Four Applications Of Mindfulness Retreat 2013 with B. Alan Wallace (part 48)

0:04 So any questions or comments about theory or practice or about your experiences? Yes, we'll start with you please. Yeah, Report an error in the passage at 0:04 Highlight the passage at 0:04

0:20 it's hard to find the right words for it. It's not a contraction. It's not like I see an enemy coming in upon itself and getting really dense. Oh, I agree. Report an error in the passage at 0:20 Highlight the passage at 0:20

0:13 the meditation awareness of awareness, you talk of inverting awareness. Can you elaborate a little bit on what you mean by that? Report an error in the passage at 0:13 Highlight the passage at 0:13

0:30 But we have these words in and out and we find them in Tibetan and Sanskrit English, so it's not just an anomaly of our own language here, of withdrawing from appearances or the senses withdrawing as we fall asleep. But the sense of inversion is simply, it is a withdrawing, a disengagement from all appearances. So again, habitually, in terms of our survival and propagation, it's all about appearances. Report an error in the passage at 0:30 Highlight the passage at 0:30

0:55 We're looking for, you know. Everything that's conducive to or adverse to survival and procreation for basic biological survival. And likewise for just generally hedonic pursuits. It's all outwards. We're looking at appearances, objects that can harm or help. And now we're doing something that runs against the grain, for which we're not biologically adapted, one can say. Report an error in the passage at 0:55 Highlight the passage at 0:55

1:16 And that is, while fully conscious, disengaging, withdrawing our interest and disengaging our attention from all appearances, including mental appearances. That is the space of the mind, thoughts and images and so forth. And when we do so, see what's left over. What are we still cognizant of when we're no longer deliberately attending to any appearances at all. Report an error in the passage at 1:16 Highlight the passage at 1:16

1:39 And so that's what's meant by it. It's not kind of coming inside into the head or into some particular place as a withdrawal, like a retreat place, but simply a loosening and a disengagement from all appearances. And again, we can take that thought experiment of the perfect sensory deprivation tank. You're not actually, you haven't withdrawn into some tiny space. Your awareness is wide open. Report an error in the passage at 1:39 Highlight the passage at 1:39

2:03 It's simply disengaged from all appearances. Okay? Report an error in the passage at 2:03 Highlight the passage at 2:03

2:11 Yes, please. Chris. Just a question about what you were saying today about the substrate. Yes. And you said that the still individual, is that the word? That's right, yeah. That is one substrate and substrate consciousness per person. Or per sentient being, yes. So, mathematics, of course, small people than we used to do. Oh, sure. So how does that work? Sure, sure. Report an error in the passage at 2:11 Highlight the passage at 2:11

2:37 Well, as I said, this abstract consciousness is not human. Therefore, you're human this time. No guarantee you're human last time, or that you'll be human next time. And so, there are many in the Buddhist worldview, we now have not only animals that can migrate up, we have human beings that migrate down, so that's an awful lot of flux. Report an error in the passage at 2:37 Highlight the passage at 2:37

2:59 And then in the Buddhist worldview, then there's a lot more types of sentient beings than simply animals and human beings. There are a whole domain of sentient beings called pretas. They're said to be hell realms. They don't exist someplace. They're like a really bad nightmare that lingers a lot. And then there are asuras, there are devas, and so there's a wide bandwidth. Report an error in the passage at 2:59 Highlight the passage at 2:59

3:19 And in the biggest picture, in the Buddhist worldview, there are as many populated worlds in the Buddhist worldview. As we can imagine in the modern scientific one with 100 billion galaxies and so forth, that doesn't top the Buddhist. The Buddhist is extremely large. And so, for example, I mean, you didn't ask it, but this immediately follows. Report an error in the passage at 3:19 Highlight the passage at 3:19

3:42 Five billion years ago, well, let's say three and a half, biologists generally say about three and a half billion years ago, the first single-celled organisms seemed to have formed, give or take a half billion, and they don't know why. I read an article just this morning saying, Scientists' understanding of the origins of life are limited. What they're trying to say is, we don't have a clue. That's limited. Because there's all kinds of theories, and none of them are scientifically testable, or have been tested, and so they're interesting theories, but none of them constitute an understanding at all. Report an error in the passage at 3:42 Highlight the passage at 3:42

4:14 It's mostly illusions of knowledge, and then, so they said limited. Okay, well, it's limited, like zero is limited. But overall, in terms of fossil remains, that kind of thing, and I've spoken with very accomplished molecular biologists and so forth about this. Give or take about three and a half billion years ago, single-celled organisms, when animals, sentient beings, conscious beings first emerged, nobody knows because they don't, you know, you can't tell from fossil remains. Report an error in the passage at 4:14 Highlight the passage at 4:14

4:38 But the simple point is that in terms of any biological creatures like us, I'm going to take this pretty seriously, I believe in science, a lot of science, that four billion years ago there weren't any humanoids around at all on this planet and there were no animals like we know it. On this planet, and now we have a whole bunch, so let alone human population going up and up and up. Hey, four billion years ago, and then sooner or later, the sun's going to go supernova, and our world's going to be engulfed in flame, and that's going to be toast for every biological organism on this planet. Report an error in the passage at 4:38 Highlight the passage at 4:38

5:10 We're all going to be wiped out. So what happens then? So if you take the bigger picture, and Buddhism already has, beat it to us, you know, that sentient beings migrate. They migrate from one planet to another, solar system to another. When you're in the bardo, you travel in the bardo at the speed of thought. Well, that's faster than the speed of light because you're not a physical being that accelerates and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 5:10 Highlight the passage at 5:10

5:38 You're just there. And so sentient beings can migrate from one planet to another entire different solar system or different galaxy. So there's horizontal movement that can happen and there's certainly a lot of vertical movement from going into a higher realm down to a lower realm. So there's plenty of room for everybody. Report an error in the passage at 5:38 Highlight the passage at 5:38

6:03 It's said, when it comes to finite, the Buddhist term is interesting, there's a number 10 to the 59th, 10 to the 59th, they say that's countless. Report an error in the passage at 6:03 Highlight the passage at 6:03

6:16 That is, you can't count that high. You can always put a 60 over the 10. But it's interesting, and this goes back to classical India. They did have very advanced mathematics. They had the number 0 before the Arabs did. In fact, they were more advanced than the Arabs were. We got ours from the Arabs. Roman numerals were incredible. Report an error in the passage at 6:16 Highlight the passage at 6:16

6:33 Incredibly clunky. Ever tried to do long division with Roman numerals? That wasn't our strength. But the Indians were very good. The Jayins were very good. The Buddhists not particularly, but the Jayins were very good. In fact, there's good reason to believe. I know I'm meandering here, but Pythagoras, Pythagorean Theum, almost certainly got it from India. Report an error in the passage at 6:33 Highlight the passage at 6:33

6:51 They had it already. And he might very well have picked it up when he traveled to Egypt, because there was commerce between India and Egypt. So, long story short, the Indians had a number for every, like we have, All we have is 10,000, 100,000, million. Well, then we have a word, 100,000 to a million, then 100 million. Then we have, okay, billion, so 1,000 times a million. Report an error in the passage at 6:51 Highlight the passage at 6:51

7:12 And then we have a trillion, 1,000 times a million. So we have a few words there, quadrillion and quintrillion and so forth. The Indians had a word for every order, every 10, every one. It's an order of magnitude, isn't it? They had one for every one going all the way up to 59. And then they just said, we're stopping here. Report an error in the passage at 7:12 Highlight the passage at 7:12

