<iframe src="https://drive.google.com/file/d/11tHwqrubvZggxVbP7Xtn81863V7ghae2/preview" width="100%" height="80" allow="autoplay"></iframe> oh good i was wondering if anybody was going to show up there will be people okay cool where are you i'm in guadalajara um looks like a restaurant behind you or something no it's a no it's a kitchen oh yeah it's where me and Juan are living right now well it's recording I don't know the video is recording I guess we can cut this part out it's just free game banter it's okay okay cool and where are you Earl I'm in New York oh cool hi Sarah Nicole says hi Sarah. Hi Nicole. Hi dear, it's good to see you. Good to see you too. How are you? I'm good. I'm working with Earl for YSI now. Yay! Yay! Hey Tracy. I'll let you all have class. Bye. See you later. Tracy, Benji, Marjorie. It's all the old schoolers. Hey, Errol. How's it going, man? Looks like you're in deep thought, Benji. I kind of am. I was just explaining to my mother, Avidya. Sharing, sharing what we learned today. we got some minutes so we can just uh catch up catch up i just want to talk sanskrit i think i'm gonna have dreams about sanskrit tonight yeah that was kind of cool i didn't think i would be so interested in it but it's pretty fun Yeah, I'm like, does every word with a short A always mean not or no? Because I'm going through my own work like a Sanskrit nerd trying to find all my answers. Sorry, a little bit of Sanskrit excitement. You listen to John's class too? Yeah. He's a great teacher. The course that he made is going to be really good. Yeah. When will that be? Do you know? It's in post-production. It's low on our list, but... So I don't know. I don't know the post-production schedule. Months, but not more. It'll be the fall, I think. It's hard to say because we've got three courses ahead of that that we're supposed to do, but there's also a lot of demand for that course. So that always bumps things up and we'll see how it goes. What three courses were before that? Just curious. Yoga for negative emotions. I think that's next. And then inner fundamental course, which is a meditation course, which I'm also super excited about. Actually, I'm excited about both of those. So those will be the next two. And then there's a yoga for a healthy body, kind of a self-image type course. That one's a, we're quite a ways off on that. The other two are already in post-production. All three of them have been filmed though. And the Sanskrit. Looks like we're going to be busy. Busier. so they'll be like the yoga for financial abundance the same kind of format 10 10 short classes and community forums and um like that i need the yoga for negative emotions i think i can do that too we get a little bit away from our traditional you know integrating some other ideas outside of solely what uh we learned comes from gashemichael so they get a little more contemporary in ways which i like not every idea is 2 000 years old in it I'm sorry, Earl, do I need to make you host or co-host or anything? Okay. Nope. I don't think so. I think Bob and Connie will join. I have to leave at 8.45, so someone will run with it at that point. Hey, Flavia. Welcome, Anjali, Chrissy. Who else we got? Shalandra. It's good to see people. we'll give a couple more minutes and then um we'll head into a somewhat agenda-less satsang so bring your questions and ideas get them ready Yes, the Yoga Sutra homework. Good timing, Paula. Let her connect. Paula, hello. Paula, are you there? We'll give her a second, Chrissy. I think we are submitting it to the-- I'm not sure. She's the one in charge. I couldn't find it in Kajabi. Like I saw like where the questions were. I just didn't know how to submit them. So I figured I'd wait. It's that sound. Cool. Did you do them yet? No, not yet. All right. I've been contemplating. Some of them are hard, I thought. Yeah, they're a little bit more challenging than I originally expected, but I wanted to kind of absorb but whatever we're chatting about here right now. That's cool. Yeah, last time he taught it, he was very much like, this is question one. We're going to talk about it now. This is question two. This was, he was more, he followed the flow, but it was a little harder to distinguish. But let's review. Let's talk about some of the ideas that we did talk about. And then I'd like to jump into the debate that he threw out there, because I thought it was a good one. So, and I'm actually going to somewhat use the homework to guide us through. And just jump in with questions. I don't want to totally go through the homework word for word. That doesn't sound like a discussion. But I do want to use it as the basis. And so the first thing that we talked about was the idea of the title of the text, right? And I love that discussion. Who remembers what that was? Discussion of what the chapter was called or? yeah the chapter about like how to connect with the people and how to reach that goal that one yep and was it called was the actual chapter called sadhana pada yeah okay if someone is a sanskritist they can type it in the chat but he he went over like let's orient herself in the text he's you know it's a four chapter the four buddhas the four cornerstones and the first one was the chapter on meditation and it was interesting he said that a lot of the the scriptures don't actually have any names for the chapters that they're probably a late addition and i think that's probably true they got named you know however many centuries later But the first chapter, we talked a lot about the five paths, and Deshlas started by going over the five paths. So when we look at the flow of the chapters, originally, the chapter on meditation, the first chapter, is a very difficult