,

As opposed to actually seeing the dog poo and reacting to it,

Is that what you're saying?

No,

No,

That because the Vedana is completely internal,

And so we can certainly have pleasant,

Painful feelings to images internally and just responds very quickly.

Yeah.

You guys can fight it out.

I'm really impressed with just how responsive it was and how low in the stack it was.

It was just like it just showed up on the scale before I could judge.

I thought that was really indicative of where it sits in the imagination chain.

Yeah,

Yeah,

Good,

Good.

Can everybody hear?

Yeah.

So once the Vedana is calibrated,

Then I guess in deep-river activities,

We can sort of like be more aware because we're kind of calibrating,

And we have the calibrated app,

So you can say,

Oh,

This is like five or three or whatever it is,

And thereby we have an opportunity to sixar.

Right.

And of course the trick is if you can sixar the Vedana,

Which for most people is hard because it's so faint,

You know,

As it moves up and down stream,

Depending on how you think of it,

But the charge comes up,

But once the charge comes up,

It's got a whole lot of momentum,

And so it becomes harder,

But if you can catch it right then and relax it at that point,

Then the rest doesn't come along.

Why would you want to do that?

It seems to me that it's a pre-valuable tool,

And some of it,

You know,

If you're on the very plus side,

Why would you not want to,

As you say,

Savor that?

Right.

So I hate to say it this way,

But I'm going to put you off till tomorrow,

Because you notice we have not gotten back to the first question,

Which is alleviated suffering.

And so once we have these tools and stuff put together,

I think we can actually,

It's a great question you're asking,

And I just want to wait till we've got it developed,

And we will deal with it,

Because that's exactly where I want to go.

You're just precocious.

I'm not sure I totally get it.

I was wondering,

It might be illustrative for me at least,

If you could talk through the example of the,

What they thought was the bird chirping in the basement that turned out to be an alarm.

Because they didn't know that it can't change when you change your interpretation of what's causing it,

Right?

They didn't know the sound.

It obviously did.

Well,

Their reaction changed,

But how can they change?

So like,

Did you think of that post-Sankara in the DO?

Okay,

So we're getting into advanced dependent origination,

But it's a great point.

So dependent origination is depicted as this,

But there's all kinds of backflows.

So thought constructs are very high up there,

But you can think of all kinds of things.

Take your favorite political hero or political demon and just think about it,

And then watch what happens to the mind.

A lot of positive or negative Vedana will come up there in response to a thought.

Okay.

So even so,

It just seems like a raw sensation,

Like we may have a contextual wrapper or whatever,

Context rather,

That's going to affect the Vedana.

Yes,

Yeah.

Like the Vedana is the contextual wrapper in some way.

There's the sensation,

And the Vedana is like sitting on top of it between the sensation and the interpretation.

Yeah,

There's a lot of contextual wrappers,

And I do agree,

I think Vedana is one of the really important ones.

And part of it is because it slips below the radar.

You know,

It's like a gorilla or something that sneaks and blows up the building and runs out before anybody sees it.

Well,

I know one of things we talked about was how some of the things you said,

I mean,

Depending upon the context,

The Vedana measurement would change.

I mean,

That's the glass of milk.

Yes.

I mean,

If I was starving,

I mean,

It would be a whole different rate than right now than I'm not.

Right,

Right,

Right.

So who you are and what's going on,

There's a lot of stuff that feeds into it.

So is this like a gut feeling?

Is Vedana like a gut feeling that's,

It has no,

It's just.

.

.

Vedana,

I would say,

Is a signal.

It's a signal that says this information is important.

And it has different ways of attracting your attention,

You know,

Pain,

Sweetness,

Heartfeltness,

Loneliness.

They're different,

But it's just a signal.

And then in reality,

In life,

What happens is there's a signal and then it goes very rapidly,

You know,

In half a second.

You know,

You're into emotions and thoughts and ideas and all this other sorts of stuff,

So it sort of gets drowned out.

But if you can learn to spot it,

It's difficult to see,

But if you can see it,

It's very easy to release.

Sometimes.

So the,

I mean,

I think you left it to us on how to design the app.

Yes.

The example you gave was minus ten to plus ten.

Right.

And what Buddha is saying in the Satipa Tansuta,

It more seems like minus one to plus one because there are only,

So is there a particular advantage to scale from a negative one to negative ten instead of just negative one?

I think so,

But that's my own subjective experience.

And for me,

A scale from one to a hundred would be way too complex.

But to me,

My experience of it is that it does vary in strength.

Doing it as a binary loses some subtlety.

