What Happens To Your Mind When You Meditate? | 1/14/2021 AUA

Our first AUA Live, in response to a simple but profound question asked by our friend and a new student of our Saturday morning exercise/meditation practice. What Happens to your Mind when you Meditate?

Please note: This was originally a video

Transcript

Good morning,

Good afternoon,

Good evening,

Thank you for coming to our livecast.

We have a little bit of,

I wouldn't call it difficulty,

But challenge.

We got so good in livecasting and live streaming on Facebook,

But for some reason this morning we couldn't do it.

So we're going back to live streaming on YouTube and then also doing recording.

But in any case,

Good morning Josh,

Good seeing you again.

I'm not supposed to see you for another two weeks,

But it's kind of a nice surprise.

Yes it is.

And what brings us here today?

Well when you and I just started,

We thought that it would be nice to name this series AUA,

Ask Us Anything,

But in reality we've just been asking each other.

But today we actually have a live question,

A live question.

So it's a friend,

A friend of yours and a new friend of mine,

A student of the Saturday practice asked a very simple question.

The question is,

What happens to your mind when you meditate?

And I thought,

Well hey,

That's really a question for AUA.

And so I thought you and I can do this.

And in the past we really haven't live streamed our discussion.

So today we're actually live streaming on YouTube.

So what do you think?

You have written some notes on this?

I did.

I'll just kind of paraphrase some of these and maybe they'll be in the post later.

But you know,

A lot of times Denny,

Or has in the past,

Introduced us as the dumb and dumber of Bodhidharma,

You know,

Referencing the movie.

And usually I kind of will say,

You know,

That self-deprecating humor can only get you so far,

Right?

It can only take the ego down so far.

But in this case,

Trying to answer such a vast,

Huge question as,

You know,

The inner workings of the mind and what happens to it in meditation,

I feel that's a kind of an apt analogy,

Dumb and dumber here.

But we're going to give it a shot anyway.

Why not?

But at least we're not beavers and butthead.

Well,

I mean,

We could try that too,

But it's pretty old real quick.

But yeah.

So yeah,

There's this kind of a disclaimer here that,

You know,

We encourage everybody that's viewing or listening to this that these are just points of reference,

You know,

This is to do your own research and more importantly,

To investigate this for yourself in your own meditation practice,

What you hear today.

And,

You know,

And a lot of people that are interested in this have a Western philosophical background,

Which I don't have,

You know,

My interest is actually more in the fringe topics,

Which we're not going to get into here today.

You can check my website if you're interested in that type of stuff,

You know,

Other than to say that,

You know,

Stuff like that can give you,

You know,

Maybe a broader perspective,

New perspectives,

Deeper comprehension,

But at the risk of,

You know,

Getting lost in the weeds and unable to relate any of those insights to alleviate what's the most pressing issue here is alleviating stress and suffering,

Right?

So.

So,

You and I talked briefly,

I wanted this to be a live show.

So as opposed to our other discussion,

We go back and forth on a lot of discussions on beforehand.

This time I purposely didn't say very much except to read what you have written.

I think this is a really,

I said it already,

I think this is a very important question.

And what I find it in,

The reason I find it so important,

So profound and why we should have this discussion as opposed to me just answering simply is that there's so much misunderstanding of what a mind is.

Yes,

And I think that's where the definition comes in.

So,

And then also we're going to maybe define some of these similar terms too,

Right?

So the ones I have down is,

Well,

We're obviously going to try to put our definition on mind,

But we also have things like brain,

Attention,

Mindfulness,

Awareness,

Consciousness,

Thought and thinking,

And then the contents of mind,

But also with the thought and thinking.

I like this term called thoughting,

Where it's not necessarily you have control over what thoughts,

They just kind of seem to appear without any conscious choice.

So this term thoughting,

If I use that,

That's kind of what I mean on that,

But yeah.

If it's okay,

Josh,

I thought maybe I provide some background,

Some background information kind of so we can explore the parameters.

And I'll do it two ways,

One way is to compare how to,

I'll use the word oriental versus the occidental or the Asian versus the Westerners,

How they use the word mind,

Okay?

Just compare that,

Because it's very interesting how it's different.

And then the other one is really talk about mind in terms of our existence,

Like in the material,

In the energy and so forth,

Which I think is also very interesting.

So the word mind doesn't actually exist in the Chinese language,

What exists is the word heart.

So when you talk about heart sutra,

That's basically the mind,

Except that in the case of the Chinese literature or the Japanese literature for that matter,

Because at least initially they translate everything into Kanji.

The word mind in that case means heart,

It's literally the same word that we use as heart.

And so obviously it doesn't mean the heart like the organ,

Okay?

So it means something else.

It is the same word that we also use to describe your mental state,

Your mental attitude.

So even though it's the same word that we use as the heart,

It actually means mental,

Okay?

Now of course,

You don't translate that directly into English.

When you say heart,

You mean exactly what that means.

So that's why when you say heart sutra,

You kind of have to,

That's at least two or three degrees of separations from what we think heart sutra is,

Which is really about our mind.

But in the Western literature,

The mind is closely associated with the brain,

Right?

Whereas the word heart is associated with the state,

The mental state,

Whether you're happy,

You're sad and so forth.

And so that's more the emotional aspect of the brain.

Whereas the mind in the Western culture,

It has to do with more the analytical part of the brain.

So that's one way to kind of say,

What is mind?

Because yesterday we had a historical event,

Which has to do with impeachment.

But the last president who was impeached had a famous saying that it depends on the definition of is.

You're old enough to remember that,

Right?

If you're old enough to remember that.

And so here,

The answer to the question,

The question is what happens to the mind when you meditate?

It has to do with your definition of the mind.

So this is a good time to talk about Buddhism.

Two weeks from now,

We're going to be talking about qigong and dao yin and what is qigong and how is it different from.

.

.

So it's actually interesting to really talk about the three different ways that we would describe our existence.

So one way is that we exist purely on a physical plane,

Material plane.

There's nothing else.

You know,

This is all about our body.

Now,

Interestingly,

The way that the Western science evolved,

It was actually all about the body because the most famous scientist is Galileo.

