🔼: ##### Dukkha The [[Sanskrit]] word often translated as "[[💡 Suffering|Suffering]]." It's perhaps better translated as "stress" or "unsatisfactoryness" or"chronic frustration." Du = "bad" Kha = "space" A bad space, a space where space does not belong, like the space that makes a table wobble. Or the guilt we feel when we eat something we like. ###### Alleviating Dukkha The path to happiness, the alleviation of [[💡 Dukkha|Dukkha]], has four steps: 1. For most of us, we tend not to change until the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain to change. [[💡 Dharma|Dharma]] (Duty) makes suffering tolerable or even choosable. We choose between pain and pleasurable options; more or less options. Dharma makes it tolerable or choosable to choose the painful and less options without needing to resort to [[💡 Willpower|Willpower]], [[Discipline]], brain hacking, etc. Dharma is putting yourself in harm's way to protect someone you love when you otherwise would have avoided that harm. Chasing pleasure doesn't bring happiness. Fulfilling our wants. We need Dharma to help us choose the painful path, a completing interest that motivates us to become sober. It's not enough to just avoid other hypothetical pain. A reason to stop smoking, to break up with that partner, to say yes to a challenge, to study, to eat the healthy food, to go to an event that makes us feel anxious. If we only go toward pleasure, our life starts to feel increasingly empty. This reduces suffering by removing resistance to pain. Dharma is not a big, broad, grand purpose. It is a support or constant. Don't have kids for the sake of finding dharma. You know what you need to increase the harmony of your life. Dharma is about increasing harmony. If you're not living in accordance with dharma, there will be friction and bad space around you. If you don't wake up feeling refreshed, if things don't feel fluid and easy, that's a sign. Big D Dharma is ego-gratifying, something very big. Give up on the big dreams and focus on the work. Big dreams sabotage our ability to do the work. Detach from outcome and focus on process. We have a [[💡 Prefrontal Cortex|Prefrontal Cortex]] (value generation) and a [[Nucleus Accumbens]] (motivation). The PFC judges the value of an action. If the action is infavorable, we have no motivation to do that thing. So if our dreams are big, if our goals are too many, we're unlikely to take the step. The bigger our dreams, the less value any task will have. Dharma is small. Dharma is about living in harmony with the life as it's around you. It's emptying your trash can, eating another serving of fruit or veg. How do you find your dharma? 1. The first dharma is [[🕯️ Self-Stewardship]], to take care of yourself. 2. Your dharma is waiting for you whether you want it or not. But you don't get the big Dharma until you attend the first dharma, you have to focus on yourself first. We’re not ready for Dharma until we get good at life as we have it now. Otherwise Dharma would crush us. The better at life we get, the harder life becomes — it’s like how we level up a video game character in order to take on bigger challenges. If our goal is to lift 200 pounds we might feel overwhelmed when we consider we can barely lift 40. So stop fantasizing about lifting 200 pounds and consider the first step to lifting 200 pounds to be lifting 20 pounds over and over again for a while. Rather than "i can do that," reframe to "I can get there, if I focus here." Forget the end result and [[🔑 Do the next right thing]]. Stop trying to be the best and just do your best. This is [[🛠 Exposure Therapy]], gradual challenge. Moving toward that greater sense of purpose alleviates some suffering and allows you to choose the more difficult path. You have to Level Up and Skill Up. Level 1 is get yourself to go to class. L2 might be to fill out med school applications. L3 might be to continue applying after 40 rejections, to act in accordance with hopes or the [[💡 Prefrontal Cortex|Prefrontal Cortex]] telling you it's a waste of time. Then later you carry more and more and you get to decide if you want to lift the weight or not. Level 1 to Level 100 is an insurmountable mountain. Level 99 to Level 100 is just one more thing to do. 3. Dharma is the second mountain. We know what we need to do, but we maybe don't want to do it. So the [[💡 Prefrontal Cortex|Prefrontal Cortex]] says it isn't enough. Our [[Nucleus Accumbens]] says "I don't want to do it," so our [[💡 Prefrontal Cortex|Prefrontal Cortex]] says "Okay, it's a waste of time." We can Rationalize whatever we want. Dharma is about living in harmony with the life you have around you now. Boundaries help. Does this increase or decrease the harmony of your life? Friction vs Healthy Challenge. Harmony at the end. What does life look like for the next ten years if they're in my life? Starts with you. You're the only one who can take care of your body, so do that. Look at the things that only you can take care of and do that. They might be difficult and anxiety or avoidance provoking, that's okay. Do it anyway, or start somewhere. Walk, eat healthier, exercise, socialize some, engage in pleasure, attain wealth and security. Introspect and take care of yourself, the rest will come on its own. If a part of us says "I'm going to be stuck forever," or "That won't be enough," pay attention to the conclusion and what direction the conclusion wants us to go – probably to craft the fear-based life it wants. Video games, porn, unhealthy food. The mind has been conditioned by the world, and that conditioning is a precise science at this point. Do not trust it. We struggle to find motivation to do things we don't want to do. But we can't decide what we want, so the question becomes whether we want to live a life where we are controlled by our wants and desires, or do we want to control our wants and desires. When the mind doesn't want something it will convince you that it's not going to be worth the effort, and we trust that. We're screwed either way. The world conditions us with shoulds and then we don't want to do it. Meditate, it's the practice of learning to control our mind instead of being controlled by it through effortful concentration. Learn to be bored and not let wants control you. Next time you get on a flight, don't bring anything with you. [[Favorite Food Exercise]]. Eventually the bored mind will want something to do, so you point it at learning physics. 4. Artha (Wealth) 5. Kamma (Pleasure) 6. [[💡 Moksha (Enlightenment)]] (Liberation) The satisfactions of wants (pleasure) are temporary. We avoid pain ad go toward security (Artha). We still paren't perfectly happy. So we get Dharma. When the other four are met and we still aren't happy, what's left is liberation. [[🧘 Pratyahara]]: when we remove one sense, our other senses become heightened. When we remove them all, then what? Even thoughts can stop, especially with [[🧘 Trataka (Fixed Point Gazing)]], using your nose as the point. Then we become attention without an object. Somewhat blissful, [[💡 Dukkha|Dukkha]] will disappear. The first transcendental (mindless) experience is easy because the mind isn't expecting anything,. The second one is way more difficult because after the first one the mind thinks it's super cool and wants to experience it again, which keeps the mind active. Om chanting 20 minutes twice a day for ten years. Fully opened moth to fully closed. 1. Do the practice. Sura Namaskar 5 min, [[💨 Nadi Shuddhi]] 5 min, Om chanting 10 minutes 2. Pay attention to and maximize vibration in the body. Feel into it, not the sound. 3. Notice where the vibration shows up in the body. 4. Notice the assention of the vibration. It'll start around the navel, then move up to somewhere between the chest and throat, and then somewhere between the chin and the top of the head. 5. Notice the vibration is lurchy and not smooth, it'll feel off at some point. Make the perfectly smooth vibration, so that each part of the om vibration assends smoothly. A locked jaw will make it lurch. This will take months. 1. An even amount of breath through A U M. 2. Find the right level of silence between rounds by feel. 6. Decrease volume and vibration. You'll notice a column inside, a central channel like a kind of field and that the vibration covers up your ability to sense it. So you chat om more and more quietly and you notice the central channel – a non-physical structure called Sushumaa, the channel through which the Kundalini shakti arises. You'll notice the vibration is usually at the front of your body but as it gets quieter it'll move back toward the spine. This is the beginning and end of Kundalini Yoga, and it will completely change the way you live your life. [^1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiXiyLJz8-U