Good morning,
Good afternoon.
Welcome to another episode of AUA,
Ask Us Anything.
And welcome Josh.
Hold this Denny,
What's going on?
How are you?
Hey,
I'm doing good,
I'm doing good.
This one I didn't really have to prepare,
You did all the preparation work,
Which is great.
Most of it.
Yeah.
So the idea here is that,
If I count my fingers,
We have done 63 episodes of weekly practice,
Another 63 weeks of weekly practice in English.
So we actually started in the very beginning of 2020,
In January timeframe,
Actually,
Before the country kind of shut down.
And of course,
Then after that,
We did it very consistently.
And so we thought that maybe this would be our annual review to kind of talk about what we have done,
And so forth.
And so this is gonna be a bunch of questions.
Most of them were asked by Josh,
And some of that was asked by some students that I summarized.
So the title of today's talk is Mindful Practice of Body,
Chi,
And Mind.
So now just keep in mind that this is already a slight deviation from our original teaching,
Which is mindfulness of the body,
Mindfulness of the feeling,
Mindfulness of the mind,
And then mindfulness of the body.
So we're actually taking a slightly different approach,
And I'll talk about why that is.
Much of that has to do with just my own practice versus the needs of my students.
And so we are kind of taking the mindfulness of body and kind of expanding it into the mindfulness of body,
Chi,
And mind.
And we'll also talk about some of our personal experiences with practice as well.
That's really the point.
That's really the point.
So this reflects our personal experience.
If there is a personal experience,
Right.
Oh,
There is.
Yeah,
On one level.
Yeah.
So that's general summary and overview.
So why don't you take this one?
Yeah,
This is a question that came up.
Well,
Even with this too,
How many sessions have you missed?
I mean,
You've only missed a couple,
Right,
Or a few every day since then,
Right?
And then also we'll just tie it in with this question that's on the screen now.
What are the common themes that you've noticed in the past 62 weeks that come up during practice?
And you've touched a little bit of that.
Well,
One of the theme for the last 62 weeks is that because of the pandemic,
We were forced to stay home.
And so we don't really have a venue anymore to get together practice.
Now,
Given that we never did with the English one,
Right.
So this is actually,
The English one is actually a reflection of what we do with the Cantonese version of that and the Cantonese version is essentially nonstop at one point seven days a week,
And now we have the Saturday devoted to the English and Sunday,
I kind of take a day off because I wanted to reserve that for eventually when we go back to prison work.
But so essentially we have five days of Cantonese practice and then one day of English practice,
Both the morning and the afternoon.
Now the afternoon of course came much later,
But the morning one,
We started pretty early.
We started pretty early.
So the theme number one is in the beginning,
In the beginning it was just a place for people to relieve their initial shock and stress due to the shelter in place.
So we actually have very different set of students in the very beginning.
A lot of people just got stuck at home.
And so the English class in the beginning was actually quite popular with that new set of students.
Now I remember at one point,
One of the students asked if we could bring in,
If she could bring in her mom who actually doesn't speak English.
And so then we started the bilingual.
Was that kind of weird that we start English first and then became bilingual?
And then eventually the Cantonese class took over and then we went back to English only on Saturday.
So the theme is the progression of theme.
The initial one was just taking care of people's very obvious needs or having to have a place to practice,
To relieve the stress and the anxiety.
And then I think that lasted a few months and then things start to open up and people start to understand how they can go back to quote unquote normal life.
So a lot of the students were also professionals in terms of healing,
Doing all kinds of physical therapies and so forth.
And so they eventually find a way to go back to work because they're now considered essential workers.
And so that initial way for students kind of dissipate.
And I don't remember even having a single one anymore from that initial batch.
Then it kind of,
As it became the Cantonese,
Then we have a group of what I always call the small army of Cantonese speaking grandmothers.
And my mom become sort of the surrogate student for me because around that time,
My dad was having a lot of issues with his health and my mom was always been the caregivers,
But now become much more intensive.
And so she started to have a lot of physical pains and so forth.
And so our practice started to gear towards fixing those physical pains,
As opposed to just like a spiritual practice.
And so the idea of chi,
The idea of the 12 energy lines,
The yin and the yang start to come together.
And then over time,
That sort of became the theme.
And then so at the end of last year,
Then we tried to get back into having more English students because for a while,
All of the English students were just Cantonese speaking students who are capable of speaking English.
And it was kind of strange because we actually had a class that everybody was able to speak Cantonese,
But we kind of artificially made it into English class,
Even though the students are the same.
And we tried different things to kind of open up the forum.
We had some initial experiment with Zoom.
They started having this on Zoom platform,
But it turned out not to be so successful.
And then I was then,
Josh,
You were the one that suggests to me,
That encouraged me,
Prompt me to,
Hey,
How about this thing called the Insight Timer?
Because we and I both know that this is a good tool for our own practice,
But around that time,
They started to have these video livecast.
So it took,
I applied for it.
I remember you told me and I applied right away,
But then it took time for them to eventually went through the orientation.
So by early part of this year,
We were able to start using the platform and then that just opened up the floodgate.
And so like,
I remember Josh,
You and I were talking about,
Now we're finally preaching to the choir.
And so now after probably close to,
I would say almost 20 weeks now,
Of having our Saturday practice done on the Insight Timer and then live stream on both YouTube and Facebook,
We have close to 350 students between the two classes.
And actually the students are very generous.
They know that we are raising money essentially for Mappa,
Mid America Buddhist Association,
And they were very generous donating money to us.
Even Insight Timer takes a pretty big cut.
But on the other hand,
We got everything for free.
And so the idea,
The thing has evolved.
And so right now we kind of focus on this three things.
So there's three things that really mix up for what I would call health,
As opposed to just being unsick.
Unsick is sort of the Western concept of healthy,
Which is,
Go to the doctor if you're sick and he will make you unsick.
But that's a very different concept of being healthy.
And so in our concept of healthy is really being healthy,
Both in the physical domain,
This physical body being very healthy.
And then the other one is being in the energy domain,
The energy that measures the chi-diamond.
And then finally we'll get towards the end,
It's also the mind.
So I think we have over the last 62 weeks or so,
We have the kind of develop a pretty nice platform.
Yes,
Indeed so.
And that goes along with the next slide,
What you just wrapped up there with our goals.
And joining with Denny,
I just,
My part,
I mean,
Maybe this is off,
But I just noticed so much fear when we first started.
So this was so important.
And then one thing Denny's also done for part of it is the Metta practice,
The loving kindness practice,
Which is just so lovely.
It's such a protective practice as well.
And it brings in deliberately attention on good energy and just friendliness and wishing people well.
And that helps with the whole fear thing.
And now I've noticed how maybe it was a practice that helped transform some of that fear,
Or maybe it's just people have gotten more accustomed to how things are now,
Or maybe a combination of the two.
And when I joined first,
I was going like maybe every day there for a little bit,
I wanna say.
And also I even joined one of the Cantonese only classes that was able to go along as well.
Yeah,
And you were actually improving your Cantonese quite a bit.
Which is not hard to do when you know zero.
I know Shifu,
I know it's one,
Right?
Well,
You're improving on your Cantonese almost as well as my mom is improving on her English because she comes on Saturday,
Which is amazing.
Yes,
Isn't it?
She just comes on Saturday too,
And she just follow.
It's great because it's a visual thing.
So if you're a visual learner,
There's not much of a language,
Or as much a language barrier anyway.
So you can just follow along visually,
Right?
And you get a lot of out there.
Surprisingly,
Surprisingly,
It's the same as like going to a,
I'll tell you a story.
So one time I brought my son,
Who doesn't really speak that much Chinese,
Definitely doesn't read.
I brought my son to Taiwan for like a three day kind of Buddhist practice where you just like,
Other than a couple hours that you sleep at night,
It's all chanting and all that.
And I look over and he was having a great time.
And I couldn't understand why because he doesn't understand the language.
And it's just like you said,
Josh,
Sometimes having full utilization of your faculty,
Your ear,
Your eye,
It's actually a distraction.
It's actually a distraction.
So come back to this slide goal.
So I will talk about my personal goal and hopefully much of that aligns with Josh own other goals.
And I think we do.
My personal goal is we have a pretty robust Sangha for the Cantonese speaking.
It's surprising that it hasn't grown that much.
It's just very hard for people to just come and practice every day like that.
But we have grown,
We have grown.
The good news is that we haven't lost a single customer.
So it took a long time to add one and then we don't lose one.
So that's,
I haven't been a businessman.
I know that's important.
But the Cantonese one has a life of its own that it serves a community.
