Meaningness Podcast

TranscriptIntroduction [00:00]​Most of this podcast is a recording from a retreat Charlie Awbery and I led a month ago. I’m adding a short introduction here now, to provide background context, so you can understand more of what we presented then.So first, tantra is the branch of Buddhism concerned with energy, and therefore with action. Energy is the potential for action. You can’t have either without the other. Tantra is still sometimes misunderstood as being all about sex. There’s a lot of energy and action in sex, so tantra can work with that. But there’s energy and action in everything we do, so tantra can work with everything in our lives.In all Buddhisms, one acts for the benefit of others. However, most just help you develop good intentions. Tantra calls the bluff on that. Without energy, intentions are flaccid piety. Tantra says, “Okay, that’s nice. What are you actually going to do for other people and how?” And it has answers.There are many different styles of beneficent activity. Tantra personifies them as yidams, who are mythic people, rather like gods, who represent particular kinds of energy. This retreat was sponsored by Evolving Ground, a contemporary Vajrayana Buddhist community we abbreviate as eG. eG teaches several different yidams, and therefore several different styles of benevolent energy, and beneficent activity. We wrote a post about that two weeks ago, titled “Yidam: extraordinary relational possibilities.” You might want to check it out for more background explanation.One style of beneficence is nobility: the wise, creative, and just use of power. In eG, we take the yidam Gesar as inspiration for noble activity. Gesar is the mythic warrior-king-sorcerer-god-hero of a vast Tibetan epic. We practice Gesar with a text, called a sadhana. A sadhana is the manual for a structured meditation ritual, which you can practice individually or in a group. Part of the ritual is reading the text out loud, and then doing the things it describes.The Evolving Ground sadhana is titled Good King Gesar. It’s written in flowery pseudo-poetic language, as is traditional. In the retreat recording that follows, I explained particular bits of the text; and quoted it in places.Gesar was the king of a place called Ling. Our retreat was held in a gorgeous remote mountain valley in Scotland. As you will hear, that is also Ling.One last thing: the transcript of this podcast on Substack includes numerous hyperlinks to explanations of uncommon concepts. If you are confused by missing background, or want to learn more about some point, you could follow those. Also, the transcript has numerous illustrations which can help visualize what we are talking about.And so now… let’s catch a ride to Ling on the back of the garuda of outrageousness!The actual world is the mandala of the deity [04:04]One of the things about this sadhana that is unusual is that it is emphasizing the actual world as the mandala of the deity. Mandala is the Sanskrit word for kingdom. It literally means circle, but it means kingdom.There is the visionary world, and there’s the actual world; and these are both real, in some sense. Tantra forms the connection between the visionary realm and the actual world. You become the connection between these two. You can think of the central channel as a conduit that connects the energy of the actual world and the energy of the visionary realm, and they flow through you.You can get lost in the visionary realm. I recommend avoiding becoming a spiritual person, because this means being lost in the visionary realm, and trying to un-see the actual world as much as possible. And this makes you ineffective! Because if you’re going to act in the actual world, for the benefit of other people, you need to have a accurate vision of what is going on, and how it works.On the other hand, if you are stuck in the actual world and you are trying to un-see the visionary world, then you’re caught in a kind of mundane materialism that lacks vision; that is not directed toward some… better future? That’s actually putting it in a bit of a materialistic point of view, but: some kind of pure vision of what is possible. I think “possibility” is the right word for this.So, a lot of Tibetan material… they were isolated in monasteries, and they got lost in the visionary realm a lot of the time.The Gesar material is, I think, an attempt to make this connection of the actual world of a very difficult political situation, at a particular time, at a particular place in Tibet, where action needed to be taken: for the benefit of people who were caught up in civil wars and religious strife. There needed to be a connection made between that mundane, difficult situation and a vision of what was possible instead. And the possibility was: a Good King.Mipham, who did a lot of this work, was an advisor to the king at the time. And he wrote a book called The Just King, which is a book of advice to the Crown Prince of Derge, which was a major kingdom in the area; who did become king.This is a form-oriented sadhana. It’s an action-oriented sadhana. And I think it’s why Mipham did what he did, which we’re reworking here. It’s that action was required, form was required, at that time. And Tibetan Buddhism had kind of gone off into fairyland, and he was trying to pull it back down to concrete form; reality.The cavortings of awareness unleashed [07:34]So all of this stuff is: the cavortings of awareness unleashed.And partly that’s to emphasize the fact that we’re speaking in the visionary realm here, and you don’t want to concretize this as something that’s actually existent in some sense. But also, there is the practice in tantra of seeing everything as illusory in some sense. And this is bringing the visionary realm and the actual realm into correspondence. And when you do that, things you see in the actual realm take on a visionary quality, and become somewhat unreal and transparent and shape-shifting. And that can become psychotic, if you’re not maintaining also the connection with the concrete specifics of how stuff actually works. This is the trick of tantra: making that connection without losing yourself in either realm. And being able to superimpose them, to employ the logic of vision and the logic of actuality as appropriate; simultaneously, ideally. So, “cavortings of awareness unleashed” is this sense of sacredness, and slightly unreal quality.Jan: I have a question about “cavortings.” I checked it in the dictionary and it means, like, “play” basically?David: Yeah, energetic, bouncing around kind of play.Jan: What was the “leash” then?David: Um, unleashed from mundanity. From being lost in ordinariness. When you’re leashed to ordinariness, you can’t see sacredness. You can’t see the electric qualities of actual things.Ideologies are demonic attempts