https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=O8rZNE0hVyA
Welcome to Meditating with John Verbeke. I’m a cognitive psychologist and a cognitive scientist at the University of Toronto, where I academically and scientifically study, research, and teach about mindfulness and related phenomena like insight, flow, mystical experience, awakening experience, higher states of consciousness, the cultivation of wisdom, and the aspiration towards enlightenment. I’ve also been practicing Vipassana meditation, Meta-contemplation, Tai Chi Chuan, for over 29 years and teaching them professionally for close to 20 years. Welcome. This is a progressive course. Each Monday is a Dharma day, and on that day I give, I teach people practices and principles that build on previous practices and principles. I’ve already taught them. If you’re joining for the first time, welcome. But this is the 10th lesson, and it’s the culminating lesson in the introductory course. So if you want to go back and learn about everything that preceded and led up to it, please look for links to previous lessons and previous sits in the description of this video. Tuesday through Friday, we meet at 9.30 EST. We regularly meet on Mondays at 9.30 EST as well. Just today there was a scheduling conflict. So Tuesday through Friday, we meet, we sit. I review the principles a couple of times in the practices. At the end of every Monday through Friday sitting, there is a Q&A. Please keep your questions today, right, for this practice, the set of practices that I’m teaching you. For more comprehensive and broader questions about maybe Buddhism in general or Buddhism and Stoicism or the cultivation of wisdom or what does this have to do with, you know, mystical experiences or a whole host of questions, there’s two things you can do. One is please come to the live Q&A. I do every third Friday. I’ll be doing one this Friday, live streamed on YouTube at 3 p.m. EST. So this Friday, which I believe is the 15th, 3 p.m. EST. The other thing you can do is subscribe to my channel, my video channel, and that will put you in touch with all kinds of lectures and discussions about these broader topics that are pursued in depth. If you get a chance, please like this video stream. It will raise its visibility on the YouTube algorithm and that will help me to reach out to as many people as possible to give them this valuable set of practices that can help in this difficult time and also more long term with their life as a whole. All right, I think that’s it for announcements. So let’s get to the Dharma. So what I want to teach you today is not, it’s the culmination of the introductory course, the 10 week introductory course. And wow, we’ve made it, eh? Here we are, the 10th lesson. And it’s kind of liminal, is what I guess I want to say. I put it here because it acts as the capstone, but it’s also the thing that bridges you into more advanced practice. So this is a practice you should start doing, and I’ll explain how to schedule it in in a few minutes, but this is a practice that really, its growth depends on how all the other practices underneath it are growing. So it grows very, very slowly, as you can imagine. So you have to be extremely patient and take a big picture view with respect to what I’m going to teach you. So what I’m going to teach you is a prajna practice. This is also known as a non-duality practice. So prajna is a practice that is very, very important. So prajna, right, it means wisdom, right? But it means a particular kind of wisdom. It means sort of self-liberated intelligence, but not intelligence in sort of the holding of propositions or belief, but the ability to see, right, through illusion and into what’s real and to be able to unlock the world and your identity in such a way that you are much more appropriately able to do it. Think about what a wise person can do. It’s not so much necessarily that they have a lot of factual knowledge, although that can help. What happens is they can come into a situation and very dynamically, and think about mindfulness being connected, they are very mindfully connected to themselves, to the situation and to other people involved in the situation, and they know how to, in all of this tangled, ill-defined mess, zero in on the relevant information and not just see it, but also, right, co-identify with it, think of meta, so that they are most appropriately fitted to it. And you have that kind of self-liberating intelligence insight capacity. So it’s not, we don’t have a single word in English that captures it really well. That’s the way I like to use the Sanskrit term prajna, that it’s an enacted dynamic, right, wisdom that is realized in an enhanced capacity to see through self-deceptive behavior and to connect to the world in a deep and adaptive manner. It’s what results out of all, you know, remember I said the eightfold path, you have all these rights, like right understanding, better, you know, right vision, right aspiration. And the right isn’t moral right, it’s the dexterity of the right hand. It’s getting an optimal grip on things, if you remember. So that’s what prajna is. Prajna is sort of having a comprehensive, flowing, optimal grip in all situations. Now, of course, that would be, if that became your permanent second nature, that might, in fact, be one way of thinking of what it would mean to be enlightened. What we are looking for is, first of all, how can we train it and how can we bring it much more into our awareness? So that’s very sort of philosophical and abstract. Let’s make it a little bit more concrete. Let’s go back to one of our primary metaphors. Remember we talked about, you know, normally we were looking through the mind. We’re always framing the world in a certain way, foregrounding some things, backgrounding other things, creating patterns of salience, how things stand out to