Welcome back to the Denver Zochem Podcast.
I'm here once again with Joseph Wagner, and today we're going to
talk about the most excellent of topics, signs.
I think the thing I would say that Joe is one of my teachers
has taught me more than anything else is that 80 to 90% of the
path is staying psyched. That making this a path of joy,
right? And not just some chore or manly
disciplinary thing that you do really makes it way more
successful and you have a good time doing it.
So why wouldn't you do that? And I can think of few things
more that keep me really stoked or psyched.
Our science and what I really think science have a lot of
factors, right? That there's an external real
blessing factor of things that are a confluence of the lineage
and and the magic of Buddha nature and all of that.
But a huge portion of it is this word I just learned recently,
which is pareidolia. Pareidolia is when we see faces
and clouds or things like that, right?
And have mean find meaning in them, like Jesus and the toast,
this kind of stuff, right? And and so I've done this my
whole life. I've seen things in patterns,
textures, and people who are more open have this more, they
see this more. If you're a more open person
than you see and you find meaning in these things, you
know, And often in Tibet they refer to things like self
arising where they'll be images. And sometimes you'll be kind of
like, I don't see it, right? But other times it'll be really
clear and obvious that, oh, there is this image in this cave
wall. This phenomena is also what's
used to read tarot cards and, and all of these sorts of things
as well. It's your ability to really use
the world as a mirror for what's going on inside you.
This is at least part of what's going on.
And I think that getting familiar with this and not
having, you don't need to bring in the scientific skeptic mind
to this, right? That's why I'm bringing up this
term, a way of understanding that you're seeing the success
of your path start to show up in your life because changes are
happening on the inside that are reflecting on the outside.
Because in Tantra and in Buddhism in general, there is no
separation between inside and outside, right?
And that's also an important role of science is really
seeing, oh, you know, the more I've experienced this in my
life, like the number of synchronicities and, you know,
seeing images and seeing beneficial signs has happened to
such a ridiculous extent that I have so much more confidence
that this is an illusion, right? Isn't solid in the way that I
thought it was. So Joe, maybe you can introduce
this topic and your experience with this and and how
practitioners can use this to really fuel their path.
Well, I thought you said a lot of beautiful things there.
Yeah, I I guess this is all based on what what Damien just
said, which is that the path is hard.
It's like swimming upstream. It's much easier not to swim
upstream, turn around and go away.
Everything else is going, which is materialism and confusion and
nightmares and hating everyone and just the trouble of samsara,
you know, old age, sickness and death.
When you become a Buddhist practitioner, whether you call
yourself that or not, you're really turning and going against
the grain. That's so important to
recognize. And what do you need to go
against the grain? The grain in any circumstance,
whether you're, you know, paddling upstream in a river or
you're, you know, trying to get through a crowd of people who
are leaving to go into a burning building, whatever.
You need energy, you need power, you need.
And what's the basis of that? Being psyched, being motivated.
If you're not motivated, even if you're really strong, kind of
like, well, you know, being motivated.
To me, this is all about that. We want to get our practice to
the point where it goes on, whether we're however we feel.
But to get to that point, that's such a high level of integration
with your practice. Most people never get there.
They just end up kind of doing it for a while and being like,
you know, what'll be easier, as if I go to Peru and drink
ayahuasca, you know, or something else.
You know, I'm now I'm going to be in the Zumba.
Nothing wrong with that stuff, whatever.
But the Dharma is, is very special and we want to keep the
connection we have. We never know.
It's kind of similar. I know a lot of people, my dad
does drug and alcohol counselling.
So I know a lot of people in the recovery world.
You never know. I mean, most people get one
chance to get out, but I don't know if they're going to get
another chance. That's why you got to try to
make it stick because if the next time you've got that other
history of you going back out or getting back involved, so you
don't know if you can make it. We all have this one shot at the
Dharma, so we got to try to make that stick.
So that's the sort of structure in which we can talk about
signs. Otherwise it just sounds like
either self deception, if you're really materialistically looking
at it, or downright craziness, which you can easily turn into,
you know, from another perspective.