to escape from actuality into some vision [09:38]David: The section “Displaying confidence in actuality,” I said last time: this is in the place of the refuge. “Taking refuge” is displaying confidence in actuality. That’s this sense of, “Okay, I’m actually in this actual-world situation. And that is what I’m confident of.”Mara showing a mystic vision of perfectionis the failure mode of trying to escape into the visionary realm. The actual world is the charnel ground. It’s civil war, in that case.Do ask questions! Splendid! Yes?Sasha Vezhnevets: Um, when I yesterday was going through it, I also had another way of interpreting the “vision of perfection”?David: Mm-hmm?Sasha: As kind of: an ideology, not necessarily related to mysticism or religion, but any sort of ideology that imagines perfection?David: Yeah.Sasha: I mean, for me, the “mysticism” would be communism; something like that. That’s what was more familiar growing up, but there’s no lack of other ones. So what you think of that interpretation?David: Yes.Sasha: And monastics, we can have academics, and that choice—Steph: Or any rule-based system, or any framework, if you take it as the main, or the only, framework.David: Yeah, thank you. That’s exactly right. There’s a section in here about Gesar… Let’s see… Your horse-hooves trample the compulsions of demonic egregores!Your werma-arrows riddle the promises of delusional enthusiasms! Your prajña-sword eviscerates the certainties of fixed ideologies!This is addressed at exactly that.Dzogchen has a meta-systematic view of Buddhism [11:20]David: This is kind of eG-specific. It’s the meta-systematic view that any fixed system is actually demonic, and needs to be slaughtered. Once you’ve chopped the head off the demon, you can raise it from the dead and have it serve you. This is a very traditional role for Tibetan sorcerers, to subjugate demons and force them to serve the dharma.My work on meta-rationality, and other things that I’ve written, are relevant here, and being echoed in the sadhana. Dzogchen, uniquely in Buddhism, is meta-systematic; and says, “Here are all these different Buddhist systems; and here’s how they’re useful, under what circumstances, for what purposes do you apply this Buddhist system; and here’s how it’s limited, and actually not a full story, not actually correct.”I think that’s part of the attraction of Dzogchen, for me and for Charlie and for others: that sense of “No fixed system; but systems are actually very valuable.” And we’re practicing a particular system in doing this; but there’s nothing sacred about this sadhana; or fixed as “this is the thing to do.” It’s a thing that has a particular function.We got this partly from Ngak’chang Rinpoche, who got it from Kunzang Dorje Rinpoche. I don’t know where Kunzang Dorje Rinpoche got it. I mean, he got it from the Kunjé Gyalpo, I suppose. Or his teachers.Victory over aggression [12:59]David: I’m just gonna go through this and babble, but please ask questions. That was a very illuminating question; thank you, Sasha!I act for the benefit of friend and foe alike.That’s central for the Gesar mythos: that a warrior is willing and able to kill, when that is absolutely necessary; but does so without anger, and without aggression, but simply out of a sense of “this has to be done.” “I wish it didn’t have to be done, but I’m now going to kill you because that’s what has to be done.”I find, to be more concrete about it, that when I’m in conflict with somebody… I mean, this sounds nice and, and I’m not nice, and I don’t really advocate niceness as such. But, looking for both how can I benefit the person, but also how can I actually take their side in a conflict, is really helpful. It doesn’t guarantee a good outcome. It doesn’t guarantee that either of us will wind up happy in the end, but by and large, it improves the interpersonal situation.Adult stage theory and Buddhist tantra [14:18]David: There’s several bits of eG-specific language in here. One is: Lead me into the autonomy of self-authorship, And my distinctive manifestation of nobility as self-possibility. These are eG terms, partly taken over from adult stage theory, which has worked its way into a tantric sadhana!Charlie: They’re directly relevant to the eG path, the ninefold path, as well. “Self-possibility” is the sixth in that set, and “personal autonomy” is the third; and those two are directly related, vertically. So, personal autonomy is the form aspect of the base; self-possibility is the form aspect of the path; and then powerfulness is the form aspect of the result, in that eG nine way.Ling is in Scotland and Colorado, and distills the nectar of the gods [15:14]David: In terms of this emphasis on the actual world in this sadhana, this is Ling. This is a magnificent place. Thank you for bringing us here, Steph! But you can see here the: grassy plains replete with iris and columbine.Apostol: Are there, like, esoteric wrinkles there?David: Yeah, everything in here is covered in esoteric wrinkles!Apostol: So why those?David: Why the iris and columbine? That’s esoteric in the sense that it’s coming out of personal experience of particularly sacred places in mountains. The iris is a reference to a sacred place in the Sierra Nevada, where Charlie and I lived for a decade. The columbine is the State Flower of Colorado. They’re spectacular blue flowers.Um, so… Where is it? Um, skipping ahead a few pages: The wind of attention parts the gray mist of nebulosity, Revealing a sunny upland meadow of Ling.There is a principle in tantra, that everything is everything else. No! Sorry! Everything is something else. There are monist religions in which everything is everything else, everything is actually the same as everything. Tantra is highly specific. It’s really interested in the complexity of details. And so: menstrual blood is emptiness. These are the same thing, and they’re also the sun; and so on and so forth. There are these systems of correspondences, where each thing is a series of other things.This is the Kingdom of Ling; but also the Kingdom of Ling is about 25 miles west of where we live, in the Rocky Mountains. Charlie and Steph have both been to that particular place in Ling, which is “replete with iris and columbine.” It’s at about 11,000 feet. It is spectacularly beautiful. And there is a stream that flows through it. The path that I’ve taken with Charlie and Steph, the stream that flows through there eventually works its way down through a series of spectacular canyons, drops about 6,000 feet onto the plane. The last canyon is called El Dorado Canyon, which is unbelievable. It’s got sort of 2000 foot walls. And, there’s a Scotsman who fell in love with an American, and married her and moved to Boulder, Colorado, which is where this stream eventually flows through, on its way out to the Mississippi