chapter. And so the commentaries say, why would Patanjali start with the hardest chapter first? Has anyone heard this before? I like when we talk about the first verse and he says, this is yoga. And if you need more information than that, then here's a whole chapter about it. It's like that. And specifically, the commentators say he gave the hardest chapter first because he wasn't going to waste the smartest students time. So it's like, boom, here's the hardest chapter and we'll do that first. And then if you don't understand it, if you didn't fully, because it's all about like really, really deep levels of meditation. And if you don't catch that, then there's the second chapter. So we're into like the chapter for dummies a little bit, which was called Sadhana Pada, which is the chapter on the way. And so in this chapter, he outlined two major topics. There's actually three, I would say. Anyone catch the major topics? The four higher truths? Yeah, that was one of them. That's the first thing he said. The four mistakes. Yeah. That is going to be its own thing, too. Because there's actually five mistakes, it seems, but it was interesting how he outlined them as four. So the second chapter, we've got the four higher truths. Also, those four or five mistakes. Well, he says five negative thoughts in chapter three and four. And then chapter five is the four mistakes, which I feel like we didn't get there yet. Oh, sorry, which chapter was the four mistakes? The four mistakes is chapter or verse five. Yeah. So it's ignorance and that leads to the four mistakes. So he's not counting ignorance as a mistake in that. It's like the Kshetram. Ignorance is the Kshetram. It's the field that allows those other four mistakes to grow. And he just touched on the first one. So we'll get there. um so the four truths those that's a big topic in the second chapter ignorance the field and the four mistakes that follow that's the second big topic Anjali's got another one Ashtanga which means what eight limbs anjali keep going yeah okay eight limbs how many are in the second chapter how many of the eight the physical practices the kriya practices yeah flavia said five chrissy said five so it's the five of the eight parts of yoga and then what's the difference between the first five and the second three like how are they kind of divided up why did he put five in one chapter physical and the last three are more mental yeah well the first five are physical or outer and the last three are inner maybe what about the kriya yoga part was the first kriya yoga so he related the outer practices to kriya yoga because kriya is an action right so i thought that was pretty interesting what's the three parts of Kriya Yoga. You might have to dig into the actual text. I'll give you a hint. Let me see if I can remember it. Yeah. Yeah. Difficult spiritual practices, regular study, and prayers to the master. those those are what how does the verse end um are the ways of becoming whole that are activities that are activities so the activities is kriya kriya yoga cur is the root to do to make like karma so what's this thing which is the very first verse of the chapter right kriya yoga what are these what are they and then he lists three spirit what is it say it again benji what was the first one um undertaking difficult spiritual practices regular study and prayers to the master cool so what's an example of a difficult spiritual practice uh formatting a manual at midnight yeah at best it's a spiritual practice what's patanjali mean by tapas by a spiritual practice spiritual hardship i'm supposed to meditate yeah doing whatever it takes to listen to teachings tapas means to burn away yeah that's the essence of the word tapas it's got this element of fire or heat tapasya it's like a hard spiritual practice remembering where things are coming from i think that's a good answer we could bring in the element of discipline like something that you're going to be disciplined to do over and over again whether it's getting on your mat on your mat or the meditation cushion if anybody out here is practicing you know some someday there will be a day where you're like i don't really want to do this yeah yeah that's definitely one of the connotations of tapas Well, that's interesting. I didn't know that. When I've heard tapas in the past, it's been like, it's been like taking retreat at the top of a mountain in freezing cold and you have no roof kind of deal. That's the context that I've heard of tapas. But I'm interested that it's like, not just like putting your body through challenges, but also overcoming mental challenges. Would you say that that's the essence of it? yeah i think so i think there's i mean gishlu has also talked about it in terms of like so tapas isn't like working hard mowing the lawn or or working on a on a manual with a without having a joyful spiritual motivation um it's the it's not just effort in anything it's effort in a spiritual practice hopefully joyfully and there's a sense of dedication right like you're dedicating it to your practice like the example of mowing the lawn like the tapas is not just like working hard and like sweating doing an ashtanga practice you have to have like the dedication that's part of your spiritual practice right i i mean patanjali doesn't all patanjali says is this is tapas what does he give for an examples you know there aren't i would also i feel like what lydia is saying is like goes back to arhat which is like something higher you know so if it's not for something to bring you higher then then why bother doing it i don't know yeah nice so tapas is the first one what's the second one regular study yeah so who knows the sanskrit a little bit svad