#601: Jack Kornfield — How to Overcome Apathy and Find Beautiful Purpose

Brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs http://linkedin.com/tim recruitment platform with 770M+ users, Athletic Greens http://athleticgreens.com/tim all-in-one nutritional supplement, and Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating. Jack Kornfield (@JackKornfield https://twitter.com/JackKornfield) trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, and Burma. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974 and is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. Jack co-founded the Insight Meditation Society http://www.dharma.org/ in Barre, Massachusetts, with fellow meditation teachers Sharon Salzberg https://tim.blog/2017/11/03/sharon-salzberg/ and Joseph Goldstein http://www.dharma.org/ims/joseph_goldstein.html and the Spirit Rock http://www.spiritrock.org/ Center in Woodacre, California. Over the years, Jack has taught worldwide, led international Buddhist teacher meetings, and worked with many of the great teachers of our time. He holds a PhD in clinical psychology and is a grandfather, husband, and activist. Some of his current projects include MMTCP https://mmtcp.soundstrue.com/, a worldwide mindfulness teacher training; Cloud Sangha https://cloudsangha.co/, a site offering access to expert mindfulness teachers online; and a positive impact Wisdom Ventures https://www.wisdomventuresfund.com/ fund. His books have been translated into 22 languages and have sold more than 1.5 million copies. They include The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology https://www.amazon.com/The-Wise-Heart-Jack-Kornfield-audiobook/dp/B00VS0V5Z0/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20; A Path with Heart https://www.amazon.com/A-Path-with-Heart-Jack-Kornfield-audiobook/dp/B000BYR530/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20; After the Ecstasy, the Laundry https://www.amazon.com/After-Ecstasy-Laundry-audiobook/dp/B0167DE84C/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20; Teachings of the Buddha https://www.amazon.com/Teachings-of-Buddha-audiobook/dp/B00QRHEOX4/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20; The Art of Forgiveness, Lovingkindness, and Peace https://www.amazon.com/Art-Forgiveness-Lovingkindness-Peace/dp/0553381199/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20; Bringing Home the Dharma: Awakening Right Where You Are https://www.amazon.com/Bringing-Home-Dharma-Awakening-Right-ebook/dp/B00ATMWJNU/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20; and his most recent book, No Time Like the Present: Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy Right Where You Are https://www.amazon.com/No-Time-Like-Present-Finding-ebook/dp/B01HMXV236/?tag=offsitoftimfe-20. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs https://linkedin.com/Tim. Whether you are looking to hire now for a critical role or thinking about needs that you may have in the future, LinkedIn Jobs https://linkedin.com/Tim can help. LinkedIn screens candidates for the hard and soft skills you’re looking for and puts your job in front of candidates looking for job opportunities that match what you have to offer. Using LinkedIn’s active community of more than 770 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn Jobs https://linkedin.com/Tim can help you find and hire the right person faster. When your business is ready to make that next hire, find the right person with LinkedIn Jobs. And now, you can post a job for free. Just visit LinkedIn.com/Tim https://linkedin.com/Tim. * This episode is also brought to you by Eight Sleep http://eightsleep.com/Tim! Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim is the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced (and user-friendly) solution on the market. Simply add the Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55°F or as hot as 110°F. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. And now, my dear listeners—that’s you—can get $250 off the Pod Pro Cover http://eightsleep.com/Tim. Simply go to EightSleep.com/Tim http://eightsleep.com/Tim or use code TIM at checkout. * This episode is also brought to you by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim. I get asked all the time, “If you could use only one supplement, what would it be?” My answer is usually AG1 https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim by Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim, my all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it in The 4-Hour Body in 2010 and did not get paid to do so. I do my best with nutrient-dense meals, of course, but AG https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim further covers my bases with vitamins, minerals, and whole-food-sourced micronutrients that support gut health and the immune system. Right now, Athletic Greens https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim is offering you their Vitamin D Liquid Formula free with your first subscription purchase—a vital nutrient for a strong immune system and strong bones. Visit AthleticGreens.com/Tim https://www.athleticgreens.com/tim to claim this special offer today and receive the free Vitamin D Liquid Formula (and five free travel packs) with your first subscription purchase! That’s up to a one-year supply of Vitamin D as added value when you try their delicious and comprehensive all-in-one daily greens product. * [07:15] Apathy and polarization [08:44] Truth beneath anger [22:40] Ajahn Chah and contractor-ese [26:25] Retuning the tone of rage [33:24] Coping with trauma-induced hypervigilance [41:01] Making group therapeutic models work [47:15] In any effort to make the world better, put on your oxygen mask first [53:19] How can an aspiring Bodhisattva cut through widespread disengagement and apathy? [1:03:57] Thich Nhat Hanh and death [1:15:06] Out-of-body experiences [1:19:40] “A Brief for the Defense” [1:27:12] A guided meditation for recapturing the adventure and joy of childhood [1:38:47] The benefits of loving-kindness meditation [1:47:56] “Last year, foolish monk. This year, no change.” * For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. For deals from sponsors of The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast, please visit tim.blog/podcast-sponsors http://tim.blog/podcast-sponsors Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (5-Bullet Friday) at tim.blog/friday https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/. For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts http://tim.blog/transcripts. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. Follow Tim: Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss https://twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferriss https://instagram.com/timferriss/ YouTube: youtube.com/timferriss https://www.youtube.com/timferriss Facebook: facebook.com/timferriss https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/ LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/timferriss http://linkedin.com/in/timferriss Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show http://tim.blog/podcast include Jerry Seinfeld https://tim.blog/2020/12/08/jerry-seinfeld/, Hugh Jackman https://tim.blog/2020/06/26/hugh-jackman/, Dr. Jane Goodall https://tim.blog/2020/04/16/jane-goodall/, LeBron James https://tim.blog/2018/11/27/lebron-james-mike-mancias/, Kevin Hart https://tim.blog/2020/05/20/kevin-hart/, Doris Kearns Goodwin https://tim.blog/2018/09/07/doris-kearns-goodwin-leadership/, Jamie Foxx https://tim.blog/2015/12/06/jamie-foxx/, Matthew McConaughey https://tim.blog/2020/10/19/matthew-mcconaughey/, Esther Perel https://tim.blog/2017/05/21/esther-perel/, Elizabeth Gilbert https://tim.blog/2020/05/08/elizabeth-gilbert/, Terry Crews https://tim.blog/2017/12/20/terry-crews-how-to-have-do-and-be-all-you-want/, Sia https://tim.blog/2020/08/12/sia/, Yuval Noah Harari https://tim.blog/2020/10/27/yuval-noah-harari/, Malcolm Gladwell https://tim.blog/2016/06/21/malcolm-gladwell/, Madeleine Albright https://tim.blog/2020/05/27/secretary-madeleine-albright/, Cheryl Strayed https://tim.blog/2017/03/30/cheryl-strayed/, Jim Collins https://tim.blog/2019/02/18/jim-collins/, Mary Karr, https://tim.blog/2020/11/11/mary-karr/ Maria Popova https://tim.blog/2014/10/21/brain-pickings/, Sam Harris https://tim.blog/2020/05/15/sam-harris-2/, Michael Phelps https://tim.blog/2021/01/21/michael-phelps-grant-hackett/, Bob Iger https://tim.blog/2020/01/16/bob-iger/, Edward Norton https://tim.blog/2019/10/31/edward-norton-motherless-brooklyn/, Arnold Schwarzenegger https://tim.blog/2015/02/02/arnold-schwarzenegger/, Neil Strauss https://tim.blog/2014/06/24/neil-strauss/, Ken Burns https://tim.blog/2019/09/12/ken-burns/, Maria Sharapova https://tim.blog/2017/08/26/maria-sharapova/, Marc Andreessen https://tim.blog/2016/05/29/marc-andreessen/, Neil Gaiman https://tim.blog/2019/03/28/neil-gaiman/, Neil de Grasse Tyson https://tim.blog/2019/10/03/neil-degrasse-tyson/, Jocko Willink https://tim.blog/2016/09/21/jocko-willink-on-discipline-leadership-and-overcoming-doubt/, Daniel Ek https://tim.blog/2020/12/03/daniel-ek/, Kelly Slater https://tim.blog/2020/09/08/kelly-slater/, Dr. Peter Attia https://tim.blog/2019/11/27/peter-attia-fasting-metformin-longevity/, Seth Godin https://tim.blog/2016/02/10/seth-godin/, Howard Marks https://tim.blog/2018/09/25/howard-marks/, Dr. Brené Brown https://tim.blog/2020/02/06/brene-brown-striving-self-acceptance-saving-marriages/, Eric Schmidt https://tim.blog/2019/04/09/eric-schmidt/, Michael Lewis https://tim.blog/2020/05/01/michael-lewis/, Joe Gebbia https://tim.blog/2018/03/08/joe-gebbia-co-founder-of-airbnb/, Michael Pollan https://tim.blog/2018/05/06/michael-pollan-how-to-change-your-mind/, Dr. Jordan Peterson https://tim.blog/2021/03/01/jordan-peterson/, Vince Vaughn https://tim.blog/2017/05/31/vince-vaughn/, Brian Koppelman https://tim.blog/2020/04/23/brian-koppelman/, Ramit Sethi https://tim.blog/2019/05/07/ramit-sethi/, Dax Shepard https://tim.blog/2020/11/18/dax-shepard/, Tony Robbins https://tim.blog/2014/10/15/money-master-the-game/, Jim Dethmer https://tim.blog/2020/05/18/jim-dethmer/, Dan Harris https://tim.blog/2020/11/19/dan-harris/, Ray Dalio https://tim.blog/2017/09/13/ray-dalio/, Naval Ravikant https://tim.blog/2015/08/18/the-evolutionary-angel-naval-ravikant/, Vitalik Buterin https://tim.blog/2021/03/08/vitalik-buterin-naval-ravikant/, Elizabeth Lesser https://tim.blog/2021/03/16/elizabeth-lesser/, Amanda Palmer https://tim.blog/2019/04/18/amanda-palmer-2/, Katie Haun https://tim.blog/2021/02/18/katie-haun/, Sir Richard Branson https://tim.blog/2017/10/09/richard-branson/, Chuck Palahniuk https://tim.blog/2020/09/02/chuck-palahniuk/, Arianna Huffington https://tim.blog/2017/10/18/arianna-huffington/, Reid Hoffman https://tim.blog/2015/08/31/the-oracle-of-silicon-valley-reid-hoffman-plus-michael-mccullough/, Bill Burr https://tim.blog/2017/09/17/bill-burr/, Whitney Cummings https://tim.blog/2015/06/26/whitney-cummings/, Rick Rubin https://tim.blog/2015/05/15/rick-rubin/, Dr. Vivek Murthy https://tim.blog/2020/03/26/vivek-murthy/, Darren Aronofsky https://tim.blog/2017/09/09/darren-aronofsky/, and many more. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:07Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake.

• 0:11Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:13Speaker 02

  No, it is an inappropriate time.

• 0:17Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:30Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Eight Sleep. My god, am I in love with Eight Sleep. Good sleep is the ultimate game changer. More than 30% of Americans struggle with sleep, and I'm a member of that sad group. Temperature is one of the main causes of poor sleep, and heat has always been my nemesis. I've suffered for decades tossing and turning, throwing blankets off, putting them back on, and repeating ad nauseam. But now, I am falling asleep in record time, faster than ever. Why? Because I'm using a simple device called the Pod Pro Cover by Eight Sleep. It's the easiest and fastest way to sleep at the perfect temperature. It pairs dynamic cooling and heating with biometric tracking to offer the most advanced, but most user-friendly solution on the market.