River. He was trained as a distiller, and on moving to the US needed to find some kind of employment; and founded a distillery, making a Colorado version of Scotch whiskey. And this distillery has won all kinds of awards for best American whiskey. People who do whiskey think that the water is very important. That’s what gives the whiskey its character. So the water for that whiskey comes from El Dorado Canyon, which is where this stream that comes down through the Kingdom of Ling, replete with iris and columbine, which we visited.So this whiskey is actually Ling whiskey, because things are other things! And we will be, in the wang, making ritual use of amrita. Amrita is the drink of the gods in Indian mythology, and that is understood as alcohol in tantra. We will be making use of amrita from Ling.Charlie: Did you bring some?David: Yes.Charlie: Good!We are always in Ling, Gesar’s kingdom [19:46]David: Uh, “Ling.” “Ling” is interesting because “ling” is simply the Tibetan word for “a place.” Ling is in Kham, which is the area that is at the border between China and Tibet, and for a long time was claimed by both China and Tibet as being part of them. Um, and the people who lived in Kham were like, “No, we’re independent of both of you, go away.” But the word “kham,” which refers to this particular area, simply means “region” in Tibetan.So Ling is a kingdom in Kham, which means it is “a place in the region.” So Lingtsang Gyalpo, I have explained to you, was the last king of Ling. He was the last king of a kingdom called Ling. But it just means “place.” He was the king of a place in some region. And very often Gesar is referred to as “Ling Gesar.” He is the Caesar of some place: Ling. And it’s actually historically unclear whether he existed, but if he did exist: like, which place is it that he was the Caesar of? It might have been Lingtsang; the people who live in Lingtsang want to claim that it was there, but it’s not clear.So in some sense we are always in Ling. Wherever we are, that’s Ling. So you take Gesar with you, and you take Ling with you.Emily: Is “Gesar” actually cognate with “Caesar,” or is that a coincidence?David: It’s believed by Western scholars to be cognate. As the Roman Empire expanded, the satraps and peripheral kingdoms… as the Empire collapsed, they declared themselves to be “Caesar.” So the Kaiser of Germany, that’s Caesar; and the Tsar of Russia, that’s Caesar; and the Gesar of Ling, that’s the Caesar too. In what are now the –Stans were Buddhist kingdoms, at one time; and the rulers there called themselves “Caesar.” And they had a lot of cultural exchange with Tibet, until they were taken over by Muslims. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit meaningness.substack.com/subscribe

Andrew Conner, independent writer who critiqued the “meaning crisis,” joins to compare John Vervaeke’s and David Chapman’s takes. They map differences in diagnoses of modern meaning, debate whether meaning was lost or muddled by metaphysics, and explore stances like eternalism, nihilism, and the complete stance. The conversation also touches on practices, sacredness, and how philosophical residues shape our sense of meaning.

Transcript​You can bless things. It’s easy! You can do this!You just go around blessing things.You don’t need a clerical collar, you don’t need a fancy hat (although the hat might help).This is a non-denominational practice. It’s not particularly religious; you can be of any religion, or no religion.There’s no prerequisites. It’s easy! You just do it.This is a practice of perception, of appreciation, of connection, of expanding benevolence.It’s not a metaphysical practice. The point is your intention, not the effect that it might have on whatever it is that you’re blessing.I normally do this silently, but for this video I’m going to do it out loud, which feels kind of dorky, but this way you can hear what I’m thinking.When you do it, you can do it silently. I found the practice is embarrassing at first, even if you do it silently; but if you overcome your embarrassment, it becomes ecstatic.Bless this place.Bless this trail. I, personally, bless this place.Bless everything here.Bless the flowering trees.Bless this house. May it keep its inhabitants safe and comfortable.Bless this amazing purple plum tree. Bless these willows. Bless the creek. Bless the petals.Bless the sun. Bless the sky, the clouds. Bless the creek, bless these new green leaves, bless last year’s dead leaves, the petals on the surface of the creek.Bless these fluffy white flowering shrubs. Bless the shrubbery. Bless the shrubbers.Bless last year’s dead grass; bless this year’s grass, just starting to come up.Bless the path.The path that takes us from the base to the result, and delights us along the way.Bless my feet that carry me on the path, my legs that support me, the ground that supports me. Bless gravity!Bless these birds. Bless the cottonwoods that are just starting to get leaves. Bless the contrail.Bless these plums. Bless these three plum trees, each individually.Bless these dandelions.Bless this fruit orchard. Bless the fruit that will come from the fruit orchard. Bless those who planted the fruit orchard. Bless those who will enjoy the fruit. Bless the carpet of petals on the ground. Bless the forsythias.Bless the dog poop bag. No, it’s gloves! Bless whoever thoughtfully put the gloves in a place where someone might find them again.Bless those who clean up after their dogs, bless their dogs, bless the love they have for their dogs.Bless the warmth of the day. Bless the wind, the breeze, caressing my skin.Woo! Bless the bunny. Hello, bunny! Bless you, bunny! Two bunnies! Bless you both.Bless this manhole cover, that is undoubtedly doing something important.Bless… Danielle Amanda Quillman Heilmann, who died in her twenties, with a ginkgo leaf. Bless her memory. Bless those who remember her. Bless them for providing this bench.Bless the bridge. Bless the bridge makers. Bless the Continental Custom Bridge Company. Bless the solidity of the iron. Bless everything made of iron everywhere. Bless the sound it makes.I bless the neighborhood. I bless this house. I bless the people who live in this house. I bless their future. May they always know happiness.Bless this place. Bless all phenomena here. Bless all beings here. Bless all beings everywhere now and forever.Bodhi. Svaha. So mote it be.​ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit meaningness.substack.com/subscribe

