Which teachers have influenced how you teach

Someone wrote in wanting to know.

What teachers had influenced me and?

What sorts of?

Things I had in my background that have informed the way that I teach meditation.

There's an interesting story about Sir Isaac Newton.

He in some ways could be looked upon as.

The key figure in the history of Western science innocence.

Although science of course, had a long history before him things really took off after he published his mathematical principles of natural philosophy where he was able to link a new kind of mathematics calculus to a description of the natural world.

This caused a revolution and it was recognized in his lifetime. How extraordinary his contribution was now this was a kind of quantum leap.

Beyond anything that had occured before and indeed it did.

Sort of.

Create the soil fertile soil from which modern science has.

Roll.

So he was praised a lot in his lifetime.

And he would on occasion say, well, if I have seen further than other People. It's because I stood on the shoulders of Giants.

He was referring to People like Kepler Galileo converted phys and so forth.

As a teacher, I don't know if I've seen further than any other teacher.

But I can say for sure that I have been privileged to stand on the shoulders of Giants.

On one hand.

I have.

The.

Spiritual teachers that have influenced me.

The strongest influences are.

From a man named Joe Shoe Sasaki Roshi, who is at Mount Baldy, Zen center, then associated with him for.

Oh.

Over 2 decades now well over 2 decades.

You can find him very easily on the Internet. He is arguably at this point at the age of 102 and still going strong. The Senior Living Buddhist master in the world. That's been a big influence on me.

Although I don't in any way think of myself as teaching within the Zen Linneage. He was the senior teacher available to me when I was living in Los Angeles. When I come back from Asia and even though I'd have many, many years of practice. When I came back, I knew I still needed somebody with vastly more practice to kick me in the butt and inspire mean keeping on track so associated with him even though.

That way of practice Rinzai Zen koan practice is not really to my personal proclivity. But in any event I needed the contact with somebody like that.

So I don't teach in SM way, but I would say that his paradigm his model for how consciousness works.

Is has had a profound influence on his paradigm is essentially a reworking of the notion of impermanence as it was formulated centrally in early Buddhism is rework that into a vastly larger than more general.

Model for the nature of consciousness.

At the name of this channel is based on.

The name of his approach, it's all based on seeing impermanence in terms of expansion and contraction.

So that's one huge influence a second influence on me has been through the personal tradition. The mindfulness tradition in specific have been influenced by 2:00 lineages of re personal practice, both come from 20th century, Burma.

One is the Uber Kinlin Edge, which puts an enormous emphasis on body sensation.

And I also emphasized body sensation not to the exclusion of other things. But just understanding how important body sensation is was something that I picked up from that tradition.

So that's an influence, another influence is from the Mahaffey sad en linea age of Burmese V custom. I took from that the noting process.

However, I have modified the concept of noting and the implementation of noting I've changed it somewhat from the way that it is done in the traditional Mahasen method.

And I don't have time now to go into the details of that, but that has been an influence.

Because most of the techniques that I teach involve noting sensory phenomenon.

I've also been influenced by my original School of Ordination Bud Rihanna in the Japanese form, which is called Xinggan in Vajrayana practice. They put a lot of emphasis on.

Visual experience auditory experience in somatic experience. You'll sometimes see the front of the expression body speech mind well body. His body speeches auditory and mind refers to mental images in this case that particular work. It's used refers to the visualization process that somatic visual auditory way of working both with.

Subjective experience of object of experience that's something I picked up from the battery on a tradition so I stand on the back of these various Masters.

Stand on their shoulders.

I also further back stand on the shoulders of the prehistoric show monic explorers of consciousness whose names we don't know, but

Who is rituals and ceremonies ordeals led to them entering states of concentration and equanimity? Which eventually developed?

When Civilizations arose into the meditation techniques of these various lineages.

But I'm fortunate to stand also on the shoulders of Sir Isaac Newton.

And Euclid.

Anne Francis Bacon.

And Richard Feynman and Albert Einstein.

And James Clark Maxwell.

The whole science tradition, the whole western mathematical empirical rigorous sceptical pregnant pragmatism has profoundly influenced me the way that I teach.

Is?

Eh.

My best attempt at a fully contemporary fully modern.

And as close to science as can be at this point in history.

Version.

Of what that other linneage of Masters and prehistoric shamans.

Had developed.

So I get to stand on 2 sets of immense shoulders and I am immensely immensely grateful.