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Conversations with Avant-garde Sages - The Wizard LLC

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<strong>Conversations</strong> <strong>with</strong> <strong>Avant</strong>-<strong>garde</strong> <strong>Sages</strong><br />

parallel <strong>with</strong> this witnessing awareness that observes it. And when<br />

shit hits the fan, it gets felt and experienced but it's seen through,<br />

so I guess, even though I don't have choice, I get off on pretending<br />

that I do. [Laughs] I don't know…<br />

WIZARD: That's biology.<br />

TRIP: Exactly.<br />

I'm going to have fun <strong>with</strong> the pretending to have choice, what can<br />

I say.<br />

GREG GOODE: Why not!<br />

TRIP: Your mind has engaged in very detailed reasoning on the<br />

nature of reality, and it seems that one of the benefits of that<br />

reasoning that you've really conducted quite exhaustively is what<br />

you call the end of the conception of inherent existence; I think<br />

that's an extremely important point. Can you explain inherent<br />

existence versus existence?<br />

GREG GOODE: This switches gears a little bit, this terminology<br />

comes from the emptiness teachings, so it has a little bit different<br />

background from the teachings we've talked about so far. But<br />

what inherent existence means is the existence of something that<br />

is totally self-sufficient, that stands on its own, so would be<br />

independent of cognition. Like it would be something out there<br />

that exists, whether it's yourself, whether it's your body, whether<br />

it's the rock in the street, whether it's a thought, whether it is a<br />

moral goodness versus moral evil, whatever it is, it would exist<br />

<strong>with</strong>out any help from cognition, <strong>with</strong>out any help from causes<br />

and conditions, and <strong>with</strong>out any help from pieces and parts, from<br />

things that are compounded.<br />

And so much of my life, I really resonate <strong>with</strong> these teachings,<br />

because for much of my life I had thought that that's how things<br />

do exist, that's the only way for a thing to really be a thing is for it<br />

to be by itself, for it to not depend on anything else. And we've<br />

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