But I would also say that all this is metaphorical.

You know,

It's completely metaphorical,

And so use whatever images,

Whatever scales,

Whatever number scale,

Whatever works for you is perfectly fine,

And it's going to be different for different people.

Like I say,

Tony's,

You know,

Used a speedometer on a car with his image,

Well,

I wouldn't do that.

But that's just me.

So use whatever works.

It's just a friendly way of just,

Okay,

Okay.

So a couple things that happened to me with this when I started using this was I discovered some things that are almost embarrassing to admit.

One is that I discovered that I'm basically a happy person.

I didn't know that.

I mean,

I was chronically depressed for the first 40 years of my life.

The older males in my life,

My older brother and my father,

You know,

If I looked happy,

I would get this kind of sideways look like,

What are you,

Some kind of idiot?

You know?

And so when somebody asks me how I'm feeling,

If I'm feeling pretty good,

I'll say,

Well,

I'm doing okay.

If they feel kind of under-filled,

I'll say,

Well,

It's been better.

You know,

It always goes towards the negative.

So my thoughts and response to that,

But when I actually look at the Vigna meter,

How I'm doing in any given moment,

It was usually up like,

Not way up there,

But on a scale of ten,

It was like three or four or five consistently,

And I was like,

What's it doing over there?

You know,

It's like you.

It responds,

And what's this all about?

But there it was,

You know,

And that was interesting news.

Another thing that I discovered with it,

I think I mentioned this the other night,

Is that how much I enjoy thinking.

Right?

I mean,

Thoughts get really bad press in Buddhist circles,

Right?

But if you think about it,

You know,

We come from scavengers,

And using the mind to map things out is like how we survive,

And so it makes all the sense in the world that those creatures who enjoyed thinking,

And were relying on intelligence,

Were going to be more likely to survive.

And so it just got wired into us.

So the content of the thoughts can be all kinds of things.

And so what I began to notice is no matter,

You know,

If it's a terrible problem,

And I could look at the content of the problem,

Have all kinds of different feelings about it,

But if I could just see how I felt about the thinking,

It was always up on the positive side.

And I think we're wired that way,

You know,

Because you look at infants of intelligent species,

They all play,

Right?

And they're pretending,

They're using their mind,

It's like they're,

It's helping this system,

This neocortex,

You know,

Develop and mature.

And so it's a little bit wired into us,

And our conditioning over lifetime can change all kinds of things,

But I think that's where we start.

And so in meditation,

You know,

If you have particularly insistent negative thoughts,

And they really get a lot of bad press,

Right?

But what I've found is that,

Okay,

There's this negative scenario,

And if I just let go of the content of it,

But just pay attention to the process itself,

It actually feels kind of positive and in a sense almost wholesome.

And I could just let that wholesome feeling sink in.

Does that make sense?

You can say it's just weird,

That's okay.

What else?

Oh,

Another interesting thing I found with this,

And you can try this out yourself,

If there's something that registers negative on your scale,

And if you just actually pay attention to it and just look at it,

You know,

Without judgment,

Just,

Oh,

There's that negative,

I could see the scale gradually move up towards the positive side.

There's something about awareness that is inherently pleasant,

Even if it's looking at something negative.

So I'll just offer that as something you can look at and try and.

.

.

You mean like if you are at any point of time on the negative side and you start paying attention to it,

It starts moving up?

That's right.

So I'll be sitting there and say,

Okay,

You know,

Where's my vedna scale right now?

And it says minus three.

And so I just notice the minus three,

And as I look at the minus three,

You know,

It's a little bit objective,

It just ended looking at it,

And it just sort of slowly.

.

.

And I've noticed as it moves up,

There's almost this involuntary smile that comes up,

You know,

I'm looking at this negative vedna and actually looking at it begins to feel slightly.

.

.

I may be just weird,

I don't know,

But I'll just offer these as things for you to try out.

Something comes to mind which is when people use like a pendulum to.

.

.

Or a food to tell them that food is actually good for them or bad for them,

Because consciously they're not aware of it,

It's not a little bad,

But something like a pendulum would swing,

Saying this is beneficial or not.

Could you use it like that?

Would you go into that and think,

Oh.

.

.

I would say that the mind and the universe are much more interesting than we really understand.

And,

You know,

If you're curious about it,

I'm a great one for empirical trials,

Try it out and see,

I have no idea.

I mean,

There's a little bit I can see of reflective skepticism that comes up inside me,

But I really don't know.

I don't know.

So.

.

.

I've gone on a long time,

Let me give you one more little piece of stuff.

Oh,

So this is another one.

