I have had a few emails about finding the videos relating to these talks so have updated the previous post about them (below) to include the link which worked for me…but if you’re in a hurry to get straight there.. here’s the link to the third video ( most recent, March 13/14) in the series of four Lama Chetsangpa talks.
If you scroll down below that you will find the previous two.
Happy cows chewing the dharma cud!
Cows digest grass. It’s not so easy to break down the cellulose to get the nutrients they need. In order to facilitate this they have four stomach compartments, and they chew the cud…(see below)
We humans just chew our food a bit then swallow it…down to the stomach where most digestion occurs.
However , we are not so used to digesting the very healthy kind of food found in this text and need to keep at it, with it, over time…chewing more diligently than a cow chewing grass!
James, i think, said he had made eighteen different translations of this…That’s going to provide a qualitatively different level of nourishment from the casual ‘Oh yes I’ve read that’ (My ego-driven quick response on mire than one occasion!)
Following on from the advice he gave, mentioned in the previous post, on how to listen to the talks…in the latest, third, weekend’s teachings, James suggested how we might engage with the texts to maximise our receptivity to the depth of wisdom from which they originate.
He invited us to write the text out by hand. This will deepen our relationship with it… and at the same time we can make a note of anything which is not clear to us. Then checking this with the commentary which opens out the text making it more accessible.
If queries remain then answers are available…!
Repeated engagement will surely effect incremental or perhaps, through time, sudden changes.
Simply Being (1998 edition) was the first Dharma Book I read and, despite the teachers encouragement to take it really slowly, line by line, I could not do that.
From a young age I was addicted to reading – the next page, the next page the next chapter – devouring without any reflection.
This habitual way of reading has taken many years to change… to slow down and really engage whole-heartedly… has not come quickly or easily.
At the beginning I would read through the texts and the notes that went with them a few times but found them hard to digest. Lacking ease and familiarity with the concepts and vocabulary i could not unlock them, and mostly happily engaged with part 2 The Talks instead!
Even there I skated over the second paragraph where it suggests that the ideas presented are to be engaged with and struggled with for the maximum benefit to be obtained. I was just struggling to engage…
The more recent edition was a revelation and, for me, much easier to engage with, so if you haven’t updated you might well find that worthwhile…
But even then the texts were challenging…but opening up a bit, and becoming more ‘relatable to’.
For me this was largely thanks to the Macclesfield teachings where there was time for James to expound the different aspects of the dharma tree in a way which engaged directly with our conditioning… and also through reading and engaging with other dharma writings by James and many others.
Surely some of the headaches from trying to engage with this text, as given in the book, will be much eased by the commentary that he has been giving over these four sessions…
Gradually the words and their meaning and our alignment with them come together… the blurred and cloudy vision clears…
Then the import and impact are such that giving time to receive becomes the only way that’s fitting.
Read a bit, reflect, meditate… repeat…this can become a fully satisfying engagement rather than an onerous task to be completed
Here’s the link to the third video ( most recent, March 13/14) in the series of four Lama Chetsangpa talks.
If you scroll down below that you will find the previous two.
Question: Why do cows have three stomachs?
Answer: Cows are true ruminants, which means they have four stomachs, the first of which is the rumen. When a cow takes a bite of grass, it chews it briefly, mixing it with a large amount of saliva. The grass then passes to the rumen, which is a large pouch. The rumen does not produce digestive juices. Instead, it is a fermentation chamber that contains millions of bacteria. These microbes produce digestive enzymes that break down the cellulose in the plants. When a cow “chews its cud,” it returns a small lump, or bolus, of food from the rumen to the mouth, where it is thoroughly chewed. When the cow swallows the bolus for the second time, it is finer and settles at the bottom of the rumen. The rumen contracts, forcing some of this well-chewed food into the second stomach, or reticulum. From there it passes to the omasum (third stomach), where water is extracted. It then enters the true, or fourth, stomach, the abomasum, where gastric juices (containing hydrochloric acid) are added to the food. This kills and disintegrates the microbes from the rumen, making the nutrients in the microbes available for later digestion and absorption.
Source of info on cows stomachs!
photo:Jim Champion / Cattle ruminating at Latchmore Bottom, New Forest
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cattle_ruminating_at_Latchmore_Bottom,New_Forest–geograph.org.uk-_157259.jpg
‘Like hospital food… do yer?’
I remember hearing this phrase from my youth!
It is really saying ‘If you don’t do what I would like you to do then I will hurt you so badly you will end up in hospital… and suffer the limitations and constraints – relating to nutritional understanding, financial, logistical, and so on – which operate in trying to feed the variety of people who turn up and are cared for in our hospitals.
