#414: Jack Kornfield — How to Find Peace Amidst COVID-19, How to Cultivate Calm in Chaos

Jack Kornfield — How to Find Peace Amidst COVID-19, How to Cultivate Calm in Chaos | Brought to you by FreshBooks http://freshbooks.com/tim and 99designs http://99designs.com/tim. "We have the opportunity, even in difficult times, to let our spirit shine." — Jack Kornfield Jack Kornfield (@JackKornfield https://twitter.com/JackKornfield) trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, and Burma, shortly thereafter becoming one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974. Jack has had a profound and direct impact on my life, and I'm thrilled to have him on the podcast once again. 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. He holds a Ph. D. in clinical psychology and is a father, husband, and activist. Jack's books have been translated into 20 languages and sold more than a million copies, including The Wise Heart http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553382330/offsitoftimfe-20, A Lamp in the Darkness http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1622030966/offsitoftimfe-20, A Path with Heart http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553372114/offsitoftimfe-20, After the Ecstasy, the Laundry http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553378295/offsitoftimfe-20 (one of my favorite book titles of all time), and his most recent, No Time Like the Present: Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy Right Where You Are http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1451693699/offsitoftimfe-20. He offers a brilliant online training program for those who want to learn to teach meditation at JackKornfield.com. https://jackkornfield.com/ This episode is more of a personal therapy session for yours truly in some respects. You will notice that I sound anxious and unsure in this interview, and that is very much by design. I think it is unhelpful when people in the public eye hide the fact that they also struggle, and it puts them on this illusory pedestal that I think is ultimately self-defeating. Instead, I want to share with you that no matter how much Stoic philosophy I read, no matter how often I meditate, there are times when I struggle, and this week is one of them. I also hope that you'll listen to portions of this conversation multiple times. There are a number of exercises that Jack shares that I will certainly be listening to in the upcoming weeks. Please enjoy. This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks http://freshbooks.com/tim. I've been talking about FreshBooks http://freshbooks.com/tim—an all-in-one invoicing+payments+accounting solution—for years now. Many entrepreneurs, as well as the contractors and freelancers that I work with, use it all the time. FreshBooks http://freshbooks.com/tim makes it super easy to track things like expenses, project time, and client info, and then merge it all into great-looking invoices. FreshBooks http://freshbooks.com/tim can save users up to 200 hours a year on accounting and bookkeeping tasks. Right now FreshBooks is offering my listeners a free 30-day trial, and no credit card is required. Go to FreshBooks.com/tim http://freshbooks.com/tim and enter "Tim Ferriss" in the "How did you hear about us?" section! This podcast is also brought to you by 99designs http://99designs.com/tim, the global creative platform that makes it easy for designers and clients to work together to create designs they love. Its creative process has become the go-to solution for businesses, agencies, and individuals, and I have used it for years to help with display advertising and illustrations and to rapid prototype the cover for The Tao of Seneca. Whether your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99designs http://99designs.com/tim. You can work with multiple designers at once to get a bunch of different ideas, or hire the perfect designer for your project based on their style and industry specialization. It's simple to review concepts and leave feedback so you'll end up with a design that you're happy with. Click this link and get $20 off plus a $99 upgrade http://99designs.com/tim. *** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast https://tim.blog/podcast/?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=podcast-description. 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. Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Please fill out the form at tim.blog/sponsor http://tim.blog/sponsor. Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books http://tim.blog/books. 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• 0:00Tim Ferriss?

  You had a rich and spicy vegetable soup and you're wondering if the audio is spicy. Do I sound spicy?

• 0:08Speaker 01

  You sound rich and wholesome. Which, I'm not sure that's a compliment, but nevertheless.

• 0:17Speaker 02

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:24Speaker 01

  No, we're seeing an appropriate time.

• 0:27Speaker 03

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

• 0:39Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. Longtime listeners of this podcast know that I've been talking about FreshBooks for years. It's the all-in-one invoicing, payments, and accounting solution. It came about because I was doing a revision of the Four Hour Workweek for 2009, looking at new software solutions that could help people, help my readers. And FreshBooks came up over and over and over again. Many entrepreneurs, as well as contractors and freelancers I work with all the time, use FreshBooks more and more every day. Why is that? Well, most people, especially entrepreneurs, business builders, hate wasting time doing things inefficiently. Painful invoicing with different cobbled-together solutions, including Word or Excel, can fall into that category. If you want to avoid that pain, what can you do?

• 1:24Tim Ferriss?

  Give FreshBooks a try. FreshBooks is accounting software that makes invoicing and other bookkeeping tasks so easy, you can save up to 200 hours per year. That's a lot of hours. Here's how it makes running your business easier. You can automate bank reconciliation in just a few clicks. You can give your accountant access to the information they need to do your taxes. This is a huge one. I've realized how important this is and how much it makes life easier when you get this done with many things. You can accept credit card and ACH payments right on invoices to get paid two times faster. And of course, you can create, customize, and send branded and professional-looking invoices in about 30 seconds. With plans starting at just $15 per month, FreshBooks is designed to grow with your business. And right now, FreshBooks is offering my listeners, that's you guys,

• 2:08Tim Ferriss?

  a free 30-day trial with no credit card required. Simply go to freshbooks.com/tim and enter "Tim Ferriss" in the "How did you hear about us?" section. That's Ferriss with two R's and two S's, of course. Check it out. Go to freshbooks.com/tim and start your free 30-day trial today. Freshbooks.com/tim.

• 2:31Tim Ferriss?

  This episode is brought to you by 99designs, the global creative platform that makes it easy for you to find and work with amazing graphic designers online. Longtime listeners of this podcast know how much attention I pay to detail, how obsessively I approach nearly all elements of my work, because the small things often end up being the big things. So whether it's your logo, your business cards, website design, even your email templates, all of these visual elements tell your customers, tell your users who you are and what you're about. So I think it's worth sweating the details. I've been using 99designs for years now to ensure that many of my creative projects, whether big or small, are as cohesive, professional, and beautiful as possible. I've worked on draft mockups of book covers. I've worked on all sorts of things.

• 3:15Tim Ferriss?

  Most recently, I've been working with a designer at 99designs to update the illustrations and layouts for all of my downloadable eBooks. I've developed a really great working relationship with the designer, who goes by the username Spoonlancer, and I intend to continue working with him to bring ideas to life one project at a time. I've also used 99designs for all sorts of high-end illustration for different books, like the Tao of Seneca. You can see a bunch of examples on my Instagram that I've put up, and they've turned out better than I possibly could have hoped. So, from logos, to websites, to packaging, to books, 99designs is the go-to creative resource to build your brand on any budget. So check them out. Right now, my listeners, that's you guys, can get $20 off,

• 3:58Tim Ferriss?

  plus a free $99 upgrade on their first design contest. A contest is a great way to get started and find the right designer for long-term work. You can also book a free design consultation with a brand expert at 99designs to receive personalized branding advice over the phone. Their hands-on team has helped thousands of business owners at this point. It's a great way to get the most out of your experience with 99designs. So, take a look. Head to 99designs.com/tim for your discount and to sign up for a design consultation today. That's 99designs.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole-body health. I do get asked a lot... What I would take if I could only take one supplement?

• 4:42Tim Ferriss?

  And the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole-food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com/tim. That's drinkag1, the number one. Drinkag1.com/tim.

• 5:24Tim Ferriss?

  Last time, drinkag1.com/tim. Check it out.

• 5:32Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. But who wants to think about germs these days? This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to interview and deconstruct world-class performers of different types, to tease out the habits, routines, frameworks, practices, et cetera, that you can apply in your own life. This episode is more of a personal therapy session, for yours truly, in some respects, and features Jack Kornfield. And I want to say a few things before we jump into his bio. The first is that my hope is that you will listen to portions of this conversation multiple times. There are a number of exercises that Jack shares that I will be certainly listening

• 6:17Tim Ferriss?

  to in the upcoming weeks multiple times. And I suggest you think of this as a menu from which you can choose different things you can use repeatedly. That's number one. Number two, you will notice that I sound anxious. I sound unsure in this interview, and that is very much by design. In other words, I'm not trying to hide the fact that I also struggle. I think it is unhelpful when people in the public, I do that, and it puts them on this illusory pedestal that is, I Ultimately self-defeating and instead I want to share with you that no matter how much Stoic philosophy I read, no matter how often I meditate, there are times when

• 7:00Tim Ferriss?

  I struggle and this week is one of them. So with all that said, who is Jack Kornfield? Jack Kornfield, you can find him on Twitter @JackKornfield, K-O-R-N-F-I-E-L-D, at JackKornfield.com. Jack trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, and Burma, shortly thereafter becoming one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974. Jack has also had a profound and direct impact on my life and I'm thrilled to have him on the podcast once again. Jack co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barry, Massachusetts with fellow meditation

• 7:42Tim Ferriss?

  teachers Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein, and the Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California. He holds a PhD in clinical psychology and is a father, husband, and activist. He has a very expanded, broad-spectrum toolkit and has worked with veterans, has worked with adolescents who self-harm, cutters, etc. He has a wealth of experience as a clinician, so he is not limited to meditation practices. I feel that's important to underscore. Jack's books have been translated into 22 languages and sold more than one and a half million copies, including The Wise Heart, A Lamp in the Darkness, A Path with Heart, After the Ecstasy, The Laundry, one of my favorite book titles of all time, and his most recent,

• 8:27Tim Ferriss?

  No Time Like the Present, subtitle, Finding Freedom, Love, and Joy Right Where You Are. He offers a brilliant online training program, and I don't use that adjective lightly, for those who want to learn to teach meditation at JackKornfield.com, and he is co-leading that with Tara Barak, who I also have a very high opinion of and who has been on this podcast. So definitely check out his course at JackKornfield.com. And without further ado, please enjoy this, what was for me, a very valuable conversation with Jack Kornfield.

• 9:03Tim Ferriss?

  Jack, welcome to the show.

• 9:05Speaker 01

  Oh, thank you, Tim. I'm happy to be back.

• 9:07Tim Ferriss?