And Galileo was the one that by looking through his microscope,

He was looking at Jupiter and he was coordinating Jupiter and the moon versus the tide.

And he deduced from that that it wasn't that the sun was evolving around the earth,

It was the earth that was revolving around the sun.

And that there was a problem because the Bible was very specific in how the earth was created and then God potted water to create air and then from that,

The sun and the moon were created.

It's very specific,

Right?

So for him to say that,

That's really against the church.

It was heretical at that time.

Now it's completely different.

Absolutely.

So then as a result of that,

He was basically put on house arrest until he died.

And so every other scientist that came along,

They have to be very careful.

They have to be very careful.

I have a PhD from Berkeley.

One has to ask,

Well,

What is it about philosophy that you know,

Because your degree is in philosophy,

Right?

I have a doctor of philosophy,

Whereas I'm really engineered.

So what does that came about?

Well,

It came about because back in the days when you,

If you were a scientist,

It's best that you refer that as your philosophy.

Because you couldn't be talking about pursuing the truth.

The truth belongs to God.

And so what's interesting from that is that then all of the,

It's very,

Very important to understand that because then all the science that derived from that is limited to the body.

Has to.

So that's why the Western medicine is about curing sickness,

Reducing symptoms on your body.

It doesn't talk about anything else.

And we even invented a word,

We call that material dialectics,

Right?

Yup.

Okay.

So,

So let me stop there and just say,

Okay,

What if you limited yourself to just the body?

So then the word mind in this case means your brain.

Yes.

And even if you would extend that,

Your mind could be just the brain and all the associate neuro system.

Right?

So if you,

If you study physiology and you would say,

Well,

You know,

Actually the brain is just one part of our neuro system.

It actually extends down to our spines,

To everything else.

But the question is what happens to your mind when you meditate?

And if you are limiting yourself to your,

So that your existence is purely physical,

Purely material.

Okay.

So,

So I want to answer that question.

What happens to your brain?

In this case,

I'm going to substitute brain,

Mind with brain.

What happens to your brain and your neuro system when you meditate?

That's if we're limiting all of existence to just physical material,

Right?

Yes.

And by the way,

Last time we talked about.

Which by the way,

I think it's pretty absurd by the way,

But it has a huge.

But on the other hand,

On the other hand,

This is,

This is,

This is 98%,

This is essentially a hundred percent of the problem we have to deal with today.

I mean,

This is like,

We talk about this,

It's like someone came into the ER,

He's bleeding.

You're not going to worry about,

You know,

How his heartbeat is irregular.

That that we can solve that later.

Let's stop the bleeding.

Right?

Right.

And last time in the last episode of AUA,

We talk about make mindfulness.

And so we,

We didn't really talk about make mindfulness as much as we talk about mindfulness.

But if this were extension of that talk,

Then I would argue that make mindfulness is all about your body.

It's really all about your physical health.

Oh yeah.

The body is,

I mean,

The utmost important thing,

You know,

If you take Buddhist reference,

You know,

The whole,

The whole universe is within this fathom,

Long body,

Right.

And mindfulness of the body,

You can,

That's all you really need,

Right,

As well.

So yes,

So this is an important way,

In sense,

A lot of the people today are kind of a materialistic culture and you know,

Science downplays a lot of things that they can't study physically.

So this is definitely needs to be addressed and I'm going to let Denny do that here in a second.

But the thing is that this has been addressed a lot,

You know,

Already.

But I'm still interested in hearing Denny's take on it as well.

Yeah.

So in that case,

It's not just meditation.

It's everything that we do,

Meditation,

Yoga,

Exercise,

Tai chi,

Even chanting and all that.

One thing that they all have in common has to do with activating the parasympathetic nerve,

Right.

So let me back up a step and talk about,

In this case,

When we say mind,

It's just the physical part of mind,

Which has to do with the brain and the rest of the neural system.

So one of the most important neural system is called the sympathetic nerve.

And this is probably one of the earliest development in human evolution.

So we used to live up in the trees where it's nice and safe,

Eating only fruits.

And then one day some guy decided that,

Hey,

What's this thing?

It's got a thumb.

Well,

What can we do with it?

Well,

You can hold a stick.

Well,

What happens when I hold a stick?

Well,

Then actually you can defend yourself.

Well,

Then what do I do with that?

Well,

Then you have to walk down the tree.

So one thing led to another,

You know,

We started to descend from the tree and then all of a sudden we said,

Well,

Wait a minute.

There's a lot of danger down here.

And also,

By the way,

You know,

We have to invent a fire and we have to cook something.

And so we developed this nerve system called the sympathetic nerve,

Which once it's activated,

We're in this thing called the,

What is that called?

Fight or flight or freeze?

Fight or flight.

Or freeze and then I've heard fawn too now.

The one I heard that is called fight or flight.

So in other words,

When you see a tiger or even,

You know,

Just a wolf or something and you have to kind of make up their mind,

Says,

Well,

Do I run from it or do I run towards it?

Right?

Because if you run away from it every time,

You don't get to eat,

You know.

So this is not just a question of safety.

This is a question of survival.

And also,

You know,

If you go back to the cave and you don't bring something home,

I mean,

The historical wife is not all that different than modern day life wife.

You got to bring something home.

You know,

You got to bring home the bacon,

Right?

So our evolution of the body is such that the brain activates the rest of the nervous system and it tunes our body,

Okay,

So that we're ready for either fighting or flighting,

Right?

And so one of the things that happens is that our eyes get dilated.

So we increase our field of view.

Mouth get dry.

No more slivers.

Lung kind of expands because we need more oxygen.

Our entire digestive system is shut down.

We don't need anything anymore,

Right?

Our liver start to excrete fatty acid,

Trichrystalloid,

So that they can eventually get turned into glucose.

That's how we then turn into energy.

Our bladder shut down.

We don't need to urinate.

None of our sexual organs are active anymore,

You know.

And so,

And then the most important part is that our adrenaline gland start to dispense all kinds of hormones.

The most important one is cortisone,

Right?

And that cortisone is steroid,

So that pumps our heart.

Just keep pumping our heart.

And then the other one,

There's two variation of that,

But together they call it adrenaline,

Okay?

And that's how we get into this really fight or flight mode.

