A Failure of Words - Swami Chidbrahmananda

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:22]Good morning everyone.

[00:00:24]>> Good morning.

[00:00:25]>> Good to see you. Everything is new. I see so many new things around here every time I come. It's wonderful.

[00:00:33]Ah boy, I had a harrowing experience the day before yesterday. I they scheduled me to come to San Diego and to hear to speak this weekend on Memorial Day weekend. So I had the privilege of driving through Los Angeles on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. It took me six hours to drive from Santa Barbara to San Diego on Friday. I was I didn't think I would be affected. I was affected. I was like three hour two and a half hours from Santa Monica all the way down to Pendleton. Stop and go the whole time just sitting there.

[00:01:10]Sunburned my arm out the window.

[00:01:15]Yes. And then I gave the lecture yesterday and I ran into the same problem. I finished less than a quarter of my lecture yesterday. And so today I'm going to make an commitment to you so that I can try and remember uh to finish a lecture to just stick with the notes here in front of me. The problem is that I get going on these ideas and these thoughts and uh I just just there's a party in my head happening. I don't know what to do. It's just walk around. New ideas and new things come at the moment. Sometimes I think you know I used to have a little Buddha actually pretty big Buddha. He's a very fat Buddha on my shrine in the early days. I gave him to a friend but called the laughing Buddha. And you know more and more I think that really the only appropriate lecture is really just to get up here and laugh for an hour.

[00:02:00]You know just chuckle at the absurdity of everything uh that we that we do that we are that we think that we wonder that we you know that we're convinced of that nothing is as it seems in this world.

[00:02:11]You know, it's funny how true it is and how much truer it becomes, uh, in the years that I've been around the monastery, uh, you know, when people told me at the beginning that this world was unreal, I was like, yeah, there's a fat chance of that. You know, this is very real. But then I see, you know, as I've grown older, you know, I consider myself an old man, although everybody older than me won't let me be an old man yet. I turned 61 this year. And, uh, it has been a difference. It has been a real change and I was telling Maharaj Sarva Devananda the other day that I I'm not ready for this period of my life. You know, I already lost one of my inner circle of friends last year and uh I keep watching all of my childhood favorite singers and actors walk off the end of the plank and uh I'm interpolating that forward and I'm thinking, "Oh my lord, what is coming?

[00:03:04]What is coming?" Uh, and it's it's amazing because you can see so clearly from this vantage point of age that this world is not what it seems. That those things that were permanent fixtures, you see that they're not. You know, you know, you know implicitly this podium was a tree and probably would be happier as a tree. At least the top was. This down here was a rock somewhere before it found a furnace. But this world's in constant flux. you know, when I lived in Denver or in Colorado for the last two and a half years, uh, and, uh, I was very interested to find out that Denver used to be an inland sea and that when you're in Rocky Mountain National Park, there are places you can go and find fossils of sea animals at the top of the Rocky Mountains. And at their natural history museum, they have a a time-lapsed kind of run of what's happened geographically in that region.

[00:03:59]And they speed it up and you can just see mountains. You know, first you got your ocean, it dries up and then this mountain pushes up and you you can see that from the vantage point of our true nature.

[00:04:11]Everything is constantly changing that there that that this was never a a brick until recent time. I could drive it home. I mean, everything you look at, you can look at it and see what it really was.

[00:04:25]And I can understand the question of the of the rishies. It's like, well, what is that one thing that sustains all of this constant flow of change that itself doesn't change? That itself is kind of the I guess the matrix that that's behind all of this. And uh I did a lot of thinking about that. I put some of it into lectures and I'm already breaking my my lecture already, but uh you know because I think about it a lot as a dream, you know, because it seems to be very similar to a dream. you know, when you enter into your dream at night, uh, uh, first of all, you renounce everything, right? So, I always like to make that point that we're all expert renunciates. So, don't fool yourself.

[00:05:05]You're excellent at renouncing yourself because you fall asleep and you enter into a new body. You might be a butterfly. You might be a person. You might just be a point of reference in that dream, but you're never surprised by it. You're never like, "H, well, hey, where'd it go?" You completely left it behind. You left your day job, your bank accounts, your loved ones, your friends, your cars, all the things so dear to you. You leave completely for the evening and step into another world. And it is another world. You know, you you're looking at mountains and those mountains seem like they're 100 miles away, but your ears are not 100 miles apart. So, it can't be true. And yet, you can experience it. You know, I've I've sat in an inner tube in Mterrey Bay in a dream and splashed in the water and watched the drops go through the hairs on my fingers in real time. You know, as a computer science person, that was pretty fascinating to It was like this mind that we have and this idea of that that this matrix that is behind all of this change, this matrix that doesn't change, the matrix that holds this moment for us, this moment that has never changed, this eternal moment that had no beginning and no end. It is always the present. You know that that that matrix which holds that they named Brahman illegally because you can't put any handle on that that at all. But we call it Brumhan. And so you get a really good image of what Brahman is when you dream. Brahman is that dream substance that can become an ocean that can become a mountain that can become a house that becomes your new body in that dream. And that we enter into this world in much the same way. You know that you can't fit into that dream at night, right?

[00:06:48]Your body is asleep in the bed and there's no way for you to stuff that between your ears and take it with you.

[00:06:54]And so what do you do? You create a thought of yourself, right? And that thought of yourself, you give it some attributes so that it can experience the dream that you place that thought of yourself within, right? And I was contemplating that. I was thinking that is fascinating that I become a thought of myself and inhabit a whole new world without any recollection of the previous one. And then I thought, well, that's exactly what the vdanta teaches us about this world that God has entered this consciousness, right? But God cannot enter this consciousness, right? Because God is the container of this consciousness in the same way that your sleeping body is the container of your dream, right? And so God is the container of this reality here and he entered into this dream. The difference with between the two is that when we enter the dream, we become one particular point of reference. When God entered this dream, he became every point of reference. So he's he's in the heart and is actually who all of us are.