  I am thrilled to have you back. And for purposes of context, for people listening, we're recording this Monday, March 9, 2020, and things are very exciting in quotation marks at the moment. And I am perhaps not so secretly going to use this conversation, which is intended to be listened to by my audience, as a therapy session for myself.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 9:37Tim Ferriss?

  And I will confess, Jack, that only very recently, in the last even few days, have I ever in my life taken prescription medication for sleeping. And I know that I'm not alone in perhaps struggling to, not necessarily make sense of, but contend with a lot of what is happening currently with the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, etc. And I thought we would start with the topic that I had written down here at the very top,

• 10:16Tim Ferriss?

  and that is talking about a large virtual class you taught recently in China. Could you speak to what that was and what the experience was like?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  I taught a class in China of people who'd been involved in meditation. So it was through a community of people I know there, many folks who are already under quarantine at home, and dealing with the collective anxiety and fears that are happening, the incredible disruption that's happening in China, which may well be happening here. It looks like it's actually coming to us in a very rapid fashion. So we talked about how to hold it all. And, you know, to get them to laugh a little bit, I said, you know, we have at our center in California at Spirit Rock, we have a whole group of people who

• 11:11Speaker 01

  are on our winter-spring two-month retreat, 100-plus folks, who are mostly in their own little rooms. They meditate quietly together. They can't go out. They can't talk to anyone. And they paid lots of money to do it. I said, and you get this for free.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  What will it mean to take your circumstance? And even though there is anxiety or fear, or, you know, again, not able to sleep, all the kind of disruptions, what if you were to turn it around? And say, "The universe has provided you with a retreat that you might not have had any opportunity to do in your life in this way, and to use it somehow to deepen your compassion, your self-care, the wisdom you have." And I said, because I use the image that is so powerful from the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  He said, "When the crowded Vietnamese refugee boats met with storms or pirates, if everyone panicked, all would be lost. But if even one person on the boat remained calm and centered, it was enough. It showed the way for everyone to survive." And I said, "So, these are tough times, and it's quite obvious, you know, that we're in this complex of cultural anxiety and the spread of the virus and so forth. You can either give in to or get lost in your fear and anxiety, or you can take this as a time to begin to train yourself

• 12:57Speaker 01

  in steadiness, in trust, in the ability to have a vaster and broader perspective. And perhaps more than anything, with a kind of common humanity, to develop your sense of care and connection more deeply for everyone else. This is the time that the bodhisattva, which is a Buddhist term for a being who commits to compassion, turns toward the difficult circumstances and makes their own heart a zone of peace and compassion and says, "We know how to hold this. We've been training our whole lives for this difficulty.

• 13:40Speaker 01

  And now, let us see if we can use this so it's not happening to us, but it's happening for us." And that reverses the frame of it. Now, I don't mean this is easy, but it is actually true.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Circumstances can change. It's said like the swish of a horse's tail from something benevolent to something difficult. And when you enter a retreat, especially a long retreat, as I did in my own training in Buddhist monasteries, they will often say, during this retreat, many people will be born, many people will die, and your task is to come to that great inner freedom that can hold birth and death and joy and sorrow and be a benevolent and liberated spirit or liberated force in the midst of it all. So we had this kind of conversation,

• 14:41Speaker 01

  and people talked about their concerns with their family and obviously their economic fears, which I worry about more broadly here in the US. How many small businesses will be affected? And how many people who live from one paycheck to the next? And it just touches my heart even to say it. And at the same time, maybe this wake up also is a call for us here to have universal health care. Because in fact, you know, it doesn't matter how rich you are, when you go out in your car or you go out to the market, you're surrounded by all these other people. And if everybody around you doesn't have the necessary care,

• 15:26Speaker 01

  then it will inevitably affect you because more and more we can feel how we are tied together. So what do we do with this, I asked them? We can either get lost in our fearful fantasies or we can let them go or give them a safe place. The way to work with anxiety to begin with is to acknowledge it, anxiety and fear, and say, thank you. Thank you for trying to protect me. I'm okay for now. And put them aside, you can even visualize putting them aside. You can take your fears and anxieties as thoughts or images. And put them into a bowl, or put them into a sword and place them on an altar in your mind and say,

• 16:11Speaker 01

  all right, may the wise ones of the past, may the Buddhas and the whoever it is that you admire, you hold this for a while, it's not my job to hold this. And let me be the, uh, the person who lives in the reality of the present with a, with a centered spirit and a compassionate heart. And that kind of conversation got a lot of, um, uh, response, uh, as a reminder really of what we know.

• 16:40Tim Ferriss?

  And for people who want to explore the exercise you just described, that actually highly suggests our first conversation, because you may or may not recall, but we spoke about anger, specifically my anger, or anger response to certain circumstances, uh, which included a discussion of contractor ease, as you put it, which we won't, don't have to get into it. But, uh, people can explore that in the first conversation we had. I would like to, uh, follow up with a question about the distinction and the labels I'm going to use are somewhat clumsy, but the, how to combine what Bruce Tifft, I believe his name is,

• 17:24Tim Ferriss?

  he wrote a book called Already Free, calls the developmental view and the foritional view, or the developmental framework and foritional framework, meaning that you have a developmental framework that one could associate with Western psychotherapy, where you identify problems, you work through your problems, you improve your circumstances, maybe you ask for that raise, quit that job, have the difficult discussion with your spouse, whatever it might be. So it's a personal development slash improvement path in some, uh, respect, problem solving path. Then the foritional view, which at least as he would put it, is improving your ability or changing your...

• 18:09Tim Ferriss?

  Lens through which you relate to your circumstances. So for yourself, how old are you now, Jack? If you don't mind me asking?

• 18:17Speaker 01

  I'm about to turn seventy-five.

• 18:20Tim Ferriss?

  Seventy-five.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  It's a wild, it's a wild number, because inside, of course, I don't, and very often, we don't feel anywhere near as old as those numbers that, you know, roll by. And inside, I don't know how, what age I feel. Fifty, forty, thirty, because it's all just a concept.

• 18:35Tim Ferriss?

  Right. So how do you, in, let's just say, current circumstances, think about how much of your mind space or energy to dedicate to relating to the anxiety and fear and so on differently, or with an accepting heart, and so you don't become lost, as you put it, in these overblown fantasies in some cases, versus the kind of brass tacks of problem solving, where you're taking steps to disinfect packages, you're taking steps to socially distance, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, thinking about medications you might need for the next two to three months if there are shortages.

• 19:19Tim Ferriss?

  How, how do you, how do you think about or suggest that you blend those two? Because I do see people who fall in a binary way, a hundred percent on one side or the other, and that doesn't strike me as ideal.

• 19:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, one side would be almost a kind of denial, and just carrying on, or saying, well, you know, the outer doesn't matter. And the other is to get lost in the future.

• 19:45Tim Ferriss?

  Right.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  Your fearful, fearful fantasies, when, when the future is still really unknown for us. Part of what happens for me, and I think as we mature, become wiser, is that we become comfortable with paradox. The way, to put it most simply, is you need to remember your Buddha nature and your social security number. Right? That there, there are different dimensions to our...

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Our being, just as light can be measured as a particle or a wave, um, depending how you examine it. And it's, there it is in its particle form and you can see it. Or there it is as a, as a wave function. Um, in the same way, consciousness itself can be experienced differently. It can be experienced as a field of vast timeless awareness. It can also be experienced in each moment as the consciousness of what's here, almost as if it's a particle. And we, um, uh, we human beings have this miraculous capacity to hold these multiple dimensions in a wise and open heart.

• 21:04Speaker 01

  So I recommend to people, of course, um, be sensible. Any, you know, any good spiritual teacher says what they want from students is, you know, a s- a student who's dedicated, yes. And also who has some common sense and not just lost in illusion. So be practical in, in your community. Um, be careful because this virus is spreading and it will spread further. There's not a question of it. Um, and the question more is, um, there's a collective and an individual one for us as individuals. How can we go through this and tend ourselves and others with care?

• 21:45Speaker 01

  And not spiral down inwardly into a place of fear or despair. Um, and this is possible, we've done this, um, as human beings, we're survivors and we have generations of ancestors behind you that are cheering you on and saying, yep, we lived through some stuff, tough stuff too. And I remember being in the, in the forest monastery and I got very sick at different times as a monk or in, in that period of my life, training.

• 22:16Tim Ferriss?

  Can you just, for people who don't have context, explain the forest monastery?

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Sure, when, when, when I, uh...

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Became interested in Buddhism. I went in the nineteen sixties to Thailand. Where I worked for some time in the Peace Corps on tropical medicine. Teams in various remote villages. Um, and then I became a Buddhist monk. In monasteries of the forests, uh, of the area of Thailand and Laos that were still huge vast forests. And in that, in those monasteries, um, we lived very, very simply. You know, took our alms bowl out to the. Nearby village to walk and get whatever food we could and. You know, sewed and made our own robes and, um. It was a marvelous way of life.

• 23:08Speaker 01

  Uh, and one that was ancient and much of it was really the training. We did a lot of meditation. We also did various kinds of communal practices and service and things like that. Was learning how to be steady and balanced. And compassionate to ourself and others through all the ups and downs. So I remember when I was sick with malaria, I had typhoid too. There are various things I went through. And I was lying on the kind of wooden floor of my little hut in the forest. Um, and didn't go to the daily chanting or whatever. So the teacher came to see me and he said, how are you? I said, I've got a, I'm, I'm really sick. He felt me. He said, you have a high fever. I said, yeah.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  He looked at me quite knowingly. He said, it's probably malaria. I said, it probably is. He said, um, makes you feel bad, doesn't it? I said, yeah, really suffering. He looked at me. I said, yes, really suffering. He says, makes you think about going home to your mother, doesn't it? And I smiled because he was a very funny guy. I said, absolutely. He said, this is malaria. All of us who lived in the jungle have had it. Now, there's good medicines and I'll send the medicine monk to help you later. But remember, no matter how hard it is, you know how to practice with this. We've all done this. And he smiled, he looked at me, he says, "You can do this."