So there's nothing on this about.

.

.

I can't help it.

There's nothing on this about the connection.

And so,

When I see how much that affects my thinking,

You know,

I started putting another scale in there and it just got way too complicated to be useful.

But what appeared spontaneously in my mind,

There was a little checkbox that just appeared.

I didn't do it.

It just showed up there.

And if the Vedana had anything to do with the relationship,

It was checked.

And I found for me,

Just recognizing whether it's plus or minus,

It had to do with the relationship,

Was.

.

.

Informative and enlightening in the common sense of it.

We won't go through this whole thing,

But I'll just tell you,

Another kind of meter that's really helpful is a tanha meter,

Is a desire meter.

Because the next,

The Vedana triggers desire.

And you can have a very strong Vedana,

Very,

Say,

Very pleasant.

And so,

I like ice cream,

You know,

So chocolate ice cream,

You know,

It's very positive.

And then there's my desire for ice cream.

And sometimes,

You know,

The chocolate ice cream is consistently positive Vedana.

Sometimes there's a very strong desire for it.

Sometimes it's pretty neutral.

I can take it or leave it.

Somebody insults you.

May have a strong negative Vedana on it.

And you might be riled up,

There may be a whole big charge that comes up around it,

Or you may feel bad for them,

Or it may not affect you at all.

So you don't want to confuse the Vedana with the strength of the charge around it.

So you can use the same process to create a tanha meter that just measures the strength of the desire or version.

And just see what that is.

I find for me and for most people who are meditating regularly,

The tanha shows up pretty easily.

But I'll just offer that as something you can play around with.

Would that be what Miriam was saying about judgment?

Yeah,

I'm not sure.

It could be,

Because there's a whole conceptual piece,

Because the judgment involves comparing,

So you're up into the pretty,

Up into bhava,

Into thoughts and ideas and stuff like that.

And then a response to those,

A Vedana response to those.

Okay.

I would be happy to bring my blood pressure thing and just leave it here.

People found that idea sort of enticing to see whether or not your blood pressure's up,

Even though you're in a very peaceful place.

So,

Anything else before we close?

So,

This is one of my favorite pieces of all time.

From the Third Chinese Zen Patriarch.

The tradition was the Zen patriarchs would,

Before they died,

Would write out all their knowledge,

Their wisdom,

What they understood.

And many of these were these big tomes.

The Third Chinese patriarch wrote something that translates into English as about four or five hundred words.

And it is just really,

Really potent.

The great way is not difficult for those who have no preferences.

When love and hate are both absent,

Everything becomes clear and undisguised.

Make the smallest distinction and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart.

If you wish to see the truth,

Hold no opinion for or against.

The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the dis-ease of the mind.

The dis-ease of the mind.

Do not search for truth,

Only cease to hold opinions.

Do not search for truth,

Just cease to hold opinions.

When the mind exists undisturbed in the way,

Nothing in the world can offend.

And when a thing can no longer offend,

It ceases to exist in the old way.

When no discriminating thoughts arise,

The mind is not able to When the mind exists undisturbed in the way,

Nothing in the world can offend.

And when a thing can no longer offend,

It ceases to exist in the old way.

When no discriminating thoughts arise,

The old mind ceases to exist.

Just to be clear,

I'm not assigning you to do work with a Vedameter.

I really offer it as a tool and if it feels like it's useful for you,

Please try it out.

As I've said many times,

I've just found it really,

Really helpful.

Do with it as you like.

And to close,

Let's just take a moment to connect into that modi-citta,

That deep,

Very human place that just wants well-being for others.

Including those who we may in other situations dislike,

You know,

If they would just feel better,

It would make my life easier.

But there's also this deep thing of really wanting the best for others.

And just spread that out around the room here to your fellow yogis and our Sangha.

May you have peace.

May you have wisdom.

May you have well-being.

May you have ease.

May you have delight.

And then sending it out beyond these walls,

Out through this retreat center,

Out across this town,

State,

The world.

May all beings,

Great and small,

The humans and the crickets and the little mice and the birds,

The whales and the seals and the orca,

May all beings everywhere live life with vitality and peace,

With ease and well-being.

May all beings know contentment.

May all beings be free.

May it be so.

Blessed be.

It was really lovely seeing you all today individually.

And thank you for your practice.

Thank you for your practice.

And if you've got good energy,

Take care of yourself.

Go for a walk,

Go for tea or continue sitting.

And as you get tired,

Sweet dreams.

Namaste.

Reviews

Wow! Loved it! So much to learn and process. Eternally grateful for your teaching.