Ep182: Meditation Maverick - Adam Mizner

In this episode I'm joined by Adam Meisner internationally renowned Tai Chi practitioner and meditation teacher Adam recounts how a troubled childhood saw him begin martial arts and meditation training and he reflects on his childhood psychic Visionary experiences Adam discusses the nature of internal cultivation the role of standing practice and provides a detailed analysis of the remarkable abilities and Attainments of his teacher the Thai Buddhist arhand langport jumia Adam also shares his current understanding about the true path of meditation criticizes visualization practices found in vagriana Buddhism questions the efficacy of Tumo meditation and elaborates on the

mechanics of his famous push hand abilities so without further Ado Adam Meisner Adam Meisner welcome to the podcast all right thank you for having me Well I'm so pleased to be talking with you today you're very well known for your Tai Chi practice but actually and I think this is very interesting you've said that your real priority and your real calling in life is meditation and the spiritual path and in fact you've also described using Tai Chi as a sort of decoy for Mara for your desires and so on that that's it we'll get to

that we'll get to that maybe I'm rushing ahead I'm surprised that you know that Actually yeah so I'm very interested to talk to you about about that sort of thing you've got a very interesting uh View and approach to meditation and spirituality and the way to intersects with things like Tai Chi so this is going to be very interesting indeed um I wonder if we might start with the context of your upbringing can you say a little something about the context of your upbringing I know you you began martial arts at 16. and actually to

Quote you you said you went the wrong way hard enough to get a little bit of an Awakening so I'm curious if we could go a little bit before you began martial arts at 16 what's the context of your upbringing and how did it lead to beginning martial arts at 16. uh yeah sure I come from a good family I was brought up atheist I guess you'd say however from a young age I had quite a Bit of spiritual experience Visions psychic visions that kind of thing a lot uh which tormented me because I was

atheists so essentially I just thought I was insane which I didn't mind that but anyway that's how it was and then you know as a bit of a crook or whatever when I was young got in lots of trouble lots of violence lots of crime that kind of stuff And eventually gotten enough trouble that I had to straighten out and uh my father who I've always respected a lot asked me just try to be on the straight and narrow for six months basically before you go to court that kind of thing and I did I

said okay I'll do that out of respect for him I didn't believe it Had any meaning but I did that and I knew that I couldn't just do that so I needed to something to straighten me out and I chose Kung Fu training at that time and uh yeah the rest is history I'm curious of course about these psychic and spiritual visions what was the content of those divers demons huh different planes that kind of thing not much sleep A lot of eyes open sort of vision comment you know I'm a True Believer that most

uh psychics It's actually an ailment if you don't cultivate it it's an ailment essentially and sometimes the element's accurate sometimes it's not but it drains people I'm sure you've seen it they become sick and uh lose a lot of vitality and eventually sometimes mentally break so I think it was just an Ailment it wasn't something cultivated or you know it just was what it was was the content indic or was it from any particular you're saying something like Davis that makes me think of course of kind of indic imagery uh what was this what was

the imagery you could say angels as well I mean I don't think the my perception of these things is not that they're different for the different Traditions that's just a cultural filter Of the reality were you able to eventually bring that under control if it's an ailment we were able to somehow Rectify it and uh or or did you grow out of it um the training made it go away actually for some time I had it under control to a certain extent but the more I cultivated the more it went away I I think you

have to pay attention to those things and if you don't they go away my Primary Buddhist teacher who is also extremely psychic and has all kinds of abilities and uh he said it just becomes less and less for him as he his attentions more on Nirvana let's say and less on the psychic phenomena it just goes away very interesting did you um or have you I was going to say weaponized this uh Proclivity but that's not quite what I mean um harnessed it for any other I mean have you found some benefits I suppose to

that that opening in your psyche that allows for these sorts of experiences or is it simply a case of closing it focusing on other things has been the main relationship you've had towards that I guess the the benefit would be uh and openness to information However you want to describe how information comes into us ability to receive information something like that I'm definitely not claiming I'm psychic or anything like that definitely not that kind of thing is less all the time however the ability to receive information is is more more clarity and less vision so

can you say something about 16 years old And that's the time you began both external martial arts also Tai Chi which we could classify as internal martial arts generally speaking and also meditation yeah I started it all together uh I'm the kind of person that if I have a teacher or somebody that I respect and they tell me something I just take it as a given I I think one of the problems in our society is everybody thinks their view Is equally as important as everybody else's like people don't believe in experts anymore and I

think this is a big problem but anyway I'm not cursed with that luckily so when my teacher says do this okay yes I don't say why I just say yes so I started kung fu for discipline because I saw a documentary on Shaolin and I was kind of inspired by that and the sifu said you should do tai chi it's like putting money in the bank for Later yes sifu I didn't think twice about it I just said yes and started doing it and then a friend of the family started teaching me some basic meditation

it all sort of started within a month of each other and in no time I was practicing full-time they just was immediately obsessed I guess up until that stage I was always Obsessed with whatever I did I did Art when I was young and I did skateboarding and all kinds of things also always to a you know full-time kind of paying attention to it full time let's say so it's just the same with that but even more so I guess it's more lifestyle orientated than my previous Pursuits so with the meditation and Kung Fu and

it Tai Chi not so much I just did it Because teacher said so at that stage but still it was it was everything you know many hours a day you said that martial arts taught you how to train so Kung Fu taught me how to train for sure yeah because the teacher that I had was is a bad man and a very militant teacher and it was it was seriously hard it would be Quite normal for people to vomit in class from pain and we're always black and blue and hurt all the time it was

hardcore but it taught me how to apply effort very well most people can't tolerate the training necessary for a proper internal cultivation it's actually more painful in many ways than high external training and so that gave me a bit of an Advantage I guess I think internal cultivation Maybe popularly is associated with a softer approach a gentler approach so well I think it's it's a popular idea so can you say something a bit more about what you mean precisely by why it's actually more can be more painful than external martial arts well you know the

the children of the Yang family the great Tai Chi family like Wanted to commit suicide because of the training attempted to commit suicide and run away from home and stuff like that so it's definitely not gentle soft means that you're not Contracting the muscle that's released that's what it means not that it's gentle but well the pain is serious and because you have to be your mind has to be saturated in the body you have to have a profound level Of presence you experience it all it's not like when you're hitting a bag or sparring

and you're kind of externalized your attention's on the opponent or the bag or the aggression and yes it hurts maybe just as much but the way your attention interacts with the sensation is not the same so you have to to have a quiet mind and be paying attention granular attention at the same time as Quite a lot of pain so it's much more challenging in that way and everyone that trains with me will agree on that my primary Buddhist teacher focuses a lot on sensation on vadana and because to transcenduka you have to deal with

duka so the first Noble Truth is to know Duco right it's not to run away from duke it's to experience it directly so I think it's a great vehicle for that does this have something to do with what You call becoming a Tai Chi creature becoming a tattoo creature means transforming your body to your mind in a certain way that it functions according to the laws of Tai Chi the universal principles of Tai Chi functions in a certain way now any other activity sport at least people cultivate themselves to become suitable for that activity right

if you want to be a boxer you skip you punch you're fit you know You have the ABS the shoulders the back you can tell a boxer a boxer looks like a boxer because they've cultivated a body and mind a way they focus their attention they have a different body to a football player a different body to a karate man a different body to an artist so you have to become a Tai Chi creature but in current Society people think that you can go do it on Wednesday night and Saturday morning and move around slowly

in the park well that might be fine but it's not Tai Chi because you're not a touchy creature now it's radically different from a normal body much more than a boxer is from a normal body let's say in what ways is a taichu creature radically different and what does it take to get there I know for example I've heard it said that weight training is a sort of opposite direction and That's for example weight training for you know Fitness or aesthetic reasons is incompatible with becoming a tiger feature so I'm curious what does it mean

to become a Tai Chi creature and why is it so radically different and how do you acquire it Okay so normal athletic activity uh making power whether it's for martial Arts or jumping or sprinting is done by Contracting the muscles against the bones to create leverage something like that right that's standard it doesn't matter if you're doing football or boxing or what you're doing that's the normal external mode of activity so in Tai Chi you want to move and make power via releasing contraction so straight away just that is the complete opposite Completely opposite secondly

normally in martial arts when you get in the zone aggressive the chi Rises everything comes up right when you get threatened uh in Tai Chi we want the chi to sink everything to drop down and be calm and relaxed in the opposite state of the natural turning on like when I used to turn on in kung fu It's up you know the eyes are bright and it doesn't mean you're not relaxed but the cheers up in Tai Chi we want to sink so once again it's the complete opposite of the normal state in normal martial

arts you resist and you you basically go Force against voice in Tai Chi you want to harmonize and follow so you're using Harmony as opposed to intensity once again the absolute opposite so Every aspect of it is kind of the opposite of the natural way so it's radically different from our normal program in normal martial arts you take something like let's say you're learning job Cross or whatever you get shown it in about one minute it's easy to understand but it takes years to get really good at it because your bones get dense your muscles

get strong you get conditioned But it took one minute to learn and it took years to get good at in other words you're cultivating a natural ability yep in Tai Chi you get shown and you just can't do it at all and takes years to find it and when you find it you have it it's a realization not a gradual conditioning because you're doing something that's not a natural ability you're trying to find a new way to do Things so that's what it is and why it's different and how you do it is by transforming

the body by opening the body primarily that's the first step opening the inner body uh releasing the flesh away from the bones releasing the fascial network away from the flesh opening the the channels The inner channels the wind channels whatever you want to call them and all this kind of things so that you can function in a different way and the primary body of the training is building this and then when you make the shapes yeah you're doing take each one because the shapes have no magic I mean you know you learn one form or

a Qatar or whatever people want to call it it's not you know you've done martial arts it Doesn't mean anything the Magic's not a shape if it was anyone could learn it in half an hour and they'd have it the shape is not special it's how you make the shape so I like to say it's not what you do it's how you do it it's not how you do it it's who does it these are sort of the phases of cultivation and what were you doing in those early years quite quickly you you said you