• 24:36Speaker 01

  And, and he actually urged me to sit up in the middle of it. There I was sweating and chills. He said, "Sit with it, meditate with it, and you'll find your center in the midst of it all." So that was the kind of training. Um, and in some way, we all have that training in our lives. Um, we know there are choices where we go down the rabbit hole of our fears and get lost and contracted. And that's fine. You can say, "Thank you, thank you for trying to take care of me as you, you know, as you might to your fears." But then you remember that who you are is not limited to that. And this is the shift of identity. That who you are is bigger than the thoughts and the fears or worries.

• 25:21Speaker 01

  Um, and when you remember who you really are, which is awareness itself, a vast, loving awareness, then you can look at the circumstances, hold them with great compassion, and say, "Well, how do I want to live now? How do I want to follow this?" And the beautiful thing is that you learn that you don't have to pick up all those difficult thoughts and carry them around. We were out wandering in the rice paddies on the way to a village to collect alms food one day with my teacher Ajahn Chah and some monks. And out across the rice paddies was this great big rock, a boulder.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  And Ajahn Chah said, "Is that boulder heavy to us?" He asked the question, kind of the way Zen master would. And being intelligent young monks, we said, "Yes, it is, master." And he smiled and he said, "Not if you don't pick it up."

• 26:21Tim Ferriss?

  I knew there had to be a trick coming. I knew there was something coming.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  And it was, and it was, it was something that we learn inside of how, how to witness what's present without being lost in it.

• 26:38Speaker 01

  And so let's, all right, let's stay with the question of, of the spread of this virus. Um, because our, our society isn't very well prepared, um, but we can prepare ourselves. We can prepare our hearts so that we're that one on the boat, whether we stay in our homes at times that we need to and take it as a time of deepening our, our sense of presence and care for others. It also means that we can become altruistic. Um, it can bring out the best in us. And let me tell you a story. Um, this was on BBC some, not so many years ago.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  They did a special on the 60th anniversary of the siege of Leningrad in World War II. And Leningrad was besieged by the, um, German army for almost three years through three long winters. And there were, oh, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people inside, many who were close to starving. And one older woman who had been there as a child, um, was describing the experience and she said, we would go out once a week. She said, and in the winter, I went out to pick up bread for my mother and myself.

• 28:04Speaker 01

  And the streets were icy and slippery and I stood in the bread line and went and got my piece of bread. And as I came out, I fell on the ice and the bread fell into the mud puddle and I sat there and I wept. I was a young girl. And another woman walked out behind me who had received her bread. And she picked, helped pick me up. And she tore her piece of bread in half and wrapped it in a cloth and handed it to me. And then this old woman led the camera down the hallway of her railroad type apartment into

• 28:43Speaker 01

  the kitchen and opened a cabinet. There was a, a um ceramic which she pulled open and pulled out a blue kerchief and untied it and inside was part of that piece of bread. And she said, what that woman did for me is she gave me the spirit to live through the next year and a half of the, of the siege, um and I'll never forget it.

• 29:12Tim Ferriss?

  Wow.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  So we have the opportunity, even in difficult times, to let our spirit shine.

• 29:20Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm. Maybe, maybe especially in difficult times, uh and, and it, I've been thinking a lot of an expression recently and how it might apply to me and how I'm responding to current life events, uh or world events for that matter. Uh and I don't know the attribution, so I apologize to whoever actually said or wrote this, but that adversity does not build character, it reveals character. Have, have you seen any, and let's just take for the time being that to be true, whether it is or it isn't, but let's just, let's assume that to be true. Have you seen any uh patterns in the people

• 30:00Tim Ferriss?

  who are having the greatest difficulty emotionally, psychologically with the spread of this novel coronavirus? Are, are, and is there anything to be learned from that that can help people?

• 30:15Speaker 01

  Well, the first thing to say is that I've seen people, I have a friend who's a doctor who's going around visiting anybody who has got symptoms. Um and she's, you know, from, from the outside, you might call it heroic in some way. But she said, but this is what I train for. This is the oath that we take as physicians. That we will actually be there. And so it brings out what's beautiful in lots of people. However, as you say, if we have a tendency to worry, which many people do, or if we have a tendency to feel ourselves to be small,

• 30:56Speaker 01

  if our identity is built somehow around the sense of separateness, um, then this can exacerbate it. What's helpful is to have a bigger perspective. Um, the Ojibwa Indian Native Americans have this amazing, I find poetic way of putting it. They say, "Sometimes I go about pitying myself when all the while I'm being carried by great winds across the sky." And, and we're in this human incarnation for a certain measure of time. No one knows how long they have.

• 31:38Speaker 01

  Um, a beautiful and difficult and remarkable dance in this life. And how will we do it? We're being carried by vastness. And we're not just this personality or our history or the small sense of self. You're a spirit that was born into your body. You were, you were the loving awareness that was born into this incarnation. And you get to remember who you are as you start to awaken. And it gives you a tremendous kind of freedom. So my hope is that people will see their habits

• 32:23Speaker 01

  and also remember that who they are. The Buddhist texts begin with the words, "Oh, nobly born." Or you who are the sons and daughters of the lineages of the awakened ones. Remember who you really are. That it will actually bring out what's beautiful in people.

• 32:40Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm. You know, I asked, I think this is, this is relevant to a question I asked earlier in so much as you strike me as someone who relates to life and death and mortality, perhaps differently than many folks, including many people I've had on this podcast. And you mentioned that you're about to turn 75. I think you've got lots of mileage left. And I also know that older segments of the population, as it relates to COVID-19, at least, appear to be more susceptible to

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 33:15Tim Ferriss?

  to severe illness and, and death. And many people, including myself, are worried about their parents and are, are perhaps in some cases for the first time, but certainly right now, a lot of people are looking at mortality or feeling the sort of imminent looming specter of death in some capacity, or the potential of death, and struggling with that. How do you relate to death and mortality?

• 33:49Speaker 01

  So I want to tell a, a little story of relation to my twin brother when he died. And I don't remember so well what we did in the last podcast. So if I

• 34:01Tim Ferriss?

  That's okay. No problem.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  I think it, it may be relevant. And then from that, maybe we can talk about how one learns to face death in a different way.

• 34:14Tim Ferriss?

  Yes, please.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  So a few years, a few years ago, my twin brother, who was an accomplished and acclaimed scientist and a geneticist and a, and a world explorer, he was a population biologist more than anything else. So he explored the underwater genomes of the great lakes of the world and Lake Malawi in Africa and Lake Baikal in Siberia and Lake Titicaca in the Andes and so forth, and genetic diversity and all those sort of things. He did lots of things. He was an acclaimed professor. But he got blood cancer and after a time.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Um, it morphed into a leukemia that they were not able. In the end, he had a, he had a stem cell transplant and all kinds of good treatment, but they were not able to stop. So I was with him in the

• 35:16Speaker 01

  weeks before he died. And I loved him a lot. He's a, you know, as a twin and a funny, you know, eh, high spirited, interesting, um, playful human being. Um, but there he was lying and knowing that he was gonna die soon. And I thought, well, maybe I'll teach you meditation, I said to him. Um, but he'd been in some pain and, you know, in all kinds of states. And I realized pretty quickly that it was a little late for that. I mean, yes, I could do a couple guided meditations, but um, mostly it was beyond his doing some inner training.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  So I said, how about instead, if I meditate with you and I'll meditate out loud?

• 36:08Tim Ferriss?

  Hmm.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  And so you'll get a sense of how I do this. And he was a member of the explorers club in, you know, which has the people who first climbed Everest or went to the North Pole or the South Pole or went to the moon, all these great explorers. I said, will they take inner explorers? He said, no, no, no, we only do the outer.

• 36:29Speaker 01

  Okay, I said, well, um, so I closed my eyes. I was sitting next to his bed. And I began to meditate and I said, I'm simply paying attention with a loving awareness to what's here in body, heart and mind. My, my main practice is that of opening to whatso and learning from it. And there are different channels or perspectives that open up. So I said, I'm tuning in right here. And I closed my eyes. And after a minute or so, I said, my body is feeling cold.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  And the cold is centered in my testicles and in my, in my penis and in, you know, right in my groin. And it's getting colder, it's like ice. And I'm paying, as I continue to pay attention, and I said, "And this is death. I feel it," because our, our minds and bodies as twins were really linked, "I feel death growing in my body." And he said, "So what do you do?" And I said, "You pay attention to it." And so I sat with that for a little bit, and I said, "Now I feel my attention moving from the ice in my genitals up to my heart."

• 37:46Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden, the temperature changes, and I feel my heart warm like an oven, and a color, kind of red comes. And I feel a love that I've had for you since we were in the womb, or maybe lifetimes past, who knows? But this love, I feel, is outside of time, that whether I'm with you in your body or not, we love each other. And I feel a rest, a connection in this love, um, that's huge and warm, and keeps us connected forever. And I stayed with that for a time, and I said, "Now my attention is moving spontaneously

• 38:29Speaker 01

  up to my head, and my head's dissolved, and now I feel myself to be vast space and awareness itself," which is how I practice often in meditation. And I said, "In this place, I can sense that there's a body here, some sensations of mine, and a sense of body over there, because I can see and hear and feel yours. They're just appearances on the screen of timeless awareness, coming and going. And who we are is so much bigger than this. We are the field of consciousness itself that manifests in these incarnations. And in this, I feel absolutely..."

• 39:13Speaker 01

  At peace and open and spacious. And when I opened my eyes and looked at him, he had become much more peaceful. It's as if he had taken in these dimensions. And it had reminded him of something that he knew deep in himself. Because these are the different dimensions of freedom. That come as one trains in meditation. And so let me talk about that a tiny bit and then I'll get back to your question about death. Because there are.

• 39:45Tim Ferriss?

  No, uh, no rush whatsoever.

• 39:48Speaker 01

  Interesting as well. There are four dimensions of freedom. That you learn as you train in. We'll call it meditation or in the inner capacities of presence. And each of them involve a shift of identity. The first is that you become more and more able to be present with the content of your experience. With what is called the 10,000 joys and the 10,000 sorrows. So as you, I'll use sitting as the example, as you sit and meditate. You'll have your longing and your love and your itches and your worries.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  And your anger and your joy and your creativity and your imagination and your pain in the knee. You know, and your resentments. And you have all of those things come. And the first thing, that first dimension of freedom that grows for you. Is what neuroscientists call expanding the window of tolerance. That you're able to tolerate your humanity. With its broken heart and its incredible love, you know. With the unbearable beauty of the world you live in and the ocean of tears. And the poet, I believe it's Hafiz, says, "Don't surrender your loneliness so quickly."

