Uprooting Your Delusions | Andrea Fella

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From ABC, this is the 10% Happier Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. Hey, guys.
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A couple things to say before we dive in. One,
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you may be hearing some background noise. That is one
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of our cats, Toby, who will not get off my lap.
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So you'll have to put up with some purring in
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the background here. So it'll stop once we get into
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the interview. But anyway, listener beware. Here's the second item
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of business I wanted to get to before we dive in.
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There's a new podcast I wanted to tell you about
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from our colleagues at ABC News. It's called In Plain Sight,
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Lady Bird Johnson. And it's full of new revelations about
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Lyndon B. Johnson's presidency and reveals the former first lady
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as LBJ's closest advisor and most indispensable political partner. It's
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fascinating stuff. It's drawn from over 123 hours of Lady
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Bird's daily audio diaries. The podcast presents a surprising and
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original portrait of the former first lady told in her
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own words. You'll hear how Lady Bird Johnson quietly shaped
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the future of our country and influenced the Johnson presidency,
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including the decision to end said presidency. Just search for
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In Plain Sight, Lady Bird Johnson, wherever you're listening right now,
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and you'll be able to pull it up. And also,
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just for ease of access, we'll leave a link for
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you in the show notes as well. Okay, let's get
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to today's episode. I know you guys by now, I
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think I do, and I think it's pretty clear that
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you love deep Dharma episodes. Today, we've got a Dharma
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episode that is quite timely. As you all know, of course,
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we live at a moment in history when most people
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are getting their news from carefully curated information silos. As
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a result, we often create very specific views about public figures,
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current events, our fellow citizens, and we can cling to
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those views pretty tightly. Today, we're going to talk about
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how useful and even pleasurable in a way it can
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be to dig into the roots of these biases and
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dismantle them, to pop our bubbles of delusion. It can
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be a relief. It can be eye-opening. It can change
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the way you relate to yourself and to other people.
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My guest is Andrea Fella. She's the co-teacher at the
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Insight Meditation Center. and the Insight Retreat Center in California.
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She's been practicing insight meditation since 1996 and teaching insight
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meditation since 2003. She's got a long history of intensive
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retreat practice. She's done a number of long retreats, both
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in the United States and in Burma. And on one
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of those long retreats in Burma, she ordained for a
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while as a nun. It's a fascinating conversation. She's a
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fascinating person. I suspect you'll enjoy it as much as
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I did. Here we go now with Andrea Fella. Andrea Fella,
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thanks for coming on. Really appreciate it.
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It's a pleasure to be with you. Nice to meet you. Likewise.
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So I know from reading the notes of your discussion
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with my esteemed colleague, Samuel, that you're interested in talking
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about the subject of views and delusion. Why that subject?
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Why is that interesting to you? And what do you
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mean by views and delusions?
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It feels to me like views in our country right
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now are creating a lot of stress and suffering. And
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looking to me, I like to kind of look at
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what the interface is between what's happening in the world
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and what the Buddha had to say. The Buddha talked
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a lot about how suffering works, how stress, how people
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get into stress and difficulty, and the tools and the
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the analysis he made of our minds, it really speaks
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to us with all of the changes there have been
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in the last 2600 years. There's not been a lot
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of change in how our minds work. And so what
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he has to say about how our minds work and
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the kind of problems and stresses and suffering that we're
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in now as a world I'm interested in that kind
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of overlap and how what the Buddha understood in terms
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of how the mind works can speak to us now,
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can help us to maybe find some ways to navigate
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the difficulties that we're in. In terms of delusion, delusion
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operates in a lot of different ways in our minds.
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There's kind of a basic way that delusion operates, which
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is that we're not aware of what's happening. that's the
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kind of most obvious way that delusion works. You know,
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when we're kind of checked out or spaced out or
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not really connecting with what's going on, that's a form
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of delusion. But that's not even the most kind of
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insidious form of delusion. The more dangerous, we could say,
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or the more kind of hidden, even hidden forms of delusion,
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because we all kind of know when we come out
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of being spaced out, it's like, oh yeah, I don't
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even know what was happening. Like we wake up after
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we were driving on the freeway, it's like, wow, how
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did I get here? We know that we've been lost.
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But the kind of delusion we're not aware of is
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when we are kind of aware of what's going on,
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but not aware that how we're taking in information, how
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we're interpreting the world is based on a perspective based
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on a view or a belief. In the Buddha's teachings,
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he talks a lot about a delusion based on taking
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what is impermanent to be permanent, what is unreliable to
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be reliable, what is not self to be self. We
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could also throw in there what is uncontrollable to be controllable.
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And those are deep forms of human belief or view
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that we tend to believe that what's impermanent is permanent.
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We tend to believe what is unreliable is reliable. But
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there's a kind of a middle ground place where views, beliefs,
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ideas that come just from living. And by view, I
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really do mean kind of what we normally mean in
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our language about a view or a perspective or a belief.
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Those are what I would call synonyms. We all have views, beliefs,
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perspectives that are shaped by how we have lived in
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our lives, shaped by our personal conditioning, shaped by our families,
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by our culture. And this is the terrain I'm kind
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of interested in exploring today, the terrain of what we
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might call the views and beliefs that are shaped by
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our personal and cultural conditioning. Because this is where I
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think a lot of our suffering is happening right now
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in our world, in our country in particular, in the
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United States. So the shaping of those views is natural.
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I mean, the whole way that our minds work, our
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human minds are always encountering the world and learning from
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it and shaped based on how we have been trained,
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what we've experienced. This is just the conditioning of our lives.
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Because I grew up in a particular family, I learned
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certain things about how families operate. Because I grew up
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in a particular culture, I learned certain things about how
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people who are strangers interact. Just things like that. And also,
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it's not just about the simple things. It's about bigger things, too,
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like how we relate to people who don't look like us.
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people who are of a different racial or ethnic background,
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you know, the beliefs and the views that are shaped
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in our minds as we're growing up, we often aren't
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aware of those beliefs and views as beliefs or views.
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We often will take them to be just, this is
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how things are, this is the truth. So the processes
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in our mind, and this is something that the Buddha
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speaks of a lot, the processes that shape our mind
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are natural processes, and they can lead us in the
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direction of stress and suffering and struggle, or they can
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lead us in the direction towards freedom, towards not being
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caught by habits and patterns of greed, aversion, delusion, confusion.
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So the processes are just, they're natural processes. The conditioning
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process It's a natural process in our minds. We all will,
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of course we will learn based on what our conditions
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have been. One of the famous quotes of the Buddha is,
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whatever one frequently ponders becomes the inclination of the mind.
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And what we frequently ponder is not only, I mean,
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the word ponder, often we think of that as meaning
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we think about, but pondering I think also refers to
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or means what we are exposed to. We ponder things
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that we aren't consciously thinking about. We find ourselves in
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a particular environment and we just absorb how things are
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in that environment. Like when I was a kid, nobody
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sat down and told me, for instance, you know, this
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is how close you stand to somebody you don't know.
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This is how much eye contact you make with somebody
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you don't know. That was just absorbed. And so it's
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a form of pondering when you're in a— it' s kind of
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like we're in a soup with a particular flavor, and
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we're a vegetable in that soup, and we're just absorbing
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that flavor. And we are unaware in many— ways that
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we're absorbing those views or those perspectives. We just take
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it to be, well, this is the flavor. I guess
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the classic analogy is not seeing the water you're swimming
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in or not being aware of the air you're breathing,
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you know, that that kind of shaping happens. And so
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it's natural for us to have perspectives, for us to
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have views. And I think in many ways the system,
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the human system, our human organism, probably needs perspectives. It
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probably needs views in order to navigate the complexity of
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our world. If we had to look around and figure
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out everything that's going on Every moment of the day,
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I think we'd just be exhausted. And so this kind
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of absorbing of perspective helps us to navigate the world
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much more easily, helps us to know how to make choices,
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to engage with people. We learn all of that, and
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we don't have to think about it moment to moment.
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And so the perspectives that we have, this is not delusion.
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Having perspectives, I think of, is not necessarily delusion. Having views,
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having beliefs. not necessarily delusion. But where the delusion comes
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in is when we do not know that we're acting
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out of a perspective or acting out of a belief,
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making choices based on a belief, receiving information even based
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on a belief or view or even an agenda. It's
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kind of amazing how much our minds are shaped by
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what we believe or what our perspective is.
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I really like what you're driving at here. It happens
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to land for me at an opportune moment because I'm
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in the middle of writing a chapter about my attempts,
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such as they are, to look at and reckon with
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my own biases. You didn't use the word bias, but
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I think it's another synonym for the views and beliefs
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that you're talking about here.
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Well, I would say bias may be a view that's
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not quite seen. It's a similar word, but often with
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biases are often hidden.
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Yes.
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When we see a bias, it becomes more of a view,
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but that's just language. Yeah. Yeah. It's very similar. I
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take your point.
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I think that's a really useful clarification because the bias
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can live a level beneath the conscious view. Nonetheless, what
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I heard in what you said there is something that
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has been a really important realization for me, which is
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that You can look at your own views and the
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biases that may lurk beneath them and notice, oh yeah,
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this is horrible. I think some pretty uncool things about
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other people based on, you know, skin color or chromosomal
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structure or whatever. And the natural temptation, at least for me,
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has been to kind of recoil like a vampire confronted
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with garlic and get into sort of a denial or
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a defensive crouch. But instead, if you see, and I
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heard this kind of openness in your comments there, just
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to see that this is just natural.
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It's useful.
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We evolve to have biases and then, of course, views
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and beliefs because we need to sort the world so
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that we can navigate through it without figuring everything out
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afresh every five minutes. Of course, things can go haywire
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when you don't look forthrightly and frankly at your biases
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and then beliefs and views and act them out blindly
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to the detriment of other human beings. And by the way,
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also to the detriment of yourself.
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Absolutely. Yeah, so I think that's an important piece. You
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touched on a couple pieces. The kind of shame we
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often have when we see these views and hidden biases,
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especially when they kind of run counter in a way
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to what our kind of conscious perception of ourself is.