[00:07:54]Uh but he's expressing it through different sets of limitations. The limitations of your body, the limitations of your gender, the limitations of your ego, your mind, those things that are your favorite things about yourself. He's he shines his light through that and it comes out this side with a name on it. You know, that's Swami C. Oh, that's Carol. That's John. Right? But it is all the same light of awareness just like your dream at night that is divine and the nature of that person sleeping. If we call God a person and have him sleep for a moment, have her that sleep for a moment, then we understand that that how that light does become the whole dream and that this this podium is as much me made of my mind, right? Made of the mind of God, made of that dream substance, Brahman that becomes all of these things and it changes constantly and continually, right? And this is this is that whole idea of of when when Jesus tells that parable, you know, don't be a foolish person who builds your house on sand, right? Don't be that foolish person that builds your world in the dream, right? Because this is a continual flow of unre repeating change.

[00:09:07]There will never be stability or security here for you at all. You will not find it. And if you do find it, better look at your watch because 10 minutes from now, it'll change, right? I know this because I used to hate peas as a kid and now peas are one of my favorite vegetables. So your attachments are not permanent. Your loves and likes are not permanent. And once you move into a comfortable situation, you get the right house, the right partner, the right dog, the right car, that'll last until the first ding on the Mercedes, right? And then oh, we got to replace that. And then the sink goes, right? And then you have two kids and you need another bedroom. And so it's this striving, this constant striving that we're in. So this world of change, what is it? What is it that we're seeing? If that's not a brick, what are we seeing?

[00:09:53]We're seeing symbols, right? A world of symbols. Everything that you've ever tasted, touched, heard, or smelled became a symbol, right? Because as everybody who ever heard any of my lectures, I always bring the same point up. That whole idea that we've never seen this outside an outside world, right? We have never had an experience a direct experience of anything in this world. Right? Because as soon as I see that light, that light hits the cones in the back of my eye becomes len becomes information. That information gets traveled along the nerves goes to my mind and it creates a symbol for that light. The symbol is all I can know. I cannot know the light itself. Right?

[00:10:35]There's no way I can get to it. Which makes a very interesting point. That means that all of our sciences, you know, we call them sciences of the world, like we're studying this stone, but we can't study that stone. We can study the mind's representation of that stone, right? Just like in the dream, you can do the same thing in a dream.

[00:10:54]You know, you can study things in the dream. You can fly. I had a dream where I could fly very much like I could swim, right? But when I woke up in the morning, I didn't go and start pulling out the physics books to figure out how did I do that, right? How did I fly like that? That's crazy, right? But that's what we do in this world. We go and we study these laws of the dream and they're somewhat consistent. But even the scientists when they get down to it, they talk in terms of probabilities, right? I remember I we had a bowl one time and my the professor said you drop that ball and it would go into the bowl.

[00:11:27]He said you would think that it would be a law that if I drop this ball, it will always go into the bowl. But he says it's only a probability. There will come a time for some reason that I drop this ball and it doesn't end up in that bowl.

[00:11:40]And so Shinish Gadata Maharaj that realized cigarette maker from Bomb May, one of my favorite sadus, uh says that what we call cause and effect in this world is only repetition, right? That there really is no such thing as cause and effect. that the mind creates the idea of cause and effect in order to construct the ego, in order to construct a little world for you to feel safe in where you feel like from here to maybe the end of my arm, at least I'm in charge in that space, right? That I can I can run that area, which of course we know not even that is true. But there's a section of the mind which will continually change that story to keep you convinced that you're in charge, right? to keep you constantly feeling like, "Yes, I planned this weekend."

[00:12:24]Even though I'm not doing at all what I said I was going to do on Monday, right?

[00:12:28]That as the week goes and the plans change, you just keep making adjustments, but you're still calling it your plan. And you get there and you're like, "So, yes, you believe this illusion, right?" And so, uh, I went up the other day about two weeks ago to the therish the home of Krishna Morty up in Ohigh. And I had never been there, didn't know anything about him. And I went to his center, beautiful place. If you haven't been there, wonderful place to go and do some meditation. I told my friend Gloria who had taken me there, that as soon as I walked in that place, I felt like I was getting a mental shower. It just felt so pristine and so clear there. Everything is white.

[00:13:07]Imagine this room, floor, ceiling, boards, everything painted white. And that's basically Krishna Morty's home.

[00:13:14]And uh it's an amazing place. And so I got interested. I went and bought a book in the bookstore called The First and Last Freedom that he wrote and read it.

[00:13:23]And in that book, he starts off basically by saying books are unnecessary and silly. And I thought that's odd.

[00:13:31]I'm reading one you wrote. Like, how did you do that? Right? And then he goes on to say, "Oh, your institutions and religions, they're all unnecessary." You know, but then right there on the wall in his in his home is the the edicts of his institution and his organization.

[00:13:46]And I was like, well, wait a minute. And then he goes on and says, "Gurus, gurus are not necessary. Gurus are unimportant." And I'm like, "Well, why do you have an institution where you're the teacher, you know, where you're teaching me these things?" So I thought, well, I that really has to mean that we're not understanding exactly what he's saying, right? And he clarifies it here. He says, "Symbols then are indispensable, right? Because this whole world is symbol. You can't you can't do away with it. There'd be nothing if there was no symbol. But symbols, as the history of our own and every other age makes so abundantly clear, can also be fatal. Consider, for example, the domain of science on one hand, and on the other the domain of politics and religion. I don't know why he puts those together. That's a dangerous mix. But he says, thinking in terms of and acting in response to the one set, the set of scientific symbols, he says, we've come in some small measure to understand and to control the elementary forces of nature. But thinking in terms of the other set of symbols, the religion and the politics, he says, "Thinking in terms of and acting in response to another set of symbols, we use these forces as instruments of mass murder and collective suicide. There's some feeding the hungry and kindness coming out of it as well." But uh to his point, he says, "In the first case, the explanatory symbols were well chosen, carefully analyzed, and progressively adapted to the emergent facts of physical ex existence." Right? So in science they're not embarrassed to say we got that wrong right because we're saying it all the time in my life I don't know how many ultimate particles the smallest particle I think five times now in my life we found the smallest particle every time they go and it's going to go on infinitely in that direction that's that's what the rishies said about this world of symbols that they realized very quickly when they went up into the Himalayas to find out what the meaning of life was they didn't go outside well they started the chvacas you know the material ists who said there's only the material. Uh they went out and started studying but they found that there is no answer out there that every answer that they came up with presented five more questions and that it just goes on add infin item you will never know. Swami G says you know you can take a grain of sand off the beach and dedicate the rest of your life to studying that piece of sand and he said by the time you die you will have more questions about that piece of sand than what you started with. Right? And so that's where they had the wisdom to say ah the bottleneck is here. I am the experience of all of this. I am the seer of all of this. And then that second wave comes in. As a matter of fact, all of this is in me.

