What Is The Mind Illuminated? Upasaka Upali - Ep. 16

Today I talk with Upasaka Upali, who is a meditation teacher and currently studies with Upasaka Culadasa. He studied meditation first with Tucker Peck, Ph.D. and currently studies with John Yates, Ph.D. (Upasaka Culadasa). He lives in the Southeastern United States where he teaches meditation locally and over video chat. We talk about his experiences and practice and what exactly 'The Mind Illuminated' is.

Transcript

In this episode of the Project Mindfulness podcast,

You will learn about the mind illuminated.

What is it and why is it important?

Honest and open to all religions,

All traditions,

All ages,

And all levels of experience.

Radically accessible,

Pragmatic,

And eye-opening.

Simply for everyone.

Welcome to the Project Mindfulness podcast.

We'll take you on a journey across the globe and talk with other meditators about their practice,

The lessons they have learned,

And what they want the world to know.

Good day and welcome.

This is episode 16 and I'm Cristiano Netasone.

Thank you for joining us.

Today I talk with Upasika Upali,

Who is a meditation teacher and currently studies with Upasika Chuladasa.

We talk about his experiences and practice and what exactly the mind illuminated is.

I'm sure his sharing and his insights will motivate and inspire you in your practice.

Welcome Upali to this podcast episode.

It's great to have you here.

It's great to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah,

Thanks a lot for joining.

So Upali,

Tell us a bit about yourself.

Who are you and what do you do in life?

Well,

I'm a meditation teacher.

So what I do is I spend as much time as I can meditating.

And then I spend a lot of time talking to other people about meditation.

And kind of specifically in like this tangible way,

Like kind of coming together in a way where we're talking about what's going on when we meditate.

So meditation from a pretty experiential perspective,

Not just sort of like an intellectual or philosophical one.

And I specifically do that in the context of I'm trained in this style of meditation called the mind illuminated.

It can most accurately be described as like shamatava,

Passana practice,

But basically where you're focusing on training both attention and awareness at the same time.

Right.

And so what is the mind illuminated?

Is it for the people who don't know it?

Yeah,

So it's a book that's kind of like a manual,

Like a textbook on how to meditate.

And the practice of like a shamatava,

Passana practice,

These stages,

It's like a 10 stage model of meditation and the mind illuminated.

It was originally nine stages.

So the practice has been around long before the book.

But what's great about the mind illuminated is it kind of incorporates this cognitive science perspective.

So you look at what's happening in your conscious experience while you're meditating.

And there's sort of these ways to go about practicing that fit in with like traditional meditation.

But then there's ways of explaining what's happening in the practice that kind of come from the aspect of looking at kind of the mind as a system,

These models of the mind,

Different explanations of conscious experience from the perspective of both like ancient philosophies and modern cognitive science.

So ultimately what that looks like is just a really,

It's easy to get sort of complicated about it,

I guess.

But I think what people like about this practice is it's kind of a step by step,

Stage by stage way to go about practicing meditation.

So the work is pretty clearly laid out for you.

And I think what people notice in picking up the book kind of from the beginning,

It was certainly my experience with this practice where you kind of think of your meditation practice as something that's kind of intimate and personal to you,

The content of what's going on in your own mind.

Maybe it even feels a little bit scary to say out loud what's actually happening in your own head.

But the thing that's pretty amazing about these stages and reading The Mind Illuminated is you can kind of read on paper a description that really resonates with a lot of people's experience when they sit down to meditate,

Whether it be sort of dullness,

Distraction,

Mind wandering.

And not only do you kind of see an experience that resonates with yours,

You get instruction on how to practically deal with that.

And the other thing as a kind of my journey and path of talking about my own practice and talking with other people about their practices,

What I've really found is it's amazing how much our experiences are shared.

The experience that you have where you feel like,

Oh,

You know,

Nobody could possibly relate to this.

I am very alone in this experience.

As soon as you say it out loud,

There's like 10 other people who raise their hands.

They're like,

Oh yeah,

Me too.

