I welcome you to this talk.
The question we are asking is,
What are the three levels of mindfulness?
This can be understood by a concept in Buddhism known as Trikaya.
Trikaya means three dimensions or three bodies.
And the Trikaya,
The three levels are Dharmakaya Nirmalkaya and Sambhog Kaya.
First,
Let's talk about Nirman Gaya.
Nirmankaya is kind of the level that we are usually aware of in the West.
In Western mindfulness practices,
We usually focus on The Nirmankaya.
Nirmankaya means the world of forms.
So we usually focus on the body,
For example.
Are we focused on emotions?
Are we focused on thoughts?
But this is not what mindfulness is limited to.
Mindfulness goes much deeper.
And then it goes into the realm of dharmakaya.
Dharmakaya means the realm of emptiness or formlessness.
And this is when you become aware of the awareness itself.
Jiddu Krishnamurti calls this choiceless awareness,
In which you are not aware of something.
You are aware of the awareness itself.
You are aware of the emptiness,
Which is your true essence.
You are aware of the void.
But then it goes much deeper into Sambhogkaya.
The Buddha said,
When you enter the space of nothingness.
Everything becomes known.
Which means that this Emptiness is not really empty,
It is full.
In quantum physics,
There is a parallel concept to this.
It is the concept of the quantum vacuum.
That when they would create a vacuum,
They would find that this vacuum does not have zero energy.
In fact it has a lot of energy so much energy that Richard Feynman said that if you take one teacup of empty space,
It has so much energy that it can boil all the oceans of the world.
This is also known as zero-point energy in quantum physics.
This means that When we enter the space of nothingness or emptiness,
It's not really empty.
It is full.
It is full of deeper experiences.
And many people in different traditions have these deeper experiences.
For Christians,
These are the experiences of God or angels.
For shamans,
These are the experiences of ancestors or spirits.
For the Buddhists,
These are the experience of deities,
Or for the Hindus,
These are the experience of gods and goddesses.
So,
To also be aware of these spiritual experiences is also mindfulness.
Now,
How does this help us?
When we think of mindfulness,
We then don't only limit ourselves to the mindfulness of forms or body or thoughts or emotions.
We also become aware of our true nature,
Of the empty nature or the awareness.
And then we also become aware of our visions that come from that emptiness.
We become aware of our visions.
We become aware of our dreams.
We become aware of deeper spiritual experiences.
So this enhances our practice of mindfulness.
And I hope you found value in this talk and thank you for joining me today.