So you got to be a little careful with this.
But if your motivation is just to stay on the path, then these
things can be really helpful. So I want I wanted to say that
as a starter. Totally and and one of the
foundations, I think for beginning to engage with the
path like this is you got to write it down.
Whatever happens. If you have a a dream of your
llama or you see a sticker of a deity that you just started
practicing on the car in front of you, write it down.
This starts to help really foment the magic that's going
on. So keep a special book just for
this sort of thing. I think that's like step one.
I think that's a great place to start.
And then Step 2 would be to have some familiarity with symbols,
just having some kind of general knowledge.
You could read Carl Jung, you could study archetypes, you
could study the tarot, you could.
What's that? Joseph Campbell, he's all, yeah.
Having some familiarity with symbols and signs, this also
will help kind of foster this perspective because it is like
looking at life in a slightly different way.
Like I mentioned in the introduction, part of the
function of this is to stay a psyched and I would say the
other function is to really start to recognize that this
world isn't solid as we thought it was.
No, it's solid and it's inside of you.
In a certain sense, it's inside of you and that is the doorway
to pure perception, which is the sort of hallmark of the
Vaudreano hallmark of the Theravada is renunciation
hallmark of the of the Bodhisattva path of the Mahayana
generally is love and compassion, Bodhichitta and the
hallmark of the Vajriana is pure perception.
But to what we're really doing, because let's say you just sit
in your little room and you say Tara's mantra.
Then you go out and someone's like, Hey, I just happened to,
you know, somebody just chatting with on the street.
They're like, they're like, look what I found.
And it's a picture of Tara. You realize, hey, wait a minute,
outside. It's not really outside.
And that's the beginning of the ability to see things purely,
which is what we really have to offer to the world.
So what you're doing is you're, you're paying attention to the
manifestations occurring in your life and you're seeing how they
relate to what you're doing in your spiritual world and that,
and then they will start to link up.
And then you feel very motivated.
You feel like, Oh my God, Tara cares about me, whatever that
means, right in my little example.
So what do you want to do? You want to get in there and
pray to Tara. You want to make some offering,
some prostrations, you want to tell some other people about
Tara, whatever. So I think something Damien
said, I want to reiterate the importance of is you got to
write these down. If you don't do that, you will
forget because our minds are freaking deluged with so much
information. So no matter how little it is,
if you write it down when you are feeling bummed, when you're
feeling like my practice doesn't work, maybe I should give up
Buddhism and become a Trappist monk, whatever you can you say,
well, I'll look at my book and all of a sudden you got four or
five pages of amazing stuff. You're like, I totally forgot
about that dream. Remember when that person called
me right after I was praying for them?
Hey, that's and then it keeps you motivated because we only
have today, as I said in, you know, in a previous podcast, we
come out of nowhere in the morning and when we fall asleep,
it's like dying. We go no place.
We only have today. So today is both the time of
making the effort and also looking for the signs, looking
for the signs of accomplishment as they're called.
So I think that having this attitude, it makes it more fun
too. I mean, we got to make the
practice fun. If we don't, we'll figure out
something else that's more fun and do and not do this.
And then we'll be right back where we are, Wheeling around in
the land of samsara. Yeah, And I think tying this to
pure perception is really helpful because it it starts to
make a certain kind of more sense than it does initially,
right, That you can really look at this, that you are in this
delusion, this dream. And Guru Rinpoche is, is your
true nature who poked his head into your dream and said, yo,
you're dreaming, right. And then he appears to you as
your llama and you're yiddim and and that did this true nature of
yourself is trying to wake you up from the dream and is
starting to show up. And the more that you start to
go, hey, maybe this isn't real. Maybe this is just a dream.
The more you start to see, oh, the dream starts to like
feedback to you, right? Like, Oh yes, you are dreaming
and that you have influence over it.
And things go shitty when you go shitty and things get better
when you go better and you have some kind of, you know, like
obstacles or or blessings. This whole wave of things, we
can start to really see how we could look at life like that and
it, and maybe it makes more sense like that.