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And yet, when we're not aware of them, I think
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one important piece is that being aware that it's happening
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is way better than not being aware that it's happening.
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When we're not aware that it's happening, We are just
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going to be acting based on those views, those biases.
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We're just going to act out of them. Things will
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pop out of our mouths and we're like, where did
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that come from? You know, it's like we'll just act
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out of those. But as we become aware more clearly of, oh,
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this is a view or this is a bias that's
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kind of hidden there, then there's a little more opportunity
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for choice. And we can also begin to see that
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this bias is operating, that this view is operating and
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affects how we see the world. Views are not just views.
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They come with a lot of baggage. So seeing that
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there's a difference between people, discriminating, discerning that there's difference
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between people, that's just part of how our minds work.
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But what is more where the view becomes a bias, perhaps,
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you know, where the sense of, oh, these people are
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different from each other becomes a bias is when there's
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views and ideas about what certain people are capable of
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or what their lives are like.
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We often don't do the work. Because it's just so
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painful to look at this. It's like an indictment. We
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go right to the story of I'm a horrible person
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and that shuts us down. We're paralyzed by it.
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Yeah, absolutely. And seeing that it's conditioned, you know, that
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it's a natural process. The conditioning process. Somebody actually asked
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me the other day, is conditioning nature or nurture? And
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what I responded with is that the process of conditioning
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is nature. Now, that we are conditioned beings is nature.
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What we are conditioned by is nurture. So, the field
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we find ourselves in, the soup we find ourselves in,
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that we absorb, these flavors, that's nurture. But the fact
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that we absorb flavors, that's nature. And so, it's human,
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it's natural that we absorb the flavor that we're in.
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And for me, that's an important thing. wisdom understanding that
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helps me to navigate the whole mess that we find
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ourselves in. Helps me to recognize, oh, you know, of
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course the mind has this flavor in it. It's been
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stewing in that for so long. So I can not
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take it personally that I have that flavor. It's not
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our fault that we have that flavor, but it's our
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responsibility to that we have the flavor. And so to
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see that it is a flavor, to see that it's
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not just truth, I mean, we're in that soup, we're
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absorbing those flavors, and we just take that to be
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the way things are. Views and ideas about, you know,
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where all the isms come from, racism, sexism, genderism, ageism,
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because we've absorbed particular views around what particular genders or
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races are capable of and who they are. So we've
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absorbed those. It's not our fault that we've absorbed them
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because we've been in that stew, but it's now our
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responsibility to see that it is a stew, that it
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is that flavor, that there's different soups out there. There's
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different possibilities out there that other people and other cultures,
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other conditions have absorbed completely different flavors. So when we
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don't see that we've been conditioned, that it's a view,
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then we're just acting as if it's truth. We're just
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acting as if this is the way the world is.
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Often these views don't create suffering in and of themselves.
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You know, the views, when we're in the stew that
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we're in, you know, it's not a problem. When we're
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in that particular flavor, it doesn't feel like suffering anymore.
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But when those views are challenged, when we come across
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somebody who has a different perspective, that's often when we
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feel the suffering of it. And so that can be
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a time to get curious. It's like, rather than kind
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of retrenching to say, oh, this is wrong, this is bad,
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this shouldn't be this way. Is it my fault? Is
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it their fault? Rather than exploring it from that perspective,
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it's like, oh, we've met a different flavor. Let's see
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what's there. if we can recognize that our flavor is
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not the only flavor, that can create conditions where we're
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more interested in getting to know what other flavors might
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be out there. It's a kind of an encouragement, I think,
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when I recognize, so first of all, not only that
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I have views, and it's useful to recognize that we
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have views, and that's actually something I encourage people. When
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you find yourself suffering, when you find some kind of
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struggle or stress happening in your lives, there is a
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view operating that's not clearly seen. This is kind of
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like a foundational teaching of the Buddha that from the
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teaching— I' ll drop this in for those of your listeners who
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kind of know the Buddhist teachings a little more, the
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teaching of dependent origination, which is a description of how
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our minds kind of create struggle, stress, suffering. It begins
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with ignorance. It's not ignorance of the not knowing. It's
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an ignorance of not understanding, of holding a view or
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a perspective. So the ignorance is really about holding a
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view about the world that's not in alignment with the way,
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you know, the world is in particular with respect to
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the impermanent, unreliable, not-self, uncontrollable nature of the world. That
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we tend to hold views that overlay permanence, reliability, controllability
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on the world. And so, the ignorance that shapes the
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suffering that happens, that's the base condition in the Buddhist
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teachings for suffering. And so, when we're suffering, there's some
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kind of view that's operating. And so, when we meet suffering,
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when we find suffering, it's useful to check into that.
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And I know that there have been podcasts that you've
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had around looking at particular things in this time around
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anger and difficulty of navigating the frustration and the anxiety
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of what's happening in the world. So can we be
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with that? Can we know the anxiety? Can we know
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the anger? This is the kind of basic mindfulness practice.
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Can we be with what's happening? That's really useful. It's really,
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really useful. And yet another piece of this puzzle of
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how those emotions emerge is is that they're kind of
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underneath them, they're grounded in beliefs. Some view, some belief,
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some idea, some attitude there. A question that can be
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useful when we experience suffering, when we know, and suffering
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is a big word. It might just be stress. It
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might be unease. It might be kind of a dissatisfaction
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or a feeling of offness. And when we experience that,
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To not only feel that, like, oh, yeah, it feels
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kind of yuck, yuck, yuck, pure. It feels kind of off.
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It feels kind of bleh. To not only know that,
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but then maybe be curious. And I find a question, actually.
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Questions are not often talked about in terms of pure
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mindfulness practice. But one of my teachers, Burmese teacher, Sayadaw Utajaniya,
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talks about using questions a lot. We have to be
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careful when we use questions because we can go off
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in thinking about things. But he encourages us to ask questions,
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kind of to just drop a question in and then
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just continue being aware, being present for what's here. And often,
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having dropped a question in, it will orient the mind
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to kind of see something from that perspective. So it's
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using a view, essentially. It's kind of using a perspective,
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using a view to kind of dive underneath. So asking
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the question, when there is suffering, what's being believed right now?
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That can be a really useful tool to see where
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the emotions are coming from. We may or may not
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get an answer, let's say. Sometimes I find when I
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drop questions in like that, It's like, gee, you know,
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there's nothing coming. And I just continue being mindful, just
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being aware at that point. But sometimes that question will
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kind of burst the bubble. It's like, oh, yeah, this
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is what I'm believing right now. And then that view
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that's kind of been hidden can begin to be seen.
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It can be revealed. And we can start to learn
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about it, start to see that it's there. And then
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maybe even be curious about, wow, that's believed. Sometimes we'll
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see that and it's like, well, I don't believe that.
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But at some level in our system, you know, some
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deeply conditioned place, that belief is believed. It is kind
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of taken to be something that's the way things should
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be anyway. And so when we see that, that's a
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place to then begin to notice what is our response
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to that. So shame, confusion, anxiety. So Again, working with
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the emotional field there in terms of our practice, in
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terms of our meditation practice. But another question then might
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be in a deeper dive. It's like, oh, there's this belief.
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How did this belief come to be? What was the
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stew that created this belief? You know, for myself, I
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had a lot of.
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Self-negativity, you know, thinking I should be better. I often
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felt like I was failing. The same time I had
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the belief that I was pretty good at things. And
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at some point I kind of saw that one was
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a setup for the other. You know, it's like, oh,
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I'm pretty good at things. Oh, I'm not good at
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it right now. That must mean I'm failing. Seeing these
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contrasting beliefs and then kind of curious about, well, where
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did this come from? And then seeing how often I,
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in my life, based my whole identity basically around succeeding.
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And of course I can't always succeed. You know, this
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is nature too, the uncontrollable aspect of experience. Of course
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I can't always succeed. Seeing, okay, this is the belief.
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And then what was it coming from? And even just
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simply recognizing this is a belief that's conditioned. That really
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helps the mind to kind of step back and go, oh, okay.
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Helps it recognize it's not my fault, and yet it's
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my responsibility because this is what's arising, and I have
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to live with this. I have to navigate the world
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with this belief or view. Another thing about seeing beliefs,
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often when I'm talking to people, I will point them
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to kind of be curious about what beliefs are happening.
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underlying their emotional stress or suffering. When you look at that,
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you may see, I kind of said earlier that you
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might not consciously believe it. And so there might be
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a kind of like, well, I don't really believe that. But,
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you know, there's something in us that does believe it.
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And so I often encourage people not to try to
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disbelieve their beliefs, but to acknowledge this is what's being believed,
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because that's kind of bursting the bubble of delusion somewhat.
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I said that the delusion really is when we don't
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see the view or belief as a belief. When we
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see a belief happening, when we see that it is
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a belief, that's kind of bursting the bubble of delusion.
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We may not at that point then disbelieve it, And
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in fact, some of these views we can see, oh,
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there's some use to some of that view. So, okay,
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I know at least it's a view right now. So
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when we know that it's a view, then we can
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kind of recognize that we are being shaped by that,
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that we're taking in information from that perspective, that we're
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acting out of that perspective. And so that can mitigate
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the impact of the view or belief. And sometimes we
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can see a view or belief operating, okay, this one's
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useful right now. I'll use this one right now. So,
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the seeing of the belief itself is really helpful. The
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recognizing that it is conditioned or what has shaped it,
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to me, that really helps speak to that point of
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the shame that we feel when we see views and
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beliefs that are not really in line with what we
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wish were in our hearts. You know, the recognizing that
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they are conditioned, the nature of that. And for me,
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that's the next practice point that I often explore when
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I see some particular view shaping my experience and recognize, okay,
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this is conditioned, is this is nature. course this is
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happening right now. Look at the stew I've been in
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all of my life. Of course this is happening. So that,
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of course, sometimes it's just the of course recognition. Sometimes
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I use the language that my teacher, Sayadaw Utejaniya, uses.