So yeah.

And then also The Mind Illuminated is written by Pasika Chuladasa,

Along with Jeremy Graves and Matthew Invergert.

And so Chuladasa is,

I'm a teacher in training with him,

Been in his training program for over two years now.

So he's someone that I study with and learn from.

And so the difference is with The Mind Illuminated that it takes both the ancient ways or the ancient ways of meditating and modern science and makes a comprehensive model for people to start meditating and continue on their path.

Is that correct?

Yeah,

That's right.

It's pretty systematic.

A lot of times,

In my experience of like,

I kind of started on the meditative path,

Not really knowing what traditions I kind of landed in.

But there are a couple of different ones that I moved through before I started taking up this style of practice.

And I find that the advice that I get on meditation would be pretty kind of like philosophical and sort of addressed to like a group in a certain moment.

And it was relevant in that moment.

And then I found that in the text that I'd read too,

Kind of like the text that teachers would write were sort of an extension of sort of talks they'd given to their own sanghas or to different communities of people.

What's different about The Mind Illuminated is it's very much like a system of training the mind.

So it can be pretty technical,

But it's pretty specific instruction about what exactly to do when you're sitting down on the meditation cushion.

So it's pretty kind of formulaic.

I think that's kind of why this is such a breakthrough in meditation and why it's resonating with so many people in terms of their practice to take up.

There's not a lot of like,

You don't have to adhere to or subscribe to any sort of dogma or ideology to the practice that really kind of gets down to the nitty gritty of like your meditative experience.

Yeah,

Makes sense.

It resonates with me and my girlfriend practiced for a year before she started to read The Mind Illuminated.

And the moment she started it,

She said,

Everything is so clear,

What I have to do,

What I have to pay attention to,

And it's working.

And that measurable success,

Even though I,

You know,

The measurable factor of that whole approach is what got her motivated again to practice and to continue to do it and do it well,

So to say.

And that seems to be a thing that with more,

Some ancient traditions is quite hard or is even put into a field of speculative,

Like you don't talk about certain things,

They're hidden or they're sort of symbolized in,

Well,

Concepts or ideas.

Well,

I haven't read the whole book,

But it seems that in this book,

It's very clear,

It's very direct approach,

Even to something as something,

Well,

Enlightenment or the arhat,

Arhat path or this whole,

I don't know,

Like in Chan or in Zen,

I know that for instance,

You don't necessarily talk about that.

And in that way,

I think it's also very refreshing,

But opening up this whole conversation about where are you right now in your path?

And are you willing to be open about it?

Yeah,

It's very pragmatic.

And I think it really helps demystify some of the experiences of meditation.

And also just kind of like I was saying from my teaching experience,

It's allowing more people to come together and share what their actual experience is when they sit down to meditate instead of speaking from more like a general or less personal perspectives.

And what that seems to do is actually kind of,

For me especially,

Is open people up to experiences on the cushion that you never really dreamed possible or benefits that you never thought you could kind of have just by sitting down quietly and turning your attention inward and just being on a cushion.

And I think the idea of meditation and mindfulness has really caught on and become more popular.

And then people start to sort of notice a benefit from just taking time to themselves and being still and being quiet.

And then this,

I think,

Kind of takes it to another level where it goes beyond just sort of something like stress reduction or being more mindful to actually systematically looking into the root or the cause of suffering.

And I've seen people come so far in this and benefit from it in ways that they never imagined they would or they never imagined possible,

Myself included.

Yeah,

That's awesome.

And so you shortly talked about how you started with meditation and mindfulness.

And so how did you actually start?

Did you run into it when you were young or how did that work for you?

I actually didn't start meditating until I was in college.

I went to school here in the US in Minnesota.

And I went to a small,

It was like a liberal arts and Christian college,

And I was actually raised in a Christian family.

And I really identified with the Christian religion and it was sort of tied up in who I was to be a Christian.

But it was about the time that I got into college that I started studying what I learned in a more academic context and realized I didn't believe anything because I experienced it to be true.