And I think when the neighborhood temple opens up,
Now we really get to be more exposed to the other Cantonese students and that takes on a life of its own.
The thing that I focus more is really on the English speaking,
The Saturday one.
And I wanna go back to the evolution.
So we started in Saturday morning.
And so of course a lot of,
In Saturday morning is great for people in North America.
Because it's eight o'clock,
So it's only 10 o'clock or 11 o'clock in the East Coast.
And it's good for people in Europe.
So it's actually late evening for them,
So it's great.
So we actually get a lot of students from the European country.
But it's very,
Very tough for the people in Asia.
So of course a lot of students says,
All right,
When are you gonna do an evening class?
And I know why,
I know why.
Even for us,
Sometimes it's just hard for us to juggle.
So having an evening class was good.
But then I didn't wanna just have another evening class.
Because then,
I haven't been in business for a long time.
I don't believe in consumer choices.
You know,
It's like the Costco idea.
Don't give them too many choices,
Because then they have a hard time to choose.
So I didn't wanna make the morning and afternoon to be identical.
And then somehow this idea came,
Because one student actually came and he says,
Hey,
You know,
I'm actually a caregiver for my brother.
And long story.
So I said,
Well,
How about we create another class in the afternoon,
Six o'clock.
Which turned out to be perfect for the people in Asia.
And so the morning and the afternoon now has its own characteristics.
The morning tend to be much more,
I would say,
Like dynamic,
Much more energy,
Energetic.
So we sit for 30 minutes and then we stand for 30 minutes.
And then for those who wants to follow,
We do this,
You know,
For the lack of a better word,
It's the mother of Qigong.
Very intense,
Very,
Very,
And we sit again.
So by the time we finish,
It's out and half.
You know,
By the time we finish.
So the evening class is all sitting,
Which turned out to be great for the elderly.
And it's great for the people who are bound to chairs or wheelchairs or bed or whatever.
And it's great for people who are caregivers who are trying to learn something that they can then use for their endeavor.
But because we can't sit,
We can only sit.
So we can't put all the stuff in that one hour.
The side benefit of that is that we actually have a little bit more time and it's a little bit more leisurely.
And what that means is that we can then focus more on the mind.
By the time,
In the morning,
By the time we're done with all the little,
You know,
Movements,
We really don't have time to work on the mind,
Right?
And so as things evolve,
The afternoon class tend to be more and more on the mind.
And I like to continue to do that.
And I think that Josh mentioned about,
You know,
Leaving some room for the meta and then,
You know,
And which by the way is really,
Really important for both caregivers and caretakers,
You know,
Care providers as well as care receivers.
Because I know for a fact that for example,
My dad is suffering both diabetes and dementia,
But the hardest part is not even the body.
The hardest part is just deal with all that emotion pain.
And so this is a common theme because if the overall theme of our morning after the practice is about healing,
Self healing,
And I think one of the things you said,
Josh,
Was very good in that if you just let your body,
Just let your body be free,
It will heal by yourself because all animals,
All species in the animal kingdom is capable of self healing.
And so what we're doing is by working on the chi and the energy line is really allowing the body to heal itself.
And then all we're doing is taking a logical extension of that to say,
Hey,
How about healing of the mind?
And healing of the mind really starts with trauma,
That we all have trauma.
And now if you take that further,
These are trauma from the past,
You know,
Even from your past life.
So the Buddhist teaching,
We taught that karma,
But karma is essentially a comic trauma.
And so how do you heal that?
And so this idea of a meta,
And we did that a few times,
And I think we will continue to do more and more as really like the closing parentheses on afternoon practice is to bring out that meta.
So that would be my personal goal.
And I think that I'm using Josh as a reflector to making sure that I'm on the right path.
And I think that more or less coincides with your goal as well,
Doesn't it?
It does.
And these are all,
That's why I'm involved in this.
And Denny will patch me in on the insight timer things through audio,
Through Zoom.
So we kind of get away with that.
I don't know if you caught getting with it,
But I chime in at the end and we take questions on Saturday.
And yeah,
The meta,
Because everything starts with the mind,
Right?
The first line of the Dhammapada,
The translation I like is,
All phenomenon is preceded by mind,
Led by mind and made by mind.
So that it all starts with the mind as well.
However,
You know,
We have to,
The mind is rooted in the body too.
But the great thing about these Brahmavi Hara practices,
Heart quality practices like meta and compassion too,
These are really important just to tie everything together.
And I think forgiveness practice is interesting as well.
So,
You know,
We can forgive others who have wronged us or perceived that of wrongness.
So we can,
And then we can ask for forgiveness from them.
And we can also forgive ourselves too.
And only when it's time and feels right to the extent that we feel like we can do it authentically,
Right?
So there's a whole other practice for that as well.
And that just,
It's not so much for the other person.
It's almost like taking a burden from us that we carry around like a grudge.
I know I've held grudges in the past with people,
But it doesn't do anything towards them.
But when we can forgive,
And it's just like setting that burden down because we don't need to carry that anymore.
I think that's another healing of body spirit as well.
So yeah,
And Denny,
You know,
In the physical aspect is very important because I pretty much quit doing like a weekly yoga practice that I had.
And this has taken the place.
And I find this just as helpful,
If not more helpful than just the regular asana yoga practice.
Just not to,
Actually at the beginning,
And we still do a few exercises that are really similar to yoga.
And you know,
Denny and I have talked about,
You know,
How yoga ties in to this.
And also we've got that planned for the part of the rest of the show here too.
Yeah.
So can I just briefly coming back to kind of take some of what you said and kind of emphasize it a little bit.
Coming back to this idea of being a caregiver.
So my mother-in-law passed away.
And so now out of the two sets of parents,
Four,
Two have passed away and now only my parents are left.
And so my kids came home for the funeral and other siblings,
Other cousins came home.
And more than one of them came up to me.
Well,
The one I can talk about is my daughter and her boyfriend came up to me separately on their own and says,
Hey,
You know,
I really learned a lot about how you and mom take care of your parents,
You know,
Take care of their grandparents,
Their compassion and their loving kindness.
And so at one point I explained that,
And this is something again about the goal is to really hopefully taking what we learned and eventually find a community,
A fellowship of caregivers and care receivers and really take what we do and kind of using the business term is vertically market,
You know,
Vertically package for that,
You know?
And so I am of the opinion that if you think of your responsibility as a caregiver,
As a responsibility or service,
That is gonna be very,
Very tough.
It is gonna be very exhausting.
And eventually you will burn that candle because you are burning it from all ends and it would extinguish.
And it's a very,
Very tough thing.
So statistically,
Those who are caregivers have a high,
Very high probability of them or themselves being the reverse because it's so emotional.
So my experience and this is again,
My goal is to try to convince people that they need to think of the caregiving as a spiritual practice,
That this is in fact a practice.
It is the ultimate practice of Metta,
Right?
But not so much Metta as in giving,
But Metta as in receive,
Which is kind of weird because as you are providing care for someone,
You are actually providing care for yourself.
So when we talk about forgiveness,
The prerequisites for forgiveness is tolerant and you have to learn to be tolerant of your own pain and your own shortcomings.
So I don't wanna talk too much because there's so much that we can talk about,
But when we talk about goal and for example,
I like to think that 62 weeks from today,
We'll be in a place where we have a fellowship of caregivers and care receivers who can really treat this as a spiritual practice.
And we're basically doing all the same thing,
The sort of the physical practice,
The physical exercise,
The physical fitness is to strengthen our body,
Strengthen our family's body.
Then the chi is another aspect of that and then finally the mind.
But ultimately one has to really think of this as a spiritual practice.
Yes,
And this is a great platform too for something like that because we're not segregating out the caregivers and the care receivers,
Right?
They're both,
Both of those demographics are join us on Saturday evening as well,
Right?
And it's so powerful because it's not draining there,
It's recharging.
The new term is called care partners.
So you cannot really think of it as giving and receiving.
You really have to condition and educate yourself,
Both of you as partner.
Because otherwise it would be like it's clashing.
So number one is that it's clashing.
Much of the pain that the caregiver receive is they care too much.
And then the care receivers say,
Wait,
I can't do all that,
Right?
That's one.
The other one is in addition to crashing is that you're both diving.
So the person who needs care is already at the bottom of the pit in terms of the emotional pain.
And now if you can't control your own pain,
And the best you can do is you dive in and you can't help someone when you're both at the bottom of the pit.
That's right.
Anyway,
Anyway.
Instead of diving down,
We wanna lift them up,
Right?
We wanna lift them up.
We wanna find that firm ground.
