Speaker 1: 0:15

My name is Donna and I'm a friend of the Soshimsa Zen Center. The World Through Zen Eyes is brought to you by Buddhist monks trained in the art of harmonizing spirituality and well-being. If you're interested in content related to fostering self-discovery and positivity, we're asking you to consider making a small donation to assist with keeping this program going.

Speaker 2: 0:42

Welcome back to yet another episode of the World Through the Eyes podcast. I'm Jan Ansonian here with Dr Ruben Lambert. It's a pleasure having you A mini-series, if you will right, Ogun, the five roots and, to some degree, the five associated powers.

Speaker 3: 1:04

And Ogun is all good.

Speaker 2: 1:08

So tune in Ogun's Ogun. Yes, what you do with it? Makes it good. That's why we're here. We have to figure out how to transform it.

Speaker 3: 1:17

That's right.

Speaker 2: 1:18

That's the power, ogun to Olyok yeah Right, that's the Lyok power. The power bit is that exact thing, and everyone wants that right. Power.

Speaker 3: 1:32

Essentially. And then we always go back to that age-old question right, Everyone wants it, but are they willing to do the work for?

Speaker 1: 1:40

it. That ties into just everything I thought you were getting.

Speaker 2: 1:46

I thought you were getting Nietzschean and Schopenhauerian over here. The will to power. You know that's the Adlerian philosophy too, isn't it? No matter what the Adlerian psychology is, no matter what the means is, but some it's always strive towards power and manipulation of your power. So even like the child that's weak, presents that weakness to exploit somebody else's helping hand right, or you have the dominant one so. But the idea is kind of very similar. It's the will to power. It's always wanting to be on top via whatever means I?

Speaker 3: 2:34

I would say yes, but I guess we have to look at the uh, all sides of the definition of the word power. Right, it can have a negative connotation when used in that context that you're describing there. Right, there's a power, I'm more powerful. Therefore, I can use my power to you know, put my hand on your head and hold you down, suppress you, hold you down and I put my foot on your back and now I dominate you, right?

Speaker 2: 2:57

but that's not, in essence, what we're talking about with power. Power is power. What you do with power, that's the second. That's the second part. That's the second part. Yeah.

Speaker 3: 3:07

It's like I'm thinking we have the saying from farm to table. This is from organ to oleo.

Speaker 2: 3:13

How do we get there? How do we get there? So, those of you who are joining for this episode and have not heard the previous episode, heard the previous episode. It really would be a good idea to jump back to the last episode, the sort of part one of this mini-series of the what are the five roots? But to just refresh the concept a little bit, the five roots are these innately existing things.

Speaker 2: 3:44

They exist in us. They're part of our makeup. You don't have to do anything to have them. You have them because you were born so well. If you want to get all kinds of technical, that's another.

Speaker 3: 4:00

You have to be born yes, I have to be born to have them.

Speaker 2: 4:03

But we have to be born to have them. But we have them and so we have them and they lie, can't really even say dormant. The idea why they're called roots is because they are beneath the surface. The way that a tree root or a plant root, or any root for that matter, is that a tree root or a plant root, or any root for that matter, is by definition.

Speaker 2: 4:25

It's hidden beneath some level, some surface, and that which is above it is known or seen, and that which is beneath the soil, if you will, is unseen. And yet it controls, directs, provides. It's a sort of silent partner for everything, the way that a plant is structured, and so we too have that. Our ogun roots go deep down into our unconscious, cham-jeo-i-sik mind. I think Jung has this thing if the tree reaches the heaven, that means its roots reach to hell, I think Something to that effect. That balance kind of that, um, balance kind of you get this because there's that sort of philosophy and yeah, so these, these roots are, are profoundly deep in us.

Speaker 3: 5:36

Well, that brings up a question for me. If it's a root, if we think about an actual tree, when you see the tree that's been developed, it's grown, you see the trunk, you see the limbs, you see the leaves that has, that is there because the root has eaten of the soil some nutrition. So I'm just thinking, maybe further down the road at some point, is what is this root sits in the soil of our psyche, unconscious, and then what is? What is the nutrition that the root eats that will? Then this is what I see as almost like the transformation process that will then cause this root, this seed, to sprout and then maybe further develop into a whole tree with a flower and then fruit.

Speaker 2: 6:29

I think we talked about at one point in time sort of the rain, how the rain rains but then it seeps into the ground, it's absorbed by the roots and then makes its way into the crown of the tree or the plant, the whole plant. So it is that same idea, right, we cannot. This was, I believe we addressed this to some degree. There was a question from a listener about whether we are able to change fortune or karma and something to that effect, and and that was the kind of imagery that that we kind of conjured up, which is, you do work, which is the suheng part, and the suheng part is the rain. So that is to say, any way or any habit that is acquired is acquired in the same way. Right, you do something repeatedly and those repeated drops of it are the rain, and that rain then seeps. So that's why it takes.

Speaker 3: 7:34

You know, psychologists would say it takes 21 days to begin developing a habit, and then then they say 90 to 100 days to to solidify it.

Speaker 2: 7:44

So we could say 21 days to start watering the soil and the water starts seeping into the soil. And then the 90 days you could say it is now absorbing or it being absorbed. Maybe this absorption starts and then makes it into the crown in 90 days, however you want to envision that. But that's the idea. It's the repeated drops of action, behavior, way of thinking, whatever that waters and then it seeps, albeit, we could say, slowly to some degree. It's not necessarily immediate. What is immediate is the cause and effect, the immediate reaction.

