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the Shurangama Sutra says

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the biggest danger in practice is thinking you are enlightened

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last episode we talked about the most famous opening of the Shurangama Sutra

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the seven inquiries into the mind

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the Buddha asked Ananda seven times in a row

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where is your mind

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Ananda answered seven times

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and every answer was wrong

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the conclusion of that episode was

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the mind does not sit in any place you can point to

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but

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knowing the mind is not there

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and actually finding where the mind is

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are two completely different things

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hello

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hi everyone

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I am Leo Wang

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today is part two of the Shurangama Sutra

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if part one was a mirror that exposes illusions

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helping you see that the mind you assumed was all a phantom

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then part two is a map of the minefield

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and what it wants to tell you is this

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when you really start going inward and sitting deeper

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how much your brain will manufacture that looks like truth

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but is actually a trap

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the last two scrolls of the Shurangama Sutra

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scroll nine and scroll ten

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spend two entire scrolls

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on just one thing

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the Buddha listed the strange states a practitioner can hit in deep meditation

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one item at a time

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fifty of them in total

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and he gave them a name

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the fifty skandha demons

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when you hear the word demon

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you probably picture a monster with horns

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but that is not what the Shurangama Sutra means at all

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the demon in the fifty skandha demons

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is you

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more precisely

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it is your five skandhas form feeling perception formation consciousness

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when consciousness shifts dramatically

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producing hallucinations emotional storms and false judgments

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they do not come from outside

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they are your own cognitive system recalibrating

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and the side effects that come with it

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the first time I read these two scrolls seriously

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I had a feeling I could not name

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it felt like the Buddha twenty five hundred years ago

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in a completely different language

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had written a manual of cognitive biases

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you know those bias lists in cognitive psychology

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confirmation bias loss aversion anchoring effect

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item after item

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modern psychologists spent most of a century

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working them out in the lab

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the Buddha had no lab

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no test subjects

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and no statistical tools

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he relied purely on direct observation of how consciousness works

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and he listed these fifty

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and he did not list them at random

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he followed the order of the five skandhas form feeling perception formation consciousness

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dividing them into five groups

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ten in each group

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from coarse to subtle

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from outer to inner

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layer after layer

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and that structure itself tells you something

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practice is not a straight road uphill

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every step you climb

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has a trap that belongs to that step

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and the higher you go

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the more refined the disguise gets

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let me walk you through a few of the groups

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and you will see how sharp the Buddha was as an observer

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start with the first group

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the ten form skandha demons

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they are about bodily perception

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have you ever had this experience

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you sit in meditation and go fairly deep

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with your eyes closed

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and suddenly everything in front of you turns bright

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not light leaking in from outside

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the field of vision itself lights up

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some people see colored orbs of light in this state

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some even feel their body turn transparent

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these experiences really do happen

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but they are not real in the way you think

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neuroscience has a very plain explanation for this

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when you stay in extreme stillness for a long time

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outside sensory input drops sharply

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the visual cortex does not shut down

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quite the opposite

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when it has no incoming signal

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it starts generating signal on its own

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once the sensory channel is cut off

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visual neurons begin firing by themselves

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plenty of people who sit in a pitch black room long enough

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also start seeing points of light and patterns

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with nothing to do with spiritual practice

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the Shurangama Sutra does not say these experiences are harmful

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what it says is this

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the experiences themselves are not the problem

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the problem is in how you read them

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the moment you decide you have seen through something

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and believe you have reached some level

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that is the real doorway and not the doorway into awakening

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it is the doorway into delusion

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now the second group

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the ten feeling skandha demons

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this group is about emotion

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at a certain depth of practice

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some people get hit by an enormous grief that comes from nowhere

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truly without any cause

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a sorrow that moves mountains

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you cannot say what you are grieving for

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but the tears will not stop

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other people go the opposite way

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suddenly flooded with bliss

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the body feels weightless

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the world feels endlessly beautiful

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both of these are feeling skandha demons

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modern brain science has a finding

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that lines up with this

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our brain has a system called the default mode network

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when you are idle and doing nothing

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it is at its most active

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and what it does is ruminate

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chewing over your past experiences again and again

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and simulating future possibilities over and over

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and in deep meditation

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the default mode network changes how it runs

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emotional memories that daily busyness kept suppressed

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get switched back on in that deep stillness

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and the prefrontal cortex

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the part of your brain in charge of rational control

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when you are deeply relaxed

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lets that top down gatekeeping loosen

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and it cannot intercept in time

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so you are not crying for no reason

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your brain is using the moment you relax

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to clear an emotional cache that piled up for years

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most of the time this process is good for you

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like a computer running a deep cleanup

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but that is not what the Shurangama Sutra cares about

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what it cares about is this

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when you are inside that flood of grief or bliss

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the moment you take it as a sign of realization

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the moment you feel you touched some cosmic compassion or dharma joy

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you have already gone off track

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because you are not experiencing the truth

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you are experiencing the byproduct of a cleanup

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and then you mistake the byproduct for the product

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a viewer left me a comment saying

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the hardest part of practice is not facing the darkness

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it is knowing you must not cling to the beautiful experiences

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and still wanting to hold on to them

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that is beautifully put

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the feeling skandha demons are hard to deal with

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because some of the traps are sweet

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next comes the third group

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the ten perception skandha demons

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of all fifty this is the group I think everyone should study most carefully

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why

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because the first two groups fool your senses and your emotions

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which are still fairly easy to spot

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but the perception skandha fools your logic itself

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it does not make you see something false

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it makes you reason in a way that looks completely correct

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and arrive at a completely wrong conclusion

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think about it

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how many people after studying Buddhism for a while

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start feeling they see more clearly than everyone around them

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how many people meditate to a certain depth