jaya how do we break that down No, I don't know. Sva is self. Yeah. Dang, Livia. So some translators or some commentators translate it as that. It's like, ultimately, it's like studying about the emptiness of the self, because that's the thing that leads us into the direct perception of emptiness. It's not the emptiness of the pen. It's the emptiness of the sva. Some translators translate that as mantra. which is interesting. But mostly it's scriptural study. And the highest form might be scriptural study on the Sva. So, tapaswajaya. And prayers to the master. Were you asking the third one, Raoul? Or did you want to stand too? Sorry. No, that's good. Ishvara pranidhana. So, I guess what talks about that in terms of you know, relationship to the guru, guru yoga, or, you know, whatever your connotation of Ishvara is, right, what concept that is for you, and there's lots of debates about whether the Yoga Sutras is a theistic or atheistic book, because traditionally, samkhya is atheistic, which is samkhya is what yoga is based on but here is uh here patanjali is kind of alluding to the necessity of a higher power whereas in the first chapter he doesn't so it's a very interesting verse for in the context of the book as a whole when you get into the commentaries people talk about this verse a lot because he's saying beginning chapter two boom kriya yoga here's this new idea? What is it? It's these three things. And then what's the next verse? Benji, you got it? Sure. Do you want me to read the English or the same? Let's do both. What the hell? Okay. Now the whole purpose of meditation is to make our negative thoughts dwindle away. Samadhi, bhavana, artha, kresha tanu, karana, arthash, cha? Bhavan atash, bhavan atash. So what the hell does that have to do with Kriya Yoga? Geshe today was like stringing it out like syrup. You know? dwindling away the negative emotions right yeah that's the tanu in our kleshas we're we're thinning out tanu is like to thin out the kleshas so at first we're like this is my ignorance or my anger and then when i study a little bit more and meditate a little bit more and my heart opens a little bit i'm not quite such a jerk i'm tanuing my afflictions thinning them out like that idea of the surf but what does it have to do with the first verse which is this big introduction of Kriya Yoga. I think the key point is about the ways of becoming whole. Like the Kriya Yoga's activities and the goal is to become whole. And so the goal is to always see things coming from ourselves. And if we see things as always coming from ourselves, we're not going to have those negative emotions. Like I have negative emotions because, girl, you're a jerk. you're annoying and you whatever right so i get upset for example well i don't want to call anyone else out on this like you're not wrong i was gonna say what but then i was like nah that's like too harsh so i went but it's interesting because uh you know we get into meditation because it's like we're talking about these kriyas and then it jumps to the purpose of meditation where if you look at the ashtanga uh you know we're gonna work up into meditation so it's it's almost like we're tanuing away with our kriya all the things that are keeping us from having the ability to reach that meditation so it's like uh you know like i see it as just like destroying the obstacles to um achieving samadhi what about also from a place of kriya yoga and um just doing all the action and putting all these practices into practice and i think about the tenu and like what geshla was talking about like stretching where the more you immerse yourself into all this stuff you're stretching yourself so thin that all of a sudden the what we're trying to get to is going to show up so this fertile soil that's going to keep creating all these negative emotions and clasias if you actually just throw yourself into all these practices and meditations and actions hopefully you get stretched so thin that you get to a growing edge where the soil no longer creates these clasias and then you can get to nirvana and all the good places i have a question a thumbs up from dulcie on that someone had a question yeah go for it um okay so guess what i even said today like you know like if you need outer methods i guess you could do kriya but really at some point you'll just do inner methods and so then their question is like well do we even really need outer practices at some point one and two i was also wondering like in some buddhist traditions they have what like deity worship. And so the deity worship becomes like, oh, if you have a problem with anger, then you should kind of enact or bring out the feeling of being an angry deity, and this will help you to relieve your anger. And so I'm wondering if that's what even what Patanjali is saying here when he says prayers to the master. But not necessarily he's saying, oh, there's a higher power, but maybe he's saying cultivate within yourself a sense of devotion to overcome your misunderstanding. Yeah, those are excellent takes on it, I think. I think it really, there's going to be a lot of different readings on what it means. Geshe-la's take in this text, his translation is very much getting away from an idea of a god into the idea of a guru or a teacher, a master. But certainly when you're talking Ishvara traditionally, you could definitely read that as a idea of a perfect being, a god, Ishvara, the all-powerful one. In a much more like a god sense, like an all-powerful, omniscient, omnipotent being will be a very traditional interpretation of Ishvara. What you described about like practice, I think that's reading a lot into it, which, you know, everyone is welcome to do. Because Patanjali