[00:16:24]These are all symbols of mind. I am the container of this universe. So Swami G says I'm not an alama. Alamita is in me.

[00:16:32]Right? And so to understand that and you can further test that I had a wonderful uh guided meditation. Oddly enough, I was giving the guided meditation, but I learned something from from my own guided meditation because in there, as I was sitting there, you know, watching the meditation and coming up with things that I thought would be helpful to share, which is an odd experience and I realized that uh that I was paying attention to my senses and that the whole world, this external world communicates with me through the same interface that my body does, right? that there's no distinction that when my body has to tell me when I'm sick, right? For me, it's that weird taste in the back of my mouth and pressure behind my eyes.

[00:17:13]I'm like, "Oh, man. I'm sick, right?"

[00:17:15]But the body has to tell you that's a that's a really big clue that you and the body are not the same thing, right?

[00:17:22]Because you would just know that you were sick. You wouldn't have to be told.

[00:17:26]And then you find even beyond that, even in the subtle realm, that your mind, your thoughts, you have to watch them.

[00:17:31]They have to present themselves to you, right? And you sit there and you watch them present your themselves to you. So clearly truly you're not the mind. That wouldn't have to happen. You don't need an interface within a singularity.

[00:17:46]An interface interfaces between two separate things. Right? And so it's very clear that we're not this body and that we're not this mind. Right? So he goes on about this idea of symbols. He says in the in the second case, symbols originally ill-chosen were never subjected to a thoroughgoing analysis and never reformulated so as to harmonize with the emergent facts of human existence. So he's saying that you know these guys that started these religions they set up their symbols, their dogmas and their creeds and those became the law immediately.

[00:18:18]There wasn't a period of time where they were tested and tried and studied and experimented with and explored and looked beyond and under and from this direction and that direction. They then stayed the same. And he takes a great issue with that. And so it is with this world and with your life. You know, we've accepted a lot of things as being true that are not true, right? We've accepted the fact that we live in a material world. We've accepted the fact that we're that it's okay to call us a consumer, which every time I read that I'm like, h, God, what an insult that is. And how odd it is. You know, I just get this image of some slug sitting on some rotting tomato, you know, and that's me, a consumer. You know, you I'm to be harvested. You know, you harvest money from me, right? And that's what the modern world more and more is feeling like. You know, they count the number of steps because they they have one or two developers that are developing entire cities now. You know, it's like they count the number of steps. Let's see. On the 15th step, statistics tell us this guy's going to want a coffee. So, get the Starbucks guys in here and put a Starbucks right here. You know, and then they're going to walk a few more steps and they're going to want some lunch or whatever it is, right? As long as we have desires and as long as we're running our life in terms of our desires, the desires of a body and the desires of a mind, neither of which we have just determined is me.

[00:19:39]Right? If you go inside and you do that practice of discerning what is body and how does it talk to that which is me, what is mind and how does it talk with me. As you sit in that space and watch, no judgments, no no analysis of it. Just simply watch. That's all that's necessary because truth is self-evident.

[00:20:00]Right? You don't have to go in with an idea and prove or disprove. Just go in with no idea and learn. Just open up to what's happening in there. Right? And we we find that no desires arise from that which is watching the mind and that which is watching the body. All of the desires that I have have arisen either in the mind or in the body. And so this is why the scriptures at least in vanta are so adamant on the fact of understanding you are not the body and you're not the mind. So that you can get a little bit of wiggle space between you and these desires which are making you a slave. Right? I used to I remember as a seven-year-old kid first time I heard someone tell me that I was a slave you know in church I sat there I was like I'm not a slave right and now as a vodan right in the monastery I realized wow my desires determined everything about me you know and and and they get more specific when you start following them you know you may start off with just a general love of pizza after a while you have to find a particular pizzeria in Milan that has a certain pepperoni that has on a done in a real up wood oven with this type of wood and boom boom boom boom boom. Uh you know, I have a really good friend who's one of these connoisseurs. You know, he started out liking tea and now he's got a tea room in his house where he dries his own tea that he buys from a farmer in China who sends him these boxes of fresh tea leaves and he ages them because there's a certain type of tea I think called poor tea or something. He's going to think I'm making fun of him if he hears this lecture, but I'm not.

[00:21:34]But uh that notion but see that's how you know you'll never find your satisfaction here because connoisseurship goes on infinitely goes on infinitely. I heard of a coffee that's found only in the manure of an elephant that they feed it to the elephant. He evacuates it and then they pull the beans out and that's actually the most expensive coffee you can buy. I was like wow that's amazing.

[00:21:57]Yeah. Look it up. It's there.

[00:22:01]It's there. All right. And so this world of odd symbols that are being presented to our senses, being presented to us in a constant stream of delectibles, un unre repeating, right? We have to find our way through this. We have to look beyond these symbols. What are they pointing at? What is what is that matrix that is behind them? Right? Because he says even the best cookbook is no substitute for the worst dinner. The fact seems sufficiently obvious. And yet throughout the ages, the most profound philosophers, the most learned and acute theologians have constantly fallen into the error of identifying their purely verbal constructs with fact and into the yet more enormous error of imagining that symbols are somehow more real than what they stand for.

[00:22:48]Right? And so this is what we've done in our life. Right? These are all symbols of something that is an unchanging reality behind them. something that is holding this moment still. Something that has allowed you to identify yourself even though your body today looks nothing like it did 50 years ago.

