Beyond Enlightenment: The Art of Embodiment with Frank Yang

[00:00:00] Speaker A: That's where I'm at right now. On my path is. So in the beginning, probably when we first talked, it was more so this transcendence, ascendance, you know, seeing outside of the body. We could say, now I feel it's the embodiment. It's the integration of that and really coming into the expression of Gary and what it means to be human altogether. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Yep, yep. I see that a lot in people's journey. They would kind of isolate between, say, abiding awareness and being human or abiding in infinity or God or whatever you want to call it, presence, or like abiding in emptiness or nothingness. So people tend to, like, shift back and forth between extremes. [00:00:46] Speaker A: I think that's the dance. [00:00:48] Speaker B: That's the dance. It's absolutely dance. Because once you rarefy one side of the extreme, say, I just want to expand my body, or like I just want to annihilate the self, then you're not balancing your being in the middle way anymore. Right. And middle way, I have to emphasize again and again, it's not moderation. It could be moderation. It could be the point between two extremes. The middle way really is what transcends but includes both sides of the duality or both sides of the reference points. And that's where realization is. It's not like non doership nor doership. It's neither. No self or self. It's what transcends both of those distinctions and dualities. But it includes both. Yeah. [00:01:34] Speaker A: Getting right into it. Yeah, man. It's ironic, right? It's kind of a joke. It's. We go to these heights, or at least we try to go to these heights of transcendence and then ultimately find ourselves back into the mundaneness, the futility of the human experience. [00:01:55] Speaker B: Yep. Yep. You should read this book called Awakening to Human by Maggie. I can't pronounce her last name, but she's probably in my email list here. I'll send it to you later. You can share it with your, like, followers or whatever as one of my new favorite non duality books. It's not even a non duality book. Actually, it is, but it isn't like she did a really good job debunking just all the, I guess you can call it woos of spirituality or a lot of, like, just unfair speculations or expectations on what realization is, how realized person should behave or should not behave. How the YouTube Modern Dharma Circle can create its own, like, echo chambers and. [00:02:41] Speaker A: Yeah, that's for sure. [00:02:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And it's all about tapping into the human aspect of awakening. About how after you go through all the shifts, it's not like these shifts disappear. Those shifts, if it is a genuine realization, it's just realizing what's always and already the case. Right. Then there's so many different layers and levels and fractals and cycles of integration. Integration, disintegration, integration, disintegration, expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction. Everything, nothing, something. Yeah. But really see the dance of these reference points and not make any side of the extreme like the ultimate. [00:03:22] Speaker A: Because then you're splitting and then you suffer. [00:03:25] Speaker B: Yep, yep. Because like a lot of people think, oh, it's just the ego that suffers, so we should just abide in awareness and realize God. But if you don't refine your view, if you. There's a. A very subtle clinging to even awareness. Itself or presence that itself, the self. Yeah. And itself is completely okay. As long as you realize at the exponential level how it's completely empty or inherent existence. Then you can aggregate all kinds of self depending on the circumstances and the people that you're hanging out with. [00:03:54] Speaker A: Yeah. That's the beauty of the dance. Right. It's the fluidity to be really whatever you want. Right. [00:04:01] Speaker B: But I will say though, even though all phenomenons are empty and emptiness are just appearances, appearances do have consequences. You can't do whatever you want. That is true. But then you also have to take full responsibility for your actions and how you people. That's what I'm learning in the last like two or three years maybe. Maybe it's more so like the last year or two. Yeah. Just because I started working with clients, acolytes. And then me and my business martyr started a company called Contemplative CrossFit. And then we hold this boot camp and the person who. The bean. The bean, who is, I guess we can call them the head coach. His name is Mei Chen. And after I met him, my entire life just kind of changed. My. The trajectory of my path changed. Even my disposition on the path changed. So there's a lot of crazy shit that went on. Actually, most people don't even know about it in the last like year because I met him like year over a little bit over a year ago. [00:05:05] Speaker A: Now can we get into what it means to awaken, to be human as Frank Yang, you know, where are you at right now in your embodiment? [00:05:12] Speaker B: Relating with people. Commitment, actually. That's a big one. And speaking of my job, like this is like the first like, quote unquote, like real job I had where like, actually had to work with a team, and then, like, our company just got registered, so it's like a legit business. And then host these boot camps. And I'm one of the co instructors that redirect the transmission at the second session of the day. We do different time zones for different folks and just learning how to be professional, how to show up to meetings on time, because we have, like, three meetings a day at least. And then how to, like, communicate with acolytes in a way where every. Every mentor, every instructor have their own, like, strength and weakness. My strength is, like, I'm able to expound on the ultimate and, like, make it look cool and sexy. And my weakness is relating to people more on the human level, really. That's what I'm working on. At the edge of being in presence is like, where the territory is right now for me to, like, flexibly aggregate, if that makes sense. [00:06:17] Speaker A: I see. [00:06:17] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:06:20] Speaker A: So relationality. [00:06:21] Speaker B: Relationality. Relational fitness. Yeah, yeah. I've been working on a little bit more too recently. Just getting getting stronger without even trying. Probably from all the transmissions that we've been getting from our coach and redirecting it to each other. Yeah, I guess we can talk about that too. Maybe later. Maybe the next one. Because I think that's a little bit, like, too much. [00:06:44] Speaker A: The transmissions. [00:06:45] Speaker B: Yeah. What is transmission exactly? Because I never. [00:06:47] Speaker A: Damn. That's what I was gonna ask. [00:06:51] Speaker B: Talk about it, because I didn't even know what transmission practices are until I met my