I just believed it because somebody told me that I had to,

That something bad might happen to me.

And so there's this part of me that I think was genuinely seeking something.

But then I couldn't continue in this path that was more like kind of based on adhering to an ideology because it just didn't resonate with what my actual experience was.

It took me a while to realize that,

But along the way,

In sort of this deconstructing process,

I went to just a community meditation center and got introduced.

I'd never meditated before and I got introduced to it and tried it and just liked it.

I mean,

I liked that.

I just noticed a benefit immediately from sitting quietly and having that time to myself.

So that's how my path started.

I didn't know what type of meditation I was doing,

But it was probably more of a vipassana practice,

Maybe in the Mahasi tradition,

Kind of like a dry insight practice.

And I eventually landed on an organic farm.

I worked as an organic farmer for some years.

And one of the farmers was a Zen teacher.

So we had a Zendo on our farm and I would sit Zazen and I started learning about this do nothing practice.

So I kind of went from this practice that the instruction was kind of like to quiet the mind as best you could.

Notice what was going on.

And then to a practice that was just sit down and do nothing.

And like I said,

I benefited from the practice.

But then when I picked up this,

Eventually came across the teaching methods at Suladasa.

One I was encouraged to practice consistently and daily.

And two,

All of a sudden I had a sort of a manual of how to kind of deal with what I was running into.

So kind of in short,

Those are kind of the traditions that I moved through.

But ultimately,

I think that seeking part of me was really concerned with this question of suffering.

I wanted to know what it was,

Or actually,

I think I had a pretty good idea of what it was,

A little too good of an idea of how it was.

And I was concerned about how to end suffering.

And the way that manifested first for me was really a lot of like the social and political activism.

We used to work in like human rights and immigrant rights campaigns.

And I kind of,

Out doing that,

I kind of exhausted myself.

And that's when I went into the world of organic farming,

And then got involved in the local food movement.

And it was a period of time over kind of two years where I lived alone.

I managed a farm,

But I lived alone on a farm and would meditate every day and started meditating in the style that the benefits of meditation really took off for me.

Cool.

Wow.

So,

I also asked the people in our community if they wanted to ask you some questions.

So I got a few from the people in our community who also practice the mind illuminated.

So first of all,

Someone was interested.

And even though another person said you could Google it,

I still think it's an interesting question.

So what does the name upasaka mean?

And why did you choose to observe the five precepts for the people who don't know what upasaka means?

Yeah.

So upasaka,

So chul das is upasaka chul das.

Upasaka is a title for a lay person.

And I think it's a pretty,

I mean just personally,

I think it's kind of a cool title to have.

The significance of it,

Of taking the vows is,

It's kind of like the closest you can come to being a monk without being a monk.

It's a way to basically say,

I'm really committed to this practice and committed to the lifestyle.

But I'm not becoming a monastic.

I'm not going to remove myself from the world.

I'm actually not still live in the world or live in sort of modern society,

But in this very intentional way.

So I kind of,

I actually decided to take the vows along with,

It was around when I started the teacher training with Chul Dasa.

It just seemed like a way to sort of take seriously and commit to my teaching.

And the process of it was kind of fun actually.

My teaching partner,

Tucker Peck,

Did the vows for me.

And we did it online.

As far as I know,

It's the only upasaka ceremony that's happened online.

And so what was fun about that is that's how I normally teach.

I teach in person.

But a lot of teaching I do happens online,

Just like your community happens online.

And so Tucker was there,

My family came in person,

And then my parents joined from Alabama.

Chul Dasa joined and said a word about kind of taking the upasaka vows.

Some of my fellow teachers in training joined and it was kind of this beautiful experience.

I didn't think it was going to be as fun and beautiful as it was.

But yeah,

That's kind of how it happened for me.

But yeah,

Essentially,

It's just a title for a layperson.

And what I think is really significant about that,

What I love to see in kind of my own practice and others' practice is trying to commit to having a deep practice and a lifestyle that really reflects these vows.