Began to train more or less full-time um so what did you what did those hours look like what exercises or methods were you employing during that time well in the early times I was doing the praying mantis Southern Tong long and uh so I did fighting fight training and fighting and external conditioning and strength training sort of Chinese strength training forms Combinations conditioning and a lot of Chico a lot and a lot of Chico not very good Qigong but what I had access to at the time I was immediately caught by the fantasy let's say

uh the stories of for the Immortals and the powers and so you know I was up long before Sunrise doing hours and hours every day before work and then after work even when I was working full-time doing hard labor sort of 10 hours a day I was still doing six hours a day and then when I worked less I did more and more I just did whatever I could what the school demanded and much much more based on my own research a lot of it which was wrong but you know it doesn't matter you build

discipline and you learn and what about the straightening out I mean you came into that endeavor as you described To straighten yourself out really to try and stay on the straight and narrow was part of the motivation evidently that you were then captured by as you say the fantasy of it and then eventually I presume the pursuit of the real thing that became your your passion and calling but what about the straightening out part did you straighten out right away was was there a conflict there how did the straightening out part play out Oh it

was immediate I uh I didn't even talk to a friend for 18 months I was alone for 18 months first 18 months and then I sort of crept back in and visited with people a little bit but uh we just had different lives and by no means am I perfectly straight now but I was then when I needed to be you know that was what I needed at the time and it you know I would count that as excessive and dogmatic and But it was what I needed the right medicine for the right ailment so

I'm curious about um your your the next steps in your biography in terms of teachers you encountered and so on I know you were inspired by Master Huang a video of Master Huang and Tai Chi and so on but actually before we do that standing practice I think is one of those iconic means of internal cultivation Particularly in the Chinese arts and uh what's the role of standing practice I know you you advocate standing practice sometimes from several hours at a time as part of as part of training uh you're also that way with meditation

you you favor extended sitting I've heard you describe that um so what's the role of standing practice maybe it has more than one role and why so how much of it should one do Okay well before that I'd just like to say it's not just Chinese ads I mean after the Buddha's Enlightenment he stood for seven days on one of the seven day cycles right my Buddhist teacher would often stand for 24 hours at a time it's not only Chinese Arts but yes it's popular in the Chinese Arts the role of it in the way

I think about it in in terms of internal martial arts is the purpose is first to align the Skeletal structure in such a way so that your muscular system can release as much as possible so the more correct your bones are the less your muscles have to work obviously if you lean forward your back muscles work more than if they're perfectly upright if your shoulders slightly dislocated the muscles are working more than they need to and so on and so on and that can be refined to a very Profound degree so that allows all of

the musculature to release inside the body When Things release they go down right because of gravity so that combined with a certain mental posture and some other things is to sink the tree to make the internal energy descend inside the body down and in so that it can increase and accumulate so that's that's it the purpose of Standing is first to correct the structure second to sync the G that's it it's not an answer all like a lot of people think it is it's not the most important thing but it's a primary foundational activity that

must be performed and sometimes for several hours at a time it seems sometimes I mean I usually tell people that that's not the way they should only do let's say 30 minutes at a time Because I've had countless people that have trained for years many years and they tell me I've trained I stand two hours a day so okay come come then they come to my class and in 15 minutes they fall on the ground they can't stand because standing correctly and standing a long time are not the same thing check out chick stands eight

hours at a time but they don't have internal power do they it's how you do it not what you do once again However yes sometimes we do a few hours at a time usually when I'm teaching people because they're doing it wrong and it takes them an hour to even start to do it right an hour and a half to get it going and then half an hour of actual doing it once they get it going half an hour is sufficient I don't think you need to overdo it so at what point did you conceive

of the idea of using Tai Chi as a sort of decoy for your ambition and Your you've described it as desire or you're obsessed these obsessive qualities yeah when did you conceive of that relationship between Tai Chi and meditation okay so the first point is that the the decoy well when I say meditation I mean all spiritual cultivation not just what I would call meditation okay meaning samadhi proper all the mental development and spiritual cultivation which is my true interest I'm not saying I don't love taiji Chuan I do but it's definitely secondary now uh

striving striving you know practicing somebody concentrating until I have nose bleeds I've never had a nosebleed in my life outside of meditation so you know going hard and then realizing over time that desire itself although I do believe it's needed I'm not one of These I don't have a goal people definitely not but that just desperate desire can be a block so how do I cultivate how do I trick my ego into wanting something else and still do the spiritual cultivation on the side without the desperate desire attaching to it so that it can bear

fruit more efficiently and something like that why that realization came I don't know but That's that's how I've done it for a long time and there was another side to the question which I've already forgotten well what time in your life did that happen did you come to that understanding in my 20s I guess early 20s something like that after years of going really hard yeah and uh you know I was interested really interested in Fighting For the First Time first years and then Tai Chi kind of took over not because of the power that

got me into Tai Chi definitely I was attracted to those skills but doing the meditation alongside and then you know sparring with people my friends people I love and feeling genuine ill will during the sparring let's say really wanting to hurt them and I remember when that happened to Someone I was very affectionate towards and I just said I just stood up and looked at him and said I'm done with this it's over I'm finished I'm not training fighting anymore and then I just focused on Tai Chi as my martial arts expression instead of the

more combat-oriented stuff and uh you know it was a way to fulfill that without developing that static between myself and others which I am too Prone to and and realized it was a negative for me for some people I think it's great but I've always been good at violence and I don't think it's good for me can you take us then through the next important Encounters in terms of teachers you've mentioned your Buddhist teacher um long po and I think that's who you're talking About and you know you've also mentioned Master Huang and different people

so could you take us chronologically through the next important meetings in terms of teachers for a Tai Chi I've had many teachers short term mainly I pick things up pretty quick very quickly so you know I sometimes it's days I've had teachers I've trained with for days and they've taught me everything they know I've had teachers that were more long-term in the beginning and as things changed then less and less formal teachers most of what I've learned has been from peers in terms of Tai Chi where other teachers meet me and they give me what

they think will help me because they they think I can use it and they're not my teacher formally we're friends and It's been like that but my most primarily effect uh influential teacher that really changed my life was definitely long Paul changed who who's my he trained me for quite a few years in in I guess you could say terravada it's sort of terrible his take on things yeah I I've always been a bit of a lone wolf I just Do my own thing and meet people and integrate what I can and yeah keep going

I don't I'm not the kind of person that likes to name drop or rely on lineage or any of that kind of stuff in fact I'm I'm sort of specifically averse to it you know people look for somebody and they go this guy has a lineage or whatever you know but in this era I mean that Usually is to make up for their lack of skill so oh if people want to learn from me I want them to learn from me because they can see the skill not because of somebody else's name I don't really

want to ride on somebody else's uh coattails or anything like that it's it doesn't fit in with my world view I wonder if you might say something about how you met And some of the the train he's and perhaps a bit about him a remarkable man with the extraordinary accomplishments in terms of cultivation spirituality energy what I'm not quite sure how to categorize it really what could you say something about him and how was you met him and the sorts of things you explored together so my introduction into Thai Buddhism you could say is uh

In ajan Cha's lineage they spent a long time in and out of his monasteries for many years I was sort of practicing as ordained as like a white robe Yogi they have a tradition there and I do that for some months and then I'd leave and I'd go straight into Thailand nightlife and sort of challenge myself with the great extremes of these two lives and I I did that for years and I had other people that influenced Me and I trained under them but that was in Buddhism it was that and that's a very austere

extremely austere tradition uh I think by any standard it's extremely acidic you know we would sleep three hours a night maybe four six nights a week back then one night a week no sleep practice through and you know it was it's a it's a hard life But it gave me something like personally I don't think that's necessary at all but it gave me something then and I did that and I practiced meditation for years quite a lot and then I'd heard about long Paul and somebody told me that he was doing this yearly event which

he was near Chiang Mai where hundreds of forest monks would come and it was in the Grove of Bodhi trees it was quite beautiful And he'd talk for a sort of teach for days and days and everyone practiced and he gave lectures and we all drunk herbs and it was all this kind of thing at night so I took a couple students I'm like oh let's go meet this master why not I could speak Thai fluently at that time so I went and sat down up the back like I do which was actually around a

corner there were hundreds of monks I couldn't even see little Poe at all And I'm listening and trying to translate to my guys and give them some insight into what long plus saying which is very esoteric actually not like when not like the public talks the sort of private thing it's a bit different or when he's talking to the monks versus the students in the west or something like that so anyway we did that and then I'm like okay I'm going home it's late I've had enough These things they go till early hours of the

morning I usually I talk about this but anyway so his attendant came up to me and said our long Paul once wants you to come with him I'm like no no it's 1am I'm going home I've got like four people that don't speak Thai they're my responsibility sorry we're out in the middle of nowhere we're going home he left came back 10 minutes later again No no I can't come like I have to take care of these people third time okay a yield so he took me off and I mean I couldn't even see long