is so short and terse that that's why there's so much discussion about this text. But I want to get to that idea of, you know, do we focus on just everything as an inner method or as an outer method in about seven minutes? I was hoping we could go through more of the homework. Flavia, yeah. I was, Geshe-la said today something that I never hear before me. I'm sure he said it, but I never hear that about having a strong body. You can move the prana. So you need to have that strong physical body to be able to have a good internal practice, I think. We were saying that maybe we could just meditate or just practice internal methods. but if the body is not strong enough, then you cannot do it really. So these five difficult spiritual practices, they are all going to make their whole body prepared for it. You were cutting out a little bit there for me. I'm not sure if that was a problem for other people. But the more or less you were talking about the Geshe said you need a strong physical body to be able to do the inner practices. And whether that we agree with that or not, is that kind of the question? I definitely relate to this idea of like your body's still absolutely critical in meditation because I directly experienced that. I have really tight hips and yoga has helped me be able to put my body, like park my body better. Because it used to be like I'd be uncomfortable in a meditation pose. I would become uncomfortable in like five minutes. And then to still, my mind was extremely difficult. Like as much as we really depend on our inner practice, our inner practice is still captured within our physical body. Um, you know, as long as we're here in this form, you know? And so I definitely, definitely, uh, see it as yoga, uh, to strengthen our body and prepare ourselves to sit extremely still in meditation for me is like such a great example of how we blur the lines between the inner and outer flavia i'm not sure if that's quite got to where you're getting at it was hard to hear the end of what you you're saying yes no i was just saying that the five the first difficult spiritual practices are needed to be able to do the other three inner methods that is not possible to to do the you need the first five limbs to do the last three limbs um if you don't know don't have like that strong okay sorry i think it's an interesting idea i I think that, you know, certainly we talk about the being able to work from the inside out and the outside in. And, you know, can you do the first five practices without the last three? You know, we could ask the reverse of your question, too. Can you do the last three without the first five? Well, maybe you can't do the first five without the last three. I don't know. But certainly there's some awesome examples of people with very messed up bodies reaching the highest of realizations like Chaturangi. or Ashtavarkhra. Yeah, Ashtavarkhra. Yes, Ashtavarkhra or Ashtavarkhra. The guy that criticized, while in his mom's womb, he corrected his dad's Sanskrit eight times and his dad cursed him in eight ways and he came out with eight bent limbs and was a great yogi. and that kind of gets to this thing of you know which limbs are inner and which limbs are outer which was what Geshe-la said that would be a fun thing to debate and so I want to save that for a big chunk of tonight I just want to tidy up a few things from the homework first though and then maybe we can go down that road that Flavia is leading us down and Benji's leading us down and that Lydia certainly let us down earlier. This idea of catch the flow of the text. Notice, Patanjali will give out a word. Like in chapter one, he gave pramana viparyaya, no, pratyakshanumana agama. He'll give an idea like pramana, and then in the next verse, he'll define each of the elements, Or he'll give you the list of the eight limbs, and then he'll define all of them over and over again in the text. Or in this chapter, it'll be the five mistakes and then ignorance being the first, which we went through. And then he'll define each of them. Here's the five. And then he'll define the five. With Kriya Yoga, he doesn't really do that. He's like, here they are. And so a lot of the commentators in this text say that's it. That's his whole explanation on Kriya Yoga. and then he just moves on and it's this mashing together of systems which i think is an interesting way to look at the yoga sutras of there is so much straight up buddhism in the yoga sutras but there's also ideas that are clearly not buddhist you know they're taken from other traditions and so here the a lot of the commentaries say kriya yoga is its own thing It's its own system. And he's just kind of thrown it out there in chapter two. And then it almost feels like he knows, like you're expected to know it. And he alludes to it and then leaves it. And then he kind of pretty much goes on to the second major system being Kriya Yoga, being the Ashtanga yoga. So when you look at Kriya yoga, those three aspects of tapas, swajaya, Ishvara pranidhana, where do we run into those? In the yamas. In the Niyamas. Yay! Those are three of the five aspects of the Niyamas. And so why is Patanjali being repetitive here? And it seems like the working theory from the smarty-pants scholars is like, he's presenting two different systems and there's some overlap in those two different systems. Kriya Yoga is its own thing. And when Geshe was saying, you know, that means a million things to a million different teachers, it's true. There's no real consensus what Kriya Yoga means. So one idea to entertain in this text is that Kriya Yoga is its own discrete thing. And then we're moving right away into the Ashtanga system. Maybe there's two discrete