And seeing how that sort of spills out into just a day-to-day life,

How it spills out into your work and relationships,

And not only what benefit that brings to you,

But what benefit it brings to others.

Right.

And so these five precepts,

If I remember correctly,

It's abstaining from taking life.

Help me out here.

Yeah,

That's right.

The refraining from harming or destroying living beings.

There's a precept to refrain from taking that which is not given,

Refraining from stealing.

There's a precept of refraining from sexual misconduct,

Refraining from wrong speech.

And then the fifth one being refraining from activities and behaviors that lead to dullness of mind or refraining from.

.

.

There's different ways that that precept is translated or interpreted,

But that's how I took it.

And that's the way that I like it,

Is refraining from.

Right.

Yeah.

And that's something that is taken from Buddhism,

Right?

It's from the Buddhist,

So to say,

Tradition.

And that is still something that is important even in this day to meditation practice.

Is that correct to say it like that?

Yeah.

Or is it more of a dedication that is just something you really wanted to commit to?

Right,

Right.

I think it is totally personal.

I think just kind of given my background in history,

I very much teach from Buddhist perspectives and study and learn in this Buddhist tradition and try to know more about Buddhist perspectives.

But I don't necessarily do it because they're Buddhist.

I kind of do it in spite of it being Buddhist.

It's the best framework that I have.

I think all the world's religious traditions and spiritual traditions,

There's kind of knowledge and value there.

In some of the courses that I teach,

I like to cover the Four Noble Truths and look at it from that idea of it's the Four Noble Experiments or the Four Noble Hypotheses.

Your mode of experimentation is meditation.

So you're using meditation to gather data and what matters is that you do what accords with your own experience.

That part of the Four Noble Truths and the Fourth Noble Truth is it leads to,

There's a way out.

There's a way out of the dukkha.

Meditation is arguably two and a half parts of the Eightfold Path.

What I see a lot in the West,

I guess,

Is there's a lot of emphasis on meditation.

What eventually starts happening is,

The way that I put it,

Is that what you do on the cushion affects what's happening off the cushion and what's happening off the cushion affects what happens on the cushion.

When meditation starts becoming central to your life because you see it has this benefit to you,

Not because I say there's a benefit,

But you genuinely start experiencing a benefit and decide you want to prioritize it.

There's inevitably this part of reflection and looking at your own idea of what's ethical,

What's moral,

What's a good lifestyle to have so that I can just be ready to sit down and practice.

I think little by little people on their own start to find it's important to incorporate that.

It's nothing that I actually very overtly set out and say,

Hey,

You've got to do things this way.

I actually maybe here and there throughout the idea that for the most part,

Just whenever people come to that on their own,

Just have conversations around it.

This has been my process,

My experience,

This is what works for me.

It's actually kind of beautiful to see what people come to on their own and what works for them and for them as well.

Right.

So it's no doctrine that you have to do it or you have to follow these things when you're on a meditative path.

Also speaking from my own experience that you land on it anyway.

It doesn't matter which approach you take,

You will go through certain things where you notice like,

Hmm,

Well,

You know,

If I'm not being honest throughout the day,

It comes back in my meditation practice or yeah,

So it makes a lot of sense.

And I think it's really cool to see that happening organically instead of doctrinally,

So to say.

Yeah,

I think that's really cool.

Yeah,

Yeah.

And I think a lot of our intentions to sort of be healthier in our lifestyles,

Live more wholesome lives and medicate,

It's like kind of comes from this place of wanting to feel better,

Wanting to do better and really a place to like,

Wanting the best for yourself and others.

It's a really,

Really wonderful intention to put forward but out there.

Yeah,

No doubt.

So there was another question.

Someone asked,

Which path of enlightenment are you on?

Are you using the Theravada four path model or use another model?

Get right to the bottom of everything.

It's okay,

You can answer it whatever way you feel comfortable with.

It's really,

Yeah.

So I usually look at this from like the four path model in Theravada and Buddhism.

I didn't think that awakening was like a real thing.