teacher, Mae Chen, actually, before, when I Sometimes I interact with people and then I'll, like, maybe look at them a little bit and they will feel like, oh, I can feel, like, spaciousness or like there's some energetic transference or whatever. But I never really gave too much thoughts about that. But then apparently my mentor or our head coach, he. He could store transmissions into zoom. So when you watch it, even when you don't watch it live, he's speaking to you and he's untangling karmas. He's blasting radiations through the screen. Literally feels like this is like drinking, like a cup of ayahuasca every week towards the end. [00:07:40] Speaker A: Wow. [00:07:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Transmission based training is just something that I was completely ignorant of before. Yeah. [00:07:48] Speaker A: That'S pretty cool. Yeah, I feel that from some people when I come on here. It's like, what are you doing to me? They're doing something to me. It's behind the words too. It's like, yeah, the words are there and they mean something, but there's some kind of very subtle meaning that is behind the words. [00:08:02] Speaker B: Yep, yep. Meaning meaning making is beyond even language and concepts. Actually. Yeah. [00:08:08] Speaker A: Do you think that's what trans. I know you don't want to get too much into it, so just let me know. [00:08:11] Speaker B: I don't know that much about it either, so I can share with you what I know. But what were you gonna ask? [00:08:17] Speaker A: Do you think that's what transmission really alludes to, is like a deeper meaning? There's like a deeper. You know what I mean? Like it brings in a deeper meaning than what you could see before. [00:08:30] Speaker B: That's a really good way to put it. I've never heard anyone put it like that before. But my mentor talks a lot about meaning, about how if you know how to construct meaning, then you construct your reality. And there's a lot of deliberate meaning making schemas and systems that go into transmissions that could be the sound of the Microsoft, could be the sound of the room or even how bright the room is or the way that he speaks into the camera, like how soft it is. [00:08:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:08:59] Speaker B: How expanded it is, how loud it is. The to intonations and even the words themselves too is part of the. The meaning making packages that makes up this what you call signless signal. It's. It's basically just. There's different way you can explain transmission, but I guess you could say it's a kind of a sync up for you to sync up to the self emptiness view. Even if you don't have the realization yet because the mentor or whoever can give the transmission. It's almost like giving you a assisted lift. [00:09:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:09:38] Speaker B: Then sometimes it gets difficult because we emphasize that coming as you are, you just come as you are, come with all your traumas and all your conditionings, pay homage to your afflictions. We don't try to dissolve anything, we don't try to fix anything. We just come as we are and then try to connect to the silent signal. But the silent signal is just really your true nature. Right. But then what happens when your afflictions comes in contact with the radiation of true nature, when you still don't have the fitness, your own fitness to navigate through these afflictions? You can go, it could be fear, there could be bliss, there could be the inability to accept whatever is happening to you and your conditioning in this moment right now. So people like squirm or like they double down or they like expound, they try to like externalize things. But it's. That's it really. It's just a signal that allows you to see self, emptiness, or your true nature. Yeah, but silent signal, you have to work with it. Well, it's called the silent signal because it's kind of like looking for the nature of mind. You can't really find it. Yeah. But then I remember receiving a transmission a while ago from. Do you know pok, the community? Pok? [00:10:53] Speaker A: I don't think so. [00:10:54] Speaker B: Okay, well, it's a community called Perfectly okay. And then they have a instructor there or a guest speaker there, sometimes hosts transmissions. And that was the first time that actually believe that transmission was real. Because before I didn't. Didn't explore it. Right. I was kind of. At first I was a materialist. I didn't believe any of that. And after he got into spirituality, got awesome realizations. Then I'm pretty much agnostic, but I still didn't really think too much about transmission or transmission teachings. But then when I was at this guy, his name is David. When I. When I was in this group, his type of transmission is that he could go inside you, but he's not transmitting anything to you. He's just going inside you and then seeing whatever like obscurations or afflictions or contractions, solidity that's in your body mind. And then he'll direct you to where the tension is and tell you to relax it, release it and surrender to it. And then you just come in contact with what's always and already there, which is, you know, your true nature. But our mentor's transmission, there's a little bit of that too. But he can actually blast the transmission through the fucking screen. And you can even pick that up temporarily. Yeah. I wouldn't believe this if I didn't come in direct contact with it. [00:12:10] Speaker A: I know, right? It seems crazy over and over, but. [00:12:13] Speaker B: Yeah, but if everything is mine, everything is kind of possible. Right? [00:12:18] Speaker A: That's it right there. Yeah. Once you ever. Once you realize everything is the one mind, then things that were magical and fantasy before become actually obvious. [00:12:27] Speaker B: I don't know if I agree. Everything's one mind. [00:12:30] Speaker A: Oh, what do you mean? [00:12:32] Speaker B: Well, what I mean. Well, I think oneness can usually be a kind of an extreme view too. Because when you say everything is one, that presupposes that there are things that are separate. It's not like things aren't one. Right. [00:12:46] Speaker A: Well, I would say it's like this. It's all the same soup, but there's different elements in the soup. So it's both. It's. [00:12:52] Speaker B: It's more like it's both the one in the many. Because exactly, yeah, yeah, Both. The one in the mini or neither. But it's hard. Yeah, it's hard to put in one way kind of view where there's a lot of clinging on to extreme views that are so like subtle that even I had to like refine a lot of my views, like for the last like three, five years. Yeah, yeah. Like before, I will hold on to the view of like say this is infinity or whatever. That's a view too, actually. It's not like I'm not, I mean, I am experiencing infinity, so to speak, but that there is still like a view here that in a very subtle level try to take the whole notion of infinity and slap it onto like this