• 1:14Tim Ferriss?

  I polled all of you guys on social media about the best tools for sleep, enhancing sleep, and Eight Sleep was by far and away the crowd favorite. I mean, people were just raving fans of this. So, I used it, and here we are. Add the Pod Pro Cover to your current mattress and start sleeping as cool as 55 degrees Fahrenheit or as hot as 110 degrees Fahrenheit. It also splits your bed in half, so your partner can choose a totally different temperature. My girlfriend runs hot all the time. She doesn't need cooling. She loves the heat, and we can have our own bespoke temperatures on either side, which is exactly what we're doing. Now, for me, and for many people, the result: Eight Sleep users fall asleep up to 32% faster,

• 1:58Tim Ferriss?

  reduce sleep interruptions by up to 40%, and get more restful sleep overall. I can personally attest to this because I track it in all sorts of ways. It's the total solution for enhanced recovery, so you can take on the next day... Feeling refreshed. And now, my dear listeners, that's you guys, you can get $250 off of the Pod Pro cover. That's a lot. Simply go to eightsleep.com/tim or use code TIM. That's eight, all spelled out, E-I-G-H-T, sleep.com/tim, or use coupon code TIM, T-I-M. eightsleep.com/tim for $250 off your Pod Pro cover.

• 2:41Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably Athletic Greens. I view it as all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it, in fact, in The Four Hour Body. This is more than 10 years ago, and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately 75 vitamins, minerals, and whole food sourced ingredients, you'd be very hard pressed to find a more nutrient-dense and comprehensive formula on the market. It has multivitamins, multimineral, greens complex, probiotics, and prebiotics for gut health, an immunity formula, digestive enzymes, adaptogens, and much more. I usually take it once or twice a day, just to make sure I've covered my bases if I miss anything I'm not aware of.

• 3:25Tim Ferriss?

  Of course, I focus on nutrient-dense meals to begin with, that's the basis, but Athletic Greens makes it easy to get a lot of nutrition when whole foods aren't readily available. From travel packets, I always have them in my bag when I'm zipping around. Right now, Athletic Greens is giving my audience a special offer on top of their all-in-one formula, which is a free vitamin D supplement and five free travel packs with your first subscription purchase. Many of us are deficient in vitamin D. I've found that true for myself, which is usually produced in our bodies from sun exposure. So, adding a vitamin D supplement to your daily routine is a great option for additional immune support. Support your immunity, gut health, and energy by visiting athleticgreens.com/tim. You'll receive up to a year's

• 4:10Tim Ferriss?

  supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your subscription. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/tim.

• 4:21Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today is a fan favorite, one of my favorites, Jack Kornfield. So Jack is one of the few people I have on speed dial if I hit particularly acute existential distress or anxiety. And this is roughly a two-year anniversary since we recorded an episode, which I suggest everyone listen to, right at the early stages of COVID. This was in March of 2020. So who is Jack? Jack Kornfield, trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, and Burma. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974 and is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice

• 5:05Tim Ferriss?

  to the West. Jack co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barry, Massachusetts, with fellow meditation teachers Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein. Goldstein? Goldstein. It's the German. It's the spending time in Germany that always messes me up there. And the Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California, which is stunning. I have spent some time there. We talked about that in our first conversation. Over the years, Jack has taught worldwide, led international Buddhist teacher meetings, and worked with many of the great teachers of our time. He holds a PhD in clinical psychology. And I just want to mention in aside here, one of the things that I love about you, Jack, and respect about you is that you spend time both in the deeply philosophical, I shouldn't say

• 5:46Tim Ferriss?

  both, there are many stems to this, the deeply contemplative, but also in the deeply clinical. And you've worked with many, many different patient groups. So I think that provides you with a very interesting and eclectic, broad-spectrum toolkit. So I just want to say that for people who may not be familiar with you. And jumping back in, you are also a grandfather, husband, and activist. Some of your current projects include MMTCP, a Worldwide Mindfulness Teacher Training, Cloud Sangha, if I'm pronouncing that correctly. This is another word that I have trouble with. Yeah, all right. Nailed it. S-A-N-G-H-A, a site offering access to expert mindfulness teachers online and a Positive Impact Wisdom

• 6:31Tim Ferriss?

  Ventures Fund. His books have been translated into 22 languages and have sold more than 1.5 million copies. I have read many of them. They include A Wise Heart, subtitle, A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology, A Path with Heart. After the Ecstasy, The Laundry, one of my favorite titles, Teachings of the Buddha, The Art of Forgiveness, Loving Kindness and Peace, Bringing Home the Dharma, subtitle, Awakening Right Where You Are. And his most recent book is No Time Like the Present, subtitle, Finding Freedom, Love and Joy Right Where You Are. You can find him online, jackkornfield.com, that's K-O-R-N-F-I-E-L-D.com, on Twitter, at Jack Kornfield, Instagram,

• 7:13Tim Ferriss?

  Jack underscore Kornfield. Jack, it's so nice to see you again. Thank you for making the time.

• 7:17Speaker 02

  It's a pleasure, Tim. Happy to see you and very glad to know that you're in [bleep] and that you brought rain with you. It turns out to be the rainmaker after all, and we really need it out west. So, way to go.

• 7:31Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you. Thank you. I do what I can where I can. So, I just need to figure out exactly how I managed to precipitate this rain and replicate that. But that's a project for After the Podcast. Jack, there's so many different places we could start. I thought I would begin with explaining one of our most recent conversations, and that was prompted by feeling some amount of existential distress that has been on slow burn for a while now. And we don't have to start here in terms of our conversation, but I want to mention it to folks, just to underscore the fact that I do have you on the speed dial, per se, because of your deep expertise and awareness related to certain things. And

• 8:15Tim Ferriss?

  in this case, it was angst and distress related to climate change, extreme weather events, and noticing a growing apathy, feeling of learned helplessness, perhaps, in my audience, which scares me more than most things. I mean, there's a lot of strife, there's a lot of anger, and I think these things may be intertwined. And we'll probably cover all of these in our conversation. Now, just to set the stage for this uplifting conversation, before we started recording, I asked what we might chat about, and you said, well, death, war, and anger. So, we will...

• 8:55Speaker 02

  All the cheerful topics.

• 8:58Tim Ferriss?

  All the cheerful topics.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Enjoy. No, enjoy and well-being, but you know, we have to make the descent and then come back out reborn into a new brighter world.

• 9:08Tim Ferriss?

  Exactly. So let's start with anger because in between my rain making activities in the dry Alpine West, I also make time for stupid arguments over breakfast, one of which I had this morning. I think that was also precipitated by yours truly. So not all great things. And you mentioned you have a number of stories before we started recording related to anger. So let's start there and I'll let you lead wherever you think it makes sense.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  I will, but let me ask you a question first. Why do you ask about anger? What is your intention? Or what makes you ask?

• 9:46Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I ask about anger because I notice as I reflect on not just my own behavior, but behavior that is common in my family, a tendency towards perhaps an emotional home base of anger. It's a very familiar feeling and I recognize how it can be corrosive. And I've spoken to people who have wanted to discuss their respective perspectives on say, clean anger. I have tried to contend with it in different ways. Some have suggested fully expressing it, hitting a pillow, working on a punching bag. That tends to amplify and

• 10:29Tim Ferriss?

  perpetuate anger in me. So it does not have the desired effect of dissipating anger at all. It just turns it from a seven to a 10. And it's something I want to work on because I also recognize that even when I convey neutral content from the perspective of the words that I choose, sometimes my tone has an undercurrent of anger and that causes strife. That causes arguments. That causes various types of tension and a lot of it, most of it is not helpful. That is part of why I ask. And if I may, just add one more thing. From

• 11:07Tim Ferriss?

  a macro societal perspective, I have never seen more polarization and anger than I see today, just observing this audience of let's call it 10 to 20 million people a month. As I look at all of it from a 30,000 foot view, I have never seen so much anger and hostility ever in all my time on this planet. So that's also frightening.

• 11:32Speaker 02

  So that really helps me a lot because your openness about it is actually what we need. If we bury it or stuff it, it just festers and as you say, you can try to be nice and then it seeps out in the tone of your voice. And people feel that. We resonate with one another. It's not a complicated thing. You could call it mystical, but if you put a violin on the table and somebody else plays a violin nearby, the strings of both of them will resonate. And so, yes, there you're looking so nice and then that little stuff seeps out. So I've really had to wrestle with anger a lot. And the Greeks call it a noble emotion, the philosophers, because there's something of value in it.

• 12:14Speaker 02

  So the first thing I want to say is that anger in itself isn't bad. It's difficult to work with, but it's not a bad thing. It's something for us to understand because it's part of human incarnation. And often the anger comes out of hurt or it comes out of fear, ways that we feel vulnerable. It's a way of protecting ourself. James Baldwin said, "I believe the reason that people cling to their hate and anger so stubbornly is because they're afraid that once hate is gone, they'll be forced to face their own pain." And so we also project it on others, you know, the ones that cause our pain and so forth.

• 12:58Speaker 02

  Instead, we get angry as if they were the ones making it happen and we have the enemy de jour. It doesn't matter. Right now it's Russia and everybody's cheering. We have a, the Pentagon is like, I don't know what to say. They're celebrating, "We have a great enemy again and a bigger budget" and so forth. You know, but it can be the immigrants or the Mexicans or the blacks or the gays or the, you know, whoever it is, the enemy de jour, because we can't bear our insecurity. And we can't bear the fact that we're vulnerable in certain ways and that what's out there is also part of us. So Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the great Russian author, when he was in the gulags writing

• 13:38Speaker 02

  these brilliant things and sent out into Siberia, he said, "If only we're simple, if only we could just round up the evil people and get rid of them." But the problem is the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who among us is willing to get rid of a piece of our own heart? So this is where we are as human beings. So here I am. I'm in the monastery. I did some years training as a Buddhist monk.

• 14:10Speaker 02

  And in my family, there were four boys, and we each had different roles. My brother got angry a lot. I think that was the healthiest in some way. Because my father was angry, paranoid, wife batterer, somewhat mentally ill, and also a brilliant scientist, who helped develop some of the first artificial hearts and lungs, and did space medicine and stuff. But he was a terrifying figure in many ways. So I was the peacemaker in the family, trying to calm it down. I've now made that a profession. You know how that goes. But anyway. And I go in the monastery, and I'm sitting, minding my own business, meditating, walking slowly in the forest in this in the remote part of Thailand on the border of Laos. That's an ascetic forest monastery.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  I wanted something tough, you know, we're young men. Is there anything dangerous to do around here? Let me try it. And I start to sit, and at some point, not that long in my time there, the first months, I start to get more and more irritated at the way the monks around me are behaving, and the problems, and you know, this one and that one. And then I just noticed that I'm getting angrier. And all of a sudden, I realize that I have a lot of anger. It just starts boiling up because there's no distraction, and I can't put it on somebody else, really. And so I go to talk to my teacher about it. I said, you know, all this anger is bubbling up. And basically, it shocked me because I thought I was a peaceful person,

• 15:38Speaker 02

  and mostly, I just didn't want to be like my father and hurt people. So I'm not going to be like him. But it turns out, he's in there, and it's all in there. And I tell, I just tell my teacher.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  And he looks at me and he says, "Good." He said, "Great, this is what you need to look at." He said, "I want you to go back to your little hut, had a tin roof, you know, close the one window and door, put on all your robes, this is the hot season, and if you're gonna be angry, do it right." He didn't say, "Go beat something." He just said, "Sit in the middle of it, take the seat, and feel the fire of it, and learn, first of all, learn to tolerate." Because part of what happens with anger is when we can't tolerate the emotions, then we lash out, or it leaks in our words. And he said, "So go and sit, and bring your mindfulness to it, and learn to tolerate it, because a lot of the power of meditation,

• 16:34Speaker 02

  as the neuroscientists say, is to increase the window of tolerance, so you don't get reactive to things, but you have the ability to feel things fully, and then decide how to express it." So I sit there, and after a while, it's like, okay, anger comes, and the great image in the Buddhist teaching is of the Buddha seated under the Tree of Enlightenment, that big world story or myth, and while he's sitting there, he gets attacked by the armies of Mara. "You have no right to sit here, Mara comes as doubt." Mara brings temptations, you know, and then it was all the beautiful maidens and a golden chariot, you could have all these things, the Buddha says, "No, been there, done that, you know,

• 17:19Speaker 02

  I want something freer than that." And then Mara attacks him with spears and flaming arrows and things, and the Buddha's response is to say, "I see you, Mara." Mara comes back other times in Buddha's life, and the main thing that the Buddha does, he doesn't fight Mara, he says, "I see who you are, I see you." And in that, you can feel that there's a freedom in the heart, a spaciousness, to be present for it. So I get better with this shit, right? I'm like, okay, now I'm not quite so angry, I know I have it. I leave the monastery after some years. I go back to New England where I'd been last.