I thought it was this mythological thing and then it happened to me.

And then someone,

My teacher sort of pointed out,

It's like,

Oh yeah,

That's what happens when you awaken.

And that being like the first half of Sivapana's dream entry.

And I even remember going to like,

I went to a local Sangha and it was this meditation group that I kind of recall really fondly.

I think I'd go meet with them maybe every other week.

And they had like a reading group and they were reading like the Heart Sutra or something.

And so we'd meditate,

Read this Sutra and then talk about it.

And before we started that week,

I had had this awakening experience,

This deep insight experience and was sort of processing and integrating that.

And the leader of the group that night,

When she opened before our discussion,

Cynically was like,

So did anybody get enlightened this week?

And like,

I remember thinking that was so funny of like this place of like,

I had started going down this very kind of direct experience,

A very experiential path.

And it led me to this genuine state of insight.

And then we kind of went into this Dharma group that was sort of operating from this sort of conceptual,

Intellectual level,

Philosophical level,

And sort of believing that awakening was this mythological thing.

So I think this is one thing that's characteristic of,

I guess what we could call like pragmatic Dharma in the West is that the idea is that awakening is not a mythological thing.

It's actually possible.

And not only is it possible,

It's possible for anyone and it's possible in this lifetime.

So yeah,

So it was in those two years that I was living on my own and meditating quite consistently that this experience just arose.

And I've been kind of working from there.

I don't focus too heavily on the four path model anymore.

I think just because I see so much,

As great as it is to have like practical and tangible instruction about practice,

I see so much kind of coming from that place of like wanting to feel better.

That people are hoping for this moment where something happens and then all of the problems go away.

And it's like I definitely was sort of in this camp of wanting to find that place.

And the mind illuminated has these 10 stages.

And I thought from the outset of reading them,

If I could just get to stage 10,

All of my problems would go away.

I found out,

Well,

It's not about the 10 stages,

It's about insight.

So there's,

Okay,

So it's about insight.

There's this four path model of insight.

If I could just get to the fourth path,

Then all my problems would go away.

And I remember on a meditation retreat with Shuladasa,

One says,

Felt like I really wanted to get the answer to this question of when it ends,

Where's the point of arrival?

And Shuladasa said in an interview with him that it was,

Fourth path was just becoming arhat,

It was just a convenient place for the Buddha to stop.

It goes beyond fourth path.

And essentially another way that I heard him put it,

He'd say,

Becoming an arhat is just the beginning.

So where I am in this process,

I mean,

There's definitely been an awakening that fits pretty strongly with Sotapanna for me.

And then I'm still working in this place of understanding the source of attachments,

So looking into tana,

To craving and aversion,

And how that leads into the formation of this sense of a separate self.

And so I'd say that's a lot of what my practice is right now,

Is seeing what feels sticky still and where the self is forming.

And being really open to that,

Opening up to it.

And so when you wake up in the morning and you go sit on your cushion to practice,

What is it that you practice?

Is it awareness of breath?

Is there a certain,

Yeah,

What is your practice at this point?

Yeah,

So I still kind of work within this,

Just because I'm teaching so much from the Mind Illuminated and studying it,

I still work in that 10-stage model.

My practice,

I actually really enjoyed something that I'm starting to talk with people more about is this practice that can be called like not a sound practice,

Where you use sound as a meditation object.

And there's an inner sound that you can find,

Kind of almost like an inner,

Well an inner noise that can be located,

And if you put your attention on it,

You can find that consistent.

And I can use that like you would use the breath as a meditation object.

And I kind of use that to cultivate more,

Cultivate a state of shamatha,

Basically.

From there,

Just kind of like move into just a place that feels more like a place of being rather than a place of doing.

And there's a good portion of my practice that's sort of that experience.

There's another part of my practice there,

What I've found is just because you have an awakening experience,

Just because there's waking up,

I guess in the words of like Ken Wilberg,

There's waking up and cleaning up.