us. And as we’ve talked about that repeatedly, this framing is often completely transparent to us. We’re doing it automatically, mindlessly, reactively. But what we can do with Vipassana is we can learn to step back and look at that framing, become aware of the patterns and processes of our mind, and notice anything that might be a potential distortion, get more clarity about it, bring more acuity to it, all the stuff we’ve been practicing. And then, how do I know if I’ve actually corrected the distortion? Well then, I have to put my glasses back on and like in Metta, I have to look deeply into the world and see if I can see the world anew, if I can unlock, right, my identities and the identities of things, if I can turn my existential mode into the being mode in which I and the world are being reciprocally opened, like you do when you’re falling in love with somebody. This is the kind of love, of course. This is not sexual erotic love. This is the kind of love that is captured by words like karuna, compassion, right? The word compassion is a little bit problematic. We’ll come back to that a little bit later when we move on to some further lessons. So, this is what you do in an insight. Insight has sort of three components to it. There is a movement that breaks an inappropriate frame and then there’s a movement that makes a more encompassing, more well-fitted, more right-handed, more dexterous, more octably gripping frame. And so, when you’re actually studying insight as a phenomenon, you know when you have an aha moment, and I do that scientifically at U of T, it’s made up of these sort of three, one of the three components. There’s a breaking frame and the making frame and then there’s the flexibility to move between them. So, breaking frame, making frame, and how flexible are you in being able to do that transformation? So, what does that mean in practice? Well, it means in practice that we want to do something that’s going to get those two motions at work in a coordinated fashion and that is training the flexibility between them by having us constantly flip and reverse between them. That’s how you do flexibility. You constantly reverse your direction, right? You try to extend the range and the fluency and the speed of your ability to reverse direction. Okay, so this is what we’re going to do now. Okay, I’m going to describe this practice to you. Don’t start doing it right now, and I also want to give you some things to look for, both positively, like things that help you sort of understand what’s going on, and then also negatively, things to watch out for, to avoid. Now, for about 80% of the people, I’ve been teaching this for a long time, the way I’m going to describe it works for them. About 20% of the people, it’s reversed. They have to do it the opposite way. And so you’re going to have to also experiment with this a couple of sticks to see which one takes three. So for the statistically normal group, this is what it’s like. As you inhale and you feel your abdomen expanding, you do that extension of awareness outward in meta, but you try and take meta as sort of broadly, maybe you’ve been doing it towards all people, not maybe towards all being. And it’s like flow, not just broadly, but deeply. You’re trying to extend it towards all beings and really unlock the potential of the world to be other than you currently see it as. It’s a kind of insight. And then as you exhale, you do Vipassana, and you do that Vipassana that I taught you where you try and go to the very center, right? That space between your thoughts, the silent mind. So you move towards sort of the mysterious ground of the psyche in Vipassana and opening up to the mysterious ground of the world in meta. And then what you’re doing is flowing between them. You’re flowing between them. So for 80% of the people, as you inhale meta out, as you exhale Vipassana in to the space between your thoughts. Now, the flexibility will be lacking, right? So what does that mean? Well, you’ll say, in half a breath, I won’t get much meta. That’s right. That’s right. In half of a breath, I won’t, will I be able to get most of that? No, you’re going to just going to move towards it. Flexibility means, and this is what will take a lot of time just to get the flexibility, is that in the inhale, you’re able to realize deep meta. And in the exhale, you’re able to realize deep Vipassana. This takes time. You’re not initially flexible. So you will only get a so you will only get a shallow sense of meta and a shallow sense of Vipassana. That is fine. That will take time. That is fine. That will take time. Now, in connection with that, here’s something to avoid. In order to extend the time so that they have more time to try and get deeper into meta and deeper into Vipassana, people start to hyperventilate. I’m exaggerating. So you know what I mean. It’s very, very important. This practice is the one that is most susceptible to hyperventilation, and it will make you lightheaded. It’s not good for you. So you have to be vigilant that you are not hyperventilating. You have to leave your breathing alone and let it flow naturally. You want this, you want Prajna to be something that flows naturally in you, not something that only is arrived at when you force things to an extremity. Okay, so really on guard, really accepting that this is going to initially be, I don’t have the flexibility. So initially shallow meta, shallow Vipassana, just whatever taste I can get of both, and not hyperventilating, not hyperventilating. You’ll do this for a long time. For a long time, all you’re going to be doing is developing the flexibility. Now, notice that Prajna is only as good as you are practicing meta and deep Vipassana, and try to extend meta a little bit farther, by the way. Like if you’ve only been going up to people, maybe all sentient beings, and then after a while more