Paul but but he pulled me out of the crowd for certain reasons which I won't talk about on here and took me in and that was it I was sort of inside the door with him from then on so that's how I met him And yeah that's how it went he's amazing person actually I've been around and met teachers but few have impressed me like like he has I think one of the biggest problems in the spiritual world is people talk a lot which is fine he talks a lot actually but they only talk so

let's say you talk about non-dual you're a non-dual guy you talk about non-dual okay If you read enough books you can talk about that so what else okay you have a big personality maybe you have a lot of Charisma okay so these two things don't imply spirituality or attainment at all right a big Charisma does not imply attainment in fact it can often be the opposite and having the gift of the gab well you can either have the gift of the god or not It has nothing to do with it there's no correlation so I've

seen this kind of thing a lot and I see it even more these days and I'm just not impressed but he he was impressive I mean he carries carries like 70 kilograms of weight on his body all the time 23 hours a day unyielding he almost never stops like I've been with him seven days where he doesn't Sleep he only serves people he doesn't even sit down to meditate he only is there for everybody else 24 hours a day seven days you know and then when I'm looking after him he's like okay I'm going to

lie down have a sleep five minutes in someone's at the door problem he's up he's looking after them just the selflessness that and that I mean you've done Exercise 70 kilograms of weight On one shoulder for one hour you'd be in trouble right let alone for many many years and uh just that Detachment from Sensation from Vader now right is real it's easy to say I'm beyond suffering but he shows that he's beyond toughering all the time and so you know I'd help him get dressed or something when I'm looking after him and put the

stuff on and you look and his Legs are black and blue and because he has like rocks that are hitting him on the inside of the rock legs and all kinds of magical devices and stuff and just to development of his body and just the incredible tolerance you know if nothing else that is a Transcendence of sensation yeah so this kind of thing plus many other things that I've seen from him convinced me You know he has this uh a presence where if you're in his space you're kind of in Bliss you Bliss out and

not just people with faith I mean I've had friends of the family due that are Jewish or whatever nothing to do with Buddhism they come and they're just Intoxicated by it because his uh his spirit and his his Prana just radiate and it's it's quite amazing now I've also seen many other Feats but you know it's not about that just a Radiating of bliss and the living for everybody else except for himself is something I haven't seen anywhere else so I was convinced but he chose me really that's what happened yeah yeah incredible do you

know anything about his life and his training and how yeah what can you share information about that and how how it was he he came into the condition that you found him into being his father was a very cultivated person and the southern tradition cow or It's called it's like the magical tradition in southern Thailand uh it's Buddhist but sort of mixed with I guess uh old Hindu traditions the next man can then disrobed and you know they sort of live this life of a yogi but they're married and anyway his wife died long Paw's

mum died and he lost the plot and uh then the grandfather started looking after a long paw when he was ten about five or something Like that when he was five he already entered Jonah for like 30 hours at a time or something like that and by that age of 10 he was cultivating such strong matter the loving kindness which is not an idea or a visualization or it's emanating it's intoxicating it's real and the training was in southern Thailand they'd go out into the sea and put Burley do you know what Burley is like

blood and guts fish guts and stuff in the water and make the Sharks frenzy and he'd get in the water and practice the metamatra and radiate and have to stay in the water to deflect the aggression of the sharks when he was eight or something his job was uh catching crocodiles and he'd use a Kata Mantra to magnetize them and make them go Dopey and grab the crocodiles and sell them so he had to look after his family when he was young and he was Well trained in the Arts at a very young age it

goes on and on his life's crazy for nine years he didn't lie down uh even now to this day he sneaks in little sleeps so when I'm with him I kind of attend to him you know I sit next to him and help do the blessings and so I'm there all the time and it's all very religious and formal you know like people come in he does the chant and Goes for 40 minutes or whatever those chanting well like I hear this again and within about 10 minutes he falls asleep because he hasn't slept because

he never sleeps and you say boom and he falls asleep but he chants while he's asleep he's developed this way to sleep while he's chanting so he keeps doing the chant while he's asleep and then towards the end of the Chain it kind of wakes up and comes out so because he didn't lie down for all these years he learned ways to I mean if you don't sleep you die right but he doesn't sleep very much so it's this kind of thing it's kind of amazing yeah true effort I mean his path was mentor and

effort I would say a massive effort how is it that 70 kg on one shoulder I assume in some Sort of shoulder pack it's the monastic road but underneath it it's kind of all strapped on and because you expose the other arm you know so it's like around the shoulder and around his waist like that oh I see yeah how is this body not hopelessly crippled and how is his mind not completely psychotic after not sleeping it's not just a case of living or dying and it seems medically Has been observed of course yeah sleep

deprivation situation people begin to hallucinate and become psychotic quite quite uh reliably and with that sort of unbalanced that amount of unbalanced weight on the body one can only imagine um the impact it would have on a body um I mean he's iron hard he's got a body but I mean normal external training can't get you there can it right right I know I mean and our Hunt is not a normal man Not one that was some little experience so I'm in our heart because I had an experience no somebody that I can say from

my observation is beyond mind and body 24 7. they never are in mind and body they're beyond mind and body 24 7 Which is my definition of an hour hand Long Park calls it uh lokudora it's beyond the world the well-being mind and body So I mean how I don't know I've done seven days without sleeping people say you can only do three it's not true it's not true what somebody without cultivation can do and what somebody with cultivation could do and just not the same they're just not the same at all indeed so what

I'm curious about given your understanding of um Meditation but also of energetic cultivation you know you've got a few different angles on that you could I guess take it from a few different uh views because you have you have that experience what is the mechanism that allows a cultivated person to go seven days in your case without sleeping or or in his case a lifetime of very little sleep certainly but what is the mechanism physically psychologically Energetically of being able to carry an unbalanced weight like that are you have you identified what those what those

mechanisms are is it simply a sort of transcendence uh surely that Transcendence wouldn't affect the structure of the body or perhaps it does I think it does but firstly I'd like to say my experience definitely says that there isn't a mechanism there are mechanisms many There's not one way there are many ways uh so he's done a lot of energy work even though that's not what he teaches I pushes but it comes directly from the Transcendence for him so this is kind of technical but in my opinion it all comes from fullness of qi or

of Prana right now if you do tatto develop this quality pranayama even a way to fill up to have more many many Times more than a normal person of Life juice right so you're more you have more you're more you can do everything more right but from the Buddhist theravartan Buddhist way you also become full because of samadhi now Janna my when I say meditation I mean Janda Okay if I that's what it means which is also the classical Indian idea I I don't think any mindfulness is meditation I don't think visualization is meditation I

don't think Mantra is meditation no they are mental development meditation is Janna so when everything else ceases movement the Mind stops moving the body definitely stops moving there's cessation of Mind stuff as they Would say in yoga the natural the energy of the Shen or the spirit of consciousness fills up the body because you're not using any you're not even breathing everything assists you're not using anything so you become full so that's how they access it right where somebody that does internal martial arts the Chinese way might access it through other exercises to build it

from the bottom up where in Buddhism like that They're top-down method but you still achieve this fullness and the fullness is what creates the Bliss and the ability to sit for many hours and to stay concentrated for many hours you're super powered meaning you have more energy more power bigger battery and I think that's the primary cause now long Paul says that that energy of samadhi and Janna is great however it's of the world meaning it's dependent on Cause and conditions so it runs out and that's fine but the energy of nubano is causeless and

forever present so I don't know how he does it I'm not at that level but that would be according to what he says and what I've observed it would be that so when I first met him I already had the genres some quite a bit of genre experience and he scolded me and said your genre is of the world you need lokuturajana Cultivate this genre that's beyond the self different teachers use different words to mean different things I mean I'm definitely not dogmatic about the what the words mean people get caught up in uh definitions

but the definition is whatever your teacher says right words are only there to to get an idea across it doesn't matter if the next teacher uses the same word differently it's meaningless so you know gradually Work out what your teacher means by what they say but uh hopefully that kind of answers how I think he does it yes it does he's incredibly strong and powerful I mean we were walking along and he's got a bag in each hand he's got that 70 or 80 kilograms on his body and a bag of amulets because he give

out these amulets all the time anyway so he's got a bag in each hand and one of the other students comes up and goes no Paul let Me take that for you and they grab it out of his hand they can't even pick it up he's been walking for an hour like this uh just sort of cheery with you know 60 kilograms in each hand and he's a tiny like he's the size of my wife he's five foot tall Maybe you know the old generation of malnourished tires they're little but just the power you know

it's incredible and it's not just it's not It's something else I mean it's coming from somewhere else it comes purely from his you know Enlightenment as far as I can tell he never practices meditation it doesn't bother he doesn't do quiet sitting he doesn't yeah he stopped sleeping because he he realized he had to serve people and he didn't have time yeah So you know needless to say when I meet these teachers they just have fancy talk and stuff and I'm generally not impressed yeah it's remarkable can you tell then I mean I suppose spending

so much time around someone like long poem I expect there are all sorts of things you notice that one wouldn't immediately think of as being signs Signs of such accomplishment uh you've described several of them there so can you tell the real deal from the talkers and if so what are some of the classic signs of a talker versus an attained person you're shaking your head I'm backing up the wrong tree here no no I mean I'm taking my head because uh for what I'm going to say is certainly Not popular I mean it's sort

