Between Pleasure & Pain: Radiance Sutras Verse 80

During this session, we discuss Verse 80 of the Yukti Verses from the 'Radiance Sutras', a translation of the Vijanana Bhairava Tantra by Lorin Loche. A meditation follows our discussion.

These sessions are recorded on a weekly basis and all are welcome.

Transcript

So today we are reading from the Radiant Sutras and the Radiant Sutras is a beautiful book by Lauren Roche.

This is an interpretation of an ancient tantric text called the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra.

The meaning of that phrase tantra in this instance just means book.

Tantra actually often just means book which is very boring when you want to say what tantra means but it'll the book will say da-da-da-da-da-da-da tantra da-da-da-da-da-da tantra and it's actually just book of whatever the earlier part of the word is.

So Vijnana Bhairava Tantra,

Vijnana one interpretation is it's wisdom but it's not wisdom like ah you are so wise and clever like not like that.

Wisdom is when life experience informs your life.

You can learn all the things in the world and then all of a sudden you know something.

You're walking through life and even in very difficult times it's actually that's when wisdom really rises in the difficult times.

I remember reading a book once where it was written by a Japanese soldier.

I can't remember who told this story it might have been Alan Watts or somebody and they were talking about the Chinese and how the Chinese people had been invaded so many times hundreds of times like when you imagine like us over here in North America we're so young as nations right we've only been here for a few hundred years ironically as we align with the day of truth and reconciliation honoring the people who lived here when we came over and took over but in China they've been there with like written history for thousands of years.

They've seen empires rise and fall and it's so easy to say that Oh empires rise rose and fell and blah blah blah blah but if you really think about what was it like during the fall of an empire there's a lot of suffering there and then the hope and dreams of the new empire or the difficulty in that or whatever like this is a lot of life experience like it's very easy to write it in a history book but to actually put yourself on any of those rise or falls of these empires and these empires lasted hundreds of years some of these empires lasted as long as well certainly a lot longer than Canada's been around and again I'm only speaking from a North American perspective there's a lot of places in Europe that are just as just as long but China's really old like it's really old and so this this soldier in the Japanese army they were attacking China and he said he'll never forget looking into the eyes of the Chinese people and it's like they weren't even afraid they just sort of looked at them and he said the way that the look he got back was as if they were saying to them you can attack us you can even kill us it's happened before but in the end we will still be here and you will you will have gone on and there was this deep wisdom inside the Chinese people that you can do whatever you want to us we've been here for thousands of years this is wisdom and all of us here every person here right now has access to wisdom like that the key is to actually be able to look at our lives through a neutral lens to look at decisions we've made and it's easy to look at decisions we've made that we like that ended up in say what we would call air quote success but we gain the most wisdom often when we look at the decisions that actually were hard and the decisions that put us in really difficult situations in the times that in hindsight we think wow I could have so done that differently we can criticize ourselves and the problem is and this is going to tie into our talk today the problem is is that if we get too caught up in the idea that we failed because we made that choice we'll never learn anything about it but if we can find a neutral ground inside of our hearts to observe that part of our life we can say oh well I can see why I would have made that choice I can see why I've had this insecurity that I needed to choose that person I needed to choose that job or I needed to say that thing interesting right because you can sit in this wisdom place and go I can fully have compassion for that previous self who did that and there's no judgment and then you can see the end point and everything and so someone later in time might say to you wow well why did you ever choose to marry that person or why did you stay for 30 years or why did you stay in that job you hit why did you do that or why did you I don't know eat more than you needed or why did you beat yourself to death in the gym why did you why did you do these things that in the end caused seemingly harm to yourself and you can honestly answer the question from a loving place to say well you know there was a lot going on at that time I was really being influenced by this and this and this I really felt that this was I think this is something that I was healing from my childhood and in the end yeah I mean it was hard and I really was hard on my body and it was hard on my emotions but in the end wow what an experience that was you can actually talk about even your own quote failures whatever if you want to call it that or difficult times with a wise outlook and even being able to look at other people in our lives those ex-partners or our parents who maybe were really difficult people and really weren't ready to be parents and really had no good role models to be good parents it is quite a place of wisdom to come to where you can look at parents especially who were abusive or anything and to be able to look at them and actually fully understand why they were the way they are but this requires us to literally have God's light and I know that word is loaded but whatever you call that divine vision but it's more than that it's actually being able to feel the essence of life and when we can feel the essence of life we don't understand why there's difficulty why is a weird word why gets us into trouble I think it's a I think it's a intentionally troubling word that just gets us all into trouble but we can see that things happen and it just is what it is so the word Bhairava so we're back we're still talking about the name of the book Vijnana Bhairava Tantra so Vijnana is wisdom Bhairava is the essence of life and I don't mean chocolate or sex or something like that I mean the essence the sparkly bit the thing that makes you alive the energy within you that causes your heart to pulse I always get the name of this wrong but there's something called the if anyone here is a doctor or nurse or practitioner knows this better they call it the SA valve the sino arterial valve or something like that and this is the little spark little spark plug in your heart that is always pumping and it is as far as doctors know medic medical scientists know it's not connected to anything you know like the shin bones connected to the knee bone you know everything's connected but not the sino arterial valve I don't know if that's what it is but it's something like that we'll pretend that's what it is for now but it's just simply no one knows where this spark is coming from so let's imagine for a moment that this is Bhairava the essence of life the spark of life the the energy of ohm what is life really while we have all these wild experiences around it this is Bhairava so this entire book is called the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra accessing the wisdom of the essence of the universe this is the point and every sutra in it helps us it's just there's it's more than a hundred and eight sutras but there's there's all these beautiful little sutras that we read that help us experience that essence of the world that's the point because the more you can feel that essence the more we can actually experience the world.