Speaker 2: 8:29

But in terms of really kind of infusing the being and forming some presence on a cellular level, that takes time and this is kind of what matured spirituality is. There's a clearly visible superficiality when one and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it you know I famously at one point in time said with it. You know I famously at one point in time said fake it till you make it in respect to just about any practice that we do. But it's the idea that you begin at least by acting like X, y and Z. Acting like X, y and Z, because this came up when someone said to me that they don't feel that they have, they don't feel that they're compassionate, and I said well, fake it till you make it. That was the response, and then they became, you know, on account of kind of one very Zen-like story, almost they became a lifelong practitioner and member of the center until they moved out of the country. But the idea is that we act as if, though, and you do that again, and this is sort of akin to Ipsongsu Gosongsu, where what you say becomes reality, yes, or, if you want to go that route, we could call it sort of self-hypnosis almost where I act and behave in a certain way it might not be my sort of standard way of behaving or normal way of behaving and you get awkward. It becomes awkward. At first You're kind of trying it out, You're kind of robotic about it. It's a little plastic, but eventually it keeps on seeping, seeping, seeping into the ground and into the roots, and then, when it infuses the being from within, then the perfumation, the hyung, the perfuming of the entirety of the being, of the person, out of their pores, radiates that which they have been infused by, and so this is this idea of how the transformation works is in that way, so we've talked about, so the roots. There are five and of course these are not only five, but there are five major ones that govern our lives.

Speaker 2: 11:23

We, in the last episode, we talked about the root of belief, xingun, which I think we made it clear enough just how we are in fact governed by it. Whether call it by by some official name or not, belief is a dominant driving force in our lives and and we mentioned about it's it's wrongfully being kind of corralled into the religious arena. And so today we're going to talk about the root of yom yom gun. I'm not fond of the term and everyone knows. I don't even have to finish this sentence, everyone knows, everyone who's close to us knows what the following term is, but the following term being mindfulness. And the reason why? Because it's been sort of gutted and hackneyed and sort of made into something different, but never mind that. Yom Gun is the root of, we could say, remembrance or mindfulness or wakefulness. And so, just like with the Sin Gun, just like with the root of belief Yom Gun, it's got another dimension. That's very interesting, because without that mindfulness or that wakefulness, we can't tell what in the heck is going on within and without really, because we are then entangled in just some projected fantasy of what we're seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching, and even when.

Speaker 2: 13:40

How can we talk about xingun, the root of belief, and all of the things that we have highlighted in the last episode, if we didn't have yomkun, that is to say, to comment on, to pinpoint, to observe, to note and to see as it arises, as shingun arises, meaning the belief that governs our day-to-day existence, to be able to catch that presence in our life, how it perfumes. I mean, as a psychologist and psychotherapist, do that largely. It's sort of what's going on inside, and we need, at least in in the, in the psychological theories, right, a second person to mirror or to echo back to you your own life, your own experience, to say, oh, did you notice how you? You know, I recently saw a funny skit I forget the fry and, and it's british uh, comedy and and there it's called psych, psychos, psychologist, psychologist or psychiatrist, and they're sitting, the way that you and I are sitting, and, uh, one of them starts off with something to the you know it's like oh, how are you doing?

Speaker 2: 15:10

How are you today? Uh, so what brings you here today? You know, he's, he's, he's acting as the psychiatrist, and the other one says oh, I'm well, I'm well, let's just establish a baseline that that you're the you're the patient and I'm the I'm the psychiatrist and says, no, that you're the patient and I'm the psychiatrist.

Speaker 2: 15:27

No, no, no, you're the patient, I'm the psychiatrist. This is why we're here. You think you're the psychiatrist and the fact it's the other way around. So you have to, you know. So it's like I'm going to need you to admit that you are in fact the patient. So I need you to say I am the patient. So I would I need you to say I am the patient. And the other goes say what? I am the patient. What do you want me to say? I'm the patient, excellent. So now that if you see that you've agreed that you are the patient, then you know, it goes back and forth in a very funny way, very funny and clever yeah and and so you know, fit into this, and on and on.

Speaker 2: 16:09

It's funny, but so we could have someone else echo back to us, and this is where friendship really is a therapeutic part of life, and we see this right with people who are, or feel themselves isolated. And one of the questions that you'd ask is how is your support network? Do you have a good support network of?

Speaker 2: 16:44

family and friends and, you know, are you kind of rooted? And so what we're really asking for is do you have people in your life who echo back to you yourself the things that you're missing? Because a good friend will tell you it's like all right, you need to, you need to chill out, man, you like, you, you're, you're wild today, you know, or or or it's wow, you really seem really angry or you seem a little down or whatever. And because we are caught up and we don't utilize the root of yom, yom gun of sort of wakefulness and awareness, we could slip.

Speaker 2: 17:25

A person could slip into depression slowly, the way that night comes and the evening comes and it's a slow, slow darkness that you know begins and then engulfs them. And if they, at some point in time, kind of a aha moment is like wow, I'm kind of really dark here and um, but a friend could could kind of catch that you know whether it's micro expressions or you know a tone of voice and so it's, it's a, it's a. That's one way that we could kind of that we are echoed ourselves back to us it's interesting because you're talking about remembrance.