Well,

That's the thing though.

This is more of the what and the why.

We get that kind of,

But the exact minute details of how this happens.

How do these chemicals actually start this whole process?

And why aren't these chemicals doing certain other things?

So,

I mean,

You can get down to the very microscopic level and observe this process,

But how they all interrelate and how the catalyst and the impetus for it happens and then how it can vary slightly in different bodies and other bodies.

And sometimes some people will have not the same degree of response than others.

So all of this is like a huge mystery.

Exactly,

Exactly.

And I just don't think that profound level of it is not going to be answered,

At least for a very long time.

Except that I remember there was a very famous couple,

A husband and wife scientist who spent their entire life studying apes.

And they actually- Did they change at all,

Maybe?

Yeah,

Yeah,

Very famous,

Very famous.

So they actually spent their entire life in Africa.

They were living within 10 feet away from the apes.

So got used to each other that they were able to be that close to them.

And they actually did an experiment because they were curious about how certain ape become the alpha male.

Okay.

And then all of a sudden there's that social change again and then somebody else became the alpha male.

And so they did a study.

I remember watching this on National Geographic or something like that,

Where they actually- Of course they have to do something so that they can extract the blood,

But eventually they did extract the blood.

And so they do the analysis on the blood.

And what they find is not only that the social hierarchy has to do with adrenaline,

But not just adrenaline,

But the rising and fading away of the adrenaline.

So they come to the conclusion that the minimum requirement for an ape to be alpha male is that they have this special ability to demand.

So the adrenaline,

They have this adrenaline on demand.

The rise of the adrenaline is faster than anyone.

So they are able to do this fight or flight better than anyone.

But not only that,

But then as soon as they're done,

Their adrenaline can then diffuse,

Decrease rapidly.

So they decided that the adrenaline is something that you need for your body to do something fast and quick.

But if you keep that adrenaline in your body for any length of time,

It actually degrades your health.

So for example,

I talked about the fatty acid that is excreted from the liver.

Well,

Guess what?

That causes cholesterol.

And adrenaline,

If you eat too much salt,

It affects your inner organ,

Especially the liver.

And that's the saying,

That also excretes adrenaline and then it causes high blood pressure.

That's why whenever I take my dad to see the hospital,

It's funny,

His blood pressure is very overplayed depending on which doctor.

Some of them are very intimidating and his blood pressure goes up.

And then the doctor says,

Well,

He needs medicine.

I say,

He doesn't.

Look at the list.

Look,

When he's over here,

He's perfectly fine.

The white coat syndrome too,

They call it.

Yeah.

So when somebody just is in a white coat and it just gets more anxiety.

The problem with modern people is that we don't know how to get out of this fight or flight mode anymore.

I mean,

It used to be that in the caveman,

We would do that for 20 minutes at most.

And we either run back to the safety of a cave or we run back with dinner and then we relax.

But today we can't.

We're on 24-7 fight or flight now.

And so if you look at all the exercise,

Including meditation,

For example,

The lotus position,

Whether it's a full lotus or half lotus or just,

You know,

What they do is they put pressure on your adrenaline gland.

Now you notice that when you sit full lotus,

There is no name for that pose.

But when you sit half lotus,

Depending on whether the left is on top or the right is on top,

It has a different name.

Do you know that name of the pose?

I didn't know that.

What is that,

Denny?

I don't know how to translate,

But one has to do with diamond and then the other one has to do with something else.

Oh,

That's right.

It's kind of,

It's in Sanskrit,

Right?

It's yoga as well.

Yeah.

So,

Interestingly when you sit full lotus,

They don't bother to give it a name.

And when you just sit with the feet loosely on the ground,

They don't bother to give it a name.

But when you sit half lotus,

It depends on whether the left is on top,

The right is on top,

There's a name.

And the reason for that is that that's an asymmetrical sitting.

So it puts pressure on one side more than the other.

So the asymmetry actually has a different medicinal effect.

That's fascinating.

Yes.

Yeah.

So my point is that this is just a simple example of how meditation and yoga is really about activating your parasympathetic nerve,

Which reverses the flight or flight mode to what we call the rest and digest.

And it starts with the adrenaline gland.

And because our modern people have this problem now that when I see someone and I can tell because they have like these bags,

The little dark circles in the eye,

That's what we call that adrenaline fatigue.

Your body's full of adrenaline all day.

And so when we deactivate our adrenaline gland,

Then all the other things happen.

That's why one of the things that we do when we sit,

The pose,

The seven support point,

The last one is about putting the tongue on the roof.

Because when you sit,

When you activate the parasympathetic nerve,

One of the things that happen is that your saliva glands start to activate and you actually get a lot of slivers in the mouth.

Now the Taoists believe that that's actually very good for your digestive system.

And so when we put the tongue on top,

Then it just automatically flows into our stomach.

And so there's a lot that we do.

There's an awful lot that we do that are very common.

And it's all about stress.

It's all about reversing that process.

So going back to our original question is that what happens to our mind when we meditate?

And if you think of the mind as your nerve system,

Your brain and the rest of the nerve system,

That's what it does.

It kicks it into the parasympathetic,

The rest and digest mode.

Yes,

Very good.

When you first started off here and talking about kind of the Asian view,

Eastern view of this,

There's this term in the Avidama.

It's called Chitta.

And I think one of the definitions is heart mind.

So they put the heart and the mind together into one word called heart mind.

Because some people,

Right when you ask maybe Easterners,

Asians,

Where their mind is,

They'll point more to their chest.

And in the West,

People would point to their head where the mind is.

So you covered that.

And both are correct.

And both are correct.

Right,

Because there's actually neurons in our hearts too,

Right?

Our physical heart organs.

There's similar types of,

If I'm getting this right,

Similar types of neural pathways and neurons that are similar to our brain neurons that are actually in our heart too.

So if I'm getting that right.

So I want to make sure that,

Yeah,

So we're just like touching one,

The tip of the iceberg in terms of mind.

And this is even when we're limited only to a physical presence,

Right?

Because then,

So this is about the nerve system,

But what about your mental states,

Right?

Because we do a lot of meta.

Well,

How does the meta work?