[00:23:08]Uh you know, and yet somehow you've always known who you were talking about when you said me, right? And so that within you which is unchanging is the only thing that's real. And the thing that within you that is unchanging is exactly that which is behind all of this that is art unchanging. And that's what led the the rishies to say thou art that you are the bottleneck. You are the observer of the entire universe. It exists within you as it as it presents itself through symbols because just like you can't enter into the dream God can't enter into this reality. And so God has also created a thought of himself. And each one of you is God thinking of himself through the sets of well through your karmas to make it easy but through the things that you've attached and averted in your life. Right? And so that's why they talk purify purify purify. You know I always used to think of my Christian context that was always something sexual. Purify purify purify.

[00:24:06]I found in vanta that just means take me and mind out of the picture. That's what purity means. And really the scriptures really open up into a very practical way if you always replace the word pure with know me and mine. It gives you a much deeper understanding of what they're saying. And so Paul, St. Paul in the his letter to the Corinthians, he says it's the spirit, not the letter. Right? What does that mean? It's the self, the soul, that unmanifested part of you that is real, not the brick and mortar, not the gross world, the material world. He says the spirit, not the letter. And we have such trust through Christ toward God, not that we are sufficient to ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God, is from that ultimate reality, this ultimate unchanging aspect of isness that we're experiencing. He says it is it is uh it's the letter kills but the spirit gives life right the letter the letter that which manifests everything has an expiration date everything ends and most of the pain in our life is the refusal to accept that right when you bought that brand new car you should have looked at it immed you should have gone home and just put a big scratch down the side just to get it over with right you should have you should have married an old partner cuz it's coming anyway, right? And it's like it would really inform our decisions. We would not spend so much time looking for a beautiful partner, you know, who was attractive to us because I'm telling you, you hit 61, there's you got to look a lot harder even in your own mirror to find something. Everything melts, right?

[00:25:53]Everything reaching for the ground and you watch it all go.

[00:25:58]You know, there'll be a day where I'll be standing up here like this, literally, you know, talking like this because that's the nature of this world. But yourself, as every old person in this room will tell you, they feel the same now in this body that they felt in this body when they were 20. The body doesn't feel the same by any means, but we all feel that same expression. I had a wonderful friend uh Lolita who had a terrible stroke. She was a very powerful corporate lawyer in Chicago and uh she became a vodontan and moved into the center in San Francisco.

[00:26:33]We were great friends for a number of years there. And then one day she gives me a phone call and she tells me that she's had a terrible stroke and that she will not be able to get out of bed again in her life. And she told me, as a matter of fact, I can't roll over. I can't button my own blouse. I can't go to the bathroom on my own. and she laid there. She lasted another 10 years. And we talked quite frequently through that. For the first year, she suffered like you could imagine.

[00:27:04]Every time on the phone, it was tears.

[00:27:06]Just why would God do this to me? Why do I have to lay here in this bed for 10 years or for you know how long? At that point, she didn't know how long it would be. What is the point of living? What's the point of being? Why didn't he just wipe me out and take me? And I, you know, I didn't know what to say to her.

[00:27:23]How could I speak to that experience? I just listened. I could only be with her.

[00:27:27]I could only hear her. And so, uh, doing that, uh, one day, it was about a year into it, I called her, she answered the phone, and I could hear immediately energetically, you know, different. And I said to her, I said, "Lita, what's going on? You sound great." And she said, "I am great." She said, "I finally understood." She said, 'I understood that I have always been limited by my body. My body never let me enjoy the world in the way that I wanted to enjoy the world. Right? I think we've all had that experience. I remember my first one was I was 13. I was out on a walk and the I was in Germany. It was these rolling green hills in the Rhineland faults area and the grass was doing that wavy thing, you know, and the sky was stormy and I just stood there and the beauty even as a 13-year-old I felt like I was trying to breathe through a stir stick, you know? It's like I knew that I could not possibly appreciate exactly how beautiful that was. That I could not even if I spread myself out and was able to touch every molecule in everything that I could see at the same time, that would still not be enough bandwidth for what I knew of the beauty that was there that I was looking at. And she said, "I've realized this that this body has always been a limit to me." And she says, 'I realized the other day that I'm still fully me, right? Just like that that thing about all the old people in here. We know, right? We're still fully us. I can't go running for a couple of Well, I might be able to do it once, run for a couple of miles, you know, out there, have some fun, but the body limits us, draws us in. She says, "I realize that life is no different for me now than it's ever been." She's like, "Yeah, I can't roll over. Yeah, I can't get out of bed, but I'm still fully me."

[00:29:10]And so, she said, "I realize that." And so I've just been having the nurses lift me and put me in a wheelchair. And she says, "I've still got two fingers that I can move on my right arm." And she says, "I push myself around in that electric wheelchair and I go to the library every morning and I pick out about five or six jokes from Reader's Digest and I memorize them. And then I just wheel myself from room to room telling these jokes to the other inmates at this old folks home." And she said, "I've had such a good time and I've enjoyed it so much and I've come up with so many new friends." She said, 'I understand now what you do when you're paralyzed in bed for 10 years. You know, you think of others. You find ways to express yourself through the obstacles that are in front of you because that's what you've always been doing, right? This freedom. And so, we have to go beyond the letter. We can't take this and let this define who we are and what we are.

[00:30:03]We let the spirit within us that satananda that pure and unconditioned love that pure wisdom that is our nature that is the place that we can take refuge it's available it's a a physical experience you can have going into your heart and resting there and leaving the mind just letting it play whatever it's playing and being uninterested and to sit in the shrine of the heart in communion with your divine beloved and have an experience of self and the beauty of that self is meant to manifest in every action that you do. Every action that you do. Meister Echart has a wonderful thing. He says wi wisdom consists in doing the next thing you have to do and doing it with your whole heart and finding delight in doing it.