Then there's some external place with all these other beings in
it who just happen to show up in certain ways that correspond.
Exactly. I'll have to tell one story.
I don't want to get into too many stories of these in this.
Another aspect is we don't want to really share too much about
these because they kind of. Put that back, but tell this
story and then we'll talk about how not to tell stories.
So what one story that was just like mind blowing to me was that
I was getting my master's degree at Pacific Lutheran University.
And I was sitting there reading a book and one of the students
who was in my graduate class just vaguely knew that it was
Buddhist. And she comes up to me and she
sets a book down in front of me and says, I think you should
have this. It was in the free pile.
And it's Nam Kainorbu's tone book like not not like the
Tibetan Book of the Dead or something like literally a
sadhna that probably should not be in the free pile at a a
school was now in front of me a a text that I was practicing at
the time. This.
Sort of thing. You can't, and I can't tell you
the thousands of times stuff like this has happened.
That's one of the more extreme ones and obviously had nothing
to do with anything I was doing. You know, I didn't make it
happen, but this person that barely knew was like, you should
have this. That's just insane.
And these sorts of things will happen.
This is the magic of the Vajriana.
And I think that, you know, for those of you who are starting on
the path, recognize that this can happen.
And as it starts to happen, pay attention.
And the more you pay attention, the more it will happen.
And this is like the recipe for psyched upness.
That's very true and very good. And I will say something
responding to that. Bhadriana works.
It is, it will change your life. You can.
It is amazing. I've been involved for a long
time. Damien's been involved for a
long time. And if you look back at me and
say in high school, I was kind of vaguely interested in this
weird stuff. I was practicing judo and
whatever. I had an Asian connection, I
guess, but I was not a meditator or whatever.
That happened later. And you look at that Joe Wagner
and kind of thought, OK, well, how's he going to go in his
life? And you look at this one, Wow.
I have to say, I have been so blessed.
Where does that blessing come from?
Isn't that me? It's coming because of the
responsiveness of what we call the Buddhism, Modi, saffas,
whatever those are, right? This deeper aspect of the
possibility of being human, that most of us, we're more like
animals, right? Animals are interested in
eating, we're interested in eating.
Animals are interested in sex. We're interested in sex.
There's no difference there. We want to be entertained.
There's nothing. But there's a whole nother
world, a whole nother world of amazing stuff out there that we
get the opportunity to experience.
And when this stuff like you're talking about starts to happen
and things much more sort of long lasting than that incident,
which is a cool little thing, but things that are like
obviously years of sort of arranging, you're kind of like,
wow, you realize this is a dream and I am in the process of
waking up from this dream. And nothing is more psyching,
psyching you up than that. And to realize it's not a world
that we're fighting against. This world's created by me.
It's my karma. I see only my karma.
As I get more pure, the world gets more pure.
Too amazing. And that's the real opportunity.
And that's what we're trying to do here is like get you to give
it a try because it is pretty special.
I think it's the most special thing.
I've been all over the world. I've met tons of people just as
everybody else has. I've done a lot of stuff.
Nothing is cool like this is cool.
And the possibilities are literally endless.
And that's amazing. That's what this is sort of
about. Yeah, yeah.
And, and I I could just reiterate that the amount of
magic I've seen in my life to where now it's like, yeah, of
course it's like, doesn't even phase me anymore that this sort
of thing happens, right. Which not that long ago I would
have been like bullshit, right? Like this is, it really works
and it really proves itself. It's a self proving and I wanted
to reiterate before I move on from it and forget.
It's important to not talk about this stuff, especially outside
of your vajra relationships, especially if you have any pride
behind it. Right?
This will diminish the energy and power of those events,
particularly when they really feel like it maybe is something
you kind of did right. Like you could feel like I did
this mantra and I caused this thing to happen.
That can happen. Dangerous.
And so you want to keep that to yourself or talk to your llama,
but not really like, put that out there, right?