Well,

The meta is now when you point it to your heart,

Which is your mental state.

You try to get away from the anchor by enhancing your compassion aspect of it.

But again,

This is all about the physical part.

Yeah,

If we just want to address it from a physical standpoint.

You can have feedback.

And the thing that happens when we meditate is we do become more and more sensitive to things,

Right?

More and more sensitive to feelings and emotions and thoughts.

We have more distinctions.

We can have,

So we can tell for ourselves eventually that when we put our mind and energy and attention on something negative,

Well then it kind of has a negative outcome.

Like there's a famous line in the suttas,

You know,

What we,

What one,

Let me get the,

Whatever one frequently thinks and ponders upon,

That will become the inclination of the mind.

Basically,

Meaning,

You know,

What you focus on,

You give energy.

So if we focus on having good will and positive heart qualities through meta,

Then we're going to experience that more,

You know,

Even in the moment.

And even if sometimes in meta practice,

Certain things will come up that are the exact opposite of what we're intending.

But the explanation I've heard for that is it's kind of like a purification process.

So those things come up to move out and to be released,

Right?

Yeah,

Yeah.

Well,

Another example of that is before the pandemic,

We used to work at the prison.

And so you find a lot of volunteers at the prison who are non-religious.

They're not Buddhist,

They're not Christians,

You know,

But yet they're very attached.

They like working as a volunteer.

That's a meditation too.

That when you,

At that momentary,

You put someone else's need in front of your need.

And that actually is a relief,

Right?

That actually is also,

Yeah.

Exactly.

So then the question is,

Well,

What's beyond material?

And so now I got to kind of,

Beyond material is energy.

Now all kinds of people talk about our existence being combined energy and physical.

Now I'm not talking about energy like when you rub your hands together to generate heat.

I'm not talking about that.

I'm talking about something a little beyond that.

And so I think from the scientist standpoint,

One of the things that,

Tell me if I've gone too far,

But we talk about scientists.

And so we talk about Galileo who discovered through his microscope that perhaps it was the sun revolving around,

It was the earth that revolved around the sun and not the other one.

So a scientist who came immediately after that is Newton,

Who basically want to come up with a set of math to describe what Galileo has done.

And he in fact had to reinvent,

He had to invent calculus to do that.

But in any case,

He's the one that,

Everybody knows him.

He's the one that,

Back in the days when there was another pandemic and he had to basically shelter in place.

So he was in his home sitting behind under the tree.

This is all folklore,

But anyway,

The part about pandemic is true.

So he sat under the tree and the apple fell on his head.

And so from that,

He deduced that there's gravity.

So gravity became a force.

It was a force not only between us and the earth,

But between all the planetary objects.

So from that,

He was able to kind of mathematically demonstrate how the planets can evolve around each other.

Another scientist that came along is Einstein.

And Einstein has his own way,

But the bottom line is that he is the one that says,

No,

No,

No,

Gravity is not a force.

Now,

Of course,

This is his conclusion,

But he actually wasn't,

His objective wasn't to prove or disprove what Newton did.

His objective has something else.

The objective was that all of the science that was before him had made an important assumption which is time is absolute.

So your time and my time has to be the same.

And Einstein says,

Well,

There's no reason for that.

That's just how we agreed on,

But there's no reason for that.

And so what he decided was that the only thing absolute in this universe is the speed of light.

Which I've heard,

I don't need to get an argument here,

But I've even seen some data before and I could be wrong on this,

Where that it changes minutely too,

That it's not the same exact thing all the time.

And then maybe you can explain this to me,

But nobody's ever been able to answer the question,

What is the speed of time?

So then,

Yeah,

But what's important is that special relativity.

One real quick point is that we don't hear about Newton's alchemical work,

But you could go online and find all this,

All his journal,

A lot of his journal stuff and work on alchemy.

But for some reason that hasn't really been publicized,

But I just thought I'd throw that out there.

But the important conclusion from that is that once you shift your assumption and instead of saying that time is absolute and you say that the speed of light is absolute,

Then time becomes relative.

That's the term relativity comes from,

Is that your time and my time could be different.

Right,

But what about the observation of light though?

If our time varies,

How can light stay constant then?

Because if there's difference in the time,

Wouldn't there also be difference in the observation of light?

So one has to understand how science works,

Which is that you're always correct at the moment that you say something and then you're always incorrect once you said it.

So you have to make the assumption that,

Okay,

So Einstein says that speed of light is absolute,

Let's just go with that for a while until somebody else came along and says that,

No,

That's not true.

For the same reason that up until then everybody says that time was absolute until that,

But the important part and this one I want to bring back to our existence.

The important conclusion from that is that time is relative.

In other words,

It might be that your time and my time,

You being in St.

Louis and me being in San Francisco are close enough that it's hard to distinguish,

But if you were on the moon or if you were on a different planet or if you were somewhere else,

Then your time is not the same as my time.

Or how fast you're moving through space as well,

Right?

So,

Then what Einstein says is that then gravity is nature's way of wanting to stay alive.

That's really weird because this is amazing.

It says that what if Josh is now in a part of the universe where one day of your life is two days of mine,

Which means that I'm going to die sooner.

Relatively speaking,

Right?

Yeah relative to you,

Right?

So then the gravity is such that I'm drawn to where you are.

That's gravity.

That's amazing.

Now what's interesting then is that,

So then if you say let's take the universe and let's just kind of map it in terms of time.

So then you have a place in the universe where time is regular like you and I,

Then that means that there will be regions in space where time is faster and then there will be regions in space where time is slower.

It turns out that as you move towards what is called the black hole,

Your time slows down.

Okay?

Now there's a very famous movie called the Interstellar,

Which was written and produced by a very famous scientist from Caltech and he was there.

He and Stephen Hawkins was there when I was actually a visiting scholar.

So I used to see them every day at the,

Of course they're very famous.

They have a table.

We have a table.

We don't mix.

But he was very famous and he actually got a Nobel Prize recently for predicting gravitational wave.

But in any case,

He made this movie and I'm not going to go through the movie if you don't have enough time,

But the point is that there's a planet called Planet Miller and the astronauts has to descend into the planet and they were just going to be there for a couple of minutes and leave and then they got stuck there and they were there for I think like a few hours.