saying. This is also kind of like a label too. Like people can get stuck in the isness. Oh, there's nothing more to go. There's just the isness. [00:13:49] Speaker A: Yep. Somewhere between form and formless. [00:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It can be both. This form is formlessness, or neither or both. Or it can form became form, emptiness can be emptiness. It's the flexibility of all these different aggregations that's the beauty. [00:14:06] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that. The flexibility of it. [00:14:08] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:14:09] Speaker A: And that's the difficult part. [00:14:11] Speaker B: Oh yeah, yeah, that's the difficult part. Yeah. Because the dualistic mind is so conditioned to just want to rarefy things or split things into like categories. [00:14:21] Speaker A: Yep. It's like. I got it now. This is it. It's all one. [00:14:23] Speaker B: You know, we think like only suicide bombers are extremist, but like unless you, you know, at least have certain degree of realization into like the view, which the view just means the nature of Maya or your true nature, you're an extremist. Yeah, yeah. Somewhere there's an extreme list they're crawling around, hiding. [00:14:46] Speaker A: They call it radical non duality for a reason. [00:14:48] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. The regular non duality can actually be extremely dangerous. [00:14:52] Speaker A: Yeah, I can see that. [00:14:54] Speaker B: I mean, a lot of people are starting seeing that. Like there's a lot of more new videos coming up, new content about how maybe you really have to be careful with non duality. You know, when you try to explain everything away through the ultimate, when you're still in the relative that you can very easily bypass or suppress or just don't have the motivation to, you know, inquire deeper because you're in that view of there's nothing to do. [00:15:21] Speaker A: That's the double edged sword of the YouTube spiritual community. Y is we have all of this at our fingertips. Right? [00:15:28] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:29] Speaker A: Within seconds you can access this knowledge that people of the past were lucky to Have. And if you're not quite on the level of the teacher or the teacher isn't. The teacher isn't really a good teacher. Putting it plainly, then, yeah, it could cause problems. [00:15:44] Speaker B: That's if you have a teacher. And I realize this path is. I would recommend people to find at least like, like a mentor, a teacher, or maybe a group just to hold yourself accountable. Yeah. That's what I realized on. On this path. Be on this path for so many years is I. I used to not believe in teachers either, but then I realize not just teachers, but just having a community where people can actually, like, check your blind spots can poke you. [00:16:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:09] Speaker B: Otherwise you can very easily create your own realization. Echo chamber. Yeah, yeah. [00:16:15] Speaker A: That's the danger. [00:16:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think modern YouTube Dharma scene has more or less this pedagogy problem. Yeah. Because it's like one video here, one video there, one video about, like, non duality, another video about, like, Hinduism. But then they're just like pickpocking, like, tiny little messages from, like, lineage that's like this deep. And then they expect you to just read it and be like, oh, this is the truth. [00:16:43] Speaker A: You're speaking to me. That's my platform. That's kind of what I do. I can tell you my service and what I think I'm rendering in that regard, in that formula is like, is at least showing a little glimpse into what could be. Right. You know, I think my whole shtick is just exposing the Dharma of the past so that people take their own path in it. You know, it's just like a little taste I like to also emphasize to people. It's like, this podcast probably isn't going to do it for you. Like, what I do on here isn't going to do it for you, but it might get you started. That's kind of like my whole formula here is like, hopefully if it resonates, it'll get you started. And then you go and find your community, find your teacher, find the books and stuff like that. [00:17:28] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm also really just criticizing myself as well, because I remember the way that I used to communicate the Dharma. They're really cool. Like, I still love the way that I used to express Dharma, but then looking back on can be a little bit reckless. The way I express Dharma, the sense of, like, focusing too heavily on the perceptual side of things. [00:17:50] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:51] Speaker B: Instead of, like, the realization, because, like, you have a perception shift, you have an experience. These are most likely the byproduct of realization. Right, right. And you can talk about them, they are part of the realization. But then if you talk about these kind of like you know, 360 like 4K. Yeah, it does feel like that, sure. Experientially. But then if people look at that and be like okay, they pin it down, find reality and say great, this is what I'm going for. I'm just going to go for like 4k8k360. But then without understanding how the mind aggregates then you're just going to find yourself in one route of extreme view or another. I just want to like you spend forever and like busted bubble of like reality, whatever. Then you turn into the extreme view of eternalism. [00:18:43] Speaker A: Right. [00:18:43] Speaker B: On the other side of the extreme is the extreme view of like annihilation or nihilism which then lionism is like the craving to not become. The craving to like delete every spec of the self. And the other one is the craving to become, to become God, to infinitely like expand. But those two extreme views, eternalism and like nihilism or annihilism, they're actually the same view, just different reference points. Yeah. Same with saying oh there's nobody here, there's nothing to do. They are, there are remedies to cure your previous view of a self, a solidified self or a very heavy sense of doership. But once you cling on to non doership or no self to be the new self, then you're in more trouble than in the beginning. Because now that you bypass everything because now you think you have the truth. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. [00:19:29] Speaker A: Do you think that's the place of community and being around people that you can relate to is grounding? [00:19:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I would say so. Also I think it's really just about the. Ultimately it's about the willingness to be wrong. The willingness to be wrong and be weak and stupid. Yeah. Because like I was watching this movie the other day and there was a dialogue about how you know, you can't be strong if you're not weak. First you have to feel weak in order to be strong. If you're strong all the time, you're probably just gonna walk around being really strong. You're probably not gonna get that much stronger. But if you can admit to yourself that there are parts of me that are just fucking weak and dumb and lazy, then there's room to grow. Yeah, yeah. So humility and the. I think there's a lot of compassion there too actually for yourself and for others. [00:20:20] Speaker A: 100. [00:20:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:20:21] Speaker A: That's a huge byproduct. [00:20:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, compassion, in a sense. Not just loving people. That's all part of compassion. Sure. But even when you see it, like, for example, if you see somebody's holding a view or somebody's needs to be checked or something like that, your teammate or whatever, even people at work. Right. Or your. Your kids or whatever, the most compassionate thing sometimes is to point it out at the right time. [00:20:47] Speaker A: Right. [00:20:47] Speaker B: But you have to point it out if you care about them and then let them sit through and feel the consequences of their view. That could be pain. Right. It's not bliss. Right? Yeah. We think compassion. We just can't let the other person, like, feel pain. But actually in that scenario, that's the opposite of compassion. Yeah. So even something like compassionate virtue is. It's all self empty, which means that, you know, how do we skillfully, like, navigate through the world? That's also another part of integration because you are still living in, quote unquote, the physical reality, even though it's not inherently existing. But you can't say it doesn't exist either, because that's just an extreme view. If it doesn't exist, why are you. What are you still doing here putting on your head, like, you know, turning on the camera, driving a car, talking to people. I see people talking to people and they just say people in his face. Hey, man, there's like no others. Who are you talking to? [00:21:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I feel like that is part of the dance that we spoke on before, between form and formless. You know, Yiddin Yang is compassion in learning how to be compassionate, learning how to love, man, without sounding too corny, I really think that is the dance between Shiva and Shakti is. It's a love affair. [00:21:58] Speaker B: You know, I like that way of putting it. The way I describe it is the dance between being and presence. Do you know Lisa, this is not the only teacher. And she's been involved for a while. She's blonde. Lisa Cohen, something like that. These are current. [00:22:16] Speaker A: Yep. [00:22:17] Speaker B: You know who she is, right? So I recently saw a new video she made on Instagram Reel because she's been making like non dual YouTube videos for like 20 years. But then she's like, oh, now everything is so short. I'm gonna try to explain non duality in two minutes. It was a beautiful explanation. She really got it. But then I was surprised the way that she described being and presence because it's kind of like the vocabularies that we're using right now is, you know, this inseparable dance between being and presence. Yeah. To. To give rise to the. The totality of reality. Yeah, yeah. So do you want to maybe describe a little bit what the difference is? Maybe you can relate it back to. [00:22:55] Speaker A: Oh, yeah, please. [00:22:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Your journey. So. So I think being. Okay, this is one way to put it. Bean is both the one and the many. Presence, neither the one nor the many. So if you're a being, you can be the one, you can be the many, you can be the frank, you can be. Oneness you can be sometimes if you have enough yogic skills. This is part of my training too. You can actually, you know, aggregate other people and then feel their feelings and even like think their thoughts sometimes. So you can be other people at various degrees. But presence is neither the one or the many. So presence is the space, like nature of mind. Right. And then being, you can say, is the ever shifting geometry of the five aggregates of form, feeling, perception, consciousness and fabrication. We don't have to get into the five aggregates, but those are the five aggregates that makes up what you are, makes up your being. If you want to break down being, one of the models is the aggregates model. So being manifests through presence through with an S. Present. The present itself doesn't rest on anything. So that's the relationship between the ultimate and the relative, or between appearance and emptiness. Are they the same or different? Oh, that's tricky, right? [00:24:07] Speaker A: Are they the same or different? [00:24:09] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that. That's a very subtle view right there. Because if you say they're the same, that's an extreme view. If you say they're completely different, that's an extreme view too. Because if you say they're the same, then everybody's enlightened, which is not ultimately true. I mean, I'm wrong, right? But if they're different, then. Then you have nothing to like, use as the ground for realization. Yeah, so that's that. This is the trippiest part of all of this actually is you can say it's neither the same nor different, but that's also just more language. But it's like this. It's like the presence you can say is the deathless or the unconditioned. The. Your true nature. It's not touched by any of the appearances or conditionings. It's inseparable from all the appearances and the qu. World. Your body, sensations, sound side conditionings, karmas. It's not apart from it, yet at the same time, none of it can touch it. No conditionings can touch the unconditioned, yet they're inseparable. That's why it can be realized and then go out in the street and do a bunch of crazy shit and still have stains in your. Your perception. But it's suchness with stains. It's stained because stain is just humans. Right. For humans there are going to be stains just, you know, just interacting with people just to aggregate self temporarily. That's a. Can be considered a stain from the perspective of purity, but the stain is none other than the purity. So you go beyond even the duality between the pureness and impureness. Something like that, yeah. [00:25:39] Speaker A: All smoking. Wow. [00:25:41] Speaker B: Yeah. I'll just go into one. One more really quick thing before I move on to the next topic. So the reason why it's so important you find this really subtle view is because if you rarefy presence, then you can run into the trouble of just wanting everything to stay a particular way. You know how people like, they go around and try to maintain a certain state or they want to go higher, they want more of whatever the state that they think is like the ultimate, that they rare fight. Yeah. Well, rarefy and separateness. We know what that looks like. Like, Looks