You write it down and just keep it for you.
That's the better way to go. Yeah, I mean, we say write it
down because it's just so easy to forget.
And then because our minds are so narrow, you might have had an
amazing day yesterday where you really felt like I got it, but
something happens today and you feel like screw it.
It takes a long time to make these habits and really change
the direction. What we're really doing is we're
like in a ship and we're going toward a certain port, but that
port is just rebirth and just one more try.
Now we get this idea, hey, there's another port.
It's a much better place and we're trying to go there.
But you can't just turn the wheel for a second and then it
turns back and you know, you got to keep doing it.
And so this is about staying psyched.
So that's for writing it down. But don't show anyone this.
You know, it's, it's much better if you keep it 100% secret and
only share it with your teacher. Now, in some cases something
happens. It's not you know, it's you
don't have a lot of pride behind it or whatever.
Then sharing with your Vadra siblings can be beneficial, but
keep it on the down low. If if in doubt, keep it to
yourself. That's important.
They in they're very clear on the tantras and all teachers say
don't talk about signs of accomplishment, not even like
really good dreams and stuff. It does diminish the chances it
will recur. And it's like energy.
You're building up this energy and then here pops out some
weird thing that sort of, you know, like the book or other
kinds of stuff, pops it out and if you talk about it, it somehow
like removes that and that energy has to build up again.
So that's important to keep in mind.
It's really just for you. Yeah, your ego can hijack
everything on the path, right? And that's, that's a constant
part of what we're asking the protectors everyday when we do
the protector offerings is we're asking the universe to kick our
ass when we start to hijack the path or wander off.
Right. Like shepherds.
What trunk for? She called them, which I really
like. You know, you're the sheep and
you wander off and they come kicking you and sometimes they
hit you with a stick to get you to go back.
It's not often pleasant, but this, this permeability of life,
you know, the name Buddha, right, means one who is awake,
right? That becomes more and more
profound as you walk this path, as you really see that that is
what this is about. And the analogy to sleep is so
exact, it's crazy. And that, you know, when you
talk about pure lands or you talk about pure vision or any of
these things, we're talking about changing the dream, right?
And, and when you start to do this stuff, you start to see
that is possible. Of course it's possible.
I have to say it's harder for us now than it probably ever has
been in a lot of ways, because we are so connected to so many
people and so many materialistic positions that having faith and
staying psyched is freaking hard.
You know, if you were in Tibet or Nepal during the time when
this stuff was really big and they didn't have a connection to
the outside world, then everything around you would have
reinforced your faith. But we live in a world where
everything is trying to discredit your confidence in
what you're doing. And so that's another important
part of all of this is situating yourself in a way, and signs are
part of that where you can say, I don't care what they think,
they're wrong, right? Like even though that every
message is coming at you, that from a materialist perspective.
Yeah. Do we have time to talk about
what signs are or do we have to do that in our next one?
Oh, we have time. Oh, great.
Well then let's talk a little bit about what when we say
signs, like, what are we talking about?
There are traditionally sort of several different categories of
signs. There are signs that happen in
your regular life, like a, like you actually meet the meditation
deity that you're, you know, that you're meditating on.
Like you get a, there's a knock at the door, you open the door
and it's Vodraculi. If stuff like that happens,
you're either totally nuts or you're amazing.
So that's it in your regular consciousness, that's rare.
Then there are things that happen when you're in a
meditative state. You're in a, in a state of
samadhi or some sort of absorption where you might have
a vision of a deity or you might hear a teaching or something
like that. But these are both happen when
you're awake. Awake meaning.
You know, not in your bed asleep.
And then there are all kinds of dream signs, incredible lists of
things you know from finding a treasure to receiving teachings
to going to pure realms, to meeting your teacher in the
dreams. All these things fit in this
category. And most practitioners that you
know a little bit about this, they're listed in various Sadhna
practices or the teacher talks about it or whatever.
So you would have some familiarity.
