How Does The Erotic Impact Your Spiritual Practice?
Episode 24 with Redesigning The Dharma by Sahaja Soma features a conversation with fiction writer and essayist, Sarah Kokernot. Sarah, who has practiced Tibetan Buddhism for 20 years, shares insights from her writing on Dharma practice and the creative process. Their dialogue begins with an overview of Sarah's spiritual journey and the profound impact of Dzogchen on her life. They explore the themes of Eros, love, and devotion in contemplative practice, highlighting the intersection of the erotic and spiritual fulfillment. Sarah also recommends resources for those interested in deepening their understanding of Dharma, including her Substack, Your Wild and Radiant Mind, and various teachings from Lama Lina and Lama Justin von Bujdoss.
Episode Highlights:
00:00 Introduction to Sarah Kokernot
03:54 Sarah’s Dharma Journey: Finding a Teacher and Deepening Practice
16:10 Exploring the Erotic in Dharma
24:01 Suffering In Life (Through A Buddhist Lens)
32:38 Eros and Intimate Presence in Mind
37:51 Compassion vs. Love
42:47 The Meaning of Devotion in Practice
47:46 Resources and Closing Thoughts
Guest Bio:
Sarah is a fiction writer and essayist who has practiced Tibetan Buddhism for 20 years. Her work has appeared in the Buddhist publication, Tricycle, The New York Times, The Best American Short Stories, EPOCH, Michigan Quarterly Review, Crazy Horse and other publications.
Raised in Kentucky in a queer family during the 80s and 90s, Sarah Kokernot found refuge in books, nature, chosen family, and the numinous. That early search for belonging continues to shape her work, and after fifteen years of publishing, she remains most devoted to creative authenticity and genuine connection.
Now based near Chicago with her husband and two children, she works as a grant writer and nonprofit consultant at StoryStudio, one of the nation’s leading creative writing centers.
With nearly two decades of teaching experience, Sarah mentors writers as a creative coach and manuscript consultant. She is currently completing her first novel and developing a book of essays, as well as sharing her insights on Dharma and creativity through her Substack, Your Wild and Radiant Mind.
Full Transcript:
Welcome to Redesigning the Dharma. I'm your host Adrian Baker, and today I'm speaking with Sarah Kokernot. Sarah is a fiction writer and essayist who has practiced Tibetan Buddhism for 20 years. Her work has appeared in the Buddhist publication, Tricycle, the New York Times, the Best American Short Stories, Crazy Horse among other publications, and her Substack, which I highly recommend is called Your Wild and Radiant Mind where Sarah writes about dharma practice and the creative process.
So when I came across Sarah's writing both in Tricycle and on this Substack, I felt like it was the kind of writing on dharma that I'd been looking for and rarely encounter. So highly recommend checking out her substack as a starting point, and I really hope you enjoy our conversation as much as I [00:01:00] did.
And as always, please if you have any questions, comments, feedback, things you'd like to see more of, please follow up and reach out either in the comments section on YouTube or Instagram, as well as just reaching out directly through email: SahajaSoma@pm.me. And now for my conversation with Sarah Kokernot.
Adrian: Let's start by thanking you first and foremost for making the time, especially later at night just to speak with me and to come on to Redesigning the Dharma because I really wanted to share your voice and your wisdom with the audience of this podcast.
When I came across your blog and we're gonna get to talk about that, I was like, this is exactly what I've been looking for in Dharma and so don't find out there in this space very much.
And I think we will get into talking about some of the reasons, maybe why that is, but let's just start by can you briefly describe for the audience, what do you do in your background in terms of getting there with meditation and.
Sarah: Yeah. But first of all, thank you so much for having me. I'm just really excited to have this [00:02:00] conversation with you. It's really cool that you reached out and I'm just really just feel flattered to be here and be able to talk about this with another practitioner-- among other practitioners as well.
And yeah, so I got into Dharma at a pretty young age. Like I got interested in it in high school. I was really interested in The Beatnicks and somehow in my central Kentucky High School in the nineties, that was pretty Christian, there was a biography in the library of Allen Ginsberg, and I got super into him and kind of learned about Chögyam Trungpa through him as well and then also Gary Snyder and Jack Kirouac.
I had this fascination with Buddhism probably starting at that age, but it was filtered through so many things that there was a lot that I didn't make sense to me and I wasn't getting it through direct sources. And then when I was older, like around the age of 19, I picked up Cutting Through Spiritual M aterialism by Chögyam Trungpa and that was the book that sort of did it for me.
I don't really think [00:03:00] that at that point I dropped my other kind of spiritual practices in some way. I'd been really interested in neo paganism and wicca but I think it scratched an itch for me that I hadn't really known was there in some way and was really impressed by like just what a clear writer he was: how direct, how forthcoming, and how he also had. I think an attitude toward Dharma that was very life-affirming in some way.
And I also wanted to travel to Mongolia and had just basically seen pictures of Mongolia and all places of a travel leisure magazine.
Became really interested in Bön and Tibetan Buddhism and syncretic traditions, I would say is something that's always fascinated me. So from there I just started to really read a lot and try to find sangha and teachings in that way.
But for me, like I found Sangha and I found practice communities. And so I had a lot of experience getting exposed to teachings and to practice, but I [00:04:00] didn't really feel actually that I found like a teacher that I really connected with until maybe 2020 when I met my current teacher, Lama Justin von Bujdoss.
That really was a great moment because I think I had really wanted to have a teacher who I connected with in some way. And I, after, gosh, it was like maybe after 15 years of practice, it wasn't that I really found one
Adrian: Nice. Justin's a fantastic teacher. I've,
Sarah: Yeah.