Sinoatrial node I once knew this and I just forget it it just went right out my head but thank you so Debbie asks why is a problem lol asking why helps with understanding and learning mm-hmm no you're exactly right I'd say that there if I was to way oversimplify our life there are many things about our physical world that asking why is very interesting why does this work the way it does why did I do this thing if I even that like why did I do this thing I might go deeper into zone maybe it's this maybe it's that maybe it's that ah yes that sounds right so you're a hundred percent right right like asking why is very important we get into trouble with why when we're talking about philosophical questions why are we here why was I drawn to that abusive partner why are politicians the way they are why is the world the way it is like that's where we get into big trouble because these are questions that actually have no answer I remember Viktor Frankl Viktor Frankl was a Austrian Jewish psychiatrist and this is significant because he was he ended up in the concentration camps during the Second World War he wrote a beautiful book called man's search for meaning which I it really changed my life it was a very foundational teaching in my I think in my personal philosophy of life it's a very tiny book but wow did it ever did it ever change me one of the things so he was in the concentration camps for four years and when he left eventually he did start up his practice again and one of the most dangerous questions that people got stuck on is why did this happen why did we have to lose all of our family and our friends and the problem is that question just cycles there is no answer and so Viktor would work with them and he actually developed something called logotherapy and logotherapy is meaning-oriented therapy because he realized that if we get stuck in the whys of life we will never ever go we know we will never walk forward whereas if we focus on meaning in life we can walk towards what gives us meaning so you can think yourself crazy exactly grace so you're a hundred percent right right why is not always a problem it is a beautiful tool of understanding unless it's an unanswerable question and those unanswerable questions can honestly torment us our whole life like let's say you were given up by your mom when you were a baby and maybe you had wonderful adoptive parents horrible adoptive parents or maybe you lived in foster care you could spend your entire life asking why why did she give me up and it will torture you your whole life it's so it's just it's just interesting you know if we get to a point where we can't answer it okay guys ready ironically but not really our talk today will help us with our reading so we are reading Sutra number 80 for anyone joining us late we are reading from the Radiant Sutras translation of the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra for anyone who has the book it's on page 115 but even if you have the book let's close our eyes for a moment and breathe deep let's take a few breaths really bring some oxygen into your body allow that oxygen to wake us up from any doldrums or depression or anything that we may be struggling with really light up that sinoatrial node in the heart that beautiful pulsing divine energy inside of you all right ready that space is good that space is bad the ride is rough or the going is smooth we are thrown into suffering we are thrown into joy beloved soulmate find the space in the center the pulsing spaciousness encompassing all opposites here the essences of creation are at play earth water fire air and space and the senses that perceive them the center is the dancing ground what do you think of when you hear that how does it make you feel to imagine that the space between stimulus and response yes the power of polarity living in non-duality except that the good with the bad for without that there is no life mm-hmm it's a great point curiosity so I love what Sally said that without the good or the bad where is life like a spinning top just what my soul needed to hear I get lost in the confusion and the questions and the point of paralyzing myself it's so easy to get stuck and swept up in all of it it's so easy to get the pulsing center of truth is where I return in those moments centering in all that we are surrounded by yes the still point between the in-breath and the exhale exactly so it's interesting like when when I first read this I felt the same as Sally like yeah but isn't life meant to be experienced aren't we supposed to embrace the good with the bad and you know and if and if we just stay in the center do we get to experience pleasure and pain and all these kind of things like isn't that the point of life but the interesting thing is that life is about that we are supposed to fully experience the pain and fully experience the pleasure the challenges is that we often don't we only want pleasure sometimes we actually only want pain maybe we've been conditioned or we feel like we need to be punished unconsciously or something like that the key is that life is meant to be an oscillation or a spinning top through these experiences and that they're actually meant to feed each other and I don't mean pain like suffering that stuff like that I mean difficulty but very often we