so the thought is that there's lots of things
we do in life to try to improve our well-being, and ones that are particularly well known or like
taking care of your health, you know, exercising physically, eating better, having a good diet,
making sure you sleep. Yeah, sleep is very important. Have a purpose and uh hobbies and friends and
community and have a sense of meaning in your life. And I think a lot of people would recognize
that these things are important. And then another one that's becoming like really popular on the
scene is taking care of your mental health in a way that's about psychologizing your experience,
so therapy and understanding psychologically what you are as a human being and your life story and
uh integrating past experiences and and healing trauma, these kind of things. A lot of people talk
about how that's really necessary. And then there's this other category that I think most people
don't actually know even exists, and it's a way of

tremendously increasing your well-being and 
reducing your suffering. That relates to meditation. That a lot of people think meditation actually 
falls into those other categories about kind of 
like improving your cleaning up your psychology or 
just having a more concentrated mind. Mindful mind 
or it's like a hobby or something like this 
or something. There's an aspect to meditation 
that I think is not so well known. I mean nothing's 
totally. Everything's kind of interrelated but 
could be separated out. It's about understanding 
your phenomenology. The raw mechanics of 
experience. The raw mechanics of phenomenological 
appearances and disappearances. And radically 
reshaping how the mind just models itself. That 
has nothing to do with storytelling. Nothing to do 
with. I mean I say nothing. Everything is related to 
you know some degree but you can separate this out. It's not about meditating to de-stress or 
meditating to heal trauma or understand yourself 
psychologically is whatever your stories go 
into your memories. It's not about helping.

you sleep not about decluttering your mind. It's just getting to the raw basic phenomenology of. Okay, you have a sound and a sound appears. What are the mechanistic qualities of this sound? Okay, it appears and it disappears. It has this impermanence to it, has this arising and passing to it. If you really get into sounding this, the hearing is different from feeling, and I can pull that apart. That's a separate part of experience. And if I listen to that sound, the beginning and the ending are really vague. Okay, so it doesn't have these harsh defined boundaries. But also in the height, the peak of the sound, there's no core to it as well. It's empty in this Buddhist sense, it's lacking a core. So, it's lacking some kind of fundamental actuality to it. And this is hearing, hearing is this vague thing. I can't quite pin it down, even if I get super super concentrated and isolate it. It's this weird amorphous thing.

it has these other qualities of unsatisfactoriness 
and no self as well as the impermanence and. It doesn't matter what sound is what sound this is. It doesn't matter if it's the most beautiful sound in the world or a horrible sound. It doesn't matter if it's your mother saying i love you. Whatever it all sounds has this quality. And then you move to the other senses feeling as these aspects to them as well and thinking and the seeing and all these things. And by just getting like raw data really training your concentration skills and metacognition and attentional clarity and how quickly you can notice phenomena appearing and disappearing. You just understand experience at a much rawer just more updated more upgraded fashion and you start realizing what this is what your life is what experience is and that there's certain things to notice that there's no center to experience actually there's this suggested center but if you look into that you find hang on it's not actually there there is actually no boundary to your

experience you a lot of people think okay well i 
mean a lot of people have this sense that there's   an inside and an outside to their mind you like 
subjectively feel this quality there's the world   and then when i close my eyes now i'm like 
inside my head inside my mind if you look if   you train these cognitive faculties you look 
for that inside and outside it's not there   and what's more is there comes a certain point 
where you look for these things and you actually   burst the delusion so that eventually the 
mind updates itself and it stops producing   that sense of in it and inside and outside it 
actually all together stops producing the sense   of a self or a sense of a center those 
things just disappear from experience   and this has nothing to do with storytelling 
nothing to do with how you like live your life or   whatever you're doing during the day it's 
just the raw phenomenology is just totally   understood to itself better and is re-transformed 
and this results in one of the most substantial

reductions in suffering and increases in your 
baseline well-being out of anything you could   do, really. And it's this kind of quite esoteric 
hidden side of meditation that i think hasn't   hit the mainstream yet. They don't realize, actually, 
this is where the far end of meditation can take   you. So that's kind of the general, did you follow 
what i'm saying? Do you get what i'm saying? Have   you heard this before or? No, actually, this is a 
new concept. So the main, as I get it, the main, uh, achievement is to realize that there is 
no center itself in a way that, yeah, all your   experiences don't gather, all the sensations don't 
gather in this centered self, but it's really   very flowy and you couldn't pinpoint where you 
hear, where you see, but but this increases your   wellbeing massively. But so what's the conclusion 
of because what seemed kind of relevant to me is   concluding as well. You said you stop having these 
borders to the outer world and your inner self or