• 41:20Speaker 01

  Let it cut more deeply, let it season you as few ingredients can. And so you sit with your loneliness. And you learn to say, "Ah, this is loneliness," and give a bow to it and say, "Yes, thank you for your song." And you sit with your love and you acknowledge that. You sit with the difficulty or shame that many people carry. I remember working with this man who'd been an orphan and he felt like there was something wrong with him because he was put into an orphanage, even though it was nothing that he as a child had done. And you learn to tolerate your humanity. And that already brings a tremendous kind of freedom. And then the next dimension of freedom, and they're not in order.

• 42:05Speaker 01

  They're different dimensions of, because we are

• 42:10Speaker 01

  we're able to hold, we're beings of multi-level or paradox, is not just the content, but the process or the common humanity of experience. And you start to realize that what you take so personally is just what life is. Zorba the Greek says trouble. "Life is trouble. Only death is nice," he goes on somehow or other. And you start to see,

• 42:43Speaker 01

  you know, that there are different kinds of tears. There are the tears from your own trauma and being, you know, hurt or wounded or abandoned or abused that need to be honored, and we might talk about trauma more later. But there's another kind of tears that are called the tears of the way. And those are the tears of the Dharma where you realize, when you face your own loneliness or longing or the way that you've been mistreated, all of a sudden you realize, "Oh, loneliness and longing comes with being human." Praise and blame come with being human. Joy and sorrow come with being human.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  I think last time I told you this story of being with Pema Chodron with this person, this woman, whose partner had committed suicide. And how terrible that was for her and Pema telling her to hold it all with compassion. And then I asked in this room of two or three thousand people for people to raise their hands or stand up if someone in their family had committed suicide or someone close to them. You know, and two or three hundred people stood up. And all of a sudden, that woman gazed back at them. I asked her to look and they had her and the room became a holy place because there

• 44:09Speaker 01

  was so much common humanity of that which the heart has to bear. And yet we know we can bear when we are connected with others. And so the second dimension or aspect of freedom is our common humanity. That it's not personal that you have suffering or that people get sick or that you have triumphs and successes and you, you know, make a name for yourself or, or build something beautiful. These are part of what human incarnation does. And you begin to hold it all, not as me and mine, but as part of this great dance. And it's all both impermanent and not so personal.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  It has both its, you know, joys and its suffering and the heart grows wider to hold this. And, and then the next dimension, which opens up further and, and kind of talks to that question you talked about developmental versus fruition practice, and I'll get back to it, is the dimension of awareness itself. My teacher, Ajahn Chah, this great meditation master in the forests of Thailand and Laos.

• 45:29Speaker 01

  Had lived in caves and done austere practices and long days and months of meditation. Um, and out in the jungles where there still were tigers and all those things. Um, and he had deep insights and visions and you know, lots of suffering, but also tremendous, um, uh, insights and beautiful states of samadhi and, um, awakening. And he went to see the greatest master of his time, another Ajahn or teacher named Ajahn Man, and told him about all the things that had happened in his meditation and the insights and understandings and beautiful states that had come of dissolving his body into light and so forth.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  And Ajahn Man's response was, "Cha, dude, you've missed the point." He said, "Those are just experiences. They're like movies on a screen. You sit and you have the war movie and you have the movie of conflict at work and you sit and you have the romantic comedy and you have the documentary." He said, "They're all happening, they arise and pass. Those are not the point. The point," he says, "is because none of those can be held on to. They all come and go. The question is, to whom do they happen? Turn your attention back to the one who knows, to the knowing."

• 46:57Speaker 01

  There was a phrase he used, "Sikibuto," to the one who knows, and become the witnessing of all of this. Because who you really are is consciousness itself, manifesting in the different forms that are experienced. But consciousness itself is timeless and pure and open, vast like the sky, containing all things, but not limited by them. And when you become the loving awareness itself, then this is the gateway to an even greater dimension of freedom.

• 47:41Speaker 01

  And then, since I'm going on and on here, I'll add the fourth dimension of freedom, which is that as you become familiar with and remember and remind yourself and discover that you can be the loving awareness, that you are the witness to things. All these things change, but even now, as you listen to him and as people are listening to this podcast and you feel your body seated there in a chair, or you're in your car, or wherever you are listening, and you hear the sounds and the other sounds around you, you know, in the sights, there is a consciousness that knows these.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Turn your attention from the experience to the mystery of consciousness that is ever-present. This is the one who knows, the knowing. Rest in it. It is your true home. And from this place, then, there opens one more dimension of freedom. As my teacher in India, Sri Nasargadhat, said, "Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. Between these two, my life flows."

• 49:05Speaker 01

  And as you become the witness of these words of your body, of experience of life, it's not that you remove yourself from life, but you actually become more intimate with it. You become able to hold it in this great heart-mind, the word in Sanskrit is jitta, which means both heart and mind, that is loving awareness. And with loving awareness, not only is there spaciousness, but there's also intimate connection. And so your love grows for this mystery of life, even as your freedom grows. And so these are the different dimensions, they're part of the training that we do

• 49:50Speaker 01

  when we train teachers in meditation, but these are the different dimensions of freedom that are possible for us. And as you learn these, they allow you to enter the terrain of birth and death with a wise and spacious heart.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  So I'd be happy to talk more about death, but let me take a pause here because I've been going for a while and I wonder how this sounds to you.

• 50:16Tim Ferriss?

  I, I enjoy this type of discussion. So it makes sense to me, conceptually, experientially, and perhaps we'll get to this point, or we'll, we'll cover this topic at some point, I think, particularly with certain adjunct assistance in ego dissolution. I, I feel as though I've, from an experiential standpoint, also perhaps glanced on the edges of some of these dimensions personally. And I suppose as, as the shepherd of my listeners, the way it's landed is both

• 50:57Tim Ferriss?

  very, very fascinating and wondering how for someone who is in pain currently, thinking about ruminating upon perhaps just perseverating with the topic of mortality and death, the uncontrollability of vastly changing circumstances, perhaps they're separated on opposite sides of the country from their parents or grandparents, and recognize that healthcare systems may be overwhelmed, et cetera, et cetera. Is there, is there something that they can do, just as a triage practice, they may not go through all of these dimensions, but is there anything

• 51:39Tim Ferriss?

  they can do in terms of practice, or anything you can share that might give them some reprieve or lessen the severity of that anxiety that's associated with all of that?

• 51:52Speaker 01

  Yes, there are a few things that they can do. And I'm, I'm grateful for the practical dimension of your question. So,

• 52:03Speaker 01

  First, I want to answer personally. I've had a really good life. So, I feel in many ways complete. Um, and so what will happen in terms of death, I don't particularly want to die. I'd like to be there for my grandson Desmond, who's now approaching one and a half years old. I want to play, you know, tag and ball and watch things and, you know, watch him develop and grow and all that. Um, but I also feel at peace with myself. That being said, um, of course, people are going to be afraid and of course, they're going to be worried for whether it's their parents who are old or, or other people they know who are vulnerable or themselves.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  So here are several different things that are important. Um, the first is to stop and just to sit down for a little bit and maybe put your hand on your heart every day. And remind yourself, let me hold all of what I'm worried about with a tender compassion. Bring in the element of compassion because we human beings go through difficult things. Let me hold myself and my worries and my parents or my friends who are vulnerable. May they be safe and well, you can sort of extend your well wishing. May we hold ourselves with tenderness and compassion.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  So this sort of brings that altruistic quality and reminds us that we can hold things with kindness. Not to judge yourself, even, you know, you think, oh, well, I shouldn't be worried so much or I should this or I shouldn't be anxious. Again, just say, thank you for trying to take care of me. And then the next step is to notice, I'm okay for now. And this becomes really important because your parents are okay for now or the people you worry about are o- okay for now. It doesn't mean they shouldn't prepare or get your masks or sequester yourself, you know, or line up the kind of care you might need or medications.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  But to live where you are, to come back and say, I'm okay for now and feel yourself rooted in the earth. Another thing that you can do, you feel yourself connected to the earth, is literally to go outside and find a beautiful boulder, a rock, or a tree, and stand with it and feel the roots of the tree, look at it and sense how it goes into the earth, and how that tree lives through winds and storm and loses its leaves and regains them, and how life keeps renewing itself. And stand with that tree and feel how you too can root yourself in the earth,

• 54:57Speaker 01

  how you can stand in the winds of change and feel grounded and steady and flexible and find those qualities in yourself. Again, you can take your images of worry and fear, thank them for trying to protect you, and visualize placing them in a bowl or into some other form and put them on an altar, and that altar in your mind can be filled with the, you know, the image of whoever or whatever you take to be sacred, it can be the Buddha in Kuan Yin,

• 55:42Speaker 01

  or Jesus, or Mother Mary, you know, or Gandhi, or whoever it is. Or, if you have an altar at home, because some people do, and they put their favorite spiritual inspiration on it, you can write your worries on a piece of paper. Feel all the energy of those fears in your body, the emotions of it, the stories, and then fold the paper up and bring it to your altar and put it in the lap of Kuan Yin, or in front of Mother Mary and say, "You hold these now. I will do what I can for my parents. I'll take care of myself and my family and community.

• 56:23Speaker 01

  I'll let you carry the fears. I'm gonna do it from a place of centeredness and courage."