And then when they returned to the space vehicle,

Their colleague,

Who was a young man when they left,

Became an older person because it turns out that every day on the planet Miller is seven years.

Okay?

Now this is all based on relativity.

This is as good as science can predict it,

Right?

Now what's interesting is that the Buddhists believe the same thing.

The sutra actually talks about us being in what is called the Kama Realm,

The realm of desire.

And then within that realm,

We have the human realm and then we have the diva realm and the diva realm,

The first layer every day is 50 years,

The next one every day is 250 and so forth and so on until you reach outside of that realm of desire and you got into the realm of the form and then you get out and now you're in the realm of the formless.

So we talk about the three realms and we talk about the six samsara,

Right?

So this is all the Buddhist teaching and what I'm saying is that in order to accept that kind of thinking,

You have to accept that our presence is more than just the material because the material is only when you are in the realm of the desire and we cannot escape the realm of desire because we're so attached to our physical existence.

That's what we call the samsara.

And you can get approximating what Denny's talking about is through very microscopic observations through like an electron microscope or things they do in particle colliders.

We don't have the,

Just because we can't sense it with our physical sense basis doesn't mean that it's maybe not there as we can see it observed with certain types of technology.

So if we push that even further,

I mean given that continuum,

Could it be possible that there are things happening that we just can't physically detect?

And by definition you can't.

By definition you can't because when we talk about the six sensors on a physical existence,

The six sense door,

The six sense roots,

This is the eye,

The nose,

The tongue,

The ear,

The body and the mind which is the brain.

The Pali word for that is set Indra.

Set is six.

Indra is the diva that is on the second layer of that realm of desire.

In other words,

We can't go beyond that.

For us to really understand what is beyond our capability,

It's not only beyond our eye,

We can't see if it's ultraviolet or x-ray or whatever.

We can't smell it,

We can't taste it,

We can't hear it,

We can't touch it,

We can't even think it.

Well even some of the yogis and stuff who have claimed to gone into and experienced those realms with inner vision or whatever and they report that,

They're still in a physical body,

Right?

So even if that's possible and they do experience it somehow with an extra sense or whatever,

Inner sense or the mind sense,

They still have to come back to this physical body,

This physical existence,

Right?

I want to say one real quick thing about gravity.

It's basically a phenomenon that we call gravity but we actually have really no idea how it works,

Right?

There's a lot of theories and a lot of stuff.

Well the gravity is,

Ultimately the gravity is like the mind.

We don't ever see gravity just like we don't ever see the mind.

We see the effect of gravity just like we see the effect of the mind.

We see how the mind influence our body and how our body influence the mind but we don't actually see the mind.

It's beyond us,

Right?

With the time that we have,

I want to make sure that we understand.

I'm bringing in the possibility that our existence is not just a material but that there's energy.

Now all the religions talk about that,

Okay?

Taoists basically talk about how to practice so that when we incarnate,

We will come back into a higher realm.

The yogis talk about that,

Right?

The yogis talk about that all the way up to the different layers.

So when we talk about the realm of desire,

The next one is the realm of the form.

The realm of the form has these four layers which are the layers of the Jhana and then beyond that is the form,

It's a realm of the no form,

The arupa.

I just want to bring back the idea that there is energy in us that are beyond our physical existence.

Now again you can you can describe that.

You can say well what does that mean?

What does it mean that there's energy in us,

Right?

So the Taoists,

They actually believe that they're co-equal which explains why the Tao has this symbol,

The Tai Chi symbol,

One black and one white.

That actually is the body and the mind.

It's just that in that case the mind is the energy and they believe that for a person to be healthy,

Quote unquote,

It's not just the body has to be healthy in that he has to maintain balance in his chi.

And we don't want to give too much away here,

Denny.

The audience is going to have to tune in to the regular show to get your full teaching on the chi,

Right?

I'm kind of,

This is a draft.

It's okay,

It's okay.

So what is chi?

So again you can try to kind of understand that with limitation.

You can say well where does that energy come from?

So you can say well actually in a way it's what someone would call a bio-electromagnetic energy.

Bio-electromagnetic energy.

Because it's easy to understand electrical energy,

Right?

So our blood is conductive.

So if you talk about the heart pumping the blood through our vessels,

It generates electrical feel,

Our nerve system is obviously electrical,

All our muscles are electrical.

That's why when you have a cramp you drink electrolyte,

Right?

Everything is electrical.

It turns out that your bones are electrical because your bones are actually piezoelectric.

So when you bend your bone or you stretch your tendon,

It actually generates electricity.

So our entire body generates electrical signal.

Was electromagnetic though as well,

Right?

That's right.

But if you have electrical you must have magnetic.

Now this is the part that the modern science has in cross.

This is a threshold that they have in cross because they're so conditioned by the church back in the days of Galileo that they're not able to go beyond just the physical existence,

That they're not able to go beyond just the electrical presence of a body,

Right?

Now the Chinese,

They didn't have that constraint.

So they long ago they understood that there is an electromagnetic field,

Not only that the electromagnetic field is tightly tied to our biology.

So for example,

One explanation for the Dan Ten.

So the Dan Ten is the Taoist believe that is the bank,

Is the storage for all your chi,

That's why we do a lot of exercise on the Dan Ten.

Dan Ten is that part of the stomach that is slightly below the belly button.

Well,

If you look at it from a purely physiological point of view,

Thinking of it as electromagnetic energy,

Your intestines,

Both your small intestines and your big intestines,

Your bowel,

If you stretch it out,

There are six times the height of a person.

They all kind of,

That's a lot of surface area.

That's a lot of surface area.

Well,

What do you get when you have surface area like that?

You get a capacitor.

So the bowel,

The small intestines in the bowel is actually a way of storing your bio with energy.

Well,

Yeah,

And then people talk about water memory.

Dr.

Emoto,

His work on water memory,

People can look that up as well.

But then there's also,

And we haven't even touched on radiation energy or vibrational energy and those are the energies that can be experienced too.

Piezoelectric,

Just about all of our electronic devices have little quartz crystals and that piezoelectric works to,

If I'm getting this right,

Can convert frequency into energy and then vice versa as well.