Transcript (ish)Dzogchen is the branch of Buddhism that I’m most influenced by; that I love most. It’s extraordinarily compelling and exciting and beautiful. It’s in some sense the basis of pretty nearly everything that I write.It has several serious problems, though. One is that you can’t sell it. And this problem is nearly fatal. Every religion has to have some economic basis. This is something we resist in the West; going back to Martin Luther, whose slogan was “Every man his own priest.” His idea was that everybody (every man at least) should be able to read the Bible in his own language, and understand it. Then he should form his own direct relationship with God, without a priest intermediating. This is a very attractive idea! It eliminates the class of religious professionals, who had become corrupt and parasitic in Europe at that time.The problem is, this doesn’t actually work. Most people are not capable of being their own priests. Not any more than most people are capable of being their own plumber. DIY religion sounds great, but hardly anyone can make it work. You need professionals to do the job. So, in many Protestant denominations, there’s a “pastor” role which is officially definitely not a priest, but performs most of the same functions in practice.Buddhism is also a religion that needs religious professionals. In Asia, there were professional Buddhist clergy. And, in Asian cultures, there were various economic arrangements that made it feasible to support a class of religious professionals. Those depended on cultural patterns that we don’t have in the West. The main one, monasticism, mostly doesn’t work in the West, despite attempts.This is a big problem for Buddhism in the West. On the one hand, we want, and actually need, full time professional teachers. But we don’t think we ought to pay for them. And it’s not clear what the payment model should be. So we’ve mostly followed the pastor model, from Protestantism. That has worked pretty okay, although not ideally, in many cases. It doesn’t work for dzogchen.But the Asian models didn’t work for dzogchen, either! The problem is, dzogchen has nothing to sell. At least, not in its original version, which is the one that I care about. That’s sometimes called “pristine” dzogchen. Later, dzogchen got modified, repeatedly over centuries, to overcome this problem, along with several other genuine problems with it. So Tibetans added things that you could sell, but those actually messed it up, I think.You can sell secrets, but dzogchen isn’t secretOne thing you can sell is secrets. So Scientology, if you keep going with it, at each level, you pay much more, and you get told the next chunk of the secrets. But all of the secrets of Scientology eventually came out, and you can find them on the internet for free.In Tibet, they tried this model, and supposedly dzogchen was extremely secret. That pretense was retained until dzogchen came to the West, and then the store got given away. So now you can find the whole thing on the internet.The original version of dzogchen simply told you what enlightenment is and what it’s like. And that’s extremely simple. It’s two or three sentences, maybe. And it’s not easy to sell two or three sentences!And also, they’re no use, because they don’t make any sense. What is enlightenment? What’s it like? If you understand the brief description, you say, “yeah; yeah, that’s what it’s like.” And if you don’t understand it, there’s no further explanation possible. You can ask questions, and the answers may sound interesting, but usually they don’t help. I have a post about this, called “A non-statement ain’t-framework.” It explains why you can’t explain dzogchen.What actually happens is: if you meditate in certain ways, quite a lot, eventually you start to see it. And then, at that point, the two sentence explanation can suddenly make sense.So you could try to sell this secret, but it’s useless, and people would feel like they didn’t get their money’s worth. And anyway, it’s on the internet!In Tibet, secrecy mostly didn’t solve the economic problem either. So the way they addressed it was to add more things to dzogchen which you can sell. Two of them are methods and entertainment.You can sell methods, but dzogchen has no methodsYou can sell a method for getting to enlightenment. In Tibet, tantra is considered the main method for getting to enlightenment. So you can sell tantra. Tantra has many complicated methods, and it takes a lot of in-person instruction to learn those methods, and you can charge for the expertise and labor of teaching them. So that works for tantra.(I should say that in Buddhism, as in Christianity, it’s mostly considered gauche to put a straightforward price tag on religious services. So instead there are implicit norms and deniable negotiations. I can see good reasons for this, but on the whole I find transparent arrangements more copacetic.) There’s no point asking ChatGPT how to get to Paris if you’re in Paris.Anyway, this doesn’t work for dzogchen, because it doesn’t have any instructions. Because it’s not a path. It’s not a method. There is no method. It’s just a description, of enlightenment. Once you’re enlightened, you don’t need a method. “Dzogchen,” in Tibetan, means “full completion.” It’s what you get when you’ve completed tantra. You don’t need any instructions at that point. It’s like: there’s no point asking ChatGPT how to get to Paris if you’re in Paris.So, to make dzogchen saleable, a whole lot of methods got added to it, which (in my view) violate the spirit of the thing, and are actually a step backward. The methods are kind of dzogchen-flavored, but they’re essentially tantric methods. And tantric methods are great. I love tantra! But it’s not dzogchen. And it’s missing the point.Student: How do I get enlightened?Teacher: You already are.Student: No I’m not.Teacher: . . . Student: Everybody is doing these way-out esoteric mystic things and getting enlightened. Tell me how to do that!Teacher: [sighs] OK, first you need to stand on your head…You can sell entertainment, but dzogchen isn’t entertainingAnother thing you can sell is entertainment. Most people in Medieval Tibet didn’t have internet access, so there wasn’t enough entertainment to go around, and that created demand for something better than watching yaks chew their cud. So rituals, which had been genuinely religious, were recycled as entertainment. Those became the main form of public spectacle in Tibet. And lots of extra foofaraw was added to these religious rituals, to make them more entertaining. Primarily, this was done with tantra; but once you’ve started adding methods to dzogchen, you can do the same thing, so you can have big public dzogchen rituals.That is actually a contradiction in terms, again in my view. If pristine dzogchen could be said to have any rituals at all, they take about two seconds, and are improvised one-on-one on the spot. But that’s not something you can charge for.And because dzogchen had the reputation of being the fanciest kind of Buddhism, the idea was it must have super-duper rituals. So a dzogchen ritual was something very special that you would pay a lot of money to