like Samsara. Yeah. Can you include both of the one and the many or. And also neither and then flexibly aggregate in and out. [00:26:25] Speaker A: That's the dance in presence. [00:26:26] Speaker B: Yeah. That's the parkour punch of consciousness. [00:26:28] Speaker A: The parkour. [00:26:31] Speaker B: MMA of the mind. Or like parkour consciousness. [00:26:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:26:37] Speaker B: Wow. [00:26:38] Speaker A: Okay. Now do you feel right when we dance to dance, right. We're doing the parkour moves, that there is the essence of wanting to clean the stains like there is the essence of purification. So we could take the ravenous hedonist approach. Right. Knowing this is true, but yet we don't. Yet there is. In the character touching upon this presence, Brahman, there is seemingly this essence of cleaning up one's act, you could say becoming a better person. [00:27:12] Speaker B: I think that's very important. [00:27:14] Speaker A: Yeah. It's interesting because we don't have to, right? [00:27:17] Speaker B: You don't have to. Yeah. [00:27:19] Speaker A: Yeah. But yet we still do. There seems to be a correlation. Definitely not a causation, but from people I spoke with, it's like a correlation of purification and simplification as well. [00:27:30] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah. Yeah. I think there's two ways to look at purification. One is more on the expedient level, more on the relative level where things do seem like there is a progress of, say, the solution or transcendence. But from the ultimate view, the ultimate liberated view of no view, the nature of mind, all the stains are inherently pure. So can you tow both of these views simultaneously throughout your spiritual journey? So that question that people always ask about, is there a path or is there not a path? Do I need to practice meditation or are we already enlightened? Right. That becomes really clear when you can really hold to do all of these two paradoxes and realize ultimately there is no paradox. You can have the pathless path coexistent with progression with path. You can have timelessness co arising or coexisting with linear time. Yeah. So I think the reason why people just tend to become more compassionate. That's not always the case. But most people become more compassionate and loving after they have certain degrees of self emptiness realization is because when you see that everything lacks inherent existence and things only come into existence because of relations and the process of codependent rising, then your reality, instead of seeing it as some kind of an empty bleak void, you only see relations. The relations are empty, but the emptiness makes the relation. So what's left to work on? Nothing but relations. It's a relationship about you, into yourself, to you, to your environment, you to like family, friends, all kinds. Yeah, yeah. That's dance. Dance of reference points. That's where relationships are. [00:29:14] Speaker A: Yeah. And then you said in the beginning something along the lines of. Yeah, you can have these realizations and understandings of Anata and no self, but we're still dancing the dance and there's still repercussions to one's actions. [00:29:27] Speaker B: So. [00:29:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's the important aspect of the relationality. [00:29:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [00:29:32] Speaker A: It's like, why not? [00:29:34] Speaker B: Yeah. And then you will suffer if you don't. [00:29:37] Speaker A: Yeah. Even if suffering is the. An illusion. It's like, well, I still don't want to. I still don't want an illusion of suffering. You know, it's like I have to become. I don't have to. That's the thing. It's tough with words, but it's seemingly. We have to become more compassionate in this dream state, as we dream the dream as it's more lucid. It's like part of the rules of the game. It's the rules of the Matrix. [00:30:02] Speaker B: It's like because the Matrix is relations. The Matrix is composite of lines of like, karmas and like causes. [00:30:10] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:30:10] Speaker B: It's a mandala. Yeah, yeah. [00:30:14] Speaker A: The Matrix is relations. [00:30:15] Speaker B: Yeah, the Matrix is relations. Exactly. Yeah. There's nothing but relations. Right. Nothing stands alone. Yeah. Yeah. [00:30:22] Speaker A: We said we weren't going to get deep today. [00:30:24] Speaker B: Man, oh man. I don't know about what I'm gonna Say, but me either. I am like, kind of running, like. How do you call that? Running low on fuel. [00:30:36] Speaker A: I think you're doing pretty good. [00:30:37] Speaker B: What's the phrase? I'm pretty good. [00:30:39] Speaker A: But because I running on fumes. [00:30:41] Speaker B: I have, like, running on films. I have so much energy all the time anyway. I can afford to, like, not sleep sometimes. And it's also all the trainings that we've been doing. The boot camp really, like, increased to, like, my fitness level, like in all kinds of fitness. It's not just physical fitness. It's like fitness with work. It's the whole umbrella of realization fitness. Realization fitness will seep down and trickle down to all levels of your fitness as a being, as an aggregating being. Yeah, yeah. [00:31:13] Speaker A: Yeah. That's the thing too, right. Is after realization, one may think just from an outside point of view, that maybe somebody has no idea that one just is pacifist, one is apathetic or just lazy altogether. But I find the contrary. It's actually empowerment. There's volition in my actions, more energy. [00:31:35] Speaker B: Way more. [00:31:38] Speaker A: Yeah, it's real. [00:31:39] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. It's like you understand the five aggregates, for example, and then what do you do with it? Now how you aggregate, how you compound phenomenons becomes the art of your life. You're not trying to annihilate compounding. It's. [00:31:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:31:53] Speaker B: Before, I used to talk about things in a more extreme kind of way. It's like you have to dissolve everything. It does feel like the body, mind's been like, dissolved. It does feel like that. But I don't think that's what's really happening. I think what happens when you go through the transformation process in the path of spirituality is you're repatterning reality or repattering your conditioning or refragmenting or. Yeah, reconditioning. Because you can't really dissolve conditioning. Because first of all, condition is empty. How are you going to dissolve something that's empty? You can repattern its form and the shape and its texture and its geometry. But then where are you going to dissolve it to? Right. When you say, I'm going to dissolve this part of the cell, where is it going to go? It's not like there's any distinction between, like, the background, the foreground anyway. It's not like it's going to