So you look at a transistor radio way back when where there's just a little crystal in there and not much power,

No battery,

But it could still pick up a signal and you could hear the radio on it.

And then the other thing is for energy on a physical level,

Just look at a piece of firewood.

Well,

It's not doing anything there,

But once it gets a catalyst,

Where does that energy come from?

All the heat that it puts out,

Right?

Well,

I guess it would come from the sun,

Right?

And it would store it from the sun,

But then when it gets ignited,

It would give off all that energy.

But you wouldn't really notice that potential energy is there until it starts burning,

Right?

So again,

Going back to the question,

Which is a very profound one,

Which is what happened to your mind when you meditate?

We're now entertaining the idea that your mind is just not your physical brain,

But it's your physical being combined with your chi.

So it's really going back to that Tai Chi symbol,

That yin and yang symbol now of really maintaining and or finding a balance between your physical presence and your chi,

Your energetic presence.

So if you look at the exercise that we do on Saturday,

It's really a progression of that.

It's really using your body to discover your chi.

We do this padding of the energy points.

By the way,

The Chinese,

The Taoists believe that there's three.

.

.

Okay,

So just very quickly,

Two minutes.

So the Taoists believe that there's 12 energy lines.

There's actually 20,

But there's 12 energy lines.

Six of them originated with your fingers and six of them originated with your toes.

And all 12 of them combine or the energy field that ties to each of the vital organ.

So this is the lung.

This is the heart.

This is what's called the pericardial system,

Which is the membrane around your heart.

So there's three.

And then there's another three more that has to do with small intestines and your large intestines.

And then there's one that has to do with really the regulator of everything that is in your upper torso.

And then six more that has to start,

Either originate or end up in your toes.

That has to do with your spleen,

Your liver,

Your bladder,

And so forth.

So those are the 12 energy lines.

And then there's eight more.

Two of them,

One is in front and one is in the back.

And so if you look at all the exercises we do,

They're really two.

.

.

That's where the word tau yin comes from.

Is tau is to instruct.

Yin is to entice.

It's the same word that we use for threading the needle.

Threading the needle.

Imagine when you thread a needle,

They already exist.

You're not creating the needle and you're not creating a thread.

All you're doing is you're guiding them so that the thread goes through the eye of the needle.

And so tau yin,

We'll talk about it next time,

Means exactly that.

Is that we're enticing the energy field that is in your body already,

But because you don't know how to use your mind,

You don't know how to create this synchronized and synergetic left and right yin and yang,

That the energy just dissipates.

So to answer the question.

.

.

Arc and block too,

Right?

Pardon me?

Block or because your health,

Right?

Because your health,

You have.

.

.

Well,

Then you're talking about is it the cost or the result?

Is it because the chi was block and therefore you have problems or is it because you have physical problem and then it's blocking your chi?

Either way,

It doesn't matter.

Yin and yang.

Yin and yang.

Okay.

So very quickly,

10 more minutes.

So what we did is we answered the question,

Which is what happens to your mind when you meditate?

So the first part was if we limit ourself to just the physical mind,

Which is the brain and the neurological system,

Then we answer the question is that what if we expand it like the Taoists would expand it to include not only a physical presence,

But our energy presence,

Right?

Which is consistent with Einstein's relativity in that there's different time in our universe.

And so there are space where your body can limit to your body and then there's when you are living in a pure energy form.

Then the question is what else?

Is there something else?

How does Buddhist teaching fits in?

Well,

The Abhidhamma,

I haven't really studied much of it,

But it goes into great detail on the human psychology,

Which deals with the mind,

Right?

So I mean,

That's just.

.

.

So I will bring in another scientist.

So we talk about Galileo,

Newton,

Einstein.

So I'll bring in another one,

Stephen Hawkins.

And then I've got to bring in one too later,

Maybe Rupert Sheldrake about morphogenetic fields.

I don't know if you're familiar with that.

So what was,

Stephen Hawkins did not get a Nobel Prize because number one,

You cannot get a Nobel Prize once you die.

And you cannot get a Nobel Prize if your theory has not been proven while you're alive.

So he didn't get a,

He didn't get.

.

.

So he was very famous for many things.

He did a lot of work with the black hole,

But one of the more famous is what's called the Hawkins radiation.

And the reason for that is there's something called the information paradox,

Which is what happens to information when material enters into the black hole and what is information?

So they talk a great deal about quantum information.

That is what's the difference between an orange and an apple,

Right?

What's the difference between.

.

.

Because ultimately they're the same because they consist of the same particle.

Inside a particle they're the same because they have the same nucleus and the same electron.

So what is it that makes them one is an orange and one is an apple?

So there's something called the quantum information,

Which is very complicated,

But in the simplicity form it could be charge,

Mass and spin,

Something like that,

Right?

So the idea is that beyond the physical existence and beyond this energy,

The chi existence,

Which a scientist hasn't really got around to that,

But they propose that there's something else,

Which is information.

So there is something called the conservation of information.

So there is.

.

.

What if Josh and I are both astronauts and we fly very close to the black hole,

We enter the black hole,

We're totally disintegrated,

We become basic elements so that we're not distinguished from one another anymore.

Is there a way that we construct and what is it,

What's left?

So this is like the cosmic DNA.

The information is that the cosmic DNA's idea is that it might be very difficult to get to,

But if you can get to it and you can find the ways to reconstruct,

Then what's called the quantum information would be what you need to reconstruct Denny and Josh.

And the idea that this quantum information is conserved.

Is that information theory,

Right?

And then you get into quantum entanglement.

There's no way to destroy that.

It doesn't get destroyed.

Quantum entanglement,

That kind of thing,

Yeah.

That's Buddha nature.

And that's what we talk about is that's really what it is.

Because if you really understand the Buddha's teaching,

They don't talk about the chi that much.

They talk about our body,

Our six sensors,

Our body,

Our four elements,

The earth,

The wind,

The fire,

And the water.

Then they jump from there,

They jump into the mind.

And in this case,

The mind is not the chi.

The mind is pure information because the mind is the seven consciousness and the eight consciousness.

The eight consciousness is the storage of the data.