That's right,
And care for ourself too.
Care for ourself,
So it has to start from within.
Yes,
Yes,
Because we can't take care of anybody else.
We talk about this all the time.
Yeah.
Now,
For those who are listening,
I just wanna add that Josh has been the caregivers in the past.
Yeah,
Somewhat.
So you're not speaking from vacuum entirely.
That's right.
My grandmother,
I visited her,
Definitely not as intensively as Denny,
But she was on a very strong painkiller for many,
Many years.
Her bones were deteriorating from osteoporosis.
My other grandmother did suffer dementia too.
So the things that Denny have experienced,
Some similar experiences as well.
Also,
I wanna say the other two brahmaviharas,
Which are kind of neglected more,
Is the sympathetic or empathetic joy,
Because it's good to have joy for other people's joy.
That's,
You talk about brightening one's spirit and lifting up when we get a chance to be happy for other people's happiness,
Which is the most challenging one for me.
But then equanimity too,
That we realize that,
Okay,
This is like a grandfatherly love,
Where I've seen this,
Been there,
Done that,
And I really wanna care.
However,
We noticed that there is past actions involved from the people and that they're,
Who are caring about,
And they're also responsible for their actions,
Right?
And we're not responsible for their actions,
But we can still care on a balanced level.
Yeah,
So one of the things I talk about in the past is,
I haven't worked in the prison for a little bit over a year and a half,
Of course,
Before 2020,
Before the epidemic.
One of the things that I was so impressed and so humbled is the number of people who are volunteering.
So the San Quentin prison where I was a volunteer,
Have somewhere between 4,
000 and 4,
500,
Maybe even less prisoners,
Inmates,
Separate into three groups.
About 700 of them are people who are on death row because it's only prison in California,
And California still has death row.
So that's a big part of populations.
And then the other part,
The people who wear the orange color,
They're the revolving door.
They come in for six months and then they leave.
So that's called the reception.
That's very violent.
And then the middle are the permanent residents.
They're basically there for life or life with possibility of parole.
So it changes the dynamic because they have a chance to be parole.
So they are gonna work hard.
And so we are actually very welcome.
I don't wanna talk about that too much.
What I wanna talk about is I am so amazed by the number of volunteers.
There are actually more volunteer register than there are inmates.
There are like close to 5,
000 volunteers registered.
And on Sunday,
We have to wait in line to get in because there's so many different group.
Now,
So you have to ask,
What drives people to volunteer in such an adverse environment?
Well,
Of course they wanna do good,
But because,
But in addition,
They feel good.
They actually feel good.
So this is coming back to what Josh said,
Is that if we practice the four immeasurables,
It's the compassion,
It's the loving kindness,
The loving kindness is meta,
The compassion,
The empathy,
Empathetic joy,
And the equanimity.
So these are the things that we wanna introduce to at least to our afternoon clock,
Step by step.
Okay,
All right.
What has been done?
We kinda covered that,
Didn't we?
Yes.
Okay.
We've been introducing rewards,
Okay?
We talk about that too,
I think.
Rewards is- A little bit,
Yes.
Think about it,
I think of it as my spiritual practice so the reward is immeasurable.
We happened to pick up a few bucks.
We actually can pay at minimum wage now on a Saturday practice.
Yeah.
And we've talked about the challenges with language barriers and things being shut down and yes.
Yeah,
Yeah.
Yeah,
So.
But there hasn't been,
You know,
Some of the,
We haven't really been challenged really hard,
You know,
Which is interesting.
I don't feel.
Or well,
Anyway.
Well,
I mean- It's a lot of time involved.
I know Denny- Look,
Look,
If there is no challenges,
Then there's no reason for anything.
That's what I'm saying,
Yeah.
Yeah,
So it's a good kind of challenge.
It's just like,
You know,
We always talk about the good kind of pain.
So that's definitely talk about that.
That's where growth comes from,
Yeah.
Okay,
So Josh has a bunch of questions,
So.
Like always,
Right?
Or like usual.
Go ahead,
What's your question?
Oh yeah,
Yeah,
So this was,
I remember Denny talking one time about,
I got more elaborate notes here,
But he talked about metta being mindfulness of mind,
And I was like,
This is really interesting.
I haven't really heard of this before.
Denny,
Do you know what I'm talking about here?
Oh yeah,
I do,
I do.
So let's talk about- Take it over here.
Yeah,
So let's talk about,
I hear echo.
Yeah,
I don't know why.
You turn yourself off,
I think.
You turn off your voice.
Yeah,
I muted the microphone.
Are you still getting echo?
Yeah,
A little bit.
Okay,
So I wanna go back to what we meant by mindfulness of the body,
Right?
So I wanna talk about mindfulness to begin with.
So what is mindfulness?
So if you go back to the very original translation,
Which is like the very end of the 19th century,
It was actually an accurate translation in that mindfulness just means memory,
Just means remember.
That's all it means.
It doesn't mean anything else.
So the word mindfulness,
The Sanskrit word or the Pali word is sati,
Sati.
Sati means,
Sati is the name of a princess who was born as a princess,
But he's actually a goddess.
And when he became the daughter of the king and the queen,
She made them took a vow that they would never disrespect her.
As it turns out,
When she grew up,
She married Shiva and which against the,
Who's not considered very high caste.
So the parents,
The royal friends disinvited them to their birthday party.
And so sati came and told and remind them that they had promised,
They had vowed not to disrespect her.
And then she jumped into the fire and then eventually became a goddess again.
And then eventually we born as a second wife of Shiva.
And we'll come back to that because there's one question that is related to Buddhism versus the North Indian religion that Shiva comes back or by that time,
His name Pravati.
Anyway,
The word sati,
By the time Buddha was using the word means it just means remember.
You remember something and you commit to your memory.
In fact,
Sati is the name of a ritual where when the husband died,
The wife would jump into the fire with him because she is so dedicated to her spouse.
That's all sati means is just remember.
And so how do we use the word mindfulness in the practice?
So when we use it in the practice,
It's called sati patanya.
Patanya means foundation.
Okay,
So therefore we have what we call the seven,
The four foundations of mindfulness.
Four ways that you can use,
Four that you can use to remember,
To really understand where your mind is.
So we have to understand that it's for us,
It's like I use the example back in the days when I first came to the country,
United States people had just started to transition from a manual transmission to automatic,
Okay?
And so you see a lot of people,
Especially the older guys,
We drive with two feet because they grew up with driving a manual transmission.
And so they have to,
Nowadays are left with just sits or whatever.
So you will see cars driving down the street with the brake lights on because they're tapping on the brake light.
That's the habit of driving.
And now- I think it was the foot clutch,
Yeah.
Yeah,
Yeah,
Yeah,
Yeah.
So you're still getting echo,
I don't know.
I hope that doesn't come out in the recording.
So you might have to temporarily mute yourself.
Okay,
So the idea is that a mind and a body is not of one.
A body does something and a mind doesn't.
So the classic is when people talk about,
Oh,
I can multitask.
Well,
Actually that's a fancy word saying that your mind is nowhere to be found.
You're not focusing on anything,
Okay?
So a mind and a body is like a left foot and a right foot.
They're not coordinated.
You know,
It's like,
It's as if you're driving the car with full acceleration and full brake.
That's how our body works.
And so the beginning,
The very,
Very,
Very beginning of your practice has to be mindfulness,
Remembering,
Always remembering where your mind is.
Now,
Of course we can go further and talk about why that is.
So that's enough to say that that's a mind.
So for the original definition of mindfulness,
It's just that.
It's just a practice so that you know where your mind is.
So there are four places where you could do that.
And there's the mindfulness of the body.
Now,
In this case,
The body is actually Gaya,
K-A-Y-A,
Which are the six sensors,
The six sensors,
Okay?
The six sensors are eye,
Nose,
Tongue,
Ear,
Body,
And the mind.
So most people don't understand that.
And they think that the mindfulness of the body is just the body.
No,
The mindfulness of body is in fact,
The mindfulness of the form,
All the physical,
All your physical faculty.
Now,
Master has actually talked about that.
And he says,
He actually says that,
I remember I wrote something along that line where he said,
There is no mind.
In other words,
As a human being,
As a physical living organism,
The only thing,
The only time that we can,
We know where our mind is,
Is through its effect on the body and the only way that we could manipulate our mind is again through the faculty.
So after I heard that,
And I said,
You know what?
This is exactly how we teach gravity,
Is that there is no gravity.
There's only the effect of gravity.
And that's why when Newton discovered quote unquote gravity,
It's just that he discovered the effect of gravity.