7:34 If that is anything beyond that is useless, it's countless. And so it's difficult to say when it's said in Buddhism there are countless ancient beings. That's what they do say. There are countless ancient beings. How should we interpret this? Well, we have modern mathematics. There's a whole, what was it, it starts with cantor. Report an error in the passage at 7:34 Highlight the passage at 7:34

7:53 Cantor. And to the whole mathematics of infinities. It's really brilliant. And it was on the turn of the, between the 19th and 20th century. Well, they didn't have that in classical India. They didn't have cantors. Mathematics of infinities. And so one wants to be a little bit careful about when they say countless, is that literally infinity as we understand it. Report an error in the passage at 7:53 Highlight the passage at 7:53

8:13 All we can say is an enormous number, whether it's finite, well they simply say countless and then maybe they mean infinite, maybe they just mean so astronomically high you can't even imagine it. But the long and the short of it is that every sentient being has his or her own unique continuum, a mental continuum, has no identifiable beginning. Report an error in the passage at 8:13 Highlight the passage at 8:13

8:34 As a sentient being, but it is said quite unequivocally that every sentient being has the capacity, the potential, to be liberated, to be fully awakened, to become a Buddha. And that the Buddhas have their work cut out for them until every sentient being is enlightened. And they keep serving the needs of sentient beings throughout the universe. And there's an interesting phrase, it's called tongsum gijiten. Report an error in the passage at 8:34 Highlight the passage at 8:34

8:58 To kind of elaborate a little bit, because this is interesting, big picture. And it is interesting to see points of divergence, but also convergence between modern, that is 2013, cosmology, and then Buddhist, which has been around for a couple of millennia. But there's a term, Tung Sum Gyi Jikilen, which is sometimes falsely translated as 3,000 fold world. Don't believe that one, that's a wrong translation. Report an error in the passage at 8:58 Highlight the passage at 8:58

9:20 It's not 3,000. Sometimes it's called trichilochism or something like that. Who knows what on earth that's supposed to mean. But what it is, is a thousand to the third power. Dongsun means three thousand, but it doesn't mean three thousand, it means a thousand to the third power. And so it's a billion-fold. Report an error in the passage at 9:20 Highlight the passage at 9:20

9:38 It's a billion-fold world. And in Buddhist cosmology, it's said that the universe consists of billion-fold world systems. But one of those billion is a world system if and only if it's populated by sentient beings. you have some planet out there, let's say Pluto, for example, that has no life forms on it at all, I don't know whether it does or not, certainly not biological organisms as we understand it, then it's not a world system. Report an error in the passage at 9:38 Highlight the passage at 9:38

10:09 Because bear in mind, when we speak of loka, and it's the same word, means loka, which means an experienced world. Well, if nobody's experiencing it, then it's not an experienced world, it's not an inhabited planet so The moral of that story is that in the Buddhist world view, That we have these clusters of billion-fold worlds. Each one of them is populated. Now, if sprinkled among them are a whole bunch of other suns and planets which have no population, they don't count. Report an error in the passage at 10:09 Highlight the passage at 10:09

10:40 So it may be a billion-fold world, but a hundred billion-fold galaxy that is with a hundred billion stars. If only one star out of a hundred has a planet that is actually populated by some Sajibin, it doesn't have to be human. But that's another thing. In Buddhist worldviews, they say, oh, there are human beings all over the cosmos. And there are animals as well. There are various types of sentient beings. Report an error in the passage at 10:40 Highlight the passage at 10:40

11:04 So a very big place. And that's just within one system. People like Stephen Hawking have talked about multiverses. And maybe there are whole universes that have no life. Well, it's complete speculation. But the Buddhist worldview is to say that, well, there really, why not? There may be multiverses. So we're just living in one that's expanding now. Report an error in the passage at 11:04 Highlight the passage at 11:04

11:24 You know, with this accelerated rate of expansion of the universe, which will either dither off into just dead cold, the big whimper it's called, or it will go into the big crunch and then presumably, as Einstein envisioned, be oscillating from the big crunch to big bang, big crunch, big bang. That's more of the Buddhist worldview. The Buddhist worldview, actually they call it the breath of Brahma, but it is a Buddhist worldview going way, way back that the universe is oscillating. Report an error in the passage at 11:24 Highlight the passage at 11:24

11:55 Like that. That is expanding and contracting, expanding and contracting. But then there's multiverses. So when one universe contracts into a singularity, and then no life forms like us can possibly survive that, we'll migrate off to another one. And then when this expanding becomes inhabitable again, then sentient beings by the power of their karma migrate into this one. But it's all participatory, all the way up, all the way down. Report an error in the passage at 11:55 Highlight the passage at 11:55

12:20 The universe is participatory. In terms of just a little bit of fluctuation of human population, no sweat. Got that one covered. By the way, how's your meditation going? Report an error in the passage at 12:20 Highlight the passage at 12:20

12:33 You know, I'm a shoe salesman. If this slipper didn't fit, how about this pair of boots? Here's some really nice, you know, dancing shoes. So by the time I've given several of these, hopefully one of the pairs of shoes fit and they're, you know, you're fit for walking. These shoes are weighed from market. What's that? I wasn't surprised. And that's why I wanted to reassure you this evening. Report an error in the passage at 12:33 Highlight the passage at 12:33

12:55 If that's the one that fits, go for it. And don't second-guess yourself. I'm speaking now, of course, to everybody. If that's the one that works, and you're not the first one, if that's the one that works, just go for it. We'll try one tomorrow. The shoe may fit, and then you have two pairs of shoes. Very good. Anything else coming up? Yes, please. Go ahead. Report an error in the passage at 12:55 Highlight the passage at 12:55

13:21 A going... A going-on question. A going-on question. Sure. Sure. A going-home question. Gotcha, gotcha. I like those. We're going home pretty soon. Report an error in the passage at 13:21 Highlight the passage at 13:21

13:45 Good, good. That's helpful. Report an error in the passage at 13:45 Highlight the passage at 13:45

14:07 Sure. Report an error in the passage at 14:07 Highlight the passage at 14:07

14:16 So in terms of spreading the word to your family members, the first is get some really strong leather belts, chloroform over them, get them down, tie them down and say, now listen, because you can't escape now. That's the way they won't run away. Report an error in the passage at 14:16 Highlight the passage at 14:16

14:40 Family members can be very, very dicey. But if they are truly interested, this is the thing, I told you that charming story between the Gautama, he just left his enlightenment seat, and the first guy, he says, whatever dude, and walks off, shaking his head, literally. The sutta says, and he walked off shaking his head, like, go figure. So it's really, Buddhist evangelism, that knocks a moron. Report an error in the passage at 14:40 Highlight the passage at 14:40

15:05 There are a few, I've heard there are some in Japan or something, but it's really rare and it's really contrary to the whole spirit. If people aren't interested, we're just going to wish them well. And then if they want to like food, then we give them food. If they like a hug, give them a hug. You know, whatever. But it's just not one of those things like, you know, we try to convert people or try to persuade them. Report an error in the passage at 15:05 Highlight the passage at 15:05

15:25 I have no problem at all, you might have noticed, of critiquing delusional views or views that I find faulty. But I do it not by just, I really make a point I'm not kidding people. I'll slug, I'll mug thoughts, ideas, perspectives. But I try to avoid doing that to people. Because they're sentient beings like ourselves. But thoughts, ideas, beliefs, dogmas are not people. So I'm merciless. But when it comes to simply if they express an interest, if they express an interest, then one thing that, it's a technique used in one Indian philosophical school called Prasanghika. Report an error in the passage at 15:25 Highlight the passage at 15:25