Adrian: as I'm sharing with the audience, you know this, but I met Justin when I first went to Bhutan and had him on this podcast and he's just an amazing teacher. I'd love for you to actually say a little bit about what resonated so strongly with Justin when you first met him 'cause that might give us a window as well into the rest of our conversation.
Sarah: Yeah, so at that point it was 2020, I think it was the fall of the pandemic, and he had started Bhumisparsha with Lama, Rod Owens. And so, that's kind of how I was introduced to him.
And I had talked with him [00:05:00] on the phone because I had some questions about, Dharma and but I'd been practicing for a while, but had gotten out of it because I hadn't found a teacher that I really had felt connected to.
And I think there was, this was also in the aftermath of a lot of cases of abuse and misconduct, which of course really alienate you from the practice in a lot of ways, right?
So he had a lot of insight into that. He was also just like incredibly down to earth. He didn't put himself on a pedestal in any kind of way. I thought the work that he was doing in Rikers Island with chaplaincy was just like very brave, and just seemed like really good Bodhi Satva work. He was really getting in there. And I think a way that's really difficult.
And my mom I have two moms and one of my moms was a a psychiatrist and a therapist, and there was a quality, I think about him that actually reminded me of her a lot. Which was like, it was very spacious, very nonjudgmental and very like willing to be with people at their own level.
So that's why,
Adrian: That Buddha family quality [00:06:00] space.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Adrian: He's got that. Yeah.
Sarah: Definitely.
Adrian: Wonderful. Thank you for sharing. So in talking about, I realize we talked a little bit about your background, but what you do now is you're a writer and if you could talk a little bit about the creative process
Sarah: Yeah. No def definitely. Yes. I thought you meant Dharma background, but no, I'm a writer.
Adrian: Both. You're
Sarah: I write fiction and I write essays, and I also privately write poetry. I started out as a poet in college studying poetry and then have written fiction for years and then recently started writing more essays about Dharma.
And yeah, but I think I really like my core identity as a writer is probably as a fiction writer, so as a storyteller. And recently finished novel and I'm working on some new things...
So yeah, so I think that also probably really informs my thinking about practice as well.
Adrian: Wonderful. And can you talk a little bit about what's been your experience in terms of how do you view this relationship between contemplative practice and creativity?
Sarah: Yeah, so I think that's a great question. And I think for me one thing that [00:07:00] I really noticed is that Buddhism really seems to have found a kind of a root in the language of psychotherapy in the west in some way.
And maybe this is because of my own background coming from a family of therapists, maybe it's like my own, like rebellious streak in some way. But I think of Buddhism and contemplative practice as really being more of an art form.
My understanding of psychotherapy is it's come really a long way since Freud, but Freud had this idea of wanting people to come to a state of what he considered to be ordinary unhappiness.
That was like his cure. He's like, I can't make you happy, but I can make you less neurotic.
Adrian: So much basic goodness. Yeah.
Sarah: Yeah, exactly. And then I think people, you know, like Viktor Frankl came along, wrote this book, Man's Search for Meaning, and had this idea of existential counseling and logotherapy and, I think he became a lot closer to, I think, maybe of what Buddhist practice does, which is it really looks at the human condition and some of the [00:08:00] impossible things that human beings have to go through. What, whether personally or socially. And how we're really able to get through them by finding meaning and purpose in our own lives.
I think that Buddhism, takes it to another level past that ordinary and happiness and tries to go into that idea of lasting or an internal kind of happiness, right?
A happiness that's not so much contingent on outer conditions or circumstances, but comes from a deep place of contentment within yourself. And the reason why I find this connected so much to the creative process and to art is because Buddhism authors all these methods which are, essentially made up.
Right. You know, Larim practice is made up, prayers made up. These are all architectures and structures around language and imagery and prayer and song that is to really take us into something that is ineffable and beyond words. And the only other thing that I [00:09:00] know of in my own life that does that is art, right?
Like when you look at a really beautiful, I'm actually writing about this kind of soon, but like when you look at I remember seeing like a Rothko for the first time as a kid and being like, what the hell is that? You know, With just like these shapes of color.
But, you know, I remember also looking at it and just staring at it for longer and longer, and it just took me to this place of sensation that was below thought or beyond words in some way.
So I think that's what the best art does for me, and I think that's what, contemplative practice does for us as well. It returns us to like this really state of like sensation and being.
Adrian: Yeah, that really resonates. It's interesting. I was having a conversation with someone recently and she was saying...
I said, the more that I practice in different traditions, the more I realized that in a lot of ways contemplative practice, like it's really about deepening appreciation of aesthetics and the that really spoke to me, vajrayana and Zen, all had a really rich appreciation of aesthetics.
And she was saying, wow, [00:10:00] that's so interesting to hear. That's not my experience at all. And she was sharing her background and she was a scientist. And I was like I get where she was coming from. 'cause I always thought, you can think of meditation or contemplative traditions as an art or as a science.
And I, I think there are those two different ways to teach it, relate to it. Some people want to geek out on the neuroscience or you know, the Indian traditions have Madhyama and these, it's extremely rigorous. You go that route.
But for me, one thing that I noticed, as someone who enjoyed writing and reading like a lot more long form fiction or nonfiction, I became less interested in that.
I became more interested in poetry. I became in symbols because practice was pointing to something that the conceptual mind can't grasp. And so it actually, I just felt that natural shift towards that sort of like pointing out that comes [00:11:00] with poetry instead of trying to box everything in.