will chase pleasure and then hold on to it with like white knuckles desperate that nothing can change nothing can change nothing can change because this is all I want I only want pleasure but then of course what happens is eventually pain follows up and then you can't handle that pain at all so we need to be able to allow pleasure to be experienced and then released fully trusting that it's always changing even if we come into a time of difficulty we'll come back to a time of pleasure but we get so attached one way or the other similarly if we are not comfortable in the painful parts of our life we actually will not make decisions that help to end the painful parts of our life let's say you're in a difficult relationship and you can't handle it so you just you know self-medicate in some way well that's fine I mean and sometimes this is a survival thing right but the problem is you'll never feel the pain you're meant to feel to actually build you up and give you the strength to make change and so then what happens is you stay stuck in pain and you don't get the course correction which then so like there's one Tantra teacher that he would talk about pleasure and pain like on a pendulum that as the pendulum swings far into pleasure it reaches its its highest point and then it swings back through the center and then into pain and then it goes through and and it continues this and even that might make you think I did well I don't want to keep oscillating between pleasure and pain that's that sounds like a horrible life like I don't want to do that but the thing is they're not talking about like you know that you know one minute you're happy the next minute you're hurting yourself or something it's not like that in the back of the radiant sutures Lauren has little meditations that we can read about this so here's what he said if you have a full life a lover a job kids pets and projects you will feel many kinds of pain during meditation this pain is not to be avoided it's a signal not noise you are a craftswoman or craftsman tending to your potter's wheel what feels like pain maybe feedback that your work in progress is out of balance the potter puts her hand just so and balance is restored so if you have a full life if you're living if you're doing stuff if you're if you've got projects if you're out in the community and you're working with people and you have friends and a partner or whatever he doesn't have to be but if you're actually out there experiencing life you are going to oscillate between pleasure and pain and it could be even something as simple as let's say I'm creating a new course and I'm so excited about it so I have all this pleasure and the pleasure is feeding me and I'm like oh I'm so excited creating this new course it could be so exciting for example I'm putting together a new course all about helping people create websites so I'm diving deep into the background how to make it really easy for people right like that's my background I actually was once a computer programmer 30 years ago and but of course what happens next that pendulum swung all the way into pain as I started hitting all these roadblocks all these technical issues that were not user friendly that were not and I started you know having to do my classic not you don't pull your hair out but you just are like oh this should be easy what's going on you hit this this roadblock but then you work through the roadblock woohoo right and then you you're like yeah I'm on my way you know and all of a sudden BAM you hit another question or a challenge or a struggle or a problem and you're like hmm that's hard I don't know now what would happen if I just saw that struggle and said okay forget it forget it I don't want to do it it's stupid that's dumb we need to be able to embrace the struggle we need to be able to embrace the pain because then we get through it we make different choices we change our to we change our path and now the pendulum gets to swing back into pleasure and this is the same with everything and this is not about accepting pain or anything that it's about let's say even you're in a relationship if there's anything that I'm finding is the most different today in romantic relationships marriages whatever you want to call them I know a lot of them aren't romantic in relationships historically you could just push things under the rug we were taught pick your battles don't fight about everything blah blah blah blah blah and if there's an issue just let it go like unless it's a really important thing but otherwise but in today's consciousness we don't want that we don't want to walk on eggshells we don't want to be we actually can be single now we don't have to be with people we can enough money to live on our own we don't need that and so all of a sudden when something comes up in a relationship we actually need to kind of lean into that pain we need to feel it we need to actually sit with it and say okay let's talk about this and even if your partner's like oh I mean really like you're gonna be that critical or you're gonna you know you know it's okay even that's painful like how how many generations of us have lived avoiding conflict for our entire life why because conflict is pain imagine you lived but you didn't avoid conflict I don't mean you go out and cause conflict