go and see, and it would be highly entertaining; or you’d hope it would be. That subsidized the actual work of dzogchen professionals, so maybe it was a good thing. But it’s dishonest.Dzogchen is still available, despite its unsellabilitySo, where does this leave us, here and now?It leaves us with the main forms of “dzogchen,” the ones widely taught and practiced, being diluted, adulterated with tantra. Maybe you could even say corrupted. And that’s fine, if you understand that’s what you are getting. They are probably great for what they are! I don’t know, I haven’t tried them seriously. Tantra is great, and tantra that’s pretending to be dzogchen is probably extra good! It’s just, there’s a conceptual confusion here, and it’s a motivated confusion, and this results in a lot of incoherent explanations, and duplicity, maybe even a kind of sleaziness in the relationship between teachers and students.I said that the unsellability of dzogchen was nearly fatal. But fortunately, the original, pristine thing is still available. In fact, it’s much more available than it ever was in Tibet, or at least than it had been in hundreds of years, because there’s no longer any attempt at secrecy. But if you want it, you need to know what you are looking for. And you aren’t going to get it on its own—unless for some reason you can understand the two-sentence explanation when you find it on the internet. No one can sell it to you, so it only comes as part of a package deal. You can get full-strength, unadulterated dzogchen from someone who mostly teaches tantra, yet maintains a clear distinction between the two. You can get it from someone very holy, with a gold-embroidered hat, who drops the two sentences in the middle of a days-long lecture series on archaic Tibetan metaphysics. You can get pristine dzogchen from a professor in a Western university classroom, who gives you the straight dope in an off-hand way while lecturing on Buddhist history. You can get it from an informal meditation teacher. That’s probably the best bet!You might get it from a crazy street person in a Starbucks, who trades it for your building her a web site. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit meaningness.substack.com/subscribe

Many people in the West pursue meditation in order to experience altered states. Meditation is sometimes considered a safer alternative to taking psychoactive drugs, with roughly similar effects. The jhanas are altered states of consciousness, for example. Buddhist tantra also produces diverse altered states, using various methods.In Western Buddhism, the usual idea is that enlightenment itself is a special kind of experience. It’s an altered state of consciousness, also in the way that psychedelic drugs can produce altered states. This is roughly consistent with some traditional Buddhist ideas about enlightenment, although not others. For example, in some tantric systems, the endpoint of the path, enlightenment itself, is said to be the simultaneous union of clarity, bliss, and emptiness. Those are often explained more-or-less as altered states of consciousness. Then tantra is a collection of methods that produce altered states, including ultimately that union. (There are other explanations of tantra that are more metaphysical; less psychological.)I don’t want to denigrate altered states, in any way. I think they can be fascinating, enjoyable, meaningful, and useful. However, the branch of Buddhism I care most about, dzogchen, denies that enlightenment is an altered state.In fact: Exactly the opposite! Enlightenment is the unaltered state. The dzogchen word for enlightenment is “rigpa,” which is defined as the natural state. You might say it is the state in which you are not altering your mind.Nearly all the time, we are in an altered state, which is called samsara. Samsara is the state in which you are constantly poking at your mind in order to get it to behave better—instead of leaving it as it is, in its natural condition.So you might suppose that rigpa is the special state in which you don’t do that. But this is actually wrong. Samsara is also nirvana. It too is enlightenment. It is also rigpa.The thing is, rigpa is always present. It’s not something you produce. Rigpa is not something you produce, because it’s always already there. It’s something you notice. Or don’t notice. Dzogchen is not like tantra. It has no methods for getting to enlightenment. From dzogchen’s point of view, tantra’s attempts to produce enlightenment are impossible and absurd. It’s like trying to get to Paris from Notre-Dame Cathedral. You’re already there! You are right at the center of it! Just look, and you’ll see Paris all around you! Everything you can see is more Paris!Rigpa’s present, regardless of what state you are in. Samsara is nirvana, because rigpa is there, even when you’re samsara-ing. You, personally—you—are fully enlightened, right now.Maybe it doesn’t seem like that?An alternative term, that’s considered more or less equivalent in Tibetan Buddhism, is tamalgyi shepa, which literally means “ordinary mind.” So, rigpa is ordinary mind, which is the ultimate goal of dzogchen, which claims to be the ultimate form of Buddhist practice.Tax preparation seems the exact opposite of enlightenment …In my experience, tax preparation seems the exact opposite of enlightenment. It’s certainly the exact opposite of meditation! A typical basic meditation instruction is: whenever you notice that you are thinking, let go of it, and return to open awareness. My recipe for efficient tax preparation is: whenever I notice I am aware, squash that, and return to Schedule 8849 line 2 column h, trying to force it, by narrowing my thinking, to equal Form 1099-B Box A. This is miserable. It’s probably a better example of samsara than the dramatic torture scenarios you can read about in scripture. At least there’s energy in those!But rigpa is there, just the same. Or so I am told! I don’t recommend my anti-meditation recipe as a religious practice. It’s better if you can meditate while doing your taxes. I can’t!When you stop samara-ing, it’s easier to notice rigpa. The samsara is a bit of a smokescreen.There’s particular circumstances in which it’s difficult to samsarize. They are ones in which rigpa might become obvious. Sacred texts have a standard list, which includes things like sneezing, orgasm, dreaming, dying, fainting, stubbing your toe with a sudden pain.In each of these experiences, it is more difficult to do samsara, so you may have a recognition of rigpa. It could become obvious. It’s difficult to think. Thinking is totally compatible with rigpa, but it tends to obscure it. Each of these experiences might also be considered an altered state of consciousness. That’s not the rigpa, but altered states make it easier to notice. Remember, though, that rigpa is