And I'm wondering that... how that sits with you actually, because you do write poetry, but you also write longer form pieces and how that sits with you.
Sarah: That is something that I can really relate to. I think of this phrase, and I don't know where I first heard it, but you know, I'm a Dzogchen practitioner and this idea that Dzogchen is the language of the dakinis, right? So it's working on this different level or different frequency of consciousness or awareness in some way.
And to me, that makes a lot of sense because we spend a lot of our lives within narrative. In some ways stuck in concept of the narratives that we create around ourselves and my understanding of poetry, especially, more modern or contemporary poetry, 20th century onward. Is that it doesn't have narrative, right? It doesn't tell a tale.
It's about juxtaposition. And one of the best pieces of advice I ever got about writing poetry was actually in graduate school.
I was a fiction writer, but I [00:12:00] had to take a poetry class. And I took a poetry class with a writer, Don Revelle, who's French and American, and has a really great translation of Rambo.
But he said that, one of the best things you can do for your poems is to take out the conjunctions. So to take out like the and, and the buts, right? Because you don't need this connective tissue in some ways. You can just let everything kind of sit side by side. And it's not linear.
It doesn't work through time in this sort of, false, linear way. It breaks down time in some way or another. And the goal of poetry also too like, you know, It's not representational, it's not mimetic, it's not trying to imitate life so much as to have its own experience in some way.
I love that you bring it up 'cause it's something that I've obviously thought a lot about and I think that that sensation that I think we get from maybe reading or hearing a really good poem to me is very similar to meditation.
Adrian: Nice. Thank you for sharing that.
So let's pivot to talking about your writing now. I'm wondering if you can share a little bit to the audience about your blog, your Wild and [00:13:00] Radiant Mind.
You know, how would you describe, I love the title of that. How would you describe the basic premise of it and the inspiration as well for creating it?
Sarah: Yeah, the title, you know, your Wild and Radiant Mind, it's interesting because, in Buddhism we often have these parables or teaching about like taming the mind. But I think I was seeing it through maybe kind of a more modern ecological perspective about this idea of rewilding.
You know, about turning ecosystems... not really cultivating them, but returning them to their natural state and really seeing this also align with the language of Dzogchen about the natural state and what is that...
To me, if we're also thinking about this in terms of like metaphor and aesthetics, to me that doesn't it doesn't look like a cornfield, right? It's not like this monoculture of just rows and rows of the same crop over and over again, right? It looks like something that maybe looks more like permaculture or ecosystems that are living in like this complex [00:14:00] harmony with each other that we are tending to and... but also try to be, in some ways, hands off of, like we wanna steward them or tend to them and do things like have, fires. I live in the Prairie in Northern Illinois, so having like healthy contained fires for prairie, but then most of the time you're hands off.
I chose that title because I think has a lot to do with letting go of our wanting to poke and prod at something and just letting things be and, yeah. So that's where the title came from. Long story short and I think that I really try to just talk about my experience of dharma practice in a way that hopefully is laid down to earth and hopefully is... for me, one of the most powerful things about it is this feeling of being re enchanted by the world in some way.
And really feeling like that there's this magic to just being alive and being human and having our existence. And so it's something that I all just wanted to communicate through the title and through the writing there.
Adrian: I love that. I, it was interesting hearing about the [00:15:00] origins for the title there 'cause what comes up for me, I, I'm thinking the dakini and sort of the wildness of the dakini.
I sort of thought of some of the more left-handed tantra, like in the Shiva traditions, you can tell the more left-handed tantra ones are the ones where the goddess has a more prominent role, like the chroma traditions.
And there's that aspect of, and we talked about this in our preparatory conversation, we can sort of emphasize more of that Shakta or Shiva aspect, or the Dharmakaya, Saṃbhogakāya.
But it's choosing to elevate, this is my interpretation, that sort of dionysian aspect, whereas in Buddhism, even Vajrayana, it's there, but there's so much emphasis on taming because, I think there's emphasis on equanimity in Nirvana.
So sometimes it's wanting to make sure that too out of control and part of bringing the erotic into Buddhism is maybe being a little more comfortable with some [00:16:00] of that language.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. Maybe so. Yeah, I know a little bit about the Dionysian, so I know what you mean there in terms of, do you want me to address it in terms of the erotic too?
Adrian: Please, yeah. And we do this, can you just talk briefly or define briefly for the audience about how would you define the erotic.
Sarah: Sure. Yeah. So I really define the erotic, I think probably around this essay by Audrey Lorde, who's an essay and a black feminist lesbian who I think wrote this essay, I believe in like the late 1970s. It's called The Uses of the Erotic.
And it's a really short essay that I probably read almost every year. And it's her definition of the erotic is really feeling into a deep sense of pleasure that bridges into joy, into a connection between self and other.
So it's not shallow pleasure. It's not something pornographic, and it's not something that's actually necessarily sexual, right?
It's she's really talking about the erotic and the sense of eros and [00:17:00] the sense of sensuality, right? And of that kind of presence that we feel when we feel very connected with what we're doing or with another person.
And I think a really good example that she gives in this of the erotic for her is, things like writing a poem painting a fence, dancing with someone.
Then she has this really beautiful passage within this essay, and it's the moment she spends the most time with that she remembers being a child in World War II and having these rations and having these plastic bags of really hard pellets of margarine that were yellow. And this feeling of massaging these pellets of margarine in her hands until they just melted.
And that's like the most poetic, descriptive moment within the whole essay. And it's also the most kind of erotic moment in the whole essay. So it's that really deep sense of pleasure.