systems. That would be an interesting take. Anjali says, I really like how Geshe said there are many ideas of Kriya Yoga and wondered about that, what he meant. I think he just meant that people, I mean, what's a vinyasa mean? I mean, everyone's got a different view of what a vinyasa class is or what it really means. Is it movement with breath? Is it a fast-flowing yoga class? Is Kriya Yoga, you know, some meanings are like doing the Kriyas, like the inner cleansing practices. You know, there's a whole bunch of different ideas of what Kriya Yoga means. There's no consistency in the interpretation of Kriya Yoga. So Geshe-la talks about Kriya Yoga. The important thing is they're externally oriented practices, and that's what Geshe-la drew out of it. It's like these are the externally oriented practices and relating to the outer limbs, which Christy was saying is the first five of the eight. And I think that's a pretty solid way to look at it. We talked about ignorance being the field for the other afflictions. So, ignorance. So, Benji, you said you were talking to people about that. Let's do a quick review on the word ignorance. Avidja. My favorite. The root of all of the other negative emotions, misunderstanding where things are coming from. Why misunderstanding? A vision means ignorance. Well, I think there was a, there was the conversation of misunderstanding versus not knowing. And I guess like, I think Gashla even said today, like, he would rather use the word misunderstanding than ignorance. And from what I kind of gathered was there was this idea of ignorance, which is what he was saying is like, oh, you don't know this person. So you're ignorant to this, knowing this person versus misunderstanding of like, well, they're saying that's Mr. Jones, but you are really adamant about that being Mr. Smith. So you're turning things around from what the fact of the matter is. Not just the truth. Like, you could be told the truth, but then you just, the fact is, like, not apparent. I don't think that answered your question. No, it's exactly where I wanted you to go. Does that make sense to people, the difference between being ignorant of something and misunderstanding something? and two i think what happened in the past was there was a difference between ignorance and nescience where nescience is really you don't have the information needed to make an appropriate decision versus ignorance is like you had that information but you chose to do what was most conducive for your well-being really and a vidya uh coming from a prefix rar like agnostic anti meaning not and then video um to see i didn't get ya so i don't know i i really enjoyed the root vid it was not what I was expecting. Um, when we're talking about like ignorance or misunderstanding, like I was, I would expect something about like wisdom to be like the word, but it's this, this root word that means to see. And so if, if we always bring it back to like seeing things the wrong way and avidya is misunderstanding things, it was like not seeing it correctly. Uh, which I could see how you might think that that would be something ignorant, but I just thought it was so interesting that the root for seeing was in this or watching was in this word, avidya. Yeah. Did he say, too, that the other root is odyssey or the O-D-E? Is that true? I didn't catch that. I didn't catch that. OK. Yeah. One of the cognates is Druid, Druvid, true seer, right? Which is kind of goes along with what Bob was saying, which is such a cool word, true, true, vid, seer. So that you're not a vid, you're not misseeing. Yeah. So wouldn't it be adruvidya? Like you're not seeing the right truth? And also, Gisela... That's what Tracy was doing today. She was throwing the negative A in front of all sorts of words today. It's the only thing I know yet. I just wanted to say also under Ovidya, Geisha said something really interesting. He said it has to do with misunderstanding the seed that you came into this world with. So it's like just made me think of like the last thought you had was misunderstanding. So I don't know. I thought it was really cold. And there's something deeper there. Yeah, he was saying that within these five wrong ideas, a vidya and the four that are going to come, three of them have a very similar sense. It's three different kinds of misunderstanding. And so a vidya in his translation is very specifically, it's called the innate misunderstanding. I can't remember the Tibetan. But it's the misunderstanding that's innate that we're born into this world with. What was his example of not to eat spicy food when you're pregnant because the baby's going to be like, I don't like that. And reacting to it as if it was a self-existent negative thing. Even at three months old, we have this ignorance that's inborn. And so he's saying that the avidya is that inborn ignorance. I think it's lenke in Tibetan. It's not the ignorance that we learn. It's not the ignorance that manifests even. It's like the ignorance that we're born with. It's the seeds of ignorance that we're born with are going to ripen in this lifetime. And he'll talk about that tomorrow because we only got to that one. but catch the nuances of the different flavors of the types of ignorance. Avidya, asmitara, is a different flavor of ignorance. It's a specific kind of ignorance. And so he was distinguishing avidya as the fertile ground that all the others can grow from, this inborn ignorance that we all have. Because if we didn't have that seed, then we wouldn't need to read this book. yeah i find it really fascinating about the whole piece where you know if if we're coming in with this misunderstanding and we're in the womb and yet they're saying don't eat the chilies