16:00 And that is, if the conversation starts up about what's the relationship between ourselves, I'm a thinker, we all are, and our thoughts. That's a perfectly good question. Report an error in the passage at 16:00 Highlight the passage at 16:00

16:11 And then to start up a conversation, one interesting technique is rather than immediately downloading your views or your understanding or what you heard from a retreat and so forth, saying, oh, this is an interesting topic. You know, what's the relationship between ourselves? Like Descartes, I think, therefore I am. And clearly that's not a false statement. I do think, and I am, so there's not a problem there. Report an error in the passage at 16:11 Highlight the passage at 16:11

16:34 It all depends on how you interpret that phrase. But what I'm getting at is... To actually start it with questions. What do you think? What do you think? Here's an interesting angle to it that I've not shared yet, but I find it very, very helpful. And it's a very powerful relationship with some really cutting-edge physics, modern and very solid mainstream physics. But I'll give the Buddhist thing first. Report an error in the passage at 16:34 Highlight the passage at 16:34

16:58 And that is that there is this kind of middle way Buddhist philosophy, which is very, very deep, highly regarded by many as the kind of pinnacle of Buddhist philosophy. Report an error in the passage at 16:58 Highlight the passage at 16:58

17:11 When we're thinking about something, then there's three elements to thinking about something. There's that that we're thinking about, whatever. So I'm thinking about you right now. We're having a conversation. So I'm thinking about you. So you're the object of my thoughts. And then there are my thoughts about you. Report an error in the passage at 17:11 Highlight the passage at 17:11

17:29 That was an interesting question. I was kind of imagining, speaking with your family. And so there's a second one. I'm thinking about you and you're the referent of my thought. And then there's me, the thinker. Report an error in the passage at 17:29 Highlight the passage at 17:29

17:41 The person who's coming up with these thoughts. So there's three elements there. The thinker, the process of thinking and then the referent of the thoughts. All good. Well the interesting Buddhist point here is that all three of those are mutually interdependent. And that is there is no, we simply cannot talk about, think about or imagine an object of thought without thought. Report an error in the passage at 17:41 Highlight the passage at 17:41

18:05 But then you can't have a thought without the thought being about something. Even if it's unicorns. Let's assume, let's imagine they don't exist, but you can still think about them. You know what they look like, even if they don't exist anywhere. And so you can't have a thought without a referent. But you can't have a thought without somebody thinking it. I mean, somebody experiencing it, right? But then you can't be a thinker if you have no thoughts. And you can't have a thought with no referent. Report an error in the passage at 18:05 Highlight the passage at 18:05

18:33 So in other words, it's like a three-legged stool. You take away any one of those legs and the other two, they not only fall over, they disappear. And so that's quite interesting. Like there's a person to your right of you and a person to your left of you. You take one of them away, the other two are still there. So you're not mutually interdependent. Report an error in the passage at 18:33 Highlight the passage at 18:33

18:52 But with this triad, the referent of the thought, the thinking and the one who's thinking it, take away one and the other two vanish. That would imply that you, the thinker, are not inherently independently real. Report an error in the passage at 18:52 Highlight the passage at 18:52

19:07 Because you disappear. Gone. But it's nothing mystical about this. If there's no left, there's no right. If there's no up, there's no down. If there's no yes, there's no no. If there's no male, there's no female. You can't say a male. We're all males. Well, then that doesn't mean anything. Male, female. You get both or neither. But you can't, how do you say, simply take one out. One could kill all the males and have females for one generation. Report an error in the passage at 19:07 Highlight the passage at 19:07

19:35 That's conceivable. But you can't just delete males entirely and still have females there because females is defined in reference to male. So there's a lot of things like that. Report an error in the passage at 19:35 Highlight the passage at 19:35

19:46 And so that makes it interesting. There is a book that was written years ago called Thoughts Without a Thinker. It's a nice entry-level book but it's not very deep because we are thinkers. So it's one of those misnomers that in fact we don't exist at all. And that's a very crude misinterpretation of what the Buddha said and the misinterpretation of the Theravāda tradition. Report an error in the passage at 19:46 Highlight the passage at 19:46

20:07 So it's by a person who has a little bit of understanding of Buddhism but frankly not very deep. Because it's much more subtle and interesting than that. The Buddha never said, I do not exist or people do not exist. He never said the self does not exist at all. He never said that. But what he's challenging is how do we grasp under the self? Report an error in the passage at 20:07 Highlight the passage at 20:07

20:26 How do we conceive of ourselves? Do we reify? And of course that definitely gets challenged. So that's interesting. Now I mentioned a parallel. It's not trivial. And I think it's actually quite deep. To my mind the most fascinating branch of modern theoretical physics and it's mainstream. It's called quantum cosmology. Report an error in the passage at 20:26 Highlight the passage at 20:26

20:44 Quantum cosmology. And it's by some really brilliant physicists. John Wheeler is one of them. He was, we had Richard, back in the late 20th century, we had Richard Feynman at Caltech, Nobel laureate. His counterpart in the United States, same stature, was John Wheeler, John Archibald Wheeler. And he went to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, which is where Einstein was and many other brilliant thinkers. Report an error in the passage at 20:44 Highlight the passage at 20:44

21:07 So they were kind of the two bookends. These were the two greats. Really brilliant, absolutely cutting-edge theoretical physicists. And so John Wheeler is one, working with a student of his, or a colleague, Bryce DeWitt was his name. Report an error in the passage at 21:07 Highlight the passage at 21:07

21:24 They took the principles of quantum mechanics, the Schrödinger wave equation, which is your fundamental core equation for doing quantum mechanical calculations, And instead of regarding a quantum system as being something isolated, you have to protect from the macro environment, the warm environment, protect it, and now in this very, very special environment, then run your quantum mechanical experiments, which is how it's largely viewed. Report an error in the passage at 21:24 Highlight the passage at 21:24

21:50 They do something I just love to do. They turned it on its head. They took it 180 degrees and said, well, let's consider maybe a quantum mechanical system with all of its weirdnesses, probability functions, collapse, and then the Heisenberg uncertainty, all these weird quantum effects. Let's kind of turn that, instead of thinking that this occurs in a very localized place, very rarefied, protected from the big bad world, let's just turn that on its head and what would it be if the entire universe is a quantum system? Report an error in the passage at 21:50 Highlight the passage at 21:50

22:19 The whole shebang. So they took the Schrödinger wave equation and then they tweaked it so that the whole universe is regarded as a quantum system. So it's called quantum cosmology. Fascinating branch and it's been embraced by people such as Stephen Hawking. Report an error in the passage at 22:19 Highlight the passage at 22:19

22:37 Anton Seilinger, a world-class experimental physicist, I actually know personally. Another man I don't know personally, Andrei Linde, a Russian physicist at Stanford, very brilliant theoretical physicist. And they have other companies, oh, Paul Davies, really outstanding, written frequently for Scientific American, outstanding theoretical physicist in Arizona. Report an error in the passage at 22:37 Highlight the passage at 22:37

22:56 He's one of the chief proponents of this nowadays. So you notice I didn't mention any flakes. This is not new-agey, fringy physics. It's very mainstream. It's not the only one that's... presented, but it's presented by some very big heavyweights. And so what gets so fascinating here really quickly, and this is, there's a connection to your question here, is that this whole triad... Report an error in the passage at 22:56 Highlight the passage at 22:56