And her argument behind this is that for people who face oppression, the erotic is incredibly powerful because it means that you really can't be colonized and you can't be conquered when [00:18:00] you are in touch with this kind of erotic nature of yourself and of life.
So I think that's where my own definition of the erotic comes from, and I think that's, it's something that's been built upon since she wrote this essay.
It also comes from too, I think another thinker named Roland Barthes, who was a literary critic and he talks about this idea of not the erotic but of jouissance and I don't speak French, so I'm probably mispronouncing it.
But jouissance I think is how you pronounce it, and it's the French term for bliss, right? And it also is a kind of bliss that you encounter when you are maybe reading something and you feel like shocked or burst open in some way. You feel like a shift in yourself and almost a kind of surprising delight. And so that's something that I associate with the erotic too.
So most of the time, I think when we speak of it, it has like a real emphasis or association with sexuality. But I see it more as like this umbrella of kind of life giving forces and sexuality being one of [00:19:00] them.
Yeah. Does that make sense?
Adrian: That totally does. And that was the definition I think my teacher, Sally Kempton would say was just talking about eros is the life force, that simple definition. So it's feeling like... enjoying the feeling of a cool breeze, caressing your skin like that's the erotic,
Sarah: exactly.
Adrian: Of the life force, just the breath moving through the body.
You know, that's the erotic and it becomes erotic also when we relate to that same act, like breathing in a different way. It comes through a heightened sense of sensitivity, like refined sense of appreciation.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. So it's like really, I think engaging with the sensuous in some way, right?
Adrian: Yes. That's another great way to say it. Please having said that, and I can already see some parallels between how you describe the erotic and contemplative traditions, especially Vajrayana, which is, it's sort of enjoying things when the mind rests in its own nature and it's not grasping.
That's the key quality. There's not a grasping element to it when I think we're enjoying the erotic. How [00:20:00] do you think of the erotic in terms of your relationship to um, contemplative practice and Vajrayana
Sarah: Yeah. I think we, talked a little bit about this I don't know if we talked about this in the preliminary conversation, but I seem to remember talking a little bit about eros and its connection to longing.
I'm not totally sure, but I believe that, in Greek, there's the root word is also connected said an idea of yearning. It's a feeling of wanting something that's not there. And I think that, we go to spiritual practice because of yearning and because of longing, for one reason or another.
It might be because we wanna feel more connected to our lives or ourselves in some way or we might want to relieve our suffering in some way. But there's a desire there that compels us to become spiritual practitioners, right?
And I think that, that feeling's really powerful. And it is, in a Buddhist framework, it's also a form of suffering, to have this longing.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's, [00:21:00] appropriate. I think it is a form of suffering, right? Because when you consider how satisfying well, let me put it this way. I think the best way I can describe is I think there's almost two forces that are going on here in terms of love.
There's this mythologist and storyteller whose name is Martin Shaw. I heard him on a, actually a podcast one time, and he had this thing to say about eros, which was like, you know, the nightingale doesn't come and sing at your window for eros, it comes and sings at your window for amor, right? For love. For like real love, right? And
Adrian: and can you define, sorry, briefly, what's amor versus
Sarah: Amor? so he calls it like that thing that Pablo Neruda and all the troubadours are really talking about like that sense of like satisfaction, right? it's like this sense of of wanting another to be happy and also knowing that they want you to be happy as well.
So I would say that amor, or longing or rather love is what all that ero s really yearns for, right? It wants to be satisfied in some way.
So I think that we come to [00:22:00] our spiritual practice with this longing for love in some way. I think that we really want to feel that, and maybe even love isn't the best term for that, but we wanna feel that sense of contentment and completeness and that sense of feeling seen and accepted and like valued and not judged. And, we wanna feel that and within ourselves without any kind of certain conditions around it.
So I think that's how this relates to me for contemplative practice is like the eros brings you to the cushion or to learn about these things.
And then once you let that kind of grasping go once you let go of that longing and you find some spaciousness around it, the thing that that really naturally arrives is the sense of love.
And I think that's also very similar from what I've learned within an a Buddhist framework that, longing and yearning.
In some ways this is Bodhicitta that hasn't been liberated yet, right? Because we're grasping. But once you just let go of it and you let it be free and you let go of your [00:23:00] fixation, like this incredible swelling of love arises from there.
Adrian: That's a great definition. Yeah. Thank you.
And it's interesting, this notion of longing, I enjoy Sufi poetry just Hafiz and Rumi and I need to have a Sufi on to properly explain this, but there's this notion of longing that's really beautiful but on the other end, like I'm reading it from my Buddhist perspective, thinking look, that's that same sort of thing.
There's something about longing that, that is creating a sense of suffering. Like what we're seeking is the end of seeking from a waking up perspective and something like Dzogchen or Zen is about cutting through that.
And seeing that seeker itself in that sense of seeking, these are appearances in the mirror. And recognizing the inherent unity that's always there. And so, it's interesting, there's a lot of longing in spiritual literature like Sufism, but yeah. I, from my Buddhist perspective, it's hard not to see it as some kind of suffering, wishing that things were other than it is right now. It's a [00:24:00] form of dukkha.
Sarah: Yeah. I think the thing about Buddhism that I think took me a while to understand or relate to is I think it has an extremely liberal idea of suffering, right?
Like from a perspective of Dzogchen is like, every time that you feel like you are parted or not connected to or not in the presence of rigpa or not in the presence of this clear light of awareness that's considered suffering.