because it's going to have an impact on the baby in the womb well the baby in the womb if it has the seeds to see the mom eating the chilies. So who's really eating the chilies? Is it the seeds of the baby in the womb or is it the mom who's pregnant? And so then it, you know, in Eastern medicine, they blame everything on mom when she's pregnant. And yet when you have this misunderstanding and you get into this understanding and you start looking at those things, who's the one that's making the mom eat the chilies? I don't think, I think we could have both at the same time, maybe, right? Yeah, maybe. We don't need to blame all the mums. He was also... Let's not do that. Shalandra, are you... No, not Lydia, please. Shalandra, do you want to jump in with anything before we move on to our next... Okay. I'm listening. I was putting my daughter to sleep, but I am present. Cool. Jump in if you want to steer us in a direction. Yeah. Can I ask one about the Chili's before we move on to the other? Yeah, you want to do the Chili's and then do the eight limbs? Yeah, whatever everybody wants to do. I'm going to check out because I got to teach. so if you want to guide it from here on in okay well can i ask you well you're you're bouncing all right well then let's see what other people say have fun earl we'll see you tomorrow so the the last one what geshla said was take the approach of the eight limbs are inner and the eight limbs are outer that's lydia's position prove her wrong so we got to find something in the limbs that are not both inner and outer. And Lydia, see if you can defend everybody off by saying they are both all inner and both all outer. And the rest of you got to find the one or two that you can't say is inner and outer. Good luck. I am excited to hear how it goes. And I'll see you at nine for sure. thanks Earl it looks like Christina and Earl and Shalonda all have a party without us gotta get the meditations in there you go okay this is like well I see some familiar faces from our previous debates in Lady Naguma which is where kind of this idea started where we started about what are the outer methods, what are the inner methods? And then we started getting all, you know, confuddled with, but if it's an outer method and you're using your body, but then you're using the inner method because you're using compassion. And we just kind of went, you know, around in circles. So I'll take it. I think all eight are an outer method and an inner method. Yeah, I think you could make a case for the fact that they're both, but all of them are both. So let's start. So as I practice the yamas, if just like we said this morning, if we start to get very, very deep in thinking about how I'm protecting life, it becomes inner, right? Or how if I start, it depends. So I'm doing the action, but it's the thinking behind it becomes inner. And then anyway, everything you do becomes a seed that gets planted. And if that's the case, everything is inner. You know, every moment of the thought is inner, whether there's a physical action or a thought going on. There's always the action plants a seed, the thought plants a seed. So everything is inner. And Bob wants to debate it. I want to say that protecting life, that is exclusively external. But what about the seed that you're planting as you do it? Is that physical? Can you say that's a physical thing? Where is that? Dang. Well, doesn't the person have to have a seed to see it as both? What if the person only has the seeds to see it as outer? Does every person have the seeds to see it as both sets since they're all inner and outer? Well, I definitely don't. So we can start there. But is a seed planted no matter if you think of it one way or another? It's planted anyway. Yeah. But what is the definition of inner method? oh very good probably you're asking what's the definition of an inner method i'm i'm answering angeli in the chat here when they can be in an hour so an outer method is something that we're going to be doing like with our gross physical body it's going to be something with an action and an inner body is in yeah an inner method is going to be something that we're doing with our mind, with our heart. Yeah, but the inner method is something that you do with your mind. For what? What is the point? If there is a method, then there is a goal. So what is the goal of that method? Inner or outer? I think the goal would be the same, would be to achieve yoga, to become whole. Yeah. Okay, because my idea was that inner method is what you do with your mind to change your body. And outer is what you do with your body to change your mind. I want to say that the outer method is the body. And what you want to do is you want to, you know, become whole. I want to become Patanjali. I want to become the angel. So I'm going to put my body in poses. I'm going to do things with my body, like refrain from eating, you know, meat or something to respect life. So I'm going to do a physical action, but my goal is to achieve the highest goals of yoga. And then the inner method is something I'm doing with my mind. And my goal is to become whole. My goal is to become Patanjali, the angel. You know, I was, you know, I really should be shot down. It really isn't. The seed thing, the seed thing is something that's inner, but it really isn't a deliberate thing. But I always think about this thing that Ken Rupert Che did to Geshe Michael once. He took them to, I guess, overlooking a highway somewhere. And he's saying, look at all those cars. Look at all those cars. All these beings are doing something. They're going somewhere. And why? Because somebody wants something. And the inner and the outer in that case is always, to me, driven