And that's why by the time he gets to Einstein,
Einstein is able to rewrite all that because no one has ever seen gravity.
It's just like no one has ever seen the mind.
So master's teaching is very clear that you have to start with the body,
Okay?
And then even when you go from body to feeling,
It's about the bodily feeling.
And he actually said at some point that the mind part of the feeling and the mind is completely outside of realm.
It's outside of realm.
This is when Buddha was teaching entities that are outside of what I call the karma realm,
Okay?
And then now when you finally get to the mindfulness of Dharma,
That's even more difficult to understand because Dharma in this case is really consciousness.
It's really the seven and the eight consciousness,
The alaya and so that's even further out.
And so a lot of times it's a mistake and I see that all the time that they think of this four foundation as if they,
You know,
It's a checkbox.
And they just say that,
Okay,
We gotta go through the body.
Okay,
We're done.
And then we go to the feeling now and that's a very dangerous practice because when you think of the body as the body as opposed to thinking of the body as the gaia which includes your brain and you don't spend enough time and training on how you mindful of your brain,
Then you go to the feeling and now this is dangerous.
This is actually very dangerous,
Right?
And so that's one.
And so master never actually talked about the mind part except he just very briefly mentioned,
He just very briefly mentioned that there are other practice,
There are other practice,
For example,
Chanting Amrita Buddha and he just mentioned very briefly that like the practice of the four immeasurables that would be mindfulness too even though they don't use the word but it will be closer to the mindfulness of the mind,
Okay?
So the four immeasurables against it is metta which is loving kindness,
Which is the beginning and then the compassion and sympathy and equanimity.
Now,
When we have a chance,
We'll talk about the four immeasurables.
The four immeasurables can be think of as a conduit for practice or they can be think of as the result of a practice.
So we talk about Zen which comes from the word Chan which comes from the word Chan,
Na which actually is Jana and Jana on one level means sentimentations.
How do you take your negative energy and just let it settle?
Because the reason you let it settle as opposed to try to filter has to do with your karmic trauma.
If you believe that your karmic trauma is of limited quantity then you can filter but if you believe that your karmic trauma is immeasurable that is so much of it that there's no possibility of filtering then the best you can do is let it sink,
Let it sentiment,
Sentimentation.
That's what Jana means on one level.
And on that level is that it also means the four level of practice that are beyond the karma realm.
And so as you practice your meditation you actually get to a point where you're outside of your body.
And later on we talk about where does all these yin and yang come from?
And that's related to that.
Then you start to see the effect of your practice.
And the first one is actually metta then it's compassion and so on.
So those are in fact pure mental quality because by that time you have no use for your body.
You already emancipated your body.
So it kind of makes sense for me that this is sort of related to the mindfulness of mind.
It does now that you say this.
The other thing that came up is the heart mind in this question.
So I can see where it's both a heart and mind.
And however,
Now I know that,
Isn't it?
Am I right that the Asian perspective of heart and mind is kind of a little bit different than the heart and mind perceptions that Westerners usually have?
This is a really,
Really good question.
And now I will say this.
You know,
In the Western culture,
We have this thing called the Renaissance,
Right?
And it's from the Renaissance that we have all the Western science,
Okay?
And so now there's a couple of reasons for that.
The Renaissance came after the dark ages,
Okay?
And so,
But in the transition,
It was still done under the control of the church.
And so Galileo is an example of someone who proposed something that violate the teaching of the church.
And for that,
He was house arrest until his death,
Right?
And so that history of focusing on just the physical science and leaving the mental science to the church,
That's the tradition,
Okay?
Related to that is the idea that the Europeans were under this control,
This mind control for so long,
More than 2000 years.
I mean,
Think about it.
It started with the Roman Empire,
Right?
Then after Christ,
It took a long time before it became the Catholic church and so forth and so on.
And the church was very,
So it had almost 2000 years of dark ages where we don't have free thoughts.
Now,
This never happened in Asia.
We never had that.
We never had that,
Okay?
And so what happened is that once they got out of that dark ages,
The intellect becomes important because they never had a chance to exercise the intellect.
So the idea that everything has to come from the mind,
Right?
And in this case,
The mind means the thinking mind.
In their case,
The mind actually means the brain,
Okay?
That means the brain.
So the Western culture,
When you translate the hot sutra,
It really should be called the mind sutra because that's what the mind is,
Right?
That's what the heart means in the Western culture because that's all they,
That's why the Western medicine,
You know,
We talked about this before the show,
Is that it has limitation because it's only about the body and nothing else.
It's only about the dead body.
Now,
When you look at the other side in the Asian culture,
The mind versus the experience are equally important,
Equally important.
So for example,
Last Saturday,
I don't think you were there or maybe you were,
But I was doing the energizing of the energy point or something like that.
And immediately one student,
And I think he was even there for the first time,
He immediately asked a very long question.
He says,
Well,
What if I do one here and one here,
You know,
Would that be better,
All right?
And so in the back of my mind,
I'm just laughing,
But I didn't want to say anything.
But this is very Western.
It's very Western that,
You know,
That they completely discard experience,
That this is all about intellect.
I can think this one better than you can.
So this,
I tried this and it worked for me.
What's wrong with this?
As opposed to saying,
Well,
If the person is teaching something from experience,
Let me just see if it works for me.
If not,
I would develop my own experience as opposed to intellect,
Okay?
So the idea of a culture that is based on intellect versus a culture that has the yin and yang,
The balance between both intellect and experience.
And again,
Understanding that the intellect comes from the brain and the experience comes from the spiral core.
Think about it.
Every single nerve ending ends in the spiral core,
Not in the brain,
Okay?
So I talk about the samurai,
But let me talk about the professional basketball player who has to shoot that last three point or two point,
I don't know the game well enough,
But you know,
The game is tied and he has to shoot that one penalty shot.
He is not using his brain.
He is what's called in the zone because he's completely in sensory.
He's completely not block out from everything else.
He's just completely focused on that,
Not using his brain.
So the difference between the brain and the experience and the idea of the mind,
This is part of,
I forgot the original question,
But which happens to me a lot.
No,
The question,
Yeah,
The Western versus the Eastern.
Yeah,
The Western versus the Eastern.
Yeah,
The Western versus the Western.
Yeah,
The Western.
Yeah,
The Western.
Yeah,
The Western.
Yeah,
The Western.
Yeah,
Okay,
Okay.
So why does that word,
Why does that single word translate into mind versus translating into heart,
Right?
Because,
So one reason that it translates into mind in the Western culture is because that's all we have in the Western culture.
It's all about intellect.
It's all about the mind.
The heart is just an organ.
It doesn't think,
Right?
Now,
The Eastern culture is very different.
Remember we talked about the heart actually is separate into the heart versus the pericardian,
Right?
The pericardian is the mechanical function of the heart.
The heart energy line,
It has to do with more the thymus gland.
So that actually controls our emotion and our thought process.
And so that makes sense that in the Eastern culture,
They translate that single word into heart because it encompasses both your intellect and your experience.
So it's called,
Some people just combine those two words with a hyphen or dash,
Is it?
Heart mind,
The heart mind.
Which is okay.
It differentiate from the brain.
Now,
It's differentiable in the brain,
Right?
So in Western culture,
Mind can mean,
Some people think that's synonymous with brain and heart is not only a physical organ,
But it can also mean kind of the emotional qualities or emotional experiences.
It's actually very,
Very much the emotional part.
It's actually very,
Very much an emotional part.
And not only that feeling too.
So like the actual visceral sensations of our experience,
Like without the overlay of different perceptions on them too,
Just how it feels in the body,
Painful,
Pleasant or unpleasant as well,
Like the Vedana.
Yeah,
So that's right.
So expanding on that,
Again,
Going back to the Western science,
Western medicine is that there is a causality,
There's a cause and effect.
So the cause,
So if I'm upset of someone,
It's because that someone appear in my vision,
Right?
If that person didn't appear,
I wouldn't be upset,
Okay?
So the idea of the causality is that the external stimulants causes internal reaction,
Which is what we call our emotional reaction,
Right?
The Buddhist teaching is not that.
The Buddhist teaching actually,
That's why the word dependence origination.
So no one ever explained that word well.
How is that different from causality?
Because causality means that if you have A,
You have B.
Right,
At most,
It would be because in order to get to B,
You must have the right condition.
But it's a very strict path.
I tell you,
No one explains that better than Mao Zedong.
Mao Zedong has a writing,
I grew up with it.
It's called On Contradiction.
No one explains that better,
That you have to have the right condition,
The right stimulus to have the right result.