So like every time that you don't have this sense of satiation in your life and you get caught up in something that's suffering. So there's no stoicism to it, really.
It's funny 'cause I think Buddhism on the outside can seem like very hard and stoic, but it's like, you're actually suffering all the time. And like maybe a low grade way that we're all just kind of used to, like right now, like it's not really bothering me, but I'm like, I'm chilly but should I put my cardigan on or should I not put it on? It's this idea of i'm comfortable, but could I be more comfortable?
Adrian: Yes.
Sarah: That kind of deal. So it's like very low grade. But I think it's very liberal in that it takes all this into account. So it's not suffering where you're [00:25:00] like in agony or something, but in this kind of more low grade, are you in presence kind of a way or not?
So that to me, I think has helped a little bit, kind of with just sort of my framework and seeing how this view is working.
Adrian: How do you think of that in terms of that more liberal view of suffering? What about that view or definition resonates and is there anything about that sort of Buddhist diagnosis that you maybe have a different perspective on, and I don't mean that it's wrong, but maybe incomplete.
Sarah: I think that it's true. I think that so much of practice is really like being able to be willing to be with our pain and with our suffering in like a very present, open way.
And I think that's part of the life affirming quality that I also see in Buddhism. Is that it's not pain denying. To me, it's almost like the way, I don't know why this is coming into my mind of a parallel, but I think about the relationship that some [00:26:00] cultures have with death in some way.
I studied abroad in Mexico and lived in South Texas for a long time. And I try to go back there when I can. But I think about the way that, Mexico really views death, right? Like death is like such a part of life and you have this festival El Dia De Los Muertos, but there's like all these flowers everywhere.
So I think that acknowledging the presence of our pain is a little bit, almost like acknowledging death in some way in that it really heightens our sense of pleasure. Does that make sense?
Adrian: Yes.
Sarah: And it really also directs our attention to that idea of mind itself. What is creating this idea of pleasure and pain. Like What is holding both of these? What are they what is that awareness? So it's like, where are the light and the dark coming from and how am I perceiving that?
So I think, being with pain and acknowledging it and maybe even just being with discomfort helps direct your mind into the, awareness itself direction in some way.
And then, begin to ask or experience what's really [00:27:00] happening when we let all of this go? What arises then? And I think that's where you move into that maybe more ineffable part of Buddhism that really feels beyond words and beyond description in some way.
Adrian: I like that.
I'd like to talk about, it sort of seems like one thing that we're offered in Buddhist traditions, I think in particular ones that are derived from the Indian paradigm, which includes Vajrayana, Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, is this notion of completeness. The words itself, Buddha or Sita implies completion. Someone who's done. They've crossed the shore.
And you said this a moment ago, we have this yearning for completeness. And I'm wondering if you can talk little bit about how you think about the shadow of that. I think a related thing, it's very human to yearn for completion. It's also very human to yearn for certainty.
It feels like the hardest thing to do is actually to be with uncertainty, and a lot of times I think what's attractive about Vajrayana, it's like, it's the clarity of the path and the map, and this is what happens after we die and the bardos.
There's some traditions [00:28:00] like zen that really emphasize the not knowing; this being the uncertainty.
Sarah: yeah
Adrian: I'm influenced by one of my teachers, Douglas Brooks here, but where he was really talking about the shadow of a lot of these traditions as well, and the shadow of the Buddha or the Sita and just sort of this needing to know. The completion. But that in fact the most difficult thing to be with is that we do die in life, is things are, we die with incomplete projects.
Sarah: Yeah.
Adrian: People we don't get to say goodbye to that actually life ends up being asymmetrical in a way, and that this is the hardest thing to, hardest pill to swallow or open up to. And I'm wondering how that sits with you and in what ways you perhaps can see that shadow within Buddhism or Vajrayana itself.
Sarah: Yeah, I guess I maybe first want to distinguish a little bit between maybe Vajrayana and Dzogchen, right? So in terms of tantra.
Adrian: Yeah.
Sarah: In terms of Atiyoga or Dzogchen. And my [00:29:00] primary practice I also practice tantra, but my primary practice is Atiyoga or Dzogchen. And I think that the, my understanding of it is that, in the ati state we're already complete. This has already happened. We're just not aware of it, Or we're not aware of it all the time.
So completion's an idea. And we're talking about something that doesn't really have a concept or a condition that, isn't gonna change from this moment now or tomorrow, like it's already existing.
So I think what I think Dzogchen is so useful for is to, really see through and kind of drop a lot of our conditioning so that we can rest in the state where we do feel incredibly complete. And that's very erotic. It's incredible. I mean, I practice meditation every day, not because I'm like some disciplined puritan.
I practice it because I'm a really sensuous person and I like pleasure, right? I don't do things that I don't enjoy. I'm really bad at it, you know, I'm not, it's really hard. I, I mean, I'm gonna wake up, I'm gonna wake up at five o'clock tomorrow and I'm gonna [00:30:00] meditate and it's because I love it, right?
I Think there's a point in practice where you are not showing up out of longing, you're showing up at a devotion. It becomes I'm gonna be here and sit with my own awareness because I feel so complete in that moment. And I think that's where this framework of the erotic really comes into play.
And I, you know, you talked about Sufi poetry and I really love Rumi and I love this idea of the beloved. And that's, what it feels like you're sitting with.
And I don't know if that language is quite used in Buddhism, but this term guru is used. And we're not talking about the human guru, we're talking about the grew of all appearance.
So in that place of practice, like you feel such a sense of completeness. It's very satisfying. It doesn't mean that you're perfect. It doesn't mean like I'm a perfect human being or anyone is at all. And that's not really like the ideal.