together. You can't separate the two because you're doing something because you want something. That's the physical, the outer is being driven by the inner. So it's really difficult. Bob wants to debate it. I just got a new thing. You made me think of something. Okay. Okay. You're in your dream. So your body is totally not moving, right? You're not experiencing the external world at all. Are you experiencing the outer method at that time? So in your dream, if you get good at lucid dreaming, you can do acts of protecting life in a dream state. And you are planting seeds. So typically you would think protecting life, Ahimsa, is part of the first, which is part of the first five, which are the Kriya yogas, which is the action yoga. So by protecting life in your dream, wouldn't that be exclusively an internal experience? I'm thinking you're right. I don't know. I have to think about that one, but I think you're right. Someone find me. Come on. I think if you're actually dreaming, even though it might appear as you're not being physical, If we were to hook you up to some electrodes, there's some physical activity going on in that body of yours. Like you could be running in the dream and your heart's racing. So now it's physical. Dang, Tracy. Dang. I didn't know. But that's not a method. Does that make it a method? Like that's not the practice itself. That's like a byproduct of the practice. And then here's the other thing. Then what if you're seeing your body? Now I'm going to debate myself. if you're seeing your body in your dream and you're using your dream body to move that's is that still an outer practice maybe in another dimension if you see the dream world as another dimension maybe it's an action in that space um but i'm curious because like when we're planting seeds right it's um actions thoughts um and the words you speak right So I think the action for me is a clear translation to the physical, the thoughts, the inner, right? But when we're speaking, is that like a fusion of the two? Like, I'm just trying to figure out where it comes in terms of planting the seeds for the inner and outer methods. It's quite, it's an action, right? You're speaking, you're vocalizing, but it's also tied to the thought. So I'm just, it's just something that was floating around in my head, just seeing this as like the fusion of the two or where the two meets. And how the words, you know, words are spells, you catch your spells. how does the word that you speak in terms of karmic seeds being planted where does it fit in the inner and outer wow how do you define an action that's my next question yeah that's very cool I never really thought about speech being dividing it between something that's an action and something that is halfway to the thought because it's expressing wow i mean it is outer in a sense of course we're hearing the sounds we're moving the mouth but also our practice right our the practice of the inner methods is what gets us to clearly express what we want to express right it's a plant the seeds that we want to plant I don't know. It was just floating through my head. I'm like, where do I fit this in? But yeah, well, my stance is that all of them, you know, are like inner and outer. But in this case, you know, I think that, you know, our mind is so quick, right? Like we can't control our mind, at least when we start. Our mind has all these crazy thoughts and you're like, I shouldn't say those out loud, right? Like, you know, I'll keep that one to myself. So I think our mind kind of restrains our body to not say things that we don't want to say, but sometimes we're not quick enough to catch it. You know, I mean, speaking of like negative speech, right. And then maybe even in positive speech too, maybe I want to, you know, give Nicole a compliment maybe I want to say something really kind to her but I'm shy and my mind is like no don't do that that that's you're going to be super vulnerable if you do that and so then I'm like okay I won't so I think our mind can you know controls and then like our speaking is the is that is the outer it's really difficult I'm just telling Bob you know we always say actions of body, speech, and mind, right? And that, when I think of actions, I think of physical things. But the movement of the mind is an action. It is a karma, all of those things. So it's an interesting... Yeah, I'd love to know what Patanjali or maybe John Campbell, because he's probably the closest proxy other than Geshe-la, how they would juxtapose Kriya and karma because they share the same Sanskrit root of, you know, John does it way better. I mean, because that's like to make or to create. And so it's interesting to figure out where that line gets drawn or where it gets crossed. Between the ia and the apple. Thank you, Lydia. Okay, cool. I don't need guess what I'm saying. Anytime, anytime. You ask me all the questions you want. But are we always a percentage of everything together? In the same way that all the elements are present in everything in nature, the mind and the body are always present, always together. Last time it was even worse because we became to think about the beings that don't have any, don't have no body. That was worse. But here, in this world, we have some percentage of body and mind always. But if we are using mainly the mind, then it's an inner method. And if we are using only the physical body, then it's an other method. Fly, it broke up a little bit, but I think you were saying that, you know, do you want to try again? Maybe just turn off your camera when you speak and then turn your camera back on. okay now i was just saying the percentage of body and mind is always present the same with the elements of in nature and