Host Michael Taft interviews Tibetan Buddhist meditation teacher and author Andrew Holecek on nondual practice and theory, finding your way back to the true nature of mind, the dangers of getting dropped off in the deep end too soon, challenging to notion of path, the art of doing nothing (and doing it well); Andrew also offers listeners a dream-based nondual guided practice.
Andrew Holecek has completed the traditional three-year Buddhist meditation retreat and offers seminars internationally on meditation, dream yoga, and the art of dying. He is the author of many books, including Dream Yoga: Illuminating Your Life Through Lucid Dreaming and the Tibetan Yogas of Sleep. Andrew is masterful at joining the wisdom traditions of Asia with the knowledge of the West. He holds degrees in classical music, biology, and a doctorate in dental surgery.
https://www.andrewholecek.com/
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Really enjoyed this podcast. I feel Andrew is describing the process that has been intuitively unfolding for me. It has been very helpful to hear this thoughts and it has been helpful to know that someone else thinks that this approach can be skillful. However (and this is my only but), I can’t help but think that all this talk of “it is not a state” is a kind of tomayto / tomahto kind of thing. I can see how it would be helpful to hear at certain points of the “path” but for me they are just different aspects of or ways of saying the same thing. Is my “state” of mind different from when I started practice – most definitely (thank goodness). Is that due to “understandings/ insights” that have opened along the way – definitely. If practice didn’t change the state of mind (which for me is both the valence with which phenomena are viewed as well as a change in the habitual phenomena I experience) – then it’s just an intellectual exercise. Is my state of mind static, permanent and unchanging? No – but subjectively how I experience my mind on a day to day basis has a lot less dukkha than previously. The “set point” has changed (to put it another way). Like all language there are occasions when one term will be more helpful than the other but I’ve heard this “it is not a state” thing so often now I fear it is becoming unhelpful dogma and I think it would be helpful to be more specific in its use eg. if there is a fear someone is attached to the idea of blissing out in a formless realm and needs a nudge.