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This is nature. And to me, that speaks to kind
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of like the natural processes of our system. It's just
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like trees growing. You seed was planted and it got
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the conditions, it was watered, it grew, it had the
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conditions to grow. That's why this view or belief is there.
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And that brings in a lot of compassion. For me,
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that's a great avenue to compassion, to recognize the wisdom
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teaching that this is conditioned. So, in many ways, the
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wisdom and compassion of our practice kind of feed each
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other there, you The shaping of our minds helps our
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minds to step back and not own it, not take
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it as my fault or I did this, and yet
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having to recognize, yes, and I am living with this,
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so is there something different that can be done here?
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And the very seeing of it, in my experience, the
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very seeing of the views, the very seeing of the
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conditioning begins to shape something different. And often we think
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we should know how to go in and change our minds.
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that we should somehow replace this view with some other view.
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But in my experience, when I have tried to disbelieve
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a view, it has a rebound effect. You know, it's
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kind of like that view kind of goes underground and
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it resists that. It's like, no, no, there's a reason
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why I'm believed here. And so being seen and being
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acknowledged as, oh, this is what's being believed, it kind
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of was willing to come out from behind the curtain
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and be seen as, and be seen for what it is,
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that it is a view, if we're trying to disbelieve it,
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it kind of drives it back behind the curtain so
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that it's kind of then operating. It acts for us, essentially.
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So that's why I often ask people or tell people
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not to try to disbelieve the view, but to just
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see that it is a view, that it's happening. And
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maybe because we do have different levels of belief. Sometimes
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when we see the view, You know, a view is
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a thought, and there's the thought that happens, and it
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kind of comes with a believing process. And that believing process,
473
00:30:54.819 --> 00:30:57.380
the picking up the thought and like going, yep, I
474
00:30:57.420 --> 00:31:01.309
believe that, yep, I believe that, it kind of circles
475
00:31:01.430 --> 00:31:04.869
and it reinforces itself essentially by telling ourselves that we
476
00:31:04.930 --> 00:31:08.490
believe it over and over again. Sometimes when we see
477
00:31:08.529 --> 00:31:11.960
a view, we're well into that believing process and we're
478
00:31:12.119 --> 00:31:13.599
really on board for it. It's like, yep, I 100%
479
00:31:13.599 --> 00:31:19.359
believe that view. That's something that is useful to notice, too.
480
00:31:19.480 --> 00:31:22.839
How strong is the belief? Sometimes the belief is not
481
00:31:22.900 --> 00:31:26.720
that strong. And even at the deeper levels, it's not
482
00:31:26.759 --> 00:31:29.539
that strong. It's more of a habit. And then when
483
00:31:29.599 --> 00:31:32.559
it's seen, it can just kind of go, oh, yeah, yeah,
484
00:31:32.619 --> 00:31:35.930
you know, okay. I can set myself aside right now.
485
00:31:36.009 --> 00:31:38.630
I don't need that view right now. It's kind of
486
00:31:38.670 --> 00:31:41.670
habit that that's working. So seeing the level of the
487
00:31:41.730 --> 00:31:46.259
belief or how strongly we believe it is another useful exploration.
488
00:31:46.319 --> 00:31:48.940
And then sometimes in that exploration, we might find that
489
00:31:49.000 --> 00:31:52.680
there's kind of a cognitive dissonance, a kind of a
490
00:31:52.779 --> 00:31:57.279
difference between the emotional belief and the cognitive side. And
491
00:31:57.319 --> 00:31:59.819
that may be partly what you were speaking to earlier,
492
00:31:59.940 --> 00:32:04.539
you know, the kind of the mind telling us, you know, Gee,
493
00:32:04.599 --> 00:32:08.000
I'm not a person who thinks that people of different
494
00:32:08.039 --> 00:32:13.880
races are less worthy, but there's something deep in there
495
00:32:13.940 --> 00:32:16.319
that there's a kind of belief there is a difference.
496
00:32:16.920 --> 00:32:21.099
You know, that's hard to see. That's hard to hold.
497
00:32:21.880 --> 00:32:25.480
And so the cognitive dissonance between what we would like
498
00:32:25.549 --> 00:32:27.549
our hearts and minds to be and what's in there,
499
00:32:28.069 --> 00:32:31.309
that can create a lot of stress of dissonance. And
500
00:32:31.410 --> 00:32:33.549
if we just kind of, like you said, like, I
501
00:32:33.569 --> 00:32:35.349
don't want to look at that, we set it aside,
502
00:32:35.390 --> 00:32:39.589
that's going to drive the belief underground. So we won't
503
00:32:40.089 --> 00:32:42.789
really get a chance to see it. And having it
504
00:32:42.849 --> 00:32:45.750
be in the light of day is way more helpful.
505
00:32:47.289 --> 00:32:49.990
That's another piece that helps me, too. It's like, oh, yeah,
506
00:32:50.009 --> 00:32:52.150
this is painful to see, but I'd rather see it
507
00:32:52.190 --> 00:32:55.809
than not see it. And also to recognize that there
508
00:32:55.849 --> 00:32:59.289
are times when the reactivity, the dissonance is so strong
509
00:32:59.329 --> 00:33:03.009
that it may make it difficult to actually be present
510
00:33:04.150 --> 00:33:06.529
with it. It's like the capacity that we have to
511
00:33:06.609 --> 00:33:12.349
be with struggle, with stress, with dissonance, it varies at times.
512
00:33:12.430 --> 00:33:15.470
It's stronger sometimes, it's weaker sometimes. And so the capacity
513
00:33:15.509 --> 00:33:19.430
that we have to be with that may be weaker
514
00:33:19.509 --> 00:33:23.180
than the reactivity. Kind of may feel like we're being
515
00:33:23.279 --> 00:33:26.960
swamped by the reactivity. And at that point, it's useful
516
00:33:27.099 --> 00:33:31.640
often to not to repress what's happening, not to repress
517
00:33:31.759 --> 00:33:34.299
the dissonance, not to repress the view, but to kind
518
00:33:34.339 --> 00:33:36.759
of take a break and say, okay, I'll come back
519
00:33:36.819 --> 00:33:40.309
to you later. I need to kind of let my
520
00:33:40.349 --> 00:33:43.710
mind settle for a little while. So there are times
521
00:33:43.769 --> 00:33:47.930
where we shouldn't like just bear ourselves into the stress
522
00:33:47.970 --> 00:33:51.299
or suffering of the dissonance that we feel. or of
523
00:33:51.440 --> 00:33:55.579
any suffering, that there are times when we should turn
524
00:33:55.619 --> 00:33:59.869
our attention to something else. Sometimes I would just say, okay, yeah,
525
00:33:59.910 --> 00:34:03.630
whatever pattern, habit, and mind is going on, you can
526
00:34:03.670 --> 00:34:05.490
take a walk with me, but I'm going to pay
527
00:34:05.529 --> 00:34:09.630
attention to my feet walking, you know, so to just redirect.
528
00:34:11.090 --> 00:34:13.679
Much more of my conversation with Andrea Fella coming up
529
00:34:13.719 --> 00:34:20.130
right after this break. I want to pick up on
530
00:34:20.170 --> 00:34:22.309
something that I think is a theme that is kind
531
00:34:22.329 --> 00:34:26.349
of threaded throughout your comments, but I want to make
532
00:34:26.389 --> 00:34:29.750
it a little bit more explicit. The theme being sort
533
00:34:29.769 --> 00:34:33.219
of compassion or warmth, which is a really important ingredient
534
00:34:33.239 --> 00:34:36.059
when you're looking at your own biases and views and beliefs.
535
00:34:36.420 --> 00:34:38.800
I think, you know, it showed up in your comments
536
00:34:39.159 --> 00:34:41.420
just in that last little bit there about how, yeah,
537
00:34:41.460 --> 00:34:43.659
sometimes looking at this stuff can be really hard. And
538
00:34:44.239 --> 00:34:46.460
maybe part of the art is just knowing when to
539
00:34:47.300 --> 00:34:51.050
focus on something else because you're overwhelmed. Another area in
540
00:34:51.090 --> 00:34:54.570
which you talked about, and I think here explicitly talked
541
00:34:54.590 --> 00:34:57.699
about compassion is when you're seeing the tension between what
542
00:34:57.739 --> 00:35:02.940
you consciously think you believe that everybody's equal. When you
543
00:35:02.960 --> 00:35:07.320
see the tension between that and what some lizard part
544
00:35:07.340 --> 00:35:09.630
of your brain is telling you about how somebody who
545
00:35:09.650 --> 00:35:12.570
looks different than you do or acts differently than you
546
00:35:12.610 --> 00:35:16.389
do is somehow different. inferior to you, when you see
547
00:35:16.429 --> 00:35:19.360
the conflict there, it can be really helpful and compassionate
548
00:35:19.389 --> 00:35:21.800
just to drop back and to see, I didn't ask
549
00:35:21.840 --> 00:35:25.539
for this. It's nature. It's part of how the mind
550
00:35:26.099 --> 00:35:30.000
reacts when it's put in a particular soup. So you've
551
00:35:30.039 --> 00:35:34.699
invoked compassion here within the context, as I understand it,
552
00:35:34.780 --> 00:35:38.119
of a traditional insight or mindfulness practice where you're watching
553
00:35:38.139 --> 00:35:42.260
your thoughts come up and trying to not... fight them
554
00:35:42.300 --> 00:35:44.559
or feed them or numb out in the face of them.
555
00:35:45.400 --> 00:35:53.239
What about an explicit loving kindness or compassion practice that can,
556
00:35:53.460 --> 00:36:00.530
I suspect, you talked about not trying to fight your beliefs,
557
00:36:00.590 --> 00:36:04.050
not trying to create new ones, just let them play
558
00:36:04.090 --> 00:36:09.309
themselves out and fizzle. But I wonder whether loving kindness meditation,
559
00:36:09.449 --> 00:36:13.110
compassion meditation, is a kind of creation of new biases
560
00:36:13.650 --> 00:36:17.170
and of new beliefs and new views, a counter-programming. It's
561
00:36:17.230 --> 00:36:18.110
worked that way for me.