[00:30:50]That's the definition of wisdom. I couldn't have come up with a a definition for wisdom if I tried. And this one I read it two or three times and I just every time I read it, it was more true. What a beautiful thing. You know, I' I've been posted at the convent in Santa Barbara there and the nuns have a saying that they that they tease every new brahmacharini with. It's like we don't do what we like here. We like what we do, right? So, no matter what it is, you decide that you like it ahead of time. That's wisdom, right? That's wisdom. That's how you get control of a restless mind. That's how you how you break out of this idea that you're going to find your happiness out there somewhere. That something that you can add something to yourself. Whether it's knowledge, whether it's experience, whether it's pleasure, whether it's girth, that you can somehow add something to yourself that's going to give you something.

[00:31:44]The first dawn of wisdom is to understand there is nothing out there that you can take that's going to make you happy, that's going to fulfill you.

[00:31:52]Your fulfillment comes from within. When you realize who you are, you know, we're b we're raised from day one. We're raised from day one to think outside, right? You go to kindergarten. How many people, every adult in your life is asking you, what do you want to be when you grow up? For some reason, the first two choices are firemen or policemen, which I never understood. I was like, what's up with that? You know, and so you're grow you grow up with this constant idea that there's something out there that you're going to become. And then you go to your Walt Disney movie and you're like, "Oh, now I got to find a prince charming or a Cinderella, right? There's someone out there that's going to be your other half. You're not complete by yourself, right? And if you don't get that other half, you won't be happy, right? And we don't think about it. We just accept that. Yeah, I'd like a I'd like a a Cinderella. I'd like a prince charming. You know, I'll put my ad out there immediately."

[00:32:45]Which incidentally is a very odd thing to do. You know, I I was looking over the shoulder of one of the young men who was in the monastery looking at one of these dating sites and I walked up behind him and I was reading them and everyone of those ads for people was talking about what they were looking for. I want someone who and I need someone who and I want this and I want that and I was like, "Good Lord, how in the world are you going to build a relationship between two people where they're both looking to take?" You know, how are you going to build a relationship when you're going to make me happy and I and you're expecting me to make you happy at the same time that I'm expecting you to make me happy? It's not going to happen. I said, "What? What a charade that is. No wonder they joke about, you know, you might as well just the whole phone off the table. Forget that method. You will not find yourself there. You will not find your joy there." You know, I always thought if you're going to put a dating ad out there, put what you're bringing to the table. You know, I'm a great cook and I really enjoy the company of the people I'm with and I I'm really easy to get along with and I'll encourage you in everything that you do, right? And if you have a bunch of people out there with the ideas of giving and caring, that's your nature. Love is about that.

[00:33:57]To express your divine nature is to express love, right? That's how you know this moment is scripture. This moment is God. It's the I am. I say that all the time. This moment is the only thing real and it is God. Right? And the the the the only way that we can find that joy is to express it. Why? Because in God there is no time. Time space causation belongs to the mind. They're tools that the mind uses to take apart this singularity into bite-sized pieces that you can comprehend that can fit into your mind. Right? When we look at this singularity, when we look at what is actually one without a second, the first thing we do is break it into five pieces, right? Our taste, touch, hear, smelling. I can never get all five in one sentence for one reason or another.

[00:34:44]Who knows? But uh you know that that those five senses, you first thing you do is break this reality into five pieces. And then you have to put them back together in your mind. And that's why the world is relative because you got to figure out how they go together.

[00:34:57]They all have a relationship with each other. And you got to figure that out.

[00:35:00]So we spend our whole life in our minds trying to create this taking this world of constant change putting it into categories and constantly shuffling it around and saying what does it mean right forgetting that the meaning is the one who's doing the work the meaning is the one who's looking at the mind the m that that which is you is that which is watching right once you know that and and and and and if I had been in kindergarten and someone had come and said to me not what do you want to become not immediately setting me on a quest that would have no reasonable end.

[00:35:34]Telling me what I was.

[00:35:37]That's what I need to know. It's like I'm in this rubbery weird thing now. You know, I just realized my toes are mine and I just learned how to pick up a glass with this thing. But what am I?

[00:35:49]How wonderful. I would have I would have loved for someone to tell me, "Hey, you know what? You're made of pure love and anything that you do with the idea of loving is going to make you happy, is going to bring you contentment because that's what you are, right? You're not this guy that needs to compete and beat and rise above, you know, and be better than. You're the guy who doesn't care who's better. You're the woman who doesn't care, you know, who's got it together. You're the one that goes around just giving and and loving and being with everyone, right? and you're wise. Wisdom is your nature. Think carefully about the things that you do.

[00:36:30]Think deeply about yourself, about how things feel. You know, because that's how you read the scripture of the moment.

[00:36:39]You go and you slap your mother. You're going to feel horrible about that. Why?

[00:36:43]Because that's how the scripture of the moment speaks to you. It says, "Hey, you just violated your nature. That's going to hurt."

[00:36:51]Right? And so if you live your life paying attention to that and honing in on that and sharpening that awareness in there, then you find fulfillment not as the goal of life but as the byproduct of being what you are. The byproduct of being what you are is how you build a happy life. Right? And that's why God says take refuge in me only. What does that mean? Take refuge in that shrine of love. That shrine of the heart within you. This is where you go. It's yourself that has to accept yourself. It's yourself that has to give you grace.

[00:37:25]It's yourself that has to say you can do this. It's yourself that gives you permission to try. It's yourself that believes in you again and again and again in the face of a thousand failures.

[00:37:40]Because this is the only place where you can transcend and change and grow into the fullness of being.

[00:37:47]Anything else that you go to to do out there in the world will only be a distraction for a short amount of time.

[00:37:54]And when that distraction is finished, it will place you down at least at at best where you left from and at worse in a much worse condition than what you started with. And we see that in the world of addictions, right? Not with drugs and alcohol. Those those those are for kids. I'm talking about, you know, the the your ego, your need to constantly be told that you're loved, your need to be constantly told that you're beautiful, your need to be constantly told that you're a man, you know, you're an alpha male, whatever the god name that is, right? We're always begging. We're turned into begging slaves if we are thinking that there's something out there for us because they're watching your behavior and they're putting that Starbucks in in the right place and they're fixing that car up in just the right way and they're spraying that new car smell just before you get in it in the morning, you know, so that they can give you feed your appetites and then all the billboards they'll put up are going to be there what to put you on your left foot to strike to to set you out of balance and then say, "Ah, but if you smelled like this, you wouldn't have that Right? You are out of balance. There's something wrong with you and we can fix it and it will just cost you $2.95.