Maybe this would be a good time to read the first half line of the first two lines of the Dhammapada,

This translation by Gil Fronsdal that I like.

All experience is preceded by mind,

Led by mind,

Made by mind.

So that's the first half of the first line.

So this is very interesting.

The actual Buddha's teaching is really about something that is non-material,

Something that is non-energy.

It's pure data.

It's pure information.

That's why when we talk about the Taoists,

And the Taoists started with Lao Tzu,

Who is a scholar around the time of Confucius,

Which is within 100 years of the birth of Buddha,

Birth and death of Buddha.

And he wrote this very famous book called Dao Tzu Jing.

You remember that?

And the first two verse,

Something goes like,

If you can name it,

It's not the real name.

So everyone is trying to decipher that.

That's right.

We're talking about quantifying mind.

We talk about information.

That's kind of quantifying mind.

My answer is that they're in a different realm.

Now there's another saying here by Shabkar that I like to read.

Okay,

I'll just read it.

The mind's nature is vivid as a flawless piece of crystal,

Intrinsically empty,

Naturally radiant,

Ceaselessly responsive.

I'll read it real quick again.

The mind's nature is vivid as a flawless piece of crystal,

Intrinsically empty,

Naturally radiant,

Ceaselessly responsive.

So when we're trying to give language to something like the mind,

It really fails.

You can't.

We can point at it like we're doing.

This is like the famous story about how Buddha is pointing to the moon and everybody's focused on their finger.

Because what Buddha is saying is that here's the moon,

It's for you to experience.

So the mind in this case,

Which is beyond a body and a chi,

Is not something that we can actually talk about.

It's something that we have to experience.

Very important point,

Denny.

And going back to the quantum physics and the physics stuff as well,

I just put this to you because I don't think I've got a really decent explanation.

How do you double blind test for the observer effect?

So we don't have to answer that now.

So it's like,

Okay,

So the observer,

What you observe you actually change when you measure it,

Right?

Or things won't happen when you.

.

.

But how do you know that's the case if you can't double blind test for that,

Right?

Well how do you talk about the temples in Japan by just looking at the tourist book?

Right,

Yes.

It's like,

Yeah,

You can talk about riding a bicycle.

You can talk about everything you want to talk about,

But it's not.

.

.

So I had this,

This morning I woke up and I said,

Well,

I really are looking forward to these discussions.

And I knew I was going to talk about mind.

And I knew I was going to talk about mind when it's pure information,

When it's just consciousness,

When it's not chi,

When it's not body.

And I came up with this revelation.

So when I was 11 years old,

I grew up in Macau,

Very small island off on one side of the Pearl River Delta.

And then when I was 11 years old,

I actually went to Hong Kong to live with my uncle.

And he has a factory,

So they work,

I think,

Six days.

And then on Sunday,

Then everybody takes a day off.

And so then I'll get together with all the young people that are in the factory.

And one day we decided that we want to take the train to a village somewhere,

Which now is like the center of town.

And this is really amazing.

This is 50 years ago.

So I remember standing at the platform and I see this train comes along.

And of course,

Once the train comes,

You can't see the other side of the platform.

It blocks your view.

So I was thinking about it this morning.

I said,

You know,

Actually,

I remember I was able to see the other side.

I remember that well,

That I was able to see the other platform.

Then all I have to do was not focus on the train.

This is really profound.

So I remember as a kid,

11 years old,

I was standing on the platform.

I was looking over and all of a sudden the train comes along and blocks my view.

I can't see the other platform.

Then I said,

Well,

I'm focusing on the wrong thing because I'm focusing on the train.

But what if I continue to focus on the platform?

I can actually see it because I can see between the train.

So that's Master's teaching.

In the end,

Because Master,

If he wants to talk about the body as the mind,

He could have done it.

Because he learned I Ching Ching when he was five years old.

And then he was learning all the internal energy,

All the other stuff that we know about.

He was a sha-lam martial artist.

He was a tai chi martial artist.

He was actually a fighter on stage.

If you want to talk about body,

He knows everything there is to know about body.

If you want to know about chi,

He knows everything there is to know about chi.

But yet he choose not to teach mind in terms of the physical presence and the chi presence.

He wants to do something else.

So he wants to talk about mind as in our consciousness,

As in our karma versus our attachment and all that.

How do you see that?

Don't focus on the train.

Focus on the gap between the train.

When we look at it,

We have to get to a point where you understand that you're not your breath.

Your body is capable of breathing all on its own.

So you got to get to that point.

This is the last part of our daily exercise.

You got to get to the last part where you're just observing your breath,

Lowering the rising and the filling away and start to discover that there is space between the breath.

And so the breath becomes an external event.

You're just there looking at something that is happening in your body and you're observing and your focus is actually on the space as if you're looking through the train.

But instead of focusing on objects in the room,

You focus on the space.

And I've heard somebody say,

Well,

That actually can increase the amount of light in your presence.

I mean,

If I had to explain that,

It would just be because,

Well,

Light moves through space.

So in the last part,

After we do Yijing Jing,

Which is really the Trinity,

We're bringing the body and the Qi and the mind together.

And then now we sit down for the last 10 minutes.

We understand that there's a body.

We're freeing.

That's why the word emancipate is important is that we're emancipating ourselves from our body.

We're using the Qi to support our body.

Okay.

We're looking at our breathing and then we're letting go of the breathing.

And in between the breathing is where we find the mind.

And mastering or emancipating ourselves from the body by fully understanding the body,

Right?

Body,

Yeah.

And knowing the body and then freeing ourselves from it,

But in a way,

So to speak,

Right?

I guess I have a couple of Easter eggs here that I've got in my notes.

So there's a couple of thinking exercises on how this has to deal with mind.

If you tell somebody,

Okay,

Don't think of a pink elephant,

Just as hard as you can,

Do not think of a pink elephant.

What happens?

Well,

That's all you think about.

Most people think about a pink elephant,

Right?

So that's why people- You're not going to think about blue elephant.

Right,

Yeah.

The mind doesn't really know negatives as much either.

So instead of,

I want to stop this or don't do that,

Kind of focus on the actual positive result or focus on what you want to actually achieve instead of what you don't want to achieve,

Right?