23:19 The person who has articulated this very clearly as I've read directly is John Wheeler. He's quite intelligible actually. And he said, you know, when we really look closely at what we scientists are measuring, Now within this quantum system of the whole universe, what we actually get from our measurements is information. So when I mentioned that earlier, that came from him. Report an error in the passage at 23:19 Highlight the passage at 23:19

23:46 And it's quite clearly true. That's what we're getting is information. And prior to making the measurement of any sort, now that we're viewing the entire universe as a quantum system, prior to the act of measurement, you don't already have concrete, real, independent stuff out there. That you just happen to be measuring, but rather everything you're measuring is rising relative to your system of measurement. In relationship to the questions you're posing, the kind of measuring device you created, from that you get information and the information then you interpret within a conceptual framework and you make sense of the world. Report an error in the passage at 23:46 Highlight the passage at 23:46

24:27 Prior to making the measurement, there's no universe out there that's already absolutely there in discrete chunks. But rather what you have is just everything in a superposition state, which means everything is a field of possibility. Then you make a measurement, and then that possibility becomes an actuality relative to your system measurement. Report an error in the passage at 24:27 Highlight the passage at 24:27

24:50 And so what you have there, and what he says here, which is so fascinating, is that what we really know as scientists, what we directly apprehend is information. That's what we get from all of our measurements, bar none. Every single measurement system gives you information. Report an error in the passage at 24:50 Highlight the passage at 24:50

25:07 And then out of the information we human beings, such as physicists, we conceive of the categories of matter, energy, space, time, particles, waves, fields, charge, etc., etc. But those categories are defined by physicists. They weren't God-given. They didn't just pluck them out of the universe. They were conceived by human minds and they were conceived on the basis of information. Report an error in the passage at 25:07 Highlight the passage at 25:07

25:34 Now, information is not physical. Information is not a particle, a field, a wave. It's not matter. It's not energy. It's not space. It's not time. Information is information. And it's not physical quite clearly. It has no mass or any other physical quality. But then it's on the basis of information that we create the categories of matter. Report an error in the passage at 25:34 Highlight the passage at 25:34

25:59 So he says, what is fundamental to the universe, contrary to the beliefs of almost everybody, what is fundamental, and by the way, he's not religious at all. I have no trace of any kind of religion. Stephen Hawkey is not religious. Anton Seininger, I know him, he's not religious, not Buddhist, Christian or anything else. As far as I know, I'm quite sure not. Report an error in the passage at 25:59 Highlight the passage at 25:59

26:18 They're saying what is fundamental to the universe, the natural world, is not matter and energy. That's the widespread belief. Or if you want to spread that out a bit, mass energy space-time. That's not it. That's not fundamental. That's derivative. Because the very categories of mass energy space-time, as we understand them, Are as we define them. Again, not God given, not nature given, not anything else given, we constructed them. And moreover, over the last 400 years, the definitions of mass have changed, the definitions of energy have changed, the whole notion of time has changed, from being absolute to non-absolute, the notion of space has changed, from absolute to non-absolute. Report an error in the passage at 26:18 Highlight the passage at 26:18

26:59 Now we have things like dark matter, dark energy, they're now considered energy and matter, even though we know nothing about them. So the whole point of this is that our definitions of space, time, matter and energy, these have evolved over the last 400 years, let alone before then, right? And they're always evolving and being created and recreated, refined and modified by human minds. Report an error in the passage at 26:59 Highlight the passage at 26:59

27:18 Therefore they're not primary. What's primary is information. And so John Wheeler's, how do you say, his summary from this, it goes in a nice soundbite. And the soundbite, it's his soundbite, is it's from bits. It's from bits. And as its refers to little chunks of matter or chunks of energy like photons, they are derivative of bits. And that's little units of information. Report an error in the passage at 27:18 Highlight the passage at 27:18

27:45 Information is primary. Matter and energy and everything else is derivative. Report an error in the passage at 27:45 Highlight the passage at 27:45

27:55 Stephen Hawking pushes that further in a paper written just a few years ago and co-authored with another, Thomas Hertog is his name, another physicist. He said, well, you know, it's not only the present and the future prior to active measurement. Exists in a superposition state, which means a field of possibility, not actuality. But the past as well. This really blew my mind when I read it. Report an error in the passage at 27:55 Highlight the passage at 27:55

28:18 The past also exists in a superposition state, until we make a measurement. Everything we know about the past at any time, everything we know about any aspect of the past, whether it's what you had for breakfast this morning or what happened right after the Big Bang, everything we know about the past, Report an error in the passage at 28:18 Highlight the passage at 28:18

28:40 based upon measurements we're making in the present. Because you never measure the past. It's inaccessible. It's everything we know, and we do know a lot of things about the past, it's always based upon measurements in the present. Report an error in the passage at 28:40 Highlight the passage at 28:40

28:56 But then, what kind of measurements? Well, that depends on the system of measurement. what will you measure? Well, that depends on the questions you're posing. And then how will you make sense interpret the information you get from your system? So what Stephen Hawking's point was, Is that the past exists in a superposition state. It's not already a done deal. It's not already carved in granite. It's not already absolutely real, waiting to be discovered. Report an error in the passage at 28:56 Highlight the passage at 28:56

29:20 But rather the past exists in a superposition state. And the past rises always relative to the system of measurement using in the present moment. And it's only when you make the measurement that you shift from the superposition state to an actuality. And so Stephen Hawking says, you're free to choose your own past. Report an error in the passage at 29:20 Highlight the passage at 29:20

29:44 By the systems of measurement you use, by the questions you pose, and the way you interpret the data. Report an error in the passage at 29:44 Highlight the passage at 29:44

29:52 I'm going to come finally back to thoughts and thinkers, because it's very closely related. Information. Report an error in the passage at 29:52 Highlight the passage at 29:52

30:00 Now I'm giving a Buddhist interpretation of quantum cosmology. You can see for yourself, it's very transparent, whether I'm speaking gibberish or whether this follows immediately from what I just said. And I will say that what I've just said is true of John Wheeler and Stephen Hawking. I've studied it carefully, and I've tried to really give an... Report an error in the passage at 30:00 Highlight the passage at 30:00

30:16 Absolutely straight and accurate account of what they said. And I've written a number of books on it, citing the sources. You can read the sources. Our most recent one was Meditations of Buddha Skeptic, but before then too. So, Buddha's interpretation. Report an error in the passage at 30:16 Highlight the passage at 30:16

30:32 Information. Instead of using the word thought, let's use a closely correlated word, information. There is no such thing as information without there being something that the information refers to. You can't have information about nothing, because information about nothing is not information. Report an error in the passage at 30:32 Highlight the passage at 30:32

30:57 And so the very existence of information depends on the existence of the informata, about which you have information. But then there's no information unless there's someone informed. It's not informing unless there's someone who is informed. Report an error in the passage at 30:57 Highlight the passage at 30:57

31:17 But then there's no one who's informed if you're not getting any information. And there's nothing about which, there's nothing... About which you get nothing, the informata, the referent of the information. There's none of that unless you have information. You can't talk about something about which you have no information. Report an error in the passage at 31:17 Highlight the passage at 31:17

31:34 And so once again we have the triad. We have the informata, let's call it, that about which you have the information. The information, the process of information transfer. And the one who is informed. Or is informing. Maybe you're informing to somebody else who becomes the informed. Three. That's familiar now. Report an error in the passage at 31:34 Highlight the passage at 31:34