What I want to encourage our listeners to do is to be on the
lookout for things that aren't those things to, to keep your,
your eyes peeled, so to speak, in your daily life for little
bits of shouts from the other shore, so to speak.
And those can happen really all the time.
Very unusual things can happen. And they're not necessarily
signs that your meditation's amazing.
They're a sign that you're in the flow.
You're in the flow. Any kind of synchronicity is
like this, whether it's related to Dharma or not.
I, I will tell one that has nothing to do with Dharma, but
was so powerful and interesting that I was quite blown away by
it. So my brother lives in Thailand.
He has a son. His son got very, very sick and
they had to consult experts from around the world.
And they got in touch with this woman who's based here in
Denver, a Doctor Who is the world expert in this condition.
And they when they came during Christmas, they actually got to
meet with the doctor. They were dealing with a doctor
there, so just dealing on Zoom or whatever.
But they got to meet the doctor and they, you know, they had a
good conversation, whatever. So my mother, I was visiting my
mother the other day when she was volunteering at the library.
She said, I got a story for you, OK.
She said she was talking to someone.
I don't even remember how she met this person.
Another volunteer, I think another place that she
volunteers and she just started to bring up that, you know, my
brother had been in town and this doctor and they got to meet
the doctor and the woman got a funny look on her face and she
said, is it such and such? And my mom was like, yes, she
goes, I know her, we're in the same like Rd. biking club.
Let's give her a call. And so they called her right
then and I was like, wow, it's like 6° of separation, right?
Very close. When this starts, this stuff
happens, you feel like you're in the flow.
When it happens related to Dharma, you know, it's a it's a
whole nother level of possibility becomes, becomes
evident. And so looking for this and
paying attention, first of all, you notice more of them because
they're happening all the time. And secondly, you, you are more
psyched. So you're more likely to be
like, hey, I got a few minutes. I'm gonna knock out some mantras
because Tara keeps showing up. She must want to hear from me or
whatever, right? And then you never know what
will happen after that. So the main thing here is to
keep your eyes peeled. You're kind of like paying
attention. Maybe we're paying totally
attention. You're just kind of like going
through your life like because it's work or whatever.
As soon as you start to pay attention, you never know what
will show up. Some magic might might poke its
head in, even at your law office or wherever.
Yeah, but I think one of the the ways that, you know, I've often
wondered, of course, I think it's possible that you could
have those complete signs like seeing the deity in real life.
I think that those chances are diminished because I think that
we're affected by other people's lack of faith.
You know, like I think that there's a field of faith, right?
I think part of why miracles used to happen more is because
there was many people with faith, right?
And so that makes the possibility in the dream because
we're so interconnected more likely.
But for me, how this has shown up is just feeling incredible
devotion to people. So I've been watching this show
on HBO and if you haven't watched it, it's fantastic.
Called The Pit and it's the main dude from ER and it's another ER
show. They call it the Pit, right?
It it's but the most realistic emergency room show I've ever
seen. And it is like Game of Thrones
level gore, right? Like they show you real what
it's really like, you know, just a mess.
And I'd watch this and I just feel incredible devotion to ER
doctors. Like every day there are
Buddha's and Bodhisattva is working in hospitals like this,
like the crazy things that are just like literally non-stop
emergency. They're underfunded,
understaffed and spending every second of their life saving
people's lives. This is happening every day in
every place all around us, ambulance drivers.
And, and I've noticed as I've gone on my path, I feel like
more and more devotion towards people who do kind of things
like in some ways that's seeing the deity, right, like.
One of the. You're what does it mean to see
the deity? Does it mean the word Tara or
Chanrazee comes with the person? Or does it just mean you have
devotion for that? I'll tell you one that happened
today along those same lines. So I was driving over to play
pickleball, play pickleball on Saturday.
I'm driving over and and I'm in this lane and in the next lane
over there are four cops on motorcycles, something you
rarely see, and they all got the exact same outfits on.
And there's two and two like this and we have to stop the
same thing. And I don't know why I said
this. I just rolled my window down and
I said, you guys look super bad ass.