ordinary mind; it’s the same when you are coming and when you are doing your taxes.Unfortunately, each of the things on the standard list has some difficulty that make it not particularly easy to find rigpa there. Easier than when doing taxes, but not easy. Sneezing, for example, is extraordinary. There’s a moment when you know you are going to sneeze, and there’s a unique, overwhelming itchy tickling feeling that pervades your physical body, subtle energy channels, and mind, and you can’t think, and rigpa is right there—and the whole thing lasts only a fraction of a second, and then you immediately lose it. Similarly, fainting, orgasm, and sudden sharp pains may last only a little longer. Tantra has esoteric techniques for prolonging these. That’s one of the points of sexual tantra. If you prolong and intensify orgasm, there’s more likelihood that you will notice, in the middle of it, “Ah! there’s rigpa here.” This may be difficult to arrange, though. Pain might be easier, but it’s difficult to have intense enough pain for long enough without injuring yourself. There are esoteric methods for that too, but generally people would rather have an hour-long orgasm than an hour-long torture session.The problem with dreaming and dying is that they make you stupid. You get caught up in some compelling, illusory drama which distracts you from your intention to recognize rigpa. Again, there are esoteric techniques, but they are difficult.Dying is supposed to be the best and most important opportunity for recognizing rigpa. That’s what the so-called “Tibetan Book of the Dead” is about. Unfortunately, though, you don’t die very often, so you don’t get a lot of practice.People in hell don’t realize how lucky they areThe exception is if you’re in hell. According to Buddhist metaphysics, after you die, which realm you get reborn in depends on your emotional state. If you are angry, you get reborn in hell. Some of the Buddhist hells—there are several Buddhist hells—some of them are so lethal that you die almost immediately after rebirth. So you are born in hell, and get sliced to bits by whirling knife blades, or crispy-fried in boiling oil, and you die two seconds later. If that makes you mad, you get sent straight back.So being in hell is actually a great opportunity for dzogchen practice, because you’re dying every few seconds. Countless opportunities to recognize rigpa! People in hell don’t notice how lucky they are, because hell is unpleasant. It’s the same problem as with prolonged pain. It makes you stupid, and you forget to practice. Everybody in hell is stupid. Don’t go to hell. It’s a stupid place.So tantra is a collection of methods that produce altered states, I guess you could say. The point is not the altered states for their own sake. Well, maybe. As I said, tantric theory says enlightenment is the union of clarity, bliss, and emptiness. Why is that enlightenment? I mean, it’s nice. You don’t suffer, I guess. The point of enlightenment as originally conceived was to stop suffering. And if you’re experiencing clarity, bliss, and emptiness, then you’re not suffering, which is nice for you. Rather like orgasm. It’s kind of difficult to do samsara in these states.From point of view of dzogchen, the value of the state is that it makes it exceptionally easy to recognize rigpa. I think some people would say it is rigpa, but I’m not necessarily convinced. Rigpa is ordinary mind, remember!It’s easiest to find rigpa when your mind is clear and sharp, but you are not distracted by thoughts or bad feelings. That’s not necessary; rigpa is there when you are obsessing about the awful thing someone said about you at work, or you’re short on sleep and your brain feels full of glue. But it helps.Meditation helps notice rigpaSo there are particular types of meditation that tend to produce that clear, undistracted state of mind. It’s pretty ordinary. You probably wouldn’t call it an “altered state of consciousness”; it’s not like taking drugs.However, “clear and undistracted by bad feelings or thoughts” is pretty much the same as “clarity, bliss, and emptiness!” Except you haven’t turned the volume up to eleven. That makes it safer and easier than esoteric tantric methods. Or drugs. It might be slower; tantra is fast but dangerous. Supposedly fast, and supposedly dangerous! I think both are often exaggerated. “Meditation” is not all one thing. Most types of meditation aren’t about this. They don’t aim for it, and probably won’t help.You will probably need many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of hours of practice of the type that does—and it’s still easy to miss the point. It helps to have someone checking your progress, and redirecting you if you get a bit off course.You need to know what you are trying to notice, and until you’ve seen that a few times, you don’t notice it, even though it’s right there all the time. Even right now! As you are listening to this! It’s rigpa!Pure obviousnessRigpa has been called “pure obviousness.”[Holds up an eggplant] This is rigpa![Rings a bell] This is rigpa! This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit meaningness.substack.com/subscribe

Discover how participants find sacredness in everyday life and community connections. Engage in lively discussions about blending Christian roots with Buddhist practices. Explore the contrasts between individualistic Western Buddhism and strong communal bonds. Hear about spontaneous moments of sacredness and childhood rituals that evoke powerful experiences. Delve into the nuances of sacredness in group practices and the differences between Tantra and Dzogchen. Finally, connect beauty with deeper feelings of sacredness, enhancing the understanding of immediate interactive experiences.

The podcast delves into the intriguing concept of kadag, a key tenet of Dzogchen Buddhism. It emphasizes that nothing is inherently pure or impure, challenging traditional notions of purity. The speaker skillfully illustrates that once you recognize kadag, you see that the world lacks fundamental spiritual or existential problems. Instead, it highlights practical issues that can be tackled directly. This insightful exploration provides a fresh perspective on how we perceive reality and address challenges in our lives.

Jake Orthwein, a contributor well-versed in both Meaningness and Jordan Peterson’s ideas, explores fascinating parallels and differences between their philosophical approaches. They delve into the chaos/order dichotomy versus nebulosity/pattern, highlighting contrasting focuses on nihilism and future visions. The discussion extends to the mythic triad in Peterson’s work compared to Buddhist ideals of emptiness. With humor and insightful commentary, Jake ties in relevant clips from Peterson, enriching their engaging conversation on meaning and purpose.