go back to some, like, primordial soup that is like the container of the universe. Because then that's the extreme view of everything's one. Yeah, yeah. [00:32:54] Speaker A: That's just part of the relationality. Right. There. [00:32:56] Speaker B: Yeah. Oneness only also relates with separateness. Right. Oneness cannot exist without the relationship it has. With separateness, both of them, Oneness and separateness, they call arise. Right. Relationship works at the metaphysical level, too. Yeah. Yeah. [00:33:12] Speaker A: Damn. Okay, how do you. [00:33:17] Speaker B: Okay, now I'm just gonna. Maybe you can talk about some of your more recent, like, discoveries or, like. [00:33:24] Speaker A: Yeah, well, where do I start? I'm still in the midst of it, man. Like, this whole experiment of coming on here and speaking to people has changed my viewpoint so much on how powerful it is to just simply sit with people that know and can transmit things through time and space through a zoom call, you know, through a camera. [00:33:46] Speaker B: You've been doing it for, like, five years now. More. [00:33:49] Speaker A: Something like that. But in the beginning, I didn't understand exactly what I was getting myself into. It was kind of just like, I don't know, a project to get some YouTube views and have some fun. I don't know. I was just. I don't really don't even know what. What thread I was following. I was just kind of like, I wanted to do this just because I don't feel like anybody's really doing it. And here I am five years later, and it's. It's completely changed my view of what spirituality is. [00:34:18] Speaker B: Yeah, it's hard to put into words. [00:34:20] Speaker A: It really is. But it comes down to transmission. I'm glad you brought that up, actually. And, like, how powerful it is to just sit with people that they just know, per se. Right. That are just a little bit further along the path. [00:34:30] Speaker B: Heard the people that heard the signal. Now they're just tuning your signal, too. [00:34:33] Speaker A: That's it. Yeah. [00:34:35] Speaker B: Continue. Signal. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting, because actually, my. One of my pith instruction. A pith. Do you know what a pith instruction means? [00:34:45] Speaker A: I've never heard of that. [00:34:46] Speaker B: When, like, a teacher gives something you have to do. My. My. My mentor really gave me pith instruction. I don't even know if this is a pith instruction, but he told me to interview other people. So I've been working on a series of interviews starting from, like, the mentors in our group. And I can. I can interview anyone. But he was like, oh, Frank, part of your karma is getting interviewed by people, like, countless times. Right? People only interview you, but you never interview other people. So to flip that karma, now my new project is interviewing other people. So I. Even just by doing it, I haven't done as many sessions as you. Probably only like five or six. It's incredible, actually, how different and also the same, but the. The way you have to, like, aggregate and the way you have to, like, direct your attention, the maneuvers that you make as a being, like, it's. It can be quite different and interesting than when. [00:35:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:35:37] Speaker B: Just get an interview or if you're just talking in front of a camera. Yeah. [00:35:40] Speaker A: It's a different kind of skill. You flipping the script. [00:35:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:35:44] Speaker A: See, it's funny because I go on the other side and I get interviewed by people, and that is stepping out of my comfort zone. I'd much rather just sit back and interview, listen and ask the right question. So when I'm put on the spot, it's like, oh, geez. Because I think. I don't know, I'm just not experienced. I guess it really comes down to that. Just comes down to having. [00:36:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Have you got an interview before? [00:36:06] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:36:06] Speaker B: You have too. Right, right. Other channels or. Okay, cool. Yeah, Maybe I'll bring you. Maybe you can come to come my channel. When I started to reach out to people in the, I guess the, you know, YouTube circle 100, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm still working on, like, some of the inner. Inner circle interviews just to practice first. [00:36:26] Speaker A: It's a different kind of skill. It's. How do I put it, man? Yeah. What it means to interview. I think this is a good thread. It's. It's almost. [00:36:35] Speaker B: You have to know the kung fu. [00:36:36] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Tai chi kung fu. You have to go with the relational fitness. Yeah, yeah, almost. In a way, this is gonna sound strange, but you have to be inside the other person's mind. I think if you want to make it a good interview, you have to almost know them better than they know themselves. [00:36:55] Speaker B: Yeah. Not everyone can do that. Right. [00:36:57] Speaker A: Yeah. That's very tough and definitely a skill to work on. Still working on it as we speak. [00:37:05] Speaker B: Maybe I'll interview you next time on my channel about how you learn to interview people. [00:37:09] Speaker A: Yeah, let me know, man. [00:37:10] Speaker B: Yeah. So in the beginning, we're kind of criticizing some aspects of the, I guess, Internet dharma culture. One of them is this concavity or this echo chamber that I talked about. Right. I think the modern society, the modern time optimizes for your realization to be in a vacuum, what they call solar realizers, because most people who are on the spiritual path nowadays are attempting to be a solo realizer. [00:37:42] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:42] Speaker B: But it's harder. It's difficult to find, like, lineage or a group. I just got lucky because, I don't know, like, my. My friends had connections and somehow everything Aligned. There's like synchronicities. But I wasn't looking for a group. I actually just tested groups. I didn't like, like talking to people at all. Yeah, I had like one or two, like really good. Usually my girlfriend that I hang out with. But I, I, I'm pretty much like pretty antisocial. I can social really well, but I prefer to be in my bubble. And then realization can actually make that bubble even stronger because now you're, you know, confined in like Stockholm syndrome, in the absolute. That's crazy. Right? It's hard to get, it's hard to shatter that. I guess you can say that's a sort of a view too, a very subtle view that there's realization is this way or that way and it should look like this way. You should, you should just not interact with people. Right. It's on my mind. Whatever this. We should, the monistic life is more holy than like capitalism, whatever the case may be. Right. [00:38:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:38:48] Speaker