Speaker 3: 18:06

I see what you're saying as the individual having to remember and be wakeful in the moments in their daily life, and then as a collective, the relationship also needs to have yom, right? Because if you have some people who are feeling lonely and who aren't being contacted, then oftentimes they reflect. Who are feeling lonely and who aren't being contacted, then oftentimes they reflect, and this is part of the reason why they might feel very sad and isolated is because they think nobody remembers me, right? And so the greater group in your relationships to remember your friends, to remember your loved ones, to remember the important people in your life, that means there's so many things in our day-to-day life that occupy space in our minds, right, but to make room for the things that are vital and important, that is a reflection that mirrors back to that person the importance and the value that they have in their lives. Right? Because some people, like you're saying, well, we all need some of that at any point in time, but some people, more than others, are less capable of doing that for themselves.

Speaker 2: 19:11

Yum.

Speaker 3: 19:12

Yum, remembering so it, even in that moment when someone may simply just reach out and call and say hey, how have you been? I haven't heard from you. That might trigger their own internal yum to realize hey. Yeah, I've from you. That might trigger their own internal yum to realize, hey, yeah, I've been kind of rotting. I've been rotting, I haven't been connecting to anybody. Thank you for reaching out. You know I am that you see me as important.

Speaker 3: 19:33

Then they start to feel like, yeah, I'm I am important right, and then, little by little, step by step, the reverse happens right, in the same manner that you described. This slow, it's like a tidal wave consuming a community of people that are sleeping. Like in that metaphor that the Buddha uses, the wave comes in and it just, slowly, just consumes the whole village.

Speaker 2: 19:55

The sleeping village is swept, the sleeping village is swept away In the same manner.

Speaker 3: 19:59

one can come out of that in small increments might seem small, but there are steps in the right direction where you're inching yourself closer out of that hole, getting back into the light and connecting and and it's, you know, that is it.

Speaker 2: 20:19

We've talked about sort of uh, as is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm and this, this really is that concept. Right, we for one, we're not a singularity in the way that we imagine ourselves to be. And you know, we've talked a number of times or mentioned at least I, ijema and the Sasan medicine and the effect of emotions on organs, but also this goes vice versa. So in oriental medicine, certain emotional states, that's why the intake is so lengthy. You know, proper medical intake from the oriental medicine doctor is a pretty thorough looking into, because a I don't want to say malfunction, but let's, let's say, you know, a problem with an organ can then express itself in an emotional state of the person. So it's not only that, our emotions are the, as Ijeoma put it kind of driving knives into your own organs.

Speaker 2: 21:38

It's the other way around also. So if there's a condition, and varying kind of degrees of whatever the condition may be a behavioral or emotional state, could be indicative of something going on internally, and so that is a yom. I was just thinking that that is a form of yom. That is a form of yom and actually the yom gun, the root of awareness or mindfulness actually is. Then, as is true with all the other ones too really is divided further still, because we have yeom-geun, but then we have sin-yeom-cheo, sun-yeom-cheo, so then it's divided further down into four subcategories of awareness or mindfulness of what? But it's this communal thing, this thought of the community, as is I had mentioned another person echoing back to us, our organs, our body. There's the same thing going on internally. So, as is the microcosm, so is the microcosm, our synaptic connections and the neurons, and all of these things are communicating with one another the way that we could then call them collectively we say oh, that's maybe the brain.

Speaker 2: 23:19

All right, the brain, but then the brain is a. What is your larger brain? Is the immediate family and extended family and your friends and friends, friends and family, and the, the synaptic connections, that's, those sparks, that that are the life of the brain. This is the electrical. You know, I'm no, by the way, I'm just a monk. So if you're, if there's a neuro somebody out there and I'm just a monk, so if there's a neuro-somebody out there and I'm just blabber-mouthing here, I'm just a sin.

Speaker 2: 23:53

But so this idea of awareness and yom is innately in us, obviously, and the very obvious expression of it is a memory of any kind. I remember a thing Now memories come and go, and so there's a layer of this yomkun, this root of awareness that's kind of on and off, on and off, on and off comes in and goes, and then there's the one that we hold on to, and so when is a yom kun, when is the root a root and when it's transformed into a power. If you've held the grudge, we could say it is the function of Yom Gun. You remembered right, and the irony, or the absurdity and the ridiculousness of it is that sometimes people know all they have is remnants of the fact that they know that they're angry at a person or disappointed, or whatever it is. But if you ask them why, sometimes people don't remember the why. Yeah, I don't know what happened, I don't remember, I just remember that I hate their guts, kind of thing, right. Well, that's, that's a that's a whole other thing altogether.

Speaker 2: 25:26

But essentially there's yom, this remembrance of a thing Obviously we have it, obviously we have it, and we have it in varying degrees and it sort of comes and goes. So the transformation of that is using that, which is, which is the root in a it's almost kind of self-fulfilling here, but using it in a conscious manner, in a purposeful and meaningful way. What do I want to yum? What do I want to be conscious? Hold on to Hold it. What do I want to hold?

