The Launch Pod

A one-minute excerpt from a talk by Doug Sensei on the Diamond Sutra held at Zofukuji Temple, Miki, Japan, on Jan. 4, 2013. You’ll want to listen to this one over and over again. http://podcast.clearskycenter.org/ Transcript: “Bliss is present because there is no one trying to do anything. Be very clear about this: bliss arises when you no longer try to do anything. Whether ...

Sensei offers a suggestion on something to do for a New Year’s resolution for 2013. Some quotes from Sensei: “Where do you tend to undermine your own unfoldment?” “It’s not hard to awaken. You just have to want to do it.” Definition of “passer le temps”: doing something simply to pass the time

The metaphor: Traveling west to east, from Nagoya to Shizuoka to Yokohama before reaching Tokyo. “Tokyo” is the awakened state, while any city along the way is still part of conditioned existence. Question: “Could you speak a little bit to Westerners? We seem to have these expectations that our teachers need to prove that they’re holy by living in a certain way to determined ‘by me.’ At least in North America we think you shouldn’t smoke, should probabl...

Part three of four on Doug Sensei’s “The Map to Awakening” talk The ongoing metaphor:  “Tokyo” = Awakening “The ego is an artificial boundary produced to defend itself against being swallowed up. That the ego is there is not the problem. The problem is that it’s there when it doesn’t need to be there, which is, fundamentally, 99% of the time.” “What is the awakened consciousness? The awakened consciousness is the being who doesn&rsquo...

“We are one cell each in a body called humanity. And this, as I see it, is where the dispensation and the map for the future lies in terms of the evolution of human consciousness.” — Sensei Doug Duncan For the first part of this talk, listen to the previous Launch Pod podcast, “First, You Need the Map!” (FYI: The geographical progression eastward is Kyoto > Nagoya > Shizuoka > Tokyo) “We want our explorations to be wider, more incorpora...

“The awakened consciousness is THE evolutionary step for humanity in total. The destination for the human species is awakening.” — Doug Duncan Sensei “You’re going to be seeing more people awaken more speedily and more easily than ever before in history.” “The absolute bottom-line fear, the main issue, for every human being throughout their life is the fear of disappearing, which is equated to mental illness. After all, mental illness is a real p...

Doug Duncan Sensei: “In meditation you’re not trying to _change_ your sensations, your passions, your lusts — you’re trying to see it clearly.” “All the skandhas — form, feelings, perceptions, etc. — happen at the same time. It’s too compacted to get a good look at. So you take it apart.” “Once you know your ego — stimulation, recognition, structure — you’re already free of it. You don’t have to change it. You do...

“Awakening isn’t so much that you’re fixing what’s wrong or improving what’s gone off as you are expanding your range to include what you exclude.” “Namgyal Rinpoche mentioned two ways to increase your intelligence: increase the range of what you eat and increase the range of your sexual experience.” “‘Unwholesome’ means choosing things that you may be habitually comfortable with but which aren’t taking you forward. They’re ...

In this concluding section, Sensei answers such questions as: How do you live in the moment and still plan for the future? Aren’t there authentic pleasures that are not based on addiction? How can you not identify with the objective world in a healthy way that still allows you to function?

In the end, the nature of addiction is an attempt to escape the pain that is at the core of all of our beings. Getting on with the spiritual work means learning to be okay in the present moment, just as it is, without need for stories or elaborations, knowing that we’re going to die, that no absolute security is to be found, that everything is impermanent. Part 4 of 5, public talk, Winnepeg, Canada, Sept. 2009