562
00:36:18.630 --> 00:36:22.570
Absolutely. And for a lot of people, that can be
563
00:36:22.590 --> 00:36:27.849
a doorway in for helping to have a little more
564
00:36:28.010 --> 00:36:31.010
ease around all of the stuff that we see in
565
00:36:31.090 --> 00:36:35.599
our minds. It really varies person to person. For myself,
566
00:36:36.320 --> 00:36:40.659
my own doorway to compassion came through the mindfulness practice
567
00:36:41.320 --> 00:36:43.639
early on in my practice when I was exploring and
568
00:36:43.699 --> 00:36:48.309
trying to consciously aim towards the loving-kindness practice, towards the
569
00:36:48.349 --> 00:36:51.710
compassion practice. Essentially, it's like you're putting different thoughts in
570
00:36:51.750 --> 00:36:55.699
your mind. Like, may you be happy, may you be healthy,
571
00:36:55.719 --> 00:36:58.530
you know, may you be free from suffering in the
572
00:36:58.550 --> 00:37:02.030
case of compassion. So you're putting different thoughts in your mind.
573
00:37:02.650 --> 00:37:05.070
For myself, what my mind told me, it was like
574
00:37:05.090 --> 00:37:08.420
trying to disbelieve what I was experiencing. You know, so
575
00:37:08.619 --> 00:37:10.840
it created so much tension in my mind to do
576
00:37:10.900 --> 00:37:15.079
it early on that I realized that that was not
577
00:37:15.280 --> 00:37:17.179
a practice that was a good one for me to
578
00:37:17.280 --> 00:37:20.170
start with. And often when I talk to people about
579
00:37:20.230 --> 00:37:24.050
meditation practices, I encourage people from my own experience, you know,
580
00:37:24.130 --> 00:37:27.210
go in the door that's easiest. Where is it most
581
00:37:27.329 --> 00:37:32.800
natural for you to cultivate being present and what supports
582
00:37:32.880 --> 00:37:35.500
you to have ease of heart and mind? And so
583
00:37:35.519 --> 00:37:40.159
for some people, compassion practice, loving-kindness practice is that doorway,
584
00:37:40.860 --> 00:37:44.199
is a place where it feels supportive. It helps to
585
00:37:44.239 --> 00:37:47.809
balance the mind out when it's looking at all the
586
00:37:47.849 --> 00:37:50.429
stuff that it sees coming up. You know, we will
587
00:37:50.510 --> 00:37:52.670
see a lot of stuff that we don't want to
588
00:37:52.730 --> 00:37:56.050
see when we look at our minds. And so for
589
00:37:56.090 --> 00:37:59.719
some people, many people, roughly everyone, You know, a third
590
00:37:59.739 --> 00:38:04.460
of the people have a relatively easier time with the
591
00:38:04.659 --> 00:38:08.139
compassion practice and metta practice. Maybe a third of the
592
00:38:08.179 --> 00:38:10.719
people really struggle with it. And then a third of
593
00:38:10.739 --> 00:38:12.679
the people are kind of more in the middle, you know,
594
00:38:12.760 --> 00:38:16.550
just where they're both kind of equally hard or easy.
595
00:38:17.309 --> 00:38:21.480
And so, yes, absolutely, for a lot of people... that
596
00:38:21.579 --> 00:38:25.960
direct cultivation of compassion through putting different thoughts in your mind,
597
00:38:26.039 --> 00:38:29.619
it is a retraining. It's putting yourself in a different
598
00:38:29.719 --> 00:38:34.280
soup for that time, essentially. And part of the compassion practice,
599
00:38:35.000 --> 00:38:37.880
where for me it actually began working, I was trying
600
00:38:37.900 --> 00:38:41.590
to just put the thoughts in my mind and somehow
601
00:38:41.679 --> 00:38:44.329
believed that that would be moving me in the direction
602
00:38:44.369 --> 00:38:49.869
of feeling compassion or loving kindness. And at some point,
603
00:38:50.340 --> 00:38:53.780
I got the instruction from one of my teachers, Guy
604
00:38:53.840 --> 00:38:56.360
Armstrong is the one who gave me this instruction, you know,
605
00:38:56.420 --> 00:39:00.320
to really settle back each time you make that wish,
606
00:39:00.570 --> 00:39:06.210
offer that wish of kindness, or express that phrase of compassion.
607
00:39:06.550 --> 00:39:10.909
May you be happy bringing somebody into your mind and
608
00:39:10.969 --> 00:39:14.780
explicitly wishing for a particular person. May you have ease
609
00:39:14.840 --> 00:39:18.380
in your life to not just focus on the wish
610
00:39:18.599 --> 00:39:21.719
and the other person, but then come back and look at,
611
00:39:21.960 --> 00:39:25.190
how did that land? In the soup that I have,
612
00:39:25.489 --> 00:39:28.570
how did that land? What is it kind of bumping
613
00:39:28.690 --> 00:39:32.599
up against? You know, because the metta practice, the compassion practice,
614
00:39:32.639 --> 00:39:35.440
puts us in a different soup, and we'll experience some
615
00:39:35.500 --> 00:39:38.480
dissonance of being in a different soup. And if we're
616
00:39:38.619 --> 00:39:42.659
not aware that that's actually part of the process, you know,
617
00:39:42.699 --> 00:39:45.639
to kind of feel like we're aiming your mind towards
618
00:39:45.719 --> 00:39:50.260
compassion or kindness... And you're bumping up against what feels
619
00:39:50.300 --> 00:39:54.949
like not compassion or kindness. That's a natural part of
620
00:39:55.050 --> 00:39:59.170
how that practice works. And so, when I understood that, again,
621
00:39:59.250 --> 00:40:03.190
to see the compassion practice and the loving kindness practice
622
00:40:03.650 --> 00:40:07.010
as a conditioning, you know, that it is a conditioning,
623
00:40:07.050 --> 00:40:09.340
and that it's going to bump up against other conditioning practices.
624
00:40:09.730 --> 00:40:13.099
And of course there's going to be essentially the opposite.
625
00:40:13.179 --> 00:40:15.960
One of the things that Guy Armstrong also told me,
626
00:40:16.219 --> 00:40:18.619
he said, you know, the metta practice is like running
627
00:40:18.659 --> 00:40:21.579
a metta magnet over your heart. And what does a
628
00:40:21.619 --> 00:40:24.840
magnet do? It pulls out its opposite. So when you
629
00:40:24.980 --> 00:40:28.239
see the opposite of metta arising when you're doing the
630
00:40:28.260 --> 00:40:35.670
metta practice, the loving-kindness practice, you'll see the opposite. And
631
00:40:35.889 --> 00:40:39.630
when that gets pulled out, that is metta. how it
632
00:40:39.690 --> 00:40:43.170
begins to be seen. So essentially, you know, the loving-kindness practice,
633
00:40:43.230 --> 00:40:47.789
the compassion practice is another way, I think, to begin
634
00:40:47.869 --> 00:40:52.349
to see some hidden views, some hidden biases. When we're
635
00:40:52.570 --> 00:40:55.969
in that field and stepping back to, and how did
636
00:40:56.010 --> 00:40:58.889
it affect me to make that wish? We may see
637
00:40:58.949 --> 00:41:02.530
some dissonance there, and that's a place maybe where we
638
00:41:02.590 --> 00:41:06.699
could also see some views that are hidden underneath the surface.
639
00:41:06.900 --> 00:41:07.739
I totally agree.
640
00:41:07.780 --> 00:41:10.219
And I've had that experience myself that, you know, I'll
641
00:41:10.239 --> 00:41:12.920
be sitting there thinking, oh, I'm a failed practitioner of
642
00:41:12.980 --> 00:41:16.789
this stuff because I'm trying to wish well to myself
643
00:41:16.929 --> 00:41:20.050
or anybody else, and I'm actually having homicidal thoughts. And
644
00:41:20.110 --> 00:41:21.949
so I feel like a failure, but actually it's a
645
00:41:21.969 --> 00:41:26.559
misunderstanding of what I think the magnet metaphor is quite useful.
646
00:41:27.099 --> 00:41:31.219
But where for me, it kind of got stratospherically useful
647
00:41:31.340 --> 00:41:34.780
was as I've done the practice, you know, this practice
648
00:41:34.800 --> 00:41:37.329
that I resisted so hard for so long, as I've
649
00:41:37.369 --> 00:41:40.309
spent the last couple of years really quite seriously exploring it,
650
00:41:40.809 --> 00:41:46.250
I've noticed that when it pulls shards of judgment or,
651
00:41:47.289 --> 00:41:51.030
you know, ill will or whatever out of my thorax
652
00:41:51.090 --> 00:41:55.420
while I'm moving this magnet over it, not only am
653
00:41:55.500 --> 00:41:59.599
I able to view the uglier parts of my psyche
654
00:41:59.659 --> 00:42:03.889
with some mindfulness, but also because I'm doing this practice
655
00:42:04.030 --> 00:42:07.190
more intensely, the mind is flooded with warmth. So I'm
656
00:42:07.250 --> 00:42:10.880
actually viewing all of this stuff like, oh, okay, okay,
657
00:42:10.960 --> 00:42:14.019
you know, it's not just this kind of clinical sense of,
658
00:42:14.039 --> 00:42:16.619
this is just natural, or, you know, I can view
659
00:42:16.659 --> 00:42:19.320
this with some nonjudgmental remove. It's like, yeah, oh, yeah,
660
00:42:19.920 --> 00:42:23.579
on some level, these views are were serving me or
661
00:42:23.619 --> 00:42:25.719
trying to help me try this, the organism trying to
662
00:42:25.760 --> 00:42:28.480
protect itself. And can I just kind of hug this
663
00:42:28.539 --> 00:42:29.800
stuff rather than recoil?