Speaker 3: 26:19

I think that one simple question that you just asked there can be completely life-altering, because we are pointing out the fact that there's a. It's almost like imagine a TV that lost control and it just starts feeding you channels and changing and changing, and then feeding you channels that you don't like horror movies. It lands on a horror movie channel and then you cannot change it. What pain and suffering having to be forced to watch that. And then if someone comes over and says, hey, did you realize the control is under the pillow there. What liberation there now to know that you can actually direct it to a channel that you want to watch. And so this oftentimes happens.

Speaker 3: 27:03

It's almost unconscious and habitual. People collect habits over time. Right, you're being fed thoughts, feelings and memories that plague you. You're remembering things you don't want to remember. Now it's impacting your interactions because you might think one part of your mind is like oh, I don't want to be angry at my spouse or my coworker or my-worker or my mother-in-law, whatever it is. But then you see them and all of a sudden that emotion takes over and then you're angry. Yeah, because that's, that's yum, gone wild.

Speaker 3: 27:32

Let's say right and so we have to also train the mind and then realize and recognize well that, like that question that you asked, what do I want to yum?

Speaker 3: 27:42

and this can be so liberating in any moment, because maybe you fixated on one part and you missed a piece of the puzzle that would have just let things set into place. And then you can see, for example, if you are angry at your mother-in-law, maybe you keep on just remembering her tone of voice and how she said something to you or how she looked at you a year ago, and then if you can break free of that and say I want to yum in this moment and see her humanity, see that maybe she's in her 90s and she's like a child and when you hold on to that, that's gonna. Now, you know, like like christ, christmas trees that light up are connecting the dots. Now you might see a whole other universe or world that was blind to you and you can see oh, she is losing her mind, she is having poor recall, she is just not able to control her mind.

Speaker 3: 28:39

And then now you might have a little bit of compassion and you might not throw her out.

Speaker 2: 28:43

This hankers back again to the communal mind, because what you could bring to your attention or be mindful of, suppose you love your spouse and you love them as the sort of popular dramatizations of life and via movies is, but the mother-in-law seems the evil element always in every novella, right? But the thing to remember is if you love roses, you must also realize that they have thorns. You can still love rose and have thorns, but not only that, you also have to love the whole darn rose, bush, including the roots and the leaves and the stalks and all of it, right. And so if you love your wife, the rose. Without the mother there is no rose.

Speaker 3: 29:55

The whole thing collapses.

Speaker 2: 29:57

It's like a house of cards.

Speaker 3: 29:58

You remove one and then the whole thing.

Speaker 2: 30:00

I don't want this part. Your wife exists because her mother gave birth to her. That you know. There next question so, but that's the cleverness of our ego and our thinking and our thinking, is it really thinking? Because if you actually think about it, then that's what you get, is to say, well, I love Rose, Rose's mom gave birth to Rose, and so, by connection, by communal thought, I have to, and it's that kind of thing.

Speaker 3: 30:56

I think some people take the fruit bite into it, marvel at the sweetness of it and then curse the seed, the tree or the seed right. Not knowing that when one ceases, the other one does too.

Speaker 2: 31:13

Right, and there's a sutra of that sort of idea of a stalk growing and the one being aware of the other, or consciously producing the other, or unconsciously producing the other. But that's sort of the idea, right? If you like the sweetness of the fruit, obviously the fruit attracts by its sweetness. Why? Because it wants the seed then to be perpetuated, right? So if you like the fruit but don't like the seed, that means you like your wife but not your child. If you like the fruit but don't like the plant, that means you like your wife but you don't like the mother-in-law or the father-in-law, right, right, and this could go both ways and in various directions, in various ways and various connections.

Speaker 2: 32:03

And so Zen employs this mechanism called Hwadu, which it's sort of that. At the basis of it, the idea is holding the exercise of Yom, and you know, hwadu is not the only way. Kwanse Mbosar, the Bodhisattva of Compassion on her crown, has an image of Amitabha Buddha there on the crown.

Speaker 2: 32:38

It was the Buddha of the Heavenly Realms, the Buddha of the Heavenly Realms right, and there's a filial relationship between the two. And it's the same way that people wear a thing. You wear a cross, a brand new t-shirt Right or you wear a cross to what. You're mindful of your belief system. You wear a yarmulke, you're mindful of that. You wear robes, you're mindful of it. You wear a yomju, you're mindful of that. You wear robes, you're mindful of it. You wear a yomju, you're mindful of it. You get a tattoo. You know, I love mom.

Speaker 2: 33:11

But if you get a tattoo I love mom and you don't listen to mom, then you've gotten the wrong tattoo. The tattoo should say I shall remember to love mom all the time, you know, etc. Etc. So, but this idea of hwado, which is, uh, you know, a kind of whimsical, unanswerable, almost question kind of thing that, just you know, torments you in a sense. That's the idea of it, that you hold on to it. How much do you hold on to it? And this is what suheng is, and this is what the intended way of how Buddhism functions is. It's not the ravenous consumption of sutras and principles and ideas and philosophies, because what they contribute to is the bond there, hmm, the, the noise in the mind. They're not transformative, they're only transformative power that memorization of a principle does if one does not go into actually enacting these principles. Is that, you know, maybe you could win an argument over a cup of coffee with somebody else when you joust.

Speaker 2: 34:49

Yeah, philosophize right and this is, but the clearly uh warrants against just philosophizing, because there isn't a transformation we wear of cleverness young Santa. Yes, that's Hermann Hesse. Right, right, yeah, because so the idea is you, yom you hold on to one principle, one topic or one thing?