• 18:01Speaker 02

  Hook up with an old girlfriend who was great. She was doing graduate teaching at Harvard. And very quickly, we get into conflict. And I realized, okay, it's one thing to deal with anger in myself. But being a monk, I had no training in how to deal with relationship. And going back was hard. People talk about leaving monastery, going back to their family. They they forget that both Jesus and Buddha had a hard time when they went home to their family. Right? This is like the real place. So I'm there with this woman and all my neurosis comes up, my neediness, my whatever fears,

• 18:43Speaker 02

  all the things about around intimacy that I didn't have to deal with as a monk. So I start to do that and and I realized the anger is getting building up again. She was great, actually. She said, okay, you dealt with it in yourself. Now let's do this together. So she says, come with me. She had an old Volvo station wagon and in the back she had 10 cases, big cases of bottles. And she said, come with me. She drove me to an old place where they were demolishing a brick building. She said, all right, get out. I want you to throw those suckers at the wall, you know, and say whatever you have. So you just about me, whatever, just let it out. Not so much as pounding the bag, but just making it all conscious.

• 19:28Speaker 02

  It wasn't like I have to do that every day. And then I went into a Reichian therapy and this guy said, you have the monk's defense. You can be aware of anything, but you're afraid to actually express it. So he said, what?

• 19:42Tim Ferriss?

  Jack, may I interrupt for a second? What type of therapist was that?

• 19:45Speaker 02

  He worked with Wilhelm Reich, who was a contemporary, right after Freud, who worked with the energy and sexuality of the body. And he asked me, what time of day is hardest for you? And I said morning, I'm not a morning person. He said, great, I'll see you at 6 a.m. when your defenses are down. So I go in and he has me do these greeting exercises, charge up my body, plays some evocative music, and starts working on my body, saying, you've gotta let this stuff out, whatever it is, okay? He worked on my body so hard, one day he cracked two ribs, actually. Oh, geez. But I wept, I cried, I got angry, I did all these things.

• 20:27Speaker 02

  So this was part of my learning it, and now I'm a lot less afraid of it, and therefore I also can use it. So when I had my house being rebuilt, and we were supposed to go to Europe, and contractor, who was a good guy, kept saying, we're, you know, we're a little behind. I said, we've gotta finish before we travel for a long time. He's putting it off, and I kept asking, nice guy that I am, and he says, oh, finally, I said, you know, we've only got a month to go, and you little teams. And I yelled at him, I said, man, if you don't finish this, I'm gonna sue your ass in court, I'm gonna get, you know, I'm just tired of this shit, and I'm really angry. And he looks at me, he says, oh, you really want it done, don't you? And I said, yeah.

• 21:07Speaker 02

  Next day, he sent like a triple crew, and I realized that I simply needed to speak contractor ease. I was kinda speaking like Buddhist monk, but that was not his language. So it became easier, in some way, to work with it and to realize that, you know, I have my own inner Taliban, I have my own inner iron curtain, it's not just out there. And by taking this energy and saying, yes, this is something that I can work with, it just becomes much easier for me, and it runs through me quicker. It's not that it doesn't, I mean, I watched Thich Nhat Hanh or the Dalai Lama get angry or upset. It's part of us.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  And then I guess the last thing to say, because it also allows for a kind of graciousness about it. When I see myself getting angry, if you really look, what I really look, underneath anger is hurt or fear, or some kind of humiliation or something like that, where you feel like you've been disrespected. And if I can drop from the anger to say, what's under this? And then express it and say, I really feel hurt when you say that, or that makes me afraid. That very conflict with another person or a group of people, it changes from being, I'm right and you're wrong to,

• 22:29Speaker 02

  this hurts, or I'm afraid about this. And we can have a genuine conversation that's entirely different. So I'll pause here because that's a lot of story.

• 22:39Tim Ferriss?

  That is, and I want to, I want to dive right back in to the stories and your teacher's name.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Ajahn Shah.

• 22:48Tim Ferriss?

  Ajahn Shah.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  Right.

• 22:50Tim Ferriss?

  So I recall from looking at my notes from an earlier conversation that we've had on this podcast, you tell the story of being out with this teacher, collecting alms, food, one day when you saw a big rock in the middle of a rice paddy. Tell me if I get any of these details wrong. And Ajahn Shah asked, is that boulder heavy? And a number of the young monks said, yes, it is, master. And then he replied with, not if you don't pick it up.

• 23:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:18Tim Ferriss?

  So being able to witness what's present without being lost in it. Now let's contrast that for a second because I feel, like you said, this internal iron curtain sometimes, or this internal conflict between not picking up the boulder, so not voluntarily overexerting,

• 23:39Tim Ferriss?

  and speaking contractories. So my question for you is, if you have the impulse to speak contractories, we're just like, for fuck's sake, enough is enough. Like so and so isn't doing the job they're supposed to do. How do you surgically use contractories in your own life and know when to turn off Mr. Nice Guy and speak more directly? Because that, I imagine, can also become a hammer looking for nails, right? And I think that's something that I do where someone might excuse constantly speaking to everyone in contractories with, well, I'm just keeping it real, or I'm just being honest, or whatever the phrases that they use to deflect the fact that they're just being an asshole a lot of the time.

• 24:24Tim Ferriss?

  How do you think about that?

• 24:25Speaker 02

  So I would, in a certain way, I'd offer you a challenge because you like challenges. You're one of those guys who's had anything dangerous to do around here, but it's both outward and inward. And the challenge would be this. That when you speak from that place, which I do, and it has its time, often it makes things worse. I think Benjamin Franklin said, "What begins in anger ends in suffering," generally speaking. So the challenge is, can you speak your truth that's underneath the anger? Can you say, "I'm worried that it isn't gonna happen," or "that this is all gonna fall apart," or "I feel so hurt," you know, when you say those kind of things, or when you do those things,

• 25:08Speaker 02

  can you actually drop, now you're aware of your anger, and allow a certain deeper level of understanding and then express it? It doesn't mean that there might not be occasions when you need to stand up, but when you talk about saying the truth, Tim, the problem is that pesky little word "truth," you know, because there's a truth of how Tim sees it and how it should be, but there's another truth that you feel worried or hurt or anxious or, you know,

• 25:39Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 25:40Speaker 02

  and so forth. That's also true. And that's a different truth that's even more challenging sometimes to express, but it connects you. And when people are arguing, I think about in couples, you can say the simplest thing, like, "What did you mean?" but with different tones of voice, like, "What did you mean?" you know, and it's like an attack, right? Or you can say, "What did you mean? I really wanna understand you." It's the very same words, but the feeling that's communicated is either blame or it's, "I'm actually curious. What's going on in you? What did you mean?" And so, there's no simple answer, but it's like riding a bike. Yeah, you fall off each side and you practice it.

• 26:25Tim Ferriss?

  Let me, once again, turn this conversation into just a self-serving therapy session, because I think that

• 26:31Speaker 02

  Yes, I'll send the bit all later, that's right.

• 26:35Tim Ferriss?

  It'll help at least a few other people out there. And I also don't want to misrepresent myself. I'm not just raging, throwing rocks through windows, nonstop, 24/7. I think, maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was the Buddha who said, "If you walk outside, and one day you meet one asshole, that person's an asshole. But if you walk outside and everyone's an asshole, you're the asshole." I might be misattributing that. It could have been Abraham Lincoln or Oscar Wilde. But I do think about that. So I'm not raging. I'm not a rageaholic, I wouldn't say. But the biggest challenge, I think, that I have is not the words I use, but the slight edge or tone that I think, whether by genetics

• 27:12Tim Ferriss?

  or environment, I have adopted, because there was a lot of this in my household. I'm unclear on how to systematically work on catching that tone. And I have to imagine it begins with awareness. Now, retrospectively, I'm aware, for instance, this morning, the issue wasn't what I said. It was probably the edge with which I said it.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:40Tim Ferriss?

  Do you have any suggestions for how to work on that?

• 27:43Speaker 02

  Oh, it's a deep and a beautiful question for us as human beings. It can be anger, or it can be other patterns, you know, addictive patterns, or other things that we fall into. And you said something, straight up, right away, the first step is just to be aware of it. Because if you're not aware of it, you're on automatic pilot. The next step is, you said, "I'm aware of it retrospectively." You want to move the time a little closer to when it happens. And there are two things you can do. One is pause. Start to tune yourself. You could even take a little notebook. I think it's a great thing, anyway. Get a little notebook and put the word anger on the first page. And then just periodically let yourself

• 28:25Speaker 02

  write about it. So you let, images of your family, anger about the world, the climate, whatever, you just let it. So you start to see, okay, this is the repository of angry. This is what I'm learning about it. This is when it comes. So you're making it more conscious. Then, as you catch up to it more in the current moment when it arises, the next step is to pause.

• 28:52Speaker 02

  And with your notebook, if you kind of write down little examples, you don't have to fill it with pages, but alright, this morning, tone of voice I got... Then you can begin to imagine or feel a different scenario. Don't even do it out loud yet, but imagine what upset you in the morning. Even with that little tone, you say, you know, how else could I have handled this? And the thing is that the imagination has an enormous capacity to change our neural structure. How we envision, as you know, Olympic athletes, they envision and they go into a game and they do better. You know this very well. You actually get to envision yourself, alright, now I am the Buddha, I have a certain fierce

• 29:35Speaker 02

  compassion, so you haven't put it all aside, but basically, I'm a gracious and caring human being. What would that, how would that come out in this situation? And you start to realize that you have this capacity, if you really begin to look at it, to transform your patterns. That's why it's called practice rather than perfect. You know, whether meditation practice or something else. Well, there are two things. There's a word, "carencia" in Spanish, and it refers to the place in bullfighting where the bull stops in the middle of the ring at some point, with the bullfighter there, and the bull and the matador are facing off, right?