664
00:42:31.519 --> 00:42:35.699
Absolutely. I mean, so much of our suffering actually comes
665
00:42:35.780 --> 00:42:40.360
from our organism trying to protect itself. Essentially, it's kind
666
00:42:40.409 --> 00:42:43.769
of based in that movement to take care of ourselves
667
00:42:43.809 --> 00:42:46.769
that we end up with all of this mess. And so,
668
00:42:46.889 --> 00:42:49.969
you know, to kind of recognize, oh yeah, that habit
669
00:42:50.010 --> 00:42:53.789
or pattern, that's trying, it has been trying to like
670
00:42:53.869 --> 00:42:56.369
take care of me. And you're right, you know, when
671
00:42:56.389 --> 00:42:59.460
the mind can be flooded with warmth, you know, that's
672
00:43:00.090 --> 00:43:04.369
with the kind of sense of the oh yeah quality of, oh,
673
00:43:04.570 --> 00:43:07.690
of course, you know, of course this is here, that
674
00:43:07.730 --> 00:43:12.599
there's a kind of the tenderness around seeing it rather than,
675
00:43:12.860 --> 00:43:14.800
like you said, you know, sometimes we might think of
676
00:43:15.139 --> 00:43:19.019
pure mindfulness as having that kind of clinical remove. We
677
00:43:19.079 --> 00:43:25.679
think of perhaps equanimity or non-reactivity as being robotic almost.
678
00:43:26.199 --> 00:43:33.530
But my experience is that With the true equanimity comes
679
00:43:33.650 --> 00:43:38.510
compassion and metta. The experience in the compassion practice where
680
00:43:38.570 --> 00:43:42.570
it kind of brings in that flavor of the warmth.
681
00:43:43.239 --> 00:43:45.000
That begins to give the mind a little bit of
682
00:43:45.019 --> 00:43:50.840
an education about that possibility of holding what's happening, no
683
00:43:50.880 --> 00:43:55.039
matter what it is, with that warmth. And that flavor
684
00:43:55.159 --> 00:43:59.530
of warmth is a flavor that's connected. It's connected with compassion, but...
685
00:44:00.449 --> 00:44:05.760
When the mind is in that place of non-reactivity, the
686
00:44:05.800 --> 00:44:10.599
Buddha often talked about freedom coming with the absence of,
687
00:44:11.260 --> 00:44:13.599
not the presence of, right? I mean, he talked about
688
00:44:13.639 --> 00:44:16.460
the absence of greed, the absence of a delusion, the
689
00:44:16.619 --> 00:44:21.349
absence of aversion being the place of freedom in the mind.
690
00:44:21.789 --> 00:44:25.449
And our minds tell us that the absence means nothing's there,
691
00:44:25.889 --> 00:44:29.230
but with the absence of those, when we can really
692
00:44:29.289 --> 00:44:33.610
start to look at what's present when those things are absent,
693
00:44:34.610 --> 00:44:40.400
you'll see non-reactivity, you'll see equanimity, you'll see joy, you'll
694
00:44:40.579 --> 00:44:44.039
see compassion, you'll see love. And for me, that was
695
00:44:44.079 --> 00:44:47.820
an expanding. I needed to, for a long time, when
696
00:44:47.880 --> 00:44:50.099
I was looking at my mind, it was more that
697
00:44:50.179 --> 00:44:54.090
clinical kind of just distancing. And it was kind of
698
00:44:54.190 --> 00:44:58.570
interesting because I would talk to people And they would
699
00:44:58.650 --> 00:45:01.210
say how much compassion they felt coming from me, and
700
00:45:01.329 --> 00:45:04.260
internally I was thinking, gee, you know, I'm feeling not reactive,
701
00:45:04.300 --> 00:45:09.079
but I'm not really feeling the compassion. I talked to
702
00:45:09.099 --> 00:45:12.079
a bunch of people about that, some of my colleagues,
703
00:45:12.800 --> 00:45:15.670
some other teachers, to kind of be curious about, you
704
00:45:15.710 --> 00:45:17.989
know what? And many of the teachers said, don't worry
705
00:45:18.030 --> 00:45:20.389
about it. The compassion's there. And I'm like, well, that
706
00:45:20.409 --> 00:45:24.750
doesn't help me. But at some point, one teacher encouraged
707
00:45:24.809 --> 00:45:27.469
me to, when I was in that space where I
708
00:45:27.530 --> 00:45:32.079
felt like I was non-reactive, to turn towards the relationship,
709
00:45:32.920 --> 00:45:37.460
to turn towards the connection. And when I did that,
710
00:45:38.610 --> 00:45:42.840
the compassion became clear, the compassion became obvious. And so,
711
00:45:42.860 --> 00:45:45.219
there are different ways. Sometimes you can start with the
712
00:45:45.260 --> 00:45:48.420
compassion practice and find your way to it through that,
713
00:45:49.719 --> 00:45:51.960
and then you get the taste of that, and then
714
00:45:52.000 --> 00:45:55.440
you can apply that or bring that to bear on
715
00:45:55.480 --> 00:45:59.420
your mindfulness practice. For myself, it came the other direction.
716
00:46:00.219 --> 00:46:03.889
When I found my way to the compassion and the
717
00:46:04.070 --> 00:46:08.329
love from the mindfulness practice and this like okay, be
718
00:46:08.389 --> 00:46:13.570
curious about the relationship as opposed to the non-reactivity side
719
00:46:13.610 --> 00:46:16.250
of it. You can kind of lean towards non-reactivity. You
720
00:46:16.269 --> 00:46:20.539
can lean towards compassion. And I didn't know how to
721
00:46:20.619 --> 00:46:24.239
lean towards compassion, but this one teacher was very astute
722
00:46:24.280 --> 00:46:27.659
in saying, look at the connection between you and the
723
00:46:27.719 --> 00:46:32.219
other person. And it was instant that the compassion was there.
724
00:46:32.340 --> 00:46:35.829
And so that was my doorway to I often like
725
00:46:35.869 --> 00:46:40.369
to offer people many doorways to compassion. You know, the
726
00:46:40.409 --> 00:46:45.989
compassion practice, the mentor practice are really useful tools. And
727
00:46:46.070 --> 00:46:49.429
for some people, perhaps bringing that warmth in, it's like
728
00:46:49.469 --> 00:46:53.369
that can be remembered as you meet something with suffering.
729
00:46:53.730 --> 00:46:57.449
You can remember that warmth and allow that to infuse
730
00:46:57.750 --> 00:46:59.690
how you're with your experience.
731
00:47:00.829 --> 00:47:03.199
There's an even larger point about practice that's coming to
732
00:47:03.219 --> 00:47:07.489
mind that Every mind is different and, you know, everybody's
733
00:47:07.630 --> 00:47:11.840
different based on, you know, your conditioning. And so some
734
00:47:11.860 --> 00:47:15.820
practices work really well for you, but wouldn't work really
735
00:47:15.840 --> 00:47:18.420
well for me. And some practices work really well for
736
00:47:18.460 --> 00:47:20.219
me right now, but wouldn't have worked really well for
737
00:47:20.239 --> 00:47:23.650
me 10 years ago. And same for 10 years hence.
738
00:47:23.789 --> 00:47:27.469
So it brings it to mind an expression from my teacher,
739
00:47:27.829 --> 00:47:30.349
Joseph Goldstein, who likes to say, you know, whatever works.
740
00:47:31.530 --> 00:47:36.989
Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, I'm a fan of that philosophy, too. Absolutely.
741
00:47:38.329 --> 00:47:41.760
Back to delusion for a second. As you know, but
742
00:47:41.780 --> 00:47:44.340
I'm saying the following for really for listeners in Buddhism,
743
00:47:44.940 --> 00:47:49.860
we talk a lot about the three poisons or the defilements, greed, hatred,
744
00:47:50.059 --> 00:47:54.400
and delusion. Greed and hatred are always kind of obvious
745
00:47:54.440 --> 00:47:56.000
to me. I can see both of them in my
746
00:47:56.019 --> 00:48:00.619
mind at any given nanosecond. And Delusion has always been
747
00:48:00.960 --> 00:48:03.360
the harder one for me. Like, what is that? What
748
00:48:03.409 --> 00:48:05.960
is that really getting at? And as I understand it,
749
00:48:05.989 --> 00:48:09.989
the fundamental delusion the Buddha was pointing to was this
750
00:48:10.090 --> 00:48:16.070
idea that we're separate, solid egos in the world, but
751
00:48:16.110 --> 00:48:19.530
not really in it because we're peering out fretfully behind,
752
00:48:19.670 --> 00:48:22.489
you know, these eye sockets. Do I have that right?
753
00:48:23.320 --> 00:48:26.139
Well, I would say he pointed to three fundamental delusions.
754
00:48:27.010 --> 00:48:31.079
That's one of them. And I said earlier, that's the delusion.
755
00:48:31.119 --> 00:48:33.519
We tend to take what is not self to be self.
756
00:48:34.730 --> 00:48:40.409
We tend to attribute a self to this unfolding process
757
00:48:40.780 --> 00:48:44.019
of mind and body. It's human. It's human. I mean,
758
00:48:44.340 --> 00:48:47.239
it's the rare human that does not have a sense
759
00:48:47.280 --> 00:48:51.349
of self and believe it. That's one aspect of the delusion.
760
00:48:51.409 --> 00:48:53.429
The other two are that we tend to take what
761
00:48:53.489 --> 00:48:55.889
is impermanent to be permanent, and we tend to take
762
00:48:55.909 --> 00:48:59.949
what is unreliable to be reliable. They kind of interweave
763
00:48:59.969 --> 00:49:03.909
with each other, those three aspects of delusion. Because things
764
00:49:04.170 --> 00:49:08.230
are impermanent, you know, and that we tend to attribute
765
00:49:08.269 --> 00:49:11.719
or take impermanence, attribute, and it's even with the with
766
00:49:11.719 --> 00:49:17.369
a very simple reflection, we can see the impermanent nature
767
00:49:17.369 --> 00:49:20.500
of experience. You know, there's nothing that we experience that
768
00:49:20.539 --> 00:49:23.940
lasts for very long. And we can know that. We
769
00:49:24.019 --> 00:49:28.090
know intellectually that we're going to die. But we don't
770
00:49:28.219 --> 00:49:30.969
behave that way. So there's a kind of a belief
771
00:49:31.150 --> 00:49:35.469
underlying in our immortality, even though we know consciously. This
772
00:49:35.530 --> 00:49:38.929
is that kind of the same thing of the dissonance, essentially,
773
00:49:38.969 --> 00:49:42.969
between what we believe and what's emotionally true, that belief
774
00:49:43.179 --> 00:49:46.690
in our own. immortality, essentially. You know, we can't fathom
775
00:49:46.769 --> 00:49:49.389
a world without us, so it wouldn't exist in a way.