[00:39:05]It used to cost $2.95. Now it's 295 per month. You don't own anything anymore.

[00:39:12]Right? We'll rent will rent your life to you. So getting very efficient. The only escape is to find out who you are. To do the practice so that you stay aware of what you are so that you can read the scripture of the moment and so that you can know and understand what fulfills you and what creates a fulfilling and beautiful life. Right? Understand this world is a world of symbols. It is unreal.

[00:39:38]Right? Echart Meister Eart says, "Why do you pray about God?" I had to look up that word pray. rattle on pretty much what I'm doing.

[00:39:48]Why do you rattle on about God? He says, "Do you not know that everything you say about God is untrue?"

[00:39:54]Because God can't fit into a word. He can't fit into a mind. If he was, he'd be here, right? In a recognizable way, right? To those who can see, to those who can hear, he is here in the face of every single person we're looking at, right? And that is how we learn to love.

[00:40:14]That is how we learn to trust. Not by the way we treat each other, not by the things that are said back and forth, but because we know who we are. And thereby I know what you are. I know that divine light that is behind that horrible person that you've become, right? I know that back there, if I look deep enough, hard enough, and long enough, I'm going to find pure love in you. I'm going to find wisdom in you.

[00:40:37]Regardless of how deeply you may have lost it or buried it or forgotten about it, it is there. Right? And so we learn to see it in ourselves first. Why?

[00:40:46]Because that's all we can know. I can never know your mind. I can't get in there. Infinitely complex. I wouldn't want to get in there if I could.

[00:40:55]Probably you wouldn't want me in there, right? And so what how do we do it then?

[00:41:00]Well, we look we know our own mind. I know that when I go like that that I'm not happy with something. And so when I see somebody going, I go, he's not happy with something. I project what I think and know of myself on everyone around me. That's how we know the world. And so the effort for knowing people is to know yourself. And when you find that you are not that failure, beaten, tired, overworked, undercomplished rag that now is in an old folks home with no use anymore. When you know that that's not you, never was you, never will be you, right? Then you can look in the eyes of others and see yourself in them. I know they're loving, right?

[00:41:45]That connection is all that's necessary just to sit there and be with each other.

[00:41:51]Your surroundings don't matter. God is with you everywhere in the marketplace as well as in seclusion or in church. If you look for nothing but God, nothing or no one can disturb you.

[00:42:05]Right? I have found this to be true in the sense that the more time I spend in meditation, sitting in the shrine of my heart, sitting in the company of my beloved and having that love just well up in that beautiful warm feeling, right? That that fills our self. I've come to understand what it means to become a Jesus or a Buddha or a Rama or a Krishna or a Ramachrishna.

[00:42:28]It is to know your own love and to remove your limits from it. Remove the boundaries of your ego that has denied your own love for yourself because you've been measuring by a voice of your mother or your father or a friend or something someone you saw written on the bathroom wall about yourself. Who knows where your image of yourself has come from. But when you spend time in the shrine of the heart and you you have a beautiful experience of what you are, that fills you up. That becomes your vehicle that you watch the rest of the world from. That's how a Jesus loves everyone. That's how he can be hang up there on the on that cross, you know, forgiving folks. Ah, today you'll be with me in paradise. That's how he does that because he knew who he was. Even in the the body being in horrible physical pain, he still had a place that he could be that was separate from body because he knew he wasn't a body. He wasn't a mind.

[00:43:26]I'm the spirit.

[00:43:31]The author of one of the Mahayana sutras affirms that the truth was never preached by Buddha. Seeing that you have to realize it within yourself. Right? If truth was something that could be said, he would say it and Omram bingo finished. You'd be done. Right? Ah, done. Now I know. Right? But it's not something somebody can tell you. I can tell you all about my inner experiences and it would make no difference to you except that then you would you know like we do with all of these people. Put them up on a shrine. Put a picture on a put the picture on the shrine right worship them. Make them something different from us because our ego won't let us think that we could possibly be that. Right?

[00:44:12]Our ego is always limiting us. That's why divine mother says the grace of God is easily attained but the grace of one's own mind is difficult indeed.

[00:44:22]Right? This is why we need a Buddha, a Rama, a Krishna. We have to find a means of letting go of this horrible judgment inside that we have. Right?

[00:44:35]To understand the misery and confusion that exists within ourselves, Krishna Morti says, and so in the world, we must first find clarity within ourself. And that clarity comes about through right thinking. This clarity is not to be organized for it cannot be exchanged with another. Organized group thought is merely repet repetitive.

[00:45:00]Clarity is not the result of verbal of verbal assertion but of an intense self-awareness and right thinking.

[00:45:08]Right? So this intense self-awareness means that you have learned to always be aware of what's going on inside.

[00:45:16]Right? to understand that the smell of pizza is going to cause a desire for pizza and a desire for pizza is going to make you go buy a piece of pizza and buying too much pizza is going to make you carry it around with you everywhere you go for certainly significantly less number of years as it tries to pump that pizza around your body. Right? So become aware. And so when you smell that great pizza, you don't just non unconsciously then complete the cycle.

[00:45:43]You just let the day become better because now it smells like pizza.

[00:45:47]Perfect. It was a perfect day and now it smells like pizza. How can it get better than this? Right? Except that the smell is a symbol. There's no fulfillment of it. You're going to go and have that piece of pizza. That's not going to affect the next one that you need at all. If you get content by it, which I've never been content with a single piece of pizza. I'm not content until I can't fit another one in there. Right?

[00:46:12]And this is the problem of not watching our self, right? Weight problems, they come because we're not aware of our inner self.