of like people ask about City and stuff like that you know is city a sign of Enlightenment or isn't it no I would say city is not a sign of Enlightenment but no city is definitely a sign of no enlightenment so yes you can have City and not be enlightened but you can't be enlightened and not have City so definitely I want to see things that Aren't normal definitely now if you're talking about Enlightenment from the Buddhist point of view now I mean I'm not attached to that specific point of view it's one way to

look at things it's one aspect of the possibility of but as far as I can tell is essentially endless cultivation I want to see them to be beyond the the sufferings of mind and body Which I don't think is the end okay I definitely don't think it's the end but I think it's primary and that is observable right it's observable you just stay with someone long enough you can tell you can tell and uh for me that's been the greatest growth for me has been in the times of great Suffering uh I don't think you

get much outside of that it's at least not to get Beyond mind and body and you have to be in a situation that makes you want to want to get Beyond minded body and you know I used to think that was the end but I definitely don't think that's the end so there's all kinds of mysteries which I are Way Beyond my understanding I don't know but for signs I want to see some ability Right uh some accomplishment City means accomplishment right and I want to see them that they're obviously beyond the sufferings of the

body and the stresses of the Mind and hopefully that they're in Bliss or radiate Bliss and that they you know have that kind of selfless ability to uh live for others in other words not for their own mind and body I'd call those signs Not fancy talk or lineage or any of that certainly not dogmatic obsession with tradition or any of that stuff I I call that a sign of not to accomplished I think there are a few if you want archetypes of attainment that come to my mind and I think this is not necessarily

you know just based on simply one one reads and hears right and so there is this there's the monk the highly attained our hunt monk type There's also an archetype and I wonder what you think of this of the sort of hidden enlightened person sometimes that's not always associated with non-monastic person going about doing some sort of normal job or other or being you know a homeless vacant or a high official or you know I agree with that entirely yeah well for example I don't think uh being a you know like being a monk has

got anything to do with it at all At all zero the purpose of the Sangha is to hold the teachings that's it it is to protect the teachings that's it and it also provides a lifestyle that some might consider more suitable for practice but that's arguable anyone that spent real time in monasteries knows it's argued you just get a Micro World of politics and all the same stuff I mean I don't think that has anything to do with it honestly it doesn't matter what your job is it doesn't matter married or unmarried I have my

views about sexual stuff that's separate but uh yeah I think there are many archetypes as you say and there are many versions of what people will call enlightened I mean what does that even Mean I mean right now we're talking about the Buddhist idea of Enlightenment meaning Beyond suffering right to be Beyond suffering which I don't think is the end but I think it's a major piece of the puzzle and so you know what does it mean I mean we're talking about that's Nirvana I guess you would say and then there are many other things

that can be cultivated I mean the Internal world is so vast and the further I delve into it the more I realized there are people out there with profound skill far beyond far beyond what most people would believe and in accordance with all of the Fantastical stories and it's vast and Broad and and to become narrow and stuck oh it's this it's that you know it's just Buddhism it's just taoism it's just It's just terrible I mean it's a mental illness it's insane it's the opposite of Freedom it's developing attachment and narrowness which is the

opposite of openness and freedom and I think that's where it's at people will receive Grace when they receive Grace maybe they're married maybe they're homeless maybe They're monastic maybe they're whatever it's not like we can decide if we could decide I'd be I would have decided long ago it just doesn't work you can't make it happen it's not all within our power we can only prepare right so I like to say you know we strive and strive and eventually God has pity on you okay If you're going to try that hard I'll give it to

you start the striving that makes it happen you know people often say to me aren't you a Buddhist aren't you a Taoist aren't you no I don't identify with any of the great religions I think they're all beautiful and more importantly I think they all carry pieces of the puzzle it's the exercises and the training that matter to me not their desire to be Part of some little group you know or to be attached to one ISM or another I have no interest in such things I'm only interested in the cultivation I think it's a

big mistake to get caught in that kind of thing that said I'm extremely pro-religion for the masses I think one of the biggest problems of our time in the Kali Yuga is the you know that religion is not popular and that it's been replaced with Materialism and statism and the worship of the government and that kind of stuff and I think that traditional religion is the answer for normal people for when I say normal I mean non-cultivators but not the answer for cultivators quite the opposite actually so I'm a great lover of religion but I'm

not attached to her to any religion and the same you know we're talking About the disorder variations of what attainment means well it's like that too isn't it I mean I don't know it's vast every time I achieve one I realize there's more so what do you do keep going we've I think begun to uncover some of the threads I was hoping to pick up with you about meditation you you describe meditation proper You limit it to a certain kind of training or certain collection of trainings oriented towards Janna or samadhi as you pointed out

and you differentiate it from mental development and in fact you've also I've also heard you say that many meditators don't actually meditate they meditate many many years and by the definition that you're providing many of them don't meditate and perhaps don't recognize that that's Happening or doing something else so there's several things I'd like to ask you about meditation but perhaps we could start there what is the path of meditation as far as you understand it let's say someone's going to betrayed or let's say Young Adam Meisner is somehow or another going to be trained

by you uh slightly older but by no means old I don't mind no he's going to be trained by you how would you put him through his Paces what if you could give him the Perfect training you you've got a lot of things wrong you said you you tried this dead ends if you could give him the direct if you want distilled step by step if such a thing can be done what would you say to a young atomizer and how would you take them to the various stages up to where you are now well

I tell him to do my meditation course but so it's not my definition of meditation It's patanjali's definition of meditation it's the Buddhist definition of meditation right Jonathan that's it's a classical definition of meditation by mental development I mean everything else leading up to that learning how to be present learning how to control thought you know all the different mental exercises Developing attitudes mental postures and so on and meditation being absorption into the light of consciousness so when the senses Fall Away when you practice meditation you focus on one object right one object through one

sense gate yep and then as you get deeper that object becomes more simple Singular it loses its edges or it just becomes just a color or whatever so first you can hear everything you can smell everything you can feel your body and then you lose sound or you lose the sensation of body and you lose the sense Gates until there's only the sense gate of the object left whether that's visual or mental or sound or whatever it is and then that also falls away so that's The falling away of the sand skates and then hopefully

what happens is the nimeter arises you get light now that is because your Consciousness is no longer dispersed out into the sense experience so the light the energy of consciousness of spirit is normally dispersed out through the sand skates that's what in Buddhism they call But sense Consciousness usually translated wrongly as consciousness okay sense consciousness now when you shut the doors of sense consciousness the energy of that Consciousness the QI of the consciousness congeals accumulates because it's no longer being dispersed and it makes light that's the nimita And when the awareness itself introverts onto itself

and you enter that that's Janna that's somebody absorption into pure Consciousness pure doesn't mean good it means separated from everything else pure gold doesn't have other metals in it when the Consciousness no longer has sight sound and so on it's just Consciousness itself pure consciousness right That is meditation proper now when you can constantly keep a Consciousness pure that's called nibana as the Buddha says what is nabana nirvana is the purified Gita right to purify data purified separated Consciousness separated from the counters you're familiar with the terabyte and stuff I guess so yeah so like

that and uh so meditation is the based on on Cause and conditioned version of that Nirvana is they're not based on cause and conditioned version of that so the set the non-permanent version versus The prominent version that's my take on so why meditation is important and why you can't achieve it without somebody is well you don't know what Vegeta is do you if you if you can't have it on its own you don't know what it is so if I have this glass of water but It's mixed with milk it doesn't matter how much I

talk about water I don't know what water is because I've never seen it separate from milk so if you try to develop a normal Consciousness awareness of underlying everything but it's always mixed with sight smell taste and so on well you don't know what Consciousness is you only know what Consciousness mixed with the sand skates is so until you achieve samadhi You don't know what Consciousness is so I think it's a fundamental absolutely necessary aspect without it you can't have Insight you can't know what the self is to become self-realized uh you don't realize what

is not self not so not selfish obviously everything else except for that that's why the Buddha says what is you know a form is not self Sensations are not self perceptions formations sense Consciousness is not self So you guys do a great detail to list what is not self right he doesn't say there is no self that would have been an easy teaching there is no self instead he goes to great detail to list all the things that are not self but he never says the Jitter is not self but he does say the purified

Jitter is nabana so I I think that it's a great error actually in a common Understanding of a sort of the propagated versions of Buddhism about about the doctrine of anata and stuff like that anyway your question how do you sorry for the deviation the first thing I would do is say learn how to sit still in your Asana that's what I do step one sit still sit still means don't move one iota don't move and you can do that for minimum one hour Then we do the next stage so when I sort of criticize

meditators you know I'll teach a meditation class and people come with Decades of experience and and now we're in there switching their legs and so you can't even sit still forget about meditation you can't sit still meditation is distilling of everything you can't even steal the body so Step One is done and then we learn How to you know watch the Mind ordinary mindfulness I guess because you need to know what you're working with and that it's a mess right you know how people say stuff they start practicing they say oh it makes me think

no it doesn't you just didn't know you thought so much so the first step is to realize you're a mess and then step by step doing things to Cultivate Stillness and a pleasant abiding is the way I teach it to make your mind and body a pleasant place to be so that you want to rest there the problem is people want to go outside of their mind and body they sit down and it's after half an hour I'm going to watch Netflix I'm gonna listen to music I'm gonna whatever why did they do that they

do it because they bounce out of their Self but why do they bounce out of their self because they're hideous it's not a nice place to be no one wants to be somewhere unpleasant so that's in my opinion the true reason for silo why morality is so one of the reasons why morality is so incredibly important which I think it is is you have to be guilt-free you have to be happy to be with yourself and uh if you're not you can't stay with yourself Long enough to absorb into yourself which is what somebody is