B: And I say also the other reason is because I talk about the pedagogy problem of like modern spirituality is like we don't really know where the materials are coming from really. Right. Because most of what we know is Buddhist materials. Most of what we know is Buddhism is very specifically Theravada, like the four path model, you know, like ID, meat, having sex. Those are very specific rules that Gautama Buddha came up with in that context for the monistic life with the type of sentient and karma that he was working with. Right. But then when people make that into a thing and then bring that into modern society, even you have a realization or a glimpse, your life is going to be very unintegrated, sometimes even like confusing. [00:39:39] Speaker A: Have you dove much into tantra? [00:39:42] Speaker B: Yeah, that's what the next thing I was going to say is like the, I don't know too much about tantra, but the transmission that we do is tantric in a sense that it's, it's like a mandala that loops on itself. Yeah. Whereas sutra is more like you just receive the teaching. Right? Yeah. But then tantra is more like relational. Yeah. So Vajrana or Mahayana, like the later Buddhisms, the third party is just the first turning of the first wheel of the Dharma. Because later wheels have tantric exercises and like even like honoring like violence. Honoring like Kali, like honoring the darkness. Right. Because if you don't live in a monastery, we're going to encounter darkness of reality. [00:40:19] Speaker A: Exactly. [00:40:20] Speaker B: But if you have that view of everything should. God should be good, you shouldn't eat Meat, then it's not going to be very easy for you to integrate with the modern life unless you move to the mountain, which, you know, there's nothing wrong with it at all. But can you really go into the mountain and really live like a monk? Or is that just another way of splitting your consciousness and hiding? [00:40:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I think the 21st century integration is very tantric. [00:40:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it has to be, actually. No, there's no other way. Yeah, yeah. You kind of have to be tantric. Yeah, yeah. [00:40:54] Speaker A: And then if you try not to be tantric in that way and try to be sutric, as you said, and force yourself to be a monk. [00:41:02] Speaker B: So for some people it works. But. But for most of it, yeah. But modern society is built on relations. [00:41:08] Speaker A: Yeah. I think that's the topic of conversation today, is relations. [00:41:12] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. That's kind of what I've been talking about. [00:41:14] Speaker A: Relationality. [00:41:16] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Because if I can sum up what tantra is in the most direct way possible is just seeing karma is Dharma. You know, like, that's why they use, like sexuality is something that's supposed to be like part of a karmic entanglement or your obstructions or your, like a source of identification. But then you utilize that, use that as a source or as a fuel to see through the inherently true nature of all phenomenons. So Dharma just means phenomenon. And there's no separation at all between Dharma and Karma either. Right. So the only. The only difference between what a Buddha is looking at and what a sentient being is looking at is just different views. The Buddha has the right view, so he sees all karma as Dharma in real time, instantaneously. But the sentient view, who doesn't have the right view is seeing Karma through the wrong view, which is a self view that would further compound that Karma, further entangle that Karma into the habitual tendencies and the patterns that he's so used to compounding condition over and over again. That's what makes up a sentient being. Like, we don't even have conditionings. We are the pattern of that conditioning and the particular reconfigurations of how phenomenons compound to make us. Us. Yeah, well said. And we just have to re. Pattern that suffering and see, that is inherently pure. Right. Appearance, emptiness, love. [00:42:44] Speaker A: Someone call me man. [00:42:48] Speaker B: Probably not important. [00:42:49] Speaker A: Bring him on the pod. [00:42:50] Speaker B: Put it on the pot. Okay. All right. No emergency. [00:42:57] Speaker A: Oh, man. Where do we go from here? Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Maybe we can talk about this, but in the beginning of, you know, my journey, quote unquote I was involved with a girl, and then I was. I was, like, turned off by what we were doing. It was just, like, not beneficial. So I was like, all right, so we broke up, and I'm like, I'm. [00:43:17] Speaker B: Just gonna turn off the spiritual technique that you guys were using, or you turn. [00:43:21] Speaker A: No, that's the thing is it was no spiritual technique. We were just. It was. It was a lot of hedonism, we could say. Just leaking my energy, we could say. So I was like, I'm gonna become a monk now. I'm gonna go, you know, practice ardent celibacy, we could say, for a few years. And I'm like, all right, this is cool. I felt the power from that. But then I was like, I don't think this is it either. Yeah, I get it. I get why people do celibacy and not even just sex, like, in celibacy in terms of anything, you know, asceticism in terms of anything. But then within the last maybe year or so, I'm like, I'm coming more back into seeing as we could say karma as dharma, and seeing the. The stuff that I thought was unholy is actually holy in that way. And. Yeah. You know, just getting more involved with girls and just, like, just doing stuff I wouldn't do before we could say. And it's actually only furthered my realization. So before, I was like, no, I can't. I was, like, shooing that away, and that was causing suffering. So now it's the integration of the. Of the stuff. Of the dirty stuff we could say into my being. And it feels deeper now, like I have a deeper love just for everybody and myself. [00:44:35] Speaker B: Just judgment towards yourself and others. [00:44:37] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. I mean, there's so many things that I could get into, but it's actually what I thought would be counterintuitive to the path is actually the path. [00:44:48] Speaker B: Yeah, that's more like the tantric bajana path. Yeah. [00:44:51] Speaker A: Yeah. 100%. [00:44:53] Speaker B: Yeah. The limitation of that is it's also very easy if you don't have a support system to bypass too, because. Oh, yeah, all the hedonism are just empty, too. It's different for everyone. Every situation is different. There's no right or way wrong way to do anything. The only thing that you really have to do on the special path is recognize what you're doing. But they have the fitness to rest. You have to have the fitness to rest, to rest with through an S. All your afflictions and all your conditions, all the contractions and discomforts