[00:46:22]I I I I've lost a few pounds this year and I tell you, I'm shocked by how much more comfortable I am just getting around, you know, just not feeling my buttons pulling on my belly, you know, not feeling my belly my buckle push into my belly button all the time. It's like if I had paid attention as I grew fatter, that would have been self-evident to me and I would have realized, look, you're paying a price for this that you don't want to pay. But once you once once you've gained that weight and once you've compromised yourself into accepting it, oh well, this is the way it is. I just like pizza, right? Then you you just live an uncomfortable life that you didn't realize was so uncomfortable until you lose the weight.

[00:47:04]And it's like that with everything. So this this this constant internal watching you know this internal awareness is what he's talking about there right it's of intense self-awareness and right thinking what is right thinking right thinking is something that that arises from your nature from either love wisdom or being presence you know that's where truth arises from Ramachrishna says that which arises in pure mind again what is pure mind a mind with no me and mind in That which arises in pure mind is the voice of God.

[00:47:40]Right? So if you want to hear God, shut up.

[00:47:45]Stop the chatter of the mind. Right?

[00:47:48]That's a funny that's a funny uh uh little meditation experiment to do, you know, because we do so much thinking.

[00:47:53]And why do we do so much thinking? Well, we think we're figuring things out, right? Oh, I'm figuring it out. I'm like, well, who's thinking?

[00:48:02]I am. Who's listening? I am. Well, what's I going to tell I that I doesn't already know. Thinking is purely entertainment.

[00:48:13]It's just something to do. It was the original iPhone right there in your head, you know? Oh, let me just sit and think about that. Oh, let me imagine that, right? And play with it. Echart Tol says the natural state of the mind is silence. That you it was meant to be used when you needed it. that that when it when it need the need would arise, the mind would arise and it would be fine. But then when it didn't, the mind would be quiet and you would be placed where? You would be placed in that peace that passes understanding because silent mind is the biggest relief in the world. To sit there and not be bombarded by thought constantly to be able to sit there and enjoy your own presence, the own moment. You start to understand how vast it it is to exist. It doesn't even matter what you're doing. You could be in pain. You could be freezing cold if you stop with the judgment of it. If you stop resisting it, accept it as it is and say, "Yeah, just feel that cold go through you. Enjoy the sensation of cold, right? Not feeling the need to constantly control and change the environment around us." Because why?

[00:49:18]Because we're sitting in a heart of love, content, full, satisfied, busy looking around for opportunities to give because we have an infinite amount to give. That's the only thing you have to give. That's the only thing people want from you. You know, that diamond ring for for that fiance is meaningless if love doesn't come with it.

[00:49:44]And you can forget the ring entirely.

[00:49:47]you better have a lot of love.

[00:49:50]But that's the thing that makes a difference in this world, right? So this very clear internal observation, intense self-awareness and right thinking, meaning thinking that's not coming from an external um condition, a thinking that's not done to an because of an attachment or an aversion, right?

[00:50:10]The thinking that comes from the space of acceptance, the space of silence.

[00:50:15]That's right thinking. It's not been biased toward the body or toward the mind. All selfishness is because we listen to body or mind. Right? Because I'm a separate body from you. And if there's one piece of pizza left, I'm going to get it.

[00:50:30]I'll be real sorry you didn't. And I might even pretended that I care and cut it in half and share it with you. But that was really only because I didn't want to look selfish. Right? It gets that bad, doesn't it? Inside. It gets that bad. And so we go inside and we watch very carefully because our divine nature is self-correcting. For Bhutananda, my my first teacher that I lived with for 15 years in San Francisco, he said that the knots of maya, the knots of egoism untie themselves in the light of awareness, right? You simply become aware. Why?

[00:51:04]Because all of us want to be Prince Charming or Cinderella. All of us want to be the night in shining armor. All of us want to be great lovers. If you want to find out what your ideal of yourself is, write your own uh obituary.

[00:51:18]How do you want to be remembered? Right?

[00:51:21]Nobody wants to be remembered for the car they drove. Nobody wants to remember be remembered for the insignia on their sweater, right? For the size of their bank account. We all want to be known as somebody who cared, somebody who loved, somebody who supported, somebody who gave. That's how we want to be remembered. So live like you want to be remembered.

[00:51:42]Be what you want to be. Stop with the narratives. Narratives are always ego because they're born of time, space, and causation. Past, present, future. Right?

[00:51:55]Everything within you that you think about yourself is untrue.

[00:51:59]It's only in the silence of mind, in the stillness of the heart where you come to know what you are. And you will be overwhelmed. Every time Ramach Krishna went into ecstatic state whenever he went into samatanti it wasn't some supernatural state he was seeing things as they are without any bias of body and mind and the experience of existence is ecstatic and you can touch it at any moment even now right now if you just close your eyes of course I don't want anybody to fall asleep here but you just close your eyes and just open the windows of everything let all of your senses is in at once. Don't pay attention to any particulars. Just back up and watch and start to wonder. What does it mean to exist?

[00:52:46]It's ecstatic. It's beautiful. It's the fastest way out of a bad mood. It's the fastest way out of heartbreak.

[00:52:54]It's the fastest way out of disappointment.

[00:52:57]Just sit down and you can do it. Whether you live in a house or not, whether you have a friend or not, you can always be your number one cheerleader. Right?

[00:53:08]Corinthians says, "What is the nature of love?" Love always hopes. It always believes. It always trusts. Love never fails. And so you can say that about yourself. Yes, I know you failed at this a thousand times, uncounted times. But I believe you can do it this time.

[00:53:25]I will always hope in you self.

[00:53:28]I will always trust in you. I will always believe in you. I will not fail.

[00:53:37]This is your divine nature.

[00:53:40]Clarity is not the result of verbal assertion, but of intense self-awareness and right thinking. Right thinking is not the outcome or mere cultivation of the intellect. Nor is it conformity to a pattern. However worthy and noble, right thinking comes with self-nowledge.

[00:53:57]Knowing who you are, knowing what you are, what arises in silence from within you, it's love, its existence, presence.

[00:54:07]All of the mysterious things that you really can't come up with a sentence to describe what is love, what is beauty, what is wisdom, right? You can only point at them because they get bigger every time you try and trap them.