your own entity. Yes, but what's the conclusion? Except for making enhancing your well-being, is there any other broader way? Like because we still live our lives, yes, and we're like part of something as much as we're like entities within these things we shape and are being shaped by. So because you said, um, yeah, there's this psychologizing trend, and it is so, which takes the individual very much away from this part of shaping what you're into kind of. And um, see, it's still part of it except for is there any other conclusion that would be interesting for me, but this is a bit out of meditation. No, no, no, I like it. The thing I can say for most certain though is it just reduces your suffering day-to-day and increases your average level of well-being. Then when we start extrapolating beyond, okay, what else does this do, then you start very easily sort of slipping into just anecdotal claims and claims that are less

obvious less justified, and then how does it 
change your behavior. It's not obvious, and   really, we need like a lot more research on this, 
a lot more scientific research. Like, is there   any tendencies that we can see that people who no 
longer have this sense of insight and outside? What   do they share? What do they have in common? What 
do they do is similar. It's not similarly a lot   of research that needs to be done. I mean, I will 
say, when you're suffering a hell of a lot less,   it becomes easier to attend to the concerns 
of other people if you care in the first place.   When you've dealt with more of your own 
shit, you're less in your own way,   and you're just kind of more just available to 
pay attention to other people, and you don't have   to worry about me so much. There's that aspect, 
but I don't think that's a guarantee because   you could get this and perhaps still 
be a psychopath and not care about other people.

you might be suffering not so much, but it doesn't guarantee that you care about others necessarily. I think it does have many deeper implications of how you understand reality, basically that your the thing we can know most intimately about reality, about what this is, is experiential. Like we're on the experiential side of things, you realize, Oh, this is what this world is, is way different than what I thought it was, than how I began on that journey where I thought like there's a really hard world here and that what I see is the same thing is what you see. And the fact that I I'm even like seeing the objective, you realize that all of this is a fabrication in your own mind and you never get to peek outside of your mind. There's a lot of claims people say, Well, yeah, meditation will make you more ethical. Unfortunately, it seems like that's not a guarantee because there's a lot of really high attaining yogis and monks and stuff who I mean there's

all kinds of sexual scandals you can read about with those people. But so realizing everything is empty, everything has no core, everything isn't satisfactory, yeah. It actually improves your wellbeing. Can you explain why? Because, okay, the unsatisfactory aspect of things is really the craving or the addiction to want to smoke a cigarette or do something or achieve anything is built on a myth that there's something I can do that will satisfy me, like satisfy me wholly. And people talk about having that like god-shaped hole inside of them. Do you know this kind of concept? People talk about having like a hole in their soul that they need to fill. And then, you know, sort of the tried examples, people will try to fill it with drugs and money and sex and like, oh no, those things don't do it. What you need to do is you need to fill it with more healthy pursuits and purpose and stuff like that. And then people say, like, well, no, no, even that kind of stuff doesn't do.

it you need to fill it with with religion and Jesus and God and you know you know this idea kind of feeling that hole people talk about? No. I just haven't heard this expression but yeah and really it's possible to deconstruct your experience in this really raw way that has nothing to do with psychology or nothing to do with blah blah so these other aspects of caring about your health matter. You know I'd still contend that being concerned about how we politically organize society matters. Your health matters, you know, not having trauma matters and then there's this other aspect as well. It's possible to notice that there's no center, there's no hole there and there's nothing that could possibly fulfill it because no sense experience or bundle of experiences are ever capable of amounting to a fully satisfying experience. You get this deeper and deeper and deeper. It's not even that things satisfy you for a little bit and then they wear off and like, Oh, it's impermanent.

and now i need to do something again to like feel complete again. If you really, really pay attention, things don't satisfy even for a second. It's really built an illusion. There's a myth like a unicorn. People are chasing, really expecting a kind of fulfillment always in the next moment. And once you really fundamentally understand what sense experience is made of, what this is, what sensations are, what all of this is, you really are incapable of ever fulfilling me in that way. And this, this actually makes you drop the pursuit of satisfaction. But at the same time, the pursuit of satisfaction is the other side of the coin of dissatisfaction. And you drop that and now you're no longer dissatisfied. You're not satisfied, but you're not dissatisfied. It actually collapses that duality. And you realize this thing, I think, is possible. Kind of full soul, full body satisfaction is a myth. It is not possible. It's not possible to ever achieve it. It's a total myth.