It's a materialistic,
Right?
We call it the,
No one explained that better than Mao.
So how is that different from Buddhist teaching?
Buddhist teaching is a little bit different.
It says,
Well,
You have the stimulus,
And if you want to have certain result,
You have to provide the condition.
But keep in mind that once you have that result,
It leaves a memory,
A cosmic memory,
A karmic memory,
And that's what we call karma.
The next time this karmic seeds actually influence your thought process as much,
If not more,
Than the outside stimulus.
So when a person picks up a gun to kill someone who's looking for someone of Asian origin,
Went into a massage parlor and start shooting,
That didn't come because of the Chinese immigrant.
That came because of the hatred in his mind.
And he just happened to pick on some Chinese lady who's working for a living,
As opposed to some other Arabic Americans or whatever.
That hatred comes from within.
That hatred is his karma,
Right?
The three poisons,
Ill will.
So the whole idea of what we call,
I like,
I don't mind using the word heart mind,
Because what it does is that it opens up the discussion.
So we don't,
I think that's,
We can come back to that.
Okay,
So you have to ask that.
Okay,
We can knock these other ones out fairly quick.
I wanted to mention too,
Denny mentioned about the basketball thing,
And there's this documentary I have,
Bookmark to watch,
It's by Michael Jordan.
Anybody in the 90s know how amazing he was.
It's called The Last Dance.
It's a documentary kind of about his flow state and whatnot,
So okay.
So here we have,
So we do these three,
Usually it's five breathing exercises,
But in the evening,
Denny only does.
Sometimes I do only two now.
Okay,
So yeah,
So why is that?
Because I feel that there can be a version of it,
But I'd like to hear what you have to say.
Well,
I actually,
I haven't seen Master Jiru for more than a year now.
The last time I saw him was right around,
Right after New Year,
The,
What's the New Year,
In 2020,
At the beginning of 2020,
After he finished,
Maybe now,
No,
Sorry.
It was actually at the end of 2019,
He was rushing back to Maba to conduct the New Year ceremony.
And so that was the last time I saw him,
And I mentioned to him that I'm starting to have students who can only practice from a sitting position.
And so he said he's gonna think about that,
On how to evolve the five breathing exercise into something that is suitable for those who are bonded to chairs.
And so having,
Since that was the last conversation,
I dare not to invent.
That's one.
The other one is that I try all five on the sitting position and they're not,
They're not that,
They don't feel right.
And so I didn't want to introduce something that is,
So this is one of the thing that I try to do is,
And I think you even notice is that every week is a little bit different from the week before.
And it's really because I really focus on the immediate effect.
Like if I do something,
I wanna make sure that it has an effect and not just movement for movement's sake and the reason is that every week,
I guarantee every week more than half the students are first times,
Maybe at least a third.
And so this is the thing that we need to do is as much as we wanna retain the returning students,
We gotta make it so that it's accessible to the new student.
And so I thought this through and I said,
If I just blindly run through all five,
Knowing that less than half of them are effective in the sitting position or immediately effective in the sitting position,
That's not gonna help a cause.
And so that's why I,
One reason is I did that to just like,
And the other thing I did is you notice that I always,
I always use the word baseline.
So I always ask people to do a deep breathing exercise and say,
Now remember that,
We're gonna do one more and then see how the improvement,
This is the Sesame Street of mindful practice.
You know,
You gotta make it entertaining and accessible and measurable.
This is my business ahead coming through.
And accommodating and dealing with all these,
This juggling of all these different dynamics going on.
Yeah,
Yeah,
Yeah,
Yeah.
So for now,
Actually,
I even do,
Sometimes I even just do two,
You know,
Just do the first one and the butterfly,
That seems to work really well.
And then I think as we progress,
Where we start to focus more on the matter,
I think that's probably all the time we have anyway.
So that answer your question.
Okay.
The next one,
How does one find energy points on the inside and outside of the legs?
There's something we go along tapping on the insides and outside the legs.
There's like what three different,
At least,
No,
Is there six on each outside inside and outside,
But I'll just let you.
Okay,
So let me generalize the question is that,
How does one find energy points,
Period,
Right?
Okay,
So the easiest one,
It turns out to be the governing vessel.
So if you look at your spiral core,
This is the only energy lines where both the physical and the chi coincide,
They're directly one to one.
And all the pressure points are at the interface between the disc.
So if you have to find the energy point for your governing vessel,
That's easy.
Okay,
Now,
Everything else is not so obvious.
Everything else is not so obvious.
And it's even different from person to person.
And it can even be different from hour to hour.
And so when the acupuncture is come find your energy points,
He or she has to feel it.
She has to feel it.
And I'm starting to,
I know a lot of people who are really good at this,
But even for me,
I can feel it a little bit because now my mom's feets are swollen all the time,
Just for more kinds of reasons.
And I need to give her massage on the energy points,
The one in the inside that has to do with the splint.
And I can feel it,
I can just like touch it,
I can feel it because initially you feel a little bit of texture under the skin,
And you can work on it and the texture goes away.
And so you will find that a lot of these energy points,
They're slightly different in,
I would say,
When you press it down,
They feel different coming back.
Okay,
So a lot of these energy points has to do with some valley.
And just let's look at what is energy point?
What is energy point?
What is this chi thing that we talk about?
The chi is magnetic field.
You see,
Our entire body has electrical field,
Right?
The only time you don't have electrical field is when you're dead.
And so that's why if you study your medicines from a cadaver,
You will never find chi because there's no more electricity.
Now,
If there's electricity,
There's magnetic field.
And so even if you have a very simple electrical pattern,
Like just bloods traveling from your shoulder to your fingertip,
It generate very complicated magnetic field.
And I actually,
I wrote a book actually,
I actually wrote the book.
And this,
I finally got my own copy.
So this is the first book that I wrote many,
Many years ago.
It's,
I wrote it when my son was born and he's now 30,
So that's a long time ago.
And in there,
I talks about electromagnetic field,
Talks about the Maxwell equations and all that.
The one distinction between electrical field and magnetic field is that there is no source.
There is no source for magnetic field.
So the source has to be in,
All magnetic field has to be in a circle,
Has to go out and come back,
Has to come,
It has to,
It has to,
We call the,
Well,
I don't wanna use a mathematical term,
But the point is that if you look at a line for quote unquote magnetic field,
It would have eventually find itself back because there's no source,
There cannot be a source.
Okay,
Whereas the electrical field is different.
You can actually have a electron,
A free electron and generate electrical field and it doesn't have to come back.
So all magnetic field has to come back.
So as a result,
You have what is called dipole.
So when you have even the simplest electrical field,
It already generate very complicated magnetic field.
And that magnetic field would have these dipole,
What we call a dipole,
Where the magnetic field comes together and go out.
Those are the energy points.
Now think about how complicated your electrical field is and therefore how complicated your magnetic field is.
So jumping ahead,
One of the question is that I always point to this one and says,
Well,
This is the energy point for the gallbladder.
And by the way,
You know,
Your hip,
When you would do using Jing,
You know,
Pointing to the Jiwon,
Pointing the one tail,
That's another energy point for the gallbladder.
And then now they runs along the end,
End,
End,
End,
And the question is that,
Wait a minute,
How come it is so far away from the gallbladder?
So,
So number one,
The energy field,
The gallbladder are named after the energy field,
Not the other way around.
So they discover the energy field,
Energy line.
They discover,
First they discovered the correlation,
The correlation between the body and the celestial and how the tie and because we're 75%,
Six,
70% water,
So if it affects the tie,
It affects us.
So our body is actually affected by both the solar cycle and the lunar cycle.
And so they discovered these energy lines that eventually they said,
Well,
There's six branches and then there's eight main ones,
Okay?
The six branches,
The 12 branches,
The six originated from the hand and then 12 originated,
Six originated from the toes.
Three of them are yin and three are yang because three are affected more by the sun and three are affected more by the moon.
And all 12,
Each one that is active for two,
They discovered that first.
Then they kind of named them because it turns out that one has more to do with this particular function and one has to do with that particular function,
Okay?
Now,
But again,
This is a two,
3000 years ago and it's only the last,
I think it was less than 150 years when Western medicine start to come to China,
Less than that.
It was actually at the end of 19th century.
So when they come to China,
They understand these names of kidneys and so forth.
And so they have the translation and they say,
Oh yeah,
We got something like that over here.
And so they named kidney with that word,
Okay?
But that doesn't mean that there's a one-to-one correspondence so for example,
The kidney is a very good example of how in the Chinese tradition,
The kidney function is so much broader than just the mechanical function of a Western kidney,
Right?