776
00:49:49.409 --> 00:49:51.989
You know, that's what we think. So there's that, the
777
00:49:52.110 --> 00:49:55.869
impermanent nature of the world. And because of the impermanent
778
00:49:55.909 --> 00:49:59.619
nature of the world, there's nothing reliable in the world
779
00:49:59.840 --> 00:50:04.179
that we can have for any length of time that
780
00:50:04.199 --> 00:50:07.900
will make us happy, that will be the thing that
781
00:50:07.940 --> 00:50:11.739
we can get or have or hold that makes us
782
00:50:12.699 --> 00:50:15.699
happy for the rest of time. We can get something
783
00:50:15.820 --> 00:50:18.800
for a few moments, the happiness of that lasts for
784
00:50:18.820 --> 00:50:21.239
a few moments, but then we're off on a loop
785
00:50:21.300 --> 00:50:24.469
of trying to get more things that make us happy.
786
00:50:25.010 --> 00:50:28.550
And then the sense of self is essentially kind of
787
00:50:28.650 --> 00:50:32.650
trying to navigate the world to find things that will
788
00:50:32.670 --> 00:50:38.630
make us happy. Those three are connected. The not-self teaching,
789
00:50:38.789 --> 00:50:42.909
I think, is a very foundational teaching of the Buddha.
790
00:50:43.710 --> 00:50:48.150
But there's also an understanding that the insights that will
791
00:50:48.230 --> 00:50:52.170
lead us to kind of letting go of greed, aversion,
792
00:50:52.230 --> 00:50:56.550
and delusion, those insights might come through the recognition of
793
00:50:56.590 --> 00:51:00.309
the impermanent nature of experience, might come through the recognition
794
00:51:00.349 --> 00:51:03.369
of the unreliable nature of experience, or might come through
795
00:51:03.409 --> 00:51:07.570
the recognition of the not-self nature of experience. So, yeah,
796
00:51:07.610 --> 00:51:12.469
I think that they're all three really powerful delusion bubbles
797
00:51:13.070 --> 00:51:17.199
That we are operating with. And when you pop one
798
00:51:17.219 --> 00:51:21.179
of them, it tends to kind of get to the
799
00:51:21.320 --> 00:51:26.760
others as well, in a way. So that's the fundamental delusion.
800
00:51:26.780 --> 00:51:31.210
I sometimes call that the level of human delusion that we...
801
00:51:32.389 --> 00:51:40.010
have these beliefs, things are permanent, reliable, controllable, that I exist,
802
00:51:40.210 --> 00:51:43.480
you know, that there's something stable or solid. And that's
803
00:51:43.519 --> 00:51:46.420
another way that the sense of self has an imputation
804
00:51:46.460 --> 00:51:50.960
of permanence. So that loops back to that particular understanding
805
00:51:51.000 --> 00:51:55.360
that we attribute a permanence to our sense of self.
806
00:51:56.340 --> 00:51:59.679
That's the level of human delusion. That the deepest level,
807
00:51:59.719 --> 00:52:02.500
you're not going to find pretty much anybody, any human
808
00:52:02.559 --> 00:52:06.059
being on the planet is going to share those delusions.
809
00:52:06.840 --> 00:52:09.340
And then the level of delusion we've been talking about
810
00:52:09.389 --> 00:52:13.449
more today is kind of this intermediate level. The processes
811
00:52:13.530 --> 00:52:19.710
are similar in terms of the way views work. I mean, basically,
812
00:52:19.730 --> 00:52:25.030
taking what is impermanent to be permanent, it's a view.
813
00:52:26.210 --> 00:52:29.519
It's a belief. Taking what is unreliable to be reliable,
814
00:52:29.559 --> 00:52:31.460
that's a view or a belief. Taking what's not self
815
00:52:31.500 --> 00:52:34.840
to be self, that's a view. In fact, it's often
816
00:52:34.920 --> 00:52:39.699
called sakaiyaditti in the Pali, identity view. So, it's a
817
00:52:39.780 --> 00:52:43.840
view that's held. And so, it functions in very similar
818
00:52:43.900 --> 00:52:46.079
ways to this kind of middle level that we've been
819
00:52:46.119 --> 00:52:51.639
talking about mostly today, the kinds of personal conditioning views
820
00:52:51.699 --> 00:52:55.309
and beliefs that have been shaped in our lives. Those
821
00:52:55.429 --> 00:53:00.380
personal views and beliefs are kind of informed by some
822
00:53:00.420 --> 00:53:04.360
of the deeper habits of mind around taking what is
823
00:53:04.440 --> 00:53:07.380
impermanent to be permanent, what is not self to be self.
824
00:53:07.800 --> 00:53:11.780
Our sense of self is shaped very personally by our culture,
825
00:53:11.860 --> 00:53:15.519
by our conditioning. So I think it's useful to not
826
00:53:15.639 --> 00:53:19.010
always drop down to that very deep human level of
827
00:53:19.030 --> 00:53:21.280
just looking at things. Well, this is not self. it's
828
00:53:21.420 --> 00:53:24.940
useful to look at that middle layer sometimes to see, well,
829
00:53:25.000 --> 00:53:27.940
how did this sense of self get shaped? What is
830
00:53:28.019 --> 00:53:31.380
the personal conditioning? What is the soup that shaped this
831
00:53:31.579 --> 00:53:34.389
sense of self? Because that can be a kind of
832
00:53:34.449 --> 00:53:40.030
a more accessible level or layer of seeing what's going on.
833
00:53:41.010 --> 00:53:45.630
And the delusion is, again, taking the view to be
834
00:53:45.750 --> 00:53:49.309
true or not seeing that it is a view. So
835
00:53:49.510 --> 00:53:53.050
when we take what is not self, to be self,
836
00:53:53.750 --> 00:53:57.929
that's a view that is being held that we're not seeing.
837
00:53:58.550 --> 00:54:00.869
We don't see that that's happening.
838
00:54:03.309 --> 00:54:05.210
You touched on this a little bit, but I think
839
00:54:05.289 --> 00:54:08.690
as we head toward the home stretch here of the interview,
840
00:54:08.730 --> 00:54:11.130
it would be nice to put a really fine point
841
00:54:11.210 --> 00:54:17.889
on this. What is the self-interest here? Now, I'm not
842
00:54:17.929 --> 00:54:21.750
referring to the not-self here. I'm saying, what's in it
843
00:54:21.789 --> 00:54:25.389
for us to do this work? Because it is hard.
844
00:54:26.010 --> 00:54:29.019
The Buddha generally tended to go through the pleasure centers
845
00:54:29.059 --> 00:54:31.619
of the brain. Why should we do this work?
846
00:54:34.920 --> 00:54:39.039
We are suffering so much. You know, the Buddha at
847
00:54:39.159 --> 00:54:43.840
one point had the kind of poignant reflection before he
848
00:54:43.880 --> 00:54:49.820
went out looking for an answer to his question. I mean,
849
00:54:49.880 --> 00:54:54.340
his question really was, is it possible for human beings
850
00:54:55.019 --> 00:54:59.079
to not suffer? Is it possible? He looked around and
851
00:54:59.119 --> 00:55:03.380
he saw suffering everywhere. I mean, we age, we get sick,
852
00:55:04.059 --> 00:55:08.960
we die. The suffering in our cultures and our communities
853
00:55:09.019 --> 00:55:11.619
and our families, it's like they're suffering everywhere. It's not
854
00:55:11.679 --> 00:55:17.329
hard to see that they're suffering. What our minds tend
855
00:55:17.349 --> 00:55:20.869
to do is to kind of take the quick route
856
00:55:20.889 --> 00:55:26.650
to like putting a band-aid over a limb that's been
857
00:55:26.690 --> 00:55:31.030
chopped off. We try to do something that will like
858
00:55:31.170 --> 00:55:35.400
make us feel better in the moment. And, you know,
859
00:55:35.440 --> 00:55:37.619
it does make us feel better for a few moments.
860
00:55:38.940 --> 00:55:44.119
But then we're back into trying to find the next thing.
861
00:55:44.750 --> 00:55:49.269
that will make us feel better. I'd say most people
862
00:55:50.710 --> 00:55:54.670
who come to this practice, not all, I know people
863
00:55:54.690 --> 00:55:58.789
who came to it through intellectual exploration, but most people
864
00:55:58.809 --> 00:56:02.829
who come to this practice come to it because of suffering.
865
00:56:03.630 --> 00:56:06.750
And the poignant reflection that the Buddha made as he
866
00:56:06.809 --> 00:56:10.610
kind of went into his own journey was, does anybody
867
00:56:11.409 --> 00:56:14.989
out there know a way or two out of this suffering?
868
00:56:16.949 --> 00:56:22.369
And that was my own question when I met this path.
869
00:56:23.590 --> 00:56:26.659
I felt like I kind of hit bottom, very painful,
870
00:56:26.940 --> 00:56:31.039
very painful time in my life. And it's like everything
871
00:56:31.079 --> 00:56:33.860
that I've tried, I've tried everything that I know of
872
00:56:34.059 --> 00:56:37.579
to be happy, and it's not working. Does anybody out
873
00:56:37.619 --> 00:56:42.219
there know a way to navigate this? And at that point,
874
00:56:42.340 --> 00:56:44.179
I was fortunate enough that a friend sent me a
875
00:56:44.239 --> 00:56:46.900
book about the Buddhist practice. It's like, well, I don't
876
00:56:47.280 --> 00:56:50.539
get how this works, you know. The first thing that
877
00:56:50.659 --> 00:56:53.280
I learned from looking at that book was like, pay
878
00:56:53.320 --> 00:56:58.150
attention to your difficult mind states, you know. And anger
879
00:56:58.210 --> 00:57:00.949
was ruling me at that point. I was so angry.