but you don't avoid it in relationships so if the other person is upset by the fact that you're upset that's okay now we're all upset and now we can all talk about it but you have to experience the pain we can't be afraid of the pain or else we're never gonna get to pleasure so that's what this teaching is all about is whether or not you are in a pleasure state or you're in a difficult state they're kind of two polarities but if you imagine coming into the center kind of just like Melissa said the still point between the in-breath and the out-breath in the center between pleasure and pain is your true self the essence of the universe and it isn't that we have to live there that's not what we're saying we're not saying you want to live in this aloof neutral space that you have no opinions and you don't enjoy anything and you don't feel pain that's not it but if we don't know that this center is a peaceful quiet place between pleasure and pain we will be afraid to lose the pleasure state and we will be afraid to step into the pain state we need to know that there is a peaceful still infinite point in between that you will always return to no matter what this is why we meditate we practice having that still state so that when things get hard you know and you're angry or you're frustrated or you just don't know and you're pulling your hair out you just sort of go hold on a minute and you close your eyes and you come to that quiet place inside and you're like okay I mean that's one of the best reasons to meditate is that you create that Pavlovian response in your body that you instantly relax you instantly go out of fight-or-flight one of the challenges with the masculine and feminine especially how I teach it you know that it's meant to be in union right you're meant to actually be interplaying but the challenge is is that for some reason we can't stop fighting that the protector and the vulnerable why are we unable to be vulnerable why are we unable to connect why do we just keep battling if we are unable to come to center it's like we never leave fight flight fawn freeze flop so that's really the foundation of this teaching is we have to be able to feel that middle ground so we're not attached to the pleasure or the pain we can still experience both we're meant to experience both but the pain is more of a course correction than a long time suffering the long time suffering comes when we don't take the course correction I mean not always I'm oversimplifying but you know what I mean let's close our eyes you can be lying down sitting up whatever you'd like and let's just breathe deeply as you inhale expanding the belly as you exhale allowing the belly to contract I want you to imagine what would it feel like to not dwell on pleasure or pain but instead to hold steady in your center imagine something happening in the future imagine a pleasurable experience and you're smiling you're enjoying it but you're not attached to it there's no hook into it you're just experiencing it but you know you'll return to center and then imagine you're working on a project and you hit a snag something goes wrong imagine yourself in this experience but imagine yourself staying centered breathing deeply looking more deeply at the problem knowing that you'll solve it but I'm gonna dive deep into this right now imagine yourself flowing between these two points in life flowing from that successful feeling to that strange struggling feeling to pleasure to difficulty but your real awareness is in the middle between all of them now imagine in that center is your true self and feel your true self sitting there having all of these interesting human experiences and you're never blinded by the pleasure or the pain but you fully experience whatever it is in fact maybe you get to experience it more when the pleasure is there you have so much gratitude you allow your heart to open even more than normal and when you come up against a challenge in life your nervous system doesn't fly into fight-or-flight because you have a calm center so your mind is able to keep thinking you're able to stay focused and resolve whatever it is just focus on your breath and feel this beautiful intuitive center and feel the wisdom in this place right inside of you that space is bad this space is good the ride is rough or the going is smooth we are thrown into suffering we are thrown into joy beloved soulmate find the space in the center the pulsing spaciousness encompassing all opposites here the essences of creation are at play earth water fire air and space and the senses that perceive them the center is the dancing ground so how do you feel hearing that or what words roll through your mind embrace all that is life is there a feeling or that rises i felt a sense of stillness peace calm and centered gives me comfort to know that there is a spot in the middle or center of truth and pure love that's what i need to focus on in those moments i want to live in the dancing ground focused balance opening and allow live lightly loosen the grip why does the middle seem lonely and uncomfortable like it's too quiet this feels right to be centered so if i put christie's question to you guys why does the middle seem lonely and uncomfortable like it's too quiet because of the unknown it's a very important question because