but I never wanted that in the first 
place. Actually, what I really want is, there's some feeling of dissatisfaction in me 
that I don't want to feel, and it's possible to get rid of that feeling of dissatisfaction, and 
that's all you ever wanted in the first place. That feels good. So that was the you 
talked about, the unsatisfactoriness, the emptiness. Seeing the emptiness of all 
things incredibly reduces your suffering because the reason why the world is kind of painful and 
hurts us is because we perceive it as these hard objects kind of knocking against us in these 
hard things. And it's one thing to notice that your thoughts are not really real in the way 
you thought they were, like you're imagining, Oh, I have to do this thing in a couple 
hours and I'm scared of doing this thing. You're totally lost in the thought, and 
you're believing it to be really real. And there's a way you can come out of that 
and realize, Oh, that's just a thought. I'm

actually worrying this thing. I'm worried 
about isn't even here. It's just a thought that move there. You get that move right? 
Recognize. Oh, just a thought actually calm   down like it's just a thought that same move 
extends all the way through experience so you   get to the point where okay you do that 
for thoughts, but you can do that even for   sensations and stuff and worries that are right 
here that oh I've got this physical body. You can   deconstruct that in experience and realize oh it's 
this sense that I have this hard physical body is   an empty construction actually in the mind that 
everything is an empty construction that has this   hollowness and really your experience just becomes 
way lighter, way flowier. There's also this, uh, I've   got this hypothesis that I have to introduce 
a term called amodal perception. Do you know   what amodal perception is? I don't know. So amodal 
perception is you can perceive the palm of my hand.

you can't actually perceive the back of my hand right now. Like, it's just not an experience for you, right? You can't see it. Your mind fills in the gaps. Your mind is heavily inferring that there is a back of my hand, so that when I show you, you're not surprised. You're like, Yeah, that's what I was expecting. Is that was there in some way. The way you're perceiving is, despite the back of the hand not actually being in direct view for you, you were experiencing it the whole time in some way. You weren't expecting there to be an elephant behind, but you weren't expecting there to be nothing. A lot of our experience is amodal perception this way that we don't directly experience it, but the mind is filling in the gaps. But this ends up creating a much more concrete world than is if you get really, really in touch with direct experience. For example, you see this park here.

again if you can unbind seeing from thinking and 
our perception. This visual field has no weight to   it, but your mind is heavily inferring the ground 
is hard. This is a heavy world here, a thick heavy   wall, and the ground goes deep, and that if you were 
to walk on that grass, you would feel its hardness.   But if you can really detach seeing from 
all the other senses, this visual field   is as thin as air, is super light, it has 
no weight to it. Do you get that thought?   And then you start doing that for everything, and 
your world just becomes super light. There's this   down regulation in amodal perception, um, 
and you can like permanently lock this in,   and it just day to day, then you're just 
suffering less. There's less contraction in   your body, you're holding less stress because 
you're taking things less seriously, but it   also seems to be if this is done well, this 
doesn't detract from your ability to function.

in the world. Like actually, you can still 
really function in the world. You're not   walking into walls or scared to walk on the 
grass because you think you'll fall through, or   any of that stuff. But then you just kind of 
exist. Your mind has just found a new, uh, new   more like optimal medium of less fabrication, 
but still being able to function in the world. Yeah, I think it's interesting because it's 
really about sobering up now, like letting   go of the chase of satisfaction. Because I feel 
like with every dissatisfaction, it's yeah, it   kind of boosts your potential to be satisfied 
on the next location, you know what I mean?   Because the lower you can go emotionally, the 
higher you can go as well. I don't, I actually don't   think it's symmetrical. I think you can have mania 
where people go like really high and really low.   I think the optimistic thing about this is 
I think it is actually quite possible to   curate your mind in a way that you actually 
get rid of a lot of the negative emotions.

