Tell me about your vision. Okay, my vision. It's
so interesting. We were talking just a bit before
we came on. As a visionary entrepreneur, well,
entrepreneurialism covers all sorts of fields.
My field would be the dissemination, the growth,
the spread of these wonderful wisdom teachings
that are coming over from Asia, specifically
within Buddhist and Sufi formats. but that are
in need of real renovation that uh the orientation
towards these practices isn't going to work over
here and what i'm getting at uh harry you think
of sitting meditation practices and mostly you
think of people and even you're instructed to
sit like a stone garden statue of the buddha
frozen still maybe that worked over in asia it's
not going to work over here and it can't that
kind of Old school thinking creates pain in the
body, stops breath in the tracks, fuels the already
out of control, you know, ticker tape parade
of thoughts in the mind. That's everything that
you're drawn to something like, oh, I'm going
to get into meditation. You want that not to
happen. So I feel in some ways that the cutting
edge of, you want to call it a reformation, it's
certainly a new, you know, development, a new
facet. of this wisdom jewel that is going to
specifically suit us here in the West. It's different
here from Asia. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that.
Tell me more about that. It's very interesting
what you mentioned. I'm actually born and raised
in India. Me? Oh, you were. I am. I am born and
raised. Your last name. Yeah, maybe that was
from. We're in India. In New Delhi. Uh -huh.
Got it. So I'm very familiar with. the the buddhist
meditation practices in a lot of ways but tell
me more what do you mean uh by things need to
be different here so it's interesting because
even let's just talk about buddhism it begins
in northern india oh but then it starts migrating
And you might think of one migration out of India
down into Southeast Asia up through China. It
keeps changing. Every time it encounters a new
territory, it ends up in Japan, the shores of
Japan. And I have this image of the gentle Chinese
monks getting off the boat on the shores of Japan
and they meet the samurai. and Zen becomes fierce.
The teachings always change through their interaction
with the cultural, spiritual realities. The other
one to mention is the North Indian teachers climbing
the Himalayas onto the Tibetan plateau, the indigenous
Bampo people, shamanistic, animistic. Suddenly
there's these images of wrathful and peaceful
deities, okay? The teachings are moving to the
West. It's in many ways, maybe only the third
major migration in the 2 ,500 year history. And
there is no way that a uniquely Western form
of practices won't develop here based on the
cultural, spiritual realities of the West. First
of all, we're all coming alive in our bodies.
You know, I look back on my life, Harry, and
one, it's the rave movement. You know, I mean,
our kids are moving. I wasn't moving like that
when I was that age. And most people who've sat
through long retreats, Vipassana retreats, Vajranadhatus,
they'll say, yeah, the wisdom teaching is great,
but it is so horrifically uncomfortable, painful
to sit. immobile for long hours and long days
and one of the things that i definitely see happening
here is that we're going to be making the practices
so much more i've used the term user friendly
immeasurably more comfortable and that's actually
what got me an outsider invited into the Buddhist
world. Because, you know, good -hearted people,
but so stiff and tight and in so much pain. And
I would get, I've done a lot of sitting, but
I never affiliated myself with any tradition.
They're always a little tight, right? But I got
invited to teach in that world because, you know,
I can get people. It's so simple, just some simple
ways of being in our bodies to just let go and
soften. It's not only immeasurably more comfortable,
you go far deeper, far more rapidly into the
revelation, the awakenings that can happen. So
I do, I think of this in some ways. In terms
of what we're talking about here in your show,
it's an entrepreneurial innovation. And actually,
if it doesn't take root, I don't see how the
old ways of doing things are going to work over
here. So what do you see? Tell me more. How does
your vision and what you do incorporate or come
together in that sense? Yeah, okay. It's not
like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
The wisdom teachings from the last 2 ,500 years
are as pertinent today as they were when they
were first written or uttered or whatever, right?
It's just that, honestly, I view the majority
of the Buddhist world as excluding some of their
most seminal culminating teachings. One from
a Tibetan teacher, do nothing but relax. That
what meditation is not about the mind, it's about...
awakening this kind of sense of relaxed felt
shimmer through the body. You want to be relaxed?
Ah, as you breathe, breath has to move through
the body like a wave through a body of water.
But if you're like this, it's like everything's
all dammed up. So these are some of the, you
want to call them innovations, that I see we've
got to now... It has to start making its way
into the teachings, the cultural milieu. It's
like an innovation in any discipline. If you
have an old business model nowadays, you're not
going to do very well, right? Yeah. That can
be debated, but I still want to know more what
you mean. Okay. I'm still trying to understand
your vision. I'm interested a lot. So help me
understand it more well. Okay. So in terms of
what I'm doing and how I'm interacting with students,
if the most radical piece I bring to the Buddhist
conversation is my insistence that bodies are
to be really relaxed. Oh, breath has to move
you. Bodies have to. You've got to let go of
the frozen stillness, the most controversial
piece. Here is the other thing that I look back
on in my life here in this culture into which
the Dharma is moving. What are the main explosively
homegrown cultural events? The rave movement,
the advent, and availability of entheogenic substances.
frankly from cannabis to lsd now the you know
the prohibition against these things has meant
that there's very very little protocol for how
to using these substances safely and effectively
and what else is interesting the orientation
coming from asia is very mind oriented concentrating
focusing those substances don't work for that
but for these ah ah body awakening breath -liberating
practices. And I'm not making this up. This is
from the scriptures, right? These substances
can work for many people very well. So, you know,
you want a controversial statement from me, that's
it. That's it. So I do. I work with Pure Land
people. They wouldn't go any near this. I work
with Ganja Sangha students who will take a small
amount of cannabis before we... sit down and
experience this awakening that can occur. So
tell me the why behind this. Why does someone
want to experience this? And what has that done
for you? Yeah, really legitimate questions. Why
in terms of introducing this kind of orientation
to a Buddhist world? Because it works. You go
so much deeper, so much more quickly into what
I call the revelation realms. And why would anybody
in their right mind want to explore these practices?
Because I can't even begin to explain how healing
they are, because you've got to awaken the body.
Look, we're all tied up. We've got knots. We
hardly breathe. If people really look at how
they breathe, they're lost in thought. it doesn't
even qualify as sniffing there's so little air
but then the culminating instruction on breathing
from the historical buddha is as you breathe
in breathe in through the whole body just like
a wave through a body of water and the bottom
line is that it feels so much better and it uh
in a sense reveals exposes you to a level of
being a level of self that uh from where i sit
this is human beings birthright you know we're
here on this planet to experience this altogether
natural truth of essential nature and those sounds
sounds like a lot of words but i'm talking about
an experiential awakening that's available for
all of us if we actually listen to the teachings
do one evoke Such relaxation. There's shimmer
through the whole body. Listen to the teachings
on breath. Not just observe from a tight body,
but letting go so deeply. And you're exposed
to this alternative dimension. Look, mostly the
world of form, that's it. That's reality. Okay?
I won't go long on this. The Heart Sutra says,
uh -uh, that's only half of reality. There's
this other. wide -open dimension, and it's valuable
to experience. The quantum physicist David Bohm.
Yeah, science is great, what it's done, infinitesimally
small, astronomically large, but that's only
half the picture. It's the world of form. Permeating
reality is the substratum of something. I want
people to experience that. Thank you for being
here today. I'm really happy that you tuned in
to Vision Pros Live. I'm looking forward to seeing
your reactions as these episodes continue to
move forward. This is going to get more and more
fun. We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show.
And thank you for giving us your time and attention.
Have an excellent time building out your vision
and becoming a vision pro yourself.