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Know too, um, as you do this, that, just as I talked about with, with a vastness, um, don't be squeamish about letting things go. You can actually let go of some thoughts and feelings. It doesn't mean they won't be there, they'll come up again. But you can say, you know, not now. I put you on the altar, I let you go, I put you back into the earth. Um, and, and instead, I'm now going to shift my consciousness to calm and spaciousness and vastness. And feel your breath breathing in and out as it does.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  And feel how life has carried you. And let yourself open to a space of steadiness and calm. And maybe link your spirit with all those others who are steady and calm in the world right now, just as you are. The thousands and thousands who found a way to be calm and steady. The physicians and nurses, you know, the fathers and mothers of children who found their way to tend one another with a steadiness and a calm. And link your consciousness with them. So these are a few of many practices to suggest. Um, and this is important to say also

• 58:02Speaker 01

  that it's not a one-time thing, that's why they're called practice and not perfect. Because you do it, you lose it, you kind of get lost again. You can't sleep, as you said, Tim, or you get lost in worries. And then you can't sleep and you say, alright, let me sit up and meditate. And let me meditate on vastness and let me become the, the bodhisattva of peace and compassion. And extend my compassion to everyone else who can't sleep tonight. And we'll meditate together and we'll meditate on our connection and love. And little by little, you'll get bored just doing the compassion over and over and you'll fall back asleep.

• 58:42Tim Ferriss?

  It strikes me that this, well, a number of things strike me. First, for people who have not ever tried this, the visualization of placing these various feelings or concerns on an altar, or with other advice-giving sources you respect, or physically putting it on your altar, is, at least has been for me, surprisingly effective. And not only that, but it doesn't have to take a long time. The power of the metaphor, for me at least, has been very effective, and certainly, Jack, you've helped me in many other instances

• 59:27Tim Ferriss?

  over the years. The linking of consciousness with others, I think, is something I haven't quite paid enough attention to. And that strikes me also, that it could be particularly important and nourishing when people are, say, social distancing, or self-quarantining, or otherwise isolated, or feeling physically isolated. So that strikes me as a very good practice. And I had a follow-up question, which was, could you maybe expound a bit,

• 1:00:04Tim Ferriss?

  or expand a bit, on, don't be squeamish about letting things go, because I think I need to hear, perhaps, maybe just you repeat what you said, or elaborate just a little bit?

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Well, it makes me think about Ram Dass, who we may talk about as we go on as well. And that story, when he was teaching as Baba Ram Dass, and had just come back from India with his white robes and beads and so forth, and... Uh, doing, offering Hindu and Buddhist meditation, some of what we just did, and some Hindu mantras. And this woman in the front row said, "Hey Ram Dass, aren't you Jewish? Come on, what's with the Hindu stuff?" And Ram Dass smiled and he said, "I am," he said, "and I was," as he pointed out, he said, "I was bar mitzvahed, as I was." And there's a lot that I love in the Jewish spiritual tradition. The Hasidic masters are like the Zen masters.

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  You read the stories and the Kabbalah has all these dimensions of consciousness. And then he smiled and he said, "But remember, I'm only Jewish on my parents' side." And it was, as he was, a witty comment, but also a profound one. Because we can get lost in things that we're identified with and really take them to be ourself. But then in a moment, we can also say, "Oh, that's just common humanity, that's just..." And we can step back and not take it so personally.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  And in this case, it's like your whole history, your parents, your trauma, you know, your gender, whatever. All those things are given to you in this incarnation in a certain way. But in another way, who you really are is bigger than all of that. And so then you can also spread out your consciousness or open to that vastness and say, "I'm gonna connect myself with everyone in the world who's steady and calm right now. We will do this together." So, I don't know if that helps.

• 1:02:17Tim Ferriss?

  It does, it does help. And you also mentioned a name that I know some listeners will not recognize, and that is Kwan Yin. Now, speaking as someone who's spent some time at Spirit Rock, and actually had some very challenging times in my first silent meditation over an extended period of time, which you were very gracious and generous in helping me to get through. There's a very large wooden carving of Kwan Yin at Spirit Rock. Who is Kwan Yin and what is the significance of Kwan Yin for you as a symbol, or an avatar, or an icon?

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  So, part of what's interesting about consciousness is that it works in the minute particulars. You know, your toenails and the, the, um, kind of breakfast you ate this morning. You know, and the number of people in your family and what kind of carpet or wood you have on the floor. That it has the specifics of life, but it also has an archetypal dimension. Which is to say it has patterns. The archetypes are the patterns of, of life.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Um, there's the pattern of, you know, houses or places to live, whether they're, you know, huts or, or thatched or caves or wooden or concrete or something. They all fit under the pattern or the archetype of, of a, of a home. Uh, and in, in the spiritual language, um, the archetypes of awakened consciousness, uh, which are sometimes described as, you know, great wise beings and so forth. There are many, many kinds and Kuan Yin is a Bodhisattva. Bodhisattva is the compound word that means, um,

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Bodhi is awakened and Satta is being, someone who's committed to compassion and the freedom or the awakening of all beings. And there's lots and lots of Bodhisattvas and in fact, I think there's lots of Bodhisattvas in my neighborhood. People who treat one another beautifully, who help uplift one another, who have a free heart. We know Bodhisattvas. So, Kuan Yin is the name for a Buddhist archetypal Bodhisattva. She is the... Consciousness of universal compassion. And sometimes she's depicted with a thousand arms and a thousand hands,

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  enough to reach out to respond to the needs of the whole universe. So we have these images of Kuan Yin because she's a, as an archetype, she's a symbol of compassion itself. And we can become that. The beautiful thing is not that there's some, you know, symbol on the wall or carved statue in whatever tradition it is, but that these are really symbols for what lies within us. And so we have, we have all these capacities. And depending which ones we, Thich Nhat Hanh used to talk about it as seeds in consciousness.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  Depending which ones we water and tend, those are what blossom. If we water and tend our anger, it will grow. If we water and tend and spend time on our fears or, you know, our conflict, they will grow. If we water the seeds of peace in us, they'll grow. If we water the seeds of compassion in consciousness and tend to it, it will blossom. And the invitation of these archetypes is to realize that we have this in us. It's not separate from us. And also, I think there's something else. People kind of approach spiritual life as a grim duty.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  All right, I jog, I meditate, you know, I, I, I go to therapy. I watch my diet. I'm trying to lose weight and now I gotta damn, do the damn meditation stuff, you know?

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  And it's not about that. It's not about like perfecting yourself. Okay, I've gotta fix my body and I've gotta heal everything and then I've gotta fix my personality and perfect it. It's not about perfecting yourself. It's about perfecting your love.

• 1:07:08Speaker 01

  Can you live in this world with love for this human incarnation? Um, with all its marbles and its imperfections, there's something bigger than that. Zen master Ryokan, the most beloved poet of Japan, he wrote of himself, "Last year, a foolish monk; this year, no change." And, and there's so much tenderness, that's like Quan Yin speaking, or here's another phrase from Quan Yin, "My old faults, like snow falling on warm ground."

• 1:07:49Speaker 01

  That there's a forgiveness and a tenderness in, in that archetype of Quan Yin that says, "Yes, we're human, and yes, we all get afraid, we make mistakes." Um, and we can water the seed, the magnificent seeds of presence and care and love, all of those are also part of who we really are. And then behind that, we are consciousness, having this great game. And that's where your psychedelics come in, my friend. As well as meditation, because you were, you were, you were beginning that, you know...

• 1:08:28Tim Ferriss?

  I was, tiptoeing around.

• 1:08:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:08:31Tim Ferriss?

  Let's, let's, let's jump in. You mentioned one of the arch, the archbishops of, of American psychedelia, Ram Dass, in a sense, at least, starting, starting back in his Harvard days, in his previous incarnation as Richard Alpert. So, could you speak to, it could be specific to Ram Dass, it could be in the context of your own life, but what, what role? Does, or do psychedelics serve, if any? And they don't need to be limited to psychedelics. Could we, we could put it under the umbrella of sacred medicine, or something else?

• 1:09:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, sacred medicines. You know, I've written about this. I've written a number of articles. I have a, I have a chapter in a book called Bringing Home the Dharma, where I, where I write more extensively about this. There is a long tradition, as we know, in many, many spiritual cultures, whether the ayahuasca cultures of the Amazon, the African cultures, Ibergane and so forth, and the Indian cultures of soma that's woven into the Vedas,

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  you know, or the Huichol Indian culture using peyote, you know, or the magic mushroom cultures of Central Americans, so forth. There's this long, beautiful human tradition of using sacred medicines to help us remember who we are. And because they're so powerful, they're also scary to people because they take apart our, our conventional reality. Which is why when Tim Leary and Richard Alpert, back in the old Harvard days, were, you know, turn on, tune in and drop out, were espousing that.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  At the same time, there was the sort of freewheeling hippie movement of love and peace as opposed to the war in Vietnam. That was a long time ago, half a century ago. But it was also threatening to the culture at large that was more focused on getting through school, having a job, on making a bunch of money, on fulfilling your social roles. And these sacred medicines, they have different dimensions, but in the deepest way, they let you shift your identity from being that separate sense of self, that separate atom in the cog

• 1:11:13Speaker 01

  of, you know, the culture, and come back to remember love, to remember who you are, to have a sense of mystery and vastness. And of course, in the meantime, depending which ones you take, they're also quite... Cleansing. And so you'll find in taking them that you relive your traumas. And if you relive them in a conscious way, you can release yourself from them. I've worked for forty years or more together with Stanislav Grof, another of the great elders in the psychedelic movement. And now, of course, with Michael Pollan's wonderful book on How to Change Your Mind and the resurgence of research at Johns Hopkins and UCLA and NYU and so forth.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  It's again possible to see the benefits of these medicines. And people are using them in all kinds of ways. Now, they can be misused, like anything. We're Americans. We know how to misuse anything.