in us so if we are using mainly the mind to achieve the goal then it's an inner method and if we are using mainly the body then it's an other method that's the idea um well i guess on the debris ground i would say well then where's the point where you cross over between mainly the body and mainly the mind like if we just keep going we're just going to keep getting at like that you know where there's more and more and more like that super fine line so how are we ever going to know if we're using more body and more mind right did i get a point on the debate ground connie yeah yeah finer finer finer yeah okay let's look at pratyahara can you have pratyahara as only a because it's through our sense organs which is completely dependent on our body if you were numb deaf how would you practice Pratyahara if you had no sensory information oh my god like Helen Keller plus two more senses well i feel like you can still have awareness yeah so what would then the stimulation be that you're withdrawing from like what's the sensation that you're pulling away from because isn't is is sensation and awareness the same thing no i feel like sensation helps awareness but if you close your eyes right now you could probably bring your awareness to your big toe yeah you can have that's why they in the abhidharma they you have a eye consciousness or an eye awareness and then you have a nose smell awareness that kind of thing so each awareness is plus mental awareness is related to a you know a body part or a you know one of our organs a sense organ so if you had no connection to your body whatsoever because all of your senses were muted are we saying yeah yeah like if you're paralyzed you know there's a couple of like strange states where humans can be in that scenario i mean i don't know all of them but would then the mind be a stimulant to itself and would the sensation in the abhid does it say like mind does that cause a sense the mind yeah yeah sensations is like nervous system driven you need a connection with nerves to send information and the awareness is coming more from your brain and i think if you lose anything with your brain then you're pretty much like a vegetable so i think that yeah you know what's trippy about that is like when you're talking about the these external things. So if we say there's all the different senses and then there's the mind sense or the mind consciousness, um, the way that you get stimulated is from external world, like these things that you perceive to be outside of yourself. But if all that shut down and you only had your mind consciousness, then the only thing that could stimulate your mind is thoughts, which is a non-physical thing. Whereas everything else is a physical thing. Like a smell is just a chemical in the air that you smell that you like hits your nose or like a sound is literally a vibration through the air so then it's interesting to talk about like think about what the role is of seeds in our perception of stimulus like if it's true in our minds then couldn't we extend that out and say that like these external things are also creations of our mind too i think if our senses were muted we have a better sense of awareness of our seeds and of our thoughts and of our feelings and so then awareness of the subtle realm becomes very attuned and very refined oh dang emotional feeling i didn't consider that that's cool what benji just said is i think the whole point of pratyaharha like we remove our senses we withdraw all this like sense intake so that we can connect with the subtle so we can connect with our inner body like i feel like you just gave like the definition of like why we should be or like the goal of i feel like that's why i do naguma practice so much is because we focus the mind on the chakra we're doing an asana so the mind and the body are very busy and then it just becomes about refining this sensitive awareness of like what what's going on there i have i kind of think that this leads us into the conversation about lung sam jukba chikba which is what geshla was talking about at the end he was answering the relationship between inner and outer methods and the sheaths and the heaps and i had this syllogism that came to me is like cooking my brain a little bit, which is consider inner and outer methods. They cannot be each other because they are two things. And then, you know, you can debate that and say, well, is it really, you know, is it, are we looking at kind of like a diamond deal between is it possible for, one thing to be two things? And the answer is yes, but on some level, we have to look at the level of seeds, right? And I think that everyone can take that as their homework and come back tomorrow and let Anjali know. Woohoo! Good thoughts on, y'all. It was lovely interacting with all of you. We will go ahead and call it a wrap here. We will be super excited. You want one last little thing, Flav? What do you want to drop in here? The last thing that I wrote, I think it's a nice debate for your idea. Oh, I was reading it. Okay, Flav says in the chat, If we cannot say we're doing something with our mind or our body, then are we doing two things at the same time? So you guys can think about Flavia's and you can think of Anjali's statements. And we, yeah, good, Flavia. We'll have a pause in the action. We will come back tomorrow. We have asana at 5 a.m. Pacific time, followed by meditation, Geshe-less teachings, and then Sanskrit. A break during the day, and then we'll have homework. same time same place so bring all of your questions dual c i see you i'm so excited you're here girl love everybody see you thank you lydia thank you everybody that was awesome this was fun thank you she's great you know