31:55 If you take out that about which you're getting informed, then you have no information about it. You have no information. Take out the information, the other two disappear. If there's no one who's informed, there's no information and therefore nothing about which you're informed. So it's once again a triad. Take away one, the other two vanish immediately. There is no one who's informed without consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 31:55 Highlight the passage at 31:55

32:18 Nobody's ever informed without being aware. Therefore there's no universe without consciousness. Report an error in the passage at 32:18 Highlight the passage at 32:18

32:29 QED. Report an error in the passage at 32:29 Highlight the passage at 32:29

32:35 Therefore, consciousness, the notion that consciousness, as John Searle says, the brain produces thoughts like the gallbladder produces bile. Report an error in the passage at 32:35 Highlight the passage at 32:35

32:46 Well, maybe not. They've got this, you know, they've so trivialized it, it's unbelievable that somehow by just blind chance and sufficient complexity that consciousness somehow emerged and God sure knows about who gives a damn, you know, that kind of thing. It's treated so casually. When I was studying cosmology at Amherst, I picked up a cosmology textbook by a Harvard astrophysicist. Report an error in the passage at 32:46 Highlight the passage at 32:46

33:07 And here's the history of the universe. It wasn't as famous as Stephen Hawking's, but it had to be complete and only maybe 300 pages. History of the universe from the Big Bang to the present. Here's the big picture. There was not one reference to consciousness. Not one. So insignificant, didn't even bear a footnote. So that's the old view. Report an error in the passage at 33:07 Highlight the passage at 33:07

33:27 The view of quantum cosmology is that consciousness is absolutely essential. Absolutely essential. And this Andre Linda, first great physicist, he's renowned. Full professorship, prize after prize. He said, you know, we tend to think of matters being primary, but after all, perception is primary. Because there's only by way of perception that we have any access to matter, right? Report an error in the passage at 33:27 Highlight the passage at 33:27

33:50 Or not. And so, it's a very different way of viewing things. And then, the real clincher here, the one that's almost like a Zen koan, is what's John Wheeler. Now I'm coming right back to him. This is not a Buddhist interpretation. There was a little bit of that. Now right back to John Wheeler. Straight. Okay? Report an error in the passage at 33:50 Highlight the passage at 33:50

34:09 He lived to about almost 100, by the way, like 98 years old. I wrote to him just before he died, but he was so old. His secretary wrote me a very nice note back and said, he's very old. Report an error in the passage at 34:09 Highlight the passage at 34:09

34:22 I wrote to him and he died. What can I do? I've not written to a physicist since then. I've been very careful. Report an error in the passage at 34:22 Highlight the passage at 34:22

34:34 Beware, Alan's on the loose. Report an error in the passage at 34:34 Highlight the passage at 34:34

34:40 Maybe so. But in any case, so here's straight John Wheeler. He says, given all of this, it's from bits. That information is primary. And he speaks of, this is an amazing statement, he speaks of the whole universe as, rather than being just a mindless, expanding field of space-time, filled with chunky matter and then somehow derivative life forms, he says the whole universe is an information processing system. Report an error in the passage at 34:40 Highlight the passage at 34:40

35:04 That's what we should really, so we really should come into the information age and get over the 19th century. You know, it's really gone, where it's all chunky stuff and consciousness was completely irrelevant. Report an error in the passage at 35:04 Highlight the passage at 35:04

35:17 It says, regard the whole universe as an information processing system. But of course, if information is being processed, somebody has to be processing it. Or maybe not just one person, maybe it's a multiverse of multiple sentient beings processing it. Maybe not one person saying, let there be light. Maybe it's a whole bunch of sentient beings co-producing, observer-participancy all the way across. Report an error in the passage at 35:17 Highlight the passage at 35:17

35:39 One universe per sentient being. Okay, that's my interpretation. You're the center of your universe, so be good. Treat it well, because you're in the center of it. But coming back to John Wheeler, it's a fascinating theme. And that is, let's say we have it's from bits, primacy of information, a whole universe as an information processing system. Report an error in the passage at 35:39 Highlight the passage at 35:39

36:01 He said, now here's the strange loop. Here's the strange loop. And the strange loop, his words now, this is straight reporting. He says, we physicists, for example, it's not arrogant, but physicists are the ones who for us have been defining matter, energy and all of that. Report an error in the passage at 36:01 Highlight the passage at 36:01

36:20 We physicists, based upon the measurements we're making in the present moment, based on that information, we are constructing, nobody else is doing it for us, the categories of matter and energy, space, time, and then all the other specifics, particles of matter and different types of fields and so forth and so on. Report an error in the passage at 36:20 Highlight the passage at 36:20

36:37 So all of those, so we have bits from bits, and that is, we are the ones who have created the very categories of space, time, matter and energy based upon information, which is none of the above. Report an error in the passage at 36:37 Highlight the passage at 36:37

36:51 And so in that regard, human beings are the ones that created matter. We created the very category. You can't speak of matter independent of the category. The category is defined by human beings. We made the definition, therefore we made matter and energy and space and time. So that's the it's from Bitt's part on the one hand. On the other hand, he's not refuting astrophysics, cosmogony, geology and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 36:51 Highlight the passage at 36:51

37:20 He's not just kind of throwing them all out. So if we ask him, do you believe that the universe, to the best of our knowledge, based upon our measurements, is 13.7 billion years old? He would say yes. How about our planet? It's about 5 billion years old? He would say yes. Okay, life as we know it, biological organisms, 3.5? I'm putting words in his mouth, but he would say yes. Report an error in the passage at 37:20 Highlight the passage at 37:20

37:42 And then, somehow, mysteriously, but clearly life did evolve, and we have evolved in the process of that. There's no reason to doubt that. Then eventually, over the last 100, 200,000 years, we have the Homo sapiens sapiens. And before that, there were other similar creatures that evolved into us, according to our best understanding. Report an error in the passage at 37:42 Highlight the passage at 37:42

38:03 So I accept that. Why not? So in that regard, it's actually independence upon matter, this whole evolution of the planet, and then single-celled organisms and evolution of life, higher primates, and then us, and then over the last 400 years. Then we have physicists doing modern physics that physicists rose independence upon matter, not out of the blue sky, not out of nothing. Report an error in the passage at 38:03 Highlight the passage at 38:03

38:30 So intelligent human beings, we arose independence upon matter, which pretty much everybody believes, right? And so matter giving rise to physicists coming up with information, coming up with measurement systems and then conceiving of matter. And so we have matter giving rise to physicists who come up with information. Report an error in the passage at 38:30 Highlight the passage at 38:30

38:49 But it's independence upon information that matter even exists. It's a strange loop. Strange loop. No information, no matter. But no matter, no physicist, we're coming up with information. And so we could call this a cycle because it's a strange loop. A loop is a cycle. It's a strange loop where one is giving rise to the other, which is giving rise to the other, giving rise to the other in a matter of dependent origination. Report an error in the passage at 38:49 Highlight the passage at 38:49

39:24 Sound familiar? But if this is true, then of course if you take out matter, then you don't have physicists evolving in this whole evolution of life. So if you take out matter, then you don't have physicists. Report an error in the passage at 39:24 Highlight the passage at 39:24

39:37 But if you take out physicists, then you don't have matter, which would imply they're both empty of inherent nature. Because if either one were independent, and you took out one, the other one would still be hanging in there. But they aren't. Report an error in the passage at 39:37 Highlight the passage at 39:37