That's sort of like my existential place in the world,

The questioning and thinking about the universe and who I am and that feels quite peaceful.

There's a sense of sort of,

I guess just peace with that,

A surrender to how things are.

But what remains for me that stood out and become really apparent over the last year or two especially is kind of the psychological stuff that's there for me,

The things that still feel sticky.

And they have to do with my own personal psychology.

So another big part of my practice has been actually not so traditional aspects of meditation like psychotherapy.

I speak with,

There's maybe two different therapists that I work with along with having like my Sangha and meditation teachers to talk to.

I actually consider therapy as actually a pretty crucial part of my meditation practice these days.

It's helping me really integrate in ways that I realized I had not integrated.

That makes a lot of sense.

For me,

Psychology and this being reflective of who you are and what you went through,

What's going on with your emotions but also the why behind these things and the dissolving even of,

Well call it neurosis or call it whatever you want but this sort of layers of just,

I don't know what it is,

Just this weird behavior that sometimes for me it comes up when I suddenly get angry about something or I have these outlook on things and I'm still like seeing them and wondering like,

So they're still here and what you say makes sense to really dig into I suppose just the whole of your experience and your being in the present but also what you carry from the past and work with that as I suppose meditation or mindfulness practice is,

That really resonates with me.

I think that's very important and it's also something I've encountered with meeting with people who sometimes have a very deep practice and then they can get annoyed with something or something happens emotionally and I think like wow,

Even though you have a deep meditation practice on the pillow,

There are still emotional things going on that you haven't dealt with or work with because they sometimes only appear when you talk with people,

When you go out shopping,

Get your clothes,

I don't know,

Simple things sometimes that we sometimes tend to overlook in the practice and I think it's beautiful as you point out to just work with all these facets of our being and our existence and make them into a meditative practice so to say.

Absolutely,

Yeah,

Yeah.

As actually as one of my therapists pointed out to me as also a meditator,

That the freedom from our insights kind of comes in their integration.

I kind of saw this path as like you have these deep insights out in the woods and then you're just kind of socially awkward as a result of that.

But this goes in line with like that kind of the beauty of like these Upasaka vows,

Being a layperson is actually seeing how these insights integrate and if you're trying to integrate you start to notice this harshness of this conflict of like,

Well if I feel sort of this sense of this deep sense of sort of being in presence when I'm on the cushion but then I get agitated and angry,

Do things that are harmful and that are unskillful off the cushion,

That creates a sense of tension or it just feels very grating in contrast to the experience that you just had on the meditation cushion.

So I think there's sort of this trap that we can fall into as practitioners where,

You know,

If kind of like deep insight comes from this place of seeing that the self is not separate,

We're left with sort of this intellectual idea that any sense of self is bad and it needs to go away.

So when it arises,

When I become a self that I don't want to be,

I will pretend like that doesn't happen or I will push it away and say no,

No,

No,

That's not me.

And actually for me the process seems to be,

And again it's actually taken the work of therapy more than just meditation,

To understand this and integrate it well is kind of really.

.

.

And I have had meditation teachers who pointed this out to me before,

But it took a while for me to truly experientially know when it was happening or what it is.

But essentially it's like being aware of and completely open to and sort of curious about these times where this solid sense of self is forming and especially if that sense of self is forming around something that feels unwholesome or not seeing that as a problem but just like any distraction in meditation kind of opening up to it.

It's like,

Huh,

You're here,

What's this about?

What can I learn from this moment?

That really kind of has been breaking down some sort of rigidity in my practice and making me feel much more honest and open to what is and more vulnerable with the people that I come in contact with and talking about meditation,

Both with my sangha and also just with my relationships outside of sangha.

So I'm so grateful to be working through that path and that process.

Yeah,

That's amazing.

It has to do a lot with acceptance just of the current situation and whatever comes up.

And I don't know why but sometimes when sitting for a long time where we're doing these practices,

The simple thing of acceptance sometimes,

I don't know where it goes,

It just seems to go into a place of,

Yeah,

But I want my mind to be clear or I want it to not be busy with any thought.