so yeah I I'd fix their lifestyle My Lifestyle the student which might not be in accordance with any religious tradition but in such a way that makes the individual feel guilt-free and at peace with themselves and satisfied so that they can rest and then they'd learn how to rest with themselves and not run to distraction And then gradually how to steal the mind and you know traditional methods but that that learning how to rest the mind was a huge huge thing for me not to focus the mind to rest the mind I used to focus

too hard and I got stuff out of it but when I realized rest that was a huge point does that answer you kind of of course yeah certainly very very capacity you know you you emphasized there There's still the Stillness of the body the ability to sit still for a period of time minimum an hour you know for example yeah start for a beginner of step one yeah right I know you you um sit for several hours at a stretch four hours certainly is not unusual for you uh to sit I've heard I've heard you

say that what well it's I have two I suppose two Questions that come come to that assuming an uninjured body an uninjured body our mind's extremely injured more than anyone else mine is so injured that's true yeah that's true it doesn't matter I've had a broken neck broken back my knees bad I've martial artist I've had every injury right so well assuming an uninjured body first of all um maybe a little bit of a climatization of the body to a certain posture uh is Um classical Asana training in other words yeah is is needed and

it is simply I think for an uninjured body anyway a relatively straightforward acclimatization process you sort of get used to it there's that level anyway uh there are perhaps deeper levels to it as well but for an injured body and you mentioned yourself you have lots of injuries and quite severe injuries um actually ruptured discs in your back Quite significant neck injury I don't know what's happened to your knee but I assume it's okay so many right so I wonder what what happens there so what are the barriers to other than simply straightforward acclimatization what

are the barriers to City Comfort because for some that's just simply a matter of acclimatizing to a posture for others there are it seems perhaps much more significant physical hurdles to overcome yeah like for me Like for you so yeah can we can we look at both of those cases and look at what are the obstacles to just simply being able to sit in Stillness well okay so let's say your body's not broken you sit in Stillness long enough profound pain comes right you know it doesn't matter if you're injured or not it will come

it's only a matter of when it will come right So you have to go that many times it doesn't matter if it takes you 10 minutes or three hours to get to that point you have to go there many times so it's not different you have to get past the body the point is to get past the body not to have a perfect body I'm talking about meditation the other side of my training is all about opening the channels and all this kind of things so your body Is a better machine so even though I'm

injured and stuff all the channels are open the tube flows I don't get pain when I see it so there's both sides of the coin but I did it the other way I did at the Buddhist way first getting past the body and then tried to fix it later now if I was teaching some myself now I'd do it the other way I'd try to fix The body first but you know they both work and you know people like oh no I have a pain I always laugh like I know you had a sensation okay

yeah keep going like it's like such a big deal or something I've never seen anyone's leg fall off in meditation nothing happens yeah while it's happening you feel like The world's gonna end because your hips are on fire and you've got nothing hurts as much as sitting still it it's it hurts but the moment you get up and move around that's it oh nothing happened my mind didn't crack the world didn't crumble nothing happened right so learning about this sort of uh it's not important we place too much importance on our Sensations It's attachment to

Beta now right we're sort of obsessed with Pleasant feelings back to the first Noble Truth to no duka right no there is no doubt to know it that means you have to be with it the reason for the monastic rules and the strictness and the hardship is so you get lots of dukkah that's the point you're supposed to have duka because without duka you can't learn about Duke It's an obvious reality and if you can't get past some physical duka you can't really get good at meditation because the body will interrupt you all the time

which is why the first limb of yoga is Asana you have to learn make the body stable and a pleasant place to be right so this is fundamental in my opinion and a mistake in modern meditation where they're kind of oh it's okay sit on a chair or Little moments and yeah car salesman spirituality just be mindful while you wash the dishes or whatever there's modern Corruption of what mindfulness means just be aware it's like no that's not what it means the Buddha didn't teach that it's a no it's the corruption for the marketplace It's

a big problem say I think the body has to be developed and then the internal body has to be developed and the mind has to be developed and then the Consciousness has to be absorbed into or the body has to be developed and the mind has to be developed and the Consciousness has to be absorbed into and that develops the internal body Either way different directions same outcome I wonder if you make a distinction between the bodies getting used to a posture which which as that develops I'm going to propose the posture does become easier

from a purely physical level and the what you're talking about getting beyond the body which seems more to do with one's relationship to the Sensations of the body um they seem to be too related and they are rather related because I think as you point out when one penetrates the body or gets it beyond the body it does it says seem to cause the body to release and let go of a lot of a lot of the bracing which inhibits sitting in Stillness but nonetheless there's sort of two different things I'm hearing you say Yeah

I think you have to get Beyond it for attainment but you need to be comfortable in it to learn how to practice so you know right together all these things are much more organic than they they sound when we write about them or talk about them of course real life is round things are interwoven I mean when we describe something it seems sort of very clinical but reality is just not like That but I would challenge people to realize their limits pretty early on sit till you pass out that kind of thing it doesn't take

very long if you gradually acclimatize over years of yeah it will but if you realize early by going in hard and you get a bit of a lesson and a realization about your attachment to body and stuff I think it's more valuable not just getting good at something you're learning something about your Your animal your mechanism you've got realizations not just I'm good at this because I've done it a lot yeah it's like the checkout chick standing there for hours it doesn't mean anything it's how you do it it's why you do it it's who's

doing it all that feel free to shoot this down um I'm proposing it specifically for your response whatever it might be I Tend I tend to personally I don't normally say uh what I personally think but I tend to lean towards the idea or encourage the idea of myself of a certain level of of differentiating at least at the beginning stages the bodily acclimatization and the relationship to sensation because I think in a sense for two reasons number one just knowing that some of the difficulty at first is an acclimatization on a physical level Means

that we can address that relatively low hanging fruit first so that some basic kind of stability and also can be achieved in the body it's also I think it does protect your own how to sit straight and like do Basics well a little bit more than that I think there's a kind of reforming of the body into the posture I think a great deal of that can be done in six months to a year um I'm not saying it's the only focus but We understand that that's an early thing that that will be inevitably happening

and then when that's more or less taken and of course it can develop over many years but when that's reached a certain threshold the body then is less likely to be injured and what you're left with is as you point out once a relationship to the bodies the body's um sensation and that does tend to still be rather available and once the bodies are climatized to The position it seems beyond that point it doesn't take long as you point out it's not like simply getting good at meditating is going to you'll have be totally pain-free

it's not really how it works but you're likely to have a different sort of pain it's not joint stress well it depends how long you said let's say you you do I know you do quite long sits so let's say you do four hours yeah and you're skipped with that so do eight and tell me how your body feels Four do it with weight on you or whatever I know that's not what everybody thinks but if you think you're trying to get Beyond body the body well that's not the same as having a skillful body

it's like oh your meditation is great because your Health's good yeah wonderful How's that going to serve you at the end do you understand what I'm pointing at I'm not saying it's not skillful to do that but you need to do both in my opinion or else when it gets bad which it will right as we age what are you going to do oh I'm I kind of climatize anymore all my meditation's gone because it wasn't meditation it was comfort Yes very interesting indeed thank you perhaps perhaps I will say then that uh I'm not

I don't mean to imply that it's all climatization but there's simply an element of physical acclimatization to the posture at the beginning which um uh which seems to take six months to a year of regular practice building the meditation creature right yeah actually that's exactly right yeah That's that's a nice way but people forget about that when they do meditation or Tai Chi or anything else and I think it's a great error because they realize you have to do it in any other more basic skill right it's it's like we we know if we want

to do a normal activity normal conventional activity you need to follow these certain rules you need to Gradually acclimatize change build the creature you need to do what the teacher says you need to find an expert you need to do all these things but then we want to learn something subtle hard to see mysterious I know I don't need to change I don't need a teacher it's crazy right it's hotter you need more of those tables not less like It's it takes a long time I mean I mean I'm not saying I'm a master of

meditation far from it I just have some experience that's it and it if people cry sincerely hopefully they'll have some experience and if they can have some experience consistently over a long time maybe they'll be a common master you said something very interesting in your description of or of the path of Meditation which is that the inner one sort of inner world or one's mind and body are not for many of us nice places to be pleasant places to be so we bounce off it and so on and one of the things that we find

in there is as you said guilt and you also said that morality training or morality codes and the whole area of morality part part of you said you thought that perhaps it's one of its main purposes is to make it Easier to be with oneself in meditation yeah I'm curious I think something that often comes up is guilt of things done in the past guilt of certainly Tendencies and habits one currently has but also guilt about things once done in the past how would you tell that young Adam Meisner I guess to overcome that in

your in your view how does one reconcile or reckon with Guilt of past actions and indeed and this is a perhaps a rather different question how does one adjust one's morality going forward it's one thing to recognize that one wishes to make some sort of lifestyle change but to implement that lifestyle change can be another matter entirely so these are I suppose two directions of morality how do you how do you address those how do you approach those in your view in Your teaching of meditation well restraint is the first step which I think is

a good translation for the word sealer at least the classical sort of Buddhist take on it it's yeah to restrain your activity and then I think more important is service uh benefit others serve others preferably starting in the home not some Exotic like going to Africa to like feed the poor like how about being nice to your wife how about that so charity starts in the home and all that kind of stuff you know so that you build the karma is sort of returning energy and activity and mental habit of the opposite of guilt I