39:56 Wasn't that fun? So, go ahead. A small dose... Check with your local chemist about the amount of chloroform to be used, administer it gently, strap them down and say, I've got to tell you something. This is really wild and you'll want to run away, but I won't let you. Report an error in the passage at 39:56 Highlight the passage at 39:56

40:23 Please, Alistair. Say again? Report an error in the passage at 40:23 Highlight the passage at 40:23

40:32 I'm glad. It's pretty cool, isn't it? And then we see why if phenomena exist as dependent related events, they have to be empty. But if they're empty, they have to be existing and they're not just nothing, then they have to be arising as dependent related events. again? the best explanation. Report an error in the passage at 40:32 Highlight the passage at 40:32

40:48 Amnesty. Report an error in the passage at 40:48 Highlight the passage at 40:48

40:57 Knowable, very important word. Unknown, yeah, sure, because there's a lot of things we don't know yet. But when you can identify something as unknowable, well, that's a big statement, but there are such. Go ahead. Report an error in the passage at 40:57 Highlight the passage at 40:57

41:26 Yeah, if your dream is non-lucid, then by definition you didn't know when it started and nobody else did. And so therefore, at least from your perspective, it's unknowable because if you did know it, it would be lucid. Go ahead. Report an error in the passage at 41:26 Highlight the passage at 41:26

· · · silence, 1 minute

42:21 Yes, indeed. You can certainly infer that, you have no idea when it was, unless you fell asleep consciously, in which you can. It is possible to fall asleep lucidly, to go directly from the lucid waking state, that is knowing you're awake, and then with this practice of settling the mind in its natural state, or, since I don't know how our time will play out for the next 20 minutes, another way to fall asleep, homework, and this is kind of sweet, is to fall asleep just with awareness of awareness. Report an error in the passage at 42:21 Highlight the passage at 42:21

42:48 If you fall asleep, this is kind of jumping ahead, But if you fall asleep while settling the mind in its natural state and you are attending to thoughts, images, memories and so forth, that can keep you awake. If you fall asleep easily, it's no problem. But if you're a light sleeper, that can just keep you awake indefinitely. It keeps on arousing, arousing. And mindfulness of breathing is very nice. Report an error in the passage at 42:48 Highlight the passage at 42:48

43:11 It can really send you into a good night's sleep. But the awareness of awareness is interesting. I've done it. And to fall asleep with that... You can actually just rest in awareness of awareness, this ever so simple practice we've done, without the oscillation or anything else, just keep it simple. And just, while you're lying down, eyes closed in bed, and just stay right there. Report an error in the passage at 43:11 Highlight the passage at 43:11

43:37 And get more and more relaxed until your mind falls asleep, and your body falls asleep, and you keep the light on, and you can go directly into dreamless sleep, lucidly. In which case that is possible. Then there was no point at which you were unknowing. You go directly from waking state to lucid, dreamless sleep. And then, one of my students just in the last retreat, one of the participants there, mentioned he was in the dreamless state lucidly. Report an error in the passage at 43:37 Highlight the passage at 43:37

44:06 And then from that, lucidly entered the dream. So he was lucid from the moment, from the time it began. In which case you knew exactly when it began. He went from lucid dreamless to lucid dream. That's possible. So now back to you. In this example we lose it. Okay, not lose it, gotcha. Report an error in the passage at 44:06 Highlight the passage at 44:06

44:47 Yeah, but you can't, well, you can infer that it was a beginning just because there was a point at which it didn't happen, so it must have happened someplace in there. It's from the perspective, again, you're speaking now from the perspective of being awake. It's all a matter of perspective. There's this theme, I didn't coin the term, but I have used it, ontological relativity. Report an error in the passage at 44:47 Highlight the passage at 44:47

45:09 And so it's inspired by relativity theory in Einstein. And that is whenever you're measuring, this is special relativity, let alone general, whenever you're measuring space, time, matter, mass or energy, any of the four, you can't simply say this is its value, period, and then walk away. Because whatever you're measuring, you, your body, your body, you can't simply say this is your size, this is your mass, this is how much energy this is and so forth. Report an error in the passage at 45:09 Highlight the passage at 45:09

45:41 Absolutely, you can't do that because it's always... Relative to whom? Traveling at what speed relative to you? Okay? And you're not an absolute. That is, you can measure your own weight, that's certainly true, but that's not absolutely what it is. Because if I'm traveling by at the nine-tenths of speed of light, your shape is different, your mass is different, your duration is different, everything about you is different. Report an error in the passage at 45:41 Highlight the passage at 45:41

46:06 And the closer I am to speed of light, it's really, really different. And my perspective is no more real or no less real than yours. Or another person traveling this way at two-thirds the speed of light. None of these are preferential. None of these are absolute. None of these are the right answer. So in a similar fashion, when we speak of knowing this, knowing that, then, okay, from what perspective? Report an error in the passage at 46:06 Highlight the passage at 46:06

46:28 From what perspective? And the point there was from within the context of the dream. From that perspective, that epistemological perspective, looking at the reality of the dream. If the dream began when you were unaware, then for you, The beginning of that dream is unknowable. It's not to say it was infinite. But it is to say it's unknowable. You cannot posit it. You cannot posit when it took place. Report an error in the passage at 46:28 Highlight the passage at 46:28

46:51 You know nothing about it because you weren't aware. And as far as you're concerned, no one else was aware of it. Therefore, in principle, it was unknowable. Because if it were known, then it wouldn't be a non-lucid dream. So that's all that's meant by that. I'm not making an absolute statement. And here's an interesting point. Report an error in the passage at 46:51 Highlight the passage at 46:51

47:10 It's related. In that Heart Sūtra. Heart Sūtra. Report an error in the passage at 47:10 Highlight the passage at 47:10

47:17 Or even more importantly, the Four Noble Truths. From the perspective, now here's this ontological relativity again. From the perspective of emptiness, or from the perspective of a direct realization of emptiness, there's no suffering. Report an error in the passage at 47:17 Highlight the passage at 47:17

47:32 From that perspective, there's no reality of suffering. Four Noble Truths, first one, there's no reality of suffering. There's no source of suffering. There's no cessation of suffering. If you don't have it, you don't have it. From that perspective, with respect to, relative to, emptiness, there's no cessation of suffering. There's no path. There's no achievement of path. Report an error in the passage at 47:32 Highlight the passage at 47:32

47:51 There's no non-achievement of the path. And it then goes through the five skandhas and the 18 datus. From the perspective of not, none of those exist. Right? At all. From that perspective. And so that would be, that's showing the relativity of all other perspectives. That if you do posit the existence of the reality of suffering, good, now from what perspective? Because it's not absolutely true, otherwise it would be true from the perspective of one who realizes emptiness. Report an error in the passage at 47:51 Highlight the passage at 47:51

48:21 It's said from the perspective of Ritma, now we go to pristine awareness, primordial consciousness. And this now relates to the beginning of saṃsāra. From that perspective, once you're viewing reality, it's called the view of the great perfection. The view of the great perfection is viewing reality, the whole picture. Report an error in the passage at 48:21 Highlight the passage at 48:21

48:39 From the perspective of pristine awareness, also known as Buddha nature, also known as Buddha mind, known as primordial consciousness, you're now viewing it from that perspective. There are no sentient beings. There's no beginning to saṃsāra because there's no saṃsāra. Report an error in the passage at 48:39 Highlight the passage at 48:39