But,
And then the idea that you have to have yin and yang.
And so for example,
I just talked about this morning in my Cantonese class that the splint is also responsible for the immune function,
The limb node,
Okay?
And the limb node is responsible for returning water back to your heart.
And so the splint is a very important organ for controlling everything that has to do with water like if you have a runny nose,
You have mucus in your lung,
If you have swollen,
Whatever,
Okay?
But the splint and the stomach is one pair,
One is yin and one is yang.
So you actually have to work on your splint energy line as well as the stomach energy line because that's the yang line that complements the yin line.
Now that kind of concept doesn't exist in the Western culture.
It's a much,
Much deeper concept.
And so this idea of this question of why this has to do with the gallbladder need to be asked the opposite way,
Which is now that you have an energy line,
What do you name it after?
And it turns out that they name it after the gallbladder because by working on this energy line that runs from the top 100 meeting all the way down to your shoulder,
All the way down to your butt,
All the way down to this has to do with,
That energy line has to do with the function of gallbladder.
That's fascinating.
It is extremely fascinating.
And it seems like Chinese medicine in this technique is more kind of like the original or one of the original holistic because it's not one thing can be considered really in isolation,
Right?
And then also you have the dualistic thing of the yin and the yang interacting with all this holistic systems as well.
The problem with the word holistic is that most people think of holistic as non-scientific,
Whereas holistic is really the W,
Is the whole.
Yes.
That's the proper,
That's the proper.
As such as people think that Chinese medicine is the alternative medicine,
No,
The Western medicine is the alternative medicine.
We've been here before.
And it blows my mind how these perceptions have already been,
These wrong,
Are these,
I guess,
Unskillful perceptions and unhelpful perceptions have been built into the American because we don't need to go into how that happened or who that benefits,
Right?
So,
But yeah.
I think it's important for me to repeat,
Which is I am not against Western medicine.
I myself is a diabetic.
I take Western medicine,
But I understand Western medicine and I understand how medicines tend to treat symptoms.
And I also understand that Western doctors are essentially salesmen.
They're part of the distribution channel for the pharmaceutical industry.
Whether they like it or not,
Because the medical doctors is that one traditions where after they get out from medical school,
The re-education in their entire career is controlled by the vendor.
And Denny and I have done a whole show on this too,
So if anybody's interested,
We can go back on this.
And we're pretty,
Denny and I see eye to eye on this,
Same way,
You know,
I don't have anything particularly against just more honesty,
Transparency around everything.
Yes.
I be,
I call it,
I used to call,
I forgot what it's called.
I used to have a very good,
But point is be your own prime contractor,
Be your own kind of,
Be your own prime contractor for your own health and treat everybody else at some time.
If the doctor wants to subscribe to you,
I just find out that the medicine that my father was taking as a sleeping aid was actually a medicine that is meant to treat schizophrenic.
It just happens to have the side effect that puts you to sleep.
So I'm saying,
What the,
You know,
What's going on?
They can do off-label stuff,
Yeah.
Yeah,
Be your own prime contractor.
Listen to everything,
Study everything and expand your horizon,
Understand the difference between Western approach and the Eastern approach and try to find something that is work for you and your loved ones.
That's all we asking.
That's right.
And remember there's informed consent.
So they have,
They're required to tell you the pros and the cons,
And then you have a choice about what medicines are prescribed.
You also have a right to a second opinion as well.
Yeah.
And now I have been a prime contractor before,
So I know what that means.
When you're a prime contractors,
Don't argue with the subcontractor.
If they're not right for you,
Just walk away.
You don't need to win them.
Okay,
So don't go to the Western doctor and talk about supplement.
Very good point,
Denny,
Yes.
They don't believe in this.
So why waste your energy arguing with the subcontractor?
Okay,
All right.
What are some,
Okay,
Now your turn.
Okay,
Yeah,
What are some of Josh's practice experiences?
That's me with Denny.
So I'll just go through these briefly.
So yeah,
This is just some things I've noticed when practicing with Denny in this practice we've been talking about.
My back adjusting during standing meditation,
Sometimes when we stand there,
I'll notice just after a few moments,
A lot of times how the back will be tensioned,
Held in parts of it,
And then it just kind of naturally releases and the spine kind of aligns more just standing there in this.
The microcosmic orbit,
Denny goes into details on this technique,
But I noticed for me recently.
I'll back off a little bit from that recently,
Yes.
Oh,
You have?
So for me,
I noticed that it was just going up the spine,
It goes,
My attention and awareness goes up really quick,
But then it's almost like I have to force down the awareness down the front,
Which I thought was interesting.
Yeah,
So I also kind of break in the idea of being mindful of your body,
In addition to being mindful of your mind.
So the idea is that when you go up,
You pay attention to your body,
You bring your body with you,
You adjust your posture,
Maintaining this thing called the one pillar supporting the sky,
Which means that you actually leaning back a little bit,
Tucking your,
Right?
So this point is straight up.
And so there's,
You can draw a straight line between the two energy point,
One on the very top of your head,
Not very top,
But just in the back of that.
And then the other one is the energy between your sexual organ and the opening of your bowel.
You draw a straight line.
And so that's how you maintain posture.
Okay,
So very important that.
So as you breathe in,
You focus,
You start to walk up,
That's why we call the wandering dragon,
Chasing the pearl.
You just walk up your spine,
You adjust your spine,
You're very mindful of your body,
You're adjusting your body.
And when you reach that you can,
Don't come down right away,
Just like this.
This is something that we talk about that.
We talk about that in a minute on Anapanaya Satay.
Remember that there is thing called Satay.
So as you relax,
Don't rush into the out breath right away,
Just let the out breath.
And as you come down,
Mindful of,
This is now the Yin part,
This is the parasympathetic nerve.
And just let it drop and visualize this glass of water with debris or this lotus part.
And just don't force it down.
Don't force it down,
Let it drop,
Relax until it comes down to your Dante.
Then you kind of switch back and you can either apply forces on your adrenaline again,
Or just go straight up.
Cool,
That's really helpful.
And just sitting here doing why you said that.
Because what I'm trying to do is force it to sink with the out breath down and tell them completely more relaxed that this is not gonna happen.
So just cut and tell,
But then when it does happen,
It sinks up.
So,
Okay.
This is the last thing.
So when I do it,
Because I was taught by,
Taught it in terms of the wandering dragon tracing the pearl is that,
As you bring,
It's just a natural thing.
You don't force it.
You just let the breath comes in and that's the pearl.
And so the pearl is rising on your spiral core and you're just chasing it,
Just go up with it.
And I even visualize like when it goes up to the top,
My head is like the dragon disappear into the cloud and then it comes back and then ready to breathe out again.
And then when it goes down to my element,
I'm in an 80 degree turn.
Again,
That's where I'm pausing.
I'm just waiting for the in breath.
And I even visualize the dragon pushing it against my,
My,
My adrenaline.
That's,
That's what the master says.
So I often skip that part where your proper sitting position is,
I have to just straighten up your,
Your,
Your spine.
Okay.
You actually should lean forward and then lean back without moving your hip.
So you maintain pressure on.
And that's in a yoga,
Yoga sitting posture too have been instructed.
Oh yeah,
They all the same.
They all come from the same souls anyway.
That's right.
So I just,
I just saw a video of a Cantonese speaking grandfather,
97 years old who learned the Taoist Qigong and when he was 57,
You know,
He started learning when he was 57.
And so he was practicing.
You couldn't tell that the difference between the Taoist Qigong from the hetter.
Wow.
Yeah.
Well,
It's,
I mean,
Of course they're different,
But the idea is the same.
That's right.
They,
A lot of them,
Yeah,
They all intersect and are weaves.
So going to the I-Jin-Jin practice and Dinyabai have done at least one show that addresses this and it's been,
It's cropped up on other ones.
There's one move when it's often said to stab,
You know,
In the shoulder,
What I just,
What occurred to me is it's also important to remove the dagger on this one too.
So I just thought I had that.
Oh,
Oh,
Oh,
I see,
I see,
I see.
So,
You know,
I don't know.
I need to go back to the videotape and see how master does it.
Does he actually remove?
No,
I don't know.
Well,
I mean,
You are,
You have to,
I mean,
Since your hands aren't sticking there.
So I'm assuming that it might be an okay perception to when you move the hands this way,
Not only are you stabbing with a dabber,
But you're also removing it then because your hands,
So I don't know.
So here's my,
Because I've been watching his videotape and also remembering the times that I was his attendant where he was teaching,
Because he teaches a little differently every time anyway.