Speaker 3: 35:16

Like in the sutras. What do they say? Like a hen laying over the eggs. Like a man whose hair is on fire looking for water. Right the water between your teeth, Right yeah. So that intensity yeah.

Speaker 2: 35:29

Yeah, you know, but at its sort of less militant expression, is just remembering a thing and working on a thing. The whole field of psychology is rendered pardon me, it's just my opinion from elsewhere but it's rendered useless if the client or the patient doesn't do their portion. And it doesn't even mean some great exercise that they're given by a therapist, but even great exercise that they're given by a therapist. But even even in the listening and the conversation you have to be, there's some participation that's required. I mean, the dreaded client is the one that comes, sits and and says nothing, does nothing, and you have to do fishing and pulling and coaxing and conjoling and getting them to kind of jumpstart in something. And so the Zen thing has that same idea.

Speaker 2: 36:41

The way that it's intended to be is you take a principle and you would know the principle because it strikes you, you find it perhaps interesting, or you find it, oh yeah, I need that. Or sometimes you hear a talk oh yeah, that's me, and this is like baseline, right. And so the thing that strikes, ah, because it grabs you, and so you have to grab it back in return, and then you have to hold on to it and then apply it. We have, let's say, a meditation class once a week. Well, we have more than once a week, but the people who come to the once-a-week meditation class, they come once a week and I trumpet so frequently to say that. You know, if you think that this once-a-week meditation class is going to, you know, do it. It's like doing a push-up one push-up.

Speaker 2: 37:43

It ain't going to do it. That's why doing a push-up, one push-up, ain't gonna do it. That's why I really strongly urge people to establish a home meditation practice, I don't care how long at the beginning, just making of that habit, because that's essentially what it is, how you hold on to a thing If we're not reminded. The ability to hold on to this yom power, it is. Power, yeah is how long can you hold on to a thing? For we live such scatterbrained lives in a sense or not necessarily in negative connotation but everything's pulling and tugging and and there's so such an overwhelming amount of information that the thing we're holding on to very easily gets sort of tussled out of our hands. And so how do you hold on to? So we have a reminder then. How frequently do you need the reminder?

Speaker 3: 38:44

right you could be.

Speaker 2: 38:45

It's your alarm clock, right you could wake up yeah, every morning when you wake up, you could have a thing by your phone, because, or, or whatever. I don't know if anybody still uses an alarm clock and it's designated tool of alarm clock.

Speaker 3: 39:00

But well, we have. We have Alexas and series and serve the same purpose, so next to it.

Speaker 2: 39:07

Then if you have a thing, leave a note or whatever, right, and so you wake up. And you've woken up and say, ah, okay, I have to remember that one thing. How long can you hold it? How long?

Speaker 3: 39:20

How quickly we forget the thing If you don't yom and practice, you're bound to return back to the path of least resistance. In a thought and a half and your mind, it will do magic tricks to convince you to be blind to all of the reasons why you should or should not do something, just to go down that same pathway that has led you to the same pitfall time and time again. And I conjured up this image in my mind really to think about how important Yom can be, because it literally can save and transform your life. And it's almost like I saw it as like interrupting the process that is mindless but will lead you to your own demise. And when I say mindless, I want to just use in this moment to represent that.

Speaker 3: 40:17

Let's say a four or five-year-old kid playing in your driveway with a ball and the child is frolicking and happy and gleeful and his favorite ball accidentally gets kicked into the street and the child at that moment only sees the ball, the attachment to the ball, the I want the ball and so they run after it. That is being mindless, I'm sorry, being mindless in the ball and so they run after it. That is being mindless in the moment, being caught up and entangled by the process. And then you have the parent, who has a different perspective, has more maturity, is seeing the whole. The child doesn't see the danger in the street, doesn't see the car, but the parent does.

Speaker 3: 41:00

This is your practice over time. The yom now has to come in and and and be like an alarm clock and say, hey, wake up. Because the child sees the ball, doesn't see the car. So it's the parent, representing wisdom, representing understanding, that has to come in and and interject itself into this mindless process and say be wakeful, what are you looking at? You go after that ball. That is your end. And then this is something that I really have great gratitude for the Zen practice. I think ultimately, you know, for those of you who talk with someone who's a counselor, no-transcript you have a part of your psyche that is the parent, that is the wakeful one that comes in and literally saves your life.

Speaker 2: 42:17

I like the childlike element right, because I have qualms with the term adult right, or grown up. Well, my metaphor is a metaphor, but the same process.

Speaker 3: 42:35

I have to use it with many, many adults that only see like again another, like it's like a mouse sees the cheese, doesn't see the trap. You know people's fish see the bait and they are completely blind to the hook and they're just doing this over and over and over.

Speaker 2: 42:53

Yeah, you know the idea. Recall, if you will, that story that I so frequently tell, which is a very true story and illustrates this simply because someone is aged doesn't mean adult in this way, and what I mean by that is, you know the story.

Speaker 2: 43:27

When I worked at the school, I had a girl who joined a little bit later into the school year and come recess time and the kids and the setup and the kids and the setup was that the children, when they come in to, because their gym class, their recess class, the martial arts class were all in one space and so they understood they come in, they take their shoes off because you don't trample your dojang, your training ground mats, with your shoes so they take the shoes off and they line them up neatly against the wall, which is part of practice, and then off they go to play the gym class or play in recess or do martial arts, obviously.