beings. Okay, so it’s very crucial that what you just, the progress that you’re looking for initially is just that in a natural unforced breath, I can move into deep meta. So I have to be practicing meta a lot, and I have to be doing this a lot before that will occur. And then in the out-breath, I get into deep Vipassana. So I have to be practicing Vipassana a lot, deep Vipassana, and practicing this Prajna practice a lot before that will happen. So that’s going to take a long time. Once they both are deep, then you’ll just be there for a while, just getting the flexibility to become very second nature, that flow. Then what starts to happen is you start to get a foreground background thing. So while I’m sensing meta, I still have a background awareness of the depth of Vipassana that I was touching, and then it goes like this. It starts to go like this. And then I start to be able to feel them both active in my breath. This takes a long time. And then it’s all at once, simultaneously as deeply out and as deeply in, mystery to mystery, ground to ground, the deepest possible reciprocal opening, the deepest resonance. You’re in the state of non-duality. Your awareness is not subjectively oriented or objectively oriented. It’s transjectively oriented. This is the place that is optimal for optimizing your optimal grip, for affording deep, deep insight, not just intellectual insight, but insight at the very level of the identity of yourself and the world. This is a fundamentally liberating form of intelligence insight, prajna. This will not be something that happens to you tomorrow, next week, next month, maybe not even this year. This takes a long time before it comes in. That’s what I mean when I said this practice is liminal. You can start it with an introductory set of skills, because you have to start somewhere. But you have to be able to do it. You have to be able to do it with a set of skills, because you have to start somewhere. But you will go through these stages for a very long time. All you will be doing is developing the flexibility. Then you will start to develop some of the simultaneity, and then you will get the gestalt of prajna. And then more and more, as you practice that, it will be there, available to you, and it will start to present itself to you. So, now you should think of yourself having this kind of practice. Always one day do basic vipasana, start with basic vipasana, do basic vipasana, and then lead into deep vipasana. Next day, do metta, trying always and gradually to be extending metta. Third day, prajna. Do that twice, so you get three and three. Vipasana, basic into deep, metta, deepening it, prajna. And then again, vipasana, basic into deep, metta, deepening it, and prajna. On the seventh day, do one of the other things, like perhaps meditative questing, in order to refine and enhance inquiring mindfulness. Okay, so that’s the practice. Don’t rush into it. I recommend doing some, you know, basic vipasana first, reminding yourself, sati, enacted remembering. Oh yeah, this is what vipasana feels like. Then a bit of metta, perhaps your most extensive metta that you have been practicing regularly. Push it, remember not just as wide as possible, but as deep. You’re trying to really do as much reciprocal opening, remembering the being mode as much as you can. Do some metta for a while. And then come back to vipasana and do the deep vipasana, space between your thoughts. And then in-breath, deep metta, out-breath, deep vipasana, accepting that it will be shallow, not as deep as when I can sit on each for a long time, and not hyperventilating. So we’ll sit for about 15 minutes. Maybe, you know, after you’ve done your center and rooting, you know, two or three minutes. I won’t time you through it. Just do it intuitively, right? A few minutes in basic, you know, basic vipasana, then deep metta, return to deep vipasana, and then go into prasana. Don’t hyperventilate. Don’t hyperventilate. Don’t hyperventilate. Understand that the metta in a half-breath and the vipasana in a half-breath are going to be much shallower than when you can follow them completely with a whole breath for a complete 15 minutes. It takes a long time to develop the flexibility. Okay. So take your time. Be patient. Make sure your phones are set on to do not disturb. Get your posture ready, and we will begin when I say begin. Begin. Okay. Okay. Okay. Slowly come out of your practice, trying as best you can to integrate what you cultivated in your practice with your everyday consciousness and cognition, perhaps by reciting the five promises to yourself. All right, everyone. So we went a little bit long today. There don’t seem to be any questions, though. Amar, are there any questions that need to be addressed? Okay. So maybe I gave you a lot to think about. That’s great. And so we’ll pick up the questions tomorrow. Please remember, please remember that I need your help. Like this video to raise its visibility on YouTube stream. Please subscribe to the channel so you can be notified of our videos. You can become aware of, I said, a whole bunch of extra videos that will, and you know, there’s both the lectures from Awakening from the Meaning Crisis and there’s all the discussions with Voices with Verbeke, where all of this is pursued in much more depth and detail and much more comprehensively. I want to thank you for joining. I want to thank you for joining. I want to thank my dear friend and techno major Amar and my beloved son Jason. Please invite others who might benefit from this to share in this. Remember, we’re going back on our regular schedule tomorrow, back at 930 EST. Finally, remember, continuity of practice is more important than quantity. There is no enemy worse than your own mind. There is no ally, no friend greater than your own mind. Take care, everyone. Keep practicing. We’ll see you tomorrow morning.