Rationality is stereotypically masculine. What about meta-rationality?Transcript:Charlie: What’s the connection between gender and meta-rationality?David: I had never thought to ask that!The systematic mode of being, or the rational mode of being, is male-coded, or masculine-coded. Meta-rationality involves an openness that surrounds systematicity, or rationality; or may just completely transcend it. And that is possibly feminine-coded? Or at any rate, it’s either feminine or non-gendered.Charlie: Mm-hmm.David: I’m thinking actually now, in Vajrayana, how there’s often a sequence of: female-coded, male-coded, non-dual.Charlie: Mmm.David: And meta-rationality is analogous in some ways to non-duality in Buddhism. So maybe it is also… it is a little farfetched, but could be analogized to transcending gender; or being— I really don’t like the word “non-binary,” but we haven’t got a better one.Charlie: Mm.David: One of the things that is important in Vajrayana is practicing a yidam of the opposite sex. Not exclusively, but that is part of the path: to step into a new alien possibility that shakes up your attachment to the fixed identity that you have.So, female is analogized with emptiness, and you go from emptiness to form, which is analogized with male, and then to the—Charlie: Right, so,David: —non-duality that is—Charlie: Yeah, so I wanted to pick up on that, and say that you’re starting with the feminine, in Buddhist tantra you’re starting with emptiness, and that is connected to wisdom. And then the male aspect: you’re connecting to form, to compassion. And then the non-duality: to the inseparability of both of those.And interestingly, in our culture, fluidity is more female-coded. And I wonder now whether the move into meta-systematicity, and beyond highly systematized thinking, is actually difficult, and one of the ways that it’s prevented, possibly, is that for men, moving out of that rigidly defined, very easily legible way of being looks and feels like a move toward “more feminine.” And because things are so clearly segmented culturally and socially, it’s very difficult for guys to do that.David: Yeah. It’s not a coincidence, presumably, that the tech industry has an awful lot of—a preponderance of—male participants.Charlie: Mm-hmm.David: Because this is basic gender psychology: that men are systematizers.Charlie: Say more about meta-rationality, in terms of our social circumstances, and gender.David: Well, I mean, before you can move into meta-rationality, you have to have mastered rationality. And to the extent that that is seen as masculine-coded, that could be an obstacle for women.Empirically, in the research done in the 1970s and '80s, many more men moved into what Piaget originally called “stage four,” which is the rational, systematic way of being, and that actually caused huge trouble at the time. There’s a famous book by the psychologist Carol Gilligan, who was a researcher in adult developmental theory, called In a Different Voice. I read it at the time it came out, which must have been early eighties? I thought it was brilliant then. Now it is hard to know why it seemed brilliant. Basically she just rejected the whole paradigm of rationality being a stage. And said: okay, maybe for men that’s how it works. But for women, there’s a different series of stages. And this was seen at the time as a breakthrough in feminist theory. Now the ways that people understand gender politics, that would be unacceptable; to say there’s separate hierarchies for men and for women. But that was very exciting at the time.But in her system, women never got to rationality! That just was, that’s a male thing. So, because meta-rationality does require rationality as a prerequisite, in terms of gender one would expect that one would find fewer women being meta-rational.Charlie: Hmm.David: However! As you’ve pointed out, there is then a move away from the rigidity that is masculinely coded, and in a direction which might be understood as toward more of a center position, a non-duality of the genders, at the meta-rational level. So maybe once women have accomplished rationality, which certainly a great many do, it may very well be that it’s then easier for them to move to the meta-rational stance.I don’t know. The problem is, this whole field, as an academic discipline, was abandoned in the wake of Carol Gilligan’s work! It just became too politically hot to handle. And so we have no empirical data on any of this. We’re just kind of guessing on a basis of anecdote.Charlie: Mm-hmm. So the whole field originally was centering around a relationship with rationality; and it came out of, and in conversation with, the rational tradition. I came at it via systematicity rather than rationality. And for a long time I actually thought of the field as being about systematicity; which is strongly connected to and related with rationality, but is not the same. And it seems to me that if we understand the stages in relation to systematicity, not only in relation to rationality, that there’s a lot more space there for understanding, for example, “stage four” in Kegan’s terms; understanding that as being about a relationship with systems.And when you look at it from that perspective, there are many ways in which a female-coded relationship with systematicity could be drawn. I’m thinking about some of my female clients and how a lot of the work that we do together is about systematizing emotional experience, systematizing boundaries and perspectives.David: Yeah. Piaget was a cognitivist, so he thought rationality was what was there. I think Kegan, a big part of his contribution was in extending that to systematicity in the relational and emotional domains.And my most recent post was about the fact that tech people (who tend to be male) tend to systematize in the work domain before they learn to systematize in the emotional and relational domains, and then they need to catch up.Charlie: Mm-hmm.David: And it’s not surprising that for women, they might do the relational and emotional domains first. And I gave the example of high level sales executives, who do have a very systematic understanding of relationship. And a lot of those people are women. That’s a much more evenly split.Charlie: Hmm. I didn’t realize that.David: It would depend on the industry, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was disproportionately women.Charlie: Mm-hmm. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit meaningness.substack.com/subscribe

The common civilizational pattern of a separate priesthood and aristocracy casts light on current political dysfunction.This video follows “Nobility and virtue are distinct sorts of goodness.” You might want to watch that one first, if you haven’t already.These are the first two in a series on nobility. There will be several more. Subscribe, to watch them all!TranscriptMany successful civilizations have two elite classes. They hold different, complementary, incommensurable forms of authority: religious authority and secular authority.This usually works reasonably well! It’s a system of checks and balances. Competition and cooperation between the classes restrains attempts at self-serving overreach by either.I think this dynamic casts light on current cultural and political dysfunction. At the end of this video, I’ll sketch how it has broken down in America over the past half century—perhaps not in the way you’d expect! In following videos, I’ll go into more detail, and suggest how we might respond.Archetypically, historically, and allegoricallyFirst, though, I’ll describe the dynamic archetypically, historically, and allegorically.Archetypically, the two elite classes are the priesthood and the aristocracy. They hold different types of authority (and therefore power).Priests hold authority over questions of virtue. They claim both exceptional personal virtue and special knowledge of the topic in general. On that basis, they dictate to everyone else—both aristocrats and commoners—what counts as goodness in personal life, and in local communal life.Kings, or more generally a secular ruling class, hold authority over the public sphere. They claim to exercise their power nobly. They may consider that’s due either to innate character, strenuous personal development, or both. That would justify a legitimate monopoly on the use of violence, and authority to dictate the forms of economic and public life.This typically leads to an uneasy power balance. The