don't think I don't use a mental trick or a philosophy I do do Are you depressed serve others no such thing as depressed and serving others they cannot coexist you hate yourself serve others be of service I think this is fundamental absolutely fundamental basic do the stuff they talk about in all the great religions not imagine it or visualize goodness Going out to the world no that's garbage garbage I did that for years that kind of stuff it didn't do anything work real life stuff actually with your with your body real stuff not imaginary stuff

do real things to benefit other people and then you will change and then you'll be somewhere more pleasant to be and then the more internal side is opening the body So the G flows so that you have the Bliss of the key flowing it's not stagnant it's not painful so that it's a pleasant place to be in that sort of strata of being and you know gearing your life into a way that you're satisfied with so you're not like doing the wrong thing for money let's say like right livelihood or whatever it is you know

you're cheating on your wife or Whatever the problem with that is is that if it makes you feel bad so when you sit down and meditate and you get images of what you're doing so you have to adjust your real life and unfortunately most meditators want to imagine their way through to enlightenment I imagine the diver like a deity uh there's a Buddha in my heart oh yeah if you want imaginary results practice Imagination if you want Real Results do real stuff I mean it's obvious so I think that do get out there and do

it that's that's what I would say and you know at the same time you hopefully you're practicing some kind of uh The View insight and you you know that you're not your actions and like your thoughts and these Things are just phenomenon and so you're not too attached to it and you can realize that what you did in the past is not concrete so it's sort of well there's sealer and vipassana or like the view and conduct something like that when you talk about imagining morality and and imagining these these things and you said you

did that for some time yeah and then you're talking About imagining a Deva in the heart and so on yeah it makes me think of practices that one might find in madriana Buddhism for example of of um you know draw dirty yoga and so on visualizing any of that kind of stuff I'm not into it at all can you say a bit more about that well if if you want imaginary results practice imagination and what is nabana beyond the body and mind so doing stuff with the mind I mean No all you're doing is making

the thief fancy making the Troublemaker have nice roads like no that's mental development it has a place but no and certainly in terms of internal work energy work The Prana that she definitely know it doesn't work It doesn't work yes you can develop mental qualities because it's the mind doing mind so it can't take you to meditation because it's the mind doing mind it can affect the mind the fabricated false mind but it also doesn't affect the chi properly or the body properly so it works on a very thin strata of the most unstable and

least real part of your being Right the ever-changing mind so when I say mind I don't mean Consciousness so I know some Buddhists will call them use the word mind to mean Consciousness nature of mind or something like that but meaning the the Fabrications of mind they're false they're not self by definition so you're making a whole lot of fancy not self okay great It's a no-brainer I mean it doesn't it doesn't work in my opinion I know it's not a popular view I know of Adriana's incredibly popular and everything whatever and I think it

works I've never observed it to work and I've cultivated very highly many many years I've cultivated visualization and Imagination and all that kind of stuff what did you explore specifically in That in that line I did like Western hermetics a lot and also different voteriana stuff I mean it's all the same oh it's a different color it's a different Mantra it's a different thing to different imagination I imagine the the piranha doing this and this Channel and so make a call around in a circle make It like a pumpkin I mean it doesn't matter why

are there a thousand variations ask yourself that because it doesn't matter that's why there's a thousand variations because it's not real so once again not a popular view actually just I mean even recently I've been debating a little bit with people about it and it you know people like it it's easily accessible right You just do it oh you're great I'm holy now you don't have to do real stuff don't actually go out there and serve people just imagine your love going out to the don't give any money to the beggar just imagine that you're

a good guy or whatever I mean I meant to say my view right I'm not I'm not here to promote any like classical view this is what I think and I'm not uh Unfamiliar with criticism although I greatly appreciate you putting over your view you're right it's not popular but it's what you think and I think and I appreciate you saying what you think that's excellent that's what we're here for what I think and it's also what I've observed with people that do different practices right the people that I've met that are great and that

only talk there's a direct correlation Huh people that I've met that I considered have real skill don't do that stuff lots of big names to that stuff or at least teach it but I've never seen them display real skill or even if they did let's say there's nothing to say it came from doing that the Buddha certainly didn't teach anything like that in in a historical Buddhism and in the the Chinese arts in proper internal work no none of that none of that in taichu no no I think it's uh Kali Yuga stuff fascinating two

questions that come from that and they're different questions but I just put them out And we can we can attack them whichever order first of all meta you talked about meta as being a sort of exuding of something that can be felt uh or it's at least by some or maybe by many depending on the strength I presume and then you also talked about this idea of kind of sending love love and light out in all directions isn't the same thing as moral training so I'm wondering if we could disambiguate that what is matter how

Does one develop it is it developed simply by imagining good emotions sort of you know feeling them and they're sort of sending them out so that's one thing the other thing which is rather different is we're talking about vagina Buddhism I'm not an expert on it okay right yeah fair enough well perhaps but maybe that's the end of it then but then My question would be what do you think have you experimented with or looked into some of the completion stage practices of virginiana Buddhism for example loser body yoga Etc you know things like that

I'm wondering what you know dream yoga Etc maybe even you know that'll take us somewhere which I'm eventually going to ask you about which is the sexuality side of things but anyway what what do you think of That so those are two actually really rather different questions but they've both sprung from what you've been saying in the last 10 minutes okay the matter I think uh well I've done this sort of projecting and all that sort of stuff and yeah I did that a lot for years then I met long par and I just saw

he actually just served people all the time and he's met her was intoxicating and he never once said to imagine it or to Project it because he did it with his real body day in and day out so his reality his cells emanated it's real so I think it that's it do it for real be kind it's pretty basic be kind not imagine being kind I mean it sounds silly when you say it like that right be kind not imagine being kind so how do you be kind well you act Kindly yep we think kindly

you you do it and it creates feeling right actions create feeling like if you are in a shitty mood and you go out and be kind to some people I guarantee your mood will change the feeling in your cells will change because you are Chi changes you start emanating kindness because you are kind at that moment you don't need to pretend to be kind So I think it's like that and then you become your this part of your being that is fabricated the body energy and mind is becomes uh it kind of um how do

we say this you know keeps creating itself over and over it becomes like dependent on the previous condition so then you naturally are more inclined to that and it perpetuates their perpetuations of mind and body So I'm sorry in a positive way so I think that that is that uh completion stuff I don't know like Tumo I don't know if I ever meet someone that can actually do it for real I mean I've met plenty of people with real real internal skill but none of them from doing that uh I have a view about it

I think it's uh Real inner Tech that is lost and now they visualize what used to be real so for example the energies from the side channels that come into the central channel the drops meet and all this business that's real they're real they're physical and the instruction was saying this is what happens like any Asian instruction that any tell you exactly how to do it in the book they just describe what happens but you Need the how to from a living teacher and somewhere along the line the description in the book became the teaching

and then they imagined what is meant to happen which is real like the descending of the drops and those things they're real and I know from other Traditions how real those things are so I think it's meant to be that and somewhere along the line it's become The Mirage of The real thing so maybe there are people doing the real thing maybe there aren't I don't know I mean you're talking about what's generally out there and the general attitude about it where they visualize the fire like the fire's real and you don't visualize it and

all these things and you know you meet them and they don't have an ounce of Chi or internal skill because they Imagine the piranha changing moving the drops moving it's a no-brainer I mean if you imagine things they're imaginary or you make change on the level of the fabricated mind that's okay but that's a small strata of our being the least real part like the Buddha says you're better off to identify with the Body than the mind I mean like the Mind changes every second it's the least self so at least get real change in

your body at least it lasts for 80 years but just in the fabricated mind I mean it lasts for a second it's it's impermanent it's not self so yeah I just don't think that's where it's at not popular view about to be attacked by everyone in the comments section Yes perhaps but that's okay I'm used to it yeah I mean it's I think it's great to you know you're sharing your view which is informed not just simply by your own imagination but by as you pointed out you're limited but thorough personal experience yeah it's by

my experience and by observation of people right that I've met yeah do you think it would be possible for someone with uh who has cultivated a lot of internal capacity and skill To reverse engineer if we take your proposal as as um sort of hypothesis that there's some tomorrow and it's described here but it's it's just description of its outcome not of its of the method is it possible for someone with uh internal skill to back which engineer that reverse engineering oh of course 100 sure why not but why would they they already have internal

skill they didn't need that They got it from another way you see what I'm saying why why reverse engineer like some old car when you've already got a good one why but yes you could if that's not a rhetorical question I I might propose at least a couple of answers well one of them might be to restore to that tradition if once again if we take your Hypothesis as the working hypothesis okay um to restore to that tradition it's authentic inner energy work um that seems like a good thing to do or a nice thing

to do sure that's one reason I guess I mean you don't need any reasons on the broad way but for the individual there's not so many reasons and it's an individual that has to do it so the sort of philosophical idea of why To do it yeah but then the personal reality is that person's striving to attain or whatever so I'm just going to step away for five years and reverse engineer this stuff for it's just unlikely but yes you could do it definitely but maybe not I mean there are things that I've learned in

this work that I Would have never thought of even with my experience it's not intuitive hmm so I can do all kinds of things with the chi and then I learned something from somebody it's like wow I would have never thought of that in a thousand years so maybe there's Keith in there that just aren't intuitive That just don't relate to other systems I don't know and I'm not claiming that Nobody Does it correctly or anything like that I'm only saying what I've observed which is limited more than most people probably but limited yeah it's