[00:54:22]That's why you can't know who you are in words or in the mind. That's why we want a silent mind. Right? So that that which is obvious can become self-evident.

[00:54:39]The pure mind Ramach Krishna says and pure atman are one and the same thing.

[00:54:45]So a silent mind and the matrix that is behind all thought, behind all existence, behind all manifestation are the same thing.

[00:54:54]That's how they say thou art that.

[00:54:57]You can't know it when there's thought in the mind. That's egoism. You will always be a subset of yourself. But in that silent spontaneous life where you're living only by the inspiration that's arising from within, that's what a Jesus, a Buddha, a Ramachrishna, that's what they are.

[00:55:15]the pure manifestation of a divine love.

[00:55:17]A love with no conditions. What does that mean? A love with no ego filter to shine through.

[00:55:24]A wisdom that doesn't come with any self-interest at all. Doesn't come with any predetermined desire that then taints your thinking, but comes from pure mind.

[00:55:46]Going back to shri nishad we'll end with this I'll try I'll try try and end in I am that shinisha's writing he says you can become a night watchman and live live happily it is what you are inwardly that matters your inner peace and joy you have to earn right by doing this practice of observation of being aware of where your thoughts are coming from being aware of how your body is indicating them to you. That work you have to do. That's where your peace will lie.

[00:56:19]Your inner peace and joy you have to earn. It is much more difficult than earning money. No university can teach you to be yourself. The only way to learn is by practice right away. Begin to be yourself. Discard all that you are not and go ever deeper. Right? And that's how you can do it. You can't describe who you are because most of that will be imagination. You have to say what you're not. I'm not a body. I'm not a mind. I'm not a man. I'm not a woman. I'm spirit. Right? When I look out of my eyes, I'm not looking out because of the way the body is. I'm looking out because of the way I am.

[00:56:56]Right? I had to find out about my gender. I had to find out about my body.

[00:57:00]I had to learn all those things. It took you nine months to realize the toes you've been looking at floating above your face for your first nine months of life belong to you. Right? So, how can you say that's who you are or that's what defines you? You had to learn how to use them. You remember that whole process. No, that's the point.

[00:57:19]Remember the process and you find your way back to what you are. Right?

[00:57:27]So, he says the only way to learn is by practice. right away begin to be yourself. Discard all that you are not and go even deeper. Just as a man digging a well discards what is not water until he reaches the waterbearing strata, so must you discard what is not your own till nothing is left which you can disown. You will find that what is left is nothing which the mind can hook onto. You are not even a human being.

[00:57:54]You just are a point of awareness co-extensive with time space and beyond both the ultimate cause itself uncaused.

[00:58:05]If you ask me who are you? My answer would be nothing in particular yet I am.

[00:58:12]The questioner says well if you're nothing in particular then you must be the universal morage. What is it to be universal?

[00:58:20]Is it not just a concept but as a way of life? Not to separate. Right? This is what it means to be universal. Not to separate, not to oppose, not to understand and love whatever contacts, but to understand and love whatever contacts you is living universally. To be able to say truly I am the world and the world is me. I am at home in the world and the world is my own. Every existence is my existence.

[00:58:49]Every consciousness is my consciousness.

[00:58:52]Every sorrow is my sorrow and every joy is my joy. This is universal life. This is also love. This is also the nature of God. Yet my real being and yours too is beyond this universe, beyond these symbols and therefore beyond the categories of the particular and the universal. It is what is totally self-contained and independent.

[00:59:20]Does it mean that I must give up the idea of an active life, particular life?

[00:59:24]Not at all. There will be marriage.

[00:59:27]There will be children. There will be earning money to maintain a family. All of this will happen in the natural course of events. For destiny must fulfill itself. You will go through it without resistance, facing the tasks as they come, attentive and thorough, both in small things and big. But the general attitude will be of one affectionate detachment.

[00:59:48]I don't need anything from outside. I love because I'm full. I give because I'm rich. Because I I have an infinite sense of being.

[01:00:00]Affectionate detachment. Enormous goodwill. Just walking around with a fundamental feeling of goodwill. Living for mutual benefit.

[01:00:10]You just walk around. The brother Lawrence says it the best way. He says, "I live within myself with a general fond regard for living. Just a general pleasantness.

[01:00:21]Everything's all right. I don't resist.

[01:00:23]I express love."

[01:00:26]Enormous goodwill without any expectation of return. Right? So not to live within time because your nature is not in time. You're outside of time.

[01:00:36]Outside of time doesn't mean a long time. It means no time. It does not affect you. and a constant giving without asking.

[01:00:46]This is one of the things he says, one of my favorite things. In marriage, you are neither the husband nor the wife.

[01:00:52]You are the love between the two.

[01:00:56]Do not forget that. That is a treasure because one day the body of your wife and the body of your husband will die.

[01:01:04]And if you don't learn this point, that will be a tragedy, painful. And every time you remember that person, it will be painful because the body's not there. But if you know that that person was the love that was between you, that's what will arise in you every time you remember them.

[01:01:22]And your remembrance of them will be a joy and not a sadness.

[01:01:27]Know that's who you are. Know that's what you are. Live accordingly and be large, be infinite, be huge. But above all, be free. free of desire, free of need, free of hunger, free of clawing and begging to get what you need from outside and find the beloved, your fulfillment, your real and true partner within your own heart. Satan, that unconditioned love, that unconditioned wisdom, that pure presence, satisfaction of being.

[01:02:09]This is our call.

[01:02:11]Look at this world.

[01:02:13]Understand that all of it points to something.

[01:02:16]Look for that something and find it in yourself.

[01:02:24]May we all find our bliss within oursel.

[01:02:28]May we all find love within oursel. And may that be enough to carry us through the times, the differences, the changes, the movements, the ups and the downs.

[01:02:42]May we find that infinite well, dive deep in it, and share it with everything we see, hear, taste, touch, or smell.

[01:02:51]May this be our divine truth and our offering to the God of love, to the God of wisdom, to the God of being.

[01:03:02]May we all have great success and a common love and goodwill for each other.

[01:03:09]May it be so, ma.