48:58 And so if you do posit saṃsāra, it's going to be from within the context of saṃsāra. Because from the perspective of direct realization of emptiness, there's no saṃsāra. There's no four noble truths. There's no saṃsāra with no four noble truths. So from the perspective of direct realization of emptiness, there's no saṃsāra, there's no four noble truths. Report an error in the passage at 48:58 Highlight the passage at 48:58

49:20 From the perspective of pristine awareness or primordial consciousness, there's no saṃsāra, there are no sentient beings. Everybody is Buddha from that perspective. Report an error in the passage at 49:20 Highlight the passage at 49:20

49:33 And does this mean that saṃsāra doesn't exist at all? No, that's silly. Otherwise the Buddhists have no reason to teach Dharma. Report an error in the passage at 49:33 Highlight the passage at 49:33

49:41 Well then, from what perspective does saṃsāra exist? From the perspective of people who are in it. Now from that perspective, saṃsāra has no beginning. Because every time it begins, nobody's there. Report an error in the passage at 49:41 Highlight the passage at 49:41

49:58 Nobody's aware of it. Otherwise it wouldn't be saṃsāra. So where it gets interesting, if you're not interested yet, here's where it gets interesting. Report an error in the passage at 49:58 Highlight the passage at 49:58

50:07 And that is, if you're just an ordinary sentient being, and you're clumping along, making a bunch of money, losing a bunch of money, having some kids, and then you die. Report an error in the passage at 50:07 Highlight the passage at 50:07

50:19 Congratulations, you made through one more life. And then you go, and you hit death. You're not even conscious. You come to the grand finale of your life. You sleep right through it. So you get to be dead and you're non-lucid. Bummer. You really miss an opportunity. Then you go to the clear light of death. You miss that one too. You enter the bardo, totally bewildered. You don't even know you're in the bardo. You're wondering why nobody's paying attention to you. Report an error in the passage at 50:19 Highlight the passage at 50:19

50:43 Everybody's so rude. Like in The Sixth Sense. You know the movie with Bruce Willis. And then you cruise through totally confused and then after a while you really have this strong urge. Is that Plato? Is that the Buddha? You get this really strong urge to get embodied again. You really just don't like being kind of ghostish. Report an error in the passage at 50:43 Highlight the passage at 50:43

50:59 And so then you migrate and you take birth again. When your bardo existence, it's called bardo becoming, when that comes to an end, your bardo consciousness collapses again, goes right into the substrate. So right there you are all over again. You went right back into the domain of unknowing. Remember, because substrates by the very nature of unknowing, avidya, unawareness. Report an error in the passage at 50:59 Highlight the passage at 50:59

51:24 And then out of that emerges the substrate consciousness. And then as your egg sperm combination develops, then you develop a mind all over again. This time it's going to be less optimistic. Maybe it's going to be a human mind again. But once again, the whole thing started in ignorance. Because there, right at conception, you slip right into the substrate, unknowing, comes substrate consciousness, stem consciousness. But the whole thing started in unknowing again. Report an error in the passage at 51:24 Highlight the passage at 51:24

51:50 So you don't remember when you were conceived, you don't remember when this lifetime began. Because it began in a moment of unknowing. So it just keeps on happening. Every time you fall asleep, you slip in, you reboot saṃsāra. Every time you slip into unknowing and non-lucidity, you just reboot in saṃsāra. Report an error in the passage at 51:50 Highlight the passage at 51:50

52:07 Every time you've won a micro-saṃsāra, every time you fall into rumination, it's a little micro-saṃsāra. Every time you go into rumination, oh, oh, when did that start? Oh, my mind was wondering. That was a little reboot of saṃsāra. Every time you fall into rumination, it starts with unknowing and you only wake up after a while, oh, I've been ruminating for a while. So you've got the micro, you've got dreams, you have the bigger picture of being re-embodied. Report an error in the passage at 52:07 Highlight the passage at 52:07

52:36 Oh, it starts out with unknowing, which then means from your perspective, no knowable beginning. And if it's not knowable from your perspective, then it doesn't exist from your perspective. Report an error in the passage at 52:36 Highlight the passage at 52:36

52:46 So having said that, now let's take the example of a tuku. And a tuku, so highly, you know, and there are many, many, but an authentic one, because some maybe just have the name and they're not really a genuine article. But an authentic tuku, one very deep realization, not necessarily a Buddha, but just a person, very deep realization. Report an error in the passage at 52:46 Highlight the passage at 52:46

53:05 That person, like some of my own teachers, like Gen Nam Rimba, died consciously, slipped very, very peacefully, even as he was dying of cancer, so serene, so cheerful, just relaxed, decided, let's cool it with the medicine, I'm going to just ride this wave, and died in his 60s of cancer, and then he spent four and a half days in the clear light of death, so that clearly indicates that he died lucidly. Report an error in the passage at 53:05 Highlight the passage at 53:05

53:28 He died lucidly. I mean, he was there all the way through. When he got to the dead zone, he was dead lucidly. The clear light of death manifested, he recognized it, he remained in that for about four or five days and then released it and he was off into the bardo. But this means that since when the clear light of death manifested and he recognized it, because that's how you sustain it, then when that comes to an end, you're lucid. You're lucid coming in, you're lucid coming out. Report an error in the passage at 53:28 Highlight the passage at 53:28

53:52 This means when he went into the bardo, then he was lucid then as well. Well, if you're lucid in the bardo, then you can be really wise and smart Report an error in the passage at 53:52 Highlight the passage at 53:52

54:00 Wise decisions about where do you want to come back. And I asked him when we lived together back in 1988. We lived together for a whole year in the same house while he was leading the shamatha project, one year shamatha project. And he spent most of his adult life as a yogi. And he spent most of the rest of his life as a yogi as well. And I got to know him quite well in that year. Report an error in the passage at 54:00 Highlight the passage at 54:00

54:20 And I translated for him when he taught. And I asked him knowing full well how he devoted his whole adult life in this lifetime. Solitary hermit. He said, what is your aspiration, what are your prayers for future life? What do you have in mind? Because you will certainly be thinking about that. And he told me, a future life, my prayer is wherever I can be of greatest benefit, I want to be born there. Report an error in the passage at 54:20 Highlight the passage at 54:20

54:44 He just left it right there. No caveat. So, he died. Some of his students found him. They've identified him. His Holiness has identified him. He's now about 10 years old. He's a monk, launched into his monastic education. So there would be one case. But the point here being that if you die consciously, clear light of death consciously, through the bardo consciously, and then you choose, okay, where should I be, what parents would be good for me to be able to be of greatest benefit? Report an error in the passage at 54:44 Highlight the passage at 54:44

55:13 You have something, a heightened vision there. And then you say, ah, that would be a good couple there. He was born in a Nepalese couple. Report an error in the passage at 55:13 Highlight the passage at 55:13

55:23 And was found, of course. That's where he chose. And then when you come in, you come in lucidly. So you're born lucidly, and you pass through the whole thing lucidly. And then like Lama Zopa Rinpoche, when he's two years old, he'd been a yogi, a Nyingma yogi probably, a Dzogchen yogi, living in Nepal in his past life. Report an error in the passage at 55:23 Highlight the passage at 55:23

55:44 He passed away, decided to be born in the same neighborhood, like a couple of miles away, something really close, Nepalese family. And then when he's still basically a toddler, I mean a little kid, two or three years old, it's said that this little child... He would face the wall, go cross-legged and just be sitting there. And then when he could get up on his legs and get going, he was heading off to his cave where he meditated in the past life. Report an error in the passage at 55:44 Highlight the passage at 55:44