very fascinating have you spent time with people who are considered to be attained in that Stream of practice um I don't mean that to I'm not I'm not uh begging the question I I think it's an interesting question well why do I say this well first of all Lang po you're a teacher remarkable man and of course spending time with such a person one of the things you've said there is that it's changed your idea of what's possible um at least giving you evidence of Something being possible that's really like out of the stories in

a sense and you've hinted also at having noticed or seen a lot of other things that one I literally lack of stories I would say yeah literal too they're not metaphors all the time they're not metaphors the skills are real then they dumb it down to a metaphor or a visualization they're real it's like this thing I can't do it I've Never experienced it therefore it must be what I can do but back then they weren't smart enough to explain things so they used metaphor that's insulting to the tradition so they were stupid back then

so they they called it Chi but really they just meant breath or or you know or whatever no I don't think that they were stupid or that they couldn't describe things I think they were describing real things and my experience definitely proves that to me and yeah but I'm like I'm not trying to talk about Adriana I don't know about Adriana it's just we talked about visualization and yeah they do a lot of it but so do others But in my experience it's it's what works is changing the body opening the inner body and cultivating

somebody so doing body work doing Chief Prana work and cultivating somebody which means Consciousness work so see none of that is really mind work it's like body Prana consciousness They're sort of least important is the fleeting personality I always tend to think the personality has very little to do with it and it you know it's also the easiest part to put on right when in the beginning we were talking about somebody that talks well and has the Charisma that's just the Mind stuff you could just learn that and people do In fact recently someone was

telling me about some cult leader in recent times whose daddy used to teach about the psychology of becoming a cult leader and he he grew up and he learned all that and he became a cult leader because he knew how to have the Charisma and all the stuff in other words the talk and the personality or the Mind strata of course he had no body skills no Cheese skills and probably couldn't enter absorption just the pretend part the most pretend part of our personality of our person the least stable part the most not self part

the least consistent part the improve most impermanent part right I mean you know what changes the most in your experience right this Buddhism 101 I mean it's just basic reality 101. I think if you cultivate correctly and you have proper experience separate from the mind those experiences change you forever forever when you have a proper experience even coming out of like say one of the former genres and the experiences that can come like that or the transformation of the body and the inner body those things change you Forever not a mental activity that you have

to repeat the next day the next day and that they're not changing you they're like a veneer a painting on top and if you don't do it for a few days it wears off so yeah I I I think you understand what I'm pointing at I believe the path is of transformation you do things that create shifts they're Irreversible changes like entering the stream or whatever all these kinds of things they change you they transform you they are not just their passing experience in the mind so I think in order to get them you have

to do real things namely transform the body the energy body and learn how to absorb Into Consciousness so I do a meditation proper into Jana samadhi and if we're talking about Buddhism that's the cause for insight the Buddha says for those without Jonah there is no Insight never pass enough right not this how you go and do your passenger on the weekend I mean there's no such thing it would have never taught a technique called dupasana never he taught Janna And as a result of Janna you might have a special kind of sight an Insight

right you might have a vipassana which can become liberating but you have to be able to absorb into the Jitter that's sort of traditional really it shouldn't be radical it's it shouldn't invite what it will it's it's traditional at least if you are consider the Buddhist Canon as Traditional right same goes for Dallas work or whatever for the Tai Chi it certainly has to be uh embodied you don't like imagine a force field and people bounce off you I mean that this doesn't happen it's a transformation into the creature or you transform yourself into the

samadhi creature One that can enter samadhi easily or you transform yourself into the creature that that can uh recognize the strata of pure consciousness all the time or you or one that recognizes the arising and falling away of you know the particles this kind of thing these experiences they change you because they're deep because they're not Mind made yes your mind affects the causes you can't do anything without the mind but they're not like a watching a movie yeah I I I really believe that the these things change you and certainly the levels of attainment

I think are permanent their shifts I don't think that their experiences They might be accompanied by experience yeah so this is I hope I'm trying to explain basically why I think that imagination is not the answer I'm not saying that Traditions that use imagination don't produce results no I'm sure they do I just don't think it comes from that so for example in of Adriana they do all this stuff and then what do they do in the end What do they do in the end of mahamudra right well that's day one in the in the

forest tradition and day two and every day that's what you do you don't need the 12 years of study and visualization do you just do that it's not unique to vadriana like that's in many Traditions that kind of practice it's an important kind of practice it's not the only answer and it doesn't Need to be the end yeah I think uh here's another controversial one I think they do it let's say you imagine in accordance with your tradition for many years then you do real practice later meaning you learn meditation so you see Consciousness and

then maybe you become you get vision and then the vision is of course filtered through your perception And of your perception is well trained your perception is totally conditioned in accordance with your tradition so you will see it just like you were trained to see it and bang yes I saw this deity just straight exactly like my teacher said but if you had that same vision and without doing all that conditioning of the Mind stuff for all those years maybe you'd see it differently and when you see it differently bang Religion shatters you become non-sectarian

like true attainment makes you but if you've been conditioned for 10 or 12 years and then you still have realization I'm not saying you don't have realization just it will filter through your conditioned perception gate in accordance with how you were molded and I think that is very smart in in the Worldly way to make a tradition strong for the social hierarchy that certain religions hold and all of that but do I think it's ideal for the personal individual spiritual cultivation no no that makes sense to you yes I see what you're driving at I've

also heard nundra described as something like that a kind of tying of oneself too exactly that exactly that and I'm sure it works I mean it obviously does I mean you meet plenty of people that are pretty dogmatic about it it works it creates the Dogma it creates the positive side of the Dogma meaning the dedication to the lineage and all that too but I think that those things are they trap us and uh we want to be free and see truth not a fabricated version or uh Through the filter version to be naked see

it nakedly I think is better yes I think you weren't wrong when you said that's a controversial one I understand you I understand your reasoning but I think I understand the structure of your point but it's certainly controversial most of the things I say are I mean well let's let's take something that's not controversial at all uh sex Yeah that's not risky you know I've heard you say that um there are there can be in terms of Trends differences in the path of men and women I've heard you say that and the rationale I heard

you explain was that uh for men it's difficult at the beginning but easier later on and for women it's easy at the beginning and more difficult later on and that's to do with what sort of material one Encounters first initially desire sexuality Etc and you made the point that in your view it's more difficult for men to work through that material but then after that comes the emotional and it's in your view more difficult for women to work through that material whilst they can quite quite easily move through the sexual side of things so I'm

I'm curious about that maybe you could say something about that What about sex then you mentioned ejaculation you've also mentioned ejaculation and that's something that needs to be worked with in some sort of a way so could you explain how you see the sexual side of the path or of of Life relating to the path I think it's a normal function of life and unless you're a monastic you should just have normal sex and the problem is that in our modern Society normal is long gone because you turn around you see a 12 foot tall

billboard of girl in lingerie who's profoundly attractive like not even a real person or you try to watch a music video and it's all like booty in your face or you scroll Facebook or the list goes on so what people think is normal sexual desire is extremely deviant meaning it's twisted from its organic Nature and it's uh perpetuated it's more regular than it should be so the normal sexual desire would be more like work on a farm don't look on the internet don't look at magazines and see how often you want to have sex and

how right after years not what happens when you live in a Modern Life so it's already deviant so I think the first step is to return to a moral life So like you know stop being a deviant stop masturbation stop having twisted stuff you know kind of like all the great religious leaders said every single one of them yeah like every enlightened master has ever said normalize make your life Savory I think that's sort of the basic level and then for inner work you have to have some control over it and uh like Transform the

gene let's say and the energy Sexual Energy and the Basic Energy of the body needs to be brought under control I don't mean doing any weird sexual practices I think that they're a disaster or the so-called Dallas sexual practice I think that's deviant at best and a total disaster for one spiritual path because if you mix your sexual urges let's say the lowest Part of Yourself The base chakra and the Twisted urges and you try to mix it with your spiritual urges which are the highest Part of Yourself that corrupts you and I think that's

one of the major causes for the the crimes of gurus yeah and you know all these gurus molesting people and stuff I think it's because of That kind of theme I think they should be left separate and just made savory another unpopular view because everyone wants to do their favorite thing and call it spiritual right take psychedelics have sex I'm spiritual wonderful good for you I want that kind of spirituality bringing the great stuff down to our level again Foreign [Music] so yeah my view on sex is also [Music] controversial from the modern point of

view but exactly in accordance with the teachings of any of the the great spiritual teachers that are you know these days they'd consider them prudish two Savory right What about ejaculation that's something that's uh a big Topic in internal Arts I think and to a certain to a certain extent meditation but certainly in internal Arts how do you see that if at all relating to the themes we've discussed today oh definitely related I mean it's a big source of energy if you're doing too much you're going to have low energy but I don't think you

should do weird stuff either Just have sex like a normal person less often don't be weird about it I think that's it say I think the same about food and sleep and all that normal functions of Life need to be normal so you can step up when I teach groups the first thing I say is you know you need to learn how to be normal you need to stop your corrupt sexuality You need to be able to keep a job stop arguing with your girlfriend eat normal food you know stop being aware like stop it

learn normalcy learn how to function in normal life step one step two start worrying about elevated ideas like spirituality but if you can't do normal life food sex relationships work you know I can't keep a job you know I can't eat with my friends because I'm too specialized and like I can't have normal sex and I just Oh you mean you're dysfunctional you can't do the basic level it's kind of sealer isn't it you have to get your basics down and then cultivate cultivation I talk about this is cultivation not religion cultivation well you need

a Base if you want to cultivate and the base has to be stable and if the base is weird it's not stable people don't maintain they're really exotic weird extreme diet no they're weird exotic sexual habit no they can't maintain their work life you know they bring the stress home and they argue with their partners how are you going to build a spiritual life on top of that you can't right You might be able to imagine you have one but you can't build a real one so this is silo sealer for non-monastics right as taught

by the Christ the Buddha and all of the great Saints and Sages since the beginning of time but in modern people don't like that stuff foreign I want to keep all my little Corruptions and deviations and be super Uber spiritual right that's I think this is the problem would you say something about the differences that I've heard you express elsewhere in terms of the path men and women take in no spirituality well the differences are more about the body such early phases for internal training And where you focus what what kind how much time you

spend in different phases it's more about inner work in terms of the QI and the channels and that kind of stuff and less about meditation some of the best meditators I've met have been women actually post menopause yeah everything calms down sexuality disappears unless you're attached to it In the mind and you can hold on to it the actual thing that's organic and basic in your body disappears they calm down boom I've met amazing meditators uh females of that kind of age group yeah I mean the technicalities need to be learned from a teacher but