• 1:12:13Speaker 01

  And for certain people, people who have already, you know, psychiatric concerns or histories and so forth, they can actually be dangerous. So I don't mean to say that they're all, everything's all hunky dory. And they can easily be misused as party drugs and things like that. Or people then, in wrong circumstances, having what they call a bad trip because they don't actually understand it. But in general, when they're approached as a sacrament or as a sacred medicine or as something in the simplest way

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  to invite us to learn from a deep dimension or being, they can be quite magic. And you can take psilocybin mushrooms, you know, or join a circle that is drinking the ayahuasca tea, you know. And when it's held in the right set and setting, where it's quiet and you're tended by someone else and you're able to let go and open in a safe way, you'll find that there's a purification that takes place, a release of things held in the body and in the emotions of past difficulties and traumas. Images and visions will come. And then beyond that, if you allow it,

• 1:13:39Speaker 01

  there opens a sense of joy and mystery and a connection to the consciousness that you really are. And all these things are possible. In what I've written, almost all the very well-known and respected teachers of my generation from the eastern.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Side of our, you know, meditation in the West. The teachers like Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein and Pema Chodron and,

• 1:14:10Speaker 01

  you name them, they all started with psychedelics. We all did. And it gave us a glimpse into something that we then wanted to learn further. The beautiful thing is that there's a great complement between this and the inner trainings in meditation. When you meditate, you learn how to navigate these vast spaces and all the intensity of emotion and healing that come up with a more gracious and understanding perspective. And in my many, many years of working with Ram Dass, but especially with Stan Grof,

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  where we would lead retreats for hundreds and thousands with holotropic breath work, many people who were also using these psychedelics at the same time or near that.

• 1:15:04Speaker 01

  We learned and showed people both how to open through this process and at the same time, how to use the meditative skills of witnessing, of being the loving awareness, of tolerance, of opening the window of tolerance, of trust and compassion, holding whatever arises in compassion, so that all the lessons and the openings would actually land in a more integrated and wise way in their lives. So I'm excited that these are now available in our culture and that people are in a conversation

• 1:15:41Speaker 01

  about how to use them in a healthy and skillful way and celebrate that as part of our human heritage, of what we can use to remember that who we are in the end is love, that who we are is life itself, living through us, and our connection, that we are, as my teacher said, wisdom says I am nothing. And love says I'm everything, that we are consciousness, connected with all things. I remember this image from Alice Walker, who wrote of one character, she said, "One day I was sitting there, like a motherless child, which I was, and it come to me,

• 1:16:26Speaker 01

  that feeling of being a part of everything, and I knew if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed, and I laugh, and I cry, and I run all around the house. In fact, when it happens, you just can't miss it. There is a reality of our interconnection that is available to us, and we all know it, you know, we know it from walking in the high mountains and having our eyes and senses cleansed and open. We know it from lovemaking and dissolving into one another, into the field of love. We know it from being there at the birth of a child, witnessing that mystery, or holding the hand of someone at the time of death,

• 1:17:11Speaker 01

  and seeing that miraculous moment when spirit leaves the body. And it's the, after that, it's just a corpse, and realizing that we're not this body. Who we are is spirit itself. We know it in all these different ways. Um, and the sacred medicines are a way of bringing us back to that.

• 1:17:32Tim Ferriss?

  Jack, I'd love to ask you about, uh, perhaps about mistakes or misuses of these plants and medicines and compounds and so on, in the sense that, just as there are people who use these tools in the right settings, with the proper preparation, proper supervision, guidance, and I should say, just as a caveat, neither of us are recommending anyone do anything with severe legal side effects. In other words, uh, many of these compounds are Schedule I in the United States, and otherwise highly, uh, policed and scheduled and controlled, so

• 1:18:15Tim Ferriss?

  follow your local legal restrictions and requirements, but

• 1:18:21Tim Ferriss?

  Just as there are people who use these things in responsible ways, there are also people who are somewhat like a hammer looking for nails in the sense that they try to use these tools to fix everything and anything, or they use them, I wouldn't say to escape exactly, because these are, on some level, anti-escapist tools. I mean, what you're trying to get away from is almost certainly going to come up and stare you right in the face for an extended period of time, which can be uncomfortable. How can these be overused or abused? Abuse is a strong word, so let's just say overused.

• 1:19:02Speaker 01

  Well, you know, they can become party drugs, and I'm not against parties or people having that kind of dance and loving connection and so forth, but they can be used in ways that are superficial, if you say that, you know, in which, or they can be used in a setting where you can get lost or frightened in the setting because it's not really very well-contained. Or, on occasion, the beautiful thing about most of the psychedelics is that they're not particularly addictive, which is a great relief. However, human beings, you know, we can still try, "All right, I'll take a lot, a lot, a

• 1:19:44Speaker 01

  lot, and see what happens," and that's not particularly helpful or healthy. That's another way of misusing it, or trying to get somebody else to do that. They should be approached with respect. And approached with that respect means also, you know, not too frequent, and that, you have to ask your own heart, "Well, what does that mean? How much can I learn from it? How do I integrate it? Can I take some time afterward? You know, it's not like piling on." And the truth is that none of these things is a kind of magic cure, as you said, that you're just gonna fix everything with it, because it doesn't work that way.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  Each of these are opportunities for healing, for understanding, for opening, to continue, and all that. Blessed, that's great.

• 1:20:40Speaker 01

  You wanna take the journey and not kind of leap ahead. And you started somehow early on talking about the difference between development and fruition. The fruition lens of becoming the consciousness, the one who knows, you can have that perspective. And because we are paradoxical, you also still need to do the inner work. Or even if you have had a beautiful vast meditation or a psychedelic trip or something that's opened you like that, still there'll be places that you're caught and there'll be trauma that you carry. And that becomes the place to develop compassion, open the window of tolerance, allow that healing to take place,

• 1:21:26Speaker 01

  and understand that we're multi-dimensional beings.

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, I mean, these are part of the...

• 1:21:36Speaker 01

  It's so mysterious. We are mysterious spiritual beings. And these help open the gate, but so does poetry. You know, so does looking deeply in the eyes of another person. So does going out onto the ocean and seeing its vastness or walking in the high mountains. These are all our birthright. So does even the mystery of sleep. You know, I mean, we wanna sleep and you talked about, you know, wanting to sleep and I find that

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  when I can't sleep, and mostly I'm able to sleep pretty easily, I get up and I meditate. Say, "Okay, it's given to me time to meditate." And then I notice my mind is maybe thinking about something or obsessing or worried or something. I say, "Oh yeah, thank you for trying to take care of me, it's okay." And I go back to my compassion practice or to the vastness. And after a while, I get bored and I go back to sleep.

• 1:22:35Speaker 01

  But there's some way in which sleep is mysterious, you know? Tim, here we are. And then every day, we long to go unconscious. Forget about the dream part. We do. It's like, oh, can I only have a period where I disappear? You know, people are worried about disappearing in meditation. Hallelujah. Can I have a period where I disappear and I'm not so self-involved with my life? And all the things I have to do and love and hate and so forth? Please, give me a little peace. You know, it's, it's such a weird thing that, that beings, um, beings sleep. Nobody looks at these things. It's just like eating.

• 1:23:20Speaker 01

  You have this hole at the top of your body into which you stuff dead plants and animals regularly. Grind them up with these bones that hang down and glug them down through the tube. You know? And you, you ambulate it by falling one direction and catching yourself and you fall the other side and you catch yourself. I mean, how did you get into this weird thing? You know? So we've lost that sense of mystery. Sleep is one of the great mysteries and we love it. So, um, when you have that sense that instead of it being success or failure, it's like, oh, you get to, you get to see this mystery and realize that it's connected with everything.

• 1:24:02Tim Ferriss?

  Yeah, you mentioned Stan, Stanislav Grof earlier.

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:06Tim Ferriss?

  Stan Grof, who I was very fortunate to have on the podcast before his, uh, stroke not too long ago. Uh, which, which I think he's largely recovered from in terms of writing, but had some aphasia afterwards, much like Ram Dass did, uh, although not that severe. Uh, he, I believe, has, uh, certainly spoken extensively on these topics. Uh, and one of his observations, I'm going to paraphrase here, uh, that is, I believe in his most recent book, or actually a combination of two books. It, it related to suicide and attempts at suicide, perhaps being attempts to...

• 1:24:49Tim Ferriss?

  Free oneself from the ego, but thinking that the only path available for that is extinguishing your physical form. And that part of the reason you see efficacy with certain psychedelics, as has been shown, at least in certain clinical studies done with psilocybin, the ability to reduce end-of-life anxiety in terminal cancer patients, or even address, say, treatment-resistant depression, is in part because just as we long for sleep to go unconscious, in a sense, or go subconscious, it's that temporary alleviation of the burden of self-centeredness and this sort of recursive

• 1:25:33Tim Ferriss?

  self-referential prison that we can create for ourselves. So I do think that's an astute observation about sleep. I just want to underscore a few things you said also. One is that I do think for anyone who is considering any type of psychedelic experience, it is incredibly valuable to put on a little bit of mileage with a regular meditation practice. And to practice, even in a somewhat volume-turned-down sense, sitting with emotions that may be difficult, or thoughts that may be unpleasant, for, say, a consecutive 30-day period, meaning

• 1:26:18Tim Ferriss?

  daily for 30 days, or 60 days minimum, before considering a larger psychedelic experience. That would be certainly something I would strongly suggest. And it's akin to, on some level, drinking from the water fountain before you drink from the garden hose, before you drink from the fire hose. I think that they can be complementary in a lot of respects, but I do think it's...

• 1:26:44Speaker 01

  It's a very good idea. It's really good advice. It's really good advice. And, and, and also, if you're gonna do it, the other dangers, you wanna have, make sure that the source of that sacred medicine is clean and good, and not just street stuff. And you wanna have a sitter. Um, for people who do, it's, it's like going out into, you know, an astronaut. You, you want a containment, so you want someone who's not taking that to sit with you, tend you, give you whatever you need to keep you warm, give you something to drink. Foster a sense that you're protected so that what needs to happen inwardly is held in this sacred set and setting, and that

• 1:27:26Speaker 01

  makes all the difference. Um, now, what Stan said, what Stan Goff said about, uh, about suicide too, let me paraphrase it in a pretty similar way, that when people feel that they want to commit suicide, they are right that something needs to die. They're mistaken in thinking that it's their body that has to die. That they're, but they're facing something that really does have to die and change, and it may be the way their, whole way they're living their life. It may be, you know, the, the history that they have that they have to die to, that, you know, you could call it an ego death, some sense

• 1:28:09Speaker 01

  of identity that they've had that they don't wanna let go of, but they have to, um, some difficulty. So, there's some way in which, just as you point to, the deep inner work of a psychedelic session, where there comes a ego death, or a death of the way we hold ourself and all that we go through, is coming to that, um, that transforms us, and we realize it's, it's, the problem isn't our body, the problem is actually in our own heart and mind.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  Um, now, if anybody's interested in, you know, a wise perspective on the nature of consciousness, um, the, my favorite book of Stan Grof's is a book called The Cosmic Game, um, which you can get, like, everything on, online, um, and it's, uh, a description, he, he described five thousand people, five thousand sessions, sitting with people, whether they did LSD or holotropic breathing or other sacred medicines, and it's a summary of the deepest insights and understandings that have come, and it's a very beautiful, uh, framework for understanding the nature of consciousness itself.