and you're still left with a lot of the 
high positive emotions. Fortunately, um, yeah, I actually actually think that's the 
case. How is it related to meditation though? Again, just through this process of observation, 
you wouldn't, yeah, like what is okay, what are the other consequences. You just, you can just feel 
better and you wouldn't know it. You wouldn't think why is just paying attention to raw 
experience, why would it have this other effect of making me happy, actually making 
the highs higher and the lows less low, but it does. It actually does. It's because you 
find out there's a lot less to be worried about, a lot less to be stressed about. You understand 
what stress is, and when you understand what stress is at a visceral level, that it is a contraction 
of mental objects, and you become sensitive to the body and these contractions. You just, you begin 
to notice them and you, I'll just let them go. Oh, just drop that, let that go. I don't need to hold 
on to that. People build stress because they don't

realizing that they don't realize they're holding 
on to it, and it's just accruing and accruing and accruing. And also, they don't know even if they 
then they become aware of it, they don't know how to let it go. Meditation teaches this process. 
Pay attention often to your body and where you're tensing, and let go. And you learn how to let go 
and you learn how to let go, not just in the body, but let go like mentally at subtler 
and subtler levels, and you begin to learn how to manually let go of even the 
contraction of the sense of space and time. So then you can get into these states where 
space and time just disappear. They can't be held up in the mind. You've sifted through to such a 
subtle level that those unbind, they break apart, and then experience turns off, go unconscious for 
like a fraction of a second. This is like a blip.

and it feels like this total reset of the brain. What's stream entry? Stream entry is when you 
do that for the first time. Stream entry, so this is going off of, um, in 
Theravada Buddhism, they've got this four-path model of enlightenment, and stream 
entry is the first of the four paths, and it's a moment where 
you have that like blackout for the first time. You like consciously recognize 
that blackout, and then everything shuts off, and then reboots, and then when it reboots, 
it's not quite the same, and then it's not the same for the rest of your life. Yeah, but this 
thing stream entry is really possible. It's really doable. Like a lot of people can get stream 
entry. Yeah, it's like a really achievable goal. Like stream entry, like what changes after you 
enter the stream? After you enter the stream, yeah, um, people kind of. It's also a bit of a loose term, like 
people don't agree about what changes.

but um, I mean, I guess the experiences are different. Yeah, it's like you've crossed some threshold level of insight into emptiness and no self. It's maybe not full, but a couple things happen. You kind of understand a bit better. There's a way in which a lot of people, they walk around in life, they really feel like they are agents, like they have free will, that they control their actions and their body. They're doing things, and it puts a tremendous amount of pressure on yourself because it's like if I don't do it, then it's not gonna happen. And so it's [__] I need to always be doing, doing. That sense of agency starts disappearing, and you realize that there is no person in the middle controlling the machine here. This just happens, things just happen on its own. The universe is just, you can't stop this, like this is just happening. It will, the body, this being will react to things, so you have this

weakened sense of agency. It comes with a lot of relief. There's so many things in life i thought i had to control and hold on to, and you realize, oh, i don't actually have to. Like that will just do itself. So stream entry comes with a reduction in the sense of agency, a reduction in sense of self. For me, it was this sense of the inside and the outside that disappearing. I gained this ability to go into the witness, which is this dissociated detached state of mind where i kind of made this distinction between, oh, there's everything to be aware of, and then awareness is this separate thing. I actually don't want to give you this view because this is a wrong view, but this is what happened for me, and i was like, oh, i'm not my thoughts. I'm aware of my thoughts, and so somebody felt like there was this big field of awareness back here.

it's just this passive observer witnessing things, witnessing things arise and pass, arise and pass. That's a wrong perspective that you can get rid of. It's kind of very specific to you, it's hard to get specific, but there does seem to be some kind of threshold phenomena, people that happens to people, and not everyone. Like for me, it was a sudden moment. Like really, I can remember the exact moment it happened. I was in a philosophy class, I asked my philosophy professor a question, and then suddenly the whole world blacked out and then came back in a fraction of a second. And that was a very obvious before and after moment in my life. That after that, there was just suddenly all this spaciousness and increased level of well-being, reduction suffering, loss of the sense of agency, and no inside and outside. And that was a before and after. For other people, they don't have such a specific moment. It's more gradual for them, but they can kind of look back and realize, yeah.

it's different now. I'm not still perceiving myself as like this freewheeling hard agent body, but um, yeah, it's just the point I wanted to kind of make about why meditate. This is the real fruit of meditation. Like, this is the real kind of the deeper reason. Like, this is the journey that will have the biggest impact on the way you suffer. And because it's so fundamental to existence, and it's independent of location, situation, context, experience, it doesn't matter what room you're in, where you are, what you're doing. These are, you understand intimately, the core mechanics of what makes up experience: seeing, hearing, feeling, tasting, touching, thinking. And they're all impermanent, non-self, boundaryless. And it just becomes your whole life. It just becomes, this is everything. This is, oh, this is everything. This is everything. There's no exception.

What Most Don't Understand About Meditation (turn on subtitles)

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