it's everything and nothing but it takes a good amount of time for me to settle in that it's the breathing space it's a little scary at first because the other sides feel juicy the middle is a self-space that can't be there with someone else don't worry you won't be there long it's so true but it's a good point that we don't have to live there we just have to know it's there fear of the unknown but it's where it's at possibly lonely too quiet because it's the absent of conditioning story or entertainment of the mind mind totally because at first glance it seems dull pleasure is where we want to be and knowing that it's there brings us a breath of relief i also think it's interesting to be very personal about what that feels like for you like i remember my teacher jim if any of you guys have read what if you could skip the cancer i talk about this in there i think i talk about in there i can't remember anyway i can't remember anyway he talked about the importance of creating new reference points in life the reference so very often we use pleasure and pain as reference points i really like this but i never want to go back there or the reference points might be i am a woman i am fit i am i have money i am educated i have children i am married you know whatever like these are my reference points in life and then the problem is is these are the things that are transient so what happens if one of those things change what happens if you are injured what happens if you're attached to being youthful and pretty or muscly or whatever you're attached to and that's no longer the case do you lose who you are because that center point is who you really are so he would say you have to create these reference points to imagine a moment in your life where you feel like you are in flow with the universe where are you are you kayaking are you painting are you reading a book is there an event in your life that suddenly time stood still is it climbing a mountain what is it and it can be a flash a moment in time a moment where you remember that's the same as this center and again it's you can't put words to it it's a feeling it's only a feeling that can destroy describe that infinite space where all polarities live like the language doesn't touch it so then suddenly that center point becomes familiar and then in those moments it's not pleasure or pain it's looking up at the night sky it's not pleasurable or painful it's just another it's an experience of everything regarding the question of why is it hard to sit in our center maybe the answer is in the experience itself you won't find the answer through thoughts only in asking the experience exactly grace that's exactly right in the middle where it's quiet we can hear the message we need where or how does levels of consciousness change in the oscillating space of uncertainty so i'm guessing that sally's referencing david hawkins work where he has the levels of consciousness that you're working through the shame guilt fear anger all that kind of thing and what's really interesting is when we get stuck in certain states of consciousness we become very attached to the cycles there cycles there well they said this to me and then i reacted and then they reacted and i reacted again families especially right and you just cycle for the rest of your life and in many ways we get attached to the pleasure of being right and we also expect the pain of the battle and we just keep digging our heels in it's really interesting to be able to feel the centerpiece inside of that even within the cycle and then from that place you can make a different choice and pop up and start to shift that state of consciousness i'm really curious about what you said about the masculine feminine always fighting maybe that's a whole other talk well for example yes it's a whole other talk but it's like when people say how much how hard it is to trust others if i was to say to play in the protector vulnerable mode like well how do i be vulnerable i mean how do i know i can trust you and the person protecting have they had enough role models and enough understanding to know the protection isn't going against the other person's desires like it's not protection for their benefit like can they do that in a healthy way but we have this constant battle inside instead that's a great challenge but it is a big question daily long-term meditation and regular chakra meditation brings us to that calm place where we can finally choose to reside and live our lives from no more fight if fight or flight occurs we have the tools to return every time 100 percent well thank you so much for being here i hope you have a wonderful day

Reviews

Synchronously perfect once more - having had an accidental fall yesterday and finding myself in that ‘central gap space’ - inbetween the stimulus/pain and waiting for my response physically, mentally and emotionally to arrive naturally in its own time.

A great reminder to dance in this space - the gap and trust the process, not yearning for the initial wtf now? Why? mind commentary but ‘be’ and remain present and experience the gap. Thank you 🙏🏽 🪷🐚

Thank you again for an amazing talk!
Key take aways: Don’t be a afraid to step into the middle and dance…love this!
Another reminder for me to read Viktor E Frankl “man’s search for meaning” 🙏