880
00:57:00.969 --> 00:57:04.449
A particular situation had happened and I was so angry.
881
00:57:04.489 --> 00:57:08.429
I would find myself just frozen with anger and non-functional.
882
00:57:08.570 --> 00:57:12.550
I was pretty non-functional. at times, with that anger. And
883
00:57:12.570 --> 00:57:15.210
the book that I got, it said something like, well,
884
00:57:15.309 --> 00:57:17.429
look at the anger, be with the anger, you know?
885
00:57:17.510 --> 00:57:19.929
It's like, how is that going to work? I had
886
00:57:20.090 --> 00:57:23.789
no clue how it would work. But because I'd hit
887
00:57:23.849 --> 00:57:26.920
rock bottom, I was like, well, I don't get how
888
00:57:26.940 --> 00:57:29.260
this is going to work, but my friend says it's useful,
889
00:57:30.079 --> 00:57:33.579
so I'm going to see what happens. And within a
890
00:57:33.719 --> 00:57:38.099
very short time, you know, within a couple weeks, it
891
00:57:38.139 --> 00:57:41.579
was very clear to me that this practice was useful.
892
00:57:42.400 --> 00:57:46.550
So it can be a big hump to get in,
893
00:57:46.969 --> 00:57:49.329
in a way. For me, I had to hit rock bottom.
894
00:57:49.349 --> 00:57:52.789
I had met mindfulness 15 years earlier, but it hadn't
895
00:57:53.150 --> 00:57:58.010
taken because I wasn't suffering enough, essentially. What's in it
896
00:57:58.110 --> 00:58:01.769
for us, and I think many people who start the practice,
897
00:58:02.469 --> 00:58:05.539
pretty quickly will get a little bit of a flavor
898
00:58:05.860 --> 00:58:11.880
of a different way to navigate the world, a different
899
00:58:11.960 --> 00:58:17.510
way to be with their minds, essentially. That shift of
900
00:58:18.789 --> 00:58:24.269
can I look at anger versus just like following, believing
901
00:58:24.309 --> 00:58:27.139
the anger. In a way, even a state of mind
902
00:58:27.159 --> 00:58:29.780
like anger, at a certain point, I understood there were
903
00:58:29.820 --> 00:58:33.239
lots of beliefs in there. The fundamental belief was this
904
00:58:33.320 --> 00:58:36.599
is gonna help me make the other person feel miserable.
905
00:58:38.519 --> 00:58:41.019
And what I missed, what I was missing with that
906
00:58:41.079 --> 00:58:45.019
belief was that it was making me miserable. And very
907
00:58:45.099 --> 00:58:49.099
quickly turning with mindfulness to the experience of, well, what's
908
00:58:49.119 --> 00:58:50.980
it like to feel anger? It's like, wow, this is
909
00:58:51.039 --> 00:58:53.480
making me miserable. It's not doing a thing to that
910
00:58:53.539 --> 00:58:58.010
other person. It just popped that belief, that delusion around,
911
00:58:58.349 --> 00:59:01.300
this is going to make the other person miserable. And
912
00:59:01.559 --> 00:59:05.260
pretty quickly through being with the experience, there was a shift.
913
00:59:05.300 --> 00:59:08.309
And it was only a couple weeks before I was
914
00:59:08.409 --> 00:59:12.900
no longer nonconformist. with the anger. It was another many years.
915
00:59:12.940 --> 00:59:16.280
It was two or three years before that pattern of
916
00:59:16.420 --> 00:59:21.789
anger really dissipated and fell away. But pretty quickly, there
917
00:59:21.829 --> 00:59:25.099
was a lot of understandings. And I even remember a
918
00:59:25.159 --> 00:59:28.360
moment in my life, I think it was two months
919
00:59:28.559 --> 00:59:32.219
into my doing this practice, and I wasn't even meditating
920
00:59:32.280 --> 00:59:34.539
at that point. I wasn't even interested in meditating. I
921
00:59:34.559 --> 00:59:37.949
was just looking at my mind in daily life and
922
00:59:37.989 --> 00:59:40.489
looking at the anger when it came up. And at
923
00:59:40.530 --> 00:59:44.329
a certain point, I saw a kind of pattern fall
924
00:59:44.389 --> 00:59:48.849
apart in the mind around the anger that had me
925
00:59:49.530 --> 00:59:53.429
on board for life. I saw a pattern change. The
926
00:59:53.469 --> 00:59:59.110
mind heading towards anger before it got angry. And the
927
00:59:59.150 --> 01:00:02.010
mind let go of the anger. It just let it go.
928
01:00:02.170 --> 01:00:05.239
And in that moment, seeing, it's like, the person who
929
01:00:05.260 --> 01:00:07.280
I was angry with had come up in my mind.
930
01:00:08.739 --> 01:00:11.679
And I saw that thought. I saw the intention to, like,
931
01:00:11.860 --> 01:00:14.179
jump on that thought and think more thoughts to get angry.
932
01:00:14.679 --> 01:00:21.840
Knew from the experience that anger was suffering. knew from
933
01:00:21.860 --> 01:00:25.239
the previous weeks of looking at being with anger that
934
01:00:25.300 --> 01:00:28.699
that was not a good direction to go. And the
935
01:00:28.739 --> 01:00:31.880
mind just let it go. And that was what was
936
01:00:31.900 --> 01:00:36.559
so inspiring to me in that moment, was that I
937
01:00:36.599 --> 01:00:40.179
didn't do the letting go of the anger at that point.
938
01:00:40.619 --> 01:00:44.300
It just let go. And so seeing that, you know,
939
01:00:44.409 --> 01:00:49.130
seeing that was life-changing for me, that moment of seeing
940
01:00:49.150 --> 01:00:52.139
that I saw directly that the practice of looking at
941
01:00:52.199 --> 01:00:55.880
the anger in the last couple of months had contributed
942
01:00:55.900 --> 01:00:59.500
to the mind letting go of it. And so at
943
01:00:59.539 --> 01:01:01.639
that point, you know, when you said, what's in it
944
01:01:01.699 --> 01:01:05.199
for us? You know, why would we do this? When
945
01:01:05.260 --> 01:01:08.750
we get those tastes, when we get those senses of
946
01:01:08.769 --> 01:01:12.889
a different possibility, it's like the mind can't go back
947
01:01:12.949 --> 01:01:17.070
from those. It understands, the mind begins to understand that
948
01:01:17.110 --> 01:01:21.610
there's a completely different way to move in the direction
949
01:01:21.909 --> 01:01:26.860
of happiness than our habitual way of just getting the
950
01:01:26.900 --> 01:01:29.059
next thing or getting rid of the things that we
951
01:01:29.099 --> 01:01:33.039
don't like. Those little tastes of shift in the mind,
952
01:01:33.460 --> 01:01:37.489
little senses of, oh, it's possible not to be caught
953
01:01:37.550 --> 01:01:41.829
by anger, but to just be with it, whatever pattern
954
01:01:41.869 --> 01:01:44.570
or habit we're looking at, just to see it. We
955
01:01:44.730 --> 01:01:49.030
feel a difference. You know, we experience a different quality
956
01:01:49.570 --> 01:01:52.110
in our heart and mind. Even if the anger or
957
01:01:52.130 --> 01:01:54.550
whatever it is, the reactivity doesn't go away in that moment,
958
01:01:54.769 --> 01:01:57.710
it's like there's space around it. And there's a piece
959
01:01:57.849 --> 01:02:03.030
of our system that understands this is a deeper way
960
01:02:03.050 --> 01:02:08.579
to well-being. So there's plenty of times that it feels
961
01:02:08.980 --> 01:02:12.480
really hard to practice. Plenty of times that it feels
962
01:02:12.519 --> 01:02:15.170
really hard to look at that difficulty and But the
963
01:02:15.250 --> 01:02:18.929
more we practice, the more we get those little hints,
964
01:02:18.969 --> 01:02:24.860
those little flavors of there's a different way. And at
965
01:02:24.900 --> 01:02:28.599
a certain point, it feels like that different way that
966
01:02:29.360 --> 01:02:32.360
the mind has had a taste of, that becomes the
967
01:02:32.400 --> 01:02:37.059
gravitational pull. And I've talked to students, too, who say this.
968
01:02:37.139 --> 01:02:39.940
It's like, I tried to stop practicing and I couldn't
969
01:02:40.000 --> 01:02:43.090
do it. It's like, I didn't want to look at
970
01:02:43.110 --> 01:02:46.860
this anymore, but... But I didn't have any choice, partly
971
01:02:46.900 --> 01:02:49.300
because what happened when they stopped looking at it or,
972
01:02:49.320 --> 01:02:51.519
you know, stopped trying to be with it would kind of,
973
01:02:51.519 --> 01:02:55.469
it's like they felt even worse. And I think it
974
01:02:55.510 --> 01:02:58.829
was Joseph, actually, who used this image. He said, you know,
975
01:02:58.849 --> 01:03:01.230
it's like we're in a bowl. You know, I've got this,
976
01:03:01.250 --> 01:03:04.050
like you can see this, but nobody else can. You know,
977
01:03:04.070 --> 01:03:06.030
we've got a bowl and we're kind of in the
978
01:03:06.090 --> 01:03:08.840
bottom of the bowl and we're trying to climb up
979
01:03:08.889 --> 01:03:13.349
the edges of the bowl. And it's hard. It's hard work.
980
01:03:13.369 --> 01:03:17.760
We have to work really hard to meet our experience,
981
01:03:17.880 --> 01:03:21.860
to hang in there when it's really hard. And we
982
01:03:21.900 --> 01:03:23.800
get a little way up the bowl, and then it
983
01:03:23.840 --> 01:03:25.139
gets really hard, and we let go, and we just
984
01:03:25.159 --> 01:03:27.699
slide back down to the bottom of the bowl. He said,
985
01:03:27.739 --> 01:03:30.119
but at some point in practice, it's like the bowl flips.