and just Stay with whatever's arising. That's the resting part. The fitness to rest and resting is not just equanimity. Resting can feel like because you're letting like the negative emotions be exactly the way it is. You can be positive, it can be neutral. None of it matters. Right. So after you rest, you start to recognize, start to observe your patterns, how phenomena is compound to create your own karmic tendencies or trajectories or your being, how you aggregate. Yeah, yeah, I like that. And that's it really. That's a. I guess you can call that mohamudra. It's just resting and recognizing. Resting and recognizing ultimately merge as one. So they're actually not distinct either. Because if you rest, there is recognition and vice versa. And the more you can rest, the more they recognize recognition there is the, the more subtle patterns you can observe. And the more you can rest, the more you can stay with whatever it's arising. That's more like the Zogchen, like Mahamudra stuff. Like I still don't know that much about like Buddhism, but enough to explain the technique of rest and recognition. [00:46:29] Speaker A: Good stuff. [00:46:31] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that. [00:46:32] Speaker A: Rest and recognition. Rest and recognize, that's the balance. [00:46:38] Speaker B: And resting and recognizing is not really doing nothing either. It's a lot like do nothing meditation. But I think first of all, we're not trying to fix anything. We're not trying to add or subtract. We're not doing anything extra. Because sometimes in do nothing meditation, it depends on like what kind of doing nothing you're doing for your meditation. But sometimes there's a sense of resistance to try to do nothing. Or you just kind of like reinforcing a. A doer that's trying to do nothing. Just like when you try to annihilate certain conditionings, you're twisting into another separate like self or whatever that's trying to annihilate this other self here. So you created not to untie another knot. And that's never going to work. That's why Samsara is. Goes in cycles. [00:47:33] Speaker A: It's good stuff, Frank. Gotta take a sip of tea to that. Damn. Okay. I don't even know what to say. I think we can probably start to wrap it up. You said you had an hour, right? About that. [00:47:49] Speaker B: Yep. [00:47:49] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:52] Speaker B: Yeah, Nothing. Nothing is coming to mind. Yeah, we covered a lot of. Actually I don't even know what we talked about. [00:47:58] Speaker A: Me either, man. We're just riffing, going with the flow here. [00:48:05] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:48:05] Speaker A: I mean, do you have anything else you want to Say or. No, I just want to keep it at that. [00:48:10] Speaker B: I'm good, man. Yeah. We just finished our application for our. This is. This. I don't think when I first talked to you. I have a group yet. This one of my friend that's been following me since he was in high school. He's. He like convinced me to start a group. But then it wasn't after like three cohorts that we finally like, we found like a. Like a teacher. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:48:31] Speaker A: The power of teachers, man. We could probably. I mean, we definitely dove into that a little bit, but we could probably get more into that and how powerful it is to. I mean, I don't actually have a teacher. That's the thing. So I speak on the importance of it, but I might even be a little hypocritical in that manner because I don't actually. [00:48:46] Speaker B: You have a teacher? You don't. [00:48:47] Speaker A: No, I don't have a specific teacher. I just see the teacher, like when I come on here, pretty much like I see the guru and everybody. Yeah, but having like a specific embodied teacher. Not yet, at least. [00:49:00] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, you. You don't like. Having a teacher is not a definitive thing. Right. But like I would say for most people it's probably more. It would make your progress a lot faster. Yeah. Just because you cannot see your own view, Right. You cannot see your own view because your view is literally your entire reality. It's not just some concepts in the head. Concepts and beliefs and worldviews. These are trickled down from the view. The view of this matrix that's pretty much invisible because you take that to be a reality, right? Yeah, yeah. [00:49:32] Speaker A: Hidden in plain sight. [00:49:35] Speaker B: So I guess against realization, just seeing through to the lack of a heroin existence in all views while simultaneously not negating any view. So you can instantiate any views that you want. Maybe even two, three views simultaneously. Or like one view, no view. But then you really have to mature your insight into how all phenomenons and all views are empty in order to do that without friction. Otherwise a part of you that's still like twisted up is always going to cling onto that view and compound phenomenons even more. Then you go right back into the cycle. Samsara. [00:50:12] Speaker A: Oh man, Good stuff. [00:50:14] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn't even real. I didn't even know what views were before. Actually. Like for me to have that realization in 2020, I had the view, but how did I get the view without really knowing what the view is? Because that was just too crazy. Like I. I just, I had too much energy that I was able to just penetrate through the obscurations. But then even after that realization, the. There's still years and years of like, view refinement. View refinement. Because the view refinement thing, it trickles down into like every particle of your life. Your habit, your tendencies, your hobbies, your. Your routines, how you talk to people, the words you use, everything. How, how you dress, what your beliefs are. Everything. Yeah. I would say, ultimately, I would say if you want to put it in the most direct way possible, we all just trying to see through the self view. But the self view is. The word self is. So like, what does that even mean? Like, what is a self? Right. If you don't really dissect what a self is Like, I've been using the five aggregates model, but that's just one model. Right. Internal family system could be another model, something like that. To really see through how the self is constructed and deconstructed. Yeah, yeah. Because all views are pretty much just the extension of a clinical cell view, which is just an extension of the view of separation. Yeah, yeah. [00:51:33] Speaker A: Oh, man. I guess moral of the story is just keep going, keep going. [00:51:37] Speaker B: Keep being curious, keep being like, honest. I think honesty is really important, being directly honest with yourself. Yeah, yeah. [00:51:45] Speaker A: Curiosity leads the way. [00:51:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Be honest, be curious and. Yeah. Always trying to find that middle way. Always find the middle way.