• 30:18Speaker 02

  And the matador finds his "carencia." It's the place in the middle of all of that energy which is unmoving, which is just, here I am, on the earth, there's the bull, there's all of this stuff. If you find that in yourself, when you practice, when you learn to find that in a cause, then it gives you all kinds of other opportunities. And I remember this woman coming to see me, who was in the middle of a terrible divorce, so, you know, we're talking real things here. Her ex-husband, who was also a wealthy lawyer, hired a killer lawyer. He was gonna keep the kids and keep all the money, he was angry at her, even though he's

• 31:03Speaker 02

  the one that had the affairs, but, anyway, so I said, first of all, get yourself a kick-ass lawyer to defend yourself. Read that from the Buddha, I don't know, anyway, wherever that...

• 31:17Speaker 02

  But we worked for a while and she came in one day because he was trying to turn their children against her, which is like one of the greatest pains a parent can have, but you know, also not so uncommon. And she said, I sat with it. I let myself feel all the pain and the tremendous amount of grief. And that's part of our work was just the grief of it. And then she came in one day and she said, I will not bequeath a legacy of bitterness to my children. I will not say a bad thing about their father. I simply will not do it. And that was the currency. That was, it doesn't matter what the bull does. I know

• 31:56Speaker 02

  what my values are and I know who I am. You have that in yourself. That power is in you.

• 32:07Tim Ferriss?

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• 32:51Tim Ferriss?

  so you can quickly prioritize who you'd like to interview and possibly hire. It's for all of these reasons and more that small businesses rate LinkedIn Jobs number one in delivering quality hires versus leading competitors. LinkedIn Jobs helps you more quickly find the candidates you want. Did you know that every week nearly 40 million job seekers visit LinkedIn? Post your job for free at LinkedIn.com/Tim. That's LinkedIn.com/Tim to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply.

• 33:24Tim Ferriss?

  So Jack, I want to make sure that we talk about death and from the notes that we exchanged before we started recording, what happens as you die or when you die. But before we get to that, so give people something to look forward to, I wanted to chat with you a bit about something you and I haven't spent that much time talking about offline. And I feel like this may connect closely to my anger response, or just general kind of aggressive response to the world. And that is hypervigilance. So you know about my childhood trauma and my traumatic background, per se. For people who want more on that, just search my name and trauma and it'll pop right up.

• 34:09Tim Ferriss?

  So we won't get into it right now. But there's a degree of hypervigilance and always seeking safety and maximizing or optimizing for safety that I think may be the foundation under which a lot of this anger arises. And I'm wondering how you have worked with people, whether they have complex PTSD or undiagnosed traumatic response in the form of hypervigilance. How do you work on that with people?

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Well, first of all, I'm just listening to you and feeling the suffering of it, not just for you, but for the child that you were, and for the child of so many people who are listening, the childhood, not everybody's, but I became somewhat that way, not that perhaps as much as you, because I didn't know when the car pulled in the driveway, was I going to get a raging, violent maniac father, or just a kind of ordinary father. So I had to be vigilant like you. Underneath that, there's fear, but there's also a lot of grief.

• 35:16Speaker 02

  The loss of what could have been a healthier family, the grief that that child wasn't protected and so forth. So for me, part of what helps with the vigilance is bringing a kind of compassion to that frightened part of ourselves. Because it's not just you as an adult, but as you point out, it's really that hypervigilance was learned long ago to protect you. And so I will do a practice of having people visualize themselves when they had to learn that, when they weren't safe. Do some compassion practice, put their arm around that child, hold

• 36:00Speaker 02

  that part of themselves really in some way. And also begin to say to all that fear, kind of almost like a mantra or a recitation, "Thank you for trying to protect me." Because it wires in the pipeline or frees immediately the brainstem, "I'm, you know, the tiger's coming," or whatever. "Thank you for trying to protect me." You feel your vulnerability. "I'm okay just now. I'm all right, thank you. You can relax." And it becomes actually a practice where you let yourself feel the hypervigilance and you say, "Thank you for trying to protect me." So you're not suppressing it, you actually honor it because it's kept you safe.

• 36:44Speaker 02

  And you say, "And right now, I'm okay." And then you let yourself feel it in your body. "I actually am okay this moment, I'm safe, thank you. I'll be all right." And again, it becomes kind of a training that you do where you are acknowledging what's true, the suffering of it, the deactivation and the grief that's underneath it, the tears that are under it.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  And now we're kind of also in the territory of trauma which you and I have talked about before and is so important in this time. I might have, I don't know, in that last conversation we had in the podcast, I probably referred to some of the retreats that we did, Michael Mead, Luis Rodriguez, other compadres and mine compatriots with returning vets from the Middle East who have tremendous amount of trauma. And part of what was needed was to make a safe enough space that they could bring out in a conscious way that which was kept inside out of fear to protect themselves and others.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  So we got combat vets together. And part of it was to write or talk or tell your story. And these are stories that they couldn't tell anybody else. You can't go home and tell people the graphic details of what happened in the battle zone. It would shatter them. I know it also like working with physicians and nurses from the neonatal units in the hospital and my beloved Trudy who has done that work talks about how the nurses come home and they can't tell the people around them that this week I held three babies in my arms as they died and describing, can't do it. So the vets say, I can't, I can't.

• 38:40Speaker 02

  And this was the powerful thing. I can't tell you what I saw and I can't tell you what I had to do. And that's the worst because it's a kind of weight on the soul of a vet. So first we got them together and as combat vets, they found a safe space to tell their stories that they couldn't tell to anybody else. And we also invited them to write a story, or write a poem, or begin to articulate it. And it's held in the body, so there was movement that we did, and martial art kind of things. There was some group songs, the songs of warriors returning from Africa, or Tibet, or,

• 39:24Speaker 02

  you know, the Mayan, that we could chant together in the stories of what it meant for a warrior to put down their armor and come home, and become, again, part of those who till the fields and care for their families. And there are all these ancient myths about it. And people, we get to let all that out that they were carrying. And we invited their family to come in. And each man stood up and told at least some part of the story that they'd never told before. And as each person spoke, when it was done, there was a group chant of honoring them and saying, "We now welcome you back, a warrior who's done your deeds as a warrior.

• 40:09Speaker 02

  You can let that go now, and we welcome you back as a human being in a new way in our midst." I mean, otherwise, people get out of the military, and the bus stops at the, you know, corner or whatever, and they're left out, and nobody knows. Nobody tends to. So I tell this story partly because it's important in terms of trauma, that it's held in our body, we need to be able to tell the story. We need others also around us to witness us. And to see that this isn't who you really are, this was a role you took on, but it's not who you really are.

• 40:50Speaker 02

  And that mirroring also has a tremendous kind of benefit or blessing when you're seen in a different way, because then you can start to see yourself in a different way. I sort of digressed from your question, but.

• 41:04Tim Ferriss?

  No, it's, it's, I don't, I don't think it's a digression. I think, I think these are parallel tracks and they're probably converging tracks at certain points. I realize those two don't go together for those people out there who are sticklers about parallel. But question that comes to mind for me also, which is very front and center as I think about mental health, new therapeutics, new models for trying to address mental health. The United States, just as a country, is woefully underprepared for the sheer volume of patient cases that, that need to be dealt with. If you compare them to almost any other first world country,

• 41:45Tim Ferriss?

  whether it's a Scandinavian country or even much larger countries, from the perspective of having trained psychologists and psychiatrists, that the US really has woefully inadequate ratios, which leads me to wonder how you think about group therapy dynamics, because it seems like one way to increase the treatable population while decreasing the per person costs. And this applies, as you just indicated, not just in some of the spheres that I know well and you know extremely well, but let's just say in the psychedelic therapeutics arena, where you could look at group therapies and integration with some of these different

• 42:28Tim Ferriss?

  compounds, whether it's MDMA or others, say psilocybin for treatment resistant or major depressive disorder. But it applies also in unenhanced environments, like the veteran example that you just provided. Do you have any thoughts on paths forward or paths worth exploring with respect to group therapeutic models? Because it seems like it's not just a way to, I want to emphasize in my mind, it's not just a way to decrease costs, it's also a way to, in many, many instances, improve outcomes, rather than having one-on-one isolated treatments.

• 43:04Speaker 02

  Yes. So first, I want to note something else, just as we have a mental health crisis here and Vivek Murthy, who's the. Current Surgeon General, and a great guy that I know, said, in what he's seen, more than half of what comes through the doors of our hospitals and clinics presenting as physical problems, really has its root in emotions and mental. That it's the level of stress, and that that's really part of the crisis, and that it gets, you know, we're allowed to have a medical problem, but it's actually not tended. There was a section of the Wall Street Journal, dozen years ago or so, it was the front page

• 43:49Speaker 02

  of it, actually, and it talked about the over-medication of children. Front page, Wall Street Journal, saying that forty-five million of our children are on antidepressants, or ADHD medication, or anti-hypertensive, you know, or antipsychotic, or various medications like that. Huge number. And then we have to pause and say, "Our children, why?" Even before we get to your question of how do we heal, there's something about the way

• 44:29Speaker 02

  our culture, the drivenness of our culture, you know, and the outer focus of it, in which we're actually not listening to our children. And you see it in all kinds of ways, I don't even have to go any further, you know, but even the kind of terrible gun violence that we see, and so forth, in some way, comes out of a tremendous amount of pain in childhood, I'm not trying to make any excuse for that, but... So here we are, we're in a culture, now let's just look at it clearly, we're in a culture that doesn't know how to do this. And I think it has to happen on a lot of levels, you're correct, that this isn't an individual problem, and people will come to see me and say, "I have a tremendous amount

• 45:12Speaker 02

  of anxiety, right now, and I'm anxious about this, this, this in my life." And I look at them, I see, that you may be anxious about that, but you're living in a culture that's suffused with anxiety, right now, it's not just yours. You're actually swimming in the psyche, or the field of consciousness around you, and it's in the news, and it's in what people talk about, and you can't not feel it. So it's not just personal. Nor is it personal to those children. And in some way, stepping back and seeing that already starts to give you a little relief. Okay, it's not my fault. I'm, you know, I'm not doing something wrong because we can so easily judge one another or judge, you know, our mental state.

• 45:55Speaker 02

  So then going to your very important question, there are new modalities of healing. And certainly some of the psychedelic work with psilocybin, ketamine, MDMA, tremendously helpful and promising. But the other part which you talk about, and it's really the epidemic of loneliness. It's what the vets were feeling when they were in their home alone and they couldn't talk to anybody about. All that was inside them is that we need each other.

• 46:25Speaker 02

  And healing is not an individual matter for almost everybody that is a human being, especially the healing of the heart and the psyche. We need to hear each other, to comfort each other, to allow the measure of grief and with it then to allow something more beautiful to arise. Because if you could see the vets after that retreat, there was a tremendous amount of love that grew that they could express because they felt free in themselves in some way. And so it's not just that you want to get back to, okay, I can function again, but that you want to renew your heart and you want to renew your soul and your spirit. And that's possible.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  And usually it needs to be done together. It can't only be done in yourself.

• 47:15Tim Ferriss?