• 1:29:24Speaker 01

  Um, now, the other thing that you're sort of pointing to, Tim, has to do with, uh, and one of our ongoing themes has to do with trauma, and, and how do we deal with that? Um, as it comes up, whether it's in a psychedelic session, or, or, uh, you know, in our meditation or just in our lives, so there's that. Um, and then I'm also, I guess, so we could go there. I'm also remembering sitting with Ram Dass when, um, oh, gosh, my mind is blanking. What's the name of the researcher at Johns Hopkins who's been doing all the psychedelic research?

• 1:30:02Tim Ferriss?

  Roland, Roland Griffiths.

• 1:30:04Speaker 01

  Roland Griffiths, right.

• 1:30:05Tim Ferriss?

  He's the director of the center, mm-hmm.

• 1:30:07Speaker 01

  Roland, Roland had come to visit Ram Dass. Uh, it was probably last year, a year or two ago. Um, and they'd never met in person. Um, but Roland, in a way, has been picking up that psychedelic work that was left off almost fifty years ago by Stanislaw Grof, who was the last LSD researcher legitimately doing that work. And he was, again, at Johns Hopkins. And so they shared stories, and it was, it was actually quite a beautiful afternoon, because Ram Dass, um, told him about the Good Friday experiment with, uh, clergy in...

• 1:30:50Speaker 01

  You know, back in the 1960s in Boston, and how various clergy members had had experiences of God and experiences of deep religious awakening in this. And then Roland was, you know, describing what he'd learned. And it was like a passing of the torch. So much love that was there in the room, which is, of course, what Ram Dass was like in these last years. And then Roland said, he said, "The thing that makes the biggest difference for those who come through our studies, whether they're healed, whether they're able to approach their death in a more peaceful way, or whether they've had great trauma and that starts to heal,

• 1:31:35Speaker 01

  or they've had depression or addiction." He said, "The various groups that we're working with." He said, "One of the scales that we're using to measure the experience is a scale for mystical experiences." And he said, "I can see in our data, quite simply, that if someone has," and he went on, "and many of our people do, a truly, a full-blown or a truly deep mystical experience, everything shifts in their life." And so this is the invitation from meditation itself, or from these psychedelics in the right setting. Because remember, the way that it's done at Hopkins is with a

• 1:32:19Speaker 01

  blindfold on and earphone, you know, so that your trip is entirely interior. And you're tended by someone, and it allows you to go into the depths of your own being. So this is really different than, you know, party tripping or something like that.

• 1:32:38Tim Ferriss?

  Very different, very, very different. People can learn more about that program at hopkinspsychedelic.org also, where you can see, not just Roland, but many other team members who are absolutely incredible. Mary Cosimano, of course. You have Matt Johnson, many other scientists and researchers. So it's worth looking at the... The studies and the science that is being done there, which is, has really sort of set the bar for how these compounds are researched in the last few decades and hopefully moving forward. Question for you about trauma. Let's, let's jump into it.

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:33:17Tim Ferriss?

  How, how would you suggest people think about trauma? You and I, and I may speak publicly about this more another time, but you and I have had a lot of conversations over the last, say, four or five years. And I feel like my response to the current circumstances in the world, COVID-19 and it's, and so on, is really an exaggerated display of the hypervigilance that is a result of childhood trauma. And I, I can prove that in a mathematical proof, but it seems somewhat self-evident to me. And I, I would, I would, I would guess that a lot of people out there may share that

• 1:34:02Tim Ferriss?

  sentiment in some capacity. How, how should people think about trauma? Or how do you think about trauma?

• 1:34:07Speaker 01

  So I want to take a pause here. You know, we're talking about a lot of things that are actually very deep in our human experience. We started with the virus itself and the fact that we human beings have periodically lived through epidemics and that many people have died. And it's not just, you know, that one becomes calm, but that it's really something huge to be able to try to hold. It's like people living through warfare. I, I wish I could say, well, that's human history, as in the past history, but it's current. And we have these streams of refugees from war zones in Syria or Sudan or other places,

• 1:34:51Speaker 01

  or the undeclared wars in the streets in, you know, Central America between gangs and parts of our country, wherever it is. So first, I just want to feel the weight of this in our human life and take a breath and say, so this is a, this is a, you know, a deep question for us as human beings. How do we hold this? What's true is that in our lives...

• 1:35:21Speaker 01

  Those who are listening and yourself and for myself, many of us have some significant trauma in our past. And if we're not aware of it, or don't have a way to manage it, then we can become over vigilant, as you described. We can unconsciously manage it through addictions, by drinking, or drugging, or using in all kinds of other ways, or eating, or sex, or whatever it is in ways that are unhealthy, addictive patterns. We can live our life in a lot of fear. So to understand trauma is really important.

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  And for anyone who's working in the realm of the psyche, of the heart and mind, whether as a psychologist or spiritual, and I can't even divide them, it's just who we are as humans. Understanding trauma is important. Trauma, in the simplest way, speaks of an experience of suffering of some kind, physical or emotional pain of some kind or other that's happened,

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  in which our body goes into its fight-flight-or-freeze, a kind of survival.

• 1:36:44Speaker 01

  And then that gets locked into our bodies and hearts and minds. Sometimes we can have difficulties and process them somewhat. Be there for it, feel the feelings, feel it all, and live through it and release it. And then it doesn't become trauma, it becomes part of our history, something that we've learned. And that's more how animals do it, apparently. One of the great trauma experts, Peter Levine, has these videos which show, for example, a

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  I think it's of a great big jackrabbit being chased by a coyote. And it's running as fast as it can and the coyote's running as fast as it can and you could see it absolutely terrified. And then all of a sudden, I don't know, some other larger coyote or something comes along and distracts the coyote that's chasing it. Um, and the, the, the, the hair, the rabbit giant hair, um, ducks down a hole and escapes. Um, and you see the coyote sniffing around for a while, like, where did it go? And then it saunters off. And then you see the hair come back out of the hole or wherever it ducked into. And it starts, weird, it starts to dance.

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  It starts to jump around as if it's releasing all the tension and all the struggle that was there in that life or death chase. And it does that for a while. And then it settles down and then it kind of hops along and goes on its way. Well, for us as human beings, when we're children and, you know, whether we're abandoned or abused or terrible things happen, or as adults as well, where there's an accident or even surgery where they put our, put us to sleep, but our body knows it and remembers it. Um, we don't release that and it gets stuck. Um, and to the extent that we have, um,

• 1:38:45Speaker 01

  major trauma that's unrecognized or unreleased, as I said, it, it takes over in some unconscious way our life. So let me tell a couple of examples that help give a perspective. The release of trauma, um, happens again, because we're beings of multi-layers or multi-dimensions. It happens in different dimensions. There's a physical dimension of it. So when you start to remember or recognize, or you may already have some memories, that there is trauma.

• 1:39:24Speaker 01

  One part of it, and it can be in therapy or sitting with a very good trauma person, the people who are trained by Peter Levine's somatic experience, or EMDR, or Bessel van der Kolk's practices and so forth, that you start to remember as best you can, start to tell the story, and then feel what it does in your body. And your body's gonna wanna start to move, and tighten, and release, and if you're able to be with someone or with yourself over a period of time and tolerate that, gradually what's been held in the body gets released. The second dimension of it is the emotions.

• 1:40:08Speaker 01

  And I know this very well from people who face trauma arising in their meditation on retreats that I teach, and I'll have them close their eyes, and the images from the past will arise, and then with them come all the emotions. Of terror, fear, of weeping, of rage or grief, and all those things that get stuck in that child or in that person, even in your body, you know, when there was the accident, or there was the trauma, you know, of being abandoned in some terrible way, all those emotions arise, and to be able to tolerate them, and make, often with the help of another

• 1:40:51Speaker 01

  person, make a field of presence and compassion that can allow those to be released, becomes important. And then there's the mental dimension of telling the story. So having worked with vets who returned back from Afghanistan, and Iraq, and Kuwait, Middle East especially, but other places as well, and led retreats with my colleagues, Michael Mead, Luis Rodriguez, this wonderful Latin poet and activist, Maledoma Somé, West African medicine man, when vets return, and it's all the more so from the women who

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  are vets, they can't tell their stories to their families, to the people around them because they're too horrific. And you, nobody wants to go home, you know, and have to tell the stories of the things that, that they've been through. It's too difficult. But when we get combat vets together, and make a safe place and create a ritual where we light a candle and make a ritual space and say, this is where we can hold the, the suffering and the horrors that you have lived through and the humanity of it and who we really are. And they begin to tell their stories. Um, there are two kinds of stories.

• 1:42:20Speaker 01

  The first part is, I can't tell you what I saw. And then they'll go ahead and tell stories and the other combat vets all know this. And then the more difficult story is, I can't tell you what I had to do, what I was forced to do. And then the real grief comes, even deeper, because it's a betrayal of our soul in some way. You know, to, to be forced to kill other people. Um, and the fact that they're able to tell their stories and be witnessed, you know, that a person can tell the story of what really happened to them as a child, and be

• 1:43:05Speaker 01

  witnessed with a loving gaze and with an understanding of how much suffering that was and how it's held in the body and the emotions, and to realize that it's not who you are, that who you are is so much bigger than that, has an enormously transformative effect. And at the end of these retreats for veterans, they would then stand up, we'd invite family and community members to come, and they would tell a little of their story or read a part of a poem they wrote or something. And finally, you'd get some of it out to everyone else to hear. And then they would be ritually and symbolically and literally welcome back into the community.