Speaker 2: 44:14

And so this little girl comes in and she makes a fast friend with another girl. Comes the time for recess, and recess is chaos.

Speaker 3: 44:29

It's the particles, it's the particles of of you know of life just buzzing, it is om of.

Speaker 2: 44:39

you know, children need it to pop open like popcorn, otherwise they don't develop. They need to vibrate, and they sure vibrate. And so, in the cacophony of all the noise, what pierces that roar is a certain pitch which is usually a crying sound. There's a why is the crying, a certain frequency, the way that now bicycle bells they've created new ones that you ding it, the old school ding, but this time the frequency is pitched to pierce through traffic noise so pedestrians could hear it if you're doing city cycling. But this is who came up with that? Maybe they didn't necessarily consider the fact that naturally and this is also kind of the idea of the roots of things, right, naturally the crying sound has a certain frequency to pierce and stand out of the cacophony of everything else going on. And so, anyway, so that's the kun of nature interrupts it, it takes you from mindless to mindful right in a second

Speaker 2: 46:05

and so I just made everything really fast.

Speaker 3: 46:06

Maybe we should invent an alarm clock that has a crying sound to wake you up, but anyway, well, but see, that's right.

Speaker 2: 46:13

This talk about power of sound and vibration and and and habituation and multi-level communication. Right, because a mother, a new mother, will lactate. Right, if she hears the sound of a crying child, then it doesn't have to be her own child. Right, it's body memory and body response. It's like a yeah, so it's yeah. So here I am in this roar of Reese's and I hear, piercing through it, the sound of a crying. So I call her over and she comes over and it's waterworks. It's, you would think, the worst thing ever possible has happened.

Speaker 3: 46:58

The world was coming to an end.

Speaker 2: 47:00

Yes, and you know, first, at that level, you have to settle them, because you can't get a sentence out of them, because breathing isn't shocking, right, it's a whole thing. So, finally, having gotten her to some communicating levels, and it turns out her best friend, her new best friend, the girl that was there and her are now besties and she wanted to put her shoes next to the other girl's shoes. But the way that the wall was there, these columns that stick stick out of the wall, right, so there isn't a straight line, so that the other girl had put her shoes, essentially on one side was a column, on the other side was a space. You know, they were neatly nice and rose, but someone else, someone else put their shoes where I wanted to put my shoes. And the suffering, the real suffering of it, right, it's a real suffering, right.

Speaker 2: 48:15

And as adults, frequently what we think is like, don't be ridiculous, it's just shoes. And then we're full of solutions why don't you just put your shoes over there? Anyway, later you'll be able to play. And we think, when we say those kind of things, that we're just dispensing some great wisdom. We might as well be like that. What is it? The peanuts that we're just dispensing some great wisdom and something. We might as well be like that. What is it? The peanuts? Womp, womp, womp womp, womp.

Speaker 2: 48:48

You might as well just say those things, because you're saying nothing meaningful to the child. You're not even looking at a child. Actually, you're not even thinking of a child, you're thinking from your adult, enlightened perspective. If that were only true. Because that's very same day, I'm pulling into a parking lot of a supermarket and there, angled at some 45 and bizarre degrees, are two cars with their noses angled towards one single available parking spot. Out of one car, dangling out of the window, is a man, furious, with a heart rate of just enormous heart rate, face purple with fury and anger, and the other one and they're fighting and yelling and screaming and making ruckus and havoc and getting their hearts tormented on the account of essentially what boils down to I was going to put my shoes over there, right, because they both want to park there.

Speaker 2: 49:56

And so you look at that, these quote unquote adults fighting over a parking spot for their car. And as that child, that little child, I wish they walked up and they could then dispense their wisdom to say you know what? This morning I was just like you. I was upset because I wanted to put my shoes next to so-and-so's shoes and I couldn't, and it really hurt my feelings and I was sad and upset and I could see you're sad because you are bloody eyed in tears and that other gentleman is about to have a heart attack, right, why? Because you want to put your shoes or your cars in the one parking spot, and I know what you feel in this moment. I was there this morning, right and. And so who's the who's right? Who's the child?

Speaker 1: 50:55

where's the beginning?

Speaker 2: 50:55

where's the end? Who's the child, who's the adult? Essentially, it's the beginning. Where's the end? Who's the child? Who's the adult? Essentially, it's the same thing. If we don't do suheng, if we don't practice yom and awareness and kind of wakefulness, it's so very easy for us to think in one moment of the day, to think, well, this child's being ridiculous. And the suffering of this child is even more so ridiculous because it's an account of an absurd thing a want of a parking spot for your shoes. And then you could turn right around and you could F-bomb another human being on account of a parking spot for your car. So is there such a thing as an adult, right? If you look at the behind the scenes process, it's exactly the same. It's the same thing. It's a tantrum.

Speaker 3: 51:56

It's just dressed up differently.

Speaker 2: 51:58

Right, it's a tantrum, it's just dressed up differently, right? And then it's a yacht or an airplane, or you know or, or you know a country, or you know a planet.

Speaker 2: 52:05

whatever you want to claim, there's no end, there's mine, not yours, and I'll trample over you just to get it right, and I wanna and I wanna, and you, you know, you gnash your teeth and you ball up your fists and you know, and and eat your breakfast. I'm not gonna eat my breakfast because that that effing this guy and that guy yesterday in the parking spot, I'm, I couldn't sleep all night. I was tormented by it. Ladies, gentlemen, hell, you don't have to wait for the end of life.