This seems bad but hopefully, if the worst came to the worst, you’d recover and continue to enjoy the kind of food you eat prior to the hospital visit!
There are some resonances with what James said in his teaching this Sunday –
‘Do you like to eat food you’ve pissed on?’
No…’cos it taste of piss
‘Well, of course it will, if you keep pissing on it!’
James has been explaining how to ‘not to make it stale’ in a series of teachings on a text he translated many years ago written by a great Yogi – Lama Chetsangpa Sri Buddha.
While his tone was light, he was pointing to the more critical consequences of ignoring, or not attending to and realising the teachings of/on the truth – and continuing to opacifying the simple givenness of ‘what is’ with our non-sense.
This is, in a way, much more grave and serious than an injury necessitating a temporary stay in hospital – it is a chronic condition whereby we live in a deadened life of deprivation and limitation.
Falling out of the ease of abiding as the innate and inalienable integrity of our openness, and with that loosing the facility to manifest freshly in each moment as appropriate to the moment, rather in relation to an idea about it – we misconstrue and solidify… depriving others and ourselves of vitality and spacious connectivity.
This dis-ease, arising from ignoring the actual, although a chronic and pervasive process is completely curable… by attending and ‘wising-up.’
Now that we know that the symptoms need not just be endured or masked… we are happy to conduct an in-depth examination of the situation.
If we meditate we can closely examine and see the way in which we engage our life energy with arisings in the mind.
These arisings are patternings of energy that the thought patterns with which we mistakenly identify – take to be true, valid, fascinating and fully worthy of in-vestment (geddit?– clothing, wrapping, Emperor’s new clothes ; ) – and spiral into…
In giving a spuriously heightened reality to impermanent phenomena we become a-mazed – confused and enmeshed in our own creativity.
And until this issue is resolved through practice we will continue to obscure, distort and falsify the truth…and suffer as a consequence.
James Low has been explaining so clearly how we get lost and how to return in the simplest way for so many years now… and has recently been teaching on this text by Chetsagpa Ratna Sri Buddha you’ll find in the book Simply Being. The texts are also available here.
The first and second recordings are now available to watch … with further teachings on March 13 and 14… concluding on 17 18 April.
I once heard a Sikh teacher trying to teach children who were fizzing with energy. He was quite fierce and he just shouted at them ‘Listen up…’ and they did!
James was lightly saying the same thing towards the end of the teaching and suggesting how we should do this:
1.First time: just listen… allowing the teachings, mood and flavour to flow through you.
2.Then listen again a second time. This time make your own notes of what seem to be a critical point or a point for further clarification.
[We can discussion in the group or 1 to 1, though maybe check with the text first, it may help…]3.Then go to the text and see if your understanding matches what’s written…is it clear ?
If still not clear …just ask. Then…see next post…
When I first started teaching James suggested that I gave homework… but not so many bothered with completing it!
There were a few things going on with that – the quicksand pull-back of samsara, the apparent primacy of friends family and worldly duties and involvements…seeing the dharma as an ‘add-on’, like bridge or golf with a particular ring fenced time and place… plus an unwillingness of the egoic structure to rock the relatively comfortable though temporary, apple-cart – or, as an adult, to follow instructions ; ).
I’m not judging, I have felt subject to, and worked with the same restrictions…but the struggle for freedom, including from my own non-sense, is unquestionably worthwhile in my experience.
In my little group we have been exploring the introduction to the Dhammapada – the text found in Finding Freedom with James’ commentary… as well as anything arising from the Q and A and other sessions.
However a good number have been listening or are hoping to listen to James’ teaching. So I think it is worth putting aside the Dhammapada for a bit and engaging as much as possible with this profound text and explanation … We have time to do this… catching up now with the first if you missed it.
Approaching it, and the second, in the way James suggests… there is hopefully more alignment and attunement as we come into connection with the third and fourth sessions.
As has been said ‘the key to your enlightenment or realisation is already in the palm of our hand’… but we do have to put it in the lock and turn it!
For many the door is like a secret door…although it’s always open if you don’t know how to look (or that it even exists) how you would find it?
So for these teachings, explanations and much else… deep gratitude to those who have realised and passed this on through time. Let’s make the most of this precious opportunity.
I was writing this for my group initially but thought others may find it helpful!
*** See next post on further advice for how to engage with this text from James’ teaching weekend 13 14 March.
Photo of Devon Violets: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Devon_Violets._Viola_odorata_(33624079715).jpg
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