And the guy was like, thanks a lot.
It was like, so obviously like cool.
And then he zoomed off, and I thought, those are the
protectors. And on some level, they really
are. I know some of our readers might
have bad experience with the police, but in general, I want
to live in a place where I can call 911.
No, in general, it's definitely true.
And I was like, there they are. Where are the protectors?
You know, I don't see Vajrasadhu coming to my aid when I call
911. I see dudes dressed like that
and I thought it starts to be a shift and you start to be like,
maybe I am in a kind of pure realm.
I'm in as pure a realm as I can handle.
You know what I mean? So that was just today and I
totally forgot about that. I wouldn't even put that in that
category until you started talking about the doctors.
Thank you. Yeah, and I, and I've learned a
lot of this from Garchingrich Shea because he really has pure,
pure vision, right? Like, he's really good at this
and teaching this, You know, he's like, he's kind of scolds
you almost in a way. Like you need to be grateful to
your country, even when it's being a giant pain in the ass.
It's protecting you, letting you practice the Dharma, all these
things, right? Like, you should be very
grateful. He always has an American flag
on his little altar in front of him as he's teaching.
We could have a lot more faith in the world.
You know, it's very easy to be negative.
It's very easy to see the negative side of things.
But as we talked about in our previous episode about these
difficult times, that's not helpful.
That doesn't help our path. But seeing the police as they
drive by and being like, thank you.
That is helpful for them and for you and letting them, you know,
having a positive connection. And the same way like we can
think about when we see the ambulance go by with the lights
on with the fire truck, we can say Omani Peme and know that
those people are risking their lives saving people and that
there are beings who need help. And people are at the end of
their life every day, all the time, all around us, that this
is a lot more magical than at first seems.
And there's a lot more people doing, you know, I work as a
teacher. I know everyday people just
grinding this difficult job with difficult children in an
understaffed, underpaid way. They dedicate their whole lives
to it. These are all Bodhi Selfas,
right? And so, you know, it's hard work
and I think that most people are doing something like this, even
if they work on computers or they're, you know, they're doing
something positive for our world so that we can all, you know,
like even our targeted ads, which drive us nuts are giving
us the products we need. You know, like even that, you
know, we could find the, the very thing we were looking for
so we could shift up and, and I think seeing signs like you're
saying, keeping our kind of that mindfulness of it, right, that
that's part of it is just the practice of where, where is it
going to poke through? Where's it?
That'll also increase your mindfulness and awareness in
general, and also help you have a more pure vision.
Great. Yeah.
Yeah, well, I, I think that this is a super fun topic and you can
go really, really deep into it. Like Joe said, there's many
signs like going upstairs or, you know, like these sorts of
things you can look for in your dreams.
So you can go as far or not as far as you'd like, But notice
how they can be really helpful to, to Orient yourself in this
way and to be, to recognize your practice is working it it, it's
not always obvious. I heard this quote from Garchin
Rupsche the other day and it was really helpful for me.
He said those practicing zokchen and Maha mudra are like in a
flying in an airplane. When you're driving a car, the
the road you're passing looks like it's going very, very fast.
In an airplane, you're going even faster by a many magnitude
level, but it doesn't look like you're going anywhere at all
because there's no reference, right?
Because there's nothing to pass by very quickly.
So when we're doing these big kind of meditation, sometimes we
can feel like we're not getting anywhere.
Like what am I doing? So the signs are one way to just
the kind of like Grimshay's way of reminding you, you're on the
path. Keep going, keep going, you
know, and, and if you look for it, they'll show up.
And, and if you stay connected, you know, he'll be there.
Grooms will show up and say, hey, you're doing great.
Keep going. And that's what these really are
about. Just keep going.
Yeah. Well said.
Thank you. Very good.
Thank you. Well, thank you again to all you
listeners once again for watching.
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We love getting those recommendations.
A lot of the shows we do are come from listeners recommending
or asking for something. So I hope you've enjoyed it and
we will see you again in two weeks.
Thank you very much for watching.