• 1:43:49Speaker 01

  We hear you. We now understand what you've gone through. And you are, you are one of us. We welcome you home. And it makes me wonder, you know, and worry about all those thousand, hundreds of thousands who were just let off the buses back home and no one really helped them with the stories and the wounds that they carry. And of course, I'm talking about military, but I could be talking about you, Tim, or me where my father was incredibly violent and would throw my mother down the stairs or beat her black and blue so she had to wear long sleeves in the summer so people wouldn't see how much she was battered by him. You know, and how it was to stand there and witness that or have his rage turn on

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  us. And it took me a long time to deal with the pain and the anger. I didn't even want to feel how much anger I had because I didn't want to be like him. But then, as I meditated, I realized it wasn't just out there, that it was in me as well. And so, these are all dimensions of healing, of the body, of the emotions, and the heart, and of the story. And one of the great gifts of being with Ram Dass in these last years is that he became, he became transparent. He became a lighthouse of love. You would just sit and he would

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  gaze at you with what in India was called the glance of mercy. The eyes of that guru, that being, whoever she or he is, that looks at you with so much love and you go blah, blah, and I've felt this and I've done that and I feel so, and your whole story and your pain and your suffering. And they just look at you with so much love and you remember that that's not who you are, all that trauma. And so, we can do that for one another in these deep healing ways. So, that's the beginning of, you know, your question about trauma.

• 1:45:51Tim Ferriss?

  Thank you, Jack.

• 1:45:54Tim Ferriss?

  Well, I, uh, I think that's number one, I would like to have you back for a third installment sooner rather than later. I'm ashamed that it took so long to have you back on. So that's the first thing I would like to say. You know, no pressure to

• 1:46:13Tim Ferriss?

  to accept the invitation now, but I would love to have another installment of this conversation for public consumption. And, uh, I think this is, I think this is a sensible place to

• 1:46:30Tim Ferriss?

  talk about what you're up to now and perhaps tie up this conversation because it's, it's provided a lot for people to chew on and think about and hopefully apply and, and use. I have all sorts of follow-up questions that I will ask another time, but the one that I can't push off is asking you what you are focused on these days.

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  So I'll get, I'll get, I'll get to that. I'll get to that in just a minute. And yes, I hope next time we can talk about climate change. We can talk about servant leadership because I did some teaching and meditation in the UK Parliament with people from both sides of the aisle and what that was like or working in Palestine and Israel and things like that. Um, I'd love to talk about all those many, many more things. Um, like this. Uh, I want to say one more thing from Ram Dass and then it connects to directly to answer your question of what I'm working on. And that is that we held a couple of, there've been a whole series of memorials

• 1:47:39Speaker 01

  for Ram Dass as a spiritual friend and teacher and colleague who died in December. Um, and I was fortunate enough to teach with him and be with him in December, not long before he died. And he was so loving um, that when the retreat ended, that the last day, they give a little set of beads with a thread from his guru's blanket tied into it. And all 350 people would pass by Ram Dass, who was seated there and who didn't have a lot of words because his aphasia had gotten. Worse, he couldn't speak as much toward the end of his life. And he just gazed at them with so much love that people would stand there and start to weep.

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  Um, and, uh, at the memorial Krishnadas, who is a colleague and a friend, um, and a quite famous musician who does chanting that you hear often in yoga studios around the country and so forth. Krishnadas told a story, he said, "I first met Ramadas when I was eighteen years old, and Ramadas had just come back from India and was wearing his white robes and his beard and he was teaching." And Krishnadas said, "It was the most compelling spiritual voice I'd ever heard and I just wanted to follow him and I went back to India, spent time with his guru Maharaji and spent time around Ramadas in the community and really became part of it,

• 1:49:08Speaker 01

  um, and have for years now." And he said, "I can tell you this," after those forty years have passed. He said, "Ramadas became the person we thought he was when we first met him."

• 1:49:22Speaker 01

  And it was, it was a really, uh, it was a beautiful and rich, uh, comment that talks about all of us because in some way we already know and in another way we're works in progress, right, of becoming. But it's also, it's gorgeous because it means that we can become that love. And we come, can become that loving awareness that's who we really are more and more in our life. So the one thing that I will say then to answer your question, I'm involved in other projects in Silicon Valley and with trying to humanize the future of technology and AI and that would be another topic and writing new things and so forth, but I've got a...

• 1:50:07Speaker 01

  Training program for people who are interested in teaching meditation. If you've been a mindfulness practitioner for, you know, a few years or a meditator for some years, and you're interested in passing it on to others, it turns out to be one of the most delicious and transformative things you can do with your life. And it doesn't mean it becomes your whole life, but one thing that you can do becoming a meditation teacher. And so with Tara Brock, we have this online training program to which we poured our very best teachings in our hearts. It's a two-year online program that's really quite wonderful

• 1:50:49Speaker 01

  that you can find out about by going on to my website, jackkornfield.com. And it involves a few in-person short retreats, if you can do them. Mostly online, you become mentored, you become part of a small group, and you have a wonderful teacher as a mentor, and you have a whole group of others that you're training with. And we now have people in 50 countries around the world doing it. And it transforms their lives, and then they take it into their schools and businesses and communities and health centers and so forth. So it's a beautiful thing to do. And I'm excited because we've just put everything that we know that's good in it, and people learn so much,

• 1:51:33Speaker 01

  and they become part of an amazing community. So that's my current favorite activity. Or one of them. Along with talking with you, Tim, and along with, you know, getting, holding my beloved Trudy, my wife and Dharma partner, and, you know, lots of walking out in the spring blossoms here in the Bay Area.

• 1:52:00Tim Ferriss?

  Well, you have many projects. I want to highlight this one for a second because I have spent time with you in person, I have spent time with you on retreat. I think you are an incredible teacher. You're also an incredible clinician and you have toolkits beyond that of perhaps the prototypical mindfulness or meditation teacher. So I want to also just give a nod to the expansive toolkit that both you and Tara have. So I want to mention also Tara because Tara Brock is the author of a book that was recommended

• 1:52:43Tim Ferriss?

  to me that I have also recommend to many, many people called Radical Acceptance, which has had a large impact in my life. The fact that the two of you are offering this teacher training, in effect, for those interested in meditation, I think is just a tremendous opportunity. And I don't say that lightly. I say that as someone who has spent time in live discussion with both of you and spent time in person with you and seen what both of you can do as practitioners and as teachers. So I highly, highly recommend that if you've ever thought about not just learning more about how to meditate, but as a practitioner,

• 1:53:26Tim Ferriss?

  how to teach this, how to help others, that you go to jackkornfield.com and take a look. And I would say, not to make this a hard sell, because it's not a hard sell, I don't have any skin in this game, I don't get anything from it, other than hopefully introducing you to two spectacular teachers, that it's very likely that you're going to be spending more time online from this point forward for the next few months. And it makes sense, at least to me, to look for opportunities. And there are many different options to feel connected and some cohesion with a group that is not in a physical location. So this also...

• 1:54:09Tim Ferriss?

  Presents, I think, a, uh, an excellent option for embracing and cultivating that if it makes sense. So, I will get off my soapbox, but since you're very understated, I wanted to at least just draw a couple of my lines.

• 1:54:26Speaker 01

  Thank you, Tim. I appreciate it. And I also, I appreciate our friendship. I appreciate that we've gotten to know each other in some really important and deep ways. And I so value the work that you do and the heart and care that you put out to all the people that listen. So, thank you for the opportunity. And thank you to all those of you who listened.

• 1:54:47Tim Ferriss?

  Thanks so much, Jack. And where else can people say hello if they want to say hello? I have @JackCornfield on Twitter. Is there anything else that you'd like to mention? jackkornfield.com, of course.

• 1:54:59Speaker 01

  That's probably sufficient. Or they, we can wave at the market, but, you know, as we, as we walk by, but for the moment, we'll issue the hugs and just make a little cleanliness bow to one another as we go by.

• 1:55:14Tim Ferriss?

  Sounds good, Jack. Well, it's always such a pleasure to spend time with you and to learn from you. I really appreciate it. This is done, I, I think I've probably from hitting record to now probably lowered my blood pressure 20 points. So, I appreciate that also. And, uh, I can't wait for our next conversation. So, thanks again for blocking out the time to have a chat.

• 1:55:41Speaker 01

  My pleasure, Tim. Take good care.

• 1:55:44Tim Ferriss?

  You too. And to everybody listening, thanks for tuning in. And you can find show notes, links to everything we have discussed, as always, at tim.blog/podcast. So, until next time, thanks for tuning in. Hey, guys. This is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? And would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found. Or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit that I've somehow dug up

• 1:56:29Tim Ferriss?

  in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short. It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you will get the very next one. And if you sign up, I hope you enjoy it. This episode is brought to you by 99designs, the global creative platform that makes it easy for you to find and work with amazing graphic designers online. Longtime listeners of this podcast know how much attention I pay to detail, how obsessively

• 1:57:13Tim Ferriss?

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• 1:57:56Tim Ferriss?

  Spoonlancer, and I intend to continue working with him to bring ideas to life, one project at a time. I've also used 99designs for all sorts of high-end illustration for different books, like The Tao of Seneca. You can see a bunch of examples on my Instagram that I've put up. And they've turned out better than I possibly could have hoped. So from logos to websites to packaging to books, 99designs is the go-to creative resource to build your brand on any budget. So check them out right now, my listeners, that's you guys can get $20 off plus a free $99 upgrade on their first design contest. Contest is a great way to get started and find the right designer for long-term work. You can also book a free design consultation with a brand expert at 99designs

• 1:58:40Tim Ferriss?

  to receive personalized branding advice over the phone. Their hands-on team has helped thousands of business owners at this point. It's a great way to get the most out of your experience with 99designs. So take a look, head to 99designs.com/tim for your discount and to sign up for design consultation today. That's 99designs.com/tim. This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. Longtime listeners of this podcast know that I've been talking about FreshBooks for years. It's the all-in-one invoicing, payments and accounting solution. It came about because I was doing a revision of the Four Hour Workweek for 2009, looking at new software solutions that could help people, help my readers. And FreshBooks came up over and over and over again.

• 1:59:24Tim Ferriss?

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• 2:00:05Tim Ferriss?

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