  So Jack, let me ask you a question about the anxiety suffused society in which we find ourselves. And this is a question I'm very interested in personally. So to what extent do you think about creating the ideal environment for yourself and your loved ones versus adjusting to an anxiety suffused society that is unlikely to be wholly changed by your efforts? And it makes me think of a very often quoted quote of Krishnamurti's, which is, "It is

• 47:58Tim Ferriss?

  no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." But one could argue that that is absolving yourself of any responsibility. So how do you think about? Choosing between those two, or a ratio between those two, or contending with that tension, if you see any tension between those two.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  I love your question, because it's a little like a Zen koan, you know? The world is on fire, it's in flames. Do I stay around and try to put the fire out, or the Titanic's going down? Do I help people into the, into lifeboats? Or do I flee? Do I go in the mountains? Or do I get a little lifeboat and so forth? Do I stay, or do I go? And the answer to those kind of koans is yes. Which you gave the little mathematical answer, how do you titrate it? In some fashion. Because I think it's both. You know, the metaphor that everyone uses these days is, you know, put on your oxygen mask first, before you put it on your children. There's a way in which we have a responsibility to ourselves,

• 49:01Speaker 02

  to try to stay healthy and well. And I know, you know, if I go into a refugee camp, it doesn't help if I go in and I'm depressed and anxious. They're already feeling that. They don't need me to breathe. They actually need somebody who says, yeah, this is suffering, and there are ways to manage it. There are ways, even though it's difficult, there are ways and there are possibilities for us. The great anthropologist and philosopher Wade Davis said, despair is a failure of the imagination.

• 49:38Tim Ferriss?

  That's a good one.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  It's a brilliant line, because it speaks to the heart. Despair is a failure of the imagination. Human beings have been in tough times since caves and saber-toothed tigers, since, you know, battles between different clans, you know, and then we don't have to talk about the Huns and the Visigoths, or the Roman army, or the, you know, the armies of the, whatever, the Aztecs, or wherever around the world. We human beings have dealt with epidemics, flood, tornadoes, continuing war is not a new story, right? And we're survivors. And we survive in two ways.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  First of all, we survive by protecting what we care about, which is ourselves and those close to us. So I do that. I want to protect my grandson. Have him live in a place where it's safe, if that's possible. Of course, safe enough. Or myself. But I also don't want to turn away for two reasons.

• 50:44Speaker 02

  My daughter said, "Well, if climate changed and everything gets better, you know, would you move to New Zealand?" Or, "Would you get..." And I said, "You know, I choose to be on the deck of the Titanic and I'll help people in the lifeboats." That's just what I've taken as a vow, as a bodhisattva, that you turn towards suffering and you offer what you can. But part of that offering is to see that the world that I want for my grandson needs my tending. And it doesn't mean I can change it, because this is the way of the world in some ways. But it can be better or it can be worse, and we know that. We can stand up for things that really matter. And so your question, which is a really, it's a question of the heart, it's also different for different people.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  There are some people who are profoundly contemplative, and I think the extreme are those Tibetan yogis in a cave who are broadcasting compassion to everybody in the world. If we're all connected, as they say, as we find, then that's their contribution. But then there I was, out on the streets in March for Your Lives in DC for this. And that was also important. And I love the fact, it was not this one, but with the prior March for Your Lives. I forget who it was, but there was a fantastic black gospel singer who stood up, and she sang in a sort of gospel style, Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'." You know, forty years after it came out,

• 52:13Speaker 02

  gather around people, "The times are changing, don't block up the wall." And I listened, and it was, it was the very same medicine that we needed. And I felt so glad to be out there with people. And I felt so glad that we were doing lobbying petitions and sending money and trying to support the organizations and do what we could. And I've also worked with kids coming out of street gangs in the cities. You know, and they're, they're veterans too. When we've had retreats with Army veterans, military veterans coming back, combat veterans. And some of these young kids, they look at each other. In their eyes and they nod and they know that they've all been together in battle.

• 52:58Speaker 02

  Because some of these kids have seen as much shooting as some of these vets have. And so we actually need to tend to that. And it becomes part of our life purpose. In some way, yes, to take care of yourself, but yourself isn't separate. To take care of yourself is everything.

• 53:19Tim Ferriss?

  So Jack, let me ask you, and I'm gonna say a bit, but the basic question is what makes an effective Buddhist Sattva versus an ineffective Buddhist Sattva? So the seven habits for the effective Buddhist Sattva?

• 53:36Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 53:37Tim Ferriss?

  Or something like that is where this is.

• 53:40Speaker 02

  Well, it's like Silicon Valley, you know? If you can measure it, then you can change it, right? How do we measure it?

• 53:46Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, right. Well, I don't want to over secularize and pull all the magic out of it, but let me, let me just riff for a second. You'll see where, where this is coming from. As I mentioned earlier, and I'm gonna circle back to this, I've never before noticed so much apathy and disengagement and anxiety and depression in my audience of let's call it 10 to 20 million, who I think are fairly representative across a very broad spectrum of not just American but global society, but let's just stick with US society at the moment. It's every race, every creed, every political orientation.

• 54:25Tim Ferriss?

  And I think one contributing factor, this is a theory, is that never before have people been exposed to constant, global, bad news of every type. And

• 54:43Tim Ferriss?

  So the question of how to be an effective Bodhisattva stems from something that I've been journaling on myself in the last few weeks, and it came about from reading a revised edition of a book called The 80/20 Principle. And it talks about in one section, happiness islands and identifying your closest, say, 10 relationships that bring you peak positive emotional states. And I began to, after I made this list, ask myself, whenever I got an email asking for a coffee date, or a phone call, or fill in the blank, would I rather spend time with this person, or if I look at my list of top 10 relationships and ask myself the question, am I spending as much time with these 10 people as I would like? If the answer is no, would I be better served?

• 55:28Tim Ferriss?

  And would our relationships be better served by me focusing on these 10 relationships? And I found myself feeling this tension between trying to serve, in my capacity as a writer and a host of a podcast, some amorphous, larger group? Or would we, on some level, be all better served if each of us just said, hey, make a list of your top 10 most important relationships and go serve those 10? And I'm sure it's not as binary, it doesn't need to be one or the other, but that's why I asked this question, because there are a lot of well-intentioned people who want to do good, but they're so scattered and their goals are so unclear that they never really produce much.

• 56:10Tim Ferriss?

  And that's a very rambling, long, compound question, but you see where I'm going.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  I think it's a great question, because it's carried in the hearts of a lot of the people listening. Part of the reason, I think, as you point out, that people aren't responding maybe as effectively as they might, is because they are overwhelmed. And there is a kind of despair, and it feels like a helplessness that sweeps over a lot of people. The problems are too big, it's not possible. One of my favorite friends, colleagues, mentors is a woman named Joanna Macy, who's been working on nuclear disarmament, climate change issues, world peace, all kinds of things for decades now. She's in her 90s.

• 56:53Speaker 02

  And years ago, she started, I think it was together with John Seed, another environmentalist, a series of practices called The Council for All Beings. And it was part of what she calls despair and empowerment work. And that phrase really carries a lot. So people would come and they'd meditate and they'd talk about the issues of climate change and so forth. And then they would be asked to be silent for a day or two while they were there in some camp out in nature. And to go out and find whether in the forest, in the stream around, or in their imagination, it could be the polar bears in the Arctic, or whatever.

• 57:34Speaker 02

  Some profound connection that they have with the natural world of something that they really care about. And then because she's playful about it, they had all kinds of stuff there. She said, "Okay, come back and dress up as your, as your thing." So people came and, you know, made a look, you know, that was some decades ago, but in any case, they came back and they made a circle. And in that circle, they were asked to speak for that part of life that they felt so deeply connected to. And someone would sit up and say, "I speak for the salmon. I'm a salmon potion. I speak for the salmon. Here is what I need. And yes, here's my grief.

• 58:19Speaker 02

  And here is what I am empowered to do now." Someone else said, "I speak for the redwoods," or "I speak for the monarch butterflies," or "I speak for the..." whatever it happened to be. And it required and invited people to be willing to face the very thing you talk about, the apathy, the despair, and say, "Yes, I'll give voice to that." And then to bind themselves to something they care about, like those 10 people in the circle that you said that you most care about. Maybe you could expand the circle a little bit further and say, "And are there a few other beings in this world? Might be the Ukrainians, or it might be the polar bears, you know?

• 59:02Speaker 02

  Might be the monarch butterflies, or it might be foster children in foster care. It's not your task to fix the world. That would be hubris. Okay? I'm Jack Kornfield and I'm the Bodhisattva and I'll fix it all." Nobody's ever done that, right? But it is your task to feel your care and to extend it to make, to put your oxygen mask on, to make something that's safe and sacred as best as you can around you, and then extend that. With your particular gift, your gift is partly through your podcast and your writing. Others, it might be planning a community garden, or their own amazing garden, and giving some

• 59:47Speaker 02

  of the fruit away, or starting a conscious business. And doing it with the intention to make a business that brings well-being to people who work for it, and so forth. There are a million ways to do it. Nobody can tell you how. You have to listen. The other thing is, that nobody else can do it for you. You are doing it, in a way. So, you know, you've spent plenty of time with those ten people, hallelujah, I encourage it. And I don't believe you're gonna stop your podcast, and I don't want you to.

• 1:00:17Tim Ferriss?

  No, I'm not gonna stop my podcast.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  You've got both. You actually, in a way, you're asking something that you've, in part, you've already answered. So, there's a story of a woman who taught in a middle school, or something like that, in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, in the, kind of, the most difficult, poorest part of the city, more people without homes, and so forth. When she got home, she had an apartment near there. If she had extra bandwidth, if she wasn't too tired, she would make sandwiches, and go down and give them to the homeless people in the neighborhood. And little by little, people found out about it, and she became a kind of minor celebrity for giving out the sandwiches.

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  And once that was found out, somebody wrote something about it, so, she started to receive envelopes of money for your good work for the homeless. And she answered them all with a one-line note sent back. She said, "Make your own damn sandwiches."

• 1:01:26Speaker 02

  And that's it. It's not that we have to carry it for someone else, but that each person actually has to decide what their gift is. And no matter how much despair you have, I want to ask you, on behalf of my grandchildren, to extend your hand and mend something, to connect with somebody, to do something, not just on behalf of them, because actually, I know that it's good for us, in our human incarnation, for our soul, somehow, to do that. That's part of the answer to it. It's not just despair, but it's empowerment and realizing that the Dallas Walker's phrase, "We are the ones we've been waiting for."

• 1:02:08Speaker 02

  It's clear the politicians ain't gonna do it, you know, the military ain't gonna do it. Who is it? Oh, as Miss Piggy would say in, you know, "Doesn't mean it's me." Uh-oh, now we're really in trouble. But it also makes a difference, and I used this last time when we talked, because it's an image that I find so compelling, from Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh, who died recently. He said, "When the crowded Vietnamese refugee boats," and he went to try to help with them. "When the crowded Vietnamese refugee boats met with storms or pirates, if everyone panicked, all would be lost.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  But if even one person on the boat remained calm and steady, it was enough. It showed the way for everyone to survive." And then you say, "Well, who is that one person?" Because the boat's rocky, the seas are up, there's anxiety, there's depression. But also, we are now facing a time of tremendous moral challenge and opportunity. You could either succumb in some way and drown in the depression or the helplessness, or say, you are now being charged in this time in human history to stand up in some

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  way and offer your piece of moral courage as a voice or an action, your piece of compassion, your bodhisattva, which means just someone who wants to alleviate suffering no matter what's happening, being willing to see the suffering and the despair and say, "That's not the end of the story." We're survivors for, you know, centuries and millennia. We know how to do this.

• 1:03:56Tim Ferriss?

  So I'd like to segue to two things, Jack. The first, just because I keep planting this flag, and I want to make sure I don't break any promises to listeners. You mentioned Thich Nhat Hanh, whose books had a huge impact on me, specifically one

• 1:04:16Tim Ferriss?