So I hope that answers some of your question, but to the idea that zen and like this idea of not knowing and being with not knowing, I think that's really integral [00:31:00] because what we're trying to do is not something... with Dzogchen, it's not analytical. I think there's a part in the beginning where you're getting the pointing out instructions that you're using your conceptuality right.
Adrian: And the Vipassanā, the analytical meditations to see through
Sarah: Yeah. That's part of a lot of training, but you're really trying to drop your conceptual mind and just go into the state of being. And so it's not really knowing and it's not really not knowing either. It's just beingness, if so I think it's very zen in that way.
Adrian: Oh, it totally is. I find Dzogchen and Zen to just be the most similar really
Sarah: yeah. And exactly. Yeah. It's something I would like to learn more about too, because I've heard that there's a little bit maybe of a chan influence on Dzogchen, that kind of has gone a little bit unrecorded.
It's primordial mind, so it makes sense that it would be, within these two different traditions or discovered or taught, expressed in different ways.
So I guess that's what I think about. When I think of that, thing of unknowing. I guess I think of it about unknowing rather than uncertainty with just being okay with not, [00:32:00] with not knowing, with not knowing everything or being okay with my own fallibility or but just being okay with whatever appears in front of you.
Adrian: Doesn't unknowing include uncertainty, because I think of uncertainty as a logical consequence of impermanence.
Sarah: Yeah. I think that maybe uncertainty is has a connotation of I don't know what's gonna happen in the future. I don't know what's gonna happen in this next moment. I don't know how long I'm gonna live. I don't know how long this is gonna last.
Adrian: Yeah.
So I want to pick one of your pieces that I really enjoyed from your blog and that you highlighted for me as well.
So "Your Mind Is the Lover:, Eros, Amor, and Majamudra." Which certainly has some of these themes.
So first of all, you talk about Eros as an intimate presence within the practice of mind itself, and we've been talking about that.
I'm just wondering if you could hone in on that phrase and explain what you mean by that.
Sarah: Can you repeat the phrase back to me?
Adrian: Sure. Yeah. You said you talk about Eros as an intimate presence within the practice of mind itself. And I'm wondering if you could expand a bit on what you [00:33:00] mean by that.
Sarah: the essay is called Your Mind is a Lover, and it mentions also Mahajudra because it refers to a prayer by the third Karmapa in there. But I'm really more of a Dzogchen practitioner, so I'm probably mixing up terms in some way in the essay.
So for Dzogchen, there's this term called Rigpa, right? Which is just like naked awareness. It's the seer. It's also something that is I would say felt in a very visceral way, right? As a kind of presence. It feels like there is someone there almost, right when you encounter this. But there's no one there. It's just awareness.
But the feeling, is very intimate. It's because it's us, right? Like it's with our own conscious. That sense of Eros is something that I experience and I think a lot of people experience within Rigpa.
When we feel this sense of presence, it feels like a sense of like intimacy and it feels like a [00:34:00] sense of like just incredible tenderness and this softness of space that feels very porous. That emptiness also has this quality of being, very supple and maybe even voluptuous, right? There's a lushness to that experience happening.
So that's I, think what I mean, when I talk about it there in the essay.
Adrian: I love the way that you're talking right now about Dzogchen and what it's pointing towards, and that really, it's the language I would like to use to describe it. And yet I find that a lot of the language in Dzogchen or some of the text, they're not talking about it in such a, if I can say it like archetypal feminine way.
And curious, have you come across that with certain teachers or if not, can you speak to,
Sarah: Yeah, no, I think that that's why I think my teacher and I really resonate, I resonate with him so well, is I think he really will talk about it in this [00:35:00] way. And that's very helpful, that you have someone who is so in touch with maybe something that is, we would qualify as more feminine in some way.
And another teacher Lama Lena is also someone who talks about this in this way. Tenzin Wangyal? I don't wanna mispronounce his name...
Adrian: I think Wangyal
Sarah: Yeah, I read all his books. I like read his books like obsessively, but I've never actually taken a class with him. But he is been such an influential teacher for me from afar because I think he is, he's so, so clear and he's so simple.
He's just like this elegant, elegant teacher. And he talks about it in this way too, in this very tender, soft way.
All of that I think has been very helpful for me because it's been, affirming to my own practice and has been like this little trail of breadcrumbs that you follow too, because it's talking about something that is, so deeply felt.
And maybe has like more of an emotive character or more of an affect than maybe what you're describing in the Dzogchen text in some way.
Adrian: [00:36:00] Yes. Yeah. Where a lot of the Dzogchen, it's the language around space. It's a lot of the emptiness, dharmakaya that gets emphasized a lot of times.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah,
Adrian: I can't help but feel that's dominated by male voices I'm curious how you think of that.
Sarah: Yeah. I'm not really sure. I think that's a possibility. I also wonder too if there's something within the environment in which these texts were written or transmitted, where these qualities were, were so evident that they almost didn't get described down. Does that make sense?
Adrian: I know what you're talking about ' cause you mentioned this in your essay in more detail, but explain what you mean more for the audience by that.
Sarah: For this quality of emptiness or dharmakaya or spaciousness, I often have heard the sambhogakaya is the thing that gets often lost with westerners, right?
Like it's that more lucid quality of awareness, right? Not just the space, but like the light part of it, right? Or the metaphor surrounding light or kind of vibrancy or vitality. [00:37:00] So yeah, the more creative, yeah, exactly. The creative vitality of that spaciousness gets kind of like lost in translation somehow.