I mean we're obviously not the same right you can I can tell what a man is and What a woman is I mean it's not a mystery I can see them we're not the same their inner workings not the same the energy is not the same hormones that hormones change the way we function and think and everything and the way they need to transform and be trained and it's not the same the body of the work is the same but there's tweaking and intricacies that are not the same They need to be learned from a

a live teacher and you think what I said earlier is a fair summary of your view to do with sex and emotion Etc desire and emotion yeah about the it's harder for men in the beginning and easier for women in the beginning and vice versa yeah yeah absolutely yeah totally I mean you're a man you know right and yeah we're more driven by that base because of the hormonal state and it's frowned upon like it's not acceptable like the way women when they're hormonal but that's okay you know she's just hormonal well mental hormonal too

right it's just different It's a different thing to get Beyond and then women with your emotions it's a bit different to the way men deal with emotions different parts of the path are faster and different parts of the path are slower it's not an advantage or a disadvantage in the long run but at any given time it is it's like in taichi it being soft the women are really it's easy for them to be soft it has a huge they have a huge Advantage but at making power well they have a disadvantage it doesn't mean

one's better than the other it's one part of it is easier for but denying that kind of thing it's yeah it's it's insane it's intentionally closing your eyes and it takes away from people's uh opportunity to cultivate properly this has been very fascinating Adam there is one question that I I think I mean there's a lot more I could I could ask you perhaps we'll have to have to talk again sometime but a lot more Dimensions to your uh meditation understanding and practice that we haven't we haven't discussed but we've done I think quite a

bit of it a fair chunk one thing that of course if anyone Googles you Adam Meisner and of course there'll be links in the show notes if people want to find your websites and so on Including your meditation course but if people Google you just your name what they're going to find is lots of different things but videos of you engaging in demonstration of sort of pushing people well that's not quite the right way putting it but sort of what was the right way be what would what would be a good Layman's verb well Push

Hands have fudging whatever right kind of moving people in an extraordinary way let's put it that way you know moving people in an extraordinary way without appearing to use the usual principles of Leverage and so on people are touching you in various ways and you're able to somehow reach into them uh energetically and of course these very strange strange looking effects um physics defying Push Hands I've heard It described as you know this sort of idea and one thing it's because it's not based on physics right and you've already I think everything real is physics

but it's not balls and levers physics would be a better way to right one thing I heard you say about that that I thought was so interesting that I I can't really not ask you is that you talked about using Tai Chi to Overcome the fight-or-flight response to balance the fight-or-flight response and you also said that that one of the mechanisms of this extraordinary moving of people that people can see you do if they if they uh look look for you on YouTube and so on is the students fight-or-flight response and that if the student

wasn't to have a fight-or-flight response to you simply just touching them a subtle Fight-or-flight response you wouldn't be able to do that and I thought that was very interesting indeed and you also linked that fight-or-flight response that one works within Tai Chi to the kind of equanimity one uh strives for and you know maybe that's the wrong word in meditation Equanimity exactly right yeah yeah well the striving I think is a word that was a you know I laugh at myself to use that but nonetheless I'm pro-striving okay I've strive for Equity right exactly so

that's very interesting can you talk a bit about that the mechanism of that uh extraordinary moving that you're doing how that relates to the fight-or-flight response I thought that was very interesting take on that hmm okay it's kind of broad but I'll try to talk about it a little bit so Tai Chi means yin yang right it's his opposing balancing qualities And the goal of Tai Chi in my opinion at least the path to it is called zhongding which means something like equanimity it usually is called Central equilibrium so that means neither Yin or young

the balancing line between them the curvy s and the yin yang symbol so you don't run away and you don't butt in to experience Which I'm sure you can see the correlation to Buddhist work you stay with the way things are with Equanimity you don't butt in and you don't run away now in taichu you want to cultivate it in a way that it's a reality in your nervous system so I always say people lie all the time their personality lies their mind lies but their nervous system doesn't lie so someone acts calm you know

I I'm Vegetarian I only eat mung beans and I'm all about love and as soon as you put your hands on them they stiffen up they stiffen up because of fear right and aggression and things like this in other words they don't have love Equanimity or any of those things they're lying they might not know it but it's a veneer so when the nervous system changes well you've changed I mean Western science would basically Say the closest thing to you is the nervous system I don't think it's that role I mean of course I think

it's more it's the spirit soul is what I think but from a more material testable point of view the nervous system is primary so we're teaching our nervous system to react with Equanimity with release so you have the fight-or-flight response which is very subtle or very extreme and You learn to let go into an emptiness and a Stillness to let go of the reaction of pushing in or running away in other words you're doing proposity in the nervous system yep and that's when you can do that you feel alien to the non-tai chi creature human

Truly alien when they touch you they it feels bizarre because they've never felt anything like that in their life because everyone always reacts with fight or flight always it's just you don't realize because it's so subtle so for whatever reason which I don't understand it makes their nervous system freeze foreign Object and then they're stuck they're a stiff object because you are you feel alien to them to their nervous system it's got nothing to do with the intellect or the mind it still happens to my students of more than 10 years they know it's coming

but their nervous system still reacts the same way then they get thrown out because of other mechanisms about moving the QI Inside to make power and stuff like that but for the fight-or-flight response it's about this Equanimity that's alien to to uh normal motor activity and sort of perception of the Mind you don't know how to put force on it well it's not forward it's not back it's nowhere it's everywhere it's empty it's for uh it's not the brain Maybe part of the brain the nervous system not the mind is confused and that's basically how

it works does that make any sense at all I know it's out there yes I think it's very interesting how does one transcend that if or how does one find the Equanimity in the nervous system to mix the mix the uh streams there are your students of 10 years some of them you say still have that response Is it likely they'll ever get beyond that I think everyone has it unless you're fully liberated it's the matter of degrees how much do you have it you only need to have more of the Equanimity and jungling than

the person you're touching right if you have enough differential you can create the effect same as any activity involving two people Yep so you do it via consciously releasing stress first to your own experience by yourself solo through bitter training in other words pain and then through applied stress via a partner and you learn how to realize what it feels like to be in this peaceful Equanimity state in the nervous system Mind and body and then you gradually learn how to maintain it under varying conditions much like the meditative path when you get off the

mat so the reason why adults so deeply into Tai Chi is I realized it's meditation off the mat for me it it served me so well and many people that I've taught years of meditation and years of Tai Chi have got more spiritually out of the Tai Chi than I Have the meditation because it's integrated equanimity not and peaceful when I am on the mat and then I get up or or someone disturbs my meditation and I'm pissed off you know it's it undoes that tendency because it's the opposite it's cultivated under stresses maybe only

gentle ones in the beginning but not perfectly solo sitting still quiet You know yeah so it's like that and I think that's its actual purpose among other things but I think the true purpose of Tai Chi is definitely cultivation spiritual and the self-defense is just a byproduct have you ever touched long Po's body uh many times but I've never tried to do tai chi on him I wouldn't dare no but I mean I've put my hands on him thousands of times but I've never Yeah so as the question is does the normal let's say a

liberated person from meditation have the same thing basically that's the inquiry right do they get that Equanimity in the nervous system I would say they do get beyond the fight-or-flight response yes but do they have the same result where people bounce off them no because that's cultivated through the very specific sort of Inner work with the G and the way you develop the white tissue in your body and it's technical it's specific do they have the Equanimity part yes therefore could they get really good at it in no time absolutely the moment they built the

creature they could do it where for a normal person building the creature is the first stage and then developing the other stuff is the rest of your life So it's like a reversal I hope that makes sense I know it's weird talk if you're not a Tai Chi guy but yeah it's fascinating and um I appreciate you so candidly sharing your opinions views and experiences I know like you said something more controversial that is that is true but I think I appreciate you sharing them thank you uh is there Anything we ought to say before

we finish I think we're coming to an end now is of course all the links to all your sites and some will be in the show notes so if people want to find out more about you Tai Chi meditation Etc all those links will be down there but is there anything that you want to say or we haven't said that we ought to say before we finish oh I think for for Seekers and cultivators is that they have to do Do real stuff including morality and uh their normal life cultivate morality and do service and

do real practices with body with the body and the inner body and the mind but don't just pretend turn the light around look at yourself and realize what's pretend and try to throw away the pretend and cultivate the real that'll do my advice Adam Meisner thank You very much thank you you're very kind thank you thank you for listening to another Guru Viking podcast for more interviews like these as well as articles videos and guided meditations visit www.guruviking.com