Because the mind has a hard time focusing on the negation of something and just focuses on what you're talking about,

Right?

Not the absence of something.

So now we're getting a little bit more specific in terms of the technique.

So the technique,

In summary,

The technique is called resting your mind.

It's resting your analytical part of your mind.

Some people call it not thinking.

Thinking by not thinking,

Right?

But that's a little bit more subtle.

But the idea that in master's teaching is really one of the biggest shift in my study because I studied meditation before I met a master and I used to focus on my nostril.

And one of the things I need to do is start to focus on my abdomen away from my brain,

Away from that.

And to understand that the difference between contact and feeling.

That's a big one right there.

So this is the part where when you observe your breath,

You're really focusing on just the contact.

So as the breath comes,

It's like the wave.

That's why I use the wave analogy.

But this is like,

This is going back to my childhood.

I was probably like five years old.

I walked along the shore with my dad.

And this isn't something else I talk about.

I said,

I just remember that back in the days when I was five years old,

My dad would have a bicycle.

I would ride on the back of the bicycle.

We get to the part where the sea is.

But there's a stone wall.

The stone wall is taller than me.

So there's no way for me to see the ocean.

So he put me on top of the stone wall.

He holds my hand.

So this is one of the trick is that if you wanted to see your own breathing and not be part of it,

You really have to like elevate yourself so that you're looking down.

So you have to practice so that as I breathe in,

I shift the focus up and then I look down and I see that my stomach is breathing.

You have to maintain that distance.

It's like me as a child walking a little further,

Standing up and looking down.

You have to do that.

You have to kind of divorce yourself from your breath.

See I'm going to have to try this,

Denny,

Because I'm more of a visceral person,

More of a kind of energetically sensitive.

I haven't really talked about that.

So my experience is more a feeling.

So this is when Shifu put this,

The contact,

Focusing more on the contact and the feeling.

I thought that was really profound for me because most people can connect more with the feeling,

Especially people that are more identified with emotions.

But the other thing real quick,

I wonder,

There's an awareness section and we haven't even talked about awareness hardly at all.

We talked a little about consciousness,

But there's a.

.

.

Well,

I think again,

I think it's important to accept the idea that awareness comes in different layers too.

And so what we're talking about is really the basic part of awareness,

Which is really spatial and temporal.

Aware of where you are and aware of now and not make your mind drift away and think about what has gone past you and what hasn't happened.

So this is about now and here.

This is a huge question.

That is awareness,

Yeah.

You know,

The consciousness thing that neuroscience is finally starting to catch up to some of the Buddhist teachings,

I feel.

But yeah,

Is awareness dependent on a human being?

You know,

Is awareness localized?

You know,

And then how do you know?

So this is a really quick awareness exercise.

Okay,

Everybody,

I want you to stop being aware right now.

Just stop,

Cut it out.

Just turn off awareness.

There is a danger in really elevating your awareness.

The reason for this is this,

And this is.

.

.

I know we're over time,

But I think it's worth repeating,

Worth talking about.

So Master talked about how one time he and the rest of the Sangha made an annual trip outside of the temple.

And this time they choose to go to Yellowstone Park.

And so they visited this one town where the only attraction was a jail.

It was a jail that came from the gold rush days.

And the jail was famous for people leaving either if they get someone and they decide not to hang him,

But rather put them in jail,

Then there's only two ways that he will come out.

One is that they become insane,

And the other one is that they're dead.

And so Master said,

Well,

I had to try this.

I have to go take a look at what this is all about.

So he went in there and realized that it turns out that the jail was completely pitch dark.

So then he sat there and he realized that when we talk about the six senses,

We often forget about the brain as being one of the physical senses.

And so when you deprive yourself of the other senses,

You have to make up for the difference.

That's why people sleepwalk or they hallucinate or they have daydream.

And so one of the dangers,

And this happens a lot,

I see it happens a lot,

Is that people meditate without understanding that the brain is one of the sensors.

So they focus on the five sensors.

And when you get to a point where you actually are able to reduce your sensation from the five sensors,

Your brain becomes very excited.

I know that because this is especially a problem for people who normally would think too much anyway.

And so I mean,

I love that.

I love that my brain all of a sudden was able to do math,

Very difficult math.

I just love that.

But the problem is that this is like a very dangerous cliff that you can go to.

Yes.

Because this is the beginning of a lot of psychological problems.

It can be.

And there's actually even dark retreats.

So there's dark retreat centers where,

I don't know if anybody's looked into this,

Where you can go and you get in there,

The room,

And you feel your way around so you can be in the dark for a while so you know where the bathroom is and your bunk is.

But then they shut the door and they give you your meals even in darkness.

So you would have to do this.

This is deprivation,

Right?

This is like a deprivation chamber.

This can be very dangerous.

It can be very dangerous.

So you would have to get advice from a reputable teacher before even considering that.

The thing is,

So the things that help with this,

I feel,

Are the heart qualities.

The heart qualities also balance these out.

Yeah.

And then also anything we can do to ground and center ourselves,

Right?

Having actually connection with the earth,

Physical contact,

Physically rooted in the earth,

And also centered in our mind as well,

Right?

So the other side of the same question,

Which is,

The question is what happens to your mind when you meditate?

The other side of the question is that what do you do with your mind when you meditate?

And I want to make sure that when you meditate,

You're 100% engaged.

Your mind is 100% engaged.

In fact,

We go as far as saying that if you're tired,

Don't meditate because you don't have the mental strength to meditate.

When you meditate,

Your mind is 100% engaged,

But is it engaged in a different level?

It's engaged in the spatial and temporal awareness level as opposed to the analytical and the emotional level,

Right?

So when we meditate,

We're completely engaged.

And that's why it helps to have an anchor like the breath,

Right?

Because it covers both the physical and the mental,

It puts them together and actually puts an anchoring.

Okay.

Well,

Josh,

I think we did what we were supposed to do today.

Yes.

We solved all the world's problems with mind.

We did.

Not really though.

That's the reason why Facebook deleted all my video and shut me off from the live stream because we were just too dangerous.

Dangerous mind,

Right?

Yeah.

It's like criminals.

Okay.

Well,

With that,

I'll see you Saturday.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thanks,

Jenny.