Speaker 3: 52:37

You could be right, smack in it A parking spot if you really deem it to be yours, and you will trample over anything that stands in your path. That was the doorway to your hell Right in that very moment.

Speaker 2: 52:49

Yeah, and so this? Why do we need to exercise the power of wakefulness? Is to wake up to what in the world is going on inside of me or in my life at that very moment. Because, had either one of those gentlemen had awakened to the dynamic unfolding, and not because what they? What? Well, okay, let's backtrack one step. They are great at yum. They yum their ego. Right, they hold their ego and they cannot let go of their ego. Should they let go of the ego? Maybe one of them would say a thing like all right, well, that guy's older or I, you know, I could use the exercise. All right, well, that guy's older, or I could use the exercise. Two parking spots over, I could walk over, or myriad of things. Right, but without Yom, the recognition of.

Speaker 2: 53:54

Am I holding on to some fixed, rigid, absurd position? Right now, what is happening in the internal weather conditions of my mind, right? Is it cloudy? That is to say, you know, korean term is like a cloudy day, but we also refer to it in the mind, right? So why am I, you know? Am I snappy? Why am I snappy? What's the? Is there a reason? Is there a dynamic? Is there something that I should be more aware of you know to wake up to what's happening. Otherwise, what we get is this very situation. We look at a child and say, oh, you're just being ridiculous. That's absurd, that's stop. Look at you crying. Look at your snots running tears not running. Every orifice in her face is oozing something. The kid's trembling internal organs are just mush right from the, from the vigor of the, of the vibrational upheaval you know on the physiological level. So, health-wise, emotional wise, thought-wise, everything is just in in in a blender, right this is the same thing for the older people, the older gentlemen in this story, right?

Speaker 3: 55:23

So many things are lost in that very moment too. And it's interesting, though, when you talk to people sometimes when they calm down and then they tell you a little bit about themselves and what they value and what they want, and then you look at them in that moment and you can actually point out to them. You're like, none of those things you just said to me match what you were thinking and doing at that very moment, and that's why, in those moments where you are not wakeful and you just allow the situation to pull the strings and the anger to override any of your thought processes or see something from a chip-chop perspective just one single soul perspective, right, you can't pull out and see any solutions or any pathways to resolve this situation. Then you lose I tell people all the time, especially adolescents, you know you lose your ability to make a choice. Don't ever render your ability to make a choice over to a habitual way of viewing the world, an emotion that you cannot control.

Speaker 3: 56:18

Somebody else outside of yourself that's pulling your strings and pushing your buttons and it's going to lure you into a situation that you might not be able to get yourself out of, or the consequences will just be so detrimental that later on, oh my God, what did I do? It's too late, right? So being wakeful in that moment interrupts the whole process, and then here you can have an opportunity to seek a different pathway that might match or line up with some of the things that you value more. When you're not so hot-headed, let's say right, you might have your child in the back seat and you just curse this person out and then later on and then later on you're like yeah, why does my kid curse?

Speaker 3: 56:59

right? You know well, you had this wonderful moment to model for them a way to problem solve, and then you pass that kid off to me and say can you fix them?

Speaker 1: 57:07

you know, only him or her right you know.

Speaker 3: 57:10

But these are those moments, these are those opportunities to be wakeful, to show these kids, or or just to, to, to keep your inner self in harmony kids of any age of any age, adults too that are with you right 99 year old kids and and nine year old kids and and today, in any given moment, you might end up on someone's uh camera and now you're being broadcasted everywhere as a person who, whatever your job title is, you know I can see the ai producing the. The title now teacher, chef, you know, magician, whatever it is loses their cool and curses out, you know, adult in front of all these children and then you don't want that, then once that cat gets let out of the bag, there's no putting it back in right.

Speaker 3: 57:53

so these are these are moments and opportunities for you to be wakeful and prevent these consequences that you don't want in your life, and also to emulate the kind of being that you want to be for anyone who's observing and also the part of yourself, because we do have parts of the self that then feel guilty and shameful afterwards, so that that part of the self is satisfied too, where later on you're like oh my goodness, what did I just do? Wakefulness is the key. Yom is the key to be able to not end up in any of those bad situations I just described.

Speaker 2: 58:28

And to alter what is Literally Without that awareness of a mechanism. We're not present to put into motion anything that is going to change that sort of cyclical trajectory, and this is the repetition of karmas and the continuum of certain patterns of behavior, thinking, or we could say karma right, but habituated behaviors and thoughts and feelings and paradigms and perspectives, and all of those things, no yom there's no chance.

Speaker 2: 59:13

There's no chance Because you know. Number one you have to know you have a problem. You have to be aware of the fact you have a problem. How are you aware of the fact you have a problem? You have to participate in life. Yum is participation in life. I am here right now. Doing what? Now? Doing what if I'm running on autopilot?