two classes need each other, but also are perpetually in competition. Priests provide popular support to the aristocracy by declaring that they rule by divine right—or proclaim that the gods are angry with aristocratic actions, so virtue demands opposing them. Priests reassure aristocrats that they, personally, will have a good afterlife—or warn of a bad one when they don’t do what priests say they should. Priests depend on the aristocracy for most of their funding, for protection, and for favorable legislation. The aristocracy can increase or decrease that, or threaten to.It’s extremely difficult for either class to displace the other entirely. Things generally seem to go better when they cooperate. Especially when priests are, in fact, reasonably virtuous, and the nobility are reasonably noble. Otherwise, they may collude with each other against everyone else.Sometimes, though, one side or the other is dominant, and subordinates or even eliminates the other class.Theocracy, in which priests usurp the role of secular rulers, does not go well. Priests try to increase their authority by inventing new demands of virtue. In the absence of secular restraining power, there is no limit to this. Most people do not want to be saints. When priests seize secular power, they unceasingly punish everyone for trivial or imaginary moral infractions. This is the current situation in Iran, for example. It’s bad for everyone except the priests. I expect it is unsustainable in the long run. Eventually there comes a coup, a revolt, a revolution, and the priests get defenestrated. (That’s a fancy word for “thrown out of a window.”)Secular rulers taking full control of religion also does not go well. A classic example was Henry VIII. He rejected the Pope’s supreme religious authority and seized control of the Church. He confiscated its lands and wealth, dissolved its institutions, and summarily executed much of its leadership. He was able to do that through a combination of personal charisma; the power and wealth that came with kingship; and the flagrant corruption of the Church itself, which deprived it of broad popular support.After clobbering the Church, Henry’s reign, unconstrained by virtue, was arbitrary, brutal, and extraordinarily self-interested. Economic disaster and political chaos followed.Henry was succeeded by his daughter Mary, England’s first Queen Regnant. She used her father’s tactics to reverse his own actions. She restored the Church’s wealth and power through brutal and arbitrary executions. For this, she was known as “Bloody Mary.”She was succeeded by her younger sister Elizabeth I. Elizabeth re-reversed Mary’s actions. She established the new Church of England, designed as a series of pragmatic compromises between Catholic and Protestant extremists.Elizabeth was, on the whole, a wise, just, prudent, and noble ruler—which demonstrates that the archetype of a Good King has no great respect for sex or gender. Likewise, the reign of “Bloody Mary” demonstrates that women are not necessarily kinder, gentler rulers than men.How modernity ended, and took nobility down with itAllegorically, archetypically, such colorful history can inform our understanding of current conundrums. You might review what I’ve just said, and consider what it might say about American public life in 2025.Now I will sketch some more recent, perhaps more obviously relevant history.On the meaningness.com site, I have explained how modernity ended, with two counter-cultural movements in the 1960s-80s. Those were the leftish hippie/anti-war movement and the rightish Evangelical “Moral Majority” movement. Both opposed the modernist secular political establishment, on primarily religious grounds. Both movements more-or-less succeeded in displacing the establishment.Revolutions can be noble. I think the 1776 American Revolution was noble. It was noble in part because the revolutionaries respected the wise and just use of legitimate authority. They accepted power, and ruled nobly after winning.The American counter-cultural revolution two hundred years later refused to admit the legitimacy of secular authority. Its leaders instituted a rhetorical regime of permanent revolution. For the past several decades, successful American politicians have claimed to oppose the government, and say they will overthrow it when elected; and, once elected, they say they are overthrowing it, throughout their tenure.This oppositional attitude makes it rhetorically impossible to state an aspiration to nobility. You can’t uphold the wise and just use of power if you refuse to admit that any government can be legitimate. Nobility, then, was cast as the false, illusory, and discarded ideology of the illegitimate establishment. In the mythic mode, we could say that everyone became a regicide: a king-killer. After a couple of decades of denigration, nearly everyone forgot what nobility even meant, or why it mattered, or that it had ever existed outside of fantasy fiction.Secular authority in the absence of nobilitySecular authority persisted, nonetheless. What alternative claim could one make for taking it? There are two.First, there is administrative competence. This was an aspect of nobility during the modern era, which ended in the 1970s. “Modernity,” in this sense, means shaping society according to systematic, rational norms. Developed nations in the twentieth century depended on enormously intricate economic and bureaucratic systems that require rational administration. One responsibility of secular authority is keeping those system running smoothly.Both counter-cultures rejected systematic rationality, as a key ideological commitment. However, it was obvious to elites, inside and outside government, that airplanes need safety standards, taxes must be collected, someone has to keep the electric power on. A promise of adequate management was key to institutional support from outside elites during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. That kept a new establishment in power.However, it lacked popular appeal. Managerialism is not leadership, which is another aspect of nobility—one that more people more readily recognize. And, as modernity faded into the distant past, beyond living memory, later generations failed to notice that technocratic competence matters: because we will freeze or starve without electricity.Accordingly, virtue has displaced competence in claims to legitimate authority. Initially, this came more from the right than from the left. The 1980s Moral Majority movement aimed for secular power, justified by supposedly superior virtue. Some American Christians explicitly aimed for theocratic rule.However, for whatever reasons, the left came to dominate virtue claims instead. They gradually established a de facto priesthood: a class of experts who could tell everyone else what is or isn’t virtuous. Initially it claimed authority only over private and communal virtue; but increasingly it extended that to regulate public affairs as well. In some eyes, it began to resemble a theocracy. It did increasingly display the theocratic characteristics that I described earlier. And, in punishing too many people for too many, increasingly dubious moral infractions, it overreached; and seems now to have been overthrown.Regicide and defenestration, OK; but then what?This religious analogy was pointed out by some on the right, fifteen years ago. I think there is substantial truth in it. However, I think they are terribly wrong about the implications for action. I’ll discuss that in my next post.If the ruling class is neither noble nor even competent, but can claim only private virtue, then metaphorical regicide (or defenestration for the priesthood) is indeed called for. That’s justified whether their claims to virtue are accurate or not. Whichever opinion about trans pronouns you consider obviously correct, holding that opinion does not justify a broad claim for secular authority.But… now what? Perhaps there is some noble prince in waiting, biding his time, cloaked in obscurity, like Aragorn, rightful King of Gondor?More likely, some commoners will need to reclaim, re-learn, and rework nobility. As did Frodo, son of Drogo, “a decent, respectable hobbit who was partial to his vittles.”Maybe… that should be you! As I’ve pointed out before, you should be a God-Emperor. Maybe now is a good time to get started on that? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit meaningness.substack.com/subscribe