So I wonder if there's some condition that happened during this time and place, which naturally transmitted that, to students either because of like cultural conditioning or because of environment.
But I often think too that maybe what's missing within these texts is just that they're supposed to be animated and enlivened by a teacher, right?
I think the teacher is the person who brings that quality up from the text so that they don't just read an airplane instruction manual or something, right? So it has that cutting through, but also if you're cutting through hardness? you're gonna get to softness eventually.
So like, maybe, maybe talking a little bit about more about that porous quality is maybe the teacher's position in some way. So that's what I was gonna add but what were you thinking?
Adrian: that. I was thinking of, I think it's different, but a related principle, which is you were talking about in your essay, and I'd love for you to go into this a bit [00:38:00] about love versus compassion in And there's a lot, and I've heard other people talk about this as well, there's a lot of talk about compassion, but not as much about love.
And one thing that you were wondering in this essay was, is this, because love was such a given in Tibetan cultures that it didn't need to be stated as much.
And you talked about cultures a lot of times sing about things and songs that are missing from their culture, so there's a yearning for it. So isn't it interesting, you were wondering in this culture, that culture, the love song... it's a big deal in Western culture, and is it such a big deal because we're yearning for something that's actually quite scarce.
And so wondering if you can talk about that, how you make sense of that emphasis on compassion versus love and how we make sense of it in a modern Western context.
Sarah: yeah. So this is where I'm gonna have to get maybe a little bit speculative, and I might be getting a little bit of my pre grade or kind of knowledge
Adrian: Or you can just share from your personal
Sarah: but [00:39:00] Yeah. Yeah. But I know that from talking to Sarah Jacoby, who is a translator who's translated the works of Sarah K handro, a really famous yogini from the early part of the 20th century.
I know of that from talking to her and also from reading her book, is that there's a lot of Tibetan words for love. And that, I don't remember the exact word in the text that I was referring to, like what it is in Tibetan. But a lot of words in general in Tibetan compassion and love kind of have an extractable meaning like they mean the same thing or they're very related to each other.
And so in terms of traditional teachings, my understanding is that compassion is the wish to end suffering, And that love is the wish to bring happiness to beings.
So like me, all beings be free from suffering, that's the compassion part. And me, all beings have happiness, that's the love part, right?
And the two are both really necessary. So I think that, I don't know, like I have a lot of hard time with the word [00:40:00] compassion, honestly, as being a little bit of a translation. I think that it, in Latin it means to suffer with. You know, we think about the passion of the Christ, and that context of Christianity and his suffering.
So I think it's maybe like a little bit hard for me to match this word to the feeling that I have when I like, receive teachings about compassion. It doesn't feel like it quite adds up. But I also don't know if love is the best word either too, because that's such a loaded word in terms of attachment.
But I, I still think that love is maybe a little bit closer to like what the meaning is, right? In the sense that love is like this expansive quality, and that when we experience love, there's a part of us just like that lights up inside, right? It's not just the wish to see others happy.
It's also this sense of, maybe it falls into the realm of sympathetic joy when we see someone that we love, feel really happy, that's also kind of love. So it's like this kind of like mutual feeling or this mutual understanding. And I think it's a kind of [00:41:00] maybe delight in some way.
I don't know if I'm really doing a good job of answering this question, but I think it's something that is really healthy to actually tease out and try to maybe refine a little bit when we talk about it in some way, because I think it helps point people into the right direction.
Rather than just cutting through suffering. Also like what arises and what comes up when we do that, what's naturally already there. I feel like that's love.
Adrian: Yes. Beautiful. I resonate with that a lot and no, I think that was a wonderful answer. Speaking, you know, just from your own experience and it also highlights a lot of the challenge we have with these traditions when the translation issues,
Sarah: Yeah.
Adrian: When there are sometimes like the word awareness, for example, or mind, and there's so many different words in Tibetan for same thing.
They have multiple words for it, where we have one in English and then we can get caught up in a connotation. It has, and that's not what the Tibetans were meaning by that particular word.
Sarah: Totally. Yeah. Yeah. And then bringing it back to Eros, that's also [00:42:00] not something that's very easily translated within ourselves. We can see that people have written entire essays and there's like a tire kind of literature talking about the erotic, right?
So it's interesting that we have this idea or concept of the erotic, but I'm not really sure if there is something quite similar in Tibetan and the way that we've described here. In the,
Adrian: For the word "erotic."
Sarah: Yeah. I don't know. That's a big, that's a big, I gotta be okay with my not knowing 'cause I don't know.
Adrian: Yeah. We need not be with the not knowing on that. We should reach out to a translator but I would wonder, Yeah.
I wouldn't be shocked if they didn't have a word that quite mapped onto that, but that's an interesting one worth investigating.
We've been talking about love the erotic. I'm wondering if you can talk about devotion and how you think about, or divine devotion and the role of it in your own practice.
Sarah: yeah, I think for devotion I feel very practical about it. I think I know a little bit about, I'm not super familiar with Hinduism but I do know that there's this term called Bhakti, right? Which [00:43:00] is like devotion to God in some way. Is that correct,
Adrian: Yeah, that, that's the most common translation I know for Bhakti, which is devotion, and it's usually in a Vaishnavite tradition to God.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. So I think there's that kind of devotion, which is really valuable and important. But I also think of devotion as just something very simple, which is just like love with emotional fidelity in some way, Which is I'm just gonna show up.
I think I've experienced that sense of Bhakti, which is like this really big, just complete opening up of tenderness to like a yidam, for instance, right? That's something that I think you can experience within Vajrayana.