986
01:03:31.159 --> 01:03:35.179
And then it becomes... hard to stay at that point
987
01:03:35.239 --> 01:03:36.920
in the bowl. It's hard to stay at that point
988
01:03:36.960 --> 01:03:41.440
because you can't stay at that point. You slide down. So,
989
01:03:41.599 --> 01:03:45.599
at a certain point in our practice, there becomes a
990
01:03:45.619 --> 01:03:50.190
kind of a gravitational pull towards the letting go of greed, aversion,
991
01:03:50.230 --> 01:03:54.110
and delusion because the mind so clearly understands that is
992
01:03:54.289 --> 01:03:57.869
not the way to happiness. And it feels the suffering
993
01:03:58.090 --> 01:04:00.989
of the greed, of the aversion, the delusion so much
994
01:04:01.030 --> 01:04:05.239
more clearly. So starting is hard. When we start to
995
01:04:05.280 --> 01:04:12.199
look at our minds, oh my gosh, really humbling, really painful.
996
01:04:13.340 --> 01:04:16.260
And I think this is where some of these teachings
997
01:04:16.300 --> 01:04:19.179
that the Buddha offers around conditioning can help us hang
998
01:04:19.260 --> 01:04:23.659
in there in that time. And the tools of compassion
999
01:04:23.699 --> 01:04:26.360
can help us hang in there around that time. What
1000
01:04:26.469 --> 01:04:28.679
else is in it for us is that as we
1001
01:04:28.739 --> 01:04:33.019
do engage with the practices, as we either kind of
1002
01:04:33.099 --> 01:04:37.760
settle our minds in concentration. We get tastes of feeling
1003
01:04:37.780 --> 01:04:42.099
like we're just infused with well-being. Or in the compassion practice,
1004
01:04:42.139 --> 01:04:44.800
like you said, with that kind of sense of where
1005
01:04:44.840 --> 01:04:48.389
it really started to turbocharge was when you got that
1006
01:04:48.510 --> 01:04:53.250
taste of that warmth. So we get those tastes, and
1007
01:04:53.909 --> 01:04:56.110
that's what's in it for us too. You know, we
1008
01:04:56.150 --> 01:05:01.780
get those tastes of those qualities that really help our
1009
01:05:01.820 --> 01:05:07.340
mind to recognize this is a whole different way to
1010
01:05:08.869 --> 01:05:13.809
find ease and peace in our lives. Bhikkhu Bodhi points out,
1011
01:05:14.230 --> 01:05:18.289
he's a translator of many of the teachings of the Buddha,
1012
01:05:19.090 --> 01:05:22.010
he points out that to get on the path of practice,
1013
01:05:22.050 --> 01:05:25.400
first of all, you have to have an encounter with suffering,
1014
01:05:25.599 --> 01:05:27.420
like the Buddha, you know, where there's a kind of
1015
01:05:27.480 --> 01:05:31.719
curiosity Does anybody know a way or two out of
1016
01:05:31.780 --> 01:05:34.860
this suffering? Does anybody know a way or two out
1017
01:05:34.900 --> 01:05:37.460
of this suffering? And then you also have to be
1018
01:05:37.500 --> 01:05:40.579
in contact with a teaching that points a way out.
1019
01:05:41.280 --> 01:05:44.000
It's the rare person who would find their way out
1020
01:05:44.099 --> 01:05:48.949
on their own, even meeting suffering, you know, without having
1021
01:05:49.090 --> 01:05:54.230
some kind of pointing of, do this. I mean, like,
1022
01:05:54.269 --> 01:05:56.170
I got that book. It's like, you know, look at
1023
01:05:56.210 --> 01:05:58.929
the anger. Like, how is that going to work? I
1024
01:05:58.969 --> 01:06:01.869
didn't get it. But it was pretty quick once I
1025
01:06:01.909 --> 01:06:05.269
started looking to see, oh, that's how it works. So
1026
01:06:05.349 --> 01:06:08.449
you get the kind of the encounter with suffering combined
1027
01:06:08.489 --> 01:06:13.679
with the teaching, and then that may spur some interest too.
1028
01:06:14.400 --> 01:06:16.420
And for me, there was faith too from my friend,
1029
01:06:16.440 --> 01:06:18.219
the friend who sent me the book. It's like, well,
1030
01:06:18.260 --> 01:06:21.280
she said it's useful, so I'm going to try this.
1031
01:06:21.840 --> 01:06:24.469
So some of what gets us on the path is
1032
01:06:25.610 --> 01:06:29.730
pure faith, pure kind of somebody said it's going to help.
1033
01:06:31.050 --> 01:06:33.699
And then once we're on the path, in my experience,
1034
01:06:33.820 --> 01:06:38.840
once we've started, it actually doesn't take that long for
1035
01:06:38.920 --> 01:06:44.119
us to understand and taste some of those benefits. And
1036
01:06:44.139 --> 01:06:47.260
then when we've tasted those benefits, that's what can keep
1037
01:06:47.340 --> 01:06:50.349
us going. People do find times where it's like, I
1038
01:06:50.389 --> 01:06:52.610
just can't keep going. It's like, well, think about how
1039
01:06:52.670 --> 01:06:55.389
it was five years ago. Think about how it was
1040
01:06:55.449 --> 01:06:58.519
two years ago, whenever you started. think about what it
1041
01:06:58.559 --> 01:07:02.639
was like then. Have you seen change because of the practice?
1042
01:07:03.719 --> 01:07:07.099
And they almost always say, oh yeah, I see that
1043
01:07:07.440 --> 01:07:10.840
if I hadn't been doing this, I would really be
1044
01:07:10.880 --> 01:07:15.239
struggling right now. It's like, okay, use that knowledge to
1045
01:07:15.320 --> 01:07:17.219
help you get through this time.
1046
01:07:19.800 --> 01:07:23.159
Well, I've really enjoyed this time with you and appreciate
1047
01:07:23.179 --> 01:07:26.389
you taking the time to come on and answer questions
1048
01:07:26.469 --> 01:07:29.389
and talk to me. Before I let you go, for
1049
01:07:29.429 --> 01:07:32.289
folks who want to learn more about you, where can
1050
01:07:32.329 --> 01:07:34.070
we do that? Is there a place on the internet?
1051
01:07:34.090 --> 01:07:36.010
Are there books? Where would we go?
1052
01:07:36.030 --> 01:07:39.989
I don't yet have my own website. I'm working on that.
1053
01:07:40.429 --> 01:07:43.739
But the main place that I teach is the Insight
1054
01:07:44.019 --> 01:07:48.960
Meditation Center, different from the Insight Meditation Society, although I
1055
01:07:49.019 --> 01:07:52.639
also teach at IMS. But my home center is the
1056
01:07:52.699 --> 01:07:55.440
Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City, California.
1057
01:07:55.460 --> 01:07:55.539
Yeah.
1058
01:07:56.289 --> 01:08:06.309
And there's a website for that community, www.insightmeditationcenter.org. Corresponding with
1059
01:08:06.389 --> 01:08:11.780
that community, we have the recordings and podcasts of everything
1060
01:08:11.800 --> 01:08:14.599
that we do or most things that we do found
1061
01:08:15.000 --> 01:08:26.859
on Audiodharma, www.audiodharma.org. And so almost all of my talks
1062
01:08:26.979 --> 01:08:31.300
are found on Audiodharma. That's a good way to get
1063
01:08:31.340 --> 01:08:35.260
introduced to my teaching in particular. And then I teach retreats.
1064
01:08:35.340 --> 01:08:38.380
I teach retreats at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. I teach
1065
01:08:38.420 --> 01:08:44.239
retreats at the Insight Meditation Society, regularly teach the three-month
1066
01:08:44.300 --> 01:08:48.220
course at the Insight Meditation Society. And then I also
1067
01:08:48.300 --> 01:08:52.189
teach at a couple of other centers around the country occasionally. Great.
1068
01:08:52.199 --> 01:08:54.010
We'll put the links in the show notes so people
1069
01:08:54.029 --> 01:08:56.840
can just click them Thank you again for doing this.
1070
01:08:57.699 --> 01:08:59.489
You did a great job and it was great for
1071
01:08:59.529 --> 01:09:00.960
me to sit and talk to you.
1072
01:09:01.380 --> 01:09:02.060
It's a pleasure.
1073
01:09:04.260 --> 01:09:08.520
Big thanks again to Andrea Fella. One more thing before
1074
01:09:08.840 --> 01:09:12.479
we let you go. We are looking for a podcast marketer.
1075
01:09:13.090 --> 01:09:15.470
If you love this show, if you love marketing and
1076
01:09:15.510 --> 01:09:18.630
building relationships, we would love to have you on this
1077
01:09:18.710 --> 01:09:22.029
team to help us grow the 10% Happier podcast and
1078
01:09:22.729 --> 01:09:25.989
the other podcasts that we hope to be launching as
1079
01:09:26.029 --> 01:09:28.449
soon as this year. So if any of this sounds
1080
01:09:28.729 --> 01:09:33.300
appetizing to you, please apply at 10% dot com slash careers,
1081
01:09:33.300 --> 01:09:37.239
10% dot com slash careers. There will, of course, be
1082
01:09:37.340 --> 01:09:40.069
a link in the show notes. This show is made
1083
01:09:40.109 --> 01:09:44.560
by Samuel Johns, DJ Kashmir, Kim Baikama, Maria Wartell, and
1084
01:09:44.600 --> 01:09:48.720
Jen Point with audio engineering by Ultraviolet Audio and background
1085
01:09:48.779 --> 01:09:53.479
purring from Toby. As always, a hearty salute to my
1086
01:09:53.539 --> 01:09:56.399
ABC News comrades, Ryan Kessler and Josh Kohan. We'll see
1087
01:09:56.420 --> 01:09:59.729
you all on Friday for a bonus meditation from fan
1088
01:09:59.810 --> 01:10:01.710
favorite 7A Selassie.