And so I come to the interpretation that the Yi Jing Jing is really about generating energy.
It's really about acting,
You know,
So again,
If you go back to the Chinese medicine,
They talk about the body consisting of,
You know,
The bone,
The muscle,
The tendon,
And the marrow,
And all that,
You know,
Lots and lots of parts.
And every single one of them are piezoelectric.
So when you look at him,
So the one good example of when he do the cross,
If you watch it again,
He would do the cross and then you would hear the crackling sound.
You would hear the crackling sound.
The crackling sound doesn't come from the part where he's stretching.
It comes from when he's holding,
Right?
So he would stretch and then he will hold.
And then when he holds,
He hears the crackling sound.
The crackling sound is the breaking of the stiction between the connected tissue and the underlying muscle.
So when we say qigong,
What is about qi?
Qi,
When you have blockage of qi,
Is when that layer between the connected tissue and underlying muscle or the underlying body parts are stuck because of either inflammation or somehow dehydrated,
Okay?
And so if you just watch him,
He would stretch and then he holds and then all of a sudden you go,
Ba ba ba ba ba ba,
Like this,
Right?
And it's because that connected tissue is what we call,
It's both piezoelectric and viscoelastic.
Visceral elastic means that all you have to do is hold it and that material will creep.
See,
It's like if you take a piece of metal and you bend it,
If you hold it,
It will stay there.
But if you take a piece of rubber and you bend it and you hold the force,
You didn't even increase the force,
Just hold it,
It creeps,
It starts to sag.
It just takes time,
That's why it's called viscoelastic.
And so I come to the recognition of my own interpretation that a big part of the qi qi has to do with the holding because that's when you generate electricity and you break the distinction between your connected tissue and the underlying structure.
And so when you talk about the stabbing,
Usually what I teach is I ask people to open the shoulder and stab and hold and then release.
So the release part is also very important.
This is something that Master talk about over and over again.
You got to stay for the duration of two breaths because you have to energize the parasympathetic nerve.
You have to go from the yang back to the yin.
You gotta let your body recover from the stress hormone.
That's what I was gonna say too is,
We are generating piezoelectricity.
However,
That's either gonna be stored or stored and then are discharged or used in a certain way.
So that's what you just- I have this crazy idea that the jump at the very end is to uniformly distribute the electricity.
Well,
That's the same thing.
That's what I gathered as well.
And you mentioned the crackling.
And I've experienced this firsthand,
The last retreat,
I guess it was last summer,
It was a small retreat out at Maba.
And we were doing I Ching Ching.
It's just like,
From what I remember,
Even the first over the hands,
I could just hear crackling.
And I was like,
Well,
Is that his knuckles popping?
But it seems like it's more than that before when you just- No,
No,
No,
It's not his knuckle.
It's really the shearing between what's called the myofascial,
The connective tissue of his muscle and the underlying- So when he uses his fist,
I can audibly hear it.
I know I have got pretty good hearing and I can hear it really plain as day,
You know?
Especially when he turns it up a little bit,
You know what I mean?
Yeah,
Yeah,
Yeah,
Yeah.
Sometimes he does it for effect.
That's right,
Right.
Because it gets people to,
It gets their attention and it gets them to- So how much time do we have?
How much time do we have left?
Let's blow through this.
How much time do we have?
Yeah,
We probably ought to wrap it up here at about 10,
115 minutes.
So the hard opening one,
I was just gonna say real quick,
With the tearing the phone book,
I thought maybe that was,
You know,
It's more like you're kind of like,
Or it's not more,
But it's another perspective as you're opening my heart up here.
So I thought that just came to me.
And I'll pick the other one.
Actually,
I spent a little bit more time on the Chinese,
Original Chinese description of these two moves.
So the one where you light the bar and you're lifting your head up.
So that's made out of two words.
The first word is up.
And the second word is,
Which is another way of saying the head.
So you're lifting your head.
Yeah.
That's one.
Then the second one,
Which is the first word is lower.
So it distinguished from the upper and the lower.
The second word of that is when you release the arrow.
It's the same word that we use for releasing the arrow.
So sometimes I use the phone book just for fun.
The phone book analogy is for fun,
But the more accurate one is the one that Master uses,
Which is pulling the arrow.
I remember that.
Yeah,
Because you're pulling it back and then release.
Because that word meant to release the arrow.
That makes sense.
And I won't.
The last one was there was,
I don't know if this is advisable or not,
So please call me out or anybody call me out.
It was just basically using this at Yu Jin Jing as kind of like an energy practice.
So you put certain intents into what you're doing,
Especially at the end,
To whatever you want to accomplish energetically.
Now,
I don't know if that's advisable or wise,
But maybe that's a topic for another time.
So we'll move on here.
Any miscellaneous views,
Observations,
And questions?
So why is it,
Why is this?
OK,
We already addressed this,
The first one about the gallbladder,
About why it's certain places and not just the,
So we went into that in depth.
Just wanted to share some other things.
On the thing where at the end of the Yu Jin Jing,
When the arms are going up the side like this,
This is where my six-year-old niece says,
You look like a chicken when you do that.
And I just thought that was so funny.
Not only that,
Because this is also used in like a preliminary to kung fu,
Right?
And so here's my kind of niece poking and prodding at me.
So how about we make this the last slide?
I have more,
But I think that could be a standalone show.
That's the stuff that I added,
Could be a standalone show.
Because that's right.
We need to explain some of that here.
OK,
So the next one here.
So the one here about the chicken,
Actually a lot of the moves in the Yu Jin Jing find its way into different styles of martial art.
So like the Spirit Boosting Palm,
You see that all over the place.
This one,
You see it all over the place.
So actually,
You come up.
The finger,
Actually Master Yiu talks a lot about the finger and how you're supposed to be like this.
You're supposed to be like this.
You come up like this.
OK,
So this is actually,
If you translate it literally,
It means hip is the underarm.
And the next one is more important is that you're raising the energy.
So it's like you're raising the energy.
Now,
Of course,
We don't do it right.
I don't do it right.
So I don't get the effect.
But on the other hand,
This style,
This thing,
You see it in many,
Many martial arts.
So this part is actually quite important.
That looking like a chicken one is actually quite important.
But Master did elaborate on how your hands has to be like,
I don't know.
So it's like you're holding a chopstick,
Sort of,
And then you just lift up your energy.
But of course,
I'm not to a point where I can feel the energy.
For the same reason that when you swallow the Dan,
I don't feel it yet.
That comes in years and years of training.
And that's even with people's practices so deep,
Just the subtle changes of mudras for some practitioners can have a significant energetic effect when you're at that level,
So I hear,
Right?
So yeah,
I'm obviously not there either.
So moving on here to the next one.
And this is interesting.
Denny and I,
Or Denny especially,
Have talked about Anapanasati.
And just one other thing that I heard recently I thought was interesting is the Pana part of Anapanasati is supposedly what I've heard is the Pali word for the Sanskrit word,
Prana.
And prana,
As yoga practitioners know,
This is kind of like similar to the word chi,
Right?
The life force energy,
The breath,
Because there's the limb in yoga that just deals with specific controlling of breath exercises.
It's called,
I'll remember it here in a second.
So I just thought that was an interesting thing that I heard that it's actually dealing with the kind of,
Not just the in and out,
But also just the kind of energy,
The breath energy that comes along with it.
And energy circulation in the body,
Perhaps.
Yeah,
I'm not sure they're the same word,
But I definitely believe that they're related.
But going back to the word Anapanasati,
It's actually made of three words.
The last one is satay,
That's mindfulness.
Then you have pana,
Then you have anapanas.
So the A is always the opposite.
So if the pana is out,
Then the A pana would be in,
Or vice versa,
Right?
So that's actually,
In that sense,
It's actually two words.
It's the breathing and it's the mindfulness.
And whatever you interpret the breathing as either in and out,
Then the A is the opposite of that.
So it would be,
But A negates the nah then?
Or does it negate both the pana too?
Or is it anah and then A pana?
Even the expert in Pali,
Come on.
That's right,
No,
No,
No.
Real quick comment.
How am I supposed to know?
But it does talk about three things.
Yes,
Satay we all agree with.
Our breath and then mindfulness,
Right?
Okay,
So with the remaining time,
I do wanna talk about the last one,
Is that yoga and meditations as connections to Buddha,
His teaching and practice.
I talked about this last week.
It's important to remind ourselves that Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew,
Not only that,
He was a rabbi.
Because once you understand that,
Then you go back to the history and you understand that the social,
Political dynamics of his time,
Only then you would understand his.