But I think devotion and maybe a more practical term is just I am going to enact love in some way for another person or for myself, right? You know, like, and I think this is important because I have kids and like when I get up at three o'clock in the morning 'cause my daughter can't sleep, I'm not really feeling a lot of Bhakti in that moment.
I'm not really feeling, I'm [00:44:00] not really, I'm not really feeling like, like, oh, you know, I have like these moments of tender to my daughter, but I'm not really feeling tender. I just want her to go back to sleep. Right. You know?
Or, you know, but I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna help her calm down and help her go back to sleep because I love my daughter.
So it's really kind of something that I think is love that is enacted. And it means doing things that aren't always comfortable and it means doing things that can be really hard. Or doing things that you feel resistance to, but you're gonna do it because that's what love is, right?
You're gonna show up for people. You're going to be patient with your partner when they forget to clean up a mess or whatever. I think that's all within this idea of devotion, right? It's also going through the hard things.
And I think I had talked earlier about. meditation practice and how we go because of longing, but then we end up going because of devotion. And I think that's really important too.
I wanna be on my cushion meditating because I love to show up for myself and others in this way because being there allows [00:45:00] for me to have this relationship with awareness that really makes me much more available and to all these other people in my life in some way that is less draining and is helpful and useful.
And that's part of my devotion, I think, to other beings as well.
Adrian: I really like that definition of devotion.
Sarah: Yeah. What do you think, what do you think of devotion?
Adrian: I couldn't have defined it as well as you did. Honestly, I really love the idea of, yeah, I think of it in terms of that Bhakti, like the feeling of love that arises towards, towards, yeah, the deity or though of course, it could be a partner. It's wanting to also, I guess the word that jumps out for me is care.
Sarah: Mm-hmm.
Adrian: Like this feeling of love that is sort of like overwhelming, but then within that love, there's this impulse to care for or offer.
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.
Adrian: But I also really, I just like the way you said showing up, you know, it actually made me of the [00:46:00] way Ken Wilbur, who had the growing up and waking up and cleaning up, he added, showing up for his fourth aspect because he realized, then there's the enactment of
Sarah: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Adrian: also just the word you use enactment like that helped to sort of solidify and clarify that a bit more for me.
Sarah: No, but you're right. It's care. I'm gonna care about you in this moment. And it's it's a labor, but easier when you, love someone because it is the wish that like, I want you to be okay. what a world it would be if if people were just okay, like baseline okay.
Had what they needed, you know, physically, mentally, emotionally, like what a world this would be. It's very, very simple. In some ways, I think it's almost so simple that it's very easy to forget about it or get it kind of lost into something.
Adrian: Yeah, it is. I was listening to an interesting conversation with Steven Bachelor yesterday talking about his new book, and he was talking about at the root of Buddhist ethics. There's just always this notion of care.
And that's [00:47:00] sort of like the test is there care present, and so I like that framing, that
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah. I think it's cool because it's like all this language can be very elevated into like this larger very powerful seeming feeling, but it's like this subtle, almost daily feeling of just I think of the term goodwill.
Adrian: Yeah.
Sarah: That term. It's such a great kind of old English term, like good, which is so close relatedly to God, and will. Which is like a wish. So just like wishing someone well, that's so, it's so powerful
Adrian: Yeah.
Sarah: and it's what the world runs on and we just forget about it.
Adrian: Yes, we get veiled,
Sarah: Yeah. Yeah.
Adrian: ordinary Go Excel.
Sarah, I'm conscious of your time because it's late where you are, but I've been enjoying this conversation so much. So perhaps on a closing note, for people who are interested in exploring more of this connection between Dharma and Eros, where might you point them? And please talk about your own [00:48:00] offerings as well as any text, teachers, practices that might be a good resource.
Sarah: Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's good. Okay, so my own offerings. Yes. The newsletter: Your Wild And Radiant Mind. A lot of my writing is there. I also have a couple pieces out in Tricycle that you can check out.
You can also check out my website. It's my first name and last name, SarahKokernot.com.
And. Okay. In terms of teachings, I think that there is a really powerful practice that Lama Lina does with the 1000-Armed Chenrezig and she really she, I'm not even gonna describe it. It's just a really beautiful practice. I think that's a really good place to start in terms of tapping into Bodhi Chita, right?
Which is also life force and love, and also that sense of Eros so I think that's a great talk. If you can find it on our website. I would start there.
And I think that the a hundred thousand songs on Mila Repa is so good. we talked a little bit about Sufism, and this idea of the beloved. And [00:49:00] I think that within that text, what's so impressive to me is Mila Repa's relationship to Marpa, his guru.
And it reminds me a lot actually of the Sufi language of not just the beloved but the friend. That's something that, that I think that Rumi also talks about.
And I think that there's this quote that I love from Mila Repa that's I think about a lot. It's because my excellent friend, the awakened mind itself never comes and goes, I'm happy.
So I think it really describes a sense of intimacy and love and tenderness that we can have with our own mind and some way.
So those are really good places to look. And then I think my teacher Lama Justin von Bujdoss is great and he has a bunch of classes that really go deep into Dzogchen. He's really brilliant at explaining everything, so I would check him out too.
Adrian: Wonderful. Sarah, thank you so much for your time and sharing your wisdom. Really enjoyed this conversation.
Sarah: you. Me too. That was so much fun. Thank you.
Adrian: Okay, great. We'll be in touch.
Sarah: So much. Thank you. Take care.
Adrian: Thank you.
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