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and cannot resist lecturing others and pointing out the way

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even believing they can see through what is wrong with other people

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the Shurangama Sutra calls this craving for clever means

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which means

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you think what you picked up is wisdom

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what you actually picked up is a very refined cage of concepts

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you can explain anything

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everything you say holds together

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but you are locked inside the theory you built yourself

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this and what cognitive psychology calls confirmation bias

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are almost the same thing

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once a person forms a strong belief

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the brain automatically filters out all the contrary evidence

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and collects only what supports that belief

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and the smarter the person is

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the stronger this mechanism gets

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because smart people are far better able

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to build chains of argument that look airtight

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so the perception skandha demons do not attack fools

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they go straight for clever people

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this is also why

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some people who go very deep in spiritual practice

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end up more stubborn than ordinary people

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not because they saw too little

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but because what they saw was too good

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so good that they were unwilling to doubt it

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next comes the fourth group

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the ten formation skandha demons

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the formation skandha is the hardest of the five to grasp

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form feeling perception

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you can feel all of those directly in daily life

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but the formation skandha is different

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it is the ceaseless driving force deep in your consciousness

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Buddhism calls it the ceaseless flow

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like an underground river

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it flows while you are awake

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it flows while you are asleep

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you have never truly come to a stop

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when practice goes deep enough

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some people notice that underground river for the first time

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and it is a deeply shocking inner experience

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you suddenly realize

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that all the choices you thought were your own

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were being pushed along by a force underneath

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for the first time you see the gears of cause and effect turning

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the Shurangama Sutra says

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the easiest mistake to make at this stage

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is thinking that seeing it means controlling it

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you saw the relation between cause and effect

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and then you assume you understand the whole machine

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that is like learning to read a weather radar

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and assuming you can control the weather

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what you saw is a small projection of how the system runs

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but you took the projection for the whole picture

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some practitioners at this stage start saying they can see past and future lives

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the Shurangama Sutra says

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not all of that is false

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but once you believe you are the one steering it all

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you turn from an observer into a dreamer

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and finally the fifth group

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the ten consciousness skandha demons

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this is the last gate

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and the subtlest one

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at this layer

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what the practitioner feels is very close to the border of no self

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some people at this stage feel a state they have never felt before

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the boundary between self and universe dissolves

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it is not something imagined

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it is a genuine experience

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in that moment

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you no longer feel like a separate individual

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living inside an outside world

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inside and outside feel like one thing

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the Shurangama Sutra says

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that experience itself can be real

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but the biggest trap at this stage

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is feeling that you are the source of everything

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you are no longer a person walking in the world

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you feel the world unfolds out of you

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you might think that sounds too extreme

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who would ever think that way

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but look around carefully

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in history and today

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how many spiritual teachers in the end

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stopped right there

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they are not bad people

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inside that experience

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they really did feel the boundary of self and universe dissolve

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but they took an experience that was only a stage

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and treated it as the final destination

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they built a house on the road

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and never walked again

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and the followers gathered around them

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moved into that house as well

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believing it was the end of the road

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at this point

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you might want to ask a question

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with so many traps

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is there one antidote that works for all of them

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there is

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and it is a single line

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the sixteen characters at the very core of the Shurangama Sutra

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do not treat it as holy

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and it stays a good state

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treat it as holy

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and every demon moves in

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put in the plainest words

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whatever you run into during practice

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light

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grief

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wisdom

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oneness

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as long as you never label it and say this is enlightenment

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it is fine

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but the moment you feel this is me arriving

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and now I am different from other people

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that act of claiming is where the demon begins

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did you catch that

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the antidote the Buddha gives

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is not to stay away from those experiences

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the antidote is do not claim them

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light comes

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just see it

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grief comes

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just let it flow through

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wisdom surfaces

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just use it

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but the moment you say this belongs to me

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this proves I reached something the most stubborn self in the five skandhas

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has come back

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and the fifty skandha demons

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are really that self wearing fifty different outfits

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waiting for you on the path

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every layer you pass through

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it puts on a finer disguise

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and in the end

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it even disguises itself as the universe

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you may have had a moment like this yourself

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not necessarily on the cushion

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maybe after finishing a book

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suddenly feeling you saw through something

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that flash of clarity feels so good

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so good that you instinctively want to lock it in place

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you want it to become some kind of identity

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you want to tell people you reached a new level

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that urge to lock it in and announce it

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is the skandha demon knocking

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I keep coming back to one question

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why did the Buddha put these two scrolls at the end of the Shurangama Sutra

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I think the placement itself is a signal

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all those scrolls before

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helped you see the truth of the mind

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and pointed you to a road toward awakening

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but in the last two scrolls

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he suddenly stops and says

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wait

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I have to tell you something

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you have come this far

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and the road ahead looks brighter and brighter

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but precisely because it keeps getting brighter

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your odds of going wrong actually go up

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because in the dark

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you never mistake yourself for someone who has seen

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only once the light shows up

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do you get the chance to take a shadow for the real thing

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so the hardest part of practice is not holding on in the dark

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the hardest part is this

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when the light comes

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can you keep from reaching out to grab it

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I think this is not only a line for people who practice

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anyone going deeper and deeper in a field they are good at

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can run into the very same trap

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once you have piled up enough experience and insight

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the biggest risk is not that you are not good enough

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it is that you are too sure you are right

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that feeling of certainty

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is the doorway into the fifty skandha demons

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and the key the Shurangama Sutra hands you

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comes down to two words

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do not believe

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it does not mean stop practicing

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it means do not believe the voice that says I have arrived

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because whatever is able to say that

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is still your own thought

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still your own five skandhas

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someone who has truly arrived

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has no need to tell themselves so

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I am Leo Wang

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see you next episode