So by the same token,
It's important to understand that the historical Buddha,
Right?
Buddha is actually not his name,
It's his title.
The historical Buddha was a North Indian.
He was a yogi.
Not only that,
But he was what we call a Aryan.
Aryan,
He's an Aryan,
Meaning that he's actually European.
So his people came from Europe,
The sort of the,
What would we call now,
The Eastern part of Europe.
And because of climate change,
They have to move down.
And so they not only went to India,
They also went to Persia and they also went to Egypt.
And so they became the ruling class.
That's why they have lighter skins,
Okay?
So the Indians who are darker skins,
Actually on a DNA level is very similar to the natives from Australia,
Okay?
So this is before the continent split,
Okay?
So they're very different people.
They have very different belief.
Their belief is that there was,
Once upon a time,
A god named Shiva,
Who was one of the three gods.
And the other two,
One is called Brahma or Brahman.
Shiva is called the Adiyogi,
The original yogi.
And so Shiva was the one that actually started the practice.
And all yogi learned from that,
That lineage,
Okay?
Now,
Earlier I talk about Satay,
Who was the name of a princess,
But before that she was actually the goddess.
And so when she jumped,
After she jumped into the fire,
She reincarnated,
She went back to her goddess status,
And then she became the second wife of Shiva.
She was also the first female student of Shiva.
And Shiva actually taught,
I believe it's called Parvati now,
But it's the Shiva,
Satay of the different name,
That there are,
That we have,
I believe we have 72,
000 energy line.
The body consists of 72,
000 energy lines,
Half of them on the right,
Half of them on the left.
And that it has,
As these energy lines comes together,
They form what's called chakra,
Which is translated into a wheel,
The wheel of the energy line,
Because even though when they meet,
They form a triangle,
But as the energy emanate from that,
It becomes a circle,
A wheel.
And so Shiva taught Parvati or Satay,
That there are 114 chakras,
And every one of them is a point of entry for your enlightenment,
Okay?
And out of that 114,
Shiva says that four of them are actually outside the body.
And so there's only 100,
And there's only,
I misspoke.
Anyway,
There's 100,
And so out of that,
There's 112,
So maybe two of them,
I forgot the exact,
But I do remember that there,
And then our 112,
Four of them,
You don't need to work.
So if you can discover one of the 108,
Then the other four would come naturally.
So there's really 104,
And so it's an increment of seven.
So from the 104,
It becomes 21,
And from the 21,
It becomes seven.
And so right now,
When we talk about the current yogi practice is about the seven chakra,
But it's actually part of the 108 and 114.
Now Buddha,
The historical Buddha,
As a yogi discovered one of those.
So his entire practice is based on that one chakra.
And that chakra has to do with the recognition of how the brain,
The spiral core works together,
Okay?
So in Buddha's teaching,
It always comes back to equanimity.
And the lack,
The opposite of equanimity would be,
Any number of words would be differentiating,
Discernment,
You know,
Where you separate,
Where you separate you from the rest of the universe.
And so this is really,
As a human being,
This is our identity.
This is,
Our identity is in fact the source of all suffering.
And so in Buddha's teaching,
It talks about how the identity is actually part of your brain,
Okay?
That's why we talked about earlier why so many people are drawn into being a volunteer.
Because through the volunteering process,
They're now separating their brain from the rest of their central nerve system.
They no longer judge,
They don't judge,
Right?
So this is actually the Bodhisattva way.
Is that,
I always explain to my parents,
I say,
Look,
Look at Bodhisattva,
Look at Guan Yin.
Her eye never look at you.
Her eye is always looking on the ground because it doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
So there's so many different ways of explaining that.
You can think of the brain as something that is very exclusive because that's what we do.
We wake up in the morning,
The first thing we say is,
Who is me?
This is me,
That's not me.
Right?
Whereas the spiral core is very inclusive.
Now,
Denny and I have talked about this last point and we've shared information on it as well.
And I still,
If Denny could send me the,
If there's any kind of detailed teaching on these,
All these different chakras,
What list I did find is all these different ways that Shiva has recommended for potential methods of enlightenment and how the Buddha only focused on one of these methods of enlightenment.
However,
I think that his method supersedes all those because I think if I'm getting this right,
I actually haven't studied Hinduism as much as,
That they don't,
Oh,
I guess there is,
But the Buddha seemed to go beyond levels of gods.
He went beyond all of that even,
Even though I guess they might've been enlightened,
He still,
They still have these status of a god.
But I think that's not accurate either because there's,
They say that,
Some people say that the Buddha was a avatar or one version of Vishnu,
But that's besides the point.
I wanted to,
So maybe we'll include some links.
I plan to include the link of the different Shiva things.
I think this is,
Yeah,
We're so beyond our depth.
That's true,
Yeah.
So if Jenny finds that link on that,
I'll include that.
I think we talk about it because it's really a great source of curiosity.
It is,
Right.
So I think it suffice to just remind ourself that the historical Buddha was a yogi.
That's right,
And that's the point I wanted to circle back to here.
But equanimity though,
For me,
Another way is just not being entangled.
Being active and living in the world,
But not being of the world.
So we might have identities,
But we're not entangled with these identities,
Right?
We're not identified with identities.
This is,
The idea is similar to what we said earlier about being your own prime contractor,
Right?
Because think about it,
Right?
Because all these years of development of spiritual practice was done in a time where communications were very expensive.
I mean,
To learn from a different teacher means that you might have to walk thousands of miles and then even you might not find that person.
Now we take it for granted.
And then to,
If you don't visit that teacher,
There's very difficult ways of learning it from the book because books are very expensive,
Right?
And also,
How do you,
Learning is very difficult.
Absorbing knowledge is very difficult.
Getting access to information.
That has been the case for thousands of years.
And that's why you get all these silos.
Everybody who comes to a client says,
Is this qigong?
And then I have to explain to them that,
Well,
Let's not put ourself into this silo called qigong.
Okay,
Because silo means something very specific to somebody.
On the other hand,
Qigong with a hyphen just means the practice of qi.
And that's what we do.
Then the next question is that,
Well,
Is this tai chi?
Or is it,
No,
Because we're so used to be put into these silos.
And my message to everyone here is that,
Be your prime contract,
Be your own prime contractors.
Break down these walls.
And with understanding that everything comes back potentially to a single source.
Now,
In this case,
I'm proposing that shiva might be the single source,
But maybe not.
Yeah,
That doesn't matter.
It really doesn't matter.
Be open mind,
Be open mind.
Because,
Yeah,
Because often we'll put a label on something and we think we know everything about it.
Well,
Because putting a label on something is the parenthesis of intellect.
That's right,
Yeah.
So they can be helpful,
But we also know.
So now you're permanently pigeonholed into this one path.
And you completely forgot that the other path,
Which is experience.
And if you want to be not to experience,
Means that you have to be very open mind.
That's right.
So the original point I was trying to make with this or the thing that occurred to me,
Even though,
You know,
Let's say that the yoga practice of today,
Even just the asana practice,
If that has any semblance to what the Buddha,
The environment that he was in,
Well then there's some kind of connection today that we can have with a yoga practice of what his environment was like.
Even though,
From what I remember,
They didn't,
There's no mention of asana practice.
However,
The jhana,
The two teachers that taught different jhana practices,
We do know that there is a limb of yoga that deals with types of meditation like that.
So he was in that environment according to the writings.
And also,
You know,
He did give detailed instructions on anapanasati.
So when we practice that,
It's just kind of like a living link to that time period and also that experience,
Which brings it back into another point that Dini mentioned,
That,
You know,
Learning is difficult.
However,
We're just taught certain ways of learning.
What we're not usually taught in school is the meditation practice,
Which is a whole nother level of how to open up the mind and integrate other knowledge and see different layers of it and also,
You know,
Opens up new perspectives.
It gives an experiential experience of different types of information that we've learned about before.
It can bring in new.
So this is a level of mind and practice and information that most people don't get to experience because they don't have a meditation practice,
Right?
And I feel that maybe sometimes a lot of people are drawn to drugs because some of these drugs can simulate kind of like the reverse versions of some of the states and experiences that meditation give as well,
You know?
Okay,
Okay,
I think we should wrap it up.
What do you think?
Very good,
Yes.
We've done enough damage,
Haven't we?
And enough good for today.
Okay,
With that,
Thank you for joining us.
All right,
Thanks again.
Okay,
Thank you.
See you.
Good practice.
See you on Saturday.
And we'll do this again next month.
That's the plan.
Okay.
All right,
Thanks Dini,
Bye bye.
Okay,
Thank you,
Bye bye.