  I don't think it's an anecdote. I think it's more of a metaphor, but I remember it so clearly. And I can't quite pinpoint why this stuck with me in the way that it did. I'm going to come back to his death, which I watched. I watched his, not his death, but his cremation. And the entire procession on YouTube, actually, live streaming. The metaphor, just so I can mention it, since I brought it up, is he talks about doing the dishes. And if, while you're doing the dishes, you're thinking of only what you're going to do after the dishes, that if later you think you're going to say, enjoy a peach after you finish the dishes, that when you are eating the peach, you're not going to be enjoying the peach. You're going to be thinking of whatever comes after the peach. And that's just stuck with me for decades now.

• 1:05:01Tim Ferriss?

  That, you know, if you're thinking of something else while you're viewing what you're doing as drudgery and you're looking forward to X, chances are when you then think you are going to enjoy X, you'll be thinking of something else if you don't train that present state awareness. So a lot of his teachings have stuck with me. Let's talk about death for a second. And specifically, the wording that I have in front of me is what happens as you die. You have, over your many decades of life now, one of the widest ranges of experiences, including non-ordinary experiences of anyone that I've ever met. So please expand on this in any way that you think makes sense. Death and what happens as you die.

• 1:05:42Speaker 02

  I will, but first I want to pick up on Thich Nhat Hanh for a little moment of two parts, and it will segue into death. Christina Figuera is a Costa Rican diplomat. You may have heard of her.

• 1:05:55Tim Ferriss?

  I have.

• 1:05:56Speaker 02

  She was the UN representative for climate. And she helped to organize the Rio Climate Summit that happened, I don't know, a decade ago or so. And then it was her job to organize the Paris Climate Summit that happened, I don't know, four years ago or whenever it was. And she tells this story. She said she had gotten to a place where there was so much contention among the different nations and players about whose fault it was and who was going to do what, that she became really despairing about climate and about what we might do, understandably so. And maybe even a bit paralyzed.

• 1:06:37Speaker 02

  And then somebody said to her, you know, I think you need to step out of this despair place for a little bit, try something different. There's a place down in southern France run by this Vietnamese monk named Thich Nhat Hanh, she'd never heard of him, called Plum Village, why don't you just go there for a couple of weeks, you know, get out of Dodge. So she did. And she said, I went there, and first of all, it slowed her down. You know, she was on a running like we do, you watch Thich Nhat Hanh walk, you know, and he walks, like every step, you were talking about being present, like every step is a miracle, that wow, I'm still alive, I can walk, the earth is here, here we are, what

• 1:07:19Speaker 02

  have I closed my eyes to, it's extraordinary, you know, like it was the last day of his life, he's just there. And then she began to practice with him, breathe, to bring some well-being into a body that was carrying so much tension and suffering, and to let it go, to hold it in compassion, to begin to release. He told her to put a little smile on her lips as she did it, and it wasn't like the smile of okay denial, but it was the smile of the sages, the wise ones who've been through everything and say, we're still here, we know how to do this. And then she took the teachings of interdependence from him, of how every breath you take is

• 1:07:59Speaker 02

  completely breathed with the, you know, raccoon in your backyard and the earthworms, and it's not a fiction, it's the reality, we're exchanging air. You know, I heard that thing, you've probably heard it, that the next breath you take will have a molecule from Julius Caesar's dying breath, and the likelihood is 99%. So I heard that, and I come from a family of scientists, even though I'm a kind of weird one in that, I thought, well, could that be true? So I did the math. I said, okay, how many molecules? Well, in one mole, there's Avogadro's number, and one liter maybe of that breath, there's 10 to the 23rd molecule, okay. How many liters of air?

• 1:08:43Speaker 02

  And I looked it up, how many kilometers of atmosphere there is, and then how many liters in that? It turned out it was 10 to the 22nd. I said, yeah, 99%, Julius Caesar's with you, you are breathing everybody.

• 1:08:57Speaker 02

  You were exchanging breaths with Gandhi and, you know, Mother Teresa and Vladimir Putin and Stalin and everybody else were in it together. She saw it. And she said, "Oh, my God, I've been doing it wrong. I've been thinking in terms of victim and perpetrator," which is how everyone was seeing it. "You're bad and you're being hurt and so forth." She went back and she said, "I saw us as a family, as interconnected, and I wrangled 196 countries," or whatever it was, "and we got to Paris Climate Accord." So this is a Thich Nhat Hanh story, but also a climate story. Because it's saying that there's another way to see it besides despair and empowerment.

• 1:09:42Speaker 02

  So when Thich Nhat Hanh died, he wrote this thing, he taught about it for a long time. He said, "I have not died." He said, "You just think I've died." He said, "But if you look at a cloud, the cloud turns into snow or rain that falls in the streams and goes in the rivers and go to the ocean. The sun heats the ocean and the cloud forms again." He said, "We are this." He said, "I'm not separate from you and the clouds and the rain. We are just the same field of awareness and consciousness of being. And so I was never born who I really am, and I can never die. I'm with you." So I was sitting with my father as he was dying, because I'm getting philosophical there,

• 1:10:26Speaker 02

  but people actually want some Thich Nhat Hanh remarkable. So I'm sitting with my father. Now, my father was, as I said, I think now slightly mentally ill, paranoid, violent, easily triggered, and he was near to dying. As I said, he'd been a scientist who'd helped invent heart, lung machines and things like that. So I sat with him, and he was terrified of dying. He was in the University of Pennsylvania Medical Center. He'd been a student at the University of Pennsylvania. And he kept looking over at the monitor to see if he'd died yet and if any would notice. And because he designed some of these monitors, he was really tuned to it, and his fear was

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  really great. I said, "So Dad, what do you think happens when you die?" He said, "Nothing. Dirt." "You go back to..." "I'm a scientist. You go back to dirt." "Right?" I said, "Well, that's..." "If you're a scientist, that's..." "That's a presumption. I thought scientists did experiments. Don't you want to see what happens?" He said, "What do you mean, see what happens?" I said, "Well, let me tell you my experience." And I described how when I was in a monastery, I'm beginning to learn my meditation, and I got exhausted. I did a year in silence, sitting in meditation or walking 20 hours a day. And I laid out on the floor one day, completely exhausted, saying, "I'll get up in 20 minutes and keep going. I'm gonna get enlightened." You know how foolish young men are. And I got up,

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  and I started to do this slow walking in this cottage I was living in. And I got to the window. I looked out. I saw my teacher at a distance in cottage several places over, meeting with somebody. I turned around, and I walked across the floor, and I saw a body on the floor. And I went, "Woo!" A little brush of fear. And then I realized, "Oh, God, it's me." I was having my first out-of-body experience, and I went close and I peered at myself. You know, I said, "Wow, this is trippy." And then I fell into my body, and I, "Okay, I'm on the floor," and I stood up. Then I learned more how to do that. So I told that to my father. I said,

• 1:12:34Speaker 02

  "I have past life experiences. I remember being a monk in a kitchen and, you know, the Middle Ages in a Chinese monastery, and it was not fun, and I know all these..." And then I looked into it, and it was how it was in those days. And then I said, "And then I've done past life regressions with people all around the world, and people who believe it or don't believe it, it doesn't matter. Half the people have these amazing experiences, and it doesn't matter whether they believe it or not. It's a complete surprise." And I've sat with people as they've died, and they've gotten close, and they'll float out of their body and then come back. I said, "How is it going?" He said, "Well, I started to let go, and there was this whole field of light, which I know from meditation and dying in meditation.

• 1:13:16Speaker 02

  And I was later, there was this sense of love and bliss, and then I could, I did a life review, which happens in a moment. I saw my whole life and, you know, what that incarnation was like." And I kept telling him these stories. I said, "So, when you die, I said, "You claim to be a scientist. Why don't you take it as an experiment?" Because it's likely that you'll find yourself floating out of your body. And you go, whoa, what's this? And then there'll be a sense of light and release. And often, there's a sense of joy and a sense of connection to something so much bigger. I went on for a little bit. I said, of course, it might happen that you're right and nothing happens.

• 1:13:59Speaker 02

  But from my experience inwardly and with so many people, you're gonna start to die and you'll float out of your body. And there'll be a lot of, it'll be surprises for you. And if that happens, remember, I told you so.

• 1:14:17Tim Ferriss?

  How did he respond to this?

• 1:14:18Speaker 02

  He responded medium. It got his curiosity, you know? And I felt good because I at least told him what I knew. We are consciousness. You're not your body. You have a body, but it's not who you are. You're certainly not your thoughts. Oh, my God, if you were your thoughts, we'd be in trouble, right? They keep changing anyway, one opinion to another. And you're not your emotions. They come like the tide or the weather. So who are you? Who you are is the awareness itself that was born into this body. You are consciousness. So I got to tell him a little bit, you know, my side of science, sort of the weird science side.

• 1:15:02Speaker 02

  And he sort of listened and I thought, well, maybe this will be useful to him.

• 1:15:06Tim Ferriss?

  All right, I have to pick at what, not pick, but pick up on one thing you mentioned in passing because a lot of folks are gonna harass me. And it's also piqued my curiosity. When you mentioned your first out of body experience.

• 1:15:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:22Tim Ferriss?

  And then I believe you mentioned later, learning how to do that type of thing.

• 1:15:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:15:26Tim Ferriss?

  How does one, how does one learn to do that type of thing? And, and why would one learn how to do that type of thing? What is the value?

• 1:15:35Speaker 02

  The first thing is, I wondered whether it was real or not. But then, when I got back in my body and I went over the window and looked out, there was my teacher and there was the person visiting them, you know, who I wouldn't have seen while I was sleeping. More often than not, people's experience of that kind, and it's actually more common than you think, happens in an accident or in some great distress. And literally, you could talk to thousands of people who said, "Oh, I was in this car accident and medics came, and there I was floating above, watching." And they can tell you things that happened that they couldn't possibly have seen. Their eyes were closed, they couldn't see that way. There are thousands of detailed accounts of that. So it's not esoteric and you don't have to go to the Himalayas

• 1:16:20Speaker 02

  or sit in silence for a year or something. It's actually part of our human nature, whether it's an accident or things like that. And the simplest thing I can say is that as I got tremendously concentrated and focused in meditation and could move my attention to different places, I could both move it into my body and then I learned to move it into the space of awareness that was not my body. And that's enough to say. But it's not that far away. You know, I don't know that it's that valuable per se. I'm not like pouting it, but I learned something. Just like I learned things from taking psychedelics. "Whoa, look at that, everything's dissolving." "Oh, whoa." You know, it's not how I thought it was.

• 1:17:03Speaker 02

  And in fact, and whatever, all kinds of things. So I learned something of value from it.

• 1:17:09Tim Ferriss?

  I may come back to that, but it sounds like the out-of-body experiences wouldn't make the cut into the seven habits of effective bodhisattvas. Is that what you're saying?

• 1:17:16Speaker 02

  What makes the cut is knowing who you are, that you're not limited by the identity that you play in the world, because we have all these roles. You're a podcaster, you're a writer, you're, you know, the boyfriend, or the father, or the grandmother. You're a businessperson, or a healer, or so forth, all that. And all those roles change. I mean, one person can be both the father of somebody and the son of their mother, and the grandson of their grandmother. They can both be a... Well, if you're a policeman and you come home, there you are, you're on your beat, and you've got your uniform and your gun and so forth. And if that policewoman comes home...