And that sometimes seems to give some conflict for some practitioners,

This idea of acceptance and then of thoughts and then them coming and going and you're just not attaching to them.

And at least for me,

That was really an eye opener,

This acceptance of like,

Yeah,

It comes up and that it is what it is.

Yeah,

Absolutely.

It's kind of like,

The example that I always give in talking about it is kind of like you see something.

So a bird flies in front of you and you see the bird and it just is,

Right?

And it's one thing to know that it happened and there's another to be like,

Well,

That happened and I wish it did it.

I'm going to try to make it so that I did not see that bird fly in front of me.

And that's an impossible task,

Right?

So yeah,

These things that are happening,

It seems like so much of the path is really just becoming aware,

Seeing that they're there and honoring that,

You know,

Like being honest with it.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I have another question.

Someone asked,

Is Samatha at will,

A good description for the mastery of stage 10?

Yeah,

So stage 10 in The Mind Illuminated is about,

You've cultivated Samatha on the cushion,

Stage nine.

And Samatha is,

It's this,

It's a unique conscious state.

And the reason why you would want to cultivate a state of Samatha is that it's a really conducive space towards investigating how things truly are.

So you know,

Seeing things as impermanent,

Seeing that there's inherently no self in all conscious phenomena that's arising.

This is something that your capacity to investigate this is just very skillful in the place of Samatha.

So that state of Samatha is,

It's impermanent like everything else.

Just because you attain it or achieve it doesn't mean that it's necessarily always happening or always available.

But stage 10 would be the practice of extending Samatha off of the cushion,

Having that experience of Samatha stay with you in your day to day life.

All right,

Clear.

So coming back to the young you being a raised Christian and the current you,

How has meditation changed your life?

Yeah,

It's a,

That's a great question.

It's nice to reflect on because sometimes you lose the forest through the trees,

Like you're kind of sitting down and focusing on what you're doing right now.

And it's really actually pretty amazing for me to look back on my sense of sort of well being.

I think I originally got into,

I think around the time that I really committed to meditating consistently was for mental health reasons,

Like just struggling with feeling good and being able to be a functional and productive person.

And I always tell people that the idea of equanimity was really profound to me and equanimity,

I like the definition of it as like the absence of craving and aversion towards whatever is arising.

But like maybe a clear way to put it,

It's like if you're out in the ocean and you're this little boat in the sea and the big waves come,

You rise with the waves and you fall with the waves,

But equanimity is like kind of becoming a barge on that ocean.

So the highs aren't so high and the lows aren't so low.

And the process of meditation,

Within just a few months,

I started noticing a really great degree of mindfulness and kind of pretty immediately that there is a stability that I'd never quite experienced before and didn't think was really possible.

Or if it was going to be possible,

I was going to find the right drug I could take that would make it possible.

So it was pretty amazing that this was coming in a way that seemed that I felt empowered to do it.

I can do this.

This is just an experience from my own mind.

So I'd say that not only a short period of time did my mental health get to a place of stability that I'd never really experienced before,

It kind of gained this new baseline and it just got better and better.

And so I would say the problems that I face in the world aren't so much of how to be a healthy and functional person now,

Although I'd still keep an eye towards that.

That's still essential in my day-to-day life is maintaining a sense of health and functionality.

But I feel like a lot of my focus now is just more so of what's worth doing?

How can I spend my time in ways that are of benefit to myself,

But especially towards my community?

How can I better serve people?

How can I really become efficient in living a compassionate life?

So yeah,

The benefits I've gotten from this have been,

Like I said,

It's kind of hard to put it into words.

The experience that I thought I was going to get from it was just a little bit of calmness and a little bit of stress reduction.

And then it's turned into this transformation of like the staple mental health and also an experience of just peace was my place in the universe.

I never thought that day would come,

You know,

But for younger Paul,

He was very concerned about,

You know,

What does this all mean?

And now it's kind of like just a joy to be kind of a part of this process that's unfolding.