Speaker 2: 59:48

It's, it's, it's a sort of cyborg, like life, because I'm alive, I'm not a machine. But then if I act and behave according to machined way of seeing, doing, thinking, then I am a sort of cyborg, part human, part machine, machined, automated system of thinking utilizing the body to do its bidding. And so to interrupt that, to interject yourself into your life, you need first and foremost that wakefulness For one to have a place. By being wakeful, you open a space within which you can exist and do. Otherwise there isn't a space. Every moment to moment is so tightly packed with things, and whether they're internalized or internal things, or externalized or external things or whatever, it's too too much. So we have to wake up in the midst of that and be present sufficiently enough to note when these things are playing themselves out and to interject with some new behavioral sort of plan, if you will.

Speaker 2: 1:01:14

And so when you hear a teaching, when something strikes you, you hold on to that. Don't forget that. Pair that against your own self, pin your behavior and your thoughts, sort of juxtapose these things and continue until those things become part of you. That's really how the practice is intended. Are we going to do this continuously and nonstop? Good luck, good luck, but some amount of frequency of oh right, right, oh right, right, oh right, right Throughout your day, throughout your thing. Oh yeah, I was supposed to X, y and Z. I was supposed to not look at things this way. I was supposed to be less judgmental, you know, I was supposed to be more this or less that or what have you.

Speaker 3: 1:02:12

Or simply, I was supposed to be awake Less impulsive, less attached, you know, whatever it is More kind.

Speaker 2: 1:02:21

Yeah, that holding on to, and the way that Kwanzaa Mimosa has the Amitabha on the crown, and the way that you wear your outfits, you wear your. You know, if a police officer wears an outfit of a police officer who is employed by the communal and acts as such, they are wakeful of their position within the great sort of clock of things. If they forget that, right, and just remember the argument they had with the Rives over breakfast, maybe Then we get problems. Yeah, right, and just remember the argument they had with the Rives over breakfast. Maybe Then we get problems. And what comes up is that Pink Floyd the Wall song.

Speaker 2: 1:03:09

If you've seen the movie belting the students on the account of his wife being a dominant monster at home, and that clip where he switches the eating soup, the wife and he, across from one another and I guess a bone or something, and he wants to take it out of his mouth and she, with her finger finger, says you better eat that. And as he swallows that the thing, the clip flashes to him, kind of spanking a kid for some bizarre you know. And so it's that kind of thing. So we, we are called to wakefulness by so many techniques, tongun, right, the continuous repetition of Kwanzaa, kwanzaa, kwanzaa, kwanzaa or what have you is. It is that it's to seep that into the roots so that they could come into and infuse the whole thing, that into the roots, so that they could come into and infuse the whole thing. And you know when you have done it.

Speaker 2: 1:04:26

If, let's say, you wake up sweat-covered in the middle of the night with a nightmarish, with a nightmare that you've just come out of, and your first words are oh, kwanzaa, kwanzaa, kwanzaa, kwanzaa, kwanzaa. Right, oh, kwanzaa, kwanzaa, kwanzaa, kwanzaa, kwanzaa. Right Now that you've been saturated with something that comes out automatically, despite the chaos of what's taking place. And this is a critical point, and this is where the chips get cashed in, get cashed in. This is why first responders and people dealing with chaos and trauma and disorder and panic and emergencies practice and practice and practice and practice, so that when something happens, the habituated automatic thing comes out. Without that, you get pulled into the chaos. So you can't keep your mind quiet, you can't keep your mind cool, you can't think clearly. You get some accident victim pull into your ER and if you can't keep yourself clear-minded, you can't be of help, and so it's that same thing.

Speaker 3: 1:05:56

You add to the chaos at that moment, right.

Speaker 2: 1:05:58

Yeah, you add to the chaos, sure, you make mistakes, et cetera, et cetera. So, yes, when trying to take up a transformative practice in your life wakefulness to what is, let's say, you want to be, as an example, less judgmental you have to be wakeful enough to know when the judgmentalness is coming up within you. And then you have to be wakeful enough when you notice it to say, aha, there it is. And then wakeful enough to say, ah, I'm going to do something about it. And wakeful enough to say I, I'm gonna do something about it. And wakeful enough to say I'm gonna do this thing about it, and wakeful enough to observe what the results are. I was being judgmental, a mind was producing a certain collection of thoughts and views of this situation. I've applied a solution. It has my mind subsided in its judgmentalness in this very moment, in this very situation. And if it has, then what that creates is this self-reinforcing thing. It's a sort of feedback thing that says, ah, that practice, that thing that I did, works, that thing that I did works.

Speaker 2: 1:07:28

I've had two now members who are one was claustrophobic and the other one claustrophobic adjacent, and they were taking an MRI and for one, what they said is that breathing, the kind of breathing that we do in one of the classes, the breathing anchored them sufficiently enough where the panic and the kind of discomfort of being in that dredged machine sort of subsided. And for another one it was a Kwanzaa Mbosal, chongun. Kwanzaa Mbosal is Kwanzaa Mbosal, kwanzaa Mbosal. And that brought them into a place where the discomfort of the machine, the noise, just the whole idea of it, subsided. So put into action, wake up and then put into action. That's the thing. So transforming your root into power means how do you use it, understand its presence in your life, see it when it happens and then apply your suheng.

Speaker 1: 1:08:34

That is, the raindrops, and then you get the transformation.

Speaker 2: 1:08:38

I don't know what time it is because we didn't start the clock. So, let's say until next time. That will be part three of this mini series. I am Jan-Sanjian here with Dr Ruben Lambert. Take care of yourselves and each other.

Speaker 3: 1:08:59

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