56:11 They have to keep on, you know, keep on, hey, come back, you're not ready yet. You'll be found, don't worry, you'll be identified, but, you know, cool it for a while, you know, play. Report an error in the passage at 56:11 Highlight the passage at 56:11

56:22 Some people come in lucidly, in which case they know when it began. They were conceived lucidly, they died lucidly, the bardo was lucid. And so no wonder when the Buddha was asked, are you a man? He said, no, I'm awake. That's the idea. So that's the optimal, that we go through existence with eyes open rather than eyes closed. Report an error in the passage at 56:22 Highlight the passage at 56:22

56:48 Online cosmology, bardo, well, this is our last night together, may as well deal with big issues. Any smaller, oh, identification, that's easy. Report an error in the passage at 56:48 Highlight the passage at 56:48

57:02 We identify, we identify, and you already recognize I'm bad with name, Barbara? No. What is your name? Elise. Elise, thank you. Barbara's over there, right? There's Barbara. See, it was just one degree off. At least I missed her by that much. Report an error in the passage at 57:02 Highlight the passage at 57:02

57:20 So Elise, identification. So now I'm recognizing Elise. And how do I recognize you? By way of that which you are not. And that is, I recognize you, of course, not by anything in the neck below, because a lot of bodies look alike, but clearly by the face. That's how we recognize people. By and large, that's it. Unless we get DNA and stuff like that. But ordinary people, it's a face. That's the most distinctive. But your face is not a person. Report an error in the passage at 57:20 Highlight the passage at 57:20

57:48 Your face isn't even a body, it's a face. It's just a contour of bone and cartilage and skin and so forth. But I recognize, accurately recognize, where's Elise? Oh, she's right there. She just identified herself to me again. And so by way of attributes which are not the entity being identified, but are unique to or characteristic of that entity, Then we recognize. And then you identified yourself as Elise. And then I have no reason to believe you're misleading me. Report an error in the passage at 57:48 Highlight the passage at 57:48

58:18 So I say, oh, where's Elise? She's right over there. And so this is how it is universally. And that is, if you're identifying an electron, you're looking at one of those, what are they called? Report an error in the passage at 58:18 Highlight the passage at 58:18

58:35 My mind is a little bit tired now. But when they're measuring element particles, all these swirls, remember those? Those have a lot of diagrams. What's that? Report an error in the passage at 58:35 Highlight the passage at 58:35

58:45 Well, that's what does it, but the data you actually get is a whole bunch of swirls, swirls and squiggles and lines of charged particles, uncharged particles and so forth and so on. And on the basis of those tracks, those tracks, there's a word for it, but I am a bit tired right now. What's that? Yeah, it's the tracks from a bumble chamber, yeah. Report an error in the passage at 58:45 Highlight the passage at 58:45

59:06 And so they, but the elementary particle physicists, they identify, oh, that particular type of swirl. Or this straight line, that's a non-charged particle. This type of swirl, that type of swirl, on the basis of those, they say, and this is very good science, they say, ah, well that's a track of an electron, that's a track of a proton, oh, that one right there, that's a neutrino, it's uncharged. Report an error in the passage at 59:06 Highlight the passage at 59:06

59:28 And that's a proton, that's a neutron, uncharged. And so, upon very sophisticated measurements and interpretation, they're identifying, so there's a word again, identifying different types of elementary particles. It's very good science. But of course they're always identifying the particles on the basis of something that is not the particle. And that is a streak in a bubble chamber, a trace in a bubble chamber, for example. Report an error in the passage at 59:28 Highlight the passage at 59:28

59:54 Or other types of information. But they're never simply identifying the electron by its being an electron, but by way of its attributes, but none of its attributes are an electron. Any more than your face as a person, or your body as a person. Or if you have your eyes closed, and your memories come up, and so you know who you are by... Report an error in the passage at 59:54 Highlight the passage at 59:54

1:00:14 The memory is coming up. Well, those memories aren't you either. And so this is what I was mentioning earlier, and that is what is appearing to us, us ordinary sentient beings, is this ongoing flow of appearances. What appears to scientists as scientists is an ongoing flow of information. And either way, with our experiences here with appearances, on the basis of appearances, then we designate or identify objects. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:14 Highlight the passage at 1:00:14

1:00:44 So we had... A pullover, that's a pullover, I recognize it by its color. Or I can recognize this cell phone because the bottom of it is kind of ripped. And so if there are other ones like it, mine is the one that's ripped down there. And so that's mine, I can recognize it. Or my suitcase. You know, you travel a lot, you want to make sure there's something distinctive about your suitcase. Report an error in the passage at 1:00:44 Highlight the passage at 1:00:44

1:01:04 A lot of them look alike. Oh, but that's it, that's mine. By something distinctive about it. But the distinctive is never the object itself. It's always by way of that. You recognize it. And then we have these objects, which are again, I'll just reiterate very briefly and then we'll dedicate merit and go to sleep, is the objects are those entities that we impute, designate, often very usefully and conventionally correctly, and the objects have as their attributes the appearances we actually see. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:04 Highlight the passage at 1:01:04

1:01:39 Or the electron has as its attributes or gives forth, presents, information we attribute to the electron. I just recognize that particle because of its charge, and its charge is displayed by that electron, therefore that which displayed that was an electron. But the charge is not an electron. The electron has a charge, it has a mass, it has a velocity, it has a momentum. But the charge isn't any one of those things. But if you strip away, never mind, if you say, never mind, I don't want to know about the momentum, the charge, the mass, the location. Report an error in the passage at 1:01:39 Highlight the passage at 1:01:39

1:02:13 Those are all the attributes of the electron. I just want to see the electron itself, please. You know, the one that has all that stuff. And so you say, well, okay, let's just do this by a process of elimination. There's an electron there. You know there's an electron there. And so let's take away its charge, just conceptually isolate it. We're going to take away the charge, and now we're going to take away its mass and its location and its spin and its momentum and the electromagnetic field generated by it. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:13 Highlight the passage at 1:02:13

1:02:39 We're going to take away all of those that it has or it produces. And now... We've taken away all the clothes from the emperor. And you're not seeing a naked emperor. You're seeing nothing at all. And that nothing at all is what has all the attributes. But it's not there because it wasn't there in the first place. You imputed it. And that's why you can't find it. And that's objectively and subjectively. Report an error in the passage at 1:02:39 Highlight the passage at 1:02:39

1:03:11 And either I'm going to practice dream yoga right now, or we're going to dedicate merit real quickly and go to bed. So let's have a moment or two just to dedicate merit. A Report an error in the passage at 1:03:11 Highlight the passage at 1:03:11

· · · silence, 1 minute

1:04:15 light sleeper, mindfulness of breathing is really good. If you're an easy sleeper, settling the mind can be a really interesting way to fall asleep. And if there's something in between, you might try awareness of awareness. It's quite nice. And it doesn't, like settling the mind, it doesn't arouse, it doesn't jazz you up, it doesn't perk you up, because there's no stimulation. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:15 Highlight the passage at 1:04:15

1:04:36 And it's just sheer flow of quiet luminosity. And so it's like going down a deep, like if there's some tunnels, some caverns in the earth, where the tunnel goes down I think a whole mile, I think the really deep ones. It would be like going down one of those very, very deep tunnels with a candle. All the way down, still keep the light on. We'll have sleep. Report an error in the passage at 1:04:36 Highlight the passage at 1:04:36

1:05:00 Have a good night's sleep. See you tomorrow morning. Report an error in the passage at 1:05:00 Highlight the passage at 1:05:00