Well,

That's very profound.

I mean,

You came from a place of,

I suppose,

Not being happy with yourself and the world to a place of,

Well,

Peace with yourself in the world.

And I think that's,

Yeah,

That's very profound.

So for our listeners,

What would you give as an advice?

What is something that you believe is an important lesson or insight to share with others?

Well,

I imagine for people listening to this podcast,

You know,

You maybe have a meditation practice or maybe you have one that's quite established or maybe you're starting to do it or maybe you're interested in it.

And the piece of advice I give is actually kind of just a practical one.

I really like trying to sort of get someone who's interested in the idea of practice to a place of like knowing tangibly what to do when you sit down and meditate and feeling like this is something that you kind of have clear direction.

And so what I'd say is that the instruction that I got starting out was like,

Quiet your mind or do nothing.

And if we put that in the context of the mind illuminated,

That's really great advice for someone who's in stage eight.

And it's not the greatest advice for someone who's in stage two.

So stage eight would be a place of characterized by like effortless,

Stable attention that you sit down and meditate and it's like the meditation happens to you,

You no longer have to try to meditate anymore.

So if that's your experience,

I'd highly recommend working towards stillness or doing something that's more of a do nothing practice.

But if your experience is you sit down in the cushion and you get distracted,

There's mind wandering,

Things like that.

Then that instruction of quieting the mind isn't so practical or useful.

In fact,

It sort of seems like we kind of beat ourselves up over like being distracted in meditation if we think we're supposed to have a quiet mind.

So the thing that I would say is when you sit down to meditate,

Just know that your mind isn't one single person in the driver's seat.

It's more like a Congress up there and that there is one driver's seat,

But there's a whole bunch of different people that take over that driver's seat.

So there's an agenda that goes forth that says,

Hey,

Let's meditate.

And then there's about a million other agendas that say,

Hey,

Let's do anything other than put our attention on the breath.

And you become aware of that and that might feel a little bit overwhelming,

But actually you're succeeding.

You're doing exactly what you're supposed to do.

You're becoming aware.

And as we become aware of the inner landscape of the mind,

It's not a problem that we're distracted.

In fact,

It's good that we're distracted.

It's good that the attention moves around.

This keeps us safe.

This keeps us alive.

What's radically different about what we're doing in meditation is we're kind of asking the attention to stand still for a little bit and come to something somatic like breath sensations.

So I just say that when you sit down to do this and put your attention on the breath,

So one,

As much as you can,

Enjoy it.

And two,

When you get distracted,

Celebrate that.

And the mind illuminated this moment of knowing that your distraction is called the aha moment.

And it's like,

Congratulate yourself for noticing.

You want to create this positive feedback loop of like,

Ah,

Good,

I noticed I was distracted from the breath and then returned.

For a lot of us,

I feel like that moment is more like an oh shit moment.

I was like,

Oh,

It's not going the way it's supposed to go and I'm doing something wrong.

And so I would just kind of encourage people to know that when you sit down to meditate,

The mind is a really complex system and there's a lot going on there.

And essentially all you're doing is just training the mind.

And so as you do that,

Just like learning anything else,

Try to enjoy the process and be as kind to yourself in the process as you can.

And that's really where you start to see the benefits.

And paradoxically,

This is actually what seems to speed up progress the most is kind of relaxing and enjoying it.

All right.

Well,

Thanks for that advice.

And thank you for joining me on this podcast episode.

It was great to talk to you and hear about the mind illuminated and everything you're doing.

Yeah,

Thanks so much for having me.

It was wonderful to talk with you.

If you enjoyed what Upasaka Upali talked about,

Make sure to check out his website,

Mentioned in the description of this episode.

On Friday,

The 15th of March at seven in the evening,

Central European time,

He will give a 45 minute meditation class in our online community on Discord.

If you'd like to be there,

Make sure to go to our website,

Projectmindfulness.

Com.

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Don't forget to subscribe to this podcast if you enjoyed this talk.

And thank you for listening and have a great day.