• 1:18:02Speaker 02

  And tries to be the policewoman in her family, she will have a very unhappy family life. She has to not only put her gun down, she has to put her identity down and become a mom or a wife or a daughter to her parent or a colleague, friend. So we have all these identities. They're not who you are. They're what your incarnation offers to you and you get to use them to grow your heart and compassion, to understand the world. I mean, you can have your own purpose, but I, you know, I would invite people to reflect on what would be a beautiful purpose for this incarnation, rather than one where you just suffer. And when you start to see that,

• 1:18:45Speaker 02

  then it frees you. Then the suffering isn't so much of a problem. I think of our friend Ram Dass, 20 years in that wheelchair, half paralyzed from a stroke, aphasia, repeated infection, lots of body pain. And by the end of his life, he just became pure love. He said, "I love everything. I just, I'm so grateful, like taking a heart for this life. I love it. I love this wheelchair. It's carried me. I love those who take care of me." He said, "I used to take care of everybody and start do all these things and now they have to pick me out of bed and wipe my butt." I didn't like that. He said, "I wanted to be the hero who's gonna save everybody and now I have to be a vulnerable human being."

• 1:19:30Speaker 02

  And I love that too. It's taught my heart something even bigger. So what do we want to do with this life? Basically, you each have your measure. What do you do with it?

• 1:19:40Tim Ferriss?

  Let me ask you, Jack, just to pick up on finding a beautiful purpose. Speaking personally as someone who's generally oriented towards the world and my environment and people around me with vigilance, hypervigilance. I think I have focused a lot on reducing risk, eliminating pain. It's a subtractive approach. Does that make sense?

• 1:20:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:20:06Tim Ferriss?

  It's getting rid of things. And we've talked about, for instance,

• 1:20:11Tim Ferriss?

  Contending with despair, but I have to, I don't have to, but I imagine that finding or seeking joy amidst it all is perhaps quite different from subtracting the bad things.

• 1:20:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:26Tim Ferriss?

  How would you speak to that or suggest people think about that?

• 1:20:28Speaker 02

  So first, if you'll forgive me, I want to read you a poem. It's a full, full page poem, so it's not super short, and it's one of the great poems, I love poetry, that I've read in decades, from Jack Gilbert, who was one of our master poets.

• 1:20:45Tim Ferriss?

  Please.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  And it's called, it's called "A Brief for the Defense." All right? And it speaks to your question. "Sorrow everywhere, slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they're starving somewhere else, with flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that's what the gods want as well. Otherwise, the mornings before lavender summer dawn would not be made so fine, and the Bengal tiger would not be fashioned orange and black so miraculously well. The poor women at the fountain are laughing together between the suffering they've known

• 1:21:27Speaker 02

  and the awfulness in the future, smiling and laughing while somebody in the village is very sick. If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction, we lessen the importance of their deprivation. We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure-seeking, but not delight, not enjoyment. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the devil. If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down..." We should give thanks that the end had magnitude.

• 1:22:12Speaker 02

  We must admit that there will be music despite everything. It's a quite extraordinary poem.

• 1:22:19Tim Ferriss?

  That really is. Who is the author one more time? You say Jack Gilbert?

• 1:22:23Speaker 02

  Jack Gilbert, yes. We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world, to make injustice the only measure of attention is to praise the devil.

• 1:22:36Tim Ferriss?

  How did you find this poem? Or how did it come into your life?

• 1:22:39Speaker 02

  Oh, I read poetry a lot. And I don't know where it came from. I've had it for some years. And I've made friends with some poets. And I've even tried to write poetry. Sadly, I'm not very good at it. You know, it's like you go to your favorite band. All right, I'm young, I'm gonna go hear the Dead. I wish I could play with them. I can't. I'm a, I'm a great fan.

• 1:23:05Speaker 02

  I'm a fan of good. And we're lucky because we have the great poets of the world. We have Hafiz and Rumi and, you know, we have the Chinese poets. We have Li Po and we have all these magnificent poets. My good friend, Luis Rodriguez, who was the poet laureate of Los Angeles a couple of years ago, and is a Latino activist who's worked with gangs and worked in prison because he was in a gang. In fact, his first major book, which wasn't poetry, was called La Vida Loca, My Gang Days in L.A., which he says proudly is the most stolen book in high school libraries of America. And his platform as a poet, he's running for governor.

• 1:23:46Speaker 02

  He wants to be, if he can, come in second, you know, so he can run against Newsom. He knows he won't win. He said, but I want to stand up for the homeless. I want to stand up for the farmworkers. What kind of culture it is that these people all work to feed us and they don't have enough food stamps to feed their children. I want to stand up for climate and for public transportation and alternatives. He's got all this, this beautiful platform.

• 1:24:13Tim Ferriss?

  Jack, let me ask you if I could, just before we move to your friend. A Brief for the Defense, why did you read that? And what do you make of the title also?

• 1:24:23Speaker 02

  The Brief for the Defense is it's in defense of joy. And I'll go back to it with you, I'm happy to. Andre Gide, the great French philosopher, said, "When you understand correctly, you must embrace joy as a moral obligation." For there's a book, and now a movie that came out, The Book of Joy, that's a dialogue between Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who recently died, and the Dalai Lama, about joy. And part of what's in that book, it's mostly a record of their dialogue. They each acknowledge the immense suffering that they've been through and the people around them. For Tutu, the incredible suffering and under apartheid

• 1:25:07Speaker 02

  and all the conflicts and the people who were killed and died and many who he knew and thrown in prison. And what tore apart the nation, really. And he was right in the center of it. And the Dalai Lama, of course, fleeing from Tibet, having the Chinese army burn the sacred texts in the monasteries and imprison monks and nuns and take over the culture. And as he said, "They've taken so much from me, why should I let them take my happiness?" And they talk to each other, and they're both, they're both very funny. They both have great senses of humor. And they say, for them, like Gide's moral obligation, the world is too magnificent and mysterious

• 1:25:52Speaker 02

  and too beautiful to live on the channel of despair. It's just not. So in the Buddhist tradition, we have these practices where you cultivate joy, where you look through the eyes to see first the secret beauty in everybody going by. And one of the parts of that practice of joy, and you could try it, Tim, is when you look at somebody. Try to imagine their happiest day, their happiest moment as a young child. Because even if they had a bad childhood, some do, there were days when they were tickling and wrestling and rolling around and laughing. I think there's an inviolable spirit in children.

• 1:26:37Speaker 02

  I've seen it in refugee camps. They just can't be stopped. And innocence and a... And so you look at that person and you see not that adult with all their cares and traumas and whatever, their fear and anger, but you realize that that child of the spirit is in them. It actually still is. And then you start to remember your most beautiful happy days as a child. And then you invite and invoke it. May I live with that spirit? May I see it in others?

• 1:27:12Speaker 02

  So Tim, I wanna pick up with the thread of joy coming out of that poem and Jee's sense of joy as a moral obligation. Because people can often think about meditation as something like a grim duty. Alright, I've gotta go to therapy and I've gotta work out and I've gotta diet and I should meditate as if it's some self-help thing. And especially since you asked, you know, when your nervous system, as all of ours, is in disarray right now, somewhat vigilant and wary, meditation is not supposed to be a grim duty,

• 1:27:49Speaker 02

  but rather more an act of adventure and understanding of opening the mind and heart and bringing a sense of well-being. Mahatma Gandhi said, "What use is freedom if it doesn't also include the freedom to make mistakes?"

• 1:28:10Speaker 02

  And my teacher Ajahn Chah, we would ask him different questions about things. And a lot of the times, he would say, "It's uncertain, isn't it?" You know, "Tell me about enlightenment." He'd smile, he'd say, "It's uncertain, isn't it?" "Well, tell me what happens when you die." "It's uncertain, isn't it?" I mean, he had teachings, but he loved the wisdom of uncertainty. He said, "Why don't you be, just as you talked about, Tim, when you're washing the dishes, as Thich Nhat Hanh described, to feel the soapy water in your hands and enjoy washing the dishes or being with another person." I remember reading about these Russian astronauts who got in trouble and were not sure they would even make it back from their orbit

• 1:28:55Speaker 02

  above the Earth where they'd been for a while. But finally, they did, and their capsule came down and opened. And they said they touched the Earth with their feet, and it was the most glorious moment just to be in the dusty plain of Kazakhstan and touch the ground and the plants that people might have called weeds. To see the eyes of people who were walking around eating them or to be able to go home and sit at a table with people felt absolutely miraculous. And so, there's something about meditation when we quiet the mind. And yes, we can bring compassion and tend to all the difficulties that we carry, but it's an invitation to get bigger,

• 1:29:40Speaker 02

  to feel the sense of mystery. As the poet says, "I'm moving at tremendous speed toward a star in the Milky Way. My heart's a little fast, otherwise, everything is fine." And for you and those who listen, to remember that spirit of adventure and joy that was there as a child, the child of the spirit. So if you would, Tim, close your eyes for a moment. Let's just meditate together, and other people can join us. And take a couple of long breaths. Let yourself settle.

• 1:30:27Speaker 02

  And notice that there are different channels. Consciousness has these different dimensions. You can tune into the channel of despair or the one of outrage. But you can also tune into the channel of the Dalai Lama and Tutu and so forth, of adventure and caring and joy. As you sit quietly, let yourself remember one of the best moments of your childhood. Even vaguely, one of the best days of joy, laughing, playing, enjoying, tickling the child of the spirit.

• 1:31:11Speaker 02

  And keeping your eyes closed, feel it. And let me know if you can remember something like that.

• 1:31:19Tim Ferriss?

  I can.

• 1:31:21Speaker 02

  And what should feel like in your body? Stay with it.

• 1:31:25Tim Ferriss?

  It feels light, unencumbered, feels expansive, exploratory.

• 1:31:36Speaker 02

  Beautiful, beautiful. So stay with this, the quality of light and unencumbered, expansive, exploratory, joyful. And let it fill your body and let it fill your cells and DNA to remind you that this child of the spirit, this inviolable joy that was born into you is still really available. It can't be taken from you no matter what. So just let it open and feel it filling your whole being in a easy, joyful way.

• 1:32:28Speaker 02

  And now let yourself imagine that some being who carries the spirit of joy and wisdom amidst everything in human life, some amazing being, comes to join you as a guide, as a friend, as an inspiration. And let yourself be surprised who wants to come, this carrier of joy and wisdom amidst it all. And see who wants to arrive or appear.

• 1:33:07Speaker 02

  And allowing this, keeping your eyes closed, notice, let me know who, if anyone, comes.

• 1:33:15Tim Ferriss?

  Well, it's actually a friend of mine, he's younger than I am, who I think does a pretty good job with levity and adventure, while also being really effective in the world.

• 1:33:31Speaker 02

  So both adventurous and joyful and effective. And so this friend, male, female?

• 1:33:38Tim Ferriss?

  Male, in this case.

• 1:33:40Speaker 02

  This guy, this fellow, comes and he's there with you and you see his smile and maybe he puts his arm around your shoulder, he's just like your brother, "We're in this together. Come on, let's have a good time. Let's make an adventure where we make a difference and we do it with real joy." And let yourself feel that connection so that you're together in this. We need that from one another. And then, as you feel this, he reaches into his pocket and he has a gift for you that's a clear symbol of what you need to step out of that small sense of self that you've talked about,

• 1:34:22Speaker 02

  that's vigilant, hypervigilant, and, you know, learn to try to protect yourself. He knows you're much bigger than that. And he has the perfect symbol, the gift, that will help you to be who you really are, this joyful, vast, adventurous spirit. And see what he gives to you. He places it in your hands. If it's not clear, you can lift it up to the light so you can see it, just what you need. What do you get from him?

• 1:34:55Tim Ferriss?

  Would you like my answer?

• 1:34:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34:58Tim Ferriss?

  So I don't know why, well, there, maybe there's no why, but it looks like a very small, maybe inch and a quarter, inch and a half diameter, almost like an pendant, but it's a silver circle with some type of circular, uh, bluish green stone in the center, which is round.

• 1:35:22Speaker 02

  All right. So hold it in your hand. And then you can ask him, what does this symbolize? And he'll tell you.

• 1:35:32Speaker 02

  You can know.

• 1:35:35Speaker 02

  Your intuition, your understanding will come.

• 1:35:39Speaker 02

  What does he tell you it symbolizes?

• 1:35:43Tim Ferriss?

  Unending connection, the circularity of it, just the illusion of separateness.

• 1:35:51Speaker 02

  So hold it in your hand and he's reminding you that part of the joy and the adventure you can have is that you're connected with it all. You're always connected and there's a joy in that spirit. You can't fall out of that circle because it is you. You are life.

• 1:36:09Speaker 02

  And then he whispers in your ear a few words of support for living with joy.

• 1:36:19Speaker 02

  What does he say?

• 1:36:20Tim Ferriss?

  The first thing that came to mind was take it easy. Take it easy.

• 1:36:24Speaker 02

  Okay, listen to that. I've heard the song myself.

• 1:36:29Speaker 02

  You know, and, and you're laughing as you say it and feel that laughter fill your body. Cause he's really reminding you who you are, that you can do this, that this is actually not just a channel, but this is underneath all the rest that we try to do. Here we are, we try to be grownups, responsible, protect ourselves, take care of everything. Take it easy. You can do what you do as he does. Adventure and success. With this joyful spirit and pause and just feel it.

• 1:37:07Speaker 02

  How is this?

• 1:37:11Tim Ferriss?

  It feels good. It feels lighter. There's a certain unwinding sensation to it.

• 1:37:20Speaker 02

  Beautiful. So you're kind of demonstrating in your own experience now for other people who are listening, watching. You're really demonstrating what meditation can do. It can open you from the, what's called the body of fear, the small sense of self, to expansiveness and to a sense of connection and well-being. And as you found that kind of adventure and joy. Now, the beautiful thing is that even if you're traveling and you happen to go to Costa Rica or Indonesia or wherever you go, that he's not far away. You can close your eyes and he'll join you in spirit, wherever you are.

• 1:38:04Speaker 02

  Because as in that circle, he's part of who you are. And it's always available in five minutes. And this is one of the gifts of meditation. And it's not like Pallianna, because there's a lot of difficult things we have to carry. And Mara keeps coming back with progression and doubt and so forth. And you can say, yes, I see you, Mara. I know you're here. And there's the Buddha seating seated there saying, yes, I, Mara, I see you. Oh, you're Mara, but that's not who I am. Oh, it's a pleasure, a pleasure to sense you in this way, because I know it's true for you.

• 1:38:47Speaker 02

  So then you wanted to ask a question about loving kindness?

• 1:38:50Tim Ferriss?

  I did. I was inclined to ask about loving kindness meditation because, as you and I have discussed, I think quite a few years ago, since it's been a little while, it seems to be sometimes an effective on-ramp for Westerners who have trouble with other forms of meditation. I don't know if that's a fair statement to make, but I do recall for the first time, doing loving kindness meditation myself, very short meditations. I mean, really, five minutes is what we're talking about. But doing it every night before bed when I was working on Tools of Titans, this book of mine. And it was incredible to look at the before and after.

• 1:39:35Tim Ferriss?

  Effect on my default state of being after five, or six, or seven days of just doing five minutes consistently of loving kindness meditation. It was quite shocking, to be honest. And for that reason, I thought I would ask if there's any loving kindness meditation you might recommend for people who would like to give it a shot.

• 1:39:57Speaker 02

  Well, first, I'm glad you had that experience, and it is common for people. And sometimes to sit in meditation, you sit, you close your eyes, and even if you're just trying to breathe and feel your breath and calm, the mind is racing, or the emotions of worry, or anxiety, or other things, kind of take you over. And it doesn't feel like it's, at the first, it's not easy, and it even doesn't feel like it's working. It does work, but, but in the beginning, they can feel that way. So you're, the wisdom of what you're saying is quite right, to actually deliberately turn the attention toward loving kindness meditation, or something like it, the joy practice that

• 1:40:41Speaker 02

  we just started to do. And it doesn't take long, in five minutes. You just did five minutes, and it changed your state. The other practice that's also good is a walking meditation, especially if you're upset. Sometimes it's actually not that good to try to sit, but we naturally pace anyway. But this is more deliberately, like tignanhan, walking with a kind of deliberate care and attention, and maybe bringing in a little loving kindness, either take each step for yourself, or the people that open your heart most naturally, that you care about. So if people go on to my website, jackhornfield.com, there are a whole series of loving kindness meditations.

• 1:41:26Speaker 02

  If you click on meditations, primarily audio, there's a couple with videos, but primarily audio. And it helps to have a voice guiding you through it, at least for the first while. And then, as you did, you can take it on and... Find your own language and do five minutes a day or ten minutes. And it will change your consciousness really very quickly. And then I love doing it, you know, I can be on the airplane flying somewhere. And I'm reading my book or lost in whatever I'm doing and it feels very isolating. And then I'll take three minutes and I'll look up. And I'll look down the aisle, there's an old grandmother and I wish her well.

• 1:42:11Speaker 02

  May she be safe and happy and loving kindness, surround her with loving kindness. And then there's that pierced teenager over there, may he be well and surrounded with loving kindness. And then there's that old man over there. And I just do two, three minutes of it, kind of almost like offering a blessing of wishing them well. And then when we land and we get off, I can almost like wave goodbye to those folks. Cause they're like, oh yeah, I got connected with you. You don't know it, but we are connected. And it changes everything. And it happens, we're walking down the street, it can happen in a moment. So some of the other things, just to recommend, I have a book entitled,

• 1:42:54Speaker 02

  The Art of Forgiveness, Loving Kindness and Peace, which has both stories in it and written on instructions for joy practice and loving kindness and compassion practice, along with those things on my website. And I do have this, what people are finding to be a kind of amazing teacher training program for people who are interested in learning it for yourselves and passing on these practices. You mentioned the MMTCP Mindfulness Meditation Certification Program. Also you can find on my website. And it's a two-year program. There's ways to start to learn meditation if you haven't. And we've now done it.

• 1:43:38Speaker 02

  For 5,000 people in 70 countries. And I get stories like this woman who's in Lahore, Pakistan, who said, you know, after I've gone through this, now I'm teaching this in a girl's school in Pakistan. And it's so helpful for the girls to have the compassion and loving kindness training and joy practices. Or I get a note from a guy who says, yeah, I'm in Kenya. You know, I work in a clinic. And yes, we need to tend to people medically, but they also really need medicine for the heart. And I teach people and there's so much gratitude. So for anybody interested, it's a wonderful training. And that's also available. And I feel really blessed, Tim,

• 1:44:22Speaker 02

  because somehow, looking for adventure like you, and as we do when we're young, I decided to go into this Buddhist monastery. And it was tough, which of course, we want as young people to be initiated, to try something difficult, to see, you know, see what we can learn. And as my teacher said, you know, where have you learned the most? When it was easy or when it was difficult? So somehow, humanity has to learn this right now. We're in a place where the deepest sense of what the world needs of our courage, our steadiness, or being that one person on the boat that Thich Nhat Hanh talked about,

• 1:45:03Speaker 02

  to be calm and steady in the face of these storms, shows us a way for us to reconnect and not just to survive, but actually to be able to instill a sense of graciousness or well-being or love. And I think that, you know, one of the other little practices that I find a wonderful reflection in the morning when I meditate or get quiet is the question, what would love have me do today? What would love have me do today?

• 1:45:43Speaker 02

  And then the heart starts to answer. And you know, some of it's tough, that we have to tend to this and do that. But what would love have me do today? What we're talking about is listening and trusting our own intuition and trusting our our own heart to guide us. I have a little passage to read, which are instructions from a thousand years ago, or a long time ago, by this Tibetan

• 1:46:14Speaker 02

  master, meditation master, teacher named Atisha. And here they are. It's really what we've been talking about, and here's how he talked about it. He said advice, Atisha's advice. He said, "Consider all experience to be dreams." We take it all so seriously, but there's this vastness of the galaxies and millions of people being born and dying, and peace coming, and war coming, and joy, and sorrow, and gain, and loss, and consider it all to be dreams. Be grateful to everyone. Thank you to everyone, even the ones that make difficulty. Don't be swayed by outer circumstances.

• 1:46:58Speaker 02

  Don't brood over the faults of others. I love this one, because it's so easy to judge the others. Explore the timeless nature of consciousness. Let suffering teach you compassion. At all times, rely on a joyful mind.

• 1:47:19Speaker 02

  And the last is, don't expect a standing ovation.

• 1:47:27Tim Ferriss?

  It's really funny.

• 1:47:28Speaker 02

  It's not a performance, it's really living your own life, becoming the Buddha that you are, the wise one, you know, the wise woman, or the wise man, the sage. Really embodying that, that you just found in yourself with your friend, with that kind of joy, that's both able to accomplish things, but able to do it in a way that plants seeds of well-being, and adventure, and caring.

• 1:47:56Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you, Jack. And I want to bring up also one quote that you shared with me long ago. This is quite a few years ago. I think it was in our first conversation on the podcast. And this is, I believe, a quote, you can correct me if I'm wrong, from Ryokan, Ryokan Taiju, who was a quiet and unconventional Soto Zen Buddhist monk, I'm reading from Wikipedia, who lived much of his life as a hermit, also well-known for poetry and calligraphy. But the quote that you shared was, let me just make sure I get this right. This is Ryokan referring to himself, "Last year, a foolish monk, period. This year, no change, period." So when you're judging yourself harshly, maybe just also remembering that this business

• 1:48:38Tim Ferriss?

  of being human isn't always easy, even for people who focus on cultivating a lot of these faculties.

• 1:48:44Speaker 02

  Perfect. "Last year, a foolish monk. This year, no change." Got this laughter in his spirit as a poet, can be. Thank you, Tim, always.

• 1:48:57Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, absolutely. And I will include links for everyone in the show notes to everything we referred to. So jackcornfield.com, @jackcornfield on Twitter and Instagram, jack underscore cornfield. And for those interested in the loving kindness meditations on your meditations section of your website, which is jackcornfield.com/meditations, I will also put some links to specific meditations on that page in the show notes at tim.blog/podcast. And thank you so much for taking the time, Jack. It's always such a pleasure, such a joy, and so helpful to me personally to spend time with you.

• 1:49:33Speaker 02

  Well, for me, too. I've enjoyed our connection since the very beginning. So, and it's good to see you blossoming in your own unique Tim way.

• 1:49:42Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you, Jack. Thank you. I appreciate that.

• 1:49:47Speaker 02

  Take care, my friend.

• 1:49:48Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you. Take care, Jack.

• 1:49:53Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half-page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered, or have started exploring over that week. It's kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading, albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests. And these strange

• 1:50:37Tim Ferriss?

  esoteric things end up in my field, and then I test them, and then I share them with you. So, if that sounds fun, again, it's very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about. If you'd like to try it out, just go to tim.blog/friday, type that into your browser, tim.blog/friday, drop in your email, and you'll get the very next one. Thanks for listening. This episode is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, what I would take if I could only take one supplement. The answer is invariably Athletic Greens. I view it as all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it, in fact, in The Four Hour Body, this is more than 10 years ago, and I did not get paid to do so. With approximately

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• 1:52:45Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:53:29Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:54:14Tim Ferriss?

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